: , , . The following companies are subsidiares of Ingersoll Rand: 13125882 Canada Inc., 211 E. Russell Road LLC, 4458664 Canada Inc., ACCUDYNE INDUSTRIES ASIA PTE. LTD., ACCUDYNE INDUSTRIES BORROWER S.C.A., ACCUDYNE INDUSTRIES INDIA PRIVATE LIMITED, ACCUDYNE INDUSTRIES LLC, ACCUDYNE INDUSTRIES MIDDLE EAST FZE, ACCUDYNE INDUSTRIES SERVICES LIMITED, ASTRUM IT GmbH, Accudyne Industries Acquisition S.A r.l, Accudyne Industries Canada Inc., Accudyne Industries S.A r.l., Air Dimensions, Air Dimensions Inc., Albin Pump SAS, BOC Edwards Global Low pressure Air business, CISA S.p.A., Cameron-Centrifugal Compression, Comercial Ingersoll-Rand (Chile) Limitada, Comingersoll-Comercio E Industria De Equipamentos S.A., CompAir, CompAir (Hankook) Korea Co. Ltd., CompAir Acquisition (No. 2) Ltd., CompAir Acquisition Ltd., CompAir BroomWade Ltd., CompAir Finance Ltd., CompAir GmbH, CompAir Holdings Limited, CompAir International Trading (Shanghai) Co Ltd, CompAir Korea Ltd, CompAir South Africa (SA) (Pty) Ltd., Consolidated Distribution Holdings Ltd., DV Systems Inc., Dosatron International SAS, Emco Wheaton Gmbh, Emco Wheaton USA Inc, Enza Air Proprietary Limited, FlexEnergy Holdings LLC, Frigoblock Grosskopf Gmbh, GD Aria Holdings Limited, GD Aria Holdings Limited, GD Aria Investments Limited, GD First (UK) Ltd, GD German Holdings GmbH, GD German Holdings I Gmbh, GD German Holdings II GmbH, GD German Investments GmbH, GD Global Holdings II Inc., GD Global Holdings Inc., GD Global Holdings UK II Ltd., GD Global Ventures I B.V., GD Global Ventures II B.V., GD Global Ventures III B.V., GD Industrial Products Malaysia SDN. BHD., GD Investment KY, GD UK Finance Ltd., GPS Industries, Gardner Denver (Thailand) Co. Ltd., Gardner Denver Austria GmbH, Gardner Denver Bad Neustadt Real Estate GmbH & Co KG, Gardner Denver Belgium NV, Gardner Denver Brasil Industria E Comercio de Maquinas Ltda., Gardner Denver CZ + SK sro, Gardner Denver Canada Corp (Canada), Gardner Denver Cyprus Investments II Limited, Gardner Denver Cyprus Investments Limited, Gardner Denver Deutschland GmbH, Gardner Denver Engineered Products India Private Limited, Gardner Denver FZE, Gardner Denver Finance II LLC, Gardner Denver Finance Inc & Co KG, Gardner Denver France SAS, Gardner Denver Group Svcs Ltd, Gardner Denver Holdings Limited, Gardner Denver Hong Kong Investments Limited, Gardner Denver Hong Kong Ltd, Gardner Denver Iberica SL, Gardner Denver Inc., Gardner Denver Industries Ltd., Gardner Denver Industries Pty Ltd., Gardner Denver International Inc., Gardner Denver International Ltd., Gardner Denver Investments Inc., Gardner Denver Italy Holdings S.r.L., Gardner Denver Japan Ltd., Gardner Denver Kirchhain Real Estate GmbH & Co KG, Gardner Denver Korea Ltd., Gardner Denver Ltd., Gardner Denver Machinery (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Gardner Denver Nash Brasil Industria E Comercio De Bombas Ltda, Gardner Denver Nash LLC, Gardner Denver Nash Machinery Ltd., Gardner Denver Nederland BV, Gardner Denver Nederland Investments B.V., Gardner Denver Oy, Gardner Denver Polska Sp z.o.o., Gardner Denver Pte. Ltd., Gardner Denver S.r.l., Gardner Denver Schopfheim GmbH, Gardner Denver Schopfheim Real Estate GmbH & Co KG, Gardner Denver Schweiz AG, Gardner Denver Slovakia s.r.o., Gardner Denver Sweden AB, Gardner Denver Taiwan Ltd., Gardner Denver Thomas GmbH (f/k/a ILMVAC GmbH), Gardner Denver Thomas Inc., Gardner Denver Thomas Pneumatic Systems (Wuxi) Co. Ltd., Gardner Denver Thomas Real Estate GmbH & Co KG, Garo Dott. Ing. Roberto Gabbioneta S.r.l., Ghh-Rand Schraubenkompressoren Gmbh, HASKEL EUROPE LTD., HASKEL HOLDINGS UK LIMITED, HASKEL INTERNATIONAL LLC, Hamworthy Belliss & Morcom, Haskel France SAS, Haskel Sistemas de Fluidos Espana S.R.L., Hibon Inc., Highspeed Newco LLC, Hingerose Limited, ILMVAC (UK) Ltd., ILS Innovative Labor Systeme, ILS Inovative Laborsysteme GmbH, INGERSOLL RAND ITS JAPAN LTD., INGERSOLL-RAND (CHANG ZHOU) TOOLS CO. LTD., INGERSOLL-RAND (CHINA) INDUSTRIAL EQUIPMENT MANUFACTURING CO. LTD., INGERSOLL-RAND CHINA LLC, INGERSOLL-RAND COMERCIO E SERVICOS DE MAQUINAS E EQUIPAMENTOS INDUSTRIAIS LTDA., INGERSOLL-RAND DE PUERTO RICO INC., INGERSOLL-RAND INDUSTRIAL COMPANY B.V., INGERSOLL-RAND INDUSTRIAL SP. Z O.O., INGERSOLL-RAND INDUSTRIAL U.S. INC., INGERSOLL-RAND PHILIPPINES INC., INGERSOLL-RAND SPAIN S.A., INGERSOLL-RAND U.S. HOLDCO INC., IR HPS Holdco. Inc., ITO Emniyet, Ingersoll Rand Cyprus Investments Ltd., Ingersoll Rand Finance LLC, Ingersoll Rand Global Investments LLC, Ingersoll Rand Global Ventures LLC, Ingersoll Rand Hong Kong Investments Limited, Ingersoll Rand Inc., Ingersoll Rand Investments (SG) Pte. Ltd., Ingersoll Rand Investments B.V., Ingersoll Rand Schweiz Investments Gmbh, Ingersoll Rand Technology R&D (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Ingersoll-Rand (Australia) Ltd., Ingersoll-Rand (China) Investment Company Limited, Ingersoll-Rand (Guilin) Tools Company Limited, Ingersoll-Rand (Hong Kong) Holding Company Limited, Ingersoll-Rand (India) Limited, Ingersoll-Rand Ab, Ingersoll-Rand Air Solutions Hibon Sarl, Ingersoll-Rand Beteiligungs Und Grundstucksverwaltungs Gmbh, Ingersoll-Rand Colombia S.A.S., Ingersoll-Rand Company Limited (Uk), Ingersoll-Rand Company South Africa (Pty) Limited, Ingersoll-Rand Cz S.R.O., Ingersoll-Rand De Mexico S.A. De C.V., Ingersoll-Rand Equipements De Production S.A.S., Ingersoll-Rand Holdings Limited, Ingersoll-Rand Industrial Ireland Limited, Ingersoll-Rand International (India) Private Limited, Ingersoll-Rand International Holding Llc, Ingersoll-Rand Italia S.R.L., Ingersoll-Rand Italiana Manufacturing S.R.L., Ingersoll-Rand Korea Holding Llc, Ingersoll-Rand Korea Limited, Ingersoll-Rand Lux Investments II S.A R.I., Ingersoll-Rand Lux Investments S.A R.L., Ingersoll-Rand Luxembourg Industrial Company S.A R.L., Ingersoll-Rand Machinery (Shanghai) Company Limited, Ingersoll-Rand Malaysia Co. Sdn. Bhd., Ingersoll-Rand S.A. De C.V., Ingersoll-Rand Services And Trading Limited Liability Company, Ingersoll-Rand Services Company, Ingersoll-Rand Services Limited, Ingersoll-Rand Singapore Enterprises Pte. Ltd., Ingersoll-Rand South East Asia (Pte.) Ltd., Ingersoll-Rand Superay Holdings Limited, Ingersoll-Rand Technical And Services S.A.R.L., Ingersoll-Rand Technologies And Services Private Limited, Ingersoll-Rand Technology R&D (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Ingersoll-Rand Tool Holdings Limited, Ingersoll-Rand Trading Gmbh, Ingersoll-Rand Vietnam Company Limited, Instrum Rand JSC, Interflex Datensysteme, Ir Canada Holdings Ulc, Ir Canada Sales & Service Ulc, Ir France Sas, Kryptonite corp, Lawrence Factor Inc., LeROI, LeRoi International Inc, MILTON ROY (HONG KONG) LIMITED, MILTON ROY (UK) LIMITED, MILTON ROY EUROPA B.V., MILTON ROY EUROPE SAS, MILTON ROY INDUSTRIAL (SHANGHAI) CO. LTD., MILTON ROY LLC, MILTON ROY US PURCHASER INC., MP Pumps Inc., Maximum AG Technologies Inc., Maximus Solutions, Mb Air Systems Limited, Nash Elmo, Officina Meccaniche Industriali Srl, Oina VV, Oina VV Aktiebolag, Plurifilter D.O.O., Pt Ingersoll-Rand Indonesia, Robuschi, Runtech Systems, Runtech Systems (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Runtech Systems Inc., Runtech Systems OY, SEEPEX, Seepex (M) SDN, Seepex Australia Pty Ltd, Seepex Beteiligungs-Gesellschaft mit Beschrankter Haftung, Seepex France S.a.r.l., Seepex GmbH, Seepex Inc., Seepex India Private Ltd., Seepex Italia SRL, Seepex Japan Co. Ltd., Seepex Nordic A/S, Seepex OOO, Seepex Pumps (Shanghia) Co. Ltd., Seepex UK Ltd., Shanghai CompAir Compressors Co Ltd, Shanghai Compressors & Blowers Ltd., Shanghai Ingersoll-Rand Compressor Limited, Shenzhen Bocom System Engineering Co., Superay, Syltone, TIWR Real Estate GmbH & Co. KG, Tamrotor Marine Comp AS Norway, Tecno Matic Europe s.r.o., Thomas Industries Inc., Trane Technologies, Tri-Continent Scientific Inc., Vacuum and Blower Systems division, Welch Vacuum Equipment (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Zaxe Technologies Inc., Zeks Compressed Air Solutions Llc, Zinsser Analytic, Zinsser Analytik GmbH, Zinsser NA Inc., and crayon interface. Read More ONEOK, Inc., together with its subsidiaries, engages in gathering, processing, storage, and transportation of natural gas in the United States. It operates through Natural Gas Gathering and Processing, Natural Gas Liquids, and Natural Gas Pipelines segments. The company owns natural gas gathering pipelines and processing plants in the Mid-Continent and Rocky Mountain regions. It also gathers, treats, fractionates, and transports natural gas liquids (NGL), as well as stores, markets, and distributes NGL products. The company owns NGL gathering and distribution pipelines in Oklahoma, Kansas, Texas, New Mexico, Montana, North Dakota, Wyoming, and Colorado; terminal and storage facilities in Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska, Iowa, and Illinois; and NGL distribution and refined petroleum products pipelines in Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska, Iowa, Illinois, and Indiana, as well as owns and operates truck- and rail-loading, and -unloading facilities connected to NGL fractionation, storage, and pipeline assets. In addition, it operates regulated interstate and intrastate natural gas transmission pipelines and natural gas storage facilities. Further, the company owns and operates a parking garage in downtown Tulsa, Oklahoma; and leases excess office space. It operates 17,500 miles of natural gas gathering pipelines; 1,500 miles of FERC-regulated interstate natural gas pipelines; 5,100 miles of state-regulated intrastate transmission pipeline; six NGL storage facilities; and eight NGL product terminals. It serves integrated and independent exploration and production companies; NGL and natural gas gathering and processing companies; crude oil and natural gas production companies; propane distributors; municipalities; ethanol producers; and petrochemical, refining, and NGL marketing companies, as well as natural gas distribution and electric generation companies, producers, processors, and marketing companies. The company was founded in 1906 and is headquartered in Tulsa, Oklahoma. A South African man snatched from his hotel and held hostage by Al-Qaeda in Mali since 2011 has been freed unscathed, his country's foreign ministry said on Thursday. Stephen McGown, 42, was grabbed in the historic trading city of Timbuktu in Mali's north along with Swede Johan Gustafsson and Dutchman Sjaak Rijke, both of whom were subsequently released. McGown has returned to South Africa and been reunited with his family, foreign ministry official Clayson Monyela told AFP. "It was a big surprise when he walked through the door -- when I gave him a hug, he was as sound and as strong as before, so he was obviously well treated up there," Stephen's father Malcolm told reporters in Pretoria, though Stephen himself did not attend the press briefing. State Security Minister David Mahlobo insisted that no ransom was paid to secure McGown's release which was completed on July 29. "We were able to actually release him without any conditions," Mahlobo told the joint press conference. "Through our shrewd engagement supported by the African Union... Stephen is back at home. "The relationship between the two presidents of the countries has been very important." As for the other former hostages, Gustafsson was released in June while Rijke was freed in April 2015 by French special forces. Rijke's wife escaped during the jihadist assault on the popular tourist hotel, but a German who tried to resist the abduction was killed. Al-Qaeda's North African affiliate Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) had claimed responsibility for the kidnappings of the three men. "We give him a warm welcome back home particularly that he lands home with a mother who has passed on during his incarceration," said Foreign Minister Maite Nkoana-Mashabane. "He was just a tourist in Timbuktu. We are happy that he is a free man." - 'Your hair has grown' - McGown's mother Beverly died in May after battling a long illness. "It's just unfortunate that Stephen's mum isn't here," said McGown's wife Catherine at the press conference. "It didn't quite work out the way we wanted, but we say to Stephen... 'you are strong and you've got to do what you need too'. He'll pick himself up in a little while and return to normal life," added Malcolm McGown. Imtiaz Sooliman, chairman of the Gift of the Givers charity which was previously involved in negotiating for McGown's release, said at the time of his mother's death that Stephen's absence was beginning to "take its toll". "We had seen the sadness in the mother's eye and watched how she patiently waited in dignified pain for the return of her son. We failed her -- my heart bleeds for her," Sooliman told local media in May. Gift of the Givers reportedly dispatched a hostage negotiator to Mali in July 2015 to push for McGown's release but was forced to give up in May this year after hitting a "dead end". Catherine said that on being reunited, Stephen "looked at me and said 'Your hair has grown', and I said, 'Well actually your hair is longer than mine'." He is now undergoing medical checks. AQIM was one of several jihadist groups that took control of Mali's north in 2012 before being ousted by a French-led military operation launched in January 2013. The group had released several videos of McGown and Gustafsson over the years, but little was known about the kidnappers' demands. Six soldiers of a new anti-jihadist force formed by the United Arab Emirates were killed and others were abducted Wednesday in an Al-Qaeda suicide bombing in southern Yemen, a Yemeni military official said. The suicide bomber blew up his vehicle next to a military position recently set up by the Yemeni force in Shabwa province, the official told AFP, speaking on condition of anonymity. Two vehicles belonging to the anti-jihadist force were destroyed in the attack, which left an undetermined number wounded while other soldiers were abducted by Al-Qaeda members supporting the suicide bomber, he added. The official said the victims belong to an "elite unit" set up by the United Arab Emirates, one of the key partners in the Saudi-led coalition which intervened in Yemen in 2015 to support President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi against Shiite Huthi rebels. Al-Qaeda militants remain active in southern Yemen where they have exploited the security gap created by the conflict between Hadi's supporters and the Huthi rebels The conflict in Yemen pits Huthi rebels and supporters of ex-president Ali Abdullah Saleh against forces loyal to the internationally recognised president Hadi. The war has killed more than 8,000 people, mostly civilians, and wounded 44,500 since Saudi Arabia and its allies intervened against the rebels it says are supported by regional arch-rival Iran. Ecuador's President Lenin Moreno on Thursday stripped his vice president, Jorge Glas, of all his functions after his deputy delivered a stinging critique of the new leftist leader. Moreno, who came to office on May 24, issued a decree removing his running mate from all his functions as vice president, but stopped short of sacking him. Glas, who has served as vice-president since 2013, has been buffeted by a wave of corruption accusations from the opposition, including allegations of links to the scandal surrounding the Brazilian oil giant Odebrecht, which has sent shockwaves across the region. The decree came a day after the vice president, who held the same position under Moreno's feisty predecessor Rafael Correa, published a long list of criticisms of the president, including charges that he had handed control of state media to "representatives of the private media" and had "a perverse way of dealing with economic data." Glas responded to Moreno's move with defiance, vowing to see out the rest of his term. "I am elected vice-president... and I will finish my mandate," he said in a statement. "It is clear political retaliation for acting in accordance with what my conscience dictates." Ecuador's oil-rich economy has suffered from the global slump in crude prices and there have been strains inside the left-wing Country Alliance party that has held power for a decade on how to deal with the downturn while maintaining subsidies for the poor. Moreno served as vice president to Correa from 2007-2013. The two men have increasingly been engaged in mutual reproaches over the poor state of the economy that Moreno inherited from Correa. One of the functions Glas was removed from was his supervisory role in the multi-million dollar project to rebuild homes destroyed in a devastating 2016 earthquake that killed 600 people. Under the Ecuadorian constitution, the vice president is mandated to fill in for the president should the head of the state be incapacitated or removed for any reason, and would enjoy the same powers as the president. Since the vice president is elected by popular vote, he cannot be sacked by the president. The only way for him to lose his job would be through a trial in the national assembly, which has ruled out such a scenario. Glas' criticism put him firmly in the camp of Correa in the split emerging within the Country Alliance party. Correa, a vocal critic of his successor, was the first to criticize Moreno's decree. "Oops! 'Dialogue' seems to have only been for those who hate the revolution! Forwards, Jorge! Take it as a badge of honor!" the former president said. The EU warned Poland Wednesday to obey a ban on logging in Europe's last primeval woodland, saying it would add any breach to a broader Brussels case against Warsaw over democratic standards. Poland's right-wing government vowed on Monday that logging would continue in the ancient Bialowieza forest despite an injunction issued last week by the European Court of Justice, the bloc's top court. "If it is confirmed that the logging continues to take place in the Bialowieza forest, the issue will be taken up in the ongoing rule-of-law procedure with Poland," European Commission spokeswoman Mina Andreeva told a press conference in Brussels. Brussels last month warned Warsaw it was ready to launch an unprecedented procedure to halt Poland's EU voting rights, over court reforms that the bloc says undermine the rule of law. The EU suspects that Poland's ruling Law and Justice Party, which won elections in 2015, is aiming to impose political control over the courts and to rob them of their independence. The logging case has so far been separate, but Andreeva said that if Warsaw disobeys the court then Brussels will add the issue to the charge sheet for breaching legal standards. "This is very clearly linked to the rule of law which our union is founded on," she said. Andreeva said she had seen press reports that the logging was continuing but added the EU would use its own tools to verify the reports, including satellite imagery. Polish Environment Minister Jan Szyszko said on Monday that logging would continue in the forest, a UNESCO world heritage site, while Polish television showed footage of machines felling trees there. The EU took Poland to court in July arguing that the operations were destroying a forest that boasts unique plant and animal life, including the continent's largest mammal, the European bison. Bialowieza Forest, straddling Poland's eastern border with Belarus,includes one of the largest surviving parts of the primeval forest that covered the European plain 10,000 years ago. Warsaw says it authorised the logging, which began in May last year, to contain damage caused by a spruce bark beetle infestation and to fight the risk of forest fires. Scientists, ecologists and the European Union have protested and activists allege the logging is a cover for commercial cutting of protected old-growth forests. Hong Kong pro-democracy legislators faced off against the city's justice secretary Thursday over a controversial rail link to mainland China which would see a portion of the city come under Chinese law. The high-speed train connection with the sprawling southern Chinese cities of Shenzhen and Guangzhou is due to open in 2018 but is facing a mounting backlash. The proposal for a joint immigration point which would see mainland police and other officials stationed at the new rail terminus in the heart of Hong Kong comes as fears intensify that Beijing is tightening its grip on the semi-autonomous city. The station is on Hong Kong's famous harbourfront, not on the border with the mainland, which lies further north. There are already concerns that Chinese operatives are working undercover in Hong Kong after the alleged abductions of a city bookseller and a reclusive mainland businessman. In the first parliamentary debate over the new plan, which was already approved by the city government's top advisory committee last month, legislators accused authorities of "casually" disregarding Hong Kong's freedoms. They said the proposal violated the city's mini-constitution, the Basic Law, which guarantees residents rights unseen on the mainland, such as freedom of speech, and prohibits Chinese law enforcers from operating in Hong Kong. The government has defended the move by saying it would save travel time. "If today, you can casually say that for the high-speed rail link to reach peak convenience you can cut out a piece of land from Hong Kong...how can you tell Hong Kong people this won't happen again?" said lawmaker Fernando Cheung as he questioned justice secretary Rimsky Yuen in a special committee meeting of the Legislative Council. "Shaking the Basic Law's safeguards for residents for the sake of convenience -- this is our bottom line, we cannot accept this," Cheung said. Yuen said the plan did not breach the Basic Law because the part of the station under Chinese control was being "leased" to the mainland as a special port area. "The goal...is to maximise the benefits of the high-speed rail. There are no political reasons behind it," Yuen said. The proposal would see around 40 percent of the station including the platforms, plus the trains themselves, come under Chinese criminal law. That has prompted questions over how residents will need to behave in the China-controlled areas and whether they will be punished for transgressing mainland law, even though they will still be in one of Hong Kong's busiest central commercial districts. There are existing transport connections between Hong Kong and the mainland, but Chinese immigration checks are done on the other side of the border. Yuen previously riled opponents by likening China to Hong Kong's "landlord" asking for a room back after renting the flat to a tenant. The new high-speed rail line is one of a number of cross-border infrastructure projects which have increased concern that Hong Kong is being swallowed up by the mainland. Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak faced renewed questions Thursday over a 2002 sale of submarines to his country after a close associate was charged in France over alleged kickbacks. Najib, then defence minister, oversaw the deal worth nearly one billion euros ($1.18 billion) to buy two Scorpene-class submarines and one Agosta-class submarine from French naval dockyards unit DCN, which is linked to French defence group Thales. Abdul Razak Baginda advised Najib at the time. An investigation into the deal was launched in 2010 in response to a complaint from Malaysian rights group Suaram, and investigators allege Abdul Razak received kickbacks. He was charged in July in France with "active and passive complicity in corruption" and "misappropriation of corporate assets", a French judicial source told AFP this week. He denies wrongdoing, saying in a statement after the news broke that he had "not committed any crime of corruption or breached any laws in the matter". On Thursday Suaram, in a joint statement with NGO The Center to Combat Corruption and Cronyism, urged Malaysian authorities to take action. "It is no longer tenable for the Malaysian authorities to dismiss the Scorpene deal as above board and keep silent on the damning developments in France," the statement said. "Najib was the defence minister that signed on the contract then -- we urge for him to answer for what happened then, and what would be the steps taken by Malaysian institutions." A spokesman in Najib's office did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Najib has previously denied any link to the graft allegations, rejecting them as a politically motivated smear by the opposition. As part of the deal DCN agreed to pay 30 million euros to Thales' Asian unit, Thales International Asia (Thint Asia). The investigation revealed that another company, Terasasi, whose main shareholder was Abdul Razak, received an equivalent sum for what was billed as consultancy work, but which investigators believe was really a front for kickbacks. Under the French legal system, a suspect is charged if there is "serious" proof of wrongdoing. The case is examined by an investigating magistrate, who has the power to decide either that there is no case to answer, or to send the matter for trial in court. The person who has been charged will almost certainly be interviewed by the magistrate investigating the case. The affair emerged spectacularly in 2006, when Abdul Razak's Mongolian mistress -- who was said to have demanded a payoff for working as a language translator in the deal -- was shot dead and her body blown up with plastic explosives near Kuala Lumpur. He was later cleared of abetting the murder. (Photo: Getty images) He asked his then-girlfriend to sign up for mobile plans with two telcos and when she refused, he threatened to distribute her nude photographs to her parents. The student ended up giving in to his demands and subscribing to two service plans that come with mobile phones with a total value of $3,143. Singaporean Daryl Cheong Zhi Yong, 24, was jailed two years and one month, fined $30,000 and caned three strokes of the cane on Thursday (3 August) for one count of extortion, among three charges. Cheong was also convicted of one count of theft and one count of assisting in unlicensed moneylending. Another count of extortion was taken into account for sentencing. The extortion incident took place on 13 July 2016, when the Cheong, a chef of a small eatery, was still in a relationship with the 21-year-old woman. Cheong texted and asked her to sign up for a Singtel mobile plan with a Samsung S6 handset and a Starhub mobile plan with an Oppo handset. When the woman refused, he threatened to hand her nude photographs, which he had obtained when they were dating, to her parents. Fearing for her reputation, the woman complied and subscribed to two different plans worth $1,455 and $1,688. Cheong later sold off the two mobile phones that came with the plans. The woman lodged a police report about the incident a month later. Cheong also faces one count of stealing from his elder brother, Stanley Cheong Zhi Qiang on 12 March 2016. When his brother was out, Cheong went to his room, lifted his bed and saw his brothers safe unlocked. He then stole a gold chain $1,000, two gold rings worth $1,000, Takashimaya vouchers worth $2,000 and $520 in cash. Cheong threw the Takashimaya vouchers away and sold the jewellery. He then spent the cash proceeds on his own things. His brother lodged a police report four days later. Cheong also assisted in illegal moneylending in August 2014. He had handed over his POSB ATM card and personal identification number linked to the account to a woman named Jojo to facilitate her unlicensed moneylending business. Between 30 August and 30 November 2014, $115,910 was deposited into his POSB account, and $116,036 was withdrawn. Story continues Cheong was arrested on 26 July last year for his suspected involvement in the unlicensed moneylending activities. Prior to his extortion offence, Cheong was found guilty of two counts of sexual penetration of a minor and one count of cheating in 2015. Cheongs lawyer Richard Ng, who was assigned by the Criminal Legal Aid Scheme, said in mitigation that his Cheong uttered the threat in anger and that he is remorseful for his actions. Cheong had intended to tell the woman he would pay for the monthly instalments for the mobile plans but the plans were already terminated by then. The extortion carries a minimum jail term of two years and a maximum of seven years, with caning. For theft, Cheong could have been jailed up to seven years and fined. For assisting in unlicensed moneylending, he could have been jailed up to four years, fined $300,000 jail and caned up to six strokes. One of Latin America's last English-language newspapers is folding after 140 years, a victim of a decline in sales of its print edition. "We fought to the end," Buenos Aires Herald editor Sebastian Lacunza told AFP on Wednesday. There will not be an edition on Friday. Trying to stave off a closure, the last English-language daily in Latin America had become a weekly last year and laid off some of its staff. Founded in 1876 when British investments flocked to Argentina, the newspaper was initially a conservative publication. But the Buenos Aires Herald became known for its critical coverage of the military dictatorship that ruled Argentina from 1976 to 1983, reporting on crimes committed by the junta. Its director at the time, Robert Cox of Britain, was imprisoned by the dictatorship before being released under pressure from Washington. The Herald was part of the Indalo group, owned by a close relative of former leftist president Cristina Kirchner, who was in office from 2007 to 2015. By Mfuneko Toyana PRETORIA (Reuters) - A South African tourist who was kidnapped in 2011 by al Qaeda while travelling in Mali has been released and is back home, foreign minister Maite Nkoana-Mashabane said on Thursday. Stephen McGowan was one of four foreigners touring Mali on motorbikes who were seized in a restaurant in the town of Timbuktu. One, a German, was killed in the kidnapping. A Dutch hostage was freed in 2015 in a raid by French special forces and a Swede was released in June this year. The kidnappers had demanded $5 million for his release, but the government rejected it, Swedish Radio said. "We would like to warmly welcome him back home and wish him good health, good fortune in his life as a free man," South African foreign minister Maite Nkoana-Mashabane told a news conference, adding that no ransom had been paid. McGowan, who was not present at the news conference, is undergoing medical tests but had no major injuries, Nkoana-Mashabane said. McGowan's mother died in May, but other close family members expressed their joy at his return. "It was a big surprise when Stephen walked through the door," said McGowan's father, Malcolm. "I gave him a big hug and he felt as sound and as strong as before. We simply had to say to Stephen: 'A lot of water has passed under the bridge but you're strong, you've got to get up and carry on with your life.'" McGowan's wife, Catherine, told the news briefing: "The first thing he said to me was: 'Your hair has grown.' I said to him 'Actually, your hair is longer than mine now.'" In a video that emerged a month ago, after the Swede, Johan Gustafsson, was released, a bearded McGowan appeared to have no idea his six-year ordeal would soon be over. "It's a long time to be away," he said. "Until when do you think this will come to an end? Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb began as a spin-off from an Islamist movement that fought Algeria's government in the 1990s. It was pushed across the border into Mali the following decade, where it pledged allegiance to Osama bin Laden's movement and built a network of fighters across the Sahara responsible for dozens of kidnappings of Westerners and attacks on security forces across West Africa. (Reporting by Mfuneko Toyana in Pretoria and Wendell Roelf in Cape Town; Writing by Ed Cropley and James Macharia; Editing by Robin Pomeroy) The latest edition of Small Business Trends magazine is out today and you can get your FREE download of it right now. In this months issue, were talking about sales. Its a critical part to any small business its impossible to survive without them and its one area where many struggle. If youre one of those small businesses that seems to come up short of sales goals every month or quarter or year, youre going to want to get your hands on this edition of the magazine. Weve got great sales tips to help your company get on the right track. Learn what best practices make your sales team click. Or what are some things you can do in your own sales efforts to help close more deals? Small Business Trends Gabrielle Pickard-Whitehead breaks them down in this months cover story. Also inside, were talking about China. No, its nothing about world security, but about your companys future potential there. Weve got coverage from our visit to the Gateway 17 conference last month in Detroit. The event was hosted by Alibaba Group and keynoted by its founder, Jack Ma. Did you know that Chinas middle class has grown to 300 million people? Ma tells us how your company can begin selling in China and the things these Chinese consumers want. Its a great read from our staff writer Annie Pilon, who attended the event alongside Small Business Trends CEO and publisher Anita Campbell. Thats just the start of whats inside this months issue of the magazine. Check out how to grow your content marketing business and even some great contests that will properly motivate your sales team. Its all inside this months Sales edition of Small Business Trends magazine, available for download right here. President Donald Trump says that small business is the engine of the American dream. Trump hosted an event this week at the White House to note the importance of small businesses to the American economy and to gather feedback from entrepreneurs. Trump Predicts a Golden Age for Small Businesses Trump also promised to keep moving forward on rolling back regulations put in place by previous administrations and moving forward on tax cut legislation. Trump was joined at the event by the head of the Small Business Administration Linda McMahon and his daughter and senior advisor, Ivanka. Some members of Congress also attended. More than 100 small businesses were in attendance, according to information provided by the White House. Your stories demonstrate what it takes to succeed, he told entrepreneurs. America is on the verge of a golden age for small business. Mentorship Opportunities Touted Following the Presidents opening remarks, McMahon and Ivanka took questions from the invited entrepreneurs. Ivanka Trump stressed the need to focus on mentorship opportunities as a way to scale a small business. She spoke about the importance of collaboration to small business growth. Bringing on people, partners and employees that can compliment your skill set is critical as you think about scale in a meaningful way, she said. Hiring Concerns Expressed Another question came from the owner of a second generation family trucking company. It concerned hiring practices. The skills gap is an ongoing issue for both large and small businesses. Many companies have the openings but cant find the people with the necessary skills to fill the jobs. Ivanka Trump said the issue is compounded for small business because they often cant offer the benefits to stay competitive for the best people. She explained the shift that was taking place to educate workers for tomorrows jobs. Industry wide certification is one of the advantages of this new push, she said. People need a credential that is recognized and they can take with them from state to state, she said. Red Tape Complaints Again Raised The maze of regulations that hamper small business growth was another concern. McMahon highlighted President Trumps Executive Order requiring for every new regulation created, two must be cut. I hold business round tables and visit small businesses, she said. The regulatory environment is crippling and strangling a lot of small businesses. Both military and civic firefighters had to intervene. Font size: A - | A + The military firefighting worked with civil firefighters to help during the landing of a Boeing 737 plane at the Sliac airport on August 2. The plane had problems with its undercarriage, the TASR newswire reported. Skryt Remove ad Article continues after video advertisement Skryt Remove ad Article continues after video advertisement It was a plane of an Egyptian company that flew from Hurghada to Sliac, said Danka Capakova, spokesperson for the Defence Ministry, which operates the Sliac airport, as quoted by TASR. None of the 113 passengers was injured. After the landing, the plane remained on the runway, the chair of the board of directors of the Sliac airport Roland Schaller told the Sme daily. The plane was could not be moved from the runway and blocked the main area of the airport. As a result, other flights had to be suspended, Schaller said. Special tools had to be transported from Bratislava to pull the plane away, Sme wrote. Schaller could not say whether the trouble was caused by a technical malfunction or a human factor. He notified the aviation authority, which has already sent an investigator to Sliac, Sme wrote. The airport in Sliac is also used for Slovak fighter planes MiG-29 that protect the countrys airspace. The Defence Ministry could not say whether they were able to take off at the time the runway was blocked, explaining that the law does not allow it to do so. The airspace was secured in the sense of standard NATO operational procedures, Capakova told Sme. State organisations and members of the private sector collaborated for the cyber-security competition. Font size: A - | A + Slovakia placed second in an international cyber exercise called CyberEx 2017, which brought together 65 groups from around the world. CyberEx, organised by the Spanish National Cyber Security Institute and the Organisation of American States, set a record for the number of participants, who came from 24 countries in Europe, Asia, and North and South America. Slovakia was represented by a five-member team composed of experts from the National Security Bureau (NBU), the National Agency for Network and Electronic Services (NASES) and anti-virus software producer Eset, the spokesperson for NASES, Lucia Makova, told the TASR newswire on August 2. Skryt Remove ad Article continues after video advertisement Skryt Remove ad Article continues after video advertisement The results of the exercise have demonstrated that key state organisations involved in cyber-security, like NBU and NASES, can collaborate well with the private sector, showing top skills in global terms, NASES general director Norbert Molnar said. The exercise took place online within an eight-hour time limit. The teams had to complete 17 successive tasks, including analysing codes, binary files and cryptography. It was not possible to advance to the next task without first resolving the one at hand. The Slovak team was one of three groups that resolved all 17 tasks. Airport CEO says the numbers show the city's air connections to the world. Font size: A - | A + The figure amounted to 45,541 passengers on charter flights in July, the airport's marketing manager Juraj Toth told the TASR newswire on August 2. The total number of passengers handled by Kosice Airport this July was 79,537, which is an increase of 19 percent when compared to July 2016, Toth said. Skryt Remove ad Article continues after video advertisement Skryt Remove ad Article continues after video advertisement The airport handled 266,662 passengers between January and July 2017, up 13 percent (or by 31,180 passengers) from one year to the next. A total of 205,681 passengers used regular flights, while 59,954 traveled on charter flights. In the first seven months of this year, we served a higher number of passengers than during the whole of 2011, 2012 or 2013, the airport's CEO and board chairman Michal Tmej said, as quoted by the newswire. "This shows how much progress we've made along with our partners in terms of eastern Slovakia's air connections to the whole world. The Finance Ministry rejected the proposal of an exemption but will likely postpone implementation by six months. Font size: A - | A + The obligation for all self-employed to communicate with the Financial Administration only electronically will probably be postponed by half a year, the SITA newswire wrote on August 2. The original draft amendment to the Tax Administration Act listed the introduction of this obligation from January 1, 2018. However, after negotiations between representatives of the associations of entrepreneurs and the self-employed and the head of the Financial Administration Frantisek Imrecze, this date should be postponed to July 1, 2018. Skryt Remove ad Article continues after video advertisement Skryt Remove ad Article continues after video advertisement The deadline does not change for legal entities, who will have to communicate with the Financial Administration electronically beginning January 1 of next year. The head of the Financial Administration discussed the introduction of mandatory electronic communication with members of the Consulting Council, an advisory body of the Financial Administration. The Finance Ministry, led by Peter Kazimir (Smer), still insists that the self-employed and freelancers will have to communicate online only, despite criticism by Deputy Prime Minister for Innovations Peter Pellegrini (also of the ruling Smer party), and despite the remarks of tax advisors that the self-employed should have an exemption. The Ministry argued that exemptions are not necessary and that online communication saves time and costs. The proposal will impact around 300,000 businesspeople, the Sme daily wrote. Procuring access to tax office website Before this change, the self-employed will have to arrange their access to the Financial Administration website, which requires a chip ID card. For online tax returns, the online mailbox at the Slovensko.sk website is enough, but a special mailbox at the FA website is needed for taxes. Those entrepreneurs who do not have a chip ID card have to conclude an agreement with the tax administrators on electronic communication to receive log-in data, according to Sme. Insiders criticising the project The Slovak Chamber of Tax Advisors is arguing that all entrepreneurs, including those who do not have internet connection or a computer, are being forced to communicate online. They would like to push for exemptions for some groups of businesspeople, but so far, only the deadline has been changed and only for the self-employed. Companies that do not pay VAT will begin e-communication in January of next year. Pellegrini does not reject the extension of online communication to all of the self-employed, but he does not want it to be operated through the Financial Administration website. Instead, he proposes to return taxes via Slovensko.sk, where the self-employed automatically receive a personal mailbox. The Financial Administration is claiming for now, according to Sme, that Slovensko.sk is unacceptable, arguing for different technical support. The proposal of obligatory electronic communication is to be approved by the government. If approved, the parliament will hold a vote on it in the fall. The self-employed will thus have six to nine months to open electronic mailbox on the tax administration website. Slovakia belongs to worlds elite in mead production. Font size: A - | A + Only honey and water. These are two ingredients of medovina, which is Slovak for mead, the oldest alcoholic drink in the world. It has appeared in forests naturally without a humans effort. In tree cavity - where was honey stored -was enough to add few drops of rainfall, the honey started to ferment and the mead was made even before a human discovered the beverage. Skryt Remove ad Article continues after video advertisement Skryt Remove ad Article continues after video advertisement In southern Europe, tradition of mead is not so spread and well-known as it is in northern countries, according to Bronislav Tomka, the owner of the Nitra-based Medovina Tomka company. In ancient Rome or Greece grapes grew everywhere, so it was easier to make wine out of them than fight with bees for a little bit of honey, Tomka explains why mead used to be more popular for Slavs, Celts, Vikings and other northern tribes. In Slovakia, production of mead was only renewed a few decades ago, but the drink has quickly become popular again - as well as internationally acclaimed. Tomka mead (Source: Radka Minarechova) Made in Slovakia Slovakia belongs to worlds elite in production of mead, Iveta Galanska from the marketing department of the Apimed company told The Slovak Spectator. The company, based in the village of Dolna Krupa near the western-Slovak town of Trnava is one of the leading mead producers in Slovakia. Meads made in Slovakia have been distinguished with a number of international. In 1996, the Tomka mead was the first Slovak mead to be awarded the international award at Agrokomplex. One of their most valued prizes is the third place at the international Apimondia contest in 2013, and the Mead of the Year 2015 national award. Apimeds barrique mead - made from acacia honey - was awarded the Best Mead in the World 2015 award in South Korea. Just like winemakers make various types of wine depending on the grapes they use, our company produces various meads that differ on type of the honey floral, locust, forest or linden, explained Galanska. Apimed company has been in the mead-making business for 18 years. It is based on the family tradition to rediscover mead and follow up the habits and values of the ancestors of Slovaks. Tomkas mead is the oldest mead producer in Slovakia. Tomka mead cellar (Source: Radka Minarechova) My father got the idea to renew production in 1984 but at that time it wasnt easy to do business with anything, Tomka goes back in the family history to the times of socialism in Slovakia, when private business practically did not exist. Tomkas father had to explain to the authorities when he tried to start his own business that mead is drinkable and he is not going to poison anyone. In 1989, when the totalitarian regime fell and transition to market economy began, Karol Tomka set up his family business in Nitra. Aging in a wooden barrel is very important part of the production process, Tomka told The Slovak Spectator, adding that he usually leaves the mead in oak barrel from two to five years. Mead has the best taste after two or three years of aging, according to Tomka, however, everyone has specific taste. Alcohol made of alcohol To make mead as such, only two ingrediences are needed: honey and water. That is if time is not considered an ingredient. To sate the demands on the market, producers now offer a variety of flavoured mead, such as cherry, almond or nut. Flavours are added to the original drink to create a unique taste. For most Slovaks, mead is a drink to be enjoyed in wintertime. The first association that comes to mind is Christmas markets, and stalls selling hot mead. But mead producers have tried to show that mead can also be refreshing in the summer months - to drink straight and chilled, or as an ingredient in cocktails. Honey champagne: 1 portion of mead 1 portion of champagne Mix in a glass and serve with a slice of lemon on top if you like. Mead mojito belongs among the most favourite among the customers of the Tomka shop in Nitra. However, mead is not the only alcoholic beverage honey can make. This year, Apimed introduced the first aperitif made of honey on the Slovak market. The drink is called Ambrozia and it is made of natural products as honey, water, herbs, spices and citrus fruits. The Tomka company went even further and created Medovec, the first spirit made out of mead. As far as I know, it is unique alcohol drink in Europe. At least I dont know about anyone who is making alcohol out of alcohol, said Tomka. Mead Mojito: 1 portion of mead soda mint limes crushed ice While mead has about 13 percent of alcohol it in, Medovec that is produced by distillation of mead, has 35 percent of alcohol. Drink with an experience Bigger mead producers, just like winemakers, often offer possibilities to learn something about mead production right in the factory. Apimed provides degustation of eight kinds of mead, complete with a guided tour on mead production. Slovakia also has a mead museum, run by the Tomka family in Nitra. It opened in 2015 and has since offered visitors a chance to taste mead, visit the 300-year-old cellar with wooden barrels and learn about the history of mead. The oldest bottles stored in the museum are about 40 years old. Those are the oldest ones within the whole Czechoslovakia. Marek Dalik, sentenced in a major corruption case in the Czech Republic, points to PM Robert Ficos friend as the main character in the case. Font size: A - | A + Why Prime Minister Robert Fico was privately meeting his Czech counterpart Mirek Topolanek back in 2006? And how did Ficos aide Miroslav Vyboh started handling the case of the Pandur armoured vehicles purchase for the Czech Republic at one of these meetings? Skryt Remove ad Article continues after video advertisement Skryt Remove ad Article continues after video advertisement Czech lobbyist Marek Dalik who was at that time Topolaneks aide recounted his complete version of what lay behind the Pandur international corruption scandal for the first time before the court, stated during his testimony on July 25. In the scandal connected to top politicians, he was the only one accused. Vyboh was merely in the position of a witness. The court has found Dalik guilty of attempted fraud, for the second time already. Repeatedly, it gave him a sentence of five years behind bars. The verdict is effective. This was the renewed trial after the Supreme Court ordered the case be re-opened due to a procedural flaw. The beginning of the Pandur scandal Originally, Dalik did not want to say much in the courtroom. He changed his mind after he went to prison and had time to think it over. I came to the conclusion that I have to say how it was from the beginning to the end. He added that he was well aware of the fact that others involved in the scandal will never corroborate his words. In his testimony, he claims that he first came in touch with the Pandur scandal after the 2006 election, when Topolanek became the new prime minister. Dalik was his unofficial aide. The outgoing cabinet of the CSSD party still managed to approve the Pandur purchase when in power. Defence Minister Karel Kuhnl hesitated though, to sign the project worth a billion before leaving his position. According to Dalik, the reason was that after the change of cabinets, he wanted to continue working in public service. Thus, he did not want to enrage Topolanek, who did not conceal his dislike for the contract. Then, it was Czech lobbyist and arms trader Pavel Musela who was in charge of the contract on mediating the deal. His middleman allegedly contacted Dalik to help with this. Topolanek did not want to hear anything about that, according to Dalik who however, explained to him that if Kuhnl signs the deal, the responsibility would stick to the previous cabinet. It would be the so-called signature of someone elses hand, the aide explained. That you pretend to be against something, and you keep your face thus. Topolanek ultimately agreed, according to Dalik, and Kuhnl signed the deal on his last day in office. Of course, I expected to get something in return for the help, Dalik concludes the introductory part. But I was not rewarded in any way. Secret meetings with Fico In summer 2006, there was also a general election in Slovakia, and Robert Fico became prime minister. Dalik describes the secret meetings which involved only him and Topolanek, as well as Fico with Vyboh. He had mentioned them already in the past. Now he specified why they were hiding: it was difficult for Fico, according to Dalik, to officially express favour to Topolanek. When he had some troubles in the Socialist International, (Czech) ex-PM Paroubek helped him a lot, the lobbyist says. Officially, they pretended to be great friends. There were several meetings, says Dalik. Mostly in southern Moravia, which was halfway between Prague and Bratislava. Still in 2014, even Fico admitted that. I can confirm that we met with friends, he noted. Then, he called even Vyboh a long-time friend of his. They never talked about the purchase of the Pandurs, Fico claims. Dalik opposes, though, that it was Vyboh who opened the issue at one of the meetings. The delivery to the Czech Republic became stuck at that time. Vyboh allegedly offered to put those relationships right. He planned Dalik opines to get the contract for the Pandurs for Slovakia from the Austrian supplier. Thus, he wanted to show that he can also push the things in the Czech Republic in the right direction. Further negotiations with the Steyr Austrian company Steyr took place with Vyboh at the helm, according to Dalik. With Vyboh at the helm Vyboh testified as a witness in the trial with Dalik in September 2014. He confirmed that he had participated in the talks on the Pandurs. He claims that his company, Willing, represented the Israeli arms producers Rafael, which armed the transporters with a remotely controlled tower. It was natural for me to be there, Vyboh explains, refusing accusations of corruption. Dalik says, though, that Vyboh basically took over the role of original mediator in the deal, Pavel Musela. In the recording, Dalik explains how Vyboh gave the request for a kickback three times six million to the supplying company. He considers this a sum similar sum to the one Musela had in his contract. Dalik allegedly only confirmed this amount at the negotiations. The first six millions should have been the remuneration for renewing the contract. Other payments should have been derived from the final sum, which was also a matter of negotiations. The kickback should have been six million euros for every ten billion Czech crowns with the 20 billion being expected as the maximum. This was really meant to be a contract for Mr. Vyboh, of which I should have received some unspecified part I confess to that, Dalik admits. He refuses, however, that this would have been a bribe, even though a part of the amount should have been a kickback/commission according to him. Dalik claims that everything should have been stated in the contract. His firm was allegedly meant to secure PR services, lobbying, and media support. Ultimately, there was no contract, though. When I asked Mr. Vyboh about what is included in the sum, he said those are dozens of millions for legal services, translation services, battle tests, that it is standard in this business that this is simply how the things are, Dalik explained. However, representatives of the Steyr Austrian company registered Daliks and Vybohs requests as demands for illegal payment, and refused to give the money. Finally, Steyr agreed with the Czech Republic on the supply of the Pandurs, at a limited volume. The total sum of the contract was 14.4 billion Czech crowns. It ultimately turned out well for the supplier and the cabinet as well, Dalik stated in court. State prosecutor Jan Koran deemed new Daliks claims before the court pragmatic, intended to improve his position and image. Neither did the court take his testimony into consideration. It found Dalik guilty of attempted fraud for trying to wheedle money out the arms traders for something he was not able to secure. Pandur Case - in 2006, the government of Jiri Paroubek (CSSD) approved the purchase of armoured transport vehicles from Steyr, - after the government of Mirek Topolanek (ODS) came to power in 2007, the Czech Republic wanted to terminate the contract, - it was ultimately approved in 2009 but at a limited volume, - it pledged to pay 14.4 billion Czech crowns for 107 Pandurs, - this was preceded by negotiations in which Topolaneks aide Dalik and Ficos friend Vyboh participated, - in 2014, Dalik was charged with corruption. Sme The extremist MP will not be the fourth deputy of the LSNS party to be charged with extremist crime. He claims the outrageous statuses are not his work. Font size: A - | A + The LSNS MP Peter Krupa, who shared slogans on stinky Jews and Gipsy drop-outs on a social network, will not be charged by police. Neither the regional police, nor the specialised unit of the National Criminal Agency (NAKA) for fighting extremism, have brought charges, the TASR newswire wrote. Skryt Remove ad Article continues after video advertisement Skryt Remove ad Article continues after video advertisement The Trencin police started checking on his statements last year and later, it opened a criminal case against him. This March, it suspended the case, however. Since February, though, a special unit has been established for the fight against extremism and terrorism; and it can re-open some cases and re-investigate them. Read also: Read also: Extremists thrive on Facebook, despite recent shut-downs Read more NAKA has started tackling Krupas statements, Police Presidium spokesman Martin Waldl told the Aktuality.sk website. Currently, the criminal prosecution of the due case has been suspended, as no facts justifying the launching of a prosecution against a specific person have been detected, Waldl explained. Read also: Read also: Kotleba accused of extremism, faces losing mandate Read more Krupa earlier told the private TV Markiza that he has nothing to do with the statuses targeting Jews and Roma. He does not know, either, who wrote them. I dot not have a Facebook site, Krupa claims. Anyone can download my photo from the internet and create a Facebook profile. NAKA has charged three LSNS MPs in recent months Aktuality.sk reminded: Milan Mazurek, Stanislav Mizik, and party chairman Marian Kotleba. Read also: Apart from hundreds of caves made by geological activities, there are also dozens of man-made caves in Slovakia. Font size: A - | A + More information about travelling in Slovakia Please see our Please see our Spectacular Slovakia travel guide They usually served as protection and shelters from enemies, but sometimes also natural dwellings. The probably most well-known nationally are the rock dwellings in Brhlovce, in the Levice District, the TASR newswire wrote. Skryt Remove ad Article continues after video advertisement Skryt Remove ad Article continues after video advertisement Not far from them, near the village of Hontianske Tesare in Krupina District, there are other unique rock caves, called dupence. (The singular, dupa, is an archaic expression for den, a burrow or lodge.) Dupence are man-made caves in Hontianske Tesare (Source: TASR) Their origin is not quite known. So far, they have not been subject to expert research, and their age or purpose have not been unambiguously determined. Most frequently, their construction is connected with the Ottoman invasion in the 16th century; but some opinions say they are still older. People are said to have hidden there during the Tartar raid in the 13th century. video //www.youtube.com/embed/t6etdvg6iLE The Tesare Dupence has had new tourist signs and tourism information boards since last year, Mayor Dana Kohutova told TASR. They were made by the end of last summer by a young Slovak artist, Tomas Dzadon. Hontianske Tesare was then one of the stops on the Kinobus presentation. Part of it was also the residence of artist Tomas Dzadon and the presentation of his work in the valley behind the village. The local dupence, divided into one-hole, two-hole and eight-hole, according to the number of rock openings, were given boards with the inscription Dupence. Moreover, Dzadon made the due number of holes into each of the boards, corresponding to the number of holes the cave itself has. More rock dwellings, made by humans, can be found in the neighbouring village of Lisov; also in Luborec in the Lucenec District. The traditional Studia Academica Slovaca summer course of Slovak for foreigners starts in the second week of August. Font size: A - | A + For three weeks between August 6 and 26 the Philosophical Faculty of Comenius University is organising the 53rd year of the summer language course, the oldest summer university for Slovak in the country. Skryt Remove ad Article continues after video advertisement Skryt Remove ad Article continues after video advertisement This year, 160 students from 33 countries will come, the organisers stated. These are mostly students of Slovak or some other Slavonic language, as well as translators, interpreters, people working in Slovakia or strengthening their ties with the homeland of their ancestors mostly from the USA. The courses include those for beginners, intermediate and advanced learners, and also special linguistic, literature or translatology courses for the most advanced students. Summer learning plans The theme this summer is Forms and Faces of Slovak language and Culture in Transformations, reflected in afternoon expert lectures. Other events include a guided tour of Bratislava, and three-day trip to the Slovak regions to show history and contemporary life. The trip can have four different routes, leading to sites with people who have an anniversary this year, or to the Zajezova community centre to see how traditional life and crafts used to be. The SAS will be festively opened on July 7 at 16:00 in the universitys Moyzes Hall, Jana Pekarovicova stated for the organisers. As the new head of the regulatory authority Lubomir Jahnatek is already facing criticism for increased water bills in central and eastern Slovakia Font size: A - | A + Just a few days after his appointment as the head of the Regulatory Authority for Network Industries (URSO), Lubomir Jahnatek has faced the first accusations by the opposition. This is due to the rapid increases in water and sewer prices in central and eastern Slovakia, considered to be in contract with the promises of Prime Minister Robert Fico pledging to keep utility prices stable. Skryt Remove ad Article continues after video advertisement Skryt Remove ad Article continues after video advertisement Karol Galek and Martin Klus, both from the opposition Freedom and Solidarity (SaS) party, pointed out on July 27 that the water and sewer bills of people living in regions serviced by the utility companies Stredoslovenska Vodarenska Prevadzkova Spolocnost and Severoslovenske Vodarne a Kanalizacie increased as of July 1. The new prices affect almost one million citizens. For an average family in central Slovakia the annual bill will increase by almost 14 while in the case of a family in northern Slovakia by almost 10. Galek sees the increases as a direct consequence of the governments interference, especially PM Fico, into the independence of the regulation. Read also: Read also: Committee recommends Jahnatek as head of energy regulator Read more If the government decides to interfere with electricity or water prices and install a puppet as a URSO head as it happened in the case of [Lubomir] Jahnatek, then we cannot wonder that companies subject to regulation would try to interfere with this regulation, too, said Galek. URSO explained that the respective pricing decisions for the utility companies were issued on June 20 and when the regulator was chaired by its vice-chairman Miroslav Celinsky, i.e. before Jahnatek was appointed, said Radoslav Igaz, URSO spokesperson. Celinsky took over URSOs helm when URSO head Jozef Holjencik stepped down in early February. Nevertheless, Jahnatek promised to look into these pricing decisions while it was the utility companies themselves that had asked for the increase in prices. After checks the regulator said that the new prices are fine and that they reflect higher depreciations or a drop in demand. Moreover, prices for these utility companies have not changed since 2014. New head Former economy and agriculture minister as well as current Smer MP Lubomir Jahnatek, 62, took over URSOs helm after Prime Minister Robert Fico officially appointed him to the post on July 25. Jahnatek replaced Jozef Holjencik. The latter resigned in early February after being publicly slapped down by PM Fico for approving steep increases in bills for utilities. In the new position Jahnatek faces several challenges. Firstly he has to disperse concerns that his appointment was a political nomination based on a ruling coalition agreement and show he is leading the office independently. I cant have any requirements on the Chairman because this is an independent authority, but I would like to ask for something: that the office uses to the maximum extent the possibilities provided by the regulatory framework, said Fico when inaugurating Jahnatek to the post. He added that Jahnatek belongs to a stream of politicians and experts who have always stood for a strong regulatory framework. Fico sees the strong regulatory framework as a way of keeping utility prices in Slovakia stable. Its no secret that stable energy prices always suited my governments well, said Fico. Jahnatek, 62, served as minister in two of three of Ficos governments. Firstly, as the economic minister between 2006 and 2010 and afterwards as the agriculture minister between 2012 and 2016. In the parliamentary election in 2016 he was elected a member of parliament in Ficos Smer party. He considers himself independent as he has never been a member of Smer and has acted either in the government or parliament only as its nominee. I feel completely independent, said Jahnatek. I served as minister for eight years and in eight years the prime minister did not tell me a single time to do something this way or that way. I dont see any reason why he should tell me this now. However, the opposition disagrees and sees the appointment of Jahnatek as a political one while also failing to meet official requirements for this post. In the wake of previous political interference from PM Fico in the independence of its regulation, the Slovak energy sector has been standing on the brink of the abyss of political influence, non-transparency, cronyism and corruption, said Galek as cited by TASR. Today, it has plunged head first into that abyss. SaS claims the direct consequence of having URSO run by political nominee Jahnatek is that energy charges will be stable, but stably high. It pointed out that utility bills already comprise 15-20 percent of average Slovak household expenditures - the highest figure in the EU. OLaNO considers the appointment of Jahnatek to be a display of arrogance on the part of the governing coalition and a mockery of all honest people. Veronika Remisova, PM for OLaNO, cast doubt on Jahnateks qualifications and competence as well as the fact that the government has not even published his CV. Lenka Ferencakova, the editor-in-chief of the Energia.sk website dedicated to the energy sector pointed out that there is a political order to keep end prices of electricity at least at the current level, while economic indicators hint the opposite. Mr Jahnatek has a long political career in the rankings of the ruling Smer party thus the doubts whether he will be independent are understandable, said Ferencakova, adding that the regulatory authority, based on either Slovak or European legislation, should be independent of the orders of any political, state, public or private subject. She recalled that the European Commission has repeatedly criticised the non-transparency of regulation in Slovakia in the energy sector. It has even hinted at having some doubts about possible political interventions into the operation of URSO. But the EC has not taken any active steps and I do not think that it would plan to get more engaged in this field, said Ferencakova. Brussel is scrutinising the recently adopted revision to the law on regulation which moved the responsibility to appoint the new head of URSO from president to the prime minister. But Ferencakova points out that the government or a ministry also appoints representatives of the regulatory authorities in other countries, for example, in the Czech Republic, Austria or the UK. Jozef Badida, an analyst at the website energieprevas.sk dedicated to the energy sector points out that after the change to the law on regulation, the position of the new head of URSO would not be the same as during the previous URSO management. This is because based on the new rules, the URSO head will co-sign price regulations with his vice chairs appointed by the government, said Badida, adding that this way the responsibility and powers will be spread out among more persons. Fico and Economy Minister Peter Ziga (Smer) have rejected the criticism from the opposition, stating that Jahnatek is an expert nominated by the Federation of Employers Associations (AZZZ) and approved by the Economy Ministrys selection committee as the best candidate. Three tasks My vision is to open the office to the public, said Jahnatek during his inauguration speech. We should communicate more with the public and listen to the advice of entrepreneurs who want to have predictable prices. They cannot be surprised by how these prices change every year. Jahnatek listed the three tasks he wants to fulfil at first. The first one will be the withdrawal of draft regulations based on which electricity, water, and heat prices will be calculated next year. He argues that when elaborating them URSO did not follow the law revised after the steep increase in prices under the baton of Holjencik and did not elaborate impact studies on different groups of consumers. New ones will be issued that will be in keeping with the law, or another solution will be found, said Jahnatek. Theres no way Ill give my blessing to somebody elses slipshod piece of work. As the deadline for issuing these regulations is September 30 it may happen that URSO will fail to arrive with new ones by this deadline. In such a case the 2016 regulations will be valid also in 2018, said Jahnatek. As the second task Jahnatek wants to look into checking the assets of utility companies factored into the calculations of regulated prices. The state allocated 1.8 million to URSO for this purpose. Nobody even knows how this analysis turned out, said Jahnatek. As it happens, the analysis, which was supposed to cut energy prices, produced a rise in prices for some consumer groups. We need to address this quickly. As for the third task, Jahnatek wants to make the setting of regulated utility prices more transparent and involve businesses into this process as well. Price-setting shouldnt be a Pandoras box from which something flows out, said Jahnatek, adding that entrepreneurs need to know the future direction of the development of energy prices. Prices must be subject to a prior discussion. Everybody should know what is going to come out. What energy experts say Energy experts point out several challenges in front of the new head of URSO. One of the main tasks will be to solve the improperly managed support of production of electricity from renewable energy sources and combined production of electricity and heat, Badida told The Slovak Spectator. The URSO itself should open up its decision-making operation to public supervision as currently it is not known at all what assets and costs of regulated subjects are entering the price. URSO may also contribute to lifting the ban and setting conditions for connecting new renewable energy sources to the national grid. It may also contribute to making the short-term market with electricity functional and secure a bigger flexibility on the side of electricity supplies, according to Badida. Ferencakova pointed out that with regards to the former autocratic leadership of URSO and departure of several long-term employees of the regulatory authority during the last few months it would be necessary at first to strengthen the expert personnel at this entity. Professionalisation of the state administration is traditionally a weak point of Slovakia, Ferencakova told The Slovak Spectator. In terms of topics related to energy, Ferencakova sees as a challenge the fact that the price of electricity as commodity that is entering the scheme for calculation of end electricity prices has increased compared with the last year. If other compounds of the regulated price for households and small companies, i.e. various fees, remain unchanged, the end price should increase, said Ferencakova. But the political and social order is pushing to keep these prices at least unchanged. Thus the new leadership will have to solve the question of whom to detract and whom to add. This is closely related to the acute need to reform the special tariff for operation of the system, according to Ferencakova. Within this tariff, electricity consumers support the generation of electricity from renewable energy sources and highly effective combined production of electricity and heat, as well as support for mining brown coal used for the generation of electricity at the power plant in Novaky. Three regional distribution companies already register claims totalling 380 million within this scheme. To cover this, the tariff should increase by as much as 11/MWh. Another problem could be the ongoing appeals processes wherein regulated subjects challenged older decisions by URSO, or ongoing lawsuits, according to Ferencakova. The planned construction work on the main highway in Slovakia may pose several challenges to drivers in near future. Font size: A - | A + A five-hour wait in traffic jams and a transport collapse on the regional roads around the capital: this was the result of the mass July 20 accident on the cross-country D1 highway stretch between Bratislava and Senec. Skryt Remove ad Article continues after video advertisement Skryt Remove ad Article continues after video advertisement The accident underlined the need for widening the existing roads in order to prevent the accumulation of traffic into one point, according to the chief highway administrator. The adopted measures securing flowing transport, however, are not enough to prevent the accidents that may block roads in the future. Slovak drivers are not used to driving in a narrowed left driving lane, so road accidents are happening more frequently, Ondrej Matej from the Institute for Transport and Economy told The Slovak Spectator. Moreover, its not good that the work is being carried out at several sections at the same time. More restrictions around Bratislava Currently, the constructors are working on the widening D1 section between Bratislava and Senec, which will mostly impact the entrance to and exit from the capital. Moreover, the Transport Ministry is finishing the construction plans for the Bratislava ring road project, which includes the D4 highway and R7 express dual-carriageway. The construction will impact several crossroads and highway exits around the capital, said Michaela Michalova, spokesperson for the National Highway Company (NDS). The detailed plans of organising transport during the construction work concerning the widening of the D1 and construction of the D4 and R7 are ready, focusing on keeping the smoothest transport possible, Michalova told The Slovak Spectator. Read also: Read also: Main highway link to be widened Read more NDS is not planning to close any sections completely, but drivers have to prepare for narrower driving lanes, lower speeds and bypass routes, she added. Construction plans criticised Not everybody, however, is satisfied with the plans concerning the ring road project. Bratislavas borough of Vajnory, which will be affected by the construction work, for example, has not received any plans for organising the transport or the construction plan yet. We have not received them to this day, Vajnory Mayor Jan Mrva told The Slovak Spectator. Neither is it possible to comment on them though such construction requires the responsible coordination of transport in the respective area. Since they missed the projects, they appealed against the construction permission for D4, but the ministrys appeals committee turned down their objections. I expect the NDS will discuss this with us and we will try to force the traffic out of the borough where the traffic is already dense, Mrva said. Read also: Read also: D1 will be extended, drivers may expect traffic jams Read more Debate about collector roads Mrva is also dissatisfied with the planned widening of the D1 stretch between Bratislava and Trnava. One of the alternatives was to construct a three-lane road with a stopping lane on both sides, plus two-lane collector roads. The final solution, however, counts on widening the road to four lanes plus a stopping lane on each side, but without any collector roads. Mrva considers the change a huge irresponsibility of the state and ignorance of the Bratislava Regions needs. All Slovaks use this highway when travelling to Bratislava or abroad, so in 2013 the experts also included collector roads in the project, Mrva said, adding that the projects cost 4 million. In his opinion, the collector roads were to serve for regional transport, the access of rescuers in case of road accidents, and also safe driving to and from the highway. Matej, on the other hand, criticises this concept, saying the collector roads would concentrate the traffic into the D1, and thus slow down the traffic. The traffic should be dispersed by the construction of new second- and third-class roads so the cars from the satellite towns go not onto the highway, but to the first-class roads, he explained. Moreover, it is necessary to secure functional and quality public transport, he added. The Transport Ministry defends the current alternative for the D1 widening, referring to the recommendation of the expert committee. We consider the current solution the most effective for people living close to Bratislava, and justified in both transport and economic reasons, the ministrys spokesperson Karolina Ducka told The Slovak Spectator. She, however, admitted that the collector roads can be added in the future, if necessary. Waiting for the Triblavina exit The current and also planned construction will bring together six new highway exits, which would secure enough connections to improve transport in this region, Ducka said. The fact, however, is that the works on the Triblavina exit (just outside Bratislava) have been suspended due to the change in the construction project. Similarly to the plans for the Bratislava-Senec stretch, the collector roads were also cut out from the original projects. The state is currently waiting for official permission for changing the construction plans. If it is issued by the end of this year, the works may start in early 2018 and be finished by the end of 2019, Michalova said. The original deadline for the exits completion was May 2017. Read also: Read also: Triblavina highway project still prompts disagreement Read more Mrva, who is also a member of the Triblavina civic association, considers the decision a catastrophe for Bratislava Region. He claims that the decision to change the construction plans is at odds with the regions master plan and traffic concept. The construction of bridges near Blatne and Triblavina require frequent transport restrictions, which result in long traffic jams when entering or leaving the capital, Mrva said, adding that trying to avoid these sections then results in further traffic jams on the regional roads. Situation may be worse As for the planned restrictions, NDS plans to keep the traffic in three lanes in each direction near the Triblavina exit currently under construction. As for the planned Ivanka Sever exit to secure the connection between the D1 and D4, the state will try to reroute the traffic to the bypass routes, as it plans to construct the bridges and change the highways levelling. To avoid accidents and further collapses it will be necessary to respect road instructions and speed limits. Matej, however, points out that while drivers abroad are used to driving in narrowed left lanes, it is not as common in Slovakia. Moreover, drivers often do not follow the zipping principle when driving. Paradoxically, the more frequent organisation of transport in narrowed lanes would help drivers get used to it, he opines. Matej also sees another challenge that traffic may face when the construction of the Bratislava ring road project begins. If the Blatne and Triblavina exits are not finished before ring roads construction starts, the traffic on the D1 around Bratislava in the morning and afternoon rush hours may collapse, Matej said. The following companies are subsidiares of Bristol-Myers Squibb: 1096271 B.C. ULC, 345 Park LLC, A.G. Medical Services P.A., AHI Investment LLC, AbVitro LLC, Abraxis BioScience Australia Pty Ltd., Abraxis BioScience Inc., Abraxis BioScience International Holding Company Inc., Abraxis BioScience LLC, Abraxis BioScience Puerto Rico LLC, Acetylon Pharmaceuticals Inc., Adnexus, Adnexus a Bristol-Myers Squibb R&D Company, Allard Labs Acquisition G.P., Amira Pharmaceuticals, Amira Pharmaceuticals Inc., Amylin Pharmaceuticals, Apothecon LLC, B-MS Generx Unlimited Company, BMS Benelux Holdings B.V., BMS Bermuda Nominees L.L.C., BMS Data Acquisition Company LLC, BMS Forex Company, BMS Holdings Sarl, BMS Holdings Spain S.L., BMS International Insurance Designated Activity Company, BMS Investco SAS, BMS Korea Holdings L.L.C., BMS Latin American Nominees L.L.C., BMS Luxembourg Partners L.L.C., BMS Omega Bermuda Holdings Finance Ltd., BMS Pharmaceutical Korea Limited, BMS Pharmaceuticals Germany Holdings B.V., BMS Pharmaceuticals International Holdings Netherlands B.V., BMS Pharmaceuticals Korea Holdings B.V., BMS Pharmaceuticals Mexico Holdings B.V., BMS Pharmaceuticals Netherlands Holdings B.V., BMS Real Estate LLC, BMS Spain Investments LLC, BMS Strategic Portfolio Investments Holdings Inc., Blisa Acquisition G.P., Bristol (Iran) S.A., Bristol Iran Private Company Limited, Bristol Laboratories Inc., Bristol Laboratories International S.A., Bristol Laboratories Medical Information Systems Inc., Bristol-Myers (Andes) L.L.C., Bristol-Myers (Private) Limited, Bristol-Myers Middle East S.A.L., Bristol-Myers Overseas Corporation, Bristol-Myers Squibb (China) Investment Co. Ltd., Bristol-Myers Squibb (China) Pharmaceuticals Co. Ltd., Bristol-Myers Squibb (Israel) Ltd., Bristol-Myers Squibb (NZ) Limited, Bristol-Myers Squibb (Proprietary) Limited, Bristol-Myers Squibb (Shanghai) Trading Co. Ltd., Bristol-Myers Squibb (Singapore) Pte. Limited, Bristol-Myers Squibb (Taiwan) Ltd., Bristol-Myers Squibb (West Indies) Ltd., Bristol-Myers Squibb A.E., Bristol-Myers Squibb Aktiebolag, Bristol-Myers Squibb Argentina S. R. L., Bristol-Myers Squibb Australia Pty. Ltd., Bristol-Myers Squibb Axia Limited, Bristol-Myers Squibb B.V., Bristol-Myers Squibb Belgium S.A., Bristol-Myers Squibb Business Services Limited, Bristol-Myers Squibb Canada Co., Bristol-Myers Squibb Canada International Limited, Bristol-Myers Squibb Delta Company Limited, Bristol-Myers Squibb Denmark Filial of Bristol-Myers Squibb AB, Bristol-Myers Squibb EMEA Sarl, Bristol-Myers Squibb Egypt LLC, Bristol-Myers Squibb Epsilon Holdings Unlimited Company, Bristol-Myers Squibb Farmaceutica Ltda., Bristol-Myers Squibb Farmaceutica Portuguesa S.A., Bristol-Myers Squibb GesmbH, Bristol-Myers Squibb GmbH & Co. KGaA, Bristol-Myers Squibb Holding Germany GmbH & Co. KG, Bristol-Myers Squibb Holdings 2002 Limited, Bristol-Myers Squibb Holdings Germany Verwaltungs GmbH, Bristol-Myers Squibb Holdings Ireland Unlimited Company, Bristol-Myers Squibb Holdings Limited, Bristol-Myers Squibb Holdings Pharma Ltd. Liability Company, Bristol-Myers Squibb Ilaclari Inc., Bristol-Myers Squibb India Pvt. Limited, Bristol-Myers Squibb International Company Unlimited Company, Bristol-Myers Squibb International Corporation, Bristol-Myers Squibb Investco L.L.C., Bristol-Myers Squibb K.K., Bristol-Myers Squibb Kft., Bristol-Myers Squibb Luxembourg International S.C.A., Bristol-Myers Squibb Luxembourg S.a.r.l., Bristol-Myers Squibb MEA GmbH, Bristol-Myers Squibb Manufacturing Company, Bristol-Myers Squibb Marketing Services S.R.L., Bristol-Myers Squibb Middle East & Africa FZ-LLC, Bristol-Myers Squibb Norway Ltd., Bristol-Myers Squibb Nutricionales de Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., Bristol-Myers Squibb Peru S.A., Bristol-Myers Squibb Pharma (HK) Ltd, Bristol-Myers Squibb Pharma (Thailand) Limited, Bristol-Myers Squibb Pharma Company, Bristol-Myers Squibb Pharma EEIG, Bristol-Myers Squibb Pharma Holding Company LLC, Bristol-Myers Squibb Pharma Ventures Corporation, Bristol-Myers Squibb Pharmaceuticals Limited, Bristol-Myers Squibb Pharmaceuticals Unlimited Company, Bristol-Myers Squibb Polska Sp. z o.o., Bristol-Myers Squibb Products SA, Bristol-Myers Squibb Puerto Rico Inc., Bristol-Myers Squibb Puerto Rico/Sanofi Pharmaceutical Partnership Puerto Rico, Bristol-Myers Squibb Romania S.R.L., Bristol-Myers Squibb S.A.U., Bristol-Myers Squibb S.r.l., Bristol-Myers Squibb SA, Bristol-Myers Squibb Sanofi Pharmaceuticals Holding Partnership, Bristol-Myers Squibb Sarl, Bristol-Myers Squibb Service Ltd., Bristol-Myers Squibb Services Sp. z o.o., Bristol-Myers Squibb Spol. s r.o., Bristol-Myers Squibb Theta Finance Ltd., Bristol-Myers Squibb Trustees Limited, Bristol-Myers Squibb Verwaltungs GmbH, Bristol-Myers Squibb de Colombia S.A., Bristol-Myers Squibb de Costa Rica Sociedad Anonima, Bristol-Myers Squibb de Guatemala S.A., Bristol-Myers Squibb de Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., Bristol-Myers Squibb/Astrazeneca EEIG, Bristol-Myers Squibb/Pfizer EEIG, Bristol-Myers Squibb/Sanofi Pharmaceuticals Partnership, Bristol-Myers de Venezuela S.C.A., CHT I LLC, CHT II LLC, CHT III LLC, CHT IV LLC, CR Finance Company LLC, Cardioxyl Pharmaceuticals, Cardioxyl Pharmaceuticals Inc., Celem LLC, Celem Ltd., Celgene, Celgene A.B., Celgene AS, Celgene Ab (Finland), Celgene Alpine Investment Co. II LLC, Celgene Alpine Investment Co. III LLC, Celgene Alpine Investment Co. LLC, Celgene ApS, Celgene B.V., Celgene BVBA, Celgene Brasil Produtos Farmaceuticos Ltda., Celgene CAR LLC, Celgene CAR Ltd., Celgene Chemicals Sarl, Celgene China Holdings LLC, Celgene Co., Celgene Corporation, Celgene Distribution B.V., Celgene EngMab GmbH, Celgene Europe B.V., Celgene Europe Limited, Celgene European Investment Company LLC, Celgene Financing Company LLC, Celgene Global Holdings Sarl, Celgene GmbH [Austria], Celgene GmbH [Germany], Celgene GmbH [Switzerland], Celgene Holdings East Corporation, Celgene Holdings II Sarl, Celgene Holdings III Sarl, Celgene Ilac Pazarlama ve Ticaret Limited Sirketi, Celgene Inc., Celgene International Holdings Corporation, Celgene International II Sarl, Celgene International III Sarl, Celgene International Inc., Celgene International Sarl, Celgene K.K., Celgene Kft., Celgene Limited [Hong Kong], Celgene Limited [Ireland], Celgene Limited [New Zealand], Celgene Limited [Taiwan], Celgene Limited [UK], Celgene Logistics Sarl, Celgene Ltd, Celgene Luxembourg Sarl, Celgene Management Sarl, Celgene NJ Investment Co, Celgene Netherlands B.V., Celgene Netherlands Investment B.V., Celgene Pharmaceutical (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Celgene Pte. Ltd., Celgene Pty Ltd, Celgene Puerto Rico Distribution LLC, Celgene Quanticel Research Inc, Celgene R&D Sarl, Celgene RIVOT LLC, Celgene RIVOT Ltd., Celgene RIVOT SRL, Celgene Receptos Limited, Celgene Receptos Sarl, Celgene Research Incubator At Summit West LLC, Celgene Research S.L.U., Celgene Research and Development Company LLC, Celgene Research and Development I ULC, Celgene Research and Development II LLC, Celgene Research and Investment Company II LLC, Celgene S. de R.L. de C.V., Celgene S.L.U., Celgene S.R.L., Celgene SAS, Celgene Sarl AU, Celgene Sdn Bhd, Celgene Services Sarl, Celgene Sociedade Unipessoal Lda, Celgene Sp. Z.o.o., Celgene Sro [Czech Republic], Celgene Summit Investment Co, Celgene Switzerland Holding Sarl, Celgene Switzerland II LLC, Celgene Switzerland Investment Sarl, Celgene Switzerland LLC, Celgene Switzerland Sarl, Celgene Tri A Holdings Ltd., Celgene Tri Sarl, Celgene UK Distribution Limited, Celgene UK Holdings Limited, Celgene UK Manufacturing II Limited, Celgene UK Manufacturing III Limited, Celgene UK Manufacturing Limited, Celgene d.o.o., Celgene sro [Slovakia], Celmed LLC, Celmed Ltd., ConvaTec Divestiture, Cormorant Pharmaceuticals, Cormorant Pharmaceuticals AB, Crosp Ltd., Delinia Inc., Deuteria Pharmaceuticals Inc., DuPont Pharmaceuticals, E. R. Squibb & Sons Inter-American Corporation, E. R. Squibb & Sons L.L.C., E. R. Squibb & Sons Limited, EWI Corporation, EngMab Sarl, F-star Alpha, FermaVir Pharmaceuticals L.L.C., FermaVir Research L.L.C., Flexus Biosciences, Flexus Biosciences Inc., Forbius, Galecto Biotech, GenPharm International L.L.C., Gloucester Pharmaceuticals LLC, Grove Insurance Company Ltd., Heyden Farmaceutica Portuguesa Limitada, IFM Therapeutics, Impact Biomedicines Inc., Inhibitex, Inhibitex L.L.C., Innate Tumor Immunity Inc., JuMP Holdings LLC, Juno Therapeutics GmbH, Juno Therapeutics Inc., Kosan Biosciences, Kosan Biosciences Incorporated, Linson Investments Limited, Mead Johnson (Manufacturing) Jamaica Limited, Mead Johnson Jamaica Ltd., Medarex, Morris Avenue Investment II LLC, Morris Avenue Investment LLC, MyoKardia, O.o.o. Bristol-Myers Squibb, Oy Bristol-Myers Squibb (Finland) AB, Padlock Therapeutics, Padlock Therapeutics Inc., Pharmion LLC, Princeton Pharmaceutical Products Inc., Receptos LLC, Receptos Services LLC, RedoxTherapies Inc., Route 22 Real Estate Holding Corporation, SPV A Holdings ULC, Seamair Insurance DAC, Signal Pharmaceuticals LLC, Sino-American Shanghai Squibb Pharmaceuticals Limited, Societe Francaise de Complements Alimentaires(S.O.F.C.A.), Squibb Middle East S.A., Summit West Celgene LLC, Swords Laboratories, VentiRx Pharmaceuticals Inc., Westwood-Intrafin SA, Westwood-Squibb Pharmaceuticals Inc., X-Body Inc., ZymoGenetics, ZymoGenetics Inc., ZymoGenetics LLC, ZymoGenetics Paymaster LLC, iPierian, and iPierian Inc.. Read More 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. Freeport-McMoRan Inc. engages in the mining of mineral properties in North America, South America, and Indonesia. The company primarily explores for copper, gold, molybdenum, silver, and other metals, as well as oil and gas. Its assets include the Grasberg minerals district in Indonesia; Morenci, Bagdad, Safford, Sierrita, and Miami in Arizona; Tyrone and Chino in New Mexico; and Henderson and Climax in Colorado, North America, as well as Cerro Verde in Peru and El Abra in Chile. The company also operates a portfolio of oil and gas properties primarily located in offshore California and the Gulf of Mexico. As of December 31, 2021, it operated approximately 135 wells. The company was formerly known as Freeport-McMoRan Copper & Gold Inc. and changed its name to Freeport-McMoRan Inc. in July 2014. Freeport-McMoRan Inc. was incorporated in 1987 and is headquartered in Phoenix, Arizona. Mastercard Incorporated, a technology company, provides transaction processing and other payment-related products and services in the United States and internationally. It facilitates the processing of payment transactions, including authorization, clearing, and settlement, as well as delivers other payment-related products and services. The company offers integrated products and value-added services for account holders, merchants, financial institutions, businesses, governments, and other organizations, such as programs that enable issuers to provide consumers with credits to defer payments; prepaid programs and management services; commercial credit and debit payment products and solutions; and payment products and solutions that allow its customers to access funds in deposit and other accounts. It also provides value-added products and services comprising cyber and intelligence solutions for parties to transact, as well as proprietary insights, drawing on principled use of consumer, and merchant data services. In addition, the company offers analytics, test and learn, consulting, managed services, loyalty, processing, and payment gateway solutions for e-commerce merchants. Further, it provides open banking and digital identity platforms services. The company offers payment solutions and services under the MasterCard, Maestro, and Cirrus. Mastercard Incorporated was founded in 1966 and is headquartered in Purchase, New York. Healthcare Trust of America, Inc. (NYSE: HTA) is the largest dedicated owner and operator of MOBs in the United States, comprising approximately 25.1 million square feet of GLA, with $7.4 billion invested primarily in MOBs. HTA provides real estate infrastructure for the integrated delivery of healthcare services in highly-desirable locations. Investments are targeted to build critical mass in 20 to 25 leading gateway markets that generally have leading university and medical institutions, which translates to superior demographics, high-quality graduates, intellectual talent and job growth. The strategic markets HTA invests in support a strong, long-term demand for quality medical office space. HTA utilizes an integrated asset management platform consisting of on-site leasing, property management, engineering and building services, and development capabilities to create complete, state of the art facilities in each market. This drives efficiencies, strong tenant and health system relationships, and strategic partnerships that result in high levels of tenant retention, rental growth and long-term value creation. Headquartered in Scottsdale, Arizona, HTA has developed a national brand with dedicated relationships at the local level. Founded in 2006 and listed on the New York Stock Exchange in 2012, HTA has produced attractive returns for its stockholders that have outperformed the US REIT index. Learning Resources Microsoft Offering Students Flexible Leasing for Surface Devices, Deals on Windows 10 PCs Microsoft on Tuesday revealed a flexible payment plan to lease its Surface computers, and a number of other back-to-school deals and programs for teachers and students. The company calls the Surface Pro its most versatile laptop. Image: Microsoft. First, the company is giving students a 10 percent discount on Surface machines, which double as tablets or laptops, through the new Surface Plus plan. Surface devices arent low-priced, with the Surface Pro priced starting at $799 and running as high as $2,999 for the Surface Studio. Some key features of the Surface Plan include: Low monthly payments at 0 percent APR over 24 months; Upgrades to the latest model after 18 months; and A 30-day hassle-free return policy and access to in-store support. Surface Plus is one of two flexible payment plans the company announced this week. More information on those plans is available on Redmond Magazine. In addition, Microsoft recently polled teachers via Twitter and found that 39 percent of educators need help settings up their digital classrooms. In an effort to help, the company has introduced the Back to School LIVE program, a series of online workshops that offer tips and resources focused on getting the classroom ready. Festivities kick off with a live Twitter chat using the hashtag #MSFTEduChat on Aug. 15 at 10 a.m. PDT and again at 4 p.m. PDT. Highlights for Back to School LIVE include: Demos of Microsoft Teams, the digital hub that comes free with Office 365 for Education and brings conversations, content and apps together in a single platform; and Learning experiences with Minecraft: Education Edition, which is available for a free trial. Lastly, Microsoft has rounded up deals on several Windows 10 PCs, like the Acer Swift 1 (starting at $329) and the ASUS Q Series notebooks and desktops (with up to $125 in savings). Individuals can also save a few hundred dollars on the HTC Vive when bundled with select PCs. The full list of deals can be found on the Microsoft blog. Rayonier Advanced Materials Inc. manufactures and sells cellulose specialty products in the United States, China, Canada, Japan, Europe, Latin America, other Asian countries, and internationally. The company operates through High Purity Cellulose, Paperboard, and High-Yield Pulp segments. Its products include cellulose specialties, which are natural polymers that are used as raw materials to manufacture a range of consumer-oriented products, such as liquid crystal displays, impact-resistant plastics, thickeners for food products, pharmaceuticals, cosmetics, cigarette filters, high-tenacity rayon yarn for tires and industrial hoses, food casings, paints, and lacquers. The company also offers commodity products, such as commodity viscose pulp used in woven applications, including rayon textiles for clothing and other fabrics, as well as in non-woven applications comprising baby wipes, cosmetic and personal wipes, industrial wipes, and mattress ticking; and absorbent materials consisting of fluff fibers that are used as an absorbent medium in disposable baby diapers, feminine hygiene products, incontinence pads, convalescent bed pads, industrial towels and wipes, and non-woven fabrics. In addition, it provides paperboards for packaging, printing documents, brochures, promotional materials, paperback books or catalog covers, file folders, tags, and tickets; and high-yield pulps to produce paperboard and packaging products, printing and writing papers, and various other paper products. The company was founded in 1926 and is headquartered in Jacksonville, Florida. Duke Energy Corporation, together with its subsidiaries, operates as an energy company in the United States. It operates through three segments: Electric Utilities and Infrastructure, Gas Utilities and Infrastructure, and Commercial Renewables. The Electric Utilities and Infrastructure segment generates, transmits, distributes, and sells electricity in the Carolinas, Florida, and the Midwest; and uses coal, hydroelectric, natural gas, oil, renewable generation, and nuclear fuel to generate electricity. It also engages in the wholesale of electricity to municipalities, electric cooperative utilities, and load-serving entities. This segment serves approximately 8.2 million customers in 6 states in the Southeast and Midwest regions of the United States covering a service territory of approximately 91,000 square miles; and owns approximately 50,259 megawatts (MW) of generation capacity. The Gas Utilities and Infrastructure segment distributes natural gas to residential, commercial, industrial, and power generation natural gas customers; and owns, operates, and invests in pipeline transmission and natural gas storage facilities. It has approximately 1.6 million customers, including 1.1 million customers in North Carolina, South Carolina, and Tennessee, as well as 550,000 customers in southwestern Ohio and northern Kentucky. The Commercial Renewables segment acquires, owns, develops, builds, and operates wind and solar renewable generation projects, including nonregulated renewable energy and energy storage services to utilities, electric cooperatives, municipalities, and corporate customers. It has 23 wind, 178 solar, and 2 battery storage facilities, as well as 71 fuel cell locations with a capacity of 3,554 MW across 22 states. The company was formerly known as Duke Energy Holding Corp. and changed its name to Duke Energy Corporation in April 2005. The company was founded in 1904 and is headquartered in Charlotte, North Carolina. WestRock Company, together with its subsidiaries, provides fiber-based paper and packaging solutions in North America, South America, Europe, Asia, and Australia. It operates through two segments, Corrugated Packaging and Consumer Packaging. The Corrugated Packaging segment produces containerboards, corrugated sheets, corrugated packaging, and preprinted linerboards to consumer and industrial products manufacturers, and corrugated box manufacturers. It also provides structural and graphic design, engineering services and custom, and proprietary and standard automated packaging machines, as well as turn-key installation, automation, line integration, and packaging solutions; distributes corrugated packaging materials and other specialty packaging products, including stretch films, void fills, carton sealing tapes, and other specialty tapes; operates recycling facilities that collect, sort, grade, and bale recovered paper; and provides lithographic laminated packaging products, as well as contract packing services. The Consumer Packaging segment manufactures and sells folding cartons that are used to package food, paper, beverages, dairy products, tobacco, confectionery, health and beauty, other household consumer, and commercial and industrial products; and express mail packages for the overnight courier industry. It also offers inserts and labels, as well as rigid packaging and other printed packaging products, such as transaction cards, brochures, product literature, marketing materials, and grower tags and plant stakes for the horticultural market; and secondary packages and paperboard packaging for over-the-counter and prescription drugs. In addition, this segment manufactures and sells solid fiber and corrugated partitions, and die-cut paperboard components principally to glass container manufacturers and the automotive industry, as well as producers of beer, food, wine, spirits, cosmetics, and pharmaceuticals. WestRock Company is based in Atlanta, Georgia. Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Limited, a pharmaceutical company, develops, manufactures, markets, and distributes generic medicines, specialty medicines, and biopharmaceutical products in North America, Europe, and internationally. The company offers sterile products, hormones, high-potency drugs, and cytotoxic substances in various dosage forms, including tablets, capsules, injectables, inhalants, liquids, transdermal patches, ointments, and creams. It also develops, manufactures, and sells active pharmaceutical ingredients. In addition, it focuses on the central nervous system, pain, respiratory, and oncology areas. Its products in the central nervous system include Copaxone for the treatment of relapsing forms of multiple sclerosis; AJOVY for the preventive treatment of migraine; and AUSTEDO for the treatment of tardive dyskinesia and chorea associated with Huntington disease. The company's products in the respiratory market comprise ProAir, QVAR, ProAir Digihaler, AirDuo Digihaler, and ArmonAir Digihaler, BRALTUS, CINQAIR/CINQAERO, DuoResp Spiromax, and AirDuo RespiClick/ArmonAir RespiClick for the treatment of asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. Its products in the oncology market include Bendeka, Treanda, Granix, Trisenox, Lonquex, and Tevagrastim/Ratiograstim. Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Limited has a collaboration MedinCell for the development and commercialization of multiple long-acting injectable products, a risperidone suspension for the treatment of patients with schizophrenia. The company was founded in 1901 and is headquartered in Tel Aviv-Yafo, Israel. The following companies are subsidiares of Accenture: 2nd Road, ?What If!, ?What If! China Holdings Limited, ?What If! Holdings Limited, ?What If! Limited, ACN Consulting Co Ltd, AD.Dialeto (Digital Agency acquired by Accenture), AFD.TECH, AGS Business and Technology Services Limited, AIG Shared Services Business Processing Inc, ASM Research Inc., ASM Research LLC, ATAN, Accenture (Botswana) (Proprietary) Limited, Accenture (China) Co. Ltd., Accenture (Shenzhen) Technology Co. 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Ltd., Cimation, Cirrus Connect Australia Pty Ltd, Cirrus Connect Limited, Cirruseo, Clarity Insights, ClearEdge Partners, Clearhead, Clearhead Group LLC, ClientHouse GmbH, Cloud Sherpas, Cloud Sherpas (GA) LLC, Cloud Sherpas Japan G.K., Cloud Sherpas New Zealand Limited, Cloudeasier SAS, Cloudpoint Limited, Cloudsherpas Inc, Cloudworks, Cloudworks Consulting Services Inc, Cloudworks Technology LLC, Computer Research and Telecommunications LLC, Concrete Desenvolvimento de Sistemas Ltda, Concrete Solutions, Concrete Solutions Ltda, Context Information Security, Context Information Security LLC, Context Information Security Limited, CoreCompete LLC, CoreCompete Limited, CoreCompete Private Limited, Corliant Inc., Creative Drive LLC, Creative Drive US LLC, CreativeDrive, CreativeDrive Digital Content Services (Shenzhen) Co Ltd., CreativeDrive EMEA Limited, CreativeDrive Singapore Pte Ltd, CreativeDrive UK Group Limited, Cutting Edge Solutions Limited, Cygni AB, Cygni Norrsken AB, Cygni Stockholm AB, Cygni Syd AB, Cygni Vast AB, Cygni Ost AB, Cygni Ostersund AB, DAZ Systems Inc, DAZ Systems LLC, DAZSI Systems (India) Pvt. Limited, DI Futures Corporation, Data Essential SARL, Davies Consulting, DayNine Consulting, DayNine Consulting (New Zealand) Limited, DayNine Consulting LLC, Declarative Holdings LLC, Decora Marketplace LLC, Decorado Marketplace Ltda-EPP, Defense Point Security, Deja vu Security, Design Strategy and Research de Mexico S.A. de C.V., Designaffairs LLC, Digiplug S.A.S., Digital Results Group LLC, Double Digit Limitada, Double Digit Pty SA, Droga5, Droga5 LLC, Droga5 Studios LLC, Droga5 UK Limited, Duck Creek Technologies, ESR Labs, ESR Labs AG, EdenOne Solutions Limited, Edenhouse ERP Holdings Limited, Edenhouse Solutions Limited, Enaxis Consulting, Enaxis Consulting LP, End to End Analytics LLC, End-to-End Analytics, Endorphin Medici (M) Sdn Bhd, Energuia Web S.A., Energy Management Brokers Limited, EnergyQuote JHA, Enimbos, Enimbos Global Services S.L., Enkitec, Enterprise Infrastructure Solutions LLC, Enterprise System Partners, Enterprise System Partners B.V., Enterprise System Partners Bilisim Danismanlik Ticaret Anonim Sirketi, Enterprise System Partners Global Corporation, Enterprise System Partners Limited, Enthusian Pty Ltd, Entropia, Entropia (M) Sdn Bhd, Entropia Holdings Pte Ltd, Entropia Intercraft Sdn Bhd, Epylon, Ergo, Espedia S.r.l., Ethica Consulting Group, Ethica Consulting S.p.A., Evopro Group, Exactside Limited, Experity, Exton Consulting, Exton Consulting Spain Strategy&Management S.L., Exton Germany GmbH, Exton International SAS, Exton Italia S.r.l., Exton SAS, FGM LLC, Fairway Technologies Inc, Farah BidCo Limited, Farah MidCo Limited, Farah Topco Limited, Filmproduction ApS, First Annapolis Consulting Inc., First Annapolis Consulting LLC, Fjord, Focus Group Europe, Formicary, Founders Intelligence, Fruendo S.r.l., FusionX, Future State Consulting LLC, FutureMove (Beijing) Automotive Technology Co. Ltd., FutureMove Automotive, FutureMove Automotive Co. Ltd., GRA Supply Chain Pty Ltd, Gagel Group S de R.L. de C.V., Gapso Servicos de Informatica Ltda, Gapso Servicos de Informatica Ltda., Genfour, George Group Consulting L.P., Gestalt LLC, Gevity, Gren utvikling AS, H.B. Maynard and Co. Inc., HRC Retail Advisory, Hagberg Consulting Group, Hahntel Ltda, Halo Partners LLC, Hamilton Holding Company S.A, Hangzhou Aiyunzhe Technology Co. Ltd., Happen, Happen GP Limited, Happen Limited, Headspring, Hjaltelin Stahl, Hjaltelin Stahl A/S, Hjaltelin Stahl K/S, Hytracc Consulting AS, Hytracc Consulting AS, Hytracc Consulting Malaysia Sdn Bhd, IBB Consulting, ICM.S S.r.l., IMJ Corp, IMJ Corporation, INSITUM, IQSP Consulting LLC, IT One Company Limited, ITBS Servicios Bancarios de Tecnologia de la Informacion SL, Icon Integration, Icon Integration (NZ) Limited, Icon Integration Pty Ltd, Imagine Broadband (USA) Limited, Imagine Broadband USA LLC, Imaginea Inc, Imaginea Technologies LLC, Industrie IT (Hong Kong) Ltd, Industrie IT (Singapore) Pte Ltd, Industrie IT Group Pty Ltd, Industrie IT Pty Ltd, Industrie&Co, Infinity Works Consulting Limited, Infinity Works Holdings Limited, Infinity Works Management Limited, Infinity Works Midco Limited, Informatica de Euskadi S.L., Innotec International EAD, Innotec International S.p. z.o.o., Innotec Marketing GmbH, Innotec Marketing International Ireland Limited, Innotec- Marketing Spain S.L, Insitum Consultoria Argentina SRL, Insitum Consultoria S.A. de C.V., International Biometric Group LLC, International Biometric Group UK Limited, Intrepid, Intrepid Futureworks Sdn Bhd, Intrigo Systems Inc, Intrigo Systems India Pvt. Limited, Intrigo Systems LLC, Inventor Technology Ltd, InvestTech, Investtech Systems Consulting LLC, ItSafer Continuity Services S.L., JKD Consulting LLC, Javelin Group, K Comms Group Limited, KSC Studio LLC, Kaper Communications Limited, Karma Communications Debtco Limited, Karma Communications Group Limited, Karma Communications Holdings Limited, Karmarama, Karmarama Comms Limited, Karmarama Limited, King James Group, Knowledge Rules Inc., Knowledgent, Knowledgent Group LLC, Kogentix, Kogentix LLC, Kogentix Limited, Kogentix Singapore Pte Ltd, Kogentix Technologies Private Limited, Kolle Rebbe, Kolle Rebbe GmbH, Kream Comms Limited, Kunstmaan, Kurt Salmon, Kurt Salmon Canada LTD, Kurt Salmon US LLC, LEXTA, LINKBYNET, LINKBYNET Indian Ocean (L.I.O) Ltd, LabAnswer, Lexta GmbH, Lexta UK Limited, Lien par le reseau Inc, Lien par le reseau infrastructures Inc, Lin Bo (Shanghai) Network Technology Co. 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Ltd., Mackevision Korea Ltd, Mackevision LLC, Mackevision Medien Design, Mackevision Medien Design GmbH, Mackevision Singapore Pte Ltd, Mackevision UK Limited, Maglan, Maglan Information Defense Technologies Research Ltd, Maihiro, Matter, Maud Corp Pty Ltd, Maxamine International, Measuretek LLC, Media Audits Ltd., Media Hive, Mediasenz Pty Ltd., Meredith Specialty LLC, Meredith Xcelerated Marketing, Meredith Xcelerated Marketing LLC, Meridian Informed Purchasing Ltd., Mindtribe, Mistral Wind Operations Servicos Empresariais Unipessoal Lda., MobGen, Mortgage Cadence LLC, Mortgage Cadence an Accenture Company, Most Champion Ltd, Mudano, Mudano Limited, Myrtle Consulting Group LLC, N3, N3 (Dalian) Business Consulting Co. 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Ltd., Nashco Consulting, NaviSys Inc., Nell'Armonia Israel Ltd, Nell'Armonia SAS, Nell'Participation SAS, NellArmonia, Neo Metrics Analytics S.L., Neo Metrics Chile S.A., New Content, New Content Editora e Produtora Ltda, New Energy Group, News Imaging LLC, NewsPage, NewsPage (Malaysia) Sdn Bhd, NewsPage Pte Ltd, Northstream, Novetta Holdings LLC, Novetta LLC, Novetta Solutions LLC, Novetta Topco LLC, OCTO Technology, OPS Rules Management Consultants, Octagon Research Solutions Inc., Octo Technology Pty Ltd, Octo Technology SA, Odgaard ApS, Olikka, Olikka Pty Ltd, Olympus Systems Corporation, Openmind, Openmind S.r..l., Openminded, Openminded SAS, Operaciones Accenture S.A. de C.V., OpusLine, Orbium, Orbium AG, Orbium Consulting Limited, Orbium Inc., Orbium Ltd, Orbium Pte Ltd, Orbium Pty Ltd, Origin Digital, PCO Innovation, PLM Systems S.r.l, PRION GmbH, PT Accenture, PT Asta Catur Indra, PT Kogentix Teknologi Indonesia, PacificLink Group, Paja Finanssipalvelut Oy, Parker Fitzgerald Inc, Parker Fitzgerald International Limited, Parker Fitzgerald Limited, Parker Fitzgerald PTY Ltd, Parker Fitzgerald Services Limited, Parker Fitzgerald Solutions Limited, Pecaso Ltd., Pegasus Production A/S, Pegasus Production K/S, Phase One Consulting Group, Pillar Technology, Pollux, Pollux Automation Mexico S.A. de C.V., Pollux Canada Inc, Pollux S.A.S., Pollux USA LLC, Pragsis Bidoop, Pragsis Bidoop UK Limited, Pramati Technologies Europe Limited, Pramati Technologies Private Limited, Presence of IT Workforce Management North America LLC, PrimeQ, PrimeQ Australia Pty Ltd, PrimeQ Ltd, PrimeQ NZ Pty Limited, Procurian Inc., Prof. Homburg GmbH, Proquire LLC, PureApps Ltd., Qi Jie Beijing Information Technologies Co. 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Ltd., Shun Zhe Technology Development Co. Ltd., SigInt Technologies LLC, Silveo, Silveo Consulting India Private Limited, Simian Pty Ltd, SinnerSchrader, SinnerSchrader AG, SinnerSchrader Content GmbH, SinnerSchrader Deutschland GmbH, SinnerSchrader Praha s.r.o., Sirvart S.A., Sistemes Consulting S.L., Skylink SAS, Soltians Limited, Solutions IQ LLC, SolutionsIQ, SolutionsIQ India Consulting Services Private Limited, Somers Ventures Ireland Limited, Somers Ventures LLC, Spacelink SAS, Storm Digital, Structure Consulting Group LLC, Sutter Mills, Synership LLC, Systor AG, T.A. Cook, TXF LLC, Tambourine, TargetST8, Tech - Avanade Portugal Unipessoal Lda, Tecnilogica Ecosistemas S.A., Tecnilogica, The Brand Learning Partners Limited, The Callisto Integration Corporation, The Monkeys, The Monkeys Pty Ltd, The Myrtle Group, Total Logistics, Tquila, Trivadis, Trivadis AG, Trivadis Austria GmbH, Trivadis Denmark AS, Trivadis Germany GmbH, Trivadis Holding AG, Trivadis Partner AG, Trivadis Services AG, Trivadis Services SRL, Troop Studios Pty Ltd, VanBerlo, Vector Acquisition Company LLC, Vector Topco LLC, Verax Solutions, Vertical Retail Consulting (Shanghai) Ltd, Vertical Retail Consulting Ltd, Vivere Brasil Servicos e Solucoes SA, Vivere Brasil Solucoes De Credito Ltda., Wabion GmbH, WaveStrike LLC, White Cliffs Consulting LLC, Wire Stone, Wire Stone LLC, Wise Partners SAS, Wolox, Wolox Colombia S.A.S, Wolox LLC, Wolox Mexico S.R.L de C.V., Wolox S.A., Wolox SpA, Workforce Insight, Workforce Insight LLC, Yesler, Yesler LLC, Yesler Limited, Yesler Singapore Pte Ltd, Zag, Zag Australia Pty Ltd, Zag Limited, Zag USA LLC, Zebra Worldwide Australia Pty Ltd, Zebra Worldwide Group Limited, Zebra Worldwide Media Pty Ltd, Zenta, Zenta Global Philippines Inc, Zenta Mortgage Services LLC, Zenta Recoveries Inc, Zenta US Holdings Inc, Zestgroup, Zielpuls, Zielpuls (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Zielpuls GmbH, avVenta, designaffairs, designaffairs Business Consulting (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., designaffairs GmbH, designaffairs group China Co. Ltd., dgroup, i4C Analytics, iDefense, solid-serVision.com GmbH, and umlaut. Read More Xylem Inc., together with its subsidiaries, engages in the design, manufacture, and servicing of engineered products and solutions for the water and wastewater applications in the United States, Europe, the Asia Pacific, and internationally. It operates through three segments: Water Infrastructure, Applied Water, and Measurement & Control Solutions. The Water Infrastructure segment offers various products, including water, storm water, and wastewater pumps; controls and systems; filtration, disinfection, and biological treatment equipment; and mobile dewatering equipment under the Flygt, Godwin, Wedeco, Sanitaire, Leopold, Wedeco, and Xylem Vue brand names for the transportation and treatment of water. The Applied Water segment provides pumps, valves, heat exchangers, controls, and dispensing equipment systems under the Goulds Water Technology, Bell & Gossett, A-C Fire Pump, Standard Xchange, Lowara, Jabsco, Xylem Vue and Flojet brand names for residential and commercial building services, and industrial water applications. The Measurement & Control Solutions segment provides smart meters, networked communication devices, and measurement and control technologies, as well as critical infrastructure technologies. It also offers software and services, including cloud-based analytics, remote monitoring and data management, leak detection, condition assessment, asset management, and pressure monitoring solutions, as well as testing equipment and managed services. This segment sells its products under the Pure, Sensus, Smith Blair, WTW, Xylem Vue, and YSI brand names. The company markets and sells its products through a network of direct sales force, resellers, distributors, and value-added solution providers. Xylem Inc. was formerly known as ITT WCO, Inc. and changed its name to Xylem Inc. in May 2011. The company. was incorporated in 2011 and is headquartered in Rye Brook, New York. Eleanor Wilson had sex with the teenager on a plane coming back from a school trip (Facebook) The father of the teenage schoolboy who had sex with his teacher on a plane says his son just wants to move on. The 16-year-old, who cannot be named for legal reasons, had oral and full sex with 28-year-old physics teacher Eleanor Wilson on a flight home from a school trip to Swaziland and not Switzerland as previously reported. Wilson has been struck off by a professional conduct panel after being sacked from her job at the school in Bristol in May 2016. Now the boys father has spoken out about the fling, telling MailOnline that his son did not want Wilson to lose her career. Physics teacher Wilson has been struck off after having sex with the boy (Facebook) He said: He didnt want her to lose her job over it. The relationship was only uncovered when another pupil found out about it and blackmailed her for sex. He then told the school and from there it was the school who pursued the investigation, not my son. He didnt want her to lose her career. Hes a young man who just wants to put this behind him and move on. MOST POPULAR STORIES FROM YAHOO UK: Heroic Brit who fought ISIS in Syria committed suicide to avoid being captured Biker known for her saucy Instagram pictures is killed in horror crash Teacher who thought wife was having affair faces jail for spying on her Husband jailed for raping his wife in her sleep and filming the attacks Greggs announces plans to open drive-thrus throughout the UK The teenager bragged about sleeping with Wilson while on the trip, according to a friend of the pupil. They added: He said they had sex a lot on the trip to Africa and on the flight back. A National College for Teaching and Leadership hearing found Wilson guilty of all but two of the allegations made against her. north korea earthquake nuclear Kim Hong-Ji/Reuters On September 9 of last year, in the middle of the morning, seismometers began lighting up around East Asia. From South Korea to Russia to Japan, geophysical instruments recorded squiggles as seismic waves passed through and shook the ground. It looked as if an earthquake with a magnitude of 5.2 had just happened. But the ground shaking had originated at North Koreas nuclear weapons test site. It was the fifth confirmed nuclear test in North Korea, and it opened the latest chapter in a long-running geologic detective story. Like a police examiner scrutinizing skid marks to figure out who was at fault in a car crash, researchers analyze seismic waves to determine if they come from a natural earthquake or an artificial explosion. If the latter, then scientists can also tease out details such as whether the blast was nuclear and how big it was. Test after test, seismologists are improving their understanding of North Koreas nuclear weapons program. The work feeds into international efforts to monitor the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty, which since 1996 has banned nuclear weapons testing. More than 180 countries have signed the treaty. But 44 countries that hold nuclear technology must both sign and ratify the treaty for it to have the force of law. Eight, including the United States and North Korea, have not. To track potential violations, the treaty calls for a four-pronged international monitoring system, which is currently about 90 percent complete. Hydroacoustic stations can detect sound waves from underwater explosions. Infrasound stations listen for low-frequency sound waves rumbling through the atmosphere. Radionuclide stations sniff the air for the radioactive by-products of an atmospheric test. And seismic stations pick up the ground shaking, which is usually the fastest and most reliable method for confirming an underground explosion. Seismic waves offer extra information about an explosion, new studies show. One research group is exploring how local topography, like the rugged mountain where the North Korean government conducts its tests, puts its imprint on the seismic signals. Knowing that, scientists can better pinpoint where the explosions are happening within the mountain thus improving understanding of how deep and powerful the blasts are. A deep explosion is more likely to mask the power of the bomb. Story continues Separately, physicists have conducted an unprecedented set of six explosions at the U.S. nuclear test site in Nevada. The aim was to mimic the physics of a nuclear explosion by detonating chemical explosives and watching how the seismic waves radiate outward. Its like a miniature, nonnuclear version of a nuclear weapons test. Already, the scientists have made some key discoveries, such as understanding how a deeply buried blast shows up in the seismic detectors. The more researchers can learn about the seismic calling card of each blast, the more they can understand international developments. Thats particularly true for North Korea, where leaders have been ramping up the pace of military testing since the first nuclear detonation in 2006. On July 4, the country launched its first confirmed ballistic missile with no nuclear payload that could reach as far as Alaska. Theres this building of knowledge that helps you understand the capabilities of a country like North Korea, says Delaine Reiter, a geophysicist with Weston Geophysical Corp. in Lexington, Mass. Theyre not shy about broadcasting their testing, but they claim things Western scientists arent sure about. Was it as big as they claimed? Were really interested in understanding that. North korea Science News/NORSAR Natural or not Seismometers detect ground shaking from all sorts of events. In a typical year, anywhere from 1,200 to 2,200 earthquakes of magnitude 5 and greater set off the machines worldwide. On top of that is the unnatural shaking: from quarry blasts, mine collapses and other causes. The art of using seismic waves to tell one type of event from the others is known as forensic seismology. Forensic seismologists work to distinguish a natural earthquake from what could be a clandestine nuclear test. In March 2003, for instance, seismometers detected a disturbance coming from near Lop Nor, a dried-up lake in western China that the Chinese government, which signed but hasnt ratified the test ban treaty, has used for nuclear tests. Seismologists needed to figure out immediately what had happened. One test for telling the difference between an earthquake and an explosion is how deep it is. Anything deeper than about 10 kilometers is almost certain to be natural. In the case of Lop Nor, the source of the waves seemed to be located about six kilometers down difficult to tunnel to, but not impossible. Researchers also used a second test, which compares the amplitudes of two different kinds of seismic waves. Earthquakes and explosions generate several types of seismic waves, starting with P, or primary, waves. These waves are the first to arrive at a distant station. Next come S, or secondary, waves, which travel through the ground in a shearing motion, taking longer to arrive. Finally come waves that ripple across the surface, including those called Rayleigh waves. In an explosion as compared with an earthquake, the amplitudes of Rayleigh waves are smaller than those of the P waves. By looking at those two types of waves, scientists determined the Lop Nor incident was a natural earthquake, not a secretive explosion. (Seismology cannot reveal the entire picture. Had the Lop Nor event actually been an explosion, researchers would have needed data from the radionuclide monitoring network to confirm the blast came from nuclear and not chemical explosives.) For North Korea, the question is not so much whether the government is setting off nuclear tests, but how powerful and destructive those blasts might be. In 2003, the country withdrew from the Treaty on the Nonproliferation of Nuclear Weapons, an international agreement distinct from the testing ban that aims to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons and related technology. Three years later, North Korea announced it had conducted an underground nuclear test in Mount Mantap at a site called Punggye-ri, in the northeastern part of the country. It was the first nuclear weapons test since India and Pakistan each set one off in 1998. By analyzing seismic wave data from monitoring stations around the region, seismologists concluded the North Korean blast had come from shallow depths, no more than a few kilometers within the mountain. That supported the North Korean governments claim of an intentional test. Two weeks later, a radionuclide monitoring station in Yellowknife, Canada, detected increases in radioactive xenon, which presumably had leaked out of the underground test site and drifted eastward. The blast was nuclear. But the 2006 test raised fresh questions for seismologists. The ratio of amplitudes of the Rayleigh and P waves was not as distinctive as it usually is for an explosion. And other aspects of the seismic signature were also not as clear-cut as scientists had expected. Researchers got some answers as North Koreas testing continued. In 2009, 2013 and twice in 2016, the government set off more underground nuclear explosions at Punggye-ri. Each time, researchers outside the country compared the seismic data with the record of past nuclear blasts. Automated computer programs compare the wiggles you see on the screen ripple for ripple, says Steven Gibbons, a seismologist with the NORSAR monitoring organization in Kjeller, Norway. When the patterns match, scientists know it is another test. A seismic signal generated by an explosion is like a fingerprint for that particular region, he says. With each test, researchers learned more about North Koreas capabilities. By analyzing the magnitude of the ground shaking, experts could roughly calculate the power of each test. The 2006 explosion was relatively small, releasing energy equivalent to about 1,000 tons of TNT a fraction of the 15-kiloton bomb dropped by the United States on Hiroshima, Japan, in 1945. But the yield of North Koreas nuclear tests crept up each time, and the most recent test, in September 2016, may have exceeded the size of the Hiroshima bomb. earthquake north korea japan Issei Kato/Reuters Digging deep For an event of a particular seismic magnitude, the deeper the explosion, the more energetic the blast. A shallow, less energetic test can look a lot like a deeply buried, powerful blast. Scientists need to figure out precisely where each explosion occurred. Mount Mantap is a rugged granite mountain with geology that complicates the physics of how seismic waves spread. Western experts do not know exactly how the nuclear bombs are placed inside the mountain before being detonated. But satellite imagery shows activity that looks like tunnels being dug into the mountainside. The tunnels could be dug two ways: straight into the granite or spiraled around in a fishhook pattern to collapse and seal the site after a test, Frank Pabian, a nonproliferation expert at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, said in April in Denver at a meeting of the Seismological Society of America. Researchers have been trying to figure out the relative locations of each of the five tests. By comparing the amplitudes of the P, S and Rayleigh waves, and calculating how long each would have taken to travel through the ground, researchers can plot the likely sites of the five blasts. That allows them to better tie the explosions to the infrastructure on the surface, like the tunnels spotted in satellite imagery. One big puzzle arose after the 2009 test. Analyzing the times that seismic waves arrived at various measuring stations, one group calculated that the test occurred 2.2 kilometers west of the first blast. Another scientist found it only 1.8 kilometers away. The difference may not sound like a lot, Gibbons says, but it is huge if youre trying to place these relative locations within the terrain. Move a couple of hundred meters to the east or west, and the explosion could have happened beneath a valley as opposed to a ridge radically changing the depth estimates, along with estimates of the blasts power. Gibbons and colleagues think they may be able to reconcile these different location estimates. The answer lies in which station the seismic data come from. Studies that rely on data from stations within about 1,500 kilometers of Punggye-ri as in eastern China tend to estimate bigger distances between the locations of the five tests when compared with studies that use data from more distant seismic stations in Europe and elsewhere. Seismic waves must be leaving the test site in a more complicated way than scientists had thought, or else all the measurements would agree. When Gibbons team corrected for the varying distances of the seismic data, the scientists came up with a distance of 1.9 kilometers between the 2006 and 2009 blasts. The team also pinpointed the other explosions as well. The September 2016 test turned out to be almost directly beneath the 2,205-meter summit of Mount Mantap, the group reported in January in Geophysical Journal International. That means the blast was, indeed, deeply buried and hence probably at least as powerful as the Hiroshima bomb for it to register as a magnitude 5.2 earthquake. Other seismologists have been squeezing information out of the seismic data in a different way not in how far the signals are from the test blast, but what they traveled through before being detected. Reiter and Seung-Hoon Yoo, also of Weston Geophysical, recently analyzed data from two seismic stations, one 370 kilometers to the north in China and the other 306 kilometers to the south in South Korea. The scientists scrutinized the moments when the seismic waves arrived at the stations, in the first second of the initial P waves, and found slight differences between the wiggles recorded in China and South Korea, Reiter reported at the Denver conference. Those in the north showed a more energetic pulse rising from the wiggles in the first second; the southern seismic records did not. Reiter and Yoo think this pattern represents an imprint of the topography at Mount Mantap. One side of the mountain is much steeper, Reiter explains. The station in China was sampling the signal coming through the steep side of the mountain, while the southern station was seeing the more shallowly dipping face. This difference may also help explain why data from seismic stations spanning the breadth of Japan show a slight difference from north to south. Those differences may reflect the changing topography as the seismic waves exited Mount Mantap during the test. nuclear nevada CTBTO/FlickrLearning from simulations But there is only so much scientists can do to understand explosions they cant get near. Thats where the test blasts in Nevada come in. The tests were part of phase one of the Source Physics Experiment, a $40-million project run by the U.S. Department of Energys National Nuclear Security Administration. The goal was to set off a series of chemical explosions of different sizes and at different depths in the same borehole and then record the seismic signals on a battery of instruments. The detonations took place at the nuclear test site in southern Nevada, where between 1951 and 1992 the U.S. government set off 828 underground nuclear tests and 100 atmospheric ones, whose mushroom clouds were seen from Las Vegas, 100 kilometers away. For the Source Physics Experiment, six chemical explosions were set off between 2011 and 2016, ranging up to 5,000 kilograms of TNT equivalent and down to 87 meters deep. The biggest required high-energydensity explosives packed into a cylinder nearly a meter across and 6.7 meters long, says Beth Dzenitis, an engineer at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California who oversaw part of the field campaign. Yet for all that firepower, the detonation barely registered on anything other than the instruments peppering the ground. I wish I could tell you all these cool fireworks go off, but you dont even know its happening, she says. The explosives were set inside granite rock, a material very similar to the granite at Mount Mantap. So the seismic waves racing outward behaved very much as they might at the North Korean nuclear test site, says William Walter, head of geophysical monitoring at Livermore. The underlying physics, describing how seismic energy travels through the ground, is virtually the same for both chemical and nuclear blasts. The results revealed flaws in the models that researchers have been using for decades to describe how seismic waves travel outward from explosions. These models were developed to describe how the P waves compress rock as they propagate from large nuclear blasts like those set off starting in the 1950s by the United States and the Soviet Union. That worked very well in the days when the tests were large, Walter says. But for much smaller blasts, like those North Korea has been detonating, the models didnt work that well at all. Walter and Livermore colleague Sean Ford have started to develop new models that better capture the physics involved in small explosions. Those models should be able to describe the depth and energy release of North Koreas tests more accurately, Walter reported at the Denver meeting. A second phase of the Source Physics Experiment is set to begin next year at the test site, in a much more rubbly type of rock called alluvium. Scientists will use that series of tests to see how seismic waves are affected when they travel through fragmented rock as opposed to more coherent granite. That information could be useful if North Korea begins testing in another location, or if another country detonates an atomic bomb in fragmented rock. For now, the worlds seismologists continue to watch and wait, to see what the North Korean government might do next. Some experts think the next nuclear test will come at a different location within Mount Mantap, to the south of the most recent tests. If so, that will provide a fresh challenge to the researchers waiting to unravel the story the seismic waves will tell. Its a little creepy what we do, Reiter admits. We wait for these explosions to happen, and then we race each other to find the location, see how big it was, that kind of thing. But it has really given us a good look as to how [North Koreas] nuclear program is progressing. Useful information as the worlds nations decide what to do about North Koreas rogue testing. See Also: PANAMA CITY (Reuters) - A former Mexican state governor from President Enrique Pena Nieto's Institutional Revolutionary Party will remain jailed in Panama until he is extradited to his home country where he is wanted on corruption charges, a Panamanian judge said on Wednesday. Roberto Borge, who was governor until last year of the state of Quintana Roo, the home to tourist resort Cancun, was detained in early June at the Panama City airport with the aid of Interpol as he was preparing to board a flight to Paris.[nL1N1J205Y][nL1N1KI2SD] Mexico's attorney general's office has accused Borge of using resources obtained through illegal means, embezzlement and abuse of public office. Appeals court judge Mauricio Marin said there were enough reasons "to order a formal arrest of Mr. Roberto Borge Angulo," denying him bail. Borge and his attorney declined to make any statements following the hearing. Two other former Mexican governors from the ruling PRI party, Tomas Yarrington of Tamaulipas and Javier Duarte of Veracruz state, were arrested this year and accused of corruption. An arrest warrant was issued earlier this year for the PRI's former governor in Chihuahua state, Cesar Duarte, for suspected embezzlement. (Reporting by Elida Moreno; Writing by Anthony Esposito; Editing by Peter Cooney) By Christinne Muschi HEMMINGFORD, Quebec (Reuters) - Hundreds of Haitians are streaming across the U.S. border into Canada, fearing deportation by U.S. President Donald Trump, according to aid workers and Quebec officials who have opened Montreal's Olympic Stadium to help process the influx. About 400 to 500 Haitian asylum seekers walked into the province of Quebec in the past week, said Marjorie Villefranche, director of the Maison d'Haiti, a community group in Montreal that is helping to settle the newcomers. Quebec Immigration Minister Kathleen Weil said Thursday that the province is getting as many as 150 refugee claims a day. "We have the necessary experience to deal with this situation ... (but) that pace is stretching our resources," she told reporters. Nearly 30 people walked across the border between Quebec and upstate New York in a short period of time on Thursday morning, according to a Reuters eyewitness. The group was made up of people from Haiti, Burundi and Syria. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police has set up a tent to process arrivals at the border, a road that separates the two countries and which is not an official crossing. Once processed, people are loaded onto buses headed for Montreal. New arrivals are being housed at 10 sites across Montreal, including the city's Olympic Stadium. More than 50,000 victims of Haiti's 2010 earthquake have been living in the U.S. under "temporary protected status" for the past seven years. Earlier this year, the Department of Homeland Security extended their status through January 2018, but officials said in May that individuals covered under that status should begin acquiring travel documents to return to Haiti. It was not clear why the pace of arrivals has picked up in recent days. The timing of this influx is "a bit surprising," aid worker Villefranche said. "Why this month, why not last month?" More than 4,300 asylum seekers crossed the U.S. border into Canada in the first six months of this year. Many told Reuters they feared Trump's immigration crackdown. Once in Canada, they are detained and held for questioning and security screening before being allowed to file refugee claims. However, time spent in the United States may put them at a disadvantage. Canada is on track this year to have the most asylum claims in almost a decade, according to government figures. The high numbers have made for worsening delays that leave people in limbo. Canadian parliamentarian Emmanuel Dubourg, who was born in Haiti, welcomed the Haitian asylum seekers on Thursday. "We in Canada understand their situation, the uncertainty they're feeling, and we will do everything we can to accelerate the process," he said. (Reporting by Anna Mehler Paperny; Editing by Bernadette Baum) NAIROBI (Reuters) - Al Shabaab militants attacked a remote police outpost in northern Kenya on Thursday and killed an officer days before national elections, police said. A major attack could undermine the security credentials of President Uhuru Kenyatta who is standing for a second and final term at elections next Tuesday when the country will also vote for members of parliament and regional authorities. The attackers hit two vehicles when they fired rocket propelled grenades at the camp in Lafey village near the border with Somalia before police repulsed the attack, said Joseph Boinnet, inspector general of police. "We have lost one officer and on the enemy side we have reason to believe that there were some casualties," Boinnet told a news conference, adding that the attackers fled with a government vehicle. Al Shabaab claimed responsibility for the attack. Al Shabaab is fighting to overthrow Somalia's western-backed government and establish its own rule, based on the group's strict interpretation of Islamic sharia law. The Islamists frequently launch attacks in Kenya in a bid to force the country to withdraw its troops from Somalia. Kenyan troops form part of the African Union-mandated AMISOM peacekeeping force, which defends Somalia's government. (Reporting by Humphrey Malalo and George Obulutsa; Writing by Elias Biryabarema; Editing by Matthew Mpoke Bigg) LIMA (Reuters) - Peru may sever diplomatic ties with Venezuela to protest Sunday's election of a legislative superbody in the country that has been widely criticized as undemocratic, Peruvian Foreign Minister Ricardo Luna said on Thursday. Luna said Peru wanted to discuss appropriate measures with his regional counterparts in a meeting set for Tuesday before acting unilaterally, however. Peru called for the meeting as Venezuelans broadly boycotted Sunday's election of a constituent assembly, designed to enhance the powers of leftist President Nicolas Maduro. Asked by reporters if Peru has ruled out cutting diplomatic ties with Venezuela, Luna said, "Not at all. All options are on the table." "We're going to see how other countries taking part in the meeting feel and, depending on that, see what can be done collectively," said Luna. "That doesn't tie our hands or condition any unilateral decision that we might take." Peru has said it expects foreign ministers from Canada, Brazil, Mexico, Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Panama, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Honduras and Paraguay to attend Tuesday's meeting in Lima. Maduro has become increasingly isolated as an economic crisis and political crisis deepens in his once prosperous OPEC nation. About 120 people have been killed during anti-government protests in recent months. Countries around the world have condemned the constituent assembly as a bid to extend Maduro's rule indefinitely and give him unbridled power. Maduro says the creation of the political body was necessary to address an unprecedented economic decline and help restore peace in the volatile country. No nation has cut ties with Venezuela in response to the vote so far. But Peru has been one of the region's most outspoken critics of Maduro's government since President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski, a conservative economist and former Wall Street banker, took office a year ago. Peru recalled its ambassador to Venezuela in March after the country's Supreme Court took over the opposition-led congress, but the move was later reversed. Maduro has denounced criticism from Peru and other countries as part of "imperialist aggression" orchestrated by U.S. President Donald Trump. "The president of Peru has called for a meeting in Lima on Tuesday to prepare an economic, political, diplomatic and military aggression against Venezuela," Maduro said on Wednesday. (Reporting by Mitra Taj; Addiitonal reporting by Hugh Bronstein in Caracas; Editing by Tom Brown) They will go on display for the first time later this month (Picture: Reuters) This is the first glimpse of the adorable cheetah cubs that were recently born at Prague Zoo. The quintuplets three males and two females are said to be doing well after surviving the most critical period after they were born on May 15 to their mother, six-year-old Savannah. The creatures, which are the most fastest animals on land, are also extremely vulnerable to diseases, with scientists claiming that each cub is critical in securing the future of the species which is threatened with extinction in the wild. They were born in May (Picture: Reuters) Two of the young cheetahs are seen playing together (Picture: Reuters) It comes after Savannah previously gave birth to quadruplets in 2014 with five-year-old Ben being the father in both cases. Savannah was previously brought to the zoo from Colchester Zoo in Essex, while Ben originally hails from Ebeltoft Safari in Denmark. MOST POPULAR STORIES FROM YAHOO UK: Heroic Brit who fought ISIS in Syria committed suicide to avoid being captured Biker known for her saucy Instagram pictures is killed in horror crash Teacher who thought wife was having affair faces jail for spying on her Husband jailed for raping his wife in her sleep and filming the attacks Greggs announces plans to open drive-thrus throughout the UK Speaking at the time of their birth, mammal curator Pavel Brandl said: Four cubs are pretty robust and one is smaller, but we believe that in the coming days or weeks, it will catch up. The tiny animals are yet to be named (Picture: Reuters) Prague Zoo has been keeping cheetahs since 1933 But it could get pretty tricky in differentiating between the tiny cheetahs, as theyre yet to be named by zoo staff and will make their roaring debut to the public on August 26. Prague Zoo has been keeping cheetahs since 1933, with the first offspring being born in 1972. Since then, some 64 have been born there including the new litter. DAKAR (Reuters) - Senegal President Macky Sall's ruling coalition was set on Monday to retain a commanding majority in parliament after a weekend election, a presidential aide said, but the opposition claimed the results were tainted by fraud. Sall came to power in 2012 by defeating longtime incumbent Abdoulaye Wade in a vote that reaffirmed Sengal's status as one of West Africa's most stable democracies. "We have won 42 districts of the 45 in the country," Mahmoud Saleh, a political adviser to Sall, told Reuters. "This gives us a comfortable majority in parliament." Sall's coalition won 43 of 45 districts in 2012. The new parliament will have 165 seats, 105 through direct suffrage while 60 will be apportioned from party lists. Sunday's vote was marred, however, by delays in issuing biometric identity cards that prevented hundreds of voters from casting their ballots, part of what opposition leaders said was an intensifying clampdown on political opposition. Political demonstrations are routinely halted by a heavy police presence and the mayor of the capital Dakar, one of Sall's main competitors, was jailed in March for embezzling public funds, charges Sall's opponents say are politically motivated. "What happened yesterday was not incompetence but sabotage to commit fraud," said opposition leader Amadou Sall. A government spokesman denied the charges of fraud and accused the opposition of being a "sore loser". Senegal is the only nation on mainland West Africa not to have seen a coup or civil war since independence and its political stability has helped it attract major investments in infrastructure and its emerging oil sector. (Reporting By Diadie Ba; Writing by Aaron Ross; Editing by Richard Balmforth) The 2001 discovery of the seven million-year-old Sahelanthropus, the first known upright ape-like creatures, was yet more proof of humanitys place among the great apes. And yet Mike Pence, then a representative and now US vice president, argues for the opposite conclusion. For him, our ideas about our ancestors have changed, proving once more that evolution was a theory, and therefore we should be free to teach other theories alongside evolution in our classrooms. How to respond? The usual answer is that we should teach students the meaning of the word theory as used in science that is, a hypothesis (or idea) that has stood up to repeated testing. Pences argument will then be exposed to be what philosophers call an equivocation an argument that only seems to make sense because the same word is being used in two different senses. Just words Evolution, Pence argues, is a theory, theories are uncertain, therefore evolution is uncertain. But evolution is a theory only in the scientific sense of the word. And in the words of the National Academy of Sciences, The formal scientific definition of theory is quite different from the everyday meaning of the word. It refers to a comprehensive explanation of some aspect of nature that is supported by a vast body of evidence. Attaching this label to evolution is an indicator of strength, not weakness. If you take this approach, you have failed to understand the purpose of Pences rhetoric, or why it is so appealing to creationists. Pence is an accomplished politician, and knows exactly how to appeal to his intended audience. He is also an accomplished trial lawyer, which makes him a conjuror with words, and like any skilful conjuror he has pulled off his trick by distraction. Pence has drawn us into a discussion about words, when our focus should be on the evidence. I would suggest the opposite approach. The problem is not really with the word theory at all. Students will have learned its meaning in the same way they learn meanings in general: by seeing how the word is used. Story continues They will have heard of atomic theory, which no one has seriously doubted for over a century. And what about the theory of gravity? Finally, they may have seen how Darwin himself uses the expression my theory, although at the time it was neither comprehensive nor well supported (there were huge gaps in the fossil record), to refer in a very general way to his linked ideas about mutability of species, common descent, and the power of natural selection. So if anyone says, Evolution is a theory, dont give them a lecture on the meaning of the word theory. If you do, youve fallen into the trap of making it seem that how we define words should affect how we see reality. You will be fighting on ground of your opponents choosing, since arguing about how to apply words is the stock in trade of theologians, preachers and lawyers like Mike Pence. The correct response is to say that evolution is a theory like gravity is a theory and then redirect attention to the evidence. And that evidence is overwhelming. Evolutionary ammo Start with family relationships. Carl Linnaeus showed how living things can be classified into species, genera, families and so on, and Darwin pointed out that this is exactly the structure we would expect from a family tree. All dogs are canines, so dogs share an ancestor with foxes; all canines are carnivora, so dogs share a more remote ancestor with bears; all carnivora are mammals, so dogs and sheep are, albeit more remotely, related, and so on. Then look at the discovery over the past few decades of family relationships at the molecular level, and the fact that the molecular family tree matches that based on anatomical resemblances. Observe the fossil record. Once lamentably full of gaps (Darwin was among the lamenters), it is now densely populated. A century ago, it still made sense to point to the missing link between humans and pre-human apes. Now we know of several different hominin species living alongside each other, and the problem becomes one of distinguishing our grandparents from our great uncles. And yes, there are missing links in the chain, but without evolution we would not have a chain at all. And then theres biogeography: for example, why marsupials are only found in South America and Australasia, and except for a few species that made their way across the Isthmus of Panama, are never found elsewhere. Plus we can actually observe evolution, and study it in the field or in the lab. The emergence of pesticide resistance is evolution in action, as shown in the justly famous Harvard/Technion demonstration evolution on a plate. So is the delightful Russian experiment of breeding tame foxes. Artificial selection, just as much as natural selection, is evolution in action. And finally, and most convincingly, we must look at the way that these different lines of evidence mesh together. We can apply biogeography to the fossil record, and link it to what we know about the movements of the continents. Using the methods of molecular biology, we can identify and time the mutations that led different species to diverge from their common ancestor, and match the timing against the fossil record. Thus the fossil record, deep anatomical resemblances, and DNA evidence agree in showing that whales, for instance, are closely related to hoofed mammals, diverging from them in the Eocene period. There are many other examples of such consistency. Then, and only then, pause to explain how a scientific theory is an interlocking connection of ideas that explain things about the world, and that evolution is one of the most successful examples. And challenge the Mike Pences of this world to spell out exactly what they would like to see taught alongside the Theory of Evolution and why. This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article. The Conversation Paul Braterman is affiliated with the British Centre for Science Education, and is science advisor to the Scottish Secular Society. Few animals can interpret echoes as keenly as bats. And few places in the world are better suited to study bats than the Shandong University-Virginia Tech International Laboratory in Jinan, a city in eastern China where Joseph Sutlive is spending the summer. Sutlive, a Virginia Tech doctoral student in the translational biology, medicine, and health [TBMH] program, recently flew to Jinan with the support of a National Science Foundation (NSF) East Asia and Pacific Summer Institutes Fellowship award. His objective: discover more about how bats interpret echoes to navigate through dark, cluttered environments with capabilities that far surpass human-made sonar systems. Bats have structures outside their nostrils that they are able to move five to 10 times a second much faster than an eye-blink, said Sutlive, who is from Charlotte, North Carolina. I would like to learn more about how those movements affect their perception, so this NSF award helps support my research on the underlying neuroscientific basis of echolocation through the TBMH graduate program. It also gives me a chance to experience China. The grant is jointly funded by the NSF and the Chinese Ministry of Science and Technology. This opportunity will broaden me as a researcher, Sutlive said. I am carrying out my TBMH dissertation research in the neuroscience focus area of the translational biology, medicine, and health graduate program, so I do biological experiments, and I also work with bat-inspired robots that use sonar and have silicone structures to match bat anatomy. It is a good combination. Sutlive collaborates with Hiroshi Riquimaroux, a neuroscientist at Shandong University with expertise in acoustics and the study of the physiology of hearing, particularly bat physiology. We are excited to see Joseph embrace the collaborative and interdisciplinary nature of the TBMH program, traveling internationally to bridge research in both engineering and neuroscience, said Audra Van Wart, the assistant vice president for health sciences education at Virginia Tech, co-director of the TBMH program, and director of education and training at the Virginia Tech Carilion Research Institute. His investigation into the neural underpinning of this specialized form of auditory processing could have both technological and biomedical applications. Human-made sonar systems use microphones and speakers in sync, while bats capture more detailed information by using their nostrils or mouths to emit sound and using their ears as receivers. Sutlive will study the greater horseshoe bat, which is native to China and has particularly efficient biosonar. Sutlive seeks to discover how the motion of the bats ear and nose structures influences the way their brains encode auditory signals. He will look for correlates of the facial and ear dynamics of the bats in neurophysiological recordings from the auditory brain stem, particularly two midbrain anatomical areas the inferior and superior colliculus, which are involved in integrating and routing sensory perceptions. Josephs research is the first attempt to look at the neural basis for the dynamics in the biosonar systems, said Sutlives advisor, Rolf Mueller, an associate professor of mechanical engineering in the College of Engineering. We have worked on this topic using studies of animal behavior and robotic reproductions, but any neural correlates have yet to be found. I have high hopes that Josephs work can deliver those. Mueller, who directs the Virginia Tech Center for Bioinspired Science and Technology supported by the Institute for Critical Technology and Applied Science, founded the Shandong University-Virginia Tech International Laboratory in 2010. Sutlives NSF East Asia and Pacific Summer Institutes Fellowship is the fifth such award for Virginia Tech students to work in China at the Shandong University-Virginia Tech International Laboratory. Natural Gas Services Group, Inc. provides natural gas compression services and equipment to the energy industry in the United States. It fabricates, manufactures, rents, and sells natural gas compressors and related equipment. The company primarily engages in the rental of compression units that provide small, medium, and large horsepower applications for unconventional oil and natural gas production. As of December 31, 2021, the company had 2,023 natural gas compression units in its rental fleet with 418,041 horsepower. The company also engages in the design, fabrication, and assembly of compressor components into compressor units for rental or sale; engineers and fabricates natural gas compressors; and designs and manufactures a line of reciprocating compressor frames, cylinders, and parts. In addition, it is involved in the design, fabrication, sale, installation, and service of flare stacks and related ignition and control devices for the onshore and offshore incineration of gas compounds, such as hydrogen sulfide, carbon dioxide, natural gas, and liquefied petroleum gases. Further, the company offers customer support services for its compressor and flare sales business; and exchange and rebuild program for small horsepower screw compressors. Its primary customers are exploration and production(E&P) companies that utilize compressor units for artificial lift applications; E&P companies that focuses on natural gas-weighted production; and midstream companies. Natural Gas Services Group, Inc. was incorporated in 1998 and is headquartered in Midland, Texas. If Independence Day and War of the Worlds are among your favorite films, this might be your dream job. NASA has posted a job opening for a planetary protection officer. The job involves preventing alien contamination during NASA space missions and stopping alien micro-organisms from reaching Earth. It also covers avoiding contamination of alien worlds by probes or other missions. OK, so maybe its less about blasting alien invaders than in the movies. Also, in order to qualify you must have an advanced degree in engineering, science or math, plus be a recognized expert in planetary protection. Youll also need to have at least one year of experience as a top-level civilian government employee. So your resume may need more than watches a lot of science fiction under job experience. Sorry. On the bright side, the pays not bad $124,406 to $187,000 a year plus benefits and you can expect frequent travel. Youd also be only one of two full-time planetary protection officers on the, well, planet. (The other works for the European Space Agency.) And it turns out that defending Earth against aliens isnt all that stressful. Its a moderate level, Catharine Conley, the current NASA planetary protection officer, told Business Insider. Its not extremely careful, but its not extremely lax. Conley told the site that the job opening results from the post being switched to a different department within NASA. She declined to say whether shell be applying for the new position. NASAs accepting applications at USAJobs.gov through Aug. 14. Copyright 2017 Albuquerque Journal Silver City native Harrison Schmitt was 37 when he landed on the moon with the Apollo 17 crew in 1972. It was the last of the lunar missions. Many of those who helped him and others get there, though, were much younger. The average age of the engineers in the mission control center during the Apollo 13 mission was 26, Schmitt said to a group of students at the Air Force Research Laboratory at Kirtland Air Force Base on Wednesday morning. Keep that in mind. Schmitt addressed an audience of high school, undergraduate and graduate students from around the country who are wrapping up their summer in the Air Force Research Laboratory Scholars program. Around 150 students were selected for this years program from 1,000 applicants, said program manager Eunsook Hwang. The program is a paid summer internship offered at three other AFRL sites throughout the country where students in engineering and science fields work and research with AFRL mentors. They see the actual projects of the AFRL and how that applies to help the nations security, defense and the future of the space program, Hwang said. The summer program culminated on Wednesday with an award ceremony, Schmitts speech and poster presentations of their findings. Rio Rancho native Steven Maurice, a University of New Mexico electrical engineering graduate student and Outstanding Scholar award recipient, said the program afforded him opportunities not always available in the classroom. Its a very different environment than academia, said Maurice, who researched artificial intelligence in robotics. You dont necessarily have the resources you need all the time. Whereas here, its, What do you need? Well get it for you. Maurice said the program has also opened doors to other possible research opportunities within the Air Force. Hwang said AFRL tries to hire as many scholars as it can. For those it cant hire, the program tries to connect them to other positions. Students attended a job fair in mid-July, for example. Theres 149 students (in the scholars program), so we cant hire every one of them, but as long as they stay in science and technology areas, we are happy with that, Hwang said. We do need those kinds of capabilities in the country. Schmitt agreed, advocating for the injection of more young blood into the countrys research institutions, especially at NASA. Youve got to have agencies that stay young, he said. The Air Force Research Lab obviously is trying to do that with the scholars program. The vast majority of NASAs employees today are older than 50, according to NASA data. The average age of the AFRL workforce is 51 to 60, an AFRL spokeswoman said. After the Apollo 17 mission, Schmitt went on to represent New Mexico in the U.S. Senate from 1976 to 1983. Copyright 2017 Albuquerque Journal Are sex workers criminals or victims? In the Albuquerque area, that may depend on whos doing the investigating. Local law enforcement agencies involved in a four-day, multi-agency operation targeting sex-trafficking of minors two weeks ago took very different approaches in dealing with those involved. The Albuquerque Office of Homeland Security Investigations ran the operation, which started on July 17, along with the Attorney Generals Office. They were also joined by the Albuquerque Police Department and the Bernalillo County Sheriffs Office. During the operation, APD detectives booked five women into jail on petty misdemeanor prostitution charges after finding their ads for adult services online. BCSO didnt arrest any sex workers, but identified nearly a dozen and helped them find social services. Meanwhile, the AGs Office focused on finding men who prey on underage girls. APD spokeswoman Celina Espinoza said in a statement that detectives interview people caught in such a sting to determine whether they are working as prostitutes willingly or being forced. At the conclusion of the investigations, we sometimes arrest the individual for prostitution, she said. Arresting an individual often removes the individual from a dangerous situation and gives them time to decide if they want to take advantage of the resources being offered. The women were released on their own recognizance the next day and the charges are still pending. Bernalillo County Sheriffs Office detectives said their focus in the operation was on rescuing trafficking victims who were being held in area motels. Detective Kyle Hartsock, with BCSOs Ghost Unit, said his team identified a couple of juvenile victims and rescued one while helping nine sex workers get services and assistance from The Life Link, a local behavioral health center. The Ghost Unit handles missing persons cases and child victims of exploitation or sex trafficking. Hartsock said his unit typically doesnt arrest or charge anyone with prostitution. We see them all as potential victims, he said. We want them to get services and rescue out of this. Hartsock said that while his group didnt arrest anyone on trafficking charges during the course of the operation, members of the unit have opened 15 new criminal cases involving potential sex trafficking, including some involving juveniles. He said they did arrest six men on warrants and charges not related to the operation. Lynn Sanchez, executive director of The Life Link, said she was surprised to hear APDs vice unit had made arrests for prostitution. She said she thought law enforcement attitudes toward women working as prostitutes had been shifting away from arresting them as offenders. I think thats horrible, and we need to stop that archaic outdated process, Sanchez said. But New Mexico law still considers prostitution a crime defined as knowingly engaging in or offering to engage in a sexual act for hire. It is a petty misdemeanor punishable by up to six months in jail. APD Police Chief Gorden Eden issued a special order in May instructing officers not to arrest certain suspects in low-level misdemeanor crimes, including prostitution. He said officers will still enforce those laws but they are permitted to issue a citation instead of taking them to jail, based on the officers judgment. APD spokeswoman Espinoza did not respond to questions about why detectives decided to make arrests, rather than issue citations, in the cases during the operation. Anthony Maez, the special agent in charge of Internet Crimes Against Children and the Human Trafficking task forces for the AGs Office, said his office arranges operations to target sex trafficking about four times a year throughout the state. He said in the most recent operation his agents charged seven men with attempted human trafficking. Those men had all arranged online to go to a hotel in order to have sex with an undercover deputy thinking she was a 15-year-old girl. Maez said New Mexicos human trafficking statute is extremely broad. Regarding the trafficking of minors, it says violations include recruiting, soliciting, enticing, transporting or obtaining by any means a person under the age of eighteen years with the intent or knowledge that the person will be caused to engage in commercial sexual activity. Its a felony. Maez said the goal of the AGs sting operation is to target adults who are trying to have sex with minors. They want to meet a child to have sex with them, Maez said. We want to send that message that you have no idea who youre going to walk in with, so maybe just dont do it. Sanchez said although the operation lasted only four days, the fact that sheriffs deputies were able to identify and help 12 trafficking victims shows that sex trafficking is a real problem in Albuquerque. If we could find that in one week, we could do that all the time, she said. We know there are more out there. July 26 is a significant day in American military history. Sixty-nine years ago, July 26, 1948, President Harry Truman signed an executive order abolishing racial segregation in the Armed Forces allowing African-Americans to serve in all branches of the military. Fast-forward. July 26, 2017, will go down in military history as the day President Donald Trump sent out a tweet bringing discrimination back to the Armed Forces by banning all transgender troops from military service. In an early morning tweet that blindsided members of Congress, White House staffers and the Secretary of Defense, Trump declared that, effective immediately, transgender Americans would not be allowed to serve in any capacity in the U.S. military. Why? Because, Trump argued, the military cannot be burdened with the tremendous medical costs and disruption that transgender in the military would entail. Note the key word: disruption. Sound familiar? It should. Because its the exact term previously used to deny blacks, women and gays the right to serve in the military. It was phony then, its phony now, the same, old, lame excuse for discrimination, just with a different face. Truman shot down that argument in relation to African-Americans. But in the 1990s it was back, aimed against women by men who argued women didnt belong in the military at all because theyd be too big of a distraction for male soldiers or that they should not be allowed in combat because, as then-Speaker Newt Gingrich explained: Females have biological problems staying in a ditch for 30 days because they get infections and they dont have upper-body strength. Ironically, President Bill Clinton resolved the women-in-combat issue, only to fall for the phony argument gays shouldnt be allowed to serve openly in the military. Having gay and straight soldiers serve side by side meant the introduction of sexual attraction, one general warned Congress, and could lead to combat deaths. It took President Obama to end Dont Ask, Dont Tell and to roll out the welcome mat for transgender Americans a policy now reversed, less than a year later, by Donald Trump, who would not allow them to serve in any capacity: not in combat; not even as chefs, clerks, mechanics, engineers, truck drivers, intelligence officers, or any other vital job in the military. Donald Trumps hissy fit has no basis in fact. In 1948, writes the New York Times, there were about 62,000 black soldiers in the Army about a tenth of the total. Today, there are between 1,000 and 7,000 transgender service members on active duty, of 1.3 million in total. Thats hardly enough to undermine military readiness. Most important, those transgender soldiers are serving our country with valor and distinction around the globe, in Iraq and Afghanistan, in combat and support missions. What happens to those brave transgender now in uniform? Do they stay or will they be tossed out of the military? The White House says it has no idea. We should not be chasing transgender men and women out of the military, we should be thanking them for their service as 18 other countries do, including the UK, Australia, France, Germany, and Israel. As for the tremendous medical costs involved, thats a phony argument, too. As Politico first reported, its what triggered the surprise Trump tweet. Conservative House Republicans initially tried to amend the defense appropriations bill by blocking the military from paying for surgery or hormone therapy for transgender soldiers. Based on a 2016 Rand Corp. study that found trans-related medical care only amounts to $2.4 to $8.4 million, or 0.004 to 0.17 percent of the overall $49.3 billion Pentagon health care budget, 24 Republicans joined 190 Democrats in voting against that amendment. Freedom Caucus Chairman Mark Meadows then warned the White House that, without this provision, conservatives would kill the entire defense bill, which guess what? includes money for Trumps pet project, the border wall. Whereupon Trump threw transgender Americans under the bus: not only by refusing to pay their health care, which is all conservatives wanted, but by banning them from the military altogether. And he did so in the middle of what the White House was calling American Heroes Week. Only Trump would honor heroes by firing them. Sad! This column was trimmed for print. Email: bill@billpress.com. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Services long-awaited revision of its Mexican Wolf Recovery Plan currently a draft but due in its final form by Nov. 30 isnt being fully embraced by environmental groups or cattle ranchers, which could indicate its a fair compromise. But the plan, which hadnt been updated since 1982, contains some serious flaws that appear to place political expediency ahead of science. Those shortcomings need to be addressed in the final document, as it will be the de facto road map for saving the Mexico gray wolf from extinction and ensuring a healthy ecosystem in southwestern New Mexico and Arizona. Every existing Mexican gray wolf, also known as the lobo, traces its lineage to seven lobos captured in the wild in the late 1970s in an effort to prevent the wolves from becoming extinct. Those seven wolves were placed into a captive breeding program and, in 1998, some of their offspring were released into the wild under Fish and Wildlifes reintroduction program. Given their limited gene pool, ensuring the lobos genetic diversity remains a challenge. Efforts to improve the gene pool necessarily include establishment of several different wolf packs throughout the reintroduction area another point of contention. The draft plan calls for limiting the reintroduction to areas south of Interstate 40 in New Mexico and Arizona, similar to its historic range, which stretches from Albuquerque to Mexico City, and from Phoenix to San Antonio. Wolf advocates say that is too limiting while critics question the need to reintroduce wolves to places they never inhabited. Bryan Bird with Defenders of Wildlife says much of the historic habitat has been lost to development its highly unlikely they will settle around metro areas and interchanges so defining a recovery area that focuses solely on historical range would preclude recovery. Plus, he says reintroducing the apex predator (or wolf) to the northern extent of its suitable habitat would return some balance to ecosystems overpopulated with elk and result in a Yellowstone effect. Two decades ago, Yellowstone National Parks ecosystem was in decline and experiencing defoliation and riparian erosion because of an unbalanced ecosystem much of which was caused by the disappearance of wolves and a subsequent boom in the elk and deer populations, which led to overgrazing. After wolves were reintroduced in 1995, the elk herds were thinned out, riparian area became re-vegetated, and other wildlife birds, beavers, bears, etc. returned. The ecosystem had rebalanced. In addition to a faulty recovery area, Fish and Wildlifes draft plan surmises the lobo could be taken off the endangered species list once its population reaches 320 in the United States and 170 in Mexico. At last count, there were 113 Mexican gray wolves in the U.S. at the end of 2016, and 28 in Mexico as of April 2017. Bird and other wolf proponents say the U.S. must have at least 750 wolves in the wild to ensure the genetic diversity needed to de-list the lobo. And while some argue that Mexico isnt doing its part in the wolf reintroduction program, Bird said Mexico is doing what it can with limited resources and little public land. Ranchers complain that wolves prey on their livestock and, though they can receive compensation for livestock that are proven to have been killed by wolves, its too hard to qualify for a payment thats too low. They also want the wolves taken off the endangered species list as soon as possible. While a 2010 USDA study indicates only about 0.1 percent of livestock losses can be attributed to wolves, Bird references an innovative program that pays ranchers for wolf presence rather than predation, and it sounds like a smart compromise. Expanding the wolves territory and gene pool are key to the wolfs successful reintroduction. U.S. Fish and Wildlife needs to focus its draft plan on the science, which supports those changes, ahead of rhetoric or political expediency. This editorial first appeared in the Albuquerque Journal. It was written by members of the editorial board and is unsigned as it represents the opinion of the newspaper rather than the writers. Thalia Papadakis has always had a soft spot for the needy creatures of the world. A blind horse. A dying pig. A discarded dog, his tail and paws frozen. She supports saving the whales, protecting endangered species great and small. Her Facebook page is full of gruesome posts excoriating the monsters who abuse animals with knives and ropes and neglect. She eats vegan. And the cats. Lordy, the cats. Papadakis has been fostering cats for years, many in such bad shape that even the kindest cat ladies might find some of them too far gone to save. Cats with no hind legs. Cats with no bladder control. Toothless cats. Deaf cats. Asthmatic cats. Angry, unsocial cats. And one cat with a skin disease called pemphigus, noted for oozing open sores that inspired Papadakis to nickname the ailment kitty leprosy. Papadakis desire to help those in need isnt relegated to the animal kingdom. Since 2011, she has been an Albuquerque Public Schools counselor, working with some of the districts neediest students from some of the roughest, most impoverished communities where free school lunches may be the only meal they eat in a day and her comforting, wise words the only thing to save them from despair. I met Papadakis in December 2014 at Alamosa Elementary School on the West Mesa, where she introduced me to some of the children and one of her foster cats. Ziggy had been tossed out on a roadway with a broken back and lifeless, ulcerated back legs. She was dehydrated, malnourished, covered in fleas and urinating blood. But Papadakis nursed the kitten back to health and began taking her to school, where students designed and crafted a suspension walker that allowed the paraplegic kitten to roll along. We decided to be kind and help Ziggy, one fourth-grader told me proudly. Now, it is Papadakis who needs kindness and help. Registration for the new school year began at Alamosa this week, but Papadakis, 39, wont be there to greet the students. She wasnt there most of the last school year, either, sidelined in September by several painful, debilitating medical conditions. She lists her ailments, nearly all of which fall under dysautonomia, an umbrella term used to describe a variety of conditions caused by the malfunctioning of the autonomic nervous system, which controls basic automatic bodily functions such as heart rate, blood pressure, digestion, sweating and kidney function: Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, which causes her joints to dislocate. Blood pressure that falls so low it causes her to pass out almost without warning. Frequent kidney stones. Degenerative arthritis. Liver hemangioma, which causes an inability to process solid foods, nausea and vomiting. Worst of the lot is the gastroparesis, which prevents her stomach from emptying food into the small intestine. It means that I cannot eat solid foods and that even when I drink anything it causes extreme pain, she said. So extreme, she said, that she relegates herself to a single organic vegan smoothie each day, supplementing that with water mixed with electrolytes and sodium. She estimates shes been losing 10 pounds a month. Her illness has left her nearly homebound, tied to her bathroom, her freezer full of smoothies, her five cats and her books and the medications she needs to manage her condition. Its quite a change for a woman who grew up healthy in sunny Greece, who ran her own Pilates studio, spent hours in belly dancing and ballet classes, shared adventures with friends around the world and obtained not one but two masters degrees, simultaneously. No one in my family is sick like this, she said. Its not anything I ever expected. Its too soon, she said, to know her prognosis. More testing, biopsies, motility studies, neurology screenings lie ahead. She knows there are no cures for what she has. There are no magic pills. But there is determination. I worked so hard to get where I am, she said. I break out crying when I think of being on permanent disability. That is not what I want. My goal is to get my doctorate and become a school psychologist, to continue to help kids. Papadakis said she has been reluctant to share her illness with her friends, many of whom live around the world, most of whom do not know what she has endured. She was encouraged to reach out by a fellow school counselor who learned that Papadakis long-term disability through APS is up in September. After that, her health insurance premiums are expected to more than double. A GoFundMe account has been set up to defray her expenses another change for a woman used to saving others, not herself. I still have things I want to do, she said. We are fortunate to have people in this world who do the work of angels. It seems only right to return the favor when the angels ask. UpFront is a front-page news and opinion column. Comment directly to Joline at 823-3603, jkrueger@abqjournal.com or follow her on Twitter @jolinegkg. Go to www.abqjournal.com/letters/new to submit a letter to the editor. The New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science is helping Albuquerqueans on Friday prepare for the Aug. 21 total solar eclipse. We want New Mexico residents to learn about this solar eclipse and find out how to enjoy it safely, said Jim Greenhouse, the museums space science director, in a news release. The eclipse will be the focus of Augusts $5 First Friday event from 5:30 to 9 p.m. at the museum. The program will include presentations on the eclipse and how to build solar viewers at home. The Aug. 21 eclipse is set to begin in the Albuquerque area at 10:21 a.m. with maximum, three-quarters coverage visible about 11:45 a.m. and the event ending at 1:13 p.m. Eye protection is essential to view the eclipse, even from New Mexico, which, while not in the path of totality, will be able to see a partial eclipse. We have an impressive lineup of attractions happening which will make this a cant-miss evening, museum director Margie Marino said in a statement. At 8:30 p.m., members of the Albuquerque Astronomical Society will point out objects in the night sky in the observatory. The museums newest DynaTheater movie, Space Next, will be screened at 6 p.m. for an additional $5. The popular First Friday Fractals, a live show that explores the world of mathematical fractals, will be offered at 6, 7, 8 and 9 p.m. for $10 for adults, $7 for seniors and $5 for children 3-12. Those tickets usually sell out in advance and should be purchased as early as possible, the museum advises. The museum is located at 1801 Mountain Road NW. SANTA FE A ninth Democrat is seeking the partys nomination to run next year for an open Albuquerque-area congressional seat. John Flores, a former journalist and military veteran, confirmed he will seek the 1st Congressional District seat currently held by U.S. Rep. Michelle Lujan Grisham, who is running for governor in 2018. Flores told the Journal he opposes President Donald Trumps agenda and would support an effort to impeach Trump. Radical times require tough action, and I am ready for this challenge, Flores told the Journal in an email. He also said he would advocate for the protection of wildlife, including the Mexican gray wolf, while still maintaining the rights of ranchers. The 2018 congressional bid marks Flores first run for public office. But he said he has worked for elected officials in the past, including the late U.S. Sen. Lloyd Bentsen, D-Texas. The 1st Congressional District seat includes most of Albuquerque and stretches east into Torrance County. After being in Republican hands for years, the seat has been held by Democrats since 2009. The other Democrats seeking the partys 2018 nomination are Albuquerque attorney Damian Lara; former U.S. Attorney for New Mexico Damon Martinez; Albuquerque City Councilor Pat Davis; former University of New Mexico Law School Associate Dean Antoinette Sedillo Lopez; Edgewood Town Councilor John Abrams; former state Democratic Party Chairwoman Debra Haaland; Sandia National Laboratories government relations official Annie Chavez, and Albuquerque physicist Dennis Dinge. On the Republican side, two candidates have entered the race: former state Rep. Janice Arnold-Jones and immigration lawyer Michael Hendricks. New Mexicos primary election will be held in June and the general election in November 2018. Copyright 2017 Albuquerque Journal SANTA FE As a teen with autism, Andy Personius is often on the outside looking in when youngsters his age get together, his mom says. That isnt the case at Arts Adventures, a weekly program in Albuquerque in which children with autism participate in theater, visual arts and other activities. The program gives him a place where he is completely accepted and part of the group, Andys mom, Jennifer Personius, said in an interview Wednesday. But Arts Adventures and similar programs for children with autism spectrum disorder face new financial challenges this summer partly because of cuts in state funding that took effect July 1. The state this year reduced funding by 18 percent for groups with contracts to provide autism services, from about $3.4 million to $2.8 million, according to the Legislative Finance Committee. Seven groups, including Arts Adventures, lost all of their state funding. The reductions come after New Mexico faced an intense budget crunch that was, at one point, projected to nearly exhaust state reserves. Health Department spokesman Paul Rhien said the budget crunch has forced the department to look for new ways to fund some programs. Within these constraints, we continually look at all contracts and determine where we can shift costs in order to continue to provide a large range of safety net services and programs that have evidence-based, positive impacts for vulnerable families statewide, he said in a written statement. The department also must fund a variety of critical services, such as programs that help families with infants and people with developmental disabilities. The health, safety and welfare of all New Mexicans will always be our top priority at the New Mexico Department of Health, Rhien said. Groups large and small have undergone cuts. The Center for Development and Disability at the University of New Mexico which diagnoses children with autism and runs Camp Rising Sun in the East Mountains, among other services is taking a 6 percent cut this year in state funding for autism services. State funding has been decreasing for some time, said Pat Osbourn, the centers associate director. But the new cut could mean longer waiting lists for families seeking services, she said, and hard choices on which programs to continue, including Camp Rising Sun, which serves about 95 children and helps train about 145 adults each year. It already takes about 18 months for families who want to have their children evaluated for autism. We really dont want those children to have to wait any longer, Osbourn said. Deborah Brink, who runs Arts Adventures, which is part of the nonprofit Very Special Arts of New Mexico, said her program will continue in the fall, but its future beyond that is unclear. Most of the programs funding comes from private donations and grants, she said, but those are tough to count on. Autism symptoms vary widely but can involve social and communication difficulties, obsessive interests and repetitive behavior, according to the Mayo Clinic. A legislative subcommittee is expected to hear from families today. The Disabilities Concern Subcommittee has a daylong meeting scheduled at the UNM Science and Technology Center Rotunda, 801 University SE. Public comment is tentatively scheduled for 11:30 a.m. State Rep. Liz Thomson, D-Albuquerque, who has a son with autism, said state funding for autism programs has been cut in half over the past decade and New Mexico trails other states in services. To cut it even further is just unconscionable, she said. WASHINGTON Fake news or fib? Two phone calls described by President Donald Trump that didnt actually happen represent the latest chapter in a long-running series of disputes revolving around the presidents rocky relationship with facts. White House press secretary Sarah Sanders on Wednesday found herself explaining that compliments Trump had described receiving in phone calls from the Mexican president and the Boy Scouts did happen just not on the phone. I wouldnt say it was a lie. Thats a pretty bold accusation, she told reporters. The conversations took place, they just simply didnt take place over a phone call. He had them in person. The noncalls werent earth-shattering news. But they fit a pattern that also involves weightier issues and that has raised larger questions about Trumps credibility six months into his presidency. After Donald Trump Jr. put out a statement, later shown to be misleading, about his meeting with a Russian lawyer in 2016, the presidents outside lawyer was categorical that the president had no role in drafting the statement. But when The Washington Post later reported that the president had dictated the statement for his son, Sanders acknowledged that Trump had weighed in on his sons statement as any father would based on the limited information that he had. Polls, history and other research leave open the question of how impressions of Trumps truthfulness affect his job approval, which hovers around a third of Americans. Trump won the presidential election despite having promoted false claims such as the notion that President Barack Obama was born outside the U.S. (he was born in Hawaii) and that Hillary Clinton had started the rumor (she didnt). The campaign featured another instance when Trump said someone told him something that the person then denied. Candidate Trump last summer claimed the NFL had complained to him that the presidential debate schedule competed with football games. The NFL denied that. A Quinnipiac poll released Wednesday found that for all of the economic and other progress Trump claims, just 33 percent of Americans approve of the job hes doing, similar to the results of a survey conducted in June by the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. Only 34 percent of the Quinnipiac poll respondents say that Trump is honest. Weve been through so much of this, said Ethan Porter, an assistant professor of media and public affairs at George Washington University, who co-authored a study released last month into whether false information and corrections change peoples attitudes toward candidates. In Trumps case, he said, People probably learned to discount additional instances of falsehoods, adding: Its already baked in the cake where you sort of know what youre getting with Donald Trump at this point. Sanders was responding to questions about a statement from the Mexican government denying what Trump described as a recent phone call with Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto. Trump said earlier this week that Pena Nieto had called him to praise his immigration policies. Even the president of Mexico called me. They said their southern border, very few people are coming because they know theyre not going to get through our border, which is the ultimate compliment, Trump said Monday. Sanders said Trump had been referencing a conversation that they had had at the G-20 summit where they specifically talked about the issues that he referenced. Mexicos Foreign Relations Department said Pena Nieto remarked to Trump during a July 7 meeting at the G-20 summit in Germany that deportations of Mexicans from the United States had fallen 31 percent between January and June, as compared with 2016. Pena Nieto said 47 percent fewer Central American migrants had entered Mexico in that period. Meanwhile, the Boy Scouts denied Wednesday that the head of the youth organization called Trump to shower praise on his politically aggressive speech to its national jamboree in West Virginia. President Randall Stephenson and Chief Scout Executive Mike Surbaugh later apologized to members of the scouting community who were offended by Trumps political rhetoric. Trump told The Wall Street Journal in an interview last week, I got a call from the head of the Boy Scouts saying it was the greatest speech that was ever made to them, and they were very thankful. Politico published the transcript of the interview Tuesday. Sanders said the president was making reference to multiple members of the Boy Scout leadership who congratulated him, praised him and offered quite powerful compliments following his speech. ___ Follow Kellman at http://www.twitter.com/APLaurieKellman Copyright 2017 Albuquerque Journal An investigation by the Civilian Police Oversight Agency found that Albuquerque police did lie to the Journal about their response to a CYFD referral concerning 10-year-old Victoria Martens prior to her slaying even though the spokesman who provided the incorrect statement had been correctly briefed a month earlier. Police Chief Gorden Eden and other police officials were also in that briefing. In addition, the investigation found that the Albuquerque Police Department doesnt have a written policy governing its response to referrals of possible child abuse or neglect from the state Children, Youth and Families Department. The CPOA and the Police Oversight Board plan to address both issues when they meet next week. The CPOA is recommending that the Police Oversight Board ask the chief to suspend spokesman Fred Duran for 80 hours. It is also recommending that APD spokeswoman Celina Espinoza get a written reprimand. Duran has since transferred to another assignment within APD. Espinoza said that was his decision and was unrelated to the CPOA investigation. Full details of the investigation wont be made public until after the Police Oversight Board votes to approve a letter describing the CPOAs review, which it is expected to do Thursday. The CPOA reports to the board. But Paul Skotchdopole, the CPOAs investigator, discussed the case during a subcommittee meeting Tuesday, which was recorded by Charles Arasim, a local freelance journalist, and posted online. During the meeting, Skotchdopole called Durans comments to the Journal hogwash. After being given correct information in December, in January, he turns around and makes up all these convoluted stories, Skotchdopole said. Last August, Victoria Martens, 10, was raped, killed and dismembered in her familys West Side apartment. Her mother, the mothers boyfriend and the boyfriends cousin have been arrested in connection with the case. Five months before the killing, CYFD had sent a referral to the APD reporting that a man had tried to kiss Victoria. (Courtesy of Charles Arasim) In December 2016, a sergeant and a detective who work in the Crimes Against Children Unit met with Eden and Duran regarding the referral and told them the department did not investigate it. The meeting was held in the chiefs office, according to Skotchdopole. A month after the December meeting, Duran told the Journal in an interview that investigators did meet with Victoria and her mother but didnt take action because no crime had been committed. He also said that no reports were made to protect the privacy of the child and shield the identities of the detectives, who Duran said often work alongside FBI agents. Based on that interview, the Journal published a story in January that said investigators had interviewed Victoria and her mother five months before her death. Skotchdopole said that after the story was published, a Crimes Against Children Unit supervisor informed Espinoza, the other media representative, that it appeared that she and Duran had provided the Journal with bad information. The sergeant from CACU contacted Celina (Espinoza) and said, I dont know where the newspaper got its information, but we told you guys that we did not go out on this referral, and its wrong,' Skotchdopole said. According to Celina, she met with the chief and this would have been at the end of January, (and told him) that she provided false information to the media, not on purpose, but that she was misled. No one from APD notified the Journal that the story was incorrect. The investigation showed that absolutely officer D(uran) did lie about the involvement of APD, said Joanne Fine, chairwoman of the Police Oversight Board. Eden, reached by email, declined to say whether he knew Duran had lied or when he became aware of it. The chief wont receive a copy of the summary of the CPOAs investigation until it is approved by the board. I have not received any investigation from any source concerning your inquiry and request for comment, Eden said in an email. Mayor Richard Berry couldnt be reached for comment. Rhiannon Samuel, the mayors spokeswoman, said his office will make an informed comment after it receives and analyzes the CPOAs investigative report. About six weeks after the story with the false information was published, the Journal again approached APD for details about its follow-up to the CYFD referral. At that time, Duran and Espinoza acknowledged that they had provided the Journal with incorrect information, which they attributed to miscommunication. Theres just certain pills that are hard to swallow. And this was one of them, Skotchdopole said during the meeting. It was a dismissive attitude. It was, So what if we gave you the wrong information. The Journal did publish a story with the correct information March 16. Espinoza said Thursday that once she learned about the error in the Journal, she worked to find out how it happened. This took some time due to the complexity of this case. We are human. We take this issue very seriously, she said in an email. We all work very hard to get accurate information to the Journal, media and public at all times. The Civilian Police Oversight Agency launched an investigation into Durans untrue comments after Jim Larson, a former law enforcement officer who worked for Dallas police and the U.S. Secret Service, filed a complaint against both Duran and Espinoza. The complaint accused them of lying to the Journal and said, if unchecked, such a practice would damage the publics faith in its police department. Skotchdopole said that during the investigation he also discovered that APD doesnt have a written policy that governs how the department should handle CYFD referrals. You cant find anything in policy on when a CYFD referral comes to APD, what should APDs response be to it, Skotchdopole said during the recent Police Oversight Board subcommittee meeting. He said theres an unwritten policy that a civilian who works at APD will review all CYFD referrals and decide if they warrant more investigation. But supervisors dont review those decisions, he said. Fine said the board will formally request that APD create such a policy. Theres no checks and balances. What this reveals is a process that is broken, Fine said. Its an unwritten policy, which is worth the paper its written on. Timeline of CPOA investigation August 2016: Victoria Martens is slain in her familys West Side apartment. December 2016: A sergeant and commander of the Crimes Against Children Unit tell police command staff, including Chief Gorden Eden and department spokesman officer Fred Duran, that APD had received referrals from the state CYFD concerning Victoria Martens but didnt investigate. Jan. 26-27: Duran and Celina Espinoza, another police spokesperson, tell the Journal that APD received referrals about Victoria Martens, investigated them by interviewing Victoria and her mother, but didnt make any arrests. Duran said no crime had been committed. Later in January: APD Crimes Against Children Unit investigators tell Espinoza that a Journal story contained incorrect information when it reported that APD had followed up on the Victoria Martens referral. Espinoza tells Eden she inadvertently gave the Journal wrong information. March 3: Journal asks APD again about the CYFD referrals and the departments response to them. March 13: Duran and Espinoza admit they provided the Journal with incorrect information. They say the misinformation was due to a miscommunication. July: CPOA investigation finds that Duran had correct information about case but made up details in the Jan. 26 and 27 interviews with the Journal. Next week: Police Oversight Board will discuss the investigation in a public meeting. PHOENIX A well-known community organizer who used social media and technology in his behind-the-scenes efforts for immigrant rights was killed Tuesday when a 51-year-old woman ran a red light and crashed into his motorcycle. Police say the woman, who hasnt been identified, was cited for running a red light and driving without a license following the fatal crash. Celso Salinas-Mireles was brought to the country from Mexico as a young child and was protected from deportation through former President Barack Obamas Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. Police identified him as Celso Mireles-Martinez, but a close friend said he went by Salinas-Mireles, having adopted his wifes name when they got married. He was like the brain behind a lot our technology, our social media work and the immigrant rights movement, longtime friend Dulce Juarez said. Salinas-Mireles worked for a software developing company after teaching himself how to code, Juarez said. He used to skills to create petitions and social media campaigns on behalf of the immigrant rights movement, and recently created an app that would alert immigrants of immigration raids. The app hadnt launched yet. Salinas-Mireles was one of the founders of the Arizona DREAM Act Coalition, a group of youths who advocate for immigration reform. In 2010, he fasted for 11 days outside of Arizona Sen. John McCains Phoenix office to persuade the lawmaker to vote in favor of the DREAM Act, a law that would have created a path to citizenship for some immigrant youths brought to the U.S. as children. The bill failed, but Salinas-Mireles continued his advocacy work. He was often found singing and playing the guitar at rallies and protests. If his fellow activists were arrested, he waited outside the jails and played songs for them as they came out, Juarez said. I really think his impact was with music and technology. I think everybody remembers him for those two things, Juarez said. He was very actively involved behind the scenes and he taught people to go for their dreams. Juarez said Salinas-Mireles was also deeply spiritual, had a great sense of humor and was humble. Salinas-Mireles is survived by his wife, Ileana Salinas-Mireles, his parents, and several siblings. His family is working on funeral arrangements and is seeking donations to cover the costs through a Go-Fund Me page. WASHINGTON President Donald Trumps tweets declaring transgender people unwelcome in the armed forces have plunged the Pentagon into a legal and moral quagmire, sparking a flurry of meetings to devise a new policy that could lead to hundreds of service members being discharged. Months after officially allowing transgender troops to serve openly in the military, the department may be forced to throw out those who willingly came forward after being promised theyd be protected. A team of military lawyers has been pulled together to deal with the matter, Adm. Paul Zukunft, the Coast Guard commandant, said at the Center For Strategic and International Studies this week. These lawyers are working with the White House to flush out some of the issues, and theyre bolstered by a Pentagon working group that had initially been set up to advance the implementation of the Obama administrations year-old repeal of a transgender ban. Now, they must deal with whatever new post-tweet policy emerges, according to the officials, who werent authorized to speak publicly on the matter and requested anonymity. Pentagon chief spokeswoman Dana White confirmed that talks between the White House and the Pentagon to work out the details of a new transgender policy have begun. Although its unclear what the result will be, the discussions illustrate that Trumps aides arent writing off his three-tweet salvo last week as an isolated outburst but as guidance for an upheaval in one of the militarys most sensitive equal rights questions. Whatever the final policy, court challenges are likely. And the personnel, health care and fairness issues sure to ensue may compel some soldiers, sailors and others to hide their identities and live a lie to remain in the military. Its a scenario that raises the specter of the now-defunct dont ask, dont tell policy that once governed gays in the military. While the 1993 compromise banned gay men and women from serving, it essentially safeguarded their places in the ranks as long as they kept their homosexuality hidden. More than 13,000 were discharged after the policy was enacted. While many others remained, they were forced to keep their sexuality in the closet. Now, asks Sarah Warbelow, legal director for the Human Rights Campaign, Are they going to go on a witch hunt? The Pentagon working group had been studying health care questions and how and when transgender people might be allowed to enlist. Now its members and the militarys legal experts must contemplate forcing out transgender troops, including many who have served multiple combat tours. If Trump stands by his tweet and the Pentagon is told to beginning discharging transgender service members, officials must address several questions: Who would be thrown out? What type of discharge would they receive? How long of a grace period would they have before leaving? There also is no uniform method of tracking transgender troops across the services. That raises another challenge. Will the Pentagon target service members who have already asked to have their sex changed in the personnel system? Or would the crackdown expand to anyone who simply sought counseling on the issue? Warbelow questioned where the effort would end. People could be scrutinized for how they look or dress. For example, she suggested, could female troops be suspect for wearing clothing considered too masculine? Trumps tweets last week were direct. He said the government wont accept or allow transgender individuals to serve in any capacity in the military. Our military must be focused on decisive and overwhelming victory and cannot be burdened with the tremendous medical costs and disruption that transgender in the military would entail, he wrote. Estimates of the number of transgender troops in the service vary widely. A Rand Corp. study said roughly 2,500 transgender personnel may be serving in the active duty military, and 1,500 in the reserves. It estimated only 30 to 130 active duty troops out of a force of 1.3 million would seek transition-related health care each year. Costs could be $2.4 million to $8.4 million, it estimated. The study found 18 other countries allow transgender people to serve openly in the military. In no case was there any evidence of an effect on the operational effectiveness, operational readiness, or cohesion of the force, Rand said. After Trumps tweets, Zukunft the commandant said, the first thing we did is we reached out to all 13 members of the Coast Guard who have come out. But any reassurance Pentagon officials offered may prove hollow under a new polic. Since last year, transgender service members have been able to serve openly in the military, receive medical care and start formally changing their gender identifications in the Pentagons personnel system. About five weeks ago, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis gave military chiefs more time to determine if allowing transgender people to enlist would affect force readiness or effectiveness. Trumps pronouncement triggered bipartisan denunciations. Military and other officials described it as the latest example of Trumps administration struggling to translate the commander-in-chiefs Twitter proclamations into actual policy. Until the Pentagon gets a new policy directive in writing, Gen. Joseph Dunford, the Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman, and other military leaders have said nothing will change. Copyright 2017 Albuquerque Journal WASHINGTON Albuquerque Mayor Richard Berry on Thursday rejected U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions characterization of Albuquerque as a sanctuary city and said its the federal governments job to enforce immigration laws, not the responsibility of local police jurisdictions. Albuquerque, New Mexico, is not a city that in your words protects criminals from immigration enforcement, and therefore, we are not in your words, a sanctuary city, Berry wrote to Sessions in a letter Thursday. The mayors remarks came in response to the attorney generals threat Thursday morning to withhold federal law enforcement resources from the high-crime cities of Albuquerque, Baltimore and both Stockton and San Bernardino in California. In letters to those chiefs of police, the Department of Justice said if their cities want to take advantage of a new federal crime-fighting assistance program launched in June, they need to prove by Aug. 18 that they are complying with federal directives regarding the detainment of foreign nationals arrested for crimes. Albuquerque had applied for the program. Sessions on Thursday noted a high-profile case in Oregon that arose last week in which a person who had been deported 20 times and was wanted by immigration authorities allegedly sexually assaulted an elderly woman in Portland, a city that refuses to cooperate with immigration enforcement. By protecting criminals from immigration enforcement, cities and states with so-called sanctuary policies make all of us less safe, the attorney general said. Sessions letter to Albuquerque Police Chief Gorden Eden drew immediate rebukes from Rep. Michelle Lujan Grisham, an Albuquerque Democrat who called the directive political, and the New Mexico chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, which described Sessions approach as bullying. Sessions announcement came in the same week that President Donald Trumps administration has renewed its crackdown on unlawful immigration. In a Journal interview Thursday, Berry said that Albuquerque shed its status as a sanctuary city in 2010 a year after he took office and that Sessions scrutiny may be more appropriately directed at the Bernalillo County Detention Center, as the city of Albuquerque does not have a jail. This may be a misunderstanding on the federal level of who runs our jail, Berry said. The dispute stems in large part from the refusal of local police jurisdictions in Albuquerque and other cities to detain arrestees who are foreign nationals until ICE agents can deport them. Berry and other city officials around New Mexico and parts of the U.S. contend it is the federal governments responsibility to detain and deport those in the country illegally. But under the Albuquerque policy adopted nearly eight years ago, Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers are given a chance to check the immigration status of everyone arrested and detained by city police at the Albuquerque Prisoner Transport Center before they are transferred to the county jail, Berry said. The move ensures that all arrestees are treated equally and that no ethnic groups are singled out, he said. The city has provided a desk at the transport center for an ICE officer since 2010. Berry told the Journal that the desk was manned by ICE agents in the early years after the policy was adopted but is rarely staffed anymore. In his letter to Sessions, Berry said the Albuquerque Police Department does not have the resources to enforce federal immigration laws with our local law enforcement officers, and we have no plans to do so. ICE personnel must perform the screening of individuals arrested for criminal offenses, utilizing ICE information systems and databases to determine which arrestees have immigration holds and can then notify Bernalillo County, the government entity that operates the County Jail, of an ICE detainer, the mayor added. Sessions letter asks in part that police chiefs confirm that their cities have policies in place that require a detainee suspected of being in the country illegally to be held for at least 48 hours to allow ICE officials to take custody. Cities and counties across New Mexico, including Albuquerque and many across the country do not have such policies in place. Sessions and other law enforcement officials in the Trump administration contend that local police departments that dont cooperate with Immigration and Customs Enforcement requests to detain arrestees who are in the country illegally are fueling violent crime. By forcing police to go into more dangerous situations to re-arrest the same criminals, these policies endanger law enforcement officers more than anyone, Sessions said Thursday. The Department of Justice is committed to supporting our law enforcement at every level, and thats why were asking sanctuary jurisdictions to stop making their jobs harder. Sessions letter also noted that to qualify for the anti-crime program, a city must have sustained levels of violence that exceed the national average. Violent crime in Albuquerque rose by more than 25 percent from 2009 to 2015, according to an APD report. There were 206 more violent crimes in Albuquerque in 2016 than in 2015. Lujan Grisham, an Albuquerque Democrat who co-chairs the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, denounced Sessions announcement as a political directive and said it undermines the work of local police officers. This political directive from the Department of Justice threatens to make cities like Albuquerque less safe by forcing local police officers to do the work of federal immigration agents, said Lujan Grisham, who is running for governor of New Mexico in 2018. Albuquerques police force is chronically understaffed, and officers are already working overtime to combat violent crime in our community. Our local law enforcement is better-equipped to target street crime, she added. We should support those efforts with more resources, not threats to withhold federal funding. Kotak Life Insurance today unveiled its new digital campaign #LaterMayBeLate. The campaign is aimed at creating awareness among individuals in the age group of 30 to 40 years, who procrastinate their decision to secure the future of their loved ones. The premise of the campaign is based on an in-depth research, which highlights two key human behavioral traits invincibility & procrastination. Unfortunately we deal with vagaries of life not realizing that one of the most important security for familys future is left for last. People dont see the importance of Life Insurance until a moment of realisation dawns upon them when they experience a jolt in their lives. #LaterMayBeLate is an effort to educate people about such experiences without being preachy or critical. The campaign comprises of short, crisp and share worthy videos that will appeal to audiences across chosen platforms Digital & in cinemas. #LaterMayBeLate brings near-death experiences / emergencies to life by showcasing how these moments always make us pray and think hard. It then urges one to act on these thoughts by taking insurance, while still alive. Jasneet Bachal, Senior Vice President & Head Marketing, Kotak Life Insurance said, Through the #LaterMaybeLate campaign we want to create awareness among the viewers to avoid procrastination in securing the future of their loved ones. While the need for protecting your family is established, it seldom translates into purchasing a protection cover, given the inherent behavior to put things away for another day. In the main film, our effort has been to bring alive a near miss situation that nudges people to realize that life can be fragile. So why should it take an emergency to make us act? Sometimes Later could turn out to be Late. Instead, we should make protecting our loved ones an emergency. The campaign is targeted towards two defined groups of audiences the uninitiated with the main film and the fence sitter with a set of objection handling films. Amit Akali, Managing Partner and Creative Head and Divya Saxena, Director, Art and Creative Whats Your Problem, explain, India has the highest average age of people taking term insurance 36 years. So, its not marriage or parent-hood that pushes them. On digging deep we realized that vulnerability or the thought that something might happen to me is what makes them take insurance to protect their family. The moment of truth probably happens when they go through some sort of near-death experience or at least a slight jolt. How many times have we been in a turbulent plane and thought of our loved ones/family? This insight gave rise to the simple creative with the call to action to take insurance now and not postpone it, as #LaterMayBeLate. The videos can be viewed here: The Main film: Directed by Surya Balakrishnan, Little Lamb Films, the campaign thought tries to bring alive a near-death experience/ emergency to life, show how these moments always make us pray and think hard and then urge us to act on these thoughts by taking an action. Objection handling films: People have various objections while they shop and have various doubts and reasons for the delay. Directed by Jayant Yadav, Still Waters Films, the campaign thought tries to establish the brands solution to few of these key reasons of procrastination that a consumer goes through while selecting a brand. Link Lives Insured: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T-knBQ2IRbo Link Ease of Purchase: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RRgw4UuOs9w Link Cost of Insurance: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z85sZWBTiPs WYP Creative team: Amit Akali: Managing Partner & Creative Head Managing Partner & Creative Head Divya Saxena: Director, Creative and Art Director, Creative and Art Sameer Murudkar: Associate Creative Director Associate Creative Director Kriti Tiwari: Senior Copywriter Senior Copywriter Snehal Shewale: Visualizer Visualizer Shiva Yadav: Creative Supervisor Creative Supervisor Pawan Kotian: Senior Visualizer Senior Visualizer Anil Durgule: Visualizer Visualizer Shashikant Singh: Visualizer WYP Account Management: Following a multi-agency pitch, Matchbox Media, the media arm of ITW Playworx, has bagged the media duties of Richfeel, a leading trichology centre, hair and scalp clinic for more than 3 decades. The account will be serviced out of the agencys Mumbai office. The mandate includes media planning and buying across platforms with a focus on performance marketing. The agencys first task will be to design and implement an integrated communication plan to take the brand to the next level and increase awareness amongst target audience. Speaking on the association, Dr Apoorva Shah, Founder, Richfeel, said, We are pleased to associate with Matchbox Media as our media agency. They impressed us with their strategic approach which was in line with our marketing strategy. We look forward to our partnership which will help in further building our brand in India. Confirming the win, Sidharth Ghosh, CEO, ITW Playworx, Mumbai, said, We are privileged to work with a prestigious brand like Richfeel. With this win, we are looking forward to help the brand achieve their vision through our expertise. Dipesh Negi & Mohit Mishra, Founders, Matchbox Media, said, We are glad to have won this account and are looking forward to help the brand achieve their objectives through the right communication. The journey of Richfeel started with two visionaries Dr Apoorva Shah and Dr Sonal Shah, Indias first certified trichologists. In 1986, they ventured into the profession of hair and scalp care treatments with Indias first and only chain of hair and scalp clinics. Starting with a humble beginning of salon-based consulting, the focus on research, expertise and results led Richfeel to expand into a chain of hair and scalp clinics spread all over the country and successful treatments for over a million hair lines. With increasing opportunities in the wellness market, Richfeel has also ventured into spa therapy with its Detox Spa Service, which provides world class authentic therapeutic treatments administered by trained therapists. Worlds first Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR) Smartphone Available Online in the United States in Two Unlocked Configurations ASUS today announced the availability of the ZenFone AR - a next-generation smartphone that represents a significant advancement in mobile virtual and augmented reality technologies. The ZenFone AR is the world's first smartphone that supports both Tango AR and Daydream VR technologies developed by Google, giving users totally new ways to engage with and be entertained by their smartphones. In the United States, two unlocked versions of the ZenFone AR will be available; a 6GB RAM configuration with 64GB storage, and a second with 8GB RAM and 128GB storage. This Smart News Release features multimedia. View the full release here: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20170803005735/en/ 8 GB RAM Smartphone with the Qualcomm Snapdragon 821 Mobile Platform To create the best-in-class VR and AR smartphone, ASUS engineered the ZenFone AR with latest, top-of-the-line components. The ZenFone AR is equipped with 8GB of RAM and includes the Snapdragon 8211 Mobile Platform; specially optimized for AR operations and unparalleled multi-tasking. ASUS worked closely with Qualcomm Technologies engineers and Google to efficiently distribute computer vision workloads, as well as rapidly process movement and positioning instructions by Tango that is known as six degrees of freedom, or 6DoF (forward-backward / up-down / left-right / roll / pitch / yaw). The desktop-class Qualcomm Adreno 530 graphics processing unit (GPU) is designed to deliver supercharged graphics performance, allowing the ZenFone AR to handle the graphics demands of Tango and Daydream with ease. Complementing the rich AR & VR experiences offered by ZenFone AR is a new audio system that supports Hi-Res Audio and DTS virtual surround sound. External audio also gets a boost with the ZenFone ARs new ultra-loud 5-magnet speaker. The Zenfone AR represents a significant achievement for ASUS in North America, said Mike Finley, senior vice president, and president, Qualcomm North America and Australia. Powered by the Snapdragon 821 Mobile Platform, the ZenFone AR is the first announced device to bring both AR and VR capabilities to consumers. Engineered for the Latest Tango and AR Experiences ASUS ZenFone AR was developed in close cooperation with Google to deliver the best user experience on both Tango and Daydream platforms. Tango, an augmented reality (AR) platform that uses qualified devices to detect their users' positions relative to places and objects around them without using GPS or other external signals, allows application developers to create AR user experiences that include indoor navigation, 3D mapping, and environmental recognition, among other augmented reality applications. To date, there are already over 35 apps on Google Play2 that are Tango compatible. ASUS and Google are also partnering with well-known brands to bring the Tango AR experience to customers. Today, Wayfairs AR application, WayfairView has been updated and integrated into its popular mobile shopping app for the ASUS ZenFone AR. The Wayfair app makes it possible for consumers to see virtual furniture and decor in their homes at full scale before they buy. A featured app on the ASUS ZenFone AR, shoppers can easily find and download the Wayfair app from the Tango App, or from the Google Play Store. To see the Wayfair app in action on the ZenFone AR, visit: https://youtu.be/BrZUEL3LJtU. Ideal for AR and VR To qualify as a Tango-enabled smartphone, ZenFone AR features a set of sensors and computer vision software that gives it the ability to interpret images, videos, space and motion like humans. Tango adds three new abilities to ZenFone AR: motion tracking, depth perception and area learning. Through these capabilities, ZenFone AR can detect how far it is away from a floor, wall or an object and understand where it is moving in three-dimensional space. For VR, the large, high resolution and high contrast display of ZenFone AR makes it ideal for VR applications when used as a VR display mounted in the Daydream View headset. The Daydream hardware also comes with a controller that is used for VR games and apps. ZenFone ARs expansive 5.7-inch size immerses the viewer in whatever VR world is being presented, while the WQHD (1440 x 2560) resolution presents images with extreme clarity and the deep black hues enabled by the high contrast super AMOLED technology enhances the 3D effect of the screen. High-End Photographic Capabilities The ZenFone AR is also an accomplished camera smartphone, and contains the ASUS PixelMaster 3.0 camera system that includes the world's highest resolution Sony IMX318 sensor and TriTech Autofocus system. Other key camera features include: 4-axis OIS photo and 3 axis EIS video stabilization, Super Resolution, Low Light, and a variety of optimized presets modes, as well as manual creative controls to provide photographers advanced control of the ZenFone AR's camera to suit any need. Lastly, high resolution 4K video recording allows for ultra-detailed videos. AVAILABILITY & PRICING In the United States two unlocked configurations will be available at online retailers, starting today: 6GB RAM and 64GB storage for MSRP $599. 8GB RAM and 128GB storage for MSRP $699. To learn more about the ZenFone AR, including alternate configurations and where to buy information, visit: https://www.asus.com/us/Phone/ZenFone-AR-ZS571KL/. HIGH RESOLUTION IMAGES http://channel.asus.com/ExternalFile.aspx?path=0bcdbf17735b4188a2e2149fa4a012cb About ASUS ASUS is one of Fortune magazines Worlds Most Admired Companies, and is dedicated to creating products for today and tomorrows smart life. Our comprehensive portfolio includes Zenbo, ZenFone, ZenBook and a range of IT devices and components, along with AR, VR and IoT. ASUS employs more than 17,000 people worldwide and over 5,500 world-class R&D talents. Driven by innovation and committed to quality, the company won 4,385 awards and earned approximately US$13.3 billion of revenue in 2016. Qualcomm, Snapdragon and Adreno are trademarks of Qualcomm Incorporated, registered in the United States and other countries. Qualcomm Snapdragon and Qualcomm Adreno are products of Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. _________________________ 1 Qualcomm Snapdragon 821 for Tango information: https://www.qualcomm.com/products/snapdragon/devices/tango 2 Tango apps on Google play: http://get.google.com/tango/apps/ View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20170803005735/en/ ASUS Randall Grilli Director of Media Relations Randall_Grilli@asus.com or Nick Mijuskovic Technical Marketing Manager Nick_Mijuskovic@asus.com WASHINGTON, Aug. 2, 2017 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Statement of Matthew L. Myers, President, Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids Maine today became the fourth state to prohibit the sale of tobacco products to anyone under 21 as the Legislature voted to override Gov. Paul LePage's veto of the measure. In taking this bold step, Maine will prevent young people from starting to use tobacco, save lives and help make the next generation tobacco-free. We applaud Maine lawmakers for standing up to the tobacco industry and acting to protect the children and health of their state. The law covers all tobacco products, including e-cigarettes, and prohibits tobacco sales to anyone under 21 as lawmakers rejected proposals to exempt members of the military. Maine provides another significant boost for the growing, nationwide movement to increase the tobacco age to 21. Tobacco 21 laws have also been enacted by California, Hawaii, New Jersey and at least 255 cities and counties, including New York City, Chicago, Boston, Cleveland, St. Louis and both Kansas Cities. The Oregon Legislature approved a Tobacco 21 bill last month, and Gov. Kate Brown has indicated she will sign it into law. Massachusetts lawmakers should quickly approve similar legislation pending there. Increasing the tobacco age to 21 will reduce tobacco use among youth and young adults age groups when nearly all tobacco use begins and that are heavily targeted by the tobacco industry. We know that about 95 percent of adult smokers began smoking before they turned 21. Increasing the tobacco age will help counter the industry's efforts to target young people at a critical time when many move from experimenting with tobacco to regular smoking. In Maine alone, tobacco companies spend over $42 million a year to market their deadly and addictive products. This legislation will also help keep tobacco out of high schools, where younger teens often obtain tobacco products from older students. A 2015 report by the prestigious Institute of Medicine (now called the National Academy of Medicine) concluded that increasing the tobacco age to 21 will significantly reduce the number of adolescents and young adults who start smoking, with immediate and long-term benefits for the nation's health. Tobacco use is the No. 1 cause of preventable death in the United States, killing over 480,000 Americans and costing the nation about $170 billion in health care bills each year. In Maine, tobacco kills 2,400 people and costs over $800 million in health care expenses each year. Without additional action to reduce tobacco use, 27,000 kids alive today in Maine will die prematurely from smoking. Increasing the tobacco age to 21 is a critical step in reducing and eventually eliminating tobacco's terrible toll. View original content with multimedia:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/maine-becomes-fourth-state-to-raise-tobacco-age-to-21-300498813.html SOURCE Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids BANGKOK, Aug. 1, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- By sharing its Sufficiency Economy Philosophy as a model, Thailand is helping other developing nations achieve the Sustainable Development Goals, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, stated. Of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations, the final goal revitalize the global partnership for sustainable development may be the most compelling of all. Because the only way we can build a better world is by working together. So many of the challenges we face, from climate change to eradicating diseases, are borderless. Although we measure results on a nation-by-nation basis, unless nations can find ways to work together for the good of our planet and its peoples, our future will ultimately be unsustainable. As the 2016 chair of the Group of 77 the largest coalition of developing nations at the United Nations the Kingdom of Thailand made its primary mission to enhance cooperation between North and South and also to strengthen South-South Cooperation. This exchange of resources, technology and knowledge between developing countries, often referred to as the Global South, can be complementary to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals. As chair country, Thailand worked to transform this vision into action. Even before its chairmanship, Thailand had been sharing its own model of development among countries grappling with the challenges of a changing world. That model is known as the Sufficiency Economy Philosophy. Initiated by the late monarch King Bhumibol Adulyadej through decades of working to uplift the nation's poor people, the Sufficiency Economy Philosophy is an approach to development and to life that is based on moderation, reasonableness and prudent decision-making. It prescribes living in harmony with the environment and making wise use of resources in order to build resilience and wellbeing. Its principles can be applied to farmers, communities, businesses and nations. In the context of the philosophy, sufficiency does not mean living in isolation. It calls for communities to work together for the common good the essence of partnerships. Thailand understands the value of working together. Once a country in need of development assistance, Thailand is now a donor nation, providing fund and sharing its resources of knowledge, technical assistance, scholarships and capacity building with less developed nations. In 2015, the Kingdom provided $78 million in Official Development Assistance to other countries through the Thailand International Cooperation Agency, while foreign direct investment surpassed $58 billion, with much of it going to the developing world. While generous funding is important, even more value lies in Thailand's willingness to share its knowledge and experience with the Sufficiency Economy Philosophy. To date, representatives from 105 countries have participated in workshops, seminars and training courses hosted by Thailand on the philosophy and its applications. Thailand has been partnering with several countries to help them implement their own development projects based on Sufficiency Economy Philosophy principles and methods. Timor-Leste is employing decision-making processes based on the philosophy's framework for sustainable agriculture projects and to support the launch of small businesses. Cambodia has established a Sufficiency Economy village as a pilot for more communities. Indonesia is using sufficiency principles shared by Thai advisors for ecological farming projects that raise incomes and quality of life for villagers. And neighboring Myanmar is working with Thai partners to establish sustainable development centers and rural development projects on sufficiency principles. Far beyond Asia, the Sufficiency Economy Philosophy is being adopted for the benefits of local peoples. In the southern African nation of Lesotho, Thailand has supported the establishment of a center to introduce integrated farming and agro-forestry farming that is protecting that nation's environment while providing greater food security and livelihoods for participants. Several nations in South America have also been applying approaches based on the philosophy. "Development approaches like the Sufficiency Economy Philosophy of Thailand, that promotes development with values, which not only complement the [SDG] agenda, but our own national development framework, will certainly help us in implementing the SDGs,'' Guillame Long, Ecuador's Minister of Foreign Affairs, told the UN General Assembly last year. Achieving the Sustainable Development Goals by 2030 will require commitment and perseverance. For some countries in the Global South with limited resources and capacities, the tasks at hand may appear enormous. Despite its own limitations, Thailand achieved the Millennium Development Goals ahead of schedule, owing a significant degree of that success to the Sufficiency Economy Philosophy. Thailand is willing to partner with any country seeking knowledge, expertise and a proven path to sustainable development. Because there is only one way to build a better world and that way is together. CONTACT: Ministry of Foreign Affairs Tel. +662 203 5000 ext. 22050 Photo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/540501/Foreign_Affairs_Thailand.jpg View original content:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/thailand-promotes-partnerships-for-a-sustainable-world-300498931.html The deal signed between Egypt and France in mid-February 2015 worth 5.6 billion U.S. dollars included 24 Rafale jets, a FREMM frigate and MBDA missiles. The Dassault Rafale is a French made twin-engine delta-wing multi-role jet fighter aircraft designed and built by Dassault Aviation. Introduced in 2000, the Rafale is being produced both for land-based use with the French Air Force and for carrier-based operations with the French Navy. Introduced in 2001, the Rafale is being produced for both the French Air Force and for carrier-based operations in the French Navy. The Rafale has been marketed for export to several countries, and it has been selected for purchase by the Indian Air Force, the Egyptian Air Force, and the Qatar Air Force. The Rafale has been used in combat over Afghanistan, Libya, Mali, Iraq and Syria. Several upgrades to the weapons and avionics of the Rafale are planned to be introduced by 2018. Chrome 60 on Android comes with a new, faster search widget and the update is already starting to hit devices for those that use the browser as their main browser app on their mobile devices. This new update to Chrome on Android includes a handful of other changes that users may or may not notice. There are a couple though that are not as difficult to spot as some of them are front-facing and will be visibly apparent should you come across them. One of these changes relates to links in the search widget, specifically those which you may have recently copied to your phones clipboard. If you have happened to copy a link on your device recently, then the next time you tap on the search widget (provided you actually use it) youll see a new link you copied entry in the omnibox dropdown among the other searches that were part of your history recently. It appears that there will only be one link you copied entry visible in the dropdown at a time, so if you copy one and then later in the day copy another, the first one will be replaced. Also new in this version of the Chrome app is a new search widget as mentioned above. There are a couple of things different here but one of the more major changes to it is the speed at which it operates. It opens up a lot quicker than before, letting you complete your searches faster which will ultimately get you to the content youre looking for faster too. In addition there is a shortcut to search Chrome with your voice instead of typing if this your preferred way to complete a search. While it might not be immediately noticeable, one other change coming with Chrome 60 on Android is that websites are blocked from activating your devices vibration right away, and will only allow this to happen after youve tapped on the page. Not many web pages seem to utilize the vibration API so you may not come across this as often, but its nice to know that Google is taking this into consideration. Googles Play Store listing page doesnt list the changes to Chrome 60 yet, so the update is very likely still heading out to users. If you havent received an update for Chrome, head to the Play Store my apps page and check to see if its available. HMD Global has now released its Camera app to the Google Play Store. Which if nothing else should result in updates being pushed to the Camera app in a quicker fashion. Likewise, this does also now mean that the Camera app can be downloaded from the Google Play Store directly. Although this is unlikely to be something that is of use to anyone really. As the Camera app can only be pushed via Google Play to Nokia Android smartphones, and those phones should already have this app installed. As it is likely to be more commonly known as the Nokia Android Camera app. At present, it is unclear when the app went live on the Google Play Store although the last listed update was on July 20. So for owners of a Nokia Android phone, providing the Camera app version running is that July 20 version (currently listed as 6.0080.07), then in spite of the app now available through Google Play, there are no newer updates available as of yet. Although when they do become available, updating through the Google Play Store directly will make the process far more easier and quicker, compared to waiting for a larger and more substantial OTA update to be pushed out to devices. In terms of Nokias range of Android phones, in spite of being a new brand to Android, this is a brand that under the guidance of HMD Global is expanding very quickly indeed. The latest Nokia phone to become available was the Nokia 6 which only arrived last month and already there are plenty of expectations that a new Nokia phone (likely the Nokia 8) will be announced this month. With current expectations surrounding August 16 as the official unveil date. Speaking of the Nokia 8, this could prove to be an interesting addition to the Nokia Android line, as many expect this will be the most flagship Nokia phone to arrive to date. With some rumors suggesting the Nokia 8 will feature a 5.7-inch display, 4GB RAM and 64GB internal storage, as well as coming powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 SoC. In addition of course, to coming equipped with the HMD Global Camera app. The screen of the upcoming Huawei Mate 10 may be marketed as the EntireView Display, with the Chinese original equipment manufacturer (OEM) filing to trademark that particular term with the European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO) earlier this week. The company initially applied for the trademark on Tuesday and its application is now being examined by the European agency that will likely process it by early fall. Huawei didnt attach a graphic to its application and will likely do so at a later date. The practice of giving names to mobile display tech has initially been popularized by Apple and its Retina Display panels in 2011, though the trend started resurfacing in recent years as OEMs started adopting new product design philosophies. The Galaxy S8 series and the LG G6 released earlier this year with screens featuring tall aspect ratios, and both South Korean consumer electronics manufacturers opted to provide their panels with dedicated monikers, referring to them as the Infinity Display and Full Vision screen, respectively. As Huawei previously hinted that its looking to follow the latest design trends in the mobile industry, naming the display module of the Mate 10 would be in line with such a strategy. According to latest reports, the Mate 10 is set to be officially announced on October 16 and will be revealed by Huawei alongside the rumored Mate 10 Lite in Munich, Germany. The smartphone is expected to feature a 6.1-inch edge-to-edge display panel and be powered by the Kirin 970 system-on-chip (SoC), HiSilicons first 10nm chipset that the Huawei-owned semiconductor company has yet to detail in an official capacity. The screen of the device is expected to feature a resolution of 2,160 by 1,080 pixels, which amounts to an aspect ratio of 18:9, i.e. 2:1. The bezel-less phablet will cost 4,000 zloty in Poland, sources previously said, indicating that the handset will be priced at over $1,000 in certain markets. The Mate 10 Lite is said to be visually similar to its counterpart, though it will feature a 5.8-inch screen and supposedly be available at half its price, sources previously said, indicating that the device will have mid-range specs and be significantly less powerful than Huaweis next flagship. Tehran has called upon the nuclear pact implementation watchdog to address the violation of the historic 2015 nuclear deal by the US after Washington imposed fresh sanctions on Iran despite compliance with terms of the agreement, Speaker of the Iranian parliament said. The US Treasury and the Senate late last month pressed new economic sanctions against six Iranian firms for their support for the countrys ballistic missile program, as well as sanctions against Teheran for alleged human rights abuses. For Tehran, the new sanctions breach the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), with the United States, Russia, China and three European powers in 2015. Irans JCPOA supervisory body assessed the new US sanctions and decided that they contradict parts of the nuclear deal, Speaker of the Iranian parliament Ali Larijani was quoted as saying by the Tasnim news agency. Iran has complained to the (JCPOA) Commission for the breach of the deal by America, he added. US President Donald Trump has personally rejected the deal, which curbs Irans nuclear program in return for gradual lift of economic sanctions. Last month, US leader threatened Teheran with further sanctions though the State Department indicated that Teheran was in line with the terms of the deal. In the wake of the US new sanctions, Iranian leaders announced to take similar moves against the US. President Hassan Rouhani, according Iranian accounts, would soon announce the sanctions to relevant ministries. Microsoft has dropped its mobile ambitions in favor of pursuing artificial intelligence (AI) technologies, the companys latest filing with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) reveals. The section of the filing pertaining to the corporate strategic vision of the company states that Microsoft is currently seeking to develop and maintain products and services aimed at the productivity segment and meant to be powered by cloud and AI technologies. In its previous statement on the matter sent to the SEC, Microsoft described its general business ambitions as mobile-first and cloud-first. While the latter part of its corporate vision still stands, albeit with a major focus on AI, it seems that the Redmond, Washington-based tech giant has now dropped the idea of pursuing mobile solutions as one of its primary revenue streams. The latest turn of events isnt entirely surprising in light of the fact that Microsoft already gave up on its largest stake in the mobile industry Nokia which it sold to HMD Global Oy and Foxconns FIH Mobile in mid-2016 for $350 million. The purchase was officially approved in late 2016 and Microsoft proceeded to transfer a number of patents to the new Finnish licensee of the Nokia brand earlier this summer, though the company still holds a broad range of Nokias popular trademarks like PureView, ClearBlack, and PureMotion. Still, its latest SEC filing indicates that the firm isnt planning to utilize those trademarks in the immediate future and may end up selling them to HMD Global or a third party. Its currently unclear what Microsofts newly reworded corporate strategy means for the future of its existing mobile software solutions, many of which are currently available on Android. While the company is unlikely to drop support for the Android version of Office, Arrow Launcher, and the recently introduced experimental build of the Windows Dev Center for smartphones and tablets running Googles operating system, the firm may now be less likely to release new mobile apps that arent specifically aimed at enterprise users and developers. The tech giants recently professed focus on AI recently also manifested itself in the form of an AI and Research group that it established earlier this year, looking to make a larger foothold in this emerging segment. Qualcomms CEO, Steve Mollenkopf, recently sat down for an interview where he discussed the way that the company figures out how to invest its development resources and what avenues to pursue, which essentially boils down to enhancing and creating fundamental technologies that can take many forms in the future. Mollenkopf joined up with Qualcomm back in 1995 as an engineer on the ground floor, and has been able to observe the companys activities and philosophies firsthand as he made his way to the top. According to Mollenkopf, the company likes to bet big on formative technologies, and that strategy has served it extremely well thus far, leaving its work responsible for most of the modern technologies that define the current internet-driven era. Mollenkopf talked about the companys past, and how betting big on mobile computing and data transfer helped to enable the smartphone era, but the focus was definitely on the future. He noted that the companys current technologies all had massive applications in fields like AI, IoT, autonomous cars, and advanced networking. The Snapdragon 835 mobile chip, boasting onboard machine learning abilities and capable of data transfer speeds upwards of a gigabit, is a prime example of Qualcomms future-looking bets at work. Qualcomm also has a hand in formative 5G technologies, with the company researching new ways to achieve high-capacity, low-latency data transfer on an increasingly massive scale. Naturally, this would tie nicely into all of the other fields; low-power mobile devices lending users the power of supercomputers thanks to onboard machine learning and cloud computing capabilities is just one near-future outcome of Qualcomms work. Speaking on the past and how the company works, Mollenkopf noted that Qualcomms main avenue to profit is not predicting exactly where technology will go, but rather casting a wider net and looking at basic technological ideas and how they can be implemented for the widest possible glut of use cases. This ends up bringing Qualcomm a very wide audience of clients, buyers, and patent licensees. This approach has served the company well and will likely continue to do so well into the future, though it can sometimes backfire or cause trouble, as seen in the companys current quarrel with Apple. LG Display is investing close to 10 trillion won ($8.86 billion) to open three new large-scale OLED production plants for large panels, and early research is indicating that production expansion of the sort that LG Display is proposing will be large enough to actually expand the market for large OLED panels, especially TVs, as a whole. Approximately 2.8 trillion won is set to be invested into the creation of a 10.5G line at a plant in Paju, 1.8 trillion won is earmarked for an 8.5G line at a plant in Guangzhou, China, and finally, 5 trillion won is intended to fund the creation of a 6G line at Paju that will specialize in flexible OLED panels for products like digital signage and curved TVs. Estimates put LG Displays 8.5G OLED production capacity at around 60,000 units per month by the end of the year, and double that once production begins at the Guangzhou plant. The planned 10.5G line, meanwhile, will likely be producing around 30,000 panels per month once production begins in 2020. LG Displays total expenditure for the expansion of OLED manufacturing is estimated to be around 16.8 trillion won ($14.89 billion), between now and the second half of 2020. This large-scale investment will result in an extra 120,000 8.5G OLED panels per month and another 30,000 10.5G panels, when all is said and done, meaning an extra 150,000 panels per month will join the market, driving supply up and prices down, which will allow for cheaper consumer applications, and a wider variety of more innovative uses of the companys display technology, some industry watchers believe. If the figures that have been estimated thanks to this early research all end up holding true, OLED TV shipments should hit 1.7 million per year by the end of 2017, and four million units per year by 2020. This, of course, is just a guess on how LG Displays massive investments and increased production will affect the market. Other companies will react in kind, and some may do so in unexpected ways, such as ramping up production on a massive scale to compete with the Seoul-based panel manufacturer, or dropping out entirely in the face of overwhelming competition. Samsung Display will almost certainly be one of the most interesting competitors to watch between now and 2020, especially since the company apparently plans to build the worlds largest OLED factory over this period. Samsung Electronics shipped more than 20 million units of the Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8 Plus as of July, according to the latest market data collected and published by Strategy Analytics on Thursday. The South Korean original equipment manufacturer (OEM) managed to ship 19.8 million units of its latest Android flagships in the three-month period ending June 30, with that number being even more impressive in light of the fact that the Galaxy S8 lineup didnt hit the market until April 21. On Average, Samsung shipped 278,800 Galaxy S8 models on a daily basis since their release and has surpassed the 20 million mark in early July, Strategy Analytics said. The same market research firm recently published an in-depth report detailing how the massive commercial success of the Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8 Plus was so influential that it even increased the average selling price (ASP) of Samsung-made smartphones in a significant manner, noting how that trend may continue in the coming months as the release of the highly anticipated Galaxy Note 8 is drawing near. Some industry watchers were previously speculating that the Galaxy S8 series is selling worse than the Galaxy S7 and Galaxy S7 Edge did, substantiating that claim by pointing out how the Seoul-based consumer electronics manufacturer stopped reporting its sales figures for the two devices in May. Samsung promptly denied those allegations, with its latest consolidated financial report revealing that its mobile division as a whole is performing in an optimal manner and has mostly recovered from the Galaxy Note 7 debacle last fall. The upcoming Galaxy Note 8 is expected to be a massive commercial success that will help Samsung strengthen its already dominant global footprint in the industry. The tech giant is currently holding more than a fifth of the global smartphone market and should maintain its lead over Apple and Huawei in the coming years, according to recent estimates. The Galaxy Note 8 is scheduled to be officially unveiled on August 23 and should go out on sale by late September. The 6.3-inch phablet is likely to additionally improve Samsungs profit margins, with industry insiders recently revealing that the device will sell for over $1,100 in select European markets. The Chinese division of Samsung Electronics reorganized itself in an effort to revive its struggling performance thats primarily reflected by its diminishing sales, the consumer electronics manufacturer confirmed on Tuesday. The Seoul-based tech giant stated that no staff cuts were made as part of the reshuffle, adding that the change only affected seven of its sales points that were shut down and replaced by 22 new locations that are less comprehensive in terms of products theyre offering but may perform better by covering more ground in the Far Eastern country. The locations of the sales points that were shut down by Samsung range from Dongbei in the northeast to southern parts of China and all of the employees working at the old stores are now being relocated to new positions, the firm said. The Chinese branch of the South Korean original equipment manufacturer (OEM) has been struggling for several consecutive years now, with its market share currently hovering around the five percent mark only four years since it held one fifth of the largest smartphone market on the planet. In terms of shipments, that amounts to a drop from 62 million units in 2013 to 23 million in 2016. Local competitors like Huawei, OPPO, Vivo, and Xiaomi all grew their domestic operations directly at the expense of Samsung in recent times by offering products that are comparable to many Galaxy devices in terms of design and performance but are priced in an extremely aggressive manner. That business strategy paid off as Samsung was seemingly unwilling to reduce its profit margins by getting involved in a price war with local OEMs, and while the firm is now somewhat more willing to sacrifice its income percentage for sales, its still striving to compete in China by relying on the overall value of its brand. The companys latest attempt to revitalize its Chinese business came in May when the firm named a new chief of mobile marketing responsible for its local promotional endeavors, giving the role to its veteran executive Choi Kyung-sik. Samsung also designed a more powerful variant of the Galaxy S8 Plus for China and is expected to release a similar Emperor Edition of the Galaxy Note 8 in the country in the coming months. Kuwait confirmed it would host during the first quarter of next year a donor conference on the reconstruction of areas liberated from the Islamic State group (ISIS) in Iraq. The confirmation was made by the countrys deputy foreign minister Khaled Al-Jarallah Tuesday. He pointed out that no date has been set yet. Kuwait has always stood by Iraq via the international coalition (fighting Daesh) and bilaterally, Al-Jarallah said during an event at the Iraqi embassy to mark the liberation of areas from the terrorist groups grip. There is coordination and harmony between Kuwait and Iraq to overcome any problems that may occur, Al-Jarallah said. According to the Middle East Monitor, Kuwait is already working with the World Bank to prepare the event, which will take place next year. Iraqi Prime Minister last month declared the liberation of the countrys second largest city, Mosul, after the army, supported by the US-led international coalition, drove out ISIS militants from the city. Antiquity has long been a source of inspiration for artists, with striking images of prehistoric monuments appearing in a variety of media across the centuries. Lucia Marchini visits an exhibition that explores the popularity of British prehistory in the visual arts. The enduring appeal of prehistoric monuments makes them fitting subjects for artworks. From antiquarians to advertisers, many people have indulged their fascination with the remote past and responded to sites like Avebury and Stonehenge in innovative ways. Some, like John Constable and JMW Turner, have captured a picturesque landscape that they had visited; others have tried to record ruins to encourage their study. As the Salisbury Museums exhibition British Art: ancient landscapes shows, the diversity of works produced over nearly three centuries in a variety of media and for a variety of purposes reflects the richness of Britains prehistoric archaeology. Some of the earliest images in the exhibition were created to illustrate works on prehistoric sites. In the 18th century, William Stukeley, secretary of the Society of Antiquaries of London, remarked that without drawing and designing the study of Antiquities is lame and imperfect. Stukeley visited Avebury several times during the 1720s and surveyed the site. The image he presents in his 1743 engraving A scenographic view of the Druid temple of ABURY in north Wiltshire, as in its original, however, departs from the evidence he gathered. Influenced by his belief that Druids built Stonehenge and Avebury, Stukeley offers an aerial view of Avebury, with the landscape altered and the form of the monument manipulated so that it appears more serpentine than his investigations had suggested. What is left is a structure that fits the antiquarians description that the whole figure represented a snake transmitted through a circle; this is an hieroglyph or symbol of highest note and antiquity. Stukeleys views have had a long legacy. The same snake-and-circle temple is seen in the work of William Blake, who used it as a symbol of Druidism in general and as a backdrop in a relief etching of c.1804-1821 from his poem Jerusalem: The Emanation of the Giant Albion. In the late 18th century, Blake painted watercolours of ancient British scenes, but by the early 19th century he had become greatly interested in stone circles and Druids, particularly with reference to Albions fall from grace. It is thought that the poets ideas about Druidism were informed by the Welsh antiquarian William Owen Pughe, who c.1806 commissioned a vast and now lost painting, The Ancient Britons, depicting King Arthurs last battle against a background of what Blake described as Druid Temples, similar to Stone Henge. Other images inspired by prehistoric monuments feature in his work, such as a relief etching from Milton a Poem in 2 books (c.1804-1811), in which a figure on horseback appears next to a towering trilithon and a rocking stone. The connection between Druids and stone circles is explored in a number of other works. The title page of the antiquarian Francis Groses fourth volume of The Antiquities of England and Wales (1776), for instance, features a vignette engraving by Samuel Sparrow depicting a Druid gathering mistletoe by a stone circle. This image combines accounts from Classical sources of Druids worshipping in oak groves and cutting mistletoe with a golden sickle (Pliny the Elder, Natural History 16.249-251) with Stukeleys recent thinking on stone circles. For his Antiquities of England and Wales series, Grose published texts with the images in order to share the latest scholarship with a wider audience. Drawing the line Opening up prehistory to a new public through illustrated books is a trend that has continued, as can be seen in Eric Ravilious dummy of White Horse: English Hill Monuments nearly two centuries later. This Puffin Picture Book would have introduced the Uffington White Horse and other chalk-hill figures, which are no longer thought to be prehistoric in origin, like the Cerne Abbas Giant and the Long Man of Wilmington to a young readership, along with prehistoric earthworks and barrows, and Silbury Hill. The dummy was sent to Puffins editor in January 1941, but the project was abandoned when Ravilious, a war artist, was lost in action the following year. Stone circles have remained popular with artists and the public throughout the 20th century and up to the present day. Avebury in particular struck a chord with two 20th-century artists: Paul Nash and John Piper. Both became friends with archaeologist Stuart Piggott, who excavated there, and both returned to the site a number of times in their work. Although Nash visited the excavation of the West Kennet Avenue and sketched the work, his own comments and those of archaeologist Alexander Keiller give the impression that he was primarily interested in the form of the megaliths rather than their archaeology. He was critical of Keillers restoration work, feeling that it made Avebury as dead as a mammoth skeleton in the Natural History Museum, but said of his 1937 lithograph Landscape of the Megaliths that archaeologists have confessed that the picture is a true reconstruction because in it Avebury seems to revive. Nashs image shows the Avenue in alignment with Silbury Hill and Oldbury Castle. Referencing Stukeleys description of Avebury as a snake transmitted through a circle, he has included a serpent whose head rises in front of the sun. Nash gave an impression of this lithograph to Piggott, who presented the artist with a copy of his 1935 essay Stukeley, Avebury, and the Druids. Pipers interest in archaeology can be seen in works spanning decades of his career. As a teenager, he was a member of the archaeological societies of Wiltshire and Surrey, and Wiltshire featured particularly heavily in Pipers work, from his watercolour, ink, gouache and collage piece Archaeological Wiltshire (1936-1937) to his design for a stained-glass window in the Wiltshire Museum (1981), featuring Bronze Age burial goods, West Kennet Avenue, Devils Den cromlech, and Oldbury Castle. In the 1940s, Piggott proposed a book on British archaeology with the text written by himself and images produced by Piper. The project never came to fruition, but it shows Piggotts understanding that art can enhance and promote the study of archaeology. Something old, something new Also in the 1940s, the recently founded Institute of Contemporary Art staged their second exhibition: 40,000 Years of Modern Art: A Comparison of Primitive and Modern. The show ran from December 1948-January 1949 and featured Palaeolithic figures and photographs of the Lascaux cave paintings, alongside the Art of our Time, with Barbara Hepworth, Henry Moore, Marc Chagall, and Pablo Picasso among the many artists represented. Two of the artists Hepworth and Moore had a fruitful relationship with British monuments. Moore published prints of Stonehenge in 1976, a site that won him over on a moonlit visit as a student in 1921. Hepworth moved to Cornwall in 1939, and came into close contact with the prehistoric monuments of west Penwith, which she viewed as sculptures in the landscape and which influenced her sculptural series of menhirs. Now, just as then, prehistory has its place in contemporary art. Jeremy Dellers representations of prehistoric monuments focus on their status in modern culture. His untitled poster of 2013 playfully sets the silhouette of Stonehenge against a retro lurid pink and orange background, referring to how the site was adopted by 1970s counterculture and hosted the annual Stonehenge Free Festival between 1974 and 1984. Since the mid 20th century, Stonehenge has been used as a backdrop for a Clothes for New Druids feature in Vogue, for a Rolling Stones photoshoot, and, less glamorously, for Tom and Jerry on decorated BT phonecards. Although prehistoric sites have featured less frequently in fine arts over the last few decades, images like these ensure the monuments will be firmly cemented in the public consciousness for years to come. British Art: ancient landscapes runs at Salisbury Museum until 3 September 2017; see www.salisburymuseum.org.uk The beautifully illustrated accompanying catalogue by exhibition curator Sam Smiles is published by Paul Holberton at 25 (ISBN 978-1911300144). This review was published in CA 330. The Head of Palestinian Authority (PA) has told Gaza-ruled Hamas to stop dealing with rival Mohammed Dahlan, as Fatah-ruled West Bank seeks to thaw ties with the Islamist movement at a time the exiled Fatah strongman vies for the PA top seat. Mahmoud Abbas according to Palestinian and Israeli accounts met with a Hamas delegation in Ramallah, in the West Bank, to discuss rapprochement between his faction Fatah and the Islamist movement. Gaza has been under dramatic humanitarian conditions including insufficient electricity supply and lack of fuel after Abbas reportedly told Israel to cut electricity supply to the enclave. The UN, international and Israeli charities have warned that living conditions in the Strip have significantly deteriorated and near utter collapse. In face of the hardship, Hamas has turned to exiled Dahlan, a Fatah official who has fallen out with Abbas. During the meeting with Hamas officials including Mahmoud Al-Ramahi, Mohammad Totah, Ayman Daraghmeh, Samir Abu Eisha and Nasser Al-Shaer, Abbas also asked Hamas to hold elections in Gaza Strip. The PA also pledged gradual return of electricity in Gaza and release of foreign funds into banks existing in the Strip. Hamas reportedly met Dahlan in June, in Cairo, to seek his help in wooing Egyptian authorities to help improve life conditions in Gaza. Dahlan who is backed by Abu Dhabis Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed is said poised to take over from Abbas who is on the verge of retiring. 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. When youve been flying an individual homebuilt airplane as long as we have (22 years, to be exact), you encounter a lot of opportunities for improving on your product. Occasionally these improvements come because of malfunctioning equipment. Thats certainly happened to me. Yet every now and then, you just want a little change. Either way, the retrofit process is an opportunity to get to know your machine a little better and possibly uncover issues you didnt even know you had. And, if you picked the right mod, you just may make your days flying more rewarding. Our Little Bird, an early Kitfox IV with Sportster wings, was always just a wee bit different than the other Kitfoxes on the display line at any fly-in we attended. Its short wings, lacking droop tips (a hallmark of the line at the time), set it off. We could not afford a Rotax 912 powerplant back then, so it was originally engined with a Rotax 582. That was swapped out for an engine that was fairly ubiquitous in Australia way back in 2000, the Jabiru 2200. I think we swapped props a half-dozen times too (well, it feels like that) until we found one that turned up that engine just right. Somewhere around then, we pulled out the flaky analog engine instrumentation wed tinkered with for years. These round dials suffered in the Kitfox instrument panel because the instruments were so close together that their individual magnetic fields conflicted with each other, resulting in odd indications. They interfered with the compass, too. (These older Kitfoxes are known for their lack of panel real estate.) We upgraded to a GRT Avionics electronic engine instrumentation system (EIS), which was a pretty fancy box for a plain-vanilla Kitfox such as ours. It turned out to be a great investmentthat original solid-state box is still cranking away in the panel today, providing EGT/CHT information, oil temperature/pressure, electrical system information, and more. About the only function we dont have it hooked up for is fuel. Why? Well, in our plane, you only need to look up and you can see the fuel sloshing in the tanks. Calibrated lines made with a Sharpie indicate how much fuel is actually left in either wing-mounted tank. As you might have guessed by now, the airplanes interior is barebonesnot so pretty. But pretty simple and functional. Thats basically how my builder rolls. About five years ago, he changed out the original bungee landing gear for the new Grove spring aluminum legs when one of the kids wanted to learn to fly. Why bother? Well, we decided that the airplanes gear needed a little more durability. After 25 hours the kid was finally touching down straight and sweet, without lurching across the runway in imitation of Mr. Toads Wild Ride. Im pretty sure the bungee gear would not have dealt with those sideloads with the same resilience as the more modern spring aluminum. Rotec to the Rescue Most recently our upgrades have been less visible, but true to form, they are all the more functional. Last year we took advantage of Australia-based Rotec Aerosports alternator upgrade for our Jabiru engine. Rotec Aerosport came onto my radar when company founders Paul and Matthew Chernikeeff produced a beautiful little radial engine, the R2800, back in 2001. I saw it first on a classic gyroplane, but it was meant for the Kitfox (and eventually a rendition of that engine found its way onto onenot mine, sadly). Around 2010 the company began to produce upgrades and fixes for Jabiru engines, including liquid-cooled cylinder heads and real alternators, such as the one we ordered. The alternator we received was for the larger, six-cylinder Jabiru engine; but with careful research and creative application, my builder was able to adapt the alternator to the Jabiru 2200, and it works great, offering us plenty of power for the radios and lights in the aircraft. This past winter he added a new starter to the list of upgrades. And it helped kick over the peppy little engine most of the time. Except for cool days. On cool days it felt as if nothing would turn the engine fast enough to get a good start except the start-cart. It finally sent us back to the drawing board, where we discovered we were not alone. Other operators of the Jabiru felt that the standard Jabiru ignition was the problem. It works fine for most of its chores, except during start. There its magneto coil just could not keep up and generate enough spark to kick over the engine. It turns out that Rotec has a solution for that problem, as well. The company makes an electronic ignition it calls E-Ignition that turns the Jabiru engine over nearly instantaneously. You dont even need a fully charged battery or high cranking speeds to generate sufficient spark for an engine start, according to Rotec. It sounded so good that we thought, heck, should we just get two and toss the old magnetos? Turns out Rotec doesnt want its customers to do that. While it is possible to run dual E-Ignitions, the company recommends just one of its E-Ignition systems alongside one original magneto. The combination offers both the performance of electronic ignition and the redundancy of an old-fashioned magneto. That seemed like wise advice when we thought about it (and more economical, too). Our order went in, and we waited for the box to come from Australia. No, it did not come on a boat. Good thing, with the state of West Coast U.S. dock labor relations earlier this year! Whats In the Kit? A high-energy ignition coil, an ignition coil lead, a Hall effect sensor (a transducer that varies its output voltage in response to a magnetic field) and mounting plate, an ignition module, a wiring harness with ignition module plug, a heat sink compound, and the installation and wiring instructions. For weight and balance, the only additional component is the ignition coil, and the redundant magneto coil is removed from the installation; so weight change on the upgrade is negligible. Installation was booked at three hours, but give yourself longer. The job requires removal of one magneto; we chose the right-hand magneto; and then installation of the new Hall effect sensor that replaces it. When the Hall effect sensor is mounted, it is 1 to 4 mm from the magnets, where the magneto was considerably closer, at approximately 0.3 mm. Dont worry, though. The Hall effect sensor is extremely sensitiveit works. The removed magneto coil can be kept as a spare. We mounted the coil and wiring harness to the motor mount and modified the wiring per the instruction manual. For most installations the ignition modules are mounted directly to the firewall, as ours is. That said, a few installations are plagued with excessive heat from the engine that carries to the firewall. Not good for electronics. The ignition module must use a conductive source other than itself as a heat sink in that case. We fabricated a heat sink out of aluminum with at least a 10-inch2 (64 cm2) single-side surface area. Setting up airflow across the area isnt a bad idea, either. Your other alternative is to find some place other than the firewall to install the module. On a typical Jabiru there are two separate ignition switches used to ground the P leads of the two magneto coils. The magnetos are live when the contacts are open, and are off when closed when the P leads are grounded. One of those switches can serve as the electronic ignition switch by rotating it 180 degrees and changing the wires from switching ground to switching 12-volt positive potential. Of course, ours is different. We had a typical rotary switch, with positions for R, L, and Both. We tied the R position on the rotary switch into the L position; essentially this means the only position on the switch in which the magneto is ungrounded is Both. Then we added the 12-volt power switch to control the E-Ignition. A 15-amp fuse, at minimum, is recommended by the company. The Jabiru electronic ignition upgrade draws approximately 1.8 amps at cruise. How does it work? While the engine is cranking, you engage the ignition through the panel-mounted switch. You have to wait for the prop to turn one or two blades before you engage it to prevent kickback (this is because the product produces a very hot spark and has fixed timing at 25 degrees before top-dead-center [TDC]). Is this more complicated than the starting procedure we had before? Yeah, it is. And how do I feel about adding complexity to an otherwise simple airplane? Honestly my feelings are a little mixed, because I am the one who has spent far too much time on the ramp at out-stations trying to get the stinker to fire up (waiting until the thermometer climbed north of 70 F most of the time for success). Now the engine starts every time after two blades turning. So, is it better? Um, yes. Definitely. Enough said. Amy Laboda has taught students how to fly in California, Texas, New York and Florida. Shes towed gliders, flown ultralights, wrestled with aerobatics and even dabbled in skydiving. She holds an Airline Transport Pilot rating, multi-engine and single-engine flight instructor ratings, as well as glider and rotorcraft (gyroplane) ratings. Shes helped with the build up of her Kitfox IV and RV-10. This article originally appeared in the August 2015 issue of Kitplanes. Read More from Kitplanes, and learn how to receive your FREE copy of The Annual Homebuilt Buyers Guide. 3 August 2017 15:40 (UTC+04:00) By Rashid Shirinov In the classic movie "Network," there was a point when people began to shout, "I'm mad as hell and I'm not gonna take it anymore." This is what Armenian people feel about the countrys national debt, which has exploded in recent years. It is not surprising that the state debt of Armenia continues to grow, since there is no clear economic policy, and the ambitious desire of the leadership and local oligarchs is above the state and national interests. The well-known Ukrainian expert and economist, Alexander Okhrimenko, said this commenting on the growth of Armenias state debt and the downturn of the economy. The latest data reads that the state debt of Armenia has already exceeded $6.095 billion. Along with this, Armenia continues to lose money due to the capital outflow, and part of the funds is being exported to offshore zones. For instance, Armenia lost more than $356 million in the first six months of this year, which exceeds the figure of the same period last year by $42.6 million. The Armenian media note that a considerable part of these funds, about $144 million, were exported to Russia, and $64.4 million - to the U.S. In general, the capital outflow from Armenia made up to $7.9 billion over the last nine years. Okhrimenko noted that the state debt and illegal export of capital are not the only problems of Armenia. The country also suffers from raging emigration, high level of corruption, which led to a decline in the economic welfare of the population, as all these factors created serious social problems in Armenia, such as the decline of population. As of July 1, Armenias population has decreased by 15,200 people compared to the same period in 2016. The interesting fact is that 8,700 Armenians left the country since the beginning of 2017, but the natural growth of the population was only 2,500 people. Moreover, the birth rate in Armenia decreased. In January-June 2017, the number of births in the country decreased by 6.6 percent compared to the same period in past year, making 17,169 people. In contrast, the number of deaths increased by 2.1 percent, amounting to 14,709. Okhrimenko said it is natural that Armenia's population is rapidly declining and the economy is falling down, as the country is hopelessly wallowing in the economic chaos and people are fleeing abroad. I have repeatedly said that the Armenian economy can be revived only in the case of settlement of the Karabakh problem. Only after that the country will be able to get out of political isolation and to participate in regional economic projects, said the expert. Armenia broke out a lengthy war against Azerbaijan by laying territorial claims on the country. Since a war in the early 1990s, Armenian armed forces have occupied 20 percent of Azerbaijan's territory, including Nagorno-Karabakh and seven surrounding regions. Today, Armenia refuses to implement four UN Security Council resolutions on withdrawal of its armed forces from the occupied Azerbaijani lands. Baku has repeatedly expressed its consent to come to the negotiating table with Yerevan to resolve the conflict by peaceful means, but Armenia continues to play for time and avoids substantive negotiations in order to preserve the inadmissible status quo in Nagorno-Karabakh. The country's [Armenias] leadership does not want to understand the simple truth: obstinacy against finding a compromise over the settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict is the only obstacle to raising living standards in Armenia, stressed Okhrimenko. The Ukrainian expert added that the country, dominated by economic crisis, social inequality and indifference of the authorities to the problems of citizens, will completely collapse in a very short time, and the Armenian political leadership will be to blame for this. --- Rashid Shirinov is AzerNews staff journalist, follow him on Twitter: @RashidShirinov Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz 3 August 2017 12:42 (UTC+04:00) By Emil Valiyev Certified Energy Auditor/Environmental adviser A constant increase in demand for energy resources, environmental problems, man-made disasters arising during production and depletion of traditional energy resources have made a rapid expansion of use of renewable world energy sources necessary in the world as well as in Azerbaijan. According to the International Energy Agency (IRENA) by 2050, the global population will demand roughly 80% more energy than it does today. In order to create new generating capacities in the countrys general energy balance and provide a more efficient use of hydrocarbon resources with the widespread use of renewable energy sources, the need and necessity in developing the use of renewable energy sources set implementation of comprehensive measures as an important task. One of the most important measures in this direction is implementation of innovation policy in renewable energy sector. Science, technology and innovation have been recognized as one of the main drivers behind productivity increases and a key long-term lever for economic growth and prosperity. Nowadays, strengthening of measures in renewable energy sources and energy efficiency has an increasingly important role. These principles became important in the Republic of Azerbaijan too. Therefore, in order to reduce a non-effective use of renewable energy sources important measures are taken in the direction of creation modern quality infrastructure for energy efficiency that stimulates implementation of innovations and new technologies. Thanks to renewable energy sources having great potential regarding creation of new generating capacities in the Republic of Azerbaijan, as well as application of scientific and technological innovations of the modern era and widespread use of energy derived from these sources, taking into account formation of new management structures regulating the field, the State Agency on Alternative and Renewable Energy Sources of the Republic of Azerbaijan (SAARES) and Azalternativenerji Limited Liability Company under the Agency have been established by the degree of the President of the Republic of Azerbaijan dated February 1, 2013. As a consequence of the state policy support to renewable energy innovation, Azguntex Solar Panel plant was opened on 24 April 2012. The plant is equipped with modern equipment from European countries and the first line of plants production capacity of 25 MW/year. Azguntex LLC having a certificate of photovoltaic module qualification installed the second production line last year and as a result annual production capacity increased two times. Initially, 120 thousand solar panels will be annually produced in the plant; however, 240 thousand solar panels will be produced in the future. It is planned to create such fields as inverters, dual meters, photo elements, small wind turbines, batteries and other similar production areas in the nearest future. One of the projects contributing to the sustainable development of the economy where the latest technological achievements meet with innovative solutions is the Sumgait High-Tech Park Project. In general, it is planned to build 15 plants in the park area based on the technology of efficient use of alternative and renewable energy. Factories on optical lenses, glass and basalt fibres, battery production and other plants that will be established in the park area will create an opportunity to produce necessary equipment needed in obtaining, acquisition and usage of renewable energy in the country. Sumgait High-Tech Park It is planned to realize a unique wind farm project Wind Island-1 in Azerbaijan. This project will be implemented at the Pirallahi and Chilov islands in the Caspian Sea and design capacity of this farm is 200 MW. It has in mind that this project will connect these islands through Estacada. SAARES and Power China company has already signed the agreement for cooperation within framework of this project. Last year, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev signed a decree endorsing Strategic road maps for the national economy and main economic sectors. The expected results of the Strategic Road Map on development of the public utilities sets the targets to be installed generation capacity 350 MW wind energy , 50 MW solar energy, 20 MW bioenergy for 2020: This Strategic Road Map this approach - construction of the small-scale generation capacity at the consumers side, including the installation of the PV panels at the roofs of the buildings will be developed widely used after 2020. Though advances and achievements were gained in the field of renewable energy in Azerbaijan, there are still some obstacles and shortcomings for the development of this field. It is useful to identify the regulatory issues presented by the various renewable technologies. Government should adopt and apply different types of regulatory policies and incentives that might be utilized to promote renewable energy technologies. Recently, many countries have started to use targeted demand-side innovation policies such as investment subsidies, technology and performance standards, authorization procedures, green tariffs, supportive tax policy, public procurement, energy efficiency obligations and consumer policy to encourage demand for green technologies. Financing of renewable energy projects is still difficult in Azerbaijan. Developing new-innovation technologies requires large initial investments. High capital costs caused by risks and market barriers are one of the key factors that hinder the financial development. For that, government should adopt special policies and financial incentives to encourage and attract major public and private investors into the renewable energy sector. However, there is not much attention to enabling access to research infrastructures and moving towards the development of global research infrastructures in Azerbaijan. The European Union has agreed that, by 2020, 3% of Member States gross domestic product should be invested in research, development and innovation; as this is one of the five headline targets for the European Union 2020 Strategy. One of the main problems in implementation of innovation policy in our country is a lack of trained professionals on the specialties such as design of alternative energy structures, selection of equipment due to power, repair & design of energy equipment, application and repair of control-measurement devices, new alternative energy types in the faculty of energetic of higher education schools. The literature, which focuses on renewable energy technology innovation assents that specific renewable energy policies are necessary to overcome the accompanying market failures and obstacles. It is useful to identify the regulatory issues presented by the various renewable technologies. Policy makers should establish efficient governance and the regulatory environment for designating renewable energy technology project development areas, removing barriers, setting standards, setting targets, taxing negative externalities, subsidizing positive externalities, tradable permits and other voluntary approaches. Government must provide collaboration with international financial institutions to support financing and insurance of renewable energy technology systems, support for technology micro-finance models and removing barriers to novel finance pathways. If public and private finance institutions join forces to standardize contract templates and other project documents to allow for an aggregation of smaller projects and local financial institutions are engaged to leverage local networks and know how to build strong project pipelines investment levels that may now sound unrealistic can be reached. The authorities in this area should make efforts for increasing bilateral, regional and multilateral cooperation on science, technology and innovation, and solutions-oriented research, strengthening capacities in science, technology, innovation, research and promoting worldwide and cross-sector mobility access to publications from publicly funded research. ---- Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz 3 August 2017 16:46 (UTC+04:00) By Rashid Shirinov Azerbaijan Business Center will be opened in Astrakhan, Russia in September to boost the business ties between the two sides. As many as 208.56 million rubles ($3.45 million) of private investment will be put in the implementation of the project, the Astrakhan region government website reported on August 3. The Astrakhan authorities noted that Mechta Ltd. will implement the investment project, while 41 new jobs with an average salary of $340 will be additionally created. In late May, the project was granted the status of the particularly important, and this entitles it with support from the government. The Azerbaijan Business Center in Astrakhan will be the second one in Russia. The first such Business Center is being built in Moscow. The agreement on the construction of the business center in Astrakhan was signed in the framework of the 7th Azerbaijan-Russia Interregional Forum held in Baku in November last year. The Center will promote Azerbaijani products in the Russian market. The interested Russian companies will have opportunity of concluding long-term contracts with specific suppliers from Azerbaijan. Thus, the construction of the center will contribute to the effective development of trade and economic relations between business entities of both countries. Azerbaijan is one of the main economic partners of Russia among the CIS countries. The trade turnover between two countries amounted to almost $2 billion in 2016. Interregional cooperation plays an important role in the development of Russian-Azerbaijani trade and economic relations and the increase in trade turnover. At present, enterprises of 71 regions of the Russian Federation cooperate directly with Azerbaijan. Fifteen regions of Russia have relevant agreements with Azerbaijan on trade and economic, scientific, technical and cultural cooperation. --- Rashid Shirinov is AzerNews staff journalist, follow him on Twitter: @RashidShirinov Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz 3 August 2017 17:18 (UTC+04:00) By Sara Israfilbayova Azerbaijan will soon receive new electric locomotives from Kazakhstan. Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan have already increased the volume of mutual deliveries and the two countries plan to increase mutual trade turnover, Kazakh-TV channel reported on August 3. Azerbaijan already buys diesel locomotives of Kazakhstan production from the company Lokomotiv Kurastyr Zauyty. At present, 10 locomotives are already running along the railways of Azerbaijan. Head of the Azerbaijan Export and Investments Promotion Foundation (AZPROMO) Rufat Mammadov, in an interview with Kazakh-TV, said that Azerbaijan intends to supply to Kazakhstan not only agricultural products but also industrial goods. We are planning another export mission to the regions of Kazakhstan, because we want to supply not only agricultural products and food products to this country, but also industrial goods. At the same time, we invited Kazakh producers, distributors and companies to Azerbaijan, Mammadov said. An export mission consisting of more than 20 Azerbaijani entrepreneurs engaged in production of cosmetics, alcoholic and non-alcoholic drinks, fruit and vegetables, canned food, tea, as well as machine building, chemical and light industry presented their products in Almaty, Kazakhstan on April 23-26. The diplomatic relations between the two countries were established on August 30, 1992. Both Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan attach great importance to the development of bilateral trade and economic ties. There is a successfully operating Intergovernmental Commission, and business forums are held regularly. Today, 37 Kazakh companies involved in different sectors of economy are successfully doing their business in Azerbaijan. In a western region of Kazakhstan alone, a total of 46 companies with Azerbaijani capital are registered. For Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan the most important points of cooperation appear to be the contacts on energy issues, oil transportation, agriculture, and the use of the Caspian Sea as an important international traffic artery. Now Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan are working on promotion of a joint transport project - the Trans-Caspian International Transport Route (TITR), which involves cargo transportation from China via Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Georgia and further via Turkey and Ukraine to Europe. The trade turnover between Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan amounted to almost $74.5 million in January-June 2017, $60.7 million of which accounted for the import from Kazakhstan, according to Azerbaijans State Customs Committee. --- Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz 3 August 2017 13:00 (UTC+04:00) By Trend The Gabala International Music Festival will enhance the cooperation between Israel and Azerbaijan in the field of music, Israeli Ambassador to Azerbaijan Dan Stav, who is attending the festival in Azerbaijans Gabala city, told Trend on August 3. I have heard a lot about Gabala festivals. I know that this is the ninth anniversary of this festival. It is the first time I am attending the event and I am deeply impressed by the quality, diversity and the harmony between the various players coming from all parts of the world, said the ambassador. Stav pointed out that the combination of performances of young players and very experienced ones in the festival is a unique experience. I am very proud that we have representatives from Israel like Janna Gandelman and Dmitry Yablonsky. I am very privileged to be here and will definitely come next year, he added. The ambassador noted that he is deeply impressed by the quality of Azerbaijan Symphony Orchestra and maestro Rauf Abdullayev. I had the privilege to listen to this orchestra in Baku when we brought our pianist Dorel Golan, said Stav, adding that now, he is very keen to hear the rest of the concert and to see how they perform virtuoso pianist Sergei Rachmaninovs pieces. So here in Gabala, it this beautiful place, this is going to be really excellent experience, he said. The 9thGabala International Music Festival, organized by the Heydar Aliyev Foundation with the support of Azerbaijans Ministry of Culture and Tourism and Gilan Holding kicked off on July 29 in Azerbaijans Gabala city and will last till August 3. --- Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz 3 August 2017 16:06 (UTC+04:00) By Laman Ismayilova YARAT Contemporary Art Space has hosted a meeting with People's Artist of Azerbaijan Fakhraddin Manafov. The event dedicated to the National Cinema Day, covered actual problems of the film industry, as well as other topics in field of art, Azertac reported. The event participants had an exchange of views with the actor about romantic drama "Tahmina", where actor played the main role as well as other aspects of the movie. Manafov answered questions of interest to the audience. In conclusion, the film "Tahmina" was shown. Fakhraddin Manafov has always enjoyed the sympathy of the public. His talent allowed him to play a huge variety of characters and feel the same way as they do. Fakhraddin Manafov was born in Khankandi, Nagorno-Karabakh region, which is currently held under military occupation by Armenians. He made his first movie appearance in 1978. In 1980, Manafov graduated from the Azerbaijan State Culture and Art University and started working with Azerbaijanfilm. The actor performed in Russia, Ukraine, Lebanon, Turkey, Iran, Georgia. His famous works includes films Business Visit (1982), Seven Days after the Murder (1991), Tahmina (1993) and Ali and Nino (2015). For the role of Ibrahim Khalil Khan in the film A Sovereign's Destiny (2008) Fakhraddin Manafov was awarded Zirva State prize. --- Laman Ismayilova is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @Lam_Ismayilova Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz Qatar and Italy signed Wednesday a military deal for the purchase of seven war vessels worth $6 billion. I am pleased to announce the conclusion of a deal between the Qatari naval forces to buy seven naval units from Italy in the context of the joint military cooperation between the two countries, said Qatari Foreign Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani following the signing of the agreement in Doha. The deal is estimated at $5.9bn, the Qatari official said at a joint news conference with his Italian counterpart Angelino Alfano in Doha. The two men also discussed efforts to end the rift between Qatar and its Gulf neighbors, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, plus Egypt. The quartet severed ties with Qatar accusing it of funding terrorism. The deal underlines the close ties existing between the tiny Emirate and Italy whose state-owned shipbuilder Fincantieri last year indicated that it would supply Qatar with four corvette warships, two support vessels and an amphibious landing platform dock, along with support services in Qatar for 15 years after delivery. All the ships will be built in Italian shipyards, with construction starting in 2018, it said. Italian defense company Leonardo will supply electronics and weapons systems for the ships and receive around a third of the value of the deal, Fincantieri reportedly said. Qatars navy is inferior to navy capabilities of regional powers, mainly Saudi Arabia and Iran. The Wednesday deal will equip the tiny gulf country with latest warships that are however still insufficient to withstand Saudi Arabia, Iran and Bahrain. Currently, Qatars navy is made up of 20-year-old patrol vessels, London-based Middle East Eye reports. 3 August 2017 11:23 (UTC+04:00) By Trend To expose the Armenian lies about Nagorno-Karabakh, it is enough to hold a census in the occupied region of Azerbaijan, which will prove that only 30,000-40,000 people are living there. The figure three times less than before the occupation, said Elkhan Alasgarov, head of Expert Council of the Baku International Policy and Security Network (Baku Network). The question is why did Armenians demand independence and the right to self-determination if 150,000 Armenians were living there when the territory was under Azerbaijans control? And now, due to positive tendencies, their number has decreased to 30,000-40,000. Are these 30,000-40,000 Armenians going to build an independent state? This is a very important question, the expert said in an interview with CBC TV channel. 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. Alasgarov went on to say that Armenia itself hasnt yet decided on the future of the Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh. From time to time, ideas emerge in Yerevan about a possible annexation of Nagorno-Karabakh to Armenia, or about granting the status of self-determination, said Alasgarov. Yerevan understands perfectly well that 30,000-40,000 Armenians cant claim self-determination. Otherwise, Armenia will also have to give the right to self-determination to the Kurds living in its own territory, noted the expert. The whole path of Armenias President Serzh Sargsyan to the highest state position was accompanied by bloody battles, political murders, and confrontation for power, he said, noting that Sargsyan is a political face of todays Armenia, which has all the features of nationalists, terrorists and criminals. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, two countries of the South Caucasus, Azerbaijan and Georgia, fought for their independence, while the Armenian society adhered to another ideology to prove to the world that the Armenian people faced a genocide. Politicians and authorities of Armenia have tried to make the world recognize the genocide, as if its recognition by certain political circles of some countries would bring the Armenian people some advantage, said Alasgarov. Another important part of this ideology was Nagorno-Karabakh, said the expert, adding that the Armenian authorities have repeatedly held elections in the occupied Nagorno-Karabakh region of Azerbaijan, thereby trying to prove something to the whole world. These tendencies in the Armenian ideology have led Armenia into the current distressed situation, he said, adding that there are simply no political forces in Armenia that could change the situation. The current political elite of Armenia is a group that is built upon a specific clan principle, and all the important political, economic and military positions are occupied by people from the Karabakh clan, said Alasgarov. It is impossible to talk about any success of this clan, because Armenia is still in a difficult economic and social situation. Of course, the Armenian diaspora forces stand behind all the actions of this clan, he noted, adding that in order to preserve the power, the military-political leadership in Yerevan needs leverage to influence its people. --- Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz 3 August 2017 10:00 (UTC+04:00) By Sara Israfilbayova The internal balance of the human body largely depends on external conditions. The microclimate of the room, in which a person is for a long time, plays an essential role in the formation of immunity, efficiency and the ability to comfortably relax. The longer we stay in this or that place, the stronger it is able to interfere with the work of our body. That is why it is important to correctly determine which heating equipment is right for your premises and the conditions of its operation. Room temperature is the most important indicator of comfort. The humidity also directly depends on the temperature. Low temperatures provoke heat release by the human body, thereby reducing its protective functions. If the room is equipped with poor-quality heating equipment or heating equipment is not selected correctly, people will constantly suffer from hypothermia, frequent colds, infectious diseases, etc. A very high temperature in the room (more than 30 C) entails no less problems. Fighting heat takes salt out of the body. This situation is also fraught with a decrease in immunity, a violation of the water-salt balance, which regulates the operation of many systems in the body. In addition, the temperature in the room affects the performance of a person. Neither the heat nor the cold will allow you to work comfortably and rest. For an active person, rest is no less important than work. After all, during sleep, for example, our body actively restores the resources of the brain, muscles, etc. consumed in the process of work. A good sleep is a pledge of good health and high performance at work. Therefore, it is necessary to take care of the microclimate equally at work and at home. The researchers from the University of Leiden in the Netherlands say that if the employee in the office is too cool or hot, the performance of his work is significantly reduced. Researchers warn employers that the habit of certain temperature conditions should be taken into account when hiring qualified staff. Comfortable air temperature contributes to good mental performance and vice versa. The temperature regime has the greatest influence on the working memory, responsible for the storage and processing of information in the short term. In the experiment, 2 groups of volunteers took part: a warmer temperature lovers and lovers of coolness. All participants performed test tasks to determine the state of short-term memory. Testing took place at different temperatures: 25, 15 and 20 C. It turned out that working at a temperature comfortable for the subject contributes to a better effect of short-term memory. Conversely, when a fan of coolness was placed in heat, and "heat-loving" in the cold, the working memory of the participant in the experiment deteriorated considerably. --- Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz 3 August 2017 16:28 (UTC+04:00) President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev arrived in Zagatala region on a visit on August 3, Azertac reported. The head of state laid flowers at a statue of the national leader in the Heydar Aliyev Park in the city of Zagatala. Head of Zagatala District Executive Authority Mubariz Ahmadzade informed President Ilham Aliyev about the landscaping work carried out in the Heydar Aliyev Park. President Aliyev familiarized himself with the activity of a tobacco processing plant of Azertutun LLC in Zagatala. President of the National Confederation of Entrepreneurs (Employers) Organizations of the Republic of Azerbaijan Mammad Musayev and chairman of the Board of Directors of Azertutun LLC Fazil Rustamov informed the head of state about the plant. The President was told that the annual processing capacity of the plant in one shift is 3300-3600 tons. Azertutun LLC was founded in 2007. This plant of the company was commissioned in 2010. The plant is supplied with modern equipment from the USA, Italy and Bulgaria. In 2016, the plant processed and sold 1039 tons of "Virginia" sorts of dry tobacco. The plant is expected to process 2300 tons of tobacco in 2017. President Aliyev also familiarized himself with a rose oil plant of AzRose LLC, which is under construction, in Zagatala. The head of state was informed about the facility. The plant occupies a total area of 3 hectares. A 5,000 cubic meter artificial lake was created here for irrigation purposes. Agricultural equipment was purchased, and experienced agronomists from Turkey were invited. Three artesian wells were drilled, gas and power lines were built, modern lighting system was installed and green areas were laid out here. Rose oil production equipment was imported from Turkey. The plant will create 31 permanent and nearly 600 seasonal jobs. Azerbaijan will initially produce 125 liters of rose oil, which accounts for 4 percent of global production. The company`s products will be exported to the world market in 2018. President Aliyev met with representatives of local public and the plant`s staff. On behalf of representatives of local public, Ilhame Mehdiyeva and Khazangul Zeynalova thanked the head of state for care and attention. President Ilham Aliyev then viewed rose plantations. On the same day, President Aliyev attended the opening of 110/35/10 KV Bahmatli electrical substation in Zagatala district. Chairman of Azerishig Open Joint Stock Company Baba Rzayev informed the head of state of the technical indicators of the substation. Extensive landscaping work was carried out around the substation, green areas were created here. Bahmatli substation will ensure high quality supply of electricity to about 9,000 consumers of Bahramli, Suvagil, Dagli, Mosul, Yengiyan, Lahij, Kurdamir, Muganli, Gandakh, Kapanakchi, Chudulubina and Aliabad settlements. President Ilham Aliyev then launched the substation. --- Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz 3 August 2017 17:27 (UTC+04:00) By Laman Ismayilova For many centuries, humans have been fascinated by the stars. Ancient civilizations believed that the stars represented various mythological entities. Some stars are visible to the naked eye and very bright compared to other stellar objects. For this reason, most of them have a long history of being observed and studied by human beings. Shooting stars make a spectacular sight in the night sky. The legend has it that wishing upon a shooting star makes the wish come true. On the night 11 by 12 August it will be possible to observe Perseid meteor shower. So get ready to chase the shooting stars! Usually the peak period of their activity dates to August 9-13. Unlike 2016, this year Azerbaijans residents will see less "shooting stars", ANAS reported. At its peak on August 12-13, the Perseid shower will have a ZHR of 80-100 meteors-per- hour. However, bright light of moon will prevent from seeing part of meteorites. --- Laman Ismayilova is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @Lam_Ismayilova Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz 4 August 2017 09:25 (UTC+04:00) President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev arrived in Gakh on a visit on August 3. As part of his visit to Gakh, President Aliyev attended the opening of Alatamir-Marsan-Tasmali-Zayam-Lalali highway, Azertac reported. The head of state viewed photo stands reflecting the technical indicators of the highway. Chairman of Azeravtoyol OJSC Saleh Mammadov informed President Aliyev that together with entrance roads to Fistigli, Marsan and Judullu villages of the region, the total length of the highway is 23.5 km. Under the project, the two-line road was expanded and a new 10m-wide roadbed was constructed. During the reconstruction, new bridges were built along the road to Fistigli, Marsan and Judullu villages. The length of the bridges is 9.5 and 24 metres respectively. The width of both bridges is 11 metres. The Alatamir-Marsan-Tasmali-Zayam-Lalali highway, which was built under President Aliyev`s order dated 22 August, 2016, links 8 settlements with the population of 7,000 people. This highway is one of the 40 inter-village highway projects implemented this year based on the recommendations and instructions of President Ilham Aliyev. The head of state cut the ribbon symbolizing the inauguration of the road. President Aliyev also visited Lalapasha villager Allahverdi Shirinov`s hazelnut farm in Gakh district. The head of state was informed of the farm, which features 130 hazelnut trees in a 3.4 hectare area. The farm is expected to give a harvest of more than two tons of hazelnuts this year. According to estimations of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, Azerbaijan is the fourth largest producer of hazelnuts in the world. The country produces around 35,000 tons of hazelnuts, with 90 per cent of this exported to foreign markets. In 2016, Azerbaijan exported hazelnuts to 25 countries, generating a profit of $100 million. President Aliyev attended the opening of the Flag Museum in Gakh. President Ilham Aliyev cut the ribbon symbolizing the official opening of the Flag Museum. The construction of the museum started in 2016. The complex occupies a total area of 3 hectares. The national flag of the Republic of Azerbaijan flies on a 62 metres-high flagpole. The modern lighting system was installed and green areas were laid out here. The museum, which covers a total area of 730 square metres, is located in the territory of the Flag Square. The President also viewed a tobacco reception center as part of his visit to Gakh. The head of state was informed that the facility created 90 jobs. Tobacco is cured in 60 facilities here. Local farmers give preference to Virginia sort. Around 6,500-7,000 tons of tobacco will be stored in the district this year. On the same day, President Aliyev attended the opening of Gakh-Goraghan section of Gakh-Gorakhan-Zagatala highway. Saleh Mammadov informed the head of state of the successful major overhaul of Gakh-Goraghan section of Gakh-Goraghan-Zagatala highway, which was built as part of the State Program on Socio-Economic Development of the Districts in 2014-2018. The construction work has been fully completed on the 8.6km section of the highway, which is 29.8km in length. A single-span reinforced concrete bridge was constructed on the highway, while a 46m-long double-span reinforced concrete bridge was built over the Suzgenchchay River. The construction of reinforced concrete water transmission pipes was also completed. Later, President Aliyev attended the opening of 110/35/10 KV new electrical substation in Gakh . Chairman of Azerishig Open Joint Stock Company Baba Rzayev informed the head of state about the substation. The substation will ensure supply of electricity to about 9,000 consumers in the district. President Ilham Aliyev launched the substation. The President also attended the inauguration of a 180-seat orphanage-kindergarten in Gakh, whose construction was initiated by the Heydar Aliyev Foundation. The head of state cut the ribbon symbolizing the official opening of the orphanage-kindergarten, and then toured it. The construction of the facility started in July, 2014, and ended in July, 2017. The three-storey building covers an area of 2124 square metres. All conditions were created here for children. All classrooms are supplied with the necessary equipment. The orphanage-kindergarten has a gym, a canteen and playgrounds. --- Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz 3 August 2017 10:36 (UTC+04:00) By Trend Azerbaijani gas will be taken into account at first for Georgias future imports, said Ilia Eloshvili, Georgias Energy Minister. "To look at figures, in Georgia the gas demand accounted for 2.2 billion cubic meters in 2016 where SOCARs [Azerbaijani state oil company] share amounted to 59 percent, Shah Deniz gas 35 percent and Russian gas from transit service 5 percent, local extraction was rather insignificant making 0.3 percent in the total gas supply," the minister said in an exclusive interview with Trend. Eloshvili pointed out that this picture is likely to be maintained in 2017-2018. "By 2026, we suppose that the economic trend in Georgia and expiration of the supplemental gas contract will motivate us to seek additional gas volumes," he said. "Of course, we appreciate our partnership and Azerbaijani gas will be taken into account at first but this will also depend on other market circumstances if any." In March 2016, Georgia and SOCAR signed an agreement on supplying additional volumes of Azerbaijani gas to the country. The agreement envisages delivery of 500 million cubic meters of gas per year from Azerbaijans Shah Deniz gas and condensate field. The contract for development of the Shah Deniz offshore field was signed on June 4, 1996. The field's reserve is estimated at 1.2 trillion cubic meters of gas. The shareholders are: BP, operator (28.8 percent), AzSD (10 percent), SGC Upstream (6.7 percent), Petronas (15.5 percent), Lukoil (10 percent), NICO (10 percent) and TPOC (19 percent). As part of the implementation of the Shah Deniz 2 project, the annual gas production volume will increase from 9 billion cubic meters to additional 16 billion cubic meters. The cost of the second stage of the fields development is estimated at $25 billion. It is planned to get the first volumes of gas within the project in 2018 and it will be the main source for the Southern Gas Corridor project, which envisages transportation of gas to Turkey and European markets. --- Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz 3 August 2017 10:24 (UTC+04:00) By Trend Berlin is an important ally of Ankara, and therefore, Turkey doesnt want to plague relations with Germany, said Turkish Minister of European Union Affairs Omer Celik in an interview with the TRT Haber news channel. He said that, regrettably, there is a tension in the relations between Germany and Turkey at the present time. Celik noted that, unfortunately, Germany still doesnt ensure the extradition of several members of the PKK [Kurdish Workers Party] terrorist organization to Turkey. Germanys demand to freeze talks with Turkey on modernization of the customs union, which is not beneficial for any side, said the minister. Politics shouldnt become a weapon for the economy, he added. It should be noted that earlier, the German government demanded from the European Union to exert financial pressure on Ankara. Moreover, the government of Germany thinks that the EU should freeze negotiations with Turkey on the modernization of the customs union. Earlier, German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel said that the country will review its economic policy towards Ankara, as well as its credit and investment programs, due to the arrest of human rights activists in Turkey. The Turkish Foreign Ministry, for its part, characterized Gabriels statements about the revision of relations with Turkey as unacceptable, noting that they augment the current crisis between the two countries. --- Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz 3 August 2017 10:39 (UTC+04:00) By Trend Turkey is simultaneously fighting against three terrorist organizations, the countrys media quoted Prime Minister Binali Yildirim as saying at a meeting of the Turkish Supreme Military Council Aug. 2. Yildirim noted that one of these terrorist organizations is the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), and the other two are the Fethullah Gulens movement (FETO) and the Islamic State terrorist group (aka IS, ISIS, ISIL or Daesh). According to him, the fight with the listed terrorist organizations has strengthened significantly. There are external and internal threats to Turkeys security, noted the prime minister. It should be noted that the command structure of the Turkish Armed Forces has been changed at a meeting of the Supreme Military Council, held Aug. 2. Under the Councils decision, Incumbent Gendarmerie Commander Gen. Yashar Guler has been appointed as commander-in-chief of the Turkish Land Forces, Vice Admiral Adnan Ozbal as commander-in-chief of the Turkish Navy, and General Hasan Kucukakyuz has been appointed as the new air force commander. --- Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz 3 August 2017 11:00 (UTC+04:00) By Trend Turkeys President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has approved the new command structure of the Armed Forces of the country, the Turkish Resmi Gazete (Official newspaper) reported Aug. 3. Newly appointed Commander-in-Chief of the Turkish Land Forces Yashar Guler, Commander-in-Chief of the Turkish Navy Adnan Ozbal and Air Force Commander Hasan Kucukakyuz will take office on Aug. 30. Turkeys Supreme Military Council approved the new command structure of the countrys Armed Forces on Aug. 2. The Councils meeting was chaired by Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim. It was previously reported that as a result of purges in Turkeys Armed Forces after the July 15 military coup attempt, the number of generals and admirals decreased by 40 percent. There were 236 generals and admirals in the Turkish Armed Forces before the coup attempt, and currently, their numbers total at 96. Reportedly, after the military coup attempt, about 13,000 servicemen, most of whom were ranked reserve officers, were called back for duty into the Turkish Armed Forces. It should be noted that on July 15, 2016, Turkish authorities stated that a military coup attempt took place in the country, as a group of servicemen declared the transition of power. Taking into consideration that rebelling servicemen started to surrender on July 16, Turkish authorities stated that the coup attempt had failed. Nonetheless, more than 255 Turkish citizens were killed during the attempted coup. --- Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz 3 August 2017 16:43 (UTC+04:00) By Ali Mustafayev Seoul expressed willingness to enhance cooperation with Ashgabat in gas and oil industry. The partnership of the two countries has a sufficient influence on Central and East Asia since the scale of their interaction in construction and commodity industries has multiplied significantly. The friendly cooperation between the Republic of Korea (South Korea) and Turkmenistan will continue to expand, reassuringly said South Korean President Moon Jae-in in his letter to the Turkmen President Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov sent on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between the two countries. Moon Jae-in noted that during his presidency, he will make every effort to develop a mutually beneficial partnership between South Korea and Turkmenistan. I wish you robust health and happiness, as well as further progress and prosperity for Turkmenistan, added the South Korean President. Korea is keen to deepen partnership with Turkmenistan in such areas as the development of gas fields, creation of petrochemical and gas infrastructures and modernization of the industry. Currently, the building process of gas chemical complex with total cost of $3.4 billion is leaded by the Korean LG and Hyundai companies and the Japanese company TOYO. The complex, which will produce polyethylene and polypropylene is expected to be put into operation in September, 2018, according to Trend. The enterprise is expected to produce 5 billion of cubic meters of processed gas, 386,000 tonnes of polyethylene and 81,000 tonnes of polypropylene per year. Previously, Korean companies LG and Hyundai completed the development of the largest gas deposit Galkynysh in Turkmenistan. Moreover the consortium also works on the project of the oil refinery factory in Turkmenbashi. Besides oil and gas industries, Seoul and Ashgabat pay attention to the cooperation in transport sector in the context of development of transit and logistics infrastructure under East-West and North-South lines with the European and Middle East markets access. The transit corridors with access to the Caspian Sea, Black Sea basin and Baltic States will allow to reach an optimal way to the European and Middle east markets. -- Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz President-elect Hassan Rouhani has received official confirmation as the countrys political leader after Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei handed him his appointment letter in confirmation of the election results. Rouhani who is embarking on his second term is expected to be sworn-in on Saturday at the parliament. He would present his cabinet before the end of the month. In acceptance of his appointment, Rouhani said the election result was the voice of the people and it must be respected. Acknowledging that difficult times lie ahead in pursuing the countrys foreign policy, the Iranian president urged for the rationality and objectivity of the states actions with regards to the outside world while recalling that the nuclear deal is a sign of Irans goodwill on the international stage. Rouhani is hoping that Iran will have increased access to international markets as he stressed that we will never accept isolation. His first term in office has been dominated by policies geared towards ending diplomatic tussles between Tehran and other countries over its controversial nuclear program with the sealing of the Nuclear Framework agreement in 2015. The deal reduced the friction between Iran and the West but the election of Donald Trump as president of the United States has reignited the debate over the nuclear program and Tehrans regional policy. Trump has expressed skepticism about the nuclear agreement, which significantly reduced the scope of Irans nuclear program in exchange for lifting sanctions, and has sought other ways to keep the pressure on Tehran. Washington imposed, late last month, fresh sanctions on Iran despite compliance with terms of the agreement, Speaker of the Iranian parliament had said, announcing that Tehran called upon the nuclear pact implementation watchdog to address the violation of the historic 2015 nuclear deal by the US. For Tehran, the new sanctions breach the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), with the United States, Russia, China and three European powers in 2015. Conscious of the task ahead, President Rouhani said the time for unity and cooperation has begun because the election has ended. He called on all those who seek the greatness of the country to support him on his second term. First up, Joe Biden is thinking about dropping tariffs against China. But theres a spy in prison this morning that helps us understand why he shouldnt. Ill explain. Your second brief, If youre looking for a good paying job, you might consider being a CEO for a health insurance company. One executive made $142M dollars last year. Let's talk about that. And as always, Im keeping an eye out for developing stories. Put this one on your radar. Mexican cartels are grooming American kids online and paying them cash to traffic illegals or run drugs across the border. Ill share details. If you enjoyed this episode of the President's Daily Brief, remember to subscribe and listen daily at podfollow.com/pdb. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Higher Sun Exposure May Up Risk Of Eye Freckles Wellness ians-Lekhaka A higher lifetime exposure to sunlight may increase the risk of developing eye freckles or dark spots on the coloured part of the eye (iris), researchers warned. The findings showed that eye freckles could indicate the presence or risk of sunlight-triggered eye diseases like cataract or macular degeneration. Further, the development of eye freckles also correlated with increasing age, lifetime number of sunburns and a history of severe sunburns resulting in blisters, the researchers reported. "While we do not know the exact role of sunlight in several eye diseases, we now have a biomarker (iris freckles) indicating high amounts of chronic sunlight exposure," said Christoph Schwab, ophthalmologist at the Medical University of Graz in Austria. In addition, people with dark coloured eyes were found less likely to have eye freckles, as well as those who maintained better sun protection habits like using sunscreen or covering up. For the study, published in the journal Investigative Ophthalmology & Visual Science, over 600 swimmers at public pools in Styria, Austria, had their eyes examined for freckles and filled out a questionnaire that asked about their lifetime sun exposure and sun-protection habits. Researchers also found that freckles were most commonly found in the lower outer quadrant (away from the nose) of each eye. This may be because the eyebrow and nose shield the upper and inner quadrants of the eye from the sun, lowering exposure and the risk of developing freckles, Schwab explained. With Inputs From IANS GET THE BEST BOLDSKY STORIES! Allow Notifications Story first published: Wednesday, August 2, 2017, 18:21 [IST] Real-life Stories: Kinjal Singh Who Became An IAS Officer To Punish Her Dad's Killer! Life oi-Syeda Farah This is the story of Kinjal Singh, and her real-life story is not less than a Bollywood movie, where her dad was killed while she was little and her mum was pregnant with her little sister. Read the struggle that she has gone through in her life... Kinjal SINGH - A fiery IAS officer of the nation who literally does not care of any political lobbies Her name is enough to send chills down the spine of even the most dishonorable ones. This is not a plot adapted from a Bollywood story but a real-life story that inspires the masses. In the year 1982, Kinjal's father, the Deputy Superintendent of Police KP Singh, was shot dead by his own colleague in Gonda (Uttar Pradesh). Kinjal was only six months old at that time when her father was killed and her sister was still in her mother's womb. DSP's last words were, "Please don't kill me. I have two little children". Kinjal and her younger sister Pranjal sacrificed everything during their childhood days to continue their studies. Kinjal got admission in the prestigious Lady Shri Ram College in Delhi. During the 1st semester of graduation, Kinjal came to know that her mother was suffering from cancer and will soon die. One day, Kinjal promised her mom that one day both the sisters will crack the UPSC examination. The confidence in her tone gave Vibha Devi the much-needed mental peace and she died a few days later. Kinjal had to return back to Delhi after two days of her mother's demise for her examination. Kinjal coped with all the difficulties and won the gold medal for becoming the topper in Delhi University. After finishing her graduation, Kinjal called her younger sister Pranjal to Delhi and rented an apartment in Mukherjee Nagar. There, the two sisters started their preparation to crack the aforementioned examination. While other girls used to visit their friends and family at regular intervals, the sisters always remained focused on their studies and did not go to their hometown even during the festive season. The sisters became each other's strength and inspired each other continuously. The results were announced and both the sisters cleared the examination in the same year. Kinjal Singh (IAS) and Pranjal Singh (IRS). Their determination shook the judiciary of India. The Uttar Pradesh court gave death sentence to the three policemen charged with the murder of the DSP - KP Singh. After 31 years of struggle, on June 5th, 2013, the CBI special court in Lucknow gave the due punishment to all the 18 policemen responsible for the killing of DSP KP Singh. Kinjal has proved that daughters are no way less than sons, in every sense of the word. Kinjal Singh's success is an inspiration to every Indian. GET THE BEST BOLDSKY STORIES! Allow Notifications Story first published: Thursday, August 3, 2017, 14:51 [IST] Chicken will be the best-positioned protein due to its low price position in times of pressure on consumer spending power but rises in production costs and the long-term impact of COVID-19 threaten to disrupt the sector, according to Rabobank. Already have an account? Log in here The Shoppers Drug Mart on 18th Street will be moving across the road to become another addition to Shoppers Mall. We need your support! Local journalism needs your support! As we navigate through unprecedented times, our journalists are working harder than ever to bring you the latest local updates to keep you safe and informed. Now, more than ever, we need your support. Starting at $4.99/month you can access your Brandon Sun online and full access to all content as it appears on our website. or call circulation directly at (204) 727-0527. Your pledge helps to ensure we provide the news that matters most to your community! Rwandan expatriates have started casting ballots in presidential elections as polling stations in Kenya, Uganda, Djibouti and South Africa, opened on Thursday. More than 44,000 registered Diaspora are set to cast their vote. According to local media portal, the New Times, Rwandans back home will cast their votes in presidential polls on Friday, August 4. The elections are the third post the 1994 genocide. Campaigning over the past weeks was held in different parts of the East-African nation. Three candidates were passed by the National Electoral Commission to vie for the seat currently occupied by President Paul Kagame. Incumbent Paul Kagame, who leads the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), is up against two other contenders: Frank Habineza of the main opposition Democratic Orange party and independent candidate, Phillippe Mpayimana. The 59-year-old Kagame has been in charge since 2000 after taking over from the then President Pasteur Bizimungu, who resigned paving the way for vice-president Kagame to take charge of the country ravaged by the 1994 genocide. The winner of the polls will get a seven-year term to steer the affairs of the country seen as one of Africas rising economic powerhouses. Kagame has warned Western diplomats against meddling in the countrys elections, urging them to let the National Electoral Commission (NEC) do its job. 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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 Institute of Banking Personnel Selection (IBPS) has invited applications for the Regional Rural Banks (RRB) Exam for the recruitment process. The interested candidates can visit the official website to apply - http://www.ibps.in/ The IBPS will be conducting the RRB examination online to fill in more than 10,000 vacancies. The Regional Rural Banks are organizations that work at regional or local hierarchy, and are directed by the Government of India in various states. Important Dates for IBPS RRB Recruitment 2017 The online registration of application began by July 24, 2017 The last date for application is august 14, 2017. The last date for editing the application details is August 8, 2017. The last date for printing you application is August 29, 2017. The online fee payment started from July 24, 2017 to August 14, 2017. The examinations will be conducted by the IBPS for Officers ( Scale I, II and II) and Office assistants in the month of September, October and December. various posts for Group 'A' Officers and Group 'B' Office assistants are being offered by almost 56 RRBs in the India. The interested candidates must go through the rules and regulations to find out of they are eligible for the respective posts. The center of examinations and the venue will be declared by IBPS. For further information related to IBPS like Eligibility Criteria, How to Apply and Prepararion Tips Click Here IBPS CWE PO MT VI Recruitment 2017: Apply in August Thousands took to the streets in Guineas capital Conakry on Wednesday to demand the holding of local elections, which have not taken place since 2005. The demonstration, led by the countrys opposition leader Cellou Diallo, condemned the high cost of living and corruption under the current regime. The presence of all these people says a lot; meaning that we are all fed up of this government. They should support the opposition in its legitimate quest to organize local elections, to conduct investigations to bring an end to impunity, and identify all those behind crimes committed during the peaceful demonstrations by the opposition, said opposition leader, Cellou Diallo. Incumbent president Alpha Conde and Diallo signed an agreement last October to organize mayoral elections by February but they have yet to be held. Guineas constitutional court in November 2015 formally confirmed Condes re-election, dismissing opposition claims of vote-rigging and fraud. It was only the second democratic presidential poll since Guinea gained independence from France in 1958. Rights campaigners have urged Conde to use his second term to intensify the fight against impunity, strengthen the judiciary and promote equal respect for citizens rights. In a statement on Tuesday, Conde urged Guineas political class to work together to implement the 2016 stalled accord to organize mayoral elections. Guinea has about a third of the worlds reserves of the aluminum ore bauxite but ranks 183 out of 188 countries on the U.N. Human Development Index. The Festival of Education is being held at Jaipur's Exhibition and Convention Center on August 5 and 6, 2017. The event which is called as 'entertaining and informative extravaganza' will be organized by the state government of the Rajasthan in partnership with Dubai based education organization called 'Gems Education'. The two day event will be first of its kind, and is focused on developing the state of education in the country through dialogue and discussions. The Guest of Honor for the festival will be His Highness Sheikh Nahayan Mabarak Al Nahayan, the United Arab Emirates' minister of culture and knowledge development, who will deliver the keynote address. In a meeting which was recently held, under the guidance of the Chief Minister of Rajasthan, Vasundhara Raje, the structure and the preparations for the the festival was reviewed and the concerned officials were asked to make all the necessary arrangements. Many speakers from the UK will be attending the festival to speak at the event. British politicians and academicians are the noted personalities who will be coming to the country's first Festival of Education. Also Read: Tips to Improve your Vocabulary What is Happening at the Festival of Education? There will an exhibition for the industry of education and a one day long 'Tweetathon' which will include 100 panelists, which makes it the largest education dialogue on Twitter. The festival will also see an awards ceremony, where many teachers of the country will be awarded for their exquisite work in the area of education. The festival will also see a Battle of the Bands competition with many colleges and university bands from across the country and abroad. The winner of the competition will be given the opportunity to perform at the closing ceremony of the festival. Eminent artists and personalities like JJ Valaya, Shabana Azmi, Sushmita Sen, Divya Dutta and Shankar Mahadevan will also be present at the event. Happy Friendship Day: How to Make Friends at School and College?" title=" Happy Friendship Day: How to Make Friends at School and College?" /> Happy Friendship Day: How to Make Friends at School and College? Pacific Cement to import cement from Vietnam 03 August 2017 Pacific Cement Ltd (PCL) is to import 25,000t of cement from Vietnam to address shortages on the island of Fiji. Market demand continues to be higher than the output of Fijis two cement producers, PCL and Tengy Cement Ltd. PCL director, Nouzab Fareed, told the Fiji Sun Online that the imports are expected to arrive later this month. The cost of import is almost the same as our selling price, so we might not get any profit out of this exercise, but we want to make sure that the markets and the players are happy and also the government is happy, he said. The cement manufacturer is awaiting the repair of its mill which is expected to remain closed until early September. Once completed, the mill is expected to return to full operation. It is hoped that the import of cement from Vietnam will help narrow the supply-demand gap in the interim. Published under Raysut shareholders agree to sell Oman Portuguese Cement Products 03 August 2017 Raysut Cement shareholders have approved a proposal to sell Oman Portuguese Cement Products Co to Opal Development. The decision was taken at an extraordinary general meeting of the company held on 25 July 2017, Raysut Cement said in a disclosure statement posted on the Muscat Securities Market website. Meanwhile, earlier this month, Raysut Cement had announced that its net profit for the first six months of 2017 fell 64.2 per cent to OMR4.62m (US$12m) from OMR12.91m for the same period of last year. Group revenue declined 25 per cent to OMR37.41m versus OMR49.93m in 1H16. Published under Philippine watchdog finds 'indications" of anticompetitive agreements 03 August 2017 The Philippine Competition Commission (PCC) discovered in its ongoing full administrative investigation indications of anticompetitive agreements in the local cement industry, senior officials told reporters on yesterday. Antitrust body commissioners said in a press briefing in Manila that PCCs competition enforcement office was pursuing the investigation. The competition enforcement office has seen indications of anticompetitive agreements that they are continuously studying and investigating to establish their theory of what has happened or what is going on in the cement industry, said Commissioner Johannes Benjamin R Bernabe. He added that the enforcement office would later on decide whether or not there was enough evidence to merit the office to submit the case to the PCC commissioners for adjudication. In August last year, former trade undersecretary and now Laban Konsyumer Inc president Victorio Dimagiba filed an affidavit-complaint in PCC against the Cement Manufacturers Association of the Philippines (Cemap), led by its president Ernesto Ordonez, Lafarge Holcim Philippines Inc and Republic Cement and Building Materials Incall of which were accused of anticompetitive behaviour. This led to a preliminary inquiry that later on developed into a full administrative investigation after the watchdog found reasonable grounds for a more thorough probe. The commissioners said that an investigation would be done within a two-year period. In the case of the cement industry, the investigation began in January. (Source: Inquirer, Philippines) Published under 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! 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Ltd., Stolvis Holdings II S.A.R.L., Subsidiaries, Technopack Industria Comercio Consultoria e Representacoes Ltda., Teknek China Limited, Teknek Japan Limited, Teksaleco Ltd., The Miller Group Ltd, Thirode Grandes Cuisines Poligny, Tien Tai Electrode Co. Ltd., Tien Tai Electrode Kunshan Co. Ltd., Unichemicals Industria e Comercio Ltda., VR-Leasing Sarita GmbH & Co. Immobilien KG, VS European Holdco BV, Valeron Strength Films B.V., Veneta Decalcogomme S.r.l., Versachem Chile S.A., Vesta, Vesta Global Limited, Vesta Guangzhou Catering Equipment Co. Ltd, Viltronics Soltec, Vitronics Soltec B.V., Wachs Canada Ltd., Wachs Subsea LLC, Weigh-Tronix Canada ULC, Weigh-Tronix UK Limited, Wilsonart International Holdings LLC, Wynn Oil South Africa Pty Ltd., Wynn's Automotive France, Wynn's Belgium BVBA, Wynn's Italia Srl, Wynn's Mekuba India Pvt Ltd, and Zip-Pak International B.V.. 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. Third times the charm? On Sept. 24, President Donald Trump announced new restrictions on visitors to the U.S. from certain countries to replace the controversial travel ban issued earlier in the year. Its the administrations third attempt to implement such a ban. Previous efforts have been met with legal challenges and protests. Under the updated ban, certain individuals from Chad, Iran, Libya, North Korea, Somalia, Syria, Yemen, and Venezuela will be barred entry to the United States. The restrictions vary by country. While entry for anyone from North Korea or Syria is suspended, the Venezuelan ban applies only to certain government officials and their families. Exceptions to the ban may be granted to people from countries on the list who plan to study here, have family in the country, or have other connections to the U.S. Sudan, which was included in earlier bans, was removed in the latest order. The Supreme Court ruled Dec. 4 to allow the ban to take effect despite pushback, especially from communities with large populations of immigrants from the banned countries. Here are the 10 U.S. towns with the largest population of immigrants from travel ban countries, according to the Brookings Institution. The No. 1 city on the list has more than 150,000 immigrants from banned countries. Editors note: Iraqi and Sudanese immigrants have been subtracted from the Brookings Institutions original totals, as they are no longer covered by the travel ban. Data on the number of immigrants from Libya, North Korea, Chad, and Venezuela was not available. 10. San Diego Number of immigrants from banned countries: 14,300 Roughly 10,000 people from Iran and smaller numbers from Yemen, Somalia, and Syria live in San Diego. The initial bans impact was much greater. The California city is also home to nearly 25,000 Iraqi refugees, and local officials were among those who urged the president to revise the executive order to exempt Iraqis, particularly those who had aided U.S. military, from the ban. 9. Seattle Number of immigrants from banned countries: 14,400 More than half of Seattle immigrants from countries included in Trumps travel ban are from Somalia. Another 5,900 are from Iran, with fewer than 1,000 each from Yemen and Syria. Washingtons attorney general was the first to challenge the initial January ban in court, and the ban was halted by a Seattle judge a few days later. 8. Chicago Number of immigrants from banned countries: 14,700 Chicago is home to a diverse population of immigrants from banned countries, including 6,700 from Iran, 5,700 from Syria, and 1,400 from Yemen. Overall, 40% of refugees resettled in Illinois since 2007 came from one of the seven countries on the original travel ban list, the Chicago Tribune reported. And 500 refugees scheduled to relocate to Chicago were initially affected by the ban, according to ABC News. 7. San Jose, California Number of immigrants from banned countries: 14,900 San Jose has 14,900 immigrants from countries affected by the travel ban, including 14,200 from Iran and fewer than 500 each from Syria and Somalia. Santa Clara County, which includes San Jose, was among those joining a lawsuit challenging the legality of the executive order. Targeting individuals because of their religion and national origin is illegal and undermines the values of our nation and Santa Clara County, county counsel James Williams said in a statement. 6. Detroit Number of immigrants from banned countries: 17,200 Fifteen out of every 1,000 Detroit-area residents are originally from one of the seven countries named in Trumps January executive order, more than in any other U.S. city. Many live in the suburb of Hamtramck, Michigan, the first city in the country with a majority-Muslim city council. The city council condemned the executive order. The CEO of Ford, the largest employer in Detroit, also has spoken out against the travel ban. 5. San Francisco-Oakland Number of immigrants from banned countries: 20,200 The San Francisco area is home to 16,300 immigrants from Iran. There are also 3,000 Yemenis and 900 people from Syria living in the region. Many members of the Bay Area tech community were especially concerned about the initial ban because it affected some workers in the industry, the San Francisco Chronicle reported. The internet industry is deeply concerned with the implications of President Trumps executive order limiting immigration and movement into the United States, said the Internet Association, a tech industry trade group whose members include Airbnb, Salesforce, and Twitter. Internet Association member companies along with companies in many other industries include legal immigrant employees who are covered by these recent executive orders and will not be able to return back to their jobs and families in the U.S. 4. Minneapolis-St. Paul Number of immigrants from banned countries: 21,500 Of the 21,500 immigrants in the Twin Cities from countries included in Trumps order, 19,900 are from Somalia. Many refugees from the war-torn country have resettled in Minneapolis and Saint Paul since the 1990s, and the cities have the largest Somali population in the U.S. One former Somali refugee living in Minneapolis, Ilhan Omar, recently became the first Somali-American elected to office in the U.S. 3. Washington, D.C. Number of immigrants from banned countries: 26,900 Iranians make up 21,500 of the 26,900 immigrants from banned countries in the Washington, D.C., area. Trumps original executive order affected many foreign students in D.C. Some experienced difficulty returning to the U.S. to complete their studies, while others were warned not to leave the country because there were concerns they might not be able to return if they did, NBC reported. 2. New York City Number of immigrants from banned countries: 44,000 New York City is home to one of the largest Yemeni immigrant communities in the United States, as well as to a large number of people from Iran and Syria. To protest the ban, some of New Yorks cab drivers went on temporary strike on Jan. 28. On Feb. 2, Yemeni bodega owners closed their doors to protest Trumps executive order. 1. Los Angeles Number of immigrants from banned countries: 151,500 Los Angeles has more residents from countries affected by the travel ban than any other U.S. city. The majority 136,000 are Iranian, but there also are close to 15,000 people from Syria. A Los Angeles judge was one of several who issued an order temporarily blocking the enforcement of the executive order. Check out The Cheat Sheet on Facebook! More from The Cheat Sheet: Anglican splits over sexuality: Now Uganda's archbishop confirms he won't attend October's Primates meeting The Archbishop of Uganda, Stanley Ntagali, has said that he will not attend the next gathering of Anglican Primates in October because of divisions over sexuality issues. Archbishop Ntagali was asked by the BBC's Martin Bashir, who is traveling with the Archbishop of Canterbury to South Sudan and Uganda, whether he would attend the next Primates conference. 'No...I made it clear I am not attending,' replied the archbishop, before attempting to stop the interview, which he said was supposed to be about the refugee crisis in the region. Confirmation that Ntagali will not attend the Primates meeting comes after he walked out of the last gathering in Canterbury in January last year, accusing the American and Canadian Churches of having 'torn the fabric of the Anglican Communion at its deepest level'. In a letter to his Church in Uganda, the archbishop wrote at the time: 'On the second day of the gathering, I moved a resolution that asked the Episcopal Church USA and the Anglican Church of Canada to voluntarily withdraw from the meeting and other Anglican Communion activities until they repented of their decisions that have torn the fabric of the Anglican Communion at its deepest level. 'They would not agree to this request, nor did it appear that the Archbishop of Canterbury and his facilitators would ensure that this matter be substantively addressed in a timely manner.' This came after the Provincial Assembly of the Church of Uganda had resolved not to participate in any official meetings of the Anglican Communion 'until godly order is resolved'. Archbishop Ngtagali had warned before the meeting that he would leave unless this was achieved. He and other conservative Primate who are part of the GAFCON group, had called for 'discipline' to be administered to the US Episcopal Church, in the light of the 2003 consecration of the Bishop of New Hampshire, Gene Robinson, a gay man with a partner. Ntagali's refusal to attend October's meeting comes amid a growing row over human sexuality after the General Synod last month voted to condemn so-called gay 'conversion therapy' and to consider liturgical support to Christians who 'transition' from one gender to another. The Queen's former chaplain, Gavin Ashenden, is leading a group of rebel conservative clergy which is threatening to break away from the Church of England over such issues. In a letter published in the Daily Telegraph last month, a group of 23 conservative Anglicans warned of the prospect of a 'declaration of independence' from vicars who feel that those with traditional views are being 'marginalised' by the Church's leadership. The letter came after 21 conservative Anglican clergy separately condemned the general synod for allowing the 'tragic developments' at synod. The statement said that 'we, as some of those committed to the renewal of biblical and orthodox Anglicanism have already started to meet, on behalf of our fellow Anglicans, to discuss how to ensure a faithful ecclesial future'. Referring to the votes passed at synod in York earlier this month, the statement said: 'Many will share our dismay at the recent decisions...and the pursuing principles, values and practices contrary to Holy Scripture and Church tradition. 'Given the persistent failure of the majority of the House of Bishops to fulfil the God-given duties which they have sworn to discharge these tragic developments were, sadly, not wholly unexpected. 'Accordingly, and in preparation for such eventualities we, as some of those committed to the renewal of biblical and orthodox Anglicanism have already started to meet, on behalf of our fellow Anglicans, to discuss how to ensure a faithful ecclesial future. We now wish that we have done so to be more widely known. '...We will meet again, as planned and with external facilitation, mediation and episcopal advice, in October. It is our intention to welcome on that occasion an even greater diversity of contributors.' The signatories included Ashenden, the leading evangelical Susie Leafe, who is director of the conservative group Reform, Rt Rev Andy Lines, ACNA Bishop with Special Mission, James Paice, a trustee of the Southwark Good Stewards Trust and Andrew Symes, the executive secretary of Anglican Mainstream. Another victim of violence: Mexican priest dies after attack during Mass A Catholic priest who was attacked while celebrating Mass in Mexico City in May has died in hospital. The local archdiocese announced this morning that Fr Jose Miguel Machorro, who was presiding over Mass at the Metropolitan Cathedral during the attack, died after falling into a coma last night. The Archbishop of Mexico City, Cardinal Norberto Rivera, wrote on Twitter: 'I commend the soul of Fr Miguel Machorro and ask God to grant strength to his family. May he be in the Glory of God.' Machorro, aged 55, was attacked while celebrating the final Mass of the day on May 15. The attacker was identified as Juan Rene Silva Martinez, 32, who was later revealed to be suffering a 'psychotic disturbance', the Catholic Herald reported. The priest was in and out of hospital since the attack. This morning, the Cathedral's Twitter account said simply 'rest in peace'. The death follows the news earlier this month that a third priest had been killed in Mexico this year. A statement from the local diocese said: 'With great pain and dismay we inform of the death of our diocesan priest Luis Lopez Villa, 71, who on July 5 was killed by criminals who managed to break into San Isidro Labrador Parish, in the municipality de Los Reyes.' World Watch Monitor reports that Christians are often targeted because they stand against the drug trade by, for example, setting up rehabilitation centres. It says there are other reasons too. 'Christians are also targeted because of the perception that churches and their leaders have a lot of money, so congregations offer a ready source of cash cartels can simply enter, lock the doors and ask the congregation to empty their pockets.' A priest was killed in March, while a bishop went missing in January, only to be found dead later. These are just the latest incidents in a rising trend of violence towards clergy. Other Christians have also been targeted. Mexico's drug trade has claimed numerous casualties in recent years. Christian Solidarity Worldwide said: 'The number of violations of freedom of religion or belief, specifically threats against and attacks on religious leaders by criminal networks, has risen in recent years across the country.' In contrast to other North American countries, Mexico is predominantly Catholic, with a significant Protestant community and much smaller numbers of adherents of other religions. Christian mom whose arm was bitten off by shark during Bahamas snorkeling trip says the 'peace of the Lord was so strong' Tiffany Johnson and her husband are experienced snorkelers but nothing could prepare them for what would happen during a fun snorkeling trip in the Bahamas this summer. The committed Christians were on holiday when they decided to take a snorkeling trip to the coral reefs off Nassau. Her husband James stayed up on the boat because he was feeling sea sick, while Tiffany went ahead into the water. She was under the water and admiring the beauty of God's creation when she felt something bump into her, BillyGraham.org, shares. She turned her head to see what it was and found herself face to face with a huge shark with its jaws clamped tightly around her arm. Terrifyingly, it started thrashing and trying to pull her deeper under the water. Mother of three Tiffany says in that moment she didn't panic or feel any pain but she did start to see her life flash before her eyes. That's when survival mode kicked in and she snapped off the remainder of her left arm from the shark's jaws. Then, she swam - literally - for her life. With a trail of blood following behind her, she kicked and swam with just her left arm screaming 'Help me Jesus' and praying to Him all the way to the surface of the water. Amazingly, she made it to the top alive and without any thought for his own safety, her husband James jumped straight in to the water to help her into the boat. Looking back on her lucky escape, she thinks the peace that came over her in the moment of the attack was God giving her a 'sound mind' like how it's described in 2 Timothy 1:7. 'When I got into that boat, the peace of the Lord was so strong on me,' Tiffany said. 'It was like a cloud, a thick presence, tangible. I've never felt anything like that before.' After her wound was bound up, she then continued to pray during the 30 minutes it took for the snorkeling boat to get back to dry land. Her husband was in shock but she described feeling calm and prayerful even when she had to go into surgery. Two months on from the attack, the word she uses to describe how she feels is 'grateful.' 'There's just so many miracles in just getting out of the water alone and in that boat ride,' Tiffany said. 'I prayed that God would use this for His glory and somehow He would make this a massive testimony that would change lives.' Now, that's just what she's doing, sharing her story and glorifying God with what He did for her that day deep under water. 'God knows your suffering': Justin Welby prays for South Sudan's refugees in Uganda The Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, prayed yesterday with South Sudanese refugees in northern Uganda,which is home to a nearly million fugitives from a four-year civil war in the world's youngest nation. 'The Bible tells us that the refugee is specially loved by God,' Welby said as he joined in prayers in a camp in the northern district of Moyo. 'Which means you who are refugees are specially loved by God, that Jesus himself was a refugee and he loves you and he stands with you and the suffering that you have is the suffering that he knows. So I pray for you, I will advocate for you.' Welby was warmly welcomed at Moyo by religious leaders, government officials and pupils of Erupi Primary School and students of Erupi Primary Teachers College. Around 1.8 million people have fled South Sudan since fighting broke out in December 2013, sparking what has become the world's fastest growing refugee crisis and largest cross-border exodus in Africa since the 1994 Rwandan genocide. Most have fled south to Uganda, whose open-door refugee policy is now creaking under the sheer weight of numbers in sprawling camps carved out of the bush. Officials from the United Nations UNHCR refugee agency say that $674 million is needed to pay for the basic needs of the refugees this year, but so far only 21 per cent of those funds have been secured. The total number of refugees is due to pass a million in the next week, UNHCR officials said. Nor is there any sign of a let-up in the stream of desperate civilians. On some days it is only hundreds; on others, it is thousands. In the camps, refugees are already on half their standard food rations of 12kg of maize a month, and now critical services such as health and education are facing cut-backs, UNHCR officials said. In Bidi-Bidi, the largest of the refugee camps, 180 South Sudanese died in the first six months of the year, nearly half of them small children. 'We came here to hide ourselves from death,' 31-year-old Moro Bullen told the Reuters news agency, standing next to a row of 16 freshly dug graves, mounds of rust-red earth arranged in three neat rows. Half of the graves were only a metre long. 'We did not come here to die. We came here to be rescued.' Human rights groups have also reported widespread rape and looting that the UN says indicates ethnic cleansing. It has also warned of a possible genocide in a country that only came into being in 2011, when South Sudan split from Sudan. The government has denied the reports, and said its troops are merely conducting operations against rebel militiamen. Writing on his Facebook page, Welby reflected on his time in Sudan: 'I spent a brief time with the bishops of Sudan hearing about their vision for their dioceses,' he wrote. 'I reflected on how the word Emmanuel means God WITH us. Together with partners, we discussed how to help the church in Sudan thrive by working WITH local churches, rather than doing things TO or FOR them. We had wide-ranging and fruitful discussions with the President, as well as the Foreign Minister, the Minister for Religious Guidance and state ministers. 'We were able to be honest about where we disagreed, and talk positively about hope for Sudan's future, achieving peace and stability in the region, security for churches, and religious coexistence.' Additional reporting by Reuters. 'This is our village': How local Christians and a Catholic charity are rebuilding an Iraqi community brick by brick Iraqi Christians returning to a historically Christian village in their country, Bartella on the Nineveh Plains, have described rebuilding their community in interviews with the Catholic charity Aid to the Church in Need (ACN) reported by the website Zenit. Bartella was the first of the region's communities to be liberated from the grip of ISIS, last autumn. It was home to 3,400 Christian families before Islamic State captured the community in 2014. Now, after three years of exile in Kurdistan, the first six Syriac-Orthodox families have returned to their newly restored homes. More than 90 homes had been completely destroyed by ISIS, with some 360 badly damaged by fire and another 1300 homes suffering varying degrees of damage, ACN reported. The charity has restored 17 homes in the village, with another 150 homes due to be worked on once funding has been secured. Meanwhile, the village's infrastructure needs repair. In a sign of hope, 'the water network is slowly being brought into service again', Noor Sabah Dana, a local engineer, told ACN. He added: '[There] is not enough water to meet everyone's needs, and sometimes the network breaks down completely. There is a municipal water tank, which serves other villages as well and. Electricity is also coming back slowly, though there are regular power failures, especially interruptions caused by the repair work.' Rubbish and other debris is finally being collected from the streets, while the municipal administration is repairing the streets. ACN found that many of the community's former residents, having spent three years as Internationally Displaced Persons (IDPs) in Kurdistan, are eager to return home. 'At least 200 families come to Bartella from Erbil every day to clean their houses and try make them habitable again,' Noor Sabah Dana said. 'The families come here to clean their flats and clear them out; then they call the Committee to appraise their homes and provide an estimate for the damages. Then the restoration process can begin,' added the engineer. 'After everything that happened, we returned to this house and asked the Church in Bartella for help,' said Mark Matti Ishaq Zora, the son of a local farmer who is the owner of the house. 'A team of experts came and appraised all that was necessary: the paintwork, the electrical installations, the doors and windows, the water pipes. This is our city, our life, our history. Besides, in Kurdistan we [are] struggling with difficult economic conditions. Food and rent are expensive. That is why I would like to tell all the families from Bartella to come back here. There is water and electricity and the Church is helping us. It is really wonderful to be able to live here again.' Nohe Ishaq Sliman, another home owner, added: 'We are all returning to Bartella because this is our city. I have lived here since I was a child. 'I drank the waters of the Tigris River and work here as a farmer. I built this house myself. How can I leave? I thank our benefactors for the help in restoring my house. I could no longer pay 600 or 700 dollars a month for rent and leave this house standing empty. How could I not return? This is my city, I want to return and live here.' Today, there are still 14,000 families around 90,000 people - who have fled from Mosul and the Nineveh Plains living in Erbil, while nearly 13,000 homes have to be repaired or rebuilt amid security concerns and Kurdish-Iraqi political manoeuvring on the ground. Further, there are massive infrastructure concerns and, most urgently says ACN, the IDPs in Erbil will continue to need food aid as well as help paying the rent ahead of what they hope will be there return to the Nineveh Plains. Some 342 properties are currently being renovated, in part through funding by ACN. To date, close to $35 million has been donated to ACN for emergency aid, including food, education, housing, pastoral help and reconstruction. Enterprise Europe Network to help Georgian business grow on international scale The Enterprise Europe Network (EEN) will help Georgian businesses innovate and grow on an international scale.Georgian entrepreneurs will soon be able to export their products abroad by using the ENN platform, which will also help Georgian companies to popularise their production on export markets.The opportunity came after Produce in Georgia Agency, Georgia's Innovation and Technology Agency and Georgian Chamber of Commerce signed a Memorandum on Cooperation (MoC)The MoC aims to enable Georgian businesses to use the platform of the Enterprise Europe Network (EEN), establish an international partnership, attract more investments and enjoy trade missions.Thanks to the MoC any Georgian company will be able to receive EEN services which will fill the application on www.een-georgia.ge and address the following organisations of the een-georgia consortium: Produce in Georgia Agency, Georgia's Innovation and Technology Agency and Georgian Chamber of Commerce.The Enterprise Europe Network is the worlds largest support network for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) with international ambitions.The Network is active in more than 60 countries worldwide. It brings together 3,000 experts from more than 600 member organisations all renowned for their excellence in business support. This old spiritual practice is making a unexpected comeback. Why? There is nothing new under the sun, so maybe it shouldn't be surprising that many old or even ancient spiritual practices are finding their way back into evangelical, Pentecostal and other Protestant Churches where they would have been almost completely alien only a couple of generations ago. From the use of the Jesus Prayer to an increased interest in liturgical worship, a rediscovery of traditions long since cast aside is one of the most interesting features of 21st-century evangelicalism. With this in mind, I travelled to Santiago de Compostela last week. The city, in northern Spain, was teeming with visitors from across the continent and around the world. They were drawn by the Feast of St James, the disciple whose body is alleged to be buried in the extravagant cathedral at the heart of the old city of Santiago. We prayed and worshipped in this place where generations have done so before us. We even had the privilege of watching the giant 'botofumeiro' thurible used quite an experience. From solo pilgrims to large groups, the streets were filled with people who'd reached the climax of a pilgrimage along the Camino the ancient route which came to peak popularity in medieval Europe as Christians from across the continent came to Santiago. A recent report in the Church Times pointed out that, 'Pilgrims on the Way of St James... have risen from 5,000 in 1991 to more than 277,000 last year, and are forecast to almost double again to 464,000 by 2021.' The interest is mirrored elsewhere with other pilgrimage routes increasing in popularity, old routes being revived and new ones planned. Books are being written about pilgrimage, while a recent BBC TV series traced pilgrimage routes from the holy island Lindisfarne in the north east of England, through France and Spain, all the way to Jerusalem. In a new book which encompasses pilgrimages old and new, The Pilgrim Journey, James Harper examines the history of these treks which can last for hundreds of miles. Pilgrimage, 'evolved tentatively in the early centuries of Christianity', he writes, 'flourished in the Middle Ages, diminished after the Reformation, became diluted in the Age of Enlightenment, and revived in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. But even at its lowest ebb, it has never disappeared.' What is it, then, which is persuading increasing number of Christians, and some non-believers, to go on pilgrimages near and far? I can see three main factors at play. First, Western evangelicals and other Protestants have begun to discover the riches of the tradition of the wider Church. For generations after the Reformation, Protestant churches mostly steered well clear of anything which reminded them of their Catholic heritage. But in recent decades, the ecumenical movement and the internet have given us access to learn for ourselves about the transformational stories that many have told from their experiences of pilgrimage. Second, it's much easier, practically, to go on a pilgrimage today. Transport, accommodation and route planning are all very simple in the 21st century. Going on a pilgrimage is as straightforward taking a beach holiday but potentially much more rewarding than a couple of weeks on a sun lounger. Finally, in our technologically advanced world, there seems to be a desire to reach out for something which has stood the test of time. Pilgrimage has been offering a spiritual renewal for hundreds of years. If the latest app to help you organise your diary isn't quite hitting the spot, and half an hour of mindfulness before work isn't doing the job, then why not try pilgrimage? The number of young people in Santiago was an indication that the trend is set to continue to rise. Pilgrimage is set to become an increasing part of the spiritual landscape in the 21st century. Places which have been prayed in for thousands of years, routes which have been trodden by thousands of pairs of feet and buildings which have stood longer than governments of all stripes these symbols of permanence matter in an ever changing world. Celtic Christians talked about 'thin places' locations where the boundary between heaven and earth seemed especially porous. Some of their own treasured sites such as Iona, Lindisfarne and even humble Bradwell-on-Sea in Essex have increasingly become sites of pilgrimage in recent years. I, for one, will be putting on my walking boots and seeking out their ancient footsteps, and the wisdom that goes along with them. Follow Andy Walton on Twitter @waltonandy August 2 Express Entry Draw Invites 3,264 Candidates to Apply for Immigration to Canada Hugo O'Doherty Eman Katem Aa Accessibility Font Style Serif Sans Font Size A A The first Express Entry draw in three weeks took place on August 2, with 3,264 candidates in the pool receiving an Invitation to Apply (ITA) for Canadian permanent residence. Invited candidates each had a Comprehensive Ranking System (CRS) score of 441 or above. Accompanying family members, including spouses or common-law partners, as well as dependent children, may also come to Canada along with the principal applicant. IRCC aims to process complete submitted applications within six months. The CRS cut-off threshold this time around was just one point higher than for the previous draw, which took place on July 12. However, it may be noted that the gap of three weeks between these draws was longer than on numerous previous occasions, allowing more candidates to enter the pool and giving existing candidates a longer-than-usual opportunity to increase their points totals. This may have created upward pressure on the cut-off threshold. If or when the gaps between draws become shorter, as they have been in the past, it is entirely possible that the cut-off threshold will decrease. Apart from candidates eligible under the Federal Skilled Trades Class, the record low threshold so far is 413*, in a draw that took place on May 31. Todays draw brings the total number of ITAs issued since Express Entry was first launched to 122,596. Of these, nearly half (54,487) have been issued in 2017. The increase in ITAs issued this year is a consequence of Express Entry becoming the main driver of economic immigration to Canada, with the backlog of applications submitted before 2015 now whittled down to just a handful of cases. How are candidates obtaining an ITA? The following hypothetical examples reflect how candidates in the pool are receiving an ITA. Edgar is 29 years old, has an advanced English language proficiency and has been working as a web developer for three years. He has a Bachelors degree and has never worked or studied in Canada. His 441 CRS points were enough for him to be issued an ITA. Javier is a 34 year-old lecturer with five years of work experience. He has a Masters degree and has demonstrated an Initial Advanced (CLB 9) English language proficiency. Like Edgar, he has never worked or studied in Canada. His CRS score of 442 was sufficient for him to be invited this time around. Nathalie is 31 and has a Bachelors degree. She has been working as a sales manager for three years. She wrote her IELTS, and scored 8 in each of the four categories. She has a brother living in Toronto as a permanent resident. She has 442 CRS points, and so she was invited to apply. Louise is 34 and obtained a Bachelors degree in Canada. She has been working in Canada on a Post-Graduate work permit for one year. Before coming to Canada, she obtained three years of work experience in her home country. Louise has a high intermediate (CLB 8) English language proficiency. Her CRS score is 441. Shahid, 40, is a civil engineer with six years of experience who earlier this year noticed that his occupation was considered in demand by the province of Saskatchewan for its International Skilled Worker Express Entry sub-category. He has a Bachelors degree and high intermediate English ability, and his spouse has a Bachelors degree and adequate intermediate English ability. He prepared an application for the Saskatchewan sub-category and, when it reopened, he quickly submitted a complete application. When he received a provincial nomination and added it to his Express Entry profile, his CRS score jumped from 303 points to 903. A diverse range of candidates have been invited to apply over recent months, and though the cut-off threshold is not at its historic low right now, there is reason to believe that it will go down over time, says Attorney David Cohen. For individuals yet to enter the pool, the time to act is now. The next few months and into next year promises to be an exciting time. The government has yet to reach its target intake, and, based on the Immigration Ministers recent comments, this intake may go up again in the 2018 immigration levels plan, which is expected to be published this fall. The CRS Calculator The CRS Calculator allows you to find out what your score would be under the Comprehensive Ranking System. To find out if you are eligible to immigrate to Canada permanently, fill out a free online assessment form. Candidates who receive an ITA and want to learn more about the next steps may complete this short form. 2017 CICNews All Rights Reserved Canadian Immigration Questions and Answers with Attorney David Cohen David Cohen Aa Accessibility Font Style Serif Sans Font Size A A Every month, Attorney David Cohen will answer a few general Canadian immigration questions submitted by our readers. These questions cover immigration programs, eligibility, processing, language requirements, investing in Canada, landing, admissibility, studying in Canada, working in Canada, and much more. Here are this months questions and answers. I am from Cameroon, where French and English are the national languages just like in Canada. I wrote the TCF exam (Test de Connaissance du Francais) as proof of French ability, plus IELTS. Will I obtain points for French knowledge under the Express Entry Comprehensive Ranking System? Candidates in the pool with proven French ability may obtain additional points under the Comprehensive Ranking System (CRS). This additional points factor was introduced on June 6, 2017. However, please note that in order to obtain CRS points for French ability you must have taken the Test dEvaluation de Francais (TEF). A candidate who has taken steps to prove ability in French and English may be in line for a greater number of points. In addition to the points awarded for language ability under the core human capital and skill transferability sections of the CRS, candidates with proven French ability may obtain additional points on the following basis. French CLB* 7 or better + English CLB 4 or below (or no proven English ability) 15 CRS points French CLB 7 or better + English CLB 5 or better 30 CRS points *CLB = Canadian Language Benchmark I want to visit some family in Canada but I am not Canadian myself. My country, Argentina, requires a visa to come to Canada. If I come, can I leave Canada and re-enter without having to apply for another visa? According to the directive issued by Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) to its own officers, the issuance of a multiple-entry visa should now be considered the standard and any single entry visa issuance requires an explanation. Therefore, unless the officer has particular reason to issue a single entry visa, it is probable that a multiple entry visa would be considered. This decision rests with the officer. If or when you have a multiple entry visa, you may enter Canada, leave, and re-enter, as long as you abide by the conditions of the visa. On each entry to Canada, a visa holder will be assessed at a Port of Entry for the bona fides of their reasons for coming to Canada. Will the Parent and Grandparent Program reopen again in 2017? It is possible that Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) may invite more prospective applicants to apply to the Parent and Grandparent Program (PGP) before the end of the year. In April of this year, IRCC announced that it had randomly selected 10,000 potential sponsors from this pool of approximately 95,000 individuals who had earlier submitted an Interest to Sponsor form, and invited them to submit a sponsorship application under the PGP. Invited individuals had 90 days from the receipt of the invitation to submit a complete application, but only around 700 had been received by early June. At a Canadian Bar Association (Immigration Section) conference held in June, an IRCC representative stated that the department may conduct a further invitation round to invite more individuals to submit an application for the sponsorship of parents and grandparents to immigrate to Canada through the Parent and Grandparent Program (PGP). If IRCC decides to conduct a second draw, it may occur in the coming months. If the department does not receive the 10,000 new applications within the stipulated timeframe, additional persons will be invited to apply [from] a randomized list of Interest to Sponsor submissions, the IRCC spokesperson said. If we dont receive complete applications we will go back and draw from that existing list. 2017 CICNews All Rights Reserved Trump Unveils Plan to Slash US Immigration Numbers and Move to Merit-Based System Hugo O'Doherty Aa Accessibility Font Style Serif Sans Font Size A A United States President Donald Trump and two Republican Senators have presented an immigration plan that would move the country towards what they call a merit-based system that rewards highly skilled workers. The plan would also cut legal immigration to the US by around 50 percent over the coming decade. Before and after coming to power, President Trump has cited Canada as an example for the US to emulate when it comes to immigration. However, the plan presented by Trump and Senators Tom Cotton and David Perdue at the White House today known as the Reforming American Immigration for a Strong Economy (RAISE) Act shows significant differences from the Canadian immigration system. In Canada, immigration levels for 2017 were set at a target of 300,000, representing nearly one percent of the population. This figure does not include the many hundreds of thousands of foreign workers and students who come to Canada each year, many of whom go on to become permanent residents. Trumps plan would bring US immigration numbers from a current rate of just over one million Green Cards issued per year down to around just over half a million, representing around 0.15 percent of the population. On a per capita basis, Canadas immigration levels would then be around six times greater than the US. While the US administration attempts to push through this immigration legislation, Canadas Minister of Immigration, Ahmed Hussen, recently announced that the 300,000 per annum figure would become Canadas baseline intake for the coming years, with scope for higher intake over time. Hussen was appointed earlier this year by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, a Liberal leader who has built much of his political success around a pro-immigration and pro-diversity agenda. Internationally and domestically, the Liberal Party is perceived as avowedly pro-immigration. Indeed, all federal parties in Canada currently represented in the House of Commons are, to a greater or lesser extent, in favour of high immigration levels. The Trump immigration plan places a greater emphasis on skilled workers than previously and removes certain family reunification categories. The proposal would no longer give green card preference to the extended family or adult children of immigrants who already live legally in the US. The plan would also end diversity lottery visas and curb the number of refugees offered permanent residence in the US. Opponents of the plan argue that it does not increase skilled immigration, but rather cuts non-economic categories like family reunification and the diversity visa while creating a points-based system for employment-based green cards that does not actually increase the numerical intake cap. Though the plan has a long way to go before becoming law and could face resistance in Congress from members of both parties, the direction of the US executive and legislative branches is certainly not moving in the direction of welcoming more immigrants. Quite the opposite, in fact. Not only do potential applicants for immigration to the US face uncertainty as to whether they may be eligible to apply in the future, but existing applicants also often face long wait times that can go into many years. The current text of the RAISE Act does not provide details of the points breakdown for various factors that may be under consideration, though President Trump has said that individuals would favour applicants who can speak English, financially support themselves and their families, and demonstrate skills that contribute to our economy. The President also stated that new immigrants to the US would be prevented from collecting welfare. The picture is far clearer in Canada, which since 2015 has successfully operated its Express Entry immigration selection system for skilled workers. Candidates are eligible either by having worked in Canada, through their experience in a trades occupation, or by accumulating 67 points (out of a possible 100) under the Federal Skilled Worker Class. These candidates are assigned a points total under a Comprehensive Ranking System (CRS) and enter a pool, from which the government of Canada selects the highest-ranked candidates through periodic draws on a priority basis. Candidates remaining in the pool can take steps to improve their ranking, and thus the chances of them being invited to apply for permanent residence. Complete applications are usually processed to completion within six months. In addition, Canadas decentralized immigration system hands certain powers to the provinces, which can then set eligibility criteria for entry to their labour markets through the Provincial Nominee Programs (PNPs). So far, the co-sponsors of the RAISE Act and President Trump have not mentioned any state involvement in any future US immigration system. At this juncture, the points factors remain opaque and the US plan does not seem to involve states in the process of welcoming newcomers to the country. Claims from the President and the co-sponsors of this bill to be using Canada as inspiration seem to be tenuous, at least at this point. Any bill that truly seeks to create a skills-based immigration system based on the Canadian model would include a state-sponsored or state-nominated migration system, says Attorney David Cohen. Moreover, the rhetoric coming from these elected officials is all about how they can help Americans. Thats all well and good, but the language does not remind listeners that existing populations and immigrants benefit from robust, well-planned immigration strategies, as we have seen here in Canada. Could Canadas immigration rate end up higher than the US in per capita and real terms? If the US administration gets its wish, immigration levels to that country will be just about more than what Canada takes in annually. If Canada then makes moves to increase its intake, as it very well may do, it could be the case that Canadas intake level creeps up to US levels in real terms. By that point, per capita immigration levels to Canada would be as much as 10 times higher than in the US. Last year, a government advisory group recommended that Canada increase immigration levels to around 450,000 per year. To find out if you are eligible to immigrate to Canada permanently, fill out a free online assessment form . 2017 CICNews All Rights Reserved Understanding the New Saskatchewan In-Demand Occupations List and Obtaining Licensure Hugo O'Doherty Aa Accessibility Font Style Serif Sans Font Size A A Last week, on July 29, the Canadian province of Saskatchewan announced an expanded list of 43 in-demand occupations for two of its most popular immigration categories. Slightly more than half of these occupations require professional licensure on the part of the applicant, a process that may seem daunting. However, in many cases this process can be done from outside Canada in conjunction with one of the relevant organizations designated by the government of Saskatchewan. A range of occupations are included in the new list, including occupations in IT, engineering, social work, medicine, marketing, agriculture, skilled trades, and more besides. The new in-demand occupations list applies to two sub-categories of the Saskatchewan Immigrant Nominee Program (SINP): SINP International Skilled Worker Express Entry This enhanced sub-category is aligned with the federal Express Entry No job offer is required. Applications are received on a first-come, first-served basis from eligible candidates in the Express Entry pool. Successful applicants obtain an additional 600 points under the Comprehensive Ranking System (CRS). This sub-category has opened four times so far in 2017, most recently on July 27. SINP International Skilled Worker Occupations In-Demand Applications to this base sub-category are received on a first-come, first-served basis and are processed entirely outside Express Entry. No job offer is required. This sub-category has opened twice so far in 2017, most recently on June 12. Intake periods for these sub-categories are often short, in some cases only lasting days, or even hours. Of the 43 occupations on the new list, 20 do not require any professional licensure. An eligible individual with work experience in one of these occupations may apply to the SINP and receive a nomination certificate without ever applying for or obtaining any professional licensure. No licensure required NOC Occupation 0124 Advertising, marketing and public relations managers 0423 Managers in social, community and correctional services 1112 Financial and investment analysts 1122 Managers in Professional occupations in business management consulting 1123 Professional occupations in advertising, marketing and public relations 2211 Chemical technologists and technicians 2121 Biologists and related scientists 2123 Agricultural representatives, consultants and specialists 2225 Landscape and horticulture technicians and specialists 2231 Civil engineering technologists and technicians 2241 Electrical and electronics engineering technologists and technicians 2242 Electronic service technicians (household and business equipment) 2243 Industrial instrument technicians and mechanics 2253 Drafting technologists and technicians 0714 Facility operation and maintenance managers 0811 Managers in natural resources production and fishing 0821 Managers in agriculture 0911 Manufacturing managers 0912 Utilities managers Professional licensure and the SINP For potential applicants whose occupation is on the list below, the SINP requires applicants to have obtained the proper professional licensure in order for the application to be processed to completion. However, it may be noted that an application (submitted by an applicant whose occupation requires licensure) that does not include the relevant proof of licensure may be held for processing until such proof is provided. All other required documents must be submitted, otherwise the file will be returned and the CAD $300 government processing fee may not be refunded. The exact process of obtaining licensure depends on the occupation in question, as well as other factors, such as the applicants professional and/or academic background. CICNews has contacted each organization designated by Saskatchewan for the purposes of licensure, and in the vast majority of cases it is possible for an applicant to complete the licensure process from outside Canada. The processing times listed below for certain occupations refer to best case scenario outcomes; these were either listed on the websites of the organizations, or confirmed by the organizations when speaking to CICNews. These processing times assume that the application is complete. Delays may occur if the organization has to wait for a third party, such an educational institution, to forward additional required documentation, such as transcripts. The requirements for some occupations in Saskatchewans updated in-demand list may seem convoluted or confusing on first glance, but when you scratch beneath the surface, the route becomes clearer, says Attorney David Cohen. Saskatchewan wants newcomers in certain occupations to be fully licensed from a Canadian perspective because Saskatchewan wants these individuals to be able to enter the labour market relatively seamlessly. By beginning this process from abroad before landing in Canada, these workers will have a head start on the competition. This is likely a process that workers would have had to complete at some stage anyway, so why not start from abroad and prepare in advance of future intake period for either the base sub-category or the enhanced category aligned with Express Entry? Not only would this increase ones chances of finding a pathway to Canada, but it would also improve career prospects in Canada, both upon initial landing and over the long term. To find out if you are eligible to enter the Express Entry pool, the first step to immigrating to Canada through the SINP International Skilled Worker Express Entry sub-category, please fill out a free online assessment today. If you have a valid Express Entry profile and work experience in an opportunity occupation listed above, please contact sinp@canadavisa.com to learn more about the next steps. 2017 CICnews All Rights Reserved A double narrative surrounds the Trump administration, and in a reflection of the schizophrenic nature of American politics right now, each account is true. On one side, we have the story familiar to anyone who has glanced at a major newspaper or looked at television in the last seven months: the Trump White House is a rat king mired in chaos, lies, and betrayal. According to this perspective, Donald Trump is a leader with no capacity for self-reflection, whose every action is driven by and feeds his amour-propre. He cannot advance his legislative agenda, and judges routinely strike down his executive actions. Palace intrigues threaten to destroy the administration from within, and his courtiers run to the press to leak the latest news in order to destroy their rivals. The whole thing at times looks like something out of Hogarthif not Hieronymus Bosch. Another perspective exists on Trumps first six months, however, which looks past style and towardsurprisinglysubstance. President Trumps administration has taken on a host of major initiatives, many of which have lingered at the top of conservative wish lists for a decade or more. The appointment of Justice Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court in some ways could justify the entire Trump presidency. Trump will make hundreds of lower-court appointments as well, and he appears serious about keeping his promise to shape the judiciary in the mold of Antonin Scalia. On energy, the administration has been busyand effective. Opening China to American imports of liquefied natural gas (LNG) will alter the worlds playing field on energy and feed a boom in the construction of LNG export terminals. Trumps rollback of EPA regulations is unprecedented, and his expansion of pipeline-building is salutary. The president has refocused U.S. energy policy from feel-good but evidence-poor measures addressing climate change to harnessing Americas resource wealth for economic growth. Abandoning the charade of the Paris Accords was window dressingthe agreements were self-defined and unenforceablebut the message was clear: the Democrats war on hydrocarbons is over. Under Attorney General Jeff Sessions, the Justice Department has moved aggressively to reverse the Obama administrations attempts to achieve social engineering through the legal system. Sessions ordered a halt to the practice of channeling corporate settlement funds to nonprofit advocacy groups, which essentially guaranteed left-wing organizations a semi-permanent funding stream. The attorney general is reviewing consent agreements that DOJ signed with a number of municipalities accused of racist policing to determine whether the charges are valid or were generated by Black Lives Matter-style ideological excesses. As homicide rates rise in many major cities, the Trump Justice Department is pouring resources into law-and-order measures. And this week, the DOJ announced that it would begin investigating affirmative action policies in college admissions to determine whether they intentionally discriminate against white and Asian applicants. In foreign affairs, Trump used harsh language about NATO as a lever to compel member nations to pay their fair share toward their own defense. Amid hysterical claims that he was prepared to let Russia resume hegemony over former Warsaw Pact nations, Trump went to Warsaw and delivered a stirring defense of Western values, praising the Polish people for their courage in fighting enemies from all sides. Trump clearly declared that America stood with Europes smaller nations in their struggle to maintain sovereignty and national identity. Defense Secretary James Mattiss strategy of annihilation of ISIS appears to be working, too, as former strongholds like Mosul fall in Iraq and hundreds of thousands of civilians begin returning home. Under any other administration, these accomplishments in the first 200 days would be acknowledged as significant, and the president would be reckoned a serious, can-do executive. But even Trumps staunchest supporters must admit that there are major problems within the White House that could destroy a promising administration from within; and some of these flaws possibly reflect Trumps own labile personality. Trumps mastery of the camera made him easily among the most charismatic political figures in modern history. Even his detractors were mesmerized by his screen presence; CNN and MSNBC would drop their regular programming to televise Trump campaign speeches, during which he wasnt shy about peddling his own brand of steaks. But unlike Hitler or Mussolini, with whom he is so often and so tiresomely compared, Trumps speechifying is anti-sublime. Trump is more like a rambling Borscht Belt comedian who occasionally pulls off a zinger. Translating that style to the presidency is a rough fit, at best. Trumps Twitter habit, while a revolutionary way for a president to communicate with his base, leaves him open to scorn when he missteps, which is not infrequently. Trumps biggest problem is, paradoxically, the quality he touted as his greatest strength. Im going to surround myself only with the best and most serious people, he explained to the Washington Post while campaigning last year. And many of his Cabinet-level appointments have been excellent. But unlike beauty pageant production or real-estate development, the deliverables in a presidential administration are less tangible, and the rules and standards of staff performance are harder to measure in politics than in business. Personnel is policy means more than hiring people with the same policy goals: it means that without cohesion of purpose and, yes, loyalty, a team is nothing but a set of competing personal agendas. Through whatever formula he or his advisors used, Trump has taken the idea of a dialectically energized team of rivals and created in the West Wing a battle royal, or a game of musical chairs played to machine-gun accompaniment. Despite the drumbeat for impeachment and calls for resignation from the Left, the Trump presidency has immense potential to effect lasting, positive change. But the president must tune out his negative press, exploit the areas of consensus that exist with Democrats in Michigan, Wisconsin, Ohio, and Pennsylvania, andcritically, and soon get a handle on his staffing problems. If Trump continues to inhabit the conflicting realities of competence and chaos simultaneously, the dissonance will destroy his presidency before it really gets going. Photo by Pool/Getty Images The New York Times broke the news Wednesday that the Justice Department is recruiting lawyers to work on a new project focused on investigations and possible litigation related to intentional race-based discrimination in college and university admissions. The move generated predictable outrage from academic and liberal interest groups, who interpreted it as a reversal of federal support for affirmative action. For 40 years, conservative and libertarian legal groups have questioned the wisdom and legality of racial preferences in higher education. And though the Supreme Court thrice has upheld the practicein its Bakke, Grutter, and Fisher rulingsthe one-vote margin in each of these decisions, and their confirmation that, even in higher education, limits exist regarding positive discrimination on the basis of race, leave this area of law somewhat unsettled. The use of racial preferences in college and university admissions also remains deeply unpopular in public opinion polling. The judicial legacy has placed colleges in a difficult position. Bakke precluded the most principled justification for affirmative actioncompensatory justice, to rectify the effects of past severe discriminationleaving instead the ill-defined benefits of diversity. Higher education institutions embraced the rationale, even as they grew ever more allergic to other types of diversity, whether pedagogical or intellectual. And despite holistic evaluation procedures, leading schools nonetheless produce near-identical percentages of ethnic and racial enrollments year after year. These figures are a reminder of what isand is notat stake in the affirmative-action debate. Most non-elite schools can attract a class of sufficient racial or ethnic diversity without using preferences; schools located in some rural areas may struggle to attract minority applicants altogether. But at elite institutions, racial preferencesor, depending on state law, such as Californias Proposition 209, their prohibition at public universitieswill decide the outcome of a percentage of cases at the bottom of the admitted pool. The mismatch theory, popularized by UCLA law professor Richard Sander and former Brookings fellow Stuart Taylor, Jr. (with whom Ive co-authored two books), contends that racial preferences force students into academic environments for which theyre unprepared. Research from Dukes Peter Arcidiacono, for instance, documented how African-American students who entered elite institutions intending to major in STEM fields initially struggled before moving toward humanities majors. (In an extraordinary affront to academic freedom, former Duke president Richard Brodhead publicly rebuked Arcidiaconos research, without in challenging any of its conclusions.) Recent campus protests at Amherst, Yale, Evergreen State, and other colleges also showed the effects of mismatch. One of the Amherst protesters said in 2015 that she had felt unprepared academically and socially for Amherst . . . I feel like an impostor . . . I always feel like I need to prove to other people that I do belong here. Would she have harbored such feelingsand blamed them on her collegeif she had attended a school for which she was academically prepared? For much of the affirmative-action era, racial preferences could be seen as a zero-sum contest between white and black applicants for the final slots at elite institutions. But that is no longer the case in our increasingly pluralistic society. The average SAT scores of Asian-Americans, the fastest-growing ethnic group in the United States, easily exceed those of whites, who in turn have higher average scores than Hispanics or African-Americans. Framing the Trump administration as doing the bidding of whites at the expense of minorities doubtless fits the worldview of most New York Times editors, reporters, and readers. But as California Democrats learned, ignoring the grassroots concerns of Asian-Americans on this issue can be politically problematic. In 2014, Democrats in the California State Senate voted to put on the ballot a repeal of Proposition 209. The vote came despite Californias status as a state where (in 2012) 14 percent of high school graduates, but 49 percent of first-year students at Cal-Berkley, were Asian-Americans and Pacific Islanders. Asian-Americans saw the move as threatening the educational future of their children, and a grassroots campaign from this overwhelmingly Democratic constituency helped kill the repeal effort. In this respect, perhaps the most significant short-term effect of any shift in Justice Department policy will pertain to lawsuits already filed, alleging that racial preferences discriminate against Asian-American applicants: the Justice Department confirmed Wednesday that its new hires would in particular work on a complaint to the Education and Justice Departments. That 46-page complaint, which the Obama administration declined to investigate, claimed that Harvard and other Ivy League Colleges have discriminated against Asian-Americans in their college admission processes, in the form of fixed enrollment numbers, and under the influence of racial stereotypes and prejudices. In the 2016 election, Trump lost the Asian-American vote by almost 40 points; its unlikely his standing with the constituency is much stronger now. However, using the power of the Justice Department to demand greater transparency in the admissions process could, in addition to promoting ideals of racial equality and merit, generate significant shifts in the electoral realignment that is already taking place. Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images Kirsty Weakley takes a closer look at the arguments around what type of Brexit is best for the sector. This week the question on everyone lips seems to have been how dirty do you want your Brexit? Ok, mainly just my lips as I tried to gauge reaction to a report from the Charity Finance Group about the potential benefits of a clean Brexit for the charity sector. CFGs conclusion is that a clean Brexit, whereby the UK leaves the single market and customs union, is less of a risk than remaining within them and being unable to influence the rules. According to CFG, the UK would be free to reform VAT and state aid rules, as well as any other EU red tape it didnt like, which could reduce the tax burden on charities. The report says that remaining in the single market and the customs union risks the worst of both worlds, as the UK would have to follow the EU's tax, state aid and procurement policies without being able to influence them. Chilly reaction The report has received a rather chilly response from the rest of the sector. In a flurry of tweets, Sir Stephen Bubb, chief executive of the think tank Charity Futures, called on CFG to withdraw it. "@CivilSocietyUK: Clean Brexit poses 'least risk' to charities, says @CFGtweets report WHAT NONSENSE. Absurd report. CFG lost it. Sir Stephen Bubb (@BubbCeo) August 1, 2017 "@CivilSocietyUK: .@CFGtweets says 'clean' Brexit poses less risk than other options and has a six-point plan for government. BIN THIS! Sir Stephen Bubb (@BubbCeo) August 1, 2017 Sad to see CFG peddling Brexit nonsense. Brexit not good for charity and a hard Brexit even worse. Ditch this silly report. Sir Stephen Bubb (@BubbCeo) August 1, 2017 Meanwhile, NCVOs Brexit expert Brendan Costelloe published a comprehensive blog post arguing that the charity sector shouldnt be looked at in isolation from the rest of the UK economy. Costelloe says: The wider prosperity of the UK is far more important for charities and their beneficiaries than an additional 1.5bn in VAT rebates, nice as that would be. He adds: The biggest threat to charities would be a diminished economy, and the impact that would have on charities and the people they support. Brexit should be negotiated in the best interests of the general public. Ultimately, this is in the best interests of charities too. Elsewhere John Downie, director of public affairs at the Scottish Council for Voluntary Organisations, describes the report as preposterous and self-serving, and said CFG was doing the sector a disservice. Research carried out by SCVO suggests that 86 per cent of charities in Scotland think that leaving the EU will damange the economy and increase demand for charities services. Its not just the umbrella bodies that have spoken out against CFG.Today the National Trusts director, Helen Ghosh, warns that Brexit is already having a damaging impact on the environment and calls on the government to commit to policies that encourage farmers to make wildlife-friendly choices. She says: We have already seen examples of short-term decision-making, where farmers in response to uncertainty about the future and income have ploughed up pasture which was created with support from EU environmental money. Its very understandable, but heart-breaking. Overall, therefore, CFG clearly dont speak for the whole sector on this issue, despite how some newspapers may have reported it. New audiences But maybe CFG wasnt hoping to win over the charity sector commentariat. Perhaps it was seeking to reach out to new people. In a blog post, Andrew OBrien, CFGs head of policy and engagement, explained that the finance directors' body decided on the phrase clean Brexit because: Our motivation in writing this report is to reach out to new audiences specifically those that have not engaged with the sector on Brexit so that they understand the needs of charities. In order to do this effectively, we thought that clean Brexit was most likely to get a hearing in those Brexit-supporting audiences where charities have not been able to make themselves heard yet." The very fact that CFG titled a blog Why has CFG written a report on potential Brexit deals? suggests that they were expecting some pushback from the sector. A conspiracy theorist might suggest that they didnt actually want the rest of the charity sector to find out at all. The report, dated Friday 28 July, was published on CFGs website, but there was no mention of it on CFG's Twitter feeds, and the press release was not sent to any of Civil Society News' journalists until Tuesday, after it had already appeared elsewhere. Coverage of the report appeared in the Sunday Express, and on a pro-Brexit blog over the weekend. Id be surprised if these are paying more attention to CFGs website than we are. The Daily Express and the Spectator also picked it up. So it seems that CFG was successful in its attempt to reach new audiences with its message about the urgent need for VAT reform. Audience response But before we congratulate them on a job well done, its worth considering the angle the newspapers took and the response from their audiences. On Sunday the Express headline was "A clean Brexit will SIGNIFICANTLY boost British charities, new research claims". On Monday it was "'We want a CLEAN Brexit!' Charities sector hopes for 1.5bn boost after Britain leaves EU. The Spectator went with "What does the charity sector want from Brexit? A clean break and tax freedom". CFGs report, press release and blog do stress that CFG did not campaign on either side of the Brexit referendum and has no position on whether Brexit is a good or a bad decision for the UK. However it has carefully analysed the opportunities and benefits various aspects of any potential Brexit deal could bring". Despite this, having read both the report and the news coverage, Id find it difficult to argue with the headlines chosen. And its also worth noting that people are bad at remembering detail from what they have read in a newspaper I suspect that readers will just remember that Brexit is a good thing for charities. Risk of opening negative debates More worryingly the coverage seems to have opened up the opportunity for those that just hate charities to have a rant, and seem to object to CFGs central point that charities should get more tax relief. While comments only represent a small minority of readers, they do offer some insight. Comments on the Spectator article include a complaint about how much a publicity director at a major charity earns, suggestion that charities get too much government funding. And discussion below the Express article that was shared in a far right Facebook group called for an end to foreign aid. What can be done to address this? Im not entirely sure to be honest. Though I doubt NCVOs response blog (described as disappointingly measured by a colleague here) will really cut through to the pro-Brexit press - It was, quite frankly, a bit dull. Others have been uncharacteristically quiet. Ultimately its for CFG and its trustees to decide if the media exposure and opening of the discussion outweighs the backlash in the sector and negative online commentary about charities. But whether we like it or not, the CFG has kicked off the debate has been opened and its time to get stuck in. BTK railway to be commissioned in October The Baku-Tbilisi-Kars (BTK) railway will be commissioned in October, Kazakhstan Railways said in a message on July 28.Kazakhstan Railways President Kanat Alpysbaev was informed about this at negotiations during his working visits to Azerbaijan and Georgia.During the visits, Alpysbaev had meetings with Turkeys Transport, Maritime and Communications Minister Ahmet Arslan and Georgias Minister of Economy and Sustainable Development Giorgi Gakharia to discuss the further development of cooperation in the field of railway transportation.The message said that with the implementation of transport infrastructure projects, the potential of corridors passing through the regions countries has increased by many times.This will make it possible to transport up to two million containers per year through Kazakhstan by 2020, said Kazakhstan Railways in its message.The BTK railway is being constructed on the basis of the Georgian-Azerbaijani-Turkish intergovernmental agreement. The peak capacity of the railway will be 17 million tonsof cargo per year. At the initial stage, this figure will be one million passengers and 6.5 million tons of cargo. Adrian Joffe attends an exclusive VIP preview of the Dover Street Market on March 18, 2016 in London, England. Fashion CEO Adrian Joffe oversees businesses reportedly raking in over $280 million in revenue yearly. Those globe-spanning pursuits aren't handled spur of the moment, but nor are they long-term designs. "We don't have five-year plans, we have like six-month plans," Joffe told CNBC of his business approach between planning and instinct. "There's always been that notion of balance." Joffe is president and chief executive of Japanese label Comme des Garcons and multi-label retailer Dover Street Market, and works closely with CDG's founder and designer, Rei Kawakubo who is also his wife. Going by instinct was very much how the couple decided to launch a DSM store in Singapore this July, said Joffe. The outlet is the company's fourth. "It was never in our minds," Joffe said about DSM Singapore, adding that a conversation with a Singaporean associate spurred the idea. "The opportunity came and we just went for it. We thought about it not very long. We came to visit, fell in love with the building and thought, 'This is going to be a unique experience,'" he added. It's that time again! Jim Cramer rang the lightning round bell, which means he gave his take on callers' favorite stocks at rapid speed: Dynavax Technologies : "Got a second wind. I can't believe it myself. It's a terrific story. It's amazing how speculative stocks can come back as long as you play them right. It's good." U.S. Silica Holdings : "No, I was not crazy about that quarter. Honestly, my charitable trust owns Schlumberger . We've got to go upstream, we've got to get the best of the best, and even Schlumberger's been under pressure, but that's my call for you." Inovio Pharmaceuticals : "You're looking at the wrong place, because that's a speculative stock that's not panning out. I can't go there. I am not going to endorse that company." Akamai Technologies : "Unbelievably bad quarter with terrible guidance. It was almost like, are you kidding me? Are you kidding me? It was unspectacular and it was unreal." Cummins Inc. : "it got smaller yesterday when they started that conference call with all about the warranty problems and all the problems they had. It was just terrible. And all lost in that was how great the truck business is. Don't give up on Cummins, but holy cow. That was really one downer of a call. I needed Excedrin Migraine after that." Chevron : "The artist formerly known as Bug who is Chevron, the brown dog that I put on Twitter, he's been outperforming Mr. Nvidia , the tech stock. Why? Because Chevron had a monster good quarter. And if that stock pulls in, buy, buy, buy." Universal Display Corporation : "I think the super-cycle is going to be great for OLED, I reiterate my like for that company, which is not far down the road from where I used to live." Rockwell Collins : "If anything, I would buy more. That's how much I respect what that company's up to." With an estimated, combined net worth of $175 billion, the two clearly have an eye for launching successful businesses and the similarities don't stop there. Both billionaires also place a high value on one thing: sleep. Bezos, who can now add Whole Foods to his growing empire, has long touted the benefits of getting a full night's rest. "I'm more alert and I think more clearly," Bezos told the Wall Street Journal in 1999. "I just feel so much better all day long if I've had eight hours." Fast-forward almost 18 years and billions of dollars later and the retail magnate still makes sure to get in a full eight hours. "Eight hours of sleep makes a big difference for me, and I try hard to make that a priority," he tells Thrive Global. "For me, that's the needed amount to feel energized and excited." Getting an optimal amount of rest helps Bezos stay alert throughout the day, enhances his productivity and boosts his decision-making abilities. NASA is looking for someone to be Earth's "planetary protection officer." The job title, with security clearance of "secret," is something straight out of the 1997 sci-fi comedy classic "Men in Black." In fact, the current planetary protection officer, Catharine Conley, says that on her first day, she was issued a pair of "dark Ray-Ban sunglasses." While it's unclear whether the new officer will be replacing Conley or joining her team, the job description is out of this world. The officer's main responsibility is to ensure humans don't contaminate space, and in turn, that extraterrestrial contaminants and organisms, if they exist, don't contaminate Earth. In this film image, Tommy Lee Jones, left, and Will Smith are shown in a scene from "Men in Black II." Photo by Columbia Pictures/Getty Images The officer would be part of NASA's Office of Planetary Protection, which, among other things, works "to avoid contamination that would obscure our ability to find life elsewhere if it exists; and to ensure that we take prudent precautions to protect Earth's biosphere in case it does." And the job pays well. Compensation is between $124,406 and $187,000, according to the job description. But space enthusiasts, don't submit your resume just yet. As Newsweek reports, the qualifications are pretty specific. To be considered, you have to hold a bachelor's degree, and preferably an advanced degree, in one of the following areas: Engineering, physical science or mathematics. Candidates must also have completed "24 semester hours in physical science and/or related engineering science such as mechanics, dynamics, properties of materials or electronics." watch now The same laws used to dismiss Pakistan's former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif could effectively be applied to other lawmakers, spelling potential political upheaval and a stronger military unsavory scenarios for the nuclear power's fragile democracy. Last Friday, the Supreme Court dismissed the 67 year-old on a failure to announce income in disclosure papers for 2013's general election. According to the Supreme Court statement, the former prime minister demonstrated dishonesty by not declaring monthly salary of roughly $2,700 from Dubai-based Capital FZE a company owned by his son during 2006 to 2014. The judicial body based its decision on Article 62 of the Constitution and Section 99 of the Representation of the People Act little-used legislation that require truthfulness and honesty from elected officials. Political infighting expected While Friday's decision was hailed as a rare example of accountability in a graft-stricken nation, the fact that such vague laws were used to remove Sharif could trigger infighting between political parties, strategists warned. "Having used these clauses to oust the prime minister, the court may have opened Pandora's box," Moeed Yusuf, associate vice president, Asia Center, United States Institute of Peace, said in a recent note. "Sharif's allies have already started bringing charges against their political opponents under the same article; other such cases are sure to follow." Having used these clauses to oust the prime minister, the court may have opened Pandora's box. Moeed Yusuf Associate Vice President, Asia Center, United States Institute of Peace Dirty politics, nepotism, and cronyism is rampant in the South Asian economy, ranked 116th in Transparency International's list of 176 corrupt nations, which means numerous lawmakers could be removed under Article 62. The court itself has previously referred to the law as a "nightmare" given the difficulty in objectively defining the terms, Yusuf said. "The fact that Sharif was disqualified on the grounds of Article 62 is potentially very problematic because more than half the current parliament and members of the provincial assemblies could be disqualified on the same grounds," echoed Rafiullah Kakar, an assistant research officer at the Commonwealth Young Professionals Programme, in a note published by the London School of Economics. That could spark the purging of an entire political class, which could create a vacuum that would likely be filled by non-democratic forces, he added. Military to benefit During the 1990s, friction between Sharif's Pakistan Muslim League and the opposition Pakistan People's Party eventually paved the way for 1999's military coup many now fear a repeat of history. The army, experts said, is a clear winner from Friday's ruling. Pakistan's Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif Christopher Furlong | Getty Image Growing Tension Between President and Ruling Party By Vladimer Napetvaridze On July 26, the Parliamentary Speech of President's Parliamentary Secretary Ana Dolidze dedicated to the discussion of the presidential vetoes once again strained relations between the President and the ruling party.After introducing the motivated remarks of the President regarding the local self-government and election bill, Ana Dolidze criticised Irakli Kobakhidze for his notes against the Presidential vetoes, but the Speaker interrupted her and pointed to the fact that as a public servant, she doesn't have the right to make political statements: "Making a political statement is a prerogative of the President, because, he is a politician, unlike you," said the Speaker of Parliament, but Dolidze didn't agree with this remark and noted that she is a political official who is appointed and dismissed by the President. During the meeting, Kobakhidze was addressing Ms. Dolidze as "Mr Giorgi," with this action indicating a negative attitude of the Speaker of Parliament towards the President and his office. This fact has rekindled the tension between the President and the Parliament.After the meeting, the Parliament has released a statement in which President Margvelashvili was accused of encouraging the representatives of his office against the Parliament and urged him to take special steps to discontinue this disrespectful attitude. "It is not the first time when public servants of the Presidential administration are insulting the Parliament, this fact shows that they are encouraged and governed by the President, reads the statement. In response to it, Margvelashvili stressed his representative in Parliament is a qualified and principal person and because of these qualities, the ruling party dislikes her.Giorgi Margvelashvili was elected as President of Georgia on October 27, 2013. He was nominated as the Presidential candidate by the governing party. But the relations between Margvelashvili and the ruling party changed dramatically soon after the Presidential election. The political views of President and the "Georgian Dream" team slowly diverged from each other. One of the first public controversies between Margvelashvili and the Georgian Dream was the issue of Avlabari Presidential Residence. The opinions of the President and the majority did not coincide. The former leader of the "Georgian Dream" and ex-Prime Minister Bidzina Ivanishvili criticized him many times: "He is my biggest mistake because he is changing his views as a teenager," Ivanishvili admitted.The relation remained tense between the President and ex- Prime Minister Irakli Garibashvili. They had a public controversy on who had to present Georgia at the 70th Session of the UN General Assembly in New York.The relationship has been uneasy between Margvelashvili and the current Prime Minister of Georgia - Giorgi Kvirikashvili as well. The Prime Minister criticised the President's stance regarding the constitutional reforms. "President's assessment or appeal to the majority is biased and unfair," said Kvirikashvili.The strain between the President and the ruling party has reached a new level of hostility after the Georgian Dream presented an initiation over changing the mode of Presidential elections to the Constitutional Commission. According to it, President will not be elected directly, but will be appointed by Parliament. After negative reactions of the President and civil sector, authors of the amendment specified the initiative does not concern a Presidency of Giorgi Margvelashvili and if direct elections are to be abolished, it will not be applied to the next Presidential elections scheduled for 2018, but will be introduced much later in 2024.Since the "Georgian Dream" has come to power in 2012, Georgia had three Prime Ministers and two Speakers of Parliament, all representing the majority - Georgian Dream. The exception concerns only former Speaker of Parliament Davit Usupashvili, who represented the Republican Party. Usupashvili never had any public controversies with the President Margvelashvili.It is a fact that for a few years, there has been an open confrontation between the President and the leading party and recent conflict between Speaker of Parliament Kobakhidze and President's Parliamentary Secretary Dolidze is one of such episodes from the series of confrontation. President Donald Trump's doubts about the war in Afghanistan has led to a delay in completing a new U.S. strategy in South Asia, skepticism that included a suggestion that the U.S. military commander in the region be fired, U.S. officials said on Wednesday. During a July 19 meeting in the White House Situation Room, Trump demanded that his top national security aides provide more information on what one official called "the end-state" in a country that the United States has spent 16 years fighting against the Taliban with no end in sight. An Afghan man reacts at the site of a blast in Kabul, Afghanistan May 31, 2017. Omar Sobhani | Reuters The meeting grew stormy when Trump said Defense Secretary James Mattis and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Joseph Dunford, a Marine general, should consider firing Army General John Nicholson, commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, for not winning the war. "We aren't winning," he told them, according to the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity. In addition, once the meeting concluded, Trump's chief strategist, Steve Bannon, got into what one official called "a shouting match" with White House national security adviser H.R. McMaster over the direction of U.S. policy. Some officials left the meeting "stunned" by the president's vehement complaints that the military was allowing the United States to lose the war. Mattis, McMaster and other top aides are putting together answers to Trump's questions in a way to try to get him to approve the strategy, the officials said. Another meeting of top aides is scheduled on Thursday. Although Trump earlier this year gave Mattis the authority to deploy U.S. military forces as he sees fit, in fact the defense secretary's plans to add around 4,000 more U.S. troops to the 8,400 currently deployed in Afghanistan are being caught up in the delay surrounding the strategy, the officials said. watch now White House Senior Advisor and President Donald Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner reads a statment in front of West Wing of the White House after testifying behind closed doors to the Senate Intelligence Committee about Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election July 24, 2017 in Washington, DC. The matter concerns Kushner Companies' use of the EB-5 federal visa program a scheme that grants green cards to immigrants who invest $500,000 in certain U.S. businesses that are slated to create 10 jobs per investor. It wasn't clear what violation was being investigated, but the subpoena involves at least one Jersey City project that was partly funded by EB-5, the Journal said. Jared Kushner, senior advisor to President Donald Trump, was running the New York-based business before last year's election, but he has since resigned. A lawyer for Kushner Companies told the Journal that the firm had fully complied with EB-5's rules and denied any improper conduct. Read the Wall Street Journal's full story San Francisco's Anchor Brewery, which dubs itself as America's "first and oldest" craft brewery, announced its acquisition by Japan's Sapporo Holdings on Thursday, reports the SF Gate. The popular and historic company, established in 1896, is yet another example of the trend of craft breweries selling out to global companies. Some worry that the deal will change the way the brewery operates or how it makes their trademark "steam beer," according to the SF Gate. However, Anchor representatives told the website that its beer would continue to be brewed at its Potrero Hill headquarters, and the recipes would remain unchanged. The brewery's President and CEO Keith Greggor said the deal was a year in the making, and Sapporo was the best fit, according to the online news outlet. "When you take a brand like Anchor, its very soul exists in the heart of San Francisco," Greggor said. "Of all the people we spoke to, [Sapporo] respected Anchor the most, what it stood for and the importance of its connection with San Francisco." Sapporo focuses on alcoholic beverages, food and soft drinks, and has been looking to further expand their share of the U.S. beer market. "The addition of Anchor's strong brand power and network to the Sapporo Group's U.S. beer business portfolio through the conclusion of this agreement is expected to accelerate its speed of growth in the U.S.," Sapporo said in a press release Thursday. Anchor Brewery and Sapporo did not respond to CNBC's request for a comment. Read the full SF Gate story here. President Donald Trump apparently didn't understand the refugee deal that he was supposed to discuss with Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, according to a transcript of a January call obtained by The Washington Post. In the transcript published by the Post, Turnbull repeatedly explains the terms of the agreement made by President Barack Obama for the U.S. to resettle as many as 1,250 asylum seekers. Trump mistakenly puts that figure at 2,000, according to the Post transcript, later saying he "heard like 5,000 as well." The prime minister corrects him and asserts that the deal is "quite consistent" with the president's first executive order restricting travel for people from seven majority-Muslim nations, according to the Post. "The obligation is for the United States to look and examine and take up to and only if they so choose 1,250 to 2,000. Every individual is subject to your vetting. You can decide to take them or to not take them after vetting. You can decide to take 1,000 or 100. It is entirely up to you. The obligation is to only go through the process," Turnbull said, according to the transcript. White House deputy press secretary Lindsay Waters said she couldn't "confirm or deny the authenticity of allegedly leaked classified documents." The Post's transcript confirms previous reports which characterized the Jan. 28 call as particularly tense. During the conversation, Trump told Turnbull that the call was his "most unpleasant call" of the day, the transcript said. Despite reported friction between the two men, both Trump and Turnbull have repeatedly insisted that their countries enjoy a strong relationship. In May, Trump said the two had "actually a very nice call," but then admitted "it got a little bit testy, but that's OK." The prime minister's office did not immediately respond to CNBC's request for comment. Read the full transcript of the call at The Washington Post. Avon , which has been under pressure from activist investor Barington Capital, said Sheri McCoy will step down as chief executive next year, and reported another surprise quarterly loss. Shares of the company, which now expects to meet the lower end of its full-year forecast, fell to a more than one-and-a-half-year low in morning trading. McCoy's exit caps a turbulent five years for the company, which shrunk to half its size after selling most of its U.S. business, navigated a bribery scandal in China and has lost about 85 percent of its value. Avon has also been struggling to reverse a steady decline in sales as the pioneer of direct-selling loses favor to bigger players such as Estee Lauder and other niche brands. Annual sales that crossed $10 billion in 2012, are now at half those levels and are expected to drop further. McCoy, who took the top job at the company in April 2012, had so far resisted stepping down despite repeated calls by Barington to do so since 2015. McCoy managed to stave off some of that pressure by agreeing to sell an 80 percent stake in its U.S. business to private-equity firm Cerberus Capital Management and adding an independent director to its board, changes that Barington approved at the time. The activist investor, however, renewed its pressure after Avon reported a surprise loss in the quarter-ended March this year, and demanded McCoy be removed accusing her of overseeing "a tremendous destruction of shareholder value" and questioned her ability to manage the business effectively. Barington, which holds a less than 1 percent stake in the company, declined to comment. Avon has hired executive search firm Heidrick & Struggles to identify McCoy's successor, suggesting the company was looking for an outsider for the job. Avon also reported a loss of 2 cents per share in the second quarter, missing analysts' estimate of a profit of 7 cents per share, according to Thomson Reuters. Revenue fell 3 percent to $1.4 billion, hurt in part by fewer active door-to-door representatives in Russia and Malaysia, and intense competition in Brazil. Avon said it now expects to meet the bottom end of its forecast for full-year constant currency revenue growth of low-single-digits and adjusted gross margin growth of 100-140 basis points. Avon's shares fell as much as 13 percent to $2.92 shortly after the market opened on Thursday. Silicon Valley is trying to out-Trump Donald Trump on jobs. Amazon wants to add tens of thousands of employees to its ranks while Google is donating millions of dollars to training. Touting such plans is partly a response to fears that tech will, like trade, be blamed for killing jobs as automation and artificial intelligence take hold. Trade became a surprise target during the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign, symbolizing globalization run amok for both political parties. Trump backed out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership shortly after taking office and has threatened to pull out of NAFTA. Republicans and centrist Democrats who traditionally support trade were caught off guard. Tech firms are trying to get ahead of potentially similar repercussions. Amazon held a job fair on Wednesday to hire 50,000 workers and hopes to sign up double that amount by next summer. It also pays for hourly associates to obtain a two-year degree in an in-demand field like medical lab technology or aircraft mechanics. More from Breakingviews : US water industry trickles toward Wall Street Last week, Alphabet's philanthropy arm, Google.org, announced a $50 million grant for organizations that help people prepare "for the changing nature of work." In June, Facebook's Sheryl Sandberg visited Detroit to announce a free social-media marketing training program. Also that month, Microsoft Philanthropies donated $26 million to expand the Skillful job-training program in Colorado for people without college degrees. The companies are also major players in automation and artificial intelligence. Nearly 40 percent of U.S. positions could be lost over the next 15 years because of robots, according to PricewaterhouseCoopers. AI that controls driverless cars and software that can replace humans will accelerate those losses. Online firms don't have too high a bar to beat to show they're taking a smarter approach to shifting job trends than Uncle Sam. Government programs for workers displaced by trade were largely ineffective. For example, some women who lost factory jobs were retrained as hair dressers instead of for positions that were in demand. Silicon Valley's initiatives are more targeted: Google is funding programs that utilize technology to help workers. Tech firms are also considering public-relations campaigns that highlight how they help the economy, like platforms for small businesses. It's more credible than Trump touting employment deals started under his predecessor. But aping the president's braggadocio to reduce any sting makes sense. For more independent commentary and analysis from Reuters Breakingviews, visit breakingviews.com (L-R) Amazon's chief Jeff Bezos, Larry Page of Alphabet, Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg , Vice President-elect Mike Pence and President-elect Donald Trump attend a meeting at Trump Tower December 14, 2016 in New York. Timothy A. Clary | AFP | Getty Images As Beijing's sweltering summer rolls into August, China's political elite usually retreats seaside to deliberate the hottest topic of all: the future of the ruling Communist Party. The highly secretive confab is in Beidaihe, a beach resort roughly 175 miles east of Beijing along the Bohai Sea, and it's an annual ritual from the days of former Chairman Mao Zedong. This year, the stakes are higher than ever: Five of the seven members of the nation's most powerful ruling body, the Politburo Standing Committee, are due to retire in a massive leadership change that happens twice a decade. Chinese leaders, second row from left, Politburo Standing Committee member Wang Qishan, Vice Premier Zhang Dejiang, President Xi Jinping, Premier Li Keqiang and others. Greg Baker | AFP | Getty Images For President Xi Jinping, this is an opportunity to install loyalists and shore up his legacy. Who gets promoted and who doesn't could have a major global impact, as the world's second-largest economy posts its slowest pace of growth in a quarter of a century. "Leadership change is always important in every country ... but in China, relatively speaking, for the outside world, it's still quite mysterious," said Cheng Li, director of the John L. Thornton China Center at the Brookings Institution. "The impact of China's importance and influence is on the rise it's already become a world leader ... so therefore, we do need to pay attention." The lineup will be unveiled at China's 19th National Congress of the Communist Party, which is set for some time in the fall although its dates are not yet announced. The bargaining could stretch until the eleventh hour, but most issues are likely to be settled this month, according to Minxin Pei, an expert in Chinese politics and professor of government at Claremont McKenna College. Reading the tea leaves: Who is in the running? China might be a one-party system, but like any other political power struggle, various factions work to usher supporters in and kick rivals out. Important considerations include the individual's relationship with Xi, the power of their patrons, seniority of current ranking, their age, experience and qualifications. Also, little of this process is governed by law. For instance, there's no requirement that the number on the standing committee must stay at the current seven, and the informal retirement age of 68 may be waived. "That's absolutely possible," said Kerry Brown, professor of Chinese politics at King's College London. "There are no institutional restraints to that happening ... the party can do what it likes." Here's a look at a few candidates who experts say might be up for promotion into the standing committee: Li Zhanshu: Director of the general office of the Communist Party; often called Xi's right-hand man Zhao Leji: Head of department of organization, which prescreens candidates and compiles short lists for key government posts. Prior to Zhao, five out of the eight people who had this job made it into the standing committee Wang Huning: Head of China's central policy research office; thought to be close to Xi and an architect of major policy initiatives; said to be behind "Chinese Dream" campaign; specialist in U.S. politics Hu Chunhua: Party secretary of Guangdong; in his mid-50s and the youngest of the bunch; regarded as a rising star Han Zheng: Party secretary of Shanghai; that's a position often tipped for promotion Wang Qishan: China's current anti-corruption czar and a close ally of Xi; believed to have significant clout; already on the standing committee and is of retirement age, but there's speculation he could see another term Wang Yang: Third-ranked vice premier of State Council, which is part of the executive branch; two-term Politburo member and due to rise Liu Qibao: Head of the propaganda department, a very powerful division; that's traditionally a position that gets promoted And here are some people of interest who have a shot at the top, but are more likely to head for the wider 25-member Politburo: Liu He: Vice chairman of the National Development and Reform Commission; oversees the Leading Group for Financial and Economic Affairs; economist by training and top economic advisor to Xi Chen Min'er: Party secretary of Chongqing; recently named to new post after a potential Xi successor was ousted; previously worked under Xi when he was Zhejiang party leader What's the process? That's a tough question, as the government has never made public statements about it it's extremely hush-hush: "Nobody knows," said Claremont McKenna's Pei. What's generally though to occur is that Xi, as the highest ranking member of the current standing committee, will speak with other elites in Beidaihe to get a sense of plausible candidates for his short list. He'll then negotiate for his picks against those of existing members, many of whom are likely to retire. There's also an informal rule for Xi to consult with past presidents, but that's not an official requirement, Pei said. Nothing is revealed until the fall party congress, which features a staggered selection process. First, party congress delegates (approximately 2,300) will select the new Central Committee (approximately 370). Then, roughly 200 with full voting rights in the new Central Committee will "cast" ballots for the Politburo and its powerful standing committee. Chinese President Xi Jinping Getty Images But here's the thing: It's all highly controlled and not really an open vote. For the initial Central Committee selection, there are usually more candidates than slots somewhere around 10 percent more. But the ballot for the Politburo and its standing committee will feature the same number of candidates as open seats. "That list is already predetermined," Li explained. Experts say Xi is a shoo-in to stay on as the top member of the standing committee, and is very likely to be given a second term as the party general secretary and chairman of the central military commission. Early next year, he is expected to be renewed as president in an annual legislative meeting. The issue is the how many votes Xi garners as a low number will be considered embarrassing, Li said. Premier Li Keqiang is also likely to stay on the standing committee, though questions have circulated about his political future given speculation that he might take the fall for China's 2015 stock market crash. Either way, there are likely to be many new faces: Eleven of the 25 in the current Politburo will retire if the informal cutoff age holds. And, Li estimated, as many as 70 percent of the central committee seats are up for grabs. What does it all mean? Check out which companies are making headlines before the bell: Yum Brands The restaurant operator reported adjusted quarterly profit of 68 cents per share, seven cents a share above estimates. Revenue also beat forecasts. Sales were higher at Taco Bell and KFC, although they fell at Pizza Hut. Worldwide same-store sales were slightly above forecasts. Dish Network The satellite TV provider earned an adjusted 69 cents per share, six cents a share below estimates. Revenue missed expectations, but its net subscriber losses were smaller than analysts had anticipated. Aetna The insurance company scored a sizable beat, earning an adjusted $3.42 per share for the second quarter compared to the consensus estimate of $2.35 a share. Revenue also topped forecasts, with the company benefiting from strong performance from its core businesses, as well as cost controls. Teva Pharmaceuticals The drugmaker fell four cents a share short of estimates, with adjusted quarterly profit of $1.02 per share. Revenue fell short of expectations, as well. Teva cites weaker-than-expected performance in its U.S. generics business, among other factors. Regeneron Regeneron earned an adjusted $4.17 per share for its latest quarter, a full dollar a share above estimates. Revenue exceeded forecasts, as well. The drugmaker's profits were boosted by strong sales of its eye treatment Eyelea. Tesla - The electric car maker reported an adjusted quarterly loss of $1.33 per share, smaller than the loss of $1.82 a share that analysts were anticipating. Revenue beat consensus estimates, and the company said it had more than 1,800 daily reservations for its new Model 3. Tesla did see negative cash flow of $1.1 billion during the quarter, with a little more than $3 billion in cash still on hand at the end of the quarter. Fitbit Fitbit reported an adjusted quarterly loss of eight cents per share for its latest quarter, three cents a share smaller than consensus forecasts. The wearable fitness device maker's revenue beat estimates, thanks to increased demand for newer models and higher prices. Wyndham Worldwide Wyndham will split its hotel and timeshare businesses into two separate publicly traded companies, echoing moves in recent years by several rivals. The move is expected to be completed during the first half of 2018. Square - Square lost four cents per share for its latest quarter, one cent a share smaller than the five-cent loss forecast by analysts. The mobile payments company's revenue came in above estimates, and Square also raised the lower end of its full-year revenue guidance. Results were helped by a 33 percent jump in gross payment volume. IAC/Interactive - IAC beat estimates by 10 cents a share, with adjusted quarterly profit of 74 cents per share. The internet business conglomerate also saw revenue beat forecast. IAC was helped by revenue increases at its Match Group dating site unit, as well as Home Advisor. AIG AIG reported adjusted quarterly profit of $1.53 per share, beating estimates of $1.20 a share. The profit beat comes as new CEO Brian Duperrault continues a makeover of the insurance company, shedding unprofitable lines and focusing on business-related property-casualty insurance. Cheesecake Factory Cheesecake Factory beat estimates by two cents a share, with adjusted quarterly profit of 78 cents per share. The restaurant chain's revenue matched forecasts. Comparable-restaurant sales fell 0.5 percent, breaking a 29-quarter streak of growth. The company also gave current-quarter earnings guidance that was below consensus forecasts. Invesco Invesco is in talks to buy the investment management business of Guggenheim Partners, according to Reuters. Invesco is already the world's fourth largest exchange-traded fund (ETF) provider, and the deal would reportedly include Guggenheim's ETF business. Talks are said to be fluid, however, and a deal is not close to being finalized. MetLife MetLife earned an adjusted $1.30 per share for its latest quarter, two cents a share above estimates. Revenue beat forecasts, as well. Stronger underwriting across all the insurance company's businesses helped its latest results. Separately, MetLife's "too big to fail case" was put on hold as a court waits for the Trump administration to articulate its stance on that designation. Last year, the Obama administration had appealed a ruling that the "too big to fail" label was wrongly applied to MetLife. Western Digital The hard disk drive maker said it plans to invest in a new memory chip production line with partner Toshiba, despite Toshiba's statement that it would go ahead on its own. The two sides have y et to reach an agreement about the planned investment in the new line. Symantec The maker of cybersecurity software earned an adjusted 33 cents per share for its latest quarter, two cents above estimates, with revenue roughly in line. Symantec also announced the sale of its website security business for $950 million plus a 30 percent stake in buyer DigiCert. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt holds up a miner's helmet that he was given after speaking with coal miners at the Harvey Mine on April 13, 2017 in Sycamore, Pennsylvania. That statement contradicted the public stance of the EPA at the time. An EPA web page that has since been edited read, "Carbon dioxide is the primary greenhouse gas that is contributing to recent climate change." "I think that measuring with precision human activity on the climate is something very challenging to do and there's tremendous disagreement about the degree of impact, so no, I would not agree that it's a primary contributor to the global warming that we see," Pruitt said during a March 9 appearance on "Squawk Box." The decision came after the Sierra Club, an environmental group, filed a complaint with the EPA's inspector general in March, which called for an investigation into Pruitt's comments on CNBC's "Squawk Box." Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt did not violate the agency's Scientific Integrity Policy when he expressed his view that carbon dioxide is not the "primary contributor" to global warming, a panel of EPA officials has concluded. The EPA's Scientific Integrity Committee convened a review panel to look into Pruitt's comment following the Sierra Club's complaint. The panel concluded that Pruitt did not violate the Scientific Integrity Policy because it "explicitly protects differing opinions," according to a draft letter to the Sierra Club from the panel. The draft was obtained by conservative media outlets including the Washington Examiner and Washington Free Beacon. "In his response, the Administrator expressed his opinion regarding contributors to global warming and called for more debate, review, and analysis as a precursor to any future EPA policy decision on the matter," wrote Thomas H. Sinks, Jr., director of the EPA's Office of the Science Advisor, in the letter. The EPA confirmed the panel's conclusion in a statement to CNBC. "In its findings, the Panel stated that an Agency employee is free to express his or her opinion on the science. The Panel also stated that this is a fundamental principle to EPA's Scientific Integrity Policy even (and especially) when that point of view might be controversial. This protection is afforded to any employee including the Administrator," said Megan Maguire, an EPA science communications specialist. Elena Saxonhouse, a senior attorney for Sierra Club, said in a statement that the decision lets Pruitt off the hook for deceiving the American public in high-profile contexts. "Pruitt's statements on CNBC were not merely a scientific 'opinion', as EPA's letter suggests," Saxonhouse said. "With his many close ties to the fossil fuel industry, it is clear they were a politically motivated attempt to obfuscate basic facts that EPA scientists have studied and verified for years." The Sierra Club noted in the release that it did not receive the letter from the EPA until Wednesday, one day after the Examiner and Free Beacon ran their stories. It alleged that the EPA press staff leaked the document to the conservative-leaning papers. An EPA spokesperson declined to comment on the record. On Tuesday, the EPA press office emailed a copy of the Free Beacon article containing a link to the panel's letter to some reporters, according to a copy of the email reviewed by CNBC. An EPA spokesperson, Jahan Wilcox, retweeted the Washington Examiner story shortly after it came out. In March, the Sierra Club contended that while Pruitt is within his rights to advocate for policy changes, he is not allowed to distort the basic science that underpins policies he opposes. It said the comment contradicted decades of established science and violated three principles of the EPA's Scientific Integrity Policy, including: "When dealing with science, it is the responsibility of every EPA employee to conduct, utilize, and communicate science with honesty, integrity, and transparency, both within and outside the Agency." "[P]olicy makers shall not knowingly misrepresent, exaggerate, or downplay areas of scientific uncertainty associated with policy decisions." "To operate an effective science and regulatory agency like the EPA, it is also essential that political or other officials not suppress or alter scientific findings." The overwhelming majority of climate scientists as much as 97 percent of the community has concluded that carbon dioxide emissions from human activity is the primary cause of global warming. Pruitt rose to prominence as Oklahoma's attorney general, where he fought alongside fossil fuel companies and other Republican attorneys general to overturn Obama-era energy regulations. As EPA chief, he has been instrumental to President Donald Trump's effort to roll back those rules, and was a primary proponent for the United States leaving the Paris climate agreement. Though the casual dining space is believed by some to be a weak link in the restaurant industry today, fast-casual chain Fatburger is ready to test the public market. Los Angeles-based Fatburger and Buffalo's Cafe CEO Andy Wiederhorn announced Thursday morning that his holding company, FAT Brands, has been trying to gauge investors' appetite for an initial public offering. "We're testing the waters right now," Wiederhorn told CNBC's "Squawk Box" in an exclusive interview. He added that the business' goal in going public would be to acquire many more franchise brands in the fast-casual category. For now, Wiederhorn heads up two Fatburger and Buffalo's Cafe, which started in Georgia and is known for its chicken wings. The public entity would trade under the ticker symbol "FAT" which stands for "fresh, authentic, tasty," Wiederhorn said. FAT Brands said it aims to raise up to $20 million in its IPO. The company is in the midst of adding another brand to its restaurant portfolio and growing its partnerships with franchisees globally. "Consumers around the world love American brands," Wiederhorn told CNBC. He said he wants to make it easier for the average investor to invest in their favorite restaurants ones that serve up classic hamburgers, pizzas and milkshakes. Fatburger's competitors today include Shake Shack , which went public in early 2015, Smashburger, In-N-Out, Five Guys and California-based The Habit Burger. Meantime, Food Network star and chef Bobby Flay is preparing to take his chain, Bobby's Burger Palace, public, seeking to raise about $15 million. But analysts remain skeptical of these restaurants' overcrowding the segment. "The smaller chains that don't have the scale, you know, that might not be the best time to do it because you're finding ways that Amazon is disrupting the business," Morningstar's R.J. Hottovy recently told CNBC's "Closing Bell." "And overall traffic is down in the restaurant space. I'd be a little wary with an offering like this," he said referring to a Bobby's Burger Palace IPO. Wiederhorn is convinced that technology has helped his restaurants grow tremendously and that it will continue to do so. "It's about the food first, but technology has really driven [our] sales. ... We're seeing double-digit comps in the U.S. with delivery [apps]." "For us, delivery has just killed it," and in a good way, Wiederhorn said. New sanctions against Russia By Messenger Staff The US Congress passed a bill which imposes new sanctions on Russia, Iran and North Korea.The bill now sent to President Trump for signing highlights Russias illegal activities in Georgia, Ukraine and Moldova.The document reads that Russia continues violating the Russia-Georgia ceasefire deal signed in the wake of the Russia-Georgia 2008 war, which obliges Russia to withdraw its forces from occupied Abkhazia and Tskhinvali (South Ossetia) regions and let humanitarian groups and the EU mission into the conflict zone.The bill stresses that Russia continues using force against Georgia and Ukraine which imposes threats on European and Eurasian nations.US lawmakers believe that America should continue its close cooperation with the EU a partner against Russian aggression, and coordinate assistance programs and provide other efforts against Russian actions.Russia has already dubbed the document a drawback in Russia-US relations.New sanctions are also in place against Iran and its Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, which stands accused of supporting terrorism, and North Korea for its missile tests.The Senate passed the sanctions package with an overwhelming bipartisan majority, 97-2 on July 27.The House of Representatives passed the sanctions package last Tuesday in a 419-3 vote, sending the legislation to the Senate.International media is confident that Trump will sign the document.None of the post-Soviet nations alone will be able to defeat Russia in a war, as has been shown by the Russia-Georgia 2008 conflict and Russias actions in Ukraine.Russia will only be stopped by joint international efforts.As such, influential nations should be unanimous in their actions against Russian aggression worldwide. A site in Finland is set to use a labyrinth of underground tunnels for the storage of nuclear waste, in what could become a template for others to follow. According to the World Nuclear Association, Finland is home to four nuclear reactors which provide almost 30 percent of its electricity. The Olkiluoto 3 project is set to be Finland's fifth. Energy company Teollisuuden Voima Oyj (TVO) says that regular production at the unit is set to begin at the end of 2018. The unit's net electrical output will be around 1,600 megawatts (MW). "One important change with Olkiluoto 3 is that it is big," TVO's Juha Poikola told CNBC's "Sustainable Energy". "Currently, the biggest power plant in the world is about 1,500 megawatts and this is 1,600, so the size is big the dimensions are big," Poikola added. Once OL3 is complete, TVO says that Finland will have taken a "long leap towards self-sufficiency in electricity production." The plans for the storage of spent fuel in Finland look far ahead into the future and deep into the ground. "For operational waste, like low and intermediate waste, we have a repository, an underground repository (at a) depth of 60 meters in the bedrock," TVO's Anne Niemi said. "And for spent fuel we have interim storage, waterproof storaging and a new underground repository for spent fuel is built in Olkiluoto (at) the depth of 400 to 450 meters," Niemi added. The design of the storage facility has taken into account the potential impact of earthquakes and even future ice ages. In addition, huge disposal canisters with copper exteriors have been designed to store spent fuel in bedrock for at least 100,000 years. William D. Magwood IV is director general of the OECD's Nuclear Energy Agency. He told "Sustainable Energy" that what was happening in Finland was "really a mark for others to follow. They've made a lot of progress, and Finland will very likely have the world's first operating nuclear waste repository." Back above ground, OL3 is now close to being operational. "Olkiluoto 3 is now in (the) commission phase," Poikola said. "Commissioning a nuclear power plant includes several stages and We just passed one stage, which was a pressure test," he added. "We tested that the primary circuit a very important part of the power plant is tight. There (were) no leakages in the pressure test, so it's just one step towards commissioning." There were still many things to be done before electricity production started, he added. McCain also urged Trump "to resolve the differences within his administration as soon as possible and decide on a policy that can achieve our national security interests in Afghanistan and the region. If the president fails to do this by the time the Senate takes up the defense authorization bill in September, I will offer an amendment to that legislation, which will provide such a strategy." On Thursday, Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John McCain (R-Ariz) expressed support for Nicholson in a statement , saying the general "has served our country with honor and distinction for 35 years. He has earned the trust and admiration of those he has served with. And he has earned my full confidence." Previously, Nicholson requested the administration increase the number of U.S. soldiers fighting the battle against the Taliban in Afghanistan. Nicholson formally assumed command of the U.S. forces in Afghanistan in March 2016. According to NBC News , the president during a July 19 meeting "repeatedly suggested" to his military advisors that they should replace Army Gen. John Nicholson, the current top U.S. commander of coalition forces in Afghanistan. It cited senior administration officials. President Donald Trump , frustrated that the U.S. is "losing" in Afghanistan, is considering replacing the American military commander leading the campaign, according to a report. Some have suggested what's needed is to consolidate the management structure of the U.S. campaign in Afghanistan to something akin of a Gen. Douglas MacArthur approach. "There are too many cooks in the kitchen and the cooks change shift annually," former Blackwater CEO Erik Prince wrote in an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal back in May. Prince, who served as a Navy Seal in the 1990s, pointed out in the Journal piece that "the coalition has had 17 different military commanders in the past 15 years, which means none of them had time to develop or be held responsible for a coherent strategy." The U.S. military has been fighting in Afghanistan since 2001 but the security situation in the country remains dangerous and increasingly volatile. The U.S. has spent well over $800 billion fighting in the conflict and there have been more than 2,400 U.S. military fatalities and tens of thousands of soldiers wounded. On Wednesday, two American service members were killed in a suicide attack in Afghanistan. Last week, at least 35 people were killed in a bomb attack in the capital Kabul that was claimed by the Taliban. "We aren't winning," Trump reportedly said during the meeting. "We are losing." Similarly, Defense Secretary James Mattis testified to the Senate Armed Services Committee in June that the U.S. was "not winning in Afghanistan," after about 16 years and he indicated that a winning strategy will mean a "change in our approach" and an "era of frequent skirmishing." Trump inherited the war from two previous presidents but lawmakers, including Arizona Republican McCain, have been critical of the current administration for failing to come up with a new strategy for the Afghanistan conflict. During his June testimony to the Senate committee, however, Mattis indicated Congress should have the new strategy by mid-July but there's still debate within the administration over what the new strategy should be. NBC News said the president made the suggestion about replacing Nicholson to Mattis, a retired four-star Marine Corps general, and Joseph Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chief of Staffs. It also reported that Trump vented to Mattis that he's given military authority to the retired general to make changes in the Afghanistan strategy but it still didn't change the situation for the better. The Pentagon didn't return calls for comment. "We can't blame Trump or the Trump administration for taking so long to come up with a policy because in my view there really are no good policies for Afghanistan at this point," said Michael Kugelman, a deputy director and senior associate for South Asia at the Wilson Center, a Washington think tank. Kugelman added that the president probably has reason to be frustrated because he's been shown some ideas of things that have already been tried by previous administrations and that haven't worked. "Most people agree there's no military solution to the war," said Kugelman. "So sending more troops may have more tactical advantages, but ultimately it won't win the war." Another option that has been weighed by previous administrations is a political solution to the conflict in Afghanistan, including negotiation with the Taliban, a fundamentalist group funded in part by money from Pakistan. Kugelman doesn't believe the Taliban would negotiate with the U.S. since it "controls more land than it has at anytime since the war started." Meantime, Prince, the former Blackwater CEO, believes there's still a way to turn things around, and not only with "an American viceroy" or MacArthur model. Besides consolidating the leadership structure of the U.S. campaign in Afghanistan, he sees private military services having a role to support the Afghan security forces and fix some of the problems dogging the current effort. Specifically, Prince wrote in the Journal op-ed about using "cheaper private solutions to fill the gaps that plague the Afghan security forces, including reliable logistics and aviation support." The Military Times newspaper reported Wednesday that the former Blackwater CEO had already presented "a business proposal offering a 'turn-key composite air wing' to help the fledgling Afghan air force fight against the Taliban and other militant groups." Prince wasn't available for comment at deadline. "If the proponents of our current family-based immigration policy believe they own the compassion card, they need to explain why importing millions of unskilled immigrants into this country without a corresponding number of higher-paid skilled people to provide them with work opportunities is so compassionate." Perhaps that argument could best be made by the growing number of experts warning the nation about the dangerous scenario we're facing with an aging population and fewer primary care doctors to treat them. A report released in March by the Association of American Medical Colleges estimate that there could be a shortage of as many as 43,100 primary care physicians by 2030. The reason is simple in that it costs so much money, time, and effort to become a primary care doctor, and the pay is relatively low compared to those costs. Merit-based immigration policies can make a major dent in this area, especially since so many foreign-born and foreign-trained doctors don't carry massive student debt and many of the other financial barriers to entry to medicine native-born Americans do. This one argument alone should be at the forefront of any merit-based immigration policy, as the specter of millions of Americans unable to even find a doctor when they need one ranks pretty high on the "compassionate reasons meter." Of course, the medical needs are just the low-hanging fruit. It will take a little more political and messaging skill to explain why refocusing our immigration policies to bring in more technically-skilled workers is more compassionate for the entire country. But, indeed, it is. The first part of the argument is that if U.S.-based companies cannot fill the growing number of hard-to-fill tech jobs, they will have the natural inclination to move overseas or go out of business entirely. The second part of the argument gets us closer to the compassion theme. That's the argument that unfilled tech jobs will have an impact on other businesses that cater to tech companies and their employees. Think about it: Every empty desk or office at a tech company is one less employee buying work clothes, grabbing lunch at the fast-food place at the corner, or taking an Uber home. In fact, according to Glassdoor Chief Economist Andrew Chamberlain, the overall value to our broader economy of the approximately 263,586 unfilled IT jobs posted by employers in the U.S. adds up to $20.1 billion. That's a lot of compassion. If the proponents of our current family-based immigration policy believe they own the compassion card, they need to explain why importing millions of unskilled immigrants into this country without a corresponding number of higher-paid skilled people to provide them with work opportunities is so compassionate. And they also need to explain why it would be compassionate to add to the growing number of Americans of all kinds struggling to find a doctor. But just watch. Any policy that helps higher skilled or wealthier citizens and immigrants alike reflexively gets attacked by liberal critics as another "trickle-down economics" boondoggle. That term was coined by the 1920s humorist Will Rogers to skewer President Herbert Hoover's policies meant to save the banks. It was resurrected by critics of President Ronald Reagan's tax cuts in the 1980s. Sloganeering like that might make for good soundbites and bumper stickers, but it adds little to a more serious debate we need to have about economics. And there's good evidence beyond Donald Trump's election victory that Americans would respond very favorably to the above arguments for merit-based immigration. The most recent major poll on this issue conducted by the Pew Research Center shows Americans who are in favor of a merit-based immigration policy outnumber those who oppose it by a 56-to-37 percent margin. But issue polls only go so far. Americans can change their minds on controversial issues relatively quickly. President Trump and conservative immigration-reform advocates will have to make a stronger and better case for this policy going forward. And if they don't make compassion-based arguments first, last, and always during those efforts, their chances of actually changing the policy will be slim and none. CORRECTION: A report released in March by the Association of American Medical Colleges estimate that there could be a shortage of as many as 43,100 primary care physicians by 2030. An earlier version of this story stated it was as many as 105,000, which is actually the estimated shortage for all physicians, not just primary care. Commentary by Jake Novak, CNBC.com senior columnist. Follow him on Twitter @jakejakeny. For more insight from CNBC contributors, follow @CNBCopinion on Twitter. What started as simply stargazing with her Girl Scouts troop as a 7-year-old in New Mexico has since turned into a career at NASA, IBM, Apple and Dell for Sylvia Acevedo. Most recently, in May, she was named the CEO of the Girl Scouts of the USA, the organization she belonged to growing up. Her mission: to ensure STEM learning is a part of every young woman's life. "I had an 'aha' moment when I was a young girl and my troop leader saw me looking at the stars," Acevedo tells CNBC Make It. Sylvia rockets "Later on, when we were choosing our badges, she encouraged me to get my science badge," she recalls. And the rest is history. Despite being one of the few girls in her science and math classes through grade school, Acevedo says she was "able to persist" because she realized she was both interested and good at the subjects. Girl Scouts gave me that early confidence of being competent to talk about money, talk about what I deserve and not taking no for an answer. Sylvia Acevedo Girl Scouts CEO But it wasn't easy to pursue this passion: When Acevedo told her high school guidance counselor she wanted to go to college and become an engineer, she wasn't taken seriously. "Girls like you don't go to college," Acevedo recalls her counselor saying, laughing and adding, "girls aren't engineers." Acevedo responded with what she calls her "Girl Scout confidence": "If I can cook, I can be an engineer." After getting her bachelor's degree in engineering at New Mexico State University, Acevedo landed her first job as a rocket scientist at NASA. She developed algorithm programs and analyzed data for the Voyager space program in 1979. When she learned it would take decades for NASA to develop the right materials for the next Solar Probe mission to get close to the sun, she left to attend graduate school. One night in mid-March, Alan Malcher, a British military veteran, dropped into the Queen's Arms, a working-class pub in north London. He took a seat at the bar and ordered his customary pint of Foster's. Within a few minutes, a stranger sidled up, ordered a drink and started a conversation. He soon brought up Russian President Vladimir Putin and began saying positive things about the Moscow-backed separatist civil war in Ukraine. "He was going on about Putin being a strong leader," Malcher recalls. "Somebody to admire." The stranger's comments, delivered with a thick Slavic accent, made Malcher's security antennae vibrate: He had recently joined a Washington, D.C.based think tank involved in combatting Russia's stealthy infiltration of American social media. So when the stranger made passing reference to Malcher's army service, he felt a twinge of apprehension. "There's no way he could have known that except via LinkedIn," Malcher says, referencing the professional online networking site where he and other critics of Moscow had been active in international affairs discussion groups. An expert in information warfare, Malcher reasoned that the Kremlin had dispatched the stranger to the Queen's Arms with a message: We know everything about you. Watch your step. Experts have increasingly called attention to Russia's use of covert "propaganda factories" to subvert democracy, flooding Twitter and Facebook with millions of computer-generated bots posting under false names (often unwittingly picked up and amplified by supporters of Donald Trump). But its battle on LinkedIn to neutralize enemies has gone largely unnoticed. There, however, Newsweek has found that pro-Moscow forces have put constant pressure on the company to suspend or permanently evict a number of its adversaries, many with long, distinguished careers in the U.S. military or its intelligence agencies. Not only has this muzzled credentialed critics and damaged professional reputations, but if Malcher's suspicions were right, the Kremlin's campaign to combat its adversaries on social media may have moved beyond cyberspace and into the streets. More from Newsweek: Why is the alt-right attacking H.R. McMaster? A North Korea attack would take out Los Angeles, Chicago or New York, and be the deadliest in U.S. history Russia investigation: Jill Stein explains her relationship to Putin, Trump and Hillary Clinton LinkedIn provides a rich hunting ground for Russian agents. Unlike Twitter and Facebook , most of its estimated 500 million, predominantly white-collar subscribers use it to advertise their expertise, seek employment or engage with peers in expert-based discussion groups. To bolster their credentials, mosteven current and former U.S. national security officialspost detailed resumes and recommendations from their colleagues. That provides fodder for Russian intelligence to gather detailed information on its most formidable critics and cast doubt on the truth of those accomplishments. "The Russian special services are for sure exploiting LinkedIn to gather personal information on certain targets and possibly recruit and blackmail them," says a close Kremlin watcher at a university in a former Soviet satellite state, asking for anonymity to protect himself. "They operate under fabricated identities and credentials, while the Russian propaganda and trolling campaigns are widely applied on the platform." The pro-Moscow campaign has recently expandedand, in some cases, gone offlineallege some American LinkedIn members who have been criticizing Russia's covert attacks on the West. A few days before Malcher was approached in a London pub in March, a former U.S. national security official who had been contesting Kremlin propaganda on LinkedIn says he was assaulted near his retirement home in France. "I was shopping at the local supermarket when I was stung on my lower-right thigh by something, probably with an umbrella," Giles Raymond DeMourot tells Newsweek. An hour later, he says, a doctor extracted bits of "what seemed like a wooden needle" from the wound. Lab tests determined it was "impregnated with carbapenem-resistant Pseudomonas aeruginosa," a potentially lethal "superbug," he says, and he's had to make several visits to his doctor for treatments. "I am still not out of the woods," he adds. (DeMourot supplied a hospital document confirming the wound was caused by "wooden splinters" and that "only an outside intervention [event] can explain the infection.") He strongly suspects his assailant was connected to Russia. Still working as a defense and foreign policy consultant for private clients, DeMourot had been writing exposes of alleged Russian intelligence front groups and agents in France and Belgium "with names, places and dates" on LinkedIn. And he had been relentlessly singled out for rebutting Kremlin apologists about the seizure of Crimea and subversion of Ukraine. "At one stage," he says, "I received manyphone calls with death threats." To DeMourot, the attack was a disquieting replay of a Cold Warera, Russian KGB assault on Georgi Markov, a Bulgarian dissident who died in 1978 after being injected with a poison pellet from an umbrella jab on a London street. Other critics have been attacked with poison too, notably an ex-KGB officer turned freelance investigator named Alexander Litvinenko, who died in 2006 after a Kremlin agent laced his tea with polonium. Paul Cobaugh, a former U.S. Army psychological warfare expert, says the accounts of DeMourot and Malcher sound right to him: "When I see influence operations, I know them." Cobaugh, who retired from the U.S. Special Operations Command in 2015, has also been harassed by Russian trolls on LinkedIn after posting comments critical of Moscow. (In August 2016, he wrote to Republican Representative Will Hurd of Texas, a former CIA officer, urging a congressional inquiry into "Russian abuse ofLinkedIn to achieve a national security advantage over the U.S.") Cobaugh and other military and intelligence veterans and academics coalesced on LinkedIn in 2015 to combat dezinformatsiya, or disinformation, a branch of what Russian intelligence calls "active measures," the tactic of spreading false rumors that the Kremlin has employed since the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution. A century later, Moscow has recalibrated the technique for social media. One of battlegrounds was the International Relations Professional Discussions group on LinkedIn, founded and managed by DeMourot. There, foreign affairs specialists from academia and the government post mainstream media articles and commentary, frequently on the subject of Russia's so-called "hybrid warfare" tactics against NATO members and applicants. Soon, trolls arrived. "A group of about 40 of us from the West began exchanging notes," says Joel Harding, who retired from the U.S. Army's Intelligence and Security Command in 2003, "and we noticed a few of the profiles [on LinkedIn] were consistently not engaging us [in debate] but rallying the troops"the defenders of Putin and the Russian invasion of Ukraine, critics of NATO, Trump-style European populists and the like. A major target was Charles Leven, a highly-decorated retired senior CIA operations officer with over 40 years' experience jousting with the Russian KGB and its successor spy agencies. Leven was the manager of several foreign policy and security-issues discussion groups on LinkedIn with a combined following of about 130,000 members. Commentary on pro-Kremlin propaganda sites like Russia Insider, a website founded in 2014 to combat "coverage of Russia [that is] is biased and inaccurate," labeled him a "suspected pedophile" and pushed a long-discredited, KGB-generated story accusing him of embezzling funds from one of his Cold War-era Russian spies. On LinkedIn, Harding was also labeled a "pornographer" (a favorite meme used against Hillary Clinton and associates) following a lawsuit against him by a Malibu Media, a notorious Los Angeles company that lures browsers into clicking on links to X-rated movies then demands payment for "illegally" copying them. Harding settled out of court for $250, but the calumny was kept alive on pro-Moscow sites. Other Kremlin critics were repeatedly called a "bloody liar," "scum" and "whackos." A PBS documentary on Putin that Leven posted on LinkedIn was called the product of a "hardline meatpuppet propaganda machine." And so on. To Leven, Demourot, Harding and their comrades, such commentary was just another front in a larger Russian media campaign that veteran Kremlin-watcher Celestine Bohlen had called"breathtaking, even by Soviet standards." A key feature of the online effort was trolling, the tactic of injecting inflammatory, off-topic commentary into discussion groups and threads with the goal of defaming critics, provoking fights and chasing away thoughtful adversaries. The verbal warfare peaked in the summer of 2016, as U.S. officials discovered Russian hackers breaking into voter rolls in California, Illinois and elsewhere. It also occurred around the time that the Moscow-backed hackers stole and promulgated embarrassing private emails from the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton's campaign manager, John Podesta. Such activities were designed to help Donald Trump and "undermine public faith in the U.S. democratic process," an American intelligence report concluded in January. One of the most persistent critics of Leven and his cohorts was Yana Dianova, a top international law expert with ties to Roskomnadzor, the Russian internet regulator that censorsopposition parties and foreign news reports critical of Moscow. A senior attorney in the Moscow office of Grata International, a firm based in Kazakhstan, Dianova has participated in two Roskomnadzor conferences, which are attended by senior security officials. In February, the firm drafted a paper for the agency putting a new series of internet censorship provisions in a favorable light. She also is listed as an "expert' with the Moscow Center of International Business Assistance. The company offers clients advice on the Russian gas and oil sector, as well as guidance on real estate investing in Cyprus, an area of "primary concern" for money laundering, according to a 2014 U.S. State Department report. Beyond her legal work, Dianova used LinkedIn and other media to insinuate that the bogus KGB embezzlement story about Leven had merit and suggested that Harding, the "porn addict," had done time in a "a maximum correctional prison." She frequently employed a favorite Kremlin rhetorical tactic, "whataboutism," or responding to exposes of Moscow's interference in the 2016 elections with counter-narratives of U.S. support for pro-democracy groups in Russia. "Americans, she wrote on LinkedIn, "may vehemently claim that they are Russian propaganda fighters but [what] they actually do 24/7 here is quite similar toCIA and other U.S. government social media trolls/disinformation programs." She also leveled insults against her critics via LinkedIn and well-known Kremlin propaganda sites like the Russian International Affairs Council, a "soft power" arm of the Kremlin founded by former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and chaired by Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. "In 2015 through 2016, Yana began making complaints" to LinkedIn management, says Harding, "calling us trolls, sending the screen shots in as evidence, getting a few of us temporarily restricted." In a June 27, 2016, LinkedIn post, she wrote that she had compiled a "list of at least a dozen" of her enemies, "with [their] background and contacts details, adding that "those whose job is to survey these activities are aware of them." "Yana Dianova attacked me and my friends relentlessly on LI," says DeMourot. "The attacks were...accompanied with our photo. Among the allegations was that I had been sent by CIA with Charles Leven to battle Russians on LI. [But] I was not a CIA employee and never met with Charles Leven. I know him only through the internet." Dianova also "attacked a company I had set up in Paris" and later closed, DeMourot says. "She told LI my profile was a fake and that the company never existed." By raising unfounded questions about their backgrounds and credentials, DeMourot and the others complain, Dianova was "trolling," a violation of LinkedIn's user agreement. She vehemently rejected the sobriquet, but whatever her intent, her writings certainly set her critics aflame. One called her "Trollvana," another "a vicious attack dog." In one particularly nasty exchange, Harding called her a "pigsty pinup girl." LinkedIn, citing privacy rules, will not discuss individual cases. Dianova continued her attacks Harding and company on Russia Insider. "If they have not been able respond with fact-based arguments, they will employ the lowest argumentative fallacies, includingad hominem attacks," she wrote. In a flurry of emails with Newsweek, Dianova offered to provide "a compilation" of "everything Charles Leven and his collaborators" have written about herbut only "in exchange" for Newsweekrevealing its sources to her with screen shots of their comments. She promised she would "not disclose to anyone that you are the source of this information." Newsweekdeclined the offer. In July 2016, LinkedIn suspended the accounts of DeMourot, Leven, his attorney James Berger and several others. A representative of LinkedIn's Department of Trust and Safety using the name "Scarlett" accused them of "repeatedly posting unwanted/inappropriate content, and using the platform to harass other members." (The red connotation provoked bitter cracks among the Americans.) The evictions were first reported a year ago by Kseniya Kirillova, a Russian-born journalist who fled Ukraine for the U.S. last year under death threats and applied for political asylum. In an email to Newsweek, Dianova says the suspensions of Leven and Berger were "not due to my efforts." Either way, such results can have professional repercussions beyond LinkedIn, many say. Berger's own expulsion from LinkedIn came up during a recent visit to another law firm, when an associate asked him why he had been banned. "It was unsettling," he says. "LinkedIn is a resume-broadcast around the world. That's why their promise of professionalism is so important." DeMourot, who has a Juris Doctor degree, regained his account only after sending a copy of his passport to LinkedIn to prove he was who he said he was. But others in the International Relations discussion group remain banned, including Leven and his attorney Berger, who received permanent membership bans without explanation. Both remain furious about it. "He and I both lost our LinkedIn memberships without possibility of appeal," Berger says. "That's the big deal." Outside of LinkedIn, the attacks on Leven and the others were echoed on other Russian propaganda sites. "She repeatedly defamed my professional ethics, reputation and loyalty to the country for which I've risked my life," Leven says through his attorney. He complains that she virtually labeled him "a thief" by publicizing the "long-ago-debunked allegation" that he had stolen money from one of his Russian spies. "Both U.S. and Russian intelligence officials agreed the story was a fabrication," Leven points out, citing authoritative books and a magazine articleon the affair. Dianova countered in a LinkedIn post that she had "NEVER [her capitalization] assertedthat Mr. Leven 'engaged in theft,'" but merely "ASKED him whether or not it is true that he had misappropriated the government funds." She also wrote that another account of the case "contains NOTHING to counter the allegationthat 'Charles Leven, had pocketed some of the money." In fact, the article didn't even mention the incident. Such exchanges have prompted a few of Dianova's critics to suspect that she is connected to Russian intelligence. Leven, who spent over three decades recruiting Russian agents, says he does "not believe she is a Russian intelligence staff officer" but rather just another well-connected Moscow figure whom the Kremlin uses to send messages, like the Russians who got a meeting with Donald Trump Jr. and other campaign officials do deliver "dirt" on Hillary Clinton. Dianova denied the allegations in an email to Newsweek. "No, I am not a Russian intelligence officer," she says, nor a Russian agent of any kind. "Their allegations that I am somehow acting on behalf Russian government authorities/its agents," she adds, "are totally false, crazed and made out of revenge." She has regularly threatened to sue anyone who repeats the allegation, but in a response to one critic who floated the idea that she and her law firm had intelligence connections, she cracked, "Thanks for the free PR." As the rhetorical combat between the Americans and the Russians accelerated through 2016, DeMourot says he continued to see real world consequences (though he does not allege these consequences were related to Dianova). He suspects he was set up for a possible "kidnapping" en route to a meeting at the Vatican, which had offered him a job as an international relations adviser. Just before leaving for Rome, he received an email with photos of two men who would meet him at the airport when he landed. Immediately recognizing them as "rogue" former British commandos, whom he knew were working for an alleged Kremlin agent he had written about on LinkedIn, he suspected the email had come from a hijacked account. When he deplaned, he saw the men looking for him and slipped back into a crowd. The incident was "probably only to scare me off," he says. Such actions have increased his suspicions that at least some pro-Kremlin activists online are working with the Russian intelligence services. DeMourot has learned of other odd offline activity seemingly directed at him. He says he once got a tip from a source in the Paris municipal government that a man "with a Russian accent" had tried to get confidential information about his company from the city's business records. After being rebuffed, the man "left in a car with CD [diplomatic] plates," the tipster told him. Back online, DeMourot and his fellow Kremlin critics felt LinkedIn was inclined to accept the other side's chargesand not theirseven though they say many of their foes were hiding behind suspected multiple fake identities (including Russians posing as pro-Trump Americans), a violation of LI's User Agreement). After being retained by Leven, Berger sent written protests to LinkedIn's Department of Trust and Safety, as well as senior executives at LinkedIn and Microsoft, which acquired the site for $26.2 billion in June 2016. The software giant rejected his argument and evidence and told him that neither he nor Leven could appeal their suspensions. "Our group consists of real professionals, many of whom have long track records of public service, military service and/or work in fields such as law," Berger says. "They have thugs, fake profiles, anti-Western agents and a host of useful idiotsall carefully exploited by their Muscovite masters. There is zero moral equivalency." Money, Berger suspects, has played a role. He argues that foreign markets are critical to the continued growth of LinkedIn and other social media platforms. Like virtually all U.S.-based social media sites, LinkedIn was looking to expand abroad, including Russia, where it had a tenuous foothold with 6 million customers in 2016, according to Reuters. Whatever the value of the Russian market, Moscow booted LinkedIn on November 17 because it would not agree to move its data servers under Russian control. (The website TechCrunch speculated that "it was a warning to bigger sites to be on their guard.") LinkedIn could get back in, the Russian news agency Tass reported in June this year, pending negotiations with Microsoft. However that turns out, company representatives say Russia was never a "priority" market and any questions about incentives to stay there are now moot. LinkedIn's head of Trust and Safety, Paul Rockwell rejected the charge of favoritism. "When we investigated this issue more than a year ago, we found it was a clear-cut case of harassment and a violation of our Terms of Service. We believe it was handled appropriately." LinkedIn spokeswoman Nicole Leverich says policing the often rancorous exchanges on the site is an ongoing challenge. "A lot of it comes down to 'he said, she said.'" Critics strongly disagree, saying LinkedIn is rife with Kremlin favoritism. DeMourot points to the case of Fred Eidlin, whom he calls "an ardent and virulent pro-Russian propagandist" who was active mainly in another LinkedIn discussion group, Political Science. Eidlin, who died last year, claimed to be a visiting professor at the prestigious Karlova (aka Charles) University in Prague, founded in 1348. "I smelled something fishy there," DeMourot says, so he made an inquiry at the school. A vice rector responded that Eidlin "does not have an official status of Visiting Professor," according to the email Newsweek reviewed. "My colleagues have not seen him for at least two years." DeMourot promptly copied the email to LinkedIn's Department of Trust and Safety, with a complaint that Eidlin was in "flagrant violation of its terms of use" by misrepresenting himself. He got nowhere. Scarlett rejected the complaint, telling DeMourot that someone had filed a counter-complaint against him. In the meantime, Leven and others escalated their plea to Simon Pope, the security manager at Microsoft. Pope reviewed the matter with LinkedIn but let the decision stand. The company's policies, at best, appear inconsistent. "If we receive a report of a false profile or harassment of a member, we investigatewith our user agreement and professional community guidelines in mind," LinkedIn spokeswoman Mary-Katharine Juric tells Newsweek. "If it violates those, we remove content or restrict accounts where appropriate." Yet when Berger asked LinkedIn to remove Dianova's "defamatory" post on Leven's alleged espionage embezzlement, "Scarlett" cited a section of the Communications Decency Act that said "we are not responsible for such content, even when it's alleged to be defamatory." Another company spokesperson, granted anonymity to discuss the issue freely, said policing all the violators in real time was impossible. And not every critic of Russia gets kicked off the site. "I've never been barred, even though I have been just as hard on the Kremlin as anyone else," says Kandy Zabka, a cybersecurity specialist who has done work uncovering hackers for the FBI, Interpol and Europol. "Putin, for some reason, likes me," she jokes. "I reported so many Russian fake profiles and trolls to LinkedIn that they gave me a Premium Account for a year." ("She helped us a lot," a company insider said on condition of anonymity because of the issue's sensitivity.) Meanwhile, Dianova finally got evicted with the same vague accusations from LinkedIn, that she had posted "defamatory" material, she says. Others have taken her place, while fake Russian accounts, in many cases computer-generated bots from Russia's "propaganda factories," continue to plague LinkedIn and other social media platforms, observers say. Rockwell, LinkedIn's head of Trust and Safety, however, dismissed the idea that the Russians are exploiting the site to harass their critics. He maintains that Kremlin interference is "not a systematic issue" now that the site has been blocked from Russia. LinkedIn's critics dismiss such a claim. The platform's "mobile application remains available both in the AppStore and in Google Play, and the network's e-mail service continues delivering messages sent via its website," Nabi Abdullaev, a senior analyst at the Control Risks security firm wrote last December in Forbes. Alan Malcher, the British Army infowar veteran, is more blunt. "They don't have a clue" about Russian access, he says. "LinkedIn can't say they are blocking the Russians," he adds, "because they [the Kremlin and its proxies] can have servers anywhere." Plus, they can use "disposable email addresses," just like Al-Qaeda and Islamic State group militants. "LinkedIn is well aware of the huge amount of trolls and fake profiles" on its site, says Zabka. "Most of the Russian trolls are still active on LinkedIn," says the Eastern European expert on Russian internet practices, who supplied Newsweek with web addresses and screen shots of dozens of alleged fake users spouting anti-Western and pro-Kremlin messages. "A small army of social media operatives...are deployed to promote all of this material to unknowing audiences," three well regarded former government experts wrote last November for the War on the Rockswebsite. Top U.S. intelligence officials say there's no reason to believe the Kremlin will pull back: "Moscow will apply lessons learned from its Putin-ordered campaign aimed at the [2016] U.S. presidential election to future influence efforts worldwide," they concluded in their January 2017 report, "including against U.S. allies and their election processes." Such techniques have worked all too well with the rise of the Moscow-friendly Trump, whose tweets denouncing investigations into contacts between the Russians and his campaign aides and family members have found a friendly echo chamber in social media sites. "They will be back," former FBI Director James Comey warned at a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing in June. But to most analysts of the Russian efforts, they've never gone awayas the LinkedIn case shows. "It is a new and open issue as to whether our kind of self-government can function successfully whenmuch of the electorate gets its news from social media easily employed by foreign powers," two top former White House cybersecurity officials, Richard Clarke and Robert Knake, wrote recently in Politico. "Infrastructure of all typesperhaps including the voting systemcan be infiltrated by sophisticated hackers based overseas." Late last year, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg called the idea that his site could be manipulated to influence voters "pretty wacky." But in April, his company produced a report on its own investigation, saying it "does not contradict" the finding of U.S. intelligence that "information warfare" ordered by Putin was carried out on Facebook and other social media sitesdespite their best efforts to stop it. The report said Facebook had "observed many actions by fake account operators that could only be performed by people with language skills and a basic knowledge of the political situation in the target countries, suggesting a higher level of coordination and forethought." "In many cases," The Atlantic noted, "such information operations are aimed at gaming Facebook's algorithm, using tactics like the mass creation of fake accounts and the creation of groups populated by those accounts." In April, Facebook said it had made progress in blocking or deleting tens of thousands of fake accounts. Yet such automated techniques put democracy at risk, says Tim Wu, the author of The Attention Merchants: The Epic Scramble to Get Inside Our Heads. "Robots arebeing used to attack the democratic features of the administrative state," he recently wrote in The New York Times. "The problem is almost certain to get worse, spreading to even more areas of life as bots are trained to become better at mimicking humans." Unfortunately, Wu argued, social media companies "lack a serious financial incentive to do anything aboutthe millions of fake users who are corrupting the democratic process." During his March encounter with that stranger at the Queen's Arms pub, fake users and bots were the least of Malcher's concerns. He had no doubt the Russians were trying to bully him in person, as they had others. "I mean, that's their endgame, isn't it?" Malcher says. "Intimidation?" I voted for Donald Trump. I am thrilled at appointments he has made. I like the federalist approach that agencies like the Environmental Protection Agency are taking under Trump, giving more consideration to individual states. But one of the administration's actions is giving me more than a little pause. The Department of Energy is currently conducting a study intended to assess the strength of the nation's electric grid. The study explores whether renewable energy policies and regulations are problematic for grid reliability, a notion Energy Secretary Rick Perry has suggested might be the case. A leaked draft of the study that was compiled by DOE career staff, however, found that renewable energy is not harming the grid. But Perry's own staff has said that the findings in the final study, expected this month, will differ from those in the draft fueling fear among utilities, politicians and the energy industry that after undergoing internal review, the study could be changed to weaken state-level renewable energy policies. The study could be used to punish renewables at the expense of giving coal and nuclear an extra boost. Truth be told, we need all of these energy sources. I applaud President Trump's central focuses of increasing American energy independence, protecting our national security, giving taxpayers a break and creating good-paying jobs. But intentionally weakening renewable energy policy at the state level would accomplish none of his core objectives. I currently serve as a Public Utilities Commissioner in Georgia, where we recognized the value renewables could bring to our state right off the bat. Many doubted our Public Service Commission when we created a host of policies to kickstart solar in the Peach State--in fact, many called our policies anti-Republican. But four years later, opponents of our decisions are hard to find. Landowners have benefited, solar developers have made a fair profit, and the tax bases of economically-distressed South Georgia communities have received a much needed boost in tax revenues. I can't speak for any other state, but other states--and the administration--might want to take a lesson from how our state has benefited from renewable energy. Let's start with taxpayers and utility customers. Both have made gains from the enormous growth of solar. Poorer counties throughout rural middle and South Georgia are seeing land values rise as a result of solar technology installed in their area. Solar investments are boosting local economies due to payments from the leasing companies. This helps local tax revenue and trickles down to various county departments. Some of this land has been in agricultural and conservation easements that reduced the tax liability. Moving land into solar not only shifts it into a higher tax-paying category, but the land value itself goes up, yielding even more revenue. The grid and its customers benefit too. Adding diversity in our power generation helps support grid reliability and is a hedge against rising fuel costseither coal or natural gas. With solar spread throughout our state, we experience less wasted electricity as it travels through power lines because the electricity doesn't have to travel as far. And because solar is inexpensively produced in our state, Georgia Power's customers can benefit from lower electricity rates. Like many states, military bases play a vital role in economic development in Georgia. When our Public Service Commission found out that the Department of Defense wanted military bases to have a measure of energy independence, we worked with Georgia Power and allowed them to build projects that allowed those bases to host distributed sources of solar power. And there are discussions with the military on the "microgrid," which would allow bases to separate from the grid in times of emergency and maintain power supplies. These solar facilities help the Department of Defense meet their renewable energy goals while supporting the bases' resiliency objectives, enhancing the bases' position if the Base Closure Commission comes calling again to evaluate its long-term usefulness. Finally, solar jobs have been good for the Georgia job market. During the Great Recession, many construction jobs were lost. The growth of solar in Georgia allowed many experienced workers to learn a new skill. I attended a week long training program where installers were being trained, electricians were redirecting their skills, and sales people were learning about new products. According to the Solar Energy Industries Association, there are more than 236 solar companies at work in Georgia, and over $2 billion in total solar investment in the state. Overall, the solar industry employs almost 4,000 people in the state. As a state elected regulator, I am very happy with the progress our state has made in solar deployment-and my constituents are too. To best align with President Trump's goals, the administration should recognize the many benefits that renewables are bringing to communities. I hope the President will continue to encourage Georgia and other states to generate homegrown electricity. Commentary by Tim Echols, the current commissioner of the Georgia Public Service Commission. For more insight from CNBC contributors, follow @CNBCopinion on Twitter. An explosive report by the Washington Post claims that President Trump instructed his son Donald Trump Jr. to release a misleading statement about the latter's now-infamous June 2016 meeting with a Russian lawyer at Trump Tower. The report by Ashley Parker, Carol Leonnig, Philip Rucker, and Tom Hamburger says that President Trump "personally dictated" a response that intentionally omitted key facts about the meeting namely that it was set up to get dirt on Hillary Clinton and, as Donald Jr.'s email thread demonstrated, that the information was "part of Russia and its government's support for Mr. Trump." I reached out to 12 law professors and asked them about the potential legal implications of this report. In particular, I wanted to know if this advances the obstruction of justice case against President Trump. More from Vox: "It's just an embarrassing spectacle at this point": Matt Taibbi on Trump's America Genetically engineered humans will arrive sooner than you think. And we're not ready. China is perfecting a new method for suppressing dissent on the internet The overwhelming consensus is that if Trump did dictate false statements about his son's meeting in order to deceive the public and throw off investigators, it would add to a "growing mountain of evidence" that points to a broader cover-up. As Samuel Gross, a law professor at the University of Michigan, put it: "It's another brick that could someday be part of a wall that proves obstruction of justice." It would also, according to the Associate Dean of Yale Law School Asha Rangappa, "expose everyone who was present to questioning by Mueller's team about what they saw and heard during that discussion." Their full responses, lightly edited for clarity and style, are below. Asha Rangappa, associate dean, Yale Law School Ordering subordinates to lie in an ongoing federal investigation can indeed be grounds for obstruction of justice, and an agreement to go along with such a policy could be a conspiracy to obstruct or defraud the United States. However, in my experience, an FBI agent's best friend in these circumstances is 18 USC 1001, which makes it a crime even if you are not under oath to knowingly misrepresent a material fact in any matter within the jurisdiction of the government of the United States. False statements and obstruction of justice can often go hand in hand, but from a prosecutor's point of view it's easier to prove false statements because you only need to show that the person acted "knowingly and willfully," rather than "corruptly," which is the intent requirement for obstruction (and harder to prove). Also, it's pretty easy to catch someone in a lie. Usually, all the FBI needs to do is simply show up (often unexpectedly), and start asking questions, and sooner or later the subject particularly one who is, say, trying to protect their boss will dig themselves into a hole. What the president has done in allegedly dictating a false statement about his son's meeting with the Russians is to expose everyone who was present to questioning by Mueller's team about what they saw and heard during that discussion. If they lie and get caught, they'll be looking at jail time: Each false statement carries a penalty of up to five years in prison, and those can add up quickly. At that point, Mueller will have the leverage to offer immunity from prosecution if they provide information on other topics or individuals of interest to him in the Russia investigation. In short, a "policy of dishonesty" within the White House would be an investigative jackpot for Mueller and the cases he is building, and if there is such a policy, the latest news gives him yet another chance to exploit it. Joshua Dressler, law professor, Ohio State University Assuming the report proves accurate that is, that the president dictated the original explanation, one that proved to be inaccurate or at least misleading the question becomes whether he was aware that it was inaccurate. Did he know about the trail of emails demonstrating that the purpose for the meeting really was to get "dirt" on Clinton? It is hard to believe he was unaware of this. And the fact that he chose to dictate the statement rather than have his son be transparent in reporting the incident suggests he knew what he was doing. Based on that assumption, I definitely consider this another basis for the claim that the president was seeking to obstruct the investigation. The report most certainly justifies, again, an investigation of the president and not merely his son, son-in-law, and present and former members of his campaign and administration. Susan Low Bloch, law professor, Georgetown University Giving a statement that misleads the public about what the meeting was about suggests that those making the statement are trying to cover up the true purpose of the meeting which we now know from Trump Jr.'s emails was to get dirt on Hillary from the Russians in order to help Trump win the election. But we don't know what the president knew when he drafted the misleading statement for his son. Specifically, we don't know if Junior was misleading his father or whether his father was trying to mislead us, the public. If the president was deliberately trying to mislead us and trying to hide the fact that he knew the Russians were aiming to help him win the election, that adds to the evidence that Mueller is collecting concerning Trump collusion with the Russians. We know that Mueller is investigating the June 2016 meeting, and Trump's helping to draft a misleading statement for his son is evidence that Mueller will undoubtedly find informative. It adds to the suggestion that there is a deliberate intent to mislead and cover up both the meeting and Russian collaboration generally. Jed Shugerman, law professor, Fordham University The clearest case for Trump's obstruction of justice was firing [FBI Director James] Comey, because Trump himself admitted as much (to Lester Holt on NBC, to [Russian Foreign Minister Sergei] Lavrov and [now-former Russian Ambassador to the US Sergey] Kislyak in the Oval Office). There is nothing illegal about lying in itself, but this latest news adds to the growing mountain of evidence of a cover-up and "corrupt" intent required by the obstruction statute. But this news also raises a question: If President Trump was drafting responses and changing his son's own response about what happened in the meeting, doesn't that at least suggest he knew much more about the meeting than he had suggested? "Collusion" is not a crime, but conspiracy to hack computers is a felony. See the 1986 Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. Christopher Slobogin, law professor, Vanderbilt University Probably the most relevant federal statute is the false statement statute, which prohibits knowingly making a false statement about a matter material to an investigation by a federal agency. The prosecution would have to show Trump's statement was false, that he knew it was false or chose not to learn about its falsity and declared it with the intent to deceive. The government would also have to show the statement was "material" to a federal investigation that is, that it might influence such an investigation, although it need not show investigators were actually influenced, nor that Trump knew it might be material to their investigation. And conspiracy to obstruct occurs if Trump agreed with his son to make such false statements. So the key question is: Did Trump or his son intend to hide the fact that it involved a meeting about the subject matter of Mueller's investigation by making a statement they knew to be false? The statement says the meeting was "primarily" about adoption, and does not specifically state it had nothing to do with gleaning confidential information about the Democrats from people associated with the Russian government. Jens David Ohlin, law professor, Cornell University By itself it's not a crime to lie to the public, though in the past it's something that's come with some political risk. Whether that's still the case is uncertain. Legally, the president's attempt to dictate his son's response may be probative (meaning it constitutes evidence) as to motive in an obstruction of justice case developed by Mueller. In other words, if an obstruction of justice charge is based on the theory that Trump wanted to shut down the Russia investigation, and to do so corruptly, then the recent revelation might help show if there was any doubt that Trump wants and needs to downplay his campaign's involvement with Russia. It's one piece of the troubling mosaic that Mueller is likely assembling. Samuel Gross, law professor, University of Michigan When we speculate about investigations from afar, we often speak of "smoking guns," but most trials don't involve them. Legal claims are usually proven by compiling many incidents and details that together reveal a clear pattern. As [University of Texas Law School] Dean Charles McCormick wrote in 1954, "A brick is not a wall." On its own, this new item may not prove much, but it's another brick that could someday be part of a wall that proves obstruction of justice. Stephen Schulhofer, law professor, New York University Lying to the public or encouraging others to lie to the public is not in itself a crime. But if President Trump dictated or participated in drafting Trump Jr.'s misleading account of the June meeting (that qualification is important; news reports to that effect are attributed to anonymous sources), those actions might become relevant in a criminal prosecution. It would be crucial to show, first, whether the president knew the account to be disseminated publicly was false. The published news reports do not (yet) claim that he did. If the president knowingly helped disseminate a false or misleading account of the June meeting, those actions still would not, in themselves, constitute obstruction of justice, a charge that requires proof of intent. Such actions, however, could become very relevant toward proving intent to obstruct by interfering with Mueller's investigation. The misleading public account could have been intended to obstruct by diverting investigative attention away from that meeting, though you would have to be very naive to think that Mueller's investigators could be so easily diverted. More likely, such actions could be evidence of a strategy to help participants in the June meeting coordinate their stories, so that they don't contradict each other when called to testify under oath or even when interviewed by the FBI, because lying to the FBI is a crime in this situation even when not under oath. Lastly, the news reports suggest not only the possibility of obstruction on the president's part but the distinct crime of conspiracy to obstruct on the part of the group that discussed and finalized the misleading public account. If the necessary knowledge and intent are present, those who participated could be guilty of conspiracy to obstruct, and then the president himself could be guilty of additional crimes such as perjury or lying to the FBI committed by his co-conspirators in furtherance of the cover-up conspiracy. Victoria Nourse, law professor, Georgetown University First, in the court of public opinion (where it really matters): Trump can no longer do what [President Ronald] Reagan did and deny personal knowledge. The public basically "pardoned" Reagan even if his associates were indicted. Will they pardon someone who appears to be personally cultivating a pattern of deception? Doubtful, but that's a political judgment. Second, in a court of law: Conspiracy to commit murder does not require murder any more than conspiracy to obstruct justice requires actual obstruction of justice. We don't know whether there is an agreement here between Trump, his son, and his son-in-law to obstruct justice (the investigation of Russia allegations), but Trump said he fired Comey for that reason, and now he seems to be working with others to deceive the public about meetings with the Russians. If I were a prosecutor, I would sure think that was evidence of obstruction and an intent to obstruct. Keith Whittington, politics professor, Princeton University Although issuing misleading or false statements to the media relating to the Russia probe seems like a stretch for a prosecution of a president for obstruction of justice, it certainly poses difficulties for the White House. It gives further evidence that the president has committed himself to a Clintonian strategy of impeding and undermining the investigation as much as possible. To the extent that the president seems to be personally involved in developing strategies to mislead the public and members of Congress (at best) on how his presidential campaign interacted with representatives of the Russian government, this should hardly be reassuring to legislators assessing his level of cooperation with the Mueller probe. Miriam Baer, law professor, Brooklyn Law School The incident provides yet another data point on the president's state of mind. That the president would dictate his son's statement to the press and do so in a misleading and evasive manner demonstrates his interest in and attempt to control the situation. The president can certainly offer his own reasons for why he did so, but the conduct provides additional evidence of a culpable state of mind. It isn't the only evidence, and it isn't even the most important piece of evidence, but it certainly is relevant, and it suggests additional avenues of inquiry. Diane Marie Amann, law professor, University of Georgia Whether an elected official's lies uttered himself, or by another at his direction amount to the federal crime of obstruction of justice hinges on intent. If the liar's purpose is to hinder a criminal investigation, then, yes, lies may violate the law. That purpose may be proved not only by the official's own admission but also, circumstantially, by treating the lies as one link in a chain of evidence of illegal intent. In a given case, other links might include firing a top law enforcement officer, or refusing to hand over documents sought by investigators. But there may be a catch: It is not clear whether Mueller's investigation is a "proceeding" as required by 18 USC 1505, a key obstruction statute. Acts that do not meet a precise statutory definition still may place an elected official in jeopardy. The Constitution allows impeachment for "high crimes and misdemeanors," a phrase understood to encompass more than felonies defined by Congress. Obstruction thus was alleged without mention of statutes in the articles of impeachment that the House approved against President Clinton (whom the Senate chose not to convict). Such proceedings, as Yale Law Professor Charles Black indicated in his 1974 Impeachment: A Handbook, would focus on how lies affect the integrity of the government; that is, the integrity of the laws the president has sworn to faithfully execute. The inquiry might have the feel of policy, yet it is authorized by the highest law in the land. In Black's words: "Impeachment is a matter of law, foursquare and all the way, and lawyers must run the process, as surely as doctors must run the operating room." Small businesses are often on the front lines of immigration enforcement. And that front is heating up. More than 65,000 people have been arrested by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (or ICE) since President Trump took office, a nearly 40 percent increase over the same period last year. The agency's acting director, Thomas Homan, has made clear that he's not just going after criminals anymore: "No population is off the table," at home or in the workplace. So it's not surprising that more than 20 percent of small businesses responding to a CNBC/SurveyMonkey Small Business Survey expect changes in immigration policy to have a negative effect on their businesses. In certain sectors and communities, that sentiment would likely be even higher. No population is off the table. Thomas Homan acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement In this environment, it's important that employers understand their basic rights and responsibilities when they encounter immigration agents so they can protect their rights and the rights of all their employees, regardless of immigration status. Immigration enforcement can affect a business and its employees in several ways. Immigration agents can raid a business, and such raids can target any establishment, from the smallest restaurant to some of the country's largest farms, warehouses and factories. In 2008, for example, a raid of a meatpacking plant in Postville, Iowa, involved helicopters and close to 400 arrests. More recently, in February, a raid of several restaurants in Mississippi resulted in more than 50 arrests. Immigration agents also can target businesses for I-9 audits (employers are required to complete a Form I-9 to verify the work authorization of new hires). And immigration agents will sometimes visit a business looking for specific individuals. More from the CNBC/SurveyMonkey Small Business Survey: Two big Trump campaign promises voters won't judge him on Why business owners are bullish, but not hiring For young entrepreneurs, business and politics don't mix Unfortunately, we've learned the hard way that ICE agents often abuse their authority and routinely violate people's constitutional rights, whether at people's homes, on the streets or in someone's workplace. A 2009 report looked closely at home raids and found an "unacceptable level of illegal entries by ICE agents during home raid operations in violation of the Fourth Amendment." It found that despite a legal requirement that ICE have some reasonable suspicion before detaining or questioning individuals, the large majority of arrest reports analyzed stated "no basis for the initial seizure." Moreover, the data revealed possible patterns of racial profiling, confirming community complaints that ICE agents targeted individuals "based simply on their ethnic appearance or limited English proficiency." A little preparation, however, can go a long way in helping employers protect their businesses and employees from the intimidation and disruption of immigration enforcement actions. Employers should prepare a written response plan in advance and practice this response just like businesses prepare for fires with fire drills. Employers should also educate their employees that they have a right to remain silent if questioned by ICE. Any information shared with an ICE agent can be used against the employer or employee, and individuals always have the right to remain silent and ask for an attorney. Amid the rising threat from North Korea, support from politicians is building for more spending on U.S. missile defense and not just ground systems but adding a space-based intercept layer. "You have both lawmakers and the Pentagon taking a hard look at the issue," said Cowen defense analyst Roman Schweizer. A measure in the Senate has more than two dozen co-sponsors and would upgrade the current ground-based interceptor system used to protect the homeland and also order concept work on a space-based sensor layer that can track missile threats. Another plan, by Republican Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, calls for a space-based interceptor system to defeat the nuclear threat from North Korea. On Friday, North Korea tested an intercontinental ballistic missile that some experts believe could put half, if not most, of the continental U.S. at risk. And there have been reports this week the regime may be close to conducting its sixth nuclear test. Experts believe Iran could have an ICBM capability similar to North Korea within a few years, as just last week it demonstrated a capability to successfully launch missiles as well as satellite-carrying rockets that some see as a precursor to long-range ballistic missile weapon capability. "You can't help but read the newspaper and see what North Korea is doing ... and ask are we postured well enough and will we remain sufficiently defended into the coming years should North Korea enter into serial production of these things," said Thomas Karako, senior fellow with the International Security Program and director of the Missile Defense Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank. The Senate version of the 2018 National Defense Authorization Act, a bill setting policy and a roadmap for defense spending for the next fiscal year, does include a recommendation that the Pentagon increase the homeland-focused Ground-based Midcourse Defense system. "Congress could decide to act more forcefully over the next few weeks or months as we head into the fall," said Schweizer. A $696 billion NDAA passed by the full House last month requires the Pentagon to start developing "a space-based sensor layer for ballistic missile defense." The full Senate has yet to vote on the NDAA. A major hurdle still remains: how to fund some of the next-generation missile defense plans, particularly space-based sensors or space-based interceptor carrier satellites. A report from the National Academy of Sciences in 2012 forecast the cost of a space-based missile defense could approach a whopping $300 billion, or about 10 times as much as other alternatives. On the Senate side, Republican Dan Sullivan of Alaska, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, is leading the bipartisan effort to potentially more than double the number of anti-ballistic missile interceptors in the nation's current GMD system. Sullivan's measure, known as the Advancing America's Missile Defense Act, would authorize development of improved kill vehicles that intercept the warheads in space and order concept work on a space-based sensor layer that can track threats. Also, it requires evaluation and cost analysis of a transportable ground-based interceptor and the identification of sites, including in the eastern U.S., as well as an accelerated pace of missile defense testing. The Sullivan legislation has at least 27 Senate co-sponsors, according to the senator's office. The U.S. hopes to have a fleet of 44 ground-based interceptors on the GMD by the end of the calendar year (most in Alaska but a handful in California). That's up from 36 interceptors today, and Sullivan's plan would add 28 more interceptors and stockpile another 14 more. That would require the military to plan to have up to 100 interceptors spread across the U.S. The ground-based interceptor missiles are believed to run $70 million to $100 million apiece, meaning if the Pentagon does end up doubling the size of the program and expanding it beyond California and Alaska, it could provide a meaningful boost to the bottom line of Boeing , the prime contractor on the GMD. Also, it would be good news for Raytheon , maker of the "kill vehicle" and two other major GMD program contractors, Northrop Grumman and Orbital ATK . The development and sustainment contract on the current Boeing-led GMD program is scheduled to end in December 2018. That said, Lt. Gen. Sam Greaves, director of the U.S. Missile Defense Agency, told CNBC the agency plans "to extend key portions of the contract" that will allow completion of a redesigned kill vehicle and integration of the radar. The extension of the GMD program means Boeing will continue doing work as prime contractor through around the mid-2020s, but then MDA wants three smaller competitions to eventually move into one contract for system engineering and testing, another for maintenance and sustainment of the existing fleet, and a third contract for what the agency calls an "all up round," or new ground-based interceptor development and production. Greaves said splitting up the contracts on the follow-on GMD "allows for the flexible development of the next-generation of homeland missile defense capabilities." At the same time, Cruz, the former GOP presidential hopeful, wrote in an op-ed in Tuesday's Washington Post that the U.S. needs a space-based interceptor system to defeat the nuclear threat from North Korea. In 2009, the Bush administration advocated a space "test bed" of interceptors as a defensive layer but it ultimately was rejected. During the mid-1980s under President Ronald Reagan, there was a Strategic Defense Initiative commonly referred to as "Star Wars." It was eventually abandoned, but not before the U.S. spent more than $30 billion. Clearly, the program would still have a significant cost but there's much more knowledge today that could potentially reduce the risk that the system won't provide sufficient protection. "We must take missile defense into space," wrote Cruz. "Only with a serious space-based capability can we target missiles in their boost phase and maximize discrimination of decoys during midcourse flight." North Korea is expected to ramp up its ICBM development program, including incorporating the use of "decoys and other penetration aids to defeat missile defense," according to a blog posting Tuesday by John Schilling, a missile expert at 38 North, a program of the U.S.-Korea Institute at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies in Washington. Playing out in the background of these proposals, though, is the recognition that we may be in the early days of a race centered around space-based ballistic missile defenses. "While ground-based radars will remain a critical part of the missile defense architecture, we're going to have to go to space," said Karako. "This has been a refrain for a long time and this is frankly the time to do it. The last five administrations have had a space-based sensor layer as a critical part of our long-range missile defense architecture on paper. But none of them have actually fielded it." Advanced space-based sensors could provide defense not only against ballistic missiles but against other weapons such as long-range hypersonic strike vehicles now in development by the Russians and Chinese. Russia's Tass News agency quoted a defense ministry official recently as saying the country hopes to have hypersonic weapons in its arsenal as early as 2020. Demonstration satellites have revealed in tests the "extraordinary capability" of space-based sensors, according to Karako. "The technology has evolved, the threat has evolved, and the utility of space has always been there, but it is even more acute now," he said. Retirement account balances have hit record highs again but now isn't the time to get complacent. For the third quarter in a row, retirement account balances reached new highs, according to fresh data from Fidelity. In the second quarter of 2017, the average 401(k) reached $97,700, and the average individual retirement account, $100,200. (See chart below for details on balance changes over time.) "The market has been pretty consistently climbing over the past year," said Meghan Murphy, a director at Fidelity Investments. The numbers also show the power of long-term, consistent saving, she said. Over the past 10 years, workers regularly saving in a 401(k) have seen their average balance grow from $78,800 to $266,100, according to Fidelity and nearly half of that growth comes from employee contributions. Millennials, in particular, have seen a significant boost, with their average account balance rising from about $7,000 to almost $110,000 over the same period. "They'll never look back and regret those contributions," Murphy said. The Trump administration will be taking aim at affirmative action programs it believes "discriminate against white applicants," reports The New York Times. But if the Justice Department blames affirmative action for the fact that it's difficult to get into a selective college, its outrage may be misplaced. Undergraduate populations at top schools are not that diverse. In fact, they are strikingly homogeneous: Largely upper-middle-class or rich. In short, it's wealthy kids, not minorities, who are disproportionately represented at colleges, and elite institutions especially. "At 38 colleges in America, including five in the Ivy League Dartmouth, Princeton, Yale, Penn and Brown more students came from the top one percent of the income scale than from the entire bottom 60 percent," reports The New York Times. It also points out that, at every one of the top 65 U.S. universities, the median parent income is over $100,000. That figure ranges from $272,000 at Washington University in St. Louis to $104,900 at UCLA. That's why Richard V. Reeves, author of the new book "Dream Hoarders" and a senior fellow in Economic Studies and co-director of the Center on Children and Families at the Brookings Institute, tells CNBC Make It that "the affirmative action we should be most worried about is the one for legacies." He argues that the preferences given to the children of alumni, as well as the other ways wealthier families elbow out competitors to make room for their own kids amounts to "cheating." "About half of the students at the most selective colleges, around 480 institutions, come from the upper-middle class. The more selective the college, the greater its dominance," writes Reeves in "Dream Hoarders." Samsung has launched a high-end dual-screen flip phone in China which contains many of the company's latest features. The Samsung G-9298, which is also called the Leader 8 or Leadership 8 when translated from Chinese, has two 4.2-inch screens, one on the front and one on the inner side of the device. It also boasts a 12 megapixel main camera and 5 megapixel front camera. Samsung hasn't made a big official announcement but a product page on its Chinese website lists the details of the device. Several reports have suggested that the device runs a version of Google's Android mobile operating system. The South Korean electronics giant has packed the device with many of the features found in its flagship Galaxy S8 phone. For example, it has wireless charging, fingerprint sensor, and Samsung Pay. It's not the first flip phone from Samsung in recent times. It launched a very similar device called the W2017 earlier this year in China. Samsung is perhaps trying to appeal to nostalgic consumers wanting a piece of the 2000s. But it could also be an attempt by the firm to differentiate itself in a market that is incredibly competitive and where it has been struggling. Samsung accounted for just 3 percent of smartphone shipments in China in the second quarter of 2017, down from 7 percent in the same period last year. The company has not given any details of availability outside of China, when the device will be available, or how much it will cost. Two members of the Senate Judiciary Committee moved Thursday to protect Special Counsel Robert Mueller from being fired by President Donald Trump, putting forth new legislation that aims to ensure the integrity of current and future independent investigations. Republican Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina and Democratic Sen. Chris Coons of Delaware said they introduced legislation letting any special counsel for the Department of Justice challenge his or her removal in court. A three-judge panel would review the dismissal within 14 days of the challenge. The bill would apply retroactively to May 17, 2017 the day Mueller was appointed by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein to investigate allegations of Russian meddling in the 2016 election and possible ties between Russia and Trump's presidential campaign. "This is something that lives long beyond this" situation involving Mueller, Tillis told reporters. "And I think it's also something that begins to re-establish the reputation for independence in the Department of Justice." Tillis was among many GOP senators who defended Attorney General Jeff Sessions after Trump criticized him for recusing himself from the Justice Department's investigation into suspected Russian interference in the election. Trump has threatened to fire Sessions, a former Alabama senator. "So this is really woven into a series of things that I think we should do to help re-establish the solid reputation of DOJ," he said. Tillis said introducing the measure Thursday would prompt discussions among Republican senators about the move over the Senate's summer recess, which was expected to begin at the end of the week. Mueller was appointed as special counsel following Trump's abrupt firing of FBI Director James Comey. Mueller, who was Comey's predecessor as FBI director, has assembled a team of prosecutors and lawyers with experience in financial fraud, national security and organized crime to investigate contacts between Moscow and the Trump campaign. Trump has been critical of Mueller since his appointment, and the president's legal team is looking into potential conflicts surrounding the team Mueller has hired, including the backgrounds of members and political contributions by some members of his team to Hillary Clinton. He has also publicly warned Mueller that he would be out of bounds if he dug into the Trump family's finances. Mueller has strong support on Capitol Hill. Senators in both parties have expressed concerns that Trump may try to fire Mueller and have warned him not to do so. "Ensuring that the special counsel cannot be removed improperly is critical to the integrity of his investigation," Coons said. Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, another member of the judiciary panel, said last week that he was working on a similar bill that would prevent the firing of a special counsel without judicial review. Graham said then that firing Mueller "would precipitate a firestorm that would be unprecedented in proportions." Democratic Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey is also working on Graham's legislation, according to Booker's office. Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, has yet to signal support for either measure. The Tillis and Coons bill would allow review after the special counsel had been dismissed. If the panel found there was no good cause for the counsel's removal, the person would be immediately reinstated. The legislation would also codify existing Justice Department regulations that a special counsel can only be removed for misconduct, dereliction of duty, incapacity, conflict of interest or other good cause, such as a violation of departmental policies. In addition, only the attorney general or the most senior Justice Department official in charge of the matter could fire the special counsel. In the case of the current investigation, Rosenstein is charged with Mueller's fate because Attorney General Jeff Sessions recused himself from all matters having to do with the Trump-Russia investigation. That was the message delivered by Republican Sen. James Risch of Idaho and Democratic Sen. Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire on CNBC's Power Lunch on Thursday both of whom serve on the U.S. Senate Committee on Small Business & Entrepreneurship. The senators cited an idea that's been out-of-favor on Capitol Hill: Bipartisanship. To pass tax reform that will spur business growth, politicians in Washington, D.C., need to follow two simple orders: Don't do what the Democrats did in writing the Affordable Care Act back in 2009, and don't do what the Republicans just tried to do in failing to repeal and replace President Obama's signature health care legislation. For legislation on tax reform to be successful, Shaheen said that it needs to go through regular orders and processes in the Senate. "Have committee hearings to listen to what people have to say, to listen to the experts and then to work together in a bipartisan way," Shaheen told CNBC. "That's what the American people want and I think that's what the majority of our colleagues want." Sen. Risch sees clear lessons to be learned from health care on both sides of the aisle. "With all due respect, in 2009, it wasn't done through regular order," he said, referring to the introduction of the Affordable Care Act. And when the Republican-controlled Congress tried to repeal the ACA, "We didn't do it through regular order." "Neither one of them worked very well, everybody is in agreement," Risch said. After the Republican bid to repeal the Affordable Care Act failed during a dramatic vote last week, the two senators called for a re-think on how legislation is drafted and passed in a politically polarized climate. President Trump has made it clear his administration next intends to tackle tax reform. According to a recent CNBC/SurveyMonkey Small Business Survey, taxes are cited by 25 percent of business owners as the most critical issue. Taxes are the No. 1 issue cited by entrepreneurs regulation, customer demand and the cost of employee health care all tied for second at 14 percent. Passing tax reform will require the cooperation of an exhausted and divided Congress. "We just went through the health care thing and people are tired," Risch said. "This was a very difficult exercise." More from the CNBC/SurveyMonkey Small Business Survey: Most business owners are optimistic on Trump rewriting tax code The one promise Trump can't afford to break is tax reform Business owners must prepare for Trump's immigration crackdown The opacity of tax reform also vexes the senators. "I don't know if we can agree or disagree at this point because we haven't seen the details," Shaheen said. "Everyone wants answers, particularly when it comes to what the spending will look like and what a tax reform package is going to look like and what the debt ceiling is going to look like," Risch said. The Small Business & Entrepreneurship Committee is a bipartisan Senate group set up to research and address the problems facing small businesses in America. Risch was named as chairman of the committee in January, and Shaheen serves as ranking member on the committee. By Mike Juang, Special to CNBC.com The family office of Steven Cohen, the billionaire banned from running a hedge fund in the US, has run into a regulatory roadblock in the UK. Point72, which manages about $11bn of Mr Cohen's personal fortune, has been told in recent months that it would not receive regulatory approval in the UK by the Financial Conduct Authority, said people with knowledge of the situation. One of the people added that it was not clear what Point72 was seeking approval for, but regulatory lawyers said the main reason family offices seek FCA authorisation is to accept and manage other investors' money. Family offices are allowed to trade in the UK without the FCA's blessing, but must be approved to oversee anyone else's money. According to regulatory lawyers, family offices may also need FCA approval in order to implement certain changes to the way a fund is structured. Mr Cohen has given indications he may be planning to raise money for a hedge fund launch next year. He appeared at the annual hedge fund conference Salt in Las Vegas this year, even though he was not scheduled to speak, and told the New York Times in an interview last year he was "leaning" towards opening to outside investors. The 61-year-old has been focused on overseeing Point72 since his fund, SAC Capital, was banned by the US Securities and Exchange Commission from managing clients' money after admitting to trading on inside information. A spokesman for Point72 said Mr Cohen has not yet decided whether he will reopen to manage outside money next year, and declined to comment on the FCA's position. The notification by the FCA does not represent a formal refusal for regulatory approval. Instead, the regulator seeks to give those applying an indication as to whether or not they will be approved, which means that official rejections are rare. The FCA declined to comment. Once the SEC lifts its ban on Mr Cohen next year, Point72 would have to again seek authorisation from the FCA before opening to outside money in the UK if Mr Cohen decides to reopen to investors.Point72 opened the London office for its family business early last year and hired Will Tovey, formerly the head of Barclays' equities distribution business in Europe, to run it. Point72 president Douglas Haynes said the office was launching with seven analysts and portfolio managers, but could grow to as large as 70 to 80 people. Earlier this year, Point72 hired Drew Gillanders, a merger arbitrageur at Och-Ziff Capital Management, to work in London. SAC Capital pleaded guilty to insider trading in 2013 and paid a record $1.8bn in fines. Mr Cohen was never personally charged with insider trading but several of his portfolio managers were convicted of the crime and sentenced to prison terms. Mr Cohen has tried to rehabilitate his image through Point72 by using social media, hosting Smart Woman Securities and setting up a trading academy to train college graduates on becoming analysts for the 1,100-employee family office in Stamford, Connecticut. In April last year Mr Cohen began laying the groundwork for a return to the hedge fund industry by opening a vehicle called Stamford Harbor Capital, which shares the same management team as Point72 and is located next door. A spokesman for Stamford Harbor said at the time that while Mr Cohen owned the entity, he would not supervise the fund because of the ban. More from the Financial Times: Donald Trump backs plan to cut US immigration in half Supreme Court gives Trump partial travel ban victory Eurozone officials warn on Greece statistics trial 'farce' Tesla may not have that big of a lead over U.S. and European manufacturers in electric car technology, agreed Oppenheimer analyst Colin Rusch. He was asked what he thought about comments earlier this week from AutoNation Chairman and CEO Mike Jackson who said within the next year or two "we'll see incredible electric vehicles from every manufacturer." "Not these modified things that are half and half but real genuine all-electric vehicles that are attractive, dynamic, affordable, fun to drive," Jackson said on CNBC's "Squawk Box" on Wednesday. "We've passed a tipping point on electrification. It's coming and it's coming around the world." Rusch said on the program Thursday: "I would agree with that." "There's been a huge amount of technology investment on behalf of the major OEMs [original equipment manufacturers] in Europe and the U.S. along with Tesla. It's a very secret time for that technology," said Rusch, a senior research analyst and managing director at Oppenheimer. "People are doing testing, not sharing data, and the actual performance of these vehicles is really uncertain right now except for the folks who see this inside," he added. Jackson's prediction may not come to pass that soon. Last week, a Japanese daily newspaper reported Toyota aims to begin selling in 2022 an electric car powered by a new type of battery that significantly increases driving range and reduces recharging time. Other automakers such as BMW are working on developing all-solid-state batteries, eyeing mass production in the next 10 years. Shares of Tesla were higher in premarket trading Thursday, one day after the company reported a narrower-than-expected second-quarter loss, boosted by revenue that nearly doubled. Tesla's stock has gained 52 percent since the start of the year. Tesla CEO Elon Musk on a conference call following the earnings release said "people should absolutely have zero concern" about the company's previously announced targets for the new, cheaper Model 3 electric sedan. Analysts have expressed concerns about Tesla meeting its targets. Rusch said as long as Tesla continues to make progress on targets, the stock will move higher. "What they have done is pretty impressive despite the very aggressive targets that they put out for them," he added There will be a flurry of flak hitting the new immigration policy endorsed by the White House. President Donald Trump announced yesterday that he supported legislation that would drastically slash legal immigration to the United States by up to fifty percent in the coming decade. The bill known as the Reforming American Immigration for a Strong Economy (RAISE) Act, introduced by Senators Tom Cotton (R-Arkansas) and David Perdue (R-Georgia) would end the visa diversity lottery that allocates 50,000 visas each year, limit refugees to 50,000 per year, and institute a skill based formula for determining whether to allow immigrants to enter our country. In sum, the bill would radically reshape America's immigration system for the worse. The bill should be opposed for three reasons: it's bad for business, demographics, and our "melting pot" culture. First, the bill would further slow American entrepreneurialism. The number of startups in America is at a forty-year low. Immigrants are inherent risk takers, having left behind the familiarity of their homeland for the possibility of success in the United States. America's workforce is 15 percent composed of immigrants, yet they make up about 25 percent of entrepreneurs, and they account for about 25 percent of patent filings. Some 3.6 million workers are employed at Fortune 500 companies started by immigrants.These companies include Google, co-founded by Sergey Brin from Russia; eBay, founded by Pierre Omidyar from France; and even AT&T, founded by Alexander Graham Bell from Scotland. These startup founders may never have passed this skill-based test that the RAISE Act mandates. Such a test would have a chilling effect on overall immigration, at a time when America needs more risk takers. To be sure, a meritocratic system has appeal, and those who support the RAISE Act cite the fact that Canada and Australia already employ such a skill based system. But these countries already accept more than twice the number of immigrants than the United States, on a per capita basis. If a skill-based policy could become part of a compassionate immigration policy, that would be both rational and in keeping with America's moral idealism. But there's little chance of that in the current anti-immigration climate. Apple CEO Tim Cook delivers brief remarks as U.S. President Donald Trump (R) and White House Director of the Office of American Innovation and the president's son-in-law Jared Kushner listen during a meeting of the American Technology Council in the State Dining Room of the White House June 19, 2017 in Washington, DC. For now, the effort is still early, but the huddle marks the next step for Kushner's effort to modernize government after Trump convened the chief executives of Apple, Facebook, Google and other Silicon Valley staples at the White House in June part of the administration's push that month with "tech week." As part of those centers, Kushner and his aides with the Office of American Innovation asked the tech industry for its help potentially through a system where leading tech engineers can do brief "tours of duty" advising the U.S. government on some of its digital challenges. On a private call with those and other major tech companies Thursday, top advisers to the president, including Jared Kushner, announced the White House would be forming small "centers of excellence," teams focused on reducing regulation while trying to get federal agencies to embrace cloud computing and make more of their data available for private-sector use, according to four sources with knowledge of the matter. The White House has asked the likes of Apple, Amazon, Oracle and Qualcomm to lend some of their digital expertise to Washington, D.C. in the coming months to help the Trump administration rethink the way that federal agencies use technology . Tech leaders who joined the president, like Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, specifically encouraged Trump to make it easier for companies to sell off-the-shelf technologies to the feds. Others, like John Doerr, a top Silicon Valley venture capitalist, touted the need for regulators to release more of their data so that startups including, perhaps, some of his own can use those insights in areas like health care. Two months later, those leaders' representatives joined a Thursday call with the White House, as did officials from Apple, Google, IBM, Intel, Mastercard, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Microsoft, Oracle and SAP, sources said. More from Recode: Along with a preview of the administration's new plans to convene "centers of excellence," they heard from Reed Cordish, one of Trump's top tech aides, who pledged that the White House would continue its efforts to boost computer science education. Sources said the administration specifically is exploring how to expand Trump's recent executive order targeting apprenticeship programs to include K-12 education. Computer science is an issue Apple CEO Tim Cook raised with the president during tech week: The tech executive specifically floated coding education as a requirement in schools. For now, though, it's unclear how the White House's newest plan meshes with existing government teams, including 18F, an initiative launched by former President Barack Obama to help the lumbering federal bureaucracy improve the way it buys and uses technology. A spokesman for Kushner's Office of American Innovation did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Earlier Thursday, though, Kushner's office helped Trump unveil a new set of tech tools at the Department of Veterans Affairs an agency long maligned for its long wait times and tech troubles. Flanked by Trump at the White House, VA officials demonstrated their new telehealth app, which allows medical professionals in its network to meet and diagnose their veteran patients over video that's streamed to smartphones, tablets or desktop. The system has been in development since last year, and the department will aim to roll it out nationwide over the course of 2017. "We're launching the mobile app that will allow VA patients to schedule and change their appointments at VA facilities using their smartphones," Trump said. "So this is something they were never able to do. Technology has given us this advantage, but unfortunately we have not taken advantage of that until now." By Tony Romm, Re/code.net. CNBC's parent NBCUniversal is an investor in Recode's parent Vox, and the companies have a content-sharing arrangement. Attention spans may well be shortening, but evidence suggests that staying engaged and focused on the long term still pays. Literally. Investors are not immune to an epidemic of short-termism. Figures from the World Bank indicate that average holding periods for stocks are four times shorter today than they were in 1980. Investors are also more risk averse. BlackRock analysis reveals that risk taking in the market is well below previous peaks. And fund flows suggest the post-crisis preference for bonds over stocks has yet to reverse. These tendencies are no doubt exacerbated by a sustained period of short-term political risks over the past year. But the net result of playing it short and safe is that investors may be compromising their long-term goals. This week, the Trump administration took the rare step of declaring Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro a "dictator," freezing his assets and banning Americans from doing business with him. It looked like a big deal. Phones pinged with alerts, and cable news channels carried the announcement live. Maduro was now the fourth member of an exclusive club of sanctioned dictators, joining Syria's Bashar al-Assad, North Korea's Kim Jong Un and Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe. "Maduro is not just a bad leader; he is now a dictator," President Donald Trump said in a statement. I watched this movie again and again in the three years I spent covering Venezuela for the Associated Press. It's always the same script and the same ending: Maduro blasts the U.S. for its attempted meddling, then goes back to the business of presiding over his country's economic collapse. This time around, the U.S. tried to punish Maduro by freezing his American assets; he has none. It forbid Americans from doing business with him as an individual something he hasn't seemed interested in doing but still allowed them to contract with Venezuela as a country. "Maduro's going to have a good laugh with this," said David Smilde, a Tulane University expert on Venezuela. "It's not going to amount to a lot." Venezuela is crossing clear lines. Maduro, the hand-picked successor to late President Hugo Chavez, has grown deeply unpopular since taking power in 2013. People are hungry. Hospitals are in ruins. Four months of daily protests have left more than 120 dead and brought on international condemnation. And over the weekend, Maduro dealt a potentially fatal blow to the country's once-stable democracy: He held an election creating a new, all-powerful congress stacked with his supporters. His wife was elected; so was his son. Streets were mostly empty the day of the election, but Maduro said 40 percent of the country voted. International elections observers were banned. U.S. sanctions already in place didn't stop any of this from happening. They've only helped Maduro argue that his country is in shambles not because of his own mismanagement, but because Americans are out to get him, sabotaging the economy at every turn. Take what happened in 2015, when the Obama administration declared that Venezuela was "a threat to national security" and sanctioned seven top officials for human rights violations. Maduro, whose approval ratings had been dismal, got one of the biggest bumps of his presidency. The sanctions let him point to an example of imperialist bullying. People rallied around him against this outsider intrusion. Maduro rewarded all seven officials with promotions and covered the capital in anti-sanction billboards that still adorn parts of Caracas, looming over food lines and formations of riot police The Obama administration saw how Maduro used the sanctions to his advantage and didn't issue any more. The country's economy continued to fall apart three-quarters of Venezuelans were losing weight and 80 percent of medicines were in short supply. With the arrival of the Trump administration this year, sanctions resumed. Each time, they gave Maduro an opportunity to blame someone other than himself for the country's descent. When the U.S. sanctioned Venezuela's vice president for alleged involvement in the drug trade, Maduro responded by giving his second-in-command even more power. When the U.S. sanctioned members of Venezuela's Supreme Court for abolishing its Congress, Maduro praised them in a public ceremony. When the U.S. sanctioned more senior Venezuelan officials for corruption, Maduro gave them all special swords on live television. So it makes sense that when U.S. Congress members and think tanks reacted to Monday's sanctions by issuing stern statements, Venezuelans were mostly cracking jokes. The U.S. hasn't hit Maduro where it truly would hurt the oil trade. Almost all of Venezuela's export revenue comes from oil, and the U.S. is its most important customer. An oil embargo would be as dramatic as Monday's sanctions were anticlimactic. The Maduro administration might implode, and the country's hunger crisis could escalate to famine. The U.S. doesn't necessarily want to drop that kind of a bomb. It doesn't want to create a refugee crisis in a country three hours from Miami; already, Venezuela exports more asylum cases than any other nation. Not to mention, an embargo would hike gas prices for American drivers. So for now, Maduro is thumbing his nose. "Sanction anyone you want!" he shouted during an address on state television Monday. "The Venezuelan people have decided to be free, and I've decided to be the president of a free people." The camera panned to an audience of top officials, many sanctioned themselves, all applauding. A minister fiddled with an expensive-looking watch, then went back to clapping. One thing about those other three men in the sanctioned-leader club: They're all still in power, and living large. Last year Zimbabwe's President Mugabe celebrated his 92nd birthday with a million-dollar party, and jetted around the world to places like Cancun and New York while his people starved. Toward the end of his speech Monday, Maduro issued some sanctions of his own, on private television stations that had not given his Sunday election positive coverage, and said his opponents would get what was coming to them. Early Tuesday, the secret police arrested two high-profile opposition leaders and took them to military prison. Another line crossed. Technology is proving a major battleground for China and the United States, as both sides vie to protect their economic and national security interests. As the Trump administration moves to take on China over intellectual property, Washington will find it has limited firepower. Beijing has a strong grip on American technology companies, and global trade rules could favor China. Beijing has forced a long list of American companies to enter joint ventures or share research with Chinese players, part of a broader push to create its own technology giants. From makers of smartphones to chips to electric cars, American businesses have reluctantly agreed, fearful of losing access to China, which has the second-largest economy in the world. China's ambitions have set off alarms in Washington, with concerns on both sides of the aisle. Robert E. Lighthizer, the United States trade representative, is now preparing a trade case accusing China of extensive violations of intellectual property, according to people with detailed knowledge of the case. But China can play a strong defense. The country has broad latitude, under special rules it negotiated with the World Trade Organization, to maintain restrictions within its market. "The problem is that U.S. trade negotiators agreed to provisions allowing China to limit market access for U.S. companies unless they engaged in joint ventures," said Michael R. Wessel, a member of the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, which Congress created to monitor the relationship between the two countries. More from The New York Times: Trump administration is said to open broad inquiry into China's trade practices Is China outsmarting America in A.I.? America's competitors angle for Silicon Valley's business "Potential Chinese partners demand the family jewels," he said. "Companies can say no, but too many give in to Chinese pressure to make a quick buck." The current trade frictions trace back to the Clinton administration. When China was entering the W.T.O. in 1999 and 2000, American negotiators gave Beijing some leeway, a position later supported by the administration of George W. Bush. As a developing country, China was allowed extra protections, such as requirements that companies in critical industries work with Chinese partners. China, in return, promised to shed the extra rules gradually as its economy matured. But Beijing did not open up, even as China evolved into an economic powerhouse. Quite the opposite has happened under President Xi Jinping, who has pursued a more nationalistic agenda than his reform-minded predecessors. China now sees the technology sector as a critical piece of its industrial policy a policy that Beijing is aggressively enlisting American tech giants to support and that the leadership will most likely go all out to protect. Beijing's demands have been partly driven by security concerns, particularly after disclosures by Edward J. Snowden, the former National Security Agency contractor, of electronic spying by the United States on China's rapid military buildup. China has also been explicit about its economic motives, seeking to dominate fast-growing global industries that could create millions of well-paid jobs for a generation of increasingly well-educated young Chinese. In several cases, China's strategy to control technology approaches the kind of oversight most countries reserve for industries serving the military or government. New Chinese rules often force foreign tech companies into partnerships with local companies in part to gain expertise, in part to assert control. Other guidance from the government has indicated that companies must invest more in China to continue to have access to the market. Apple has opened research and development centers in the country as part of a new charm campaign. Two significant Trump administration economic policy debates one on the federal debt ceiling, the other on plans for tax reform have been settled. On the debt limit, White House budget director Mick Mulvaney says the entire administration now wants Congress to enact a "clean" increase in the debt ceiling. Mulvaney has previously called for tying negotiated spending cuts to an increase, but he told a small group of journalists Thursday that Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin's call for an unencumbered increase has triumphed in internal deliberations. Congress must raise the debt ceiling soon in order to protect U.S. creditworthiness. On taxes, Mulvaney said the forthcoming overhaul plan being crafted with House and Senate leaders will not increase any current tax rates including the 39.6 percent top rate for the highest earners. White House strategist Stephen Bannon has floated the idea of an increase in the top rate to blunt Democratic attacks about giveaways to the rich. But the White House economic team has discarded that possibility, Mulvaney said. The budget chief also praised the early turn toward greater White House discipline under new Chief of Staff John Kelly. Among other effects, Mulvaney said, the retired Marine General has tightened up monitoring of meetings and conversations with the president. When he talks to Trump on the phone now, Mulvaney said, Kelly is on the line. When he walks into the Oval Office, Kelly is there keeping track of who goes in and out, he said. watch now China is bracing for a clash with the U.S. when President Donald Trump announces potentially aggressive trade measures against Beijing. White House officials told CNBC the president will make a speech on Friday targeting Chinese intellectual property and trade practices. Here is how people in China are reacting. China's official response The official Chinese response has largely been critical but subdued. On Thursday in Beijing, the Chinese Commerce Ministry played up the U.S.-China trade benefits, but dismissed the notion that China has not done enough to protect intellectual property. "I would like to emphasize that the Chinese government has always put strong emphasis on the protection of intellectual property rights," ministry spokesman Gao Feng told reporters at a regular press briefing. "The results are obvious to all." When asked about the speculation that U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer could initiate an investigation into Chinese trade practices using Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974, which allows the president to unilaterally impose restrictions to protect American industries, Gao reiterated China's position that disputes should be taken to the World Trade Organization. "Any trade measures taken by WTO members should abide by the rules of the WTO," Gao said. Lighthizer and other Trump administration officials have been critical of how the WTO manages international disputes. China's unofficial response Government officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told CNBC that China is in wait-and-see mode with the White House. They want to see if Trump will actually take action and what the details of any measures might be, they said. So far, despite Trump's tough talk, Beijing has seen no 45 percent tariff on Chinese goods, no border tax and no quotas on steel. That said, China has seen action with the Trump administration's crackdown on certain Chinese entities with business dealings in North Korea. And for their part, officials and government researchers say they are miffed that the U.S. is linking the North Korea nuclear issue with U.S.-China trade. This week, the country's vice commerce minister said that the two are "completely different domains." One officer told CNBC that, from the Chinese perspective, connecting the two issues makes little sense: Just because China and the U.S. don't see eye to eye on one issue doesn't mean the two can't do business, he explained. Chinese state media The Chinese state media tends to be more openly critical, and, on Thursday, the government-backed China Daily attacked Trump's expected announcement. In an editorial, the newspaper described the possible restrictions as "worrying" with the potential to "spark a trade war." The paper argued that, depending on the action, "China will have no choice but to take retaliatory measures." It's important to note that the state media is not the official government reaction, but articles and editorials are vetted by authorities, so the media response helps gauge Beijing's outlook on various topics. American companies in China U.S. companies in China are in a tough spot. On the one hand, many business executives have told CNBC they want the Trump administration to focus more on intellectual property theft as well as market access instead of manufacturing and the trade deficit. Scott Palmer, an intellectual property expert at law firm Sheppard, Mullin, Richter & Hampton, said the U.S. needs to press for greater trade secret protection, easier trademark filings and cooperation to fight counterfeits sold online. However, several American businesses are also feeling vulnerable to retribution in one of their key markets. And since Trump's election, Chinese officials and the state press have already said that, if need be, China would prepare for tit-for-tat retaliation. What is also worrying executives in China is the possibility that retaliation could affect entirely different industries. For example, in 2009, the Obama administration slapped a hefty tariff on Chinese tires. Soon after, Beijing imposed penalties on U.S. chicken parts costing American poultry producers. The two issues weren't explicitly linked, but the timing raised eyebrows. Executives are also concerned that the business climate could get even tougher for U.S. companies more generally. Top corporate complaints these days include tighter controls on the internet and a crackdown on virtual private networks, requirements for data storage on local servers, as well as uncertainty about getting money out of the country. American companies want the U.S. government to help, but they are nervous about the real impact on their operations. WATCH: White House considering China trade crackdown President Donald Trump appeared to describe his proposed border wall as a political tool and admit he knew Mexico would not fund it in a January call with Mexico's president, according to a transcript of the call obtained by The Washington Post. Building a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border and compelling Mexico to pay for it was a top Trump campaign promise. Trump told President Enrique Pena Nieto he realized funding for the barrier likely would not come from Mexico, according to the Post, but Trump pressured the Mexican president to stop publicly saying his country would not fund the wall. "If you are going to say that Mexico is not going to pay for the wall, then I do not want to meet with you guys anymore because I cannot live with that," Trump said, according to the Post transcript. Trump also said the wall was "the least important thing we are talking about, but politically this might be the most important." Trump requested federal funding to construct the barrier. The House last week approved a $1.6 billion down payment for it, though the money may not get approved by the Senate. The White House did not immediately respond to a request to comment on the president's remarks about the wall. Read the Post report here. President Donald Trump and his team are not as well organized as the European Union, the president of the European Commission said in an interview with Politico. When asked about the recent events in the White House, Jean-Claude Juncker said that "it's stunning" how Anthony Scaramucci was fired as communications director after 10 days in office. "We are better organized than the Trump administration. That is because if there are any internal difficulties, those difficulties are fixed in a direct conversation instead of by firing people," Juncker said in the interview published Thursday. The relationship between the European Union and the United States has become somewhat tense since Trump took office. The latter has suggested several times that other EU countries should follow the U.K.'s example and depart from the political union comments that have not played well among European leaders. The 'Friendship Bridge' is seen in the background as Chinese men take part in morning exercises on the Yalu river in the border city of Dandong, Liaoning province, northern China across from the city of Sinuiju, North Korea on May 23, 2017 in Dandong, China. A ban on travel by U.S. passport holders to North Korea will take effect on Sept. 1 and Americans in the country should leave before that date, the U.S. State Department said on Wednesday. Journalists and humanitarian workers may apply for exceptions to the ban, the department said in a public notice. The U.S. government last month said it would bar Americans from traveling to North Korea due to the risk of "long-term detention" there. The ban comes at a time of heightened tensions between the United States and North Korea, which has been working to develop a nuclear-tipped missile capable of hitting the United States. North Korea will become the only country to which Americans are banned from traveling. American student Otto Warmbier, sentenced last year to 15 years' hard labor in North Korea, returned to the United States in a coma on June 13 after being released on humanitarian grounds, and died June 19. The circumstances surrounding his death are not clear, including why he fell into a coma. North Korea has said through its state media that Warmbier's death was "a mystery" and dismissed accusations that he had died as a result of torture and beating in captivity. The State Department issued a notice in the Federal Register on Wednesday declaring U.S. passports invalid for travel to, in or through North Korea. The restriction takes effect in 30 days, and applies for one year unless extended or revoked by the secretary of state. "Persons currently in North Korea on a U.S. passport should depart North Korea before the travel restriction enters into effect on Friday, September 1, 2017," the department said in a statement. Professional reporters or journalists, representatives of the International Committee of the Red Cross or the American Red Cross traveling on official missions, those traveling to North Korea for "compelling humanitarian considerations" and those whose requests are "in the national interest" may ask for a special validation of their passports in order to travel to the country, the State Department said. North Korea is currently holding two Korean-American academics and a missionary, a Canadian pastor and three South Korean nationals who were doing missionary work. Japan says North Korea has also detained at least several dozen of its nationals. A company building tiny rockets is only a few launches away from cracking open a multi-billion dollar market. Vector Space Systems on Thursday flight tested its Vector-R launch vehicle from Spaceport Camden in Georgia. The FAA-approved launch reached its targeted height of 10,000 feet while carrying a commercial payload which included packages from NASA, Astro Digital and the Center for Applied Technology. The launch, partially funded by NASA, was a critical step in Vector's plan to become the top transporter of micro-satellites. "The money in these vehicles is made in making a lot of them and flying a lot of them," CEO Jim Cantrell told CNBC. Cantrell's company is building the Vector-R rockets to meet demand from companies that can't foot the bill to ride along with SpaceX or United Launch Alliance but still need to put satellites in orbit. SpaceX's Falcon 9 vehicle is considered one of the most discounted in the industry, but its $62 million per launch price tag is still too expensive for a lot of small companies. The Vector-R aims to cost of less than $3 million per launch, one-twentieth the cost of SpaceX. Cantrell was actually part of the SpaceX founding team, but left in 2002 because his dream differed from Elon Musk's, who wanted to build rockets large enough to bring cargo to the International Space Station and take humans to the Moon. "We told Elon in the early days to start with a small vehicle and work your way up. Elon kind of had the argument that this was too small, that there's no market to it, which was right at the time," Cantrell said. With the much lower cost per launch and $31 million in funding led by Sequoia -- one of the best-known venture capital firms in Silicon Valley -- Cantrell believes the Vector-R will quickly reach its goal of flying more than 100 times per year. Vector is in the final stages of negotiating its first customers. "We're negotiating a flight manifest now and we have a number of contracts in place," Cantrell said. "We'll announce our first customer in about a month." The microsatellite industry is currently worth $2.92 billion, according to research firm MarketsandMarkets, and is expected to grow more than 20 percent annually to be worth more than $7.5 billion in 2022. Potential competitors in the sector include Rocket Lab, who has a launch site in New Zealand, and Virgin Orbit, who will begin testing its LauncherOne vehicle later this year. Viacom , the owner of MTV, Comedy Central and Paramount Pictures, forecast a low single-digit dip in sales to U.S. pay-TV companies and streaming video services this quarter. Its stock fell nearly 12 percent on Friday. The media company beat Wall Street's average estimates for fiscal third-quarter revenue and profit, helped by an unexpectedly strong 4 percent jump in such affiliate sales, but investors focused on the downbeat projection for the current quarter. "As good as the affiliate fee number was in this quarter, it looks really bad in the next quarter," said Brian Wieser, an analyst at Pivotal Research Group. "You won't be able to see investors having overly aggressive expectations after this call." For the latest quarter, Viacom said U.S. sales to pay-TV affiliates and online video firms such as Netflix , which pay to screen its shows, rose 4 percent to $1.01 billion, largely due to the timing of some deals with streaming video services. On a post-earnings conference call executives said that bump would not be repeated this quarter, and instead said they expected affiliate revenue to dip. The meager outlook comes as U.S. television networks and cable providers are struggling to keep hold of viewers as more watch shows and movies on smartphones and tablets. Six of the largest U.S. pay TV providers posted subscriber losses during the past quarter. As a result, investors are worried that companies like Viacom will not be able to negotiate rate increases from their pay-TV partners. [The stream is slated to start at 7 p.m., ET. Please refresh the page if you do not see a player above at that time.] President Donald Trump heads to West Virginia on Thursday night for a campaign-style rally in a state he won easily. Trump returns to the comfortable setting following a series of setbacks to his goal of repealing Obamacare and recent staffing changes in the White House. Earlier Thursday, Trump promised a "very big announcement" at the rally without giving any more details. Republican officials have been informed that West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice will switch his affiliation to join the Republican Party, NBC News reported, citing multiple sources. Foreign ministers of the 10 member nations of Asean are gathering in Manila for the 50th anniversary leaders meeting Signs of renewed tensions in the South China Sea have reemerged in recent months are expected to endorse the framework for a code of conduct in the disputed waters on Sunday A Chinese coast guard vessel is followed by a Vietnamese coast guard ship in the disputed waters of the South China Sea on May 14, 2014. Hoang Dinh Nam | AFP | Getty Images Foreign ministers of the 10 member nations of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations are gathering in Manila for Asean's 50th anniversary leaders meeting. Besides celebrating the organisation's half century of existence, the parley also brings together top diplomats from non-members such as the US, China, Japan, South Korea, North Korea, India, Russia, Australia, New Zealand and participants in forums such as the Asean Plus Three, the East Asia Summit and the Asean Regional Forum. The Philippines' Department of Foreign Affairs confirmed that foreign ministers from Asean and China would formally endorse the document called "Framework of the code of conduct in the South China Sea," during their meeting in Manila on Sunday. What is the code of conduct in the South China Sea? A code of conduct is a set of rules outlining the norms and rules and responsibilities of, or proper practices for, an individual, party or organisation. Asean and China agreed to set up a code of conduct in the South China Sea during a 2002 summit amid heightened tensions in the disputed waters. The region in question includes one of the world's most important shipping lanes, believed to be rich in mineral and marine resources. watch now But as expectations for an area code of conduct differ between Beijing and the Asean nations, the road to reaching agreement on a set of principles and expectations could be bumpy, observers say. For Beijing, a code of conduct could be a non-binding instrument that can be leveraged to improve regional trust, rather than resolve overlapping claims; Asean members, however, may have a different opinion, said Zhang Mingliang, a Southeast Asia expert at Jinan University in Guangzhou. What is to be signed? The draft framework of the code of conduct was made final at an Asean and China senior officials meeting in May in southwestern China's Guizhou province. Details about the framework's content have not been released to the public since. The Chinese foreign ministry has said this non-action could keep outside interference away. It did not name the US, whose Asia Pacific policy has remained partially fuzzy since US President Donald Trump took power in January, triggering widespread concern among Southeast Asian nations. More from the South China Morning Post: China and Asean agree to draft code of conduct in South China Sea Is Philippines offering Beijing an olive branch over South China Sea? China's tough stance on India causing concern in Southeast Asia In May, Singaporean Foreign Minister Chee Wee Kiong said the draft framework had "positive momentum" and that he hoped to make "steady progress toward a substantive code of conduct". A draft of the text leaked by the media describes the envisioned agreement as "a set of norms to guide the conduct of parties and promote maritime cooperation in the South China Sea". It is "not an instrument to settle territorial disputes." Regional experts and diplomats believe the agreement's framework will be more symbolic in content than substantive. "Many principles, such as peaceful solving disputes, have been approved by different parties even without the framework," said Zhang Mingliang of Jinan University. Robespierre Bolivar, a spokesman for the Department of Foreign Affairs of the Philippines, told reporters in Manila on Tuesday that the framework would be an outline. He did not specifically mention the arbitration decision in which The Hague's Permanent Court ruled against China's territorial claims and its massive reclamation activities in the region. A brief history of a code of conduct in the South China Sea The concept of a code of conduct was first raised in the 1990s; but it was not until 2002 at a gathering of foreign ministers from Asean countries and China in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, that a code of conduct was mandated by the non-binding China-Asean Declaration on Conduct of the Parties in the South China Sea. Since then, little progress on a code of conduct has been made while tensions have intensified as reports of fishing disputes in the area grow commonplace. watch now It was not until 2013, when Beijing, in an apparent attempt to ease its tensions with its Southeast Asian neighbours, agreed to begin formal consultation on the code of conduct. And it took almost four years for senior officials from China and the Asean nations to agree on a framework for the code of conduct, though the framework's contents remain unreleased to the public. It's common knowledge that Uber, once touted as the company behind the future of transit, has had a highly publicized fall from grace over the last few months. In April, the company reported losses of $2.8 billion and has seen senior executives leave the company amid claims of sexual harassment and ongoing lawsuits, according to Bloomberg. Since June, the ride-sharing app has been seeking a new CEO to revamp the company after co-founder and former CEO Travis Kalanick stepped down due to pressure from investors. Marsha Ershaghi, head of compliance and corporate culture at LRN, a firm that helps businesses build ethical cultures and has partnered with companies like Kodak, Dell and Ford, tells CNBC Make It that Uber's toxic company culture stems from one main issue: a lack of oversight from company leaders. Notably, Uber is currently going through a cultural shift and listening to what employees want, a company spokeswoman tells CNBC Make It. But the ride-hailing app's past struggles highlight why tech companies should address toxic company culture right away. Here's what else Silicon Valley can learn from Uber's tumultuous experience: Toxic culture can start from the top but must be stopped early Toxic cultures are often bred within isolated parts of an organization, says Ershaghi. "Companies are not necessarily toxic as a whole but have micro segments of toxicity," she says. In Uber's case, she says the company's cultural toxicity permeated the entire organization because it came from the top down and was allowed to spread unchecked. For instance, Ershaghi points to a bizarre 2013 email that Uber's ousted CEO wrote to his employees. The letter, which starts with "you better read this or I'll kick your --s," served as a guideline for employees who were headed to Miami to celebrate the company's success, according to ReCode, which published the email in its entirety. "The mere fact that [Kalanick] felt that he had the right to speak so rawly and openly like that shows what type of company culture they had," Ershaghi says. Ershaghi partly blames the widespread culture on Uber's board of directors and shareholders. A company's most senior leaders should not allow inappropriate professional behavior. Instead, they must hold the CEO accountable, she says. Companies need to provide a safe space for reporting misconduct Although Uber's "bro-culture" and sexism had reportedly been known internally for years, it wasn't until former engineer Susan Fowler blasted the company in a 2017 blog post that others started to speak up. The news prompted Kalanick to order an "urgent investigation." Ershaghi says that employees often refrain from reporting wrongdoing in the workplace due to fear of retaliation, especially if they see that their company has a lack of respect for its workers and puts business profits over its employees. However, organizations have a "duty to provide platforms for employees to report misconduct," says Ershaghi. Companies can provide this service through an anonymous hotline but employees usually prefer reporting misconduct to direct supervisors, she says. This means that a company must encourage employees to point out improper behavior and make it known that workers will be protected if they do speak out, says Ershaghi. Calling an uber from the iphone application David Ramos | Getty Images Businesses should have policies to govern behavior, especially during periods of 'rapid growth' Ershaghi says that Uber's rapid growth created the perfect storm for a toxic company culture, which should prompt other tech companies to take note. Ariana Huffington, who joined Uber's board in 2016, admits that the start-up's rapid expansion has been part of Uber's problem as structures and processes failed to keep pace. Ershaghi points out that this is common in the tech space: The industry is built on the backs of ideas and venture funding. This results in tech companies with little to no regulation because investors want "free-spirited innovation" and "rapid growth," Ershaghi says. She suggests that tech companies create and implement policies, or a code of conduct, to dictate behaviors from employees at all levels. Investors need to hold leaders accountable for creating a healthy company culture Change begins with a company's investors, shareholders and board members, Ershaghi says. These senior executives must hold those under them accountable for the company's work culture and "should no longer be sitting on the sidelines." For specific teams, she suggests that supervisors practice short, targeted dialogues with their staff to build a culture of trust and open communication lines. At the more senior levels, leaders can be held accountable by receiving pay based on performance incentives. In June, Uber announced that it hired two women to join the leadership team, showing that it wanted to repair its reputation as a "fratty" workplace. Apple Music's Bozoma Saint John was appointed as chief brand officer and is tasked with bringing humanity and an "emotional connection" to the brand, Huffington said at the iCONIC Conference in June. Harvard Business School's Frances Frei was chosen to oversee strategy and leadership. Leaders should take an 'ethical stand' against a toxic culture or profit and employee retention suffers The Missourians Opinion section is a public forum for the discussion of ideas. The views presented in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Missourian or the University of Missouri. If you would like to contribute to the Opinion page with a response or an original topic of your own, visit our submission form The Clorox Company manufactures and markets consumer and professional products worldwide. It operates through four segments: Health and Wellness, Household, Lifestyle, and International. The Health and Wellness segment offers cleaning products, such as laundry additives and home care products primarily under the Clorox, Clorox2, Scentiva, Pine-Sol, Liquid-Plumr, Tilex, and Formula 409 brands; professional cleaning and disinfecting products under the CloroxPro and Clorox Healthcare brands; professional food service products under the Hidden Valley brand; and vitamins, minerals and supplement products under the RenewLife, Natural Vitality, NeoCell, and Rainbow Light brands in the United States. The Household segment provides cat litter products under the Fresh Step and Scoop Away brands; bags and wraps under the Glad brand; and grilling products under the Kingsford brand in the United States. The Lifestyle segment offers dressings, dips, seasonings, and sauces primarily under the Hidden Valley brand; natural personal care products under the Burt's Bees brand; and water-filtration products under the Brita brand in the United States. The International segment provides laundry additives; home care products; water-filtration systems; digestive health products; grilling products; cat litter products; food products; bags and wraps; natural personal care products; and professional cleaning and disinfecting products internationally primarily under the Clorox, Ayudin, Clorinda, Poett, Pine-Sol, Glad, Brita, RenewLife, Ever Clean and Burt's Bees brands. The Clorox Company sells its products primarily through mass retailers; grocery outlets; warehouse clubs; dollar stores; home hardware centers; drug, pet and military stores; third-party and owned e-commerce channels; and distributors, as well as a direct sales force The company was founded in 1913 and is headquartered in Oakland, California. The News in Brief Georgian Schools to be Abolished in S.Ossetia The Russian-backed authorities in the Tskhinvali Region/South Ossetia will abolish Georgian language schooling in the regions ethnic Georgian populated areas beginning from the 2017/2018 academic year. On July 26, the regions deputy minister of education Elisa Gagloeva said that the ministry of education has done preparatory work this year for transferring the Georgian schools of the republic [of South Ossetia] to the state educational standard. This means that the Russian and the Ossetian language components have been significantly strengthened in the curriculum and that all subjects [from now on] will be taught in Russian, Gagloeva also noted, adding that the change concerns Georgian schools in Akhalgori Municipality (six schools), as well as one school each in the occupied portions of Sachkhere and Kareli Municipalities.* As a result of the change, the Georgian language will be reduced to a single subject. On June 9, new South Ossetian leader Anatoly Bibilov visited Akhalgori Municipality, where he expressed dissatisfaction over the fact that education in some local schools was conducted in the Georgian language and tasked his officials with transferring the schools to the same educational system as in the rest of the region. The move follows the pattern established in the Gali District in Abkhazia, where 31 Georgian schools remaining after the war of 1992-1993 were gradually moved to Russian-language schooling. The last 11 Georgian schools in the Gali District were abolished in 2015. * The areas were under the jurisdiction of the central government before the 2008 Russian-Georgian War. (civil.ge) Georgian MP fined for wearing pistol at rally against extremism A Georgian opposition member of parliament was fined 200 USD on Wednesday for demonstratively wearing a pistol in his belt during a rally against far right extremists. Otar Kakhidze, a lawyer who represents European Georgia in the national assembly, was fined 500 lari (USD 208) and given a one-month ban on wearing a gun outdoors. Kakhidze said he would comply with the judges ruling, which he referred to as fair and legitimate. Earlier, after videos emerged about him wearing a gun, Kakhidze conceded that it was his mistake but he wanted only to protect himself. Kakhidzes European Georgia held a rally on Sunday to protest against what they call Russian fascism in Georgia. It was conceived as a counter-rally to the one held a week earlier by ultra-nationalists who demanded stricter immigration rules, kicking out illegal immigrants from the country, banning the financing of NGOs from abroad and prohibiting United National Movement and its spin-offs. European Georgia, which consists mainly of former UNM members, was one of the ultra-nationalists primary targets. Their gathering on July 14 was viewed by many as either directly orchestrated by the Kremlin or serving its interests. During the EG rally, which was supported by some other minor pro-western political groups, ultra-nationalists gathered on the side of the street and bombarded the participants with eggs, plastic bottles, brooms and other objects. However, hundreds of police officers amassed on the spot and managed to prevent serious clashes. (dfwatch) DUP accuse Irish Taoiseach of going backwards on Brexit The Democratic Unionists have issued a stinging criticism of Leo Varadkar, the Irish prime minister, over his governments shifting position on the border post-Brexit. According to The Journal Nigel Dodds, the DUPs Westminster leader, has denounced as total nonsense Dublins calls for border controls to be shifted to the Irish Sea. This is part of a wider criticism of both Varadkar and Simon Coveney, his foreign minister, which is not confined to Northern Irish unionist opinion. Commentators in the Republic are also wary that Coveneys excessively green position is leading him to make a dogs dinner of Northern Ireland. As we explained earlier this week, Dublins position makes little sense beyond appeasing nationalist sentiment. Ulsters exports to the mainland are worth more than four times those the Republic and more than seven times those to the EU, so this British commerce is the very last thing which should have additional barriers and costs imposed on it. Moreover, its difficult to see how imposing customs and passport checks on internal movement an extremely unusual arrangement for a sovereign country is really compatible with the Irish Governments commitment to respect the legitimacy of Northern Irelands place in the United Kingdom. A senator from Fine Gael, Varadkars party, has since claimed that the DUP are politically impotent over Brexit. With the Governments majority on Brexit bills in the Commons secured by their votes, that seems unlikely. Welsh Labour mulls party split over Brexit One of Welsh Labours most inveterate nationalists has broken cover again this week to tout a formal split between Welsh Labour and the wider UK party. Leighton Andrews, formerly a senior minister in the Cardiff Bay administration, has denounced Labours national position on Brexit and suggested it should be the spur for a separate party. He has form on this front: in 2015 he rather ignorantly suggested that his partys national leadership contest in which Welsh MPs, members, and trades unionists played their full part was a matter for English Labour which was of no interest to him. Of course, Labours national position on Brexit is much closer to the views of Leave-voting Wales than the unrelenting Europhilia of its local franchise, whose leader implausibly suggested during the referendum that Brexit might lead the Welsh to choose independence to stay in the EU. Officers leaving the British Transport Police ahead of Scottish merger The SNPs determination to impose a centralised, nationalist agenda on all aspects of Scottish life has not been great for Scottish policing. Since 2007 the Scottish Government have already, and very controversially, merged the countrys regional police forces into a single leviathan, Police Scotland, at great expense and without any appreciable improvement in delivery. But this has not stopped them from legislating to further expand it by absorbing the Scottish operations of the British Transport Police, the pan-mainland force responsible for policing the railways, after short-sighted Westminster devolved the power to do so. This has already attracted criticism as the BTP performs its role in Scotland perfectly well, and many non-nationalists suspect the SNP are simply determined to be rid of any organisation with British in its title. But now the Police Federation has revealed that officers are leaving the service ahead of the merger, either to join specialist forces elsewhere in Scotland (such as the Ministry of Defence Police and the Civil Nuclear Constabulary) or to seek a transfer to England. Whenever a pro-UK administration takes over at Holyrood and tackles the mess the SNP have made of policing, re-establishing the BTP north of the border will be a very decision: it will be a good policy that sends a strong pro-British message too. Leaked letter shows most Ulster parties opposed donor transparency The DUP have come under a lot of criticism over receiving so-called dark money during the EU referendum, when they took hundreds of thousands from the Constitutional Research Council to spend campaigning on the mainland. James Brokenshire has since been attacked for his decision not to back-date new rules on donor transparency, with some commentators alleging that it must have been an unwritten part of the Governments deal with the DUP. But this week the Belfast Telegraph revealed that both the Ulster Unionists and the two major nationalist parties, Sinn Fein and the SDLP, were united with Arlene Fosters party in their desire to keep previous donors under wraps despite public protestations to the contrary. During the EU referendum, one of the arguments most forcefully deployed by elements of the Remain side was that a vote to leave would trigger to breakup of the United Kingdom. The theory ran that it would so outrage public opinion in Europhile Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland to be dragged out of the EU by England, and that membership of the EU was of such paramount importance to those nations interests, that previously pro-Union voters would flock to the separatist cause. Some of us thought this was a dubious prospect at the time, and said so. Scotlands latent nationalists had already been activated by the 2014 referendum; Wales simply didnt exist in anything like the numbers necessary. Northern Ireland was a thornier case but even then, its dependence on the UK is such that the best plan the Irish Government has come up with for absorbing it includes London continuing to pay for the province, in full, for thirty years. Some of those peddling this line were probably bluffing: Carwyn Jones would have to be extraordinarily out of touch to seriously believe that Brexit might force Wales to choose between unions, even if his principality hadnt voted Leave. But Nicola Sturgeon bet heavily on this received wisdom when she rushed to the press cameras the morning after the vote to announce her push for a second referendum. The complete absence of any Europhile wave of support has seen her administration beached for over a year in an increasingly uncomfortable position, alienating the electorate and leading to a string of painful electoral setbacks. Gradually, and very quietly, the truth is being acknowledged: Brexit is bad news for those who want to break up our country. Heres a very interesting titbit from Jonathan Freedland in the Guardian: Labour could well find an ally in the Scottish Nationalists. A senior SNP figure told me this week that Scottish independence all but depends on Brexit being cancelled: without the economic safety net of the single market, Scots wont risk a leap out of the UK. Only a second EU vote could provide that reassurance. If youve not yet taken the time to read the article above-linked, thats exactly what this site was arguing at the time (and being taken to task for). Evidence of this new reality goes beyond anonymous quotes, however. We have the concrete fact that separatist MPs are openly collaborating with what Isabel Hardman styles Parliaments new tribe, the neo-Remain caucus being put together by Blairite Labour MPs and Tory Europhiles. Both Plaid Cymru and the SNPs much-reduced phalanx of MPs are signing up and Irish nationalism is absent only because Sinn Fein have wiped out the SDLP and refuse to take their seats. These committed nationalists are not labouring against their own cause. Naturally, this shift from Brexit will boost the separatists to the separatists can help scotch Brexit has occurred without any widespread acknowledgement that the previous argument, which was laid on thick by Remain in the run-up to the vote, was wrong. But its important that unionists for whom the UK comes first, regardless of their EU stance raise the salience of this point. Those who demanded that Brexiteers should suborn their EU views to the best interests of the Union, when they believed those interests lay with Remain, should now be asked: the facts have changed have you changed your minds? 08/03/2017 The Democratic members of the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs have signed a letter asking the committee chairman to schedule a hearing on Wells Fargo immediately following the August recess. In a letter to Chairman Mike Crapo (R-Idaho), the Democrats said they have questions for Wells Fargo CEO Timothy Sloan and company chairman Stephen Sanger. The committee last heard from bank executives a year ago, when it was revealed that bank employees had opened checking and credit card accounts in customers' names, without their knowledge or consent. It was alleged that the purpose was to generate fees for the bank and several thousand Wells Fargo employees were fired in the aftermath. Last week the bank revealed that more than a half-million auto loan borrowers were sold insurance without their knowledge, and that in some cases it might have led to loan defaults and vehicle repossessions. In their letter, the Democratic lawmakers said it was time for additional questions, alleging new information about the bank's misconduct has emerged since the fake accounts scandal. Seeking additional information "Many Committee members have sought additional information from Wells Fargo about these developments, with varying degrees of success," the senators wrote. "A hearing would give members the opportunity to hear directly from the bank's top leadership about these developments." Among the questions that need answers, the Democratic committee members said they want updates on the bank's efforts to compensate customers harmed in the fake-accounts scandal, and about the unnecessary insurance sales. Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) is the ranking Democrat on the committee. The letter was also signed by Senators Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Jack Reed (D-R.I.), Robert Menendez (D-N.J.), Jon Tester (D-Mt.), Mark R. Warner (D-Va.), Heidi Heitkamp (D-N.D.), Joe Donnelly (D-Ind.), Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii), Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), and Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nev.). Wells Fargo paid a $185 million fine in connection with the unauthorized accounts. In revealing the unauthorized insurance sales last week, the bank estimated total remediation at $80 million. Meanwhile, the Los Angeles Times reports various New York agencies, including the state insurance regulator, are looking into the latest revelations. Experts weigh in with tips on everything from baggage to ways to get through security faster If this holiday travel season traffic continues to grow in numbers like the rest of 2022 has, travelers who havent flown since the pandemic lifted should be ready for changes that they might not have seen before. Here are some possible wrinkles and ideas that ConsumerAffairs found that may be worth considering. It may be worth printing this out and using it as a guide as you plan out your holiday air travel. Flights might be packed to the gills. Flights will all be full ... Costa Crociere is moving into the Indian cruise market and is set to offer three- and four-night cruises from Mumbai on the neoClassica this coming season, according to a report in The Hindu Business Line. The sailings will run from Mumbai to Kochi via Mangaluru and Kochi to Maldives from November to March. Costa will still continue to offer its popular seven-night Mumbai-Maldives program as well, that made its debut in December 2016. Earlier this week the company announced the neoClassica would leave the fleet in March 2018, making her India season the last deployment of her Costa career. MV Werften has delivered what it is calling the world's most luxurious river vessel, the Crystal Bach, which is the first in a series of four Rhine-class river ships being built for Crystal. The 135-meter long and 11.4-meter wide Crystal Bach was designed for river cruising in Europe, the company said. Up to 106 passengers will sail along the Rhine, Danube and Main Rivers through the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany and Switzerland in 55 large suites, all designed to be above the water line with horizontal sliding windows. "Today, we proudly hand over this exclusive ship, said Jarmo Laakso, Managing Director of MV WERFTEN, during the ceremony. "The Crystal Bach is the first newbuilding project to be completed under the MV Werften flag. Our employees have done wonderful work and proven that they can meet the highest quality standards." Edie Rodriguez, CEO and President of Crystal Cruises, stated: "With the Crystal Bach we now welcome the second member of the Crystal River Cruises fleet. We would like to thank MV Werften for this wonderful ship. In the past months, we have had the pleasure of working with this shipyard as an experienced and reliable partner and look forward to our cooperation in the coming three projects." "We have incorporated the best navigational and safety standards on ocean ships to the Crystal fleet of river ships with four Azimuth thrusters for easy maneuverability, forward bridge with two navigators seated at all time with state-of-the-art navigation system and had river ship training at the Simwave simulator center in Rotterdam," said Gustaf Gronberg, SVP of newbuilding and marine operations. The Crystal Mahler will follow later this month, with two more ships scheduled for delivery next year. CruiseMaineUSA could be undergoing a significant overhaul in the near future. The State of Maines tourism office issued a Request for Proposals (RFP) in late June for an individual or group to run the organization on a one-year contract, with options extending the deal for up to five years. Steve Lyons, acting director of Maine Tourism, is coordinating the process. He is also go-to person for CruiseMaine until a winner is named. Bids were accepted from June 29 to July 20 for the contract that includes cruise marketing and coordinating outreach to develop and promote cruise activities for the state of Maine. The State of Maine requires us to issue competitive bids for contracts in excess of $5,000 per year. We issued a RFP at the end of June and we are in the process of reviewing submissions. We anticipate making an award announcement within the next week or so, Lyons said, in an email to Cruise Industry News. According to the RFP, which did not specify a budget, the winning bidder will be the one that scores the highest on a 100-point scale as determined by an evaluation team. The criteria will be split across organization qualifications and experience (25 points), proposed services (45 points) and cost (30 points). The RFP noted that the lowest cost bid will receive 25 points. Proposals with higher bid values will be awarded proportionately fewer points calculated in comparison with the lowest bid. In a managed, written question-and-answer period during the RFP process, the office of tourism noted that the current contract had ended on June 30, and it did not know if the previous vendor would submit a proposal. Long-time CruiseMaine director Amy Powers has meanwhile set up her own consulting firm, MaineCruisePro, and has also been linked to a role with the Cruise Lines International Association, according to a report in the Mount Desert Islander. Axel Springer SE operates as a publishing company primarily in Europe and the United States. The company operates through three segments: Classifieds Media, News Media, and Marketing Media. The Classifieds Media segment operates a portfolio of online classified portals in the areas of real estate, jobs, cars, and general. This segment operates SeLoger, Immoweb, and Immowelt/Immonet real estate portals; Totaljobs, Jobsite, and Saongroup job portals; meinestadt.de, a regional portal; and car and general classified ad portals, including LaCentrale and Yad2. The News Media segment offers newspapers primarily under the BILD and WELT brands in Berlin, as well as the FAKT name in Poland; automotive, computer, and sports magazines under the AUTO BILD, COMPUTER BILD, and SPORT BILD brand names; and a tabloid under the BLIKK name in Hungary. This segment also operates Internet portals, such as Onet.pl and azet.sk; profession.hu, a job portal; WELT, a news channel; BILD.de, a news and entertainment portal; WELT.de, a news portal; Upday, a mobile news portal; businessinsider.com; and Autobild.de, a digital appearances of the magazine. Its digital offerings also comprise analytics, studies, and digital market data for companies and institutions. The Marketing Media segment provides advertising services on performance or reach based marketing. The company distributes its print media primarily through press wholesale companies, station book trade, and press import companies; and digital products principally through its webpages or download platforms, including the app stores of Apple and Google. Axel Springer SE was founded in 1946 and is headquartered in Berlin, Germany. 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. BT Group plc provides communications services worldwide. Its Consumer segment sells telephones, baby monitors, and Wi-Fi extenders through high street retailers, online BT Shop, and Website BT.com; and offers home phone, copper and fiber broadband, TV, and mobile services in various packages. The company's EE segment offers 2G, 3G, and 4G mobile network services; broadband, fixed-voice, and TV services; and postpaid and prepaid plans, and emergency services network. This segment also sells 4G mobile phones, tablets, connected devices, and mobile broadband devices from various manufacturers. Its Business and Public Sector segment provides fixed voice, mobility, fiber and connectivity, and networked IT services to retailers, utilities, public sector, healthcare, sports, construction, finance, and educational sectors. The company's Global Services segment offers business communications and ICT services comprising BT Connect, BT Security, BT One, BT Contact, BT Compute, BT Advise, and BT for financial markets. This segment serves approximately 5,500 customers in 180 countries. Its Wholesale and Ventures segment enables communications providers and other organizations to provide fixed or mobile phone services. Its ventures provide mass-market services, such as directory enquiries and payphones; and enterprise services comprising BT Fleet and BT Redcare. This segment also provides broadband and Ethernet, voice, hosted communication, mobile virtual network operator, managed solutions, machine-to-machine, roaming, and media services. The company's Openreach segment engages in the provision of services over the local access network; and installation and maintenance of fiber and copper communications networks that connect homes and businesses. The company was formerly known as Newgate Telecommunications Limited and changed its name to BT Group plc in September 2001. BT Group plc was incorporated in 2001 and is headquartered in London, the United Kingdom. Lawmakers tasked with negotiating the states health care budget agreed late Thursday night to a smaller shift in reimbursement funding for hospitals Medicaid cases, meaning hospitals with the largest fractions of those cases may not face nearly as severe a reduction as initially proposed. Senate budget writers had previously raised a plan that would have redistributed a $318 million additional fund of automatic rate enhancements to those hospitals into general funding for all hospitals in the state. (The state currently reimburses all hospitals for Medicaid care at a certain base rate.) But negotiators agreed to shrink that redistribution to just $9.5 million, or 3 percent of the total fund, for the upcoming budget year. The change means that potential cuts to the states largest safety net hospitals, like Jackson Health in Miami-Dade or Tampa General, are unlikely to reach into the tens of millions as had been first projected. It means a slight reduction that hospitals can live with. Hospitals can plan. Its not a drastic reduction, said Sen. Aaron Bean, the joint panels health care budget chief. I think the industry can live with it. Floridians are going to be well taken care of at their local hospital. The House had initially suggested trimming hospital Medicaid reimbursement spending by 3 percent in both inpatient and outpatient care, which would have been about $110 million. That would have meant slight cuts for every hospital across the board. But the Senates plan, to instead reshuffle the additional Medicaid enhancement payments into the base rates paid to all hospitals, would have given the majority of hospitals a small boost while dealing major cuts to the approximately two dozen hospitals that currently get the additional funds. Proponents of the Senate plan had said bolstering the base rate funding would mean money more fairly follows the patient. Safety-net hospitals, which labeled the additional money a critical care fund, said that the money was necessary because those hospitals disproportionately handle more severe and complex cases. Though its clear those hospitals will not lose as much, its not yet clear how much individual hospitals will gain or lose. Lawmakers are still negotiating other details related to hospitals Medicaid reimbursements, such as how the base rate funding is weighted to pay for more complicated, complex medical cases. What House and Senate negotiators are also likely to agree to early is how the state will handle its policy of retroactive eligibility for Medicaid, which determines how long the program will cover past medical bills. Last year, the Legislature had approved shortening the period from three calendar months to just one calendar month, though advocates said the change could hurt seniors and those with disabilities. Bean said the House is likely to agree to a plan to extend the policy for just one year, rather than permanently as initially suggested, and authorize a study to collect data on how the change affects patients before it is reconsidered in 2020. Lawmakers also plan to bump up still unresolved differences in the budget to each chambers budget chief Friday, and those reimbursement details are just one of several health care issues left on the table. The chambers still have to reach agreement on some funding related to child welfare, how to fund a waitlist for caring for people with disabilities, and a proposal that would require the Agency for Persons with Disabilities to restructure its Medicaid waiver. And though both chambers have now agreed to a mild cut to the enhancements fund, the fund may be trimmed further in future years, suggested Sen. Rob Bradley, who will soon take over budget negotiations with his House counterpart Rep. Travis Cummings. What happens in future years we're still discussing, he said Thursday night. We want the system to wean off [those] payments over time but those are ongoing discussions. The legislative session is scheduled to end by May 3. For that to happen, the chambers must reach agreement on all budget issues by Tuesday, so the budget can sit for a required 72 hours before the vote. Serco Group plc provides public services in the United Kingdom, Europe, North America, the Asia Pacific, and the Middle East. The company offers base and operational support engineering, and management and information, as well as nuclear, space, and maritime services for the defense sector; and custodial, immigration detention, and detainee transport and monitoring services for the justice and immigration sectors. It also provides rail, ferry, and cycle operations; road traffic management; and air traffic control services to the transportation sector, as well as integrated facilities management, pathology and non-clinical support, and patient administration and contact services for the health sector. In addition, the company offers citizen services, including contact centers and case management; middle, back office, and IT; and employment and skills services. The company serves the United Kingdom and Canadian governments, devolved authorities, and other public sector customers; and federal and civilian agencies, and various state and municipal governments. Serco Group plc was founded in 1929 and is based in Hook, the United Kingdom. @PatriciaMazzei Democratic Florida Senate candidate Annette Taddeo said she settled a lawsuit Wednesday with American Express over what the company had claimed were nearly $38,000 in unpaid charges. The terms of the lawsuit were kept private. In a statement, Taddeo's campaign spokesman said the lawsuit "has been amicably resolved by both parties." AmEx sued Taddeo and her translation business, LanguageSpeak, in Miami-Dade Circuit Court last month. "As mentioned earlier, LanguageSpeak worked diligently to resolve this matter in short order and speaks to Annette Taddeo's well respected record as a longtime successful business owner of nearly 25 years," spokesman Christian Ulvert said. "Further, unlike her opponent, Annette has disclosed more than needed as this matter pertains to company matters, not personal credit cards." At the time she was sued, Taddeo claimed the suit was politically motivated. She's running for Senate District 40 in a special Sept. 26 election against Republican Rep. Jose Felix Diaz. An AmEx attorney did not immediately respond to a emailed request for comment late Wednesday. Ulvert used the lawsuit settlement to urge Diaz, an attorney who does lobbying work, to "offer a complete and full account of his clients, retainers paid, issues that were before the Legislature that conflicted with his public service and any activity he engaged in as lobbyist in Miami-Dade County." @amysherman U.S. Rep. Ron DeSantis has asked the U.S. Department of Justice to investigate the former information technology worker fired by U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz. In a letter to Attorney General Jeff Sessions, Desantis asks for an investigation into the financial records of Imran Awan and his wife Hina Alvi to search for other potential crimes or suspicious activity. "While we can never tolerate breaches of the public trust, the wire transfer to Pakistan is particularly alarming as Pakistan is home to numerous terrorist organizations," he wrote. The criminal complaint charging Awan for bank fraud makes no mention of terrorism. The federal complaint states that Awan and Alvi raudulently obtained a $165,000 home loan from a credit union. Alvi submitted paperwork in January to wire $283,000 to Pakistan including the money from the loan. When a representative from the credit union called Alvi, a male answering the phone initially said the money was for "funeral arrangements" but later said it was to purchase property. Awan was arrested at Dulles International Airport headed to Pakistan July 24. His wife flew to Pakistan in March. DeSantis, a Republican from Ponte Vedra Beach, serves on the judiciary committee. His letter to Sessions, and calls for Wasserman Schultz to testify about the case, allows DeSantis to draw attention to himself while he considers a bid for Florida governor in 2018. DeSantis made terrorism a central issue of his short campaign for U.S. Senate in 2016 -- he dropped out when Rubio got back in. News reports starting in February indicated that Awan was under investigation for equipment and data theft, but the federal charge for bank fraud makes no mention of such an investigation. Awan was a shared employee of many Democratic House members who fired him after the news reports about the investigation, but Wasserman Schultz waited until he was arrested to fire him. After details of the investigation were reviewed with us, my office was provided no evidence to indicate that laws had been broken, which over time, raised troubling concerns about due process, fair treatment and potential ethnic and religious profiling, she previously said. Upon learning of his arrest, he was terminated. Wasserman Schultz's spokesman David Damron declined to comment on the letter by DeSantis. Awan has pleaded not guilty and awaits a preliminary hearing in Washington D.C. Aug. 21. His attorney filed a motion Wednesday asking the government to return $9,000 in cash seized from Awan by law enforcement when he was arrested. The motion states that Awan needs the money to pay for his defense. @PatriciaMazzei @FrancoOrdonez Caught in the White House transition this week from Reince Priebus to John Kelly: steep economic sanctions the U.S. threatened against Venezuela if President Nicolas Maduro rammed through his new constituent assembly in a Sunday vote denounced as fraudulent. Kelly, a military general who used to head U.S. Southern Command in Miami, is intimately familiar with Venezuelas tumult. And since being named chief of staff Friday, hes taken a key role in shaping the Trump administrations response to the South American countrys crisis, sources close to the White House said. Florida Republican Sen. Marco Rubio, who has worked with President Donald Trump, Vice President Mike Pence, the National Security Council, Priebus and now Kelly on Venezuela policy, said he felt reassured by Kellys Oval Office presence. Were fortunate it worked out this way, Rubio told the Miami Herald in an interview. The president has Kelly next to him not just a chief of staff who I believe will improve the performance of the White House, but someone who I believe understands Venezuela as well or better as anyone in the administration. Kellys involvement appears to be one of several reasons why the White House has taken its time before escalating penalties against Venezuela not because Kelly opposes more sanctions, but because he wants to vet and weigh in on the administrations plan. Maduro announced late Wednesday his government intends to seat the new constituent assembly Friday, a watershed move expected to trigger further action by the U.S. and international community, which have condemned the violence-marred election and refused to recognize the new assembly. More here. Photo credit: Pablo Martinez Monsivais, Associated Press Synopsys hosted the annual Verification Luncheon and Customer Panel SoC Leaders Verify with Synopsys at DAC 2017 in Austin, Texas. The panel featured industry experts and executives from Intel, Qualcomm, AMD, NXP, and Wave Computing, and drove our main messages of innovation and technology leadership, in addition to collaborations with market makers. In case you missed it, this blog provides the highlights and video of the event. Click here to read more ... The government of Indonesia has dropped its threat to block the encrypted messaging service Telegram. Rudiantara, Indonesias minister of Communications and Information Technology, had threatened the service with a ban unless it helped to restrict access to unlawful content, including radical terrorist propaganda. Last month, Telegrams founder Pavel Durov affirmed that terrorist-related public channels would be blocked. Following a meeting between Durov and Rudiantara in Indonesia, the minister has announced that the government has agreed to keep Telegram accessible, adding that it would work with the company to implement standard procedures to address the negative content in Telegram. He noted that other social media sites such as Facebook and Google could be subjected to similar scrutiny in the near future. The government had previously requested internet companies to prevent access to eleven addresses which were using Telegrams web version. Suspected militants apprehended by the Indonesian police confirmed that they had used the service to communicate in an attempt to coordinate attacks. Rudiantara stated that the ban could be lifted shortly. The government was criticised in some circles for attempting to block access to the app rather than using it for intelligence gathering by monitoring conversations, but Durov vetoed this approach, saying that he would not have travelled to Indonesia if the government had suggested it. The basis of Telegram is a 100 per cent promise of encryption. This is why our company exists, said Durov. Weve discussed ways to block the public channels available for the propaganda of terrorism, which is something that we are committed to do. He noted that Telegram has a sign-up rate of around 20,000 people daily in Indonesia. In June, Telegram was threatened with a ban in Russia if it didnt register its details with the government. Durov agreed to these terms but stipulated that the firm would never share private user data with the authorities. Analysts at Credit Suisse told clients they were encouraged by the oil majors' progress on those factors which they could control. That meant that both organic and inorganic free cash flow generation across the space "looked encouraging", with those outfits able to continue de-risking their balance sheet strains. There are also new factors which had yet to kick-in which might aid them. "Whilst the low-hanging fruit may have been picked, there is more the industry can do; RDS (a Focus List stock) has only passed the halfway mark of its 'cultural evolution'. In addition, there are other variables coming into play that could make the industry 'fitter'; e.g. benefits from automation, big data and data analytics, all of which are still in the early stages," they said. Furthermore, demand growth for crude oil remained "resilient" was a good augur for companies' margins and the sustainability of their dividend payoyts, they argued. However, in the same research note they marked up their forecast for the euro/dollar exchange rate from 1.10 to 1.20, which meant a bigger cash burden for those firms paying out in euros. The Swiss broker therefore reiterated its 'outperform' stance on stock of BP, Royal Dutch Shell and Galp, but downgraded Repsol from 'neutral' to 'underperform' and ENI from 'outperform' to 'neutral'. It also lowered its target price on Repsol from 14.0 to 13.25 and for ENI from 16.0 to 14.5. The target on BP shares on the other hand was raised from 520p to 530p although that for Shell was kept at 2,500p. Russia's Defence Ministry says that a cease-fire treaty has been agreed on in the northern parts of the Homs province in war- torn Syria. The truce, which was set to go into effect at midday local time (1000 BST) on Thursday, will include 84 settlements populated by in excess of 147,000 according to Major General Igor Konashenkov, a spokesman for the ministry. Truces had previously been struck in four other zones in the country and are holding despite Syrian opposition forces with US backing clashing with Islamic State militants in the north-eastern city of Raqqa. Coming less than 24 hours after the Russian Foreign Ministry said it would continue its, "consistent and principled policy of uncompromising fight against terrorists in Syria" after its headquarters in Damascus was hit by several mortar shells, the zone is the third to be set up in Syria under the Russian-led initiative focused on quelling the flow of violence between Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's forces and rebels. Two checkpoints and three observation posts will be established on Friday between the opposing forces to institute a "de-escalation zone." The Homs province were some of the first to fall after a 2012 revolt against Assad's rule, but have managed to remain free of militant groups including IS. After Russian, Turkish and Iranian representatives met in Kazakhstan earlier this year, one further safe zone has been proposed in the north-western Idlib region, but "conflicts of interest" between the powers has complicated the process. Russian prime minister Dmitry Medvedev has criticised new sanctions imposed on the country by the US, equating them to the declaration of a 'full-scale trade war'. Donald Trump signed off the action this week, which limits the amount of money US businesses can invest in Russian firms. The move came as a response to allegations of Russian interference in the US presidential election in 2016, when Trump defeated Democratic rival Hillary Clinton. The introduction of the legislation was pushed forward by Congress, with Trump actually criticising the action as deeply flawed. In a post on his Facebook page on Wednesday, Medvedev wrote that it puts an end to the prospect of an improvement in relations between the two governments. "It ends hopes for improving our relations with the new US administration. Second, it is a declaration of a full-fledged economic war on Russia." 'OUTWITTED' Medvedev also launched a stinging criticism of Trump, who was portrayed as a weak leader unable to overrule Congress on the issue. "The US establishment fully outwitted Trump; the President is not happy about the new sanctions, yet he could not but sign the bill," Medvedev added. "The issue of new sanctions came about, primarily, as another way to knock Trump down a peg." He predicted that Trump will be removed from office, as US lawmakers seek to further undermine the Presidents policies. Medvedevs words are the latest shot in the ongoing war of words between US and Russian officials, with tensions rising significantly since the allegations of meddling from the Kremlin in the election. Venezuela's newly reelected president Nicolas Maduro has rejected claims that his government had inflated turnout figures in the countrys elections last Sunday. The South American nation has become engulfed in further political instability as mass protests continue following Sundays vote. British firm Smartmatic, the firm hired by authorities in the country to carry out the vote, said on Wednesday that the turnout had been inflated by as much as one million votes. Over the weekend a group of 43 international election observers, part of the Council of Electoral Specialists of Latin America, composed of former presidents and magistrates from electoral organisations throughout Latin America, issued a statement calling on governments and people of the world to respect the election result as the sovereign decision and right of self-determination of the Venezuelan people. We recognise this democratic act their undoubtable and inalienable exercise of national sovereignty, they said. Maduro stood by the count of more than eight million, and even said the number would have been higher if protesters had not prevented millions of citizens from voting. The former bus driver and trade union leader accused Smartmatic of being influenced by the US in a speech on Wednesday in front of the newly-elected constituent assembly in Caracas. He said its president had been "pressured to the neck by the gringos and the Brits". Opponents of Maduros anti-imperialist government have taken to the streets en masse, with reports of escalating violence in the region, which each side blames on the other. Estimates said the death toll topped 120 people died after riots on Sunday, that some reports claimed was organised by the opposition to scare voters away from the polls, while other blamed the government. FALLING OIL PRICES Falling world oil prices have damaged the Venezuelan economy in recent years, with its petroleum reserves traditionally being the main driver behind its previous economic stability. In just four years, the countrys GDP has shrunk by 35% as oil dropped from over $100 per barrel to below $30 at the beginning of 2016. Two of Maduros fiercest political opponents, Leopoldo Lopez and Antonio Ledezma, were reportedly taken from their homes by security forces earlier this week as the President cracks down further on opposition. Senior UK politicians joined in the condemnation of Maduro following this weeks events, including some Labour MPs who called on leader Jeremy Corbyn to denounce his actions. Corbyn has previously backed Maduro, as well as his predecessor Hugo Chavez, but shadow foreign secretary Emily Thornberry said Labour did not support his regime. "Our official statement on Monday called on the Venezuelan government to respect human rights and the rule of law, said the election must not be treated as a mandate for further repression and violence, and challenged President Maduro personally to answer the legitimate concerns of the international community about his increasingly authoritarian rule," Thornberry said. The Foreign Office has withdrawn its embassy staff from the country, and advised any Britons in the country to leave. Former London mayor Ken Livingstone, who during his time in office struck cut-price oil deals with Venezuela to supply Transport for London, said voiced the view that oil owning families in the country were "using their power and control over imports and exports to make it difficult and to undermine Maduro". Oscar Guardiola-Rivera, a senior lecturer in law at Birkbeck, University of London, said the opposition was dominated by far-rightwing sectors and noted in The Guardian that opposition leader Lopez had used his Twitter account to ask Venezuelans to take to the streets and ratify the results "by force and had been filmed urging the army to rise up against the government. Hackers behind the massive WannaCry cyber attack which crippled IT systems at the NHS in May have withdrawn 108k worth of bitcoin. Businesses in 150 countries worldwide were affected by the ransomware attack, which led to demands of bitcoin payments to be made by the victims to the digital wallets of those behind it. According to tracking firm Elliptic, three bitcoin wallets have withdrawn the money over the last 10 days. Cyber security authorities advised businesses and organisations not to hand over the ransoms, which were for between $300 and $600. NHS services throughout England were thrown into disarray in May when IT systems were disrupted by the large-scale cyber-attack. Hospitals in London, Nottingham and Cumbria, among others, were simultaneously affected by the coordinated failure, amid several reports of pop-up messages on computers demanding ransom money. Cyber-security has become a significant issue in recent months and years as both states and private entities become more aware of tactics aimed at disrupting networks across the globe. "We're following the movement of funds being sent out of the WannaCry wallets," Elliptic co-founder Tom Robinson told CNBC. "We believe some of these funds are being converted into Monero, a privacy-focused cryptocurrency. We continue to work with law enforcement to support their efforts in tracing ownership of these funds." According to research conducted by the High Pay Centre, senior executives of FTSE 100 companies currently make an average of 4.5m per annum. While that figure is down 17% from the 5.4m recorded by the centre in 2015, it is still a stark contrast when put against the average income of a full-time employee in the UK at 28,000 before tax. High-profile executives, like Sir Martin Sorrell at WPP, who took a 22m pay cut and Rakesh Kapoor, chief executive over at Reckitt Benckiser, who went from being the highest paid FTSE 100 chief in 2015 at 25.5m to having his pay packet almost halved to 14.6m in 2016, contributed to the fall. Director of the High Pay Centre, Stefan Stern noted that although a "limited and very late" fall had been recorded it took political pressure and "the spotlight of hostile public opinion" to reach the 4.5m figure. In 2015, a CEO would receive 148 for every 1 that the average employee would earn. In 2016, that dropped to 129. GENDER WAGE DISPARITY Peter Cheese, chief executive of the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development, which carried out the research in conjunction with the High Pay Centre added that its study showed a "clear gender pay disparity at the top, with female CEOs receiving less than their male peers." Of the top 100 jobs in 2016, just six were held by women, with the report stating that as a FTSE 100 CEO it was "more likely that your name is David than you being a female," with eight senior positions being held by people with that name. At an average salary of 2.6m, female CEOs are earning 77% less than their male counterparts. "Quite rightly this issue of fairness is increasingly being called out and this needs to be addressed at all levels of businesses," said Cheese. Within the last week, journalists at the Financial Times, which has a 50/50 split between male and female employees, voted to take industrial action over the 13% pay gap in its editorial staff, the biggest shortfall in a decade, demanding that the FT, "put its money where its mouth is." On Tuesday, the Church of England also became embroiled in the ongoing controversy as it published figures that showed male employees at its central office received an astonishing 41% more than their female counterparts, who also made up 74% of the lowest paid employees. Director-general of the BBC, Tony Hall was the recipient of an open letter in July where more than 40 high-profile women demanded he "do the right thing" to stamp out the pay gap in its halls, where female presenters earned an average of 10% less than men. Edwin Morgan of the Institute of Directors told the BBC that the gender pay gap was just part of the problem in promoting women to senior roles, stating that, "There's also unconscious bias. It is a big systemic problem and it is not just the pay issue." The report went on to say that it wanted to see Theresa May, who herself earns just 6,000 more per year than London mayor Sadiq Kahn, be more critical of executive pay and the, "growing gap between rewards for those at the top and those who were just about managing." Going on to demand that the PM stick to her guns and, "introduce a bill to reform executive pay before the year end." Saying that it should be seen by the top firms as a "mechanism to bring about greater fairness and transparency at work, and avoid the demotivating effects of unjustified wage gaps." Ordinary employees would have to work for 160 years to earn the average remuneration of FTSE 100 chief executives in 2016, according to new research. The average take home pay for the bosses of Britains top stock market-listed companies was 4.5m last year, according to the High Pay Centres annual survey of top executive pay. This compares to Office for National Statistics figures showing average annual earnings of 28,200 for full-time employees in the year to April 2016. Guardian The government has warned energy companies it is still prepared to legislate for an energy price cap, after British Gas announced a 12.5% electricity price rise for more than 3m households. The increase would add 76 to a typical annual electricity bill, and some experts warned that it could kick start a new round of price rises from the so-called Big Six energy companies. Guardian Britains largest energy companies could face an existential threat in the wake of a technology boom which threatens to upend the traditional utility business model, according to former energy chiefs. An influential six-strong group of former FTSE chief executives and policymakers has warned that traditional energy companies have already chronically underestimated the markets pace of change and could lose out to a rising breed of tech-based rivals. Telegraph Tesla expects to spend more than double its 2016 figure this year, after burning through a record amount in its second quarter as it ramps up production of its most "affordable" electric car to date. Capital expenditure at the company, led by the billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk, came in at $959m (725m) in the three months the June, taking overall capex for the first half to $1.5bn. - Telegraph The governments favourite infrastructure and engineering consultant, CH2M Hill, is to be taken over by its US rival in a $3.35 billion deal. A fortnight after The Times revealed that Jacobs had approached CH2M Hill, the two companies announced the transaction. CH2M Hill is best known as the controversial delivery partner for the first phase of the governments High Speed Two railway. Last month it landed the contract to oversee the redevelopment of the houses of parliament and it was one of the key players in the delivery of the 2012 Olympics. The Times Interim sales at Yoox Net A Porter have exceeded 1 billion for the first time after a strong performance in its key markets in North America and the Asia-Pacific region. The luxury online retailer said its results were outstanding and a result of organic growth of more than 20 per cent in the second quarter. The Times Home Four wheelers Lexus Inaugurates Fourth Showroom In India At Bengaluru oi-Sukesh Luxury carmaker Lexus has inaugurated its fourth showroom in India at Bengaluru. Lexus Guest Experience Centres (GECs), as they are known, are now open in premium locations across New Delhi, Gurgaon, Mumbai, and now in Bengaluru. The newly opened Lexus Guest Experience Centre is located at Residency Road, Lavelle, Bengaluru. All of the guest experience centres were designed specifically to allow guests to experience Lexus vehicles as well as the Lexus lifestyle. From the moment the customers step into the GEC, they will receive a warm welcome from an exclusive Lexus Relationship Manager. Recommended Video Jeep Compass Price (Ex-Showroom) In India Variant-Wise - DriveSpark The Bengaluru GEC is a combination of Kannadiga and Japanese cultures. The hosting area features the 'Sangam Jaali' inspired from the Indian style of greeting 'Namaste and 'Omotenashi' of Japanese culture. A handcrafted Hampi Chariot is also installed on the wall. The Lexus India product portfolio includes the ES 300h, RX 450h and LX 450d. Apart from the GECs, after sales facilities are available in Chandigarh, Hyderabad, Chennai and Kochi. Senior Vice President, Lexus India, Akitoshi Takemura said, "Lexus invites India to experience brand's passion through our vehicles and discover a guest experience that is uniquely Lexus at any of the Lexus Guest Experience Centers." DriveSpark Thinks! Lexus India calls its showrooms as the Lexus Guest Experience Centres offering a premium experience to the customers. Each GEC is uniquely designed to reflect the local culture. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Scott Pruitt reversed course on plans to delay an Obama-era ozone pollution regulation, announcing Wednesday that EPA would comply with the rules original Oct. 1 deadline. The move comes a day after 15 states and the District of Columbia filed suit against EPA for the delay, claiming that Pruitts original plan to put a one-year stay on implementation would endanger the health and safety of millions. In a statement announcing the decision, Pruitt claimed EPA believe[s] in dialogue with, and being responsive to, our state partners. The Obama-era standards would lower the amount of allowable ground-level ozone from 75 parts per billion to 70; as Oklahomas attorney general, Pruitt sued to fight the standards in 2015. As reported by The Hill: Earthjustice, which sued the EPA last month over the delay, welcomed the action. The EPAs hasty retreat shows that public health and environmental organizations and 16 states across the country were right: the agency had no legal basis for delaying implementation of the 2015 smog standard, said Seth Johnson, an attorney with the group. Implementing the safer 2015 smog standard will mean cleaner air and healthier people, particularly for those most vulnerable to ozone, like children, people with asthma and the elderly.' For a deeper dive: ABC, The Hill, Politico Pro, Bloomberg BNA, Project Earth For more climate change and clean energy news, you can follow Climate Nexus on Twitter and Facebook, and sign up for daily Hot News. By Katherine Paul Sometimes the stars align. This is one of those times. Not long after the Organic Consumers Association (OCA) announced that Ben & Jerrys ice cream tested positive for glyphosate, the key ingredient in Monsantos Roundup weedkiller, another story brokeone that validates the importance of finding glyphosate, even at low doses, in any food. According to internal Monsanto documents, Monsanto forced the retraction of a critical long-term study, first published in 2012, showing that very low doses of Monsantos Roundup herbicidelower than those detected in Ben & Jerrys ice creamcaused serious liver and kidney damage in rats. Shortly before the study was retracted, the editor of the journal began working for Monsanto, under a consulting contract. (The study, led by G.E. Seralini, was republished in 2014, by the Environmental Sciences Europe). Since the New York Times first reported on OCAs testing findings, the news about Ben & Jerrys has been picked by thousands of media outlets, including TV stations, in the U.S. and internationally, including in Germany, the U.K., France, Mexico, Portugal and Japan. No surprise, it didnt take long for critics to come out of the woodworkmostly the usual suspects who defend Monsanto. Their criticisms focused largely on the amounts of glyphosate detected in the ice cream, and how they fall below the U.S. Food & Drug Administrations (FDA) allowable safe levelslevels that dont take into account the latest research. That latest research, in addition to the Seralini study, includes a peer-reviewed study published in January, in Scientific Reports. Led by Dr. Michael Antoniou at Kings College London, the Antoniou study found that low doses (thousands of times below those declared safe by U.S. and international regulators) of Roundup weedkiller, administered to rats over a two-year period, caused non-alcoholic fatty liver disease. Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, which is now reaching epidemic proportions, can lead to cirrhosis of the liver, a life-threatening condition. OCAs news, and the latest revelations about Monsantos efforts to bury the truth about Roundups true toxicity have Ben & Jerrys (and parent company Unilever) sweating. As for Monsanto, company officials werent too pleased when their internal emails went public. The New York Times reported that one Monsanto scientist wrote this in an internal email in 2001: If somebody came to me and said they wanted to test Roundup I know how I would reactwith serious concern. The email was uncovered in what EcoWatch reported are more than 75 documents, including intriguing text messages and discussions about payments to scientists, which were posted for public viewing early Tuesday by attorneys suing Monsanto on behalf of people alleging Roundup caused them or their family members to become ill with non-Hodgkin lymphoma, a type of blood cancer. Just Released Docs Show Monsanto 'Executives Colluding With Corrupted EPA Officials to Manipulate Scientific Data'https://t.co/aCYVEIWPSn Mark Ruffalo (@MarkRuffalo) August 1, 2017 Monsanto told the New York Times It was outraged by the documents release. But we are the ones who should be outraged. By Monsanto knowingly selling a toxic product, and covering up that fact by attacking credible independent scientists. By government agencies that allowed, and possibly even colluded in the cover-ups and attacks. And by companies like Ben & Jerrys that profess great concern for the environment, the climate and social responsibility, while excusing themselves from having to live up to those promises. Ben & Jerrys Responds In response to our finding glyphosate in Ben & Jerrys ice cream, the company told the New York Times it was working to ensure that all the ingredients in its supply chain come from sources that do not include genetically modified organisms, known as G.M.O.s. Rob Michalak, global director of social mission at Ben & Jerrys, told the Times: Were working to transition away from G.M.O., as far away as we can get. But then these tests come along, and we need to better understand where the glyphosate theyre finding is coming from. Maybe its from something thats not even in our supply chain, and so were missing it. Not even in their supply chain? Seriously? Ben & Jerrys is one of the, if not the biggest buyer of non-organic milk in Vermont. And the cows that make that milk? Theyre fed GMO animal feed. More than 92,000 acres of Vermont farmland is planted in corn grown for animal feed, reported Regeneration Vermont. Ninety-six percent of that corn is GMOcorn grown using massive amounts of chemical fertilizers, and toxic weedkillers like glyphosate, atrazine and metolachlor. But thats not something Ben & Jerrys, the darling brand of the progressive movement, likes to talk abouteven though activists have been begging the company for more than two decades to clean up its act, and go organic. And not just because of the glyphosate in its ice cream, though thats reason enoughbut because, as OCA Director Ronnie Cummins recently explained, because Ben & Jerrys support of conventional and GMO dairy is ruining Vermonts waterways, hurtling dairy farmers into bankruptcy, hurting migrant workers and perpetuating animal abuse. We Stand by Our Test Results Criticisms of the New York Times story on OCAs test results, and on the testing itself, dont hold up. Our tests were conducted by Health Research Institute Laboratories, an independent, 501(c)(3) non-profit analytical chemistry laboratory, using the latest methodology. We provide a full explanation of that methodology here. As for the significance of the amounts of weedkiller detected in Ben & Jerrys ice cream, as mentioned at the beginning of this post, we point to the latest research that says these amounts are actually higher than doses known to cause serious health issues in rats, based on long-term peer-reviewed studies. You can read more about the relevance of our findings here. Ben & Jerrys has been hiding behind its do-gooder image for far too long. We intend to keep the pressure on, until the company commits to a three-year transition to 100 percent organic, immediately. Katherine Paul is associate director of the Organic Consumers Association. By Nicole Greenfield In the red state of Nebraska, people know Jane Kleeb for her politics. Shes a progressive Democrat in a land of Trump voters, after all. But people also know the 44-year-old Kleeb, a Florida native who moved to Nebraska in 2007 after marrying into a family of local homesteaders, as someone who can bridge the political divide and unify the most unlikely of groups. And thats exactly what shes done around the fight against TransCanadas 1,179-mile-long Keystone XL pipeline, which, if built, would transport a minimum of 830,000 barrels of tar sands oil through Nebraskas heartland every day. As the founder of Bold Nebraska, which has since grown into the multistate Bold Alliance, Kleeb has successfully united Republicans and Democrats, ranchers and native tribes, country folk and city dwellers to battle the oil companys attempts to push its project through. And while the U.S. State Departments March 24 announcement that it was reauthorizing the project certainly dealt a blow to their common cause, the diverse group is not backing down. Ill tell you the reason our battle against KXL has been successful so far, said Art Tanderup, one of the farmers whose land is along the pipelines proposed route. That reason is Jane Kleeb. She is a great organizer. And shes a cheerleadershes always out here saying, Come on guys, I know we can beat this.' For Kleeb, the first goalpost in the KXL fight was building that team to cheer on. Bolds initial meetings took place in early 2010 in the Nebraska Sandhills, home to the precious Ogallala Aquifer, which is threatened by the pipeline. At those meetings, skeptical landowners greeted her with crossed arms and stern faces. In the beginning, there was resistance, she remembered. But I knew that if I kept showing up, and if their peers were always standing with me, we would build a good team and build trust. Weve had political disagreements over the past seven years, but were such a deep-knit communitywe cherish each other like family membersthat we just dont let that stuff divide us. Jane Kleeb (third from right) and fellow activists before their meeting with White House officials during a 2014 Reject and Protect rally. Garth Lenz/iLCP Those tight bonds, in addition to their unwavering persistence, bolstered the Nebraskans efforts in helping defeat the Keystone XL pipeline in November 2015. Kleeb credited quality time spent together for bringing the group so closethe many late nights sitting around landowners kitchen tables, the days they braved stormy weather to create crop art, their annual ritual of planting sacred Ponca corn along the pipeline route, and a 2014 trip to Washington, DC, where they camped out on the National Mall and urged President Obama to reject KXL and protect the heartland. We have these moments where were all in ithands in the soil trying to stop this thing, she said. Thats really important and a lesson for all pipeline fights. If you want to do this, it cant just be a bunch of people in a room writing a plan on paper. You have to be with the people that are directly in the path, because theyre the ones were standing up for and standing with. Kleeb noted that her four-year-old minivan already has nearly 200,000 miles on it from all the times shes crisscrossed Nebraska to be with the pipeline fighters. And, choking back tears, she said that after every single long night of work or strategizing, a landowner would leave eggs or meat on her passenger seat. No note, nothingjust one of the farmers or ranchers decided they were going to make sure that I left with some food to take home to my family. Still, Bold Nebraska doesnt succeed because of personal relationships alone. Kleeb is a seasoned political organizer and strategistthe former executive director of the Young Democrats of America and current chair of the Nebraska Democratic Party. She started Bold Nebraska in 2010 as a means to counter the growing force of the states Tea Party and keep Nebraskans informed about issues that cut across the political spectrum. About two months after she founded the organization, the Keystone XL controversy arose as exactly one of those issues, beginning with a series of phone calls Kleeb received from concerned farmers and ranchers. She and the landowners quickly learned about tar sandsthe particularly harmful, dirty crude that would flow under their land and endanger their water supply. Bold Nebraska supporters gather at the site of a solar and wind powered barn outside Benedict, Nebraska. Mary Anne Andrei/Bold Nebraska Jane Kleeb deserves a lot of credit, said Anthony Swift, director of NRDCs Canada Project, who partnered with Bold Nebraska to help make a strong case to the state legislature about the pipeline. She worked with all of the landowners along the route, and Nebraskans as a whole, to educate them about the risks of the pipeline. Meanwhile, he added, TransCanada came and told them things that really stretched the truth. The company also rattled landowners who didnt want to sign easement agreements by threatening the use of eminent domain. Nebraskans can identify a straight-talker; they know when people are not being entirely honest with them. So the juxtaposition between Jane Kleeb and TransCanada was pretty perfectit made a clear choice for them on who they could trust. Bold Nebraskas communal efforts and hard work were validated when President Obama rejected the pipeline in 2015. Since then, as the director of Bold Alliance, Kleeb has expanded her pipeline-fighting efforts to other states like Iowa and Louisiana. And back in the Cornhusker State, even without her day-to-day oversight, the fight continues. With the Nebraskan holdouts once again on the front lines, the pipeline route is still unapproved, and they await a final call from the five elected members of Nebraskas Public Service Commission. (The battle is simultaneously playing out in federal court in Montana, where NRDC, Bold Alliance, and partner groups Northern Plains Resource Council, Center for Biological Diversity, Friends of the Earth, and Sierra Club are suing the Trump administration for unlawfully issuing a cross-border permit for the project.) A series of public hearings were held in the spring, and the Bold Nebraskans will gather in Lincoln from Aug. 7 to 11, many as formal intervenors, to testify anew against the pipeline and raise awareness with a kickoff parade that will feature Harleys, horses and tractors. We want to show that this unlikely alliance is still here, still fighting, Kleeb said. An official decision on Keystone XL could be made as soon as September. With the roller-coaster emotions the pipeline has brought so far, how do Kleeb and other Nebraskans keep the faith? We fundamentally see this as such a wrong project that for us theres no other way to look at it, she said without hesitation. We have no option but to think that our work will stop this pipeline again. By Andy Rowell As U.S. President Donald Trump reluctantly signs new legislation imposing sweeping new sanctions on Russia, it has been revealed that existing sanctions on the country, designed to prevent frontier oil and gas exploration, are not working. On Wednesday, Trump was forced to sign a new sanctions bill. As Congress had voted for the bill in such large numbers, the president could not veto it. Therefore Trump grudgingly signed signed the bi-partisan bill for the sake of national unity, while attacking it as seriously flawed and unconstitutional. The president attempted to argue that it violated the Constitution and previous Supreme Court. He said, The bill remains seriously flawedparticularly because it encroaches on the executive branchs authority to negotiate. Congress could not even negotiate a healthcare bill after seven years of talking. The president added, By limiting the Executives flexibility, this bill makes it harder for the United States to strike good deals for the American people, and will drive China, Russia, and North Korea much closer together. In typical Trump fashion, he also bragged, I built a truly great company worth many billions of dollars. That is a big part of the reason I was elected. As president, I can make far better deals with foreign countries than Congress. But Trump was not the only one who criticized the legislation, according to the Financial Times. The Russians also attacked Trump as demonstrating complete impotence, in the most humiliating manner. The oil and gas industry was not happy, either. The paper noted, International oil and gas companies have warned that the new sanctions, if signed into law, could cause unintended harm to billions of dollars worth of projects, due to the potentially broad interpretation of some clauses in the bill. The decision to expand sanctions to cover oil and gas export pipelines could now undermine some $4.75 billion worth of funding for projects, such as Gazproms Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline from Russia to Germany, and Chevrons $37 billion expansion of the Tengiz project in Kazakhstan, whose oil flows through Russia to the Black Sea, according to the FT. But are sanctions really as effective as we think at stopping oil and gas development in Russia? According to a new Reuters investigation, A gap in U.S. sanctions allows Western companies to help Russia develop some of its most technically challenging oil reserves. Back in 2014, when Washington imposed sanctions on Moscow, the U.S. Treasury said it wanted to impede Russias ability to develop so-called frontier or unconventional oil resources. But it explicitly mentioned shale reservoirs, not other forms of unconventional oil and gas. Therefore, the sanctions are not working, as there is a serious loophole to exploit. According to Reuters, Three years on, however, Norways Statoil is helping Kremlin oil giant Rosneft develop unconventional resources, while British major BP is considering a similar project. Although Statoil is not officially breaching sanctions, the cooperation highlights how sanctions have only been partially effective in curbing Western energy investment. All these companies are not exploring for shale, but the deeper reservoirs that lie beneath shale oil in limestone. Reuters pointed out that Geologists are unanimous, though, that even though shale and limestone formations are different geological structures, they both constitute unconventional oil resources. Both are extracted through hydraulic fracturing, or fracking. In this case, they should be banned. But once again the oil industry seems to have found enough wriggle room to avoid accountability and culpability and carry on as business as usual. BEER-SHEVA, Israel...August 3, 2017 - Researchers at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev and Soroka University Medical Center in Beer-Sheva, Israel have discovered a new genetic mutation that prevents sperm production. Five percent of men suffer from infertility and approximately one percent suffer from azoospermia, which is a condition in which sperm cells are completely absent. For the first time, the researchers identified a mutation in the gene TDRD9 using whole genome genotyping and sequencing. The results were published in the Journal of Medical Genetics. The findings were possible only because five men from a single Bedouin family suffered from lack of sperm and spermatogenic arrest in their testis with no obvious cause. The men were being treated by Dr. Eitan Lunenfeld and his team at the Soroka University Medical Center In Vitro Fertilization Unit. Profs. Ruti Parvari and Mahmoud Huleihel of the Shraga Segal Department of Microbiology, Immunology and Genetics discovered the mutation in the gene, which normally protects the full DNA sequence in sperm. This mutation inactivates the function of the gene and arrests sperm production. "With the link between this damaged gene and male infertility now identified, specific scans will be available to test for the mutation which will be important for treatment of a couple's infertility," the researchers say. ### This study was partially supported by The Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) - Israel Science Foundation (ISF) (NSFC-ISF) (1183/14). About American Associates, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev American Associates, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (AABGU) plays a vital role in sustaining David Ben-Gurion's vision: creating a world-class institution of education and research in the Israeli desert, nurturing the Negev community and sharing the University's expertise locally and around the globe. As Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (BGU) looks ahead to turning 50 in 2020, AABGU imagines a future that goes beyond the walls of academia. It is a future where BGU invents a new world and inspires a vision for a stronger Israel and its next generation of leaders. Together with supporters, AABGU will help the University foster excellence in teaching, research and outreach to the communities of the Negev for the next 50 years and beyond. Visit vision.aabgu.org to learn more. AABGU, which is headquartered in Manhattan, has nine regional offices throughout the United States. For more information, visit http://www.aabgu.org. By studying a population of lizards before and after a sudden cold snap that struck the U.S., scientists have observed how the surviving population underwent rapid adaptation in response to the event. The results demonstrate how a subpopulation can respond quickly - even in one generation - to extreme climatic events. The first direct measurement of natural selection influencing a wild population following a short-lived but extreme climatic event was reported in 1898 by biologist Hermon Bumpus, who found that the size of sparrows changed in response to a severe snowstorm. Yet, despite technological advances, there are still surprisingly few examples of biological response to intense weather events. Here, Shane C. Campbell-Staton and colleagues measured the threshold temperature at which the green anole lizard, Anolis carolinensis, loses its coordination, at five sites across Texas in August 2013. They conducted the same measurements following an extreme cold snap during the winter of 2013-2014, which drove temperatures that were significantly colder than the previous 15 years. Yet they found that the surviving lizards in the south displayed greater resistance to lower temperatures than they had before the cold snap, at levels similar to their more northern counterparts. Furthermore, RNA sequencing revealed 14 genomic regions that displayed significant divergence between individuals before and after the storm. Intriguingly, the shift in gene expression only occurred in the southern population, which displayed a genetic shift toward the more northerly populations; the northern populations, in contrast, showed no change, presumably because winter variability there was less severe. These results are highlighted in a Perspective by Peter R. Grant. ### WASHINGTON -- People who suffer from depression may want to look to yoga as a complement to traditional therapies as the practice appears to lessen symptoms of the disorder, according to studies presented at the 125th Annual Convention of the American Psychological Association. "Yoga has become increasingly popular in the West, and many new yoga practitioners cite stress-reduction and other mental health concerns as their primary reason for practicing," said Lindsey Hopkins, PhD, of the San Francisco Veterans Affairs Medical Center, who chaired a session highlighting research on yoga and depression. "But the empirical research on yoga lags behind its popularity as a first-line approach to mental health." Hopkins' research focused on the acceptability and antidepressant effects of hatha yoga, the branch of yoga that emphasizes physical exercises, along with meditative and breathing exercises, to enhance well-being. In the study, 23 male veterans participated in twice-weekly yoga classes for eight weeks. On a 1-10 scale, the average enjoyment rating for the yoga classes for these veterans was 9.4. All participants said they would recommend the program to other veterans. More importantly, participants with elevated depression scores before the yoga program had a significant reduction in depression symptoms after the eight weeks. Another, more specific, version of hatha yoga commonly practiced in the West is Bikram yoga, also known as heated yoga. Sarah Shallit, MA, of Alliant University in San Francisco investigated Bikram yoga in 52 women, age 25-45. Just more than half were assigned to participate in twice-weekly classes for eight weeks. The rest were told they were wait-listed and used as a control condition. All participants were tested for depression levels at the beginning of the study, as well as at weeks three, six and nine. Shallit and her co-author Hopkins found that eight weeks of Bikram yoga significantly reduced symptoms of depression compared with the control group. In the same session, Maren Nyer, PhD, and Maya Nauphal, BA, of Massachusetts General Hospital, presented data from a pilot study of 29 adults that also showed eight weeks of at least twice-weekly Bikram yoga significantly reduced symptoms of depression and improved other secondary measures including quality of life, optimism, and cognitive and physical functioning. "The more the participants attended yoga classes, the lower their depressive symptoms at the end of the study," said Nyer, who currently has funding from the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health to conduct a randomized controlled trial of Bikram yoga for individuals with depression. Elsewhere at the meeting, Nina Vollbehr, MS, of the Center for Integrative Psychiatry in the Netherlands presented data from two studies on the potential for yoga to address chronic and/or treatment-resistant depression. In the first study, 12 patients who had experienced depression for an average of 11 years participated in nine weekly yoga sessions of approximately 2.5 hours each. The researchers measured participants' levels of depression, anxiety, stress, rumination and worry before the yoga sessions, directly after the nine weeks and four months later. Scores for depression, anxiety and stress decreased throughout the program, a benefit that persisted four months after the training. Rumination and worry did not change immediately after the treatment, but at follow up rumination and worry were decreased for the participants. In another study, involving 74 mildly depressed university students, Vollbehr and her colleagues compared yoga to a relaxation technique. Individuals received 30 minutes of live instruction on either yoga or relaxation and were asked to perform the same exercise at home for eight days using a 15-minute instructional video. While results taken immediately after the treatment showed yoga and relaxation were equally effective at reducing symptoms, two months later, the participants in the yoga group had significantly lower scores for depression, anxiety and stress than the relaxation group. "These studies suggest that yoga-based interventions have promise for depressed mood and that they are feasible for patients with chronic, treatment-resistant depression," said Vollbehr. The concept of yoga as complementary or alternative mental health treatment is so promising that the U.S. military is investigating the creation of its own treatment programs. Jacob Hyde, PsyD, of the University of Denver, gave a presentation outlining a standardized, six-week yoga treatment for U.S. military veterans enrolled in behavioral health services at the university-run clinic and could be expanded for use by the Department of Defense and the Department of Veterans Affairs. Hopkins noted that the research on yoga as a treatment for depression is still preliminary. "At this time, we can only recommend yoga as a complementary approach, likely most effective in conjunction with standard approaches delivered by a licensed therapist," she said. "Clearly, yoga is not a cure-all. However, based on empirical evidence, there seems to be a lot of potential." ### Session 1301: "Effects of a Hatha Yoga Intervention on Depressive Symptoms in Male Military Veterans," "Effects of a Hatha Yoga Intervention on Depressive Symptoms: Mediating Roles of Mindfulness and Self," "Hyperthermic Yoga for the Treatment of Depressive Symptoms" and "Heated Yoga for the Treatment of Anxious Depression," Symposium, Thursday, Aug. 3, 2-2:50 p.m. EDT, Room 152A, Street Level, Walter E. Washington Convention Center, 801 Mount Vernon Pl., N.W., Washington, D.C. Session 2090: "The Influence of Yoga on Chronic Depression and Potential Cognitive Mediators," Paper Session, Friday, Aug. 4, 9-10:50 a.m. EDT, West Overlook Room, Level 2, Walter E. Washington Convention Center, 801 Mount Vernon Pl., N.W., Washington, D.C. Session 2258: "Multidisciplinary Collaboration in Creating a Yoga Protocol to Complement Evidence-Based Care," Poster Session, Friday, Aug. 4, 3-3:50 p.m. EDT, Exhibit Halls D and E, Level 2, Walter E. Washington Convention Center, 801 Mount Vernon Pl., N.W., Washington, D.C. Presentations are available from the APA Public Affairs Office. Contacts: Lindsey Hopkins at lbhopkins@gmail.com or by phone at (415) 533-1749. Maren Nyer at MNYER@mgh.harvard.edu or by phone at (617) 643-4897. Nina Vollbehr at n.vollbehr@lentis.nl or by phone at (+31) 6 17012443. Jacob Hyde at jacob.hyde@du.edu or by phone at (303) 871-6245. The American Psychological Association, in Washington, D.C., is the largest scientific and professional organization representing psychology in the United States. APA's membership includes nearly 115,700 researchers, educators, clinicians, consultants and students. Through its divisions in 54 subfields of psychology and affiliations with 60 state, territorial and Canadian provincial associations, APA works to advance the creation, communication and application of psychological knowledge to benefit society and improve people's lives. Washington, DC-- According to one longstanding theory, our Solar System's formation was triggered by a shock wave from an exploding supernova. The shock wave injected material from the exploding star into a neighboring cloud of dust and gas, causing it to collapse in on itself and form the Sun and its surrounding planets. New work from Carnegie's Alan Boss offers fresh evidence supporting this theory, modeling the Solar System's formation beyond the initial cloud collapse and into the intermediate stages of star formation. It is published by the Astrophysical Journal. One very important constraint for testing theories of Solar System formation is meteorite chemistry. Meteorites retain a record of the elements, isotopes, and compounds that existed in the system's earliest days. One type, called carbonaceous chondrites, includes some of the most-primitive known samples. An interesting component of chondrites' makeup is something called short-lived radioactive isotopes. Isotopes are versions of elements with the same number of protons, but a different number of neutrons. Sometimes, as is the case with radioactive isotopes, the number of neutrons present in the nucleus can make the isotope unstable. To gain stability, the isotope releases energetic particles, which alters its number of protons and neutrons, transmuting it into another element. Some isotopes that existed when the Solar System formed are radioactive and have decay rates that caused them to become extinct within tens to hundreds of million years. The fact that these isotopes still existed when chondrites formed is shown by the abundances of their stable decay products--also called daughter isotopes--found in some primitive chondrites. Measuring the amount of these daughter isotopes can tell scientists when, and possibly how, the chondrites formed. A recent analysis of chondrites by Carnegie's Myriam Telus was concerned with iron-60, a short-lived radioactive isotope that decays into nickel-60. It is only created in significant amounts by nuclear reactions inside certain kinds of stars, including supernovae or what are called asymptotic giant branch (AGB) stars. Because all the iron-60 from the Solar System's formation has long since decayed, Telus' research, published in Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta, focused on its daughter product, nickel-60. The amount of nickel-60 found in meteorite samples--particularly in comparison to the amount of stable, "ordinary" iron-56--can indicate how much iron-60 was present when the larger parent body from which the meteorite broke off was formed. There are not many options for how an excess of iron-60--which later decayed into nickel-60--could have gotten into a primitive Solar System object in the first place--one of them being a supernova. While her research did not find a "smoking gun," definitively proving that the radioactive isotopes were injected by a shock wave, Telus did show that the amount of Fe-60 present in the early Solar System is consistent with a supernova origin. Taking this latest meteorite research into account, Boss revisited his earlier models of shock wave-triggered cloud collapse, extending his computational models beyond the initial collapse and into the intermediate stages of star formation, when the Sun was first being created, an important next step in tying together Solar System origin modeling and meteorite sample analysis. "My findings indicate that a supernova shock wave is still the most-plausible origin story for explaining the short lived radioactive isotopes in our Solar System," Boss said. Boss dedicated his paper to the late Sandra Keiser, a long-term collaborator, who provided computational and programming support at Carnegie's Department of Terrestrial Magnetism for more than two decades. Keiser died in March. ### The software used in this research was in large part developed by the DOE-supported ASC/Alliances Center for Astrophysical Thermonuclear Flashes at the University of Chicago. The Carnegie Institution for Science (carnegiescience.edu) is a private, nonprofit organization headquartered in Washington, D.C., with six research departments throughout the U.S. Since its founding in 1902, the Carnegie Institution has been a pioneering force in basic scientific research. Carnegie scientists are leaders in plant biology, developmental biology, astronomy, materials science, global ecology, and Earth and planetary science. LOS ANGELES (Aug. 3, 2017) -- An experimental treatment derived from a potentially deadly microorganism may provide lifesaving help for kidney transplant patients, according to an international study led by investigators at Cedars-Sinai. The study, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, found that treating patients with the drug IdeS before transplantation significantly reduced, and in most cases eliminated, donor-specific antibodies that can cause rejection or failure of the new organ. These antibodies represent an often impenetrable immunologic barrier to transplantation. IdeS is derived from an enzyme in the bacteria Streptococcus pyogenes, which causes disorders ranging from sore throats to life-threatening infections. Stanley C. Jordan, MD, medical director of the Kidney Transplant Program at Cedars-Sinai, said the enzyme is the only one that can completely remove organ-rejecting antibodies and allow kidney transplantation to take place. He noted that, one hour after infusion of the enzyme, antibodies declined drastically. "We found that IdeS could immediately cut patient antibodies in half, making them powerless to attack and injure a newly transplanted kidney," said Jordan, the study's lead author. "We can put a new kidney in a patient without it being rejected." All people have human leukocyte antigens (HLA), proteins that are key to the immune system's defense against bacteria, viruses and other potentially harmful invaders. Patients develop antibodies to foreign HLA due to failed organ transplants, transfusions or pregnancy. These antibodies persist over a patient's lifetime, causing their body to perceive a newly donated organ as a threat and so attack it. This response prevents patients from having a successful kidney transplant and they often remain on dialysis for years with diminished quality and length of life. The study of IdeS involved two coordinated investigations, with a total of 25 patients treated in the U.S. and Sweden. Twenty-four of the patients were transplanted successfully after receiving the investigational therapy. The special enzyme is produced by Hansa Medical of Sweden. "IdeS could change the way we treat antibody rejections overall," said Jordan, who also directs the Human Leukocyte Antigen and Transplant Immunology Laboratory at Cedars-Sinai. "We think this approach to preventing organ rejection has the potential to offer significant benefits to those in need of heart, lung, liver and bone marrow transplants." Nearly 128,000 people in the U.S. are waiting for organ transplants, according to the Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network, with more than 105,000 needing new kidneys. Many of them wait years for an organ to become available, only to have their bodies' immune systems attack it. "We need larger studies to confirm the promising results of this unique approach to removing patient antibodies that threaten newly transplanted organs," Jordan said. "And we want to investigate any long-term impact IdeS therapy may have on overall antibody production in patients." ### Research reported in this study was supported by Hansa Medical of Sweden. Disclosure: Jordan reports receiving fees from Hansa for medical and scientific consultation. DOI: 10.1056/NEJMoa1612567 Targeting healthy cells that have been hijacked by cancer cells could help treat many different types of the disease, according to research* funded by Cancer Research UK and published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute today (Thursday). Scientists found that targeting an enzyme known as NOX4 stops the action of a type of cell called cancer associated fibroblasts (CAFs), reducing the size of tumours in mice by up to 50 per cent.** Fibroblasts are healthy cells whose role is to hold different types of organs together. When they are hijacked by cancer cells, they become CAFs and are known to help tumours grow, spread and evade therapy. Until now, attempts to target them have proved unsuccessful. In line with previous studies, the team at the University of Southampton found that higher levels of CAFs were associated with poorer survival in several cancers including bowel, head and neck cancers.*** For the first time, they identified that NOX4**** is needed for CAFs to form and help tumours grow in many cancer types. But they could stop this happening by blocking NOX4 using a drug that is being developed to treat a condition called organ fibrosis. These findings could form the basis for new treatments and help make cancers respond better to existing drugs. Cancer Research UK is now funding the Southampton scientists to see if this approach improves treatments like immunotherapy and chemotherapy to make them more effective. Professor Gareth Thomas, lead researcher and Chair of Experimental Pathology at the University of Southampton, said: "By looking at many types of cancer, we have identified a common mechanism responsible for CAF formation in tumours. "These cells make cancers aggressive and difficult to treat, and we can see exciting possibilities for targeting CAFs in many patients who don't respond well to existing therapies." Dr Aine McCarthy, Cancer Research UK's senior science information officer, said: "Some cancers are incredibly difficult to treat, and can use the body's own cells to help them grow, evade treatment and spread around the body. Researchers have been trying to unlock the secrets behind this for many years and this study is a big step forward in understanding how some cancers achieve this. "These findings show that CAFs can be targeted with a drug and their 'pro-tumour' effects can be reversed in mice, giving researchers a starting point to develop new and potentially more effective treatments in the future." ### For media enquiries contact Kathryn Ingham in the Cancer Research UK press office on 020 3469 5475 or, out of hours, on 07050 264 059. Notes to editor: *Hanley, C, J., et al., Targeting the myofibroblastic cancer-associated fibroblast phenotype through inhibition of NOX4. Journal of the National Cancer Institute. **mice were treated pharmacologically with a drug called GKT137831 to inhibit NOX4, which statistically significantly reduced myofibroblast accumulation (68.4%, 95%CI=14.6-122.3%, p=0.02) and tumour growth (46.8%, 95%CI=15.9-77.8%, p=0.006). ***CAF accumulation and prognostic significance in head & neck cancer (oral, n=260; oropharyngeal, n=271), and colorectal cancer (n=56) was analysed using immunohistochemistry. Patients with moderate/high levels of myofibroblastic-CAF had a statistically significant decrease in survival rates in each cancer type analysed. ****CAF formation was dependent on the generation of intracellular reactive oxygen species, by NOX4 (NAD (P)H Oxidase). A statistically significant increase in NOX4 expression was found in multiple human cancers. CAFs remain poorly understood, and clinically effective treatments targeting CAFs are yet to be developed. About Cancer Research UK Cancer Research UK is the world's leading cancer charity dedicated to saving lives through research. Cancer Research UK's pioneering work into the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of cancer has helped save millions of lives. Cancer Research UK receives no government funding for its life-saving research. Every step it makes towards beating cancer relies on vital donations from the public. Cancer Research UK has been at the heart of the progress that has already seen survival in the UK double in the last forty years. Today, 2 in 4 people survive their cancer for at least 10 years. Cancer Research UK's ambition is to accelerate progress so that by 2034, 3 in 4 people will survive their cancer for at least 10 years. Cancer Research UK supports research into all aspects of cancer through the work of over 4,000 scientists, doctors and nurses. Together with its partners and supporters, Cancer Research UK's vision is to bring forward the day when all cancers are cured. For further information about Cancer Research UK's work or to find out how to support the charity, please call 0300 123 1022 or visit http://www.cancerresearchuk.org. Follow us on Twitter and Facebook. About the University of Southampton The University of Southampton drives original thinking, turns knowledge into action and impact, and creates solutions to the world's challenges. We are among the top one per cent of institutions globally. Our academics are leaders in their fields, forging links with high-profile international businesses and organisations, and inspiring a 24,000-strong community of exceptional students, from over 135 countries worldwide. Through our high-quality education, the University helps students on a journey of discovery to realise their potential and join our global network of over 200,000 alumni. http://www.southampton.ac.uk Cold Spring Harbor, NY - Continuously throughout our lives, our cells are expressing genes. It's the first step in making proteins, the stuff of all the structures in the body and molecular players in the countless dramas unfolding every second as cells execute tasks that enable our organs to function. Many specialized and overlapping mechanisms have evolved to assure that genes are active only when they should be. One of the most important wasn't even known to science until the late 1990s. Called RNA interference, or RNAi, it is present across the spectrum of life, from single-celled organisms to the most advanced primates. Like other creatures, we humans depend on RNAi to fine-tune the expression of our genes. We could not survive without it. Today in Molecular Cell, a team led by structural biologist Leemor Joshua-Tor, an HHMI Investigator and professor at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL), publishes atomic-resolution pictures and a comprehensive analysis of the workings of a part of the RNAi machinery. Although much is already known about this machinery, important mysteries about its function have remained unsolved. The new discoveries pertain to the way several parts of the machinery come together and work in concert to tamp down gene expression. They can do this in various ways, but the new pictures are about one way in particular: events occurring after the attachment of the machinery to an RNA message (mRNA) copied from a gene. This association of the RNAi machinery and a gene's message is prelude to destruction of the message before it arrives at a cellular protein factory called the ribosome. When the machinery works properly in this mode, the protein never gets made. The primary component of the RNAi machinery is called RISC - the RNA-induced silencing complex. It contains two essential parts, a small RNA molecule called a microRNA (miRNA) which guides RISC to its mRNA target; and a much larger component into which the guide RNA fits, a protein called Argonaute, which, Joshua-Tor showed in 2004, actually performs the "slicing up" of the mRNA. Now Joshua-Tor's team has succeeded in showing how in humans, a protein called GW182 physically associates with RISC. It was known that there are three possible binding sites on GW182 for Argonaute. An atomic level view of one, called a hook motif, reveals a gate-like interaction. The pictures show that human Argonaute has a single binding site for GW182, and that binding of the guide sequence increases the affinity of the Argonaute and GW182. Showing that human GW182 can "multivalently" recruit up to three copies of Argonaute at once, experimenters in the lab led by first author Elad Elkayam suggest a possible source of synergy. "There may be greater efficiency in destroying the mRNA target, we speculate, because of 'crosstalk' between the RISC complexes and GW182," Joshua-Tor says. ### This work was supported by the National Institutes of Health, National Institute of General Medical Sciences, and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. "Multivalent recruitment of human Argonaute by GW182" appears online in Molecular Cell August 3, 2017. The authors are: Elad Elkayam, Christopher R Faehnle, Marjorie Morales, Jingchuan Sun, Huilin Li and Leemor Joshua-Tor. The paper can be viewed at: http://www.cell.com/molecular-cell/newarticles About Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Founded in 1890, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory has shaped contemporary biomedical research and education with programs in cancer, neuroscience, plant biology and quantitative biology. Home to eight Nobel Prize winners, the private, not-for-profit Laboratory employs 1,100 people including 600 scientists, students and technicians. The Meetings & Courses Program hosts more than 12,000 scientists from around the world each year on its campuses in Long Island and in Suzhou, China. The Laboratory's education arm also includes an academic publishing house, a graduate school and programs for middle and high school students and teachers. For more information, visit http://www.cshl.edu Imagine planting a single seed and, with great precision, being able to predict the exact height of the tree that grows from it. Now imagine traveling to the future and snapping photographic proof that you were right. If you think of the seed as the early universe, and the tree as the universe the way it looks now, you have an idea of what the Dark Energy Survey (DES) collaboration has just done. In a presentation today at the American Physical Society Division of Particles and Fields meeting at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, DES scientists will unveil the most accurate measurement ever made of the present large-scale structure of the universe. These measurements of the amount and "clumpiness" (or distribution) of dark matter in the present-day cosmos were made with a precision that, for the first time, rivals that of inferences from the early universe by the European Space Agency's orbiting Planck observatory. The new DES result (the tree, in the above metaphor) is close to "forecasts" made from the Planck measurements of the distant past (the seed), allowing scientists to understand more about the ways the universe has evolved over 14 billion years. "This result is beyond exciting," said Scott Dodelson of Fermilab, one of the lead scientists on this result. "For the first time, we're able to see the current structure of the universe with the same clarity that we can see its infancy, and we can follow the threads from one to the other, confirming many predictions along the way." Most notably, this result supports the theory that 26 percent of the universe is in the form of mysterious dark matter and that space is filled with an also-unseen dark energy, which is causing the accelerating expansion of the universe and makes up 70 percent. Paradoxically, it is easier to measure the large-scale clumpiness of the universe in the distant past than it is to measure it today. In the first 400,000 years following the Big Bang, the universe was filled with a glowing gas, the light from which survives to this day. Planck's map of this cosmic microwave background radiation gives us a snapshot of the universe at that very early time. Since then, the gravity of dark matter has pulled mass together and made the universe clumpier over time. But dark energy has been fighting back, pushing matter apart. Using the Planck map as a start, cosmologists can calculate precisely how this battle plays out over 14 billion years. "The DES measurements, when compared with the Planck map, support the simplest version of the dark matter/dark energy theory," said Joe Zuntz, of the University of Edinburgh, who worked on the analysis. "The moment we realized that our measurement matched the Planck result within 7 percent was thrilling for the entire collaboration." The primary instrument for DES is the 570-megapixel Dark Energy Camera, one of the most powerful in existence, able to capture digital images of light from galaxies eight billion light-years from Earth. The camera was built and tested at Fermilab, the lead laboratory on the Dark Energy Survey, and is mounted on the National Science Foundation's 4-meter Blanco telescope, part of the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile, a division of the National Optical Astronomy Observatory. The DES data are processed at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Scientists on DES are using the camera to map an eighth of the sky in unprecedented detail over five years. The fifth year of observation will begin in August. The new results released today draw from data collected only during the survey's first year, which covers 1/30th of the sky. "It is amazing that the team has managed to achieve such precision from only the first year of their survey," said National Science Foundation Program Director Nigel Sharp. "Now that their analysis techniques are developed and tested, we look forward with eager anticipation to breakthrough results as the survey continues." DES scientists used two methods to measure dark matter. First, they created maps of galaxy positions as tracers, and second, they precisely measured the shapes of 26 million galaxies to directly map the patterns of dark matter over billions of light-years, using a technique called gravitational lensing. To make these ultraprecise measurements, the DES team developed new ways to detect the tiny lensing distortions of galaxy images, an effect not even visible to the eye, enabling revolutionary advances in understanding these cosmic signals. In the process, they created the largest guide to spotting dark matter in the cosmos ever drawn (see image). The new dark matter map is 10 times the size of the one DES released in 2015 and will eventually be three times larger than it is now. "It's an enormous team effort and the culmination of years of focused work," said Erin Sheldon, a physicist at the DOE's Brookhaven National Laboratory, who co-developed the new method for detecting lensing distortions. These results and others from the first year of the Dark Energy Survey will be released today online and announced during a talk by Daniel Gruen, NASA Einstein fellow at the Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology at DOE's SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, at 5 p.m. Central time. The talk is part of the APS Division of Particles and Fields meeting at Fermilab and will be streamed live. The results will also be presented by Kavli fellow Elisabeth Krause of the Kavli Insitute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology at SLAC at the TeV Particle Astrophysics Conference in Columbus, Ohio, on Aug. 9; and by Michael Troxel, postdoctoral fellow at the Center for Cosmology and AstroParticle Physics at Ohio State University, at the International Symposium on Lepton Photon Interactions at High Energies in Guanzhou, China, on Aug. 10. All three of these speakers are coordinators of DES science working groups and made key contributions to the analysis. "The Dark Energy Survey has already delivered some remarkable discoveries and measurements, and they have barely scratched the surface of their data," said Fermilab Director Nigel Lockyer. "Today's world-leading results point forward to the great strides DES will make toward understanding dark energy in the coming years." ### The Dark Energy Survey is a collaboration of more than 400 scientists from 26 institutions in seven countries. Funding for the DES Projects has been provided by the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science, U.S. National Science Foundation, Ministry of Science and Education of Spain, Science and Technology Facilities Council of the United Kingdom, Higher Education Funding Council for England, ETH Zurich for Switzerland, National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Kavli Institute of Cosmological Physics at the University of Chicago, Center for Cosmology and AstroParticle Physics at Ohio State University, Mitchell Institute for Fundamental Physics and Astronomy at Texas A&M University, Financiadora de Estudos e Projetos, Fundacao Carlos Chagas Filho de Amparo a Pesquisa do Estado do Rio de Janeiro, Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Cientifico e Tecnologico and Ministerio da Ciencia e Tecnologia, Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, and the collaborating institutions in the Dark Energy Survey, the list of which can be found at http://www.darkenergysurvey.org/collaboration. Fermilab is America's premier national laboratory for particle physics and accelerator research. A U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science laboratory, Fermilab is located near Chicago, Illinois, and operated under contract by the Fermi Research Alliance LLC. Visit Fermilab's website at http://www.fnal.gov and follow us on Twitter at @Fermilab. The DOE Office of Science is the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States and is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time. For more information, please visit science.energy.gov. OAK RIDGE, Tenn., Aug. 3, 2017--After more than a year of operation at the Department of Energy's (DOE's) Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), the COHERENT experiment, using the world's smallest neutrino detector, has found a big fingerprint of the elusive, electrically neutral particles that interact only weakly with matter. The research, performed at ORNL's Spallation Neutron Source (SNS) and published in the journal Science, provides compelling evidence for a neutrino interaction process predicted by theorists 43 years ago, but never seen. "The one-of-a-kind particle physics experiment at Oak Ridge National Laboratory was the first to measure coherent scattering of low-energy neutrinos off nuclei," said ORNL physicist Jason Newby, technical coordinator and one of 11 ORNL participants in COHERENT, a collaboration of 80 researchers from 19 institutions and 4 nations. The SNS produces neutrons for scientific research and also generates a high flux of neutrinos as a byproduct. Placing the detector at SNS, a mere 65 feet (20 meters) from the neutrino source, vastly improved the chances of interactions and allowed the researchers to decrease the detector's weight to just 32 pounds (14.5 kilograms). In comparison, most neutrino detectors weigh thousands of tons: although they are continuously exposed to solar, terrestrial, and atmospheric neutrinos, they need to be massive because the interaction odds are more than 100 times lower than at SNS. The scientists are the first to detect and characterize coherent elastic scattering of neutrinos off nuclei. This long-sought confirmation, predicted in the particle physics Standard Model, measures the process with enough precision to establish constraints on alternative theoretical models. Typically, neutrinos interact with individual protons or neutrons inside a nucleus. But in "coherent" scattering, an approaching neutrino "sees" the entire weak charge of the nucleus as a whole and interacts with all of it. "The energy of the SNS neutrinos is almost perfectly tuned for this experiment--large enough to create a detectable signal, but small enough to take advantage of the coherence condition," Newby said. "The only smoking gun of the interaction is a small amount of energy imparted to a single nucleus." That signal is as tough to spot as a bowling ball's tiny recoil after a ping-pong ball hits it. Physicist Juan Collar of the University of Chicago led the design of the detector used at SNS, a cesium iodide scintillator crystal doped with sodium to increase the prominence of light signals from neutrino interactions. After trying more sophisticated technologies, he went back to simple inorganic scintillators. "They are arguably the most pedestrian kind of radiation detector available, having been around for a century. Sodium-doped cesium iodide merges all of the properties required to work as a small, 'handheld' coherent neutrino detector," he said. "Very often, less is more." Success depended on finding the right combination of neutrino detector and source. "The detector was designed with SNS in mind," Collar said. "SNS is unique not only as a neutron source, but also as a neutrino source. It will provide us with opportunities for many more exciting sorties into neutrino physics." Because SNS produces pulsed neutron beams, the neutrinos are also pulsed, enabling easy separation of signal from background. That aspect makes data collection cleaner than at steady-state neutrino sources such as nuclear reactors. Three neutrino flavors were seen by COHERENT--muon neutrinos that emerged instantaneously with the neutron beam and muon antineutrinos and electron neutrinos that came a few microseconds later. "The Standard Model predicts the energy and time signatures we saw," Newby said. "Juan [Collar] wanted to make sure that he chose a detection mechanism with the timing resolution to distinguish the prompt from delayed signals." The calculable fingerprint of neutrino-nucleus interactions predicted by the Standard Model and seen by COHERENT is not just interesting to theorists. In nature, it also dominates neutrino dynamics during neutron star formation and supernovae explosions. "When a massive star collapses and then explodes, the neutrinos dump vast energy into the stellar envelope," said physicist Kate Scholberg of Duke University, COHERENT's spokesperson. "Understanding the process feeds into understanding of how these dramatic events occur." Coherent elastic scattering is also relevant for detecting the enormous neutrino burst from a supernova. "When such an event occurs in the Milky Way, neutrinos of all flavors will bump into nuclei, and sensitive dark matter detectors may observe a burst of tiny recoils," she said. "COHERENT's data will help with interpretation of measurements of neutrino properties by experiments worldwide," Scholberg concluded. "We may also be able to use coherent scattering to better understand the structure of the nucleus." Though the cesium-iodide detector observed coherent scattering beyond any doubt, COHERENT researchers will conduct additional measurements with at least three detector technologies to observe coherent neutrino interactions at distinct rates, another signature of the process. These detectors will further expand knowledge of basic neutrino properties, such as their intrinsic magnetism. ### The team included partners from the Russian Federation (Institute for Theoretical and Experimental Physics named by A.I. Alikhanov of National Research Centre "Kurchatov Institute"; National Research Nuclear University Moscow Engineering Physics Institute), USA (Indiana University, Triangle Universities Nuclear Laboratory, Duke University, University of Tennessee-Knoxville, North Carolina Central University, Sandia National Laboratories at Livermore, University of Chicago, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, New Mexico State University, Los Alamos National Laboratory, University of Washington, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, North Carolina State University, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, University of Florida), Canada (Laurentian University), Republic of Korea (Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology and Institute for Basic Science). The title of the Science paper is "Observation of Coherent Elastic Neutrino-Nucleus Scattering." ORNL's Laboratory Directed Research and Development (LDRD) Program funded local siting studies and installation to establish the experiment at the SNS. The U.S. National Science Foundation, the Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics at the University of Chicago and an endowment from the Kavli Foundation and its founder Fred Kavli supported construction of the detector. Additional support came from the DOE Office of Science, including an award from the office's Early Career Research Program; National Nuclear Security Administration Office of Defense, Nuclear Nonproliferation Research, and Development; LDRD programs of Lawrence Berkeley and Sandia National Laboratories; Pacific Northwest National Laboratory via the National Consortium for Measurement and Signature Intelligence Research Program and Intelligence Community Postdoctoral Research Fellowship Program; Alfred P. Sloan Foundation; Consortium for Nonproliferation Enabling Capabilities; Institute for Basic Science (Korea); National Science Foundation (USA); Russian Foundation for Basic Research; Russian Science Foundation in the framework of MEPhI Academic Excellence Project; Triangle Universities Nuclear Laboratory; University of Washington Royalty Research Fund; and resources of the Spallation Neutron Source and the Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility, which are DOE Office of Science User Facilities at ORNL. UT-Battelle manages ORNL for DOE's Office of Science. The single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States, the Office of Science is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time. For more information, please visit http://www.science.energy.gov. PHOTO SLIDESHOW CAPTION/CREDIT, main image#1: SLIDESHOW 1_ 2017-P04680.jpg From left, Professor Yuri Efremenko of the University of Tennessee-Knoxville and Jason Newby of Oak Ridge National Laboratory are among 80 participants in COHERENT, a large, collaborative, particle physics experiment to record neutrinos at the Spallation Neutron Source. Photomultiplier tubes look like giant light bulbs and are used to detect light from neutrino interactions in detectors. COHERENT's cesium iodide detector, the first to espy neutrinos at the SNS, employs a 5-inch (13-centimeter) wide photomultiplier tube. An 8-inch (20-centimeter) wide photomultiplier (shown here) is deployed in COHERENT's nearby liquid-argon detector. Measurements from different types of detectors are necessary for comprehensive studies of neutrinos at SNS. The scientists are standing in front of the cesium-iodide-detector shielding. Image credit: Oak Ridge National Laboratory, U.S. Dept. of Energy; photographer Genevieve Martin CAPTION/CREDIT, #2: SLIDESHOW 2_collaboration.jpg COHERENT collaborators were the first to observe coherent elastic neutrino-nucleus scattering. Their results, published in the journal Science, confirm a prediction of the Standard Model and establish constraints on alternative theoretical models. Image credit: COHERENT Collaboration CAPTION/CREDIT, #3 SLIDESHOW 3_SNS May2015_Arieal_5W8A6989.jpg During normal operations of the Spallation Neutron Source, this world-class "neutron factory" also produces neutrinos in large quantities. Image credit: Oak Ridge National Laboratory, U.S. Dept. of Energy; photographer Jason Richards CAPTION/CREDIT, #4 SLIDESHOW 4_Duke_ScholbergRichBarbeau.jpg From left, Professor Kate Scholberg of Duke University is spokesperson for COHERENT, an experiment that detected interactions of high-intensity neutrinos produced by the SNS at ORNL. The experiment has been the first to observe a process predicted by theorists 43 years ago but never observed. Graduate student Grayson Rich of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the Triangle Universities Nuclear Laboratory contributed to data analysis, which Duke Assistant Professor Phil Barbeau coordinates. Image credit: Duke University; photographer Long Li CAPTION/CREDIT, #5, SLIDESHOW 5_Linac_July2014_-149.jpg At SNS's Beamline 13, protons hit a target of mercury, an atom with a big nucleus capable of releasing a slew of energetic particles. These particles enter a moderator that decreases their energies. Some of the particles, called pions, are charged and lightweight. They stop in the target, decay and then release neutrinos at all angles. Because the pions decay at rest, the neutrinos that are generated are low in energy. Some particles travel perpendicular to the beamline and traverse about 100 feet (30 meters) of rock, gravel and shielding, which filter out errant neutrons. The neutrinos enter a detector in the SNS basement--a 32-pound (14.5-kilogram) scintillating crystal of sodium-doped cesium iodide enclosed in carefully designed shielding. "Experimentally, what kept us up at night was worrying about two sources of backgrounds--related to the beam and from the environment," ORNL's Jason Newby said. "Shielding was designed to limit both." Image credit: Oak Ridge National Laboratory, U.S. Dept. of Energy; photographer Genevieve Martin CAPTION/CREDIT, #6 SLIDESHOW 6_IMG_8454.JPG From left, Professor Juan Collar with Bjorn Scholz and Nicole Fields led detector development at the University of Chicago. A four-pound prototype detector, a replica of the 32-pound (14.5 kilogram) one used at the SNS, is at left. Fields's 2015 Ph.D. thesis contains feasibility studies performed with this prototype, whereas Scholz's 2017 Ph.D. thesis contains the result published in the Science paper. The detectors contain copper electroformed using techniques developed by COHERENT collaborators at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, resulting in the material with the lowest known radioactive content. The lead visible on top of the prototype was recovered from a Spanish galleon sunk in a Dutch harbor some 300 years ago, and was similarly selected for its very low radioactivity. Photographer: Dan O'Hanlon. CAPTION/CREDIT, #7 SLIDESHOW 7_littlest detectorIMG_5606.jpg Bjorn Scholz (left) from the University of Chicago and Grayson Rich of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the Triangle Universities Nuclear Laboratory show off the world's smallest neutrino detector. Its siting at SNS's high-flux neutrino source was the key to the COHERENT experiment's success. Image credit: COHERENT Collaboration; photographer Juan Collar CAPTION/CREDIT, #8: SLIDESHOW 8_2017-P04678.jpg From left, Jason Newby of ORNL and Yuri Efremenko of the University of Tennessee-Knoxville/ORNL check equipment for the COHERENT experiment at the SNS. In 2005 Efremenko and others proposed a neutrino facility at the SNS; that vision is realized in the current work. Image credit: Oak Ridge National Laboratory, U.S. Dept. of Energy; photographer Genevieve Martin CAPTION/CREDIT, #9: SLIDESHOW 9_2017-P04688.jpg Connor Awe and Justin Raybern, both of Duke University, explore data from COHERENT, a collaboration of 80 researchers from 19 institutions and 4 nations to detect neutrinos at the SNS. Its first detection of neutrinos at the SNS used a custom cesium iodide detector designed at the University of Chicago. Image credit: Oak Ridge National Laboratory, U.S. Dept. of Energy; photographer Genevieve Martin CAPTION/CREDIT, #10: SLIDESHOW 10_2017-P04690.jpg From left, Jason Newby of ORNL and Brandon Becker of the University of Tennessee-Knoxville examine equipment that will collect data for COHERENT. Becker, a graduate student, will model, simulate and analyze interesting physics that result from interactions between neutrinos and lead shielding that cause emission of neutrons inside the neutrino detector. So-called "neutrino-induced neutrons" have been theorized, but to date there is no conclusive evidence for their presence. Image credit: Oak Ridge National Laboratory, U.S. Dept. of Energy; photographer Genevieve Martin CAPTION/CREDIT, #11: SLIDESHOW 11_ 2017-P04693.jpg From left, Jason Newby of ORNL, Jacob Zettlemoyer of Indiana University and Hector Moreno of New Mexico State University work on the COHERENT experiment to detect neutrinos at the SNS. Shown is an 8-inch wide photomultiplier for a liquid-argon detector with a mass of 62 pounds (28 kilograms) that will collect data throughout 2017. Researchers hope measurements from different types of detectors, such as this one, will help them better understand neutrino interactions already detected via a sodium-doped cesium iodide detector. Another detector, with a heart of germanium, is under assembly. Yet another, a sodium iodide detector, is running in a mode sensitive to some neutrino interactions, and will be upgraded to see the tiny recoils of coherent scattering in the near future. Image credit: Oak Ridge National Laboratory, U.S. Dept. of Energy; photographer Genevieve Martin CAPTION/CREDIT, #12: SLIDESHOW 12_2014-P02735.jpg Large data sets pose challenges to neutrino experiments. The team turned to the High Performance Storage System at the Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility to store big data. Each year the experiment generates about 100 terabytes of data--roughly equivalent to the memory capacity of a human brain. Image credit: Oak Ridge National Laboratory, U.S. Dept. of Energy; photographer Jason Richards CAPTION/CREDIT, #13 SLIDESHOW 13_ heic1317a.jpg Research to advance dark matter detectors has greatly contributed to making coherent neutrino detectors a reality. No one really knows what dark matter is. Among the most popular candidates for dark matter are particles similar to neutrinos but much heavier, called weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs). Because interactions between WIMPs and nuclei would convey just a little bit of energy, detected as nuclear recoils, dark-matter detectors must be sensitive to these tiny signals. Thus, dark matter experiments have driven technologies sensitive to low-energy nuclear recoils. In return, the COHERENT measurement helps characterize backgrounds that will affect future dark matter detectors, in which neutrinos from the sun may swamp the WIMP signal. Credits: NASA/ESA/JPL-Caltech/Yale/CNRS Major changes in agricultural practices will be required to offset increases in nutrient losses due to climate change, according to research published by a Lancaster University-led team Major changes in agricultural practices will be required to offset increases in nutrient losses due to climate change, according to research published by a Lancaster University-led team. To combat repeated, damaging storm events, which strip agricultural land of soil and nutrients, farmers are already adopting measures to conserve these assets where they are needed. But in a new paper in the journal Nature Communications, researchers investigating nutrients in runoff from agricultural land warn that phosphorus losses will increase, due to climate change, unless this is mitigated by making major changes to agricultural practices. These changes could include a more judicious use of fertilizer including strategies to use soil phosphorus more efficiently, or physical measures to reduce the losses of nutrients from fields. Professor Phil Haygarth of the Lancaster Environment Centre led the three-year, Natural Environment Research Council and DEFRA funded study. He said: "The warmer, wetter winters predicted for the future will result in more phosphorus transferred from agricultural land into the rivers and ultimately the oceans. Although farmers are already doing what they can to prevent these losses, the currently adopted measures are not likely to be enough to offset the increase expected under climate change. "This paper should alert policy makers and government to the help and support that farmers will need to achieve the scale of agricultural change that may be necessary to keep up with the increase in pollution due to climate change." Nutrients, such as phosphorus and nitrogen are essential to crop and animal growth, but too many nutrients cause algal blooms in rivers and lakes. These suffocate fish and other organisms and require costly remediation by water supply companies. Fertilisers and manures washed off in storms are a major source of nutrients, with more than 60 per cent of the nitrogen and 25 per cent of the phosphorus in our rivers coming from agriculture. The research in the paper combined the latest climate predictions from the Met Office Hadley Centre, including a high resolution climate model for the UK, with two phosphorus transfer models of different complexity. The predictions incorporated both the uncertainty in the data and the natural inter-annual variability in climate. Dr Pete Falloon of the Met Office Hadley Centre, who led the climate modelling, said "State-of-the-art high resolution climate models were used in this project alongside the latest UKCP09 climate projections. While rainfall intensity was more realistically predicted by the high-resolution climate models, particularly for summer convective storms, these storms do not make a significant difference to summer phosphorus losses. Our study therefore showed that the main factor driving increased future phosphorus losses was the projected increase in winter rainfall." ### The project - Nutrients in Catchments to 2050 - involved researchers at Lancaster University, the UK Met Office Hadley Centre, Bangor University, Liverpool University and Manchester Metropolitan University and had associated partners at the James Hutton Institute, UEA, Anglia Ruskin University, Rothamsted Research and from the National Demonstration Test Catchments Team. http://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-017-00232-0 WASHINGTON -- The largest gravitationally bound objects in the universe are galaxy clusters that form at the intersection of cosmic web filaments. These entities are shaped and grow through massive collisions as material streams into their gravitational pull. Within the heart of some galaxy clusters are mysterious and little known radio mini-halos. These rare, dispersed, and steep-spectrum (brighter at low frequencies) radio sources surround a bright central radio galaxy and are highly luminous at radio wavelengths. Studying this phenomenon is Dr. Tracy Clarke, a radio astronomer at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) Radio Astrophysics and Sensing Section and co-author of research on the topic titled, "Deep 230-470 [megahertz] VLA Observations of the mini-halo in the Perseus Cluster." She works in conjunction with the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO), the research team uses the upgraded Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (JVLA) to peer into the cluster of galaxies in the constellation Perseus, 250 million light-years from Earth. "In 2011, an upgrade to the receivers on the JVLA sacrificed the observatory's capability for operation at frequencies between 30 MHz and 300 MHz" said Clarke. "However, in 2013 all 27 of the 25-meter antennas of the JVLA were outfitted with new receivers, providing the bandwidth necessary for these observations." According to Clarke the Perseus cluster is one of the most massive objects in the known universe, containing thousands of galaxies immersed in a vast cloud of multimillion-degree gas and harbors a mini-halo. Mini-halo systems are thought to provide a window on the otherwise elusive turbulence driven by minor mergers between galaxy clusters and less massive systems. Funded by NRL, the new broadband low frequency receivers have widened the VHF/UHF receiver bandwidth from 300-340 MHz to 230-470 MHz, significantly increasing the sensitivity of the telescope. The new JVLA facilities have also produced an order of magnitude of deeper image quality than previous high fidelity data, which lets the mini-halo emissions be seen clearly at the 270-430 MHz range. "Overall, the recently upgraded JVLA has enabled a breakthrough in radio astronomy by providing a radio telescope with unprecedented sensitivity, resolution, and imaging capabilities," said Julie Hlavacek-Larrondo, Universite de Montreal astrophysicist and a lead author of the paper. "The new JVLA images of the Perseus cluster demonstrate the unique and state-of-the-art capabilities that this telescope offers to the community." The deep JVLA observations of the Perseus cluster, combined with the cluster's properties, offer researchers a unique opportunity to study mini-halo structures. Lead author Marie-Lou Gendron-Marsolais, Ph.D. student at Universite de Montreal notes, "The results demonstrate the sensitivity of the new low frequency JVLA receivers, as well as the necessity to obtain deeper, higher-fidelity radio images of mini-halos in clusters to trace complex structures and further understand their origin." Recognizing the power of the new VHF/UHF receiver, NRL wanted to enhance the availability of this new resource. In 2014, NRL and NRAO researchers worked to develop the VLA Low Band Ionospheric and Transient Experiment (VLITE) to tap into the new broadband low frequency receivers and piggyback on the $300 million dollar infrastructure of the JVLA. "The data stream from this new system can be tapped to expand our understanding of objects such as these mini-halos while at the same time providing real-time monitoring of ionospheric weather conditions over the U.S. southwest," Clarke said. At present, VLITE is being further expanded (eVLITE) to more than double the number of baselines from the original 45 baselines to 104 and should be fully operational by the end of August 2017. The expansion, to date, has brought a total of 66 baselines to VLITE. Astronomers use VLITE for a wide range of astrophysics, which includes exploring the sky for short-lived bursts of radio waves. This type of research continues to grow in importance, since a small number of such events have led astronomers to suspect still-undiscovered phenomena in the universe may be producing many such powerful bursts. ### A century-old technology that scientists use to probe the ionosphere -- the important atmospheric layer that can interfere with the transmission of radio waves -- is getting smaller. A team of NASA scientists and engineers at the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, is upgrading and miniaturizing the electronics on a prototype instrument, called the Concentration vs. Height for an Orbiting Electromagnetic Sounder, or ECHOES. The device could be used to "sound" the ionosphere from either a ground-based observatory or ultimately a constellation of CubeSats. The ionospheric layer, which is electrically charged or ionized primarily by extreme-ultraviolet radiation coming from the sun during the day or by the bombardment of cosmic rays during the night, is of interest to scientists because of the role it plays in the transmission of radio waves. Depending on the concentration of electrons in the ionosphere and the frequency of the radio waves, the layer reflects radio waves to Earth, rather than allowing them to escape into space. However, solar flares, the spontaneous eruption of high-energy radiation from the surface of the sun, can cause a sharp increase in the number of ionized particles, thus changing the height and density of the particles. "Gravity pulls the denser plasma (ionized gas) down toward Earth to lower altitudes that are less dense. This is an unstable configuration," said ECHOES Principal Investigator and Goddard scientist Mark Adrian. "This motion leads to a turbulent mixing of the ionosphere, not unlike pouring cream into your morning coffee. This produces density irregularities or structures that reflect and refract radio waves -- what we simply refer to as interference." To determine the electron density vertically in the ionosphere, scientists have long used radio sounders -- in essence, dedicated radio stations. A range of different radio frequencies are directed vertically to the ionosphere and a receiver then collects and measures the values of the returning signals or echoes. The immediate plan is to use ECHOES on the ground, contributing to a network of instruments that support space-weather prediction and real-time mapping of the ionosphere. However, the instruments also could fly in space, for example, in a constellation of CubeSats that would make simultaneous, multi-point soundings of the top-side of Earth's enveloping ionosphere, which lies 46 to about 621 miles above Earth's surface. The sounding technique is at least a century old. However, it wasn't until the dawn of the space age that the technique was applied to sounding-rocket and full-fledged satellite missions, such as the Canadian-built and NASA-launched Alouette 1 in 1962. More recently, NASA launched the Radio Plasma Imager on a mission called the Imager for Magnetopause-to-Aurora Global Exploration, or IMAGE. Also, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, in collaboration with its European partners, provided another sounder, the Mars Advanced Radar for Subsurface and Ionospheric Sounding, for the European Space Agency's Mars Express mission. "Basically, what we're doing is miniaturizing a 100-year-old radio receiver signal-processing technology," said ECHOES co-Principal Investigator Damon Bradley, who led the development of the digital signal-processing system for the radiometer on NASA's Soil Moisture Active Passive, or SMAP mission, which tracks global soil-moisture levels. "ECHOES is essentially a low-frequency radar that uses space-based digital-signal processing, as on SMAP, but for probing the ionosphere as opposed to mapping global soil-moisture levels." Before the miniaturized instrument can fly in space, however, the team needs to prove that it's capable of obtaining density measurements in a relevant environment. As part of its technology-development effort, the team plans to integrate ECHOES electronics and antenna systems with other instrument hardware and execute a test at the Goddard Geophysical and Astronomical Observatory later this year. "A successful proof-of-concept demonstration of the ECHOES instrument would place Goddard in a unique position to compete for other future Heliophysics or planetary opportunities, particularly those involved CubeSat or small-satellite platforms," Adrian said. ### For more information about NASA's Cubesats, visit: https://www.nasa.gov/cubesat For more technology news, go to https://gsfctechnology.gsfc.nasa.gov/newsletter/Current.pdf The scientists also discovered 3 species new to science of the same genus The conjunctivitis-transmitting Oriental eye fly (Siphunculina funicola) has been recorded for the first time in China. In the same paper, published in the open access journal ZooKeys, a team of three scientists further describe three species of the same genus, which are new to science. The studied flies in the genus Siphunculina present a number of curious insects, including the grass flies and the Oriental eye fly - a species that transmits conjunctivitis and other eye diseases to both humans and domestic animals. As the larvae feed on faeces or thrive in decaying flesh, they can usually be found in bird nests, excrement or carcasses. The scientists Dr. Xiaoyan Liu, Huazhong Agricultural University, China, Dr. Ding Yang, China Agricultural University and Dr. Emilia P. Nartshuk, Russian Academy of Sciences, collected the Oriental eye fly in Hainan, the southernmost province of China. Previously, the species had been known to inhabit other countries in eastern and southern Asia, where the flies amass around people and cattle, causing considerable annoyance and spreading eye diseases. ### Original source: Liu X-Y, Nartshuk EP, Yang D (2017) Three new species and one new record of the genus Siphunculina from China (Diptera, Chloropidae). ZooKeys 687: 73-88. https://doi.org/10.3897/zookeys.687.13156 HOUSTON - (Aug. 3, 2017) - Rice University chemists have produced a catalyst based on laser-induced graphene that splits water into hydrogen on one side and oxygen on the other side. They said the inexpensive material may be a practical component in generating the hydrogen for use in future fuel cells. The easily fabricated material developed by the Rice lab of chemist James Tour offers a robust and efficient way to store chemical energy. Tests showed the thin catalyst producing large bubbles of oxygen and hydrogen on either side simultaneously. The process is the subject of a paper in the American Chemical Society's Applied Materials and Interfaces. "Hydrogen is currently made by converting natural gas to a mixture of carbon dioxide and hydrogen gas," Tour said. "So for every two hydrogen molecules, a molecule of carbon dioxide is formed, making this traditional process a greenhouse-gas emitter. "But if one splits water into hydrogen and oxygen, using a catalytic system and electricity generated from wind or solar energy, then the hydrogen afforded is entirely renewable," he said. "Once used in a fuel cell, it reverts back to water with no other emissions. And fuel cells are often twice as efficient as internal combustion engines, further saving energy." The catalyst is another use for versatile laser-induced graphene (LIG), which Rice introduced in 2014. LIG is produced by treating the surface of a sheet of polyimide, an inexpensive plastic, with a laser. Rather than a flat sheet of hexagonal carbon atoms, LIG is a foam of graphene sheets with one edge attached to the underlying surface and chemically active edges exposed to the air. LIG itself is inert, so turning it into a water splitter involves a few more steps. First, the lab impregnated the side of the plastic destined to pull hydrogen from water with platinum particles; then the lab used a laser to heat the surface and make LIG. The Rice material uses only a quarter of the platinum found in commercial catalysts, said Jibo Zhang, a Rice graduate student and lead author of the paper. The other side, for oxygen evolution, was first turned into LIG and then enhanced with nickel and iron through electrochemical deposition. Both sides showed low onset potentials (the voltage needed to start a reaction) and strong performance over 1,000 cycles. The lab came up with another variation: making the polyimide into an LIG catalyst with cobalt and phosphorus that could replace either the platinum or nickel-iron sides to produce hydrogen or oxygen. While the low-cost material benefits by eliminating expensive noble metals, it sacrifices some efficiency in hydrogen generation, Tour said. When configured with cobalt-phosphorus for hydrogen evolution and nickel-iron for oxygen, the catalyst delivered a current density of 10 milliamps per square centimeter at 1.66 volts. It could be increased to 400 milliamps per square centimeter at 1.9 volts without degrading the material. The current density governs the rate of the chemical reaction. Tour said enhanced LIG offers water-splitting performance that's comparable and often better than many current systems, with an advantage in its inherent separator between oxygen and hydrogen products. He noted it may find great value as a way to chemically store energy from remote solar or wind power plants that would otherwise be lost in transmission. The material might also serve as the basis for efficient electrocatalysis platforms for carbon dioxide or oxygen reduction, he said. ### Co-authors are graduate students Chenhao Zhang, Huilong Fei, Yilun Li and Junwei Sha. Sha is also a student at Tianjin University and the Collaborative Innovation Center of Chemical Science and Engineering, Tianjin, China. Tour is the T.T. and W.F. Chao Chair in Chemistry as well as a professor of computer science and of materials science and nanoengineering at Rice. The research was supported by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research and its Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative, the National Science Foundation-funded and Rice-based Nanotechnology-Enabled Water Treatment Engineering Research Center and the Chinese Scholarship Council. Read the abstract at http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/acsami.7b06727 This news release can be found online at http://news.rice.edu/2017/08/03/two-sides-to-this-energy-story/ Follow Rice News and Media Relations via Twitter @RiceUNews Related materials: Rice U. chemists create 3-D printed graphene foam: http://news.rice.edu/2017/06/21/rice-u-chemists-create-3-d-printed-graphene-foam-2/ Zap! Graphene is bad news for bacteria: http://news.rice.edu/2017/05/22/zap-graphene-is-bad-news-for-bacteria-2/ Gas gives laser-induced graphene super properties: http://news.rice.edu/2017/05/15/gas-gives-laser-induced-graphene-super-properties/ Need graphene? Grab a saw: http://news.rice.edu/2017/07/31/need-graphene-grab-a-saw-2/ Tour Group: http://www.jmtour.com Wiess School of Natural Sciences: http://natsci.rice.edu Video: https://youtu.be/OtEnsVNV4xY One side of a two-sided catalyst based on laser-induced graphene produces hydrogen in a lab experiment. The material was created at Rice University. (Credit: Tour Group/Rice University) https://youtu.be/GYp_TWzaoGw One side of a two-sided catalyst based on laser-induced graphene produces oxygen in a lab experiment. The material was created at Rice University. (Credit: Tour Group/Rice University) Images for download: http://news.rice.edu/files/2017/08/0807_WATER-1-WEB-1of6iml.jpg A two-sided electrocatalyst developed at Rice University splits water into hydrogen on one side and oxygen on the other. The hydrogen side seen in electron microscope images features platinum particles (the dark dots at right) evenly dispersed in laser-induced graphene (left). (Credit: Tour Group/Rice University) http://news.rice.edu/files/2017/08/0807_WATER-2-WEB-24e1r83.jpg A two-sided electrocatalyst developed at Rice University splits water into hydrogen on one side and oxygen on the other. On the oxygen side, seen in electron microscope images, nickel and iron are deposited onto laser-induced graphene. (Credit: Tour Group/Rice University) Located on a 300-acre forested campus in Houston, Rice University is consistently ranked among the nation's top 20 universities by U.S. News & World Report. Rice has highly respected schools of Architecture, Business, Continuing Studies, Engineering, Humanities, Music, Natural Sciences and Social Sciences and is home to the Baker Institute for Public Policy. With 3,879 undergraduates and 2,861 graduate students, Rice's undergraduate student-to-faculty ratio is 6-to-1. Its residential college system builds close-knit communities and lifelong friendships, just one reason why Rice is ranked No. 1 for happiest students and for lots of race/class interaction by the Princeton Review. Rice is also rated as a best value among private universities by Kiplinger's Personal Finance. To read "What they're saying about Rice," go to http://tinyurl.com/RiceUniversityoverview. A new publically available database will catalog metadata associated with biologic samples, making it easier for researchers to share and reuse genetic data for environmental and ecological analyses. The resource, called the Genomic Observatories Metadatabase (GeOMe), was developed by researchers at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History and eight other museums and research institutions. It links publically available genetic data to records of where and when samples were collected, providing contextual information that until now has been missing from widely shared databases. Such information is critical for comparing biodiversity in different locations worldwide and tracking it across time. But despite calls for more data sharing within the research community, researchers have until now lacked the tools to make this information readily available. The developers of the database, described Aug. 3 in the journal PLOS Biology, said standardizing and preserving this metadata will greatly enhance the value of the genetic sequence data that researchers are already collecting. With GeOMe, researchers will be able to find and access genetic data collected at specific times and places anywhere in the world, enabling them to ask big questions about the structure and sustainability of life on the planet. For example, they might investigate how the inhabitants of a specific altitude throughout the world have shifted as the planet's climate has changed. "Tracking biodiversity through global change is a collaborative effort," said Christopher Meyer, a research zoologist at the National Museum of Natural History who helped lead GeOMe's development. "We can't do it on our own. GeOMe will advance big data and discovery for the future, allowing the sum of scientific endeavors to far exceed individual research products." Scientists who analyze ecological samples--whether they are plants or animals or entire communities of microbes, gathered from the oceans, freshwater or land--have their own systems for keeping track of when are where those samples were collected. But for the broader research community, such information has been difficult to obtain and impossible to comprehensively search. GeOMe provides a solution by permanently linking information about samples' temporal, environmental, geospatial and scholarly context to genetic sequence data stored by the National Center for Biotechnology Information. Meyer said he and his colleagues devoted the time and resources to developing GeOMe because they knew it would be a powerful tool to accelerate discovery. As museum scientists, they recognize the value of tracking and preserving information. And as a leader in acquisition and dissemination of knowledge about biodiversity, Meyer said, it was important for the National Museum of Natural History to play a key role. GeOMe's developers, including Eric Crandall at California State University, Monterey Bay, Michelle Gaither at the Hawai'i Institute of Marine Biology and John Deck at the Berkeley Natural History Museums, have worked to ensure that the resource is easy to use and adaptable for a wide range of needs. With the database and toolkit freely available to the research community, scientific journals can now mandate that authors make their metadata available in a searchable and standardized format, just as they have long done for genetic sequence data, they said. Importantly, the team notes, data in GeOMe will conform to standards developed by the Genomic Standards Consortium and the Biodiversity Information Standards organization, ensuring that submitters capture and record the same essential information about every sample. These standards will ensure that in the future, researchers will be able to conduct analyses across datasets. "[Our knowledge of] biodiversity is being written through genomic data--but the data doesn't mean much unless you can put it in context," Meyer said. "If we don't start implementing a tool like this now, our data will be less useful in perpetuity." ### GeOMe's development was a collaboration between researchers and computer scientists at the following institutions: the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History; Berkeley Natural History Museums at the University of California, Berkeley; the Hawai'i Institute of Marine Biology at the University of Hawai'i; Biocode; Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi; the University of California's Gump South Pacific Research Station, in Moorea, French Polynesia; Berkeley Institute for Data Science at the University of California; and the University of Queensland in Australia; and California State University, Monterey Bay. Funding for this study was provided by the National Science Foundation, the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Boulder, Colo. -- Aug. 3, 2017 -- Dr. Simone Marchi, a senior research scientist in the Space Science and Engineering Division of Southwest Research Institute (SwRI), has been selected to receive the Farinella Prize for his research on the impact history and evolution of the inner solar system. The prize honors the memory of Paolo Farinella (1953-2000), an Italian planetary scientist who made significant contributions in the fields of asteroids and small bodies. The distinction recognizes young scientists working in Farinella's fields of interest -- including physics, planetary science, space geodesy and space popularization -- and emphasizes the interdisciplinary research and international collaboration that were a hallmark of Farinella's work. This year's award specifically recognizes outstanding contributions to the study of the physics and dynamics of the inner planets of the solar system and their satellites. Marchi's research interests are in the formation of the terrestrial planets and the Moon, the geology of asteroids and the terrestrial planets, spectroscopy and dynamics of minor bodies, and meteorites. His most recent work has focused on the dwarf planet Ceres and the earliest collision history of the Earth and Moon. "The contributions Simone has made to space science at such a relatively young age are truly remarkable," said SwRI Associate Vice President Dr. Robin Canup. "His outstanding research contributions, in combination with the interdisciplinary nature of his work and his tremendous leadership skills in developing successful collaborations, make him an ideal recipient for this award. We are very proud of him and his many achievements and look forward to seeing what his future research will reveal about the mysteries of the solar system." Marchi will receive the award at a ceremony in September during the international European Planetary Science Congress 2017 in Riga, Latvia. The Farinella Prize is supported by several Italian institutions, including the University of Pisa, Agenzia Spaziale Italiana (ASI), Instituto Nazionale di Astrofisica (INAF), and the "Nello Carrara" Institute of Applied Physics-Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche (IFAC-CNR). Marchi holds a degree in physics from Pisa University and a doctorate in applied physics from Pisa University. Farinella, one of his master thesis advisors, served as an inspiring and influential figure for him. Marchi has authored or co-authored more than 100 peer-reviewed publications and holds memberships in the American Geophysical Union, American Astronomical Society (Division for Planetary Sciences), and the International Astronomical Union. ### A drug commonly used to treat diabetes may have disease-modifying potential to treat Parkinson's disease, a new UCL-led study suggests, paving the way for further research to define its efficacy and safety. The study, published in The Lancet and funded by The Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson's Research (MJFF), found that people with Parkinson's who injected themselves each week with exenatide for one year performed better in movement (motor) tests than those who injected a placebo. "This is a very promising finding, as the drug holds potential to affect the course of the disease itself, and not merely the symptoms," said the study's senior author, Professor Tom Foltynie (UCL Institute of Neurology). "With existing treatments, we can relieve most of the symptoms for some years, but the disease continues to worsen." The researchers followed 60 people with Parkinson's disease at the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery (NHNN) as they used either a once-weekly injection of exenatide for 48 weeks, or a placebo, in addition to their regular medications. They found that people who used exenatide had better motor function at 48 weeks when they came off the treatment, which persisted after the 12-week follow-up. Those who had injected the placebo showed a decline in their motor scores at both the 48- and 60-week tests. The advantage of 4 points, on a 132-point scale of measures such as tremors, agility and speech, was statistically significant. The participants did not report noticeable improvements in their symptoms during the trial period beyond what their standard medication already did for them. They were tested while temporarily off all medication, to determine how the disease itself was progressing. The research did not determine conclusively whether the drug was modifying the disease itself, so the next stage in the research will investigate that more fully. Parkinson's disease affects 1 in 500 people and is the second most common neurodegenerative disease worldwide. Symptoms typically don't become apparent until over 70% of the brain's dopamine-producing cells have been affected. The condition results in muscle stiffness, slowness of movement, tremors, sleep disturbance, chronic fatigue and an impaired quality of life. The saliva of the Gila monster lizard provided the inspiration for the development of exenatide, which has been used since 2005 to treat Type 2 diabetes. It activates receptors for the GLP-1 hormone in the pancreas to stimulate insulin release. GLP-1 receptors are also found in the brain, and prior research has shown that activating them can boost the function of dopamine connections, act as an anti-inflammatory, improve energy production, and switch on cell survival signals. Further research by a team led by Professor Foltynie will seek to clarify how exenatide works for people with Parkinson's disease. Prior evidence in animal models demonstrated that exenatide improved motor performance. Another study also found early evidence that it could be a disease-modifying agent for Parkinson's, but it was an open-label trial, so this latest study strengthens the existing evidence as the first randomised, placebo-controlled trial of the drug for Parkinson's patients. "This is the strongest evidence we have so far that a drug could do more than provide symptom relief for Parkinson's disease," said Professor Foltynie. "Using approved therapies for one condition to treat another, or drug repurposing, offers new avenues to speed Parkinson's therapeutic development," said Dr Brian Fiske, senior vice president of research programs at MJFF. "The results from the exenatide studies justify continued testing, but clinicians and patients are urged not to add exenatide to their regimens until more is known about their safety and impact on Parkinson's." "While we are optimistic about the results of our trial, there is more investigation to be done, and it will be a number of years before a new treatment could be approved and ready for use. We also hope to learn why exenatide appears to work better for some patients than for others," said the study's first author, Dr Dilan Athauda (UCL Institute of Neurology). The researchers say the next step will be a longer-term study with more participants, which will investigate whether there are marked improvements in quality of life. ### The study was conducted at UCL and the NHNN in collaboration with The Cure Parkinson's Trust and researchers from the National Institute on Aging, and was supported by the National Institute for Health Research University College London Hospitals Biomedical Research Centre. Scientists are on a threshold of a new era of color science due largely to an explosion of technologies, but key questions remain for the field, according to a study in the journal Science by an international team of researchers led by Tim Caro of the University of California, Davis. While studies have long used color as a factor for understanding evolution, only recently have visual physiologists, sensory and behavioral ecologists, evolutionary biologists and anthropologists come together to study how color is produced and perceived by animals and its function and patterns of evolution. With this wide-ranging synthesis, "The Biology of Color," such a multidisciplinary group provides a roadmap of advances in the field of animal coloration, as well as remaining challenges. "In the past 20 years, the field of animal coloration research has been propelled forward very rapidly by technological advances," said corresponding author Tim Caro, a professor in the UC Davis Department of Wildlife, Fish and Conservation Biology. "These include digital imaging, innovative laboratory and field studies and large-scale comparative analyses, each of which are allowing completely new questions to be asked." Coloration is a complicated biological trait. Animals use it for camouflage, to send warning signals, attract mates, send social signals, regulate their body temperature and thwart pests, among other uses. Caro's own research has helped clarify long-held mysteries about animal coloration. This includes why zebras have black and white stripes (to avoid biting flies) and why pandas are black and white (to camouflage in both snow and dark forests, since they need to eat year-round). Among the advances, the study notes that scientists now recognize that other animals see the world differently from humans. Researchers now understand the mechanisms underlying color production, and color measurements collected at a geographic scale are shedding light on the dynamics of evolutionary processes. For instance, scientists can now pose questions about the evolution of camouflage based on what a prey's main predator can see. They also see how gene changes underlying color production have parallels across unrelated species. Such research can contribute to advances in medicine, security, clothing and the military. Challenges include learning how color is integrated with other sensory information. For instance, how a swallowtail butterfly responds to color can change depending on how its host plant smells. Additional challenges include a better understanding of the neural mechanisms by which color influences behavior, and creating techniques to better analyze the role of color in animal patterns and motion. A workshop where the study's ideas were formulated was funded by the Institute of Advanced Study in Berlin (Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin.) ### Achieving the global temperature goals laid out in the Paris Climate Agreement is unlikely, according to research by economist Dick Startz The Paris Climate Agreement of 2016, which saw 195 nations come together in the shared goal of ameliorating climate change, set forth an ambitious goal of limiting global temperature rise to less than 2 degrees Celsius. Since then, many have wondered, is that even scientifically possible? Unfortunately, the odds aren't looking good. New research by Dick Startz, a professor in UC Santa Barbara's Department of Economics, along with colleagues from the University of Washington and Upstart, suggests it is unfeasible for the world to meet the global temperature goals adopted in the agreement, and nearly unfathomable that the collective nations will exceed expectations. Startz collaborated on a paper, published in "Nature: Climate Change," that used a combination of statistical, scientific and economic data to paint a clear picture of the climate scenarios most likely by the year 2100. That picture is bleak. The paper posits a 95 percent chance that global temperatures will increase by more than 2 degrees Celsius, and a less than 1 percent chance they will not exceed 1.5 degrees Celsius. The team looked at statistical data from 1960 to 2010 and found that temperatures over the next 80 years will likely increase from two to 4.9 degrees Celsius, with a projected median of 3.2 degrees Celsius. It is most likely (a 90 percent chance) that global temperatures will fall somewhere in the middle of the range. Though their conclusions are in agreement with those of many other climate experts, their methods varied from the norm. Startz and his co-authors employed an entirely data-driven model in their work that eschewed opinion in favor of evidence. "Instead of focusing on expert opinion, we wanted to just rely entirely on what the data says," Startz explained. "This is a high-tech statistical model that looks at what has happened to per-capita output in each country, to carbon intensity in each country, and to population in each country. What we find is that there is a wide range of what could happen, but unfortunately the bottom end of the range is still fairly bad, and the top end of the range is catastrophic." The researchers were surprised to find the major contributing factor in climate change over time was not population growth, but carbon intensity, which is a measure of carbon dioxide per unit of gross domestic product. "For a lot of history, carbon intensity rises for a while, reaches a peak, and then starts to fall," Startz explained. "Our predictions assume that carbon intensity is going to continue to trend downward, as it has been. That still leaves us in a mess. The only thing that is going to get us out of it is finding a way to make carbon intensity fall much more quickly than it has been." The model even takes into account the rate at which carbon emissions have been decreasing in recent years, but still comes up short. "If our carbon emissions keep getting better as fast as they have, we're still in that much trouble," Startz said. "That's the best-case scenario, unless there is major change. Continued improvements in our carbon intensity aren't going to be enough." So can anything prevent the seemingly inevitable warming of the Earth? Startz points to two possible but equally challenging solutions: major technological advances (such as innovations in battery power or safer nuclear power), or simply putting a high price tag on pollution. "We can hope for some magic breakthrough or we can do the unpleasant task of charging more when we're polluting," he commented, "but even that might not be enough." Though the worldwide economy would have to slow down "tremendously" for the findings in the paper to be erroneous, Startz said, he still hopes that somehow, for the sake of the planet, his predictions will prove incorrect. "Believe me," he said, "there's nothing we would like better than to be wrong." ### As many as 360,000 men and women leave the military each year -- good news for employers in need of the wealth of experience and skills veterans bring to the workforce. Yet, as a University of Cincinnati survey reveals, 50 percent of post-9/11 veterans without a service-related disability and nearly 63 percent of those with a service-related disability report they did not even feel somewhat prepared to enter the civilian workforce What's more, 48 percent of veterans without a disability and nearly 60 percent of those with a disability described their transition to civilian employment as negative. "We know even though unemployment rates for veterans are going down, their experiences largely aren't positive," said Stacie Furst-Holloway, an associate professor in UC's Department of Psychology who led the 2016 survey and will present her team's findings Aug. 3 at the American Psychological Association's annual convention in Washington, D.C. A seat at the table The research -- one of the first academic studies of its kind -- stems from earlier work conducted by Furst-Holloway and and a team of researchers at UC conducted with colleagues at the VHA National Center for Organization Development aimed at improving human resources practices at VA hospitals nationwide. Data from more than 200,000 VA employees revealed that veterans there tend to be hired into lower grades despite more years of experience, are evaluated less favorably and are more likely to be demoted than non-veterans, report lower job satisfaction and leave earlier and more frequently than non-veterans. Furst-Holloway wanted to know if these issues were unique to just the VA's veteran workforce or if veterans in other civilian employment reported the same experiences. But when she delved deeper, she found that while there is a sizeable research on diversity and inclusion in the workplace, much of that focuses on the experiences of women and minorities with little paid to veterans. "Veterans represent 11 percent of the U.S. workforce. They are a substantial part of our working population yet to this point, they don't have a seat at that table," said Furst-Holloway. With help from the VA, UC's Veterans Programs & Services office and several national recruitment firms working with veterans, Furst-Holloway launched a national survey last summer that drew nearly 900 responses from veterans of the second Gulf War -- those who had served in the Armed Forces sometime since September 2001 and had returned to civilian life. Respondents -- 82 percent of which are male -- hailed from all branches of the military, with an average length of service of 11 years. Sixty-two percent of survey-takers reported having a service-related disability. Furst-Holloway and her team found that one's length of time served in the military and rank are associated with a greater sense of preparedness for civilian reintegration, while having a service-related disability is associated with more negative reintegration experiences, feeling less prepared and a lower likelihood of being employed. Women and those with lower levels of education are also less likely to be employed, says Furst-Holloway. An uphill battle Why do so many veterans face an uphill battle when returning to civilian jobs? Furst-Holloway says the problems include veterans struggling to find a good job fit for their skills, an unfamiliarity with corporate practices and expectations, difficulties in adapting to a significantly different civilian workforce culture, mental health issues and personality differences. "Translating the skills they gained in the military to an appropriate civilian job that matches their skills and maturity level and years of work experience often has been very difficult," she explained. "Because their resume looks different, they don't get those jobs." As a result, many veterans report feeling underemployed. And those veterans who are hired often report finding it hard to bridge the gap between military and corporate culture, she said. "One of the big issues we're hearing from our veterans is, in the military, the culture is to do your job. If you don't, someone will make sure that you do. There's no slacking," Furst-Holloway said. "When veterans come into the civilian factor, they sometimes see civilians who slack with no consequences for that." "It's incredibly frustrating for people who have essentially grown up in and been socialized into an environment where that is just not acceptable," she explained. "They don't really know where to direct that frustration and get really fed up and they quit." How to climb the corporate ladder is also an obstacle for many veterans, Furst-Holloway said. Unlike the military, where there are clear lines of advancement, earning a promotion in the civilian workforce is a lot tougher jump to make. "In the military, promotions are pretty lockstep. You know what the next level is and exactly what it is you need to do to get that promotion," said Furst-Holloway. "Veterans come into the civilian workforce where those rules and structures often times don't exist and get passed over for promotions." Mental health issues and personality differences, such as how resilient and optimistic a veteran is, also play a large role in how successful their transition to the civilian workforce is, said Furst-Holloway. Those surveyed who were more optimistic by nature and had a social support network reported more positive reintegration experiences and success in finding employment. Furst-Holloway describes the survey's findings as a "starting point" to further research on the kind of reintegration assistance veterans need most and how employers can better integrate veterans into corporate life. "Socialization into the military is so powerful," she said. "For many who join the military coming out of high school, it's how they've been trained to view the world. In many private companies, it's a very different world than what they're used to." ### In 1974, a Fermilab physicist predicted a new way for ghostly particles called neutrinos to interact with matter. More than four decades later, a UChicago-led team of physicists built the worlds smallest neutrino detector to observe the elusive interaction for the first time. Neutrinos are a challenge to study because their interactions with matter are so rare. Particularly elusive has been whats known as coherent elastic neutrino-nucleus scattering, which occurs when a neutrino bumps off the nucleus of an atom. The international COHERENT Collaboration, which includes physicists at UChicago, detected the scattering process by using a detector thats small and lightweight enough for a reseacher to carry. Their findings, which confirm the theory of Fermilabs Daniel Freedman, were reported Aug. 3 in the journal Science. Why did it take 43 years to observe this interaction? asked co-author Juan Collar, UChicago professor in physics. What takes place is very subtle. Freedman did not see much of a chance for experimental confirmation, writing at the time: Our suggestion may be an act of hubris, because the inevitable constraints of interaction rate, resolution and background pose grave experimental difficulties. When a neutrino bumps into the nucleus of an atom, it creates a tiny, barely measurable recoil. Making a detector out of heavy elements such as iodine, cesium or xenon dramatically increases the probability for this new mode of neutrino interaction, compared to other processes. But theres a trade-off, since the tiny nuclear recoils that result become more difficult to detect as the nucleus grows heavier. Imagine your neutrinos are ping-pong balls striking a bowling ball. They are going to impart only a tiny extra momentum to this bowling ball, Collar said. To detect that bit of tiny recoil, Collar and colleagues figured out that a cesium iodide crystal doped with sodium was the perfect material. The discovery led the scientists to jettison the heavy, gigantic detectors common in neutrino research for one similar in size to a toaster. No gigantic lab The 4-inch-by-13-inch detector used to produce the Science results weighs only 32 pounds (14.5 kilograms). In comparison, the worlds most famous neutrino observatories are equipped with thousands of tons of detector material. You dont have to build a gigantic laboratory around it, said UChicago doctoral student Bjorn Scholz, whose thesis will contain the result reported in the Science paper. We can now think about building other small detectors that can then be used, for example to monitor the neutrino flux in nuclear power plants. You just put a nice little detector on the outside, and you can measure it in situ. Neutrino physicists, meanwhile, are interested in using the technology to better understand the properties of the mysterious particle. Neutrinos are one of the most mysterious particles, Collar said. We ignore many things about them. We know they have mass, but we dont know exactly how much. Through measuring coherent elastic neutrino-nucleus scattering, physicists hope to answer such questions. The COHERENT Collaborations Science paper, for example, imposes limits on new types of neutrino-quark interactions that have been proposed. The results also have implications in the search for Weakly Interacting Massive Particles. WIMPs are candidate particles for dark matter, which is invisible material of unknown composition that accounts for 85 percent of the mass of the universe. What we have observed with neutrinos is the same process expected to be at play in all the WIMP detectors we have been building, Collar said. Neutrino alley The COHERENT Collaboration, which involves 90 scientists at 18 institutions, has been conducting its search for coherent neutrino scattering at the Spallation Neutron Source at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee. The researchers installed their detectors in a basement corridor that became known as neutrino alley. This corridor is heavily shielded by iron and concrete from the highly radioactive neutron beam target area, only 20 meters (less than 25 yards) away. This neutrino alley solved a major problem for neutrino detection: It screens out almost all neutrons generated by the Spallation Neutron Source, but neutrinos can still reach the detectors. This allows researchers to more clearly see neutrino interactions in their data. Elsewhere they would be easily drowned out by the more prominent neutron detections. The Spallation Neutron Source generates the most intense pulsed neutron beams in the world for scientific research and industrial development. In the process of generating neutrons, the SNS also produces neutrinos, though in smaller quantities. You could use a more sophisticated type of neutrino detector, but not the right kind of neutrino source, and you wouldnt see this process, Collar said. It was the marriage of ideal source and ideal detector that made the experiment work. Two of Collars former graduate students are co-authors of the Science paper: Phillip Barbeau, AB01, SB01, PhD09, now an assistant professor of physics at Duke University; and Nicole Fields, PhD15, now a health physicist with the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission in Chicago. The development of a compact neutrino detector brings to fruition an idea that UChicago alumnus Leo Stodolsky, SM58, PhD64, proposed in 1984. Stodolsky and Andrzej Drukier, both of the Max Planck Institute for Physics and Astrophysics in Germany, noted that a coherent detector would be relatively small and compact, unlike the more common neutrino detectors containing thousands of gallons of water or liquid scintillator. In their work, they predicted the arrival of future neutrino technologies made possible by the miniaturization of the detectors. Scholz, the UChicago graduate student, saluted the scientists who have worked for decades to create the technology that culminated in the detection of coherent neutrino scattering. I cannot fathom how they must feel now that its finally been detected, and theyve achieved one of their life goals, Scholz said. Ive come in at the end of the race. We definitely have to give credit to all the tremendous work that people have done before us. ### On the North Slope of Alaska, snow is melting earlier in the spring and the snow-in date is happening later in the fall, according to a new study by CIRES and NOAA researchers. Atmospheric dynamics and sea ice conditions are behind this lengthening of the snow-free season, the scientists found, and the consequences are far reaching -- including birds laying eggs sooner and iced-over rivers flowing earlier. "The timing of snowmelt and length of the snow-free season significantly impacts weather, the permafrost, and wildlife -- in short, the Arctic terrestrial system as a whole," said Christopher Cox, a scientist with CIRES at the University of Colorado Boulder and NOAA's Physical Sciences Division in Boulder, Colorado. The study has been accepted for publication in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society. Focusing on the transition seasons on the North Slope -- the springtime snowmelt and the autumn onset of snowpack -- the researchers found that since the mid-1970s, the spring melt has been happening earlier, and the first snow has been happening later. The end result: an increase in length of the snow-free season, by about one week per decade from 1975 to 2016. From 1975 to 2016, the spring snowmelt has arrived nearly three days earlier every decade, and from 1979-2016, snow onset has arrived later, by about 4.5 days every decade. CIRES and NOAA researchers and their colleagues analyzed long-term observations of snow cover and meteorology at the NOAA Barrow Atmospheric Baseline Observatory outside of Utqia?vik (formerly Barrow), Alaska, along with other records of environmental variables in the region. Despite natural swings up and down, a persistent, long-term warming trend emerged: eight of the 10 earliest melt dates have occurred since 1990, pointing to the influence of warming Arctic temperatures. 2016 experienced the earliest melt, the latest onset of snow in autumn, and the longest snow-free season in 115 years of record-keeping -- about 45 percent longer than the average over the previous four decades. The researchers then began dissecting their data to find weather-related factors that might be contributing to these observed changes. They found different factors at work in spring versus fall. Changes in flow patterns of warm Pacific Ocean air from the south were driving earlier spring snowmelt, while decreasing summer sea ice had the greatest influence on later onset of snowpack in the fall. The researchers found that large-scale features of atmospheric circulation--in particular, the strength and position of the Aleutian Low, a semi-permanent, subpolar area of low pressure located in the Gulf of Alaska near the Aleutian Islands--largely determined the timing of snowmelt during spring in Alaska, by either facilitating or inhibiting the transport of warm, moist air into the region. Conversely, in autumn, the amount of open water in the Beaufort and eastern Chukchi Seas appeared to be very influential in affecting the temperature at Utqia?vik and the subsequent timing of the onset of snowpack. The extent of open water in the region during autumn has increased significantly in the past several decades, a signal other studies have linked to Arctic amplification. The rapid expansion of the North Slope's snow-free season has had consequences for water resources, wildlife behavior, the plant growing season and more, the research team reported in the new paper. For example, on Cooper Island near Utqia?vik, where a colony of black guillemots has been monitored since 1975, researchers found that the timing of the seabirds' egg laying correlates with Utqia?vik's snowmelt, so earlier melt means earlier egg laying. The timing of snowmelt also influenced the timing of peak discharge from the North Slope river system and the start of the vegetative growing season, according to the researchers. "It's remarkable how rapidly things are changing in the Arctic and how the longer snow-free season affects so many other patterns--the guillemots, vegetation growth, and fluxes of gases from the tundra," said Diane Stanitski, co-author of the paper and a scientist at the NOAA Earth System Research Laboratory in Boulder, Colorado. This spring's snowmelt date at Utqia?vik was late, on June 18, said lead author Cox. This late melt didn't make it into the paper, because analyses were done by then, but the atmospheric conditions that led to the later melt were consistent with the findings in the paper. Such variability underscores the need for continued monitoring of snow cover, Cox said. Long-term datasets from the region help scientists understand the reasons behind long-term changes and predict what the region will face in the future. "This study takes an integrated approach that addresses the need to advance Arctic environmental research at the system level, a challenge that has been recognized by the broad scientific community as necessary to improve predictions of future change," said Cox. ### CIRES is a partnership of NOAA and CU Boulder. Coming face-to-face with disability could end supernatural myth-making in Africa Many people in rural African communities still believe that disability is caused by supernatural forces, curses and as 'punishment' for wrongdoings - according to University of East Anglia research. The resultant stigma leaves disabled people vulnerable to neglect and abuse - with sexual abuse reported by 90 per cent of people with learning difficulties. Many disabled children are kept 'locked up' at home - often for their own safety. But the more that communities come into contact with disability, the more awareness and understanding grows. Meanwhile medical explanations for disability are beginning to emerge, with increasing numbers of families seeking medical advice for children with disabilities rather than consulting a witchdoctor. The 'Preparation of Communities: Using personal narratives to affect attitudes to disability in Kilifi, Kenya (Pre-Call)' project was set up to promote disability awareness in small communities in a rural part of Kenya, by encouraging a process of reflection and education. The research team at the Kenya Medical Research Institute (KEMRI) led focus groups to find out how cultural beliefs and knowledge shape people's understanding of disability. The discussions involved 21 community groups located across the five constituencies of Kilifi County, bordered one side by the Indian Ocean coast and stretching into the rural interior. A total of 263 participants were involved who observed Christianity (70 per cent), traditional religious practices (20 per cent) and Islam (10 per cent). Lead researcher Dr Karen Bunning, from UEA's School of Health Sciences, said: "Information on the medical causes of childhood disability are not widely available across communities in low-income countries and understanding is generally poor. "In Namibia for example albinism is explained by the mother having sex with a white man or a ghost. And in Guinea-Bissau, epilepsy is widely thought of as being caused by evil spirits, or sometimes as a punishment for wrongdoing. "We found that disability is often explained by things like extra marital affairs invoking a curse, witchcraft, supernatural forces such as demons or ghosts affecting the child, and the will of God. "Curvature of the spine or limbs represented the effects of a curse, saliva production was linked to demons and ill-gotten financial gain. "The different explanations represent a real mixture of traditional, religious and biomedical beliefs," she added. "And while biomedical factors such as inherited conditions or antenatal care were increasingly talked about, these explanations did not negate other culturally-based accounts." The findings reveal that underpinning all of these explanations is a desire to make sense of disability and, particularly for carers, to improve the given situation. And where an explanation of wrongdoing or the presence of an evil force might result in a visit to a local witchdoctor, a medical attribution might be followed with a visit to a medical centre. The project also looked at the challenges faced by people with disabilities and their carers. Dr Bunning said: "What tends to happen is that these types of cultural beliefs affect how individuals with disabilities view themselves and how other people see them. Attributing the child's condition to some form of malevolent preternatural force by reference to demons, evil spirits and witchcraft contributes to the view of disability as both undesirable and unacceptable. "People with disabilities in Africa have poor access to health provision, low school attendance, limited employment rates and low wages. More extreme consequences include neglect and abuse - with sexual abuse reported to occur at some time in the lives of 90 per cent of the population with learning difficulties. People with communication difficulties are at a high level of risk because they are less able to report abuse. "We found that children with disabilities are often kept apart from the local community in restricted environments - contributing to the social distance between them. Although in many cases this is to protect them from abuse and keep them safe. "The burden of caring for family members with disabilities also led to discrimination by association," she added. "And the stigma associated with people with disabilities is so great that it also extends to anyone trying to help. The implication being that anyone offering help would also give birth to a disabled child. "But we found that the more people come into contact with disability, the better their understanding. Real life encounters with people who have disabilities can be a really positive step, so raising disability awareness in small communities can really help." ### 'The perception of disability by community groups: Stories of local understanding, beliefs and challenges in a rural part of Kenya' is published in PLOS ONE on August 3, 2017 . The research was led by UEA (UK) in collaboration with the Kenya Medical Research Institute (Kenya), the University of Oxford (UK) and the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (UK). AN insect that was once found mainly in China and in South America has begun to appear in Europe. Forensic entomologists - who gain vital crime scene information such as time of death by studying the infestation of human cadavers - need to learn as much as they can about the newcomer. The University of Huddersfield's Dr Stefano Vanin, assisted by some of his students, is leading the way. His researches have led him to show that climate change and the globalisation of trade are key factors in the migration of the fly that has the scientific name Synthesiomyia nudiseta. In recent years, the insect has been found in Spain, Portugal and southern Italy. Now, it has been detected in corpses in the Genoa district of North West Italy. A new article co-authored by Dr Vanin - who is the University of Huddersfield's Reader in Forensic Biology - includes five case studies of dead bodies found in houses in Genoa. Their ages ranged from 51 to 89, and the deaths were deemed to be natural. Larvae and pupae of S. nudiseta were discovered in each cadaver. So how did a tropical insect migrate to Northern Italy? Dr Vanin and his University of Huddersfield team obtained samples of the Genoese flies and conducted DNA analysis, comparing the genealogy of the Italian insects with that of Chinese specimens. This led to a conclusion that S. nudiseta had arrived not via Spain and Portugal but directly from China. The DNA findings are reinforced by the fact that Genoa is a large port and most of its trade is conducted with China. The extent to which globalisation can disperse insect species is an issue that Dr Vanin has explored previously, and he also says that global warming plays a role. "If the insects had arrived 20 years ago, they would have died. But the average temperature in Genoa, as in the whole Europe, has increased by about two degrees and is now a good temperature for this species," he said. In addition to the forensic significance of the spread of S. nudiseta, there could also be a public health dimension, according to Dr Vanin. "This species does not have any competitor in Europe, so it could spread and increase the risk of transmission of disease," he explained. There is a need for more work on the distribution of the insect within Europe, says Dr Vanin, and he stressed the importance of this at the most recent meeting of the European Association for Forensic Entomology. He aims to carry out new research. ### The co-authors of the article on S. nudiseta in Italy include collaborators from the Institute of Legal Medicine and Forensic Pathology, University of Genova, and two of Dr Vanin's University of Huddersfield PhD students, Giorgia Giordani and Fabiola Tuccia. They belong to the cohort of doctoral candidates funded by a 1 million award from the Leverhulme Trust, creating a Centre for Evolutionary Genomics. Under Dr Vanin's supervision they have also been analysing samples of S. nudiseta that have been found in mummified South Peruvian bodies. * The article, First records of Synthesiomyia nudiseta (Diptera: Muscidae) from forensic cases in Italy, by Stefano Vanin, Sara Lo Pinto, Giorgia Giordani, Fabiola Tuccia and Francesco Ventura is in the July 2017 edition of Forensic Science International. In the world of health care, the phrase "too much information" -- or TMI -- can be a serious problem. If you Google "How to prevent cancer," for example, you will find list after list of websites claiming to have the winning strategy, with some plans presenting 20-30 steps. The same situation occurs if one searches for information on quitting smoking, exercising, sleep, and endless other issues. The question becomes this: When does a person receive too much health information? What's the best way for health providers to convey information without consumers skipping over or forgetting key information? According to a new study from the University of Illinois, the answer lies in the goal of a specific health objective. Dolores Albarracin, professor of psychology, graduate student Jack McDonald, and colleagues at other universities studied the behavior of some 459 people to shine light on this topic that challenges health providers. One school of thought among health care providers is to give health information in small doses of two or three recommendations at once. Others argue that it's best to give patients the entirety of their options, so as to not skip out on something that may prove useful. The Illinois study, published in Clinical Psychological Science, asserts that it depends on the nature of the recommendations. According to the researchers, presenting a large amount of information would be appropriate if the goal would be for people to remember a large amount of potentially interchangeable behaviors, but if the goal is for people to remember a complete set of important recommendations, then the best strategy should be to present relatively few recommendations. "The best number of health behaviors to recommend seems to depend on the goal of an intervention," Albarracin said. "If the goal is to communicate as many recommendations as possible, then go for a long list of behaviors. But if the goal is to implement behaviors, then the best strategy may be to convey a lower number of recommended behaviors." The researchers, who also included Patrick McDonald at the University of Buffalo and Colleen Hughes at Indiana University-Bloomington (both are former members of Albarracin's research group), came to their conclusion by analyzing the results of experiments in which participants were presented with a list of brief health recommendations (ranging in number from two to 20, with each recommendation being about 33 words long). They were then asked to recall as many recommendations as they could. Participants were also asked open-ended questions about their intentions to follow the recommendations. Even though more recommendations meant that participants recalled a lower proportion of the total, they recalled and intended to follow more recommendations. "When multiple health recommendations are necessary, knowing the influence of the number of recommendations on recall and intended compliance is critical," the researchers wrote. This information can prove useful in many health fields. For example, psychotherapists who want to change the behavior of their patients in specific ways could assign homework, for example, that addresses one behavior. Other health professionals might give recommendations in small bursts (perhaps via text messaging) to help maximize the proportion of recalled recommendations while minimizing the costs to a patient. ### How do search engines generate lists of relevant links? The outcome is the result of two powerful forces in the evolution of information retrieval: artificial intelligence -- especially natural language processing -- and crowdsourcing. Computer algorithms interpret the relationship between the words we type and the vast number of possible web pages based on the frequency of linguistic connections in the billions of texts on which the system has been trained. But that is not the only source of information. The semantic relationships get strengthened by professional annotators who hand-tune results -- and the algorithms that generate them -- for topics of importance, and by web searchers (us) who, in our clicks, tell the algorithms which connections are the best ones. Despite the incredible, world-changing success of this model, it has its flaws. Search engine results are often not as "smart" as we'd like them to be, lacking a true understanding of language and human logic. Beyond that, they sometimes replicate and deepen the biases embedded in our searches, rather than bringing us new information or insight. Matthew Lease, an associate professor in the School of Information at The University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin), believes there may be better ways to harness the dual power of computers and human minds to create more intelligent information retrieval (IR) systems. Combining AI with the insights of annotators and the information encoded in domain-specific resources, he and his collaborators are developing new approaches to IR that will benefit general search engines, as well as niche ones like those for medical knowledge or non-English texts. This week, at the Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics in Vancouver, Canada, Lease and collaborators from UT Austin and Northeastern University presented two papers describing their novel IR systems. Their research leverages the supercomputing resources at the Texas Advanced Computing Center [https://www.tacc.utexas.edu/], one of the leading supercomputing research centers in the world. ANNOTATOR CONSENSUS AND ATTRIBUTIONS PROVIDE RATIONALES FOR SEARCH RESULTS In one paper, led by Ph.D. student An Nguyen, they presented a method that combines input from multiple annotators to determine the best overall annotation for a given text. They applied this method to two problems: analyzing free-text research articles describing medical studies to extract details of each study (e.g., the condition, patient demographics, treatments, and outcomes), and recognizing named-entities -- analyzing breaking news stories to identify the events, people, and places involved. "An important challenge in natural language processing is accurately finding important information contained in free-text, which lets us extract into databases and combine it with other data in order to make more intelligent decisions and new discoveries," Lease said. "We've been using crowdsourcing to annotate medical and news articles at scale so that our intelligent systems will be able to more accurately find the key information contained in each article." Such annotation has traditionally been performed by in-house, domain experts. However, more recently crowdsourcing has become a popular means to acquire large labeled datasets at lower cost. Predictably, annotations from laypeople are of lower quality than those from domain experts, so it is necessary to estimate the reliability of crowd annotators and also aggregate individual annotations to come up with a single set of "reference standard" consensus labels. Lease's team found that their method was able to train a neural network -- a form of AI modeled on the human brain -- so it could very accurately predict named entities and extract relevant information in unannotated texts. The new method improved upon existing tagging and training methods. The method also provides an estimate of each worker's label quality, which can be transferred between tasks and is useful for error analysis and intelligently routing tasks -- identifying the best person to annotate each particular text. LEVERAGING EXISTING KNOWLEDGE TO CREATE BETTER NEURAL MODELS The group's second paper, led by Ph.D. student Ye Zhang, addressed the fact that neural models for natural language processing (NLP) often ignore existing resources like WordNet -- a lexical database for the English language that groups words into sets of synonyms -- or domain-specific ontologies, such as the Unified Medical Language System, which encode knowledge about a given field. They proposed a method for exploiting these existing linguistic resources via weight sharing to improve NLP models for automatic text classification. For example, their model learns to classify whether or not published medical articles describing clinical trials are relevant to a well-specified clinical question. In weight sharing, words that are similar share some fraction of a weight, or assigned numerical value. Weight sharing constrains the number of free parameters that a system must learn, thereby increasing the efficiency and accuracy of the neural model, and serving as a flexible way to incorporate prior knowledge. In doing so, they combine the best of human knowledge with machine learning. "Neural network models have tons of parameters and need lots of data to fit them," said Lease. "We had this idea that if you could somehow reason about some words being related to other words a priori, then instead of having to have a parameter for each one of those word separately, you could tie together the parameters across multiple words and in that way need less data to learn the model. It would realize the benefits of deep learning without large data constraints." They applied a form of weight sharing to a sentiment analysis of movie reviews and to a biomedical search related to anemia. Their approach consistently yielded improved performance on classification tasks compared to strategies that did not exploit weight sharing. "This provides a general framework for codifying and exploiting domain knowledge in data-driven neural network models," say Byron Wallace, Lease's collaborator from Northeastern University. (Wallace was formerly also a faculty member at UT Austin and became a frequent user of TACC as well.) Lease, Wallace and their collaborators used the GPUs (graphics processing units) on the Maverick supercomputer at TACC to enable their analyses and train the machine learning system. "Training neural computing models for big data takes a lot of compute time," Lease said. "That's where TACC fits in as a wonderful resource, not only because of the great storage that's available, but also the large number of nodes and the high processing speeds available for training neural models." In addition to GPUs, TACC deploys cutting-edge processing architectures developed by Intel to which the machine learning libraries are playing catch up, according to Lease. "Though many deep learning libraries have been highly optimized for processing on GPUs, there's reason to think that these other architectures will be faster in the long term once they've been optimized as well," he said. "With the introduction of Stampede2 and its many core infrastructure, we are glad to see more optimization of CPU-based machine learning frameworks," said Niall Gaffney, Director of Data Intensive Computing at TACC. "Project like Matt's show the power of machine learning in both measured and simulated data analysis." Gaffney says that in TACC's initial work with Caffe -- a deep learning framework developed at the University of California, Berkeley, which has been optimized by Intel for Xeon Phi processors -- they are finding that CPUs have roughly the equivalent performance for many AI jobs at GPUs. "This can be transformative as it allows us to offer more nodes that can satisfy these researchers as well as allowing HPC users to leverage AI in their analysis phases, without having to move to a different GPU enabled system," he said. By improving core natural language processing technologies for automatic information extraction and the classification of texts, web search engines built on these technologies can continue to improve. Lease has received grants from the National Science Foundation (NSF), the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to improve the quality of crowdsourcing across a variety of tasks, scales, and settings. He says that though commercial web search companies invest a lot of resources to develop practical, effective solutions, the demands of industry lead them to focus on problems with commercial application and short-term solutions. "Industry is great at looking at near-term things, but they don't have the same freedom as academic researchers to pursue research ideas that are higher risk but could be more transformative in the long-term," Lease said. "This is where we benefit from public investment for powering discoveries. Resources like TACC are incredibly empowering for researchers in enabling us to pursue high-risk, potentially transformative research." ### Who is the better experimentalist, a human or a robot? When it comes to exploring synthetic and crystallization conditions for inorganic gigantic molecules, actively learning machines are clearly ahead, as demonstrated by British Scientists in an experiment with polyoxometalates published in the journal Angewandte Chemie. Polyoxometalates form through self-assembly of a large number of metal atoms bridged by oxygen atoms. Potential uses include catalysis, electronics, and medicine. Insights into the self-organization processes could also be of use in developing functional chemical systems like "molecular machines". Polyoxometalates offer a nearly unlimited variety of structures. However, it is not easy to find new ones, because the aggregation of complex inorganic molecules to gigantic molecules is a process that is difficult to predict. It is necessary to find conditions under which the building blocks aggregate and then also crystallize, so that they can be characterized. A team led by Leroy Cronin at the University of Glasgow (UK) has now developed a new approach to define the range of suitable conditions for the synthesis and crystallization of polyoxometalates. It is based on recent advances in machine learning, known as active learning. They allowed their trained machine to compete against the intuition of experienced experimenters. The test example was Na(6)[Mo(120)Ce(6)O(366)H(12)(H(2)O)(78)]200 H(2)O, a new, ring-shaped polyoxometalate cluster that was recently discovered by the researchers' automated chemical robot. In the experiment, the relative quantities of the three necessary reagent solutions were to be varied while the protocol was otherwise prescribed. The starting point was a set of data from successful and unsuccessful crystallization experiments. The aim was to plan ten experiments and then use the results from these to proceed to the next set of ten experiments - a total of one hundred crystallization attempts. Although the flesh-and-blood experimenters were able to produce more successful crystallizations, the far more "adventurous" machine algorithm was superior on balance because it covered a significantly broader domain of the "crystallization space". The quality of the prediction of whether an experiment would lead to crystallization was improved significantly more by the machine than the human experimenters. A series of 100 purely random experiments resulted in no improvement. In addition, the machine discovered a range of conditions that led to crystals which would not have been expected based on pure intuition. This "unbiased" automated method makes the discovery of novel compounds more probably than reliance on human intuition. The researchers are now looking for ways to make especially efficient "teams" of man and machine. ### About the Author Leroy "Lee" Cronin is the Regius Professor of Chemistry at the University of Glasgow. He leads the Complex Chemical Systems team and is developing chemical robots to use artificial intelligence to look at how chemistry can become complex from the bottom up (origin of life) and the discovery and digitization of chemistry from the top down. His team combines synthetic and analytical chemists, roboticists, computer scientists, and theoreticians. http://www.chem.gla.ac.uk/cronin/ From: MicroTech's CEO Tony Jimenez - Largest Hispanic-Owned IT Integrator in US Tysons Corner , VA Thursday, August 3, 2017 On August 1, 2017, the General Services Administration (GSA) announced MicroTech has been awarded a spot on the $50 Billion 15-year Enterprise Infrastructure Solutions (EIS) Multi-Agency Contract (MAC). MicroTech, a Certified and Verified Service-Disabled Veteran-Owned Small Business (SDVOSB) and leading provider of Telecommunications and Cyber Security Solutions, Cloud Computing, Technology Solutions, and Professional Services is one of only ten companies to receive an EIS Award. Through the Network Services program, GSA has developed the Network Services 2020 (NS2020) strategy, a new and all-inclusive acquisition program to fulfill agencies' needs for IT and telecommunications. NS2020 will work to become the government's main source for network-based and network-enabled services, which will be provided through the new EIS contract vehicle. To read more about this strategy visit the GSA's website at https://www.gsa.gov/portal/category/101050. "MicroTech is honored to have been selected as a provider for this next generation of network services contract" says Tony Jimenez, Founder, President and CEO of MicroTech. "This award is the culmination of several years of work by our dedicated team and is our most significant contract win to date" Mr. Jimenez added. "It will allow MicroTech to expand our offerings beyond data services, voice services, and managed services, to the full spectrum of telecommunications, cloud and network services that drive era-defining modernization and innovation." The winning MicroTech team included a stellar group of globally recognized telecommunications and information services companies, including such global leaders as; Cox Communication, NTT America, Spectrum, Tata Communications, Telefonica, and Vodafone. MicroTech now holds 25 multiple-award type contracts with dozens of Federal State and Local Government Agencies through which MicroTech provides a broad range of innovative technologies and state of the art Professional Services and Solutions. About MicroTech: MicroTech, a certified and verified Service-Disabled Veteran-Owned Small Business (SDVOSB) and a Minority Business Enterprise (MBE) certified by the National Minority Supplier Development Council (NMSDC), has had noteworthy success since its inception in 2004. Under Tony Jimenezs leadership, the privately-owned company has experienced exponential growth over the years and is repeatedly recognized as a small business success story. Described as the hottest Hispanic business in the nation, MicroTech was ranked as the #1 Fastest Growing Hispanic Company in the Nation for three consecutive years by Hispanic Business Magazine. MicroTech was also named one of the Top 10 Fastest Growing Hispanic-Owned Companies in the Nation for five consecutive years and has been repeatedly listed on Washington Technologys annual list of the Top 100 Government Contractors. MicroTech provides Cloud Computing, Technology Services, Cyber Security Solutions, Products & Managed Service Solutions, Network Systems Integration, Big Data Management, Telecom Solutions & Integration and Financial Services to the public sector, as well as commercial enterprises -- managing more than a quarter of a million technology users daily. A prime contractor of more than 100 Federal projects and more than 25 procurement vehicles, MicroTech offers access to 2,500 vendors and a million technology products and services across the Federal Government. About Tony Jimenez: Tony is the award-winning Founder, President, and CEO of MicroTech, a Service-Disabled Veteran-Owned Small Business (SDVOSB). He is an active member of the technology industry and an advocate for the Veteran, Hispanic and Small Business communities. As a respected business owner, successful entrepreneur, and award-winning small business advocate, Jimenez is always willing to go that extra mile! To learn more, visit www.microtech.net/meet-ceo Follow us on Twitter Like us on Facebook Connect with us on LinkedIn From: Joyce L. Gioia, CMC, CSP -- The Herman Group Austin , TX Wednesday, August 2, 2017 The Herman Trend Alert August 2, 2017 Office Design That Supports Productivity Though average US workers will spend about 35 percent of their waking lives in an office, according to The Conference Board, close to half are not satisfied with their workplace environment. Inefficiencies in the office setting result in "lost productivity, lackluster engagement, and an absence of innovation". Companies trying perks In a misguided drive to respond to this challenge, organizations are experimenting with "increasingly lavish perks". However, the approach favoring things like food and ice cream over meaningfulness are missing the mark. According to a recent study by PwC, what really drives employee fulfillment is an adaptable space that prioritizes communication and cooperation. Advice from PwC's research In this spirit, PwC offers advice they believe will work to truly make a difference to employees: Create spaces that morph The right office design can be adapted to company or market needs quickly. Like PwC's own Experience Centers, they recommend tailoring spaces to the needs of the business. They use real-time simulations and advanced technology to help employees know how to handle challenges before they reach the customer. Their spaces are easily changed and technologically flexible. Thoughtfully combining technology and design, these spaces facilitate the movement of teams' ideas from vision to reality. Cubicle forests are counterproductive People learn in dynamic environments, as opposed to cubicles which inhibit people's ability to evolve and improve. In these dynamic environments, people learn from each other and can co-create. Giving people the flexibility to customize their space facilitates the speedy transfer of information and encourages dynamic thinking. Balance open workspaces PwC employees can also choose different seating plans and social spaces to foster collaboration on different days, depending on their needs at the times. Productive spaces are paired with "quiet zones" that support concentration. Thus, PwC employees are encouraged to be as productive as possible. The value of values People make decisions based on their values and Millennials, the largest demographic in the workplace, are no exception. In fact, they are most likely to rate "values and culture" highly, when considering job satisfaction. The most effective office planning for this group embraces the balance of emotional and functional needs, and includes design elements that express corporate culture. Many aspects must be considered in design, especially ergonomic needs, layouts that encourage movement, and wall art and plants. These add up to making office environments feel personalized. At the same time, healthy food offerings demonstrate a commitment to well-being. What's next? Ideal office spaces optimally serve workers. As we learn more and more about what works best for individual workers, expect to see office genomes emerge. We will be able to tailor spaces to enjoy maximum productivity from each worker. ******** The Herman Group is a firm of Strategic Business Futurists concentrating on workforce and workplace issues. We forecast the future and advise clients regarding relevant trends and how those trends may affect their lives. Applying our expertise as Certified Management Consultants, we advise corporate leaders regarding employee retention and organizational development to help them build workforce stability. We help organizations become Employers of Choice. We also work with Employer of Choice, Inc. to formally recognize employers that meet the stringent standards dictated by the labor marketplace. As authors of management books and as active professional speakers, we inform and inspire people to make a positive difference in the world of work. You did really get the ball rolling with our retention presentation, overall we have seen a move in the right direction with our turnover. In practice since 1980, we have served a wide variety of clients throughout the United States and in other countries. Our global affiliates assist us in sharing our expertise and advice with clients internationally. Our team of professional consultants and trainers is supported by an administrative staff that gets things done. We also have consultants certified to deliver our programs in your local area. Delivering to both small and large groups across 100 industries, The Herman Group has provided over 2,500 educational and informative keynote speeches and training seminars worldwide. Based in Greensboro, North Carolina, we travel extensively to meet the needs of our clients. We can always be reached through the support team in our office at (800) 227-3566. Overseas callers may reach us through 336-210-3547. Should you have any questions after touring our website, please call or e-mail us at info@hermangroup.com. Get started now on improving the stability and performance of your workforce and increase your chances for success in the future. The National Farmers Union has called on the government to address severe delays in solving BPS claim issues of previous years. This comes as the NFUs latest member survey on BPS reports that 14% of farmers said they still have outstanding problems from 2015 and 2016. Another statistic from the survey shows a year-on-year increase of assistance needed by claimants to complete the BPS application. Over half (55%) of claimants in 2017 required help, compared to 46% in 2016. NFU Vice President Guy Smith: While we can see there is progress being made by the RPA, its clear that an unacceptably large proportion of farmers are still haunted by problems yet to be rectified. We are still hearing from too many members who are becoming understandably angry about delays, errors and underpayments. It's understandable how these claimants simply do not see or benefit from the positive steps our survey shows the RPA has made. 'Under pressure' Those with problems from previous years struggled with some of the elements of the 2017 claim, with some needing to complete supplementary forms to show land correctly. Mr Smith continued: This will add to the workload in the coming months for the RPA, when resources must be under pressure. There is a still strong expectation of the RPA achieving at least 90% claims paid in December. The rise in claimants seeking professional assistance with their applications is alarming. Weve always maintained that BPS should not be beyond the average farmer - it should be an accessible system for all. 'Lack of clarity' In the survey, over half of those interviewed said they needed assistance. The NFU said this shows that cost is being loaded into the industry through lack of clarity and a perception that the process is difficult. Many NFU members who did not have claim issues found the process straightforward. Mr Smith concluded: This survey work will arm us in our talks with the RPA to shape the next BPS year, to ensure that the application system is fit for purpose and that the delivery of BPS monies is accurate and timely. The NFU interviewed 364 farmers across all regions in England between 5 July and 21 July 2017 in order to obtain the data. Police are urging dog owners to ensure their pets are kept under control at all times after a rise in sheep worrying incidents. Recently, a ewe and two lambs were killed in a field at Topcliffe, North Yorkshire. It is believed the three sheep were attacked by dogs some time overnight on 31 July and 1 August. A spokesperson for North Yorkshire Police said: Dog attacks on livestock result often in death or severe injury, and have a huge impact on farmers and their livelihoods. The message to owners is simple - keep your dog on a lead near livestock, even if they are in a separate field. Even the most mild-mannered dog can see sheep, especially lambs, as something to chase and kill. Two sheep were savaged to death by an out-of-control dog in a country park in Torquay last week. Last week, it was announced that the National Trust has restricted access for dog walkers on fields near the ancient monument of Stonehenge due to an increasing number of attacks on sheep. Anyone who has any information about the incident in Topcliffe is asked to contact North Yorkshire Police on 101, quoting reference number NYP-02082017-0087. The Welsh farming industry has launched a search for the Dairy Stocksperson of the Year, which seeks to champion dedicated, committed and enthusiastic dairy stock managers from across Wales. NFU Cymru and NFU Mutual have launched their Dairy Stockperson of the Year Award, which is now in its sixth year. Aled Jones, NFU Cymru Milk Board Chairman said: We want to recognise the key role that a good dairy stockperson plays in a successful dairy enterprise and to the Welsh dairy industry as a whole. Potential award winners will be judged on their care and management of the herd, the breeding programme, their handling skills, their involvement in the dairy enterprise and their knowledge of the dairy industry in Wales. As a dairy farmer myself, I am very passionate about the industry and I believe it is important to champion those individuals who go above and beyond to ensure they have happy and healthy cows. I would urge you all to nominate a dairy farmer or manager in your area who you believe deserves to be recognised for their work within the industry. The closing date for entries is Monday, 25 September 2017 and the winner will be announced at this years Welsh Dairy Show at the United Counties Showground, Carmarthen, on Tuesday, 24 October 2017. Keenly contested Dai Davies OBE, Chairman of NFU Mutuals Advisory Board for Wales said: The quality of the stockmanship is a major factor in determining the success of any dairy enterprise. We have some superb stockpeople involved in the dairy industry in Wales and I am confident that this will be a keenly contested competition and one which NFU Mutual is pleased to support as the leading rural insurer in Wales. Mair James, Welsh Dairy Show Secretary said: This award is a fantastic way of raising the profile of the dairy industry and those who work within it, therefore the Welsh Dairy Show is pleased to be associated with NFU Cymru and NFU Mutual in this Award. This years winner will receive 300 and a Welsh slate engraved cheese board and the person nominating the winner of the award will also receive 50s worth of local farm shop vouchers or goods. Summary Company Announcement Date: August 02, 2017 FDA Publish Date: February 08, 2018 Product Type: Food & Beverages Allergens Food & Beverage Safety Reason for Announcement: Recall Reason Description Undeclared walnuts Company Name: Fairway Like No Other Market Brand Name: Brand Name(s) Fairway Product Description: Product Description Blondie cookies Company Announcement Fairway Like No Other Market of New York, NY Is voluntarily recalling Fairway brand Cookies Blondie, because the product may contain undeclared ingredient, walnuts. People who have an allergy or severe sensitivity to nuts run the risk of serious or life-threatening allergic reaction if they consume this product. The Fairway brand Cookies Blondie were distributed to Fairway stores in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut and also through home delivery programs provided by Fairway E-commerce, Google and Instacart. The product is packaged in octagon-shaped plastic containers that are black on the bottom and clear on the top with a standard weight of 10 oz. The product bears either Item Code 268492 XXXXXX or 263413 XXXXXX. All SELL BY Date codes are being recalled. No other Fairway products are involved. The recall is the result of a discovery by Fairway personnel. The company has ceased distribution of the Fairway brand Cookie Blondie and removed the product from Fairway store shelves. Consumers who purchased the affected Fairway brand Cookies Blondie should return the product to the place of purchase for a full refund. Consumers with questions may contact the company at (646)616-8265, Monday Friday, 9 am 5 pm EST. #### Aishwarya Wants To Look Really Hot According to Spotboye, ''Aishwarya Rai Bachchan wants to look as hot as she did in Dhoom 2.'' And She Wants To Take The Help Of Yoga For It Aishwarya has appointed the same yoga instructor whom she had lined up for Dhoom 2. She Only Has 3 Weeks There's barely 3 weeks' time left before Aishwarya faces the camera for Fanney Khan. Remember How Kareena Kapoor Took The Help Of Yoga To Become Really Thin If you remember, Kareena Kapoor too practiced yoga to become size zero for one of her films. Kareena Has Inspired Many Actresses Kareena Kapoor is the one, who proved that even yoga can be equally effective and beneficial when it comes to losing weight. She is an inspiration to many actresses. Coming Back To Fanney Khan A few days back, Prerna Arora talked about Aishwarya's role to a daily, "The team starts building the set in Mumbai next month and Anil will kick off shooting in the first week of August. Aishwarya joins him by the month-end and the film will wrap up in a start-to-finish schedule by October.'' Aishwarya Was Blown Away By Her Highly Stylised Character ''Ash was blown away by her glamorous and "highly stylised" character.'' She Immediately Said Yes! ''We took the script to her two months ago and she immediately gave her nod." Her Character Is Entirely Different "Her character is the complete opposite of her serious turns in Jazbaa and Sarbjit. In our film she is the spunky, enchanting female protagonist.'' Navya Refutes Rumours About Debuting In Bollywood Recently, in her first ever interview with Vogue magazine, Navya refuted all rumours and has put it out straight, that she is no way interested in doing movies. Navya Says No Way She was quoted as saying to the glossy, "No way I'll make a career in acting. I am enjoying my internship at the advertising agency." Recommended Video Navya Naveli makes STUNNING entry at Vogue Awards with family; Watch Video | FilmiBeat She Loves Her Independence Navya further added, "I love the independence I get in Manhattan." Mom Shweta Too Isn't Keen On Navya Stepping Into Bollywood Navya's mother Shweta supports her decision and says, "I really try to tell Navya about all the cons [of being a part of the film industry]. I have nothing against the industry, it's who we are. But, it's not an easy world to be in." A Day In Navya's Life In Manhattan In Manhattan, Navya spends her day by attending a spinning class in the morning, trawling the city streets later and relishing meals with friends at her favourite restaurant, Serafina. Quite cool naa? Is This Happy News For Sara Ali Khan & Jhanvi Kapoor? While Navya wants to stay away from Bollywood, the other star kids in the industry are gearing up for their big screen debut. We are talking about Sara Ali Khan and Jhanvi Kapoor! With Navya choosing to bow out of competition, we wonder if Sara and Jhanvi are doing some happy dance! People Just Blew It Out Of Proportion Sana was quoted as saying, "I still can't believe that a normal hug was trending, trolling, and rolling. People just blew it out of proportion because [Salman] had a closed fist, and some dumb people even called it an awkward hug." Who The Hell Am I To Make Him Feel Uncomfortable? When quizzed if she felt that Salman was uncomfortable for even a moment, the actor hit back saying, "Who the hell am I to make him feel uncomfortable? It's stupid to put somebody down by saying such a nasty thing and showing me in a wrong light. It's not [as if] I went to hug him and he didn't recognize me." Recommended Video Salman Khan HUG Sana Khan | FilmiBeat Maybe He Hugs Like That... Speaking about the closed fists, she said, "Couldn't it be somebody's style? Maybe he hugs like that. I don't know. I think the best person [whom] to ask this would be Salman." Don't Think Backless Even Matters To Him...He Has Seen More Than That She added, "He has been in the [film] industry for over 25 years, so don't think backless even matters to him... he has seen more than that (laughs). Let's not talk like a five-year-old and make all this sound so big." I Am Not A Psychopath To those calling it a forced hug, Sana gave it back by saying, "I'm not a psychopath to hug somebody if the person doesn't want to talk to me." I Am Not Someone Who Falls On People's Lap "I'm not someone who makes people stand and keep talking and falling on their lap. I am on good terms with Salman; we share a rapport, I talk to him on and off, we've met so many times, I've been to his house, and we have worked together on the sets also. So there's nothing to feel awkward [about]." Salman Complimented Me That I Looked Nice She also revealed that she had a 2-minute chat with the actor during the event where Salman literally told her that for a moment he did not recognize her. Sana said, "For a moment, Salman didn't recognise me - he literally told me that. [Then] he complimented me that I look very nice. And I said, Yes, I've dropped 7kg', and he is like, It's showing." Maybe He Didn't Want My Back Bronzer To Fall On His Clothes When asked if the backless dress made the hug look awkward, Sana added, "Well, could be. Maybe he didn't want my back bronzer to fall on his clothes." It's Not That He Wants To Feel Me Up Or I Want To Feel Him Up She said, "He has worked with all sexy and good-looking actresses, who would use bronzer from head to toe, so he knows that. And it's not that he wants to feel me up or I want to feel him up. I am sorry, we have all grown up from that zone. We need to respect each other's space and gestures." Families who need help getting their children ready for the coming school year can get supplies and free haircuts through the Back to School Bash set for later this month. The bash is put on through a partnership between The Salvation Army and United Way of Missoula County, said Evie Damon, youth social services coordinator for the Salvation Army in Missoula. Families are invited to the event through either case managers or referred by the agencies already helping them, said Erin Steele, director of development and marketing for United Way of Missoula County. Pattee Creek Market is accepting donations to pay for supplies for the backpack drive. Donations also can be made through the Salvation Army and United Way. About 1,200 backpacks stuffed with school supplies will be given away and Boomswagger will provide the students with free haircuts, Damon said. A small number of helmets also will be available for those who bike to school. Kid will be able to expand their libraries by picking up some of the books donated by the Holy Spirit Episcopal Church, she said. Dinner will be provided by Annunciation Greek Orthodox Church and the Outdoorsmen Church will provide activities outside. The hope is that one day the event will grow to be open to the public, Steele said. "But for these first few years, we have really targeted families we know need help, the kids who won't have anything on the first day of school," Steele said. Volunteers also are needed to help put on the event, Steele said. The Back to School Bash will be from 3 to 7 p.m. on Tuesday, Aug. 15, at The Salvation Army, 355 S. Russell St. For more information, people can contact Damon at 406-549-0710. That same week, the childrens consignment store Duck-Duck-Goose will hold its Back-to-School Consignment Sale. This will be the fifth year for the event put on by Avorie Williams and her husband, who own the consignment store together. Moms and dads in the community gather their kids stuff that doesnt fit or they dont use things like clothes, shoes, gear they prepare it for the sale by pricing it, hanging it; then they bring it in, Williams said. Williams recommends that people price the items at about 70 percent of the retail value. After the event, the people who brought in items to sell are given the proceeds, as well as any unsold items. Most parents then use the money to buy new clothes for their children, Williams said. Parents are cutting a lot of costs, Williams said. And shoppers love it. A lot of parents choose to donate the unsold items, and Williams works with local nonprofits to get the clothes to families who need them. People can bring in items to sell on Aug. 14-15. The consignment sale will be held from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. on Aug. 17-19 at the University of Montana Adams Center. For more information, people can got to dkdkgoose.com/missoula/. 2012 F150 Transmission issues I just bought this 2012 V-6 F150 with about 130k miles on it and something strange seems to be going on with the transmission. Occasionally it can't seem to decide if it needs to be in first or second gear when I start out from a stop. Sometimes it changes on me when i touch the gas. When pulling out into an intersection from a stop it sometimes does the "uncertain" shift and then it kills the throttle and i can't get out of my own way or worse, I can't get out of the way of the oncoming car that was not in the picture when I first pulled out... Once when sitting at a light I watched the gear indicator on the dash blink back and forth between first and second. Needless to say, when it was time to go it didn't want to go. This seems to be worse if I turn off Traction control. Once it just went to neutral and wouldn't pull at all until I stopped the truck, put it in reverse and then back into drive. Would there be some sort of electronic module that is flaking out or might there be a TSB that applies? I'm getting pretty frustrated with my new purchase right now. I would appreciate ideas from anyone with experience or expertise on this. Missoula County Attorney Kirsten Pabst on Wednesday charged Caressa Hardy, a 51-year-old arrested earlier this week in Frenchtown, with two counts of deliberate homicide for the alleged murders of Thomas Korjack and Robert Orozco. Pabst said the killings occurred in March 2013 at a Frenchtown home where Hardy, Korjack, Orozco and a woman were living, and that evidence suggests a financial motive for the alleged homicides. Following the deaths of Korjack and Orozco, multiple transactions were made on Korjack's financial accounts, investigators found. The case has been under investigation for more than a year by the Missoula County Sheriffs Office, assisted by the Missoula Police Department and the FBI. Korjack and Orozcos bodies have not been found. Officers, including the FBIs national Evidence Response Team, were at the house on Pond Road northwest of Frenchtown where the alleged murders are believed to have taken place. Missoula County Sheriff T.J. McDermott said cadaver dogs are being used at the scene, and he expects investigators will be there at least through the end of the week. Hardy made her initial appearance in Missoula County Justice Court on Wednesday. She gave no address other than the jail, and when Justice of the Peace Landee Holloway asked her to confirm her birthday, Hardy responded "I reserve the right to remain silent." Pabst asked for bail to be set at $2 million and said if Hardy is released that she be on GPS monitoring and cannot have contact with any witnesses in the case. Holloway imposed the requested bail and release conditions. According to a court affidavit Pabst filed in the case, a woman who said she witnessed the killings reported them to police three years later in 2016. The woman said she first met Hardy previously known by the name Glenn Dibley in California, and that she and Hardy were in a long-term relationship and had children together. The older two children were removed from the couple by the state of California. The youngest child, a girl, who continued to live with Hardy after the alleged killings was found at the home when officers arrested Hardy on Monday. The woman told police Hardy shot and killed Korjack and Orozco who lived with them at the house after Korjack and Hardy began to have a falling out and Hardy thought she was going to be kicked out of the house, according to the affidavit. Before arriving in Montana, the woman and Hardy had moved to Wyoming, where Hardy changed her name, began to dress like the woman and adopted a similar hairstyle. (The woman) said she thought Defendant actually wanted to be her, the court affidavit said. Korjack, who was a father figure to the woman, brought her and Hardy to live in Frenchtown. The woman had left the home for a while, then returned and fell in love with Orozco, who began living with them, according to the court documents. The woman told investigators that after Orozco and Korjack were killed, she was kept in the house for around a month, and that Hardy carried a gun constantly. She said Hardy changed the locks so that the doors could be locked from the inside, preventing her from leaving. She said Hardy broke into the safe containing money and other valuables that Korjack owned, and that Hardy gutted the room where the two men were killed, and burned everything in piles outside. According to a court affidavit, detectives found a bullet lodged in the cement wall of the room where Korjack and Orozco were allegedly shot, hidden behind new drywall. She was eventually allowed to leave and lived with a friend near Kalispell, but later moved back to Hardys home before leaving for good, according to the court documents. The woman described Hardy as extremely anti-government and paranoid and that she didnt report the alleged murders for years because she was afraid Hardy would find out and kill her. For the latest instalment of our long-running and popular series, Whats in Your Shed, we head to south Wales to quiz Monmouthshire beef farmer Greg Willis. Find out what kit he loves, what is his least favourite and what is his oldest machine still at work. How brand-loyal are you? Our yard is a bit like a rainbow, so you can tell were not really loyal to any one brand. For a long time weve had a Renault or two on the fleet as we used to have a couple of tidy dealers. The first was Vernon Lane just down the road and then Harold R Johns, which still has the Claas franchise now. Were also now on our second Fendt and weve had a couple of John Deeres in the past, too. See also: Whats in Your Shed? heads to Caithness Favourite dealer? Its got to be either our John Deere dealer Frank Sutton or Harold John. The great thing about Frank is that hes open seven days a week without fail and hell even help out with other brands if youre stuck. Harold John is also good to deal with and weve had a couple of pieces of grass kit from there. Favourite piece of kit? For me its got to be the Spread-a-bale as it makes my life so much easier day to day. Years ago we used to use an old Teagle Tomahawk for bedding down, but it created so much dust and chopped up the straw so fine that we switched back to bedding down by hand, which was a complete pain. We came across the Spread-a-bale around three years ago and initially thought it looked a lot of money for something pretty basic. But it does the job really well, doesnt chop up the straw and doesnt make much dust. If it broke Id buy another one tomorrow. The Fendt 516 is also worth a mention. We bought it last year to replace our 415 and it has just clicked over the 600-hour mark. For a four-cylinder tractor it hangs on amazingly well and pulls our five-furrow Vogel and Noot plough on 20in furrows with no problem at all. Least favourite machine? The five-furrow Vogel and Noot plough. We bought it second-hand at a farm sale and its always got something wrong with it. The pin that holds the plough to the headstock seems to snap like a carrot and were on our third one of those at the moment. Weve had countless other bolts and pins snap and weve also had to weld up a crack on the bracket for the turn-over ram. The Merlo 40.7 CS has been giving the plough a run for its money recently. I love driving the thing, but its had a series of electrical problems that have been a pain in the backside. Farm facts Douglas Willis Farms, Cefn Mawr Farm, Usk, Monmouthshire Livestock 500-head beef finishing unit plus 500-600 store lambs 500-head beef finishing unit plus 500-600 store lambs Grassland 120ha 120ha Arable 40ha maize and 25ha wheat 40ha maize and 25ha wheat Other Family butchery firm with two shops that process and sell all meat from the farm Family butchery firm with two shops that process and sell all meat from the farm Staff Greg Willis and Rhys Purcell, plus one part-time Latest purchase? Weve just bought a VDW silage clamp defacer to replace our old shear grab and weve been impressed with how much cleaner the face of the clamp is. With the shear grab it could take a week to get across the face and by then you could start to see mould growing. But with the defacer you only take a few inches off at a time so you can skim across it in a day, which helps it stay nice and fresh. Oldest machine still at work? Weve got a late-1950s three-cylinder Massey Ferguson 35 thats been on the farm since before I was born. It gets used every day on the scraper and starts on the button every time. It does seep plenty of oil and every time we fix one leak it springs another, but it never seems to give serious trouble. Weve also got some old Kverneland-branded Globus stone rakes from the 1980s, which get used a lot on our stony ground. When we go out with the rakes we offset them and make a windrow of stones that we then pick up with an elevator on the tractor. How long do you keep your machines? We try to replace a tractor and telehandler every three to five years if we can. The rest just gets replaced when it starts to give trouble. Whats next on your wishlist? At the moment were looking for a new round baler and a telehandler. Currently, weve got a Welger 245 roller baler, but we find it struggles to bale dry, brittle straw. Were hoping to replace it with a belt baler and were looking at either a Welger, McHale or Krone. As the telehandler is on 5,000 hours and has had some electrical problems, thats due to be replaced, too. Im a fan of hydrostatic machines so I might try a Claas or one of the new JCBs with the hybrid transmission. Most embarrassing machinery mistake? It was a long time ago, but I was pulling out of a field opposite our drive with a trailer load of stone on the back. It was a blind pull out so I was looking carefully in both directions and slowly inching out. The next thing I knew the front wheel of the tractor was parked on the bonnet of an Isuzu. Luckily the driver was fine and there was no damage done to the tractor. The Isuzus repair bill was a pricey one though as I shunted the engine mounts out of place. Most expensive repair bill? Last year we parked our Renault 640 and baler in a shed full of bales wed just finished stacking and when we came back in the morning we couldnt see the tractor for the pile of bales it was buried under. Once wed dragged them all off we realised that every single panel on the tractor had been damaged beyond repair. Somehow the baler escaped without a scratch. Our dealer had to source a series of blank panels and paint them up the correct colour. The bill totted up to 15,000, almost writing off the tractor. Best invention? This is a very simple one, but it saves us loads of time when clamping silage. Instead of having loose tyres everywhere we bolt them together into a matt of six. We then haul these up on to the clamp with the telehander and two people can slot them quickly into place. What couldnt you live without in the workshop? The Snap-on half-inch impact driver. Its an amazing thing and is as good, if not better, than any air-powered version. Do you buy second-hand? We do buy some second-hand kit and some buys have been better than others. The Vogel and Noot plough wasnt one of the best ones, but we had a good experience with our Renault 735RZ. We bought it at a farm sale in Suffolk five years ago for 22,000, which was pretty good for a 200hp tractor on 4,800 hours. Favourite job? Buying cattle. Least favourite? Fixing machinery, particularly if its new. Whats your everyday transport? Ive got a Defender 90 weve always had one on the farm. My current one is a 2010 model on 100,000 miles and probably due for replacement. As I cant get a new one Im not sure what Im going to buy next. Best tractor youve ever had? Its probably our John Deere 6310. We bought it new in 1998 and it hasnt given us any trouble, other than a couple of batteries and an alternator. Its now on 8,000 hours and drives the mixer wagon every day. Its also the one I parked on the bonnet of that Isuzu. Worst tractor youve ever had? We had a Renault 120.54 Nectra, which was a limited edition. It had a gearbox called Trackshift that was so shocking we nicknamed it Trackshit. To be fair to Renault it stood by us and helped with the repair cost, even though the tractor was out of warranty. Biggest machinery bargain? Weve got a Simba Solo that we bought from a farmer in Nottinghamshire for 2,100. Its a few years old, but is really tidy and had nearly new metal on it. Any machinery classics in the shed? Just the MF 35 on the scraper, which is usually referred to as the Dirty Five. In the shed Tractors Renault 735RZ and 640RZ; Fendt 516 with MX loader; John Deere 6310; New Holland Boomer 3050; Massey Ferguson 35 Renault 735RZ and 640RZ; Fendt 516 with MX loader; John Deere 6310; New Holland Boomer 3050; Massey Ferguson 35 Loaders Merlo P40.7CS and Bobcat Merlo P40.7CS and Bobcat Cattle equipment Keenan Mechfiber 340; Spread-a-bale straw spreader; silage clamp defacer Keenan Mechfiber 340; Spread-a-bale straw spreader; silage clamp defacer Grass kit Claas Disco double mowers; Kuhn tedder; Claas Liner 2900 rake; Pottinger Mex 6 trailed forager; Welger 245 round baler; Claas Quadrant 2200; Kuhn topper Claas Disco double mowers; Kuhn tedder; Claas Liner 2900 rake; Pottinger Mex 6 trailed forager; Welger 245 round baler; Claas Quadrant 2200; Kuhn topper Cultivation equipment Vogel and Noot five-furrow plough; front-linage-mounted press; Simba Solo with grass seeder; 3m power harrow; Kverneland stone rakes and elevator Vogel and Noot five-furrow plough; front-linage-mounted press; Simba Solo with grass seeder; 3m power harrow; Kverneland stone rakes and elevator Other Bunning Lowlander muck spreader; 3 x 26-ft bale trailers, one with demountable cattle box Bunning Lowlander muck spreader; 3 x 26-ft bale trailers, one with demountable cattle box Digger Hitachi 13t Sony India introduces HT-RT40 5.1 channel home theatre system: Features, price and more News oi -Samden Sherpa Sony HT-RT40 is priced at Rs. 22,990 and is currently available across all Sony Center and major electronic stores in the country. Sony has just launched a new product dubbed as HT-RT40 in its home audio lineup for consumers in India. "Driven by innovation, the soundbar type 5.1 channel home theatre is capable of creating cinematic surround sound delivering an energetic listening experience. This new addition in the soundbar type 5.1 channel home theatre category has a sleek bar design yet powerful sound that gels well with looks of your living room," said the company in a press statement. Further, HT-RT40 comes with Indian sound setting which has been specially designed for Indian consumers. Besides, the new Sony home theatre system features 5.1 channel surround sound and has a power output of 600W. The Sony HT-RT40 home theatre system delivers such power through two rear 'Tall Boy' speakers, and a dedicated external subwoofer. The dedicated external subwoofer works with a 3 channel Soundbar delivering true theatre surround sound. The two rear speakers ensure real cinema audio like experience at home with great sound, the company said. Connectivity options include Bluetooth and NFC which the company claims will help users have a better experience at the same time avoid complex set-up sequences. The Sony HT-RT40 home theatre system does not support Wi-Fi connectivity. The HT-RT40 is also equipped with a 'Music Center' feature through which users can browse music via their smartphones."Supported by Android and iOS devices, this application concept is called 'Smart remote commander' and the app comes equipped with intuitive operations so that customers can surf music in pen-drive from far away and enjoy their favorite songs through Music Center," the company said. Other connectivity options include a USB port, HDMI port, and an optical in. The home theatre also features 'S-Master HX' digital amp for delivering high-frequency ranges and 'ClearAudio+' that automatically adjusts TV sound settings. For immersive listening experience. The company has also said that Sony HT-RT40 can be easily synced with Bravia TVs. As for the pricing and availability of the new home theater system, it has been priced at Rs. 22,990 and is already available in all Sony Center and major electronic stores across India. 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 Huawei Mate 10 tipped to launch on October 16 along with a cheaper Lite variant News oi -Chandrika The Huawei Mate 10 will flaunt a 5.8-inch bezel-less, full-screen display. We already know that Huawei is gearing up to launch their upcoming flagship Mate 10. Last week, the company's CEO Richard Yu claimed in an interview that smartphone will give tough competition to Apple's iPhone 8. Since iPhone 8 usually launch in September, we assumed that the Huawei Mate 10 will also get unveiled around the same time. However, a Polish website called Tabletowo has suggested something else in a report. According to the claims made by the publication, the device will be launched on October 16 at an event that is to take place in Munich. Well, to remind you, even the Huawei P10 was already launched in Europe before coming to China. The report further reveals, the Huawei Mate will 10 carry a very high price tag. PLN 4,000 in Poland, which is roughly equivalent to $1100. While the price is ridiculously high, the smartphone is expected to arrive with impressive features and specs. Going by the speculations, the Huawei Mate 10 will flaunt a bezel-less, full-screen display. The display will be a 5.8-inch 2K one with the aspect ratio higher than that of the Samsung Galaxy S8 and S8 Plus. Some reports also suggest that the fingerprint scanner will be placed below the display. On the optics front, the successor of last year's Huawei 9 is rumored to arrive with four cameras. The vertically aligned rear dual camera setup will be comprised of two 34MP sensors and will be accompanied by a LED flashlight. While the front-facing dual camera is said to have two 16MP sensors. Additionally, the smartphone is expected to be powered by the Kirin 970 processor and it will probably run on Android 7.1.1 Nougat right out of the box. That being said, the Huawei Mate 10 could also ship with Android 8.0 O on board with Huawei's latest EMUI skin on top. Since not everyone will be able to afford Huawei Mate 10, the company is also tipped to release a cheaper Lite variant of the smartphone. The Huawei Mate 10 Lite will reportedly be sold for PLN 1,999, which is around $556. Considering the significant price difference, the Lite variant will come with watered-down specs. Its display size will also be smaller than the Huawei Mate 10. 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 Lenovo P2 gets up to Rs. 3,500 price cut News oi -Abhinaya Prabhu You can get a huge discount on the Lenovo P2 right now. Lenovo P 2 was launched in India in January this year starting from Rs. 16,999. With a 5100mAh battery, the device proved to be a long lasting warrior in our review. Now, the Lenovo P2 seems to have received a price cut and the same is reflected by the listing on the online retailer Flipkart. Going by the same, both the variants of the Lenovo P2 have received significant price cuts in the country. Notably, the 3GB RAM variant of the smartphone is available with a discount of Rs. 3,500 and the 4GB RAM variant has got a discount of Rs. 2,500. Right now, Flipkart is selling the two variants of the Lenovo P2 at Rs. 13,499 and Rs. 15,499 while their launch prices are Rs. 16,999 and Rs. 17,999. The base model is available in the Grey or Graphite Grey color variant while the higher-end model is available in the Gold variant. Despite the varying RAM capacity, both the variants of the Lenovo P2 have 32GB of storage space that can be further expanded up to 128GB with the help of a microSD card. To refresh on the specifications, the Lenovo P2 adorns a 5.5-inch FHD 1080p Super AMOLED display and makes use of an octa-core Snapdragon 625 SoC. There is a front-facing fingerprint scanner that is embedded into the physical home button. Based on Android 6.0 Marshmallow, the Lenovo P2 flaunts a 13MP main snapper at its rear with a Sony IMX258 sensor and a 5MP selfie camera at the front. The connectivity features on board the Lenovo smartphone include 4G LTE, Bluetooth 4.1, dual SIM support, and other standard aspects. As mentioned above, the USP of the Lenovo P2 is its capacious 5100mAh battery that is claimed to deliver a long lasting backup of three days. Furthermore, the battery also comes with support for Qualcomm's fast charging technology as well. 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 For the second time in two weeks, western Montana wildland firefighters returned to work on Thursday knowing one of their own died in action. The Hotshot firefighter killed in a tree-felling accident on the Lolo Peak fire Wednesday was 29-year-old Brent M. Witham of Mentone, California, according to the Missoula County Sheriffs Office. Witham was given CPR on the scene of the accident and airlifted to a Missoula hospital, but could not be revived. He was a member of the Vista Grande Hotshot crew based in Idyllwild, California, serving with 374 fellow firefighters in the mountains 10 miles southwest of Lolo. The 6,542-acre, lightning-caused fire continued to burn actively on Thursday after growing about 200 acres overnight. Most of the fire line defense has been arrayed along Lantern Ridge, overlooking the Highway 12 corridor west of Lolo. Mark Struble, the Lolo Peak fires public information officer, said Wednesdays death is something crews know can happen. The U.S. Forest Service even holds drills to prepare for something like this. We call it an incident within an incident, Struble said. You have to refocus after a situation like this. I think were taking it easy on people, letting them know if they need more time to handle the stress and debrief, its all part of the process when things like this happen. But everyone knows this is dangerous work, and even with the right protections and protocols, accidents can happen. Struble said Withams family in California was making memorial arrangements, and he didnt know if a service would also take place in Montana. The Vista Grande Hotshot crew has already returned to their base at the San Bernardino National Forest. The option was out there to stand down for other crews, but I dont know if any did, Struble said. You want your folks to be able to grieve their way, but the fire keeps burning. Hotshot firefighters are among the most highly trained and experienced ground crews in the wildfire force. Working in teams of 20, they exceed the physical fitness and technical skills of most Type I fire crews. Hotshots are typically qualified to use multiple firefighting tools from hand equipment to chainsaws, pumps, engines and communications gear. They often serve as initial attack forces, hiking into remote fire locations or using helicopters for access. Witham's death was the second firefighter fatality in two weeks in western Montana. On July 19, 19-year-old Trenton Johnson of Missoula died when he was struck by a tree while preparing to confront a half-acre fire northeast of Seeley Lake. Falling trees killed 4 percent of the 440 firefighters who died on the job between 1990 and 2014, according to statistics compiled by the National Interagency Fire Center. "As a department, our hearts go out to the Witham family, members of the U.S. Forest Service family, and all wildland firefighters across the nation,'' said sheriff's office spokeswoman Brenda Bassett. Gov. Steve Bullock memorialized Witham on Thursday, asking the public to keep firefighters in their hearts. Haiti - FLASH : PM announces support for widows of police officers killed in office Monday at an extraordinary meeting of the Superior Council of the National Police (CSPN) organized by the Prime Minister, Jack Guy Lafontant, also president of CSPN attended by Senators Jean Renel Senatus and Ralph Fethiere, President of the Commission "Defense" measures were adopted by the Council on support for families of police officers killed in office. Concerned about the next school year, three months' wages of the agents killed in office, will be paid to their families, while waiting for a law to fix the benefits will be entitled to the families of these workers of the Fatherland. Among other things, in a structural way, a 2% tax on the payroll of the National Police of Haiti (PNH) will be granted to the Office for Occupational Injury, Sickness and Maternity Insurance (OFATMA) for a wider coverage of medical insurance for the benefit of all police officers who are victims at work. The Prime Minister recalled that his plan is already included in the Finance Bill 2017-2018. HL/ HaitiLibre ALPHARETTA, Ga. The Rainmaker Group (Rainmaker), the hotel revenue and profit optimization cloud, has joined with the hospitality industry's most respected data resources, Smith Travel Research (STR) and Hotel News Now (HNN), as the presenting sponsor of the 2017 Hotel Data Conference. The market-leading conference, taking place August 9 to 11 at the Omni Nashville Hotel, brings industry experts together for an immersive experience, focused on identifying, discussing and analyzing the data and trends that shape the rapidly evolving $550 billion global hospitality market. "We are thrilled to support ongoing education and innovation in the industry, as the presenting sponsor of the 2017 Hotel Data Conference," said Tammy Farley, Rainmaker president. "HDC is a pivotal event for hospitality professionals each year, bringing together the top minds in market data and trends. The HDC subject matter aligns exactly with Rainmaker's focus on revenue and profit optimization through the application of science and data. We are honored to have several of our management team take part in the panel discussions and educational presentations during the event." Rainmaker will play a high-profile role throughout HDC, with Tammy Farley, Rainmaker president, giving the opening address for the conference prior to the general session on Thursday morning, August 10. Also on Thursday of the conference, Ellis Connolly, Rainmaker's vice president of hospitality sales, will take part in a panel discussion entitled, "Group hug! Let's talk meetings." Speakers on this panel will explore the current state of group business and meetings, as well as what meeting and corporate travel planners are looking for when seeking a venue. On the final day of the conference, Rainmaker's vice president of revenue analytics, Dan Skodol will present a "Data Dash" session on the psychology of pricing, showcasing the results of a behavioral survey that Rainmaker conducted at its OPTIMIZE2017 user conference earlier this year. This session is designed to help guide hoteliers and revenue managers in devising pricing strategies that take into account how consumers typically make decisions related to price and purchases. "Improving forecasts and optimizing pricing for both transient and group business are the cornerstones of our business and essential components of a successful revenue management strategy," adds Farley. "We are proud to align ourselves with HDC as they continue to explore the growing role of data in these processes and promote best practices that drive the industry forward." For more information on Rainmaker's hotel revenue and profit optimization cloud, please visit: http://www.letitrain.com/. About Rainmaker The Rainmaker Group, a Cendyn company, is the premier provider of revenue and profit optimization solutions to the hospitality industry. Rainmaker's intelligent profit platform helps hotels, resorts and casinos optimize revenue, drive increased profitability, save valuable time & outperform competitors. As part of Cendyn, Rainmaker offers a complete set of software services for the industry, aligning marketing, sales and revenue teams to optimize their strategies and drive performance and loyalty across their business units. To learn more about Cendyn and its suite of hotel revenue management and profit optimization solutions, visit LetItRain.com or www.cendyn.com. About Cendyn Cendyn is the leading innovative cloud software and services provider for the hospitality industry. With a focus on integrated hotel CRM, hotel sales, and revenue strategy technology platforms, Cendyn drives sales, marketing and revenue performance for tens of thousands of hotels across the globe. The Cendyn Hospitality Cloud offers a complete set of software services for the industry, aligning marketing, sales and revenue teams to optimize their strategies and drive performance and loyalty across their business units. With offices in Boca Raton, Atlanta, Boston, San Diego, London, Munich, Singapore, Sydney, Bangkok and Tokyo, Cendyn proudly serves clients in 143 countries, delivering over 1.5 billion data-driven, personalized communications on behalf of their customers every year. For more information on Cendyn, visit www.cendyn.com. Dana Glaze Marketing Manager 470-440-2041 Singapore Established property and hospitality group with an AsiaPacific focus, Roxy-Pacific Holdings Limited ("Roxy-Pacific" or the "Group"), announced today the acquisition of its second hotel asset in Japan, Tenmabashi Grand Hotel Osaka, for JPY 3.0 billion (~S$36.8 million). Launched in May 2017, the 154-room Tenmabashi Grand Hotel Osaka is an 8-minute walk away from Tenjibashi shopping street the longest shopping street in Japan. Nearby tourist hotspots include the Osaka Tenmangu Shrine, Osaka Castle Park, as well as the famous Cherry Blossoms at the Osaka Mint Bureau. For convenient access to public transportation and connectivity throughout Osaka and greater Japan, the hotel is minutes away from the Osaka Temmangu and Temmabashi train stations, as well as the Minamimorimachi subway station. The 9-storey hotel comprising 3,672.26 square metres ("sqm") of total floor area will, upon completion of the acquisition in October 2017, be self-managed by the Group's Noku Roxy hospitality management arm, which currently operates a boutique hotel in Kyoto, Japan Noku Kyoto. Mr Chris Teo, Managing Director of Roxy-Pacific, commented, "Since its soft opening in April this year, Tenmabashi Grand Hotel Osaka has received warm reception due to the merits of its location and easy connectivity to public transportation. Our selfmanaged Noku Kyoto hotel has achieved high room rates and good yield a testament of the effective business model that we hope to replicate in the Osaka hotel asset so as to bolster our recurring income streams for greater resilience." Through its furnishings and curated list of attractions and F&B offerings in the vicinity, the Noku Roxy brand aims to showcase the best version of the city, as well as hidden gems only visited by the locals. Attention to detail and personalised experiences also create a differentiated stay for guests. Roxy-Pacific's acquisition of the Osaka hotel comes amidst a tourism boom for Japan, receiving 13.8 million tourists in the first six months of 2017, a 17.9% increase from 11.7 million a year ago. Osaka received a record number of foreign visitors in 2016 exceeding 9.4 million, representing a 31% hike from 20152. The city also boasts one of the highest hotel occupancy rates of any major city in Japan. Amongst the Noku Roxy hospitality brand asset pipeline includes a 50-villa resort in Maldives, and a separate resort in the Chalong sub-district of Phuket, Thailand, planned for launch in the last quarter of 2017 and 2019, respectively. About Roxy-Pacific Holdings Limited Established in May 1967, Roxy-Pacific Holdings Limited, an established property and hospitality group with an Asia-Pacific focus, was listed on the SGX Mainboard on March 12, 2008. The Group is principally engaged in the development and sale of residential and commercial properties ("Property Development") and generates recurring income through its property investments and hospitality business ("Hotel Ownership and Property Investment"). Roxy-Pacific"s residential development projects typically comprise small-to-medium sized residential developments such as apartments and condominiums targeted at middle-to-upper income segments. Between 2004 and 2016, the Group developed and launched 43 small-to-medium sized developments comprising a total of more than 4,000 residential and commercial units in Singapore, Malaysia and Australia. 1 Japan National Tourism Organisation Visitor arrivals for Jun 2017 2 The Japan Times, January 20, 2017 Record 9.4 million foreign tourists visited Osaka in 2016 Page 4 of 4 The Group"s hospitality portfolio comprises its flagship hotel in the heart of historical Katong, Grand Mercure Singapore Roxy hotel, which is self-managed under franchise agreement with international hotel operator, Accor Group. Beyond Singapore, the Group had in 2015 launched its first upscale boutique hotel under the Noku Roxy brand in Kyoto, Japan, with upcoming resorts in Maldives and Phuket, Thailand, in the pipeline. For Property Investment, Roxy-Pacific owns 52 retail shops at The Roxy Square Shopping Centre in Singapore, and holds a 50% interest in a 14-storey, freehold commercial building at 117 Clarence Street in Sydney"s CBD, Australia. For more information, please visit: http://roxypacific.com.sg Dolores Phua 6534-5122 Roxy-Pacific Holdings Limited The John Paul Group designs and delivers customized loyalty solutions, supported by a patented digital platform, supporting major brands across the banking, luxury, travel tech and automobile industries. John Paul was established in Paris in 2007 and merged with American company LesConcierges in 2015. The group was acquired by AccorHotels in November 2016. John Paul today announces Amber Treshnell as Chief Executive Officer, Americas. In this newly established role she will be responsible for overall company performance in the Americas, building on recent successes and ensuring the continued growth of the business. The John Paul Group designs and delivers customized loyalty solutions, supported by a patented digital platform, supporting major brands across the banking, luxury, travel tech and automobile industries. John Paul was established in Paris in 2007 and merged with American company LesConcierges in 2015. The group was acquired by AccorHotels in November 2016. Amber brings over 19 years of experience to John Paul after spending 5 years as Business Development Director, North America at Ten Group where she was responsible for growing the USA and Canada markets. Prior to this she spent 14 years in the banking industry, where she held a variety of leadership roles, most notably within Card, Retail Banking and Wealth Management, within financial services companies such as Bank of America, Redwood Credit Union, Tamalpais Bank (acquired by Umpqua Bank), American Express, and Washington Mutual (acquired by JP Morgan Chase). "Amber comes with a fantastic background in business development and a wealth of experience working closely with senior business leaders across a range of industries. Being very much business oriented, she will bring a high level strategic consulting expertise to our US clients and partners. Backed-up by AccorHotels and a solid presence in the US, I'm very confident that Amber will attract the best talents to support the growth and keep John Paul ahead of the market in quality, digital and innovation." said David Amsellem, Group CEO John Paul. Treshnell commented: "It is increasingly important for brands to attract and retain customers throughout the customer journey. John Paul is more than simply 'a concierge company', we are providing value-add 360 loyalty solutions with personalized touch points using cutting-edge digital technology. As the first digital enabled concierge, John Paul has been innovating and leveraging cutting edge technology such as Predictive Data Mining, Artificial Intelligence and Chatbots to elevate the customer experience. This approach wasn't even on the radar for most other companies in the industry. This strategy resulted in Forbes rating John Paul as the 6th most innovative company with respect to Artificial Intelligence in 2016. I'm excited to take the helm as we continue to expand in the Americas with our 'humanly digital solution' backed by the financial stability and resources that AccorHotels brings." John Paul is growing rapidly and searching for new talents across the Americas with +20 open roles helping brands to attract and retain their customers and employees. Best Day Travel Group Signs With SiteMinder, Strengthens Offering to Hotels Best Day Travel Group, one of the leading companies focused on the tourism sector in Latin America, today announces it has signed a connectivity agreement with SiteMinder, the global hotel industrys leading cloud platform. The strategic partnership provides Best Day Travel Groups hotel clients greater reach and growth within international markets, with real-time delivery of reservations for hotels to meet the needs of the dynamic online booking market. The partnership also forms part of Best Day Travel Groups strategy to enhance its leadership within Latin America and support its growth globally, by strengthening its offering to hotels. We love working with SiteMinder because of the opportunity to further expand our global presence. SiteMinders platform allows us to connect our hotel partners to a worldwide network in a dynamic way, which means the benefit of more reservations and revenue as well as enhanced options for our hotel clients across Best Day Travel Groups different lines of business, says Rafael Durand, COO & Head of Global Product of Best Day Travel Group. Rubi Perez, Director LATAM at SiteMinder, says, The alliance between Best Day Travel Group and SiteMinder makes it easy to bring more travelers to the beautiful destinations that Latin America offers, and to experience the world-class accommodation provided by the regions hotels. It also represents the strength of the two brands in being able to bring the world to Latin America, and Latin America to the world through BestDay.com. Travelers have used BestDay.com for nearly three decades to search for more than 18,000 of the best hotel, flight, tour, package and car rental deals across Latin America. The website complements Best Day Travel Groups vast network of trusted travel agents and wholesalers. Todays partnership between Best Day Travel Group and SiteMinder follows close collaborations during the 42nd Tianguis Turistico trade fair in Mexico and the 5th World Travel Market Latin America conference in Brazil. Media contacts Sandra Cruz Steta Marketing Group (for BestDay) (998) 884.4668 sandra@stetamarketing.com Maria Franco SiteMinder +61 410 233 735 media@siteminder.com About Best Day Travel Group Best Day Travel Group is the most important tourist company in Mexico and one of the most important in Latin America. Founded in Mexico in 1984, it now has offices in nine countries (Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Chile, US, Uruguay, Mexico, Peru and the Dominican Republic). It is known for its technological innovations, personalized services and its passion for travel, giving customers the best day of their trip. Best Day Travel Group offers its clients more than 180,000 hotels worldwide, access to affordable and traditional airlines, and a wide variety of tourist services that are distributed throughout its six lines of business: BestDay.com (online travel agency), BD TRAVEL Solution (white label technology for partners), HotelDO (B2B services for traditional travel agencies and wholesalers), BD Travel (receptive travel agency services and DMC in Cancun, Riviera Maya, Puerto Vallarta and Los Cabos and soon in Punta Cana, Orlando and Cuba), NRG, which focuses on the youth market, and Gran Plan, a strategic alliance with AeroMexico tourism package sales. More information can be found at: prensa.BestDay.com.mx, the BestDay Travel Blog and BestDay.com. About SiteMinder As the leading cloud platform for hotels, SiteMinder allows hotels to attract, reach and convert guests across the globe. We serve hotels of all sizes with award-winning solutions for independents and groups alike, wherever they are in the world. SiteMinders products include The Channel Manager, the industrys leading online distribution platform; TheBookingButton, a wholly-branded booking engine for direct bookings via the web, mobile or social; Canvas, the intelligent website creator for independent hoteliers; Prophet, the real-time market intelligence solution that takes the guesswork out of pricing rooms; and GDS by SiteMinder, a single-point of entry to a six-figure network of travel agents and the worlds major global distribution systems. With more than 26,000 hotel customers and 550 of the industry's top connectivity providers as our partners, today we have presence in more than 160 countries on six continents. For more information, visit www.siteminder.com. HFTP Announces Advisory Council for its Second Annual HITEC Amsterdam in April 2018 Pan-European expert advisors will help plan cutting-edge education program for the returning hospitality technology conference and exposition, a regional counterpart to the highly-successful HITEC Hospitality Financial and Technology Professionals (HFTP), the only organization producing nonprofit hospitality events at an international level, including the world's largest Hospitality Industry Technology Exposition and Conference (HITEC), is pleased to announce the advisory council for its second annual HITEC Amsterdam. The next HITEC Amsterdam will take place from April 1113, 2018 at the RAI Convention Centre in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. The HITEC Amsterdam Advisory Council met in Amsterdam this month to plan the upcoming conference's educational program. Sessions planned by the pan-European group will address the issues of top concern to the hospitality technology field. HITEC Amsterdam is an extension of HFTP's tremendously successful HITEC, which just completed its 45th year. "HFTP was overwhelmed by the success of its inaugural HITEC Amsterdam in March 2017, and is delighted to bring the event back in April 2018," said HFTP CEO Frank Wolfe, CAE. "The HITEC Amsterdam Advisory Council worked hard when they met last month to design an educational program that will radiate interest and knowledge-sharing amongst attendees." Planning for HITEC Amsterdam is in full swing with guidance from an advisory council representing six European countries. The council is chaired by Carson Booth, CHTP and vice-chaired by Derek Wood. The HITEC Amsterdam Advisory Council who are among Europe's finest hospitality technology group are: Carson Booth, CHTP , startup technology consultant, Germany , startup technology consultant, Germany Fergus Boyd , vice president of digital and IT at Yotel, London , vice president of digital and IT at Yotel, London James Byrne , owner at Eccleston Square Hotel, London , owner at Eccleston Square Hotel, London Mark Campbell , chief information officer at Dorchester Collection, London , chief information officer at Dorchester Collection, London Ally Dombey , director at Revenue by Design, London , director at Revenue by Design, London Steven Dow , vice president of revenue management at Diamond Resorts International, England , vice president of revenue management at Diamond Resorts International, England Gerhard Finster , owner at Arcadia Hotels Group, Germany , owner at Arcadia Hotels Group, Germany Thierry Guiraudios , chief information officer at chez Louvre Hotels Group, France , chief information officer at chez Louvre Hotels Group, France Alvaro Hidalgo , managing partner at First Logic Consulting, Spain , managing partner at First Logic Consulting, Spain Timo Kettern , director of IT at Lapithus Hotel Management, Germany , director of IT at Lapithus Hotel Management, Germany Lodewijk Klootwijk , chief executive officer at European Golf Course Owners Association, The Netherlands , chief executive officer at European Golf Course Owners Association, The Netherlands Phil Le Brun , vice president and segment chief information officer at McDonald's Corporation, London , vice president and segment chief information officer at McDonald's Corporation, London Michael Levie, CHTP , executive at citizenM, The Netherlands , executive at citizenM, The Netherlands Ian Millar, CHTP , professor of IT at Ecole Hoteliere De Lausanne, Switzerland , professor of IT at Ecole Hoteliere De Lausanne, Switzerland Sophie Pommois , project director of global distribution at Global Hotel Alliance (GHA), Switzerland , project director of global distribution at Global Hotel Alliance (GHA), Switzerland Michiel Roelfsema , deputy general manager at Hotel Okura Amsterdam, The Netherlands , deputy general manager at Hotel Okura Amsterdam, The Netherlands Henri Roelings , founder and CEO at Hsyndicate, The Netherlands , founder and CEO at Hsyndicate, The Netherlands Barry Thomas, CHTP , area director of information technology at Rosewood Hotel, London , area director of information technology at Rosewood Hotel, London Derek Wood , managing director at Derek Wood Associates Ltd, England , managing director at Derek Wood Associates Ltd, England Lyle Worthington, CHTP, CIO at The Student Hotel, The Netherlands In traditional HITEC fashion, HITEC Amsterdam will include an exhibit hall, keynote presentations and over 16 educational sessions about trending hospitality technology topics including: blockchain, OTA's, sustainability, service bus, PMS, API, GDPR/DPO, development methodologies, meeting room technology, consumer journey and more. For the latest news, follow HFTP/HITEC on HITEC Bytes, PineappleSearch, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter (@HFTP), Instagram (HFTP_HITEC), Flickr and YouTube. For more information about HITEC Amsterdam, contact the HFTP Meetings & Special Events Department at education@hftp.org, +1 (512) 249-5333. About HITEC HITEC is the world's largest and oldest hospitality technology exposition and conference brand. HITEC offers a unique combination of top-notch education, and brings together the brightest minds and hottest technologies from across the globe to one place. The unparalleled event offers attendees essential education, access to top hospitality technology industry experts and the resources to find cost-effective ways to improve company bottom lines. Combined with the intimate opportunities to connect with fellow professionals, HITEC has everything to enhance your career. Historically hosted annually in a different city throughout the United States, HFTP decided to break tradition in 2017 by hosting three HITEC events all taking place outside of U.S. borders in Toronto, Amsterdam and Dubai. This will be the first time the global association's largest HITEC event featuring thousands of hospitality professionals from around the world will take place outside of the U.S. In 2017, HFTP is producing its larger HITEC Toronto as well as two additional, inaugural HITEC events: HITEC Amsterdam and HITEC Dubai. For more information about HITEC and HFTP's other global activities, contact the HFTP Meetings & Special Events Department at education@hftp.org or visit www.hftp.org and www.hftp.org/hitec. Download the HFTP/HITEC media kit via the HFTP website. About HFTP Hospitality Financial and Technology Professionals (HFTP) established in 1952, is an international, nonprofit association, headquartered in Austin, Texas, USA, with offices in Hong Kong, United Kingdom and the Netherlands. HFTP is recognized as the spokes group for the finance and technology segments of the hospitality industry with members and stakeholders spanning across the globe. HFTP uniquely understands the industry's pressing issues and assists its stakeholders in finding solutions to their challenges more efficiently than any organization. It does this via its expert networks, research, certification programs, information resources and conferences/events such as HITEC. HFTP also owns the world's only hospitality-specific search engine, PineappleSearch.com. For more information about HFTP, email membership@hftp.org or download the HFTP/HITEC media kit via the HFTP website. Read industry updates on the suite of HFTP hospitality news sites: HITEC Bytes, Club Bytes, Finance Bytes and HFTP News. Page Content Montreal and Havana, 2 August 2017 Throughout an intensive series of addresses and bilateral meetings undertaken in Cuba last week, ICAO Secretary General Dr. Fang Liu encouraged Cubas leadership to continue pursuing and leading on pragmatic and proactive approaches to sustainable aviation development for economic and social progress, particularly with regards to data analysis and aviation security and facilitation. While opening the Caribbean and South American Aviation Data and Analysis Regional Seminar, which was organized by ICAO and hosted by Cuba, Dr. Liu stressed that as a United Nations specialized agency, ICAO is deeply committed to enabling all its member States to achieve progress on these issues through its No Country Left Behind initiative and its Regional Offices. The stakes are considerable, Dr. Liu remarked, In 2016 aviation directly generated some 10 million jobs and approximately $725 billion in global GDP. Looking more closely at the Latin American and Caribbean regions, aviation generates approximately 169 billion dollars in GDP and supports the direct and indirect employment of six million people. Cubas leadership on these issues, and in optimizing local synergies between aviation, tourism, e-commerce and trade, provides a crucial contribution to the sustainability of local operations. Dr. Liu also stressed the importance of data and analysis in terms of understanding emerging aviation trends and issues to ensure that these priorities and strategies are optimally crafted. These messages were also highlighted throughout her bilateral meetings with Cuban officials, including Vice President of the Council of Ministers of the Republic of Cuba and Minister of the Economy and Planning, Mr. Ricardo Cabrisas Ruiz, Cubas Deputy Ministers for Transport, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Trade and Investment, and Tourism, Messrs. Eduardo Rodriguez, Abelardo Moreno Fernandez, Antonio Carricarte Corona, and Luis Miguel Diaz Sanchez, respectively. The Vice President and the Ministers recognized the crucial role air connectivity plays in Cubas socio-economic development, given the importance of its tourism sector and its status as a Small Island Developing State. Noting its alignment with many of the Secretary Generals specific recommendations, Mr. Ruiz and Mr. Rodriguez outlined Cubas 2030 strategic plan for the development of its aviation sector and broader transport system, and pointed to the priority given to continued progress on issues related to compliance of ICAO Standards and Recommended Practices (SARPs) within it. Dr. Liu expressed appreciation for Cubas efforts toward human resource capacity to achieve its aviation goals, and for its remarkable level of Effective Implementation (EI) of ICAOs aviation security SARPs and continued improvement on its already outstanding level of aviation safety oversight. Addressing an Extraordinary Session of Cubas National Air Transport Facilitation Committee, Dr. Liu also stressed that compliance with ICAOs facilitation SARPs is an important aspect of addressing the challenges raised by the forecast growth, particularly in light of security concerns. She highlighted the significance of ICAOs Traveller Identification Programme (TRIP) which was well reflected in the UN Security Council Resolutions to limit international terrorist movements and trans-border crime. I would like to take this opportunity to applaud the leadership of Cuba in being responsive and proactive on these goals here in the Caribbean. The establishment of this committee, and your nomination of a National Focal Point for Facilitation matters, are key to the intensive coordination needed between all ICAO TRIP stakeholders at the national level, she remarked at the Session. The TRIP strategy relies significantly on the global transition to machine-readable passports (MRPs), which is nearly completed. The deadline for removal of non-MRPs from global circulation was 24 November 2015, and while some States are still pursuing this goal, Cuba and 142 other ICAO Member States are now fully MRP-compliant. Progress should nonetheless be achieved with regards to biometric passports and the associated ICAO Public Key Directory, which are also key elements of the TRIP strategy. These offer tremendous advantages in terms of the enhancement of security. Highlighting the opportunity to enhance Cubas aviation security measures and contribute to the holistic security of the aviation network at a global level, the Secretary General stressed throughout her bilateral meetings the crucial importance of the prompt implementation of the Public Key Directory (PKD) in tandem with the deployment of compliant passports. This resulted in Cuba expressing its commitment to the PKD and to the TRIP strategy broadly. The Secretary General was accompanied on this mission by the Representative of Cuba on the Council of ICAO, Mrs. Mirta M. Crespo Frasquieri and ICAO Regional Director of the North American, Central American and Caribbean (NACC) Office Mr. Melvin Cintron. Resources for Editors About ICAO A specialized agency of the United Nations, ICAO was created in 1944 to promote the safe and orderly development of international civil aviation throughout the world. It sets standards and regulations necessary for aviation safety, security, efficiency, capacity and environmental protection, amongst many other priorities. The Organization serves as the forum for cooperation in all fields of civil aviation among its 191 Member States. ICAO's North America and Caribbean Regional Office ICAO's South American Regional Office ICAO's No Country Left Behind initiative Contacts Anthony Philbin Chief, Communications aphilbin@icao.int +1 514-954-8220 +1 438-402-8886 (mobile) Twitter: @ICAO William Raillant-Clark Communications Officer wraillantclark@icao.int +1 514-954-6705 +1 514-409-0705 (mobile) Twitter: @wraillantclark LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/raillantclark/ New Delhi, Aug 3 (IBNS): EEPC India has signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Messe Munich for enabling India's participation in the popular 'bauma 2019 ' exposition for construction and mining goods. The MoU, expected to boost engineering exports through strategic tie-ups in Europe, was signed in New Delhi, on August 1, by EEPC India Executive Director Bhaskar Sarkar and Exhibition Group Director of bauma at Messe Munchen, Nicole Schmitt. 'bauma' is the worlds leading sector event for construction machinery, building material machines and mining machines With a total exhibition space of 605,000 square meters, 'bauma' is also said to be the largest trade show in the world. In 2016, 'bauma' broke all previous records, attracting a total of 3,425 exhibitors from 57 countries, and 583,736 visitors from around 200 countries, the organisers said. "The Indian engineering industry is looking forward to participating in the prestigious fair, in its 2019 edition. Our construction and mining companies are fast adding value in terms of technology and scale and would be looking for new global opportunities through such fairs," said Sarkar. Held once in three years, the fair is scheduled to be held in Munich, Germany, between April 8 and 14, 2019 . Nicole Schmitt said that India is scaling up fast and the global firms are keen to partner with Indian industry to cater to the world demand for construction material and mining equipment. Image: bauma website Image: download-wallpaper.net Srinagar, Aug 3 (IBNS): Two army men, including a Major, were killed while two others were injured after a group of militants ambushed an army patrol party in Shopian district of south Kashmir on Thursday. According to reports, militants attacked an army patrol party in Zadipora Shopian, some 55 kms from state capital Srinagar early today when security forces along with Special Operation group of Kashmir Police were laying a cordon in the area following an input about militant presence. "Four Army men, including a Major, were injured in the attack. The injured Army men were shifted to 92 Base Hospital in Srinagar, where the officer Kamlesh and another jawan sepoy Tanjin succumbed to injuries. The condition of the other injured is also stated to be critical," a police official said. Soon after the attack, forces launched an anti-militancy operation in the area, however, sources said the militants managed to escape taking advantage of the darkness. Earlier, two militants were killed in an overnight gunfight at Gopalpora Kulgam, over 75 km from Srinagar. According to an official of 9 RR of army, a joint operation led by the Special Operations Group (SOG) and Jammu and Kashmir Police laid an ambush in Gopalpora village of Damhal Hanjipora after inputs about the movement of militants in the area. He said a brief gunfight erupted after forces challenged the militants. Two militants were killed in the operation, he said. Two AK-47 rifles were recovered from the slain militants. Confirming the details, the Jammu and Kashmir police tweeted, "Two militants killed by @JmuKmrPolice and SF in Gopalpora Kulgam. One of them was involved in killing of 5 policemen & guards of bank Van." Congratulating the teams, Jammu and Kashmir DGP Shesh Paul Vaid tweeted, "Last night in a joint operation 2 terrorists were killed at Gopalpora #Kulgam. Well done boys!" (Reporting by Saleem Iqbal Qadri) Image: download-wallpaper.net New Delhi, Aug 3 (IBNS): Taking to the social media, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has responded to a tweet from former President Pranab Mukherjee and said that he will always cherish working with the latter. Sharing a letter which he had received on his last day as the President of India from Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Pranab Mukherjee tweeted, "On my last day in office as the President, I received a letter from PM @narendramodi that touched my heart! Sharing with you all." Replying to the post, the Prime Minister said, "Pranab Da, I will always cherish working with you. @CitiznMukherjee." Mukherjee, the 13th president of India, ended his tenure on July 25 and was succeeded by former Bihar governor Ram Nath Kovind. New Delhi, Aug 3 (IBNS): The Supreme Court on Wednesday rejected the Congress' plea for dismissing provision for NOTA in the upcoming Rajya Sabha poll in Gujarat. The Congress on Wednesday moved the Supreme Court against the Election Commission's decision to allow the use of NOTA provision in the upcoming Rajya Sabha poll as the party, rattled by defections in Gujarat, fights to stem further rot. According to reports, a bench headed by Justice Dipak Misra heard the plea after senior advocate Kapil Sibal mentioned the matter and sought urgent hearing. Sibal told the top court that there is no statutory provision with regard to NOTA in the Constitution. Rajya Sabha elections are scheduled to be held on August 8. On Tuesday, the Election Commission announced its decision to introduce NOTA option in the Rajya Sabha polls. The Congress objected to it, saying it has been done post notification of the election and the measure is in violation of the constitution and electoral laws. As the series of defections by party MLAs in Gujarat has alerted the Congress against the alleged BJP design to deny Sonia Ganhi's political Secretary Ahmed Patel a second term in the upper house, the EC's NOTA decision has probably pressed the panic button hard. It fears that many of its MLAs may vote for the NOTA option during the polls spoiling the chances of Patel. In a damage control act, the Congress has already herded its Gujarat MLAs to Karnataka where it is in power with Siddaramaiah as Chief Minister. New Delhi, Aug 3 (IBNS): Minister of Road Transport and Highways Nitin Gadkari unveiled the logo of Highway NEST and Highway village on Thursday in New Delhi according to media reports. The Ministry of Road Transport and Highways (MORTH) has decided to encourage the setting up of wayside amenities along India's national highways with help from private entrepreneurs. Although the highways crisscross the country as a huge network and connect many of the tourist attractions, Indian highways suffer from severe lack of wayside amenities. The National Highway Authority of India (NHAI) is a facilitator in the project. The Ministry aims to build each unit at every 40 to 50 km along the highway. All units will have common features such as food court, drinking water facilities, toilets, shops and a fuel pump. The plan is to have separate wayside amenities for regular travellers and truck drivers. The Ministry said that local farmers or villagers along the highway will be encouraged to set up the amenities. The smaller ones will be called NEST while the larger ones will be called Villages. Image:PIB New Delhi, Aug 3 (IBNS) : Criticising the Narendra Modi Government for its foreign policy, particularly in regard to China and Pakistan, the Congress on Thursday demanded a consensus-based road map. Kickstarting the discussion, senior Congress member Anand Sharma said while India has "rightful aspirations" to play leadership roles, the tension in the relationship with Pakistan and China hinders the way ahead. "Unless we manage our neighbourhood well, it is impossible to play neither a regional nor global role," he said. Raising the issue of cross border attacks, terrorism and killing of soldiers, Sharma said India has succeeded in "de-hyphenating" India and Pakistan. "The real concern is that the hyphenation is back, because many countries have commented their intent to mediate between us. China has made this statement,"he said. " The Prime Minister repeatedly says we have isolated Pakistan. A mature country doesn't make such statements," Sharma said. "Isolation is factually incorrect. Pakistan has economic relations with China and Turkey. They have defence ties with Russia. Where is isolation? What is the roadmap of the Government?" he said. A federal appeals court on Wednesday blocked U.S. immigration officials from deporting a Mexican man who recently settled a lawsuit over claims that he was raped in a Montana jail while previously awaiting deportation proceedings. Attorney Shahid Haque filed a petition with the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals on behalf of Audemio Orozco-Ramirez. The attorney said the temporary stay will remain in effect until the court issues a judgment. Orozco-Ramirez was arrested Wednesday during a regular check-in with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which had earlier allowed him to have a work permit, Haque said. It's not unusual for immigrants who are in the country illegally to regularly report to immigration officials and not be deported, as long as they are considered a low priority. That's changing under President Donald Trump, who used an executive order to broaden immigration officials' authority to deport people in the country illegally. The result has been more arrests during such check-ins. "Ever since President Trump took office and he issued these new priorities, we've been seeing more and more that people who previously had been allowed to just check in and be free from detention, they've been arrested now," Haque said. ICE officials told Haque they planned to put Orozco-Ramirez on a plane to Mexico within days. The attorney attributed the unusual speed to the high-profile rape allegations Orozco-Ramirez made while he was in federal immigration custody in 2013. "It's an effort to quickly remove him because of the public scrutiny this case has had over the years," Haque said. ICE officials declined to comment on the case on the phone and requested that a written query be sent by email. There was not an immediate response to the query on Wednesday. Orozco-Ramirez, who has lived in the U.S. illegally for the last 20 years and has no criminal background, was arrested in 2013 during a traffic stop of a vehicle he was riding in as a passenger. Immigration officials determined he was in the country illegally and detained him at southwestern Montana's Jefferson County jail while beginning deportation proceedings. Orozco-Ramirez, who was in a cell with nine other men, was held down and raped, he said in his lawsuit. He sued the county, which he said should have had policies in place to prevent the attack. The Associated Press typically does not name rape victims, but Orozco-Ramirez has talked publicly about his case. The county agreed to pay Orozco-Ramirez $125,000 to end the lawsuit in December without admitting the rape had occurred. Since then, Orozco-Ramirez has been living with his wife and seven children north of Billings, and reporting monthly to ICE officials without incident, Haque said. Orozco-Ramirez applied for a special visa in 2015 for victims of crimes who suffered mental or physical abuse and are helpful to investigating authorities, but ICE never responded to the application, Haque said. Haque said Orozco-Ramirez should be entitled to a U visa, which was created by Congress to assist victims of serious crimes who cooperate with law enforcement in investigating the crime. Haque said ICE would not certify Orozco-Ramirez had cooperated in investigation of a crime and if they would, deportation would be stopped. U visas are issued by United States Citizenship and Immigration Services. Since his assault in 2013, more than 400 people have signed a public petition asking ICE to stop Orozco-Ramirezs deportation. A small group gathered outside of the ICE offices in Billings Wednesday afternoon in response to a call put out by the ACLU of Montana. "We're interested in keeping an eye on the front and back doors so they don't sneak Audemio out," said one of the protesters, Emma Kerr-Carpenter. "We have four in the back, four in the front." Orozco-Ramirezs son, Miguel, 15, was with his father at his monthly check-in meeting with ICE agents. He described his surprise when they heard a knock at the door and another man entered. "The one man said, 'Oh, did you already tell him?'" Miguel said. They quickly arrested Orozco-Ramirez. When Miguel asked what was happening, they didn't say. Later, Miguel said they told him it was a warrant from four years ago. In Billings on Wednesday afternoon, Billings Sanctuary Uprising called for an "emergency vigil" outside the federal building at 2900 Fourth Ave. N. The group, which had helped organize the petition, had been told that it would be notified before anything changed with Orozco-Ramirez's status. "Why won't the government be honest?" said Rev. Mike Mulberry, who helped organize the vigil. "We're all worried that this is about distraction and diversion from a serious issue. I don't understand why local folks who are a part of this community can be supportive of this. I just don't know what they're doing." Orozco-Ramirezs older son, who has a legal visa but has asked to remain anonymous because he is worried about retribution, had to come to Billings to assume custody of his younger brother. They hoped to see their father. When he came to get his younger brother, the older son said they denied a request to see his father. "It's so painful for us," the older son said, rubbing his eyes as tears hit the sidewalk. "All he does for us I mean honestly, all he does is work every day." If he could speak to his father, his message would be simple. "I love him," he said. "Now I have to take over and help out our family." Guwahati, Aug 3 (IBNS): Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi visited some of the flood affected areas of Assam on Thursday, according to media reports. The party's official Twitter handle said, "Assam and its people left to fend for themselves by the negligent government in a time of grave need." Rahul Gandhi visited Lakhimpur on Thursday, which, according to local reports, has been the worst affected among the 29 districts of the state, He met with the villagers and also reviewed the relief and rehabilitation measures being implemented, according to media reports, The Congress VP is also scheduled to attend the cremation of veteran Congress leader and former central minister Santosh Mohan Deb in Silchar, Assam, media reported. Image: INCIndia/Twitter Srinagar, Aug 3 (IBNS) : Kashmir- based banned militant organisation Hizb-ul-Mujahideen has claimed the responsibility of Shopian attack in which two army men, including a Major were killed and another soldier seriously injured after a patrol party was ambushed in Shopian district on Thursday. The valiant militants of our outfit laid an ambush and attacked an army party from all sides. Five Indian soldiers were killed and many others were injured. The militants managed to reach at their destinations safely after the daring attack, said Burhanuddin, a spokesperson of the outfit. Hizb-ul said it will reward the militants for carrying out the attack. However, the Army put the number of martyred soldiers at two. According to reports, militants attacked an army patrol party in Zadipora Shopian, some 55 kms from state capital Srinagar early today when security forces along with Special Operation group of Kashmir Police were laying a cordon in the area following an input about militant presence. "Four Army men, including a Major, were injured in the attack. The injured Army men were shifted to 92 Base Hospital in Srinagar, where the officer Kamlesh and another jawan sepoy Tanjin succumbed to injuries. The condition of the other injured is also stated to be critical," a police official said. Soon after the attack, forces launched an anti-militancy operation in the area, however, sources said the militants managed to escape taking advantage of the darkness. Earlier, two militants were killed in an overnight gunfight at Gopalpora Kulgam, over 75 km from Srinagar. According to an official of 9 RR of army, a joint operation led by the Special Operations Group (SOG) and Jammu and Kashmir Police laid an ambush in Gopalpora village of Damhal Hanjipora after inputs about the movement of militants in the area. He said a brief gunfight erupted after forces challenged the militants. Two militants were killed in the operation, he said. Two AK-47 rifles were recovered from the slain militants. Confirming the details, the Jammu and Kashmir police tweeted, "Two militants killed by @JmuKmrPolice and SF in Gopalpora Kulgam. One of them was involved in killing of 5 policemen & guards of bank Van." Congratulating the teams, Jammu and Kashmir DGP Shesh Paul Vaid tweeted, "Last night in a joint operation 2 terrorists were killed at Gopalpora #Kulgam. Well done boys!" (Reporting by Saleem Iqbal Qadri) Srinagar, Aug 3 (IBNS) : The Army paid homage to two of its soldiers, killed in an ambush by militants in Shopian of South Kashmir on early Thursday. Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti and Deputy Chief Minister Nirmal Singh and the Chinar Corps Commander Lt Gen JS Sandhu, paid rich tributes to Maj Kamlesh Pandey and Sep Tanzin Chhultim in a solemn ceremony in Badami Bagh Cantoniment, Srinagar. "Major Kamlesh Pandey joined the Army in June 2012. He hailed from Almora, Uttrakhand. He is survived by wife and a two-year-old daughter," an Army spokesman said in Srinagar. Twentyfive-year-old Soldier Sepoy Tanzin Chhultim of Lahaul Spiti, Himachal Pradesh had joined the Army in September 2012, and is survived by his parents. The spokesman further said that the mortal remains of the two will be taken to their native places for last rites with full military honours. The Army stands in solidarity with the bereaved families and remains committed to their dignity and well being, spokesman added. (Reporting by Saleem Iqbal Qadri) Kolkata, Aug 3 (IBNS): A large number of depositors and agents of Rose Valley ponzi firm ransacked a luxurious hotel, owned by the Rose Valley Group, in south Kolkata's Minto Park area on Thursday afternoon, reports said. According to reports, demanding their deposits back, more than 500 protesters gathered in front of the Rose Valley-owned Park Prime hotel at A.J.C. Bose Road area at around 12:15 pm. The mob suddenly went on a rampage as their demonstration turned violent. They vandalized the hotel's portico and reception area and allegedly assaulted hotel staffers. An employee of Park Prime hotel claimed that protesters had misbehaved with guests at ground floor's cafeteria and chased hotel staffers. Later, a heavy police force from nearby police stations, led by Deputy Commissioner (South division) Praveen Tripathi and Deputy Commissioner (South East division) Gaurav Sharma, rushed to the area and brought the situation under control. Police officials told IBNS that at least seven protesters were detained from the scene for creating violence. Meanwhile, due to the hour-long brawl, traffic on adjacent A.J.C. Bose Road was partly hit. The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) and Enforcement Directorate (ED) are currently probing the 15000-crore Rose Valley financial scam while the ponzi group's CMD Gautam Kundu is in judicial custody. (Reporting by Deepayan Sinha, Image from Park Prime hotel's official website) New Delhi, Aug 3 (IBNS): Issuing a statement regarding India's bilateral relationship with Pakistan, External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj said terror and talks cannot go together, in an attempt to answer the Opposition in the Rajya Sabha on Thursday. The Opposition on Thursday raised multiple questions to the government regarding India's stand and road map in bilateral relationship with countries, mainly Pakistan and China. Swaraj said the government has tried to maintain a good friendship with Pakistan but it becomes untenable when terrorism continues on the other hand. Highlighting the efforts made by the Narendra Modi government to maintain a friendship with Pakistan, the External Affairs minister said: "We tried to make friendship with them (Pakistan). Our Prime Minister even went to wish then Pakistani counterpart, Nawaz Sharif, on his birthday back in December 25, 2015." However, Swaraj do not endorse the Pathankot attack as the reason behind the breach in friendship between the two neighbouring countries, which occurred a week after PM Modi's Islamabad visit to wish Sharif. The Pathankot attack occurred on January 2, 2016. It had attacked the Pathankot Air Force Station. The minister said that she believes the Burhan Wani encounter became a turning point in the diplomatic relationship between India and Pakistan, when the then Pakistani Prime Minister called Hizbul Mujahideen commander a 'martyr'. Burhan Muzaffar Wani, was the commander of Kashmir-based militant outfit, Hizbul Mujahideen. He was killed in an encounter with the Indian security forces few months after the Pathankot attack. But Swaraj stated talks cannot go on with terrorism. The Congress also tried to put pressure on the government by raising questions on India's status in the Doklam issue. Attacking the Opposition, Swaraj stated: "It is shameful that the main opposition party (Congress) sought reports from China regarding the standoff between the two countries on Doklam issue. It is unfortunate that they didn't ask us (India government) for the reports on Doklam." The ongoing military standoff has heightened tension at the Bhutan-India-China tri-junction in Doklam, a disputed territory claimed by both Bhutan and China, where the Indian Army personnel have reached to stop China from building a road. China has accused India of trespassing into its territory and demanded withdrawal of troops leading to a heated exchange. While India and Bhutan say the land belongs to the tiny Himalayan kingdom and that the Indian troops are there at the request of Bhutan, China has warned that it will not accept any dialogue till Indian soldiers pull out from Doklam. Swaraj explained to the Upper House members how she herself tried to make all political parties aware of the Doklam situation and government's road map towards solving it. The minister said she explained the roadmap to all opposition parties of the country in two meetings recently. She even said the opposition parties were satisfied with the government's answers to all their queries. On July 15, assuring that national security will have bigger priority over politics, leading parties have extended their support to the NDA Government's approach to resolve the present border standoff with China amicably and peacefully through diplomatic process. After the meeting with Swaraj back in mid July, senior Congress leader Anand Sharma had said that: "We conveyed our concerns to the Government and proposed diplomacy be employed to ease tensions." Image: Official Twitter handle of Sushma Swaraj. Guwahati, Aug 3 (IBNS): The Assam government will seek a CBI probe into the killing incident of minority student leader and president of All Bodo Minority Students Union (ABMSU) Lafikul Islam Ahmed, who was killed by unidentified assailants in lower Assamas Kokrajhar district on August 1. While taking part in a meeting with the representatives of ABMSU, AMSU and BPF Minority Cell in presence of BTC Chief Hagrama Mohilary at Brahmaputra State Guest House in Guwahati on Thursday evening, Assam Chief Minister Sarbananda Sonowal said that, the state government will write to the Centre seeking a CBI probe into the minority student leader killing incident. We have already formed a Special Investigation Team (SIT) to probe the incident, Sonowal said. The SIT formed is headed by Deputy Superintendent of Police (Headquarters) Prakash Medhi. The Assam CM has also asked DGP Mukesh Sahay to submit a report of the incident. Meanwhile, Assam police arrested the PSO of Lafikul in connection with the killing incident. The PSO was identified as Jakir Ali. Earlier, police arrested another person named Antaz Ali from Gossaigaon in connection to the case. According to the reports, two motorcycle borne unidentified assailants opened fire from an AK-47 rifle at Lafikul at a shop in Titaguri market in Kokrajhar district, while he had gone to buy tiles. Seriously injured Lafikul was immediately rushed to the hospital, where he was declared brought dead. In the firing incident, the shopkeeper was also injured and admitted at a hospital. Meanwhile, the Assam government has announced an ex-gratia of Rs 5 lakh to Lafikuls family and Rs 50,000 to the injured person. (Reporting by Hemanta Kumar Nath) New Delhi, Aug 3 (IBNS): A 25 member delegation from the Young FICCI Ladies Organisation called on Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday. The delegation interacted with the Prime Minister on subjects such as women entrepreneurship, and women empowerment. The Prime Minister responded at length to various questions raised by the delegation members. He said Swachh Bharat Mission offers great opportunities for "waste to wealth" entrepreneurship, with significant benefits to community health. Responding to a question on water conservation, PM Modi said all of us should individually focus on judicious use of water; and micro and drip irrigation. The Prime Minister said family values, acceptance of diversity and environmental consciousness are three of Indias greatest traditions which we must nurture. Subjects such as education, skill development, art and culture and women's safety also came up for discussion. New Delhi, Aug 3 (IBNS): A 15-member delegation from the Nagaland GB (Gaon Burahs) Federation called on Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday. The Nagaland GB Federation is a body of Gaon Burahs (village chieftains) of all the Naga villages. The delegation members said they were happy at meeting the Prime Minister, and expressed their wholehearted support to the Prime Minister for the Naga peace process. They also expressed the hope that Prime Minister Modi would take this process to its logical conclusion, and said that all civil society organisations and tribes have stated their desire for peace. The Prime Minister said he is happy to receive the delegation, and also happy to note that they come with a message of peace. Modi also thanked them for their words of appreciation and support. New York, Aug 3(Just Earth News): The United Nations envoy for the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) today expressed his concern over arbitrary arrests and detentions across the country, following civil society's call for the holding of elections before year-end and their peaceful protests against delays in the publication of the electoral calendar. I am concerned by the restrictions imposed on peaceful assembly and arrests of those who seek to express their political views, as well as by the targeting of journalists and the confiscation of their materials, said Maman Sidikou, the Secretary-General's Special Representative for the country and head of the UN stabilization mission in the country, known by its French acronym, MONUSCO. On 31 July, the UN documented over 120 arrests or detentions in Kinshasa, Goma, Lubumbashi, Beni, Butembo, Bukavu and Mbandaka. Among those detained were eight media representatives, including a journalist from radio Okapi and two members of the international press, who were released following the UN Mission's intervention. Mr. Sidikou called on the national and local authorities to fully uphold fundamental rights and freedoms as enshrined in the Constitution of the country, as well as for all political actors to refrain from any statement or action that could heighten tensions and further polarize the political landscape. UN Photo/Manuel Elias (file Source: www.justearthnews.com New York, Aug 3(Just Earth News): The United Nations peacekeeping chief said today the involvement of eastern African countries in revitalizing the peace process in South Sudan was among the main topics he discussed with that nation's President, describing such regional engagement aa good thing.a We discussed the initiative of IGAD towards the revitalization of the peace process, said Jean-Pierre Lacroix, the UN Under-Secretary-General for Peacekeeping Operations, in the South Sudanese capital, Juba, following a meeting with President Salva Kiir. Mr. Lacroix, on his first official visit to South Sudan, added there was a convergence of opinion that it was a good thing that the countries forming the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) are more engaged in helping South Sudan and its people. These countries are Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia, Sudan and Uganda. The conflict in South Sudan began in December 2013 as a result of political face-off between President Salva Kiir and then First Vice-President Riek Machar. Despite the August 2015 peace agreement, violence has continued. To date, the crisis has left more than 5.5 million people in need of aid and some 1.7 million refugees have also fled to neighbouring countries. Last month, the IGAD agreed to set up a high-level forum to work across the region to get the South Sudanese peace process back on track. According to the UN Mission, known as UNMISS, South Sudan's Minister of Cabinet Affairs, Martin Lomuro told the press that the President sent very clear message on what he would like the UN to do, noting that the President would like the IGAD, UNMISS or the UN to reach out to those rebels who are holding citizens hostages and to engage them and to bring them to the table to talk to one another in order to bring peace. Mr. Lacroix met with senior Government officials including the First Vice-President Taban Deng, and the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Deng Alor. The peacekeeping chief said that there was a shared understanding with the government that actions and initiatives to advance peace are important and that they have to be put in place to accelerate the implementation of the Peace Agreement and bring sustainable peace to the world's youngest nation. Mr. Lacroix underlined that the peace process could not move forward if fighting continued. He pledged the continued support of the UN towards providing aid for the most vulnerable people in South Sudan. UN humanitarian agencies are doing their best to help South Sudanese and we look forward to further cooperation with the Government so that we can access populations in distress wherever the needs are. Photo: UNMISS Source: www.justearthnews.com SUMMERSET, S.D. - A Montana woman has been charged with murder in the death of a Summerset woman. Court documents say 38-year-old Stormy Gayle Marsh is accused of killing 49-year-old Phyllis Mastin who was found dead in her mobile home early Wednesday. KOTA-TV reports the court records say Mastin had been stabbed several times and that a knife and gun were found under her body. Police say they found Marsh at a Rapid City motel with the victim's car and cell phone. Marsh told investigators that Mastin's ex-boyfriend had been in the mobile home, that the three of them got into a physical fight and that Mastin told her to leave. It was not immediately clear if Marsh had a defense attorney. United Nations, Aug 3 (IBNS) : Maintaining its earlier stand that comes significant in the light of the worsening relationship with India, China has extended its hold on the pending application in the UN to designate Pakistan-based JeM terror group leader Masood Azhar as a terrorist. China says it will take a decision in due course." The Chinese side will make the decision+ in due course, media reports quoted the Chinese foreign ministry as saying about the pending application proposed by the US+ , the UK and France among others in the 1267 anti-terrorism committee of the UN Security Council. Early this year, China had put a six-month technical hold on the application which is expected to come up for review shortly. We have stated Chinas position on the listing of the 1267 Committee of the UN Security Council many times in the past, the ministry said in a written response. China has been blocking Indias move stating that there is no consensus in the UNSC 1267 which enforces a global ban on terror groups and their leaders with affiliations to al-Qaida and the Islamic State. JeM has already been in the banned list. This is the second year China has blocked attempts to bring about a UN ban on Azhar which would force Pakistan to act against him. India moved for the UN ban against Azhar in March last year accusing him of masterminding the Pathankot terrorist attack. China was the only member in the 15-nation UN body to put a hold on Indias application with all other 14 members of the Council supporting New Delhis bid to place Azhar on the 1267 sanctions list that would subject him to an assets freeze and travel ban. Sydney, Aug 3 (IBNS): Officials at the University of Sydney were left embarrassed and apologised after racist graffiti emerged in at least two places on Wednesday, reports said. The graffiti were directed at Chinese students and contained the message 'Kill Chinese' atop a Swastika symbol. Condemning the incident, the university said in a statement: "The University of Sydney is committed to ensuring that our community is a safe, inclusive and supportive one. Any graffiti or posters placed around campus of a racist nature are immediately removed." A university spokesperson was also quoted as saying by SBS: "We do not know who is responsible, although the university's security people suggest that it appears to be the work of a lone individual." The graffiti have triggered fear among the Chinese students. Poppy Wang, vice-president of the university's Chinese Students Association, told BBC that she feels less secure. "Most people I talk to feel sad because they come to this country to study, not to be treated like this," she said. Earlier, similar derogatory posts appeared at University of Melbourne. Image: Twitter New York, Aug 3(Just Earth News): The United Nations human rights office on Thursday expressed concern about the ongoing unrest in Mauritania, ahead of the constitutional referendum scheduled for Saturday, particularly the apparent suppression of dissenting voices and the reported use of excessive force by the authorities against protest leaders. Protests have been taking place daily since 21 July, led by opposition politicians calling for a boycott of the vote, said Ravina Shamdasani, spokesperson for the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), in a statement. The authorities reportedly did not respond to the majority of requests for authorization for the protests and actively dispersed gatherings. In several cases, protest leaders were reportedly beaten up and a number of them were arrested, she added. An amendment to Mauritania's constitution, which would abolish the Senate and change the national flag, is put to a vote in the referendum. Mass protests are planned this afternoon in Nouakchott and reports suggest that the Senate building has been cordoned off by the police and the gendarmerie. OHCHR urged the Government to ensure that its response to the protests is line with its obligations under international human rights law and to ensure that the rights to peaceful assembly, to freedom of opinion and expression are fully respected. These rights are particularly precious in a pre-electoral context, she said, calling on all sides to refrain from the use of violence and to take measures to prevent the situation from escalating. The Government has a responsibility to ensure that the elections are held in conformity with the international human rights obligations of Mauritania, and should take all necessary measures to ensure free, transparent and credible elections, she stressed. Photo: WFP/Justin Smith Source: www.justearthnews.com Kabul, Aug 3 (IBNS): The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) has claimed responsibility for carrying out the suicide attack near a mosque in Herat province of Afghanistan on Tuesday evening, reports said. The group has also identified the two suicide bombers, Umair Asim and Tayyeb Al-Khurasani, who were responsible for the death of dozens. ISIS has also claimed that around 50 people were killed in the attack, while 80 others suffered injuries. However, official records showed that the casualties were around 90. The group has further claimed that the attack was carried out using automatic rifles, hand grenades and suicide bombing vests. The incident drew criticism from the country's President Ashraf Ghani, who said that such attacks are against Islamic and humanitarian values. The US Embassy in Kabul also condemned the deadly attack. A tweet from the embassy on Wednesday read: "The U.S. Embassy in Afghanistan condemns the deplorable attacks against worshippers at the Jawadia Mosque in Herat yesterday evening." Images: @bsarwary/Twitter @amjad_amjo/Twitter Update 5.53pm: All Army cadets evacuated from a mountain in Co Down following bad weather are safe, a spokesman said. A group of more than 50 from the Cleveland Army Cadet Force in Middlesbrough were on a training exercise in the Mourne range in Co Down when they got into difficulties on Wednesday. Children as young as 12 were among those rescued. Five suffered ankle injuries after slipping on wet stones and a number were treated for the effects of exposure, the MoD said. An Army spokesman added: "We can confirm that all Army cadets caught in today's inclement weather on the Mourne Mountains are safe and accounted for." The Mournes are a range south of Belfast which is extremely popular with walkers but like all mountains the conditions can be unpredictable. The group included children aged from 12-17. Emergency services were called to the scenic Annalong Valley at around midday. A Mourne Mountain Rescue spokesman said it was not a major incident but weather had caught them out. He added: "It is nothing out of the ordinary. "Everything is under control and within normal team procedure." Northern Ireland Ambulance Service paramedics provided medical support. Newcastle, Bangor and Kilkeel Coastguard Rescue Teams, and the UK Coastguard search and rescue helicopters based at Caernarfon and Prestwick, were on scene. Also attending were the Irish Coastguard Rescue 116 helicopter, Mourne Mountain Rescue Team, Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) and ambulance service. An MoD spokesman said: "We are exceptionally grateful for their assistance." Earlier: Over half of the young army cadets have been rescued after they got into difficulty in the Mourne Mountains. Up to 16 people are being treated for hypothermia. A major rescue operation is underway to take the British army cadets to safety. Up to 70 young people got into difficulty while camping in the Carrick Hill area. 46 of the group - mainly aged between 12 and 17 - have been brought down by 4-by-4 so far. 17 others remain on the mountain. Some are said to suffering from the effects of hypothermia and some have lower leg injuries. An army spokesperson said that all of the cadets are safe and accounted for. Liam Colquhoun from the Coastguard said bad weather is hampering efforts to bring the young people to safety. "Unfortunately, we've had to stand two of the aircrafts down due to the fog so they're down to about 20 metres now," he said. Major Rescue Operation involving 70 people on the Mourne Mountains Northern Ireland: https://t.co/xMo92bm0l8 via @YouTube UK News in Pictures(@UKNIP247) (@uknip247) August 2, 2017 Earlier:Up to 16 people are being treated for the effects of hypothermia after getting into difficulties in the Mourne Mountains in Co Down. A major medical emergency was declared just before lunchtime after a group of around 70 army cadets got caught up in torrential rain. It is understood the group had been camping close to the Carrick Hill area. The casualties are being taken to Annalong Community Centre to be assessed. Local MLA Colin McGrath has been watching the rescue unfold. He described the weather as "atrocious" today and said that it is understandable that the youngsters got into trouble. He also said that there have been more than a dozen ambulances passing through Newcastle in the last hour to attend the scene. Earlier: Rescue teams are currently assisting with a large scale incident involving up to 70 Army Cadets in the Mourne Mountains in Co Down. According to the UK coastguard, they receiving a call just before 12pm today requesting assistance after receiving several reports that a large number of people were in difficulty. It has been reported that the group were caught out in inclement weather while walking. They said that initial reports suggest that all members of the group are accounted for, however four people may be suffering from exposure. A number of people are said to have sustained lower leg injuries. Newcastle, Bangor and Kilkeel Coastguard Rescue Teams, and the UK Coastguard search and rescue helicopters based at Caernarfon and Prestwick are on the scene. The Irish Coastguard Rescue 116 helicopter, Mourne Mountain Rescue Team, PSNI and NI Ambulance Service are also on scene. The three helicopters are currently situated at Donard Park due to poor weather conditions and will support casualty evacuation as further information comes in. More to follow Earlier: Helicopter, coastguard and medical response teams have been sent to the aid of 40 army cadets after they got into difficulty in the Mourne mountains. The Ministry of Defence told the BBC that the cadets, aged between 12 and 17, had been camping when they got into difficulties It has been reported that medical staff are treating several children at the scene. Local politician Colin McGrath tweeted: "Major emergency incident in mournes with helicopter, coastguard, medical and ambulance responding. Please God all will be ok." 70 people are stranded on the Mourne Mountains. Major incident declared withn3 helicopters and Coastguard in attendance @BelfastLive pic.twitter.com/DamxYDC5Qt Kirth Ferris (@Kirthferris) August 2, 2017 Earlier: A major rescue operation is underway in the Mourne Mountains in Co Down. There are reports that are 70 people stranded in the area. Ambulances are attending the scene and it is reported helicopters are on their way. Some people have been treated at the scene. Burma Energy, Finance Officials Shuffled Amid Slowing Growth U Pe Zin Tun at the 34th Asean Ministerial Meeting in Naypyitaw. / The Irrawaddy YANGONMyanmar has replaced its minister for energy, state media reported on Wednesday, as Daw Aung San Suu Kyis administration looks to address concerns that the enactment of vital reforms has been slow since she took power last year. The government also appointed a new deputy finance minister and confirmed three new central bank deputy governors this week. New foreign investment approvals have slowed since Daw Aung San Suu Kyis National League for Democracy won a landslide election victory in late 2015, and gross domestic product growthwhile still among the fastest in Asiafell last year. Analysts say the changes this week signal that Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, who had prioritized sealing a peace deal with the countrys myriad armed groups ahead of economic reforms, is aware of growing frustration with her governments management of the economy. Outgoing Minister of Electricity and Energy U Pe Zin Tun will be replaced by U Win Khaing, who takes the role in addition to heading the Ministry of Construction, according to an official announcement carried by state media on Wednesday. The government inherited a power crisis, with major cities experiencing regular blackouts and only a third of the countrys 53 million or so people connected to the grid. U Pe Zin Tun was a civil servant who had been retained from the previous quasi-civilian government. There has been a lack of overall direction and movement in Myanmars energy and power sectors over the last year, said Jeremy Mullins, research director at Yangon-based consulting firm Myanmar Energy Monitor. Decisions were needed on a number of large-scale energy projectsincluding the sensitive Chinese-backed Myitsone damwhile hefty electricity subsidies need to be culled, he said. Investors have been frustrated by slow processes and conflicting signals, and in the meantime the countrys poor electricity situation has not improved much, he added. The new role for Win Khaing reflected Daw Aung San Suu Kyis focus on electricity and roads as drivers of growth and jobs, said Yangon-based analyst Richard Horsey. Economy Stabilized On Tuesday, state media also announced the appointment of new Deputy Minister of Planning and Finance Set Aung, a foreign-trained economist and central banker who held the same role in 2012-13. Investors and diplomats have told Reuters they privately urged Suu Kyi to make more sweeping changes to her economic team. The personnel changes this week, however, suggest a continuation of the governments current approach, said Horsey. Planning and Finance Minister U Kyaw Winwho has not won the confidence of investorsremains in place, as does the central bank governor, another holdover from the previous military-backed government. Suu Kyis office issued a statement on Friday to mark a year since her administration announced its economic plana three-page document widely criticized as lacking specifics. The statement said the new government had stabilized the economy and that GDP growth was around 7 percent annually, but did not give specific growth forecast for the current fiscal year. The World Bank estimates growth slowed from 7.3 percent in 2015-16 to 6.5 percent in the fiscal year that ended in March. The governments long-term economic plan will take time, U Kyaw Win said in the statement, but will bring prosperity in which all can share. Burma Govt, UNFC set for Peace Talks The governments Peace Commission and the UNFCs peace delegation met in Chiang Mai, northern Thailand on July 20, 2017. / Kyaw Kha / The Irrawaddy YANGON The government will hold talks with the United Nationalities Federal Council (UNFC) in an effort to persuade the ethnic bloc to attend the next session of the Union Peace Conference. The governments Peace Commission and the UNFCs Delegation for Political Negotiation (DPN) are set to hold informal talks in Chiang Mai, northern Thailand on Friday. Well discuss with the DPN about their [possible] participation in the next session of the conference. Well see how we can cooperate with them. We will also coordinate so that they can join the drafting of the framework for political dialogue, adviser of the peace commission U Hla Maung Shwe told The Irrawaddy. The Peace Commission led by U Hla Maung Shwe and the DPN delegation led by Nai Aung Ma Ngay already held informal talks on July 20. On the agenda of the Friday meeting will be eight points presented by the UNFC for signing the Nationwide Ceasefire Agreement (NCA) as well as a deed of commitment (DoC) to attend the conference, according to the DPN. There is some misunderstanding between us about the DoC. And we expect the talks will be able to fix a time for official talks, said a DPN delegate. The government invited the UNFC to attend the second round of the Union Peace Conference in May in Naypyitaw, but the UNFC did not attend the conference after the two sides failed to reach an agreement over the DoC. The government and UNFC have not yet reached an agreement over the deployment of troops, the location of military outposts, and the inclusion of international observers in the joint ceasefire monitoring process. The UNFC has said it would sign the NCA if its eight proposals are fulfilled, including the demand that all of its members be included as signatories to the ceasefire agreement. The Kachin Independence Organization (KIO), the Taang National Liberation Army (TNLA), the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army (MNDAA) and the Wa National Organization (WNO) resigned from the UNFC at the councils conference in Thailands Chiang Mai in late June. The coalition currently has five membersthe New Mon State Party (NMSP); the Karenni National Progressive Party (KNPP); the Lahu Democratic Union (LDU); the Arakan National Council (ANC); and the Shan State Progressive Party (SSPP). Translated from Burmese by Thet Ko Ko. Burma Irrawaddy Doctor Admitted to Yangon Hospital With H1N1 Volunteers distribute masks to schoolchildren in Yangon in order to reduce the spread of H1N1 influenza. / Thet Htun Naing / The Irrawaddy YANGON & PATHEIN, Irrawaddy Region Superintendent Dr. Sein Sein of the 200-bed Pyar Pon Hospital in Irrawaddy Region was found to be infected with H1N1 influenza and admitted to Yangons Waybargi Hospital on Thursday morning. Dr. Sein Sein was admitted to the [Waybargi] hospital at 11:35 a.m. and her current situation is good. She was diagnosed with H1N1 in Pyar Pon Hospital and was transferred to us, the superintendent of Waybargi Hospital Dr. Aye Aye Aung told The Irrawaddy. The Irrawaddy doctor had been sick since late July and was diagnosed with the flu before being transferred, she added. Communications officer of Pyar Pon Hospital U Soe Naing said the hospital had also transferred a H1N1 infected fisherman to Yangon recently as well. Our superintendent has been sick for three or four days and was transferred to Yangon, he said. According to Irrawaddy Regions health department, a total of 408 people are currently suspected of being infected with H1N1 but only 15 patients have been diagnosed. The virus has so far claimed seven lives in the region. As of Wednesday, a total of 13 deaths have been reported nationwide due to the recent outbreak of the disease, according to the Ministry of Health and Sport. Its painful to watch the national news. Partisan politics rule the day. The times when you made decisions by taking into account the best interests of your neighbor feel all but gone. We used to come together as one nation, indivisible, and chart out a course that we all could agree on. We used to meet in the middle. And in rural Montana, we still do. We have all seen the magic that occurs when diverse interests and stakeholders put their differences aside, and focus on their commonalities. Thats the real Montana not Republicans, Democrats, Libertarians or Independents. Its neighbor helping neighbor solve problems and plan for a future where the grizzly and elk are plentiful, and where our kids and grandkids can still find moments of inspiration in mountain meadows. On the heels of the recent Montana state legislative session, there was a lot of talk about our public lands. Some radical folks on the right feel our federal public lands lands that are managed and protected for all to use and enjoy should be transferred to states, or sold completely to private parties. They arent happy with how these lands are managed by our U.S. Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management or National Park Service. We saw the same rancor on the left side of the spectrum, with extremists who toss wrenches into forest restoration activities with little consideration for simple yet hugely significant consequences for local economies and potential wildfire risks. We urge Montanans of all stripes to meet us in the middle, listen to each other, respect each other and hash out a path forward where we all win. Over the last decade weve seen lots of bills come and go statewide and nationally that propose quick fixes to long-term problems. The only legislation that has passed, that has passed the litmus test of all Montanans, are the pieces of legislation where the solutions started around the kitchen tables of real Montanans. The Rocky Mountain Front Heritage Act, which permanently protected thousands of acres of prime wildlife habitat, was over 30 years in the making. Sure, there were folks on the left who said the habitat protections were not enough, and people on the right who said it was too much. But the overwhelming majority met in the middle. And Montana is better for it. More recently in the communities of Seeley Lake and Ovando, over a decade of listening, tweaking and compromise resulted in the recently introduced Blackfoot Clearwater Stewardship Act, which not only puts logs on trucks and promotes forest restoration activities, it also provides mountain bikes and snowmobiles with more terrain while permanently designating some of Montanas wildest landscapes such as Grizzly Basin and Monture Creek as wilderness. We are seeing this collaboration elsewhere in the state. The Gallatin Range near Bozeman is currently seeing mountain bikers, hunters, horsemen, skiers, outfitters and conservationists working together to find permanent solutions for that vital corner of Greater Yellowstone. That collaborative spirit is also alive and well in Lincoln, where ranchers, timber mills, snowmobilers, business owners, fly fishermen, hunters and more are working together to create a positive future for the area. Each Montanan has the ability to come together, meet in the middle, and decide how Montana grows in the next hundred years and beyond. U.S. Sens. Jon Tester and Steve Daines, and new U.S. Congressman Greg Gianforte: please, support our Montana-made solutions. Put your partisan leanings aside. Work on behalf of Montanans, who meet in the middle. Its in this place where the real work is done. Burma Parliament Criticized on H1N1 Vote A volunteer of philanthropist group Moe Say Ta Nar puts hands out masks to schoolchildren in Yangon last month. / Thet Htun Naing / The Irrawaddy YANGON With the recent outbreak of H1N1 influenza claiming more victims by the day, lawmakers in the National League for Democracy (NLD)-dominated Lower House have been criticized for voting down a proposal on Wednesday to raise awareness of the disease. Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP) Lower House MP U Thein Tun submitted the proposal on July 28 urging the government to boost awareness of H1N1known as swine fluacross the country in order to reduce infection rates and deaths. Many legislators welcomed the suggestion on the day, however when the Lower House resumed its regular session on Wednesday, the proposal was rejected in a secret vote. Twelve parliamentarians debated the proposalseven supported the awareness campaign, three questioned the plan, and two insisted the vote be on record. Out of a total of 392 votes in Parliament, 146 MPs voted in support and 231 against the proposal, while four abstained, and 11 MPs did not join the ballot. The outcome did not sit well with netizens and observers, who, along with much of the public, are concerned with the death tollstanding at 13and the number of confirmed infections rising to 99 out of 284 suspected cases in Myanmar, according to health ministry figures on Thursday. Some political watchers criticized the NLD majority, saying it consistently opposed proposals from opponent parties, regardless of the value of individual proposals. Ko Min Thway Thit, member of the All Burma Federation of Student Unions (ABFSU), was really disappointed with the decision. Their [NLD MPs] conduct was absolutely wrong, he said. It should not have gone that way. Since the virus began spreading, activist Ko Min Thway Thit has joined others in several townships in Yangon in donating medical face masks and distributing leaflets advising people on combating the flu. He told The Irrawaddy their movement does not represent any particular organization and accepts the help of volunteers, adding that a government-run awareness campaign would be more effective than a grassroots effort like that of his team. They [NLD] should think separately about the issues of national interest and political interest, he said. Political analyst U Yan Myo Thein told The Irrawaddy the government must accelerate countrywide initiatives in order to combat H1N1. As publically elected lawmakers, he said, MPs should have voted in favor to show they prioritize public interest. The analyst concluded that NLD MPs rejected the proposal of the USDP lawmaker because the health ministry affirmed it could handle the outbreak. Lawmakers must monitor the actions of government, whether it deems those actions efficient or not, he added. MPs should encourage the Union Parliament to lessen the worrying of the people, said U Yan Myo Thein. The health ministry has distributed 400,000 leaflets and 50,000 posters on the disease, held more than 1,400 awareness events and collaborated with civil society organizations across the country, according to its statement on Thursday. The statement added that a laboratory in Japan has recognized the strain as seasonal influenza A (H1N1)pdm 09 and that it could be cured by antiviral tablets. The health ministry has encouraged people to wear masks and wash their hands frequently, cover mouths when coughing and sneezing, and avoid crowded places. H1N1 flu symptoms are the same as seasonal flu, including cough, fever, sore throat, stuffy or runny nose, body ache, headache, chills and fatigue. Burma Six Bodies With Gunshot, Machete Wounds Found in Maungdaw Villagers tend cattle near the Mayu mountains of northern Maungdaw, Rakhine State, in November 2016. / Moe Myint / The Irrawaddy YANGON The bodies of six farmerssome shot dead and others with machete woundswere found in southern Maungdaw Township, Rakhine State on Thursday morning, according to the information committee of the State Counselors Office. The six farmers, from 50-household Kai Gyee village near Mayu mountain range, were found by Myanmar Army troops conducting security operations in the region, according to the police major. They were ethnic Mro, a sub-ethnic group of Arakanese, he added. Arakan National Party lawmaker U Maung Ohn, who represents Maungdaw Township in the Rakhine State parliament, told The Irrawaddy that reports in the morning stated that the two men were killed when militants attacked farmers on Thursday morning. Four women also fled the scene but have not yet been found, he said, and another woman was critically injured but managed to return to the village and alert officials who called the border police, according to the lawmaker. Local online publication Narinjara named eight villagers reportedly killed by alleged Muslim militants on Thursday, citing Kai Gyee villages administrator U Sein Hla Maung. Burma World Islamic Body OIC Tells Myanmar to Protect Rights of Rohingya Minority A Rohingya refugee girl reacts to the camera while carry a child at the Kutupalang Makeshift Refugee Camp in Coxs Bazar, Bangladesh on July 8, 2017. / Mohammad Ponir Hossain / Reuters DHAKA, Bangladesh Myanmar must protect the rights of its Rohingya Muslim minority, the chief of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) said on Thursday, urging the southeast Asian nation to join hands with Muslim-majority neighbors in tackling a refugee crisis. A group known as Harakah al-Yaqin attacked Myanmar border guard posts on Oct. 9, killing nine policemen and igniting the biggest crisis yet to face Nobel peace laureate Aung San Suu Kyis fledgling administration. About 75,000 people fled to Bangladesh during the ensuing military crackdown, which was beset by allegations of rape, torture and extrajudicial killings by security forces. Suu Kyis government has denied most of the allegations and is refusing access to a United Nations panel of experts, saying its mission will aggravate the situation on the ground in the western state of Rakhine. Myanmar should sit with Bangladesh, Indonesia and Malaysia to find a roadmap for the solution of the crisis, said Yousef bin Ahmad Al-Othaimeen of the OIC, which represents 57 states and acts as the collective voice of the Muslim world. We call on the Myanmar government to ensure human rights for the Rohingyas, Othaimeen told reporters during a four-day visit to the Bangladeshi capital. Myanmar cant deny the human rights of Rohingyas. We also call on the Myanmar government to ensure citizenship for the Rohingyas. Othaimeen is also expected to visit Rakhine Muslims in the Kutupalong camp and surrounding areas in the southern resort town of Coxs Bazar on Friday, Bangladesh foreign ministry officials said. Thousands of Rohingya live in Bangladesh without being officially recognized as refugees, but police rarely file immigration charges against them. Still, their presence is a source of tension between the two countries. Many in Myanmar see the Rohingya as illegal immigrants from Bangladesh, although about 1.1 million of them live in Rakhine state and say their roots go back generations. Guest Column The Abandoned Route Through India, Myanmar and China Should be Restored An Indian coalmine worker walks along the Stilwell Road after a days work in Ledo town, at the Indian-Burmese border. / Adnan Abidi / Reuters A derelict border crossing steeped in history cuts across the rolling mountain ranges from India to Myanmar. It is at the junction of three distinct geographical regions: the Eastern Himalayas; the verdant floodplains fed by the Brahmaputra river; and the Patkai hills. This route meanders towards the Chindwin river, the largest tributary of the Irrawaddy, which defines the plains of Myanmar. The Pangsau Pass stands at this border crossing between India and Myanmar, bearing witness to waves of migrations over the centuries. Across the Pangsau Pass, in the Sagaing region of present-day Myanmar, lies Pangsau village. The residents there are a mix of ethnic Bamars, mainly considered Burmese (the dominant ethnic group in Myanmar), ethnic Tangsa Nagas who also inhabit parts of the Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh, and some other Eastern Naga tribes. The nearest proper town inside Myanmar from the village is about 60 kilometers away. It is connected by a dirt road, the old Stilwell Road, which is now almost inaccessible during the rainy season. At Pangsau Pass, every Friday is designated as Burma Day, when the villagers can cross to India. They visit the market in Nampong to buy essential items for the week. Some people cross on foot, others on rickety motorbikes. Indian citizens are allowed to visit Pangsau village on the 10th, 20th and 30th day of every month, on what are known as India Days. Most Indian visitors are tourists, and there is a market held in Pangsau village on these days. The Arunachal Pradesh state government and the local market coordination committee decide on these access days in consultation with the Indian Army, which patrols the border. Pangsau market sells a host of local Burmese products and vegetables, and there are local eateries with Burmese delicacies. These are mostly local leafy vegetables with sticky rice and rice noodle soups. Burmese sticky rice is very popular among the border communities in India. Many Indian tourists also visit the Lake of No Return, where several Allied Forces warplanes crashed during World War II. Men roam in longyi, trying to sell their products. Women and children wear bright patches of thanaka on their faces, a yellowish-white cosmetic paste, made from ground bark. The Stilwell Road was constructed under the leadership of General Joseph Stilwell of the US Army between 1942-45. It began in Ledo, Assam, and ended in Kunming, in the southwestern province of Yunnan in China, spanning 1,736 kilometres. This provided an alternative route for Chinese soldiers fighting the invading Japanese during the concluding stages of the war. The section of the road that links India and Myanmar has been disused ever since the war ended, and is described by the Chinese as barely useable. But the origins of the route go back long before Joseph Stilwell. This was the way Chaolung Sukapha, the first Ahom king, entered the plains of Assam in 1228 AD. He established the Ahom kingdom (1228-1826), which began a period of stability and prosperity in present-day Assam. Several waves of migration happened after that, and they included the six major Tai groups of Assam. The Singphos have also used the route for centuries. The many ethnic groups of the region have this route etched in their collective imaginations. The Tai-Phakey community, which numbers about 2,000 people in Assam, migrated from Hukawng Valley in Myanmar through the Pangsau Pass. They have managed to preserve the old form of Tai language, and medieval scriptures in their Buddhist monastery. According to several members of the community that I met during fieldwork, they have been able to preserve their cultural and linguistic heritage because the closed borders make them feel isolated from their culture. So they preserve all they have left. As you approach Ledo, a huge billboard announces the beginning of the Stilwell Road to Kunming, installed by a former Assam minister. This is indicative of the shared aspirations of the people of this region to open up to Myanmar and southwest China. The Pangsau Pass Winter Festival, held intermittently over the past few years, has also demonstrated strong cultural links across the region. The main rationale for re-opening the road is connecting people across these shared borders, along with the exchange of ideas and goods. But there is less interest shown by the Indian government. The presence of several insurgent groups in northeast India deters New Delhi from restoring the road. Some Indian insurgent groups are based across this border in Myanmar, with active cross-border operations. The Kachin insurgency against the Myanmar government is also based there. China has shown interest in opening up the route, but Indias hesitation is also based on the fact that some part of it involves the contested territory of Arunachal Pradesh. Boundary talks between India and China about the status of Arunachal Pradesh have been going on for years now, with 19 rounds of talks completed in 2016. It may be complicated, but it is imperative for both New Delhi and Yangon to work towards opening up the road, given Chinas continued strategic engagement in the Kachin region of Myanmar. A joint development of these borderlands, which have historically been hubs of migration and exchange, will augur well for the region as a whole. Mirza Zulfiqur Rahman is researcher in International Relations and Politics, Development Studies and Borders, Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati. This article was originally published on The Conversation. Sydney, Australia- 02 August 2017 - Primary Communication today announced it has joined Code Red, the first international PR network specialising in IT security technology. Serving global security technology companies needing best-in-country services, Primary Communication is the only Australian public relations and marcomms firm to be accepted as a member of the Code Red Security Network. The Code Red security network already has 18 specialist agencies working to provide cohesive, integrated campaigns to improve the knowledge and reputation of global security firms. Were proud to welcome Primary Communication as the Australian and New Zealand partner, and as part of our overall strategy to offer global security communications support and opportunities for our clients in the security industry, commented Code Red founder Dianne Canham. Businesses are investing in smart defences against data breaches and malware. They need the latest technology to tackle emerging threat vectors carried across mobile devices, the cloud and now the Internet of Things. Elaine Banoub, Account Director, Primary Communication said the Australian team is thrilled to be joining the Code Red Security Network. IT security is a massive issue from the boardroom to the shopfront of every company and government group in Australia and New Zealand. Our technology clients do much more than provide systems, they are also contributing to the public dialogue. Working closely with the Code Red team, we can effectively tap into a much wider network of global services and roll out harmonised campaigns that are tailored to our unique local markets. The partnership with benefit from Primary Communications strong presence in ANZ along with Code Reds existing international footprint of co-branded partners and affiliates across the globe. Amazon will open its first Australian fulfilment centre in the Melbourne suburb of Dandenong South, the company said in a statement today. No date was given for the actual opening. The 24,000-square-metre centre was described as an integral early step in the move towards the establishment of a retail operation in Australia. Recruitment for a variety of jobs, including operations managers, pickers, packers, systems technicians, and HR specialists, would begin immediately, the statement said. The new centre is located in the Pellicano's M2 Industry Park in Dandenong South, providing easy access to the South Gippsland Highway, Monash Highway and Eastlink. The building is also close to a wide range of amenities for employees. The lease of the centre was facilitated by CBREs Industrial & Logistics business. Robert Bruce, Amazon's director of operations for Australia, said: "We are thrilled to be creating hundreds of new roles in Dandenong South. This is just the start. Over time, we will bring thousands of new jobs to Australia and millions of dollars of investment as well as opening up the opportunity for thousands of Australian businesses to sell at home and abroad through Amazon Marketplace. He said the new fulfilment centre would stock hundreds of thousands of products that would be available for delivery to customers across Australia when Amazon launched its retail offering. We will be focusing on offering our Australian customers low prices on a great selection of products and cant wait to get started," he said. Victoria's industry minister Wade Noonan said: Amazon is the latest global company to choose Victoria for its Australian operations. The company's decision to locate its centre in Dandenong South will create hundreds of local jobs and open up retail opportunities for thousands of local businesses. Amazon Web Services launched an Australian region in 2012 and the Web giant launched a Kindle Store on amazon.com.au in 2013. Amazon has about 1000 employees in Australia right now. Will the inquiry that the Australian Communications and Media Authority has been asked to carry out into the malfunctioning NBN end up doing any good? If one goes by the comments of Richard Bean, acting chairman of the ACMA, during an interview on Radio National on Wednesday, it will just be a waste of time. To make it clear, this is no fault of Bean's. He has been tasked with finding out the reason for the dissatisfaction by the government when world+dog seems to be full aware of the reason why slow speeds are the main item on the NBN menu. Bean cannot refuse he has no choice in the matter. But it became clear in his answers to the pugnacious Fran Kelly on the Breakfast programme that he can do nothing to make the problem better. He can, of course, use statutory powers vested in the ACMA to seek information from companies which are stakeholders in the whole NBN fiasco. There is no means of ensuring that he will be told the truth. So what if his inquiries reveal that, as suspected by everyone expect NBN chief executive Bill Morrow, the CVC charge is the main reason for people shying away from taking faster connections? Simply put what if the main reason for people experiencing slow speeds is the that they are cutting their coats according to their cloth and opting for the lower tiers because they cannot pay more? Well, Bean told Kelly, the ACCC would have to look at a method of solving the issue. Or the government would have to carry the baby. Essentially, it would devolve back to the government who have taken the neoliberal position that every service that is supplied to citizens - using their own taxes, mind you - has to yield a profit. But the government has again refused to put the NBN on-budget, insisting that it be kept off and that it should make a profit. Finance Minister Matthias Cormann was quoted recently as saying: "The government is not considering a writedown of its investment in NBN and there is no basis for such a writedown. "The government's investment in NBN can only be written down in accordance with the requirements of accounting standards. These standards require there to be evidence that the investment should be written down and do not allow this to be done at the government's discretion. "NBN has already discounted its prices for retailers by 28% since the beginning of the rollout and is in regular discussion with RSPs (retail service providers) about issues such as data consumption and CVC." It looks like in the end, Australians will just have to suck it up, curse under their breath and pay more if they want speeds that will be of any use to them. Photos: courtesy NBN Co. Reddit Email 245 Shares By Jeffrey D. Sachs | (Project Syndicate) | NEW YORK In recent weeks, US President Donald Trump and his advisers have joined Saudi Arabia in accusing Iran of being the epicenter of Middle East terrorism. The US Congress, meanwhile, is readying yet another round of sanctions against Iran. But the caricature of Iran as the tip of the spear of global terrorism, in Saudi King Salmans words, is not only wrongheaded, but also extremely dangerous, because it could lead to yet another Middle East war. In fact, that seems to be the goal of some US hotheads, despite the obvious fact that Iran is on the same side as the United States in opposing the Islamic State (ISIS). And then theres the fact that Iran, unlike most of its regional adversaries, is a functioning democracy. Ironically, the escalation of US and Saudi rhetoric came just two days after Irans May 19 election, in which moderates led by incumbent President Hassan Rouhani defeated their hardline opponents at the ballot box. Perhaps for Trump, the pro-Saudi, anti-Iran embrace is just another business proposition. He beamed at Saudi Arabias decision to buy $110 billion of new US weapons, describing the deal as jobs, jobs, jobs, as if the only gainful employment for American workers requires them to stoke war. And who knows what private deals for Trump and his family might also be lurking in his warm embrace of Saudi belligerence. The Trump administrations bombast toward Iran is, in a sense, par for the course. US foreign policy is littered with absurd, tragic, and hugely destructive foreign wars that served no real purpose except the pursuit of some misguided strand of official propaganda. How else, in the end, to explain Americas useless and hugely costly entanglements in Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Yemen, and many other conflicts? Americas anti-Iran animus goes back to the countrys 1979 Islamic Revolution. For the US public, the 444-day ordeal of the US embassy staff held hostage by radical Iranian students constituted a psychological shock that has still not abated. The hostage drama dominated the US media from start to finish, resulting in a kind of public post-traumatic stress disorder similar to the social trauma of the 9/11 attacks a generation later. For most Americans, then and now, the hostage crisis and indeed the Iranian Revolution itself was a bolt out of the blue. Few Americans realize that the Iranian Revolution came a quarter-century after the CIA and Britains intelligence agency MI6 conspired in 1953 to overthrow the countrys democratically elected government and install a police state under the Shah of Iran, to preserve Anglo-American control over Irans oil, which was threatened by nationalization. Nor do most Americans realize that the hostage crisis was precipitated by the ill-considered decision to admit the deposed Shah into the US for medical treatment, which many Iranians viewed as a threat to the revolution. During the Reagan Administration, the US supported Iraq in its war of aggression against Iran, including Iraqs use of chemical weapons. When the fighting finally ended in 1988, the US followed up with financial and trade sanctions on Iran that remain in place to this day. Since 1953, the US has opposed Irans self-rule and economic development through covert action, support for authoritarian rule during 1953-79, military backing for its enemies, and decades-long sanctions. Another reason for Americas anti-Iran animus is Irans support for Hezbollah and Hamas, two militant antagonists of Israel. Here, too, it is important to understand the historical context. In 1982, Israel invaded Lebanon in an attempt to crush militant Palestinians operating there. In the wake of that war, and against the backdrop of anti-Muslim massacres enabled by Israels occupation forces, Iran supported the formation of the Shia-led Hezbollah to resist Israels occupation of southern Lebanon. By the time Israel withdrew from Lebanon in 2000, nearly 20 years after its original invasion, Hezbollah had become a formidable military, political, and social force in Lebanon, and a continuing thorn in Israels side. Iran also supports Hamas, a hardline Sunni group that rejects Israels right to exist. Following decades of Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands captured in the 1967 war, and with peace negotiations stalemated, Hamas defeated Fatah (the Palestine Liberation Organizations political party) at the ballot box in the 2006 election for the Palestinian parliament. Rather than entering into a dialogue with Hamas, the US and Israel decided to try to crush it, including through a brutal war in Gaza in 2014, resulting in a massive Palestinian death toll, untold suffering, and billions of dollars in damage to homes and infrastructure in Gaza but, predictably, leading to no political progress whatsoever. Israel also views Irans nuclear program as an existential threat. Hardline Israelis repeatedly sought to convince the US to attack Irans nuclear facilities, or at least allow Israel to do so. Fortunately, President Barack Obama resisted, and instead negotiated a treaty between Iran and the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council (plus Germany) that blocks Irans path to nuclear weapons for a decade or more, creating space for further confidence-building measures on both sides. Yet Trump and the Saudis seem intent on destroying the possibility of normalizing relations created by this important and promising agreement. Jeffrey D. Sachs, Professor of Sustainable Development and Professor of Health Policy and Management at Columbia University, is Director of Columbias Center for Sustainable Development and of the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network. His books include The End of Poverty, Common Wealth, The Age of Sustainable Development, and, most recently, Building the New American Economy. Licensed from Project Syndicate Related video added by Juan Cole: Times of India: Trump: Tillerson says he and Trump disagree over Iran nuclear deal Reddit Email 287 Shares By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | Many of the reactions to Stephen Millers announcement of Trumps proposed immigration policies have pulled at the heart strings. People on social media have been remembering their own grandparents, who came to the US without knowing English and without higher degrees but made something of themselves. It turns out that Donald Trumps own mother grew up speaking Gaelic in a Scottish village and knew little English before she came to the US. I cant imagine that Trumps German grandfather knew English before arriving, either, and it is not as if he had a degree or anything. Millers grandparents came in the same way in 1902. But arguments from the heart will not be persuasive to the Trump voters or most of the Republican Party. Here Id like to set aside those considerations, of fair play and appeals to emotion and make a different set of arguments about the plan presented. What would it mean for American power in the world? 1. Sen. Tom Cotton, who spent years as a notorious illegal alien in Iraq, said that the US admits about 1 million legal immigrants a year, phrasing it as an Arkansas every three years. This argument is, like most of Cottons rhetoric, full of fallacies. First of all, the magnitude of the immigration is not important in and of itself. Arkansas is population-wise a small state mainly because it does not have a very good economy. It is 49th in the country for median household income. Its work force is only 3% agricultural, but whatever else they are doing does not appear to pay very well and maybe doesnt generate a big demand for workers. Arkansas largely lacks what economists call absorptive capacity, States that do have a good economy might be able to absorb that many immigrants, indeed need that many immigrants to continue to grow. Again remember that they are less expensive than babies. Someone else has already paid for their basic education. They arrive ready to work and pay taxes and social security, and to serve in the military. Whether it is good or bad to bring in a million immigrants a year or a population increase from that source of 0.31% annually (not counting their natural increase once here) cant be decided by mentioning the absolute number. 2. The fertility rate in the United States is collapsing and we may be on the verge of a demographic crisis.. Women in their teens and early twenties, i.e.Generation Z or Centennials, stopped having children at the rate of the predecessors. If they have postponed childbirth, then the alarm may be a blip. But if this development is a sea change, and Trump stops immigration, then the US will gradually shrink, as Japan is expected to. In 2007 we had 4.4 million live births. Last year it was 3.98 mn. And remember you have to subtract the death rate. These are complicated calculations since immigrants tend to come as adults. I dont think Cotton has carried them out. So actually we may need those 1 million immigrants every year to avoid shrinking and losing our status as a Great Power. Or as we will see, we might need them to compete with populous emerging Great Powers. 3. Shrinking would be bad, very bad, from the point of view of geopolitics. I know it could have benefits environmentally, but Cotton does not care about that anyway. Let us argue to someone who cares about American power. How big a population a country has tells you how big an army it can raise. It tells you how many workers it can put to work if it has the factories or laboratories or fields to employ them. The rising powers in the world are China and India, both with over a billion in population. As they catch up technologically to the US and that advantage falls by the wayside, the sheer size of army they can deploy becomes crucial. The US at a dinky 320 million is only not at a disadvantage now because of that technological advantage. 4. Consider the fate of Japan, which will shrink from 130 million to 90 million over the next few decades. Who will pay into social security? How seriously can the world take a country dominated by little old retired people? Who will serve in the 100,000 strong Japanese Self-Defense Force? How innovative will Japanese science and engineering be under these circumstances? Who will work in factories and make Toyotas? Youll say they can site the factories in Vietnam, but why shouldnt Vietnam over time just make its own car? And who will buy Japanese-made goods at home? How to have an economy with only a geriatric consumer base? I once jokingly advised a friend to invest in whatever corporation makes the most popular adult diapers. He was grossed out. One of the reasons Russia is acting so weird is that it imploded as a Great Power. Half the population of the Soviet Union hived off into new republics. Of the 150 mn. Russia was left with they lost 10 million to over-drinking, suicide, depression and a collapse of the birth rate. Losing the Cold War was hard on them. White Supremacy ironically could push the US into a disaster similar to that of Russias after 1991. 5. As for admitting only people who speak English and have higher degrees, this idea is based on yet another set of fallacies. Working class immigrants in the United States generally do not compete with native-born workers for jobs. They occupy different niches. In part this is because the immigrants dont have good English. So guess what. If you go down to admitting 500,000 educated English-speakers a year, you may a) produce the Japan effect of decline, 2) you will cut out the ability to harvest strawberries, and 3) you will actually start bringing in many more immigrants who can compete for jobs against native-born Americans. 6. CNNs Jim Acosta accused Stephen Miller of a Whites only immigration policy, saying he was angling only for Australians and British. The charge is actually probably true, but like most racist immigration policies, it would get subverted. The fact is that not very many people immigrate to the United State from developed countries like Britain or Australia. So you know what would happen if this law were passed in the form reported by Miller? Desi paradise. The largest pool of English-speakers with BAs and higher degrees recognized by the United States lies in Pakistan, India and Bangladesh. From each according to current law up to 25,000 can come each year, not counting later loved ones who join them. The next largest pool is former British Africa Nigeria, Kenya, South Africa, etc. etc. I hear Steve Bannon doesnt like Indian-Americans and once asked of Silicon Valley, Why are these people here? Bannon and Miller have managed to craft an immigration proposal that would replace Central Americans and Mexicans with highly skilled Indians, Pakistanis, Bangladeshis, Nepalese, Sri Lankans, and huge numbers of people from African countries. Remember, unless they change it, up to 25,000 can legally come from each of these countries annually. Theyd get that many qualified applicants from 20 Commonwealth countries annually without any difficulty. Indias middle class just doubled to 250 million or so and is set to double again by 2025. You think theyd even miss 250,000 if they came over the next 10 years? Here are the English-speaking Commonwealth countries whose degree holders Miller and Bannon and Sessions want to import wholesale. More bad news for Bannon and Miller: A lot of these countries are Muslim-majority or Buddhist or Hindu, or have large Muslim minorities (who might have a special reason to want to leave). So I really dont think this outcome is the one the Trumpies were going for. But some other time Ill tell you how our current system was crafted by Southern white supremacists in Congress and how reality subverted their white bread designs. Commonwealth Countries: Republics: Bangladesh Botswana Cyprus Cameroon Dominica Fiji Ghana Guyana India Kenya Kiribati Malawi Maldives Malta Mauritius Mozambique Namibia Nauru Nigeria Pakistan Rwanda Samoa Seychelles Sierra Leone Singapore South Africa Sri Lanka Tanzania Trinidad and Tobago Uganda Vanuatu Zambia monarchies with heads of state other than the Reigning Monarch of England: Brunei Lesotho Malaysia Swaziland Tongo Commonwealth Realms Antigua and Barbuda Australia The Bahamas Barbados Belize Canada Grenada Jamaica New Zealand Papua New Guinea Saint Kitts and Nevis Saint Lucia Saint Vincent and the Grenadines Solomon Islands Tuvalu The United Kingdom Related video: Exchange between Stephen Miller and Jim Acosta on Statue of Liberty & Immigration (C-SPAN) Reddit Email 72 Shares By Jake Johnson, staff writer | ( Commondreams.org ) | The Justice Departments plan to challenge efforts that colleges and universities have undertaken to expand educational opportunity is an affront to our values as a country. In a development civil rights groups characterized as deeply disturbing, the New York Times reported on Tuesday that the Trump Justice Department is looking to begin investigating and suing universities over affirmative action admissions policies deemed to discriminate against white applicants. Throughout his career, Attorney General Jeff Sessions has pushed efforts to end affirmative action programs and he has a clear record of hostility to racial diversity. Kristen Clarke, Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. The plan is detailed in an internal Justice Department document obtained by the Times. The memo makes clear that the new project will be run not by career civil servants, who are usually tasked with handling school-related matters, but by Trumps political appointees. Supporters and critics of the project said [the document] was clearly targeting admissions programs that can give members of generally disadvantaged groups, like black and Latino students, an edge over other applicants with comparable or higher test scores, the Times notes. Rights groups immediately expressed alarm, portraying the departments memo as part of the Trump administrations broad effort to roll back central civil rights provisions in crucial areas of American society, from schools to the workplace to the voting booth. Trump's DOJ: Ending affirmative action Gutting voting rights Bringing back war on drugs Targeting immigrants https://t.co/N4OfwPk6Qb Ari Berman (@AriBerman) August 2, 2017 Vanita Gupta, president and CEO of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, said in a statement on Monday that the Justice Departments move to challenge efforts that colleges and universities have undertaken to expand educational opportunity is an affront to our values as a country. Longstanding Supreme Court precedent has upheld the constitutionality and compelling state interest of these policies, Gutpta noted, and generations of Americans have benefited from richer, more inclusive institutions of higher education. Kristen Clarke, president and executive director of the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, observed in an interview with the Times that the Justice Departments Civil Rights Division was created and launched to deal with the unique problem of discrimination faced by our nations most oppressed minority groups. The plan outlined in the departments internal memo represents a disturbing diversion from this mission, Clarke argues. Everything they are doing is making it clear that they want to defang and weaken the federal governments tools to protect the civil rights and safety of people across the country. Sen. Patty Murray: Throughout his career, Attorney General Jeff Sessions has pushed efforts to end affirmative action programs and he has a clear record of hostility to racial diversity, Clarke added in a statement, referring to his record as a federal prosecutor. We will not stand by idly as this administration continues to hijack and obstruct this divisions core civil rights mission. As Common Dreams has reported, numerous key figures within the Trump administrationnamely Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Education Secretary Betsy DeVoshave come under fire in recent weeks for what civil rights groups have deemed their repeated refusal to commit to enforcing federal civil rights protections. In response to a recent Department of Education directive aimed at scaling back civil rights investigations at public schools, Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) said: President Trump and his administration can claim to oppose discrimination all they want, but actions speak louder than words, she said. Everything they are doing is making it clear that they want to defang and weaken the federal governments tools to protect the civil rights and safety of people across the country. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License Via Commondreams.org Related video added by Juan Cole: Majority Report with Sam Seder: Jeff Sessions & Trumps DOJ Will Use Civil Rights Office To Target Affirmative Action Nicht Ihr Computer? Dann konnen Sie fur die Anmeldung ein Fenster zum privaten Surfen offnen. Weitere Informationen White Rock, British Columbia (FSCwire) - Renaissance Gold Inc. (TSX.V: REN) (RenGold or the Company) is pleased to announce that its wholly owned subsidiary, Kinetic Gold (US) Inc. has signed a definitive agreement with S2 Resources Ltd. (ASX:S2R) through its subsidiary Nevada Star Resources LLC. The agreement grants S2 the option to acquire a 70% interest in the South Roberts, Pluto and Ecru projects located in Nevada. S2 must spend US$3,000,000 per project over a 5-year period to earn a 70% interest, with a committed expenditure of US$200,000 per project by the 2nd anniversary of the agreement. Upon signing the definitive agreement S2 paid the Company US$75,000. South Roberts Project: The South Roberts Project, Eureka County, Nevada lies on the Battle Mountain-Eureka trend of world class gold deposits. The project lies under shallow pediment along the western margin of the northern Nevada rift in a very similar setting to Barricks Goldrush deposit to the north. Targets are defined along a major NW gravity break with coincident Carlin-suite geochemistry over a strike length of more than 3 miles. A first pass, 6-hole drilling program conducted in 2014 confirmed shallow depths to Paleozoic bedrock and widespread anomalous gold and Carlin pathfinders, which have not yet been followed up. The 2014 drill holes were very widely spaced (approximately 1 km apart), and significant targets remain untested. Pluto Project: The Pluto project, Lander County, Nevada lies along the north-south Rabbit Trend of gold deposits. High grade gold up to 13.1 g Au/t occurs in an isolated outcrop of Havallah Sequence rocks exposed in a structural window through Tertiary volcanic rocks. Detailed gravity and soil geochemistry define a multi-element anomaly occurring mostly within a NE trending horst block. The highly prospective Antler sequence rocks, which host world class deposits in the Battle Mountain district 60 miles to the north, are modelled to occur at shallow to moderate depths beneath this high-grade outcrop. The magnitude of the gold grades in the Havallah outcrop is quite unique in Nevada and could represent leakage above a potentially very robust gold system. This target has never been drilled. Ecru Project: The Ecru project, Lander County, Nevada lies on the Battle Mountain-Eureka Trend in the Cortez district, near the Gold Acres, Pipeline and Cortez Hills gold deposits. The project is centered on a large gravity high, interpreted to represent an upthrown block of favorable lower plate carbonate rocks, which host the nearby world class gold deposits. Historic drilling on adjacent parts of the same gravity high have yielded significant mineralization in both upper and lower plate rocks and have included grades in excess of 1oz. Au/t. Several undrilled target areas exist on and around this gravity feature which have the potential to host a significant discovery. Robert Felder, President states We are extremely pleased to have a group of the caliber of S2 as our exploration partner on these three projects in Nevada. They have demonstrated their technical capabilities with past successes and have chosen Renaissance as a partner to work with in Nevada. We look forward to a very productive and successful relationship. This agreement advances our portfolio from having 8 to now 11 of our projects in earn-in or option agreements. About Renaissance Gold Inc. Renaissance Gold Inc. is a western US focused prospect generator utilizing a joint venture business model. The company is the spin-out of AuEx Ventures, Inc. - discoverer of the Long Canyon gold deposit in Nevada now in production by Newmont Mining Company. RenGold applies the extensive exploration experience and high-end technical skills of its founders and team members to search for and acquire high quality precious metal exploration projects that are then offered for joint venture to industry partners. RenGold maintains a large portfolio of gold and silver exploration properties and has entered into over 60 exploration agreements including those as AuEx. About S2 Resources Ltd. S2 Resources Ltd. is a well-funded Australian junior exploration company with significant mineral exploration properties in the Eastern Goldfields of Western Australia, the Skellefte VMS base metal district in northern Sweden, and the Central Lapland Greenstone Belt of northern Finland. It listed on the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX:S2R) in late 2015, following its demerger from Sirius Resources when Sirius was taken over for A$1.8 billion. The S2 team comprises the original Sirius team that most recently discovered, permitted, and raised over A$770 million in equity and debt financing to develop the world class Nova-Bollinger nickel-copper mine. This same team was previously the Australian arm of TSX listed LionOre, which was taken over by Norilsk for A$7 billion. It is led by Mark Bennett, who is a two-time recipient of Australias Prospector of the Year award for the discovery of Nova-Bollinger, and the Thunderbox gold mine and Waterloo nickel mine in Australia. Qualified Person All technical data disclosed in this press release has been verified by RenGolds Qualified Person, Robert Felder, M.Sc. and Certified Professional Geologist as recognized by the American Institute of Professional Geologists (AIPG). VANCOUVER, British Columbia, Aug. 03, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Novo Resources Corp. (TSX-V:NVO) (OTCQX:NSRPF) (Novo or the Company) is pleased to announce that it has signed definitive agreements completing the acquisition of certain tenements in the Karratha region of Western Australia which comprise the Comet Well project (please see the Companys news releases dated April 11 and June 26, 2017 for further details). The Comet Well project is comprised of three prospecting licenses and two exploration licenses that cover 54.5 square km. As detailed in the Companys June 26, 2017 news release, outcropping gold-bearing conglomerates are the target of Novos exploration at Comet Well. The Comet Well tenements encompass a critical part of our Karratha gold project, commented Dr. Quinton Hennigh, Chairman and President of Novo Resources Corp. Similar gold-bearing conglomerates to those recently uncovered at Purdys Reward have been identified along approximately 6 km of strike at Comet Well. Novo plans to extend its exploration program into the Comet Well area once these tenements have been granted and permitting is complete. Summary of Terms The aggregate cash portion of the purchase price pursuant to the definitive agreements is AU$1.75 million, of which AU$100,000 was paid upon signing of the preliminary agreements and AU$150,000 will be paid upon signing of the definitive agreements. The shares portion of the purchase price consists of 1,450,000 Novo common shares (collectively, the Initial Consideration Shares). The Initial Consideration Shares will be subject to a statutory hold period expiring four months from the date of issuance. Three years after the signing of the definitive agreements, a further AU$3 million in aggregate is required to be paid and AU$3 million worth of Novos common shares (the Subsequent Consideration Shares) issued, with the number of Subsequent Consideration Shares to be calculated based on Novos then prevailing 5-day trailing volume-weighted average price (VWAP). The Subsequent Consideration Shares will also be subject to a statutory hold period expiring four months from the date of issuance. A bonus (the Discovery Bonus) of AU$1,000,000, payable (at the vendors option), in cash and/or Novo common shares, is required to be paid if Novo publishes measured, indicated, or inferred gold resources of at least 250,000 ounces on the Comet Well Project. If the Discovery Bonus is to be paid in the Companys common shares, the shares will be priced at the Companys then 5-day trailing VWAP and will be subject to a statutory hold period expiring four months from the date of issuance. The definitive agreements are binding but are subject to standard conditions precedent including receipt of Australian Foreign Investment Review Board approval, TSX Venture Exchange approval, and obtaining any other required third party consents. About Novo Resources Corp. Novos focus is to explore and develop gold projects. Novo holds in excess of 12,500 sq km of ground prospective for paleoplacer/conglomerate-style gold deposits in the Pilbara region of Western Australia. Novo also controls a 100% interest in approximately 2 sq km covering much of the Tuscarora Au-Ag vein district, Nevada. TORONTO, Aug. 03, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Aurania Resources Ltd. (TSXV:ARU) (Aurania or the Company) announces that a heliborne geophysics survey of the Lost Cities Cutucu Project (Project) in southeastern Ecuador commenced yesterday. This geophysical survey is a key step toward our objective of discovering mineral deposits in a large tract of exploration concessions that cover the geological extension of a prolific mineral belt in southeastern Ecuador. said Dr. Keith Barron, CEO of Aurania. We have recruited a team with considerable experience in the southern part of the cordillera, having had direct involvement in the discovery of the Fruta del Norte gold deposit as well as the San Carlos and Mirador copper deposits, all of which are now in the mine construction phase. We look forward to applying our experience to the northern part of the cordillera and we expect a regular flow of news, now that exploration has started in earnest. Geophysics in Context of Auranias Exploration Approach Aurania is applying a methodical approach to ensure thorough exploration of the Lost Cities Cutucu Project. The approach may be described as consisting of a number of stacked layers as follows: Layer 1 historical records of gold mining in southeastern Ecuador in the late 16 th Century. The historical information is being studied to refine the region in which the Logrono de los Caballeros and Sevilla del Oro mining areas are likely to have been located; Century. The historical information is being studied to refine the region in which the Logrono de los Caballeros and Sevilla del Oro mining areas are likely to have been located; Layer 2 interpretation of satellite imagery of the Project area. This interpretation has identified 12 areas that are considered to share many of the geological features that characterize epithermal gold and porphyry copper deposits in the Cordillera del Condor which lies immediately adjacent to, and along trend of, the Project; Layer 3 geophysical data. Overlay of geophysical data on the historical maps and interpretation of satellite imagery is expected to provide a powerful tool for prioritising these, and additional target areas, for exploration; and Layer 4 assay data from stream sediment sampling will be used to identify areas of elevated gold, copper and pathfinder elements that are commonly associated with mineral deposits. Objective of the Survey Geophysical data from the Project are expected to be particularly useful in targeting epithermal gold and porphyry copper mineralization: Epithermal gold deposits in the adjacent mineral district, such as the Fruta del Norte deposit, are located near faults that are usually visible as breaks in the magnetic geophysical data. These deposits are also typified by clay alteration that demagnetizes the rock, resulting in an area of low magnetism that is usually discernible in the magnetic data. The clay alteration may also generate an elevated radiometric response. A typical epithermal target may therefore be identifiable as a local area of low magnetic signature, coincident with an elevated radiometric signature, adjacent to a fault break; Porphyry copper and/or copper-gold deposits usually have a magnetic core that is typically evident in airborne magnetic data. Since the magnetic core of the San Carlos, Panantza and Mirador porphyries in the adjacent mineral belt are over 800 metres in diameter, magnetic data in Auranias geophysical program are being measured along parallel lines that are spaced at 400 metre intervals to ensure that at least two geophysical lines cross a typical porphyry. Having an anomaly detected by several adjacent geophysics lines assists in the differentiation of significant anomalies from spurious point sources that are usually less important targets. Porphyry deposits are also typically enclosed by a non-magnetic alteration zone. A typical porphyry would therefore have a doughnut-shaped magnetic signature with a magnetic core enclosed by weak magnetism. Alteration over a porphyry may also result in an elevated radiometric signature. Details of the Survey The survey is planned to include approximately 12,000 line kilometres flown at a terrain clearance of approximately 80 metres in east-west orientated parallel lines spaced at 400 metre intervals. Data will be downloaded at frequent intervals so that target identification can commence immediately, rather than on completion of the survey. Magnetic and radiometric data will be acquired from the entire Project area over a four- to six-week period. Technical Information The technical information contained in this news release pertaining to The Lost Cities Project has been verified and approved by Jean-Paul Pallier, MSc.. Mr. Pallier is a designated EurGeol by the European Federation of Geologists and a Qualified Person as defined by National Instrument 43-101, Standards of Disclosure for Mineral Projects of the Canadian Securities Administrators. About Aurania Aurania is a junior exploration mining company engaged in the identification, evaluation, acquisition and exploration of mineral property interests, with a focus on precious metals. Its flagship asset, The Lost Cities Cutucu Project, is located in the Jurassic Metallogenic Belt in the eastern foothills of the Andes mountain range, in southeastern Ecuador. VANCOUVER, BC--(Marketwired - August 03, 2017) - Sarama Resources Limited ("Sarama" or the "Company")(TSX VENTURE: SWA) announces that it has completed its previously announced private placement (the "Private Placement"). As part of the Private Placement, originally announced on July 20, 2017, 10,277,777 common shares of Sarama ("Shares") have been issued for gross proceeds of C$1,850,000. The proceeds of the Private Placement will be used principally to advance the exploration of the Company's resource properties in Burkina Faso and for general working capital purposes. The Private Placement was conducted on a non-brokered basis to institutional and accredited investors pursuant to prospectus exemptions available under applicable securities laws. A four-month hold period will apply to all of the Shares. Pursuant to the Private Placement, Sarama paid a finder's fee of $19,800 and $300 of associated expenses to a third party in relation to the issuance of 5,500,000 Shares. Sun Valley Gold Master Fund, Ltd. ("Sun Valley") is a related party of the Company as a result of owning approximately 15% of the Company's outstanding Shares. Sun Valley purchased a total of 1,666,667 Shares in the Private Placement. The participation in the Private Placement by, and issuance of Shares to Sun Valley constituted a "related party transaction" as defined in Canadian Multilateral Instrument 61-101 - Protection of Minority Security Holders in Special Transactions, which has been adopted by the TSX Venture Exchange pursuant to its Policy 5.9 - Protection of Minority Security Holders in Special Transactions (the "61-101 Policy"). However, the Private Placement is exempt from the formal valuation and minority shareholder approval requirements of such instrument and policy, as the Company's Shares are listed on the TSX Venture Exchange and, in respect of the minority shareholder approval requirement, neither the fair market value of the Shares, nor the consideration received for the Shares exceeds 25% of the Company's market capitalization. ABOUT SARAMA RESOURCES LTD Sarama Resources Ltd (TSX VENTURE: SWA) is a West African focused gold explorer with substantial landholdings in Burkina Faso. Sarama is focused on consolidating under-explored landholdings in Burkina Faso and other established mining jurisdictions. Sarama's flagship properties are situated within the Company's South Hounde Project area in south-west Burkina Faso. Located within the prolific Hounde Greenstone Belt, Sarama's exploration programs have built on significant early success to deliver an inferred mineral resource estimate of 2.1 Moz gold.(1) Acacia Mining plc is earning up to a 70% interest in the South Hounde Project by satisfying certain conditions, including funding earn-in expenditures of up to US$14 million, over a 4-year earn-in period and may acquire an additional 5% interest, for an aggregate 75% interest in the Project, upon declaration of a minimum mineral reserve of 1.6 million ounces of gold. Acacia has satisfied certain milestones and currently holds a 50% interest in the South Hounde Project and is continuing to sole fund exploration activities. Sarama holds a 31% participating interest in the Karankasso Project Joint Venture ("JV") which is situated adjacent to the Company's South Hounde Project in Burkina Faso and is a JV between Sarama and Savary Gold Corp. ("Savary"). Savary is the operator of the JV and in October 2015, declared a maiden inferred mineral resource estimate of 671,000 ounces of contained gold(2) at the Karankasso Project JV. Sarama has also agreed to acquire(3) a 100% interest in the Bondi Deposit from Orezone Gold Corporation (refer to news release dated May 24, 2016). Bondi has a historical estimate of mineral resources of 0.3Moz Au (measured and indicated) and 0.1Moz Au (inferred).(4) Together, the South Hounde Project, Bondi Deposit and the Karankasso Project form a cluster of advanced gold deposits, within trucking distance of one another, which potentially offers a development option for a multi-source fed central processing facility in the southern Hounde Belt region of Burkina Faso. Incorporated in 2010, the Company's Board and management team have a proven track record in Africa and a strong history in the discovery and development of large-scale gold deposits. Sarama is well positioned to build on its current success with a sound exploration strategy across its property portfolio. VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA--(Marketwired - Aug. 3, 2017) - Auryn Resources Inc. (TSX:AUG) (NYSE MKT:AUG)(NYSE AMERICAN:AUG) ("Auryn" or the "Company") is pleased to announce that it has acquired the rights, through two separate transactions, to the Tacora and Andamarca properties that are contiguous to the Huilacollo gold epithermal project in the Tacna province of Southern Peru. The Tacora and Andamarca properties add an additional 1,100 hectares to the existing land position and greatly expand the mineralized footprint (see Figure 1) of the project. Huilacollo now consists of 3,100 hectares within the highly prolific Pliocene Au/Ag epithermal belt. Shawn Wallace, Auryn's CEO, commented, "the acquisition of the Tacora and Andamarca licenses adjacent to our Huilacollo project provides Auryn with both new exploration opportunities and room for future infrastructure requirements as we work towards drilling this fall." Mr. Wallace further stated "taking into account the additional licenses that we have under application, Auryn will control over 27,000 hectares in this very prospective belt. We are excited about the prospectively of the district that we have assembled as we move toward our goal of significant oxide gold discoveries in Southern Peru." The Tacora licences acquired have a known high sulphidation epithermal alteration system over an area of 1.5 kilometers by 500 meters (see Figure 1). Historical grab samples from the mineralized epithermal system demonstrate strong gold values ranging from 0.1 - 4.6 g/t Au. Auryn's technical team believes that the epithermal system on the Tacora licenses is the continuation of the same oxide gold epithermal system observed on the Huilacollo licenses. The Andamarca license provides Auryn with a strategic land position that is considered important from an infrastructure standpoint if future mining were to occur. Tacora and Andamarca concessions were acquired in two separate transactions with private Peruvian owners. Under the terms of the Tacora acquisition agreement, the Company will pay US$200,000 on signing of the Public Deed transferring the concessions in favor of Corisur Peru SAC. The Tacora concessions are subject to a 0.5% NSR, 50% of which is buyable for US$0.5 million. Under the terms of the Andamarca acquisition agreement, the Company will pay US$450,000 on signing of the Public Deed transferring the concession in favor of Corisur Peru SAC. The Andamarca concession is subject to 1.5% NSR, 50% of which is buyable for US$2.5 million. In addition, Auryn has under application an additional 19,000 hectares of mineral licenses within the Pliocene Au/Ag epithermal belt on alteration systems identified from satellite imagery (see Figure 2). These concessions are in the process of being granted and it is anticipated that the granting of the licenses will occur in Q4 of 2017. The expansion of land positions within the Pliocene Au/Ag epithermal belt is consistent with Auryn's strategy of developing district scale exploration projects in highly endowed areas that are we consider underexplored. Committee Bay Update Auryn has drilled a total of 18,600 meters of which 6,500 meters are currently in the assay lab with an additional 12,100 meters on route. Turnaround times from a drill hole being completed to results have been approximately 6 to 8 weeks due to bottlenecks in the shipping of samples from Rankin Inlet (now resolved) and a 3 to 4 week turnaround time at the laboratory. Importantly, due to increased drill production and efficient drill targeting, Auryn is anticipating that an additional 7 targets will be drill tested, taking the total number of targets to be tested to 19. Homestake Ridge Update Auryn initiated drilling on July 21st and has completed 1,600 meters of the proposed 15,000-meter program to date focusing on the South Reef and Slide Zone target areas. Surface work is concentrating on refining target corridors based on geological mapping, geophysical induced polarization, portable X-Ray fluorescence and shortwave infrared surveys that are currently ongoing. Michael Henrichsen, P.Geo, COO of Auryn, is the Qualified Person who assumes responsibility for the technical disclosures in this press release. About Auryn Auryn Resources is a technically driven junior mining exploration company focused on delivering shareholder value through project acquisition and development. The Company's management team is highly experienced with an impressive track record of success and has assembled an extensive technical team as well as a premier gold exploration portfolio. Auryn is focused on scalable high-grade gold deposits in established mining jurisdictions, which include the Committee Bay and Gibson MacQuoid gold projects located in Nunavut, the Homestake Ridge gold project in British Columbia and a portfolio of gold projects in southern Peru, through Corisur Peru SAC. VANCOUVER, Aug. 3, 2017 /CNW/ - Sandstorm Gold Ltd. ("Sandstorm" or the "Company") (NYSE MKT: SAND, TSX: SSL) has released its results for the second quarter ended June 30, 2017 (all figures in U.S. dollars). Second Quarter Highlights Attributable gold equivalent ounces sold 1 of 12,750 ounces (Q2 2016 12,517 ounces); of 12,750 ounces (Q2 2016 12,517 ounces); Revenue of $16.1 million (Q2 2016 - $15.7 million ); (Q2 2016 - ); Average cash cost per attributable gold equivalent ounce of $290 resulting in cash operating margins 1 of $970 per ounce (Q2 2016 - $261 per ounce and $994 per ounce respectively); resulting in cash operating margins of per ounce (Q2 2016 - per ounce and per ounce respectively); Operating cash flow of $11.1 million (Q2 2016 $8.9 million ); and (Q2 2016 ); and Net loss of $1.9 million (Q2 2016 net income of $5.2 million ). Subsequent Event On July 3, 2017, Sandstorm completed its previously announced arrangement to acquire all the issued and ordinary share capital of Mariana Resources Ltd ("Mariana") that Sandstorm did not already own. Under the terms of the arrangement and as consideration for the acquisition, the Company issued 32,685,228 common shares and paid an additional $47.3 million in cash. The transaction and the addition of the 30% Hot Maden interest to the Company's portfolio of royalties provides for: 100% increase in production for only 19% dilution; adds an anchor asset that is high-grade and low-cost with significant exploration upside; utilizes a strong local partner with experience in exploring, developing, permitting and operating projects in Turkey ; and ; and also includes exploration properties in Cote d'Ivoire, Turkey , and Argentina . Sandstorm has begun the process to sell the exploration properties and will retain net smelter return royalties as well as equity in the spin-out. Sandstorm's President & CEO, Nolan Watson commented, "The focus of the second quarter was closing the acquisition of Mariana Resources and adding the Hot Maden anchor asset to the Company's royalty portfolio. Meanwhile, our producing streams and royalties continued to generate strong free cash flow and as a result we have a healthy balance sheet that we can utilize to continue pursuing acquisitions and to buy back shares." Outlook Based on the Company's existing gold streams and royalties, attributable gold equivalent production for 2017 is forecast to be between 50,000 and 55,000 ounces. The Company is forecasting attributable gold equivalent production of approximately 130,000 ounces per annum in 2022. Financial Results When compared to the second quarter of 2016 there was a slight increase in attributable gold equivalent production and revenue primarily due to increases from the Company's silver and copper stream on the Chapada mine in Brazil as well as additional gold equivalent ounces sold from the Emigrant, Bachelor Lake and Black Fox mines. As a result, cash flow from operations was higher when compared to Q2 2016. Net income was lower when compared to the same period in 2016 due to a number of factors including a $4.5 million non-cash impairment charge relating to the Coringa royalty, a $0.9 million non-cash loss relating to the revaluation of the Company's investments and a $0.5 million non-cash increase in depletion expense driven by an increase in the number of attributable gold equivalent ounces sold. The decrease in net income was partially offset by a foreign exchange gain as well as a decrease in finance expense related to the Company's revolving line of credit. Streams & Royalties: Q2 Updates Of the gold equivalent ounces delivered to Sandstorm, approximately 37% were attributable to mines located in Canada, 25% from the rest of North America and 38% from South America and other countries. Three months ended June 30, 2017 Revenue (in millions) Gold Equivalent Ounces Canada $6.0 4,758 North America excl. Canada $4.0 3,127 South America & Other $6.1 4,865 Total $16.1 12,750 Canada Streams and royalties on Canadian mines contributed 6% fewer gold equivalent ounces to Sandstorm when compared to the second quarter of 2016. The change is primarily attributable to a decrease in gold equivalent ounces sold from the Diavik mine in the Northwest Territories, offset by increases from the Bachelor mine in Quebec and the Black Fox mine in Ontario. North America excl. Canada When compared to Q2 2016, gold equivalent ounces coming from North America, excluding Canada, decreased by 26%. The change was driven by a decrease in gold equivalent ounces sold attributable to the Santa Elena mine in Mexico and the San Andres mine in Honduras, offset by an increase in ounces sold from the Emigrant mine in Nevada, USA. South America & Other Operations in South America and other countries contributed an additional 1,605 gold equivalent ounces sold when compared to Q2 2016, representing a 49% increase. The Yamana silver stream and Chapada copper stream contributed approximately 1,340 of those ounces. Aurizona Trek Mining Inc. ("Trek") announced the results of a Feasibility Study at the Aurizona gold mine in Brazil. The study is based on a new mine plan and updated Mineral Reserve estimate and outlines the design of an open-pit gold mine producing approximately 136,000 ounces of gold per year on average, with an initial 6.5-year mine life and significant exploration upside, as demonstrated by recent drill results. Initial capital to fund construction and commissioning is estimated at approximately $130.8 million due to Trek's ability to leverage significant existing infrastructure in place at the brownfields mine site. All-in-sustaining costs are estimated at $754 per ounce over the life of the project and the after-tax internal rate of return and net present value is estimated to be 34% and $197.1 million, respectively, using a base case gold price of $1,250 per ounce and a discount rate of 5%. Operations are expected to restart by the end of 2018. The most significant opportunity to add value at Aurizona is through exploration success. Near-mine exploration targets have the potential to extend the Piaba deposit up to five kilometres along strike to the southwest. Early results from the planned 30,000-metre 2017 drilling program have successfully demonstrated that significant gold mineralization persists below the shallow, westernmost reserve pit and that the Piaba gold deposit extends along strike at least 350 metres to the west. Trek will continue to test mineralization along strike and also at depth, with the objective of increasing the reserve and resource base and extending the mine life. MINERAL RESERVE ESTIMATE EFFECTIVE DATE MAY 29, 2017 Proven Probable Total Ore Type Tonnage (kt) Gold Grade (g/t) Contained Gold (oz) Tonnage (kt) Gold Grade (g/t) Contained Gold (oz) Tonnage (kt) Gold Grade (g/t) Contained Gold (oz) Laterite 122 1.94 8,000 539 0.98 17,000 661 1.16 25,000 Saprolite 1,684 1.52 82,000 1,310 1.38 58,000 2,994 1.46 140,000 Transition 2,553 1.34 110,000 1,363 1.18 52,000 3,916 1.29 162,000 Fresh Rock 4,079 1.46 192,000 8,186 1.72 452,000 12,265 1.63 644,000 Total 8,438 1.44 392,000 11,398 1.58 579,000 19,836 1.52 971,000 Note: This Mineral Reserve estimate has an effective date of May 29, 2017 and is based on the Mineral Resource estimate dated January 5, 2017 by SRK. The Mineral Reserve calculation was completed under the supervision of Gordon Zurowski, PEng of AGP, who is a Qualified Person as defined under NI 43-101. Mineral Reserves are stated within the final design pit based on a $1,056 per ounce gold price pit shell with a $1,200 per ounce gold price for revenue. The cut-off grade was 0.60 g/t Au for the Piaba pit area and 0.41 g/t Au for the Boa Esperanca area. The mining cost averaged $2.32/tonne mined, processing averaged $11.30/tonne milled and G&A was $2.84/tonne milled. The process recovery averaged 90.3%. The exchange rate assumption applied was R$3.30 equal to $1.00. The FS scope only considers the Piaba and Boa Esperanca open pit mineralized zones. The Mineral Reserve estimates contained herein may be subject to legal, political, environmental or other risks that could materially affect the potential development of such Mineral Reserves. Mineral resources that are not included within the Mineral Reserves do not have demonstrated economic viability. For more information refer to www.trekmining.com and see the press release dated July 31, 2017. Webcast and Conference Call Details A conference call will be held on Friday, August 4, 2017 starting at 8:30am PDT to further discuss the first quarter results. To participate in the conference call, use the following dial-in numbers and conference ID, or join the webcast using the link below: Local/International: (+1) 416 764 8609 North American Toll-Free: (+1) 888 390 0605 Conference ID: 45733622 Webcast URL: http://ow.ly/d5Bt30e50JG The Sandstorm Management Discussion and Analysis (MD&A) and Financial Statements for the three months ended June 30, 2017 will be accessible on the Company's website and on SEDAR at www.sedar.com. The Company has also completed a Form 6-K filing with the SEC that will be accessible on EDGAR at www.sec.gov/edgar.shtml. Shareholders can request a hard copy of the MD&A and Financial Statements by emailing This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. . QUALIFIED PERSON Keith Laskowski (MSc), Sandstorm's Vice President, Technical Services is a Qualified Professional (#01221QP) of the Mining and Metallurgical Society of America and a Qualified Person as defined by Canadian National Instrument 43-101. Mr. Laskowski has not independently verified the resource estimates contained in this disclosure. He has reviewed and approved the technical information in this press release. Note 1 Sandstorm has included certain performance measures in this press release that do not have any standardized meaning prescribed by International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) including average cash cost per ounce of gold and cash operating margin. Average cash cost per ounce of gold is calculated by dividing the total cost of sales, less depletion, by the ounces sold. In the precious metals mining industry, this is a common performance measure but does not have any standardized meaning. The Company believes that, in addition to conventional measures prepared in accordance with IFRS, certain investors use this information to evaluate the Company's performance and ability to generate cash flow. Cash operating margin is calculated by subtracting the average cash cost per ounce of gold from the average realized selling price per ounce of gold. The Company presents cash operating margin as it believes that certain investors use this information to evaluate the Company's performance in comparison to other companies in the precious metals mining industry who present results on a similar basis. The Company's royalty income is converted to an attributable gold equivalent ounce basis by dividing the royalty income for that period by the average realized gold price per ounce from the Company's gold streams for the same respective period. These attributable gold equivalent ounces when combined with the gold ounces sold from the Company's gold streams equal total attributable gold equivalent ounces sold. The presentation of these non-IFRS measures is intended to provide additional information and should not be considered in isolation or as a substitute for measures of performance prepared in accordance with IFRS. Other companies may calculate these non-IFRS measures differently. ABOUT SANDSTORM GOLD Sandstorm Gold Ltd. is a gold streaming and royalty company. Sandstorm provides upfront financing to gold mining companies that are looking for capital and in return, receives the right to a percentage of the gold produced from a mine, for the life of the mine. Sandstorm has acquired a portfolio of 160 streams and royalties, of which 20 of the underlying mines are producing. Sandstorm plans to grow and diversify its low cost production profile through the acquisition of additional gold streams and royalties. For more information visit: www.sandstormgold.com TORONTO, ON --(Marketwired - August 02, 2017) - Kinross Gold Corporation (TSX: K) ( NYSE : KGC) today announced its results for the second-quarter ended June 30, 2017. 2017 second-quarter highlights: Production 1 : 694,874 gold equivalent ounces (Au eq. oz.), compared with 671,267 Au eq. oz. in Q2 2016. 694,874 gold equivalent ounces (Au eq. oz.), compared with 671,267 Au eq. oz. in Q2 2016. Revenue: $868.6 million, compared with $876.4 million in Q2 2016. $868.6 million, compared with $876.4 million in Q2 2016. Production cost of sales 2 : $660 per Au eq. oz., compared with $731 in Q2 2016. $660 per Au eq. oz., compared with $731 in Q2 2016. All-in sustaining cost 2 : $910 per Au eq. oz. sold, compared with $988 in Q2 2016. All-in sustaining cost per gold ounce (Au oz.) sold on a by-product basis was $901 in Q2 2017, compared with $976 in Q2 2016. $910 per Au eq. oz. sold, compared with $988 in Q2 2016. All-in sustaining cost per gold ounce (Au oz.) sold on a by-product basis was $901 in Q2 2017, compared with $976 in Q2 2016. Operating cash flow: $179.7 million, compared with $315.9 million in Q2 2016. $179.7 million, compared with $315.9 million in Q2 2016. Adjusted operating cash flow 2 : $230.8 million for Q2 2017, an increase of 23% compared with $187.2 million for Q2 2016. : $230.8 million for Q2 2017, an increase of 23% compared with $187.2 million for Q2 2016. Adjusted net earnings (loss) 2,3 : $54.9 million, or $0.04 per share , compared with adjusted net loss of $9.8 million, or $0.01 per share, in Q2 2016. $54.9 million, or $0.04 per share compared with adjusted net loss of $9.8 million, or $0.01 per share, in Q2 2016. Reported net earnings (loss) 3 : Net earnings increased to $33.1 million, or $0.03 per share, compared with a net loss of $25.0 million, or $0.02 per share, in Q2 2016, mainly due to a decrease in production cost of sales. Net earnings increased to $33.1 million, or $0.03 per share, compared with a net loss of $25.0 million, or $0.02 per share, in Q2 2016, mainly due to a decrease in production cost of sales. Organic development projects: The Tasiast Phase One expansion continues to advance on time and on budget and is expected to reach full commercial production in Q2 2018. Plant construction is now 55% complete. The Tasiast Phase Two and Round Mountain Phase W feasibility studies are on schedule to be completed in September. The Company expects to make a development decision on both projects at that time. At Bald Mountain , engineering work at the Vantage Complex in the South area is progressing on schedule. In Russia, the Company has started processing ore from the September Northeast satellite deposit near Dvoinoye, while at Moroshka , decline development is on schedule, with construction of surface infrastructure now complete. Outlook: Kinross expects to be within its 2017 guidance for production (2.5 - 2.7 million Au eq. oz.), production cost of sales ($660 - $720 per Au eq. oz.) and all-in sustaining cost ($925 - $1,025 per Au eq. oz.). The Company expects to be within its capital expenditures guidance of $900 million (+/- 5%). Kinross expects to be within its 2017 guidance for production (2.5 - 2.7 million Au eq. oz.), production cost of sales ($660 - $720 per Au eq. oz.) and all-in sustaining cost ($925 - $1,025 per Au eq. oz.). The Company expects to be within its capital expenditures guidance of $900 million (+/- 5%). Debt offering: On July 6, 2017, Kinross closed its offering of debt securities, consisting of $500.0 million principal amount of 4.50% Senior Notes due 2027. The Company used the net proceeds, along with available cash on hand, to repay its term loan, which was due August 2020. On July 6, 2017, Kinross closed its offering of debt securities, consisting of $500.0 million principal amount of 4.50% Senior Notes due 2027. The Company used the net proceeds, along with available cash on hand, to repay its term loan, which was due August 2020. Balance sheet: As of June 30, 2017, Kinross had cash and cash equivalents of $1,061.3 million, and available credit of $1,433.1 million, for total liquidity of approximately $2.5 billion. The Company has no scheduled debt repayments until 2021. 1 Unless otherwise stated, production figures in this news release are based on Kinross' 90% share of Chirano production. 2 These figures are non-GAAP financial measures and are defined and reconciled on pages 14 to 18 of this news release. 3 Net earnings/loss figures in this release represent "net earnings (loss) attributable to common shareholders". CEO Commentary J. Paul Rollinson, President and CEO, made the following comments in relation to 2017 second-quarter results: "We delivered another quarter of strong and consistent operational results, as our portfolio of mines achieved production targets, lowered costs, and generated strong cash flows. "Our organic development projects are advancing well, and we expect to complete feasibility studies and make a development decision on the Tasiast Phase Two and Round Mountain Phase W expansion projects in September. The Tasiast Phase One expansion project is proceeding as planned and is expected to reach full commercial production in Q2 2018. Our projects in Russia have progressed well, with ore from the September Northeast deposit now being processed at the Kupol mill. We continue to advance Bald Mountain expansion opportunities and expect production to double this year compared with 2016. "The $500 million debt financing we completed in July enhances our financial flexibility, strengthens our balance sheet, and leaves no debt maturities until 2021. "We are once again on track to meet our annual company-wide guidance for production and costs, and Kinross remains strongly positioned to continue delivering value for our shareholders." Financial results Summary of financial and operating results Three months ended Six months ended June 30, June 30, (in millions, except ounces, per share amounts, and per ounce amounts) 2017 2016 2017 2016 Operating Highlights Total gold equivalent ounces(a) Produced(c) 700,452 675,623 1,378,233 1,367,533 Sold(c) 689,362 690,983 1,341,878 1,355,148 Attributable gold equivalent ounces(a) Produced(c) 694,874 671,267 1,366,830 1,358,730 Sold(c) 683,584 686,752 1,329,530 1,346,149 Financial Highlights Metal sales $ 868.6 $ 876.4 $ 1,664.7 $ 1,659.0 Production cost of sales $ 456.6 $ 506.7 $ 915.4 $ 964.4 Depreciation, depletion and amortization $ 204.0 $ 210.2 $ 421.5 $ 403.4 Operating earnings $ 104.9 $ 69.2 $ 153.5 $ 112.0 Net earnings (loss) attributable to common shareholders $ 33.1 $ (25.0 ) $ 167.7 $ 10.0 Basic earnings (loss) per share attributable to common shareholders $ 0.03 $ (0.02 ) $ 0.13 $ 0.01 Diluted earnings (loss) per share attributable to common shareholders $ 0.03 $ (0.02 ) $ 0.13 $ 0.01 Adjusted net earnings (loss) attributable to common shareholders(b) $ 54.9 $ (9.8 ) $ 78.3 $ 11.4 Adjusted net earnings (loss) per share(b) $ 0.04 $ (0.01 ) $ 0.06 $ 0.01 Net cash flow provided from operating activities $ 179.7 $ 315.9 $ 387.5 $ 530.4 Adjusted operating cash flow(b) $ 230.8 $ 187.2 $ 481.7 $ 394.8 Average realized gold price per ounce $ 1,260 $ 1,266 $ 1,241 $ 1,223 Consolidated production cost of sales per equivalent ounce(c) sold(b) $ 662 $ 733 $ 682 $ 712 Attributable(a) production cost of sales per equivalent ounce(c) sold(b) $ 660 $ 731 $ 680 $ 709 Attributable(a) production cost of sales per ounce sold on a by-product basis(b) $ 645 $ 711 $ 665 $ 693 Attributable(a) all-in sustaining cost per ounce sold on a by-product basis(b) $ 901 $ 976 $ 922 $ 963 Attributable(a) all-in sustaining cost per equivalent ounce(c) sold(b) $ 910 $ 988 $ 931 $ 972 Attributable(a) all-in cost per ounce sold on a by-product basis(b) $ 1,098 $ 1,027 $ 1,100 $ 1,022 Attributable(a) all-in cost per equivalent ounce(c) sold(b) $ 1,102 $ 1,037 $ 1,103 $ 1,028 (a) "Total" includes 100% of Chirano production. "Attributable" includes Kinross' share of Chirano (90%) production. (b) The definition and reconciliation of these non-GAAP financial measures is included on page 14 to 18 of this news release. (c) "Gold equivalent ounces" include silver ounces produced and sold converted to a gold equivalent based on a ratio of the average spot market prices for the commodities for each period. The ratio for the second quarter of 2017 was 73.01:1, compared with 75.06:1 for the second quarter of 2016 and for the first six months of 2017 was 71.46:1, compared with 77.20:1 for the first six months of 2016. The following operating and financial results are based on second-quarter 2017 gold equivalent production. Production and cost measures are on an attributable basis: Production: Kinross production increased to 694,874 attributable Au eq. oz. in Q2 2017, compared with production of 671,267 attributable Au eq. oz. in Q2 2016. Production cost of sales: Production cost of sales per Au eq. oz.2 decreased to $660 for Q2 2017, the lowest since 2011, compared with $731 for Q2 2016, mainly as a result of lower cost of sales per ounce at Round Mountain, Fort Knox, Bald Mountain and Tasiast. Production cost of sales per Au oz. on a by-product basis2 decreased to $645 in Q2 2017, compared with $711 in Q2 2016, based on Q2 2017 attributable gold sales of 665,858 ounces and attributable silver sales of 1,294,197 ounces. All-in sustaining cost: All-in sustaining cost per Au eq. oz. sold2 decreased to $910 in Q2 2017, compared with $988 in Q2 2016. All-in sustaining cost per Au oz. sold on a by-product basis2 decreased to $901 in Q2 2017, compared with $976 in Q2 2016. Average realized gold price: The average realized gold price in Q2 2017 was $1,260 per ounce, compared with $1,266 per ounce in Q2 2016. Revenue: Revenue from metal sales decreased slightly to $868.6 million in Q2 2017, compared with $876.4 million during the same period in 2016, mainly due to the slightly lower average realized gold price. Margins: Kinross' attributable margin per Au eq. oz. sold4 was $600 for Q2 2017, compared with a Q2 2016 margin of $535 per Au eq. oz. 4Attributable margin per equivalent ounce sold is a non-GAAP measure defined as "average realized gold price per ounce" less "attributable production cost of sales per gold equivalent ounce sold." Operating cash flow: Adjusted operating cash flow2 increased by 23% to $230.8 million for Q2 2017, compared with $187.2 million for Q2 2016. Net operating cash flow was $179.7 million for Q2 2017, compared with $315.9 million for Q2 2016. Earnings (loss): Adjusted net earnings2,3 increased to $54.9 million, or $0.04 per share, for Q2 2017, compared with a net loss of $9.8 million, or $0.01 per share, for Q2 2016, mainly as a result of a decrease in production cost of sales. Reported net earnings3 were $33.1 million, or $0.03 per share, for Q2 2017, compared with a net loss of $25.0 million, or $0.02 per share, for Q2 2016. Reported net earnings increased mainly as result of a decrease in production cost of sales. Capital expenditures: Capital expenditures increased to $200.7 million for Q2 2017, compared with $114.0 million for the same period last year, primarily due to Tasiast Phase One expansion project costs, and increased spending at Paracatu and Bald Mountain. Operating results Mine-by-mine summaries for 2017 second-quarter operating results may be found on pages nine and 13 of this news release. Highlights include the following: Americas With strong operational performance during the quarter, the region is on track to meet its 2017 guidance range for production and cost of sales per ounce, notwithstanding the temporary curtailment of mining operations at Paracatu. At Fort Knox, production and cost of sales per ounce were mainly in line with Q1 2017. Production decreased compared with Q2 2016 largely due to a colder spring season that affected heap leach performance, which was offset by an increase in mill grades. Cost of sales per ounce was lower year-over-year mainly due to a decrease in operating waste. Round Mountain performed strongly during the quarter, with production increasing 12% compared with Q1 2017, and 24% compared with Q2 2016, primarily due to higher mill grades, the highest the mine has reached since 2008. The production increase was also as a result of more ounces recovered from the heap leach primarily as a result of higher grades. Cost of sales per ounce was at its lowest level since 2012, and was substantially lower both year-over-year and quarter-over-quarter mainly due to the higher mill grades. Labour costs also decreased year-over-year. At Bald Mountain, production increased compared with Q1 2017 and Q2 2016 mainly due to a significant increase of tonnes placed on the heap leach pads, and ounces recovered. Cost of sales decreased compared with Q1 2017 mainly due to lower contractor costs and was lower year-over-year mainly due to a decrease in contractor and maintenance costs. The mine is expected to substantially increase production in the second half of the year due to mine sequencing and timing from the heap leach and is on track to double production for 2017 compared with full-year 2016. Kettle River-Buckhorn outperformed during the quarter, as production increased compared with Q1 2017 and Q2 2016, with cost of sales per ounce decreasing mainly due to higher grades. While the last batch of ore was hauled from Buckhorn in July, the mill is expected to continue to process stockpiles, with minimal production expected in the third quarter. The small-footprint, high-grade underground mine performed strongly during its nine year mine life and exceeded expectations, with mine life originally slated to end in 2015. Exploration in the region continues in 2017. At Paracatu, production was higher compared with Q1 2017 and Q2 2016 mainly due to higher recoveries. Cost of sales per ounce decreased compared with Q1 2017 mainly due to the higher recoveries, and was higher compared with Q2 2016 primarily due to more operating waste mined and unfavourable foreign exchange movements. At the beginning of July, the expected temporary curtailment of mining and Plant 2 operations commenced at Paracatu due to the lower than average rainfall in the area. The Company's 2017 production guidance took into account the potential curtailment and is not expected to be impacted at this time. The expected production impact has been partly mitigated by the tailings reprocessing initiative, which is expected to increase in the third quarter at Plant 1, while Plant 2 maintenance has been brought forward to coincide with the downtime. The production from the tailings reprocessing is expected to be approximately 25,000 - 35,000 gold ounces in the third quarter, with a processing rate of approximately 50,000 t/d at Plant 1. The Company also continued to implement water mitigation efforts, including an enhanced water pumping system, securing water rights, and installment of wells around the site. Curtailment of mining and Plant 2 operations will continue until the water balance allows for production to resume, which is expected in Q4 when the rainy season begins. At Maricunga, production from the rinsing of the heap materials placed on the pads prior to the suspension of mining activities continued to produce better than expected results. Cost of sales per ounce was lower quarter-over-quarter and year-over-year due to higher ounces recovered. While the rinsing of the pads is now expected to continue for the remainder of the year, production is expected to be minimal and lower than the first half of 2017. Russia The region performed well in Q2 2017 and is expected to meet its 2017 production and cost of sales per ounce guidance. Kupol and Dvoinoye production was slightly higher compared with Q1 2017 primarily due to an increase in ore processed, and was lower compared with Q2 2016 mainly due to the anticipated lower grades. Cost of sales per ounce remain among the lowest in the portfolio, but increased compared with Q1 2017 mainly due to lower grades and more operating waste mined, and increased compared with Q2 2016 mainly due to a decline in gold equivalent ounces sold and unfavourable foreign exchange rates. West Africa The region had solid performance during the quarter and is on track to meet its 2017 guidance for production and cost of sales per ounce. Tasiast production was lower compared with Q1 2017 primarily due to lower mill grades and a decrease in ore processed, with cost of sales per ounce higher primarily due to higher contractor costs and lower grades. Production and cost of sales per ounce outperformed Q2 2016 results due to the strike and suspension of mining last year. At Chirano, production was slightly lower compared with Q1 2017 mainly due to less ore mined, and was 28% higher compared with Q2 2016 mainly due to higher grades as the operation ended open pit mining and transitioned to mining the underground Paboase and Akoti deposits. Cost of sales per ounce was higher quarter-over-quarter mainly due to increased maintenance costs and was 22% lower year-over-year mainly due to better grades and lower operating waste. Organic development projects Tasiast Phase One project development is progressing well, and continues to be on time and on budget, with full commercial production expected in Q2 2018. Plant construction is now 55% complete, with 85% of all equipment and materials now onsite. Installation of the SAG mill's outer shell is now complete and mechanical work has commenced. The oxygen plant has now been commissioned, with the tailings storage facility expected to be commissioned shortly. Concrete works and foundations for the primary crusher, apron feeder and cyclone towers have been completed and heavy mechanical work has now commenced at all three facilities. Installation of three new leach tanks is progressing, and installation of the conveyor is expected to begin shortly. Phase One is expected to increase plant throughput to 12,000 t/d from 8,000 t/d. The Tasiast Phase Two and Round Mountain Phase W feasibility studies are advancing well and expected to be completed in September, when the Company expects to make a development decision on both expansion projects. The Tasiast Phase Two expansion contemplates installing an additional 18,000 t/d of throughput capacity, for a total combined capacity of 30,000 t/d for both phases. The Round Mountain Phase W expansion project is expected to extend mine life at one of Kinross' most consistent operations located in one of the best mining jurisdictions in the world. At Bald Mountain, detailed engineering work at the Vantage Complex in the South area is progressing on schedule. The project team has now been established and the execution plan is being developed. The permitting process is proceeding as planned and major construction work is expected to begin in the first half of 2018. The proposed heap leach pad and associated processing facilities and infrastructure is expected to accommodate a total capacity of 68 million tonnes of ore. Development at Kinross' Russian development projects are in their advanced stages. At the Moroshka satellite deposit, located approximately four kilometres from Kupol, decline development is on schedule, with construction of surface infrastructure now complete. The Company began processing ore from the September Northeast satellite deposit at the Kupol mill in June 2017. September Northeast, which is located approximately 15 kilometres from Dvoinoye, was completed on budget and on schedule. Exploration Kinross' exploration efforts continued to focus within the footprint of existing mines and the immediate surrounding districts. During the first half of the year, a total of approximately 113,000 metres of drilling was completed for brownfield exploration, representing 54% of the 2017 brownfield drilling program. Highlights from the first half of 2017 include: Kupol: A total of approximately 44,000 metres was drilled at Kupol in the first half of 2017, including approximately 21,400 metres of infill drilling completed at the north and south strike extensions of the Kupol main vein. The infill drilling program continues to show encouraging results. The program is expected to be completed in Q3 2017, after which geological modelling and evaluation will commence to determine potential mineral reserve conversions and mineral resource additions for end of year. Tasiast Sud: The majority of exploration activities at Tasiast in the first half of 2017 were conducted in the Tasiast Sud area within the C613 and C615 deposits, which are located immediately south of the Tasiast mine and west of the Tamaya deposit. Approximately 12,800 metres of drilling was completed and results have been encouraging. As a result, Kinross is commencing an accelerated infill drilling program in the area, with the goal of potential mineral resource additions at year end. The Company has also initiated a pre-feasibility study on the potential for a dump leach operation at Tasiast Sud, combining material from Tamaya, C613 and C615. The majority of mineralization at both C613 and C615 is within a banded iron formation, with C613 defined over an approximate two kilometre mineralized strike open to the south and north, and C615 defined over a three kilometre strike. Bald Mountain: Exploration activities are continuing to focus on pit extensions and targets identified in 2016. Drilling results from the Vantage Complex deposit, including the Vantage South extension, Saddle and Luxe, along with drilling at Top, Top Gap and Saga in the North area, have been encouraging. Debt offering On July 6, 2017, Kinross closed its offering of debt securities, consisting of $500.0 million principal amount of 4.50% Senior Notes due 2027. Kinross used the net proceeds, along with available cash on hand, to repay its term loan, which was due August 2020. As a result, the Company now has no scheduled debt repayments until 2021. Balance sheet As of June 30, 2017, Kinross had cash and cash equivalents of $1,061.3 million, compared with $819.0 million as of March 31, 2017. The Company also had available credit of $1,433.1 million as of June 30, 2017 for total liquidity of approximately $2.5 billion. On July 28, 2017, the Company extended the maturity date of its $1,500.0 million revolving credit facility by one year from August 10, 2021 to August 10, 2022. Cerro Casale divestment On June 9, 2017, Kinross completed an agreement to sell its 25% interest in the Cerro Casale project and its 100% interest in the Quebrada Seca exploration project in Chile to Goldcorp Inc. ("Goldcorp"). The sale included gross cash proceeds of $260.0 million (which includes $20.0 million for Quebrada Seca), a contingent payment of $40.0 million following a construction decision for Cerro Casale, the assumption by Goldcorp of a $20.0 million contingent payment obligation payable to Barrick Gold Corporation when production at Cerro Casale commences, and a 1.25% royalty on 25% of gross revenues from all metals sold at the properties (with the Company foregoing the first $10.0 million). Additionally on closing, the Company entered into a water supply agreement with the Cerro Casale joint venture to have certain rights to access, up to a fixed amount, water not required by the Cerro Casale joint venture. Yukon property vend-in On June 14, 2017, Kinross completed an agreement to sell its 100% interest in the White Gold exploration project for gross cash proceeds of $7.6 million, 17.5 million common shares of White Gold Corp., representing 19.9% of the issued and outstanding shares of White Gold Corp., with a current market value of approximately $28 million, and deferred payments of approximately $11.4 million. Outlook The following section of the news release represents forward-looking information and users are cautioned that actual results may vary. We refer to the risks and assumptions contained in the Cautionary Statement on Forward-Looking Information on page 19 of this news release. The Company expects to be within its 2017 production guidance range of approximately 2.5 - 2.7 million Au eq. oz., its production cost of sales guidance range of $660 - $720 per Au eq. oz., and its all-in sustaining cost guidance range of $925 - $1,025 per Au eq. oz. sold. The Company expects to meet its 2017 capital expenditures forecast of approximately $900 million (+/- 5%). Other operating costs is now expected to be $80 - $90 million for 2017, compared with the previous $60 million forecast, mainly as a result of the temporary curtailment at Paracatu and VAT and other tax related items at Tasiast. Depreciation, depletion and amortization is now expected to be approximately $300 - $325 per Au eq. oz. for 2017, compared with the previous forecast of $350 per Au eq. oz. Conference call details In connection with the release, Kinross will hold a conference call and audio webcast on Thursday, August 3, 2017 at 8:00 a.m. ET to discuss the results, followed by a question-and-answer session. To access the call, please dial: Canada & US toll-free - 1-800-319-4610 Outside of Canada & US - 1-604-638-5340 Replay (available up to 14 days after the call): Canada & US toll-free - 1-800-319-6413; Passcode - 1511 followed by #. Outside of Canada & US - 1-604-638-9010; Passcode -1511followed by #. You may also access the conference call on a listen-only basis via webcast at our website www.kinross.com. The audio webcast will be archived on our website at www.kinross.com. This news release should be read in conjunction with Kinross' 2017 second-quarter unaudited Financial Statements and Management's Discussion and Analysis report at www.kinross.com. Kinross' 2017 second-quarter unaudited Financial Statements and Management's Discussion and Analysis have been filed with Canadian securities regulators (available at www.sedar.com) and furnished to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (available at www.sec.gov). Kinross shareholders may obtain a copy of the financial statements free of charge upon request to the Company. About Kinross Gold Corporation Seoul needs new framework to cope with rapid change By Choi Ha-young Rep. Lee Soo-hyuck South Korea may be sidelined in negotiations to resolve the North Korea nuclear and missile issues, not because of its diplomatic incapacity but because of the changing situation regarding Pyongyang's advanced missile technology, said a former chief negotiator for the six-party talks. Rep. Lee Soo-hyuck of the ruling Democratic Party of Korea (DPK) said the U.S., not South Korea, will have to take the helm in dealing with the unprecedented threat considering the characteristic of North Korea's intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBM), which it claims are capable of hitting the U.S. mainland. Lee was the South Korean representative in the multilateral talks dedicated to denuclearizing the North in 2003. "Currently, North Korea is one of the few countries on earth that can attack the U.S. with missile capacity," Lee said in an interview with The Korea Times at his office in the National Assembly, Thursday. "The paradigm has changed dramatically. Washington is a player directly involved in the crisis." It has been said that Pyongyang continues ICBM tests to show its intention to make a deal with Washington over the issue, not with Seoul, although President Moon Jae-in has vowed to take a leading role in addressing North Korean issues. So concerns have increased that Seoul may be excluded in talks, heightened by North Korea not responding to South Korean offers for military and nonpolitical talks. * The World Banks Chief Economist for Latin America and the Caribbean, Carlos Vegh, has said he believes Brazils economy will grow this year, despite the countrys political crisis. The comments were made at a symposium on the macroeconomic challenges facing the region, held on the same day that Brazils federal chamber of deputies began voting on whether President Michel Temer should face trial over corruption charges. Vegh went on to say that he believed that Temer would complete his term in office and that Brazils economy would grow, if only a little, as it is emerging from a deep recession after posting negative GDP growth of 3.8% and 3.6% in 2015 and 2016 respectively. End of preview - This article contains approximately 118 words. Subscribers: Log in now to read the full article Not a Subscriber? Choose from one of the following options Praying mantises are known for their specialized "arms" a pair of oversized appendages near the top of the thorax that are lined with sharp spines and capable of immobilizing prey. And a recently discovered fossil sheds light on how those lethal weapons may have emerged. Scientists described an exceptionally well-preserved praying mantis fossil embedded in a rock slab excavated from a site in northeastern Brazil, dating the mantis to about 110 million years ago and identifying it as Santanmantis axelrodi, according to a new study. While the earliest mantids another name for insects in the mantis family can be traced to the Jurassic Period (199.6 to 145.5 million years ago), the Cretaceous Period (145.5 to 65.5 million years ago) is when the group's diversity began to emerge, the study authors wrote. This fossil is more complete than any other specimen of this species, revealing previously unknown details of the body parts in early mantids that are adapted for predation. [Lunch on the Wing: Mantises Snack on Birds (Photos)] The fragile remnants of ancient insects are far rarer than fossils of more robust creatures with shells or skeletons, yet a number of fascinating insect specimens have stood the test of time. The oldest example of insect sex dates to 165 million years ago; the oldest known stick insect dates to 126 million years ago; and a 46-million-year-old mosquito was preserved while still engorged with its final blood meal. In the newly described fossil mantis, much of the insect's head, thorax and wings were preserved. The head measured about 0.2 inches (4 millimeters) wide, while the wings measured 0.6 inches (16 mm) long and retained remarkably detailed vein patterns, the study authors wrote. Two pairs of legs were also present in the fossil, with the uppermost pair folded up under the head so that little of their structure was visible. But the lower legs were extended, revealing spines on both the upper and lower parts something that was not apparent in other fossils of this species, the researchers explained. Restorations of S. axelrodi incorporate the newly discovered details. (Image credit: Hornig et al.) The longest spines measured about 0.02 inches (0.4 mm) in length, standing erect and angling out from the leg at about 90 degrees from a slightly wider base which meant that they were probably rigid and they had what appeared to be a sharp tip, the scientists wrote in the study. This marks a significant difference from the predatory adaptations of modern mantids, which typically bear spines only on their primary limbs, the scientists explained. The sturdy, erect spikes on the fossil's secondary pair of limbs "strongly indicate that these appendages were involved in the prey-catching process," the scientists wrote, suggesting that predatory behavior in these ancient insects may have been more diverse than expected certainly more so than in their descendants alive today. The findings were published online July 24 in the open-access journal PeerJ. Original article on Live Science. p.p1 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times} This story was updated Aug. 4 at 3:29 p.m. EDT. About 508 million years ago, a skinny, flat worm swam through the deep sea, waiting for the right moment to extend its 50 sharp spines and nab its next meal, a new study finds. The 4-inch-long (10 centimeters) worm was small about the length of a toilet paper roll but its spines would have made it a formidable carnivore, at least for tiny prey, the researchers said. "The grasping spines in the head long and curved inward were used to capture small swimming creatures like crustaceans (shrimp-like creatures) and larvae of other marine animals," study co-researcher Derek Briggs, a professor of paleontology at Yale University, told Live Science in an email. [See Images of the Ancient, Spiny Worm] The newly identified creature belongs to a group of bristly jawed, carnivorous marine worms scientifically known as chaetognaths and commonly called arrowworms. Intriguingly, the newfound worm is one of the largest chaetognaths on record, and was likely a forerunner of today's smaller, plankton-eating chaetognaths, the researchers said. The scientists named it Capinatator praetermissus, Latin for "overlooked grasping swimmer." (In Latin, "Capio" and "natator" mean "to grasp" and "swimmer," respectively. The species name is Latin for "overlooked," reflecting the more than 30 years it took to name and describe the species.) From 1983 to 2016, researchers uncovered 49 C. praetermissus specimens in British Columbia's Burgess Shale deposit in the Canadian Rockies, a region known for holding innumerable fossils from the Cambrian period, which lasted from about 543 million to about 490 million years ago. However, the researchers didn't have enough information to formally describe the critters until this year, they said. At a 1983 fieldwork expedition on Mount Stephen in the Canadian Rockies, a Royal Ontario Museum team, led by Desmond Collins, uncovered several Burgess Shale-type fossils that were identified later as C. praetermissus. (Image credit: Copyright Royal Ontario Museum) During its lifetime in the middle Cambrian, C. praetermissus swam by undulating its slender body. But its head was the attention grabber: It had about 25 curving spines on each side of its head almost double the number of spines chaetognaths have today. When it spotted a potential meal, C. praetermissus would have deployed its spines outward and closed them together over the hapless prey. "Darting from the water depths, the spines would have been a terrifying sight to many of the smallest marine creatures that lived during that time," study co-researcher Jean-Bernard Caron, a senior curator of invertebrate paleontology at the Royal Ontario Museum and an associate professor at the University of Toronto, said in a statement. It's common to find fossilized chaetognath spines, but it's rare to unearth fossils containing the remains of soft tissues, as researchers did for this study, Briggs noted. "The specimens preserve evidence of features such as the gut and muscles, which normally decay away, as well as the more decay-resistant grasping spines," Briggs said in the statement. "They show that chaetognath predators evolved during the explosion of marine diversity during the Cambrian period, and were an important component of some of the earliest marine ecosystems. This marine worm had almost twice as many pairs of spines that it used to capture prey up to 25 pairs as its modern-day counterparts. The pictured specimen was uncovered in Burgess Shale at Walcott Quarry in British Columbia's Yoho National Park. (Image credit: JB Caron/Copyright Royal Ontario Museum ) C. praetermissus is hardly the only spiny worm from the Cambrian. Other wormy monsters include Collinsium ciliosum, a spiky, worm-like creature with 30 legs that were either feathery or tipped with claws, from 518 million years ago; Ottoia prolifica, a toothy, penis-shaped worm that lived 508 million years ago; and Hallucigenia sparsa, a spiky worm with a toothy grin from 508 million years ago. The new study was published online today (Aug. 3) in the journal Current Biology. Editor's Note: This article was updated to fix the age of Ottoia prolifica. At the time the O. prolifica study was published, the Burgess Shale site was dated to 505 million years ago. But within the past few years, improved evidence has helped researchers pin it to 508 million years ago, although there is still a margin of error for that date. Regardless, it's important to note that both C. praetermissus and O. prolifica are the same age. Original article on Live Science. The Minoans and Mycenaeans were the first advanced, literate civilizations to appear in Europe. They left archaeologists with a wealth of material to pore over: palaces, golden jewelry, wall paintings, writing (some of it still undeciphered) and, of course, burials, in what is today Greece. Now, new research on Bronze Age skeletons could shed light on the origins of the Minoan and Mycenaean people. The study of ancient DNA suggests that there is genetic continuity between the predecessors of these ancient cultures and Greeks today. The Minoan and Mycenaean civilizations emerged from Aegean farming communities and gave rise to the Greeks who built the Parthenon and developed democracy. The findings, which were published online today (Aug. 2) in the journal Nature (opens in new tab), also raise some questions about prehistoric migrations that set the stage for the Bronze Age. [7 Bizarre Ancient Cultures That History Forgot] First Greek civilizations The Minoans and Mycenaeans have intrigued archaeologists from the early days of the discipline. The Bronze Age civilization called the Mycenaeans used an early form of Greek called Linear B (shown inscribed on this tablet). (Image credit: Zde , CC BY-SA 3.0) German businessman and archaeology pioneer Heinrich Schliemann set out in the 1870s to find the real-life remains of the heroic-era Homer described in "The Odyssey" and "The Iliad."He uncovered gold-rich tombs in the city of Mycenae, and since then, dozens more Mycenaean sites have been studied across mainland Greece and the Aegean Islands. The civilization, which lasted from about 1600 B.C. to 1100 B.C., produced the earliest written form of the Greek language. [10 Beasts & Dragons: How Reality Made Myth] Just a few decades after Schliemann's exploits, British archaeologist Sir Arthur Evans revealed the ruins of a monumental, fresco-filled palace on the Greek island of Crete that predated the Mycenaeans. He called this culture "Minoan" after the mythical King Minos who ruled over Crete and occasionally sacrificed young Athenians to the labyrinth-dwelling half-man, half-bull Minotaur. The Minoans thrived on the island between 2700 B.C. and the mid-1400s B.C., when the Thera volcanic eruption on Santorini in the southern Aegean Sea may have triggered the cultures collapse. Minoan script and hieroglyphs remain untranslated, but the language is thought to be very different from Greek. Finding their roots Because of some iconographic similarities with Egyptian art, Evans thought that the Minoans might have come from North Africa. In the century that followed, others proposed theories about how the Minoans and the Mycenaeans came about, wondering how much these cultures owed to other great civilizations in Mesopotamia and Egypt, said study leader Iosif Lazaridis, a geneticist at Harvard Medical School. "These theories have been difficult to test, but with ancient DNA, it is possible to say something about the origins of the people," Lazaridis told Live Science. Lazaridis and his colleagues looked at ancient DNA samples from 19 sets of human remains that had been found at Bronze Age tombs and burial sites in the Aegeanregion. The researchers sequenced those ancient genomes and checked the DNA against a database of 332 other ancient genomes and thousands of genomes of present-day humans. Genetically, the Minoans and Mycenaeans had the most in common with early Neolithic farmers from Greece and Turkey, the researchers found. The genomes of the Minoans and the Mycenaeans were also similar to those of modern Greek populations and to each other for the most part. The study found that the Minoans and Mycenaeans got some of their DNA from populations farther east, from places like the Caucasus (the area between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea) and Iran. However, only the Mycenaeans seemed to have some "northern" ancestry, which the authors speculate could represent the vestiges of a massive prehistoric migration of nomadic herders from the Eurasian steppe that eventually made it to mainland Greece but not Crete. Lazaridis was involved in a previous ancient-DNA study (opens in new tab) that pointed to such a migration as the potential source of Indo-European languages (a category that includes Greek). John Bintliff, an archaeologist at Leiden University in the Netherlands who was not involved in the study, said some of the findings resonate with current ideas on the Minoans and Mycenaeans. For example, the fact that the Mycenaeans spoke Greek but the Minoans spoke a different, still untranslated tongue "has long suggested that the mainland and Crete were subjected to different streams of farming migrants," Bintliff told Live Science. However, Bintliff cautioned against looking for big historic events in gene diffusion. "The supposed 'nomad invasion' has been a long-researched issue in European prehistory, and was originally tied to innovations in weaponry and burial customs," Bintliff said. "After decades of investigation, however, most prehistorians in Eastern to Western Europe disagreed with any major arrival of new people Gene flow can occur presumably through individual smaller-scale migration of a peaceful kind, through commerce and the movement of artisans and other specialists." Lazaridis said further research could potentially help scientists understand how these "eastern" and "northern" types of ancestry got in the DNA of Bronze Age Greeks, whether by trickling in slowly from neighboring regions over thousands of years, or bysudden big migrations. Original article on Live Science. Laminate Medical Technologies, an Israeli firm, won an Investigational Device Exemption (IDE) from the FDA to begin a clinical trial of its VasQ device designed to support arteriovenous fistulas. The technology will hopefully benefit patients that receive hemodialysis via AVF in the upper extremity. In many dialysis patients the fistulas that are created too often have trouble staying in shape and may require revision procedures. Additionally, the connection may narrow, leading to complications, and blood turbulence near the connection can lead to clots or cell lysis. The VasQ device, made of Nitinol memory alloy, supports a fistula by wrapping around a vein and holding the artery so it doesnt disconnect. The connection, being more secure and retaining its shape, prevents blockages, disconnections, and reduces the turbulence of blood as it moves through the fistula. Heres a bit of detail about the study approved by the FDA that will test the VasQ for safety and efficacy: The prospective, multi-center, single-arm, open-label, 13-site study will enroll 129 male and female patients, 18 to 80 years old, who require creation of new brachiocephalic fistula. During screening, surgeons will assess additional eligibility criteria such as adequate blood vessel anatomy and absence of potentially precluding past and current medical conditions and comorbidities. The primary effectiveness endpoint for this trial will be the primary patency rate 6 months after creation of the arteriovenous fistula. Patients will be followed for a total of 2 years. Heres an informative video from Laminate Medical Technologies explaining the workings of the VasQ device: Product page: VasQ Via: Laminate Medical Once you have mastered the fundamentals of bird identification, the next step in my opinion is to start a life list and a Montana list. Those who have been birding for years have many lists they enjoy adding to and keeping current. I have at least 100 lists for various parts of Montana, as well as states and countries I have birded in. The list that I enjoy the most is the year list for Montana. Each year I keep track of the birds that I see that year by date and location. At the end of each month I compare how many birds I have on my current year list to last year and to the five-year average for that month. Doing this does a couple of things for me. Because I am competitive in nature, I always want to do better than I did last year, or at least stay close to my five-year average for each month. This keeps me interested in going out birding as often as possible. If you dont compete against yourself you can end up saying, why should I drive to Dillon to see a gray flycatcher, I have already seen it 11 times in the past. Thats exactly what my wife said to me recently on a birding trip, I dont get it, you have already seen this bird many times. You drove 90 miles and found it within three minutes, and it looks just like what it looked like the last time you saw it. She misses the point. I didnt have it on this years list. Thats what keeps me birding. In late May I took a 1,800-mile trip to eastern Montana birding in communities such as Malta, Fort Peck, Plentywood, Westby, Roundup and Billings. Why? I needed the birds in those areas on my 2017 year list. I know a lot of birders who kind of lose interest in birding eventually, and I think it is because they dont keep a year list. They have seen most of the birds in their area, and they just dont want to go see them again. The result of that philosophy is that you dont get better at birding because youre not birding. Consequently, you dont find species that you have never seen because you are not spending enough time in the field to run into the rarities. As an example, on my 1,800-mile excursion to eastern Montana, I found a species that I have never seen in Montana in several past trips. The species was the least tern, which I have seen in Florida, New Jersey, and the Washington D.C. area, but never Montana. They migrate in small numbers up the Missouri River in Montana as far as Culbertson and Wolf Point. I have stopped at the Culbertson Bridge on Montana Highway 16 every time I've been in eastern Montana in hopes of seeing one. I must have looked at least 20 times over the years. This time, the river was low enough to have an exposed sandbar near the bridge with a least tern along with several Franklin gulls sunning themselves. How did I finally get this species on my Montana list? By being persistent and birding eastern Montana most springs with the hope that someday I might see one. So all of this brings me to the bird that I want to share with you today the eastern phoebe. This species has been seen 24 times in Montana and the sightings are scattered over the state with the majority of those sightings east of the Continental Divide. I have seen the species three times, all of them in Westby, which is near the North Dakota border. My last sighting was in September 2010. It is not typically on my current year list. On May 13 an eastern phoebe was identified near the bridge that crosses the North Fork of the Big Blackfoot on the Helmville/Ovando road and reported to ebird. Due to conflicts I was not able to visit the site until June 9. We heard the distinctive fee-beee song within a few minutes of arriving, and then it landed on the bridge rail and we got good looks at it. I was unable to get a photo, but another birder allowed me to use her photo for this article. Eastern phoebe is a large flycatcher with a length of 7 inches, a dark brown head, brown back and wings, long tail and white chin and belly. This species lacks wing bars or an eye ring. Most field guides dont include Montana in their range maps for the species. The eastern phoebe has not been recorded in Powell County previously. Its always a mystery as to why a rare species shows up when it does. Most rare species show in the spring or fall during migration to or from breeding grounds in this case the province states of Canada. The most logical explanation for rarities is that a storm blows them off course. In this case it appears that the bird may stay all summer. So far this year, I have found four species I didnt see in 2016, so Im off to a good start to beat my year list of 2016. Im currently at 273 species for the year as I write. Last year in total I saw 277 species. With five months to go, I think I will exceed last years list. Ive mapped out a plan of areas to go to the rest of the year and hope the birds will be there. Its not too late for you to start a 2017 year list, and then next year you can try to beat it. Good birding and may you find a rare species this year. Thats the fun of it all. by Erik Sass @eriksass1, August 2, 2017 While its safe to say most publishers remain skeptical about Facebook as an advertising partner, the worlds dominant social network has been introducing a number of new features in an attempt to woo them back. That includes greater control over how they monetize their content. This week, Facebook revealed a new tool that allows publishers to set CPM targets for ads appearing with their content on the Facebook Audience Network. The new CPM Targets tool, announced by publisher solutions product marketing manager Amelia Zins in a blog post, allows publishers to set minimum bids for ads next to their content on the Audience Network. However, the new tool offers a bit more flexibility than a simple price floor. advertisement advertisement Facebook will accept some bids that are slightly below the target price as long as they are balanced out by bids over the target price. That enables publishers to hit their CPM target without sacrificing too much revenue. Among other benefits, the tool allows publishers to set varying price targets for different ad formats and audience segments. It also promises to restore some publisher control over what constitutes premium inventory, as well as the user experience on their sites. For example, reducing clutter by refusing to run ads for very low CPMs. This is just the latest in a series of new products introduced by Facebook as it seeks to repair its relationships with content owners. Last month, Facebook disclosed that it is preparing a digital subscription system, which will enable publishers to limit the number of articles Facebook users can see for free through their news feed, capping it at 10. After that, they would have to buy a subscription. The social network also recently announced it is allowing publishers to create Groups linked to their Facebook pages. Successful Ghanaian fashion and lifestyle brand, Sacha Okoh, says there is a room for improvement in the lifestyle industry in Ghana, and she hopes to be the one to bring that change, especially to Ghanaian women. I aim to improve the beauty and fashion sense of Ghanaian women, one 'fleek' at a time, she reiterated. The CEO and founder of Viva Boutique, currently one of the Ghana's leading beauty and style gurus around, she is highly recommended for her taste for luxury multi-brands. Her experience and expertise in the fashion and lifestyle industry span over 12 years and, as such, she needs no introduction. She is also the host of lifestyle, fashion and beauty tips segment on the 'Tips From The Powder Room' on GHOne TV. She has fast become the go-to lady for all things beauty, style and fashion. Sacha began her journey into the industry in 2005, after she completed De Montfort University, Leicester-UK, with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Business and Marketing. Before that, she worked in the finance and research industry due to her background in retailing from some of the biggest brands in London. I decided to create my own make-up line after recognising the lack of Ghanaian-owned brands that catered for the Ghanaian woman instead of the brands manufactured for those in the Diaspora, which had saturated the Ghanaian market then. I wanted to create a brand that had the Ghanaian woman in mind, and provided total coverage on her face and was suitable for the typical Ghanaian weather all year round. I also wanted a brand that would also cover all blemishes and enhance each Ghanaian woman's beauty, and that was how successful makeup brand, SO Aesthetics Makeup was Born in 2005, she said about how she started. Sacha within the same period also took over the running of Viva Boutique, which retails merchandise by top Italian and French designs, Bottega Veneta, Dolce &Gabbana, Givenchy, Moschino, La Perla and Valentino, among others. She also went to London School of Fashion, and gained a qualification in Buying & Merchandising. Sacha has positioned the SO Aesthetics Brand as one of the most authentic Ghanaian-owned brands on the make-up today, and moved the company to become a household name in Ghana. She successfully launched the web and digital presence of the company and created one of the first ever make-up fairs, the SO Aesthetic make-up. She also successfully managed sales campaigns with several companies and sponsored several beauty pageants such as Miss Ghana and Miss Universe and entities, including Vlisco Ghana, the Office of the First Lady and others. I am also a trained make-up artist from one of the worlds foremost beauty institutes, the London School of Beauty and Make-up with a qualification in Advanced Make-up Artistry in 2010, and I went on to train over 100 make-up artists in Ghana, with over 60 percent employed and currently working in the beauty industry in Ghana and abroad, she said about her exploits in the make-up artistry. Sacha, indeed, brings her impressive resume, wealth of experience and impressive beauty skills on her hit segment, Tips From The Powder Room on the most watched girl talk show in Ghana on GHOne TV every Wednesday night, where she gives incredible tips on how every lady can stay fabulous, with a range of topics from care of the skin, to how to create the perfect look for the right occasion, to what colours to try with your skin tone, to how to do the next make-up trends, suggestion of the nest products for your face and skin types plus answering every make-up need or question posed by viewers. It is a fun and interactive segment that captivates the viewers from beginning to end and leaves them informed, educated and entertained on how to be and stay fabulous each week. Ghanaian actress and movie producer, Zynnell Zuh, believes that the Ghanaian movie industry has taken a nosedive. Speaking to KOD on The Zone, the 'Adams Apple' actress said, Well is true, that the industry is on a serious decline and it is because of so many reasons. According to Zuh, most movie producers have folded up businesses due to poor sale. I think the dynamics have changed, but when you produce movies that do not have the crossover appeal you can't market to other countries. It's a marketing thing, she explained. Asked by KOD if Kumawood has taken over the movie industry from the 'glam movies', she said, They have their own challenges, they may not tell you, but I mean it's very evident they have taken over, there are more movies produced in Kumawood than the English. Known for slaying red carpet events, Zynnell disclosed that the fashion industry has given make-up artists, photographers and fashion designers jobs. Her pronouncement follows Yvonne Nelson's comments about 'slay queens and kings' on red carpets. Yvonne Nelson, on her Twitter handle, mentioned that the industry has so lost its way and they can't even see it, they are all going in that direction. Dressing up to be posted on SM. Ghanas economy is on a life support and must be treated with absolute care and attention, a member of the Minority in Parliament Isaac Adongo has said. According to him, the Akufo-Addo government is deliberately playing propaganda with the state of the economy and may be hit with the reality soon. Our economy is on life support; any attempt to use propaganda will expose us. Where in the world, do we use 10-year-old nominal values to make present calculations? Gross international reserves mean nothing if you dont relate it with the depreciation of the cedi. Today, we are being told that a father who fails to raise revenue to feed his family should be praised, the Bolga Central MP noted while contributing to the debate on the reviewed 2017 budget presented by the Finance minister Ken Ofori-Atta Monday. On his part, former deputy finance minister Cassiel Ato Forson said the government has failed to achieve its revenue targets. Government has failed to achieve its revenue targets. We are cutting down on the budget for goods and services by GhC600million. We are paying people but they dont have the resources to work with. The budget is being revised from Asempa budget to Asembone budget, he said. Meanwhile, the government has announced that over 500, 000 jobs will be created for the youth who are being stopped from the illegal mining business galamsey. Over 500,000 job opportunities in oil palm plantations and regulated small-scale mining will be created under a five-year Multilateral Mining Integration Project (MMIP) project, Mr. Ofori-Atta stated. The General Secretary of the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC), Mr Johnson Asideu Nketia is currently at parliament house and set to hold a crunch meeting with the minority side in parliament. I have been angered by the actions of the speaker so I drove early this morning from Oyarifa to this place waiting for my Chairman to join me for us to meet with the minority to thank them for staging a walk-out after their views were suppressed yesterday, he revealed on Okay Fm. Mr Asiedu Nketia said the minority deserve a pat in the back for the bold decision they took and that his presence in parliament is to urge them on to embark on similar moves in the future. The Minority on Tuesday staged a walk-out protesting the Speakers decision to refer a motion for a rescission of the $510m AMERI power deal to the Mines and Energy Committee for consideration. Minority leader, Haruna Iddrisu was seen furiously gesticulating at his opposite number after the Speaker had shot down his objections to a motion on the AMERI deal. The minority is accusing the speaker of showing bias towards them and trying to suppress their views on the floor of parliament indicating that it informed their decision to stage a walk-out. 02.08.2017 LISTEN Kumasi, Aug 02, GNA - Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) has scaled up the drive towards forging stronger partnership with industry to stimulate economic growth. This involves deepening their engagement - to generate innovative and strategic ideas to make the university's programmes relevant to the real needs of industry. As part of this a day's stakeholders' conference had been held in Kumasi and brought together representatives of the Association of Ghana Industries (AGI), Association of Small Scale Industries (ASSI) and the academia. 'Strengthening academia-industry collaboration for national development' was the theme chosen for the meeting. It came under the KNUST's 'Building stronger universities' project funded by the Danish International Development Agency (DANIDA) and a consortium of Danish universities, led by University of Copenhagen. Deputy Minister of Trade and Industry, Mr. Robert Ahomka-Lindsay, addressing the conference, underlined the need for the university to engage industry in its research activities. This, he said, had become vital given the complexities of the current economic environment and the fierce competition resulting from globalization, something that had made the integration of science and technology into the operation of businesses imperative. It was for this reason that building academia-industry linkages was critical, he added. Mr. Ahomka-Lindsay noted that academia had become the prime source of ideas that were increasingly being translated into viable market commodities - service provision, product manufacturing and improvement in systems, processes and procedures of the corporate world. It is estimated that, about 75 per cent of patents registered in the United States has their origins in the universities. He indicated that research and development was of great importance to business as production processes and methods kept rapidly changing and improving in complexity and technology. Professor Mrs. Ibok Oduro, Provost, College of Science, spoke of the determination of the university to strengthen its research capacity through the implementation of well-thought out programmes and activities. The event was used to launch the KNUST Academia-Industry Database, a project funded by DANIDA, and aimed at assisting the university to be more responsive to the pressing needs of the society. GNA By Florence Afriyie Mensah, GNA Accra, Aug. 2, GNA - Government has inaugurated a nine-member Board to steer affairs at the Ghana Export-Import Bank (EXIM Bank) with a charge to members to pursue an export-led agenda to help restructure the economy. Mr Kwaku Kwarteng, Deputy Minister of Finance, who inaugurated the Board, said it must help the government in the realisation of its flagship initiatives, such as the one-district, one-factory programme. 'The government expects the board to come up with prudent policies and programmes that will ensure that exporters are well resourced; be it financing exportable products and services, so that the nation can reap appreciable foreign exchange from the sector,' he said. He urged the board to focus on non-traditional export products such as poultry, cassava, cashew, oil palm and pharmaceuticals, which had the potential to facilitate the government's export trade and enhance socio-economic development. He said while the Export Trade, Agricultural and Industrial Development Fund (EDAIF) had undertaken many interventions in the past to enhance the contribution of SMEs to economic development, these efforts did not adequately address the funding gaps faced by SMEs and the export community. 'These challenges have necessitated the strategic move to establish the EXIM Bank,' he said. The Ghana EXIM Bank was set up by an Act of Parliament, Act 911, in 2016 to help support and develop directly or indirectly trade between Ghana and other countries and build the country's capacity and competitiveness on the international marketplace. Responding, Mr Kwadwo Boateng Gyenfi, Board Chairman, gave the assurance that the team would ensure that the bank's mandate was carried out. Mr Gyenfi said the board would explore, maintain and deepen business relationships with other EXIM banks, including the India EXIM Bank, the Africa Export-Import Bank, the China Exim Bank, among other such financial institutions. The other members of the board are Mr Lawrence Agyinsam, the Chief Executive Officer of the Ghana EXIM Bank; Mr Ofosu A. Tetteh-Kujorjie, representing the Ministry of Finance; Mr Robert Ahomka-Lindsey, a Deputy Minister of Trade and Industry, and Dr Johnson P. Asiama, the Second Deputy Governor of the Bank of Ghana. The rest are Nana Appiagyei Dankawoso I, the President of the Ghana Chamber of Commerce, Mr Peter Kwame Abebrese and Madam Catherine Quaidoo, both representatives of the President and a Representative of the Ghana Export Promotion Authority. GNA 02.08.2017 LISTEN Accra, Aug 2, GNA - The Owere Mines branch-Konongo of the Ghana Mine Workers Union (GMWU) of the Trades Union Congress (TUC) on Tuesday picketed at the Ministry of Lands and Natural Resources over 19months non-paid salaries. The Union used the opportunity to present a petition to Mr John Peter Amewu, the sector Minister to compel the management of the Mine to pay all standing salaries and all other entitlements due the 65 workers or revoke the mining license of Owere Mines Limited. Addressing the press, Mr Prince William Ankrah, the General Secretary of GMWU, said their members have not received their salaries and Social Security Insurance Trust (SSNIT) contributions for the past 19 months. Mr Ankrah said the Owere Mines had been ransacked by 'galamseyers' and they have taken over the field, which hindered the operations of the miners in the area thereby rendering the members unproductive in the area. He noted that the members' patience were running out and that any further delay on the part of the Ministry to resolve the concerns within two weeks would incur the wrath of the workers. It had become necessary because according to Mr Ankrah, several meetings with authorities to resolve the situation proved futile. Among the issues the Union is seeking the Minister to resolve is the untold hardship brought to workers due to the situation, which had led a worker to lose his spouse and an unborn baby as a result of his inability to afford medical bills. The Union noted that the concession of 125 kilometre square, which was acquired for large scale mining in 2004 was diverted to a galamsey site by the owners of the concession since 2016. 'These illegal mining activities ongoing here have not only driven potential investors away but also a serious challenge on lives of the residence and the entire 17 communities whose major source of drinking was the polluted Owere River,' the petition signed by Francis Owusu, Branch Union Secretary said. The Union also indicated that Owere illegal miners had defiled the President's instruction through the sector Minister that all illegal mining activities should cease, adding that the illegal miners were using dynamite to blast. The petition sent to the Minister noted that since June 9, this year, the entire mine site had been without electricity due to indebtedness to Volta River Authority, which affected the living conditions and security of workers. According to Mr Ankrah, the government has a 10 per cent share in Owere Mines and it had been operation for the past six years. GNA By Julius K. Satsi, GNA Police in South Africa have foiled an attempt to smuggle a stolen luxury car into Zimbabwe using donkeys to pull it across the Limpopo river. The suspects fled into the bushes towards Zimbabwe after their efforts to free the car from the sand failed, local police say. Last December a vehicle stolen in Durban was recovered on the same river, attached to a group of donkeys. Local police are investigating whether a syndicate is behind the new practice. Police Brigadier Motlafela Mojapelo says a Mercedez Benz C220 was recovered on the river bed close to Musina. The thieves had put metal sheets under the wheels to make it easier for the donkeys to pull. "The suspects were using donkeys to pull the car across the river but our members were just in time to pounce on them after the donkeys were apparently no longer able to pull it through the sand," Mr Mojapelo is quoted in local media as saying. The donkeys were unharmed. It is not clear why the thieves do not simply driver the car into Zimbabwe but the BBC's Pumza Fihlani in Johannesburg notes that one reason might be that most modern cars are fitted with a tracking device which uses satellite tracking to locate a vehicle, if stolen. The tracker is only active when the car is running. The Limpopo River forms the border between South Africa and Zimbabwe and is a well known transit point for illegal immigrants moving between both countries but the news of it becoming a smuggling point for cars is a surprise development, our correspondent says. YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK If it werent for a crested caracara, Jim Peaco might still be hauling trash. Theres not a lot of stimulation when youre a garbage truck driver, said the Yellowstone National Park photographer. So during breaks you have your bird book and binoculars. There were no wolves back then and few bears. So you try to work on your life list. Thats when he saw the caracara in Yellowstone National Park, thousands of miles north of where it would normally live. Publicizing the sighting made him a bit of a star in the birding world. This bird should not have been here, he said of the tropical falcon that has been featured on the Mexican peso. That led to a job as a slide librarian for the National Park Service in Yellowstone. If I hadnt seen that bird I probably wouldnt have heard about that opportunity, Peaco said. Such is the fickle nature of Jim Peacos fate. Born of fire From garbage truck driver to seasonal slide librarian in 1984, Peaco finally got a toehold on a dream job: Yellowstone National Park photographer. I had been here eight years, he recalled. My boss said, Get out once a week and take some new photos.' I was paid out of the donation box. Then in 1988 I was paid by the Yellowstone Association. As it turned out, 1988 was a pivotal year in Yellowstones history, thats when more than 790,000 acres burned in wildland fires, one-third of the entire park. If those fires wouldnt have started, I dont know if the job would have continued or not, Peaco said. Because of the fires, there was a huge demand for photos from Yellowstone not only nationally but internationally. That made the parks management decide that maybe it would be a good idea to have a staff photographer. Attention getter Tall and thin, the 60-year-old Peaco is hard to miss in his ranger green pants and gray shirt. Its even harder to ignore him when he sets up his tripod, topped with a fat 600mm camera lens, on a boardwalk to capture photos of harlequin ducks at LeHardy Rapids on the Yellowstone River. For one little boy with bright red shorts, a hat and sunglasses, Peacos uniform was a huge attraction. The boy jumped up and down yelling, A ranger guy! When Im in uniform everyone assumes I know everything, Peaco said, and laughed. It was the large camera lens that drew the attention of Amanda Chou, a budding Sunnyvale, California, photographer who was touring Yellowstone with her father, Stephen Chou. With all of the patience of a school teacher, Peaco gave Amanda a few tips on how to photograph the birds using a slow shutter speed to give the rushing water a silky appearance. Some people are here to check Yellowstone off their list, Peaco said. Others with kids and the Junior Ranger program are well read and have studied before their trip. Wide ranging Like any job, not every day for Peaco is filled with black bear encounters, scenic geyser eruptions and adoring children seeking photography lessons. Peaco also helps out by monitoring exhibits at the visitor centers and sometimes has to put on his ranger hat to keep tourists away from elk, bison or bears. Some days even he cant find a photo worthy of shooting, despite being in one of the most unusual places in the world. Yet over the course of his career hes photographed presidents, flown over the park during the height of the 1988 fires, boated onto the 160-degree waters of Grand Prismatic Spring and captured shots of grizzly bears and geysers that have circulated around the world one of which appeared in a text book and was incorrectly credited to Joe Peaco, a source of humor to the humble photog. When wolves were reintroduced into the park in 1995, Peaco got to visit the wolf enclosure with biologists as they tried to coax them out of the fenced area and into the wilds of the park. Heres this wolf, No. 10, over my right shoulder howling, he said. It was the deepest voice. It was dumping snow and he was on a ridge. It really was a ghostly image. It is stories like this that have put Peaco squarely at the center of some of Yellowstones most historic events over the past 30 years. Ive had experiences like I never would have before, he said. Seasonal starter Thats pretty cool considering Peaco knew very little about Yellowstone or photography when he signed up in his Illinois hometown in 1980 for a seasonal job to wash dishes at a park restaurant. After two to three days at that job in Old Faithful Lodge, he was promoted to waiter when some of the staff didnt show up. It was a blast, he said. Our biggest concern was: What are we going to hike this weekend? The fact that he was in such an unusual place began to dawn on him when Mount St. Helens volcano erupted, shedding ash on the park, and then it snowed 18 inches. What! This place is crazy, Peaco recalled thinking. That winter instead of traveling out of the park to vacation someplace warm, Peaco applied for a job at the Snow Lodge. Thats when the wild factor set in, he said. There were fewer tourists around and the whole winter thing in the geyser basin was like being on another planet. Thats when the hook was set. Even now, there are constant reminders for Peaco about the uniqueness of Yellowstone. At a bear jam near Tower Junction, he set up his 600mm lens and tripod to try to photograph twin black bear cubs walking atop a downed log. A frustrated tourist father, unable to photograph the scene with his camera, appealed to Peaco to let him mount his camera body to the long lens to take a few photos. Peaco complied and then let the mans daughter look through the lens at the cubs. Thanks, Ranger Jim, the girl said before departing with her parents. Qatar Airways has taken the decision not to proceed with its pursuit of financial investment in American Airlines after the latters latest public disclosure. In late June Qatar Airways revealed intentions to buy a stake in American Airlines, one of the US carriers it is battling in a row over transatlantic flying rights, stating it planned to take an initial investment of up to 4.75% in the US carrier. It said this would not be increased without prior consent of the American Airlines board. But today (Wednesday) Qatar Airways said in a statement: Further review of the proposed financial investment, taking into account the latest public disclosure of American Airlines, has demonstrated that the investment no longer meets our objectives. Qatar Airways will continue to investigate alternative investment opportunities in the US and elsewhere that do meet our objectives. Qatar Airways will continue to seek opportunities to invest in global aviation to support the airlines goal to offer the best possible travel experience for its customers. Cal Bank launched a new brand image to stimulate financial technology and inclusion. Apart from its new tagline and logo, the bank adds on to its portfolio a new campaign for environmental protection and alternative energy, a financial inclusion department, and a technologically based operation strategy. Speaking to JoyBusiness at the launch, Managing Director of Cal Bank, Frank Adu, said, We are actually setting up a department for financial inclusion, because we work with a lot of start-ups. He said, We have changed our business module, we currently have 25% of our portfolio in retail, so we are gradually moving into that space. Mr Adu said the bank was looking at using technology as an enabler, and if possible even pioneer certain technology bases in the sector. He said, The bank will not fight the disruptive nature of technology. The bank have to go with it, so Cal Bank is prepared to embrace it and in fact even originate the same, Mr. Adu said. Deputy Governor of the Bank of Ghana, Dr. Johnson Asiamah, stressed on the importance of strengthening risk management measures in the banking sector. He said, while the central bank welcomes this positive trend in terms of the banking industrys reliance and technology, banks need to consider the potential operational and systemic risk factors associated with such emerging trends. Dr. Asiamah said banks must strengthen their risk management systems, and establish robust technological and information control and security measures to ensure confidentiality, and integrity of financial transactions. This he said, will limit operational risks and build confidence in such electronic banking services. The new brand image is to strategically grow revenue, advance retail and digital banking. The new tagline Forward Together is to show commitment to partner clients and carry them forward to greater heights. Plan International Ghana through the IWASH project has handed over four mechanized boreholes to four communities in the Afadjato South district of the Volta region. The communities are LiatiAgbonyra, LiatiDafornu, Laiti Soba and LiatiTeikrom. These communities have benefited from a mix of hardware construction, hygiene education, sanitation promotion and advocacy components to improve health in order to reduce water sanitation and hygiene related diseases. To ensure sustainability, Water and Sanitation management committees and Natural Leaders committees have been formed to manage the boreholes as well as facilitate continual education in safe WASH practices. In a short ceremony held in each of the communities over the course of two days (27th and 28th July 2017), Country Director of Plan International Ghana, Madam Fadimata Alainchar urged communities to take good care of the boreholes and to ensure that there is transparency in its management. She said, We appreciate this partnership and commitment. We charge the communities to commit to keep the girls healthy, send them to school and for them to complete good quality education. The committee selected must ensure transparency and accountability. Photo: Madam Fadimata Alainchar, Country Director of Plan Int. Ghana, being assisted by traditional rulers and community leaders to cut the tape The Afadjato South District Assembly representatives joined Plan International Ghana in all the four communities to hand-over the facilities to the communities. In Liati Soba, the District Chief Executive of Afadzato South, Hon. Wisdom SemanSeneadza joined Plan International Ghana for the ceremony. He said, I commit myself and the Assembly to collaborate with Plan International Ghana and we will move with you and we encourage you to move with us. He further called for the community to maintain the mechanized borehole to serve future generations. The communities were delighted and hailed Plan International Ghana efforts in their communities. The women and girls were particularly thrilled as they will now be able to access water quickly as traditionally, the responsibility of provision of household water rests on the woman. According to 65-year-old Olivia Akabua, a natural leader of one of the communities, the women and girls used to go to the river side which is about half a mile, to fetch water. This water she said is unhygienic and unsafe for drinking. I am happy that we have water very close in our community. We will be able to go to school early, feeling refreshed and the water is safe too, echoed Victoria, 10 years The provision of the mechanized boreholes will curb cholera and other diseases in the communities and this will go a long way to ensure that all children especially girls reach their fullest potential. Story by Ghana | Myjoyonline.com 03.08.2017 LISTEN Minister for Business Development, Ibrahim Mohammed Awal, has urged the media to support the governments plans to brand Ghana as a ready market and open for business. He noted that the President had communicated the desire to make Ghana the most business friendly nation in Africa and so the media should take that as a brand and promote Ghana as being ready and open for business. It means that the media must help the government to champion and remove all obstacles to business and help create environment that will make business thrive, Mr Awal said. Ibrahim Mohammed Awal Speaking at the a forum on Media Business Development on Wednesday in Accra, Mr Awal said since the medias role was indispensable, it needed to create spaces to highlight local Ghanaian businesses. The forum was organised by the Media Foundation for West Africa (MFWA) in partnership with Citi FM and the Business and Financial Times, to facilitate periodic interactions between the media and business entities, aimed at helping promote businesses in Ghana. It was on the theme: Business Development in Ghana: the Role of the Media. The forum was also used to launch the West Africa Media Excellence Conference and Awards which is scheduled to take place in October and would be hosted in Ghana by MFWA. Mr Awal said the media was very indispensable and so it needed to champion business interest by learning the little things about businesses and help create and promote local business brands. He applauded media for their big role in holding government accountable and for being at the forefront in the fight against illegal mining. He urged them to keep up with the fight to help sanitise the environment. He noted that Ghana needed a media that was not too political but one that would push businesses which were scattered all over the country. He described business and media as bedfellows that could not be separated and so asked the practitioners to help especially the SMEs to thrive. He said SMEs contribute about 90 per cent of all businesses in the country but only 10 per cent of them survive after three years of start-up due to their failure to follow good governance structures and business practices. It is therefore important that the media partners businesses to thrive, Mr Awal said. Mr Sulemana Braimah, the Executive Director of MFWA said the media constituted one of the most potent enablers of the overall development of societies. He said for that matter, societies could not develop without thriving businesses, hence the need for the media to support the development of businesses. He said media organisations were also businesses whose sustainability depended on the strength and capacity of other businesses to trade. So there is a symbiotic relationship between business development and media sustainability. Nana Kwesi Gyan Apenteng Chairman of the National Media Commission, said media pluralism in Ghana required media personnel to be responsible and serve the public interest, including providing a platform to promote businesses. He said as the media continued to evolve, many media houses, especially the radio stations that disregarded ethical and professionalism practices would disappear within 10 years. They will die out themselves, Mr Apenteng noted, while the professional ones would prevail. The Ghana Committed Drivers Association (GCDA) has served notice of a nationwide demonstration to push for the repeal of the recently passed mandatory towing levy. The Association says it is not in favor of the levy and wants the government to halt its implementation. A press release dated August 3, 2017, and signed by the Associations Chairman, Charles Danso did not give a date for the start of the nationwide protest but called on members to support the agitation. Read: Transport Committee okays controversial towing levy; implementation likely in September We wish to inform all drivers, car owners and all stakeholders to join this demonstration for the betterment of our country Ghana. We will send a notice to the Police for the date and time they can be able to protect us on this demonstration, the statement said. Background Parliament recently gave backing for the implementation of the controversial levy to be imposed on vehicle owners. The law which was to take effect July 1, 2017, was suspended to enable the Transport Ministry to hold stakeholders engagements, following the massive public disapproval it received. The National Road Safety Commission (NRSC) introduced the service in order to rid the countrys roads of broken down vehicles that are abandoned and which cause accidents. Story by Ghana | Myjoyonline.com Yesterday I watched a video in which Prophet Kumchacha was calling for the BNI to arrest Pastor Mensa Otabil for fraud. According to him, Pastor Mensa Otabil has been chastising other pastors for charging their members GHC100 for consultations, and therefore did not see why the same pastor Otabil should charge others $5,000 for miracles. I am not a member of ICGC. But in the last one year I have devoted two previous publications in defense of Pastor Mensa Otabil, especially in the run-up to the 2016 elections, when he was always at the receiving end. So I was expecting that when the $5,000 Greater Works billionaires faith offering issue came up, the avow members of the church would have been the ones filling our press pages with justifications of what had happened during the Conference. They are quiet, and, in their quietness, they forced their leader to defend himself, and in the process they exposed him to ridicule, forcing him to say things that he is not known for. I have said many times that I am not the same firebrand tongue-speaking Christian that I was noted for when I was a student. I have become more reflective of my faith; I am now more of a Traditionalist-Christian, having gone back for a lot of what my forefathers practiced, and believing more in humanity. I dont see why I cannot associate myself with my family deity, much in the same way as I will associate myself with the church, in much the same way as the Asantehene Otumfuo Osei Tutu II is an Anglican while responding to his royal call. Growing up, especially in my teenage years, I was made to believe that everything my grandfathers did, with regards to culture and tradition, was evil. I saw so many deities being destroyed by firebrand latter day Evangelists, converting shrines into churches, and destroying the customs that came with them. Herbalists were seen as idol worshipers, and it was very stigmatizing for those of us who had family members practicing herbal medicine. Today I regret not learning to be an herbalist; my father and all his four brothers knew herbs. Three of my fathers first cousins were addicted herbal practitioners whose knowledge in herbal medicine is still a record; one ignorant Evangelist helped me demonize all the knowledge that could have earned me a living. For several years Rasta haired individuals, smokers, and prostitutes were not allowed into our churches. They were seen as sinners. The first time I heard a Rastafarian had been accepted into a church was in ICGC. It was Kojo Antwi, the Musician, who was reported to have become a member of Pastor Mensa Otabils church. I was taught in Sunday school that it was a sin to drink alcohol; it was a sin to smoke cigarette; it was a sin for an unmarried person to have sex; it was even a sin to dance to circular music. The Church of Pentecost for instance ex-communicated several of their members for adulterous reasons, they forced their female members to wear head gears as signs of holiness, and prevented them from wearing trousers. Today I see, in the churches of Pentecost, young women wearing jeans trousers, sometimes very revealing ones. Many of the women these days are sitting in the church not covering their heads. Has God changed from the days of the 1990s? Or has He changed his rules? Has the content of the Bible changed? Or is it a change in our understanding of the Bible that is forcing us to accept the, so called, sinful acts back into the churches? And are these not the very reasons why we should be careful in the way we condemn others? I have been to several churches overseas where Gays and Lesbians are openly accepted, and respected. I have been to a church in America where the pastor smoked cigar outside before entering the auditorium to preach. I dont smoke, I dont drink, I am not a gay, but the fact that I am not anyone of them does not mean I should condemn them. After all there may be several other things that I might also be doing that they, the so called sinners, do not subscribe to; should they also condemn me? We must admit that most of the churches, including many of us, the pastors, elders, followers, are all being hypocritical. We are all pretending to be sanctimonious. We condemn people for fornication. But we know that the gentleman and the lady who are standing right in front of the pastor, going through their wedding vows, have known each other many times before they decided to marry. We condemn other pastors for what we dont do, but we forget the many things that we too do wrong. I will not condemn Pastor Mensa Otabil for asking his members to give money, regardless of how it happened. In my view, it was a fundraising strategy for the church. We can argue about the mode of collecting the $5,000. How it was tied to prosperity, and miracles. This is a method borrowed from our traditional religion where rules and regulations were mystified into taboos, the same things that the churches condemned some decades back, that is exactly what they are practicing today. When I was young, I was told it was a taboo to cross the Ayensu River on Tuesdays. We were banned from going to farm on Fridays, because the gods would be angry if we disobeyed. All these were mere rules to protect the environment, and to secure our rivers. Our elders knew that if they did not attach superstition to the rules, the members of the community would never have complied. So the rules were mystified just to achieve results. The churches will not accept it, that they have barrowed this strategy, but that is exactly what they have done. I believe in miracles, and I believe that miracles happen to man, by Gods own design and timing, not by any pastor. These announcements of the gathering of saints to witness miracles are all a designed fundraising strategy, there is absolutely no miracle to be performed, and those who profess testimonies of instant miracles are all engaged either in self-psychology or induced pre-paid testimonies. It is time for us to lift the veil off the church, and accept that we are making a mockery of our faith, if we do not put things in plain language. Recently I was invited to the Pentecost Convention Center to speak at the Churchs General Council meeting. The General Council, whose membership is drawn from all over the world, is the highest decision making body of the Church of Pentecost. As I sat through the gathering, I witnessed the external auditors of the church gave their reports, finance committees gave their reports, including reports of the Pentecost University College, I sat there while questions were asked of the accounts. These are the structures we need in all the churches, quality leadership, governance system that goes beyond the founder and the General Overseer. We need a Charities Authority, to regulate the activities of all of us in the third sector. Currently NGOs are self-regulating, and so there is a certain level of decency in that area. Donors would never give an NGO any money to operate without making sure that there is credibility and accountability within the structures of the organization. Unfortunately, this is not so with many of the churches. They receive their monies from individual members who are either too afraid to ask questions, or do not have the capacity to demand accountability, or feels that their pastors are equivalent to God, and so they may be blaspheming if they dare ask for accountability. Anyway, I will give to ICGC any day, any time, if I have the money, not because I have a believe that I will receive the promised miracle, but because I have confidence in the structures of the ICGC, and the integrity in the application of my money. These churches, including the Methodist, the Presby, the Catholic, all deserve our giving, for they have proven their worth, and their contribution to the development of our country has been evident. At least I have seen Otabil build churches across the country and how those churches are training responsible leadership. I have seen, arguably, the largest private university in this country, the Central University, being built by the ICGC. I have seen the Lighthouse Chapel being run like an institution, beyond the founder, Dag Heward-Mills, building hospitals, schools, and raising leaders. But that is why I will not give my money to Kumchacha and his church. That is why I will not give my money to Obinim and his church. It is not because I do not like them. It is because I cannot trust Kumchacha and Obinim to use the church offerings responsibly. James Kofi Annan The Rector of Koforidua Technical University, Prof. Smile Dzisi has charged government to invest more in technical and vocational institutions to encourage students to patronage such institutions. According to the professor Technical and Vocational education equips students with practical skills and knowledge required on the job market for nation building. Speaking at the official launch of the 30th and 29th graduation ceremony of Liberty Specialist Institutes in Koforidua, Prof. Smile Dzisi charged government to invest more in technical and vocational Institutions in the country, adding that technical and vocational education is the bedrock of every nation and therefore authorities and civil society needs to invest more in the sector to ensure the transformation of the country. If government can provide logistics for students who pursue vocational & technical education it will encourage more youth to embrace vocational and technical education and this will go along way to increase enrollment of such institutions, she stated. The managing director of the school, Madame Edna Ametameh also expressed worry about the lack of support to technical and vocational institutions in the country, saying technical institutions are collapsing in the country due to poor investment of the part of successive governments and something needs to be done about it to salvage this worrying situation. There are a number of challenges confronting technical and Vocational institutions in this country, most institutions lacks logistics which do not promote and encourage quality teaching and learning. Madame Edna Ametameh advised Ghanaians to change their attitudes towards vocational training, it is high time parents and guardians change our attitude towards technical and vocational education in this country, most European and African countries who are excelling well heavily invested in technical and vocational education in their countries and the results are what we all seeing from them today. Overall 20 students graduated with practical skills and knowledge and were advised to come out with innovative ideas by establishing their own businesses and also employ others rather than depending on the government to reduce unemployment. By: Neil Nii Amatey Kanarku/citifmonline.com/Ghana On 17 August 2016, an article titled, The Damning Effects Of Religion In Africa, written by Kofi Asamoah Okyere was published on Modernghana.com in which the writer sought to establish a case that religion impeded the development of Africa. He gave two definitions of religion as follows: Religion can be loosely defined as a belief in a supernatural power or powers that control human destiny. It can also refer to the institutionalisation of such beliefs and their practices. His points may be summarized as follows: Religion is a major cause of physical conflicts and doctrinal disputes in Africa and the world as a whole. There is a direct link between religion and laziness which contributes to poverty in Africa; religion makes people lackadaisical in their attitude towards finding practical ways to improve their undesirable living conditions. Religious doctrines create a sense of fear or timidity in its adherents. Religion creates an avenue for many charlatans to parade as so-called men of God to fleece the poor of their meagre resources. Most religious groups discriminate against women in so many ways. Many governments in Africa use religion as a vehicle to incite disaffection among people in a bid to advance their political interests. Religion in Africa does not encourage creativity, invention or critical thinking, because of its conservative or static. He placed some emphasis on Christianity since it is a dominant religion in Ghana and also a religion he once practised. The writers implicit argument for the negative character of Christianity is that religion by nature creates damning effects and Christianity, being a religion, therefore also by nature creates damning effects. His recommendation, therefore, was that African societies should put less focus on religion and a major focus on science, technology and critical thinking as this will move our development goals forward. I seek, in this article, to contest the claim that the Christian faith, as one of the major religions in Africa, predominantly fosters negative effects (like conflicts, laziness, fear, lack of curiosity/creativity and violence), and argue that Christianity has been a contributor to progress and development and also a force for more peaceful societies in Africa and the world. I will not argue that the Christian faith has not and does not continue to be used to promote undesirable effects like fear, violence, laziness and suchlike. Such an argument clearly will be dead on arrival. What I will argue is that at least when it comes to Christianity, the cure for religiously induced evils is exactly the opposite of what Mr Okyere tried to suggest. My view, which is similar to the one expressed by Yale University Professor, Miroslav Volf, in his 2002 lecture on Christianity and Violence, delivered at the University of Pennsylvania, is this: the cure for religiously induced evils is never less religion, but rather more religion. Now more religion here does not mean that the cure for religiously induced evils lies in increased blind religious zeal (which is at the very heart of the problems observed by Mr Okyere in his article). Rather, the cure lies in a stronger and more intelligent commitment to the Christian faith as faith. The more the Christian faith is reduced to shallow religiosity that is essentially targeted at motivating, empowering and giving meaning to the everyday life issues that are shaped by economic or national interests, the worse off African societies will be. However, the more the Christian faith becomes a defining element in the believers and the more they practice it as a lifestyle with strong ties to its biblical origins and with intelligent commitment, the better off African societies will be. In this article, I will support the above thesis by countering Mr Okyeres arguments about the undesirable character of Christianity and then conclude with a little explanation of what the core Christian teaching is. Most of the points the writer used as evidence for his case ended up proving the damaging effects of the abuse of the teachings of Christianity rather than proving a negative logical outworking of the Christian faith; the evidence only proved that professing Christians have not been Christian enough. The old adage stands true that a philosophy ought not to be judged based on its abuse. That a technology is being used by criminals to further their ends says more about the people using the technology than it does about the technology itself. It is rather interesting to note that Londons The Times newspaper, on December 27, 2008, published an incisive article by Matthew Parris, a British Political Writer and an atheist, titled As an atheist, I truly believe Africa needs God, in which the writer came to the opposite conclusion from that of Mr Okyere. About his observations, Mr Parris, confessed, It confounds my ideological beliefs, stubbornly refuses to fit my world view, and has embarrassed my growing belief that there is no God. I will refer to some of his observations in my responses to the points raised in Mr Okyeres article. Does Christianity cause physical conflicts? Even Jesus himself cautioned his followers not to live by the sword (Matthew 26:52). So quite clearly any professing follower of Jesus who claims the Bible authorizes him to pick up arms against others who merely disagree with him is not going the way of Jesus and therefore cannot to be said to be representing Christ. When Mr Okyere complaints that governments in Africa use religion as a vehicle to stir up trouble among people to advance their political and parochial interests it only says more about the kind of people we have in our governments than it does about the contents of the Christian religion. Regarding the claim of that various sects and religions believing that their way is the approved one, it rather goes to show what we all know by common experience of the nature of men and of the nature of truth. The fact that evidence points in a certain direction do not guarantee that everyone will accept it. We see this in our national politics all the time. People (even non-religious ones) have different ways of understanding and interpreting things; some are reasonable, others are not. But truth by its nature is exclusive and does not include in itself contradictory claims. Further truth always corresponds to reality. Thus when a claim to truth is made by any person or religion, all we have to do is check to see if it corresponds to reality as it is and also whether it is logically sound. If a preacher gives an interpretation of a certain passage, we can always check with the Bible and the context of the passage. As one scholar has warned, any time a text is taken out of its context it can become an excuse for justifying anything at all. Many false preachers within Christianity, as well as non-Christian critics of the Bible, often fall into this trap. The influence of Christianity on Societies Historians concede that it was Christianity that civilized barbarian Europe. Even renowned atheists like Jurgen Habermas do recognize that Europes civilization (even though now considered post-Christian) is traceable to Christianity. In other words, the West has abandoned God but is still stealing from God. In his book, A Time of Transitions (2006), he emphatically observes that it is Christianity alone that accounts for the liberty, conscience, human rights, and democracy, which have become the benchmarks of western civilization. Modern Europe still feeds itself from this religious source. Even the USAs declaration of independence document which has shaped that nation was drafted by men largely influenced by a Judeo/Christian worldview. The language of the document betrays this fact: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. The abolition of slavery by the British parliament in 1807 was largely due to the work of William Wilberforce, a deeply religious member of parliament. For 18 years he regularly introduced anti-slavery motions in Parliament. Historically speaking, it cannot be gainsaid that Christians have been very proactive when it comes to the establishment of hospitals, schools and NGOs that are helping to alleviate poverty in Africa. A lot of western charity funds are administered through Christian NGOs in Africa. It is only the severest critic that can see a mission hospital or school or a village borehole and still claim that Africa would be better off without Christianity. Thus I think the argument about Christianity being one of the religions making adherents lethargic should be shelved. It has no merit. In fact, according to Matthew Parris, while working in Africa, he observed some of his African Christian work colleagues and confessed that it would have been convenient to believe (because of his worldview) that their honesty, diligence and optimism in their work was unconnected with personal faith but this did not fit the facts. It was too obvious that what these people were in their character was actually influenced by a conception of man's place in the Universe that Christianity had taught. Does Christianity lack Critical thinking? Any argument that a religion like Christianity which counts among its great teachers and apologists Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, Luther, G. K. Chesterton and C. S. Lewis (to name just a few great theological and apologetic minds) would need to learn critical thinking, betrays a narrow understanding of rationality and the nature of critical thinking. Their works are available in libraries and bookstores for anyone willing to examine them. Does Christianity discourage Science and curiosity? Any student of the history of modern science cannot deny that scientific inquiry grew out of a religious tradition. As the writer and one-time Professor of Medieval and Renaissance English Literature at Cambridge, C. S. Lewis, once noted, men became scientific because they believed there was law in nature and they believed there was law in nature because they believed in a law Giver. Indeed, even Prof. Richard Dawkins, perhaps the most vociferous atheist of our time, admitted in a debate with Prof. John Lennox that science did grow out of a religious tradition. Whether you are looking at Copernicus or Kepler or Galileo or Pascal or Newton you find men who believed in God and were curious to learn about this world. So rather than being static and un-progressive, biblical Christian teaching enables men to be curious and creative. Matthew Parris, describing his observation of the Christians he found in Malawi and across the continent, wrote: The Christians were always different. Far from having cowed or confined its converts, their faith appeared to have liberated and relaxed them. There was a liveliness, a curiosity, an engagement with the world - a directness in their dealings with others - that seemed to be missing in traditional African life. They stood tall. Does Christianity discriminate against women? I think anyone who makes this charge should first take a look at how Jesus treated women and then juxtapose it with any other practice he observes amongst professing Christians and then come to a conclusion as to whether what he has observed is consistent with Jesus or is a departure from Jesus. Jesus defied the tradition of his time and treated women in a much more equal and dignifying way than was normal in the society of that time. Women were normally left to attend to domestic affairs at home but Jesus allowed women to travel with him and his twelve disciples (Luke 8:1-3). Ordinary Jews, not to talk of Rabbis, did not speak to Samaritans, and surely not to Samaritan women. Yet Jesus had a long and personal conversation with a Samaritan woman at Jacob's well which even led to her conversion (John 4:4-30, 39-42). Further, women were generally not educated nor were they allowed any active role in the affairs of religion yet Jesus allowed Martha's sister, Mary, to sit at his feet in the role of a disciple while Jesus taught her. Jesus even encouraged Martha to do likewise (Luke 10:38-42). The heart of the Christian Gospel The problems enumerated in Mr Okyeres article go to show that it is the heart of man that is depraved. Interestingly, this is precisely the message of Christianity - there is something desperately wrong (the Bible calls it sin) in the heart of man and Jesus holds the remedy. He is able to transform the human heart. In a day when the prevailing mindset says that man is good at heart but society is to blame for his flaws, the words of Jesus Christ come echoing through the centuries in sharp contrast: from your heart, says Jesus, come the evil ideas which lead you to kill, commit adultery, and do other immoral things; to rob, lie, and slander others Matthew 15:19. style="margin-left:0px; margin-right:0px">But Jesus comes to us, not just with wise teachings and profound observations about human nature; he also gives us new hearts (like in the case of William Wilberforce) - hearts that beat after God's own heart - a new view of God, a new appreciation of the world and ourselves and also through his Holy Spirit he gives us the enabling power live as we ought to. This is where Jesus Christ stands unrivalled among the founders of all the world religions. Rather than only pointing you to some enlightening great teachings and deep truths, he, by his power, transforms hearts that are dead to God into hearts that are alive to God. This is what Christians call the new birth our natural desires and inclinations are remoulded and redirected: our desire for power turns into a love for humility and service. We begin to exalt commitment over feelings, forgiveness over anger, patience over shortcuts, honesty over deception and sacrifice over comfort. This is the kind of real transformation Mr Parris observed in the African Christians which led him to conclude his article saying: Those who want Africa to walk tall amid 21st-century global competition must not kid themselves that providing the material means or even the knowhow that accompanies what we call development will make the change. A whole belief system must first be supplanted. R. G. Coleman E-mail: [email protected] Blog: www.rgcoleman.wordpress.com 03.08.2017 LISTEN "Those that are calling for restructuring are looking for appointment. When they say they want restructuring what they mean is that they want an appointment....... some people told us Nigeria is a "geographical expression" although it was not even original to them"- Acting President Yemi Osinbajo. Your Excellency, I trust that you are well despite the fact that your principal is still at large. Permit me to take this opportunity to respond to your gratutious insult and your irresponsible and irreverant assertion about those of us that have been at the forefront of the fight for restructuring our nation for many years. However before doing so I shall make a few observations and assertions of my own. You have constantly condemned and warned against what you call "hate speech" in our nation yet you indulge in it more than anyone else. I say this because you constantly call others, particularly members of the opposition, "looters" and you take pleasure on demonising them before the world even before a court of law has pronounced them guilty of any wrongdoing. You also call them "plunderers", "liars", "clueless" and "destroyers". If this is not hate speech then I really don't know what is! You have stigmatised and criminalised every single leading member of the opposition PDP, including our leader President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan, over the last three years and you have sought to paint us as reprobates and evil souls that are not fit to hold public office and that have destroyed the very foundation of our country. One of your most prominent and vocal sympathisers, supporters and leaders even called President Jonathan's wife, our former First Lady, Mrs. Patience Jonathan, an ugly and illiterate hippopotamus! Are these sentiments not motivated by pure hate? Yet you know very well that all that you and your associates have said about the PDP and our leaders is not only a lie from the pit of hell but also a carefully crafted, purposely contrived and premeditated false narrative. Worse still you are fully aware of the fact that over sixty percent of your party elders and APC governors, ministers, legislators and public office holders were, up until three or four years ago, all elders, leaders and members of the PDP, including President Olusegun Obasanjo and Vice President Atiku Abubakar. If the PDP was so bad why did you give those that came from there such prominent positions and key roles to play at both the state and federal level before, during and after the presidential election of 2015? You claim that those that are calling for restructuring are only doing so in order to get an appointment. You measure others by your own squalid standards and you do nothing but take shameless dictation from a tiny cabal of faceless shape-shifting reptilians, corpsocrats, bloodsucking demons and vampires. You cover up their atrocities and you endorse their wicked ways and their evil persecution. You have forgotten who you are and where you are coming from. From the outset and as far back as the early 1940's the Yoruba particularly, and indeed the people of the south generally, have wanted and fought for nothing but a restructured Nigeria where power is devolved from the center and now you insult those that support it and pooh pooh the whole idea. As a Christian you have joined forces with those that hate your faith and that have sought to denigrate it and wipe it off the face of the earth. Those that are behind this hideous and satanic agenda are not even real or true Muslims but rather they are Islamic fundamentalists and believers in radical and political islam. They call their fellow Muslims who do not share their radical and bigoted views "infidels" simply because they believe that religion is a personal issue which must never be brought into or used in partisan politics and simply because they are prepared to support a non-Muslim for the Presidency or indeed any other political office. Your new found friends and those you front for hate Christians and they hate real Muslims. Yet you do not care about this deviant disposition as long as you are given the opportunity by them to remain in office even though they treat you like filth and they regard you as nothing more than a mere quisling, puppet and puffed up, highly celebrated "national co-ordinator". What a sorry impasse you have brought us to. We had hoped that you would be a man and stand up like one whilst your "father" was away trying to recover from his ill-health and many afflictions in London but this was not to be. Nigeria is crumbling right under your feet and falling apart because you have refused to rise up to the occassion, muster the required strength and moral authority to set things right and build bridges of fraternity and friendship and ensure that there is justice and fairness to all in the land. Under you no Fulani herdsmen have been arrested. Under you Boko Haram has gone from bad to worse. Under you the Arewa Youth threatened a whole ethnic race with eviction and genocide yet none of them were arrested. Under you the Yoruba youth have said they do not want restructuring anymore but what they want is secession. Under you IPOB brought the whole of the south east to a stand-still and today they reign supreme in that region and zone. Under you stage-managed pictures of our ailing President were put out with visiting governors which were proof of life but which did not ondicate whether he was mentally or physically well enoufh to come home and rule our nation. 90 days down the line and ww still dont know what is wrong with him and how much longer he will be away. Not only has the President gone missing but even the presidential jet that took him to the UK and that was parked at Stanstead Airport waiting for him for the last three months has now reportedly also gone missing. Ours has become an international shame and we are now the laughing stock of the world because you find it very hard to tell us the truth. Even CNN and the Washington Post, your good friends that helped to bring you to power, are now mocking you. Yet you do not care and you continue to act as if all is well. Are you not provoking the Living God? Did the respected General Overseer of your Church, the Redeemed Church of God, Pastor Enoch Adegboye (a profoundly good man who is undoubtedly one of God's endtime generals) not teach you that a heavy price will be paid by those who join forces with the Amalekites to hurt, wound, crush and destroy the children of light and the sons and daughters of promise? What is your fear and what is the source of your cowardice. Can light overcome darkness? Did David not survive the wilderness? Did he not survive the brutal onslaught of Saul, the rebellion of his own son Absalom and the vicious attacks of the Phillistines? Did he not defeat and destroy Goliath and redeem the honor of the children of Israel and the Living God? Is that God dead to you now? Whose report do you believe? Do you believe the report of the Lord ot the report of man? He who created the eyes and the ears, can He no longer see and hear? Is the arm of the Lord too short to defend and deliver? Is there anything too big or too difficult for our GOD? Is He that created the universe and who chose to make the earth His footstool so weak that He cannot honor His word and deliver His people? The truth is that if you fail to do the right thing and you turn your back on Him and His purpose, He will spew you out and find another that will effect His purpose and will in our country. We are not inbyour hands but in His. Mordecai told Esther this over three thousand years ago and I am telling you the same thing today. If you neeed to be reminded about the veracity and efficacy of the Holy scriptures when it comes to the truisms and strictures of leadership and governance and you are reluctant to hear them from your spiritual father because you are ashamed of the fact that you have gone astray then please do the following. Ask for a secret audience with either Bishop David Oyedepo, Bishop Mike Okonkwo, Prophet T.B. Joshua, Dr. Daniel Olukoya, Apostle Suleman, Bishop Danson, Pastor Paul Adefarasin, Bishop B.O. Ezekiel or any of the other great men of God in our nation who will undoubtedly have the courage and the conviction to tell you what the Lord is saying and the bitter truth. You need help and you need it fast. The politicians cannot help you now and neither can your new-found friends on the corridors of power or your beleaugered, divided and dying party the APC. Only the Living God can help you. It is so bad that you did and said nothing when your fellow Redeemed Pastor (who happened to be a woman) was slaughtered right under your nose in Abuja recently. You did not even attend her burial. Instead of doing the right thing and soothing frayed nerves you are encouraging division in our nation and you are consolidating and perpetuating a ruthless and heartless quasi-apartheid system of government which has no basis in deceny, rationality, justice or fairness. It is a cruel and barbaric system which sees a few as the master race and the rest as slaves. Given all this how can you possibly live with yourself and how can you hold your head up high? You join common slaves and ride on horseback whilst you condemn and confine the princes of the realm and the sons and daughters of the Most High God to walk around barefooted. This is not only sacrilage but it is indeed a great evil under the sun. May god forgive you and may He deliver you before it is too late. All those that said that we should have faith in the APC and the Acting President should carefully meditate on and consider his words and categorisation of those who believe in retructuring and self-determination. He says that they are just looking for an appointment. Permit me to ask the following questions. Is it the leaders of the south, Afenifere, Ohaeneze and the Niger Delta that are looking for appintments? Or is it the leaders of the Middle Belt? Is it Baba Fasoranti, Baba Ayo Adebanjo, General Alani Akinrinade, Chief Amos Akingba, Bishop Gbonigi, Professor Bolaji Akinyemi or Chief Olu Falae? Is it Chief John Nwodo, Governor Victor Ezeife or Chief Arthur Nwankwo? Is it Chief E.K. Clark, Chief Solomon Asemota SAN or Chief Albert Horsefall? Is it General TY Danjuma, General Dogonyaro or General Zamani Lekwot? Is it Atiku Abibakar who was the Vice President that you are today 18 years ago? Is it the respected Baba Bisi Akande who has been calling for us to go back to the 1963 regional structure and form of government? Is it General Ibrahim Babangida who was Head of State 32 years ago? What appointment can you or Buhari possibly offer any of them at their age and with their wealth of knowledge and experience? Why should you measure these distinguished and respected people, most of whom are old enough to he your father, by your own sordid standards? The other day you stood at a public function and clapped heartily when our father and leader President Olusegun Obasanjo said that the way to stop the Biafran agitation was to offer the Igbo people a slice of cake? Does that make sense to you? Is this whole thing about cake and appointments as far as people like you are concerened? Why do you seen to take pleasure in denigrating those that do not belive in a natuon that has all the powers of government concentrated at the center and that has dashed the hopes and dreams of millions? Nigeria was meant to be a federation and not a unitary state with a federal facade! Have you forgotten that today simply because you are Vice President to Buhari? Does Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, the man that brought you into politics and that single-handedly made you Vice President, agree with you on this? Does he also believe that everyone thwt believes in restructuring is just looking for an appointment? If so that would be very curious because he once believed in it and we used to discuss it extensively when we were closer. I am sure that at some point he would have lectured you on its merits and rudiments. Honestly you have lost it completely. You have betrayed your people and jettisoned their cause. You have ignored their call for justice and equity and you have turned a deaf ear to their cry for deliverance. Some will call you a shamelss coward but I will not go that far out of respect for your office. I am however constrained to say that I have lost the great respect that I once had for you. Like the biblical Demas you have turned your back on your primary calling and you have gone the other way. You have been seduced and overwhelmed by a Demastic annointing. You have fallen in love with the awesome power of governance at the Villa and all wordly things. In short you are a self-serving modern-day Afonja who will eventually be consummed by those who he has joined forces with to destroy his own people and the children of the Living God. Thus sayest the Lord. My regards to your family Your Excellency and kindly convey my warmest greetings and special felicitations to your brother "Jebi" who I am very fond of and was very friendly with whilst at London University in the early 1980's. Shalom. Accra, Aug. 2, GNA - A Pastor, Joshua Okpoti Sowah, was on Wednesday sentenced to 24 months imprisonment by an Accra Circuit Court on the charges of fraudulent transaction of land. Pastor Joshua unlawfully entered a land at Oyarifa belonging to one Patrick Kuntor, and did make a grant of two plots of the land to one Bernice Nkansah at a cost of GH80,000.00. He is to serve 24 months in prison in hard labour for fraudulent transaction, and to pay a fine of 25 penalty units for trespassing. The court presided over by Mr M. E Essandoh also ordered Pastor Joshua to compensate the complainant with an amount of Gh30,000.00. In sentencing the court said the prosecution was able to prove beyond reasonable doubt that the convict was never the owner of the land but went ahead to sell it to Bernice. Prosecuting, Police Chief Inspector Francis Tassan told the court that the complainant, Patrick Kuntor is a consultant, while the convict Joshua, is a Pastor. He said in 2009, the complainant purchased a parcel of land located at Oyarifa and registered it at the Lands Commission in that same year, and was issued with a Land certificate in 2010. The prosecution said the complainant travelled and returned in May 2016 and detected that someone has trespassed on the land and developing same. A report was made and parties were invited over to the police station. Police Chief Inspector Tassan said Beatrice mentioned the convict as the one who sold the land to her, so Pastor Joshua was invited severally but he refused to go, using a medical condition as an excuse. He told the court that during investigation, it was revealed that, Pastor Joshua has no documents covering the land and was not the rightful owner of the land to go ahead and disposed of it. According to the prosecution, a search conducted by the police at the lands commission on May 19, 2016 confirmed the complainant as the rightful owner of the land. GNA By Hafsa Obeng, GNA Dance event Aug. 13 at Elks Lodge The Butte Elks Lodge, Montana and Galena, will feature the Highlites John Fox from 1 to 5 p.m. Sunday, Aug. 13. Fox will be playing favorite dance music polka, swing, waltzes, all the Big Band songs. Cost is $10 per person; the bar will be open. Peer Advocacy Group meets Aug. 10 Montana Independent Living Project is hosting a peer advocacy group for those living with a disability. The next meeting is 1 to 2 p.m. Thursday, Aug. 10, at 3475 Monroe St., suite 103. This group is designed to provide a safe, nonjudgmental space for sharing, education, advocacy, and fun. Anyone who has a disability or knows someone who does is invited. This group meets the second Thursday of every month There is a drop-in time for those living with a disability who would like to hang out, play games, watch movies, work puzzles, or talk. Its held 2 to 4 p.m. Mondays and Fridays at the MILP office. MILP is also hosting a walking group at 2 p.m. every Friday at the Butte Plaza Mall. Meet in front of the theater. "Living Well with a Disability" is every Monday June 19 through July 31 from 2 to 4 p.m. RSVP at 406-782-4834. Details on MILP: Mike Phyfield or Alice de Chelley at 406-782-4834 or email mphyfield@milp.us or adechelley@milp.us. Vacation bible school begins Monday St. Mark Lutheran Church will have vacation bible school from Monday through Friday, Aug. 7 through 11, at 223 S. Montana. The theme is "A Mighty Fortress is Our God." The school is for children age 3 through sixth grade and is from 9 a.m. to noon. For registration, call 406-782-5935. Sunday school resumes Sept. 16 from 9:15 to 10 a.m. Accra, Aug. 2, GNA - Mr Joe Tachie, the Acting Chief Director, Ministry of Business Development says Ghana being predominately an SME economy needs to nurture and support start-ups and micro-small medium enterprises to enhance their contribution to economy growth. He said it was, therefore, timely that the Ministry of Business Development was created to focus on sustainable growth and development of the SME sector. Mr Tachie was speaking on behalf of the Minister of Business Development at the re-launch of the KingsBan Capital Microfinance Limited in Accra. Kingsban Capital Microfinance Limited was incorporated on July 17, 2012; and commenced operations, officially, on March 11, 2013. On June 24, 2013, the name of the company was changed from Kingsbanc Capital Microfinance Limited to Kingsban Capital Microfinance Limited. Over the past five months, the company has successfully restructured its operation and this has resulted in the constitution of a New Board of Directors, the introduction of new technology to enhance, a new corporate identity and recruitment of staff to fill new positions. Mr Tachie said the Ministry launched its flagship programme, the national entrepreneurship and innovation plan support small scale businesses in the country. The Plan is a multi-pronged approach aimed at creating the conducive and business-friendly environment to stimulate enterprise activities and provide integrated national support for start-ups and small businesses that would in turn generate employment for the teeming youth of Ghana. He said the vision of government was to build the friendliest environment and people friendly economy in Africa to be led by the striving private sector to create jobs, improve on livelihoods and prosperity for all Ghanaians. He said to trigger this strategic intent, government had focused on reducing the high cost of doing business and has initiated measures within the micro economic space to stabilise the cedi, this was to help reduce significantly the high cost of borrowing and also to attract new investments into existing businesses. He said government was speedily working at reducing the regulatory burden from businesses, simplifying and rationalising rules and regulations and aligning them with international standards in other to improve on business competitiveness of the country. Mr Robert Kow Bentil, the Managing Director, Kingsban Capital Microfinance Limited said just a few years ago, the company was ready to take their place in a highly competitive financial service industry to contribute its quota to the growth of the nation. 'Our growth over the years has been slow but steady, since entering the industry in 2012, we have grown from initial staff strength of eight to 23,' he added. He commended the other financial institutions department of the Bank of Ghana for their close supervision over the activities of microfinance companies, which had minimised the incidence of these few and unfortunate cases witnessed as a nation. 'Kingsban Capital Microfinance Limited see you as partners in meeting the needs of a teeming number of Ghanaians desirous of superior financial service in the form of secure and high-yielding saving products and affordable loans for individuals and micro-enterprise,' he said. He assured the Bank of its readiness to comply with all directives and requirements from the Bank guiding its operations as a microfinance company. Dr Ebenezer Ashley, a Financial Consultant said the role of microfinance institutions within the financial sector; and socio-economic development and growth of the country cannot be overemphasised. He said in recent years, the Ghanaian economy had witnessed the formal establishment of several microfinance institutions and the non-bank financial institutions have satisfied the necessary conditions to facilitate their operations; and to receive funds from the public. 'In spite of the seeming challenges militating against their success and meaningful contribution to the development and growth of the Ghanaian economy, many microfinance institutions operating within our jurisdiction are striving for innovation and excellence,' he added. He said the board, management and staff of Kingsban Capital were expected to exude strong financial intellectualism and demonstrate effective ideas in microfinance and banking in general to assure rapid transformation of the company from microfinance to savings and loans and eventually to a full-fledge bank. He called on key stakeholders in the financial market to entreat to play an active role by providing the requisite intellectual and financial resources needed by Kingsban Capital to effectively occupy its enviable position in the financial industry. GNA By Morkporkpor Anku, GNA Accra, Aug. 2, GNA - Colonel Benjamin Amoah-Boakye, the Director of Army Legal Affairs, has advised players in the mining sector to obey the directives given by government to halt their activities. He said this was necessary to enable government as well as the security personnel to differentiate from legal small scale miners and the illegal ones (Galamsey). Col Amoah-Boakye said this at the fourth National Dialogue on the Implementation of Voluntary Principles (VPs) on Security and Human Rights, on the theme: 'Supporting the Governments Implementation of the VPs through Dialogue.' It was aimed at ensuring that issues that were affecting human rights and security of mining communities were looked at to make sure the safety of the people were guaranteed. He said members of mining communities should know that in as much as they want their rights to be respected by security personnel they should also do what was expected of them for mutual understanding and stability. 'You have your rights as people but know that we are here to protect and help mining companies live up to expectations,' he stated. He, therefore, urged small scale miners to streamline their documentations and wait on government directives to start their operation because by then a proper mode of identification to differentiate legal from illegal miners would have been known. He called for collaboration from stakeholders to ensure that plans to tackle illegal mining were advanced to improve the economy. Ms Hannah Blyth, Programmes Manager Fund For Peace, commended government for the joint security task force to maintain peace in the various mining communities. She said in other to ensure people's rights were not violated the personnel needed to be well trained to engage with the community constructively. Ms Blyth appealed to the joint task force to use the applicable international law enforcement principles, such as the United Nations (UN) code on the conduct of law enforcement officials and the UN basic principles on the use of force and firearms by the law enforcement officials. 'They should use UN recognised use of force principles to ensure the rights of people are not violated and the use of force should be proportionate to the risk at hand to deal with such sensitive communities.' She said there should be measures in place to enable victims report abuse cases that involved security personnel for redress. She also urged the media and civil society groups to be vigilante in this regard to reduce potential issues. According to Ms Blyth the National Action Plan on VPs could help improve training for security forces both private and public. She called for the implementation to be reviewed and finalised because it was crucial and could help in tracking down on the galamsey issues. Education, baseline approach is what mining companies need to enable them build on multi stakeholder collaboration to talk about these issues constructively and come out with appropriate measures to address it, she added The VPs is a set of guidelines to help companies work with local communities and government together to improve safety and promote peace in oil and gas and mining affected areas while respecting human rights. This was organised by Fund for Peace in partnership with the West African Network for Peacebuilding-Ghana and funded by the US Department of State. GNA By Samira Larbie, GNA 03.08.2017 LISTEN Accra, Aug. 2, GNA - The Youth for Human Rights Africa (YoHRA), a non-governmental human rights organisation, has launched its maiden annual conference in Accra, to create awareness and empower the citizenry to demand for their Fundamental Human Rights. The conference, which was on the theme: 'Promoting Fundamental Human Rights: A Catalyst for Accelerated Socio-Economic Development in a Free and Just Society,' was scheduled to take place on December 11. Dr Angela Lamptey, the Deputy Executive Secretary of YoHRA, who launched the conference on Wednesday, said it would coincide with the United Nation's commemoration of the International Human Rights Day which falls on December 10 each year. Mr Francis-Xavier Sosu, the President of YoHRA, said it was important that people knew their Fundamental Human Rights, so that they could demand them. He said although crucial for holistic development of every individual, the rights of many people particularly the vulnerable continued to be violated, leaving them in distress and impoverishment due to their lack of awareness and knowledge of their Fundamental Human Rights. Fundamental Human Rights are meant to be automatic for everybody and not a privilege to be owned by governments, religious or any human institution, therefore the provision of quality education and health among others, are expected to be mandatory provisions for national development. Mr Sosu said the goal of YoHRA, was to create awareness and promote observance Fundamental Human Rights in Ghana and Africa by the use of National, Regional, African and the United Nation's Human Rights Instruments, and empower the underprivileged in society through civic education, research, publication, as well as follow up on reports on abuses across the continent. It also aimed at inspiring the youth to become advocates for tolerance and peace through education on the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights. YoHRA's focus, he said was particularly on advocating against human rights abuses of women, children and People Living with Disabilities (PLWDs) in society through strategic litigation and public interest action, and would work with international organisations and affiliates involved in human rights promotion and advocacy in carrying out trainings for promoters across Africa. He called for stakeholder collaboration in advocacy and education against the numerous human rights abuses in society. Dr Isaac Annan, the Director in Charge of Human Rights at the Commission on Human Rights and Administrative Justice (CHRAJ), said it was important for the citizenry to be well exposed to the details of the African Charter and other international Instruments so that they could hold all State institutions rather than politicians accountable for any violations. He said Ghana had ratified all the major Human Rights Treaties without any reservations, yet still faced numerous challenges in their implementation at the national level, and it would only take massive public education and sustained advocacy with the youth as leaders, to hold the right people accountable and push for the right things to be done. GNA By Christabel Addo, GNA 03.08.2017 LISTEN Accra, Aug. 02, GNA - Jihad Chaaban, the jailed supervisor of the Abelenkpe Branch of the Marwako Restaurant, has instructed his lawyers to file for an appeal against his nine-month sentence by the Abeka District Court. The Counsel for the convict, Julio De Medeiros, said his client disagreed with the judgement and he was going to immediately start working on the appeal process. The Court found Chaaban guilty of unlawfully causing harm and assault; but found him not guilty of offensive conduct conducive to breach of the peace. It thus gave him six months imprisonment for assault and nine months for causing harm. Both sentences are, however, to run concurrently. Chaaban, on February 28, this year, angrily grabbed the neck of Ms Evelyn Boakye, a worker, and dipped her face into a full jar of blended pepper after he had accused her of fidgeting with the blender and working slowly. He was, subsequently, charged with intentionally and unlawfully causing harm and assault as well as offensive conduct for calling the victim a prostitute. The Court, presided over by Mrs Victoria Ghansah, said the Prosecution had been able to prove beyond every reasonable doubt that the accused committed the offence. But Julio De Medeiros said: 'We entirely disagree with the findings of the Court, because we thought that we put up a very good defence.' Chaaban had pleaded not guilty to the charges. GNA By Morkporkpor Anku, GNA ABB has entered into a 2year agreement with the Volta River Authority (VRA) to offer Power and Automation training courses on quarterly basis to the VRA Training Academy in Akuse in the Eastern Region. These courses will be given to VRA trainers and Technical Engineers as well as trainees, five days each of the 2year collaboration agreement. The training which is expected to take off in July 31st this year is aimed at extending ABBs training capabilities and vast technical know-how in the field of power and automation to tackle dumsor as a result of technical breakdown. The Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) comes in line with ABBs commitment to develop and transfer its know-how and knowledge and enhance the awareness of the latest technology in Power and Automation fields in countries they operate. The Deputy Chief Executive in-charge of Engineering and Operations, VRA, Ing. Richard Badger, who spoke on behalf of the Chief Executive Emmanuel Antwi-Darkwa said the collaboration with ABB which is a leading power and automation technology group in the field of Model of Excellence for Power Utilities in Africa. He noted that the maiden training programme has been launched at the VRA Academy at Akuse and is currently ongoing. Ing. Richard Badger added that by the end of this initial two-year agreement, they would have succeeded in making the VRA Academy the preferred technical training institution for power utilities in the sub-region. He indicated that this will serve as a platform for acquiring state-of-the-art knowledge and skills in power and automation technologies by critical staff in the industry. According to him, as they establish the new strategic partnership between their organizations, they are looking forward to fully exploring the opportunities that ABB will offer. Ing. Richard Badger said this is because their partnership with ABB now goes beyond purchasing and supply of goods and services to breaking new frontiers in research, manufacturing, consultancy and improved productivity and performance to the mutual benefit of the two organizations. The Managing Director of ABB in Ghana, Hesham Tehemer emphasized that his outfit is always looking for collaboration and other opportunities to facilitate knowledge transfer. He added that the technical expertise of ABB will be put in the hands of Ghanas largest utility company making them more familiar and very abreast with ABB latest technology in Power and Automation. Hesham Tehemer mentioned that he fully understand Ghanas power challenges and we are here to make sure the VRA meet their energy and industrial development goals by unleashing the full potential of the entire organization to take advantage of their huge and growing installed base in Ghana since 1960s. He intimated that this constitutes a large opportunity to increase their operational resources and enhance customer value in Ghana. The Chief Learning Officer of VRA Academy, Eric Mensah-Bonsu intimated that the agreement will see vast improvement in stable power production in the country. He noted that the collaboration is focused on building capacity in the energy sector for industry players. The Chief Learning Officer indicated that the programme which is also expected to cover 200 direct beneficiaries will train 20 people under each of the 10 programmes outlined for the 2year period. Aside that, Mr. Mensah-Bonsu indicated that GRIDco and VRA trainers of trainers will also be trained to transfer the knowledge gained to other members of the industry. The power sector equipment and manufacturing is changing from the old system to automated system. And so we need to be abreast with the new trend and technology to stand stall in the automation process so that as and when we are modernizing the equipment we have the skills available to manage it well, he stated. The Association of Gas Tanker Drivers has hinted of a nationwide strike if the National Petroleum Authority (NPA) fails to withdraw the Cylinder Recirculation Module which is expected to be implemented in September this year. According to the group, the policy if allowed will throw them out of business, and cause the collapse of all gas filling stations in the country. Speaking at a press conference this week, the Chairman of the Association, Safiu Mohammed, said About 7,000 Ghanaians workers in the LPG chain will have to be laid off, aggravating the already high unemployment situation in the country. The policy itself is discriminatory. He added that, we believe the government is not being told the truth. The CRM will be a complete on the economy as the operators will repatriate all their earnings in foreign currency. Sadly, in a job Ghanaians are already doing well, we, therefore, call for its complete withdrawal. One of the tanker drivers who spoke to Citi News said, threatened that the Association will stop its operation if the government does to respond to their concern in a week's time. We are going to stop loading if we do not hear anything. We are giving the government up to a week to respond to our concerns, he said. By: Jonas Nyabor/citifmonline.com/Ghana The troubles of Ibrahim Mahama, brother of former President John Mahama, have deepened, as he has been dragged to court a day after the Northern Regional Minister abrogated a road contract awarded to him. Firebrand Brong-Ahafo Regional Youth Organizer of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), Kwame Baffoe aka Abronye DC, has filed a suit against Mr Ibrahim Mahamar over the bauxite concession granted to him a few days to the exit of his brother from power. Ibrahim, who is linked to Exton Cubic Group Limited, is to face Abronye at the Supreme Court over the huge bauxite mining lease granted the firm for 21 and 18 years respectively. He is challenging the legitimacy of the concession. The suit also cited the Attorney General as respondent and Abronye wants the Supreme Court to declare that the mining lease agreement between the then National Democratic Congress (NDC) government and Exton Cubic Group Limited required parliamentary ratification under Section 5 (4) of the Minerals and Mining Act, 2006 (Act 703). The NDC government, acting through then Minister of Lands and Natural Resources Nii Osah Mills, on December 29, 2016, entered into and granted Exton Cubic Group Limited mining leases to mine bauxite in different concessions for 21 and 18 years respectively. Abronye wants an order setting aside the mining lease agreements because they violate Section 5 (4) of the Minerals and Mining Act, 2006 (Act 703). Abronye is also seeking a perpetual injunction restraining Exton Cubic Group Limited and its assigns from prospecting, exploiting or mining bauxite in Ghana pursuant to the mining lease agreements being ratified by parliament. In his statement of claim prepared in Sunyani, Abronye said he was bringing the action pursuant to Articles 2 (1) (b) and 130 (1) of the 1992 Constitution and was invoking the jurisdiction of the highest court for interpretation. According to the plaintiff, Exton Cubic Group Limited has started mining/exploiting bauxite in Nyinahini pursuant to the purported mining lease agreements. He averred, the plaintiff's case is that the activities of the 2nd defendant (Exton Cubic Group Limited) are illegal as same are against the Minerals and Mining Act, 2006 (Act 703). According to Abronye, he would argue in court that the power of the minister responsible for mines to grant mining rights is governed by Section of Act 703, saying What is germane to the plaintiff's case is Section 5 (4) of Act 703. The language of Section 5 (4) of Act 703 is clear, plain and calls for no conflicting interpretations. The plain and unmistakable import of the provision is that any contract that involves the grant of a mining right for the exploitation of mineral in Ghana is subject to ratification by parliament. He averred that there is a plethora of cases in which the Supreme Court has authoritatively held that any transaction that requires parliamentary ratification is null and void and creates no rights, unless it has been ratified by Parliament. It is in the interest of the public that mining agreements are subjected to parliamentary approval and ratification. Any mining agreement purportedly entered into without parliamentary approval or ratification is null and void. He pointed out that the overall kernel of the plaintiff's case is that the two impugned mining agreements were entered into in violation of the express provisions of Section 5 (4) of Act 703 as same were not laid before parliament for approval and ratification. There is no indication that Exton Cubic Group Limited has been served with the processes of the Supreme Court. NDC minority leader, Haruna Iddrisu, also believes that the concession granted to Ibrahim's company must be ratified by parliament. By William Yaw Owusu A Deputy Director-General of the National Disaster Management Organization (NADMO), Abu Ramadan, has alleged that former President John Dramani Mahama gave two vehicles belonging to the organization to controversial politician and founder of the Ghana Freedom Party (GFP), Akua Donkor, for her personal use. Abu Ramadan made the revelation on Citi FM on Wednesday in Accra, claiming that Madam Akua Donkor was given the vehicles as a reward for campaigning for Mr. Mahama in the run-up to the 2016 general election. He made this revelation while expressing concerns over the lack of logistics at NADMO, which he said is hindering effective service delivery. Since the then ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC) exited power on January 7, 2016, there have been reports that about 208 state vehicles have gone missing. According to the ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP), the vehicles were 'stolen' during the transition period, with some well-known persons linked to the NDC such as film actor John Dumelo, being caught with one of the alleged stolen cars. Madam Akua Donkor is the latest NDC 'sympathizer' to have been accused of illegally possessing state vehicles. According to Mr. Ramadan, some directors (names withheld) at NADMO approved of the vehicles being given to Madam Donkor. He said, We were told some directors actually gave instructions for NADMO vehicles to be given out for personal use. Akua Donkor is holding two of our [NADMO] cars. After she declared her support for Mahama and went around campaigning, she was given a brand new L200 Mitsubishi, two of those. Mr Abu Ramadan revealed that NADMO's debt stock shot up to GH40 million between 2015 and 2016 when the NDC was in power. He hinted of possible sanctions against officials who presided over the rot at the organisation. 'Auction Craze' According to Mr. Ramadan, the organization was cash strapped and struggling to provide relief items for flood victims. He believed the NDC was responsible for these challenges as there was enough evidence to also prove that some relief items were auctioned when the party was in power. He asserted, When we came to office, we received reports that some items were auctioned. The items were given out for free. None of the regional stores even had one bag of rice sitting at the stores. BY Melvin Tarlue The Abeka District Court in Accra yesterday sentenced Jihad Chaaban, the Lebanese supervisor of the Abelemkpe branch of Marwako Restaurant, to nine months' imprisonment for dipping the face of Evelyn Boakye, a caterer of the eatery, into blended pepper. The court, presided over by Victoria Guansah, also handed the convict a six-month jail term for the offence of assault without the option of a fine. Both sentences are to run concurrently. In the view of the court, the judgement was to serve as a deterrent to employers, who treat their employees without dignity. Charges Jihad, 26, was hauled before the court on March 8, this year for dipping the head of Evelyn into blended pepper on February 26, 2017. According to the prosecution, the convict offensively conducted himself when he angrily called the complainant a 'prostitute.' Jihad was facing an additional charge of intentionally and unlawfully causing harm to Evelyn. Although Jihaad had vehemently denied the charges, the court, after a six-month trail, found him culpable and accordingly jailed him. Judgment Sentencing the accused, Ms. Guansah stated that the prosecution, led by Chief Inspector Hanson Armah, could not prove its charge of offensive conduct against him (accused). She said the act of Jihad so complained about by Evelyn took place in the kitchen of the restaurant, which is not a public place. The court held that for the prosecution to ground its case against the convict, the act ought to have occurred at a place where the public had access to. Ms. Guansah noted that although customary law frowns on the action of Jihad, the prosecution failed to establish the essential evidence to sustain the charge of offensive conduct and accordingly acquitted and discharged him. On the charge of assault, the magistrate argued that for the charge to hold, there must be a physical touch without the consent of the victim, adding that there was a touch [in the instant case], which could not be said to be a friendly one. The court was convinced that Jihad held the neck of the complainant without her consent. She noted that the manager, nonetheless, in his caution statement to the police, admitted the offence but denied same in court. The trial magistrate, as a result stated, The accused person's guilt has been linked to the act of assault and battery, insisting that the court was satisfied that Jihad assaulted Evelyn. Touching on the charge of causing harm, Ms. Guansah said per the testimony of the doctor of the Achimota Government Hospital, who attended to Evelyn, the complainant's eyes were traumatized, stressing that that could not be normal and was as a result of the action by Jihad. The magistrate held that once an act is committed, it's inconsequential if the harm was intended or not. She stated that Jihad intended the consequence of his action, noting that the convict caused the harm of Evelyn. Ms. Guansah was of the view that the prosecution had been able to prove the guilt of Jihad on the charges of causing harm and assault. Mitigation Julio De Meideros, lawyer for the convict, while describing the judgment of the court as elaborate, stated that it was important the magistrate avert her mind to the fact that the parties had reconciled and had solved the matter out- of -court. He said the terms of settlement filed by the parties demonstrate the reconciliation of the parties. Jihad's lawyer stated, We never intended our conduct and wanted to have peace with the complainant. Consider the age of the accused; he is a young person who has just started life with this experience. Julio added, Once you are employed, you are over-exuberant to show your superiors that you are up to the taskthis is the situation the accused has found himself. He said his client did not directly benefit from the crime, explaining that it would have been different if Jihad had gone on a frolic of his own, committed the offence and benefitted unjustifiably. From all the facts, one thing is clear that all that happened in the course of his duty, the accused did not set out to commit the offence and benefit from it, he claimed. Sentence The magistrate stated that the company should have its own regulations for correcting its employees other than the way the convict used. She argued that Jihad had not shown any remorse and that at a point in the trial, he even sounded contemptuous of the court. She said Evelyn went to Mawarko to work and not to be treated like a slave, indicating that the victim was a staff at the Rice Department of the eatery but came to the Vegetable Department to help, a gesture Jihad ought to have appreciated. Ms. Guansah wondered how Jihad, who claims he could not speak English, could be appointed to head the workers whose means of communication is English. Appeal Meanwhile, Julio has served notice to appeal against the decision of the court, but Ms. Guansah was emphatic that her judgement would stand the test of time. [email protected] By Jeffrey De-Graft Johnson Pretoria (AFP) - A South African man snatched from his hotel and held hostage by Al-Qaeda in Mali since 2011 has been freed unscathed, his country's foreign ministry said on Thursday. Stephen McGown, 42, was grabbed in the historic trading city of Timbuktu in Mali's north along with Swede Johan Gustafsson and Dutchman Sjaak Rijke, both of whom were subsequently released. McGown has returned to South Africa and been reunited with his family, foreign ministry official Clayson Monyela told AFP. "It was a big surprise when he walked through the door -- when I gave him a hug, he was as sound and as strong as before, so he was obviously well treated up there," Stephen's father Malcolm told reporters in Pretoria, though Stephen himself did not attend the press briefing. State Security Minister David Mahlobo insisted that no ransom was paid to secure McGown's release which was completed on July 29. "We were able to actually release him without any conditions," Mahlobo told the joint press conference. "Through our shrewd engagement supported by the African Union... Stephen is back at home. "The relationship between the two presidents of the countries has been very important." As for the other former hostages, Gustafsson was released in June while Rijke was freed in April 2015 by French special forces. Rijke's wife escaped during the jihadist assault on the popular tourist hotel, but a German who tried to resist the abduction was killed. Al-Qaeda's North African affiliate Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) had claimed responsibility for the kidnappings of the three men. "We give him a warm welcome back home particularly that he lands home with a mother who has passed on during his incarceration," said Foreign Minister Maite Nkoana-Mashabane. "He was just a tourist in Timbuktu. We are happy that he is a free man." 'Your hair has grown' McGown's mother Beverly died in May after battling a long illness. "It's just unfortunate that Stephen's mum isn't here," said McGown's wife Catherine at the press conference. "It didn't quite work out the way we wanted, but we say to Stephen... 'you are strong and you've got to do what you need too'. He'll pick himself up in a little while and return to normal life," added Malcolm McGown. Imtiaz Sooliman, chairman of the Gift of the Givers charity which was previously involved in negotiating for McGown's release, said at the time of his mother's death that Stephen's absence was beginning to "take its toll". "We had seen the sadness in the mother's eye and watched how she patiently waited in dignified pain for the return of her son. We failed her -- my heart bleeds for her," Sooliman told local media in May. Gift of the Givers reportedly dispatched a hostage negotiator to Mali in July 2015 to push for McGown's release but was forced to give up in May this year after hitting a "dead end". Catherine said that on being reunited, Stephen "looked at me and said 'Your hair has grown', and I said, 'Well actually your hair is longer than mine'." He is now undergoing medical checks. AQIM was one of several jihadist groups that took control of Mali's north in 2012 before being ousted by a French-led military operation launched in January 2013. The group had released several videos of McGown and Gustafsson over the years, but little was known about the kidnappers' demands. Ravalli County Sheriff Steve Holton has identified 32-year-old Christopher Ray Phillips as the man who killed himself during a traffic stop in Missoula last week, days after its believed he killed a Butte woman in Jefferson County. Missoula police tried to stop Phillips on the 3600 block of Rattlesnake Drive shortly before midnight on July 25. Holton said the investigation found that a police officer was giving commands to the people in the car when Phillips shot himself in the head. Because the incident involved Missoula police, the Ravalli County Sheriffs Office was called in to conduct the investigation. On July 23, the body of 45-year-old Cassandra Dean Morrison was found on the side of the road near Jefferson City, and the Jefferson County Sheriffs Office asked the Montana Department of Justice to assist them in investigating her death, which was deemed suspicious. The Montana DOJs Division of Criminal investigation released a statement Thursday that Morrison died from multiple gunshot wounds, and that the investigation is ongoing. Missoula police were conducting surveillance on Phillips at the DOJs request. Two other people who were in the car with him when he committed suicide were taken into custody. Its interesting to note that the new KARPOWER deal (generating 225 MW) between Karpower and Government of Ghana is much worse than the AMERI deal entered in early 2015. It has been reported that KARPOWER is a rental contract where the annual capital recovery charge fixed M&O for the 225MW Karpower plant shall amount to US$118.4 million. The total payment in 5 years shall amounts to US$592 million, according to ACEP costing the Government at least US$82 million more than the Ameri power deal. It has been learnt that the AMERI Power Plant shall transfer to the Government of Ghana at no additional cost to the exchequer after five (5) years. It may be pertinent to mention that the book value of the power plant which is currently estimated at USD 325 million after five (5) years, with a life cycle of around 15 -20 years, will be handed over to the Government as a debt free asset which can be used to leverage and raise financing as a collateral or else the Government may choose to sell the operating asset to any investor who may not like to take any development risk, hence the plant being operational and in its best conditions. This can be direct income to the Government as the Plant may continue to generate electricity at 4.5c/kWh while the Government can make additional profit of at least 3.5c/kwh for the next 15-20 years. While in the KARPOWER deal, Ghana will take no ownership of its assets after 5 years, neither after 10 years when the agreement comes to an end. It is a Power Purchase Agreement (PPA) and has not been kept very transparent according to media sources. It has been learnt that the PPA should have been spread over a period of 20 years and thereby reduce the burden on consumers, unlike the 10-year deal negotiated for the KARPOWER ship, which can sail at any time, to leave Ghana into darkness. KARPOWER deal also exempts the seller from all applicable taxes including personnel income tax (a practice common according to internal agreement), however the Government Consent and Support Agreement guarantee is an additional support offered for this Project. While AMERI investors carefully watch being discriminately sidelined by the Government in Ghana, they have kept a solid stance that AMERI deal through financial modelling aimed at providing a guide for ensuring value for money in future negotiations on procurement of power. Additionally, many questions have emanated among international investors in relation to the transparency and comparison of the two deals recently. The Government and Energy Ministry continue to battle with foreign investors to bring any new investment in Ghana! Chief Executive of Dalex Finance, Ken Thompson urged government to pay debts owed private businesses in the country especially as it begins to operate a Single Treasury Account of all public funds. Finance Minister, Ken Ofori Atta announced during the presentation of the mid-year review of the 2017 budget that government had begun transferring all state funds at commercial banks to the Bank of Ghana. This is likely to be finalized by September. The move has been greeted with mixed reactions from banks and other industry players. Mr. Thompson said government should also play its role in ensuring a debt free economy. He spoke with JoyBusiness after delivering a short lecture at the launch of the 2017 IFEJ Flamingo awards for business and economic journalists under the theme: Embracing financial inclusion and innovation for growth and development. The focus for this years award is on finance with a touch of technological solutions. More than 50 financial and economic journalists are expected to contest for all the 10 categories in the award. The Institute for Financial and Economic Journalist, IFEJ is a non-profit organization that believes that for the countrys economy to improve; financial journalists must be able to provide qualitative analysis of sectors of the economy for policy redirection. A member of the Anlo Queenmothers Association, Mama Hodzigbe II is suggesting the National Commission for Civic Education (NCCE) be mandated to lead public education on the issues of oil and gas. According to the Queenmother, a lot of people are unaware of what the oil resources are being used for. Her suggestion follows concerns by sections of the public over the lack of education on how the revenue from Ghanas oil is being used in the various regions and districts. Some are even in doubt as to whether the funds are being used for the intended purpose. These came up at a public forum at the Keta Municipality of the Volta Region, organized by the Public Interest and Accountability Committee (PIAC) in collaboration with the Institute Of Financial and Economic Journalists (IFEJ) and sponsored by GIZ. Mama Hodzigbe said, in order to have the public educated on the issues on oil revenue, Parliament should be able to mandate the NCCE and other constitutionally mandated organizations to visit first and second cycle institutions and educate children on the use of the oil proceeds. Most times you go to workshops like this and it ends there but we want PIAC to give the mandate to NCCE to educate the public more, she said. She said the public needs to be abreast with challenges as well as the benefits oil production in the Voltaian Basin starts. Vice Chairman of PIAC, Kwame Gyantua in an interview with Joy News said it is necessary for the people of the Volta Region to understand what the Ghana National Petroleum Commission (GNPC) and the government are doing with regard to onshore drilling. The onshore bit should be clarified to the people, he said. According to him it is important to make the people feel part of the whole process in order to avoid challenges and agitations when commercial exploration starts. Mr. Gyantua said information regarding oil exploration in any country is key and therefore, things ought to be explained in a very structured manner to avoid agitations and challenges. I think GNPC should come back to the communities to educate the people more on issues on oil and its revenue, he stated. The Municipal Choef Executive (MCE) for Keta , Seth Yormewu in his welcome address, stressed the importance for citizens to be made aware of the revenue accruing from all petroleum activities. It is only when this is done that answers to questions bothering on the minds of the people can be provided, Mr. Yormewu indicated. Story by Ghana | Myjoyonline.com | Ivy Sertordzi, V/R Members of the Concerned Lotto Agents Association of Ghana (CLAAG) have expressed dissatisfaction with the abrupt tightening of the law against unlicensed lotto operators in the country by the National Lottery Authority (NLA) upon the assumption of office of President Akufo-Addo. Director-General of NLA, Kofi Osei-Ameyaw, recently asked all unlicensed lottery operators to, as a matter of urgency, register with the NLA in order to operate in accordance with the National Lottery Act of 2006, Act 722, which mandates the authority to regulate, supervise and conduct national lotteries in the country. Per the new directives, all lotto agents, writers and operators, have up to the end of this year to register with the NLA or they would be made to face the full rigorous of the law, the CLAAG members claimed. Executive Secretary of CLAAG, Kwaku Duah-Tawiah, in a statement to the media, said they heard the Director-General on radio disclosing that the NLA would register between 30 and 50 lotto operators in each region and charge each person GH1 million to raise GH150 million for the state. He described this as unacceptable and passionately appealed to the government to quickly amend the law governing the lotto operation since the government stands to gain more than GH300 million annually if it allows the current status quo to remain. Mr. Duah-Tawiah argued that the large number of lotto agents, writers and operators could contribute substantially to the growing of Ghana's economy if proper modalities were put in place for them to operate. The CLAAG members claimed Mr. Osei-Ameyaw and some management members of NLA intend to arraign and jail all private lotto operators by setting a high threshold that is difficult to meet. We appeal to President Akufo-Addo and his government to take a second look at the National Lottery Law or we would interpret the directive by the NLA boss as bad faith on the part of government after honouring our side of bargain in the electioneering campaign promise. Arresting people, who are prepared to work in their own country in order to contribute meaningfully to the economy, is not a good thing to talk about, we do not know whether we will be registered as banker to banker operators of NLA or not. From Ernest Kofi Adu, Kumasi The German delegation with officials of Upper Manya Kro Rural Bank, Out-Growers Farmers and the Asare Odometa Plantation Deputy Minister in-charge of Economic Development of the German Development Corporation, Dr Friedrick Kitchelt, has commended the Asare Odometa Plantation Limited, Upper Manya Kro Rural Bank Limited and Klo Oil Palm Out-growers Association for successfully utilizing a loan from the German Government to develop the oil palm plantation. The Asare Odometa Plantation Limited, technical operators, provides the farmers with all the technical knowhow to develop their farms. The Upper Manya Klo Rural Bank lends money to the farmers to ensure that they are able to get all their farm equipment to work on their farms. The German Deputy Minister made the remark after visiting and interacting with all parties in the plantation project at Asesewa in the Eastern Region. Dr Kitchelt said there could be an additional investment into the oil palm plantation, saying there could be a third phase of this partnership. According to him, government should ensure that it comes out with policies that will make the farmers independent to be able produce more food on their own instead of rallying on grants. Tripartite system Chief Executive of the plantation, Nenenyo Mate-Korle, who welcomed the delegation, said the funding has helped to engage 98 farmers. He said the Asare Odometa plantation took GHc500,000 to buy the processing plants while the Klo Out-growers Association took same amount. This scheme is a tripartite arrangement. My business in Asare Odometa Limited is to provide technical assistance to the farmers and supply them inputs while the Upper Manyo Klo Rural Bank Limited serves as the financial operator that disburses the funds for the beneficiary members within the Association. The arrangement is that they grow the trees and sell them to Asare Odometa Plantations, and we pay them by cheque through the bank so that the bank will be able to recover their fund. He said the project, which started as a family business, has grown into a large-scale farm, which should be supported well enough to champion the government's policy on 'One-District-One-Factory' model within the locality, Mr. Mate-Korley underscored. Lifeline Deputy Managing Director of Upper Manya Klo Rural Bank Limited, Andrew Akyeampong, said his outfit provided the farmers with credit to the tune of about GH981,000, of which a portion went to the Asare Odometa Plantation and the rest to the Out-growers Association. Government readiness Deputy Minister of Agriculture in-charge of Tree Crops, William Agyapong Quaitoo, said he was happy with how the model is well crafted, and assured the German delegation that government would enact policies to make the farmers independent. A business desk report Police Prosecutors handling the trial of 20 persons accused of murdering Army Major, Maxwell Adam Mahama have revealed, they are on a manhunt for 13 more persons whom they believe, took part in the murder of the soldier. Major Maxwell Mahama was on May 29 lynched by a mob at the Central Regional town of Denkrira Oboasi, after some residents suspected him of being an armed robber after seeing his sidearm. About 60 suspects were initially arrested in connection with the murder. Joy News Joseph Ackah Blay reported from the court Thursday that, in pleading for an adjournment, State Prosecutor, DSP George Amegah informed the court the duplicate docket had been forwarded to the Attorney General's Department for advice. He also informed the court the investigators handling the case were still trying to apprehend 13 others they believe to have participated in the crime. Magistrate Ebenezer Kweku Ansah, adjourned hearing to September 7, as they await the A-G's advice as well to allow the police more time in their investigations. Story by Ghana | Myjoyonline.com Blantyre (Malawi) (AFP) - Malawi on Thursday celebrated the successful conclusion of a two-year project moving 520 sedated elephants by truck to a reserve where the animals had been nearly wiped out by poaching. Described as one of the biggest-ever wildlife translocations, the elephants were transported 350 kilometres (220 miles) from two southern parks to the Nkhotakota reserve in the centre of the country. "We have taken extraordinary measures to secure a future for Malawi's elephants, and at the same time are helping people who live around these critically important wild areas," said Brighton Kumchedwa of the national parks department. The elephant population in Nkhotakota fell from 1,500 to just 100 in 2015. Since then security work and community relation programmes have made the reserve safe for wildlife. Africa Parks, a conservation organisation that led the translocation, described it as "historic", adding that 261 elephants were moved last year and the remainer this year. Only two elephants died in the process, which was completed on August 2. The elephants were selected family by family and darted from a helicopter, before being winched by their legs into crates on the back of 30-tonne trucks. They were driven overnight from the two parks, which had a overpopulation of elephants, to their new home in Nkhotakota. Their new home is now surrounded by a high electric fence and has also re-filled with buffalo, antelope, warthog and zebra. "This successful translocation is a pivotal moment for Malawi," said Peter Fearnhead, head of African Parks. "Rehoming more than 500 elephants, and knowing they will thrive in Nkhotakota, is a story of hope and survival, and a real example of what is possible with good collaboration." Britain's Prince Harry assisted in the first stage of the relocation. Project organisers said there were more than 10 million African elephants 100 years ago, but only an estimated 450,000 remain today. About 40,000 are poached every year to feed the insatiable demand for ivory. President Nana Akufo-Addo appointed Lawrence Agyinsam as the Chief Executive Officer of Ghana's Exim bank in March 2017. A nine member governing board chaired by astute businessman and entrepreneur, Kwadwo Boateng Genfi was also inaugurated last Tuesday in Accra to help streamline the direction of the bank. The Ghana Exim bank is expected to improve the country's export competitiveness, to rake in much needed foreign exchange and improve Ghanas balance of trade. Exim bank CEO [Left] Lawrence Agyinsam joins the bank with extensive experience in the financial sector. His experience spans the whole gamut of managing banking business from the formulation and implementation of commercial banking strategy, managing the overall budget of retail and SME banking to managing the bank's marketing communication, corporate communication and market intelligence. Prior to his appointment as CEO of Ghana EXIM Bank, Lawrence was the CEO of Broadview Group, which consists of Broadview Trust, Broadview Capital and Broadview Consult. At Broadview, he was responsible for providing the overall strategic direction and focus for Broadview Group in fulfilling its core mandate as a licensed corporate trustee. He was also responsible for the overall strategic planning, policy development and asset management of the firm. In the period 2005-2012, he worked at Bank of Africa in various capacities as Head of Retail Banking, Head of Public Sector, Acting Head-Corporate Banking, Assistant General Manager-Business Development and Executive Head of Commercial Banking. Before Bank of Africa, Lawrence worked with UT Financial Services where he was appointed as IT/Finance Consultant to advice the Chief Executive on financial service technologies and software implementation. He also played a key role as a lead consultant in the implementation of the Unisoft software. He has also had stint with Ghana Institute of Management and Public Administration (GIMPA) as well as Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nation where he was the information analyst and budget officer respectively. Lawrence holds an MBA from Leicester University, UK and has several certificates and diplomas from various institutions both local and international including International Labour Organisation(ILO),Italy and Ghana Institute of Management and Public Administration(GIMPA) By: citifmonline.com/Ghana The family of the late Nakpa Naa Alhaji Salifu Dawuni is appealing to the government to allow them to bury the late chief. The appeal was made when the Northern Regional Minister, Salifu Saeed paid a courtesy call on the family during his visit to Nanung area to assess the extent of damage caused by recent torrential rains that left many persons homeless. The late Nakpa Naa died in March of 2014 at the Tamale Teaching Hospital but the choice of his burial site has become a bone of contention between two factions. Thus, his remains are still at the Yendi Government Hospital mortuary while the grave is still left uncovered. According to the spokesperson for the family, Mohammed Awal the continued prohibition of the burial is a great concern to the family. We are saying that in this particular family of ours, we have a very big problem which is the burial of our old man who is the late Naa Salifu Dawuni. He died on the 5th of March 2014 but until now he has not yet been buried and we are not sleeping over this, he told Citi News. It is a problem to us and we call on the government to as a matter of urgency look into that for us to bury the late chief. The continued detention of his remains at the mortuary is not in our best interest. By: Mohammed Aminu M Alabira/citifmonline.com/Ghana 03.08.2017 LISTEN A number of National Service Personnel posted to various public and private institutions to begin a new working life have been turned away, Joy News has learnt. The personnel were turned away for lack of space and knowledge. By Ghanas laws it is mandatory for students who complete tertiary education to offer one year of national service in a private or public institution. However, the 2017 batch of students posted to some private institutions especially in Accra have been turned away. When we went to the place they told us the place was full. If they knew the place was full why were we posted there? one of the frustrated National Service person asked. According to him, about 125 personnel have been turned away. The National Youth Organiser of the governing New Patriotic Party Sammy Awuku finds the situation worrying. Sammy Awuku He told Joy News something must be done about the situation. The current national service situation is a bit nightmarish. Students are posted to agencies of state and when they get there they are told there is no space. The National Service outfit must liaise with these agencies to have these issues resolved, he pleaded. But the Public Relations Officer at the NSS, Ambrose Entsiwa says there is no cause for alarm. He said even though they have heard the complaints from some of the service personnel they are yet to get official notification from the establishments where the students were posted. According to him, the Secretariat is giving the institutions the benefit of the doubt, at least until the end of registration on August 24 so they will be able to have a clearer picture what the problem is. He said in some cases the personnel were turned away from the institutions because they have made their own arrangements as to which students they would prefer to have as service personnel. Whilst the Secretariat discourages that arrangements by the institutions, Ambrose Entsiwa said those institutions will pay the allowances of the service personnel and also pay service charges to the secretariat so they must have some say in who is recruited for them. Story by Ghana|Myjoyonline.com A firefighter was killed while working the Lolo Peak fire Wednesday afternoon the second firefighter death in Montana this fire season. Missoula County Sheriff T.J. McDermott said an official investigation to determine the cause of death is still underway. Dispatchers at the Lolo Peak fire said the man was given CPR after apparently being struck by a falling snag. Rescuers worked to get him off the mountain and loaded onto a LifeFlight bound for Missoula. However, emergency workers could not save his life. The mans name has not been released pending notification of his family. McDermott said further details will be released once the investigation is complete. Please keep wildland firefighters on the Lolo Peak fire and firefighters across the nation in your thoughts and prayers, Leigh Golden, the fire's public information officer, said in an emailed statement. If confirmed, the incident marks the second time in two weeks that a firefighter in Montana has been killed by a falling tree limb, often referred to as a snag. On July 19, Trenton Johnson, 19, was killed by a burning snag that fell on him as he was working the Florence fire near Seeley Lake. Johnson was a standout lacrosse player for Hellgate High School in Missoula and was attending Montana State University. He was working for a private firefighting company based in Oregon. His death took place in only the second fire that Johnson had worked with a 20-person crew with the private company Grayback Forestry, which was under contract to the U.S. Forest Service. The last year to claim more than one wildland firefighter's life in Montana was 2001. That was also the last year in which a firefighter was killed by a snag. Ravalli Republic reporter Eve Byron contributed to this story. Niamey (AFP) - Niger's president has sounded the alarm over his country's world-leading birth rate, labelling the average of over seven children per household a "handicap" to development in the impoverished west African nation. Mahamadou Issoufou said that at the current rate, Niger's population would more than double by 2035 and hit 75 million by the middle of the century. "Common sense compels us to reflect now on this future," he said Wednesday during a televised address on the 57th anniversary of Niger's independence from France. "If we cannot educate, train and care for our youth and offer them employment opportunities... they will become a handicap, or even a menace to social cohesion and prosperity." Deeply poor Niger has the world's highest birth rate of 7.6 children per household, and its population of 18 million is growing at close to four percent a year. The United Nations estimates that the population of west Africa could reach a billion people by 2050 and senior politicians in the region last month called for measures to half birth rates. Niger has a number of factors contributing to its ballooning population, not least the fact that three quarters of women are married before they reach 18 and that contraceptive use is just 12 percent nationwide. "We need to act now," Issoufou said during his address, adding that the government wanted to put a stop to underage marriage and increase education rates among girls. The New Patriotic Party (NPP) would be commemorating the 70th anniversary of the ground-breaking political entity christened the United Gold-Coast Convention (UGCC); it is celebrating the event at the national level and presumably in the regions and within the constituencies. The party, which traces its ancestry and umbilical cords to that phenomenal movement is justified in so doing and honoring the memories of the elite political grouping with avowal of individual freedom in a liberal democratic state where the development of the individual and of society in a free political atmosphere under the rule of law are the principles of the state and a center piece of free enterprise, fundamental human rights as well as a vigorous pursuit of private initiative are the abiding anchor. Instructively, after three scores and ten years in our governance journey, we are left in no doubt, and proudly so, that our philosophy and or tradition has emerged vindicated in contemporary times today. Apparently, this discussion purporting to dissect the trailblazing success story of the UGCC cannot be complete without reviewing and re-evaluating this success and its impact within not only our national front, sub-regional level as well as the continental scheme of affairs towards defining the proper frontiers and definitions of development and progress amongst the comity of other advanced, first world nations of the world. Again, it is important to reitereate the following viewpoint put up in a write up by Earl Conteh-Morgan in an article entitled: Post Cold War Era West Africa: Implications for Us Foreign Policy captured in a book edited by Karl P. Magyar with the title United States Interests and Policies in Africa, Transitions to a New Era. In that write up, Conteh-Morgan asserted: Africa, perhaps more than other regions of the world, has always been profoundly subjected to the ebbs and flow of global systemic values and changes; colonization and decolonization, super-power ideological rivalry, the demise of the cold-war, and authoritarian tendencies and democratization amongst others. As waves of change roll over the international environment, so do the policy postures of the great powers also change vis-a-vis the various nations of the African continent. The history of the Africas relationship with the great powers has, accordingly, been one where Africa has assumed varied episodic geopolitical utilities shaped by the rhythm of global geostrategic and military rivalries. As Africa continues to be challenged by this new fin de siecle international environment, it is confronting some formidable sociopolitical and economic problems unprecedented in post-world war II era international politics The writer asserted further, that in particular, West Africa is undergoing dramatic change with profound politico-economic implications for the heightened inter-dependence of the international and Nigeria system. Several self-declared Marxist regimes have modified their ideological inclinations with the demise of the Soviet Union. Pro-free market regimes (Ghana, Sierra Leaon, Togo and Nigeria among others) have embarked on more privatization as a way of decreasing state control over their economies The above observation, ipso facto, previews in particular the hitherto Gold-Coast when through overt or covert administrative manipulations, our states were and the colony in particular was colonized and our peoples denied free democratic participation in the governance process. Here in the then Gold-Coast, before 1947, and through de facto or de jure sovereign power, the resources of our land were at the mercy of colonial plunder and misappropriation and in the periods between 1471 and 1945, our peoples lived under foreign domination and imperialistic rule without real recourse to expanding the frontiers for the mass participation of the subjugated indigenes in the decisions which had direct impact on their lives. Through one-sided profiteering schemes, our economies and natural resources were decimated and our state had little to show. Against the backdrop of several civil agitation and crave for the effective participation of its people in a self-governing environment, the visionary elites birthed the trail-blazing UGCC as a vehicle for the pursuit of their emancipation and fastracking the independence struggle. Whilst this action served our own purposes, it was also to lead the African liberation and indigenization of the reins of not only political power, but also the economic empowerment of our peoples. It need be admitted, that inspite of our chequered historical past as a nation, the vision so espoused by our forbears of giving vent to the free participation of ordinary citizens in the affairs of the state has stood the test of time having transitioned from a subjugated colonial status, to a republican statehood. Suffice it to admit though that, this newly founded selfdom was not to be seen as an end in itself; rather, it was a means to serve the bigger end or vision of not only achieving political independence and the granting of the franchise for a universal adult suffrage, but very much an impetus for creating the right economic framework to lift our nations from the doldrums of cyclical improvishment and dependence or reliance on handouts from our colonial taskmasters. It was to spur a holistic African project as a key player in industrial and technological innovation and advancement thereby turning into a hub of choice for international investment. Several years on after the declaration of that vision, our own nation inspite of its great endowments is yet reeling under the clutches of the Guggisberg economic superstructure with dependence on the exportation of primary products to the international market. We have not become competitive technologically or have we developed the wherewithal to turn our natural resources into wholesome finished products to enable us earn the needed income to self-finance our national development. Today, the New Patriotic Party which traces its ancestry to the UGCC has assumed once again the reins of power having secured an overwhelming mandate from the Ghanaian people with a pro-free market mantra and orientation as the founding fathers of the UGCC under H.E. Nana Addo Danquah Akufo-Addo(a chip of the old block though). That the party, has inherited a nation plaqued with myriads of socio-economic difficulties is in no doubt and which no one can be remiss about. However, how it turns around and salvages this germane issues and challenges as a political party with antecedents to the UGCC portends the vindication of the beliefs held by its forbears and would fit as a glowing tribute to those philosophical front-runners. In like vein, the party in government would be honoring the memories of the founding fathers of our national political emancipation, when it is able to link our success as a sovereign state to a holistic African agenda of continental emergence as key player in global commerce, trade, industry and socio-economic progress. Asia our contemporaries have gone far in pace ahead of us and the continent as a whole and it would therefore be the height of naivety to remain in our neophyte state. Perforce, on this occasion of the 70th anniversary of the UGCC, it is worthwhile to honor the memories of George Alfred Grant, Francis Awoonor-Williams, Ako Adjei, R.S Blay, Dr J.B. Danquah(the doyen of African politics), William Ofori Atta, Edward Akuffo Addo as well as the venerable Obetsebi Lamptey, the stalwarts who successfully launched the UGCC on that fateful and historic day in Sekondi, in the Central region of Ghana. We profoundly cherish their brevity and visionary thoughts of a free society even at the peril of their lives. Longlive the NPP Longlive our forbears Longlive Ghana By Emmanuel Ataffuah-Danso, Convener, The African Young Conservative Dialogue, GH Accra. 0208231667/0246733297 [email protected] Deputy Chief of Staff and a member of the Ghana @60 Planning Committee has justified reasons for government seeking to hold a memorial and thanksgiving service as well as a lecture on Friday, August 4. Samuel Abu Jinapor says the date which marks important dates in Ghanas political history adding the President will be the guest of honour at the Saltpond event. August 4 may not mean much to some Ghanaians, but for historians and politicians, it is a significant date in the countrys history books. On August 4, 1897, the Aborigines Rights Protection Society (ARPS), a group critical of colonial rule was formed in the then Gold Coast. Traditional leaders and the educated elite originally established it to protest the Crown Lands Bill of 1896 and the Lands Bill of 1897, which threatened traditional land tenure. The ARPS became the main political organisation that led organised and sustained opposition laying the foundation for political action that would ultimately lead to Ghanaian independence. Also significant to note was August 4, 1947, when the United Gold Coast Convention (UGCC), the mother party from which the New Patriotic Party (NPP) was birthed, was formed. For the reason, Mr Jinapor explained to Joy News that Committee is holding the event to celebrate the establishment of the UGCC. Later in the day, there will also be an official 60th Anniversary Independence lecture at the National Theatre in Accra to be addressed by the Speaker of Parliament, Prof Aaron Mike Ocquaye, he said. The topic for the lecture is Fourth August, Ghanas Day of Destiny. Mr Jinapor acknowledged the committees decision will generate political debate but justified it. We came to these conclusions upon very thorough and deliberate thoughts. We think that we can have the difference in opinion, inferences and deductions from historical facts but we must be unanimous in the historical underpinnings of our country. The arguments we are making here is bigger than the NPP and the history shows in Danquahs speech". He said academicians, chiefs and politicians conceived the Ghana that Danquah and his cohorts dreamt about in Saltpond and it was not only about Danquah. According to him, history of Ghana described the day August 4 in Saltpond where a congregation of all the stakeholders of our body politics or society that conceived the Ghana of today, not the Ghana of one party state, or adhere to the rule of law. Story by Ghana | Myjoyonline.com | Abubakar Ibrahim |a[email protected] The Osu Traditional Council has launched the 2017 Homowo festival with a focus on education to secure good future. The one-month festival on the theme: Our youth and education, the way forward will champion a new paradigm shift to ensure the youth have access the education. Activities lineup include: a Homowo lecture, health walk and screening and clean-up exercises. The Homowo Festival, which means hooting at hunger, is celebrated by the Ga-Dangmes in Greater Accra which is characterized by the sprinkling of Kpokpoi and palm nut soup to signify their gratitude to the gods for blessing them with a bumper harvest. Speaking at the launch, Paramount Chief of the Osu Traditional area, Nii Okwei Kinka Dowuona VI said the education of the youth is paramount to the Osu stool. He revealed that they would be collaborating with NVTI, HOTCASS, SOCIAL WELFARE, OIC, YWCA to train the youth in catering, masonry, carpentry, tourism etc to be skilled professionals. I am therefore making an appeal to the youth to take interest in this opportunity created by the Stool. This is the time for the youth to take their place in the community, he stated. Nii Okwei Kinka Dowuona VI noted that this years Homowo is very critical in the life of my kingship as he celebrates 10 years of his installation. It also affords me the opportunity to bid a final farewell to Five (5) of my departed predecessors on the Osu Stool from 1916 1982 as Osu MantsEmEi. This occasion will take place in the month of October 2017. Osu MantsE called on government and development partners to assist in his drive to improve the socio-economic conditions of the people. Nii Kinka Dowuona, therefore, appealed to companies working in the area to support the Council in its endeavours to enhance the living conditions of the people. He called on the residents to work in unity and ensure that peace prevailed for a successful celebration of the Homowo Festival. Fremont, CA A California man has been arrested for allegedly recording a couple having sex and trying to extort them for money. Police say back in March, a couple moved into a two-bedroom apartment and shared it with several other people, including the suspect, 33-year-old Maninder Adama. The couple moved out of the area at the end of April, but in mid-June, they began receiving messages from an unknown email address with claims that the sender was in possession of a video that depicted them engaging in sexual acts together, according to police. Adama threatened to send the video to the couples family and post it on social media sites if they didnt pay him $5,000, police say. Then he also said, [speaking to the woman in particular], Well, if you dont have the money to pay up, if you spend the night with me, Ill forgive the $5,000 and give you back the tape, said Detective Michael Gebhardt with the Fremont Police Department. The suspect included screenshots of the video as proof in his emails. Based on the positioning of the room and its setup, the couple believed they were recorded while living in the shared apartment. Police, who were contacted in July, determined Adama was the one sending the emails. The suspect was arrested Thursday, and several laptops and electronic devices with the ability to record audio and video were seized, police say. In addition, detectives located a video of the victims on one of the laptops. Adama was booked on suspicion of multiple counts of felony extortion and multiple misdemeanor counts related to invasion of privacy for allegedly recording the victims. Detectives are continuing to investigate the case to determine if there are additional victims. CAL Bank has launched its new brand identity. The rebranding has seen a change in the bank's logo and the tagline. CAL Bank's logo has been changed into two yellow and orange petals which depict 'C' and 'B'. The bank's tagline has also been changed to 'Forward Together'. MD of Cal Bank, Frank Adu Jnr Speaking at the official unveiling ceremony in Accra, the Managing Director of CAL Bank, Mr. Frank Adu Jnr said the move formed part of the company's three year strategy spanning 2015-2018. Some staff of Cal Bank displaying the new brand logo and paraphenalia The strategy focuses on 'reviewing the strength of the CalBank brand and investing in ensuring it continues to be relevant in today's hyper active banking space.' According to Mr. Adu, the rebranding is geared at creating a stronger, vibrant and more meaningful brand for our current and future clients, across different customer segments. 2nd Deputy Governor of BoG, Dr. Johnson Asiamah The Chairman of the Board of Cal Bank, Van Percy also commended the efforts of all stakeholders and urged for stronger collaboration to achieve greater heights in the bank's future agenda. The event was attended by shareholders, industry regulators including Second Deputy Governor of the Bank of Ghana, Dr. Johnson Asiamah, staff as well as other stakeholders. By: Pius Amihere Eduku/citibusinessnews.com/Ghana Johannesburg (AFP) - Jailed Paralympic athlete Oscar Pistorius was taken to hospital Thursday for overnight observation, an official said, as local media reported he was suffering chest pains. Pistorius, 30, is serving a six-year jail term for murdering his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp, a model and law graduate, in his Pretoria house in 2013. The "Blade Runner", as he was known, has always maintained that he mistook Steenkamp for an intruder when he fired four high-calibre bullets through a locked toilet cubicle. "This morning he went for a medical examination and he was scheduled to return back (to jail), but he will now be kept overnight for observation," Logan Maistry, spokesman for the department of correctional services, told AFP. Maistry added that the department would not release details on Pistorius's medical condition. The News24 website said Pistorius was taken from Atteridgeville prison in Pretoria to hospital in an ambulance after complaining of chest pains. The year before he killed Steenkamp, Pistorius became the first double-amputee to race at Olympic level when he appeared at the London 2012 games. While on parole he gave a television interview saying that an "instant fear" drove him to open fire. The Minister for Health has assured that the unemployed private nurses will soon be recruited. The Minister at a press conference stated that his ministry has appealed to the Finance Minister to release funds to enable their clearance and posting which the Minister for Finance Ken Ofori Atta is currently working on. He further complained about the constant picketing of the nurses at his ministry which he described as indiscipline and threatened to involve the security apparatus if persuasion fails. Mr. Agyemang noted that government has recruited 14,566 nurses who graduated from 2012 to 2016. The minister added that, nurses starting from next year will apply for jobs in the health sector without the assistance from the government. Minister of information Mustapha Hamid, present at the press conference also appealed to the nurses to exercise patience. The president for the Association Federick Baah however, responded positively to the proposal from the minister and promised to be patient with the minister while he works on the procedures for their recruitment. By: Gifty Tracy Aminu/citifmonline.com/Ghana The Accra Metropolitan Assembly (AMA) has arrested five for dumping refuse at unauthorized places at the Kwame Nkrumah Interchange area which is contrary to section 56(a) and (b) of Act 851, Public Health Act (2012). The 5 persons are Ibrahim Mustapha, Ishmael Yartey, Kwabena Owusu, Mustapha Buhari and Ama Galley. Briefing the media, the Head of the AMA's Rapid Response Unit (RRU), Moses Abor said, the five were taken to the Nima Police where they were cautioned to desist from such acts. The AMA has in recent times rolled out a number of measures to actualize the President's vision of making Accra the cleanest city in Africa. 21 offenders had earlier been prosecuted at the Abeka Magistrate Motor and Sanitation court of the AMA for committing such offence at Lapaz and Achimota. The Abeka Sanitation and Motor Magistrate court fined 21 GHc720 each or default serve a six months imprisonment each for dumping refuse at unauthorized places on the Lapaz section of the N1 Highway contrary to section 56(a) and (b) of Act 851, Public Health Act (2012). By: citifmonline.com/Ghana There is no government contract making Puma Energy Limited the sole entity tasked with the supply of gas and LPG cylinders to domestic consumers, the National Petroleum Authority (NPA) has said. The NPA, in a statement responding to claims by the Gas Tanker Drivers Association, said no other Company has been issued a license to do the cylinder recirculation as part of the Cylinder Recirculation Module. The authority said the claims from the Gas Tanker Drivers Association were an outright falsehood perpetuated by the Association. We wish to categorically state that neither Puma Energy Limited nor any other Company has been issued a license to do cylinder recirculation. Puma Energy is a licensed Oil Marketing Company whose primary role is to sell petroleum products to bulk consumers and the general public through retail stations and reselling outlets. The Association of Gas Tanker Drivers hinted of a nationwide strike if the NPA failed to withdraw the Cylinder Recirculation Module. According to the group, the policy if allowed, will throw them out of business, and collapse all gas stations in the country. The association also said about 7,000 Ghanaians workers in the LPG chain will have to be laid off, aggravating the already high unemployment situation in the country. In response to this, the NPA said this policy will seek to maintain the existing jobs and is also going to create more jobs based on the category of licenses to be created in the implementation plan. It was initially believed the module would start in September 2017 but the NPA has clarified that the policy is in a draft stage which is yet to be finalized and submitted to Cabinet for approval before implementation. Find below the full NPA statement RE: 7000 GAS TANKER DRIVERS TO LOSE THEIR JOBS BY SEPTEMBER The attention of the National Petroleum Authority (NPA) has been drawn to a purported statement emanating from the Gas Tanker Drivers Association and widely circulated in the media yesterday 2nd August, 2017 with the above caption in which a number of false allegations were made and we hereby seek to clarify and set the records straight. Claim 1: Contract with Puma Energy The publication claimed Government had entered into a contractual agreement with Puma Energy Limited to be the sole entity tasked with the supply of gas and LPG cylinders to domestic consumers. This is an outright falsehood perpetuated by the Association. We wish to categorically state that neither Puma Energy Limited nor any other Company has been issued a license to do cylinder recirculation. Puma Energy is a licensed Oil Marketing Company whose primary role is to sell petroleum products to bulk consumers and the general public through retail stations and reselling outlets. Claim 2: Policy to commence on September 1, 2017 Contrary to the claim that the Cylinder Re-circulation Model policy is set to be implemented beginning September 1, 2017, the policy is in a draft stage which is yet to be finalised and submitted to cabinet for approval before implementation. The ministerial sub-committee led by NPA is currently reviewing the policy and at the same time developing a draft implementation plan. The NPA has held two separate meetings with LPG/Oil Marketing Companies to collate their concerns and these have been taken care of in the draft policy implementation plan. Further consultations will be held with the said companies and other stakeholders including the Gas Tanker Drivers before the policy is finalized and implemented. Claim 3: Policy will keep thousands out of job It is worthy to mention that while the policy will seek to maintain the existing jobs, it is also going to create more jobs based on the category of licences to be created in the implementation plan. Conclusion In this regard, the NPA wishes to assure the general public that it is not in our interest to keep the Gas Tanker Drivers Association out of job as is being speculated. As the Regulator of the petroleum downstream industry, we have a responsibility to safeguard the interest of all our service providers as well as consumers. By: Delali Adogla-Bessa/citifmonline.com/Ghana Economist, Eric Osei-Assibey, sees long-term benefits in the current administrations industrialisation drive, arguing that the focus on production will sustain macroeconomic gains. The senior Economics lecturer at the University of Ghana, Legon, says whatever macroeconomic stability that Ghana may achieve if the productive base does not expand, the gains will not be sustainable. You can bring down the fiscal deficit but if the economy is not growing for you to generate more revenue, you will have to keep borrowing and adding to your debt stock, interest cost and all of that come back to increase your expenditure without necessarily increasing your infrastructure, he said. The government hopes to increase employment and the production of goods and services with its One District One Factory industrialisation policy. In the 2017 budget statement, some GH456.25 million in both capital and operating expenditures was allocated for the programme that was scheduled to begin in June this year but has been postponed. Speaking on Hard Truth, a current affairs programme on the Joy News channel on MultiTV, the renowned economist said just like the industrialisation policy, the 2017 budget is rich in calculated efforts to offset government expenditure a move he describes as a step in the right direction. This is one of the budgets that you could see very deliberate policies towards the real sector of the economy, like policies that are geared toward bringing in investments in the productive sectors of the economy, he said. Dr Osei-Assibey sees a bump in Ghanas foreign currency when the factories start production but he wants the government to actively involve the private sector. The way the private sector responds is key, and hence the business-enabling environment must be conducive to make it attractive enough for businesses to invest, he said. Watch more in the video below. Story by Ghana | Myjoyonline.com | George Nyavor | [email protected] Nouakchott (AFP) - Police and opposition activists clashed Thursday in Mauritania's capital on the final day of campaigning for a controversial constitutional referendum. The authorities refused to give the green light for protests opposing the constitutional changes in Nouakchott and three regions of the west African country, leading to what activists said was "excessive" use of tear gas in an area to the west of the capital. A coalition drawn from a broad political spectrum including Islamists and anti-slavery activists in the conservative west African nation oppose measures including abolishing the senate and changing the national flag, and some are boycotting Saturday's vote. Saleh Ould Henenna, a spokesman for the protesters, said "we have to inform the authorities of our activities but we don't have to wait for their approval," denouncing "the dictatorship which governs this country." Activists including the head of an anti-slavery group had fainted during the rallies because of the tear gas, he said. The clashes came just hours before President Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz was due to speak at his own rally, promising "revelations" about a Senate he says is corrupt. Senators rejected the abolition of their own chamber in March, apparently to the government's surprise as a majority are from the ruling party, prompting Aziz to call the referendum. But the opposition fears that despite Aziz's claims to the contrary he is laying the groundwork for a third term in power, with his own prime minister saying recently he supported the idea. Around 20 Senators maintained a sit-in at the chamber on Thursday, under police guard. Opposition lawmakers from the lower house have followed suit in solidarity with their peers, a parliamentary source told AFP. Hohoe (V/R), Aug 3, GNA - Dr Akinwumi Adesina, the President of the African Development Bank (AfDB), is championing the transformation of the rural economies of African countries as the fastest way to lift millions of people out of poverty. The President, who is on a three-day visit to Ghana, said this at a welcome dinner hosted by Ghana's Minister of Finance, Mr Ken Ofori-Atta and attended by the Vice-President, Dr Mahamudu Bawumia, Dr Ernest Kwamina Addison, Governor of the Bank of Ghana, and key government functionaries, said a release made available to the Ghana News Agency. He said 'we have to make sure that agriculture, which is their basic source of livelihood, is made a business, not a way of life. I don't believe that agriculture is a way of life at all. It is a development activity. This is where Africa's wealth will come from if we do it the right way. Agro industrialization has to play a very big role in what we do.' Dr Adesina, who spoke on various ways the Bank will continue to support Ghana, said the country has no business importing rice and pledged the AfDB's support in this area. 'One of our High 5s is to Feed Africa. Coming from the airport, I was speaking to the Honourable Minister of Finance about northern Ghana, and I was saying that northern Ghana has over 400,000 hectares of land which is very good for agriculture. Ghana absolutely has no business at all importing rice. You are spending US$400 million a year importing what you should be exporting. I think we are going to do something about that. It is one of the key issues that we are going to be discussing,' he said. The AfDB President said his outfit plans to support Ghana and CAte d'Ivoire to transform the cocoa industry and create more wealth and jobs from the product. 'You are trying with 40 per cent of cocoa production, but you can do more. The Bank will support you and CAte d'Ivoire with how you can coordinate your production and also your market support to avoid the fluctuations that you currently see. I have a firm belief that God has given every nation what they need to develop and to strive. The issue is what you do with it. We have a programme that we are going to be discussing with you,' the President emphasized. Thanking the Ghanaian Government for making the visit possible, Dr Adesina stressed how the country had made steady progress since the Presidential election in January this year. 'Consistent with its 'Feed Africa' strategy, the African Development Bank will support government efforts to improve the underperforming value chains which fail to add enough value to agricultural produce; to repair and rebuild inadequate infrastructure; to improve access to agricultural financing; and to reduce volatility in the international price of cocoa,' he said. The Bank will also contribute to the stabilization of the energy sector. Dr Adesina stressed why the continent needs to give the youth tools and the means to stay in Africa and to prosper by doing so. Last year, the African Development Bank and the European Investment Bank launched Boost Africa, an initiative that provides support to the earliest and riskiest stage of the entrepreneurial value chain via a funding mechanism that will channel a150 million to 2,000 young entrepreneurs, and create 75,000 direct jobs and 500,000 indirect jobs. The Vice-President, Dr Mahamudu Bawumia, lauded Adesina for his focus on agriculture and pledged his government's support. 'It is clear that the AfDB is going places with you as President. We can see and feel it. For any economy in Africa to change, we need to solve the agriculture problem. This will put us on the way to industrialize. Our next budget as a country will focus on agriculture. We are counting on the Bank to be with us on this journey, as you have always been,' Bawumia said. For his part, Mr Ken Ofori Atta, commended AfDB's work in Ghana and expressed optimism that the partnership would be strengthened with Dr Adesina's visit. 'As a country, we believe that we need to get back to basics and the beauty of Adesina's Presidency is this clarity on agriculture and the need for us to have food security, more importantly, power and the whole concept of industrialization. And it is exciting to have someone who has had quite a lot of experience and success in Nigeria as Agriculture Minister at this time when we most need it,' he said. 'There are a lot loan facilities that we are working on, and there are already good projects in energy, agriculture, rural roads and others. For all of us, between energy and agriculture we should be able to strike a partnership. 'We are also very clear for the African Development Bank to be the lead institution so that when we are getting multilateral donor funding, they are following what AfDB is doing. In all these, the need to increase our capital base is key. President, we are way behind you because it is important.' He also commended the Bank for stepping in to ensure that Ghana and CAte d'Ivoire work together to change the cocoa narrative. 'That is because our leaders have not been working together. The President of the AfDB is stepping in and we are working together to see how we can change this.' GNA By Maxwell Awumah, GNA The Vice President, Dr Mahamudu Bawumia, says he is optimistic the organisers of this year's Hajj will make the country proud. He acknowledged and thanked them for all the hard work they have put in to make this year's Hajj an easy one for pilgrims. In a brief remark to stakeholders and prospective pilgrims, Dr Bawumia expressed delight at the ongoing facelift at the Hajj Village, with the construction of permanent structures such as a clinic to cater for prospective pilgrims. Dr Bawumia said this when he visited the Hajj Village on Thursday to interact with the key stakeholders and inspect facilities. From what I see, this could be one of the best, if not the best organised Hajj in Ghanas history, Dr Bawumia said. I remind you that the next few weeks will be the most critical, as all the planning you have done will have to be implemented...I am however confident that you will make Ghana proud by ensuring an incident-free 2017 Hajj, he added. He was taken round by Sheikh I. C. Quaye, Chairman of the Pilgrims Affairs Office of Ghana (Hajj Board), and other members of the Board and briefed on arrangements made to ease the Hajj process this year. Briefing the Vice President on progress so far, Sheikh Quaye indicated that the first set of pilgrims will leave Ghana via Tamale on August 10. He indicated that four flights in total will depart from the Tamale airport, with eight others departing from Kotoka International Airport in Accra. A total of 6,200 Muslims are expected to undertake the holy journey in Saudi Arabia this year. Story by Ghana | Myjoyonline.com | Abubakar Ibrahim |[email protected] Former President John Mahama is in Kenya as part of Commonwealth Observer Mission to monitor the East African countrys August 8 elections. The former President heads the 15-member Observer mission which includes journalists and former diplomats in Commonwealth member countries. At a press briefing in Nairobi Thursday, Mr Mahama explained, our presence here affirms the support of the Commonwealth to Kenya and its democratic processes. He assured the political parties and Kenyans, their observation role will be undertaken in an impartial and transparent manner. We will seek to assess the pre-election environment, polling day activities and the post-election period against the backdrop of Kenyas national legislation and regulations as well as regional and international commitments, Mr Mahama told the media. The East African country is yet to recover from the political and economic crisis it was plunged into following the declaration of former President Mwai Kibaki as the winner of December 27, 2007, presidential election. The post-2007-2008 election violence reportedly left at least 1,200 people dead after a brutal police response to protests combined with ethnic killings. Current Kenyan President, Uhuru Kenyatta and his vice, William Ruto were linked to the killings leading to the International Criminal Court (ICC) laying charges against them. But the crimes against humanity laid on them were withdrawn for want of evidence, the Hague-based court said in December 2014. In its bid to avoid the 2007-2008 post-election clashes, the Commonwealth Observers said they will observe the opening, voting, closing, counting and the results management processes. Mindful of the significance of the elections to Kenyans, Mr Mahama said their presence is to affirm the support of Commonwealth to Kenya and its democratic processes. The observers will be deployed to various locations across the country on August 5, 2017, the former Ghanaian leader said. They will be in small teams and will arrive to observe preparations ahead of polling day and meet with political parties, the police, election officials and other stakeholders in their respective locations, Mr Mahama said. The full list of Commonwealth observers is: Chairperson: His Excellency John Dramani Mahama Former President of the Republic of Ghana Members: (in alphabetical order of nationality) Ms Natasha Stott Despoja Former Ambassador, Senator and Party Leader Australia Professor Pierre Moukoko Mbonjo Former Minister of External Relations Cameroon Mr Christopher Cobb Journalist/Electoral Communication Specialist Canada Ms Pauline Welsh, Director of Legal Affairs Electoral Commission of Jamaica Mrs Nana Asantewa Afadzinu Executive Director, West Africa Civil Society Institute Ghana Professor Aishah Bidin Law Professor and Human Rights Commissioner Malaysia Mr Solomon Akintola Oyateru Ambassador (Retired) Nigeria Hon Gideon Kayinamura Ambassador (Retired) Rwanda Ms Angelique Pouponneau Vice-Chairperson for Inclusion and Engagement Commonwealth Youth Council Seychelles Mr Glen Mashinini Chairperson/Commissioner Electoral Commission of South Africa Ms Elizabeth Lwanga King Development Advisor Uganda Hon Canon Justice James Ogoola Chairman The Elders Forum of Uganda Baroness Sandip Verma Parliamentarian United Kingdom Hon Justice Damian Zefren Lubuva Former Attorney General and Minister of Justice and Justice at the Court of Appeal, and Chairman of the National Electoral Commission United Republic of Tanzania. Story by Ghana | Myjoyonline.com | Austin Brakopowers | [email protected] | Instagram: @realbrakopowers The International Court of Arbitration has thrown out a case business man Alfred Agbesie Woyome filed against the government of Ghana. His case did not meet the preliminary requirements needed for a thorough investigation and adjudication. In a ruling released, Thursday, a copy of which has been intercepted by Myjoyonline.com, the ICC said in part the international Court of Arbitration of the International Chamber of Commerce decided that this arbitration will not proceed Article 6(4) and fixed the ICC administrative expenses at US$ 5,000.00, which is covered by the non-refundable payment already made by the claimant. Article 6(4) says "The arbitration shall proceed if and to the extent that the Court is prima facie satisfied that an arbitration agreement under the Rules may exist." Woyome is sweating to refund a 51 million cedis cash he fraudulently took from the government of Ghana under the late president John Mills in 2010. He was paid the money in three tranches of 17 million cedis after he sued government for an abrogation of contract. According to the business man, he had a contract with the erstwhile Kufuor administration to build stadia for the CAN 2008 tournament. However, he claimed that contract was illegally abrogated. The claims by Mr Woyome were denied vehemently by functionaries of the then Kufuor government. He filed the suit in 2009, a year after the NPP government had left office and under the NDC government, a government he is known to have financed to power. He won a judgement debt case. The Attorney General, Betty Mould Iddrisu at the time had failed to defend the state and Woyome was handed default judgement. Even when the court instructed that only one tranche of 17 million be paid to Woyome until his case is exhausted, the Attorney General at the time Betty Mould Iddrisu is reported to have paid all the three tranches. Betty Mould resigned but his successor Martin Amidu who filed a case of fraud against Woyome and demanded a refund of the money was dismissed by the late president John Mills. As a citizen of Ghana, Amidu proceeded to the Supreme Court challenged the payment to Woyome and demanded a refund. The court upheld the arguments and instructed Woyome to refund same in 2014 . More than three years after the instruction, Woyome is yet to fully honour his obligation to the state. Instead, he filed a suit at the ICC insisting he had a case against the government of the Ghana. He filed the case on March 17, 2017 . Since then he has been in an out of court explaining how he expended the 51 million cedis why it has taken him too long to rfefund the amount. On August 3, Woyome's biggest hope of protecting what is left of the amount he took in 2010, which is the ICC case against government, has also disspitated with a ruling he will not be happy about. It remains to be seen where he will go next. Story by Ghana|Myjoyonline.com|Nathan Gadugah Drumroll, please And the winner of the ASX 300s best stock of 2016/17 is Whitehaven Coal [ASX:WHC]. This is an unlikely victory. Just 17 months ago, WHC along with much of the global coal industry was trading near record lows. Coal was largely seen as an industry in decline. But sentiment often changes. Identifying these shifts could potentially make you a lot of money. The end of financial year is an interesting time. This is when I take a close look at the best-performing stocks of the past 12 months. Its always fascinating to see how big uptrends like WHC evolve. Check this out. Its the ASX 300s top 20 stocks for last financial year: Source: marketindex.com.au/asx300, 30 June 2017 [Click to enlarge] Most of these stocks arent household names. Only three are in the ASX 50 (Qantas, Orica, and Aristocrat). I suspect few traders were looking at any of them a year ago. But look at the performance. These stocks have shot the lights out in difficult conditions. Having a few of them in your portfolio could have made a real difference. So, how can you identify these stocks much earlier? Well, heres the interesting thing: Youll find 13 of them in Quant Traders Overflow portfolio. Another three hit their exits stops in recent months, after racking up big gains. You may be wondering about the other four stocks; three were too volatile (one eventually gave a signal, but was stopped out for a loss), and one hit its trailing stop in November for a small financial-year gain. These are the trends that Quant Trader got [Click to enlarge] The table is only for the 2016/17 financial year (some stocks have a larger overall gain). Youll also notice the figures dont match the pervious table. This is due to differences in the entry dates and the start of the financial year. Many stocks have been in the portfolio less than 12 months. I think youll agree this is a solid result. The top 20 make up just 6.6% of the ASX 300, and less than 1% of the overall market. Yet Quant Trader has made big hypothetical gains on 80% of them. This weeks report will look closer at three of these stocks. I want you to see how the system identifies and profits from big trends. These are skills you can learn yourself. DIY trend trading OK, youre about to see the trades Each has a very different setup. But they all lead to the same thing large gains. I want you to study each trade carefully. Youll get an insight to how big trends develop. Youll also see what it takes to ride a trend. This is the key to profiting from similar moves. Right, heres the first stock: Aristocrat Leisure [ASX:ALL] Source: BigCharts [Click to enlarge] Lets start by putting the trade into perspective. This shows the share price over a 10-year period. Now, have a look at the box in the top corner. Thats the 2016/17 financial year. ALL had been rising strongly for several years prior. This wasnt your classic down and out bargain. Many people dont like buying after a strong move. They reason that a stock must be nearing the end of its run. Their overriding concern is to avoid buying at the top. But this is often a mistake. You see, strength is positive. Its a good indicator that a trend will continue. And some trends like this one can last for a very long time. Heres what the trade looks like up close [Click to enlarge] Quant Traders entry was at $6.85 on 20 November 2014. This was a few days after the service began. The trigger to buy was a fresh high in the share price. I often hear people talk about buying low and selling high. Theyll say you should never buy a stock after a strong run. Many would have said that Aristocrat Leisure was due for a fall. But these people miss the point. Strength indicates buyers are paying up to own the stock. Buying into this momentum is what trend-following is all about. The next stock is The a2 Milk Company [ASX:A2M] Source: BigCharts [Click to enlarge] Again, Im starting with a weekly chart. This gives you a bigger picture view. Youll quickly spot the difference in this trade. A2M had not been rising for several years. Instead, the stock had been trading sideways in the months before the buy signal. As before, the box shows you last financial year. OK, lets zoom in on the action [Click to enlarge] Quant Traders buy signal was on 2 August 2016 at $1.90. The trigger was a breakout after a period of range-bound trading. This often leads to further buying and a rising share price. But the key to this trade is the exit strategy. This is what makes a big gain possible. Look closely at the red line below the share price. It resembles a set of rising stairs. This is the trailing stop. And it can potentially turn your entries into a lot of money. Now, pay close attention to the trailing stop. Youll see it gives A2M plenty of room to move. This is a key reason the system can stay on big trends it helps ride out the corrections along the way. The last stock is Bluescope Steel [ASX:BSL] Source: BigCharts [Click to enlarge] BSL has an entirely different setup to the previous stocks. I would describe this as a classic turnaround story. The shares were recovering after a deep bear market. This is one of my favourite plays. Stocks like BSL are often out-of-favour. The markets low expectations can lead to big upside if the companys fortunes begin to turn. Check this out [Click to enlarge] Situations like BSL are interesting. You see, many people like to buy as the share price falls. They believe this is how you get a bargain. But I disagree. Trying to pick the low is a longshot. Youre fighting against the trend. Ive seen a lot of money (and a few careers) lost attempting this strategy. Have another look at the chart The key to this trade was not attempting to buy at the low. Quant Trader waits for the moving averages to turn higher. This increases the odds of the trend continuing. Another critical factor is staying on the trend. This means resisting the urge to take profit. Many traders sell after a small rise. Doing this ensures they cant make a triple-digit gain. Let me sum it all up for you: Dont be afraid to buy into strength chances are the shares will run further. Use a trailing stop that gives a trade breathing space. This helps stay on a trend. Avoid falling stocks wait for signs of an up-trend. Be slow to take profits. Letting winners run is the secret to big returns. Most trades wont reach the top 20 performers list. Some promising trends will result in a loss. Others will only post modest gains. And thats OK. Its all part of the strategy. The important thing is that you spread your risk widely. This increases the odds of getting some of this financial years best stocks. These can make a big difference to your overall results. Keep an eye on Quant Traders portfolio. Chances are the top stocks will pass through as they trade higher. I believe this puts you in the box seat to get on some of the biggest trends. Until next week, Jason McIntosh, Editor, Quant Trader Publishers Note: Did your broker tip 17 of the top 20 ASX 300 stocks last financial year? If your answer is no, heres something you should do Check out Jason McIntoshs Quant Trader advisory service. Its a fully algorithmic trading system for ASX stocks. Quant Trader scans practically every company. It then tells you when to buy and sell. Chances are youve never heard of some of the unique opportunities it identifies. And right now, you can trial it for 30 days with a 100% money back guarantee. This could change the way you trade forever. Check it out today. Yesterday, Genworth Mortgage Insurance Australia [ASX:GMA] was one of the best performing stocks on the ASX. The company rose 5.2% to $3.20 per share. If youre unfamiliar with the business, Genworth provides lenders mortgage insurance. This essentially protects the bank if borrowers are unable to repay their mortgages. The risk of default, in most cases, is therefore transferred over to the insurer rather than the bank. On the same morning that Genworth rose, the company also released their first half yearly report for FY17. But unlike what youd expect when investors rush to buy, revenues and earnings didnt outperform. Instead, revenues consisting of gross premiums and unearned premium both fell 3.9% and 16.9% respectively. The drop in revenues caused profits for the period to plummet 34.8%. Are investors just crazy? Why would they jump into a business after their earnings power takes a beating? Well, there is a reason. Its not always about earnings There are two things that Genworth is doing that investors love. The company is paying a 14 cent dividend, and plans to buy back $100 million worth of shares. As reported by the Australian Financial Review (AFR): These capital management moves go to the heart of the markets misunderstanding of exactly what Genworth is about. Rather than being viewed as a mortgage insurance company in decline with a grim earnings outlook it can be seen as a capital-generating machine. Also, there are good reasons why it should stay that way for several years to come. But earnings growth is not why you invest in Genworth. Its also not why it was spun off from its US parent, Genworth Financial Inc. [NYSE:GNW] who still owns 52% of the Australian company. Instead, Glenworth was created and should be thought of as a cash cow. The AFR continues: In Australia the normal interim and final dividends have been topped up with special cash dividends in 2014, 2015, 2016 and again in 2017. Genworth also had a capital return in 2016. And just yesterday, Genworth said they would pay an interim dividend of 12 cents per share, along with a special dividend of 2 cents per share. Chuck in a $100 million buy back and what more could income investors want? Harje Ronngard, Junior Analyst, Money Morning PS: Its not always the blue chips that have the best dividend yields. Income specialist Matt Hibbard has written a new report Top 5 Dividend Stocks in Australia for 2017 all about the best Aussie dividend stocks. Some of the stocks Matt mentions pay reliable yields of 6%, 7%, 8% and more. Thats more than 5% what youd get on an Aussie 10-year bond for just slightly more risk. To get your free copy of Matts report, click here. CCSO Evidence Photo Heiser Canyon Illegal Grow, Pre-eradication, Aug 2 2017 View Photos San Andreas, CA This week three multi-agency teams led by the Calaveras County Sheriffs Office have already outpaced its own illegal marijuana eradication activities since January. Speaking with Clarke Broadcasting yesterday Calaveras Sheriff Rick DiBasilio signaled what will likely result by Friday in a gangbusters week for eliminating numerous illegal grows throughout the county. As reported here last week, the sheriff shared details concerning the countys eradication efforts since January along with thoughts relating to this years harvest. Explaining this weeks field activities, the sheriff shares, We are working in conjunction with other entities, Fish and Wildlife, the CHP, Department of Water Resources, [county] co-compliancewe have multiple people who have come out. He adds, This is part of a program that we put together about three months ago that we have been working on. We have brought in environmentaliststo review and we are hitting the unregistered [illegal or unable to get a permit] sitesbecause they are obviously out of compliance. In addition to destroying illegal grows and making arrests, the sheriff emphasizes that Fish and Wildlife and DWR officials are in tandem issuing citations to the property owners. Asked whether these group efforts will be part of a short, targeted spurt, the sheriff demurs a bit, offering, Three teams are spread out over several areas and we are all going to be here for a bit - it is ongoing. As for the costs and funding involved, he admits to having little idea as to what the total will be until all the costs are tallied. With regard to the latter, he confides, There is no federal funding it is coming from marijuana [registration] fees, some from the general fund, depending on the program used to eradicate and a lot of it is being paid for through the state by CHP, DWR and Fish and Wildlifeit is like mutual aid. Telegraphing A Toughening Stance According to Sheriff DiBasilio, the fast and furious flurry of focused eradication activities should send a message to illegal operators across the county. If you are an unregistered grower or a grower who had a registration that has been denied, dont grow in Calaveras County because we are going to take your product, he states, matter-of-factly. Monday at five locations, the teams eradicated 12,617 plants, made seven arrests, recovered two weapons and had two structures red-tagged. Tuesdays yield at six locations was 6,292 plants and five arrests. (Click the image box slide show for a few field images supplied by the sheriff, including some taken today from a Heiser Canyon grow site operation where a team subsequently eradicated 5,000 plants.) For residents who may be on the lookout in their neighborhoods, the sheriff offers this visual aid: If they see a long line of cars and trucks with trailers and equipment and helicopters flying over know that your sheriffs department is doing what it needs to do to eradicate these illegal grows. As fall harvest activities gear up later this month, the public continues waiting for the county supervisors to figure out whether the board will opt to ban commercial grow activities as a three-supervisor bloc hopes to do or if it will move into crafting more viable long-term grower regulations than provided under the existing urgency ordinance regulating medical marijuana grows. While it is widely considered to be deeply flawed, it allows the county to collect fees and taxes that help pay for enforcement costs. One way or another, they need to figure out something before January 1 so we can get something in place, the sheriff affirms. Whether it is a ban or regulation they need to do something and hopefully in the next meeting or two they will do thatmake a decision so I know what direction to go. Initial Busts Yield Nearly A Dozen Arrests Tuesday afternoon around 1 p.m. at an illegal grow site in Glencoe at 14751 Highway 26, two men with Sacramento addresses, Cha John Xiong, 48, and Pao Jack Xiong, 38, were picked up and each subsequently charged with felony marijuana cultivation and conspiracy to commit a crime. Arrested in the 10 a.m. hour at 2500 Spruce Creek Road in Railroad Flat on misdemeanor illegal grow charges were Tien Nguyen, 60, of Stanton Island, NY, and Cop Ba Ngo, 51, of San Jose. The sheriff pointedly recalls this location as among those eradicated last season. It was a flat out illegal grownever attempted to register itand we went back there this year, the sheriff notes dryly, adding that those involved gambled and lost on the chance that enforcement officials would get to them again. Earlier Tuesday morning, around 8:30 a.m. at 117255 Jesus Maria Road, Ya Vang Xiong, 41, of Sacramento was picked up on two felony charges. Shortly afterwards, at a grow located at 126 S. Railroad Flat Road in Railroad Flat, Juan Blanco Peralta, 28, of Santa Rosa, was arrested on misdemeanor counts of illegally cultivating marijuana plants and obstructing a peace officer. On Monday, several more illegal growers in the West Point/Railroad Flat area were arrested on related felony and misdemeanor charges. Among these are Cheng Kuang Chao, 67, and Nai Wang Chao, 56, both with Sacramento addresses, associated with a grow that was located at 1423 Argonaut Lane; Thuyen Thi Nguyen, 60, linked to a grow at 1360 Argonaut Lane; also Nhat Tien Nguyen, 35, of Stockton, and Phu Minh Nguyen, 31, of San Jose, arrested at 21482 Highway 26. Most of the foundations you can find in stores, both in the powder and in liquid forms, are not fit for people with oily skin. They just make you look more greasy. Those that actually work well on oily skin are super expensive. What should you do? Make your own, of course! Today, we will tell you how to make your own foundation for oily skin in Nigeria. Stick around until the end for some makeup tips. DIY: Best powder for oily skin in Nigeria Oily skin is not the worst thing that could happen to you. Many people have learned how to deal with it and look great in the process. Which is why we want to share our recipe for the best foundation for oily skin. We are certain that it will make you love your skin so much more. For this recipe, you will need: 1/4 cup of corn starch or arrowroot powder; 2 tbsp. of oats (finely ground) 1/2 tsp. of spice (depending on your skin tone, experiment with cocoa powder, instant coffee, cinnamon and nutmeg) 10 drops of a carrier oil of your choice (we recommend using sweet almond oil or grapeseed oil) a drop of your favourite essential oil. Instructions Step 1. Whisk your corn starch/arrowroot powder and your oats until well combined. Little by little, start adding your spices. Add the spices until you get the shade you need. Sift the powder to remove large chunks of oats and other elements. Step 2. Slowly, start adding your carrier oil, drop by drop. Mix it all together until the mixture is even. Add a little bit of your essential oil. Do not add too much at once, as the powder will stop being a powder. Step 3. Transfer the powder to your powder jar. You can use the leftover jar from your favourite store-bought powder or you can buy a new one. Now you can use it like any other foundation powder you have used before. However, this one will most likely stay with you throughout the whole day. Best foundation for oily skin in Nigeria (liquid) READ ALSO: How to make pink lips cream at home? If you prefer liquid foundations to powder, we have a recipe for you as well. However, to make it, you still need to go through our previous recipe. You will be using the powder you have made in this recipe. Thus, for your homemade liquid foundation for oily skin, you will need: the powder you made before; your favourite essential oil or lotion. It is very easy to make, as all you have to do is mix the powder with the desired amount of oil/lotion. The more you add, the runnier it will be. If you add just a few drops, you will have a powder that you can press into a contact and use it like any store-bought compact. If you add more, you will have your liquid foundation. Notes: Remember that the colour of your oil will affect the colour of your foundation. Use lighter powder with darker essential oils. If you see that the foundation is already too dark, add some colourless lotion to dilute it, or mix in more arrowroot powder/corn starch. If you have oily skin, it is recommended to use these essential oils: aloe vera, jojoba, eucalyptus, geranium, lavender, myrrh, ylang ylang. Pick the one you like best or mix them together. Nigerian makeup tips for oily skin Whether you are new to makeup, or your experience is rather extensive, a few tips would not hurt. Here are seven important tips for every Nigerian makeup lover. Moisturise! In order for you makeup to look flawless, your skin needs to be flawless as well. The best way to perfect skin is moisturising. If you think that because your skin is oily, you do not have to moisturise, you are wrong! Even people with oily skin need to protect it from drying out, especially in hot weather. You can find oil-free moisturisers and do not be afraid that you willskin oilier than it already is. Do not forget to use primer. The key to good makeup is primer. As your skin is prone to oiliness, your makeup can literally slide off your face if it is too hot outside. However, if you use primer, your pores will shrink, and makeup will stay on much longer. Eyeshadow primer is also important, as it prevents the eyeshadow from smudging. Setting powder/spray is your best friend. Makeup will stay on so much longer if you use a setting powder or a setting spray. They are absolutely essential for people with oily skin. If you use them, you can even go for a run, and your makeup will stay on. So do not hesitate to splurge on a good setting powder/spray, if you want your makeup to stay on at all times. Do not expect incredible results from cheap makeup. Of course, some drugstore makeup brands sometimes surprise you with how good they are. However, it is not always so. Most of the cheap stuff looks cheap when it is on your face, and it can make you break out terribly. Cheap makeup products are not usually meant for oily skin, and they do not stay on for very long. Nevertheless, listen to both your heart and your budget and do not spend your last money on that lipstick! Use foundation that matches your skin tone. If you enjoy ordering makeup online from overseas, be aware that they rarely have makeup that matches your skin tone (especially if it is extra dark). Try different brands and find the foundation and powder that are just the right match for you. However, it is still better to go to your nearest makeup store and switch to your hearts content. When choosing concealer, it is best to choose one that is slightly lighter than your skin tone. Experiment with contour and highlight. The highlight/contour trend is not dead yet. Try out different techniques, see what works best for your facial features. Contouring is actually a great alternative to plastic surgery! However, you might face the same issue as with foundation - not that many contour/highlight pallets are fit for darken skin. So find your go-to product/brand and stick to it until it is discontinued. Then repeat the process. Clean your brushes. Do not be lazy and messy, and always clean your brushes after you are done! The residue of old products will not only ruin your perfect look, but also cause you to break out. So take those extra five minutes to remove the excess product from your brushes. We hope we have armed you well with our knowledge, recipes and tips. Now make your own foundation powder or liquid competition and slay everyone with your stunning looks. READ ALSO: Ombre lips on dark skin: Secrets of perfect makeup Source: Legit.ng Medical education is one of the most important training in our world today because it has to do with the lives of people. To be an excellent doctor, you have to be trained in the best universities with the best and updated facilities. So, if you are interested in getting the best medical training available in Nigeria, the university below is where you should study. So, what is the best university in Nigeria for medicine in 2018? The University of Ibadan The best university for medicine in Nigeria is the University of Ibadan. It is also popularly known as UI and it is the first premier university in Nigeria. It was established first in 1932 and was located in Yaba, Lagos. In 1948, the staffs of the college were moved to Ibadan to start the University of Ibadan. The University of Ibadan was finally moved to its permanent site on the 17th November 1948. The college of medicine also began in 1948 after it was given recognition by London University. Due to the fact that the university did not have the facilities to train its student in clinical courses, students were sent abroad to complete their training. The University Teaching Hospital was built and opened in 1957, and it graduated its first locally trained doctor in 1960. Since its establishment, the University has trained more than 7,000 medical doctors. Some of these doctors are now physicians and teachers of medicines all in different teaching hospitals in the country. READ ALSO: Top 100 universities in Nigeria 2017 In Nigeria today, University of Ibadan is the leading university when it comes to medical training in Nigeria. The college of medicine, University of Ibadan has affiliations with other international institutions. It receives medical students from foreign universities for specialized training programs. Admission to study medicine and surgery at the University of Ibadan is very competitive because many people apply to the University every year. The University of Ibadan was also the first to start postgraduate medical training in Nigeria. Other best universities in Nigeria for medicine and surgery Obafemi Awolowo University (OAU IFE) University Of Ilorin (UNILORIN) Ahmadu Bello University Zaria (ABU Zaria) University Of Lagos (UNILAG) University of Benin (Great UNIBEN) Lagos State University (LASU) University Of Nigeria Nsukka (UNN) Delta State University Abraka (DELSU) Niger Delta University (NDU) To gain admission into the College of Medicine University of Ibadan, you can check JAMB brochure for information on requirements and other relevant details. We wish you all the best. READ ALSO: Nigerian universities currently selling masters form 2017/2018 Source: Legit.ng There are many types of banks in Nigeria today. However, most of us are only familiar with this list of banks in Nigeria: First Bank of Nigeria, Guaranty Trust Bank, Zenith Bank, etc. We should know that we have different kinds of banks depending on the types of banking operations they perform. Continue reading and you will find out what are the different types of banks in Nigeria. Most people are only familiar with banks as a place they save their money and get them back when they need them. And also as a place where they can get loans. However, banks have a lot of other different functions and services available for public, companies, and governments. These various services and functions are provided by different types of banking institutions in Nigeria. The different types of banks can be difficult to differentiate but according to the banking licenses that are currently available in Nigeria today, we have the following types of banks as listed below. Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) The Central Bank is the number one bank in any country. It is the institution that manages and regulates the Nigerian currency and the activities of all other financial institutions in Nigeria. It was established by the CBN Act of 1958. It started operations on the 1st of July 1959. The functions of the Central Bank as stated in the CBN acts include: Maintaining Nigerias external reserves Promoting monetary stability and a sound financial environment To be the lender of last resort to the federal government To be the financial adviser to the federal government The Central Bank of Nigeria is also responsible for giving license to all other banks, other financial institution, and sectors in Nigeria. The Central Bank of Nigeria is headed by a governor. The current governor is Mr. Godwin Emefiele. READ ALSO: List of commercial banks in Nigeria and their managing directors 2017 Commercial Banks Commercial Banks in Nigeria are banks that provide financial services to businesses and companies, and also to the general public. The financial services provided include accepting deposits, giving of business loans, and offering basic investment products. The roles of commercial banks in Nigeria include: Accepting of deposits. Serves as a financial intermediary by collecting money from depositors and lending it to borrowers. They invest depositors money in businesses that are profitable. Issuing of debit, credit, and prepaid cards to their customers. They provide both secured and unsecured loans to their customers. There are around twenty-two commercial banks in Nigeria. Retail Banks Retail Banks are banks that provide banking services for individuals. The general public is their main customers. They provide services such as personal savings account, current personal account, fixed deposit account, and debit and credit card services. Individuals can also obtain car and mortgage loans from their retail banks. Merchant Banks Merchant banks are the same as Investment Banks. These banks majorly provide financial services for production and trade of goods and services, and businesses. Most of the Merchant banks in Nigeria today have been converted to either a commercial bank or retail bank. Microfinance Banks Microfinance banking is very popular in Nigeria. Most times they are created to serve a specific group of people. They provide micro financial services such as savings, small loans, etc. to individuals in public. Some institutions in Nigeria have Microfinance Banks created to serve their staffs and students. Mortgage Banks Mortgage banks are banks whose primary service is to provide mortgage loans to people. Such banks do not take deposits from individuals. Non-Interest Banks This is an unpopular specialized banking in Nigeria. However, they are present in Nigeria according to the types of banking license provided by the Central Bank of Nigeria. Most banks in Nigeria can be seen in more than one category as they sometimes combine more than one type of banking operation. One reason you should pay attention to the different types of banks in Nigeria is that it is advisable to use a bank based on the primary purpose of the bank. For example, if you need a mortgage financial service, getting it at a mortgage bank is better than getting the mortgage at a commercial or retail bank. READ ALSO: Functions of Commercial Banks in Nigeria Source: Legit.ng - Ogbonnaya Onu, minister for science and technology, stated that the move to declare a state of emergency was made in recognition of the cardinal place of science and technology in driving the economy - Onu revealed that the council had further resolved to help Nigerian firms produce the countrys needs, by encouraging technological development - The minister also disclosed that Ministry of Foreign Affairs would help the country improve its free visa status ranking from the present 92nd position it currently occupies The minister for science and technology, Ogbonnaya Onu, has disclosed that a state of emergency has been declared in the sector, by the Federal Executive Council, Daily Trust reports. Legit.ng notes that Onu made his comments in a chat with state house correspondents, after the FEC meeting. READ ALSO: Osinbajo, APC state chairmen discuss Buharis health in Aso Rock He disclosed that the move was made because the Economic Recovery and Growth Plan of the Buhari administration recognized the cardinal place of science and technology in driving the economy. He revealed that a policy had been approved by the council to help Nigerian firms produce the countrys needs, by encouraging technological development. In his words: We are not looking for transfer of technology because we know it would not happen; what we are looking for is acquisition of technology and we are interested in building our own capacity. We are convinced that we can do this and we believe that with the new policy we will be in a position to acquire technology. The minister also disclosed that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs would help the country improve its free visa status ranking from the present 92nd position it currently occupies. According to Onu, this is a very low position for the country as it allows Nigerians to enter only 45 countries on free visa. PAY ATTENTION: Install our latest app for Android, read best news on Nigerias #1 news app Meanwhile, Legit.ng previously reported that the Nigerian minister of science and technology, Dr. Ogbonnaya Onu, revealed how Nigeria ranks in the world when it comes to technological readiness. Quoting the global competitiveness report for 2015/2016, Onu said Nigeria recorded a score of 3.0 out of 7 and ranked 106 out of 140 countries on technological readiness and a score of 2.8 out of 7 with a rank of 117 out of 140 countries on innovation. Watch this Legit.ng TV video asking which of Buharis ministers should be sacked. Source: Legit.ng MUSCATINE Toby McCarter announced he will run for the Muscatine School Board this week. He is the third person to announce his candidacyincumbents Tammi Drawbaugh and Tim Bower announced their candidacy last week. A third board member, Randy Naber, will retire from the board when his term ends this September. The deadline for announcing a run for the Sept. 12 school board elections was on Thursday. Heres what you need to know about McCarter: Personal background: McCarter grew up in Nevada, Iowa. He moved to Muscatine in August 2014 with his wife and two children, who will attend middle school next year. Education: Graduated from Nevada High School and earned a bachelors degree in international economics and business and transportation and logistics from the University of Arkansas. Occupation: Investment adviser at Edward Jones in Muscatine. Appointments: McCarter currently serves on the boards of Muscatine Charities and the Muscatine Art Center. He is the president-elect of Kiwanis and serves on the committees for the United Way Kids First Fund and the Greater Muscatine Chamber of Commerce and Industry membership committee. Reasons for running: In an interview Thursday, McCarter said he wants to run for school board because his children are part of the school district. I feel like theres a lot of hope and a lot of opportunity for Muscatine, he said, adding that education is the primary driver of our future in the city. As an outsider, McCarter said he will bring new ideas and perspectives to the board. The Iowa native said he grew up in a single-parent householdhis mother was an educator. His mom's career as an educator, he said, has spurred him to serve and give back. I know what its like to not have any money; I know what its like to be without, he said. He continued to show an interest in education, serving on the PTO in Iowa City when his family lived there. Goals if elected: McCarter said he wants all children in Muscatine to receive a great education. Though he had not been following the affairs of the board of education, he said, he has attended meetings with Aligned Impact Muscatine, a private-public partnership that supports the school district in its goals. McCarter said he wants to encourage parents to send their children to 3-year-old and 4-year-old preschool and improve early literacy rates in the district. He also said attendance and graduation rates in the district could be improved. I want the best education for my children and for all the children here in Muscatine, he said. I want to continue to guide that path that were on. - The convener of the Niger Delta Peoples Congress (NDPC), Mike Loyibo, lamented the selfishness of Chief Edwin Clark, considering the fact that the Buhari's government had taken steps towards solving the Niger Delta problem - Loyibo urged the federal government to solve already identified problems instead of allowing any particular group to slow it down - The groups convener listed the issue of the Maritime University, amnesty programme, Ogoni clean-up, among the problems that require the immediate attention of the presidency The federal government has been asked by the Niger Delta Peoples Congress (NDPC) not to negotiate with the Edwin Clark-led Pan Niger Delta Forum (PANDEF), Daily Trust reports. The groups position was made known in a statement released by its convener Mike Loyibo. Legit.ng notes that Loyibo urged the presidency to go back to the people of the region, just as Acting President Yemi Osinbajo initially went round, seeking their buy-in. READ ALSO: Ayade redeems N10million pledge to Imams for election prayers Clark had threatened that his group would withdraw from the peace negotiations with the federal government if their demands were not met. Osinbajo is scheduled to meet with PANDEF at the Presidential Villa on Thursday, August 3, at 6:30pm. He stated: It is highly selfish and unpatriotic for the Chief E. K. Clark- led PANDEF to give the federal government an ultimatum considering the right steps taken so far by the government towards a permanent solution to the age-long crisis that has bedeviled the Niger Delta region. We are aware that the government constituted a high-powered committee chaired by the acting president who has demonstrated so much passion and commitment towards the region. PANDEF is just one of the many groups in the region and its decision cannot be binding on everybody. There is no need for the Federal Government to negotiate with any group; rather, the Presidency should go back to the people in the host communities just the same way that the acting president went round initially to seek their buy - in . After all, it was not PANDEF that secured peace in the region. They have consulted widely and a road map has already been fashioned out. The federal government should not allow any group to slow her down; rather, immediate action should be taken to tackle already identified issues." Listing out various issues that require the attention of the federal government, Loyibo stated: The oil companies should be compelled to relocate to the region as previously instructed by the acting president. The Maritime University needs immediate action. The modular refineries should kick off immediately. The NDDC, as presently constituted, should not stand. The amnesty programme should be well funded, further strengthened and re- engineered. The Ogoni clean -up should go ahead and the model should be used for other neglected communities in the region." PAY ATTENTION: Install our latest app for Android, read best news on Nigerias #1 news app Meanwhile, Legit.ng previously reported that the director general of the Voice of Nigeria (VON) Osita Okechukwu, berated the Ijaw national leader Edwin Clark, over the ultimatum he issued to the federal government, to constitute a negotiation team on the demands of the Niger Delta region. Okechukwu advised Clark to join hands with the Buhari government to develop the country, instead of engaging in propaganda. Watch this Legit.ng TV video asking who is Nigeria's greatest president ever. Source: Legit.ng - Okechukwu Enelamah, the minister of industry, trade and investment, stated that the tax break was given to pioneer companies- excluding mineral oil and cement firms- to aid them attract investment - The minister disclosed that the initiative is governed by the Industrial Development Income Tax Relief Act - A review process will be carried out every two years to reflect new realities; and companies added to the list will benefit from the initiative A three-year tax holiday was approved for 27 new industries and products, by the Federal Executive Council on Wednesday August 2, The Cable reports. The development was made public by the minister of industry, trade and investment Okechukwu Enelamah. READ ALSO: Northern governors kick-start fundraiser to reinvigorate Bank of the North The minister disclosed that the move was made in order to enable the companies grow and expand. He stated: The FEC gave approval to a memorandum that was presented to amend the list of pioneer industries and products that will enjoy pioneer status going forward. The pioneer incentive scheme is governed by the Industrial Development Income Tax Relief Act. The whole purpose of it is to give tax holidays to industries that we consider pioneer, not mature, to enable them to grow and attract investment in them. We have tried to remove all ambiguities in the definition of industries by reclassifying industries according to the international standard industrial classification, which is the same standard used by the Nigerian Bureau of Statistics. We also agreed that the pioneer list should be reviewed every two years and that in the case of additions to the list, it will be affected immediately. In case of deletion from the list, there will be a three-year window that will be allowed for those investing in that industry and enjoying pioneer status to carry on till the end of that three-year period. Against this backdrop, we then approved 27 industries that were recommended for addition to the pioneer list. According to Enelamah, the list would eventually be made public. He stated that mineral oil and cement firms are not included among the pioneer industries. This is because Nigeria is already a net exporter of cement, and mineral oil is already governed by the petroleum profit tax. PAY ATTENTION: Install our latest app for Android, read best news on Nigerias #1 news app Meanwhile, Legit.ng previously reported that the minister for science and technology, Ogbonnaya Onu, disclosed that a state of emergency has been declared in the sector, by the Federal Executive Council. The move was reportedly made because the Economic Recovery and Growth Plan of the Buhari administration recognized the cardinal place of science and technology in driving the economy. Watch this Legit.ng TV video asking Nigerians to state what Buhari should tackle first when he returns Source: Legit.ng Arewa Youths Consultative Forum (ACF) on Thursday August 3 insists that the quit notice given to Igbo people residing in the northern part of country is still in force. The youths who had earlier insisted on the Igbos leaving the north claimed the quit notice issued to the easterners stands. The group however claimed that those interested in being part of Nigeria are welcome to stay while those who are not interested should leave before expiration of the notice. READ ALSO: Full text of speech by Osinbajo on how to stop Biafra agitation, others According to Shettima Yarima, chairman of the forum who spoke in Kano on Thursday August 3, the group's mission is for a peaceful co-existence of people in the country. Going further, the group gave reasons for insisting on the initial quit notice issued to the Igbo people to leave the country. PAY ATTENTION: Read the news on Nigerias #1 new app The group however claimed that they will continue consultation to north-central and north-east to determine if they should reconsider their position. Legit.ng had reported that a group, the Igbo Renaissance Agenda (IRA) recently claimed the Arewa Youth Assembly are trying to replace the acting president with their kinsman. In the video below, acting president Osinbajo speaks on the Biafra war. Source: Legit.ng The National Identity Card is the card issued by the National Identity Management Commission (NIMC) to Nigerians as a means of identification and contains relevant information about the holder. Legit.ng earlier reported that as from January 1, 2018 the federal government has announced that no Nigerian will obtain or renew international passports without having the National Identification Number (NIN). Here are things you need to know about the National ID card National ID card Source: NIMC 1. Persons eligible The National e-ID Card can only be issued to Nigerians registered into the national identity system and legal residents who have attained the age of 16 years and above. Unlike the National Identification Number (NIN) which is assignable to all Nigerians and legal residents without any age restrictions. 2. Functions The e-ID card can be used for identification, payment and other applications in Nigeria. READ ALSO: This is how to check if your National ID card ready for pick up 3. Electronic Identity (e-ID) The National e-ID Card contains key information of the applicant or Card holder recorded in the Database. 4. Payment Europay MasterCard & Visa (EMV) This payment function enables the National e-ID Card to be used as a tool for making payments for goods and services in any part of the world. All that the cardholder needs to do is to visit one of the participating banks (such as Access Bank) and load money on the card or have someone transfer money to the card using any of the available payment platforms/options. For example (from a bank account to the card, Quickteller transfer, POS terminals, ATM) etc. The card can also be used to pay for goods and services such as utility bills like DSTV, GOTV, Startimes, flight tickets, Water bill, PHCN and so on and in Automated Teller Machines (ATMs) all over the world where any of the payment processors (such as Mastercard) is displayed. READ ALSO: NIMC On Many Uses Of The New National Identity Card 5. Match-on-Card (MoC) The card has your 10 fingerprints taken at the point of registration in to the National Identity Database safely stored away on it. No unauthorised person can access them. The Match-on Card (MoC) is the most secure technology to authenticate a person. A secure terminal or a Card Acceptance Device (CAD) is used to match a specific fingerprint against that locked away on the National e-ID Card. Too many attempts, and the applet is blocked for security reasons. That way, an agency or authorised person can be sure that the person presenting the card is the true owner. It is no different from what is currently done with the 6. International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) Travel The National e-ID Card is also a travel document and conforms to such standards as the ICAO just like the International Passport. This function on the card provides future functionality for anyone who may wish to embark on cross border migration such as regional travel within West Africa and or other consenting countries where a visa is not required. Meanwhile, Legit.ng earlier reported that Mohammed Babandede, the comptroller general of the Nigeria Immigration Service (NIS), while addressing state house correspondents on Tuesday, August 1 revealed the new policy. PAY ATTENTION: Watch more videos on Legit.ng TV He said the development is part of efforts to have a centralised database for Nigerians and to also improve the business environment in the country. Watch this Legit.ng video on what Nigerians think of the country: Source: Legit.ng Register for more free articles. Sign up for our newsletter to keep reading. Be the first to know Get local news delivered to your inbox! Sign up! Already a Subscriber? Already a Subscriber? Sign in Terms of Service Privacy Policy - The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission said three ministers had reported to Ibrahim Magu concerning the development - The anti-graft agency said many of these fraudsters claim to be appointees of Ibrahim Magu - The agency released its phone number and e-mail addresses asking the public to report any such cases The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) has warned Nigerians against patronizing fraudsters claiming to be appointed by its chairman Ibrahim Magu. The alleged fraudsters meet government officials to receive monetary gifts and such others on Magu's behalf. The corruption-fighting agency warned that it take gratification to either to facilitate or scuttle an ongoing investigation. The warning came in a statement calling the attention of Nigerians to what it says are the activities of a band of fraudsters extorting senior government officials and claiming to be working for Magu. The agency said at least, three different ministers had approached it with complaints of being reached by those claiming to be officers. It warned that it has a good name to protect and wondered why people are bent on giving it a negative reputation, the statement obtained by Legit.ng said. READ ALSO: I do not want one Nigeria, I can never want it - Nnamdi Kanu The EFCC said it had earlier warned some fraudsters were approaching suspects under investigation by the commission claiming that Magu sent them. They also reportedly cloned the email and Facebook accounts of the EFCC chairman through which they sent messages demanding bribes. The agency said it had constantly warned its staff against such practices because they are well paid. The consequence of engaging in the practice, according to the EFCC, is outright sack and prosecution. The statement said the EFCC often receives complaint of people who have fallen victim to such fraudsters claiming to be agents. In such cases, the EFCC said, such victims often think they were relating with the real officials of the anti-corruption body. It said despite the initial warning, some members of the public have continued to fall prey to the antics of these fraudsters. It announced that it was not part of the criminal practice and that Magu would not send people to do such. Those who engage in the fraudulent act do so because they know that those under investigation are scared, the agency said. PAY ATTENTION: Read the news on Nigerias #1 new app While warning that it would not tolerate its name being dragged by fraudsters, the agency also asked the public to report cases they come across. For this, the agency released 0903131991 and info@efccnigeria.org through which its officers can be reached. Legit.ng had earlier reported that Ibrahim Magu recently said that corruption would kill Nigeria if the anti-graft agency doesnt fight and kill it now. This comes even as the EFCC boss urged stakeholders in the anti-corruption war not be discouraged with the way corruption is celebrated in Nigeria. Watch this video as Nigerians recently supported EFCC in the fight against corruption: Source: Legit.ng Exceptional British record shark caught off Cornwall BBC Rabbit ears are back! Antenna sales back on the rise as millennials are shocked to discover broadcast TV is FREE Daily Mail UPDATED: Siedle, Raimondo Critic, to be Awarded $48M in SEC Record Whistleblower Case GoLocalProv.com. Private equity sleaze. Steep fees call into question bitcoins promise for the underbanked America Banker Tesla mum on new accounting rules that could significantly change financial results Francine McKenna, MarketWatch Electric-Car Revolution Is Shaking Up the Biggest Metals Markets Bloomberg The Cobalt Pipeline WaPo. Good article on blood cobalt in your cell phone, but this: The worst conditions affect Congos artisanal miners a too-quaint name for the impoverished workers who mine without pneumatic drills or diesel draglines. Artisanal miners. I cant even. Climate change to cause humid heatwaves that will kill even healthy people Guardian. The new analysis assesses the impact of climate change on the deadly combination of heat and humidity, measured as the wet bulb temperature (WBT). Once this reaches 35C, the human body cannot cool itself by sweating and even fit people sitting in the shade will die within six hours. India: Summer or pre-monsoon season, lasting from April to June (April to July in northwestern India). In western and southern regions, the hottest month is April; for northern regions of India, May is the hottest month. Temperatures average around 3240 C (90104 F) in most of the interior. The future is already here its just not very evenly distributed. Flash drought could devastate half the High Plains wheat harvest Grist Venezuela AP Explains: Brazil Congress to vote on presidents future AP Syraqistan Brexit Grenfell: names of wealthy empty-home owners in borough revealed Guardian Why exorcisms are on the rise in France The Economist (MT). MT: So no chance having exorcists purge the evil out of neoliberals, right? China? Amazon and Alibaba square off in Southeast Asia Nikkei Asian Review Our Famously Free Press Using Tech Tools to Do Data Reporting NYT. I guess thats why the Times could axe 27 reporters and gut the copy desk; theyre going to do everything with data! Oh, and video. New Cold War On Being Nosey Ribbon Farm Not a shot! Anti-vax movement prompts Brooklynites to withhold inoculations from their pets, vets say Brooklyn Paper Should we stop keeping pets? Why more and more ethicists say yes Guardian Trump Transition Democrats in Disarray Zuckerberg hires former Clinton pollster Joel Benenson Politico. Good. Great! Sen. Cory Booker just introduced a bill that could legalize marijuana nationwide Vox. Sanders introduced a bill to deschedule marijuana in 2015. Importantly The legislation would also be retroactive, so it would automatically expunge federal marijuana use and possession crimes from peoples records and let those currently serving time in prison for marijuana use or possession petition for resentencing. Personally, I think its a very good sign when even the most vile opportunists compete to do the right thing. Democrats may be losing, but centrists arent Carl Beijer Class Warfare Terrifying news about the state of the Republic Fabius Maximus. Ive resolved to ignore all articles with terrifying in the headline, but Im making an exception in this case. (Here is the full article, a PDF from Journal of Democracy.) New Deal Archive and Map The Living New Deal (marym). Amazing. Antidote du jour (via): Bonus antidote: Midday on the @NYCTSubway. Guy walks onto a train with this. pic.twitter.com/Ca67la8Dvv Matthew Chayes (@chayesmatthew) July 27, 2017 See yesterdays Links and Antidote du Jour here. Press Release Functional collagen ingredients are fueling growth within the joint health category and category-leader Bioiberica is helping formulators capitalize on the trend with a new cost-effective, clinically validated Native (undenatured) Type II Collagen under the brand name b-2Cool. Native Type II Collagen works via a unique mechanism of action that sets it apart from other forms of collagen. Rather than contributing to the structural integrity of the joint, Native Type II Collagen modulates the immune response through oral tolerization to protect against degradation of endogenous collagen, thus reducing the inflammatory response in joints damaged by osteoarthritis, rheumatoid arthritis or extreme exertion. b-2Cool Native Type II Collagen is produced through a unique, strictly controlled process that guarantees the biological activity of the molecule. It has been developed by Bioiberica scientists with a proven record of expertise. The efficacy of b-2Cool has been confirmed in both animal models and clinical trials, including one published RCT to date, and another RCT is expected to start in the coming months. Bioibericas b-2Cool Native Type II Collagen is the first major challenger to the established leader in the U.S., offering brands an unrestricted alternative supported by the reputation of the worldwide joint health expert. Bioiberica, a biotechnology company based in Barcelona, has been contributing to the science of natural joint care for more than 40 years. Since 1975, Bioiberica has consolidated its position as an international leader in joint health and chondroprotection thanks to a constant commitment to science and research. Vertically integrated from raw material to active ingredient, Bioiberica places all its medical, molecular and market knowledge at its partners disposal for the collaborative development of the market. Bioibericas b-2Cool is available in the U.S. exclusively through Berg Imports, Ann Arbor, MI. For more information, contact Cai Berg at 734-253-2231 or email [email protected] Tricks and illusions, once the domain of magicians, are helping scientists unveil how the brain works. Here's one you can try using a tabletop mirror. Place your left hand on the table in front of the mirror's reflective surface and your right hand behind the mirror, about six inches away, where you can't see it. Now tap the table surface with both hands while looking at your reflection. Within a minute, you'll feel as though the hand you see reflected in the mirror is your right hand and it's right next to the mirror -- even though the hidden hand did not move. This classic "mirror box" illusion has been used in a number of neuroscience studies, including with amputees as a possible therapy to alleviate phantom limb pain, where it may help the brain re-map and adapt to a missing limb. Now, a new version of the mirror box illusion, developed by University of Delaware brain scientist Jared Medina and doctoral student Yuqi Liu, is pulling back more of the curtain on how the brain processes multiple sensory inputs to perceive our bodies and the world around us. Their study, which is supported by the National Science Foundation, appears in Scientific Reports, a multidisciplinary, open access journal from the publishers of Nature. In their novel illusion, study participants placed their hands in opposite postures (one hand palm-up, the other palm-down), creating a conflict between visual and proprioceptive feedback for the hand behind the mirror. Proprioception is your so-called "sixth sense," the sense of where your body is in space, that comes from your muscles and joints. It's the sense that allows you to touch your nose with confidence even with your eyes closed. After synchronous opening and closing of the two hands, the study participants felt that the hand behind the mirror rotated or completely flipped to match the hand reflection. "All of a sudden during our experiments, you'd hear a little laugh of surprise when people experienced this neat sensation of feeling like their hand flipped, even though it did not move," Medina said. Resolving battle of the senses Neuroscience eBook Compilation of the top interviews, articles, and news in the last year. Download a copy today The illusion's effectiveness was influenced by the perceived difficulty of moving the hidden hand to the position viewed in the mirror. Less illusion occurred for more difficult rotations requiring more strain. Such biomechanical data, Medina said, is coded in the body schema, a representation of your body position in space that takes into account feedback from all the relevant senses, plus stored information from muscles and joints about what your body can and can't do. According to Medina, the brain does "optimal integration" of incoming sensory information and then sorts out what the most reliable sense is. "Vision is really precise," Medina said, "but proprioception -- the sense of where your body is in space--is noisier. So if there is a conflict between these senses, and vision is telling you that your hand is right there, but proprioception says it isn't, your brain is optimally calculating. Vision, because it is more precise, typically rules. However, in our study, the brain also appears to be considering additional information--biomechanical constraints from the body schema--in resolving this conflict between the senses." Medina and his students are now using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) in UD's Center for Biomedical and Brain Imaging to further uncover how the brain calculates and integrates the vast inputs it receives from all the senses. This sophisticated tool can illuminate which regions of the brain are at work when performing a task. A better understanding of such brain processing could help advance new treatments for patients with brain injuries such as strokes, chronic pain and other disorders, and for developing artificial limbs that feel like a part of the body. "How do you embody an artificial limb? It has to respect the laws of the body you've learned all your life," Medina noted. "It's quite important to figure out how the brain solves the problem of multisensory information, and how that relates to embodiment and our sense of self. These cool tricks and illusions are a path to understanding how the mind works." Source: http://www.udel.edu/udaily/2017/july/magic-helps-unmask-brain-function/ In a new study published today in The American Journal of Human Genetics, a multinational team of researchers describes, for the first time, the biological basis of a severe neurological disorder in children. The extremely rare disorder is characterized by developmental regression and neurodegeneration. At first the children lead normal lives and seem identical to their age-matched peers. However, beginning at around 3 to 6 years of age, they present with neurological deterioration, gradually losing motor, cognitive and speech functions. Although the condition progresses slowly, most patients are completely dependent on their caretakers by 15-20 years of age. Researchers from the Hadassah Medical Center and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem's Faculty of Medicine, working with colleagues from the Pennsylvania State University College of Medicine and a multinational research team, have now identified and studied 7 children from Canada, France, Israel, Russia and the United States who suffer from the disorder. The researchers found in all patients the same spontaneously occurring, non-inherited genetic change in a gene (named "UBTF") responsible for ribosomal RNA formation. Because of this small change, the patients' cells are flooded with ribosomal RNA and are poisoned by it. (Ribosomes are responsible for the translation and production of cell proteins; themselves, they are made up of ribosomal proteins and of ribosomal RNA in a precise ratio). The researchers found an identical error in the same gene in all the patients tested, representing a difference of one letter among the roughly 3 billion letters that make up human DNA. By finding the identical change in children who suffer from the identical clinical disease, the researchers determined that the altered gene is indeed the cause of the disease. Prof. Orly Elpeleg, head of the Department of Genetics at Hadassah Medical Center in Jerusalem and a professor of Pediatrics at the Hebrew University's Faculty of Medicine, led the multinational research. Prof. Elpeleg credits the discovery to deep sequencing technology that Hadassah and the Hebrew University were among the first to introduce into clinical practice in the world, and the first in Israel. Prof. Elpeleg initially encountered the disease in a young girl who came to Hadassah: "Several years ago, I saw a patient who was healthy until the age of 3, and then experienced a disturbance in her walking and motor function, speech and cognition. Around that time, we had introduced the deep-sequencing technology for clinical use at Hadassah, which enabled us to read all the coding genetic material of a person within a couple of days, in order to identify genetic defects." Since 2010, Hadassah has assembled the largest genetic mapping database in Israel, of about 2400 patients. Genetics & Genomics eBook Compilation of the top interviews, articles, and news in the last year. Download a copy today "Searching for similar genetic defects in this database, we found a 9-year-old boy who had been treated at Hadassah and now lives in Russia. The boy had been healthy until the age of 5, and then displayed neurological deterioration just like the girl I had diagnosed. Dr. Simon Edvardson, a pediatric neurologist at Hadassah, flew to Russia, examined the boy, took genetic samples from him and from his parents and confirmed that his illness was identical to that of the Israeli girl. We then knew we had identified a new disease that was not recognized in the medical literature," said Prof. Elpeleg. Comparing their data in a program called Gene Matcher, the researchers found several more children around the world who shared an identical genetic defect and the same course of disease. In order to understand the mechanism of the newly identified disease, the researchers collaborated with Dr. George-Lucian Moldovan at the Pennsylvania State University College of Medicine, in the United States. Dr. Moldovan confirmed the disease mechanism: in the children's cells, there is an excess RNA of the ribosome, which probably causes brain cells to be flooded and poisoned. "Our study links neuronal degeneration in childhood with altered rDNA chromatin status and rRNA metabolism. It is the first time that an excess of ribosomal RNA has been linked to a genetic disease in humans," said Prof. Elpeleg. While there is currently no cure for genetic diseases of this kind, the identification of the exact mutation may allow for the planning of therapies designed to silence the mutant gene. "Science may not be able to repair the gene, but now that our findings are published, it may be possible to make early identification of the disease and in the future find ways to prevent such a serious deterioration," said Prof. Elpeleg. 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 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. 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. Stanford scientists have 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 experimental team was led by UCLA Professor Kang Wang, and precise theoretical predictions were made by Stanford Professor Shoucheng Zhangs group. 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. In the latest experiments at UCLA, UC-Davis 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. Majorana fermions (blue, red, and purple lines) travel through a topological insulator (horizontal bar) with a superconductor layered on top in this illustration of new experiments to detect the fermions. Green lines indicate electrons travelling on the edges of the topological insulator. 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. 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. Science Chiral Majorana fermion modes in a quantum anomalous Hall insulatorsuperconductor structure A propagating Majorana mode Although Majorana fermions remain elusive as elementary particles, their solid-state analogs have been observed in hybrid semiconductor-superconductor nanowires. In a nanowire setting, the Majorana states are localized at the ends of the wire. He et al. built a two-dimensional heterostructure in which a one-dimensional Majorana mode is predicted to run along the sample edge (see the Perspective by Pribiag). The heterostructure consisted of a quantum anomalous Hall insulator (QAHI) bar contacted by a superconductor. The authors used an external magnetic field as a knob to tune into a regime where a Majorana mode was propagating along the edge of the QAHI bar covered by the superconductor. A signature of this propagationhalf-quantized conductancewas then observed in transport experiments. Abstract Majorana fermion is a hypothetical particle that is its own antiparticle. We report transport measurements that suggest the existence of one-dimensional chiral Majorana fermion modes in the hybrid system of a quantum anomalous Hall insulator thin film coupled with a superconductor. As the external magnetic field is swept, half-integer quantized conductance plateaus are observed at the locations of magnetization reversals, giving a distinct signature of the Majorana fermion modes. This transport signature is reproducible over many magnetic field sweeps and appears at different temperatures. This finding may open up an avenue to control Majorana fermions for implementing robust topological quantum computing. Les emplois a Rennes sont abondants et varies. Il y a quelque chose pour tout le monde. Que vous soyez a la recherche dun emploi [] Les blattes ou cafards (Blatta orientalis) sont des insectes qui appartiennent a la famille des Blattoptera. Ils se caracterisent par leur forme allongee, leurs ailes [] From Consortium News Film director Andrei Nekrasov, who produced 'The Magnitsky Act: Behind the Scenes.' (Image by Tampere Film Festival) Details DMCA Why is the U.S. mainstream media so frightened of a documentary that debunks the beloved story of how "lawyer" Sergei Magnitsky uncovered massive Russian government corruption and died as a result? If the documentary is as flawed as its critics claim, why won't they let it be shown to the American public, then lay out its supposed errors, and use it as a case study of how such fakery works? Instead we -- in the land of the free, home of the brave -- are protected from seeing this documentary produced by filmmaker Andrei Nekrasov who was known as a fierce critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin but who in this instance found the West's widely accepted Magnitsky storyline to be a fraud. Instead, last week, Senate Judiciary Committee members sat in rapt attention as hedge-fund operator William Browder wowed them with a reprise of his Magnitsky tale and suggested that people who have challenged the narrative and those who dared air the documentary one time at Washington's Newseum last year should be prosecuted for violating the Foreign Agent Registration Act (FARA). It appears that Official Washington's anti-Russia hysteria has reached such proportions that old-time notions about hearing both sides of a story or testing out truth in the marketplace of ideas must be cast aside. The new political/media paradigm is to shield the American people from information that contradicts the prevailing narratives, all the better to get them to line up behind Those Who Know Best. Nekrasov's powerful deconstruction of the Magnitsky myth -- and the film's subsequent blacklisting throughout the "free world" -- recall other instances in which the West's propaganda lines don't stand up to scrutiny, so censorship and ad hominem attacks become the weapons of choice to defend "perception management" narratives in geopolitical hot spots such as Iraq (2002-03), Libya (2011), Syria (2011 to the present), and Ukraine (2013 to the present). But the Magnitsky myth has a special place as the seminal fabrication of the dangerous New Cold War between the nuclear-armed West and nuclear-armed Russia. In the United States, Russia-bashing in The New York Times and other "liberal media" also has merged with the visceral hatred of President Trump, causing all normal journalistic standards to be jettisoned. A Call for Prosecutions Browder, the American-born co-founder of Hermitage Capital Management who is now a British citizen, raised the stakes even more when he testified that the people involved in arranging a one-time showing of Nekrasov's documentary, "The Magnitsky Act: Behind the Scenes," at the Newseum should be held accountable under FARA, which has penalties ranging up to five years in prison. Browder testified: "As part of [Russian lawyer Natalie] Veselnitskaya's lobbying, a former Wall Street Journal reporter, Chris Cooper of the Potomac Group, was hired to organize the Washington, D.C.-based premiere of a fake documentary about Sergei Magnitsky and myself. This was one the best examples of Putin's propaganda. "They hired Howard Schweitzer of Cozzen O'Connor Public Strategies and former Congressman Ronald Dellums to lobby members of Congress on Capitol Hill to repeal the Magnitsky Act and to remove Sergei's name from the Global Magnitsky bill. On June 13, 2016, they funded a major event at the Newseum to show their fake documentary, inviting representatives of Congress and the State Department to attend. "While they were conducting these operations in Washington, D.C., at no time did they indicate that they were acting on behalf of Russian government interests, nor did they file disclosures under the Foreign Agent Registration Act. United States law is very explicit that those acting on behalf of foreign governments and their interests must register under FARA so that there is transparency about their interests and their motives. "Since none of these people registered, my firm wrote to the Department of Justice in July 2016 and presented the facts. I hope that my story will help you understand the methods of Russian operatives in Washington and how they use U.S. enablers to achieve major foreign policy goals without disclosing those interests." Browder's Version Next Page 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 (Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher). From Alon Ben-Meir Website Iraq, once the cradle of civilization, has and continues to experience one of the most horrific violent conflicts in modern history that defies any semblance of civilized humanity. It is hard to imagine the mammoth death and destruction that has been inflicted on the Iraqi people by foreign powers and domestic terrorism. Yet, the country can still overcome the horrors of the past 14 years, provided its leaders correctly reassess the changing regional and domestic dynamics and agree to allow all Iraqis, regardless of their sect and cultural orientation, to choose their own political and civil structure. Since the invasion of Iraq by the US and its allies in 2003, up to 500,000 civilians have been killed. From 2006, there have been 40,000 recorded terrorist attacks averaging more than 7,100 deaths per year. Nearly 225,000 have become refugees, and 3.1 million are internally displaced. The destruction of infrastructure and socio-economic dislocation created widespread hunger and disease, especially among the tens of thousands of children who are vulnerable and suffering from malnutrition. All this human and material devastation culminated with the rise of ISIS that has ravaged the country, while the internal indiscriminate terrorism between Sunnis and Shiites continues unabated. This tragedy is unfolding as the Iraqi government and people are still languishing in the shadow of death and ruin, wandering about the political wilderness in search of ways to piece the country back together in the wake of ISIS' eventual defeat. These efforts, however, may well prove to be an exercise in futility. The Abadi government ignores the fact that the Iraqi Kurds are on the verge of establishing their own independent state following the upcoming mid-September referendum, and that the Sunnis will reject the status quo ante and never again subjugate themselves to the whims of a Shiite government in Baghdad. Having suffered intense discrimination, oppression, and wanton violence perpetrated against them, especially during the eight years of the Maliki government, the Sunni community has long since concluded that their future wellbeing depends on their will and ability to govern themselves. They are determined to follow the footsteps of their Kurdish counterparts by establishing autonomous rule as a prerequisite to ending Sunni-Shiite bloodshed. The carnage between the two sides that started immediately following the 2003 Iraq war continues to rage, claiming the lives of hundreds each week, and is unlikely to abate as long as: a) the Iraqi government and outside powers, including the US, are still absorbed by the illusion of maintaining Iraq's geographical unity; and b) Shiite Iran and Sunni Saudi Arabia are waging a proxy war in Iraq to secure their geostrategic interests to become the region's hegemon. In many ways, the rise of ISIS and its control over much of the Sunnis' three provinces further deepens the Sunnis' resolve to fight for their independence from any internal or external power. In addition to the egregious mistreatment they have suffered under the Maliki government, the Sunnis endured the brunt of ISIS' brutality and horrific ruling methods. Children were affected the most, as they were witnessing the unspeakable cruelty of ISIS in real time. Children were recruited to commit the most heinous crimes; hundreds of thousands have been traumatized as they were forced to watch beheadings and the gruesome treatment of innocent bystanders 'suspected' of committing petty crimes. The liberation of Mosul offers a new beginning to build a promising future for Iraq. In that regard, I maintain that Iraq's strength rests on the three main sects becoming first politically independent from one another. The central government must support the establishment of an independent Sunni entity and amend the constitution to reflect the new political and territorial divisions. Internally, the Iraqi government must address the endemic corruption which consumes nearly one third of the country's revenue, establish a fair and impartial judiciary, engage in economic development, and refrain from infringing on the Kurds' and Sunnis' internal or external affairs as they put their own houses in order. Given that the Sunnis' three provinces have no oil, their economic development depends on securing their share of revenue by passing the long-anticipated oil law. In addition to that, the new Sunni entity would need the financial support from the Gulf states, the US, and the EU to become a viable entity. The central Shiite-led government in Baghdad must not hold them hostage by denying them their legitimate share, thereby preventing them from establishing their own state. This would be the recipe for continuing bloodshed and destruction that will only deepen the gulf between them, to the detriment of the country's future. The benefits of this roadmap are enormous, as it will first impact directly on the future stability of Iraq, and bring an end to the proxy war between Saudi Arabia and Iran as they come to realize that neither can change the reality of Sunni-Shiite coexistence, both in Iraq itself and as neighbors. This arrangement would also mitigate the Iranian threat, which the Gulf states and Israel view as the source of regional tension and violent conflict. Moreover, it would significantly reduce militant activities, enhance regional security, and start a process of peace and reconciliation to end the revenge and retribution that would inevitably ensue, given the horrifying violence that they have inflicted on one another for the past fourteen years. Next Page 1 | 2 (Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher). US Regime Change Project (Image by Ilya Schurov) Details DMCA When the U.S.A. wanted a regime change it used to be done in secret by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), especially when that country had a democratically elected government such as Iran (1953), Guatemala (1954), Chile (1973), Nicaragua (1980's), Haiti (2006), Honduras (2009), Ukraine (2014) and Syria, where the bloody project is still raging, the body count mounting, and millions of refuges are homeless. In the last few decades the U.S. has grown bolder in its regime change projects. What used to be done secretly is now unabashedly done in plain sight. The 2017 Venezuela regime change project has gone public. Most of the U.S. public cannot see the forest for the trees of propaganda that has the public confused about what is behind the chaos in Venezuela today. Mostly what is behind it is U.S. funding millions of dollars to the political parties of the oligarchs. Without that money the opposition political parties would be more divided than they already are and weaker. The mainstream media spreads the propaganda that President Nicolas Maduro is a dictator. That Maduro is repressive and killing his own people of peacefull demonstrators. That the Venezuelan Supreme Court judges are his cronies and exceeded their constitutional powers. That the Constituent Referendum called by Maduro was illegal. That the elections have been a fraud. That the opposition are patriots who are demanding democracy. That Maduro has singlehandedly destroyed Venezuela's economy. That the press and television media is censored by Maduro. That the reason President Barack Obama imposed sanctions on Venezuela is because it is a national security threat to the U.S. That President Trump has imposed additional sanction because he is upset about democracy, freedom and the rule of law in Venezuela. None of the above is true. Yet the main stream media keeps repeating it: New York Times , Washington Post , Guardian , Fox News , CNBC , and CNN . Members of Congress keep repeating these lies, a word I rarely use. Not since the mainstream media was a co-conspirator for the Bush-Cheney administration's illegal invasion of Iraq in 2003 has the mainstream media fallen so low and been so guilty of collusion to spread false propaganda supporting illegal U.S. foreign policy aggression. Anyone who still has illusions that the U.S. mainstream media is free and independent should be dispelled of that belief by what it is misinforming us about Venezuela today. The New York Times (Image by Geoff Livingston) Details DMCA The co-opting of the mainstream media is not new. Here is a New York Times editorial the day after Hugo Chavez was kidnapped by a military coup government that was installed in 2002: UPRISING IN VENEZUELA: THE GOVERNMENT; VENEZUELA'S CHIEF FORCED TO RESIGN; CIVILIAN INSTALLED By JUAN FORERO APRIL 13, 2002 A transitional government headed by a leading businessman replaced President Hugo Chavez today, hours after military officers forced him to resign. It was a sudden end to the turbulent three-year reign of a mercurial strongman elected on promises to distance his country from the United States while uprooting Venezuela's old social order--- Pedro Carmona Estanga, the head of Venezuela's most important business association, was installed as interim president at a ceremony at 6 p.m. He promised that the new government would adhere to ''a pluralistic vision, democratic, civil and ensuring the implementation of the law, the state of law.'' Elections will be held within a year, officials said. The Bush administration laid the blame for Mr. Cha'vez's overthrow firmly with the ousted leader. Officials portrayed the ouster as a victory for democracy--- 082912_CondoleezzaRice_003 (Image by NewsHour) Details DMCA The Bush Administration, the New York Times and the mainstream media showed no remorse or shame---the U.S. government continued to watch and undermine the Chavista movement, Venezuela's Bolivarian Socialism, in any way that it can. The U.S. continues to be involved and fund a long-term regime change project. The Empire never gives up. The U.S. has been perfecting its regime change techniques, camouflaging them as "democracy promotion", which is funding subversion through the Agency for International Development (AID), the United States Information Service (USIS), and the Congressional funded National Endowment for Democracy (NED), International Republican Institute (IRI)and co-opted non-governmental organizations (NGO). Covertly the CIA and US military continue to this day to undermining democracy in Venezuela. Next Page 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 (Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher). Quicklink Not Found Sometimes, authors delete their quicklinks after publishing them. To see if the quicklink was renamed or re-published, please click here. Three people were killed yesterday after suspected al Shabaab militants attacked a passenger bus and a car at Nyongoro area in Witu, Lamu county. The attack happened along the Lamu- Garsen highway and left four others with serious bullet injuries. According to the police, the deceased were in a Toyota Rav4 vehicle which was attacked and burnt by the militants. The bus was on its way from Mombasa to Kipini at about 3.30pm when the militants opened fire from a bush. When the Rav4, which was few kilometers behind from the bus, reached the area it was attacked and burnt. Police escorts exchanged fire with the militants forcing them to retreat. The attack comes days after Nelson Marwa warned that all public and private vehicles plying the Lamu-Mombasa route without armed police escort will be impounded and licences withdrawn. 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. Chinese troops entered one kilometer into Indian territory and threatened shepherds grazing cattle in the Barahoti area of Uttarakhand's Chamoli district, Indian officials said on Monday, July 31. The transgression took place on the morning of July 25 when a group of shepherds was asked to vacate the land by troops of the People's Liberation Army (PLA), the officials were quoted by the Press Trust of India (PTI) news agency. The incident comes in the backdrop of a prolonged standoff between Chinese and Indian troops at Doklam near Sikkim, the PTI pointed out. Barahoti, an 80 sq km sloping pasture about 140 km from the Uttarakhand capital Dehradun, is one of three border posts in what is known the 'middle sector', comprising Uttar Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand. It is a demilitarized zone where Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP) jawans are not allowed to take their weapons, officials said. According to the PTI: "In 1958, India and China listed Barahoti as a disputed area where neither side would send their troops. In the 1962 war, the PLA did not enter the middle sector and focused on the western (Ladakh) and eastern (Arunachal Pradesh) sectors. After the war, ITBP jawans would patrol the area with weapons in a non-combative manner -- with the barrel of the gun facing down. During negotiations on resolving the border dispute, the Indian side unilaterally agreed in June 2000 that ITBP jawans would not carry arms in three posts, Barahoti and Kauril and Shipki in Himachal Pradesh. ITBP men go patrolling in civil dress and the Barahoti pasture sees Indian shepherds from border villages tending their sheep and people from Tibet bringing their yaks for grazing." Doval, Yang fail to discuss Sikkim stand-off On July 27, Indian National Security Adviser Ajit Doval and his Chinese counterpart Yang Jiechi discussed "major problems" in bilateral ties but did not discuss the military standoff erupted in the Sikkim sector on June 16. Doval arrived in Beijing on July 26 to take part in the Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa (BRICS) NSAs meeting being hosted by Yang, who, like Doval, is the Special Representative for India-China boundary talks. His visit has raised expectations about the likelihood of India and China finding a way-out of the over the month-long standoff. The military standoff began on June 16 when, according to Indian media, Chinese troops attempted to lay a road in the Doklam area. Doka La is the Indian name for the region which Bhutan recognizes as Doklam, while China claims it as part of its Donglang region. India and China share a 220-km-long border in Sikkim section. India calls on BRICS to show leadership on regional issues Meanwhile, Indian National Security Advisor Ajit Doval on Thursday (July 27) called on BRICS countries to show leadership on issues of regional and global importance, including countering terrorism. Speaking at the meeting of NSAs from BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa), Doval said, "We should hold a BRICS forum to discuss security issues that impact global peace and stability." In his brief opening remarks at the meeting hosted by his Chinese counterpart Yang Jiechi, Doval said BRICS countries also should take leadership role on strategic issues of regional and global importance specially in the areas where they have "consensus". Next Page 1 | 2 (Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher). President Trump after signing into law sanctions against Russia As this writer and others have written these new sanctions against Russia approved by Congress and signed into law this morning by President Trump indicates "official" Washington has gone insane. Even though a bit of sanity emerged when Trump issued a signing statement indicating there were "a number of clearly unconstitutional provisions" which could mean the possibility exists he won't follow through and a constitutional crisis could ensue. That's a can of worms only to be only looked at if it happens. Nevertheless this whole business of sanctions against purported" enemies" concocted by neo-con "official" Washington making assertions and accusations are in fact delusions. The sanctions are just the latest manifestation of Washington going bonkers. Ever since the coup in Ukraine in February 2014, the subsequent secession of Crimea from Ukraine with the people voting in a referendum to join the Russian Federation, there's been a new cold war instigated by the US. It was further compounded when Russia sent its air force into Syria on September 30, 2015 at the legal request of Syrian President Bashar Assad which turned the tide of the war in Syria. These events plus the endless hysteria of Russia interfering in the 2016 elections to get Trump elected. All of it so much hogwash yet touted as fact by "official" Washington and its complicit corporate MSM. Let's remember the truth regarding the coup in Ukraine was instigated by the CIA and the State Department collaborating with neo-Nazi thugs that forced the legitimately elected President Viktor Yanukovych to flee for his life when these neo-Nazi's initiated the violence in Kiev killing legitimate protesters as well as police bringing havoc to the capital bringing with it a pre-planned hastily installed post coup regime into power. The post coup regime in Kiev voted to abolish Russian as a second official language-which was spoken by a majority in Crimea. So the Russian speaking people in Crimea saw it all as a direct threat against them. So with these events a peoples referendum was enacted by Crimean officials and the people voted to secede from Ukraine and join the Russian Federation. Yet all the above events were portrayed by the Obama administration and the MSM as illegal and a Russian invasion of Crimea. But there was no Russian invasion. There were 25,000 Russian military legally stationed in Sevastopol as part of the Russian Black Sea Fleet. All they did was provide a non threatening presence during the Crimean referendum vote. Yet in the west the referendum was declared illegal and Russia just went ahead and annexed Crimea. As for Russia interfering in the 2016 US election the evidence points to a leak- not a hack- by someone who had physical access to DNC computers then doctored to incriminate Russia-this from Ray McGovern's group "Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity" (VIPs). VIPS has also said there was no unanimous declaration by all 17 US intelligence agencies declaring Russian interference, just 3 handpicked analysts from the FBI, CIA and NSA who concurred without providing any factual evidence. So it goes. Innuendo, accusations, allegations, assertions; no factual evidence necessary plus demonization of Vladimir Putin as the new Hitler. Which brings us back to the madness of "official" Washington's latest sanctions on Russia-with Iran and North Korea thrown in for good measure. These sanctions are also impacting Germany, France and Austria whose countries firms are interconnected with Russia's Gazprom in building Nord Stream 2, a gas pipeline under the Baltic Sea from Russia directly into Germany. 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 The Hill Sen. John McCain diagnosed with brain cancer Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) has been diagnosed with glioblastoma, a type of brain tumor, according to doctors directly involved with his care. CNN's Sanjay Gupta ... (Image by YouTube, Channel: CNN) Details DMCA When Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) returned to the Senate floor after being diagnosed with cancer he was greeted by fellow senators with a rousing ovation of admiration, respect and goodwill. After casting the decisive vote in favor of proceeding to consider the Republican healthcare bill, and before casting the decisive vote against the GOP bill, McCain gave one of the most impassioned and important speeches in many years about the nature and future of the Senate. McCain's call to arms was for the Senate to return to its historic role as the great deliberative body, to rise above the partisanship and rancor that overwhelms American politics and distorts the Senate today. McCain wants to return the Senate to the regular order of committee hearings leading to a reasoned and respectful debate during which the rights of all senators would be respected, and the traditions of the Senate would be honored. The traditional role of the Senate has been destroyed in recent years. The Senate is now virtually indistinguishable from the House of Representatives. The founding fathers would be appalled. McCain is right. By his recent presence, as always, McCain lifted the Senate. Given the fact that the Senate is almost equally divided between the two parties, and given the fact that Republicans now face significant internal divisions, McCain now has nearly decisive influence to determine the outcome in the Senate on many vital issues facing the nation. In terms of pure vote-counting, going forward, as McCain goes, so goes the Senate. At a time when the Republican president and Republican Congress will not have achieved even one major legislative victory during the first seven months of the Trump presidency, there are thoughtful senators in both parties who want to return the Senate to its historic role as McCain calls for. The two most important questions in American politics are how much Gen. John Kelly, the new White House chief of staff, will be able to move the Trump administration toward a more regular order in the executive branch, and how much McCain will be able to move the Senate back toward its regular order in the legislative branch. There is a dramatic opportunity for a major bipartisan breakthrough to create millions of high wage American jobs to rebuild America through a historic infrastructure bill. There is a legitimate possibility, if both parties work together and compromise, to enact a significant tax bill. There is an urgent need for both parties to work together to fix the problems in ObamaCare, ending the wrecking ball tactics of many Republicans, which help Democrats but harm the nation. John McCain is a man of passionate patriotism who has proven his valor in war and his courage and integrity in peace. The moving applause of his Senate colleagues was authentic, and true, and noble, and a moment to remember about the Senate at its best. McCain embodies the best of the American past and the potential of the American future, which need not be a future of permanent dysfunction in Washington and political cancer of national division that afflicts the body politic today. McCain offers the Senate a better way, and may have the moral and political leverage to make good things happen. McCain lifts the Senate by his noble presence, and I pray he has many more years to make his presence felt. Amen. Trump (Image by IoSonoUnaFotoCamera) Details DMCA Don't let the title of this article fool you; I believe that Trump was declared the victor of the Electoral College and therefore is the legal president of the United States. However, the fact that OJ Simpson was acquitted of the murder of his wife and her friend, Ron Goldman, does not make him innocent. The fact that Trump too often plays the fool, that his campaign clearly colluded with the Russians in an effort to win the White House, and the most salient point, the fact that he lost the popular vote by nearly 3 million votes, makes him illegitimate. Some may think this is too harsh, but the thin-skinned Trump is forever worrying about whether the press and people see him as legitimate. So much so he declared that Obama ordered a wiretap on Trump tower, an attempt to make it look like Clinton colluded with the president to ensure Trump's defeat. Trump declared that if it were not for voter fraud he would have won the popular vote as well--another fiction created by Trump to make himself feel legitimate. My question is why the Democrats aren't looking at all the voter-registration laws passed between 2008 and 2016 and try to determine how many legitimate voters were not allowed to cast ballots for Hillary Clinton? We know that Russian hackers gained access to voter registrations in at least 21 states; do we know if they removed or added anyone to the registration rolls? It seems while Trump wants to prove voter fraud it is more likely that states ended up keeping democratic voters away from the polls, meaning Clinton's popular-vote victory would have been much higher and that she likely would have legitimately won the electoral college if not for the new laws making registration more of an obstacle for minority voters. Therefore, it is because of foreign influence, Trump's behavior as president, and most importantly, the loss of the popular vote that I consider him as an illegitimate president. He is like the criminal whom everyone knows is guilty but gets off because of a minor technicality. No one likes the fact that the criminal got off, some call for judicial reform so it doesn't happen again, but no one looks at the criminal as innocent. In the same vein, I believe most Americans do not see Donald Trump as a legitimate president. I am in the camp that wants to rid this country of the slavery-rooted Electoral College, which means that Trump would not have won the presidency on a technicality. On Thursday July 26, PEW Research Center released the findings of its 2017 survey of U.S. Muslims which estimated the population of American Muslims at 3.35 million. This estimate is projection of Pew's survey of 2011 which estimated the population of American Muslims at 2.7 million that was actually a projection of the Pew survey of 2007. The Pew press release said: "Muslims represent a relatively small but rapidly growing portion of the U.S. religious landscape. Pew Research Center estimates that there are 3.35 million Muslims of all ages living in the U.S. -- up from about 2.75 million in 2011 and 2.35 million in 2007. This means Muslims currently make up roughly 1% of the U.S. population." Tellingly, the 2007 estimate was closer to the estimates announced by the American Jewish Committee in October 2001. The AJC study -- titled Estimating the Muslim Population in the United States -- claimed that the best estimate of Muslims in the United States is 2.8 million at most, compared to the 6 or 7 million figure used by many researchers and Muslim organizations. The PEW surveys, just like the AJC report, seem to undercut the influence of American Muslims. It looks another desperate attempt to discount the role of American Muslims. The PEW survey of 2007, titled "Muslim Americans: Middle Class and Mostly Mainstream," claimed to be the most extensive, covered the views of 1,050 Muslims interviewed in English, Arabic, Urdu, and Farsi. According to Luis Lugo, director of the Pew Forum, the Washington-based organization spent $1 million on the poll. It paid $50 to each of the 1,050 Muslims surveyed. The PEW survey of 2011, titled, "Muslim Americans: No Signs of Growth in Alienation or Support for Extremism," is based on the interviews with 1,033 Muslim American. Interviews were conducted by telephone between April 14 and July 22, 2011 by the research firm of Abt SRBI. Interviews were conducted in English, Arabic, Farsi and Urdu. Pew Research Center's 2017 survey of U.S. Muslims was conducted Jan. 23 to May 2, 2017, on landlines and cell phones, among a representative sample of 1,001 Muslim adults living in the United States. The PEW's misleading demographic figures of American Muslims already made an entry into the Wikipedia encyclopedia's article on American Muslim population estimates. Pew numbers are now quoted as authentic reference when estimate of American Muslims is given. Religious denominations, like all interest groups, can gain or lose political clout based on perceptions of their size, according to J. Gordon Melton, director of the Institute for the Study of American Religion in Santa Barbara , Calif. In the case of the U.S. Muslim community, Melton says, its efforts to influence policy in the Middle East would get a boost if it were viewed as being larger than the country's Jewish population, which is estimated at 6 million. "It's a political question: How does it sway votes?" he argued. The American Jewish Committee's executive director David Harris has warned that the increasingly visible American Muslim lobby posed a challenge to U.S.-Israel relations. In an article published by the Jerusalem Report in May 2001, Harris urged American Jewry to unite with Israel to battle against the growing Arab and Muslim lobbies here and the challenge they present to long-standing U.S. support for Israel . Harris cited the "myth" of high Muslim population figures as one tactic Muslims are using to advance their position. The American Jewish Committee and other groups estimate the number of Jews in this country is about 6 million. "Six million has a special resonance," Harris wrote in the Jerusalem Report magazine. "It would mean that Muslims outnumber Jews in the U.S. and it would buttress calls for a redefinition of America 's heritage as 'Judeo-Christian-Muslim,' a stated goal of some Muslim leaders." The American Jewish Committee survey of Muslim population was conducted by Tom W. Smith of the National Opinion Research Center in Chicago who questioned the study, "The Mosque in America: A National Portrait," released in April 2001 by the Council on American-Islamic Relations. The CAIR study reported that the number of mosques rose by about 25 percent, to more than 1,200, from 1994 to 2000. Based on reports of attendance at some mosques, researchers estimated the number of American Muslims at 6 million to 7 million. The project surveyed individual mosques, finding that 340 adults and children participated at the average mosque and that another 1,629 were "associated in any way" with the average mosque's activities, yielding a figure of 2 million Muslims. The authors then adjusted the estimate to 6 million to 7 million overall to take into account family members and unaffiliated Muslims. Based in part on that report, most media organizations, as well as the White House and the State Department, have said that there are at least 6 million Muslims in the country. CAIR's 2001 study findings were reaffirmed by another major survey of the Mosques in the United States . On February 29, 2012 a comprehensive study of the mosques - "The American Mosque 2011: Basic Characteristics of the American Mosque, Attitudes of Mosque Leaders" - was released. Sponsors of the U.S. Mosque Survey 2011 include: The Hartford Institute for Religion Research (Hartford Seminary), the Association of Statisticians of American Religious Bodies (ASARB), the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the Islamic Society of North American (ISNA), the Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA), and the International Institute of Islamic Thought (IIIT). Next Page 1 | 2 (Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher). The Saturday Morning Massacre... so it was dubbed by the homeless community in St. Petersburg, Florida. On gay-pride day in St. Petersburg, the so called "liberal" mayor of St. Petersburg initiated mass arrests of homeless folks to clear the homeless of off the streets. Most of the charges were trumped up by the city and the mayor's police force and most were minor or made up. Thus, began a new round of prosecution and persecution of homeless folks in St. Petersburg. You see, in Florida, homelessness is criminalized and in many cases certain life sustaining needs are criminalized by cities in Florida and throughout the US. But, the actions of the St. Petersburg police go even further. After the "Saturday Morning Massacre", Mayor Kriseman, with the unconditional support of the Chief of Police and the SPPD, began a regular series of harassment efforts and arrests of those experiencing homelessness. Every day for the last several weeks, homeless folks have been told that they would be trespassed from public parks, such as Williams Park, that they would be trespassed from even the whole downtown area. This is unprecedented and unconstitutional! It violates international law regarding freedom of movement. All this is in light of upcoming elections for mayor. And, the two corporate-sponsored candidates, Mayor Rick Kriseman and Former Mayor Rick Baker, are campaigning on how tough they can get or are in regards to "cleaning up" the downtown area and getting tough on crime. But, it gets even worse. There is now a lawsuit and criminal charges potentially in the works for a recent incident of gross police misconduct, neglect and abuse. Recently, in a sweep of homeless folks, eight homeless folks were arrested in put in a police van. While in the police van, the van caught on fire. It is not clear whether an officer was smoking or something else started the fire. The homeless folks started to bang on the door and on the inside walls of the van as smoke was causing breathing problems and causing the people to choke. The police van driver initially ignored their pleas for help for more than 20 -25 minutes according to the three of the homeless folks that were in the van. They came to us, at the Poor People's Economic Human Rights Campaign Florida, to report this to us. We have secured a private litigation attorney and the Southern Legal Counsel from Gainesville to take on the case. In addition, to the initial reckless endangerment by ignoring the pleas of the homeless, the officers involved, did not even let the homeless folks out of the van until they had already sprayed the van with fire extinguishers. When the homeless folks finally got out, they had to be treated for smoke inhalation. They were then told that if they didn't say anything all charges would be dropped. There was an attempted cover-up of this. But, we are going public with this all over. It appears that six of the eight have been rearrested and all have been harassed in continued retaliation for having come forward. This case is ongoing and may impact the election. The only candidates that have been responsive and supportive are Uhuru and Green party-supported candidate for Mayor Jesse Nevel, as well as Akile Cannion, District 6 candidate for city council. The story continues... As of this writing it has been reported that on September 1st there will be a series of crackdowns being initiated by the city. These include forcing several soup kitchens to either move or cease serving meals, social services agencies moving, forcing homeless folks to no longer lie down in the grass in public parks, and attempting to end meal shares in the parks by such groups as Food Not Bombs. But, we advocates and activists are going on the offensive. We have lawyers involved, planned sleep-outs and other direct actions, a copwatch being activated, and a festival of Resistance called Disturbing the Peace Fest. So, for our part the story and struggle continues also. Homelessness is not a crime. Poverty is not a crime. From Consortium News On Aug. 1, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said the U.S. is not pushing for regime change in North Korea, but some White House insiders say President Trump is considering going to war. Meanwhile, North Korea claims to have made progress on delivering a potential nuclear strike on the West Coast and beyond. Tillerson, while saying the Pentagon has updated military options, admitted that a confrontation with North Korea could be catastrophic and suggested that there was still time for negotiations backed by economic pressure. "We do not seek a regime change, we do not seek the collapse of the regime, we do not seek an accelerated reunification of the peninsula, we do not seek an excuse to send our military north of the 38th parallel," said Tillerson, referring to the border between North and South Korea. "We're not your enemy, we're not your threat but you're presenting an unacceptable threat to us and we have to respond." I spoke to Flashpoint's Special Correspondent for the Koreas, Kay Jay Noh, about the volatile situation that could become a full blown confrontation at any time. Noh, who was recently in China and Korea, is a longtime political activist, writer and teacher. I spoke to him in Berkeley, California, on July 31. Dennis Bernstein: U.S. pundits and certain Trump administration officials are talking about a "first strike," a "limited strike." We are flying bombers over the peninsula. What is your understanding of the situation on the ground in both countries? Kay Jay Noh: I was in Korea and China recently and the situation on the ground is very different in the two countries. In Korea, people are going about their lives as if things were perfectly normal. In China, there is an escalation to war. It is rather covert but those preparations are becoming more and more evident. What we do know is that on July 28, the North Koreans launched a Hwasong-14 ICBM [intercontinental ballistic missile]. This missile traveled to an altitude of 3,725 kilometers and a distance of 998 kilometers. It was in the air for 47 minutes. So it is clearly an ICBM that has the range to reach the continental United States. The experts are still out on whether the reentry vehicle worked or not. All of this raises the temperature considerably. As always, the US has stated that all options are on the table. [UN Ambassador] Nikki Haley has said that she is not going to go to the UN anymore because there is no point in doing so. The prime minister of Japan, Shinzo Abe, together with Trump, has said that they are "done talking about North Korea" -- ominous last words perhaps. Again, it is important to point out that North Korea's missile program is a deterrent one. They do not have a first-strike policy, and they have reiterated on numerous occasions that they are willing to cease their nuclear program if the US will cease its military maneuvers against North Korea. DB: We need another geography lesson on how close Seoul [the South Korean capital] is to the front lines. What might such a first strike look like? KJN: A first strike might be on a nuclear facility, it might be on a launch facility, it might be a targeted attempt to take out the leadership. The thing to remember is that the North Korean border is closer to Seoul than Seoul's main airport. The North has between 7,000 and 12,000 conventional artillery pieces pointed at Seoul and could obliterate the city in a short space of time. Estimates are that between 30,000 and 300,000 people could be killed in the first volley of artillery fire. North Korea has been using what is referred to in the defense parlance as a "tit-for-tat." Every time it perceives a threat, it responds either rhetorically or militarily. The problem with tit-for-tat as a conflict resolution process is that it often leads to misinterpretation and a spiral of escalation. It seems that we are getting close to a point where things are no longer predictable. DB: Because the United States refused to sign a peace treaty in 1953 (to officially end the Korean War), we are still essentially in a state of war. KJN: Korea was forced to open to the West in 1886 by a sort of gunship diplomacy. Since then the Korean relationship with the United States has been a very conflicted one, despite the way it is portrayed in the media. 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 Donald Trump War Policy (Image by maxpixel.freegreatpict...) Details DMCA President Trump has been defeated by the military/security complex and forced into continuing the orchestrated and dangerous tensions with Russia. Trump's defeat has taught the Russians the lesson I have been trying to teach them for years, and that is that Russia is much more valuable to Washington as an enemy than as a friend. Do we now conclude with Russia's Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev that Trump is washed up and "utterly powerless?" I think not. Trump is by nature a leader. He wants to be out front, and that is where his personality will compel him to be. Having been prevented by the military/security complex, both US political parties, the presstitute media, the liberal-progressive-left, and Washington's European vassals from being out front as a leader for peace, Trump will now be the leader for war. This is the only permissible role that the CIA and armaments industry will permit him to have. Losing the chance for peace might cost all of us our lives. Now that Russia and China see that Washington is unwilling to share the world stage with them, Russia and China will have to become more confrontational with Washington in order to prevent Washington from marginalizing them. Preparations for war will become central in order to protect the interests of the two countries. The situation is far more dangerous than at any time of the Cold War. The foolish American liberal-progressive-left, wrapped up as they are in Identity Politics and hatred of "the Trump deplorables," joined the military/security complex's attack on Trump. So did the whores, who pretend to be a Western media, and Washington's European vassals, not one of whom had enough intelligence to see that the outcome of the attack on Trump would be an escalation of conflict with Russia, conflict that is not in Europe's business and security interests. Washington is already raising the violence threshold. The same lies that Washington told about Saddam Hussein, Gadaffi, Assad, Iran, Serbia and Russia are now being told about Venezuela. The American presstitutes duly report the lies handed to them by the CIA just as Udo Ulfkotte and Seymour Hersh report. These lies comprise the propaganda that conditions Western peoples to accept the coming US coup against the democratic government in Venezuela and its replacement with a Washington-compliant government that will permit the renewal of US corporate exploitation of Venezuela. As the productive elements of American capitalism fall away, the exploitative elements become its essence. After Venezuela, there will be more South American victims. As reduced tensions with Russia are no longer in prospect, there is no reason for the US to abandon its and Israel's determination to overthrow the Syrian government and then the Iranian government. The easy wars against Iraq, Libya, and Somalia are to be followed by far more perilous conflict with Iran, Russia, and China This is the outcome of John Brennan's defeat of President Trump. UPDATE: The escalation of the conflict with Russia has begun. US vice president Mike Pence made false allegations against Russia yesterday (Aug. 2) in Montenegro designed to panic Montenegrins into joining NATO. The two-decade march of NATO eastward despite Washington's promise to the contrary, surely has taught Russia that no agreement with Washington can ever be trusted. So why does Russia continue to seek agreements with Washington? NGOs Coordination Board on Tuesday ordered the freezing of accounts belonging to an NGO associated with Rosemary Odinga. Executive Director Fazul Mohamed addressed a letter to CBK Governor stating that the foundation, Key Empowerment Foundation Kenya, had received Sh530 million from George Soros Foundation. The purpose of this letter is, therefore, is to advise your office to immediately identify and mark for No Debit/No Credit accounts held under the name The Key Empowerment Foundation Kenya and initiate immediate preservation of all funds under held under the said Foundation within the next 24 hours effective the date of this communication, stated the letter. The Soros Foundation, named after its billionaire founder, supports individuals and organisations fighting for freedom of expression, transparency, accountable government, and societies that promote justice and equality across the globe. Fazul Mahamed alleged the foundation opened and operates a number of illegal unauthorized bank accounts. The Financial Reporting Centre is requested to investigate a possible case of using the foundations bank accounts as a cover-up for money laundering and diversion of donor aid, said Fazul. According to Fazul, the aid agency that funded the foundation is associated with Subterfuge political activities globally and nefarious regime change tactics. The board also argues that the funds from the foundation were meant to fund Raila Odingas campaigns. See original here The Senate on Tuesday confirmed Christopher Wray as the next director of the FBI, but in an unprecedented move, five senators voted against his nomination. Before yesterday, only one senator had ever voted against an FBI nominee. In addition, three senators abstained from the vote. Senator Ron Wyden, who voted against Wray's confirmation, said he did so because of Wray's position on government surveillance. "In his public and private statements, Chris Wray failed to oppose government backdoors into Americans' personal devices, or to acknowledge the facts about encryption. That it isn't about liberty versus security, it's about more security versus less security." The American Civil Liberties Union also criticized Wray for his involvement in the U.S. torture program under George W. Bush. We speak with independent journalist Marcy Wheeler and economist James Henry. This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form. AMY GOODMAN: On Tuesday, the Senate has confirmed longtime corporate lawyer Christopher Wray, in a 92-to-5 vote, to become the next director of the FBI, replacing James Comey, who was fired by Donald Trump in May. In an unprecedented vote, five senators, all Democrats, voted against Wray. Before yesterday, only one senator had ever voted against an FBI nominee. The five Democrats were Kirsten Gillibrand of New York, Ed Markey and Elizabeth Warren, both of Massachusetts, and Jeff Merkley and Ron Wyden, both of Oregon. In addition, three senators didn't vote: Richard Burr of North Carolina, Minnesota's Al Franken and Arizona's John McCain. In a statement, Senator Wyden criticized Wray because of his stance on government surveillance. Wyden said, quote, "In his public and private statements, Chris Wray failed to oppose government backdoors into Americans' personal devices, or to acknowledge the facts about encryption. That it isn't about liberty versus security, it's about more security versus less security," he wrote. The American Civil Liberties Union also criticized Wray in part for his work at the Justice Department under George W. Bush, when he worked with many of the key architects of the U.S. torture program. For more on Christopher Wray, we're joined by two guests. Marcy Wheeler is with us. She is an independent journalist who covers national security and civil liberties. She runs the website EmptyWheel.net, joining us from Michigan. And joining us via Democracy Now! video stream is economist and lawyer James Henry, global justice fellow at Yale University, senior adviser with the Tax Justice Network, former chief economist at McKinsey Company. He recently wrote for The American Interest a piece that is headlined "No Wray." We welcome you both to Democracy Now! JAMES HENRY: Good to be with you. AMY GOODMAN: Marcy Wheeler, let's begin with you. Talk about the confirmation of Christopher Wray as the next FBI director, its significance. MARCY WHEELER: Well, I think he was overwhelmingly confirmed because he gave the assurances. He gave these very well-rehearsed assurances that he was not going to end any investigation into the -- into Russia and collusion with the Trump administration. But at the same time, the confirmation process really didn't get into a lot of the questions that he might have faced about his own tenure at DOJ in the Bush administration, and it didn't get into some of his own actions in the past that would really answer whether or not he was going to be independent. And as you mentioned, Senator Wyden also had additional concerns about Wray's response on encryption, on whether or not the FBI is going to continue to seek backdoors into secure communications. AMY GOODMAN: Now, 92 to 5 sounds like a pretty overwhelming majority for confirmation as FBI director, of the senators, and I'm sure most people see it that way. It is quite something that it is the largest "no" vote in the history of confirmation of FBI directors. Only one senator, when Comey was confirmed, voted against him, and that was Rand Paul. He was opposed to Comey because he would not rule out drone domestic surveillance, Marcy. MARCY WHEELER: Right. And frankly, the numbers shouldn't be that overwhelming ever. The FBI director, it's a tenure position. And there -- you know, all of these people, including Jim Comey, had controversial things in their past. There's this notion that we have to have unanimous approval for this top law enforcement officer. And yet, I think that that shows a lack of skepticism, which is really important. And importantly here, I think there was the view among some people in the Democratic Party -- and it should be more broadly -- that Trump is getting rewarded for having fired Jim Comey. As you described at the top of the show, there are -- we have two new pieces of evidence that Trump is obstructing justice into the Russian investigation, into Comey's firing. And yet, he still gets to replace Comey with somebody. Absent Christopher Wray being confirmed, we would have Andrew McCabe, who was basically Comey's deputy. It would be sort of a status quo. Yet now Trump gets to reward himself for having gotten rid of the guy who was investigating him and his family. AMY GOODMAN: And, of course, he's been attacking McCabe, along with Jeff Sessions, on Twitter. And explain, Marcy Wheeler, what this role, Christopher Wray as FBI director -- exactly what that role is, since there is a special prosecutor because Jeff Sessions recused himself, to the tremendous ire of President Trump. Next Page 1 | 2 | 3 (Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher). Since nobody at the White House likes Trump any more than you do, all the presidents men (and women) have been consistently leaking unflattering information about their leaderalmost as fast as he can produce it. The most recent leak involves transcripts from some of Trumps more volatile phone conversations with other world leaders, per a WaPo report. Weve already talked about Trumps ridiculous conversation with Mexican president Enrique Pena Nieto, but our presidents dealings with Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull is even more revealing. For you see, Trump is very selective with his friends. Even if Trump and Putin havent had backchannel talks in hours, they always pick up right where they left off. Unfortunately, Turnbull isnt as delightful a phone buddy for Trump as the Russian prez. During an argument about refugees, Trump decided hed had all he could stand: I have had it. I have been making these calls all day, and this is the most unpleasant call all day Putin was a pleasant call. This is ridiculous. The problem for Trump was that he just couldnt justify reneging on any campaign promises. After all, Trump prides himself as the worlds leading anti-immigrant leader: This is going to kill me. I am the worlds greatest person that does not want to let people into the country. And now I am agreeing to take 2,000 people. After all, Trump knows the 1,250 immigrants Obama agreed to let into the U.S. on humanitarian grounds after UN interventionthe refugees come from Papua New Guineas Manus Island and the island nation of Nauruare all going to become terrorists of some kind: I hate taking these people. I guarantee you they are bad. That is why they are in prison right now. They are not going to be wonderful people who go on to work for the local milk people. And what will these immigrants do if theyre not working on dairy farms? Why become the Boston bomber in five years, of course. So its not even surprising that Trump said that he thinks, It is a horrible deal, a disgusting deal that I would have never made. As far as I am concerned, that is enough, Malcolm. I have had it. Which sounds pretty tough, until you realize Trump still went through with it. Now that is the art of the deal. Auditor General Daniel Yaw Domelevo whose last-minute appointment by former President John Mahama was criticized, says he is not aligned with anybody or political party but the Constitution of Ghana. Mr Domelevo who activated a section of the Audit Service Act by initiating steps to retrieve looted state funds stated he is working in the interest of the nation as per the countrys constitution. My allegiance is to nobody but the Constitution of Ghana. Let me assure you that we (Audit Service) are not operating under political influence, he said at a news conference Wednesday to announce the issuance of certificates of indebtedness to some public servants. The accountant was in a letter dated December 19, 2016 and signed by the then Chief of Staff, Julius Debrah, offered the appointment. Domelevos appointment became the third major last-minute one made by the former President Mahama before exiting office in January 7, 2017. Swearing him into office, President Mahama urged Mr Domelevo to be guided by the National Anti-Corruption action plan which he said hinges on three key principles; prevention, education and prosecution. In discharging your job, your emphasise is not on sanctions but on trying to prevent, creating the systems that prevent misappropriation of public funds from taking place in the first place, he advised. Eight months on, Mr Domelevos critics have lauded him for steps being taken to retrieve state funds that have been misappropriated by some public servants in the country. Eight months on, Mr Domelevos critics have lauded him for steps being taken to retrieve state funds that have been misappropriated by some public servants in the country. He has issued four certificates of indebtedness to some public servants who misapplied public funds. The move is a rare progress being made in the public sector after about 25 years of failure to retrieve monies unlawfully misapplied by public officials. It is a part of efforts by the Ghana Audit Service to apply the law on disallowance and surcharge under article 187 clause 7 B of the 1992 constitution. The Supreme Court in June this year ordered the Auditor-General to recover all state funds which have been misappropriated by both public officials and private individuals. Auditor General Daniel Yaw Domelevo said the 11 certificates of indebtedness issued have all been presided over by him to ensure due diligence. Two weeks ago I issued the first batch of four certificates and they are served on the people. Before the close of day today, Ill be issuing seven more certificates, he announced. Per the Law, all persons implicated have 60 days to appeal after receiving a surcharge. According to the Auditor General all irregularities and infractions that has led to the embezzlement of public funds, exposed by the Audit Service since the constitution came into effect in 1993 would be pursued. He said any accused person who fails to pay the surcharge will be sued or the persons salary withheld. The Supreme Court ruled that we should go back and collect the moneyso we have a lot of work to do, Mr Domelevo said. The Ghana Audit Service would issue a report to Parliament before the close of the year detailing the names of persons involved. Meanwhile, the staff of the Ghana Audit Service are being trained in forensic auditing to ensure evidence gathering is thorough to assure effectiveness in their operations. Source: 3news.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 Day one in Konigsberg. Jump challenge. Day two at the legendary downhill track in Bikepark Planai. Day three in Saalbach Hinterglemm. The backflip challenge. MTB Pro, Martin Soderstroms summer just got even more exciting as he was challenged on a mountain bike mission by BMW Mountains. The missionmaking it to three bike parks in one weekend and completing different MTB challenges on the go.Martin was given a task to choose three bike parks in any location in Europe and had to reach them within a one-weekend time frame, completing special challenges on the way. He decided on three of the hottest bike spots in the Austrian Alps, and hit the legendary jumps, dared drops and downhill tracks in Saalbach Hinterglemm, Bikepark Konigsberg and Bikepark Planai.Stay tuned for more since Martin is not the only athlete being challenged this summer as Hannah Barnes is set to take on the mission next. But that is not all, for the cherry on top, you will have a chance to be a part of the mission, win weekly prizes from Garmin, or go on a road-trip with Martin and Hannah. Keep an eye on http://bit.ly/BMWMountainsOnAMission , since August 21st will mark the day your mission will be revealed.Photo credit: Jan Kasl PokerNews Podcast 455: WSOP Main Event Champion Scott Blumstein August 03, 2017 Sarah Herring Digital Media Manager Scott Blumstein has been on a road trip since his World Series of Poker Main Event win. He takes the time to join the PokerNews Podcast from Amarillo, Texas to talk a little bit about his experience. Blumstein shares his insights on some key hands and answers listener questions. Brent Harrington and Sarah Herring also try a new segment where they talk about one of the most exciting bluffs in poker history. Sharelines WSOP Main Event Champion Scott Blumstein shares his insights on his experience. Day 2 of the 2017 PokerStars Festival Manila PHP215,000 (~$4,260) High Roller Shot Clock saw 18 players out of a 36-entry strong field returne to the tables of the PokerStars LIVE Manila at the City of Dreams Grand Ballroom. With the registration open for another full level and break, further hopefuls took a shot at the prize pool and a field of 47 entries in total emerged. The prize pool of PHP9,118,000 was set with the top six spots guaranteed to receive a share of it, along with points for the current Asian Player of the Year leader board. Ultimately, it was Australia's Peter Plater who sat down for the winner shot after more than 13 hours. During the final table play, Plater admitted that his best cash so far was for A$9,000 on last Sunday in a A$350 tournament at the Crown Casino in Perth. Right after, the 37 year old engineer jumped on a plane to Manila, won his entry with a one-shot through yesterday's PHP33,000 satellite and eventually lifted the golden trophy. "Fold to the money, that was Platers strategy for the final table. He came in with a short stack and just wanted to walk away with anything. Id like to say that I was trying to win it but it was simply fold to the money. I had no intent to play the High Roller tournament, Plater added. The big buy-in events are a little bit too high for me. I like playing the 400 and 500 dollar events. I was a bit lucky just before I came. I won a tournament just before I came so I had a little extra money than I usually do, so I thought, Ill give it a go, the satellite. And the rest is history. The Aussie, who engaged in plenty of table talk and banter with runner-up Sathesh Muthu and third-place finisher Hermann Lee from Singapore, takes home PHP3,100,000 (~$61,520). The other players in the money include Japan's Yo Seb Rhee and Jun Obara while fellow live satellite qualifier Timofey Asmolov min-cashed. Final Result High Roller Shot Clock Place Player Country Prize (PHP) Prize (USD) 1 Peter Plater Australia 3,100,000 61,520 2 Sathesh Muthu Singapore 2,140,000 42,475 3 Hermann Lee Singapore 1,368,000 27,152 4 Yo Seb Rhee Japan 1,050,000 20,840 5 Jun Obara Japan 820,000 16,673 6 Timofey Asmolov Russia 640,000 12,703 Day 2 early action Tom Or-Paz was leading the field of Day 1 survivors, but the player from Israel suffered several setbacks to join the rail much sooner than expected. Among those to run out of chips were Aditya Sushant, Konstantin Pogodin, Aki Virtanen, Singapore's Alex Lee, Victor Chong and Van Sang Nguyen. Or-Paz bowed out before the last three tables as well after losing a flip with pocket fives against the king-queen of Lester Edoc. Lester Edoc himself was one of the victims of the hot run of Sathesh Stash Muthu when his open-ended straight draw didn't get there, and Muthu also cracked the pocket kings of Pete Chen when flopping a flush with ten-nine suited. Sparrow Cheung dispatched fellow 2017 Asian Player of the Year (APOY) contender Alan Lau with ace-king versus ace-ten, but also failed to earn additional points for the leader board. Short-stacked, Cheung put his hopes on queen-ten and Jun Obara's pocket jacks held up. Sathesh Muthu seemed unstoppable by then, and he also took care of Hoa Thinh Nguyen after rivering a broadway straight. But Yo Seb Rhee, who fired four bullets on Day 1, managed to break through Muthu and built his stack with two aggressive moves in quick succession. While Celine Lee doubled with quads, Linh Tran and Ken Okada were less fortunate and ran out of chips. Tsun Ming Chan, one of the players that joined in the first level of Day 2, ran with queen-seven suited into the pocket aces of 1990 World Series of Poker Main Event champion Mansour Matloubi and one seven on the board was not enough. What followed was a wave of double ups and Simon Burns ended up as the bubble boy of the unofficial final table. The Brit first lost most of his stack with set versus flush and the remainder vanished with nine-seven against the ace-deuce of Peter Plater. This sent everyone into the dinner break with the following seat assignments. Unofficial Final Table Seat Player Country Chip Count Big Blinds 1 Shengyu Li China 226,000 38 2 Yo Seb Rhee Japan 579,000 97 3 Timofey Asmolov Russia 210,000 35 4 Peter Plater Australia 157,000 26 5 Jun Obara Japan 167,000 28 6 Sathesh Muthu Singapore 410,000 68 7 Mansour Matloubi UK 124,000 21 8 Hermann Lee Singapore 384,000 64 9 Celine Lee China 93,000 16 Final Table Action The final table started with a bang and it was Shengyu Li who was first to bust. He three-bet out of the big blind, bet a four-high flop and shoved when a jack appeared on the turn. Initial raiser Hermann Lee snap-called with jack-four suited for trips on the flop and a full house on the turn, and Li's pocket tens found no magic river. Mansour Matloubi's stack all but vanished and the Welshman joined the rail in 8th place. His ace-three in the big blind failed to hold up against the eight-six of Jun Obara and the money bubble was reached. Several players were getting very short and it was Celine Lee who ended up empty-handed. Lee moved all in for her last seven big blinds with pocket queens and Peter Plater reluctantly called with pocket sevens and the slightly superior stack. A seven fell on the flop and that was it for Lee. Timofey Asmolov lost back-to-back hands against Peter Plater and had to settle for the min-cash when his king-seven suited found no help against Plater's ace-ten. Jun Obara's move with jack-eight and second pair on the flop followed by a straight and flush draw on the turn backfired, as Stash Muhtu called with ace-nine for two pair on the river and the field was down to the last four. Yo Seb Rhee fired four bullets on Day 1 and had to settle for 4th place eventually. A roller coaster final day saw the Japanese at risk with pocket eights out of the big blind on a jack-high turn and Hermann Lee snap-called with seven-three spades for flopped two pair and a turned full house. Down to the final trio, Sathesh Muthu held more chips than both of his opponents combined, but both Peter Plater and Hermann Lee doubled through him. Muthu regained a comfortable lead and the two short stacks collided when Lee's queen-jack suited for top pair failed to hold up against the nine-three of spades for Plater. Another spade on the river completed Plater's flush and Lee was gone. Satesh Muthu dominated the first hands of the duel one-versus-one, but Peter Plater quickly established a big lead. After 90 minutes, Muthu forfeited the vast majority of his stack against a back-to-back check-raise of Plater on flop and turn and then got it in with pocket nines on an eight-high flop the next hand. Plater reluctantly called with jack-seven for middle pair and went runner-runner straight to clinch the win. That marks the end of the PokerNews live updates from the High Roller Shot Clock, but the PHP55,000 Main Event continues with the second of three starting days as of 2 p.m. local time on Friday, August 4th 2017. PR-Inside.com: 2017-08-03 06:02:01 A.M. Best Awarded International Best Ratings Agency for Takaful at the International Takaful Awards 2017 A.M. Best Yvette Essen, +44-20-7397-0322 Director, Research & Communications yvette.essen@ambest.com or Edem Kuenyehia, +44-20-7397-0280 Director, Market Development & Communications edem.kuenyehia@ambest.com or Jim Peavy, +1-908-439-2200, ext. 5644 Director, Public Relations james.peavy@ambest.com A.M. Best received the award for International Best Ratings Agency for Takaful at the International Takaful Awards 2017, held in conjunction with the 11th International Takaful Summit in London. This is the third consecutive year that A.M. Best has been awarded the International Best Ratings Agency for Takaful. Accepting the award was Mahesh Mistry, senior director analytics, representing A.M. Bests Europe Middle East and Africa (EMEA) office. The International Takaful Awards recognise the achievements of those companies that have made significant contributions and shown leadership in the (re)takaful sector. Roger Sellek, CEO, EMEA and Asia-Pacific, said: "A.M. Best continues to recognise in its credit rating approach the important differences between conventional and Sharia-compliant models. A.M. Bests commitment to and engagement with the (re)takaful market are key focal areas, and earning the 2017 International Best Ratings Agency for Takaful award only furthers our commitment to this sector. Sellek added: A.M. Bests views on the takaful industry are frequently sought by market participants and our experts are often invited to present at takaful events across the world. This level of prominent participation is instrumental to staying abreast of developments in a sector with potential for growth. This award also highlights the continued confidence of the industry in our specialist approach to insurance sector credit ratings. A.M. Best is the worlds oldest and most authoritative insurance rating and information source. For more information, visit www.ambest.com. Copyright 2017 by A.M. Best Rating Services, Inc. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/201708020059 PR-Inside.com: 2017-08-03 11:51:24 Press Information TA Roofing Tower House Business Centre, Fishergate, York YO10 4UA Stuart Simpson Director 01904 428704 email https://www.taroofing.co.uk/contact/ Published by Stuart Simpson 01904 428704 e-mail https://www.taroofing.co.uk/ # 326 Words Tower House Business Centre,Fishergate, York YO10 4UADirector01904 428704Stuart Simpson01904 428704 TA Roofing are pleased to announce that they are now a member of The National Federation of Roofing Contractors (NFRC).The NFRC have been going 125 years and theyre the UKs largest and most influential roofing trade association, promoting quality contractors and superior products.The NFRC is striving to professionalise the UK roofing industry and is urging the government to support its campaign. For example, in their 2017 manifesto, they declare their ambition to provide a foundation for upskilling existing workers and to launch a career path for new entrants and apprenticeships. Moreover, they want the government to use only accredited roofing professionals on all public funded projects and to encourage uptake across the overall built environmentBecoming an NRFC member involves going through a strict code of practice and vetting procedure. Whilst proving their high standards of workmanship and solid business practices, TA Roofing had to have site inspections and show that they adhered to Government endorsed standards.There are many so called roofers out there and they are definitely not all equal, and so many customers receive sub standard work. Its therefore recommended that anyone requiring roofing work should use an NFRC approved company.Stuart Simpson, Director of TA Roofing in York stated, We wanted to become part of this established association so that potential customers can see that we are a reputable company that provides quality work, a great service and excellent work ethics. Stuart added, We were drawn to NFRC because they share our passion for roofing and they are innovative and at the forefront of new technology and products in an ever changing industry. TA Roofing are currently expanding and recruiting more staff in various trades to deal with the increasing amount of jobs. They not only require roofers but also need joiners, builders and labourers.Having the NFRC membership will be another asset for their continued growth and will set them apart from other roofing companies in the area. A Nairobi cab driver was on Wednesday charged in a Nairobi court with robbing and raping a female passenger at gunpoint. The court heard that Anthony Kanyari Muga committed the act near Ngara primary school jointly with a Mr Mwangi on July 31, 2017. The suspects robbed the complainant her personal items, a mobile phone and cash Sh 31,000 all valued at Sh 54,800. According to the prosecution, the two raped the woman in the same vehicle of registration number KCK 681K. The court heard that the complainant had arrived in Nairobi from Mombasa at around 1 am and hired the taxi within the city centre. After the driver arrived, he called another man(Mr Mwangi) to accompany him to the complainants residence near Pangani. Instead, Muga drove to a dark alley near Ngara primary school where the crime is alleged to have been committed. Mr Muga denied the two counts when he appeared before Milimani senior resident magistrate Hellen Onkwani. The prosecution asked the court to detain the accused person at Central Police Station until they get results of a medical test conducted on the driver following his arrest on Tuesday. The Magistrate ordered he be detained for two days as requested by the prosecution before he processes Sh2 million bond granted by the court. The case will be heard on October 3. PR-Inside.com: 2017-08-03 19:24:13 Press Information Published by ACCESSWIRE News Network 888.952.4446 e-mail http://www.accesswire.com # 395 Words ACCESSWIRE News Network888.952.4446 FSCwire / Press ReleaseThe following press release was disseminated by FSCwire for Argex Titanium Inc.--- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- ---MONTREAL, Quebec (FSCWire) - Argex Titanium Inc. (TSX:RGX). has issued a press release with the following headline:Argex Titanium Poised to Secure Significant Offtakes for Commercial PlantTo view this press release on the FSCwire website, please either click on the link below, or copy and paste the link into your browser:If you would prefer, you can also view this press release as a PDF file, please either click on the link below, or copy and paste the link into your browser:For more information on Argex Titanium Inc., or to see additional press releases issued by this company, please either click on the link below, or copy and paste the link into your browser: http://www.fscwire.com/public-company/Argex Titanium Inc.Source: Argex Titanium Inc. (TSX: RGX, WKN: A1J1GR, ISIN: CA04014T1021)Date: August 03, 2017Time: 1:24 PM EDT--- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- ---The story mentioned above was issued on behalf of Argex Titanium Inc. and disseminated through FSCwire.About FSCwireFSCwire (a division of Filing Services Canada Inc.), is a global newswire dissemination, SEDAR, SEDI, and EDGAR / XBRL service provider.FSCwire is a full service global newswire dissemination company and is fully approved by all exchanges in Canada and the U.S. Press releases can be distributed for all sizes of public, private or not for profit companies and any other organization requiring news distribution. In addition to individual companies; public relations, communications and investor relations firms trust FSCwire to distribute press releases for their respective clients.In addition to newswire dissemination FSCwire also offers EDGAR, XBRL, SEDAR, SEDI, and additional services for publicly traded companies. For more information, please go to our website: http://www.fscwire.com Maximum News Dissemination by FSCwire. http://www.fscwire.com Copyright 2017 - FSCwire (a division of Filing Services Canada Inc.) Hard Luxury Goods Market PR-Inside.com: 2017-08-03 07:04:18 Press Information Future Market Insights 616 Corporate Way, Suite 2-9018, Valley Cottage, NY 10989, United States T: +1-347-918-3531 F: +1-845-579-5705 Email: sales@futuremarketinsights.com Website: www.futuremarketinsights.com Shrikant Ghuge Analyst 1-347-918-3531 email http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/asean-luxury-goods-market # 628 Words 616 Corporate Way, Suite 2-9018,Valley Cottage, NY 10989,United StatesT: +1-347-918-3531F: +1-845-579-5705Email: sales@futuremarketinsights.comWebsite: www.futuremarketinsights.comAnalyst1-347-918-3531 Luxury goods comprises of products such as accessories, footwear, apparel, watches and others which are quite expensive and target those consumers who belongs to premium class. The market for luxury goods consist of three types of end consumers, which includes kids lying between the age of 0-12 years, teenagers belonging to the age group of 13 to 19 years and the rest lies in adult group. Luxury goods market can also be segmented on the basis of application which includes soft luxury goods and hard luxury goods. Soft luxury goods includes designer apparel and leather goods such as hand bags and others, which is easily available for the customers in the hypermarket stores or directly operative outlet. Whereas hard luxury goods comprises of jewellery and premium watches. The hard luxury goods are offered to the consumers through premium class outlets, stores or sell out through internet.Thus the market for hard luxury product is also segmented on the basis of mode of distribution channel used for offering products to the consumers. The mode of Distribution channel is segmented into retail outlets, sell out through internet, companys brand outlet and others. Among all these distribution channel online retailing is expected to be most preferred mode for distribution in the forecasted period. This is due to consumer convenience preferences and availability of the products at lower price. Furthermore, the second most preferred mode is expected to be the companys brand retail outlets as they provide better offerings at less price.Request Report Sample@ http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/sample/rep-as-106 Globally, the demand of hard luxury goods are showing robust annual growth of 10% to 12%.North America and Europe is the highest contributor in the market share of hard luxury goods market. Increasing demand of accessories coupled with rising middle class disposable income has supported the growth of emerging markets in Asia-Pacific. It is expected to account for the fastest CAGR growth as compared to other regions. Among all the countries in Asia Pacific China is expected to be the most lucrative market followed by Japan. India is also expected to show a healthy growth in the forecasted period by registering a single digit CAGR growth. Whereas in ASEAN region Singapore is expected to be the most dominant market. The rising growth for hard luxury goods in Singapore is supported by the new entrants of jewellery brands and rising sales of watches. Rapid urbanization coupled with increasing disposable income in Thailand and Malaysia is predicted to boost the customer base and prominent contributor in the revenue of hard luxury good market in ASEAN region followed by Indonesia and Philippines.Expanding middle class income group coupled with the urge of consumers for premium class products are the key drivers for the market growth of hard luxury goods in ASEAN region. Moreover, wide varieties of product offerings in each segments and continuous innovation and product launch is also expected to influence the consumers of ASEAN region to fuel the market growth of hard luxury goods in the forecasted period.However, the market of hard luxury goods in ASEAN region possess some restraining factors. This includes the weak distribution channel and limited availability of the products. Furthermore, the consumers perceives these products as quite expensive and also it is considered as a premium class product and not an absolute necessity.Visit For TOC@ http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/toc/rep-as-106 The key international market players for hard luxury goods operating in ASEAN region includes Gianni Versace S.p.A., LVMH Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton SA, Compagnie Financiere Richemont SA, Prada S.p.A., Hermes International SCA, Salvatore Ferragamo S.p.A, Prada S.p.A, Ralph Lauren Corp, Christian Dior SE, Gucci, Rolex SA, Bottega Veneta, Louis Vuitton Malletier, Tod's S.p.A. and others. Barite Market PR-Inside.com: 2017-08-03 07:46:06 Press Information Future Market Insights 616 Corporate Way, Suite 2-9018, Valley Cottage, NY 10989, United States email Published by Abhishek Budholiya +1-347-918-3531 e-mail http://www.futuremarketinsights.com # 575 Words 616 Corporate Way, Suite 2-9018,Valley Cottage, NY 10989,United StatesAbhishek Budholiya+1-347-918-3531 Barite is a mineral that is rich in barium. Barite commonly occurs in the large number of depositional environment and it is found in the zinc-lead veins in limestone, in the hot spring deposits and in the hematite ore. Barite is also found alongside meteorites. Barite is relatively inert and also exhibits a physical property of high density. Barite is widely used as a weighting agent in the drilling muds. Barite also finds other applications in the electrical and electronics, rubber, ceramics, paints radiation shielding, medical and glass industry among others. China, India, Morocco and U.S. are expected to be the largest producers of barite. The total barite resources across the globe in all categories are around 2 billion tons, however, only 740 million tons is considered among the identified resources.Most of the barite manufactured is used as a weighting agent in the drilling fluids that are used in the oil and gas exploration. Barites are mainly used to suppress the high formation fluids and also to prevent blowouts. The quantity of barite used is mainly dependent on the depth of the hole that has to be bored. The deeper the hole, more the barite is required. Barite is non-magnetic in nature and hence, it does not interfere with the magnetic measurements that are taken during boring the hole making barite an ideal choice for the drilling fluids. Barite is widely used in the manufacturing of paints and coatings. Thus, the growing automobile industry is expected to boost the overall growth of the paints and coatings industry which in turn is expected to drive the growth of the overall barite market. The global barite market is expected to grow owing to its increasing demand in other applications such as textiles, paper and paints among others. Though, there are alternatives to barite such as ilmenite, celestite, iron ore and synthetic hematite, none of these substitutes had a major impact on the barite drilling mud industry.Request For Report Sample@ http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/sample/rep-gb-150 Barites offer several benefits such as good stability, strong inertia, moderate rigidity, acid and alkali proof and high specific gravity. Due to such advantages, barite is widely used in applications including engineering plastic, middle and high-grade paint, medicine compounding, rubber, pottery, paper-making and cosmetics among others. The main types of barites are ground barite, finely ground barite and bleached barite. Ground barite is used as filler in the production of oil cloth, linoleum, paper, textile, plastics and rubber. Finely ground barite finds use in making thixotropic mud for sealing oil wells in drilling applications and bleached barite is used as a pigment in white paint.Considering the rapidly growing oil and gas drilling industry, the demand for barite is expected to record a strong growth in the coming years. India and China hold a dominant position in the barite supply and have increased prices significantly in the recent times. Owing to this, there is an increased focus on discovering and developing new barite resources across the world. While India and China are anticipated to dominate the barite production and export, mining projects in several stages of development are ongoing in countries such as Liberia, Kazakhstan, Mexico, and Zimbabwe.Visit For TOC@ http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/toc/rep-gb-150 Some of the key participants of the barite market include Desku Group Inc., SMIMTAF, Shijiazhuang Oushun Minerals Products Co. Ltd., Shanghai Titanos Industry Co., Ltd., CMS Industries and V&P Corporation among others. PR-Inside.com: 2017-08-03 19:44:01 For Immediate Release: August 3, 2017 BOISE, Idaho - Boise Cascade Company (Boise Cascade) (NYSE: BCC) today announced that Jill Twedt has been appointed vice president, legal and corporate secretary. Ms. Twedt joined Boise Cascade as senior counsel in 2007 and currently leads the company's compliance committee. "Jill's experience in working on our various acquisitions and divestitures and her knowledge of our business will help us to continue to focus on our growth and compliance efforts," commented Tom Corrick, chief executive officer of Boise Cascade. Ms. Twedt has a B.A. in political science from the College of Idaho and a J.D. from the University of Idaho College of Law. She is active in the Society for Corporate Governance. In the Boise community, Ms. Twedt serves as board president for Boise Valley Habitat for Humanity, board member with the United Way of Treasure Valley, and on the Board of Trustees for the College of Idaho. About Boise Cascade Boise Cascade is one of the largest producers of engineered wood products and plywood in North America and a leading U.S. wholesale distributor of building products. For more information, please visit our website at www.bc.com. Media Contact Lisa Chapman Office 208-384-6552 Investor Relations Contact Wayne Rancourt Office 208-384-6073 This announcement is distributed by Nasdaq Corporate Solutions on behalf of Nasdaq Corporate Solutions clients. The issuer of this announcement warrants that they are solely responsible for the content, accuracy and originality of the information contained therein. Source: Boise Cascade Company via Globenewswire PR-Inside.com: 2017-08-03 17:30:12 Press Information Published by ACCESSWIRE News Network 888.952.4446 e-mail http://www.accesswire.com # 399 Words ACCESSWIRE News Network888.952.4446 FSCwire / Press ReleaseThe following press release was disseminated by FSCwire for Eagle Plains Resources Ltd.--- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- ---Cranbrook, British Columbia (FSCWire) - Eagle Plains Resources Ltd. (TSX Venture:EPL). has issued a press release with the following headline:Eagle Plains Commences 2017 Fieldwork at Vulcan Silver-Lead-Zinc Project, Southeastern B.C.To view this press release on the FSCwire website, please either click on the link below, or copy and paste the link into your browser:If you would prefer, you can also view this press release as a PDF file, please either click on the link below, or copy and paste the link into your browser:For more information on Eagle Plains Resources Ltd., or to see additional press releases issued by this company, please either click on the link below, or copy and paste the link into your browser: http://www.fscwire.com/public-company/Eagle Plains Resources Ltd.Source: Eagle Plains Resources Ltd. (TSX Venture: EPL, ISIN: CA2699062022, WKN: 588696)Date: August 03, 2017Time: 11:30 AM EDT--- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- ---The story mentioned above was issued on behalf of Eagle Plains Resources Ltd. and disseminated through FSCwire.About FSCwireFSCwire (a division of Filing Services Canada Inc.), is a global newswire dissemination, SEDAR, SEDI, and EDGAR / XBRL service provider.FSCwire is a full service global newswire dissemination company and is fully approved by all exchanges in Canada and the U.S. Press releases can be distributed for all sizes of public, private or not for profit companies and any other organization requiring news distribution. In addition to individual companies; public relations, communications and investor relations firms trust FSCwire to distribute press releases for their respective clients.In addition to newswire dissemination FSCwire also offers EDGAR, XBRL, SEDAR, SEDI, and additional services for publicly traded companies. For more information, please go to our website: http://www.fscwire.com Maximum News Dissemination by FSCwire. http://www.fscwire.com Copyright 2017 - FSCwire (a division of Filing Services Canada Inc.) Air Treatment Products Market PR-Inside.com: 2017-08-03 07:06:57 Press Information Future Market Insights 616 Corporate Way, Suite 2-9018, Valley Cottage, NY 10989, United States T: +1-347-918-3531 F: +1-845-579-5705 Email: sales@futuremarketinsights.com Website: www.futuremarketinsights.com Shrikant Ghuge Analyst 1-347-918-3531 email http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/india-air-treatment-products-market # 657 Words 616 Corporate Way, Suite 2-9018,Valley Cottage, NY 10989,United StatesT: +1-347-918-3531F: +1-845-579-5705Email: sales@futuremarketinsights.comWebsite: www.futuremarketinsights.comAnalyst1-347-918-3531 The air treatment equipment includes those products which modify or change the technological characteristics and properties of air. This modification may include the treatment of harmful gases present in the air, increasing or decreasing the air temperature, compressing the air, removal of harmful microorganism from the air, increasing or decreasing the air pressure, removal of extreme odours and others. The air treatment equipment includes air compressor, air dryers, air washers, air filters, injectors and others.?On the basis of application the air treatment products are available for both industrial and domestic use. It is also used for roadways vehicles, waterways vehicles such as for ships, marines, and also for airways such as in aeroplane, spaceship, fighter plane and others. For domestic use air treatment equipment are offered to the consumers in the modified form and available in the consumer durable products for their convenient use. The air treatment consumer durable product includes hot air blowers, air conditioners, automatic washing machine, microwave, oven, automatic washer dryers, hair dryers, refrigerators, dishwashers and others.Request Report Sample@ http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/sample/rep-in-246 On the basis of domestic use the air treatment products is sub-segmented into air conditioner, air purifier, humidifiers and dehumidifiers and others. Among all these sub-segments air purifiers are further sub-segmented into air filters purifiers, ionizing purifiers, ozone generators, adsorbents and others. Whereas air conditioners is sub-segmented into room air conditioners, split air conditioners, window air conditioners and others.Globally Asia-pacific is considered to be the highest market for the air treatment products followed by North America and Europe. In Asia Pacific China, India and Japan represent ample opportunities for players in this market. This growth in these countries is supported by increasing number of health conscious consumers and rising disposable income of the consumers.Among all these countries, India accounted for low growth for air treatment products in 2011 due to economic slowdown. Moreover, the demand of air conditioner segment also registered less growth as monsoon arrived early in the country. However, the market growth for air treatment product showed a positive growth in 2013 due to rise in country economic condition and urge of the consumer for better and healthier life. It is expected that India will show a potential growth for air treatment products in the forecasted period. This growth will be supported by rise demand for air conditioners in states such as Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Maharashtra and others due to rise in heat and temperature. It is expected that air conditioner will occupy the largest position of the pie as the consumers in India are making their switch from ceiling fans or table fans to air conditioner. Among all the sub-segments of air conditioner, split air conditioner is expected to show the highest growth. Furthermore, it has been found that awareness among the consumers for purified air will also fuel the market growth for air treatment products in India. States such as Uttar Pradesh and Gujarat is expected to support the growth of air purifiers as these states possess large number of industries.In India, high entrant of manufacturing industries, outsourcing companies and rise in commercialization are some of the major drivers supporting the market growth. In addition, increase in number of health consciousness among the consumers coupled with rising disposable income is also expected to fuel the market growth for air treatment products in India.Visit For TOC@ http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/toc/rep-in-246 However, the market of air treatment products in India possess some restraining factors. This includes lack of awareness among the consumers regarding the product such as humidifiers, dehumidifiers and others. Additionally, the consumers perceives these products as quite expensive and also it is considered as a luxury product and not an absolute necessity.The key players for air treatment products in India includes Bajaj Electricals Ltd, Godrej & Boyce Mfg Co Ltd., Usha International Ltd., Panasonic Corp, Atlas Copco AB, Eureka Forbes, OSIM International, SANYO Electric Co ., Ltd and others. PR-Inside.com: 2017-08-03 20:07:01 Launches "Inspired Inclusivity" Global Brand Platform Celebrates Agencies and Leaders Who Drive Culture Change New York, NY - August 3, 2017 - Today Interpublic Group (NYSE: IPG) will host the company's ninth annual IPG Inclusion Awards program in New York City, and, for the first time, broadcast the program to a global audience via Facebook Live. The Inclusion Awards will honor six agencies and two individuals from IPG's global network who have shown leadership in advancing the company's goal of being one of the world's most diverse and inclusive companies. The event will also debut a new global brand platform called "Inspired Inclusivity" intended to make diversity and inclusion an urgent business issue. Additionally, during the event, Frans Johansson, the best-selling author and consultant, will share his findings on how diversity and innovation are connected. To view the program on Facebook Live, visit https://www.facebook.com/InterpublicGroup, from 3-5 pm ET on August 3rd 2017. Michael Roth, IPG's Chairman and CEO, stated, "This year's program is different from what we've done in years past because, frankly, things need to change. While we've made some great progress, a lot of work remains to be done. We're launching a new framework for taking our efforts to the next level. Today's event highlights why our focus on diversity isn't just important, it's urgent from a business perspective. It's also critical that we expand our definition of inclusion to ensure that we incorporate the many dimensions of diversity from gender to race to culture to caregiver or veteran status and beyond. We are streaming live on Facebook to reach more of our people around the world, and we welcome our newcomers to this important event." Heide Gardner, IPG's Chief Diversity and Inclusion Officer, added, "IPG has been working on diversity and inclusion since 2005. With the backing of our Board of Directors, IPG has emerged as a clear leader in the industry. We're the first to hold CEOs accountable through their compensation. We're the first to track progress using serious metrics. We were the first to talk about the most underrepresented racial and ethnic group in our industry, who are Black women executives. 'Inspired Inclusivity' brings to the forefront the programs and work that make D&I part of our DNA, which can be an enormous differentiator for us." During the event, IPG will formally announce its new global diversity and inclusion theme "Inspired Inclusivity" with a new logo that was the result of an employee global design competition. IPG received over 100 design submissions from all over the world. The winning design was submitted by Rashpal Amrit, Graphic Designer at Frukt London. Rashpal will be at the event to present the new logo. Frans Johansson, Founder and CEO of The Medici Group and Author of The Medici Effect and The Click Moment will deliver a keynote address during the program. Frans will discuss recent groundbreaking strategy work he is doing with clients who are leveraging diversity and how their approach to driving innovation has led to significant changes in their organizations. Interpublic agencies and employees were invited to submit entries for seven award categories showcasing how they have elevated diversity to a business imperative. The Most Inclusive Climate of the Year honor is awarded to the agency that received the highest score on IPG's annual Climate for Inclusion survey. Submissions were then judged by MERGE leadership. MERGE is IPG's umbrella organization for the company's Business Resource Groups (BRG) which include the Asian Heritage Group (AHG), Black Employee Network (BEN), IPGLBT, Hispanic/Latino Heritage Group (SOMOS) and the Women's Leadership Network (WLN). The 2017 IPG honorees are: Community Impact - Area 23, an FCB Health Company - Area 23, an FCB Health Company Outstanding Support for Diverse Businesses - McCann Worldgroup - McCann Worldgroup Inclusive Talent Initiatives - R/GA - R/GA Best Internal Communications Program - Campbell Ewald - Campbell Ewald Inclusion Campaign of the Year - WMcCann - WMcCann Most Effective Targeted Campaign - McCann New York - McCann New York Inclusive Leadership Award - Blake Winfree and Erin Swenson Gorrall, MullenLowe U.S. - Blake Winfree and Erin Swenson Gorrall, MullenLowe U.S. Most Inclusive Climate of the Year - Carmichael Lynch # # # About Interpublic Interpublic is one of the world's leading organizations of advertising agencies and marketing services companies. Major global brands include Craft, FCB (Foote, Cone & Belding), FutureBrand, Golin, Huge, Initiative, Jack Morton Worldwide, MAGNA, McCann, Momentum, MRM//McCann, MullenLowe Group, Octagon, R/GA, UM and Weber Shandwick. Other leading brands include Avrett Free Ginsberg, Campbell Ewald, Carmichael Lynch, Deutsch, Hill Holliday, ID Media and The Martin Agency. For more information, please visit www.interpublic.com. # # # Contact Information Tom Cunningham (Press) (212) 704-1326 Jerry Leshne (Analysts, Investors) (212) 704-1439 This announcement is distributed by Nasdaq Corporate Solutions on behalf of Nasdaq Corporate Solutions clients. The issuer of this announcement warrants that they are solely responsible for the content, accuracy and originality of the information contained therein. Source: INTERPUBLIC GROUP OF COMPANIES, INC. via Globenewswire PR-Inside.com: 2017-08-03 14:03:01 GREELEY, Colo., Aug. 03, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- As part of the company's effort to serve as the worldwide leader in high-quality, innovative protein and value-added food products, JBS today announced the appointment of Alfred "Al" Almanza to the role of Global Head of Food Safety and Quality Assurance. Almanza will join the JBS Global leadership team, reporting directly to JBS Global President of Operations, Gilberto Tomazoni. Based in Greeley, Colo., he will lead the company's global food safety efforts, ensuring that JBS operations around the world implement the highest food safety, quality control and risk management systems, while maintaining and expanding access to global export markets. JBS is the worldwide leader in protein exports, serving more than 300,000 customers in more than 150 nations. Prior to joining JBS, Almanza spent nearly 40 years with the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Food Safety and Inspection Service (USDA, FSIS). He began his career with USDA as a food safety inspector in a small plant in Dalhart, Texas, eventually rising from this entry-level position to serve as Deputy Under Secretary for Food Safety under Secretary of Agriculture Thomas J. Vilsack, from September 2014 to December 2016. For the past 10 years, he has served as the Administrator of FSIS, leading USDA's science-based food safety modernization efforts, regulatory strategies and public health efforts to prevent foodborne illness. "We are delighted to bring Al's expertise and passion for food safety, quality and public health to the JBS team," Tomazoni said. "During his long and storied career at FSIS, Al earned the respect and admiration of his peers for his team-based management approach and his willingness to partner with both industry and public health organizations to ensure the provision of safe, quality food to consumers. JBS is privileged to have someone of Al's caliber join our company." Almanza is globally recognized as an expert on food safety, risk management, the development of modern inspection systems, and international sanitary standards that govern market access for meat and poultry products. During his time at FSIS, he held several leadership positions, including Labor Management specialist, District Manager of the Agency's Dallas District Office, and ultimately Administrator of FSIS, where he led a team of more than 7,000 FSIS field employees. "I am excited to start this new chapter of my career as a part of the JBS Global Team," Almanza said. "It was an honor to serve the public as a member of the USDA team and help uphold its mission to protect public health for nearly four decades. I now join a team that shares my commitment to food safety and feeding the world in a safe, sustainable way. I look forward to helping JBS maintain the highest food safety levels in the industry, and putting in place best-in-class benchmarks and safeguards to ensure that our products continue to exceed all industry standards." ABOUT JBS JBS is the leading animal protein producer in the world and the second-largest food company in the world, with production platforms in South America, North America, Europe and Oceania. Founded in 1953, JBS has more than 235,000 team members worldwide, more than 300 production units, export customers in more than 150 countries, and annual revenues of more than $50 billion. JBS processes, prepares, packages and delivers fresh, further-processed and value-added beef, pork, lamb and poultry products for sale to more than 300,000 customers in more than 150 countries on six continents. PR-Inside.com: 2017-08-03 15:00:12 Press Information Published by ACCESSWIRE News Network 888.952.4446 e-mail http://www.accesswire.com # 387 Words ACCESSWIRE News Network888.952.4446 FSCwire / Press ReleaseThe following press release was disseminated by FSCwire for Kapuskasing Gold Corp.--- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- ---Vancouver, British Columbia (FSCWire) - Kapuskasing Gold Corp. (TSX Venture:KAP). has issued a press release with the following headline:Kapuskasing Gold Announces Private PlacementTo view this press release on the FSCwire website, please either click on the link below, or copy and paste the link into your browser:If you would prefer, you can also view this press release as a PDF file, please either click on the link below, or copy and paste the link into your browser:For more information on Kapuskasing Gold Corp., or to see additional press releases issued by this company, please either click on the link below, or copy and paste the link into your browser: http://www.fscwire.com/public-company/Kapuskasing Gold Corp.Source: Kapuskasing Gold Corp. (TSX Venture: KAP)Date: August 03, 2017Time: 9:00 AM EDT--- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- ---The story mentioned above was issued on behalf of Kapuskasing Gold Corp. and disseminated through FSCwire.About FSCwireFSCwire (a division of Filing Services Canada Inc.), is a global newswire dissemination, SEDAR, SEDI, and EDGAR / XBRL service provider.FSCwire is a full service global newswire dissemination company and is fully approved by all exchanges in Canada and the U.S. Press releases can be distributed for all sizes of public, private or not for profit companies and any other organization requiring news distribution. In addition to individual companies; public relations, communications and investor relations firms trust FSCwire to distribute press releases for their respective clients.In addition to newswire dissemination FSCwire also offers EDGAR, XBRL, SEDAR, SEDI, and additional services for publicly traded companies. For more information, please go to our website: http://www.fscwire.com Maximum News Dissemination by FSCwire. http://www.fscwire.com Copyright 2017 - FSCwire (a division of Filing Services Canada Inc.) Managed Mobility Services Market PR-Inside.com: 2017-08-03 07:09:05 Press Information Future Market Insights 616 Corporate Way, Suite 2-9018, Valley Cottage, NY 10989, United States email Published by Abhishek Budholiya +1-347-918-3531 e-mail http://www.futuremarketinsights.com # 573 Words 616 Corporate Way, Suite 2-9018,Valley Cottage, NY 10989,United StatesAbhishek Budholiya+1-347-918-3531 Managed services include all those in-house functionality that is transferred to the third-party service providers for better management. In today's fiercely competitive business environment, organisations want to ensure that their staff focuses on the core competencies of their business and non-core activities are handled by third-party service providers. Some of the common managed services include lifecycle management activities, IT resource activities, HR activities, etc.The global managed services market is forecasted to witness a healthy growth rate in the next five years as more organisations understand the importance and advantages of outsourcing their non-core operational activities.Request Report Sample@ http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/sample/rep-gb-259 Managed Mobility Services Market Anticipated to Witness High Double-Digit CAGRThe global managed services market is segmented into managed data centre, managed security, managed infrastructure, managed communications, managed mobility, etc. All these segments of the global managed service market are anticipated to witness a healthy growth through 2020, with the managed mobility segment forecasted to witness a high double-digit CAGR.Managed mobility services include the management of smartphones, tablets, and other mobility services required by businesses in carrying out their day-to-day operations. Over the years, smartphones have penetrated every walk of our life and businesses want to leverage on the enormous reach of the mobile phones.Organisations are using mobile devices to manage their work in an effective manner. Mobile devices are used extensively in the hotel and restaurant industry for allocating seats to patrons on a real-time basis. Moreover, mobile phones have become an important platform for advertising and marketing purposes, as they offer multiple channels through which a product or service can be promoted. These factors have forced businesses to look for credible mobility management service solutions and this is anticipated the boost the prospects of the global managed mobility services market.Low Adoption of Managed Mobility in Developing Economies Can Pose a Challenge to the Growth of the Global Managed Mobility Services MarketAlthough organisations in developed countries are pushing the demand for managed mobility services, it is forecasted that the low demand from organisations in developing nations can curtail the growth prospects of the global managed mobility services. Many organisations in developing economies are concerned about the rising operational costs and they do not want to increase it by outsourcing their mobility activities to third-party vendors. Moreover, businesses in developing economies tend to use free, open-source software for mobility management, as they do not have the budget to invest in premium software. These factors are forecasted to present a key challenge for the growth of the global managed mobility services market.The global managed mobility services market is segmented into:Managed smartphones and tabletsManaged mobile securityManaged mobile VASAmong these segments of the global managed mobility services market, the managed smartphones and tablets segment is forecasted to expand at a high CAGR through 2020. The increase in proliferation of smartphones and tablets in both developing and developed economies is projected to be the key reason for the growth of this segment. The growth will be particularly phenomenal in India and China, but the weak demand from other Asia Pacific nations can have an adverse impact on the growth of the global managed mobility services market.Visit For TOC@ http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/toc/rep-gb-259 Global Managed Mobility Services Market: Key PlayersSome of the key players in the global managed mobility services market include Cisco, Alcatel-Lucent, Dell, AT&T, Ericsson, HP, and Microsoft. Isaac Ruto, Peter Munya, William Kabogo and Alfred Mutua. What is common among these 4 men? For starters, they are all sitting governors who have have seemingly gone against the community wave, but have very realistic chances of retaining their seats. Of the 4, only Isaac Ruto and Alfred Mutua have outright opposed the community chiefs. These are William Ruto and Kalonzo Musyoka respectively. In Machakos, Alfred Mutua abandoned the Wiper ship very early in his term and started courting Jubilee. Initially, Kalonzo saw him as salvageable until he wasnt. The gulf between Mutua and Kalonzo continued to widen when it became apparent that the Machakos governor had ambitions to be the Kamba supremo. And then he founded his own party (Maendeleo Chap Chap) hammering the final nail in his relationship with Kalonzo. Mutua concurrently damaged his relationship with Machakos Senator Johnstone Muthama, whose ally and Deputy Governor Bernard Kiala started been sidelined. It was now clear that Mutua would not have any major ally towards the 2017 election. Meanwhile, Muthama and his friend Kiala assumed that it would be automatic who the wiper gubernatorial candidate for Machakos would be. The gemstone dealer probably thought that by virtue of his stature, Kalonzo would give him free reign in Machakos affairs. How wrong he was. The former Vice President insisted on a nomination exercise, bringing on board Wavinya Ndeti. Read: 70 Ambulances, 140 Police Cars, Forensic Lab Heres What Alfred Mutua Has Done in Machakos This Year Kiala stood no chance. Though they claimed there were massive irregularities, it is hard to imagine how Kiala could have beaten Wavinya even in a free and fair process. Kiala then chose to go independent, until this weekend when he pulled out but categorically stated it was not in favour of any candidate. But essentially that was more of a move to avoid embarrassment, since the according to the polls he was doing exceptionally bad. Would have been a miracle if he crossed 3%. Now the battle is between Wavinya and Mutua without distractions. In the Wiper nominations, Wavinya got 227, 947. Thats more than a third of Machakos 627,168 registered voters. If Mutua and videos doing rounds showing vote marking in favour of Wavinya are to be believed, then it was of great importance that the perception of a Wiper wave in Machakos be created. The same way crowds in rallies are a psychological tool used to influence voters, a party wave is too. Nobody likes to support a side that seems to be losing. [showad block=6] But even if the nomination was free and fair, there is still almost 2/3 of voters to be fought for. The choice for Machakos is not straightforward. Here they have a governor who has performed exceptionally well by many Kenyans standards, and a candidate who did well as MP and promises more if elected governor. You know, its very hard to understand the politics of this country. Pull anyone from the street. Kisumu, Embu, Muranga, Mombasa, Turkana etc.. anywhere. Ask them to list the best performing governors in Kenya for the last 5 years. I bet Alfred Mutua will be mentioned as the top. I mean, most governors are struggling to show a single project they have initiated. Read: PHOTOS Alfred Mutua Builds New Public Toilet in a Record 10 Days And here is Mutua who can point to a stadium (best county constructed stadium), a peoples park, tons of ambulances, police cars, and most importantly, ambition, vision and will to do much more. Ask any Kenyan whether they want a governor like Mutua, and theyll reply, where do I sign up. Then why doesnt Mutua have 95% support? Well, obviously Kenyans are not the sharpest tool in the shed. Tribe and tribal loyalty still plays a big role, and often blocks people from recognizing a good fruit when they have it, or a bad one too. Obviously Mutua is no angel, but all things considered, his achievements dwarf every other governor in this country. In some counties, people actually wonder whether they have anyone in charge. Read: Alfred Mutua Builds 33 km Highway in 3 Months New Record in Africa That said, most opinion polls put Mutua ahead. A majority of Machakos people are likely to reward performance instead of putting party loyalty first. But even without these polls, I would still have been of the view that Alfred Mutua will be re-elected. Kenyans are changing (albeit slowly), and parties are starting to play a lesser role in county matters. Wavinya may not be a bad choice, but she is competing against a very good governor. 2022 may present better prospects for her. Therefore: Machakos 2017 Prediction: Alfred Mutua wins The above analysis is an opinion based on observation of the mood, and not supported by concrete scientific numbers. Now Read: Prediction: William Kabogo vs Ferdinand Waititu Polyurethane Resins Paints and Coatings Market PR-Inside.com: 2017-08-03 07:49:27 Press Information Future Market Insights 616 Corporate Way, Suite 2-9018, Valley Cottage, NY 10989, United States email Published by Abhishek Budholiya +1-347-918-3531 e-mail http://www.futuremarketinsights.com # 578 Words 616 Corporate Way, Suite 2-9018,Valley Cottage, NY 10989,United StatesAbhishek Budholiya+1-347-918-3531 Polyurethane resins are produced by the reacting polyalcohol and an organic di-isocyanate. Polyurethane resins are extensively used in applications such as surface coatings, footwear, furniture and packaging. Polyurethane resin paints are characterized by properties such as high durability, toughness, easy cleaning and high gloss. Owing to these properties, polyurethane resin paints finds wide spread applications across the globe. Polyurethane resin paints are also used where high performance is expected, in applications such as oil-rig towers, warehouses, industrial plants, heat resistant coatings, bridges etc.Paints perform the vital role of protecting the surfaces from rust and weathering, increasing durability and also increasing the visual appeal of the products. Polyurethane resin paints are used in various applications such as wood coatings, aircraft coatings, construction etc. The demand for polyurethane resin paints is expected to witness strong growth from the furniture segment where polyurethane resin paints are used to paint the surface of wooden furniture. Interiors and furniture coating is one of the major end-user industry of polyurethane resin paints. Polyurethane resin paints are used are used for applying protective layer over wooden furniture in order to protect the wooden surfaces. Economic growth in Asia Pacific and Latin America coupled with growing disposable income in these regions, have led to an increase in demand for furniture products and this in turn is expected to drive the demand for polyurethane resin paints and coatings used in furniture applications. Polyurethane resins coatings are also used for marine applications across the globe. Other applications where polyurethane resin paints and coatings can be used include heavy duty exterior and interior structural coating, exterior surfaces of steel tanks, clean rooms, conveyors, chemical processing equipments, paper mills, power plants, offshore structures, oil field machinery, handrails, etc.Request For Report Sample@ http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/sample/rep-gb-154 The demand for polyurethane resin paints and coatings is also expected to see robust growth from the marine industry. Increasing demand and sales of leisure boats globally is expected to drive the demand for polyurethane resin paints and coatings market in the near future. The demand for boats has seen a significant increase in countries such as U.S further adding to the demand for polyurethane resin paints and coatings. Growing construction activities globally is also expected to increase the demand for polyurethane resin paints and coatings in the next few years. Polyurethane resin paints and coatings are also used for applying protective base layers to various products. The demand for polyurethane resin paints and coatings from automobile sector is also anticipated to exhibit strong growth in the next few years.In terms of consumption Asia Pacific was the highest consumer of polyurethane resin paints and coatings followed by North America, Europe and Latin America. In Asia Pacific, China and India were the major markets for polyurethane resin paints and coatings. The demand for polyurethane resin paints and coatings is higher in these countries on account of growing disposable income in this region and growing expenditure on furniture and interiors. In Latin America, Brazil is the major market for polyurethane resin paints and coatings. The demand for polyurethane resin paints and coatings is also expected to be high in Middle East and African countries on account of growing construction activities in these regions.Visit For TOC@ http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/sample/rep-gb-154 Some of the major companies operating in the global polyurethane resin paints and coatings market are BASF SE, Sherwin Williams, Henkel, Lubrizol, DSM, and Arkema among others. PR-Inside.com: 2017-08-03 14:00:13 Press Information Published by ACCESSWIRE News Network 888.952.4446 e-mail http://www.accesswire.com # 396 Words ACCESSWIRE News Network888.952.4446 FSCwire / Press ReleaseThe following press release was disseminated by FSCwire for Ashburton Ventures Inc.--- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- ---Vancouver, British Columbia (FSCWire) - Ashburton Ventures Inc. (TSX Venture:ABR). has issued a press release with the following headline:Mining Activities Resume at the Z-1 Zeolite QuarryTo view this press release on the FSCwire website, please either click on the link below, or copy and paste the link into your browser:If you would prefer, you can also view this press release as a PDF file, please either click on the link below, or copy and paste the link into your browser:For more information on Ashburton Ventures Inc., or to see additional press releases issued by this company, please either click on the link below, or copy and paste the link into your browser: http://www.fscwire.com/public-company/Ashburton Ventures Inc.Source: Ashburton Ventures Inc. (TSX Venture: ABR, FWB: ARB, WKN: A1J3M5, ISIN: CA0437832086)Date: August 03, 2017Time: 8:00 AM EDT--- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- ---The story mentioned above was issued on behalf of Ashburton Ventures Inc. and disseminated through FSCwire.About FSCwireFSCwire (a division of Filing Services Canada Inc.), is a global newswire dissemination, SEDAR, SEDI, and EDGAR / XBRL service provider.FSCwire is a full service global newswire dissemination company and is fully approved by all exchanges in Canada and the U.S. Press releases can be distributed for all sizes of public, private or not for profit companies and any other organization requiring news distribution. In addition to individual companies; public relations, communications and investor relations firms trust FSCwire to distribute press releases for their respective clients.In addition to newswire dissemination FSCwire also offers EDGAR, XBRL, SEDAR, SEDI, and additional services for publicly traded companies. For more information, please go to our website: http://www.fscwire.com Maximum News Dissemination by FSCwire. http://www.fscwire.com Copyright 2017 - FSCwire (a division of Filing Services Canada Inc.) Ortho-Xylene Market PR-Inside.com: 2017-08-03 07:50:26 Press Information Future Market Insights 616 Corporate Way, Suite 2-9018, Valley Cottage, NY 10989, United States email Published by Abhishek Budholiya +1-347-918-3531 e-mail http://www.futuremarketinsights.com # 542 Words 616 Corporate Way, Suite 2-9018,Valley Cottage, NY 10989,United StatesAbhishek Budholiya+1-347-918-3531 Xylenes are petrochemicals produced by catalytic reforming and coal carbonization in the manufacture of coke fuel. They are used in various industries and medical technology as a solvent. It occurs naturally in coal, wood tar and coal among others. Xylenes are mainly produced as a part of the BTX aromatics. They are derived from various sources within a refinery including pyrolysis gasoline, toluene disproportionation and reformate among others. Reformate accounts for over three fourths of mixed xylenes market. There are three types of xylenes, viz., ortho-xylene, meta xylene and para xylene.Ortho-xylene is a commercial isomer of xylene. It is a hydrocarbon based on benzene with two methyl substituents bonded to the aromatic ring. It is liquid at room temperature. It is used extensively for producing phthalic anhydride (PAN)-primarily dio-octyl phthalate for PVC. The major use for PAN is for producing plasticizers which are largely used in automobile and construction industry. In addition, it is used in solvent based paints. It is extracted by means of distillation from xylene stream in a plant designed for para-xylene production. It is a constitutional isomer of m-xylene and p-xylene. Moreover, it is produced with its isomers paraxylene, metaxylene and ethylbenzene. Friedel Crafts alkylation of toluene yields a mixture of ortho-xylene .This reaction gives a pure form of o-xylene. Furthermore, it is used in alkyd resins having wide applications in the coating industry. It has a large demand in the petrochemical industry.The growing construction industry coupled with burgeoning development in the automobile industry is expected to drive the demand for ortho-xylene within the forecast period. Additionally, the growing paints and adhesive industry is expected to fuel the demand for ortho-xylene further over the next few years. However, acute inhalation or exposure to ortho-xylene in humans results in irritation of eyes and neurological effects. Furthermore, chronic exposure of ortho-xylenes results in central nervous system effects, cardio-vascular and kidney effects. It reacts violently with oxidants causing fire and explosion hazard. Thus, stringent regulations on use of ethylene are expected to hamper the ortho-xylene market in near future.Request For Report Sample@ http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/sample/rep-gb-157 In Asia, prices of xylene are anticipated to weaken due to weak downstream conditions in the purified terephthalic acid and paraxylene sectors. Global manufacturing coupled with supply chain and access to feedstock are the key strengths of the companies involved in the ortho-xylene market.Asia Pacific is expected to be the fastest growing regional market within the forecast period on account of the growing chemical industry and in turn, rapid industrialization. China dominated the otho-xylene production in 2011 and this trend is expected to continue within the forecast period. In India, Reliance Industries is a manufacturer of ortho-xylene with a capacity of 150 KTA. Consumption of ortho-xylene in Eastern Europe and Russia is expected to be strong on account of the thriving construction industry.Visit For TOC@ http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/sample/rep-gb-157 The major players in the ortho-xylene market are Creasyn Finechem (Tianjin) Co., Ltd., Doe & Ingalls of North Carolina Inc., DynaChem Inc, Minda Petrochemicals Ltd, Shell Chemicals, Sonoco Chemicals, U.S. Petrochemical Industries Ltd. and Puritan Products, Inc. among others. Ortho-xylene projects by major companies are planned in China, Taiwan and Singapore within the forecast period. Polyvinylidene Fluoride (PVDF) Market PR-Inside.com: 2017-08-03 07:46:57 Press Information Future Market Insights 616 Corporate Way, Suite 2-9018, Valley Cottage, NY 10989, United States email Published by Abhishek Budholiya +1-347-918-3531 e-mail http://www.futuremarketinsights.com # 557 Words 616 Corporate Way, Suite 2-9018,Valley Cottage, NY 10989,United StatesAbhishek Budholiya+1-347-918-3531 Polyvinylidene fluoride, also known as polyvinylidene difluoride (PVDF), is a specialty plastic material belonging to the fluoropolymer family. It is a pure thermoplastic and highly non-reactive fluoropolymer which is produced by the polymerization of vinylidene difluoride. PVDF is primarily used in applications which require high resistance, strength and purity to solvents, bases, acids and heat. It is also used as an important ingredient in high-end paints for metal roofing in commercial and residential applications. Membranes of PVDF are widely consumed for the purpose of immobilizing proteins owing to its resemblance to amino acids. PVDF is also used extensively in sheets, films, membranes and coatings in various end-user industries such as chemical processing, oil & gas, construction and energy.The global market for PVDF, along with its end products has been witnessing noticeable growth over the past few years. Increasing demand for lithium-ion batteries, coatings, and photovoltaic films are anticipated to be some of the major influencing factors for the growth of the market with increased emphasis on its various applications and their end-users. North America accounted as the largest consumer for PVDF, followed by Asia Pacific. Moreover, future market growth is expected to be from Asia Pacific on account of growing demand of PVDF in various applications such as oil & gas, and coatings for building & construction industries. The market for PVDF in Western Europe is also expected to grow significantly with certain PVDF expansion projects anticipated to stabilize the overall business in this region.Request For Report Sample@ http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/sample/rep-gb-151 Other regions such as Eastern and Central Europe as well as Latin America are also expected to host future global events which would supplement the growth of PVDF in different applications. In addition, proposals for improvement in infrastructure, rising residential construction industry and increasing demand for lithium-ion batteries is also expected to fuel the demand for PVDF in these regions.High demand from different end-user industries such as coatings, photovoltaic films, oil & gas, and electrical are expected to be the major growth factors for the PVDF market. However, increasing use of substitutes to PVDF is expected to slow down the growth of the market. Research & development (R&D) has been one of the key factors in the PVDF market. Various associations, end-user manufacturers and PVDF manufacturing companies have planned significant investments for future advancements and technology innovations in PVDF to replace other metals and plastics. This factor is expected to provide new opportunities for the growth of the market. Large scale companies such as Arkema have made significant investments for the expansion of PVDF polymer capacity in emerging economies such as China to meet the rapidly-growing demand for PVDF resins in emerging application such as new energies and water filtration. Moreover, the company plans to expand its PVDF business portfolio in Brazil with the expansion of their coatings production capacity. The new investment would help the company offer diversified and more domestically-produced additives and waterborne emulsions which are substantially taxed as imports in Brazil.Visit For TOC@ http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/toc/rep-gb-151 Arkema, Daikin Industries Ltd., Dyneon GmbH, Shanghai Ofluorine Chemical Technology Co. Ltd., Shanghai 3F New Materials Company Limited, Solvay S.A., Zhuzhou Hongda Polymer Materials Co. Ltd., Zhejiang Fotech International Co. Ltd., Kureha Corporation, Quadrant Engineering Plastics Products Inc. are some of the key manufacturers of PVDF dominating the market. Semiconductors in Solar Photovoltaic (PV) Power Systems Market PR-Inside.com: 2017-08-03 07:05:23 Press Information Future Market Insights 616 Corporate Way, Suite 2-9018, Valley Cottage, NY 10989, United States email Published by Abhishek Budholiya +1-347-918-3531 e-mail http://www.futuremarketinsights.com # 534 Words 616 Corporate Way, Suite 2-9018,Valley Cottage, NY 10989,United StatesAbhishek Budholiya+1-347-918-3531 In recent years, energy efficiency, environment compatibility, and cost reduction have been emerging as critical issues across the semiconductor industry. The electronics and semiconductor industry has launched various semiconductor solutions such as insulated gate bipolar transistors (IGBTs) for solar power systems. Various semiconductor products used in solar PV market include PV cells, insulated gate bipolar transistors (IGBTs), metal oxide field effect transistors (MOSFETs), diodes, couplers, analog IC, logic IC, micro components and optical semiconductors, among others. Factors driving the growth of the solar power market include volatility in fossil fuel prices, environmental concerns, government incentives, and technological developments.The demand for semiconductor power devices in solar PV is spurred by rising concerns over efficiency in performance to reduce power losses. Continued focus on design improvements across the electrical and electronics industry has been driving the growth in demand of semiconductors in solar power industry. At the same time, the renewable and alternative energy market has gained an increased demand, especially the solar energy market, which is expanding rapidly. Further, increase in incentives by governments and feed-in tariff policy are creating significant growth opportunity for semiconductor manufacturers in solar PV market.Request Report Sample@ http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/sample/rep-gb-271 Across the globe, energy security has emerged as a critical issue and governments have been prioritizing renewable energy sources such as solar power in order to create a balanced energy portfolio. Recent developments in GaN (gallium nitride) and SiC (silicon carbide) technologies represent an emerging opportunity in solar power market for semiconductor industry players as these technology offer better features such as better power efficiency. Competition from conventional energy sources which are offered at a subsidy across different countries represents a challenge to the growth of solar power market owing to cost issues. This in turn affects the growth of semiconductors for renewable energy including solar PV.Visit For TOC@ http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/toc/rep-gb-271 Europe was the leading region for solar power and has seen significant growth in demand for semiconductor products and solutions in order to cater the growing demand for efficient solar power production .The growth of solar power industry in this region is driven by regulatory factors which have mandated reduction in emission and harmful gases and increased reliance on renewable energy. Asia Pacific is expected to be the fastest growing market for solar power driven by growing investment in solar power by countries such as China, Japan and India. This in turn is expected to propel the growth in demand of semiconductor products and solutions over the coming years. North America lead by increasing demand for solar power in the U.S. owing to regulatory pressure and need to create a mixed source of energy is also expected to experience increasing growth in demand for semiconductors in solar PV. Key players in this market include Fairchild Semiconductor International Inc. (U.S.), JA Solar Holdings, Co., Ltd. (China), Mitsubishi Electric Corporation (Japan), Infineon Technologies AG (Germany), ABB Ltd. (Switzerland), Suntech Power Holdings Co., Ltd. (China), Hitachi Power Semiconductor Device Ltd. (Japan), Toshiba Corporation (Japan), STMicroelectronics N.V. (Switzerland), Fuji Electric Co. Ltd. (Japan), Vishay Intertechnology Inc (U.S.), Semikron Inc (Germany), and First Solar, Inc. (U.S.), among others. PR-Inside.com: 2017-08-03 16:12:41 Press Information Published by ACCESSWIRE News Network 888.952.4446 e-mail http://www.accesswire.com # 402 Words ACCESSWIRE News Network888.952.4446 FSCwire / Press ReleaseThe following press release was disseminated by FSCwire for South American Gold Corp.--- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- ---Las Vegas, NV (FSCWire) - South American Gold Corp. (OTC Pink:SAGD). has issued a press release with the following headline:South American Gold Declares Stock Dividend in Spin Off EntityTo view this press release on the FSCwire website, please either click on the link below, or copy and paste the link into your browser:If you would prefer, you can also view this press release as a PDF file, please either click on the link below, or copy and paste the link into your browser:For more information on South American Gold Corp., or to see additional press releases issued by this company, please either click on the link below, or copy and paste the link into your browser: http://www.fscwire.com/public-company/South American Gold Corp.Source: South American Gold Corp. (OTC Pink: SAGD, ISIN: US8363011011, WKN: A1H89U)Date: August 03, 2017Time: 10:12 AM EDT--- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- ---The story mentioned above was issued on behalf of South American Gold Corp. and disseminated through FSCwire.About FSCwireFSCwire (a division of Filing Services Canada Inc.), is a global newswire dissemination, SEDAR, SEDI, and EDGAR / XBRL service provider.FSCwire is a full service global newswire dissemination company and is fully approved by all exchanges in Canada and the U.S. Press releases can be distributed for all sizes of public, private or not for profit companies and any other organization requiring news distribution. In addition to individual companies; public relations, communications and investor relations firms trust FSCwire to distribute press releases for their respective clients.In addition to newswire dissemination FSCwire also offers EDGAR, XBRL, SEDAR, SEDI, and additional services for publicly traded companies. For more information, please go to our website: http://www.fscwire.com Maximum News Dissemination by FSCwire. http://www.fscwire.com Copyright 2017 - FSCwire (a division of Filing Services Canada Inc.) PR-Inside.com: 2017-08-03 15:03:12 Press Information Published by ACCESSWIRE News Network 888.952.4446 e-mail http://www.accesswire.com # 392 Words ACCESSWIRE News Network888.952.4446 FSCwire / Press ReleaseThe following press release was disseminated by FSCwire for Tribute Resources Inc.--- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- ---London, Ontario (FSCWire) - Tribute Resources Inc. (TSX Venture:TRB). has issued a press release with the following headline:Tribute Enters into term Sheet to Acquire the Remaining Shares of Tocardo International BVTo view this press release on the FSCwire website, please either click on the link below, or copy and paste the link into your browser:If you would prefer, you can also view this press release as a PDF file, please either click on the link below, or copy and paste the link into your browser:For more information on Tribute Resources Inc., or to see additional press releases issued by this company, please either click on the link below, or copy and paste the link into your browser: http://www.fscwire.com/public-company/Tribute Resources Inc.Source: Tribute Resources Inc. (TSX Venture: TRB)Date: August 03, 2017Time: 9:03 AM EDT--- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- ---The story mentioned above was issued on behalf of Tribute Resources Inc. and disseminated through FSCwire.About FSCwireFSCwire (a division of Filing Services Canada Inc.), is a global newswire dissemination, SEDAR, SEDI, and EDGAR / XBRL service provider.FSCwire is a full service global newswire dissemination company and is fully approved by all exchanges in Canada and the U.S. Press releases can be distributed for all sizes of public, private or not for profit companies and any other organization requiring news distribution. In addition to individual companies; public relations, communications and investor relations firms trust FSCwire to distribute press releases for their respective clients.In addition to newswire dissemination FSCwire also offers EDGAR, XBRL, SEDAR, SEDI, and additional services for publicly traded companies. For more information, please go to our website: http://www.fscwire.com Maximum News Dissemination by FSCwire. http://www.fscwire.com Copyright 2017 - FSCwire (a division of Filing Services Canada Inc.) US-based Kenyan businesswoman, Sheila Wanjiku, has been sentenced to death. This is after Justice Jessie Lesiit found her guilty of pre-meditated murder. While sentencing her to death, the Judge said that the only sentence to murder is death adding that the offence committed by Wanjiku is very serious. She was found guilty of shooting and killing her husband, Leonard Kibinge, on April 15, 2014 at Gitaru village, Kikuyu constituency. Wanjiku has 14 days to appeal the decision. In her testimony, Wanjiku had claimed she and her husband were kidnapped that night and that it was the kidnappers who killed her husband. 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. The National Inventory Certification Association congratulates member Dwight Saxon for achieving the designation of Certified Inventory Specialist. By: Saxon's Inventory Contact National Inventory Certification Association Cindy Hartman ***@nationalinventorycertificationassociation.com National Inventory Certification AssociationCindy Hartman End -- The National Inventory Certification Association(NICA) is pleased to announce that Dwight Saxon, owner of Saxon's Inventory, has recently earned the designation of Certified Inventory Specialist (CIS). Achieving this designation confirms his knowledge to provide quality residential and small business contents inventory services.There is an increasing awareness of the necessity and benefits of having a prepared photographic and written record of one's personal property prompted. This knowledge and the ever-increasing busy lifestyles of homeowners and business owners alike create a growing demand for a professional inventory service provider.To earn the CIS designation, Saxon passed specified courses developed by NICA, agreed to conduct business according to the asset industry Code of Ethics, and accumulated a required number of Continuing Education Units. He then passed the Certification Exam, which is the final step in achieving this designation.Being industry certified is not required for the contents inventory professional. Choosing to invest in continuing education shows Saxon's desire to learn the industry. This informs his clients that he has gone the extra mile to ensure that Saxon's Inventory provides quality inventory services. He stated, "As a retired firefighter, I saw so many people lose everything they own. If each of these people would have had a document of their belongings, I know the recovery process would have been easier, faster, and more financially equitable. I can now help people prepare in case they face a loss; it's a great feeling knowing what good my service will do for others."Based in Wellington, Florida, Saxon's Inventory offers residential and business asset inventory services throughout Broward, Palm Beach, Martin, and Saint Lucie Counties. For more information, visit http://SaxonsInventory.com About National Inventory Certification AssociationThe National Inventory Certification Association(NICA) is nationally recognized as the official certification authority for the personal property/asset inventory industry. The certification and continuing education opportunities ensure that members have access to quality industry knowledge to help them achieve the success they seek for their home and business contents inventory companies. For more information visit www.NationalInventoryCertificationAssociation.com or call 717-827-6422. Fast Growing IT Company Strengthens Resources in Madison and Milwaukee Wisconsin Contact Heartland Business Systems ***@hbs.net Heartland Business Systems End -- Heartland Business Systems ("HBS"), LLC announced today that Scott Papador has joined the company as the General Manager of Southern Wisconsin. Scott brings over 30 years of experience in information technology to HBS. His most recent role was Chief Information Officer/Chief Technology Officer at MyHealthDirect;a cloud based, healthcare scheduling software company. As a founder, Scott oversaw the design, development, testing and implementation of the MyHealthDirect application platform, which is now deployed in the some of the largest health plans and health systems. In conjunction with his technological expertise, Scott was a vital member of the management team where his leadership experience in sales, marketing, client relationship management, and team development helped accelerate the company's growth.Prior to his work at MyHealthDirect, Scott served as the Senior Vice President of Technology, Account Management & Strategy for USWeb. Scott started his career at IBM, where he worked for 14 years. At IBM, Scott acquired training in consultative selling, program management and quality assurance, and was selected to the IBM President's Class in Palo Alto, CA.The Southern Wisconsin sales force have given Scott a warm welcome. Scott comments "I am excited to join the team at Heartland Business Systems and look forward to serve the company in the role of General Manager of Southern Wisconsin. I am impressed with the quality and depth of the entire staff, and am looking forward to a very rewarding tenure. I am fortunate to be joining such a respected company that prides itself on top quality service."Steve Velner, Vice President of Sales and Marketing stated "HBS has a strong presence in the Milwaukee and Madison area. We are very fortunate to have someone with Scott's extensive background and leadership abilities at the helm. The IT market is changing quickly, delivering the right solution while focusing on the customer's business outcome are vital to everyone's success. Our business and the strength of our customer relationships will continue to grow because of our tremendous local team and the leadership of Scott Papador."To learn more about HBS, please visit the company site at http://www.hbs.net HBS is a premier provider of technology integration, consulting, infrastructure, business automation, and networking solutions. HBS employs over 400 technical engineers and business consultants throughout the Midwest (Wisconsin, Illinois, Minnesota and Iowa) servicing customers within the education, government, healthcare, and commercial markets. Golden prize goes to MotchiRotchi for the 5th time in parallel for the creativity in Advertising and creating ideas globally and locally Motchirotchi golden prize Contact MotchiRotchi LTD - Egypt / UK press@motchirotchi.com MotchiRotchi LTD - Egypt / UK End -- MotchiRotchi advertising agency has won the golden prize for it's creativity in " Creative Ad. Festival in Egypt for the fifth time in parallel in the same festival which is held in Egypt August 1st every year.MotchiRotchi have 3 teams of creative and innovation, which are responsible for creating ideas, make the creation done with their amazing direction of excution.MotchiRotchi and it's CEO " Mohamed Roshdy " the Egyptian Film Director and the head of creativity and innovation department has won the golden prize in Egypt at the Festival of CReative Ad. August 2017."Nothing is unreachable, unaccessible, impossible, and unexcutable"said by Mohamed Roshdy the CEO of MotchiRotchi during the festival of Creative Ad.MotchiRotchi has started working in Advertising & digital Marketing also MEdia Productions fields since 2015 1st of August which they at MotchiRotchi are celebrating the birth of MotchiRotchi and the winniing the Golden Prize at the Festival of Creative Ad. Festival in Egypt at the same time.MotchiRotchi has won the "Top and Best Agency"in Egypt for the past seven month in the competition between all the advertyising, digital marketing, social media, and SEO services in Egypt & UK, regarding to Top10seo.com monthly report and Sortlist.com monthly reports, in addition of top50agencies.com monthly report.Check the advertisement which had won, produced by MotchiRotchi and Directed by Mohamed Roshdy the CEO and Film Director of MotchiRotchi via this link:MotchiRotchi official website: www.motchirotchi.comCheck them online and trust them to get your business inside thier trustworthy hands. By: Bavarian Inn Guests enjoy the Purely Michigan Dinner at Bavarian Inn End -- Guests are invited to enjoy some of Michigan's best food, beer, cider, and wine at the Bavarian Inn Restaurant's (http://www.bavarianinn.com/)"Purely Michigan Dinner" scheduled for Friday, Aug. 25 at 6 p.m.The Inn, supported by vendors like Grandpa Tiny's Farm, is teaming up with Founders Brewing Co. of Grand Rapids, Blake's Hard Cider Co. of Armada, and Herbruck's Poultry Ranch of Saranac to present dishes and beverages which exemplify fine dining in the Great Lakes State. Guests will have the opportunity to visit and share tasting notes with Founders and Blake's experts, and hear from guest speaker Mohamed Mousa from Herbruck's Poultry Ranch, a Michigan family-owned-and-operated company since 1958, and one of the country's largest pioneering producers of organic and cage-free eggs.The starter course is Nam Sod Spring Roll and Southwestern Panna Cotta, accompanied by Founders "Rubaeus" Raspberry Ale and its Barrel Aged Stout along with Blake's "Wisteria" lavender, "The Tonic" ginger and cucumber, and "Black Phillip" cranberry and citrus infused ciders.Next, a serving of "Eggs Four Ways," presented in Scotch, pickled, deviled, and smoked styles, accompanied by Founders "Rubaeus" Raspberry Ale.Following a refreshing Blueray Blueberry sorbet, the entree is Steak Au Poivre, served with Black Star Farms 2013 Pinot Noir from the Leelanau Peninsula.The dessert course is Peach Kremeschnitte with caramel, served with a Blake's infused cider.Cost for this special "Purely Michigan Dinner" event is $60 per person, which includes all food and listed beverages, tax, and gratuity. Reservations and prepayment are required. Reservations may be made by calling 1-800-BAVARIA or 989-652-9941. For more information, go to www.bavarianinn.com and view the calendar of events.Celebrating 125 years of service in 2013, the Bavarian Inn Restaurant has become a Michigan landmark. Generations of diners, lodgers and tourists from around the globe have discovered true Bavarian hospitality thanks to Dorothy and her late husband William "Tiny" Zehnder. Guests experience the old-world European charm of the Bavarian Inn whether it's the famous chicken dinners, fresh baked goods or Michigan's greatest selection of German beer. Bavarian Inn also prides itself on being one of the top consumers of Pure Michigan agricultural products. Nestled within a backdrop of authentic German architecture, a variety of shops and other fun activities, a trip to Frankenmuth would not be complete without a visit to the Bavarian Inn. Learn more at www.bavarianinn.com. (http://www.bavarianinn.com/)Bavarian Inn online press room: http://www.logos- communications.com/ bavarianinn/ MANILA 24-7 Intouch, an award-winning multi-channel contact center, is celebrating their one year anniversary operating in the Philippines. End -- With two campuses located in UP Town Center and Cyber Park Tower 1 in Quezon City, 24-7 Intouch has brought its family-oriented culture, innovative solutions, and disruptive technology to the Metro Manila area."Opening in the Philippines has allowed us to grow with our partners and support new clients with a global footprint," said Greg Fettes, Founder & CEO of 24-7 Intouch. "We're also proud to have brought 1,100 new jobs to the area."Both campuses in the Philippines showcase the 24-7 Intouch culture with open-concept design elements, empowering team members to provide memorable customer experiences for their Fortune 500 clients."We Like to Win," said Jeff Fettes, Founder, Global President & Chief Operating Officer of 24-7 Intouch. "We set the bar high for performance and innovation. We obsess about our clients and people, which is reflected in the phenomenal experiences we create."In July, 24-7 Intouch was awarded the 2017 Elite Contact Center Outsourcing Award, presented by TMC ( http://www.tmcnet.com/ ). It is also continuing their global growth by opening up its 14th campus in Las Vegas, Nevada in 2018.24-7 Intouch is an award-winning Global Contact Center Outsourcer that delivers innovative and value-driven customer service solutions across all industries via an omnichannel approach that includes voice, social media management, live chat, email, fraud, UAT, self-service, and back office administration. Using the most advanced technology in the industry, 24-7 Intouch's customizable customer care method allows their clients to utilize business insights to deliver lifetime consumer loyalty and increase incremental revenue. With over 17 years of experience, the 24-7 Intouch team takes pride in creating a top to bottom brand alignment for partners to create the ideal customer experience. "The Ransom Everglades HS Junior created the campaign to broaden the reach of the foundation and once again extend its global impact beyond U.S. borders to another international location." By: Joshua's Heart Foundation Congresswoman, Chiqui Roa-Puno - Aid for Antipolo Check Presentation Contact A Better Concept PR ***@abetterconcept.com A Better Concept PR End -- Standing in the Gap,is a Joshua's Heart Foundation (JHF) initiative, created by and led by Junior Advisory Board Chair, Jordan Wong. For over ten years, Joshua's Heart Foundation has been a stabilizing force for many underserved communities throughout South Florida and the neediest citizens from nations around the world. Within an organization equipped with an army of young volunteers poised to make a difference in the lives of the less fortunate, Jordan Wong has emerged as a leader who, inspired by his desire to give back to his roots, took the initiative and started his campaign to aid the children of a shelter for disadvantaged youth in Antipolo, Philippines.Antipolo City is located 16 miles east of Manila, with a population of more than 776,000. Within the city limit is the children's shelter which Jordan, with the assistance of his family, selected as the recipient of his Aid for Antipolo Campaign. The shelter,, (which means 'shelter for children') serves approximately 50 children on only 60 pesos daily, which is the equivalent of $1.20 per day. On the grounds of KKV are the following three shelters: Children's Haven housing for boys who are abandoned, physically abused and neglected street children Bahay Kalinga Center for Girls housing for girls who were physically and sexually abused, abandoned and neglected Children in Conflict with the Law (CICL) Custodial Care housing for juvenile delinquents in rehabilitationAs is the case in most developing countries, the local government's budget is hardly adequate to provide 3 meals per day for growing children. This gap creates a huge need for supplemental meals in their community. Donations are ongoing to Aid Antipolo. So far, through the efforts of Jordan and his supporters, their diligent work has raised $5,000.00 to donate to the 'shelter for children'. The excitement and outpouring of love has touched many in Antipolo.Congresswoman, Chiqui Roa-Puno, who represents the first district of Antipolo, made a special check presentation to KKV shelter on Saturday, July 29th on behalf of Jordan and JHF. "I am encouraged and humbled by the outpouring of love from our supporters and want them to know these donations will go a long way to ensure that the kids at the shelters do not go hungry. These funds will help provide supplemental meals for a period of at least 120 days," said the Congresswoman. Jordan added, "My wish for the children of Antipolo is for them to have a normal and healthy life, get educated so that they can make a difference in their world and know that we genuinely care about their wellbeing. I hope they enjoy all the supplemental meals this love project has created for them."Joshua's Heart Foundation would like to thank the following major donors whose generous support made this initiative a success: JBW Realty Group, Cochran Family Trust, Touzet Family, Wong Family, Keller Family, Kim Family, Felix and Digna Manlunas, Steve and Diana Pattison and Joshua Williams.Joshua's Heart Foundation ( http://joshuasheart.org/ )(JHF) was founded in 2005 in Miami, Florida by Joshua when he was four and a half years old and is dedicated to the fight against global hunger and poverty. JHF has two primary goals to "Stomp out World Hunger" and to "Break the Cycle of Poverty." JHF is a 501(c) 3 not-for-profit organization, which empowers needy people to improve their quality of life by providing necessities like groceries and other personal items. They also effectively engage and educate communities at home and abroad about committing to fight hunger and poverty on a global basis. JHF is a youth run organization dedicated to stomping out hunger. To date JHF has distributed over 1.3 million pounds of food to families in need in South Florida, Jamaica, Africa and India. The Junior Advisory Board consists of 80 young people ages 9-18, and 12,500 youth volunteers which are known as elves. Learn how you too can make a difference through donations and volunteering by visiting www.joshuasheart.org. Learn more or donate to the Aid for Antipolo campaign at http://aidforantipolo.weebly.com/ Green REIT Plc has signed an agreement with Barclays Bank Ireland plc to lease 3,437 square metres (37,000 square feet) of lettable space at its flagship development at One Molesworth Street in Dublin 2. The letting covers two and a half floors of a total of five floors of office space, with Barclays... [] Javascript Error Javascript is deactivated in your browser. To use all functions on this portal, for example the login, Javascript must be activated. Please activate Javascript in your browser settings. AMERICAN CANYON With only two days remaining before a key deadline, the developer for The Village at Vintage Ranch apartments returned last week to the City Council and received an extension in return for several concessions. Advanced Building Solutions (ABS) first asked the council on June 6 for more time to complete its paperwork for the projects design permit and tentative subdivision map. The developer said they were at risk of missing the July 27 deadline, which could have entirely derailed The Village and its 159 rental townhomes, slated for the northwest corner of American Canyon Road and Silver Oak Trail. But when council members last month placed conditions on granting a six-month extension, ABS President Chris Scerri balked at the deal. He said at the time he would strive to complete everything by July 27, and return only if necessary. Necessity forced him backed to City Hall July 25 when the council held a special meeting and voted to extend The Villages permit and map deadline to Jan. 27 of next year. In exchange, Scerri agreed to three conditions that will affect the projects affordable units and its appearance. He also agreed to help finance some sidewalk improvements along American Canyon Road. ABS had originally planned to make 16 of The Villages 159 townhomes available at below market rates for 10 years. Under one of the councils conditions, this term will expand to 20 years. The council also demanded ABS revise the look of The Villages buildings. The project, first designed more than a decade ago, featured a Spanish style of architecture that is considered out of date, said Community Development Director Brent Cooper. Cooper suggested something more contemporary, and Scerris architect agreed to make the townhomes look more like the buildings in American Canyons new apartment complex, Canyon Ridge. Im pleased with the architectural amendments, said Mayor Leon Garcia. The third condition calls for ABS to contribute $35,000 toward a city project to widen and improve the sidewalk along the southern end of American Canyon Road. The walkway currently is only four feet wide. The plan calls for widening it to six or eight feet. In June, the council suggested the developer build a multiuse trail that would front the north side of American Canyon Road. But after reviewing this idea, city staff recommended against it because they said the proposed trail would dead-end at a railroad crossing. Instead, Cooper suggested to ABS that they help finance sidewalk improvements on the southern side of American Canyon Road, which is heavily used by pedestrians, particularly students when American Canyon High School is in session. Councilmember Mark Joseph called this new condition a more practical solution for improving sidewalks in that part of the city. Even after hearing the developers willingness to accept the conditions, some council members wondered if extending the deadline would result in the project getting built. The Village has been in the making since 2005, when a different developer was in charge, and has experienced numerous delays over the years. Will this be the last extension? asked Councilmember Kenneth Leary, echoing similar remarks by Councilmember David Oro. Both Scerri and City Manager Dana Shigley said they believed so. Theyve made significant progress in all areas, said Shigley of ABS. Something strange would have to happen to not move forward now. Public Works Director Jason Holley said The Village was close to completing and filing all necessary paperwork. Scerri indicated his company needed only a few weeks more to get going. He added that he planned to select a site contractor soon. We plan to start [work] in the middle of August, said Scerri. Believe me, we want to build more than anyone. If you are new to iQ you can schedule a demo and learn more about this opportunity. PSFK iQ - Where Innovators Turn for Research. Our professional-grade research platform is designed specifically for Retail and CX leaders who want to know whats next. Whether youre staying current on trends or need a real-time research partner to help you get ahead, count on PSFK iQ to deliver the info you need to make your next move. This article is the first in an occasional series examining global success stories in childrens and YA publishing. Vicki Grant, who lives in Nova Scotia, had written 14 YA and middle grade books, most published by Orca, without making much of a splash outside her native Canada. Then she hit upon love, and a plot for her 15th novel, which should raise her profile considerablyin Canada and all around the world. Rights to 36 Questions That Changed My Mind About You, a romantic comedy that explores whether theres a scientific way to fall in love, have sold into 17 foreign territories, months before the books publication. That will happen in October, when Running Press releases the book in the U.S. and Canada. I think a lot of people understand that the idea that theres something you could do to engineer love is appealing in any language, said Grant in a telephone interview from her summer home in Port Joli, a small village on Nova Scotias southeast coast. The inspiration for the book sprang from two sources: first, a very part-time job once held by Grants daughter, now 22, who earned beer money during college by offering herself up as a guinea pig for the psychology department, which paid subjects a small fee to participate in various research studies. I always thought there was a story in teenagers being used for experiments, Grant said, but I had never settled on what the experiment would be. Then in 2015, Grant (and countless others) read an essay by Mandy Len Catron, a writing instructor at the University of British Columbia, about a psychology study conducted in the 1990s that explored whether a romantic connection between two strangers could be accelerated by having them ask each other a specific series of 36 questions. The thesis was that a close relationship might be quickly established through the reciprocal sharing of increasingly personal information. Catron confessed she used the questions to find love herself. Her essay, published as part of the New York Times Modern Love series, went viral. When I read it I immediately thought, oh my God, thats such a YA book, said Grant, whose novel begins with a doctoral candidate explaining to her female lead, Hildy, that the decades-old study was being updated to establish how the digital age has changed the way intimacy is experienced. Basically, we want to see how young people whove grown up with 1,200 online friends might respond to intense face-to-face emotional sharing, the researcher explains. Grants agent, Fiona Kenshole of the Transatlantic Agency, was not immediately sold on the idea of a novel based on academic research, but got onboard after reading the manuscript, which is written in a combination of prose, dialogue, and text messages. Her genius was to turn the research into something very lively and funny, and yet, substantial. In a joint sale for world English rights, Kenshole accepted a preempt from Hot Key Books (which will publish in Australia and the U.K.) and Running Press, which was expanding its YA list after being acquired by Hachette in 2016. Adrienne Szpyrka, who edited the book at Running Press, said, I think more than anything the story just has such a great hook. Who doesnt want to know more about questions that could help you fall in love? Kensholes next mission was to make sure the title stood out at the Bologna Book Fair (Everyone always wants to justify their airfare, she said) among the many other YA titles Hachette would be presenting. She also thought 36 Questions might be Grants best chance to have a hit. Vicki is moderately recognized in Canada but not anywhere else, the agent said. I was worried that she was heading toward that midlist plateau that you always dread. So before heading to Italy, Kenshole did some research herself. I Googled the Times essay and found that every other country had picked up on the Modern Love essay and had their own reporter do a version, she said. So I took screen grabs of each of the stories, written in their own language, and sent them to all of the editors I wanted to reach out to. That worked. Before she left for the book fair, Koreas Frombooks had already acquired the book at auction; same with Indonesias Gramedia PT. Not huge markets but a solid start. Then the Italians [Mondadori] bought it in a preempt two weeks before Bologna and that was exciting. By the time she got to Bologna, 36 Questions was in demand. More pre-empts. More auctions. There was a very heated auction in Germany and eventually the book sold there for considerably more than the U.S. rights, Kenshole said. The winning editor, Julia Bauer at Heyne fliegt, found the concept irresistible; its themes, universal. The book reads like a very modern screwball comedy, Bauer said. And the hook is just fantastic. As soon as you hear about the 36 questions, you get curious, you want to read more about it, and test them yourself. One of the key factors that led to her teams interest, she said, was their sense that the novel would almost sell itself. As soon as we pitched the book, everyone came up with ideas for marketing. We plan to shoot a trailer in Munich with short interviews of pedestrians. And well have numerous online activities to be centered on the question, Can love be engineered? The universality of Hildy and fellow test subject Pauls experience is something that Running Press editor Szpyrka said that she and Grant worked to achieve in the editing process. The story takes place in Canada, but since we were releasing it for a U.S. market, and since the setting wasnt particularly important to the story, Vicki downplayed some of those details, so that readers anywhere could imagine the story taking place near them, she said. I wonder if thats a small part of why this works so well, even outside of North America. To date, the novel has sold into 17 territories, including France, Spain, Brazil, Israel, and Turkey, where editor Tugce Nida Sevin of Penguen Kitap thinks the book is a natural fit with something teenagers are already drawn toonline psychological quizzes. We are aware of how these type of tests are popular on social media, how viral they can be in a few days, if not in a few hours, Sevin said. Penguen plans to work closely with bookstagrammers and booktubers to promote the title. Kenshole is thrilled that so many editors saw the possibilities so quickly. Its really, really hard to spot a winner from an outset, she said. This book is beautifully written, but so many books are. I think the time was right for a story that is lovely and light but tackles other topics, too, like the way we judge people and put labels on them. It could be a beach read but its also got a lot more happening than your average rom-com. 36 Questions That Changed My Mind About You by Vicki Grant. Running Press, $17.99 Oct. 17 ISBN 978-0-7624-6318-3 Following a burst of activity in Asia, Viacom International Media Networks Southern and Western Europe, Africa and Middle East (SWEMEA) Cluster has offered more detail on what it is calling a string of important milestones and deals in Europe and Africa. The activity covers linear, subscription video-on-demand and multiplatform distribution and will see VIMN launch the MTV Play VOD mobile app in Germany and Austria, while SVOD carriers Showmax and iflix will carry multiple VIMN brands in sub-Saharan Africa. MTV and NickJr have been launched on Orange in Spain and MTV recently launched the first ever fully-localised MTV Snapchat Discover channel in France In Africa, VIMN has announced the signing of key SVOD contracts that include multiple brands within the media companys portfolio and will cover sub-Saharan Africa. An existing 2015 agreement with Showmax has been expanded to include 500 hours of Nickelodeon content from kid favourites like Paw Patrol, Dora the Explorer, SpongeBob SquarePants and more, in addition to 150 hours of new international and local content from other VIMN Brands, including MTV Base shows like MTV Base Meets... and MTV Shuga. VIMN also signed a deal with iflix, who confirmed its expansion into Africa this June.I am very pleased to be confirming these deals across the cluster, said Raffaele Annecchino, president and MD of VIMN SWEMEA. "Our strategies vary market by market based on the opportunities available and we remain flexible and committed to working with the best affiliates in each region. This month, weve closed deals for linear and non-linear distribution for multiple brands in our portfolio across a range of countries and platforms. I am proud of our success and I look forward to announcing additional agreements shortly. The IBC Conference has recognised TV Globos Marcelo Souza, Joao Castellani, Daniel Monteiro and Carlos Octavio Quieroz, for their paper on big data for journalism, business analytics and video recommendation. The acknowledgement follows the Brazilian networks move to bring data analytics into the core operations of the business. The paper details three ways in which the company is processing massive amounts of data to achieve its business goals.A lot of people are talking about the potential of big data applications in the media industry, but TV Globo has actually done it, and is reaping real benefits from it, said Paul Entwistle, leader of the team of experts that reviews the papers submitted to t he IBC Conference What makes the paper particularly interesting is that the authors talk about three very different applications: using public data to drive the news agenda; using business analytics to understand audiences; and using machine learning to recommend content to consumers, he added.The award definitely shows that we are on the right path with digital transformation at TV Globo, said Marcelo Souza. Big data applications are not just a technology matter they bring us great potential when combined with content and business needs. The U.S. military in Afghanistan says four American troops were wounded in a suicide car-bomb attack in the southern part of the country, in addition to two service members who were killed. The Pentagon confirmed on August 2 that two U.S. soldiers died in the attack on a convoy of NATO troops near the city of Kandahar. It did not immediately provide details on the numbers of troops wounded. However, a statement released on August 3 said four soldiers were also wounded in the attack, adding that their injuries were not life-threatening. The Taliban claimed responsibility for the bombing. There are about 13,500 U.S. and NATO troops currently in Afghanistan. The U.S. administration is contemplating whether to send additional U.S. troops to Afghanistan to fight the Taliban and other Islamist militants. Based on reporting by AP and dpa In Afghanistan's northern Balkh Province, ethnic Turkmen kids attend class every day in a small tent -- the only school available in their area. There are few books, and no chairs or desks. Some teachers have faced threats from violent extremists, but they remain committed to educating the next generation, whatever the risks. (RFE/RL's Turkmen Service) Napas newest convenience will provide relief to passers-by and do so as discreetly as possible on one of downtowns busiest streets. The City Council has nailed down the locations of two automated, self-washing, free-use restroom buildings to be installed in its central business district, where restaurants, hotels and the Oxbow Commons all are enjoying more shoppers. Installation would begin before Thanksgiving and both units are expected to enter service in early December, said Rosa Corona, an engineer in the city Public Works department. One of the two high-technology commodes, to be supplied by Exeloo Ltd. of New Zealand, will go up in a small parking lot on Main Street near Veterans Memorial Park. The council, which approved the public toilets in June, on Tuesday chose a location that will place its enclosure sideways to avoid blocking views of the Napa River and the eastern Napa Valley hills eliminating one of the few concerns among city leaders who have strongly supported the additions to downtown. Council members accepted the new toilets but had questioned earlier plans to point the Main Street units doors directly toward the sidewalk and street, worrying it would become an eyesore in one of the citys most visible areas. In the new location, two parking spaces will be sacrificed to make room for the toilets, officials said. The choice of this (site) is much, much better, said Peter Mott. Exeloos $440,000 deal with the city allows the manufacturer to set up one set of toilets on Main Street and another in the West Street parking lot, near the site of the demolished Cinedome theater. The West Street commode will be installed near an existing electrical panel close to the middle of the block south of Pearl Street, within the surface parking lot that replaced the cinema. Both restrooms will hook into existing water and sewer lines. Enclosures at each site will include two toilet stalls that automatically wash themselves with disinfectant, then rinse and dry after each use. Programmable locks will let maintenance workers keep the stalls off limits overnight to discourage vandalism and illegal activities. With the locations of the new conveniences finally settled, Mayor Jill Techel was hopeful that fewer cafes, restaurants and other businesses would have to carry one of the burdens of downtown Napas growth. I want (residents) to know this is something were putting in to make the opportunities to use downtown not impose on our merchants more than they have (taken on) already, she said. Its our responsibility, with whats going on downtown, that we also participate by providing bathrooms for our residents and folks who come down to enjoy the area. These public toilets are for the use of everyone. Theyre not just for visitors; these are for anyone downtown, added Vice Mayor Juliana Inman. This is an area where we have many thousands of residents who gather in Veterans Park for many activities. This is filling a local need, not necessarily a visitor need. MINSK -- The offices of two major independent trade unions in Belarus have been raided and searched by financial police. The headquarters of the Union of Workers of Electronic Outputs Producing Industry (REP) in Minsk and those of the Belarusian Congress of Independent Trade Unions in the central city of Salihorsk were searched on August 2 by officers from the Financial Investigations Department. The officers confiscated office equipment and financial documents and the two organizations' leaders were interrogated. They were told the searches were conducted as investigations were launched into alleged tax evasion by the trade unions. REP Chairman Henadz Fyadynich told reporters on August 3 that his organizations chief bookkeeper, Ihor Komlik, has been detained and remains in custody. Fyadynich added that he was ordered not to leave Minsk as the investigation is under way. Fyadynich also said that the case against him, his assistants, and his organization is politically motivated. He added that the case "surely is connected to" February-March mass protests against an unpopular labor law that taxes people who are unemployed. It's happening below the radar. It's not making international headlines. And with everything else going on, it's easy to miss. But it is nevertheless a good idea to keep a close eye on the quiet, stealthy pressure Russia is applying to Georgia. Russia's quiet war on Georgia takes many forms. Last week, for example, pro-Kremlin leaders in Russian-occupied South Ossetia announced that they would shut down the remaining Georgian-language schools in the region. The Russification of South Ossetia follows a pattern established in occupied Abkhazia, where all Georgian-language schools in the predominantly Georgian speaking Gali district were closed in 2015. According to a report last month by the U.K. Foreign Office, pro-Moscow authorities have also systematically restricted the freedom of movement, residency, and property rights of ethnic Georgians in Abkhazia and South Ossetia. The two Russian protectorates have also been thoroughly militarized, with approximately 8,000 Russian troops and hundreds of tanks based there. Russian troops in South Ossetia have been periodically and persistently moving the boundary line in the dead of night, erecting razor-wire fences, putting up so-called border posts, and effectively annexing more Georgian territory. And according to media reports, Vladimir Putin plans to make a provocative visit to Abkhazia on August 8, which is the ninth anniversary of Russia's invasion of Georgia. And bear in mind that Russia's quiet war on Georgia is happening with a government in power in Tbilisi that has actively sought to reduce tensions and improve relations with Moscow. Russia's war on Georgia never really stopped. It just became stealthier. Keep telling me what you think on The Power Vertical's Twitter feed and on our Facebook page. Two Russian citizens were killed by explosions that ripped through a munitions depot in Georgia's breakaway region of Abkhazia on August 2. Abkhazia's de facto interior minister, Aslan Kobakhia, said on August 3 that at least 64 people, including 35 Russian tourists, were injured by the explosions at a military arsenal in the village of Primorskoye near the Black Sea. Mizan Lomia, spokesman of Abkhazia's de facto Emergencies Ministry, said on August 3 that three women from Russia were riding horses near the depot when the explosions took place. Two of the women, Yelena Panakova, 47, and Yelena Timofeyeva, 55, were killed by the blasts. Kobakhia said that 27 people, including two children, were hospitalized. Abkhazia declared its independence from Georgia in the early 1990s as the Soviet Union collapsed. Moscow effectively gained control over the province and a second breakaway Georgian region, South Ossetia, after a brief war with Georgia in 2008. Russia has recognized both regions as independent nations and keeps thousands of troops there. U.S. Vice President Mike Pence during a visit to Tbilisi this week denounced what he described as "Russia's occupation on Georgian soil." Based on reporting by apsny.ge, Interfax, TASS, AP, and 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 Lawmakers in Kosovos new parliament are tentatively scheduled to meet to try to stave off a political crisis on August 4 after being unable to elect a speaker or move forward with the formation of a new government a day earlier. The parliament's first session on August 3 was broken off after no party or coalition was able to establish a majority to elect a speaker, the first crucial step toward forming a new government. Interim speaker Adem Mikullovci tentatively scheduled another session for 10 a.m. on August 4 after lawmakers deadlocked over nominating a new speaker. The failure to vote on a speaker has raised worries that Kosovo could be headed for a political crisis and fresh elections. Early elections on June 11 failed to give any party a ruling majority and the legislature's session on August 3 was its first since that election. A coalition headed by the Democratic Party of Kosovo (PDK), which includes the Alliance for the Future of Kosovo (AAK), won 35 percent of the June vote. President Hashim Thaci has said that he would give Ramush Haradinaj, leader of the AAK, a formal mandate to try to form a government -- despite speculation that Haradinaj may not be able to find coalition partners. Lawmakers in the first session were tasked with electing a speaker and his deputies, opening the way for Thaci to issue the mandate. But the process hit a roadblock when a procedural vote to allow PDK a two-hour pause to nominate a speaker was deadlocked 60-60 in the 120-seat parliament, indicating that the PDK-led coalition might not have enough support to create a majority and form a government. Officials from the European Union and other Western institutions have expressed concerns that inconclusive June election results could plunge the country into the same constitutional crisis it faced after a 2014 vote failed to produce a clear winner, delaying the formation of a government for nine months. But Thaci told RFE/RL on July 6 that Haradinaj had confirmed after coalition negotiations that he has enough votes from parliamentary deputies to form a government. The 48-year-old Haradinaj has been tried and acquitted twice on war crimes charges at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague. Haradinaj was elected Kosovos prime minister in 2004 but resigned after 100 days to surrender himself for trial at The Hague. He denies all charges against him. Kosovo in 2008 declared independence from Serbia and has since been recognized by more than 110 countries worldwide, although not by Serbia or Russia. Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei formally endorsed Hassan Rohani as president for a second term. Religious, military, and political leaders attended the August 3 ceremony, which was broadcast on Iranian state television. Rohani, a 68-year-old self-proclaimed moderate, was reelected as Iran's president in May. Rohani is due to take the oath of office at the Iranian parliament on August 5. (IRIB via Reuters) A senior U.S. general in Europe says the U.S. military is keeping a close eye on Moscow's planned military exercises in Russia and Belarus --- exercises that some experts say could involve 100,000 troops. U.S. Air Force Brigadier General John Healy, who directs U.S. forces' military exercises in Europe, told Reuters on August 3 that Moscow was not being "transparent" in regard to its Zapad 2017 exercises because it is not allowing Western observers. He said Russian observers attended the recent U.S. and NATO exercises in the Black Sea region, but a similar invitation has not been extended for the Zapad maneuvers set for September. Russia has said the war games do not require invitations to outside observers, claiming they will involve fewer than 13,000 troops. Healy said the U.S. military is stepping up its own global exercises in response to a more aggressive Russia and other worldwide threats. He said the goal was to carry out more challenging exercises that involve forces from all nine U.S. combatant commands -- instead of focusing on specific regions or one military service. Healy said it was important to conduct war games and training events that reflect the global nature of military threats in the current environment, including cyberwarfare. He said the U.S. military plans 11 major exercises in the next year that will include air, ground, and naval forces with a range of NATO allies. Based on reporting by Reuters For expertise on shipbuilding in Russia-annexed Crimea, a 19-year-old marketing student based in Paris might seem like an unusual choice. But for many observers in Russia, where children of the ruling elite often snag plum positions tied to the state, the appearance of Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskovs daughter at a Sevastopol shipyard this week was just the latest example of a system rife with cronyism and nepotism. Yelizaveta Peskova, who has documented her jet-set lifestyle on social media, was widely ridiculed for her August 1-2 visit as part of a pro-Kremlin delegation to the shipyard, where she said the industry needs better PR and that theres nothing "to be ashamed of" about building ships. The visit to the Southern Sevastopol shipyard, which has been locked in a land dispute with the city government, was the most recent public foray into the Russian political world for Peskova, whose studies in France have triggered criticism of her father. The Russian opposition, led by Kremlin foe and anticorruption campaigner Aleksei Navalny, has long accused senior officials of hypocritically whipping up anti-Western sentiment at home while shipping their children off to travel, study, and live in the West. Critics of President Vladimir Putin's administration also accuse the ruling elite of pulling strings to secure lucrative jobs for their relatives in the government or state-connected companies. Peskova, the Putin spokesmans daughter from his first marriage, has defended her father against accusations of corruption by Navalny and others. But until recently, her image has been mainly that of a socialite who posts glamorous images of herself on Instagram -- her main social-media venue. Over the past several months, she has dipped her toe in Russian politics, publicly opining on youth activism, attending a meeting of bloggers organized by a lawmaker in Russias lower house of parliament, and traveling to Chechnya to meet -- and dance -- with Kremlin-backed strongman Ramzan Kadyrov. Then, in July, she announced that she had joined Avanti, a lobby group founded by Russian businessman and former senior lawmaker Umar Dzhabrailov that has the stated mission of promoting patriotic business. It was with Avanti, where Peskova serves as an adviser on youth politics, that she arrived in Sevastopol. The announcement of the August 1-2 visit immediately drew mockery on social media. Liza Peskova will fly to Syria and deal with ISIS. After that shell solve the North Korea-U.S. problems, one Twitter user wrote. Kremlin critics offered comparably searing takes on comments she delivered in Sevastopol. At one point, she said that she doesnt know a single person who would even think that there are people who build ships and that we need to build a PR strategy for shipbuilding. Wearing a dress she said was from a design collection by Kadyrovs daughter, Peskova added that young people should be shown that shipbuilding is prestigious work and not seen as something to be ashamed of. Navalny, who has published several high-profile investigations of Peskovs wealth, quipped on his website that Peskova is a ready-made government minister or head of a state corporation. A new star has finally appeared on the horizon of our governments feudal personnel policies, Navalny wrote. A spokeswoman for Peskova told RFE/RL on August 3 that her client is not giving comments at this time. Peskov has previously come under fire for his daughters decision to live in France not only from opposition corners but from Putin supporters as well. Tatyana Stanovaya, a political analyst with the Carnegie Moscow Center who studies Russias elites, told RFE/RL that amid mounting tensions between Russia and the West -- most notably over sanctions -- the foreign-based children of Russian officials will likely face heightened pressure to return home. It will be harder for them to live comfortably in Western countries, because they will face questions both from the West and from Russia: Why do you continue living in rotting Europe, as Russian patriots like to say, and not come home and serve the motherland? Stanovaya said. Oleg Kashin, a prominent Russian journalist and political observer, suggested Peskovas trip to Sevastopol was less likely a case of nepotism than a card played by the lobby group in the shipyards conflict with the local government. Sevastopol authorities are taking land away from the yard, and in this situation, even some ridiculous federal support for the yard would be most welcome, he wrote for the Russian news site Republic.ru. He added, however, that Peskova is unlikely to escape her status as a Russian officials daughter, even if she wants to live the carefree Parisian life, like in the film Amelie, and laugh at the idiocy that rules at home. Youre the daughter, and if your parents dont secure a place for you in the state hierarchy -- whether it's because they didnt want to, or you didnt want it, it doesnt matter -- the hierarchy will come to you and suck you in, Kashin wrote. MOSCOW -- Russian activists picketed the presidential office building in Moscow to protest a court decision to deport a Russian-born journalist to Uzbekistan. The protesters on August 3 staged so-called single pickets in order to comply with a Russian law against mass demonstrations that aren't authorized by authorities. One of the protesters, LGBT activist Yevgeny Pavlovsky, was detained by police. Meanwhile, Russia's presidential Council for Civil Society and Human Rights said on August 3 that the ordered deportation of Novaya Gazeta correspondent Ali Feruz to Uzbekistan contradicts Russia's constitution and the European Convention on Human Rights. The council said Feruz -- whose real name is Hudoberdi Nurmatov -- was born in Russia and members of his family are Russian citizens and therefore the council "will do everything to reach a favorable solution of the issue." An August 1 Moscow court order to deport Feruz for violating migration rules has sparked protests in Russia and abroad. Feruz, who has been waiting in Russia since 2014 to receive refugee status, insists he might face incarceration and torture if he is deported to Uzbekistan. Feruz has said that he had to flee Uzbekistan in 2008 after he refused to cooperate with Uzbek security services and was tortured in Uzbek custody for two days. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on August 3 that the presidential administration was aware of Feruz's case. Peskov said the case is very complicated and that Russian authorities "cannot close their eyes to some of the violations of the law by Nurmatov." The Union of Journalists of Russia and Amnesty International have urged Russian authorities to overturn the deportation order. Ukrainian officials and local residents moved to stabilize conditions in the freshly recaptured southern city of Kherson, as Russian symbols were being torn down and with the restoration of Ukrainian radio and television service and a new police presence. 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. The action on November 12 came after months of occupation by Russian forces following their unprovoked invasion of Ukraine in February and as Ukrainian and Western officials hailed Kyivs latest extraordinary battlefield success and Moscows strategic failure. Separately, Russian occupying forces said late on November 12 that they were preparing to leave the city of Nova Kakhovka, the site of a damaged dam on the Dnieper River, to a safer location, according to Russian state-run TASS news agency. As jubilant Kherson residents awoke the morning following the arrival of the first Ukrainian troops, Ukraines military said it was putting stabilization measures in place to ensure safety. Ihor Klymenko, chief of the National Police of Ukraine, said about 200 officers were at their posts in Kherson and that checkpoints had been set up. Authorities also began seeking out any evidence of possible Russian war crimes, he said in a Facebook post. The Ukrainian communications watchdog said national TV and radio broadcasts had resumed in the strategic southern city and officials said aid supplies had begun to arrive from nearby regions. Social media postings on November 12 showed local residents removing memorial plaques put up by Kremlin-installed authorities during the occupation. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and other officials warned that while special forces had entered central Kherson, the full deployment of Ukrainian troops was still under way and that some Russian soldiers could have shed military uniforms for civilian clothing and remained in the city. Even when the city is not yet completely cleansed of the enemys presence, the people of Kherson themselves are already removing Russian symbols and any traces of the occupiers stay in Kherson from the streets and buildings, Zelenskiy said in his nightly video address. But he said that medicine, communications, social services are returning. Life is returning. 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. Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba, speaking to world leaders at an ASEAN summit in Cambodia, warned that the celebratory mood could turn grim with the possible discovery of war crimes evidence in Kherson. Such evidence was discovered after Russian troops pulled out of the Kyiv and Kharkiv regions months ago. Every time we liberate a piece of our territory, when we enter a city liberated from the Russian Army, we find torture rooms and mass graves with civilians tortured and murdered by the Russian Army in the course of the occupation of the territories," he said. "Its not easy to speak with people like this. But I said that every war ends with diplomacy and Russia has to approach talks in good faith. The White House on November 12 hailed Russias withdrawal from 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," U.S. national-security adviser Jake Sullivan told reporters as he accompanied President Joe Biden to the ASEAN 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 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. 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. 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?'" Meanwhile, Pavel Filipchuk, the head of the occupation government in Nova Kakhovka, told administrators and residents that Russian forces will be pullng back from the city on the right bank of the Dnieper River. He cited concerns that the key dam could be damaged by missiles, which would result in flooding. Both Kyiv and Moscow have accused each other of planning to blast the dam, which has already been severely damaged. With reporting by AFP, AP, dpa, and Reuters Slowly but surely we are learning that the near-catastrophic failure of Oroville Dams main spillway wasnt truly caused by weather, even though the state claims that in seeking federal aid for repairs. Rather, it resulted from poor engineering and construction when the nations highest dam was rising more than a half-century ago as the centerpiece of the State Water Project, and poor maintenance since its completion. The latest evidence is a huge report by a team of engineering experts, headed by Robert Bea and Tony Johnson of the University of Californias Center for Catastrophic Risk Management. It concluded that the dams fundamental flaws were compounded by decades of neglect by the state Department of Water Resources (DWR) and the Division of Safety of Dams (DSOD). The gated spillway was managed to failure by DWR and DSOD, the damning no pun intended report declared. One of the most abysmal failures cited was the recently exposed existence of DSOD inspection reports dating to 1989. For reasons yet to be fully determined, identified deficiencies were either ignored, treated as low priority, not acted upon or a combination thereof. The 124-page report added that complacency, lack of industry standard level maintenance, and possibly pressure from internal DWR management and external State Water Contractors representatives to hold down maintenance costs were key contributors. Finally, and most ominously, the study team suggested that Orovilles problems are not confined to the spillway, whose collapse last February led to the near-failure of an auxiliary spillway, a threat of failure in the dam itself, and massive evacuations of those living along the Feather River north of Sacramento. The Bea-Johnson report says the dam may be facing a breach danger from a serious and dangerous form of a slow-motion failure mode through leaks in the dam caused by shifting of fill material. The sensors that are supposed to detect such shifts stopped working many years ago. DWR has insisted all along that despite the spillway failure, the earthen-fill dam itself is sound and safe. Shoddy engineering and design and neglectful maintenance in such a huge, and hugely important, structure is serious business. If what Bea, Johnson and the other experts say is accurate, it may explain why state officials from Gov. Jerry Brown downward have been so closed-mouthed about what went wrong. After all, if it wasnt the weather, but human error, that created the problem, then the states plea for federal aid is bogus. But theres an even more pertinent question raised by the Bea-Johnson study whether the state is even capable of competently building and maintaining huge public works projects. One recalls the more recent example of the Bay Bridge, one third of which was replaced after the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake revealed the sections flaws. It not only took a quarter-century to design and build the futuristic replacement, but costs wound up four times their original estimate and after it was completed, it was revealed that there were major construction flaws that the Department of Transportation didnt disclose but investigative journalism by The Sacramento Bee exposed. When asked about it, Brown infamously replied, Shit happens. Meanwhile, Brown wants the state to build two more mega-projects. One would bore water tunnels to carry Oroville Dams water beneath the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta and complete the State Water Project that was the proudest achievement of his father, Pat Brown. The other is a north-south bullet train. If Oroville Dam and the Bay Bridge set the standard for how the state does such things, maybe the tunnels and the train are disasters waiting to happen. AISHA, Russia -- Authorities in the Russian Republic of Tatarstan have demolished houses belonging to the Romany minority, saying they were built illegally. Riot police with dogs were present as three private houses belonging to local Romany families were razed in the village of Aisha on August 3. A court in Tatarstan ruled on March 16 that five private houses in Aisha must be demolished as they had been built without permission. Romany families promised to take apart the houses by August 3 and had removed three by the deadline. But the last two houses were demolished by authorities on August 3, an action that the Romany community is now being charged 800,000 rubles ($13,200) for. Andrei Suchkov of the Law Zone human rights organization, which represents Roma's rights, told RFE/RL that the officials had no right to demolish the houses with heavy machinery as it also destroyed construction materials that could be used by the homeowners to build new houses. In 2016, authorities in Russia's western Tula region destroyed some 500 houses belonging to Roma, saying they were illegally built. MOSCOW -- Journalists and free-speech advocates in Russia and around the world are speaking out in support of a journalist who has been ordered deported to the autocratic Central Asian country of Uzbekistan. The liberal newspaper Novaya Gazeta, where the reporter works, called for a protest picket on August 3 outside the presidential administration building in Moscow, as statements of support poured in from around the world. The event and other support for the journalist were being organized under the social-media hashtag # (Hands Off Ali). A Moscow judge on August 1 ordered that the journalist, who is known by the pen name Ali Feruz but whose real name is Hudoberdi Nurmatov, be deported to Uzbekistan after ruling he has been living illegally in Russia since 2011. Feruz was taken from the courtroom to a holding center for people facing deportation. Defense lawyer Daniil Khaimovich told RFE/RL that they will appeal the verdict, arguing that Feruz has applied for political asylum in Russia and has the right to remain in the country until a decision is made. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on August 3 that the presidential administration "is aware of the existence" of this case but added it was impossible "to close one's eyes" to violations of the law. Ali Feruz is openly gay, a human rights activist and a correspondent for the independent Novaya Gazeta newspaper. This is a near-lethal combination for someone who is about to be handed over to Uzbekistan, where 'sodomy' is a crime and torture is endemic. Born in Soviet Russia in 1986, Feruz moved to Uzbekistan and took its citizenship at the age of 17. But he fled the country in 2008 after being tortured for two days for refusing to cooperate with the country's security services. He has gained a reputation in Moscow for his Novaya Gazeta coverage of the city's largely marginalized communities of migrant workers. "He writes excellent pieces about refugees and migrants," Novaya Gazeta journalist Yelena Kostyuchenko told RFE/RL. "He knows several foreign languages very well, including Arabic, Uzbek, Tajik, Kazak, and Kyrgyz. This and his concern for people, his kindness, enable him to find a common language with almost everyone." Kostyuchenko recalls that Feruz's first article for the paper was about an Uzbek citizen who was kidnapped by the Uzbek security forces in Moscow and spirited out of the country. Novaya Gazeta Editor in Chief Dmitry Muratov issued a video appeal (below) on August 2, urging journalists to support his call for the Russian government to, at the least, allow Feruz to travel to a third country. "I am sure that the federal authorities and the president will hear our position and will hear you, for which we are very grateful," Muratov said. On August 3, responding to Novaya Gazeta's appeal to President Vladimir Putin, the advisory presidential human rights council said the court's ruling violates the Russian Constitution and the European Convention on Human Rights, pledging "to make every effort to achieve a positive resolution of this problem." A petition on the website Change.org urging the Russian government not to deport Feruz to Uzbekistan has garnered more than 5,000 signatures. The Russian Union of Journalists issued a statement urging the court to change its ruling, taking into consideration that Feruz was born in Russia and his family lives there. The independent Trade Union of Journalists and Media Workers has taken up Feruz's cause, organizing a series of one-person pickets at the presidential administration building since the case against Feruz began in March. Former State Duma Deputy Dmitry Gudkov asked on Facebook on August 3, "Who has more rights to Russian citizenship?" "He was born in Russia," Gudkov wrote about Feruz. "His family lives here. He speaks and writes Russian. He works for one of the major newspapers in the country." He added that all of the Russian government's claims to support "the Russian world" beyond the country's borders amount to nothing more than "lies." The Amnesty International human rights organization on August 2 issued a statement in support of Feruz, noting that he "is openly gay, a human rights activist, and a correspondent for the independent Novaya Gazeta newspaper." "This is a near-lethal combination for someone who is about to be handed over to Uzbekistan," the statement said. The organization launched an international campaign aimed to pressure the Russian authorities not to hand the journalist over to Uzbekistan. The newly appointed representative on freedom of the media for the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, Harlem Desir, posted his appeal to the Russian government on Twitter. Council of Europe human rights commissioner Nils Muiznieks on August 2 called on Russia to release Feruz and "to ensure that he is provided with all the necessary procedural safeguards" concerning his asylum application. "It should be recalled that international law prohibits sending a person to a country where there are substantial grounds for believing that the person may be subjected to torture or ill-treatment," Muiznieks wrote. Colleague Kostyuchenko told RFE/RL that Feruz described for her the circumstances under which he fled Uzbekistan. "The Uzbek security services tried to co-opt him and force him to make denunciations against people in his town," she told RFE/RL. "He refused. So they tortured him for two days. They threatened him [and his family]. He told me: 'I understood on the second day of torture that they would not let me out alive.' So he agreed. They released him, and he fled the country." "We know that even here in Russia, the Uzbek security services came to his mother...to his sister, to his brother in order to find out where [Feruz] was," Kostyuchenko said. "Uzbekistan is a totalitarian country where the prisons are completely opaque. People go there and simply disappear. We are afraid that he will be imprisoned and there he will be tortured and, in the end, killed." Written by RFE/RL senior correspondent Robert Coalson on the basis of reporting by RFE/RL Russian Service correspondent Natalia Dzhanpoladova A Russian activist in the southern region of Krasnodar jailed for propagating extremism and separatism online has started a hunger strike in custody, her mother says. Darya Polyudova's mother, Tatyana Polyudova, says her daughter started the hunger strike on August 2 to protest conditions in the penal colony. According to Tatyana Polyudova, other inmates in the penal colony constantly mistreat her daughter and provoke her into conflicts. She added that political prisoners should be kept separately from other convicts. Tatyana Polyudova said her daughter suspects the penal colony's administration is behind the pressure on her. Darya Polyudova was sentenced to two years in a minimum-security penal colony in December 2015, becoming the first person in Russia convicted under a law criminalizing calls for separatism on the Internet, legislation that came into force in May 2014. She was indicted in 2014 after she made pro-Ukrainian statements online critical of Moscow for its support of pro-Russia separatists in eastern Ukraine, where fighting between government forces and the separatists has killed more than 10,000 people since April 2014. The Moscow-based Memorial Human Rights Center has added Polyudova to its list of political prisoners in Russia. With reporting by OVD-Info WASHINGTON -- A Russian man extradited from Finland two years ago on computer-fraud charges has been sentenced to 46 months in a U.S. prison for spreading malicious software and netting millions of dollars for himself. The U.S. Justice Department on August 3 said Maksim Senakh and co-conspirators attempted to turn a network of thousands of infected computers into their personal cash machines. It said Senakh, 41, of the western Russian city of Veliky Novgorod, will be deported after serving his 46-month sentence. Cybercriminals like Mr. Senakh should take heed: They are not immune from U.S. prosecution just because they operate from afar or behind a veil of technology, it said. We have the ability and the determination to identify them, find them, and bring them to justice, the Justice Department added. Senakh was arrested in Finland in 2015 at U.S. authorities request and extradited to face U.S charges. His arrest prompted protests by Russias Foreign Ministry, which called the move illegal. Senakh pleaded guilty on March 28 in a U.S. federal court to conspiracy to commit wire fraud and to violate the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. According to court records, malware, known as Ebury, harvested log-on credentials from infected computer servers, allowing Senakh and his co-conspirators to create and operate a botnet of tens of thousands of infected servers throughout the United States and the world. The Justice Department did not identify alleged conspirators or disclose where they might be located. ON MY MIND Dmitry Medvedev's remarks about new U.S. sanctions against Russia were telling for a number of reasons. First, the Russian prime minister said that by imposing additional punitive sanctions, Washington has declared a "full-scale trade war" on Moscow. But a trade war assumes that there is some level of trade to speak of. And in fact, U.S. exports to Russia account for less than 0.1 percent of America's GDP and U.S. imports from Russia are less than 0.2 percent of America's GDP. But it wasn't just a lack of knowledge of the U.S.-Russian trade relationship that Medvedev demonstrated in his comments. Medvedev said that U.S. President Donald Trump's administration "has demonstrated total impotence by surrendering its executive authority to Congress in the most humiliating way." This remark betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of the separation of powers and of how U.S. democracy works. As the Kennan Institute's Maxim Trudolyubov writes in a piece featured below, a "key to understanding Moscows approach" is the Kremlin's "assumption that the executive is by far the most important force in any government." Trudolyubov adds that "Russia is realizing that the constellation of forces it has to deal with in the U.S. includes Congress, the intelligence agencies, law enforcement, and the media -- not just the executive." IN THE NEWS Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev sharply denounced the sanctions bill signed into law by U.S. President Donald Trump on August 2, saying it ends hope for improving relations and ignites "an all-out trade war with Russia." Russia is disputing a report by the Reuters news agency that shows higher Russian casualties in Syria than has been officially reported. A member of Russian opposition politician Aleksei Navalny's campaign staff in the Russian Republic of Tatarstan has been sentenced to 15 days for "violating laws on public gatherings." Russian opposition activist Vladimir Yegorov has been extradited from Belarus to Russia, his lawyer says. A court in Moscow has ruled that a correspondent for Russia's Novaya Gazeta newspaper, Ali Feruz, must be deported to Uzbekistan. The Moldovan government has declared Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin to be persona non grata. A Ukrainian judge has adjourned the in-absentia treason trial of former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych. Russian-appointed judges at a court in Ukraine's occupied Crimea region are scheduled to conduct a new hearing today in the trial of journalist Mykola Semena, who is fighting what he says is a politically motivated separatism charge. Two Russian citizens were killed by explosions that ripped through a munitions depot in Georgia's breakaway region of Abkhazia on August 2. Georgian President Giorgi Margvelashvili says his country's territorial integrity and its eventual membership in NATO were "clearly defined" during U.S. Vice President Mike Pence's July 31-August 1 visit to the South Caucasus country. WHAT I'M READING New ECFR Report On Russia's Fellow Travelers In Europe Gustav Gressel has a new report for the European Council on Foreign Relations: Fellow Travelers: Russia, Anti-Westernism, and Europes Political Parties. The Moscow-Washington Standoff In Republic.ru, Moscow-based foreign affairs analyst Vladimir Frolov examines relations between Moscow and Washington in the aftermath of new U.S. sanctions and Russia's expulsion of American diplomats. And on The Russia Files blog, Kennan Institute Senior Fellow Maxim Trudolyubov explains how and why Vladimir Putin fails to understand how the U.S. political system works. Notes From The Cyberwars TechRepublic looks at what the cybersecurity elite is doing to prevent a digital apocalypse." The Digital Forensics Research Lab looks at the online evidence to assess whether there will be more hacking and document dumps ahead of the German elections. The Trouble With 'Patriots' In Republic.ru, political analyst Tatiana Stanovaya looks at how and why the Kremlin is having trouble managing it's "patriotic" wing. Arming Ukraine In his column for Bloomberg, political commentator Leonid Bershidsky argues against sending weapons to Ukraine. Russia's Libya Game Mattia Toaldo of the European Council on Foreign Relations has a piece looking at Russia's policy in Libya. Myths About Stalin In an op-ed for Vedomosti, economist Oleg Vyugin takes on two myths about Josef Stalin: that he was an "effective manager and an outstanding historical personality." Between A Rock And A Hard Place In Intersection magazine, political analyst Fyodor Krasheninnikov looks at the options for opposition-minded voters in Russia's uncompetitive elections. The article is available in both Russian and English. How To Combat Propaganda The EU's Disinformation Review spells out 25 ways to combat propaganda without doing counterpropaganda. Navalny And The Russian Left On his blog, Sean Guillory of the University of Pittsburgh's Center for Russian and Eastern European Studies looks at the dilemma Aleksei Navalny poses for the Russian left. About That 'End Of History' Thing European Western Balkans talks to Francis Fukuyama about Russia, the West, the current state of the world, and, of course, the end of history. U.S. President Donald Trump recently proposed firing the top U.S. Army commander in Afghanistan out of frustration that the war against the Taliban there remains stalemated, media reports said on August 2. Trump reportedly fumed about the lack of progress during a meeting last month with advisers and demanded to know what the end game would be in a war that has lasted 16 year so far, according to AP, NBC News, Reuters, and other media reports, citing anonymous U.S. officials. The meeting got stormy when Trump said Defense Secretary James Mattis and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Joseph Dunford should consider firing Army General John Nicholson, commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, because he was not winning the war. Reuters reported that Trump also argued that the United States should demand a share of Afghanistans estimated $1 trillion in mineral wealth in exchange for U.S. assistance to the Afghan government. Reuters said Trump complained that the Chinese are profiting from mining operations in Afghanistan while the United States bears the cost of the war. The meeting took place the day after Trump invited a group of Afghan war veterans to lunch at the White House to brainstorm for ideas on how to win the war. "I'm going to be talking to you about Afghanistan, what you think, your views," Trump said to the group, telling reporters, "These are people on the ground know it probably better than anybody." "We've been there for now close to 17 years," Trump said, "and I want to find out why we've been there for 17 years, how it's going, and what we should do in terms of additional ideas. I've heard plenty of ideas from a lot of people, but I want to hear it from the people on the ground." The Pentagon has been preparing a new strategy for Afghanistan, and word has leaked that Mattis is recommending an increase in U.S. troops of about 4,000 to the current NATO coalition force of 8,400. But nothing has as yet been approved by Trump. Another meeting of top Trump advisers is scheduled for August 4, Reuters said. With reporting by AP, NBC New, and Reuters U.S. President Donald Trump has said that Washington's relations with Moscow have hit a very dangerous low," blaming lawmakers for the situation. Our relationship with Russia is at an all-time & very dangerous low, Trump wrote on Twitter on August 3. You can thank Congress, the same people that can't even give us HCare! he added, referring to a recent defeat in the Senate for his health care reform plans. Trump's comment came a day after he signed new sanctions against Russia into law, a move Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said amounted to a "full-scale trade war" against Moscow. In a statement accompanying his signature of the sanctions bill, Trump said it was significantly flawed and would hinder his administration's ability to negotiate with foreign adversaries. He also said he was signing the bill "for the sake of national unity." The legislation aims to punish Russia for its military aggression in Ukraine and Syria and for allegedly meddling in last year's U.S. presidential election. It also imposes sanctions on Iran and North Korea. Based on reporting by Reuters and AFP Russian-appointed judges at a court in Ukraine's occupied Crimea region are scheduled to conduct a new hearing on August 3 in the trial of Mykola Semena, an RFE/RL contributor who is fighting what he says is a politically motivated separatism charge. The judge at the trial in the Crimean capital, Simferopol, agreed at the last hearing on July 18 to include the UN General Assembly's December 2016 resolution on human rights in Crimea -- which was seized by Russia in 2014 -- in the case documents. While testifying at the hearing, witnesses and experts called by the defense also sought to discredit the results of a linguistic examination conducted by Olga Ivanova of the Crimean branch of Russias FSB security service. The charge against the 66-year-old Semena stems from an article he wrote for RFE/RL's Krym.Realii (Crimea Realities) website in 2015. The Kremlin-installed prosecutor in Crimea charged that the article had called for the violation of Russias territorial integrity. But linguist Elena Novozhilova said that she had found many mistakes in Ivanova's examination of Semenas article. She testified that, in her opinion, the article does not contain any calls for the violation of Russia's territorial integrity. Semenas trial has been delayed several times since it started in late March. Semena faces up to five years in prison if convicted. He contends that the accusation is baseless and politically motivated, and that Russian authorities have based the case on an inaccurate Russian translation of his original Ukrainian text. Activists say Semena's trial is part of a systemic Russian clampdown on independent media and dissent in Crimea since Moscow's armed occupation and takeover of the Ukrainian region. 7 Some of the photography students intend to become photojournalists. "There are a lot of talented children in the front line district of Maryinka. And they can't leave their homes, because their parents are not welcome anywhere else, says Oleh Tkachenko, the head of the youth media center. Police from Vallejo shot and killed a robbery suspect in Richmond Wednesday evening after he allegedly led them on a vehicle pursuit, according to Vallejo police. At 5:05 p.m., Vallejo police officers tried to pull over a vehicle that was wanted in connection with an armed robbery in El Cerrito on July 26. The driver of the vehicle, who was reported to be armed and dangerous, refused to yield to officers and led them on a high-speed pursuit, police said. The pursuit ended about 15 minutes later in the 3400 block of Richmond Parkway in Richmond. The driver, who was the only person in the vehicle, exited and advanced toward officers with a machete raised over his head, police said. According to police, the suspect refused to comply with numerous orders to drop the weapon and submit to arrest. Perceiving the suspect as an immediate and deadly threat, five officers fired their weapons in order to stop the suspect, police said. The suspect was struck multiple times and was later pronounced deceased at the scene, police said. According to police, the suspect was identified as a 45-year-old Benicia resident. His name is not being released until authorities notify the next of kin. Richmond police Lt. Felix Tan said no one else was injured and there were no other suspects. Richmond Parkway was closed between Lakeside Drive and Interstate Highway 80 for several hours as police investigated the shooting. At 12:24 a.m. Thursday, Richmond police announced on Twitter that the roadway had reopened. This case is being investigated by the Richmond Police Department and the Contra Costa County District Attorney's Office. Anyone with information is encouraged to contact Vallejo police at 800-488-9383. KYIV -- A Ukrainian judge has adjourned the in-absentia treason trial of former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych. Judge Vladyslav Devyatko rejected a request by Yanukovych to give him another month to get acquainted with the case and adjourned the trial until August 10. Devyatko also denied a motion on August 3 by Yanukovych's state-appointed lawyer, Vitaliy Meshechek, for a one-month delay. Yanukovych's previous lawyers withdrew from the case on July 6, saying the former president had informed them that he no longer needed their services. Yanukovych announced on that day that he would not participate in the trial, charging that it was politically motivated. The court then decided to hold the trial in absentia and provide Yanukovych with a state-appointed lawyer. Yanukovych abandoned office in late February 2014 and fled to Russia in the face of protests triggered by his decision to scrap plans for a landmark deal with the European Union and instead improved trade ties with Moscow. Dozens of people were killed when his government attempted to clamp down on the pro-European protests known as the Euromaidan. Prosecutors are seeking life imprisonment for Yanukovych, who is accused of treason, violating Ukraine's sovereignty and territorial integrity, and abetting Russian aggression. After he fled, Russia seized Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula and fomented opposition to the central government in eastern Ukraine, where the ensuing war between Ukrainian forces and Russia-backed separatists has killed more than 10,000 people since 2014. The mother of two Ukrainian government soldiers is on desperate hunt to learn the fate of her sons who went missing in action in eastern Ukraine in 2014. Kateryna Khomyak's sons are among more than 400 soldiers the Ukrainian government says are missing after battling Russia-backed separatists. Khomyak told Current Time TV, the Russian-language network run by RFE/RL in cooperation with VOA, that she's determined to find out what happened to her sons. (YouTube, Current Time TV) WASHINGTON -- A pro-democracy group has launched a new website to monitor and highlight what it says is Russian-backed disinformation on Twitter. The site, called Hamilton 68, which was launched on August 2, is a project of the Alliance for Securing Democracy, housed at the German Marshall Fund. The effort aims to track and analyze English-language tweets from some 600 Twitter accounts the site has identified as spreading Russian propaganda. Twitter said it was not involved in the effort. U.S intelligence agencies have concluded that Moscow engaged in a hacking-and-propaganda effort to try to sway last year's U.S. presidential campaign. Their report in January prompted a number of private and public projects to try and identify fake Facebook accounts and Twitter feeds that are deliberately spreading misinformation. The name for the new website is taken from a famous essay authored in 1788 by Alexander Hamilton, who later became the first U.S. treasury secretary. Essay 68 discussed "protecting America's electoral process from foreign meddling." The Washington D.C.-headquartered German Marshall Fund is a policy think tank funded by money from the U.S. and German governments as well as private donors. On the evening of July 27, the high and mighty of Uzbekistan gathered for a dinner in Tashkent to honor the memory of the countrys first president, Islam Karimov, who died last year. The choice of date itself was interesting because, in accordance with Uzbek custom, it appeared to mark 11 months since Karimovs death. This would seem to indicate he died on August 27, the day he had his stroke, and not September 2, when his death was officially announced. In any case, President Shavkat Mirziyoev; the head of the security service, Rustam Inoyatov; Prime Minister Abdullo Aripov; and others, including leading religious figures, assembled in Tashkent to offer one last round of praise to the man to whom many of them owed their careers and their success. The next day, they started to tear Karimovs legacy apart. The first salvo came at the weakest link in Karimovs family: his eldest daughter, Gulnara Karimova. The would-be international socialite had fallen from grace several years before, as her connections to illegal business deals started to become public. Apparently too dangerous and embarrassing to be allowed to roam free, Gulnara was detained and placed under house arrest in Uzbekistan in 2014. Early photographs showing her incarceration at home were the last images ever seen of her. The Uzbek Prosecutor-Generals Office officially placed her under arrest only recently, on July 28, and for the first time it became known that Gulnara had been under investigation in Uzbekistan since late 2013 and had been convicted in August 2015 and sentenced to five years of limited freedom -- meaning, in this case, house arrest. A statement from the Prosecutor-General's Office said Gulnaras illegal activities had cost Uzbekistan some $2 billion and that investigations were still ongoing to track down other assets belonging to [Gulnaras] criminal group ensuring their return to Uzbekistan. OK, most people in Uzbekistan knew about Gulnara. In one of the cables posted by WikiLeaks, a U.S. diplomat purportedly described her as the most hated person in Uzbekistan. Demonizing Gulnara is easy for Uzbek authorities. But on July 30, Uzbekistans new round-the-clock television channel -- Uzbekistan 24 -- aired a program that essentially praised President Mirziyoev but mentioned that he was battling difficulties he had inherited. The program never mentioned Karimov by name but contained phrases such as: The announcement, from the first hours of [Mirziyoevs] rule, that relations with close neighbors were not a battle for dominance, but on the contrary, sincerity and trust for one another... Uzbekistans ties with its immediate neighbors were strained, to say the least, when Karimov was president. Great credit should go Mirziyoev for the progress his government has made in less than one year in its relations with Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Afghanistan. The program on Uzbekistan 24 mentioned that problems...were resolved not by asserting claims, emphasizing superiority, and acting like a gamecock, but by a single kind word and unceasing work... Uzbekistans economy is having a hard time and is reflected in the black-market rate, which is now about twice the official rate, of around 4,000 Uzbek soms to one U.S. dollar. The program noted this also, describing the economic policy as disgraceful and saying: All the criticisms toward Uzbekistan from leading economic organizations, all the accusations of unprofessionalism by all specialists, were voiced only because of the hard-currency policy. And again, according to the program, all these problems are gradually being resolved thanks to the reforms started by [Mirziyoev]. Uzbekistan certainly does have problems, and it is true these problems originated during Karimovs time in power. Since Mirziyoev took over as Uzbekistans leader, many authorities on Central Asia have been watching to see how much Uzbekistans second president would resemble Turkmenistans second president, Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov. Berdymukhammedov started out with fair words and some efforts at improvement, but after a year or two he settled into the style of rule his predecessor, Saparmurat Niyazov, had practiced -- one characterized by the notion of an infallible, omnipotent leader. One big difference here is that Berdymukhammedov came to power when Turkmenistan was becoming richer from its gas sales, which in turn were helped by higher world prices and the appearance of China as a gas customer. There was a knock-on effect on the standard of living in Turkmenistan. Berdymukhammedov had no need for a scapegoat. Mirziyoev came to power at a time when Uzbekistan was facing a serious economic crisis. Inevitably, he needed to find something, or someone, to blame for the poor situation in his country. He has found someone, and the case of Gulnara and veiled criticisms of Uzbekistans first president are probably only the start of a campaign that portrays Mirziyoev as bringing Uzbekistan to its feet after his predecessor brought the country to its knees. RFE/RL Uzbek Service Director Alisher Sidik and Sirojiddin Tolibov of the Uzbek Service contributed to this report. The views expressed in this blog post do not necessarily reflect those of RFE/RL. Volkswagen India has confirmed that it will be launching the much-awaited Tiguan All Space on 6th March and T-Roc SUV on 18th March The T-Roc had made its Indian debut at VWs media night, just before the 2020 Auto Expo and now VW has disclosed the launch date of the mid-size SUV. VW will be bringing in the T-Roc as a CBU (Completely Built Unit) and it will go on sale from 18th March, 2020. Volkswagen will be selling the T-Roc only with a petrol motor and there will be no diesel engine on offer. It will draw its power from a 1.5 litre BS 6 emission norms compliant TSI petrol motor. The engine will be able to dish out 148 bhp and 240 Nm of max torque, and will come mated to a 7-speed DSG unit as standard. The T-Roc will be a feature packed product and will include multiple creature comfort features. These would include, Vienna leather upholstery, touchscreen infotainment system compatible with Android Auto and Apple CarPlay, keyless entry, start/stop button, a panoramic sunroof, dual zone Climatronic AC and much more. On the safety front, being a VW product, the T-Roc wont disappoint. It will come with a host of safety features. These would include ESC (Electronic Stability Control), TPMS (Tyre Pressure Monitoring System), ABS, reverse parking camera, park distance control and 6 air bags for safety of occupants. Upon launch, the T-Roc will be competing with the likes of Jeep Compass and Hyundai Tuscon. Pricing is expected to be around the INR 20 lakh mark. Under its India 2.0 strategy, Volkswagen (along with Skoda) is committed to bring in multiple new products for the Indian market. The T-Roc is part of a long list of SUVs which VW intends to bring in to the country. Considering the segment, we dont expect the T-Roc to be a big number churner for Volkswagen, however its other planned products like the Taigun certainly have the potential to turn things around for the German carmaker. The Taigun will be a compact SUV which will be based upon the India-specific MQB AO-IN platform and will compete with the likes of Kia Seltos and Hyundai Creta. Other upcoming SUV launch from VW happens to be the VW Tiguan All Space which is scheduled for a launch on 6th March, 2020. Tiguan All Space is a larger, 7 seater variant of the Tiguan which is currently on sale in India. It will rival the likes of Skoda Kodiaq, Toyota Fortuner, Ford Endeavour, etc. Russian meddling in American elections is a venerable tradition. In 1968, Soviet agents approached Vice President Hubert Humphrey's campaign to offer clandestine aid. The ardent Cold War liberal refused. During the early 1980s, the KGB energetically, but futilely, spread propaganda and disinformation aimed at damaging President Ronald Reagan's political standing. Despite these precedents, the Russian involvement in the 2016 election is actually the opposite of history repeating itself. During the Cold War, the USSR intervened to preserve the international order and prevent the ascension of Richard Nixon and then Reagan, men it perceived as erratic, perhaps irrational. In 2016, however, Russia worked to elect an erratic, perhaps irrational, American president in hope of shaking up the international order. The explanation for this dramatic reversal lies in a transformation of the power structure in the Kremlin. Put simply, the foreign policy elites are out and the spies are in. The Russian foreign policy elite has long been a refuge for some of the most liberal, cosmopolitan and educated elements of society. Foreign policy experts and diplomats, the so-called mezhdunarodniki (internationalists), made up the backbone of the liberal wing of the Communist Party. These cadres were trained in the many elite institutes and research centers that sprang up as the Cold War turned into a battle of diplomacy and living standards rather than military force. By the late-1960s, Soviet foreign policymakers had studied not only Marxist-Leninist dogma, but also what would be recognized by their Western contemporaries as cutting-edge social sciences, economics, anthropology and history. These young men (and, very rarely, women) flocked to the Foreign Ministry and the various "International Departments" of the Communist Party's Central Committee. The most talented and ambitious of these elites gathered around the Central Committee Department for Relations with Socialist States and Parties, which managed the Soviet Eastern European Empire and Western Communist parties. Yuri Andropov, a powerful functionary who cut his teeth under Stalin, led this department. Hailing from the Party's old guard, Andropov was committed to protecting and strengthening the Soviet state and its traditions, while also realizing that it was in dire need of modernization. Andropov became a patron of the leading mezhdunarodniki and of young, better-educated regional leaders who wished to shake up the ossifying, geriatric leaders in Moscow. However, there was always a crucial difference between Andropov and his proteges: While he was extremely suspicious of "imperialist" machinations, his young subordinates viewed improved relations with the West and more openness to the outside world as key to enhancing Soviet power at home. The most prominent Andropov protege was a regional party secretary named Mikhail Gorbachev. When he became the Soviet leader in 1985, he surrounded himself with the mezhdunarodniki. They moved to end the Cold War and open the Soviet Union to Western money, technology and ideas. To their horror and dismay, the Soviet system proved unable to survive the shock these reforms caused, and the Soviet state collapsed less than six years after the beginning of their experiment. Ironically, in his next position as the chief of the KGB, the powerful agency that referred to itself as the "sword and shield" of the Communist Party, Andropov shaped an elite cohort that had a totally different view of the international system. Assuming control with the KGB's reputation in tatters because of its role in Stalin's terror, Andropov moved to reinvigorate the agency by recruiting young, patriotic university graduates (including a recently minted lawyer named Vladimir Putin). While Andropov aimed to professionalize Soviet intelligence gathering and secret policing, he also created a cultlike image of the intelligence operative as the ideal Soviet citizen who waged an aggressive struggle against dissent and corruption. With a deep sense of mission, his new, university-educated cadres viewed their job as protecting the party and state against foreign foes: namely the Americans and their allies, who attempted to undermine Soviet society by means of "ideological subversion." This self-perception informed how Soviet intelligence operatives read the world. In contrast to the cosmopolitan mezhdunarodniki, this wing of the Soviet foreign policy establishment grew increasingly paranoid and nationalist. Struggling to make sense of why Soviet society was not flourishing as party dogma predicted, KGB operatives surmised that vast conspiracies led by shadowy forces (most prominently the CIA, but also bankers, arms manufacturers and Zionists) were behind everything the Soviet regime found alarming at home - from Ukrainian nationalism to Soviet youth's embrace of rock, disco and punk. This perception made KGB cadres quick to embrace Russian nationalism and profoundly suspicious of attempts to increase interaction between the Soviet Union and the West. The clash of visions between the foreign policy elite and the secret services irrevocably fragmented Soviet foreign policy. The institutions controlled by the mezhdunarodniki, especially the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, would deal with the West. A preference for stability, and often a great amount of respect and even envy for the technological, economic and political achievements of the "other side," guided these dealings. The intelligence apparatus, by contrast, including both the KGB and the military's GRU, began directing more of the Soviet Union's relationship with developing countries, helping to trigger clashes in Africa and Asia that culminated with the disastrous KGB-instigated invasion of Afghanistan. The KGB and GRU also provided strategic intelligence assessments and, after Reagan's election, started feeding the Soviet leadership alarming false reports about Western intentions that, we now know, drove the world to the brink of a nuclear war in the early 1980s. Both the division of labor and ideological cleavage between the intelligence and diplomatic communities continued into the post-Soviet era with some important differences. "The near abroad," or the former Soviet republics, replaced the developing world as the arena of responsibility for Moscow's intelligence agencies. These institutions, previously known as the least corrupt element of the Soviet state, became active participants in overlapping, quasi-criminal, extremely well-financed international networks that served to enrich current and former members of the Soviet intelligence community and bankrolled and empowered pro-Russian factions in the "near abroad" - most notoriously the governing party of Ukraine before the 2014 Maidan Revolution. Furthermore, large elements of the Russian intelligence community took the fall of the Soviet Union as confirmation of the KGB's conspiratorial view of the world. Most prominently, they blamed the fall of the Soviet Union on a CIA conspiracy which employed, as the last KGB chief Vladimir Kryuchkov and others argued, the mezhdunarodniki as agents of influence who, wittingly or unwittingly, destroyed the power of the Soviet/Russian state. Yet despite the growth of this powerful reactionary narrative, relations with the West were, until recently, handled by experienced, professional diplomats. No man exemplified this group better than former prime minister Yevgeni Primakov. Primakov, an academic, diplomat and sometimes intelligence operative, was an early supporter of Gorbachev's reforms. As Russian foreign minister and prime minister under Boris Yeltsin, he balanced toughness in the defense of Russian interests with a realistic perception of the limits of Russian power. While Primakov lost power shortly after Putin assumed the presidency, Russia's foreign policy toward the West maintained Primakovian features until 2012, as Putin carefully balanced public complaints against perceived Western aggression in Iraq, the "near abroad" and Libya with a cautious, realpolitik-based foreign policy. This delicate balance collapsed after Putin reentered office for his third term in 2012. Perhaps scarred from street protests against irregularities in parliamentary elections by Moscow's westernized "creative classes," a cloud of paranoia slipped over the Kremlin. Putin's foreign policy speeches lapsed into the conspiracy theories popular with the old intelligence agency hard-liners. The Russian handling of the Maidan Revolution, which aimed to overthrow the Ukrainian government aligned with Russia, signaled a decisive break with the past. Seeking a response to what he viewed as an all-out assault on the Russian state by a Western cabal bent on world domination, Putin sidelined the diplomats and unleashed the spies. As soon as Russia decided to occupy Crimea, Russian operatives mobilized the pro-Russian and, more importantly, semi-criminal business groupings that they had cultivated in Ukraine, and used them to seize key political institutions as a cover for Russian troop movements. The same sequence of events followed as the war expanded into southeast Ukraine, laying the foundation for the "people's republics" that are still fighting the Ukrainian government three years later. Furthermore, the Ukrainian crisis shattered the decades-old division that left relations with the West to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and its professional staff. The spies had become so dominant that they could now operate on all fronts without any approval from the diplomats and, as we now know, began conducting operations against the U.S. political system itself, employing some of the techniques that served them so well in Ukraine. The newly dominant intelligence apparatus views chaos and disruption as a strategic response to Russia's structural weaknesses. As work by political scientist Yuval Weber shows, many intellectuals associated with the intelligence community believe that Russia has only a limited potential for economic growth, and that the risks of globalization outweigh its possible economic benefits. These intellectuals also inherited much of the old KGB's conspiratorial culture, mainly the belief that an ongoing "globalist" offensive aims to dissolve the Russian Federation, just as it did the USSR. They believe that if Russia is doomed to be a poor country with powerful enemies, it must turn the tables on the West and make hard power, rather than wealth, the yardstick through which international success is measured. From this vantage point, chaos best serves Russia's interests and Russia is willing to lend a helping hand to any agent promising to weaken the forces arrayed against it. A think tank associated with these intellectuals reportedly was a key supporter of attacking the Clinton campaign. While the challenges represented by the new Russian state are something new and frightening, the West can draw on its old tool kit to effectively respond to them. In the short term, despite the Trump administration's dreams of a grand bargain, a relaxation of tensions is the most both sides can expect. Most likely, the administration will pursue containment of Russia in Eastern Europe. However, this is not enough. Russia's self-perception as a weak power means that it will inherently limit direct military meddling to places that it believes the West considers peripheral or where the West has left openings to exploit (see Syria). But Russia's strategy also involves undermining Western domestic structures themselves, which will undermine its rivals' ability to mobilize their superior resources and coordinate their actions and, ideally, drive them to conclude that the current world order is not viable or worth defending. To adequately confront the challenge from Russia and other rising anti-liberal states, Europe and the United States will need to find ways to harden their systems against anti-liberal assaults. On the most basic level, we must critically examine the systems that failed in 2016: from cybersecurity to the role Facebook, Twitter and Google played in propagation of fake news - and why so many Americans believed it. In the longer term, the best way to rescue the liberal order is to focus on the discontents that Russia and its ad hoc allies so skillfully exploited. Policymakers must wield the playbook employed by Cold War liberals who argued that having strong unions for American workers, a robust welfare state and well-protected civil rights were as important a foreign policy priority as a strong military. This vision of a freer, more equal world bound by a rules-based system of international relations can safeguard democracy at home and abroad, and prevent Russia's desire for disorder from spreading chaos in the United States. Updated on Aug. 19: We are just days away from the 2017 total solar eclipse, and you won't want to miss it becuase you're stuck in traffic or blanketed by a canopy of clouds. Space.com's meteorologist coluimnist Joe Rao has this weather update just for you. On Aug. 21, the moon will completely blot out the sun along a narrow strip of land from Oregon to South Carolina, in the first total solar eclipse visible from the United States mainland since 1979. Here's guide for what time the eclipse begins and ends for you. Space.com is tracking the weather and traffic conditions along this 70-mile-wide (113 kilometers) "path of totality," which stretches across 14 states. Below you'll find up-to-date information to help plan your eclipse-viewing adventure. [Here Are the Best Maps of the 2017 Solar Eclipse (and a Printable Poster)] A few quick words of advice: Stay flexible, and be open to viewing the eclipse from a relatively out-of-the way site within the path of totality, such as a state park or national forest. And arrive at your preferred viewing spot at least a day in advance, to give yourself time to seek out a less crowded or sunnier area if need be. Some of the places discussed below will doubtless get very crowded on Aug. 21. This NASA map of the United States shows the entire path of totality for the August 21, 2017 total solar eclipse. (Image credit: Ernie Wright/NASA/Goddard/SVS) Oregon Traffic Prediction: The eclipse will make landfall on the U.S. mainland in Oregon, just north of the town of Newport. The moon's shadow will then move eastward through the northern part of the state, cutting across several major highways in the process notably, Interstate 5 in the west and Interstate 84 in the east. There may be heavy traffic on I-5, as people from Portland and Eugene head south and north, respectively, to get into the path of totality. For updates, see: http://www.tripcheck.com/Pages/RCMap.asp Popular Viewing Sites: Newport and environs : Many people will likely flock to this area to see the eclipse make landfall. That's an exciting prospect, but keep in mind that the Oregon coast can be a pretty cloudy place cloudier than the state's interior, anyway. Indeed, historical data show there's a 56 percent chance that the view from Newport will be adversely affected by clouds, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI) and the Cooperative Institutes for Climate and Satellites-North Carolina (CICS-NC). (This information comes from the interactive "cloudiness map" that NCEI and CICS-NC have put together for the entire totality path; you really should check it out, no matter where you're heading on Aug. 21.) You can keep up with Newport traffic here and Newport weather here. : Many people will likely flock to this area to see the eclipse make landfall. That's an exciting prospect, but keep in mind that the Oregon coast can be a pretty cloudy place cloudier than the state's interior, anyway. Indeed, historical data show there's a 56 percent chance that the view from Newport will be adversely affected by clouds, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI) and the Cooperative Institutes for Climate and Satellites-North Carolina (CICS-NC). (This information comes from the interactive "cloudiness map" that NCEI and CICS-NC have put together for the entire totality path; you really should check it out, no matter where you're heading on Aug. 21.) You can keep up with Newport traffic here and Newport weather here. Madras : This city in west-central Oregon is billed as one of the top locations from which to see the Aug. 21 eclipse. It sits at the confluence of four highways and is just a two-hour drive from Portland, so it'll be relatively easy to get to (provided traffic isn't too bad). Skies should be clear, too; in Redmond, just down the road from Madras, there's a mere 12 percent chance that clouds will affect the view, according to the NCEI and CICS-NC. (This translates to a "viewable percentage" of 88, as NCEI and CICS-NC term it.) Madras traffic updates can be found here, and weather updates here. Likelihood of Rainfall: August is one of the driest months in Oregon, which tends to receive most of its precipitation in the winter months. For example, Newport gets an average of just 0.8 inches (2.1 centimeters) of precipitation in August, compared with 10.8 inches (27.5 cm) in December, according to Current Results. For Madras, those figures are 0.3 inches (0.9 cm) and 1.4 inches (3.5 cm), respectively. Idaho Traffic Prediction: The totality path sweeps across Idaho's broad southern stretch, from Weiser in the west through the Snake River Valley in the east. Much of this region is sparsely populated national forest land, with small towns sprinkled here and there. There aren't many highways in the area, so some may get clogged if hordes descend upon them. Go here for traffic updates. Popular Viewing Sites: Weiser : This city in far-western Idaho is right off a major highway, and sits on the banks of the famous Snake River to boot. And the weather should be good; nearby Ontario, Oregon, has a 93 viewable percentage, according to the NCEI and CICS-NC. Traffic updates here and weather updates here. : This city in far-western Idaho is right off a major highway, and sits on the banks of the famous Snake River to boot. And the weather should be good; nearby Ontario, Oregon, has a 93 viewable percentage, according to the NCEI and CICS-NC. Traffic updates here and weather updates here. Rexburg : Rexburg, all the way across the state, is pretty much right on the totality path's center line, giving viewers there an extra-long look at the eclipse. Indeed, totality will last 2 minutes and 17 seconds in Rexburg 36 seconds longer than in Idaho Falls, which is not far south. And Rexburg has a viewable percentage of 91. Traffic updates here and weather updates here. Likelihood of Rainfall: As in Oregon, August is generally dry in Idaho. For example, Weiser and Rexburg get an average of just 0.3 inches (0.9 cm) of and 0.7 inches (1.8 cm) of precipitation in that month, according to the site U.S. Climate Data. Weiser's average annual rainfall is 12.1 inches (30.7 cm), and Rexburg's is 13.3 inches (33.8 cm). In this map of the U.S., the darker the dot, the greater the chance for cloudiness at the hour of peak viewing during the total solar eclipse on Aug. 21, 2017. The information is based on the 10-year cloudiness average for Aug. 21, 20012010. (Image credit: Deborah Riddle/CICS-NC/NOAA/NCEI) Montana The path of totality does cut through Montana, but just barely; less than 8 square miles (21 square km) of the state will witness the total solar eclipse, according to Eclipse2017.org. And that tiny patch of land is unpopulated, remote and rugged. If you're thinking about planning an eclipse adventure there, Eclipse2017.org has some helpful info here. Wyoming Traffic Prediction: Wyoming is like Idaho lots of open space connected by country highways, which may get quite crowded around towns and cities on Aug. 21. Go here for traffic updates. Popular Viewing Sites: Jackson : This city in the shadow of the Grand Tetons offers spectacular scenery every day, so it and surrounding areas will likely attract lots of folks on Aug. 21. Jackson doesn't have an entry on the NCEI and CICS-NC map, but Big Piney, which isn't far south, has an 88 viewable percentage. Traffic updates here and weather updates here. : This city in the shadow of the Grand Tetons offers spectacular scenery every day, so it and surrounding areas will likely attract lots of folks on Aug. 21. Jackson doesn't have an entry on the NCEI and CICS-NC map, but Big Piney, which isn't far south, has an 88 viewable percentage. Traffic updates here and weather updates here. Casper : Casper will also be a popular destination. This city in east-central Wyoming boasts great weather prospects (88 viewable percentage), and it's easy to get to (and away from) via four big highways. Traffic updates here and weather updates here. Likelihood of Rainfall: Jackson gets 1.42 inches (3.6 cm) of rain in August, out of an annual total of about 16.9 inches (42.9 cm), according to U.S. Climate Data. Casper is drier, receiving 0.87 inches (2.2 cm) of rain in August and 12.5 inches (31.8 cm) over the course of a year. Nebraska Traffic Prediction: The eclipse's arrival in Nebraska marks the end of its time in the Rocky Mountain West and the start of its journey through the Great Plains and Midwest. As the moon's shadow moves east, it will darken the rooftops of more and more people but there's still plenty of wide-open space in Nebraska. Go here for Nebraska traffic updates. Popular Viewing Sites: Alliance : Three highways go through or near this small city on the western edge of Nebraska's famous Sand Hills region. Alliance is quite close to the center of the totality path, and it usually offers good weather (82 viewable percentage). Traffic updates here and weather updates here. : Three highways go through or near this small city on the western edge of Nebraska's famous Sand Hills region. Alliance is quite close to the center of the totality path, and it usually offers good weather (82 viewable percentage). Traffic updates here and weather updates here. Grand Island : This city in south-central Nebraska is also close to the totality path's center; the total eclipse there will last about 2.5 minutes. Weather could be a bit more of an issue here, however; the viewable percentage is 74. Traffic updates here and weather updates here. Likelihood of Rainfall: According to U.S. Climate Data, Alliance gets 1.54 inches (3.9 cm) of its 15.4 inches (39.1 cm) of average annual rainfall in August. The numbers for Grand Island are 3.11 inches (7.9 cm) and 26.6 inches (67.6 cm), respectively. Iowa Iowa is even more of a fringe player in the Aug. 21 eclipse than Montana is: Just 450 acres (180 hectares) of the Hawkeye State lie in the path of totality, according to Eclipse2017.org. So you're probably not planning an eclipse trip to Iowa. Kansas Traffic Prediction: The path of totality hits a slice of northeastern Kansas, an area of small cities connected by a web of highways. These roads could get busy as people from Topeka drive up to get a look. Go here for traffic updates. Popular Viewing Site: Hiawatha : This city is close to the shadow path's center line and sits at the junction of two highways. Hiawatha's viewable percentage is likely similar to that of nearby Falls City, Nebraska (74). Traffic updates here and weather updates here. Likelihood of Rainfall: Robinson, which is just down the road from Hiawatha, gets 3.78 inches (9.6 cm) of its 34.2 inches (86.9 cm) of average annual rainfall in August, according to the site U.S. Climate Data. Missouri Traffic Prediction: A lot of people are getting involved now, just by default. Two big cities in Missouri St. Louis and Kansas City fall within the path of totality (though only barely; parts of both cities lie outside it). So you're going to want to check traffic updates if you're headed to the Show Me State. Popular Viewing Sites: St. Joseph : This city in northwestern Missouri is right in the totality path's center and will be an eclipse headquarters of sorts. As GreatAmericanEclipse.com notes, astronomers and skywatchers will hold a viewing party at St. Joseph's Rosecrans Memorial Airport. St. Joseph has a 78 viewable percentage, according to NCEI and CICS-NC. Traffic updates here and weather updates here. : This city in northwestern Missouri is right in the totality path's center and will be an eclipse headquarters of sorts. As GreatAmericanEclipse.com notes, astronomers and skywatchers will hold a viewing party at St. Joseph's Rosecrans Memorial Airport. St. Joseph has a 78 viewable percentage, according to NCEI and CICS-NC. Traffic updates here and weather updates here. Columbia : The college town of Columbia, in the middle of the state, is also close to the center line; indeed, viewers there will see the total eclipse for nearly as long as folks in St. Joseph (2 minutes and 36 seconds, compared with 2 minutes and 38 seconds). But Columbia's weather is a little iffier; the viewable percentage is 70. Traffic updates here and weather updates here. Likelihood of Rainfall: About 4.37 inches (11.1 cm) of rain falls in Columbia in August, out of a yearly total of 42.6 inches (108.2 cm), according to U.S. Climate Data. According to HomeFacts.com, St. Joseph gets about 3.63 inches (9.2 cm) of rain in August and about 28.6 inches (72.6 cm) in an average year. Illinois Traffic Prediction: The totality path doesn't come close to Chicago, instead slicing across far-southern Illinois. But this less-populated area will likely be pretty busy, because it boasts the spot that will be totally eclipsed the longest on Aug. 21 (see below). Go here for traffic updates. Popular Viewing Site: Carbondale area : Much of Illinois' southern tip will offer great viewing for the eclipse. And a spot in the forest southeast of Carbondale will experience the total eclipse for 2 minutes and 42 seconds on Aug. 21 longer than any other place. So Carbondale will draw lots of folks, who are invited to a viewing event hosted by Southern Illinois University. The weather is likely to cooperate; Carbondale has an 80 viewable percentage. Traffic updates here and weather updates here. Likelihood of Rainfall: Carbondale gets about 3.27 inches (8.3 cm) of rain in August and 47.2 inches (119.9 cm) all year, according to U.S. Climate Data. Kentucky Traffic Prediction: Western Kentucky offers a wealth of great viewing opportunities and could be attractive to folks seeking to escape the crowds expected in and around Carbondale. Go here for traffic updates. Popular Viewing Sites: Paducah : This city isn't right on the center line, but viewers there will still get about 2 minutes and 20 seconds of total-eclipse darkness. And Paducah has a 77 viewable percentage. Traffic updates here and weather updates here. : This city isn't right on the center line, but viewers there will still get about 2 minutes and 20 seconds of total-eclipse darkness. And Paducah has a 77 viewable percentage. Traffic updates here and weather updates here. Hopkinsville : Hopkinsville is smack in the totality path's center, so you'd experience about 20 seconds more of totality here than you would in Paducah. And, as in other center-line spots, there will be eclipse festivities in Hopkinsville. Traffic updates here and weather updates here. Likelihood of Rainfall: About 2.76 inches (7.0 cm) of rain falls in Paducah in August, out of a yearly total of 49.1 inches (124.7 cm), according to U.S. Climate Data. Hopkinsville gets about 3.46 inches (8.8 cm) and 51.1 inches (129.8 cm), respectively. Tennessee Traffic Prediction: The moon's shadow pretty much bisects this long, skinny state, but several large cities (Memphis, Chattanooga and Knoxville, for example) will not be treated to totality. So Tennessee's highways could get pretty crowded with folks headed for darker skies. Go here for traffic updates. Popular Viewing Sites: Nashville : Tennessee's capital isn't that close to the path's center line, but it will get more than 1 minute and 50 seconds of totality. Clouds may be an issue, however; the city has a viewable percentage of just 44, according to the NCEI and CICS-NC. Traffic updates here and weather updates here. : Tennessee's capital isn't that close to the path's center line, but it will get more than 1 minute and 50 seconds of totality. Clouds may be an issue, however; the city has a viewable percentage of just 44, according to the NCEI and CICS-NC. Traffic updates here and weather updates here. Crossville : This city east of Nashville is closer to the center line and could be a better bet, weather-wise; it has a 66 viewable percentage. Traffic updates here and weather updates here. Likelihood of Rainfall: Nashville's average rainfall in August and the entire year are 3.19 inches (8.1 cm) and 47.2 inches (119.9 cm), respectively. For Crossville, the numbers are 3.98 inches (10.1 cm) and 55.1 inches (140.0 cm), respectively. North Carolina Traffic Prediction: The path of totality goes through the far western tip of North Carolina. It could get quite busy here as folks from miles around descend on this scenic part of the Appalachian Mountains. Go here for traffic updates. Popular Viewing Site: Great Smoky Mountains National Park : This famous patch of land on the Tennessee-North Carolina border draws more visitors annually than any other national park in the nation. So it will probably be a popular destination for eclipse watchers on Aug. 21, even though it lies north of the totality path's center line. Nearby Asheville has a viewable percentage of 65. You can get up-to-date information about traffic here, and weather updates here. Likelihood of Rainfall: Nearby Gatlinburg, Tennessee, gets about 4.57 inches (11.6 cm) of rain in August and 55.2 inches (140.2 cm) in a typical year, according to U.S. Climate Data. Georgia Traffic Prediction: Georgia is another state that just gets nicked by the totality path; only people in Georgia's extreme northeastern corner will be treated to a total eclipse. That means a lot of folks from Atlanta (and smaller cities, such as Athens) could head to this area to get a better view. Go here for traffic updates. Popular Viewing Site: Clayton : Two highways run through this city of a few thousand people in the Blue Ridge Mountains. And Clayton will get about 2 minutes and 35 seconds of totality, according to Eclipse2017.org. The closest location to Clayton on the cloudiness map Clemson, South Carolina has a 75 viewable percentage. But weather prospects in Clayton may be a bit worse than that, considering how rainy the city is (see below). Traffic updates here and weather updates here. Likelihood of Rainfall: Clayton gets about 5.83 inches (11.6 cm) of rain in August and 68.9 inches (140.2 cm) over the course of a year, according to U.S. Climate Data. South Carolina Traffic Prediction: South Carolina is the end of the line for the Aug. 21 eclipse, unless you have a boat. The moon's shadow will bid farewell to the U.S. mainland on the state's sandy beaches, which will likely draw lots of folks who wish to wave goodbye. Go here for traffic updates. Popular Viewing Sites: Columbia : The state capital will be treated to about 2.5 minutes of total eclipse, and numerous highways go through or around the city. This accessibility could be both a blessing and a curse, drawing many people into the city from far afield. Clouds could be a factor; the NCEI and CICS-NC give two divergent viewable percentages for Columbia 44 and 76. Traffic updates here and weather updates here. : The state capital will be treated to about 2.5 minutes of total eclipse, and numerous highways go through or around the city. This accessibility could be both a blessing and a curse, drawing many people into the city from far afield. Clouds could be a factor; the NCEI and CICS-NC give two divergent viewable percentages for Columbia 44 and 76. Traffic updates here and weather updates here. McClellanville : This is the last American city the totality path will hit, so it's a good choice for people who want to watch the eclipse head out to sea and disappear. But don't be shocked if the weather doesn't cooperate: August is the rainiest month in McClellanville, and the closest city on the interactive cloudiness map, Charleston, has a 53 viewable percentage. Traffic updates here and weather updates here. Likelihood of Rainfall: Columbia gets an average of 4.84 inches (12.3 cm) of rain in August and 46.3 inches (117.6 cm) over the course of a year, according to U.S. Climate Data. McClellanville gets 6.54 inches (16.6 cm) and 53.5 inches (135.9 cm), respectively. Editor's note: Space.com has teamed up with Simulation Curriculum to offer this awesome Eclipse Safari app to help you enjoy your eclipse experience. The free app is available for Apple (opens in new tab) and Android, and you can view it on the web. If you take an amazing photo of the Aug. 21 solar eclipse, let us know! Send photos and comments to: spacephotos@space.com. Follow Mike Wall on Twitter @michaeldwall and Google+. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook or Google+. Originally published on Space.com. Total solar eclipses are astonishing events to witness, and preparations for them particularly for eclipses with paths that are visible to large numbers of people, such as the Aug. 21 eclipse can generate widespread "eclipse fever" that lasts for months. However, the eclipse itself speeds by all too quickly, with the total eclipse visible for about 2 minutes. The length of totality for the upcoming Great American Solar Eclipse will vary across locations; Earth's rotational speed and the curvature of its surface together with the orbital speed of the Earth and moon determine how long a total eclipse is visible at any given point, Space.com reported. People in Carbondale, Illinois, will enjoy the longest period of total darkness during the eclipse, beginning at 1:20 p.m. local time and lasting 2 minutes and 40 seconds, according to NASA. The fleeting nature of eclipses is a good thing. While the moon doesn't block the sun's light for long, other events in Earth's past did significantly obstruct the sun for weeks, months or even years at a time, which can have devastating consequences for life on the planet. [Top 10 Ways to Destroy Earth] The Hinode satellite captured this image of an annular eclipse on Jan. 4, 2011. At the time, the moon was slightly more distant from Earth than on average, leaving a fiery ring still visible around its sun-blocking silhouette. (Image credit: NASA/Hinode/XRT) Around 66 million years ago, a mass extinction event known as the Cretaceous-Tertiary (K-T) extinction wiped out up to 80 percent of Earth's species. Many researchers link this die-off to a momentous event preserved in the geologic record a giant comet or asteroid slammed into Earth and left an enormous crater measuring 112 miles (180 kilometers) across, under what is now the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico. Debris that "blasted into the upper atmosphere and beyond" would have been capable of quickly encircling the globe or at least one hemisphere and blocking the sun, paleoclimate expert Linda Ivany, a professor in the Department of Earth Sciences at Syracuse University, told Live Science in an email. Dimmed, not darkened The fragments of the asteroid and pulverized surface rock were probably soon joined in the atmosphere by quantities of ash from wildfires, caused by the heat pulse that scorched vegetation following the impact, Ivany said. "Those particles can stay in the atmosphere much longer and were likely generated more or less continually for a period of years after the event," she said. As this ashy cover extended across Earth's atmosphere, it wouldn't have blocked the sun completely, as a total eclipse does. But it would have dimmed the sun's light enough to sound a death knell for photosynthesizing plants and the animals that ate them, Ivany told Live Science. "The reduced solar input for months or years would have hurt the ability of these organisms to grow and reproduce, like a house plant you put in too dark a corner. Sooner or later, it just fades and dies, even though it's not 'dark' in your house," she said. Reduced sunlight would have meant cooler surface temperatures, as well, Ivany said. "There are data from the Cretaceous extinction that suggest short-term cooling immediately following the extinction, and that's likely due to the change in the opacity of the atmosphere," she said. Terrestrial vertebrates that either ate plants or preyed on herbivores such as the non-avian dinosaurs were also snuffed out. But animals inhabiting ecosystems fueled by dead organic matter had a better chance of surviving periods where vegetation was scarce or unable to grow, Ivany explained. This NASA map of the United States shows the entire path of totality for the August 21, 2017 total solar eclipse. (Image credit: Ernie Wright/NASA/Goddard/SVS) Ashes to ashes Asteroid impacts aren't the only events capable of partially blocking the sun volcanos can also darken skies on a global scale. On April 5, 1815, when Indonesia's Mount Tambora erupted, it spewed approximately 36 cubic miles (150 cubic kilometers) of rock and ash to heights of 18 miles (29 km), in what was the biggest eruption in recorded history. [History's Most Destructive Volcanoes] Shortly after the explosion, the ash cloud over the region expanded to cover an area approximately the size of Australia, and air temperatures there dropped as much as 20 degrees Fahrenheit (11 degrees Celsius), Scientific American reported. The ash lingered in Earth's atmosphere, teased into filaments that spread over the planet. The ash obscured sunlight and lowered temperatures around the world for the next three years, leading people to dub 1816 the "Year Without a Summer," according to the New York Times. And Earth is capable of generating even bigger eruptions, from so-called "supervolcanoes" massive calderas that can measure up to 31 miles (50 km) in diameter and can produce nearly 1,100 cubic miles (more than 450 cubic km) of magma, the journal Science reported. (For comparison, the famous 1980 Mount St. Helens eruption released just 0.1 cubic km of magma, according to Oregon State University.) Luckily, supervolcanoes typically erupt only about once every 100,000 years, according to Science. The most recent supervolcano eruption was Mount Toba in Indonesia about 74,000 years ago, which produced an estimated 700 cubic miles (2,800 cubic km) of magma. Geologists have identified seven active supervolcano zones on Earth, though none of them currently poses a threat, Science reported. By comparison, the few minutes of darkness during the Aug. 21 solar eclipse won't lead to any long-term changes affecting global temperatures. However, there will likely be a noticeable impact on solar energy grids in parts of the U.S. Utility workers in California are anticipating solar energy production to be reduced by up to 75 percent during the eclipse, potentially affecting up to 6 million homes, a representative for California Independent System Operator, a nonprofit that oversees and operates electrical power grids, told Live Science in June. Original article on Live Science. Editor's note: Space.com has teamed up with Simulation Curriculum to offer this awesome Eclipse Safari app to help you enjoy your eclipse experience. The free app is available for Apple (opens in new tab) and Android, and you can view it on the web. If you take an amazing photo of the Aug. 21 solar eclipse, let us know! Send photos and comments to: spacephotos@space.com. T he UKs top chefs will battle it out for the title of best banger next month as Bubbledogs and Borough Market host the ultimate foodie sausage party. The hot dog and Champagne restaurant, which was founded by Sandia Chang and James Knappett in 2012, will host the challenge to celebrate its fifth birthday, with a top line-up of chefs on board to compete at creating the proverbial mutts nuts. Its a larger scale follow-up to a similar event last year which was held on-site at Bubbledogs. We were going to have a birthday party and were inviting lots of chefs that we know, says Sandia. We thought, why not make it into a competition? as we know that chefs love competition. We ended up selling tickets to raise money for Action Against Hunger and it was so much fun we are doing it again. This years line-up includes two Michelin-starred chef Tom Kerridge from The Hand & Flowers, Shake Shacks Mark Rosati, former Kitty Fishers head chef Tomos Parry, Shaun Searley from the Quality Chop House, Magnus Reid of Legs, Bonny Porter of Balls & Company and James Knappett himself. Matt Larcombe and Jonny Lake from Heston Blumenthals The Crown at Bray, who won last year, will also be competing to retain their title. Their creation was called The Chippy Dog, and featured a sausage coated in Hestons fish and chip batter then deep fried, along with minted pea ketchup, a pickled quail egg and triple-cooked chip crumble on top. The chefs are secretive about what theyll be cooking up this time round, but rules dictate they must start with one of the Bubbledogs sausages in a Bubbledogs bun the real creativity is in the toppings. Their efforts will be judged by a panel including Jason Atherton, Richard Vines and Richard Turner, while compere for the night will be Joe Warwick. 30 must-try dishes in London restaurants 1 /41 30 must-try dishes in London restaurants Bone marrow on toast with parsley salad at St John Not only has this dish kicked off countless wonderful meals over the course of St Johns 25 years, but it also gets credit for putting British cooking back on the global culinary map. Roasted bone marrow, coaxed out onto toast, cut perfectly with salad of parsley, shallots and capers. A nose-to-tail revolution, and utterly divine. Whole turbot at Brat Tomos Parrys talents with a turbot first came to feverish acclaim at Mayfair restaurant Kitty Fishers, but they are now the star attraction at his Michelin-starred solo spot. This whole fish grilled Basque-style, over hot coals and in a specially designed cage softens as if it has melted, and is basted at the table in an emulsion made with its own juices. Benjamin McMahon Marinara at 50 Kalo di Ciro Salvo Superlatives should be used in moderation but heck it, this might just be Londons best pizza. This under-the-radar London iteration of a Naples pizzeria serves an unrivalled marinara: just tomato sauce, oil, garlic and oregano. No need for any more with a sauce this good and a base so fine and perfectly charred, you can stop mourning your cancelled Italian holiday at first bite. Luciano Furia Clay pot baked pork and crab glass noodles at Kiln When we say Kiln is one of the hottest spots in town, we mean it hang over the counter at the Thai barbecue and youre not far out of range for the odd flame. Baking in the heart of the swirling heat is this must order: shimmering glass noodles, coated with a silky sauce enriched with fatty slicks of Tamworth pork belly and improbably unctuous crab meat. Lamb chops, Melabes Perhaps because its quietly tucked in among its unassuming neighbours down on the wrong end of High Street Kensington, Melabes is often overlooked by Londons food lovers. An unwarranted shame, as this partly Middle Eastern, partly Mediterranean set-up is really very good; it is somewhere to pick and choose from bits and pieces, and put a meal together yourself. The lamb chops, which come all smokey and burnished from the grill, are perfect; pink as a Vegas sign inside, but the fat all soft and dripping and delicious. A must, whatever the order. Steak tartare imperial at Bob Bob Ricard Theres Press For Champagne buttons, lobster in your mac and cheese and anything that stays still long enough gets gilded there is no point in going small at Bob Bob Ricard. Steak tartare is a luxurious pick at the best of times, but the Imperial upgrade here comes with a dollop of caviar even without the finishing touch, the tartare itself is one of the best in the capital. Bacon naan at Dishoom Londoners spent decades believing bacon in a bap with some ketchup (or brown sauce, but lets not have that argument now) couldnt be beaten and then Dishoom came along. This breakfast sandwich fills a fresh naan with bacon, a slathering of cream cheese, a luxurious tomato and chilli chutney, coriander and an oozing fried egg if you feel so inclined. Hangover be gone. Cacio e pepe at Padella Five years ago, you would have thought anyone queuing for pasta in London to have lost their minds this dish changed that. The starlet of Padellas much coveted is this plate of pici hand-rolled fat worms of eggless pasta with a mirror-shine sauce of parmesan cheese and pasta. Simple but unrivalled and itll set you back just 6. Jamon croquetas at Barrafina A dish like this should be elusive it is far too easy to eat seven portions of croquetas in a single sitting, which is why we presume Barrafina makes you queue. Very sensible. As the crunchy coating gives way to the oozing centre, enriched with the flavour of Spanish jamon (the best ham in the business), were already planning our next visit. Biang biang noodles at Xi'an Biang Biang Noodles There are oodles of noodles in the capital, but Guirong Weis triumphant take is one of the finest. First finding followers at her north London restaurant Xian Impression (soon to reopen for dine-in, but not yet), the dish of has inspired a whole spin-off restaurant in Spitalfields. Thick, hand-pulled, chewy noodles soak up all the spice and zing of the special sauce they swim in very special indeed. Souffle Suissesse, Le Gavroche Le Gavroche the street urchin is perhaps not for everyone. It is a Mayfair time machine, a reminder of how things were done once upon a time. Fortunately, it happens that how things were once done was very well indeed, and lunch or supper here is a masterclass in traditional French luxury (and often, happily, includes very large glasses of wine). Staff make the place, anyone who has been gently teased by the twins pretending to be each other will know. A tendency towards the old ways does mean the cooking offers little in the way of evolution or revolution, but new, after all, isnt always better. Michel Roux Jrs cheese souffle, baked on double cream, stuns, so overwhelmingly tasty, utter decadence that clings to the taste buds. Buttermilk Jamaican Jerk Chicken, Around the Cluck / 12:51 James Cochran found his signature dish early on, but its good it should stay with him for the rest of his career. While he has chops, and can do more beyond, theres something special in the way he works with his chicken; hotly spiced, gorgeously crispy, beautifully soft on the inside. A long-standing favourite and, though 12:51 cant operate as it did before, there are tables at his new project Around the Cluck, which is operating out of the same site. Breakfast at Hawksmoor Guildhall Your Full English is not full in comparison to the Hawksmoor breakfast at the steak connoisseurs Guildhall restaurant. The mind-boggling two-person spread swaps bacon rashers for an entire smoked chop, serves its bubble and squeak with short rib, puts trotter meat into its baked beans, and adds grilled bone marrow to all the usual trimmings. Cauliflower shawarma at Berber & Q Its not often that the main event at a barbecue restaurant is the veg, but Berber & Q have achieved just that. The cauliflower shawarma here is cooked on their flaming grill until softened and charred, before being doused liberally in tahini, pomegranate molasses, coriander, pomegranate seeds and a scattering of dried rose petals. BBQ Butter Chicken Wings at Brigadiers Brigadiers is a bold, boisterous sort of place: a labyrinthine City dining room, packed to the rafters with beer and Indian food that is indisputably gutsy. But arguably its finest moment comes in one of its smallest packages these chicken wings may be diminutive, but are mightily spiced, deftly charred and dripping with ghee-fuelled succulence. Beef brisket bun at Smokestak David Carters Shoreditch restaurant occupies itself by giving the entirety of Kansas City a run for its money on a daily basis. The star turn at this lauded barbecue restaurant is its beef brisket bun the meat is soft and juicy, riddled with its fats in the centre, while charred and treacle-like on the outside, paired perfectly with pickled chillies. To remember it is to salivate, we assure you. Snails, LEscargot LEscargot is one of Sohos old aristocrats and in its grand, beret red dining room there is always a mischievous sense of fun perhaps because it is still such a smart, suited, chandeliered place, and people are often drinking themselves rather silly. The clue to good eating is in the name; the snails come still clinging to their shells and submerged in their butter and parsley sauce. Dive in; you will emerge stinking gloriously of garlic. It wont matter a jot; roll on the red wine and settle in for a long, comforting night. Confit potatoes at Quality Chop House Yes, there are some high quality chops on offer at this 150-year-old Clerkenwell restaurant but blimey, leave room for the chips. Fine slices of potato are stacked into architecturally sound wedges, and confited until shatteringly crispy on the outside and devastatingly soft in the centre. They have been much imitated in recent years, but never bettered. Smoked eel sandwich at Quo Vadis Jeremy Lee cooks many things to a legendary level at Quo Vadis his pies could so easily have also made this list but he gets the nod here for his unrivalled take on the fancy sandwich. Smoked eel, horseradish cream and Dijon mustard, served with red onion pickle a combination so popular Lee says he nearly ran out of eel on post-lockdown reopening. Classic bao at Bao London has buns in abundance, but we still bow down to the fluffy superiority of Bao. The Taiwanese restaurant has become a cross-town favourite, thanks to its pleasingly pert rice buns (they are genuinely very pert, no crassness intended) and carefully considered fillings. The classic order comes filled with braised pork, fermented veg, coriander and a dusting of peanut powder. Carol Sachs Potato and roe, Core by Clare Smyth Clare Smyth has a knack that must infuriate other chefs; she is able to take the simplest of ingredients say, a single carrot and a smattering of lamb mince do something devilish with it and charge rather a lot for it; so good are the results, though, that few mind. Smyths sorcery is perhaps best witnessed with her signature, the potato and roe. It is simply a potato on a plate in a little sauce, but then it is also perhaps the best potato dish in the world; it has this wonderful salty richness, a certain seaside intenseness. It is glorious; so too is the smoked chicken that tends to come as an amuse bouche. Youll be treated here. Omelette Arnold Bennett Dont worry, no Arnolds were harmed in the making of this dish. Alongside impeccable service and an arguably perfect dining room, you could add another highlight to your breakfast at The Wolseley by ordering this creamy, haddock-filled dish, named for the writer who inspired its creation while staying at the Savoy. Fish pie, J Sheekey Long an actors favourite, J Sheekeys glamour has never lost its lustre. Its kept its regulars and charmed newcomers with a menu that plays the greatest hits of fine dining favourites. Seafood is Sheekeys thing; simply done sole is beautiful here, crab comes three ways, brill brushed in butter has a meatiness thats beyond satisfying. The fish pie is famous though, and rightly so; beneath the flaking pastry is a sea of cream, mustard and white wine, in it bobbing cod, haddock and salmon. It is simple but never fails; it does on its own for lunch, but is a failsafe at supper, too. John Carey The Ari Gold at Patty & Bun Theres a cheeseburger on every high street in the capital but not all of them are created equal. Patty & Bun has got the classic combination down to a tee with its curiously named Ari Gold burger: a fat, 35-day aged patty is served medium rare, and topped with gooey American cheese, smokey house mayo and tangy pickled red onions. Xiao long bao at Din Tai Fung Few dishes in the capital have been known to cause queues of four hours. Thats exactly what the world-famous xiao long bao dumplings did when top Taiwanese restaurant group Din Tai Fung first opened in Covent Garden. An intricately folded out layer (made by chefs trained for at least 18 months) gives way to succulent meat and a broth you could take on by the bowlful. Pig's trotter, the French House Upstairs in the Soho local, Neil Borthwick is quietly running one of the areas best kitchens. He orders in particularly good oysters, does brilliant things with brill and with his pigs trotter, has a dish that is rich and fatty, but with a beautiful salty cut that makes it madly moreish. The menu tends to change often upstairs in the French, but have this if its on. That little dining room is somewhere to go in early for lunch and stay until late, eventually spilling down into the pub below, to drink pints they do pints now, not just halfs all while merrily reliving the joys upstairs. Peter Clark Dover sole with crab butter at Bentley's Oyster Bar and Grill There are so many delights at Bentleys, its tricky to pick a single one. This could so easily have been a plate of rigorously sourced oysters, the fish pie, the decadent Royal seafood platter (pictured). It is however, the Dover sole that wins. A sublime piece of fish always, expertly cooked without fail choose it either filleted with beautiful crab butter, or grilled and whole for a simple pleasure. Over in the City, Corrigan does similarly brilliant things with lobster at Daffodil Mulligan. Ragu, Lina Stores Sohos Lina Stores the pasta bar, not the longstanding Italian deli it comes from is the sort of restaurant one longs for; small, fun, friendly, not too pricey. They do small plates of near perfect pasta; their ragu, whether lamb or veal, is a gem. A good ragu is hard to find too often theres too little meat, or meat not cooked for long enough but here, they spend the time over it, cooking slowly, carefully. No restaurant can compare with a Nonna, but Lina gets gratifyingly close. Porterhouse steak, the Guinea Grill London is not short of steakhouses, but the Guinea does not number among them. A pub a proper one it is tucked down a Mayfair sidestreet, away from everything and yet still perpetually busy. Besides the small bar is a dining room that looks much as it must have done when the likes of Sinatra was in (or Bette Midler, or Kylie, or Regan, or, or, or), where theyve served prime Aberdeen Angus cooked on a smoking hot grill. The Guinea is all about having a good time pints, red wine, brandies, the lot but they cook beautifully, and their handling of a good piece of beef is second to none. Puree de pommes de terre, Le Comptoir Robuchon The late Joel Robuchon may have been the most decorated chef of his and perhaps any other era, but his signature stayed humble mashed potato. Until youve had it, it is hard to believe it could be quite so good; mash, after all, is mash. No matter the scepticism, it will always surprise; it is almost silly that so little could taste of so much. A side, it will match almost everything on the menu; of which, the lamb with aubergine on the menu of classics is extraordinarily good. Sandias tips for a top dog include adding something with some acidity to cut through the meatiness because hot dogs are so savoury and big in flavour and adding texture in the form of something crunchy on top. Hosting the event at Borough Market allows for far more spectators this time round, and ticket holders will also be given a chance to vote for their favourite dog with a second prize for the peoples choice champion. The event takes place on September 4 and tickets are on sale now for 35. These will entitle guests a guzzle of each dog plus a free glass of Champagne as well as the opportunity to exercise their democratic right. Further drinks will be available to buy on the night and all profits will be split between Action Against Hunger and the Red Cross UK Solidarity Fund which works to help victims of terror, including those affected by the London Bridge and Borough Market attacks. Its a lot of fun to see the banter, camaraderie and competition between the chefs, says Sandia, and it is great to see the creativity of the chefs come through. Visit bubbledogs.tocktix.com for tickets. S hopkeepers in east London have been urged to refuse to sell cleaning products containing acid and ammonia to customers under 21 following a spate of violent attacks in the capital. There are currently no legal restrictions on the sale of corrosive substances but Hackney Council has launched a campaign for traders to challenge those attempting to buy household cleaning products. Customers buying the products - which could cause serious burns and blindness if used as weapons - will be asked for ID in shops taking part in the trial. The plea comes after an investigation by the Standard found it was incredibly easy to buy industrial strength acid as close as half a mile from the spot thugs left a moped-rider blind in one eye after hurling liquid in his face. Exclusive: Acid attack outside Harrods Litre-size bottles of a drain-cleaning product with a 91 per cent concentration of sulphuric acid were purchased by our reporters in two shops in Mare Street, Hackney. An even stronger sulphuric acid - at 93 per cent concentration - was purchased in Walthamstow, several miles away. Five attackers launched a 90-minute rampage injuring five people across Hackney and Islington last month. An attack victim is doused in water in Bethnal Green / Rex Features In recent weeks horrific attacks have also been a carried out in Bethnal Green and outside Harrods in Knightsbridge. Police figures reveal that east London is at the centre of the epidemic, with Newham, Barking and Dagenham, Tower Hamlets and Hackney having the highest number of acid attacks in the last three years. Motorcycle delivery drivers and motorcyclists take part in a demonstration in Parliament Square / AFP/Getty Images Calls have been made for the Government to change laws on the sale of cleaning products containing acid while the Met Police have stepped up their response to such attacks. Last month officers were issued 1,000 acid response kits following the spike in crimes involving corrosive substances. Mayor of Hackney Philip Glanville said: Im glad that the Home Office is considering tough new restrictions on corrosive substances. We have taken the initiative by asking shop keepers to voluntarily ID customers and report suspicious sales. A pioneering procedure that uses steam injections to cure one of the most common prostate problems was being offered for the first time in a London hospital today. Two men were undergoing the less invasive treatment at Charing Cross Hospital in Hammersmith. A probe is inserted via the urethra and the enlarged prostate is blasted with water vapour, destroying cells and causing the gland to shrink over the following fortnight and repair itself. It is far quicker and less risky than the traditional surgery. Patients can be discharged after two hours rather than requiring several days in hospital. Professor Hashim Ahmed, who is carrying out the procedure, said: The treatment is remarkable. It takes a procedure that normally requires 60 to 70 minutes under general anaesthetic, and has a one to two per cent risk of incontinence and a five to 10 per cent risk of erectile dysfunction, and does it under sedation in about 10 minutes. One in three men over 40 suffers from an enlarged prostate, causing discomfort and difficulty urinating. Thousands have the traditional operation, known as transurethral resection of the prostate, every year. This involves using electrocautery or a laser to chisel out part of the gland. It is one of the most common urological procedures in the NHS. Imperial College Healthcare, the trust that runs Charing Cross, performs about 250 a year but a similar number of men decline it because of the risks. Professor Ahmed believes thousands stand to benefit from the new, cheaper procedure, called Rezum Water Vapour, imported from America. A US study and tests in Europe found risk of incontinence and impotence was cut to virtually zero. Professor Ahmed said: We can offer it to those who are on lifelong medication who opted not to have surgery because they were worried about side effects of traditional surgery. The condition is different to prostate cancer, which can require the removal of the entire gland. T he prospect of thousands of electric cars driving round Londons streets came a step closer today as Sadiq Khan announced a 4.5 million investment in 1,500 new charging points across the capital. Transport for London and the capitals town halls will roll-out the new green charging infrastructure - which will almost double the number of points - over the course of 2018. It comes after the Government last week announced a ban on sales of petrol and diesel cars from 2040 to help tackle the countrys toxic air problem. But Mr Khan, environmentalists and some motoring experts accused it of falling short of what is needed to deal swiftly with toxic air which is blamed for a death toll of about 9,000-a-year in the capital alone. The chosen boroughs - 25 of Londons 32 - will each receive up to 300,000 of government cash to install the standard charging points, which take between four and eight hours to charge a family car, in residential areas. Town hall officials will now identify sites where charging points could be installed. Some of the cash could be spent on new approaches such as using lamp posts as the base and power supply for charge points, which would be cheaper and quicker to roll out with less impact on the streetscape. They believe the scheme will help motorists without access to off-street parking to make the switch from polluting vehicles to zero-emissions ones more easily. More money will follow next year if the scheme is successful. The new points will be in addition to the network of 150 rapid charge points for taxis and commercial fleets that TfL is installing by 2018. Mr Khan, who wants all new road vehicles driven in London to be zero emission by 2040, said: This substantial investment in electric charging points will make a real difference, making electric vehicles an easier and more practical option for Londoners across our city. We have a bold ambition to make Londons transport system zero emission by 2050, and working with boroughs to roll out more charging infrastructure is a vital part of making this a reality. The money for this tranche of charging points comes from the Governments Office for Low Emission Vehicles Go Ultra Low City scheme. But the Mayor called on ministers to step up their investment in charging infrastructure so every Londoner could consider going electric over coming years. Julian Bell, London Councils transport and environment spokesman, said: Improving Londons air quality by reducing emissions is a real priority for our city. It is unacceptable that 9,000 people a year die early in London due to air pollution. So it is great to see London boroughs bidding to invest in conveniently located electric vehicle charging points. This will help to ensure we have infrastructure in the right places to make it easier for people across the capital to choose electric vehicles. The only boroughs not to receive the funding are Barking & Dagenham, Bromley, Enfield, Harrow, Hillingdon, Kingston and Sutton. Mr Khans draft transport strategy also aims for all taxis and minicabs to be zero-emissions capable by 203 and buses by 2037, while Londons entire transport system would be zero emission by 2050. He has called for a national diesel scrappage scheme although ministers are understood to believe it would be too expensive. T he Duke of Edinburghs retirement from royal duties has been marked with the launch of a special commemorative 5 coin. The reverse of the 5 coin bears the image of Prince Philip and the phrase Non sibi sed patriae Latin for not for self, but country, while the other side features the face of the Queen. Prince Philip, 96, attended his final solo royal engagement on Wednesday in the grounds of Buckingham Palace where he met Royal Marines who had completed a mammoth 1,664 mile trek. The Queens Consort announced in May he would be retiring from royal engagements after more than 65 years supporting the monarch in her role as head of state and attending events for his own charities and organisations. The Duke of Edinburgh at his last solo Royal engagement (REUTERS) / Reuters Buckingham Palace has stressed although the Duke's diary of engagements came to an end on Wednesday he may decide to attend certain events, alongside the Queen, from time to time. His son Prince Charles struck the very first commemorative coin during a recent visit to the Royal Mints visitor centre in Wales on July 11. Prince Charles inspects the new 5 coin / PA Prince Philip served as President of the Royal Mint Advisory Committee from 1952 until 1999, an unbroken period of 47 years. Every UK coin and medal produced by The Royal Mint over this time, including four portraits of The Queen, has been discussed and approved by the committee he chaired. Prince Philip, The Duke of Edinburgh: Final Royal Engagement 1 /21 Prince Philip, The Duke of Edinburgh: Final Royal Engagement The Duke of Edinburgh attending the Captain General's Parade as his final individual public engagement at Buckingham Palace Getty Images The Duke of Edinburgh attending the Captain General's Parade as his final individual public engagement at Buckingham Palace PA The Duke of Edinburgh attending the Captain General's Parade as his final individual public engagement at Buckingham Palace PA The Duke of Edinburgh attending the Captain General's Parade as his final individual public engagement at Buckingham Palace PA The Duke of Edinburgh attending the Captain General's Parade as his final individual public engagement at Buckingham Palace Reuters The Duke of Edinburgh attending the Captain General's Parade as his final individual public engagement at Buckingham Palace PA The Duke of Edinburgh attending the Captain General's Parade as his final individual public engagement at Buckingham Palace PA The Duke of Edinburgh attending the Captain General's Parade as his final individual public engagement at Buckingham Palace PA Royal Marines prepare for a parade attended by Britain's Prince Philip, in his role as Captain General, Royal Marines, to mark the finale of the 1664 Global Challenge, on the Buckingham Palace Forecourt Reuters Royal Marines prepare for a parade attended by Prince Philip, in his role as Captain General, Royal Marines, to mark the finale of the 1664 Global Challenge Reuters The Duke of Edinburgh attending the Captain General's Parade as his final individual public engagement at Buckingham Palace PA The Duke of Edinburgh attending the Captain General's Parade as his final individual public engagement at Buckingham Palace PA The Duke of Edinburgh attending the Captain General's Parade as his final individual public engagement at Buckingham Palace PA The Duke of Edinburgh attending the Captain General's Parade as his final individual public engagement at Buckingham Palace PA The Duke of Edinburgh attending the Captain General's Parade as his final individual public engagement at Buckingham Palace PA The Duke of Edinburgh attending the Captain General's Parade as his final individual public engagement at Buckingham Palace Reuters Adam Lawrence, Chief Executive of The Royal Mint, said: We are particularly delighted that the Prince of Wales struck the very first of the coins that will celebrate the contribution that The Duke of Edinburgh has made to public life. The coin goes on sale on August 7 but the public can register their interest now at http://www.royalmint.com/pre-register/prince-philip. T heresa Mays Government was condemned by bosses of Britains 50 billion drinks industry today for a chaotic approach to Brexit that put trade and jobs in danger. The Wine and Spirit Trade Association said Chancellor Philip Hammond was the only minister who seemed to have a clear plan to exit the European Union safely. It called on the rest of the Government to get a grip. The wine and spirit industry has had enough of political posturing and Cabinet rifts which have led to a flurry of mixed messages over what we should expect from the Government approach to Brexit, said WSTA chief executive Miles Beale. The attack comes from an industry that supports over half a million UK jobs. Britain is the biggest exporter of spirits in the world. The WSTA said Brexit could cost Britain its world leadership in the wine market. Put bluntly we want the Government to get a grip and put to rest some of the deep-seated concerns facing our trade, said Mr Beale. The drinks industry supports more than half a million UK jobs. / AFP/Getty Images Labours split over Brexit deepened today when one of its biggest union supporters suggested the UK does not need to stay in the single market. GMB union boss Tim Roache said: Look, people, companies, countries in the EU want to trade with the UK theres no doubt about that. What we need to do if were out of the single market is use that as an opportunity for optimism for positive investment. The union opposed free movement, saying that there were widespread examples of employers moving cheaper workers in from countries like Bulgaria. Key Brexit Players - In pictures 1 /8 Key Brexit Players - In pictures David Davis Reuters Michel Barnier AP Tim Barrow AFP/Getty Images Oliver Robbins Sabine Weyand Didier Seeuws AFP/Getty Images Mr Roaches comments on the Today show contradicted Labours Brexit spokesman Keir Starmer, who yesterday said the party would back the single market membership for a transition. European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker today accepted that Brexit would not be stopped. The official said that despite a density of problems emerging over withdrawal, he disagreed with Maltese prime minister Joseph Muscat who last week claimed there were signs that Brexit will not happen. My working hypothesis is that it will come to Brexit, he said in an interview with Politico. Boris Johnsons claim that ministers are not preparing for a no-deal situation has been rejected by a fellow minister. Brexit minister Steve Baker said work was under way on preparations for all eventualities. A n airport worker has been seriously injured after being struck by lightning while working on the runway. Surveillance footage captured the moment Austin Dunn, 21, collapsed after a bolt struck under the tail of the aircraft he was working on at Southwest Florida International Airport. The enormous charge of electricity went in through his right hand and out through his left, his family have said. In the footage, the bolt can be seen from several different angles lighting the plane up in a sudden flash. Mr Dunn, who was working under the right wing of the Sun Country plane, was extensively injured in the accident on July 22. His co-workers can be seen running to help before he was rushed to hospital in Tampa. He was treated for third-degree burns to his hands, feet and chest, bleeding on the brain, and muscle injuries, and may also have suffered nerve damage. He has now been released from hospital but his family have said the road to recovery will be a long one. A GoFundMe page has been started to help his family fund trips to the hospital and to help pay his medical bills. Florida is often called the lightning capital of the United States, with storms taking place on about 100 days every year. According to the University of Florida, the state ranks number one in the number of deaths due to lightning, 94 per cent of which take place between late May and end of September. Previously, I have written concerning the topics of managing managers, including the use of a)mediation in resolving turf and other co-level related disputes between managers; b) the differing approach to correcting managerial performance deficiencies and behaviors in contrast to disciplining non-managerial /supervisory staff. But it appears that the current POTUS spends too much time reading scandal sheets and pursuing monuments of his own misperceived magnificence to pursue growth in office, as many have hoped; only to be stuck in hope's maze of confused inner geographies (notwithstanding neglect of deliverable geographies served by the Napa Valley Register). Although I was once a Boy Scout and proud to have gained my Silver Moccasins merit badge, I joined to learn woodcraft and outdoor survival, not partisan politics. Furthermore, one doesn't have to have been a scout of any particular suasion to adhere to the tenet that our political and business leaders (I include POTUS in the category of leader) should manifest ethical behaviors that serve as an effective example to our populace, youth and adult, including immigrants given to us tired and poor. Keep one's path on the true compass: I urge with my official three-fingered scout salute. (I still relish my BSA Pathfinder device.) Instead our extant POTUS spends a majority of time denigrating the integrity of our institutions, using revengeful ad homonym remarks in criticizing people who take legitimate (or at least rightful) issue with him, and treating others like public roadkill to the degree that I suspect he will in time endeavor to replace our national eagle with a turkey vulture, bird that he is; move the national capital from Washington, D.C. to swamp- free Death Valley (anything to keep a campaign promise, other promises aside. With apologies to Californians, until such time as a lower geographical site can be found within the 50 states.) But what could be lower than the warped harping on and on and on of a political colleague and party member's real or imaginary deficiencies before the public? Asked the desert rat at the bottom of the meteor crater. The use of bullying tactics from a bully pulpit? Great example, should the questioned leader want to encourage our trusting Boy Scout youth to become goose-stepping culprits. He should be reported to Amnesty International, Banana Republican that he is. If true discipline is to be meted out, it should be on a one-on-one basis, handled in confidence, based upon tangible observations and consistent with bona fide articulated and legitimate (legal) expediencies. Not as we've seen repeatedly by our current POTUS with respect to his disrespectful and egregious approach to Attorney General Sessions or others. What I see before me is a manifestation of Neanderthalic business practices. It's called Intentional infliction of emotional distress. It is commonly referred to a tort of outrage , whereby its victim or reluctant recipient can seek recovery for severe emotional distress caused by another individual (usually in power) who intentionally or recklessly inflicts emotional painbehaving in an extreme or outrageous manner or who willfully steps outside of policy norms-- to cause an employee to resign employment, or forfeit some other policy benefit (i.e. retirement stipend, bonus, membership privilege ) or regulatory right therein. I have seen it happen both in employment situations and in cases that have been before me as a hearing officer or arbitrator. But I must confess to my shortcomings, having never terminated a person on public television. Neither have I encouraged any of my clients to warn, reprimand, suspend or otherwise threaten to discipline an employee in the presence of the public or fellow employees. Intentional infliction of emotional distress (think of it as a form of assault) is recoverable in California and certain other states as, inter alia, wrongful discharge. And, as a valid cause for recovery it has been backed by volumes of case law going back more than 30 years. I consider, however bullying behavior to be outrageously wrong, irrespective of the jurisdiction where it originates. While I am assured that out extant POTUS has been counselled about such matters, irrespective of his contrary disposition and lack of respect for boundaries, the following short list of elements which are indicia of such intentional infliction are: A) Was the employer's act intentional or reckless? B) Was the supervisor's act extreme or outrageous? C) Was the cause of the act retaliation for employee's asserting some protected right? D) Was the purpose of the supervisor's act to get the employee to voluntarily undertake a decision adverse to himself/herself? E) Was the supervisor's act the cause of the distress? F) Did the employee actually suffer severe emotional distress as a result? G) Did the supervisor step outside of policy when he engaged in such bullying tactics? Bob Austin Napa A fifth of the worlds population could be forced to migrate from Asia due to climate change by the end of the century, scientists have warned. Extreme heatwaves that can kill healthy people within hours will start striking parts of Pakistan, India and Bangladesh unless global carbon emissions are cut drastically, according to the new research. Scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) found that densely-populated areas in the Indus and Ganges river basins will be the worst affected, leading to reduced crop yields. Climate change is not an abstract concept, it is impacting huge numbers of vulnerable people, MIT professor Elfatih Eltahir told the Thomas Reuters Foundation. Business as usual runs the risk of having extremely lethal heat waves. The study, published in Science Advances, used state-of-the-art climate models to project potential future heat and humidity in South Asia, already the warmest region in the world. While most climate studies have been based on temperature projections alone, this one also considers humidity as well as the bodys ability to cool down in response. Researchers considered three factors that make up what is called a wet-bulb temperature, which is the air temperature taken when a wet cloth is wrapped round the thermometer. Human beings can survive a wet-bulb temperature of up to 35 degrees Celsius. Beyond which, the human body will have difficulty cooling down, leading to heat stroke and eventually death. Those most at risk are poor farmworkers or outdoor construction labourers in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh where they are least likely to have air conditioners. Some 25 per cent of Indias population still has no access to electricity. About 15 per cent of Indias population gets exposed to those extreme temperatures of 31 or 32 C but under the business-as-usual model, that number would reach 75 per cent by 2100. In 2015, the region experienced a deadly heat wave that killed roughly 3,500 people in Pakistan and India over a few months. That was only the tip of the iceberg, Eltahir said. In the sense that much more severe heat waves are coming. The study doesnt directly address migration but researchers said it is likely that millions of South Asia will be forced to move due to blistering temperatures and crop failures unless steps are taken to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. People in the Middle East and parts of Africa have already started moving because of extreme heat and drought, Eltahir said. Reducing our carbon emissions now will really make a difference in the future. It appears that Afghanistan produced three billion dollars worth of opium and heroin in 2016, which is nearly double what was produced in 2015. Afghan produces about 80 percent of the illegal heroin in the world. While most of it is exported nearly a third of all families in Afghanistan have at least one member who is an opium or heroin addict. This is not a new problem but yet another side effect of the Russian invasion in 1979 and the decades of fighting that followed. The chaos of the 1980s fighting against the Russians allowed the opium trade to spread from Pakistan to Afghanistan. Pakistan subsequently eliminated opium and heroin production on its side of the border but tolerated it in Afghanistan. Many Pakistani businesses and corrupt officials have become wealthy from the Afghan drug trade (mainly by smuggling in chemicals needed to turn opium into heroin and then accepting bribes to allow most of the heroin to be smuggled through Pakistan to foreign markets). Inside Afghanistan the heroin income made possible more wealthy and powerful tribal warlords who managed the drug trade, mostly in the south (Helmand and Kandahar provinces). It was no accident that this was also the homeland of the Taliban because the Taliban have, from the beginning (the early 1990s, after Pakistan recruited and armed the first Taliban from among Afghan refugees) depended on cash from the drug gangs (often run by kinsmen) to survive. Because Taliban controlled Afghanistan was providing sanctuary for the al Qaeda Islamic terrorists who were responsible for a growing number of attacks against Americans the U.S. sent troops to Afghanistan in late 2001 and has been trying to pacify Afghanistan ever since. The U.S. has spent over $700 billion in that effort so far. Much of that money was spent on economic and other non-military aid. For Afghans who could avoid the Taliban (most could) and the opium (most could not) it has been a golden age of economic progress. But there is no peace and there wont be until the drug trade is eliminated or greatly reduced. That will cripple the Taliban and other Islamic terror groups but defeating the drug gangs is not easy. For thousands of years what is now Afghanistan has faced numerous foreign invaders who did a lot of damage and then moved on. This time around the most dangerous foreign threat is chemical and financial. Heroin, made possible by a late 19th century German chemical process enables locals to convert opium (laboriously obtained from poppy plants) into much more valuable (and portable) heroin. This is the basic problem in Afghanistan. While a few Afghans benefit financially (some spectacularly) from the heroin trade nearly half the population in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran suffer the consequences of addiction, crime and social breakdown. These deadly side-effects are most obvious inside Afghanistan. The drugs are winning as they usually do for a while wherever they get established. Eventually they get crushed but eventually can last a long time. The only thing that nearly everyone in Afghanistan can agree on is that the opium and heroin are bad. Nearly ten percent of the population is addicted to drugs (mostly opiates) and another ten percent (there is some overlap) makes a living or gets rich from the drug trade. Most Afghans consider the biggest threat to be the drug gangs, which are largely run and staffed (like the Taliban) by Pushtun. The Taliban want to create a heroin producing Islamic terrorist and gangster sanctuary in Central Asia. If you want to know how that works, look at Chechnya in the late 1990s and Somalia during the last decade. No one has come up with any cheap, fast or easy solution for that. In 2017 the Taliban have adopted a strategy of going after rural military bases, especially in the south (Helmand, Kandahar and Uruzgan provinces). The Taliban first attack all police and army checkpoints leading to the base and once those checkpoints have been taken the roads are blocked with landmines and roadside bombs to prevent reinforcements reaching the base by road. Since the Afghan Air Force has limited air transport capability the base being attacked will often get little support and that demoralizes the defenders. Increased American air support had made this strategy more costly for the Taliban. The Taliban also concentrate on key smuggling routes. In the north there is Kunduz province and access to Central Asia. In the west there are several provinces that provide access to Iran, with Herat being a frequent target. But even away from the borders some interior provinces, like Ghor, are important because they provide easy access to the north and west. The most valuable route is in the east and into Pakistan. This has produced a deadly standoff with Pakistan. Pressuring Pakistan In an effort to persuade Pakistan to stop supporting violence in Afghanistan the Americans are withholding military aid more frequently. In 2016 the U.S. was willing to pay up to $900 million in such reimbursements but has only paid $550 million. Pakistan can retaliate by blocking road access to Afghanistan but this escalation ultimately fails for Pakistan because the only major ally they have is China and the Chinese have made it very clear that they will not join Pakistan in such an escalation. China is more concerned with the Pakistani ability to protect the thousands of Chinese coming into Pakistan each year to build new infrastructure projects. Pakistan has over 100,000 soldiers and police dedicated to the security of these Chinese and their growing number of work sites. There are still thousands of Islamic terrorists inside Pakistan who see the Chinese as a legitimate target. Meanwhile Afghanistan and India are more aggressively fighting back at the Pakistan sponsored terrorism sent their way. This has turned India and Afghanistan into allies, which infuriates the Pakistani military. That means India has to deal with more Pakistani-backed Islamic terrorist and separatist violence in Kashmir. This has been increasing since 2015. In 2016 there were about twenty terrorism related deaths a month in Kashmir and it is about the same so far in 2017. Because of the increased Pakistani aggression in Kashmir 2016 was also the first time Pakistan suffered fewer terrorism incidents than India. Last year Iraq was first with nearly 3,000 attacks while Afghanistan was second with nearly 1,400. Then came India with nearly a thousand and Pakistan with about 700. Pakistan has benefitted from cracking down (since mid-2014) on local Islamic terror groups that carry out attacks inside Pakistan, especially those that attacked the government and military. But two things havent changed. First most of the attacks in India have nothing to do with Islamic terrorism but are the result of leftist or tribal rebels in eastern and northeastern India. Most importantly, adjusted for population Pakistan still suffers more than four times as many attacks as India. Moreover the attacks in India killed far fewer people because most had nothing to do with Islamic terrorism, which concentrates on killing as many people as possible (and nearly all of them Moslems). Overall attacks in India killed over 80 percent fewer people than those involving Islamic terrorism. With help from India and the U.S. Afghanistan is becoming more vocal and aggressive about Pakistan continuing to tolerate pro-Islamic terrorists religious schools (madrasas) in Pakistan that specialize in training young Afghans, many of whom ended up in Afghanistan as suicide bombers or members of the Taliban. Afghanistan now accuses Pakistan of colluding with the Afghan Taliban to kidnap Afghan children and get them across the border to these Pakistani madrasas. This is something that had long been known but kept quiet because of a desire not to antagonize the Pakistani military and intelligence establishment. That is no longer an issue. The Russian Paradox The U.S. and Afghanistan keep finding evidence that Russia is supplying weapons to the Taliban. When pressed Russian officials will talk about the Taliban are the only ones fighting ISIL (Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant) in Afghanistan and need more weapons for that. This is absurd because Russia considers the Afghan heroin coming into Russia as a bigger threat than ISIL. The latest evidence of Russian arms getting to the Taliban comes from northern Afghanistan, where there is little ISIL activity but major heroin export routes to Central Asia and Russia. The Taliban has been very active up there. Earlier in 2017 the American accused Russia of colluding with Iran, or Iranian arms smugglers, to supply the Taliban with weapons. Apparently Russia is again trying to destabilize the Afghan government so that they, and their ally Iran, will have more influence. This has been going on since the 1800s. But for over a thousand years before that warlords in Iran and northern India fought to control parts of Afghanistan, especially those areas that were part of the Silk Road between the Middle East (and Europe) and China (as well as stops along the way, like India and Iran.) Russia and Iran are concerned about the damage Afghan opium and heroin are doing (by creating millions of Russian and Iranian addicts) but are willing to tolerate the Afghan drug gangs if the export of the drugs can be better regulated to avoid Russia and Iran. That rarely works well but Russia, Iran and Pakistan are willing to try but understand that the American in particular and the West in general would never go along. Meanwhile Western nations are the main source of foreign aid that keeps the Afghan government going. Thus the Russians supplying weapons to the Taliban in northern Afghanistan. Because of the Ukraine related sanctions on Russia it has proved difficult to keep the Afghan Air Force Russian helicopters operational. Two of the four Russian made Mi-35 helicopter gunships are grounded because of this and there are problems getting technical support for the 26 Mi-17 transport helicopters. The solution for this problem is to replace the Russian made helicopters with American UH-60s. Some Afghan Mi-17 pilots have already had training for this and report that the conversion training is not a problem and for experienced pilots is quite easy. The Afghan Air Force expects to be receiving at least 18 UH-60s by the end of 2018. The U.S. has already supplied twenty MD-530F helicopters armed with machine-guns, missiles and rockets and the U.S. has agreed to supply 30 more. These are easier to operate and maintain than the Mi-35s and cheaper as well. Since UH-60s can be armed as well that will be the solution to the grounded Mi-35 problem. The Afghan Air Force plans to increase its helicopter force from 71 now to 214 by 2024 and replace all the Russian helicopters with American ones in the process. Iranian Frenemies Afghanistan has always had a love-hate thing going with with Iran, the ancient and powerful empire to the west. Yet while Pakistan is considered an enemy Iran is more a frenemy. This is demonstrated in many ways. Iran has always considered the Afghans, especially the Pushtun tribes, a bunch of unreliable barbarians. Most everyone in the region agrees with that. Part of that animosity is religious. The Pushtun tend to be Sunni Moslems and often very fanatic ones. That means Shia Moslems are considered heretics and subject to eradication by devout Sunnis. While only 15 percent of Afghans are Shia, nearly all Iranians are. The Afghan Shia are mostly Hazara, descendants of medieval Mongol invaders. There are over two million Afghans living in Iran, most of them Shia and refugees (or children of) fleeing recent (since the 1980s) wars in Afghanistan. While these Shia refugees feel some affinity with Iran they are still Afghan and many got involved with the lucrative drug smuggling business. This is dangerous as well as lucrative and has turned the Afghan-Iran border into a combat zone. Since the refugees tend to provide a lot of these smugglers, shelter them while profiting from money earned smuggling, the refugees are not very popular in Iran and it is difficult for Afghan refugees to become permanent residents. In 2012 Iran came up with a solution; allowing Afghan Shia in Iran to join an Iranian sponsored mercenary force in Syria. Iran was trying to keep the Syrian government in power against an uprising by the majority of Syrians (who are Sunni). The Shia minority has ruled Syria for over 40 years and since the 1980s done so with the financial and material support of Iran. After 2012 that support included more and more foreign Shia fighters recruited, trained (usually in only a few weeks), paid and led by Iranians. The key benefit for Afghan volunteers from Iran was that successful service (especially if killed or disabled) provided the volunteer and his family with permanent residency in Iran. Nearly 20,000 Afghans from Iran have volunteered so far and some 20 percent have been killed or wounded. Despite the losses, Afghans kept volunteering because the payoff was relatively large and real. The Iranians kept their end of the bargain. But some of the Afghan volunteers did desert and provided foreign journalists and intel analysts with details of how the system worked. For one thing Iranian recruiters stressed the religious angle and the need to protect fellow Shia in Syria. The reality was that Iran needed tough and fearless fighters to deal with Sunni Islamic terrorist groups (mostly al Qaeda and ISIL) who comprised most of the opposition. These Sunni fanatics were responsible for numerous (and ongoing) attacks on Afghan Shia and that was sufficient motivation for most of the Afghan volunteers who come from a warrior culture. In addition to keeping their end of the deal Iran has recently (since late 2016) been providing the Afghan volunteers more public praise in the Iranian media. Most of the Afghans killed in Syria are flown home for burial in Iran and photos or video of the funerals often show up in the media. The families of the martyrs are praised as well and often shown receiving their residency papers and other benefits as well (access to better housing, medical care and so on). All this angers many Afghans who see it as another Iranian scheme to exploit Afghanistan. It is, but the Afghan refugees keep volunteering. Air Support Surge American air support increased 65 percent (compared to 2016) during the first six months of 2017. This was measured in terms of airstrikes carried out. The number of weapons (smart bombs and missiles) used increased even more dramatically, from 545 to 1,634. Most of the additional air support was applied to Taliban and Haqqani Network targets, which was usually in direct support of Afghan troops. This was part of a trend because during 2016 the United States increased its air support for Afghanistan over 40 percent. That meant 1,337 missiles and smart bombs used for the entire year. The number of airstrikes was about 600, nearly double what it was in 2015. This was no surprise as in mid-2016 the United States revealed that earlier in the year it had ordered American forces in Afghanistan to go after all Islamic terrorists and do so with few restrictions. An easing of restrictions was noted earlier in 2016 but there was no official announcement until June. By then the U.S. Air Force admitted that during the first five months of 2016 American warplanes used 451 missiles and smart bombs against ground targets in Afghanistan. Thats nearly twice as many as during the same period in 2015. That is still less than a quarter of the activity during 2011 and less than half the number of missiles and smart bombs used per month in 2014 (the last year American combat troops were in Afghanistan). The change in 2016 came after the Afghans finally convinced the American political leaders that more air support for Afghan forces would make a major difference. In early 2016 the United States agreed to allow American forces in Afghanistan to work more closely with Afghan forces against the Taliban and other Islamic terror groups. That change included more American air support and relaxed ROE (Rules of Engagement). Now local American commanders could decide when to use American air power or ground forces to assist Afghan forces rather than having to try and convince lawyers and politicians back in the U.S. that this particular attack was a matter of life or death. That cautious approach left a lot of Afghan soldiers, police and civilians dead and other Afghans noticed why. Afghan political and military leaders have been increasingly critical, often publically, about the earlier, more restrictive, American policy. The U.S. has not yet agreed to increase U.S. troop levels in Afghanistan. Currently there are about 10,000 U.S. troops there and the Afghans want that increased by 50 percent. The Afghans made a case for keeping more American troops. Meanwhile more air support will be provided and fewer restrictions will be placed on the use of those aircraft. In early 2017 a new government in the U.S. indicated there would be more effective military and other assistance to the Afghan war effort. For those who have studied recent efforts to establish narco states (especially in Colombia and northern Burma) what the Taliban and the drug gangs are doing is trying to establish large areas where there is no government presence. This was almost achieved in Colombia in the late 1990s before popular anger at the drug problem led to widespread support for defeating the drug gangs. The situation was different in northern Burma where opium has been produced on a large scale for centuries but there was no national government until the departing British convinced former colony Burma to take possession of the tribal north. Until the 1980s Burma was the source of most of the illegal opium but was displaced by Afghanistan which produced a cheaper product in larger quantities. Colombia came close to becoming a narco state and Burma never did because the tribes were a minority that never had a chance of taking over. In Afghanistan the Taliban were actually in control of most of the country in the late 1990s but their hold was fragile as was demonstrated by how quickly they were driven out by the addition of the few hundred American specialists (Special Forces CIA field operatives) and several thousand smart bombs. The Taliban are not some invincible force, they simply get more press coverage by those who ignore the past. August 2, 2017: In the south (Kandahar Province) the Taliban attacked a NATO convoy and killed two U.S. troops. Ten foreign troops have died in Afghanistan so far this year, all of them American. For all of 2016 sixteen foreign troops died in Afghanistan, all but two of them American. August 1, 2017: In the west (Herat province) two Islamic terrorists attacked a Shia mosque during prayers and caused over a hundred casualties (with 29 dead from a suicide bomb, grenades and gunfire). Further east fighting between the Taliban and security forces near Kabul temporarily closed the Kabul to Kandahar highway. This interfered with truck traffic, which is essential because there are no railroads and few navigable rivers inside Afghanistan. In the southeast (Logar province) Afghan airstrikes killed over twenty Taliban and Haqqani Network members, including a senior Haqqani leader (and nine of his associates) known to be responsible for organizing most of the suicide bomb attacks in the area, July 31, 2017: In Kabul ISIL attacked the Iraqi embassy with a suicide bomber and three gunmen. Security forces defeated the attack, killing all four of the ISIL men. Two embassy employees were killed and three policemen were wounded. July 29, 2017: In the east (Nangarhar province) a recently discovered ISIL base was attacked from the air and the ground. At least eight ISIL men were killed and documents and weapons recovered. This played a part in finding and destroying three other ISIL weapons storage sites. July 26, 2017: In the south (Kandahar Province) about 200 Taliban attacked a small army base in a rural area. The soldiers suffered about 30 dead and 20 wounded defending the small fortress while nearly half the attackers were killed or wounded. The soldiers retreated from the base for a few hours while airstrikes kept hitting the enemy. When more ground troops arrived the army recovered the base and some of the dead Taliban. July 25, 2017: In the west (Herat province) the army ended a ten day effort to defeat anti-government tribal militias operating near the Iranian border. The fighting left at least 250 militiamen dead along with seven civilians. One soldier was killed and seven wounded. July 24, 2017: In Kabul a Taliban suicide car bomber attacked near where a lot of government employees were going to work, killing 35 people and wounding more than 40. This comes a day after Taliban attacked a hospital in central Afghanistan (Ghor province) killing 35 civilians. The Taliban later tried to deny responsibility for this one. July 23, 2017: In the east (Nangarhar province) ISIL gunmen using civilians in a funeral procession for cover ambushed some soldiers. The deception failed as the soldiers fired back and called in air support. The civilians were able to flee he area but over a dozen were killed in the cross fire. The fighting went on for two days leaving 23 ISIL men and two soldiers dead as well. July 22, 2017: In the south (Kandahar province) the Taliban murdered seven of the 70 civilians they had kidnapped from several villages in the last few days. This was a Taliban intimidation operation that sought to force the villagers to stop opposing the Taliban (often by cooperating with the security forces). Various Islamic terror groups account for about 68 percent of the civilian deaths in Afghanistan and the Taliban are responsible for about two-thirds of that. The security forces account for about 20 percent of the civilian deaths, nearly all are accidental. Most of the civilian deaths occur in just ten of the 34 provinces and four of those provinces (Kabul, Helmand, Kandahar and Nangarhar) account for most of that. Normally the Taliban and the drug gangs have a lot of cooperation from civilians in Helmand and Kandahar because so many families profit from the drug trade. The drug gangs dont have to coerce farmers to grow poppies and harvest the opium. If the price paid for the opium is high enough and the Taliban can keep the government from interfering. Despite that the majority of the population in these two provinces benefit little from the drug trade and often suffer because of it and the constant fighting that goes along with it. In the west (Herat province) Afghan troops clashed with a group of Taliban near the Iranian border. The Taliban lost eleven dead and at least six wounded. Among the dead was Mullah Abbas, a known (and much wanted) Taliban leader who was known to manage the movement of Iranian weapons and other supplies from Iran for the Taliban. Iran denies that Iran is supplying the Taliban but Afghan intel has lots of evidence (Iranian made weapons, documents, and prisoner interrogations) that say otherwise. In the east (Nangarhar province) a Pakistani army operation across the border in the Rajgal Valley came to an end as the Pakistanis declared a week of fighting had cleared 250 square kilometers of remote hills and forests of Islamic terror group camps, especially the ones being used by ISIL to move men and equipment between Pakistan and Afghanistan. The last phase of this operation involved using special operations troops to kill or chase away Islamic terrorists camped out at the highest point in the area; Brekh Top. This was technically part of the massive anti-terrorism campaign that began in mid-2014 in North Waziristan and was scheduled to end at the end of 2017. For the last year most of the air and ground action has been in adjacent tribal areas like Khyber. Pakistan was mainly interested in clearing out any Islamic terrorists hostile to Pakistan and that has largely been accomplished. About 5,000 people died so far in this three year old campaign, 90 percent of them Islamic terrorists (although some of these were civilian bystanders) and the rest the security forces, mainly soldiers. Over a million civilians fled the fighting and only about half have returned home so far. Pakistan shares details of these operations with Afghanistan, the United States and China. However Afghanistan points out that there is no way to confirm details of what Pakistan claims to have accomplished in operations like this and often the result, on the Afghan side, are often not detectable. July 21, 2017: The United States is withholding a $50 million reimbursement (for counter-terror operations) to Pakistan because Pakistan has refused to shut down sanctuaries for the Haqqani Network in Pakistan. The Americans have evidence of Haqqani still operating in Pakistan which the Pakistanis are unable to explain. The Americans are withholding military aid. In 2016 the U.S. was willing to pay up to $900 million in such reimbursements but has only paid $550 million. July 20, 2017: Afghanistan criticized Pakistan for making a big deal about attacking Haqqani Network and Afghan Taliban bases on the Pakistani side of the border but ignoring similar bases in Baluchistan (Quetta) and the Pakistani capital (Islamabad). July 18, 2017: In the east (Nangarhar province) a feud between Taliban commanders led to a gunfight that left two well-known Taliban commanders dead. July 16, 2017: In the east (Nangarhar province) at the Torkham border crossing police seized a Pakistani truck that was trying to smuggle nearly ten tons of explosives (Ammonium Nitrate fertilizer) into the country. The Pakistani driver was arrested and apparently admitted that the truck was loaded by Pakistani gunmen, who hid the bags of ammonium nitrate under legal consumer goods. Torkham is the main border crossing with Pakistan and where thousands of people and vehicles pass through each day. On the Pakistani side is the Khyber Pass which has always been the easiest way to get from northern Afghanistan to the lowlands (most of Pakistan and all of India) beyond. Normally large bribes would get illegal cargoes like this across the border but since ammonium nitrate is the main ingredient in most Islamic terrorist bombs, sometimes bribes are not enough because many police have lost family to Islamic terror attacks and that sometimes results in border guards refusing to take the money and let the ammonium nitrate through. For a long time ammonium nitrate, a banned fertilizer, has been used to make roadside bombs. It takes 3-4 kg (6.6-8.8 pounds) of ammonium nitrate (mixed with some fuel oil) for an average roadside bomb. Pakistani officials have resisted pleas to crack down on the movement of excessive (for Pakistans needs) quantities of ammonium nitrate into Pakistan and then, via lots of bribes, into Afghanistan. A lot of the bribes are paid on the Afghan side of the border. July 11, 2017: In the east (Kunar province) an American airstrike killed Abu Sayed, the current leader of the Afghan branch of ISIL. This is the third time in the last year that the local ISIL leader has been killed. The April incident involved a joint U.S.-Afghan commando raid. ISIL has been active in Afghanistan since early 2015. July 10, 2017: Civilian combat related deaths for the first six months of the year were 1,662, which is up two percent from 2016. Some 40 percent of these civilian deaths were caused by Islamic terrorist attacks using explosives (roadside bombs, suicide bombers or landmines). CENTER FOR AUTOMOTIVE RESEARCH-MANAGEMENT BRIEFING SEMINARS DAY FOUR WRAP-UP By Steve Purdy The Auto Channel Michigan Bureau As we review the week at the Center for Automotive Research Management Briefing Seminars well add a few tidbits of news and opinion weve not reported on yet before offering our synopsis and assessment. We learned this week that French automaker PSA is planning a return to the U.S. market. We once had the Peugeot and Citroen products but neither made a go of it. Peugeot had serious quality and durability problems and Citroen cars were just too quirky for U.S. tastes. Both are now as high quality and mainstream as any brands in the world. PSA recently bought GMs European brands, Opel and Vauxhall and is the second largest automaker in Europe next to VW. The company already has a car-sharing service in the U.S. and they are beginning to establish a dealer network. No Peugeot or Citroen products are sold here yet and PSA did not hint at what their product strategy might be. Renegotiation of the NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement) was a topic of discussion as trade officials from Mexico and Canada took the stage to lay the groundwork for their respective agendas. The Trump administration has NAFTA restructuring on their to-do list insisting that the U.S. is getting a raw deal from the agreement. Talks are scheduled to begin in Washington DC later this month. All seem to agree that the whole deal should be simplified. Both the Canadian and Mexican speakers said the opportunity to restructure this regional deal could mean a more competitive position against European and Asian producers. All agree that the tariffs the Trump administration has suggested would be catastrophic. The California Air Resources Board has led the nation in imposing fuel economy standards usually with the most stringent regulations in the country. Often coordinating with the Federal governments EPA regulations CARB standards have been copied by other states as well. As the Federal government backs away from some of the traditional environmental standards Annette Hebert, CARB chief of emissions standards, said her organization is willing to talk with government and industry officials as they review policies. She noted significantly that CARB has not been invited to join Federal regulators to talk about these standards. Topics of discussion at MBS evolve ever more rapidly. Not long ago the discussion of self-driving cars would have been purely science fiction. Car sharing, new ownership models, autonomous shuttles and the ever-accelerating move away from traditional car ownership and enthusiasm were on no ones radar. We are rapidly learning about such technologies as 3D printing, the electric turbo, light weighting with exotic materials, evolving propulsion systems . . . and on and on and on. We always find fascinating stories at MBS One measure of the health of the automobile industry is attendance at MBS. Jay Baron, president and CEO of CAR assures us that attendance is up about 10% to around 1,000 conferees. Compare that to about half that number during the recent recession. In those dismal days we were worried about who would be going belly up. Even the major OEMs were at risk. The conventional wisdom was that if GM and Chrysler failed it would have had a domino effect taking major suppliers down and that would take all the other OEMs down as well. Many thought we were at risk of losing our entire auto industry. Now, just less than 10 years later, after the government bailed out GM while managing its bankruptcy, presided over the takeover of Chrysler and propped up other elements of the business, the automobile industry today is as healthy as it has ever been. Products are better than theyve ever been and profits consistently come in strong. So, whats not to be optimistic about? Well, just this. The auto business has always been, and will always be, cyclical. Weve now been in the longest period of sustained growth in the industrys history and it is just now leveling off. Does that mean were headed for a downswing? Probably. But so far it looks like it may be a gentle one. Steve Purdy, Shunpiker Productions, All Rights Reserved Willis Towers Watson Public Limited Company operates as an advisory, broking, and solutions company worldwide. It operates through two segments, Health, Wealth and Career; and Risk and Broking. The company offers actuarial support, plan design, and administrative services for traditional pension and retirement savings plans; plan management consulting, broking, and administration services for health and group benefit programs; and benefits outsourcing services. It also provides advice, data, software, and products to address clients' total rewards and talent issues. In addition, the company offers risk advice, insurance brokerage, and consulting services in the areas of property and casualty, aerospace, construction, and marine. Further, it offers investment consulting and discretionary management services to insurance and reinsurance companies; insurance consulting and technology, risk and capital management, pricing and predictive modeling, financial and regulatory reporting, financial and capital modeling, merger and acquisition, outsourcing, and business management services; wholesale insurance broking services to retail and wholesale brokers; and underwriting and capital management, capital market, and advisory and brokerage services. Additionally, the company provides primary medical and ancillary benefit exchange, and outsourcing services to active employees and retirees in the group and individual markets, as well as delivers healthcare and reimbursement accounts, including health savings accounts, health reimbursement arrangements, flexible spending accounts, and other consumer-directed accounts. The company was formerly known as Willis Group Holdings Public Limited Company and changed its name to Willis Towers Watson Public Limited Company in January 2016. Willis Towers Watson Public Limited Company was founded in 1828 and is based in London, the United Kingdom. Baxter International Inc., through its subsidiaries, develops and provides a portfolio of healthcare products worldwide. The company offers peritoneal dialysis and hemodialysis, and additional dialysis therapies and services; intravenous therapies, infusion pumps, administration sets, and drug reconstitution devices; remixed and oncology drug platforms, inhaled anesthesia and critical care products and pharmacy compounding services; parenteral nutrition therapies and related products; biological products and medical devices used in surgical procedures for hemostasis, tissue sealing and adhesion prevention; and continuous renal replacement therapies and other organ support therapies focused in the intensive care unit. It also provides connected care solutions, including devices, software, communications, and integration technologies; integrated patient monitoring and diagnostic technologies to help diagnose, treat, and manage a various illness and diseases, including respiratory therapy, cardiology, vision screening, and physical assessment; surgical video technologies, tables, lights, pendants, precision positioning devices and other accessories. In addition, the company offers contracted services to various pharmaceutical and biopharmaceutical companies. Its products are used in hospitals, kidney dialysis centers, nursing homes, rehabilitation centers, doctors' offices, and patients at home under physician supervision. The company sells its products through direct sales force, as well as through independent distributors, drug wholesalers, and specialty pharmacy or other alternate site providers in approximately 100 countries. It has an agreement with Celerity Pharmaceutical, LLC to develop acute care generic injectable premix and oncolytic molecules. Baxter International Inc. was incorporated in 1931 and is headquartered in Deerfield, Illinois. I strongly condemn yesterday's attack on a NATO convoy in the Kandahar province of Afghanistan, which left two US soldiers dead and four more wounded. I offer my sincere condolences to the families and loved ones of the fallen, and wish a speedy recovery to the injured. This cowardly and brutal attack will not deter us in our mission to help the Afghan security forces stabilise their country, and prevent it from ever again becoming a safe haven for international terrorism. Shopify Inc. is a commerce platform and eCommerce infrastructure provider connecting small businesses with a large and growing global marketplace. The company was formed in 2004 in Ottawa, Canada as Jaded Pixel Technologies but changed its name to Shopify Inc in 2011. The name change was part of a rebranding strategy that helped accelerate the business and drive it to $5.5 billion in sales in 2022. As of October 2022, the company boasted millions of merchants in 175 countries with more than $543 billion in economic activity generated since launch. In terms of scale, Shopify employs more than 10,000 individuals and is among the top 20 publicly traded companies in Canada. Shopify was founded by Tobi Lutke. Mr. Lutke had been working on a website for a snowboard store but quickly realized the software was more valuable than just selling snowboards so his team switched gears. The platform was launched in 2006 and it quickly gained momentum. Mr. Lutke is a member of the board of directors and the companys CEO, a position he has held since 2008. Shopify is a commerce company but, more importantly, it is an eCommerce commerce company that can assist small businesses with all aspects of their operations. The company is in business to provide an eCommerce platform for small businesses globally. Its platform enables merchants to market, manage, and sell their products through a variety of sales channels that include but are not limited to eCommerce. Channels include the companys core Shopify.com website as well as brick & mortar locations, pop-ups, social media, and buy-now buttons. Because branding is such an important part of a business's success the company goes to great lengths to assist its merchants in that regard. The Shopify.com website includes several tools to help with branding that include a business name generator and a logo maker as well as a website builder and a full range of marketing products. Marketing products help merchants with email marketing and Facebook ads as well as automation of the same. Among the many benefits of using Shopify is acceleration. Businesses that use the website to its fullest are able to accelerate their growth and reach milestones years ahead of their competitors. Brands that use Shopify.com include Heinz, Tupperware, and Netflix. According to data from BuiltWith, the Shopify platform was host to more than 1.58 million websites in 2021 and the figure is growing. Data from W3Techs suggest that more than 4.0% of the top 10 million websites are using Shopify. Emory Universitys Candler School of Theology and Aquinas Center of Theology have entered into an affiliate agreement that will strengthen their programming and academic resources. Approved by Emorys administration in July, the agreement will introduce new opportunities to engage the Catholic community in the Atlanta area and beyond. The Aquinas Center was established at Emory in 1987 by the Southern Dominican Province of the Roman Catholic Church to provide a Catholic scholarly presence, ecumenical in spirit, for the benefit of Emory, the Archdiocese of Atlanta, and the region. It has been an affiliate of the university at large; this new, updated agreement makes it an affiliate of Candler School of Theology specifically. During the Aquinas Centers three decades at Emory, Candler has been its closest partner in programming. Most notably, the two joined forces in 2010 on the high-profile, weeklong visit of Cardinal Walter Kasper, then president of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, who remains influential at the Vatican. The formal affiliate arrangement will strengthen the connection between Candler and Aquinas even further, with promising yields for both organizations and the public. Having the Aquinas Center directly affiliated with Candler provides a mutually beneficial framework for a robust, collaborative relationship that will enrich the intellectual and spiritual lives of Emory students, faculty, staff and the broader Atlanta community, says Jan Love, Candlers Mary Lee Hardin Willard Dean. Phillip Thompson, executive director of the Aquinas Center, says that the affiliation is key because it will allow Aquinas to develop additional resources and new programmatic offerings. Vibrant and relevant programming draws people to the faith, enhancing both the spiritual lives of individuals and the church itself, he says. Affiliating with Candler opens doors for us to explore new ways to enhance the publics knowledge of the living Catholic tradition and invite them to engage in the intellectual and moral life of the church. Thompson says to expect programming that will boldly engage contemporary issues and partner with other religions for the common good. Among these new programmatic offerings: hosting Dominican scholars as visiting professors expanding the current Catholic speakers series adding an annual Catholic-Orthodox lecture hosting an Aquinas Day at Emory New Catholic Studies Program Candler is currently developing a Catholic Studies program to add to its curricular offerings, so the timing of the affiliation could not be more perfect, says Love. The program is set to launch in the fall of 2018. Tony Alonso, a prominent Catholic voice in contemporary liturgical music, begins this fall as Candlers director of Catholic Studies, and will lead the development of the program. The Aquinas Center will work with Alonso to forge relationships with personnel in Catholic churches and schools in the Southeastkey people who need to know about our new program, says Love. Thompson is enthusiastic about the program, seeing it as meeting a pressing need. We must prepare the next generation of Catholic leaders to ensure the vitality of the church, he says. Candler has a century-old tradition of providing top-notch theological education to Christian leaders, so were excited to help get the Catholic Studies program going. For Candler, the Catholic Studies program and the new affiliation with Aquinas help meet a need, too. Weve wanted to reach more Catholic students for some time, says Love. This formal affiliation with the Aquinas Center will act as a catalyst in that, increasing our reach and enriching the resources and programming we can offer these students. Long considered dry ground for Roman Catholicism, the Southmade up of 55 dioceses across 16 states and the District of Columbianow has 27 percent of the nations self-identified Catholic population, according to the Pew Research Centers 2014 Religious Landscape Study. There are more than one million Catholics in the Archdiocese of Atlanta. Some years ago, Jill Hamilton had an epiphany while driving on a stretch of highway in North Carolina. As was her custom, she had turned off the radio to think, this time about a nursing project built around spirituality and how religious songs are used in the African American community. "You can do this," the nurse researcher thought to herself. "You know the methods. You know how to interview. You know how to analyze the data. You can do this." The interviews continue to be a source of study and inspiration for Hamilton, who rejoined Emory's School of Nursing last year as an associate professor. Included in a research presentation for her BSN students is a photo of the small, white-clapboard church she attended as a girl in Black Mountain, North Carolina. Many of her study participants grew up similarly, listening to songs, psalms, and prayers learned in church and school or at home from beloved family members. As Hamilton has documented, these songs and verses provide comfort to older African Americans in times of stress, especially during illness. "Many people memorize songs when growing up but forget about them until something happens that shakes them," says Hamilton, who was a Georgia Cancer Coalition Distinguished Scholar during her first tenure at Emory. "When you're growing up, you're happy, and everything is fine. Then later on in adulthood, someone tells you, 'you've got cancer.' And you think, 'Cancer means I'm going to die.' Cancer patients have told me, 'Once I got myself together, I remembered this song my grandmamma or granddaddy sang to me.' " Hamilton first witnessed the healing power of religious song at a funeral in eastern North Carolina. When members of the congregation were invited to speak, an older African American gentleman went to the microphone and began to sing. "I'd never heard that particular song before," Hamilton recalls. "He sang it as a source of comfort to the family. I put on my research hat in the back of that church. I knew I had to capture these songs before they died off with the older generation." Colleagues were skeptical of her idea at first. Why should a nurse study religious songs? Still, Hamilton held fast to her idea, guided by her epiphany in the car, and eventually published her findings in journals such as The Gerontologist (2012), Nursing Research (2013), and Cancer Nursing (2016 and 2017). The consumer magazine Good Housekeeping also featured her work. While the link between religion and mental health is well established, Hamilton's studies are the first to focus specifically on religious songs and African American cancer survivors. Early on, when she showed some of her video interviews to a group of breast cancer survivors, they told her, "We need this." "This is not about music therapy," Hamilton emphasizes. "Religious songs transport people. They take you from a situation where you are stressed or sad back to a place where you felt safe and loved." In an article published in Cancer Nursing this year, Hamilton notes that African Americans may view cancer as a punishment from God and a death sentence. Statistics support the latter; 50 years ago, African Americans had an overall five-year cancer survival rate of 27 percent. Today, their overall five-year survival rate is 62 percent. More and more, African Americans successfully complete their cancer treatment despite the negative perceptions they may hold. "Spirituality and religious beliefs were complementary strategies to treatment that enabled these participants to overcome their fears and anxieties, to endure treatment, and to find meaning and purpose in their illness experience," Hamilton writes. Although their survival rates have greatly improved, African Americans continue to have a higher burden of cancer, the result of disparities such as low income, limited health care access, less than optimal treatment delivery, and lower rates of health literacy. "So, what are we missing from this group?" the author asks in her article. Hamilton offers an idea. When their patients seem anxious or depressed, oncology nurses should ask them about their favorite song or Bible verse. "If they tell you about a song or verse that might be helpful, note it in their chart, and when they get stressed out, can't sleep, or are in severe pain, help them recall the words," says Hamilton. "You can use this strategy for anyone. The nurse can write some of the words on the board in the patient's room." But what if a nurse feels uncomfortable talking about religion or faith? "You can acknowledge their beliefs, even if you don't share them," Hamilton suggests. "That makes them feel valued, that makes them trust you. And if they trust you, then you can engage them more in their health care." Hamilton plans to pilot a new study involving African Americans with late-stage cancer at Atlanta's Grady Memorial Hospital. She will show them some of the video interviews she's collected to determine if the stories and songs help relieve their psychological distress. As intended, her video subjects come from a range of socioeconomic backgrounds. "If you show people a video of others like them who survived cancer, viewers will think, 'I can survive too.' " Long term, Hamilton would like to turn the videos into a DVD to share with faith-based institutions and community groups. These videos also could serve as a valuable training tool for health care providers and nursing, social work, public health, and pharmacy students. "We need these stories," she says, "because they represent a legacy of sustainability and hope." Joseph Boyden has written a lengthy essay for Macleans magazine addressing critics who have questioned his claims of Indigenous heritage. Being Indigenous isnt all about DNA. Its about who you claim, and who claims you, says the sub-headline on the piece, published online Wednesday. Late last year, Aboriginal Peoples Television Network reporter Jorge Barrera launched an investigation into claims of Indigenous ancestry the Toronto-raised novelist has made throughout his life, and the evidence or lack thereof to back it up. Read more: Joseph Boyden storys originality called into question Oh, please. Joseph Boyden not the victim in Indigenous ancestry saga: Paradkar Joseph Boydens identity crisis opens up questions on who is part of a community The probe made national headlines and sparked a debate on identity and who has the right to speak on behalf of Indigenous communities. In his new Macleans piece, Boyden questions what it means to be Indigenous in Canada and writes that DNA testing has concluded his family members are mutts. Celtic DNA. Check. Native American DNA. Check. DNA from the Arctic. Cool. I didnt know that. Explains my love for winter. Some Ashkenazi Jew? I love it, he writes. More scientifically-minded family members than me have been exploring areas like autosomal DNA and mtDNA and haplogroups, and guess what? We are what our familys stories have always told us we are. And then some. Since the controversy erupted, Boyden says he has spoken with many elders and knowledge keepers who have supported him and told him hes going through a rite of passage. The Scotiabank Giller Prize winner behind Through Black Spruce details the support hes received from some Indigenous communities and how Cree and Ojibwa families have traditionally adopted him both in Ontario and Manitoba. A request to interview Boyden on Thursday was not immediately answered. SHARE: I am done with public life. Politics isnt a happy job. Its not a fun job, really. Its a fulfilling job and its really interesting and I loved doing it. Christy Clark, exiting politics this week after six and a half years as Liberal Premier of B.C. There goes Christy Clark tactical, scrappy, engaging, and ready, it seems, to close the book on a dynamic political career that spanned more than two decades and achieved the top spot in provincial politics. And this same week in Ontario, here comes Caroline Mulroney, 43, with a famous family name, a weighty resume (Harvard-educated, lawyer, vice-president of an investment firm, founder of a charity, mother of four, yes thats a plus) announcing shes seeking the provincial nomination for York-Simcoe for the Tories. Shes running on affordability issues. I bracket these two women, one exiting, one entering provincial politics because theres an undeniable interest these days in how women fare in the political arena. In many but not most political discussions, gender parity is seen as a priority. Read more: Christy Clark says shes done with public life after resigning as B.C. Liberal leader Caroline Mulroney to seek Tory nomination in York-Simcoe For Conservative leader Patrick Brown, who hopes to capitalize on Liberal Premier Kathleen Wynnes mostly dismal polls by next Junes election, Caroline Mulroney is seen as a star candidate in a secure riding. Shes also a woman. What could be better? We appear to love dynasties more than we like to admit. But for the public, the name of her father, former prime minister Brian Mulroney does not come with the same copious supply of stardust that our current Prime Minster Justin Trudeau inherited from his papa, former PM Pierre Trudeau. (Imagine if selfies had existed in his day.) So whether Mulroney will go on to have a successful political career depends on whether she has the resilience and the chops for it. With Christy Clark gone, the number of female provincial premiers will be reduced to the shaky number of two (in a brief golden age, in 2013, there were six female first ministers, including one from Nunavut.) After first winning election in 1996 as an MLA from Kelowna, B.C., Clark, now 51, served in opposition, became a cabinet minister, took a break to become a talk-show host, and then in 2011, resurfaced to win the Liberal leadership and become Premier. In last Mays election, her party, one seat short of a majority, failed to find a way to govern. She first said she would stay on, but then, as ever, there was that walk in the snow, or in her case, along the water. She said her initial goodbye with her teenage son Hamish by her side, and the words above which I found powerful: for her, politics was not a happy job but a fulfilling one; and desperately hard work, especially for women who still comprise only one in four politicians in Canada. They have to struggle harder to get there in the first place and then deal with specific challenges breaking into boys clubs, gendered insults, having to prove themselves tough. The more successful they are, the more they are perceived as unlikeable or too tough in a way that men simply arent. Were down to Ontario Liberal premier Kathleen Wynne, who if the polls continue to be dismal for her, will be hailed as a political miracle if she manages to hold onto power in the June 2018 election; and Alberta NDP Premier Rachel Notley, whose next years as premier will be defined by the newly amalgamated United Conservative Party whaling on her at every turn. I wish her strength. But fun it will not be, for either of these premiers. I hoped that my generation would be the last to have to count the room, to see if the number of women candidates or bosses or strategists are achieving anywhere near gender parity, but I see the battle goes on. In a terrific profile of Katie Telford in Chatelaine by writer Sarah Boesveld, we get to know the most influential woman in Canadian politics who considers it her job to still count the room for women. Telford, 38, currently chief of staff to PM Justin Trudeau, is a bit of a wunderkind. She fought for and won her first political chief of staff job when she was only 26, working for former Liberal education minister Gerard Kennedy. Since then, Telford, who keeps a low profile and lets her boss shine, has directed both Trudeaus successful leadership campaign and the general election. Boesveld calls her a master strategist and a key driver behind the Liberals push for gender equality. Two things stood out for me in this profile besides how obviously talented and hard-working Telford is. One is that, even though shes part of a new generation, she still considers it necessary to actually tally in her notebook, at every government meeting, the number of women who are in the room. Spoiler alert: its often not many. The second thing is a quirky detail. When Trudeau travels abroad with his chief of staff he makes a point of introducing her right away as his colleague, because shes so often mistaken for his wife. Onward. Judith Timson writes weekly about cultural, social and political issues. You can reach her at Judith.timson@sympatico.ca and follow her on Twitter @judithtimson Read more about: SHARE: Toronto police are seeking a suspect who posed as a wealthy man and an American general on dating websites to rip off victims. The man allegedly laundered money after defrauding victims between September 2016 and February of this year, using websites such match.com, ourtime.com, and chemistry.com, police said. The man allegedly led his victims to believe that they were in a relationship with a wealthy person who was a victim of unforeseen circumstance in another country, police said. Three of the victims were tricked into sending over $1 million (U.S.) to a business account controlled by the suspect to assist with a supposed emergency, police said. Police dubbed the investigation Project War Hero after a case in January. It was called War Hero because in this instance the ruse used by the culprit was to pose as an American general posted overseas who has run in to some form of trouble that requires short term financial support, Toronto police Det. Sgt. Ian Nichol said in an e-mail. Nichol said it is not a unique ploy and is very common in this type of fraud. Randolph Aquino, 46, of Markham, is wanted for possession of proceeds of crime over $5,000 and laundering proceeds of crime. Police said they believe Aquino has fled to the Philippines. He is described as clean-shaven, 5-foot-7, 180 pounds, short hair who presents himself as a professional in the financial services industry. Anyone with information is asked to contact police or Crime Stoppers. SHARE: An Air Canada flight from Toronto to Budapest returned to Pearson airport early Thursday after police said a flight attendant was attacked. At around 12:30 a.m., Peel police received a call for a flight returning back to Toronto with an irate passenger and a flight attendant who was assaulted, said Peel police Const. Mark Fischer. When we attended the scene, we learned that the passenger was unruly, and he has since been arrested and taken into custody for assault. A flight attendant was taken to the hospital with minor injuries. Police said the flight was over Nova Scotia when it turned back to Toronto. My understanding is that the unruly passenger was possibly drinking, said Fischer. John Svab, 57, of Hamilton was charged with uttering death threats, aggravated assault and endangering aircraft while in flight. His daughter Renata Svab, 32, of Hamilton, was upset when contacted by the Hamilton Spectator. He has never had trouble before, Renata said. He was excited to see his mom (in Hungary). He has no anger issues. Air Canada said the passengers would be travelling on another flight Thursday. The flight was carrying 267 passengers and eight crew members. With files from Bryann Aguilar and The Canadian Press SHARE: Might as well start with a disclosure: 20 years ago, I worked for a summer for the Yonge Street Small Business Association, and for John Anderson, the proprietor of a furniture shop called Morningstar and the ringleader of the merchant and landlord group. So I know, and have warm memories of, the people and area Im writing about here I have a conflict of interest in this story because I made a little money once upon a time from these people and places. Back then, they had funding from the federal government to pay me minimum wage to paint storefronts. For a summer, I lugged cans of paint up and down a 36-foot extension ladder, putting colour on the first and second floors of restaurants and clothing stores on Yonge between College and Bloor. On Wednesday evening, I went back to Andersons Morningstar storefront now moved across the street for an emergency meeting of the business association. A lot of the businesses there have endured the ups and downs of the two decades since: Nails Attraction, Rock Variety, Hockridge china shop (there since 1900), Cats Cradle, ABC Books. Many of them still occupy the two- and three-storey storefronts that have long defined the strip. But a lot has changed in the area since then, too. The laneway food stands of Roys Square are gone, replaced by a giant glass condo tower at Bloor. Across the street, Stollerys is gone, replaced by a construction site that will be a condo tower. North and south of Wellesley, whole blocks have now been turned into giant holes in the ground that will become condo towers. And these changes, inevitably, bring other changes. And those changes, the merchants and landlords gathered Wednesday night said, represent a crisis for small businesses. While the meeting was taking place, the Star reported that rock n roll haircut institution House of Lords was closing up shop because, after 51 years in business, a property tax hike double taxation, the owner called it was just too much to absorb. At the meeting a half a block south, John Anderson was telling about 40 assembled merchants sitting among the carved wooden doors for sale in the rear of his shop that he expected House of Lords closing would be just the beginning as many nodded along, he proposed tracking the businesses that shuttered due to tax increases and labeling them the Mayor Tory Cemetery. Read more: House of Lords hair salon set to close after 51 years Although the discussion soon made clear it isnt John Tory whos responsible for the tax increases they are complaining about. Its the provincial agency that does property tax assessments, MPAC. Because of the recent sales in the neighbourhood to condo developers, every building on the strip has been reassessed according to the value of its highest and best use, in the lingo of the province. Which means a little T-shirt shop in a 14-foot-wide, two-storey Victorian brick building is assessed taxes as if it were a 40-storey condo with a Shoppers Drug Mart in the podium. House of Lords owner Paul Burford called it double tax. John Anderson was talking about a 100 per cent tax increase in one year. Other landlords, pointing to the assessments, were talking about a 500 per cent increase in their taxes by 2020. It looks like this: one landlord in attendance showed me the tax bill on his building in the 500-block of Yonge. In 2016, he paid just over $22,000 in property tax. In 2017, he was asked to pay more than $48,000. And that increase was the first year of a four year phase in so he was told to expect similar increases every year until 2020. It is standard in commercial real estate for landlords to pass property tax increases directly to tenants commercial leases include a base rent paid to the landlord and then an additional rent premium that absorbs all costs such as taxes, which is adjusted each year. But landlords in attendance said they couldnt pass these increases to tenants, because the small retailers would be bankrupted, leaving the space vacant and the landlord with the bill. George Giaouris owns a building in the 500 block (Ive been here on Yonge St. since I was 9 years old, he says) and operates his own shop, North Bound Leather, on the main floor. My second floor tenant, he said at the meeting, Im supposed to tell them, Your base rent is $15 per square foot, now the assessment says your share of the (taxes), according to the assessment, is $22 per square foot? Thats just wrong. I cant do that. Some would say Giaouris and others like him ought to just sell their buildings to developers who can build something to justify the highest use taxation. But adding insult to injury, the landlords along Yonge dont even believe the valuations mean anything. The area is now covered as part of a Heritage Conservation District, which means the many existing two- and three-storey buildings that remain must be protected, as is. Any new towers to be built would have to be set behind the existing storefront buildings, in order to preserve the character of the neighbourhood. Which means the option of building a big condo there to cash in isnt even really available. This is, in a nutshell, very similar to the problem facing the converted warehouse building at 401 Richmond St. I wrote about earlier this year, where property taxes charged to little gallery and artist studio spaces were set to triple again thanks to highest and best use assessments reflecting condos going up on other lots in the neighbourhood. Unless we want every neighbourhood where a new residential condo is built to soon be razed and replaced by walls of identical towers, its a problem with our tax system we need to find a solution for. Those in attendance seemed to feel that taxes should be based on the current use of a property not some speculative higher or better use. A tiny book shop should be taxed as a tiny book shop, not as a massive condo that may or may not be viable on that site 20 years from now. Linda Malone, director of the IAM Yoga studio at 680 Yonge, told the meeting very specifically she and others were not anti-condo. In fact, she said, it was customers who live in some of the more recently built new units who she thought made her fledgling business viable. As the city changes, she said, it may even be that a lot of the businesses on Yonge would have to find a side-street locationperhaps even her own. But who here feels that we are being penalized at the expense of big developers? she asked, and almost everyone in the room raised their hands. We want a reasonable increase so we, as business owners, can find out if our businesses can grow with the city of Toronto. A 500 per cent tax increase is pushing us out. Edward Keenan writes on city issues ekeenan@thestar.ca . Follow: @thekeenanwire SHARE: A Toronto legal clinic that has advocated for the Black community for over two decades is in jeopardy of having its funding cut amid allegations of financial mismanagement. The African Canadian Legal Clinic has failed to address a number of issues, including misuse of public funds, since they first surfaced in 2009, according to a June 2016 decision from a committee of Legal Aid Ontarios board of directors. The decision, obtained this summer by Metro, found the clinic was in fundamental breach of its obligations under its funding agreement with Legal Aid Ontario. The decision specifically cites an audit by independent auditors PwC, which names Margaret Parsons, the clinics executive director, and found she charged $754 for a diamond ring to a company credit card in 2007. Auditors found no evidence the money had been paid back. The decision also alleges the clinic used money from undisclosed staff vacancies to pay out $170,000 in bonuses, including $121,000 that went to Parsons. In an interview with Metro, Parsons denied any wrongdoing and said no public funds were ever misused. She did not deny that she bought the ring with the card but says she paid it back twice and provided auditors with a receipt. She also said the clinic was transparent about staff vacancies and she never gave or received the bonuses. We've always been treated as a pariah of the clinic system, she said, adding the African Canadian Legal Clinic has been held to a higher standard than other community legal clinics. They have never given us a fair shake, she said about Legal Aid. Parsons said the non-profit clinic has 26 employees, with a budget of about $1.7 million a year that's for the most part public funding. The clinic committee of Legal Aids board of directors is expected to decide in the next few weeks if it will suspend the funding it provides. The money makes up 35 per cent of the clinics total annual income, according to Legal Aid, which Parsons confirmed. In 2016-17, Legal Aid gave $669,730 to the clinic, Legal Aid spokesman Graeme Burk said. Since 1994, the African Canadian Legal Clinic has advocated for the Black community on issues ranging from school board discrimination to carding. Before Black Lives Matter was around, this clinic was talking about anti-Black racism when no one wanted to say the word, Parsons said. Legal Aid's concerns date back several years. A 2003 forensic audit by Legal Aid Ontario identified several problems with management at the African Canadian Legal Clinic, the Toronto Star reported. Later that year, Legal Aid and the clinics board of directors announced a plan to address concerns, including accounting problems, according to the Star. Legal Aid staff became concerned again in 2009 following the resignation of two clinic board members over concerns of financial irregularities and gross misconduct and illegalities, the June 2016 decision states, referencing emails from the board members. Legal Aid hired PwC to complete a forensic audit that was finalized in 2013. Parsons disputes that the board members resigned because of financial concerns and said it was the clinic that requested the PwC audit. The PwC audit also found that a clinic credit card was used to buy alcohol from the LCBO for on-site Bacardi Friday events. A separate 2014 report from Legal Aid found $6,650 in unexplained cash advances using the African Canadian Legal Clinic's credit card and flagged $39,007 spent on taxis in Toronto. Parsons said in the interview that the taxis were legitimate travel expenses for clinic employees. She said the unexplained cash advances and alcohol purchases are due to a few employees who were immediately fired when she found out. She also said that the money was paid back to the clinic. Based on that report, the clinic was found in fundamental breach of its statutory obligations under the Legal Aid funding agreement and was instructed to meet eight conditions to avoid losing funding, ranging from training for board members to submitting a financial restructuring plan. The June 2016 decision found that the clinic had met only one of them: to co-operate with an audit of overtime. A second internal document from Legal Aid Ontario references a decision from early 2017 that found the African Canadian Legal Clinic had made some progress but had not fulfilled the eight conditions. It declared funding would be suspended March 31, 2017 unless there was full compliance from the board and management. Parsons and Rawle Elliott, the chair of the clinics board, told Metro that all conditions have since been met. Its challenging for a volunteer board, but weve met the challenge, Elliott said. Burk, the Legal Aid spokesperson, wrote in an email to Metro that whether or not (the clinic) has complied with the conditions is the very question before the Clinic Committee. We cannot comment beyond that. Julian Falconer, a lawyer hired to handle the issue for Legal Aid, said the agency has convened an advisory committee of African Canadian leaders who are helping to assess what the needs are in the community and how to meet them regardless of what direction the clinic committee takes. Its essential that at the end of the day the folks that were ultimately intended to be helped by legal services are not lost in what has been a difficult process, he added. Falconer said the findings of the clinic committee in the 2016 decision obtained by Metro speak for themselves. No one is happy with the nature of the allegations involved here. Everyone is concerned, he added. SHARE: How will the Donald Trump presidency end? It will end badly, so let me count the ways: 1. America is hurtling towards a constitutional crisis that will rock its institutions to the core. 2. Its president and his business empire will soon be exposed as beholden to Russian oligarchs and mobsters. 3. Trump will try to fire special counsel Robert Mueller to prevent this from becoming known, but Congress will intervene. 4. His only remaining hope will be a 9/11-scale disaster or contrived war that he can exploit. 5. If we are lucky enough to survive all of the above, Trump will resign before he is impeached but only in exchange for a pardon from his servile vice-president, Mike Pence. Read more: A brief oral history of the bonkers Anthony Scaramucci era Yes, this scenario is anything but far-fetched. One lesson we have learned from the slow-motion train wreck of this Trump presidency is that precise predictions are impossible to make. That is true, except for one thing. We are now getting a much clearer sense of where this high-stakes drama is heading. The details may change but the contours of this epic chapter in American political history are beginning to emerge. Although it has been another head-spinning week, perhaps the most important disclosure was a Washington Post story (notwithstanding reports that Mueller empanelled a grand jury to probe Russias ties to the 2016 campaign). The story suggested how centrally involved Donald Trump has become in the expanding inquiry about his secret connections with Russia. The story revealed that, contrary to previous public assurances, Trump himself dictated a misleading statement about the nature of a meeting with a Russian lawyer during the campaign. In August, U.S. President Donald Trump said he hopes for a "truly honest" outcome from the Russia investigation that has consumed the opening months of his presidency. (The Associated Press) Mueller, a former FBI head, is examining Russian interference in the 2016 election, including potential obstruction of justice and allegations of cover-up. But much to Trumps horror, Muellers investigation is expanding to include the history of connections between Trumps controversial business empire and Russian government and business interests. In this latter category are some of the most corrupt Russian oligarchs and mobsters, involved in widespread money laundering, who rose to prominence after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. On the surface at least, one of the most perplexing questions still unanswered from last Novembers shocking election result has been Trumps persistent refusal to single out Russia or President Vladimir Putin for dramatically interfering in the American presidential election. This has prompted many people in the U.S. and abroad, not only his critics, to ask the question: What does Russia have on Trump? Increasingly, it appears that the Mueller investigation will help answer that question by examining the close but largely secret relationship between the Trump empire and Russian financial interests. According to leaks, it has only been in recent days that Trump has realized that this Mueller probe, if not stopped, may even include an examination of his tax returns that he has been so stubborn to keep secret. A revealing preview of what Mueller is undoubtedly discovering was featured as the extensive cover story of Septembers issue of the U.S. magazine New Republic. Written by investigative journalist Craig Unger, the story was titled: Married to the Mob: What Trump Owes the Russian Mafia. Unger was stark in his conclusions: Whether Trump knew it or not, Russian mobsters and corrupt oligarchs used his properties not only to launder vast sums of money from extortion, drugs, gambling and racketeering, but even as a base of operations for their criminal activities. In the process, they propped up Trumps business and enabled him to reinvent his image. Without the Russian mafia, it is fair to say, Donald Trump would not be president of the United States. More than anyone, Trump knows what Mueller will discover. He knows the legal peril that he and his family are in. He also knows that his presidency is certain to end in some way if that story ever becomes public. We should remember this when we see how Trump acts in the weeks to come. Like a cornered rat, he will fight to protect his interests. In every conceivable way, he will work to stop Muellers probe, to challenge Congress if it intervenes, to undermine the press and judiciary if they get in the way and yes even to engage in reckless military adventures if he thought that would strengthen his position. This next stage of this Trump story will no longer be a diverting reality show. It will be the moment when Americans and the rest of us will learn if U.S. democracy is strong enough to stop him. Tony Burman is former head of Al Jazeera English and CBC News. Reach him @TonyBurman or at tony.burman@gmail.com Read more about: SHARE: The next Ontario election is 44 weeks away, but political games are already at a fever pitch. This week, the Liberals filed a formal complaint with Elections Ontario claiming both the Progressive Conservatives and the New Democrats have broken the provinces tough new fundraising law. But the governing partys allegations against their main rivals do not seem to hold water. On Wednesday, David Clarke, the Liberals executive director, complained in writing to Chief Electoral Officer Greg Essensa that the Tories and New Democrats are flouting the restrictions triggered by a Star probe last year. I am concerned about multiple apparent contraventions of the Election Finances Act . . . by at least 14 nominated candidates from the . . . PC Party and further apparent contraventions of the law by two (NDP MPPs), wrote Clarke. I ask that you fully investigate these allegations. The Liberals claim a $500-a-plate July 27 dinner at One King West attended by 14 nominated Tory candidates violated a ban on politicians going to such fundraisers. In fact, Elections Ontario assured the Tories on June 26 that nominated candidates can attend a fundraising event between the end of their nomination meeting and the day the writ is dropped. The independent overseer of provincial campaigns confirmed that to the Star on Thursday. Under the Election Finances Act . . . the effective date of registration is deemed to be the date of issue of the writ. We have provided this information to all political parties, said Election Ontarios Cara Des Granges. With the next election set for June 7, 2018, that means the campaign does not officially begin until May 9. In their letter to Essensa, the Liberals also alleged that the New Democrats broke the law at a separate event on July 18 in Niagara Falls. They believe that raising $20,175 at MPP Wayne Gates nomination meeting was illegal because both Gates and NDP deputy leader Jagmeet Singh were in attendance. However, an Elections Ontario bulletin issued to the parties this summer specifically spelled out a list of where attendance restrictions do not apply. These include to fundraisers where the attendees pay no fee or charge to gain entry to meet a party leader or MPP, but have the option of making contributions by bidding in a silent auction at the event . . . (or at) an annual general meeting where no contribution is embedded in the entry fee. Rick Dykstra, president of the Progressive Conservative party, expressed astonishment that the Liberals do not appear to grasp a law they crafted and passed. Several months ago, the PC party did its due diligence to read the law, confirm with Elections Ontario what the law means, and fully abide by it, said Dykstra. It would appear by this complaint that the Ontario Liberal Party has not read, or is unable to understand, the law they wrote, he said. But the Liberal partys ignorance to the law should come as no surprise given their own very serious legal problems. Thats a reference to two trials of former Liberal aides that begin next month in Toronto and Sudbury. The New Democrats also blasted the Grits for wasting Elections Ontarios resources by calling for investigations into petty grievances. Ontario families would be better served if Kathleen Wynne and the Liberal party spent less time making frivolous complaints and more time addressing the needs of Ontarians, said Karla Webber-Gallagher, the NDP provincial secretary. Webber-Gallagher emphasized that the New Democrats are confident that all rules were respected. Wynne moved to reform Ontarios lax fundraising rules after the Star revealed in March 2016 that Liberal cabinet ministers had secret annual party targets of up to $500,000 apiece. Under the changes, which took effect on Jan. 1, corporate and union donations are banned, MPPs and registered candidates cannot attend fundraisers, and the individual contribution limit has dropped to $1,200. To offset the lost donation revenue, parties receive yearly $2.71-per-vote public subsidies based on the results of the 2014 election. The Liberals, with 1,863,974 votes, receive $5.06 million annually; the Tories, with 1,508,811 votes, $4.09 million; the NDP, with 1,144,822 votes, $3.1 million; and the Greens, with 232,536 votes, $630,000. Read more about: SHARE: For a year now, 4-year-old Sidney Fahrenbruch has wanted to be a police officer. She wears a specially sized police uniform and has brought officers candy on Halloween, pies at Thanksgiving and cookies for Christmas, according to her mom Megan Fahrenbruch. This past month, she also enlisted an officers help to make sure her new home in Longmont, Colorado, was monster free after meeting him at a barbecue. She brought her police outfit with the hat and he let her play with the sirens and it was all over, laughed Megan Fahrenbruch. Sidney invited officer David Bonday over to scour some nooks and crannies in her unfamiliar digs shortly after her family moved in last month. Megan Fahrenbruch says her daughter doesnt really buy into the idea of monsters, but the aspiring police officer smelled an opportunity to hang out with an officer. She was all excited and she waited for him outside, Megan Fahrenbruch said. Sidney again wore her police uniform for the hunt, which turned up zero bogeymen. In video taken by Sidneys mom, Bonday tells the girl shes super brave as she peers under her sofa and its cushions with the officers flashlight for any offending beasts. When asked by a reporter what shed do if she saw a monster, Sidney replied Id punch it in the face, her mom said. The Longmont Police Department posted on Facebook about the monster hunt, writing Monsters can be a frightening experience for children. It turns out though, that with a little help, you really can get these unfriendly folks out of your house. SHARE: WASHINGTONThe White House said Wednesday that compliments President Donald Trump described receiving from the Mexican president and the Boy Scouts of America happened just not on the phone, as Trump had claimed. I wouldnt say it was a lie. Thats a pretty bold accusation, White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders told reporters. The conversations took place, they just simply didnt take place over a phone call. . . . He had them in person. It was the latest episode in Trumps rocky relationship with facts, raising questions about his credibility six tumultuous months into his presidency. A Quinnipiac University National Poll conducted July 27-Aug. 1 found that 34 per cent of Americans say Trump is honest, an all-time low for him. Sanders was responding to questions about a statement from the Mexican government denying what Trump described as a recent phone call with Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto. Trump said earlier this week that Pena Nieto had called him to praise his immigration policies. As you know, the border was a tremendous problem and theyre close to 80 per cent stoppage. Even the president of Mexico called me. They said their southern border, very few people are coming because they know theyre not going to get through our border, which is the ultimate compliment, Trump said Monday. Sanders said Trump had been referencing a conversation that they had had at the G-20 summit where they specifically talked about the issues that he referenced. Meanwhile, the Boy Scouts denied Wednesday that the head of the youth organization called Trump to shower praise on his politically aggressive speech to its national jamboree in West Virginia. President Randall Stephenson and chief Scout executive Mike Surbaugh later apologized to members of the scouting community who were offended by Trumps political rhetoric. Trump told The Wall Street Journal in an interview last week, I got a call from the head of the Boy Scouts saying it was the greatest speech that was ever made to them, and they were very thankful. Sanders said the president was making reference to multiple members of the Boy Scout leadership who congratulated him, praised him and offered quite powerful compliments following his speech. But she acknowledged no member of the leadership called the president. Read more about: SHARE: WASHINGTONU.S. President Donald Trump is obsessed with this election win, thinks New Hampshire is a drug-infested den, worries about looking like a dope and doesnt want to talk publicly about who is going to pay for the wall. These are among the themes and standout moments from Trumps January telephone conversations with Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto and Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull. The Washington Post obtained transcripts of the calls and published them Thursday. Read more Putin was a pleasant call. This is ridiculous: Full transcripts of Trumps calls with Mexico and Australia Do not worry about Canada, Trump says in leaked transcript. We do not even think about them Stop saying Mexico is not going to pay for the wall, Trump urges Mexican president in leaked transcript Here are eight of the most jaw-dropping passages from the calls, with added context: 1. New Hampshire is a drug-infested den Trump to Pena Nieto: We have the drug lords in Mexico that are knocking the hell out of our country. They are sending drugs to Chicago, Los Angeles and to New York. Up in New Hampshire I won New Hampshire because New Hampshire is a drug-infested den is coming from the southern border. So we have a lot of problems with Mexico farther than the economic problem. We are becoming a drug-addicted nation and most of the drugs are coming from Mexico or certainly from the southern border. But I will say this you have that problem, too. You have some pretty tough hombres in Mexico that you may need help with, and we are willing to help you with that big league. Recall that Trumps critics hit him hard for using the phrase bad hombres during a presidential debate in October, so it is striking that he would repeat a variation in a call with the president of Mexico. Trumps dim appraisal of New Hampshire recalls his description of American carnage in his inauguration speech seven days earlier. 2. This was my most unpleasant call Trump to Turnbull: Look, I spoke to Putin, Merkel, Abe of Japan, to France today, and this was my most unpleasant call. This is extraordinary language for the leader of one friendly country to say to another. The whole point of these phone calls, days after Trump was inaugurated, was for the two leaders to get to know each other and start things off on the best possible note. Trump steamrolled that objective when he compared his conversation with the Australian prime minister, leader of one of Americas staunchest allies, to Russian President Vladimir Putin, who had just meddled in the U.S. election, and deemed Putin more pleasant. The Post published a summary of this conversation in February, reporting that 25 minutes into what was expected to be an hour-long call, Trump abruptly ended it. Now the full transcript is public. 3. Enrique, if I can interrupt Pena Nieto: To tell you the truth, Mr. President, I feel quite surprised about this new proposal that you are making because it is different from the discussion that both of our teams have been holding. Trump: Enrique, if I can interrupt this is not a new proposal. This is what I have been saying for a year and a half on the campaign trail. I have been telling this to every group of 50,000 people or 25,000 people because no one got the people in their rallies as big as I did. But I have been saying I wanted to tax people that treated us unfairly at the border, and Mexico is treating us unfairly. The proposal that caught Pena Nieto by surprise was a tariff on goods imported from Mexico to the United States. Trump agreed that a tariff had not been discussed in talks between White House adviser Jared Kushner and Mexican Foreign Minister Luis Videgaray but said Pena Nieto should have expected it, based on Trumps campaign rhetoric. Note the way Trumps slips in a boast about his crowd size. 4. I hate taking these people Trump to Turnbull: I hate taking these people. I guarantee you they are bad. That is why they are in prison right now. They are not going to be wonderful people who go on to work for the local milk people. In both phone calls, Trump seems singularly focused on bad people getting into the U.S. and how bad it will make him look. He had just signed an executive order banning travellers from seven majority-Muslim nations (which courts would later block). His logic is that if he agrees to take in 1,250 immigrants who landed in Australia, per a deal the Obama administration made, hell look like a hypocrite. Especially if Trumps greatest fear is realized and one of these people turns into the Boston bomber (his words) or the next San Bernardino or World Trade Centers (also his words). Nevermind that Turnbull explains to Trump, several times, that these immigrants were vetted both by Australian and U.S. security officials. 5. I had 84 per cent with the Cuban American vote Trump to Pena Nieto: In the latest election, I won with a large percentage of Hispanic voters. I do not know if you heard, but with Cuba, I had 84 per cent with the Cuban American vote. But overall generally, I had well over 30 per cent, and everyone was shocked to see this. I understand the community, and they understand me, and I have a great respect for the Mexican people. Trump loves to brag about his victory, but it is not clear where he came up with his statistic about Cuban American voters. According to the Pew Research Center, Trump did win 54 per cent of the Cuban American vote in Florida, but the White House has not been able to back up Trumps claim to have won 84 per cent of the Cuban American vote nationally. On the overall Latino vote, Trump is in the ballpark. He got 28 per cent of the vote, according to exit polling. 6. Why do you discriminate against boats? Trump to Turnbull: What is the thing with boats? Why do you discriminate against boats? In these phone calls, Trump also displays a very shallow understanding of foreign policy. Here, he seems baffled by Australias policy of rejecting refugees who arrive by boat, despite the fact that Turnbull had also explained several times that its a deterrent policy: Anyone who tries to migrate to Australia by water will automatically get kicked out. So we said if you try to come to Australia by boat, even if we think you are the best person in the world, even if you are a Nobel Prize winning genius, we will not let you in, Turnbull finally says. 7. They are having rallies for Trump right now because Trump has taken a hard stance on Mexico Trump to Pena Nieto: In Ohio, they are having rallies for Trump right now because Trump has taken a hard stance on Mexico. We lost a lot of factories in Ohio and Michigan, and I won these states some of these states have not been won in 38 years by a Republican, and I won them very easily. So they are dancing in the streets. You probably have the same thing where they are dancing in your streets also but in reverse. Trumps habit of talking about himself in the third person is on display here as is his sense of humour. His line about Mexicans dancing in the streets in reverse appears to be a joke about protests against his election. 8. I look like a dope Trump to Turnbull: I look like a dope. This was about the Australian refugee deal again. Trumps singular focus on letting bad people into the country seems derived from his concern for his public reputation. Trump ran on reining in immigration, and he seemed worried that honouring a deal made by the Obama administration would hurt his credibility, or at the very least make him look like a hypocrite. This is going to kill me, he told Turnbull. I am the worlds greatest person that does not want to let people into the country ... It makes me look so bad, and I have only been here a week. Read more about: SHARE: JOHANNESBURGAl Qaedas North Africa branch has freed a South African man who was held hostage for six years in Mali and he is now home, South Africas government announced Thursday, denying it had paid any ransom. Stephen McGown, who was released on July 25, was the longest-held of a number of foreigners seized by Islamic extremists in Mali, where several armed groups roam the West African countrys north. The extremists have made a fortune over the last decade abducting foreigners in the vast Sahel region and demanding enormous ransoms for their release. South Africas minister for international relations, Maite Nkoana-Mashabane, said the government does not pay ransom in hostage situations. But South African aid organization Gift of the Givers Foundation, which helped mediate McGowns release, told The Associated Press that its representative spoke on several occasions with an Al Qaeda intermediary in Mali about the extremists demands for several million dollars. Gift of the Givers founder Imtiaz Sooliman said he was unaware what if any payment was made in exchange for McGowns freedom, as the group was not involved in the final stage. Im ecstatic. It doesnt matter how he came out. He came out, Sooliman said. McGown was kidnapped in 2011 at a hostel in Timbuktu, where he had been travelling as a tourist. He also has British citizenship. It was a big surprise when Stephen walked through the door, his father, Malcolm, told reporters. He felt as sound and as strong as before. McGowns release follows that of Swedish national Johan Gustafsson, who was freed in late June after being kidnapped along with McGown in November 2011. Swedish officials denied that a ransom had been paid, as other European governments have done to secure the release of their citizens in the Sahel. A Dutch tourist seized in the same abduction was freed in a French raid in 2015. In early July, the 42-year-old McGown was included in a proof-of-life video released by the Al Qaeda-linked Nusrat al-Islam wal Muslimeen group in Mali. The video showed six foreign hostages shortly before French President Emmanuel Macron arrived for an anti-terror summit. No genuine negotiations have begun to rescue your children, a narrator of the video said. Gift of the Givers had tried to secure the release of McGown and Gustafsson since 2015, sending a negotiator into remote parts of Mali and Niger. We have reached a dead end, the group said in a May 17 statement. Sooliman said the group handed over negotiations to the governments of South Africa and Mali. Brian Dube, spokesman for the Ministry of State Security, told the AP that Malis government, non-governmental groups and other individuals were involved in negotiations but didnt give details. We can confirm that he has been released without any conditions whatsoever, Dube said. In May, McGowns mother, Beverley McGown, died after an illness after waiting in vain for years for her son to be freed. McGowns father on Thursday told reporters his son will pick himself up and rejoin life at home after the loss. McGowns wife, Catherine, described their first exchange on reuniting: He looked at me and said, Wow, your hairs grown! I said, Your hairs longer than mine now! Dube, the Ministry of State Security spokesman, didnt give details about the conditions of McGowns captivity but said he was in good health, his mind is sharp and he was looked after well. He has had multiple medical checkups and has been told to rest, Dube said. Extremists are still believed to be holding a Colombian nun taken from Mali, an Australian doctor and a Romanian man seized at different times in Burkina Faso, and an American who was working with a non-profit organization in Niger. Islamic extremists seized control of Malis north in 2012. While they were forced out of strongholds a year later by a French-led military intervention, jihadists continue to attack Malian and French soldiers and UN peacekeepers. Five regional countries Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Burkina Faso and Chad have now created a 5,000-strong multinational military force against the extremists. Read more about: SHARE: Last week, a photograph that appeared to show six women wearing burkas on a bus sparked a heated debate in a private Facebook group for Norwegians critical of immigration. For many members of the group, which is called Fedrelandet viktigst or Fatherland first, the image encapsulated the problems Norway was facing after an influx of Muslim immigrants in the past few years. It also played into a continentwide debate about Islamic dress across Europe. Norways right-wing government recently proposed a law that would ban some forms of dress worn by Muslim women in schools and universities the first Scandinavian country to do so. The burka, a long, loose veil worn by some Muslims in Afghanistan and other parts of South Asia, would be restricted under the law, as would the face-covering niqab more commonly worn in Arab countries. Masks and other items of clothing that cover the face would also be restricted. Some group members took the picture posted with the comment, what do people think of this? as proof that a ban was needed. More than 100 soon commented on it. It looks really scary, should be banned. You can never know who is under there. Could be terrorists with weapons, one user wrote, according to a translation from the Local website. Others described it as frightening and tragic. However, when you look at the photograph above more closely, it may become apparent that the photo itself is irrelevant to any debate about Islam in Norway. Why? Well, those are not burkas. Theyre bus seats. Johan Slattavik, the user who initially posted the photographs to Fedrelandet viktigst, told the Washington Post in a Facebook message that he had been bored one night so he decided to play a little practical joke. Slattavik is a journalist and says he was curious to see how people would react. I laid out the photo to see what happened, he said, adding that he was shocked so many people fell for it. I ended up having a good laugh, Slattavik said. The strange situation went viral in Norway on Friday, when another Facebook user named Sindre Beyer posted images of the exchange to his own Facebook page. What happens when a photo of some empty bus seats is posted to a disgusting Facebook group and nearly everyone thinks they see a bunch of burkas? Beyer wrote, along with two embarrassed emoticons. Beyers images of the Fedrelandet viktigst Facebook were widely shared, attracting more than 1,600 shares and almost 3,000 likes. Many mocked the anti-immigrant tone of the original comments. Then it is proven: The meanest are also the stupidest, wrote one. Another offered their own interpretation of the image: Think I passed the test, since the first thing I saw was a bunch of Darth Vaders. Beyer told Norwegian news outlet Nettavisen that he had shared it so people could see whats happening in the dark corners of the internet. The mockery has resulted in some angry reactions, Slattavik said, but he did not take them seriously. I would say that has also been educational, he said. I have thought about the differences between legitimate criticism of immigration to Europe and blind racism and xenophobia. I wanted to look into these differences: something I think I have achieved by setting up this practical joke and watching the reactions. Norway is one of a number of countries in Europe that has proposed laws that restrict the wearing of burkas and niqabs, but these restrictions have faced criticism from those who say they further isolate Muslim immigrants. After Germany proposed a ban on full-face veils last year, some German journalists argued that burkas and niqabs were worn by only a tiny fraction of Muslims in the country. Read more about: SHARE: WASHINGTONTrade with Canada is so fair and balanced, U.S. President Donald Trump told his Mexican counterpart in January, that we do not even think about them. Trump made the remarks in a phone call with Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto on Jan. 27, a week after his inauguration. A transcript of the call was obtained by the Washington Post and published on Thursday, just under two weeks before the beginning of negotiations on revisions to the North American Free Trade Agreement. Read more Putin was a pleasant call. This is ridiculous: Full transcripts of Trumps calls with Mexico and Australia Stop saying Mexico is not going to pay for the wall, Trump urges Mexican president in leaked transcript NAFTA talks could hinge on Mexicos disproportionate share of auto investment, jobs Well, Canada is no problem do not worry about Canada, do not even think about them, Trump said after Pena Nieto made reference to the three countries that are part of NAFTA. That is a separate thing and they are fine and we have had a very fair relationship with Canada. It has been much more balanced and much more fair. So we do not have to worry about Canada, we do not even think about them. Those private words were in line with Trumps public words during Prime Minister Justin Trudeaus visit to Washington three weeks later, when Trump called the trade relationship with Canada very outstanding. But they went even further, suggesting Trumps frequent campaign complaints about NAFTA were solely focused on Mexico. Trump, perhaps seeking negotiating leverage, has since started talking tougher about Canada. In April, he railed against Canada over an arcane dairy dispute and slapped tariffs on Canadian softwood lumber. People dont realize Canadas been very rough on the United States. Everyone thinks of Canada being wonderful and civil, he said in April. I love Canada. But theyve outsmarted our politicians for many years, and you people understand that. Dan Ujczo, an Ohio-based trade lawyer focused on Canada-U.S. issues, said Trump talking up Canada to the president of Mexico was in line with a lifelong negotiating tactic. We have witnessed that this is a president whose modus operandi is to pit parties against each other in any negotiation, whether on staff, his Cabinet, or members of Congress, Ujczo said. This could be relevant on areas where Canadas and Mexicos interests diverge, such as in agriculture. Canada did not come up again in the January call. In the most noteworthy portion, Trump pleaded with Pena Nieto to stop publicly saying that Mexico would not pay for Trumps border wall and promised Pena Nieto that the funding would come out in the wash and work out in the formula somehow. Trump, asking Pena Nieto to help fight the tough hombres behind Mexicos drug trade, also declared the state of New Hampshire a drug-infested den. NAFTA talks begin in Washington on Aug. 16. Trumps administration has issued a lengthy wish list of desired changes that would affect Canada on issues from telecommunications to online shopping. Read more about: SHARE: CHICAGOPolice are searching for a Northwestern University professor and a University of Oxford employee suspected in the stabbing death of a Chicago man and have alerted law enforcement agencies around the country that the pair should be considered armed and dangerous. Anthony Guglielmi, a Chicago police spokesman, said Wednesday that a Cook County judge issued first-degree murder warrants for Wyndham Lathem, 42, and Andrew Warren, 56, in the killing of Trenton Cornell-Duranleau. Cornell-Duranleau, 26, was stabbed to death last week in a 10th floor apartment believed to be Lathams in the River North neighbourhood. Police have not released a possible motive or said how they linked the suspects to the killing, but Guglielmi said security camera footage shows them leaving the building that night. Guglielmi said Lathem and Cornell-Duranleau knew each other, but he didnt know any details about the relationship. He said investigators determined that Warren, who lives in England, came to the U.S. recently for the first time, but he didnt know if Warren knew the victim. Officers went to the apartment last Thursday night after the person working at the buildings front desk called to report that hed received an anonymous call about a crime having been committed in that unit. Cornell-Duranleau, who lived in the Heart of Chicago neighbourhood on the citys lower West Side, was pronounced dead at the scene. The medical examiners office said he died of multiple sharp force injuries. A Northwestern University spokesman, Alan Cubbage, said in a news release that the school is co-operating with the investigation and that Lathem has been placed on administrative leave and banned from entering school property. He said there is no indication that Lathem, an associate professor of microbiology-immunology who has been on the faculty since 2007, is a danger to anyone at the school. Warren is a senior treasury assistant at Somerville College in England, which is part of the Oxford University network, according to a university website. According to an obituary posted by Cornell-Duranleaus family on the website of The Argus-Press of Owosso, Michigan, Cornell-Duranleau had a cosmetology license. The obituary doesnt say when Cornell-Duranleau came to Chicago, and the family didnt reply to calls seeking comment. SHARE: WASHINGTONIt wasnt until the media started asking questions that the White Houses introduction of a law curtailing legal immigration got contentious. During the daily press briefing, CNNs Jim Acosta, himself a son of Cuban immigrants, challenged senior adviser Stephen Miller on a component of the proposed bill which would grant English-speakers more favour in gaining admission to the United States. Arent you trying to change what it means to be an immigrant coming into this country if youre telling them you have to speak English? Acosta asked. Cant people learn how to speak English when they get here? The answer is, of course, that they can. As President Trumps grandfather did. As Stephen Millers great-grandparents did. And as a member of Trumps own Cabinet did. The policy, the Raise Act, would introduce a point-based system for new applicants to enter the U.S. In addition to speaking English, points would be awarded based on these other answers that Miller mentioned: Can they support themselves and their families financially? Do they have a skill that will add to the U.S. economy? Are they being paid a high wage? (Canada already uses a points system for skilled applicants that takes similar factors into account, including immigrants abilities in English or French.) Were that policy in place in 1885, Friedrich Trumpf would likely not have gained entry to the United States. The immigration record for his arrival that year indicates that he arrived without an identifiable calling: The word none sits next to his name in that column. A biographer of Trumpf father of Fred Trump, who was the father of the president told Deutsche Welle that Donald Trumps grandfather didnt speak English when he got here. He came to New York, Gwenda Blair said, and, after he learnt English, he went to the West Coast, ran restaurants, amassed a nest egg, then went back to Kallstadt, married the girl next door and brought her to New York. It was on the West Coast that Trumpf (now just Trump) became a citizen and registered to vote in the 1892 election. But: No skills, no English. Would he have gotten in? Donald Trumps mother, Mary McLoed, would have had more luck. An immigrant from Scotland, she is listed on Census documents as speaking English, though a Politico profile of her from last year notes that she spoke almost exclusively in Scots Gaelic before leaving for a new life in the United States at age 18. Were Friedrich Trumpf barred entry, there might not be a President Trump. But if this law had been in effect a century ago, there also may not have been a senior adviser Stephen Miller. Reporter Jennifer Mendelsohn tracked down Millers genealogy. She discovered that Millers fathers mother his great-grandmother, Sarah Miller was identified in the 1910 Census as speaking only Yiddish. Whats more, the Los Angeles Times obituary for Millers grandmother Freya makes special mention of how her parents, Nathan and Frannie Baker, epitomized the American Dream. Teaching each other English, working together to build a nest egg, the two immigrants eventually bought a small grocery store, it reads. The Baker Family lived upstairs and all the family worked in the store. Freya, and her two brothers, were educated in the superb public school system. Other senior Trump officials have family trees that suggest ancestors who may have been barred entry at Ellis Island. Kellyanne Conways great-grandfather was named Pasquale Lombardo, and was born in Naples, Italy. A man of that name and the proper age is identified in the 1910 Census as living in Pennsylvania and working as a blast furnace labourer who spoke only Italian. Stephen K. Bannons great-great-grandfather was a man named Mattias Herr, who was born in Bavaria in 1836 before moving to Maryland. Its not clear whether he spoke English or knew a skilled trade. Mike Pence like most Americans is also the grandchild of an immigrant. His mothers father, Richard Michael Crawley, immigrated from Ireland to work as a bus driver. He did speak English, though, and likely would have cleared admission under the Raise Act. As mentioned above, though, at least one member of Trumps Cabinet didnt. Elaine Chao, Trumps secretary of transportation (and wife of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell), was born in Taiwan and came to the United States in 1961, when she was 8. She described that transition in a CNN interview last month. I remember how tough it was to try to learn a new culture, a new language and just to adapt to, like, ordinary daily stuff like the food. Like, most Chinese dont eat meat between breads, she said. As she tried to learn the language, the kids were mean to me, she said. Her father, who spoke English, was already in the U.S. when Chao and her mother and sisters arrived, working in the maritime industry. Would that have been enough to warrant admission? To bring over his family? This, it seems, was Acostas point: Doesnt two centuries of experience show that people who arrive in America without the ability to speak English or a highly skilled trade can have a significant impact on the future of the country? Read more about: SHARE: Qatar Airways could have done a deal with American Airlines Airlines Group Inc. (AAL) - Get Free Report and it would probably have benefited from doing so, but CEO Akbar Al-Baker seemed to do everything wrong. Qatar said on June 22 it wanted to buy 10% of American Airlines. It clarified to say that it planned initially to buy up to 4.75% of American shares, the maximum American permits without advance notice to its board. During the following month, Al-Baker ignored a suggestion from the Allied Pilots Association, which represents American pilots, that it would be willing to talk. He called U.S. flight attendants "grandmothers" in a speech, then apologized, even seeking to call Sarah Nelson, president of the Association of Flight Attendants. He also leased planes to British Airways so it could fly through a strike. On Wednesday, Aug. 2, Qatar gave up. It said it "has taken the decision not to proceed with its proposed passive financial investment in American Airlines. "Further review of the proposed financial investment, taking into account the latest public disclosure of American Airlines, has demonstrated that the investment no longer meets our objectives," Qatar said. No word yet on what disclosure was so disturbing. Al-Baker may be perceived as a dealmaker, but if he wanted to make this deal, he should have watched his language and worked with the unions. After all, 83% of American Airlines employees are union members. "An entry door was provided," said APA spokesman Dennis Tajer. "But instead of knocking, Qatar tried to torch the door to gain entry." Would it have been helpful to work with labor on a major transaction involving American? It worked for Doug Parker. The way he got to be American's CEO was to enlist the aid of APA, the Association of Professional Flight Attendants and the Transport Workers Union in backing a plan to replace previous management during bankruptcy. In fact, management at all three global U.S. airlines have found that it is in their interest to work with unions. At United Continental Holdings Inc., President Scott Kirby may be rebuilding the network, but first CEO Oscar Munoz made believers of the labor unions. At Delta Air Lines Inc., the strategy since bankruptcy has been to work with the Air Line Pilots Association while fighting aggressively to keep other workers from organizing. It is true that from day one, American Airlines opposed the concept of a major Qatar Airways investment. But initially, before the "grandmother" remark, that seemed largely predicated on the divergence of the two party's views on unfettered U.S. expansion by the subsidized Middle East three carriers -- Emirates, Etihad and Qatar - in violation of the Open Skies agreements that have enabled the expansion. Isn't it possible that Qatar would have been willing to make a deal with American that would have harmed the two United Arab Emirates carriers by leaving them on the wrong side of a subsidies battle? At the moment, their country is blockading Qatar. Sell them out? Where does the line form? Qatar Airways is already closely involved with three of American's closest partners. Like American, Qatar Airways is a Oneworld member. It owns 20% of International Consolidated Airlines Group SA, owner of British Airways and Iberia. It also owns 10% of South America's Latam Airlines Group SA. American has a trans-Atlantic joint venture with British Airways and Iberia -- the trio share revenue, aircraft, decisions and information regarding trans-Atlantic flights. Moreover, American is exploring a joint venture in Latin America with Latam. Qatar not only could have furthered its strategic investment plan, but also it could have seized an opportunity to invest in a profitable airline. On American's earnings call last week, Parker said, "This is an airline that can produce over $5 billion pretax profits on a normal year, and we feel today that we're undervalued." Sounds like a good place to put some money, both to encourage synergies and to make money. Too bad Al-Baker couldn't make it work. This article is commentary by an independent contributor. At the time of publication, the author held no positions in the stocks mentioned. Special Counsel Robert Mueller has impaneled a grand jury to investigate Russia's interference in the 2016 election. The grand jury began its work in recent weeks, according to a report from The Wall Street Journal on Thursday. The step is a sign that his inquiry into the matter is growing in intensity and entering a new phase, according to two people familiar with matter cited by the Journal. Mueller, a former director of the FBI, was appointed by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein in May to oversee the investigation into Russia's meddling in the 2016 election and potential ties between the Trump campaign and Russia. The president has vigorously denied allegations of collusion, even as revelations regarding his associates' activities continue to unfold. Before Mueller's appointment, federal prosecutors had been using at least one other grand jury in Alexandria, Virginia, to assist in their criminal investigation of former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, according to the Journal. The probe has been taken over by Mueller's team. Grand juries allow prosecutors to subpoena documents, put witnesses under oath and seek indictments if there is evidence of a crime. Trump has slammed the Russia investigation as a "witch hunt," and his aides and advisers insist it is much ado about nothing, despite reports that often suggest otherwise. The president's son, Donald Trump Jr., has come under scrutiny for setting up a meeting at Trump Tower last summer on the promise of obtaining damaging information about Hillary Clinton from Russians. His son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and his former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, attended the meeting and have also been key figures in the ongoing probe. Ty Cobb, special counsel to the president, told the Journal he wasn't aware Mueller had started using a new grand jury. "Grand jury matters are typically secret," he said. "The White House favors anything that accelerates the conclusion of his work fairly.... The White House is committed to fully cooperating with Mr. Mueller." President Trump raised eyebrows when he fired FBI Director Jim Comey in May. Speculation has swirled he might seek to dismiss Mueller and Attorney General Jeff Sessions, with whom he has publicly expressed his displeasure over the former Alabama senator's recusal from all Russia-related matters. Incoming White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said on Monday that the president has "100% confidence" in all of his Cabinet members, including Sessions. A bipartisan group of senators have moved to protect Mueller's job with legislation that would block Trump from outright firing him. SNC-Lavalin, a leading engineering and construction group, has announced that it has received a notice from Salalah Methanol Company (SMC) to proceed with the engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) phase of its anhydrous liquid ammonia plant project, located in Salalah, Oman. This phase follows the early works programme, which was awarded earlier this year. The EPC work has been authorised by SMC while it concludes the final stages of the projects financial arrangements. SMC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Oman Oil Company (OOC), awarded SNC-Lavalin the EPC contract in March this year. The contract covers a 1,000-tonne per day anhydrous liquid ammonia plant, including its utilities and off-site infrastructure. We are very excited about this opportunity to pursue our work with SMC, said Etienne Cabanes, senior vice president, Europe, Middle East and North Africa, mining and metallurgy. We look forward to ensuring the successful execution of this project with the utmost care for quality, safety, environment and the community in Salalah. SNC-Lavalin is pleased to enter into this next phase of the Salalah ammonia project, which is of great importance for SMC and the Sultanate of Oman," said Jose J Suarez, president, mining and metallurgy, SNC-Lavalin. This project demonstrates that our strong expertise is recognised by clients and major financial institutions alike, and we are committed in offering our client and the region a world-class project that they are going to be proud of. - TradeArabia News Service The President General of the NUGFW and NATUC, James Lambert says, too many people in the cou Two-time Olympic judo champion Peter Seisenbacher, who was placed on the international wanted list, has been detained in Kyiv on sexual assault charges, Austrian newspaper Wiener Zeitung has reported. The 57-year-old Austrian is accused of committing the sexual assault of minors. Ukrainian criminal prosecutors detained the judoka in Kyiv on August 1. The extradition of the Austrian is now being considered. Seisenbacher won twice at the Olympic Games - in Los Angeles in 1984 and in Seoul 1988. Subsequently, he successfully trained the national teams of Georgia and Azerbaijan. In October 2016, he was accused of sexual offenses against minors. op Ukraine hopes to break the deadlock in talks with Canada on the provision of lethal defensive weapons and the strengthening of sanctions against Russia, Ukrainian Ambassador to Canada Andriy Shevchenko has said. "We are convinced that we can progress significantly in this direction with Canada," he said in an interview with Canada's CBC television channel. According to him, the United States also favors the need to strengthen support for Ukraine. "Many people in Washington understand the enormous need for more sanctions against Russia and aid to Ukraine with defensive weapons," the ambassador said. In his opinion, the position of the United States and Canada refraining from these steps will change. "There is agreement that pressure on Russia should be strengthened," the diplomat said. The interview was recorded before President Donald Trump signed H.R. 3364, the "Countering America's Adversaries Through Sanctions Act," which, among other things, foresee increasing pressure on Russia and support for the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine. op Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine Oleksandr Turchynov has initiated a meeting of the Ukrainian-South Korean commission on military and technical cooperation, according to a report posted on his official website. Turchynov met with South Korean Ambassador to Ukraine Lee Yang-goo on August 2. During the meeting, the sides discussed the deepening of bilateral cooperation in the military and space spheres, as well as holding a meeting of the bilateral commission to speed up the implementation of joint projects. "There is a large range of directions in which we could bring our cooperation to a fundamentally new level," Turchynov said. He said that the two countries have a lot in common. "Ukraine and the Republic of Korea, in the conditions of military confrontation, were forced to ensure the socio-economic and democratic development of their countries." Lee Yang-goo, in turn, emphasized the interest of the South Korean government in deepening cooperation with Ukraine. He also said that the Republic of Korea supports the territorial integrity and sovereignty of Ukraine. "We understand you perfectly well. After all, South Korea has suffered crushing wars, external pressure and powerful economic crises, but without it our country would have never become so strong and advanced as it is now. Any crisis gives us an opportunity for further development," Lee Yang-goo said. The 5th International Economic Forum Ukraine-South Korea was held in Kyiv in late July 2017. op In January-June of 2017, Ukrainian agrarian exports to the European Union countries increased by 31.4% or by USD 663.4 million, compared to the same period of last year, and amounted to USD 2.774 billion. This is reported by the Ministry of Agrarian Policy and Food of Ukraine. "Today, the EU countries consistently rank second in the regional structure of our agricultural exports. According to the results of the first half of 2017, their share was 34.9%. The total foreign trade turnover between Ukraine and the EU countries also increased by 24.1% or by USD 739.3 million, compared to the same period in 2016, and amounted to USD 3,802.8 million. This is the concrete result of the FTA agreement between Ukraine and the EU," Olha Trofimtseva, the Deputy Minister of Agrarian Policy and Food of Ukraine on European Integration, said. She added that the Netherlands with a share in total exports to the EU of 17.6%, Spain - 17%, Italy - 13.5%, Poland - 12.1%, France - 6.8%, Germany - 6.7%, Great Britain - 3.8%, Portugal - 3.3%, Belgium - 3% and Hungary - 2.1% were among the leading importers. ish New US sanctions against Russia prove Washington's desire to make Putin pay a real price for his aggressive actions. U.S. Senator John McCain, Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, released the relevant statement on President Trump signing into law the Countering Americas Adversaries Through Sanctions Act that strengthens and expands sanctions on Russia, Iran and North Korea. "While the American people surely hope for better relations with Russia, what this legislation truly represents is their insistence that Vladimir Putin and his regime must pay a real price for attacking our democracy, violating human rights, occupying Crimea, and destabilizing Ukraine," McCain says. He also expressed the hope that President Trump would be "vocal about Russias aggressive behavior." "The enactment of this legislation, which enjoyed overwhelming bipartisan support in both houses of Congress, sends a strong message to friend and foe alike that the United States will hold nations accountable for aggressive and destabilizing behavior that threatens our national interests and those of our allies and partners," the U.S. Senator said. As a reminder, yesterday, US President Donald Trump signed the Countering Americas Adversaries Through Sanctions Act which inter alia provides for stepping up pressure on Russia and supporting the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine. ol The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) delivered 10 tons of humanitarian aid to Luhansk region. This was reported by the press service of the State Border Guard Service of Ukraine. "One truck carrying humanitarian aid from the International Committee of the Red Cross arrived in Luhansk region. The aid included food and hygiene kits and components for water supply with a total weight of 10 tons," the report said. ish New Zealand should refrain from negotiations on a free trade zone and introduce sanctions against the Russian Federation. President of the Ukrainian World Congress Eugene Czolij discussed this during the meeting with Manager of the Europe Division at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade of New Zealand, Rob Taylor. "Eugene Czolij discussed the importance of New Zealand adopting the Autonomous Sanctions Bill and introducing sanctions against the Russian Federation, and to refrain from negotiations on a free trade zone with the Russian Federation until it stops blatantly violating its international commitments," the UWC press service reports. The UWC President also focused attention on the aggressor acts of the Russian Federation in Ukraine which also pose a serious threat for global peace and security, and called upon New Zealand to support Ukraine in the defence of its independence and territorial integrity. "Eugene Czolij also highlighted that, while countering the hybrid war of the Russian Federation, Ukraine is reforming, modernizing and combating corruption, and encouraged support for its economic development," the statement reads. In addition, the leader of the Ukrainian Diaspora called upon New Zealand to recognize the Holodomor of 1932-33 as the genocide of the Ukrainian people. ol Terrorist organizations operating in eastern Ukraine receive weapons and ammunition from the neighboring state, according to an address made by Ukrainian delegates at a meeting of the UN Security Council in New York on August 2. "The rhetorical question is: How did the terrorist organizations in Ukraine get weapons that often surpass armament stocks of many states on the European continent? Or why do not terrorists run out of diesel and munitions?" reads the address. Diplomats also noted that these deadly supplies had also been used to conduct devastating terrorist attacks, including, for example, the shooting down of Malaysian Airlines Flight MH17, with 298 innocent civilians on board. "The international regime, aimed at curbing arms supply to terrorists, runs into a problem when states, who are supposed to uphold it, turn out to be in breach of their international obligations and commitments in this regard. One of the most telling cases of our times is the continuing flooding of the occupied territories in the east of Ukraine with all kinds of weapon systems, all coming from the neighboring state," reads the statement. op The Polish Foreign Ministry has welcomed the signing by U.S. President Donald Trump of a law that supports the policy of sanctions against Russia, Polskie Radio has reported. "According to a statement by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Poland welcomed the fact that U.S. President Donald Trump signed a law upholding the policy of sanctions against the Russian Federation," reads the report. It says that ever since Russia's annexation of Crimea and aggression against Ukraine, restrictions have been introduced by presidential executive orders. The fact that sanctions have now been adopted in the form of an act which was supported by a large Congressional majority gives hope that they will be more effective. The statement notes that the simultaneous extension by the said act of sanctions against Russia's energy sector, including companies which are involved in the Nord Stream 2 project, is consistent with the strategic interest of Poland and the Central and Eastern Europe region. This could also contribute to greater diversification of energy supplies to the European Union as a whole, the Polish Foreign Ministry said in a statement. As reported, on August 2, U.S. President Donald Trump signed H.R. 3364, the "Countering America's Adversaries Through Sanctions Act," which, among other things, foresees growing pressure on Russia and support for the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine op The Council of Europe carefully observes the way in which judges of the member states are recruited. This is a very sensitive subject as it has an impact on the independence that judges enjoy when performing their functions. Regis Brillat, Special Adviser of the Secretary General of the Council of Europe for Ukraine said this in an interview, commenting on the competition for the Supreme Court of Ukraine. Speaking about the competition procedure, the Special Adviser noted that "the HQCJ [High Qualification Commission of Judges of Ukraine] has used all available means to adhere to the principles of openness and publicity during the contest to the Supreme Court." He stressed that "the Ukrainian society expects new Supreme Courts judges to be independent and impartial in the judicial practice throughout their career, and for these principles to be respected also in connection with judges recruitment and appointment." "The HQCJ reports, coverage of competition statistics, briefings, meetings with civil society, media, international partners are a clear indication of transparency and openness of the competition. I must point out that broadcasting interviews with candidates or publicizing their files on the Commission's website is not common practice of the member states of the Council of Europe. At the same time, we understand that these steps are being taken by the Ukrainian authorities in order to restore full confidence in the justice system, and therefore these measures can be considered to be effective at this stage," Regis Brillat said. ol HAVANA, Cuba, 2 August 2017 When Eduardo and his wife Margalys decided that they wanted to have children, he wasnt sure what it would be like to be a father, but he was committed to being a good one. They attended family planning services together, and eventually prenatal sessions when they became pregnant. Eduardo was at the hospital when little Adrian finally arrived, but he was not able to share that moment with Margalys in the delivery room. The hospital didnt offer the possibility, he says, but he would have liked to have been there. Although the presence of men in the delivery rooms during childbirth is legally institutionalized in Cuba, many hospital regulations do not allow it, and there is widespread ignorance among men and women about this right. Eduardo also didnt have parental leave. In 2003, Cuban law expanded the social benefit so that after the mother's 12 weeks of postnatal leave, the father and the mother could decide who would care for the baby until the first year of life. However, in practice, hardly any couple shares the leave. Eduardo believes he did not have enough information about parental leave and specific disability leave. Despite these ingrained social norms, Eduardo shared all of the new parental responsibilities with his wife. From changing diapers and washing clothes, to playing with the baby or rocking him to sleep. We have to work as a team and share the tasks; if not, it doesnt work, he says. Early moments matter In their early years of life, childrens brains form up to 1,000 neural connections every second connections that are the bricks for building their future. Those connections need good nutrition, protection and love. A fathers participation before, during and after birth increases his commitment and responsibility in the long run, which has a positive impact on the child. Greater participation in child rearing from the father not only helps with early childhood development, but also breaks the cycle of violence perpetuated by beliefs and attitudes around the masculinity. Cuba has a strong commitment to equality between women and men in all professional and social spheres, as is written in its constitution, laws and policies. The country is a signatory to the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) (1979), the Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989) or the Beijing Declaration (1995), and openly recognizes equality between men and women, including co-responsibility in the care and upbringing of children. However, cultural patterns and structures perpetuate inequalities in the enjoyment of rights and in the spaces for parental involvement. The Animal Health Trust (AHT) has - in partnership with UK and Icelandic research and veterinary institutions - helped identify the cause of a mystery respiratory disease epidemic which infected Icelands native horse population and also dogs, cats and humans. The epidemic of respiratory disease in early 2010 was characterised by coughing and nasal discharge. The disease spread through the population of 77,000 Icelandic horses within weeks, leading to a self-imposed ban on their export and significant economic cost to the country. Initially, due to the speed at which the disease had spread, a viral cause was suspected. However, investigations by researchers at the University of Iceland showed that only Streptococcus zooepidemicus was consistently recovered from coughing horses and rare fatal cases of infection. However, this bacterium is also often found in healthy horses. The AHT and the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute were brought in to investigate. Dr Simon Harris from the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute said: "To identify the culprit, we sequenced the DNA from 257 samples of bacteria from diseased animals and people. This showed that one specific strain of S. zooepidemicus, called ST209, was the likely culprit, and we also found this strain in a human case of blood poisoning. This study highlights, for the first time, how DNA sequencing can be used to identify endemic strains of bacteria and distinguish them from the cause of an epidemic infection." Iceland is free of all major equine infectious diseases thanks to the ban on the importation of horses into the country in 1882. Consequently, Icelandic horses are particularly susceptible to any new bacteria or virus that crosses the border, and so strict biosecurity regulations are in place to help protect them. Dr. Sigriur Bjornsdottir of the MAST Icelandic Food and Veterinary Authority, used information from owners and veterinary surgeons to build an epidemiological network. This enabled her to identify an equine rehabilitation centre where horses exercised in a water treadmill. The water treadmill is thought to have provided the perfect conditions for transmitting the disease as water was splashed up and ingested. Horses would complete their rehabilitation and return home, whilst incubating the disease, taking the infection with them. The ST209 strain of S. zooepidemicus found in Iceland has also been recovered from a coughing horse in Sweden and an abdominal abscess in a Finnish horse trainer. Dr Andrew Waller, Head of Bacteriology at the AHT, said: "There are a couple of theories as to how the strain entered Iceland. These bacteria are able to survive outside a horse for a week or so, which means the import of contaminated equipment or clothing is the most likely route by which ST209 entered Iceland. However, this particular strain could have even infected a human who travelled to Iceland, before spreading the strain back to a horse and triggering the epidemic. "We are delighted to have helped uncover the likely identity of the cause of this epidemic. Our investigation highlights the ability of S. zooepidemicus strains to cause disease in animals and people. We found evidence that even endemic strains of S. zooepidemicus were likely causing cases of respiratory disease in Icelandic horses, illustrating that this group of bacteria causes more clinical problems in horses than was previously thought. We hope that raising awareness of the cause of this epidemic, and the likely involvement of a water treadmill as a key factor in disease transmission, will encourage veterinarians around the world to improve disease control precautions preventing future epidemics." PS: Whilst you're here, take a moment to see our latest job opportunities for vets. A former ally of Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen was detained by police on Thursday in connection with allegations of illegal drug production from 2012. Nhek Bun Chhay was taken in for questioning from his home on the outskirts of the capital, Phnom Penh, National Police Deputy Chief Gen. Mok Chito said. Police did not explain why 5-year-old allegations of involvement in the drug trade had suddenly been revived. Nhek Bun Chhay was dismissed from his government advisory post by Hun Sen in June following reports that he had conspired with the opposition Cambodia National Rescue Party against Hun Sen's ruling Cambodian People's Party ahead of local elections that month. More than a dozen other members of Nhek Bun Chhay's party also were removed from their government positions. Hun Sen, known as one of Southeast Asia's wiliest politicians, has used many methods to extend his more than four decades in power, including co-opting and intimidating opponents. In recent years he and his party have been accused of using the courts to pressure their opponents, sending some fleeing abroad and jailing others. Nhek Bun Chhay formed his own Khmer National United Party last year, which won a single seat in June's local polls, the only one not taken by the two main parties. Nhek Bun Chhay, then a member of the FUNCINPEC party, led fierce but futile armed resistance against a bloody power grab by Hun Sen in 1997. FUNCINPEC reconciled with Hun Sen and joined a coalition government, and he became a deputy prime minister in 2004. In 2007, police in Kampong Speu province arrested 18 people and confiscated a lot of drugs and drug-making material. They said one suspect was an adviser to Nhek Bun Chhay, then secretary-general of FUNCINPEC. No legal action was taken against Nhek Bun Chhay at that time. Police said Thursday that the 2012 allegation applied to activities in Kampong Speu. Defense Minister Tea Banh has been granted the honorific title Samdech, joining a small number of officials in the upper echelons of the ruling Cambodian Peoples Party who are deemed to have made significant contributions to the nation. The title was bestowed upon Gen. Banh on July 29 by a royal decree signed by King Norodom Sihamoni, who left Cambodia for a medical check up in China on July 23. The decree stated that Gen. Banh, whose official title is now Samdech Pichey Sena Tea Banh, was granted the honorific for contributions to peace, stability, national unity, development of all sectors, protecting democracy, national defense, and good social stability. General Tea Banh is the most outstanding leader, who is respected and loved by citizens and loyal to the throne, it reads. In a statement issued on the same day, Prime Minister Hun Sen congratulated Gen. Banh, calling him a very capable and loyal operator. Before the commune elections in June, Gen. Banh said that he would smash the teeth of anyone who opposed the election results and warned that military force would be used against anyone attempting to overthrow Hun Sens regime. Gen. Banh could not be reached for comment. Moeun Tola, a labor rights worker, said the title itself would not improve Gen. Banhs public image and was likely granted to ensure future loyalty to Hun Sen. Whoever criticizes or expresses their opinions will be abused or threatened or even killed. But those who speak in line with [the government] and defend them, he or she will be given motivation, he said. In 2015, CPP deputy presidents Say Chhum and Sar Kheng were granted the Samdech title, which roughly translates to an outstanding leader with the love of the people. Others who have held the title include the late former CPP president Chea Sim, National Assembly President Heng Samrin, Kong Sam Ol, Royal Palace minister, and Sok An, the late former head of the Council of Ministers. The United Nations special rapporteur on human rights will visit Cambodia next week, a UN spokesman has said. Rhona Smiths visit follows the release of four jailed human rights workers and an election official in June. UN officials this week remained tight-lipped about the purpose and scope of Smiths visit to Cambodia. Human rights groups said Smith would likely meet with civil society and government officials to discuss allegations of rights violations, land rights, and torture. They added that Smith would also examine the effects of recent amendments to the law governing political parties that prohibit parties from associating with convicts. Am Sam Ath, a monitoring manager at local rights group Licadho, said Smith would first seek to review issues covered during her last visit to the country and look into the current situation of freedom of speech, rights, land disputes and human rights violations, as well as the political situation in Cambodia. Som Chankea, a spokesman for Adhoc, where the four released rights workers are employed, said human rights in Cambodia had seen a downturn of late, which explained why UN rights officials were planning to visit. He added that it would not be easy for Smith to meet with officials as the government had shown it was less willing to engage with the UN, which it has accused of violating Cambodias sovereignty. On her previous visit to Cambodia, in October, Smith focused on the use of the courts to jail members of the opposition Cambodia National Rescue Party. A South African man held by al-Qaida in Mali since 2011 has been freed, the South African government said Thursday. Stephen McGowan was the last of three foreign nationals abducted in Timbuktu in November 2011 to be freed. The governments of Mali and South Africa worked together, along with NGO Gift of the Givers, to negotiate his release, but South African International Relations Minister Maite Nkoana-Mashabane told a media briefing in Pretoria that no ransom was paid. Imtiaz Sooliman, chairman and founder of Gift of the Givers, says McGowan was freed July 29 and is currently in a South African hospital, being treated for an infection. Sooliman says the disaster relief charity -- which also works in Syria, Yemen, and Somalia and has secured the release of other hostages held by Islamist groups -- tracked down McGowans captors in 2015 and set up negotiations with their intermediaries. He said the South African government then completed the process, and that he did not know on what terms McGowan was released. I wouldnt know if anybody paid a ransom, but that was a request, he told VOA. They initially had asked for 10 million euros, (($12 million)) then they asked for 5 million euros, (($6 million)), then they asked for 4 million euros, (($5 million)), then they ask for the exchange of prisoners and no ransom. Then they asked for ransom and exchange of prisoners, then thy asked for ransom again. They had various optionsSo in the end we really dont know which option was used. He says that the charity does not support the mission of extremist groups and does not agree with paying ransoms or engaging in prisoner exchanges. We have a moral dilemma, he said. We cannot allow your person to stay forever in captivity because they are innocent. And unfortunately, if it means negotiating with terrorists to take out someone who is innocent, we will do that. Its very easy saying that when youre not involved, he said. But when you see the anguish of a mother or a father or a wife, when they want their family members back, and if you put yourself in that same situation: would you say, if your child was taken away as a hostage, would you say, Im not going to negotiate with terrorists. Its fine, you can keep my child. Since his release, McGowan has reunited with his family. "It was a big surprise when I saw Stephen walk through the door. When I hugged him, he felt as strong as ever," his father, Malcolm McGowan, told reporters. The younger McGowan was abducted along with Swede Johan Gustafsson, who was freed in June, and Dutchman Sjaak Rijke, who was freed in April 2015 by French special forces. Al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb, or AQIM, claimed responsibility for kidnapping the three foreigners, who were taken by a group of armed men from the terrace of their hotel along with Rijke's wife, who managed to escape, and a German who was killed while trying to resist abduction. The White Houses recent decision to withhold $50 million in military aid to Pakistan for failing to do enough against the Haqqani network has triggered new debate in Pakistan over the countrys war against terrorism and its militarys dependence in recent years on U.S. aid. Since the 2001 U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, Pakistans military has received $30 billion in military assistance for helping crack down on groups that target international forces in Afghanistan. But U.S. officials have long complained that Islamabad has fallen short in its fight against the Haqqani network, a U.S.-designated terrorist group that many suspect has links to Pakistans spy agency. Some analysts say that withholding funds to pressure Islamabad is not effective. I think this is not something new. U.S. administrations have been using aid and coalition support funds disbursement as leverage against Pakistan for many years now. If this policy did not bring any results in the past, dont expect any different results this time, said Jahangir Khattak, a New York-based journalist. Despite military aid cuts, Pakistans military establishments will not take sincere action against Haqqani network, the one (in which) Pakistan has invested hugely for many years. Although, Pakistan is concerned about Trumps administration possible unilateral actions, such as stepping up drone attacks and special force operations, as it did on Osama bin Laden, said Hashim Wahdatyar, an Afghan political expert who is based in Washington, D.C. Pakistan says it has paid the price Pakistan argues that it has paid a steep price in the U.S.-led war on terrorism, carrying out military campaigns in remote tribal areas to push militant groups out of their strongholds. U.S. officials continue to insist that Islamabads help is critical for securing peace in Afghanistan. Recent experiences indicate that the United States cannot win the war in Afghanistan without Pakistans support, said U.S. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Joseph Dunford, last month. Currently, Pakistan is in the middle of military operations on several fronts against the terrorists the most recent one is called Khyber-4, launched against Islamic State. Keeping Pakistans military engagements in view, the last thing they want to happen is any cuts in assistance. The issue of giving away grants and then taking them away is a bit complicated, Khadim Hussain, a Peshawar-based political analyst, said. The authorities in Pakistan might create trouble in the smooth flow of logistics, may start facilitating more violence in Afghanistan, and may also try to sell the Taliban to Russia and China. An inconsistent U.S. policy may create a space for Pakistan officials to use all the above options, some analysts say. More dialogue needed Journalist Khattak said there is a need for more dialogue to create a better understanding between Pakistan and the United States. I think the key to convincing Pakistan to stop its backing of Haqqani network may not come through sanctions, he said. The two sides have to take steps to remove the trust deficit that has been bedeviling their relations on quid pro quo basis. Also, key to change in Pakistans attitude is its relations with Afghanistan, which are currently passing through a difficult period. 1 A plane drops flame retardant to put out a fire in Rigaud, France, just north of Nice. France has been battling for several weeks huge fires near beaches on the Cote d'Azur that are popular with tourists, forcing the evacuation of people in the area. An Australian woman and two Cambodian associates will spend the next 18 months in prison for operating a commercial surrogacy center in Cambodia. Tammy Davis-Charles was sentenced Thursday in a court in the capital, Phnom Penh, along with two Cambodian associates, nine months after she was arrested and detained. The trio acted as intermediaries between local women and foreign couples, mainly from Australia, seeking to become parents. The couples paid Davis-Charles as much as $50,000 for her services, with the surrogate mothers receiving $10,000 to carry the children. Davis-Charles and the two Cambodians were also charged with falsifying documents. Southeast Asia has been a popular destination for would-be parents overseas, thanks to much lower costs than other nations. But Thailand banned the practice after numerous allegations of exploitation, with Cambodia doing likewise last year. The trade has shifted to neighboring Laos, which has yet to ban or restrict commercial surrogacy. A Boko Haram faction responsible for the kidnapping of a Nigerian oil prospecting team, which led to the deaths of at least 37 people, has become a deadly force capable of carrying out highly organized attacks. Nigerian government forces have focused on crushing the best-known branch of the Islamist militant group whose leader Abubakar Shekau has led an eight-year insurgency to create an Islamic state in the northeast that has killed thousands. But while Nigeria has claimed the capture of Shekaus main base in the Sambisa forest and freed many of more than 200 schoolgirls abducted by his faction in April 2014 in Chibok town, a rival wing has developed the capacity to carry out attacks on a larger scale. Better organized, better message At least 37 people, including members of the prospecting team, rescuers from the military and vigilantes, died last week when security forces tried to free those being held by the Boko Haram faction led by Abu Musab al-Barnawi, who is trying to thwart government efforts to explore for oil in the Lake Chad Basin. That wing is much better organized than the Shekau faction which typically stages suicide bombings in mosques and markets, said Malte Liewerscheidt, senior Africa analyst at Verisk Maplecroft consultancy group. The Shekau faction does not seem to have a clear ideology or any strategy, said Liewerscheidt. That makes it easier for al-Barnawis faction to recruit, whereas Shekaus faction was not trusted by locals, he said. And despite the assessment that it is less organized, Shekaus faction has stepped up suicide bombings in the last few weeks, killing at least 113 people since June 1, according to a Reuters tally. The combined attacks by the two wings marks a resurgence by the group, months after President Muhammadu Buharis announcement in December 2016 that Boko Harams stronghold in the Sambisa forest had been captured. Boko Haram, which has killed more than 20,000 people and forced about 2.7 million to flee their homes since 2009, split last year. IS-backed faction The division led by Shekau, Boko Harams most recognizable figure known for videos taunting Nigerian authorities circulated on social media, operates in the northeastern Sambisa forest and usually deploys girls as suicide bombers. But, since Islamic State named al-Barnawi as Boko Harams leader in August 2016 after the west African militants pledged allegiance the previous year, his Lake Chad-based faction has been moving fighters and ammunition across porous borders in northeast Nigeria, Cameroon, Niger and Chad. The head of a private Nigerian security firm, who did not want to be named, said al-Barnawis IS affiliation meant his wing benefits from sub-Saharan trade routes to ship weapons from lawless Libya where Islamic State is active. His group has been planning a larger scale attack for some time, said a Western diplomat, speaking anonymously. Boko Haram launched two attacks in June, the most prolonged raid on the northeastern city of Maiduguri in 18 months and an attack on a police convoy, which were more ambitious than routine suicide attacks. Shekaus faction is widely believed to have been behind the two attacks. Not-so-liberated areas Buhari has repeatedly said the insurgents are on the verge of defeat since the army, helped by neighboring countries, wrested back most of the land in Nigerias northeast, an area the size of Belgium, that the militants took in early 2015. But security experts say the territorial gain has given a false impression because much of the liberated areas beyond main roads patrolled by the army remain no-go areas where displaced people cannot return to farm. While insurgent-held territory has been recaptured, this was conflated with a military victory, said Ryan Cummings, director of Africa-focused risk management company Signal Risk. All that has happened is that Boko Haram has reverted to the asymmetrical armed campaign it had waged for the seven out of the eight years of its armed campaign against the Nigerian state, he said. The military has been forced to concentrate forces around Maiduguri, capital of the insurgencys birthplace, Borno state, where Shekaus faction has stepped up suicide bombings, which now occur on a near-daily basis. Ransom money A security analyst said Shekaus wing used ransom money paid by the government to free Chibok girls to buy weapons and recruit fighters. The attacks stepped up after a deal was brokered in May to free 82 of them. The return of experienced commanders freed in exchange for the girls also bolstered his group, said the analyst, who asked not to be named. The fact that they were held for some time suggests they were serious players, he said. Acting-President Yemi Osinbajo, in power while Buhari takes medical leave in Britain for an unspecified ailment, responded to the oil teams abduction and frequent attacks by ordering military chiefs to scale up their efforts in Borno, according to a statement. The military said armed forces chiefs relocated to Maiduguri Aug. 1. This move and action are expected to give impetus to the military effort, it said, without elaborating. The theatre army commander is already based in the city. Brazil's President Michel Temer on Wednesday survived a congressional vote that could have suspended him over a bribery charge, mustering enough support to avoid a trial. Temer needed the support of just one-third 171 of the 513 members of the lower Chamber of Deputies. Hours after the voting began, he had received the votes of more than that number of legislators. A final tally was expected later in the evening. Members of Congress were announced and asked to announce their votes. While members voting against Temer were outspoken, most who supported him simply said "no," a sign that many preferred not to broadcast their support for a leader deeply unpopular across the country. Despite the victory, the vote was expected to serve as a referendum on Temer's ability to govern and pass unpopular reforms intended to lift the country out of a prolonged recession. "Brazil can't change presidents three times in one year,'' Sergio Moraes, a Temer supporter, said. "He will be investigated later.'' Temer took office about a year ago, after Dilma Rousseff was impeached and removed as president for improperly handling government finances. Temer is accused of corruption after a close aide was given $150,000 in cash part of $12 million in bribes prosecutors allege he and the aide were due to receive after intervening in a business deal. Temer 'is a good man' During his opening statement, Antonio Claudio Mariz de Oliveira, Temer's lawyer, tore into the charges against Temer. He said that a recording secretly made of the president in March was illegal and that a confiscated suitcase of money, allegedly destined for Temer, was a red herring. "The suitcase of money was returned'' by the police to the Temer aide who had been carrying it, Mariz de Oliveira said. "Why was it returned? Because the president is a good man, an innocent man.'' During her impeachment, Rousseff accused Temer, her former vice president, of attempting a coup. Since taking over, Temer has been hit by one scandal after another. And with his 5 percent approval rating even lower than Rousseff's was, Brazilians are wondering whether his government is even more compromised than the one it forced out. Temer's future remains in the balance. Attorney General Rodrigo Janot, who leveled the bribery charge against Temer, is expected to charge him with obstruction of justice by the end of the month. That would provoke a second vote, forcing his allies to again decide whether to risk their own political futures by sticking with the deeply unpopular leader. All 513 seats in the chamber are up for election next year. In Cameroon, people have been supporting the war effort against Boko Haram by donating blood for the wounded, but officials say the countrys blood banks continue to run short. Hundreds of people have been gathering at the court yard of the city council in Yaounde to donate blood for Cameroonian soldiers fighting the Boko Haram insurgency. Among them is 50-year-old Anatol Bihina who is waiting to be tested to see if he can donate. He says he owes the military respect and encourages them to go ahead defending Cameroon from acts of terror. He says if he is approved to donate blood, he will not hesitate to give every time he can. Cameroon has deployed more than 3,000 troops to its northern border with Nigeria as part of the multinational joint task force battling Boko Haram. Another 1,000 soldiers are on the country's eastern border with the troubled Central African Republic to keep rebels out of Cameroon's territory. Since it began its offensive two years ago, the regional force has chased Boko Haram out of much of the territory it once held. But raids and suicide bombings have continued. Officials say hundreds of people wounded in Boko Haram violence, including soldiers, have died partly due to blood shortages. According to the Ministry of Health, Cameroon runs short by at least 400,000 pints of blood every year. Dr. Biwole Sida of the general hospital in Yaounde says donations help but still are not enough to meet the need. The doctor says 13 percent of donated blood is rejected due to the high prevalence rate of hepatitis B. Among those helping fill empty blood banks is the South African community. Zanele Makina, South Africa's high commissioner to Cameroon, says it was able to collect blood from at least 200 people this week. "Its amazing, its very good. We did not expect so much response from Cameroonians but the moment they saw the set where we had set up our area of blood donation, even market kids who were selling, the moment they heard or saw musicians singing, they would come and say they also want to give blood," said Makina. In a statement, the military said it is heartened by the initiative. Cameroonian President Paul Biya has encouraged citizens to support the military. The government says it has received large food consignments and as much as $6 million in donations for the soldiers over the past two years. In a rare move, Pakistans military chief Thursday condemned as terrorism a Taliban attack in neighboring Afghanistan in which two U.S. troops were killed and four others wounded. The denunciation by General Qamar Javed Bajwa came on a day when the U.S. special envoy for the region, Alice Wells, began a two-day official visit to Islamabad to discuss ways to end the armed Afghan conflict, among other issues. We fully understand the loss and pain of victims' families as Pakistan is undergoing a similar trail of blood in the fight against a common threat of terrorism, a Pakistani army statement quoted Bajwa as saying. The general offered heartfelt condolences on the death of the two U.S. soldiers. The Islamist Taliban swiftly took credit for Wednesday's attack in the southern Afghan city of Kandahar, saying one of its suicide bombers drove his explosives-packed car into the convoy. A Taliban spokesman says 15 soldiers belonging to foreign occupation forces, including two high-ranking officers, were killed. The insurgent group refers to the U.S.-led NATO military mission in Afghanistan as occupation forces. The Taliban routinely exaggerates casualty figures when making such claims. U.S. and Afghan officials have long alleged the Pakistani military covertly supports and shelters Taliban leaders and members of the Haqqani network plotting deadly attacks against local and international forces in the country. Islamabad rejects the charges and maintains it is making all possible efforts to secure the largely porous border with Afghanistan and promote peace and reconciliation among the warring Afghan sides. Alleged insurgent sanctuaries on Pakistani soil are a major irritant in Islamabads relations with Washington. The visiting U.S. delegation headed by Wells met with Foreign Secretary Tehmina Janjua, during which the Pakistani side shared its perspectives on challenges confronting the region, including the security situation in Afghanistan, an official announcement said Thursday. The foreign secretary hoped that the ongoing U.S. review [of Afghan policy] would result in a comprehensive political strategy to promote reconciliation and peace in Afghanistan and the region, the statement added. The U.S. envoy acknowledged Pakistans sacrifices in the fight against terrorism, it added. Ambassador Wells agreed on the importance of a strong partnership between the United States and Pakistan and gave the U.S. perspective on how to move forward this relationship in the coming years, according to the Foreign Ministry statement. Local media reported the American delegation is also expected to meet General Bajwa on Friday. 4 Peace activist Latifah Ibn Ziaten, whose son, a French paratrooper, was killed in a 2012 terrorist attack, now lectures school groups. Ibn Ziaten says, "One must look at youth as the future of France. Today, a young person should be followed from nursery school to middle school. What is happening is the opposite. We are focusing on the middle school and by then it is a bit too late." A Georgian court on Wednesday rejected a request to postpone former President Mikheil Saakashvili's hearing on embezzlement charges. Saakashvili's lawyers asked Tbilisi City Court to delay the hearing because the former president has been stateless since July 26, when Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko revoked Saakashvili's Ukrainian citizenship. Calling the request unsubstantiated, Judge Badri Kochlamazashvili ruled that the hearing would be held at the court's discretion. Saakashvili, 49, once a lauded pro-Western reformist, served two terms as Georgia's president, from January 2004 to November 2013. His popularity declined toward the end of his second term, in part because of a five-day war with Russia during which Moscow's forces drove deep into the South Caucasus country, and his long-ruling party was voted out of power in a 2012 parliamentary election. In 2015, Saakashvili forfeited his Georgian citizenship by accepting an offer from his old college friend, Poroshenko, to become governor of Ukraine's southwestern Odessa Oblast province a post that required Ukrainian citizenship. Saakashvili, who harbors Ukrainian political ambitions, resigned as governor of Odessa in November 2016, complaining of official obstruction and corruption. He accused Poroshenko of dishonesty and said his central government had sabotaged democratic reforms required for membership to the European Union and NATO. 'Very Soviet behavior' Saakashvili recently told VOA that Poroshenko stripped his Ukrainian citizenship in order to eliminate his main domestic political opponent and undermine democracy in the Russian-occupied Eastern European nation. "It's a very Soviet behavior, very much reminiscent of the Soviet Union's actions," he told VOA. "First, deprive somebody of citizenship and then declare them crazy, criminal. It's very much a deja vu." Poroshenko, who announced the decision while Saakashvili was visiting the United States, said he nullified Saakashvili's Ukrainian citizenship upon learning that the former Georgian leader had lied on his citizenship application. Ukrainian law requires applicants for citizenship to disclose whether they are subjects of any ongoing criminal investigations inside or outside the country. Georgia has been seeking the former president's extradition to face charges connected to embezzlement of public funds, the violent dispersal of protests and a raid on a private television station. Saakashvili said the charges were politically motivated. He insisted he "indicated everything rightfully" on the 2015 document, and that Poroshenko operatives had since doctored it. "The documents that I filed were not shown," Saakashvili said. "We are demanding them to be shown because we need to see that everything was done legally. The fact that they are showing this [falsified application for citizenship reveals a] blatant desire to do something very illegal. We are talking about the forgery here." No copy of original Asked whether he had a copy of the original application, Saakashvili said he did not. "I happen to trust people," he told VOA. "I have filed so many documents in my life that I don't keep copies. I trust the state institutions; I trust people that they would do their jobs fairly." Kyiv officials declined to respond to Saakashvili's assertions or comply with a request to share a copy of the disputed application. Although Saakashvili has vowed to return to Ukraine and fight to reclaim his citizenship, it is not known whether he has taken any official steps to initiate that legal process. On Wednesday, Kyiv officials in Washington said he had made no efforts to reach them. On Tuesday, Ukraine's top prosecutor, Yuri Lutsenko, said he would be forced to extradite Saakashvili to Georgia should he return to Ukraine but only if the Georgians filed a new request. Georgian authorities unsuccessfully requested Saakashvili's extradition twice prior to Poroshenko's official visit to Tbilisi last month. The German government has condemned Vietnams unprecedented and blatant violation of German and international law by kidnapping a Vietnamese citizen seeking asylum in Berlin and returning him to Hanoi to face criminal charges. The German foreign ministry expelled a Vietnamese intelligence officer and summoned Vietnams ambassador to hear a complaint that the incident has the potential to have a massive negative impact on relations between Germany and the Socialist Republic of Vietnam. A statement issued in Berlin Wednesday said senior German officials have no reasonable doubt that Vietnamese security services and embassy staff carried out the kidnapping last week of Trinh Xuan Thanh, 51, an executive of the state-owned energy company PetroVietnam, which has been the target of recent corruption investigations that have ensnared government and business leaders. Thanh is accused of responsibility for nearly $150 million in losses by a division of PetroVietnam at a time when he headed that group. Seized by armed men A Vietnamese-language newspaper and German media reported that armed men accosted and seized Thanh in Berlins Tiergarten, a large forested park in the German capital, July 23, the day before he was to appear for a hearing on his request for political asylum in Germany. Thanh, a former high-ranking member Vietnams Communist Party, turned up in Hanoi this past Monday. Police in the Vietnamese capital claimed he decided to turn himself in, 10 months after an international warrant was issued seeking his arrest. The Hanoi police did not explain how Thanh made his way from Berlin or why he returned home. No pictures of him have been published and family members were said to have been unaware that he was back in Vietnam. The German foreign ministry said Chancellor Angela Merkels government was demanding that Thanh be allowed to travel back to Germany immediately, so authorities there could examine both his asylum application and Vietnams request for his extradition. In addition, a spokesman for the German foreign ministry, Martin Schaefer, told reporters: We reserve the right to draw further consequences, if necessary, at a political, economic and development policy level. In Hanoi, no comment VOA asked the Vietnamese foreign ministry to comment on the case but received no response. Media reports in Germany said the Vietnamese embassy in Berlin was not responding to any inquiries. Vietnams current anti-corruption drive marks a period of change and maneuvering within the countrys Communist Party. Massive corruption has been like rust eating away at the authority of the legitimacy of the Communist Party of Vietnam, Professor Carl Thayer told VOA from Australia. Thayer, an emeritus professor of the University of New South Wales at the Australian Defense Force Academy, explained: This has been openly acknowledged by top party officials for well over a decade. Each major corruption case is judged not only on the financial loss to the state, but also on its impact on political stability. I liken anti-corruption campaigns to campaigns to end prostitution, Thayer continued. They are never-ending, because human greed is involved and officials will take risks. Quick promotions for Thanh Thanh, a Hanoi native, graduated from the Hanoi University of Architecture in 1990 and then worked until 1995 in Germany, which currently is Vietnams largest trading partner in the European Union. After returning to Vietnam, he advanced rapidly through a series of executive positions of increasing responsibility, at a state-owned technology and economic development company, a state-owned civil and industrial construction company and, in 2007, PetroVietnam Construction Joint Stock Corporation. He was chairman from 2009-2013, and was awarded a Laborers Hero in the Renovation Era medal in 2011. Thanh moved into the government realm in September 2013 as deputy chief of office and head of the representative office of the Ministry of Industry and Trade in the central province of Da Nang. In early June last year, Thanh landed in the spotlight after a photograph of him driving a privately owned car bearing government number plates was posted online. Tripped up by privilege An uproar ensued as people questioned why Thanh, then a deputy chairman of the southern province of Hau Giang, was assigned a government plate. After review by authorized agencies, the provinces leaders admitted they had made a mistake. However, the outcry caught the attention of the head of the Communist Party of Vietnam, Nguyen Phu Trong, who on June 9, 2016, called for an investigation of Thanhs activities. That scrutiny uncovered losses of $147 million at PetroVietnam during Thanhs tenure. In July 2016, Thanh requested annual leave. The following month, he requested sick leave for medical treatment overseas, and then disappeared. By mid-September, Vietnams Ministry of Public Security had charged Thanh, along with four others, with mismanagement at a subsidiary of the national oil and gas giant PetroVietnam, had removed him as a member of the Communist Party, and had issued an international warrant for his arrest. The resulting worldwide manhunt for Thanh appeared to be fruitless until the recent events in Berlin. One report this week indicated the two governments involved had discussed the Thanh case before he was abducted in Berlin. The Associated Press said Germanys foreign ministry spokesman, Martin Schaefer, confirmed that German and Vietnamese officials discussed Hanois request for Thanhs extradition during a meeting in Hamburg July 7-8, on the sidelines of the Group of 20 summit. This report originated on VOA Vietnamese. In China, the plush international hotel lobby has been one of the few places to find gaps in the Great Firewall, a sophisticated system that denies online users access to blocked content such as foreign news portals and social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter. Now that small crack in the system may be closing, too, as Beijing tightens control over what it sees as its domestic cyberspace, mimicking real-world border controls and subject to the same laws as sovereign states. Regulators have warned firms providing internet networks for hotels to stop offering, or helping to install, virtual private networks (VPNs) into hotel systems, tools that allow users to evade, at least partially, Chinas internet censors. We received notices recently from relevant (government) departments, so we dont make recommendations anymore, said a marketing manager at Chinese hotel network provider AMTT Digital, who is not named because he is not authorized to talk to the media. He added this was linked to increased government scrutiny over the use of unauthorized VPNs. Tunnel closing for some VPNs create a tunnel through the Great Firewall allowing users to access blocked content outside Chinas borders. Companies in China routinely use VPNs for their businesses, which Beijing has said are not currently under threat. A notice from the Waldorf Astoria in Beijing, circulated online, said the hotel had stopped offering VPN services. A Waldorf official declined to comment, but several staff said the hotel no longer offered VPN services. (VPNs) dont accord with Chinese law, one staffer told Reuters. So we dont have this anymore. Network provider: hotels decide A leading internet network provider to hotels in China, AMTT Digital says it works with more than 30 global hotel chains including Marriott, InterContinental, Shangri-La , Wyndham, Starwood and Hilton. Previously, the firm, which is backed by several funds including ones with government ties, would recommend certified, or government approved, VPNs, the manager said, which would then be incorporated into hotels internal networks. We would make recommendations of certified VPN providers and then incorporate them into the gateway so it runs smoothly, he said. But it is up to the hotel to decide if they want it. Dozens of VPNs closed Chinas Ministry of Information Industry and Technology (MIIT), which oversees regulation of VPNs, did not respond to requests for comment. As it clamps down further on access to outlawed online content, Beijing has recently closed dozens of China-based VPNs, overseas providers have seen rolling attacks on their services, the WhatsApp encrypted messaging app was disrupted, and telecoms firms have been enlisted to extend Chinas domestic internet control. U.S. tech giant Apple Inc pulled dozens of VPN apps from its App Store in China at the weekend, drawing criticism from app providers who said it was bowing to pressure from Beijings cyber regulators. Were in the middle of the storm right now with the government fiercely cracking down on VPNs, said Lin Wei, a Beijing-based network security expert at Qihoo 360 Technology Co. Its really hard for ordinary people to find anywhere they can get on sites like Google. No Twitter, Facebook, YouTube The neutered hotel VPNs, which staff and analysts said were often installed with tacit approval from authorities, already underline sensitivities of even ceding small amounts of control. President Xi Jinping has overseen a marked sharpening of Chinas cyberspace controls, including tough new data surveillance and censorship rules. This push is now ramping up ahead of an expected consolidation of power at the Communist Party Congress this autumn. Guests at the InterContinental hotel on the east side of Beijing can search on Alphabet Incs Google search engine or check their email on Gmail, a business need for many travelers, but both otherwise widely blocked in China. But they cant access Facebook, Twitter or YouTube, which are banned by the government. China also routinely blocks sensitive content online such as searches for the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests or, more recently, coverage of imprisoned Nobel laureate Liu Xiaobo, who died of cancer last month. These topics are searchable, though, in China using a VPN connection. Some hotels haven't blocked sites Technical staff at five other hotels in Beijing, including Crowne Plaza, Hilton and Shangri-La, said guests could still access some blocked websites, though others were often still off-limits. Officials at the hotels declined to comment. Other hotels Reuters spoke to said they did not offer VPN services because it did not accord with government rules. Its a compromise the hotels are making, said Lin, the network security expert. VPNs were not technically illegal, but were in a grey area and for well-known reasons authorities were cracking down on them. Staff and guests at a number of hotels said some kind of VPN service was still on offer, either built into the hotels Wi-Fi network or on demand to guests who needed access. Reuters visited the InterContinental and Crowne Plaza in Beijing, both owned by InterContinental Hotels Group, where Google and Gmail were unblocked. A worker at the Hilton Beijing hotel said the same sites should be accessible. Officials at IHG and Hilton did not respond to requests for comment. Some hotels went further. A technician at the Pangu 7 Star Hotel in Beijing, owned by exiled tycoon Guo Wengui, said resident guests could get full internet access, including sites like Facebook and Twitter, through its VPN-enabled Pangu global Wi-Fi network. We have a special VPN to cross the Great Firewall, the worker told Reuters. But its a little bit slow. Reuters couldnt reach Pangu officials for comment. Iran said new sanctions imposed by U.S. President Donald Trump on Wednesday broke the terms of its nuclear deal with the United States and other world powers, and it vowed an "appropriate and proportional" response. Trump, who during his election campaign called the nuclear agreement negotiated under his predecessor, Barack Obama "the worst deal ever," signed the new sanctions into law along with measures against Russia and North Korea. Iran had already said it would complain to the body that oversees the 2015 deal under which it accepted curbs on its nuclear program in return for sanctions relief about the measures passed in Congress last week in response to a missile development program and human rights abuses. "In our view the nuclear deal has been violated and we will show an appropriate and proportional reaction to this issue," Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi said in an interview with state TV, according to the ISNA news agency. Few options While Russia has reacted to the sanctions by ejecting U.S. Embassy staff, Iran has no diplomatic relations or direct trade links with the United States, so its options are limited. Araqchi said Tehran's response would be "intelligent." "The main goal of America in approving these sanctions against Iran is to destroy the nuclear deal and we will show a very intelligent reaction to this action," Araqchi said. "We are definitely not going to act in a way that gets us entangled in the politics of the American government and Trump." The new U.S. sanctions, signed a day before Iranian President Hassan Rouhani takes part in a ceremony before being sworn in for a second term, are likely to embolden his hard-line critics who say the nuclear deal was a form of capitulation. The United States is one of six countries to sign the deal with Iran, and the others Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany have said they see it as a success in easing concerns that Iran might be trying to develop nuclear weapons. Deal with Total The deal has also meant European countries flocking back to invest in oil-rich Iran, with France's Total agreeing to develop a new phase of the South Pars gas field, the world's largest. Araqchi said the Europeans would not allow Trump to destroy the nuclear deal. "What Total did and the contract that was signed between this company and Iran sent a message from Europe to the Americans that whatever the conditions, they will continue their economic relations with Iran," he said. In a separate announcement, Tehran confirmed that Rouhani would keep on two important ministers for his second term: Oil Minister Bijan Zanganeh, who is largely credited for closing the Total deal, and Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, Iran's lead negotiator in the nuclear agreement. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is suspected of crimes involving bribery, fraud and breach of trust in two corruption cases, Israeli police said Thursday. Investigators, who have been questioning Netanyahu for months, secured a gag order that limits media coverage of the cases and of talks that are underway to enlist a state witness. Netanyahu has denied any wrongdoing, and his spokesman said in a statement Thursday that the prime minister was the target of "a witch hunt, now at its peak, aimed at changing the government." "This is destined to fail, for a simple reason: Nothing will happen because nothing happened," the spokesman said. One case, dubbed "File 1000,'' reportedly involves claims that Netanyahu improperly accepted lavish gifts from wealthy supporters, including Australian billionaire James Packer and Hollywood producer Arnon Milchan. The second, "File 2000,'' reportedly concerns Netanyahu's alleged attempts to strike a deal with publisher Arnon Mozes of the Yediot Ahronot newspaper group to promote legislation to weaken Yediot's main competitor in exchange for more favorable coverage of Netanyahu by Yediot. Netanyahu is not the first Israeli leader to face criminal investigation. Former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert was convicted of breach of trust and bribery in 2014, and Ariel Sharon was questioned while in office about allegations of bribery and campaign financing illegalities. The brief detention of a prominent exiled Uighur leader in Italy last week is raising alarm among human rights groups, who see it as a sign of growing Chinese political influence in Europe. Feeding that concern is the role played in the arrest by the international police organization Interpol, which since November has been headed by Meng Hongwei, China's deputy minister of public security. Last Wednesday, Dolkun Isa, the secretary general of the Munich-based World Uighur Congress (WUC), was stopped by police in Rome as he was preparing to address the Italian Senate about restrictions facing his people in China's western Xinjiang province. Isa, now a German citizen, was taken to a police station where he was photographed, fingerprinted and held for more than three hours before being released. Detention at China's behest The detention was described to Isa as an "identity check." However, he said the Italian police also told him that he was picked up because his name appeared on Intepol's list of "red notices," indicating individuals who are wanted by police in any of the group's member countries. China issued the red notice in 1997 and placed Isa on its most-wanted terrorist list in 2003, though Isa and his supporters maintain the listing was politically motivated. The arrest "was a big shock for me because I believe that democracy, human rights and the rule of law are the basic values of the Italian democracy, Italian government," Isa told VOA. He expressed frustration over what he sees as a willingness in the West to cave to political pressure from China in exchange for economic benefits. This was not the first time that China has tried to block Isa from advocating for the Uighurs, a mainly Muslim ethnic group. He said he had been stopped before in New York, South Korea, Turkey and Switzerland. The WUC has demanded the European Union investigate whether China pressured Italy into detaining Isa. "The EU should be awakened and re-adjust its policies toward trade and political exchanges with China," said WUC spokesman Dilxat Rixat. The EU hasn't responded to VOA's request for comment. China's growing influence Chinese Uighurs have long complained of discrimination and attempted assimilation by the dominant Han Chinese, and hundreds of people have been killed in Xinjiang during violence between the two groups. Uighurs describe the violence as a response to ethnic repression, but Beijing links it to Islamist terrorism elsewhere in Asia and has reacted with increasingly harsh measures. "I used to say that China was practicing the carrot-and-stick approach to the Uighur problem," said Dru Gladney, a professor of anthropology from Pomona College in California. "But now it seems like the carrot is being completely removed and the stick is increasingly enlarged greatly." Starting in September, the use of Uighur language will be banned at all school levels in Xinjiang. China also has barred Uighur parents from naming their newborns "Muhammad" or using other names that it says have "extremely religious" meanings. "It is exactly the cultural genocide policy of the Chinese government toward the Uighurs," Isa told VOA. "Uighur language is one of the main factors of Uighur identity. If you change your language, then, maybe 60 percent of identity would be lost. And another identity is religion. That's why the Chinese government today makes more pressure [on] religion and the language," he said. Growing grievances Michael Clarke, an associate professor at Australian National University's National Security College, argued that China's intensified deployment of such controls will only heighten pre-existing anxieties among the Uighurs. "There is no doubt that such policies exacerbate not only inter-ethnic tensions [i.e. between ordinary Uighurs and Han Chinese], but also Uighur relations with state institutions," the professor told VOA by email. Professor Gladney of Pomona College called on the Chinese government to ease its heavy-handed controls in Xinjiang or face what he called "a speed bump" in its Belt and Road Initiative an infrastructure project that passes through the far west region. To execute the project, China needs popular support from countries in Central Asia or Arab states of the Persian Gulf, where Muslim populations are increasingly angry over China's treatment of Uighur Muslims, he said. Japans Prime Minister Shinzo Abe reshuffled his Cabinet Thursday, opting for seasoned party veterans to help restore his battered popularity. Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga, who retained his post, announced the new lineup. Abes approval ratings have suffered from a spate of scandals over alleged cronyism and other abuses and objections to the ruling Liberal Democratic Partys tendency to force unpopular legislation through parliament. Abes invincibility in peril The shake-up reflects Abes recognition that despite the Liberal Democrats overwhelming majority in parliament, his own once seemingly invincible position after more than four years in office may be imperiled. But plans for the reshuffle were disclosed weeks in advance, and it was not expected to have a major impact on the foreign policy or economy of Americas biggest ally in Asia. The newly named ministers included many Cabinet veterans, including Itsunori Onodera, a former defense minister who again was named to that post. Last week, Abes protege Tomomi Inada stepped down as defense minister after the disclosure that the ministry hid information about risks faced by Japanese peacekeeping troops in South Sudan. In Japan, choice Cabinet positions tend to be distributed between factions that operate almost like political fiefdoms within the ruling party. This time, the ministers appear to be chosen with factions in mind, but they went to politicians with proven expertise or track records. Popular lawmakers Abe also chose several popular lawmakers known to differ from him on key issues such as nuclear power and revision of Japans pacifist constitution. The new foreign minister, Taro Kono, 54, is known to be liberal leaning and has opposed nuclear energy, though he toned down his stance while serving as reform minister in an earlier Abe Cabinet. A politics graduate of Georgetown University, Kono is fluent in English. He is probably best known for being the son of Yohei Kono, a former speaker of the lower house who also served as foreign minister. Konos predecessor, Fumio Kishida, opted out of this Cabinet to become the policy chief for the Liberal Democrats. He is widely thought to be aiming to become prime minister after Abes term ends or if he steps down. The U.S. Department of Justice says it is seeking lawyers to look into a 2-year-old complaint alleging discrimination against Asian-American students in a universitys admission policy, but dismissing reports that it is launching a broader effort to sue colleges over policies seen as discriminating against white applicants. In a statement released late Wednesday, Justice Department spokeswoman Sarah Isgur Flores said a recent announcement by the departments civil rights division sought volunteers to investigate the complaint by a coalition of 64 Asian-American groups against a universitys admissions policy and practices. The complaint, filed with the Justice Department and the Department of Education in 2015, alleged that Harvard Universitys admission policy discriminated against Asian-American applicants. The Education Department later closed the complaint, citing a similar civil lawsuit against Harvard. But Flores said the case had been left unresolved, apparently by the Justice Department. This Department of Justice has not received or issued any directive, memorandum, initiative, or policy related to university admissions in general, she said. The Department of Justice is committed to protecting all Americans from all forms of illegal race-based discrimination. Media reports The New York Times first reported about the announcement Tuesday, saying the civil rights division sought lawyers to investigate allegations of discrimination against white students. The Washington Post also reported on the news and cited an unidentified official describing the project as an effort to investigate affirmative action policies that discriminate against white applicants. Flores called the reports inaccurate. The Asian American Coalition for Education welcomed the department's decision to look into its complaint. "The purpose of our complaint is to eliminate all unlawful discrimination against our children," Yukong Zhao, the group's president, said in a statement. Civil rights advocates who greeted the initial reports with alarm nonetheless remained skeptical about the planned investigation. We reject such attempts to use Asian-American students as a wedge to escalate the fears of those who believe that affirmative action creates an unfair advantage against white or Asian students, said Brenda Shum of the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law in Washington. In recent years, Asian-American groups have filed at least five complaints against Ivy League schools, alleging discrimination, according to Nicole Ochi, an attorney representing a different group of Asian students challenging the 2014 suit against Harvard. In addition to the Harvard case, two other suits filed against the University of North Carolina and University of Texas are pending in courts. All three were filed by Students for Fair Admissions, a nonprofit founded by Edward Blum, a Texas businessman and fierce opponent of affirmative action. Ochi said that because of the pending lawsuit against Harvard, there was absolutely no need for the Justice Department to investigate the complaint. Though the Justice Department has never sued a college or university over its affirmative action policies, it may choose to join the lawsuit against Harvard, she said. Affirmative action has long been a divisive issue in the United States. The policy allows colleges and universities to consider race in admitting students and gives minority students an edge over white students. While proponents say it has helped improve diversity on college campuses and given otherwise disadvantaged students a shot at the American dream, critics see affirmative action as reverse discrimination against whites and Asian Americans. You can call it affirmative action or you can celebrate diversity or you can set goals for under-represented minorities, but when you consider a persons skin color in deciding whether to award her an admissions slot or a contract or a job then you are engaging in racial discrimination, Roger Clegg, president of the conservative Center for Equal Opportunity, wrote in a blogpost. Deep suspicion Brian Levin, a professor of law at the California State University at San Bernardino, said the civil rights communitys reaction to the reported Department of Justice initiative demonstrated a deep distrust of the agency. Under this cloud, even a few positive measures within the Justice Department are met with suspicion by many civil rights leaders, Levin said. The Justice Department says it remains as committed to protecting civil rights as it did under the Obama administration. Herman Schwartz, a professor at American Universitys Washington College of Law, said that while the Justice Department has the authority to challenge a schools affirmative action policies, it is not likely to succeed in light of recent Supreme Court rulings in favor of affirmative action. They can initiate [litigation] all they want, but the law of the land is that individualized treatment of applicants is appropriate and will not be challenged or should not be challenged, but will pass muster, he said. A suicide bomber in Afghanistan killed at least four people Thursday night in an attack on a convoy of foreign troops between Kabul and the largest American base in the country. Initial reports said three Afghan civilians had died during the attack. U.S. officials announced later that one soldier from NATO's Resolute Support mission was among the dead. More than a dozen people, both civilians and soldiers, were wounded. The Taliban told journalists the bomber was one of its men. Thursday's attack followed a Taliban attack in southern Afghanistan's Kandahar province that killed at least two American soldiers; the insurgents claimed the casualty toll was far higher. The convoy that came under attack Thursday was made up of both Afghan and NATO troops, traveling through Kabul's Qarabagh district near Bagram Airfield, the largest concentration of U.S. forces in the country. The military statement indicated the assailant detonated a suicide vest he was wearing. Five NATO troops and one Afghan interpreter were wounded by the explosion and were taken to the U.S. military hospital at Bagram, about 50 kilometers from the Afghan capital. All were reported in stable condition. Others who were wounded were taken to an Italian-run hospital in Kabul that specializes in treating bombing victims. A report from the hospital soon after the suicide attack said 12 people were being treated "so far." None of the victims of Thursday's attack were identified. The attack on Wednesday killed two American soldiers and wounded four others near the Kandahar airport in southern Afghanistan, site of a major military base for international troops helping Afghan security forces' fight to contain the Taliban insurgency. The NATO coalition base houses up to 13,000 troops from 39 countries who train, advise and assist Afghan forces. U.S. authorities have not identified the Americans killed in Kandahar, but a grieving father in the state of Indiana said his 23-year-old son, an Army sergeant, was one of them. Mark Hunter said his son, Jonathon, was a member of the security detail for the convoy that was attacked. Sergeant Hunter left the United States on July 1 for his first deployment in Afghanistan. An online account of the Kandahar attack by Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid claimed the insurgent drove his explosives-laden car into the convoy, killing 15 foreign soldiers. Such Taliban reports often are exaggerated. A Reuters journalist at the scene said one armored vehicle and one other vehicle were badly damaged in the blast. NATO military helicopters made at least four flights from the Kandahar base to the attack scene to secure the area and remove wreckage. The Taliban's summer "fighting season" is now at its peak, and the increased pace in terrorist attacks coincides with U.S. military commanders' requests for several thousand additional troops to join the battle. Those requests are stalled in Washington, according to military analysts, since President Donald Trump has expressed opposition to overextending the U.S. commitment to Afghanistan. In a rare move, Pakistan's military chief Thursday condemned the Taliban attack in Kandahar as terrorism. General Qamar Javed Bajwa said in a statement, "We fully understand the loss and pain of victims' families, as Pakistan is undergoing a similar trail of blood in the fight against a common threat of terrorism." Rwandans head to the polls Friday with President Paul Kagame widely expected to win a third term despite allegations of political repression. Nine of the 11 registered political parties have endorsed the incumbent but a few candidates of other parties are still challenging Kagame. More than 200,000 people attended Kagame's final pre-election rally on Wednesday near Kigali. Supporters drove for hours to the massive hilltop venue. They sang, danced and cheered while waiting for their candidate to arrive. They waved the red, white and blue flag of the ruling party, the Rwandan Patriotic Front. Supporter Martha Kaiesu said Rwandans love Paul Kagame. "He's a freedom fighter," said the 25-year-old Rwandan. "He has brought us peace, unity and reconciliation." While dancing, supporter Fabrice Gafunguzo said Kagame is a "man of his word" who has delivered development and peace to the country. Green Party candidate Frank Habineza held a much more low-key rally on the side of a road on the outskirts of Kigali earlier this week, attracting about 500 people. Motorcycle taxi drivers and chickens passed by, uninterested in the small gathering. The low turnout was blamed on a government order forcing a change in location. Habineza founded the Green Party as an alternative to Kagame's rule. He has been hesitant to publicly criticize the president. "We look at government policies," he explained. "If something is not going right, we criticize it, but also we give an alternative to that problem, the policy, but not individuals because individuals come and go. But government stays and the people stay." Kagame has been in power for 17 years. A 2015 constitutional referendum, approved by 98 percent of voters, potentially allows him to remain in power until 2034. In 2010, he won 93 percent of the vote. Nevertheless, Habineza said he expects to win the election with at least 65 percent of the country's vote. At one of the last events of his campaign, nearly half the crowd at his rally stood across the street. Away from the camera and prying ears, some Rwandans told VOA they are afraid of what could happen to them if they publicly support the opposition. Habineza supporter Charles Ndamage said he is treated like an "enemy of the country." "Many people are afraid of expressing what they think," he said at the rally. "So even here as we are standing here maybe there are people that you can say are spies. Spies they are everywhere." But there are some calling for change. Inside a gated house, with curtains drawn and doors shut, about 15 members of the People Salvation Movement discussed the future of their newly-formed organization on Tuesday. Thirty-five-year-old accountant Diane Rwigara leads the group. She said she submitted more than double the required signatures to become a presidential candidate, but the National Election Commission rejected her candidacy. In the small living room with her fellow activists, she speaks next to a portrait of her father, Assinapol Rwigara, who died in a 2015 car accident that she says was an assassination. Assinapol Rwigara used to be one of Kagame's major donors in the 1990s until the party allegedly made demands regarding Rwigara's businesses. Living in fear Since the People Salvation Movement is not a registered party, Rwigara says they only meet in private. She says it is risky for anyone to speak against the government. "The main issue in country is fear," she explained. "It's beyond fear it's terror. Fear of the ruling party. Fear of the state, where people get mistreated by government, by the people in power." Kagame and his government claim the environment is free and open. "We have a lot of associations, be it political associations, parties or civil society. Everything is open here," said Wellers Gasamagera, the spokesperson for Kagame's political party. Gasamagera told VOA Kagame's opponents use arguments about human rights as an excuse for their lack of popular support. International human rights groups have alleged kidnappings, and politically motivated jailing of dissidents. A new government policy this year required presidential candidates to have their social media messages pre-approved by the electoral commission. The policy was reversed following international criticism. Boniface Twagirimana, the vice president of the opposition group United Democratic Forces of Rwanda, claims civilian-clothed intelligence operatives attempted to kidnap and strangle him in Kigali in December 2015. He says there's a chance the population will turn to civil violence. "Maybe imagine there will be an explosion where they cannot continue being persecuted, being intimidated, being killed, being imprisoned when you react," he said. "Maybe anytime, the population will take other measures." Twagirimana says he's putting his life on the line by conducting peaceful political advocacy for change. The chairperson of the United Democratic Forces of Rwanda, Victoire Ingabire, is serving a 15-year prison sentence on a conviction related to charges of terrorism and threatening national security, after running for president in 2010. Polls open at 7 a.m. on Friday and results are expected by the end of the weekend. Kosovo's new parliament convened Thursday for the first time since a snap election in June, but deputies did not appoint a new speaker or hold a debate as the winning coalition struggled to secure a majority. The PAN coalition of parties made up of former guerrillas who fought in a war in 1998-99 gained 33.7 percent of votes but remained two votes short of a majority in the 120-seat parliament. Two other players, the nationalist Vetevendosje party and the LAA coalition, remained opposed to a deal that would give PAN a majority. The deputies were divided Thursday about the election of a speaker, which is seen as a test of PAN's ability to form a government. PAN's candidate for prime minister, Ramush Haradinaj, briefly held the position in 2005. The former guerrilla commander was twice indicted for war crimes by the U.N. war crimes tribunal in The Hague. Both times he was cleared. In 2014, parliament did not form a government for six months, bringing the economy of the country of 1.8 million to a standstill. Any new government will have to tackle unemployment running at 30 percent and improve relations with Kosovo's neighbors, especially Serbia, a precondition for both countries to move forward in the European Union accession process. It must also reform health and education and the tax administration system as well as include representatives of 120,000 Kosovo Serbs who do not recognize independence. Kosovo declared independence from Serbia in 2008, almost a decade after NATO airstrikes drove out Serbian forces accused of expelling and killing ethnic Albanian civilians in a two-year counterinsurgency. In 1517, Michelangelo climbed Mount Altissimo in Tuscany and found the marble of his dreams. It was, the Renaissance master wrote, "of compact grain, homogeneous, crystalline, reminiscent of sugar." He deemed it perhaps even more precious than that from nearby Carrara, where he had obtained marble for some of his most famous statues. With the blessing of Pope Leo X, Michelangelo designed a path that could get blocks of the white marble down from the mountain to be transported to Florence to be used to decorate the facade of the church of San Lorenzo. In exchange for getting a quarry operation going, Florentine authorities granted Michelangelo the right to take as much marble as he wanted from Altissimo - which in Italian means both "most high" and "God" - for his use for the rest of his life. "There is enough here to extract until Judgment Day," he wrote to a contemporary. But it was never to be. After several years of work to carve out a road, Pope Leo, who was of Florence's Medici family, relieved Michelangelo of his commission and the project was abandoned. The church of San Lorenzo still has no facade. Today, the quarries of 1,589-meter-high (5,213-feet) Altissimo, in Italy's Apuan Alps, buzz with the kind of activity that even a genius like Michelangelo probably could not have foreseen. Modern cutting and extraction techniques have produced a surreal landscape similar to some Cubism paintings, a dizzying array of upside down staircases and sugar-cube structures looking heavenward. "The primitive technology consisted of human labor and beasts of burden," said Franco Pierotti, director of extractions. "The primordial instruments such as levers, chisels and hammers later evolved with the introduction of helical wires in the 19th century and now we have diamond-tipped wires and saws and heavy earth-moving equipment," he said. Before the extracting begins, experts known as "tecchiaroli" hang on ropes from the sides of the mountain and pick at its sides with pointy iron bars to remove loose rock that could fall and hurt workers in subsequent phases of the extraction. In the three centuries following Michelangelo's time, the Altissimo quarries went through cycles of abandonment and re-discovery. In 1821, Marco Borrini, a local landowner, teamed up with Frenchman Jean Baptiste Alexandre Henraux to start a new company and it has been active in the area ever since. The venture brought new life to the economically depressed area, employing hundreds of quarrymen, squarers, sled men, stone cutters and cart drivers, who guided oxen trains. In the 19th century, the tsars of Russia chose Altissimo marble for the construction of St. Isaac's Cathedral in St. Petersburg and more recently, it was used in the Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque in Abu Dhabi, which opened in 2007. Today, the Henraux company owns the entire mountain, employs about 140 people and extracts marble from five active quarries. Over the years artists such as Auguste Rodin, Henry Moore, Joan Miro and Isamu Noguchi have used Altissimo marble for their sculptures. Michelangelo would be proud. Two Indian soldiers and two rebels were killed in separate armed clashes Thursday in the disputed Himalayan region of Kashmir. The two soldiers were killed during a shootout in the southern district of Shopian, where they were taking part in a raid to capture suspected rebels. Another soldier was critically wounded in the incident. The rebels were killed in the southern town of Kulgam when they walked into an ambush laid by government forces. The bloodshed comes just days after the death of Abu Dujana, the commander of the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Toiba militant group, was killed by Indian security forces. Parts of Kashmir have been administered by nuclear-armed rivals India and Pakistan since the end of British colonial rule in 1947, but both nations claim the region to themselves in full. Rebel groups in the Indian-administered region have waged a nearly three-decade insurgency seeking either independence or a merger with Pakistan that has killed tens of thousands of people. A cease-fire held Thursday in parts of Syria's Homs province, observers said, giving civilians a chance to start putting their lives back together. The British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported no violations, while reporters on the ground said fruit and vegetable markets reopened and children were back on the streets in the city of Homs. The quiet will also give humanitarian workers the chance to bring in badly needed aid. "It's important that people can live again," an opposition activist told The Associated Press. Russian defense officials and representatives of the Syrian rebels worked out the details of the cease-fire in northern Homs last week in Cairo. Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov said the truce would affect an area that has a population of more than 147,000 people. This is the third of four truces reached during negotiations in Kazakhstan in which Russia, Iran and Turkey agreed to establish what they called "de-escalation" zones in some of the most violent areas of Syria. Cease-fires are also in effect in parts of southern Syria and an area outside Damascus. The fourth area, in Idlib province, has yet to be established. Like other cease-fire deals during the Syrian conflict, this one does not cover Islamic State fighters or those from al-Qaida-linked groups. A website launched on Wednesday seeks to track Russian-supported propaganda and disinformation on Twitter, part of a growing non-governmental effort to diminish Moscow's ability to meddle in future elections in the United States and Europe. The "Hamilton 68" dashboard was built by researchers working with the Alliance for Securing Democracy, a bipartisan, transatlantic project set up last month to counter Russian disinformation campaigns. The website, supported by the German Marshall Fund, displays a "near real-time" analysis of English-language tweets from a pool of 600 Twitter accounts that analysts identified as users that spread Russian propaganda. The site was launched at a time when the Trump administration has shown reluctance to address Russian cyber attacks during ongoing investigations into whether his campaign colluded with Moscow during the 2016 election. U.S. intelligence officials and lawmakers have warned that Russia will attempt to interfere in the 2018 congressional elections and the next presidential election in 2020. Twitter accounts selected by the new website include those overtly involved in disinformation campaigns pushed by Russian propaganda outlets, such as RT and Sputnik, and users that share information promoting the Russian government. It also includes automated bots and "cyborgs," or users identified as partially automated and partially human-controlled, that helped amplify Russian propaganda. "We're not necessarily saying everyone in this list is getting a paycheck from the Kremlin," said J.M. Berger, a fellow at the German Marshall Fund, adding that the group had "very high confidence" accounts selected were spreading Russian disinformation. U.S. intelligence agencies said Russia conducted a wide-ranging influence operation to discredit Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton and help Donald Trump, a Republican, win the 2016 election. Russia has denied the allegations, and Trump has inconsistently embraced or challenged the assessment of his own intelligence agencies. The research group is exploring ways to conduct similar analyses for other platforms, including Facebook, Alphabet's YouTube and Reddit, but such projects are more difficult because less data is openly accessible, Berger said. Twitter said it was not involved in the project. It had no other comment. The name for the website is taken from Federalist Paper 68, which was authored by U.S. founding father Alexander Hamilton in 1788 as part of a series of essays anonymously published to defend the U.S. Constitution to the public. Hamilton wrote of "protecting America's electoral process from foreign meddling" in Federalist Paper 68, Alliance for Securing Democracy wrote in a blog post. "Today, we face foreign interference of a type Hamilton could have scarcely imagined." A majority of American voters say that transgender people should be allowed to serve in the U.S. military, according to a Quinnipiac University national poll published Thursday. Sixty-eight percent of respondents said they thought transgender people should be allowed to serve in the armed forces. Twenty-seven percent said they thought transgender individuals should not serve. A little over a week ago, President Donald Trump announced on Twitter that the U.S. military would no longer let transgender people serve in the military, reversing the policy established by former President Barrack Obama. "Our military must be focused on decisive and overwhelming victory and cannot be burdened with the tremendous medical costs and disruption that transgender in the military would entail," Trump tweeted on July 26. The U.S. military's top general reacted by saying that there would be no policy change until the Trump administration issued formal guidance to the Department of Defense. "In the meantime, we will continue to treat all of our personnel with respect," the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Joseph Dunford, wrote in a memo to military leaders. Most military households in favor Military households approved of transgender people serving in the military 55 percent to 39 percent, according to the poll. "Voters say a soldier is a soldier, no matter what his/her gender identity is," Tim Malloy, assistant director of the Quinnipiac poll, said in a statement released with the survey results. Republican voters remained the only demographic group opposed to allowing transgender people in the military. They disapproved 60 percent to 32 percent. The same poll also showed that only 19 percent of Republican voters said more acceptance of transgender people would be a "good thing for the country." Overall, 46 percent of respondents said they thought that more acceptance of transgender people would be positive. According to the RAND Corporation, a policy research group, about 4,000 transgender people currently serve in the U.S. military. The Quinnipiac poll surveyed 1,125 voters nationwide between July 27 and August 1 over landline telephones and cellphones. One day after President Donald Trump endorsed a plan to reduce and reshape legal immigration to the United States, Republican lawmakers unveiled border security legislation to stem the flow of illegal immigration. Senator John Cornyn of Texas said Thursday during a news conference at the Capitol that U.S. border agents should have "100 percent situational awareness" and "100 percent operational control" of America's border with Mexico. "Since 9/11, we've seen how important it is for us to know who is coming into our country and what their intentions are," said Cornyn, whose state encompasses more than a thousand-kilometer stretch of the U.S.-Mexico border. Cornyn's bill, Building America's Trust Act, would authorize billions of dollars to boost the number of border patrol agents, increase high-tech monitoring capabilities, and augment walls and other physical barriers to deter illegal crossings. It also would withhold certain types of federal funding to localities that do not cooperate with federal immigration officials in identifying and detaining undocumented immigrants so-called "sanctuary cities" and make it harder for undocumented minors apprehended at the border to be released to family members residing in the United States. "This is not a pretend border security bill. This is a tough border security and interior enforcement bill," Cornyn said. Ending illegal immigration was one of Trump's core promises to voters during last year's campaign, and many Republican lawmakers have long supported tougher border enforcement, as well as compelling municipalities to work cooperatively with federal immigration agents. Hurdles ahead The bill faces significant hurdles in the Senate, however, where Republicans control 52 of 100 seats. Eight Democrats would have to back the legislation to reach the three-fifths majority needed to begin floor debate. Many Democrats say they would support additional resources for border enforcement as part of a broader package that provides a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants. A comprehensive immigration reform bill passed the Senate in 2013, when Democrats controlled the chamber, but was never put to a vote in the Republican-led House of Representatives. "Should there be more enforcement? Yes," Democratic Senator Tim Kaine of Virginia told VOA. "But just doing the crackdown on both legal and illegal [immigration] with no visa reform, no other kinds of reform that doesn't really speak to what I'm hearing form Virginians [constituents]." As for withholding federal funds from sanctuary cities, Kaine, a former mayor of Richmond, Virginia, added, "I don't like bills that punish cities." Cornyn sees the issue as one of compliance with the law. "It is the responsibility of every city and every citizen to cooperate with law enforcement, and that's what we're demanding," the Texas Republican said. "If they don't, this [bill] has provisions that will withhold federal funds." Rights groups Immigrant rights groups argue that erecting walls and other barriers along the border is both offensive and unnecessary. "The undocumented population is staying steady. In fact, net migration from Mexico has decreased," said Carlos Guevara of Unidos US. "We already spend an enormous amount of resources on the border." Some Republicans counter that heightened vigilance at the border would save lives. "Think about the more than 10,000 people who have died crossing the border by smugglers who have left them for dead," said Senator Thom Tillis of North Carolina. "We want to keep them alive." New climate models show that parts of South Asia will become uninhabitable by 2100 if greenhouse gas emissions are not dramatically reduced. Under a high emissions scenario, where little action is taken to stop climate change, the heat wave intensity will reach magnitudes that have not been observed before, Elfatih Eltahir told VOA. Eltahir is a hydro-climatologist at MIT who co-wrote the report published Wednesday in the open-access journal Science Advances. Ironically, the water that attracted humans to these regions will be what makes the environment intolerable. These wont be the hottest places in the world, but the heat, humidity, high population density and poverty combined will make them some of the places with the highest risk for deadly heatwaves. The researchers wanted their analysis to take both heat and humidity into consideration, so that it would be more relevant to human health. They modeled the so-called wet bulb temperature, which takes the actual temperature and subtracts the cooling one could hope to achieve though evaporation. If the wet bulb temperature rises about 35C (95F), just below normal human body temperature, a person has no hope of dissipating heat. Under these conditions, even the healthiest individual in the shade, with water, will die after a few hours. According to the heat index, a heat-humidity metric often used in weather reports, which adds humidity on top of temperature, a wet bulb temperature of 35C would feel like 72C (161F). The models showed that under the high emissions scenario, these temperatures would likely be met sometime during the last three decades of the century in the Ganges River valley, northeastern India, Bangladesh, the eastern coast of India, the Chota Nagpur Plateau, northern Sri Lanka, and the Indus valley of Pakistan. That doesnt mean the heat would regularly surpass these temperatures. If the wet bulb temperature goes above 35 (Celsius), then everybody thats outside basically dies so its a one-off sort of event thats pretty terrible, Alexis Berg, a hydro-climatologist at Princeton University, who was not associated with the study, told VOA. The report did say that under the high emissions scenario, called RCP 8.5, approximately 30 percent of the worlds population would be regularly exposed to extremely dangerous wet bulb temperatures of 31C (88F). Under a lower emissions scenario, only 2 percent of the globe would be regularly exposed to those highs. RCP 8.5 is a death sentence for a large fraction of the world. It should be avoided at all costs, said Matthew Huber, a climate scientist at Purdue University. It does not require impossible effort to avoid RCP 8.5. The choice is very much ours to make. He noted that the study, which he was not associated with, is a much more thorough analysis than previous work. He told VOA via email, This study explores multiple global climate models, multiple climate change trajectories, and also contains a much finer resolved depiction of the underlying physics. Everyone with whom VOA spoke emphasized that this future is very avoidable, but Berg also cautions, it could get worse. Things dont stop magically in 2100, he said. The world keeps warming. Climate change could make much of South Asia, home to a fifth of the world's population, too hot for human survival by the end of this century, scientists warned Wednesday. If climate change continues at its current pace, deadly heat waves beginning in the next few decades will strike parts of India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, according to a study based on computer simulations by researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Key agricultural areas in the Indus and Ganges river basins will be hit particularly hard, reducing crop yields and increasing hunger in some of the world's most densely populated regions, researchers said. "Climate change is not an abstract concept. It is impacting huge numbers of vulnerable people," MIT professor Elfatih Eltahir told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. "Business as usual runs the risk of having extremely lethal heat waves." The areas likely to be worst affected in northern India, southern Pakistan and Bangladesh are home to 1.5 billion people, said Eltahir, the study's co-author. Currently, about 2 percent of India's population is sometimes exposed to extreme combinations of heat and humidity; by 2100 that will increase to about 70 percent if nothing is done to mitigate climate change, the study said. Heat waves across South Asia in the summer of 2015 killed an estimated 3,500 people, and similar events will become more frequent and intense, researchers said. Persian Gulf Projections show the Persian Gulf region will be the world's hottest region by 2100 as a result of climate change. But with small, wealthy populations and minimal domestic food production requirements, oil-rich states in the Gulf will be better able to respond to rising heat than countries in South Asia, Eltahir said. The study does not directly address migration, but researchers said it is likely that millions of people in South Asia will be forced to move because of blistering temperatures and crop failures unless steps are taken to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Disaster experts from South Asian countries met in Pakistan last month to launch a toolkit to help city governments develop ways to manage the impact of heat waves in urban areas. Ahmedabad, in western India, has already introduced a heat action plan South Asia's first early-warning system against extreme heat waves. Authorities in the city of 5.5 million have mapped areas with vulnerable populations and set up "cooling spaces" in temples, public buildings and malls during the summer. The 17-year-old Indonesian girl made a persuasive case to her family: Lured by what she had read online, she told her parents, sisters, aunts, uncles and cousins they should all move to Syria to join the Islamic State group. Each of her two dozen relatives found something in it for them. Free education and health care for the girls. Paying outstanding debts for her father and uncle. Finding work for the youngest men. And the biggest bonus: a chance to live in what was depicted as an ideal Islamic society on the ascendant. It didn't take long before their dreams were crushed and their hopes for a better life destroyed as each of those promised benefits failed to materialize. Instead, the family was faced with a society where single women were expected to be married off to IS fighters, injustice and brutality prevailed, and a battle raged in which all able-bodied men were compelled to report to the frontline. In an interview with The Associated Press, Nurshardrina Khairadhania, now 19, recalled her family's fateful decision to immigrate to the IS stronghold of Raqqa two years ago - and how, only months later, their bid to escape began. During that time the family endured separation, her grandmother died and an uncle was killed in an airstrike. "IS shared only the good things on the internet," said the young woman, who goes by her nickname, Nur. She now lives with her mother, two sisters, three aunts, two female cousins and their three young sons in Ain Issa, a camp for the displaced run by the Kurdish forces fighting to expel IS from Raqqa. Her father and four surviving male cousins are in detention north of there. While the men are being interrogated by the Kurdish forces for possible links to IS, the women wait in a tent in the searing heat, hoping for the family to be reunited and return to their home in Jakarta. Nur's family is among thousands from Asia, Europe, Africa, North America and the Middle East who chased the dream of a new Islamic society advertised by IS in slickly produced propaganda videos, online blogs and other social media. By the time they got there, the group's brutal campaign of beheadings, kidnappings and enslaving women was well underway. For Nur and her sister, such images were part of a hate campaign against the nascent Islamic caliphate or simply justified punishment for crimes committed there. "I was afraid to see that. I first thought it was another group ... who hates IS," Nur said. Nur recalled calling her family together just months after the extremists' declared their "caliphate" on territory seized in Syria and Iraq in the summer of 2014. Making her pitch, she recounted the benefits laid out on the IS blogs: her 21-year-old sister could continue her computer education for free. Her 32-year-old divorced cousin, Difansa Rachmani, could get free health care for herself and her three children, one of whom was autistic. Her uncle could get out from under the debt he incurred trying to save a struggling auto mechanic business in Jakarta - and could even open a new one in Raqqa, where mechanics were in high demand to build car bombs, the extremists' signature weapon. For Nur, the Islamic State seemed to be the perfect place to pursue her desire to study Islam and train to be a health practitioner. "It is a good place to live in peace and justice and, God willing, after hijrah, we will go to paradise," she recalled thinking, using the Islamic term for migration from the land of persecution to the land of Islam. "I wanted to invite all my family. ... We went to be together forever, in life and afterlife." The family sold their house, cars and gold jewelry, collecting $38,000 for the journey to Turkey and then on to Syria. But once in Turkey, the first quarrels began, over how or even whether to sneak into Syria. Seven relatives decided to head out on their own and were detained by the Turkish authorities while trying to cross the border illegally. They were deported back to Indonesia where, the family says, they remain under surveillance because the rest of their relatives had lived in IS territories. The saga of family separation had only just begun, however. After arriving in Islamic State group territory in August 2015, the family was divided again: the men were ordered to take Islamic education classes, and ended up jailed for months because they refused military training and service. After their release, they lived in hiding to avoid forced recruitment or new jail sentences. The women and girls were sent to an all-female dormitory. Nur was shocked by life in the IS-run dormitory. The women bickered, gossiped, stole from each other and sometimes even fought with knives, she said. Her name and those of her 21-year-sister and divorced cousin were put on a list of available brides circulated to IS fighters, who would propose marriage without even meeting them. "It is crazy! We don't know who they are. We don't know their background. They want to marry and marry," she said. "IS wants only three things: women, power and money," she and her cousin, Rachmani, said in unison. "They act like God," Nur added. "They make their own laws. ... They are very far from Islam." In a separate, monitored, interview with the AP at a security center run by Kurdish forces in Kobani, north of Raqqa, where he and the other male family members were being questioned for possible IS ties, her 18-year-old cousin said that living under the extremists was like living in "prison." "We (didn't) want to go to Syria to fight," he said, speaking on condition of anonymity for fear of retribution from IS or trouble with the Kurdish authorities or those back home in Indonesia. "We just wanted to live in an Islamic state. But it is not an Islamic state. It is unjust, and Muslims are fighting Muslims." IS officials ignored Nur's persistent queries about continuing her education in Raqqa. And because they refused to enroll in military service, the men never got the jobs they had been promised. When the battle for Raqqa intensified in June, IS militants set up checkpoints around the city, searching for fighters and came looking for the men. Rachmani did get free surgery for a chronic neck ailment and her son got attention for his autism and was finally able to walk. Soon after the family's arrival, she was sent to the then-IS stronghold of Mosul in Iraq for the surgery. "I left my country for my stupid selfish reason. I wanted the free facilities," Rachmani said. "Thank God I got my free (surgery) but after that all lies." The family searched for months for a way to escape, a risky endeavor in the tightly controlled IS territory. When the Kurdish-led campaign to retake Raqqa from IS intensified in June, the family finally saw their opportunity. At great personal risk, Nur used a computer in a public internet cafe to search for "enemies of IS," despite the danger posed by frequent raids carried out by IS there. She contacted activists and eventually found smugglers, who, for $4,000, got the family cross the frontline and into Kurdish-controlled territory. They turned themselves in to Kurdish forces on June 10. An Indonesian Foreign Ministry official said authorities have known for several months about the presence of Indonesian nationals, including Nur's family, in the Ain Issa camp and were investigating their condition. "However, they have been two years living in the IS area, so the risk assessment of them is required and we have been facing obstacles to reach them as they are in an area not controlled by any official government, either Iraq or Syria," said Lalu Muhammad Iqbal, the ministry's director of Indonesian citizen protection. "I am very regretful. I was very stupid and very naive. I blame myself," Nur said of the family's plight. "May God accept my repentance because you know ... it is not like a holiday to go to Turkey. It is a dangerous, dangerous trip." When nonprofit Video Volunteers launched a campaign to tackle patriarchy in rural India, several women mentioned a seemingly innocuous custom: not being allowed to call their husbands by their first names. Women, particularly in villages, are taught from a young age to never address their husbands or older male relatives by their names, as a mark of respect. But the custom, which is less common in the cities, is deeply patriarchal, said Stalin K., director of Video Volunteers, which is based in Goa. "At first glance, it seems like a small, harmless custom," he said. "But even these seemingly inane practices matter, as they are as much a power play as sexual assault or violence against women," he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation by phone. Video Volunteers trains men and women in rural areas across India to report on everyday issues that concern them. The volunteers record short video clips on their tablets, which are then screened and discussed in the community. About 70 volunteers in more than a dozen states were trained to report on patriarchy, sexism and violence against women. More than 327,390 crimes against women were registered in India in 2015, an increase of more than 50 percent since 2010. Many crimes go unreported, particularly in villages, because women fear bringing shame to their families. Women's concerns The Video Volunteers reports included women talking about their limited freedom of movement compared with that of men, biases against widows, the practice of covering their heads in the presence of men, and the prejudice faced by women doing jobs considered to be men's work, such as driving tuk-tuks, or three-wheeled taxis. Several reports were about women not being able to call their husbands by names because they were told it was disrespectful and inauspicious to do so. Instead, a woman would address her husband as the father of their child, by his profession, or simply with "please listen." In discussions held afterward, women practiced saying their husbands' names aloud for the first time, said Stalin, who goes by his first name. The women were then encouraged to talk to their husbands about the practice. In many cases, the men did not allow their wives to address them by name, and one woman was ostracized by her village for referring to an older male relative by name, Stalin said. But some women were told they could call their husbands by name in private. "That is still a step forward," Stalin said. "Our experience with this campaign is that these women are not passively accepting of patriarchy. They are very aware and just waiting for an opportunity to push back in a thoughtful and considered manner, which perhaps has a greater impact." Police say the death toll from Wednesdays attack on two buses traveling to Juba from the border town of Nimule has risen. Daniel Justin Achuor, spokesperson for the South Sudan National Police Service, said Thursday 10 people were wounded and nine people were killed. Two of them are soldiers and seven are civilians. All those who were wounded are taken to Nimule [civil hospital] and now the situation is calm, Achuor told South Sudan in Focus. Achuor said commercial buses from Juba traveled to Nimule Thursday without incident. The Juba-Nimule road is a major lifeline linking the South Sudanese capital with the East Africa region, via Uganda. The road carries most goods that South Sudanese traders import from Uganda. Wednesdays incident was the fifth deadly attack this year along the 200-kilometer stretch of road between Nimule, on the banks of the Nile River, and Juba. Ambush attack The SPLA spokesman, Brigadier General Lul Ruai Koang, said one of the buses was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade, and that the attackers also had heavy weapons. He blamed rebels loyal to First Vice President Riek Machar for the raid, but a spokesman for Machars SPLA-In Opposition group denied any involvement. The attackers were repulsed, Koang said. He indicated government forces inflicted an equal number of casualties on the raiders who opened fire on the buses, but details were unclear. A passenger aboard one of the two buses heading for Juba said a very serious ambush broke out after the convoy passed Moli town in Eastern Equatoria province, less than halfway along the route to Juba. The passenger said he saw three people who had been shot to death, one woman and two men, before the buses turned around and headed back to Moli. Several people with gunshot wounds were taken for treatment to Nimule. Each side blames the other Koang told VOA he was convinced that rebels loyal to Machar were responsible for the attack. However, the deputy military spokesman for Machars SPLA-IO, Colonel Lam Paul Gabriel, was equally certain that his fighters were not involved. We do not know exactly who is responsible for that, but we have sent an MI [military intelligence] team in search for the culprit, Gabriel told South Sudan in Focus. We are advising our civilians to be careful while traveling on this road. He said SPLA-IO forces had received strict orders from Machar, making it very clear that civilian vehicles should not be attacked. Before Wednesdays ambush, the most recent attack on the Nimule-Juba road was in June, when 10 people including two senior army officers were killed in a raid on another convoy. That assault was believed to have been carried out by Machar loyalists. South Sudan has been mired in civil war since the young nations first president, Salva Kiir, dismissed his deputy Riek Machar four years ago. After a peace accord was signed in April 2016 and backed by the United States and other Western nations, Machar returned to the capital to share power with Kiir, but the deal fell apart less than three months later, and Machar and his supporters left Juba. Nearly 2 million residents have fled South Sudan since 2013, in Africas largest cross-border flood of refugees since the 1994 Rwandan genocide. The exodus from South Sudan has become one of the worlds worst humanitarian crises, according to aid groups. Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby, spiritual leader of the world's Anglicans, prayed on Wednesday with South Sudanese refugees in northern Uganda, home to a nearly million fugitives from a four-year civil war in the world's youngest nation. Around 1.8 million people have fled South Sudan since fighting broke out in December 2013, sparking what has become the world's fastest growing refugee crisis and largest cross-border exodus in Africa since the 1994 Rwandan genocide. Most have fled south to Uganda, whose open-door refugee policy is now creaking under the sheer weight of numbers in sprawling camps carved out of the bush. "The Bible tells us that the refugee is specially loved by God," Welby, leader of the 85-million strong Anglican Communion, said as he joined in prayers in a camp in the northern district of Moyo. "Which means you who are refugees are specially loved by God, that Jesus himself was a refugee and he loves you and he stands with you and the suffering that you have is the suffering that he knows. So I pray for you, I will advocate for you." Officials from the United Nations UNHCR refugee agency say $674 million is needed to pay for the basic needs of the refugees this year, but so far only 21 percent of those funds have been secured. The total number of refugees is due to pass a million in the next week, UNHCR officials said. Nor is there any sign of a let-up in the stream of desperate civilians. Some days it is only hundreds. On others, it is thousands. In the camps, refugees are already on half their standard food rations of 12kg of maize a month, and now critical services such as health and education are facing cut-backs, UNHCR officials said. In Bidi-Bidi, the largest of the refugee camps, 180 South Sudanese died in the first six months of the year, nearly half of them small children. "We came here to hide ourselves from death," said 31-year-old Moro Bullen, standing next to a row of 16 freshly dug graves, mounds of rust-red earth arranged in three neat rows. Half of the graves were only a meter long. "We did not come here to die. We came here to be rescued." Splintered Conflict Although the roots of the war lie in the animosity between President Salva Kiir, who hails from South Sudan's powerful Dinka ethnic group, and his former deputy, Riek Machar, a Nuer, it has splintered into a patchwork of overlapping conflicts. Machar is under house arrest in South Africa, having fled there last year to seek medical attention, but there has been little let-up in the levels of conflict, especially in the Equatoria region abutting Uganda. "It has evolved significantly. There are many actors. Because there are many actors now it has become more violent. The prognosis is not encouraging in terms of achieving peace," said Brian Adeba of the Washington-based Enough Project. Refugees have told Reuters of towns and villages emptied by government forces, dominated by the Dinka, with men, women and children summarily executed, and their bodies mutilated. Rights groups have also reported widespread rape and looting that the United Nations says indicates ethnic cleansing. It has also warned of a possible genocide in a country that only came into being in 2011, when South Sudan split from Sudan. The government has denied the reports, and said its troops are merely conducting operations against rebel militiamen. President Donald Trump, in a defiant speech at a West Virginia rally Thursday night, called stories about his campaigns alleged ties to Russia a total fabrication that makes his political opponents feel better about themselves after their loss of last years election. Special Counsel Robert Mueller has seated a grand jury, The Wall Street Journal reported hours earlier, significantly stepping up his probe into Russian interference in the election. Theyre trying to cheat you out of the leadership you want with a fake story, Trump said to cheers in Huntington. That is demeaning to all of us. Trump said of the investigations by the special counsel: I just hope the final determination is a truly honest one. WATCH: 'Failed Voices in Washington Oppose Our Movement,' Trump Says The president added that what the prosecutors should be looking at are Hillary Clintons 33,000 deleted e-mails. Clinton, the Democratic nominee, won the popular vote, but Republican Trump prevailed in the presidential election by capturing enough electoral votes. Seriousness of issue The presidents remarks came as analysts and political commentators emphasized the seriousness of the special counsel putting in place a grand jury in the nations capital. If, in fact, Mueller has impaneled a grand jury, it likely signals that he has significant evidence that would point in the direction of a crime having been committed, Professor Anthony Clark Arend, who is the senior associate dean of Georgetown Universitys School of Foreign Service, told VOA. Reuters news agency reports the grand jury has already issued subpoenas in connection with the June 2016 meeting involving a Russian lawyer and others held with the presidents son, Donald Trump Jr., and other top campaign officials. Some have asserted the meeting indicates possible collusion between Russia and the Trump presidential campaign. Reports indicate the younger Trump jumped at the idea of a meeting when the lawyer told him, through an intermediary, that she had incriminating evidence against Clinton. Trump has cast doubt on whether the Russians tried to interfere in the election, despite intelligence reports that the Kremlin sought to manipulate the election in the Republican nominees favor. Russia has denied any meddling and Trump has consistently denied any collusion. He has called Muellers probe a witch hunt and there has recently been speculation in Washington the president may try to fire the special counsel. White House response The presidents special counsel, Ty Cobb, in a statement released by the White House on Thursday, said he is unaware of a grand jury probe, but the White House favors anything that accelerates the conclusion of his work fairly ... the White House is committed to fully cooperating with Mr. Mueller. Now that a grand jury has reportedly been seated, it could seek to subpoena Trump family financial records. The president has warned Mueller to stay away from his finances. WATCH: 'No Russians in Our Campaign,' Trump Says CNN reported Thursday that Muellers probe had crossed that red line, expanding to examine possible financial crimes, some unconnected to the 2016 election. The president did not respond, as he walked from the Marine One helicopter to the South Portico late Thursday, when VOA asked him, Did Mueller cross the red line? Mueller, a former FBI director took over the Russia probe after Trump fired FBI Director James Comey in May when Comey apparently refused the presidents request to back down from the investigation. Bill to protect special counsel Two U.S. senators on Thursday introduced a bill to make it difficult to fire a special counsel. The proposal, by Democrat Chris Coons and Republican Thom Tillis, would prohibit a president from firing the investigator except for misconduct, conflict of interest, severe illness or another good cause. A three-judge panel would determine if the firing was justified. The law is apparently an effort to protect Mueller from any attempt by Trump to remove him. Some analysts had said that if the president wanted to fire Mueller, the proposed legislation might have prompted him to do it before the Senate had a chance to vote on the new law. Pro forma sessions The Senate, which began its August recess Thursday evening, blocked Trump from making any appointments during the summer break by agreeing to a series of pro forma sessions brief meetings that technically keep the Senate in session. Lawmakers are due back in Washington in early September. Senators took the action after Trumps recent criticism of Attorney General Jeff Sessions sparked speculation that he might fire Sessions during the summer recess. Trump sent several tweets last week lambasting his attorney general, who had recused himself from the ongoing Russia investigation. The president, who cannot fire the special counsel himself, could have then appointed a replacement who could then have fired Mueller. Pro forma sessions have been used for decades to block recess action, including last year when the Senate used the brief meetings to prevent former President Barack Obama from filling a vacant seat on the Supreme Court. More than a hundred buses carrying thousands of Syrian militants and their families left Lebanon Wednesday, completing a cease-fire deal between the Syrians and the Lebanese Shi'ite militant group Hezbollah. Hezbollah-run media in Beirut said the Syrians headed for an area of Syria's Idlib province controlled by rebels fighting against the Damascus government. The cease-fire ended three years of sporadic fighting between the Syrian jihadists, linked to the al-Qaida terror network and its affiliates, and their Lebanese foes. Six days of intense fighting in Lebanon's mountainous Jurud Arsal region led to an agreement between the two sides last week to exchange fighters' bodies and swap prisoners. The final step this week was the departure of about 9,000 jihadists and civilians, including residents of Syrian refugee camps around the Lebanese town of Arsal. Hezbollah's media unit, which provided details of how many Syrians were on the move, said they included a top al-Qaida operative known in Syria as Abu Malek al-Talli. "The Nusra Front was defeated in Lebanon," Hezbollah's al-Manar television announced in the Lebanese capital, using an old name for al-Qaida's affiliate in Syria. More than a year ago al-Nusra Front disbanded and founded a new jihadist-led alliance called Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), which now controls large swaths of Idlib in northern Syria. The United Nations refugee agency, UNHCR, said in a statement on Wednesday it was not involved in the deal between the Syrian and Lebanese militants. It added that refugee returns should "be individual decisions, based on objective information about the conditions in the place of intended return, and made free from undue pressure." Three top Democratic senators, in a rare show of bipartisanship, on Wednesday urged U.S. President Donald Trump to stand up to China as he prepares to launch an inquiry into Beijing's intellectual property and trade practices in coming days. Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer pressed the Republican president to skip the investigation and go straight to trade action against China. "We should certainly go after them," said Schumer in a statement. Senators Ron Wyden of Oregon and Sherrod Brown of Ohio also urged Trump to rein in China. Tensions between Washington and Beijing have escalated in recent months as Trump has pressed China to cut steel production to ease global oversupply and rein in North Korea's missile program. Sources familiar with the current discussions said Trump was expected to issue a presidential memorandum in coming days, citing Chinese theft of intellectual property as a problem. The European Union, Japan, Germany and Canada have all expressed concern over China's behavior on intellectual property theft. U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer would then initiate an investigation under the Trade Act of 1974's Section 301, which allows the president to unilaterally impose tariffs or other trade restrictions to protect U.S. industries, the sources said. It is unclear whether such a probe would result in trade sanctions against China, which Beijing would almost certainly challenge before the World Trade Organization. The Chinese Embassy in Washington said in a statement to Reuters that China "opposes unilateral actions and trade protectionism in any form." Leverage for talks U.S. Section 301 investigations have not led to trade sanctions since the WTO was launched in 1995. In the 1980s, Section 301 tariffs were levied against Japanese motorcycles, steel and other products. "This could merely be leverage for bilateral negotiations," James Bacchus, a former WTO chief judge and USTR official, said of a China intellectual property probe. Some trade lawyers said that WTO does not have jurisdiction over investment rules such as China's requirements that foreign companies transfer technology to their joint venture partners allowing sanctions to proceed outside the WTO's dispute settlement system. But Bacchus argued the United States has an obligation to turn first to the Geneva-based institution to resolve trade disputes, adding: "There is an obligation in WTO to enforce intellectual property rights that is not fully explored." Lighthizer and Trump's commerce secretary, Wilbur Ross, have complained the WTO is slow to resolve disputes and biased against the United States. The threat comes at a time when Trump has become increasingly frustrated with the level of support from Beijing to pressure Pyongyang to give up its nuclear and missile program. Trump has said in the past that China would get better treatment on trade with the United States if it acted more forcefully against Pyongyang. Beijing has said its influence on North Korea is limited. China also says trade between the two nations benefits both sides, and that Beijing is willing to improve trade ties. A senior Chinese official said Monday that there was no link between North Korea's nuclear program and China-U.S. trade. Wyden, the top Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, wrote to Lighthizer urging action to stop China from pressuring U.S. tech companies into giving up intellectual property rights. Wyden's state of Oregon is home to several companies that could make a case regarding intellectual property rights and China, including Nike and FLIR Systems. Watching over his kids at a water fountain in Warren, Detroits largest suburb, Republican Jason Marchand says he approves of Trump a president who has done things that should have been done a long time ago and credits him for improvements in the auto industry. But he acknowledges that their views differ on the role of immigrants. Everybody deserves to have a change of life and populate [the city of Detroit, Michigan] more. It wouldnt be a bad idea, Marchand told VOA. Yet Marchand, who is a mechanic, is just the kind of American worker - and voter - targeted by a new Senate bill. Rolled out at the White House, Wednesday, by President Donald Trump, the RAISE Act would cut legal immigration by 50 percent, part of Trumps campaign promise to put America first. The measure, which was first introduced in February, would establish a point system for would-be immigrants, favoring those who speak English and have marketable skills. The aim is to put American workers first, White House senior advisor for policy Stephen Miller said during the White House press briefing Wednesday. A bipartisan group of almost 1,500 economists wrote a letter to lawmakers in April saying they are in near universal agreement that, with proper safeguards, immigration represents an opportunity rather than a threat to our economy and to American workers. While immigration may hurt workers in certain industries, the economists argued, benefits such as increased entrepreneurship and a flow of younger workers to replace retiring baby boomers far outweigh any harm that may be done. But Miller countered Wednesday, asking, How is it fair, or right or proper that if, say, you open up a new business in Detroit, that the unemployed workers of Detroit are going to have to compete against an endless flow of unskilled workers for the exact same jobs? Why Detroit? The city of Detroit is often used to represent the plight of unemployed American workers. During the Great Recession, the city endured a 28.4 percent unemployment rate, high crime and high school dropout rates, urban blight, and a steep population decrease among native-born residents. While Detroit remains in long-term recovery, its unemployment rate today stands at 7.8 percent. Additionally, population loss has slowed, which may be attributable to a rise in the citys immigrant population during the same time period, according to a June study by Global Detroit and New American Economy. It's almost like climate change: 97 out of 100 economists recognize that immigration is a positive economic force, said Steve Tobocman, Director of Global Detroit an initiative that capitalizes on the economic contributions of southeast Michigans international population. Miller, in what amounted to an unusual public account of administration immigration policy, disagreed. We are constantly told that unskilled immigration boosts the economy but again, if you look at the last 17 years, we just know from reality that is not true. And if you look at wages, you can see the effects there, if you look at labor force, you can see the effects there. Miller added that the number of unemployed people of working age in the U.S. is at a record high. He said almost one in four Americans between the ages of 25 and 54 arent even employed. In fact, government statistics show that 21.5 percent of American residents in that age range were unemployed in June. But most of those were not looking for work. Labor statisticians normally measure unemployment by looking at the number of individuals actively seeking work as a percentage of the total labor force. By that measure, unemployment stands at a relatively low 4.4 percent in June. Not anti-immigrant Detroiters are by and large not keen on villainizing the citys legal immigrant population. Michigans Republican governor Rick Snyder, once called himself the most pro-immigrant governor in the country. Among Detroit-area working-class residents, the narrative is not too different. On a bench nearby Marchand, democrat Ed Nouhan, a retired craftsman and union person, notes that his own parents were immigrants. But he is pro-immigrant only insofar as new residents are sponsored and undergo proper background checks. You have good and bad in every ethnic[ity] or nationality or race of people, said Nouhan. Marjorie Akers, a self-described single mom on a fixed income, has seen her neighborhood become increasingly diverse over the years, and is happy about it. Despite her personal economic concerns, she is happy to see her children attend a more diverse school. The future is more about travel and going to different countries and places and learning different things, said Akers. Its always been a free country for people to be able to come and go as they please, and I think thats good. RAISE Act The RAISE Act, introduced by Republican Senators Tom Cotton and David Perdue, is expected to have a tough time in the Senate because Republicans have a slim majority and would need 60 votes to overcome a filibuster by opposition Democrats, who generally support current immigration levels. But Miller thinks momentum will grow as more Americans learn about the bill and the pro-American worker goal behind it. Our message to folks in Congress is, If you are serious about immigration reform, then ask yourselves whats in the best interest of America and American workers and ultimately, this has to be a part of that. U.S. President Donald Trump is expected to increase pressure on China to change its trade practices and do more to stop North Korea's weapons programs. Reports by financial news media Thursday predicted Trump will sign an order in the coming days to open an investigation of Chinese demands that foreign companies share technology secrets in exchange for access to the massive Chinese market. White House officials said no developments were expected Friday, as the original reports had indicated. The expected investigation could lead to higher tariffs on Chinese-made products headed for the U.S. market, which is the world's largest. Trade experts warned such actions might violate commitments the United States has made to the World Trade Organization. Nevertheless, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross recently criticized China's trade practices, including forced technology transfer, as unfair measures that hurt U.S. exports and contribute to a $347 billion trade deficit in China's favor. As a presidential candidate, Trump denounced China's trade policies. He also has said that China, as North Korea's neighbor and major trading partner, could do far more to stop Pyongyang's efforts to improve nuclear weapons and missiles. U.S. experts have warned that North Korea's missile tests and nuclear development efforts pose an increasing threat to the United States and many other nations. Trump's tough stance on trade issues helped him win support from working-class voters who believe they have lost jobs due to unfair foreign competition. His approach was a break with the Republican Party's traditional pro-trade and pro-business stance. The president's opponents in the Democratic Party have accused him recently of talking tough about trade issues but failing to take effective action. U.S. President Donald Trump sparred with the leaders of Mexico and Australia in contentious phone calls shortly after he assumed power in January, newly leaked transcripts show. According to the documents, Trump demanded that Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto stop saying that Mexico would not pay for a wall that Trump wants built along the U.S.-Mexico border to thwart illegal immigration into the United States. During his months-long run for the White House, Trump vowed that he would make Mexico foot the bill. In a transcript of the January 27 call, published Thursday by The Washington Post, Trump told Pena Nieto, If you are going to say that Mexico is not going to pay for the wall, then I do not want to meet with you guys anymore because I cannot live with that. At one point, Trump said, I have to have Mexico pay for the wall I have to. I have been talking about it for a two-year period. But Pena Nieto resisted, saying, "My position has been and will continue to be very firm, saying that Mexico cannot pay for the wall. Trump objected: But you cannot say that to the press. The press is going to go with that, and I cannot live with that. In the end, Pena Nieto said that Trump's wall proposal is an issue related to the dignity of Mexico and goes to the national pride of my country, but agreed to stop talking about the wall. Trump said recently that he still "absolutely" intends to try to make Mexico pay for the $21 billion wall, but in the meantime has asked Congress for funds to start construction. The fate of the proposal, however, is uncertain, with Democratic lawmakers and some Republicans opposed to it. Discussion with Australian PM In another even more acrimonious call in January, Trump, who has moved quickly to curb immigration into the U.S., erupted at Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull as they discussed a deal former U.S. President Barack Obama made with Australia to accept 1,250 refugees into the U.S. This is going to kill me, Trump told Turnbull. I am the worlds greatest person that does not want to let people into the country. And now I am agreeing to take 2,000 people. As they argued about the refugee plan, Trump told the Australian leader, "I have had it. I have been making these calls all day, and this is the most unpleasant call all day. Before the call ended abruptly, Trump told Turnbull that at least one of his calls to world leaders had gone better. Putin was a pleasant call, Trump said, referring to Russian President Vladimir Putin. This is ridiculous. The White House has not commented about the transcripts. Trump has since met with both Pena Nieto and Turnbull at world gatherings and had seemingly less contentious conversations with the two U.S. allies. President Donald Trump has become increasingly frustrated by the situation in Afghanistan and has recently floated a change in command as he struggles to settle on a new strategy after years of war. NBC News first reported Wednesday that Trump fumed during a meeting last month over the lack of progress. The network said he also proposed firing Army Gen. John Nicholson, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, during the heated Situation Room exchange. The U.S. has been fighting in Afghanistan for nearly 16 years, but Trump has yet to settle on a new strategy for achieving the goal he inherited from the Obama administration: getting the Afghan government to a point where it can defend itself. 'This is hard work' Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said last month that the administration was close to announcing its new strategy, despite blowing a self-imposed deadline, but was still sorting out the big ideas, beyond troop levels and other military details. It just takes time, he said. It wasnt that past presidents were dumb or anything else. This is hard work, so youve got to get it right. Thats all there is to it. Mattis said as recently as June that we are not winning the war. Trumps predecessors also struggled with the task of stabilizing the country and bringing U.S. troops home. White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders referred questions about the meeting to the National Security Council, which said the presidents team continues to develop options for him that address threats and opportunities to America arising from this vital region. The presidents national security team is developing a comprehensive, integrated strategy for South Asia that utilizes all aspects of our national power to address this complex region, said NSC spokesman Michael Anton in a statement. That strategy has been worked carefully in the interagency process and while no decision has been made the presidents team continues to develop options for him that address threats and opportunities to America arising from this vital region. He declined to comment on details of the classified meeting. Lunch with troops The meeting took place the day after Trump took the unusual step of having lunch with a group of service members whod spent time on the ground in Afghanistan to try to brainstorm new ideas for fighting the war. Im going to be talking to you about Afghanistan, what you think, your views, Trump said as he sat down for lunch, telling reporters, These are people on the ground know it probably better than anybody. Weve been there for now close to 17 years, he went on to say, and I want to find out why weve been there for 17 years, how its going, and what we should do in terms of additional ideas. Ive heard plenty of ideas from a lot of people, but I want to hear it from the people on the ground. Waiters and soldiers According to NBC, Trump brought up the lunchtime conversation at the meeting with senior aides and advisers, comparing the soldiers on-the-ground perspective to waiters who know the ins-and-outs of the restaurants where they work. He at one point brought up what he said was an ill-advised closure of Manhattans 21 Club restaurant, which he blamed on an expensive consultant. Trump has long expressed skepticism about experts conclusions, including the U.S. intelligence community and military commanders. I know more about ISIS than the generals do. Believe me, he said at one point during his campaign. Turkey's top diplomat vowed Thursday to root out militants plotting against China, signaling closer cooperation against suspected Uighur militants hailing from China's far west who have long been a sore point in bilateral relations. Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu told reporters during a visit to Beijing that his government would treat threats to China's security as threats to itself and would not allow any "anti-China activity inside Turkey or territory controlled by Turkey." Cavusoglu's tough comments, which came after a meeting and warm handshakes with his Chinese counterpart, Wang Yi, were seen as referring to China's Uighur ethnic minority, a Turkic people who share cultural and linguistic ties with Anatolian Turks. Turkey and China have in recent years pledged to cooperate on security and counterterrorism efforts, though experts say such ties are also balanced by mutual suspicion. Relations between Ankara and Beijing have been strained by Turkey's support for groups fighting Syrian President Bashar al-Assad a China ally and its sheltering of Uighur refugees. Accusations of oppression Human rights groups have long accused China of oppressing its roughly 10 million Uighurs with severe restrictions on language, culture and religion and inflaming a cycle of resentment and radicalization. Hundreds have died in Xinjiang in violent clashes in recent years, and China now keeps the region, with a land area comparable in size to that of Iran, under a constant lockdown with massive policing and surveillance efforts that activists say are rife with abuse. Thousands of Uighurs have fled China in recent years to seek asylum in Turkey, with many traveling on to Syria to join Islamic militant groups or simply to escape persecution and find a new home. In response, China has pressed allies, including Russia and Syria, to share intelligence about Uighur militants fighting in Syria and help avert their return to strike at China. Hundreds of Uighurs, if not far more, are believed to have joined the jihadist-led, al-Qaida-affiliated alliance called Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, founded by the former al-Nusra Front. Others have pledged allegiance to the Islamic State group or sided with smaller militant factions in the Syrian conflict. Cavusoglu endorsed China's efforts Thursday, adding that Turkey "fully appreciated all the actions China has taken" in combating IS and striving for a political settlement in the Syrian war. Turkey also agreed to designate as a terror group the East Turkestan Islamic Movement, a decades-old Uighur separatist movement with links to al-Qaida. The Turkish government will also seek to restrict negative reporting about China in its media, Cavusoglu said. Agreements applauded Wang hailed the agreements and said that "deepening our collaboration on anti-terror and security is the most central part" of the two countries' relationship. Niu Song, a professor in the Middle East Studies Institute at Shanghai International Studies University, said Turkey has begun to confront Islamic militant groups as well as respect China's "core interest" in fighting separatists after spending the early years of the Syrian conflict turning a blind eye to militant activities along its border with the war-torn country. "Turkey has reconsidered its Syrian policy and Uighur policies in the last few years," Niu said. "Since then the foreign ministers of China and Turkey have met many times and have increasingly found areas of consensus on major international issues." With President Xi Jinping keen to play a leadership role in global affairs, China has swiftly expanded its presence in the Middle East and offered itself as a mediator in the region's conflicts. But it has not shied from calling for help, either. At Beijing's request, Egyptian police in recent weeks rounded up scores of Muslim Chinese students studying at Al-Azhar University and deported them to China, sparking panic among Chinese living in Cairo who belong to the Uighur, Hui and Kazakh ethnic minorities. The World Uyghur Congress, an overseas Uighur advocacy group, said it hoped China's and Turkey's vows of cooperation in the name of security would not infringe on Uighur refugees' lawful rights. "The Turkish foreign minister's comments have surprised and concerned us," said Dilxat Raxit, a spokesman for the group. "China's goal is to use economic pressure to restrict Uighurs' political rights, but we remain hopeful that the Turkish people will continue to stand with Uighurs and give us their support." Shift by Erdogan Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan had positioned himself as a champion of Turkic peoples and in 2009 accused Beijing of committing "genocide" toward Uighurs, attracting a flurry of headlines and infuriating Beijing. The two governments clashed again in 2015 when Turkey offered asylum to Uighur refugees detained in Thailand whom China had demanded back. Since then, however, the China-Turkey relationship has warmed amid a broader political realignment. China, Russia and Turkey have strengthened their partnership, while Erdogan has pulled away from the orbit of European governments amid disputes over human rights and other issues. China has expressed openness toward Turkey's joining the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, a security alliance composed of Russia and several central Asian states that is seen as a counterweight to NATO. Turkey and Russia have also backed several major Chinese initiatives including Xi's Belt and Road Initiative to develop infrastructure spanning Eurasia that were initially shunned by Western powers. Deaths in U.S. coal mines this year have surged ahead of last years, and federal safety officials say workers who are new to a mine have been especially vulnerable to fatal accidents. But the nations coal miners union says the mine safety agency isnt taking the right approach to fixing the problem. Ten coal miners have died on the job so far this year, compared to a record low of eight deaths last year. The U.S. Mine Safety and Health Administration is responding to the uptick in deaths with a summer initiative, sending officials to observe and train miners new to a particular mine on safer working habits. The push comes during a transition for the agency, amid signals from President Donald Trump that he intends to ease the industrys regulatory burden. Federal inspectors powerless The miners union, the United Mine Workers of America, says the agency initiative falls short. It notes federal inspectors who conduct such training visits are barred from punishing the mine if they spot any safety violations. To take away the inspectors right to issue a violation takes away the one and only enforcement power the inspector and the agency has, UAW president Cecil Roberts wrote in a recent letter to the federal agency. Patricia Silvey, a deputy assistant secretary at the Mine Safety and Health Administration, or MSHA, said eight of the coal miners who died this year had less than a years experience at the mine where they worked. We found from the stats that category of miners were more prone to have an accident, Silvey said in an interview with The Associated Press before the 10th death occurred at mine in Pennsylvania on July 25. New miners die in accidents Silvey pointed to a death last May at West Virginias Pinnacle Mine where a miner riding a trolley rose up and struck his head on the mine roof. She said the fatality could have been due to the miners unfamiliarity with the mine. The miner had worked there nine weeks, according to an accident report. And in the most recent death, a miner less than two weeks into the job at a mine in eastern Pennsylvania was run over by a bulldozer July 25. Five of the 10 coal mining deaths this year have occurred in West Virginia, and two more in Kentucky. Alabama, Montana and Pennsylvania each had one coal mining death. Nine of the miners killed this year had several years experience working at other mines. The mine safety agencys injury numbers show that workers who were new to a mine had more than double the injuries. Going back to October 2015, miners who worked at a specific mine less than a year suffered 903 injuries, compared to 418 for miners working at a mine one to two years. Training for miners The mine safety agency says it will visit mines and offer suggestions on training miners who have been at a mine less than a year. Silvey said the union is correct that inspectors wont be writing safety violations, but that the initiative has in no way undermined our regular inspection program. The miners union said the federal agency should not expect safety suggestions to carry the same weight as citations and fines. To believe that an operator will comply with the law on their own free will is contrary to historical experience and naive on MSHAs part, the letter said. Strong enforcement A former MSHA official said the agency would be tying the hands of inspectors if they dont allow them to write citations on the training visits. The record low fatal injury rate among coal miners in recent years is because of strong enforcement of the law, said Celeste Monforton, who served on a governor-appointed panel that investigated West Virginias 2010 Upper Big Branch mine disaster that killed 29 miners. There were 12 coal mining deaths in 2015 and 16 in 2014. It would be a disgrace to see that trend reversed, she said. Phil Smith, a spokesman for the miners union, said the unions safety department met recently with MSHA on the dispute, but MSHA maintained it has the authority to conduct observation visits without enforcement. Safety boss position vacant The mine safety agencys top position has been vacant since former Assistant Secretary of Labor Joe Main left in January. Main, a former miners union official, focused on eliminating hazards at troubled mines by increasing aggressive inspections after West Virginias Upper Big Branch explosion. Main declined to comment. Silvey said a vacancy at the mine safety agencys top position hasnt hindered their efforts. She said she knew of no timetable for hiring a new assistant secretary of Labor to oversee the mine safety agency. I know one thing, its a presidential appointment, she said. The World Health Organization and the U.N. Children's Fund (UNICEF) recommend that mothers breastfeed within the first hour after giving birth and continue until their children reach age 2, with supplemental food as they grow older. Yet no country in the world meets these standards or provides enough support for breastfeeding mothers, according to a report the agencies released Tuesday. "Breast milk works like a baby's first vaccine, protecting infants from potentially deadly diseases and giving them all the nourishment they need to survive and thrive," Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO director-general, said in a press release. Anthony Lake, executive director of UNICEF, posed this question on UNICEF's website: "What if governments had a proven, cost-effective way to save babies' lives, reduce rates of malnutrition, support children's health, increase educational attainment and grow productivity?" Lake provided the answer: "They do: It's called breastfeeding. And it is one of the best investments nations can make in the lives and futures of their youngest members and in the long-term strength of their societies." According to the Global Breastfeeding Initiative, a partnership of 20 international agencies whose goal is to increase investment in breastfeeding worldwide under the leadership of UNICEF and WHO, breastfeeding can bolster brain development, which in turn can lead to a smarter, more productive work force. Furthermore, breastfeeding saves mothers' and babies' lives. In the first six months of life, it helps prevent diarrhea and pneumonia, two major causes of infant death. Breastfeeding also reduces the risk of ovarian and breast cancer, two leading causes of death among women. The World Health Assembly, the decision-making body of the WHO, wants to see at least 50 percent of the world's children under 6 months of age exclusively breastfed by 2025. Reaching that target will require an investment of an additional $5.7 billion, or just $4.70 per newborn, for such things as improving breastfeeding practices in maternity facilities and improving access to lactation counseling and it could generate $300 billion in economic gains across lower- and middle-income countries by 2025 and save 520,000 children's lives in the next 10 years, according to a World Bank study. Because nursing mothers need support from their families and communities, and governments worldwide need to implement policies such as paid maternity leave and nursing breaks, the U.N. agencies declared August 1-7 World Breastfeeding Week. As U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson embarks on his first official trip to Southeast Asia this week, the United States continues to press for a legally binding mechanism to prevent conflicting territorial claims in the South China Sea from erupting into violent confrontations. After more than 15 years of intermittent talks, foreign ministers from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and China are expected to endorse the framework of a code of conduct (COC) that commits to cooperation rather than confrontations in the disputed waters, during talks this week in the Philippines. "The U.S. has certainly welcomed the agreement on the framework, but we are also continuing to call for the rapid adoption of an effective code of conduct," Susan Thornton, acting assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific Affairs, said Wednesday in a telephone briefing. Although the United States is not a claimant to the sovereignty over disputed islands in the South China Sea, U.S. officials have continually called for various claimants to pursue their claims peacefully and in accordance with international law. "We'll press for due regard for legal processes, dispute resolution mechanisms, and upholding certainly international law and the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea," Thornton said. During Wednesday's briefing, Thornton downplayed concerns from the region that North Korea's threats are overshadowing territorial disputes in the South China Sea. "It certainly hasn't been knocked out of the front of our minds and it will be a focus at the upcoming meetings," she said, acknowledging that such a perception is likely based on North Korea's continuous missile tests and nuclear provocation. Regional assistance Still, Thornton acknowledged that Tillerson will seek greater cooperation from regional allies in isolating North Korea when he arrives for talks on Saturday. "What we are trying to do is galvanize this pressure and isolate North Korea, so it can see what the opportunity cost is over developing these weapons programs," she noted. But some analysts caution Washington not to create a perception of being so focused on the North Korean threat that the South China Sea and other issues important to U.S. allies in the region are overshadowed. "Southeast Asian governments are coming to believe that they will not get practical support from the Trump administration so they cannot take risks with China," Bill Hayton of London policy institute Chatham House told VOA. "This is likely to result in them taking more timid positions and not challenging China's activities in the disputed areas." U.S. priorities Secretary Tillerson will travel to Manila later this week for ASEAN-related meetings, including the ASEAN Regional Forum, the East Asia Summit Ministerial, and the U.S.-ASEAN Ministerial. Then, the top U.S. diplomat will head to Bangkok and Kuala Lumpur. Denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, maritime security and counterterrorism are said to be high on the agenda. The State Department said Tillerson's travel reaffirms the "administration's commitment to further broaden and enhance U.S. economic and security interests in the Asia-Pacific region." And an initial draft of a joint statement among foreign ministers of the Southeast Asian bloc is said to reaffirm the importance and effectiveness of the "whole-of-nation approach" over "a purely military option" in combating violent extremism. Watch: US Assures ASEAN: North Korea Will Not Overshadow South China Sea Talks The U.S. Department of Justice is throwing cold water on reports that it is exploring a new initiative to investigate and sue universities and colleges over race-conscious admission policies critics see as discriminatory against white applicants. The New York Times and The Washington Post reported on Wednesday that the Justice Department's civil rights division will run the new project and is seeking current department lawyers to work on investigations and possible litigation related to intentional race-based discrimination in college and university admissions. The program, according to the Times and the Post, will be run by political appointees in the civil rights division's front office rather than by career lawyers in its Educational Opportunities Section. It was not immediately clear whether the program is being set up specifically to deal with discrimination against white college applicants. The Times said it had obtained a copy of the personnel announcement but did not cite any direct references to a racial category. A Department of Justice official confirmed the internal announcement but said it did not reflect a new policy or program or any changes to longstanding DOJ policy. Whenever there's a credible allegation of discrimination on the basis of race, the department will look into it, the official, requesting anonymity, told VOA. Civil rights Rights groups reacted with alarm to what they said was the latest indication of the Justice Department's wavering commitment to civil rights. Former Secretary of Education John B. King, who is now CEO and president of the Education Trust nonprofit, said he was disheartened by the reported initiative. "Now is not the time to slow down on diversity initiatives or deter university leaders from doing the right thing for their communities, campuses, and for our nation's future prosperity," King said in a statement. Brenda Shum of the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law said the project amounts to an attack on civil rights. The lawyers' committee believes that this action represents the next step in a pretty aggressive and strategic effort to roll back civil rights protections for historically disadvantaged groups, Shum, the group's director of the group's educational opportunities project, said. Affirmative action in college admission has long been a divisive issue in the United States. The policy allows colleges and universities to consider race in admitting students. While proponents say it has helped improve diversity on college campuses and given otherwise disadvantaged students a shot at the American dream, critics see affirmative action as reverse discrimination against whites and Asian-Americans. You can call it affirmative action or you can celebrate diversity or you can set goals for under-represented minorities, but when you consider a person's skin color in deciding whether to award her an admissions slot or a contract or a job then you are engaging in racial discrimination, Roger Clegg, president of the conservative Center for Equal Opportunity, wrote in a blogpost. The center has welcomed the planned Department of Justice program. Previous cases The Department of Justice has never sued a college or university for discriminating against white applicants, though it has filed briefs in a number of cases, Herman Schwartz, a professor at American University's Washington College of Law, said. While it has the legal authority to challenge a school's affirmative action practices, it is not likely to succeed, Schwartz said. They can initiate (litigation) all they want, but the law of the land is that individualized treatment of applicants is appropriate and will not be challenged or should not be challenged but will pass muster, he said. In a landmark decision in 2003 known as Grutter v. Bollinger, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled the University of Michigan Law School's affirmative action policy as constitutional. In 2013 and again in 2016, the high court ruled in favor of the University of Texas' limited affirmative action policy. The case had been originally filed on behalf of Abigail Fisher, a white student who claimed she had been wrongfully denied admission to the school. In 2014, Project on Fair Representation, a conservative legal defense foundation, filed lawsuits against the University of North Carolina over its use of race in admissions and against Harvard College on behalf of a group of Asian-American students. The lawyers' committee is challenging both lawsuits. Legal experts say that unless the Supreme Court precedent is overturned, the chances of their success remain slim. The U.S. military is moving toward more global exercises to better prepare for a more assertive Russia and other worldwide threats, a senior officer said in an interview with Reuters. Air Force Brigadier General John Healy, who directs exercises for U.S. forces in Europe, said officials realized they needed to better prepare for increasingly complex threats across all domains of war land, sea, air, space and cyber. Some smaller-scale war games with a global focus had already occurred, but the goal was to carry out more challenging exercises by fiscal year 2020 that involved forces from all nine U.S. combatant commands instead of focusing on specific regions or one military service, such as the Marines. "What we're eventually going toward is a globally integrated exercise program so that we [are] ... all working off the same sheet of music in one combined global exercise," Healy said in an interview this week. He said war games and training were imperative to rehearse for possible conflicts and they needed to reflect the global nature of today's military threats, including cyberwarfare. Healy said Russia was his main focus in Europe, and officials were keeping a close watch on Moscow's Zapad military exercises that begin next month and which experts say could involve about 100,000 troops. He said Russian observers attended recent U.S. and NATO exercises in the Black Sea region, but Moscow had not extended a similar invitation to its own war games. "They're not being as transparent as we are," he said. Moscow says its war games will involve less than 13,000 troops and so do not require invitations to outside observers. Healy said an initial assessment of a range of exercises conducted across Europe this summer with over 40,000 U.S. and allied forces had been positive, but a deeper assessment would be completed in October. As a deterrent to Russia after its 2014 annexation of the Crimea region of Ukraine, U.S. and NATO forces have boosted their presence and training in Europe. This has included the addition of four NATO battle groups with 1,000 soldiers each in Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia and Poland, all of which have borders with Russia. Next year, the U.S. military plans 11 major exercises that will take in a range of NATO allies from Iceland to Britain, the Baltic states, and possibly Finland, according to Healy. Those exercises, too, will bring together air, ground and naval forces. U.S. scientists have succeeded in altering the genes of a human embryo to correct a disease-causing mutation, making it possible to prevent the defect from being passed on to future generations. The milestone, published this week in the journal Nature, was confirmed last week by Oregon Health and Science University (OHSU), which collaborated with the Salk Institute and Korea's Institute for Basic Science to use a technique known as CRISPR-Cas9 to correct a genetic mutation for a heart condition. Until now, published studies using the technique had been done in China with mixed results. CRISPR-Cas9 works as a type of molecular scissors that can selectively trim away unwanted parts of the genome, and replace it with new stretches of DNA. "We have demonstrated the possibility to correct mutations in a human embryo in a safe way and with a certain degree of efficiency," said Juan Carlos Izpisua Belmonte, a professor in Salk's Gene Expression Laboratory and a co-author of the study. To increase the success rate, his team introduced the genome editing components along with sperm from a male with the targeted gene defect during the in vitro fertilization process. They found that the embryo used the available healthy copy of the gene to repair the mutated part. The Salk/OHSU team also found that its gene correction did not cause any detectable mutations in other parts of the genome - a major concern for gene editing. Still, the technology was not 100 percent successful - it increased the number of repaired embryos from 50 percent, which would have occurred naturally, to 74 percent. The embryos, tested in the laboratory, were allowed to develop for only a few days. "There is still much to be done to establish the safety of the methods, therefore they should not be adopted clinically," Robin Lovell-Badge, a professor at London's Francis Crick Institute who was not involved in the study, said in a statement. 'Utmost Caution' Washington's National Academy of Sciences (NAS) earlier this year softened its previous opposition to the use of gene editing technology in human embryos, which has raised concerns it could be used to create so-called designer babies. There is also a fear of introducing unintended mutations into the "germline," meaning cells that become eggs or sperm. "No one is thinking about this because it is practically impossible at this point," Izpisua Belmonte said. "This is still very basic research ... let alone something as complex as what nature has done for millions and millions of years of evolution." An international group of 11 organizations, including the American Society of Human Genetics and Britain's Wellcome Trust, on Wednesday issued a policy statement recommending against genome editing that culminates in human implantation and pregnancy, while supporting publicly funded research into its potential clinical applications. The latest research involved a gene mutation linked to hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, the most common cause of sudden death in otherwise healthy young athletes. It affects around 1 in 500 people. Salk's Izpisua Belmonte, emphasizing that much more study is needed, said the most important practical application for the new technology could be in correcting genetic mutations in babies either while they are still in utero or right after they are born. "It is crucial that we continue to proceed with the utmost caution, paying the highest attention to ethical considerations," he said. The administration of U.S. President Donald Trump announced Thursday it will provide an additional $169 million in humanitarian aid to the drought-stricken African countries of Ethiopia and Kenya. The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) said the funds, over $136 million for Ethiopia and almost $33 million for Kenya, would be used for emergency food aid, nutrition supplies and health services. USAID said nearly 8 million Ethiopians are in need of urgent humanitarian aid. Without it, the agency said "food insecurity could reach catastrophic levels for some families in the worst-affected areas" and result in "the displacement of affected populations." In Kenya, USAID said some 2.6 million people are "acutely food-insecure" as drought conditions continue. The latest round of humanitarian aid increases to $458 million the amount of assistance the U.S. has provided to Ethiopia and Kenya this fiscal year. Last month, the U.S. pledged nearly $640 million in urgent food assistance to Nigeria, Somalia, South Sudan and Yemen. In addition to drought-caused food shortages, the countries have had to grapple with armed conflicts and economic turmoil that caused reductions in medical care, shelter and safety and sanitation services. The United Nations previously warned of mass starvation in Nigeria, Somalia, South Sudan and Yemen. Last month it said many people in South Sudan continue to suffer from hunger, but that famine conditions in parts of the country had eased. The United Nations reports 795 million people are undernourished throughout the world, primarily in developing countries. Venezuela's election chief has denied a report that voter turnout numbers were "manipulated" and inflated by at least 1 million for this week's controversial election to choose an assembly to rewrite the national constitution. The head of the National Election Council, Tibisay Lucena, said the claim by a British election-technology firm was "irresponsible," and she threatened to begin legal action against the company. "This is an unprecedented opinion from a firm whose only role in the electoral process is to provide certain services and technical support that has no bearing on the results," Lucena said. The head of British firm Smartmatic, Antonio Mugica, said Wednesday in London there is no question in his mind that the total reported vote was false. He did not, however, say whether vote tampering altered the outcome of Sunday's balloting. "Based on the robustness of our system, we know without any doubt that the turnout of the recent election for a National Constituent Assembly was manipulated," Mugica said. "We estimate the difference between the actual participation and the one announced by authorities was at least 1 million." The government said more than 8 million people cast ballots Sunday. The opposition, which boycotted the vote, said turnout was less than half that number, and that account was reinforced by journalists' reports that dozens of polling places around Caracas were almost deserted on Sunday. The president of the opposition-controlled National Assembly, Julio Borges, said Smartmatic's findings are "complete confirmation" of what the opposition and election analysts had suspected. Pre-election polls showed more than 70 percent of all Venezuelans opposed a body to change the constitution. The opposition contends the vote was rigged to pack the assembly with supporters of President Nicolas Maduro. Maduro's opponents are demanding early presidential elections. The next scheduled election is October 2018. Lawmakers seek investigation Borges said lawmakers will ask the country's top prosecutor to investigate members of the National Election Council for potential crimes. Despite the controversy surrounding voter turnout and the final results, Maduro plans to swear in the 545 members of the new "constituent assembly" so they can get to work. He originally set Thursday for the assembly's opening session, but late Wednesday announced the new body would begin its inaugural session on Friday instead, for the sake of "peace and calm." "It has been proposed," Maduro said at a ceremony for the new assembly members in the capital, "that the installation of the National Constituent Assembly, instead of being held tomorrow, be organized in peace and calm, with all necessary protocol, on Friday at 11 a.m. [1500 UTC]." Details on what might be included in a new constitution are unclear. Maduro has said it is the only way to pull Venezuela out of its severe economic crisis and stop the daily protests that have killed more than 120 people since April. But the opposition says its goal is to dissolve the opposition-controlled national assembly, fire anyone who disagrees with the government, and turn Venezuela into a socialist dictatorship. The United States, Canada, European Union, and nearly every Latin American nation have said they will not recognize the constituent assembly. The U.S. imposed sanctions against Maduro on Monday for what it called his "illegitimate" election of a body to rewrite the constitution. All of Maduro's assets in the United States are frozen and Americans are forbidden from doing any business with him. Maduro raged on television that he does not care. "They don't intimidate me. The threats and sanctions of the empire don't intimidate me for a moment. ... Bring on more sanctions, Donald Trump." 'Collapse into dictatorship' U.S. Vice President Mike Pence said Wednesday during a visit to Montenegro, "we've seen the completion of Venezuela's collapse into dictatorship. The United States calls on all who cherish freedom to condemn the Maduro regime for its abuse of power and its abuse of its own people." Pence reminded Maduro that he is "personally responsible" for the health and safety of opposition leaders Leopoldo Lopez and Antonio Ledezma, who were dragged out of their homes in the middle of the night earlier this week and taken to military prison. The Supreme Court accuses the two of breaking the terms of their house arrest for previous opposition activities and planning to flee the country. Lopez's lawyer denies the charges. The drop in global energy prices and political corruption have destroyed Venezuela's oil-rich economy. Gasoline, medicine and such basic staples as cooking oil, flour and sugar are scarce, and many Venezuelans cross into neighboring Colombia and Brazil to buy food. Maduro has blamed the country's woes on what he calls U.S. imperialism and its supporters inside Venezuela. He has warned against intervention by the Organization of American States, saying that would surely lead to civil war. Venezuela's president and election chief on Wednesday denied a report that voter turnout numbers were manipulated and inflated by at least one million for the controversial election to choose an assembly to rewrite the national constitution. The head of the National Election Council, Tibisay Lucena, said the claim by a British election-technology firm was irresponsible, and she threatened to begin legal action against the company. This is an unprecedented opinion from a firm whose only role in the electoral process is to provide certain services and technical support that has no bearing on the results, Lucena said. The head of British firm Smartmatic, Antonio Mugica, said in London Wednesday there is no question in his mind that the total reported vote was false. He did not, however, say whether vote tampering altered the outcome of Sunday's balloting. Based on the robustness of our system, we know without any doubt that the turnout of the recent election for a National Constituent Assembly was manipulated, Mugica said. We estimate the difference between the actual participation and the one announced by authorities was at least one million. President Nicolas Maduro said in televised remarks that Mugica was pressured by the United States and Britain. He also repeated the government's stance that eight million people voted, adding that the turnout would have been 10 million if others had not been blocked by protesters. This election cannot be stained by anyone, because it was a transparent vote, Maduro said. The opposition, which boycotted the vote, said turnout was less than four million, and that account was reinforced by journalists' reports that dozens of polling places around Caracas were almost deserted on Sunday. The president of the opposition-controlled National Assembly, Julio Borges, said Smartmatic's findings are "complete confirmation" of what the opposition and election analysts had suspected. Pre-election polls showed more than 70 percent of all Venezuelans opposed a body to change the constitution. The opposition contends the vote was rigged to pack the assembly with supporters of Maduro. Maduro's opponents are demanding early presidential elections. The next scheduled election is October, 2018. Lawmakers seek investigation Borges said lawmakers will ask the country's top prosecutor to investigate members of the National Election Council for potential crimes. Luisa Ortega Diaz, Venezuela's top law enforcement official and a Maduro critic, told CNN in an interview Wednesday that she has opened an investigation into the allegations of vote manipulation. Despite the controversy surrounding voter turnout and the final results, Maduro plans to swear in the 545 members of the new constituent assembly so they can get to work. He originally set Thursday for the assembly's opening session, but late Wednesday announced the new body would begin its inaugural session on Friday instead, for the sake of peace and calm. It has been proposed, Maduro said at a ceremony for the new assembly members in the capital, that the installation of the National Constituent Assembly, instead of being held tomorrow, be organized in peace and calm, with all necessary protocol, on Friday at 11 a.m. Details on what might be included in a new constitution are unclear. Maduro has said it is the only way to pull Venezuela out of its severe economic crisis and stop the daily protests that have killed more than 120 people since April. But the opposition says its goal is to dissolve the opposition-controlled national assembly, fire anyone who disagrees with the government, and turn Venezuela into a socialist dictatorship. The United States, Canada, European Union, and nearly every Latin American nation have said they will not recognize the constituent assembly. The United States imposed sanctions against Maduro on Monday for what it called his illegitimate election of a body to rewrite the constitution. All of Maduro's assets in the United States are frozen and Americans are forbidden from doing any business with him. Maduro raged on television that he does not care. They don't intimidate me. The threats and sanctions of the empire don't intimidate me for a moment ... Bring on more sanctions, Donald Trump. We've seen the completion of Venezuela's collapse into dictatorship, U.S. Vice President Mike Pence said during a visit to Montenegro Wednesday. The United States calls on all who cherish freedom to condemn the Maduro regime for its abuse of power and its abuse of its own people. Pence reminded Maduro the U.S. position that he is personally responsible for the health and safety of opposition leaders Leopoldo Lopez and Antonio Ledezma, who were dragged out of their homes in the middle of the night earlier this week and taken to military prison. The Supreme Court accuses the two of breaking the terms of their house arrest for previous opposition activities and planning to flee the country. Lopez' lawyer denies the charges. The drop in global energy prices and political corruption have destroyed Venezuela's oil-rich economy. Gasoline, medicine and such basic staples as cooking oil, flour and sugar are scarce, and many Venezuelans cross into neighboring Colombia and Brazil to buy food. Mauro has blamed the country's woes on what he calls U.S. imperialism and its supporters inside Venezuela. He has warned against intervention by the Organization of American States, saying that would surely lead to civil war. Upmarket fashion magazine Vogue has featured an unexpected new model in its latest edition London's first female police chief. Metropolitan Police Commissioner Cressida Dick has posed in her uniform for the glossy magazine as part of a feature that celebrates women at the top of their game. Dick, 56, is the first female commissioner in the London police force's 188-year history and began leading the organization of 43,000 officers and staff in April this year. Dick, an experienced counterterrorism officer, had a turbulent start to her new role with London's emergency services, having to cope with a devastating fire which engulfed the Grenfell tower block in central London, killing about 80 people. "There is something about putting the uniform on. You've got a role to play, to be calm, to lead other people, to go forward when everyone else is running away. It gives you a sense of, not of courage but, 'It's my job,'" Dick told Vogue. Dick joined the London force, known as Scotland Yard, in 1983 as a constable and made her way up the ranks to become Britain's most senior counterterrorism officer and national director for security during the 2012 London Olympic Games. In the Queen's 2015 New Year Honour's List, she was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE). Dick said the Grenfell fire and recent fatal attacks in Westminster and by London Bridge had meant long working hours, but the police force's morale has stayed high. "It's brought the public supporting the police, even more than before. You can't walk down the road without people coming up to you and shaking your hand and saying thank you for what you're doing. All the staff say the same," she said. U.S. security agents have arrested the British hacker known for discovering a "kill switch" that nullified a widespread ransomware attack earlier this year. Marcus Hutchins, a 23-year-old malware researcher who uses the name Malware Tech, was detained by the FBI on Wednesday at the Las Vegas airport, where he was preparing to return to Britain after attending two hacking conferences in the city. Court documents unsealed on Thursday indicated Hutchins was arrested on hacking charges unrelated to the ransomware attack known as WannaCry. Reuters news agency reports Hutchins is accused of advertising, distributing and profiting from malware code known as Kronos that stole online banking credentials and credit card data between July 2014 and July 2015. Hutchins has not made a public statement, but his mother told London's Telegraph newspaper that she expected to be "rather busy tonight," trying to find out where her son is being held. Hutchins became an overnight hero in May after disabling the WannaCry worm, which infiltrated software in hundreds of thousands of computers in hospitals, schools, factories and shops in more than 150 countries. Parts of Britain's National Health Service were infected, as well as the FedEx delivery company, German rail Deutsche Bahn and Spain's Telefonica. The attack first became evident May 12, 2017, and continued over the weekend. By May 15, Hutchins had discovered a so-called "kill switch" that disabled the worm. The malware operators demanded the owners of the computers pay a fee of $300 to $600 to regain control of their computers. U.S. President Donald Trump has signed legislation that imposes new sanctions against Russia and gives the U.S. Congress veto power to block the president from removing or easing them. Trump has called the new law "significantly flawed" in a press release issued Wednesday after signing the bill. But as VOA's Zlatica Hoke reports, he denied being pressured into signing it. U.S. senators urging new congressional authorization for the use of military force (AUMF) in the Middle East and elsewhere made little headway convincing a skeptical Trump administration during closed-door discussions Wednesday, participants said. "There's an unbridgeable difference between the administration and many members of this committee," Democrat Chris Murphy of Connecticut told reporters as he emerged from a classified briefing by Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Defense Secretary James Mattis to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. "They don't believe they need an authorization. Many of us believe they do," Murphy added. The U.S. campaign against Islamic State, begun under former President Barack Obama and intensified by President Donald Trump, is one of several that rely on Congress' open-ended 2001 authorization to hunt down terrorists after the 9/11 attacks on the East Coast. Further use Over the last 16 years, that AUMF has been used as the legal basis for at least three dozen U.S. military operations in 14 countries. It remains valid today, according to the White House. Neither Tillerson nor Mattis spoke with reporters on Capitol Hill, but the administration made its views known. "The administration is not seeking revisions to the 2001 AUMF or additional authorizations to use force," the State Department's Bureau of Legislative Affairs wrote in a letter to the committee's chairman, Republican Bob Corker of Tennessee. "The United States has sufficient legal authority to prosecute the campaign against al-Qaida and associated forces, including against the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS)." Senators of both political parties disagree. "Under the Constitution, this is Congress' responsibility, and it has been years since we have considered an authorization for the use of military force," Republican Susan Collins of Maine told VOA. "And yet we have troops in trouble spots all over the world. To say that all of those are permissible under the 9/11 AUMF is a stretch. It's time for a debate on that." "We need a clear strategy from the administration about the counter-ISIS fight, our path forward in Afghanistan and our path forward in Syria," said Democrat Chris Coons of Delaware. "It is our job as Congress to either authorize or deauthorize these conflicts." Failed effort feared Some are not opposed to a new AUMF in principle, but worry that Congress will be unable to agree on specific language, leading to a failed effort that sends a message of disunity from Washington, or will make stipulations that undermine military operations. "Our objective is to defeat, destroy groups like ISIS with no time constraint. If we can only come up with an AUMF that ties this or a future president's hands, I would not support it," said Republican Ron Johnson of Wisconsin. "The troops would appreciate Congress weighing in, but not in a manner that would restrain their ability to defeat this enemy. That's the conundrum." Some committee members expressed hope for further dialogue with the administration. "I think those conversations will continue," said Republican Cory Gardner of Colorado. "I don't think anything was decided or concluded [in the closed-door briefing]." The current U.S. Congress is the most racially and ethnically diverse in history. Nineteen percent of its members are racial minorities, according to the Pew Research Center, but only two Native Americans have seats in the House of Representatives. Republicans Thomas Cole, a member of the Chickasaw Nation, and Markwayne Mullin, a member of the Cherokee Nation, are from Oklahoma and serve in the House. They are among eight Native Americans who ran in the November 2016 election. Native Americans and Alaska Natives account for two percent of the total U.S. population, but many analysts believe their representation should be greater, given that the federal government recognizes more than 560 tribes as separate and sovereign governments. History of exclusion Part of the problem is that Native Americans were not granted citizenship until 1924, and it was left to individual states to decide whether Indians could vote or not, said Walter Fleming, who heads Montana State Universitys Native American Studies program. ". It wasnt until after World War II that the last states lifted voting restrictions." At the time, the Native population was between 250,000 to 350,000, and so the numbers didnt allow a whole lot of participation, Fleming added. And even after that, there were legal barriers to voting. States used various methods to discourage Native Americans from voting, insisting, for example, that voters give up tribal residencies, imposing poll taxes or disqualifying those who couldnt read or write English. In some areas, barriers to voting persist. Counties have been pretty reluctant to set up polling stations outside of the usual county seats, local schools and courthouses, said Fleming. They say its because setting up satellite sites is cost-prohibitive; but, of course, thats just one mechanism for keeping people from voting, particularly in reservation communities where people might not be able to afford gasoline [to drive] to go vote. Some states dont accept tribal cards as legitimate forms of identification - an issue that has become the subject of several lawsuits across the country. Native Americans, especially those who live entirely on the reservation, may well have little reason to have things like drivers licenses, said Fleming. Everything to lose Many Native Americans sense they have little to gain by participating in the political process, observers say. Some refuse to register to vote, recalling a time when being listed on government rolls led to them losing their property or their children to boarding schools and foster homes. Former U.S. Senator Ben Nighthorse Campbell recalls conversations with members of the American Indian Movement (AIM), a civil rights and activist movement of the 1960s and 1970s, which promoted greater self-determination among tribes. Some of those AIM guys I knew personally, said Campbell. And I remember some of them asking me, Why do you want to run for a government that took so much away from us?" Campbell, a member of the Northern Cheyenne tribe and the first Native American to be elected to the U.S. Senate, said most minority groups, with the exception of those brought to the United States as slaves, came for the opportunities it offered. Native Americans are the only ethnic group in America, bar none, who had nothing to win and everything to lose, he said. Campbell said he would like to see more Native Americans in Congress, but points to one of the most fundamental challenges. Its an uphill battle. There are some congressional races that run into multiple millions of dollars, and Native American people have trouble raising that kind of money. Both Fleming and Campbell acknowledge the importance of Native voices, something they say politicians are finally acknowledging. Former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle once told me that he didnt think he could have won the statewide race in South Dakota without the Indian vote, said Campbell. If they register and get out to vote, we know there are about five states where they can turn the statewide race. Another opposition party set to contest general elections in 2018 has been officially launched in Zimbabwe. The Economic National Democratic Party (ENDP) is led by Thabani Tigere, a former Gokwe district secretary of the Movement for Democratic Change led by Morgan Tsvangirai, who contested the partys primaries in Gokwe-Nembudziya constituency in 2005. He left the MDC formation the following year and formed ENDP in 2013. Tigere said, We stand for real democracy, economic emancipation and eradication of poverty through creation of jobs, revival of industries and agriculture. Tigere urged all opposition parties to join ENDP saying his party is brand new and likely to transform the country, currently ravaged by serious social and economic problems. He told reporters that his party would incorporate structures catering for the elderly and religious issues. Almost 60 opposition parties are preparing for the 2018 harmonized local government, parliamentary, senatorial and presidential elections. President Robert Mugabe will contest the presidential election at the age of 94. A Zimbabwean living in California, Violet Mariyacha, says she will be contesting the 2018 presidential election, which will feature several candidates including 93 year-old President Robert Mugabe and Movement for Democratic Change founding president Morgan Tsvangirai. In a statement, Mariyacha said she would improve the standard of living for Zimbabweans and become their voice if elected president in the crucial poll. She is expected to contest the election under her party the United Movements and Unions Party, which was formed sometime this year. Mariyacha, who is engaged in humanitarian work, has urged the United Nations to intervene in Zimbabwe, saying there are serious cases of human rights abuses. The statement read in part, "Mariyacha has recently launched a grass roots campaign to put pressure on the United Nations and the world to intervene in the countrys upcoming 2018 elections, vowing to prevent the human rights violations, arbitrary arrests and abductions, beatings, torture, and killings of members and supporters of the opposition parties during the 2008 election." Mariyacha claims that she has been in politics since the 1990s. HEALTH INSURANCE Molina to cut jobs, exit ailing markets Molina Healthcare is cutting costs, shrinking its head count and exiting some Affordable Care Act markets after the health insurer posted a steep second-quarter loss, three months after pushing out the brothers who had led the firm their father founded. The company said it is cutting about 1,500 jobs as part of a restructuring plan. In the meantime, Molina withdrew its 2017 earnings outlook. The insurer also said it will leave money-losing Affordable Care Act markets in Utah and Wisconsin next year. Molina, a major player in Medicaid health plans and the ACA, fired chief executive Mario Molina and chief financial officer John Molina in May. The company is still searching for a permanent leader to replace interim chief executive Joseph White. The second-quarter loss was $230 million, or $4.10 a share. The company said it will exit health insurance marketplaces in other states as may be necessary. Bloomberg News CYBERSECURITY Some data was safe from hack, HBO says HBO, which acknowledged Monday that hackers had broken into its systems and stolen proprietary information, now says the attackers probably havent breached the networks entire email system. In a Wednesday email to employees, chief executive Richard Plepler wrote that we do not believe that our email system as a whole has been compromised. He added that the hack is being reviewed and that HBO is hiring an outside firm to help employees monitor their financial accounts. Purported hackers said in an email that they had accessed HBOs internal network and email system and then posted stolen information online. An HBO spokesman declined to comment on reports of leaked episodes of HBO shows, including Game of Thrones. Associated Press Also in Business U.S. businesses added 178,000 jobs in July, a survey found, evidence that employers remain confident enough about future demand to keep hiring. Payroll processor ADP said that the biggest gains were in fields such as education, health care and shipping. Manufacturers cut 4,000 jobs, while construction firms added 6,000. Mining, which includes oil and gas drilling, gained 3,000 jobs. On Friday, the federal government is set to release its unemployment report for July. The U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau said that it had ordered JPMorgan Chase to pay $4.6 million for allegedly failing to make sure that it reported accurate information for checking-account screening reports. The reports are used to determine who can open a bank account. Without the legally required processes to check the data it provided, the bank kept customers in the dark about why their applications were denied, CFPB Director Richard Cordray said in a statement. The CFPB said that the bank did not admit or deny the agencys findings. F itbit reported a 40 percent drop in revenue, its third straight quarterly decline, as the wearable-device maker faces waning demand for its fitness trackers. Fitbit reported a net loss of $58.2 million, or 25 cents a share, in the second quarter ended July 1, compared with a profit of $6.3 million, or 3 cents a share, a year earlier. Revenue fell to $353.3 million from $586.5 million. F acebooks Instagram app is most popular for people younger than 25, who the company says spend an average of more than 32 minutes a day on the photo-sharing service. For those 25 and older, usage is more than 24 minutes a day, the company said. Instagram credits much of the growth in engagement to its Stories feature launched last year as a copycat to rival Snapchats own Stories. The function allows people to upload short videos that disappear after 24 hours. Instagrams version now has 250 million daily users. Federal prosecutors accused the manager of a Boston-based hedge fund of defrauding investors out of millions of dollars, nearly two months after state regulators charged him with engaging in a Ponzi-like scheme. According to a criminal complaint filed in a federal court in Boston, Raymond Montoya, 69, who operated RMA Strategic Opportunity Fund, used the money to pay for luxury vehicles and his sons home mortgage and to repay earlier investors. From news services Coming today 8:30 a.m.: Labor Department releases weekly jobless claims. 10 a.m.: Freddie Mac releases weekly mortgage rates. 10 a.m.: Institute for Supply Management releases its service sector index for July. 10 a.m.: Commerce Department releases factory orders for June. Earnings: Aetna, Yum Brands. Since 2006, the nations largest police departments have fired at least 1,881 officers for misconduct that betrayed the publics trust, from cheating on overtime to unjustified shootings. But The Washington Post has found that departments have been forced to reinstate more than 450 officers after appeals required by union contracts. Most of the officers regained their jobs when police chiefs were overruled by arbitrators, typically lawyers hired to review the process. In many cases, the underlying misconduct was undisputed, but arbitrators often concluded that the firings were unjustified because departments had been too harsh, missed deadlines, lacked sufficient evidence or failed to interview witnesses. A San Antonio police officer caught on a dash cam challenging a handcuffed man to fight him for the chance to be released was reinstated in February. In the District, an officer convicted of sexually abusing a young woman in his patrol car was ordered returned to the force in 2015. And in Boston, an officer was returned to work in 2012 despite being accused of lying, drunkenness and driving a suspected gunman from the scene of a nightclub killing. The chiefs say the appeals process leaves little margin for error. Yet police agencies sometimes sabotage their own attempts to shed troubled officers by making procedural mistakes. The result is that police chiefs have booted hundreds of officers they have deemed unfit to be in their ranks, only to be compelled to take them back and return them to the streets with guns and badges. Its demoralizing, but not just to the chief, said Charles H. Ramsey, former police commissioner in Philadelphia and chief in the District. Philadelphia and the District together have had to rehire 80 fired officers since 2006, three of them twice. Its demoralizing to the rank and file who really dont want to have those kinds of people in their ranks, Ramsey said. It causes a tremendous amount of anxiety in the public. Our credibility is shot whenever these things happen. The Posts findings illustrate the obstacles local police agencies face in holding their own accountable at a critical moment for policing: President Trumps administration has indicated that the federal government will curtail the strategy of federal intervention in departments confronted with allegations of systemic officer misconduct, even as controversial police shootings continue to undermine public confidence. Nationwide, the reinstatement of fired officers has not been comprehensively studied or tracked. No national database logs terminations. Some firings receive local publicity, but many go unreported. Some states shield police personnel records including firings from public disclosure. To investigate how often fired officers were returned to their jobs, The Post filed open records requests with the nations 55 largest municipal and county police forces. Thirty-seven departments complied with the request, disclosing that they had fired a combined 1,881 officers since 2006. Of those officers, 451 successfully appealed and won their jobs back. The officers names and details were available in about half of the reinstatement cases: 151 of the officers had been fired for conduct unbecoming, and 88 had been terminated for dishonesty, according to a review of internal police documents, appeals records, court files and news reports. At least 33 of the officers had been charged with crimes. Of these, 17 had been convicted, most of misdemeanors. Eight officers were fired and rehired by their departments more than once. To overturn a police chiefs decision, except in cases of fact errors, is a disservice to the good order of the department, said San Antonio Police Chief William McManus, who in February was ordered to reinstate Officer Matthew Belver for a second time. It also undermines a chiefs authority and ignores the chiefs understanding of what serves the best interest of the community and the department. In the District, arbitrators have ordered the city to rehire 39 officers since 2006, more than half of them because arbitrators concluded that the department missed deadlines to complete its internal investigations. One officer, convicted of assault after he was caught on video attacking a shoe store employee, was fired in 2015 and reinstated in 2016 after an arbitrator concluded that police had missed the deadline by seven days, arbitration records show. D.C. Police Chief Peter Newsham said he disagreed with the arbitrators conclusions on when the clock started in those cases. The public has to suffer because somebody violated an administrative rule, Newsham said, adding that two-thirds of the officers reinstated because of missed investigative deadlines are no longer on the D.C. force. Police unions argue that the right to appeal terminations through arbitration protects officers from arbitrary punishment or being second-guessed for their split-second decisions. Unions contend that police chiefs are prone to overreach, especially when there is public or political pressure to fire officers. In interviews, local and national union officials said some of the 451 reinstated officers should never have been fired in the first place. Theyre held to a higher standard, said James Pasco, executive director of the national Fraternal Order of Police. Their work is constantly scrutinized to a far higher degree. You very seldom see any phone-cam indictments of trash collectors or utility workers. Local police departments have often been criticized in recent years as not holding their officers accountable in fatal shootings, or in cases of brutality and corruption. To address the outcry from the public, the Department of Justice has employed its authority to investigate police departments for civil rights violations and to force reforms. Under President Barack Obama, Justice launched dozens of these investigations. The tactic was used, for example, in the aftermath of the 2014 fatal police shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo. The Trump administration, however, has indicated that local officials should take the lead in policing their own departments. I think theres concern that good police officers and good departments can be sued by the Department of Justice when you just have individuals within a department who have done wrong, Attorney General Jeff Sessions said during his Senate confirmation hearing this year. Justice Department officials recently told The Post that the department will be more judicious in launching civil rights investigations. The Attorney General has explicitly said that police officers who abuse their sacred trust are made to answer for their misconduct and that the Department of Justice will hold accountable any law enforcement officer who violates the civil rights of our citizens by using excessive force. Any assertion to the contrary is flat out wrong and incredibly irresponsible, said Ian D. Prior, a Department of Justice spokesman, in a written statement. What the Attorney General does not believe, however, is that the unconstitutional actions of one police officer should result in onerous and ineffective agreements between the Department of Justice and local police departments that prevent law enforcement from reducing violent crime and protecting the public, Prior said in the statement. But in a speech to law enforcement officers last week, President Trump made comments that were widely interpreted as condoning police violence against thugs who are taken into custody. He told officers: [P]lease dont be too nice. When you guys put somebody in the car and youre protecting their head. ... I said, you can take the hand away, okay? Trump said. The White House later said the president had been joking. The 37 departments that complied with the The Posts request for records employ nearly 91,000 officers. The nearly 1,900 firings and the 451 rehirings show both how rare it is for departments to fire officers and how difficult it is to keep many of those from returning. Its the frustrating part of my job, said Boston Police Commissioner William B. Evans, who has been compelled to rehire four officers. Most of the people we terminate [it] is clearly for good reason. Firings undone In case after case, arbitrators have required police chiefs to take back officers the chiefs no longer want in their ranks. In the District, police were told to rehire an officer who allegedly forged prosecutors signatures on court documents. In Texas, police had to reinstate an officer who was investigated for shooting up the truck driven by his ex-girlfriends new man. In Philadelphia, police were compelled to reinstate an officer despite viral video of him striking a woman in the face. In Florida, police were ordered to reinstate an officer fired for fatally shooting an unarmed man. He is being paid to protect and serve us as citizens. But he takes my childs life, Sheila McNeil, the mother of the man who was killed by the officer in Florida, said at a public meeting in 2015. I dont understand how he can still be out here on the street. What fairness is that? The 37 departments that reported rehiring officers have one commonality: a police union contract that guarantees an appeal of disciplinary measures. Police unionization began around the turn of the 20th century and spread rapidly in the 1960s and 70s as states passed laws allowing collective bargaining by public workers. Today, most public employees, including police officers, have some form of collective-bargaining rights. On most police forces, officers accused of wrongdoing are subject to internal affairs investigations to determine whether they violated department policies. If the officers are found to have breached department policies, police chiefs, superintendents or police boards can discipline them. The multiyear contracts negotiated by police unions ensure that any discipline may be appealed typically through arbitration, a process that brings in outside parties, often lawyers who specialize in labor law, to review the punishments and rule on the appeals. That is how police Sgt. John Blumenthal returned to work in Oklahoma City. On July 7, 2007, a man was lying handcuffed on the ground when Blumenthal ran up and kicked him in the head, according to several other officers. Blumenthals fellow officers reported the incident to internal affairs, and months later Blumenthal was fired and convicted of misdemeanor assault and battery. Two years later, an arbitrator ordered the department to return Blumenthal to work. The reasons are unclear, because the records of the proceedings are not public. Today, Blumenthal, who did not respond to requests for comment, is a motorcycle officer. The message is huge, said Oklahoma City Police Chief Bill Citty, who said he loses about 80 percent of arbitration cases. Officers know all they have to do is grieve it, arbitrate it and get their jobs back. One of the primary determinations an arbitrator makes is whether a department adhered to the rules when disciplining an officer. Were all of the correct investigative steps followed? said Arnold Zack, a former president of the National Academy of Arbitrators who teaches labor law at Harvard University. And was there a violation of any policy, and if so, what should the discipline be? Zack said that police chiefs often bemoan arbitration but that many cases fall apart because the departments fail to properly investigate the allegations. In one Florida case, a sheriffs deputy who was fired after being accused by prosecutors of trafficking in pain pills was reinstated because the arbitrator found that the department did not adequately investigate the allegations before firing him. Many of the arbitrators who handled the cases examined by The Post declined to be interviewed about their decisions, saying that they do not discuss their rulings. In Chicago, union officials say the appeals process saved the job of an officer who was unfairly fired for failing to pay his parking tickets. In October 2015, Bill Caro, at the time an officer with 28 years service in the Chicago Police Department, was terminated after he failed to pay nine parking tickets totaling $1,471. The department had warned him to pay the unpaid fines and had given him a deadline that he missed. Caro eventually paid the tickets, but the department fired him anyway, records show. He appealed, and in August 2016, a local judge who served as arbitrator in the case deemed the punishment excessive and ordered that Caro be returned to the force. His firing was reduced to a five-year suspension without pay, meaning he will not report to work until 2020. Caro could not be reached for comment. For 239 officers in The Posts study whose firings were made public, the majority had their terminations reduced to suspensions; at least 43 received no discipline at all. Most of the reinstated officers were awarded back pay for the time they were off the force, which can stretch to several years. The arbitrator is bound by the contract language just as much as the department, Zack said. If the contract says you have five days to investigate, and you take six days, then the firing has to be overturned. Does that mean some bad guys will get away with some things? Yes. CASE STUDY 1 Getaway driver: His cousin is a fugitive. Hes patrolling Boston. In 2012, the Boston Police Department was forced to rehire Baltazar Tate DaRosa two years after stripping him of his police powers for what the department said was his role in a murder. One year after he joined the department, DaRosa was asked to help investigate the 2003 killing of his cousin, who had been ambushed by a masked gunman as he sat in a car with his girlfriend. DaRosa, then 25, and his cousin had relatives in Cape Verde, a group of islands off the coast of West Africa. Frustrated at their inability to generate leads in the tightknit Cape Verdean community, detectives asked DaRosa to help. [The detective] sent me around asking family members and Cape Verdeans, but being a police officer, no one really told me anything about the case, DaRosa later told investigators, according to internal affairs records and arbitration documents. On a cold night in January 2005, DaRosa was off-duty at the Copa Grande Oasis, a nightclub outside Boston, records show. DaRosa was supposed to have been working but had called in sick from his overnight police shift. He and Carlos DePina the brother of DaRosas murdered cousin were at the club together. Also at the club that night was a man named Jose Lopes, a known gang member who eventually would be identified as a suspect in the killing of DaRosas cousin. The officer, his cousin DePina and two friends drank and danced until the club lights came on about 1:45 a.m., signaling closing time. DaRosa headed out to his car and popped in a CD as he waited for DePina to return. But when DePina arrived at the car, he turned and walked back toward a group of people in the parking lot, according to DaRosas account. About five minutes later, his cousin ran back to the car out of breath, saying he had heard gunshots, DaRosa said. Lets get out of here, DePina said, according to DaRosa. DaRosa, with DePina as a passenger, drove away, passing a police cruiser with flashing lights speeding toward the club. Back in the parking lot, Lopes was dying from numerous gunshot wounds to the chest and back. Several witnesses told police they saw people run to DaRosas car, records show. Another witness told police of seeing DaRosa driving from the scene with the shooting suspect in the car. The department placed DaRosa on paid administrative leave and opened an internal investigation. But DaRosa refused to cooperate, invoking his constitutional right against self-incrimination, records show. In July 2005, five months after the killing, DaRosa was arrested, charged with being an accessory to murder and placed on unpaid administrative leave by the department. His cousin, who is still at large, was charged with murder. In September 2006, a jury acquitted DaRosa. Once his trial was complete, DaRosa agreed to cooperate with internal affairs investigators, telling them he thought his cousin was mistaking some other sound when he said he heard shots. He also expressed regret for not stopping to help police. I assumed that if something did happen that the cruisers were there for it, he said. Boston police officer Baltazar DaRosa, center, is brought into Norfolk Superior Court in Dedham, Mass., in July 2005 for arraignment on a charge of accessory to murder after the fact in the January 2005 shooting of Jose Lopes. (George Rizer/Boston Globe/Getty Images) Detectives later learned that DaRosa and his cousin DePina had been arrested at the club during a Cape Verdean-themed night three months before the shooting. Police said that DaRosas cousin had been drunk and causing a disturbance and that DaRosa had bloodshot eyes and reeked of alcohol. At the station, police eventually let the men go. The internal investigation of DaRosas possible role the night of the shooting was completed in 2007, and in December 2010, the department fired DaRosa, saying both events at the nightclub had violated department policies abuse of alcohol, neglect of duty, and a lack of truthfulness, records show. DaRosa appealed the firing. His union attorney argued that there was no prove DaRosa used his influence to interfere with his cousins arrest months before the shooting or that DaRosa knew Lopes was at the club the night of the shooting or that he had suspected his cousin was the shooter. In July 2012, after a three-day, closed-door hearing at City Hall, arbitrator Richard G. Boulanger, a Boston-area lawyer, sided with the union. He concluded that DaRosa was not poised as a get-away driver or that he had knowledge that Carlos was involved in Joses shooting. Nearly two years after his firing, and seven years after the shooting, DaRosa was reinstated and awarded $50,111 in lost pay and overtime, records show. DaRosa, a union attorney, and former Boston police commissioner Kathleen OToole, who led the department at the time of the shooting, did not respond to requests for comment. I feel very happy for Baltazar, Bryan Decker, a lawyer who handled the case for the police union on DaRosas behalf, told a local reporter at the time. Hes an upstanding member of the community, and I think that he is just excited to get back to work helping the people of Boston. Today, DePina is a fugitive, believed to have fled the country. His cousin DaRosa is a bike patrol officer. CASE STUDY 2 The drive-by shooting: A truck was shot up, and a limo was pulled over. Early New Years Day, 2007, Fort Worth police officer Jesus Jesse Banda Jr. sat in his car outside an all-night party where his ex-girlfriend was with another man. Banda called a dispatcher and ran a check of the license plate of the truck the man was driving to determine his address. Days later, the truck was found blasted with nearly a dozen rounds from a shotgun. Banda, who had seven years service at the time, told investigators he knew nothing about the damage to the truck, according to internal affairs and arbitration documents. In the end, police could not tie Banda to the shooting, but the department concluded that he had lied about why he had called in the license plate. Then-Police Chief Ralph Mendoza put the officer on restricted duty, ultimately suspending him indefinitely the same as firing him in June 2007 for being untruthful and violating the departments ethical standards. Banda was told not to represent himself as a police officer while internal affairs investigated the matter. During that time, Banda was a passenger in a limousine pulled over by a Fort Worth officer. The officer said he saw the vehicle and, as he watched, the driver passed a Bud Light to passengers in the back. The officer said that when he asked Banda to get out of the vehicle, Banda handed the officer his police credentials. The department opened a second internal affairs investigation. An arbitrator ruled in August 2008 on Bandas firing over the check of the license plate. He said Banda had clearly used department resources to run the license tags for personal reasons but also said that firing him was too harsh, compared with punishments given to other officers. The arbitrator ordered him reinstated, reduced his firing to a 90-day suspension and awarded nearly a year of back pay, records show. Banda was back on the force only one month when he was fired a second time, this time by new Police Chief Patricia Kneblick for misrepresenting himself as an officer during the traffic stop. Again, Banda appealed. This time, Bandas union attorney argued that there was no proof that Banda had showed his work ID during the traffic stop and that the departments investigation had been shoddy and incomplete. Bill Detwiler, who was the hearing examiner, agreed: The hearing examiner finds the investigative process used in this case to be fatally flawed. Detectives had followed up with just three of eight potential witnesses and had done little or nothing to source such information including tracing the license plate of the limo and interviewing the driver, Detwiler said in his ruling. And, Detwiler noted, the detective investigating possible criminal charges lacked formal training and experience. Seven months after Bandas second firing, in April 2009, Detwiler reinstated the officer with partial back pay. Banda, through the police department, declined to comment. The hearing examiner took issue with the same problems that we took issue with, Terry Daffron Hickey, Bandas attorney, told a local TV station at the time. I think when youre in a situation where youre investigating a police officer and its a serious accusation and their job is on the line, theres a duty out there to do a thorough, fair and complete investigation. In 2015, Banda, 45, was promoted to detective, records show. Current Fort Worth Police Chief Joel Fitzgerald declined to comment. CASE STUDY 3 The eight-year firing: The officer was convicted of sexually abusing a young woman. In the District, the Metropolitan Police Department fired officer Michael Blaise Sugg-Edwards after he was convicted of misdemeanor sex abuse over an incident with a teenager in his police car. Eight years later, the department is still fighting to keep the 35-year-old off the force after the agency in 2015 was ordered to rehire him. Sugg-Edwards, who was born and raised in the District, joined the department in 2005. He was nominated to be rookie officer of the year and to receive an achievement medal for stopping an armed rape. On Nov. 16, 2007, Sugg-Edwards was on patrol when he saw a 19-year-old woman dressed all in white walking alone near Love, a now-closed warehouse nightclub off New York Avenue in Northeast, court records show. The woman was there to celebrate her 19th birthday with friends but had to go back to a friends car because she needed her identification to enter the club. Sugg-Edwards pulled up in his marked patrol car. He allegedly told the woman that a club supervisor had sent him to escort her safely to her friends car and invited her to get into the patrol car, according to court records. She said that once she was in his vehicle, he drove to a gas station and parked between two tractor trailers. Sugg-Edwards asked her, What are you trying to do to get into the club? she told police, adding that he began touching her thigh, genitals and breasts. She said she pushed him away, got out of the car and reported the sexual assault to two off-duty officers at the nightclub. She was seen on video from outside the club getting out of the squad car, and officers reported that she was crying when she approached them. Sugg-Edwards was the only uniformed officer in the area who fit the description that she gave to police. A police official called Sugg-Edwards and asked whether he had picked up a female near the Club Love? according to an affidavit for his arrest. Yes, I did, he said. Sugg-Edwards said he drove her to a gas station to use the bathroom but denied assaulting her, according to court records. The official reminded the defendant that he had been warned in the past about talking to female patrons near the night club, the affidavit said. The department put Sugg-Edwards on unpaid leave, and records show that he began working at a toy store in Maryland. In June 2008, Sugg-Edwards was convicted at a bench trial of misdemeanor sexual abuse. He was sentenced to a 100-day suspended sentence, one year supervised probation and $1,000 in court fees. Then-D.C. Police Chief Cathy L. Lanier recommended to the trial board a group of three officers that Sugg-Edwards be fired. The trial board, however, concluded that firing Sugg-Edwards was too harsh a penalty and recommended a reprimand. Fellow officers testified that Sugg-Edwards had an otherwise clean record, a reputation as a nice guy and that the sexual assault was totally out of Officer Sugg-Edwards character, records show. On Sept. 14, 2009, the departments human resources director decided to fire Sugg-Edwards anyway, saying that the trial board ignored evidence proving the grievant was guilty of the misconduct. The police union filed an appeal arguing that the D.C. code and municipal regulations barred the department from imposing discipline harsher than what the trial board recommends. That appeal was not decided until January 2015, more than five years later. Attorneys for the union and the police department blamed the delay on a backlog of arbitration cases. Arbitrator Sean J. Rogers ruled that although there was enough evidence to prove Sugg-Edwardss misconduct, the unions contention was correct. Rogers ordered Sugg-Edwards reinstated with back pay and benefits. City officials tried again to keep him off the force: They appealed the arbitrators ruling to the Public Employee Relations Board, which resolves disputes between the District and labor organizations. The department argued that it had the authority to fire the officer, even if the trial board disagreed. The review board upheld the arbitrators original ruling in April 2015. The police department then appealed the review boards decision in court. The case is pending. For now, Sugg-Edwards remains off the force, and the city has yet to pay him as ordered by the arbitrator. His annual salary was $58,759 when he left the department eight years ago. Sugg-Edwards did not respond to calls and emails from The Washington Post seeking comment. Police union attorney Marc L. Wilhite said that Sugg-Edwards wants to go back to policing and that the department needs to follow the law and reinstate him. Police officials, citing union rules and local privacy laws, declined to discuss the case. Police Chief Peter Newsham said that in general he is frustrated that the department has been compelled to reinstate officers with histories of misconduct. Since 2006, the department has had to rehire at least 39 officers, records show. Police officers go into peoples homes . . . and they have the authority to take peoples freedom, Newsham told The Post. And youre going to return somebody into that role, somebody who has that responsibility and authority, whos been involved in extreme misconduct? I dont think anybody is comfortable with that. CASE STUDY 4 A challenge to fight An officer is fired twice and put back on the force twice. On Dec. 3, 2015, an official with the criminal division of the Bexar County District Attorneys Office in Texas was concerned about the dashboard-camera video of a recent arrest by a San Antonio police officer. Can you take a look at this video? the official asked in an email to the city attorneys office. The officer has the suspect handcuffed, in custody and challenges him to fight while unhandcuffing him. Soon, the police departments internal affairs unit launched an investigation into the officer involved: Matthew Belver, then 43 and with nine years service in the department. Belver also worked part time as a security guard at a local church. The video was eventually made public under pressure from the local media. The video depicted the August 2015 arrest of then-48-year-old Eloy Leal, who told internal affairs investigators that he had gone outside to investigate after someone had been injured during a shooting in his neighborhood. Leal said that he saw bullet casings on the street near the scene and that he pointed them out to Belver, who was one of the responding officers, according to internal affairs and arbitration documents. Then, Leal said, he criticized Belver for missing the casings and announced that he was walking home to get a camera to document the evidence. As Leal began walking away, Belver arrested him, records show. The next 17 minutes were captured on the camera mounted on Belvers dashboard. Belver was recorded telling Leal, who was handcuffed in the back seat of the squad car, that he could go free if he was willing to fight. If you beat my a--, dont f------ kill me, Leal pleaded as Belver uncuffed him. Naw, as soon as they come off, Im going to beat your a--, Belver responded. The officer ordered Leal to get out of the squad car and run or fight, but Leal refused. Belver recuffed Leal, who asked what he was being charged with. Ill think of something, Belver responded, driving away with Leal in the back seat. Leal was charged with interfering with the duties of a public official, a charge that prosecutors later dropped. Leal could not be reached for comment. The incident was not the first time that Belver had been accused of misconduct by people he arrested. The department had fired Belver in 2010 after two other allegations that led to separate investigations by internal affairs. In the first incident, Belver was accused of unlawfully entering a home and roughing up two men who were accused of threatening neighbors with a gun. In the second, two weeks later, Belver arrested Carlos Flores, a San Antonio mechanic, on suspicion of drunken driving. Then, according to a complaint from Flores, Belver challenged him to a fight. Matthew Belver (KSAT/Channel 12) Belver told me that if I could kick his [a--], he would let me go, Flores said in his complaint. By the time Flores reached the police detention center, he had a bruised left eye, injuries to his back and neck, and a large bruise across his face, an internal affairs investigation would later determine. Flores, who could not be reached for comment, was fined for driving while intoxicated and was convicted of assault against a public servant. That conviction was later overturned on appeal. But Belver and his union attorneys won the officers job back after his 2010 firing, negotiating a last chance agreement that allowed Belver to return to work as long as he had no further misconduct and agreed that he would not patrol alone. After the 2015 video surfaced of Belver challenging Leal to a fight, San Antonio Police Chief William McManus fired Belver again writing on Feb. 12, 2016, that the officer had violated several department policies as well as his last-chance agreement. Once again, Belver appealed his firing. During the two-day hearing last September, Belvers attorney argued that because the last-chance agreement was limited to two years, it had expired eight months before the Leal encounter. The attorney also noted that the union contract prohibited the department from considering discipline for matters older than 180 days, which would exclude the prior two allegations of assault made against Belver. Arbitrator Lynne M. Gomez, a labor lawyer, agreed with the union and said that the union contract and wording of the last-chance agreement meant the department had to treat the Leal incident as a first offense. In the revised circumstances, a firing was too harsh, she ruled. While the Chief testified that he thinks the Grievant is a disaster waiting to happen . . . just cause generally requires that discipline be applied progressively to achieve a corrective goal, Gomez said in her ruling. Gomez in February issued Belver a 45-day suspension and ordered that he be returned to work with back pay, which city officials said will be $66,662. Reached by email, Belver declined to be interviewed, referring questions to the head of the police union, who he said would be familiar with both this incident and the arbitration process that followed. Mike Helle of the San Antonio Police Officers Association said in an interview with The Washington Post that Belver was in the wrong because he had placed himself, his fellow officers and the public at risk. But Helle, the president of the officers association, said he supports the arbitrators decision because not every infraction merits termination. Arbitration creates an environment in which the final say-so of whether the termination is justifiable or not is in the hands of a third party, Helle said. It creates a bit of fairness. It takes the emotion out of the argument. McManus, the police chief, declined to be interviewed about the Belver case or the other 29 officers whom the San Antonio Police Department has been compelled to rehire since 2006. Im sure many police chiefs across the country share the same frustrations that I do when an arbitrator overturns a termination, McManus said in a statement. CASE STUDY 5 Fatal force An arbitrator disagrees that a shooting wasnt justified. On Feb. 10, 2011, in Miami, police detective Reynaldo Goyos was working with a dozen undercover officers taking part in a sting at a local strip club known to be frequented by gang members. Shortly after 11 p.m., one of the undercover officers spotted what she described as two intoxicated men being ejected from the club. Travis McNeil and his cousin Kareem Williams stumbled across the parking lot and climbed into a burgundy Kia Sorrento. As they drove off, a half-dozen officers, including Goyos, followed them, worried that the men would come back and cause a disturbance, according to an arbitrators account that was based on witness statements and internal police files. Reynaldo Goyos (City of Miami Police Department) We get three or four blocks from the club, and all of a sudden police was surrounding us, Williams told The Washington Post. Goyos drew his gun and got out of the passenger seat of an unmarked Chevrolet Suburban. Show me your hands! he yelled. I looked at the driver, Goyos would later tell police internal affairs investigators. He was staring right at me. He looked like he wasnt paying attention, like hes very incoherent. [He] was disobeying my . . . commands. Goyos told internal affairs that as he approached the drivers side door he could see that both men had their hands in their laps. But then McNeil, in the drivers seat, reached toward his waistband and then toward the floorboard of the vehicle, according to the officer. Standing about two feet from the Kias open drivers side window, Goyos fired his weapon three times striking McNeil in the chest and Williams in the wrist and hip. McNeil was dead at the scene. On the drivers side floorboard, investigators found two cellphones. There were no weapons in the vehicle. None of the five other officers surrounding the car, who also had drawn their weapons, had fired. They would all later tell internal affairs investigators that Goyos was the only officer with a clear view into the car. The shooting quickly drew local media scrutiny. The department completed its internal investigation in November 2012. The next month, the citys Firearms Review Board made up of three assistant chiefs, a police major, and a police attorney concluded that the shooting was not justified. The board said that neither Goyos nor anyone else had been in imminent danger and questioned whether the physical evidence supported Goyoss version of events. Police officials concluded that the location of McNeils fatal wound was inconsistent with Goyoss assertion that he saw a black object in McNeils hand. In January 2013, then-Miami Police Chief Manuel Orosa fired Goyos, who had been with the department since 2005, arguing that he should have sought cover instead of approaching the vehicle. Goyos appealed, prompting a four-day arbitration hearing in late 2013. Goyos and his union attorney argued that Goyos did not violate the departments use-of-force policy and reasserted Goyoss claim that he had seen a black object in McNeils hand. There was no misconduct on the part of officer Goyos, said Eugene Gibbons, Goyoss attorney, who has defended many police officers accused of wrongdoing. He was simply doing his job to the best of his ability that evening. In a text message to The Post, Goyos declined to be interviewed and added, It was all political. In August 2014, arbitrator Martin Soll, a labor lawyer, sided with Goyoss legal team, writing that the physical evidence supported Goyoss account and that there was no evidence that his actions had violated department policy. Just or proper cause did not exist to discharge or otherwise discipline City of Miami Detective Reynaldo Goyos, Soll wrote. Soll ordered that Goyos be reinstated and awarded him $74,400 in back pay, an outcome that made local headlines. Its been frustrating, but there is no other option, said current Miami Police Chief Rodolfo Llanes. I have no other choice but to have a conversation with the person thats being brought back and tell them that I expect nothing but excellent work from now on. In 2015, the city settled a federal civil rights suit with McNeils family, agreeing to pay them nearly $1 million. CASE STUDY 6 Missed deadline D.C. police took six days too long to fire an officer. The nine-year effort to fire D.C. police officer Daxzaneous Banks began in March 2008 when a court employee asked why the undercover officer had signed in as having attended a criminal trial that had been rescheduled. Banks had been paid for being available to testify, although the trial had not occurred. Internal affairs began to investigate and found that on at least 10 occasions, he had allegedly forged the signatures of several prosecutors on his time sheets, records show. You affixed these signatures knowing them to be improper and fraudulent, according to an account of the case filed in court by the D.C. Attorney Generals Office. Bankss conduct forced prosecutors to abandon charges against a suspected cocaine dealer because the officer was the sole witness to the alleged drug transaction, according to the records. The accusations of forgery, prosecutors told internal affairs, raised serious veracity issues about his potential testimony in criminal cases, according to their account. Police investigators concluded that Banks had violated four policies: being involved in the commission of an act that would constitute a crime; conduct unbecoming an officer; inefficiency; and fraud. On Sept. 9, 2008, then-Police Chief Cathy L. Lanier recommended to the trial board, a three-member panel that oversees officer discipline, that Banks be fired. After a two-day hearing in March 2009, the board found Banks guilty of violating three of the four policies, and in June 2009, he was fired. Shortly thereafter, the union appealed Bankss firing, arguing that the department had missed its deadline to discipline the officer. Marc L. Wilhite, the union attorney who represents Banks, said the officer denies forging the signatures. Banks expressed repeatedly he believed he had a case scheduled that day, according to the Districts summary of the case. In the appeal, the union argued that the city began its investigation in April 2008 and was required by law to discipline Banks within 90 business days of starting the investigation. Wilhite said Laniers September 2008 recommendation to fire Banks was made at the end of 96 days six days past the 90-day deadline set by District code. The department argued that its investigation did not truly begin until May 2008 and that it had met the 90-day deadline. Because of a backlog of union arbitration cases, Bankss appeal languished until 2016, according to Wilhite. He said Banks, meanwhile, worked as a lifeguard and at other jobs. Finally, in September of last year, arbitrator Homer C. La Rue sided with Banks. It is clear that the department failed to meet its obligation to bring charges against Ofc. Banks within 90 days of the incident, wrote La Rue, a local labor attorney. La Rue ordered that Banks after seven years off the force be reinstated with full back pay and lost benefits, and that his personnel record be expunged of the termination. At the time of his firing, Banks was earning $68,023 annually. The District appealed the decision to the Public Employee Relations Board, which reviews disputes between the District and unions, but the reinstatement was upheld. In January, the D.C. Attorney Generals Office appealed the case in D.C. Superior Court, arguing that any harm caused to Banks by missing the deadline is outweighed by the police departments interest. The appeal is pending. To date, the Metropolitan Police Department has not returned Banks to active status. Wilhite said that Banks, the son of a District police officer, wants his job back and has been under pressure from his family to return to policing. Banks is one of 26 officers nationwide ordered reinstated since 2006 because arbitrators ruled that police officials had missed deadlines as outlined in local laws or union contracts. Of those, 23 were from The District. Six of those officers were ordered reinstated in the past two years, records show. The deadline issue has troubled the department for decades, and has been documented in stories in The Washington Post and in the Washington City Paper. Many departments have time limits under union contracts or local laws to complete internal investigations to prevent cases from dragging on. The Districts deadlines are among the shortest: A survey last year of 81 major police departments found that at least 21 departments imposed deadlines, ranging from 30 days to three years, according to Campaign Zero, a police accountability group. For many years, the District code imposed a 45-day deadline for a city employee accused of wrongdoing to be investigated and discipline recommended, said Mark Viehmeyer, an attorney for the police department and acting director of its labor relations branch. The City Council repealed the rule in 1998, calling the deadline arbitrary. In 2004, the City Council took the issue up again because the police and fire unions were complaining that officials were taking too long to pursue disciplinary cases, Viehmeyer said. The council then imposed a 90-day deadline for the police and fire departments, he said. Separately, he said, the police union contract since the early 1980s has imposed a second deadline: Police officials have 55 days to fire an officer once they decide to do so. District officials said in interviews that they are meeting the deadlines and that cases are overturned because arbitrators misinterpret when the clock begins. D.C. Police Chief Peter Newsham said the department in the past two years has taken steps to eliminate the ambiguity about when the internal affairs investigation begins so that authorities can meet arbitrators interpretation of the 90-day deadline. That was our main point of contention with the arbitrators, Newsham said. They were continually changing when the 90-day clock started ticking. Viehmeyer said that in many of the cases in which the department was ordered to rehire officers, the underlying misconduct was never in dispute. There are a lot of cases where the arbitrators analysis I think is sort of belied by some of the facts in the case, he said. Wilhite, who has represented many of the officers who were reinstated, said the rules are clear. There are lots of other angles that MPD has been using to try and avoid the reality, which is once the 90 days has been violated, that case must be dismissed, Wilhite said CASE STUDY 7 No due process A department fails to investigate an officers arrest. Broward Sheriffs Sgt. John Goodbread was in his doctors office in Florida for a routine physical sometime in 2003 or 2004 when he felt the pain in his lower back. He had me do one of these exercises as part of the physical, bend over type of thing, touch your toes, see what your range of motion, Goodbread would later tell police. As I was bending over, I stopped because the lower back just seized up. The doctor issued Goodbread a prescription for hydrocodone. It was the first of multiple pain-medication prescriptions from several doctors that would ultimately result in criminal charges against Goodbread. In March 2011, a detective in Palm Beach County got a tip suggesting that Goodbread and his then-wife, Heather Goodbread, may be involved in doctor shopping a practice in which someone seeks the same or similar prescriptions from multiple doctors, according to a summary of the case later included in the arbitrators ruling. Criminal investigators began looking into the allegations that Goodbread and his wife had obtained prescriptions for the pain medications from four doctors offices, according to court records. On April 8, 2011, Goodbread and his wife were arrested and eventually charged in state court with trafficking Oxycodone and withholding information from a practitioner, both felonies. The couples arrest made local headlines, and the Broward County Sheriffs Office suspended Goodbread without pay. I was completely caught off guard, Goodbread, a former narcotics officer who has consistently maintained his innocence, said in an interview with The Washington Post. Somebody else had used my name to get those scripts. I had nothing to do with anything. In April 2012, his wife pleaded guilty to withholding information from a practitioner and was put on probation under an agreement that withheld an adjudication of guilt. She would later testify during her husbands arbitration hearing that she was the one who had called in prescriptions in her husbands name and that he had not been aware of her scheme. She eventually completed her probation, court records show. Neither she nor her attorney could be reached for comment. In January 2013, Goodbread pleaded no contest to one count of withholding information from a practitioner under an agreement that deferred criminal prosecution. He was ordered into a pretrial intervention program, which he completed in a matter of months, and the case was dismissed. The Broward Sheriffs office fired him. The local police union appealed. The union argued that the department had not conducted a full internal affairs investigation but instead had relied on evidence gathered during the criminal probe. Therefore, the union argued, Goodbreads firing had been based on hearsay. Sgt. John Goodbread (Palm Beach CountySheriffs Office) His wife had admitted to misrepresenting herself to get the medication, said Michael Braverman, the attorney who represented Goodbread. But the department didnt give [Goodbread] even the most minimal amount of due process. In a Dec. 20, 2013, ruling, arbitrator Robert Hoffman sided with the union. He concluded that there had not been an adequate internal investigation by police and that Goodbread had been denied due process. Hoffman acknowledged that Goodbreads participation in a diversion program could be considered conduct unbecoming an officer, but the arbitrator questioned whether it merited his firing, given the inadequate internal affairs probe. Lesser discipline could result if the record did not contain serious due process concerns, he wrote. Hoffman ordered that Goodbread be reinstated in his job and receive back pay. In a video posted on Facebook, Goodbread thanked the police union for helping him get his job back. Broward Sheriffs Col. Jack Dale, who currently oversees officer discipline, said the department had handled the case poorly, because firing Goodbread while criminal charges were pending had impeded its ability to investigate fully. If a criminal case is ongoing, your best move is to wait until the criminal case is done before you terminate them, Dale said. Goodbread told The Post that without arbitration, he would still be out of a job for something he did not do. Have I seen it where the arbitration process may not work perfectly? Sure, Goodbread conceded. But its there to protect the rank and file. . . . Basically, its our union looking out for us to make sure that we dont [get] wrongly terminated. CASE STUDY 8 A rush to judgment An officer is fired quickly after a punch goes viral. In Philadelphia, Aida Guzman cradled a bottle of beer in one hand and clutched a can of Silly String in the other as she bounced along with the music playing after the citys annual Puerto Rican Day Parade on Sept. 30, 2012. A few feet away, Lt. Jonathan Josey of the Philadelphia Police Departments highway patrol unit was one of more than a dozen officers dealing with a vehicle doing doughnut turns nearby. In the next few seconds, what transpired between Josey and Guzman would become a criminal matter. One thing is undisputed: Joseys hand connected with Guzmans face. A bystander captured the encounter on video. Guzman was walking from the street toward the sidewalk, and then Josey approached. The officer swung with an open hand striking Guzman in the face and knocking her to the ground. Guzman, bleeding from the mouth, was arrested and cited for disorderly conduct. Josey would later tell investigators that he felt himself get hit with liquid and Silly String, prompting him to turn around, see Guzman and approach her. The video of Joseys smacking Guzman quickly went viral, and then-Police Commissioner Charles H. Ramsey acted quickly. He reviewed the video and the use-of-force report filled out by Josey, in which the officer said he had been trying to knock the beer out of Guzmans hand and accidentally hit her in the face, according to a summary of the case later compiled by the city. Four days later, on Oct. 4, Ramsey suspended Josey, concluding that he had falsified his use-of-force report by claiming he had personally seen Guzman throw beer on him and several other officers. On Nov. 1, 2012, Ramsey fired Josey for conduct unbecoming an officer and for use of excessive force. Prosecutors charged Josey with simple assault, a second-degree misdemeanor. The charges and Joseys firing outraged the police union and fellow officers, who packed the courtroom during the 2013 trial, according to news reports at the time. The union argued in the local news media that department leadership and prosecutors were bending to political pressure. Other officers present that day told the judge that they heard Josey instruct Guzman to drop her beer. Josey testified at trial that he was trying to swat the beer bottle from Guzmans hand and that at that very moment Guzman slipped on a can on the ground, according to local coverage of the trial. As she stumbled, the officer said, the swat intended for her beer bottle instead struck her face. The video looks disturbing but, obviously, its not what it appears to be, Josey said in court. I was kind of shocked when I saw her go to the ground. I didnt expect to come into contact with her face. Judge Patrick F. Dugan ultimately concluded that Josey was not guilty. It was a complete joke, Guzman attorney Enrique Latoison said in an interview with The Washington Post. A mockery of a trial. Josey then appealed his firing. Arbitrator David J. Reilly held a two-day hearing in June 2013 and concluded that Josey should not have been fired. His decision letter is not subject to public records laws, but The Post obtained a 2014 report on arbitration from the citys Police Advisory Commission that summarized Reillys rationale. According to the report, Reilly wrote that after viewing the video frame by frame, he believed Joseys account and concluded that his use of force was reasonable. Reilly also decided that although Josey incorrectly claimed he had seen Guzman throw beer on him, that was insufficient grounds to fire him. Reilly ordered that Josey be rehired and that all references to his firing be removed from his personnel file. Guzman, a mother of three, sued over the incident. In May 2013, the city paid her a $75,000 settlement. Latoison said he remains outraged at Joseys acquittal and reinstatement. If you accidentally hit somebody, if you accidentally step on your puppy or accidentally swat your child, everybody, universally has the same reaction, Oh, Im sorry! Latoison said. His immediate reaction was to rough her up, put her in handcuffs, throw her in a police van and charge her with disorderly conduct. Josey and the union that represents Philadelphia officers did not respond to multiple requests for comment. When Josey was reinstated, his criminal defense attorney told local reporters that Jon didnt do anything wrong that day other than do his job. Ive said before and Ill say again, Fortunato Perri, the attorney, added in a recent interview with The Post. The people of Philadelphia are very fortunate to have someone like Jon Josey working for the Philadelphia PD. [This story has been optimized for offline reading on our apps. For a richer experience, you can find the full version of this story here. An Internet connection is required.] Crystal Earlys son took to breast-feeding right away. At 10 weeks, James was already more than 13 pounds and hungry all the time, Early said recently. But in just two weeks, she would be back at work and would need to pump breast milk. Im nervous about the time it takes out of the day, and making sure I can take that time to really do what I need to do and also not miss important pieces of my job each day, Early said. I never want someone to think that Im taking a quote-unquote break, or that Im missing out on work. Early is one of the lucky ones: Her company, a Tampa staffing firm where shes worked for six years, has a new pumping room with a door that locks, and has even decorated the space with photos of the babies whose mothers are pumping. Even so, she worries about leaving her son when hes still so little, about what she might miss while shes pumping and about how shell pump when traveling for work. That is one of the number one sources of stress: how they are going to manage the breast milk supply, says Aimee Danielson, director of the Womens Mental Health Program at Medstar Georgetown University Hospital. One of the biggest factors in whether its something tedious versus truly stressful is the ability of the workplace to have institutional support for pumping. Earlier this year, The Washington Posts On Parenting section ran an article explaining what is required of companies that have workers who need to pump. In response, we received nearly 200 stories from federal employees, emergency workers, teachers and others at companies large and small. Some gushed about pristine pumping rooms, but many others had less pleasant tales. [Women share their stories of pumping at work. Its not pretty.] In a country where there is no paid parental leave and where most leaves consist of just 12 weeks or less, women are returning to jobs when their bodies (and hearts) might be wanting them to do otherwise: They suffer from painful breasts, leaking milk, the stress of trying to balance a job with new family demands, plus a stigma that a mother cant excel at work. We heard from new moms who pump as they sit on dirty floors in storage rooms and watch as roaches scurry in dark corners. We heard from teachers who pump during a short free period in their classrooms that dont lock, one with a video camera recording. And then there was this nightmare: The CEO of the company used to announce when I was going to pump by singing a little song for everyone to hear: Pump, pump, pump it up! wrote a woman who worked in a Silicon Valley tech start-up. She also recalled a time when she wasnt permitted to leave a meeting and her milk began to leak through her shirt. (She quit and recently began her own consulting company.) The workplace is full of obstacles for mothers, and pumping is a big one. Here, women share their stories. A PLACE TO PUMP So what does it take to pump breast milk? A room with a lock. And, of course, theres the pump, which typically costs about $300, although many pumps are now covered by insurance under the Affordable Care Act. New mothers also need sanitized bottles, storage bags, tubing and other accessories. Some very proactive employers provide a hospital-grade pump, and nursing moms bring their own equipment to hook up to it. Women should have a space to set the equipment while pumping, a sink to clean the equipment, a refrigerator to keep the milk cold and a microwave, so the equipment can be sanitized after every pumping session, which usually lasts 15 to 20 minutes. (Add time for walking to the pumping space, storing the milk and cleaning the equipment.) An employer, no matter its size, has an obligation under the law to provide the space necessary to allow her to express milk in private and to have the time to do that, says Bob Simandl, a lawyer with von Briesen & Roper who focuses on employment and labor law. The area needs to have a locked door and no windows, or a covering over the windows. The employer and employee need to have a very open discussion as to timing of breaks, whether they will coincide with paid breaks, expectations for where and when, and what is most convenient for employer and employee, Simandl says. Sara McClusky of Reston is a product analyst at a digital consulting company in the District. The first person at her small firm to have a baby, she found there was no designated maternity leave or pumping space. But McClusky, who has a 1-year-old daughter, was more fortunate than some. I basically was told to come up with a wish list, and wed walk through it and make a plan, she says. I was fortunate that my boss at the time had been a working mother and had done the pumping thing. Before that, no one would have understood what I would be talking about. I was fortunate that my boss at the time had been a working mother and had done the pumping thing, says Sara McClusky, a product analyst at a digital consulting company in the District. (Linda Davidson/The Washington Post) McCluskys pumping area is in a small printer room, which also has a fridge. Its not too bad; sometimes I have to slide peoples printouts under the door. But, she said, her company is so small that she was really . . . paranoid to ask for it. After her daughter was born, McClusky took four weeks of paid leave provided by the company, two weeks of paid vacation time and then six weeks of unpaid leave. She knew that she wanted her daughter to have breast milk for the full year recommended by pediatricians. She put her pumping times on a shared calendar so people knew to try to avoid scheduling meetings with her during those two to three 15-minute breaks. That didnt always work, so she would call into meetings as she pumped. I was pumping once while on an internal call, and someone asked if there was a large toad in the room with me, she said. I work with a lot of younger developers, mostly men. So I said it was mommy time and I just left it there. Being the only new mother in a small office has been difficult. Its been a bit lonely. I had very small, but very lonely, victories, she says. She would have liked to celebrate when she downgraded to pumping just twice a day, or even gloat when she pumped a whopping 20 ounces at work in one day. Its kind of like, Whos going to commiserate with me? You just dont realize how much time is going into thinking about it. WORKPLACE CULTURE The worst stories come from women with clueless (and in some cases crude) co-workers or bosses. Some reported male co-workers trying to peek, or banging on the door when they knew a woman was pumping. Others had co-workers tell them that they wished they could have a break like pumping mothers do. (Not only is pumping physically demanding, but many of the women we spoke to continued to work while pumping.) And some co-workers and bosses expressed frustration with schedule disruptions. But pumping cant wait: A woman needs to pump at regular intervals to avoid leaking, pain and potentially serious infections. What happens when a company fails to create a culture that supports pumping employees? Well, bad news spreads fast, says Julia Beck, founder of the Its Working Project, which helps companies bring parents back into the workforce. A person who feels their needs were dismissed, theyre not going to be quiet about it. . . . It will affect not just retention but recruitment. The best stories are about organizations that understand the transition for women returning to work after having a baby. Cynthia Calvert, president of Workforce 21C, helps companies manage their workforce and advance women. If you support a new mother in the workplace, you gain loyalty, not just from her, but all her colleagues, she tells managers. And for women who feel guilty about asking for required accommodations? What youre doing is making it possible to remain employed, she says. Know your worth; this isnt special treatment. This is a setup required so you can continue to be employed. And its just for a short period of time. At Ayrika White-Mfoudis workplace, pumping was the norm. White-Mfoudi has three boys, 7 and 3 years old and 20 months. When she returned to work as a veterinarian at a busy practice in Catonsville within eight to 12 weeks of giving birth to each of her babies, she was one of several women who were pumping breast milk. So when they needed to pump, she and her colleagues took turns using the office of a vet who only came once a week, putting a covering over the window. It was fine. I know we had it better than most, she says. The all-women vet squads male boss was understanding, so the women felt like they could actually take their breaks to pump. He has daughters and a wife and is very supportive of family, White-Mfoudi says. We got very lucky. Of course, even with a decent space and a break to pump, it wasnt easy. No one understands. Its just youre attached to a machine for 15 minutes. Theres no love, youre isolated, no one is talking to you, she says. Its hard enough just to do it, then to hear these stories from women who arent supported is just terrible. . . . Its just not understood. I know we had it better than most, says Ayrika White-Mfoudi of her experience pumping breastmilk as a veterinarian at a busy practice in Catonsville. (Linda Davidson/The Washington Post) OUTSIDE THE 9-TO-5 For many women who dont work in an office, pumping may feel nearly impossible. This includes teachers, retail and fast-food workers, women in the military, and women who must travel often for work. (Trying to get through the Transportation Security Administration with dozens of ounces of breast milk adds another layer of difficulty; one mom suggested using frozen peas as ice packs.) Twins Victoria Clark and Ryan Evans are police officers who live in District Heights and the District, respectively. Clark has a 2-year-old daughter and 6-month-old son, and Evans has four children: a daughter who is 8, a son who is 6, and a twin boy and girl, now a year old. Clark stayed home with her newborn daughter for eight weeks, then headed back to the police station, which had a space dedicated to lactation with a comfortable chair, a small table, an outlet, a microwave and a refrigerator. Being in the station, rather than on patrol, gave her a degree of freedom. I just told my supervisor that I needed to take a break, and I pumped twice a day, she says. No one bothered me; it was great. But soon enough, she was itching to get back on the streets, she said. The first day she went out on patrol, she asked the dispatcher for a break. In the middle of pumping, she said, We need you to go out! Clark had to radio back for all to hear: I have no clothes on! That was the last time she pumped at work. Dont be quiet. Look up what your rights are. Look it up for yourself. You have every right, says police officer Ryan Evans, left, who stopped pumping after a few months because of the stress it caused at work. Her twin sister Victoria Clark, right, is also a police officer who pumped on the job. (Linda Davidson/The Washington Post) Evans recalled a supervisor telling her that she had to email him each time she went to pump and again when she came back. To her, it felt like a violation. When people took a smoke break or ate lunch, they didnt have to email their supervisor, she thought. I pumped at the same time every day. It was kind of like, Why do I have to do this? And after a few months, she stopped pumping because of stress. If she had to give advice to other women considering pumping, Evans said she would still encourage them to do it, but she would also tell them to speak up. Dont be quiet. Look up what your rights are. Look it up for yourself. You have every right, she says. You can take care of your child the way you want to. SPEAKING UP With the patchwork of laws that provide protections (including the Affordable Care Act, Title VII and the Fair Labor Standards Act), even the most well-meaning HR departments may not be on the cutting edge of this, says Tom Spiggle, owner of the Spiggle Law firm in Arlington and author of Youre Pregnant? Youre Fired! If you are paid an hourly wage, chances are youre entitled to pumping breaks and a clean, private room to pump in, he says. It pays to know whats required and then ask for it. Employers and employees can educate themselves by reading the requirements on the Labor Department website. Lauren Zelin has a 4-year-old boy, a 2-year-old girl and a 3-month-old boy. She is the media relations manager for a nongovernmental organization in the District. I know there are a lot of horror stories out there, but there are exceptions, she wrote to us. My co-workers and I are extremely lucky to have a great lactation room because we strongly advocated for it when our office was remodeled. Zelin compiled an email list of the moms in the office who had previously pumped at work, asking them, What do we need? What should we do? Would you go with us to HR and tell them what we need? she says. Zelin and her co-workers requested eight bays, knowing they wouldnt get all of them (they got four). They also asked for a refrigerator just for breast milk, shelving to hold the pump, and a sink to wash pump parts. Today, theres a schedule, and all four bays are usually in use. The organization has 370 employees in its D.C. office and is steadily growing, she says. As we grow, the number of moms grows. We can work and be moms and be supported in both, says Lauren Zelin, who with her co-workers advocated for a pumping room in the office of their nongovernmental organization in the District. (Linda Davidson/The Washington Post) Some people think youre just sitting around, but moms want to work and get home, Zelin says. Theres a desk in each bay where they can plug in laptops. We pick up our work, drop it down and keep working, she says. Such a welcoming setup can be a retention and recruitment tool, Zelin says. Some of that was included in how we pitched it: This is a thing we need. Breast-feeding is good for babies health, so it also cuts down on long-term health-care costs. But we especially talked about how it makes a difference in the workforce. We can work and be moms and be supported in both. Idris Elba and Matthew McConaughey in "The Dark Tower." (Ilze Kitshoff/Sony Pictures Entertainment/Sony Pictures Entertainment) A movie doesnt have to be rated R to be scary, but it should have a villain who doesnt remind you of the test-tube love child of Voldemort and a second-rate stand-up comic moonlighting as the host of a local dance clubs Goth & Industrial Night. As the glibly wisecracking, well-coiffed demonic sorcerer Walter Padick also known as the Man in Black, thanks to his self-explanatory, funereal attire Matthew McConaughey in the PG-13 Stephen King adaptation The Dark Tower is unlikely to evoke deathly shivers so much as a terminal case of the giggles. I hope you dont mind me making myself at home, Walter says to a couple whose kitchen stove he has just commandeered, after materializing from the alternate dimension in which he lives. Where I come from, we dont have chicken. Bada-bing. Later, when he resumes his campaign of universal annihilation because, as previously noted: Bad Guy Walter quips, brightly, Have a great apocalypse. There is nothing great or even particularly apocalyptic about The Dark Tower. Inspired, in only the most generous sense of the word, by Kings violent, eight-volume, supernatural-western fantasy series, the film by Nikolaj Arcel (A Royal Affair) is a watered-down, kids-movie version of King-ly horror. Walters brooding nemesis, the equally fashion-forward Roland Deschain, a.k.a. the Gunslinger (Idris Elba), isnt even the movies true hero, although he has been stalking Walter, pistols blazing, since time immemorial. (Rolands guns are said to have been forged from the steel of King Arthurs sword, Excalibur, but that doesnt make their bullets lethal to Walter, who catches them in his hand, like flyballs.) In a sop to its apparent target audience, the main protagonist of The Dark Tower is a troubled tween named Jake Chambers (Tom Taylor), who seems to have accidentally wandered into this movie from the set of a young-adult drama about alienation. Jake Chamberss Tom Taylor is the real protagonist of The Dark Tower. (Ilze Kitshoff/Sony Pictures Entertainment) As the movie opens, Jake has been having vivid nightmares in which he sees Roland do battle with Walter. As illustrated in the films dreamlike prologue, Walter has been kidnapping children and hooking them up to a high-tech contraption that harnesses their psychic energy to create a laserlike beam that he uses to chip away at the titular Dark Tower, a mysterious, linchpin-like skyscraper that somehow holds together the films various multiverses. Jake lives in modern-day New York or, rather, in the movies rendering, on Keystone Earth while Roland and Walter inhabit a wasteland known as Mid-World, which seems to contain both medieval villages and Walters high-tech lair, staffed by laughably sycophantic, bumbling minions out of a live-action version of Despicable Me. Are you still reading? Lets make this easy: The Dark Tower isnt frightening, or even, despite some serviceable action and special effects, very interesting, except perhaps for viewers too young to know better, or for Stephen King fans especially susceptible to outright pandering. Adapted for the screen by Arcel, with the assistance of Akiva Goldsman, Jeff Pinkner and Anders Thomas Jensen, The Dark Tower seems to have been driven less by a coherent screenplay than by a desire to stir together miscellaneous scraps from the universe of Kings novels and films. References to Pennywise the clown from It and to the Overlook Hotel in The Shining are scattered throughout. Even Jakes powerful clairvoyant ability referred to as the Touch in Kings books is here called the Shine. Other ingredients, in addition to the obvious Harry Potter influence, include Star Wars and every cowboy cliche known to man. Kings Dark Tower series has been called his magnum opus, a great work that attempts, in its sprawling ambition and 4,000-plus pages, to tie together many details from his literary oeuvre. But the only part of that description that applies in this case is work. In the buildup to the release of The Dark Tower, fans of the source material have expressed concern that the movies brisk running time would underserve the books grand themes. Trust me: When the house lights come up, no one is going to wish they could sit through a minute more of this chore. The Dark Tower (93 minutes, at area theaters) is rated PG-13 for mature thematic material, sequences of gun violence and action. Honeybee colonies are on the rise in the United States, the Department of Agriculture reported Tuesday. The colonies had been declining for years because of parasites and disease. (Joe Raedle/Getty Images) The number of U.S. honeybee colonies rose in 2017 from a year earlier, according to a U.S. Department of Agriculture survey released Tuesday. The number of commercial U.S. honeybee colonies rose 3 percent to 2.89 million as of April 1, compared with 2.8 million a year earlier, the department reported. It said the increase was caused by beekeepers adding more bees to make up for previous years rapid losses. Parasites and disease have accounted for the majority of the decline in honeybee population. But another cause of this drop is colony collapse disorder, which has raised concerns among farmers and scientists for a decade. Colony collapse disorder is a phenomenon in which bees abandon their hives. Beekeepers have improved hive conditions, and the disorder has steadily decreased in recent years. A possible contributing factor to the changes in the honeybee population has been pesticides. Environmental groups have expressed alarm about the more than the 90 percent decline during the past two decades in the population of pollinators, including wild bees and monarch butterflies. Pesticide manufacturers argue that their products contribute in a very minor way to the population trend. Tim May, a beekeeper in Harvard, Illinois, and the vice president of the American Beekeeping Federation, says he thinks that its difficult to point out specific factors causing the loss of honeybees. Its really tricky, May said. Maybe its pesticides, maybe its not. But when I eliminate everything else, its a distinct possibility. (Illustration by Cristiano Siqueira/For The Washington Post) On a recent Thursday in the Maryland suburbs, I witnessed a scene that, in the context of American politics in 2017, can only be described as extremely strange. The occasion was a sold-out Chamber of Commerce function at La Fontaine Bleue, a dolled-up catering hall in Glen Burnie, used mostly for weddings and family celebrations. Hundreds of local business leaders crammed into the space during lunch hour, paying $650 a table to watch the states Republican governor, Larry Hogan, step onto the stage with one of the most popular Democrats from liberal Montgomery County, state Comptroller Peter Franchot. A Lincoln-Douglas debate this was not. The event marked the third in a series of carefully staged appearances the two men have been conducting around the state, involving a moderator, a couple of plush easy chairs and a little over an hour of brotherly, affirmational banter that felt a bit like a tag-team fireside chat. At a time when national politics is brimming with partisan vitriol occasionally tinged with bursts of rage and even violence here sat two of Marylands leading statewide vote-getters, one Democrat and one Republican, touting the idea of bipartisanship as if it were an earthshaking archaeological discovery. Ive learned to appreciate the fact that, even though we dont agree on everything, what we do agree on is not to tear each other down in public, Franchot told the crowd. To which Hogan gamely replied, He said we publicly dont tear each other down. But we dont tear each other down in private. We actually like each other! And our wives like each other! Franchot added. We both married up, said Hogan, bringing a warm round of laughter. Repeatedly during the event, Franchot took on the task of bashing the Democratic power brokers in Annapolis part of the duos well-honed good-cop, bad-cop routine. Theres a certain arrogance down there, he said. The legislature is so infected with partisanship in the backrooms that ... Right on cue, Hogan cut in to soften the message. But heres the good news, if I can, he said. Save me from what Im about to say, Franchot replied, smiling. The good news is, there were some folks in the legislature who said at the beginning of the year that their primary focus was to attack me, hurt me politically for next years campaign. To focus on Washington and Donald Trump. And we totally ignored them and completely stayed focused on Maryland. Hogan argued pointedly that these early attempts from Democrats to tie him to Trump hadnt succeeded. In fact, we went up in the polls, he said. I had the second-highest favorability of any governor in the country. So they can keep attacking me if they want, but it doesnt seem to be working. Hogans approval rating did dip a bit this year; nevertheless, it remains stunningly high. Hillary Clinton may have won Maryland last year by 26 points, and when Hogan ran for governor in 2014, Maryland was the state with the nations highest percentage of registered Democrats. Yet, today, heading into his 2018 reelection bid, Hogan is indeed one of the most popular governors in America. Of course, most Democratic power brokers in Maryland are not going to be signing up anytime soon for a friendly roadshow with their Republican nemesis. (Franchot is more fiscally conservative than many Democrats, and, not surprisingly, his embrace of Hogan has earned him enemies in his own party.) Hogans critics told me they believe his numbers will start to fall once Democrats have settled on a candidate to challenge him. They expect the eventual Democratic nominee will saturate the airwaves with an assessment of Hogans first term that his critics rate as uninspired. But for now at least, Hogan has two powerful, though seemingly contradictory, things going for him. On the one hand, he was elected by the same category of voters who, from Pennsylvania to Ohio to Wisconsin, would later vault Trump to the White House: a potent wave of disaffected blue-collar and suburban whites. On the other hand, he has worked to create a personal brand that is affable, bipartisan and pragmatic pretty much the opposite of Trump. Nobody is a bigger critic of Trump than I am. I consider him to be a reckless and vulgar individual, Franchot told me. And I find Governor Hogan to be about as far removed from him in how he interacts with people, the respect he has for people, the public interest that he expresses from his perspective I think he is as far removed from Donald Trump as anybody could possibly be. And so, in the shadow of the nations storm-tossed political epicenter, Larry Hogans governorship is seeming more and more like an intriguing test case for a radically different version of the Republican Party: What would it look like if a politician played to Trumps electoral coalition while rejecting just about every element of the presidents personal style? Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan in West Baltimore in January 2016 to announce a city-state partnership aimed at revitalization. (Marvin Joseph/The Washington Post) When I interviewed Hogan in May, he was taking a break from a day of appearances in Baltimore. Meeting me in the stately 23rd-floor suite he uses when hes in Charm City, he let out a laugh when he saw two press staffers trailing me into his office. Theyre worried Ill say something wrong, he joked. Hogan does not look as polished as he did when he was elected in 2014. He was thinner then, with a robust head of combed-back silver hair. A cancer diagnosis that came less than five months into his term stripped him bald. He now wears his hair in a buzz cut, and he carries more weight in his gut and neck. He knows he looks older and a bit heavier but seems not to mind. These days, the guy who ran for office as a frustrated Everyman looks more the part than ever. Much has changed for Hogan since early 2014, when the commercial real estate executive began holding private discussions with close friends and confidantes. Over dinner at a McCormick & Schmicks in Oxon Hill, he broached the subject of running for governor with his longtime friend Timothy Maloney. A lawyer and former Democratic legislator in Prince Georges County, Maloney had quietly advised generations of politicians, including the term-limited Democratic incumbent governor, Martin OMalley. I started laughing and laughing. I said, Larry, thats the craziest thing Ive ever heard in my life, Maloney recalls. And Larry was laughing, too. But then I noticed that he wasnt laughing quite as hard as I was. When Hogan entered the race, he decided lower taxes and more jobs would be his message. (To this day, its hard to spend five minutes with him before he turns the conversation to his belief that Maryland previously had a dismal reputation within the business community.) One of his advisers, Russell Schriefer, says that he, too, initially doubted Hogans chances, as he would with any Republican running in a state dominated by Democrats. But he was impressed by Hogans message discipline. As the campaign heated up, his Democratic opponent, Lt. Gov. Anthony G. Brown, wanted to force Hogan to defend national Republican rhetoric on guns and abortion. But Hogan refused to engage. He had this really very intense focus on taxes, the economy, on bread-and-butter issues that average Marylanders cared about, Schriefer says. And he continued to stick with it and not get involved in outside issues. As would be the case with Trump two years later, Hogan was a massive underdog. Lobbyist Bruce Bereano an outsize personality who has been close to Maryland politicians from both parties became an early follower. He says he started seeing signs that Hogan might outperform expectations at the July 4 parade in Dundalk, a blue-collar Baltimore neighborhood of formstone rowhouses brought low by the closing of the Bethlehem Steel factory. The parade is a cant-miss event for politicians, with 10,000 people lining Belclare Road and Liberty Parkway. Hogan zigzagged along the winding route to shake as many hands as he could. Bereano remembers at some points seeing people grab Hogan and yank him into the crowd. The lobbyist recalls being stunned by the warmth of the reception: I mean, you would think he was Bruce Springsteen. At the end of the route, Hogan climbed into a campaign RV parked in front of Dundalk Elementary School. Exhausted, he dropped into a captains chair, turned to his supporters and blurted out: Man, I think were going to win this thing. With the vote drawing near, conventional wisdom continued to favor Brown. But about two weeks before Election Day, a group of top Maryland Democrats, led by then-Sen. Barbara Mikulski, met with the state partys chief pollster, Fred Yang. Democratic House of Delegates Speaker Michael E. Busch was one of those seated around the table. The pollster was giving us a rundown and the room was silent, Busch remembers. I was thinking, This is not good. Busch showed me a photo taken the morning of Election Day on Main Street in Annapolis the heart of his own legislative district. He was in the midst of his voting-day routine, stopping at coffee shops and restaurants to say hello and remind people to vote. He stepped into Chick & Ruths deli, and there was Hogan. In the photo, Hogan is beaming. Busch is standing behind him, forcing a smile. He told me that wasnt how he was feeling. I dont think anybody knew at the time what the outcome was going to be, he recalls. I had seen the numbers. ... People were tired of government telling them what to do. They felt like these guys [in office] arent responding to me. They only take care of themselves. It was a groundswell. You could see it happening. It was, Busch says, the beginning of what we now know is the Trump revolution. At some level, the similarities between Trump and Hogan are inescapable: Both are conservative, straight-talking businessmen with backgrounds in real estate. Both entered politics as outsiders who gave voice to a frustrated working class but forged common cause with corporate executives. Yet their personas couldnt be more different. To understand what separates the two men, it helps to start with Hogans father. In July 1974, Larry Hogan Sr., a three-term Republican congressman from Southern Maryland, rose from his seat on the House Judiciary Committee to address a nation he called troubled and divided and became the first Republican on the committee to recommend impeachment for President Richard Nixon. The younger Larry Hogan was only in high school at the time, but the moment clearly left an imprint on him. When his 88-year-old father died this past spring, Hogan reflected on that moment in his eulogy, delivered at St. Marys Church in Annapolis. Despite tremendous pressure, this statesman put aside partisanship and his own personal ambitions and he made the tough decision, the governor said. He then quoted directly from his fathers famous floor speech: Party loyalty and personal affection and precedents of the past must fall, I think, before the arbiter of mens action, the law itself. No man, not even the president of the United States, is above the law. After college in Florida, Hogan came back to Maryland to work for his father, who had by then become the county executive of Prince Georges a successful Republican in a county dominated by Democratic politicians. Hogan bunked with a group of friends in what could only be described as a makeshift fraternity house. Maloney, then a hard-charging young Democrat, was one of his five housemates. In 1980, the two hatched a plan to remake the Prince Georges County Council by passing a ballot initiative that would reduce the number of council members from 11 to nine and force them to run in distinct districts. The idea to lessen the influence of machine politics benefited both Maloney (an outsider) and Hogan (a Republican). Its hard to get something on the ballot, Hogan recalls, but Maloney and I did it. To the surprise of the establishment, the measure passed. At age 24, Hogan had run his first successful campaign. The experience served as a preview of Hogans future governing style, which has tended to favor the practical over the partisan. Thats how I lived most of my life, he says, thinking back on that early victory. Most of my friends were all Democrats. Id have been a lonely guy if I only hung out with Republicans. While he used his deep knowledge of planning and zoning to launch a real estate business, he kept returning to politics. In 1981, he ran unsuccessfully for his fathers former congressional seat, finishing second in a packed Republican field. Eleven years later, he ran unsuccessfully for Congress again scaring Democratic incumbent Rep. Steny H. Hoyer with the narrowest victory of his long tenure. Eleven years after that, Hogan joined the administration of Republican Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr., accepting a post overseeing hundreds of patronage jobs. Every decade I might dip my toe in the waters of politics, Hogan says. But it wasnt my life. Hogan described to me a weekend morning not long after his fathers funeral. He was sinking into an easy chair in the basement of the governors mansion he calls it his man cave wading through the stacks of homework his staff leaves for him most evenings. On CNN, pundits discussed the news that Trump had just fired the FBI director. When Hogan looked at the television screen, he caught an unexpected sight. A grainy image of the House Judiciary Committee was serving as a backdrop to a report on the echoes of past scandal. I looked up and theres my dad, he recalls. In seeing it, he seemed to understand that his fathers role in Watergate had the potential to become an inescapable ghost for him. People around him, he says, have already started to wonder openly if a moment will come when he, like his father before him, will be driven to buck his party and turn on the president. Everyones talking about it, and they are making comparisons, Hogan told me. Ive thought a lot about the magnitude of that moment and how important and tough a decision it was that he made. Hogan is trying not to focus on this latest presidential drama. But he says he still feels his fathers presence in the way he approaches politics every day. Even though its 40 years later, and a lots changed over that time, the basics are the same, he explains. You focus on things everyone cares about and you dont constantly pick fights with people because theyre in the other party. And you look for areas of agreement, try and find common ground, common-sense solutions. I think thats what he tried to do back then, and its what I try to do now. Hogan speaks at a news conference outside the Maryland State House on the final day of the states legislative session in Annapolis in April. (Patrick Semansky/Associated Press) Among Hogan critics, his pragmatic approach to governing has been described as Dont sweat the large stuff. More air conditioning in Baltimore County schools was one crusade. A shorter school calendar starting after Labor Day aimed at helping fuel Ocean City vacation businesses was another wildly popular move, even as it angered some education advocates. One of the most indelible images of his first term was a photo Hogan has posted repeatedly on Facebook showing him leaning out of a Chesapeake Bay Bridge toll booth in a dark suit with sunglasses. It highlights his move to reduce highway tolls across the state. Democratic critics complained about lost transportation revenue. But on a crowded holiday weekend, theres just nothing partisan about lower tolls. Hogan told me he tries to push only those proposals he cares about deeply. If theres something I believe in, I fight hard, he says. But Im not if you notice with the legislature, I dont swing at every pitch. He doesnt have much of a choice but to proceed with caution. Democrats hold a veto-proof majority in the General Assembly, which handcuffs his ability to pass legislation. I asked Busch what he thought Hogans most significant legislative achievement was, and he sat silent for an uncomfortably long time. Rather than answer, Busch told me he believes Hogans list of legislative accomplishments is padded with bills Democrats already planned to approve such as a ban on fracking that Hogan joined midway through the process, and a bill promoting electric cars that had initially passed in 2007 and needed only to be reauthorized. During the 2017 legislative session, Hogan posted periodic Bipartisanship Alerts online to tout these victories. Yet whether he is genuinely interested in bipartisanship is a source of intense debate in Annapolis. That is especially true among Democratic lawmakers who say they have experienced steady tension with the governor. All three years in office, Hogan has clashed with them over a school-choice bill he pushed that would expand Marylands use of charter schools. With the teachers union lobbying hard, Democrats beat back several of Hogans education proposals. At one point earlier this year, he called in local news cameras to attack a bill that would establish the standards the state could use to identify failing schools but prevent the state from turning them into charter schools. Hogan decried it as one of the most outrageous and irresponsible moves that our legislature has ever taken. He accused Democrats of blocking him from taking any substantial action to make any improvements to persistently failing schools. (He vetoed the measure, but the legislature overrode it.) His pro-charter agenda has aligned him with Trumps controversial education secretary, Betsy DeVos. When I interviewed Steven Hershkowitz, a spokesman for the teachers union, the Maryland State Education Association, he made a point to note that one of Hogans top education advisers, Jason Botel, had left the state to join the Trump administration. And Democrats jumped at the opportunity to draw parallels when DeVos drove to Bethesda in March to tour a public school with Hogan at her side. Their caravan arrived at Carderock Springs Elementary School to find 150 protesters blocking the entrance and chanting, Public schools are a public good! Hogan and DeVos had to walk through a back entrance. Hogans approach to immigration has been similarly polarizing. In March, he learned of reports that a 14-year-old student at Rockville High School had allegedly been raped by two older students, both of whom were said to have entered the United States illegally. When Hogan made his first public comments on the case, he pointedly raised the accused perpetrators immigration status. It appears as if this was part of the Obama, unaccompanied-minor kind of amnesty program where they allowed these kids to come in, he told reporters. The alleged rape, he said, demonstrated the dangers of a pending sanctuary bill meant to put limits on the role of local law enforcement in immigration matters. That legislation had passed through the Maryland House the evening before at what Hogan called the worst possible time ever a few days after this girl was brutally raped by these two young men who were in this country illegally. The comments stirred anger from some quarters. Chris Lloyd, a teacher and president of the Montgomery County Education Association, told me that when he heard the remarks, he feared a backlash against Latino students. He blamed the governor for creating real danger by using the incident to make a political argument. The instinct, he says, reminded him of the man in the White House. Over the coming days, Hogan dialed back his tone, telling reporters he wanted to let everybody do their jobs. He set aside talk of the legislation in Annapolis, and his office has since said the anger he flashed during his initial response was aimed at the school system. The governor was responding to widespread calls from the local community for information which was not forthcoming from the school system at the time, says Hogan spokeswoman Amelia Chasse. Six weeks later, prosecutors announced they had dropped the sex-assault case against the two teenage immigrants. The episode highlighted what one of his advisers told me is a hallmark of Hogans tenure: For better or worse, he follows his gut. Hes very candid and its not calculated, says Mike Leavitt, a consultant based in Maine who advises Hogan, along with a number of blue state Republicans. My experience has been, hes going to say whats on his mind regardless what anyone else suggests. But those instincts often lead him to the political center rather than the hard right. They apparently guided him to skip the 2016 Republican National Convention. As the GOP gathered in Cleveland to nominate Trump, Hogan stood on the busy median of Interstate 270 in Rockville. With local news cameras rolling, the governor handed a giant check to Montgomery County officials to bring attention to a $229.6 million plan to ease traffic backups. Hogan told me the timing of the event was a coincidence; savvy political observers in Maryland see it differently. I think it was done on purpose to show, Hey, Im not in Cleveland, Montgomery County Executive Isiah Leggett (D) told me. Im in Montgomery County with money. As the 2016 presidential election approached, Hogan announced he would not vote for Trump and he ended up writing in his fathers name instead. Since the election, he has treaded a fine line when it comes to Trump, generally keeping his distance but also stopping well short of outright war with the administration. I think my opinions are fairly well known, he said when I asked him about Trump. I have almost no relationship with Washington or the president. In Annapolis, Democrats have introduced a succession of measures intended to force Hogan to take a position on Trumps immigration and health-care proposals. One resolution created a fund to allow the Maryland attorney general, a Democrat, to sue the administration without Hogans prior approval. Throughout, Hogan tried to maintain the same message discipline he employed during the campaign. Theyre demanding I protest Trump every day, he said at one point during our interview, sounding mildly irritated. Thats not what people elected me to do. They elected me to run the state, and thats what Ive been doing. If Hogan does further distance himself from Trump, it would arguably be in keeping with the nonpartisan, regular-guy persona he has created for himself. Joan Cadden, a former Democratic state delegate who for years ran a beauty salon in the blue-collar Baltimore suburb of Brooklyn Park, says Hogans popularity has soared in her neighborhood. Hes a real down-to-earth person. Thats why everybody likes him, she told me. You know, hes a good man. I dont always agree with all his politics, but hes a good man. On Opening Day at Camden Yards last year, instead of heading straight for a luxury box, Hogan started in front of Pickles Pub and walked to the outfield bleachers in an Orioles jersey, posing for what he estimated was more than 4,000 pictures with fans. I asked Hogan about that day. People were like, Nobody ever comes down here, Hogan said, chuckling at the memory. I just like being with people more. And people seem to sense that I care about them and that Im one of them. In many of the photos posted on his Facebook feed, he is holding a can of National Bohemian beer, a local favorite. He does come across as an Everyman, Busch, the Democratic House Speaker, says. A regular Joe. I think it serves him well. Protesters and supporters greet Hogan during a visit to a Bethesda elementary school in March with Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos. (Sarah L. Voisin/The Washington Post) This spring, Democrats around Maryland started hosting gatherings to mark the unofficial launch of the 2018 gubernatorial campaign. Inside the crowded ballrooms, party activists were not hiding their simmering anger toward Trump. At the celebration dinner for the Anne Arundel County Democratic Central Committee, the Rev. Henry Green offered a most unusual invocation, asking: How do we pray when we feel surrounded on all sides by people of the lie? The dinner was oversold, and several people had to eat standing. Democrats who harbored plans to run for governor worked the long, winding line to the bar. The former head of the NAACP, Benjamin Jealous, leaned his large frame down to talk with a councilman. State Sen. Richard S. Madaleno Jr. from Montgomery County handed out stacks of freshly printed business cards identifying him as a candidate. The county executives from Baltimore and Prince Georges counties, Kevin Kamenetz and Rushern L. Baker III, occupied corners of the reception hall, encircled by party insiders. When Democratic National Committee Chairman Tom Perez took to the microphone to rouse the crowd, he made no secret of the message his party would be sending in Maryland. Where is this governor when Donald Trump is an affront to our values? Perez asked. Hes got a sock in his mouth. John Willis, the former Maryland secretary of state, is one of several party insiders working on blueprints for the upcoming campaign. He has studied the numbers from 2014 and noted that voters from both parties dismayed by inaction in Washington turned out in record low numbers. Republican turnout was low, but Democratic turnout fell off the table, he told me. Literally, it was the lowest percentage of Democratic voters ever. Four years later, Democrats will be counting on anti-Trump sentiment to bring those numbers back up. The strategy could certainly succeed, but if it fails, the implications would reverberate well beyond Maryland and well past 2018. Hogan himself has never professed a desire for national office, and his version of center-right pragmatism is, today at least, very much out of fashion in Republican politics. Yet his success, if he continues to succeed, would demonstrate that it is possible to win in a state as blue as Maryland by combining Trumps outsider-populist appeal with a softer edge. On the stage at La Fontaine Bleue, the traveling roadshow was nearing its end. Comptroller Franchot was taking repeated potshots at his fellow Democrats, when finally the governor interrupted. Hed had enough. Were not going to say anything more about how bad the partisanship is. Im done with all that, Hogan declared. Despite some of the yelling and name-calling that they do in the paper, they actually are working across the aisle and getting things done, more than almost anyone before. Democratic Del. Pamela Beidle walked out of the catering hall seething at Franchot. But not at Hogan. If hes going to win again, she said of the governor, he knows he has to just keep on being the good guy. Matthew Mosk is a senior producer in the Washington bureau of ABC News. To comment on this story, email wpmagazine@washpost.com. For more articles, as well as features such as Date Lab, Gene Weingarten and more, visit The Washington Post Magazine. Follow the Magazine on Twitter. Like us on Facebook. Protesters hold hands during a demonstration in front of police officers at a Walmart in St. Louis in October 2014. (Jim Young/Reuters) Aug. 9, 2014 An unarmed 18-year-old black man named Michael Brown was shot and killed by Darren Wilson, a white police officer in Ferguson, Mo., after an altercation in the street. Browns body was left where he fell for hours, stoking outrage among family and neighbors and beyond. Within days, the national media had descended to cover the shooting and its tumultuous aftermath. His death immediately sparked outrage, with protests and vigils beginning that day and showing no sign of abating on Monday, The Washington Posts Mark Berman wrote. The reaction took a violent turn on Sunday, as some protesters began looting businesses in the Ferguson area over several hours, leaving a trail of broken glass and burned-out storefronts in their wake. A U.S. Department of Justice investigation later found racial bias in Fergusons police and court system. But Wilson, who resigned in November 2014, was not prosecuted. The deaths of Brown, Walter Scott, Eric Garner, Freddie Gray and other unarmed black men during interactions with police galvanized the Black Lives Matter movement, which began as a hashtag on social media after the 2013 acquittal of George Zimmerman, who fatally shot unarmed black teenager Trayvon Martin. In June, the city of Ferguson settled a wrongful-death suit filed by Browns parents for $1.5 million. Reader: My friend has a high-stress public-sector job. He says his office is backstabby, but his boss is great. Likes him, likes his work, knows about the backstabby culture and does not play into it. So, my friend wants to keep his boss on his side. But, and this is a big but, my friend lives close to the airport and the boss lives far away from it. So once or twice a month, when the boss needs to make an early flight for a business trip, he asks to stay at my friends apartment the night before to spare himself the expense of a hotel. In the meantime, my friend just lost his mother after a long illness, and the woman he was to marry ended their relationship. All he wants to do after work is watch Netflix and eat carryout. He does not want to clean his apartment and entertain his boss while he is trying to recover from his moms death and his relationship imploding. He does not want to go to HR, because that might ruin his relationship with his boss. By the way, no sexual harassment here they are both straight guys with no undercurrents. How can he maintain good relations with his boss in a negative work environment, and yet not serve as a hotel once or twice a month? (Marvin Joseph/The Washington Post) Karla: While opening his home was a beau geste on your friends part, closing the door to his boss guest is easier said than done. But this ongoing arrangement, although platonic, is somewhat more personal than a host-and-guest/boss-and-underling setup. Maybe its time for your friend to invite the boss into his real world. His grief gives him a good opening: Hey, just to let you know, Im still working through some devastating personal losses. Of course, youre welcome to crash on my sofa, but Im afraid I cant be much of a host. Then he should leave the apartment exactly as is dishes in sink, socks on floor hand the boss a clean towel and some takeout menus on arrival, and retire to his room to sit in bed with his laptop and a box of pad thai. A little disarray and discomfort might just remind the boss that he is intruding on a colleagues personal space, not checking in to a bed-and-breakfast. Either hell understand and respect the conditions especially if he sees his host as his friend or hell make other arrangements. Once your friend starts emerging from his grief, he may decide he doesnt mind hosting or he can continue making his apartment a less appealing overnight option: maintain more relaxed housekeeping standards, arrange to have it fumigated, have the AC break down you get the idea. And unless things turn nasty, Id keep HR out of the loop for now. Ask Karla Miller about your work dramas and traumas by emailing wpmagazine@washpost.com. Read more Work Advice columns. For stories, features such as Date Lab, Gene Weingarten and more, visit The Washington Post Magazine. Follow the Magazine on Twitter. Like us on Facebook. Email us at wpmagazine@washpost.com. In the distance, the Big Wheel of Dreamland peaks above resurgent Margates refurbished buildings and its harbor. (Ernie Jordan/Alamy Stock Photo) The young man checking tickets looks at me with a quizzical tilt of the head: Just you is it, mate? Apart from me, the queue for the Scenic Railway roller coaster in Margate is composed of teens and young families. I dont like his intonation but I can see his point. As a 37-year-old man, I stick out like a sore thumb. What that insouciant youngster doesnt know, though, is that I have a very good reason for being here. Im on what others might describe as a sentimental journey; my brother and I spent many days amid the faded neon and sticky concrete of Dreamland, the amusement park where youll find the Scenic Railway, during our preteen glory days in the early 1990s. Wed get the train from Ashford, our home town, and walk the 500 yards from Margate Station to Dreamland (or Benbom Brothers, as it was briefly known at the time). Im back because Dreamland reopened in May after a $30 million refurbishment, with the Scenic Railway as its centerpiece. Will it live up to my memories? The Sands Hotel overlooks Margate Sands, the citys primary beach. (Will Hawkes/For The Washington Post) Initial impressions are good. It is much like it was, and also very different. The 1920s Scenic Railway, the oldest coaster in Britain, still has a brakeman perched between the fifth and sixth cars, it still creaks and rattles around the (completely new) wooden track and the descents are as thrilling as they ever were, but it seems to be better run and, well, safer now. Thats true of the whole park. There are things here that would have appeared suspiciously foreign in 1991: plenty of grass to complement the concrete, for example, and decent food. There are eight street-food stalls around a circular green, while by the entrance theres a branch of Morellis, an iconic Kentish ice cream company founded in nearby Broadstairs in 1932. (Most of its branches are, nonetheless, now to be found in the Middle East.) Dreamlands desire to please is probably best exemplified by the beaming, 50s-styled teens who scoot around the park offering help, and the information boards by each ride, which contain a solid chunk of well-chosen history. Metaphorically speaking, a broad smile has replaced a disinterested shrug. The same might be said of Margate. This has long been one of the most down-at-heel towns in Southeast England, but in the past few years it has undergone a significant resurgence (even if theres still much to do). A victim of the 1970s boom in overseas travel the British swapped Margate for Mallorca it has endured a period of sullen decay, its plight only heightened by the disheveled grandeur of its Edwardian inheritance. On a warm day, though, Margates problems can be easily forgotten. Leaving Dreamland, I walk east across the crescent-shaped sandy beach toward another sign of the towns renaissance, the Turner Contemporary art gallery. Its late afternoon and the town is relaxed. A few people are splashing in the water as seagulls swoop and caw overhead; groups of day-trippers eat ice cream on some modern steps by the beach. Container ships, visible far out in the North Sea, inch slowly along the horizon. In the Old Town, close to the Turner, all is pastel-colored contentment. Its a contrast with the shops along the front toward Dreamland, where Beacon Bingo sits next to the tinny din and flashing lights of the Fabulous Showboat arcade. Margates greatest delight is saved for the evening. The reason Englands finest painter, J.M.W. Turner (1775-1851), adored this place was the quality of light: The skies over Thanet are the loveliest in all Europe, he apparently claimed, and on a clear evening its hard to disagree. Fish and chips perched on my knee, I sit and watch as the sky goes from gray to pale blue to golden and then, finally, blood red as the sun hits the horizon. The next morning, I set off for a walk down the coast. I head east, away from Dreamland, on the wide, sea-level promenade that separates Margates easterly beaches from white cliffs. Its a warm morning, but I have it almost to myself except for a few boys with fishing nets and a woman surrounded by a variety of dogs: Come on Ollie! Come on Rupert! she insists, and they eventually follow. There are some amazing sights. The huge Cliftonville Lido, an open-air swimming pool, sits semi-derelict, as does an art-deco lift that once transported fashionable holidaymakers down to the beach. Local kids clearly spend a lot of their time here: Theres graffiti that veers from the abusive to the amusing. (Sydney picks her nose, apparently.) Despite this, though, its a wonderful hours walk. Its low tide and there are acres of exposed sand, rock pools and seaweed. Vibrant pink flowers cover the grassy clifftops, and the air is full of that hard-to-explain aroma that defines the English seaside: part seaweed, part salt, part something else entirely. By the time I reach my destination, Botany Bay famous for its free-standing chalk stacks Im in a bit of a reverie. I head back along Northdown Road, Cliftonvilles main thoroughfare. Its an interesting mix of old and new, with chip shops galore. (My favorite, Godwin Fish and Chip restaurant, with its simple decor and dated shop-sign font, looks like it hasnt changed since the mid-60s.) There are also some fashionable newcomers, such as Urchin, a wine shop, and Cliffs, which promises Coffee Records Yoga. Chalk stacks at Botany Bay, a beach about two-and-a-half miles east of Dreamland. (Will Hawkes/For The Washington Post) A bowl of cockles from Mannings Seafood, near the citys main beach. (Will Hawkes/For The Washington Post) Im aiming for the Turner, but Im not in the market for art. Theres a stall nearby, Mannings Seafood (founded in 1962), that is another reminder of my youth. It boasts a fantastic array of cooked, cold seafood: prawns, crabs, lobster tails, oysters, whelks, mussels and crayfish tails, to name a few and my favorite, cockles. Doused with salt and vinegar, theyre ugly but delicious. Back at Dreamland, meanwhile, its all go. While Im tempted by my old favorite, the Waltzer a ride in which you sit, pinned to the high-backed seat of a car as it spins rapidly along an undulating, circular track I decide that discretion is the best part of valor and retreat instead to Cinque Ports, a recently refurbished pub by the entrance. With a glass of local ale the golden, bitter, very delicious She Sells Seashells by Gadds in front of me, I resolve not to let another 25 years pass before I return. Next time, though, Ill bring my kids. Hawkes is a writer based in London. His website is willhawkes.contently.com. Find him on Twitter: @will_hawkes. More from Travel: Cornwalls stunning countryside holds everything from Iron Age wonders to Lands End Its hard not to be charmed in unspoiled south-central England This Belgian cosmopolitan port city offers art, diamonds, ale, architecture and chocolate Vacationers on Hatteras Island, on North Carolinas Outer Banks, had to evacuate the area last week after a power outage. Now, tourists are wondering: Can they can get a refund on their disrupted and canceled trips? (Logan Cyrus For The Washington Post) When the order came down to evacuate Ocracoke Island last week, some guests at the Ocracoke Harbor Inn informed the staff that power was not one of their vacation requisites. They could beach without it. I had people standing in front of me saying, I dont need air-conditioning. We can light candles in the windows, recalled Brenda Lea, a front-desk clerk. Unfortunately, a mandatory directive is nonnegotiable. After a construction crew working on Bonner Bridge accidentally sliced through power cables on July 27, thousands of visitors were forced to vacate Hatteras and Ocracoke islands in North Carolinas Outer Banks. The blackout hit seven villages on Hatteras plus the 16-mile-long Ocracoke, which is accessible by ferry. While the clock ticks summer away, two questions hover like dark clouds over vacationers heads. Those with upcoming plans are asking: Will the islands reopen in time for my trip? The optimistic answer is yes if their vacations start after noon Friday, when the evacuation orders for Dare and Hyde counties are expected to be lifted. (The latest update from Cape Hatteras Electric Cooperative on Thursday evening said that the utility had restored power to both islands.) Meanwhile, people affected by the closure want to know if and how they can recover their travel expenses. That answer is a bit more complicated. In situations like these, hotels and other travel companies are generally pretty generous to travelers in terms of offering refunds, said Sarah Schlichter, senior editor at SmarterTravel. That said, policies do differ from one company to the next, so its important to reach out directly and figure out what the company will offer you. A recent round of calls to hotels and inns on Ocracoke and Hatteras reaped some encouraging news: Properties are granting full refunds. Their policies echo the terms and conditions that cover mandatory evacuations triggered by hurricanes. Ocracoke Harbor Inn, for one, has waived charges for out-of-towners who had to depart prematurely or cancel because of the outage. Lea said that the staff is reaching out to guests about two days before their arrival to discuss the situation. The majority of people have hung on, she said. The last thing they want to do is not come. The Anchorage Inn & Marina, also on Ocracoke, has refunded room charges and canceled reservations through Saturday. Leslie Gilbert, the inns secretary, said employees are contacting folks who have booked rooms for Sunday and beyond. Sadly, some of our guests with reservations later in August are choosing to cancel and have made reservations elsewhere off the islands, she said, as to not disrupt their vacation plans. Pam Gouyer, who runs Pams Pelican Bed & Breakfast on Ocracoke, is giving her guests wide latitude and wont penalize them if they decide to cancel at the last minute. If we still dont have power, I am going to have to give them a refund, she said, I cant charge them for not being here. Her refrain is echoed in Hatteras. Hatteras Island Inn in Buxton is refunding canceled bookings, and the Village Marina in Hatteras Village is allowing guests to choose between a full refund and applying their deposit to a future stay. At the Inn on Pamlico Sound, in Buxton, a front-desk employee directed a caller to its policy online, which reads: Weather related credits are provided only if a mandatory evacuation order is issued. Credit toward future stays will be issued only for the specific days covered by the mandatory evacuation order. One tweak to the rule: Swap weather for human. The refund process turns a bit trickier for visitors who rented a home through an online booking site or an island realty company. The approach is more case-by-case than a blanket refund or credit. HomeAway customer service is working with travelers individually to help them figure out their options, which could include rescheduling with the homeowner, seeking a refund from the homeowner or booking a different vacation accommodation, said Melanie Fish, a public relations manager with HomeAway, which lists dozens of properties for both islands. Vacationers who used a more traditional rental company, such as Midgett Realty and Outer Beaches Realty, can tap into their travel insurance if they added the proffered plan at the time of booking. Linda Fallon, senior vice president at Arch Insurance Group, which provides policies for Ocracoke Island Realty, said travelers can recover expenses through the road-closure benefit. If people cannot get onto the island, she said, they can rightfully put in a claim. But dont start popping the Krug yet. We evaluate each claim, she said. Travelers who purchased more comprehensive insurance from another provider can also recoup their costs, depending on the policy. But timing is everything: You must have bought the plan before the outage. They should check their policy, said Gail Mangiante, a licensed agent with InsureMyTrip. It may offer coverage under the reasons for trip cancellation or trip interruption. Also, if anyone has a policy with a cancel for any reason or interrupted for any reason benefit, coverage may apply. When filing a claim, remember to seek reimbursement for all prepaid travel expenses, such as airfare, rental car, tours and outings even that deep-sea fishing excursion. No insurance? As a Plan B, Schlichter recommends contacting your credit-card provider. Many companies provide travel protection or will challenge the charges on your behalf. You may be able to enlist your credit-card issuer in a dispute to get your money back if the hotel or vacation rental didnt provide the service that was promised to you, she said. If you need a vacation after all of the power-outage drama, consider visiting the Outer Banks after Labor Day. Prices drop and crowds thin out though you will be traveling in the middle of hurricane season. More from Travel: The weather is beautiful, but these Outer Banks beach towns are desolate. They need their vacationers back. Badly. Can an American tourist in London keep calm and carry on after recent terrorist attacks? How many states have you been to? The Edward Gorey House on Cape Cod is the good kind of ghastly Only 37 percent of travelers say they plan to unplug on vacation, a new poll finds. (iStock) If youre planning to leave your smartphone or laptop at home when you go on vacation this month, you might want to think again. The unplugged getaway is so last year. More than 62 percent of travelers say they plan to check their work-related email and voice mail, according to a new poll by the travel agency network Travel Leaders Group. Just 37 percent of respondents say they unplug, a precipitous drop from three years ago, when more than half of travelers said that they would go deviceless while they were away. Disconnecting is passe, which is bad and good. Its bad in the sense that people really need a break. In fact, the right to disconnect is recognized by some forward-looking employers, including Mercedes-Benz. Earlier this year, France enacted a law that required companies with more than 50 workers to set hours when employees are not supposed to send or answer emails. But its good in the sense that a connection can be a powerful tool that can improve your vacation. Jessica Tsukimura cant do without her connections because of the unavoidable reality that the world doesnt stop when youre away. Tsukimura, who just returned from Italy with her husband, says they both work in jobs where they must be reachable, no matter what. Shes the head of the New York office of a global branding and design agency; he works for a hedge fund. We brought one company phone and a personal phone, she says. If there hadnt been talk of a laptop ban, they would have taken their computer, too. We both checked emails once daily and texted colleagues as necessary, she says. But then we shut down our business communications. This ensured the vacation remained a vacation. [What you need to know before returning to tourist sites after disasters] Thats the interesting thing about disconnecting in 2017: People say they want to do it. A recent Hilton Hotels & Resorts survey found that 77 percent of travelers say they prefer a vacation where they are able to unplug from their life. But, ultimately, they dont. And when they fail, only 10 percent say theyre embarrassed about obsessively checking their smartphones and laptops. Thats not a real vacation, says Samantha Ettus, author of The Pie Life: A Guilt-Free Recipe For Success and Satisfaction. Just like you recharge your phone, you need to recharge your own battery with a real tech break, says Ettus, who specializes in offering corporations advice on work-life balance. But you cant rely on your company or colleagues to set your boundaries for you. Thats your job. Yet even Ettus acknowledges that a complete disconnect say, leaving the phone home may not be possible in 2017. Instead, she advises choosing a time of day to check email and messages and then closing your laptop for the evening. Keep the office work contained where possible. In a perfect world, you wouldnt check messages at all. Consider what happened to Anna Beyder, who works for an Atlanta-based technology company. On a recent vacation, she decided to log into her email account and regrets it. I opened an email that I thought was totally harmless only to find out that it said that my office was relocating to another city and I was being assigned to a new manager, she says. Although it didnt ruin her vacation, I wish I hadnt opened it, she says. But its far from a perfect world. In a sense, leisure travelers like Beyder and Tsukimura are becoming more like business travelers, who dont even go to the bathroom without a device. Im not making that up. A new Skyroam survey says that 98 percent of road warriors use a smartphone at all times. Nearly 60 percent use a tablet computer and 70 percent carry a laptop computer. [Hotel resort fees, hidden charges bemoaned by travelers, are climbing higher than ever] In addition to being unrealistic, unplugged vacations deprive travelers of a valuable tool: Your device can help you resolve problems quickly and get better customer service. Laura Barta says she uses her phone to get directions when shes on vacation. Unplugging would mean leaving Google Maps at home. And because shes gone for two weeks at a time, it also helps to keep a smartphone if anything really urgent comes along, says Barta, who runs a toy company in Hershey, Pa. Perhaps the best reason to carry a device, even on vacation, is that it can quickly remedy a customer-service problem. Travel-industry employees particularly airline workers sometimes recoil in fear when you point a cellphone camera at them. The last thing they want is for their often rude behavior to be captured on video and distributed via social media. And a Facebook or Twitter post is often enough to get a service problem resolved in real time. Of course, I dont recommend trying this every time an airline or hotel employee gives you an answer you dont like. But isnt it nice to know you can record an incident if it happens? Elliott is a consumer advocate, journalist and co-founder of the advocacy group Travelers United. Email him at chris@elliott.org. Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan (R) during a news conference outside the Annapolis statehouse last year. (Bill O'Leary/The Washington Post) The father of our country knew something about bad press. Americans loved George Washington, but it didnt take long for newspapers to start slamming him on everything from domestic policy to his political principles. He chafed at the criticism, sure. But he did not silence his critics. Because back in 1783, Washington said, the freedom of Speech may be taken away and, dumb & silent we may be led, like sheep, to the Slaughter. [This womans name appears on the Declaration of Independence. So why dont we know her story?] That brings me to Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan, who needs to work on being more like Washington. Hogans staff has blocked and deleted the posts of at least 450 people who voiced their opinions on his official Facebook page. And the American Civil Liberties Union sued him for that earlier this week. The governors staff dismissed the lawsuit as frivolous, and the online commentary was rich with a who cares? backlash. Its only Facebook, plenty of folks said. But it matters. And it especially matters when its a guy like Hogan. This is a Republican governor in an overwhelmingly Democratic state who is astonishingly popular. He has the second-highest approval rating of the nations 50 governors. Hogan is not a reactionary hothead. Hes shown a steady hand in leading his state and a stern adherence to principles. Hes also been pretty deft at using Facebook as a primary means to connect with his constituents, playfully debuting his hairless head after chemo treatments on his page. So blocking people who come to the governors page which is a public forum, labeled as official and administered by staff members paid public tax dollars is unnecessary and ultimately dangerous. In an interview with The Washington Post, Hogan spokeswoman Amelia Chasse defended the governors actions, arguing that blocking the comments was nothing more than moderating them. The governors office has a very clear social media policy, and we will continue to remove all hateful and violent content and coordinated spam attacks to foster an open and constructive dialogue, she said. But its too easy to use the image of trolls or spammers or hateful folks lashing out online. The Post talked to some of the real people blocked by Hogan. And theyre just that real people talking to their elected leaders: a teacher, a business owner and a pastor, not trolls. They all said that their comments were respectful, thoughtful and not profane. The pastor quoted the Bible in his post, appealing to Hogans Catholic faith. Attorney Lakshmi Sarma Ramani of Bowie, Md., wasnt hateful, but she asked about hate crimes. I politely commented that I was disappointed in his lack of response to hate crimes and other recent news items, she wrote in the comment section of The Posts news story. I also do not appreciate that idea that when a number of people comment on the same topic, they are immediately disregarded by some as a so-called collective effort, rather than recognized as a large group of concerned citizens. What the governors staff called a concentrated spam attack others would probably call advocacy. The Facebook era makes it easy to tailor a message by simply blocking a critic or deleting a negative comment. Its a lot cleaner than the old days, when doing the same would have required sending staff out to collect and burn newspapers with critical editorials or arresting and silencing protesters. But thats exactly whats happening, only digitally. Hogan isnt the first public official to be criticized for defanging Facebook and other social media. President Trump is being sued by Twitter users who were blocked from his Twitter feed. One of the first landmark rulings on this issue came down last week in Virginia. The chair of the Loudoun County Board of Supervisors violated the First Amendment, according to U.S. District Judge James C. Cacheris in Alexandria, when she banned a constituent from her Facebook page. And in Kentucky, Gov. Matt Bevin (R) also got a visit from the ACLU over his use of Facebook and Twitter. This shouldnt be so hard. In Washingtons time, the era of affordable postage had an impact much like the Internet. The number of newspapers quadrupled between 1776 and 1800, and anonymous letter writers hammered his leadership. And even back then, Washington had anonymous trolls. People using the pseudonyms Juricola, Valerius, Belisarius, and Portius all wrote letters to newspapers trashing Washingtons decisions. Petitions criticizing his stand on the Treaty of Amity, Commerce, and Navigation with Britain overwhelmed his office, according to the historical documents collected by the online Papers of George Washington Project. But he did not silence them. Freedom of speech, dissent and discourse lie at the very foundation of our nation. And true leadership means accepting that. Twitter: @petulad The requested page is currently unavailable on this server. Back to [RTHK News Homepage] Jeff Brotman, co-founder and chairman of Costco Wholesale Corp., at the University of Washington in 2003. (Ralph Radford/AP) Jeff Brotman, who co-founded and chaired the retail giant Costco, a chain of members-only warehouses known for selling affordably priced bulk goods that range from hummus to mattresses, died Aug. 1 at his home in Medina, Wash. He was 74. A spokesman for Costco Wholesale Corp. confirmed his death but did not know the cause. Mr. Brotman opened Costcos first warehouse with Jim Sinegal in 1983 in Seattle. He said the idea for the company originated with his father, Bernie Brotman, a retailer who along with his brothers operated 18 stores in Washington and Oregon. Mr. Brotman received crucial financing for the company months before opening his first warehouse when he met venture capitalist Fred Paulsell on a flight to Seattle that was struck by lightning and made an emergency landing in San Francisco. They talked about opening a chain of low-cost warehouse clubs, and Paulsell soon came on as a partner. Based in Issaquah, Wash., the company now operates 736 warehouses around the world, including 511 in the United States and Puerto Rico. When he and Jim Sinegal started it, everyone thought it was a tough sale because so many warehouse clubs had failed, Costco board member John Meisenbach told Bloomberg . They stuck to their guns in not trying to be a fancy place, and they took care of their employees. Jeffrey Hart Brotman was born in Tacoma, Wash., on Sept. 27, 1942. He studied political science at the University of Washington in Seattle, where he graduated with a bachelors degree in 1964 and received a law degree in 1967. Mr. Brotman later served as a regent at the university. Mr. Brotman briefly practiced law and operated companies such as Bottoms, a womens jean store, before founding Costco. He was also an early investor in Starbucks, and he was a major supporter of Democratic political campaigns. In 2012, he hosted a fundraising luncheon for President Barack Obama at his home in Medina. Along with Starbucks Chairman Howard Schultz, Mr. Brotman also hosted a $5,000-a-plate fundraising event in 2000 for the Democratic vice presidential nominee, Joseph I. Lieberman. He endorsed Hillary Clintons presidential campaign in 2016. Survivors include his wife of 41 years, the former Susan Thrailkill, a former Nordstrom executive; two children; a brother; and two grandchildren. Robert Hardy, a veteran British stage and screen actor who played Minister for Magic Cornelius Fudge in the Harry Potter movies and was the irascible veterinarian Siegfried Farnon in the long-running TV series All Creatures Great and Small, died Aug. 3 in London. He was 91. His family announced the death but did not disclose the cause. In a career spanning seven decades, Mr. Hardy thrived primarily as a character actor with patrician good looks and a booming voice. Although he appeared in several Harry Potter films in the 2000s, he was perhaps best known for All Creatures Great and Small, which aired on the BBC from 1978 to 1990 and was based on James Herriots memoir about working as a country veterinarian. On television, he also starred in the miniseries Winston Churchill: The Wilderness Years (1981), set in the decade just before the British politician came to power in 1940. New York Times TV critic Walter Goodman called Mr. Hardys performance a remarkable impersonation of Churchill, complete with the aggressive slouch, the slumping stride, the truculent lower lip, the use of spectacles for peering over. Mr. Hardy often reprised his role as the British prime minister, including for miniseries such as The Woman He Loved and War and Remembrance (both 1988) and the TV movie Churchill: 100 Days That Saved Britain (2015). In addition to many theatrical roles, he starred in a 1956 television production of David Copperfield; portrayed the title role in a 1960 TV version of Henry V opposite Judi Dench as Katherine, the Princess of France; played the swaggering Earl of Leicester in Elizabeth R (1971), a compelling BBC drama starring Glenda Jackson; and was Prince Albert in the TV series Edward the King (1975). Timothy Sydney Robert Hardy was born in Cheltenham, England, on Oct. 29, 1925. He attended the University of Oxford, where his tutors included authors C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien. He also befriended actor Richard Burton in a college theater club. We initially loathed each other, Mr. Hardy told the Daily Telegraph decades later. He thought I was upper class and spoilt and all that. And I thought he was presumptuous and tiresome. They gradually bonded over a mutual worship of Shakespeare and their ability to quote verbatim large swaths of his plays. After brief wartime training as an RAF pilot, he began his career in Shakespearean roles onstage in Stratford-upon-Avon and apprenticed under the tutelage of actor Godfrey Tearle. Mr. Hardy played supporting roles in films such as Torpedo Run (1958), The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (1965), 10 Rillington Place (1971), The Shooting Party (1985) and Sense and Sensibility (1995). In his spare time, Mr. Hardy became a leading authority on the use of the longbow in medieval warfare. According to his family, he was also part of the team that raised the Tudor warship Mary Rose, which sank off Englands south coast in 1545. His marriages to Elizabeth Fox and Sally Cooper, daughter of actress Gladys Cooper, ended in divorce. Survivors include a son from his first marriage and two daughters from his second. Mr. Vitarelli, shown in 1984, was the longtime director of the Sunday morning program Face the Nation. (CBS Broadcasting Inc. ) Robert E. Vitarelli, who as director of the CBS Evening News and Sunday mornings Face the Nation was an unseen yet indispensable influence on television news for decades, died July 30 at a hospice center in the Villages, Fla. He was 86. The cause was congestive heart failure, said his son, Chip Vitarelli. Vit as he was known among colleagues rose from the mail room in the CBS office in New York to be a defining presence at the networks Washington bureau from 1963 until his retirement in 1992. He directed the Evening News with anchormen Walter Cronkite and Dan Rather, as well as Face the Nation with moderator George Herman. For periods he also directed programs including the overnight newscast Nightwatch, CBS This Morning and the Point-Counterpoint debate segment on 60 Minutes. He oversaw coverage of presidential inaugurations, the 1961 Mercury flight that made Alan B. Shepard Jr. the first American to enter space, and the funerals of President John F. Kennedy in 1963 and civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. and Sen. Robert F. Kennedy (D-N.Y), both in 1968. Mr. Vitarelli traveled widely for his work, including to Berlin when President John F. Kennedy visited the divided city months before his death, and to China during President Richard M. Nixons historic trip to the Communist nation in 1972. During a Face the Nation visit to Saigon amid the Vietnam War, a bomb exploded at Mr. Vitarellis hotel shortly before he and his party arrived. If the bomb had gone off two hours later we would have all been unpacking inside the hotel, rather than at a safe distance from the site, he said in newsman Bob Schieffers book Face the Nation, about the program of the same title. Mr. Vitarellis most taxing assignment, he said, came during his tenure at CBS Evening News, as the Watergate scandal unfolded, leading to Nixons resignation in 1974. For a year and a half, wed have the whole damn show and then an hour special right after that, Mr. Vitarelli recalled in CBS News political correspondent Roger Mudds book The Place to Be. For the past two decades, Mr. Vitarelli was director of The Kalb Report, a public-affairs program filmed at the National Press Club in Washington and moderated by veteran CBS and NBC newsman Marvin Kalb. He was a director who understood that his job was not to look good, Kalb said in an interview. His job was to make the anchorman look good and to work with a writer . . . to enhance the product of the piece. Vit had from the very beginning . . . an instinct which was highly professional. Robert Edward Vitarelli was born in New York City on Nov. 12, 1930. He grew up in Pittsburgh, where his father ran a photography studio. An uncle was a director with the Walt Disney studio in Hollywood. Mr. Vitarelli studied communications at the University of Pittsburgh later completing a degree at the University of Alabama before joining CBS in 1953. His honors included a Directors Guild of America Lifetime Achievement Award. Mr. Vitarelli resided for many years in Potomac, Md., and retired to Florida in 2013. His first marriage, to Carol Funkhouser, ended in divorce. Survivors include his wife of 50 years, the former Carol Miller, of the Villages; a son from his second marriage, Chip Vitarelli of Alameda, Calif.; a brother; and two grandchildren. Activists with the Potomac Riverkeeper Network set up at Paw Paw Tunnel Campground near Oldtown, Md., for a weekend paddle and protest over TransCanadas planned natural gas pipeline. (Patricia Sullivan/The Washington Post) The pipeline that TransCanada wants to build is short, 3.5 miles, cutting through the narrowest part of Maryland. It would duck briefly under the Potomac River at this 1,500-resident town, bringing what business leaders say is much-needed natural gas to the eastern panhandle of West Virginia. But environmentalists say that brief stretch could jeopardize the water supply for about 6 million people, including most of the Washington-metropolitan area. Thats why dozens of protesters have gathered each weekend this summer at various points along the upper Potomac, part of a growing national movement that opposes both oil and natural gas pipelines and wants businesses and governments to embrace green energy instead. Inspired by the Dakota Access oil pipeline protest at Standing Rock, N.D., and the broad wave of demonstrations that has energized the left since President Trumps inauguration, the protesters hope to persuade Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan (R) and his environment secretary to stop the pipeline, which got an enthusiastic green light from West Virginia. Its got me worried, said Andy Billotti, 53, who wore a T-shirt from Aprils Peoples Climate March in Washington as he erected his tent at the Paw Paw Tunnel Campground near Oldtown, Md., for one recent protest. If something were to happen, that fracked poison would come down the river . . . right into our wells. Andy Billotti, 53, was one of about 20 kayakers and canoeists who camped out at the Paw Paw campground. (Patricia Sullivan/The Washington Post) Opponents gathered at the McCoys Ferry campsite in Clear Spring, Md., over the weekend and will be at Taylors Landing next weekend. The protest at Taylors Landing, near Sharpsburg, Md., is slated to include state Sen. Richard S. Madaleno Jr. (D-Montgomery), a gubernatorial candidate and the latest of a handful of politicians to take part. The activists want Hogan, who this year banned fracking in Maryland, to deny TransCanada a water quality permit to cross the Potomac. Environment Secretary Ben Grumbles said the state has sought additional information about the project from the company and will schedule a public hearing on the permit application in coming weeks. About 40 other permits are also needed, including ones from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and the National Park Service, because the pipeline would also go under the C&O Canal. Industry and economic development officials say the pipeline is safe and sorely needed to attract new employers to the West Virginia panhandle. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of miles of gas lines like this in the Washington, D.C., area, Eric Lewis, president of the Jefferson County Development Authority (JCDA), told about 60 protesters in July at a town council meeting in Shepherdstown, W.Va. If people have issues with fracking, they should take it up somewhere else. West Virginias Public Service Commission already granted its utility, Mountaineer Gas, approval to begin building the distribution pipeline from Berkeley Springs to Martinsburg. Bulldozers are at work. The utility plans to eventually extend that line to Charles Town and Shepherdstown. The natural gas that runs through the areas existing pipeline is entirely spoken for since the opening of a Procter & Gamble manufacturing plant near Martinsburg, Mountaineer Gas officials said. Youve got to have an industrial base to provide employment, said West Virginia Commerce Secretary H. Wood Thrasher. Without gas service, we are dead in the water. He said the state has lost a significant number of companies interested in moving to the eastern panhandle because of the lack of natural gas service. The JCDA has been working on getting natural gas service to the region for decades, said John Reisenweber, the authoritys executive director. More recently, it has encouraged the development of renewable green energy, such as wind and solar. But manufacturers, commercial and some residential developers insist on natural gas, he said. While gas pipelines have crisscrossed the country since the 1920s, the number of approved interstate lines has spiked in recent years, driven by the boom in natural gas extraction through hydraulic fracturing. Protests have spiked, too. New Yorkers convinced their state environmental agency twice in the past two years to deny a water quality certificate for natural gas pipelines. Federal authorities shut down a much-criticized Ohio pipeline in May, after 18 leaks spilled more than 2 million gallons of drilling fluid, adversely impacting the water quality. Catholic nuns near Lancaster, Pa., have built an outdoor chapel in an attempt to stop another pipeline. In Virginia, two disputes over much larger proposed pipelines have become a hot-button political issue in the governors race. The nations 2.3 million-mile pipeline network is considered the safest way to move oil, and the only feasible way to transport natural gas. Natural gas pipeline leaks are down 94 percent since 1984, the industry says. But accidents do happen an average of 299 significant incidents in each of the past five years, according to federal data. TransCanada spokesman Scott Castleman noted that his company and its predecessors have a century of experience in the region. The proposed eight-inch diameter pipeline would be buried up to 100 feet beneath the riverbed, with walls twice as thick as required, and constant monitoring for leaks and surges. A dozen TransCanada pipelines safely cross the Potomac River elsewhere in Maryland, Castleman said. While solar, wind and other renewable energy sources are growing steadily, most authorities say it will be at least 2050 before renewables provide half or more of the nations energy needs. Environmentalists, however, say theres no sense in investing more in fossil fuels when wind and solar sources can provide energy now. More and more, people realize that each of these [pipeline] projects deepens our commitment to fossil fuels, locking us in for 40 or 50 more years, said Bill McKibben, a well-known environmentalist and author. The scientific verdict on natural gas has changed, and changed dramatically, in the past half-decade. The major component in natural gas is methane, which is significantly more efficient at trapping heat and warming the planet than carbon dioxide. A study published last year by Harvard University researchers found that emissions from methane have increased significantly since fracking began, although the researchers said they could not readily attribute the increase to fracking. Members and friends of the Potomac Riverkeeper Network attended the July paddle to raise awareness about the pipeline project. (Reza A. Marvashti/for The Washington Post) Environmentalists also point to the geology of the upper Potomac. The land beneath the river in this region is karst, a term for a terrain that is full of fractures, caves and pools, where special precautions are needed when building pipelines to avoid spillage of chemicals or gas into the water supply. Unless you have an X-ray of the ground, you never know where the water goes, or where it comes from, said Stephanie Siemek, a doctoral student at the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Sciences Appalachian Laboratory in Frostburg, Md., who led a tour of the Paw Paw Tunnel for the environmentalists camping nearby in July. You dont know how old it is, or where its derived. It might start from a mountaintop, but we dont know how it gets to a spring. About 20 people had come to the campground, some drawn by the opportunity to kayak or canoe down the river the next day, others by the cause. It wouldnt make a difference until something happened, and then it would make a huge difference, Janine Brewer of Frederick, Md., a retired federal employee, said as she strung her hammock between two pines. Billotti, who joined the Standing Rock protest last winter, lives nearby in Burkittsville, Md. He runs along the C&O Canal, tubes in the river and takes his dogs for swims there, too. Why should Maryland pay the price for West Virginias growth? he said. We have clean energy available they could build solar or wind power. We need to stop contaminating the planet. A construction worker was killed in an accident in College Park on Thursday, officials said. Francois Odil Dishmey Kelly died while working on a construction site and fell to his death, according to Sgt. Rosanne Hoass of the universitys police department. Hoass said foul play is not suspected, and that a death investigation will continue. At around 1:30 p.m., the Prince Georges County Fire Department responded to a building under construction at the University of Maryland near Campus Drive and Route 1, fire department spokesman Mark Brady said in a Twitter message. The worker fell from an upper floor of the building and was pronounced dead at the scene, Brady said. This story has been updated. The one-story house on Mine Road looked unkempt and suspiciously vacant. Trash littered the grounds, and the roof tiles were warping. Neighbors couldnt recall seeing people coming or going. But someone was worried. On Saturday, a concerned citizen called local authorities, asking for someone to check on the family supposedly living there. Within minutes, two sheriffs deputies arrived. A 43-year-old man named Kariem Moore opened the door and met the officers outside, at the bottom of the homes front stairs. He began to rant and rave, said Lt. C.A. Carey, a spokesman for the Spotsylvania County Sheriffs Office. He attempted to divert their attention . . . But the deputies reminded him, We are here to check on the welfare of your family. As soon as Moore turned his back to escort the deputies into the home, Carey said, a woman and two boys, ages 11 and 8, burst out a rear door on the right side of the house, yelling. The woman made an astonishing allegation, Carey said: Moore had been holding her and the boys captive for at least two years, barring them from leaving the property. Kariem Moore, 43, is charged with assault and battery and three counts of abduction. (Rappahannock Regional Jail/ ) Moore has been charged with three felony counts of abduction and felony assault and battery, Carey said, and is being held without bond at Rappahannock Regional Jail. He faces a preliminary hearing in September. Authorities say they believe that he was in a relationship with the woman, and that the boys are their biological children. Authorities have not released details about the alleged captivity, such as where the woman and her two sons slept, what they ate and how Moore allegedly prohibited them from fleeing. When he was arrested, he wasnt carrying any weapons. Carey said he did not know if Moore kept any guns inside the house because the investigation is ongoing. This is not something you see on a daily basis. You see it on TV but not in your local community, Carey said. You never know when a simple call can save someones life. He said sheriffs deputies had not been called to the property previously in 2017. There was a service request from another jurisdiction in 2016, Carey said, but the deputies who responded to the residence were called back either before they arrived or once they got there. Online records indicate that Moore previously lived in Philadelphia. It was not immediately clear what brought him to Virginia, but he appears to have spent time in Fairfax County before ending up in Fredericksburg, about 50 miles south of Washington. Dave Larrabee, director of operations for the Lamb Center a day center for the homeless in Fairfax said Moore frequented that facility for about four or five months in 2012, with a woman Larrabee said was his wife and a young son. Larrabee said the family would spend nights living in their car. I do remember he had a temper, Larrabee said. He got angry at some of the other guests. I had a way of calming him down. Moores mother, Harriette Moore, said in a brief phone interview that she hadnt seen her son in as long as five years. She said she was still trying to learn more about the allegations against him. Its a shock. Im trying to hold up. I cant get it together, said Harriette Moore, who is in her 60s, has retired from working in government and lives in Philadelphia. He was raised correctly. I raised my children to make their own way and become someone in the world. She said the last time she saw Moore, he was with his significant other, who was using a wheelchair, and their children. She said Moore was taking care of his partner because she was very sick. She did not know if the couple had married. Neighbors in Fredericksburg, whose well-tended lawns and spacious homes and decks stood in stark contrast to the rental property where Moore was arrested, said they were unaware that anyone was living there until this week. Kevin Johnson, a high school social studies teacher who lives with his family on a cul-de-sac directly behind the house, said he hadnt seen any kind of activity there, ever. He said the neighborhood is generally filled with kids playing outside, with one or two parents casually keeping watch. Were a relatively close-knit neighborhood, where people usually know whats going on, Johnson said. Its really sad. Its awful. Katherine Sorensen, a cashier at a Wawa convenience store about three miles from the house, said Moore was an occasional customer. Hed always pull up in a moped to buy a cup of coffee and never with children in tow, she said. Sorensen also said shed seen Moore frequenting some of the dozen or so fast-food restaurants that are clustered around the nearby Interstate 95 interchange. Ive seen him everywhere around here, she said. I saw him in the news this morning. Shapira and Siegel reported from Washington. Magda Jean-Louis in Washington contributed to this report. A Baltimore man was charged Wednesday with multiple counts of human trafficking after an investigation revealed he was forcing multiple women into prostitution in Howard County, police said. Kamal Goodwyn, 43, also known as Kamal Dorchy of Charles Plaza in Baltimore, is being held in Howard County without bond in the trafficking after allegedly posting ads for the women on Backpage, police said. Police began investigating the case July 23 after a woman called police from a motel in Laurel and told them she was a victim of human trafficking by a man and that she was tired of working for him, according to charging documents filed in the case. Goodwyn was arrested after the police located him when he rented a motel room in Prince Georges County, police said. Three more women were discovered in the room, all believed to be trafficking victims and between the ages of 17 and 24, according to police. Police charge that he coordinated and arranged appointments at motels for the women and forced them to perform sex acts for money. He found women by running ads offering jobs in massage work or prostitution, police said, and took half of the money they earned through performing sex acts and also controlled their access to cellphones, food and sleep. Police said Goodwyn also physically assaulted the women, threatened them with a handgun and supplied them with drugs. He recently beat one woman who tried to hide money from him and threw her from a car onto a road, according to the charging documents that also said one of the women told police he hits you like a man. The public defender assigned to Goodwyn could not immediately be reached for comment Wednesday. All four women were taken to a safe location, police said. Goodwyn faces a preliminary hearing set for Aug. 30 in Howard County, according to Wayne Kirwan, Director of Community Justice and Public Information Howard County State's Attorney's Office. A motorcyclist led police on a chase Thursday along Interstate 66 in the Virginia suburbs before crashing the bike, then fleeing on foot before being caught, police say. Virginia State Police said the incident started just before 7 a.m. when officers attempted a traffic stop along eastbound I-66 near Route 28 in Centreville. The motorcyclist refused to stop and sped away, hitting speeds of 100 mph during the chase and weaving in and out of traffic, according to state police. Officials said a trooper lost sight of the motorcyclist. After crashing the bike, the motorcyclist fled into a wooded area, police said. State troopers, along with officers from Fairfax County police, searched the area and located the suspect. After a brief search, authorities found Rudine L. Puckett, 25, of Tennessee and he was taken into custody. He was taken to a hospital for minor injuries, said state police. And he was then transported to a local jail. Puckett faces charges including eluding police and reckless driving. The incident remains under investigation. Five suspects got into this Silver Spring apartment building Tuesday and held occupants of one unit captive overnight, according to police. (Montgomery County Police) Five would-be robbers talked their way into an apartment in Silver Spring on Tuesday, bound four adults and held them captive all night in an effort to gain access to a nearby check-cashing business where the intruders knew one of the occupants worked, according to Montgomery County authorities. About 8 a.m. the next day, one of the intruders assaulted a male occupant with a knife. The occupant disarmed the attacker even as he continued to be restrained, causing the intruders to flee, said Capt. Paul Starks, a spokesman for the Montgomery County Police Department. This was a horrific crime. It could have been a lot worse, Starks said Wednesday. One child a 7-year-old boy was home in the apartment at the time of the incident, but he may have slept through the ordeal, Starks said. He said the invaders targeted the apartment to try to find a way to gain access to the check-cashing business. Starks would not say exactly how the men had planned to get into the business or whether they succeeded. The home invasion occurred in a brick apartment building along Manchester Road, about one mile east of downtown Silver Spring. This is a diverse neighborhood full of hard-working people who have a purpose, Starks said. After the intruders fled, the occupants were able to call 911. Medics treated the man who had fought back, and he was taken to a hospital with non-life-threatening injuries, police said. Based on initial findings, detectives think the invaders arrived at the apartment about 9 p.m. Tuesday and knocked on the door. At the time, two men and the 7-year-old were inside. The intruders used an undisclosed ruse to get inside. A short time later, police said, a female occupant arrived, and a second female occupant arrived home around midnight. All four adult occupants were bound, according to police. Police ask anyone with information about the crime to call 240-773-5070. For those who wish to remain anonymous or be eligible for a reward of up to $10,000, the number to call is 866-411-TIPS (8477). The Senate Judiciary Committee voted Thursday to confirm the White Houses choice for U.S. attorney for the District, Jessie K. Liu, to head the largest U.S. attorneys office in the country and an office that often oversees politically sensitive investigations of the executive and legislative branches. The committee sent the nomination of Liu and six other Justice Department appointees to the floor by unanimous voice vote as the Senate broke for its August recess, but not before the ranking Democrat, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (Calif.), criticized President Trump for meeting in-person with Liu before selecting her. Liu, 44, is a former Bush Justice Department deputy assistant attorney general who served on Trumps Justice Department transition team and as deputy general counsel at the Treasury Department. Feinstein, who spoke on behalf of Democrats about Liu, called that meeting uncommon and said a pre-nomination between a sitting president and a U.S. attorney nominee is unusual regardless of the district that the U.S. attorney candidate might represent. And as I said, weve checked, and to our best knowledge this has never happened in the last administration. Lius April 21 meeting at the White House was disclosed after committee Democrats sent questions to the administrations first seven U.S. attorney nominees in June. Liu was the only one who answered that she interviewed with representatives of the White House Counsels Office and then met the president with the White House counsel, Donald McGahn. Committee Democrats acted after Trump said he fired FBI Director James B. Comey because of his handling of an investigation into Trump campaign dealings with Russia, accused special counsel Robert S. Mueller III of conducting a witch hunt in the probe, called his attorney general beleaguered and weak, and criticized federal judges since taking office in January. The confrontations have raised concerns among critics in both parties that White House actions undermine the rule of law by blurring the line between the president and an independent Justice Department. [Trump renews Twitter attacks on Attorney General Jeff Sessions] Liu was nominated by the White House on June 12 to succeed Channing D. Phillips to lead a U.S. attorneys office whose 300 attorneys have jurisdiction to prosecute local crimes in the nations capital along with federal crimes. Lius confirmation vote before the Senate has not been set but is expected after Congress returns in September. She has declined to comment while her nomination is pending. Liu, a graduate of Yale Law School, was an assistant U.S. attorney in the District from 2002 to 2006, before joining the Justice Departments national security division and serving as a deputy assistant attorney general with the civil rights division until 2009. She also worked at the Morrison & Foerster and Jenner & Block law firms. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., ranking member on the Senate Judiciary Committee. (Pablo Martinez Monsivais/AP) Given the unique role that the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia may have in investigations that directly related to the administration, I just want to point out that its concerning that she [Liu] was singled out for a meeting with the president, Feinstein said in opening remarks. A spokesman for the White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment. [Deputy attorney general appoints special counsel to oversee probe of Russian interference in election] [White House set to nominate former Justice deputy to be Districts U.S. attorney] Feinstein said she voted for Liu because in response to the committees questions, Liu made clear that in the April 21 meeting, no one raised the subject of any current or potential investigations of the president, his family members, Cabinet members or businesses. Feinstein said Liu also committed to following Justice Department policies regarding communications with the White House. Candidates for the 93 U.S. attorney positions typically are interviewed by Justice Department officials such as the attorney general and White House counsel staff, more than a half-dozen former federal prosecutors and White House officials said. Meetings with the president and counsel are typically reserved for top administration and judicial nominees, they said. Administration nominees to the U.S. attorney post in the District draw added scrutiny because unlike the 50 states, the District has no senators who could threaten to block confirmation with whom the administration typically consults on its nominee. U.S. attorneys who have held the job in the past have gone on to serve in senior administration positions, including Obama administration attorney general Eric H. Holder Jr., and George W. Bush homeland security adviser Kenneth L. Wainstein. Several of Lius former mentors and superiors appointed by presidents of both parties praised her selection as an excellent lawyer, hard-working manager and not visibly partisan. In statements, Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-D.C.) has criticized the Trump administration for breaking with recent predecessors in not consulting with her before making the nomination and not honoring the principle of local residency. Liu lives in Arlington. Once again, the Trump administration has left the District of Columbia out of the process in selecting a particularly important federal official, the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, who uniquely prosecutes nearly all of our local adult crimes here, a Norton statement said. D.C. Firefighters stand by the wreckage of a car that burned after crashing into a light pole in Northwest. (Vito Maggiolo/D.C. Fire and EMS Department) One person was reportedly killed Wednesday night in a two-vehicle crash in Northwest Washington just a few feet from Medstar Washington Hospital Center, District officials said. One of the vehicles crashed into a light pole and burst into flames in the 100 block of Irving Street just after 10 p.m., said Officer Hugh Carew, a D.C. police spokesman. D.C. Fire and EMS spokesman Vito Maggiolo said that one person died at the scene after a reported entrapment and vehicle fire. A second person was taken to a hospital with non-life threatening injuries, fire officials said. Occupants of the second vehicle were evaluated at the scene and declined being taken to a hospital. The D.C. police Major Crash Unit was called to investigate the cause of the crash, police said. No further details were immediately available. THE DISTRICT SUV crashes into building, injuring one An SUV rammed into a building in Southeast Washington early Thursday, injuring one resident and launching a search after those in the vehicle fled the scene, authorities said. Few other details were immediately available, and the incident was under investigation. According to D.C. fire officials, one person who lives in the building along the 5000 block of D Street SE was treated for what were described as minor injuries. A load-bearing wall was struck in the crash, forcing the evacuation of about 20 residents. The Red Cross was helping those evacuated. Dana Hedgpeth Four men are shot in Brookland area Four men were shot, including one who was critically wounded, on Thursday night in the Brookland area of Northeast Washington, D.C., police said. Police found the man who was critically wounded, and he was unconscious and unresponsive near the intersection of 18th and Monroe streets about 7:45 p.m., said Officer Sean Hickman, a police spokesman. The other three men were conscious and breathing. All four men were taken to hospitals, Hickman said. Homicide detectives were called to the scene to investigate. Police were looking for a black Chevy Impala or Malibu that was seen leaving the scene. Clarence W illiams MARYLAND Biker is killed in motorcycle crash A man on a motorcycle has died after crashing into the back of a car on Indian Head Highway, according to Prince Georges County police. Russell Lee Jr., 38, of Montgomery Village was traveling north on Indian Head Highway near Palmer Road when he struck the back of a car about 12:30 a.m. Wednesday, according to police. Lee did not stop at a red light on Palmer Road and was pronounced dead at the scene, police said. The cars driver was not hurt. Lynh Bui Temple Hills crash victim is identified A woman who died after crashing her car in a Temple Hills parking lot has been identified as Jeanette Bryan, 53, according to Prince Georges County police. Bryan, of District Heights, hit a curb leaving a parking lot about 8 p.m. Monday at St. Barnabas Road near 28th Avenue, investigators said. The crash caused a chain-reaction collision involving two other cars, leaving one driver with injuries that did not appear to be life-threatening, police said. The other driver was not hurt. Bryan was pronounced dead at the scene. Authorities are investigating the crash. Lynh Bui Construction worker is killed in accident A construction worker was killed in an accident in College Park on Thursday, officials said. Francois Odil Dishmey Kelly died while working on a construction site and fell to his death, according to Sgt. Rosanne Hoass of the universitys police department. Hoass said foul play is not suspected, and that an investigation will continue. At around 1:30 p.m., the Prince Georges County Fire Department responded to a building under construction at the University of Maryland near Campus Drive and Route 1, fire department spokesman Mark Brady said in a Twitter message. The worker who fell was pronounced dead at the scene, Brady said. (Firefighters battle the blaze at the home on F Street NE where Dane Smothers Jr. was struck by a firetruck. (D.C. Fire Department)) The fire station alarm sounded at 11:31 p.m. Flames were shooting from the first floor of a rowhouse on Capitol Hill, threatening to spread to adjacent homes. A mile away at Engine 3, Dane Smothers Jr. threw on his gear and jumped into the firetruck. It was the rookies third month on the job, and this was his first fire. Smothers, 28, had just climbed down from the engine when he was struck by a 57-foot-long ladder truck pulling up to the burning house at Eighth and F streets NE, authorities said. The firefighter was rushed to MedStar Washington Hospital Center, where he was listed in critical condition as of Thursday evening. Authorities said he suffered traumatic injuries to his upper body. His family remained by his side and issued a statement requesting privacy. Smothers was aboard the first arriving engine, which has hoses and generally stops near the front of a burning structure. The truck that struck him, Truck 7, was attempting to pass to get as close to the house as possible. Trucks have equipment used to break through doors and windows, and their crews need to work ahead of firefighters to open access for water and to allow toxic smoke to vent. Representatives for the police and fire departments would not comment on the specifics of the investigation. The driver of Truck 7 was not identified. On Thursday, the Districts mayor and other public officials expressed guarded optimism that Smothers would pull through. Hes in the best hands he can be in right now, said Dabney Hudson, the president of the D.C. firefighters union. Smothers grew up in the District and graduated from Friendship Collegiate Academy, a charter high school in Northeast Washington noted for its advanced placement and college prep classes. He worked as a clerk at a library in Anacostia for three years before he started at the fire academy and joined two uncles in the department. One uncle was at the F Street fire. Smothers is engaged to Shambriel Metts, who works raising money to help children with autism. According to the couples online wedding registry, they are planning a wedding in March 2019. [Rookie firefighter injured responding to blaze] He has a quiet countenance, yet his presence is strong, said Shakira Hemphill, who taught Smothers ninth-grade English and 10th-grade world literature. Though seemingly shy, he sat in the front row during class and drew in friends. He was a very committed student, said Hemphill, now Friendships interim director of talent, noting traits Smothers possessed as a teenager that would be appreciated as a firefighter. He was always on time. He was always prepared. It warmed my heart to see him mature and turn out to be everything that he had set for himself in class. Smothers graduated April 26 from Recruit Class 378, joining two dozen classmates at the Elstad Auditorium at Gallaudet University. A video posted by the fire department on Twitter shows them walking to their seats behind a bagpiper. Smothers was assigned to Engine 3 on New Jersey Avenue NW, quartered in a century-old building near Union Station. The last D.C. firefighter to die in the line of duty was Lt. Kevin McRae at a fire in Shaw in May 2015. Like Smothers, McRae had family on the force, a cousin who died on duty in 2007. Kevin McRaes son, Davon McRae, became a firefighter in July. [Last D.C. firefighter to die in line of duty recalled as hero] Smothers was injured on an unusually busy night for D.C. firefighters, who at one point were on the scenes of three simultaneous fires a fatal accident involving a car that burst into flames, the two-alarm Capitol Hill fire and another blaze in Michigan Park. At the Michigan Park fire, two D.C. police officers were injured rescuing an elderly couple, who suffered burns and smoke inhalation and were hospitalized. On Thursday, U.S. Capitol Police officers had pizzas delivered to the Engine 3 station, and a firefighter recruit class brought doughnuts. Gregory M. Dean, chief of the D.C. fire department, was at a family wedding in Seattle and flew back to the District on the first available flight Thursday. Inside the station, firefighters on a different shift than Smothers went to work, getting regular updates from the station captain who spent the night and most of Thursday at the hospital. Firefighter Margie Dickey, an 18-year veteran, said one of Smothers uncles reached out to her after graduation and said that he wanted to make sure we knew that they were proud of him. . . . He also said to make sure we take care of him. He said, Hes a good kid. Dickey said that Smothers didnt tell her why he joined the department. I was under the assumption he was ready to follow in his familys footsteps, she said. Noting the family history, she said, He didnt come into this job blind. He knew the hazards he was going to potentially face. Its a shame he had to face them on his first fire. Aaron Coles, 50, who lives near Smotherss mother in Southeast Washington, said in winter that Smothers could be seen shoveling snow side by side with neighbors for hours. He will give you the shirt off his back, Coles said of the man he calls D.J. If he sees youre in need of help, D.J. is going to help you, no questions asked. Coles has known the Smothers family since they moved to the neighborhood in 2001; Smothers now lives elsewhere. He called Smothers one of the nicest young men around here, saying he is quiet but his actions speak more than what his words say. Vice President Mike Pence speaks at the Adriatic Charter Summit in Podgorica on August 2, 2017. (Savo Prelevic/AFP/Getty Images) Vice President Pence will join Virginia GOP gubernatorial nominee Ed Gillespie for a fundraiser later this month, a spokesman for Gillespie confirmed. It is among the first public demonstrations of support by Gillespie from the Trump administration in a race that is seen as a bellwether for the 2018 midterm cycle. The White House and other conservatives have been urging Gillespie to tap President Trumps strategists, after the former Republican National Committee chairmans surprisingly narrow primary victory over Trump loyalist Corey A. Stewart in June. Gillespie, who was White House counsel under George W. Bush, has also more openly embraced Trump after largely keeping his distance during the primary. In January, Gillespie met with Pence during the antiabortion March for Life in Washington. A friend and successful former governor, Vice President Pence has long been a champion of pro-growth economic policies, and I look forward to welcoming him back to the commonwealth, Gillespie said in a statement to the Virginia News Advance, which first reported the news of the fundraiser. Virginia GOP gubernatorial candidate Ed Gillespie. (Bob Brown/AP) The private event will be held in Richmond on August 19, the same day Gillespie is set to speak at the Americans for Prosperitys Defending the American Dream summit. Americans for Prosperity is the main political arm of a network of conservative advocacy groups financed by billionaire Charles Kochs donor network. Gillespies spokesman declined to say whether the fundraiser was connected to the summit. Gillespie faces Democratic Lt. Gov. Ralph Northam in November. Former president Barack Obama plans to campaign for Northam. A Northam spokeswoman criticized Gillespie for appearing with Pence, a social conservative and critic of LGBT and abortion rights. Just a day after he called for defunding Planned Parenthood, Gillespie is doubling down on his backwards, anti-women views by campaigning with Pence and refusing to stand up to the divisive agenda of the Trump administration, said Northam spokeswoman Christina Freundlich. These anti-choice, anti-women views belong on the other side of the Potomac not in the Virginia governors mansion. MASSACHUSETTS Woman will serve 2 years in suicide case Michelle Carter, who was convicted of involuntary manslaughter for urging her boyfriend through calls and text messages to commit suicide, was sentenced Thursday to 15 months in prison. In a landmark case that made national headlines, a Massachusetts judge ruled Carter was responsible for Conrad Roy IIIs death because she had placed him in a situation that led to his suicides. Bristol County Juvenile Court Judge Lawrence Moniz sentenced Carter to 2 years, with 15 months suspended. However, the judge granted Carter a stay of incarceration, meaning Carter will not serve time behind bars until she has exhausted her appeals in state court. Moniz ruled in June that Carter was responsible for Roys suicide in 2014. Legal experts have said the decision could have national implications as courts grapple with how to apply long-standing laws as technological changes have taken interactions online. Roy, 18, was found dead from carbon monoxide poisoning in his truck on July 13, 2014, outside Boston. Roy and Carter, who was 17 at the time, had been texting about death in the days and weeks leading up to the tragedy, according to court records. Lindsey Bever and Kristine Phillips NATIONAL SECURITY Cyberattack hero may have sold malware Marcus Hutchins, a young British researcher credited with derailing a global cyberattack in May, was arrested for allegedly creating and distributing malicious software designed to collect bank account passwords, U.S. authorities said Thursday. Hutchins was detained Wednesday in Las Vegas on his way back to Britain from an annual gathering of hackers and IT security gurus. A grand jury indictment charged Hutchins with creating and distributing malware known as the Kronos banking Trojan. Such malware infects web browsers then captures usernames and passwords when an unsuspecting user visits a bank or other trusted location. News of Hutchinss detention came as a shock to the cybersecurity community. Many had rallied behind the researcher whose quick thinking helped control the spread of the WannaCry attack that crippled thousands of computers last May. The indictment, filed in a Wisconsin court last month, alleges that Hutchins and another defendant, whose name is redacted, conspired from July 2014 to July 2015 to advertise the availability of the Kronos malware on Internet forums and sell the malware. Associated Press Source: Xinhua| 2017-08-02 22:52:55|Editor: Zhou Xin A boy protests outside the German embassy in central Athens, capital of Greece, on Aug. 2, 2017. Hundreds of refugees living in reception camps, hotels and rented apartments across Greece staged a symbolic peaceful demonstration here Wednesday against the slow pace of relocations to Germany for family reunification.(Xinhua/Marios Lolos) ATHENS, Aug. 2 (Xinhua) -- Hundreds of refugees living in reception camps, hotels and rented apartments across Greece staged a symbolic peaceful demonstration here on Wednesday against the slow pace of relocations to Germany for family reunifications. Refugees marched from Syntagma square to the German embassy and the EU's offices in the Greek capital, requesting a swift change. Several were holding banners and placards reading "Our children wait for us," "No separation EU" and "The right to reunite is not a crime." Most of the protesters were Syrians stranded in Greece after the closure of the Balkan route to central Europe in March 2016. More than 62,000 refugees and migrants have been trapped in Greece. Despite progress made regarding living conditions in camps, the assessment of asylum bids and relocation process to other European countries still take several months. By July 24, 2017, according to the European Commission, a total of 16,803 persons had been relocated from Greece and 7,873 from other EU countries under the 2015 deal between member states who committed to accept at least 40,000 people from Greece and Italy within two years. The suffering is worse for parents and children who were separated during the perilous journey from war-torn Syria to safety in Europe. Approximately 2,500 applications have been lodged, accepted and still pending this year for family reunifications from Greece to Germany, according to Greek Asylum Agency data. By April this year almost 900 refugees travelled from Greece to Germany to reunite with their relatives, but from April the number of people reaching Germany had dropped to about 70 on average per month under an informal bilateral agreement. On July 18, responding in written on behalf of the European Commission to a question submitted by a Greek member of the European parliament regarding this informal arrangement, European Commissioner for Migration Dimitris Avramopoulos noted that "Germany may prolong the normal six months transfer time period for those persons" under the Dublin Regulation. "However, in case the delays would be unduly long and might as a result affect the human rights of the applicants, such arrangements could raise an issue of their compatibility with European Community law and international human rights instruments," the commissioner added. Refugees in Athens on Wednesday protested the delays were already too long. "The procedure is going really slowly. We are waiting for a long long time. They are taking just 70 persons each month. This is not legal," Mohammad T., said. Protesters dispersed after two of the representatives held a meeting with German embassy diplomats who said that they will forward their request to Berlin. A natural gas explosion Wednesday at the Minnehaha Academy in Minneapolis left two people dead and seven severely injured. Former employees of the college prep school, Elizabeth Van Pilsum, center, Rick Olson, left, and Edie Olson, right, gathered outside the private Christian school. (David Joles/Star Tribune/Associated Press/David Joles/Star Tribune/Associated Press) OHIO ISIS backer sentenced in military-killings plan An Ohio man who professed support for the Islamic State militant group was sentenced to 20 years in prison on Wednesday for soliciting the murder of U.S. military personnel, federal prosecutors said. Terrence McNeil, 24, of Akron, had pleaded guilty in April to five counts of solicitation to commit a crime of violence and five counts of making threatening interstate communications. McNeil was sentenced in U.S. District Court in Akron, according to court records. In a statement, the Justice Department said McNeil spread violent Islamic State rhetoric, circulated information about U.S. military personnel, and explicitly called for them to be killed. Prosecutors said that McNeil posted online kill lists in 2015 with the names and addresses of 100 U.S. military members and asked others to kill them on behalf of the Islamic State, to which he had professed support on social media. Reuters ALABAMA Last peanut-butter plot escapee back in jail The last of 12 inmates who escaped an Alabama lockup by tricking a guard with peanut butter is back in jail after persuading his sister to drive him to Florida, a sheriff said. Martin County Sheriff William D. Snyder announced Tuesday night that investigators zeroed in on a house on a quiet street in Tequesta, Fla., north of West Palm Beach, where a car with an Alabama license plate was parked outside. A short time later, Brady Kilpatrick, 24, was arrested, along with his sister, Jensen Davis Lefan, 18; her boyfriend, Hayden Thomas Mayberry, 24; and Mayberrys childhood friend, Dakota Anthony, 23. Kilpatrick escaped Sunday from the jail in Walker County, Ala., where inmates tricked a guard into letting them out by using peanut butter to alter a number over a cell door. Authorities said the inexperienced guard, watching 150 inmates through security cameras from a control room, thought he was opening the cell at an inmates request, when in fact, the peanut-buttered number he punched in released a door to the outside. A dozen inmates fled, throwing off their orange jail uniforms and running in every direction. The other 11 fugitives had been rounded up by Monday afternoon. Kilpatrick appeared in court Wednesday in Stuart, Fla., where a judge ordered him held without bail pending his return to Alabama. Lefan and Mayberry also remained in the jail, with $7,500 bail set for each. Associated Press NEW YORK Ex-boss of male escort site gets 6-month term The former chief executive of a once-popular male escort service website who pleaded guilty last year to promoting prostitution was sentenced to six months in prison Wednesday by a judge who said she wanted to send a deterrent message even though she knows the business helped people. Jeffrey Hurant, who ran the Rentboy.com site, was sentenced by U.S. District Judge Margo K. Brodie in Brooklyn. The very thing that is illegal there is no question it did a lot of good, Brodie said of the website as she also announced a $7,500 fine. Almost two decades of committing a crime. That cant go unpunished. She noted the many positive letters sent to her on Hurants behalf. I am convinced you started the site for a good purpose, she said. Hurant defended the business he said he ran openly for 20 years, saying many sex workers had told him that the website enabled them to work safely and independently after years of laboring in deplorable conditions. I disagree with the law I violated. I am obliged to follow it, he said. My company mitigated many of the dangers of sex work. Prosecutors sought at least a short prison term to deter operators of other escort services from similar misconduct, while his attorneys wanted probation. In letters to the court, lawmakers, civil rights organizations and other supporters cautioned that a tough sentence could send the wrong message to the gay community. Before authorities arrested Hurant and seized the Rentboy site, it had thousands of advertisers paying as much as $300 a month, 500,000 visitors a day and revenue of $10 million in the past five years. The business hosted parties and an annual awards show for escorts called the Hookies. Associated Press Source: Xinhua| 2017-08-03 03:36:10|Editor: Zhou Xin Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim (C) chairs a meeting of the Supreme Military Council in Ankara, Turkey, on Aug. 2, 2017. Turkey on Wednesday replaced its top three military commanders - the army, navy and air force chiefs, a year after a coup attempt that shocked the NATO country. (Xinhua) ANKARA, Aug. 2 (Xinhua) -- Turkey on Wednesday replaced its top three military commanders - the army, navy and air force chiefs, a year after a coup attempt that shocked the NATO country. The changes were made during a meeting of the Supreme Military Council, which discusses the appointments and retirements of high-ranking staff officers, as well as removal of military personnel. The fight against the Fethullah Gulen movement, who alleged masterminded the failed coup that killed nearly 250 people the night of July 15th, 2016, was expected to be one of the main issues to be discussed at the session. Prime minister Bilani Yildirim and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan held a six-hour meeting in Istanbul on Tuesday prior to the critical meeting, reported TV channels. According to the decisions at this meeting, the Chief of General Staff, General Hulusi Akar, who was spectacularly held hostage during the coup attempt by plotters, will stay on duty until 2019, as expected. Land forces commander, General Salih Zeki Colak, Naval forces commander Admiral Bulent Bostanoglu and Air forces commander, General Abidin Unal, have been changed and replaced by other high-ranking generals, presidential spokesman Ibrahim Kalin told reporters after the meeting. General Yasar Guler, former commander of the Gendarmerie, has been appointed Land forces commander; Vice Admiral Adnan Ozbal has been appointed Navy commander and Hasan Kucukakyuz is the new Air Force commander, Kalin said. In lower-level reshuffles, 61 colonels have been promoted as general, indicated by a statement released by the Ministry of National Defense. The Turkish military is undergoing a comprehensive post-coup restructuring process. For the Turkish Armed Forces (TSK), the July 15 coup attempt was a humiliation from which it will take a long time to recover. It showed unmistakably that the network controlled by the U.S.-based preacher Fethullah Gulen infiltrated massively the military organization in past decades despite warnings by military and civilian authorities. The Turkish Armed Forces, the second biggest in number after the United States in NATO, used to be the most trusted institution in Turkey. But that was before rebel soldiers fired at civilians resisting the putsch and national institutions were attacked by helicopters and fighter jets. Almost 4,500 officers have been dismissed from the TSK since the coup attempt. Among these are almost half of the generals and admirals previously serving in the armed forces. Because of massive purges that followed the botched coup, the number of generals and admirals decreased by 40 percent, reported Turkey's media. Most of the dismissed generals and admirals have been replaced through promotions from lower ranks, and there seem to be no real shortages at present, according to experts. The changes after the coup further accelerated a weakening of the political influence of the one all-powerful military, who instigated four interventions against the civilian regime since 1960, ousting elected governments. The Turkish government made some groundbreaking changes in command structure and functioning of the Turkish military. First, the Chief of Staff would be appointed directly by the president. Direct government control has also be strengthened by levelling the number of cabinet ministers and four-star generals in the YAS. The chain of command at the top has also be changed. The Chief of Staff and the General Staff are attached to the Presidency instead of the Prime Minister's office. The commanders of the Land-, Air- and Sea-forces, on the other hand, are subjected to the Ministry of National Defense. Moreover, the president and the prime minister will be able to give orders directly to these commanders without going through the Chief of Staff. In addition, the military education system has undergone major changes. Military high schools have been closed, and within two years the existing military academies will be fused into a new National University for Defense under the Ministry of National Defense. Other measures seemed more radical and potentially disruptive for the Turkish Armed Forces. Political appointments go against a long and honoured tradition of meritocracy in the military, and the direct appointment of the Chief of Staff by the president is likely to stir up controversy in the officers' corps. The same goes for an increased presence of cabinet ministers in the Supreme Military Council. "It is obvious that the Turkish army is becoming deeply politicized and its recruitment criteria is becoming entrenched within religious practices," said a high ranking military source quoted on Wednesday by the Turkish Daily News newspaper, criticizing that the army while being under civilian scrutiny would become more politicized. The new chain of command at the top is also a novelty in the Turkish military system, and breaks with a time-honoured practice of having one supreme military commander for all the armed forces. Moreover, the establishment of a new national university for defense will discontinue the Turkish military academies and institutions with traditions that go back well over a century, argued some experts such as Ahmet Yavuz, a retired general who is frequently a guest on TV programs on this subject. This expert and author of books on the evolution of the military institution argue that the current changes may not only put the armed forces in a difficult spot in combatting threats like the bloody Kurdish separatist insurgency that has resumed since 2015 in mainly Kurdish southeastern Turkey, but also politicize the army in general. Such a development would impact negatively on the long-term efficiency and battle-preparedness of the armed forces, argued experts. Recep Tayyip Erdogan who managed to get sweeping executive powers in a crucial constitutional referendum in April blames the U.S.-based cleric Fethullah Gulen and his many followers in Turkey to have orchestrated the botched coup of last summer, in which rogue soldiers commandeered tanks and fighter jets, bombing the Parliament and trying to kill or abduct Erdogan. After the coup attempt, the Turkish government has imposed a state of emergency until now and launched a large-scale crackdown against Gulen's followers; however, the 76-year-old preacher strongly denies directing the coup and any responsibility in the events. SOUTH ASIA Study warns of serious peril from heat by 2100 Climate change could make much of South Asia home to a fifth of the worlds population too hot for human survival by the end of this century, scientists warned Wednesday. If climate change continues at its current pace, deadly heat waves beginning in the next few decades will strike parts of India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, according to a study based on computer simulations by researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Key agricultural areas in the Indus and Ganges river basins will be hit particularly hard, reducing crop yields and increasing hunger in some of the worlds most densely populated regions, researchers said. Climate change is not an abstract concept, it is impacting huge numbers of vulnerable people, MIT professor Elfatih Eltahir, the studys co-author, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. Currently, about 2 percent of Indias population is sometimes exposed to extreme combinations of heat and humidity; by 2100, that will increase to about 70 percent if nothing is done to mitigate climate change, the study said. Heat waves across South Asia in summer 2015 killed an estimated 3,500 people. Similar events will become more frequent and intense as the years go by, researchers said. Reuters THAILAND 2 ex-leaders acquitted of abusing power A Thai court acquitted two former prime ministers of abuse of power on Wednesday in a case involving the deadly dispersal of an anti-government demonstration in 2008. A division of the Supreme Court acquitted Somchai Wongsawat, deputy Chavalit Yongchaiyudh and two former police officials, saying they did not intend to endanger the demonstrators by quelling the violent protest. Two people died and hundreds suffered injuries during a pitched battle that developed when police tried to clear away protesters blocking the entrance to the parliament complex. They wanted to stop Somchai, who was prime minister, from delivering his first policy statement. The protesters were seeking to bring down his government, which they believed served as a proxy for former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, who was ousted in a 2006 coup after being accused of corruption and disrespect for the monarchy. Somchai is the brother-in-law of Thaksin. The defendants Chavalit also is a former prime minister were accused of exceeding their authority in allowing police to use force against the protesters. Associated Press 2 ex-Guantanamo detainees allowed to stay in Ghana: Lawmakers in Ghana have ratified an agreement that allows two former Guantanamo Bay detainees to stay in the West African country. Ghanas top court had ruled in June that the former presidents decision to allow the ex-detainees to come had been unconstitutional. The two men, of Yemeni origin, now will be able to stay in Ghana after parliaments approval, the Ghana News Agency reported. They had been cleared for release in 2009, but the United States refused to send them to Yemen because of instability there. Officials had to find another country willing to accept them. 7 killed in Boko Haram attack in Nigeria: Authorities in northern Nigeria said Boko Haram extremists have killed at least seven people in an attack on a village in which they burned homes and shops to the ground. The village, Mildu, is not far from the Sambisa Forest, which was a Boko Haram stronghold before Nigerias military announced it had regained control of the area late last year. Boko Harams insurgency has killed more than 20,000 people and displaced about 3 million since 2009. The extremist group wants to enforce strict Islamic sharia rule. Hiker missing since 1987 found in Swiss glacier: Police in southwestern Switzerland have found in an Alpine glacier the remains of a German hiker who disappeared almost exactly three decades ago. The regional Valais police department said the remains of the unidentified man were found after two hikers last week happened upon a hand and a pair of shoes sticking out of the Hohlaub Glacier. Laboratory tests identified the deceased man, who was in his mid-40s when he disappeared on Aug. 11, 1987. From news services IN BALTIMORE, 2017 started with 26 murders in 25 days. Then it got worse. Charm City is suffering through its bloodiest year in decades, a daily drumbeat of carnage impervious to community outrage and surge police deployments. Marylands biggest city is now on pace to exceed 400 killings this year in per capita terms, worse even than Chicago, which is undergoing its own season of senseless slaughter. Baltimore is a melting pot of dysfunctions, but that doesnt easily explain the current bloodbath; after all, it was no less troubled from 2008 to 2014, when annual murders never exceeded 250. So many factors have combined to produce the homicide spree that began in 2015 the same year riots erupted after Freddie Gray received fatal injures in police custody that local officials often seem flummoxed in their attempts to unpack the causes. Without doubt, they involve a police department that is understaffed, under-resourced and undertrained, and whose relations with the community it serves are strained to the breaking point. At least half of each years homicide cases are not solved, so killers can assume impunity. Disturbingly, the number of arrests has dipped even as murders have skyrocketed, suggesting that the police have continued to retreat, as they did after the riots following Mr. Grays death two years ago. The departments reputation was further diminished when, just this week, prosecutors were forced to dismiss dozens of cases that relied on testimony from an officer who, in a video, appeared to plant evidence at a crime scene as two fellow officers looked on. The forces extravagant deficiencies, including pervasive racism, were laid bare in a Justice Department report last year, which led to an ambitious program of court-ordered reforms. Unhelpfully, Attorney General Jeff Sessions tried to derail the reforms; Baltimores own leaders and police insisted on moving forward with them. The reforms, along with a concerted effort to improve staffing, recruitment and training, offer some optimism for the long term. In the short term, the outlook is grim. The rioters in 2015 targeted, among other businesses, pharmacies, whose copious supply of opiates flooded the market, fueling competition among vicious gangs that vie for control of the business and have no compunction about settling turf wars with bullets. The gunplay takes place in neighborhoods with notoriously bad schools and few opportunities for advancement or escape. The citys manufacturing base has been decimated in recent decades, and the near-quarter of the population that lives in poverty can gaze upon affluence and ease in upscale neighborhoods nearby. The good news is that many residents, far from being resigned, are outraged. In May, an organization called Mothers of Murdered Sons called for a cease-fire over Mothers Day weekend. It didnt work several people were shot, and at least two died, including a 17-year-old girl. Undaunted, a broad coalition of churches and grass-roots groups, mainly in the black community, has launched an energetic campaign for a 72-hour cease-fire for this weekend. T-shirts, fliers, a website and Facebook page are all promoting a peace rally this Friday night, with the slogan Nobody kill anybody. That, at least, is a start. Federal appeals court judge Merrick Garland, with President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden, on March 16, 2016, the day Obama nominated him for the Supreme Court. (Andrew Harnik/Associated Press) In his July 30 op-ed, Lets break this Senate logjam, Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) complained that Senate Democrats are taking too much time debating the confirmation of President Trumps nominees. The hypocrisy is stunning. Has he forgotten that Republicans refused for nearly a year to even hold a hearing, much less a debate, on Merrick Garland, President Barack Obamas Supreme Court nominee? I havent. Carol Anderson, Bethesda With his interference in the 2016 election, Russian President Vladimir Putin hoped he could tilt Washington onto a more pro-Moscow course. But after President Trump signed legislation tightening sanctions on Russia on Wednesday, it should be clear that Putins strategy backfired in a big way. First, Russias meddling has not helped it achieve its policy objectives. Russia wanted sanctions lifted; instead, they have been strengthened. Russia hoped that Trump would splinter the NATO alliance with his threats not to defend members who were not meeting their financial commitments. Instead, allies are increasing their defense spending by $12 billion, the Trump administration continued the deployment of NATO forces to the Baltics and sent an additional 900 troops to Polands border with Russia, and the president has now reaffirmed the United States commitment to Article V of the NATO charter. None of these outcomes please Moscow. The Trump administration is considering plans to provide Ukraine with advanced anti-tank weapons, including Javelin missiles, and possibly anti-aircraft weapons a move that is sure to anger Putin. In Warsaw, Trump delivered one of the most anti-Russian speeches any American president has given in a generation, and proposed a natural gas deal with Poland to decrease its energy dependence on Moscow. Administration officials have also accused Moscow of violating the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces treaty and arming the Taliban in Afghanistan. The one bright spot for Putin is Syria, where Trump worked with Russia to establish a cease-fire area and canceled a CIA program to train and equip anti-Assad rebels a move sought by Moscow. But Trump also bombed Putins ally Bashar al-Assad and his administration blamed Moscow for Assads use of chemical weapons on innocent civilians. Relations between the United States and Russia are so bad that Putin is now expelling hundreds of American diplomats, the largest such expulsion since the Communist revolution. We are in a new Cold War. Second, Russias election meddling has boxed Trump in to this aggressive stance for the foreseeable future. Trumps best defense against charges of collusion with Russia is: Look at my policies. There has been no president this tough on Moscow since Ronald Reagan. Even if Trump wanted to pursue detente with Russia, he cannot do so, because any concessions he makes to Putin will be seen through the prism of the Russia investigation. Every step taken that benefits Moscow will cost him politically at home, while tough stances will insulate him from accusations that he is Putins puppet. Third, Russias election meddling has achieved something no Russian leader has previously been able to do: It has turned Democrats into modern-day Cold Warriors. In 2012, after Mitt Romney called Russia our No. 1 geopolitical foe, Democrats cheered Barack Obama for mocking him by saying, The 1980s are calling to ask for their foreign policy back. Today, five years later, Democrats are suddenly channeling their inner Reagan. (Victoria Walker/The Washington Post) Its ironic. During the Cold War, when the Kremlin was throwing people into the gulag and threatening the United States with nuclear annihilation, many Democrats were all for accommodating Moscow. They opposed the Reagan defense buildup, the Strategic Defense Initiative and aid to anti-Soviet freedom fighters and chafed when Reagan declared the Soviet Union an Evil Empire. But the Kremlin finally crossed a line when it messed with Hillary Clintons campaign. None of this is what Putin was hoping for when he decided to interfere in the 2016 election. There is still no evidence that Moscows interference had any impact on the results of the election. Long before the first WikiLeaks emails came out, polls showed that 65 percent of Americans had already decided that Clinton was dishonest and 56 percent said she should have been prosecuted. Moreover, the stories that cemented these perceptions in Americans minds had nothing to do with Russia or WikiLeaks and most came out many months before the first WikiLeaks emails were published. It was the New York Times that broke the story that Clinton used a private email server while secretary of state. It was The Post that revealed the Clinton Foundation accepted millions of dollars in donations from foreign governments during the same period. It was ABC News that revealed that the Clinton State Department gave special treatment to FOBs (friends of Bill Clinton) after the Haiti earthquake. None of that had anything to do with Russia. So while Russias interference did not change the outcome of the 2016 election, it certainly has changed U.S. policy since. Relations with Moscow are at an all-time low, and there has not been such bipartisan unity in opposing Russia in decades. Thats actually a pretty good outcome for the United States and her allies but not exactly what Putin had in mind when he decided to meddle in American democracy. Read more from Marc Thiessens archive, follow him on Twitter or subscribe to his updates on Facebook. Source: Xinhua| 2017-08-03 03:51:23|Editor: Song Lifang A Syrian soldier takes position in the Syrian barren region of Fleita in western Syria near Lebanon as preparations were underway to transfer al-Qaida-linked Nusra Front militants on Aug. 2, 2017. The first buses transporting militants with the al-Qaida-linked Nusra Front and civilians crossed into the Syrian side of the Syrian-Lebanese borders as part of evacuation deal between the militants and Hezbollah. Around 113 buses carrying 7,777 people, including Syrian rebels, their families and Syrian refugees sympathizing with the militants, started entering the Syrian barren region of Fleita in the evening, after evacuating the Juroud Arsal barrens on the Lebanese side of the borders. (Xinhua/Ammar Safarjalani) FLEITA, Syria, Aug. 2 (Xinhua) -- The first buses transporting militants with the al-Qaida-linked Nusra Front and civilians crossed into the Syrian side of the Syrian-Lebanese borders as part of evacuation deal between the militants and Hezbollah. Around 113 buses carrying 7,777 people, including Syrian rebels, their families and Syrian refugees sympathizing with the militants, started entering the Syrian barren region of Fleita in the evening, after evacuating the Juroud Arsal barrens on the Lebanese side of the borders. The evacuation came as part of a deal struck between the militants and Nusra, following a wide-scale offensive Hezbollah and the Syrian army unleashed two weeks ago in the border region of Syria's western Qalamoun, and the Lebanese Juroud Arsal. In Syria, the battle was swift and both allies succeeded to clean the Fleita barrens from the al-Qaida-linked militants. On the Lebanese side of the borders, Hezbollah was close to defeat the Nusra, before a deal was struck between both sides. The deal started with a cease-fire, and an exchange of the bodies of dead fighters from both sides, as well as prisoners swap. The second stage of the deal is the evacuation of all remaining Nusra militants and their families from Arsal toward rebel-held areas in Syria's northwestern province of Idlib. After arriving in Fleita, the buses will head toward the Rashideen area in the Aleppo province in northern Syria, before heading toward Idlib. The evacuation ends the presence of Syrian militants of Nusra Front in Lebanon and in the Syrian border region of Qalamoun. A Hezbollah commander told Xinhua in Fleita that the battle against Nusra in the border region was a "perfect one." He added that the battle, which started on July 21, took an important turn in favor of Hezbollah and the Syrian army, when both forces captured the Kirra hilltop in Fleita, which exposes the Nusra positions on the Syrian-Lebanese border region. He said both allies' goal was to clear the border area in Syria and Lebanon from Nusra and the Islamic State (IS) militants, which are still holding some positions in the border region. He also noted that the IS-held area on the borders is completely besieged. "The level of coordination and harmony between the Syrian army and Hezbollah is high," he said. In Fleita, ambulances of the Syrian Arab Red Crescent were ready to escort the convoy of buses coming from Lebanon. The source in Hezbollah told Xinhua the evacuation is expected to last until Thursday morning, adding that the entire operation will end on Thursday. Dana Milbanks July 30 Sunday Opinion column, What do we do if Trump really is crazy?, insulted Americans living with mental illnesses and those who love them. Putting politics aside, terms such as madman, barking mad, mad as a March hare, off his rocker, round the bend and a few fries short of a Happy Meal demean, marginalize and ridicule individuals who often have serious brain disorders. The Associated Press stylebook warns against using such derogatory terms and cautions writers never to reference a diagnosis unless it is properly sourced. Lowering expectations for individuals with mental illnesses presumes there is no recovery. My adult son has a serious mental illness. He has been arrested, shot twice with a Taser and hospitalized five times. But after eight years of hard work and treatment, he is symptom-free, works fulltime and enjoys life. Pete Earley, Fairfax The Justice Department apparently wants to revisit the perennial issue of affirmative action in university and college admissions remarkable news for many reasons, not the least of which is: President Trump was the first Republican since the civil rights revolution to reach the White House without campaigning against quotas. Trump went out of his way to inflame racial and ethnic sore spots but not this one. Affirmative action: Should we keep it? Yes or no? NBCs Chuck Todd asked Trump on the Aug. 16, 2015, edition of Meet the Press. Im fine with affirmative action, Trump replied. Weve lived with it for a long time. On Fox News Sunday two months later, Chris Wallace asked Trump how that reply squared with conservative doctrine. You know, it has served its place, and it served its time, he equivocated. Some people have loved it, and some people dont like it at all. Though still fine with affirmative action personally, Trump allowed it would be a wonderful thing if its necessity someday faded. When Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia commented, during December 2015 oral arguments on race-conscious university admissions, that some African Americans might be better off at less-advanced schools, Trump joined those denouncing the conservative icon. Very tough to the African American community, he scolded. Jeb Bush is the one who boasted during the Republican primaries that he abolished race-conscious admissions in Floridas state universities while governor. If Trumps intuition told him that voters generally, and whites specifically, arent that riled up about reverse discrimination in higher ed anymore, his intuition was probably right. In heavily populated California, Florida and Michigan, race-conscious admissions in state universities have been banned for years. More than a quarter of the U.S. population lives in the eight states with no affirmative action in public higher ed. Trumps core constituency is the white working class usually defined as those without a college degree. And its far from clear that blacks getting into college ahead of whites ranks at, or even near, the top of this groups grievances. To be sure, some 52 percent of white working-class voters believe discrimination against whites is as bad as, or worse than, discrimination against African Americans and other minorities, according to a study by the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI). (Claritza Jimenez/The Washington Post) Yet 54 percent of them think investing in a college education is a gamble, suggesting admission is not the prize they eye. And 56 percent disagree that efforts to increase diversity almost always come at the expense of whites. Furthermore, the belief that whites are victims of discrimination did not statistically predict support for Trump in 2016, according to the PRRI survey; deporting illegal immigrants and general fear of cultural displacement did. Theres little evidence that the broader U.S. public wants more higher-ed affirmative-action wars of the kind that equivocal but supportive Supreme Court decisions have tried to defuse including the June 2016 4-to-3 ruling in favor of the University of Texas program that so exercised Scalia. Significantly, Trump, then the presumptive Republican nominee, had no comment on that ruling, pro or con. Americans are ambivalent about this genuinely difficult issue, with 70 percent of the public telling Gallup last year that only merit should affect college admissions and 63 percent telling the Pew Research Center in 2014 that its a good thing for colleges to have programs designed to boost minority enrollment. Candidate Trumps views on affirmative action channeled those contradictions. He was indeed not far from restating, crudely, the pragmatic position Justice Sandra Day OConnor expressed on behalf of the Supreme Court majority in a 2003 case that upheld race-conscious admissions to assure diversity on campus. Governmental use of race must have a logical end point. . . . We expect that 25 years from now, the use of racial preferences will no longer be necessary to further the interest approved today, she wrote. Late Wednesday, a Justice Department spokeswoman denied theres a broad attack on race-conscious admissions brewing, just a review of a complaint against Harvard University filed by Asian Americans who believe that schools efforts to ensure diversity in admissions result in a de facto cap on their admissions. Of course, that would hardly diminish the potential impact, because similar issues are being raised by Asian American plaintiffs in lawsuits, backed by conservative activists, against Harvard and the University of North Carolina. Those cases could undo the settlement OConnor established, or tried to, apropos cases brought by white plaintiffs. With 11 years left before OConnors target date, someone at the Justice Department seems drawn to an old conservative crusade in which the president himself has heretofore shown little interest. Whoever that is must really believe in the cause, because the political upside is not necessarily that big as Donald Trump, of all people, has demonstrated. Read more from Charles Lanes archive, follow him on Twitter or subscribe to his updates on Facebook. PRESIDENT TRUMP says accelerating the United States economic growth is one of his administrations most cherished goals. On Wednesday, he embraced a legislative overhaul to the immigration system that, if enacted, would make that goal unattainable. Mr. Trump endorsed a bill sponsored by a pair of conservative Republican senators, Tom Cotton of Arkansas and David Perdue of Georgia, that would reduce legal immigration by about half over a decade, a shift that a broad consensus of economists believe would sap the nations economic vitality. It would slash the number of immigrants granted green cards for legal permanent residence to about 540,000 annually from the current level of roughly 1 million. The legislation would achieve that chiefly by eliminating green cards granted to siblings and grown children of current immigrants and green-card holders so-called chain migration while holding steady the number of green cards based on job skills. Those employment-based immigrants would be selected according to a points system that would favor English speakers with higher levels of education and high-paying job offers. So much for the tired, poor, huddled masses for whom the Statue of Liberty stands as a beacon. Halving the number of legal immigrants would deprive an array of businesses of oxygen in the form of labor exactly the opposite strategy required for growth in an economy where productivity is stagnant and unemployment is extremely low. By drastically constricting the supply of legal immigrants, Mr. Trumps program would also sharply intensify the demand for undocumented immigrants, for whom no wall would be an effective deterrent. In economic terms, therefore, the legislation makes little sense, which explains why Stephen Miller, the White House senior adviser for policy, repeatedly justified it by saying that ordinary Americans would support it in a poll. (Mr. Miller also made a point of mentioning that the poem summoning the tired, huddled masses to America was not on the original Statue of Liberty but added later. Touche!) Mr. Miller is correct that as a percentage of the countrys population, foreign-born residents are near their highest level in almost a century. That stark fact is a major cause of the nativist, anti-immigration backlash that helped propel Mr. Trumps candidacy and that sustains the hard core of his political base even after a calamitous first six months in office. Yet with the U.S. birthrate at a historic low, and baby boomers starting to retire, it is a simple truth that the United States will need an infusion of immigrant labor to maintain economic growth, let alone expand it. To bar immigrants while the birthrate dips is to emulate Japan, whose own fading economic prospects are a direct result of precisely such conditions and policies. The bills sponsors ignore Japan while citing Canada and Australia as models of the merit-based immigration system envisioned by the legislation. In fact, in per capita terms the United States already admits less than half the number of annual immigrants let in by both Canada and Australia. While fresh immigrants do depress wages for some low-skill and minority workers, as Mr. Trump argued, they act as rocket fuel for the overall economy. By cutting their numbers, Mr. Trump would undercut the nations prospects. One day [Marine Theodore Wallace] saw an officer casually aim his rifle and try to shoot a Vietnamese boy in the distance. Sir, what are you doing? hed asked. Hes probably supplying the [North Vietnamese Army], the officer said. Whats he doing out here anyway? Its his country! said Wallace. Mark Bowden, Hue 1968: A Turning Point of the American War in Vietnam As Vietnams 1968 Tet holiday approached, Gen. William Westmoreland, commander of U.S. forces there, cabled the Joint Chiefs of Staff in Washington that he had a plan. He would serenade, perhaps into dissolution, the communist forces that he was certain would concentrate on attacking U.S. forces based at Khe Sanh near the demilitarized zone: The Vietnamese youth is quite sentimentally disposed toward his family, and Tet is a traditional time for intimate family gatherings. The Vietnamese PSY War [Psychological Warfare] people have recently written a highly sentimental Tet song which is recorded. The Vietnamese say it is a tear-jerker to the extent that they do not want it played to their troops during Tet for fear their desertion rate will skyrocket. This is one of the records we will play to the North Vietnamese soldiers in the Khe Sanh-Con Thien areas during Tet. This surreal nugget is from Mark Bowdens magnificent and meticulous history, which tells, with excruciating detail, a story that is both inspiring and infuriating. His subtitle is an understatement. As the epicenter of North Vietnams Tet offensive throughout South Vietnam, the swift capture of Hue, the countrys third-largest city, by communist forces and of the 24 days of ferocious fighting that expelled them became a hinge of American history. A month later, President Lyndon Johnson announced he would not seek reelection in an America where opposition to the war and trust in the government were moving inversely. After the battles first day, Jan. 31, Westmoreland told Washington that the enemy had about 500 men in Hues Citadel. He was, Bowden writes, off by a factor of 20. So it went with U.S. intelligence. A few months earlier, Walt Rostow, Johnsons national security adviser, had told a Hue-bound reporter on deep background that the war was essentially already won because a crop called IR8 rice was going to stymie the communists revolution with a green revolution. Rostows theory was slain by this fact: The Vietnamese disliked the taste of IR8 rice. The communists arriving in Hue immediately began advancing the revolution by purging enemies of the people in what quickly became an orgy of violent score-settling. While Westmoreland remained fixated on Khe Sanh Never, writes Bowden, had a general so effectively willed away the facts a secret U.S. planning group met in Okinawa the day after the offensive began to consider a plan, code-named Fractured Jaw, involving tactical nuclear weapons. Westmoreland said these were not needed in the present situation. Bowdens interviews, almost half a century on, with those who fought, on both sides, have produced unexampled descriptions of small-unit combat. The communists many months of large-scale infiltration and preparation were matched by their military skills. To a man, Bowden writes, the American veterans I interviewed told me they had faced a disciplined, highly motivated, skilled and determined enemy. To characterize them otherwise is to diminish the accomplishment of those who drove them out of Hue. In June 1968, Westmoreland was relieved of his command. (Department of Defense) What Bowden calls one of the great shots in the annals of combat photography is of a U.S. tank in Hue draped with dead and wounded Marines. None were identified. Until, more than four decades later, Bowden found that the 18-year-old with a hole in his chest, who looked dead, or nearly so, was Alvin Bert Grantham from Mobile, Ala., whose story Bowden tells. During house-to-house fighting, Marine Eden Jimenez was clearing rooms tossing in grenades, then spraying the room with bullets in one of which he found a tall wardrobe that he had riddled. In it was a mortally wounded woman holding a rifle and a baby. Bowden writes: When he was an old man, living in Odessa, Texas, he still wondered almost every day about that woman and child. . . . Who was she? How would he have felt if he had killed the baby, too? Hue, like the war that pivoted there, continues to haunt some elderly men who live among us. And the wars legacy lives in Americans diminished trust in government. Since 1968, trust has not risen to pre-Vietnam levels. Read more from George F. Wills archive or follow him on Facebook. The July 29 Style article The young Trump fan Pickle? Hes kosher, proved the existence of a real-life, cute 9-year-old who sent an admiring letter to President Trump, despite skepticism from some old meanies. The White House wouldnt be seeking to benefit from the innocence of children, right? As the grandparent of an 8-year-old who is so afraid of the president that he does not want to hear his name, I wonder how unfiltered the White House may be when choosing childrens letters for reading on-air. What about Dear Mr. President, Please dont deport my mother? Or Why would you let my daddy lose his health care because he has a preexisting condition?, Why do you make fun of women you call ugly? A disabled reporter? Didnt they teach you in school that bullying hurts?, and Kids get grounded for using nasty words. Does being president make it okay? If any such letters arrive at the White House, who will read them? Chris Edwards, Harrisonburg, Va. Special counsel Robert Mueller, right, leaves after briefing senators on June 21 about his investigation of potential coordination between Russia and the Trump campaign. (Joshua Roberts/Reuters) Special counsel Robert S. Mueller III began using a grand jury in federal court in Washington several weeks ago as part of his investigation of possible coordination between the Kremlin and the Trump campaign, according to two people familiar with the inquiry. The development is a sign that investigators continue to aggressively gather evidence in the case, and that Mueller is taking full control of a probe that predated him. In recent weeks and months, Mueller has been expanding the legal team working on the matter, and recently added Greg Andres, a longtime white-collar lawyer specializing in foreign bribery who previously worked in the Justice Departments criminal division. Muellers investigation now includes a look at whether President Trump obstructed justice by firing FBI Director James B. Comey, as well as deep dives into financial and other dealings of former national security adviser Michael T. Flynn and former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort. Federal prosecutors had previously been using a grand jury in the Eastern District of Virginia, and even before Mueller was appointed, had increased their activity, issuing subpoenas and taking other investigative steps. (Victoria Walker,Peter Stevenson/The Washington Post) The Wall Street Journal on Thursday first reported the existence of the Washington grand jury. A White House adviser said the president and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, had not received subpoenas, nor had the White House. Members of the presidents legal team met with Mueller three weeks ago to express their desire to work with his investigators. A spokesman for Mueller declined to comment for this article. Ty Cobb, whom Trump appointed as White House special counsel, said of the grand jury: This is news to me, but its welcome news to the extent it suggests that it may accelerate the resolution of Mr. Muellers work. The White House has every interest in bringing this to a prompt and fair conclusion. As weve said in the past, were committed to cooperating fully with Mr. Mueller. Mueller has largely removed the original prosecutors from the case, replacing them with a formidable collection of legal talent and expertise in prosecuting national security, fraud and public corruption cases, arguing matters before the Supreme Court and assessing complicated legal questions. [As Mueller builds his Russia special-counsel team, every hire is under scrutiny] In federal cases, a grand jury is not necessarily an indication that an indictment is imminent or even likely. Instead, it is a powerful investigative tool that prosecutors use to compel witnesses to testify or force people or companies to turn over documents. (Meg Kelly/The Washington Post) Its unclear why Mueller chose to use a panel in the District, although there are practical reasons to do so. The special counsels office is located in Southwest D.C. much closer to the federal courthouse in the city than the one in Alexandria, Va. Mueller also had previously worked in the U.S. attorneys office in D.C., giving him some familiarity with the courthouse and the judges. Experts said that Washington would be the appropriate place to convene a grand jury to examine actions taken by Trump since he became president and took up residence at the White House. Many of the potential crimes Muellers team is investigating would have occurred in the District, such as allegations that Trump aides or advisers made false statements in disclosure records or lied to federal agents. The Post has previously reported that Mueller is investigating whether the president tried to obstruct justice leading up to his firing of Comey. Others said the choice could reflect Muellers reputation for planning ahead and gaming out a possible trial. He could have better chances convicting aides to Trump in a city in which 90 percent of voters supported Democrat Hillary Clinton in 2016. The special counsel team took over the investigation when Mueller was appointed in May, and prosecutors from the Eastern District of Virginia were largely taken off the case. The only prosecutor known to have stayed was Brandon Van Grack, a national security division prosecutor whose name was on the subpoena connected to Flynn. Muellers team also absorbed an investigation of Manafort that was attempting to trace his sources of income and possible connections to the Russia case. The grand jury in Virginia had issued a subpoena related to Flynns business, the Flynn Intel Group, which was paid more than $500,000 by a company owned by a Turkish American businessman close to top Turkish officials, said people familiar with the matter. A subpoena related to Manafort also was issued from Alexandria. Rosalind S. Helderman, Spencer S. Hsu, Devlin Barrett and Tom Hamburger contributed to this report. A group of Republican senators on Thursday unveiled its answer to President Trumps border wall: a $15 billion venture to step up multifaceted border security without choking off trade. The legislation, fronted by the chambers No. 2 Republican, Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, comes as a rebuke to the president for his singular focus on getting a border wall built and getting Mexico to pay for it an endeavor Trump himself dismissed as the least important matter that he and Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto would discuss in a January phone call, but politically this might be the most important. It also comes as a rejection of the House GOP leaders, who recently pledged to fully fund Trumps wall, approving the first $1.6 billion installment on it as part of the Houses recently passed defense authorization bill. Border security is not a one-size-fits-all proposition; we need an approach that will work at each unique place along the U.S.-Mexico border, Cornyn told reporters Thursday. [Transcript: Trump urged Mexican president to end his public defiance on border wall] The senators behind the legislation framed it as a chance to regain the publics confidence and restore the public trust deficit in Congress after several rocky legislative months not to mention years upon years worth of failed attempts to pass an immigration bill encompassing border security measures. The legislation also gives Republican lawmakers an immigration platform to latch onto that has enjoyed widespread support in the past, just a day after many party members were openly criticizing a proposal from Sens. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) and David Perdue (R-Ga.) to severely reduce legal immigration that Trump endorsed. Cornyn congratulated Cotton and Perdue on Thursday for initiating the debate again on legal immigration, but was firm and clear that their bill was a beginning, not the end. When Cornyn unveiled the bill Thursday, he was joined by Republican Sens. John Barrasso (Wyo.), Ron Johnson (Wis.) and Thom Tillis (N.C.). Their proposal authorizes $15 billion over four years to pay for border security infrastructure that includes a potential wall system, fences, levees, border surveillance technology which the George W. Bush administration coined a virtual wall and an increase in Border Patrol agents, Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers, and immigration court prosecutors and judges. Those judges would also be required to hear cases of unaccompanied minors who cross the border in an expedited fashion. Cornyn declined to entirely rule out the president procuring money from Mexico to foot the bill, though he remarked that we are used to Congress appropriating the money. The bill also incorporates legislation to end the catch and release of people who violate immigration law and to punish sanctuary cities that refuse to turn over undocumented immigrants to federal authorities by withholding federal funds. Finally, Cornyns bill envisions more resources for border crossings and other ports of entry to make them more efficient and ensure that trade can continue to flourish. Cornyn has stepped out in recent months to counter Trumps pledge to either get rid of or entirely renegotiate the North American Free Trade Act, or NAFTA, trumpeting the pacts benefits for Texas. Most of the measures in Cornyns bill have passed Senate muster before, as part of a comprehensive bill that the body approved in 2013. That bill was the result of intense bipartisan negotiations, and it matched the enforcement measures with initiatives like a pathway to citizenship for certain immigrants living in the United States without official status. But those olive branches to immigrants considered key to bringing Democratic support on board are not part of Cornyns most recent proposal. Read more at PowerPost Source: Xinhua| 2017-08-03 04:26:43|Editor: yan Video Player Close HELSINKI, Aug. 2 (Xinhua) -- Finnish Border Guard said on Wednesday the explanation NATO had given about a border violation on Tuesday appeared "to match the events", Finnish news agency STT reported. NATO told Finnish authorities that two Spanish jet fighters flew erroneously into Finnish air space on Tuesday when they were trying to identify three aircraft that NATO presumed to be Russian and were flying near Estonian air space. Seniour lieutenant Jan Sundell, the officer in charge of the Finnish investigation, told STT there seemed to be "nothing odd in this case". The international flight path between the air spaces in the Gulf of Finland is narrow. The Gulf runs in East-West direction and is bordered by Finland in the North and Estonia in the South. NATO aircraft from various member countries alternates on duty in Estonia. Two bipartisan pairs of senators unveiled legislation Thursday to prevent President Trump from firing special counsel Robert S. Mueller III without cause or at least a reason good enough to convince a panel of federal judges. Senators have raised concerns that the president might try to rearrange his administration to get rid of Mueller, who is spearheading a probe of Russias alleged interference in the 2016 presidential election and any possible collusion between the Kremlin and members of the Trump campaign and transition teams. Muellers probe has been advancing, despite the presidents attempts to discredit the probe as an illegitimate witch hunt. He impaneled a grand jury in D.C. a few weeks ago, according to areport out Thursday. The case has already produced subpoenas, from a grand jury in the Eastern District of Virginia that issued them in relation to former national security adviser Michael Flynns business and former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort. While Trump cannot fire Mueller directly, many have raised concerns in recent weeks that he might seek to replace Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who recused himself from all campaign-related matters, including the Russia probe. Sessionss deputy, Rod J. Rosenstein, said he would not fire Mueller without cause but a new attorney general could supersede his authority. The blowback from Congress to Trumps public criticism of Sessions was sharp and substantial, and his allies in the GOP told the president to back off. Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) even indicated that he would not make time in the Senate schedule to consider a new attorney general nominee. (Jenny Starrs/The Washington Post) [Republicans are starting to draw red lines on Trump firing Sessions and Mueller] This week, there have been reports that new White House chief of staff John F. Kelly told Sessions he would not have to worry about losing his job. But that has not quieted the concerns of the Democrats and Republicans behind the latest efforts to safeguard Mueller and, by extension, his Russia probe from presidential interference. The Mueller situation really gave rise to our thinking about how we can address this, address the current situation, said Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), the co-author of one of the proposals. He called the effort a great opportunity, in perpetuity, for us to be able to communicate to the American people that actions were appropriate or if not, then not, if an administration ever attempts to terminate a special counsels term. The two proposals one from Tillis and Sen. Christopher A. Coons (D-Del.) and the other from Sens. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) and Cory Booker (D-N.J.) each seek to check the executive branchs ability to fire a special counsel, by putting the question to a three-judge panel from the federal courts. They differ in when that panel gets to weigh in on the decision. Graham and Bookers proposal, which also has backing from Judiciary Committee Democrats Sheldon Whitehouse (R.I.) and Richard Blumenthal (Conn.), would require the judges panel to review any attorney generals decision to fire a special counsel before that firing could take effect. Tillis and Coons proposal would let the firing proceed according to current regulations, which they codify in the bill but the fired special counsel would have the right to contest the administrations decision in court. In that scenario, the judges panel would have two weeks from the day the special counsels case is filed to complete their review and determine whether the termination was acceptable. Tillis and Coons, who pulled their bill together over the past two days, explained the difference as one to ensure that the legislation does not run afoul of constitutional separation of powers. Both senators, as well as Graham, said they expect they may merge their efforts after lawmakers return to Washington in September. I think we maybe can have a meeting of the minds. I really appreciate them doing it, Graham said Thursday of Tillis and Coonss bill. I just have a different way of doing it. In either guise, the bill effectively would limit the presidents authority to hire and fire special counsels a privilege that fell more squarely under the executives purview after Congress let an independent-counsel law, established in the wake of the Watergate scandal, expire in 1999, following Kenneth Starrs investigation of President Bill Clinton. The lawmakers are not expecting that the president will like or support either proposal to protect the special counsel from being fired without cause. But they say they are convinced that there is enough support to pass such a law, even over Trumps objections, because of the number of Republicans and Democrats speaking out in defense of Mueller and his probe. Coons identified a broader bipartisan concern that the president may take inappropriate action to interfere with the ongoing, important work of Bob Mueller, he said, and guessed that if the president were to fire the special counsel, the Senate might promptly take action to reappoint him. This is the first step to put a speed bump in place against his improvident firing, he said of his bill with Tillis. Coons also pointed to his partnership with Tillis as an example of a trend of public statements and actions by an increasingly wider range of bipartisan senators to push back on decisions by this White House. As far as Mueller is concerned, that may be smart politics. According to a Quinnipiac University poll released this week, 64 percent of registered voters believe Mueller will conduct a fair investigation far more than the 33 percent of registered voters who approve of the job Trump is doing as president. Sixty-nine percent of registered voters also believe it would be an abuse of power for Trump to order the Justice Department to fire the special counsel. But the numbers are not so clear-cut when considering only registered Republicans. While more than half of registered GOP voters believe Muellers investigation will be fair, over three-quarters of registered Republicans approve of Trumps tenure in the Oval Office. And only 37 percent of registered GOP voters believe that Trump would be abusing his power if he ordered Muellers firing. Scott Clement contributed to this report. Read more at PowerPost Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe arrives at a news conference at his official residence. After he took the podium, he bowed to the nation. (Kimimasa Mayama/European Pressphoto Agency) A deeply contrite Japanese prime minister, tainted by political scandals and plummeting in the polls, overhauled his cabinet Thursday in an attempt to stave off challenges to his leadership. By appointing a lineup of experienced political veterans from across various factions in the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, Shinzo Abe tried both to restore stability to his government and to show the Japanese people he was working to put right the recent problems, analysts said. I reshuffled my cabinet with a determination to go back to the high point we occupied when we regained control of the government five years ago, Abe said at a news conference Thursday night, during which he did a long, low bow of contrition and voiced his deep remorse for losing the publics trust. Abe, who had been enjoying support ratings around 60 percent at the beginning of this year and looked set to retain the leadership of the LDP through to 2021, has suffered several blows this year that saw his poll numbers tumble into the 20s. He has become embroiled in two cronyism scandals centered around educational institutions, and his defense minister has been accused of a coverup that would perhaps inadvertently help Abe pursue his goal of revising the American-written, postwar constitution. The prime minister seemed to suggest that this cherished political goal, which would have enabled him to strengthen the Japanese military, was being put on the back burner. Our top priority is the revitalization of the economy, Abe said in the news conference. [ Japanese prime ministers poll numbers are so low they make Trumps look good ] In the reshuffle, the prime minister changed 14 of the 19 cabinet positions. Notably, he moved his foreign minister of the last five years and potential rival, Fumio Kishida, into the No. 3 position in the LDP, putting him in charge of the partys Policy Research Council. The move was apparently designed to keep Kishidas supporters happy and stop them from trying to oust Abe in LDP leadership elections next year. Abe also promoted another rival for the leadership, Seiko Noda, making her internal affairs minister. As the new foreign minister, Abe appointed Taro Kono, who studied at Georgetown University in the early 1980s and worked on Capitol Hill for Richard C. Shelby of Alabama, who was a Democratic congressman at the time. Among the archconservatives running the LDP, the 54-year-old Kono is considered something of a moderate. His father, Yohei Kono, led the study that resulted in the 1993 Kono Statement, in which Japan offered its sincere apologies and remorse to the women in Korea and China who had been used as sex slaves by the Japanese army during World War II. One of Konos first tasks will be to travel to the Asean Regional Forum in Manila next week, where North Korea will be one of the top agenda items. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson will also be attending, and the two are certain to meet. [ Abe accused of giving secret donation to far-right school ] Abe put two trusted political veterans into the portfolios at the center of his current woes: education and defense. Itsunori Onodera will return to the post of defense minister, which he held for almost two years when Abe returned to the premiership at the end of 2012, after the resignation last week of the gaffe-prone Tomomi Inada, once viewed as Abes protege. Inada had been accused of hiding records of the Self-Defense Forces controversial peacekeeping activities in South Sudan last year, when the security situation there was rapidly worsening. If the logs had been made public, this could have sapped the momentum from Abes plan to allow the SDF, as the Japanese military is known, to cast off some of its postwar limitations. Onodera represented a safe choice after Inada, said Sheila Smith, senior fellow for Japan studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. This makes complete sense, said Smith. Abe needs someone who knows what hes doing because Japan is about to write a new five-year plan and will upgrade its missile defenses. Onodera has serious policy chops and is well-known in Washington. And for education, Abe installed Yoshimasa Hayashi, a solid technocrat who had previously served as minister of defense and agriculture, and has a squeaky clean reputation. That was needed after the controversies involving the two schools, which Abe was accused of indirectly arranging favors for. But its not clear that the changes will put an end to Abes problems, Smith said. Well have to wait and see how the public responds, she said, noting that the problem was with one person, not the party as a whole. The polling data showed that the public had lost trust in Abe himself. The one thing the LDP has going for it: the main opposition Democratic Party is in even worse shape, with its latest leader a woman who was supposed to become the new face of the beleaguered party also standing down last week. Read more: In Japan, prime minister pushes ahead with controversial anti-conspiracy bill Why Japans first lady was probably not snubbing Trump at the G-20 dinner South Korea, Japan reach settlement on wartime Korean sex slaves Todays coverage from Post correspondents around the world Like Washington Post World on Facebook and stay updated on foreign news The Post has obtained transcripts of President Trumps January phone conversations with Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto and Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull. (The Washington Post) The Post has obtained transcripts of President Trumps January phone conversations with Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto and Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull. (The Washington Post) The leaked transcript of a phone call between President Trump and Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto published Thursday by The Washington Post left some Mexicans flabbergasted, even in a country where politics is commonly called surreal and where embarrassing phone calls by politicians are often filtered to the media. One popular Mexican radio host compared the January phone call to a Saturday Night Live skit. Others complained that Trump was using tough talk to threaten the Mexican leader as if he were a Trump employee. Pena Nieto appeared patient throughout the call, winning some rare praise from a population unhappy with his presidency. He politely told Trump again that Mexico would not pay to build a wall on the U.S.-Mexican border. My position has been and will continue to be very firm, saying that Mexico cannot pay for the wall, Pena Nieto told Trump. Trump replied: You cannot say that to the press. The press is going to go with that, and I cannot live with that. Later in the call Trump said, If youre not going to say that Mexico is going to pay for the wall, then I do not want to meet with you guys anymore because I cannot live with that.Trump also boasted that he could make Pena Nieto so popular that he could get lawmakers to change the Mexican constitution so that he could seek reelection. [Trump urged Mexican president to end his public defiance on border wall, transcript reveals] The Post obtained the transcripts of phone calls Trump made a week after his inauguration to Pena Nieto and Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull. Of the call to the Mexican president, Fernando Dworak, an independent political analyst in Mexico City, said: Its one thing to negotiate as a businessman and another as a president. Giving instructions to leaders of other countries is following this script, which is not only imperial but completely useless for diplomacy. Others, however, criticized Pena Nietos posture during the call and said the Mexican leader needed to be more assertive in sticking up for Mexican interests. If the Mexican president had taken a clearer and stronger stand, he could have been able to improve his position internally politically and public-opinion wise, said Carlos Bravo Regidor, professor at the Center for Teaching and Research in Economics in Mexico City. The position he assumed from the beginning was weak. Maybe because he is weak. Bravo conceded, however, that Pena Nieto is trying to navigate a very difficult situation. The leaking of the conversation portrays him generally in a good light. He is making an effort. He is being reasonable. [8 jaw-dropping lines from Trumps phone calls with Mexico and Australia] (Elyse Samuels/The Washington Post) Parts of the transcript were especially eye-popping, such as when Trump appeared to be offering political assistance to Pena Nieto. I want you to be so popular that your people will call for a constitutional amendment in Mexico so that you can run again for another six years, Trump said. Mexicos constitution prohibits presidential reelection, and Pena Nieto is scheduled to leave office in December 2018. According to some, Pena Nieto at first appeared to be adopting a son-in-law strategy. Pena Nieto appointed Luis Videgaray who proposed the Trump trip to Mexico last summer as his foreign minister, perhaps hoping to leverage Videgarays apparent relationship with Trump son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner. I did not want to meet with anybody, Trump said in the phone call, referring to the August meeting. It was only because of a very good relationship that Jared Kushner has with Luis that these two decided to meet and discuss, but I was not really in favor of the meeting. The transcript leaked as Mexico prepares for renegotiations on the North American Free Trade Agreement. Analysts say the Pena Nieto administration appears to be trying to keep some version of the pact intact, as 80 percent of Mexican exports head to the United States, and does not want to antagonize Trump. [Transcripts of Trumps calls with the Mexican president and the Australian prime minister] Some in Mexico saw the phone call as part of a pattern of missed opportunities to raise issues of importance to Mexico while leaving clear that the country is trying to save NAFTA at all costs. Yet another episode . . . where the renegotiation of NAFTA takes priority, and Mexicos diplomacy is reduced to submission and irrelevance, said Jose Merino, political science professor at the Autonomous Technological Institute of Mexico. But others see little upside in engaging Trump in a verbal battle, especially for Pena Nieto, who has a preference for protocol and doesnt handle hecklers or off-the-cuff comments very smoothly. Provoking the U.S. president would risk a rerun of Trumps ill-fated trip to Mexico City last August, where he appeared alongside Pena Nieto and talked about Mexico paying for the wall as his Mexican counterpart stood by. Its a chance to think that Pena Nieto hasnt acted so badly by avoiding useless confrontations with a bully, Dworak said. Theres nothing to be gained, and it only risks strengthening Trump. A Jan. 27 statement from Los Pinos, the Mexican presidents office, said that during their conversation the leaders had broached the border wall payment issue and that both presidents recognized their clear and very public differences . . . and agreed to resolve these differences as part of an integral discussion on all aspects of the bilateral relationship. The call came after Pena Nieto canceled a Jan. 31 trip to Washington, responding to a Trump tweet that it would be best not to visit if the border wall wasnt part of the agenda. The two presidents finally met at the Group of 20 summit in Hamburg last month, where again Trump spoke of having Mexico pay for a border wall and Pena Nieto sat silent, though Videgaray said they didnt hear what Trump said. In Australia, Turnbull won kudos for his straight-forward negotiating style and willingness to push a new president to accept a politically unpalatable deal cut by his Democrat predecessor. But refugee advocates were horrified by what they saw as the prime minsters indifference to refugees under Australian care in Papua New Guinea and Nauru. Turnbulls remark that a Nobel prize winning genius who arrived by boat wouldnt be allowed entry to Australia was seen by some Australians as exposing the governments cynicism toward its own tough immigration policy, which is designed to deter refugees and economic migrants arriving by boat from Indonesia. The conversation with Trump shows Malcolm Turnbull is not at all interested in the suffering, treatment and indeed torture inflicted on innocent people, the leader of the Greens Party, Richard Di Natale, said in a phone interview. Hes more interested in his own political survival. Speaking before the transcript of the conversation was published, the top public servant at the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade said the Trump-Turnbull phone call hadnt hurt relations, a position both men had stated publicly. Neither of them think its a big deal, Frances Adamson said Thursday in Sydney. Youve heard them talk about it. Nonetheless, the revelations come at a politically awkward moment for Turnbull. A split in his center-right Liberal Party over same-sex marriage is undermining his leadership, which has been hurt by poor poll numbers over the past year. A special meeting of federal Liberal parliamentarians on Monday to resolve the issue is shaping up as a test of Turnbulls ability to lead a party split between conservatives and liberals. Patrick reported from Sydney. Read more Todays coverage from Post correspondents around the world Like Washington Post World on Facebook and stay updated on foreign news Saudi Shiites in Qatif in Saudi Arabias Eastern Province protest the execution in Riyadh of prominent Shiite cleric Nimr al-Nimr by Saudi authorities on Jan. 2, 2016. (AFP/Getty Images) Munir al-Adam spends his hours alone in a Saudi prison, his mother says. He doesnt know if it is day or night because he is kept mostly in a dark cell. Partially blind and partially deaf, he has experienced different forms of torture in the five years since his arrest. He has been ordered to stand for long intervals of time, said his mother, Zahraa Abdullah. He was beaten with sticks and cables. He was electrocuted and prevented from eating or going to the bathroom. Adam and 13 other Saudi men are facing execution any day now for allegedly staging protests in the kingdom. All from the countrys Shiite minority, they include a teenager who was arrested just before he was to board a flight to visit a U.S. college where he planned to study English and finance. The men were charged with terrorism-related offenses. But human rights activists and American academics say confessions from the defendants were extracted under torture and that the death sentences breach international law. Activists have launched a public appeal to Saudi Arabias new crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, to dismiss the sentences. Saudi Justice Ministry officials said Thursday that they planned to issue a statement soon about the cases. Saudi officials have said previously through state-run media that the men staged attacks on checkpoints and patrols, killing several members of the security forces. [Trump signs tremendous deals with Saudi Arabia on his first day overseas] The sentences are a sign of the deepening tensions between Saudi Arabias Sunni elite and Shiite Muslims at home and in the region. In neighboring Yemen, the kingdom is engaged in a costly war against Shiite Houthi rebels said to be backed by Irans Shiite theocracy, Saudi Arabias top regional rival. The Saudi-led campaign to isolate Sunni-led Qatar is partly over the Persian Gulf nations close ties with Iran. At home, Shiites have long complained of discrimination. As the Arab Spring revolts erupted six years ago, thousands staged demonstrations mainly in eastern Saudi Arabias heavily Shiite-populated regions to demand more rights and access to government services. But the kingdoms rulers viewed the uprisings as a threat, accusing protesters of aligning themselves with Iran. In recent weeks, confrontations between Shiites and government forces in a restive eastern area have grown more violent. The 14 men on death row have been charged with offenses related to attending demonstrations. They were sentenced by the Specialized Criminal Court, which, according to the Britain-based human rights group Reprieve, used confessions extracted through torture as the basis of convictions. For more than a decade, Saudi Arabia has been among the top five countries globally for the large number of executions it carries out, mostly through beheadings and stonings. More than 300 people have been executed in the past two years, human rights activists say. The death penalty is regularly imposed for nonviolent crimes, including drug possession and adultery. Two weeks ago, the 14 men were moved to the Saudi capital, Riyadh, a sign that their executions were nearing. At least one juvenile and several young protesters are among the group, according to Reprieve. They include Mujtabaa al-Sweikat, who was arrested at an airport in December 2012 as he was leaving the country to visit the campus of Western Michigan University. Sweikat, 17 at the time, was not given a reason for his arrest and has been in prison ever since. He was convicted without having access to legal representation, according to human rights activists. In a July 22 statement, faculty and administrators of Western Michigan University said Sweikat was subject to sleep deprivations, beatings, cigarette burns, solitary confinement and others forms of torture or suffering. He was sentenced to death on the sole basis of a confession extracted by torture, they added, citing the findings of the U.N. human rights office President Donald J. Trump and other U.S. officials should be robust and vocal in defending freedom of expression the world over, read the statement. If U.S. citizens stay silent as another country attacks this freedom, we undermine the very foundations of democracy. Adam was arrested in March 2012 at a shop in the eastern town of Awamiyah. Police accused him of confronting them and took him to jail. He was 18 at the time and was tortured in his first three months in detention, said his mother, who answered questions via text messaging. She last spoke to him in June, during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. Now, every day is consumed by one fear. The date of the execution is not known, she said. I call upon every influential person to save my sons life. Heba Farouk Mahfouz in Cairo and Sheikha Aldosary in Riyadh contributed to this report. Read more: An ambitious young prince wants to reimagine Saudi Arabia and make it fun Todays coverage from Post correspondents around the world Like Washington Post World on Facebook and stay updated on foreign news Iran's top nuclear negotiator, Abbas Araghchi, talks to journalists after meeting senior officials from the United States, Russia, China, Britain, Germany and France in Vienna in October 2015. (Heinz-Peter Bader/Reuters) New U.S. sanctions targeting Iran are a breach of its nuclear deal with world powers and an attempt to abolish the accord, Iranian officials said Thursday, adding that the government will respond to what it sees as an escalation of U.S. aggression. We believe that the nuclear deal has been violated, and we will react appropriately, Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said on state television Thursday. The deal curbed Irans nuclear activities in exchange for the removal of some sanctions, while the new measures target anyone involved in Irans ballistic missile program and its powerful Revolutionary Guard Corps. The belief in Washington is that . . . Iran must be put under pressure, Araghchi said. And the goal of the new sanctions, signed by President Trump on Wednesday, is to destroy the 2015 agreement so that Iran will withdraw. The administration has criticized the deal for its narrow focus on the nuclear program, without addressing issues such as Irans support for proxy militias and its growing ballistic missile arsenal. Trump has questioned the utility of the agreement, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said in remarks at the State Department on Tuesday. The agreement dealt with a very small slice of Irans threats, Tillerson said. It was kind of like we put blinders on and just ignored all those other things. But even as the United States ramps up pressure on Iran including threats to leave the pact officials in Tehran have moved cautiously in response, weighing the cost of potential conflict with the benefits of remaining part of the deal. Before the agreement, which ended the countrys isolation, Iran probably would have balked at calls for diplomacy. As a regional power, it has defied the international community, building up missile defense and backing proxy forces across the region. [Power struggle escalates between Irans president and hard-liners] But under the nuclear deal, Iran has rejoined the global economy and is now keen to avoid blame for the collapse of the agreement. Trump recently certified Irans compliance with the deal, an authorization he is required to make to Congress every 90 days, but has suggested he may not do so again in the fall, without saying why. President Trump made clear that, in terms of the fate of the nuclear deal, the administrations latest certification of Iranian compliance was only a temporary reprieve a stay of execution, said Robert Malley, who served as the White House coordinator for the Middle East under President Barack Obama. So far, Iran has appeared content to sit back and allow the [Trump] administration to further isolate itself on the nuclear deal, said Malley, who is now vice president of policy for the Brussels-based International Crisis Group. But that calculus could change. Iran, experts say, could continue to adhere to the agreement and seek assurances from Europe and Russia that they would refuse any U.S. attempt to renegotiate. The European Union has countered Trumps calls to ditch the accord, reminding the administration that it belongs to the international community. If the White House decided to declare Iran noncompliant, it would probably be based on little to no valid evidence, said Richard Nephew, former coordinator for sanctions policy at the State Department. But Iran could still push the technical limits of the deal with small incremental steps that restart its nuclear program, he said. It could also restart all of its nuclear activity, which it says is for peaceful purposes, or use its military assets or proxy forces to strike U.S. interests in the region. Iran and the United States have skirmished in the waters of the Persian Gulf, where the U.S. Navy stations its 5th Fleet. American forces and militias loyal to Iran also fight in proximity in Iraq and Syria, where they are both battling the Islamic State. Having Iranian proxies take aim at the U.S. presence in Iraq or Syria could trigger powerful U.S. retaliation, which quickly could snowball, Malley said. [The United States and Europe are on a collision course over Iran] According to Ali Vaez, senior Iran analyst at the International Crisis Group, rising tensions could push Iran to double down on means of deterrence it considers essential to its national security, including missile defense and support for regional proxies. Last week, Iran successfully fired its satellite-carrying Simorgh launch vehicle into space, prompting the U.S. Treasury Department to come back with more sanctions. Irans parliament, reacting to the sanctions bill as it made its way through Congress, recently fast-tracked funding for the countrys ballistic missile program and Revolutionary Guard Corps. According to Abbas Aslani, world news editor at Irans privately run Tasnim news agency, Iran will not violate the nuclear agreement but neither will it abandon or compromise on its defense capabilities, including the missile program. Irans hard-liners, many of whom opposed the deal as one that granted too many concessions, may use the tensions to press for some sort of retaliation. The deal was negotiated under Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, a moderate recently elected to a second term. He fired back at domestic critics Thursday at a ceremony marking his formal endorsement by Irans supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has the final word on all matters of the state. Iran survived some of the toughest sanctions through a combination of the power of diplomacy and deterrent defensive power, the Associated Press quoted Rouhani as saying. During his second term, Iran will insist on constructive engagement more than before. But it is unclear how long Rouhani will maintain his pro-diplomacy rhetoric, which has already become increasingly more critical of the Trump administration, said Farzan Sabet, a fellow at Stanford Universitys Center for International Security and Cooperation. Still, conflict between the United States and Iran is not preordained, Malley said, and both sides could back down. But that means that the survival of the nuclear deal and avoidance of military conflict depend on the Trump administration showing restraint and the Iranian regime displaying wisdom, he said. Given what we know of the two, what are the odds of that? Read more Todays coverage from Post correspondents around the world Like Washington Post World on Facebook and stay updated on foreign news National security adviser H.R. McMaster on Wednesday removed Ezra Cohen-Watnick, his senior intelligence director, from his position in the White House more than four months after he initially tried to get him out of the job. In March, McMaster told the 30-year-old former Defense Intelligence Agency official that he was being moved to another position. But Cohen-Watnick, who worked on the Trump transition team and is close to Jared Kushner, Trumps son-in-law and senior adviser, appealed to Kushner and Stephen K. Bannon, Trumps chief White House strategist. Bannon and Kushner spoke with Trump, and Cohen-Watnick was kept in place. McMasters removal of Cohen-Watnick suggests that his influence in the White House and control over his personnel might be on the rise because of the arrival of new White House Chief of Staff John F. Kelly, a retired Marine general. The White House confirmed Cohen-Watnicks firing shortly after it was reported by the Conservative Review. General McMaster appreciates the good work accomplished in the NSCs Intelligence directorate under Ezra Cohens leadership, according to a White House statement. He has determined that, at this time, a different set of experiences is best-suited to carrying that work forward. The statement said that Cohen-Watnick would take on another position in the administration. His dismissal follows the removal last week of retired Army Col. Derek Harvey, an influential voice on Iran, Syria and counterterrorism policy. Harvey and Cohen-Watnick were known in the White House for their hawkish views on Iran and were regular allies in White House debates on counterterrorism, Middle East policy and Iran policy, U.S. officials said. Cohen-Watnick and Harvey were hired by McMasters ousted predecessor, Michael Flynn. McMaster initially sought to remove Cohen-Watnick after CIA Director Mike Pompeo told him that some intelligence officials did not think he was up to the job, said U.S. officials. The intelligence director is the White Houses primary point of contact with the intelligence community and is a filter for information that goes to the president. New waves of asylum seekers are sweeping into Canada from the United States, forcing authorities in the province of Quebec to set up a network of temporary shelters, including a makeshift center at Montreals Olympic Stadium. As many as 150 migrants a day are making irregular border crossings from northern New York state into Quebec near the border station at Lacolle, and 70 percent of them are Haitians, fearful that the Trump administration will soon end their special temporary status in the country. Quebec Immigration Minister Kathleen Weil said during a news conference Thursday that the province can handle the surge in migrants, but she asked the Canadian government to speed the processing of initial asylum claims for new arrivals and allow the migrants to leave Quebec if they wish to ultimately settle in other parts of the country. In addition to the shelter at the stadium, where up to 300 migrants can sleep on cots in the concessions area, Quebec is putting them up at student dormitories, shuttered nursing homes and hotels. In the first six months of the year, 6,500 asylum seekers arrived in Quebec across land and other borders, accounting for 35 percent of Canadas total, Weil said. [Some Canadians are also calling for more border control] Montreal Mayor Denis Coderre greets a bus of Haitian asylum seekers from the United States as it arrives at the Olympic Stadium in Montreal. (Catherine Legault/AFP/Getty Images) Jean-Pierre Fortin, head of the union representing Canadas border agents, called the influx a national crisis. The arrivals began shortly after Donald Trump was elected president and initially consisted of migrants from sub-Saharan Africa and countries named in Trumps temporary ban on travelers from several Muslim-majority states. Most have been crossing into Quebec and Manitoba, where geography makes the trek over the border relatively easy, except in winter. The increase in Haitian arrivals has been recent. One Haitian woman interviewed Wednesday by the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. after crossing into Canada said she left the United States because she was scared. So we checked online and we saw that Canada was going to welcome Haitians, and thats why we come here, she said. [Asylum seekers risk freezing winter trek to flee U.S.] Theres been a lot of fear in the community as to what happens if temporary protected status ends in January, said Adonia Simpson, a lawyer and director of the family defense program at Americans for Immigrant Justice in Miami, which has a large Haitian community. An estimated 58,000 Haitians have been granted temporary protected status (TPS) to remain in the United States since a 2010 earthquake devastated the Caribbean island nation. That status was renewed on an 18-month basis until May, when then-Homeland Security Secretary John F. Kelly announced a six-month extension and warned the migrants that it could be the last one. Kelly said that the situation in Haiti has stabilized and that TPS recipients should get ready to go home when the latest extension, which began in July, ends in January. Haitian asylum seekers sit with shopping bags outside Olympic Stadium, which is being used for temporary housing, on Wednesday. (Christinne Muschi/Reuters) [How Canada is trying to capitalize on Trumps immigration curbs] The Department of Homeland Security urges Haitian TPS recipients who do not have another immigration status to use the time before Jan. 22, 2018, to prepare for and arrange their departure from the United States, Kelly said in a statement. Under an agreement with Washington, migrants arriving at official Canadian border points who have already made a refugee claim in the United States are automatically turned away. But if the migrants cross irregularly into Canada, they can still seek asylum. Montreal Mayor Denis Coderre blamed the Trump administrations immigrant policy for the influx and wrote on Twitter that the newcomers were welcome: The City of Montreal welcomes Haitian refugees. You can count on our full collaboration. Then he added in Creole, Dont give up. [Trump, GOP senators unveil bill to slash legal immigration] Marleine Bastien, executive director of Haitian Women of Miami, said a high level of anxiety exists in the Haitian community because of fear that the temporary status will end. But she is asking migrants to think twice before making the rash decision of crossing into Canada. Haitians with TPS status could end up as undocumented migrants in Canada, with an uncertain path to legalization. Rather than cross illegally into Canada, they should first attempt to apply for legal status in either country through conventional means, she said. Read more Todays coverage from Post correspondents around the world Like Washington Post World on Facebook and stay updated on foreign news Source: Xinhua| 2017-08-03 04:57:04|Editor: yan Video Player Close CAIRO, Aug. 2 (Xinhua) -- A joint coordination meeting between Arab League (AL) and African Union (AU) Commission kicked off in Cairo Wednesday, Egypt's state-run MENA news agency reported. The meeting was held at the level of senior officials and specialized organizations' heads. Addressing the meeting, Assistant Secretary-General of the AL for International Political Affairs, Khalid al-Habas, said that hosting this important meeting comes within the framework of mutual keenness on continuing coordination and consultation. He stressed the attention paid by AL Secretary General to enhance the Arab-African cooperation especially in the presence of strong ties and common cultural and historical factors gathering both. Al-Habas reiterated that Arab-African cooperation had been achieved through the periodical meetings held at various levels. Meanwhile, AU Commissioner for Social Affairs Amira al-Fadil stressed the importance of the presence of a delegation from the AU that comprises different administrations specialized in technical issues to be discussed in this meeting. Fadil said that AU considers this partnership is one of the most important ones. This meeting is expected to raise recommendations to the coming joint meeting that will be held between AL Chief and the chairperson of AU Commission scheduled in the end of the year. Thank you for reading! Please purchase a subscription to read our premium content. If you have a subscription, please log in or sign up for an account on our website to continue. Photo taken on Sept. 22, 2013 shows the Russian embassy to Syria in Damascus, capital of Syria. (Xinhua/Zhang NaiJie) MOSCOW, Aug. 2 (Xinhua) -- Russia says terrorists attacked its embassy in the Syrian capital of Damascus with mortars on Wednesday, leaving no casualties. Two shells fell in the embassy and two more landed near the compound, resulting in slight material damage, the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement. "We strongly condemn the terrorist attacks against the Russian diplomatic mission in Damascus," it said, adding that Russia's principled and consistent line to carry out an "uncompromising" fight against "terrorists" in Syria will continue. The Russian embassy in Damascus has been shelled several times since Moscow started to participate in anti-terrorism operations in Syria in September 2015. Russia has withdrawn most of its troops from the war-torn country. However, it still supports anti-terrorism and humanitarian missions there. It was March 2020, and the world was closing down as the COVID-19 pandemic spread. At first, the news of... Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 02/08/2017 (1928 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. Claiming the eviction notices were sent in error, Manitoba Housing did an about face Wednesday and is allowing a group of seniors to stay in the community theyve called home for decades. A day after the Free Press reported the senior citizens were being forced by Manitoba Housing to move from Gilbert Park, Minister of Families Scott Fielding called them personally to say they could stay. Any of the tenants who wish to stay in their current homes will be allowed to do so and the notice they received saying otherwise was sent in error, said David von Meyenfeldt, a spokesman for the provincial government. BORIS MINKEVICH / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS From left, Doreen Thomas, Barb Desjarlais, Bev Forbes, Irene Soko and Chuckie Brunette celebrate Manitoba Housing's change of heart. But as happy as the seniors were as they gathered to celebrate outside their homes Wednesday, they say they dont believe the notice was sent out by mistake. There is no way this was a mistake, said 78-year-old Irene Soko. It was deliberate and they kept pushing it. We wanted a meeting all together to talk and they wouldnt give it to us. Soko and 67-year-old Bev Forbes, both of whom were told theyd have to move, as well as their friend and neighbour Chuckie Brunette, all say they believe the province changed their mind after their story started to get attention. On the phone with Fielding, Soko says she asked the minister for the promise she wouldnt have to move in writing. Given that she feels Manitoba Housing has broken promises to her in the past, this time around she wont feel comfortable till she sees it on paper. He said the letter was sent out in error, continued Soko. He explained and I said, OK, well will be getting a letter? Because were still scared. The tenants will be grandfathered into their current units as the size of their households havent changed since they moved into them in 2011, which means they are not subject to Manitoba Housings over-housing policy. The daughter of 79-year-old Doreen Thomas was out celebrating with her mom and the other tenants after getting the news. Barb Desjarlais was raised by her mother Doreen in Gilbert Park and had been involved in trying to fight the decision to move her mother to another part of the city. She says throughout the two months of trying to deal with the situation, she feels a lack of respect was shown to her mother by the Manitoba Housing property manager, who didnt seem interested in hearing their concerns. She, like the tenants, is having a hard time believing this was all just a misunderstanding. Im having a hard time believing that, she said. They all got letters at different times. I hate to think theyd make such a huge mistake, but it can happen. Theyre human and we forgive them. But I just hope this doesnt happen to anyone else. According to a provincial spokesman the letters were sent out by accident during Manitoba Housings annual tenant lease renewal, an error they deeply regret and apologize for. BORIS MINKEVICH / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS Irene Soko is thrilled she doesn't have to move from Gilbert Park, where she has lived for 36 years. When asked for comment on the stress the mistake has caused the seniors over the past two months, von Meyenfeldt said: Manitoba Housing is sympathetic and apologizes for the misunderstanding. They regrettably received a letter they shouldnt have. He went on to confirm the tenants will receive the promise in writing, but could not comment on why the Manitoba Housing property manager continued to tell the tenants theyd have to move if the letters were sent out by mistake. The tenants had previously reached out to MLA Cindy Lamoureux (Burrows) when trying to get help to fight the notices they received. Lamoureux went to Gilbert Park to meet with property manager Debbie Cook Wednesday, prior to Manitoba Housing informing the tenants they could stay. She arrived at the meeting with five of the tenants, but says she was refused any chance to speak with the property manager. While she says the lack of compassion shown to the seniors throughout this process has been concerning, what is most important is they will be allowed to stay in their homes. Soko says this conflict wont truly feel over till she gets a letter in the mail saying shell be allowed to stay. When that happens, shell be able to rest easy again. Itll be wonderful, she says with a smile. We didnt expect results so fast, but I think it ensures theyre not going to bother us again. ryan.thorpe@freepress.mb.ca Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 03/08/2017 (1927 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. Yes! Winnipeg is searching for a new leader. Vince Barletta, who replaced former Yes! Winnipeg leader Bill Morrissey in July 2015, is leaving the post early next month to become president and CEO of the St. Boniface Hospital Foundation. Barletta said in an interview Wednesday he starts his new job after the Labour Day weekend. He said he hadnt considered leaving Yes! Winnipeg until a recruiter contacted him and asked if hed be interested in the foundation job. He called the foundations chairman, Neil Duboff who he has worked with in the past and was urged to apply. MIKE DEAL / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS Neil Duboff (left), chairman of the St. Boniface Hospital Foundation, and Vince Barletta, leader of Yes! Winnipeg. Barletta will be leaving Yes! Winnipeg in September to become president and CEO of the hospital foundation. When you think about the opportunity that lies ahead, and you think about the tremendous success an organization like the St. Boniface Hospital Foundation could have it was just too good an opportunity to pass up, Barletta said. And Im glad I didnt pass it up because I think weve got some incredible ground we can cover in the coming years. He noted the foundation, which has a staff of 22, has a long track record of success in raising money to support patient care and medical research at St. Boniface Hospital. Since its inception in 1971, more than 75,000 people have donated a total of $120 million through the foundation. Barletta said he was also attracted by the fact the foundation embodies the same spirit or community that has helped make Yes! Winnipeg a success. Yes! Winnipeg was launched in 2011 as an initiative of Economic Development Winnipeg (EDW). Its mandate is to attract, retain and expand businesses and jobs in the city. EDW president and CEO Dayna Spiring said EDW officials will be sorry to see Barletta go. But its a great opportunity for him. Hes going to get the chance to run his own team and its a nice step for him, she said. Were certainly going to miss him at Yes! Winnipeg, but were grateful for the contributions he has made. Spiring said the search for a replacement is still in the very early stages. We want to do it as soon as we can, but its important to me to get the quality that I want and to make sure I get someone that has the skill set I want, she said. I have a few people in mind and I think there is probably going to be some great candidates out there. Were going to make sure we find the right one. Duboff said Barletta was chosen from a pool of more than 90 people who had expressed an interest in the job. Among the reasons he was chosen were his broad experience, his capacity to deal with technical matters, his communication skills and his understanding of what the foundation is trying to do and the importance of strategic planning. While it was a very difficult decision on who to select, it was clear that Vince was going to be the leader to take us to even stronger positions than weve had until now. Barletta replaces Chuck LaFleche, who had served as the foundations president and CEO for seven years. We were sorry to see him (LaFleche) go but hes got new opportunities (he wanted to pursue), Duboff said. The move to St. Boniface Hospital Foundation marks another major career shift for the one-time senior provincial government official and former two-term Brandon city councillor. Prior to joining Yes! Winnipeg, Barletta was director of community and economic development with the Government of Manitobas priorities and planning committee of cabinet. He said one of the highlights of his two-year tenure as Yes! Winnipeg leader was working with Skip the Dishes. The Winnipeg firm was acquired last year by U.K.-based Just Eat for about $200-million and is growing to more than 500 employees in the city as it continues to expand its operations. That was the largest technology transaction in Canada when they were purchased, Barletta noted. (It) put Winnipeg on the map in terms of business and high-tech something we dont always think about when we think about Winnipeg. Other highlights he cited were Canada Goose opening a second major production plant in the city, Manitoba Harvest continuing to expand its operations here and machine-learning technology company Sightline Innovation setting up shop here. murray.mcneill@freepress.mb.ca Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 03/08/2017 (1927 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. LOWER FORT GARRY Exactly 146 years to the day Treaty 1 was signed at Lower Fort Garry, Parks Canada unveiled nine flags there Thursday afternoon to mark the anniversary of the legislation that forever altered the fabric of Canadian history. Seven flags representing Treaty 1 First Nations Swan Lake, Sandy Bay Ojibway, Long Plain, Roseau River Anishinabe, Brokenhead Ojibway, Sagkeeng and Peguis flanked by a Canadian flag and a Union Jack, were erected on the national historic site, creating a permanent reminder of both the treatys successes and its shortcomings. Its a beautiful legacy for us to witness, Long Plain First Nation Chief Dennis Meeches said minutes before the flags were raised. Today is a great example of reconciliation. JUSTIN SAMANSKI-LANGILLE / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS Flags are raised at a Treaty 1 flag raising ceremony Thursday at Lower Fort Gary National Historic Site. When it was signed Aug. 3, 1871, Treaty 1 became the first numbered treaty made between Indigenous peoples and the Crown in Western Canada. After several days of deliberation and negotiation between Crown officials and Indigenous representatives, the agreement was reached and a bond established between European settlers and Canadas first people. Though its signing resulted in those Indigenous people ceding a significant portion of southern Manitoba to the newly established federal government, Treaty 1 is considered by many to be a representation of nation-to-nation relationships intended to foster respect and understanding between all people living in what is now known as Canada. Were all treaty people here sharing one goal, said Chief Lance Roulette of Sandy Bay Ojibway First Nation. To grow, to be prosperous and to live in harmony with one another. Speaking to a crowd of more than 120 people, Roulette and other chiefs discussed the importance of the continued commitment by both the government and the public to recognize and acknowledge the history of Canadian land and the legacy of the agreements that shaped and continue to define the country. Its happening late, Roulette said. But its happening. Brokenhead Ojibway First Nation Chief Jim Bear acknowledged the flags installation as an important step, but he called on all levels of government to continue to address and commit to reconciliation efforts. Were not asking for handouts, Bear said. Were just asking for fairness. Were just asking for justice. Were just asking for reconciliation. Jim Carr, the federal minister of natural resources and the MP for Winnipeg South Centre, spoke at the events opening and attended a traditional pipe ceremony prior to the flag installation. Carr said the ceremony served as a reminder that we are spirit before we are human, and that when we go, we are returned to the earth. Returned to the ground. Returned to the creator. Loretta Ross, the Manitoba treaty commissioner, said the flags will now serve as a visible acknowledgment of the deep ties that First Nations in Manitoba and across Canada have to the land acquired by the government through treaties. When you see the flag of your community flying, it gives pride and gives a level of understanding, she said. Carl McCorrister, a retired teacher from Peguis First Nation, felt a deep sense of joy upon seeing his communitys flag a green, yellow and blue tapestry with a red ring representing the circle of life at its centre fluttering in the wind at Lower Fort Garry. With the blue representing water, the green representing nature, and the red representing his people and ancestors, McCorrister said the flag serves as a reminder of his strong connection to Manitoba. In many ways, the flag symbolizes Treaty 1, he said. As the flags made their way up the poles, organized in a wide semi-circle, the crowd stood silently as one man banged a hand-held drum with authority, singing loudly and passionately, his voice echoing across the grounds. For a long time, Meeches pointed out, holding Indigenous ceremonies and celebrating Indigenous culture was illegal; It wasnt that long ago before they became publicly acceptable. The raising of the flags might seem minor to some, but Ross, Carr and, most importantly, the chiefs and elders present, hope their presence will act as a signal of comprehension, understanding and reconciliation for years to come. Its such a beautiful day, said Peguis First Nation Chief Glenn Hudson. Such a beautiful day. ben.waldman@freepress.mb.ca Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 03/08/2017 (1927 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. Canadas immigration minister is in Winnipeg to consult with local resettlement groups before deciding how many and what sort of newcomers to welcome next year. Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Minister Ahmed Hussen has no plans to speak to the media, but one of the Winnipeggers Hussen is sitting down with told the Free Press what he hopes to impress upon the minister. Its important for us to make sure that humanitarian immigration is a strong part of Canadas immigration, said Brian Dyck, the Mennonite Central Committees national migration and resettlement program co-ordinator. Its important to get the balance right with various aspects of humanitarian immigration and make sure theyre well supported, said Dyck, who also chairs the National Refugee Sponsorship Agreement Holder Association that meets with the Canadian government to help form policy on refugee resettlement. Lately, Dyck has been involved with the Global Refugee Sponsorship Initiative, advising groups and governments in the United Kingdom, where theyve set up a private refugee sponsorship program similar to Canadas. Canada is in a position to be looked at as a leader globally in terms of refugee resettlement, said Dyck, who has travelled to the U.K. twice this year to talk about private refugee sponsorship. One of the U.K.s first sponsors was the Archbishop of Canterbury, who had a Syrian family move into his official London residence, Lambeth Palace. Canadas private sponsorship program is such a success because its not just one person or small group taking the refugees under their wing, Dyck told the Brits. One of the things we highlighted that Canada has and that was appealing to them is that its not just a few people involved in doing this. Its everyone a large group is making sure these people feel that theyre integrated. Thats one of the successes its all of our responsibility. Hearing the NGOs in the U.K. excited about refugee resettlement as a way to build and energize their communities and make a difference personally was encouraging, Dyck said. Their reaction was in stark contrast to the result of last years Brexit vote that was seen as rejection of newcomers to the U.K. This is one way people can demonstrate, Thats not who we are, said Dyck, who met with sponsors, politicians and government representatives in places like Bristol and Manchester. Sponsors in the U.K. face challenges similar to their Canadian counterparts, including access to affordable housing and how to get the most bang for your buck with integration programs. They were asking questions about the effectiveness of the settlement services Canada, Dyck said Wednesday on the eve of his meeting with Canadas immigration minister. Service standards are something this government is focused on not just for refugees, but for all who can access settlement services. He said the federal government has said it wants immigration policy to be driven by data and to know what is working and if money is being well spent. Are they improving their French or English? Are they learning skills so they can get good jobs? theyre the kinds of questions many refugee-welcoming countries are asking as the world witnesses the greatest number of displaced people since the Second World War. Dyck thinks theyll find the answers. It is an exciting time, not just in Canada but globally. Some people are looking at this as an opportunity to be creative in ways to deal with forced displacement. carol.sanders@freepress.mb.ca Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 03/08/2017 (1927 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. The Pallister government has hired a University of Manitoba constitutional law expert to provide a legal opinion on whether Ottawa has the authority to implement a carbon-pricing scheme in Manitoba. Bryan Schwartz will provide legal advice on the constitutionality of the federal governments decision to set benchmarks on pricing. Ottawa wants provinces to phase in carbon pricing that would reach $50 a tonne by 2022 or develop a cap-and-trade system. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau meets with Manitoba Premier Brian Pallister in Winnipeg on Saturday, July 29, 2017. THE CANADIAN PRESS/John Woods Dr. Schwartz is a well-known Manitoban expert on constitutional law who will provide a legal opinion to help guide our government in its development of a made-in-Manitoba climate and carbon-pricing plan, Justice Minister Heather Stefanson said in a news release Thursday. Our government looks forward to receiving his assessment as we seek clarity in this fundamentally important matter. Premier Brian Pallister has said Manitoba should get credit for billions of dollars the province has invested in its hydroelectric system, which provides the vast majority of the provinces power. Hes looking at cutting a better deal for Manitoba with Ottawa. Saskatchewan has already threatened to challenge the carbon-pricing plan in court, saying it doesnt take into account measures taken to reduce emissions, such as that provinces carbon-capture facility. All provinces and territories except for Manitoba and Saskatchewan agreed to sign a carbon-pricing plan in December when they signed the Pan-Canadian Framework on Clean Growth and Climate Change. Provinces have until the end of 2018 to introduce a price on carbon or Ottawa will impose its own model on them. Ottawa presented provinces with three options for pricing carbon several weeks ago: legislate their own levy on emissions starting at $10 a tonne; legislate their own cap-and-trade system that can show it will produce equivalent cuts in emissions as a carbon tax; or use a hybrid model largely based on Albertas program that Ottawa will impose itself. Meanwhile, the newly formed Manitoba Carbon Pricing Coalition held a news conference at the Legislative Building Thursday to urge the province to introduce a Manitoba carbon price in 2018. This coalition is not advocating for any specific policy. Were here to educate and to provide information about carbon pricing so that the public and governments have all the facts to make informed decisions, spokesman Curt Hull said. He said Manitoba should not ask for any special favours on carbon pricing. He said every province needs to do its share. In order to avoid the potentially catastrophic consequences from climate change we need to take urgent action, he said. Members of the coalition include Climate Change Connection, Green Action Centre, Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives Manitoba, International Institute for Sustainable Development, University of Winnipeg, Prairie Climate Centre, Manitoba Energy Justice Coalition, Transition Winnipeg, Canadians for Clean Prosperity/Manitobans for a Clean Economy and the Citizens Climate Lobby. larry.kusch@freepress.mb.ca Opinion Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 03/08/2017 (1927 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. This week Canadas immigration minister, Ahmed Hussen, is in town to discuss the annual levels plan with an invitation-only list of Manitobans. How many will we admit in 2018? The ministers agenda speaks of economic needs, international obligations, ability to process and settlement capacity, but is the usual subterfuge aimed at limiting the numbers. It is an annual exercise designed to give the appearance of consultation, but is of little consequence. Canadas basic approach to immigration has remained essentially unchanged for a century. Adrian Wyld / The Canadian Press Files Immigration Minister Ahmed Hussen during Question Period in the House of Commons in Ottawa. We are and have been for three generations a gated nation, restricting immigration deliberately. Current demand to come here is about triple what we allow in each year. Who we let in, or dont let in, has changed dramatically over the years. Winnipegs Canadian Museum of Human Rights has a powerful gallery that highlights this reality: the Komagata Maru incident of 1914 in which an Asian ship of British Raj citizens was turned back; no Asians until 1947; prime minister Mackenzie Kings denial of landing in 1939 to Jews escaping the Holocaust aboard the ship St. Louis. Today and for many years our approach is no longer openly racist. The rules are much more subtle, but they still achieve a restrictive result. It seems to be what many Canadians want. Immigration for the past quarter century has been largely from non-traditional sources such as Asia, Africa and the Middle East. It was in 1991 that we eliminated the Assisted Relative Class from our immigration categories so that these more recent Canadians can no longer sponsor their families to come here. The economic and political elites have maintained their grip on the nation, but Canada has paid a heavy price. Had we kept to the vision and policy of prime minister Wilfrid Laurier in the early years of the 20th century, today our population would match that of Japan, be 11/2 times that of Germany and double that of the United Kingdom. Instead Canada is small and largely irrelevant on the world stage, although there are many Canadians who see us as tiny-perfect and like it that way; a kind of Switzerland to the planet. But the blunt reality is that we are defenceless in a dangerous world. Our military size ranks us only 74th among nations. The U.S. military is 22 times ours in size. We couldnt even begin to defend our borders. One of historys great ironies is that the most significant wave of immigration in early days was the arrival in 1783 of the United Empire Loyalists, the refugees from the American Revolution. Today we depend on the U.S. to protect us. When one reflects that the state of California has a population four million larger than all of Canada and yet could fit into the bottom two thirds of Manitoba, one can see how we have compromised our birthright in this vast and promising land. In 1900, the U.S. had a population lead on Canada of 71 million people. Today, it leads by 290 million. The U.S. opened its gates to the world and built the mightiest nation on the planet. Canada has cautiously tiptoed along the immigration path; the consequences are still to unfold. This is the real backdrop for Minister Hussens tour. Tom Denton is a writer and speaker on immigration-related issues. Opinion Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 03/08/2017 (1927 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. Anthony Zurcher, the BBCs North America correspondent, nailed it in a report on July 27. Where Abraham Lincoln had his famous team of rivals in his administration, this is something different, Zurcher wrote. Trumps White House seems more akin to the final scene in (Quentin Tarantinos film) Reservoir Dogs, where everyone is yelling and pointing a gun at someone else and theres a good chance no one is going to come out unscathed. Several walking wounded have limped out of the White House since the shooting started Sean Spicer, Michael Short, Reince Priebus but nobody would call them unscathed. The latest to take a bullet is Anthony Scaramucci, the new communications director, who was appointed only two weeks ago. Evan Vucci / The Associated Press Files U.S. President Donald Trump (right) talks with new White House Chief of Staff John Kelly after he was privately sworn in on Monday. Scaramucci, who could be a Tarantino character himself, topped all the other bizarre events in the White House last week by delivering an obscenity-laced rant that forced the resignation of U.S. President Donald Trumps chief of staff, Reince Priebus. And why has the new chief of staff, General John Kelly, now fired Scaramucci? Maybe for being a potty-mouth, but more likely because Scaramucci was insisting that he report directly to Trump, not through Kelly. Things are falling apart in the White House much faster than even the keenest observers of Trumps behaviour would have predicted and the important part is not the dysfunction. The United States would work just fine if Trump never managed to turn his tweets into reality. What matters is that he is cutting his links with the Republican Party. Trump was never a real Republican. As a genuine populist, he is ideology-free. Senior Republicans knew this and they tried quite hard to stop him from winning the nomination last year. After that, they were stuck with him. He won the White House for them, so they have been in an uncomfortable partnership ever since. That is now coming to an end. Part of the unwritten deal was that establishment Republicans got senior roles in the Trump White House. Priebus, dismissed last Friday, was the most important of them. Whats left are alt-right white nationalists such as Steve Bannon and Stephen Miller, New Yorkers with Democratic leanings such as Jared Kushner and Gary Cohn, Trump family members, ex-businessmen such as foreign secretary Rex Tillerson and a triumvirate of generals in high civilian office. This is a recipe for paralysis, but who cares? Did you really want a White House team that enabled Trump to impose his will (or rather, his whims) on the United States and to some extent the world? Well, no and neither do senior Republicans, but they do care very much about controlling the White House. Republicans who think long-term are well aware that the changing demography of the U.S. population is eating away at their core vote. This may be their last chance, with control of both houses of Congress and (at least in theory) of the presidency, to reshape their image and their policies. They cant do that if they dont control the White House and the only way they could regain control there is for Trump to go and Vice-President Mike Pence to take over. A successful impeachment could accomplish that, but it would be very hard to engineer such a thing without splitting the Republican Party, even if the current FBI investigation comes up with damning evidence of Trumps ties with Russia. It would be a big gamble. The Republicans in Congress couldnt really get Trump out before November 2018 and the turbulence of impeachment might cost them their control of Congress in the mid-terms. In an ideal outcome, however, it would give the Republicans time to go into the 2020 election with Pence in charge of the White House and some solid achievements under their belts. What would Trump do if he faced impeachment? His instinct would be to fight and he fights mainly by creating diversions. The best diversion is a war, but against whom? Even Trump would have trouble selling a war against Iran to the American public. Despite all the propaganda, the country doesnt really feel like a threat. North Korea, however, says and does things provocative enough to let Trump make a (flimsy) case for attacking it. And if he thought his presidency was at stake, he certainly would. Gwynne Dyer is an independent journalist whose articles are published in 45 countries. Source: Xinhua| 2017-08-03 07:07:57|Editor: Liu Video Player Close CARACAS, Aug. 2 (Xinhua) -- Venezuela's top electoral body on Wednesday entered into a dispute with the Venezuelan company that provided voting services for the recent and controversial constituent elections. The company, Smartmatic, has questioned the official outcome of Sunday's vote, and called for an audit. The president of the National Electoral Council (CNE), Tibisay Lucena, told reporters at a press conference the allegations made by the company were "grave" and "unprecedented." It is "an unprecedented opinion from a company whose only role in the electoral process is to provide certain services and technical support, which do not determine the outcome," said Lucena. In a statement and video posted to its website, the company specifically contested the CNE's assertion that 8,089,320 Venezuelans went to the polls to elect the members of a National Constituent Assembly (ANC) to rewrite the Constitution. "We know, without any doubt, that the turnout ... was manipulated," said the company, adding "we estimate the difference between the actual participation and the one announced by authorities is at least one million votes." However, the company supplied no proof, asserting only that since the political opposition boycotted the elections, no independent auditors were on hand to verify the results. Lucena said the company was making "an irresponsible assertion." The 545 members of the ANC were to be sworn in later in the day. Opinion Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 03/08/2017 (1927 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. There is a truth about the Winnipeg Free Press that has, for far too long, not been fully and properly reconciled on the pages of our newspaper. When our first edition rolled off of a press in a rented shack at 555 Main St. on Nov. 30, 1872, what was then the Manitoba Free Press was publishing on territory designated in Treaty 1, which was signed one year earlier. That link between the Free Press and the first treaty signed after Canadian Confederation is a fact about the oldest newspaper in Western Canada that cannot be denied. And yet, that is a truth that the Free Press and those who have shared in the benefits of Treaty 1 have seldom acknowledged, let alone celebrated. So let us recognize the facts of this first treaty, signed 146 years ago today at the Stone Fort we now all know as Lower Fort Garry. MIKE DEAL / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS A replica of a Treaty Medal No. 1 on display at the Manitoba Museum. It commemorates the Treaty negotiated at Lower Fort Garry in 1871. That first treaty, signed on behalf of Her Majesty Queen Victoria, was a promise to the peoples who were the first to live on these lands after the melting of the glaciers and who then helped ensure the survival of those of European descent who wanted to make this land their home, too. That first treaty, signed amid the smoke of a pipe ceremony and the presentation of medals, formalized a relationship that not only ensured peace in the Red River Valley, but also reflected long-term, respectful relationships between First Nations and settler communities established during 100 years of the fur trade. At the time of this first treaty, the future city of Winnipeg was a place where Cree and Anishinaabe, Dakota, Metis, French and English, Catholics and Protestants not only shared the land, but established the sort of openhearted, multi-faith, multilingual, multi-cultural community to which we still aspire. And that first treaty laid the foundation for the Manitoba of today, a province that would be a better place for all if the ties that bind and the binding obligations were acknowledged and respected. As Canada marks its 150th year of Confederation and the Free Press celebrates its 145th year of publication, this first treaty can no longer be consigned to the past. Instead, this first treaty needs to be part of our present and a guide to our future together. Canada and Manitoba cannot be a country and province where those who were here first are denied the promises that are part of our shared history and an embodiment of our collective aspiration. Manitoba and Winnipeg cannot be a places where we are quick to enjoy the holiday that is Louis Riel Day, but slow to respect the homeland of the Metis and their place in our past, present and future. And the Free Press cannot be a newspaper that doesnt use its power to help build understanding of the facts of this first treaty, its ongoing obligations and the path toward reconciliation that begins with recognition. The editorial page is the voice of the newspaper and our mission is to use that voice to articulate views and express opinions that will serve this community. For our first 145 years, that voice has not always spoken as loudly and as clearly as it could about the peoples who were first here and their lasting contributions to the city and province we all share. Today, we are acknowledging that past and moving forward in the spirit of that first treaty that created a permanent and lasting relationship. The signing of that first treaty was something celebrated by those on this land, not denied. To celebrate it anew by taking steps to recognize the strength of that covenant today and tomorrow is an appropriate way to mark the 146th anniversary of the signing of Treaty 1. In that spirit of commemoration, we will mark this historic month by declaring on this page, to all who come to hear our voice, the truth that the Winnipeg Free Press has been published since 1872 on Treaty 1 territory and the homeland of the Metis. TREATIES 1 AND 2 A video was released in late last month showing a teenager being restrained and repeatedly tased while in a Cheatham County, Tennessee jail. The video can be seen here. Eighteen-year-old Jordan Norris was arrested in November 2016 on drugs and weapons charges. He was held in the county jail for several days. While there, he was put on suicide watch. The night of the incident, he was allegedly banging his head against the wall and threatening other inmates. Sheriffs deputies responded by dragging Norris from his cell and strapping him into a restraining chair. The video, taken from surveillance cameras in the jail, clearly shows Norriss chest, arms, and legs bound to the chair. His mouth is gagged and a deputy is holding up his head. Another deputy can be seen repeatedly shocking Norris in the chest with a Taser. The deputy can be heard saying, Ill keep on doing it until I run out of batteries, and stop resisting, while Norris is flinching in agony from the Taser. Norriss step-father, William Chapman, told local News Channel 5, I think he had some sort of breakdown. They said he was feeling suicidal. After the teens release from jail, Chapman said he had counted more than forty burns on Norriss body. Sheriff Breedlove declined an interview for the report, but said the deputies followed procedure and used a dry-stun to gain compliance. In other words, as far as the police are concerned, it could have been worse. Norris has filed a lawsuit against the Cheatham County Sheriff's office for use of excessive force. Cheatham County borders Nashvilles Davidson County. While Nashville and some surrounding counties have recently experienced a population boom, Cheatham County remains relatively small with a population of approximately 40,000. According to the United States Census Bureau, the per capita income in the county is $23,922, with ten percent of the population living in poverty. Like most small towns and rural areas across the US, Cheatham County has seen a rise in opioid addiction and the crimes associated with the drug trade. A recent report by the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation revealed that between 2013 and 2014 alone the county experienced an 85 percent increase in drug and narcotics violations. Sheriff Mike Breedlove was elected in 2014 on a tough-on-crime platform of addressing the drug problem plaguing the county. In February, a local reporter from television news channel WKRN rode along with a member of the countys drug enforcement team, Lt. Shannon Heflin. Nowadays, its safe to say 99 percent of it [crime] is drug-related, Heflin told the reporter, who added that Lt. Heflin, a 22-year veteran, says just about every crime they see can be traced back to pain pills and the addiction they fuel. In March, Detective Ken Miller told the news station, Heroin is taking up 80 to 90 percent of our time. Everything we are dealing with now is related to heroin. The abuse of Norris is not an isolated event. All over the United States, local law enforcement is becoming more and more militarized. Military grade assault weapons and armor, and armored combat vehicles are becoming a common sight across small-town America. Crime and addiction are treated simply as the outcome of the character flaws of bad people who need to be removed from society instead of as a broader social phenomenon. This mindset is apparent on the Cheatham County Sheriffs Office Facebook page. Each week, Sheriff Breedlove updates the page with humorous anecdotes from the weeks crime and arrest reports. The entries are meant to humiliate and degrade those arrested for crimes and to bias public opinion before the accused are tried in court. One such entry, nonsensical and racist in regard to a man driving on a revoked license, reads: A FaceBook representative from Saudi Arabia has offered a round trip ticket for HiNKLE [sic]. They have physicians on hand to safely remove both of his hands and reattach them to an All-State Saudi goodwill driver. All for the effort to protect other American infidel drivers from HINKLES disregard Sheriffia LawBut, we are America and hes lucky this is not TEAMSAUDI.. Breedloves entry regarding the arrest of Jordan Norris describes using a SWAT team to storm the teenagers house in the middle of the night while he was sleeping to arrest him: JORDAN NORRIS (2nd pic) let it be known he was going to kill any Deputy who tried to arrest him. He was armed with stolen weapons and on the fast track to live the Thug Life. The team, armed with a search warrant, invited themselves into the House of Norris on Little Pond Creek with such dynamic quickness, he became shocked with awe and peed a little bit. Great job Cheatham SWAT!! The language employed to describe the arrest, while absurd, is also intended to evoke a military raid in a war zone, complete with the shock and awe of the American war machine. Cheatham County, like many local law enforcement agencies, has increasingly used excessive force and shoot first, ask questions later tactics. For example, in January, local resident Charles Holland was shot by deputies. He had emerged from his house with a rifle upon seeing several police cars outside responding to a traffic stop. A neighbor told WSMV news he heard five or six gun shots and Hollands home was riddled with bullets. Holland, a Nashville firefighter, was taken to a local hospital. Peter ONeill, Papua New Guineas prime minister, was placed back in office when the countrys parliament reconvened on Wednesday following national elections. ONeill received 60 votes from newly elected parliamentarians, with 46 voting against. He will now begin a second five-year term, but with a significantly decreased majority. Parliament was recalled even though results from only 106 of 111 seats had been declared. With the remaining seats still to be confirmed, the final shape of parliament is yet to be determined. A high number of electoral petitions is expected also in the court of disputed returns. The hasty reconvening of parliament by Governor-General Bob Dadae was undoubtedly designed to legitimise the deeply undemocratic and disputed election, and intended to quash widespread popular anger over its outcome. Dadae had already invited ONeill to form a new government last Friday, when more than a quarter of official returns were still outstanding. The parliamentary vote was held despite objections of some legal figures, who said Electoral Commissioner Patilias Gamato did not follow the law during the return of the election writs. Speaker Job Pomat declared that since ONeills Peoples National Congress Party (PNC)of which Pomat himself is a membergained the highest number of seats, his nomination met legal requirements. ONeill earlier declared that the PNC had negotiated an agreement with the Peoples Progress Party, the United Resources Party and the Social Democratic Party to form a coalition government. The two-week voting period that ended on July 8 was dominated by vote-rigging, the wholesale omission of names from the electoral roll, ballot box-tampering and bribery. The Electoral Advisory Committee members charged with overseeing the election all resigned, accusing the Electoral Commission of not allowing them access to basic information. Australian academic and former PNG treasury advisor, Paul Flanagan, told Radio Australia on July 18 that by comparing the electoral rolls with 2011 census figures, he found rolls had been inflated by nearly 300,000 false names. The ghost voters were mainly concentrated in electorates controlled by the PNC. In the weeks following the close of polling, hostility to the conduct of the elections erupted in protests and violent incidents over accusations that vote counting was hijacked. Towns in several Highlands provinces remain in lockdown following shootings between rival factions in which several people were killed. Protestors in Mt Hagen last week crowded the towns streets, calling on the Electoral Commission to account for what they said was an illegal early declaration, with dozens of ballot boxes still left to count. The protests sparked fighting and forced the closure of businesses and disruptions to the airport. Demonstrations also have taken place recently in the capital Port Moresby over counting delays in the citys three electorates. The turmoil is an expression of the explosive social tensions produced by the austerity policies imposed by the ONeill government over the past two years. ONeill seized office in 2011 by ousting his predecessor Michael Somare in an illegal parliamentary coup supported by Canberra, which regarded Somare as too close to Beijing. ONeill has clung to power in the face of struggles by students and workers over inequality, corruption and the countrys deepening social crisis. The government has increasingly turned to police-state measures to suppress opposition. International observer teams criticised the running of the election. The Pacific Islands Forums team noted large numbers of citizens were prevented from exercising their constitutional rights to vote despite high levels of civic awareness and interest in participating in the election. The official observers stopped short of supporting calls by opposition leaders to force the Electoral Commission to declare the election officially failed and conduct a new one. Despite the widespread electoral fraud, ONeills government has seen its majority slashed. The PNC has so far won 25 seatsdown from 55 in the previous parliament. Prominent government figures, particularly those responsible for massive expenditure cuts, have been ousted. These include Deputy Prime Minister Leo Dion, former parliamentary speaker Theo Zurenuoc, Fisheries Minister Mao Zeming, Health Minister Michael Malabag, Petroleum and Energy Minister Nixon Duban, and Youth and Community Development Minister Delilah Gore. None of the opposition parties, however, offer any alternative for working people. A coalition headed by the National Alliance (NA) with the second largest number of seats in the parliament, and backed by the Pangu Party and the PNG Party, has attacked ONeill from the right, accusing him of bankrupting the country and not going far enough in slashing budget spending. The NA was a coalition partner in the previous ONeill government and bears responsibility for its savage austerity measures. NA leader Patrick Pruaitch was sacked as treasurer shortly before the election. He had belatedly tried to distance himself from the government by attacking the PNC for mismanaging the economy. The NA campaigned as part of the opposition, demanding an end to government borrowing. The new government will immediately confront a deepening fiscal crisis. The Midyear Economic and Fiscal Outlook from the Treasury is expected to reveal a deficit one billion Kina ($US309 million) larger than that forecast in the budget seven months ago. After five years of the biggest deficits in PNGs history, public debt has blown out from K21 billion to K25 billionor from 29 percent of gross domestic product to 34.5 percent. Like its predecessors, the incoming government will carry out the requirements of the international banks and transnational companies that dominate the countrys economy and dictate terms to the countrys dependent capitalist class. It will intensify the attack on the living standards of working class and rural masses, and the police-military repression of opposition and unrest. Washington and the regional powers, Australia and New Zealand, will be watching closely. All have vital commercial and strategic interests in the country and are seeking to maintain their hegemony in the southwest Pacific against Beijings growing economic and diplomatic influence. The author also recommends: After the Papua New Guinea election: The way forward for the working class and rural poor [29 July 2017] Photo credit: Getty From Woman's Day Ever since North Dakota approved no-fault divorce in 1985, New York was the lone holdout in America, requiring couples to assign blame when they split. But in 2010, the state legislature approved no-fault divorce, siding with opponents who viewed the law as antiquated and passe. But what other outdated marriage laws exist today in the U.S.? Read on to find out which states have (or had) the wackiest rules around. Legal: Marriage by Proxy for Military Personnel Marriage by proxy, which means someone can stand in for a bride or groom who can't be present at his or her own wedding, is limited to members of the U.S. Armed Forces. But of the five states that allow the practice-California, Kansas, Colorado, Texas and Montana-Montana is the only one that allows double-proxy weddings. Essentially, neither the bride nor groom has to show up. Legal: Marriage Under the Age of 18 with Parental Consent Photo credit: Getty For a few months between 2007 and 2008, anyone under 18 could get married in the state of Arkansas with parental consent. That's right, even babies could get married as long as their parents agreed. The original law was meant to allow pregnant teenagers to get married if their parents approved, but lawmakers forgot to put in an age minimum, which, combined with a grammatical error, left the law open to anyone of any age. After months of embarrassment for the state, the law was finally corrected in April 2008, making the minimum age 17 for boys and 16 for girls. Legal: To Annul a Marriage That Was Done on a Dare Ever been dared to get marriedas a prank? Neither have we. But apparently this happens often enough in Delaware that it's actually an option when couples file for an annulment. Along with the basics reasons such as marrying "without the capacity to consent," "under duress" or "with fraudulent information," couples can now check "because of a jest or dare" when applying to dissolve their nuptials. Handy! Story continues Illegal: To Marry the Same Man Four Times In the state of Kentucky, it's illegal to remarry the same man four times. Honestly, good for Kentucky. If you've already divorced him three times, someone needs to step in, because you're clearly not the best decision maker in the world. Of course, as long as it's different men, you can get married and divorced as many times as you like. Let the good times roll! Legal: Man Must Prove Himself by Killing Birds In Truro, Massachusetts, a groom-to-be must "prove himself manly'" prior to marriage by hunting and killing either six blackbirds or three crows. Manly is a good thing. Dead birds? Not so much. Illegal: Married Couples to Sleep Nude in a Rented Room Despite the fact that the infamous witch trials were over 300 years ago, religious conservatism is still alive in Salem, Massachusetts-at least on the law books. Apparently, married couples are not allowed to sleep in the nude in a rented room. Of course, reflecting on numerous media reports about germs on hotel bedspreads, that doesn't sound like such a bad idea after all. Illegal: For Men Over 16 to Propose Marriage-and Not Mean It In South Carolina it is illegal for a man over 16 years old to propose marriage and not mean it. Doing so means he's committing a misdemeanor under the Offenses Against Morality and Decency Act. Not sure if that means he will be forced to marry the woman in question, or if it just means he can't ask for a woman's hand as a way to seduce her. We hope it's the latter. Illegal: Mistreatment of Mother-in-Law as Grounds for Divorce Many husbands would probably say their mother-in-law isn't their favorite person in the world. But for those who really, really dislike their wife's mother, moving to Wichita, Kansas, might be a good option. In this city, a man's mistreatment of his mother-in-law may not be used as grounds for divorce. So assuming he wants to keep his wife, he can still be as nasty to dear old Mom as he pleases! Illegal: For Married Couples to Kiss in Public on Sundays Imagine it: You get a babysitter so you and your hubby can go out for a romantic dinner. Afterward you take a stroll around town. Caught in the moment, you lean in for a passionate kiss. Busted! The police can cuff you and throw you in jail-that is, if you live in Hartford, Connecticutand it's Sunday. Well, maybe not these days, but technically, it's still illegal in this city for a man to kiss his wife on the Lord's Day. Illegal: For Palm Readers and Fortune Tellers to Officiate a Wedding It's most likely that your wedding was officiated by a religious figure or judge. Or, if you're a bit more eccentric than some, you had a friend become ordained online so he or she could marry you. Good thing you went with the tried-and-true: New Orleans has made it illegal for palm readers, fortune tellers, mystics and the like to officiate a wedding. Guess they don't want you peeking at your future. You'll just have to go into it with blind faith like everyone else! You Might Also Like Its been 40 years since David Berkowitz, the prolific New York City serial killer known as the Son of Sam, was arrested and put behind bars for life. Read: O.J. Simpson's Attorney Concerned About Client's Safety After Remark by Fred Goldman But the man who claimed to be carrying out Satans work when he killed six people and wounded seven others between July 1976 and July 1977 says hes found God while doing time at the Shawangunk Correctional Facility in upstate New York. If I had not become a Christian, I may have died a long time ago, Berkowitz told Inside Edition in a 1993 jailhouse interview. Berkowitzs manhunt became the largest in the citys history until his arrest on August 10, 1977, in Yonkers, N.Y. He confessed to the killings of Donna Lauria, 18, Christine Freund, 26, Virginia Voskerichian, 19, Alexander Esau, 20, Valentina Suriani, 18, and Stacy Moskowitz, 20. He claimed hed been given orders to kill from his neighbors dog. On May 8, 1978, Berkowitz pleaded guilty to the six murders and was given six 25-years-to-life sentences. Following his sentencing, he was sent to Attica State Prison in upstate New York. In 1979, Berkowitz was slashed in the throat. "Another inmate tried to take my life by cutting my throat with a prison-made razor blade, he told Inside Edition in 1993. "Im lucky to be alive. The doctor there who stitched me up said, It is a miracle you are alive.'" It took 56 stitches to close the wound. His neck still bears the scar. Read: 40 Years After 'Son of Sam' Arrest, Detective Reveals How Cops Finally Ended His Reign of Terror As with many inmates, life in prison is a struggle, he wrote on his website, AriseandShine.org. I have had my share of problems, hassles and fights. At one time I almost lost my life when another inmate cut my throat. Yet all through this and I did not realize it until later God had His loving hands on me. Story continues A decade after claiming hed killed in the name of Satan, Berkowitz converted to Christianity. In 1987, he was transferred 250 miles away to Sullivan, where he remains today, and soon met another inmate who introduced him to the religion. In the 1993 interview with Inside Edition, Berkowitz recalled picking up a Bible for the first time. The words began to seem very real as if God were talking to me, he said. It was at that moment, in 1987, that I began to pour out my heart to God," he wrote on his website. "Everything seemed to hit me at once. The guilt from what I did. The disgust at what I had become. I told Him that I was sick and tired of doing evil. I asked Jesus to forgive me for all my sins. I spent a good while on my knees praying to Him. As I have communicated many times throughout the years, I am deeply sorry for the pain, suffering and sorrow I have brought upon the victims of my crimes. I grieve for those who are wounded, and for the family members of those who lost a loved one because of my selfish actions. I regret what I've done and I'm haunted by it." Berkowitz, or inmate No. 78-A-1976, now calls himself the Son of Hope. Now 64, Berkowitz preaches behind bars as a minister. He has also created a video series where he discusses his reform and gives sermons. He insists that neither he nor his webmaster profit from the money they make from his speeches or interviews. In the late 90s, he sold a series of self-help VHS tapes about reform. He later released his prison journals as a book, Son of Hope: The Prison Journals of David Berkowitz. He has also spoken to high school, college, and law school students around the world via email and handwritten letters. Read: O.J. Simpson's Trial: Where Are They Now? It is like a nightmare that just keeps coming back, he told Inside Edition in a 1999 interview. Every time you hear, Son of Sam! Son of Sam! I dont even know who that person is. He has been denied parole every time he has been eligible, most recently in May 2016. Berkowitz, a veteran, told the parole board last year that he is no threat whatsoever to the public. It was the first time hes openly declared that he should be paroled after years of telling the media, including Inside Edition in 1993 and 1999, that he should never be let out. His next parole hearing is in May 2018. I feel people can change let him change in jail, Donna DeMasi, one of his surviving victims, told InsideEdition.com in a recent interview. He is never going to come out. I will never see him and never have to see him and I am thankful." Watch: The Other 'Keepers': How a Priest Got Away With the Murder of a Nun for 2 Decades Related Articles: Resham Khan was attacked in London on her 21st birthday - GoFundMe Acid attacks are now so prevalent that the public needs to be trained in helping victims, the Royal College of Emergency Medicine (RCEM) has said. The London alone, the number of attacks rocketed from 261 in 2015, to 454 last year, an increase of 73 per cent. Doctors at the RCEM and Barts Health NHS Trust say that bystanders who come to the aid of victims should be taught to quickly remove contaminated clothing and wash off the acid with copious amounts of water, which can lessen scarring and the need for plastic surgery. They also called for legislation to make the carrying of corrosive substances in the street illegal. The number of high profile acid attacks has been increasing in recent years, especially in London, said Johann Grundlingh consultant emergency physician at Barts Health Trust, writing in the British Medical Journal (BMJ). The attacks, involving a range of corrosive substances, have brought into sharp focus the need for clinicians, law enforcement officers, and our lawmakers to find ways to deal with this latest menace on our streets. The assailants intention is not to kill, but to maim and disfigure. Corrosive substances now seem to be a replacement for carrying knives. Bystanders who come to the aid of the victim of an attack can have an important role in minimising further injury. For more news videos visit Yahoo View, available on iOS and Android. Carrying corrosive substances is currently legal with no restrictions on volume or strength, although the government is considering changing the law. In 2002, after similar attacks, Bangladesh banned the open sale of acid and imposed stringent punishment of offenders, which saw the number of attacks fall by 15-20 per cent a year. India and Cambodia have also implemented legislation to combat acid attacks but have yet to introduce laws restricting the ease and availability of acid. Last month two teenage boys were arrested following six acid attacks in the streets of London in a 72 minute spree. Just days before a man was arrested for flinging acid into the face of an aspiring model in the capital. Story continues Although acid attacks are rarely deadly, victims are often left scarred, blinded and heavily traumatised. The substance used is usually sulphuric or nitric acid and, unlike most other countries, in the UK men are more likely to be victims than women. Since police clamped down on knife crime, gang members frequently conceal acid in water bottles. Chart: Acid attacks across the UK DNA samples from thousands of years ago show the Ancient Greeks descended from two even more distant peoples, solving a genetic mystery that had scientists scratching their heads for years. Although the Greeks are a famous ancient civilization, they were following in the footsteps of two other groups known as the Minoans and the Mycenaeans who lived around the Aegean Sea, the embayment in the northeastern Mediterranean that today is surrounded by Greece and Turkey. But not much is known about those two predecessors, in terms of where their people originated and how they came to inhabit mainland Greece and the island of Crete during the Bronze Age. A recent genetic analysis, however, gives scientists some insight: The Minoans and the Mycenaeans were closely related to one another, with similar but not identical DNA, and modern Greeks are descended from them. Read: DNA From Ancient Mammoth Hunters Makes This Countrys Men the Tallest in the World The study, published in the journal Nature, relied on the DNA from the teeth of 19 ancient people who belonged to the Minoan and Mycenaean cultures as well as to the lands of southwestern Anatolia modern day Turkey, just across the Aegean Sea from Greece. Their genes were compared to those of hundreds of other ancient people. We show that Minoans and Mycenaeans were genetically similar, having at least three-quarters of their ancestry from the first Neolithic farmers of western Anatolia and the Aegean, and most of the remainder from ancient populations related to those of the Caucasus and Iran, the study says. However, the Mycenaeans differed from Minoans in deriving additional ancestry from an ultimate source related to the huntergatherers of eastern Europe and Siberia. The DNA from the Caucasus suggests migration of peoples from that area toward the Aegean after the time of those early Stone Age farmers. Comparing the ancient DNA to more than 2,600 samples from modern Greeks proves the current population is close to the Mycenaeans genetically, but also has DNA from other early Stone Age ancestors. Story continues _____6380 Photo: C messier/CC BY-SA 4.0 According to the researchers, the DNA results show that although more people migrated to the area and introduced additional genetic material, there has been a long-running genetic continuity in what is now Greece, giving modern-day inhabitants an idea of their connection to the land even further back than the ancient Greek civilization that was the birthplace of democracy, philosophy and the Olympics. After migrating thousands of years earlier from Anatolia, the Minoan civilization appears to have formed first on Crete about 5,000 years ago, but shared time and space with the Mycenaeans on the mainland during the Bronze Age before disappearing about 3,000 years ago. Read: Ancient Egyptians Were More Asian Than African, DNA Shows The University of Washington explained that the Minoans and Mycenaeans, which had similar cultures, were much more advanced than some people would imagine: The Minoans were also the first literate people of Europe, the university said, and the Mycenaeans used an early form of written Greek when they emerged a thousand years into the Minoan reign. While the new study does not resolve all the outstanding questions, it provides key answers, according to the university. Importantly, the findings disprove the widely held theory that the Mycenaeans were a foreign population in the Aegean and were not related to the Minoans. The results also dispel the theory that modern Greeks did not descend from the Mycenaeans and later ancient Greek populations. Related Articles Source: Xinhua| 2017-08-03 07:38:03|Editor: Song Lifang Chamber of Deputies Speaker Rodrigo Maia (C, front) attends the plenary session of the Chamber of Deputies for voting to decide on a corruption case against President Michel Temer in Brasilia, capital of Brazil, on Aug. 2, 2017. (Xinhua/Li Ming) BRASILIA, Aug. 2 (Xinhua) -- The Brazilian Chamber of Deputies voted to dismiss the corruption charges against President Michel Temer. As a tense vote continued on Wednesday evening, the government's allies in the Chamber received more than a third of votes, or 172 out of 512, the threshold needed to dismiss the charges. This means that the charges filed against Temer, the first against a sitting president, by prosecutor-general Rodrigo Janot, will be dropped. Anthony Scaramuuci was forced out of the White House on Monday, but his rollercoaster 11 days in the spotlight has made him an instant celebrity. Asked on Tuesday what the future now holds for him, the New York financier told TMZ: You know what I'm going to do next? I'm working on being the best person I can be, and I want Chief of Staff Kelly to have an unbelievable opportunity inside the White House. Mr Scaramucci was ousted at the request of John Kelly, the new White House chief of staff, according to several West Wing insiders. When asked if he had any advice for his eventual successor, Mr Scaramucci said it "would not be appropriate for me to comment right now", and refused to say whether he had spoken to the president since his dismissal. Donald Trump's former communications director put an end to one rumour, however. Despite much social media speculation that Mr Scaramucci could take up a spot on the hugely popular US show, Dancing With the Stars, he put that rumour to bed on Tuesday. "I don't know how to dance," he said with a smile. Anthony Scaramucci, pictured at Trump Tower in January 2017 Several reports have suggested that Dancing With the Stars was attempting to recruit another recently-departed White House communications official. ABC had expressed interest in hiring Sean Spicer, US tabloids claimed earlier this week. Mr Spicer, who also reportedly met with several cable news channel executives during the week, did not comment on the claims. It was unclear whether Mr Scaramucci, following his brief tenure in the White House, would continue his political career, return to finance or perhaps pursue a new media career. Mr Scaramucci no longer owns the company that made him a millionaire - he'd been forced to sell it to take on the role of White House communications director. "The Mooch's" abrupt dismissal on Monday completed a saga that was strange even by the standards of a US presidency that is proving to be unorthodox in any number of ways. Story continues Mr Scaramucci burst onto the Washington scene on July 21 when Mr Trump tapped the brash fellow New Yorker to craft the message for a White House seen by many to be in disarray. "I love the president," Mr Scaramucci declared at an opening press conference during which he praised Trump as a "wonderful human being" who has "really good karma." He ended the event by blowing a kiss to the assembled reporters and television cameras. Sean Spicer resigned on July 21 In the following days, Mr Scaramucci accompanied Mr Trump on Air Force One, proudly posting a photo on Twitter of himself onboard the presidential jet giving the thumbs up sign. While Mr Scaramucci was reveling in his new dream job, however, things were apparently not doing so well on the home front. The New York Post reported that his 38-year-old second wife had filed for divorce in early July and that Mr Scaramucci had been travelling with the president when their second child, a son, was born. Scaramucci responded by telling the media to "leave civilians out of this." 'I can take the hits' "I can take the hits, but I would ask that you would put my family in your thoughts and prayers & nothing more," he said on Twitter. Mr Scaramucci had indeed taken a few hits on his rocky road to the White House. He sold his stake in his global investment firm, SkyBridge Capital, months ago to clear the way for a White House position only to be blocked by Mr Trump's chief of staff Reince Priebus. New White House communications director Anthony Scaramucci speaks to members of the media on his first day on the job Credit: Pablo Martinez Monsivais/AP Following his eventual appointment, Mr Scaramucci sought to dispel reports of a feud saying he and Mr Priebus were "a little bit like brothers where we rough each other up once in a while." But tensions were evident from the start. Mr Spicer, who also opposed bringing Mr Scaramucci on board, resigned the same day the 53-year-old former hedge fund investor joined the White House team. And just days later, Mr Scaramucci called a New Yorker reporter and went on an expletive-laden rant during which he called Mr Priebus a "paranoid schizophrenic" and predicted he would resign. Mr Priebus was indeed out of a job later that week, replaced as Trump's chief of staff by Mr Kelly, who had been heading up the Department of Homeland Security. But the clock was also ticking on Mr Scaramucci - Mr Kelly, a no-nonsense retired Marine Corps general, fired him in one of his first acts as the new chief of staff. New White house communications director Anthony Scaramucci, flanked by Sarah Huckabee Sanders, blows a kiss to reporters after addressing them on his first day on the job Credit: Jonathan Ernst/Reuters Even before his firing, with his impeccably tailored suits, aviator sunglasses and slicked back hair, Mr Scaramucci had become fodder for late night comedians. Anthony Scaramucci speaks to members of the press at the White House Credit: AP But his tenure - while short at 11 days - is apparently not the shortest ever. According to The Washington Post, president Ronald Reagan's nominee for communications director resigned after less than a week in March 1987 when reports emerged he had been a member of a Nazi youth group as a boy. The 11 wild days of 'The Mooch', in pictures Vermont senator, writing in the Guardian, says: The truth is Nissan is an all-too-familiar story of how greedy corporations divide and conquer working people Bernie Sanders: I proudly support Nissan workers fight to form a union. What they are doing takes tremendous courage. Photograph: Zuma Wire/Rex/Shutterstock Bernie Sanders has attacked Nissan for doing everything it can to stop workers from unionizing at its Mississippi plant despite making obscene profits. In an editorial for the Guardian, the former presidential hopeful weighs in as Nissan workers prepare to vote on joining the United Auto Workers (UAW) union. Echoing union officials and their supporters, Sanders says Nissans campaign could go down as one of the most vicious, and illegal, anti-union crusades in decades. Nissan is being investigated by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), the independent US government agency responsible for enforcing US labor law, after warning workers they could lose wages and benefits if they back the union vote. Other workers have been told they will receive increased benefits and pay if they vote against unionising. Workers should never have to endure this type of threatening campaign or walk through a minefield just to vote for a union, Sanders writes. The truth is Nissan is an all-too-familiar story of how greedy corporations divide and conquer working people. The Nissan vote is the latest in a series of attempts by unions to grow membership in Americas south, where many manufacturers have moved to take advantage of low wages and non-union workforces. Unions have faced similarly hard-fought battles to gain recognition at plants run by Boeing and Volkswagen and lost. Sanders, the actor Danny Glover and leading labor officials have all campaigned in support of the UAWs attempts to unionise the 800-strong plant. Nissan has union representation in 42 of 45 of its plants throughout the world, writes Sanders. But the company does not want unions in the US south, because unions mean higher wages, safer working conditions, decent healthcare, and a secure retirement. Corporations like Nissan know that if they stop workers in Mississippi from forming a union, wages will continue to be abysmally low in this state. Story continues Sanders says Nissan made $6.6bn in profits last year and paid its chief executive officer, Carlos Ghosn, more than $9.5m last year. Those kinds of obscene profits are a direct result of corporations decades-long assault on workers and their unions, he writes. The American middle class, once the envy of the world, is disappearing while income and wealth inequality is soaring. We have got to turn that around. President Donald Trump at the Boy Scout jamboree in West Virginia on July 24 - AP The Boy Scouts have denied calling President Donald Trump to praise his controversial speech at their annual jamboree last week, directly contradicting the president's version of events. Mr Trump, in an interview with The Wall Street Journal, claimed that he had received a phone call praising the July 24 speech. "I got a call from the head of the Boy Scouts saying it was the greatest speech that was ever made to them, and they were very thankful," he said, in a full transcript of the interview obtained by Politico. The WSJ did not publish it in its entirety. Donald Trump addressing the Boy Scouts on July 24 The Boy Scouts said they did not call Mr Trump to commend him on the remarks. "We are unaware of any such call," the Boy Scouts responded in a statement. It specified that neither of the organisation's two top leaders - President Randall Stephenson and Chief Scout Executive Mike Surbaugh - had placed such a call. Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the White House spokesman, said Boy Scout leaders had praised Mr Trump in person after his speech. She said the president was making reference to "multiple members of the Boy Scout leadership" who "congratulated him, praised him and offered quite powerful compliments following his speech". Mr Trump said in the WSJ interview that the 40,000 Boy Scouts and their leaders "loved it", despite Mr Surbaugh apologising for his speech the next day. Told that reaction to the eyebrow-raising, politically aggressive speech was "mixed", the president defended his remarks. "By the way, Id be the first to admit mixed. Im a guy that will tell you mixed. There was no mix there," he said. "That was a standing ovation from the time I walked out to the time I left, and for five minutes after I had already gone. There was no mix." Other US presidents have delivered nonpolitical speeches at past jamborees. Yet last week, to the dismay of many parents and former scouts, Mr Trump promoted his political agenda and derided his rivals, inducing some of the scouts in attendance to boo at the mention of former President Barack Obama. Story continues "I want to extend my sincere apologies to those in our Scouting family who were offended by the political rhetoric that was inserted into the jamboree," said Mr Surbaugh. "That was never our intent." Mr Surbaugh noted that every sitting president since 1937 has been invited to visit the jamboree. Mr Stephenson told The Associated Press two days after the speech that Boy Scout leaders anticipated Mr Trump would spark controversy with politically tinged remarks, yet felt obliged to invite him out of respect for his office. By David Shepardson TRAVERSE CITY, Michigan (Reuters) - The California environmental agency that probed Volkswagen AG's diesel vehicles for violating pollution-control rules is now scrutinizing whether some gasoline-powered vehicles are emitting excess pollution, according to a senior official. "We are not just looking at diesels, but we are looking at some gasoline concerns," Annette Hebert, division chief for emissions compliance overseeing autos at the California Air Resources Board (CARB) said in an interview Tuesday on the sidelines of an auto conference. The review is focused on potential excess pollution from gasoline-powered vehicles. She declined to name specific vehicles under review. "We're spending a lot of time and effort and resources into looking into all manufacturers' vehicles," Hebert said. Separately, a person briefed on the matter said California and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency since last year have been reviewing some Volkswagen Group gasoline engines sold in the United States. In its annual report, Volkswagen disclosed investigations that did not involve diesels and said "since November 2016, Volkswagen AG has been responding to information requests from the EPA and CARB related to automatic transmissions in certain vehicles." Volkswagen's luxury Audi unit faces at least 13 lawsuits alleging it concealed the existence in vehicles with automatic transmissions of "defeat devices," which interfere or disable emissions control equipment while the vehicle is being driven. The California agency and the EPA have probed excess emissions and pollution in Volkswagen vehicles since the automaker admitted in 2015 to using secret software to emit excess emissions in diesel vehicles. Regulators in the United States and Europe are taking a harder line on automotive emissions in the wake of the Volkswagen cheating scandal. On Wednesday, German automakers and German government officials reached a deal to overhaul engine software to cut pollution and avert a ban on diesel technology. Fiat Chrysler Automobiles NV won approval on Friday from the EPA and California to sell 2017 diesel vehicles after emissions in its older diesel vehicles came under scrutiny. The U.S. Justice Department sued Fiat Chrysler in May and the automaker hopes to use the 2017 emissions software update as the basis of a fix to address concerns over 2014-2016 Fiat Chrysler diesel vehicles. Hebert told Reuters it should take at least three months to complete the review of the fix, but she wants to move quickly. Regulators are investigating emissions in older Daimler AG Mercedes-Benz diesel vehicles. In May, the German automaker withdrew its request for approval to sell 2017 U.S. Mercedes-Benz diesels. (Reporting by David Shepardson, editing by David Gregorio) Phnom Penh (AFP) - An Australian nurse who ran surrogacy services in Cambodia that matched foreign couples with local women was sentenced to 18 months in prison Thursday, as authorities in the impoverished kingdom tackle the "rent-a-womb" businesses. Tammy Davis-Charles, 49, has been in custody since her arrest in November last year, weeks after Cambodia abruptly outlawed commercial surrogacy. Authorities announced a blanket ban on the trade, which critics say exploits poor women, after similar curbs in Thailand pushed the shadowy industry across its borders. With cheap medical costs and no laws excluding gay couples or single parents, Cambodia quickly mopped up demand from foreign couples, mostly from Australia. Davis-Charles told the court she moved to Phnom Penh after commercial surrogacy was restricted in Thailand, where she had been working. The nurse said lawyers told her surrogacy was legal in Cambodia at the time. But the judge said Davis-Charles continued to run the business and lure Cambodian women into the trade even after she knew the industry had been outlawed. "Tammy Davis-Charles was an intermediary between intended parents and Cambodian surrogate mothers," Judge Sor Lina said delivering the ruling. The Melbourne native, who wept after the verdict was handed down, was also convicted of falsifying documents. "The court sentences Tammy Davis-Charles to one-and-a-half-years in jail," the judge added. Two Cambodian colleagues were convicted of the same charges and also jailed for 18 months. Police said Davis-Charles' clinic charged would-be parents up to $50,000, while Cambodian surrogates received around $10,000 each -- a vast sum in a nation where the average annual income is around $1,200. Davis-Charles, who advertised surrogacy services online, was accused of bringing more than 23 Cambodian women into the trade for 18 Australian and five American couples between 2015 and her November 2016 arrest. Story continues - Pushed underground - In her defence statement in July, Davis-Charles broke down in tears in front of the court appealing for mercy from the bench, saying she had already "lost everything" during her six months in custody. During the trial she denied recruiting the surrogates, saying her role was limited to providing medical care. Davis-Charles had twins through a Thai surrogate before going into "the surrogacy business full-time... to help people everyday," according to her post on the website of her Bangkok-registered company. Surrogacy agencies started sprouting up in Cambodia in 2015 after neighbouring Thailand shut down the trade following a series of scandals, including tussles over custody. But in late 2016 Cambodia barred the industry and refused to recognise birth certificates for babies, leaving many foreign couples in limbo. In April this year the government said it would allow foreign couples to return home with babies if they could prove they were conceived before the ban on commercial surrogacy. While Cambodia's crackdown has slowed the tide of foreign couples, it has failed to snuff out an industry that remains a lure for some of the country's most vulnerable women. "There is certainly still surrogacy going on underground," said Sam Everingham, director of the Australia-based consultancy Families Through Surrogacy. The trade has also sprung up in neighbouring Laos which has yet to criminalise commercial surrogacy. Laos' role as the new surrogacy destination emerged after Thai authorities arrested a man attempting to smuggle six large refrigerated vials of sperm into the Communist country -- presumably for use in the booming surrogacy clinics. Some offer to carry out the embryo transfer in Laos and then provide pregnancy care for the surrogate in Thailand, a wealthier country with vastly superior medical facilities. Thai authorities banned the trade in late 2014 following a slew of scandals, including the discovery of nine babies in a Bangkok apartment fathered by a rich Japanese man using Thai surrogates. This week, we take a look at three spectacular properties in exotic locations used to film James Bond movies. Feel like a secret agent on the Jamaican beach where Ursula Andress debuted the famous white swimsuit in Dr. No. Fly across the world to Udaipur, India, where 007 breaks into a floating palace in Octopussy. Or, head to a Bahamian beach and re-enact your favourite Thunderball sequence. Click on the slideshow to begin your caper. All photos courtesy of Airbnb. BEIJING (Reuters) - China said on Thursday that it was coordinating with the U.S. navy in the search for a missing U.S. sailor in the South China Sea, a rare show of goodwill between the navies in the disputed waters. The U.S. 7th Fleet said on Tuesday that U.S. and Japanese ships were looking for an unnamed sailor from the USS Stethem destroyer who had gone missing during a routine operation in an unspecified section of the South China Sea. It said multiple searches were conducted inside the ship, but to no avail. China's Defence Ministry said in a statement that its Liuzhou guided-missile frigate was in nearby waters conducting war-readiness duties, and "on the basis of humanitarian spirit, and according to the code for unplanned encounters at sea, carried out operational coordination with the U.S. side". It said the sailor went missing when the U.S. ship had been more than 100 nautical miles southwest of the contested Scarborough Shoal, but did not elaborate. China claims nearly all of the South China Sea, through which about $5 trillion in ship-borne trade passes each year, a stance contested by Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan and Vietnam. Washington has criticized Beijing's construction of islands and build-up of military facilities there, concerned they could be used to restrict free movement and extend China's strategic reach. But Chinese officials say that U.S. "freedom of navigation" operations in the waters violate China's sovereignty and raise tensions in the region. China has said one of the reasons for its island building is to better meet its humanitarian and search and rescue obligations at sea. In June, the U.S. navy said a sailor had been found alive aboard the USS Shiloh after U.S. and Japanese vessels spent 50 hours searching thousands of square miles of waters off the Philippines. (Reporting by Michael Martina; Editing by Nick Macfie) By Gabriella Borter (Reuters) - Former FBI Director James Comey, who was fired by U.S. President Donald Trump, has signed a deal for a book on leadership and decision-making that will come out in spring 2018, the publisher said on Wednesday. The book deal with Macmillan's Flatiron Books comes three months after Comey's firing raised questions about whether Trump tried to interfere with the Federal Bureau of Investigation's probe into Russia's alleged meddling with the U.S. presidential election. Russia denies any interference, and Trump has denied collusion with Russia and interfering with the investigation. The book, which has not yet been given a title, will discuss "what good, ethical leadership looks like and how it drives sound decisions," Bob Miller, president of Macmillan's Flatiron Books, said in a statement on Wednesday. Flatiron won the rights to the book after an auction and did not immediately respond to a request for comment. In addition to reflections on Comey's interactions with Trump this year, the book will feature anecdotes from his role in leading an investigation into the use of a private email server by Democrat Hillary Clinton during her 2016 presidential campaign. Comey's announcement that the FBI was reopening the Clinton email investigation days before the November election led to accusations by some Democrats that he was unfairly influencing the outcome. The FBI eventually closed the probe without taking any action. (Reporting by Gabriella Borter in New York; Editing by Frank McGurty and Lisa Shumaker) Source: Xinhua| 2017-08-03 07:58:11|Editor: Yang Yi Video Player Close LOS ANGELES, Aug. 2 (Xinhua) -- Local police Wednesday said they will "close monitor" the surroundings of the Chinese Consulate General here to ensure the safety of the consulate office building and diplomatic staff. Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) made the remarks after Tuesday's shooting incident outside the Consulate General. A security guard of the consulate said the shooting incident occurred at about 6 am local time Tuesday. A gunman, in his 60s, shot at least 17 bullets before killing himself in his car. No one was injured in the shooting incident. There are six obvious bullet holes in the consulate building, with one on the metal address plate of the building, two on the facade near surveillance cameras and three in the windows. It was not immediately clear if the gunman had any political motive, police said. "Why he did it and what he did still are on going investigation, so we would not know," Tony Im, LAPD public information officer, told Xinhua in a phone interview. "Police department put a security hold on the case, so no information or his identity is being released at this time," Ed Winter, assistant chief of operations for the coroner's office, told Xinhua. "They don't want any information out, so we can't discuss it," Winter added. On Tuesday, the consulate general expressed serious concerns about the incident and urged U.S. authorities to take necessary measures to protect the safety of the consulate office building and Chinese diplomatic staff. These body-positive activists got trolled, but they werent having it. (Photo: glitterandlazers/Instagram) Megan Crabbe, Melissa Gibson, and Anna OBrien are three body-positive activists who have a combined following of 1.2 million people on Instagram. After months of being online friends, they decided to finally meet in person in sunny Miami Beach. The girl gang shared fun-filled photos together in bikinis by the ocean and had a great time. But despite the many likes they got and love they received in the comments, body shamers tried to troll the women with negative and nasty comments but the activists werent having it. So many people are taught worth is finite and there are things you must be to have it. So they see me, a fat girl being valued and respected by the world, and it breaks the paradigm they were trained on. So their first reaction is to attack, to point out how Im not worthy, OBrien tells Yahoo Style. After the initial day of trolling, OBrien uploaded a photo of all three girls in bikinis. For the caption on the bikini photo, she wrote, So this is for all the fat shaming comments about our bodies yesterday. Haters can kiss our swimsuit hungry booties. Peaches and beaches, people. The ladies were not about to let the haters bring them down. Gibson tells Yahoo Style, Bodies are glorious, strong, resilient, and that looks different on everybody. When we recognize that we all live in a world that has normalized only a very small portion of bodies and how it does that, we can begin to see the silliness in valuing some bodies over others. Story continues So when Im body-shamed, all I see is that that individual still buys into the lies we are taught and believe about bodies. It isnt my reality; in fact, it isnt based in any truth. That takes the sting out of it and lets me see the pain and humanity in each of us. Slaying in the sunshine with these two goddesses here's to a week in Miami drinking, dancing, and eating key lime pie with two babes who are not only amazing friends but forever heroes of mine. I seriously love them both so much. P.s. we made a hashtag out of our names for the trip, introducing #truelyglitterpanda My bikini is Peek & Beau at ASOS A post shared by Megan Jayne Crabbe (@bodyposipanda) on Aug 1, 2017 at 2:00pm PDT All the women had something to say about the experience. On what she has learned from the body shamers, Crabbe says, When people body-shame you, you are not actually the problem. Your body is not the problem. That person and their idea that other peoples bodies are theirs to comment on are the problems. You do not need their validation to feel like royalty. Amen. 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. A fort that is more than 1,000 years old, dating back to the time of Alfred the Great, has been unearthed in Scotland, more than 200 years after it was thought to have been completely destroyed. The ancient fort was built by the Picts, a loose confederation of tribes who lived in what is now Scotland during the Dark Ages. The fort was likely a major source of power for the Pictish kingdom between A.D. 500 and 1000. In the 1800s, a town was built over the ancient stronghold, known as Burghead Fort, and most archaeologists thought the last remaining traces of the fort were destroyed at that time. However, new archaeological excavations are revealing major structures hidden beneath the town, including a rare coin that dates to the period of English king Alfred the Great. [Photos: The Search for Alfred the Great's Grave] "Beneath the 19th century debris, we have started to find significant Pictish remains," Gordon Noble, head of archaeology at the University of Aberdeen in Scotland, said in a statement. "We appear to have found a Pictish longhouse. This is important because Burghead is likely to have been one of the key royal centers of Northern Pictland." Enigmatic tribes Almost nothing survives of the mysterious Pictish culture, including the name they called themselves. The Romans first mentioned the Picts, which means "painted people," likely because of their distinctive tattoos and war paint. However, relatively few Pictish writings survive, and much of what historians know about the Picts' early history comes from the accounts of Roman speechwriters such as Eumenius. Burghead Fort was known since medieval times, but in the 1800s, the town of Lossiemouth was built atop its ruins, and the fort was thought to have been largely destroyed. In 2015, researchers from the University of Aberdeen set out to discover whether any of the ancient kingdom's remains were left. They found ruins from an ancient longhouse with a stone-built hearth. Inside the remains of the building was a coin emblazoned with the image of Alfred the Great, an English king who fended off the Vikings during the heyday of their raids in the late 800s. The coin helps date the structure's occupancy to the later part of the Pictish period, the researchers said. Story continues A coin dated to the era of Alfred the Great was found in the remains of a Pictish fort in Scotland. University of Aberdeen "Burghead Fort has long been recognized as being an important seat of power during the early medieval period, and is known as the largest fort of its type in Scotland," Bruce Mann, an archaeologist with the Aberdeenshire Council Archaeology Service, said in the statement. "Its significance has just increased again, though, with this discovery. The fact that we have surviving buildings and floor levels from this date is just incredible." Originally published on Live Science. Editor's Recommendations Mr Trump is down to just 33 per cent approval - a new low: Getty Images A higher number of voters than ever are now dissatisfied with Donald Trumps performance in the White House, according to a new poll. A survey from Quinnipiac University discovered that only a third of American voters think Mr Trump is doing a good job, while 61 per cent do not. Quinnipiac found these figures represented the highest disapproval and lowest approval since his Inauguration, and down 7 per cent since his 40 per cent approval rating in June. The President was swamped with negative approval ratings on key issues like foreign policy, the economy, immigration, health care and terrorism. The poll, carried out between 27 July and 1 August, follows another blow to Republicans as their second attempt to repeal Obamacare was voted down in the Senate. It also follows another reshuffle in the executive branch, with former Press Secretary Sean Spicer's replacement, Anthony Scaramucci, fired after 10 days, and the departure of former Chief of Staff Reince Priebus. The majority of 1,125 voters across the US in the poll said Mr Trump was not honest, did not have good leadership skills, was not intelligent and did not care about them. He was recently accused of lying that he received a phone call from the Boy Scouts leader to congratulate him on his speech at their annual jamboree, which was widely criticised for hinting about sex and highlighting business advice from a late property developer who refused to sell homes to people of colour and went bankrupt. He was also accused of lying that Mexican President phoned him with praise for his management of the border wall, which Enrique Pena Nieto denied. His press secretary, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, said the Presidents statements were not fabricated, and that he had talked to the men in person instead of over the phone. More than 50 per cent of those surveyed also said Mr Trump has attempted to derail or obstruct the investigation into the Russian interference in the 2016 election, and two thirds believe Russia did interfere. Story continues Mr Trump has repeatedly called reports of collusion with the Russians a witch hunt. He fired former FBI Director James Comey, who was leading the investigation, and attacked "beleaguered" Attorney General Jeff Sessions for recusing himself from the investigation as he had been accused of meeting the Russian ambassador during the campaign. Mr Trump signed a bill imposing new sanctions on Russia, and in retaliation Russia forced out 755 diplomats out of the country, including Russian nationals, and declared the hoped-for improved relationship with the US was over. I love the White House, one of the most beautiful buildings (homes) I have ever seen. But Fake News said I called it a dump - TOTALLY UNTRUE Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 3, 2017 Gallup data has also found the President sinking to a new low of 60 per cent disapproval and 36 per cent approval, according to a sample of 1,500 adults on 1 August with a 3 percentage point margin of error. Sam Clovis, a former economics professor and radio talk show host, is Donald Trump's pick for chief scientist at the Department of Agriculture: Rex Features Donald Trump's pick for chief scientist at the Department of Agriculture previously ran a blog where he described progressives as "race traitors" and called former president Barack Obama a "dictator." Sam Clovis, a former economics professor and radio talk show host, wrote the blog for his Impact with Clovis show. He has been criticised for his lack of a scientific credentials and his "scepticism" of climate change. Although the website has been taken down, archived pages are still available. In one post from September 2011, Mr Clovis said Mr Obama was "brought up by socialists to be a socialist" and "has designs on being a dictator." He wrote: "His associations were socialists or worse, criminal dissidents who were bent on overthrowing the government of the United States. "He has no experience at anything other than race baiting and race trading as a community organizer." A month earlier, he denounced progressives as "liars, race traders and race traitors." He also accused "progressives, socialists and fellow travellers" of keeping minorities "enslaved to government." He also said the civil rights leader WEB Du Bois was "the first race trader" for endorsing Woodrow Wilson. According to CNN, a spokesperson for the Department of Agrilcutre defended Clovis, describing him as "a proud conservative and a proud American." All of his reporting either on the air or in writing over the course of his career has been based on solid research and data. He is after all an academic. Will people tune in to the news site linked to the president? - Facebook Apparently sick of what he refers to as the 'Fake News' media, Donald Trump has set up as a 'real news' show to list his achievements as president. The show, hosted on Facebook, is fronted by Mr Trump's daughter-in-law, Lara Trump. As the rest of the media spoke about the recent turmoil in the White House, this programme attempted to draw attention to what the Trumps see as the president's achievements of the week. Eric Trump and his wife Lara applaud as Donald Trump addresses a rally in Youngstown in July Credit: Getty Images The first segment shows his son Eric Trump's pregnant wife listing these achievements. She begins this by saying: "I bet you haven't heard about all the accomplishments the president had this week because there's so much fake news out there". In the video, which has over two million views, Mrs Trump said she is "proud" of the fact her father-in-law donated this quarter's salary to the Department of Education, after giving it to the Parks Department in the previous quarter. She said: "This is a president who is putting America before himself". She also pointed out that unemployment is at its lowest since 2001, saying it was an "incredible fact" and that the "economy is booming". However, she did not put this in context as she did not point out unemployment has been falling every month for six years. Eric and Lara Trump are expecting a baby boy in early September Credit: Stuart Nicol for the Telegraph Praising the president, she pointed out his visits to "incredible veterans" and claimed that Mr Trump had created 800,000 jobs. She also highlighted that he had visited a hospital treating wounded soldiers and helped to "crack down" on gangs by going to see officials from the Department of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Mrs Trump then ends the show by saying "Thanks for joining us everybody, I'm Lara Trump and that is the real news." She made no mention of Scaramucci's rant... The video was posted after his strange and profane rant, but before he was fired. ...or anything about the tumultuous time the White House has faced recently Including McCain's shock vote U.S. President Donald Trump in the Roosevelt Room of the White House in Washington - REUTERS Donald Trump reluctantly signed a bill imposing new sanctions on Russia yesterday, with Moscow saying the move ended hopes for better relations between the two countries. The US president himself called the measure seriously flawed and attacked Congress for forcing his hand. Dmitry Medvedev, the Russian prime minister, said the new sanctions were tantamount to a "full-scale trade war". He said that the move showed the Trump administration was utterly powerless. "The hope that our relations with the new American administration would improve is finished," he wrote on Facebook. The Russian prime minister suggested the sanctions were an attempt by the "US establishment" to remove Mr Trump from power. "The issue of new sanctions came about, primarily, as another way to knock Trump down a peg. New steps are to come, and they will ultimately aim to remove him from power," he wrote. Mr Medvedev later tweeted: "The Trump administration has shown its total weakness by handing over executive power to Congress in the most humiliating way. "The US establishment fully outwitted Trump. The President is not happy about the sanctions, yet he could not but sign the bill." We will steadily continue our work on developing the economy, relying mostly on ourselves. We have learned to do this Dmitry Medvedev (@MedvedevRussiaE) August 2, 2017 The Russian government said it was considering imposing counter-measures against the US. President Donald Trump, flanked by Sen. Tom Cotton, R- Ark., left, and Sen. David Perdue, R-Ga Credit: AP Photo/Evan Vucci Mr Trump had privately opposed the move and approved the bill behind closed doors, unlike other bill signings for which he has invited television cameras into the White House. The president then issued a scathing statement which exacerbated divisions between himself and members of his own Republican Party in Congress, saying he had only consented to the new law for the sake of national unity. Story continues Mr Trump had wanted the power to alter sanctions to give him room for diplomatic manoeuvre with Russia, with whom he has repeatedly suggested friendlier relations. But the bill, which was passed overwhelmingly by the Republican-controlled Congress last week, prevents him from doing so without Congressional approval. Some Republicans in Congress were concerned that if Mr Trump was allowed to dictate the future of sanctions, he could reduce them without gaining enough in return from his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin. Mr Trump accused Congress of acting unconstitutionally and encroaching on the executive branchs authority. He said: The bill remains seriously flawed. The framers of our Constitution put foreign affairs in the hands of the president. This bill will prove the wisdom of that choice. I built a truly great company worth many billions of dollars. That is a big part of the reason I was elected. As president, I can make far better deals with foreign countries than Congress. Congress could not even negotiate a healthcare bill after seven years of talking. Mr Trump said he hoped there would be cooperation with Russia on major global issues so that these sanctions will no longer be necessary. Russia's foreign ministry said that new US sanctions amounted to "dangerous" and "short-sighted" policy. In a statement, the ministry said the sanctions against Russia had put global stability at risk, a matter Moscow said it and the United States bear particular responsibility for, adding that the measures amounted to "hostile action" for which it reserves the right to respond. The foreign ministry statement also urged the US to "get rid of its illusions and understand that no threat or pressure will force Russia to change its policy or sacrifice its national interests". trump's America Puff The sanctions are aimed at punishing Moscow for interfering in the 2016 US presidential election in what intelligence agencies have concluded was an attempt to help Mr Trump win. They also penalise Russia for its military aggression in Ukraine and Syria, and impose further financial sanctions against Iran and North Korea. Russias energy sector is targeted with new limits on US investment in Russian companies. US companies will also be banned from engaging in energy exploration projects in which Russian firms have more than a third stake. The European Union says the sanctions might impact its energy security. Jean-Claude Juncker, the European Commission president, said Europe would take counter-measures if the US sanctions harmed its companies involved in oil and gas projects with Russia. He said: We are ready. We must defend our economic interests vis-a-vis the United States, and we will do that. Meanwhile, Mike Pence, the US vice-president, lambasted Russia for trying to destabilise the Western Balkans and casting a shadow from the East. On a visit to Montenegro, the newest member of Nato, Mr Pence said: The president and our Congress are unified in our message to Russia. A better relationship, the lifting of sanctions, will require Russia to reverse the actions that caused the sanctions to be imposed in the first place. The bill will limit the President's ability to pull back on the sanctions without congressional approval: Getty Images Donald Trump has signed a bill to impose further sanctions on Russia over interference in the 2016 US presidential election, annexation of the Crimean peninsula, and other perceived violations of international norms. The bill had been approved in the US Congress by overwhelming margins, bringing in both Republican and Democratic votes at a time in Washington politics where polarisation is the rule, and bipartisanship is a rare exception to that order. In signing the bill, Mr Trump signalled that he wasn't completely happy with the outcome - and reasserted his common claim that he is the ultimate deal maker. "I built a truly great company worth many billions of dollars. That is a big part of the reason I was elected," the President said in a statement on the sanctions bill that criticised Congress for encroaching on executive authority. "As President, I can make far better deals with foreign countries than Congress." Prior to the signing, it was unclear if Mr Trump would actually sign the legislation. US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson had previously told reporters that he and the President didn't believe the new sanctions would "be helpful to our efforts" on Russian diplomacy. The bill also limits the President's ability to ease sanctions against Moscow. The legislation is one of the first major pieces of law that has landed on Mr Trump's desk since he got into office just over six months ago. Even before Mr Trump signed the legislation, the threat of the bill prompted Russian President Vladimir Putin to retaliate. Mr Putin ejected 755 US diplomats from his country in response to the sanctions threat earlier this week. The bill was originally approved in the Senate 98-2, but then languished in the House of Representatives as representatives dredged through a series of procedural fights. That was put to an end when sanctions on North Korea were added to the legislation. The House then voted to approve those measures, and effectively forced the Senate to take a harder line on North Korea in doing so. Story continues The House and Senate also agreed to a deal to change the bill in light of urgings from several US industries and European allies. The European Union had expressed concern that new Russian sanctions would injure their energy security, and would damage their private industries working to establish a pipeline to feed natural gas from Russia into Germany. European Union officials vowed to act swiftly should those interests be threatened by new US sanctions enacted without consult to their positions. Congress had refused to consider removing language in the bill that would take away their ability to veto any future attempts by the President to remove sanctions placed on Russia, even as the White House lobbied for those restrictions to be pulled back. The veto language indicates that Congress can take steps to dial back eased sanctions if Mr Trump's administration too an "egregious" step to try and remove sanctions, according to Senate Foreign Relations Chairman Bob Corker. Mr Corker was initially unsure if the sanctions bill was appropriate, but later was a strong supporter of the measure. "I've walked the President through the process of how congressional review works," Mr Corker told CNN. "The administration -- knowing that unless it's way out of bounds -- likely they have the flexibility to do what they need to do." Some experts have said that, although Mr Trump signed the bill with a statement of protest, the massive support for the bill in Congress left him with little hope. "Although thte President's statement is a stunning rebuke of Congress, the fact remains that both the House and Senate were nearly unanimous in voting for this toughened sanctions regime," Lawrence Ward, a partner at the international law foirm Dorsey & Whitney, said in a statement provided to The Independent. "Those near unanimous votes made it impossible for President Trump to take any action other than signing it." Consumer Reports has no financial relationship with advertisers on this site. Drug-safety experts recommend throwing all your pill bottles into a bag at least once a year and taking them to your doctor or pharmacist for a thorough drug checkup. That "brown-bag review" of prescription and over-the-counter drugs as well as vitamins and supplements provides a chance to check for duplicate meds, excessive doses, and dangerous interactions, and for you to ask questions. For insight on how easy it is to talk with pharmacists about your drugs and to see how well they caught potentially dangerous interactions, we sent 10 secret shoppers to 45 pharmacies across the U.S. and had them ask about a list of drugs they were taking. They included three prescription drugs (the blood-pressure medication hydrochlorothiazide, the blood thinner Coumadin, and the sleeping pill Ambien) and two OTC drugs (baby aspirin and Aleve PM, a combination pain pill and sleep aid). Make sure you talk with the pharmacist. In half their visits, shoppers first met a clerk or pharmacy technician at the counter, not a pharmacist. Schedule an appointment. The pharmacists did a pretty good job of spot-checking problems when our shoppers just showed up at the counter. But experts say that for a full brown-bag review, youre better off reserving time with your pharmacist or doctor. Ask about insurance. None of our shoppers had to pay for their walk-in visits, and CVS and Target told us they also do free comprehensive reviews. Other pharmacies, and your doctor, may charge for full reviews, but most often its only your regular insurance co-pay. Medicare allows free yearly reviews with a doctor, and for many Medicare Part D patients taking multiple meds, a pharmacist, too. Be thorough. Cover the basics for each medication or supplement, such as what its for, how long you should take it, what it costs, and any side effects and potential interactions. Also ask about nondrug options that might be safer, and whether you can switch to a lower dose. Story continues National Check Your Meds Day Consumer Reports, working with the Department of Health and Human Services, has proclaimed Oct. 21, 2017, National Check Your Meds Day. A number of pharmaciesAlbertsons, Costco, CVS, Sams Club, Target, Walmart, and many independentshave agreed to support the effort. Some may even have extra staff on hand to help you review your meds. Ask your local pharmacy whether it is participating. Good to know: Asking whether there are meds you can stop taking could result in at least one less prescription, according to CRs recent nationally representative survey. Editors Note: This special report and supporting materials were made possible by a grant from the state Attorney General Consumer and Prescriber Education Grant Program, which is funded by a multistate settlement of consumer fraud claims regarding the marketing of the prescription drug Neurontin (gabapentin). This article also appeared in the September 2017 issue of Consumer Reports magazine. More from Consumer Reports: Top pick tires for 2016 Best used cars for $25,000 and less 7 best mattresses for couples Consumer Reports is an independent, nonprofit organization that works side by side with consumers to create a fairer, safer, and healthier world. CR does not endorse products or services, and does not accept advertising. Copyright 2017, Consumer Reports, Inc. Elon Musks house runs on solar. The Tesla CEO made the announcement during Wednesdays second quarter 2017 earnings call, where he revealed that both himself and Jeffrey B. Straubel, the companys chief technology officer, have installed solar roof tiles on their houses. We have installed and working the Solar Roof tiles, Musk told investors during the conference call. Tesla started taking pre-orders for the textured black and grey smooth tile styles back in May, with U.S. orders expected to start shipping this year. Unfortunately, those that didnt order immediately have a long wait on their hands: the tiles sold out until next year in just 16 days. The company is expected to start taking orders for the remaining Tuscan and slate styles in November, with deliveries starting next year. International orders are expected to start shipping next year. The solar roof tiles are offered at a competitive price point. Tesla has priced them at an average of $21.85 per square foot, bringing them down to below the cost of a normal roof. Musk is one of the first to have the tiles up and running. When he first announced the tiles in October, he laid out a vision of a future house with a Tesla Model 3 in the garage, a Powerpack lithium-ion battery on the wall, and a roof made of solar tiles. The tiles would provide energy to the Powerpack, which would provide a steady stream of power to the car and house at all times of day. With the Powerpack already available and Model 3 shipments starting last month, the tile was the last missing piece of his vision. Tesla solar tiles on a roof. I want to emphasize that theres no Photoshopping on the roof, Musk said. That is actually how it looks, and it wasnt taken by some it was take some pics with your phone and send them over. Thats what were talking about here, not some special lighting conditions, pro-photographer situation. And this is version one, and I think this roofs going look really knockout as we just keep iterating. Story continues An aerial shot of the roof. The solar roof works out as cheaper than a new roof even before the energy savings brought by using the roof. When those are factored in, the roof starts to pay for itself: Tesla's solar roof price comparison. These tiles are tough. Theyre made of tempered glass, which makes them about three times stronger than slate or asphalt. On top of that, the tiles are capable of defrosting by using a similar method employed by anti-ice wires used in windshields. All this means the tiles are capable of working through extreme conditions: The Tesla tile as shown on the far right. Solar Roof is the most durable roof available and the glass itself will come with a warranty for the lifetime of your house, or infinity, whichever comes first, Tesla said in a May blog post. Musk explained during the call that solar roof tile production should increase exponentially, in a similar fashion to Model 3 production. That means initial growth will be slow, followed by a sharp increase, ending with a plateau where Tesla produces a consistently high number of tiles per month. Even when production reaches its peak, though, its going to take a long time before every house has a solar roof. Musk holding a tuscan roof tile. I think eventually almost all houses will have a solar roof, Musk said during a May TED conference in Vancouver. The thing to consider the timescale to be probably on the order of forty for fifty years. On average, a roof is replaced every 20 to 25 years but you dont start replacing all roofs immediately but eventually if you were to fast forward to fifteen years from now it will be unusual to have a roof that doesnt have solar. Beyond the tiles, Teslas solar operation has had big success recently. Last month, it was announced that Tesla will build the worlds largest battery in South Australia to solve the states energy woes. The 100 megawatt pack will store renewable energy for 30,000 homes. A storm last September left 1.7 million residents without power, and its hoped that Teslas solution will avoid a similar situation occurring again. In the future, these technological breakthrough could transition the whole of the United States onto solar energy. Musk has laid out an ambitious plan that involves using rooftop solar panels, utility-sized power plants and localized power infrastructure. The Tesla Powerpack as shown in this company rendering. If you wanted to power the entire United States with solar panels, it would take a fairly small corner of Nevada or Texas or Utah; you only need about 100 miles by 100 miles of solar panels to power the entire United States, Musk said during his keynote conversation at the National Governors Association event in Rhode Island last month. The batteries you need to store the energy, so you have 24/7 power, is 1 mile by 1 mile. One square-mile. The solar roof could be the first step toward a major shift in energy production. Photos via Tesla (Reuters) - Two North Carolina counties on Thursday lifted evacuation orders as of noon on Friday, allowing tens of thousands of people back to the Outer Banks a week after a power outage forced the emergency measures at the height of the summer vacation season. About 50,000 visitors had been ordered off the islands of Hatteras and Ocracoke in Dare and Hyde counties, respectively, creating hardship for businesses that depend on summer beach visitors. Power was fully restored to both islands, the Cape Hatteras Electric Cooperative said on Thursday, after a construction accident cut underground transmission lines on July 27. "Power has been restored and Cape Hatteras Electric Cooperative (CHEC) has assured local officials that reliable and adequate power is available to enable the return of visitors on Friday afternoon," Dare County said in a statement. A spokesman for Hyde County said its order would also be lifted on Friday. About 5,000 residents remained on Hatteras Island and about 900 residents remained on Ocracoke Island despite the evacuation orders, officials said. Tourism generates about $1 billion annually in Dare County, and about a quarter to 28 percent of that comes from Hatteras Island where tourists were temporarily prohibited, a county spokeswoman said. During a news conference on Monday, North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper said he would attempt to help recover funds for those who sustained losses. Cooper declared a state of emergency for Hatteras and Ocracoke last week. Other areas of the Outer Banks remained open, including cities such as Kitty Hawk and Nags Head north of the bridge where the power cables were severed. (Reporting by Daniel Trotta; Editing by James Dalgleish) Source:Xinhuanet| 2017-08-03 08:49:18|Editor: Mengjie BEIJING, Aug. 3 (Xinhuanet) -- What will you think of when it comes to the Forbidden CityBeijing? Red walls and yellow tiles? The home for Ming (13681644) and Qing (1644--1911) emperors? World Culture Heritage? With its magnificent architecture and colorful cultural gems, the Forbidden City is attracting numerous visitors around the globe every day. Baptized by the wind and rain of over 600 years, it is now more than a cultural symbol. It is a treasure vault full of wisdom and craftsmanship waiting always to be discovered. Forbidden City (Xinhua file photo) Forbidden City Replica Withstands Magnitude-10 Quake Test Recently a video clip showing a replica of the Forbidden City structure withstanding an earthquake measuring 10 on the Richter scale test went viral online. Netizens from home and abroad were shocked by the anti-seismic architecture of ancient Chinese palaces. In its 600 years of history, the Forbidden City has survived over 200 major earthquakes, including the deadly Tangshan earthquake in north China in 1976 which registered a magnitude of 7.8 on the Richter scale. So how could the Forbidden City stay untouched through so many deadly earthquakes? To find out the answer, a unique scale model to replicate the classic Forbidden City structure was built on a shake platform simulating different earthquake forces. When the test moved beyond magnitude 10, the stone bases shifted around, but the wooden structure remained stable. According to experts, the traditional "dougong" and "sunmao" structures in Forbidden Citys buildings are like shock absorbers in cars with good buffer effect. This is a fabulous proof of the genius of Chinese traditional architecture, a foreign expert said. The video has earned thumbs up and positive comments from many netizens. Nails are not needed in the buildings of the Forbidden City. How great is the wisdom of ancient Chinese architects! Secrets of the Forbidden City Free of Standing Water In July 2016, heavy rainfall hit Beijing for 55 consecutive hours, resulting in waterlogged roads and buildings. In the Forbidden City, however, standing water was drained off in a mere 20 minutes. When images of water flowing out of the dragon mouths were put online, they created a buzz on social media. In fact, there are all together 1,142 stone spouts of dragon head shape in the base platforms of the three main halls in the Forbidden City, through which excess water can be discharged effectively. In addition, the difference in altitude between the north gate and the south gate of the Forbidden City almost reaches 2 meters, creating favorable conditions for natural drainage. Whats more, ditches, culverts and drain holes can be found everywhere in the Forbidden City, contributing to the massive drainage system underground. Standing water could be easily discharged through the pipes into the moat or Zhongnanhai. The drainage system under the Forbidden City has an even longer history than the palaces above ground. According to historical records, no matter how heavy the rain was in Beijing, the system had succeeded in protecting the Forbidden City from flooding. Up till now, this ancient system still accounts for 90% of the sewerage system in the Palace Museum today. Secret Weapons in Hot Summer -- Refrigerator and Ice Cellar Today, we can use air conditioners and electric fans to deal with the summer heat. In a time when there were no such equipment, how did the "Son of Heaven" endure the blistering days in the Forbidden City? The architectural style of the Forbidden City is a key factor for keeping them happy in hot weather. First of all, the walls of the palace were thick enough to keep indoor space cool. Also, there were ambulatory in chambers where the emperors lived, providing shield from the sun and heat. Enamel refrigerators made during Emperor Qianlong's reign(1736-1796) (Photo source:chinanews.com) The first electric refrigerator in the world was set in 1923. However as early as the Ming and Qing dynasties, refrigerators were already widely in use as important tools to drive away summer heat in the palace. The refrigerators then were made of wood and inlaid with metals of weak thermal conductivity, to slow down the melting of ice cubes inside. There were small holes on the cover through which the icy air could come out and cool the rooms. The huge amount of ice cubes needed were carefully stored in specially built ice cellars. Today, the royal ice cellars have been developed into service area for tourists. From 2016, the Palace Museum has opened the royal ice cellars as service areas for tourists.(Photo source:chinanews.com) OTTAWA (Reuters) - The U.S. administration is putting its support behind a bill that would reduce the number of legal immigrants into the United States and prioritize high-skilled workers by setting up a merits-based system similar to those used by Canada and Australia. To bring in skilled workers, Canada uses a points system to assess immigrants' ability to enter the Canadian workforce. The majority of Canada's economic immigrants this year are expected to come from this so-called express entry system. Canada plans to allow 300,000 immigrants into the country this year. Applicants are ranked on their age, education, language ability, and work experience and earn points for each category up to 600. For example, people aged between 20-29 years get the maximum 100 points while those over 45 get zero for that category. Potential immigrants get additional points if they have a sibling who is a citizen or permanent resident of Canada. Immigrants' spouses are assessed on the same criteria if they are also applying to come to Canada. For a full list of points awarded under the ranking system, see http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/express-entry/grid-crs.asp With a population of about 35 million, the immigration target for 2017 amounts to 0.9 percent of the population. According to the 2011 census, 20.6 percent of the population were foreign-born and immigrated to Canada. More recent numbers for 2016 will be released later this year. The following are Canada's immigration targets by category for 2017. CATEGORY TARGET PCT OF POPULATION Economic 172,500 0.5 Family 84,000 0.2 Refugees, protected persons 40,000 0.1 Humanitarian, other 3,500 0.01 IMMIGRANTS AS PCT OF POPULATION Canada (2011) 20.6 United States (2015) 13.5* *Source: Migration Policy Institute (Reporting by Leah Schnurr; Editing by Alistair Bell) Four fishermen reportedly snagged the largest blue shark ever caught in British waters. The shark weighed 256 pounds significantly larger than the previous record held by a shark that weighed 216 pounds. The group broke a 58-year-long record with their huge catch Tuesday, Metro reported Tuesday. Amateur angler John Dine captured the nine-foot shark while fishing with three friends on the coast of Penzance in Cornwall. It reportedly took an hour for Dine to reel the shark in before the group measured its length and weighed it. TRENDING: Shark Attacks Two 12-Year-Old Girls On South Carolina Beach The friends, who hailed from Essex, held up and posed with the massive shark for a photo. They returned the shark to the water after they snapped the picture. Officials will reportedly award the group a "catch and release" record at the Angling Club of Great Britain as soon as next month. pri_48292295-e1501597844845 2 Photo: BNPS Skipper Robin Chapman talked about the huge catch, noting that the friends were instantly sure they caught a big one. "As soon as they hooked the shark up we knew it was big," Chapman told Metro. "It went off like an absolute steam train. Chapman explained the time it took to secure the blue shark. The crew reportedly spotted the shark miles away as it circled their vessel. "After 40 minutes of hard battling with this giant, we finally got the first sighting," Chapman said. "We saw the fish from the bow as it circled the boat once before going off on another surging run straight back to the oceans depths." Chapman recalled the struggle with the shark, as it swam back and forth a few times before they hooked it. They eventually pulled it aboard the vessel. "I told John to remember what he saw because if he lost it nobody would believe him," Chapman said. "The fish repeated this five or six times but luckily the wire and hook held fast, enabling them to haul it on board." Story continues The blue shark, categorized as the "Prionace glauca," is reportedly the most prolific shark on the planet, according to Sharks-World. The term "glauca" is derived from the latin word Latin meaning "blue-grey" or "green." READ: Shark Attacks Map 2017: Full Timeline Of When And Where "The aerodynamic shape and lightness of the blue shark body allow it to move 'elegantly' across the oceans," the website read. "It exhibits countershading like many other sharks. The upper part is an indigo blue tone while the ventral and the sides are white." The blue shark reportedly lives in temperate, tropical and subtropical waters. It typically approaches shores, where divers and fishermen usually station themselves. "The blue shark surrounds its prey before attacking it, the website read. "When needed it joins with other sharks of the same species and cooperates to attack larger prey and facilitate their capture. Its swimming speed and its triangular teeth help this shark tearing the skin and flesh of the most complicated animals." The blue shark, a meat-eater, feeds on 24 types of prey that includes squid, octopus, mackerel, tunas, lobsters, crabs, small sharks and even seabirds. It generally seeks small prey but is satisfied with larger prey too. Related Articles Germany has given Vietnams intelligence agency station chief 48 hours to leave the country following accusations that the Vietnamese embassy was involved in the kidnapping of a former Hanoi government official at a park in Berlin, the Financial Times reports. The German foreign office said there was no serious doubt that the Vietnamese embassy was involved in the abduction of Trinh Xuan Thanh, who turned himself in to police in Hanoi Monday. On July 23, Berliners had reported seeing armed men detain Thanh in broad daylight in the Tiergarten, a popular inner-city park. Thanh is wanted on financial mismanagement charges in Vietnam, whose state oil company allegedly incurred losses of $177 million under his stewardship. After leaving PetroVietnam, he forged a political career and climbed as high as the National Assembly in May. But a month later he fell out of favor and was expelled form the ruling Communist party. Hanoi issued an international arrest warrant for Thanh after he fled the country last summer. At the time of Thanhs disappearance from the Tiergarten, he was simultaneously fighting extradition charges and attempting to claim asylum in Germany. Read more: Vietnam Has Arrested Four More Dissidents as Crackdown on Opposition Intensifies German diplomats reportedly discussed Thanhs case with their Vietnamese counterparts less than a month before his disappearance. The high-level discussions took place at Julys G20 summit in Hamburg, which the non-member Vietnamese delegation had attended as a guest. Martin Schafer, a spokesman for the German foreign ministry, called the abduction an extreme breach of trust, according to the FT. Germany also said that his unprecedented and shocking disappearance could exert a huge negative influence on bilateral relations. [FT] Correction: The original version of this article misstated the Vietnamese officials expelled from Germany. A local intelligence chief has been asked to leave the country, not both the intelligence chief and Vietnams ambassador to Germany. Helen Mirren telling it like it is. (Photo: PA) Weve always had a sneaking suspicion that anti-aging creams are total rubbish. And it sounds like Dame Helen Mirren shares our suspicions. Mirren, who is the face of LOreals skin care brand, has said that LOreals moisturizer probably does f*** all. Sitting on a LOreal panel in the South of France as brand ambassador, Mirren told Campaign that when she puts her moisturizer on, it probably does f*** all, but it just makes me feel better. Feeling lardy in the Crosby hotel A post shared by @helenmirren on Dec 7, 2016 at 2:04pm PST All I can do is be who I am. Ive always loved makeup. Im an eternal optimist I know that when I put my moisturizer on it probably does f*** all, but it just makes me feel better. Ive always said to LOreal as well that I will only do what makes me feel better, Mirren said. Mirren has been the face of LOreals Age Perfect moisturizer range since 2014 and also spoke of how it drives her crazy that ads promoting skin products have used pictures of 15- and 16-year-old girls. wow monte carlo! I wish my mum was alive to share it with me A post shared by @helenmirren on Jun 25, 2017 at 3:38am PDT As a 30-year-old, I used to look at that and think, what the f*** are you talking about? she added. It was ridiculous. Pissed me off majorly. Advertisers are only just coming out of that, and its taken them a long time. So whether aging moisturizer does f*** all or not, were still glad its Mirrens face up there. And hey, if it makes Dame Mirren feel better, it makes us feel better too. Read more from Yahoo Beauty + Style: Follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Pinterest for nonstop inspiration delivered fresh to your feed, every day. For Twitter updates, follow @YahooStyle and @YahooBeauty. Sharknado 5 (Photos: SYFY) Watch out, world sharks in tornadoes are coming for ya! (Again.) They rampaged in Los Angeles, tore apart New York, wrecked Washington, D.C., and even menaced outer space. Now, theyre ready to feast on the rest of earth in Sharknado 5: Global Swarming, coming to a screen near you on Sunday, Aug. 6. Ian Ziering returns as hero Fin Shepard, a regular guy who always finds a way to battle these beasts. Hope his passport is up-to-date, since Fin, his wife, April (Tara Reid), and their pals will have to chase Sharknados from London to Rome to Tokyo and beyond. And like previous installments, Sharknado 5 boasts some insane cameos, including Fabio, Dolph Lundgren, Olivia Newton-John, Margaret Cho, Clay Aiken, and Chris Kattan. Ziering talked to Yahoo TV about the Sharknado phenomenon, Fins new chainsaw, and how long this franchise can keep going. Did you ever think youd make five Sharknado movies? I actually didnt think the first one would see the light of day. No one is more surprised than I am that we have just completed our fifth and its going to air Aug. 6. You said it right, its the gift that keeps on giving. And its because the audience demanded it. Why do you think these movies are so popular? Its the fun movie where everyones in on the joke except the characters in the movie. Its not a classic horror movie. Its not a classic science-fiction movie. Its not a classic comedy. It transcends those categories and forms its own. Its become appointment television; its a summer event that people have parties and gatherings for. I dont know anything else out there thats like this. So, whats going on in Global Swarming? We were very sure to maintain the same formula. Basically, Sharknado movies are about an ordinary man who goes to extraordinary lengths to keep his family safe and protected from sharknados. We started in California and have basically decimated the entire United States and have even been to outer space. It seems the only place next to go is the rest of the world, so thats what weve done. This production was shot in over half a dozen locations around the world. I left my home in Los Angeles, flew east, and continued to fly east around the world until I was back at my own door. Ive never done that before. This was a global production. Story continues Will we see the chainsaw again? Pretty sure youre going to see the chainsaw again. Absolutely! Thats Fin Shepards signature weapon. And he is given a chainsaw by a cameo appearance that is hysterical. Its almost a divine chainsaw hes given. The Sharknado 5 crew traveled around the world during production. The movies have always gotten some great cameos. How do you line them up? Many of them are requests. Its become like a badge of honor on actors IMDb, to brag that theyve been eaten by a shark on Sharknado. We also solicit cameo opportunities. And whats really amazing now is that since weve taken this global, its not just celebrities that are looking to get in on all the fun theres countries now that have solicited production in hopes that wed come and destroy their iconic tourist spots. How long can this franchise keep going? These movies are fan-based movies, and as long as the fans continue to enjoy them, as long as the ratings continue to go up, theyll continue to make them. Theres no shortage of creativity. Once weve gotten people to accept sharks in tornadoes, accept us going into outer space to fight sharks, to be OK with Fin Shepard flying in a mechanical suit and his wife April is sort of bionic theres really nothing that we couldnt do. It seems the more crazy and the more outlandish these scenarios become, the more people love it. Honestly, this could go on for many, many years. Its already spawned a play, or a musical. Theres cosplayers that dress up like sharknados in various Comic-Cons around the country. You know, when youve got your picture on the front of a kids pajamas, it really lets you know that youre part of something thats iconic. Do you get recognized more for Sharknado or Beverly Hills, 90210? As an actor, this journey for me is 42 years long now. Ive done a lot of things over my career that different people have been fans of. Ive got little 9-year-old girls that remember me from McKenna Shoots for the Stars, which is an American Girl Doll movie. Ive got grandmas who remember me from Dancing With the Stars. And of course the 90210 fans are some of the most supportive fans out there. This Sharknado franchise now seems to have brought them all together because the demographic that it appeals to is from 8 to 80. Whats amazing is that social media creates another layer of interaction. When I put on these behind-the-scenes pictures, people love that! So if people want to see what Im posting, they can follow me @ianziering. Whats been your favorite moment from the movies? I think my favorite moment was from Sharknado 2, where I stood on top of a fire truck in midtown Manhattan, raised a 40-pound chainsaw into the air, and screamed, Lets go kill some sharks! And when I did that, everyone screamed, Yeah! And it wasnt just our crew and our background actors. It was the entire city block of New Yorkers on their way walking to work! It was just so empowering and so exciting. It was a tangible, palatable moment, where I felt like I was part of something bigger than a TV movie. Sharknado 5: Global Swarming premieres Sunday, Aug. 6, at 8 p.m. on SyFy. Read More From Yahoo TV: Review: The Guest Book is a High-Concept Anthology Comedy Broadchurch Postmortem: Creator Chris Chibnall Talks Marks Big Moment Game of Thrones: Does Star Gwendoline Christie Ship Brienne With Jamie or Tormund? As the old adage goes, denial aint just a river in Egypt. Despite overwhelming evidence and a consensus among the vast majority of the worlds scientists, many Americans still contest the notions of global warming and climate change. Its part of the reason why former vice president Al Gore is back on the big screen with An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power, a follow-up to his Oscar-winning 2006 alarm-sounder An Inconvenient Truth. When you see the levels of climate denial in the United States, the only country where the major conservative party is committed to climate denial, you can be pretty sure that that didnt happen by itself, Gore told Yahoo Movies during a recent interview (watch above). Gore sees Americans resistance to believing climate change science as the result of a concerted effort by lobbyists in carbon-emitting industries to fight regulations. Some of the large carbon polluters and their ideological allies have spent billions of dollars over the last couple of decades to create that climate denial, he said, likening the strategy to the one tobacco companies popularized in the late-1960s. Their goal is to put false ideas out there in the media, with fake scientists who are pretending to be authoritative like those fake doctors were working for the cigarette companies, he said. Still, Gore remains optimistic. My default setting is always hope. Whats more apparent to me is that this climate movement is now following in the tradition of great moral causes in the past. The abolition of slavery, the right to vote for women, the Civil Rights movement, the anti-Apartheid movement, more recently the gay rights movement. Ultimately, the underbrush was cleared away and people were able to clearly see the central choice, which was a very clear moral choice: whats right, and whats wrong. And the climate movement is now at that stage. And also, just for the record: Da Nile the river in Egypt has been facing the dangers of climate change first-hand, with rising sea levels threatening to flood Egypts ancient cities, if the river doesnt sink into the sea first. Story continues An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power is now in select theaters and opens nationwide Aug. 4. Watch Gore recall his experience presenting at the Academy Awards: Read more from Yahoo Movies: Controversy surrounding breastfeeding is nothing new, but one awesome photographer continues to try and end the stigma. Tennessee photographer, Nicki Kaylor, came up with a creative way to help normalize breastfeeding. In a series entitled Latched with Love, Kaylor asked nine moms to write down rude comments they have received while nursing. Kaylor then photographed the women feeding their children and holding up the signs. SEE ALSO: 'Walking Dead' actress had the perfect response for trolls hating on her breastfeeding photos The results show a juxtaposition between the beautiful photos and the hateful comments. Image: nicki kaylor photography Image: nicki kaylor photography Image: nicki kaylor photography Kaylor told Mashable that she wants mothers to feel it's ok to nurse without a cover. "I put this series together because there's so much judgment against mothers nursing their babies in public," she said. "Absolutely no mother should be in public, feeling ashamed because her baby is hungry and she has to feed it. I did this as a movement." Image: nicki kaylor photography Image: nicki kaylor photography Since posted on July 17, the photos have gained a lot of popularity on Facebook. "There's been a few people who comment rude remarks on the album but overall, nursing mothers love the series," Kaylor said. "Some referred it as 'refreshing to see' because they've had the same stares and comments as well." Hopefully, other women will see these photos and feel inspired by these strong, confident mothers. Jerusalem (AFP) - Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had to step in on Wednesday to prevent tensions with Jordan spiralling into a brawl between two lawmakers who agreed to meet on the border. Oren Hazan, from Netanyahu's Likud party, had accepted a challenge from Jordanian MP Yahya al-Saud to meet near the main crossing between the two countries on Wednesday morning, with fears of a fistfight. Netanyahu's office said in a statement they had called Hazan "to order him not to go to the Allenby Crossing." Hazan told military radio he approached the border but did not cross on Netanyahu's orders. "The Israeli MP is a coward, he retreated," Saud said according to a video published by Jordanian media. Saud had travelled to the border in anticipation of the meeting and said he was "doing this for Jordanian people to express our anger." Jordan is one of only two Arab states to have signed a formal peace treaty with Israel, but the neighbours have been involved in weeks of spats over new security measures installed at the Al-Aqsa mosque compound in Jerusalem. While Israel considers Jerusalem its undivided capital, Jordan claims authority over Al-Aqsa and the new checkpoints, introduced after an attack at the site, provoked huge protests. On July 23 Hazan tweeted that Israel protected Jordan's "asses" and the country needed "reeducation," apparently sparking a rebuke on Twitter. Both MPs have long histories of controversy. Hazan was suspended in 2015 from his position as deputy speaker of Israel's parliament after a televised report accused him of involvement in pimping and drugs. He was also suspended for one month from any parliamentary activity in December 2015 after "insulting" behaviour towards a colleague with a disability. In May he was heavily criticised after taking a selfie with US President Donald Trump as he landed in Israel. In response Hazan told Israeli media he was often referred to as the "Israeli Trump." Saud meanwhile has physically fought with a number of parliamentary colleagues in recent years. By Wladimiro Pantaleone PALERMO, Italy (Reuters) - Italian coastguards seized a migrant rescue boat operated by a German aid group in the Mediterranean suspected of aiding illegal immigration from Libya, a prosecutor said on Wednesday. Video showed the Iuventa, which is run by Jugend Rettet, arriving at the island of Lampedusa surrounded by several coastguard vessels after it was stopped at sea before dawn. Police inspected the ship as soon as it docked and checked the crew passports. They later took charge of the boat and set sail for a larger port in Sicily. Jugend Rettet said on Twitter it had received no information about the investigation. It could not be reached for further comment. It was the first time Italian police have seized a humanitarian boat. The move came amidst growing suspicion over the role non-governmental organizations are playing in picking up migrants off the Libya coast and bringing them to Italian ports. Ambrogio Cartosio, chief prosecutor in the western Sicilian city of Trapani, told a news conference his investigation into Jugend Rettet was ongoing and no one had yet been charged. "The evidence is serious," Cartosio said. "We have evidence of encounters between traffickers, who escorted illegal immigrants to the Iuventa, and members of the boat's crew." Italian media reported the boat had two Syrians aboard who were taken to a refugee center, but that could not be immediately confirmed. "TAXI SERVICE" Cartosio said there was no indication that Jugend Rettet had received any money from the Libya-based traffickers. "It would be fantasy to say there was a coordinated plan between the NGOs and the Libyan traffickers," he said. Cartosio told a parliamentary committee in May that he had suspicions about certain humanitarian groups because some rescue crew seemed to know in advance where to locate the flimsy boats crowded with migrants. Looking to regulate eight non-governmental groups which regularly hunt for migrants in the southern Mediterranean, the Italian government asked them this week to sign a code of conduct, including a demand that they carry an armed policemen on board their boats. Jugend Rettet, which describes itself as an organization of young Europeans, was one of five groups that refused to sign up, but Cartosio denied a suggestion that there was any link between this refusal and the boat's seizure. The 5-Star Movement, which polls say is now the country's biggest party, have accused NGOs of offering a "taxi" service to migrants, while the rightist Northern League party has said all their ships should be impounded. The humanitarian groups say they are only interested in saving lives, warning that thousands of people would die if they were not out at sea. Despite their efforts, 2,200 migrants have died so far this year trying to reach Europe from north Africa. Looking to turn the screws on the traffickers, Italy's parliament authorized on Wednesday a limited naval mission to help Libya's coastguard curb migrant flows. Jugend Rettet says on its website it started patrolling the Mediterranean in July 2016 and has rescued 6,526 people in its first year of action. "We want to put pressure on state actors to enforce the fundamental right to life and security even in the Mediterranean," the group says. (Additional reporting and writing by Isla Binnie; Editing by Crispian Balmer and Alison Williams) Source: Xinhua| 2017-08-03 09:39:21|Editor: Yang Yi Video Player Close BEIJING, Aug. 3 (Xinhua) -- Users of bike-sharing service in China should register in real name, the industry watchdog said Thursday. Bike-sharing providers are banned from offering service to children under the age of 12, and are not encouraged to offer service of electric bikes, according to the guidelines released by the Ministry of Transport and nine other government departments. There were 18.9 million users of shared bikes in China in 2016. The number is expected to hit 50 million by the end of this year. Booming bike-sharing has led to urban management challenges such as congested city sidewalks. Ivanka Trump in her namesake sleeveless dress. (Photo: Getty Images) Ivanka Trump went sleeveless in a blush-pink, ruffled dress from her namesake brand to meet with military wives. On Wednesday, Trump joined military spouses in the Roosevelt Room at the White House for a discussion on how families are affected by the demands of deployment. Spouses often have to put their professional and educational goals on hold, and those with careers that require state licensing face unique challenges. Ivanka Trump has been wearing a lot of sleeveless outfits lately. (Photo: Getty Images) When a service member is away, their spouse assumes greatly increased responsibilities, and their commitment and dedication is just as critical in the service about this country, Trump said, according to CNN. You must often be ready at a moments notice to move your families and find new employment. We are committed to supporting you and ensuring that you have every opportunity to find success in our economy. Today we met with #MilitarySpouses & learned what this Administration can do to support our non-uniformed heroes. pic.twitter.com/vi0cZow28N Ivanka Trump (@IvankaTrump) August 2, 2017 The $138 Ivanka Trump embellished crepe shift dress with a ruffled hem is sleeveless, an interesting choice for the first daughter, given the June reports that reporters were barred from the House for wearing sleeveless clothing. Photo: Getty Images Trump has been busy at the White House this week, despite a call for first family members to step down from their government positions. On Tuesday, MSNBC Morning Joe co-host Mika Brzezinski tweeted to her 654,000 followers, Its time for Donald Trumps family members to get out of the way and let professionals run the White House. Actually, it is way past time. It's time for Donald Trump's family members to get out of the way and let professionals run the White House. Actually, it is way past time. Mika Brzezinski (@morningmika) August 1, 2017 The first daughter has been showing off her shoulders lately. On Tuesday, Trump met with small business owners as part of the White Houses American Dream Week, wearing a sleeveless, dark-green top, a white midi skirt, Dior sunglasses, and a $1,990 Salvatore Ferragamo Sofia bag. Story continues And on Monday, Trump attended the swearing-in ceremony for Gen. John Kelly as White House chief of staff, wearing a white, sleeveless top with a black-and-white skirt. 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. By Brendan Pierson NEW YORK (Reuters) - Jurors in the U.S. fraud trial of former drug company executive Martin Shkreli deliberated for a third day on Wednesday without reaching a verdict. The day came and went without any word from the jurors in U.S. District Court in Brooklyn. Juries in lengthy deliberations often send notes asking to review evidence or legal instructions, but Shkreli's jury has sent only one note, Tuesday afternoon, asking for clarification of terms in the case. They are expected to resume deliberating on Thursday morning. Before going to trial on securities fraud and conspiracy charges, Shkreli, 34, was best known for raising the price of anti-infection drug Daraprim by 5,000 percent in 2015 as chief executive of Turing Pharmaceuticals. The criminal case stems from Shkreli's career before Turing, when he managed hedge funds MSMB Capital and MSMB Healthcare and drug company Retrophin Inc. Prosecutors have said that between 2009 and 2014, Shkreli lied to MSMB investors, lost their money and paid them back with stock and cash taken from Retrophin without the approval of the company's directors. Shkreli's lawyer, Benjamin Brafman, has argued to jurors that, while Shkreli may have made statements to investors that were not entirely accurate, he made them in good faith. He has also stressed that none of Shkreli's investors lost money, a rarity in a securities fraud case. (Reporting by Brendan Pierson; Editing by Jonathan Oatis) A jury in Dallas has said a couple must pay their wedding photographer $1.08 million in damages for launching a public campaign intended to defame and discredit her after the two parties disputed over a $125 fee. Wedding photographer Andrea Polito said Fridays decision was the end of a long journey. Andrew and Neely Moldovan had hired the photographer and her studio to take their engagement photos and capture their October 2014 wedding and rehearsal dinner. Polito said she had been a busy wedding photographer in the Dallas area for over a decade, and her studio was usually booked every weekend. After the nuptials, Politos contract stipulates that once she sends proofs, the couple must put in an order for their album, which carries an additional fee of at least $125 for the cover. According to the lawsuit Polito filed in March 2015, Neely Moldovan, a lifestyle and beauty blogger in Dallas who has previously blogged for HuffPost, requested copies of high-resolution photographs from the event after she received proofs. Despite contractual protocol, the couple did not submit their order for the album. Polito told The Washington Post that she, like many other wedding photographers, does not release high-res images until after the entire package is complete and paid for because photographers will hand over the images and the bride disappears. After several emails back and forth reiterating the contract, Polito said she waived the fee in an attempt to move on with the process. Then she learned the couple had told local news stations Polito was holding their photos hostage, according to the suit. The couple appeared on Dallas local NBC News station, lamenting their experience working with Polito. They also complained on social media, posting comments on Facebook and Instagram and writing a review trashing the photographer as scamming them on WeddingWire, a site couples use to find wedding vendors. The suit also said multiple one-star reviews appeared on the review site Yelp in the days after the Moldovans appeared on TV. Story continues Polito wrote candidly about the experience on her blog, and she ultimately filed a defamation lawsuit that alleged that the couples campaign defamed her and destroyed her business. The photographer said in her lawsuit and to multiple news outlets that the viral news story eventually caused her to close her studio. She told CBS News she hasnt photographed a wedding in two years. A Dallas county jury agreed with the photographer, and found the couple guilty of defaming Polito and acting out of malice to disparage her and her business. A spokesperson representing the Moldovans told HuffPost that the couple is stunned by the verdict. We did what consumer advocates say to do: When you are wronged, you fight back, read a statement sent on behalf of the Moldovans. If this is the cost of standing up for whats right, we should have given in to start with. But we hope to prevail in the end. The couple can appeal the verdict but have not indicated if they intend to do so, according to the The Associated Press. Politos lawyer Dave Wishnew said Polito hopes the verdict will send a message that freedom of speech does not mean freedom from consequences. In an interview with The Dallas Morning News, Polito said she felt vindicated. I feel my reputation was restored to myself, she told the newspaper. Whats been so hard the past couple of years has been feeling so ashamed of this story. Also on HuffPost Dress by Bridal Couture by Sonni Dress by Paloma Blanca Gown by Delphine Manivet Dress by Gregory Nato for Fancy Bridal Dress by Galina via David's Bridal Dress by House of Ollichon Dress by J. Crew Dress by AWAVEAWAKE Dress by Rime Arodaky Gown by Lela Rose Dress by Delphine Manivet Dress by Inbal Dror Dress by Christian Siriano Dress by Anthropologie Dress by Philippa Galasso Dress by Legends by Romona Keveza Attire by Keepsake via Joy Loves Fashion Dress by Rosa Clara Dress by Taylor Dress by Sarah Seven Dress by Rosa Clara Dress by Justin Alexander Dress by Paloma Blanca Love HuffPost? Become a founding member of HuffPost Plus today. This article originally appeared on HuffPost. By Duncan Miriri SUSWA, Kenya (Reuters) - Kenya's ruling party cannot win next week's national elections without rigging the result, opposition leader Raila Odinga said on Wednesday, adopting a hard-line stance likely to stoke public fears of violence. "There is no other way that Jubilee can win elections other than through rigging and they know it - that is why they are making all the efforts," he told Reuters as he left an election rally in the town of Suswa near the capital. "I'm very confident that we are going to get a very, very decisive victory," he said. A veteran opposition politician, Odinga is running against President Uhuru Kenyatta in the Aug. 8 polls, in which Kenyans will choose a new president, MPs and local officials. Many Kenyans are jittery, fearing a repeat of the 2007 polls, when Odinga alleged rigging and called for demonstrations after tallying was abruptly stopped and a winner announced. More than 1,200 people were killed in a campaign of orchestrated ethnic violence that followed. Kenyatta and his now-deputy, William Ruto, were charged at the International Criminal Court in the Hague, but the case against them collapsed. Odinga lost again in 2013 and alleged rigging due to the widespread breakdown of electronic voter ID machines, but he limited his challenges to the courts, not the streets, and the elections eventually passed off peacefully. On Wednesday, Odinga running mate Kalonzo Musyoka told voters to stay near polling stations after the vote to prevent rigging. "When you vote, don't go home, because Jubilee is planning to rig. Watch your vote," he told the crowd at the Suswa rally, many of whom wore bright orange and red Maasai blankets and welcomed him with shouts and waves of ceremonial clubs and sticks. Jubilee is Kenyatta's party. RIGGING FEARS The murder this weekend of a top election official, whose mutilated corpse was found in a Nairobi mortuary, shocked Kenyans and raised questions about the security of the voting system. Kenyan media have suggested the killing of Chris Msando may be linked to his role as head the election's electronic communication technology. Officials assured Kenya's 49 million people the system was safe, but a simulation exercise for the media raised questions, especially when Odinga received slightly fewer votes than other candidates in what was meant to be an equal vote split. Election commissioner Abdi Yakub Guliye said the discrepancies were typos by polling staff. "Many of them have had training probably not sufficient to internalize the working of the kit. So it is possible somebody may mistype a number," he said. "For such large number of polling stations, we are anticipating it may happen, inadvertently of course." The live-streaming of the simulation stopped after four outlets had transmitted their results. On polling day, there will be 40,883. In case of any discrepancy, the final result will be taken from signed tally sheets from each constituency, photographs of which will also be transmitted to the tallying center. The portal showing these sheets is not yet ready. Mulle Musau, the head of the largest group of domestic observers, said he hoped the glitches could be ironed out. "They did notice a few hitches but they said they are able to deal with them. This is part of the technical issues they are testing," he said. (Additional reporting by John Ndiso and Rajiv Golla in Nairobi; writing by Katharine Houreld; editing by Larry King) Monrovia (AFP) - Liberia's outgoing President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf says she will actively campaign for the handful of female candidates contesting elections in October, while her male vice-president seeks to replace her. There is just a single female candidate among 20 contenders running for president this year in Liberia, as Sirleaf steps down as Africa's first female head of state following more than a decade in power. "I will not be seeking re-election in the October 2017 elections, I will be on my feet everywhere in my own little way to campaign for women listed and certified by the National Elections Commission (NEC) as candidates to participate in the ensuing elections," Sirleaf said in a press statement issued Tuesday. Beyond MacDella Cooper, the former fashion model turned humanitarian running for the presidency, just 15.9 percent of remaining candidates standing for vice-president and seats in the House of Representatives are women, according to NEC figures. Sirleaf said she owed her own victories to women who came out in force to vote for her in 2005 and 2011 as she unified a nation emerging from the ashes of a civil war that ended in 2003. She would be "reciprocating the Liberian women who stood under the sun and the rain -- telling the Liberian people that we, the women of Liberia, this is our time," the statement said. Liberian women continue to suffer extremely high rates of sexual violence, according to the UN Women agency, the legacy of a war in which rape was used as a weapon by rebel forces and government soldiers alike. Widespread illiteracy and discrimination based on sex also limit women's involvement in public life in Liberia, according to UN Women. Joseph Boakai, Sirleaf's vice-president, is seeking the top job for the ruling Unity Party based on the record of peace and relative stability Liberia has experienced since Sirleaf was elected, and while he has received her endorsement it is not clear if she will actively campaign on his behalf. Though statistics about how many pre-adolescent boys sometimes wear dresses are scant, studies estimate that about 2 percent to 7 percent behave in cross-gender ways. And this week, two sons of celebs became the latest to express themselves in gender-bending ways. Both have gotten largely praised in the media. Chris Evanss son Eli, 5, caused a media stir when he went to the theater in London wearing a shiny green dress. (Photo: Getty Images) The most darling thing you have ever seen! declared Perez Hilton, in writing about how Megan Fox shared a photo on Instagram of her 4-year-old son Noah in an Elsa dress a proclivity of her sons that shes shared with the public before, once telling Jimmy Kimmel, The boys can wear dresses. Noah wears dresses, so there are no rules you can be whatever you want to be in my house! Other media outlets noted that Noah rocked the Elsa dress and looked sweet; although social media commenters had more mixed opinions, with some criticizing the decision to let Noah wear the dress. Confusing the little-boy mind from an early age that they cant decide what they want of their own. Transgender in the process. Selfish people! offered one Instagram critic. A post shared by Megan Fox (@the_native_tiger) on Jul 31, 2017 at 8:51pm PDT Meanwhile, U.K. television and BBC radio producer Chris Evans posed with his family on Tuesday for a London paparazzi shot that included his son Eli, 5, wearing a glam green frock. That, too, received mixed reactions, with one media outlet writing that he steals the show with his forward-thinking dress sense. Others on social media did not approve, however. What is it with these celebrities making their little boys wear dresses? wondered one Twitter user. The boys are not the first and certainly wont be the last to cause a mix of emotions from onlookers because of their gender-bending aesthetic. In late July, Liev Schreibers son Kai, 8, dressed up as Harley Quinn for the San Diego Comic-Con, and people had feelings. Before that, Charlize Therons son Jackson, 4, dressed as a princess, prompting similar controversy. Story continues Regular moms have also gotten lots of attention for proudly sharing images of their sons in dresses, as have books addressing the topic, such as Morris Micklewhite and the Tangerine Dress, which caused an uproar at a Michigan elementary school. So how can a mom or dad best respond to their little boys wanting to experiment with gender-creative expression through dresses or princess costumes or nail polish particularly parents for whom such requests could trigger worry or fear for their child? All those feelings a parent might have? Dont push them under the rug, Diane Ehrensaft, developmental and clinical psychologist and author of The Gender Creative Child, tells Yahoo Style. Filter them, tag them, and put them in cold storage, even if it involves a bit of performance. Then say, Dresses are people clothes, and if those are what you want to wear, thats beautiful. I cant tell you how important it is for a child to get positive feedback about gender-expansive behavior. Thats because, explains the founding member of the Child and Adolescent Gender Center in San Francisco, it may be a very core part of who he is. And the last thing you want to do is instill shame, rather than pride. Still, what about preparing such a boy for the possibly hurtful reactions of others? Ehrensaft explains that how a parent approaches giving such a warning should differ based on the childs constitution. Some kids need that guidance more than others some may say I dont care what anyone thinks, while some are very sensitive about teasing, Ehrensaft explains. For the latter, she says, a parent could advise something like the following: I just want you to know there are some kids who might not understand, and will be confused, and they may say some not-nice things. What would you like to do about that? A parent might also suggest ways to teach the critics or bullies points, including how dresses are not girl clothes, but people clothes. So you give them something to pull out of a toolbox, she says. Making sure that theres a supportive adult around when your boy experiments with gender-creative dress such as by giving his teacher or camp counselor a heads up is hugely important, Ehrensaft stresses. And there are always supportive people who can help boost a childs self-confidence, such as the Instagram commenter who left the following thoughts on Foxs image: Beautiful pictures of a beautiful family. Ill never understand why people are getting so upset over a dress. Boy things/girl things. How about simply kid things without the labels. Read more from Yahoo Style + Beauty: A remote corner of the Himalayas has become the unlikely scene of a major power standoff between China and India. Now entering its seventh week, the standoff centers on the tri-junction border shared by China, India, and Bhutan referred to as Doklam in India and Donglang in China. Neither side is spoiling for a fight, nor are they ready to back down anytime soon considering the security concerns, domestic political pressures, and regional reputational stakes. A series of quiet diplomatic interactions has not restrained the brinkmanship or ultimatums and the risk of a major armed clash between two Asian heavyweights remains. China and India have sparred along the Himalayan border for decades, including a brief war (and clear Chinese victory) in 1962. In areas like Aksai Chin or Arunachal Pradesh, long-standing disputes still play out in regular diplomatic arguments. Yet until recently there seemed to be a settled status quo in the comparatively peaceful tri-national border area, which has special strategic significance, lying as it does above the 14-mile-wide Siliguri valley, or the chickens neck, that connects northeast India to the rest of the country. As it turns out, both sides had very different visions of just what that status quo was. The clash of perceptions has left them both smarting, and dialed jingoistic language up to 11. To China, Doklam is its own sovereign territory based on treaties, tacit agreements, and de facto control. India considers Doklam a disputed territory and contends that any changes to the territorys jurisdiction must be made in consultation with India per a 2012 understanding between the three parties. Thus, when roughly 100 Peoples Liberation Army (PLA) soldiers arrived on the Dolam plateau (an area within Doklam) on June 16 with bulldozers and earthmoving machinery to improve and extend an existing Chinese road, a company-sized unit of Indian soldiers crossed into Dolam from a nearby Indian army post and interdicted the construction team. The Indian soldiers formed a human chain to physically obstruct the road-building project and urged the Chinese to desist from changing the status quo. Since the Indian interdiction on June 18, PLA construction has halted and both sides remain at an impasse. Between 300-350 Indian troops have pitched tents near the standoff site and dug in for the long haul, supported by supply lines and 2,500 reinforcements. China recently threatened to move its own reinforcements into the area and conducted live-fire military exercises in Tibet. While Indian officials have voiced interest in dialogue, official Chinese statements demand Indias unconditional withdrawal before any talks can begin. After issuing a complaint against Chinese actions on June 20, Bhutan has otherwise remained studiously ambiguous as to its views of the standoff. The Doklam standoff stems from Chinas and Indias deep-seated suspicions about the others intentions. Conventional wisdom on international politics guides states to confront, not appease, those attempting to revise any status quo, lest it encourage further belligerence. But identifying exactly who the revisionist side is, and what the status quo was, is notoriously difficult in any case, because the definitions are vague and under-theorized. And it is especially hard amid the murky legacies of empire that make up the Himalayan frontiers. For China, Indias military deployment into a disputed region is revising norms of sovereignty as well as long-standing public and private agreements. China believes its own actions and demands are sanctioned by existing agreements and understandings, and that India is subverting those agreements for unprecedented military deployments on foreign soil. For India, Chinas attempts to construct roads in disputed territories appears consistent with its previous salami-slicing maneuvers of unilaterally revising unsettled borders for territorial aggrandizement and expanded influence in the region. India believes China is deliberately exploiting the ambiguity of existing territorial disputes to expand its borders, influence, and offensive capability while its own actions are more explicitly legitimated by other treaties, arrangements, and security imperatives. The historical and diplomatic ambiguity around the border has also created plenty of space for both sides to feel self-righteously aggrieved. China contends it has unquestioned sovereignty over Doklam based on an 1890 treaty between Great Britain and China delimiting the border between the Indian state of Sikkim and Tibet, as well as the boundary point with Bhutan. As both India and China have accepted this treaty, India had no legitimate grounds to cross the border and thus its actions constitute an invasion of Chinese territory. Secondly, China argues even if Doklam is disputed, India is still inappropriately interfering with and prejudicing a bilateral dispute between Bhutan and China. India concedes its troops crossed an international border but into Bhutan, not China. Indias interdiction is furthermore justified by another treaty, Indias 2007 treaty of friendship with Bhutan, and both countries interest in halting Chinas attempts to unilaterally revise the status quo. As several analysts have pointed out, the vagaries of colonial cartography and internal contradictions within the 1890 treaty mean it can actually be interpreted to support both Indian and Chinese claims. Adding to the confusion is Bhutans ambiguous position. As a tiny Himalayan kingdom sandwiched between the regions two major powers, Bhutan has enjoyed a special relationship with India since 1949 that some might describe more as suzerainty. While the 2007 India-Bhutan Friendship Treaty updates the 1949 agreement to accord Bhutan greater autonomy, India still wields considerable influence over Bhutans foreign policy. To justify its recent military actions, India has invoked an article which states that neither country will allow its territory to be used for activities that harm the others national security interests. To date, however, Bhutan has yet to clarify whether India acted independently or at Bhutans request for military assistance in Doklam. China has argued that, absent a clear invitation, India lacks legitimate grounds for its involvement. Indias Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) has used more circumspect language like coordination, and has flubbed opportunities to clarify Bhutans request. It is possible Bhutan privately requested help or that India coerced its way into the dispute for its own security interests as it did in Sri Lanka in 1987. Another point of contention is private diplomacy among the various actors. While not publicly brandished as justification, our sources suggest (and some reporting seems to corroborate) that PLA actions in Doklam may be based on a private understanding between China and Bhutan. Both countries have at least seven disputed territories between themselves and reports indicate Bhutan may have implicitly agreed to cede Doklam to China in the late 1990s a period when China was busily cleaning up its frontiers in favor of territorial gains on its northern border. Thus, China deems its road-building in Doklam legitimate within this private, pre-settlement agreement, and fearing such a settlement, Indias military invasion seeks to challenge that agreement and Bhutans sovereignty. It is possible India was privy to this private Chinese-Bhutanese agreement over Doklam and may have tried to thwart it. Regardless, India would likely maintain that no formal agreement means no final settlement. In its diplomatic demarche to China on June 20, Bhutan stated that Chinese actions violated its 1988 and 1998 agreements prohibiting alteration of the status quo before the completion of negotiations. Moreover, another private and superseding 2012 agreement between India and China purportedly required the consultation of all three countries before a final determination on the tri-junction is made. China also implicitly contends it has had a decades-long presence and effective jurisdiction over Doklam where Tibetan herdsman bring their livestock to graze. According to Chinese records, the PLA began patrolling Doklam once a year since 1975 and gradually extended its geographical coverage southward. India argues the remoteness of Doklam, its harsh winters, and poor infrastructure mean China has not always exercised de facto control over the area. Bhutanese herdsman have also traditionally used Doklam as a grazing land, and security forces from all three countries have regularly patrolled the area, leading to occasional confrontations. China destroyed two Bhutanese military posts in 2007 and allegedly constructed Chinese posts at the same spot. One unofficial map circulated by Chinese bloggers even refers to a line of actual control between China and Bhutan, implying Bhutan exercises de facto control of Doklam. China is also arguing that Indias actions are unprecedented. To China, India has not only interfered in a bilateral dispute but escalated it by deploying forces across a recognized international border into a third country. Indeed, even Indian observers have acknowledged Doklam is the first time India has engaged Chinese forces from the soil of a third country. Upending established norms of sovereignty through force in the name of self-defense could permit future adventurism. Yet Indias argument is that it was responding to unprecedented Chinese revision of borders through road construction (both hardening and extension) in disputed territory. Such moves would create permanent facts on the ground with grave implications for Indian national security. In our estimation, Chinese claims are vulnerable due to the ambiguity of treaty language, private agreements, and de facto possession claims. But Indian claims are by no means less vulnerable given the unprecedented nature of Indias actions on the plateau and Bhutans deafening silence. Both sides views of the status quo may appear to themselves entirely justifiable, yet to their adversary as thin gruel. Seven weeks into the crisis, the continued impasse and increasingly caustic rhetoric indicates the potential for escalation remains high. The Indian national security advisors recent visit to Beijing did not yield any breakthroughs, contrary to some reporting. Aggressive signals of resolve like military exercises or mobilization or perceived windows of tactical opportunity in a different sector of the disputed India-China border could lead either side to miscalculate, resulting in accidental or inadvertent escalation. And any shooting that begins on the border could even expand into other domains like cyber- or naval warfare. Despite the challenges, there are several possible resolutions in sight if both sides and third parties trying to defuse tension strive to understand what might seem like mutually incompatible perspectives. For example, India could find alternative ways to grant Beijing a win by softening its position on Chinas One Belt, One Road project, both sides could pursue international arbitration, or both sides could wait until harsh winter weather conditions force both sides forces to quietly draw down. Another off ramp to deescalate the crisis is a back-channel agreement with Bhutan appearing as the public arbiter, allowing both sides to save face. The most obvious solution, as many have identified, would be a mutual withdrawal and return to pre-June 16 positions something which may already be slowly happening, as both draw back troops. For both sides to save face, the public narrative of their back-channel dialogue could rely on Bhutan. For example, India could claim Bhutan thanked India for its support and commitment to upholding the bilateral friendship treaty, but after deploying its own monitoring force, Bhutan requests that India withdraw its forces. This would allow India to withdraw without appearing to bend to Chinese demands, send a message that Chinas salami tactics will be challenged, and buttress its credibility with states concerned with Chinese encroachment. For its part, China can claim India withdrew first and quietly halt road construction until a final settlement is reached between itself and Bhutan. This would give all sides, including Bhutan, a face-saving exit necessary to appease domestic audiences. At the same time, India and China will have exchanged clear signals on just how serious they are about the border and how dangerous assumptions about the other side can be. Photo credit: DESHAKALYAN CHOWDHURY/AFP/Getty Images Police responding to a Virginia home were reportedly stunned when a woman and her two children ran off as they approached. The reason: Cops say the mother and the kids had been held captive in the Fredericksburg home by a man for years. Watch: Grandmother Arrested After Taking 4-Week-Old Grandson Hostage With Gun The 32-year-old mother and her kids, ages 11 and 8, reportedly ran out a side door as the man reluctantly spoke with police at the front door at about 5 p.m. Saturday. That man, 43-year-old Kariem Ali Muhammad Moore, had allegedly been keeping them captive for some two years and, according to police, the shocking situation only came to light when a concerned caller alerted authorities that the woman hadn't been seen in a while. Spotsylvania Sheriffs Lieutenant C.A. Carey told Fredericksburg.com that the children had never been to school as far as investigators know. The mother was taken to a hospital in serious condition, reportedly due to an ongoing illness that had gone untreated. The children also received treatment at a hospital. The kids are now in the care of a relative, according to reports. Investigators have been told Moore is the father of the children, but that has not been verified, Carey said. Read: 'Extremely Disturbing' Video Shows Teens Recording Man and Laughing as He Drowned: Cops Moore has been charged with three counts of abduction by force, intimidation or deception as well as assault and battey on a family member, according to online police records. Moore is being held in the Rappahannock Jail without bail. Watch: 8 Women Held Captive Inside Mansion by Suspected Human Trafficker Related Articles: Curvy Irish model Louise OReilly shares her journey to self-love. (Photo: Facebook/ Louise OReilly) Louise OReilly, who bears a striking resemblance to actress Margot Robbie, is one of Irelands most recognized curvy models. Its hard to believe that a woman who is so gorgeous would lack confidence, but OReilly recently opened up on Instagram about her insecurities when she hits the beach in a swimsuit. In her candid post, OReilly urges her followers to not let their insecurities get in the way of enjoying and living their lives. Throughout most of my teenage years, I would be so afraid to embrace any kind of opportunity, or invite to even a party, OReilly tells Yahoo Style. If I did go to something, it would have taken me a good week or more to build up and prepare for it. She adds, My body confidence was extremely low. While on the outside people saw a bubbly, chatty, friendly teenager, inside I felt the total opposite because of my size. OReilly recounts the many occasions she missed out on fun-filled days at the beach because she was worried about her cellulite or afraid she would be being the biggest woman there. Story continues One consistent thing I notice when it comes to low body confidence is the amount of opportunities and possibilities people talk themselves out of, whether its avoiding going out to events, holidays, fun days out, totally trying to avoid buying a bikini or swimsuit and just laying on a beach!! OReilly wrote in her post. OReilly tells Yahoo Style, I try to encourage people to get out of that kind of mindset as it will only lead to regret further down the line. New model polaroids thanks @sadowskaphoto #curvymodels #plussizemodel #plusmodelmag #celebratemysize #modelonduty #diversityinfashion A post shared by Louise O'Reilly (@stylemecurvy) on Jul 21, 2017 at 1:45pm PDT OReilly said that as a teenager, it was hard for her to love her body. The now 27-year-old woman says it was a long journey to get to a place of self-love and acceptance. On how she got to a body-positive place, the model says, Its a slow and steady process, but one that is so important to do. Simple things are always good to start, such as not obsessing over sizing, [and] wearing what fits you as opposed to focusing on the label is so important. She adds, Cut out negative talk and putting yourself down its vital to try and avoid negative talk with other people. OReillys message is resonating with her many followers. One commenter wrote, I have really low body confidence after having my baby 5 months agoYoure an inspiration, thank you for perking me up a little. Another commenter added, I put on a swimsuit today for the first time in years and went into the pool with my kids on holidays and we had a ball! Saturday night glam ..Currently in bed with a face mask on, hair in a messy bun and wearing mismatched pjs .. a stark contrast to wearing a glam outfit last week at the colosseum #realitycheck #fbloggers #styleblogger #saturdaynight #travel A post shared by Louise O'Reilly (@stylemecurvy) on Jun 10, 2017 at 2:54pm PDT OReilly is more than just a pretty face and fashion blogger. She has a college degree in international relations focused on politics and law, and she encourages her young followers never to choose beauty over intellect. The brilliant thing about education is that you find yourself more as a person, [as well as] your interests and what you really want to achieve, she says. It will open doors for you, and you will surpass even your own expectations with education. Read more from Yahoo Beauty + Style: Follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Pinterest for nonstop inspiration delivered fresh to your feed, every day. For Twitter updates, follow @YahooStyle and @YahooBeauty. Source: Xinhua| 2017-08-03 09:39:25|Editor: Mengjie (Xinhua photo) BARCELONA, Aug 2 (Xinhua) -- Brazilian star striker Neymar da Silva Santos Jr will leave FC Barcelona, the Spanish giant confirmed on Wednesday. Neymar Jr, along with his father and agent, informed FC Barcelona of his decision in a meeting held at the club's offices. FC Barcelona "refer to the buy-out clause of his existing contract which as of 1 July totals 222 million euros which will have to be deposited in its entirety." "Furthermore", the club said, "in reply to the claim for the contract extension bonus, the club has once again made it clear that the amount remains deposited with a notary until the case is resolved." Neymar remains under contract at FC Barcelona, although the club said he has temporary permission to not take part in training sessions. Neymar Jr missed training on Wednesday morning and the club said that "before the morning session began, Neymar Jr. informed those present of his wish to leave the club and was therefore given permission to miss training and resolve his future." Dear Vice President Mike Pence: A betting man might place odds that, sometime in the next three and a half years, and maybe a lot sooner than that, you will become president of the United States. The present situation in the White House is unsustainable. The time has come for you to consider the possibility that, as a result, it will not be sustained and that you, as a consequence, have a date with history at some point on your calendar. True, your bosss impeachment and removal remains a low-probability event. A Republican-controlled Congress has already allowed the president to cross thresholds that would surely have led to the removal of prior commanders in chief. While this may reflect little more than base political calculations, impeachment is an exceptionally grave act before which one should naturally hesitate. The preeminent legal scholar Charles Black opened his book on impeachment by arguing that [e]veryone must shrink from this most drastic of measures. Writing in Lawfare, Jane Chong notes: Acknowledging his own status as a longtime political opponent of then-President Richard Nixon, Black nonetheless expresses a very strong sense of the dreadfulness of the step of removal. Impeachment must be treated like high-risk surgery, he insists, to be resorted to only when the rightness of diagnosis and treatment is sure. So it may take time, and your appointment with history may never come. But consider, at this stage, the odds that President Trump will be removed from office early are certainly not lower than the odds of his election in the first instance. Only last week, a Republican senator spoke the words: the beginning of the end of the Trump presidency. Your boss is completely out of control. You know this, probably better than we do. You know that he is incapable of controlling his behavior and could lash out at any moment in a fashion that could be ruinous. You know thats true even if theres nothing to all those Russian allegations. And you know that all those denials including the ones to your face have proved false. You know, in other words, that it could happen. And if it does, you will face the monumental task of leading a fractured country forward out of the wreckage. The time to begin preparing for that moment is now. You occupy an unusual position in our constitutional structure. Because you, like the president himself, were elected by the people, you are the only member of the executive branch whom Donald Trump cannot fire. This gives you unusual power in a White House more closely modeled on Lord of the Flies than Abraham Lincolns team of rivals. You do not, as White House staffers are so fond of reminding one another, serve at the pleasure of the president. Hes stuck with you. He can marginalize you, but he cant get rid of you entirely. It is critical that you recognize the distinction between yourself and the courtiers who jockey for his favor. You do not merely serve Donald Trump. You have an independent relationship with the American people, and Trumps fall whenever it eventually comes to pass will be your rise. Its time for you to stop acting like one of the courtiers and start acting like a potential successor, a viable one. The strength and nature of your independent relationship with the people may well have profound consequences for a post-Trump America. So risk his displeasure and start cultivating that relationship now. Embrace marginalization. Its your protection, the one thing that may allow you to emerge as a leader not hopelessly tainted by your origin story. Work on that marginalization. Pray for it. Dont try to come in from the cold. Run out into the cold and stay there. The first step is putting meaningful distance between yourself and Trump. You do not have to publicly condemn his shocking conduct though itd be nice if you did. But enough with the insincere fawning and the over-the-top efforts to remain in his good graces. Do not allow yourself to be sullied by the swirling insanity overtaking 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. Your foreign trip was a good idea. Do more of that. Go to funerals. Make speeches on important unifying themes. Someone in this administration needs to act with the deliberation and integrity and dignity of a president. And it should be you because, unlike the many sycophants surrounding Trump, you may need to wake up tomorrow and actually be the president. The more time you spend with Trump, the less plausible youll be in his role. Second, it is critical that you have some credibility. Your association with Trump has already deprived you of most of it for many Americans. But, hey, you go to war with the vice president you have, not the vice president you wish you had. So please, be careful not to ever allow an administration unrivaled in its mendacity to once again make a liar out of you. Simply refuse to make any factual representations to the American people that you have not independently verified and are not prepared to personally stand behind. Claiming the White House lied to you just isnt going to cut it. Third, reaffirm, wherever possible, your commitment to and faith in all of our three branches of government. We have seen President Trump assault the integrity and independence of the other branches and his own, for that matter. Remember that he is poisoning the well for you, too. Do you want to become president having never stood up for the men and women of the Justice Department? Do you want your administration to have to litigate before courts for whose integrity you couldnt muster a word? Remember that the people whose abuse you tolerate today may have to work for you tomorrow. How do you want them to see you? Finally, study and study again the example of Gerald Ford, who became president with the resignation of Richard Nixon on Aug. 9, 1974. In the days leading up to Nixons resignation, Ford was not certain of the outcome. He did, however, make decisions that proved critical in his ability to lead the country out from Watergate. His example is instructive. A vice president staring down the barrel of his bosss impeachment would be well advised to consider and care about historical perceptions. Ford, for example, elected to have credible witnesses in the room for significant meetings. His own chief of staff, Robert Hartmann, accompanied him to a meeting with Nixons chief of staff, Alexander Haig, wherein Haig informed the vice president of the soon-to-be revealed tapes that would end Nixons presidency. In that meeting, Haig laid out a series of options regarding Nixons future, including that Nixon resign and Ford issue a pardon. Ford declined to comment on that option or on the issue of pardons at all deeming himself an interested party in the matter. He assiduously conducted himself so as to ensure that when accusations of a quid pro quo that he pardoned Nixon in exchange for becoming president inevitably surfaced, he was able to counter them honestly. Are you conducting yourself in a fashion that you will comfortably answer questions about your comportment when the time comes? Ford was determined to not take any steps that could be perceived as attempting to secure the presidency for himself. He did not encourage the president to resign, though his doing so would obviously trigger Fords own elevation, and he gave no indication of any willingness to pardon Nixon if he did resign. But, critically, neither did he suck up to Nixon nor erode his own credibility so as to make himself less of a viable leader if he had to lead. In short, part of Fords great service to the nation was not just his uncheerful willingness to assume the office, but his ability to do so under conditions in which members of both parties could speak to his honesty and integrity. Those are conditions you are going to need to cultivate. After Ford took office, he addressed the nation, saying: My fellow Americans, our long national nightmare is over. Our Constitution works; our great republic is a government of laws and not of men. Its a good line. You might consider jotting it down somewhere and practicing it a few times. Photo credit: AARON P. BERNSTEIN/Getty Images The relationship between the two leaders has been tense as a result of Mr Trump's rhetoric about Mexico: Getty Mexico has rejected Donald Trumps claim its countrys president telephoned him to praise him for his immigration crackdown and tightening of border security. It was the second time in two days that a claim by Mr Trump that he had received a congratulatory call about a controversial issue, was disputed. Speaking earlier this week as he introduced his new Chief of Staff, John Kelly, Mr Trump praised his officials work in his post as Secretary of Homeland Security. Con @realDonaldTrump hablamos de la importancia de modernizar el TLCAN y de explorar programas de trabajo agricola temporal #G20Summit. Enrique Pena Nieto (@EPN) July 7, 2017 At Homeland, what he has done has been nothing short of miraculous, Mr Trump said of Mr Kelly, a former four star general. As you know, the border was a tremendous problem and theyre close to 80 per cent stoppage. And even the president of Mexico called me - they said their southern border, very few people are coming because they know they're not going to get through our border, which is the ultimate compliment. Yet Mexico has denied that President Enrique Pena Nieto ever made such a call to Mr Trump. A statement released by the Mexican Foreign Ministry, said Mr Pena Nieto has not recently spoken to President Donald Trump over the telephone. The statement went on reference the only other time the two met and conversed on the sidelines of the G-20 Summit, according to the Associated Press. During the meeting the two heads of State held last July 7th in Hamburg, Germany, the topic of migration was a topic of conversation approached by both. President Pena Nieto shared that repatriations of Mexican nationals from the United States had fallen 31 per cent between January and June 2017 in comparison to the same timeframe in 2016, the statement read. Story continues Mr Trump has had a tense relationship with the Mexican leader, both before he was elected and after. When he was still a candidate, he took up an invitation to travel to Mexico City to meet him and discuss immigration. Mr Trump claimed they discussed the issue of a border wall, but not which country would pay for it. The Mexican leader insisted he had told Mr Trump that Mexico would not pay for it. In January, as controversy about the wall grew, Mr Pena Nieto cancelled a planned visit to Washington to meet with Mr Trump. This morning we have informed the White House that I will not attend the meeting scheduled for next Tuesday with the POTUS, Mr Pena Nieto tweeted at the time. This is the second time in two days that questions have been raised about a congratulatory telephone calls that Mr Trump claims to have received. In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, the president disputed that there had been any negative reaction to a controversial speech last week to a Boy Scouts jamboree. And I got a call from the head of the Boy Scouts saying it was the greatest speech that was ever made to them, and they were very thankful. So there was - there was no mix," he said. Yet the Boy Scouts organisation said such a call never took place, according to reports from Time magazine and the Toronto Star. Documentary filmmaker and political activist Michael Moore visited The View, and the longtime critic of the Republican Party set his sights on the Democrats. Moore last year predicted that Donald Trump would win the 2016 presidential election. There were people who voted for Obama twice that told me they were voting for Trump and I was like, Something is going on here,' he said. We tried to get the campaign, the Clinton campaign, to spend more time in Michigan and Wisconsin. Though Trump won the Electoral College, Moore pointed out that Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton won the popular vote something the Democrats have done in six of the past seven presidential elections. He said about Democrats, The people of America agree with us. His implored Democrats to use their strength in numbers in areas in which they lost the electoral vote. Watch: Steph Curry helps The View surprise disabled veteran with new home: Read more from Yahoo TV: Tell us what you think! Hit us up on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram or leave your comments below. And check out our host, Khail Anonymous, on Twitter. As Michelle Carter prepared to be sentenced for the death of Conrad Roy III Thursday, Roys aunt argued she should be given twenty years behind bars. Kim Bozzi said Carter should be kept far away from society after being convicted of involuntary manslaughter for urging Roy to take his own life. Take away the spotlight that she so desperately craves, Bozzi said in a prepared statement she planned to read at Carters hearing, given exclusively to the Boston Herald Wednesday. Twenty years may seem extreme, but it is still twenty more than Conrad will ever have. Read: Text Messages From Michelle Carter Urged Conrad Roy To Kill Himself The 20-year-old was convicted of involuntary manslaughter by Judge Lawrence Moniz in June. In a high profile trial, prosecutors presented shocking text messages from Carter to Roy, who was her boyfriend at the time, urging him to take his own life. Roy committed suicide in 2014 by attaching a portable generator to his truck. Prosecutors presented evidence that showed at one point during his suicide, Roy got scared and attempted to get out of his truck before Carter became infuriated and told him to get back inside and finish his suicide. Her lawyer, Joseph Cataldo, said at the time of her sentencing that there were a host of different options for the young woman, ranging from 20 years in jail to probation. Roy's aunt is hoping for the 20-year option. Im unsure when she decided to set her sick plan into motion or why, Bozzi said in a victim impact statement, also given to the Boston Herald. But when she did she did it relentlessly. It was calculated and it was planned down to a T. She preyed on his vulnerabilities. He trusted her, which in turn, cost him his life. Bozzi planned to urge Moniz to sentence Carter to 20 years behind bars Thursday. Carters father, however, said he was prepared to plead for a far more lenient sentence. Story continues She will forever live with what she has done and I know will be a better person because of it, David Carter wrote in a July letter to the judge. I ask of you to invoke leniency in your decision-making process for my loving child Michelle. In a letter provided to the Herald, David Carter planned to ask the judge to take into consideration that Michelle was a troubled, vulnerable teenager in an extremely difficult situation and made a tragic mistake. Read: Conrad Roys Suicide Note To Michelle Carter Released As Evidence Roys mother, Lynn Roy, said in June that Carter didnt have a conscience but that beyond that, she did not want to talk about the outcome of the case. I dont wish pain, Roy told the Daily Mail at the time. I feel bad for her family too. Carter was scheduled to be sentenced sometime Thursday. Related Articles A mother of four children living in Ohio for nearly 20 years has been deported to Mexico after a traffic stop revealed she was an undocumented immigrant, authorities said. Beatriz Morelos Casillas, 37, was arrested outside Cleveland on July 24 for driving without a license. On Tuesday she arrived in Nuevo Laredo, a violent Mexican border town controlled by the deadly Zetas cartel. Read: Single Mother of 4 Seeks Sanctuary at Church as Federal Agents Threaten Deportation Her husband, David DeJesus Casillas, traveled to the dangerous town to meet his wife and found her late that night, the Hispanic immigration group HOLA told the Cleveland Plain Dealer. The couple will now try to figure out what to do next, according to a spokesperson for the organization. David Casillas was legally living in the U.S. under a work visa. He said his wife knows no one in the town across the border from Laredo, Texas. They have lived in Painesville, just north of Cleveland, for the past 17 years. The couple has four children, ages 4 through 12, who are all American citizens. Shes scared; I believe shes more scared for her children than for her right now, nephew Christian Morelos told CBS News. She was headed home from her factory job, where she works seven days a week, when she was pulled over, her family said. What happened to Beatriz was the direct result of the new [Trump] administration and the policies that have been given to ICE, immigrant attorney Elizabeth Ford told CBS. People with no criminal history are being told they have to leave the country in a very short amount of time, when theyve built an entire life here with children and houses and families and jobs, Ford said. Thomas Horman, the acting director of ICE, has said his agency is simply doing its job in arresting immigrants who lack documentation. Read: Mexican Man Whose Wife Voted for Trump Is Deported: 'They Suddenly Told Me It Was Time to Go' Another Painesville deportee, Francisco Narciso, was kidnapped by cartel members when he arrived in Nuevo Laredo and was held for ransom six days until his girlfriend wired nearly $4,000, his friends and immigration advocacy groups said. Story continues He was grabbed at gunpoint at a bus station and locked in a room with others who had been deported, his family said. After being beaten and denied food, he was finally released Sunday night, his girlfriend told the Plain Dealer reported. Kidnapping is a common money-making scheme for cartel members. ICE has faced criticism for depositing deportees in the state of Tamaulipas. The U.S. State Department considers it one of the most dangerous areas of Mexico and advises American tourists to avoid the area. Watch: 29-Year-Old Illegal Immigrant Calls 911 Because He Wanted to Be Deported Related Articles: WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A NATO soldier was killed and six other personnel were wounded in Afghanistan on Thursday after a suicide bomber attacked their convoy in Kabul province, a coalition statement said. The wounded were being treated at a U.S. military hospital at Bagram Airfield and were in stable condition, the statement said. The incident occurred in Qarabagh district. A U.S. official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said the soldier killed appeared not to be American, citing initial reports, but provided no further details and said that information could change as more details come in. The coalition maintains nearly 13,000 troops from 39 countries as part of a mission to train, advise and assist Afghan troops. A suicide bomb attack in Afghanistan on Wednesday killed two American troops as they were traveling in a convoy near the airport in the southern city of Kandahar, the U.S. military said, in a strike claimed by the Taliban insurgency. The attack was seen as a reminder of the dangers posed to the 8,400 U.S. service members currently in Afghanistan as President Donald Trump weighs sending thousands more troops to fight America's longest war. U.S. military commanders in Afghanistan have asked for several thousand additional troops, but the request is stalled in Washington, where Trump has expressed skepticism over extending the American commitment. (Reporting by Idrees Ali; editing by Jonathan Oatis) The parents of 12-year-old Mallory Grossman, who killed herself in June, said Tuesday they would sue Rockaway Township school district in New Jersey for not being able to prevent the alleged cyberbullying that led to the girls suicide. The girl's mother, Dianne Grossman, and the family's attorney said the school district did nothing to stop the alleged online harassment of her daughter by a group of girls at school that continued for months, NBC New York reported. The family mentioned they might also consider suing the parents of "three or four" children at the school for allowing them to bully Mallory for months. Dianne said she spoke to one of the alleged bullies' mother before the day of her daughter's death and the mother ignored her, and said it was just a big joke. Read: Chris Cornell's Blood At Suicide Scene Does Not Indicate Foul Play, Report Says Amid Conspiracy Theories Mallory, a gymnast and a cheerleader at the school district, killed hersel just a week before completing sixth grade, according to her mother. "There was a pattern, a regular history pattern of who the school district dismissing my concerns," Dianne said. Dianne also said she and her husband made the school district aware of the problems earlier but they did not pay heed to their concerns, NBC New York reported. "We feel we followed the schools protocol," she said. "We started low on the totem pole and worked our way up until it finally made its way to the principal. Their words were, Well investigate it, well look into it." Dianne added, "Im going to make the assumption the school did something, but Im also going to make the assumption, based on where we are today, that they didnt do enough." Read: Teen Who Died In 'Blue Whale Challenge' Left Suicide Drawings, Family Says The family's lawyer, Bruce Nagel, described the messages Mallory received as "vile and malicious," according to Fox5 New York. "For months, there were texts, there was Snapchat, there was Instagram. For months she was told she's a loser, she has no friends. And finally, she was even told, 'Why don't you kill yourself?'" said Nagel, who also noted that a cellphone could be "a lethal weapon" in the wrong hands. Story continues Accusing the institution did not do enough, Nagel said: "They should have taken steps to bring in the children, bring in the parents and get this stopped." "Cyberbullying is similar to other types of bullying, except it takes place online and through text messages sent to cell phones. Cyberbullies can be classmates, online acquaintances, and even anonymous users, but most often they do know their victims," according to the National Crime Prevention Council. It has become an issue of concern throughout the world with the increasing usage of internet as a mode of communication among children, teenagers and adults. Online_harassment_lit_review Photo: Willowbl00/ Wikimedia Commons According to a recent survey conducted by the Pew Research Center among the adults and teens in the United States, 41 percent of the 4,248 poll participants said they were personally harassed online, and about 66 percent said they noticed others being cyberstalked or bullied online. The study also found 14 percent of adults in the country faced cyberbullying due to their political stance, followed by an individual's appearance (9 percent), race (8 percent), gender (8 percent), among other factors. In December when Brandy Vela, a Texas teenager, died by suicide after being harassed online, her family insisted tighter laws were required to curb cyberbullying. Vela received abusive text messsages on her cellphone and also on Facebook, according to CBS News. Another similar incident in April led to the death of a Pennsylvania high school freshman. The student was said to have received vulgar text messages from classmates, according to the Daily Mail. In an obituary, Mallory is remembered as the 12-year-old girl devoted to helping others. "Mal loved the outdoors and nature. She loved flowers, every color and shape. She was compassionate. She raised money often and would send every penny to her favorite charity, Camp Good Days. This camp provides summer camp experiences for children with cancer and children who have lost someone dear to them with cancer. Selfless. It was her giving spirit and love for all people and things that drove her to move mountains," her obituary reads. Mallory's well-wishers and loved ones also created a Facebook page, "Mallory's Army," which conveys the larger message for cyberbullying to be stopped so that it does not lead to such consequences. A GoFundMe page was also created to help the girl's family. Related Articles Stephen Millers tirade over the famous poem inscribed on the statues base makes it clear: the huddled masses can no longer breathe free in America The Statue of Liberty: its meaning is entirely a matter of the angle of perception. Photograph: Mike Segar/Reuters The surest mark of regime change is when they start attacking the statues. Americans appreciate this as well as anyone hence the carefully stage-manged toppling of Saddam Hussein in Firdos square in Baghdad in 2003. Stephen Miller, one of the key ideologues of the Trump regime, surely knew what he was doing when he took a symbolic axe to the Statue of Liberty in a heated argument with CNNs Jim Acosta over the presidents proposals to drastically limit legal immigration. In fairness, Miller did not attack the statue itself. A horde of boat-trip owners and Liberty impersonators would have lynched him if he did. But he did attack its meaning, and in particular the meaning ascribed to it when Emma Lazaruss famous poem was added to its base in 1903, 17 years after the monument itself was completed. As Miller scolded Acosta: I dont want to get off into a whole thing about history here, but the Statue of Liberty is a symbol of American liberty lighting the world. The poem that youre referring to, that was added later and is not part of the original Statue of Liberty. Miller is factually correct, but as he put it himself, this is not really about history. It is about the contemporary resonance of Lazaruss startling words, the only ones in which a state has appeared to invite not just any old immigrants, but the poorest of the poor: Your tired, your poor, / Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, / The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. There has never been a time when the wretched refuse has been more visible on our screens. Miller was not engaging in literary criticism he was making it clear that these people are not welcome in Trumps USA. This conflict about the meaning of a statue is part of a wider political and cultural war: it is really a conflict about the meaning of America. Lazarus and her friends who campaigned to place her words at the base after her death knew very well that they were engaging in a highly political act. The sculpture was intended to mark the connections between French and American republicanism by representing in a well-worn classical trope, the female embodiment of Liberty. Lazarus changed that meaning: in her poem the female figure is no longer abstract she has a voice. And she gives herself a very different name: Mother of Exiles. The marrying of the poem to the image is a brilliant feminist coup and a devastating attack on American nativism. Story continues And just as Lazarus changed the meaning of the statue, rightwingers have long wanted to change it back. The great loudmouth Rush Limbaugh, a kind of John the Baptist for the coming of Trump, argued in 2010 that Liberty is not inviting anyone in, but is rather an early neocon, taking the American flame out to the benighted world: Lady Liberty is stepping forward. She is meant to be carrying the torch of liberty from the United States to the rest of the world. The torch is not to light the way to the United States. Rather unusually, Limbaugh actually hit on something. The meaning of the statue is entirely a matter of the angle of perception. Lazaruss great imaginative act was to see it as it would be seen by exhausted, wretched but hopeful people on the decks of ships after long and often dreadful journeys. It is literally about seeing the world from the perspective of people seeking refuge and a chance to better their lives. Her statue speaks back to them the words of hope and welcome they need to hear. And of course, this is not the perspective Miller and Trump want ever to recognise. Their torch is meant not to light the way, but to inflame the hatreds that are their only source of power. 'The dog saved the day thankfully': iStock A ten year old girl in America has reportedly been saved from kidnap after her dog attacked her assailant. Police in Virginia, where the attack happened, said that during the attack the girls dog bit the man, who immediately released her and fled. Police also released a statement describing the Hispanic male they suspect of the attempted kidnap. They searched the area with a police dog, but could not find the suspect. In a statement on Facebook, the Prince William County Police Department said: At approximately 3:50pm, the victim, a 10-year-old girl, was reportedly walking her dog in the 1800 block of Heather Glenn Ct in Woodbridge when an unknown man approached her and grabbed her arm. During the encounter, the victim's dog bit the suspect who then released her and fled on foot. A police K-9 checked the area. The suspect was not located. The victim was not injured. The investigation continues. The police department issued a description of the man they wish to question. He is a Hispanic male of unknown age. He is thought to be roughly 5'3", and 145lbs with a thin build, short brown hair and a goatee. He was last seen wearing a white striped shirt and light coloured long trousers. Thank god she had her dog with her. Good for that dog. wrote one person on Facebook. Womans best friend! wrote another, adding: The dog saved the day thankfully. Another Facebook user commented: Good job dog. Related: MANILA (Reuters) - Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte has asked Congress for funds to recruit 20,000 new soldiers to battle rising threats from pro-Islamic State militants in the country's restive south, senators said on Wednesday. Duterte called an urgent meeting with a group of senators on Tuesday night, sharing with them the latest intelligence reports on plans by Muslim extremists to attack three cities on the southern island of Mindanao. "He wanted to relay to us that he needs 20,000 more soldiers for the entire Armed Forces of the Philippines," said Senate majority leader Vicente Sotto. "He wants to make sure that in his tenure, he will be able to resolve the problem of peace and order." Three other senators said the president was serious about the scale of the security threat and asked Congress for support to fund his plan to upgrade the military's equipment and intelligence capabilities. They declined to say which three cities could suffer the same fate as Marawi, where Islamist rebels have battled the military for nine weeks since laying a siege on May 23, with the intent to establish a "wilayat", or Islamic State province. A large area of Marawi has been devastated by almost daily artillery shelling and aerial bombings to try to dislodge militants holed up in the commercial center who are believed to be holding as many as 100 hostages. More than 600 rebels and soldiers have been killed in the unrest. Duterte last month submitted to Congress a budget of 3.76 trillion Philippine pesos ($15 billion) for next year, including 145 billion pesos for the defense. "We're willing to help," said Senator Panfilo Lacson, adding that soldiers were battle-weary after two months of fighting in Marawi. "We need fresh legs, so in legislation we can help by fast-tracking the budget to increase the troop ceiling." He said the president also asked to boost the police force by 10,000 men, recruiting more to be deployed as commandos to help the military fight insurgents. ($1=50.3650 Philippine pesos) (Reporting by Manuel Mogato; Editing by Martin Petty and Clarence Fernandez) Source: Xinhua| 2017-08-03 10:44:57|Editor: Zhou Xin Video Player Close YANGON, Aug. 3 (Xinhua) -- Myanmar's parliamentarians have put forward a motion urging the government to carry out extensive awareness campaign against the spread of seasonal influenza A/H1N1, also known as swine flu. The campaign is supposed to be launched at busy or crowded areas, such as schools, markets, factories, railway stations, ports and airports. Advising people not to go to crowded places, parliamentarians of the House of Representatives (Lower House) stressed the need to introduce preventive vaccination against the epidemic. "If H1N1 happens to combine with H5N1, which occurs in Dawei, genetic mutation can take place and a new strain of virus will result," a Member of Parliament warned. Another MP said, "Because of poor health knowledge of the people, low income, weakness in food knowledge and social system and insufficient support of health knowledge, the spread of disease may become rampant and go out of control." The MPs supported the motion urging the government to collect and distribute gear, medicine and aid to effectively control the disease. In the latest development, one more death from H1N1 was reported on Wednesday, bringing the death toll nationwide to 13, accounting for 4.5 percent out of 99 confirmed cases since July 21. However, no medical staff have contracted the virus from direct contact with patients, the health authorities said, adding that patients diagnosed with respiratory disease in Yangon are being treated at a specialist hospital in North Okkalarpa, a town near Yangon. The authorities are dispatching a rapid relief team to distribute medical supplies and potential quarantine procedures. Myanmar has also faced another influenza outbreak in the rainy season of July, namely H5N1 (bird flu), leaving 5,000 chickens culled. The bird flu occurred on July 26 in Dawei town, southern Tanintharyi region. By Chris Kenning (Reuters) - The honeymoon did not last long. Just hours after saying "I do," a Tennessee bride pulled a 9 mm pistol from her wedding dress, pointed it at her groom and pulled the trigger, according to court documents and media reports. Kate Elizabeth Prichard, 25, of Kenton, Tennessee, faces a charge of aggravated domestic assault. Her husband, James Burton, was not injured in Monday's incident. "Responding officers let the husband know the honeymoon was over and his new wife was going to jail," Sergeant Kyle Evans of the Murfreesboro Police Department told WTVF-TV. Prichard was still in her wedding dress when she was arrested, Evans said. The incident followed an argument with Burton at the Clarion Inn motel near Murfreesboro, according to court documents. Prichard at first pointed the gun her new husband's head, and pulled the trigger, but no shot was fired. She then racked a round into the gun chamber and shot it into the air, the court documents show. It is not known if Prichard was aware there was no bullet in the gun when she first pulled the trigger. Police arrived at the scene after a call to the Murfreesboro police said a woman had threatened to shoot her husband for pushing her against a wall. The pair were uncooperative and denied the allegations, the records show. Evans declined further comment to Reuters on Wednesday. Neither Prichard nor Burton could be reached for comment. It was not clear if Prichard was represented by an attorney. A manager at the Clarion Inn did not respond to a request for comment. Prichard posted a $15,000 bond, according to the Rutherford County Jail. The jail spelled her last name "Pritchard," though it was spelled "Prichard" in police and court records. (Reporting by Chris Kenning in Chicago; Additional reporting by Tim Ghianni in Nashville; Editing by Matthew Lewis) A decade ago, while sailing across a rarely traversed area between Hawaii and the U.S. mainland, oceanographer Captain Charles Moore stumbled upon the now-infamous North Pacific garbage patch, an enormous swathe of plastic pollution floating in the sea. Now, Moore has confirmed the discovery of a second garbage patch in the same ocean, located in the South Pacific. Moore, who made the disturbing discovery during a six-month research trip, estimates that this polluted patch of plastic could span as much as a million square kilometres. Thats 1.5 times larger than Texas, and more than two times the size of California. (Photo: Bloomberg via Getty Images) Moore, founder of the Algalita Research Foundation, told ResearchGate that his team would conduct lab analysis on the plastic theyd found, but based on initial impressions, the garbage patch uncovered in the South Pacific could contain millions of plastic particles per square kilometer, he said. Like the North Pacific garbage patch, the one in the southern part of the ocean is a nebulous swarm of pollution made up of tiny plastic fragments, known as microplastics, which can be hard to see with the naked eye and even harder to clean up. We found a few larger items, occasionally a buoy and some fishing gear, but most of it was broken into bits, Moore told ResearchGate of the discovery. Moore sifting through plastic pellets in California. He and his team recently discovered evidence of a plastic garbage patch in the South Pacific that he says could be 1.5 times larger than Texas. (Photo: Rick Loomis/Getty Images) The news that the South Pacific is choked with plastic should not come as much of a surprise. About 19 billion pounds of plastic waste ends up in our oceans every year, according to a 2015 paper. And a lot of that refuse is getting trapped by natural ocean currents, referred to as gyres, at five locations around the planet. The North Pacific is one of these locations; the South Pacific is another. Henderson Island, an uninhabited coral atoll located at the edge of the South Pacific gyre, was recently discovered to be one of the most polluted areas on Earth. Researchers found the island smothered in around 38 million pieces of plastic trash all of which had arrived there via the seas. Story continues [M]y thought was the remarkable remoteness of Henderson Island would have afforded it some protection, researcher Jennifer Lavers told the Guardian in May. I was totally wrong. Related... Scientists Have Figured Out How Much Plastic We've Made Since 1950. It's Not Pretty. The Ocean Is Filling Up With 'Plastic Smog' How Plastic Bottles Benefit ExxonMobil Could This Plastic-Eating Caterpillar Be The Answer To Our Waste? The Great Pacific Garbage Patch Is Even Worse Than We Feared 9 Life Hacks To Help You Break Up With Plastic Also on HuffPost Love HuffPost? Become a founding member of HuffPost Plus today. Reduce use of all plastic products, but especially single-use ones Plastics are an invaluable material, used to make everything from medical equipment to parts of buildings, and nixing them completely from your daily life would be near-impossible. Plastic has done incredible things for us as a society and it has an appropriate place, said Nick Mallos of the Ocean Conservancy. What we need to remember is to minimize our plastic waste (and really, all waste just generally) that includes recyclable plastics and compostable or biodegradable ones too. Someone might buy a new iPhone and say, 'Well, since I recycled my old phone with Apple, Im all good.' But Apple doesnt tell you just how little of that iPhone actually gets recycled, said Adam Minter, author of Junkyard Planet: Travels in The Billion-Dollar Trash Trade. People need to stop thinking of recycling as a get-out-of-jail-free card. You havent actually done anything good for the environment. Youve just done something less bad. (More on that below.) If we really want to deal with the waste problem were facing, we need to think deeper about the nature of consumption itself, Minter said. Reducing single-use plastic products are especially key. Single-use plastic packaging, like plastic bags, containers, straws and cutlery, is the biggest source of trash found in or near water bodies worldwide, according to Mallos. Start bringing your own reusable bag to the supermarket and a reusable bottle for your water; refuse a straw when you order a beverage and leave a set of reusable cutlery at your desk at work. Click here to learn more tips and tricks on how you can give up single-use plastics. Don't litter This might seem straightforward, but preventing litter is a critical action to ensure that plastic waste gets properly disposed of and doesnt end up in our seas or other environments. According to environmental engineer and plastics expert Jenna Jambeck, mismanaged waste like litter is the number one cause of plastic garbage is the worlds oceans. That plastic bag that got caught in a breeze could end up in a storm drain; that empty plastic bottle left on a beach could get carried out by a tide. Ocean Conservancy recommends always taking five whenever you leave a space to ensure that youve collected all your trash and disposed of it properly. Plastic bags, which often cant be recycled (more below), are especially prone to becoming litter as they are easily carried away in the wind (yet another reason to not use them!). If you must throw one away though, be sure its balled up or weighed down so it cant easily float away. Recycle when you can, and do it right Recycling plastics is much more complicated than you might think. Its so complex, in fact, that a significant amount of discarded plastics (even the ones you put into the recycling bin) dont end up being recycled. In general, less than 7 percent of all the plastic that Americans throw away each year are recycled and about 8 percent is combusted in waste-to-energy facilities. The rest end up in landfills. The reasons for these low numbers are manifold, said Darby Hoover, a waste management specialist with the Natural Resources Defence Council. But generally, it boils down to two major problems: Firstly, there are many different kinds of plastics and not all of them are easily recycled; and secondly, consumers often aren't aware of these differences and therefore don't dispose of plastics in the best way. You know that little triangle on plastic products? The little triangle is not an indicator that something is recyclable. Instead, its merely a designation numbered 1 to 7 of what kind of plastic it is, what polymer that plastic is, explained Hoover. A number 1, for instance, indicates that the item is made of Polyethylene terephthalate (or PET, for short), a material typically used to make bottles and microwaveable food containers; while a number 2 indicates high-density polyethylene, the stuff plastic grocery bags are usually made of. The most complicated designation is number 7, which indicates all other plastics -- including products with a mixture of various plastics in them and also compostable plastics. Recyclers use these numbers to determine which items can be recycled at their facility and which cant. Different kinds of plastics typically cant be recycled together, and many facilities wont accept certain types of plastic at all, like styrofoam, vinyl and plastic film products like plastic bags and cling-wrap (these products have been known to gum up recycling equipment). To add to the confusion, local municipalities across the U.S. have differing rules when it comes to recycling plastics. Some might accept type 7 plastics, for instance, but others will not. No matter where you live, you have to check the local municipality for their rules, said Hoover, who recommended reviewing your local city or town website for more information. You also have to continue checking in, she added, as these rules often change without much warning. Choose non-synthetic fabrics when possible Studies have found that microplastics plastic fragments less than 5 millimeters long can get washed out of synthetic clothing, like those made of polyester or acrylic. A single cycle of a washing machine could release more than 700,000 microplastic fibers into the environment, concluded one 2016 paper. Natural fabrics to consider instead include organic cotton, wool, flax and hemp. Say no to microbeads Plastic microbeads are sometimes added as an exfoliating agent to personal care and beauty products like face scrubs, soaps and toothpaste. These tiny plastic pieces can pass unfiltered through sewage treatment systems and end up in local waterways, and eventually the sea. Recognizing the potential risk that microbeads pose to marine environments and possibly human health, several countries, including the U.S. and the United Kingdom, have introduced bans of the substance. Many of these bans have yet to be enforced, however, and some are limited in scope, so remain vigilant when purchasing products that could have microbeads in them (look out for terms like exfoliator, "scrub, buff and polish). Visit the Beat the Microbead website to learn more. Participate in cleanup efforts Every year, Ocean Conservancy organizes the International Coastal Cleanup, a global event that asks volunteers to collect plastic and other garbage from coastal areas and waterways. Last year, more than 700,000 people in more than a 100 countries participated in the event, collecting more than 18 million pounds of trash in a single day. In 2017, the cleanup event is planned for Sept. 16 but you dont have to wait till then to do something. Ocean Conservancy has a DIY toolkit to help you organize cleanups in your own community. Support plastic bag legislation Using a plastic bag for groceries may seem convenient, but the ubiquitous sack is one of Americas greatest waste challenges. An average American family of four uses more than 1,500 plastic bags every year, according to the NRDC. Each bag is typically only used for about 12 minutes. Yet since plastic bags are very rarely recycled, most of them end up in landfills where they can languish for many hundreds of years. Reducing your use of plastic bags is one important way to mitigate this waste problem. But another way to make a big impact is to support local, state and federal single-use bag legislation -- specifically legislation that supports the reduction of all kinds of single-use bags including plastic and paper, according to Jennie Romer, a New York City lawyer and founder of the website Plastic Bag Laws. Across the country, there are already many ordinances in place related to single-use bags. Last year, California became the first state to ban single-use plastic bags at all retail outlets, and in 2010, Washington D.C., implemented a 5-cent fee for all single-use bags, both plastic and paper. Cities and towns in Texas, Hawaii, Massachusetts and Colorado, among other states, have also embraced single-use bag legislation in some form or other. For most of the nation, however, plastic and other single-use bags remain widely available. According to Romer, its extremely challenging to pass a plastic bag law or even keep one in place (New York City is a prime example) due to fierce opposition led mostly by lobbyists from the petroleum and plastic industry. They fight bag regulations tooth and nail, Romer said. And their resources far outweigh that of the volunteers and grassroots community groups that are leading this fight. Preliminary evidence suggests that single-use bag legislation can be very effective in reducing waste. In Ireland, for instance, where a plastic bag tax was introduced in 2002, plastic bag use reportedly dropped by more than 90 percent in just a few weeks. In San Jose, California, a 2011 plastic bag ban resulted in a reduction of plastic litter by approximately 89 percent in the storm drain system, 60 percent in the creeks and rivers, and 59 percent in City streets and neighborhoods, stated a city report released almost a year after the ban was put in place. Find out more about plastic bag legislation around the country and how you can get involved by visiting the Plastic Bag Laws website. Support companies that offer solutions to reduce, reuse and recycle plastics Engage your family and friends Waste is not an issue people often talk about, but for change to occur, the conversations need to start. This is a critical issue thats tied up in so many other environmental concerns, said Minter. Yet people seem to have an aversion to it. They just dont take much of an interest. Wheres the Paris landfill conference? You dont see environmental groups flying celebrities into anywhere to talk about waste. The dialogue can begin in your own home and among your own friends. Start engaging your loved ones and your community on this important issue. Track your progress Start paying attention to the amount of plastic you use and waste on a daily basis. And as you start cutting back on your consumption, jot down a tally of all the plastics you save. Youll likely be amazed. Ocean Conservancy also has a Clean Swell App which lets you track your beach cleanup efforts. It lets you share your progress on social media and to submit data directly into a global ocean trash database. This article originally appeared on HuffPost. The history of the Statue of Liberty became the focus of a back-and-forth between Stephen Miller, an aide to President Donald Trump, and CNNs Jim Acosta during the White House Press Briefing on Wednesday. The broadcast journalist had argued that the Presidents support of a bill that would place new limits on legal immigration did not jibe with the spirit embodied by the monument, as expressed by the Emma Lazarus poem that has become synonymous with Lady Liberty: Give me your tired, your poor, it famously declares, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free. The poem that youre referring to was added later, Miller replied. Its not actually part of the original Statue of Liberty. The poem was engraved onto a plaque placed on the pedestal in 1903 nearly two decades after the statue was unveiled and that the monument wasnt always associated with immigration. Originally, the meaning of the monument had more to do with the abolition of slavery than with immigration. In the 1860s, French anti-slavery activist Edouard de Laboulaye had first proposed that France should make a gift of the statue, dubbed Liberty Enlightening the World and designed by sculptor Frederic Auguste Bartholdi, both to commemorate the alliance between the U.S. and France during the American Revolution and the end of slavery in the U.S. after the Civil War, according to the National Park Service. Get your history fix in one place: sign up for the weekly TIME History newsletter But, while the statue herself would be a gift, it would be up to Americans to raise money to construct the monuments base. Many years passed during this period, and in that time the main liberty-related questions on Americans minds especially in New York City evolved. The Civil War had ended, but a Great Wave of Immigration had begun, as 23.5 million persons immigrated between 1880 and 1920. It was as a result of the need to fund the pedestal that Emma Lazarus was tapped to write the famous sonnet The New Colossus for a Statue of Liberty fundraiser in 1883. Inspired by her work with Russian Jews detained by immigration officials on Ward Island, she included a new facet of liberty in her interpretation of what the statue could mean. Story continues Word about the poem got out, and it was reprinted in newspapers Joseph Pulitzers New York World and in the New York Times. It became even more popular more than a decade after Lazarus 1887 death, when her friend Georgina Schuyler happened upon a copy of the poem in 1901 and was moved to bring it new attention. She started a campaign to raise awareness of the poem timeliness. Its text was added to Lady Libertys pedestal two years later, as the wave of immigration continued. In the years since, though the statue would take on many additional layers of meaning, the link between it and immigration would solidify, with many recognizing that even if Laboulaye had had something else in mind Lady Liberty and Emma Lazarus were important parts of the history of immigration in the U.S. For example, when President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, it was in a ceremony on Liberty Island. As Esther Schor, who wrote a biography on the author, said in 2011, Emma Lazarus was the first American to make any sense of this statue. By Nate Raymond BOSTON (Reuters) - Federal prosecutors on Wednesday accused the manager of a Boston-based hedge fund of defrauding investors out of millions of dollars, nearly two months after state regulators charged him with engaging in a Ponzi-like scheme. According to a criminal complaint filed in Boston federal court, Raymond Montoya, who operated RMA Strategic Opportunity Fund LLC, misused millions of dollars to pay for luxury vehicles and his son's home mortgage and to repay earlier investors. Massachusetts Secretary of State William Galvin accused Montoya in June of engaging in an "egregious fraud" and brought an administrative complaint against him. Galvin's office said at the time it was also making federal authorities aware of the case. Four days after Galvin brought charges, Montoya met with law enforcement and admitted to defrauding RMA investors, the criminal complaint said. His lawyer, Christopher Bruno, said the 69-year-old resident of Allston, Massachusetts was cooperating with authorities and surrendered to face the criminal charges on Wednesday morning. Bruno said Montoya was also in plea talks. "His efforts are focused on preserving assets for ultimate return to investors," Bruno said in a statement. During a court hearing, Assistant U.S. Attorney Neil Gallagher said Montoya had already agreed to freeze accounts he controlled holding $6 million to $8 million in assets and forfeit 10 vehicles including three Ferraris and two Porsches. According to the complaint, Montoya had run RMA since 2009 and told investors it had about $4 billion in assets under management and used proprietary software that helped it predict stock price movements and was achieving positive results. In fact, Montoya managed less than $100 million, invested only a portion of his victims' money and fabricated account statements for the fund, which was incurring losses by 2012, the complaint said. During his June interview with authorities, Montoya said that losses by 2015 and 2016 had become substantial but he nonetheless told investors they were earning modest returns, the complaint said. Story continues It said Montoya also admitted that he used investor funds to make payments to earlier investors as well as to pay for personal expenses including travel, vehicles, tuition for his children and his son's mortgage. Montoya was released on a $100,000 bond following a court hearing on Wednesday afternoon. The case is U.S. v. Montoya, U.S. District Court, District of Massachusetts, No. 17-mj-2228. (This story corrects spelling of Allston, Mass. in paragraph 5) (Reporting by Nate Raymond in Boston; Editing by Peter Cooney) By Brendan Pierson NEW YORK (Reuters) - Federal and New York state prosecutors will not pursue criminal charges in the death of a state prison inmate following an altercation with guards in 2015, officials announced on Wednesday. Acting U.S. Attorney Joon Kim and Dutchess County District Attorney William Grady concluded there was "insufficient evidence to meet the high burden of proof required for a federal criminal civil rights prosecution," according to a statement from Kim's office. The death of inmate Samuel Harrell sparked protests and drew widespread media attention. His widow, Diane Harrell, sued New York state in state and federal courts. She has said that Harrell died because he was handcuffed, punched, kicked and stomped by guards at the medium-security Fishkill Correctional Facility, including officers belonging to a group that inmates called the "Beat Up Squad." The prison is about 70 miles north of New York City. In a statement sent through their attorney, Luna Droubi, members of Harrell's family said they were "deeply troubled" by the prosecutors' decision. "The decision of the U.S. Attorney's office in no way alters the family's continued demand for justice," the statement said. According to Diane Harrell's federal lawsuit, the April 21, 2015, confrontation occurred after Harrell, who was diagnosed with bipolar disorder, announced he was going home despite having years left on his sentence for a drug conviction. Harrell was pronounced dead at a local hospital. The county medical examiner ruled his death a homicide, describing the exact cause of death as an irregular heartbeat caused by high blood pressure after the altercation, according to Wednesday's announcement. Prosecutors said in the announcement that they did not have sufficient evidence to show that Harrell's injuries resulted from intentional, reckless or criminally negligent acts by the guards, as would be required if they brought a criminal case. Story continues Thomas Mailey, a spokesman for the New York Department of Corrections and Community Supervision, which oversees the prison, said that the department respected the prosecutors' decision and declined to comment further. A spokesman for the New York State Correctional Officers and Police Benevolent Association, a union that represents guards at the prison, could not immediately be reached for comment. (Reporting by Brendan Pierson in New York; Editing by Jonathan Oatis) Andrew Feinberg (Photo courtesy of Andrew Feinberg) WASHINGTON Reporter Andrew Feinberg says a Russian state-owned news site he once worked for pressured him to advance a conspiracy theory about the fatal shooting of Democratic National Committee staffer Seth Rich. Feinberg, who was the White House correspondent for Sputnik, first made the allegations when he left the Russian outlet in May. However, his story is newly relevant in light of a lawsuit filed this week that accused President Trump and the White House of playing a role in a fake news story designed to advance the same conspiracy theory. Feinberg started at Sputnik in January, just as Trump took office. He was the outlets first reporter to work inside the West Wing. In a conversation with Yahoo News on Wednesday, Feinberg alleged that Sputnik wanted him to bring up a news article thats at the center of the lawsuit in the White House press briefing room. The story, which was published on the Fox News website on May 16 and retracted a week later, suggested Rich may have played a role in last years leak of DNC emails. The U.S. intelligence community has concluded that the email leak was orchestrated by the Russian government to help Trump defeat his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton. There are multiple investigations into whether Trump and his campaign colluded with Russia. Feinberg said that during a meeting held on May 26, his superiors asked him bring up the story in the press briefing. It was, We want you to ask about Seth Rich and just, you know, ask about the case and if those revelations should put an end to the Russia hacking narrative and the investigation, said Feinberg. According to Feinberg, his bosses handed him a termination letter when he declined. He described the situation as disturbing. Its really telling that the White House is pushing the same narrative as a state-run Russian propaganda outlet, Feinberg said. Feinberg previously discussed his departure from Sputnik with Yahoo News in May, on the day he left his job. He said he didnt initially have reservations about working for a government-owned site but came to feel they wanted him to falsely spin the news. Story continues I thought as long as I just do what everyone else does as long as I do the job fairly and accurately, I thought it would be OK, Feinberg said at the time. There are lots of state-owned news outlets; Sputniks not the only one. The lawsuit was filed by a Washington private investigator named Rod Wheeler in a New York federal court on Tuesday. Wheelers suit alleges that a Dallas financier and Republican donor named Ed Butowsky worked with Fox News reporter Malia Zimmerman to create a false news story linking Richs death to the DNC email leak. Rich was shot in Washington, D.C., last July, shortly after the emails were published by WikiLeaks. Police have said they believe he was killed in a botched robbery, though the murder remains unsolved. There has been no evidence linking Rich to the theft of the emails or their publication. Mary Rich, the mother of slain DNC staffer Seth Rich, gives a press conference in August 2016. (Photo: Michael Robinson Chavez/The Washington Post via Getty Images) According to Wheelers suit, Butowsky and Zimmerman wanted to advance a political agenda for the Trump administration. Trump has vehemently denied that he or anyone in his orbit worked with Russia. Wheelers suit suggested that the Fox News story pinning the leak on Rich was designed to put the allegations of Russian collusion to rest and potentially end the probes. Before the story was published, Wheeler and Butowsky met with Trumps former press secretary Sean Spicer at the White House. The lawsuit included alleged quotes from Butowsky suggesting Trump himself had input on drafts of the Fox News story and was eager to see it published. The Fox News story included quotes attributed to Wheeler that said he believed Rich communicated with WikiLeaks. Wheeler insists those quotes were fabricated, though he made comments similar to those included in the story in a television interview. The Fox News story also included the claim that an anonymous federal investigator confirmed Rich was in contact with WikiLeaks. Richs family and D.C. police denounced the article almost immediately. Fox News retracted the story on May 23. The network released a statement saying the article was not initially subjected to the high degree of editorial scrutiny we require for all our reporting. In the wake of the lawsuit, the networks president of news Jay Wallace released a statement that said the accusation that foxnews.com published Malia Zimmermans story to help detract from coverage of the Russia collusion issue is completely erroneous. Wallace further said the networks internal investigation into the matter found no evidence that Wheeler was misquoted. White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders has said Trump had no knowledge of the story and it is completely untrue that there was White House involvement in the story. Conspiracies about Rich were widespread online after his death. But prior to its retraction, the Fox News story was the first mainstream news article to bolster the theories. Based on Feinbergs story, his bosses at Sputnik asked him to bring up the Fox News article in the briefing three days after the story was retracted. While Feinberg said his editor did not directly bring up the Fox News story he felt the implication was clear since the article was the only alleged new development in the Rich case. They didnt mention the Fox story, but it was clear what they were talking about with revelations, Feinberg said. According to Feinberg, he responded with a hard no and was then handed his walking papers. It was the same meeting. It was, We want you to do this. I said, No. They said, We have a termination letter for you, Feinberg recounted. Feinberg said the meeting included his editor, Peter Martinichev, and a man hed never seen before named Mikhail Safronov, who identified himself as Sputniks D.C. bureau chief. I never saw him in the office before, Feinberg said of Safronov. Feinberg first discussed his departure from Sputnik with Yahoo News on May 26, the day he left the news outlet. At the time, Feinberg identified the Rich story as one of two main fake narratives he was asked to promote during his time at Sputnik. Feinberg said Sputnik also pressed him to ask questions that suggested the Syrian regime of President Bashar Assad was not responsible for chemical attacks in that country. There is firm evidence linking Assad to chemical weapons but he has denied responsibility. Assad is a staunch ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin. On the day he left Sputnik, Feinberg said his editors pressured him to ask about Rich at the briefing throughout his final week on the job. This week they were pushing on Seth Rich. They were pushing on Seth Rich and I kept saying no, Feinberg said in the May conversation. Russian President Vladimir Putin addresses employees of Rossiya Segodnya media holding (Sputnik) in Moscow in 2016. (Photo: Mikhail Klimentyev/Sputnik, Kremlin Pool Photo via AP) Sputnik did not respond to a request for comment on this story. The company is operated by Rossiya Segodnya, a news conglomerate that is wholly owned by the Russian government. Rossiya Segodnya was established by an executive order from Russian President Vladimir Putin in 2013. Sputniks website describes the company as being entirely geared toward foreign audiences and dedicated to providing alternative news content. The U.S. intelligence community labeled Sputnik and Russias other foreign media outlets as a key part of Moscows propaganda machine in its report on Kremlin interference in the 2016 presidential election. That report alleged Sputnik and other English-language Russian media companies worked in concert with online trolls and bots to advance narratives and conspiracy theories as part of an influence campaign designed to aid Trump. Update (7/5/17 4:06pm): Beverly Hunt, a spokesperson for Sputnik, contacted Yahoo News on Friday evening, two days after this article was published, to dispute some of Feinbergs claims. Andrew willingly entered into an at-will employment agreement. Sputnik elected not to renew his agreement, Hunt said. Andrews contract was not renewed due to performance related issues. Feinberg responded by claiming he was never given a reason for his dismissal. If there were any issues with my performance during my tenure at Sputnik, I never heard a single word from any of my supervisors about them up until the minute I was fired. Even then, I was not given a reason for them letting me go, Feinberg said. _____ Read more from Yahoo News: By Lawrence Hurley and Julia Edwards Ainsley WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Civil rights groups slammed the Trump administration on Wednesday over a U.S. Justice Department plan to probe whether colleges' racial-preference admissions programs discriminate against white and Asian-American applicants. First reported by The New York Times, the proposal has met resistance among career lawyers within the department, which has mounted an effort to find volunteers to staff the investigation, said a source familiar with an internal announcement. Affirmative action programs in higher education were meant to address America's historic racial discrimination problem. The Supreme Court has ruled that universities may use affirmative action in admissions policies with the aim of helping minority applicants get into college. U.S. conservatives have said that in helping black and Latino applicants, affirmative action can hurt white people and Asian-Americans by putting them at a disadvantage. In 2016, the Supreme Court upheld a racial preference system at the University of Texas at Austin, rejecting a discrimination claim brought by a white women, Abigail Fisher, who was denied entry to the university in 2008. There are pending lawsuits against Harvard University and the University of North Carolina. "The idea that the Justice Department would sue colleges over their inclusive policies is an affront to fairness and sends a dangerous signal that it will no longer work to protect the most vulnerable," said Dennis Parker, director of the American Civil Liberties Union's Racial Justice Program."It would mark an alarming shift in direction that threatens the hard-fought progress made by civil rights advocates and the department itself over the past decades," he added. Sherrilyn Ifill, president of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, said allocating resources to investigate college admission programs would be a waste of taxpayers' money. Story continues According to the U.S. Census Bureau, 61 percent of the 323 million people who live in the United States identify as non-Hispanic white. Eight of the 50 U.S. states ban affirmative action in public universities. Several major U.S. universities said they would be carefully watching any administration moves on the issue. We will closely review any DOJ policies as they are released, said J.B. Bird, a spokesman for the University of Texas at Austin, which on Monday was sued again over its admissions policies. On the probe, Trump spokeswoman Sarah Sanders questioned the Times article and said: "While the White House does not confirm or deny the existence of potential investigations, the Department of Justice will always review credible allegations of discrimination on the basis of any race. A Justice Department spokesman declined to comment. (Reporting by Lawrence Hurley and Julia Edwards Ainsley in Washington. Additional reporting by Scott Malone in Boston; Editing by Kevin Drawbaugh and Tom Brown) White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said at Wednesdays briefing that she didnt think it was appropriate to lie from the podium or any other place. Press Sec.: "I don't think it's appropriate to lie from the podium or any other place...my job is to communicate the president's agenda." pic.twitter.com/3ErYtffkhd ABC News (@ABC) August 2, 2017 Sanders job is to defend President Donald Trumps actions, and defend she does. But despite her saying that her job is to communicate the presidents agenda and answer questions as honestly as she can, Sanders has a history of not doing that with complete truth. Here are just a few examples of Sanders giving us reasons to pause: 1. When she said at Wednesdays press briefing that Trump didnt lie about calls from the Mexican president and leaders of Boy Scouts of America. Here is Sarah Huckabee Sanders lying about Trump lying about the Boys Scouts and Mexico calling him. Lieception.pic.twitter.com/1ehyhkqF9k Erick Fernandez (@ErickFernandez) August 2, 2017 Trump said Monday that the president of Mexico called him directly to offer praise for his immigration policies. President Enrique Pena Nieto said in a statement that he has not had any recent telephone communication with President Donald Trump. Sanders said in the briefing that this call Trump claimed to have had was actually a reference to a conversation the two presidents shared at the G20 summit. As for the leaders of the Boy Scouts of America, Sanders said they congratulated and praised Trump after his controversial speech at the National Scout Jamboree last week (though the group says this never happened). Sanders then admitted that no actual phone calls took place; rather, they were in-person conversations. When ABC News Cecilia Vega indicated that the president lied, Sanders said she wouldnt say it was a lie. Story continues 2. When she said the president is not a liar. In June, former FBI Director James Comey said in his Senate testimony that the Trump administration had spread lies, plain and simple, defaming him at the agency. Sanders then disputed this testimony amid an off-camera briefing at the White House by saying, The presidents not a liar. According to The New York Times, Trump told public lies or falsehoods every day for his first 40 days. 3. When she said that the White House heard from countless members of the FBI about their respective lack of confidence in James Comey. The acting director of the FBI, Andrew McCabe, told lawmakers in a congressional hearing May 11 that that was inaccurate and said that Comey enjoyed broad support within the FBI, and still does to this day. During his presidential campaign, in February 2016, Trump said to a crowd in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, If you see somebody getting ready to throw a tomato, knock the crap out of them, would you? Seriously. Just knock the hell ... I promise you, I will pay for the legal fees, he added. 5. When she said multiple news outlets reported that former President Barack Obama ordered wiretaps on Trump. Sanders said high-profile sources like The New York Times and BBC had reported this, but the only claim appears to have come from a November 2016 blog post based on anonymous sources that has not been corroborated by independent U.S. journalists. Sanders clearly needs to rethink her definition of honesty were not even 200 days into this administration. Love HuffPost? Become a founding member of HuffPost Plus today. Also on HuffPost President Donald Trump seems to like the view from a firetruck made by Wisconsin-based Pierce Manufacturing as Vice President Mike Pence stands by during "Made in America" week. Trump gives the thumbs-up from the firetruck cab. Trump admires a wheel loader made by Caterpillar. Trump grips a Marucci baseball bat. Trump models a Stetson cowboy hat. Trump checks out a boat made by Hinckley Yachts. This article originally appeared on HuffPost. President Trump with Republican senators at the White House discussing the health care bill, July 19, 2017. (Photo: Saul Loeb/AFP) WASHINGTON Senators are leaving Washington this week for the remainder of the summer, with little legislation to show for seven months of work and an angry president blaming them for the countrys strained relationship with Russia and the continued existence of Obamacare. Trump tweeted Thursday morning that U.S.-Russia relations were at an all-time low following the passage of a bill that reinforced sanctions against Russia, Iran and North Korea. The president signed the bill on Wednesday morning. You can thank Congress, the same people that cant even give us HCare! he wrote, presumably referring to both Democrats and Republicans, although his own party controls both houses. The House of Representatives recessed on July 28. Several Republican senators pushed back, saying relations between the U.S. and Russia were poisoned by Moscows meddling in the 2016 elections an episode Trump has minimized in public. Id thank Putin for that, not Congress, Sen. Roy Blunt, R-Mo., told reporters. Sen. Cory Gardner, R-Colo., and others made similar statements. But lawmakers also admitted that they had not gotten as much done as they had hoped to with both the White House and legislature in their control. Last week, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnells plan to repeal parts of Obamacare failed by just one vote on the Senate floor. Trump wants them to try again, but much of the conference is moving on to tax reform, which the White House also wants done by the end of the year. At the same time, there are must-pass bills coming up to fund the government and to increase the governments borrowing limit. Were getting nothing done, my friends. Were getting nothing done, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., said on the Senate floor last month, urging his colleagues to rise above their dysfunction and partisanship. The Senate has rolled back more than a dozen Obama-era regulations and pushed through a Supreme Court nominee along with dozens of other nominations. But their grander ambitions on health care, tax reform and infrastructure have stalled, as a bare majority of Republicans attempt to push through that legislation without Democrats. According to the Washington Post, the Senate has passed fewer than 10 bills this session that require a roll call vote a stunningly small output. Story continues Its not good enough, weve got to do better, said Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin. He conceded the ball is in our court on repealing and replacing Obamacare. We would have liked to have achieved more things, obviously, Sen. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., conceded on NBC Thursday. Flake recently published a book excoriating members of his own party for losing their way during the 2016 campaign and turning their backs on conservative principles such as free trade in order to embrace Trump, a former Democrat. Sen. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., Sen. Roy Blunt, R-Mo., and Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis. (Photo illustration: Yahoo News; photos: J. Scott Applewhite/AP, Bill Clarke/RollCall via Getty Images, J. Scott Applewhite/AP) The uneasy alliance between many Senate Republicans and Trump is starting to show signs of strain. Sen. Thom Tillis, a North Carolina Republican who has not previously been a frequent critic of the president, announced Thursday he is introducing a bill to prevent Trump from firing the special counsel in charge of overseeing the investigation into Russias interference in the 2016 election. The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday that the special counsel, Robert Mueller, has impanelled a grand jury in the case. The Senate is also likely to use procedural moves to stay in session technically, even while the members all leave town, preventing Trump from filling jobs with recess appointments that would circumvent the need for confirmation. And several Republicans are asking Trump not to follow through on his threat to sabotage Obamacare by stopping government subsidy payments to insurance companies. Republicans and Democrats plan to hold bipartisan hearings on stabilizing the individual markets in September. I think theyve seen that threats and things like that really dont work with people here, Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., said. It remains to be seen if Trump ramps up his bashing of GOP senators and what that would mean for their fall agenda. For now, lawmakers downplayed the tension. Im sure that a lot of people said bad things about me today and Congress today and the president would be in that group, I guess, Blunt said. He added that he didnt think relations between Congress and the president were as bad as has been reported. Were hopeful about a new staff structure and I think were going to see things begin to happen in different ways, he said. Former Gen. John Kelly was recently brought over from leading the Department of Homeland Security to be Trumps chief of staff. Democrats are hoping for improvement as well. I think the first six months have been trying months for all of us, said Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., the ranking member on the judiciary committee. Asked if she thought the situation would improve in the fall, she crossed her fingers. Read more from Yahoo News: Source: Xinhua| 2017-08-03 11:10:05|Editor: Zhou Xin Video Player Close LONDON, Aug. 2 (Xinhua) -- A group led by Chinese scholar Chunyu Han has decided to retract their controversial paper about a new gene-editing technique, according to a retraction statement posted Wednesday on the website of the journal Nature Biotechnology. Han, a scholar from Hebei University of Science and Technology, and his team published a paper in Nature Biotechnology last May. They reported that NgAgo could be used to locate and snip specific bits of DNA in laboratory-grown human cells, permanently disabling genes. The paper claimed that NgAgo might be more efficient and versatile than the CRISPR-Cas9 gene-editing technique. But their paper soon attracted controversy. In their latest statement, the authors said despite the efforts of many laboratories, an independent replication of the results in their paper has not been reported. "We are therefore retracting our initial report at this time to maintain the integrity of the scientific record." But the authors also said that they nevertheless continue to investigate the reasons for this lack of reproducibility with the aim of providing an optimized protocol. Han's paper has become a focal point in the academia and media following its publication. It was the most widely covered paper in China last year, according to media monitor Meltwater, with nearly 4,000 Chinese news stories citing the paper in just the first two months after its publication. But the technique proposed in the paper soon attracted controversy. Initial complaints on social media that the research could not be replicated were followed by a series of peer-reviewed publications demonstrating the same. Some researchers used human cells as Han did, while others tried zebrafish or mouse cells. Two-time Emmy-award winner Tony Hale is well known for his acting chops on HBOs Veep, as well as his other credits including Arrested Development, happythankyoumoreplease, The Informant! and Stranger Than Fiction. However, theres one thing hes not done to date, and thats sing the theme song to a movie he appears in. That all changes with the debut of the film Brave New Jersey, out August 4. Yahoo Music is excited to debut the original theme song to the production, which is performed by you guessed it Hale himself! Brave New Jersey We had the crazy idea to ask Tony Hale to sing the end-credits song, which his character Clark composes and performs in the movie, explains the films director/co-writer Jody Lambert. To our great surprise, Tony said yes. We wanted the film to be all score no needle drops and we wanted a very specific sound, not period like a Woody Allen 30s jazz score, but something more modern than youd expect. So we put together an unusual trio to compose the score: Kelly Winrich and Matthew Logan Vasquez of the indie band Delta Spirit, and Songwriters Hall of Fame and Grammy nominee (and my father) Dennis Lambert. They worked remotely, sharing pieces of music, sometimes snippets, then we all got together to record the score in Los Angeles. It was thrilling to finally match the music to picture and feel the Sci-fi Folk tone of the movie come to life. Brave New Jersey will be in theaters and available on demand (along with the rest of its soundtrack) August 4. Check here for more details. Students in teacher Marie Calabros fifth-grade class on the first day of year-round school at Bruns Academy on July 24, 2017, in Charlotte, N.C. (Photo: Davie Hinshaw/The Charlotte Observer via AP) When the 146,000 students in the public schools of Charlotte-Mecklenburg, N.C., entered their classrooms last fall, they might have found themselves in a charter school among upper-middle-class students taught by an experienced teacher with a specialized lesson plan or in a traditional school staffed by first-year teachers, with peers too burdened by the weight of poverty to worry about test scores. The determining factor, by and large, was whether their parents had the time, resources, connections and know-how to navigate Charlottes complex school choice program. To get their child into one of Charlottes popular pre-K Montessori programs, where children teach themselves at their own pace, parents must start the application process a full year in advance meaning nearly two years earlier than registration for regular kindergarten. Information about scholarships to cover the programs tuition and transportation costs is not widely available. Families without the time or resources to research their options are likely to be left out of the desirable program. The result is a school system that after decades of progress has slipped back to being as racially and economically segregated as it was 40 years ago. At schools like Bruns Academy a regular public school, despite its name, where 99 percent of students receive free or reduced-cost lunches, and 89 percent are black the issue of segregation is being seriously addressed for the first time in years. Carol Sawyer, an education activist and former Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools (CMS) parent, is running for the CMS school board on a platform of prioritizing diversity. Out of all of the solutions for education reform that have been proposed you know, these silver-bullet solutions, like having better teachers and having a business model the least expensive solution that we have consistently have ignored is that of integration, Sawyer said. Diversity is a way to equalize the effects of social capital the values, expectations, self-discipline and other intangible qualities imparted by families that predict academic success. Story continues Unlike other potential solutions, integrations success is proven. An African-American girl sits in the back row of a classroom in a Charlotte, N.C., school as integration got underway on Sept. 7, 1957. Three local schools were integrated in the city with only one minor disturbance. (Photo: Bettmann/Getty Images) From the beginning of Charlottes court-ordered busing program, which operated from 1969 to 2001, ensuring that classrooms were racially and socioeconomically diverse was a priority for Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools. But a lawsuit by a group of white families ended the court-ordered busing program that made the system one of the most integrated and highest-performing in the nation. It took only a few years for three decades of progress to be lost. In 2005, North Carolina Superior Court Judge Howard Manning wrote that the system was perpetrating academic genocide for the at-risk, low-income children. Now, the growing Southern metropolis is attempting to make up for lost time. For students entering CMS schools in the fall, the classroom demographics will look a little different. In a unanimous vote last fall, the school board added socioeconomic status as a factor in student assignment for its charter and magnet schools, and modified zone boundaries to help reduce concentrations of poverty at its traditional schools. Among progressives, Donald Trumps election was a huge wakeup call, said Richard D. Kahlenberg, a senior fellow at the Century Foundation who helped design CMSs new diversity initiative. People are recognizing that we have some genuine threats to our democracy and to our public education system. Part of the reason that Donald Trump was able to be successful in scapegoating minorities is that white people and more affluent people have had little exposure in school to people who come from different backgrounds. Under those circumstances, its easy for a demagogue to get away with demonizing people as the other. Prioritizing diversity and bucking the then president-elects educational agenda was considered a bold move in the largely Republican state, but the board approved the plan without dissent the day after Trumps election. President Trump talks to Education Secretary Betsy DeVos in the Roosevelt Room of the White House in Washington on Feb. 14, 2017. Even as fierce political battles about school choice rage in Washington, most Americans know little about charter schools or private school voucher programs. (Photo: Evan Vucci/AP) Trump and his secretary of education, Betsy DeVos, have moved the federal education policy in the opposite direction, eliminating a fully funded Obama-era grant program to help school districts like CMS find ways to integrate classrooms and proposing tax credits for families of students who want to attend private schools. CMS is required to update its district boundaries and reevaluate its student assignment system every six years, but the process is rarely controversial. According to UNC Charlotte professor Roslyn Mickelson, who also works with CMS, some parents tried to defeat the diversity agenda by threatening to pull their children out of traditional schools, taking advantage of the network of charter schools strategically located to minimize enrollment by poor and minority students. Lake Norman Charter, for example, has a student body that is 77 percent white, and just three percent qualify for free or reduced-cost lunches. Its students score far above average on North Carolinas end-of-grade tests exams that only 24 percent of Bruns Academy students pass. The mayor of one Mecklenburg County town proposed establishing a business park of charter schools for local children to attend, to keep them out of the clutches of diversity. Charter schools were originally supported by civil rights activists and educators as alternatives to failing, hypersegregated schools, Mickelson said, but now there are people who embrace charter schools as way to essentially get a private education on the taxpayers payroll. The work of a school social worker is troubling enough, Bruns Academys school social worker Barry Sherman said. But on top of that, when youre in a school that has virtually the entire student body basically, in one form or another, struggling, and the families basically are all struggling that creates a very difficult, to say the least, set of circumstances to deal with in the school setting, when academic excellence and academic achievement are supposed to be the real business that we are about. But according to teachers, what students lose out on most is having peers with different life experiences to challenge them something that doesnt happen when wealthiest students all attend charter schools. There are different bars that are raised the diversity of thought is part of education and that doesnt get to happen in a lot of classrooms that are hypersegregated by race or socioeconomic status, said Kayla Romero, a former CMS teacher who now works full time as an educational activist. The lack of diversity has consequences far beyond test scores, Sawyer added. It makes it significantly more difficult for poorer children to move into the middle class later in life. Make America Smart Again says this young demonstrator at the March for Public Education in Washington, D.C., on July 22, 2017. (Photo: Jeff Malet/Newscom via Zuma Press) Charlotte is now famously ranked 50 out of [the 50 largest cities in America] in economic mobility, and having students socioeconomically and racially isolated amplifies that, Sawyer said referring to Equality of Opportunity Projects analysis. As a society, we can not afford to ignore this issue and pretend that well be fine because my kid is going to a great school and a great college. We are undermining our entire society and our societys future, not to mention throwing away talent. Though skeptical about how much change the new rules will bring about, activists like Romero and Sherman remain hopeful that the citys rare first step toward increasing diversity will trigger even greater efforts in Charlotte and across the nation. The greatest wish for me would be that Charlotte would take a real strong look in the mirror and recognize that separate and isolated experiences of living are not in step with the world that were living in, Sherman said. Read more from Yahoo News: Whether its for a Death Star run or a walk around the block, these are the shoes Star Wars fans will be looking for in a matter of days. As the 40th anniversary celebration for A New Hope, rolls on, a new line of canvas footwear inspired by George Lucass original 1977 space opera is ready to launch from shoemaker Sperry, which released a popular Jaws-themed collection last year. Arriving Aug. 10, the Star Wars x Sperry collection features five styles that run the gamut from the light side to the dark side with seminal designs, images, and iconography from the film and Yahoo Movies has your first look right here. Cloud Slip-On McQuarrie: These shoes are adorned by the classic concept art by legendary Star Wars designer Ralph McQuarrie, whose art helped create the look of the saga. The right shoe features a design for the X-wing fighter, while the left is an early visualization of the films climactic lightsaber battle between Darth Vader and a character then known as Deak Starkiller. Cloud Slip-On Droids: Now you can walk a mile in C-3PO and R2-D2s shoes. (Sorry, couldnt resist.) Cloud Slip-On Han/Chewie: Slip on these beauties and you can make the Kessel Run in less than 12 parsecs, too. Cloud CVO Rebel Pilot: Riffing on the orange flight suits worn by Luke Skywalker and his fellow fighter pilots, this style includes the Rebel sigil, while the silver-and-yellow heel stripe is inspired by Lukes helmet. Cloud CVO Death Star: Channel your inner Sith lord with these shoes, featuring the Imperial insignia; the green accent is a subtle reference to the ultimate battle stations planet-destroying superlaser. Each pair will cost $75 and will be available in a range of unisex sizes at sperry.com, Sperry brick-and-mortar locations, and select retailers. Watch: Star Wars Stars Make Their Best Blaster Noises: Get more Star Wars scoop from Yahoo Movies: Stephen Miller clashed with CNN's Jim Acosta at a White House press conference A poem at the Statue of Liberty that is a national symbol for the country's embrace of immigrants was at the centre of a heated exchange at a White House news conference to promote President Donald Trump's push for immigration reform. Senior White House aide Stephen Miller clashed on Wednesday with CNN reporter Jim Acosta, who asked if the Trump administration's new merit-based green card proposal was keeping with US tradition. The reporter read a line of The New Colossus, the sonnet by Emma Lazarus sonnet, that is etched into the base of the statue: "Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses." Trump advisor Stephen Miller and CNN's Jim Acosta just got in an argument about the poem on the Statue of Liberty pic.twitter.com/WlGtL7b75v BuzzFeed News (@BuzzFeedNews) August 2, 2017 "The poem you were referring to was added later," Mr Miller said. "It's not actually part of the originally Statue of Liberty." Mr Miller said the statue was a "symbol of American liberty lighting the world" and suggested it had little to do with immigrants. American poet Emma Lazarus Credit: AP The legislation unveiled earlier Wednesday by the presidentwould dramatically overhaul the US immigration system. It would reduce legal immigration to the US and evaluate visa applications based on merit. During a heated exchange, Mr Miller called Acostas suggestion that the bill would regulate the racial and ethnic makeup of immigrants outrageous, ignorant, insulting and foolish. The notion that you think this is a racist bill is so wrong and so insulting, Mr Miller said. Acosta, who was the target of Mr Trump's ire when he blasted CNN as "fake news" at a press conference in January, didnt call the legislation racist. The New Colossus poem Trying to place Mr Trump's latest plan in a broader context, Acosta raised Mr Trump's promise to build a wall along the border with Mexico. You want to bring about a sweeping change to the immigration system, he said. Story continues Mr Miller accused him of conflating separate topics. Surely, Jim, you don't actually think that a wall affects green-card policy, Mr Miller said. You couldn't possibly believe that, do you? Do you really at CNN not know the difference between green-card policy and illegal immigration? I mean, you really don't know that? People look at the Statue of Liberty from a ferry boat in Jersey City Credit: AP Referring to the president's plan to award points to green-card applicants based on the ability to speak English, Acosta asked: Are we just going to bring in people from Great Britain and Australia? I am shocked at your statement, that you think only people from Great Britain and Australia would know English, Mr Miller said. It's actually - it reveals your cosmopolitan bias to a shocking degree. This is an amazing moment. That you think only people from Great Britain or Australia would know English is so insulting to millions of hard-working immigrants who do speak English from all over the world. Cosmopolitan bias? @Acosta grew up in Annandale, Virginia. Stephen Miller grew up in L.A. https://t.co/nNrilCsWRB DEREK DELGAUDIO (@derek_del) August 2, 2017 A Trump spokesman attack a reporter son of Cuban immigrants as a "cosmopolitan" while dismissing the ideals of the Statue of Liberty; /2 Dan Murphy (@bungdan) August 2, 2017 "Jim, have you honestly never met an immigrant from another country who speaks English, outside of Great Britain and Australia? Is that your personal experience? But it was Mr Miller's comments on the State of Liberty that drew the biggest reaction on social media, prompting ridicule and angry responses from immigrant rights advocates. The Statue of Liberty was imported. The poem was made in America. https://t.co/MvBz5XeHxY southpaw (@nycsouthpaw) August 2, 2017 About time someone like Stephen Miller had the political genius to take on the very overrated Statue of Liberty, who everybody hates James Poniewozik (@poniewozik) August 2, 2017 The poem was sold to finance construction of the the statue of liberty, meaning the country literally bought into it's meaning to erect it https://t.co/FQKLkfRWE6 (@JohnLGC) August 2, 2017 The Statue of Liberty was given to us by French abolitionists to mark the end of slavery. The Lazarus poem was the meaning we assigned her. Karrie Jacobs (@KarrieUrbanist) August 2, 2017 The National Park Service says Lazarus' sonnet depicts the statue "as the 'Mother of Exiles:' a symbol of immigration and opportunity - symbols associated with the Statue of Liberty today." The statue was a gift from France commemorating its alliance with the United States during the American Revolution. Edouard de Laboulaye, a French political thinker and abolitionist, proposed the idea of the statue and made sure broken shackle and chain were at the right foot of the statue. Writers and authors later asked Emma Lazarus, a poet and descendant of Jewish immigrants, to write a sonnet to be sold at an auction to raise money for a pedestal to hold the Statue of Liberty. The bronze plaque of the poem by Poet Emma Lazurus on Statue of Liberty in New York Credit: AP She wrote "The New Colossus" on November 2, 1883, inspired by the plight of immigrants and refugees and her own experiences. She died four years later and the poem eventually faded from public memory. In 1901, a Lazarus friend, Georgina Schuyler, found a book containing the poem and started an effort to resurrect the work. Her words were eventually inscribed on a plaque and placed on the statue's pedestal. Statue of Liberty facts TeeTee Dangerfield, a 32-year-old transgender woman, was found dead from multiple gunshot wounds Monday in College Park, Georgia. She is the 16th known transgender person to be killed in the United States in 2017. 32-year-old Tee Tee Dangerfield from Atlanta: The 15th trans woman of color killed this year in the US. #SAYHERNAME #BLACKTRANSLIVESMATTER pic.twitter.com/8PmADTdyIL Zackary Drucker (@zackarydrucker) August 1, 2017 Police found Dangerfield inside of her car at the South Hampton Estates apartment early Sunday morning, according to WXIA. She was immediately taken by a team from the College Park Fire Rescue to Atlantas Grady Memorial Hospital, where she was pronounced dead. College Park Police Maj. Lance Patterson told Georgia Voice that there are currently no suspects in the shooting, and the police are unsure whether Dangerfields transgender identity was a motivating factor. At this time we dont have anything thats telling us that, but were not ruling out any possible motive, Patterson said. Monica Roberts of TransGriot.com wrote Monday that she was sick of [her] trans sisters dying. She is the 16th trans woman of color murdered in the United States this year, the 14th African American trans woman killed in 2017, and most infuriating to me, was under age 40, Roberts wrote. The number of slain trans individuals may actually be higher, as violence experienced by trans people is regularly and grossly under- and misreported. Transgender individuals face disproportionately high rates of violence and discrimination. According to The National Center for Transgender Equalitys 2015 Transgender Survey Report, 46 percent of respondents were verbally harassed and 9 percent were physically attacked because of being transgender. The survey also found that 10 percent of respondents reported being sexually assaulted during the prior year, and 47 percent said they were sexually assaulted at some point in their lifetime. Story continues As GLAAD notes, 2016 was the deadliest year on record for transgender people in the United States with 27 killings, almost all of them trans women of color. Dangerfields death comes just days after comedian Lil Duval told the hosts of The Breakfast Club morning show that he would kill a woman if he found out she was transgender after having sex with her. Despite outcries from the LGBTQ community and its allies, Duval has refused to apologize for his comments. Also on HuffPost Kim Coco Iwamoto Laverne Cox The transgender activist Laverne Cox came to our attention when she first appeared on VH1's "I Want to Work for Diddy," which made her the first African-American transgender woman to be on a mainstream reality TV series. The show went on to win GLAAD's media award for outstanding reality program in 2009 where Cox accepted the honor and spoke about transgender visibility (VIDEO). Since appearing on Diddy's show, Cox got her own VH1 reality series, "TRANSform Me," which got its own GLAAD media award nomination in 2011. She then exploded within the entertainment industry after becoming a breakout star in the Netflix original series "Orange Is The New Black." The pioneer continues her advocacy in public engagements and frequently writes about trans issues for The Huffington Post. Louis Gradon Sullivan (1955 - 1991) In 1976 Lou G. Sullivan began applying for gender confirmation surgery, but was rejected because he identified as gay. At the time, "female-to-gay male transsexuality was not recognized by the medical/psychotherapeutic establishment as a legitimate form of gender dysphoria at that time." After mounting a successful campaign to get homosexuality removed from a list of objections which served to keep interested candidates from undergoing surgery, Sullivan finally obtained gender confirmation surgery in 1986. That same year he organized FTM, "the first peer-support group devoted entirely to female-to-male [transsexual and transvestite] individuals." Michael Dillon (1915 - 1962) Dillon was the first person known to have transitioned both hormonally and surgically from female to male. A British writer, physician, philosopher, and Buddhist, Dillon penned several books including, Self: A Study in Ethics and Endocrinology (1946), Growing Up into Buddhism (1960), The Life of Milarepa (1962), Imji Getsul (1962), and numerous articles. He was in love with another famous transgender person, Roberta Cowell, but she did not share his feelings. He died in India -- where he had moved to study, meditate, and wrote under the name Lobzang Jivaka -- just days after sending his memoir, "Out Of The Ordinary," to his literary agent. Love HuffPost? Become a founding member of HuffPost Plus today. This article originally appeared on HuffPost. By Steve Holland and John Walcott WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Donald Trump's doubts about the war in Afghanistan has led to a delay in completing a new U.S. strategy in South Asia, skepticism that included a suggestion that the U.S. military commander in the region be fired, U.S. officials said on Wednesday. During a July 19 meeting in the White House Situation Room, Trump demanded that his top national security aides provide more information on what one official called "the end-state" in a country that the United States has spent 16 years fighting against the Taliban with no end in sight. The meeting grew stormy when Trump said Defense Secretary James Mattis and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Joseph Dunford, a Marine general, should consider firing Army General John Nicholson, commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, for not winning the war. "We aren't winning," he told them, according to the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity. In addition, once the meeting concluded, Trump's chief strategist, Steve Bannon, got into what one official called "a shouting match" with White House national security adviser H.R. McMaster over the direction of U.S. policy. For more news videos visit Yahoo View, available on iOS and Android. Some officials left the meeting stunned by the presidents vehement complaints that the military was allowing the United States to lose the war Mattis, McMaster and other top aides are putting together answers to Trump's questions in a way to try to get him to approve the strategy, the officials said. Another meeting of top aides is scheduled on Thursday. Although Trump earlier this year gave Mattis the authority to deploy U.S. military forces as he sees fit, in fact the defense secretary's plans to add around 4,000 more U.S. troops to the 8,400 currently deployed in Afghanistan are being caught up in the delay surrounding the strategy, the officials said. Story continues "It's been contingent all along informally on the strategy being approved," a senior administration official said of the troop deployment. Trump has long been a skeptic of lingering U.S. involvement in foreign wars and has expressed little interest in deploying military forces without a specific plan on what they will do and for how long. Officials said Trump argued that the United States should demand a share of Afghanistans estimated $1 trillion in mineral wealth in exchange for its assistance to the Afghan government. But other officials noted that without securing the entire country, which could take many years, there is no way to get the countrys mineral riches to market, except to Iran. Trump complained that the Chinese are profiting from their mining operations, the officials said. (Editing by Jonathan Oatis) Washington (AFP) - US President Donald Trump claimed relations with Russia had hit an all-time and "very dangerous" low Thursday, putting the blame on Congress after he reluctantly approved sanctions against Moscow. After Moscow called the sanctions a declaration of "economic war" that had exposed the US president's weakness, an angry Trump lashed out at his own lawmakers who had overwhelmingly approved the measures. "Our relationship with Russia is at an all-time & very dangerous low," Trump wrote on Twitter. "You can thank Congress, the same people that can't even give us HCare!" he added in reference to a recent defeat in the Senate on his health care reform plans. Senator John McCain, a noted Russia hawk, hit back on Twitter, suggesting Trump had misdiagnosed the source of the problem. "Our relationship w/ Russia is at dangerous low. You can thank Putin for attacking our democracy, invading neighbors & threatening our allies," McCain said. Trump's outburst came a day after he grudgingly signed off on the sanctions, calling the legislation "significantly flawed" and adding that some of its provisions were unconstitutional. Trump's presidency has been overshadowed by allegations that his team colluded with Moscow during last year's US presidential campaign in which he defeated Hillary Clinton. On Thursday, reports emerged that special investigator Robert Mueller had impaneled a grand jury to investigate the issue, a step toward possible criminal indictments. The move is a sign that the sweeping federal investigation -- which includes allegations that Trump campaign officials coordinated with Russia to tilt the election in the Republican's favor -- is gathering pace. - Trump thwarted - After meeting his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin at a G20 summit in Germany last month, Trump said he wanted to work more closely with Moscow on areas such as the conflict in Syria. Story continues But the sanctions law -- which also includes measures against North Korea and Iran -- greatly limits his room for maneuver and underlines the lack of trust from lawmakers, even though his Republican Party controls both houses of Congress. The sanctions target the Russian energy sector in particular, giving Washington the ability to sanction companies involved in developing Russian pipelines. The measures also place curbs on some Russian weapons exporters and constrain Trump's ability to waive the penalties. - 'Economic war' - Moscow, which announced a series of retaliatory measures over the weekend, has painted the bill's passage in the Senate as a humiliation for Trump. Prime Minister Dmitri Medvedev took to Facebook late Wednesday to say Trump's signing of the bill "ends hopes for improving our relations with the new US administration." "It is a declaration of a full-fledged economic war on Russia," Medvedev wrote. "The Trump administration has shown its total weakness by handing over executive power to Congress in the most humiliating way." Moscow has already ordered the US to slash diplomatic staff in Russia by 755 personnel in response. The Kremlin said Trump's formal approval did not "change anything" and no further retaliation was planned. - Sanctions 'backfiring' - The head of Russia's largest oil firm Rosneft -- which has already been targeted by earlier US sanctions imposed over the Ukraine crisis -- promised the company would try to avoid more pain. "We will seek to work in such a way as to minimize the impact of the sanctions," Igor Sechin told Russian news agencies, adding that sanctions had "started backfiring" to damage American interests. Iran reacted angrily, saying the new sanctions against it "violated" its 2015 nuclear deal with world powers, and warned it would respond "appropriately." The sanctions seek to penalize the Kremlin for allegedly meddling in the 2016 US presidential election and for Russia's annexation of Crimea. Washington has already slapped several rounds of sanctions on Moscow over Ukraine since 2014, and in December, then leader Barack Obama turfed 35 Russian diplomats out due to accusations of election interference. Trump had received the legislation at 1:53 pm on Friday, but waited until Wednesday to sign it. The delay had raised speculation that Trump might veto or try to somehow shelve the sanctions, which were approved in a 98-2 Senate vote. By signing it, he avoided the humiliating prospect of Congress overriding his veto. US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said Wednesday that he would meet with his Russian counterpart Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov over the weekend, but warned US-Russia ties could still get worse. Report reveals leaked transcripts of phone call between US and Mexican presidents, in which Trump begs Pena Nieto not to tell press he wont pay for wall Donald Trump also offered military aid to Mexico to deal with drug cartels, an offer first reported in February. Photograph: Yuri Cortez/AFP/Getty Images Donald Trump suggested his demand for payment for a border wall with Mexico was merely a political ploy, and told Mexicos president his refusal to pay should not be mentioned in public. The news opened Trump to charges of hypocrisy and letting down his support base. A border wall paid for by Mexico was Trumps signature issue in his run for the White House, as crowds at campaign rallies joined call-and-response routines and Trump railed against undocumented Mexican migrants for what he said was their predilection for crime. But in a phone conversation with Enrique Pena Nieto on 27 January, a week after Trumps inauguration as president, Trump said: From an economic issue, it is the least important thing we were talking about. He added: Psychologically, it means something. A White House transcript of the call was published by the Washington Post on Thursday. The Post also published a transcript of Trumps call on 28 January with Malcolm Turnbull, the prime minister of Australia, in which he tried to wriggle out of an Obama-era deal to resettle refugees currently held on Manus Island and Nauru. Much of the conversation with Pena Nieto focused on Trumps acknowledgment that Mexico would not pay for the wall and his need for Pena Nieto not to say so. The Mexican president had cancelled a planned visit to Washington over the issue. Trump said: The fact is we are both in a little bit of a political bind, because I have to have Mexico pay for the wall I have to. Referring to the Mexican presidents insistence that he would not pay, Trump said: You cannot say that to the press. The press is going to go with that and I cannot live with that. You cannot say that to the press because I cannot negotiate under those circumstances. Story continues Trump even threatened to cut off relations with Pena Nieto. The funding will work out in the formula somehow, he said, adding later: It will come out in the wash, and that is OK. But if you are going to say that Mexico is not going to pay for the wall, then I do not want to meet with you guys any more because I cannot live with that. In Mexico, where Trump is reviled and Pena Nieto has been criticised for failing to fight a bully, the release of the transcript led some pundits to say that strategy of deference was not working. What this transcript shows is that Trump views the US-Mexico relationship like its employer-employee, said Esteban Illades, editor of the magazine Nexos. Mexico must do what he says in order to keep its job. The threat from the first phone call seems to have worked. Penas defiance of Trump is always out of earshot of the American president. Hes never there when Pena says Mexico wont pay. Others saw the issue differently. This is a boost for Penas image in Mexico, said Jose Carreno, a columnist and commentator on foreign affairs. All of a sudden he looks a lot stronger. But it is less about Pena than about Trump. Trump comes across less a bully than a politician who realizes he has gone too far in promises and is trying to find a way out without losing face. Pena Nieto has passed up repeated opportunities to publicly tell Trump Mexico will not pay for the wall. During a joint appearance last August at the presidential palace in Mexico City, he stood passively as Trump said details would be discussed at a later date. Pena Nieto had the last word. He did not rebut Trump. At the G-20 summit in Hamburg last month, Trump again voiced approval for having Mexico pay. Pena Nieto said nothing. The Mexican foreign minister, Luis Videgaray, later told a Mexico City radio station neither he nor the president had heard Trumps comments. Videgaray who proposed the Trump campaign trip to Mexico became foreign minister in January. It was believed that he and Jared Kushner, Trumps son-in-law and senior adviser, had a strong relationship that could be leveraged. Trump recognised that relationship in the White House call, telling Pena Nieto: I did not want to meet with anybody. It was only because of a very good relationship that Jared Kushner has with Luis that these two decided to meet and discuss, but I was not really in favor for that meeting. Some in Mexico interpreted Pena Nietos passivity as an attempt to avoid unduly angering Trump over the impending renegotiation of Nafta, the key trade accord between Canada, the US and Mexico. Talks start this month. In the transcript published by the Post, Trump also offered military aid to deal with drug cartels, an offer or perhaps veiled threat first reported in February. You have some pretty tough hombres in Mexico that you may need help with, and we are willing to help you with that big-league, he said. He added, of the fight against organized crime: Listen, I know how tough these guys are our military will knock them out like you never thought of. We will work to help you knock them out because your country does not want that. Trump also dwelled on his immigration promises in his conversation with Turnbull. This is going to kill me, he said to Turnbull. I am the worlds greatest person that does not want to let people into the country. He added: This deal will make me look terrible. The Hill The final results of the 2022 midterm elections have been trickling in over the past several days, but no winner has been declared yet in either major race in Alaska and wont be for some time. Alaskas ranked-choice voting system means determining a winner often takes longer than in most other states. Voters in this system Source: Xinhua| 2017-08-03 11:45:16|Editor: Zhou Xin Chamber of Deputies Speaker Rodrigo Maia (C, front) attends the plenary session of the Chamber of Deputies for voting to decide on a corruption case against President Michel Temer in Brasilia, capital of Brazil, on Aug. 2, 2017. (Xinhua/Li Ming) BRASILIA, Aug. 2 (Xinhua) -- The Brazilian Chamber of Deputies has voted to dismiss the corruption charges against President Michel Temer. In Wednesday's vote, government allies in the Chamber received more than one third of votes, or 172 out of 512, the threshold to dismiss the charges. This means the charges filed against Temer by Prosecutor General Rodrigo Janot, the first case against a sitting president, will be dropped. While former president Dilma Rousseff was impeached on lesser grounds than Temer, the Chamber is controlled by Temer's Brazilian Democratic Movement Party (PMDB) and its allies. The vote was delayed in the afternoon as both sides for and against Temer clashed on the Chamber floor. One deputy even threw fake money in the air to satirize Temer and his government's embezzlement. Another person hoisted two balloons, drawing Temer's image on them. Chamber Speaker Rodrigo Maia castigated deputies and asked them: "do you think that playing with dolls is a good image for Brazil?" According to a poll in late July, the president's abysmal approval rating has plunged to just 5 percent. Therefore, it is no surprise to see protesters yelling "Temer Out" outside the Congress. Temer was charged with passive corruption after executives of meat conglomerate the JBS, admitted paying bribes to the president. They also provided an audio recording in which Temer could seemingly be heard signing off on bribes for public officials. Prosecutor General Rodrigo Janot has accused Temer of accepting these bribes in order to provide political favors for the JBS. Temer's special advisor, Rodrigo Loures, was also caught on film receiving a suitcase containing 500,000 reais (160,000 U.S. dollars), which the JBS said was prepared for Temer. By Ayesha Rascoe WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump pressured the Mexican president to stop voicing opposition in public to his plan to have Mexico pay for a border wall, according to transcripts of phone calls published on Thursday that gave an insight into Trump's attempts to influence foreign leaders in his first days in office. The Washington Post published texts of sometimes fraught calls with Mexico's Enrique Pena Nieto and Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull just days after the Republican took office on Jan. 20. The substance of the calls has previously been reported but the lengthy transcripts reveal Trump, whose first elected office is the presidency, trying to use a mixture of bluster, tough talk and charm as he fully enters the world of diplomacy. Trump argued with Turnbull over refugees in an acrimonious call on Jan. 28 which the new U.S. president told his counterpart was "unpleasant." In a Jan. 27 call, Trump pressed Pena Nieto to avoid saying in public that Mexico would not fund the planned border wall. But he complimented the Mexican leader's "beautiful words" and said he hoped Mexico would change its constitution to allow Pena Nieto to extend his stay in office. The proposed wall, aimed at preventing illegal immigration to the United States, is a bone of contention between Mexico and Washington. Pena Nieto has repeatedly rejected Trump's promise that Mexico will end up paying billions of dollars for its construction. 'YOU CANNOT SAY THAT' Trump told the Mexican leader in the call that "if you are going to say that Mexico is not going to pay for the wall, then I do not want to meet with you guys anymore because I cannot live with that, according to the transcript. You cannot say that to the press, Trump said. Pena Nieto had earlier scrapped a plan to hold talks with Trump in the United States due to tensions over the wall and trade. The two men have since met, holding talks at a summit of the Group of 20 nations in Germany last month. The White House has said the U.S. government will pay for the wall initially to get the project off the ground but that Mexico will eventually reimburse it for the work. Both the White House and Mexico's foreign ministry did not have any immediate comment on Thursday about the release of the call transcripts. It was the latest in a series of leaks from inside Trump's administration which have angered the president. The Republican won some sympathy over leaks from a political opponent on Thursday. "I am alarmed at leaks of conversations between two heads of state," Democratic U.S. Senator Brian Schatz wrote on Twitter. "It doesn't matter what I think of this president, this is terrible." In the conversation with Pena Nieto, Trump said both leaders were "in a little bit of a political bind" due to Trump's campaign pledge to build the wall and have Mexico foot the bill. "I have to have Mexico pay for the wall I have to. I have been talking about it for a two-year period," Trump said. He suggested that the two men avoid the issue of paying for the wall when asked. "They are going to say, 'Who is going to pay for the wall, Mr. President?' to both of us, and we should both say, 'We will work it out,'" Trump said. "It will work out in the formula somehow. As opposed to you saying, 'We will not pay' and me saying, 'We will not pay,'" the U.S. president said. Pena Nieto said he understood Trump's position on how to refer to paying for the border wall and suggested seeking "a creative way to jump over this obstacle." Toward the end of their conversation, Trump responded effusively to a comment by Pena Nieto about the Mexican leader's wish for a constructive relationship with the United States. "Your words are so beautiful. Those are beautiful words and I do not think I can speak that beautifully, okay?" Trump said. "I want you to be so popular that your people will call for a constitutional amendment in Mexico so that you can run again for another six years," he said. By law, Mexican presidents can only serve one six-year term. 'DRUG INFESTED-DEN' In comments likely to upset voters in New Hampshire - an important early voting state in the U.S. presidential election primaries - Trump described the state as "a drug-infested den." "I won New Hampshire because New Hampshire is a drug-infested den," he said, complaining that drugs from Mexico are damaging the United States. While Trump won the Republican primary there, he narrowly lost the state to Democratic rival Hillary Clinton in the general election. New Hampshire officials from both parties lashed out at Trump, with several saying his push to repeal the Obamacare healthcare law would worsen the nation's opioid crisis. Speaking to Australia's Turnbull, Trump became irritated that the United States was expected to honor an agreement made by his Democratic predecessor, Barack Obama, to accept as many as 1,250 refugees held in Australian processing centers on remote Pacific islands. Trump said that would make him look bad given his campaign promises to reduce the number of refugees entering the United States, according to the transcript. "This is going to kill me. I am the worlds greatest person that does not want to let people into the country," Trump said. He told Turnbull that their conversation was the most difficult he had held that day, after speaking to Russian President Vladimir Putin and others. "I have had it. I have been making these calls all day and this is the most unpleasant call all day," Trump said. "Putin was a pleasant call. This is ridiculous." (Additional reporting by Eric Walsh in Washington and; Scott Malone in Boston; Writing by Alistair Bell; Editing by Jonathan Oatis) Not only did President Donald Trump earn zero achievement badges for his much-criticized Boy Scouts speech, but now he's also lying about the praise he's gotten from Scout leaders. After his politically-charged rant at the Boy Scouts of America National Scout Jamboree in West Virginia last week was lambasted, the president said "the head of the Boy Scouts" told him it was "the greatest speech that was ever made to them." Um, but the Scouts say that never happened, according to the Associated Press. SEE ALSO: Everyone is tweeting the Boy Scouts values after Trump turns jamboree into full-blown political rally All the guy had to do was say things that were appropriate enough for a bunch of kids to hear, but he just couldn't. Instead, he wound up talking about politics and a big sex yacht, causing Chief Scout Executive Michael Surbaugh to write a letter essentially apologizing to the world. But Trump (quite possibly in denial) encouraged people to forget about all the controversy, telling The Wall Street Journal (in an interview published by Politico) the scout leaders loved it. "I got a call from the head of the Boy Scouts saying it was the greatest speech that was ever made to them, and they were very thankful. So there was there was no mix." Problem is Surbagh, the head of the Scouts and the one who wrote that apology letter, never made that call. Neither did the other top Scout, President Randall Stephenson, the Boy Scouts told the AP "We are unaware of any such call," the Scouts said. What is truth in 2017 anyhow? What a dumb thing to lie about. https://t.co/Oix38LOwbt Anthony De Rosa (@Anthony) August 2, 2017 As a parent of a Boy Scout, this whole story from Trump's speech to this outrageous LIE infuriates me. How low will he go? Mindy Grosh (@MindyGrosh) August 2, 2017 So Boy Scouts "Do Not Lie" BUT "Trump Lies" 45 NEVER A BOY SCOUT!! https://t.co/xhqVnm5HQj UnitedWeStandNina (@Luv2salzzaNina) August 2, 2017 Trump lied about the BOY SCOUTS. A senior Scouts source says there was no call at all, let alone a call telling him his speech was the best. Daniel Dale (@ddale8) August 1, 2017 He lied about the size of his inauguration crowd, which we could all plainly see. Makes sense he'd lie even more about what we can't see. shauna (@goldengateblond) August 1, 2017 UPDATE (and yes this is real life) Aug. 2 2:37 p.m. PT: Story continues Sarah Huckabee Sanders insisted during Wednesday's press conference that "it wasn't a lie" and that Trump heard from "multiple members of Boy Scout leadershop" who extended "quite powerful compliments." The conversations took place," she added, referring also to a supposed conversation with the president of Mexico. "They just simply didn't take place over a phone call. He had them in person. A Russian journalist was punched by a drunk man on Wednesday while reporting on Russia's Paratroopers' Day celebrations live on air from one of Moscow's central parks. The video of Nikita Razvozzhayev, correspondent of the national NTV channel, getting punched in the face by an intoxicated man in Gorky Park, Moscow's most popular recreational zone, quickly went viral on Twitter. Former Russian paratroopers frolic in a fountain in Gorky Park Credit: EPA/MAXIM SHIPENKOV In the video, the attacker is seen interrupting Razvozzhayev's live report by walking into the camera frame and shouting "This is our country! We will conquer Ukraine!" In response, Razvozzhayev politely asked the man to be quiet, but instead the man hit him. Russian paratroopers wade through a fountain celebrating a Paratroopers Day in the Gorky Park in Moscow, Credit: AP Photo/Alexander Zemlianichenko The broadcast then switched back to the studio, where the programme host said there were problems with the report and expressed hope that her colleague is fine. It wasn't immediately clear whether the reporters injury was serious. According to media reports, the police detained the attacker and launched an investigation into the incident. A former Russian paratrooper plays with a child in a fountain during Paratroopers' Day celebrations Credit: REUTERS/Tatyana Makeyeva Razvozzhayev was covering the celebrations of Paratroopers' Day, Russia's notorious holiday for veterans and active duty airborne troops servicemen, on which Gorky Park traditionally becomes the main venue for the festivities. Celebrations usually involve heavy consumption of alcohol and watermelons, occasional fights and fountain bathing that law enforcement often turns a blind eye on. By David Shepardson and Jarrett Renshaw WASHINGTON/NEW YORK (Reuters) - The Environmental Protection Agency will reject a proposed overhaul of the U.S. biofuels program that would have shifted blending responsibility away from refining companies further down the fuel supply chain, three sources familiar with the matter told Reuters on Thursday. The decision is a blow to independent oil refiners like Valero Energy Corp and CVR Energy that have said the requirement costs them hundreds of millions of dollars every year, as well as to billionaire investor Carl Icahn who holds a majority stake in CVR and vocally supported the change. Online news site Politico was first to report the EPA's decision, citing an unnamed senior administration official. One of sources who spoke to Reuters said agency will likely announce the move next week. An EPA official declined to comment. Efforts to reach Icahn were not successful. None of the sources were able to give a reason behind EPA's decision. But ethanol producers had lobbied for years against the proposed change, saying it would undermine biofuels policy by making it too complicated. The sources declined to speak for attribution because they were not authorized to speak publicly. The U.S. Renewable Fuel Standard, adopted in 2005, requires increasing volumes of biofuels like ethanol in the nation's gasoline supply to boost U.S. agriculture, reduce pollution, and cut reliance on imports. Independent refiners had petitioned the EPA repeatedly during the administration of former President Barack Obama to change the law's requirement that refiners blend the fuels, saying they do not have the facilities needed to do so. Refiners unable to blend are required to purchase blending credits, called RINs, from others who can. The requirement cost Valero, America's top refiner, some $750 million in 2016, the company has said. Icahn threw his weight behind the proposed change this winter, submitting a plan to the White House on the topic. This raised the hackles of Democratic lawmakers who said the move was a conflict of interest because of his refinery stake. His company, CVR Energy, deferred most of its 2016 RIN obligation into this year, betting prices would fall. Prices fell in the first quarter as Icahn, then an adviser to Trump, was working to change the point of obligation or where the responsibility lies for blending. RIN prices were stable on Thursday. "I think refiners knew this was coming," one broker said. Shares of CVR were down 0.4 percent at $19.02 on Thursday afternoon. Valero shares were down 0.2 percent at $68.38. Biofuels maker POET LLC applauded the move. "Changes to the point of obligation would create market confusion, raise fuel prices and remove incentives for offering cleaner-burning biofuel blends to consumers across the country," said spokesman Rob Walther. (Additional reporting by Chris Prentice in New York) WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A Texas man pleaded guilty on Thursday to conspiring to illegally export radiation hardened integrated circuits for use in Russian and Chinese space programs, the U.S. Justice Department said in a statement. Peter Zuccarelli, 62, of Plano, Texas, received approximately $1.5 million from an unnamed co-conspirator to purchase the circuits for Chinese and Russian customers, in violation of strict export controls, the statement said. Zuccarelli faces a maximum sentence of five years in prison. A sentencing date has not been set, the statement said. (Reporting by Eric Beech) Before his visit to Estonia, Vice President Mike Pence probably didnt know the Russian word for west zapad. But he knows it now, because it is the codename for one of the largest military exercises that Russia traditionally undertakes in the Baltic region. Estonia, along with Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland are bracing for the appearance of up to 100,000 Russian troops in Belarus and western Russia, including the imposing 1st Guards Tank Army, ahead of the September exercise. Alarmed at the size of the exercise, set to take place so close to the Baltics, the United States has sent additional forces to the region to reinforce NATO forces already deployed there. The vice president now seems to be the administrations go to person for reassuring allies in Europe that the United States is committed to NATO and to the defense of the continent. He said all the right things in Estonia, visited NATO forces there, and met with Baltic heads of state and government. But unfortunately, both his words and the 600 or so U.S. reinforcements are thin gruel when bets are being placed on the Russians doing something mischievous in September. The Russians may do nothing more than leave behind in Belarus a substantial troop presence to bring that nation to heel and to further intimidate the Baltics. Such a repositioning would also put Russian forces in an advantageous position for an aggressive move against the Baltics later on. Or it could be something worse. All eyes will be watching the Russian exercise buildup in August to anticipate what is in store for September. Thus far, the Russians are not allowing allied observers to monitor the exercise, which is the standard procedure for exercises of a certain magnitude in order to ensure transparency and confidence building. But confidence building is not in the Russian playbook. Once his European tour ends, Pence will return to Washington and to the presidents agenda, which has languished since his inauguration. Burning in the presidents inbox is the crisis with North Korea, which is tumbling towards a military option with each new and improved missile launch. But unlike the president, Pence will know that his new friends in the Baltics are counting on him not to take his eye off what could be an even more immediate military crisis in the region. If the Russians choose to use Zapad to cause trouble, it may be the president will turn to his globalist vice president to be the point man on the crisis and organize a response by the West. Have a few trips to Europe readied Pence for a rogue Zapad in September? Story continues The vice president has a national security staff that has won plaudits for its international work. National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster and the Europe/Russia section of the National Security Council staff can also be counted on to provide the vice president and his team with seasoned support. There is no question that the Department of Defense under James Mattis, together with General Curtis Scaparrotti and his European Command are also ready to back up the vice president. The State Department will play an important role as well, albeit weakened by uncertain leadership and dwindling morale among the few seasoned senior foreign service officers remaining. The national security apparatus is solid where it needs to be to support Pence in a September crisis in the Baltics. NATO will be a player at the table too. After all, trouble with the Baltics, unlike with Ukraine, brings the alliance immediately into the picture, especially given the many allies that already have troops deployed in the region. Pences quick trip to NATO a few months ago will not be enough to help him understand NATOs role and the U.S. leadership required to move the alliance. Slowly, the administration is coming together to lead the U.S. mission to NATO, including through the nomination of former Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Texas) to be the U.S. ambassador to NATO. Even if she makes it to her new post by September, she will not yet be up to speed on NATO, and will depend on the excellent NATO secretary, General Jens Stoltenberg, along with the U.S. mission staff, to help determine the right posture. So if a crisis breaks this September, the good news is that the vice president will be well served. The Pentagon and European Command will be ready to help the greenhorn administration navigate possible courses of action. The bad news is there wont be much time to make tough decisions, especially if they require putting together a coalition or winning allied approval. There is one more bit of bad news too. What about the president himself? The rest of the executive can be ready to go, only to be hobbled by indecision at the top. Will President Donald Trump be ready to act quickly and decisively in what will likely be his first major military crisis? With John Kelly as chief of staff, the odds are now better that appropriate and vetted courses of action will be teed up for presidential decisions. But at the end of the day, it will be the president who must decide. Will he be ready to move? Photo credit: MAXIM MARMUR/AFP/Getty Images United Airlines has come under fire again after leaving a Canadian teenager behind at an airport in Connecticut, according to CTV News Vancouver. The 15-year-old boy, who attempted to board a flight home to Vancouver International Airport (YVR) on Tuesday, was reportedly left stranded at Bradley International Airport near Hartford for almost 10 hours. A United employee informed Victor Shmulevich that the airline doesn't allow unaccompanied minors to board its flights. The teen's parents made alternative plans for him to return to Vancouver, British Columbia. Read: Canada Will Punish Airlines For Treating Passengers Badly Shmulevich's father arranged for him to board a flight with Air Canada, which allowed him to fly to Toronto and then to Vancouver, according to Vancouver news outlet Georgia Straight. Shmulevich reportedly arrived 20 hours after the United Airlines incident. Shmulevich's father told CTV News Vancouver "what's most concerning is that [United] didnt actually try to assist us. They said, 'Sorry, you've got to deal with this by yourself. We can't do anything." A media representative from United Airlines issued a statement Tuesday to International Business Times about the incident. The airline explained its strict policy against boarding unaccompanied minors, however, United also plans to investigate how Shmulevich was able to obtain a ticket for a flight that wasn't included in its unaccompanied minor program. "United does not allow unaccompanied minors to travel on itineraries with connecting flights, which was the case in this instance," the representative wrote. "We are looking into the booking process further to determine how this passenger was able to purchase a ticket for a flight that was not part of our unaccompanied minor program." "The safety of our passengers is our number 1 priority. However, we were not made aware of this situation by the passenger or the airlines. We are looking into this issue and will be reviewing appropriate protocols with the airlines," Kevin Dillon, executive director of the Connecticut Airport Authority, told IBT in an email. Story continues Read: Teen Arrested After Jumping Off Copa Airlines Flight, Other Similar Incidents The Los Angeles Times reported on changes made to United Airlines unaccompanied minor program in 2014. United initially required children between ages 5 and 12 years to participate in the program, but it was modified to include minors up to the age 15. United spokesperson Charles Hobart told the Times, "we made a thoughtful review of the policy and decided that this change will provide the best possible care for these travelers." Minors traveling solo with United will be forced to pay an additional $150 alongside the original ticket, according to the airline's website. The fee is required for each direction of travel in domestic and international territories. United collects the additional fee for the "extra handling" needed to care for children traveling alone. United's unaccompanied minor policy claims to "understand just how important it is to provide a safe, comfortable, fun experience for children who are flying alone." The airline believes its unaccompanied minor service provides "peace of mind" for parents. Benefits to enhance the unaccompanied child's experience include early boarding, a seat towards the front of the aircraft and a complimentary food item. United Airlines isn't the only company to enforce strict unaccompanied minor regulations. Southwest Airlines requires children ages 5 to 11 to enroll in its unaccompanied minor program, which charges $50 fee in each direction. Delta Air Lines also has an unaccompanied minor program for children ages 5 to 14, which requires a $150 fee. Delta's program is optional for children between 15 to 17. United Airlines plane Photo: Getty Images Follow me on Twitter @dory_jackson Related Articles In December last year, the then president-elect Donald Trump tweeted that the costs of the new Air Force One planes Boeing were building were out of control and called for the order to be canceled. Trump was wrong about Boeing building "a brand new 747 Air Force One" and costs being "more than $4 billion," as the U.S. Air Force had only awarded a $170 million contract to Boeing to design Air Force One planes. At that time, the Air Force was planning to buy two new jetliners to replace the Boeing 747-200s that have served presidents since George H.W. Bush, but was yet to place orders. Now the Air Force has found a way to make Trump feel he has got a good deal by planning to buy a pair of Boeing 747s abandoned by a bankrupt Russian airline and now housed at the Southern California Logistics Airport in Victorville, California. Read: How Much Does Air Force One Cost To Make? Though the Air Force is not expected to release the contract value, officials said they are getting a "good deal" on the planes, which are, on average, listed at $386.8 million each, according to Defense One, a defense and national security website. Were working through the final stages of coordination to purchase two commercial 747-8 aircraft and expect to award a contract soon, Air Force spokeswoman Ann Stefanek said in a statement. However, turning a standard 747 into an Air Force One takes quite a bit of customization. The $170 million contract given to Boeing to design the next Air Force One planes includes equipping it to stay aloft and connected during a nuclear war. Apart from the customized conference rooms, offices and seating for White House staff, guests and journalists, the presidential aircraft needs to have these additional features: Midair refueling capability Missile defense systems Electronic countermeasure defense systems An operating room Ability to withstand the electromagnetic pulse emitted from a nuclear detonation A communications set-up to manage a wartime crisis from anywhere in the world. Story continues So how much money does it take to keep this flying White House operational? According to records accessed by Judicial Watch, a conservative watchdog group, the answer is $142,380 per flying hour. According to analysts, it costs just $20,000 to $25,000 per flying hour for an airline to operate a commercial 747. Records released by the Air Force to Judicial Watch reflected the costs for nine hours of travel by Trump over two weekends in February and March, Foxtrot Alpha reported. From Feb. 3 to Feb. 6, the presidential plane was airborne for 4.7 hours, at a cost of roughly $669,000. A month later, the plane flew 4.3 hours, for a total of $612,234. The group also tracked former President Barack Obamas travel during his tenure. According to records, Obama racked up $97 million in travel costs over his two terms in office. The Air Force told Judicial Watch the flying costs includes fuel, flight consumables, aircraft overhaul, and engine overhaul. However, these costs dont include the cost to transport the presidential limousines, affectionately known as "The Beast", which are transported to the presidents destination in advance in a fleet of Boeing C-17 Globemaster III cargo planes. The president also has the option of flying on the Marine One, the call sign for the presidential helicopter, after getting off Air Force One. Read: Boeing 747-8 Selected By Pentagon To Serve As Air Force One Obama had initiated the decision to replace the two VC-25 aircraft that currently serve as Air Force One, and set aside money for the purpose in his 2016 budget. According to the Pentagons 2018 budget request sent to the Congress in February, the Air Force plans to spend nearly $3.2 billion between 2018 and 2022 to acquire and operate the new jets. Related Articles Undocumented immigrants wait to be deported in this stock photo: Scott Olson/Getty US immigration officers have arrested 650 people in communities across the US in the latest deportation sweep, but the vast majority of those picked up by law enforcement dont have a criminal record an apparent break from the organizations stated priority to focus on criminal aliens. In a crackdown that came close in size to a large-scale sweep earlier this year, Immigrations and Custom Enforcement (ICE) agents arrested 650 people over a four-day span last month, including 38 minors. Of that group, though, 520 had no criminal record, compared to just 170 people who had no criminal records and were arrested in the earlier crackdowns. ICE says that the targets of the latest sweeps were subject to removal orders by federal judges, however its not clear how the individuals without criminal records ended up on the targets list, or how many were incidental arrests. Danielle Bennett, an ICE spokeswoman, told The Independent that non-criminal individuals may have been on the targets list as a part of determent efforts, but did not clarify the process by which it is decided to put non-criminal undocumented immigrants on that list under current priorities (it is not legal to cross the border without authorization). Ms Bennett said that deterring those individuals from coming to the United States illegally is important, as the trip is often dangerous. In addition, spreading the message that current US policy is to deport undocumented immigrants from Central America is important to ICE because people coming to the country without permission often spend their life savings to do so, and risk losing all of that if deported. Avid Moussavian, the senior policy attorney for the National Immigration Law Centre, told The Independent that the recent raids show that the administration is targeting any and every undocumented immigrant in the country not just criminal aliens. Policy justifications like determent, she said, only show that the United States government is uninterested in addressing underlying causes that have sparked migration from Central America. Story continues They are looking for justification for what is essentially a mass detention and deportation plan, Ms Moussavian said. This is an agency that has demonstrated a willingness to be vindictive and retaliatory. A statement from ICE announcing the recent deportation raids noted that the operation is the second development as a part of the organisations Operation Border Guardian/Border Resolve, a program that was developed in response to an increase in families from Central America attempting to illegally cross the USs southern border. The US has seen a surge in immigrant traffic from Central American countries in recent years, spurred in particular by bloody gang violence in places like El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala. Those countries have been seen a confluence of unfortunate events that have made life miserable and dangerous for many citizens, including the violence as well as harsh economic desperation. With that backdrop, many have joined an exodus to greener pastures, including in the United States, where they hope they can start a new and safer life. The situation led to a 23 percent increase in migrants attempting to enter the US in 2016 compared to the prior year, according to government statistics. Those levels of immigrant flow have been called a refugee crisis by officials working for United Nations refugee services. While ICE notes that individuals facing deportation can request that their cases be heard by judges to determine that they face significant danger back home, recent federal policies seem to undercut that mission. Mr Trumps controversial ban on immigration and refugee admissions has essentially halted refugee admission from crisis hot spots around the country, including from Central American countries facing bloody gang violence. Donald Trump and his attorney general Jeff Sessions - REUTERS The US Justice Department is reportedly planning to investigate and possibly sue universities over admissions policies that discriminate against white applicants. An internal memo seeks lawyers in the department's Civil Rights Division who are interested in working on a new project on "investigations and possible litigation related to intentional race-based discrimination in college and university admissions," the New York Times reported, citing the department document. The US Supreme Court has ruled that universities may use affirmative action admissions policies, which are intended to give minority applicants an edge in getting into college. The court has rejected racial quotas but said race could be used as one factor among many in evaluating an applicant. Critics of affirmative action say that in some cases it goes too far in discriminating against white and Asian-American applicants. The Times said the Justice Department document does not explicitly say whom it considers at risk because of affirmative action admissions policies. But the newspaper reported that supporters and critics of the project said it clearly targeted admissions programmes that seek to help black and Latino students. A Justice Department spokesman told Reuters the department would not comment on personnel matters. The Times said the document suggests the project will be run out of a part of the Civil Right Division where its political appointees work, rather than the Educational Opportunities Section, which is devoted to handling cases involving universities and is run by career civil servants. Source: Xinhua| 2017-08-03 12:00:26|Editor: Mengjie Video Player Close PANAMA CITY, Aug. 2 (Xinhua) -- The head of the World Trade Organization (WTO) on Wednesday warned of a "clear risk" of a trade war sparked by protectionist policies. The global community must be attentive because "the risk of a trade war is very clear," said Roberto Azevedo, WTO director general who was here for a trade forum organized by Panama's Chamber of Commerce, Industry and Agriculture. Azevedo warned that whichever country applies unilateral measures, other countries would respond, triggering a domino effect. It is easy to see where such chain reactions begin. Should a trade war break out, countries "will in the end be worse off than when the dispute begins." Azevedo also called for more dialogues, noting the potential influence that digital technologies can have on world trade. He said new technologies are growing faster than traditional sectors like exports. "We need to raise awareness among leaders and governments that we are willing to work with them to identify solutions ... for these types of phenomenons," said Azevedo, adding his agency was promoting relevant dialogues with officials and international organizations. The WTO's annual report, to be released in September, sheds light on the trend and the importance of training the work force so it can take advantage of the new opportunities, he said. A North Carolina woman was left fighting for her life after she came in contact with flesh-eating bacteria while vacationing at South Carolinas Myrtle Beach last week. According to a report by NBC-affiliate WMBF News, Bonita Fetterman from Lumberton city cut her leg on a chair while standing on the balcony of her hotel. As the injury wasnt very serious, Fetterman did not seek any medical help and later went down to the beach, her granddaughter, who didn't wish to be identified, told the news website. The following days she did not have any complaints. Read: What Is Bourbon Virus? Missouri Woman Dies After Contracting Tick-Borne Disease However, things took an ugly turn when the family came back home Saturday and Fetterman noticed blisters on her leg. The blisters soon turned purple, and Fettermans blood pressure started dropping. She was immediately taken to Southeastern Hospital, but was airlifted Sunday morning to University of North Carolina Medical Center in Chapel Hill after her condition deteriorated. If she stayed there, she had like a 10 percent chance of surviving, and they were to amputate her leg, Fettermans granddaughter was quoted as saying in a Washington Post report. The case garnered national attention after Fetterman's daughter, Marsha Barnes Beal, put up an emotional Facebook post detailing her mother's ordeal. "She came in contact with a life threatening flesh eating bacteria after putting her feet in the water at Myrtle Beach! Surgery is the only option until it is completely cut away from her long! she posted. Along with the message, Beal also posted a few photographs showing her mothers bruised leg. She also posted a video of her mother while she was being airlifted and taken to the hospital. Beals post was shared more than 78,000 times and received several thousand comments with people praying for Fettermans speedy recovery. Speaking to WMBF News, Fettermans granddaughter said: "The doctor came in and spoke with me at Chapel Hill. He said it was a flesh eating bacteria from her open wound. Story continues Read: Shark Attacks Teen At South Carolina Beach: 'I Thought My Brother Was Messing With Me' Meanwhile, the Myrtle Beach officials Monday posted a message on their official Facebook account addressing the incident that took place with Fetterman. The post read: "The City of Myrtle Beach is aware of a Facebook post that claims bacterial issues along the Grand Strand. We have had no reports and no direct contact about any such issues. The city has been unable to confirm the location or date of any such incident. At this point, all we have is a Facebook post, with no confirmation. "Our ocean water quality is tested twice weekly, with excellent results. If we can determine where such contact may have occurred, we can order additional water quality tests to determine whether any connection exists," the statement added. Related Articles The strange death of a woman who was buried in sand and suffocated on a Maryland beach has been deemed an accident, authorities said. Ashley OConnor, 30, was vacationing with her family in Ocean City when she somehow landed in a deep hole, according to police. Read: Body of College Football Player Who Vanished on Lake Tahoe Recovered One Year Later A beachgoer found the womans body almost completely buried in the sand, with only a hand showing, the Ocean City Police Department said in a statement. OConnor, who lived in Plano, Texas, was last seen going for a walk on the beach Monday at about 2 a.m., her family said. On Wednesday, police announced the Maryland Chief Medical Examiners Office concluded the cause of death was accidental asphyxia caused by suffocation. Read: Experienced 13-Year-Old Swimmer Drowns, Coach Suffers Heart Attack While Giving CPR A toxicology report is pending, police said. OConnor was recently married and had just established a painting business with her wife, Janet, according to a GoFundMe page established to help with funeral costs. It was not clear how the woman ended up in the hole, or how it came to be filled with sand, police said. But investigators concluded that the hole was not dug to bury OConnor in it, the department said. Watch: Teens Laugh, Watch and Record Man Drowning in Pond Related Articles: White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said Wednesday that two phone calls that President Donald Trump publicly mentioned but were later disputed by others didnt actually happen, but were instead in-person conversations. The conversations took place, Sanders said at a press briefing regarding Trumps alleged phone calls between the head of the Boy Scouts and the president of Mexico. They just simply didnt take place over a phone call He had them in person. The Boy Scouts organization said that they were unaware of a phone conversation between Trump and chief executive Michael Surbaugh. Mexico denied the conversation altogether, saying in a statement: President Enrique Pena Nieto has not had any recent telephone communication with President Donald Trump. The first instance took place July 25, when Trump told the Wall Street Journal that Surbaugh had called him with praise following the Presidents appearance a day earlier at the National Scout Jamboree in West Virginia despite his speech drawing wide criticism for its political overtones and Surbaugh later writing to parents that he regret[ed] that politics were inserted into the Scouting program. I got a call from the head of the Boy Scouts saying it was the greatest speech that was ever made to them, and they were very thankful, Trump said in the Journal interview, according to a transcript obtained and published by Politico. What Trump was actually referring to, Sanders said, was in-person conversations with multiple members of the Boy Scout leadership, following his speech there that day, who congratulated him, praised him and offered quite powerful compliments following his speech. Then on Monday, Trump claimed to have received a call from Pena Nieto after the swearing in of new chief of staff, John Kelly. Even the president of Mexico called me, Trump said in the Oval Office. Their southern border, they said very few people are coming because they know theyre not going to get to our border, which is the ultimate compliment. Story continues Sanders said that Trump was actually referring to an in-person chat with the Mexican president last month at the Group 20 Summit in Hamburg. On Mexico, he was referencing the conversation that they had had at the G-20 Summit, where they specifically talked about the issues that he referenced, Sanders said. A reporter then asked her if Trump had lied. I wouldnt say it was a lie, Sanders said. Thats a pretty bold accusation. Capping off weeks of tumult in Washington, the White House Press briefing recently descended into a heated argument between reporters and the administration about the Statue of Liberty. Senior presidential advisor Stephen Miller stopped by the press briefing to promote an immigration bill that Donald Trump has recently thrown his weight behind. The bill would implement a merit-based policy for doling out US visas, prioritising those applicants who are financially independent and able to speak English. Mr Miller a central author of Mr Trumps travel ban on six Muslim majority countries described this latest policy as compassionate and "common-sense". Some reporters, however, seemed to disagree. The Statue of Liberty says, Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, said CNNs Jim Acosta, referring to the poem inscribed under the iconic American statue. It doesn't say anything about speaking English. Mr Miller countered by saying that the poem was not actually part of the original Statue of Liberty. The poem that youre referring to was added later, he told Mr Acosta. The exchange set off a fierce debate over the meaning of the Statue of Liberty, and the intentions of American immigration policy as a whole. At one point, Mr Acosta appeared to insinuate that Mr Trumps immigration policy was racist. This whole notion of, Well, they have to learn English before they get to the United States - Are we just going to bring in people from Great Britain and Australia? he asked. ...It just sounds like youre trying to engineer the racial and ethnic flow of people into this country with this policy. Mr Miller called the comments outrageous, insulting, ignorant and foolish, and accused Mr Acosta of ascribing nefarious motives to a compassionate bill. I am shocked at your statement that you think that only people from Great Britain and Australia would know English, he said. It reveals your cosmopolitan bias to a shocking degree. Story continues The immigration bill in question has been stalled in the Senate since February, and is unlikely to make it out of the chamber much less become law. But the potent backlash revealed the strong feelings Mr Trumps stance on immigration still evokes. The President has fuelled the immigration debate since the day he announced his candidacy, famously labelling some Mexican immigrant rapists and criminals. His travel ban on six Muslim-majority countries reignited allegations of racism. Just last week, he delivered an impassioned speech on a Central American gang that many viewed as an attempt to once again tie Latino immigrants to crime. New York Times reporter Glenn Thrush, perhaps responding to allegations of racism around this most recent policy, asked Mr Miller on Wednesday for statistics to back it up. Specifically, he asked for citations proving increased immigration drove down American workers wages. NYT's @GlennThrush asked the WH to cite studies that back up immigration plan. Here's what Stephen Miller said: https://t.co/USebvdMLDp Amanda Wills (@AmandaWills) August 2, 2017 After listing of the names of several researchers, Mr Miller suggested his audience use common sense in analysing the policy. Steve, Im not asking for common sense, Im asking for statistical data, Mr Thrush replied. Maybe well make a carve-out in the bill that says the New York Times can hire all the low-skilled, less-paid workers they want from other countries and see how you feel then about low-wage substitution, Mr Miller shot back. He added: Maybe its time we had compassion, Glenn, for American workers. A key White House aide staunchly defended the immigration reform bill backed by the White House Wednesday, at one point arguing that the poem inscribed on the State of Liberty doesnt encapsulate the countrys values on this issue. President Trump announced his support on Wednesday for the RAISE act, also known as Reforming American Immigration for a Strong Economy Act. The bill would rework the immigration system to prioritize English speakers and limit the entry of low-skilled workers to the country. But in order to become law, it would need to be passed by the Senate, where it faces an uphill battle. During the daily White House briefing, White House aide Stephen Miller was asked how the immigration bill would square with the Emma Lazarus poem on the Statue of Liberty which asks for your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free. The Statue of Liberty is a symbol of liberty enlightening the world, Miller said. The poem that youre referring to was added later, its not actually part of the original Statue of Liberty. The poem was engraved on the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty in 1903, seventeen years after the statues dedication. Miller also clashed with CNN reporter Jim Acosta, the son of Cuban immigrants, arguing that his questions revealed a cosmopolitan bias and calling one comment one of the most outrageous, insulting, ignorant and foolish things youve ever said. Defence lawyer Joseph Cataldo talks to his client, Michelle Carter, during the trial: Faith Ninivaggi/The Boston Herald/AP A woman who encouraged her boyfriend to kill himself with dozens of texts messages, including one that told him to "get back in" a truck filled with toxic gas, could avoid a jail sentence. Michelle Carter was convicted of involuntary manslaughter in June after a judge ruled that her final instruction to Conrad Roy III caused his death from carbon monoxide poisoning in July 2014. Bristol County Juvenile Court in Massachusetts heard that Carter, then 17, had repeatedly messaged the 18-year-old Roy, before he took his own life. "The time is right and you are ready ... just do it babe," Carter wrote in one message. Another said: "You can't think about it. You just have to do it. You said you were gonna do it. Like I don't get why you aren't." At trial it emerged that Carter and Mr Roy met in Florida in 2012 while both were on holiday with their families. After that, they only met in person a handful of times. Their relationship consisted mainly of texting. Both teens struggled with depression. Carter had been treated for anorexia and Mr Roy had made earlier suicide attempts. Carter's lawyer, Joseph Cataldo, argued that Mr Roy was determined to kill himself and nothing Carter did could change that. He said Carter initially tried to talk Mr Roy out of it and urged him to get professional help, but eventually went along with his plan. Mr Cataldo also argued that Carter's words amounted to free speech protected by the First Amendment. Explaining why he had found her guilty, Judge Lawrence Moniz focused on Carter telling Mr Roy to "get back in" after he climbed out of his truck as it was filling with carbon monoxide. He had told he was afraid. The judge said those words constituted "wanton and reckless conduct" under the manslaughter statute. Ahead of the sentencing, Mr Roy's aunt Kim Bozzi, asked the judge to give Carter to the 20-year maximum sentence. But her father said his daughter made "a tragic mistake," and is asking for probation and continued counselling. Story continues As she was tried as a youthful offender, the judge has several options for sentencing. He can commit her to a Department of Youth Services (DYS) facility until she turns 21 on 11 August. He could also combine a DYS commitment with an adult sentence which could lead to maximum 20-year term. Alternatively, he could release her on probation with no time to serve. Agencies contributed to this report Emily Pomeranz died of pancreatic cancer, but not before savoring one final Tommys milkshake. (Photo: Facebook) A restaurant fulfilled a womans last wish with a simple task: shipping a milkshake halfway across the country and into her waiting hands. Emily Pomeranz, who died on Friday from pancreatic cancer, spent her last days in a hospice in Arlington, Va., near Washington, D.C. Her one final wish was to drink a mocha shake from a diner in her hometown of Cleveland Heights, Ohio. She told a friend, Sam Klein, about her desire, and he contacted Tommys Restaurant to arrange the ambitious order. The milkshake reached Pomeranzs bedside four days before she took her last breath. Klein, who had also grown up in Cleveland before moving to D.C., recalled how he had asked his friend if she needed anything during a trip to the hospice. Tommys Restaurant is located in Cleveland Heights, Ohio. (Photo: Google Maps) She said with a smile, I wish I could have one more Tommys mocha milkshake, he recounted. Thats when Klein contacted the restaurants general information email address and received a reply from the owner. As Klein wrote in a Facebook post: A few days later I got a call from Tommy Fello, the owner of Tommys. Yes. We will figure out a way to do this, is what he said. To keep the milkshake fresh, Fello packed it in dry ice and paid $123 for overnight shipping, 375 miles cross-country. I wasnt even sure if wed be able to do it, he admitted. But when the package arrived, Klein says, Pomeranz was elated to see the drink for one final time. I know Emily would love the fact that shes making people feel good even though shes not here with us anymore, he said about sharing her story. In an emotional Facebook post, Klein added, So, my friends, if you are in Cleveland Heights, or anywhere near there, please stop in [on Coventry Road], order one of those incredible milkshakes and ask for Tommy (he is the one cooking in the middle of the restaurant) and say, This one is for Emily. Thank you for sending one to her. Read more from Yahoo Beauty + Style: Even Jeff Bezos was impressed when Blue Origins suborbital space booster and capsule mockup went on display at the EAA AirVenture air show in Oshkosh, Wis. The line to get a look inside the New Shepard capsule snaked around the equivalent of city blocks, as shown in an aerial view that the billionaire founder of Blue Origin (and a little side venture called Amazon) tweeted today: Incredible turnout to see the first booster ever to fly into space and land vertically upon the Earth. #BlueOrigin #Oshkosh pic.twitter.com/fh9KqVBCUo Jeff Bezos (@JeffBezos) August 2, 2017 SpaceX founder Elon Musk might bristle at Bezos reference to a first, but its technically true: The booster made its first suborbital flight to outer space and back in November 2015, a month before SpaceX did its first rocket flyback in connection with an orbital launch. Since then, Blue Origins booster went through four more launches and landings, and for the past year, its been taking a victory lap around the country. At first, it was shown off only to those who could get inside Blue Origins rocket production facility and headquarters in Kent, Wash. In March, it was taken to Amazons MARS conference in California. In April, folks who attended this years Space Symposium (including yours truly) got a peek in Colorado. Heres a video recap: For the past week, its been Oshkoshs turn. The annual air show brings well more than a half-million aviation enthusiasts to Wisconsin, and this year the topics included the history of the Apollo space program, Microsoft co-founder Paul Allens Stratolaunch space venture and of course, Blue Origin. Story continues In a video posted to Instagram, you can hear Bezos voiceover as Buzz Aldrin and other Apollo-era astronauts troop into the New Shepard capsule mockup to try out the seats. He said having the space pioneers on board was very, very meaningful. These guys had the adventure of a lifetime, Bezos said. Were just so lucky to have them. Space changes people. Every time you talk to an astronaut they will tell you that when you look back at the Earth and see how beautiful it is, and how fragile it is, with that thin limb of Earths atmosphere, it really makes you appreciate home. Ariane Cornell, the companys head of astronaut strategy and sales, was quoted as telling the Oshkosh crowd that New Shepard should start sending passengers on suborbital space rides in the next year or two. Hardware for New Shepard is being built in Kent, and the flights blast off from a space facility nestled amid Bezos sprawling ranchland in West Texas. At the same time, Blue Origin is working on an orbital-class launch vehicle called New Glenn. The Florida factory where New Glenn is to take shape should be ready for operations early next year, and Blue Origin plans to start launching those rockets by 2020. And as for that space-flown New Shepard booster? Bezos has said he eventually plans to donate it to a museum for long-term display. Lets hope that Seattles Museum of Flight is in the running. More from GeekWire: Samsung Galaxy Note 7 fans are essentially the Kanye West of mobile consumers. Their opinion is: Galaxy Note 8, Im really happy for you and Im gonna let you finish, but the Galaxy Note 7 is one of the best smartphones of all time. On this day last year, Samsung announced the Galaxy Note 7, a device intended to be a unique and innovative addition to the smartphone market. Instead, the Galaxy Note 7 release was devastated due to a series of recalls that made the device one Samsung wanted to quickly forget. Flaws in the Note 7 battery caused several devices to spontaneously combust just weeks after its Aug. 19, 2016 market release. The manufacturer scrambled to get the device outfitted with a new battery and back on the market; however, the newer models also began catching fire. The Galaxy Note 7 was recalled a second time and globally discontinued in October 2016. Even so, relics of one of the most trying times in Samsungs history still exist and are still being used as intended. In January 2017, an estimated 76,000 people were using Galaxy Note 7 handsets in the U.S alone, according to a CNBC report. Those numbers have dwindled since Samsung released the Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8+ in April 2017, but several enduring fans remain, even as Samsung prepares to announce a new Galaxy Note model at the end of August. Samsung Galaxy Note: Whos Buying What? The Samsung Galaxy Note 8 launch has been highly anticipated for several months, with new leaks and rumors surfacing almost daily. So far, the device is shaping up to be similar to the current Galaxy S8 devices, likely featuring an infinity display with an on-screen home button and a rear-facing fingerprint scanner. Reports indicate Samsung was once again forced to delay an on-screen fingerprint scanner, originally intended for the Galaxy S8. This setback may deter several current Galaxy Note 7 users who otherwise would be first in line to purchase the upcoming device. Story continues [Samsung] had an opportunity to get the rest of [the Note 7s] off the market with the Note 8, but I think its going to be iterative rather than groundbreaking, Jack Estes, an IT consultant in Indianapolis told International Business Times. Most of us are going to wait for the Note 9. By most of us, Estes is referring to fellow members of the Note 7 Alliance, an online forum where fans of the Galaxy Note 7 congregate to develop ways to keep their smartphones up and running. The forum is home to nearly 5,000 members. In addition to Note 7 maintenance, they also discuss news about Samsungs current and future plans. Opinions among the group vary, with some having already surrendered their Galaxy Note 7s in favor for the Galaxy S8 or another smartphone. Others plan to purchase the Galaxy Note 8 upon its release or wait for future Galaxy Note models. However, several owners of the ill-fated device feel slighted that Samsung did not view their dedication to the Galaxy Note 7 as a positive. We said its not fair that we have this nice phone and you guys are making us go back to your old model. You should give us a discount or some type of incentive on the next phone because of this ridiculous double recall we had to go through, Zack Cernok, a swimming pool contractor in Quakertown, PA told IBT. Samsung never responded to us. They treated us like we didnt exist. Despite his gripes with Samsung, Cernok plans to be a Galaxy Note 8 early adopter. However, he also plans to keep his Galaxy Note 7, noting that those who own the device can still return it to Samsung for a refund. Im going to hold on to this phone just because of the amount of effort and research I did. To me, its worth more than $1,000. Will it ever be a collectors item? Who knows, maybe it will, but I dont want to throw the thing away, Cernok said. Samsung did not respond when asked for comment on the Galaxy Note 7s still in circulation. Factions That Keep The Galaxy Note 7 Alive Owning and using an outlawed smartphone came with a host of challenges early on. Following the Galaxy Note 7 discontinuation, Samsung and its mobile network affiliates deployed a series of updates, intended to limit or drain the batteries of handsets still on the market. In response to these directives, the Note 7 Alliances primary function was developing and perfecting an application to bypass Samsung's efforts to shut down Galaxy Note 7s still in use. The Alliance Shield X firmware blocks update packages sent by mobile carriers from being able to hit Galaxy Note 7 handsets without requiring root access to the devices. Alliance forum developers created solutions for removing the 60 percent charging limit Samsung implemented on the Galaxy Note 7, as well at the 30 percent charging limit. The application also includes an NFC feature, which allows the firmware to be transferred from one Galaxy Note 7 to another by tapping the two phones together. The Alliance Shield X is available to forum members; however, there are strict rules in place before the firmware can be accessed. The application so far has been a Godsend, Estes told IBT. Its what has kept the amount of Note 7s that are out there up. Cernok occasionally participates in the Alliance forum but largely maintains his Galaxy Note 7 on his own. He was previously a member of a different forum called the Note 7 Rebels, which has since gone defunct. He has also hosted a YouTube channel discussing his experience maintaining his Galaxy Note 7. Taking It Back To The Underground Alliance developers are still working to reverse the zero percent update Samsung deployed to handsets, which drains devices of all battery power and hinders their ability to recharge. The developers are also working on a root solution for models of the Galaxy Note 7 running the Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 chip. If successful, the root will allow users to port the Android Nougat OS onto the devices, which launched to market running Android Marshmallow. Alliance members believe there might be a resurgence of interest in the Galaxy Note 7 if its inner codes can be cracked. Other enthusiast groups, such as XDA Developers, have largely abandoned efforts to maintain the Galaxy Note 7, according to Estes. Meanwhile, the Alliance forum has also served as an underground marketplace of sorts, where members sell Galaxy Note 7 handsets within the group, instead of sending them back to Samsung. Estes purchased a Galaxy Note 7 for his girlfriend from a fellow forum member who decided to buy the Galaxy S8. If somebody is deciding to get rid of their phone they would rather offer it to someone else in the forum who would keep going before they send it back to Samsung, Estes said. Most people would rather get $400 or $500 from another forum member and call it a day, so they don't have to wait six, eight or 10 weeks for a refund check so they can go buy another phone. Are Galaxy Note 7 Fans More Important Than Its Follies? On the other side of the Galaxy Note 7 story are owners who had a far worse experience using the smartphone. As of the second Galaxy Note 7 recall, which began Oct. 13, 2016, there were 13 reports of burns, 47 reports of property damage and 96 reports of batteries overheating, according to the Consumer Product Safety Commission. While sympathetic to those who suffered in Galaxy Note 7 incidents, some loyalists suggest the number of people still using handsets today greatly outnumber the number those who reported issues with the device. Concern that Galaxy Note 7 malfunctions could cause more serious damage or even fatalities led to the devices discontinuation. However, some of the final incidents to surface in the news played out in a peculiar fashion. Reports of incidents involving the Galaxy Note 7 seemed to abruptly stop after the device was discontinued, according to Cernok. There was a timeline. All of the [explosions] happened within a two-month time period from when the phones were turned on. After that theres been no reports [in the news], he said. Three of the last reports of Galaxy Note 7 malfunctions detailed some of the horrifying incidents of the ordeal. A Galaxy Note 7 belonging to Southwest airline passenger Brian Green began smoking as his flight from Louisville, KY to Baltimore prepared for take-off. This incident led to the Federal Aviation Administration banning the Galaxy Note 7 from airplanes, a directive which remains in place today. A Galaxy Note 7 owned by Farmington, CT teenager Abby Zuis exploded in her hand just weeks after her parents replaced her original device. Michael Klering, a Nicholasville, KY resident, had to seek medical treatment for smoke inhalation after his Galaxy Note 7 caught fire as he slept. These incidents occurred just days before Samsung discontinued the Galaxy Note 7 on Oct. 11, 2016. There were virtually no more reports of handsets malfunctioning once the device was officially off the market. samsung voluntary recall Photo: Screencap: Samsung As of July 19, Samsung still describes the Galaxy Note 7 recall as voluntary, which indicates owners have a choice as to whether they want to return their handsets. This has left many who still own the device confused as to why measures were taken to wirelessly shut down the smartphones still in circulation. In particular, Verizon disabled outgoing calls on Galaxy Note 7 handsets. Attempting to make a call would direct users to customer service, similar to if they had missed a service payment. This prompted many to switch their wireless service to T-Mobile, according to Estes. Despite their resistance, those who still own handsets have had to come to terms with the Galaxy Note 7 being a discontinued and recalled item, which is now illegal to take on take on airplanes. Samsung established a protocol for the recall, and if we chose not to follow it, that's on us, Estes said. Cernok noted that the one thing truly keeping the Galaxy Note 7 alive in the U.S. is that mobile carriers are not allowed to shut down wireless service on paid accounts because it is considered a public utility. Fans Till The End The Galaxy Note 8 is expected to release between September and October, which means many loyalists may soon switch to the new model. Forum chatter indicates that Samsung sent invites to Galaxy Note 7 owners to register for an all-expense paid trip to New York City to attend the Galaxy Note 8 Unpacked event. The contest is limited to 50 winners. Many have a renewed interest in returning their Galaxy Note 7s and using the refund money toward purchasing a Galaxy Note 8. samsunginvite4 Photo: Screencap It is near certain, however, that there will always be Galaxy Note 7 handsets in the wild. Aside from the rogue users that kept the device alive, many still own units that were never taken out of their original packaging, according to Cernok. Cernok plans to soon pack up his Galaxy Note 7, but may occasionally use it as a tablet. His interest in the Galaxy Note 7 as a product has dwindled amid his work and family responsibilities; however, he credits the device for sparking his interest in mobile technology. He said he may update his YouTube channel at least once more when he gets the Galaxy Note 8. Estes is fully prepared to keep his Galaxy Note 7 for another year if the Galaxy Note 8 doesnt include standout features to urge him to upgrade. [The Galaxy Note 7 is] a fantastic phone, Estes said. Theres virtually nothing I need a computing device for that I cant do on this phone. There isnt another substitute out there. Related Articles File photo taken on Feb. 5, 2016 shows the Kwai Chung container port in Hong Kong. (Xinhua/Lui Siu Wai) SINGAPORE, Aug. 2 (Xinhua) -- Visiting Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam said on Wednesday that a HK-ASEAN Free Trade Agreement (FTA), which is likely to be inked by the end of this year, is mutually beneficial for both the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of China and ASEAN member countries. Hong Kong's active role in the Belt and Road Initiative added to the justification of the view, she said while meeting the press after launching a photo exhibition. On her first official visit abroad since taking office on July 1, the chief executive is on a tour which will also take her to Thailand. "Singpore and Thailand are Hong Kong's largest and second-largest trading partners in ASEAN, and I want to thank the governments of the two countries for their support in facilitating an anticipated free trade agreement between Hong Kong and ASEAN, which would hopefully be signed by the end of this year after a three-year discussion," she said. Lam said that she advocated more pragmatic fiscal policies and more investments on education and infrastructure. The chief executive would meet Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong and other Singaporean government officials during her two-day visit to the city state. On Wednesday afternoon, Lam attended the opening ceremony of a photo show together with Singapore's Senior Minister of State for Culture, Community and Youth Sim Ann and Chinese Ambassador to Singapore Chen Xiaodong, which was held at the Arts House. Some 50 photos were on display to showcase the images of Hong Kong in the 1950s, when the Singapore-born photographer Lee Fook Chee immigrated to Hong Kong. The exhibition was presented by the Hong Kong Economic and Trade Office in Singapore and a foundation to commemorate the 20th anniversary of Hong Kong's return to China. "The photos from the 1950s Hong Kong convey the can-do spirit of people of all backgrounds who helped to build our city, values or hard work, creativity and determination that we all share," Lam said at the opening ceremony. By Dustin Volz SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - A cyber security researcher widely credited with helping to neutralize the global "WannaCry" ransomware attack earlier this year has been arrested on unrelated hacking charges, according to court documents unsealed on Thursday. Marcus Hutchins, a British-based malware researcher who gained attention for detecting a "kill switch" that effectively disabled the WannaCry worm in May, was detained by the FBI in Las Vegas on Wednesday, a U.S. Justice Department spokesman said, just days after he and tens of thousands of hackers descended on the city for the annual Black Hat and Def Con conventions. An indictment filed in a U.S. District Court in Wisconsin accused Hutchins, also known online as "MalwareTech," of advertising, distributing and profiting from malware code known as "Kronos" that stole online banking credentials and credit card data. Hutchins' alleged activity took place between July 2014 and July 2015, according to the indictment. Hutchins, who faces six counts related to Kronos, was indicted along with an unnamed co-defendant on July 12, but the case remained under seal until Thursday, a day after his arrest. Kronos malware downloaded from email attachments left victims' systems vulnerable to theft of banking and credit card credentials, which could have been used to siphon money from bank accounts. The indictment alleges that the unidentified co-defendant advertised the Kronos malware on AlphaBay, a dark web marketplace that international authorities took offline last month. Investigators said the site allowed anonymous users to facilitate global trade in drugs, firearms, hacking tools and other illicit goods. The Justice Department said Kronos was used to steal banking systems credentials in Canada, Germany, Poland, France, the United Kingdom and other countries. Within the cyber security community, Hutchins was heralded as a folk hero for his apparent role in stopping the WannaCry attack, which infected hundreds of thousands of computers and caused disruptions at car factories, hospitals, shops and schools in more than 150 countries. A Justice Department official said his arrest was unrelated to WannaCry. Reuters was unable to immediately reach Hutchins or an attorney representing him. Andrew Mabbitt, founder of cyber firm Fidus Information Security, said on Twitter that he was working to obtain a lawyer for Hutchins because he lacked legal representation. Mabbitt did not respond to a request for further comment. "I refuse to believe the charges against @MalwareTechBlog," Mabbitt said on Twitter. "He spent his career stopping malware, not writing it." Hutchins' arrest was first reported by the security website Motherboard. (Reporting by Dustin Volz, additional reporting by Joseph Menn and Eric Auchard; editing by Steve Orlofsky and G Crosse) Workers from the Haifa Chemicals company erected a protest tent Wednesday evening both inside and outside its plant after it was announced earlier in the day that the company was closing shop and letting go of its 800 employees. Follow Ynetnews on Facebook and Twitter The announcement came after authorities failed to find a reasonable alternative to replace a large ammonia tank required by the company to function which was ordered to be shut down earlier this year. The colossal, circular vat is located in the northern port of Haifa, Israel's third largest city, and can hold 12,000 tons of ammonia, which is used in products such as fertilizer and explosives. Haifa Chemicals workers protest closure (: ) X An Israeli court in February ordered the company to shut down the ammonia tank the largest in the countrywhich has been a point of contention for years, with residents and environmental groups warning it is a major health hazard. "Haifa Chemicals management decided to close the company and is forced to fire all its employees," the company said in a statement. The workers blocked off roads leading to the plant and the Histadrut has vowed to continue the protest until a solution is found to the crisis. Photo: Histadrut In addition to blocking off the roads near the plant, the enraged workers, fearing for their livelihoods, set tyres alight and waved placards calling on Minister of Environmental Protection Zeev Elkin (Likud), whom they consider primarily responsible for their plight, to immediately intervene and slam the breaks on the expected redundancies. By Wednesday morning, dozens of Haifa Chemicals workers had assembled outside the plants premises, lighting fires and demanding the resignations of the company's CEO Nadav Shachar and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Chairman of the Southern Workers Committee Yehuda Peres slammed the closure, arguing that it constituted the targeted destruction of the periphery. Photo: Histadrut We didnt give up over the last five months and I dont intend to give up now, he stated defiantly. Today, the struggle entered a new phase and anyone who wants to move us will have to do so by force. Vowing to keep the protest up at full throttle until a real solution had been found, Peres went on to say that the affair could not go on at the expense of the workers livelihoods and their children. Aviram Elmakias, 28 from Dimona has particular cause to be concerned by the mass layoffs since he and his wife are expecting a baby in the near future. With Aviram being the sole breadwinner of the family, he explained why he is so overwhelmed by a sense of trepidation. Photo: Histadrut The significance of losing work is hard. Yes, I am young but to have to go out and look for work when my wife may give birth any minute is difficult, he said. We are in a state of total uncertainty and are disheartened by the situation. What happens in the factory seriously affects my home, and my wife is under serious stress. It isnt nice to bring a child into the world this way. We dont even know who to blame. Photo: Histadrut With the closure, Eli Ben Hamo, 44 is another worker being placed under similar strain. Married with three children, Hamo has worked for the company for more than five years. It is awful when you know you need to get to your workplace to receive a notice that the factory is being closed. Yesterday we still had hope, we thought there would be positive results and that they had found a solution for us, but theres nothing, he lamented. Unlike Elmakias however, Hamo knew who he was blaming for the crisis. I think that if the minister of environmental protection is convinced and decides, it will be possible to find a solution. Everything is in his hands. We are for the closure of the ammonia tank, but there are alternatives. No one is taking responsibility. Source: Xinhua| 2017-08-03 12:15:32|Editor: Mengjie Video Player Close HANOI, Aug. 3 (Xinhua) -- Foot-and-mouth disease is striking cattle in a commune in Vietnam's central Quang Ngai province, the communal authorities said on Thursday. The disease broke out in Tinh Hiep commune, Son Tinh district, affecting over 110 cows and bulls raised by 18 families. The communal authorities have taken urgent isolation and disinfection measures to prevent foot-and-mouth disease from spreading to other communes. They have also asked for the district's authorities to grant them some 2,500 doses of vaccines against the disease among cattle. This is the new outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease in Vietnam. Earlier, in May, the Department of Animal Health under the Vietnamese Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development announced that Vietnam was free of bird flu, and foot-and-mouth and blue-ear diseases. Source: Xinhua| 2017-08-03 12:20:35|Editor: Mengjie Video Player Close SRINAGAR, Indian-controlled Kashmir, Aug. 3 (Xinhua) -- Two militants were killed Thursday in a fierce gunfight with contingents of police and Indian army in restive Indian-controlled Kashmir, police said. The gunfight between militants and government forces broke out at village Gopalpora of Kulgam Pulwama district, about 78 km south of Srinagar city, the summer capital of Indian-controlled Kashmir. "This morning a gunfight triggered in Gopalpora between our men and militants. The militants tried to break the cordon and escape through the orchards but were killed," a senior police officer posted in Kulgam told Xinhua. "The identity of the slain militants is being ascertained." Indian army spokesperson Col Rajesh Kalia said they have recovered two assault rifles from the gunfight site. Police said the search and cordon in the area was launched on specific intelligence information suggesting presence of militants. Kashmir, the Himalayan region divided between India and Pakistan is claimed by both in full. Since their independence from Britain, the two countries have fought three wars, two exclusively over Kashmir. Source: Xinhua| 2017-08-03 12:45:44|Editor: Yang Yi Video Player Close TOKYO, Aug. 3 (Xinhua) -- Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe reshuffled his cabinet and the ruling Liberal Democratic Party executive lineup Thursday, his top spokesperson chief cabinet secretary said. The reshuffle follows the resignation of the outgoing cabinet following an extraordinary cabinet meeting held in Prime Minister's Official Residence earlier in the day. Source: Xinhua| 2017-08-03 13:05:48|Editor: Yang Yi Video Player Close BEIJING, Aug. 3 (Xinhua) -- Wei Minzhou, a former senior legislator in northwest China's Shaanxi Province, has been expelled from the Communist Party of China (CPC) and dismissed from public office for violating the Party's code of conduct, the top anti-graft body said Thursday. Wei, former vice head of the Standing Committee of Shaanxi Provincial People's Congress, was found to be corrupt and to have long engaged in superstitious activities, according to a statement released by the CPC Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI). He refused to cooperate in the Party's investigation, attended lavish banquets, failed to report personal information, and was engaged in for-profit activities, the statement said. Wei, suspected of taking bribes, took advantage of his posts to seek profits for others and accepted a huge amount of property, it said. As a senior official of the CPC, he lost his faith in the Party. Even after the 18th CPC National Congress, he still showed no signs of restraint and his wrongdoings were of a grave nature, said the statement. Wei's illegal gains will be confiscated and his case transferred to the judiciary, it added. The CCDI announced an investigation into Wei in May. Source: Xinhua| 2017-08-03 13:36:04|Editor: Zhou Xin Video Player Close VIENTIANE, Aug. 3 (Xinhua) -- Lao government, civil society organizations and wood processing industry met in Lao capital Vientiane on Wednesday, discussing the updated Timber Legality Definition to take a further step towards better accessing the European Union (EU) market, Lao News Agency (KPL) reported Thursday. The discussion was made at a technical working group meeting held in Vientiane under the chairmanship of Director General of Forestry Department, Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry, Sousath Sayakoummane. The discussion was a preparation of the second face-to-face negotiation of FLEGT VPA (Forest Law Enforcement, Governance and Trade -- Voluntary Partnership Agreement) between the Lao government and the EU which is expected to be held early next year. "Laos is engaged in a VPA process with the EU which aims to combat illegal logging and associated trade. The FLEGT VPA process contributes to strengthening governance in the forest sector which also improves the foundations for sustainable forest management," KPL quoted an expert at the EU FLEGT Facility, European Forest Institute, Tim Dawson as saying. Initiated by the Lao government and supported by various national and international stakeholders, the Lao-EU FLEGT process aims at promoting good forest governance and eliminating illegal logging activities in Laos. VPAs, bilateral trade agreements between the EU and a timber-exporting country outside the EU, are central to this scheme. Among other things, VPAs address illegal logging and foster trade in legal timber products. Source: Xinhua| 2017-08-03 13:41:07|Editor: Zhou Xin Video Player Close TOKYO, Aug. 3 (Xinhua) -- Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe reshuffled his cabinet and the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) executive lineup on Thursday in a bid to restore public faith in a scandal-mired government. Taro Kono, former minister in charge of administrative reform, has taken over the foreign minister portfolio from Fumio Kishida. Kishida, widely believed to be a front-runner to take charge of the ruling party in the future, will henceforth chair the party's Policy Research Council. Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga retained his position as the government's top spokesperson and Finance Minister Taro Aso will continue on in his role. Following the abrupt resignation of Tomomi Inada as defense minister last week to take responsibility for a coverup scandal involving concealing contentious activities records of Japanese troops on a peacekeeping mission in South Sudan, House of Representatives member Itsunori Onodera, has been handed the portfolio in a repeat of the role he held between 2012 and 2014. The new-look cabinet comprises 13 members who have either served in the former cabinet or had previous experience in ministerial positions, and sees six new faces, with the revamped lineup aimed at restoring public trust. The reshuffle comes a year since Abe last rejigged his cabinet and at a time when public approval ratings have sunk to their lowest since Abe retook office in 2012. The LDP leadership and the cabinet had sparked widespread public mistrust according to a number of media polls, partly due to an influencing-peddling scandal alleging the prime minister used his position to ensure the construction of new veterinary school to be run by his friend in a special deregulated zone. The reshuffle follows the resignation of the outgoing cabinet following an extraordinary Cabinet meeting held in Prime Minister's Official Residence earlier in the day. The new cabinet will be formally inaugurated in an attestation ceremony to be held at the Imperial Palace later in the day. Australian diver Rick Anderson, the owner of Rick's Diving School, makes an unlikely friend in a Port Jackson shark. (Xinhua) By Will Koulouris SYDNEY, Aug. 3 (Xinhua) -- Sharks are a vital part of the marine ecosystem, often thought to be dangerous and deadly creatures, but for Australian diver Rick Anderson, they are good friends. Nestled in the pristine beaches of popular Australian tourist location Port Macquarie, Rick Anderson, the owner of Rick's Diving School, has made an unlikely friend in a Port Jackson shark that was born close to one of his frequented diving locations a few years ago. Anderson told Xinhua on Thursday that his relationship with his "true dinosaur" friend began at birth when he came across a freshly hatched group of sharks. "I came across some fresh hatched ones poking around on the bottom, I approached one just to show my dive students that were with me at the time," Anderson said. "I had it sitting on my hand, patting her, and scratching her, and that went on for a couple of months because I saw her fairly regularly," he said. This out of the ordinary relationship between the experienced diving instructor, and his bullhead shark friend -- known for their large, blunt head -- continued as he would regularly visit her as she grew. "I would see her around that particular reef, and she became more and more familiar with me to the point where she would come up for a cuddle of her own accord," Anderson said. "She would swim up, tap me on the legs, or just swim straight up to my face until I held my arms out," Anderson said. "She would lay on my arms and let me give her a bit of a scratch under the chin, or on top of the head, and snuggle in, and then when I open my arms back up, she would just cruise away." he added. The city of Port Macquarie attracts thousands of local, and international tourists every year who come to see the beaches and local attractions, and Anderson said that visitors to the area can also get up close and personal with his 1.7-meter-long friend. "She comes to me, she will swim past other divers to come to me for a bit of a cuddle first, but once I've given her a scratch or a pat she is quite happy to be passed over to someone else to give her a pat, or even a cuddle," he said. Port Jackson sharks are known to frequent the sea bottom, and have teeth that distinguish them from other sharks, with the front teeth being sharp and pointy, while the back teeth are flat and blunt. Source: Xinhua| 2017-08-03 13:51:10|Editor: Zhou Xin Chamber of Deputies Speaker Rodrigo Maia (C, front) attends the plenary session of the Chamber of Deputies for voting to decide on a corruption case against President Michel Temer in Brasilia, capital of Brazil, on Aug. 2, 2017. (Xinhua/Li Ming) BRASILIA, Aug. 3 (Xinhua) -- The Brazilian Chamber of Deputies has voted to dismiss the corruption charges against President Michel Temer. On Wednesday evening, the Chamber of Deputies voted by 263 against 227, to reject the charges filed against Temer by Prosecutor General Rodrigo Janot, the first case against a sitting president. At the time, the vote was delayed because of clashes between deputies from both sides for and against Temer on the Chamber floor. A deputy threw fake money in the air to insinuate Temer and his government's embezzlement. Another man hoisted two balloons with Temer's images on them. Chamber Speaker Rodrigo Maia castigated deputies and asked them: "Do you think that playing with dolls is a good image for Brazil?" Paulo Abi-Ackel, the Chamber's rapporteur on the case, said the rejection of the charges does not presume impunity for the president, and the Chamber's decision would not prevent future legal issues. However, according to Brazil's law, the vote result means Temer will not be prosecuted on these corruption charges until he leaves office. The lawsuit began in May, mostly a year after Temer took office in last August, when his predecessor, Dilma Rousseff, stepped down in impeachment plea deal. Temer was himself charged with passive corruption after executives of Brazil's meat conglomerate, the JBS, admitted paying bribes to the president. They also provided an audio recording in which Temer could seemingly be heard signing off on bribes for public officials. Brazilian Prosecutor General, Rodrigo Janot, charged Temer of accepting these bribes and illegally providing political favors for the JBS. Temer's special advisor, Rodrigo Loures, was also caught on film receiving a suitcase containing 500,000 Brazilian reais (about 160,000 U.S. dollars), which the JBS said was prepared for Temer. Brazil's political torments may not come to its end. Janot said he will file two more suits against Temer, in which he is suspected of obstruction of justice and criminal organization. Janot on Wednesday also asked the Supreme Court to include Temer in the investigation into a conspiracy-based bribery by his Brazilian Democratic Movement Party (PMDB) leadership. Supreme Court Justice Edson Fachin responded that he will consider expanding this investigation to include the president. Source: Xinhua| 2017-08-03 14:06:14|Editor: Yang Yi Video Player Close BEIJING, Aug. 3 (Xinhua) -- China on Thursday asked the United States side to promptly investigate a shooting at the Chinese Consulate General in Los Angeles. A man of Asian origin fired multiple gunshots outside the Consulate General of China in Los Angeles Tuesday morning before shooting himself dead, local police said. The shooting, reported at about 6:00 a.m. (1300 GMT), did not injure anyone else. The man, who was in his 60s, was found dead in his vehicle parked 20 meters away from the consulate office building, according to local police. In response to a question about the shooting, Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said China attaches great importance to the incident and has made solemn representations to the U.S. side. China has asked the U.S. side to investigate the shooting as soon as possible, demanding that necessary actions be taken immediately to ensure the safety and security of the compound and personnel of the Consulate General, said Geng. Source: Xinhua| 2017-08-03 14:41:35|Editor: Yang Yi Video Player Close VIENTIANE, Aug. 3 (Xinhua) -- The construction of Laos' first ever oil refinery in the Saysettha Comprehensive Development Zone of capital Vientiane is expected to be completed in mid-next year. The refinery is expected to have an annual production capacity of 800,000 tons of oil, the Lao News Agency (KPL) reported on Thursday. The refinery construction project began in 2014 as an investment of the Lao-China Dongyan Petrochemical Co., Ltd (LCPC), a joint venture between China's Yunnan Dongyan Industrial, which holds 75 percent of its shares, the Lao State Fuel Company 20 percent and the Lao-China Joint Investment 5 percent. Once operational, the refinery will become among the nation's largest industrial enterprises and be able to supply about 60 percent of fuel in Laos. As of now, the project has been 40 percent completed, according to Deputy Director of the Lao State Fuel Company Phaiboun Phomphaphithuk, KPL reported. Sitting on over 218,677 square meters and worth 179 million U.S. dollars, the oil refinery project involves the construction of three buildings, 16 oil tanks which have a total storage capacity of 80 million liters. Laos imported 1.3 million liters of oil annually, according to Phaiboun. Source: Xinhua| 2017-08-03 15:01:40|Editor: Yamei Video Player Close A combination of file photos show Russian President Vladimir Putin (L) at a news conference in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, on Feb. 28, 2017 and U.S. President Donald Trump at the White House in Washington D.C., the United States, on June 1, 2017. (Xinhua) MOSCOW, Aug. 3 (Xinhua) -- With a new sanctions bill enacted on Wednesday, the United States has declared a full-scale trade war against Russia, killing hope for easing the tension in bilateral relations, Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev has said. "The hope of improving our relations with the new U.S. administration has come to an end," Medvedev said Wednesday on the social media Facebook, commenting on the signing into law of a new U.S. sanctions bill by U.S. President Donald Trump. Calling it "significantly flawed", Trump on Wednesday signed into law the bill that also imposes sanctions against Tehran and Pyongyang. The bill was approved overwhelmingly in July by the U.S. Congress despite the White House urge for a "flexibility" in dealing with Russia, partly representing a bipartisan move to punish Moscow over its alleged meddling in the U.S. presidential election last year. Trump's reluctant signature highlights more difficulties ahead in diplomatic efforts for both Washington and Moscow to resolve their conflict on such thorny issues as of the Middle East and Ukraine. It also fully displays increasing troubles for Trump at home, such as crippled legislative agenda marked by failed efforts against his predecessor Barack Obama's signature health care system, in the aftermath of an alleged collusion with Russia of his campaign camp. The Trump administration demonstrated "complete impotence, in the most humiliating manner, transferring executive powers to Congress," commented Medvedev. As the new sanction regime makes it difficult to remove the measures against Moscow that may last decades, Medvedev foresaw little room for improving bilateral ties. "The relationship between Russia and the United States will be extremely tense, regardless of the composition of the Congress or the personality of the president," he said. The Russian prime minister slightly indicated a possible economic retaliation by saying that Russia will reduce reliance on western imports. In a preemptive diplomatic move against the U.S. new sanctions, Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered Sunday a reduction of 755 staff in the U.S. diplomatic mission in Russia by Sept. 1. Putin meanwhile voiced disappointment over Washington in an interview with a Russian TV station aired on Sunday. "We waited for quite a long time that, perhaps, something will change for the better," said Putin. "But, judging by everything, if it (bilateral relationship) changes, it will not be soon." Russian Foreign Ministry on Wednesday described in a statement the U.S. new sanctions as "short-sighted and even dangerous" while saying Moscow remains open to cooperation with Washington in various areas, including on the settlement of regional conflicts. "However, fruitful cooperation is possible only if U.S. politicians overcome their own delusions and cease to perceive the world around them through a reality-distorting prism of 'American exclusiveness,'" the ministry said, adding that further retaliatory measures are possible. On the enactment of U.S. new sanctions bill, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told Russian reporters that "De-facto this doesn't change anything," and that "retaliatory measures have already been taken". U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said Tuesday he will meet with his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov over the weekend. Source: Xinhua| 2017-08-03 15:16:51|Editor: Song Lifang Video Player Close UNITED NATIONS, Aug. 2 (Xinhua) -- The UN Security Council unanimously adopted a counter-terrorism resolution Tuesday, calling for wide-ranging actions to stop supplies of small weapons, drones and material for improvised explosive devices (IEDs) to terrorists. Sponsored by Egypt, this month's president of the 15-member panel, the measure was endorsed by the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, the UN Office of Counter-Terrorism, the Counter-Terrorism Committee and INTERPOL. "We have been reminded time and again that no country can claim itself immune from the threat," INTERPOl representative Emmanuel Roux told the council members. "Yet this also means that we can all be part of the effort to stop their movement and break the supply." "It is vital to mobilize international cooperation not only across regions, but also across action domains, ranging from international and domestic legislation to police work in the field," Roux said, warning of the convergence of organized crime and terrorism. "We see firearms used in conflict zones reappear on the streets of major cities," Roux added, saying that "legal commercial products were turned into components for IEDs, and guns manufactured decades ago were found reactivated for sale in the marketplaces of the Dark Web." He also warned that terrorists may get access to weapons by exploiting "the tactics and knowledge learned from the battlefield, the contacts and supply chains of organized crime groups they often used to belong to, and technology allowing the creation of modular firearms and 3D printing." The council plans to tackle the challenge by asking nations to consider joining "instruments" to eliminate the terrorists' weapon supplies, strengthening embargoes by monitoring measures and taking legal actions to address illicit trafficking. The resolution also calls for insuring the security of small and light arms by means of marking and tracking, strengthening border-control capacities, developing investigative capabilities, and enhancing international cooperation to prevent such terrorist groups as the Islamic State and Al Qaeda from acquiring weapons. In addition, it called for increasing awareness of the material that goes into IEDs, as well as deeper collaboration in counter-terrorism activities, information technology and communications, among UN member states and other relevant international agencies. Source: Xinhua| 2017-08-03 15:16:53|Editor: Song Lifang Video Player Close TOKYO, Aug. 3 (Xinhua) -- Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe reshuffled his cabinet and the ruling Liberal Democratic Party's (LDP) executive lineup on Thursday in a bid to restore public faith in a scandal-mired government. Taro Kono, former minister in charge of administrative reform, has taken over the foreign minister portfolio from Fumio Kishida. Kono is the son of Yohei Kono who in 1993 as Chief Cabinet Secretary issued the landmark Kono Statement which admits the Imperial Japanese Army coerced and forcibly recruited "comfort women" to work in military brothels during World War II. Kishida, for his part, widely believed to be a front-runner to take charge of the ruling party in the future, will henceforth chair the party's Policy Research Council. Kishida had reportedly told Abe he wanted the senior party post, with sources adding that the experience he will gain from his new position will serve him well in a leadership push in the future. Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga retained his position as the government's top spokesperson and Finance Minister Taro Aso will continue on in his role. Following the abrupt resignation of Tomomi Inada as defense minister last week, to take responsibility for a coverup scandal involving concealing contentious activities records of Japanese troops on a peacekeeping mission in South Sudan, lower house member Itsunori Onodera has been handed the portfolio, in a repeat of the role he held between 2012 and 2014. Yoshimasa Hayashi, who previously served as agriculture minister, will take over the education minister's portfolio and former environment minister Shunichi Suzuki will serve as minister in charge of the 2020 Tokyo Olympics and Paralympics. Former LDP policy chief Toshimitsu Motegi will concurrently serve as economic revitalization minister and minister in charge of human resources development, with the latter role part of Abe's new policy initiative aimed at creating more job opportunities for seniors in Japan's rapidly aging society. Seiko Noda, who had served as chair of the LDP General Council, was picked by Abe to serve as internal affairs minister, taking over from Sanae Takaichi. In terms of the LDP's junior Komeito party ally, Hiroshige Seko, who serves as Economy, Trade and Industry Minister as well as minister for economic cooperation with Russia, and Transport Minister Keiichi Ishii, both retained their posts in the reshuffle. Upper house lawmaker Masaji Matsuyama will serve as minister for promoting dynamic engagement of all citizens, and LDP lower house member Yoko Kamikawa will continue as justice minister. The new-look cabinet comprises 13 members who have either served in the former cabinet or had previous experience in ministerial positions, and sees six new faces, with the revamped lineup aimed at restoring public trust. Source: Xinhua| 2017-08-03 15:16:54|Editor: Song Lifang Video Player Close LONDON, Aug. 3 (Xinhua) -- As petkeeping has become a widespread phenomenon globally, recent research into animals emotional lives casts doubt on the ethics of petkeeping, reports said. Research is revealing that the emotional lives of animals, even relatively "simple" animals such as goldfish, are far more complex and rich than we once thought, said a report published Tuesday on the website of British newspaper The Guardian. "Rats have a sense of empathy and there has been a lot of research on what happens when you take babies away from a mother rat -- not surprisingly, they experience profound distress," Dr. Jessica Pierce, a bioethicist, was quoted by the report as saying. Pierce said pet ownership is problematic because it denies animals the right of self-determination. "It is morally problematic, because more people are thinking of pets as people...They consider them part of their family, they think of them as their best friend, they wouldn't sell them for a million dollars," Hal Herzog, a professor of psychology at Western Carolina University, was quoted by the report as saying. "The logical consequence is that the more we attribute them with these characteristics, the less right we have to control every single aspect of their lives," Herzog said. Ninety percent of Britons think of their pet as part of the family and 16 percent even included them on the last census, according to the report. Although some countries such as Canada have moved to change the legal status of animals, ethicists say if people still have the right to euthanize animals then they are still property. "Crucially, our animals can't tell us whether they are happy being pets," the report said. However, the argument over whether we should own animals is largely theoretical. Caring for pets seems to many people to be the one area where we can actually do right by animals; convincing people of the opposite is a hard sell, according to Gary Francione, a professor at Rutgers Law School in New Jersy. That petkeeping has become a vast industry has been decided by market forces and human nature, Tim Wass, an animal welfare consultant, told the paper. "The question is: how can we help them care for them correctly and appropriately?" Herzog said humans' attitude toward animals will change in the future. "In the long haul, I think petkeeping might fall out of fashion...Cultural trends come and go. The more we think of pets as people, the less ethical it is to keep them." Source: Xinhua| 2017-08-03 15:27:01|Editor: Song Lifang Video Player Close KANDAHAR, Afghanistan, Aug. 3 (Xinhua) -- Two U.S. soldiers were killed and four others wounded in Wednesday's attack near an airport in Kandahar, capital of Afghanistan's southern province of Kandahar, NATO's Resolute Support (RS) said Thursday. "Resolute Support can confirm that two U.S. soldiers were killed and four U.S. soldiers were wounded in an attack on a NATO convoy in Kandahar Province yesterday afternoon," it said in a statement. The attack occurred after a suicide car bombing struck the convoy in Shoorandam which is located in Police District 5 on the outskirts of Kandahar. The wounded soldiers were receiving treatment at a coalition medical facility, the statement said, adding "their wounds are not considered life threatening." Gen. John Nicholson, commander of RS and U.S. forces in Afghanistan, has offered condolences to the families of the victims. Taliban militant group has claimed responsibility for the attack. No Afghan civilian was harmed as the bombing took place in a less populated area in the city, 450 km south of Afghan capital Kabul, according to local police. Currently, around 13,000 foreign troops remain in Afghanistan to train and assist local security forces in their fight against the insurgents. Source: Xinhua| 2017-08-03 15:27:04|Editor: Song Lifang Video Player Close CANBERRA, Aug. 3 (Xinhua) -- Australia's Minister for Transport on Thursday agreed to consider a radical proposal from the Australian Airline Pilots Association which would result in domestic passengers having to present their passports or other photo ID such as driver's license before boarding domestic flights. The pilots' union called a press conference late on Wednesday night to express their disappointment in the "gap in the aviation security system." They called for a number of measures to be introduced to beef-up security at airports, among them a requirement for passports to be presented before passengers board domestic flights. Currently, passports are only required for international travelers, but on Thursday, federal Transport Minister Darren Chester said he would be happy to sit down with the pilots and security experts to discuss the merits of the radical proposal. Speaking on Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) radio, Chester said while the idea was out-of-the-box, he would happily consult the relevant authorities regarding the viability of such a plan. "I'm quite happy to sit down with the pilots' union if that's their desire," Chester said. "If they've got a genuine concern, the correct way to do is to raise it with me or raise it with the experts in the field and it can be analyzed and assessed for any risk." The minister conceded that while airports in particular were "difficult and challenging operating environments," Australia's current security measures were working well to thwart any danger. Last week, authorities arrested four men in Sydney in relation to a terror plot to bring down an Australian airliner. Source: Xinhua| 2017-08-03 15:27:06|Editor: Song Lifang Video Player Close TEHRAN, Aug. 3 (Xinhua) -- Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Thursday endorsed Hassan Rouhani as the President of the Islamic republic for his second term. In a ceremony broadcast live on state television, Khamenei gave his official approval for Rouhani. The incumbent moderate president won a landslide victory on May 19 by garnering 57 percent of the ballots. His nearest conservative challenger Ebrahim Raisi got 38.5 percent of the ballots. The key political achievement of Rouhani during past four years in the office was signing a nuclear deal with six major world powers, namely Britain, China, France, Germany, Russia and the United States, which put an end to a decade-long dispute over the country's sensitive nuclear program. The deal, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), was signed in July 2015 and was implemented in January 2016. Based on the deal, nuclear-related sanctions on various Iranian business and financial sectors were lifted, but it put more strict limits on its nuclear program. Rouhani will take the oath of office in the parliament on Saturday. Source: Xinhua| 2017-08-03 15:32:14|Editor: Song Lifang Video Player Close CANBERRA, Aug. 3 (Xinhua) -- Australia's peak scientific body, the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO), is severely lacking in climate scientists, according to a report released by the Australian Academy of Science on Thursday. The Australian government began reducing its investment in climate science in 2014 under former Prime Minister Tony Abbott, but Trevor McDougall, the former CSIRO oceanographer who led the academy's review, said the government needed to overhaul the current system to avoid costly mistakes and progress vital research. He said the review asks for 77 additional positions to be created - 27 of which are needed immediately - in the fields of climate observation and modeling. "We've come to the conclusion that about 80 new positions are needed in order to provide the sort of climate information that the community, companies need in terms of understanding how their particular industry is being and is going to be affected by the changes that are happening," McDougall told Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) radio on Thursday. "The changes that are happening, the uncertainty around those changes means we have to work harder, do more research, particularly in the climate modelling area, to be able to say with any confidence, for example how the rainfall and evaporation, the growing conditions in the Murray-Darling Basin will change over time, because currently we just don't know that." Former CSIRO researcher John Church, who was at the organization for four decades and is one of the world's premier sea-level experts, said that while the redundancies were tough on researchers who were first fired under cuts announced by the government back in 2014, they did reveal that their research was vital and now lacking. "I guess it was tough on me, but more importantly it did a lot of damage to climate science in Australia and Australia's relationships with international partners," Church told ABC radio. "There have been various plans developed previously about what climate scientists needed but these have never moved to implementation." The federal opposition has since come out in support of the report. A statement said the CSIRO "remains in crisis, reduced and under resourced, making climate change mitigation and adaptation harder and more expensive for all Australians, especially future generations." Source: Xinhua| 2017-08-03 15:32:15|Editor: Song Lifang Video Player Close PHNOM PENH, Aug. 3 (Xinhua) -- Cambodia's Phnom Penh Municipal Court on Thursday sentenced an Australian nurse and her two accomplices to 18 months in prison each for operating commercial surrogacy services in the country, according to a verdict. Tammy Davis-Charles, 49, director of Fertility Solutions PGD clinic, and two Cambodian helpers - a 35-year-old female nurse and a 28-year-old male staff - were arrested in November 2016 in Phnom Penh. They were found guilty of acting as intermediaries in surrogacy and engaging in falsifying documents, according to the verdict pronounced by the court's presiding judge Sor Lina. "The court decides to sentence each of them to one year and six months in prison," the verdict said. It also fined them 2,000 U.S. dollars in total. During a hearing on June 13, Davis-Charles, who is also a fertility specialist, said she operated commercial surrogacy services in Cambodia since early 2014, moving from Thailand when the country banned commercial surrogacy. She confessed to the court that she had arranged for 23 Cambodian women to carry babies for 18 Australian couples and five American couples. "In average, we charged a foreign couple 50,000 U.S. dollars for surrogacy services," she told the judge, admitting that she paid 10,000 U.S. dollars to Cambodian women to bear pregnancies on their behalf. According to her, all born babies had been taken out of Cambodia by their biological parents. Cambodia banned commercial surrogacy in November 2016, describing it as a form of human trading. Source: Xinhua| 2017-08-03 15:37:19|Editor: Song Lifang Video Player Close SYDNEY, Aug. 3 (Xinhua) -- Australia's largest bank may face extensive fines after the country's financial intelligence and regulatory agency accused it of breaching anti-money laundering and counter-terrorism financing laws on Thursday. The Australian Transactions Reports & Analysis Centre (AUSTRAC) has launched a civil case with the federal court that claims the Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA) did not adequately comply with the law from November 2012 to September 2015. In total, AUSTRAC have alleged 53,700 contraventions of the Anti-Money Laundering and Counter Terrorism Financing Act over the three year period, with a value of around 624.70 million Australian dollars (494.82 U.S. dollars). The financial watchdog also said the CBA's use of intelligent deposit machines (IDM), that instantly credit money to an assigned account domestically or internationally, had no limit or checks regarding the sum of money that could be deposited per day, which is in contrast with Australian regulations. In Australia, authorities must be notified when a deposit of 10,000 Australian dollars (7,021 U.S. dollars) cash is made to an account. "CBA failed to give 53,506 threshold transaction reports to AUSTRAC on time for cash transactions of 10,000 Australian dollars (7,021 U.S. dollars) or more," AUSTRAC said. "These late threshold transactions represent approximately 95 percent of the threshold transactions that occurred through the bank's IDMs." Furthermore, AUSTRAC claims that even after CBA became aware of suspected money laundering amongst its accounts, the bank did not monitor the customers to mitigate the risk. In response, the CBA said in a statement obtained by Xinhua, that they take their regulatory obligations "extremely seriously," and have invested more than 230 million Australian dollars (182.24 million U.S. dollars) to improve anti-money laundering and counter-terrorism financing compliance. Each one of the 53,700 breaches holds a maximum 18 million Australian dollar (14.26 million U.S. dollars) fine. Source: Xinhua| 2017-08-03 15:52:26|Editor: Song Lifang Video Player Close SEOUL, Aug. 3 (Xinhua) -- South Korean stocks tumbled Thursday as foreign investors dumped local listed stocks, ending the third-day rally through Wednesday. The benchmark Korea Composite Stock Price Index (KOSPI) declined 40.78 points, or 1.68 percent, to settle at 2,386.85. Trading volume stood at 299.95 million shares worth 6.2 trillion won (5.9 billion U.S. dollars). The KOSPI extended its initial loss throughout the session as foreigners dumped 404 billion won worth of domestic stocks. Geopolitical risks escalated on the Korean Peninsula as the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) test-fired what it called an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) around midnight on July 28. U.S. President Donald Trump signed a bill imposing new sanctions on the DPRK into law overnight, boosting worry about the already heightened tensions on the peninsula. The South Korean government announced comprehensive measures to control speculative investment in real estate, fueling concerns about the possible slump in the property market. The government also unveiled a plan to revise a tax code as part of efforts to impose higher corporate tax on big-profit corporations and finance the future welfare demand. Institutional and individual investors bought shares worth 10 billion won and 357 billion won respectively, limiting the KOSPI's further decline. Market watchers said the Trump administration's hardline policy toward the DPRK boosted geopolitical risks, among foreign investors, noting that the revised tax code would increase tax burden on big companies. Market bellwether Samsung Electronics declined 2.4 percent, and memory chip giant SK Hynix dropped 3.7 percent. The biggest life insurer Samsung Life Insurance retreated 2.8 percent, and the most-used search engine Naver sank 2.1 percent. Leading chemical firm LG chem shed 1.4 percent, but the biggest automaker Hyundai Motor gained 0.7 percent. The No.1 auto parts maker Hyundai Mobis advanced 1.4 percent, and the state-run power supplier Korea Electric Power Corp. closed unchanged. South Korea's currency finished at 1,128.8 won against the greenback, down 4.8 won from the previous close. Bond prices ended higher. Yields on the liquid three-year treasury notes fell 0.3 basis points to 1.730 percent, and the return on the benchmark 10-year government bonds lost 1.1 basis points to 2.247 percent. Source: Xinhua| 2017-08-03 16:07:41|Editor: An Video Player Close BEIJING, Aug. 3 (Xinhua) -- Trade between China and Africa reached 85.3 billion U.S. dollars in H1, surging 19 percent year on year as the two sides strengthened cooperation in a wide range of areas, official data showed Thursday. The data reversed the negative growth trend since 2015, according to Gao Feng, spokesperson with the Ministry of Commerce. During January-June, Chinese imports from Africa, including minerals, agricultural products and fruits, amounted to 38.4 billion U.S. dollars, jumping 46 percent from the same period last year, while exports gained 3 percent to 47 billion U.S. dollars. Transport equipment has become a bright spot in China's exports to African countries, with that of ships, trains and aerospace equipment up 200 percent, 161 percent and 252 percent respectively, thanks to stronger project construction cooperation. In May, Kenya's Mombasa-Nairobi Standard Gauge Railway launched, becoming the newest addition to a list of Chinese-built railways in Africa. China became Africa's largest trade partner in 2009, and the scale of bilateral trade has expanded rapidly ever since. Trade with the region's top three trading partners -- South Africa, Angola and Nigeria -- went up 28 percent, 67 percent and 22 percent, respectively in the first six months. In terms of investment, Chinese business non-financial investment in Africa came in at 1.6 billion U.S. dollars in the first six months, up 22 percent year on year. Source: Xinhua| 2017-08-03 16:27:53|Editor: Song Lifang Video Player Close BRASILIA, Aug. 3 (Xinhua) -- Brazilian President Michel Temer will hold on to power as the Chamber of Deputies voted to reject corruption charges against him on Wednesday. The lawsuit filed against the president by Prosecutor General Rodrigo Janot has been dropped with 263 votes against 227 to dismiss the charges. This case began in May, when Joesley Batista, the owner of a Brazilian meatpacker, the JBS, confessed that he had paid bribes to the president. He also turned over an audio recording, in which Temer can seemingly be heard signing off on bribes for public officials. Temer's special advisor, Rodrigo Loures, was also caught on film receiving a suitcase of 500,000 Brazilian reais (about 160,000 U.S. dollars) allegedly destined for the president. Prosecutor General Rodrigo Janot then charged Temer with bribe-taking on June 26, the first such charge against a sitting president in Brazil's history. On Wednesday afternoon, the vote was delayed since Temer's supporters and opponents in the Chamber had clashed at the scene. At the time, there were also protesters yelling "Temer out" outside the Congress. Paulo Abi-Ackel, the Chamber's rapporteur on the case, said that the rejection does not presume a shield for the president against any future legal issue. However, according to Brazilian law, the current result means Temer cannot be prosecuted on these corruption allegations again during his term in office. While many people were not convinced of the decision, the president celebrated on Wednesday evening his victory to remain in power. In a brief statement following the House session, Temer vowed to dedicate himself to the government and called for a solidary country "without resentment". The president said that the Parliament's decision is not a victory for any individual, but for Brazil as a democracy, adding that the country should "take down the walls" separating the people. Nevertheless, Brazil's political torments may not come to its end. Janot said he will file two more suits against Temer, in which he is suspected of obstruction of justice and criminal organization. Janot on Wednesday also asked the Supreme Court to include Temer in the investigation into a conspiracy-based bribery by his Brazilian Democratic Movement Party (PMDB) leadership. Therefore, Temer is still being investigated, in a process which involves the JBS and its head, Joesley Batista, who exchanged evidence for leniency. If the Chief Prosecution Office decides to bring more charges against Temer, he will have to take the same old road once more. Hence it remains to be seen whether the Wednesday's victory will last till the end of his term in December 2018. Source: Xinhua| 2017-08-03 16:38:03|Editor: Yamei Video Player Close BEIJING, Aug. 3 (Xinhua) -- The People's Liberation Army's (PLA) flagship newspaper Thursday called for the immediate withdrawal of Indian border troops trespassing in China, warning India not to harbor any illusions about the Chinese military's resolve to defend its territory. "The Chinese government will make no concession on territorial sovereignty, and any country should not underestimate our resolve to uphold territorial sovereignty," said a commentary in the PLA Daily. Over 270 Indian troops crossed the Sikkim section of the China-India border and obstructed Chinese road works in the Dong Lang area (Doklam) on June 18. As of the end of July, over 40 members of the Indian military and one bulldozer remained in Chinese territory. Chinese border troops have taken initial counter measures at the area and will step up targeted measures, according to the commentary. "The Chinese military does not demand a single inch of other's land and it won't give an inch of its own territory to others," it said. The newspaper also said that the PLA would always be a strong and elite force, which was capable of winning battles at the command of the Communist Party of China. "The Chinese people love peace," it said. "We have no intention of aggression or expansion, however, we have confidence in defeating all aggression." "China will never allow any people, organization or political party to split any part of Chinese territory from the country at any time, in any form," the commentary said. Peace and development have become the theme of this era, it said. The commentary urged India to acquire a clear understanding of the general trend of the world and contribute more to regional and world peace and development, instead of acting in reverse. Related: Full text of facts and China's position concerning Indian border troops' crossing of China-India boundary BEIJING, Aug. 2 (Xinhua) -- Chinese Foreign Ministry issued on Wednesday a document of the facts and China's position concerning the Indian border troops' crossing of China-India boundary in the Sikkim Sector into the Chinese territory. Full story Source: Xinhua| 2017-08-03 16:48:11|Editor: Yamei Photo taken by mobile phone shows shared bicycles on a sidewalk in Beijing, capital of China, Aug. 3, 2017. The Chinese government issued guidelines on Thursday to regulate bike-sharing services, which have boomed nationwide but led to urban management challenges. (Xinhua/Luo Xiaoguang) BEIJING, Aug. 3 (Xinhua) -- The colorful seas of haphazardly parked bicycles outside subway entrances and along sidewalks in Chinese cities will hopefully disappear soon thanks to new guidelines. The Chinese government issued guidelines on Thursday to regulate bike-sharing services, which have boomed nationwide but led to urban management challenges such as congested city sidewalks. Users of bike-sharing services in China should register under their real names, according to the guidelines released by the Ministry of Transport (MOT) and nine other government departments. The MOT released a draft version of the guidelines in May to solicit public opinion, receiving 780 suggestions. Due to safety concerns, bike-sharing providers are banned from offering services to children under the age of 12 and are not encouraged to offer electric bike services. By scanning a bike's QR code with a smartphone, riders can pedal away for as little as 0.5 yuan (7.4 U.S. cents ). The services allow users to pick up or drop off a bike almost anywhere. China now has around 70 bike-sharing brands, which have put more than 16 million bicycles on streets nationwide and attracted over 130 million users, according to the MOT. Shared bikes are part of the green urban transport system, and city governments should optimize bike transportation networks to improve convenience and safety for riders, the guidelines said. Local governments should study specific conditions to ensure rational allocation of bicycles and avoid excess supply in some areas, the guidelines said. Market players such as Mobike and Ofo have been speeding up expansion, both domestically and abroad, while updating their bikes and increasing output to grab a bigger market share. A survey from the Shanghai Bicycle Association showed that about 500,000 bikes are sufficient to meet daily use for Shanghai, but the city is home to over one million shared bikes operated by 11 enterprises. According to Zhang Siding, cofounder of Ofo, his company's bike supply is already adjusted dynamically based on changes in demand and frequency of use. Bike-sharing operators are encouraged to set up electronic fences to guide users to park in an orderly manner and dispose of non-functioning bicycles in a timely fashion. The guidelines also encourage the companies to offer services without requiring deposits to avoid cash pooling that could lead to illegal funding concerns, according to Wu Chungeng, spokesperson with the MOT. Many bike-sharing apps require users to deposit between 99 and 299 yuan before using the service. Some pioneers have introduced discounted or free deposits for users based on their credit performance. The introduction of electronic fences and credit scoring will help encourage users to behave in line with regulations and improve management efficiency, said Xing Lin, director of government affairs with Mobike. Source: Xinhua| 2017-08-03 17:13:22|Editor: Yamei Video Player Close JAKARTA, Aug. 3 (Xinhua) -- Indonesian authorities deported Chinese nationals on Thursday involved in a cyber fraud ring following their arrests at multiple points in the country. A Jakarta police detective said that a total of 143 Chinese nationals were deported to a Chinese city from Jakarta international airport, using Chinese airlines. Those arrested would immediately be taken under the custody of the Chinese police soon after they arrive at the Chinese airport. "They were indicated of working under the same network," Deputy Chief Jakarta Police Detectives for General Crime Didik Sugiarto said at the airport in Jakarta as the Chinese nationals were being deported. They wore blue, orange and pink T-shirts, indicating different locations of their arrests in Indonesia. The Indonesian police arrested them in Jakarta, Surabaya and Bali over the weekend after obtaining a tip from Chinese police. Didik said the Indonesian police were still detaining four people from China's Taiwan, and one Malaysia national related to the gang's operation in Indonesia. Police also detained five Indonesians implicated in the bogus operation. "Those Indonesians worked as domestic helpers, drivers and translators for the gang," Didik said. Investigations against the detainees are underway in Jakarta police headquarters. It is reported that the gang had amassed some 450 million U.S. dollars during their operation in Indonesia since late last year. They extorted money from people in China embroiled in legal cases. Source: Xinhua| 2017-08-03 17:18:25|Editor: Yamei Video Player Close TEHRAN, Aug. 3 (Xinhua) -- Iran's deputy foreign minister accused the United States of violating the nuclear deal known as JCOPA by renewing sanctions against the Islamic republic, semi-official Mehr news agency reported on Thursday. "In our eyes, the JCOPA has been violated (by the United States), and we will give deserved response," Iran's Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi was quoted as saying. U.S. President Donald Trump on Wednesday signed a sanctions bill on Russia, Iran and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. Sanctions against Iran is mainly in response to Tehran's growing missile program. The signing of fresh anti-Iran sanctions by Trump is an attempt to destroy the JCOPA, Araqchi, who is also Iran's senior nuclear negotiator, said. Washington believes the JCPOA has strengthened Iran in the region, he said, adding "they think that this situation must be reversed and Iran must be put under pressure." Imposing fresh sanctions on Iran is an attempt to reduce Tehran's benefits from the nuclear deal and to negatively affect its "successful implementation," he said, according to Press TV. Araqchi also said that, in a committee chaired by Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, several decisions were made over reactions towards Washington's "provocative measures," which will be duly handed over to the Iranian Foreign Ministry and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). Iranian officials have repeatedly said Iran maintains its right to respond to the United States if the latter does not comply with the nuclear deal. Iran and six world powers, namely Britain, China, France, Germany, Russia and the United States, reached an agreement on the Iranian nuclear issue in July 2015, which put Tehran on the path of sanctions relief but with more strict limits on its nuclear program. Source: Xinhua| 2017-08-03 17:23:29|Editor: Yamei Video Player Close MANDERA, Kenya, Aug. 3 (Xinhua) -- At least one police officer was killed and unknown number injured after suspected Al-Shabaab militants raided police camps in Kenya's Mandera county which borders Somalia early Thursday. Local police said about 50 heavily armed militants also burnt down two vehicles and escaped with one police vehicle car in the dawn attack on Lafey police station and the administration police camp. Northeastern regional coordinator Mohamud Saleh confirmed the attack, saying a number of attackers were killed while others escaped soon after the attack. "The gunmen stole one car after causing damage at the station but response teams are pursuing them. The place is remote and far," he said, adding that one police officer was killed during the attack. Saleh said reinforcement has been sent to the scene to pursue the attackers and also to access the damages caused. More than 10 police officers who were on duty took cover in the siege as the gang ran randomly there causing damage before escaping. Locals said the attackers had been roaming the place since Wednesday night and that they alerted authorities of their presence. A dusk to dawn curfew has been imposed in the area to help restore security in the border region and it is not clear how the group managed to strike. The curfew was imposed after a series of attacks by suspected Al-Shabaab militia between June and early July. Residents said there were some Al-Shabaab militants who were also killed and their bodies picked up by their accomplices as they escaped. The latest incident comes after gunmen shot dead three people and burnt a four-wheel drive car in Lamu County. The attackers also injured four passengers who were on a bus in the attack before they retreated into a bush. Police say no arrest has been made so far. The attacks came a few days to the election amid fears such attacks may affect voting. Kenyan security personnel patrolling the Somalia border have been hit with a series of explosion attacks since Kenya sent its troops to fight Al-Shabaab inside Somalia. Source: Xinhua| 2017-08-03 17:33:34|Editor: Yamei Video Player Close VIENTIANE, Aug. 3 (Xinhua) -- Representatives of the national assemblies of Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam (CLV) were discussing parliamentary cooperation for the triangle development area in the Lao capital of Vientiane. The sixth meeting of the Foreign Affairs Committees of the National Assemblies of the three countries is being held from Tuesday to Friday. In his opening remarks at the meeting on Wednesday, Lao National Assembly Vice President Lieutenant General Sengnouan Xayalath highlighted satisfactory achievements in joint development, such as creation of infrastructure for connectivity, cooperation among local authorities for environment protection, management of the use of natural resources, prevention of human trafficking and combating crimes in the triangle area, Lao local daily Vientiane Times reported Thursday. He pointed to the success in negotiations for an agreement on promoting and facilitating trade and the approval of 15 projects for infrastructure development in the area as an outstanding achievement to facilitate trade, investment, tourism and visits between the three countries. In his remarks, Chairman of the Cambodian National Assembly's Commission on Foreign Affairs, International Cooperation, Information and Media Chheang Vun said the Cambodian National Assembly praised the three governments for paying attention to the development of the triangle area by using all the potential to maintain peace, stability and development in the lower Mekong basin. Chairman of the Lao National Assembly's Committee on Foreign Affairs Eksavang Vongvichit mentioned some shortcomings in cooperation such as the coordination between related sectors at the central and local levels, and identified funding sources for implementing development projects agreed on by the three sides. "We, the Committees of Foreign Affairs, have to make more efforts in overseeing the implementation of the agreements, treaties and development plans agreed to by the government's of the three countries," he said. Chairman of the Vietnamese National Assembly's Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Nguyen Van Giau highlighted the tourism potential, especially for community-based eco-tourism and cultural tourism, which he said should be promoted. Source: Xinhua| 2017-08-03 17:38:36|Editor: Yamei Video Player Close DHAKA, Aug. 3 (Xinhua) -- Six Myanmar drug trafficking suspects were arrested after Bangladesh Coast Guard personnel chased their boat in the Bay of Bengal close to the southeastern border with Myanmar early Thursday. Acting on a tip-off, Lieutenant Commander Jafar Imam Sajib, commanding officer of Coast Guards stationed in Teknaf under Bangladesh's Cox's Bazar district, some 292 km southeast of the capital Dhaka, told Xinhua that the patrol team of Coast Guard personnel challenged the boat carrying the suspects. "Coast guard personnel had to fire three warning shots as the boat tried to go back towards Myanmar," he said. The Coast Guards finally intercepted the boat believed to be involved in drug smuggling. "Six Myanmar citizens were arrested with suspected links to the seizure of 300,000 yaba pills from the boat," he said. Yaba tablets, often used for sexual stimulation in the country, have been increasingly popular among drug users in Bangladesh, despite efforts of law enforcement agencies to contain the dangers of the narcotics trade. On Jan. 17 last year, Bangladesh's elite force RAB seized 2.8 million yaba tablets, the biggest ever seizure of contraband yaba tablets in the country. Iran's President Hassan Rouhani receives the presidential mandate from Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei during an endorsement ceremony, in Tehran, Iran, August 3, 2017. (Reuters photo) TEHRAN, Aug. 3 (Xinhua) -- Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Thursday endorsed Hassan Rouhani as the President of the Islamic republic for his second term. In a ceremony broadcast live on state television, Khamenei gave his official approval for Rouhani. The incumbent moderate president won a landslide victory on May 19 by garnering 57 percent of the ballots. His nearest conservative challenger Ebrahim Raisi got 38.5 percent of the ballots. The key political achievement of Rouhani during past four years in the office was signing a nuclear deal with six major world powers, namely Britain, China, France, Germany, Russia and the United States, which put an end to a decade-long dispute over the country's sensitive nuclear program. The deal, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), was signed in July 2015 and was implemented in January 2016. Based on the deal, nuclear-related sanctions on various Iranian business and financial sectors were lifted, but it put more strict limits on its nuclear program. Rouhani will take the oath of office in the parliament on Saturday. Source: Xinhua| 2017-08-03 17:48:42|Editor: Yamei Video Player Close NEW DELHI, Aug. 3 (Xinhua) -- The Indian government said Thursday that more than 100 bridges across the country were in dilapidated condition and could collapse anytime. "We have carried out a safety audit of 160,000 bridges in the country and found that over 100 structures are in dilapidated condition. These 100 bridges can collapse anytime and they need immediate attention," Highways Minister Nitin Gadkari told the Parliament. "My ministry had last year launched a special project to create data of all bridges and culverts in the country as part of the steps to avert mishaps," the minister said. Bridge collapses are common in India. While some British-era bridges collapse due to poor maintenance, others collapse due to lack of inspections and use of substandard construction materials. At least two people were killed and several others injured after a pedestrian bridge over a river collapsed in the western Indian state of Goa in May. In August last year, some 38 people died when two buses and a car fell into a river after a road bridge between Mumbai and Goa collapsed. Rwanda's incumbent President Paul Kagame of the ruling party Rwanda Patriotic Front (RPF) speaks during his last presidential campaign rally in Kigali, capital of Rwanda, on Aug. 2, 2017. Rwanda's three presidential candidates Wednesday concluded their campaign rallies ahead of Friday polls that will elect the president for the next seven years. (Xinhua/Gabriel Dusabe) KIGALI, Aug. 3 (Xinhua) -- Rwanda's three presidential candidates Wednesday concluded their campaign rallies ahead of Friday polls that will elect the president for the next seven years. The three presidential contenders, incumbent President Paul Kagame of the ruling party Rwanda Patriotic Front (RPF), Frank Habineza of the Democratic Green Party of Rwanda (DGPR), and Philippe Mpayimana, an independent candidate held their final rallies in Kigali. Kagame, who has been the president of Rwanda since 2000, wrapped up his campaign rallies at Bumbogo sector, Gasabo district in the outskirts of capital Kigali. Hundreds of thousands of supporters cheered as well-known local musicians kept the crowd entertained before the incumbent president arrived. The RPF flag bearer's final campaign rally was characterized by "Walk for Paul Kagame", where thousands of his supporters most especially the youth walked a 20 kilometers journey from Amahoro National Stadium to Bumbogo at the final event venue. Kagame in the rally reiterated his pledge to further work to enhance Rwanda's development, strengthen security, and improve general welfare of Rwandans. "Rwanda has passed through a lot, drawing useful lessons along the way," he said. "We know how to make choices for our lives basing on where we have come from and where we are today." Habineza concluded his campaign rally in Nyabugogo, a suburb of Kigali city while independent candidate Mpayimana held his last rally at Amahoro National Stadium. Habineza moved around the city waving the residents before he arrived at the rally. "I will end all unnecessary and none registered taxes to tax payers," Habineza said at his last rally. For the last two weeks, the three presidential candidates have been travelling countrywide soliciting votes. RPF's manifesto mainly focuses on strengthening the economy, citizen's social welfare, and good governance among others. On the other hand Habineza campaigned on pledge to promote food security, re-enforce the rule of law in the country, reduce taxes, and grow more environment-friendly economy. Mpayimana's campaign message focused on a pledge to strengthen democracy, promote trade and agriculture, foster unity among Rwandans and empower Rwandan youth among other pledges. Many analysts predict Kagame as the winner. "I think Kagame will win with well over 90 percent of the total national vote largely due to his stature and achievement, the strength of his party RPF and the clear weakness of his opponents," Christopher Kayumba, senior lecturer, School of Journalism and Communication, University of Rwanda told Xinhua in an interview. Kagame, 59, has been president since 2000 when he was elected president of the transitional government by ministers and members of parliament following the resignation of then President Pasteur Bizimungu. Kagame was then reelected in 2003 and 2010. National Electoral Commission (NEC) has set up 2,340 polling centers and 16,691 polling rooms across the country which will minimize long queues during the elections, Rwandan media The New Times quoted official of NEC as saying. According to NEC, Polling stations will be open at 7 a.m. and will close at 3 p.m.. Over 6.8 million people will participate in this year's presidential elections, up from 5.7 million, who participated in 2010 presidential elections. Source: Xinhua| 2017-08-03 18:08:50|Editor: Yamei Video Player Close CAIRO, Aug. 3 (Xinhua) -- Egypt has worked with Russia to broker an agreement to create a "de-escalation zone" in the northern Homs countryside in war-torn Syria, official MENA news agency reported. The ceasefire deal is to take effect on Thursday between the Syrian government forces and armed rebels in Homs province. On the other hand, Russia's military spokesman said in Moscow that the two warring parties reached the agreement after earlier talks in Cairo on July 31. Egypt successfully brokered an earlier deal to de-escalate conflict in Eastern Ghouta region in Damascus, according to MENA. The northern parts of Homs province have recently been hit by several sporadic airstrikes from the Syrian regime forces. The Egyptian leadership has always expressed support for a political settlement for the Syrian crisis in a way that ends bloodshed in Syria and maintains the unity of its territories. Since its eruption in March 2011, the Syrian crisis has claimed the lives of about half a million people and displaced and wounded over 14 million. Russian troops in Syria have been launching bombing raids in support of the government forces, while a U.S.-led international anti-terror coalition has been launching airstrikes against Islamic State (IS) targets in the conflict-stricken country. Latest UN-sponsored peace talks in Astana of Kazakhstan failed to reach an agreement between the administration of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, mainly backed by Russia and Iran, and the exiled opposition. Source: Xinhua| 2017-08-03 18:13:54|Editor: Yamei Video Player Close BEIJING, Aug. 3 (Xinhua) -- U.S. corporate acquisitions in China saw steady growth in H1, a Chinese official said Thursday. The value of foreign investment from U.S. companies through mergers and acquisitions (M&As) in China rose 2.3 percent year on year in the January-June period, said Gao Feng, a spokesperson of the Ministry of Commerce. There has been a gaining streak in yuan terms for the past years except for a decline in 2015, Gao said at a press conference. His remarks came in response to media reports that "U.S. corporate M&As had collapsed to their lowest level for 14 years" in H1 due to rising trade frictions. Gao disputed the reports, saying the two sides were working actively and cooperation had sound momentum after a 100-day plan and the first round of economic dialogue being held over the past three months. "We have made clear the direction of the one-year plan in economic cooperation and will strive to achieve an early harvest," Gao said. Economic and trade cooperation are said to play the roles of a "ballast stone" and "propeller" in the relationship of the two economies, which have become closely interconnected. China has become the largest trade partner of the United States, while the latter is China's second largest. Bilateral trade surged nearly 207-fold to 519.6 billion U.S. dollars in 2016 from the level in 1979, when the countries established diplomatic ties. "Cooperation brings mutual benefits and confrontation causes destruction to both sides," Gao said. During the conference, the MOC spokesperson also said that the Chinese government has always encouraged M&As by foreign companies. The ministry on Sunday relaxed rules on foreign-funded firms, with less red tape in acquisitions and business registration. Source: Xinhua| 2017-08-03 18:34:04|Editor: Song Lifang Video Player Close LUSAKA, Aug. 3 (Xinhua) -- Police in Zambia on Thursday arrested an opposition leader while he was being interviewed on a private television station. Saviour Chishimba, leader of the United Progressive People (UPP) was picked up in the morning by plain clothes while appearing on a live interview on Diamond Television, according to a statement Chishimba posted on his Facebook page. Source: Xinhua| 2017-08-03 18:44:08|Editor: Song Lifang Video Player Close JAKARTA, Aug. 3 (Xinhua) -- Indonesia and New Zealand have agreed to deepen bilateral cooperation in combating terrorism through information exchanges and preventive efforts. The agreement was the result of the meeting between Indonesian government's anti-terrorism desk of BNPT head Suhardi Alius and New Zealand's Assistant Commissioner for International and National Security Michael Pennet. Alius said during the meeting on Wednesday that he and his New Zealand counterpart shared the experiences and views in dealing with terrorism issue. The two shared similar concerns on the returning of Islamic State (IS) militants to their respective countries. Those militants, popularly known as Foreign Terrorist Fighters (FTF), have posed new security threats to several Asian countries. Alius and Pennet agreed on measures to jointly fight terrorism, including terrorists' families and members of radical groups. "This approach also includes the de-radicalization programs that we have applied here," Alius said. Senior security officials of Indonesia, New Zealand, Australia, Malaysia, Brunei and the Philippines attended the sub-regional meeting on FTF and cross-border terrorism in Indonesia's North Sulawesi over the weekend. Source: Xinhua| 2017-08-03 18:44:11|Editor: Song Lifang Video Player Close NEW DELHI, Aug. 3 (Xinhua) -- BRICS nations have more opportunities for mutual growth and development compared to their challenges, an expert has said. In a recent interview with Xinhua on the upcoming BRICS summit to be held in China, Varaprasad S. Dolla, a professor from Jawaharlal Nehru University, said the key objective of this summit is about "stronger partnership for a brighter future." China, which took over the BRICS presidency this year, will host the Ninth BRICS Summit this September in Xiamen, southeast China's Fujian Province. "Looking at the opportunities and new challenges, I see that there are more opportunities for mutual growth and common development compared to the challenges that these countries face together," said the expert. Commenting on some western media's skeptical attitude about the prospects of BRICS cooperation, the expert said, "No two countries are without differences." "When you have five countries coming together, they are bound to have differences, definitely more differences. But differences can be seen as stumbling block provided the differences are addressed and then amicably a common agenda is sort," said Varaprasad. Reviewing the accomplishments BRICS countries have achieved in the last decade, Varaprasad said, "Look at the trade where it's actually happening within the BRICS countries, it has been growing ever since they came together. Today BRICS trade is to the tune of about roughly 200 billion U.S. dollars among the BRICS countries." Varaprasad said the future of innovation could be with the bloc. "One suggestion ...... is that all BRICS countries state their innovation potential," said Varaprasad. "For instance, India and China gave the world a number of scientific innovations in the past." "And if you take that into account, it is likely that these countries will actually lead the innovation-trajectory in the years to come," said the expert. On the global economic governance, the expert said today developing countries, particularly BRICS, are able to contribute more to global growth. "BRICS has now emerged as the major block. Therefore it is likely that they will have a lot more than they had before to contribute to economic governance," said Varaprasad. The highlight of this year's BRICS summit is to establish a new platform for south-south cooperation by exploring the "BRICS Plus" model involving more countries under the BRICS fold. "As I indicated, the global economic governance architecture, if it is to become truly representative and inclusive, then initiatives like 'BRICS Plus' is imperative. Therefore inviting a number of countries from the south to the BRICS summit in Xiamen is to be welcomed," said Varaprasad. When asked how BRICS countries can cooperate to promote the China-proposed Belt and Road Initiative, the expert called for more participation from companies. "I think it is only when you allow the participation of the companies from these countries within the Belt and Road Initiative, they would also come forward because when they participate, they will bring their own competitive advantages and their own technical know-how and personnel." Proposed by China in 2013, the Belt and Road Initiative refers to the Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road aimed at building a trade and infrastructure network connecting Asia with Europe and Africa along the ancient trade routes of the Silk Road. Source: Xinhua| 2017-08-03 19:09:26|Editor: Song Lifang Video Player Close PARIS, Aug. 3 (Xinhua) -- After a short honeymoon at the Elysee Palace, French President Emmanuel Macron saw his popularity sharply sliding in July, a survey showed Thursday. A YouGov poll for the CNews and HuffPost said 36 percent of respondents have good opinion about Macron at the end of last month, compared with 43 percent who endorsed his action earlier in July. The debut of the head of state approved by 81 percent of the centrists, including the ruling camp The Republic on The March, MoDem and UDI parties, was down by 14 points, according to the poll. Having won a May election with 66.1 percent of the vote, Macron promised pro-market reforms to revive lifeless domestic labor market and encourage companies' investment which he said were needed to put the country economy on track. However, his liberal roadmap seemed ignited critics with trade unions planned nationwide protest on Sept. 12, the first street test to the youngest president in France's modern history. YouGov questioned 1,003 respondents on July 26-27. Source: Xinhua| 2017-08-03 19:14:33|Editor: An Video Player Close CHENGDU, Aug. 3 (Xinhua) -- A joint cultural park between China and Italy will be built in Chengdu city, capital of southwest China's Sichuan Province. The park, to be located in Chengdu's Tianfu New Area, will see a series of joint projects between China and Italy in the fields of culture, environmental protection, agriculture, and aviation industry, according to an agreement inked in Chengdu Thursday. China and Italy will enhance cooperation in art, design and music, with events such as Italian music festivals, operas and fashion shows. Ivan Scalfarotto, Italian vice minister for economic development, said that the two sides could cooperate on common problems troubling mankind, such as aging and urbanization. He said Italy hoped to play a proactive role in China's Belt and Road Initiative. Italy's investment in Sichuan grew fast in the first half of 2017, increasing by 14.6 percent year on year to 83.5 million yuan (12.4 million U.S. dollars). Most of the investment focused on manufacturing, garment processing, agricultural products and catering. Source: Xinhua| 2017-08-03 19:24:45|Editor: An Video Player Close BEIJING, Aug. 3 (Xinhua) -- China had more than 230.8 million people aged 60 or above at the end of 2016, 16.7 percent of the total population, the Ministry of Civil Affairs said Thursday. Of the 230.8 million, 150.03 million were 65 or above, or 10.8 percent of the total population, according to a report released by the ministry. By international standards, a country or region is considered to be an "aging society" when the number of people aged 60 or above reaches 10 percent or more.H The country had 140,000 nursing homes holding a total of more than 7.3 million beds at the end of 2016, with a year-on-year increase of 20.7 percent and 8.6 percent respectively. However, there are only 31.6 beds for every 1,000 senior citizens. According to the report, China had about 460,000 orphans at the end of 2016, with 88,000 living in government-funded agencies, with the rest being cared for by relatives or private orphanages. Some 19,000 Chinese orphans were adopted by domestic or overseas families in 2016, the ministry said. Source: Xinhua| 2017-08-03 19:29:47|Editor: Song Lifang Video Player Close PHNOM PENH, Aug. 3 (Xinhua) -- Cambodia's former deputy prime minister Nhek Bun Chhay was called into questioning on Thursday afternoon for allegedly involving in illicit drug production in 2007, a government-aligned media reported. "Phnom Penh municipal police implement a court warrant and bring Nhek Bun Chhay for questioning for his alleged involvement in a drug production case in Kampong Speu province in 2007," the Fresh News quoted National Police chief Gen. Neth Savoeun as saying. Nhek Bun Chhay, 59, was a former deputy prime minister from 2004 to 2013 when he was a senior member of the royalist Funcinpec Party, which is in alliance with the ruling Cambodian People's Party of Prime Minister Samdech Techo Hun Sen. He left Funcinpec Party in February and formed his own party called the "Khmer National United Party." In June, the prime minister ousted Nhek Bun Chhay from the government adviser role after the government found that he secretly supported the opposition Cambodia National Rescue Party. Source: Xinhua| 2017-08-03 19:34:53|Editor: Song Lifang Video Player Close NAIROBI, Aug. 3 (Xinhua) -- The Commonwealth election observer mission in Kenya headed by ex-Ghanaian president, John Dramani Mahama on Thursday renewed call for peaceful national polls on August 8 amid heated campaign rhetoric. Speaking to reporters in Nairobi, Mahama said the upcoming Kenyan polls will have a huge ramification in the region and across the world hence the need to conduct them in a transparent and peaceful manner. "This is a watershed election in Kenya and its successful completion will reaffirm the country's status as a mature democracy," Mahama remarked, adding the commonwealth observer mission will remain impartial during the voting exercise. The former president of Ghana is leading a 15 member election observer mission in Kenya that is composed of eminent persons from Africa, Asia, Europe, the Caribbean and Pacific regions. He revealed that observers will be deployed across the country on August 5 to assess general preparedness by the electoral body to conduct smooth election of a new president, lawmakers, county and ward executives. Mahama added the observers will closely monitor the entire voting, tallying and results transmission process on August 8 and issue an interim statement on their preliminary findings two days later. "A final report will be prepared and submitted to the Commonwealth Secretary General and subsequently shared with relevant stakeholders and the public," Mahama told journalists. The Commonwealth will rally behind efforts to boost peaceful political transition in Kenya during the upcoming polls. Mahama said the bloc has faith in the ability of Kenya's electoral body to carry out credible polls amid doubts from some quarters. "Our technical team has been assessing Kenya's preparedness to hold fair elections and key stakeholders are confident the exercise will be successful. I believe the electoral system in Kenya has improved," said Mahama. He added that key stakeholders in the electoral process that include political parties, civil society and private sector have rallied behind a call for free, credible and peaceful polls. "As the campaign nears completion, I would wish the people of Kenya, those seeking election, poll officials, to make the process democratic," said Mahama. He disclosed the Commonwealth election observer mission in Kenya will depart the country on Aug. 14. Source: Xinhua| 2017-08-03 19:45:01|Editor: Song Lifang Video Player Close JAKARTA, Aug. 3 (Xinhua) -- Indonesia will begin mass production of electric cars in 2020 in a bid to reduce emission and reliance on fossil fuel, a minister said here on Thursday. Minister of Research, Technology and Higher Education Mohamad Nasir revealed that the ministry has invited four universities in the production of eco-friendly vehicles. "We have asked four universities to develop the electric car. The target is mass production will be started in 2020," he said. President Joko Widodo has given strong support to the development of the vehicles. The government has prepared regulations, funding and incentives in producing electric cars Indonesia's oil output has been dwindling in recent decades due to aging wells and lacking of exploration activities. Source: Xinhua| 2017-08-03 19:50:40|Editor: An The photo taken on Aug. 3, 2017 shows Chinese bonsai trees planted in Dhaka, capital of Bangladesh. Bangladesh has imported scores of bonsai ficus trees from China and planted them beside a major road leading to the country's main airport in the capital. (Xinhua/Salim Reza) Source: Xinhua| 2017-08-03 19:50:07|Editor: An Video Player Close BEIJING, Aug. 3 (Xinhua) -- The total sum of public donations in China reached 82.7 billion yuan (12.3 billion U.S. dollars) in 2016, up 26.4 percent year on year, the Ministry of Civil Affairs (MCA) announced Thursday. Apart from monetary donations, a total of 9.31 million people also provided 25 million hours of charity volunteer work. By the end of 2016, 14.8 million people in urban China were living on the basic living allowance, while in China's countryside, the number was 45.9 million, according to the MCA. The China Welfare Lottery, affiliated with the MCA, last year grossed a total revenue of more than 206 billion yuan from selling lottery tickets, among which 26.8 billion yuan had been spent on social aid projects and other national social welfare. Source: Xinhua| 2017-08-03 20:15:18|Editor: Song Lifang Video Player Close CAIRO, Aug. 3 (Xinhua) -- Egypt hosted over the past three days two delegations from the Libyan eastern region of Barqa and the northwestern port city of Misrata to outline a roadmap for inter-Libyan national reconciliation, the Egyptian army said in a statement on Thursday. Led by Egypt's Chief of Staff Mahmoud Hegazy, the Egyptian Committee on Libya held separate talks with the two delegations, followed by joint talks with their representatives without preconditions, said military spokesman Tamer al-Refaay in the statement. The participants agreed on a time-scheduled roadmap including mechanisms for future meetings "in order to achieve true reconciliation that enhances means of coexistence between Libyans, end the state of polarization and restore social unity in Libya," he added. The discussions showed agreement among Libyan factions on maintaining Libya's unity and sovereignty, rejecting all forms of foreign interference in Libya's domestic affairs, fighting all kinds of terrorism and working on the establishment of a modern civil state based on peaceful power transition. Libya has been engaged in a civil war since the 2011 ouster and death of former leader Muammar Gaddafi, which eventually divided the war-torn country into two governments, a UN-backed one in Tripoli and a parliament-backed, military-oriented one in Tobruk. Tobruk's government was internationally recognized before the Presidential Council (PC) was established in 2015 to run a unity government in Tripoli as per a UN-brokered peace deal between Libyan factions reached in Skhirat, Morocco. Supported by self-proclaimed Libyan national army led by Field Marshall Khalifa Haftar, the government in Tobruk refuses to recognize the Tripoli-based unity government known as the Government of National Accord (GNA). Barqa region supports Haftar while Misrata city is regarded as a hub of military opposition to the Libyan military chief. Hosting several meetings between Libyan rival factions as well as representatives of Libya's neighboring states, Egypt is keen on restoring security and stability to the war-torn neighboring country whose chaotic conditions pose a threat to the Egypt's western borders. Egypt's Western Desert witnessed a terrorist attack that killed at least 21 soldiers in July 2014. Later in February 2015, IS militants released a video showing the beheading of 20 Egyptians near the Libyan chaotic city of Sirte. Since May, the Egyptian air forces have destroyed at least 42 vehicles loaded with weapons, ammunition and explosives before they infiltrated into Egypt via its western borders with Libya. The Egyptian leadership of President Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi supports the self-proclaimed Libyan national army led by Haftar and the parliament-backed government in Tobruk. More world attention has recently been drawn to Libya and France managed earlier in July to rarely bring face to face Libya's two main rivals Fayez al-Sarraj, head of Tripoli-based unity government, and military chief Haftar who is backed by Tobruk's government, for settlement talks. Source: Xinhua| 2017-08-03 20:15:18|Editor: Song Lifang Video Player Close TEHRAN, Aug. 3 (Xinhua) -- The Iranian Foreign Ministry on Thursday condemned the recent endorsement of new sanctions against the Islamic republic by the U.S. president as "illegitimate." In a statement, the Foreign Ministry Spokesman, Bahram Qasemi, said that Iran reserves the right to respond to Washington's "hostile" measures against Tehran. "The U.S. move is illegitimate, illogical and contrary to all the human principles as well as the international laws," Qasemi was quoted as saying by the ministry's website. Washington's anti-Iran actions is another instance of U.S. enmity with the Iranians, he said, adding that it is also an insult to the world consciousness. Qasemi noted that other countries, involved in signing the Iran's nuclear deal two years ago, also disapprove the "U.S. unilateral" measures in exerting pressures against Tehran. "The Islamic Republic of Iran will not remain tight-lipped in the face of the U.S. violation of the nuclear deal, also known as JCPOA, and the Iranian parliament and government will soon announce a series of reciprocal measures," he was quoted as saying. However, Iran will not fall pray to the U.S. and Israeli plots to ignore and violate JCPOA, he stressed. The Iranian officials have said that by new round of sanctions against Tehran, the U.S. administration is seeking to provoke Iran to withdraw from the 2015 deal which put an end to the decade-long disputes of Tehran's sensitive nuclear program. U.S. President Donald Trump on Wednesday signed a sanctions bill on Russia, Iran and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. Sanctions against Iran is mainly in response to Tehran's growing missile program. Tehran has emphasized that its ballistic missile advancement is for deterrent purposes and the country will never negotiate over it. On Thursday, Qasemi reiterated that "Iran has stood up to the United States' hostile moves and is pressing ahead with its efforts to ensure stability and security, and to fight against terrorism in the region," he noted. "Iran will, by no means, allow the expansionist and destabilizing policies of others to bear fruit," said Qasemi. Source: Xinhua| 2017-08-03 20:30:25|Editor: An Video Player Close BEIJING, Aug. 3 (Xinhua) -- The Ministry of Water Resources and the China Meteorological Administration issued an alert Thursday for mountain torrents in the country's north region. Parts of Heilongjiang and Liaoning provinces in the country's northeast, and the western part of Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region in the nation's northwest are likely to receive mountain torrents between 8 p.m. Thursday and 8 p.m. Friday. Central parts of Heilongjiang Province have a high possibility of mountain torrents disaster. Heavy rain is expected to hit the remaining areas, which may also lead to mountain torrents. To guard against disasters, the agencies told local authorities to step up real-time monitoring and flood warnings and stand ready for evacuation. Mountain torrents are caused by heavy rain, which are frequent in summer. Source: Xinhua| 2017-08-03 20:40:39|Editor: Song Lifang Video Player Close MOMBASA, Kenya, Aug 3 (Xinhua) -- Kenya's anti-terrorism police officers are on Thursday interrogating a British national who was arrested at Moi international airport with two magazine and 42 bullets. The police said Surone Abdiwahid Faiza, 27, was arrested at the departure section of the airport during screening of her luggage. Coast regional police commander Larry Kieng said the woman of Somalia origin was handed over to anti terrorism sleuths for further interrogation and profiling. Kieng said the woman who hold British passport was to travel to Nairobi and board another Kenya Airways plane to London. "The 9mm ammunitions were concealed in her suitcase when they were discovered by the police. We are yet to establish if she is a licensed gun holder and her intention to smuggle the bullets to the plane," Kieng said. "The two magazines; one had 10 bullets of 9mm calibre and the other had 32 bullets of the same calibre. These type of ammunitions are commonly used in small arms like pistols. The officer said she will be arraigned in court on Thursday to enable police to seek more days to complete their investigation. The officers said Kenya government has already contacted the British Embassy in Nairobi to assist in the investigation Kenya security agents are also on higher alert of possible attacks waged by Somalia-based Al-Shabaab militant group. The group has intensified attacks in along the border town of Lamu and Mandera targeting both civilians and security agents. Source: Xinhua| 2017-08-03 20:45:41|Editor: Yamei Video Player Close BEIJING, Aug. 3 (Xinhua) -- The Chinese Ministry of National Defense on Thursday said that the Chinese navy had coordinated with the U.S. search for a missing U.S. sailor in the South China Sea. The Chinese navy's Liuzhou frigate, which was conducting combat readiness duties in nearby waters, carried out operational coordination with the U.S. navy "in the spirit of humanitarianism" and in accordance with the code for unplanned encounters at sea, the ministry said in a statement. The sailor fell into water when a U.S. warship was navigating 100 nautical miles southwest of Huangyan Island in the South China Sea recently, the statement said. Source: Xinhua| 2017-08-03 20:45:43|Editor: Song Lifang Video Player Close RAMALLAH, Aug. 3 (Xinhua) -- Palestinian Presidency slammed Thursday the Israeli Prime Minister for laying corner stone for new settlement units in a West Bank settlement, Palestinian official news agency (WAFA) reported. Nabil Abu Rudeinah, Palestinian President's spokesperson, condemned Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for laying foundational stones for over 1,000 units in Beitar Illit settlement located south of Bethlehem in the West Bank. Abu Rudeinah said that the settlements are unlawful and East Jerusalem, West Bank and Gaza Strip are all Palestinian territories, in response to statements by Netanyahu in which he reportedly said that the West Bank and East Jerusalem are part of Israel. "Settlement are basically illegal and the Israeli government has to immediately stop its destructive approach to the two-state solution," he said. He also condemned Israel's announcement of evicting a family in the East Jerusalem town of Sheikh Jarrah for the benefit of Israeli settlers. The presidential spokesperson urged the international community, especially the United States, to interfere and to stop Israeli settlement activity, warning that this might lead to uncontrollable consequences. Beitar Illit is the second largest Jewish settlement in the West Bank, built since 1990 as part of the Gush Etzion settlement bloc in the south of the West Bank, with nearly 50,000 residents. According to Israeli media, Netanyahu attended a corner stone laying ceremony for a new neighborhood in the settlement, where he reportedly said "we're connecting Beitar Illit to Jerusalem." The issue of settlements is a major dispute that hurdled the Palestinian-Israeli peace negotiations, and lead to its breakdown in March 2014, after nine months of U.S.- sponsored talks. Source: Xinhua| 2017-08-03 20:55:51|Editor: An Video Player Close BEIJING, Aug. 3 (Xinhua) -- A total of 23 power companies in northern China's Shanxi Province, including subsidiaries of four state-owned enterprises (SOEs) supervised by the central government, have been fined over price fixing, China's economic planner said Thursday. The companies colluded on the transaction price of direct power supply during a meeting in early 2016 organized by the Shanxi Province Electric Power Association, according to a statement by the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC). After checking sales data, the anti-monopoly department found that the companies involved had carried out the price fixing agreement. The association was fined 500,000 yuan (about 74,400 U.S. dollars), the highest penalty imposed for such violation, while the 23 companies were fined 72.88 million yuan altogether. The companies include several Shanxi subsidiaries of central SOEs: China Datang Corporation, China Guodian Corporation, China Huaneng Group, and China Huadian Corporation, as well as four provincial power companies and 15 power stations. The price fixing breached anti-monopoly law and violated the principle of fair market competition encouraged by the country's ongoing power reform, the NDRC said. China has been actively reforming the power pricing system, granting the market a decisive role in power sales. The reform is expected to lower the cost of power users, cutting the corporate burden. Source: Xinhua| 2017-08-03 21:00:54|Editor: An Video Player Close BEIJING, Aug. 3 (Xinhua) -- China will work with ASEAN countries to uphold stability in the South China Sea, consult on a code of conduct (COC) and maritime cooperation, and guide the East Asian regional cooperation. Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang made the remarks when answering a question on China's expectations for future development of China-ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) relations. Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi will attend a series of foreign minister meetings from Aug. 6 to 8 in the Philippines, including meetings between foreign ministers from China, ASEAN, Japan and the Republic of Korea, as well as foreign minister meetings of the East Asia Summit and the ASEAN Regional Forum. Geng said that the new COC framework demonstrated the aspirations of China and the ASEAN to maintain peace and stability in the South China Sea and created a favorable atmosphere for cooperation. Next year is the 15th anniversary of the China-ASEAN strategic partnership. Relations are at a crucial point of building on the past for a new stage of cooperation, said the spokesman. "China is willing to work with the ASEAN to maintain stability in the South China Sea, advance the consultation on the COC, promote maritime cooperation and guide the East Asia regional cooperation, to inject positive energy into regional integration and economic globalization," Geng said. Source: Xinhua| 2017-08-03 21:00:55|Editor: An Video Player Close BEIJING, Aug. 3 (Xinhua) -- Addressing "reasonable security concerns" is key to denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said Thursday. Wang made the remarks at a joint press briefing following talks with visiting Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu, in response to a question regarding recent remarks by U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. Tillerson said that the U.S. seeks neither "regime change" nor "collapse of the regime" in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK). "We do not seek an accelerated reunification of the peninsula," Tillerson said. "We do not seek an excuse to send our military north of the 38th Parallel." This came after the DPRK fired its second intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) last Friday, following the first being launched on July 4. Noting that China's stance on the issue is consistent and stable, Wang said China is committed to denuclearization of the peninsula and maintaining peace and stability. The Foreign Minister urged all sides not to increase tensions. China hopes the United States will put its words into action toward the DPRK, Wang said. Stressing security is "at the core" of the issue, Wang said China wants a solution that addresses the "reasonable" security concerns of all parties. He said China is fully committed to UN resolutions on the DPRK and participates in ongoing U.N. consultation in a fair, objective, and respectful manner. Source: Xinhua| 2017-08-03 21:26:02|Editor: Song Lifang Video Player Close DHAKA, Aug. 3 (Xinhua)-- Rows of Chinese bonsai trees planted recently along a major road in Bangladesh capital Dhaka now have produced greenish new leaves, giving the city an exquisite look. The major Dhaka road just outside the country's main Hazrat Shahjala Airport got a huge facelift with the plantation of the trees and other development works along sidewalk ways recently. The bonsai Ficus trees adorn the Airport road, one of the city's busiest roads. Thousands of people passing along enjoy this beautification, as bonsai is considered something exquisite in the country, where people only saw small bonsais. Bangladesh has procured the bonsai Ficus trees from China under a multi-billion taka beautification project, which also includes children's playing zones and car parks. Apart from these, there are modern waiting zones as well as service booths, which provide wi-fi services, free drinking water, public toilets and ATM booths. There are also vending machines for drinks and snacks, free mobile charging stations, money exchange booths, nursing corners for new mothers, police boxes and automated cash recharge points for mobile phones. College student Nadia said she has never seen this kind of bonsai before. "It feels great. They have nicely adapted to the place," she said. Jalal Uddin Ahmed, an engineer of the project, said they have planted 100 bonsai trees. "We're quite amazed to know about the history of bonsai." Bonzai, meaning tray planting, is a Japanese art form using trees grown in containers which originated from China as early as four thousand years ago. These bonsais are imported from China, Ahmed said, adding "they are very much appreciated in our country." Private firm Vinyl World Group under the supervision of Bangladesh's Roads and Highways Department planted the trees. A modernization project aimed at upgrading the Dhaka airport was launched in February this year. Monuments have been installed depicting Bangladesh's historical events of the country. There are also spaces for shrubberies at many points of the road to showcase the country's achievements to foreigner visitors. Bangladesh Road Transport and Bridges Minister Obaidul Quader formally inaugurated the project, saying the road would be the model road of the country. Source: Xinhua| 2017-08-03 21:36:10|Editor: Song Lifang Video Player Close TOKYO, Aug. 3 (Xinhua) -- Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe apologized on Thursday for the recent scandals implicating him and some of his close allies with a new cabinet in place, while opposition parties called for a deeper probe into the scandals, saying that a cabinet reshuffle won't erase the misconducts. "I would like to express deep regret and apologize for creating strong distrust among the public over the scandals," Abe said at a press conference following the inauguration of his new cabinet. Abe has been accused of using his influence to facilitate a government decision to approve the heavily-subsidized opening of a veterinary school at an university run by his friend. To make the situation worse, Abe's close ally and protege Tomomi Inada stepped down last week as defense minister for being involved in covering up information about risks faced by Japanese peacekeeping troops in South Sudan. Abe apologized for causing public distrust over the scandals and stressed that the new cabinet would put the economy first, saying that there were much to do. As for his long-time goal of revising the pacifist constitution, Abe said that he wants to deepen the discussion on the subject inside his party and among the people but the debate "is not dependent on any schedule." He also said nothing has been decided on whether to dissolve the lower house before its members' terms expire in December 2018. Abe reshuffled his cabinet earlier in the day in a bid to restore public faith in a scandal-mired government, the fourth such attempt since he retook office in 2012. Opposition party lawmakers, however, slammed the reshuffle as an attempt to cover up the scandals and called for a deeper probe into the issues. Renho, the outgoing leader of the main opposition Democratic Party, pointed out that the cabinet reshuffle wouldn't make the scandals just disappear. "Even if the ministers are changed, we will not end our pursuit of the allegations," she said. She also demanded former defense minister Inada to speak at the parliament on the coverup scandal, saying that the new defense chief won't be able to explain the situation. Seiji Mataichi, Secretary General of the Social Democratic Party, said that the prime minister should be held accountable for appointing problematic ministers. Ichiro Matsui, head of Nippon Ishin no Kai, said that the "skeleton" of the cabinet is not changed and the reshuffle will cause little impact. To restore public trust, what the prime minister should do is to fulfill his duty of making sufficient explanations to the people, he said. Ichiro Ozawa, coleader of the Liberal Party, said that there was no point in replacing the cabinet "since the top of the government is already corrupt," adding that what should be replaced is the prime minister. Source: Xinhua| 2017-08-03 22:01:21|Editor: Song Lifang Video Player Close KATHMANDU, Aug. 3 (Xinhua) -- Nepal's newly appointed Information and Communications Minister Mohan Bahadur Basnet said Thursday that his country has given high importance to its relationship with China. Appreciating incessant support extended by China to Nepal, the minister highlighted the wide-ranging cooperation between the two countries since the establishment of diplomatic relations on August 1, 1955. "China's continuous support has been instrumental in our socio-economic prosperity for years. I believe that the two countries can further strengthen their cooperation in multi-dimensional areas such as tourism, disaster response and connectivity," the minister said addressing a talk program organized by the Sino-Nepal Media Society. Basnet commended China's support to Nepal in the aftermath of the devastating earthquake in 2015. Basnet, who is a leader of the ruling Nepali Congress, was appointed the minister two weeks ago in the Deuba-led Cabinet that came to power in June this year. The information minister also asked the Chinese government to help reopen the Tatopani-Khasa (Zhangmu) border point which has remained shut after the devastating earthquake in 2015. Meanwhile, in the same program former Foreign Minister of Nepal Mahendra Pandey, was of the view that Nepal-China relations can be further strengthened under the China-proposed Belt and Road Initiative. "I believe that Nepal's dream to transform into a land-linked country from the current landlocked will be materialized through strong partnership with China under the Belt and Road cooperation. So the Belt and Road Initiative is a new opportunity for us," he said. Another Former Foreign Minister Ramesh Nath Pandey said that Nepal should focus on building political confidence with China to reap benefit from the rise of China. "The more we build the political confidence the more we can enhance understanding with China," he said. During the program, Chinese Ambassador to Nepal, Yu Hong expressed hope that China-Nepal ties will be further expanded under the Belt and Road Initiative framework, noting that the two countries have witnessed steady progress in their relationship over the years. "We have been deepening political, economic and cultural relationship over the years. I see a bright future in bilateral cooperation between China and Nepal under the Belt and Road Initiative as we signed a Memorandum of Understanding in May to this effect," she said. Ambassador Yu said China has been extending support to Nepal as a very important neighboring country. "China extended 3 billion RMB to Nepal's post-earthquake reconstruction. Our support will be continued in future under the Belt and Road Initiative," she said. The program was attended by political party leaders, civil society members, media persons and various sections of Nepali society. Source: Xinhua| 2017-08-03 22:06:24|Editor: Song Lifang Video Player Close CAPE TOWN, Aug. 3 (Xinhua) -- A South African national who was kidnapped almost six years ago in Mali by Al-Qaeda militants, has been released, it was announced on Thursday. Stephen McGown had been in captivity since November 2011 when he was kidnapped while on holiday in Timbuktu, Mali. He was taken hostage along with Swedish national Johan Gustafsson and Hollander Sjaak Rijke, a Dutch citizen. McGown's family, the South African government and the international community have since then been campaigning for his release. Finally these efforts have culminated in McGown's release, the South African Department of International Relations and Cooperation (DIRCO) said. "We would like to warmly welcome him back home and wish him good health and good fortune in his life as a free man," DIRCO spokesperson Brian Dube said. It is with sadness though that McGown' mother, Beverly passed away in May 2017 without seeing her son again, said Dube. The South African government would like to convey its deepest gratitude to all role players such as the government of Mali, NGOs and individuals for their efforts that eventually secured McGown's release, Dube said. "We call on all South Africans to continue to support him whilst allowing him the space and time he needs to adjust to his environment after years of incarceration," said Dube. Source: Xinhua| 2017-08-03 22:06:26|Editor: Yamei Video Player Close This aerial photo taken on July 28, 2017 shows the new look of Longtoushan Township in Ludian County, southwest China's Yunnan Province. On Aug. 3, 2014, a 6.5-magnitude earthquake jolted Ludian County, killing more than 600 people and destroying about 80,000 homes. (Xinhua/Hu Chao) KUNMING, Aug. 3 (Xinhua) -- Southwest China's Yunnan Province is about to wrap up reconstruction in Ludian county, the epicenter of the deadly Aug. 3, 2014 earthquake, the authority said Thursday. According to the county committee of the Communist Party of China, of the total 489 reconstruction projects, 457 have been completed, and the remaining 32 will be finished by the month end or not long after. The total investment budget for the projects was 7.63 billion yuan (1.13 billion U.S. dollars). House reconstruction for county residents had already been completed in early 2016. With schools, hospitals, office buildings and other infrastructure being built and put into use, the living conditions now exceed levels before the quake. China unveiled a three-year plan in November 2014 to rebuild houses, public utilities, infrastructure and industry. Both central and provincial governments provided financial support. The Magnitude 6.5 quake killed 617 people, with 112 still missing, and destroyed or damaged over 90,000 homes. Source: Xinhua| 2017-08-03 22:11:31|Editor: Yang Yi Vietnamese Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs Pham Binh Minh (1st R) shakes hands with President of the Vietnam-China Friendship Association Nguyen Xuan Thang (2nd R) in Hanoi, Vietnam, Aug. 3, 2017. Reinforcing and bolstering the friendly and cooperative relations between Vietnam and China in a sound, stable manner are in line with principal and long-term benefits of the two peoples, Vietnamese Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs Pham Binh Minh said when addressing the national congress of the Vietnam-China Friendship Association for the 2017-2022 tenure. (Xinhua/Le Yanna) HANOI, Aug. 3 (Xinhua) -- Reinforcing and bolstering the friendly and cooperative relations between Vietnam and China in a sound, stable manner are in line with principal and long-term benefits of the two peoples, Vietnamese deputy prime minister said here on Thursday. It is also beneficial to peace, stability and development of the region as well as the world, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs Pham Binh Minh said when addressing the national congress of the Vietnam-China Friendship Association for the 2017-2022 tenure. "Vietnam treasures the development of friendly and cooperative relations with China, always considering that a strategic choice and a leading priority in Vietnam's foreign policy," the deputy prime minister stated. Friendly exchanges among Vietnamese and Chinese people strengthen the bilateral ties, playing an important part in enhancing mutual trust and understanding, he said. According to the deputy prime minister, to further develop Vietnam-China ties in a more practical and a more comprehensive way, the Vietnam-China Friendship Association should focus on strengthening friendly exchanges, actively contributing to their closer cooperation in various fields, and improving the association's organizational quality and operations. At the congress, Chinese Ambassador to Vietnam Hong Xiaoyong stated that preserving and promoting China-Vietnam friendship are glorious historical responsibility of the two peoples, and it should be brought into full play. China and Vietnam will intensify strategic exchanges and enhance mutual political trust through high-ranking visits and contacts, bolster win-win cooperation through facilitating strategic linkages such as "Belt and Road" initiative, and the "Two Corridors and One Economic Circle" plan, and effectively manage differences through friendly consultations, the Chinese ambassador said. The congress reelected Nguyen Xuan Thang, member of the Communist Party of Vietnam Central Committee, and Director of Ho Chi Minh National Academy of Politics, as president of the Vietnam-China Friendship Association. Source: Xinhua| 2017-08-03 22:16:41|Editor: An Video Player Close BEIJING, Aug. 3 (Xinhua) -- A Chinese official has invited overseas media to cover the upcoming 19th Communist Party of China (CPC) National Congress. Jiang Jianguo, head of the State Council Information Office, made the announcement Thursday during an informal meeting with representatives of overseas media outlets in Beijing. The national congresses, normally held every five years, are major events for the CPC and China with increasing international influence, said Jiang. The 70th anniversary of the CPC as the ruling party is in 2019 and the CPC's centenary is just four years away. Jiang spoke about CPC Central Committee General Secretary Xi Jinping's speech at a workshop for provincial and ministerial officials last Wednesday. The workshop was held to lay the ideological, theoretical and political foundations for the 19th CPC National Congress, said Jiang. "Xi has earned the utmost trust and respect from Party members and the Chinese people," said Jiang. This year's congress is expected to seek solutions to a series of issues concerning the short-term and long-term development of the country, according to Jiang. Attendees of the meeting include representatives of AFP, AP, Asahi Shimbun, Bloomberg, Kyodo, Reuters, TASS and the Wall Street Journal. Source: Xinhua| 2017-08-03 22:26:49|Editor: Song Lifang Video Player Close TOKYO, Aug. 3 (Xinhua) -- Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, amid growing public discontent and mistrust that saw his support rate plummet to historic lows, made a cabinet reshuffle Thursday in a bid to recover confidence. Abe picked a line up of veterans to serve in his new cabinet in a bid to fight shy of further controversies, which arose from a slew of scandals and gaffes involving himself and his ministers. The prime minister's cabinet reshuffle Thursday was as much about damage control in the public's eyes as it was about picking the right lineup to see that solid policy visions are brought through to fruition. He is also appeasing the ruling Liberal Democratic Party's party's inner factions, political watchers here said. CLEANING HOUSE Abe's hand had been forced to some extent and his choices, both in terms of some of his new cabinet picks and executive party lineup choices, were to quash increased disquiet from within the LDP's factions. If left unchecked, the dissatisfaction within the LDP could further wreak havoc on Abe and his somewhat delicate administration, analysts say. Former defense minister Tomomi Inada, a protege of Abe's who has being embroiled in multiple scandals, would have been ousted in the reshuffle had she not resigned last week, political experts have concurred. "I'm not surprised to see Itsunori Onodera handed the defense minister's portfolio as he is a known entity to Abe as he will be serving in this capacity for a second time. At a time when Japan is dealing with regional geopolitical situations, the public has been incensed that Inada wasn't booted out earlier," political commentator and Shizuoka-based author Philip McNeil told Xinhua. In the public's eyes, the defense ministry is now, ostensibly, in a "solid" pair of hands, those of an experienced minister who has a proven track record, said McNeil. "Onodera will now be charged with shoring up the ministry and making sure the coverup scandal will remain a thing of the past," McNeil said. "You simply can't have a scandal-tainted defense ministry as the public has hit the panic button. Abe seems to have cleaned house here to an extent," he added. More house cleaning had to take place at the education ministry, experts also said, as the influence-peddling scandal needs to be resolved. The scandal involved Kake Educational Institution, run by a close friend of Abe's, being picked to open a new school in a special deregulated zone. Considering the prime minister himself is implicated in the Kake scandal, political watchers said it came as no surprise that Yoshimasa Hayashi will be taking over as education minister, as he's another veteran who previously served in numerous cabinet positions including as defense minister and farm minister. Those who have come under close scrutiny over the Kake ordeal were also removed from the spotlight, McNeil said. Again, this is an example of Abe bringing in veterans who purportedly run tight ships to rekindle public support, he explained. Former education minister Kozo Yamamoto, who had been embroiled in the Kake scandal, has been replaced as state minister in charge of regional revitalization and Koichi Hagiuda, switched out as deputy chief Cabinet secretary for the same reason, McNeil said. MAVERICK ENVOY Meanwhile, Abe's selection of Taro Kono, former minister in charge of administrative reform, to take over the foreign minister portfolio from Fumio Kishida, took some political watchers by surprise, in as much as Kishida, a potential future rival of Abe's for the party leadership, has been allowed to write his own ticket. Kishida will now chair the party's Policy Research Council and according to sources close to the matter had told Abe he wanted the senior party post, with such tenures often a stepping stone to leadership positions. "The Kishida-Kono switch is an interesting one as they either have been or are potential threats to Abe's leadership, a point the prime minister may have conceded and a move that keeps them both onside," said independent political analyst Teruhisa Muramatsu. Kono is the son of Yohei Kono, who in 1993 as Chief Cabinet Secretary issued the landmark Kono Statement, which admits and apologizes for the Imperial Japanese Army coercing and forcibly recruiting "comfort women" to work in military brothels during World War II. "While he may be seen as one of the only mavericks in his cabinet role, both in terms of experience and his willingness to shoot from the hip, the Georgetown University graduate who was an aide in Washington and still has close ties there, could steer foreign diplomacy in a positive direction," Muramatsu said. "While he might be known for being a fervid negotiator and for speaking his mind, it's his open-mindedness that may give Japan's foreign diplomacy, especially concerning regional issues, a slightly softer and congenial impression, which might not be such a bad thing," Muramatsu added. BALANCING ACT Abe, as widely expected, retained a number of his key members and closest allies, including Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister Taro Aso as well as Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga to show a semblance of continuity, stability and aptitude. But experts have noted that compromises were made to ensure more unity between and within the LDP's factions, with Kishida's voluntary exit from the cabinet and Seiko Noda's reappearance being examples of this. Noda, who will serve as minister of internal affairs and communications, is another potential rival of Abe's when it comes to the future premiership. According to analysts, she was picked on merit and due to internal party politics. "It's basically politics within politics. Abe needs to restore public support well ahead of the next general election in 2018, but unlike previous reshuffles he no longer has the gravitas to pick and choose completely at will," said McNeil. "Abe is still intent on his singular mission of revising Japan's pacifist Constitution and in order to achieve this and secure the majorities he needs in parliament as well as the public backing, he needs to balance public support with his party's support, both of which are onerous tasks," Mc Neil said. Abe's first stint at the helm ended, in part, for health reasons, but also because his party at the time was in disarray on the back of a heavy (upper house) election loss and a political funds scandal. "Sound familiar?" concluded McNeil. Source: Xinhua| 2017-08-03 22:31:51|Editor: Yang Yi Video Player Close LUSAKA, Aug. 3 (Xinhua) -- Zambia's favorable natural conditions for agricultural development and China's cutting edge in capital, technology and experience present a great opportunity for the two countries to increase cooperation in the agricultural sector, a top Chinese official said on Thursday. Yang Youming, Chinese Ambassador to Zambia said there was a great possibility for the two countries to complement each other to cement cooperation in agricultural sector. "I believe that, with the joint efforts of China and Zambia, the agricultural cooperation between our two countries will yield more extensive and fruitful results," Yang said at the official opening of the China-African Agriculture Cooperation and Development Summit, organized by the China Agriculture Film and Television Center and Global Max Media Group in collaboration with the Agricultural and Commercial Society of Zambia. China, he said, will continue to encourage its enterprises to invest in Zambia's agricultural sector and urged the enterprises to seize the opportunities to exploit the southern African nation's vast potential in the sector. The Chinese envoy explained that a lot has been done between the two countries in the development of the agriculture sector in the southern African nation. He cited the establishment of the China Aid-Zambia Agricultural Technical Demonstration Center in 2012, which is one of the 14 demonstration centers in Africa, has one of the best cooperation areas in the sector. Since its establishment, over 1,000 Zambian agricultural technicians have been trained at the center by Chinese experts while the center has also carried out fruitful cooperation with the country's institutes such as the University of Zambia (UNZA) as well as other agricultural research institutions. He further revealed that China has provided concessional loans for the development of Zambia's agricultural infrastructure projects such as helping the government build nine large-scale silos, which have alleviated the storage shortage, a project to sink over 1,000 boreholes in rural areas while discussions for the investment in three China-aided large-scale milling have been concluded and actual construction is expected to start soon. The Chinese envoy further noted that his government has helped in building the capacity of human resource in Zambia's agriculture sector and that China currently provides about 100 opportunities for trainings in the sector. About 500 Zambians specialized in agricultural sector have so far received training in China, he added. According to him, about 20 Chinese firms have invested in Zambia's agriculture sector and were involved in the cultivation of over 10,000 hectares of land. Dora Siliya, Minister of Agriculture in Zambia said the southern African nation will remain indebted to China over its unparalleled support to development. She said China has helped the country in various sectors, including agriculture and that currently discussions were underway for the development of a modern farming block in the northern part of the country. Zambia, she said, was keen to learn from China's vast experience in the agriculture sector as the country plans to diversify agricultural production which has mainly concentrated on maize growing. Source: Xinhua| 2017-08-03 22:36:57|Editor: ying Video Player Close By Eric J. Lyman ROME, Aug. 3 (Xinhua) -- France's decision to nationalize a key shipyard rather than let an Italian company take control is stoking anger in Italy, and analysts told Xinhua the move could add more stress to already-strained relations between the two European Union (EU) states. The latest news is that the French state would nationalize the STX shipyard near the city of Saint-Nazaire, on France's Atlantic coast. This came after the Italian port operator Fincantieri was the only qualifying bidder to take over the concession. Bruno Le Maire, France's minister of finance, said the decision was made in order to "defend France's strategic interest in shipbuilding." Fincantieri and Italian government officials cried foul, noting that the previous concession was held by a Korean firm, and stressing that if national interests were at play, the concession should have never been opened up for bidding. Pier Carlo Padoan, Le Maire's Italian counterpart, said there was "no reason" Fincantieri shouldn't be allowed to operate the STX shipyard, and Carlo Calenda, Italy's minister for economic development, criticized Le Maire for changing the terms of the deal first laid out by Francois Hollande, France's previous president. Carlo Altomonte, a political scientist at Milan's Bocconi University, said in an interview that he believed increasing geopolitical uncertainty likely prompted France's decision. "It's wrong to look at this as a commercial problem," Altomonte said. "It's a security problem, a military problem." But Altomonte is in a minority in Italy, where many analysts say the French move could have lasting international implications. "There was a period after Emmanuel Macron was elected president that people thought he might be the new face of Europe," Antonio Villafranca, research coordinator and the head of the European Program at the Institute for International Political Studies, told Xinhua. He was referring to the May election Macron won to succeed Hollande. "But Macron's looking out for national priorities," he said, adding "He wants what's best for France, not what's best for Europe." Villafranca said weaker ties between European states could have an impact as countries try to grapple with major problems like migration, security, and economic growth. "I think may people expect greater collaboration from a man who ran for president on a pro-European platform," Villafranca said. According to Marco Angelo Gervasoni, an expert on the comparative history of political systems at Rome's LUISS University, European countries have been drifting farther apart for some time. "This isn't a problem that started because of the STX shipyard," Gervasoni said in an interview. "There's been tension for some time. Look at the Brexit vote, look at the debates over migration. These things don't happen in a union that is growing closer together." Gervasoni added that Macron's image in Italy could be another causality of the latest developments. Up until two weeks ago, Macron was very popular in Italy, according to the professor. "Now, not nearly so much." Source: Xinhua| 2017-08-03 22:52:08|Editor: yan Video Player Close BERLIN, Aug. 3 (Xinhua) -- Seventeen German companies are to announce the site of a new lithium-ion battery plant, Bloomberg reported on Thursday. The group, led by former ThyssenKrupp AG manager Holger Gritzka, has formed the company Terra E Holding GmbH in a bid to break the dominance of Korean companies LG and Samsung in the electricity storage market. The project has won the backing of the German government and will begin in late 2019 and reach full capacity in 2028, according to Gritzka. The plans underline the German automotive industry's desire to re-orient itself towards cleaner technologies in the wake of the global "dieselgate" scandal. Lithium-ion batteries are crucial to electric mobility as well as offering a means to stabilize intermittent flows of wind and solar power on electricity networks. Millions of cars manufactured in Germany are projected to be powered by such batteries. "We have to be better in process technology than competitors, a constant step ahead," Gritzka told Bloomberg. The project was awarded 5.2 million euros (6.16 million U.S. dollars) in subsidies from the German ministry of education and research. More than a billion euros in total are needed to complete the plant. Gritzka said he hoped German Chancellor Angela Merkel's endorsement of the company and government subsidies for research would lure strategic investors. Source: Xinhua| 2017-08-03 23:07:18|Editor: Yang Yi Video Player Close BEIJING, Aug. 3 (Xinhua) -- China on Thursday voiced appreciation of Turkey's decision to list the East Turkistan Islamic Movement (ETIM) as a terrorist organization. During a meeting between Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi and Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu, the two sides agreed that anti-terrorism cooperation and common security are in their fundamental interests and the core of political mutual trust. China firmly supports Turkey's defence of its national sovereignty, security and stability, said Wang. Cavusoglu said Turkey regards China's security as its own and will never allow any activities in Turkish territory that jeopardize China's sovereignty and security. The two sides agreed to improve cooperation and alignment between the Belt and Road Initiative and Turkey's Middle Corridor plan, according to Wang. Stressing Turkey's geographic importance to the Belt and Road initiative, Wang said China will work with Turkey to expand areas of cooperation in the process of promoting the Belt and Road construction. The two sides also discussed the Palestine-Israel issue, with Wang saying the only way out is peace talks. During Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas' visit to China in July, President Xi Jinping made a four-point proposal on the issue and China has taken measures to implement Xi's ideas, said Wang. He said China would like to work with Turkey, which has a unique role to play, and other parties to make unremitting efforts to fundamentally solve the issue. Cavusoglu is paying an official visit to China from Wednesday to Thursday. During the visit, he and Wang co-hosted the second meeting of the China-Turkey foreign ministers' consultation mechanism. Source: Xinhua| 2017-08-03 23:12:22|Editor: ying Video Player Close BRUSSELS, Aug. 3 (Xinhua) -- NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg on Thursday condemned the attack on a NATO convoy in the Kandahar province of Afghanistan. Stoltenberg said in a statement that two U.S. soldiers died and four more were wounded in Wednesday's attack. "This cowardly and brutal attack will not deter us in our mission to help the Afghan security forces stabilize their country, and prevent it from ever again becoming a safe haven for international terrorism," NATO chief said. Currently, around 13,000 troops from 39 NATO and partner countries are in Afghanistan, training the Afghan forces within the framework of NATO-led Resolute Support mission. Source: Xinhua| 2017-08-03 23:22:24|Editor: ying Video Player Close TIRANA, Aug. 3 (Xinhua) -- Massive wildfires which have raged in Albania for weeks reached a critical point on Thursday, forcing Albanian authorities to seek support from Greece and Italy. Albanian Foreign Minister Ditmir Bushati asked Greece and Italy to send airplanes as it is the only way to help Albanian firefighters battle fires and put flames under control, the Albanian ministry informed in a press release Thursday. Two airplanes from Greece and others from Italy are to be sent. In the meantime, Albanian emergency authorities informed that 25 fires had broken out in the last 24 hours in different districts of Albania. Around 200 military personnel, 150 firefighters, and many experts from other state agencies are battling fires, but due to the complex terrain in several spots, they have sought intervention from the air. Albania's interior minister made a strong statement earlier in the day, threatening severe punishment to anyone deliberately setting fires. According to police, most of the fires were deliberately set, while the hot weather has furthered their spread. Source: Xinhua| 2017-08-03 23:32:30|Editor: yan Video Player Close ULAN BATOR, Aug. 3 (Xinhua) -- The Central Bank of Mongolia has issued a commemorative coin dedicated to the Gobi brown bear which is on the verge of extinction. The coin made of pure silver has the shape of a circle with a diameter of 38.61 mm and a price of 300,000 togrog (122 U.S. dollars). An image of the Gobi brown bear, which lives only in the Mongolian Gobi Desert, together with the inscriptions "Mongolia," "Central Bank of Mongolia" and the year, "2017," are on the front side of the coin. The Central Bank said that the coin was issued to raise public awareness of protecting the critically endangered bear. According to experts, there are now only 22 to 30 Gobi brown bears in Mongolia. Source: Xinhua| 2017-08-03 23:37:32|Editor: Yang Yi Video Player Close BEIJING, Aug. 3 (Xinhua) -- As China's "new economy" goes from strength to strength, more and more foreign firms are jumping in for a slice of the pie. Shared bikes flood the city streets, diners pay for meals on their smartphones, electric cars whizz down the roads: in the rapidly shifting picture of China's new economy, foreign companies are not absent. Apple is betting big on this emerging market. Two weeks ago, its mobile payment service Apple Pay launched its largest-scale marketing campaign since entering China, offering perks including up to 50 percent discounts on purchases for a week. Despite a much smaller presence than its Chinese rivals Alipay and WeChat Pay, the country's massive mobile payment market is hard to ignore for the U.S. tech giant. The general merchandise volume of China's third-party mobile payments reached 38 trillion yuan (5.7 trillion U.S. dollars) in 2016, up more than 200 percent from 2015, according to estimates by consultancy iResearch. Apple's interest is not just in mobile payments. Last year, it made an investment of 1 billion dollars in Chinese on-demand mobility provider Didi Chuxing. This spring, Apple CEO Tim Cook visited bike-sharing start-up Ofo during his China tour. The sharing economy is taking off in China, so is its appeal to foreign investors. The country's top bike-sharing companies, Ofo and Mobike, have attracted investment from the United States, Japan, Singapore and elsewhere. Some foreign firms see business opportunities come in an indirect way. One example is the U.S.-funded Dow Chemical (China) Investment Company, which signed a memorandum of understanding with Mobike in May to help the latter develop lighter and more eco-friendly shared bikes. U.S. home-sharing company Airbnb has said it plans to more than triple the size of its China workforce this year and double its investment in the market to better serve Chinese travelers. E-commerce is another success story in China's new economy. Online retail sales reached 3.1 trillion yuan in the first half of this year, a surge of 33.4 percent from a year earlier. While Chinese firms Alibaba and JD.com grab the limelight, their U.S. rival Amazon is also doing well. On Black Friday last year, sales at Amazon China doubled from a year earlier, according to a company report. The number of active users of its cross-border shopping service soared 22 times by December 2016 from two years earlier. In a move to tap deeper into China's Internet economy, Amazon in June partnered with Migu, a China Mobile subsidiary with one of the country' s largest mobile reading platforms, to launch a new Kindle exclusively for Chinese readers. China's spectacular growth used to be built on cheap manufacturing, low-end exports and smokestack industries. Now, with a wealthier domestic consumer base as well as technological progress, it is reconfiguring the economy for more consumption, more innovation and less pollution. The sight of new energy vehicles (NEVs) on China's roads is increasingly common. About 510,000 NEVs were sold in China last year, up 53 percent year on year, and the number is expected to hit 800,000 this year, according to the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers. International brands are doubling down on the market. Tesla has Asia's largest supercharger station in Beijing and plans to add over 300 supercharger stalls in the country this year, more than the combined increment of the past two years. Denmark-based world-leading biotechnology company Novozymes sees long-term opportunities in China's industrial biotechnology sector as China transits to a greener, innovation-driven economy. "We believe China's efforts to build up an inclusive business environment, and the relentless efforts to drive supply-side reform with an emphasis on sustainable growth, will lead to more business opportunities," said Sara Dai, Novozymes regional president of Asia Pacific. Official data also showed growing foreign interest in China's new economy. In the first half of 2017, foreign direct investment (FDI) into China's high-tech manufacturing and services rose 11.1 percent and 20.4 percent year on year, respectively. During the same period, FDI in information technology services, a significant part of the new economy, jumped 35.6 percent year on year, said Gao Feng, spokesperson of the Ministry of Commerce. Singapore investment firm Temasek Holdings wants to increase investment in China's new economy, said Wu Yibing, Temasek's joint head of China. The transition of China's economy has brought about a number of very attractive sectors including high-tech, non-banking finance, life science and consumption, Wu said. Source: Xinhua| 2017-08-03 23:47:37|Editor: ying Video Player Close BEIJING, Aug. 3 (Xinhua) -- Indian troops' trespassing into Chinese territory is irresponsible and reckless, the Chinese Foreign Ministry said Thursday. Spokesperson Geng Shuang made the remarks in response to a question regarding China's road building in the Dong Lang area, mentioned in a position document on the border incident. The document, "The Facts and China's Position Concerning the Indian Border Troops' Crossing of the China-India Boundary in the Sikkim Sector into the Chinese Territory," was released Wednesday. According to the document, road building in the Dong Lang area on the Chinese side of the Sikkim Sector of the boundary aims to improve local transportation, help local herdsmen and facilitate border patrols. "China had notified the Indian side about the road works through the border meeting mechanism on May 18 and June 8 and the Indian side did not make any response," Geng said. Over 270 Indian troops crossed the border on June 18. "As of August 2, there were still 48 Indian troops and one bulldozer in Chinese territory," he said, adding that there are still a large number of Indian armed forces congregated on the Indian side of the boundary. India ignored existing mechanisms and channels and flagrantly dispatched armed troops into China and have refused to withdraw, Geng said, calling it illegal under international law. In response to China's position document, the Indian Ministry of External Affairs said that peace and tranquility on the India-China boundary was an important prerequisite for the smooth development of bilateral relations. Geng said the Indian side is always keeping "peace" on the tip of its tongue. "But we should not only listen to its words but also heed its deeds," he said, noting the Chinese side maintains that relevant facts cannot be ignored. Firstly, out of goodwill, China had notified the Indian side in advance through border meeting mechanism on May 18 and June 8 respectively. However, the Indian side didn't make any response to the Chinese side through any channel for over one month. Instead, it flagrantly dispatched armed forces carrying equipment to illegally cross the boundary to obstruct China's road building. "This is by no means for peace," he said. Secondly, over one month has passed since the outbreak of the incident. The Indian border troops still illegally stay in the Chinese territory. Moreover, the Indian side is building roads, hoarding supplies and deploying a large number of armed forces on the Indian side of the boundary. "This is by no means for peace," he said. Thirdly, the fact that the Indian border troops illegally trespassed the boundary is irrefutable. Under such circumstances, instead of deeply reflecting on its mistakes, the Indian side fabricated such sheer fallacies as the so-called "security concerns", the "issue of tri-junction" and "at the request of Bhutan" as excuses to justify its wrongdoing. "This is by no means for peace," said Geng. Fourthly, the Chinese side has made serious representations with the Indian side through diplomatic channels for multiple times. Under such circumstances, the Indian side, rather than withdraw its trespassing troops and equipment, made unreasonable demands to China which demonstrated its lack of sincerity for resolving the incident. "This is by no means for peace," said Geng. "If the Indian side truly cherishes peace, what it should do is to immediately pull back the trespassing border troops to the Indian side of the boundary," said Geng. Source: Xinhua| 2017-08-03 23:47:38|Editor: Xiang Bo Sudan's Foreign Minister Ibrahim Ghandour (R) and his Egyptian counterpart Sameh Shoukry attend a press conference for meetings of the joint political consultation committee between Sudan and Egypt in Khartoum, capital of Sudan, Aug. 3, 2017. Sudan and Egypt on Thursday reiterated commitment to enhancing cooperation and overcoming any barriers obstructing their historical ties. (Xinhua/Mohamed Babkir) KHARTOUM, Aug. 3 (Xinhua) -- Sudan and Egypt on Thursday reiterated commitment to enhancing cooperation and overcoming any barriers obstructing their historical ties. Meetings of the joint political consultation committee between Sudan and Egypt on Thursday convened in the Sudanese capital Khartoum, chaired by Sudan's Foreign Minister Ibrahim Ghandour and his Egyptian counterpart Sameh Shoukry. Speaking at a joint press conference, the two ministers regarded the meetings as evidence of willingness of the two countries' leadership to enhance bilateral relations. The two ministers reiterated importance of continued coordination between the two countries' foreign ministries and the concerned bodies and institutions to achieve common benefits of the two peoples. They further stressed commitment to working together to find solutions for all the issues obstructing the historical ties between Sudan and Egypt. The two ministers also stressed the importance of security and military cooperation as the two countries are strategic to each other. The Sudanese-Egyptian political consultation committee is one of the committees emanating from the higher presidential committee between the two countries, which held its first meeting in Cairo in October 2016. In 2004, Sudan and Egypt signed an agreement of the four freedoms, which avails the citizens of the two countries freedoms of work, movement, residence and ownership. Khartoum said it has fully implemented the agreement since it was signed, while Cairo continued to impose entry-visa on Sudanese aged between 18 and 50 years old. However, in April 2017, Khartoum also started imposing entry visa on Egyptians who want to enter Sudan. Source: Xinhua| 2017-08-03 23:52:42|Editor: yan Video Player Close BRATISLAVA, Aug. 3 (Xinhua) -- The first 10 Slovak military police officers left for the Mediterranean this week to serve in the EU mission EUNAVFOR MED Operation Sophia. The Slovak officers, as part of a German ship crew, will monitor Libyan shores and meet tasks related to illegal migration in the area. The main task of the mission will be maintaining security in the southern part of the Mediterranean with an emphasis on illegal migration and illegal arms trafficking. "We're not indifferent to security in the union and, as its member, we'll participate in the operation," announced Slovak Defence Minister Peter Gajdos in a send-off message to the soldiers on Thursday. Training of the coastal guard in Libya will also form a part of the operation, said Gajdos. The officers will remain in the Mediterranean for six months, after which they will be replaced by another 10 officers. Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and Iran's President Hassan Rouhani attend an endorsement ceremony for Rouhani as a president, in Tehran, Iran, August 3, 2017. (Reuters photo) TEHRAN, Aug. 3 (Xinhua) -- Iran on Thursday denounced the recent endorsement of new sanctions against the Islamic republic by the U.S. president, saying that it violates nuclear deal. In a statement, Iranian Foreign Ministry Spokesman, Bahram Qasemi, condemned Donald Trump's signing of new sanctions against the Islamic republic as "illegitimate." Iran reserves the right to respond to Washington's "hostile" measures against Tehran, it said. Trump on Wednesday signed a sanctions bill on Russia, Iran and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. In a statement released by the White House, Trump said he favoured tough measures to "punish and deter bad behavior" by Iran. Sanctions against Iran are mainly in response to Tehran's growing missile program. Tehran has emphasized that its ballistic missile advancement is for deterrent purposes and the country will never negotiate over it. "The U.S. move is illegitimate, illogical and contrary to all the human principles as well as the international laws," Qasemi was quoted as saying by the ministry's website. Washington's anti-Iran action is another instance of U.S. enmity with the Iranians, he said, adding that it is also an insult to the world consciousness. Qasemi noted that other countries, involved in signing the Iran's nuclear deal two years ago, also disapprove the "U.S. unilateral" measures in exerting pressures against Tehran. "The Islamic Republic of Iran will not remain tight-lipped in the face of the U.S. violation of the nuclear deal, also known as JCPOA, and the Iranian parliament and government will soon announce a series of reciprocal measures," he was quoted as saying. However, Iran will not fall pray to the U.S. and Israeli plots to ignore and violate JCPOA, he stressed. The Iranian officials have said that by new round of sanctions against Tehran, the U.S. administration is seeking to provoke Iran to withdraw from the 2015 deal which put an end to the decade-long disputes of Tehran's sensitive nuclear program. On Wednesday, the Secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council, Ali Shamkhani, said that "United States wants to pull out of the nuclear deal by holding Iran responsible for that, but Tehran will not give Washington the chance of being the first to drop the deal," according to semi-official Mehr news agency. Besides, Iran's Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi accused the United States of violating the JCOPA by renewing sanctions against the Islamic republic, Mehr reported on Thursday. "In our eyes, the JCOPA has been violated (by the United States), and we will give deserved response," Araqchi was quoted as saying. The signing of fresh anti-Iran sanctions by Trump is an attempt to destroy the JCOPA, Araqchi, who is also Iran's senior nuclear negotiator, said. Washington believes the JCPOA has strengthened Iran in the region, he said, adding "they think that this situation must be reversed and Iran must be put under pressure." Imposing fresh sanctions on Iran is an attempt to reduce Tehran's benefits from the nuclear deal and to negatively affect its "successful implementation," he said, according to Press TV. Araqchi also said that, in a committee chaired by Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, several decisions were made over reactions towards Washington's "provocative measures," which will be duly handed over to the Iranian Foreign Ministry and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). Iran and six world powers, namely Britain, China, France, Germany, Russia and the United States, reached an agreement on the Iranian nuclear issue in July 2015, which put Tehran on the path of sanctions relief but with more strict limits on its nuclear program. On Thursday, Qasemi reiterated that "Iran has stood up to the United States' hostile moves and is pressing ahead with its efforts to ensure stability and security, and to fight against terrorism in the region," he noted. "Iran will, by no means, allow the expansionist and destabilizing policies of others to bear fruit," said Qasemi. Source: Xinhua| 2017-08-03 23:57:47|Editor: yan Video Player Close ISTANBUL, Aug. 3 (Xinhua) -- Turkish and Qatari economy ministers on Thursday pledged to boost bilateral trade and investment at a business forum. The two ministers, accompanied by a total of 250 businessmen from various sectors, met in the Turkish western city of Izmir to develop "productive alliances." "As governments our only function is to bring our businessmen together," Turkish Economy Minister Nihat Zeybekci said at the forum. "Turkish economy can satisfy all the needs of Qatar from food to tourism, from construction to energy," he added. Addressing to the forum, Qatari Economy and Commerce Minister Sheikh Ahmed bin Jassim bin Mohammed Al-Thani said the two countries will be stronger through the establishment of high-level cooperation when facing problems in the future, local media reported. "Increasing our trade volume and boosting successful investments will also strengthen our economies," Al-Thani added. The trade volume between the two countries achieved 554 million U.S. dollars during the first half of this year, according to Turkish state-run Anadolu agency. Al-Thani also praised the role of Qatari and Turkish private sectors in breaking the blockade imposed on his country by several Arab states in early June, Anadolu said. Turkey has sent a total of 221 cargo planes of daily used items to Qatar since the blockade, according to the figure released by Zeybekci at the forum. The Saudi-led Arab quartet, including the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Egypt, cut their diplomatic ties with Qatar on June 5 and imposed a blockade on it, accusing the latter of supporting terrorism and interfering with their internal affairs, which Doha has repeatedly denied. Source: Xinhua| 2017-08-04 00:17:55|Editor: Yang Yi Video Player Close by Zheng Jianghua BRUSSELS, Aug. 3 (Xinhua) ---- The newly--adopted U.S. sanctions against Russia sparked a backlash in the European Union (EU) and risks further damaging transatlantic relations, which have already been soured since Donald Trump took office, a senior analyst cautioned. Critics of Nord Stream--2, a twin pipeline system via the Baltic Sea transporting natural gas from Russia to the EU, will "view the U.S. sanctions as a chance to put pressure on Berlin to end its support for the project," wrote Judy Dempsey, non--resident senior fellow of Brussels--based think tank Carnegie Europe, underscoring that the European unity is at stake. In the wake of Trump signing into law a sanctions bill against countries of Russia, Iran and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), European Commission President Jean Claude--Juncker on Wednesday warned that the EU was ready to take "appropriate steps" if European firms' interests are undermined. Prior to Trump's grudging green--light to the bill, the U.S. House of Representatives in a rare bipartisan move approved the sanctions bill by a vote of 419 to 3 with the Senate passing the bill by 98 to 2. The near--unanimous congressional approval indicated a bipartisan consensus to punish Russia for the Ukraine crisis and its alleged meddling in the 2016 presidential election, which Moscow had for long been strongly denied. Trump described the bill as "seriously flawed," but still signed it "for the sake of national unity." Under the bill, companies supporting Russia in building energy export pipelines would be fined, a prospect that irks the EU as five European energy companies are involved in the Russia energy giant Gazprom--led Nord Stream--2 project. The project aims to expand an existing gas pipeline from Russia to Germany under the Baltic Sea, bypassing the territory of Ukraine, Poland and the Baltic states. Supporters of Nord Stream 2, notably Germany and Austria, argue that the project will diversify the EU's gas imports at a time when the bloc's own gas production is dwindling. Critics such as Poland, Slovakia and the Baltic states, regard it as a geopolitical project contradicting the plan to create the European energy union and lessen Europe's overreliance on Russian gas. Moreover, Ukraine, the current major transit country for Russian gas exports to Europe, dreads losing transit fees once the project is set in motion at the end of 2019, when Ukraine's gas transit agreement with Russia's Gazprom expires. Russia then plans to switch its gas transit route for European countries to the Turkish Stream and Nord Stream routes, bypassing Ukraine. But the fallout of the U.S. sanctions bill goes far beyond the Nord Stream--2, Dempsey noted, underlining that European firm working with Russian energy company Lukoil, which is developing the large Shah Deniz gas field in Azerbaijan, would also be fined. The Southern Corridor, which would be fed gas from the Shah Deniz field, thus would be affected by the sanctions, imperiling Europe's energy security and diversification, Dempsey wrote, noting that U.S. energy companies will cash in on the sanctions. "When the new U.S. sanctions bill was first unveiled, Germany and Austria accused Washington of using the measures to allow U.S. energy companies to enter the lucrative European market by shipping liquefied natural gas to new terminals in Europe and thus make up any shortfall in Russian gas imports," Dempsey wrote. "The reaction from the commission is understandable. The U.S. measures hit European interests. The sanctions serve the interests of American companies that want to expand their presence in Europe," Dempsey added. The EU has been unnerved by the Trump administration's unremitting call for scaling up their defense spending to meet NATO's threshold of 2 percent of GDP. Brussels also bristled at Washington's decision to withdraw from the Paris agreement on climate change. Whether the Unites states will enact the new sanctions against Russia heedless of EU interests and what "appropriate steps" the EU will take are mooted points at this stage, but the bill has cast a heavy shadow, again, over transatlantic relations. Source: Xinhua| 2017-08-04 00:28:09|Editor: ying Video Player Close AMMAN, Aug. 3 (Xinhua) -- Jordan on Thursday pledged continued support to the steadfastness of the Palestinians in "safeguarding Al-Aqsa Mosque", state-run Petra news agency reported. King Abdullah II of Jordan donated one million Jordanian dinars (1.41 million U.S. dollars) to the Awqaf department in Jerusalem, Minister of State for Media Affairs Mohammad Momani said at a press conference. Stressing Jordan's historical role in safeguarding the holy mosque, Momani said Jordan makes this task its top priority. Jordan's support to Awqaf department is meant to support its efforts in the holy city and to enable it to stand up to Israeli attempts to alter the status quo in Jerusalem, he added. Jordan, which signed a peace treaty with Israel in 1994, oversees the holy sites in East Jerusalem, which is seen as the future capital of the Palestinian state. Jordan's pressure on Israel over the past few weeks has led to the removal of metal detectors at the entrances to the mosque and its reopening to worshippers. Source: Xinhua| 2017-08-04 00:33:11|Editor: ying Video Player Close CHENGDU, Aug. 3 (Xinhua) -- A total of 58 suspects in a cross-border telecom scam were brought back to Chengdu in southwest China from Indonesia by air Thursday. Victims in Meishan city, Sichuan Province were swindled out of over 6 million yuan (900,000 U.S. dollars) by a series of phone and wire frauds on May 24. On June 23, police arrested seven suspects making fake phone cards and credit cards in Chengdu and southeast China's Xiamen, and seized over 1.3 million yuan. Interrogation led police to a gang of accomplices in Indonesia. Two teams of police officers were went to Indonesia in June and July. With the support of the local police, 68 suspects of two groups were rounded up in Bali and Surabaya, of whom 58 were brought back to China Thursday. On July 27, an unrelated group of 17 telecom fraud suspects in a separate case were brought back from Cambodia. Source: Xinhua| 2017-08-04 00:33:18|Editor: ying Video Player Close SINGAPORE, Aug. 3 (Xinhua) -- Chief Executive of China's Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor and Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong on Thursday explored collaboration opportunities between the two sides under the Belt and Road Initiative at their meeting here. They also discussed deepening Singapore-Hong Kong and ASEAN-Hong Kong cooperation in various areas, including trade and investment, finance and civil aviation, according to a statement from Singaporean government. The two leaders reaffirmed the close relations between Singapore and Hong Kong and noted that Hong Kong and Singapore share many similarities and same challenges. The leaders agreed that despite competition in some areas, the two places have potential to cooperate in many fields, saying they were looking forward to the signing and early implementation of the free trade agreement between Hong Kong and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). Lam, who arrived in Singapore on Wednesday for a two-day visit, also met with Singapore's Deputy Prime Minister Teo Chee Hean, who expressed confidence that Hong Kong will continue to prosper with its increasing integration into the Chinese mainland, especially with the establishment of the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area. China is planning to develop a city cluster in the Greater Bay Area comprising Hong Kong, Macao and nine cities in Guangdong Province, to play to the distinctive strengths of Hong Kong and Macao and elevate their positions and roles in the mainland's development and opening up drive. On Thursday morning, Lam visited Singapore's Urban Redevelopment Authority, the Civil Service College and the GovTech Hive. Lam disclosed that she will push to build a civil service academy in Hong Kong, similar to Singapore's Civil Service College, to provide training and experience for Hong Kong residents in civil service. This has been Lam's first official visit outside HKSAR since she assumed the post of Hong Kong's chief executive on July 1. She will also visit Thailand. Source: Xinhua| 2017-08-04 01:08:30|Editor: ying Video Player Close SOFIA, Aug. 3 (Xinhua) -- Officials between China and Bulgaria have met to discuss cooperation expansion between the two sides on economy, trade and technology, Bulgaria's Ministry of Economy said in a statement on Thursday. The meeting held between Bulgaria's Minister of Economy Emil Karanikolov and Chinese Ambassador to the Balkan country Zhang Haizhou discussed possibilities for the participation of Chinese high-tech companies in Sofia Tech Park, the first state-owned science and technology park in Bulgaria. Sofia Tech Park could provide good conditions for Chinese companies and institutes, who are planning to expand their research and development centers in Europe, the statement quoted the minister as saying. Chinese high-tech companies could set up their own or joint laboratories for research and innovation, as well as demonstration areas, added Karanikolov. Ambassador Zhang said in turn that China was currently pushing technology parks to create incubators in Bulgaria, according to the statement. The meeting also discussed options for strengthening bilateral economic and trade cooperation, the statement said. On Trade, the Chinese ambassador said that Bulgaria should increase its exports to China to achieve trade balance between the two countries. "The Chinese side attaches great importance to Bulgarian agricultural products," the ambassador noted. Bulgarian exports to China grew from 78 million U.S. dollars in 2006 to nearly 480 million dollars in 2016, the statement said. Meanwhile, imports from China to Bulgaria amounted to 961 million dollars in 2006, and 1.149 billion dollars in 2016, it added. Source: Xinhua| 2017-08-04 01:08:32|Editor: ying Video Player Close by Eric J. Lyman ROME, Aug. 3 (Xinhua) -- The newly-elected head of the Rome-based International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) Gilbert Houngbo said in an exclusive interview with Xinhua that China's success in raising millions out of poverty over the last two generations can make it a useful model for other economies in transition. "Even as a symbol, China's economic transition offers hope to other developing countries that want to do the same thing," the IFAD chief said in the interview. "In specific terms, there are lessons China has learned, technologies developed, for example, or ways to adapt to floods or drought, that can be very helpful when applied in other places," said Houngbo, who's a former prime minister of Togo. "China experiences many of the challenging issues faced by both developed and developing countries," Houngbo said. He cited China's urbanization process as an example, saying the "tremendous economic growth" China experienced in recent decades presents it with an unusual set of difficulties, such as large numbers of would-be farmers leaving the countryside for urban areas. Over time, a trend like that reduces the number of people left to grow food. "There are 3 million or more Chinese who move into cities every year," Houngbo said, adding "That's an astonishing number: every three years or so, it adds up to more than the entire population of my native country, Togo." The IFAD chief gave his own advices on China's urbanization, calling for more infrastructure building for people living rural areas. "The best way to solve that specific problem is to provide social protection and services like fast internet or access to medical care outside urban centers to act as an incentive for people to stay in rural regions," Houngbo said. Houngbo is on a multiple-country trip, which will take him to African countries like Botswana and Zambia. He will also make stops in Sweden, Denmark and Finland, before finishing the month with a trip to China. The China trip is a key one, Houngbo told Xinhua, noting that the country is one of a small handful in the world that is both a major borrower from IFAD and a major contributor. Having 176 members, IFAD has been working to combat poverty and malnutrition in developing countries through agriculture assistance. Faced with the challenges of helping the world's poor-fed population, the organization's 10th three-year budget period concludes at the end of next year, forcing it to gear up its fund-raising efforts for a new budget period. And the final year of each budget period is the key year when countries are making their pledges for the next three-year cycle. The IFAD chief also warned of an upcoming more difficult time for farmers, citing rising temperatures and unpredictable weather patterns as reasons. Houngbo, 56, previously worked for the United Nations Development Program and the International Labor Office, but became the sixth president of the IFAD in April. Source: Xinhua| 2017-08-04 01:18:35|Editor: Yurou Liang Video Player Close BEIJING, Aug. 3 (Xinhua) -- Chinese defense ministry has urged India to immediately pull back the trespassing troops to the Indian side of the boundary. Ren Guoqiang, a spokesperson of the ministry, made the remarks in a statement released by the ministry's website late Thursday night. Ren called on the Indian side to swiftly address the situation in a proper manner to restore peace and tranquility in the border region. Since the incident occurred, China has shown utmost goodwill and sought to communicate with India through diplomatic channels to resolve the incident. Chinese armed forces have also shown a high level of restraint with an eye to the general bilateral relations and the regional peace and stability, said Ren. However, goodwill has its principles and restraint has its bottom line, said Ren. Ren urged the Indian side to give up the illusion of its delaying tactic, as no country should underestimate the Chinese forces' confidence and capability to safeguard peace and their resolve and willpower to defend national sovereignty, security and development interests. Chinese armed forces will resolutely protect the country's territorial sovereignty and security interests, said Ren. Indian border troops illegally crossed the border into Chinese territory on June 18, and obstructed China's road construction work on the Chinese side. As of Thursday, there are still Indian border troops illegally staying in the Chinese territory. On Wednesday, China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs issued a document titled "The Facts and China's Position Concerning the Indian Border Troops' Crossing of the China-India Boundary in the Sikkim Sector into the Chinese Territory." Related: Full text of facts and China's position concerning Indian border troops' crossing of China-India boundary BEIJING, Aug. 2 (Xinhua) -- Chinese Foreign Ministry issued on Wednesday a document of the facts and China's position concerning the Indian border troops' crossing of China-India boundary in the Sikkim Sector into the Chinese territory. Full story Infographic: Under the pretext of "protecting Bhutan", India attempts to create disputes in Doklam Source: Xinhua| 2017-08-04 01:23:38|Editor: ying Video Player Close JUBA, Aug. 3 (Xinhua) -- The UN peacekeeping chief on Thursday lauded efforts by the regional bloc, the Inter Governmental Authority on Development (IGAD) to revive South Sudan's stalled peace agreement and find a political solution to the conflict. Jean-Pierre Lacroix, the UN Under-Secretary-General for Peacekeeping Operation, said that the IGAD initiative to revitalize the 2015 pact offers hope towards peaceful resolution of the South Sudan conflict, adding that the UN would support the East African countries in their search for lasting political solution in the war-torn country. "It is a very important and positive thing that the countries in the region are being more engaged in helping South Sudan return to peace," Lacroix told journalists at the conclusion of his three-day visit to South Sudan "The UN welcomes and supports this new engagement by IGAD and we look forward to that process moving forward," he added. Lacroix condemned escalation of violence across South Sudan, including deadly road ambushes on civilians that have killed dozens of people in the past months, calling on the warring parties to stop targeting civilians and end hostilities immediately. "The continuation of fighting is an obstacle to further progress in the political track and it's also a matter of concern because this fighting obviously has a very serious impact on the population and on our effort to bring humanitarian assistance to the population. So we call on all parties to stop the fighting and to make all efforts so that we have cessation of hostilities," he said. The envoy further called on the government and other countries tasked with contributing the much-awaited Regional Protection (RPF) to expedite the deployment of the force to help in restoring security in the capital and other parts of South Sudan. He said the UN peacekeeping mission in South Sudan would consider using UN blue helmets in major roads and high risk areas to deter violence against civilians. In August 2016, the UN Security Council approved the deployment of 4,000-strong RPF to secure Juba and protect key installations following renewed clashes in July 2016. The additional force with stronger a mandate will back up the existing 13,000 UNMISS troops in the war-torn East African country "With the deployment of RPF and those capacities that are currently deployed in Juba, we may be able to use them to help secure these areas and roads so that we minimize the risk of these incidents (road ambushes) and increase the level of security, South Sudan has been embroiled in more than three years of conflict that has have taken a devastating toll on the people of South Sudan. The peace pact signed in Addis Ababa in 2015 under intense international pressure was shattered again following renewed violence between rival government and opposition troops in the capital Juba in July 2016. The conflict has since spread to other regions which enjoyed relative peace, causing mass displacement of least 3.5 million people from their homes, ethnic polarization and tribal violence that has killed tens of thousands of people. Source: Xinhua| 2017-08-04 01:28:42|Editor: ying Video Player Close VILNIUS, Aug. 3 (Xinhua) -- Lithuania's tax reform would be meaningful only if it ensures tax environment which encourages social justice and economic growth, the Baltic country's President Dalia Grybauskaite said on Thursday. She was commenting on the government's updated proposals on tax changes which were presented by Prime Minister Saulius Skvernelis. "It is important to find a balance between the goals declared by the government and financial abilities of the country," Grybauskaite was quoted as saying in her remarks emailed to local website Delfi.lt. "However, we can see that, according to the government's proposals, heating prices would still go up and the ceiling for contributions to the State Social Insurance Fund seems like a 'gift' to very high earners," the head of state added. In her words, the whole upcoming tax reform will be evaluated later when it is laid out in a draft law. The Lithuanian government abolished the reduced VAT for heating earlier this year, however, later pledged to restore it. Lithuania has a long heating season every year. As such, the taxation of heating services is among the most vulnerable issues. Meanwhile, Prime Minister Skvernelis noted in a press conference held earlier on Thursday that the current tax reform proposals are not final as they will be further discussed at the parliament. Among other proposals, the government intends to introduce new reduced 15 percent VAT for heating as of the beginning of next year. Before it was removed, the reduced VAT for heating amounted to 9 percent, while general VAT in Lithuania is 21 percent. The new 15 percent reduced VAT would be also applied to hotel and accommodation services. The current Lithuanian government started its work in December last year and pledged to rearrange the tax system in order to reduce income inequality, social exclusion and poverty. Source: Xinhua| 2017-08-04 01:28:43|Editor: ying Video Player Close BAGHDAD, Aug. 3 (Xinhua) -- Iraq's firebrand Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr on Thursday called Iraqi people to hold massive demonstrations across Iraq on Friday against wide spread corruption. "I wish the people are aware of what corrupt politicians are engaged with a dirty scheme to restore corruption which will not only control the people's food, but also their necks and blood. So that they would stage demonstration by millions to determine their fate," Sadr said in a statement by his office. Sadr pointed out that the "sectarian storm," which engulfed the Iraqi people after the U.S.-led invasion in 2003, made many Iraqis to close their eyes about what the politicians and the parliament blocs were doing. He said the politicians, who were seen as corrupts by many Iraqis, are planning to bring a new electoral commission and to approve an election law for the provincial elections that would take into account the interests of the same old large parliamentary blocs, according to the statement. Sadr demanded "a mass demonstration tomorrow (Friday) in Tahrir Square (In central Baghdad) and in the provinces. Demonstrations that will reveal the will of the people." Sadr's comments came two days after the parliament passed 21 articles of the draft of the coming provincial elections slated for 2018, including an article stating Saint-Lague system in counting the votes for the provincial councils' seats. Sadr and many political parties see the counting method is serving the interests of the large political parties. Sadr followers held many massive rallies in the past few years. In one occasion, the protestors broke into part of the Green Zone, including storming the parliament building. The popular protests forced Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi to make some reforms, which were aimed at confronting the country's economic crisis due to the sharp decrease in oil prices in global markets at the time that the security forces were in full-combat with Islamic State terrorist group in the country. However, Abadi's reforms, first gained popular support, but with the passing of time the reforms fell short to convince demonstrators who demanded that Abadi be more aggressive against the political parties that benefited from corruption and could reverse the reforms to their own good. Source: Xinhua| 2017-08-04 01:33:47|Editor: ying Video Player Close WASHINGTON, Aug. 3 (Xinhua) -- U.S. President Donald Trump has nominated California entrepreneur Jamie McCourt to be the U.S. ambassador to France, said the White House on Thursday. McCourt, as an entrepreneur and attorney, has founded and directed leading enterprises in Los Angeles and Boston, said the White House in a statement. The 63-year-old businesswoman has degrees from Georgetown University, the University of Maryland and MIT. During Trump's presidential campaign, McCourt showed her support and donated more than 400,000 U.S. dollars to the "Trump Victory" fund, according to Los Angeles Times reports. McCourt's nomination, which is seeking the confirmation from the Senate, came after the White House had withdrawn her candidacy to head the diplomatic mission in Belgium. Source: Xinhua| 2017-08-04 01:33:49|Editor: yan Video Player Close KIGALI, Aug. 3 (Xinhua) -- Central African country Rwanda is set to hold its presidential elections on August 4, which will be the third since the end of the ex-genocidal regime in 1994. The following are some basic facts about Rwanda: Rwanda is a landlocked country and is located in the heart of Africa. It is bordered by Uganda to the north, Tanzania to the east, Burundi to the south and the Democratic Republic of Congo to the west, covering an area of 26,338 square kilometers. Rwanda is also known as "The Land of Thousand Hills." It has five volcanoes, 23 lakes and numerous rivers, some forming the source of the River Nile. The Volcanoes National Park in the Virunga volcanic mountains with its high-altitude forests is world famous for mountain gorillas. Rwanda is the highest densely populated country in the region with 415 inhabitants per square kilometer in 2012, according to the Fourth Rwanda Population and Housing Census conducted in 2012. The total population are 10,515,973, according to the 2012 census. 52 percent of the total population are women and 48 percent are men. 83 percent of Rwandan people live in rural areas. Kigali is the capital city of Rwanda, which has a population of 1,132,686, according to the 2012 census. There are 11 political parties in Rwanda, including the ruling party Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) chaired by incumbent President Paul Kagame. In 1899, Rwanda became a German colony. In 1919, it became a mandate territory of the League of Nations, under Belgium. Rwanda gained independence from Belgium in 1962. On April 6, 1994, then-President Juvenal Habyarimana died in an air crash along with Burundian President Cyprien Ntaryamira, which swiftly triggered a three-month-long genocide that claimed over 1 million lives, mostly ethnic Tutsis. After taking control of Kigali on July 4, 1994, RPF formed a transitional government, which brought parties that did not participate in the genocide together. July 4 also marked the end of genocide. Kagame has been president since 2000 when he was elected the president by ministers and members of parliament following the resignation of then President Pasteur Bizimungu. He was then reelected in the presidential elections in 2003 and 2010. The 2003's presidential elections, the first multi-party presidential elections since independence, marked an end to the nine-year transition. Source: Xinhua| 2017-08-04 02:09:10|Editor: yan Video Player Close LONDON, Aug. 3 (Xinhua) -- A British surgeon who carried out unnecessary breast cancer operations on women on Thursday had his prison term extended to 20 years. Surgeon Ian Paterson was originally given a 15-year prison sentence when he appeared at Nottingham Crown Court in May where he was found guilty of 17 charges of wounding with intent. The Solicitor General Robert Buckland went to the Court of Appeal in London and successfully argued that the sentence was unduly lenient. A spokesman for the Attorney General's office said in an official statement later: "The doctor specialized in cancer diagnosis and treatments of breast conditions, and was revered as the 'go-to' specialist. Between 1997 and 2011, Paterson deliberately exaggerated or invented the risk of cancer to vulnerable patients and then carried out unnecessary operations on the victims, including mastectomies." "The surgeries caused serious lasting physical and physiological harm to all the victims. One woman was unable to breast feed her baby as a result," he added. Speaking after the hearing, Solicitor General Buckland said: "Throughout our lives, we are told and expected to trust doctors. Paterson woefully abused that trust. He deliberately prayed on people's worst fears and then mutilated them on the operating table. This is a truly sickening crime and my thoughts are with the victims and their families. I hope the increased sentence will help bring some closure for them." Paterson was not in court to hear the proceedings in person, and instead appeared at the Court of Appeal via video link from the prison where he is serving his sentence. Photo provided by Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) on June 9, 2017 shows the test-fire of a new type of ground-to-sea cruise missile. Top leader of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea Kim Jong Un guided the test fire of the missile, which was "a powerful attack means capable of striking any enemy group of battleships." (Xinhua/KCNA) WASHINGTON, Aug. 2 (Xinhua) -- China has taken "significant steps" to help solve the Korean Peninsula nuclear issue, a senior U.S. State Department official said on Wednesday. In a conference call with reporters on U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson's upcoming trip to southeast Asia, Susan Thornton, acting assistant secretary of state, said that the United States had seen "significant steps ... frankly, unprecedented steps" by China to increase pressure on the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK). "We see a growing determination on their part to take steps to try to address the situation seriously," said Thornton. "We and China have the same goal, which is denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula," she added. It was the second time in two days that the leadership in the U.S. State Department had contradicted U.S. President Donald Trump's recent rant that China does "do NOTHING for us ... just talk" on the Korean Peninsula nuclear issue. Speaking here at a briefing on Tuesday, Tillerson also said to achieve the goal of denuclearization on the Korean Peninsula, the United States seeks to "partner with China," and that the United States doesn't blame the Chinese for the situation on the Korean Peninsula. Tillerson's remarks came days after the DPRK launched its second intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) in a month, following the first being launched on July 4. The DPRK confirmed the Saturday's test-firing of the second ICBM was simulating its maximum range, which it said can cover all the territories of the United States. China has always called for negotiated solutions to the nuclear issue on the Korean Peninsula. Liu Jieyi, China's permanent representative to the United Nations (UN), said on Monday that China is firmly opposed to any violation of the UN Security Council (UNSC) resolutions, including nuclear tests and ballistic missile tests by the DPRK. China has been urging the DPRK and other relevant countries not to exacerbate the situation on the Korean Peninsula by avoiding words and actions that could escalate regional tensions, which run counter to the objectives sought by the UNSC. China has been working with Russia to put forth a road map for achieving regional peace and the UNSC's objectives, the Chinese ambassador told a press conference at the UN. A men tries to help a motorcyclist out of the flood after the heavy rain in Sanaa, capital of Yemen, on July 25, 2017. Yemeni authorities warned people to take precautions for torrents and rockslides due to heavy rains these days. (Xinhua Photo) ADEN, Yemen, Aug. 3 (Xinhua) -- Hundreds of UAE-backed Yemeni troops launched Thursday a fresh anti-terror campaign and targeted al-Qaida hideouts in the southeastern province of Shabwa, a military official told Xinhua. The newly-recruited forces carried out the first ground offensive against several hideouts of the al-Qaida gunmen in the town of Azzan in Shabwa province, and kicked out scores of terrorists from the surrounding areas, the local military official said on condition of anonymity. Warplanes of the Saudi-led Arab coalition air-covered the Yemeni troops that deployed in around entrances of Azzan town in Shabwa province, the military source said. The Yemen-based al-Qaida branch used to take Azzan town and other mountainous areas in Shabwa as safe places for hiding as well as training its new fighters, according to the source. A government official told Xinhua by phone saying that the pro-government forces supported by the Saudi-led coalition will keep tracking al-Qaida militants in various places of Shabwa province. The oil pipelines and companies operating in Shabwa will be secured by local soldiers trained and equipped by the United Arab Emirates, the government official said anonymously. The deployment of pro-government forces in Shabwa comes just one day after well-armed al-Qaida gunmen stormed a military checkpoint in Shabwa, killing five soldiers and injuring seven others in addition to seizing heavy weapons from targeted position. On Wednesday, Yemen's Prime Minister Ahmed Obeid bin Daghr along with some ministers and high-ranking military officials visited Abyan and attended a huge military parade there. The Yemeni Prime Minister delivered a public speech inside a stadium and vowed to launch a new anti-terror campaign to eradicate terrorist elements from different areas in Abyan during the upcoming days. The Yemen-based al-Qaida branch, seen by the United States as the global terror network's most dangerous branch, has exploited years of deadly conflict between Yemen's government and Houthi rebels to expand its presence, especially in Shabwa and Abyan provinces. Yemen's government, allied with a Saudi-led Arab military coalition, has for years been battling Iran-backed Shiite Houthi rebels for control of the impoverished country. Statistics showed that more than 8,000 people have been killed in Yemen's conflict, most of them civilians, since the Saudi-led coalition entered the conflict in 2015. The impoverished Arab country is also suffering the world's largest cholera outbreak, where about 5,000 cases are reported every day. Source: Xinhua| 2017-08-04 05:00:42|Editor: ying Video Player Close SAN FRANCISCO, Aug. 3 (Xinhua) -- A spokeswoman at Yosemite National Park in northern California, a state on the U.S. West Coast, said Thursday an investigation is underway on the death of a Chinese national in the park. Jamie Richards told Xinhua that authorities for the time being do not deem the death as suspicious. She noted that "whenever there is an injury or fatality (at the park), there is an investigation" to determine the cause. Information provided by the park suggested that the cause of the death could be drowning. The Yosemite park covers an area of 747,956 acres, or more than 3,000 square kilometers, and reaches across the western slopes of the Sierra Nevada mountain range. While a park spokesman provided some additional details of the Chinese female, including name and age of the deceased, who was apparently touring alone in the area, the Consulate General of China in San Francisco opted to withhold identity information. Spokeswoman Richards said results of the probe at Yosemite, about 195 miles or 314 kilometers east of San Francisco, are expected to come out next week. Source: Xinhua| 2017-08-04 05:30:54|Editor: yan Video Player Close GABORONE, Aug. 3 (Xinhua) -- Governors of the World Bank Group and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and delegates from countries on the African continent met here in Gaborone on Thursday for the 2017 African Caucus. The two-day forum is under the theme: "Economic Transformation and Jobs Creation: A focus on Agriculture and Agribusiness." Delegates, including ministers of finance and central bank governors from 54 African countries, will discuss issues of mutual interest and take common position to present to the Heads of the Bretton Woods Institutions. The caucus provides a platform on which African countries can articulate their positions jointly and guide their development partners on Africa's key priority areas in their development agenda. When addressing the official opening ceremony of the forum, the chairman of the African Caucus, Kenneth Matambo who is also the Minister of Finance and Economic Development in Botswana, said they have chosen to discuss the role of agriculture in transforming the economies and creating jobs, particularly for women and youth, who are economically disadvantaged. Matambo also said as African governments they went further to make a commitment under the African Union's Agenda 2063, to work towards modern and productive agriculture. He emphasized that they are committed to using science and technology, innovation and indigenous knowledge to create a profitable and attractive Africa. During the two days meeting, governors will discuss and reach a consensus on the following topics:(i) Agricultural Policy Foundations, financing,land Tenure and Markets,(ii)Technologies for Agricultural Development and Climate Smart Agriculture; the role of private sector,(iii)Agricultural value chains and sustainable jobs creation for youth and women,(iv)fiscal policy to support agricultural transformation in Africa, and (v)financial deepening and Inclusion to support Agricultural Development in Africa. The findings of the deliberations will inform the 2017 Memorandum of African Governors to the Heads of the Bretton Woods Institutions, being the president of the World Bank Group ,Dr Jim Yong Kim and the Managing Director of the international Monetary Fund ,Ms Christine Lagarde. Matambo concluded by reminding fellow African governors that agriculture is recognized as the single largest employer in the world, providing livelihoods to about 30 percent of the world population. He is of the view that their governments can create sustainable jobs especially for women and youth, and guarantee food security along with knowledge and entrepreneurship, and by responding to and creating innovative ways to meet the needs of the agriculture sector. The African Caucus was established in 1963, as the "African Group," with the objective of strengthening the voice of African Governors in the Bretton Woods Institutions (BWIs), i.e. the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank Group (WBG), on development issues of particular interest to Africa. Membership to the Caucus is open to all African Countries who are members of the IMF and WBG, currently all the 54 countries on the African continent. Source: Xinhua| 2017-08-04 06:01:05|Editor: yan Video Player Close ADDIS ABABA, Aug. 3 (Xinhua) -- The Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) and the Ethiopian government on Thursday renewed their commitment to working together for the economic and social transformation of Ethiopia and the African continent at large. The newly appointed ECA Executive Secretary, Vera Songwe, who took office on Thursday, held talks with Ethiopia's Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn at his office in Ethiopia's capital Addis Ababa. The two sides have discussed a number of issues, including the urgent need for the continent to strengthen its domestic resource mobilization so it can fund its development. They have also discussed issues related to the ongoing Continental Free Trade Area (CFTA) negotiations; intra-African trade; special economic zones; climate change; gender; peace and security. Songwe said following Brexit and the new American isolationist policies, there is need for Africa to unite more than ever and take advantage of the gaps being left by the threat against multi-lateralism. "Of course there is uncertainty at the moment but what makes us happy is that it is happening at a time when Africa is getting its voice back," said Songwe, adding the continent must capitalize on the discord being created by dissenting voices against globalization. "We must unite in Africa as others disperse for we stand a better chance of taking the space others are vacating if we stand as one. We can only weather this storm by working closely together for the transformation of our economies but more so if we rely on our own resources." The new ECA Chief underlined the need for Africa's institutions to be reformed if they are to meet the continent's challenges, including resource mobilization to fund the continent's development. For his part, the Prime Minister agreed, adding the spirit of Pan-Africanism embodied in the ECA and her sister organizations, the African Union Commission (AUC) and the African Development Bank (AfDB) should continue to spur the continent's desire to do more for itself. "The collective role that these Pan African institutions play adds value in a lot of ongoing work for Africa's transformation," said Hailemariam, adding the ECA remains a key player in Ethiopia and Africa's development. He thanked Songwe for her role as a member of Rwandan President Paul Kagame's committee that has been looking at implementing institutional reforms at the African Union. The Prime Minister said he was quite happy that Songwe was appointed the first woman Executive Secretary of the ECA, adding this was a sign that Africa's women are on the rise. They have also talked about the host country agreement that governs relations between the ECA and Ethiopia. According to a statement from ECA, the new ECA chief is expected to meet with officials of the African Union Commission and others on Friday. Source: Xinhua| 2017-08-04 06:06:07|Editor: yan Video Player Close KIGALI, Aug. 4 (Xinhua) -- Central African country Rwanda on Friday held its third presidential elections since the end of the ex-genocidal regime in 1994. Incumbent President Paul Kagame is seeking his third term after Rwandans voted in the revised constitution that allows him to seek re-election. Following are the basic facts about Kagame. Born in 1957 in Rwanda's Southern Province, Kagame spent 30 years in Uganda as a refugee. Kagame joined a rebel group led by Yoweri Museveni, who finally became President of Uganda. He then served as a senior military officer under Museveni's government. In 1990, Kagame returned to Rwanda to lead then rebel group Rwandan Patriotic Front's (RPF). RPF defeated the genocidal government in July 1994 and took power. RPF subsequently set Rwanda on its current course towards reconciliation, nation building and socio-economic development. Kagame was appointed Vice-President and Minister for Defence in Government of National Unity on July 19, 1994, and four years later was elected Chairman of RPF. On April 22, 2000, Kagame was sworn in as President after being elected by the Transitional National Assembly. In 2003, he won a landslide victory in the country's first-ever multi-party elections by winning 95 percent of the vote. He won 93 percent of the vote in 2010's presidential elections and get re-elected. Kagame is married to Jeannette Nyiramongi, and have four children. 2 plead guilty in dentists death Daniel Boom Robertson, 32, of LAnse Mitan, Carenage and Dwayne Fighter Hamilton, 30, pleaded guilty to felony murder when they appeared last week before Justice Hayden St Clair Douglas in the Port of Spain High Court. A prison service bio-social report was ordered and the matter was adjourned to September 27. John of Chico Ave, Santa Cruz was shot in the stomach by robbers at his St James clinic on May 21, 2007. Two unmasked, armed men entered Johns Madras Street, St James dental clinic which he shared with his wife Ella-Mae, also a dentist, and aimed the gun at her. John immediately intervened and was shot in the chest and stomach. Although he slumped to the ground, he had enough strength to use his licensed firearm to injure one of the men. The incident happened in the waiting area and was witnessed by Johns then five-yearold daughter and several patients. John, 36, underwent three surgeries during the four days he battled for his life at the Port of Spain General Hospital. His pancreas, stomach, heart and liver were damaged by the bullets and he died at hospital. The two men were represented by attorneys Daniel Khan and Darryl Worrell. Attorneys to petition High Court Attorneys for two of the men - led by attorney Wayne Sturge - are expected to file an application seeking to have the protracted magisterial proceedings stayed on the grounds of abuse of process, while attorneys for the other three are expected to file an application calling on the High Court to review a delay by the Director of Public Prosecutions to give a decision on the way forward in the prosecution of the cases. Attorney Joseph Sookoo who held for Sturge, yesterday informed acting Chief Magistrate Maria Busby Earle Caddle that an application was expected to be filed to have the protracted inquiry stayed on the grounds of abuse of process and delay. Attorney Criston J Williams, who appeared for the three other accused, also intends to file a separate action but told Earle Caddle he is still awaiting a response from DPP Roger Gaspard, SC, on a letter sent in May, suggesting Gaspard bypass the preliminary inquiry (PI) stage and send matters directly to the High Court or discontinue them altogether. Chicki Portello, Kareem Gomez, Levi Joseph, Anthony Charles and Israel Arnold Lara are charged with murder and are before Earle Caddle in the Port of Spain Eighth Magistrates Court. Williams has also quoted and forwarded correspondence from the Chief Justices Chambers to Law Association president Douglas Mendes, SC, on May 31, on the Ayers-Caesar matter and one day before a vote of no confidence in CJ Ivor Archie and the Judicial and Legal Service Commission members was passed by the association. Addressing acting Chief Magistrate Earle Caddle yesterday, an attorney from the DPPs office submitted that the DPPs objection to her aborting the matters and order that they be restarted, was still being maintained. The prosecutor added there was still no factual information on the former chief magistrates status and the DPP had formed the opinion that the public utterances on the issue were sufficient for him to invoke his powers under the Indictable Offences (Preliminary Enquiry) Act. The matter was adjourned to August 29, when Earle Caddle said she expects to have an official response from the DPP on his position. She also informed Sookoo that his legal team had until that date to file whatever application they intended to in the High Court. At yesterdays hearing, the men maintained their silent protest by wearing matching black t-shirts with messages calling for their freedom written in white. Also wearing the same t-shirts were their family members who sat in the public gallery. Ayers Caesar resigned as a judge on April 27 after she was elevated the high court on April 12. She has since filed a lawsuit against the State and the JLSC, claiming she did not resign voluntarily but was forced to do so because of the discrepancy in the number of part-heard matters she still had. Kamla sues against lack of Protective Service Compensation Committee Since August 2015, one month before the Peoples National Movement government assumed office, the tenure of the members to the committee had not been renewed nor new members appointed. The committee has been in limbo while approximately 11 police officers and dozens more who have been injured in the line of duty and yet to claim have been awaiting monetary compensation. Attorney Kamla Persad-Bissessar SC filed a constitutional motion last month on behalf of injured police officer Fazal Ghany, and yesterday she went before Justice Devendra Rampersad in the San Fernando High Court to seek an order directing the Dr. Keith Rowley-led cabinet to advise President Anthony Carmona to appoint members to the committee. The fact that the committee has not been functioning for the past two years means officers who have been injured in the line of duty could not receive compensation. One such person is Ghany, of Rio Claro, who is the applicant in the motion. In an affidavit, he stated he was injured 11 years ago. He suffered a spinal fracture. Ghany was medically boarded and has been at home unable to earn a living. The committee turned down his application for compensation and he sought judicial review and lost. The Appeal Court also ruled against Ghany, but the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council upheld his application for a claim. Since the ruling delivered in July 2015, Ghany has been knocking on the doors of the committee for compensation but to no avail. Attorneys sent letters on his behalf, but he was given the same response that the new committee had not yet been appointed. Persad-Bissessar, instructed by attorney Gerald Ramdeen, contended before Rampersad yesterday that Ghany was seeking a declaration that the failure of the Government to appoint the committee amounts to a refusal to obey the order of the Privy Council. Persad Bissessar told the judge the matter affects the lives of approximately 14,000 members of the various arms of the protectives services including members of the Defence Force and Coast Guard. The State was represented in the matter by attorney Anthony Bullock who told Rampersad Cabinet did recommend the members to sit on the committee, but a legal issue arose. He asked for the matter to be postponed for two weeks, but Persad-Bissessar strenuously objected, saying the non-existence of the committee was of grave importance in which a ruling of the Privy Council is being disobeyed. Rampersad said he sees no genuine defence in opposition to the motion and fixed the matter for 1.30 pm today. However, the case would be heard before the vacation judge, Joan Charles, in the Hall of Justice, Port of Spain. Four firearms seized In the earlier exercise, members of the Northern Division Task Force stopped and searched a 24-year-old man of Upper St John Road, St Augustine after he was seen acting in a suspicious manner. Police found a Beretta pistol and a magazine with ten rounds of 9 mm ammunition. They later went into bushes at Knowles Street, Curepe and found a revolver with four rounds of .38 mm ammunition. No one was arrested in connection with that find. Members of the Inter- Agency Task Force on Tuesday executed a search warrant at a house at Quarry Road, San Juan and found a pistol and four rounds of 9 mm ammunition. Police arrested a man and charged him. He was expected to appear before a Port of Spain magistrate. And Maracas police officers are searching for a man in connection with the discovery of a gun yesterday morning. Newsday was told Maracas police officers were on patrol yesterday morning at about 3.20 am when they saw a man walking along the roadway. When the man saw the police, he ran off. Police gave chase but the man escaped in some bushes. They found a black pistol which they believe belonged to the suspect. Couple held with firearm Police from Northern Division went to a house at Edna Hill at 3 am, where they executed a search warrant on the owner of the property. During a search, the officers found and seized a Smith and Wesson semi-automatoc pistol and 21 rounds of ammunition of nine-millimetre calibre. The couple, a 35-year-old man and a 44-year-old woman, was detained and charged on the weekend. They have since appeared before an Arima magistrate and the case adjourned. The firearm has since been sent to the Forensic Science Centre in St James for ballistics test to see if it was used in recent criminal acts. Panmen not paid since Carnival In addition, employees of Pan Trinbago have not been paid their monthly salary for July. Contacted yesterday about this sad state of affairs, Pan Trinbago president Keith Diaz said pans governing body has no money even to pay its own staff who work at its head office in Port of Spain and several regional offices including in Tobago. Pan Trinbago sources said Panorama remittances owed are in the region of $4.5 million. Pan Trinbago cancelled its media launch of Pan Month, carded for yesterday at the VIP Lounge at Queens Park Savannah with no reason given. An email from Pan Trinbago apologised for any inconvenience caused by the cancellation and promised another media release on Pan Month. The National Carnival Commission (NCC) never gave us any money from gate receipts for 2017 Panorama competitions nor have they given us the ten percent we normally get from prize monies. That is the funds we use to run the organisation and over 40 employees have not been paid for the month of July. I am not seeing any funds, Diaz complained. In early February, days before Carnival, Pan Trinbago took the NCC court over an impasse regarding Panorama. The pan body accused certain Carnival interest groups of seeking a hostile takeover of Pan Trinbago. In January, Minister of Community Development, Culture and the Arts Dr Nyan Gadsby-Dolly ordered a forensic audit into Pan Trinbago. Following allegations of financial mismanagement and impropriety, Gadsby-Dolly also instructed the NCC to take over the gate receipts for Panorama 2017. Panmen threatened a boycott of this years competition but an agreement was arrived at in January, to allow for the staging of the Panorama. However, up to yesterday, panmen have received no payment for their performance in the marquee pan competition. The court case remains pending with the last hearing being on July 29 and the case being adjourned to October 10. Asked about players unpaid Panorama remittances, Diaz yesterday said, Pan Trinbago has nothing to do with that. The NCC is supposed to have that money paid to the players since the NCC was instructed by government to take all of the gate receipts of Panorama. Efforts to reach NCC chairman Kenny De Silva for a comment yesterday proved futile. Beware of fake news Acting Chief Executive Maria Cooper, in a short welcome address to the 21 interns drawn from secondary and tertiary institutions across the country, pointed to the risks of inaccuracies that occur because of the changed and sophisticated media environment both locally and globally. She described the project as one born out of Newsdays commitment to the development of youth in society. This is the second year Newsday is undertaking the project which will culminate with the young participants demonstrating their newly-acquired skills in both the regular Newsday publication and a special youth issue towards the end of August. Last years inaugural event saw a number of participants undertaking freelance assignments with Newsday in news and feature writing, design and layout and photography, and some have maintained a relationship with the newspaper. Editor in Chief Jones P. Madeira, warned that todays audiences are no longer passive recipients of information and opinion generated by the media. He said the dramatic evolution of information technology and its shattering of the constraints of time and distance for the transfer and exchange of information have given the audience the immense power of proactively talking back, and it is to the peril of media that they choose to ignore this fact and not lend an ear. He quoted a USbased journalist and author Jeff Ansell who had warned that research on the run only gets it right some of the time, and truth and perspective become casualties of reporting. Speaking with Newsday after yesterdays launch, Cooper outlined the objectives of the NYLO programme which included to train participants how to communicate effectively with others using traditional and new media and to guide participants in the basics of journalism including how to write news stories, how to approach people and, how to ask questions. According to the Newsday acting CEO, the newspaper also wants to gain constructive feedback from its youth partners on how to report and disseminate the news for younger audiences. The participants toured Newsdays prepress and press operations at its El Socorro headquarters as part of yesterdays launch and they will continue at that venue today and tomorrow for sessions that further expose them to newspaper publishing operations as well as the rudiments of news and feature writing. Mass evacuation after Atlantic gas leak Police said the three were taken to the Point Fortin Area Hospital where they were being treated up to press time. Two of the three are employed with sub contractor Scaffolding Manufacturers (Trinidad) Ltd, while the third works with janitorial and cleaning service company Europa. They all complained of nausea and difficulty breathing. Police said the leak occurred at 10.45 am and workers were quickly evacuated. Workers at nearby companies Trinmar Operations as well as Petrotrin were also evacuated after the alarm was triggered. Atlantic LNG Media Communications Officer Billson Hainsley subsequently issued a media release confirming there was a hydrocarbon release at the facility. The companys response and safety systems were immediately activated as per their design and all staff at the facility were evacuated as a precautionary measure, Hainsley stated. Within 20 minutes the incident was brought under control and technical teams are currently conducting checks. The all-clear was given and Atlantic is in the process of advising relevant stakeholders, including the Point Fortin Borough Corporation and the community, the release stated. ASP Harry together with Sgt Haynes visited the scene and spoke with company officials. Charles: TT without a foreign policy In a release, Charles referred to events which have transpired in Venezuela in the wake of voting in that countrys Constituent National Assembly on Sunday. According to Charles, We are now all left hoping for divine intervention. He claimed the former Peoples Partnership (PP) government used its clout in Caricom to support Jamaicas desire to be an honest broker among contending parties in Venezuela. He alleged since the PP demitted office, We outsourced our Caricom foreign policy to the likes of Antigua and Barbuda and St Vincent and the Grenadines. Charles claimed both countries are ALBA (Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America) members and, came down too heavily on the side of (Venezuelan President Nicolas) Maduro. He reiterated the Oppositions criticism of Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley for taking issue with Organisation of American States (OAS) Secretary General Luis Almagro for criticising Maduro. Charles said sanctions imposed on Venezuela and Venezuelas recent suspension from the Mercosur Group can impact existing energy agreements with Venezuela. TT and Venezuela are in the process of negotiating a gas sales agreement which would see natural gas from Venezuelas Dragon Field being process in this country. Charles claimed Government is, desperately hoping for oil prices to rise to save us from impending economic disaster. He also claimed Government is, praying for this Venezuelan crisis to go away hopefully by divine intervention. Charles condemned Foreign and Caricom Affairs Dennis Moses for, pretending unconvincingly to be a foreign policy guru. Cabinet approves draft policy on Local Govt reform At these sessions, council members and staff are allowed to ask questions and voice concerns regarding the draft policy. Rural Development and Local Government Minister Kazim Hosein said, We have completed sensitisation sessions in six corporations so far and the remaining eight will be visited in the upcoming weeks. Hosein also said the task force has also met with various government ministries which the corporations will have to liaise directly with, once more responsibility is vested in them. The task force is also working closely with the Ministry of the Attorney General and Legal Affairs regarding the legislative amendments required for the reform to take full effect. The main ones include the updates to property tax legislation and the Municipal Police Regulations. The latter deals with the establishment of constabularies of 100 municipal police officers in each of the 14 local government corporations. This was one of the key campaign promises made by the Peoples National Movement in the 2015 general election and 2016 local government election campaigns. Hosein said the ministry will, also be holding further sensitisation sessions in each municipality for the burgesses to update them and seek their feedback and advice on how best to involve citizens more effectively. He recalled last year the ministry held 15 public consultations on local government reform. So we want people to now know that their voices are being heard and they are driving the changes that they want to see, Hosein said. The main objective of local government reform is to engage all citizens on a greater level so that there are improvements in service delivery across the country. The ministry indicated sensitisation exercises have also been held for key stakeholders such as trade unions, whose members will be directly affected by local government reform. Share Theres a lot of positioning around spectrum lately as different stakeholders do their best to get more of it as 5G draws near. Qualcomm (News - Alert) and Verizon are among the companies that have visited Capitol Hill in recent weeks to reiterate this message. And T-Mobile USA Inc. recently petitioned the FCC (News - Alert) in whats been described as an effort to give large wireless carriers more control over spectrum. Dean Brenner and Alice Tornquist of Qualcomm participated in an event sponsored by the Congressional Spectrum (News - Alert) Caucus to talk about the importance of a wide range of spectrum for 5G. Brenner is Qualcomms senior vice president of spectrum strategy and technology policy. Tornquist is Qualcomms vice president of government affairs. Following the event, Brenner published a blog discussing the visit, talking about how the U.S. government could help advance 5G, and revisiting what has happened so far related to 5G spectrum. Brenner suggested that for 5G to meet its potential, spectrum will have to be available for its use in the low, mid, and high bands. According to Qualcomm, 5G has the potential to generate more than $12 trillion between now and 2035. As noted in Brenners blog, the FCC recently auctioned 600MHz of spectrum, in the process raising nearly $20 billion. It has also allocated mid-band spectrum in the 3.5GHz range. And the Spectrum Frontier Ruling, Brenner said, will open up millimeter wave spectrum. In that ruling, the FCC issued rules for over 11 GHz of millimeter wave spectrum for 5G, but also asked for comments on a wide variety of other bands, some of which are key bands for 5G in other regions around the world, Brenner said. Finally, just last week, the FCC announced that it will consider a Notice of Inquiry a request for information on other mid-band spectrum. In a separate posting, this one published Aug. 2 by The CommLaw Group, the law firm urged readers not to let the FCC take away their 3.5GHz spectrum. And it said that T-Mobile (News - Alert) USA is petitioning the FCC to gut the core purpose of the current rules governing the 3550-3700MHz spectrum band (3.5GHz band), which is to lower the barrier of entery of smaller carriers into the wireless 5G business by allowing commercial shared us of the 3.5GHz via licensed and unlicensed allocation. What T-Mobile and its ilk want, CommLaw suggested, is for the FCC to give that spectrum to the large wireless carriers. And it noted the FCC is seeking public comment on the T-Mobile petition. Comments are due Aug. 8. Edited by Maurice Nagle Tang Yijun, deputy secretary of Zhejiang province, extended a warm welcome to a youth group from Hong Kong at an official reception to kick-start a 6-day exchange visit to Zhejiang province. The visit is part of the 20th anniversary celebrations to mark the return of Hong Kong to the mainland. "Holding such exchange activities can help the youth in Hong Kong to know more about the long history and rich culture of the mainland, experience the developmental achievements and folk culture in Zhejiang and be part of closer ties between Hong Kong and the mainland." Tang stressed the significance of the visit. The visiting group, made up of 240 Hong Kong youth, visited three museums featuring Ningbo's history, a book collection and entrepreneurship after the welcome ceremony. The youngsters were amazed to learn that many Hong Kong celebrities were serial entrepreneurs in Ningbo before hitting the spotlight. The group will visit Hangzhou Bay new district and its surrounding counties on August 2 and 3. Rita Fan Hsu Lai Tai, member of the standing committee of the National People's Congress, shakes hands with Hong Kong youth to welcome them before taking a group photo. [Photo/ China Daily] Rita Fan Hsu Lai Tai and four Hong Kong youth representatives take a group photo at the welcome reception on August 1. [Photo/ China Daily] It started in mid-September Black Friday specials. I took the bait when I saw an email from a retailer offering sales that were way ahead of the traditional Friday after Thanksgiving Black Friday sales. Beat the rush! Get all the deals before anyone else offers them and you lose out! Get y We have used your information to see if you have a subscription with us, but did not find one. Please use the button below to verify an existing account or to purchase a new subscription. Shortly after the Italian parliament approved the deployment of the countrys naval forces to the Libyan shores to help combat the flow of illegal migration from the North African country to Europe, the Libyan National Army (LNA) have been ordered to take actions against foreign vessels trespassing in Libyan waters. The Parliaments vote, which took place on Wednesday, was quickly followed by Italian patrol boats heading towards the port of Tripoli. The move has been strongly criticized in Libya as being a violation of the countrys sovereignty. Italian defense Minister Roberta Pinotti gave assurances that there will be no harm done to Libyan sovereignty, because, if anything, our aim is to strengthen Libyan sovereignty. According to her, their intervention will be limited to providing logistical, technical and operational support for Libyan naval vessels. Pinotti added that they will be sharing and coordinating their actions. The Italian navy will collaborate with the UN-backed Government of National Accord, which must give permission for any Italian ship to deploy off Libya, but which is said ready to cooperate with Italy. Meanwhile the rival Tobruk-based House of Representatives (HoR) accused Rome of trying to export the illegal migration crisis from its territory to Libyas, signaling that it could lead to a dangerous impact on the countrys security, economy and society. Commander of the Libyan National Army (LNA) Field Marshall Khalifa Haftar ordered that any naval vessel that enters national waters without permission from the army should be repelled. The LNA is loyal to the HoR, which described Italys move as a violation of Libyan sovereignty. The action of the Italian navy is inciting a new wave of nationalism as activists in Tripoli hung photos of resistance hero Omar al-Mukhtar in the capital citys main square, accompanied by the words No to a return to colonization. Libya and Italy have had a bitter history together during the colonial period. President Rached Ghannouchi of the Ennahdha political party has called on the countrys National Unity Government to prioritize the economic challenges facing Tunisia and the upcoming (municipal and local) elections instead of the political future of a Minister or Prime Minister. Presidential and parliamentary elections are scheduled to take place in 2019 but they have slowly overshadowed the countrys economic and financial crises. A report from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) highlighted that Tunisias democratic evolution from the mass demonstration, which became known as the Arab Spring, has been able to overcome many challenges but the economic transition is delayed. In a report published in July, IMF stated that the economy is not keeping pace with the ongoing democratic transition in this country and urged for reforms in the areas of taxation, pension, voluntary reduction of public service and improving budgetary outcomes. It also lamented about the social challenges that still persist warning that social discontent is high while the economy continues to be in a complex socio-political environment. The ruling Nidaa Touness party admits that it is increasingly becoming challenging to surpass the economic and social realities that the government has to deal with while acknowledging that economic growth has also stalled. The partys Executive Director, Hafedh Caid Essebsi, said as the majority party of the ruling coalition government, they should table alternatives to salvage the economy considering the economic indicators. He called for an economic dialogue under the auspices of President Essebsi of Tunisia. IMF has warned that improving the standard of living of the countrys youthful population will only be possible by transforming the countrys economic model. A fter the scandalous racist remarks of Algerian leaders against sub-Saharan migrants, and in a blatant violation of commitment under the 1951 Geneva Convention, Algerian authorities resumed earlier this week arbitrary expulsions of Sub-Saharan migrants and asylum seekers who were abandoned in harsh conditions on the border with Niger, media reports said quoting international humanitarian NGOs. After Algerian authorities started dismantling the makeshift camps set up by the migrants and after they launched, what the media called, a black-man hunting operation, they officially announced in a statement by the Foreign Ministry the repatriation operations of Nigerian nationals in irregular situation in Algeria, as of August 1. According to some Algerian media, the government announced it earmarked over 330 million to this operation. The decision to relaunch summary deportations comes amid a wave of anti-migrant populism expressed by senior political figures in the country, venting the sluggish economic growth on poor Sub-Saharans, most of whom have fled poverty and conflict in their home countries to look for work in Algeria or seek transit to Europe via neighboring Libya. Embarrassed by the surge of anti-migrant sentiment and in need of workers in farming and construction, Algeria rushed to save its face with the launch of an operation to grant residency rights and job permits to illegal African migrants. The migrant regularization plan was announced by Algerias Prime Minister Abdelmadjid Tebboune in response to the growing anti-migrant racism in the country, notably after the launch of an anonymous online campaign that blames African migrants whose numbers are unofficially estimated at 100,000 for taking jobs and spreading the HIV virus that causes AIDS. Indeed, Algerias social media networks woke up recently to a shameful and outrageous campaign targeting sub-Saharan migrants after the launch of a racist hashtag in Arabic saying No to Africans in Algeria. The Algerian social media were tarred by racist calls for cleaning Africans off Algerian cities, and forcing them out of Algerian borders. Few days after the announcement of the migrant regularization campaign, a new Algerian political leader and former Prime Minister Ahmed Ouyahia expressed statements verging on racism and hate speech against Sub-Saharan migrants in the country. Speaking to Ennahar TV station, Ouyahya, Secretary General of RND political party, described Sub-Saharan migrants as a source of crime, drugs and other calamities. His racist statements showed fierce opposition to the governments attempt to save its face by giving sub-Saharans an opportunity to obtain residency status in Algeria. The Algerian politician went on to refuse to consider migration from a human rights perspective saying with a hostile tone that the issue is part of state sovereignty. Ouyahyas heinous stands against migrants and asylum seekers echo scandalous statements uttered last December by Advisor to President Bouteflika and ironically head of Algerias human rights commission Farouk Ksentini who bluntly accused sub-Saharans of spreading HIV in Algeria. We Algerians are exposed to the risk of HIV contamination and other sexually transmitted diseases because of these migrants, he shamefully said last December. The presence of African migrants and refugees in Algeria will cause Algerians several problems, Ksentini, a henchman of the military regime, had told Algerian media, adding that these migrants bring diseases to Algeria. Last December, Algeria was rebuked by international NGOs for rounding up more than 1400 sub-Saharan migrants in Algiers who were later deported 1900 km southwards to the desert city of Tamanrasset, from which they were sent to Niger. Algerias ill treatment of refugees and asylum seekers continued with the expulsion of 41 Syrian refugees to the Moroccan borders near the town of Figuig last April 17. Several international watchdogs have lashed out at Algeria calling it to decriminalize immigration. Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and the UNHCR have all called repeatedly on Algeria to guarantee protection to migrants and asylum seekers on its soil and halt its discriminatory policies towards them in keeping with its commitments under the 1951 Geneva Convention. Photo: Valerie Macon/AFP/Getty Images In the immediate aftermath of the 2000 election, Al Gore was often said to have retreated from the public spotlight. But, a decade and a half in, his has been a relentlessly active post-political life, as hes become the face of climate activism in the United States and abroad. On Tuesday night, after a screening of his new documentary An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power directed by Bonni Cohen and Jonathan Shenk, it adds to the case for urgent action advanced in the landmark 2006 An Inconvenient Truth and also vividly documents the frantic negotiations over the Paris climate accord, in which Gore played a pivotal role the former vice-president spoke with me about his own climate optimism, extreme weather in the age of global warming, and what he calls the democracy crisis in America including just how worried he is about the current president. This is a transcript of that conversation. Thanks everybody for coming. So you know who I am, Im David Wallace-Wells, Im with New York Magazine and Im completely honored and thrilled to be here speaking with you about this incredible movie. David Wallace-Wells wrote the amazing cover story for New York Magazine on the climate crisis, the most-read story in the history of New York Magazine just a couple of weeks ago, congratulations. Its interesting, that story was a tour of worst-case situations, and I wanted to ask you, in light of this movie, to talk a little bit about your optimism. Were in a kind of interesting moment with climate, where there are reasons for despair and there are reasons for hope. I wondered if you could talk a little bit about how you balance that information and come out optimistic. Well, thank you so much David, I really admired the article you wrote, took note of some of the snipes and critiques, and I agreed with some of the climate writers that I most respect, like David Roberts and Joe Romm, who said, good for David Wallace-Wells, its a real wake-up call. We need to be aware of how things could go really badly wrong. I want to, before I answer your question, I want to acknowledge the three people here who are loves in my life more than words can say. My daughter Karenna Gore and my granddaughter Anna Schiff and my grandson Oscar Schiff. Anybody who works on the climate crisis has to deal with an internal struggle between hope and despair. I have been dealing with this, with escalating degrees of involvement, for 40 years now, and in the policy realm for 25 years. And actually there are two big changes since the first movie that I was involved with came out a decade ago. One is, the climate-related extreme weather events are, unfortunately, becoming a lot more serious and destructive and a lot more common. Superstorm Sandy was one of the ones that we saw on the screen here and that some of you lived through. But the other big change is that we have solutions now that are not simply visible on the horizon as they were a decade ago, when you had to rely on the technology experts to assure you that they were coming, theyll be here, just wait. But now, theyre popping out all over the place. My hope comes from two sources. Number one, there is a growing awareness of how serious this is Mother Natures had the most persuasive voice because of change number-one that I mentioned. But the second source is that these new technologies, like ultracheap electricity from solar and wind, now electric cars are coming down very quickly, and batteries are coming down very quickly. The addition of batteries to renewable energy sources will be a complete game changer because you can use solar electricity at night and wind electricity during the day a lot of that usually comes at night. I believe that we are in the early stages of a sustainability revolution in the world powered by new digital tools, the Internet of Things, and machine intelligence that extends our power to manage molecules and atoms the way weve managed bits of information. And its opening up a lot of possibilities. Now, that hope is premised on the assumption that the growing awareness will lead to the emergence of more political will and the adoption of these new solutions in order to solve this crisis in time to avoid the worst-case outcomes that you said in your article could be mitigated and dampened by an awareness that leads to a political awakening. An economist who I knew whos deceased now, his name was Rudi Dornbusch, he once said things take longer to happen than you think they will, and then they happen much faster than you thought they could. And Ive seen that in the technology areas with these exponential curves. Ive seen it in political and social revolutions. Ill just use one quick example. If somebody had told me even five years ago that in 2017, gay marriage would be fully legal in all 50 states and accepted and honored and celebrated by two-thirds of the American people, I wouldve said well I sure hope so, but I think thats wildly unrealistic, youre being naive. Change cant happen that quickly. But it did. Nelson Mandela once said during the anti-apartheid movement, its always impossible until its done. And so the hope is partly an act of will but it is mainly a hopeful projection of the trends that I see underway, including the Paris agreement which was a huge historic breakthrough that not only bound virtually every country in the world to these reductions, but in many ways, more importantly, sent a powerful signal to investors and business and industry. Were seeing big shifts around the world. Just last month, two months ago, India announced that within only 13 years, 100 percent of their new cars and trucks were going to have to be electric vehicles. Thats faster than were moving in the United States. And so there are a lot of things like that that give me hope. In the movie, I think you mentioned that were not just dealing with a climate crisis, were dealing with a sort of political crisis as well. And one of the ways in which the current moment seems to me different than the gay-marriage movement, for instance, is there are some very serious forces in American politics that are opposed to the kind of progress that you and I and probably everyone in this room are looking for. How do we deal with that gridlock and how do we make sure that the progress thats necessary can take place? Our democracy has been hacked by big money before Putin hacked our democracy. The big lobbyists and campaign contributors and special interests occupy way too big a role in determining the decisions that are supposed to be made by the elected representatives of the people, of, by, and for the people, and thats a serious problem. Ive watched it happen in my lifetime; I went to Congress in the mid-70s, I didnt have a single fundraiser; by eight years later, fundraising was really a dominant activity in campaigns, and what happened in the interim is that the 30-second TV ads became the currency of politics and determined the outcome of most races. So today, the average member of Congress spends, on average, four to five hours every single day begging special interests and lobbyists and wealthy people for money to pile up for their next campaign so they can buy more TV ads than the other candidates, and too often that actually does determine the outcome. So, human nature being what it is, these members of Congress naturally begin to think more of the impact of their words and deeds on the following days telephone calls than they do on the impact of legislation on their constituents. And that has really distorted and warped our politics. And when you add in the redistricting the shaping of congressional districts to be always dominated by one party and never even think about appealing to the middle or independents between Democrats and Republicans because all theyre worried about is getting a primary challenge, in the case of Republicans, from somebody from the tea party or somebody from the far right thats financed by these special interests. And they know that the choice is up to them. If they toe the line and do what the special interests do what they want them to do, theyre safe. If they dont, the special interests will just give all this money to their challengers in the primary and so they get scared, and in service of their political survival, they just do whatever the lobbyists tell them to do. Now there is hope there. If indeed it was mainly the dominance of television over the previous print medium that was in existence when our Constitution was written that gave individuals the ability to enter the public forum and use ideas and knowledge as a source of power versus money, then television changed that. But now, with internet-based media including social media, with all of the problems, and there are serious problems there that we need to really do a lot of hard work in we now see the emergence of new possibilities for individuals who can once again use the power of ideas and the best available evidence and logic and reason to appeal to others who might share their points of view and ideas and then use that as an alternative to wealth as a source of power. Take the Bernie Sanders campaign. Whether you agree with his agenda or not, I admired the fact that he proved you can now run a credible campaign and potentially a winning campaign by not taking any special-interest or lobby money but instead just relying on small donations from individuals over the internet. I hope thats the future of our politics. If it is, we have a chance to rekindle the spirit of America and reinvigorate our democracy. I think its important to distinguish between the worldview of our leaders and the worldview of the people who elected them. The story in the movie with the mayor of the town in Texas, I mean there are huge numbers of conservatives who are quite open to a lot of policy initiatives and are taking action on their own. But Im also interested to hear you talk about geopolitics. You talked a little bit about our domestic issues, but obviously China and India in particular are hugely important going forward and well need to have some kind of global cooperation to really tackle this issue in a way that is necessary. Watching you in the movie negotiate or help negotiate the Paris deal was hugely eye-opening to me because it was just a reminder of how even when we talk about nations getting together it is really about people in a room talking. I worry sometimes that there are not enough of those gatherings, not enough of those interfaces. Were living in a world now where there are more walls being built than ever before, people are skeptical of globalization and any kind of global alliance. But obviously as someone who helped bring the Paris agreement together, you saw the other side of that. Yeah, when we face a common threat its easier to get unity of purpose. But it is tough, and of course were going through tough times in our democracy now. I dont want to get sidetracked into that Please. I know there are probably some people here who supported Trump, maybe still support Trump, and I want to be respectful of that. [Laughter.] But Im worried. And I think that its likely that the next few months are going to be very challenging for our country. Some of us feel like weve seen a movie like whats going on in the White House now once before, and I think this investigation by the independent counsel may have its own rhythm underneath the news cycle, from the chatter of the commentators in public view, and may yet lead to a result that will be challenging for us as a nation. But, I mean, this experiments only six months old now, and some experiments are terminated early for ethical reasons. [Laughter, cheering.] Believe me, I have absolutely no inside information at all, but it is challenging. But aside from whats going on in the White House right now and what the Trump administration is doing, on a global basis, there is now much more unity of purpose in confronting the climate crisis, and it is increasingly powered by the availability of clean alternatives to fossil fuel. I love your phrase in your magazine article, fossil capitalism, and I dont know if you invented that I stole it. You stole it, okay. You gave credit the first time, thats the practice these days, but thank you. Its a compelling phrase. When the cost of renewable energy is lower than the cost of fossil energy, then that creates a whole new reality, and crossing that line between more expensive than and cheaper than is like crossing the line between 33 degrees and 32 degrees. Its more than one degree, its the difference between ice and water. And in markets, its the difference between markets that are frozen up as they were for renewable energy, and liquid flows of capital into exploiting the new opportunities that are available now. I use the analogy in the movie of cell phones, which really took off in the developing countries because they were able to leapfrog over the old landline technology. I dont know if anybody here is the same, but I dont even answer my landline anymore because nine times out of ten its a telemarketer or a recording and I long ago stopped shouting angrily at the recording. Who put me on your list? But anyway, they can skip all that by just going straight to cell phones and they have. And the landline electricity grids dont exist in many parts of the developing countries. So theyre leapfrogging to the solar panels, and its really happening with dizzying speed. So thats also driving investment by China and now India. Indias created this international solar alliance to spread solar panels all over South Asia and Africa, theyre really aggressive now, as China is in Africa, so I do think that the unity of purpose in developing these solutions is stronger now than its ever been. You mentioned the sort of dizzying speed of the technological change, which is mind-blowing theres also the speed of climate change. I think the stat is 50 percent of all of our emissions in human history have been in the last 30 years which puts us back around the time when you were first running for president. And I wonder obviously, youve been asked alternate-history questions many times before but I wonder, are there any things that you think about from your time in the vice-presidency that you wish you had done more on, or options that we could have taken more aggressive action on that would have left us in a better place now, when we wouldnt be as in crisis as we are? Its a great question. I usually get too criticized for being way too aggressive in coming up with solutions that were very difficult to sell to the Congress, like the Kyoto agreement in 1997 a time when the vast majority of global warming and pollution was still coming from the rich countries, and so it had to be designed in a way that had the rich countries take the first steps and have the developing countries come in in the second phase. And I was very aggressive in negotiating and agreeing to that, and then the Congress said no way and would not accept it. How would I have done that differently? Im not really sure, Id have to give some thought to that. Do you think it was important that the emissions started to come from the developing world before there would be truly global action on it? I think that the postcolonial mind-set in much of the developing world led to an international politics that was characterized by insistent demands by developing countries that the rich countries pay them before they would join in. And of course its easy to see the justice of those demands. But in a world already experiencing middle-income wage stagnation in the wealthy countries because globalization had a centrifugal force flinging jobs out to the lower-wage venues there was already a growing anxiety in the U.S., at least, about jobs being lost to some of these developing countries that were paying very low wages and factories moving overseas, and the idea of sending tax dollars to those same countries played into their anger and anxiety about that. You know, middle-income wages in the U.S. have stagnated really since the mid-70s, and its been masked by a lot of other improvements in the quality of life. We sometimes question whether there are improvements while looking at our smartphones all the time, but the late, great Neil Postman from this city wrote a fabulous book called Amusing Ourselves to Death I think we have a fan of Neil Postman here! I had the privilege of knowing and working with him. He was wonderful; I dont want to get sidetracked, but my point is that we didnt really realize fully in the U.S. because incomes among elites were rising rapidly we didnt fully realize the distress that was being felt by so many in the middle-income, lower-middle-income groups in this country, and the rise of inequality in incomes and net worths as technology has played a larger role in the production process. The three classic factors of production: land, labor, and capital, land being resources, labor, and capital. Capital, when it started to flow into increasingly efficacious forms of technology that substituted for labor, then all of a sudden, the returns from the production process went more and more to the providers of capital, so wages stagnated. Its immensely complicated and its above my pay grade, but this was already underway in the late 90s, and so the politics of a treaty that included transfers of wealth from the rich countries to the poor countries ran headlong into this political turbulence in the Congress. Think were about out of time, but I just wanted to thank Bonni Cohen and Jon Shenk for the movie The directors! Bonni Cohen and Jon Shenk really get the credit for this movie. David, its a privilege to be interviewed by you, and, ladies and gentlemen, I have one request before we leave. In this chaotic communications environment of today, the one thing that has the most influence on people is when they hear, by word of mouth or social media, that a movie is worth seeing. And this movie opens widely this Friday, and the more people who see it, the better chance we have to build this climate movement. One-hundred percent of the profits from the movie and the book, of the same title comes out this week also one-hundred percent of the profits go to training even more climate activists around this country and around the world. If you thought the movie was worthwhile and if youre willing to do it, you can make a huge difference by recommending it to your friends, recommend that they learn whats in the movie. Use your voice in conversations on climate. Use your vote become politically active, its really important. Use your choices and influence businesses to be even greener, much greener than they are now. Political will is a renewable resource. Its up to all of us now to renew it. We owe it to our kids and grandkids and we owe it to ourselves to solve this climate crisis. Donald Trump and Australian prime minister Malcolm Turnbull. Photo: Getty Images The transcript of Donald Trumps discussion with Australian prime minister Malcolm Turnbull obtained by the Washington Post reveals many things, but the most significant may be that Trump in his private negotiations is every bit as mentally limited as he appears to be in public. At issue in the conversation is a deal to settle 1,250 refugees who have been detained by Australia in the United States. I did not pay any attention to the details of this agreement before reading the transcript. By the time I was halfway through it, my brain could not stop screaming at Trump for his failure to understand what Turnbull was telling him. Australia has a policy of refusing to accept refugees who arrive by boat. The reason, as Turnbull patiently attempts to explain several times, is that it believes giving refuge to people who arrive by boat would encourage smuggling and create unsafe passage with a high risk of deaths at sea. But it had a large number of refugees who had arrived by sea, living in difficult conditions, whom Australia would not resettle (for fear of encouraging more boat trafficking) but whom it did not want to deport, either. The United States government agreed under President Obama to vet 1,250 of these refugees and accept as many of them as it deemed safe. In the transcript, Trump is unable to absorb any of these facts. He calls the refugees prisoners, and repeatedly brings up the Cuban boatlift (in which Castro dumped criminals onto Florida). He is unable to absorb Turnbulls explanation that they are economic refugees, not from conflict zones, and that the United States has the ability to turn away any of them it deems dangerous. Donald Trump Is His Own Worst Enemy Turnbull tries to explain to Trump that refugees have not been detained because they pose a danger to Australian society, but in order to deter ship-based smuggling: Trump: Why havent you let them out? Why have you not let them into your society? Turnbull: Okay, I will explain why. It is not because they are bad people. It is because in order to stop people smugglers, we had to deprive them of the product. So we said if you try to come to Australia by boat, even if we think you are the best person in the world, even if you are a Noble [sic] Prize winning genius, we will not let you in. Because the problem with the people At this point, Trump fails to understand the policy altogether, and proceeds to congratulate Turnbull for what Trump mistakes to be a draconian policy of total exclusion: Trump: That is a good idea. We should do that too. You are worse than I am Because you do not want to destroy your country. Look at what has happened in Germany. Look at what is happening in these countries. Trump has completely failed to understand either that the refugees are not considered dangerous, or, again, that they are being held because of a categorical ban on ship-based refugee traffic. He also fails to understand the number of refugees in the agreement: Trump: I am the worlds greatest person that does not want to let people into the country. And now I am agreeing to take 2,000 people and I agree I can vet them, but that puts me in a bad position. It makes me look so bad and I have only been here a week. Turnbull: With great respect, that is not right It is not 2,000. Trump: Well, it is close. I have also heard like 5,000 as well. Turnbull: The given number in the agreement is 1,250 and it is entirely a matter of your vetting. Then Trump returns to his belief that they are bad, and failing to understand the concept that they have been detained merely because they arrived by sea and not because they committed a crime: Trump: I hate taking these people. I guarantee you they are bad. That is why they are in prison right now. They are not going to be wonderful people who go on to work for the local milk people. Turnbull: I would not be so sure about that. They are basically Trump: Well, maybe you should let them out of prison. He still thinks theyre criminals. Later, Trump asks what happens if all the refugees fail his vetting process: Trump: I hate having to do it, but I am still going to vet them very closely. Suppose I vet them closely and I do not take any? Turnbull: That is the point I have been trying to make. After several attempts by Turnbull to explain Australias policy, Trump again expresses his total inability to understand what it is: Trump: Does anybody know who these people are? Who are they? Where do they come from? Are they going to become the Boston bomber in five years? Or two years? Who are these people? Turnbull: Let me explain. We know exactly who they are. They have been on Nauru or Manus for over three years and the only reason we cannot let them into Australia is because of our commitment to not allow people to come by boat. Otherwise we would have let them in. If they had arrived by airplane and with a tourist visa then they would be here. Trump: Malcom [sic], but they are arrived on a boat? After Turnbull has told Trump several times that the refugees have been detained because they arrived by boat, and only for that reason, Trumps question is, But they are arrived on a boat? Soon after, Turnbull again reiterates that Australias policy is to detain any refugee who arrives by boat: Turnbull: The only people that we do not take are people who come by boa. So we would rather take a not very attractive guy that help you out then to take a Noble [sic] Peace Prize winner that comes by boat. That is the point. Trump: What is the thing with boats? Why do you discriminate against boats? No, I know, they come from certain regions. I get it. No, you dont get it at all! Its not that they come from certain regions! Its that they come by boat! So Turnbull very patiently tries to explain again that the policy has nothing to do with what region the refugees come from: Turnbull: No, let me explain why. The problem with the boats it that you are basically outsourcing your immigration program to people smugglers and also you get thousands of people drowning at sea. At this point, Trump gives up asking about the policy and just starts venting about the terribleness of deals in general: I do not know what he got out of it. We never get anything out of it START Treaty, the Iran deal. I do not know where they find these people to make these stupid deals. I am going to get killed on this thing. Shortly afterward, the call ends in brusque fashion, and Turnbull presumably begins drinking heavily. Peter Kramer/Getty ImagesRapper The Kidd Creole of Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five is facing a charge of second degree murder in the fatal stabbing of a homeless man in New York City on Tuesday night, WABC-TV reports. The 57-year-old hip-hop legend, born Nathaniel Glover, was arrested Wednesday in the Bronx. According to police, the rapper got into a dispute with a homeless man in midtown Manhattan on Tuesday night, and during the fight the homeless man was stabbed. The victim was taken to a local hospital where he was pronounced dead. According to the New York Daily News, passersby called 911 just before midnight on Tuesday because they thought the victim was lying in the street drunk, but when police arrived they found the man suffering from multiple stab wounds. According to the paper, Glover was identified as a suspect from surveillance video. The Daily News reports that Glover currently works as a handyman and security guard near the scene of the incident. In 2007, Glover, along with the rest of Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five, was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Copyright 2017, ABC Radio. All rights reserved. Scouts honor? Photo: Steve Helber/AP The leader of the Boy Scouts of America did not tell President Trump that the speech he delivered at the National Scout Jamboree was the the greatest speech ever made to them, the organization said Wednesday. The group was forced to address the claim after Politico published an meandering interview Trump did with The Wall Street Journal the day after giving the speech. I got a call from the head of the Boy Scouts saying it was the greatest speech that was ever made to them, and they were very thankful, Trump told the WSJ after he was asked whether there was a mixed reaction to the speech. There was no mix there, he added. We are unaware of any such call, the Scouts told the AP. Despite the hedging denial, the group said definitively that neither its president, Randall Stephenson, nor its chief executive, Mike Surbaugh, made such a call to Trump. If the call had gone down as Trump said, the Scouts would have had some explaining to do. Days after Trumps speech the organization issued a public apology, in which Surbaugh said, We sincerely regret that politics were inserted into the Scouting program. This isnt even the first time this week someone denied making a phone call Trump claims to have received. On Monday, when Trump was introducing his new chief of staff, Mike Kelly, he praised the former DHS Secretarys work on the border between the U.S. and Mexico. As you know, the border was a tremendous problem and theyre close to 80 percent stoppage, Trump said. And even the president of Mexico called me they said their southern border, very few people are coming because they know theyre not going to get through our border, which is the ultimate compliment. That call was never made, the Mexican Foreign Ministry said in a statement, noting that President Enrique Pena Nieto has not recently spoken to President Donald Trump over the telephone. A U.S. official confirmed this to the AP. The statement did note the last time the two leaders spoke, which was on the sidelines of last months G20 summit in Hamburg. There, they discussed declining deportations of Mexicans from the U.S. and a drop in the number of Central American migrants entering Mexico. But that information was relayed less as a compliment than as a statement of fact, the AP says. That means Trump is either lying or misremembering. Either way, hes creating problems for others. The Boy Scouts are now enduring a second week of headlines regarding a speech that had some parents pulling their kids from the group. Meanwhile, Pena Nieto has taken heat from Mexican lawmakers for making a secret phone call and complimenting Trump two things he would surely avoid. The not-terribly-well-known Seth Moulton and Tim Ryan prepare to strut their stuff at an Iowa event know as an incubator for Democratic presidential candidates. Photo: Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call; Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call Its the early, silly season of 2020 presidential speculation. So theres nothing unusual about speculation surrounding two fairly obscure Democratic House members, Seth Moulton of Massachusetts and Tim Ryan of Ohio. Compadres in an unsuccessful revolt against Speaker Nancy Pelosi last November (Ryan was the alternative candidate, Moulton a vocal supporter), they have both already attracted rumors that theyve seen a future POTUS in the bathroom mirror. They will join another colleague who has attracted some national attention, Cheri Bustos of Illinois, as featured speakers at Septembers Polk County Steak Fry, in Des Moines. This event is an effort to revive the annual Steak Fry event former senator Tom Harkin used to host in his home town of Indianola, which was a big-time magnet for future Democratic presidential candidates. Everybody should get used to the idea of a putative 2020 Democratic field the size of an Iowa cornfield. There are three potential candidates who would each become front-runners in the 2020 race if they decide to run: Bernie Sanders, Joe Biden, and Elizabeth Warren. There are questions as to whether any or all of them are too old, particularly for a party looking to show its shed the barnacles exposed by the 2016 Clinton campaign. Sanders will be 78 when the 2020 Iowa Caucuses are held; Biden will be 77, and Warren will be 71 (for that matter, Donald Trump will be 73). But none of them has any particular reason to diminish their influence by declining interest in 2020. Their long shadows will make it harder for little-known alternatives to emerge. But the possibility of retirement or illness among the Big Three keeps open the gate to dark-horse fantasies. If Sanders, Biden, and Warren do fall by the wayside, Democrats may suddenly find themselves with a presidential field that resembles the mob that ran for the GOP nomination in 2016. And as National Reviews Jim Geraghty reminds us, that did not work out to well for those Republicans who kept expecting someone to emerge to knock off Donald Trump, right up to the moment he was nominated: One chunk of the field convinced itself there was an establishment lane, leaving Jeb Bush, John Kasich, Marco Rubio, and Chris Christie all elbowing each other for the same base of support that proved insufficiently influential. On the other side, Ted Cruz, Rick Perry, Bobby Jindal, and Scott Walker tried to occupy the conservative lane. Ben Carson and Carly Fiorina competed with Trump for an outsider lane. But in the end, it turned out there were no real lanes, just a traffic jam. Every non-Trump candidates determination to be the last one standing against Trump was the strategic miscalculation of the cycle. There is no Donald Trump analogue gearing up for a presidential run on the Democratic side in 2020, so far as we know. But if one emerges, she or he will be helped enormously if there is a large field against which to pose as Gulliver among the Lilliputians. Geraghty counts 18 possible candidates right now, and while some will certainly not run, others may come out of the woodwork if the Big Three give the race a pass. Indeed, the Trump precedent has made the narcissism of long shots seem a lot more reasonable. There are some things about the Donkey Partys procedures that might help mitigate the risk of an accidental nominee. Most importantly, Democrats award delegates on a strictly proportional basis, making the occasional sweeps that helped Trump win in 2016 impossible. The Democratic practice of awarding nonelected superdelegates if they preserve it is also a hedge against a hostile-candidate takeover of the party. But even if they have no reason to fear the fate that befell the GOP in 2016, Democrats should begin to think through the practical consequences of a very large presidential field. If nothing else, the two-tier debates Republicans were forced to undertake would be very controversial in a party where last years debate scheduling and formatting were a huge bone of contention. And an undifferentiated glut of candidates might be good for party unity but not so hot for voter interest. Maybe one or two of the Big Three (its hard to envision all of them running) will enter the 2020 race and either lock up the nomination early or at least cull the field of electoral weaklings. If not, then just two short years from now, at the Iowa State Fair, the candidates may be so thick on the ground that you wont be able to stir em with a stick. Utah. Photo: George Frey/Bloomberg via Getty Images The EPA on Wednesday reversed its decision to delay the implementation of an Obama-era clean-air rule after lawsuits from 15 states. The delay, which EPA head Scott Pruitt announced in June, would have pushed back by one year requirements to reduce ground-level ozone. At the time of the decision, Pruitt said that the EPA would spend that time figuring out how to effectively implement the ozone standard without impeding economic growth. But that delay inspired considerable pushback from attorneys general in 15 states, who sued, alleging that delaying the rules violated the Clean Air Act. By illegally blocking these vital clean air protections, Administrator Pruitt is endangering the health and safety of millions but Attorneys General have made clear: we wont hesitate to fight back to protect our residents and our states, New York attorney general Eric Schneiderman said in a statement. Ground-level ozone is a particularly nasty form of air pollution that has been linked to asthma, and heart and lung disease. Its produced when common pollutants from cars, power plants, and factories combine with sunlight. The 2015 rule forces states to have reduced ozone levels to 70 parts per billion by October 1 of this year. In his announcement of the EPAs reversal, Pruitt, Oklahomas former attorney general and a staunch ally of the energy industry, said he reserves the right to delay other rules in the future. But he would no doubt prefer that Congress just do the job for him. The House has already passed a resolution that would delay the ozone regulations not just by one year, but by eight years. It arrived in the Senate two weeks ago. On June 19 in a courtroom in Downtown Brooklyn, a federal judge took up the enigmatic case of an individual known as John Doe. According to the heavily redacted court record, Doe was an expert money launderer, convicted in connection with a stock swindle almost 20 years ago. But many other facts about his strange and sordid case remained obscured. The courtroom was filled with investigative journalists from numerous outlets along with lawyers petitioning to unseal documents related to the prosecution. This case, argued John Langford, a First Amendment specialist from Yale Law School who represented a Forbes editor, implicates an integrity interest of the highest order. The public had a right to know more about Does history, Langford argued, especially in light of the relationship between the defendant in this case and the president of the United States. John Does real name, everyone in the courtroom knew, was Felix Sater. Born in Moscow and raised in Brooklyn, Sater was Donald Trumps original conduit to Russia. As a real-estate deal-maker, he was the moving force behind the Trump Soho tower, which was built by developers from the former Soviet Union a decade ago. Long before Donald Trump Jr. sat down to talk about kompromat with a group of Kremlin-connected Russians, Sater squired him and Ivanka around on their first business trip to Moscow. And long before their father struck up a bizarrely chummy relationship with Vladimir Putin, Sater was the one who introduced the future president to a byzantine world of oligarchs and mysterious money. Sater was a canny operator and a colorful bullshitter, and there were always many rumors about his background: that he was a spy, that he was an FBI informant, that he was tied to organized crime. Like a lot of aspects of the stranger-than-fiction era of President Trump, these stories were both conspiratorial on their face and, it turns out, verifiably true. Langford read aloud from the transcript of a 2011 court hearing, only recently disclosed, in which the Justice Department acknowledged Saters assistance in investigations of the Mafia, the Russian mob, Al Qaeda, and unspecified foreign governments. A prosecutor once called Sater, in another secret proceeding, the key to open a hundred different doors. Many were wondering now whether he could unlock the truth about Trump and Russia. In the universe of what the president has called, with telling self-centrism, his satellite associates, Sater spins in an unmapped orbit. The president has said under oath that he really wouldnt know what he looked like if they were in the same room. (For the record, Sater is 51 years old and olive-complexioned, with heavy-lidded eyes.) Yet their paths have intersected frequently over the years. Most recently, in February, the Times reported that Sater had attempted to broker a pro-Russian peace deal in Ukraine, handing a proposal to Michael Cohen, the presidents personal attorney, to pass to Michael Flynn, who was then still the national-security adviser. Both Cohen and Flynn are now reported to be under scrutiny by the FBI, in connection with special counsel Robert Muellers investigation of Russias election interference and Trumps campaign. If there really is a sinister explanation for the mutual affinity between Trump and Putin, it almost certainly traces back to money. The emissaries who met with Don Jr., promising damaging information on Hillary Clinton, came through the familys business relationship with property developer Aras Agalarov, who had been trying to build a Trump tower in Moscow. Both congressional investigators and the special counsel are reportedly zeroing in on the finances of Trump and associates, looking for suspicious inflows. On July 20, Bloomberg News reported that the special counsel had taken over a preexisting money-laundering investigation launched by ousted U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara and was said to be examining, among other things, the development of the Trump Soho. As a convicted racketeer with murky ties to the Mafia, law enforcement, intelligence agencies (both friendly and hostile), various foreign oligarchs, and the current president of the United States, Sater has become an obsession of the many investigators professional and amateur searching for Trumps Russia connection. Since the election, especially in the more feverish precincts of the internet, he has been the subject of constant speculation, which has at times been contradictory. Was he the missing link to the Kremlin? (Trump, Russia, and a Shadowy Business Partnership, read the headline of a recent column by Trump biographer Tim OBrien.) Or could he be Muellers inside man? (Will a Mob-Connected Hustler Be the First Person to Spill the Beans to the FBI on Trumps Russian Ties? asked a story on the lefty site Alternet.) Could he be playing both sides? At least one clue to the answer, Saters pursuers suspect, may be found in the records of his closed criminal case which just so happened to have been overseen by one of the top prosecutors working on Muellers investigation. Judge Pamela Chen listened as the various attorneys advocating for disclosure made impassioned arguments, drawing on Supreme Court precedents, the Pentagon Papers, and even the possibility of fraud by President Trump. But when it came time for federal prosecutors to make the case for continued confidentiality, citing concerns for Saters safety and the possible disclosure of sensitive details about government operations, Chen closed the courtroom to the public. The key documents in Saters case remain sealed. His lips, however, are another matter. Trump with Sater in 2005. Photo: Cyrus McCrimmon/The Denver Post via Getty Images For an international man of mystery, Sater can be quite talkative. Over the past few months, Ive reached out to him regularly by phone and email, and every once in a while, he has responded. He would vent about how he was tired of being kicked in the balls over long-ago offenses, by reporters investigating his ties to Trump. Then he asked what I wanted to know. What do you do for a living? I asked. I am the epitome of the word the deal guy, Sater replied. People who know Sater told me he shares some character traits with Trump, a man for whom he professes unabashed affection. He tends to talk grandiosely, if not always entirely truthfully; he can play the coarse outer-borough wiseguy or the charming raconteur. Most of all, like the man he orbits, he has a transactional view of the universe anything can be brokered. I work on deals, Sater told me. Deals in real estate, liquid natural gas, medicine. I am currently working on bringing a dont laugh, do not laugh a cure for cancer using stable isotopes. He said he found the technology through a former real-estate partner, who had met a scientist, who was now testing it. I own a significant piece of it for doing the work, Sater said. Ill find investors, and eventually, God willing, we will be able to deliver the cure for cancer. But as my lawyer, Robert Wolf, says, Felix, if you announce that youve found the cure for cancer, tomorrows papers are going to be, Trumps Gangster-Related Ex-Partner Looking to Steal Money from Medicaid. Thatll be the headline for the cure for cancer. Sater said a lot of things like that, maybe just to be playful. He would joke sardonically about the latest additions to his Google search results, which yielded story after story about his entrepreneurial ventures, live and defunct, the two dozen or so lawsuits relating to various personal and business disputes, his curious presence at Trump Tower (the Federal Election Commission recorded a $120 purchase of campaign merchandise there on July 21, 2016, the day before WikiLeaks started releasing hacked Democratic Party emails) and even the Orthodox religious movement he belongs to, which was the subject of a breathless Politico expose headlined The Happy-Go-Lucky Jewish Group That Connects Trump and Putin. It was like, my rabbi from Chabad flying back and forth and smuggling secret messages in his ass or something, Sater said. He scornfully dismissed the whole notion that he might be some kind of middleman between Trump and Russia. Then he would confide just enough about himself to keep the conversation interesting. When I asked Sater how he first met Trump, he replied, No comment on anything related to the president of the United States. He savored a delicious pause. But back in 96, I rented the penthouse suite of 40 Wall Street, a Trump-owned skyscraper. (A contemporary court record confirms he had an office there.) A few years later, Sater started doing deals to license Trumps name for real-estate projects. How did I get to Donald? Sater asked. I walked in his door and told him, Im gonna be the biggest developer in New York, and you want to be my partner. In reality, Saters route to Trumps office was anything but direct. His family emigrated from the Soviet Union when he was 7. He grew up on Surf Avenue in Coney Island. As a boy, he said, he used to sell the Forward on the boardwalk. His father, Mikhail a big strapping fellow, Sater said, who was once a boxer worked as a cabdriver. At some point, the elder Sater got involved in organized crime, running a long-term extortion racket in Brighton Beach with a Genovese-family soldier. (He would end up pleading guilty to extortion charges in 2000.) After a few years of college, Felix Sater found his way to Wall Street in the late 1980s. Brokerage houses then had retail operations that sold stocks over the phone, and Sater started out as a cold-caller. He worked his way up through several firms, including Gruntal, a freewheeling brokerage that did a lot of business with Michael Milken. (One of Saters colleagues there was Steve Cohen, the hedge-fund billionaire who recently dodged insider-trading charges.) A friend, Sal Lauria, later wrote in a Wall Street crime memoir, The Scorpion and the Frog, that Sater was a sly salesman and a sharp dresser who would routinely spend thousands of dollars on designer suits. They frequented nightclubs and celebrity parties. At one such event, Lauria wrote, they encountered Trump, who sent a bodyguard over to obtain the phone numbers of their wives. They laughed off that advance, but Lauria wrote that Sater could be a hothead when provoked. One night in 1991, when Sater was in his mid-20s, they were out at a bar in midtown when Sater got into a drunken argument over a woman and ended up slashing another mans face with a broken margarita glass. He was convicted of assault, served a year in prison, and was barred from selling securities. Sater moved over to the shady side of Wall Street, establishing a firm called White Rock, which engaged in illegal pump-and-dump schemes. The firm would secretly acquire blocks of penny stocks; then, its brokers would hype them to suckers over the phone. Sater and Lauria had personal ties to mobsters, and the firm received protection from Mikhail Saters associate in the Genovese family. Using an alias, Paul Stewart, Felix Sater laundered fraud proceeds through a labyrinthine network of Caribbean shell companies, Israeli and Swiss bank accounts, and contacts in New Yorks Diamond District. He moved in the same bucket-shop demimonde as Jordan Belfort, the crooked trader portrayed in The Wolf of Wall Street. Jordan was a stone-cold little bitch, and everybody knew it, said Sater, who claims that Belfort was actually nothing special as a salesman. Jordan picked up 90 percent of it from everybody else and turned it into his own movie. I have had 27 producers approach me already to sell my lifes work, and Im sitting here going, Why? So in the first two minutes of the movie some director could show me doing coke out of a hookers ass? (Through a representative, Belfort said he had no recollection of Sater.) In the mid-1990s, the Mafias involvement in stock manipulation caught the attention of law enforcement. Feeling the heat, Sater decided to get out of the illegal business, starting a seemingly legitimate investment company in his penthouse office at 40 Wall Street. He explored opportunities back in Russia, which was going through its chaotic post-Communist privatization process. He and his partners moved to Moscow, where they presented themselves as New York bankers. We were dealing with ex-KGB generals and with the elite of Russian society, Lauria wrote. One night, Sater told me, he went to dinner with a contact that he assumes was affiliated with the GRU, the Russian military-intelligence agency, where he was introduced to another American doing business in Moscow, Milton Blane. Theres like eight people there, Sater said, and hes sizing me up all dinner long. As I went to take a piss, he followed me into the bathroom and said, Can I have your phone number? Id like to get together and talk to you. Blane, who died last year, was an arms dealer. According to a government disclosure made 13 years ago in response to a Freedom of Information Act query, Blane had a contract with the Defense Department to procure foreign military material for U.S. intelligence purposes. Sater says the U.S. wanted a peek at a high-tech Soviet radar system. Blane sat down with me and said, The country needs you, Sater said. This was the beginning of what Sater claims were many years of involvement with intelligence agencies. He says he developed contacts at secret Russian military installations known as closed cities. I was working for the U.S. government, risking my life in Russia, Sater said. Picture what they would have done if they were to have caught me in closed military cities a little Jewish boy who gave up his passport and now was trying to buy the highest secret shit on behalf of the Americans. You think anybody would ever find me again? Meanwhile, back in New York, the FBI was looking for Sater. The bureaus investigation into the Mafia and Wall Street had caught a break when someone neglected to pay the rent for a locker at a Manhattan Mini Storage facility on Spring Street. The management opened it up, found three guns, and called the police. The locker also held a cache of papers stuffed into a box and a gym bag: financial records that documented Saters money-laundering activities. The FBI launched an investigation called Operation Street Cleaner, targeting Sater and his co-conspirators. At first, Lauria wrote, they hoped that Saters spying might earn them a free ride for their financial crimes. In addition to the radar system, Sater has publicly claimed that he provided intelligence on some Stinger missiles floating around Afghanistan, as well a phone number for Osama bin Laden. The FBI was not satisfied, however, so the fugitives returned to the U.S., where they pleaded guilty and became government witnesses. (Andrew Weissmann, the supervising prosecutor who approved Saters cooperation agreement in December 1998, would go on to become a top deputy to Mueller on the Russia investigation.) In 2000, Operation Street Cleaner culminated in the arrests of 19 people, including several alleged mobsters, who were charged with cheating investors out of $40 million. Sater would continue to work with the FBI for years afterward in the hope of reducing his eventual sentence. Sater provided assistance of an extraordinary depth and breadth, a prosecutor later said in a closed hearing, on matters that ran a gamut that is seldom seen. After the September 11 attacks, as the FBI and CIA scrambled to respond to the threat of terrorism and Islamist insurgency, intelligence about black-market arms dealing suddenly became extremely valuable. Loretta Lynch, who oversaw Saters case as the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York, later testified during her confirmation process to become Attorney General that Saters work for the FBI and other agencies involved providing information crucial to national security. Sater was skilled at deciphering financial fraud, and as is often the case, the same things that made him a successful criminal his ingratiating charm, his street smarts, his ability to see all the angles made him a very useful government asset. He engaged in undercover work, making surreptitious recordings, according to an unsealed court-hearing transcript. He was always looking for the next big person to get connected to, said a former law-enforcement officer who worked on Saters case. So long as Sater continued to assist the FBI, the bureau left him free to do business. He kept up his wealthy lifestyle with his family, living on a beachfront lane in the moneyed enclave of Sands Point on the Long Island Sound the model for East Egg in The Great Gatsby. He was finished on Wall Street, but real estate is far less regulated. Sometime around 2000, Sater got to know a neighbor, Tevfik Arif, an oleaginous former Soviet official from Kazakhstan. Arif and his family made money in the chromium business after the fall of communism, and had interests in hotels and construction in Turkey. He and Sater went into business together, calling their firm the Bayrock Group. Bayrock leased office space on the 24th floor of Trump Tower, one floor below the headquarters of the Trump Organization. At this time, it wasnt too difficult for a company without a reputation to approach Trump, whose business career was in a relative lull between his 1990s crash and his big comeback with The Apprentice. The Bayrock office was staffed with an assortment of eye-catching women, many of them from Eastern Europe. One attracted the attention of a Trump Organization leasing agent, who started paying calls to the office. He provided an introduction to Trumps development team, a former Bayrock executive says. Soon Sater was in the bosss office. In a 2008 deposition taken in connection with Trumps unsuccessful libel lawsuit against his biographer OBrien, Sater testified that the companies interacted on a constant basis and that he frequently popped in to visit Trump himself for real-estate conversations. Sater says he convinced Trump to license his name to Bayrock developments in Florida and Arizona. Such deals, a major component of Trumps business over the past two decades, allowed him to avoid issues of creditworthiness, which posed a problem because of his previous defaults, while capitalizing on his primary asset, his celebrity. Trump described the licensing business as really risk-free. If a project succeeded, he could bray triumphantly and collect fees, and if it failed, he could walk away, disclaiming responsibility. For Sater, the partnership offered an opportunity to leverage Trumps name. In the deposition, he called this his Trump card, and he said he played it at every possible opportunity. My competitive advantage is, anybody can come in and build a tower, Sater said. I can build a Trump tower, because of my relationship with Trump. When asked about Sater in his own deposition, Trump swore that nobody knows anything about this guy. Saters federal case was still secret, and he had taken to spelling his name Satter to avoid incriminating search results. But even a cursory background check would have revealed his earlier assault conviction and a 1998 Businessweek article about his involvement in stock fraud headlined The Case of the Gym Bag That Squealed. Sal Lauria, despite his lack of real-estate experience, also went to work for Bayrock as an independent contractor. Sater played the role of the jet-setting deal-maker, entertaining lavishly, traveling constantly, jumping on a helicopter to Cannes when he felt the traffic from a nearby airport was moving too slowly. Joshua Bernstein, one of Saters subordinates, later asserted under oath that he and Lauria would often joke about being white-collar criminals and claimed that Sater had threatened to kill him, once on the day of the office Christmas party while wielding a pair of scissors. He would say things like that regularly throughout the firm, Bernstein testified. Another Bayrock associate in Arizona claimed in a lawsuit, later settled and sealed, that Sater once threatened to torture him and leave him dead in a car trunk. (Sater vehemently denies threatening either man and says the lawsuit allegations were financially motivated.) In 2005, Sater and Trump embarked on their most ambitious joint project: the Trump Soho. The site of the development a parking lot on Spring Street happened to be directly across the street from the storage facility that had been Saters previous undoing. Trump took a very active interest, handling negotiations over construction contracts and promoting the building on The Apprentice. Trump received a 15 percent ownership stake in return for contributing his name and expertise, as well as a potential cut of development fees and an ongoing deal to manage the hotel. Another 3 percent of the building was allotted to Trumps children Ivanka and Don Jr., who were just beginning to involve themselves in the family company. They worked closely with Bayrock, particularly Don, who played a deal-making role, traveling with Sater to explore other prospective projects. Sater also tried to take the Trump brand abroad. Bayrock proposed deals in Ukraine, Poland, and Turkey. In Moscow, Sater identified a site for a high-rise Trump tower. He later testified that Donald Trump personally asked him to chaperone Don and Ivanka when they traveled to the Russian capital to explore the opportunity. In September 2007, Trump, Arif, and Sater unveiled Trump Soho. The real-estate bubble was about to burst, but Bayrock was inflated, at least temporarily, by a group of people with even worse market timing: Icelandic bankers. Lauria managed to broker a deal with the FL Group, an investment group run by a long-haired Viking raider. The Icelandic fund agreed to invest $50 million in Bayrock, offering Arif and Sater a potentially lucrative payout. In December 2007, though, the Times reporter Charles Bagli published a scoop, revealing many details of Saters criminal history. Bayrocks partners were upset; Sater complained in a leaked email that Trump was treating the scandal as an opportunity to try and get development fees for himself. Sater was quickly and quietly forced out of the company. When the market crashed, Bayrock did, too, and none of the foreign projects came to fruition. Condo sales at the Trump Soho dried up, although Ivanka and Don Jr. continued to boast, falsely, that a majority of the buildings units had been sold. In August 2010, a group of Trump Soho buyers sued, claiming the buildings marketing was fraudulent. (Trump and his co-defendants agreed to settle with the buyers, refunding nearly $3 million.) That September, Arif was arrested on human-trafficking charges in Turkey after police broke up an alleged sex party he was holding on a yacht attended by Russian prostitutes and business associates, including a Kazakh billionaire whom Bayrock once listed as a financial backer. (Arif was later acquitted at trial.) Sater, meanwhile, dropped out of public view. As Bayrock was imploding, he formed a new company called Swiss Capital, also on the 24th floor of Trump Tower. He shifted his activities to Europe, working on coal and oil deals in Kazakhstan, hotel projects in France and Switzerland. He spent an extended period in London, pursuing developments with Sergei Polonsky, a flamboyant builder from St. Petersburg who like all of Russias new billionaires maintained warm relations with Vladimir Putin. But Polonsky soon went bust and ran afoul of the Russian state. He was later arrested at his Cambodian island retreat, deported home, and convicted of embezzlement. This whole time, Sater had been working on the side with the FBI. He has claimed that he was building Trump Towers by day and hunting bin Laden by night. When his Orthodox synagogue, Chabad of Port Washington, named him its Man of the Year, the congregations rabbi gave a speech recounting how Sater had told him many things about his past, few of which he really believed, until one day he was invited to a private event at a federal building in New York. I get there, and to my amazement I see dozens of U.S. intelligence officers from all the various three-letter intelligence agencies, the rabbi said. Theyre taking turns, standing up one after the other, offering praise for Felix, praising him as an American hero for his work and his assistance at the highest levels of this countrys national-security interest. Saters decade of undercover work finally ended in October 2009, when he was sentenced for his securities fraud at a secret proceeding in Brooklyn. (He was given no jail time and a $25,000 fine.) Around the same time, Sater paid a visit to Trump Tower. I stopped up to say hello to Donald, and he says, You gotta come here, Sater told me. Though the Trump Organization has contended it never formally employed Sater, he had business cards that identified him as a senior advisor to Trump. Donald wanted me to bring deals to him, Sater said. Because he saw how many I put on the table at Bayrock. He said Trumps willingness to take him on, even after discovering his criminal past, was indicative of his character. I know youre gonna be able to spin it as He doesnt care and will do business even with gangsters, Sater said to me. Wouldnt it also show extreme flexibility, the ability not to hold a grudge, the ability to think outside the box, and its okay to be enemies one day and friends the next? None of the real-estate deals Sater was trying to drum up for Trump materialized, and he drifted away from the company within a year. Since then, Trumps memory of Sater has grown foggier. I never really understood who owned Bayrock, he testified in 2011. Two years later, he abruptly cut off a BBC television interview when Saters name came up. In 2015, in response to questions from the Associated Press, Trump replied, Felix Sater, boy, I have to even think about it. In legal proceedings related to Bayrocks failed ventures, Trump has contended he had little personal involvement in any of his licensing projects. In general, [you] go into a deal, you think a partner is going to be good, Trump said in a 2013 deposition. It happens with politics. It happens with everything. You vote for people, they turn out to be no good. I stopped up to say hello to Donald, and he says, You gotta come here, Sater said. Donald wanted me to bring deals to him. Sater continued to move in New York real-estate circles, though he tried to keep a lower profile. He was part of an insular Russian-American business community, and during the oil and gas boom earlier this decade, he was well positioned to act as a middleman between New York developers and Russian oligarchs who were trying to reinvest their fortunes in property. He had access to high-net-worth individuals in Russia and the U.S., said a business associate of Saters. Sater has claimed he was working on a Trump-branded real-estate deal with a Russian real-estate developer in Moscow as late as 2015. (Agalarov signed a letter of intent to build a Trump tower in Moscow around the same time, but Sater denied this was the same project.) One person whom Sater dealt with extensively was a Swiss-based investor named Ilyas Khrapunov, whose family was involved in banking and politics in Kazakhstan. Starting in 2011, with Saters assistance, Khrapunov and his family members invested in, among other things, a shopping mall outside Cincinnati, a residential complex in Syracuse, an apartment building on West 52nd Street, and three condos in the Trump Soho. According to a lawsuit filed by the firm of Boies Schiller Flexner, which is coordinating a global asset-recovery effort on the behalf of a Kazakh bank, the money for Khrapunovs real-estate investments came from billions looted from the bank and a municipal government. In July, the Financial Times reported that Sater was assisting in a money-laundering investigation of the Khrapunovs, in which it said the FBI has taken an interest. (The papers sources said Sater was being paid handsomely for his assistance.) U.S. laws, which exempt real-estate transactions from certain anti-money-laundering regulations, have long made if possible for American developers to profit from the proceeds of crime and political corruption. The FBI is reported to be looking into whether Trump and other figures close to him might have engaged in such behavior, but money-laundering investigations are notoriously arduous, and proving intentional wrongdoing is especially difficult when the money comes from criminal activity in a foreign country. Much of what is publicly known about Sater traces in one way or another to a seven-year legal battle, which has taken place largely out of public view. Years before anyone cared much about Donald Trumps ledger books, Jody Kriss, Bayrocks former director of finance, went to see a lawyer named Frederick Oberlander. Kriss thought he had been cheated out of money that Bayrock owed him. He told Oberlander, a specialist in arcane tax issues, all about the companys dealings, including the FL Group transaction. Oberlander has a shambling manner and talks like a mad scientist. (Among other things, he told me that he studied astrophysics at a NASA institute and had taught computer science at Yale, that he had worked on nuclear submarines, that he used to be a competitive weightlifter, that he made a fortune in software development, that he once traded derivatives and sniffed out Bernie Madoff before anyone, and that he went into tax law, at which he was brilliant, because he thought it would be fun.) Oberlander told Kriss he thought that Bayrocks finances looked fishy. Oberlander also made contact with a second former Bayrock employee, Joshua Bernstein, the one who claimed Sater had threatened him. He had been fired and was suing over compensation. He possessed a hard drive containing thousands of internal documents and emails, as well as copies of several documents from Saters stock-fraud case, including a confidential government presentencing report, detailing his secret cooperation. Oberlander appears to have seen the documents as a tool to prod Bayrock toward a large settlement. I am so not kidding this is not a game, Oberlander wrote Bernstein in an email. My job is to shake the living daylights out of them. In May 2010, Kriss filed suit in federal court, alleging that tax evasion and money laundering are the core of Bayrocks business model. An enormous complaint, written by Oberlander and illustrated with arrow-filled flowcharts and snippets of incriminating internal emails, purported to describe a wildly complex racketeering conspiracy. It claimed that Bayrock had been largely a mob-owned and operated business, that it had engaged in fraud, that the FL Group transaction has been structured to evade taxes, and that much of the money had been siphoned off by insiders. (The complaint alleged some $10 million was allotted to repay hidden interests in Russia and Kazakhstan.) Oberlander attached Saters presentencing report as an exhibit. In a letter to Saters lawyer, Oberlander likened the suit to a tactical nuclear device, bound to yield massive press attention. Saters lawyers later claimed that the presentencing document amounted to an extortionists Holy Grail, exposing him to retribution from the Mafia. Oberlander argued that the First Amendment gave him the right to alert the public, especially in light of Saters continuing business activities. The courts came down hard on Saters side. The civil case against Bayrock was immediately sealed, and the judge who presided over Saters old stock-fraud case, saying something very bad and perhaps despicable was done, ordered that Oberlander and Bernstein hand over the offending documents. (Bernstein later settled his claim against Bayrock and is no longer involved in the case.) For the next few years, in closed proceedings, Oberlander would fight an increasingly fanatical legal battle, filing numerous suits against Bayrock, its lawyers and accountants, and the man referred to only as John Doe. He has faced both civil contempt proceedings and a criminal investigation related to his alleged defiance of court orders regarding the dissemination of sealed information. (No charges have ever been brought.) Frederick Oberlander has a history of overstepping legal boundaries, a Bayrock spokeswoman said, citing the contempt proceedings. He has filed a string of meritless legal actions in hopes of a financial windfall. Whatever Oberlanders motivations were to begin with, he has managed to drag many compromising facts into the open, including the FBIs apparent blindness to Saters business dealings and millions in income from Bayrock. (In 2011, well after his sentencing, the IRS hit Sater with $460,000 in tax liens relating to the period he worked for Bayrock, which he did not pay off for two years.) Even after Kriss removed him as his lawyer, Oberlander continued to fight on in a variety of legal venues, including in a case in which he is suing on behalf of allegedly defrauded New York State taxpayers. His lawsuit does not name Trump as a defendant, but the litigation has already damaged the president by revealing the dodgy goings-on at Bayrock, which, even if not criminal, certainly look suspicious, given the many questions surrounding Trumps financial links to Russia. Two sources said Oberlander has provided information to Senate investigators. Donald Trumps projects with Bayrock were financed with the proceeds of transnational crime, Oberlander claimed when I met him for lunch one day in April. He knew, and he continued to take the money. (The Trump Organization did not respond to a request for comment.) Oberlander described elaborate machinations involving secret agreements and misdirection, most of which appeared to be based on inference rather than the documentary evidence in the public domain. You want to understand how it works? I show you or youre obviously going to fail, he snapped, when I expressed confusion about an intricate diagram he was sketching on a paper tablecloth. You think way too much more of your intellect than you should. And you can quote me on that! In our chats, Sater called Oberlander a nut job and said the lawsuits were pure extortion. Last December, a federal judge denied a motion to dismiss Krisss civil fraud, racketeering, and conspiracy claims against Sater and other Bayrock executives. (The parties are now in settlement talks.) It overshadows my life. And then with Donald becoming president and obviously me being the major Russian mafioso that I am, he said sarcastically, its just been a disaster for my life. A complete disaster. Despite his protests, Sater seemed to revel, just a bit, in all the speculation swirling around him. Last August, in the middle of the presidential campaign, Sater was introduced, via a mutual friend, to a veteran political fixer named Robert Armao. I looked him up, Armao told me, and I said, This is an interesting man. They met for a meal, where Sater regaled him with tales about Trump, and predicted he would win the presidency, for sure. Armao was impressed. Felix Sater knows everybody, everywhere, he said. Armao, once a political aide to Nelson Rockefeller, has represented foreign leaders as a communications adviser and does business in the energy industry. Sater told him he coveted the wonderful Rolodex he had built over decades. Over the next few months, he would ask Armao to act as his intermediary on a number of matters, including enlisting Armaos assistance in brokering an energy deal to refurbish Ukraines aging nuclear reactors. They met again for breakfast at the St. Regis Hotel, a block south of Trump Tower, on October 7, the day the Obama administration issued its first urgent warning about Russian election interference, WikiLeaks published the first batch of John Podestas emails, and Trumps vulgar Access Hollywood tape appeared. This time, Sater brought along a friend: Andrii Artemenko, a Ukrainian opposition politician. The nuclear deal appeared to be just the beginning of their plans, which would end up entangling the White House. I think they had visions of kingmaking, and making Artemenko president of Ukraine, Armao said. Then youd really be in business. Artemenko is a politician who, like every politician, wants to become president, Sater said. So he came to me. Though they started off talking about nuclear reactors, and averting another Chernobyl, Trumps election appeared to open up an even more ambitious opportunity. I got friendly with Artemenko over that deal, and he said, Look, its killing me, weve got people dying every day between all the bombings and killings. I mean theyre killing kids over there. Theres a new administration coming in, you got access to the administration. I know how to end the war in eastern Ukraine. He goes, thats the idea, lets end the war. Lets get peace going. Peace sounds good, right? How does the word peace not work? In January, Artemenko returned to the United States to attend Trumps inauguration, bringing with him a Putin-friendly peace proposal, which called for a referendum to approve Russias occupation of Crimea in return for the end of hostilities in eastern Ukraine. (The plan also called for deploying propaganda to undermine Ukraines current president, a Putin adversary.) I think it sounds like a good idea, Sater said. Politically, it would be an opportunity to break the situation that is currently going on with Russia. Cause I am a very firm believer that Vlad the Terrible no matter how poised he is and how well he controlled himself in the Oliver Stone interview that crazy fucker has got 10,000 nuclear warheads pointed at us. Not a good guy to get into a pissing match with. So I figured, hey, things could work out all around, and probably give Donald, who wants to get on better relations with Putin, an opportunity to break this logjam. So I picked up the phone, and called Michael Cohen. Cohen, one of Trumps personal attorneys, had known Sater since they were teenagers. He met Artemenko and Sater at a hotel on Park Avenue, and they gave him a sealed envelope containing the plan. The New York Times reported that Cohen said he had hand-delivered the envelope to Flynn at the White House. (Cohen later denounced the Times story as fake news.) After it was exposed, the peace initiative was scuttled and Trumps opponents seized on fresh evidence that preposterous as it might seem Sater still had enough pull with the president to dabble in diplomacy. A Big Shoe Just Dropped, wrote the liberal blogger Josh Marshall, who has continued to enthusiastically delve into Saters role in what he calls the Trump-Russia money channel. Since then, shoe after shoe has clunked to the floor, in a cacophonous cascade of ever-more-damaging disclosures. I know there is a huge movement to find the there there, Sater said in June. I got it. But unfortunately, Im not going to be the one. He said he would be happy to be summoned to speak to Mueller or congressional investigators. God bless them if they do, he said. We could talk about bin Laden and Al Qaeda and cyber-crime convictions and operations of over fucking 12 years, no problem. He couldnt resist telling me, though, that something big was brewing. In about the next 30 to 35 days, he told me, I will be the most colorful character you have ever talked about. Unfortunately, I cant talk about it now, before it happens. And believe me, it aint anything as small as whether or not theyre gonna call me to the Senate committee. This was before the news of Don Jr.s fateful Trump Tower meeting came out. Still, it was already clear that Mueller was shifting his attention toward Trumps family business, and many were wondering if Sater, who sang so beautifully for the FBI before, might have another big number to perform. Lately, something about Muellers investigation seems to have truly alarmed the president. Rattled by its focus on his finances, the president has sent signals that he might fire the special counsel and has openly discussed issuing preemptive pardons. The extremity of Trumps reaction has only heightened suspicions he has something truly damning to hide. And if anyone outside the presidents immediate orbit knows what that is, one could imagine it would be Sater. Sater laughed off such theories. The next three years of hearings about Trump and Russia will yield absolutely nothing. I know the man, they didnt collude, he said. Did a bunch of meetings happen? Absolutely. The people on the Trump team who had any access to the Russians wanted to be first in and be the guys that ran the whole detente thing. Michael Flynn wanted to be the detente guy, and then [Paul] Manafort, Im sure, wanted to be the detente guy. Shit, I wanted to be the detente guy, why not? But was it really a conspiracy between Putin and Donald to get him elected? A little bit of a stretch. When was the last time you talked to the president of the United States? I asked. For once, the deal guy had nothing to offer. *A version of this article appears in the August 7, 2017, issue of New York Magazine. The path to enactment of the tax cuts Republicans want is a real Rube Goldberg machine of questions with no answers. Photo: Jeffrey Coolidge/Getty Images A lot of the angst surrounding the long, perpetually snarled GOP effort to enact health-care legislation is the knowledge there are big, important things in the queue behind it. As old-timers recall, a health-care bill was supposed to be enacted very quickly at the beginning of the year as the one thing Republicans could come to an agreement over without a lot of thought. A bit over seven months later, the major question bugging Republicans is whether they can shove health care under the bed like so much dirty laundry, and move ahead with the more pleasant task of cutting taxes. If they insist on finishing health care first, the time to handle everything else will obviously be shortened. But if you take a look at the vast number of unanswered questions about how, exactly, tax legislation is supposed to be enacted, it begins to make health legislation seem simple by comparison. Here are a few basic questions: 1. Will a tax-cut bill require a budget bill? This could be the most important question of all, and amazingly, the answer is still up in the air. Originally, the plan was to first move the health-care bill via a budget resolution for Fiscal Year 2017, and then move the tax bill through a budget resolution for Fiscal Year 2018. In both cases Congress could authorize reconciliation instructions to produce legislation that could clear the Senate by a simple majority vote, making filibusters impossible and Democrats irrelevant. This double reconciliation strategy was decided on before Donald Trump even took office, and it looked fiendishly smart until it broke down completely on the health-care issue. One problem was that deal-cutting Republicans were constantly in danger of having deals unraveled by the Senate parliamentarians interpretation of budget rules. But more fundamentally, cutting Democrats out of the process entirely meant that Republicans had to have all but two of their senators onboard. This proved to be a bridge too far. While its been taken for granted all year that the GOP will use the budget process for tax legislation, some doubts seem to be creeping into their deliberations. Earlier this week, Senator Orrin Hatch, chairman of the tax-writing Finance Committee, said it might be easier to appeal to Democrats for cooperation on taxes than to pursue reconciliation. Part of what Hatch may have had in mind is that lashing a fun-and-easy tax-cut bill to a budget resolution that has a lot of other ramifications could be perilous, because it takes Republicans into the treacherous territory of deficit reduction and spending cuts. 2. Is a bipartisan tax bill feasible? While many Republicans would be relieved to never again hear jargon like reconciliation or Byrd Rule or other complicated budgetary legerdemain (here, we agree), using the regular legislative process to cut taxes the way they want to cut taxes would be difficult if not impossible. Yes, quite a few Democrats think corporate tax rates are too high and too easy to evade. Some of the more conservative Democrats would be fine with pairing upper-end and middle-class tax cuts. But the kinds and amounts of tax relief, for corporations and individuals, to which Republicans believe they are entitled go well beyond what most Democrats would even consider. And outside the budget process, Senate Democrats would have veto power over the whole enchilada. Forty-five out of 48 Senate Democrats just publicly announced they wont support any tax bill that benefits the top one percent of taxpayers or increases the national debt. More likely than not, Republicans will decide to use the budget process and then try to pick off a Senate Democrat or two to offset possible GOP defections. 3. Would using the budget process require deficit neutrality? This is far and away the most confusing thing about the nexus between budget and tax legislation. It is entirely possible to pass a budget resolution that boldly, proudly, increases budget deficits. The budget resolution that moved the so-called Bush tax cuts in 2001 and 2003 did just that. But budget rules prohibit measures that increase deficits beyond a ten-year window, so tax cuts that cause increased deficit beyond the window have to expire. And thats why the Bush tax cuts were not permanent. Some Republicans (particularly those associated with the tea party movement in the past) really dont like adding to budget deficits, and most of them dislike temporary tax cuts. But the talk about offsetting tax cuts with revenue measures or spending cuts is political, not something required by budget procedures. That is important because if push comes to shove, Republicans probably wont let deficit hawkery get in the way of tax cuts. There has even been talk of dealing with the ten-year window problem by simply extending it to, say, 25 years, since the budget resolution itself determines the size of the window. In the end there will probably be offsetting tax loophole closings to help pay for tax cuts only if Republicans favor them as ends in themselves. A good example is the federal income tax deduction for state and local taxes, which has popped up in various accounts of the Trump administrations tax ideas. The deduction mainly benefits wealthy blue states like New York, New Jersey and California. If that idea doesnt offend too many House Republicans from the same states whose votes are needed to pass a tax bill, it will probably be included. But the biggest potential revenue offsetthe so-called Border Adjustment Tax, or BAT, which House Speaker Paul Ryan proposedappears to be dead; it offended importers and businesses that relied on imports, and did not scratch the administrations protectionist itch. So the tax cuts arent going to be offset on the revenue side of the ledger. 4. Do tax cuts require spending cuts? As noted above, this subject only comes up if tax cuts are enacted via a budget resolution, which sets overall spending and revenue goals for Congress and the federal government. And also as noted above, theres no firm requirement that budget resolutions cut budget deficits or are even deficit-neutral. But because some Republicans want to show progress toward a balanced budget, and perhaps even more want to cut certain kinds of domestic spending whether or not it is necessary to pay for tax cuts, the tax-cut dessert has been linked tightly to the broccoli of spending reduction in the minds and budget planning of congressional Republicans. How far to push spending cuts, particularly in the political minefield of entitlements like Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, and agricultural subsidies, has been a huge question haunting the FY 2018 budget debate that in turn controls when and how tax cuts occur. 5. Where is Congress on the FY 2018 budget process, anyway? Not remotely as far as one might expect considering how long discussions have been going on. After months and months of efforts to reach consensus within and beyond her House Budget Committee, chairman Diane Black finally brought a draft budget resolution up for approval late last month. In a compromise between House Freedom Caucus members and the rest of the GOP caucus, the bill only required $203 billion in entitlement cuts though Black threw conservatives the bone of a vision statement that aimed at much, much deeper future cuts, including reforms of Social Security and Medicare. There are no plans yet to move the budget resolution to the full House, and the basic viability of the House budget effort has now been endangered by Blacks decision to run for governor of Tennessee. If she steps down as Budget Committee chair, there will be a leadership vacuum at the worst possible time, and if she doesnt, she may be loath to support measures that will lose her votes back home. In the Senate, the FY 2018 process really hasnt even begun. 6. Are Republicans at least united on the tax cuts themselves? Um, not really. It was a big deal when the so-called Big Six of tax policy the House Speaker and Senate Majority Leader, the chairmen of the House Ways and Means and Senate Finance Committees, and the Treasury secretary and National Economic Council director released a statement of principles on tax legislation last week. But as the New York Times put it: The five-paragraph joint statement in many respects raised more questions than it answered, providing fewer specifics than the previous plans released by House Republicans and President Trump. The lack of detail highlighted the challenge that Republicans face as they try to make difficult trade-offs on legislation that could reshape the entire economy. So the answer to the above question is no. 7. How much time to Republicans have to get this all done? Another subject of confusion is the relationship between the FY 2017 budget resolution and reconciliation bill that is still hanging out there to facilitate health-care legislation, and the FY 2018 budget measures intended (unless Republicans abandon this approach in favor of a bipartisan bill) to enact tax cuts and Lord knows what else. The consensus of budget experts is that once a FY 2018 budget resolution is enacted, the FY 2017 measures expire. Up until that point, Congress can theoretically work on two budgetary tracks. From a more practical point of view, congressional Republicans really need to wrap up the health-care debate once and for all before moving decisively toward consuming the last cookie on the once-heavily-laden plate of their 2017 agenda. For one thing, there are provisions in the stalled health legislation that Republicans really need to move into the budget/tax legislation if they want to enact them in a 51-vote context, like Planned Parenthood defunding, and perhaps repeal of some of the Obamacare taxes. For another, the pressure on their own members of Congress to get along will be significantly heightened if there is just one final opportunity to go into an election year with a legislative trophy in hand particularly if it is one that is reasonably popular, unlike the health-care legislation Republicans have been pursuing in vain. As all of the foregoing questions indicate, abandoning health-care legislation for this budget and tax morass wont make life easier for congressional Republicans. Their hard deadline for getting this done is the end of the year. They probably should not make any big plans for the holidays. The Trump administration is fundamentally opposed to the criminal-justice-reform movement that showed great promise of reducing mass incarceration. But Donald Trump and Jeff Sessions only have so much influence. Photo: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg via Getty Images These are times that make a lot of people who have spent years slowly building a bipartisan consensus favoring criminal-justice reform very nervous. In 2016, Donald Trump won while campaigning on a crude 1970s/80s-style law and order message in direct opposition to reform. After taking office, he promptly appointed criminal-justice-reform nemesis Jeff Sessions as his attorney general. Could the rock that was so painfully pushed up the hill toward reversal of mandatory-minimum sentencing and mass-incarceration policies be about to roll right back down? At Democracy Journal, John Pfaff offers some largely comforting words about the Trump-Sessions effect on mass incarceration, reminding us that the administration has limited leverage over the state and local criminal-justice policies and practices that drive incarceration. And he also usefully explains that even state governments that conservatives control are less important than local prosecutors, who have different incentives than tough-on-crime pols: [W]hat prosecutors care about is their county electorates. And, at least in more populous counties, local politics still seem to favor reform. The 2016 election provides several interesting examples of this. In red and blue states alike, voters frequently approved smart-on-crime initiatives (including two focused on decriminalizing drugs in strongly pro-Trump Oklahoma) and elected reform-minded prosecutors in places ranging from Corpus Christi and Dallas in Texas, to Jacksonville, Florida, to Chicago, Illinois. The real problem, Pfaff argues, is that Trump may have sensed a fundamental change in the political winds: Reforms biggest vulnerability is that Americans remain fearful of crime, even as crime rates have dropped to near-historic lows. And from its start, Donald Trumps campaign aimed to stoke those fears. It turned out to be relatively easy for Trump to cherry-pick alarming crime statistics such as the spike in murders in certain cities to rebuild fears that were only beginning to abate after decades of steadily reduced crime rates. Will other pols seize on largely anecdotal evidence of a renewed crime wave to emulate Trumps success? That would not be surprising. Theres a chance that the political dynamics that created the war on drugs and other backlash policies are less likely to recur, even with Trump fanning the flames. After all, reactionary criminal-justice policies used to be near-universal among Republicans, and also very popular among Democrats who viewed being tough on crime as a swing-voter imperative. There is now resistance on the right to the crime wave talk, and significantly less knee-jerk me too rhetoric among Democrats. Perhaps we will soon be able to look back on the Trump administration as an experiment in backlash politics that ultimately failed. Lets hope so. Finally, a businessman as commander-in-chief. Photo: Pool/Getty Images Receiving regular gossipy dispatches from behind the scenes at the White House is one of the few silver linings of the Trump administration. But the latest leak is too scary to be any fun. NBC News reports that during a July 19 meeting in the situation room with his top national security advisers, President Trump repeatedly suggested that General John Nicholson, commander of the U.S. forces in Afghanistan, should be replaced because were not winning the 16-year war. He also asked about the U.S. taking Afghanistans minerals, and suggested he wasnt getting good advice from top military officials. Trump was reportedly influenced by a recent meeting he had with veterans who served in Afghanistan. To illustrate why he felt they may have better insight on an Afghanistan strategy than the generals, he told a story about the renovation of New Yorks 21 Club in 1987. Per NBC: Trump told his advisers that the restaurant, Manhattans elite 21 Club, had shut its doors for a year and hired an expensive consultant to craft a plan for a renovation. After a year, Trump said, the consultants only suggestion was that the restaurant needed a bigger kitchen. Officials said Trump kept stressing the idea that lousy advice cost the owner a year of lost business and that talking to the restaurants waiters instead might have yielded a better result. He also said the tendency is to assume if someone isnt a three-star general he doesnt know what hes talking about, and that in his own experience in business talking to low-ranking workers has gotten him better outcomes. The 21 Club, which has been one of Trumps favorite New York spots, closed for two months in 1987 while it underwent a full renovation and reopened to great fanfare. Trumps advisers contend that the U.S. is losing not because theyre out of touch, but because the president has refused to sign off on a strategy in Afghanistan. Last month the president delegated decisions on troop levels in Afghanistan to Defense Secretary James Mattis. At the time, Mattis said, This decision is part of a broader strategy we are developing that addresses our role in Afghanistan and beyond. We will present this to the president in the coming weeks. We will continue to work with our allies and we will ask more of them. But Trump was not happy with any of the options presented to him, and the military commanders new authority to make tactical decisions isnt very useful if theres no larger strategy in place. Mattis and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Joseph Dunford reportedly defended General Nicholson, who Trump has never met, during the meeting. In an interview with MSNBC on Wednesday, National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster claimed he absolutely has the confidence of the president. Ive known him for many years, McMaster said of Nicholson. I cant imagine a more capable commander in any, on any mission. The New York Times reported on Thursday that while Trump remains undecided on an Afghanistan strategy, he has come up with a plan for yet another staff shake-up: Mr. Trump, according to several administration officials, has been considering a shake-up that could include appointing Mike Pompeo, the C.I.A. director, to take over as national security adviser, while sending General McMaster to command forces in Afghanistan. Such a move could earn General McMaster a fourth star. According to Politico, McMaster has been trying to sell Trump on an Afghanistan plan for months, but seems out of sync with his mercurial president. Sending McMaster to deal with the Afghanistan situation himself is one very Trumpian solution to the problem. This guy. Photo: Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post/Getty Images New York is turning over the states voter information to President Trumps election-fraud commission after all. The state mailed over CDs containing 12 million records on Wednesday, the Buffalo News reports. In June, Governor Andrew Cuomo joined around 30 other states in refusing to cooperate with the administrations request. Cuomo said New York would not help the White House perpetuate the myth voter fraud played a role in our election. NY refuses to perpetuate the myth voter fraud played a role in our election. We will not comply with this request.https://t.co/eQC6ORV0v1 Andrew Cuomo (@NYGovCuomo) June 30, 2017 But as Politico pointed out, it wasnt really up to the governor whether or not to share those voter databases. Instead, that decision falls to the bipartisan state Board of Elections, which said Wednesday that it had received a Freedom of Information Law request for New Yorks voter records, and the four-member board (split evenly between Democrats and Republicans) agreed to comply. The commission reportedly amended its request from its original ask, and will no longer be collecting Social Security or drivers license numbers. The voter data that was sent includes names, addresses, dates of birth, and individual voting history which is the same information the public can also access, and many campaigns do just that. So the data Trump and his election-fraud czar Kris Kobach get is the same that Politico says has, in some form, been sent to members of the general public 1,379 times since the beginning of 2015. Jim Justice goes back to the Republican Party he only left two years ago. Photo: Sholten Singer/The Herald-Dispatch/AP Now we know the nature of the big news the president indicated hed be announcing at an event in West Virginia tonight. Americas most marginally Democratic governor, Jim Justice, is officially becoming a Republican. You have to figure the party switch came as something of a surprise to West Virginians, since the state GOP was attacking Justice as recently as this morning. His own staff wasnt told about it either. But in the longer run, it wasnt that surprising at all. During his successful 2016 campaign, Justice went out of his way to advertise his antipathy for his partys national ticket, his friendship with the Trump family, and his background as a coal-company owner. He was actually a registered Republican until 2015. And hes the states sole billionaire. None of this suggests someone who hums Happy Days Are Here Again when hes alone. His party switch is a bit anticlimactic, too. West Virginia stopped being one of the last states full of ticket-splitters who voted Democratic at the local level and Republican nationally in 2014, when Republicans made massive gains and took over both chambers of the state legislature. Nationally, the switch gives Republicans their 26th trifecta states where they control the governorship and both state legislative chambers. But the trifecta doesnt change a whole lot, since Justice lacks any real veto power over the legislature to begin with (overriding vetoes can be done with simple legislative majorities). Hes also the 34th GOP governor, which equals the record number of Republican governors set in 1922. That number is almost sure decline soon, perhaps this year (Democrats are heavily favored in New Jersey and slightly favored in Virginia), and certainly in 2018, when Republicans will have to defend 26 of the 36 governorships at stake in a midterm election where the presidents party almost always loses ground. What the switch really accomplishes is to make Senator Joe Manchin (who endorsed Justice last year, a courtesy that probably will not be reciprocated in 2018) more isolated going into his reelection year. As of last month, though, Morning Consult showed Manchins approval/disapproval ratio as looking quite good, at 57/31, and even in West Virginia, a midterm year isnt likely to be as much of a cakewalk for the White House party as a presidential year. But Trump can enjoy his little surprise for at least an evening in one of his very strongest states. Mueller. Photo: Alex Wong/Getty Images Special Counsel Robert Muellers investigation into Russian interference into the 2016 presidential election has taken a step forward with the impaneling of a grand jury in Washington, according to multiple reports. Calling this a sign that his inquiry is growing in intensity and entering a new phase, the Wall Street Journal notes the significance of the grand jurys location. When Mueller took over as special counsel there was already a grand jury in Alexandria, Virginia looking into former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn. If there was already a grand jury in Alexandria looking at Flynn, there would be no need to reinvent the wheel for the same guy. This suggests that the investigation is bigger and wider than Flynn, perhaps substantially so, University of Texas law professor Stephen I. Vladeck told the WSJ. Indeed, we also learned Thursday afternoon that Muellers grand jury has issued subpoenas related to the meeting Donald Trump Jr. took with a Russian lawyer at Trump Tower last year. Also present at that meeting were Jared Kushner, Paul Manafort. In a statement to the media, White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said President Trumps lawyer Ty Cobb wasnt aware of this new grand jury. Grand jury matters are typically secret, Sanders quoted Cobb as saying. The White House favors anything that accelerates the conclusion of his work fairly.The White House is committed to fully cooperating with Mr. Mueller. Sanders statement added that former FBI Director James Comey said three times the President is not under investigation and we have no reason to believe that has changed. Photo: SuperStock/Getty Images/SuperStock RM Ive always been bad at journaling. All my childhood diaries include major gaps: In one entry, Im 8, visiting my aunt. In the very next, Ive experienced puberty and have a crush on Justin, the kid who sits behind me in biology. Today, my journal and I are something like estranged acquaintances, who check in every now and then just to keep in touch, without really understanding why. Yep, we say to each other in passing, everythings good. Hope all is well with you! And yet Id like to be the kind of person who keeps a record of her life. It would be nice to relive those moments at some point in the future. Beyond that, theres also wealth of evidence to suggest that writing regularly can improve your mental, and even physical, health. In one recent study, for example, people who wrote about a breakup were better able to cope with the heartache; in another, those who wrote down their worries were rewarded with reduced anxiety. Believe it or not, when study subjects wrote about their problems, it reduced stress, and that helped their bodies recover more quickly from injury, Eric Barker, author of the new popular psychology book Barking Up the Wrong Tree, told me, citing a study published in the British Journal of Health Psychology. The benefits of journaling are well documented, but one might be curious about how to journal in the first place. What do you write about? Is your journal supposed to be a simple recap of your day or an essay about your emotions? These seem like painfully obvious questions, but the answers can vary and figuring out what works for you will make your journaling more effective. Step 1: Decide What to Write About In order to figure this out, youll have to answer why you want to keep a journal in a first place. If youre keeping a journal for a practical purpose to remember events about your day or at work (work journals can be useful when it comes time to negotiate a raise) then the answer is simple: Write down the events of your day. And yet in order to reap the full benefits of journaling, youll have to dig deeper than that. Consider a 2005 study, for example, that found that expressive writing that is, exploring your thoughts and feelings while telling a story led to emotional and physical health benefits. In the paper, the studys authors explain that the whole point is to bring up issues that are emotionally charged. Heres one writing prompt from that study: For the next 4 days, I would like you to write your very deepest thoughts and feelings about the most traumatic experience of your entire life or an extremely important emotional issue that has affected you and your life. In your writing, Id like you to really let go and explore your deepest emotions and thoughts. You might tie your topic to your relationships with others, including parents, lovers, friends or relatives; to your past, your present or your future; or to who you have been, who you would like to be or who you are now. You may write about the same general issues or experiences on all days of writing or about different topics each day. The researchers told participants not to worry about spelling, grammar or sentence structure. The only rule they had to follow was to continue writing until time was up. Thus, if you want to extract the mental and physical health benefits of writing, youll want to write expressively. Redemptive narratives might also help get through emotional distress, as suggested in a 2014 study published in the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships. Researchers found that when subjects wrote in a form of narrative focused on positive outcomes in negative situations, they reported a decrease in emotional distress. Ultimately, to get the full emotional benefit of journaling, its best to tell a narrative, not just recap your day, and write through your emotions. Write about a few things that happened during the day and, more importantly, how those events, epiphanies, or interactions made you feel. If youre trying to journal your way through distress, it may help to focus your writing on positive outcomes as well. The blank page can be intimidating, though. To get used to the habit, Barker recommends starting small. Use a technique that Stanford professor BJ Fogg calls minimum viable effort, he said. The important thing with building a habit is being consistent. So start with the absolute minimum amount of work a ridiculously low amount so that you have no excuse to not be consistent. In practice, this might be as simple as writing one sentence a day, then working your way to more. Just one sentence. Theres no excuse not to do that, Barker said. Once you manage a sentence a day for a week, try two sentences. Still incredibly easy. And slowly keep increasing the amount as you strengthen the habit. If the idea of recapping the emotions of your day seems like too much, you could even just start a gratitude journal, which is a simple, daily list of things youre grateful for: a cup of peppermint tea, sunny mornings, comfortable slippers. In Thanks! How the New Science of Gratitude Can Make You Happier, author Robert Emmons, a researcher from the University of California, Davis, said that study participants felt more optimistic and happier about their lives after writing just a few sentences about gratitude each week. Step 2: Know Your Purpose Some people prefer to write in the morning; others at night. Theres conflicting research over which time of day is better for creativity, productivity, or emotional well-being, which ultimately means that the best time of day to write is the time that suits your own peak hours and the purpose of your journaling. (Also, theres no reason you cant write in the middle of the day on your lunch break, for instance!) For creativity, many writers and entrepreneurs are a fan of morning pages, a concept popularized by author Julia Cameron. Morning pages are three pages of stream-of-consciousness writing, written first thing in the morning. The idea is to simply write whatever is on your mind, without much thought or planning, so that you can tap into your minds creativity before you wake up with the days anxieties, which can hinder your creative flow. If the purpose of your journal is to release your nagging thoughts, you might want to write before bed instead, so you can transfer those thoughts out of your head and onto paper. On the other hand, you might find this keeps you up, in which case, you could choose to write in your journal throughout the day, when those thoughts begin to itch. Trial and error works, too. Try writing in the morning for a week. If its not working for you, switch to another time of day and see if you fare better. Whatever time of day you choose, keep your journal in an easy-to-reach spot, which should serve as a visual reminder to keep up with your writing. Plus, its one less excuse when its time to write. Step 3: Choose a Medium The next step is to pick a medium that works for you best, whether its your computer, an app on your phone, or old-fashioned pen and paper. Apps and computers are more convenient (and probably what youre already used to writing with), but theres some evidence to suggest writing by hand may be a better option. In 2012 research from Indiana University, psychologist Karin James studied kids who were learning different shapes and letters. The experiments run like this: we do a pretraining fMRI scan and measure how the children brains respond to letters, shapes, digits, and noise, James said. Then we train them either through the see and say method, what usually is used in preschool, typing on a keyboard, or hand-printing the letters of the alphabet. From there, James and her colleagues conducted another scan, similar to the first, then compared the results. There are few differences after see and say or typing, but after printing, there are large differences in regions of the brain that are later used for reading, she said. In other words, the study discovered that children were better able to process letters and read successfully through handwriting. Similar research found that when children wrote by hand, they also wrote faster and were able to express more ideas. This suggests there are cognitive benefits to writing by hand, namely, it may help us process and understand concepts better. So when youre writing expressively to process your emotions, doing it by hand might be better for actually understanding those emotions. In another study on the emotional benefits of writing, UCLA researcher Matthew D. Lieberman told the Guardian that the calming effects of journaling were more effective when subjects wrote by hand. As one Yale psychologist told the New York Times, With handwriting, the very act of putting it down forces you to focus on whats important. Maybe it helps you think better. But what really matters here is that youll keep up the habit. Typing or even using a journaling app on your phone might feel more convenient or comfortable for you, so if that medium fits your lifestyle best and helps you journal regularly, by all means, do what works for you. Finally, dont let perfect become the enemy of good. Your journal doesnt have to be brimming with profound thoughts and experiences, so try to separate your urge to edit from your desire to write. Your brain does not work in flow mode and edit mode at the same time, so if youre trying to make the writing good or to edit it as you put it on the page, you will be pinching off the flow at the same time, said author Tara-Nicholle Nelson, who also hosts her own 30-day writing challenge. Give yourself permission to write poorly. Write bullet point lists, meander, write nonsense and the like, only then will your nervous system realize it is being allowed to truly down-regulate and relax, said Nelson. And then youll find yourself having all sorts of insights and fun and flow in your daily writing. Photo: Jaap Arriens/NurPhoto via Getty Images I avoided Instagram Stories for 11-and-a-half months. I didnt want to cave. Stories are, of course, short videos that users could record and upload for their friends viewing pleasure, to be played in sequence before disappearing forever after 24 hours. For years, Stories had been more or less the exclusive purview of Snapchat the social networks trademark and defining feature until exactly a year ago today, when Instagram went and introduced its own identical version. I used both apps, but I was skeptical of Instagram Stories. Snapchat was for the kind of goofy, casual video content that didnt need to last forever, while Instagram was for posed, memorable snapshots. Snapchat had the puppy filter; Instagram didnt. Snapchat had cool teens; Instagram had people I went to college with. If it was good enough for the teens, then damn it, Snapchat was good enough for me. But it wasnt just Instagram that had stolen Snapchats thunder. Stories are now everywhere. Back in March, Facebook (which owns Instagram) also rolled out a Stories feature for its main app, which means that Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat and, over in Asia, the ever-growing Snapchat clone Snow are all focusing on fun, goofy, ephemeral video as their output. Everything as the memes went was getting Stories. Pregnancy tests. Graphing calculators. Even Owen Wilsons teeth got Stories. Owen Wilson will now have stories in 2017! pic.twitter.com/DHAR0u8pVf (@dgahk) April 5, 2017 Why Stories? Part of it is just the rush of attention and novelty that comes with something new. Theres a much lower threshold involved in posting a Story whip out phone, film dumb five-second video, add flamingo sticker, post, repeat than there is in, say, editing and posting a full-on YouTube video. You dont really have to have anything significant to say (not that this has ever stopped anybody from posting videos on YouTube), and it doesnt take long. And then you get to watch the views tick upward in the form of an organized list of the names of all the people who were interested enough in your life to stop and tap through your Story. Want to be a social-media influencer? No need to create a YouTube account leverage your already-extant Instagram account and your phone to become an influencer to all of your followers! But its not just that Stories are easy, or new. Its that theyre different. As a format, they fall somewhere between snaps, which you only send to a specific person and self-delete immediately after theyre viewed, and Instagram photos, which last forever unless you manually delete them. In a world where tweets and Facebook posts can scuttle jobs and attract harassment and abuse, the semi-permanence of a Story is attractive as is its lack of a public comment section. They let you communicate with your friends what youre up to, without requiring a perfect filter. And, unless youre Kim Kardashian beefing with Taylor Swift, once those hours are up, youll probably never have to think about that given Story again. For anxious Instagram photographers, Stories represent a release from pressure. For Facebook itself, Stories are a way to sidestep context collapse the phenomenon where users are forced to juggle broadly different social-media audiences, like co-workers, family, and close friends. Rather than permanent posts with hornets nests of comments, Stories are simple, short videos difficult to share, difficult to hate, and difficult to send to the wrong place. Facebook needs content if it wants to keep selling ads, and after looking long and hard at Snapchat, its clearly figured out the kind of content that works. But it deserves some credit, too. When Instagram first announced Stories, CEO Kevin Systrom was fairly candid about the fact that it was all but a carbon copy of their competition. This format unlocks a new version of creativity for us, he told the New York Times. I think Instagram will be judged by where we go from here, and what we make of it in the future. Where Instagram went was up today, users spend more time on Instagram Stories in total than they do on Snapchat. And what it made was Stories. That is: Instagrams wholesale adoption of Stories as a format has introduced it to a whole new audience older users not fluent in Snapchat (Instagram boasts that users over 25 spend over 24 minutes per day using it) and helped transform it into the most popular and successful new form of social-media communication since the tweet. I understand this. Over the last year, I watched a lot of Stories. Influencers snapping from their perfectly curated L.A. apartments. Lena Dunham being Lena Dunham. Theyre fun. I watched as friends started recording dozens of Stories a day, and as people who would never touch Snapchat took up Instagram Stories with gusto. Still, I held out. Why reward the copycats? Two weeks ago, thanks to a combination of a decently convincing friend and several drinks served to me in a coconut, I gave in. I wish I had done it sooner. As days get shorter and temperatures cool, its also time (eek) to start thinking about going back to school. To help you get a jump on the best school (and school-related) supplies to buy for fall, were running a series called Cool School Stuff, in which well sniff out the best backpacks, best dorm decor, and best bento boxes, among many, many other things. Over the next few weeks, some students will be walking into their first day of kindergarten, others are moving into dorm rooms, and some are shipping off halfway around the world for a semester abroad. But what school supplies come in handy in Australia? Or when youre traveling around Europe? To pinpoint the essentials, we spoke with Adam Treisman, 20, who studied abroad in Melbourne last year. UE BOOM 2 Phantom Wireless Mobile Bluetooth Speaker $222 The most key thing was a portable Bluetooth speaker. Id recommend the UE Boom because it has a really long battery life. Once, we were traveling down the coast of Australia and we happened to hear a party on the beach, so we stopped. Their speaker ran out of battery soon after, but we kept the party going for another four hours because we had this with us. It was coincidental and cool. $222 at Amazon Buy $222 at Amazon Buy get the strategist newsletter Actually good deals, smart shopping advice, and exclusive discounts. Email This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply. Vox Media, LLC Terms and Privacy Notice By submitting your email, you agree to our Terms and Privacy Notice and to receive email correspondence from us. Norwex Antibacterical, Antimicrobial, Microfiber Bath & Hand Towels This is random, but an antimicrobial towel. I remember my dad was like, You need this. And I was like, I dont know. But once I used it, I was like, Wow, I needed that. It dries really quickly, so you can reuse it multiple times; and its small, so you can take it wherever, but still use it as a shower towel. Its good for not having to carry around a wet, disgusting towel that just has that stench, or using a gross towel at whatever shitty hotel youre staying at, where its like you dont even know what youre looking at. Buy at Amazon Buy Buy at Amazon Buy Space Jam Reversible Tank Top $34 Always a quirky outfit to bring to festivals or anything themed. I always had a fun shirt that I could throw on. $34 at Urban Outfitters Buy The Strategist is designed to surface the most useful, expert recommendations for things to buy across the vast e-commerce landscape. Some of our latest conquests include the best womens jeans, rolling luggage, pillows for side sleepers, ultra-flattering pants, and bath towels. We update links when possible, but note that deals can expire and all prices are subject to change. Every editorial product is independently selected. If you buy something through our links, New York may earn an affiliate commission. Some of the small artisanal miners extracting gold in a disputed piece of land in Mubende are not only doing it illegally but have also grown too big and sophisticated that it is high time government took them seriously, Gemstone, the large mining firm in the area, has said, writes CHRISTOPHER TUSIIME. Moses Masagazi, the director of AUC Mining Company, which owns the subsidiary, Gemstone International, says the artisanal miners mining gold in Mubende, around the area where his company holds a license, are doing it illegally. Artisanal miners at Mubende goldmines going about their business Small-scale miners have severally accused Masagazi of fueling their eviction, which recently received a presidential endorsement. He, however, says his actions are justified. In response to several questions from The Observer, Masagazi says the mining by small-scale miners is utterly illegal and should be stopped immediately. AUC are the holders of Exploration License EL 1093 and Mining Lease ML 4063 issued by ministry of Energy and Mineral Development under Ugandas Mining Act 2003, reads part of Masagazis statement sent to The Observer. Under these licenses, the company was granted exclusive exploration rights and working obligations in respect of the minerals in all areas of the license sections 4 and 31 of the Act. Masagazi alleges that the work of AUC Mining Company has been hampered by these illegal miners yet it has injected more than $13 million in the development of the area. LOSSES Masagazi says the company has consequently incurred huge losses in terms of time and market opportunities because of the conflicts with artisanal miners. Apart from the investment in the area, to-date, the company, under the severely encumbered activities, continues to pay the licenses fees to URA. This year [2017] alone the company has paid over Shs 100m in form of licence-related fees, he says. The illegal mining activities by the artisanal miners, he adds, have also led to invalidation of their exploration data that had been generated and recorded about the exploration site on top of the miners occupying their near-term target areas. WEAK LAWS Masagazi wonders why the government has since failed to effect the relocation directives issued by the president in 2014, despite the matter being reported to several authorities. The company reached an agreement with government authorities in 2014 [after the artisanal miners were organised into associations] regarding Katugo and Lubaali areas, which are one of the most prospective grounds of the license, Masagazi wrote. He pointed out that despite this agreement, the small-scale miners did not relocate. Instead, they just expanded all over - an erosion of investors confidence. This agreement needs to be enacted and properly controlled. Masagazi added: Instead some politicians, senior government officials and senior security forces personnel continue to protect their illegal operations. This illicit gold mining is progressively fueling lawlessness, destruction and pollution of the environment through mercury and cyanide use and massive land destruction. NO LONGER ARTISANAL Masagazi says the more than 60,000 people in the Kitumbi mines are no longer artisanal because they have acquired bigger equipment that is supposed to be used by miners with exploration licences. The type of mechanized illegal mining going on in Mubende district is not like the artisanal mining that is going on in any other part of Uganda. It is, therefore, only a matter of time before they start using explosives. The investor explains that for these miners to be called artisanal, they are supposed to be mining the alluvial deposits, and not the hard rock and the primary reef deposits. The illegal miners, who include even foreign nationals and have continued with their illegal activities unabated, are using a combination of mechanical tools including jack hammers and more sophisticated machines like compressors, generators, hammer drills and mechanical excavators and trucks. These are, therefore, illegal miners and cannot be described as artisanal miners, he says. DEMANDS Because the company is holding a lease and exploration licences, Masagazi says the government should now ensure its security and safe access to the exploration work sites to be able to restart their work programs and development efforts. [We want] security of tenure and our exploration licenses extended to allow us to repeat all the work that has been destroyed and regain time that has been lost, since 2013, he says. Masagazi adds that all unauthorized and the unregulated illegal miners in the area should be stopped and evacuated by the authorities. The company also seeks compensation for the cost of the five years standing time and the irreparable damage done to their previous scientific exploration works, trenches and drill pads. BACKGROUND In 2012, AUC Mining Company produced a report from its exploration findings and submitted it to the government, as required by law. A couple of weeks later, following the geological interest areas highlighted in the report, there developed an influx of illegal miners in October 2012, says Masagazi. He adds that the matter was promptly reported to the relevant authorities but no action has been taken to-date. He says the company suspects the reports submitted to government were used to invade the areas which had been identified as potentially viable because they [artisanal miners] are only following the hard rock/gold reef target areas identified in those reports. Currently, the number of smallscale miners in Kitumbi sub-county is estimated to be 40,000. Many of them say they cannot vacate the place because they have nowhere to go, and are threatening to go to court to challenge any eviction notice. tusiime.chris20@gmail.com Violet Kukundakwe is an enthusiastic young female entrepreneur. The 29-year-old radiographer has laid a foundation and sketched her future around farming, a venture she attaches great passion to. With an audacious smile, Kukundakwe talks of her first business idea. While at university, she and friends would buy movies and rent them to fellow students. It was through that experience that her business acumen was birthed. Doreen Kukundakwe Towards the completion of her Bachelor of Science in Medical Radiography from Makerere University in 2010, Kukundakwe had already got two jobs one with Kampala Imaging Centre (KIC) and another at Mulago Paramedical School. Alongside the two placements, she hawked jewelry to different offices, Rotary gatherings and at every opportunity she got. I lost 10 kilograms because of the movements, but I got some money out of it. That is what mattered, she says. In 2013, the brainy youth enrolled for a masters degree at the University of Johannesburg. However, she had to first attain a prerequisite Bachelor of Technology, Diagnostic Radiography which she did for nine months. Out of her genius and expertise, she saved Shs 3 million through peer tutoring at the university while she studied. While my friends spent all they had in luxury and creating happiness, I saved every penny I could, Kukundakwe says. TAKING A GAMBLE She adds that although she occasionally had fun with friends, she knew she was not entitled to luxury until she had made tangible success in her life. Back home, Telex free networking had made a mark. Her friends had benefitted from it; so, she couldnt wait to eat of the apple. Being the businesswoman she is, she invested her savings in the project. Since it makes money real quickly, I cannot miss the opportunity, she thought to herself. Unfortunately, she lost out 90 per cent of her money, and vowed never to fall for any networking venture however appealing it may appear. LUCRATIVE POULTRY Getting back on her feet was at a job offer as a radiographer at Nakasero hospital on return from South Africa in February 2014. (She had resigned from KIC to pursue further studies). Once more, she saved every penny she got. Under the influence of her cousin, she accepted the idea of poultry farming. The required initial capital was Shs 50 million, which she did not have. People want to help you after seeing you somewhere, she says. No one can give you money to start anything without something to show. Since she couldnt afford the minimum number of birds to start with, she kept procrastinating. After a series of debates and sets of advice, Kukundakwe paid for 250 chicks in May 2014. With her mothers help, she established her first poultry houses in Namugongo. After four months, she started harvesting two to three trays of eggs daily. For a year, she singlehandedly looked after the farm. Every morning she woke up to feed, vaccinate and wash the feeders and drinkers before she engaged in other activities. At the moment, she picks 38 trays of eggs daily, and cant wait for more thanks to her cousin for the lucrative idea. So far, Kukundakwe has reared a total of about 5,000 birds at her now expanded farm in Maganjo. When the birds kept increasing in number, she had to employ a helper. It was very difficult for me to get a reliable person because of poor work ethics. They usually stole from me, and I had to push them to work, she says. As luck would have it, Kukundakwe finally got one vibrant worker who is so passionate about his work. Kukundakwe has also planted some trees, and is planning to plant more. Her biggest challenge has been the ever-increasing prices for feeds and diseases like Newcastle. Before she knew about the disease, she had lost 50 birds. FUTURE Kukundakwe works towards having a fully automated farm with a better cage system. She affirms that this will help reduce on the egg damage. Her target is 10,000 birds by 2019, and 100,000 in the next 10 years. PRIVATE LIFE Born to Anne Begumisa and Richard Akankwasa of Kabale in 1988, Kukundakwe is the firstborn of three children. While away from the farm, she spends time with her family, attends fellowships and other spiritual growth classes at Watoto church. She also loves volunteering, travelling and eating new foods. Kukundakwe is also a member of Uganda Women Entrepreneurs Association Limited which, she says, has created opportunities for work, travel, trade and knowledge. I am a serious woman whom most times people misinterpret for being tough and unapproachable, she says, adding that she is quite friendly and hardworking. She also looks out for business seminars, exhibitions and trainings which she says are vital for networking and learning more about business. EDUCATION Kukundakwe attended Buganda Road primary school for her primary education before joining Gayaza high school for O-level and Mount St Marys College Namagunga for her A-level. At the moment, she is at the University of Johannesburg for a Master of Technology, Diagnostic Radiography. Kukundakwe calls upon farmers to unite and form cooperatives. This increases our bargaining power and ability to purchase farm inputs, she says. kajdora@gmail.com The new specialized maternal and neo-natal centre at Mulago next to the School of Nursing and Midwifery is near completion and will open in October, according to authorities at the national referral hospital. We have so far completed 96 per cent of the project and the hospital will be opened once all medical equipment is installed, said Sherief Mettwally, the project manager of Arab Contractors, who are in charge of the project. The unit, whose construction started in June 2015, is expected to decongest the main hospital and reduce maternal and infant deaths in Uganda, once open. In an interview with The Observer, Mettwally said the unit, reportedly the biggest in East and Central Africa, will accommodate 450 beds on nine floors. Mulago national referral hospital carries out tens of thousands of deliveries annually. However, because of limited bed capacity, many women deliver and recover from the floor. There is still restricted entry onto the premises and the beautiful, imposing structure remains an enigma even to its neighbours. The boda boda cyclist could not stop gushing about the beautiful structure as he carried us to the site. He is hopeful the facility will improve maternal health by coming equipped with medical personnel and necessary apparatus. According to Enock Kusasira, the public relations officer at Mulago, This is a specialized hospital and it will be working on only referred cases. It is not for every mother who wants to deliver; it is for cases like assisted reproduction, uro-gynaecology, fistula, [gynaecological oncology] and general gynaecology of advanced nature, he said The facility will run as part of Mulagos Obstetrics and Gynaecology department. On whether the facility will be free of charge, Kusasira said that will be decided by ministry of Health. Its too early for us to tell whether services will be paid for or not; we are leaving that to policymakers ministry of Health and parliament. There is a private wing, but it is too early to commit myself to that. Many proposals are going on regarding how the new facility will be run, said Kusasira. beckymutonyi@gmail.com rachealnuwahereza@gmail.com A Ugandan bus travelling from the border town of Nimule to the South Sudan capital, Juba, was attacked yesterday evening by unknown gunmen leaving seven dead, Uganda police has confirmed. The bus, registration number UAS 442B, was ambushed 55km from the Ugandan boarder between the township of Moli and Kerepi. In a statement last night, police spokesman Asan Kasingye said that an unspecified number of people were injured and rushed to the nearby Nimule hospital, together with five male dead bodies, four of which have been identified as South Sudan nationals. However, there are queries about the fifth body being described as Ugandan or, of any nationality from the East African region, Kasingye said. Another Ugandan identified as Ochia Rafa, from Yumbe district, travelling to South Sudan in a Nissan Patrol car was shot dead during the incident. Kasingye said his body was received at Elegu police station. More to follow The new Jinja bridge construction is now 40 percent complete, the Japanese contractors, Zenitaka and Hyundai, have said. The 525-metre cable bridge is the first of its kind in the country and will offer an alternative connection between Kampala and eastern Uganda along the planned Kampala-Jinja Expressway route. The only connection present is that along the Owen falls dam, constructed by the British colonial government in 1954. The new bridge is expected to be complete by June 2018 and has a projected lifespan of 120 years. The bridge is 22.9 metres wide with provisions for walkways and carriageways. Jinja bridge under construction Construction of the bridge is being fully financed with a Shs 391 billion loan from the government of Japan. Speaking today in Jinja during a routine inspection, Japanese ambassador to Uganda Kazuaki Kameda said the bridge is a symbol of his countys niche for quality infrastructure in Uganda. We would like to contribute to Ugandas economic development through quality infrastructure like this, the ambassador said. I will continue to be vigilant on the progress of the projects sponsored by Japan. Kameda was accompanied by Works and Transport minister Monica Ntege Azuba and Allen Kagina, the Uganda National Roads Authority executive director. LOCAL CONTENT Azuba used the opportunity to caution contractors working on government projects to put strict quality measures on local suppliers. On all our projects, we want to try (as much as possible) to have local suppliers on board but most of them produce substandard products. So, if the contractors insist that these suppliers provide only quality products, it will help the local industries grow, Azuba said. The minister was reacting to a story narrated by the project manager, Lawrence Pario, whereby a steel manufacturing company which he refused to disclose lodged a complaint with the president after being denied a deal to supply steel towards the bridge construction. They told the president that we were refusing to support local industries, Pario told a laughing boardroom. He said they stood their ground when the president intervened and only recently, allowed supplies from the said company after they were satisfied by the improved quality of their product. Azuba said such strictness on government projects will push companies to improve the quality of their products and also ensure quality infrastructural projects. kamogajonathan50@gmail.com The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are a new set of universal goals, targets and indicators that UN member states adopted on September 25, 2015 to frame their agendas and policies over the next 15 years (2015-2030). The 17 SDGs, officially known as Transforming Our World: The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, intend to change the course of the 21st century by addressing the key perennial challenges of poverty, hunger, inequality, the adverse effects of climate change and violence against women and girls. It is important to note that the SDGs seek to address the unfinished business of the Millennium Development Goals where Uganda registered a 33 per cent success rate. Agenda 2030, however, presents a more people-centered approach with the global slogan of Leave no one behind. In Uganda, domesticating the SDGs is a collective effort bringing together the government, development partners and civil society. In 2014, Uganda committed to integrate the SDGs into its national planning process the second National Development Plan (NDP II) 2015/16-2019/2020. This is complemented by an institutional framework that provides support in implementation of the policy, legal and planning frameworks. Uganda has continued to demonstrate readiness to implement the SDGs along which comes the commitment to attain gender equality set out in goal five and through various goals and indicators of the SDG framework. With leadership from the office of the prime minister, a national SDG coordination structure was established comprising the ministry of finance to oversee monetary allocation; the National Planning Authority to oversee integration of SDGs into national, sector and local government planning frameworks; and the Uganda Bureau of Statistics to oversee generation, analysis, and dissemination of statistics to guide effective implementation and review of the SDGs at country level. Also in place is the Equal Opportunities Commission mandated to address all forms of discrimination and inequalities against any individual or group of persons. Despite the progress, enforcement of gender laws and policies remains a challenge as demonstrated by the continued discrimination against women working in flower farms who are exposed to chemicals that negatively affect their health. Women, especially widows, are still discriminated against and denied access to productive resources such as land and/or proceeds accruing from land. Many young women and girls are being trafficked to the Middle East and other destinations in the quest for better employment opportunities only to end up being sexually exploited. Media reports of violence against women and girls remain prominent with defilement noted to be on the rise in several districts. This is mainly attributed to poverty, negative cultural norms and practices in addition to inadequate resourcing for the prevention and management of sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV). Child marriages are still prevalent in Uganda and reports show 25 per cent of adolescents aged between 15 and 19 are already having children. The high burden of unpaid care work on women and girls remains a violation of basic human rights to education, political participation, decent work, leisure and human rights. Chronic under-investment in rural infrastructure and technology has a disproportionately negative impact on women living in rural areas, as they often engage in time-consuming unpaid care work, including fetching water and fuel wood, which prevents them from engaging in paid work and education. Although there is registered progress in the political arena in terms of womens representation, there has been a drop in the number of women parliamentarians from 35 per cent in the 9th parliament to 32.8 per cent in the current one. There are only three women district chairpersons out of 117 and the figure is equally grim for LC-III chairpersons where there are only 19 women. Despite the above progress, womens participation in leadership and governance is still constrained by the restrictive legal and policy frameworks that impact on citizens freedom of expression and assembly. In addition, the commercialization of politics has meant that a majority of women cannot compete favorably, given their limited resources. Goal 5 which is a standalone goal on gender equality builds on lessons from implementation of MDG 3 by prioritizing focus on ensuring all the basic rights of women. The SDGs provide an opportunity for women and girls to position themselves as key actors in influencing prioritization of their issues in the implementation phases. The 2016 SDG report stresses the need for strong partnerships across civil society, government, private sector, and the academia as vital for successful implementation, monitoring, review and follow-up of the 2030 agenda. At country level, this calls for improved coordination of local implementation actions including capacity building efforts, mobilization of resources and data generation, and utilization to ensure that partners make cost effective development gains. All citizens have a critical role in ensuring that the gender-specific targets of the goals are met. In order to link to national processes and global conversations at the High Level Political Forum on Sustainable Development, Forum for Women in Democracy (Fowode) is launching a multi-stakeholder process dubbed Voice to Action Advancing Gender Equality in the SDGs to create awareness and consolidate multi-stakeholder commitment to the promotion and realization of gender equality in Uganda. Let us all put women at the centre of development in order to attain Agenda 2030! The writer is the programmes director at Women and Leadership Programme at Fowode. Last week, I was in Kenya to get a pulse of how things are as we near the election-day, August 8. Well, there are events from our neighbours that left me wondering whether they have learnt anything by looking over their western border for inspiration. For the many years that we have had the current government in Uganda, one would have thought that these brothers and sisters across the border would have picked a few lessons. Wapi! Last week, I watched in dismay as the home of Deputy President William Ruto was being attacked by unknown assailants. It took heavy deployment to dislodge a few armed people whose mission to access Rutos home was not even clear. And that Mr Ruto who is supposed to be the second most-protected person in Kenya can have his security compromised to this level left me in shock. Please Kenyans, if you need to know how to deal with such nonsense, please head to Uganda and learn how a well-grilled security system works. Dont make a mistake. It is not the police you know how ours failed to protect one of their own Andrew Felix Kaweesi so, dont even begin comparing. Its not the army their role is to deal with outside threats. We got a Special Forces Command whose work is to protect the persons closest to the president. It is one of the quietest we hear less of what they do, but you can feel their presence. Imagine someone gaining entry into the village home of the vice president in Uganda! Such an intruder would have turned into the late in very few seconds. In your case, it took almost the whole day to clear danger from the home of the deputy president. If this can happen at the home of the second most-protected person in Kenya, what would happen to ministers? And all the other officials that are in need of serious protection, what is their fate? You Kenyans need to wake up! And as the drama was unfolding at the Rutos home, there was live coverage including villages overcome by curiosity coming close to the scene. Really? How can you allow civilians near an operation? At that time, Rutos home was a warzone where civilians are not allowed. I am reminded that during the terrorist attack on West Gate mall, the same slow response was the mode of operation. In this episode, we saw pot-bellied officers holding batons stranded and unable to do anything. Here, we do not allow pot bellies for those assigned to respond. Found with that sagging tummy, the onus is on you to shed off the weight or no operation work for you. And please next time, allow your officers to carry guns along. If you have been to Uganda, you should have seen all types and brands of guns. Security guards have guns, police and army officers have guns, prisons officers have guns and many civilians carry them too. That is why we can brag that the kind of hostage-taking that is slowly becoming common to our neighbors in Kenya cannot happen here. The other thing is that back home we have quite a number of people trained to use the gun. Disarming a person is so easy. We have so many war veterans, former LDUs, Kyankwanzi graduates, militias such as arrow boys, crime prevernters, etc. So, dear neighbors, please style up or else we will keep laughing at you! And before I could sign off this piece, something else happens again in Kenya. Chris Msando, a systems development manager at the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) who was instrumental in installing digital technology to be used in voting and tallying during the forthcoming elections, was found dead in the outskirts of Nairobi. I am again perplexed. How can an entire country want to have a perfect election and even develop technology for voting and tallying? Come on Kenyans, that is an area that no sane person can invest in. The reasons are well known. When the right voting, the tallying and the correct results are announced, that is not proper elections. A proper electoral process is where these are in the control of human beings. These are more trusted than technology. From who will these machine get instructions? What if the machine declares the opposition candidate the winner? How will that machine be punished or questioned for relaying the wrong results? We are more than happy to lend you our now retired, but not tired, former Electoral Commission boss. He is a mean human machine! And finally, must all Kenyan elections be about life and death? You did it ten years ago and now it seems you are inching close to the same? You dont know your wars. The author is a human rights expert and specialist on refugee issues. A few weeks ago, I stated in this column that land is likely to be the next major frontier of social conflict and violence in Uganda in the near future. Of course land conflicts are already rampant. They can only get worse. There has been deepening pressure and stress placed on a fixed factor of production that is land, and in a country where the vast majority are poor and can only count on land as their sole valuable possession. But beyond the commercial value, people also have invaluable emotional and cultural attachments to their land that make it something they are willing to die for. Now we have woken up to the rather ill-thought move by the NRM government to amend the Constitution and grant a free hand to the state to seize private land. This is ostensibly for public works purposes, to avoid protracted valuation and compensation processes and enable government push ahead with attaining middle-income status; when? The government claims that valuation and compensation impose unnecessary delays on especially infrastructural projects such as road construction and public-interest investments. Not many people believe this assertion. There is a sense in which Ugandans have grown too distrustful of General Musevenis government such that even where there are genuine intentions to serve a broader, public good, people are cynical and suspicious. There is little public trust in the intentions and actions of the rulers. At any rate, it appears that battle lines are being drawn early on. Either government will back off or we might be in for a serious fight ahead. Strong sentiments have emerged against any move to pass legislation in favor of compulsory land acquisition before proper valuation and appropriate compensation. There have been some unmistakable voices from very powerful figures in Buganda where the land question is most contentious and the stakes are highest. Considering the powerful vested interests and the emotiveness surrounding the land question, why would this government toy with this idea well aware it is likely to cause public uproar and ultimately fail? As many have rightly pointed out, the argument that road construction projects take long because of delays in compensation is rather shallow and self-serving. There are many road projects that took forever to complete for reasons other than land acquisition. Rather, the problems in public works projects in Uganda go beyond compensation to a bigger institutional decay, inefficiencies and endemic corruption that cut across all government departments and ministries. It is not just the roads sector that has had long periods taken to accomplish something however small. Paying pensioners or compensating laid-off workers can take ages because officials involved are working out how to get their slices of the monies. But even in the roads sector, there have been delays to finish a road project where land acquisition and compensation may not have been an issue. The reconstruction of about a kilometer stretch of Jinja road from the Wampewo avenue roundabout to Nakawa took years to complete yet it is unlikely there were any compensations to landowners as this was an existing road that only required redoing and a little expansion. The same can be said of the Iganga-Tirinyi-Mbale road that only requires re-tarmacking. My sense is that we may well be up for a bait that will exercise all our energies and engage all our attention yet the real issue at hand is something else. Already, there are voices in parliament and among the public that they can put up with lifting the presidential age limit but cannot stand the proposed constitutional land amendment. It is interesting how Ugandans easily settle for quick compromises. We are stuck with an imperial president who many believe is ruling the country illegitimately. Many of us would perhaps pay little attention to his longevity in power, but the fact that misrule now pervades Ugandas body politic and malfeasance reigns in the public sector makes Musevenis continued clinging to power utterly reprehensible. The proposed constitutional land amendment might well be a Trojan horse. The architects of imposing a life-presidency on the country might be working to detain the public in arguments over land such that, in the end, removing the age limit will be seen as a lesser evil which we can entertain. We need to see through this gimmickry. The age limit project is no less a nefarious plot than the move to use the law to commandeer peoples land. In fact, the latter, as a bad law, is a consequence of the machinations that go with a regime that has stayed beyond its sell-by-date. The foremost struggle we face today is not to save our land from a parasitic government; it is a struggle to free our country from the current mis-rulers, to save ourselves from the embarrassment of being misruled for decades by one man with a dubious claim to being our savior a messiah. moses.khisa@gmail.com The author is the interim secretary, Society for Justice and National Unity, a Kampala-based think-tank. OPEC is struggling with a floundering oil market, few prospects of higher oil prices, competition from U.S. shale, and dissension within its own ranks. The supply/demand situation is improving, but at a painfully slow pace. OPEC will meet again in a few days to try to figure out how to boost compliance with the collective cuts, but the group is faced with no good options in trying to balance the market. The prospect of deeper cuts has been floated, but the risk is that it would require more sacrifice with an uncertain payoff. In any event, OPEC appears to be struggling with maintaining compliance for its existing cuts. Although some dispute the data, it appears that more than half of the participating OPEC members are not fully complying with their obligations. Worse, Nigeria and Libya, exempted from the deal, are boosting output. OPEC production actually jumped in July by 90,000 bpd, according to a Reuters survey, putting collective output at its highest point so far this year. In the past, OPEC has fine-tuned its output levels over time, making multiple cuts in response to market conditions. That makes the current deal, consisting of one cut that has been extended, atypical. History suggests OPEC could simply follow up with a deeper reduction in order to boost prices. But OPEC no longer has that luxury. Unlike in the past, the group can no longer afford to ride out an extended period of low prices. In the 1980s when the group abandoned any sense of cooperation and produced at maximum capacity, it crashed oil prices for years, a downturn that arguably extended until the beginning of the 21st century (aside from a temporary period of time during the Persian Gulf War). That downturn worked in the sense that U.S. oil production went into a long-term decline that many thought would be terminal. Related: Did Google Just Tackle The Biggest Problem In Energy? OPEC can no longer afford to ride out a wave of low oil prices that could last upwards of a decade or more in order to kill off rival production from places like the United States. That is because the major oil producers of the Middle East have dramatically higher spending levels than they did in the past. Ever since the Arab Spring, which saw widespread discontent and instability spread throughout the region, Saudi Arabia and other Gulf States had to shower their populaces in social spending in order to stave off rebellion. So, while they still have some of the lowest oil production costs in the world costing just a few dollars to produce a barrel of oil the real costs come from the broader government budget. For example, the WSJ notes that the UAE can produce oil for about $12 per barrel, but it actually needs something like $67 per barrel to balance its budget a fiscal breakeven price far above the prevailing market price for the last three years. But the UAE is far from the worst off. A report from Fitch from earlier this year, and reported on by Bloomberg, laid out fiscal breakeven prices for oil-producing countries: Nigeria at $139 Bahrain at $84 Angola at $82 Oman at $75 Saudi Arabia at $74 Russia at $72 Kazakhstan at $71 Gabon at $66 Azerbaijan at $66 Iraq at $61 Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, at $60 Republic of Congo at $52 Qatar at $51 Kuwait at $45 There are several important points from figures like these. First, it explains why compliance with the promised OPEC cuts has been slipping. Financial pressure on countries like Iraq and the UAE incentivize cheating. Ecuador calculated that it could no longer stick to its reductions and decided to abandon the OPEC agreement a few weeks ago. The WSJ says that 7 out of the 11 participating members are not fully complying. More importantly, however, is that many OPEC members are now running budget deficits. For decades, the Gulf States had huge surpluses, but painful fiscal shortfalls now mean that OPEC cannot tolerate low oil prices forever. Many major Middle Eastern producers have had to make painful cuts to spending, an austerity campaign that has hit growth in the region. All of that is to say that OPEC probably does not have the appetite for deeper cuts. The only way they would cut deeper is if they were confident that oil prices would rise substantially, a highly uncertain prospect in todays market. The more likely scenario is that they keep the current reductions through March 2018, and Saudi Arabia will try to browbeat its peers into keeping compliance high. It is not a great situation for the group to be in. OPEC will have lot of difficulties to respect its commitments because of budgetary difficulties faced by some its member countries, Chakib Khelil, the former oil minister of Algeria, told the WSJ. Related: How Will The EU Respond To Fresh US Sanctions On Russia? If oil prices do not rise, the longer-term prospects are even darker. OPEC has no exit strategy in mind next year. Again, just as there is little to no appetite for deeper cuts, there is probably not a lot of excitement within OPEC to extend the deal again beyond the first quarter of 2018. That raises the prospect of returning to full production, a scenario that could cause prices to crash once again. The possibility of oil prices remaining around $50 per barrel or lower for years to come is a serious threat to the financial health of many oil-producing countries. The ongoing implosion of Venezuela is largely an outgrowth of low oil prices. Producers in the Middle East have a lot more financial firepower to work with, but they cannot hold on forever. More instability in more countries is likely. The WSJ notes that Saudi Arabia has burned through about $246 billion in cash reserves since 2014 while also turning to the debt markets. We calculate, and a lot of people we know calculate, theres about three more years of this they could deal with, with regard to drawdowns in the sovereign fundsand then theyve got a very severe problem, Tim Dove, CEO of Pioneer Natural Resources Co., told the WSJ. By Nick Cunningham of Oilprice.com More Top Reads From Oilprice.com: Gulf of Mexico Production Production for May by BOEM was 1673 kbpd and by EIA 1661, compared with 1661 and 1658 kbpd, respectively in April. March looks like the peak, at least near term, for the basin, especially with Hurricane Cindy impacting the coming June figures. (Click to enlarge) The combined new fields added from late 2014 look to be peaking as well. Great White came back on line but xxx and yyy declined. In previous data I had omitted one big producing lease in Mars, which included the new Deimos field. With this added the production growth through 2017 is higher (and as shown later the decline in mature fields faster) than previously shown. There may be more increase to come: The Mars leases had three rigs operating through June, one dedicated for Deimos, which has now gone. The two platforms on the field each have a dedicated platform rig, so they can continue with in-fill drilling and workovers as they wish. The Kaikias development will be tied into the Olympus TLP on the Mars field in 2019, but its a subsea tie-back so would need a separate drilling rig. The facility has nominal capacity of 100 kbpd, but that might be limited by the platform wells and manifolds rather than production trains if not then Shell must be expecting some decline before Kaikias comes on line. (Click to enlarge) Stones start-up is still not looking good with an 8 kbpd fall Shell are taking over the operation from SBM by buying the FPSO instead of leasing. Maybe this indicates poor operating performance (if so its something for ExxonMobil to be concerned with as they are following the same approach with SBM for Liza), or maybe just a convenient scapegoat. Julia, Cardamom, Stones, Jack and Lucius still have active drilling programs so may have opportunity for growth. Julia had plans for subsea multiphase pumping, I dont know if that is operating or will be brought on as pressures fall. Production from the South Santa Cruz and Barataria fields started in mid-June (actually part of Fourier and East Anstey fields by BOEM naming). The first Horn Mountain Deep well, for Anadarko, started production in April, a second well is due to be spudded this quarter. These are the only new fields announced for this year. Anadarko was the only company that had hinted they may develop something else (e.g. with Warrior and Phobos tie backs), but with them slashing budgets for 2017 after poor second quarter results that is now be unlikely: in their investor presentation, they indicated they expected flat production out 3 to 5 years, and didnt sound particularly confident of that to me, and with no mention of Shenandoah so that might be on the way to full cancellation. One new lease in the Marmalard field (the last there) for LLOG was started in late May. Ive added natural gas production for the new fields here. Hadrian South and Otis are the only dedicated gas fields. Hadrian South production is a big proportion of the gas total from GoM now. It produces to the Lucius Spar, operated by Anadarko, and according to their investor presentation Hadrian South is supposed to finish by about 2021. Im not sure if that can be correct, but if so its production should be declining significantly soon. Also on Lucius, its biggest producing lease, really part of Hadrian North field, started showing a sudden water cut increase in May, and dropped about 8 percent production (for some reason this does not show up in BOEMs list of qualified fields, but it is definitely tied in to Lucius). The first lease on the Lucius field has been killed in about two years with water break through; its not clear what their plans are for it (this is Anadarko as well). (Click to enlarge) (Click to enlarge) A couple of leases in Na Kika look like they have gone off line so production is down. Thunder Horse numbers were revised and now clearly show the impact from South Thunder Horse with about 35 kbpd increase. There have one rig still operating, but I think they will just maintain plateau now. Atlantis looks to be running about at nameplate capacity, so the coming North Atlantis development is likely only to be able to extend the plateau; there is one rig operating there now. (Click to enlarge) (Click to enlarge) Related: Goldman: $50 Oil More Profitable Than $100 Oil For the Caesar/Tonga/Tahiti fields the Anadarko facility (Constitution Spar) went off line taking off 40 kbpd production (Ticonderoga and Constitution fields go there too). The turnaround was for 42 days so will reduce June figures too. The Constellation field is to be tied into the spar next year, the spar has nominal nameplate of 70 kbpd so another 25 or so (average) might be added to overall output. (Click to enlarge) For the Chevron fields in these leases it looks like production is limited by the gas handling capacity on Tahiti platform, at 70 mmscfd, which is pretty low given its oil capacity of 125 kbpd. (Click to enlarge) After a bit of a plateau from some brownfield work and new tie backs the decline in the larger mature fields looks like starting up again; the drop in gas is particularly noticeable, but is mostly due to Baldpate turn around. Overall water cut looks like it might be rising as well. Thunder Hawk has two new rigs operating, but I havent seen any announcement for new developments there. The smaller mature fields (not included in the charts) seem to be holding up quite well, I will try to get some individual lease data for these next month. (Click to enlarge) (Click to enlarge) (Click to enlarge) For the GoM activity report from the last week in July, there were 28 rigs drilling, twelve running tools and two in plug and abandon operation. I think the report can mean there is dual activity on a single well (e.g. wire line and drilling). Two rigs are predrilling on Stampede, one on Appomattox and one on Mad Dog II. For the newer fields, there is development drilling on Lucius, Cardamom, Mars (two rigs), Stones, Julia, Jack / St. Malo, plus new wells for recently added or due production on Horn Mountain Deep and South Santa Cruz/Barataria. Atlantis also has a new rig, which may be for development of the Atlantis North discovery its noticeable how any reasonable discovery is immediately fast tracked, the North Sea is similar. The Dorado field (operator Anadarko, discovery in 2014) is also being drilled; I think it is one of the last of wells for small fields (King, Dorado, Holstien Deep) being tied back to Marlin, theres probably one more for King and a couple of others possible. Only Phobos has appraisal drilling. Five rigs are drilling on unnamed fields, so presumably exploration four of these are in Green Canyon, which means they are near field, and probably smaller, prospects; the other one is for Shell, in Walker Ridge, and probably a frontier wildcat. With all the predrilling on new fields, most new fields reaching plateau or decline periods, and few exploration wells (and fewer still in frontier regions) it seems likely that the drilling numbers will tend to decline over the next few years as unused well slots and tie back locations on the facilities are exhausted, even with an increase in oil price. In the past few months as production rose the EIA STEO showed a new production forecast which had the same shape but was just raised to start on the new production number. They didnt do the reverse as the production fell but instead kept the June STEO forecast with a single dip down for April. The August STEO, showing May data, is due next week. Gulf of Mexico Lease Sales As further support that the current decline in exploration is not just a function of price, the chart below shows the acreage of GoM leases that have been successfully auctioned, plus the percentage of offerings that were taken up (charts are stacked according to BOEM designated production areas to the give total). The numbers before about 1976 are listed against states (FL, LA, TX) and I think are inshore shallow leases, although it might be they just changed naming convention. After about 1990 areas were split from just GOM to east, central and west. The percentage bought calculation only considers the area auctioned after 1990. It is marked how the amount bought and the percentage bought both peaked and rapidly dropped off, even in the high price years through to 2014. However, there were obvious impacts from earlier price collapses in the late nineties and 2008. (Click to enlarge) Related: The Secret Behind Better Oil Major Earnings Its possible to read too much into these charts but generally it looks like, on average, discoveries follow three or four years behind the lease sales and production about the same length after that. But the recent production rise isnt in that pattern maybe disrupted by the 2008 recession and 2010 drilling hiatus, or maybe the high oil prices after 2011 allowed some difficult and expensive long-term discoveries to become commercial. (Click to enlarge) The number of open, undeveloped leases is relatively few, and declining. The chart below shows the number of leases discovered (and not terminated without development), producing or in development, and those still undeveloped. The open bars show my guesses for some larger fields that seem likely to be approved soon (e.g. Vito, Anchor). Most of the undeveloped leases (in yellow) are associated with existing, fairly recent, fields on production (e.g. St. Malo, Tubular Bells (and are likely to be poorer wells, waiting on surface facility capacity to become available before being tied in. There are two new field discoveries this year: Mormont and Khaleesi, by LLOG in Green Canyon (they have switched from Animal House to Game of Thrones naming convention) and are likely to be smaller reserves similar to their Delta House developments. (Click to enlarge) There is one area that might be expanding: deep shelf pre-salt. These are deep or ultra-deep wells but in shallow water (this is a rare combination and hence one problem is that there arent many rigs jack-ups that are suitable). W&T brought on Mahogany field this year, in an already producing lease (one well at 5000 boed with up to three others due, although the production data suggests it wasnt as great as expected) and there may be more to come. The production is high pressure and high temperature, and in places can be too high for the available technology or commercial development, and mostly gas prone. By George Kaplan via Peak Oil Barrel More Top Reads From Oilprice.com: After several years of austerity and belt-tightening, the major international oil companies posted substantial profits in Q2 of 2017. The five largest private oil companies together generated more than $30 billion in profit, an indication that most have successfully adapted to the current bout of low prices, while a few have publicly indicated their belief that prices will hover around $50 for the foreseeable future. What this means is that the mega projects that dominated many companies balance sheets for the last decade will become increasingly rare, as the majors pivot towards short-term, low-risk ventures with a faster turnaround. A closer look at each company shows how individual firms have adapted in distinct ways to this new era. Chevron Corp, the second-largest U.S. major after ExxonMobil, invested heavily in large upstream projects when the price of oil shot past $100 again after the 2008-2009 global recession. The massive Gorgon natural gas facility and Wheatstone complex in Western Australia, with a combined price tag of more than $50 billion and a cost overrun of nearly $20 billion, represented a huge, costly investment for Chevron and one that struggled to reach optimal output. For most of 2016, the news out of Gorgon wasnt good and Chevrons flagship project looked increasingly like a boondoggle. The companys upstream activity fell off, declining from 2.67 million boe/d to 2.59 boe/d from 2011 to 2016, while earnings from upstream fell with prices: from $20.8 billion in 2013 to $1.96 billion in 2015, according to SEC filings. All thats changed, however, as earnings from upstream rose in 2016 and are now on-track for a solid recovery. The company posted a loss of $102 million in its U.S. upstream operations, but thats down from $1.11 billion a year ago, and profits from international upstream were $955 million, compared to a loss of $1.35 billion in 2016. Investment in the U.S. patch has ramped up as Chevron looks to capitalize on the shale boom: the companys portfolio in the Permian Basin is worth at least $43 billion. Related: Oil Prices Slip Despite Modest Draw In Crude Inventories In Q2 of 2017 Chevrons output reached 2.78 million boe/d, with a positive outlook for Q3. The bulk of new output came from the companys major projects. Production was up an impressive 252,000 boe/d from 2016, as Gorgons growing pains receded. Chevron posted Q2 profits of $1.5 billion, compared with a loss of $1.5 billion in Q2 of 2016. The companys earnings exceeded expectations and share price rose 1 percent at the news. ExxonMobil also reported healthy profits of $3.4 billion in Q2, though the report wasnt enough to impress the market. Share prices fell 2 percent as the company reported relatively stagnant upstream activity: upstream volumes fell 1 percent to 3.9 million boe/d. Earnings were high primarily thanks to slashed capital expenditure and exploration, which is down 24 percent from a year ago, and the rising price of oil and natural gas compared to 2016, which helped the company realize upstream profits of $1.18 billion, up from just $294 million a year ago. While the worlds largest traded company appears strong and is still a veritable cash machine for investors, its performance disappoints when compared to its peers. Theres also the news out of the U.S. patch, where Exxon has been pumping more money and paying more attention. Despite the low cost of operating in the Permian, Exxon posted a U.S. upstream loss of $183 million. Neither Chevron nor Exxon has voiced concerns about peak oil demand, which some analysts and market watchers feel could be coming as soon as 2040. But that hasnt stopped other internationals from pivoting towards a future of low price and low demand. Royal Dutch/Shell beat expectations with a strong earnings report, posting a $3.6 billion profit in Q2 of 2017, tripling its earnings from a year ago. Shell managed its improvement through cutting costs in the face of low prices, which the CEO believes might improve in the short term. Hes stated that Shell will be resilient to oil prices, and will follow improved efficiency with a more diverse portfolio. Upstream profits were $339 million, a major improvement from Q2 of 2016 when Shell posted a $1.3 billion loss. Production nevertheless declined from 3.752 million boe/d to 3.495 million boe/d, a trend which will continue as Shell sheds assets in Malaysia and Australia. The companys debt-to-assets ratio improved, though last year was marked by Shells massive acquisition of BG Group for $54 billion. Anticipating lower for longer oil prices, Shell has positioned itself as the most forward-looking major company. Its CEO says he intends to purchase an electric car, Shell followed the BG Group purchase with statements that the future would be in cleaner fuels like natural gas, rather than conventional oil, and unlike the US majors Shell sees peak oil demand coming as soon as the 2030s, according to its CEO. Related: Goldman: $50 Oil More Profitable Than $100 Oil Shell plans on spending $1 billion on its New Energies division to prepare for the transition toward renewable power and electric cars. Its very likely that Shell will follow its current round of divestments by shedding even more assets, pulling itself away from traditional upstream activities and diversifying to meet changing future demand and persistent low prices. Looking at these three majors, its clear that big oil is taking the changing market conditions into account as they pivot away from expensive long-term projects that depend on high prices. Shell, along with BP and Total, are also looking to increase their diversification, though Chevron and Exxon may count on projects on the US patch and in the Gulf of Mexico keeping them in the black. In the event that prices stay in the $50s, each major may find new ways to stay profitable, adding credence to a recent report from Goldman Sachs that oil in the $50s may be more profitable than oil in the $100s, at least for the biggest firms. By Gregory Brew for Oilprice.com More Top Reads From Oilprice.com: While OPEC is preparing for yet another meeting to discuss compliance with its notorious production cut deal, two of its members are enjoying something of a windfall thanks to high demand for their crude grades from refiners around the world. In the latest sign that the market does indeed abhor a vacuum, Nigerian and Angolan crude oil is taking the place of the crude of Middle Eastern produces that are cutting their exports as part of the deal. Nigeria is exempt from the cut, at least for the time being. Angola isnt exempt, but this fact is not preventing it from raising its exports to certain coveted destinations, including Asia and the U.S., stepping in for Saudi Arabia in Asia and Venezuela in the U.S. as refining margins in both regions run high amid peak demand. Data from the Energy Information Administration shows that after a dip to 844,000 barrels in March, Angolan crude oil exports to the U.S. jumped to 2.53 million barrels in April and to 3.24 million barrels in May. According to traders who spoke to Reuters, last month Angola loaded almost 8 million barrels for the U.S. and Canada. Nigerian exports to the U.S. have also been strong, although between March and May the monthly shipments have declined from 10.2 million to 8.7 million barrels. U.S. refinery runs are at two-year highs, and European refiners are also boosting output, with forecasters seeing these runs hit the highest in six years before Shells 400,000-bpd Pernis refinery, the biggest on the continent, shut down for two weeks after a fire. This means that the other refineries will spread the load among themselves, analysts believe, unwilling to miss out on the strong margins. Related: Is Russia Poised To Own A Stake In U.S. Oil? In China, demand for crude from teapots is a major driver of higher Nigerian and Angolan exports as they compete with state-owned refiners. Interestingly, analysts are seeing this support after reports from June, which warned that Chinese demand for crude is likely to slacken during the third quarter as a tenth of refining capacity will be shut down despite the summer driving season where demand reaches its peak, because of a fuel glut on the domestic market. In addition to strong refining margins that are motivating refiners to boost purchases of crude, Nigeria and Angola also have the specific types of their crudes working for them. Angolas heavy sour crude is a welcome replacement for Venezuelan oil, which U.S. Gulf Coast refineries need to produce oil products. It is just as welcome elsewhere where refineries need heavy and sour crude to operate. At the same time, some refiners are switching to light crude, thanks to a booming supply from U.S. shale, Libya, and Nigeria. This switch has fed higher demand for Nigerian light crude, with the Forcados blend trading at a US$1.70 premium to dated Brent. Angolas Cabinda is changing hands at a three-year-high premium to the benchmark at US$0.40 per barrel, and so is Girassol, at US$0.50 per barrel. Its likely that this will change as the capacity cuts in Chinas state-owned refineries are felt, but it is possible that strong demand from Europe and North America will compensate for this capacity reduction. Already two-thirds of Angolas September exports have been bought, within a week of them being made available. By Irina Slav for Oilprice.com More Top Reads From Oilprice.com: Irans crude oil exports to China could hit an 11-month high this month, according to sources who spoke to Reuters. But overall, Irans total oil and condensate exports for the month could fall by 4 percent on an annual basis to 2.37 million barrels daily. In July, according to TankerTrackers, Iran exported an average 605,699 bpd to China, with its market share standing at 26.82 percent. Overall exports averaged 2.26 million bpd. Energy data provider Kpler calculated the average daily crude exports for July at 2.476 million bpd. Iranian crude has become more attractive for buyers looking for a bargain after Tehran lowered prices, and with heavy crude supply from South American falling. A supporting factor for this higher attractiveness was the decline of the Dubai regional oil benchmark against Brent crude. Be that as it may, one source told Reuters that overall Iranian shipments to Asia this month might fall to 1.3 million barrels, chiefly due to tensions between Tehran and New Delhi regarding the development of the offshore Farzad-B gas field, which Indian ONGC was negotiating for months, but Tehran chose to award it to Gazprom. Yet the overall decline will be small, at just 0.3 percent from July. The decline in Indian exports, however, will be heftier, at 25 percent, to 310,000 bpd. As a result, the source added, South Korea will become Irans second-biggest client after China, importing 380,000 bpd this month. In China, Iranian crude may continue to gain market share as production cuts in other OPEC members continue and supply from South America remains tight. Iran plans to further increase its crude oil production by about 200,000 bpd by the end of this year, with the total climbing to 4 million barrels daily. So far, Iran has not offered to start cutting output in line with other OPEC producers, although it has declared its support for the deal. By Irina Slav for Oilprice.com More Top Reads From Oilprice.com: The Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) is refusing to ship oil to Iran because Baghdad refused to consult the semiautonomous regime regarding the export program, according to a new report by Bloomberg. Both the Iraqi government and the KRG pump oil from separate wells in Kirkuk, which makes controls over the regions fossil fuel wealth difficult to mark clearly. Attacks by the Islamic State caused Iraqi forces to flee the area back in 2014. Since then, the Kurdish Peshmarga army has defended the region. Ahmed al-Askari of the Kirkuk provincial council told Bloomberg over the phone that lack of communication from Baghdad caused the disagreement over the exports to Iran. Any oil deal, or discussions about the provinces output, without involving the Kirkuk governorate and its provincial council will not be successful, the Kirkuk governors office added in an emailed statement. Kurdistan plans to hold a referendum on its political independence from Iraq in late September. The proposal has angered Iran and Turkey two neighboring countries with large Kurdish populations of their own. A new KRG will eventually include Kirkuk, according to Dilshad Shaaban, a representative from the KRG parliament. Baghdad intends to stymy the KRGs relationship with Turkey through the Iran deal. By rerouting Kirkuks oil to Iranian refineries, less Kurdish oil will reach the Ceyhan port. Similar conspiracies surround a related pipeline to Iran recently proposed by Baghdad. Related: Is Russia Poised To Own A Stake In U.S. Oil? Over the weekend, Irans Oil Minister Bijan Zanganeh said that Iraq and Iran had reached an agreement to commission a feasibility study of a crude oil pipeline that would export oil from fields in Kirkuk via Iran. In order to raise more legal problems in Kirkuk, Baghdad and Tehran have been trying for a long time to work on a pipeline to transport crude oil from the province to the Iranian territories, Shaaban, who also serves as the deputy chairman of the Kurdistan Parliaments natural resources committee, told Asharq Al-Awsat. By Zainab Calcuttawala for Oilprice.com More Top Reads From Oilprice.com: American sanctions against Russias energy industry aim to limit the latters ability to develop shale reserves, which inadvertently makes them less effective political tools, according to the results of a new investigation by Reuters. U.S. sanctions against Moscow in 2014 worked to impede Russias ability to develop so-called frontier or unconventional oil resources, the Treasury Department said. The measures, which were enacted as a political reaction to the Crimean annexation, targeted projects that would allow fracking initiatives to penetrate Russian markets. At the time, Russian majors depended on Western technology to use the technique at all. But Norways Statoil and British Petroleum are willing and able to work with Rosneft to develop unconventional resources on Russian land without fear of backlash from American regulators. This is because the measures explicitly prohibit any aid to Russia in progressing shale reservoirs, without banning cooperation on other oil sources. Piggybacking on the American language, the EU banned any project located in shale formations by way of hydraulic fracturing, In a 2013 report on a project near the Volga River, Statoil had suggested it would assist Russia in shale oil ventures in the area. After the U.S. and EU sanctions went into effect, the company clarified that the aim of the project was to tap into limestone reserves instead, making the project compliant with the terms of the sanctions. Related: The Only Way OPEC Can Kill U.S. Shale Norway and Russia are also partnering on exploration in the Arctic, where they share some offshore oil and gas deposits, with Statoil working together with Rosneft and Lukoil to explore these. Last year, Gazprom agreed to buy 38.5 percent in the Norwegian business of Austrian oil and gas producer OMV, but according to a Reuters report from the time, the government was trying to get Gazprom to lower this to 25 percent. No news on the deal has been announced since. By Zainab Calcuttawala for Oilprice.com More Top Reads From Oilprice.com: Hanif Abbasi,Akram Sheikh could not prove foreign funding against PTI 03 August, 2017 Related News Imran Khan distributed loan cheques under Kamyab Jawan Programme PTI govt to face all challenges coming its way: Imran khan More on this View All Tips for Taking Incredible iPhone Travel Photos Top 2021 Accessories We Know You Will Love Types of Casino Payment Methods Best Poker Hands ever played on a Casino Are Slot Developers Important for players? Hand Wash and Toiletries in Pakistan And the Role of DUPAS in Reshaping the Industry Woke Bingo ISLAMABAD: Senior counsel for PML-N leader Hanif Abbasi, Akram Sheikh, on Wednesday remained unsuccessful to prove before the Supreme Court that Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) received huge foreign funding from prohibited sources. During the hearing of case against PTI, the court repeatedly asked Akram Sheikh whether any documents were available that could establish that the party received funds from prohibited sources. A three-member SC bench comprising Chief Justice Mian Saqib Nisar, Justice Umar Ata Bandial and Justice Faisal Arab is seized with a petition filed by PML-Ns Hanif Abbasi seeking disqualification of PTI Chairman Imran Khan and Secretary General Jahangir Tareen for non-disclosure of assets, ownership of offshore companies, and PTI being a foreign-aided party. The chief justice noted that the jurisdiction of determining that the funds received by a political party were illegal rested with the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP). At the outset of the hearing, Akram Sheikh told the bench that the chief justices observations made on Tuesday warranted further clarification. The nation should be made aware that funds were accepted by the PTI from multinational companies, Sheikh said, adding that PTI had admitted to accepting prohibited funds. Prohibited funds can be confiscated; there are laws that allow such funds to be confiscated, Sheikh argued. Justice Umar Ata Bandiyal told Sheikh that he would have to prove that PTI had accepted prohibited funds. Sheikh claimed that foreign corporations sent $40,760 to PTI Pakistan. The CJ said that record did not prove this funding. He also pointed out the possibility that the corporations which funded PTI are owned by overseas Pakistanis. Sheikh, however, said he cannot bear the burden of obtaining the certificates of the corporations funding PTI. He urged the court to maintain its neutrality. The CJ assured him that the bench realised its responsibility and was only questioning him to establish a clear understanding of the case. The counsel contended that PTI received funds exceeding one million dollars from PTI USA, which is against USA's Foreign Agent Registration Act (FARA). However, the CJ maintained that American law is not applicable in Pakistan. The CJ recalled that Imran Khan had filed his declaration with the Election Commission of Pakistan that he had never received funds from the prohibited sources. Sheikh contended that Imran Khan had furnished a fake certificate before the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) that no donations from prohibited sources were received by the party, thus he deserved to be declared disqualified under Article 62 of the constitution. The CJ noted that Political Parties Order (PPO) 2002 did not envisage such a penalty for submitting a 'fake' certificate. He observed that the apex court while exercising its jurisdiction under Article 184(3) of the constitution decides cases on the basis of admitted facts. He told the counsel that he would have to prove that the affidavit filed by the PTI chief with the ECP was fake. Sheikh referred to the list of FARA wherein agents from abroad transferred funds to PTI Pakistan. He said a total of 1.186 million US dollars were transferred from PTI California, USA by March 31, 2017, while some 2.3 million dollars were collected from Texas during the year 2010-13. However, two million dollars were transferred to PTI Pakistan till date and PTI did not contradict this amount. Sheikh pleaded that prohibited funds should be investigated as a whole and the court may order an inquiry in this regard. To a court query, Sheikh said that ECP has no power to disqualify Imran Khan for furnishing with it a false declaration. The court asked Naeem Bukhari, counsel for Imran Khan, that he has not yet submitted documents and passport in order to determine about his status of being non-resident. Naeem Bukhari replied that he will soon provide so. Sheikh also argued that the assets of Niazi Services Limited (NSL) were owned by Imran Khan. The court, however, noted that Imran Khan was the real owner of the company but not a title holder. Sheikh submitted that to establish money trail regarding funds needed to purchase the London apartment, Imran Khas has attached various documents purportedly issued by financial institutions and others along with his reply. He said all these documents are photocopies and even not verified. He said internet search discloses that these financial institutions do not even exist at present. He said all record produced by Imran Khan is of dubious nature, adding that facts of the case clearly establish that Imran Khan had consistently made false and misleading statements in the declarations filed with the ECP in the nomination papers as well as the declarations made in the income tax and wealth tax records. Douglas V. Gibbs is a proud member of the American Authors Association Douglas V. Gibbs is a proud member of the Military Writers Society of America. Several local schools did well in the Albany Business Reviews annual Schools Report. Of the 84 school districts studied, Bolton was the highest ranked locally in seventh place. This is an increase from its 2016 rank of 12th. The ranking is calculated using state Education Department data including a districts test scores in language and reading, social studies, science, math and graduation rates. Bolton students ranked seventh in English and fourth in math. The district has about 200 students in prekindergarten through 12th grade. District officials said in a statement on their website that they are very pleased with the ranking These accolades truly endorse our schools mission, We strive for academic excellence and remarkable experiences in a supportive community, which will exceed all expectations. We are proud of the achievements of our students and look forward to sharing their bright future with our community. Local schools that were in the top 25 included Saratoga Springs in ninth; Greenwich in 14th, Queensbury, 16th; Lake George, 18th; Schuylerville, 23rd; and Cambridge, 24th. Queensbury dropped slightly from its 13th place finish last year and Lake George was 10th in 2016. Other districts saw their ranking increase. Johnsburg went from 44th place last year to 28th this year. North Warren went from 37th to 30th. Fort Ann increased from 52nd to 33th and Glens Falls City School District increased from 38th to 35th. Rounding out the top 50 was Hadley-Luzerne in 37th; Salem in 40th; South Glens Falls at 41st and Argyle in 50th. Some schools in this area did rank in the bottom 10 of the percentage of high school graduates heading immediately to a four-year or a two-year college. Only about 72 percent of Corinth graduates went to college. The percentages were about 71 percent for Johnsburg; 68 percent for Argyle; 67 percent for Hadley-Luzerne; 66 for Cambridge; 63 percent for Hudson Falls and 61 percent for Hartford. I cant stop thinking about lying and why people lie, recalling my first lie as a 4-year-old. Its seems so small, but it isnt really. All these years later that pre-school falsehood still bothers me because I abhor lying. Even so, I know over the years I have lied by omission, by pretending to not be home when I am or by telling my husband, Im fine, when Im not. As a young girl, I lived in a brown boxy rancher on a newly developed treeless street in Niagara Falls. My Dad hung a swing from the basement rafters by two hooks and each time the swing glided back and forth it squeaked. One cold winter morning, my Mom had a visitor and when I wandered upstairs for a sweater after a long and squeaky swing, the visitor asked me, Were you swinging? And I said, No. No? Why would I say that? Even that young, I sat there embarrassed, refusing to admit the lie, baffled by my resistance and my response. Why did I lie? Why did it matter? Why wouldn't I fix it? Maybe thats why I embarked on an early quest to seek and tell the truth. My daughters know that the punishment for lying far exceeds the deed they are trying to cover up or keep from me. So they generally tell me the truth. While a journalism graduate student at American University in Washington, D.C, professors chanted a truth and integrity mantra that made the lies of journalists like Janet Cooke (Washington Post), Stephen Glass (The New Republic) and Jason Blair (The New York Times) seem treasonous to the profession. So when I read this morning that Washington Posts Factchecker found that our nations president has made over 832 false or misleading claims since taking the oath of the Office of the President in January (thats an average of four a day), I was troubled. How can that be good for our country, I wondered. How can that be? Last August, Politico tracked then candidate Donald Trumps untruths. In six speeches, one town hall, seven TV interviews, 37 tweets, totaling four hours and 43 minutes, the raw number of misstatements, exaggerations or falsehoods were 87 or one untruth every 3.25 minutes. (from Politico) Recently, as if saying, 'for the president its OK,' White House Deputy Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said that any parent would have weighed in to protect their child in reference to Donald Trump Jrs meeting with Russians at Trump Tower. Theres no inaccuracy in the statement. The president weighed in as any father would, based on the limited information that he had, she said. And yesterday Sanders told a questioning White House Press Corps that it was a bit harsh to call two recent false statements by the president lies. I started wondering, does everyone lie? Do people regularly tell lies to intentionally mislead others? According to researchers from Michigan State University in East Lansing, 60 percent of subjects studied report telling no lies at all in a 24-hour period and almost half of all lies are told by only five percent of subjects. These Department of Communication scientists asked 1,000 U.S. adults to report the number of lies they told in a 24-hour period. The lies were broken down into lies to family, friends, business contacts, acquaintances and strangers. Countering earlier research that said Americans tell on average, one to two lies a day, University of Michigan researchers said that data was skewed because that number was just an average of the number of people surveyed divided by the number of lies told. The important findings are that many people do not lie on a given day, the majority of lies are told by a few prolific liars, and because the distribution is highly skewed, the mean number of lies per day is misleading, University of Michigan researchers wrote in their conclusion. On any given day, the majority of lies are told by a small portion of the population, and nearly 6 out of 10 Americans claim to have told no lies at all. So now I am thinking that there must be others, maybe even six out of 10, who are asking if it is OK for a world leader to persistently, lie. I am reminded that Congress would not accept the lies of President Richard Nixon during Watergate and President Bill Clinton was impeached because he lied. What does this say about a nation that accepts regular lying as the norm? POULTNEY, VERMONT A Granville man pleaded not guilty this week to charges that accuse him of burning a 6-foot wooden cross that belonged to a Vermont church. Alexander Taylor, 23, was arraigned Monday in Rutland, Vermont District Court on charges of unlawful mischief and petty larceny, officials said. The charges stem from an incident this spring in which a cross was stolen from Poultney Methodist Church. Taylor was a student at Green Mountain College in Poultney, and admitted throwing the cross on a bonfire at the college, authorities said. He has pleaded not guilty and was released on his own recognizance. LAKE GEORGE American slang can be difficult to understand. If you tell an international student worker she is running around like a chicken with its head cut off, she may look at you with a raised eyebrow. It was a popular topic of conversation Thursday morning at a tutoring program for international students being held this summer at the Caldwell-Lake George Library. We were discussing how many expressions there are about chickens, said 16-year-old Graceann Bennett, who helps her mother, tutor Michelle Bennett, with some of the pop culture references. Rashad Mayhaddinli, a 20-year-old from Azerbaijan. said he was confused by the expression all set. Michelle Bennett said it means complete. She translated another expression, Im shot, as meaning that very tired, as if the person saying it had been shot by a gun and died. Bennett said the English language has expressions that can be hard to understand, but the students have been doing a good job. I was beyond impressed with your ability to speak and read English, she said. The students also discussed greetings. They noted that Americans say Hi, how are you? but do not engage in a long conversation. She is enjoying the tutor program, Bennett said. Im so into being an English teacher and being able to learn culture, she said. The program operates on Mondays from 3 to 5 p.m. and Tuesdays and Thursdays from 10 a.m. to noon. Three staff tutors have been meeting with 13 students about three times a week. The library is partnering with St. James Church, according to Barbara Durkish, director of the Caldwell-Lake George Library. Durkish said different groups of students come, depending on their schedules. Theyre doing fantastic. Theyve all said that its helped them tremendously in communicating, she said. Weve seen a definite growth in the communication skills. Mayhaddinli and fellow Azerbaijani Rauf Mirishli, also 20, were at the library for the Thursday session. Both work at The Garrison bar & lounge in Lake George. We came here to see what kind of books they had and I saw English as a second language (flier), so I signed up for it, Mayhaddinli said. The tutors go over reading passages, teaching vocabulary and word association. But there is also time for fun. Bennett said they play party games such as Apples to Apples and Loaded Questions to learn about each others culture. Mayhaddinli is studying for a drivers test. Mirishli said he participated in the guest worker program to experience a different culture. The ultimate goal in the future is to have masters degree in finance in the U.S., he said. Mahyaddinli also would like to pursue a masters degree in finance or business administration. The students have visas to stay in the country for four months. They spend about three months of that working and then they have one month free for sightseeing. Mayhaddinli said he wanted to see Boston and New York City and Niagara Falls. Bennett said she believes that students should be connected to cultural activities. Durkish said the program nearly abruptly ended, because it ran out of money. It was initially funded with a $1,100 grant from the Southern Adirondack Library System, which covered materials, textbooks and the cost of paying tutors at $30 per hour. But because of the number of students taking part, the program is running short of money. The Student Connections executive committee on Tuesday agreed to provide an additional $900 to continue the program through the rest of the summer until early September, when students usually return home. Student Connection Executive Director Patty Kirkpatrick said the tutoring meets one of the objectives of the J-1 visa program, which is to immerse the students in the language and culture. Lake George Village Trustee Ray Perry, who is on the Student Connection executive committee, suggested that, by using an online language learning program, so they could get help more students. Kirkpatrick suggested partnering with the school to see if they could set up a language lab, where students at different levels could be working on improving their English skills. Mayor Robert Blais said when the Student Connection was reactivated this summer, it started with a budget of about $5,000, which came from the village and the towns of Lake George, Queensbury and Bolton. The committee also suggested distributing backpacks to the international students next year, which could promote programs such as this tutoring initiative, as well as other valuable information. The Fort Ann man accused of killing his 95-year-old grandmother has a new lawyer and agreed in a brief court hearing Thursday to have his case moved to Washington County Court. Kevin L. Gonyea is no longer being represented by the Washington County Public Defenders Office, as the agency determined it had a conflict of interest because it had represented potential witnesses in the case, Public Defender Michael Mercure said. Lake George lawyer Greg Teresi has been appointed to handle the case, paid for by the county as Gonyea has been determined to be indigent. Gonyea and Teresi appeared briefly before Kingsbury Justice Michael Keenan on Wednesday, with Gonyea agreeing to have his case moved to County Court. Moving the case allows prosecutors to continue to have him held without bail, without the preliminary hearing that would be required if the defense requested it. Prosecutors have to present evidence to convince a judge to keep the defendant in custody and have a felony charge moved to a superior court, unless the defendant waives the hearing. as Gonyea did. Teresi could not be reached for comment Thursday. Gonyea, 50, faces a second-degree murder charge for allegedly choking Leona Twiss to death July 9 in her Twiss Road, Fort Ann home in what police described as a mercy killing. Police said she suffered from dementia and was being considered for placement in a nursing home. Both he and his wife, Melissa Gonyea, face felony charges for tampering with evidence and hindering prosecution for disposing of a towel that police believe was used to kill Ms. Twiss in her Twiss Road home. Melissa Gonyea was not charged with murder and not accused of taking part in strangling Twiss. She is being represented by lawyer Robert Gregor, who was assigned to the case when her husband was represented by the public defenders office. Because the two are co-defendants, the public defenders office could not represent both. Washington County District Attorney Tony Jordan said his office has not scheduled the case for grand jury review as the investigation continues. Some of the forensic evidence is still being worked on, he said. There is still some investigation going on, and we dont have a specific timetable yet. Both Gonyeas are being held in Washington County Jail, pending further court action. Police said the Gonyeas moved to Fort Ann from Florida last summer to care for Twiss and her late husband, Walter Twiss, who died last fall at the age of 95. The Twisses had been married 74 years. Second-degree murder is punishable by up to 25-years-to-life in state prison. Editor: Many hide in fear and irresponsibility, turning their faces away. Others stride the world like giants, fearless, responsible, moral. John McCain could not be broken by the North Vietnamese and he would not be broken by the irresponsible right wing of the Republican Party. He knew that with his brain cancer this might be the last time he spoke in the Senate. He had been often wrong, often right. This time he felt certain. A defining speech, a defining and defying vote; it had to be perfect, the timing exquisite. First, he gave a speech in the Senate on why the Republicans in that body should return to the democratic, collaboratively bipartisan conduct that gave it the name, "the greatest deliberative body on the face of the earth." Second, he had to vote yes on allowing discussion to start. Democrats, independents and most of all social media howled in anger excoriating him. He was quiet. He knew where he was going. For McCain it is like health care, a matter of life vs. death. Third, after meeting quietly with a number of senators from both sides, he timed his vote. Rising, he drew the attention of the vote counter, strode forward and unlike certain, much smaller, colleagues in the House, loudly said "no! An audible gasp swept the chamber. The bill that would condemn tens of millions to no health care and thousands to death was dead itself. A hero, McCain now knows his place in history is secure. There is more cruelty and ugliness coming. The question is, what do we do? Do we turn our faces away or do we act responsibly? Do we constantly excuse representatives who take two steps forward and four back? Do we and you stand up and say no? Richard Dudley, Glens Falls Editor: Today, July 27, Barrone Knobs confused my recitation of facts with off the cuff remarks. Mr. Knobs letter generally lacks facts except that the office of the president does deserve respect; Deadbeat Donald demonstrates repeatedly that he does not. Rather than try to put words in my mouth, Mr. Knobs, let me assure you that every word of my arguments can be printed in this paper. You can speak for your own words, but stick to facts and skip the innuendo. Mr. Knobs strange global warming and divine judge argument is farcical. Mr. Knobs, the earths orbit is, in fact, tilted. Research earths obliquity and Milankovitch cycles. Also in response to my recent letter, I received an unsigned postcard, apparently from the same supporter of Deadbeat Donald who similarly wrote an anonymous letter last fall. That letter was mostly racist drivel. The postcard is more misogynistic and demonstrates the writers view that two-way, fact-supported conversations in the sunlight are an anathema, to be avoided at all costs. The postcard writer asserts that I have not changed any minds about Deadbeat Donald. Perhaps not, but I wont stop trying. Deadbeat traffics in lies, I prefer facts. Deadbeat Donald recently spoke at the Boy Scouts of America Jamboree to teen and pre-teen boys. He bashed former Boy Scout President Obama (respect for presidents?), joked about firing staff and criticized fake news simply facts which he prefers to disparage. He said he wants to kill health insurance for millions and bragged (again) about his election win and made political attacks, all in front of BSA, just the topics for an out-of-touch person to discuss. His motto is far from the BSA motto. Even BSA felt obligated to apologize for his crude performance. Anonymous closed by making fun of my name. Very Trumpian! Al Muench, Chestertown Welcome Guest! You Are Here: 1. Genesius Guild's final show The Genesius Guild wraps up its 61 season of free classical theater this weekend with three performances of Aristophanes' "The Clouds." See the show at 8 p.m. Friday-Sunday at Lincoln Park in Rock Island or you'll have to wait until next summer for a night of classical theater. For more info, visit genesius.org. 2. Fair continues The Mississippi Valley Fair continues this weekend with grandstand concerts happening tonight through Sunday at the fairgrounds, 2815 W. Locust St., Davenport. The lineup features Vince Neil, voice of Motley Crue, on Thursday, Brett Eldredge on Friday, John Mellencamp on Saturday and Randy Houser on Sunday. Shows start at 8 p.m. each day. The only way to see a grandstand concert is to purchase a Fun Card, priced at $60. Along with admission to the grandstand concerts, a Fun Card gets you access to the fairgrounds each day. For more info, visit mvfair.com. 3. Q-C Music Guild You can now stream the 1950 movie "Sunset Boulevard," on Netflix. But, better yet, you can see the action live on stage this weekend at Prospect Park Auditorium, 1584 34th Ave., Moline. Quad-City Music Guild opens its latest show, "Sunset Boulevard," on Thursday. You can see it at 7:30 p.m. Thursday-Saturday and 2 p.m. Sunday at Prospect Park Auditorium. It also runs next weekend, Aug. 10-13. Tickets, $11 for children and $16 for adults, are available by calling 309-762-6610 or visiting qcmusicguild.com. 4. Mercado on Fifth This week's edition of Mercado on Fifth, the open-air night market celebrating Moline's Floreciente neighborhood, features live music from Grupo Innstinto and a live performance from Quad-Cities Ballet Folklorico. Festivities are planned for 5-9 p.m. Friday outside at the intersection of 5th Avenue and 12th St. in downtown Moline. 5. Terra Lightfoot tunes Check into the Triple Crown Whiskey Bar & Raccoon Motel on Thursday for a night of indie rock tunes from Terra Lightfoot, from Ontario, The Still Tide, from Brooklyn, New York, and The Velies, based in the Quad-Cities. Doors open at 6 p.m. and music starts at 8 p.m. Thursday. Tickets, $12, are available at raccoonmotel.com. 6. Iowa Blues Challenge kick-off This weekend marks the preliminary round of the Iowa Blues Challenge, in which area solo acts and bands will battle for a chance to represent the state at the International Blues Challenge in January in Memphis, Tennessee. Six local blues acts will participate in the contest's first round, set for 8 p.m. Saturday at the Rock Island Brewing Company, or RIBCO, 1815 2nd Ave., Rock Island. A team of judges will decide which two competing acts, including a solo or duo and a band, will move on to the final round of the Blues Challenge in Des Moines. Admission: $10. Josh Duffee is one of those people who wont let the music of Bix Beiderbecke fade. Duffee, who often wears his hair slicked back and dons a vintage suit, has made 1920s-30s jazz his lifes work and mission. It started for the Davenport musician at the 1998 Bix Beiderbecke Memorial Jazz Festival. After Duffee performed in the first-ever Bix Youth Band, he sat in the balcony of the Capitol Theatre and watched The New Wolverine Jazz Orchestra, out of Sydney, Australia, perform songs by the Jean Goldkette Orchestra, which Beiderbecke performed in. I had this moment where there were chills running down my back, Duffee, 37, said. I thought, This is the music I want to play the rest of my life. Almost 20 years later, his jazz band, The Graystone Monarchs, will perform twice this weekend during the 46th annual Bix Beiderbecke Memorial Jazz Festival. Finding money As Duffee has learned, part of the job of a 20s-style jazz musician is recruiting new people, especially younger generations, to listen. Thats also the primary challenge for organizers of the jazz festival, which kicks off Thursday, according to Joe Hesse, vice president of the Bix Beiderbecke Memorial Jazz Society. When Hesse joined the society about 10 years ago, the festivals budget was around $250,000. In recent years, as the fest has moved from its traditional home at LeClaire Park, sponsorships have dwindled and attendance has slipped from 10,000 to 15,000 to 5,000 to 7,000 festival-goers, he estimated. This year, Hesse and other organizers have worked with a $100,000 budget to bring regional and local acts to Davenports Rhythm City Casino Resort. Weve changed a lot of things to save money and still have a quality festival, Hesse said. We dont get as many of the $10,000 or $20,000 sponsorships that used to be out there. Thats the challenge of it, finding the money. One longtime sponsor, Howard Braren, a Rock Island-based Bix relative, called the financial strains a "fact of life. Have they been through struggles? From time to time, Braren said. Most festivals have year-to-year battles for money, but theyre surviving, and thats the main point." Across the country, at least 25 jazz festivals have called it quits in the past five years, according to Steve Trainor, president of the Bix Beiderbecke Memorial Jazz Society. For example, the Central Illinois Jazz Festival in Decatur, Illinois, recently announced it wouldnt return in 2018. When you look around the country, jazz festivals are having a harder time, he said. More and more are folding. In the early days of the Davenport jazz festival, which started in 1971, Hesse said, It was the premier summer event, and it was one of the few summer events. Now, theres a lot going on in the Quad-Cities. Theres a festival almost every weekend. Recently, the series of jazz concerts have fallen on the same weekend as the Mississippi Valley Fair, but Hesse said the two events draw "different demographics." I dont think fans of John Cougar Mellencamp are sitting there debating, Do I want to see John Mellencamp or 1920s jazz? Keeping it going There may be extra buzz around the festival this weekend as it coincides with the opening of the Bix Beiderbecke Museum & Archives, which Braren helped raise money for. The museum is inside the River Music Experience in downtown Davenport. The point is to keep the music of Bix alive, Braren, president of the museum board, said, mentioning that the 2016 festival attracted people from 40 states and nine countries. Who else has this kind of influence? Beiderbecke's music has had an influence on Duffee, who has performed at the festival since 2002. Duffee, who festival organizers call a "walking history book" concerning 1920s jazz, keeps a collection of vintage records, instruments and photographs at his Davenport home. Duffee also named his son "Chauncey" after one of his favorite jazz musicians, Chauncey Morehouse. "Finding a record Bix played on is like Christmas," he said. "His sound was unlike anything anyone had ever heard at that time." Duffee says he's thankful to share a hometown with Beiderbecke (1903-1931). There's only one place Bix is from, and it's here," he said. "That's why so many people from all over make the pilgrimage here. They want to see where he played, lived and where he got his inspiration. That includes Enrico Borsetti, who has traveled to Davenport from his home in Rome, Italy, specifically for the jazz festival several times since 1991. During this five-week trip in the Quad-Cities this summer, Borsetti, a high school teacher, said he plans to cook meals for friends, visit the new Bix Museum and, of course, listen to as much jazz as possible during the festival. Ive been hooked on Bixs playing since I was 12, Borsetti said. This is a good place for a jazz aficionado." Eastern Iowa Community Colleges Clinton, Muscatine, and Scott Community Colleges will hold a special registration session on Saturday, Aug. 12, from 9 a.m. to noon, in advance of the first day of fall classes on Aug. 21. For more information, call 888-336-3907 or visit www.eicc.edu. Staff will be on hand to answer questions about college programs. All the services students need to register will be open and available including advising, financial aid and orientation. Financial aid is still available for the upcoming academic year. The colleges also offer an extensive online program so students can earn their associates in arts degree online. The college also recently introduced a new degree plan for working adults specifically designed to fit around work and family schedules. The colleges main campuses are located at: Clinton Community College, 1000 Lincoln Boulevard Muscatine Community College, 152 Colorado St. Scott Community College, 500 Belmont Road, Bettendorf Jim Mowrer, a veteran who has previously run for Congress, is picking a different office to shoot for in 2018. Mowrer, a Democrat, announced Thursday that he running for Iowa secretary of state. Mowrer said he would fight efforts to make it harder to vote. "After speaking with auditors, community leaders and voters across the state, it's clear that we need a leader in the Secretary of State's office with a record of effectively managing taxpayer dollars and with a dedication to ensuring fair and accessible elections," Mowrer said in a statement. In January, Iowa Secretary of State Paul Pate, a Republican, proposed a voter identification law, saying it would improve election integrity. The Republican-led Legislature followed through and then-Gov. Terry Branstad signed the a bill into law in April. Democrats have been critical of the plan, saying it's just a way to deter voting. Mowrer also noted the law's scaling back of early voting opportunities. An Iowa National Guard veteran, Mowrer served in Iraq in 2005 as an intelligence analyst. He also worked in the Pentagon. He ran unsuccessfully last year for the 3rd Congressional District seat, losing to Rep. David Young. He also previously ran for Congress in Iowa's 4th District, losing to Rep. Steve King in 2014. Mowrer is married and has two children. He works at a nonprofit organization and is an adjunct professor at Grandview University in Des Moines. IOWA CITY U.S. Rep. Dave Loebsack is spending August meeting with residents in his 24-county southeast Iowa congressional district, visiting farms, touring businesses and wishing he was back in Washington, D.C., working on health care reform. Although the Iowa City Democrat sees little or no likelihood majority Republicans can repeal and replace Obamacare, we have to fix the Affordable Care Act because its here to stay. His primary concern at the moment is the instability in the health insurance markets in many states, including Iowa. We dont have a lot of time with whats happening in a lot of places around the country with the insurance markets being so unstable at the moment, he said Thursday. Many insurers are deciding whether to remain in the market. In Iowa, for example, Minnesota-based Medica the last remaining insurer selling individual insurance plans in a majority of Iowa counties has said it will continue to sell plans for the 2018 coverage year. However, Medica told the Iowa insurance commissioner the average proposed rate increase for all products will be 43.5 percent. So its really crunch time in the sense of trying to do something legislatively to stabilize the insurance markets, Loebsack said during an interview at his Iowa City office. To protect Iowans who might be in counties without access to a qualified health plan offered through the state exchange, Loebsack proposed legislation to allow them access to the same coverage offered to members of Congress and their staffs. Loebsack said hes pleased that Republican Senate Health Committee Chairman Lamar Alexander and Democratic Sen. Patti Murray are looking for a bipartisan plan to stabilize the insurance markets. However, they wont have hearings until the Senate reconvenes in September after Labor Day. In the meantime, President Donald Trump is threatening to withhold cost subsidies the federal government has been paying insurance companies to insure low-income individuals through the Obamacare exchanges. Many Republicans are saying the same things as I am thats creating instability, Loebsack said. So the president could take an action at this moment that would help relieve some of the pressure on the insurance industry and, therefore, on folks on the exchange. In the wake of the collapse of efforts in the Senate to repeal Obamacare and enact a new health insurance plan, Loebsack sees an opportunity for working on a bipartisan basis to identify the problems with the ACA and find solutions. Acting to stabilize the insurance markets would be the low-hanging fruit Congress quickly could accomplish, Loebsack said. If people are going to be honest about this, the likelihood that there will be a repeal and replace is almost zero at this point, he said. Fearing primary challenges, some Republicans continue to call for repeal and replace, he added. Well, thats done now, Loebsack said, and referring to polls that show Americans, by as much as two-to-one ratios, prefer the ACA to an unknown alternative, he added, Lets do the will of the people. House Republican leadership appears less willing to do the kinds of the things theyre doing in the Senate, but I would urge them to get off the dime and to be open-minded about having hearings. A good Thursday to all. Falling temps and thunderstorms are on tap for the region. What does that mean for the Q-C? Here are the weather details from the National Weather Service. 1. Rain heading our way Showers and thunderstorms are likely after 1 p.m. The chance of precipitation is 60 percent with new rainfall amounts between a quarter and half of an inch possible. Skies will be mostly cloudy with a high near 82 degrees. There is a 30 percent chance of showers and thunderstorms tonight before 10 p.m. Skies will be mostly cloudy with a low around 56 degrees. Friday will be partly sunny with a high near 74 degrees and a low around 55 degrees. Saturday will be mostly sunny with a high near 77 degrees and a low around 59 degrees. Sunday brings a 30 percent chance of showers, with thunderstorms possible after 1 p.m. Skies will be mostly cloudy with a high near 75 degrees and a low around 60 degrees. 2. Costco discussion draws out more concerns For weeks, residents of the 6th Ward have come to plan and zoning and city council meetings to express their concerns about a new Costco Wholesale location on 53rd Street, north of Fairhaven Road. Wednesday's Davenport City Council committee-of-the-whole meeting was no different; now, Costco and the property owner to the north have now raised some concerns of their own. Read more. 3. Amidst struggles, Bix jazz fest fights to keep music alive Josh Duffee is one of those people who wont let the music of Bix Beiderbecke fade. Duffee, who often wears his hair slicked back and dons a vintage suit, has made 1920s-30s jazz his lifes work and mission. It started for the Davenport musician at the 1998 Bix Beiderbecke Memorial Jazz Festival. After Duffee performed in the first-ever Bix Youth Band, he sat in the balcony of the Capitol Theatre and watched The New Wolverine Jazz Orchestra, out of Sydney, Australia, perform songs by the Jean Goldkette Orchestra, which Beiderbecke performed in. But as Duffee has learned, part of the job of a 20s-style jazz musician is recruiting new people, especially younger generations, to listen. Thats also the primary challenge for organizers of the jazz festival, which kicks off today, according to Joe Hesse, vice president of the Bix Beiderbecke Memorial Jazz Society. Read more. 4. Iowa appeals court denies appeal in 1986 Bettendorf murder case The Iowa Court of Appeals has ruled that a 49-year-old Quad-City man serving life without parole in the 1986 death of Jennifer Jenny Crompton was properly sentenced and denied his request for post-conviction relief. Mark Allen Smith, who was 18 at the time of Cromptons death, argued in his appeal that his sentence was cruel and unusual punishment and that juvenile sentencing factors should be extended to young adults because their mental and emotional development is similar to a juvenile. Read more. 5. CrimeStoppers seeks info about a theft East Moline police are seeking the public's help in catching a thief. About 5 p.m., Monday, the pictured suspect walked into the kitchen area at Leisure Time, 845 Avenue of the Cities, and took a wallet out of an employee's purse. The suspect is a white or Hispanic male with a slim build. The suspect was wearing khaki pants, a maroon AC/DC tee-shirt and a black ball cap. It appears he has dark hair and facial hair. Anyone with information about this person is asked to call the CrimeStoppers of the Quad-Cities tip line at 309-762-9500 or click on "Submit a Tip" on their Facebook page. All tips are anonymous and you could earn a cash reward. 6. Illinois students start back to school today Students on the Illinois side of the Quad-Cities begin school today in the Rock Island-Milan District and at United Township High School. Others will start later in the month. Read more. DES MOINES After spiking to a 20-year high in 2015, Iowa pedestrian deaths dropped slightly in 2016, according to data from the state transportation department. An incorrect figure for 2016 was provided by the Iowa Department of Transportation in error and published in a story on June 25. In Iowa, pedestrian deaths as a result of vehicle accidents have been trending downward since the late 1980s, according to DOT data. But that trend reversed for one year in 2015, when there were 28 pedestrian deaths in the state, the most since 1995. That number began to fall again in 2016, when there were 23 pedestrian deaths in Iowa, according to the department. That number is way higher than any of us would ever want, said Steve Gent, with the Iowa DOT. "Our goal is always zero." Gent said pedestrian deaths comprise 7 percent of all traffic fatalities in Iowa, which he said he thinks is too high a share of overall road deaths. Thats a really high number considering all the cars and trucks and SUVs and motorcycles, all the other users of the transportation system, he said. Thats a very significant number, and it goes to show how vulnerable pedestrians are in the road environment. Gent said one challenge to reducing pedestrian deaths is that they typically do not occur in the same area from year to year. Because they are more random, pedestrian deaths cannot be reduced by making changes at specific areas of the states road system. Instead, systemic changes must be made in order to bring the number of deaths down, Gent said. The locations are random, generally, from year to year. So its not an easy fix, Gent said. Its more systemic vs. an actual hotspot. Pedestrian deaths are worse nationally, where the figures have been on the rise in the past few years. After many years of decline, pedestrian deaths increased 25 percent from 2010 to 2015, according to figures from the national Governors Highway Safety Association. And pedestrian deaths are becoming a larger percentage of overall traffic fatalities, from 11 percent in 2007 to 15 percent in 2015, according to the association. More than 80 years after Leon "Bix" Biederbecke died at the age of 28, a theory about the cornetist's controversial end argues Bix was the tragic victim of an anti-liquor campaign arranged by the federal government. The indisputable facts: On Thursday, August 6, 1931, at 9:30 p.m. Bix, the great Davenport cornetist, died in New York City. According to the front page article of the Davenport Democrat and Leader, a predecessor of the Quad-City Times, the cause of death was pneumonia. But jazz artist Randall Sandke, who plays cornet and trumpet and who is on the board of the Bix Beiderbecke Museum and Archive, said he has long wondered about the ultimate cause of Bixs death. His research has led him to some fresh conclusions about the case. His findings were laid out in a 2013 essay, "Was Bix Beiderbecke Poisoned by the Federal Government," published in the Journal of Jazz Studies, a periodical from the Institute of Jazz Studies at Rutgers. I think Bix has gotten a bad rap, Sandke said in an interview with the Quad-City Times on July 27. He died, and it was related to his alcoholism." Sandke argues that Bix could have been unlucky enough that night to have imbibed tainted alcohol, as many had during Prohibition, and it could have been the federal government that may have, inadvertently, been a factor in Bixs untimely death. That Bix drank alcohol heavily has never been a secret. Prohibition did not stop people from drinking alcoholic beverages. In fact the 18th Amendment never prohibited drinking alcohol, just its manufacture, transportation and sale. The article as was written: After one year from the ratification of this article the manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors within, the importation thereof into, or the exportation thereof from the United States and all territory subject to the jurisdiction thereof for beverage purposes is hereby prohibited. Bix did not just one day contract pneumonia and die. He had been in declining health since he had a reaction to alcohol the evening of Nov. 30, 1928, Sandke said. Sandke said that he has been interested in Bix since he was a boy of 11 or 12 in Chicago, both reading about him and listening to his music. In that era, plenty of his contemporaries were hard drinkers, and they managed to avoid the kind of tragic end he had, Sandke said of Bix. What Sandke thinks is that in Bix's final days, the musician was unlucky enough to have consumed alcohol that was tainted, possibly with methanol, such as wood alcohol, or some other substance. In his article, Sandke turns to the writing of Deborah Blum, whose 2010 story, The Chemists War: The little-told story of how the U.S. Government poisoned alcohol during Prohibition with deadly consequences, published by Slate, explains the governments role in fighting bootleggers. While consumable alcohol was banned during Prohibition, there remained a need for industrial alcohol. The industrial alcohol, as Blum points out, often was stolen by bootleggers and resold as drinkable spirits. What the government did was order the poisoning of industrial alcohols produced in the United States in the hopes it would scare people into giving up illicit drinking. Instead, by the time Prohibition ended in 1933, Blum says in her essay, the federal government poisoning program, by some estimates, had killed at least 10,000 people. Blum writes that while Prohibition went into effect on Jan. 1, 1920, people continued to drink and that by the mid-1920s, the Treasury Department, which oversaw alcohol enforcement, estimated that approximately 60 million gallons of industrial alcohol had been stolen annually by bootleggers to supply the nations drinkers. It was not the governments intent to kill anyone, Blum points out. The idea of denaturing industrial alcohol was introduced to the United States in 1906, as it had been a practice in Europe. Chemists employed by the syndicates and bootleggers worked to make the denatured industrial alcohol potable, which made the government create ways to make industrial alcohol more poisonous. As for Bix, a breakdown the night of Nov. 30, 1928, in Cleveland, may have been the result of bad alcohol, Sandke said. That night, Sandke believes, Bix passed out onstage while performing with Paul Whitemans orchestra in the New Music Hall in Cleveland. Later, in a fit of delirium, according to trombonist and friend Bill Rank, Bix cracked up and broke up a roomful of furniture at the hotel. Whiteman called for a doctor and nurse and ordered Bix back to Davenport. Instead, Bix headed to New York, but he was a changed man, Sandke said. The episode left Bix with severe peripheral neuropathy affecting both of his legs and feet as well as chronic pneumonia, which eventually killed him. His kidneys and liver didnt function properly. He suffered from headaches, dizziness, blackouts, memory loss and had to use a cane to get around. Bix was only 26 at the time. The symptoms are those of someone who has been a victim of alcohol poisoning. It seems to me there was a definite break in his life from the time he had that breakdown in Cleveland, Sandke said. His health never really recovered from that point on. "If you listen to his music from that point on, he rallies and he records some great stuff. Hes not in the studio not nearly as often as he had before then because of his physical problem." Despite Bixs drinking, Sandke said, He was able to really maintain this unbelievably high standard of performing all those years until that night." On Aug. 9, 1931, both WOC and WHO paid tribute to Bix during a broadcast of the Valley dance, according to the Davenport Democrat and Leader. During the broadcast, pianist Bert Sloan played Bixs composition, In a Mist, reminding people that Bix also was an accomplished pianist and composer. I think there is a certain amount of luck of the draw when youre buying any kind of unregulated product, Sandke said. Some people managed to avoid being seriously affected. As Iowas commissioner of elections, I take the integrity of our elections and every voters personal data very seriously. You can be assured that the states elections systems are protected, and your personal information remains confidential and secure in Iowas voter registration database. Im writing this because I want to emphatically encourage all registered voters to ignore any suggestion that you should cancel your voter registration. Hidden in the media hype about supposed hacking into U.S. elections systems by Russia is the fact that there are only two known instances of unauthorized intrusions in 2016 and neither happened in Iowa. No ones vote was changed or deleted in either instance. I remain dedicated to protecting Iowas election integrity. My elections staff remains vigilant. We have safeguards, redundancies and constant monitoring in place to protect against unauthorized intrusions. We utilize paper ballots in Iowa. The devices that scan and count your paper ballot are not connected to the Internet or to each other. Each ballot tabulator is tested, in public, by county auditors prior to elections to ensure they are working properly. The Election Modernization and Integrity Act passed by the Iowa Legislature this year allows us to conduct post-election audits, which will help us catch any discrepancies. Although there are no known unauthorized intrusions into our system, the media hype may have been successful in eroding confidence in Americas elections. Americans have been told that our system was manipulated from the outside. This fear is misplaced. We cannot allow propaganda to hamper Americans ability to choose our representative form of government. Finally, I need to address the request for information I received from the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity. If my office receives a request that complies with state law, the Iowa Code requires us to provide the requested information. That request must be treated like the hundreds of other list requests received every year and will not compromise personal information. Here are some important points about voter list requests: Your social security and drivers license numbers are confidential by law and never provided to any voter registration list requester. There is no record of the way you marked your ballot, so your personal voting choices are never shared with anyone. Participation in an election is part of the record, but how you voted is not. Voter registration records are publicly available in prescribed circumstances. This has been the case for many years. In Iowa, a list of registered voters is provided only to persons who make an official request and swear to use the information only for political or official purposes. The log of who requests voter registration lists is also public record. Most importantly, I urge all registered voters to remain registered and to participate in elections. Voter integrity and voter participation are not mutually exclusive. I have to take a strong stand against any organization that promotes or publicizes unwarranted fear mongering regarding voter registration. Such shameful activity is the epitome of voter suppression. The worst response you could have is to cancel your voter registration and to not exercise your right to vote. It has never been easier to register to vote in Iowa. Make your voice heard and be a voter. SUMMERSET | On Wednesday afternoon, local law enforcement gathered evidence in a trailer at Pine Hills Mobile Home Park, where the body of a 49-year-old woman had been found earlier in the day. White plastic bags covered their shoes as periodic gusts of wind pushed stray cottonwoods askance and lifted small plumes of dust from the gravel driveways in the park. On Pierce Street, one block south of the crime scene, a group of children rode their bikes along the concrete road. The woman, identified by authorities as Phyllis Mastin, was found dead in her home on Fillmore Street around 2:30 a.m. The Meade County Sheriff's Office and Summerset Police Department are investigating the death as a homicide and said they have a person of interest in custody. Phyllis was a nice tenant, said Craig Price, 58, the mobile home park manager. There was never no problems down there. Never. I get complaints about loud music and barking dogs and all that stuff all the time, but I never got a complaint about her. Price said authorities told him they suspected Mastin was killed by a roommate. He said that was the first time hed even heard of someone other than Mastin living in the home. As far as I knew, a couple weeks ago it was just her and her dog living there, he said from the deck outside his home on Pierce Street, a large lit cigar slowly receding between his fingertips. Price said he moved into his home in 1990 and has been the park manager since 2004. He estimated that Mastin had lived in the park for seven years. Its a black eye to the park, he said. We never, ever had anything like this go on. This is a good place to live. We got a lot of kids in here. This just shocked me. It just literally shocked me. Price said he first realized something was wrong Wednesday morning when he saw Summerset Police Department cruisers pour into the neighborhood. Im an early morning riser and I seen them coming and watched them come down Sturgis Road and then they turned in here ... and so I went down there, he said. Laurie Lechler, who lives on Pierce Street just south of Mastin's home, said she lets her children ride their bikes around the park without a care on long summer days. Weve never feared anything, Lechler said. Even though a homicide occurred nearby, Lechler said her feelings about safety in the mobile home park would remain unchanged. "We still don't" fear anything, she said. On a recent Thursday, thousands of people poured into downtown Rapid City for an evening of summer concerts. Most were there to have a good time, drink a cold beer and relax with friends and family. However, some came to cause trouble. Around 8 p.m., a scuffle broke out between two girls near the Elks Theatre on Sixth Street. Rapid City Police Officers Tim Doyle and Brian Pitts sprinted across the street to break up the fight, which started after one girl accused the other of talking crap about her. Pitts called the girls parents to pick them up and within a few minutes they were gone. These sorts of fights have caused headaches for police assigned to provide security at the popular Main Street Square Concert Series and Rapid City Summer Nights, which draw as many as 8,000 people downtown. It's mainly teenagers who are causing the problems, officers say, starting fights or illegally climbing onto rooftops. Occasionally, somebody will drink too much, but for the most part, those people are with somebody who will take care of them so we dont have to, Doyle said. Most of the officers who provide security are also school liaison officers who work in the citys high schools and middle schools. Four probation officers also patrol the area, checking for runaways and probation absconders. In June, after a series of "juvenile issues," the police department issued an appeal to parents, asking them to accompany underage children to the Thursday night events, which continue through the end of this month. Since then, police say the number of fights and other disturbances have declined. The department has partnered with other law enforcement groups to ensure that most kids who come downtown are supervised during the events. Officers have also formed relationships with some of the teens and now know them by name. When you forge relationships with kids in school, you can kind of work with people to get a good result, Doyle said. After sending the girls home, Doyle and Pitts resumed their regular patrol duties. It was 8:30 p.m., and the sky was already getting dark. Walk it! Pitts yelled at a pair of skateboarders riding on the sidewalk. After receiving a report that a large group of kids had gathered near the Hardees on Fifth Street, Pitts and Doyle drove their ATV to the restaurant to see if they were causing any mischief. Pitts recognized one of the teens and called him over for a quick chat. The group then cleared out. Pitts greeted a few kids in an alley behind Main Street before driving the ATV back to Art Alley, where his police cruiser was parked. You just get to know em, Pitts said. Your heart kinda goes out to them. You become kinda their champion. PIERRE | The state Board of Regents plans to talk next week about putting another fee on the students attending South Dakotas public universities. The proposal calls for charging students $5.07 more per credit hour. The purpose for the South Dakota Higher Education Enhancement Fee is to gradually increase faculty salaries, according to a document distributed to the regents. The regents set tuition and fees. They meet Aug. 8-10 in Pierre for their annual planning session. The new fee would generate an estimated $4 million in the first year, according to the document. The public university systems Council of Presidents recently discussed the proposal. It comes from Black Hills State University in Spearfish. University officials expect students will take 788,442 credit hours of courses in fiscal 2018. That forecast led to the $4 million estimate. The fee is intended to last 10 years at a minimum. It isnt clear whether the fee is a flat addition of $5.07 per credit hour or would increase by an additional $5.07 each year. The document states: This would be a $152.10 increase each year for 10 years or an annual cost increase to students in year ten of $1,521.00. This would be (a) $6,084 cost increase for a four year degree. Regents President Bob Sutton of Sioux Falls wrote in an email, "(I)t is an informational item, introducing a new approach, and will not be voted on at this meeting." "Tuition and fees will be discussed as part of the strategic planning, and this was an idea brought forward," he wrote. Tuition and a mandatory activity fee went up an average of 2.9 percent at South Dakotas public universities effective this summer. Resident undergraduates taking 30 credit hours will pay an average of $8,555.32 for the 2017-2018 academic year. In year one, the estimated $4 million of additional salary revenue would spread like this: Black Hills State University, $539,718; Dakota State University, $341,496; Northern State University, $310,010; South Dakota School of Mines & Technology, $327,908; South Dakota State University, $1,402,403; and University of South Dakota, $1,078,465. Better faculty salaries long have been among the regents goals. Tom Jackson is president for Black Hills State University. In an email, he wrote: "One of the many strengths of the South Dakota public higher education system is its strong focus on quality. The South Dakota Higher Education Enhancement Initiative is a proposal to potentially strengthen each campus as each strives for excellence. "In higher education we sometimes think of college as a cost. It is also a very smart investment that may generate over $750,000 in lifetime earnings over that of a high school graduate." Doing business with the state of Montana can be tricky, but a free workshop next Tuesday can help vendors navigate the system. The State Procurement Bureau is touring The Treasure State conducting outreach to current and potential vendors. The workshop is offered in Hamilton by the Ravalli County Economic Development Authority and Montana Procurement Technical Assistance Center. John Schneeberger, an economic development specialist at RCEDA and part-time government contracting advisor, said the Aug. 8 workshop will explain how to navigate the new on-line bidding system. Vendors in Hamilton should attend if they have a product or service that they would like to expand their market for. And if they have some notion that the state of Montana buys it, they probably want to come, he said. The workshop topics include a listing of the most commonly purchased goods and services, government procurement techniques, where to find bids and proposals, how to register as a vendor, resident preferences, and tips for winning state contracts. It also will provide resources for vendors. The first step is to register as a vendor for Montana. Based on commodity codes, vendors will receive notices and invitations for quotes or invitations for proposalsm and learn how the system works. Schneeberger said that formerly Montana had a vendor registry requiring hard copy correspondence.The Electronic Montana Acquisition & Contracting System (EMAC) replaces that. We recently responded to a request for proposal using the EMAC system and it was well organized, Schneeberger said. The state procures a variety of products and services including vehicles, snowmobiles, professional services, general supplies, transportation, construction, bricks, electrical, floor, glass, wood, legal work, offices, musical supplies and equipment, asphalt, guardrails, and highway maintenance. There are prerequisites you have to go through to establish you are a qualified vendor before you can say what youre offering, Schneeberger said. You need to enter all your information - which varies based on what types of services youre offering - including name, official business name, DUNS number and all of that. As a procurement government contracting advisor, Schneeberger helps people set up government contracting at all levels of government - state, federal and local. I help a lot of people around here providing goods and services to the Forest Service or the USDA, he said. I help people with fire contracting. For example, the recent solicitation with preseason agreements for equipment, where people sign up their bulldozers, backhoes, graders, and fire trucks and put in bids is through an automated system called Viper. Schneeberger said his main focus is helping people with the System for Award Management (SAM), which is the federal government registry allowing businesses and individuals to conduct transactions for goods and services with the government. Schneeberger said the EMAC system is not intuitive for new users and the explanation at the workshop will be helpful. It takes into account all types of contracting, procurement and government agencies, has to abide by federal acquisition regulations, and can be confusing, he said. When Im signing up people to just do ground support of truck and driver for the Forest Service for these fires, 99 percent of the system doesnt apply to them, I know. Schneeberger recommends spending three hours at the workshop to save many hours of frustration and confusion. There will be folks from state financial services division and the state procurement bureau, he said. They will be here and talk about how to do it and any issues people may have." A question and answer period follows the presentation. Preregister for the workshop online at rceda.org or by calling 406-375-9416. The workshop will begin at 10 a.m. at Hamilton City Hall, 223 So. Second St. in Hamilton. For more information visit online, montanaptac.org. SEELEY LAKE Just like 10 years ago, Seeley Lake sat in the crosshairs of Mother Natures big gun and didnt blink. On August 4, 2007, the Jocko Lakes fire ran to the western edge of town and stopped when a wind shift stalled it just short of Boy Scout Road. This Wednesday, the Rice Ridge fire sat primed to ride an overnight windstorm south down the Morrell Creek valley and straight up the Double Arrow Ranch subdivision. And then the forecasted wind didnt come. Since the early 80s, Ive been worried about Seeley Lake, retired Lolo National Forest Supervisor Orville Daniels said during a visit to the incident command post at Seeley Lake Elementary School. We knew if a fire starts here on the right day, Seeley Lake is gone. In 2007 it almost was. If that wind hadnt changed and shifted to the east, and an initial attack crew from Alaska hadnt stood there, with the wind at their backs, and was able to stop it. Dozens of Double Arrow homes were eerily vacant on Wednesday as another crew of Alaskan and Montanan firefighters perched on Wolverine Drive and watched a seemingly endless parade of aircraft shower the leading edge of the fire. Smoke plumes marked the southern fire perimeter from the spine of Rice Ridge, down across Morrell Creek and over to the base of Morrell Mountain, barely two miles north of Cottonwood Lakes Road. Most of the airshow involved four water scoopers: a pair of single-engine Air Tractor 802s and a pair of much larger, twin-engine CL 415s. Roughly every five minutes, the carousel of planes roared into the valley, sprayed clouds of water and banked away to reload from Seeley Lake, which had been closed to recreation. Intermittently, a sortie of retardant bombers would appear to draw thick red lines in the forest. They ranged from one of Missoula-based Neptune Aviations venerable P2-Vs (on its last season of firefighting) to 10 Tanker Airs hulking DC-10, a converted jumbo jet. The retardant is more effective, because it stays on the ground longer, said fire air operations manager Mike Kerrigan. But if you have a lake right there, you can put significantly more water on the fire. Right now this is the No. 1 fire in the nation. But were still competing for everything. We have helicopters ordered that we cant get filled. The whole airshow got briefly grounded around 11 a.m. Wednesday when a tourist at a gas station decided to fly his radio-controlled drone copter in the parking lot. A local resident spotted the drone and reported it to U.S. Forest Service officers, who were able to find and arrest the man. The FAA (Federal Aviation Administration) has gotten really serious about that, Rice Ridge public information officer Mark DeGregorio said. It doesnt just stay with us in our little fire world. It goes straight to the FAA. A guy they busted for flying a drone in Arizona is getting a really hefty fine. Nevertheless, the steady soaking made a noticeable difference in the fire progression. And more significantly, the sturdy east wind that woke Missoulians early Wednesday morning failed to arrive in Seeley Lake. By Wednesday evening, the Rice Ridge fire measured 6,857 acres and had 150 firefighters assigned. A new Type II incident command crew took over management of the fire on Wednesday afternoon, with plans for increased coordination with firefighters combatting the 3,220-acre Liberty fire burning toward the old Jocko Lake fire scar. Last night it had come over the hill and everyone could see it, said Seeley Lake resident Loren Rose, who lives near the Seeley Lake airfield just south of the fire front. They hit that really hard, laid it right down. An east wind would be bad for us in our situation. It would probably be good for the Liberty fire, because it would blow it back up away from Placid Lake. But then wed get the smoke from the fires over by Lincoln. Intro Greetings! I am a political scientist , specializing in International Relations , my research and teaching focus on ethnic conflict and civil-military relations . I watch way too much TV, and I like movies as well so I tend to write about both and find IR stuff in pop culture. I rant alot about American politics and sometimes about Canadian politics. I like to take ideas I once learned a long time ago and apply them to whatever strikes my fancy. Thank you for reading! Please log in, or sign up for a new account and purchase a subscription to continue reading. 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. Bonnie Tsui is a writer in Berkeley, and the author of "She Went to the Field," a history of female soldiers in the Civil War. She wrote this for the Los Angeles Times. Kaitei College, once a naval academy, it now educates and trains the future leaders of the country. If you want a future in politics in the country of Japan then this is the school you must be at. Akaba Teiichi s dream is to become Prime Minister and create his own country. As the son of a minister who lost a government election to his rival by one vote Teiichi places enormous pressure on himself to advance through the ranks of the student council. So, ss a freshman he must align himself with whomever he sees has the best chance of becoming next years student council president. Should he align with the popular angel-haired Himuro Rorando or with the enigmatic Morizo Okuto. Choose wisely and his path is set to becoming student council president at Kaitei College one year, then Prime Minister of Japan! Teiichi was once a gifted pianist but he gave that up to pursue his (fathers) dreams of political advancement. He is in a relationship with Shiratori Mimiko, but he wants to keep it secret lest it have a negative effect on his career path. So they talk to each other at night via the old analog cups and string, though he only be on the other side of the gated entrance to Mimikos home. At Teiichis side is his right-hand man Sakakibara Komei, nothing if not a touch androgynous but an expert at eavesdropping on their rivals. He is wholly devoted to Teiichi, if not in a bit in love with him as well. Always in Teiichis face is his long time rival, Togo Kikuma, the son of his fathers rival, who constantly berates Teiichi and gives him nipple twists whenever he can. Whomever Teiichi aligns himself with Kikuma will be sure to be on the other side trying to destroy him. Finally, there is the nonchalant Otaka Dan, who came to the school on a scholarship and it winning over people by simply being a nice guy. He does not buy into this student council business and acts a voice of calm and reason throughout the film, which baffles everyone else who believes that careers are made and broken at the high school politics level. The subject of politics and political systems around the World has probably never been as popular as it is now. Because it has largely been a negative experience to have something satirize the subject and inject potent shots of humor into the mix comes as a welcome surprise. All of the wheelings and dealings and behind the back gestures of politics are well and present in Nagai Akiras adaptation of Furuya Usamarus manga by his writer Izumi Yoshihiro. Allegiances and alliances will rise and fall, day in and day out, as the election goes on. Teiichi has to navigate these tumultuous waters and make sure that he is on the winning side when the ballots are cast. At the same time Kikuma is constantly trying to destroy him, even seeking his fathers help in taking Teiichi down through his own father. What makes a film like Battle of Supreme High work, despite all the political back and forth, as light as it is, is the performance from its lead, Suda Masaki, and sharp injections of comedy through to the final act. There is a part of Japanese comedy that explodes out of the normal, be it by a facial expression or sharp rise in the vocals. Out from the passive pace, from these moments Masaki excels, pulling a face or raising his voice suddenly. There are some moments between him and his father, taking the entrance exam that Dan took to see who was smarter, discovering the lineage of one of the student council nominees and how his family is involved, these moments between Teiichi and his father are amazing and laugh out loud hilarious. Humor gives way to the drama of the election but comes about at the end to wrap things up nicely. Teiichi also has to come to understand how these elections are affecting his friendships and relationships. His friendships with Komei and Dan. His relationships with his father and his girlfriend, Mimiko. These are all affected by his desire to advance to the schools political system. And will he still maintain that his dream is to become Prime Minister of Japan and create his own country, or, will go back to his first love, playing piano. In the end only Teiichi knows that for certain. Maybe it was all part of his plan all along. Teiichi: Battle of Supreme High appears to have fallen under the radar when it played during the first week of the Fantasia International Film Festival. For those of us who have been overwhelmed by the state of geo-politics of late this is a fun-injected alternative, with moments of laugh out loud hilarity throughout. Headed by a strong performance from its lead, Suda Masaki, it takes the piss out of local politics and provides an oasis against the din of the real politicians around us. 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). Two big new Trump Administration efforts to address the opioid epidemic ... neither of which call for new or increased sentences | Main | "Justice Thomas, Criminal Justice, and Originalisms Legitimacy" August 3, 2017 Distinct sentencing advice from family members for teen guilty of involuntary manslaughter for encouraging suicide This local article, fully headlined "Conrad Roys aunt: Give Michelle Carter 20 years; Defendants dad wants probation," reports in the very different advice being given to a juvenile judge in Massachusetts in a high-profile case due to be sentenced today. Here are the details: A grieving aunt of teen suicide victim Conrad Roy III is looking for a 20-year prison sentence for Michelle Carter tomorrow on the heels of her conviction in the blockbuster suicide-by-text case but the girls worried dad is pleading for probation. I believe she should be kept far away from society, wrote Kim Bozzi, Roys aunt, in a statement she said she plans to read at Carters sentencing inside Taunton Trial Court. Take away the spotlight that she so desperately craves. Twenty years may seem extreme but it is still twenty more than Conrad will ever have, Bozzi said in the written statement she gave to the Herald. But David Carter, Michelles father, begged for probation and continued counselling in a July letter to Judge Lawrence Moniz. She will forever live with what she has done and I know will be a better person because of it, David Carter wrote in the signed letter, provided to the Herald. I ask of you to invoke leniency in your decision-making process for my loving child Michelle.... The judge found that Carter caused the death of Roy, who killed himself in a Fairhaven Kmart parking lot in 2014 by filling his truck with carbon monoxide. Carter, 20, of Plainville, who had an almost entirely virtual relationship with Roy, goaded him into killing himself through a series of texts and calls. The Mattapoisett teen left the truck as it filled with deadly fumes, but according to testimony at Carters trial, she told him on the phone to get back in. Im unsure when she decided to set her sick plan into motion or why, but when she did she did it relentlessly, it was calculated and it was planned down to a T, Bozzi wrote in the victim-impact statement. She preyed on his vulnerabilities, he trusted her, which in turn, cost him his life. Bozzi, who attended every court appearance, told the Herald other family members are prepared to speak as well. She said Carters conviction was a relief and that what happens next is up to God and a judge. Prior related post: UPDATE: Michelle Carter received a prison sentence of 2.5 years, but only half has to be actually served in prison as explained in this CNN article. It starts this way: Michelle Carter, who was convicted of involuntary manslaughter in the 2014 suicide of her boyfriend, was sentenced Thursday to a two-and-a-half-year term, with 15 months in prison and the balance suspended plus a period of supervised probation. "This court must and has balanced between rehabilitation, the promise that rehabilitation would work and a punishment for the actions that have occurred," said Bristol County Juvenile Court Judge Lawrence Moniz. August 3, 2017 at 09:12 AM | Permalink Comments She is guilty of speaking her mind that is all she is guilty of. I hope the law and the conviction gets tossed upon appeal. Posted by: Daniel | Aug 3, 2017 11:45:03 AM Have to agree with Daniel. From what I've seen I believe this shouldn't have even made it to trial (or adjudication as the case may be). Posted by: Soronel Haetir | Aug 3, 2017 11:52:56 AM Never could see suicide myself. If someone missed me off enough I am thinking of a killing trust me myself would not be my first choice Posted by: rodsmith3510 | Aug 3, 2017 12:43:56 PM As for this case. I think you are both reaching. This is no different than telling fire in a crowded location when no fire exists. Just because he was either mentally weak enough or stupid enough to listen does not excuse her actions. Sorry but involuntary manslaughter is appropriate. No I me in the old days would probably have pulled my gun and informed her if she was that anxious to see someone die I would be glad to give her an up close and personal look when the bullet goes through her empty head Posted by: rodsmith3510 | Aug 3, 2017 12:53:06 PM I find this whole thing problematic but the fact she was egging him on including after he stepping out of furnace, so to speak, and pushed him to go back in, is the sort of direct incitement in the heat of things that the law is concerned about. This wasn't just her over a span of time encouraging him to commit suicide or that his life was worthless. Posted by: Joe | Aug 3, 2017 1:21:42 PM [sentencing hearing including victim impact statements are being streamed online now] Posted by: Joe | Aug 3, 2017 2:32:46 PM @Joe The appeal should be interesting. I personally don't think the incitement exception applies because I don't think someone can incite anyone to anything via a text message (or e-mail for that matter). To me the incitement test is predicated on the incitement being in-person. That's was the fact pattern in Brandenburg. Indeed, Brandenburg v. Ohio has always been seen as less restrictive of speech than Holmes' "clear and present danger" test. But even under the clear and present danger test she wins because while the danger her speech represented was clear it was not a present danger because she wasn't present. Look at Abrams vs United States. There the people were throwing flyers out of windows. Holmes didn't think that met his test and throwing flyers out of windows is the closest fact pattern to a text message. In other words, if she had been there in the Kmart parking lot with him urging him to get back in the car then the case for incitement would be much stronger, perhaps even pervasive to me. But the lack of her physical presence makes her words far more like protected advocacy than incitement. Posted by: Daniel | Aug 3, 2017 4:50:16 PM Daniel, I agree if she was physically present it would carry significantly more weight. This guy could of been persuaded by a few songs or even the sick movies out today, that maybe cashing in is the way to go. Has to be more responsibility for a person with their own life than just txts and a phone call. I dont see what a term of imprisonment would accomplish except to satisfy the guys parents temporarily, a deflated victory. Afterwards they realize, it doesnt bring him back. Posted by: MidWestGuy | Aug 3, 2017 9:57:58 PM "To me the incitement test is predicated on the incitement being in-person." I find this artificial though text message might not do it. It is more than just tossing a bunch of flyers anyhow -- it is back/forth communication between two individuals. I think incitement by phone is possible, that is voice. Skype too. If the conviction is legitimate, the sentence to me sounds fair. Posted by: Joe | Aug 3, 2017 10:10:34 PM The intentional act of the victim broke the chain of causation. Suicide is not a crime. Solicitation of suicide is not solicitation of a crime. I say to a lawyer, go fuck yourself. I am now guilty of rape, according to this ridiculous judge. Posted by: David Behar | Aug 3, 2017 11:20:38 PM There are two questions: (1) Can the state criminalize the sort of conduct here? (2) Did it actually do so? If the answer to the questions is yes, and I think it plain that the answer to (1) is yes, then she probably got off a little easy. Posted by: federalist | Aug 4, 2017 11:50:55 AM @Joe The problem with the intimacy argument is that traditionally the kind of one-to-one behavior you find problematic has been evaluated under the "true threats" exception rather than the incitement exception. The difficulty with the true threat approach is that, at least explicitly, she didn't threaten him. This is why I think the appeal's ultimate resolution of her case should be from a 1A point of view, interesting. I do understand the moral intuition that her behavior is wrong somehow. However, it doesn't fit /neatly/ into the category of exceptions that SCOTUS has delineated, which means that if her appeal is going to be rejected they will have to massage those categories somehow. Can they do that? Yes. Will they do that? I doubt it. This court as we have just seen in The Slants case tends to be hostile to restrictions on free speech. I think it unlikely, but not impossible, that they will uphold her guilty verdict. Posted by: Daniel | Aug 4, 2017 12:23:34 PM Daniel, I don't think "true threats" is the criteria here. It's some sort of criminal incitement. That's a traditional exception and fits within Supreme Court case law. And, I don't think you have to be there in person necessarily for that to occur. The Slants case was a case where some sort of content or viewpoint based exception was overturned. A traditional unconstitutional condition. I think there is room for appeal here but think the incitement to return into the van (as compared to her convincing him generally to commit suicide) is a hard case for her. Posted by: Joe | Aug 4, 2017 1:54:32 PM Joe. What crime did she incite? Is getting into a truck a crime? Is suicide a crime in Mass.? Did his suicide disturb the peace, the only crime I can come up with, incitement to disturb the peace. That is not the charge that was tried. Posted by: David Behar | Aug 4, 2017 3:14:24 PM Post a comment Distinct sentencing advice from family members for teen guilty of involuntary manslaughter for encouraging suicide | Main | "Capital Punishment of Unintentional Felony Murder" August 3, 2017 "Justice Thomas, Criminal Justice, and Originalisms Legitimacy" The title of this post is the title of this notable new essay authored by Judge William Pryor as part of a Yale Law Journal Forum collections of essays under the heading "Justice Thomas: Twenty-Five Years on the Supreme Court." The essay covers lots of elements of Justice Thomas's criminal justice jurisprudence, and I recommend the piece in full. And especially because Judge Pryor is the current Acting Chair of the US Sentencing Commission, I figure sentencing fans might find this passage from the essay interesting: A second area where Justices Thomas and Scalia agreed on a legal rule but disagreed on how to apply it was in determining whether statutory mandatory minimum sentences violated the right to a jury trial. Both Justices agreed with the rule established in Apprendi v. New Jersey that any fact, other than a prior conviction, that increases the penalty for a crime beyond the statutory maximum must be proved to a jury beyond a reasonable doubt. And both voted to invalidate mandatory sentencing guidelines that required judges to find facts that would increase sentencing ranges. But the Justices disagreed about why mandatory sentencing guidelines were problematic. Justice Scalia saw the problem as permitting fact-finding to increase the ceiling of a judges discretion in a way that could disadvantage a defendant. Justice Thomas, on the other hand, saw the problem as changing the range of discretion, even if the sentencing ceiling remained unchanged. This difference led the Justices to opposite positions in Alleyne, discussed above. Justice Thomas wrote for the majority that facts that trigger statutory mandatory minimum sentences must be proved to a jury because the facts alter the prescribed range of sentences to which a defendant is exposed and do so in a manner that aggravates the punishment. Justice Scalia joined a dissent written by Chief Justice Roberts that viewed the application of a statutory mandatory minimum as a limit on the discretion of the judge that in no way affected the role of the jury. As an aside, I respectfully disagree with both Justices Scalias and Thomass decisions to join in the majority opinions in Blakely and Booker, the foundational decisions underlying Alleyne. The notion that mandatory guidelines that regulate judicial discretion within a statutory range of punishment to reduce sentencing disparities somehow violates a defendants right to a jury trial even though it is entirely permissible for judges, in an indeterminate system, to find sentencing facts and impose punishments anywhere within a broad statutory range has never made sense to me. I side with another Yalie, Justice Samuel Alito, on that one. But accepting the logic of Blakely and Booker that the Sixth Amendment requires a jury to find all facts essential to the potential penalty, only Justice Thomass position in Alleyne makes sense. August 3, 2017 at 01:35 PM | Permalink Comments I walked through the Missouri Atty Generals Office, down a hallway with an Ass. A.G., back in 1974 or so. I was working on a criminal case against the State. JB Johnson case. We walked by an empty lawyer's office which had a Confederate Flag on the wall behind the desk chair and a small state flag with a confederate flag in its corner. "What's up with that!" I asked. "Oh, that is just Clarence. He is UnReconstructed!" In those days UnReconstructed meant that one opposed the three Reconstruction Amendments to the Constitution, particularly the 14th Amendment. We later met up with Clarence at the lunch room and I was introduced. Attorney General Danforth had hired him. And later Senator Danforth got Clarence hired to be head of the EEOC. And promoted him for the Court of Appeals and Supreme Court. Posted by: Liberty1st | Aug 3, 2017 2:23:42 PM Yale? Dismissed. Worthless. Posted by: David Behar | Aug 3, 2017 11:18:16 PM Post a comment "Sentencing by Computer: Enhancing Sentencing Transparency and Predictability, and (Possibly) Bridging the Gap between Sentencing Knowledge and Practice" | Main | Distinct sentencing advice from family members for teen guilty of involuntary manslaughter for encouraging suicide August 2, 2017 Two big new Trump Administration efforts to address the opioid epidemic ... neither of which call for new or increased sentences This week has seen two big notable developments concerning addressing the nation's opioid epidemic coming from the Trump Administration: (1) on Monday, the Administrations Commission on Combating Drug Addiction and the Opioid Crisis presented this interim report of policy recommendations; (2) today, Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced the formation of the Opioid Fraud and Abuse Detection Unit, which this press release describes as "a new Department of Justice pilot program to utilize data to help combat the devastating opioid crisis." Both the Commission report and the AG Sessions' comments rolling out this new DOJ unit talk about the importance of criminal law enforcement as part of a national strategy to deal with opioid problems. But, as I note in the title of this post, neither the Commission report nor AG Sessions calls for new or increased federal sentences as part of the criminal justice response. Of course, federal (and state) criminal punishments for opioid and heroin offenses are already pretty severe in lots of settings. But in prior eras, it would be common to hear politicians and others say that already tough sentencing schemes were "obviously" not tough enough when a problem persisted. (Also, it should be recalled, the US Sentencing Commission reduced all guideline drug sentences by two levels back in 2014. It would certainly be easy for AG Sessions to call for the heroin guidelines sentences to be restored to their pre-2014 levels.) For those concerned about increased federal criminal prosecutions in drug cases and the potential impact on federal incarceration levels, the mere lack of a call for new or increased sentences surely will not be seen as a cause for celebration. Nevertheless, I still think it notable and intriguing that a tougher sentencing scheme is not (yet) expressly part of the opioid agenda coming from the Trump Administration. August 2, 2017 at 04:02 PM | Permalink Comments @Doug That is because the prior drug suppliers were mostly black, brown or yellow skinned people who brought their drugs into this country by boat or mule. The primary suppliers of the opioids are pharmaceutical companies and medical doctors who write prescriptions fulfilled at a pharmacy . No one wants to be seen to be tough on doctors or pharmacists. For one, medical professional have a lot of money and political capital. Two, if you anger them they might let your appendix explode. Posted by: Daniel | Aug 2, 2017 4:29:02 PM Nice to see that you're so complimentary of the Trump administration's enlightened justice initiatives. There will surely be more to come. What a relief. Posted by: anon | Aug 2, 2017 10:56:02 PM We need to sentence the doctors who prescribe opiodes to those who do not really require them. Like if you are not dying of pain then you can use aspirin. Posted by: Liberty1st | Aug 3, 2017 7:48:39 AM The bar is so low that we congratulate them for not doing something so obviously stupid as increasing already tough sentences. Your headline with Obama would have been harsh about not supporting reform. Posted by: Paul | Aug 3, 2017 1:23:10 PM Post a comment It may become a new rite of passage in lame duck administrations that top staff start taking lobbying positions for the lawless scandal factory that is Uber. Thats a thread we see in two Chronicle stories this week, one being todays Matier & Ross column about Ed Lee staffers taking lobbying jobs with Uber, and the other being a state of the fundraising race in supervisor and mayoral elections. Turns out that large campaign donations are coming in from oh golly you're never gonna believe this! Ed Lee staffers who just took high-paying lobbying jobs with Uber. Popping up in both articles is Tony Winnicker, Mayor Lees former press secretary (or henchman, if you believe the late Rose Pak). Winnicker is freshly hired as an Uber communications consultant and he's also a top donor to Sup. Jeff Sheehys reelection campaign, a campaign with a substantial cash lead over all other supervisor candidates (NOTE: This is now being disputed by a rival campaign, which is addressed below). Also making the jump to Uber is Lees City College board appointee Alex Randolph, who will be an Uber public affairs manager presumably with plenty of fires to put out regularly, and former Aaron Peskin aide David Noyola is already an Uber flak. We are building a strong team with deep ties to the San Francisco community to strengthen partnerships in our hometown, Uber spokesperson Davis White told Matier & Ross. And by deep ties to the San Francisco community he means they know where the bodies are buried. Meanwhile in the 2018 Supervisor races (the primaries are less than a year away!) Sup. Sheehy, as mentioned above, leads all candidates with $105,414 raised. In second place, we have his D8 progressive opponent Rafael Mandelman, whose challenge Sheehy will have to fend off in order to keep his appointed seat. Sheehys sizable lead comes courtesy big checks from the aforementioned Winnicker and tech lobbyist Alex Tourk. Hey, know any good stories about him? Update: D8 progressive opponent Rafael Mandelman disputes the Chron's math here. In a just-posted Facebook status, Mandelman says "In just 75 days, our campaign brought in $107,665 from more than 350 contributors, leading our nearest competitor by more than $2,900." The rest of the reported fundraising totals are pretty pedestrian and in the $20,000 to $30,000 range. The shocker in the district data is not in the numbers, but in the names. Specifically in District 6, where Jane Kim will be termed out, and the only people whove filed to run for her seat are development-happy public comment session microphone hog Sonja Trauss, and barista Jason Lee Jones. Cheer up, D6, former SFist contributor Sunny Angulo may throw her hat in the ring! (Angulo also has a real job on Sup. Peskins staff, and used to work for Kim too.) Only one mayoral candidate has declared for the 2019 mayoral election, and that is of course Mark Leno who has raised more than $166,000. But we are delighted to speculate about his potential opponents, who may include board president London Breed, Sup. Mark Farrell, Sup. Jane Kim, Sup. Aaron Peskin, City Attorney Dennis Herrera, and Assessor-Recorder Carmen Chu. Related: Uber And Lyft Permanently Banned From Most Of Market Street Under New Plan Speaking at the second mid-term review of the sixth phase of the Japan-Vietnam Joint Initiative in Hanoi on August 2, Hoang said investment and trade ties between the two countries have developed practically, adding that Japanese investors have shown higher confidence in the Vietnamese investment climate.The official noted that Vietnam and Japan inked cooperation agreements worth up to 22 billion USD during Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phucs visit to Japan last June.Nagai Katsuro from the Japanese Embassy in Vietnam highlighted close cooperation between the two countries over the past time.He said Japan wishes to work with Vietnam to address issues regarding Vietnams investment climate, which, he said, is expected to be improved through the Joint Initiative.During the meeting, the two sides agreed to put forth measures and process of identifying the minimum wage.Apart from labour and salary matters, they also focused on logistics and transportation services, support to small and medium-sized enterprises and regulations imposed on foreign investors as prescribed in the Investment Law, the Enterprise Law, the Land Law and other laws related to investment and business.The Joint Initiative, launched in April 2003 as a result of special cooperation between the two Governments, aims to create an open and transparent business and investment climate in Vietnam through a policy dialogue between Japanese investors and concerned Vietnamese ministries and agencies. VNS He made the remark at the 2nd Ministerial Conference on Labour Cooperation in these five countries, or the CLMTV, which convened in the central city of Da Nang on August 2. The biennial conference focused on the theme of Promoting Human Resources Development and Decent Work for Migrant Workers. Dam said connected by the Mekong River, the ASEAN member states, with combined population of about 230 million people, have witnessed their partnership expanded continuously. He suggested the countries increase the sharing of information on labour affairs and policy changes. Minister of Labour, Invalids and Social Affairs Dang Ngoc Dung stated guest workers are an important growth momentum for both sending and receiving countries, adding that this is why they need to be protected and provided with stable jobs. Participating ministers agreed the management of migrant workers requires consistent approaches and concerted efforts not only within a country but also at the regional and international levels. They also highlighted the roles of parties involved, including public officials, lawmakers, researchers and enterprises. The ministers approved a joint statement on safe labour migration submitted by the CLMTV senior officials following their meeting in Da Nang on August 1. The statement stressed cooperation among these countries is in line with international labour standards and the law of each nation, with parties committing to working together in a number of prioritised sectors, including labour training, fair recruitment, and standard labour contract. Vietnamplus City leader Huynh Cach Mang said that the city delegation organized practical and effective activities to tighten further friendship, solidarity and comprehensive cooperation ties between the two nations within the visit framework. Particularly, the city's delegation collaborated with leaders of Vientiane capital, Champasak, Savannakhet and Xiangkhouang provinces to co-organize activities marking the 55th establishment anniversary of diplomatic ties (September 5, 1962- 2017) and the 40th anniversary since Vietnam and Laos co-signed Friendship and Cooperation Treaty (July 18, 1977-2017); and localities of Laos to hold a cultural event named The 2017 Ho Chi Minh City Days in Vientiane and Champasak with photo exhibition, folk and fashion performances The events were broadcasted on the Lao National Television and localities, attracting thousands of audiences. Besides that, the delegation also held Ho Chi Minh City Trade, Services and Tourism in Savanakhet, Conference for Investment, Trade and Tourism Promotion in Laos, offering ceremony of cow breed, opening ceremony of photo exhibition about Vietnam, Ho Chi Minh City and Laos relationship, opening ceremony of reading room for children in Xiangkhouang province. The delegation also visited Vietnamese community in Savannakhet province. During the visit, the delegation worked and had a discussion with leaders of Vientiane capital, Savannakhet, Champasak and Xiangkhouang provinces also paid a courtesy greeting to Politburo member, Vice President of Laos Phankham Viphavanh, former General Secretary of Party Committe of Laos Khamtay Siphadon, Laotian President Choummaly Sayason, former Prime Minister and President of the Lao Front for National Construction Sisavat Keobunphan. The city leader strongly affirmed that Ho Chi Minh City always respected emotions as well as assistance of leaders and former high- ranking leaders of Laos for the Ho Chi Minh City Party Committee, authority and people. The visit affirmed determination of Ho Chi Minh City leaders and people in boosting Vietnam- Laos relationship in general and cooperation ties between Ho Chi Minh City and Lao localities in particular. Ho Chi Minh City also pledged giving priority to trade and investment cooperation, exchange of high- ranking delegation with the partner in the upcoming time. The Vietnam Fatherland Front Committee in Ho Chi Minh City, the Ho Chi Minh Communist Youth Union, the Ho Chi Minh city Union of Friendship Organizations, the Sponsoring Association for Poor Patients Ho Chi Minh City and Overseas Vietnamese Committee of Ho Chi Minh City would co-hold free medical examination and treatment, eye surgery, gifting for Laotian poor patients; and continue launching Green Summer Campaign. Additionally, the Ho Chi Minh City Education and Training would continue giving scholarships for Lao students. The HCMC Tourism Department would help Vientiane to successfully kick off the 2018 Laos Tourism Year and Mekong Sub-region Tourism City Mayor's Conference in Vientiane. The HMC Department of Information and Communications pledged to support the Department of Posts and Telecommunication of Vientiane capital to develop a modern public administration system, information data The practical activities contributed to not only strengthening further traditional friendly and solidarity relations; especially comprehensive cooperation ties between Vietnam and Laos; bust also boosting economic cooperation between Ho Chi Minh City and Lao localities. The two week visit to Laos of the Ho Chi Minh City delegation was led by deputy standing secretary of the HCMC Party Committee Tat Thanh Cang. BY AI CHAN- Translated by Huyen Huong iStock/Thinkstock(NEW YORK) -- Rangers are still searching the Grand Canyon National Park in Arizona for a mother who disappeared while hiking there with her children this week. Sarah Beadle, 38, of Fort Worth, Texas, made reservations to stay with her two children at the Bright Angel Campground in the Grand Canyon National Park on Tuesday. But Beadle never arrived. Her children, ages 10 and 11, are both safe and accounted for, according to the National Park Service, which has launched a missing person's search and investigation within the park. Beadle was hiking with her kids down the South Kaibab Trail, where park rangers later found her backpack near the junction of the River Trail. The National Park Service said Beadle is an "experienced backpacker and hiker" who last hiked the Grand Canyon in 2002. She is described as a white woman, 5 feet 4 inches tall and about 130 pounds with brown hair and blue eyes. She is believed to be wearing shorts and a t-shirt. The National Park Service is urging anyone who may have seen or talked to Beadle to contact its tip line at 888-653-0009. Copyright 2017, ABC Radio. All rights reserved. SIOUX CITY | A Sioux City woman was sentenced to 15 years in prison Thursday for stealing from businesses and fraudulently cashing checks. Tracie Russell, 41, pleaded guilty in Woodbury County District Court to two counts of second-degree theft and single counts of forgery, second-degree burglary, identity theft and credit card fraud. She must serve three years before she's eligible for parole. Russell was charged in four separate cases that covered crimes that dated back more than a year. She pleaded guilty to writing and cashing a check on another person's bank account in March 2016. She also pleaded guilty to using a stolen credit card to buy items from Younkers in April 2016. On Nov. 14, Russell admitted, she stole an iPhone from Z Wireless, 3107 Gordon Drive. Russell also broke into the Hampton Inn, 5555 Sergeant Road, on March 14 and took money from a cash register. Russell must also pay restitution to the victims in an amount still being determined. WASHINGTON | Sam Clovis, President Trump's choice for a key U.S. Department of Agriculture post, came under scrutiny Wednesday for a years-old blog from his former Sioux City talk radio show in which he labeled progressives "liars, race traders and race traitors," and referred to former President Barack Obama as a "socialist" who "hates the greatness of this nation." CNN reported Wednesday on the archived blog posts from 2011 and 2012, which were originally posted on KSCJ's website as part of Clovis' now-defunct program Impact with Sam Clovis." Other national news organizations later picked up the story. Clovis, who is also a former economics professor at Morningside College in Sioux City and a former candidate for U.S. Senate and Iowa treasurer, was a top policy advisor during Trump's presidential campaign. Currently serving as a senior White House adviser to the USDA, Clovis has been nominated as undersecretary for the department's Research, Education and Economics division, a post considered the department's top scientist. His appointment, which requires Senate confirmation, has faced opposition from Democrats and others who have questioned his conservative views on climate change and his limited scientific credentials. In one blog post in August 2011, Clovis mentioned a local caller to his radio show that was concerned that Republican presidential candidates "seem to be afraid of taking on the race baiting." "I could not agree more," Clovis wrote. "The current crop of candidates need to get that titanium spine we keep hearing about and call out the progressives for what they are -- liars, race traders and race 'traitors.' " "We can go back 100 years and see how the progressives, socialists and fellow travelers have done everything possible to keep minorities in this country enslaved to the government. This is particularly true in the African-American community." In multiple blog posts, Clovis hammered then-President Obama. In September 2011, Clovis claimed Obama had "no experience at anything other than race baiting and race trading as a community organizer. He has never run anything." In September 2011, Clovis spoke of "desparate (sic) times for the president "as he seems to be recognizing that perhaps there are people out here who do not like his policies and have really stopped liking him as a person." "He is clearly a progressive socialist who hates the greatness of this nation and is doing all he can to make permanent changes in the structure of the country before he leaves office." Clovis declined questions about the blog posts, referring questions to the USDA. "Dr. Clovis is a proud conservative and a proud American. All of his reporting either on the air or in writing over the course of his career has been based on solid research and data. He is after all an academic," a USDA spokesperson told CNN. Local officials at KSCJ, which is owned by Powell Broadcasting, did not immediately respond late Wednesday to the Journal's request for comment. SPIRIT LAKE, Iowa | The Dickinson County Sheriff's Office is urging residents to beware of phone scams after a resident was reportedly taken in by a scammer posing as his grandson. According to a news release, a resident received a call from someone falsely claiming to be his grandson who said he was in jail in the Des Moines area and needed bond money. The caller convinced the grandfather to go to Wal-Mart and purchase gift cards, then to call a number and give him the numbers off the gift cards, the release said. The cards were drained immediately. SIOUX CITY | A switch to one-way traffic in Sioux City's Bridgeport area could be more trouble than it's worth. Such was the consensus Wednesday morning as business representatives and city staff effectively nixed a proposal to switch a trio of streets in the heavily truck-trafficked area to one-way during a meeting at the Siouxland Chamber of Commerce offices. The feedback followed the presentation of a feasibility study on the proposal, which showed the transition would likely have little positive effect and could eventually cause additional headaches for business employees and their customers upon the opening of the Seaboard Triumph Foods pork plant this fall. The proposed transition would have switched traffic to one direction southbound on South Patton Street, eastbound on Boulevard of Champions and northbound on Harbor Drive, forming a counterclockwise loop around area businesses -- a move some thought might ease flow by reducing the number of conflicting turns. But Eric Hanson, a project manager with H.R. Green, the consulting firm working on the project, told businesses a July study showed the proposed switch would actually have little overall effect and could increase some motorists' traveling distance. "What we found in our first quick run through it is it's going to function similar to what it does today," Hanson said of the one-way idea. Several business representatives said while they believed it had been a worthwhile measure to investigate, it appeared to negatively impact their customers and employees. "We were concerned about the inconvenience for traffic coming out of the scrap yard with the one-ways," Michael Potash of Sioux City Compressed Steel, which sits at 2600 Boulevard of Champions, told the Journal after the meeting. "If it would have improved the flow of traffic, we would have lived with that, but it doesn't look like it's going to." Another business representative during discussion said he believes one-way streets have "strangled" the city's downtown and would not aid the Bridgeport area, either. Nearly three dozen business representatives attended the construction update meeting to offer feedback on the proposal, as well as on the three remaining phases of planned construction in the area. The city is currently improving roads to accommodate the influx of traffic brought by numerous expansion and development projects in the area and the startup of the $300 million pork plant next month. The plant is expected to begin with a workforce of more than 1,000 employees and expand to more than 2,000 next year. In addition to discussion of the one-way and general project updates, city staff corrected comments made at Monday's City Council meeting regarding the $2.1 million phase of a road construction project expected to start in the area in mid-August and conclude in December. Public Works Director Dave Carney said the council had been told Monday that the project would include an extra right-turn lane on the Interstate 29 southbound Singing Hills Boulevard exit, but it will actually be an extension of the existing turn lane. The turn lane extension is expected to help alleviate traffic that currently backs up on I-29 at the Singing Hills Boulevard exit between 6:30 and 7 a.m. Carney said the city plans to check with the Iowa Department of Transportation about the potential for addition of a second right-turn lane, which some businesses have advocated for. Seaboard Triumph Foods CFO Mark Porter told the business owners some of the bottleneck in the mornings is caused by the 900 construction workers who report around the same time to the plant site. He said once the pork plant begins operations later this year, the workers will have staggered shift starts. "That 7 o'clock logjam on I-29 will get better here very, very soon," he said. "But the full day -- the added traffic throughout the day -- that's something we're very attentive to." Carney said the city now plans to move forward with the remaining three phases of the road construction project, then see what other changes need to be done. He said seeing actual traffic patterns rather than computer models will show where the deficiencies lie. The city also plans to have a police presence in place along the interstate and at major intersections as the pork plant starts up to help with any traffic issues, Carney said. SIOUX CITY | Woodbury County District Judge Duane Hoffmeyer issued an administrative order this week that bans guns in the county courthouse, rescinding a recent Board of Supervisors decision which allowed the public to carry guns into the building. The supervisors took the action in an attempt to comply with a new state law that broadens gun rights in Iowa. The 10-page order signed July 31 prohibits the carrying of weapons in the Woodbury County Courthouse, Law Enforcement Center and the second floor of the Trosper Hoyt Building which holds juvenile court services. The order by Hoffmeyer, the chief judge of Iowa's Third Judicial District, comes after a series of controversial machinations between the Board of Supervisors and County Sheriff Dave Drew in the wake of the new expanded gun rights law and an Iowa Supreme Court order that says no guns should be brought by people to court-controlled areas. " ... the purpose of this Administrative Order is to provide a safe place for resolving disputes and deterring incidents of violence when firearms are on or in close proximity to individuals or employees who may wish to cause harm," Hoffmeyer wrote. "Allowing guns or weapons increases the likelihood that a violent or disgruntled employee or individual affected by the court system will have access to a firearm while at work or at the courthouse and prevent the Judicial Branch/Sheriff from adequately controlling the safety of other employees and customers." In June, the majority of supervisors voted to rescind a prior ban on weapons on county property, including the courthouse to follow the April state law that broadens the states so-called stand-your-ground provision. However, Drew told supervisors he would follow the Iowa Supreme Court order that issued a statewide ban of weapons in all courthouses and court-controlled areas by people other than law enforcement. Drew said he sought personal legal counsel to ensure he was on solid ground for his position on acting contrary to the supervisors' decision. "The Sheriff is responsible for carrying out all court orders," Drew told the Journal Wednesday evening. "We will continue ... in this direction." The weapon restrictions will be enforced during the county's normal work hours or "whenever a jury completed deliberations for the day." Items that are brought as evidence for trial are exempt. Anyone that knowingly violates the provision may be charged with contempt of court, criminal trespass or interference with official acts, the order says. County Board Chairman Matthew Ung said Wednesday Hoffmeyer's order is "troubling." "It's even more of an overreach than the Supreme Court order. I think the fact that it goes so far to order the sheriff to disarm fellow law enforcement officers with a valid identification sends a stupendously bad message to the community," Ung said. "It also discourages employees to lawfully carry. With all the issues we have to worry about in this world, fearing our own employees and our own off-duty officers is very misguided and more of an overreach ... " SIOUX CITY | In the Sioux City base's largest employment deployment since the Vietnam War, nearly 300 members of the Iowa Air National Guard's 185th Air Refueling wing will depart for an overseas mission in October. The series of deployments, scheduled to last until January, will range from 30 days to six months in numerous locations in the Arabian Peninsula and in the Pacific, 185th Wing Commander Col. Larry Christensen said Thursday. Nearly a third of the unit's airmen will be deployed during that time. The largest segment of the deployments, consisting of nearly 200 members, will join members of the 133rd Test Squadron in Fort Dodge, Iowa, in six-month deployments in the Arabian Peninsula, where they will be stationed in Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait. Members will include the 185th Construction Engineering Squadron, food services, communications, supply, security forces personnel and members of the Intelligence, Public Affairs, Finance and Chaplain's offices. The deployments are part of the Air Forces pre-scheduled deployment period, designated as the units Reserve Component Period, which requires the Air National Guard to provide continuous year-round coverage, using units like the 185th to supply pre-designated numbers of airmen based on the kinds of jobs needed throughout the Air Force's global areas of responsibility. An additional 100 members from the 185th operations and maintenance groups will depart for 30- to 120-day deployments in similar locations in the Persian Gulf region. In addition, they will support the continuous bomber presence in the Pacific Ocean at Andersen Air Force Base in Guam. "Most of the people are already prepared to go," Christensen said Thursday at a news conference. "Because that's what we do here. We train and make sure they are ready to go." Additional preparations, he said, include getting members accustomed to a different environment and to "make sure their families are ready for them to go." Based at Sioux Gateway Airport, the 185th's main mission is to refuel planes-- while in the air-- for the U.S. Air Force, Navy and NATO with KC-135 Stratotanker refueling tankers. The unit has about 950 full and part-time members. Christensen said the impact the deployments will have on the base will be "extensive" given the number leaving. "We will continue as normal, probably at a slower pace, but we will continue as normal," he said. "These people will be leaving jobs in the local community, leaving families, so that's the larger impact," the commander said. "I have to make sure I thank the entire Siouxland community for the amount of support we get." The 185th has had smaller numbers of airmen deployed around the globe on a nearly constant basis in recent years. The unit, which traces its roots to 1943 and World War II, flew fighter jets prior to 2003. This fall's deployment is the largest since the unit converted to refueling tankers in 2003, and the largest for the 185th since 1968, when the then-800 member unit was recalled to active duty and deployed to Vietnam with their F-100s jets. During the year-long mission in southeast Asia, the unit's pilots flew 6,539 combat sorties and earned numerous military honors. Lt. Warren Brown was killed in action on July 14, 1967, becoming the first Air National Guard pilot to die in Vietnam. The 185th also lost two other airmen who were killed on active duty; one from a medical issue, and a second from an accident. WINNEBAGO, Neb. | The clinical director of the Winnebago Indian Health Service hospital conceded Thursday that public confidence in the tribal hospital has been further shaken following reports that up to 35 podiatry clinic patients may have been inadvertently infected with diseases that include HIV and Hepatitis. Between April 17 and June 2, a podiatry instrument was not properly sterilized between procedures, raising concerns of blood-borne diseases potentially being transferred from patient to patient, according to the hospital. The podiatrist responsible for the error has since been terminated, and the clinic remains temporarily closed. "I don't know if they're going to trust us. I don't know when we get the trust back," said Dr. Virgilio Cantu, clinical director of the Winnebago hospital, which serves members of the Winnebago and Omaha tribes of Nebraska. Winnebago Tribal Council Chairman Frank White said the embattled hospital didn't have a vote of confidence from the community to begin with. "The trust -- it wasn't there before, and this just makes it worse," White said. White rattled off a myriad of shortcomings at the hospital, operated by the Aberdeen, South Dakota-based Great Plains Area Indian Health Service, dating to well before the latest disclosure. "In recent years, we've had deaths at the service unit due to incompetent staff," he said. Root of the problem The Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is investigating the latest incident, which Cantu blamed on Dr. John Horblein. Horblein started working in Winnebago in April after the hospital contracted with Arizona-based AB Staffing Services for podiatry services after the hospital's previous podiatrist left. "During the course of his treating patients, it came to our attention that sterilization of the scalpel handle would not occur between patients," Cantu told reporters Thursday. "That can cause an infection." The blade of the instrument, Cantu noted, was sterilized between procedures, which reduced the chance of infection. "The risk, although it's minor, it's very small, it's still a risk," he said. The hospital's investigation found 35 patients had undergone invasive procedures during that time period. None are currently known to have contracted a disease as a result of the contamination. The hospital contacted the CDC and the Nebraska Department of Health and Human Services, which advised that all patients be tested for Hepatitis and HIV. "I'm going to say it this way: we reviewed the records of all the patients that were seen in the clinic, and of those 35, no one had any signs or medical history that indicated they had Hepatitis B, Hepatitis C or HIV," Cantu said. A nurse noticed the physician had improperly sterilized the instrument. The clinic closed June 3, a day after hospital officials were notified of the problem, Cantu said. Horblein was immediately dismissed from the hospital. Cantu said Horblein is under evaluation, but he is uncertain whether he remains licensed or is still practicing. Delayed disclosure As of this week, he said, the hospital began testing patients for possible infection. If any of the patients are found to be infected with HIV or Hepatitis, Cantu said the hospital is ready to help. Hospital officials are considering working with a group of specialists at the University of Nebraska Medical Center. Cantu attributed bureaucratic processes for the more than two-month delay in disclosure the matter to the public. "It was very quick, I've never seen it operate this fast," Cantu said. "But still it caused a bit of a delay. And I guess that's what everyone verbalizes -- 'Why did it take so long?' We want to make sure we had the correct information." Cantu said it would not have been prudent to administer HIV or Hepatitis tests earlier because the tests can't detect antibodies before a certain amount of time has passed. "If we were to say, 'We think you've been exposed, come in for testing,' on the fifth or on the sixth, two days, three days later, our immune system hasn't had a chance yet to develop a response," Cantu said. "Any testing we would have done, would have been negative. And the patients would have been sent home thinking, 'My tests are okay.'" White, the Winnebago tribal chairman, clearly was not happy that it took so long to disclose the incident. "I believe that they should have shared this with the tribal leaders, at least make us aware of it," he said. As Cantu got ready to leave the Blackhawk Community Center, he and White exchanged parting words. There was an audible stiffness. "We'll be in contact," Cantu said to White. "Yes, we will," White replied. Justice Department Special Counsel Robert Mueller has issued grand jury subpoenas related to Donald Trump Jr.'s 2016 meeting with a Russian lawyer at Trump Tower, according to a person familiar with the matter. The subpoena seeks both documents and testimony from people involved in the meeting, CNN has learned. That meeting has drawn scrutiny since an email exchange beforehand indicated the Russians offered damaging information on Hillary Clinton. Mueller's grand jury activity was first reported by The Wall Street Journal and Reuters. Mueller's team of investigators continue to look into whether President Donald Trump or any of his campaign associates colluded with Russia during the presidential contest. The moves signal a new step in the investigation, which Trump has lambasted as a "witch hunt." Trump has denied any collusion between his team and the Russians. US intelligence agencies have concluded that Russia attempted to sway the presidential contest in Trump's favor. Ty Cobb, special counsel to the President, said he wasn't aware that Mueller had started using a new grand jury. "Grand jury matters are typically secret," Mr. Cobb said. "The White House favors anything that accelerates the conclusion of his work fairly... The White House is committed to fully cooperating with Mr. Mueller." Trump ignored shouted questions about Mueller as he departed the White House on Thursday afternoon. Smiling and waving, Trump walked from the Oval Office to his Marine One helicopter on a sunny August afternoon. He was joined by son Eric Trump and daughter in law Lara Trump, as well as Jared Kushner and new chief of staff John Kelly. A spokesman for Mueller's office declined to comment on the reports. Federal investigators have seized on Trump and his associates' financial ties to Russia as among the most fertile avenues for moving their probe forward, people familiar with the investigation tell CNN. The web of financial ties could offer a more concrete path toward potential prosecution than the broader and murkier questions of collusion in the 2016 campaign, these sources said. In May, CNN reported that federal prosecutors had issued grand jury subpoenas to some associates of former national security adviser Michael Flynn as part of the ongoing probe into the Russian meddling. Mueller took over that investigation in mid-May. Those subpoenas were issued by the US Attorney's office in Alexandria, Virginia, but the Wall Street Journal report indicated that Mueller would utilize a grand jury based in downtown Washington, near the offices where Mueller and his team work. The question of Russian interference has hung over Trump's presidency for months, even as the White House has sought to wall itself off from the matter. Trump has retained a team of lawyers to handle the growing legal swirl. SIOUX CITY -- Jim Mowrer, a veteran who has previously run for Congress, is picking a different office to shoot for in 2018. Mowrer, a Democrat, announced Thursday that he running for Iowa secretary of state. Mowrer, who stopped in Sioux City as part of a campaign tour, said he would fight efforts to make it harder to vote. "After speaking with auditors, community leaders and voters across the state, it's clear that we need a leader in the Secretary of State's office with a record of effectively managing taxpayer dollars and with a dedication to ensuring fair and accessible elections," Mowrer said in a statement. In January, Iowa Secretary of State Paul Pate, a Republican, proposed a voter identification law, saying it would improve election integrity. The Republican-led Legislature followed through and then-Gov. Terry Branstad signed the a bill into law in April. Democrats have been critical of the plan, saying it's just a way to deter voting. Mowrer also noted the law's scaling back of early voting opportunities. An Iowa National Guard veteran, Mowrer served in Iraq in 2005 as an intelligence analyst. He also worked in the Pentagon. He ran unsuccessfully last year for the 3rd Congressional District seat, losing to Rep. David Young. He also previously ran for Congress in Iowa's 4th District, losing to Republican Rep. Steve King in 2014. Mowrer is married and has two children. He works at a nonprofit organization and is an adjunct professor at Grandview University in Des Moines. The votes from Republican Senators Susan Collins, John McCain and Lisa Murkowski to stop their party's repeal-Obamacare juggernaut were demonstrations of genuine courage. The appearance of this virtue in a dark time is not necessarily miraculous, but I couldn't help noticing the striking intervention in this debate by 7,150 American nuns who called the Senate GOP's core proposal "the most harmful legislation for American families in our lifetimes." In a letter organized by the Catholic social justice lobby NETWORK, the nuns cited Pope Francis -- "health is not a consumer good, but a universal right, so access to health services cannot be a privilege" -- and noted matter-of-factly: "To cut Medicaid and take health care from millions of people is not a pro-life stance." Their plea was a reminder, particularly to more secular liberals, that religious witness in politics is not confined to the political right, that Christianity has long had a lot to say about economic and social inequities, and that pushing prophets inspired by faith out of the public square would be harmful to progressives as well as conservatives. In speaking out as they did, the socially minded nuns -- who do the work of justice and mercy every day in hospitals, clinics, homeless shelters and schools -- made clear that depriving millions of Americans of health coverage truly is a moral outrage. But while the most conservative among the faithful might not appreciate it, the sisters also did a service to believers of all stripes by demolishing stereotypes about what it means to be religious. This is important because religion and the political standing of believers are badly harmed by the reality that so many Americans associate faith exclusively with the conservative movement. Large numbers of young people are abandoning organized religion (and particularly Christianity) altogether. A key reason: They see it as deeply hostile to causes they embrace, notably the rights of gays and lesbians. Harvard University's Robert Putnam and Notre Dame's David Campbell, the authors of "American Grace," their definitive 2010 study of data on American religious attitudes, concluded that young Americans "have been alienated from organized religion by its increasingly conservative politics." A PRRI survey in 2014 found that among millennials who no longer identify with their childhood religion, nearly a third said that "negative teachings about, or treatment of, gay and lesbian people" were either somewhat or very important to their disaffiliation. It's true that some, particularly but not exclusively on the left, criticize religion and those devoted to it on principle. They believe, devoutly you might say, that faith in God is irrational and destructive. They see religion as promoting passivity, conformity and, in extreme cases, violence. The popularity of the late Christopher Hitchens' book "god is not great" -- Hitchens did not capitalize "God" on purpose -- speaks to the strength of this view among a sizable group of Americans. But studies by PRRI and the Pew Research Center suggest that at least some who have moved away from formal religious affiliation do not see belief itself as a bad thing and remain spiritually engaged. They are turned off by the worldly, not the otherworldly, aspects of religion. Alexis de Tocqueville, that shrewd 19th-century student of American life, noted in "Democracy in America" that religion was stronger and faced less hostility in the United States than in Europe precisely because faith on our shores was far less associated with propping up political power and ideological interests. "Unbelievers in Europe attack Christians more as political than religious enemies," Tocqueville wrote. "They hate the faith as the opinion of a party much more than as a mistaken belief, and they reject the clergy less because they are representatives of God than because they are the friends of authority." Religious apologists for President Trump should take note. A critic could fairly observe that the argument I offer here is naturally congenial to me as a liberal. Nonetheless, my conservative brethren who worry about religion's decline should consider that a rampant secularism may be less to blame than a narrowing of the scope of faith-based public engagement. Pope Francis' insistence that the church be associated more with justice and mercy than with cultural warfare can thus be seen as precisely the right antidote for what ails organized religion. The sisters are right that claims to compassion and love are hollow when they are severed from society's obligations to the most vulnerable. They also make clear that faith is something more than a cog in the status quo's political machine. One day [Marine Theodore Wallace] saw an officer casually aim his rifle and try to shoot a Vietnamese boy in the distance. "Sir, what are you doing?" he'd asked. "He's probably supplying the [North Vietnamese Army]," the officer said. "What's he doing out here anyway?" "It's his country!" said Wallace. -- Mark Bowden, "Hue 1968: A Turning Point of the American War in Vietnam" WASHINGTON -- As Vietnam's 1968 Tet holiday approached, Gen. William Westmoreland, commander of U.S. forces there, cabled the Joint Chiefs in Washington that he had a plan. He would serenade, perhaps into dissolution, the communist forces that he was certain would concentrate on attacking U.S. forces based at Khe Sanh near the demilitarized zone: "The Vietnamese youth is quite sentimentally disposed toward his family, and Tet is a traditional time for intimate family gatherings. The Vietnamese PSY War [Psychological Warfare] people have recently written a highly sentimental Tet song which is recorded. The Vietnamese say it is a tear-jerker to the extent that they do not want it played to their troops during Tet for fear their desertion rate will skyrocket. This is one of the records we will play to the North Vietnamese soldiers in the Khe Sanh-Con Thien areas during Tet." This surreal nugget is from Mark Bowden's magnificent and meticulous history, which tells, with excruciating detail, a story that is both inspiring and infuriating. His subtitle is an understatement. As the epicenter of North Vietnam's Tet offensive throughout South Vietnam, the swift capture of Hue, the country's third-largest city, by communist forces -- and of the 24 days of ferocious fighting that expelled them -- became a hinge of American history. A month later, President Lyndon Johnson announced he would not seek re-election in an America where opposition to the war and trust in the government were moving inversely. After the battle's first day, Jan. 31, Westmoreland told Washington that the enemy had about 500 men in Hue's Citadel. "He was," Bowden writes, "off by a factor of 20." So it went with U.S. intelligence. A few months earlier, Walt Rostow, Johnson's national security adviser, had told a Hue-bound reporter on "deep background" that the war was essentially already won because a crop called "IR8 rice" was going to stymie the communists' revolution with a green revolution. Rostow's theory was slain by this fact: The Vietnamese disliked the taste of IR8 rice. The communists arriving in Hue immediately began advancing the revolution by purging "enemies of the people" in what quickly became an orgy of violent score-settling. While Westmoreland remained fixated on Khe Sanh -- "Never," writes Bowden, "had a general so effectively willed away the facts" -- a secret U.S. planning group met in Okinawa the day after the offensive began to consider a plan, code-named Fractured Jaw, involving tactical nuclear weapons. Westmoreland said these were not needed "in the present situation." Bowden's interviews, almost half a century on, with those who fought, on both sides, have produced unexampled descriptions of small-unit combat. The communists' many months of large-scale infiltration and preparation were matched by their military skills. "To a man," Bowden writes, "the American veterans I interviewed told me they had faced a disciplined, highly motivated, skilled and determined enemy. To characterize them otherwise is to diminish the accomplishment of those who drove them out of Hue." In June 1968, Westmoreland was relieved of his command. What Bowden calls "one of the great shots in the annals of combat photography" is of a U.S. tank in Hue draped with dead and wounded Marines. None were identified. Until, more than four decades later, Bowden found that the 18-year-old with a hole in his chest, who looked "dead, or nearly so," was Alvin Bert Grantham from Mobile, Alabama, whose story Bowden tells. During house-to-house fighting, Marine Eden Jimenez was clearing rooms -- tossing in grenades, then spraying the room with bullets -- in one of which he found a tall wardrobe that he had riddled. In it was a mortally wounded woman holding a rifle and a baby. Bowden writes: "When he was an old man, living in Odessa, Texas, he still wondered almost every day about that woman and child. ... Who was she? How would he have felt if he had killed the baby, too?" Hue, like the war that pivoted there, continues to haunt some elderly men who live among us. And the war's legacy lives in Americans' diminished trust in government. Since 1968, trust has not risen to pre-Vietnam levels. In her July 30 Regulars column, Linda Holub reports that not only was Calvin Coolidge the last president to pay down the national debt, he thought the Declaration of Independence was a sacred document. The national debt was decreased steadily from 1945 until Ronald Reagan cut taxes and increased the Defense Department to build a thousand-ship Navy. The Declaration of Independence is hardly a sacred document: Moses brought down the Ten Commandments, not the Declaration of Independence. The sacredness of the Declaration didnt prevent the Civil War, when the South seceded. The Declaration, sacred or not, clearly says that, ... whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these Ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its Foundation on such Principles, and organizing its Powers in such Form as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness ... If the Declaration of Independence is a sacred document, that knowledge was apparently wasted on President Lincoln and the northern states when the Confederate states decided that the high tariffs on imported machinery and the Norths lobbying against slavery, in fact, became destructive of their rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness and decided to exercise the rights that Coolidges supposedly sacred document explicitly enumerated. - Douglas VanDerVoort, Sioux City Transgendered persons will no longer be inducted into our armed forces, it seems. Whats next? Will we see able-bodied persons with a hernia be rejected? Or might just having bad teeth, deformed ears, gout, clubfoot, ingrown toenails, arthritis, a joint replacement or a gastrointestinal by-pass be enough to disqualify one from serving our country? The answer to all of the above is "yes." Along with scores of other physical and mental limitations, any of the above can prevent one from being able to serve in our armed forces. For seven and a half years of the Obama administration, and all of the preceding history of the United States, transgendered persons have not been allowed to serve openly in the military. A Google search reveals a number of studies which imply that mental health problems are more prevalent in the transgender population than is the case in the population at large. If very healthy, mentally stable individuals are a must when we place them in a position to deploy lethal force, it certainly doesnt seem out of line to encourage transgendered persons to seek careers in other domains. The entitlement/victimology mindset in our country needs to come to an end because it leads to emotionally based decisions when logic is required. Most of us look down each morning and come to grips with the fact that we were born with a set of genital equipment. We live with what destiny set forth. Its been this way for a few thousand years, so maybe we need to stiffen that spine that we have which separates us from amoebas and tolerate what we are. - Lon Zimmerman, Sergeant Bluff, Iowa Placed next to the charcuterie and cheese board on the bar countertop at Main + Abbey were three glasses of wine one white and two red. Michael Hesebeck, the food and beverage manager at Hard Rock Hotel & Casino Sioux Citys in-house gastro pub, explained in great detail the contents contained in each class and how they paired with the small servings of bite-sized food plated on the large wooden board presented in front of me and Todd Moyer, the general manager of Hard Rock. While Hesebeck revealed the origins of each wine label, Moyer wasted no time in dividing the delicate food pairings arranged on the charcuterie and cheese board by Main + Abbey chefs. Slices of house-made pork pate with blueberries, walnuts and applewood smoked bacon shared space with prosciutto rosettes, sliced Cambozola cheese and Tillamook sharp cheddar, pickled heirloom carrots, shallot marmalade, apricot mostarda, bacon jam, dried cranberries, rye roast and water crackers. The first wine, the white, was a Negri Moscato dAsti. One of my favorite wines, said Hesebeck. Were actually importing that from Italy. Its going to have some carbonation to it, which is really nice. Beautiful fruit forward. That one is going to pair really, really nicely with the apricot mostarda and the shallot marmalade. The second wine, a red, was a Duckhorn Merlot. Its nice and jammy, fruit forward and it has a big body to it, Hesebeck continued. It pairs really well with the bacon jam and the pate. Last was the Sean Minor Cabernet Sauvignon, an award-winning red wine that even caught the interest of Moyer, who asked for a two-ounce sample. This particular wine is one of many labels on Main + Abbeys wine list from Napa, California. The menu itself, which expands at Hard Rocks newly added Wine Bar, is massive in size. We have quite a few things going on here, but its all designed to not only pair with wine but pair with each other, which is a lot of fun, said Hesebeck. Recently, the lifestyle magazine Wine Spectator presented Main + Abbey with an Award of Excellence. According to the publications website, the award is bestowed upon restaurants that offer at least 90 selections, feature a well-chosen assortment of quality producers, along with a thematic match to the menu in both price and style. Winners in Wine Spectators annual awards program were announced July 5. Hard Rocks Main + Abbey was one of 2,335 restaurants across the United States to be given the Award of Excellence. Higher tier accolades like the Best of Award of Excellence and the Grand Award were also given out to select restaurants. Hesebeck and Moyer recently received the certificate, signifying the gastro pubs latest honor. The award indicates Main + Abbeys growth since the restaurant debuted its small list of about 20 or so wine labels. Moyer said the genesis of this menu (and Main + Abbeys latest award) was established with the help of its food selection. We started with some pairings, he said. [Hesebeck] got to this point and said, Look I think we can get an Award of Excellence from Wine Spectator. He came to me and said, Im going to need to add about 50 bottles to our inventory. At least, thats how Hesebeck sold the idea to Moyer. The food and beverage manager actually ended up with about 75 more bottles. Even though Main + Abbey built its identity as a beer-centric gastro pub, Hesebeck saw the potential to reach a market in Sioux City that loves to drink wine. And we have this incredible food menu that does really well with wine, said Hesebeck. For the guests that are really into wine, we have a reserve wine list. As [Moyer] said, we started adding more wines. Fifty was the goal and we essentially ended up with this list of probably 250 different wines on it that we started scaling back to get to this Main + Abbey reserve list. The Main +Abbey reserve list has 95 different bottles, which was unveiled at the end of January this year. We still have our staples like Sean Minor and the Duckhorn Merlot and the [Negri] Moscato, but we wanted to do more -- we wanted to do more in this restaurant, said Hesebeck. Ultimately, thats what led to this Wine Spectator award. After we finished our wine and samples from the charcuterie and cheese board, Moyer and Hesebeck directed me to Hard Rocks latest addition, a place that further accommodates Sioux Citys wine connoisseurs. And its simply called the Wine Bar. The newly renovated area is subtle with its inclusion of casino games, having a dozen or so near the entrance. Keeping with Hard Rocks music motif, the Wine Bar walls are adorned with guitars, drum kits and jackets from famous rock stars. A large bar overlooks the slot machines, carrying with it a collection of liquor and wine bottles. Affixed on both ends of the bar are two silver vending machines. Open wine bottles equipped with nozzles stand upright behind a sheet of glass. Images of wine glasses of varying fullness appear on small LCD monitors above each label. Three buttons allow customers a choice between a sampling of a specific wine, a slightly larger tasting or a full glass. Whats really unique about this menu besides being the storage system for Main + Abbey there are these beautiful displays that showcase the wine, said Hesebeck. At Main + Abbey, we focus on glasses and bottles. Down here we have this really cool opportunity to offer samples of wine. You can tour and find specifically what it is that youre looking for. Awaiting for us at the bar was a plate of Caprese bruschetta. And more wine. The food is unique to the Wine Bar and is partly made and arranged to pair with wine we had the pleasure of drinking Red Zinfandel, a Pinot Noir and a Sauvignon Blanc. All of which were stored at the Wine Bars immense wine holding room a dimly lit hallway filled top-to-bottom with wine, leading to the quiet and cozy VIP room called the Platinum Lounge. This allows the propertys regulars to come enjoy their own space and get away from it all, said Hesebeck. But you dont have to be a rewards player or VIP to enjoy the tasty perks. Main +Abbey and Wine Bar prides itself in being versatile as the wine list for both locations continues to grow. "There's something for everybody," said Hesebeck. "The heart of our wine list is being approachable and not being intimidated by price tag to try to different things." Economy August 3, 2017 Harry Glasbeek Capitalism is ugly. The major villains at Goldman Sachs, J.P. Morgan, Citigroup, Barclays Bank, Royal Bank of Scotland, AIG, were not impelled by any desperate need they had to meet, or by their lack of education and opportunities, the circumstances that lead the poor to commit crimes. They were acting as self-seeking, greedy, venal individuals who do not care for anyone but themselves. They were acting as capitalism expects capitalists to act. Their manipulations of financial markets led to the evictions and impoverishment of millions and ravaged sovereign states. None of the most heinous miscreants have been prosecuted for their crimes. Spineless, supposedly Rule of Law- loving governments, hid behind the slogan that these corporations and their avaricious leaders were too big to fail, too big to jail. The laws shocking tolerance for the wholesale financial thievery in capitalisms flagship nations presented capitalisms gatekeepers with a political problem. It laid bare a central fact: there is one set of laws for capitalists and another for the rest of us. This is not to be acknowledged. Capitalisms legitimacy depends heavily on the belief that the law is evenhanded and that capitalists, just like all other people, are subject to law. Laws prestige derives from this evenhandedness, from its devotion to fairness. That is how it delivers justice. Vague as the ideas of fairness and justice are, once law is seen to fail to deliver on these fronts, capitalism is in danger as it stands to lose the patina of legitimacy law bestows on it. The peasants, as the self-proclaimed zillionaire Nick Hanauer warns, are then likely to bring out their pitchforks. He wants to retain the unearned privileges capitalism bestows on him and he urges his comrades to exploit the working class a little less crassly. Exploit, but do so slyly, is the advice he and the zillionaires intellectual gatekeepers (Stiglitz, Krugman, Summers, Carney, Lagarde) give their fellow exploiters. Living by the Same Rules? The idea behind this advice is that capitalism and capitalists should not give fodder to non-capitalists to ask why capitalists are not required to live by the same rules as the rest of us. But it is becoming harder and harder for capitalisms cheerleaders to ward off the questioning. All over the world, populations have been engaging in colourful and brave protests against a huge variety of capitalist brutalities and demonstrating their dissatisfaction by delivering surprise after surprise in election after election. Many people are angered and agitated by capitalisms ravaging of their environment, of their standard of living, of their physical and cultural well-being, of their hard fought-for entitlements to participate in the selection and running of their own governments. The financial robberies and skullduggeries merely added fuel to this already smouldering fire. To many, it is becoming painfully obvious that not only does capitalism hurt, kill and rob people, but also that some, a very few individuals, a few actual capitalists, benefit from those egregious inflictions of harm. There is a more easy-to-see gap between, on the one hand, laws self-portrayal as being spiritually committed to the evenhanded treatment of conduct and individuals, that is, to the values that pertain to a liberal polity and liberal economy and, on the other hand, laws actual working in a capitalist society. For individual capitalists it is ideologically important to hide the gap between laws claim to evenhandedness and its actual working. This opens a promising door for anti-capitalists. It is possible, indeed, rather easy, to show that if we can force law to live by its claimed aims and goals, capitalists can be outed as receivers of ill-gotten gains and participants in deviant, even criminal, conduct. It will become obvious that, for capitalists to enjoy their special privileges, it has been necessary to bend and twist law into a logical pretzel. This will go a goodly way to erode the legitimacy of capitalists and capitalism. It will also satisfy the desire for revenge that has impelled so many harmed people to go out into the streets and to call for radical change. There is a potential to change the terrain of anti-capitalist politics, to tilt it our way a little. Let me elaborate. Laws Self-Portrayal Canada holds itself out as a liberal market capitalist democracy. The ideal of liberalism is the protection of the sovereignty of individuals. In law, all individuals are to be treated with equal respect. All are entitled to think and act as they choose, subject to restrictions that permit the majority of us to so think and act. As sovereign individuals we are expected to take responsibility for our conduct. Individualism, as opposed to collectivism, is the central social and political value it favours. This is reflected in the devotion we have for the Rule of Law which demands that law remains wedded to fair processes and neutral applications of the law by neutral and neutred adjudicators who treat all individuals as equals before, according and under the law. As law is both created by the State and provides the mode of exercising State power, law plays a role in ensuring that States inherently coercive power does not undermine the goals and values of laws liberal project. That coercive State power is kept in check by independent judges and constitutional bills of rights. Law also sets out to restrain the States power to treat individuals as criminals; no one should be inhibited in their exercise of autonomy unless it can be justified by reference to the public good. The vote of each individual is to have equal weight as governments are elected to do their job. That job is perceived to be to facilitate and to promote private and individual self-seeking, rather than telling individuals how to behave. By coincidence, as it were, this individualistic scheme and its opposition to coercion dovetails with the needs of the preferred idealized market economic model. If all act as self-interested individuals, none of whom can dictate conditions to any other, an efficient economy will ensue, one that enhances the freedom of all individuals to make their own choices. Of course, these are ideals. There is much slippage. But, what is clear is that the model does not identify capitalist relations of production as having any particular salience. Capitalists are just seen as sovereign individuals, not warranting any special legal treatment. Their class position is of no interest to law. But, in fact as the opening paragraphs show liberal law does support the maintenance of a class-divided society. It hides this by making some vital assumptions, turning them into unchallengeable premises and by inventing a tool, the corporation, to give these assumptions a capitalist bite. Laws Assumptions Liberal law does not question the grossly uneven division of wealth that prevails in our economy. Law does not care whether property has come to be owned as a result of endeavour, the winning of a lottery or by inheritance (even if it came from people who originally stole it). People either own means of production or not. The law considers them equals when they meet and engage with each other. The mere disadvantage of not having any wealth is not seen as a diminution of autonomy, of sovereignty of the wealth-less. If an individual does own property, it is seen to be part and parcel of that individuals essence and cannot be taken from her by anyone unless there is some very special reason to do so. This explains the difficulties faced by governments when they want to tax the rich. Liberal law, pretending that individuals all are equally autonomous, regardless of their wealth, assumes that any deal entered-into seriously between a rich and a poor person is a legally enforceable one. The voluntary choices made by all individuals are to be respected no matter how awful the terms of the deal may be for the property-less party. Individuals with no wealth, workers, in order to live, must sell some of the very things that make them individuals their intelligence, physical abilities and imaginations to another, a capitalist, who may do with them what he pleases. Workers are assumed to have voluntarily agreed to obey orders by the purchasers of their bodies and minds; they are assumed to agree to a level of personal harm to their bodies and minds. Laws assumptions have been internalized, normalized, making challenges difficult and permitting law to pursue the project it must honour to remain relevant to a capitalist society, namely, the maintenance and perpetuation of a class-divided political economy. This unarticulated agenda stays hidden even while it is given a boost by laws creation of the for-profit corporation. Law pretends (law does a lot of pretending!) that the corporation is just that, a tool, a mere instrument to advance liberal political and market economic ideals. Fakery in Law A registrar will register a corporation on behalf of one of a multitude of applicants, provided they are over 18, sane and not bankrupt and have selected a name that is not already in use. As soon as the registrar signs off, a legal person is created with all the capacities of the adult individual loved by liberal law. Unlike the human individual, the corporation cannot be seen, touched, smelled, has no colour or mind or body. But, such is the magic of law, it can hold the property its founders put into it and do with it as a human being might. It becomes a legitimate market actor. Because it is an it, it must have a board of directors to set its policies, executive managers who will put the plans into effect and workers who actually work. All this is said to lead to efficiency because it allows the pooling of assets that will then be put to optimal use in a co-ordinated manner. First lie: The pretence is that the corporation is an individual. The best justification for its creation by law, however, is that, as a collective of human beings and assets, it will be more efficient than atomized individuals, each with their separate assets. It is, by design, not an individual in the liberal legal or the market economic sense. This is not just a debating point. As a collective, a corporation inherently has more power to coerce and to exploit than individuals do. This violates every basic tenet of liberal law and market economics. To return: the corporation is said to be economically efficient. It does generate wealth. One reason is that it is immunized against the force of normal legal controls. Second lie: As the active capitalist, the corporation is responsible for the materialization of risks it has created by its activities. Of course, the corporation, as such, does not care whether it has to pay compensation and/or is punished. There is no way to use the normal sanctions of liberal, based on individual psychology, social awareness and fear of loss of liberty. The treasured liberal idea that all individuals are to be held responsible for their personal actions is defanged. Liberal law is rendered impotent by its own creature. To return: while the corporation is supposedly like a real person, all its thinking and acting is done by human beings. As just seen, technically it can be held responsible for that thinking and acting, even though the impact of such responsibility is a muted one. Similarly, the responsibility of those corporate thinkers and actors also mutates in an unexpected way. Third lie: Directors, executives and workers, as individuals inside a corporation, have specific duties and obligations to the corporation, shareholders and outsiders. These duties vary in their scope, each attracting different remedies and sanctions. This poses problems for victims and regulators and enables directors and executives to shuffle the deck. They frequently arrange to have the corporation pay the damages or the fines provided that they are left off the hook. This is what happened in the banking scandals. Corporate law creates a malady: multiple personality disorder, a syndrome which facilitates the deflection of personal responsibility. To return: investors of capital who expect a share of the profits reflecting the proportion of invested capital their contribution represents, are known as shareholders. They are seen as putting their capital at risk and are often referred-to as risk-takers. Fourth lie: Law presumes those red-blooded capitalists who invest their monies to be such virtuous contributors to the general good that they should be thanked legally. They are given the privilege of limited liability. This means that they can never be asked to lose more than the amount they invested, even if the corporation in its pursuit of profits on behalf of those shareholders caused more losses than their investments represent. Their responsibility is not measured by their risk-creating conduct; the responsibility imposed is not that which is attached to a sovereign individual. Liberal law and market economics be damned! Worse: corporate law also holds that, as shareholders do nothing, being indolent gamblers laying about in the hope their bet is a winner, they should not be personally responsible for any violations of law committed by the corporation and its directors, executives and workers. They are given legal immunity, as well as fiscal limited liability. Individual responsibility is not for them. As well, note that the label risk-takers is a blatant falsehood. The law allows shareholders to shift virtually all the risks imposed by their actions onto others. This links to another lie. Fifth lie: The same law that holds that shareholders are not responsible for corporate wrongdoing (because, apart from being such generous contributors of capital, they are passive bystanders), gives them immense legal powers to control the corporation. They have the legal power to replace those directors and executives who do not bring the bacon and to offer sweet rewards to those who do. They are able to, and do, dictate, the profit-maximizing policies of the corporation. They, not corporations, are the capitalists. After all, corporations as mere things, do not care about anything. Those who run them give corporations the impetus to maximize profits and they do it to please shareholders. Directors and executives do have some reason to abide by the letter and spirit of the law but, as we have seen, they have little to fear from the law should they push the envelope as far as it can go and even further in their drive for profits. They do have much to fear from not pleasing shareholders; they have much to gain by pleasing shareholders. Shareholders, having been rendered legally immune can afford to be indifferent as to how their corporation and their directors and executives seek to satisfy them. Profits at any cost is the not-so-hidden mantra. They push directors and executives to be callous about the consequences of their risk-creating conduct. Despite proclamations of adherence to liberal ideals, the corporation is a legally created site of irresponsibility. It should now be plain that the reason that corporations maim, kill, dispossess, pollute, violate laws and social expectations, more so than any other group or institution in our society, is the fact that corporations are built to permit flesh and blood capitalists to exploit, ravage and pillage under cover of law, law that purports to set its face against the coercion and oppression of sovereign individuals by other individuals. It should not be surprising: in a capitalist system, law has to further the capitalist project. But, it is complicated. To be effective as a legitimator of capitalism, law has to demonstrate that it truly does endorse and enhance liberal norms and values at the same time that it may have to be antagonistic to them when it is pushed to satisfy capitalisms needs. This is what opens the door to progressive people. Liberal Responsibility in the Non-Corporate Sphere Employers are legally responsible when their employees carelessly and/or in violation of law harm outsiders. Tavern owners and other alcohol licencees are legally responsible when they continue to supply a patron when they could have anticipated that that patron could harm an outsider and did so. Churches are legally responsible for the acts of some of their employees when they abuse people in their care. The same is true of school boards, franchisors whose franchisees underpay or violate workers human rights, of police boards whose police officers violate peoples civil rights, and so on and so on. The fact that none of these, employers, tavern keepers, churches, etc., intended the infliction of injury does not negate their responsibility. This legal approach is based on the liberal notion that a person who controls an activity from which s/he expects to benefit should be responsible for the materialization of risks created in pursuit of those benefits. To take responsibility for ones actions is the essence of liberalism. It is only when we cloud the issue by interpolating corporations that the usual rule is forgotten. Corporate law protects those who control and expect to benefit from corporate activities from being saddled with responsibility. Shareholders are allowed to cower beneath a corporate veil. Yet, these cowards, especially the very successful ones, stride around our polity like feudal kings used to do. The pretence is that this is not objectionable because shareholders, while seeking benefits from the corporations endeavours, do not control them. This is another lie. Sixth lie: It is often contended that corporations have far too many shareholders to be able to identify them all and that many, perhaps most, investors in corporations are not direct investors. Rather they contribute money to an institution that pools investments and buys shares with them. If anyone exercises control over corporate activities it is those institutions that act as intermediaries. But, this is not an accurate picture of our corporate world. There are many incorporated businesses that do not employ anyone. It is no trick to discover who controls their corporations and intends to benefit from them. Most of the incorporated businesses in Canada are small businesses. In fact 87.4% of all employer businesses employ 19 people or less. If incorporated as many are in the hope of avoiding legal obligations it is dead easy to discern who controls the enterprise for whose benefit. At the other end of the scale, of the top 500 firms listed by the Financial Post , 254 are privately held, that is, their shares are not traded precisely because those who run it want to control these firms without any intervention by anyone else. The identity of the controllers and beneficiaries is not a mystery. Of the other 246 major corporations whose shares are traded all the time, only 67 do not have a single or small group of shareholders who control the voting power in the corporation. While it will sometimes be technically difficult, it is feasible to find those who control corporate policies and whose failure to consider the consequences of pursuits engaged-in on their behalf should leave them no better off than a tavern owner or a church when it comes to legal accountability. Only the perpetuation of the lies that all shareholders are virtuous and passive and that controlling shareholders cannot be found prevents liberal law from being applied as it self-righteously claims it wants it to be applied. The Politics Capitalism, precisely because it is a system, is totalizing. We are all subjected to its coercions and are all implicated in its daily workings. We are impacted differentially and find it hard to fight it as a system. We need a tangible target. Understandably, the creation of the corporation as a tool to do capitalists bidding has served to make it appear to be the enemy. As the story told suggests, the corporations crafty legal design, leading to multiple personality disorder and an ordered site of irresponsibility, makes it extremely difficult to win individual battles, to get redress and justice, let alone meaningful reforms or radical change, when corporations are our targets. All too often, it feels as if we are fighting windmills. If anti-capitalists set out to identify controlling shareholders whenever they engage in a local struggle against an oppression apparently perpetrated by a corporation, it would further not only the specific aims of the battle but also the struggle to break the hold capitalism has on our political imagination. There are flesh and blood human beings who profit from all this obfuscation. They are the real capitalists. If anti-capitalists set out to identify controlling shareholders whenever they engage in a local struggle against an oppression apparently perpetrated by a corporation, it would further not only the specific aims of the battle but also the struggle to break the hold capitalism has on our political imagination. Once it is accepted that controlling shareholders, that is, human beings supposedly subject to our laws, are responsible for the decisions that impose hardships, the logic of law can be used to ask them to account for their actions. Once these hidden cowards are forced to come out from under the veil they can no longer say that they cannot help it if their corporate monies are used to make a mockery of our democratic institutions, and they can no longer say that they had no way of stopping the use of processes that make so many environments unlivable or poison workers, they can no longer say that they are not connected to the dispossessions of peoples and cultures. They control the corporations that do these things as they maximize profits on shareholders behalf. Anti-capitalists of all stripes will be able to see that they have tangible enemies who all belong to the same class. They will have targets that, unlike a pervasive invisible system or a legal artifice, are concrete and that, like the rest of us, will respond to pain and hurt. This just might wound the corporation and have some impact on capitalism. It is worth a shot. We have nothing to lose but the bosses smile. 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. Jayden White, a fifth grader at Berry Elementary School, tests out his project during Fun in the Sun camp at the James E. Richmond Science Center. LA PLATA, Md. (August 03, 2017)The students at the Fun in the Sun camp spent a week shedding light on how solar eclipses work, learning about the sun's energy and studying the planets of the solar system.The James E. Richmond Science Center hosted four science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) camps this summer. More than 85 students in fourth through eighth grades participated in four programs offered this year. The week-long camps focused on forensics and food science. There was an Expedition Earth camp and the Fun in the Sun program.It didn't take much to entice Elias Brock, a Berry Elementary School fourth grader, to sign up. "I love engineering," he said. "I love science and math."Nick Deeble, a North Point High School senior, worked as a counselor at the camp, helping set up experiments and other activities. "STEM is the future," he said, adding that students who start learning and loving STEM subjects early will go on to continue to study them more in depth as they advance in school.For John Hanson Middle School sixth grader Laila Manley the camp called to her. "I love science and math," she said. "A camp that revolves around science is the perfect fit for me. Without science we pretty much wouldn't be able to do anything."The Science Center and the Space Foundation will hold a free Space in the Community event 5:30 to 8:30 p.m. Aug. 10. A free solar eclipse event is 1 to 4 p.m. Aug. 21 at the science center. For more information about upcoming events at the center, go to www.ccboe.com/sciencecenter. LA PLATA, Md. (August 03, 2017)The Charles County Sheriff's Office today released the following incident and arrest reports.OFFICERS APPREHEND SUSPECTS IN HIT AND RUN CRASH / RECOVER STOLEN CAR: On July 28 at 4:16 a.m., a patrol officer observed two vehicles on Route 228 making an illegal U-turn. The rear vehicle's operator had flashing lights on and appeared to be pursuing the first vehicle. The officer activated his emergency equipment, and the rear vehicle pulled over where the driver indicated the first vehicle, a Cadillac SUV, had struck him and took off. The officer located the Cadillac, but the driver refused to stop. Instead, the driver turned onto Water Hickory Court where the SUV struck a tree in the front yard of a house and then a parked car. Upon approaching the SUV, the officer found three female occupants inside, and he observed a handgun on the floorboard. Further, the SUV had been reported stolen from La Plata., were arrested and charged with theft and traffic violations. Pfc. M. Nauman investigated.TEEN CHARGED AGAIN WITH MULTIPLE BURGLARIES: During the early morning hours of July 31, officers responded to multiple intrusion alarms at several businesses in Waldorf. Officers arrived and discovered the front window of a business broken out. Officer B. Clark and his K9 partner, Dino, quickly initiated a track, which led to the area of Snow Owl Place where a suspect was located. Investigation revealed the suspectwas the same teen who had been arrested and charged with breaking into ten businesses just a few weeks earlier. In each case, the suspect threw a large landscaping rock through the front window or door to gain entry. The teen was charged with multiple counts of burglary, theft, and destruction of property. Detective H. Burgess is investigating.THEFT FROM AUTO: On July 29 between 12 a.m. to 8 a.m., unknown suspect(s) broke into an unlocked car in the 400 block of Garner Avenue in Waldorf and stole a laptop and books. Cpl. P. Morgan is investigating.FRAUD ALERT: On August 1 at 10 a.m., an unknown person called a residence in Charles County and identified himself as an officer from the Charles County Sheriff's Office. The suspect said he had an arrest warrant for the victim, claiming the victim missed jury duty. The caller told the victim he could avoid being arrested by paying a fine immediately. The victim was instructed to purchase cash cards and provide the caller with the card and pin number. The victim complied, and the suspect removed the funds. The CCSO is reminding people the Courts relay information about jury duty through mailed correspondence, not via telephone. Further, no one from the CCSO will ever call a person to collect money. For more information about this type of fraud, visit www.ccso.us . Pfc. J. Harley is investigating. The Ryan White Care (RWC) program requires its programs to have local advisory bodies. Broward County has two RWC programs. South Florida AIDS Network (SFAN) functions as that advisory body for Floridas Department of Health (FL-DOH) RWC programs in Broward County. SFANs monthly meetings are open to the public. Broward County also has a RWC program (Broward-RWC). This meeting focused on four topics. Simone McPherson of FL-DOH Broward discussed Browards new Test and Treat Program. Joey Wynn, SFAN Chair, discussed possible changes to the Medicaid Project AIDS Care (PAC) Waiver program. Richard Morris, of Broward-RWC, reported on its program. Morgan and Ashley Mayfaire discussed TransSOCIALs services. Broward Test and Treat Simone McPherson gave a preliminary report on Browards Test and Treat program. It began on May 1, 2017. Within 24 hours, this new program can link HIV testers to HIV treatment. This program has linked about 135 people living with HIV to antiretroviral treatment. Most people in this program had already tested HIV positive. They, however, had never entered or had left treatment. The rest had no awareness of their HIV infection. Changes to Medicaid Project AIDS CARE (PAC) Waivers The Florida Medicaid program uses waivers to prevent expensive hospital care. These waivers specify exceptions to Medicaid rules for diseases such as AIDS and Cystic Fibrosis, among others. People with these diseases have great risk for requiring expensive hospital care. These waivers waive rules that bar Medicaid payments for less expensive outpatient care that avoids more expensive hospital care. Joey Wynn, Chair of SFAN, discussed possible changes to Project AIDS Care (PAC) Waivers. In Florida, about 7,800 people living with HIV/AIDS (PLWHA) are eligible for PAC Waivers. According to Wynn, last year, about 7,000 PLWHA accessed only one PAC Waiver service. That service consisted of a single case management phone call per month. Wynn said that these PLWHA required more than one monthly case management phone call. Visual inspection for adequate food, medications, and general health may be necessary. Wynn argued that providers of those services would have become more business-like. They will have to market their agencies to Medicaid Managed Care Insurance Plans. They will have to show evidence that their services improved the health of their clients and kept them out of hospitals. Wynn discussed possible service substitutions. Medicaid will stop paying for services without evidence of their effectiveness. One PAC Waiver service, massage therapy, has failed to show evidence that it works. If a service fails to show that it works, another could replace it. For example, physical therapy could replace massage therapy among allowed Medicaid expenses. Medicaid cannot make these changes before 2018 at the earliest. People currently in the PAC Waiver program should stay in contact with their case manager. Broward-RWC Richard Morris, of Broward-RWC, reported that 84 percent of ADAP clients had achieved viral suppression. With a suppressed viral load, a person maintains their own health. Increasing evidence indicates that they have a miniscule chance of infecting others. This exceeds the goal of the National HIV/AIDS Strategy. TransSOCIAL Morgan and Ashley Mayfaire started TransSOCIAL last year. Morgan Mayfaire found it difficult to locate services to help with his transition. While TransSOCIAL began as a calendar of events for transgender people, it now has several programs. It provides financial aid for legal name-changes and updating ID documents. TransSOCIAL conducts Trans and LGBT+ competency trainings. TransSOCIAL has voucher programs for PrEP and Hormone Replacement Therapy. Next SFAN Meeting: Friday, August 4, 2017 at 10 a.m., at the Holy Cross Healthplex, 1000 NE 56th Street, Ft. Lauderdale. SFAN welcomes newcomers. To find out more about TransSOCIAL, please visit www.TransSOCIAL.org. Follow Sean McShee on Twitter @SeanMcShee Little Leo has graced the Earth. Trystan Reese and his husband Biff Chaplow have conceived their first biological child, Leo Murray Chaplow. Leo eats like a champ, sleeps well, and gives us lots of cuddles, Reese told CNN. Reese, a gay transgender man, became a topic of discussion over the last few months, documenting their parenting journey and posting updates throughout the pregnancy. "I'm OK with my body being a trans body," Reese said. "I'm OK being a man who has a uterus and has the capacity and capability of carrying a baby." Earlier this year, Reese said I think there are a lot of gay couples who would love to have their own biological child without intervention or assistance from other people. For me, I see it as a really amazing gift that Ive been given. I get to live as a man, and I also get to do this really amazing thing that a lot of people would love to do. After receiving medical advice, Reese stopped taking testosterone to prepare for the pregnancy. "We've been under medical supervision the entire time to make it as healthy and safe as possible." This wont be their first child. In 2011, Reese and Chaplow adopted the latters niece and nephew after his sister was not able to care for them. "We are so lucky to have been able to welcome him into our lives and cannot wait to see who he grows up to be." After the dust settled, I just realized how much I loved our kids, Reese told The Washington Post, and how much room there was in our life for our family to grow. Le Collectif Cheikh Yassine a organise un certain nombre dactivites et de festivites pour les enfants de Gaza sous le theme La joie des enfants de Gaza pour lAid . Ces activites ont commence le premier jour de lAid et continue jusquau 4eme jour de lAid dans la bande de Gaza. Plusieurs activites, ont ete organisees parmi lesquelles : des competitions recompensees par des prix, des jeux, des animations et des chants presentes par un groupe ainsi que des distributions de cadeaux et daides financieres. Sophomore Pennsylvania Sire Stakes horses were spotlighted during the second half of the four-day meet at the Clearfield County Fair in north-central Pennsylvania, with trotters All Set Lets Go and Bet On Tom turning in track-record performances on Tuesday afternoon (August 1). In a $5,300 A division of the three-year-old filly trot, All Set Lets Go by 15-1/2 lengths in 2:02, equaling the all-age track trot mark held by males Cottonwood Sam (2003) and Simeon (2015) and breaking the divisional record of 2:02.3 set by A Little Laid Back last year. Roger Hammer drove the daughter of Donato Hanover for trainer John McMullen and his McMullen Stable, LLC. In the last race of the day, Bet On Tom traversed the Clearfield twice-around in 2:01.2 the fastest trotting mile ever at Clearfield in his $5,300 A division for colts and geldings. Aaron Johnston drove the unaltered son of Tom Ridge to a 7-1/2 length wire-to-wire win for trainer Gary Johnston and owner Dr. William Solomon. Three-year-old pacers took centre stage on Wednesday afternoons (August 2) card, with Ginger Tree Marty (trainer-driver Sam Beegle) and Marvalous Artist (trainer-driver Roger Hammer) turning in identical 1:59.1 miles, just a fifth shy of Star Of Terrors track record for three-year-old pacing colts at Clearfield. (with files from the Pennsylvania Fair Harness Horsemens Association) Group Supports President Donald Trump's Calls on Republican National Committee to do More to Support Ban on Transgenders in the U.S. Military Contact: Public Advocate, 703-845-1808, email, twitter: @eugenedelgaudio WASHINGTON, Aug. 3, 2017 /Standard Newswire/ -- Public Advocate of the U.S. is hosting an event today at the Republican National Committee offices in support of President Donald Trump's policy to ban transgenders in the U.S. military, Thursday August 3rd at 11AM in Washington, D.C. Who: Group Supports Ban on Transgenders In Military Why: Speakers and citizens will express public support for Trump Where: 310 First Street, Southeast, outside the Republican National Committee When: Thursday, August 3, 2017 at 11 AM Eugene Delgaudio president of Public Advocate said: "A number of Generals wrote a letter of support Wednesday and Americans are responding favorably and supporting President Donald Trump's announced planned ban of transgenders in the military. And Americans equally support an end to the use of taxpayer funds to pay for elective sex change operations in the military. We are here to express support for President Trump and the Republican National Committee to do more to support this announced policy as well." The group will hold signs, sing some patriotic songs and chant "Tweet Trump Tweet." Public Advocate volunteers will gather at the Republican National Committee located at 310 First St SE, Washington, DC 20003 to urge members of Congress and other Republican officials to support the Trump ban. Retired veterans will be asked to speak in support of the proposed Trump ban on transgenders. Life Legal Files Petition in Supreme Court Contesting Gag Order Against Daleiden Contact: Alexandra Snyder, Life Legal Defense Foundation , 202-717-7371NAPA, Calif., Aug. 3, 2017 / Standard Newswire / -- Life Legal Defense Foundation today filed a petition for writ of certiorari seeking review of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals decision in National Abortion Federation v. Center for Medical Progress.The National Abortion Federation (NAF) filed a lawsuit against David Daleiden and his Center for Medical Progress (CMP) just weeks after Daleiden released videos showing Planned Parenthood directors negotiating the sale of baby body parts for profit. NAF sought a gag order prohibiting CMP from releasing additional footage recorded at its annual conferences, fearing further public scrutiny of the unethical and illegal business practices of its members. Federal judge William Orrick, who previously served on the board of an organization that "partnered" with Planned Parenthood, issued the order. In doing so, he held that Daleiden contracted away his First Amendment speech rights when he signed the non-disclosure agreement NAF requires of all conference attendees, to avert public relations disasters like that which followed late-term abortionist Martin Haskell's unveiling of the new technique of partial birth abortion at a NAF meeting in the 1990's.The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the order without fully reviewing the case, as is required when First Amendment freedoms are at stake.Life Legal's Vice President of Legal Affairs, Katie Short, notes that no federal appeals court has ever upheld a gag order that was based on the alleged agreement of the parties to hide information that is of significant public interest and concern.Even Judge Orrick acknowledged that the public "has an interest in accessing the NAF materials." Yet heand the Ninth Circuit in its affirmation of Orrick's rulingelected to protect the interests of the abortion industry over the interests of taxpayers who fund Planned Parenthood to the tune of $550 million annually.The Supreme Court has held the type of gag order issued by Judge Orrick to be unconstitutional prior restraints on speech, holding that prior restraints are "the most serious and least tolerable infringement on First Amendment rights." The Court has further held that the damage of gag orders "can be particularly great when the prior restraint falls upon the communication of news and commentary on current events," which is exactly what Daleiden's videos are.Quoting other Supreme Court authority, the petition notes that the "dominant purpose of the First Amendment was to prohibit the widespread practice of governmental suppression...of material that is embarrassing to the powers that be.""The abortion industry went after David Daleiden for one reasonto protect the reputation it carefully cultivated in four decades of public deception," said Life Legal Executive Director Alexandra Snyder. "Our hope is that the Supreme Court will agree that First Amendment freedoms must not be extinguished to remove from public scrutiny issues of fundamental social and political importance."Life Legal is defending Daleiden in two lawsuits filed against him by the National Abortion Federation and Planned Parenthood.About Life Legal Defense FoundationLife Legal Defense Foundation was established in 1989, and is a nonprofit organization composed of attorneys and other concerned citizens committed to giving helpless and innocent human beings of any age, and their advocates, a trained and committed voice in the courtrooms of our nation. For more information about the Life Legal Defense Foundation, visit www.lldf.org Play at the new site will be free and first come, first served through the... The girlfriend of triple-murder suspect Brent Ward Luyster allegedly provided him with at least nine firearms in the year leading up to the slayings at a Woodland home, according to a federal indictment. It is unclear if any of those weapons were used in the fatal shootings, however. Andrea Sibley, 28, is charged in U.S. District Court in Tacoma with one count of aiding and abetting a felon in possession of a firearm and five counts of giving a false statement during the purchase of a firearm. Luyster, 37, a known white supremacist, is facing one count of being a felon in possession of a firearm. The grand jury indictment, filed July 26, states that between March 2015 and May 2016 in Clark and Cowlitz counties, Sibley provided Luyster with three .223 caliber rifles, two .22 caliber rifles, a .40 caliber handgun, 12 gauge shotgun, .308 caliber rifle, and .380 caliber handgun. Shes also accused of giving a false address to a Sportsmans Warehouse while purchasing firearms July 5, 2015, and July 17, 2015; Bobs Merchandise in Longview on Feb. 17, 2016, and Feb. 19, 2016; and Clark County Transfers on Feb. 24, 2016, the indictment shows. Sibley who helped Luyster go on the lam after he allegedly fatally shot three people and injured a fourth in July 2016 pleaded guilty last year to first-degree rendering criminal assistance and was sentenced to a year of community custody. A federal warrant was issued for her arrest July 26. Court records show that she was arrested two days later and appeared in court in Tacoma. Luysters federal charge relates to a May 16, 2016, incident in Longview, court records state. On that day, he was arrested for allegedly pistol-whipping his former girlfriend. An FBI agent included in the probable cause affidavit for Luysters triple-homicide case confirmed that he was facing federal charges in connection with the Cowlitz County case. In the Cowlitz case, Luyster is charged with second-degree assault with a deadly weapon, felony harassment and two counts of first-degree unlawful possession of a firearm. Clark County cases Last month, a Clark County Superior Court judge ruled that Luyster will face separate trials: one for aggravated murder and the other for attempted escape from the Clark County Jail in February. His murder trial is set for October. In that case, he faces three counts of aggravated first-degree murder, attempted first-degree murder, and first- and second-degree unlawful possession of a firearm. Prosecutors are not seeking the death penalty. A trial date has not yet been set for the remaining charges, which include second-degree attempted escape, first-degree malicious mischief and possession of a weapon by a jail inmate. He is scheduled for a hearing on the matter Aug. 29. Luyster was previously convicted in 2013 of criminal mischief with a deadly weapon; 2010 of second-degree possession of stolen property; 2005 of malicious harassment; 2001 of third-degree assault; 1998 of second-degree burglary; and 1997 of second-degree theft, according to the indictment. Where is Tufan's elder brother Motin? Tufan Sarkar, a Sramik League leader from Bogra, made headlines after his relatives reportedly shaved the heads of his alleged rape victim and her mother. The man had been spreading terror in town, and the man he relied on most for influence is his brother Motin Sarkar, locals have said. Police have been searching for Motin, a butcher turned transport owner, whose rise in local politics is credited to his influential friends in the ruling Awami League. Even though Motin is not a suspect in the rape and assault case which accuses several of Tufan's relatives, but police want his custody for a murder that happened 16 years ago. A Bogra court recently issued a warrant against him for the murder of one 'Ujjal' in 2001. Their father Mojibur Rahman used to sell meat and animal hide in Kasaipatti of Bogra's Chaksutrapur. Motin, his middle child, became general secretary of the district's Jubo League unit and its truck owners association after he initiated into politics several years ago. He was however expelled from Juba League, the youth front for ruling Awami League after Tufan came to be accused of raping a teenage girl. Tufan was also scrapped from Sramik League, the ruling party's labour front, as its convener in Bogra. There have been previous warrants for Motin's arrest over the 2001 murder, but police failed to catch him. "The warrant for Motin Sarkar was issued on July 20 but we got it yesterday," said Bogra Sadar Police Station OC Emdad Hossain. "We have taken some measures. You'll get some good news soon." Motin has been out of sight of locals in Bogra town, locals have told this news agency. Some are speculating that he escaped to India. He was not home when this correspondent visited his home at 11am and then again at 5pm on Wednesday. His offices for the truck owners' association and personal use are both located in his home. The man is usually home if not called away to take part in meetings and rallies. Motin's wife however told bdnews24.com that he was away on business. His house was buzzing with activities even just few days back. On Wednesday, his wife and child were the only ones home. Motin's influence in town relies on his association with Awami League leaders and top administrative officials. Tufan has followed in his footstep. He entered politics through his brother and Sramik League General Secretary Samsuddin Sheikh Helal, and became its convener few years back. The 28-year-old earned a reputation in town after he came to be accused for the murder of Emran, a Juba Dal leader from Chaksutrapur whose mangled body was found after his murder in broad daylight on Dec 2 of 2013. The murder case is one the six cases against Tufan, said Bogra Senior Additional Police Superintendent Arifur Rahman Mandal. The others describe attempted murder and assault. There would have been more cases if people had not backed away from filing their complaints out of fear, locals said. But the alleged rape of a girl who recently passed her Secondary School Certificate would lead to his arrest. She accused him of raping her several times after luring her with promises to help her get into a good college. Taking to reporters from a hospital, she said Tufan's family even proposed marriage when his wife Asha Akhter came to know it. She is then accused of getting her elder sister Marzia Haan Rumki, a reserved seat councillor, and others to pick up the girl and her mther from their home in Bogra town. They were beaten up and their heads were shaved off by a hairdresser. The rape and assault case was filed after the incident. Police have arrested nine of the 10 suspects named in the case. Trump blames Congress for 'all-time low' in Russia ties WASHINGTON (Reuters) : U.S. President Donald Trump said on Thursday Washington's relationship with Russia is at an "an all-time and very dangerous low," and blamed Congress for the situation, a day after he grudgingly signed into law sanctions against Moscow. Congress overwhelmingly approved the sanctions last week, leaving Trump with little choice but to sign the legislation although he has long expressed a desire for better ties with Russia. Even as he signed the bill on Wednesday, Trump strongly criticized it. He complained the measure, which allows Congress to stop him from easing sanctions on Russia, infringed on his presidential powers to shape foreign policy. Russia responded by saying the sanctions amounted to a full-scale trade war and an end to hopes for better ties with the Trump administration. "Our relationship with Russia is at an all-time & very dangerous low," Trump said in a Twitter post on Thursday. "You can thank Congress, the same people that can't even give us HCare!" added, referring to a bitter setback this month when his fellow Republicans, who control both chambers in Congress, failed to push healthcare legislation through the Senate. Trump's desire for better ties with Moscow has been hamstrung by the findings of U.S. intelligence agencies that President Vladimir Putin's government meddled in the 2016 U.S. presidential election campaign. U.S. congressional panels and a special counsel are investigating. Moscow denies any meddling and Trump denies any collusion by his campaign. Congress passed the new sanctions to punish Russia over the election interference and the annexation of Ukraine's Crimea in 2014. Republicans and Democrats usually are strongly divided on many issues but the measure drew wide support from both parties. Republican U.S. Senator Tom Cotton, asked about Trump's tweet in an MSNBC interview, agreed U.S.-Russian ties were "at a very low point" but rejected the president's blame. "Ultimately, the responsibility falls primarily on Vladimir Putin," Cotton said, pointing to Russian actions over Ukraine, arms control treaty violations and alleged meddling in various Western nations. "We need to confront, put pressure on Vladimir Putin at every point." Despite Trump's public misgivings about the sanctions, Vice President Mike Pence presented a tough stance against Russia during a tour of Baltic states this week. Pence assured the leaders of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania - all once part of the Soviet Union - that they would have U.S. support in the event of Russian aggression. Russia will hold large-scale military maneuvers in nearby Belarus this month. Dick Durbin, the second-ranking Democrat in the Senate. asked for his reaction to Trump's tweet, told MSNBC: "I can just tell you we saw real bipartisanship on Capitol Hill when it came to these sanctions. Democrats and Republicans agreed we had to tell North Korea, Iran and Russia 'enough was enough.'" The sanctions also affect North Korea and Iran. Durbin said the bill deliberately included measures to ensure Trump imposed the sanctions and did not lift them. "We put requirements in the bill which most presidents have never seen to make sure this happens," he said. Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev denounced the sanctions on Wednesday and the Kremlin reiterated this on Thursday. "Nobody should doubt that Russia will protect and defend its interests," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said at a conference call with reporters. "We in general believe that this policy of sanctions is short-sighted, unlawful and hopeless." Even before Trump signed the bill, Putin on Sunday ordered the United States to cut about 60 percent of its diplomatic staff in Russia by Sept. 1 and took away a summer house used by U.S. Embassy staff. Truce in Syria`s Homs province after safe zone agreed: Russia Syrian regime forces and \"moderate\" rebels will cease fire in northern parts of Homs province. AFP, Moscow : Syrian regime forces and "moderate" rebels will cease fire in northern parts of Homs province on Thursday after Russia struck a deal with the opposition on implementing a third safe zone, Moscow said. "From 1200 local time (0900 GMT), units of the moderate opposition and government forces will completely stop firing," defence ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov said in a statement. Konashenkov said Moscow and Syrian opposition groups had reached an agreement on the "operational details" of a "de-escalation zone" north of the city of Homs at talks in Cairo on July 31. The zone is the third to be established in Syria under a Russian-led initiative aimed at halting fighting in four areas between President Bashar al-Assad's forces and rebels. It covers 84 towns and villages with a total population of 147,000 people, Moscow said. Russia has been behind a push to pacify Syria since the start of this year after tipping the six-year conflict in favour of Assad with its game-changing military intervention in 2015. Konashenkov said Russian military police will set up two checkpoints and three observation posts on Friday along the boundaries of the zone dividing the two forces. Rebels had agreed to "unblock" part of a road running through the safe zone between the cities of Homs and Hama and a "Committee for National Justice" made up of rebels and local groups would help oversee the implementation of the plan, he said. The northern parts of Homs province were recently being shelled by regime forces and hit by intermittent air strikes. Towns in the area were among the first to fall to Assad's opponents in 2012 after a revolt against his rule. They have remained outside the hands of jihadist groups including the Islamic State (IS), which do not fall under the Russian deal. Russia last month struck a deal with the United States and Jordan for a ceasefire in another southern zone, where Moscow has now deployed its military police. Under a second agreement sealed with rebels in July Russian forces also set up two checkpoints and four observation posts in an area covering conflict-ravaged Eastern Ghouta near Damascus. Under a plan hammered out between Russia, Turkey and Iran at peace talks in Kazakhstan one more safe zone is supposed to be established in the northwestern Idlib region. However, negotiations on that zone have been complicated by conflicting interests between the international powers. .Moscow has been flying a bombing campaign to support regime forces, while Assad's international opponents have been striking IS from the air as part of a US-led coalition. Worker killed in tyre explosion in Jessore UNB, Jessore : A motor worker was killed and another injured when a tyre of a truck exploded while putting air into it at Mudli intersection in the district town on Wednesday. Local people said the incident took place around 9:30 pm when a tire of a truck exploded with a big bang while pushing air into it, leaving Yunus Ali, 45, hailing from Jhenidah and Hossain Ali, 20, two workers of 'Rimon Vulcanizing' shop injured. Later, they were taken to local hospital where the doctors declared Yunus dead. Hossain was shifted to Dhaka Medical College Hospital for better treatment. Rohingyas must get citizenship, rights OIC Secy-Gen calls upon Myanmar Visiting Secretary General of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) Dr Yousef bin Ahmad Al Othaimeen on Thursday reminded Myanmar that Rohingya people must be given full citizenship and basic rights. "Rohingya people are denied their basic rights. They need to be recognised in giving their identity. They must return to their country. They must have their full citizenship," he said. The OIC chief made the remarks while talking to journalists after his meeting with Foreign Minister AH Mahmood Ali at the Foreign Ministry. He called upon Myanmar government to come up with a roadmap on how to go forward to settle the issue peacefully. "We're very willing to come and sit down with you. Give us a roadmap [on] how to go forward. All the neighbouring governments, including Bangladesh, are willing to negotiate...to sit down how we can move forward on this issue. You can't deny human rights. This is very important for OIC," he said. The OIC Secretary General said they will continue pressing on this issue in a very peaceful manner as they're willing to negotiate and sit down. He also appreciated the United Nations for its role and sending many delegations to Myanmar to see situation there. "I plead upon the Myanmar government-please these are your people. Give them their basic human rights." Talking about the government's plan to shift the Rohingya people to an island, the OIC Chief said this is a very good idea as the government plans to create a small city with all amenities where they can live like in a normal city. "I'm pleased to know that the government of Bangladesh is thinking of developing a small Island for them. This is very good. It'll be like living in a small city as guests ...as a normal city with services like health, housing and education. I congratulate the government of Bangladesh to think of this idea," said the OIC chief. Dr Othaimeen called upon all the international organizations to help the government of Bangladesh and help people of Myanmar with all the support they need. He said Rohingya people are their brothers and sisters and thanked Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina for hosting them and offering shelter with required facilities. On terrorism and extremism, the OIC chief said terrorism is not acceptable and there is nothing to justify terrorism and violence. "Terrorism has nothing to do with Islam. Islam is a religion of peace, religion of mercy religion of tolerance. Bangladesh is a shining example of all these values of Islam." He said the OIC condemned all attacks in the past and mentioned, "We're with you in your fight against terrorism." The OIC chief also conveyed to Prime Minister and Foreign Minister that they condemn all the terrorist acts not only in Muslim countries but also in non-Muslim countries. He appreciated Bangladesh's socioeconomic development and the leadership of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina. "Bangladesh is a very important country. We talked about the whole range of issues not only Rohingya issue," he said adding that Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina is a shining example for all Muslims across the world. During his meeting with Hasina, the OIC chief suggested holding an interfaith dialogue between Bangladesh's Muslim religious leaders and Myanmar's Buddhist religious leaders to resolve the Rohingya problem. "The dialogue will help develop a better understanding among them (leaders) and resolve the Rohingya problem," he said. Othaimeen arrived here on Wednesday night on a four-day tour. He will visit Rohingya camps in Cox's Bazar to see for himself the situation there on Friday. This is his first visit to Bangladesh since assuming charge as the OIC Secretary General. The visit comes at a time when Bangladesh is preparing to host the next Session of the OIC Council of Foreign Ministers to be held in the first half of 2018. Othaimeen also met President M Abdul Hamid on Thursday afternoon. During his visit, the Secretary General and his accompanying delegation will also hold a meeting with Opposition Leader in Parliament Raushon Ershad. The OIC Secretary General will visit the Kutupalong Camp and surroundings in Cox's Bazar and the Rakhine Muslims there on Friday to express OIC 'sympathy and solidarity' with them. This will give him an opportunity of briefing from the local administration and representatives of international humanitarian organisations working there, said Foreign Ministry officials. The OIC repeatedly condemned the violence and abuse against the Rohingya Muslim minority in Myanmar in the past months. During the extraordinary session on January 19 in Kuala Lumpur, the OIC Council of Foreign Ministers urged Myanmar to eliminate the root causes affecting the Rohingya Muslim minority and restore their citizenship. Hajj flight starts from Ctg today UNB, Chittagong : This year's first hajj flight from Chittagong will leave for Saudi Arabia on Friday night. Civil Aviation and Tourism Minister Rashed Khan Menon will inaugurate the flight at Hazrat Shah Amanat International Airport at 11:45pm. On July 24, the first Hajj flight of Biman Bangladesh Airlines carrying 418 Bangladeshi pilgrims took off from Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport in Dhaka. Some 127,198 pilgrims will perform Hajj from Bangladesh this year under government and private managements. Of them, 4,230 pilgrims will perform Hajj under the government management. Rain disrupts life in city again Fire Service workers helping the stranded people from waterlogging area through rubber boat as heavy rains made all the capital streets worse for the second day on Thursday. This photo was taken from Shantinagar area on Thursday. Staff Reporter : A heavy rainfall submerged parts of Dhaka city under knee-deep water on Thursday, paralysing civic life once again. It began to rain in the morning, but torential rain started at 12:00am to continue for about four hours. The Met office recorded 121mm rainfall between 12:00pm and 3:00pm in Dhaka, Meteorologist Arif Hossain said. "Light to moderate rainfall has been forcast for next two days. Meanwhile, gridlock on the city's roads and streets and the acute waterlogging due to the poor drainage system doubled the sufferings of the people. Roads, lanes and bi-lanes at Farmgate, Green Road, Manik Mia Avenue, Dhanmondi 27, Shukrabad, Subhanbagh, Tejturi Bazar, Agargaon, Mirpur, Kazipara, Begum Rokeya Sarani, Karwan Bazar, Shantinagar, Rayerbazar, Jatrabari and some other lower-lying areas in Dhaka were inundated. Even, a portion of parking space at Bangladesh secretariat went under water. Commuters, especially students and office goers, suffered a lot as vehicles were seen stranded. Nusrat Jahan, a house wife, was waiting for more than half an hour at Purana Paltan for transport. She said, "I have failed to catch a bus or hire a rickshaw for going to Jatrabari even after long waiting. The rain collapsed all the traffic system of the city." Seventy-year old Kamrul Hasan was completely wet when he was returning home from his workplace. "This problem persists round the year when it rains," he said referring to the irresponsibility of the authorities concerned. Meanwhile, light to moderate rain or thunder showers accompanied by temporary gusty wind is likely to occur at most places in Rangpur, Rajshahi, Mymensingh, Khulna and Sylhet divisions, Bangladesh Met Office bulletin reads. There may occur moderately heavy to heavy rainfalls at many places over Dhaka, Barisal and Chittagong divisions and other places over the country, according to the bulletin. Urbanization of Chittagong in a planned way Dr. Md. Shairul Mashreque : The forum for planned urbanization in Chittagong held a news conference at Chittagong Press Club on 18 July 2017. The President of the Forum , Sikander Khan, a renowned economist said that without preparing ground thousand crore taka is spent on one project after another. Who will be supposed to get the project is predetermined. Whether those project s are in the original plan book are not kept in consideration. Money thus flows in the name of development without panning and consideration. That means money thus flowed through project line is sure to find place in water. That visible development is taking place in Chittagong is a mere show through numerous projects. CDA is constructing elevated roads. Is this project lies in long term plan or CDA is doing for earning name and fame not thinking in terms of welfare. The Vice President of the Forum Engineer Subash Barua presented a written statement. He said that port city Chittagong has become a city of lot of sufferings and predicaments. Each project aggravates the conditions of the city rather than alleviates it. Each project attached a small pointed piece of iron to the coffin. Life of the city dweller has become hail. He suggested remedies with seven point recommendation for implementation. They include: all canals need excavation according to CSORS, widening and deepening of canals to enhance their carrying capacities, eviction of all illegal structures near the canals, constructing new canal according drainage master plan 1995, construction of water bodies and silt trap, renovating all city drains and regular cleaning , increasing carrying capacity of Karnafuli through capital dragging, enforcing strict law to stop throwing rubbish to the drains, and stop hill leveling. Without implementing these recommendations installing pump and sluice gate will be meaningless. He advised formation of a strong committee for smart completion of these works thus suggested. The city corporation and autonomous and parastatal bodies must do their assigned works. There is no gainsaying of the fact that Despite repeated warning and response of the concerned administration tragic incidence is taking place almost every year during monsoon. The environmentalists have long had words of warnings about impending disaster in the event of wanton destruction of forests and rampant leveling of hills. The criminal syndicate with certain amount impunity is destroying hill forest and cutting hills without any qualm of conscience. That the concerned authorities like CDA and the department of environment failed to take follow up action after circular issued in 1982 is hardly amazing. For urban governance is distressingly missing. A plethora of circulars served by the urban administration could not prevent the powerful syndicate from cutting hills. It could manage to continue anti-social activities through using lacuna in legislative measures and managing stay order. Even then 'under the existing environmental law there is scope to file case with environmental court against environmental degradation brought about by illegal hill cutting (ibid). Devastating landslide hit hill slums on 1st July, 2011 in Batali hill claiming 17 lives injuring many. It was triggered by heavy downpour. Some families continue to take risks on live despite the catastrophe while some are shifting to safer places. The Chittagong city corporation (CCC) 'engaged around 60 workers to remove the debris and mud inside the protection wall to make it risk free temporary.' Mentionable, CCC initiated construction of this protection wall to prevent landslide during the period of military back caretaker government. It was of course a protective measure against natural devastation but with faulty construction as the experts commented. Even then some illegal construction of dwelling units near the wall removing some of its polls is responsible for Batali hill disaster. The tragic episode is the indication that nature lashes back once again. The hill dwellers suffered the consequence in 1998(killing 16), 1999(killing 19), 2000(killing 16), 2002(claiming 70) and 2007(the worst one). Disaster in Chittagong in June 2007, the worst in recent time, claimed more than 120 lives injuring many. The rescue operation was on to retrieve bodies from beneath the mudslides that wrought havoc in hill top slums in the wake of torrential rains. Following the disaster a hill management committee headed by CTG divisional commissioner was formed to compensate and rehabilate the affected people. In August 18, 2008 hill slide left 11 persons killed at the foothill slums of Motijharna. It happened before the concerned authorities could evacuate the foothill slums and rehabilate the dwellers early in the morning. Hill slide also took place in Chattagong University in June 2007. Most victim families used to live close to the ill. The reasons behind landslide, according to an expert, are unstable geographical formation, reckless construction, and heavy rainfall, lack of a proper sewerage system and lack of knowledge about nature's ability to lash back with huge fatalities. Yet the most remarkable factor seems to be lack of governance in urban Chittagong where there has been mushroomed growth of squatter settlements in risky hills. There has been reckless hill cutting with the concerned authorities including CDA and department of Environment paying a deaf ear to the allegations about illegal possession of public land property and leveling of hills and hillocks. (Dr. Md. Shairul Mashreque, Chittagong University) Now computers can read emotions through lip - reading! Life Desk : Malaysian researchers have developed a computer that has the ability to decode human emotions by studying lip pattern. Karthigayan Muthukaruppan and his colleagues of the Manipal International University in Selangor, Malaysia, have created a system using a genetic algorithm to correlate irregular ellipse- fitting equations to the shape that the human mouth takes on while displaying different emotions. The upper and the lower lips of the mouth were identified as two separate ellipses by the algorithm. The researchers claim that this system gets better with each use. The researchers used photos of South-East Asian and Japanese individuals to train the computer to identify the six common human emotions - happiness, sadness, fear, anger, disgust and surprise, besides a neutral expression. There has been a surge of interest in developing all aspects of human-computer interactions, especially in the area of human emotion recognition by observing facial expression. The initial stage application of an emotion detector might be to help individuals who are mute to interact using computer-based communication devices, such as voice synthesizers, in a far more effective manner. Artificial Intelligence is a 'chip' of the computer science 'block'. It deals with creating machines that simulate intelligent human behavior. The term Artificial Intelligence (AI) is also used to describe a trait, a property or a characteristic of a machine, or the program it contains. The basis of AI encompasses different sources of information, from computer science, physiology and oncology to the abstract components of philosophy. Further research into the areas of sensory perception, language skills and learning has amalgamated to create machines that are endowed with the ability to 'think'. For a very long time, man-like machines such as robots have captivated man's imagination. His creative genius soared to an all-time high with the invention of computers. Man was able to create machines that closely resembled and carried out chores like him, with robotic precision. He invented a slave that did not ask for a break or a hike in salary! Today, systems are being etched out with the ability to mimic human speech and thoughts and to perform countless other chores that were earlier deemed impossible. The usage of Artificial Intelligence surged during the nineties and the early part of the twenty first century. This was when greater emphasis began to be laid on miniscule details; when researchers began taking a lot more interest in methodical analysis. Besides, AI began to be associated with several different areas of work. Some of the traits that these machines today are capable of exhibiting are learning, perception, planning, communication, reasoning, knowledge, and the ability to move/manipulate objects. It is amply used in the fields of technology, counter terrorism, crisis management, defense, data mining, and in the realm of medical diagnosis. The study carried out by the Malaysian researchers has been published in the International Journal of Artificial Intelligence and Soft Computing. Source: Medindia Trader shot in capital risingbd.com : A businessman was shot and wounded by unknown miscreants in Pallabi area of capital on Thursdasy morning. The deceased was identified as Mohammad Rajan Mia, 29. The incident took place around 6:00am at second floor of a building in Mirpur Section-11. Family sources said that hearing doorbells, the victim went to open his door yesterday morning. Meanwhile, some miscreants opened fire, leaving him bullet injured. Later, he was rushed to Dhaka Medical College Hospital. Dhaka Medical College Hospital police outpost in-Charge Sub-Inspector Bachchu Mia confirmed the matter to risingbd.com. Crucial safeguard for freedom of judiciary Verdict on 16th amendment to constitution a final resolution to dispute Special Correspondent : The Supreme Courts' judgment that declares the 16th amendment to the constitution as null and void will safeguard the independence of the country's judiciary, lawyers said on Thursday. Welcoming the verdict, they said the 16th amendment was illegal, unconstitutional and against the principle of separation of powers of the state organs and independence of the judiciary. "It's a landmark verdict that scrapped parliament's power to remove top judges. The verdict opens new horizons for an independent judiciary," Zainul Abedin, President of the Supreme Court Bar Association (SCBA), told The New Nation yesterday. He said the 16th amendment brought to the constitution in 2014 abolishing the Supreme Judicial Council, which was introduced in 1978. Independence of the judiciary has been curbed by the amendment, he said. "The Supreme Court's verdict has allowed to restore the Supreme Judicial Council, led by the Chief Justice, to remove judges for breaching their judicial code of conduct," he added. Terming the verdict as a crucial safeguard for the freedom of the judiciary, the SCBA president said, "If we want to establish the rule of law in this country, we must have democracy and an independent judiciary." "The ruling reflects expectations of the citizenry who have faith in the Supreme Court. They believe that the Supreme Court is the last resort where they can get justice when other courts deny them," Zainul added. "The 16th amendment has infringed upon the independence of the judiciary. By declaring the amendment null and void the court preserves and protects its independence," Shahdeen Malik, a senior lawyer, told The New Nation. Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina brought the constitutional change, allowing parliament to remove top judges in September, 2014. In May last year, the High Court declared the amendment illegitimate after a lawyer filed a public interest litigation. The Supreme Court led by chief justice S.K. Sinha gave a provisional verdict last month ruling against the government. "It is a historic judgment regarding the independence of the judiciary. The law that empowered the parliament to impeach judges has been declared illegal and scrapped as well. Only the Supreme Judicial Council now retains the power to impeach judges as per the law," advocate Manzil Morshed, who filed the litigation, told The New Nation. He further said: "Not only lawyers, the public perception was that the judiciary could not function independently if the parliament had the power to sack judges on grounds of incapacity or misconduct." When asked if the verdict would trigger conflicts between the parliament and the judiciary, the lawyers said as per the Constitution, the Appellate Division's decision is the final if dispute arises regarding the court. There is no chance for a rebuttal here. This verdict is the final resolution to a dispute." iStock/Thinkstock(MINNEAPOLIS) -- Two staff members were killed and multiple others were hospitalized on Wednesday after an explosion caused a school building to collapse in Minneapolis, officials said. The Minneapolis Fire Department confirmed the explosion was caused by a gas leak and said contractors were doing construction on the gas lines at the time of the explosion. The Fire Department also confirmed that it had recovered two bodies in the wreckage, but it did not disclose their identities. "At this point right now, we're shutting down operations for the night," Minneapolis Fire Chief John Fruetel told reporters after the second body was recovered from the rubble late Wednesday. "The investigative phase will continue tomorrow." He said the victim's family members were being notified. Minnehaha Academy, however, identified both victims. In a Facebook post, the school named the first as Ruth Berg, a receptionist who worked for the school for 17 years. Berg "welcomed everyone with a smile and was always willing to go the extra mile to help our students, families and staff," the post stated. "She will be greatly missed." The school identified the second victim as John Carlson, a staff member and alum. "He graduated from Minnehaha in 1953, sent his children here, and after retiring from his first career, he came back to work at the school," according to the Facebook post. "John will be deeply missed." The hospital said Wednesday afternoon that it is treating four patients: one person in critical condition and three in satisfactory conditions. Five others have already been discharged. Injuries include broken bones, lacerations and head wounds, officials added. Officials said the building sustained "heavy, heavy damage" and said the front walls were blown out and the roof collapsed. They added that it was fortunate that this incident did not occur during the school year while students were in class. One father told ABC affiliate KSTP-TV that he was in the school counselors office ahead of the incident with his daughter and wife. He said someone came into the office and told them there was a gas smell and everyone needed to get out. His daughter got up to start exiting through the hallway, and "just seconds after that was a huge explosion," he told KSTP-TV. It was a large, huge, 'boom.' One of those movie scenes where you kind of start shaking and it knocks you off your feet. It was pretty intense. From there, people were in panic. We heard a lot of screaming." They exited the building out a back door, and thats when he said he saw how severe it was. He called this a close-knit community and said he ran back in to try to find anyone hurt. Some parts of the building were completely blocked by debris, he said. His wife and daughter were scratched up a little bit but otherwise OK, he said. We're blessed," he said. "This couldve been a lot worse. Officials said two floors collapsed over a sub-basement currently filled with water they used to extinguish the fire. Crews need to get into the rubble to locate missing persons, officials said Wednesday afternoon, adding that this is still considered a rescue mission. One girl told reporters she was at school for cross-country practice Wednesday morning; 30 seconds after she left the building, she was in the parking lot when the explosion occurred, she said. A "huge cloud of dust" came and the windows shattered, she told reporters. "It shook all my insides." Minnesota Gov. Mark Dayton said in a statement, "The state will provide any and all resources necessary to aid first responders." Copyright 2017, ABC Radio. All rights reserved. A new gallery and community art center in Herrin aims to provide Southern Illinoisans with greater access to fine arts. Hartley Art Gallery & Event Center, located at 100 S. Park Avenue, has offered art classes and events over the past year and will host its grand opening later this month. Owner Victoria Hartley drew on her background in business and her lifelong passion for the visual arts in dreaming up the space, which features a new art or photo exhibit each month. The business will also be available for rent as an event center and will offer music events and book signings. The gallery has already shown exhibits by artists from Missouri and Kentucky, but Hartley said she loves putting the spotlight on local Southern Illinois artists. We have so many wonderful people here that have such great talent. They dont have an opportunity sometimes to go out and promote their own work, so Im their link to that, Hartley said. Hartley and her father have spent the past year designing and renovating the previously vacant space; theyve breathed new life into the building, which is the original site of the First National Bank built in 1900. Its upstairs once served as the United Mine Workers headquarters, Hartley said. They actually used to print money here at this building. So its got just a lot of really good history with it, Hartley said. The gallery hosts several painting classes each month offered by professional artists. Materials are provided. Part of the reason its a dream job is I get to work with all the professional artists who come in here, and I take all the classes. Of course, Im very particular about the classes, so anyone who teaches here, I make sure its a curriculum that is suited to giving the students something that theyre proud of when they leave here, Hartley said. Hartley said one of her goals is to help mentor young artists and show them the steps professionals take to exhibit their work. One of the reasons I started the business was to connect younger students who have potential to established artists, because I was a very gifted child in the arts and there werent a lot of people when I was growing up to take private lessons with, and you dont get the full instruction that you really need, Hartley said. All classes are open to beginners, Hartley said. If someone comes in, I dont even care if they can only draw stick people, she said. I just say, come on in here, dont be afraid. I think thats the whole message: dont be afraid to come in and try art. Just come in and grab a paintbrush and look at a class that might inspire you and let your creative talents flow. I think that everybody has to start somewhere, and you dont know if youre going to have that talent unless you try it. Herrin Mayor Steve Frattini will lead a ribbon cutting ceremony at the Hartley Art Gallery and Event Center at 6 p.m. Friday, Aug. 18. A reception in the gallery will follow. The event is free and open to the public. Codell Rodriguez Codell Rodriguez is the night editor for The Southern Illinoisan, and he writes a movie column for Scene618. Follow Codell Rodriguez 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 The direction/narrative of Christopher Nolan's war epic, "Dunkirk," can best be described as chaotic, but it's an intended and well-executed chaotic that makes the movie that much better. Chronicling the miraculous evacuation of allied forces from Dunkirk in 1940, the film follows various intertwining stories. On the mole, we follow British private Tommy (Fionn Whitehead) and other soldiers desperate to get home. They dodge enemy fire and duck and cover during German bombings on the beach, and every time they find salvation in the form of an evacuation ship, the enemy frustratingly finds a way to take that hope away. With hundreds of thousands of soldiers stranded on the beach, Britain turned to civilian ships to aid in the evacuation. On the sea, the film focuses on a yacht piloted by Mr. Dawson (Mark Rylance); his son, Peter (Tom Glynn-Carney); and hand, George (Barry Keoghan), a teenager who hopes to prove himself. Joining them is Cillian Murphy in a heartbreaking performance as a shell-shocked soldier. Every scene he has with Glynn-Carney is extremely well done. In the air, the story focuses on RAF pilots Farrier (Tom Hardy) and Collins (Jack Lowden). They try to take out as many German fighters and bombers as they can to take the pressure off the sea and beaches. The film has an unconventional timeline of events that can jump back and forth a bit, but the three main stories intertwine with a satisfying culmination. You need to pay attention, but I never really felt lost at all. One of the most successful aspects of the film, which really surprised me, was that it relies more on tension and visuals than dialogue. I mean, people don't stay silent. There's more than enough dialogue when there needs to be. But Nolan is more than happy to let the powerful work of the sound department and the beautifully unsettling soundtrack by Hans Zimmer take center stage much of the time. Tommy doesn't need to say anything. His weary face, the scarred and smoke-filled landscape with the slow, mournful soundtrack says more than enough. I mentioned Murphy before, who I think deserves the most praise, overall, but there wasn't a weak performance in this film. Yes, Harry Styles from One Direction is in it. No, he's not a celebrity cameo. He does a good job. It should also be noted that Kenneth "I'll challenge any of you to a Shakespeare-off" Branagh plays a navy commander. I mean, nothing much to say. He's brilliant as always. Moving on. This is a remarkable war film that doesn't focus on grandstanding, but on a desperate tale of survival and ultimately hope. It's stirring to see looks of desperation turn to glee when rescue arrives, but just as effective is seeing the man who's seen and been through so much, he barely has a reaction at all. "Dunkirk" is one of the most impressive movies I've seen this year and recommend everyone check it out before it leaves town. CARTERVILLE A professional genealogist will share strategies on using property records to trace family history at an upcoming workshop in Carterville. Mark Lowe, a certified genealogist, will speak at the 2017 Family History Conference and Book Fair at John A. Logan College from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday, Aug. 12. This annual event is hosted by the Genealogy Society of Southern Illinois. He's a past president of the Association of Professional Genealogists and a former vice president and secretary of the Federation of Genealogical Societies. His work has appeared in The National Genealogical Society Quarterly, The North Carolina Genealogical Society Quarterly and the Middle Tennessee Genealogical Society Quarterly. His genealogy profile page says he specializes in land records, land platting and court records, as well as African-American, Baptist, Methodist, migration and Moravians research. He also specializes in genealogy in Kentucky, North Carolina and Tennessee, particularly Memphis and Nashville. The workshops being presented are "Tennessee, the Road to the West," in which he will discuss the records that exist for researching Tennessee; "Land Barons or Dirt Farmers: Finding Land Transactions," in which he will discuss following the land using property records and learning how to trace a specific property and family line; "Finding Your Landless Ancestors;" and "Over the Mountain, Across the Plains: Using Electronic Records to Trace Our Ancestors." Those interested in attending the conference can contact Jackie Lyell at gssi@ilgssi.org. According to a news release from Saline County States Attorney Jayson Clarks office, Jaylan Banks, 18, entered a plea of guilty Thursday to the Class 2 felony charge of aggravated battery. Judge Walden Morris sentenced Banks to eight years in the Illinois Department of Corrections with two years supervised release. Claflin University and the South Carolina NAACP will host the annual African-American Economic Summit on Saturday, Aug. 5, at the W.V. Middleton Fine Arts Center. "Preparing African-Americans for Today's Global Market" is the theme for this year's summit, which reflects the focus that will be placed on employment and career options for South Carolinians. In addition, seminars will feature experts in entrepreneurship, community development, land/property management, employment training, economic empowerment, tourism and other issues important to improving predominately African-American communities in South Carolina. The African American Economic Summit will open at 9 a.m. with a welcome by Claflin President Dr. Henry N. Tisdale and an "Economy and Jobs Forecast" presentation by Diane Sumpter, president/chief executive officer at DESA, Inc., a professional services firm based in Columbia. Sen. John W. Matthews, D-Bowman, will serve as keynote speaker for the Annual CEO Luncheon at 1 p.m. in Ministers' Hall. The inaugural "Black Mayor's" Forum will begin at 2 p.m. in the Fine Arts Center. Participants include representatives of rural and urban municipalities led by African American mayors. The African-American Economic Summit began in 2005 to promote education, employment and entrepreneurship. Claflin University is one of the event's founding partners. Over the years, the summit has provided strategies to help individuals and businesses prosper economically. "We have been a bridge to link generations and connect communities across South Carolina," said William Johnson, 2017 AAES planning committee chair. "Economic sustainability is our ultimate goal. With each succeeding year, we are adding more advocates." Attendance is free, however attendees are encouraged to register online. Find out more at the S.C. NAACPs Facebook page: www.facebook.com/scnaacp. DENMARK The decades-old water tower that stands above the city of Denmark has seen better days. The rusting water tank, featuring fading dogwood blossoms painted by the late Jim Harrison, a nationally acclaimed artist known for his rural Americana landscapes, is a landmark in this city that's home to the annual Denmark Dogwood Festival. Denmark City Council's decision last month to have the iconic landmark taken down in August was not an easy one, Mayor Gerald Wright says, but the city doesn't have the money -- nearly $20,000 -- to refurbish the water tank. Still, Wright acknowledges the tower has stood as a symbol of Denmark for decades and he understands why some residents don't want to see it demolished. We made a decision to take the water tower down from a functional perspective. There is a sentimental value. However, there is a tremendous cost to saving the water tower. We were trying to save this cost. I could not justify in my mind the cost that was involved. We have moved too far along with this decision to change it," the mayor said Monday. One of the things I encourage our citizens to do is express opinions. I welcome views that may or may not be the views of council. I appreciate those folks who step up and express their feelings. I hope they will accept those decisions that are made Wright added. One of those opposed to the water tank's removal is Ashley Jordan, a clerical assistant at Denmark Technical College who has lived in Denmark for 15 years. Jordan, who is a representative of the federal Bamberg County Promise Zone, remembers seeing the tank as a child when she would get off the Amtrak train in Denmark to visit her grandfather after traveling from her home in Queens, New York. To me, the most important reason the tower should remain standing is that it gives me and others a sense of place. ... The water tower is like the Tin Man (from "The Wizard of Oz"). It holds the heart that strangers may never see. But they feel it. It is the heartbeat of this southern home, Denmark," she said. That big, green, rusty giant has sentimental value for me and many others in the community. My earliest memory (of the water tower) is waking up to get off of the train from New York in Denmark. I did not understand what the water tower was, and I excitedly asked, 'What is that?' It became my symbol that I had reached my grandpa. Dr. Anna Martin, an art teacher at Denmark-Olar High School, said she commends Jordan for sharing her opinion, but does not entirely agree with it. I applaud Ashley and others who are willing to speak out to power and oppose the removal of the water tower," Martin said. "I always encourage my students to express their opinions and stand up for their beliefs. But she added, I listened closely to what (the city council) said, and I think they are trying to do the right thing. Sadly, given their limited funds and options, I would have to agree that, given the present condition of the water tower, it would be very expensive and difficult, if not impossible, to restore it to a safe condition. Presently, it is a hazard that will only get worse over time." She said one of the hazards posed by the tank is the lead paint that was used on it when it was built. Wright agrees, noting, It was done at a time in which there was not a prohibition on lead paint. It would have to be dealt with in compliance with standards from EPA and DHEC regarding those substances." City Administrator Heyward Robinson said he also worries about possible hazards related to the tank. There is rust inside and outside of the water tower. Some of the railings are damaged. There are structural damages," he said, adding it could be a hazard to citizens if pieces of the structure fall. The mayor added, The water tower is unsightly. It represents deterioration of something we are not taking care of. But Jordan says the water tower is "public art" and should remain up. Wright said prior to Jim Harrisons death, "we had some discussion with him about doing some kind of painting (of the tower) in a project he was pursuing. (We) did not get to the point of working out the details prior to his death. Council had previously considered making public art out of a tower elsewhere, the mayor said. One idea was that if we do another dogwood, we would do it on another one of the tanks," he said. Jordan said at least six other municipalities throughout the country have successfully renovated their water towers with artistic projects. She suggested Denmark use the money it is going to pay for demolition to leverage a fundraising campaign for such a project. Wright noted, however, that a town that was referenced in the (last council) meeting is actually going to use their tank. We would not be able to use the tank we have from a functional perspective. "The prices I looked into to bring the water tank back online were $160,000 to $200,000," Robinson said. Jordan, who is involved with the Community Rural Arts Work League, said she'd like to see city officials seek grants to fund a public arts project utilizing the water tower. I have spoken with CRAWL committee members and collaborative partners. Some of us have met with politicians in the area to express our concern for the taking down of the water tower," she said. "We have gone as far as having a T-shirt designed to be sold in Denmark, with proceeds going to the water tower effort. Several community activists have suggested that we organize the citizens." But Martin added, If the old families want to save it, they should do so, and more power to them. Otherwise, we need to move on and put the city's limited available funds where they will do the most good. Resident Detra Salley-Bruce, a disabled Army veteran whose family has lived in Denmark for nearly a century, said, "A lot of people like the water tower because its old. Its part of the history of the city. Its a historical place." Instead of spending money to tear the water tower down, she said the city should tear old buildings down and improve businesses downtown, including the old Dane Theater, or place a walking trail where the old railroad tracks were on U.S. 78. In the meantime, Denmark City Council at its July meeting awarded the bid to remove the water tower to Iseler Demolition Inc., which specializes in water tower demolition, at a cost of $19,200, the city administrator said. "It will be sad not to see it there anymore," said Caroline Templeton, manager of The Caroline Collection Antiques in Denmark, noting she's not taking sides in the debate over the water tower's future. "It's been a part of the landscape for as long as I can remember. By Sara Israfilbayova Azerbaijan will soon receive new electric locomotives from Kazakhstan. Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan have already increased the volume of mutual deliveries and the two countries plan to increase mutual trade turnover, Kazakh-TV channel reported on August 3. Azerbaijan already buys diesel locomotives of Kazakhstan production from the company Lokomotiv Kurastyr Zauyty. At present, 10 locomotives are already running along the railways of Azerbaijan. Head of the Azerbaijan Export and Investments Promotion Foundation (AZPROMO) Rufat Mammadov, in an interview with Kazakh-TV, said that Azerbaijan intends to supply to Kazakhstan not only agricultural products but also industrial goods. We are planning another export mission to the regions of Kazakhstan, because we want to supply not only agricultural products and food products to this country, but also industrial goods. At the same time, we invited Kazakh producers, distributors and companies to Azerbaijan, Mammadov said. An export mission consisting of more than 20 Azerbaijani entrepreneurs engaged in production of cosmetics, alcoholic and non-alcoholic drinks, fruit and vegetables, canned food, tea, as well as machine building, chemical and light industry presented their products in Almaty, Kazakhstan on April 23-26. The diplomatic relations between the two countries were established on August 30, 1992. Both Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan attach great importance to the development of bilateral trade and economic ties. There is a successfully operating Intergovernmental Commission, and business forums are held regularly. Today, 37 Kazakh companies involved in different sectors of economy are successfully doing their business in Azerbaijan. In a western region of Kazakhstan alone, a total of 46 companies with Azerbaijani capital are registered. For Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan the most important points of cooperation appear to be the contacts on energy issues, oil transportation, agriculture, and the use of the Caspian Sea as an important international traffic artery. Now Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan are working on promotion of a joint transport project - the Trans-Caspian International Transport Route (TITR), which involves cargo transportation from China via Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Georgia and further via Turkey and Ukraine to Europe. The trade turnover between Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan amounted to almost $74.5 million in January-June 2017, $60.7 million of which accounted for the import from Kazakhstan, according to Azerbaijans State Customs Committee. By Azernews By Laman Ismayilova YARAT Contemporary Art Space has hosted a meeting with People's Artist of Azerbaijan Fakhraddin Manafov. The event dedicated to the National Cinema Day, covered actual problems of the film industry, as well as other topics in field of art, Azertac reported. The event participants had an exchange of views with the actor about romantic drama "Tahmina", where actor played the main role as well as other aspects of the movie. Manafov answered questions of interest to the audience. In conclusion, the film "Tahmina" was shown. Fakhraddin Manafov has always enjoyed the sympathy of the public. His talent allowed him to play a huge variety of characters and feel the same way as they do. Fakhraddin Manafov was born in Khankandi, Nagorno-Karabakh region, which is currently held under military occupation by Armenians. He made his first movie appearance in 1978. In 1980, Manafov graduated from the Azerbaijan State Culture and Art University and started working with Azerbaijanfilm. The actor performed in Russia, Ukraine, Lebanon, Turkey, Iran, Georgia. His famous works includes films Business Visit (1982), Seven Days after the Murder (1991), Tahmina (1993) and Ali and Nino (2015). For the role of Ibrahim Khalil Khan in the film A Sovereign's Destiny (2008) Fakhraddin Manafov was awarded Zirva State prize. President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev arrived in Gakh on a visit on August 3. As part of his visit to Gakh, President Aliyev attended the opening of Alatamir-Marsan-Tasmali-Zayam-Lalali highway, Azertac reported. The head of state viewed photo stands reflecting the technical indicators of the highway. Chairman of Azeravtoyol OJSC Saleh Mammadov informed President Aliyev that together with entrance roads to Fistigli, Marsan and Judullu villages of the region, the total length of the highway is 23.5 km. Under the project, the two-line road was expanded and a new 10m-wide roadbed was constructed. During the reconstruction, new bridges were built along the road to Fistigli, Marsan and Judullu villages. The length of the bridges is 9.5 and 24 metres respectively. The width of both bridges is 11 metres. The Alatamir-Marsan-Tasmali-Zayam-Lalali highway, which was built under President Aliyev`s order dated 22 August, 2016, links 8 settlements with the population of 7,000 people. This highway is one of the 40 inter-village highway projects implemented this year based on the recommendations and instructions of President Ilham Aliyev. The head of state cut the ribbon symbolizing the inauguration of the road. President Aliyev also visited Lalapasha villager Allahverdi Shirinov`s hazelnut farm in Gakh district. The head of state was informed of the farm, which features 130 hazelnut trees in a 3.4 hectare area. The farm is expected to give a harvest of more than two tons of hazelnuts this year. According to estimations of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, Azerbaijan is the fourth largest producer of hazelnuts in the world. The country produces around 35,000 tons of hazelnuts, with 90 per cent of this exported to foreign markets. In 2016, Azerbaijan exported hazelnuts to 25 countries, generating a profit of $100 million. President Aliyev attended the opening of the Flag Museum in Gakh. President Ilham Aliyev cut the ribbon symbolizing the official opening of the Flag Museum. The construction of the museum started in 2016. The complex occupies a total area of 3 hectares. The national flag of the Republic of Azerbaijan flies on a 62 metres-high flagpole. The modern lighting system was installed and green areas were laid out here. The museum, which covers a total area of 730 square metres, is located in the territory of the Flag Square. The President also viewed a tobacco reception center as part of his visit to Gakh. The head of state was informed that the facility created 90 jobs. Tobacco is cured in 60 facilities here. Local farmers give preference to Virginia sort. Around 6,500-7,000 tons of tobacco will be stored in the district this year. On the same day, President Aliyev attended the opening of Gakh-Goraghan section of Gakh-Gorakhan-Zagatala highway. Saleh Mammadov informed the head of state of the successful major overhaul of Gakh-Goraghan section of Gakh-Goraghan-Zagatala highway, which was built as part of the State Program on Socio-Economic Development of the Districts in 2014-2018. The construction work has been fully completed on the 8.6km section of the highway, which is 29.8km in length. A single-span reinforced concrete bridge was constructed on the highway, while a 46m-long double-span reinforced concrete bridge was built over the Suzgenchchay River. The construction of reinforced concrete water transmission pipes was also completed. Later, President Aliyev attended the opening of 110/35/10 KV new electrical substation in Gakh . Chairman of Azerishig Open Joint Stock Company Baba Rzayev informed the head of state about the substation. The substation will ensure supply of electricity to about 9,000 consumers in the district. President Ilham Aliyev launched the substation. The President also attended the inauguration of a 180-seat orphanage-kindergarten in Gakh, whose construction was initiated by the Heydar Aliyev Foundation. The head of state cut the ribbon symbolizing the official opening of the orphanage-kindergarten, and then toured it. The construction of the facility started in July, 2014, and ended in July, 2017. The three-storey building covers an area of 2124 square metres. All conditions were created here for children. All classrooms are supplied with the necessary equipment. The orphanage-kindergarten has a gym, a canteen and playgrounds. For the two American doctors, their Haitian counterparts and Touro College of Medicine (TouroCOM) Harlem medical student Maxwell Horowitz, there was little they could do for the suffering woman. The cancer in her abdomen had metastasized with physical properties, emerging as a white mass out of her stomach. We couldnt treat her, recalled Horowitz, who spent a week in Haiti running a volunteer medical clinic with Hands Together of the Palm Beaches in June. All we could do was offer her painkillers and suggest she go to the main hospital, a journey of several hundred kilometers. Unfortunately, the reality of medical care in Haiti seemed to be that if the patient could not afford the treatment, they didnt receive it. These people didnt have money, said Horowitz who together with his colleagues set up their clinic in a church in the city of Jean Denis, located in the region of Artibonite. They lived in concrete or mud huts and bathed in the river. They didnt have access to clean drinking water. The woman was lucky though; her three children talked about combining their income to ensure she received treatment. The experience gave Horowitz a newfound appreciation for the American healthcare system, flaws and all. While a lot of things in our healthcare system are up in the air, its important to remember that there are a lot of basic things we take for granted, said Horowitz. Growing up, Horowitzs family instilled in him the Jewish value of Tikkun Olam, repairing the world. Throughout his high school and college career, Hurwitz volunteered for a variety of causes including Duke Engage, where he spent ten weeks running a culinary camp for children in a poverty-stricken area of New Orleans. Looking for a medical school after completing a Masters in Medical Physiology at Case Western University, Horowitz read about TouroCOMs mission of helping the underserved. TouroCOMs mission really spoke to me, explained Horowitz. Horowitz discovered Hands Together of the Palm Beaches, an organization that regularly visits and provides medical treatment to the indigent in Haiti, while searching for a way to volunteer after his first year of medical school. In the week that Horowitz was there, the team managed to see close to 2000 patients. The doctors distributed supplies and medications for malaria, worms and other common ailments including hypertension, the latter of which Horowitz said was prevalent in the area. The most common causes of hypertension were sugary drinks like Coca Cola. Soda is cheaper than clean water, said Horowitz. You can have a bottle of soda that has 56 grams of sugar in it. One patient had an alarming blood pressure of 220/160. For the severe cases, the doctors distributed Clonidine, an ACE inhibitor and a beta blocker. In most situations, Horowitz and the doctors advised a change in lifestyle after asking patients about their habits. We can only give advice, stated Horowitz. We cant monitor them but hopefully our presence and care made them understand how necessary these changes are. For the people living in the remote village, the next time they would see a doctor would be when the clinic returned in six months. It was an eye-opening experience, recalled Horowitz, who will be spending the next few weeks performing research in neurosurgery at Mt. Sinai Hospital. It reminded me of why I got into medicine. It reinvigorated my passion to treat people and help them in any way I can. The Government of Oman has signed a $3.55 billion five-year senior unsecured term loan with a group of Chinese financial institutions. A statement issued by the Ministry of Finance said the term loan follows the sultanates $5 billion multi-tranche bond and $2 billion sukuk priced earlier this year. The transaction witnessed strong interest from a group of leading Chinese banks with the transaction upsized from the initial target of $2 billion to accommodate the interest from the lenders, said a Oman News Agency report quotin the statement. We are delighted to see the strong interest and support from the Chinese financial institutions and companies to increase their investments in Oman. The transaction demonstrates the continued confidence of international investors in Oman. With this loan we have successfully completed the financing requirements for the expected 2017 fiscal deficit, and also been able to meet the refinancing needs in relation to some of the loan instalments that fell due during the year," said Nasser bin Khamis Al-Jashmi, Undersecretary of the Ministry of Finance. The transaction was noteworthy in a number of ways and was able to fulfil the sultanates key objectives including: Complete governments external funding requirement for 2017; diversification of funding sources from the debt capital markets and the traditional source of Western/regional banks; a milestone transaction and a first for the region, where only Chinese financial institutions were invited to participate in a loan that introduced new pool of investors to Oman. "The transaction saw significant demand from the Chinese lending base, reaffirming lenders continued belief in the sultanates long-term credit fundamentals," the statement said. The $3.55 billion transaction size also represents the largest ever deal size achieved for a regional borrower exclusively in the Chinese market. The strong demand supported the competitive pricing and enabled Oman to upsize the facility, it said. The transaction was self-arranged by the newly established Debt Management Office in the Ministry of Finance. A large number of French companies have shown interest in investing in Iran's economic development projects, announced a senior trade official. French companies are eagerly looking for investment opportunities in the Iranian market, as the country today is in a position to choose from amongst an array of trade offers, Mohsen Rashidi, chairman of the French-Iranian Trade Promotion Center (CPCFI), was quoted as saying in an Iran Daily News report. He recalled that representatives of a number French companies have visited Iran since the implementation of the nuclear agreement between Iran and the major world powers, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). Rashidi added that under such circumstances, it is possible for Iran to establish effective relations with the world and take advantage of the available grounds to fully expand ties in every sector. He said that before the nuclear deal, the French businessmen used to prefer Qatar to Iran. Iran and the six world powers (the US, Russia, China, France, Britain and Germany) signed the nuclear agreement in Vienna in July 2015, based on which Iran agreed to curb its nuclear programme in return for lifting the related sanctions. In relevant remarks in late September, Iran's President Hassan Rouhani underlined the need for European governments to provide their banks and insurance companies with guarantees for cooperation with Tehran, adding that Iranian companies should also enjoy the benefits of the nuclear deal. Ooredoo Oman, a top telco in the Sultanate, has partnered with state-run Nama Holding, to provide electricity distribution companies of Nama Group with remote connectivity solutions as part of the automated metre reading (AMR) project. Under the agreement, Nama Groups new metres will be equipped with cutting-edge smart technology, to deliver more frequent readings remotely. AMR metres are an end-to-end solution which works by digitally sending readings to electricity distribution companies for more reliable energy bills. AMR metres come with displays, allowing users to better understand and regulate their energy consumption. Sultan bin Ahmed Al Wahaibi, chief business and wholesale officer at Ooredoo, said: The smart metre rollout project will augment Omans energy system with a solution that is more accurate, efficient, and innovative. This agreement gives energy suppliers the opportunity to create a smart energy grid to better match supply and demand. It is a privilege to be a part of this project, which is yet another proactive example of the Sultanate driving its growth into a knowledge-based economy that is easier, faster and more transparent for all. Mansoor Al Hinai, VP Distribution & Supply Business at Nama Group, said: This agreement forms part of a strategic national effort to providing high quality services to our customers and benefits our stakeholders. The AMR project is a gateway to enhancing telecoms technology in the electricity system, which will deliver greater efficiency for the benefit of businesses throughout Oman. Ooredoo, as our digital partner, offers us the telecoms technology we require to begin introducing AMR metres. During the first phase of the project, more than 10,000 commercial buildings will be outfitted with the next generation devices. The move will allow energy consumers to better understand their readings and make cost-effective changes to manage their utility bills. TradeArabia News Service Emaar Hospitality Group, the hospitality and leisure subsidiary of Emaar Properties, has unveiled plans to open a new hotel which will be linked directly to The Dubai Mall and with direct views of Burj Khalifa. In collaboration with Vida Hotels and Resorts, the group will open Vida Dubai Mall in 2021. This marks the 10th upcoming hotel project in the UAE and international markets - by Vida Hotels and Resorts, an upscale lifestyle hotel and serviced residences brand for the new generation of business executives, entrepreneurs and leisure travellers. Vida Hotels and Resorts already has two operational hotels in Dubai - Vida Downtown and Manzil Downtown. Additionally, the brand has seven upcoming projects, including Vida Dubai Mall, in the UAE and three in international markets including Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Egypt. With two other hotel brands under Emaar Hospitality Group Address Hotels + Resorts and Rove Hotels the company now has 11 operational hotels in Dubai, and 27 upcoming hotel projects in the UAE and key overseas markets including Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Turkey and Egypt. Vida Dubai Mall stands out for its central location in Downtown Dubai, linked directly with the worlds largest retail and lifestyle destination. The hotel and serviced residences project is in easy access of Dubais business hubs including the Dubai International Financial Centre and Dubai International Convention Centre. Opening to direct views of the iconic Burj Khalifa, Vida Dubai Mall is a two-tower development with the 195-room Vida Dubai Mall hotel and 614 serviced residences under Vida Residences Dubai Mall. The hotel and 380 serviced residences form part of a 55-storey tower, while the rest of the serviced residences are located in a second tower, 38 storeys high. The two towers are linked by a seven-storey podium with a wide range of amenities including restaurants, retail and leisure attractions. The podium-level amenities include an outdoor swimming pool, sunbathing deck, kids club, yoga deck and events spaces, which overlook Burj Khalifa. Olivier Harnisch, chief executive officer of Emaar Hospitality Group, said: Vida Hotels and Resorts has set a distinctive identity in the hospitality sector of Dubai as stimulating environments where convenience meets interactivity, reflecting the aspirations of the new generation of travellers. With its focus on serving as lively and vibrant hubs where inspiring minds can create, connect and come alive, Vida hotels are fast expanding their footprint with 10 upcoming projects in the UAE and international markets. Vida Dubai Mall in Downtown Dubai, linked directly to the most visited destination in the world, underlines the growth of this home-grown brand that offers exceptional ambience and service standards. The hotel project celebrates the brand value of Vida, which means life in Spanish, highlighting warmth, simplicity and creativity in uniquely design-led spaces. Highlighting our competencies in mixed-use project management, Vida Dubai Mall will be a sought-after destination for the young and trendy, and offer seamless service for guests and residents in a spectacular location in the heart of the city. Vida Dubai Mall will feature a rich suite of facilities for guests and visitors including signature restaurants, meeting rooms, salons, events venues and other amenities that will be unveiled in due course. It will also have a direct link to the retail podium of the upcoming Address Fountain Views residential and hotel project in Downtown Dubai, adding to the choice of residents. Elegant and simple, the design of Vida Dubai Mall celebrates fashion craftsmanship through vibrant seating areas and a variety of fashion-forward artwork. The interiors are also thoughtfully laid out to maximise views and filter in natural light. The other upcoming projects under Vida Hotels and Resorts in Dubai are: Vida Dubai Marina, Vida The Hills, Vida Townsquare, Vida Dubai Creek Harbour and Vida Residences Downtown. Emaar Hospitality Group has also signed management contracts to operate Vida Beach Reem Island Abu Dhabi, Vida Marassi Al Bahrain, Vida Jeddah Gate in Saudi Arabia, and Vida Marassi Marina in Egypt. - TradeArabia News Service Thumbay Hospital, the leading network of private academic hospitals operated by the Hospitality Division of Thumbay Group, will conduct a medical tourism meet in Bangladesh on August 5. Considered as the pioneers of Medical Tourism in the UAE, the Thumbay Hospital network, with its academic hospitals in Dubai, Ajman, Sharjah, Fujairah and Hyderabad (India), have been making significant strides in medical tourism through Thumbay Medical Tourism (TMT), Thumbay Groups award-winning medical tourism initiative. The medical tourism departments in all the hospitals, including Thumbay Hospital Hyderabad focus on marketing the services to international patients through innovative methods. Last year on World Tourism Day, Thumbay Hospital had welcomed its 6,000th medical tourist. Thumbay Hospital is also a proud partner in the Dubai Health Experience (DXH), the prestige brand conceived by the Dubai Health Authority (DHA) to strengthen the position of Dubai on the world map of medical tourism. TMT has established representative offices in 87 countries, giving further fillip to Thumbay Hospitals medical tourism ambitions. Commenting on Thumbay Hospitals medical tourism advantage, Akbar Moideen Thumbay, vice president of Thumbay Groups Healthcare Division said: Considering the current and future trends in medical tourism, Thumbay Hospitals has developed enhanced facilities, maintaining the highest standards of quality and offering packages with a wide range of personalization options. Our aim is to have about 1,000 medical tourists daily at our hospitals, in the next 3-4 years. Presently, Thumbay Hospitals receives inquiries from a wide range of clientele including hospitals, medical practitioners, partnered agents, and inquiries from various websites across the globe. - TradeArabia News Service Wyoming is one of only 12 states in the country that exports more energy than it consumes. It lands in the top five net suppliers of products like crude oil and coal, along with Texas, Pennsylvania, West Virginia and North Dakota. With a small population and rich natural resources, the Cowboy State ranks first in that list, and it has since the mid-1980s, according to the Energy Information Administration. Unsurprisingly, Wyomings economy is directly linked to the health of its chief energy industries. Over the last two years, oil, gas and coal markets have contracted as prices fell or demand decreased reminding everyone that there are pros, and cons, to landing first. When things are great, its great. The state sits back and enjoys the $100 crude price and $5 Mcf for gas. But, weve seen it go the other way as well, said Jim Robinson, principal economist at the states Economic Analysis Division. At the best of times, Wyoming enjoys high revenues from the multiple taxes laid on industries like coal and crude. The severance tax for mining exhaustible resources from the state is 7 percent of fair market value for coal and 6 percent for oil and gas. Additionally the companies pay royalties, property tax and sales taxes. All of which takes the tax burden off the citizens of Wyoming, Robinson said. In short, Wyoming exports its taxes to the energy consumers in other states. On the flip side, Wyoming cant do anything about the prices of its valuable resources. Coal production is a significant factor pushing Wyoming to the top of net exporters of energy, and its taken a hit in recent years as other states buy less of it. Ironically, another of the states industries, natural gas, is pressuring coal in the power mix. This year has been a rebound year for industries, but hardly a dramatic rise. In the second quarter of 2017, there was modest production of coal in Wyoming, with some companies reporting an earnings loss. It is expected to be the low point in the year for coal production, depending on how cold the upcoming winter months prove to be. Meanwhile, oil and gas markets have been relatively stable, but not robust, Robinson said. Prices there are really, really flat and theyve been that way for the last six months, he said. The environment right now for producers is very different than years ago. They are much more aware of the bottom line. We are not seeing a big bounce back in sales and use taxes related to the mining sector for that reason. In Campbell County, the center of the coal market, the sales and use taxes for fiscal year 2017 were down $19.8 million, according to the Economic Analysis Division. Natrona County, a central location for oil and gas field services, was down $7.1 million. Trends show a gradual improvement with no surprises or significant gains, Robinson said. The reality is this slow economic period could last for a very long time, the economist said. A massive crude oil bust that hit Wyoming in the 1980s kicked off nearly two decades of low prices before the state experienced a significant improvement in the sector. Luckily for Wyoming, coal production in the Powder River Basin was on the rise in the mid-80s, expanding to be the large and sustainable bedrock of the state economy, until recently. Prices have gone up and prices have fallen again for both crude oil and natural gas. Coal has faced economic hardships and declining employment, but has emerged from the worst of the recent downturn, experts say. The downside of being an energy state, Robinson said. Is the volatility. Leah Yuval Genie Avuno and Bar Alkaher are exuberant, engaging, bright typical teenagers. However, their lives for the past year have been anything but typical. They came to Tucson through the shinshinim program as ambassadors of their country, Israel, under the auspices of Tucsons Weintraub Israel Center. There were 2,500 applications to the program and 114 of those teens were accepted for positions around the world. Their goal was to make a tighter connection between Israel and the Jewish and general communities in each country. Leah immigrated to Israel with her mother and aunt when she was two years old; they had extended family in Israel who had arrived decades earlier. She is now the oldest of eight siblings and lives in Kiryat Malachi in southern Israel 37 miles from Gaza. One of her activities among an extraordinary number of others is her presidency of the city youth and students council under whose umbrella special programs were created for Ethiopian teens to learn how to combine the Israeli modern world and the Ethiopian world and other children of immigrants from, for example, Morocco and Yemen. In Tucson, she spoke about the diversity of the Israeli population and grinned when she said that in the past, Ethiopian Jews literally thought they were the only Jews in the world. She gave her talk, "Story of an Ethiopian Jew," at an event at the University of Arizona sponsored by the Black Student Union and Hillel. Bar was born in Haifa. When he was a toddler, his parents moved the family (Bar has a twin brother and an older sister) to the newly created town of Shimsheet in the Galilee. It is a self-described secular town, but the residents are surrounded by Judaism and celebrate its cultural aspects which include all the holidays. Like Leah, he has a dizzifying biography. A favorite activity is his volunteer work in the Young Outdoor Guide program where he joins field trips with younger students helping their teachers by creating activities and taking on various responsibilities. He is also a counsellor in his youth movement. When they arrived in Tucson, they were shocked. Bar thought Tucson was just a barren desert, but was excited about being in a relatively small city because he doesnt like big cities. Tucson was not the first place Leah would have imagined if she thought U.S.A. But she quickly got used to the quietness and the mountains and came to love it here. They have visited many venues in Tucson, including Montessori schools where they have played with the children and took along Israeli music, snacks and games PHOENIX In a fight reminiscent of the old West, its now official: Two Arizona ranchers cannot have the same brand for their cattle. The ruling came from the Arizona Supreme Court in a case that involves a decision by Eureka Springs, a California operation, to move its cattle to Arizona. Those animals already bore the bar seven brand, essentially a dash and a numeral 7. So the firm applied to the state Department of Agriculture to register that brand in Arizona. Only thing is, Eloy rancher David Stambaugh already had recorded that brand. So the state agencys clerk rejected Eureka Springs request. But that was overruled by supervisors because the Eureka Springs cattle are branded on their left rib; Stambaugh brands his cattle on their left hip. Both a trial judge and the state Court of Appeals sided with the Department of Agriculture. So Stambaugh took his case to the states high court. In legal arguments, attorneys for the Department of Agriculture argued that the agency was free to consider that the different location of the brands allowed both to be recorded. But Justice Robert Brutinel, writing for his colleagues, said what the Department of Agriculture did violated the law that says no two brands of the same design or figure shall be adopted or recorded. What that means, the justice said, is that anything else is irrelevant. He wrote that the statute is unambiguous and does not include location. Anyway, Brutinel said, allowing location to determine to whom a steer belongs would undermine the very purpose of the branding law. He said it would reduce a misapplied brand one inadvertently placed on a different location on the animal to being an unrecorded brand. And Arizona law makes the use of an unrecorded brand a crime, punishable by up to 30 days in jail and a $500 fine. Brutinel acknowledged that when ranchers register a brand they are also to include the location where the animal will be marked. But he said theres a good reason for that: It can prevent theft. Requiring ranchers to specify the location of their brands makes it more difficult for a thief to modify or replace a valid brand because their thief must pass what effectively is a two-prong security test: a matching design and a matching location, Brutinel wrote. Even if the thief is able to modify one brand design into another, it must still be in the required location, he continued. Additionally, specifying the location of the brand helps the Department (of Agriculture) and other ranchers know where to look to be able to quickly identify an animals owner. But none of that, the justice said, overrules the plain language of the law that a rancher with a unique brand is entitled to ensure he or she is the only one in Arizona to use it. Leading up to Tuesdays hearing on a proposed ban of fee-based sexual orientation conversion therapy for minors, county communications specialist Jason Ground encouraged members of a private Facebook group to attend and criticize Supervisor Ally Millers position on the matter. I believe we should allow parents to decide how to raise their children, Miller wrote in a July 27 Facebook post. Hers was one of two votes at Tuesdays Board of Supervisors meeting against the resolution that bans conversion therapy of minors for a fee in the county. Referencing those comments, Ground encouraged members of the private Facebook group which appears to have been shut down Wednesday to sign up to speak during the call to the audience portion of the meeting and shove her words down her throat, according to screenshots first published by the Arizona Daily Independent website. Working in county communications, I cannot safely say anything publicly, just in a private group like this, Ground wrote. In a subsequent message containing an expletive, Ground wrote, Oh, and ---- her. Grounds posts were not visible as of mid-morning Wednesday, and around 11:30 a.m. the group was no longer publicly accessible. Ground declined to comment when contacted by the Star, though county communications manager Mark Evans confirmed he had made the comments. Evans said Ground decided to delete his Facebook account of his own accord. County employees are prohibited from using social media for personal reasons during business hours, according to Evans. We use social media here for county business, Evans said of his department. However, this wasnt county business and, moreover, even though he was posting in a closed group he was still publicly criticizing the supervisor in an inappropriate way, and for both of those reasons he has been appropriately disciplined. On Wednesday morning, Evans declined to provide any details on that discipline, but confirmed that Ground is still employed in the communications office. State law requires public bodies to maintain all records that are reasonably necessary or appropriate to maintain an accurate knowledge of disciplinary actions. At the time of Evans' conversation with the Star, no such records had been produced, according to an email sent by Evans Thursday afternoon in response to a public records request. However, at the behest of County Administrator Chuck Huckelberry, a letter of reprimand - intended to memorialize a discussion earlier in the day regarding Ground's "wrongful use of county resources" - was subsequently drafted and sent to Ground. "As we discussed, the Communications Office provides an important public service for the County and our work receives a high level of scrutiny," the letter, which the county provided to the Star, reads. "It is vital we conduct ourselves professionally and treat all county employees and elected officials with respect." "Your action has not only been an embarrassment for yourself but for this office and for the county," the letter continues, before warning Ground that similar or additional violations of county policy "will result in further discipline, including dismissal from county employment." Additionally, Ground apologized to Miller for his criticism and use of profanity in a Wednesday afternoon email. "It will not happen again," the email concludes. Miller did not respond to requests for comment. The conversion therapy ordinance was approved with a 3-2 vote Tuesday, over the objections of Miller and Supervisor Steve Christy. PHOENIX Federal agents threatened to indict the wife of former utility regulator Gary Pierce if he did not plead guilty to bribery charges, Sherry Pierces attorney said Tuesday. FBI agents showed up at the couples house May 16, just days before a federal grand jury indicted both, said the attorney, Ashley Adams. My client was in her robe, Adams told U.S. District Court Judge James Tuchi on Tuesday. She said the agents, with a draft of the proposed indictment in their hands, told Gary Pierce that if he did not plead guilty, Were going to indict the mother of your children and the grandmother of your grandchildren. Adams did not say what the couple told the agents. But a week later, Gary and Sherry Pierce were indicted on charges of bribery and fraud, along with the owner of a utility company, George H. Johnson, and a lobbyist, Jim Norton. Assistant U.S. Attorney Frederick Battista did not address the allegation during the court hearing, and he refused to comment on it afterward. According to the indictment, Johnson funneled $31,500 through Norton to Sherry Pierce for what prosecutors contend was minimal work. The contention is that the funds were a bribe for Gary Pierce to vote for two issues of interest to Johnson before the Arizona Corporation Commission: allowing owners of small firms like Johnson Utilities to pass some of their income-tax obligations along to customers and increasing the companys rate base so it could boost its charges. All have pleaded innocent. Adams and the attorneys for the other three defendants went to court Tuesday to get access to various FBI interviews, case agent notes and other documents. Prosecutors did not want to provide some documents unless there was a court order prohibiting the defense team from sharing with others, including the media. Battista argued outside disclosure could harm another and larger investigation that is still pending. Records show the prosecution has an FBI report of agents interaction with the Pierces on that May morning, but it is one of the documents prosecutors dont want disclosed to the public. Adams asked Tuchi how an interaction with the couple could be considered confidential. And attorney Patricia Gitre, who represents Gary Pierce, questioned how an FBI report about an early morning pre-indictment interaction with the couple could be part of some other investigation. Battista defended the confidentiality, telling the judge, Once they have the information, they will understand how its possible that pertains to another investigation. Prosecutors are arguing that if whats in that document and others gets out, it will become evident who else the FBI is investigating. They already have said there is a much larger and more intensive investigation. Battista said premature disclosure could undermine that inquiry and result in witnesses refusing to cooperate because they fear their names will end up in newspapers. Attorney Ivan Mathew, representing lobbyist Norton, was not impressed. That is gobbledygook, he told the judge. Woody Thompson, representing Johnson, said the burden is on prosecutors to show the judge why documents in the governments control should be shielded from outside eyes. The claims of harm by Battista are all speculation and conjecture at this point, Thompson said. Tuchi said federal law clearly requires the government to turn over any information about the case to defense attorneys. But the judge also said he understands the harm prosecutors are claiming if some of that information gets out. To narrow whats restricted, the judge ordered prosecutors to surrender everything they have on this case and then find the carve-outs of which documents and interviews they believe cannot be shared beyond the defendants and their lawyers. That order ensures the defense team can see what the government has and what it wants protected. At that point, Tuchi said, the lawyers can file legal motions arguing whether there should be restrictions on use of the materials. Battista noted that, even without disclosure of the documents and interviews, there have been media reports and speculation on what else is being investigated. Both the Corporation Commission and Pinnacle West Capital Corp., parent of Arizona Public Service utility, have disclosed contact with the FBI. And Gary Pierce told Capitol Media Services after he was initially interviewed by the FBI that agents were questioning him about the 2014 election. The probe appears to be an outgrowth of an investigation originally started at the state Attorney Generals Office. It included allegations that Pierce, while a regulator, met secretly with Don Brandt, the chief executive of APS, and Don Robinson, his predecessor, while the utility was in the middle of a rate case before the commission. That state investigation also was looking into $500,000 spent by the Free Enterprise Club in 2014 on behalf of Gary Pierces son, Justin Pierce, who was running for secretary of state. Wil Cardon, another candidate in that race, charged that the elder Pierce used his position on the commission to get financial support for Justins campaign from companies regulated by the panel. Ironwood Forest National Monument must be protected to preserve its plants and animals as well as the tourism spending and jobs it has generated, said a group of speakers led by U.S. Rep. Raul Grijalva. Grijalva, five environmentalists, a Tohono Oodham tribal official and an aide to Pima County Supervisor Sharon Bronson held a Wednesday news conference. They spoke against a Trump administration effort to review Ironwood and 26 other national monuments, including four in Arizona, for possible elimination or reduction in size. All these monuments were created by presidential orders, which President Trump and numerous other Republicans have criticized as executive branch overreaching. Ironwood was created in 2000 at the request of Pima County government and local environmentalists, with little major public opposition, speakers noted. Thats unlike other monuments declared in Utah and elsewhere over local opposition. This is one that I worked for, said Tucson Democrat Grijalva, a former county supervisor, as he stood amid rocky ridges and desert shrubs of the Waterman Mountains inside the monument. Referring to Trumps order to review the monuments legal status, Grijalva said, We question the motivation of that and we question the legalities of that. While Trumps review was in part triggered by former President Obamas controversial designation of the Bears Ears National Monument in Utah, it was also an opportunity to deal with the demands and pleadings of industry, particularly the extractive industries, to go into these monuments and exploit them, Grijalva said. Grijalva said he and other Democrats on the House Natural Resources Committee have asked Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke for transparency who did you meet with, who are your stakeholders, what is the criteria for your review, what are the comments that should be made public? Last month, three Arizona Republican congressmen and 11 other Congress members wrote to Zinke asking to eliminate Ironwood and Grand Canyon-Parashant, the Sonoran Desert and the Vermillion Cliffs monuments in this state. They said Ironwood prevents multiple use of state trust lands which they said harms the public school system because it gets revenues from state land sales. The monument contains close to 129,000 acres of federal land and about 54,000 acres of state land. They also said the monument designation prevented mineral and geothermal energy production and led to a ban on target shooting there. On Wednesday, Bronson aide Maria Klucarova countered that Ironwood is one of many places in Pima County that in 2015 accounted for more than $2 billion in travel and tourism spending. That overall spending generated 24,600 jobs, $115 million in state tax revenues and $81.9 million in local tax revenues, Klucarova said. Verlon Jose, the Oodham Nations vice chairman, said, We must and shall protect the pristine desert. ... This is our national library, this is our national education. ... This is history, people. We must preserve this for future generations. We know about economic development, we know about the almighty dollar. But there are a few things that are non-negotiable, that we must preserve and protect, not for me or you, but for our elders and our children, Jose said. You know who is building a really strong argument against the re-election of Sen. Jeff Flake? Sen. Jeff Flake. Our junior senator, a Republican, made a splash over the last week by coming out with a seemingly daring denunciation of Republican behavior under President Donald Trump, in interviews and in excerpts of his new book, called Conscience of A Conservative. His pearl-clutching impressed national pundits like the gullible centrist Republican at the New York Times, David Brooks. But Flake also laid the foundation for an argument that can be made against him from the right and the left in 2018. The argument will be that Flake is all talk and no action. And it will likely be used by conservative Republicans challenging him in the primary election, then adapted and reused by Democrats challenging him in the general. Many Republicans scoff at Flake's attempt at molding a conservative image for himself the year before the election. I exchanged Facebook messages Thursday with Lori Hack, a Ted Cruz supporter who became infamous in Republican circles as a delegate to last year's national convention who refused to vote for Trump. The state GOP chair, Robert Graham, replaced her as a delegate. Hack, of course, has problems with Trump as Flake does. But she actually did something about it and suffered for it by losing her credentials to attend the Republican National Convention. She has a problem with Flake, too that he talks about himself as a conservative while taking sides too often with Democrats. She pointed to his support for President Obama's normalization of relations with Cuba and his support for comprehensive immigration reform as two examples. Looking at Flake from the left, as I do, the contradiction between words and deeds jumped out last week. In an excerpt of his book published in Politico, Flake criticized Republican members of Congress for looking the other way during the instability of Trump's presidency. "To carry on in the spring of 2017 as if what was happening was anything approaching normalcy required a determined suspension of critical faculties. And tremendous powers of denial." What's hard to fathom is that Flake had written those words before he voted for the so-called "skinny repeal" of the Affordable Care Act. This bill was a precise repudiation of the principles of good government that Flake is arguing for in his book and media tour. To recap, the skinny repeal was a last-gasp effort to get something done on health care. It was worked out in private by a small group of Republican senators. Up until the few hours before they were to vote on the bill, the senators had not seen the bill. Senators were expected to vote for it with the expectation that it would then not be approved in the House and instead be converted into a new health-care bill in a House-Senate conference committee. It was the apex of bad government in service of the Trump agenda, and Flake went with it. Amazingly, he did so while he was preparing to launch a critique of just this sort of behavior. The issue of Flake's talk vs. Flake's action he built that. One of the main suspects in a prostitution scandal that entangled police officers admitted in court to running an illegal massage parlor for more than two years. Stephanie Garcia pleaded guilty on Monday to felony counts of keeping a house of prostitution and receiving the earnings of a prostitute, according to Pima County Superior Court documents. In February 2016 a year after police raided 10 properties across Tucson believed to be offering sexual services Garcia was charged with eight felonies, including illegal control of an enterprise, encouraging women to lead a life of prostitution and money laundering, court documents show. From January 2013 through January 2015, Garcia operated a massage business called Daisys Delights, that advertised on websites, according to Arizona Daily Star archives. Garcia previously worked for a massage parlor called By Spanish, which operated for four years until Tucson police shut it down during the January 2015 raid, following a yearslong investigation into the massage parlor ring. The investigation showed that several police employees knew of or were customers of both businesses. In 2013, Garcia left By Spanish to start Daisys Delights, employing several women to give massages and a booker to take appointments. Garcia is facing a maximum sentence of two years in prison, but the charges also carry the possibility of probation, court documents show. The date of her sentencing was not posted to Pima County Superior Court records as of Wednesday. The booker, Miranda Gomez, pleaded guilty in March to an open-ended offense of receiving the earnings of a prostitute. Unlike Garcias plea agreement, which classifies both her offenses as felonies, Gomezs plea says that her offense will be treated as a felony until the court decides to designate it a misdemeanor. In May, the operator of By Spanish, Clarissa Lopez pleaded guilty to keeping a house of prostitution and receiving the earnings of a prostitute. She was sentenced to two years of probation and 600 hours of community service. Lopezs boyfriend, Ulises Ruiz, is facing six felonies in connection with By Spanish and is scheduled to go to trial in January. Mozambican Prime Minister Carlos Agostinho do Rosario has urged Vietnamese businesses to extend their operations in his home country. PM Rosario joined talks with his Vietnamese counterpart Nguyen Xuan Phuc in Hanoi on Tuesday, as part of his official visit to the Southeast Asian nation from July 31 to August 3. During the conversation, the Mozambican head of government expressed his hope that more businesses from Vietnam would begin operations in his home country in the fields of trade, transportation, oil and gas, and agriculture among others. PM Phuc considered the visit an important milestone in the bilateral relations of the two countries. The two leaders expressed their satisfaction with the positive development of the Vietnam- Mozambique traditional friendship and multi-faceted cooperation. Regarding political ties, they agreed to maintain exchanges at all levels and support each other during international forums. With regard to economic ties, both parties highlighted the effective operation of Movitel, a joint venture between Vietnams military-run telecom group Viettel and Mozambiques investment company SPI, as well as Vietnams cooperative food crop development research project in Mozambique. According to PM Phuc, Vietnam is willing to share its experience with Mozambique in the fields of natural disaster prevention, weather forecast, climate change, education and training, and security and defense. He asked Mozambique to provide more favorable conditions for Vietnamese businesses to open bonded warehouses, develop goods distribution channels, and improve the legal framework for foreign investors. Regarding regional and international issues, both sides pledged to contribute to the maintenance of peace and cooperation, and address any dispute via peaceful means in accordance with international law. Following the talk, the two heads of governments witnessed the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding on cooperation to preserve wild flora and fauna, and an agreement on aviation transport services. PM Rosario also met with General Secretary of the Communist Party of Vietnam Nguyen Phu Trong on the same day. Like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter to get the latest news about Vietnam! Vietnam has expressed its discomfort at a recent statement from the German foreign ministry, which requested a Vietnamese embassy officer to leave Germany in response to the alleged kidnap of a former Vietnamese oil executive in Berlin. Thursdays regular meeting of the Vietnamese foreign ministry in Hanoi was overshadowed by questions regarding Trinh Xuan Thanh, a fugitive who turned himself in to police on Monday after hiding overseas for nearly a year. Thanh, a former provincial leader and ex-chairman of a state-run Vietnamese company, has been criminally charged for his role in the firms incurring massive losses. According to an AP report on Wednesday, the German government accused Vietnamese agents of kidnapping an ex-oil executive in Berlin, apparently referring to Thanh, and consequently demanded that an officer of the Vietnamese Embassy in Germany leave the country within 48 hours During Thursdays meeting, Tuoi Tre (Youth) newspaper asked Le Thi Thu Hang, spokesperson of the Vietnamese foreign ministry, to comment on the report and elaborate on her ministrys reaction. In response, Hang said she feels sorry about the statement from the spokesperson of the German foreign ministry in regard to Trinh Xuan Thanh on August 2. An AFP correspondent also questioned Hang as to whether Vietnam confirms the accusation that it had kidnapped Thanh in Berlin and whether the incident would affect the Vietnam-Germany relations. The reporter also asked the spokesperson about the whereabouts of Thanh. German news agency DPA requested Vietnams reaction to reports which quoted Thanhs attorney in Germany as saying that the ex-oil executive was seeking asylum in the European country. Responding to those questions, Hang said: According to a July 31 announcement from Vietnams Ministry of Public Security, Trinh Xuan Thanh gave himself up to the police. Competent Vietnamese agencies are investigating the case. The spokesperson added that Vietnam always respects and keeps developing its strategic partnership with Germany. Also on Wednesday, the German foreign ministry said in an official statement that the Vietnamese government should bring Thanh back to Germany so the European country could start processing a Vietnamese request to extradite him, as well as his asylum application. Trinh Xuan Thanh is the former deputy chairman of the administration of Hau Giang Province and the former chairman of PetroVietnam Construction JSC (PVC), a subsidiary of state-run oil and gas giant PetroVietnam. He is among six individuals probed on charges of intentionally violating state regulations on economic management that caused severe consequences, for causing massive losses of approximately US$147 million at PVC. An international wanted notice was issued for Thanh in September 2016. Like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter to get the latest news about Vietnam! Good morning from Tuoi Tre News! Society -- One hundred and fifty out of 781 meters of an underground tunnel passing under Ho Chi Minh Citys District 1 to make way for the citys first metro line has been dug so far after over two months of construction, according to the municipal Management Authority of Urban Railways. -- Vietnam may run out of construction sand in 2020 as domestic demand for the granular material in the next few years is forecast to exceed the countrys total reserves of two billion cubic meters, Pham Van Bac, director of Vietnams Department of Construction Materials under the Ministry of Construction, warned on Wednesday. -- Hanoi police officers have arrested Kieu Tien Vinh, 31, the welder allegedly responsible for the fire that devoured a baking facility in the capital on Saturday, killing eight, after he was found to be doing the work without proper training or qualifications. -- The Civil Aviation Authority of Vietnam has proposed a number of options to enlarge the capacity of Tan Son Nhat International Airport in Ho Chi Minh City to 40 million yearly passengers, including the expansion of the airports northern apron by the third quarter of next year. -- Two tourist information booths have been set up at the September 23 Park and Bach Dang Riverside Park in Ho Chi Minh City, where foreign visitors can get access to free brochures, travel assistance, power outlets as well as Internet-connected computers which can be used to look up information on local attractions. Business -- Sacombank has estimated that it would take three years to collect all the debts owed by its former deputy chairman Tram Be, who was arrested on Tuesday along with the banks ex-CEO Phan Huy Khang for their deliberate economic mismanagement that had resulted in financial losses of VND6.6 trillion (US$288.4 million). -- Vietnams Ministry of Finance has proposed a new regulation that would limit the amount of tax-deductible life insurance bought by companies for their employees to VND3 million ($132) per person a month. -- Mitsubishi Motors Vietnam has recalled nearly 1,000 cars of its Outlander Sport models GA2WXTHHL and GA2WXTSHL manufactured between 2014 and 2016 to replace the rear shock absorbers, which were found to be prone to rusting. -- State-owned Vietnam National Chemical Group (Vinachem) has been found responsible for making multibillion-dollar investments in fertilizer projects that have so far incurred financial losses of up to $280.44 million and outstanding debts of $1.07 billion. Sports -- Mai Huu Tin, president of the Vietnam Vovinam Federation, was elected president of the World Vovinam Federation for 2017-2022 on Wednesday at the federations congress in India. Like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter to get the latest news about Vietnam! Help India! Patna, (IANS): In a first of its kind in Bihar, a mob in Bhojpur district led by cow vigilantes on Thursday thrashed a truck driver and two others on suspicion of transporting beef, police said. They also tried to set on fire the vehicle which was on its way to Muzaffarpur district. But the police said they foiled the attempt. Support TwoCircles The incident occurred in Shahpur near Ara town when the mob stopped the truck on suspicion that it was carrying beef and caught the three. All three men were arrested after being rescued from the mob, a police official said. They will be interrogated whether they were carrying beef or buffalo meat, the official said. The protesters blocked the Ara-Buxar road demanding that the three men be handed over to them. The police refused to do that. The truck driver has confessed that they were carrying buffalo meat and not cow meat, the official said. Help India! By TwoCircles.net Staff Reporter Another violent incident of cow-vigilantism has been reported, this time from Betul district of Madhya Pradesh where members of a so called cow-protector outfit thrashed four men accusing them of smuggling cows. Support TwoCircles The incident took place at Dulhara village, which is around 110 kilometres from Betuls district headquarters. The incident happened Friday last week but came to light yesterday when the video of the same was circulated on social media platforms. The victims Suresh Meena, Mohammad Sameer, Roop Singh and Mohammad Afzal were bathing in a river in the Dulhara village when some of the locals gathered near the river and thrashed them, accusing them of smuggling cows. All the victims belong to Harda district. The video shows the victims tied and being beaten up by the goons. What makes the incident look more bizarre that a policeman is also spotted thrashing the victims. There was no police case registered against anybody until yesterday. After the video went viral, police registered a case against assailants as well as the victims. Police SDO Prem Singh Thakur informed the press that Sections 341, 147, 294 and 323 of IPC was lodged against identified assailants Shyam, Manak, Sundar Parate and others. The policeman spotted in the video is yet to be identified. All of them are absconding. Moreover, the police officer told PTI that case against the cow smugglers has also been registered. The cow smugglers have been arrested. We are investigating the video clip and will take further action accordingly. Help India! By Twocircles.net Staff Reporter Thiruvananthapuram: Amidst protests against Karnataka government over slapping police escort expenses on jailed PDP leader Abdul Nasser Madani for his travel to Kerala to attend his sons wedding, Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan has stepped in saying the state government is ready to facilitate Madanis Kerala visit and provide him with all the required security. Bengaluru city police have slapped a bill of Rs. 14.79 lakh on Madani after Supreme Court granted him bail to attend the wedding function on condition that he foot the bill for his security expenses. An undertrial in Bengaluru blast case, Madani is currently logged in the Bengaluru jail. Support TwoCircles A Facebook post by Pinarayi Vijayan on Wednesday night alleged the huge bill amount was slapped in order to obstruct Madanis trip to Kerala. NIA court had previously granted him permission to visit his old parents and Supreme Court has permitted him to attend his sons wedding. But Karnataka polices action is only meant to deny him, the post said. Vijayan said he doubts the move is aimed at obstructing his Kerala visit and added that the government was all set to provide any kind of security. The Chief Minister has also sent a letter to Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah seeking steps to reduce the bill. The Karnataka police will not have to bear additional expenses when the state takes up escort duty. Hence the amount should be reduced, the letter said. Madani formed the PDP in 1992 after the demolition of Babri Masjid in an attempt to challenge the Hindutva onslaught and marginalised communities like Muslims and Dalits in the state together. Madani was first arrested on April 8, 2000, in connection with the 1998 Coimbatore bombings which had killed 60 people. Madani was imprisoned for eight years but was released in August 2007 after the court acquitted him of all charges. However, he was once again arrested in connection with 2008 Bangalore blasts and has been in jail since. Help India! By Mirza Mosaraf Hossain, TwoCircles.net For the past three weeks, both the campuses of Aliah University: Park Circus and New Town, have come to a standstill due to protests over charges of corruption and nepotism against the University authority. The ongoing protests have also stalled the admission of new candidates for the session. Since the beginning of the session, no classes have been conducted for about 15 days due to protests and the main gate of the Park Circus campus has been blocked and even faculty and administration staff are not being allowed to enter the campus. Support TwoCircles Though this is not the first time that this University has come into limelight for the wrong reasons, the current situation can be described as one of the gravest situation that this University has faced in its 10-year period. While the University had been simmering with issues, the situation got worse in July, when protests erupted against the admission policies, administrative decisions, recruitments of various teaching and non-teaching staffs undertaken by the present Vice Chancellor and respective administrative bodies. On July 17, a group of 30 students from Theology Department gheraoed Vice Chancellor Dr Abu Taher Khan at the New Town Campus demanding why general degree course of Theology had been suspended. This led a tussle with administrations when students backed by the Trinamool Congress from B.Tech courses joined them to demand that each and every student who completed B-Tech should be given admission in M-Tech. In an interview with Anandabazar Patrika, the VC pointed out that among the protesting students were some who had more than 37 backlogs in their previous semesters. All the protesting students demanded the resignation of the Vice Chancellor and they even blocked the V.C from entering the university compound on July 23. They also dismissed admission procedure for the new session which was scheduled on July 24. Since then, the students have been agitating with other issues that are very pertinent to the campus. According to Syed Zaidul Hasan, an M-Tech student, Last year the Executive Council of this university formed a fact-finding Committee against corruption by the V.C that we submitted to the said Committee along with valid proofs. Though the Committee has finished its task of investigation which shows all the allegations that we drew are true, our V.C did not show any interest to publicise the report and thats why we are protesting. The other demands that they enlisted are the establishment of a separate library in Park Circus campus, solve the crisis of drinking water at the said campus, issuing of mark sheets in time so that students can apply wherever they want to, etc. The Registrar of the University, Dr Nursadh Ali, said, A dialogue between two dissenting groups is very necessary to resolve any problem. But there lies a vast gap between students and administration authority of this university to come up to any conclusion and that is very pathetic. Saidur Rahaman, an Assistant Professor in the Arabic Department, said, Participation of the students in politics is good and student have the democratic right to protest. But making campuses standstill, disrupting academic curriculum is not the right way of protest. All should come forward actively to resolve this crisis. He also said that coordination between teachers-students with the administration should be made so that basic demands of the students can be fulfilled at the earliest It must be pointed out that while there are genuine concerns among students over various issues, the role of political parties especially the Trinamool Congress has only made the situation worse in the campus. According to students, a number of protesting students manhandled and used abusive language against several teachers.While most students want classes to continue, they are too scared to come out and speak as these protesters are politically connected. Many of them are not even students anymore and most of these students are simply using protests to disturb the normal functioning of the campus. The regular students are also being threatened with dire consequences if they follow any classes. Yakul Rahaman, a third-year student of Electrical Engineering, said, We are told by the agitating students not to follow any class and if we do then consequences will be dangerous for us. He also said that there are hundreds of students who want to do classes but there is no one to come forward united and as protests have become a daily activity. What is all the more surprising is that even as protests escalated, the administration has not even bothered to create and/or hire a Proctor for the University and neither is there any authority which can guarantee discipline or provide security. As a result, even for the smallest issues, the Police has to be called into the campus. According to some Muslim scholars and community sympathisers, the fear is that the current situation may destroy the aspirations and dreams of the minorities of West Bengal. One Professor who refused to be named, said, The present Bengal government has granted crores of rupees for its infrastructure, lab, and other related matters. Maulana Azad College and Lady Brabourne College were set up by the then Muslim philanthropists in order to upgrade Bengali Muslims overall improvement. But now there are hardly any Muslim students in these two institutions. He added that the present turmoil over tag and war between administration and students at Aliah University is looming another Maulana Azad or Lady Brabourne college situation. This University is often in news for all the wrong reasons and there is a collective failure of teachers, administration and students community. Every few months, there is a strike in the campus that affects academic work. Last year, classes were disturbed in the New Town science, engineering and management department for over 40 days he said. The grim situation in Aliah also must be seen in the context of the falling number of students from the Muslim community across campuses in West Bengal. A few days ago, we had done a story which showed how the minorities of West Bengal, especially Muslims, are being deprived of the benefits of Other Backward Classes (OBC) reservation categories both in Colleges-Universities admissions and state-run recruitment sectors. In such a scenario, Aliah University becomes the only campus where Muslims are assured of quality education. The problem is that the current situation in the University at a time when the admission process will only tarnish its image and put the academic lives of students in danger. Help India! By Siddhant Mohan, TwoCircles.net A week ago, Pratapgarh police conducted a raid in search while looking for an absconding criminal but ended up targeting Muslim residents of three villages of the district. Support TwoCircles Javed alias Jabba and Shoaib are two criminals who are wanted by the police for their involvement in various cases. Police received the intel that Javed and some his companions were hiding in the villages Bhuliyapur, Azadnagar and Ahmadnagar. On July 27, Pratapgarh police conducted a search and raid operation in Bhuliyapur, Azadnagar and Ahmadnagar villages of around 6.30 am. Police was trying to arrest absconding Javed, but it ended up harassing the villagers, especially Muslims and torturing and shaming women. The raid and search operation lasted for more than three hours. SP Pratapgarh Shogun Gautam himself led the operation with the police force from ten police stations including Kotwali, Antu, Kohdor, Raniganj, Madhanta, Jethwara, Maheshganj and Baghrai. When a force of around 500 policemen barged into these villages on July 27 morning, it created a huge chaos and fear among the villagers. Although police have claimed that it was purely a search operation but locals are presenting a completely different picture. According to them, the police specifically targeted houses of Muslims. One villager Mohammad Afzal told TwoCircles.net, It was like they came for vengeance. They left no Muslim house spared, and they almost did not touch houses of people from other religions. The time when police entered into the villages, many villagers were still sleeping. Police allegedly entered into the houses through rooftops and backdoors. Moreover, police also pulled people from their houses and made them stand outside of the houses while they were conducting a search operation. This act has given rise to the reports and allegations of looting cash and jewellery coming out from the region. One of the villagers Shakir Ali has alleged that Police entered his house from back door, then pulled his wife out of the house and started searching inside the almirah. Shakir has reported than when the police has left his house, he found that about 45 thousand rupees, and some jewelry had gone missing from his locker. He suspects the policemen took it. A fact-finding team of Samajwadi Party leaders had gone to observe the situation. The teams member Shailendra Yadav aka Lalai told TwoCircles.net, When we visited there, it was total chaos. People started crying, especially women who have faced the police atrocities most. The delegation has accused police of ripping of the clothes of Muslim women. When we tried to confirm the fact, no women came forward. But one local told us, They did not have any lady constable with them. Only male constables were handling the situation. You are smart enough to think what a force of male constable does to ladies. The same they did to our women. The police claim that it had brought a number of women constables with them, but sources inform that only two lady constables were brought with the force of 500 men. Police did not stop at the raiding. The police also seized 27 two-wheelers, one Innova and one e-rickshaw, all belonging to Muslim community members for allegedly not having supporting documents of their ownerships. This step has created huge chaos as the vehicles were seized by the police who came to arrest a criminal, and all the vehicle owners had the proper papers. That is why administration had to release all the vehicle in couple of days after the incident. Around 28 young individuals from the community were beaten by the police during the raid. Allahabad-based Minority Welfare Society met District Magistrate and Superintendent of Police on the same day to record the grievances. The society has alleged the police of carrying out a torture operation, in the name of search operation. While SP Pratapgarh Shagun Gautam has denied to all these claims and termed the allegation as pressure tactics. He told TwoCircles.net, I dont think you believe that police loots money, and beat people. No such thing happened that day. Police had gone to search and arrest, but the wanted fled just a day before. And the man who tipped us off also denied. This all is pressure tactics so that police should not go there again. Help India! Lucknow, (IANS): Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath on Thursday announced that women across the state will get free ride on all state-owned buses on Raksha Bandhan day. The women will be able to avail free ride from midnight of August 6 till midnight of August 7. Support TwoCircles Necessary instructions, officials told IANS, have been issued to the Uttar Pradesh State Roadways Transport Corporation (UPSRTC). The state government has also asked police to ensure that the free ride for women is safe and that they do not face any trouble at the hand of eve-teasers or any anti-social elements. A new research suggests that Netflixs popular teen drama 13 Reasons Why may have triggered a rise in the number of Google searches about suicide and possibly suicidal ideation. Published in the Journal of the American Medical Association on July 31, the research looked at Google Trends data to analyse how internet searches for suicide changed, both in content as well as volume, immediately after the TV series premiered on March 31. An upswing in suicide searches 13 Reasons Why is centred on Hannah Baker, a high school student who leaves behind 13 cassette tapes after committing suicide. While she was alive, Baker was badly bullied, assaulted and generally ignored. She addresses each audio recording to a person who she claims played a role in her decision to take her own life. Researchers noted that over the first 19 days after the shows debut (between March 31 and April 18), 900,000 to 1.5 million more Internet searches were made about suicide and suicide methods than the expected, reflecting a 19% hike. Seventeen of the top 20 related queries were higher than expected, with most rising queries focused on suicidal ideation, said the study. The research highlighted that online searches for how to kill yourself increased by 9% while commit suicide went up by 18% and how to commit suicide escalated by 26%. However, not all the search results were negative. The paper found that searches for suicide prevention went up by 23% and suicide hotline number increased by 21%. It is crucial to note that the study does not determine whether the Internet searches studied during the research actually led to any suicide attempts. The paper concluded by stating that 'our analyses suggest 13 Reasons Why, in its present form, has both increased suicide awareness while unintentionally increasing suicidal ideation. Suicide on-screen Ever since it first aired in March, the teen drama has met with equal parts praise and backlash. If there was a list of ways not to portray suicide, this would tick every box, said The Guardian columnist Zoe Williams, in an April 2017 article. Aimed at a young audience, Netflix's breakout hit series was intended to reveal the gruesome, graphic nature of suicide. According to Nic Sheff, one of the shows writers, 13 Reasons Why was created to to dispel the myth of the quiet drifting off. Sheff himself had once attempted to take his own life. He shared his views about the series in a Vanity Fair op-ed that he wrote after the shows release. Im proud to be a part of a television series that is forcing us to have these conversations because silence really does equal death, he added. Getting help is what saves people, as long as the help does what it's supposed to do: helpIn the show, Hannah does what she should, she seeks help. But the help wasn't good enough, and that's the note the show ends on, wrote Rudi Kinsella in an op-ed published on an Irish news website, JOE.ie. Perhaps directing the conversation towards young people, as 13 Reasons has done, is what needs to be done, Kinsella added. A difficult topic However, some people arent happy with the way suicide was portrayed on the show. In 13 Reasons Why, I dont see a daring and powerful teen drama. Its just a tired attempt at discussing a difficult topic. Its clear the creators see suicide only for its shock value, and I worry for the teens like me who will watch the show, wrote 18-year-old Jaclyn Grimm in a USA Today opinion piece. "There is a great concern that I have ... that young people are going to overidentify with Hannah in the series and we actually may see more suicides as a result of this television series," said Dan Reidenberg, executive director of SAVE (Suicide Awareness Voices of Education), a suicide prevention advocacy group, told ABC News. Two months ago, 15-year-old schoolgirl Bella Hendon took her own life after being apparently inspired by the controversial Netflix show, stated a News Corp Australia report. In another case, Franco Alonso Lazo Medrano, a 23-year-old Peruvian, took his own life and left behind recordings just like Hannah Baker did in 13 Reasons Why. "The way things are portrayed in the media does have an effect on the way suicides can happen. This is particularly true for young people that are very vulnerable and at risk of suicide," added Reidenberg. According to SAVE, suicide is the third leading cause of death in the world for those aged 15-44 years. If you are feeling depressed or experiencing suicidal thoughts, please call the SupportLine telephone helpline at 01708 765200. You can also talk to your parents or a loved one or, seek professional help. It's important to know you're not beyond help and you're not alone. Before becoming leader of the Labour Party, Jeremy Corbyn opposed Britain's membership of the European Economic Community and then the European Union all of his political life. Footage has revealed that in 1995, he spoke out against the EU's bureaucracy. He was also filmed revealing his disdain for the way Brussels dealt with the 2015 Greek bailout crisis. Mr. Corbyn is a Brexiteer During the EU Referendum last year, he struggled to compose a passionate argument for Britain to remain in the EU. He also failed to reveal whether he voted for Brexit when he attended his local polling station. Although his position on the issue has become muddled and confused since June 23rd 2016, if Remainers bothered to study his history of opposition to the EU, they will discover his actions speak louder than his words. Mr. Corbyn is a Brexiteer. He always has been and he always will be. Why do so many Euro-enthusiasts turn to him as their best hope of defeating the UK's withdrawal from the trading bloc? It is strangely ironic, if anything. A study conducted by The Independent found that 30,000 voters turned to Labour as their best hope of defeating a 'hard' Brexit. Yet the Labour leader said himself that remaining a member of the EU's Single Market contradicts ending the free movement of workers, meaning you cannot have one without the other. This proves he himself supports a full EU withdrawal. But the shadow Brexit Secretary, Sir Keir Starmer, intends to table an amendment to enable the UK to remain part of the European Economic Area as part of a transitional deal before 2022. There is much talk of the Conservatives being divided over leaving the EU, yet Labour is just the same. This adds more speculation as to why the majority of Remain voters who participated in that Independent survey voted for this party when their position is so confusing. Labour was the lesser of two evils Perhaps they feel that under the First-Past-the-Post voting system Britain uses to select its governments, they felt Labour was the lesser of two evils in regards to Brexit. They knew the Tories were mostly united on implementing a full withdrawal from Brussels, but felt the centre-left party was still their best hope of thwarting a 'hard' EU exit under the UK's two-party system. Yet they also knew Mr. Corbyn's party's manifesto said this country will leave the trading bloc in its entirety. This means 80 per cent of people who voted this year chose a party that supported a 'hard' Brexit. Even though the Liberal Democrats were the only party to oppose Britain leaving the EU, many Remainers must have felt voting for them was a 'wasted' vote. It is clear the party has also struggled to rebuild itself after the disastrous tuition fees u-turn in 2010. Despite this, if I was a passionate Europhile, I would have voted for the Liberal Democrats in June. This general election was a total mystery. We also witnessed UKIP voters deserting their party for Labour, satisfied by the latter's Brexit policy as well. So just who does Mr. Corbyn appeal to then? Everybody? Perhaps this is why he performed better than expected in June. The Korean regime has now tested an "IRBM" (Intermediate-range Ballistic Missile). The present missile arose to a height of 1741 miles and flew 900 miles into the Sea of Japan. In case the trajectory was changed the missile range would greatly increase. With increased range, the missile could reach Alaska. Donald Trump has already said that the Americans are at the end of their "strategic patience". He has said that the military option is on the table. He and his generals would be aware that the military option would just lead to a Pyrrhic victory. If the Americans do attack North Korea the retaliation against South Korea and Japan is on the cards. American action against North Korea may well result in massive destruction in South Korea. CNN International reported this news. China and North Korea The North Korean Dictator is a young man. One wonders whether he has any hobbies. president Trump in a Tweet has mentioned whether the Korean leader has anything else to do. Kim Jong-un is an insular man. He feels the security of his regime and North Korea lies in having an effective nuclear deterrent. Much of what the North has achieved now is with the encouragement of China. One is reminded that in 1962 China was in a similar position and yet the Americans did nothing to stop China going nuclear or develop ICBM. No American commentator has anything to say about this particular period. North Korean deterrent? General Mattis has already said that the military option would lead to a great calamity. There is no doubt that North Korea is not Syria. In a way, the Korean leader is correct in having a deterrent.This has saved him from an American attack. In other words, he has a deterrent. All the same, this could lead to destruction of the Korean Peninsula Economic sanctions The Americans have been trying to bring the North Korean regime to reason by economic sanctions. Economic sanctions can only succeed if all nations accept them. Unfortunately, the sanctions against North Korea have not worked. They have been in force for years. One reason is that China has not played ball. One wonders how sure is Trump that China will rein in the north. It's a tricky situation but Trump may well remember that in a nuclear conflagration there are only losers and survivors. Last word Trump has to show statesmanship and make a direct approach to Kim. That may work. A look back in history will show that Ho Chi Minh fought the Americans for 12 years but Vietnam is no longer China's best friend and more open to the USA. They also fought a war with China in 1983. Labour and Conservative MPs are teaming together to force a vote on the Government's 'hard' Brexit plans. If they are successful, the House of Commons would have to decide whether Britain remains a member of the European Economic Area (EEA) after the UK withdraws from the European Union (EU) on March 2019. But The Daily Express has revealed that a job advert for a Digital Design Lead for a new agency has suggested the UK will be quitting the EU's Customs Union in March 2019. It inadvertently disclosed the Government's post-Brexit trade policy. Theresa May intends to establish a new "UK Trade Remedies Organisation" to manage Britain's economic relations with the rest of the globe after it leaves the trading bloc. The news comes as data collated from The Independent shows that 30,000 voters abandoned the Conservatives on polling day for Labour because they believed the latter would be able to prevent a 'hard' Brexit, despite it barely being mentioned during the general election. The research suggests this factor helped deny the Prime Minister a majority. Largest fight in Parliament Many MPs fear that quitting both the EU and the EEA before the UK's trade deal with Brussels being concluded in 2022 will cause significant economic damage to this country. Labour politicians like Stephen Kinnock, Chuka Ummuna and Heidi Alexander are discussing with Conservative MPs how they can help keep Britain in the EEA during a transitional period when the Government's EU withdrawal bill is presented to the House of Commons in September. One option would be for an MP to table an amendment for the UK to remain in the EEA for a brief period. One Tory MP battling against a 'hard' Brexit told The Guardian it could be the largest fight in Parliament. They said there was a chance of defeating the Government on this issue. No. 10 has ruled out the option of remaining in the EEA after March 2019 and Theresa May's plan to create a brand new trade agency show she is not budging on this issue. The "UK Trade Remedies Organisation" intends to employ 130 new staff and will come under the remit of the Department for International Trade. It will investigate unfair trade practices like steel dumping, which currently resides with Brussels. "Global Britain" The body will be established on October 2018, ready for when Britain leaves the EU six months later. The advert for the agency also highlights the Government's commitment to implement a new trade bill in September as part of its vision for a "Global Britain." This revelation will infuriate the Chancellor, Philip Hammond, who is a big supporter of temporary membership of the EEA. The shadow Brexit Secretary, Keir Starmer, has also confirmed that he will be tabling for an amendment to vote for a transitional deal to be implemented after March 2019. A Tory-Labour alliance would leave the Prime Minister vulnerable to defeat over her Brexit plans, as the number of DUP MPs in the House of Commons would not be sufficient enough to protect her from losing a vote. Best model to prevent uncertainty Supporters of the EEA believe it is the best model to prevent uncertainty for businesses as Britain leaves the EU. The idea was supported by the former foreign secretary and Tory leader William Hague, arguing it was the only way to rescue Brexit. Brexit Secretary David Davis said it was likely that Parliament would have the final vote on whether it can repeal the EEA Act 1993, but since Theresa May lost her majority, there may be no appetite among politicians for exiting the EEA. Ms. Alexander criticised Conservative politicians for failing to read the main text of the Government's EU withdrawal bill, saying it states that they intend to dismantle the EEA Act 1993. Mr. Kinnock said a 'soft' Brexit was the best way to prevent Britain from walking over a cliff-edge. One pro-EU Labour MP said Mr. Corbyn should capitalise on the findings from The Independent's general election study to fight the Government's Brexit plans. Every day new revelations about Donald Trump and the "Russian connection" are in the headlines. The latest is the news that Donald Trump dictated a statement to his son regarding Russian hacking. With his son-in-law involved in a Russian investigation and the findings of the intelligence community that Russia interfered in the presidential election in support of Trump, this is certainly enough to alarm. In addition, Congress is also conducting an investigation into the Russian connection. All of these matters have influenced the opinion of Congress, leading to the passing of more sanctions on Russia. Such overwhelming support of the bill must have been a surprise to the president, along with the clause that bars the president from lifting or modifying the sanctions without the approval of Congress. This is the reason the president referred to the bill as seriously "flawed," according to CNN International Overwhelming Congress support The president was unable to even veto the bill because of the overwhelming bipartisan support the bill received, which effectively means that his hands are tied. This implies the sanctions are on Trump himself. It also means the vast majority of members in both houses are convinced that Trump had something to do with the Russian connection. Such an overwhelming majority in support of a bill which will also limit the freedom of action of the president is a rarity in US constitutional history. The secretary of state Rex Tillerson has also voiced his opposition to the bill saying it interferes with the executive authority of the president. Not trusting the president? Congress has shown that they do not trust the president as far as the Russian connection is concerned. Trump's claims the Russian investigation is a "witch hunt" could be true and there are ominous signs that almost all Congress feel Russia interfered in the election in support of Trump. The question is, does Russia have so much of influence that it can sway the American election? This is a difficult question but there is no answer. Millions of Americans voted across the country and it would be an insult to their intelligence in case it is insinuated that Donald Trump won the election because of Russia interference. Donald Trump may have had a Russian connection but that is not a crime. Any leader can legitimately meet with the foreign governments. Last word The problem arises when you insinuate that something sinister has happened and say that Russia had a hand in helping Trump sit in the White House. Trump has opposed the restriction on his freedom of action in foreign policy with respect to Russia. But nobody is listening as Congress has effectively tied the hands of the president and he can do nothing about it US Military based in Cameroon will be investigated following claims by amnesty international that Boko Haram terror suspects were abused and tortured and that maybe the military personnel turned a blind eye to it. The Amnesty International 2017 report on torture in Cameroon infers that while the American Military may not have abused and tortured suspected members of the Boko Haram terror group, which claims allegiance to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), there is a possibility that they knew about the abuse but did nothing to stop it. US Military AFRICOM to launch investigation US Africa Command (AFRICOM) will investigate whether the U.S military stationed in Cameroon knew about the abuse by Cameroonian forces who allegedly tortured and possibly killed suspects of the Boko Haram Group. CNN reported in 2015, that Boko Haram was listed as the "world's deadliest terror group by the Global Terrorism Index." The Central West African country of Cameroon does have foreign military operating in the country and according to Stars and Stripes, "The U.S. maintains a small presence in Cameroon, which hosts a drone base." Sputnik explains that the "US military maintains a minimal presence there, while also training with Cameroonian soldiers alongside French forces in the fight against Boko Haram." AFRICOM has undertaken to find out what, if anything, their troops knew about the allegations of torture that were raised by Amnesty International. In a statement, Jennifer Dyrcz, a Captain in Command was cited by The Stars and Stripes as saying, "US Africa Command has ordered that an inquiry be conducted into these allegations. As the inquiry is ongoing, we cant provide specific details about what that entails." Amnesty International alleged torture by Cameroon soldiers Boko Haram members may belong to one of the most dangerous terror organizations in the world, but as far as Amnesty International are concerned, that does not mean suspected members of the group can be tortured and abused. They received reports from victims claiming they had been beaten, tortured and even killed at more than 20 sites across the country. The concern about the US presence is that they may have known about the torture, but did nothing about it. At least one complainant suggested that "white men" who spoke English were present at a site where he was held. They spoke English and the complainant said that he thought " they were Americans." Alioune Tine, the Regional Director for Amnesty International in West and Central Africa was quoted by Sputnik as saying,Nothing could justify the callous and widespread practice of torture committed by the (Cameroon) security forces." Cameroon and Boko Haram Boko Haram based in neighboring Nigeria is a terrorist group who are trying to establish an Islamic caliphate in Nigeria. They are hugely opposed to western based education which they claim lures people away from following Islamic teaching as a way of life. Following the deaths of hundreds of students at schools, a 2014 incident which USA Today covered, took place. According to their report, Boko Haram abducted about 234 school girls to use as sex slaves and to intimidate the local population. Cameroon became involved in the fight against Boko Haram shortly after the incident that took place at the Government Secondary School in the town of Chibok in Borno State, Nigeria. At the time, Reuters carried a report that Cameroon deployed over a thousand troops to their northern border following accusations from Nigeria that the country was not doing enough to prevent Boko Haram from sheltering across the rather porous border. Chad, who also shares a common border also deployed troops to counter Boko Haram movements, along with a joint force that included forces from Niger and Benin. Retaliatory attacks by Boko Haram include a 2016 attack on a Chad military base that killed six soldiers. The day before, 24 News reported that "a would-be suicide bomber was shot dead before detonating her device as she sped on a motorbike towards a military roadblock near the Cameroonian border town of Kolofata." Cameroon crackdown on Boko Haram, many suspects imprisoned In the fight against the Boko Haram terror group, the Cameroonian military and police have detained many suspects for questioning. The Amnesty International report 2017 was the result of prisoners complaining that they were tortured. AFRICOM will be investigating whether their military personnel in the country were aware of the alleged torture and failed to report it in terms of United States Military Standing Orders. Stars and Stripes cited AFRICOM's spokesperson as saying that US military service members are required to notify leadership of any "possible, suspected or alleged violation of the law of war for which there is credible information during the conduct of operations." When talking about discrimination, nothing is worse than passing a bill that restricts Transgender People from using Bathrooms of their choice. Just recently, the Senate in Texas supported a bill that would block transgender individuals from utilizing bathrooms in schools and buildings. The said bill runs counter to local ordinances that promote nondiscrimination. Bathroom bill: a vehicle of discrimination On Tuesday, the Texas Senate approved another version of the legislation that directly affects transgender people in Texas. This is part of the Republican efforts to revive the very controversial Bathroom Bill. Fox News reported that following a debate that took eight hours, the 21-10 vote was reached. Regardless of the Democrats objection to its passage considering its discriminatory effect on the already vulnerable population, the Republicans once more backed the necessity to pass the legislation for the sake of privacy in bathrooms. The Texas bill goes now to Congress for consideration. This Senate Bill 3 is authored by state Senator Lois Kolkhorst. As stipulated in the bill, the bathroom usage in schools and buildings will be regulated and will be overseen by local governments and will be based on the sex listed on an individuals birth certificate and other IDs. During the debate on Tuesday, a crucial alteration made to the legislation was the inclusion of IDs which are issued by the Texas Department of Public Safety. Despite the fact that these moves help transgender adults, who are unable to change their birth certificates, but are able to update their IDs, the bathroom bill does so little in enabling transgender children to utilize school bathrooms, matching their gender identity. The bathroom bill likewise nixes portions of local nondiscrimination ordinances that let transgender residents use public bathrooms of their preference. The bill would set a statewide policy on public bathrooms as well as offering guidance to school districts. Language of the past according to Democrats Democrats, on the other hand, believed the language of the bathroom bill was essentially a relic of the past. Moreover, the Democrats described wording in the original bathroom bill, which precluded the creation of policies to safeguard a class of individuals from discrimination, as language the Legislature has not taken into account since the Jim Crow era. The bill obviously allows certain people to be discriminated against. The bathroom bill now heads for to the House. The bill will be more likely to confront an icy reception by some legislators who are staunch opponents of such legislation. The Winds Of Winter has been delayed for seven years already, which is why most fans are now very thrilled for its official release. Recently, George RR Martin has finally given a hint about the books launch date. A Song Of Ice and Fire author hinted possible 2018 release International Business Times Australia reported that George RR Martin has finally teased the possible release date of The Winds of Winter novel. Writing on his Not A Blog website, the 68-year-old author has admitted that he is currently working on the sixth book of the A Song of Ice and Fire series. Martin has also addressed the speculations claiming that he already finished writing the much-anticipated novel. He said that the reports are totally fabricated, adding that he is still months away before finalizing his draft. The New Mexican writer did not disclose an official launch date of The Winds of Winter book. However, George RR Martin has shared that he is a bit uncertain whether TWOW or Westeros book titled Fire and Blood would be released first, UPI reported. I do think you will have a Westeros book from me in 2018... and who knows, maybe two, Martin said. The A Dance with Dragons novel, which is the fifth book of the A Song of Ice and Fire series, officially hit the stores in 2011. GRRM working very hard to finish TWOW Meanwhile, KRQE News 13 reported that George RR Martin is now working very hard on The Winds of Winter book that he has no enough time to do other things. The brain behind the Game of Thrones series had previously complained about not being able to watch movies because he is finishing the long-delayed book. Martin has claimed that he was able to watch only one movie in June, which he thinks is strange for him being a film lover. The veteran author even confessed that he, also, does not have time to read books as he focuses more on finishing TWOW novel. The A Feast for Crows writer even expressed his frustrations on fans who keep on demanding him to publish the book the soonest time possible. Martin, however, vowed to prioritize writing The Winds of Winter before he starts working on other book series. Though George RR Martin teased that The Winds of Winter might come out in 2018, fans should note that nothing is final as of yet. Hence, they should take things lightly until everything is confirmed and proven correct. Stay tuned for more news and updates about the up and coming book! Director Zhao Baogang says his latest TV series, Deepwater Forces, is about China's effort to establish a new, modern navy. The new series is a tribute to the 68th anniversary of the founding of the People's Liberation Army Navy. [Photo provided to China Daily] In 2014, crew members of Submarine 372 of the People's Liberation Army discovered that the vessel was sinking fast. Then on a patrol mission at sea, they were caught between life and death at midnight, after a sudden change in water conditions. Thanks to the fast reaction and skills of the PLA Navy, the crew was able to stop the submarine from sinking in a few minutes. President Xi Jinping honored the naval fleet's Senior Captain Wang Hongli in 2014. Wang's crew was also given first-class merit citations by the PLA Navya rare honor in peacetime. The incident inspired the TV series Deepwater Forces, which has been airing on Beijing Satellite TV, Zhejiang Satellite TV and streaming site iQiyi since July 27, with two episodes each night. Directed by well-known TV figure Zhao Baogang, the series has added fictional content to develop it into a story of young officers on a submarine. Zhao's 2007 hit TV series, Struggle, depicted bittersweet love in an urban setting. But his old fascination for the ocean led him to make this navy-themed series, a first in his 30-year career. "The core of the story is about China's effort to establish a new, modern navy," Zhao tells China Daily. To make the sets look as real as possible, Zhao got his team to build a life-size submarine prop in Fangshan district, around 40 kilometers from downtown Beijing. Chinese peacekeeping troops, the last detachment of the country's first deployment of a full infantry battalion for a United Nations (UN) peacekeeping mission arrive at Juba International Airport on April 8, 2015. [Photo/VCG] As a country pursuing the path of peaceful development, China has been staunchly safeguarding world peace and promoting global development. Since the beginning of the new century, China has enthusiastically participated in international affairs, adding value to international relations. Following the path of peaceful development, China has contributed to world peace and development, and worked with the rest of the international community to deal with various global and regional challenges. As a founding member of the United Nations and a permanent member of the UN Security Council, China has always supported the UN to play a greater role in international affairs. Over the years, China has become a major contributor to UN operations, undertaking an increasing number of tasks that include global peacekeeping, international humanitarian relief and escorting vessels in the high seas. China contributes more troops to UN peacekeeping operations than any other permanent member of the UN Security Council. More than 30,000 Chinese peacekeepers have served overseas since China started participating in peacekeeping missions in 1990. China's share of UN peacekeeping costs in the 2016-18 period will be second only to that of the United States. It has also played an important role in the Iranian nuclear talks, South Sudan's domestic reconciliation, the Afghan peace process and made great efforts to find a political resolution to the Syrian crisis. As many Chinese officials have emphasized, being the largest developing country in the world has helped China decide that development is its primary task of governance. And the history of the Chinese as a peace-loving people, their painful sufferings over the decades leading to the reform and opening-up, their aspiration for development, and the current global trend of peace and development have all determined that China will not seek development through the colonial and hegemonic path that the Western powers did to expand their empires. As President Xi Jinping has said, China's pursuit of peaceful development is not an act of expediency, much less diplomatic rhetoric, but a conclusion drawn from the objective judgment of history, the reality of the current world as well as the vision for the future. China advocates the building of a community of shared destiny and developing a new type of international relations featuring win-win cooperation. With the economic vision to build a trade and infrastructure network connecting Asia with Europe and Africa, it is promoting the Belt and Road Initiative on the principles of extensive consultation, joint contribution and shared benefits. As such, a more prosperous China will make even greater contributions to world peace and development. --Xinhua News Agency WASHINGTON - US President Donald Trump has signed into law new sanctions against Russia that were passed overwhelmingly by Congress last week and that run counter to his desire to improve relations with Moscow. A White House official said on Wednesday he had signed the bill, and White House adviser Kellyanne Conway confirmed this during an interview with Fox News. Given the delay since Congress approved the legislation last Thursday, there had been speculation that the Republican president might be resisting signing a bill that has already provoked countermeasures by Russian President Vladimir Putin. Congress, controlled by Republicans, approved the sanctions to punish the Russian government over interference in the 2016 presidential election, annexation of Ukraine's Crimea and other perceived violations of international norms. Trump, who has long said he would like better relations with Russia, grudgingly accepted the new sanctions, which also include Iran and DPRK. The bill had enough support in Congress to override a presidential veto. There were conflicting signals from the administration in recent days about the sanctions. US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson told reporters on Tuesday that he and Trump did not believe they would "be helpful to our efforts" on diplomacy with Russia. Vice-President Mike Pence said that the bill showed Trump and Congress were speaking "with a unified voice." The new sanctions measure, the first major foreign policy legislation approved by Congress since Trump took office in January, includes a provision allowing Congress to stop any effort by the president to ease existing sanctions on Russia. The legislation will affect a range of Russian industries and might further hurt the Russian economy, already weakened by 2014 sanctions imposed after Russia annexed Crime from Ukraine. After Congress approved the sanctions last week, the Kremlin ordered the United States to cut about 60 percent of its diplomatic staff in Russia. Putin said on Sunday that Russia had ordered the United States to cut 755 of its 1,200 embassy and consulate staff by September, and was seizing two diplomatic properties. Several provisions of the new sanctions target the Russian energy sector, with new limits on US investment in Russian companies. American companies also would be barred from participating in energy exploration projects where Russian firms have a stake of 33 percent or higher. The bill includes sanctions on foreign companies investing in or helping Russian energy exploration, although the president could waive those sanctions. The bill would give the Trump administration the option of imposing sanctions on companies helping develop Russian export pipelines, such as the Nord Stream 2 pipeline carrying natural gas to Europe, in which German companies are involved. Besides angering Moscow, the legislation has upset the European Union, which has said the new sanctions might affect its energy security and prompt it to act, too. Reuters BEIJING - Chinese Foreign Ministry issued on Wednesday a document of the facts and China's position concerning the Indian border troops' crossing of China-India boundary in the Sikkim sector into the Chinese territory. The following is the full text of the document: The Facts and China's Position Concerning the Indian Border Troops' Crossing of the China-India Boundary in the Sikkim Sector into the Chinese Territory I 1. The Dong Lang area (Doklam) is located in Yadong county of the Tibet Autonomous Region of China. It borders India's Sikkim state on the west and the Kingdom of Bhutan on the south. In 1890, China and the UK signed the Convention Between Great Britain and China Relating to Sikkim and Tibet which delimited the boundary between the Tibet region of China and Sikkim. According to the Convention, the Dong Lang area, which is located on the Chinese side of the boundary, is indisputably Chinese territory. For long, China's border troops have been patrolling the area and Chinese herdsmen grazing livestock there. At present, the boundary between the Dong Lang area and Sikkim is a part of the China-India boundary in the Sikkim Sector. 2. On 16 June 2017, the Chinese side was building a road in the Dong Lang area. On 18 June, over 270 Indian border troops, carrying weapons and driving two bulldozers, crossed the boundary in the Sikkim Sector at the Duo Ka La (Doka La) pass and advanced more than 100 meters into the Chinese territory to obstruct the road building of the Chinese side, causing tension in the area. In addition to the two bulldozers, the trespassing Indian border troops, reaching as many as over 400 people at one point, have put up three tents and advanced over 180 meters into the Chinese territory. As of the end of July, there were still over 40 Indian border troops and one bulldozer illegally staying in the Chinese territory. 3. After the outbreak of the incident, Chinese border troops took contingency response measures on the spot. On 19 June, the Chinese side made prompt and serious representations with the Indian side through diplomatic channels to strongly protest and condemn the illegal trespass by the Indian side and demand the immediate withdrawal of the trespassing Indian border troops back to the Indian side of the boundary.China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ministry of National Defense and the Chinese Embassy in India made serious representations with India for multiple times in Beijing and New Delhi, strongly urging India to respect China's territorial sovereignty and immediately pull back its trespassing border troops. The spokespersons of the Chinese foreign and defense ministries spoke in public on various occasions, laid out the facts and truth, stated China's position and released a map and on-the-scene photos showing Indian troops' trespass (see Appendix I). Road construction given as reason for June incursion into Chinese territory US experts have urged Indian troops to withdraw from intruded Chinese territory and also called on the two countries to resolve the issue diplomatically. Indian troops illegally crossed into the Sikkim section of the border between the two countries to Doklam, Chinese territory, in June, in an attempt to stop China's road construction going on there. The action drew strong protests from China. New Delhi has described China's road construction as a "significant change of the status quo with serious security implications for India", citing its geographic proximity to its vulnerable "Chicken's Neck" - the narrow stretch of territory connecting the majority of India to its more remote northeast areas. Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi told reporters in Bangkok on July 24 that it is very clear who is right and who is wrong in the standoff in Doklam, and that even senior Indian officials have publicly said that Chinese troops have not intruded into Indian territory. "In other words, India admitted that it has entered Chinese territory. The solution to this issue is simple, which is that they behave themselves and withdraw," Wang said, as quoted in a Chinese Foreign Ministry statement. Jon Taylor, a professor of political science at the University of St Thomas in Houston, said the Indian military breached both international law and treaty convention by entering Chinese territory shortly after Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited the US. "The incursion can be viewed as part of a greater strategic competition between China and India, one that is influenced by Trump's push for a closer partnership with India," he said. Taylor said that despite India's actions, China has remained restrained and tolerant. "I believe that this is because China wishes to preserve friendly China-India relations," he said, adding the need for a swift resolution of the issue is clear. But he said India does not understand the breadth of China's established presence on the Donglang (Doklam) Pass, nor its resolve to maintain its presence in the Donglang region since it is indisputably a part of China's territory and under its effective jurisdiction. "India would do well to remember China's response and resolve during the 1962 border war. Continued provocations could lead to a much wider, and uglier, conflict that would inevitably result in a Chinese victory, again". Ryan Hass, a foreign policy fellow at the Brookings Institution, said although the timing and final contours for resolving the dispute remain as yet unknown, there is cause for cautious optimism that the two countries have the wisdom to peacefully resolve the dispute. "Chinese and Indian leaders are among the most talented and creative diplomats in the world," he said. "Beijing and New Delhi would benefit by focusing their energies now on creating a conducive environment for peaceful solutions to emerge," said Hass, who served as director for the Chinese mainland, Taiwan and Mongolia at the National Security Council in the Obama administration. Ted Carpenter, a senior fellow of defense and foreign policy studies at the Cato Institute, said the dispute should be addressed through patient, creative diplomacy by Beijing and New Delhi. "Both governments need to make resolving this troubling issue a very high priority," he said. Hass said the US could use the dispute as an opportunity to clarify privately for both China and India its strategic interest in stable and productive relations between the two Asian powers. "Beyond that, the United States should avoid involving itself in the dispute, either privately or publicly, as any such involvement likely will not help to calm tensions, but could have the unintended effect of hardening each side's position as well as souring US relations with one or both of the disputants," he wrote in an article on the Brookings website. The US has not taken a side so far. State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said on July 18 that the US is concerned about the ongoing situation there, saying both sides should work together to try to come up with some better sort of arrangement for peace. chenweihua@chinadailyusa.com Please turn JavaScript on and reload the page. Loading... Checking your browser before accessing the website. This process is automatic. Your browser will redirect to your requested content shortly. Please wait a few seconds. ABC News(WASHINGTON) -- Newly appointed White House Chief of Staff John Kelly called Attorney General Jeff Sessions on Saturday to reassure him of his job security, a senior-level source familiar with the situation told ABC News. It comes in the wake of a wave of criticism Sessions has taken from the president on social media, and marks one of Kelly's first actions in his new role. Sessions was among Trump's earliest and most vocal supporters during his campaign for president, endorsing him publicly in February of 2016, and was widely regarded as a close ally of the president going into his role as attorney general. The relationship between the two men has shown signs of deteriorating in the wake of Sessions recusing himself from the ongoing Russia investigation, with Trump calling his attorney general beleaguered in a tweet sent on July 24. The reassurance from Trump's new chief of staff points to a change in direction from the type of ambiguous rhetoric the president has used as recently as last week, when he said "time will tell" what will happen to Sessions. Trump announced his appointment of Kelly, the former secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, to replace outgoing chief of staff Reince Priebus in a tweet last week, calling Kelly a "great American." Copyright 2017, ABC Radio. All rights reserved. HA NOI Nam A Commercial Joint Stock Bank has signed a 15-year bancassurance partnership with FWD Vietnam Life Insurance Company Ltd. to provide comprehensive and diverse life insurance products for the banks customers. With this exclusive agreement, FWD will expand its bancassurance distribution network as it aims to become a leading insurer in Viet Nam and change the way people feel about insurance. Luong Thi Cam Tu, Nam A Banks general director, said: "Through our stable customer base, nationwide network and similar strategies of customer centricity and mutual trust, I believe the cooperation between Nam A Bank and FWD will bring good results not only in the insurance sector, but also in the development of both companies." Through this collaboration, FWD is once again demonstrating solid steps to build a market-leading bancassurance distribution platform by investing in people, technology, partners and networks. Nam A Commercial Joint Stock Bank began operations on October 21, 1992, and was one of the first commercial banks to be established after the Banking Ordinance was issued in 1990 to enable economic reforms. Since then, it has grown rapidly, and now owns a network of 60 transaction offices nationwide. Its charter capital has increased to VND30 trillion now from VND5 billion in 1992. Nam A bank aims to establish itself as one of Viet Nams most modern and leading banks that is seeing fast, strong, safe and effective development, and making significant contributions to the countrys socio-economic development. Established in 2013, FWD is the insurance arm of Pacific Century Group, an Asia-based private investment group. FWD operates in Hong Kong and Macau, Thailand, Indonesia, the Philippines, Singapore, Japan and Viet Nam, offering life, medical and general insurance and employee benefits across a number of its markets. VNS HA NOI - E-commerce platform Sendo.vn has announced it is collaborating with Google to digitise and offer automatic online advertising service Shop Ads to 120,000 merchants on its marketplace. At Sendo.vn, we are committed to helping SMBs and consumers take advantage of the opportunities online. Vietnamese consumers, in turn, can access a wide range of products and choices in over 25 categories, supplied by 120,000 merchants. Therefore, this cooperation between Sendo.vn and Google is not only a crucial development strategy by Sendo.vn for its shops, but will also contribute to Viet Names e-commerce development, Tran Hai Linh, CEO of Sendo.vn, said. We are happy to work with Sendo.vn to help SMBs in Viet Nam grow and take advantage of the opportunities online, Matthew Heller, head of Channel Partnerships, Southeast Asia, said. "Sendo.vn offers knowledge, experience and end-to-end customer service on digital advertising, so that merchants can focus on running their businesses. SMBs can sign up for this service directly on the Sendo.vn website with just one click and their Google advertising campaigns will go live immediately. With a reasonable budget of only VN80,000 (nearly US$4) per day, Sendo merchants can reach at least 1,200 potential customers directly on the largest search advertising system Google, spending only VN60 (3 US cents) per customer. Moreover, Sendo merchants pay only when someone clicks on their ad. If no one clicks, they do not need to pay. Over 300 Sendo.vn merchants have signed up to use the Shop Ads service through this collaboration and have recorded positive results. The owner of Chat, a household utilities e-commerce site, said his business has grown after using Shop Ads. Since using the service, I have seen more customers visiting my online shop on Sendo.vn. When people search the key word household utilities on google.com.vn, they will see the ad for my shop. My sales have grown more than 40 per cent since I started using Shop Ads compared with previous months. According to a survey by Vinalink, Google ranked second in online advertising revenue in Viet Nam with VN2.2 trillion in 2015, following Facebook with VN3 trillion. Meanwhile, total revenue from all Vietnamese advertising enterprises had a smaller market share with VN1.9 trillion. - VNS HA NOI The Ministry of Industry and Trade (MoIT) has rejected a proposal to shut down a major iron mine over concerns that it poses risks to the environment. The ministry said in a press statement that the proposal by the Ministry of Investment and Planning (MPI) to immediately terminate the T hach Khe iron mine project in the central province of Ha Tinh was not based on scientific and practical considerations. It added that an alternative proposal would be submited to Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc for approval. The project was approved in 2007 but work on its was suspended in 2011 after Ha Tinh Province authorities proposed closing the mine over environmental concerns. The PM then for a review by the MPI, which also suggested stopping the iron mine project and another steel billet manufacturing project. The Government should consider the thousands of billions of Vietnamese ong invested over the past 10 years. The termination would affect the investment and business environment in Ha Tinh Province, the MoIT said in its response. It also called on the Government to consider the economic effectiveness of the project for Viet Nams industrial and economic development, its contribution to the GDP and to reducing the countrys trade deficit. The Viet Nam Union of Science and Technology Association (VUSTA) held a conference on July 25 to collect opinions on the project. "Many ideas supported continuing the project. However, some still proposed more studies to clarify the issues of environment and biological diversification, it said, adding that the ministry would continue to co-operate with relevant ministries and the province on resolving the problem. The Thach Khe iron mine project and its technical design was implemented by the Viet Nam National Coals and Minerals Group (Vinacomin), in co-operation with the Russian Design Institute for Dewatering of Mineral Resources, Special Mining, Mining Geography and Surveying (VIOGEM). The ministry said it established councils of leading scientists and specialists in minerals, hydro-geology, engineering geology, mining, environmental protection. They included experts from VUSTA, the National Assembly for Environment Science and Technology and Ha Tinh Provincial Peoples Committee following instructions from the PM. MoIT also invited the German CBM Company to provide consultancy as an independent expertise unit. The environmental impact assessment report on the project has been carefully carried out. It took a year to complete and be approved by the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment, it added. MoIT said the environmental issues that scientists have raised were clearly defined in the report, with local and foreign specialists saying the proposed solutions were suitable. It said the project was feasible as it would have revenue from not only minerals exploitation but water supply for local people. As of November 2016, Thach Khe Iron JSC poured VN1.6 trillion (US$71.1 million) into the project. If the suspension continues, it will be unable to recoup the investment. VNS As an important trading with a strong agriculture sector, Viet Nam has great potential to become a strategic exporter of agricultural products to the Republic of Korea (RoK), Hong Sun, vice chairman of the Korean Chamber of Business in Viet Nam, tells Viet Nam News reporter Nguyen Phuong Thao How do you assess the export potential of Vietnamese agricultural products, as well as Korean interest in this sector? The Republic of Korea has an area of 100,000sq.m, nearly one third of Viet Nam. However, the population of RoK is quite large at over 52 million. Therefore, Korean demand for food products is significant. Due to inadequate food supply from domestic producers, RoK depends heavily on imports of agricultural products. Korea has been importing a large number of agricultural products from China for many years; however, Korean customers are not as interested in Chinese goods anymore due to low standards and bad quality. Currently, the RoK government is seeking strategic partners for providing agricultural products to meet increasing demand of the Korean people. Viet Nam is one of RoKs most important trade partners and an agricultural country. Therefore, Viet Nam has great potential to become a strategic exporter of agriculture products to Korea. Furthermore, since the Viet Nam Korea Free Trade Agreement came into effect in December 2015, Viet Nam has more advantages in exporting goods to the RoK. What would you say are the main obstacles for Vietnamese firms in exporting agriculture products to the RoK market? From Viet Nams side, the biggest obstacle is the lack of large scale, hi-tech farms that meet quality standards. With the current model of small-sized farms and households being the main production units, it is difficult for the countrys suppliers to satisfy Korean market in quantity as well as variety. Then, the RoK government is very strict about quarantining food products. At present, RoK only accepts dragon fruit and mangoes from Viet Nam. Korea also needs lemon, avocado and many types of herbs, but Vietnamese products still face quarantine obstacles. In the coming time, Vietnamese exporters should co-operate with Korean importers and get information and advice on quarantine issues. For example, they should get information about which kinds of pesticides or fertilisers should be avoided for exporting produce to the Korean market. Currently, the RoK imports a lot of agricultural products from China. Can the increasing interest in Vietnamese agricultural products be sustained? What should Vietnamese farmers and enterprises do to sustain this interest? Chinas products do not meet the taste of Korean customers. People buy them only because of low prices. However, cheap prices often go parallel with bad quality and cheating, like using prohibited chemicals. The Korean Government has discovered some cases of cheating in imported Chinese goods. For instance, Chinese importers put lead into crabs to make them heavier, and this has led to decreasing confidence in Chinese products. Food has a direct, significant impact on human health, so if you lose your reputation once, it is difficult to win customers trust the second time. Therefore, Viet Nam should strictly follow the policies and regulations when exporting products to the RoK, building trust and reputation for Made in Viet Nam products. How can the Korea Chamber of Business in Viet Nam (KORCHAM) support Vietnamese exporters? KORCHAM, in accordance with Korean Agriculture and Food Distribution Association in Viet Nam (KAFDA), are supporting Korean enterprises in approaching Viet Nams agriculture market. KORCHAMs representatives have emphasised the important position of Viet Nam in talks with the Korean government, promoting trade co-operation between the two countries. From our experience, we have found that Viet Nam lacks product collection centres where agricultural products can be gathered, classified and packaged, serving both domestic demand and exports. Moreover, the cold chain is considered one of the most significant systems in developing agriculture. The Vietnamese Government should co-ordinate with related ministries, departments and local agencies to set up cold chain systems all over the country. At present, one Korean enterprise is discussing with the RoK government a proposal to support Viet Nam in establishing the product collection centres. However, I cannot reveal that companys identity yet. The number of RoK enterprises investing in Viet Nam has increased significantly. How do you evaluate trade relations between the two countries? There are over 6,000 Korean enterprises in Viet Nam at present, and this number will increase significantly if supported by the Vietnamese Government. During the visit of South Korean (former) president Park Geun Hye to Viet Nam in 2013, leaders of both countries targeted a bilateral trade turnover of US$70 billion by 2020. However, this year, the two sides have increased this target to $100 billion, thanks to successful and effective co-operation over recent years. We also encourage Korean firms, when investing in Viet Nam, to look at long-term instead of short-term benefits. We ask Korean businesses to follow all Vietnamese laws and pay attention to their Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) so as to become strategic partners in the long run. VNS HCM CITY Domestic garment and textile firms have, for the most part, missed out on the much-touted benefits of free trade agreements (FTAs) that Viet Nam has signed, experts said at seminar yesterday. The firms in the country that have taken advantage of FTA breaks is the FDI sector, they noted. Viet Nam has signed 12 free trade agreements, of which 10 FTAs have come into force: VN-ASEAN, ASEAN-India, ASEAN-Australia-New Zealand, ASEAN-South Korea, ASEAN-China, ASEAN-Japan, Viet Nam-Chile, Viet Nam-Japan, Viet Nam-South Korea and Viet Nam- Eurasian Economic Union, said Nguyen Ngoc Hoa, deputy director of the HCM City Department of Industry and Trade. In the 2016-20 period, most tariff lines under the FTAs have entered the period of being deeply cut or completely removed, he said. Garments and textiles are key export items for the country in general and HCM City in particular. If enterprises can take good advantage of FTA opportunities, the country will be able to increase export revenues as well as expand export markets, he said. But to be able to enjoy preferential tariffs under FTAs, the products must meet requirements under the rules of origin, he added. With weak materials supply and supporting industries, businesses in the garment and textiles face a big challenge in complying with the rules of origin, Hoa said. Import reliance Pham Xuan Hong, chairman of the Garment-Textile-Embroidery-Knitting Association in HCM City, said the garment and textile industry has to import around 70 per cent of its materials for production, mainly from China. Domestic garment and textile businesses have not taken much advantage of FTAs since they cannot meet rule of origin requirements. And one of the main reasons for this is that Vietnamese firms lack knowledge on this issue, he said. Hoa said yesterdays seminar was organised by the department in collaboration with the Ministry of Industry and Trade to help garment and textile businesses get updated information on rules of origin so that they can capitalise on preferential treatments under FTAs to boost exports. Trinh Thi Thu Hien, head of the origin of goods division under the Ministrys Export-Import Department, said that currently, more than 50 per cent of Viet Nams garment and textile products are making full use of opportunities provided by FTAs, but these are mainly FDI companies. Rules of origin can neutralise preferential tariffs under FTAs, she said. Goods eligible for preferential treatment under FTAs have to meet general or product-specific rules of origin, and have appropriate documentation, known as the certificate of origin (C/O). Each FTA has its own certificate of origin form, she said. A product can qualify for the C/O if it is cut-made-trimmed in Viet Nam under the ASEAN FTA, but under other FTAs like ASEAN-Japan and Viet Nam-Japan pacts, firms must meet the rules of origin from the fabric onwards, which is a big challenge for Vietnamese firms since the country still relies heavily on imported fabric. Under the EU-Viet Nam FTA, the ministry has negotiated to apply more flexible rules of origin, Hien said. While this FTA also requires rules of origin to apply from fabric onwards, meaning that exports to the EU must use fabric produced in Viet Nam or the EU, the agreement also allows firms to use fabric from one third country which has FTAs with both Viet Nam and the EU. At the seminar, Hien answered several questions raised by enterprises about FTA rules and procedures regarding C/Os. Diversify markets Hoa said exports in the garment and textile sector were still focused on a few main markets. He urged exporters to diversify their export markets, especially those with which Viet Nam has signed FTAs, so as to avoid or minimise risks. Firms need to study carefully the characteristics of each market as well as its rule of origin requirements, he said. Hong said garment and textile exports reached over US$14 billion in the first half of the year, a year-on-year increase of 11 per cent. Following the solid first half performance, the industry is confident of achieving its 2017 export target of $30-31 billion, an increase of 10 per cent over last year, he said. VNS HA NOI The European Commission has investigated the import of hand pallet trucks and their parts from Viet Nam, which allegedly originate in China. The investigation concerns the possible circumvention of anti-dumping measures imposed by the EUs Council Implementing Regulation No 1008/2011, as amended by Implementing Regulation No 372/2013. The regulations cover the import of hand pallet trucks and parts originating in China by imports consigned from Viet Nam, whether declared as originating in Viet Nam or not, and making such imports subject to registration. The investigation, which began on July 19, aims to determine if the import of hand pallet trucks and their parts, including chassis and hydraulics, into the EU circumvents regulations. It is being conducted following a petition from PR Industrial SRL and Toyota Material Handling Europe, manufacturers of hand pallet trucks in the EU. The petitioners said they witnessed a change in the pattern of trade involving exports from the Chinese mainland and Viet Nam to the EU following the increase of duties on the product without sufficient due cause or economic justification for such a change other than the duty. This change appears to stem from consignments of the product concerned via Viet Nam to the EU after having undergone assembly in Viet Nam. The applicants have provided evidence showing that these assembly operations constitute circumvention as Chinese parts make up more than 60 per cent of the total value of the assembled product and the value added during assembly is lower than 25 per cent of manufacturing cost. According to the EUs statistical office Eurostat, imports of hand pallet trucks from Viet Nam to the EU increased from less than 1,000 units in 2011 to more than 73,000 units in 2016. The applicants request also contains evidence that the effects of the existing anti-dumping measures on the product are being undermined. In addition, there is evidence that imports of the product under investigation are being done at prices below the non-injurious price established in the investigation that led to the existing measures. Should circumvention practices via Viet Nam covered by Article 13 of the basic regulation, other than assembly operations, be identified in the course of the investigation, the investigation may also cover these practices, the petition stated. To obtain information for its investigation, the Commission will send questionnaires to known exporters/producers in Viet Nam, known associations of exporters/producers in Viet Nam, known importers and known associations of importers in the Union and to authorities of Viet Nam and the China. Since the possible circumvention takes place outside the EU, exemptions may be granted to producers of the products under investigation in Viet Nam who can show they are not related to any producer subject to the measures and who are found not to be engaged in circumvention practices. The investigation will be concluded within nine months. VNS HA NOI Information technology group FPT Corporation (FPT) has announced it will reduce its ownership in its retail arm FPT Technology Production Distribution and Retail to below 50 per cent. The group said in its management boards resolution on Tuesday that the divestment will be carried in 2017 and divided into two stages. In the first stage, FPT will sell 30 per cent to institutional investors to reduce its ownership to 55 per cent from the current level of 85 per cent. Secondly, FPT will sell a maximum of 10 per cent of its remaining stake in the retail and distribution arm to other investors via an initial public offering (IPO). According to the Nikkei Asian Review, the sales of the distribution and retail arm could bring about VN2.3-2.7 trillion (US$103-121 million) to the firm. The sale income could be used to improve its technological infrastructure and provide new telecommunication services. At the groups annual shareholder meeting held in April, the group chairman Truong Gia Binh said selling the distribution and retail arm was a must so FPT could become a pure ICT group with rapid growth. HCM City Securities Corporation (HSC) said in a report that the deal could be finalised in the third quarter of this year. According to HSC, the IPO price has not been determined as FPT did not want its shares to be owned by a single investor, however, it could be lower than the share price of Mobile World Corporation. HSC also said that FPT Retail could trade on the HCM Stock Exchange (HOSE) in 2018. Shares of FPT, listed on the HOSE under code FPT, closed Wednesday up 0.8 per cent at VN49,400 per share. Shares of Mobile World Corp on the same exchange ended at VN99,500 per share. FPT also plans to increase charter capital for FPT Software LLC to VN1.3 trillion from the current VN1 trillion, marking the groups efforts to switch its core business from retail to technology and telecommunication. The group also announced it will make a 10-per cent cash advance payment for 2017 dividend payout, meaning shareholders will receive VN1,000 for every share. The group will finalise the list of beneficial shareholders on August 18 and payments will be made on August 31. FPT in the first six months of 2017 recorded a post-tax profit of VN1.21 trillion, a yearly increase of 12 per cent. VNS THUA THIEN-HUE The central province of Thua Thien-Hue earned US$474.7 million from shipping products to other countries in the first seven months of the year, a year-on-year surge of 24.88 per cent. Of the total, $268.2 million was contributed by the foreign-invested sector, up 28.3 per cent, and $137.4 million by the local private sector, up 30.54 per cent, compared with figures of the corresponding period last year. The United States continued to be the provinces largest importer, accounting for 44 per cent of the provinces export revenue. Along with traditional markets such as China, the European Union, Japan, the Republic of Korea and Taiwan, local products were also exported to Cambodia, India, Slovakia and Sri Lanka. Key earners, including industrial processed products, agro-forestry-fishery products, fuel and minerals, as well as beer, sake, fine art and crafts, recorded strong growth. Notably, the export of aquatic products doubled to $16 million. The province also spent $303.9 million on purchasing goods from other countries, increasing 8.35 per cent from the same time last year. Most of the imported items were garment support materials and spare parts, with China still the main source of these imports. Import expenses of local State-owned enterprises and private firms accounted for 18.4 per cent and 30.1 per cent of the total spending, respectively, while those of the foreign-invested sector constituted half the sum. Despite accounting for a large proportion, FDI spending only rose by 3.12 per cent year-on-year. Local SOEs saw the highest increase of 18.5 per cent in import revenue compared with the same period last year. The province is targeting export growth of 15 per cent per year during the 2017-20 period to reach an export turnover of $1.25 billion by 2020. VNS By Vuong Bach Lien They come from different backgrounds but have joined together for a community project in Viet Nams northernmost province of Ha Giang. Four young men arrived from different countries architects Alexander Eriksson Furunes from Norway and Sudarshan Khadka from the Philippines, Frenchman Remi Gontier, a social enterprise consultant, and independent filmmaker Eric Roache from the US. All volunteered to take part in Action for Lung Tam, an independent community project which aims to empower women and provide sustainable development for the traditional craft village of Lung Tam, which sits on the Nho Que River. With seven other young Vietnamese, they banded together to form a solid team. Funny, friendly, and dedicated, they are well known in the community, often called by the team members and villagers in a familiar way: Alex, Sudar, Remi and Eric. Early yesterday morning, they boarded a bus and began their third trip to Lung Tam Village. The project Action for Lung Tam began in May this year to guide and encourage the local community to develop the region with their own capacity in a sustainable way and inspire neighbouring communities to do the same. This project was initiated by Alex and a young dynamic Vietnamese woman Nguyen Huyen Chau. He and his Filipino colleague and friend Sudar came to Viet Nam and offered free training to young Vietnamese architects on how to apply the build with community method. This model had been applied successfully by Alex in India, China, and the Philippines. Sudar, who also specialises in building for the community, partnered with Alex on a Study Centre project in Tacloban, Philippines after super typhoon Haiyan hit the city in 2013. The community, after taking part in the project, learned skills necessary to building and re-constructing houses after natural disasters. Why Lung Tam? Alex and Sudar said that they were impressed by Vang Thi Mai, a Mong woman who set up a Linen Fabric Co-operative in 1998 to improve the lives of local women and has spent 16 years to help develop it. Many Mong women hold a minor role in their family, and are often exposed to domestic violence, child marriage and even human trafficking. But Mais initiative helped bring women together to make linen fabric. The cooperative started with 5 women in 1998. Today they are 130 people all women plus just 1 male member. Their lives changed dramatically after they began making products from linen textiles and batik a technique using beeswax. The project also helped to strengthen the womens position within their families as well as their role in the community. However, until now they have not had a proper facility. And another 400 women in the area are expected to join by 2020. The team traveled to Ha Giang to work with the women from the cooperative to design and build a new centre which is larger, better equipped and can house up to 400 women. Before beginning to build, they started by learning from the communitys rich culture in linen and batik textiles. They learned about the architecture, the lifestyle, daily schedule and especially their methods of building homes. They also learned how to use natural materials, local skills and resources to make something that carries value and meaning. Its fantastic to work with them. There is a lot of energy inside this community. They are able to do things by themselves first. And after we help finish the process, said Alex. Work with passion: Norwegian architect Alexander Furunes (centre) and Filipino architect Sudarshan Khadka talk about their project at Ha Nois Nanoco Gallery two weeks ago. VNS Photo Bach Lien Learn from the community Filipino architect Sudar said that he believed that a true community construction has to start with the process of learning about them. And to do this, nothing is better than accompanying the group and joining in with local life. Architecture is a part of culture, and architecture cannot be detached from people and life, he said. In order to really learn from the community, with an unavoidable language barrier, the team communicated though drawing and mapping out their ideas. When we express the ideas within a small group, some people may be willing to participate, while others may be hesitant because theyre shy. Moreover, when you ask them questions, its very difficult to obtain more information without having a subjective influence on their thought. Its completely different for drawing. Everyone has the equal chance to express their ideas, their opinions on papers, and explain to others about their illustrations, Alex explains. Despite the language barrier, they have been able to build a strong bond with local members. Vang Thi Mai, president of the linen cooperative said she was happy with the project and was touched to see the efforts of the team in learning about local culture, architecture and to help design and build the new cooperative centre. We work together to make this project a reality, she said Independent filmmaker Eric is in charge of filming the life and the changing process of the community as they work with the team. He also teaches filmmaking to some community members for free, so that they can one day make films themselves. Through close collaboration with the Lung Tam community, Remi looks forward to providing his entrepreneurial vision for the economic empowerment of the Lung Tam cooperative. According to their needs, I try to consult for further improvement of the members working environment and also seek opportunities to expand their market and promote their products. Through keeping people happy in their working environment and bringing more economic empowerment, this will help the cooperative maintain their traditional values in a more sustainable way, he said. We thought that providing a community house where people can share their values and enhance economic empowerment of the cooperative could be a good synergy for the Lung Tam people to pass down their beautiful traditions and values to future generations, he adds. Do it with passion The expenses for the trip, their stay in Ha Giang and their workshop has mostly been paid for by the team. They are looking for more sponsors to help make this project happen. We did it out of passion. The benefit that we get is that we learn from the community, the friendships that we create, its enough for us. We dont do it for the money, said Alex. Its important for us to make people understand how much architecture means to people. And hopefully by doing more this kind of project, we understand more about what architecture means to humanity, said Sudar. VNS HA NOI The National Assemblys Committee for Judicial Affairs yesterday continued its sixth plenary session to discuss amendments to Law on Judicial Records. According to a Government statement, since the laws implementation, judicial record card issuance has basically met public expectations and solidified judicial record cards role in State and social management. However, regulations on the database of judicial records have limitations. In particular, the issuance of judicial record card No. 2, issued at the request of individuals who want to know their judicial records, has been abused. The draft law on judicial records proposes removing regulations related to judicial record card No. 2 issuance to protect the rights, benefits and secrets of individuals. Nguyen Cong Hong, deputy head of NAs Judicial Affairs Committee said that the draft law does assess the impacts of judicial record card removal. In fact, demand for the cards is increasing for visa requests, marriages, settlements, labour export and job applications. Cong said the card removal may harm Vietnamese citizens rights. Many participants proposed keeping judicial record card No.2, adding that there needs to be many judicial record cards at different levels. NA deputy Nguyen Ba Son said that information technology should be used to improve the judicial record database. The current national database lacks connections among localities. Le Thi Nga, the committees chairwoman, concluded that the draft laws compiling committee must produce a comprehensive assessment of the draft laws impact on citizens, those who leave the country, get married with foreigners and work and study overseas. She ordered the consideration of removing judicial record card No.2 and proposed adding judicial records for legal entities. VNS HA NOI Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc voiced his hope for stronger trade and investment ties between Viet Nam and Tanzania while receiving two ministers from the African country in Ha Noi yesterday. Talking to Minister for Industry, Trade and Investment Charles Mwijage and Minister for Agriculture, Livestock and Fisheries Charles Tizeba, Phuc lauded Tanzanias maintenance of an average economic growth rate of over 6 per cent during the past decade and hoped that the country will successfully realise the targets set in its Vision 2025. He thanked Tanzania for supporting Viet Nams struggle for national liberation in the past and facilitating investment and business activities of Vietnamese firms, including Halotel a joint venture of Viet Nams military-run telecommunications group Viettel with Tanzania. Minister Mwijage said the two countries co-operation is developing strongly as seen in economic ties and business-to-business partnerships. He highly valued Viet Nams expansion of cooperation with African nations, including Tanzania one of the fastest growing economies in Africa, over the last decade thanks to strong economic reforms. He called on Vietnamese enterprises to invest in apparel, footwear, vegetable, plant oil and cement production in his countrys economic and industrial zones. Congratulating Tanzania on its economic achievements, PM Phuc promised the Vietnamese Government will provide businesses with information about export processing and special economic zones in Tanzania so that they can consider investment in agricultural and aquatic product processing, and electronic products, consumer goods, garment and footwear there. Viet Nam is ready to supply goods of high quality and at competitive prices for Tanzania to meet demand, he noted. To fuel bilateral trade and investment relations, he asked both sides to soon conclude negotiations for the signing of a double-taxation avoidance agreement and another on investment encouragement and protection. The PM asked the African nation to facilitate the licensing of Vietnamese workers at Halotel while ensuring security and protecting assets of Vietnamese firms in the country. Vietnamese and Tanzanian businesses should also boost connectivity and trade activities to raise bilateral trade to US$1 billion in the near future, he added. VNS HA NOI Viet Nam on Thursday reaffirmed that former Chairman of the state-run PetroVietnam Construction Corporation (PVC), Trinh Xuan Thanh, whom Germany claims was "abducted" from the country, turned himself in to police in Viet Nam. During a regular press conference, the Vietnamese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Le Thi Thu Hang said that Thanh presented himself to police on July 31, according to a report by the Ministry of Public Security. The police are investigating the case, she said. Vietnamese police earlier issued an arrest warrant for 51-year-old Thanh on charges of mismanagement at State-owned PetroVietnam Construction Corporation, resulting in losses of approximately VN3.3 trillion (US$146.6 million) during his tenure as the chairman of the companys board of directors. German Foreign Ministry spokesman Martin Schaefer made the accusation on Wednesday and said it "has the potential to negatively influence relations in a massive way." The Vietnamese spokeswoman said that she regrets the remarks of the German Foreign Ministry spokesman on August 2. Viet Nam always appreciates and wishes to sustain and develop the strategic partnership with Germany, she said. VNS HA NOI - Chairman of Ha Nois Peoples Committee Nguyen uc Chung has asked relevant departments and investors to plan out a response to the Government Inspectorate (GI)s conclusion on wrongdoings of Build-Transfer (BT) projects. The content must be submitted no later than August 15. The citys leaders will submit the report to the GI and the Government Office. Earlier in July, the GI released findings of egregious wrongdoings in the implementation of seven BT projects in Ha Noi. The GI recommended holding Ha Noi authorities accountable for the faults and said that all BT projects were behind schedule and had entailed significant cost overruns. The report added that contractors were not sufficiently capable of mobilising capital and also blamed a failure to disburse budget in accordance with set schedule. Seven BT projects that caused massive loss are the construction of Yen So wastewater treatment plant, Le Van Luong Road extension, southern main road of Ha Tay, a street connecting Le uc Tho and Xuan Phuong new urban area, a road surrounding Chu Van An memorial site and the Ha NoiHung Yen interprovincial road. The municipal Department of Planning and Investment has asked relevant departments and districts to review and reevaluate the projects norms and prices. Investor of Ha Noi-Hung Yen inter-provincial road running through Ha Noi was said to apply wrong unit price and norm and increase the total investment. The municipal Department of Planning and Investment asked the citys Financial Department and Gia Lam Districts Peoples Committee to order Thanh Nam Company-the investor-to review the calculation of construction value norm. Him Lam Joint Stock Company, the principal investor in the Long Bien intersection, was asked to recalculate steel girder transport cost. Long Bien Districts land use centre was ordered to review relocation of the projects infrastructure to clarify VN3 billion (US$130,400) that was asked to be cut by the GI. Regarding Le uc Tho-Xuan Phuong road, leaders of Nam Tu Liem District are required to invite auditors to re-assess applied prices. Regarding the main southern road of Ha Tay, the State-owned Civil Engineering Construction Corporation No.5 (CIENCO5) was asked to immediately pay back VN1.428 trillion ($62.8 million) to the State budget. The investor was also asked to transparently open related information and documents. Leaders of Ha Nois Peoples Committee said that the GI conclusion was reached when the BT projects had not been finally accounted and audited. These projects are still being implemented. The responsibility of the citys authorities and investors is to withdraw experience, review and make proper and legal adjustments, they said. The city leaders said that they will issue documents requiring solutions and punishments for each project. VNS ONG NAI In the southeast region, a curious phenomenon of foreign direct investment firms recommending long-time employees to resign has cropped up. In return, these employees receive a hefty one-time payment. The companies dont force the workers to resign but merely recommend it, and the workers consent, making the practice perfectly legal. However, workers might not be aware that by doing so, they relinquish many of their rights, and some are urging authorities to get involved. Nguyen Thi Sen, 51, from Bien Hoa City of ong Nai Province, worked at Pouchen Viet Nam a manufacturing factory of the Taiwan-based sportswear company for nearly 18 years. At the end of last year, the company announced that workers with tenure of 15 years or longer may receive a lump sum equal to 12 months of salary if they quit. Sen is still four years from retirement age, and under the companys policy, she would receive one-month salary as a bonus every year. However, thinking the one-time payment was a generous amount, Sen agreed to end her contract and social security, and received VN 140 million (US$6,160). Now I regret my decision. Previously, my monthly salary plus bonus was VN 10 million ($440), so my annual income would total VN 150 million ($6,600), including the New Year bonus, Sen told Vietnam News Agency. The government increases the salary rate every month, if I continued to work at Pouchen until retirement, then I could earn a total of VN 500 million ($22,000), in addition to a nice pension. Now, I have no income, the lump sum will run out eventually. Sen said she tried to look for other jobs, but no one would hire someone her age. Nguyen Thi Hue, 47, also from ong Nai Province, worked at Changshin Viet Nam for 20 years and earned a basic monthly salary of VN 9 million before ending her contract and receiving VN 150 million ($6,600). Afterwards, she intended to find another job but was unable to do so. Im currently living off my unemployment insurance but its ending soon, now I just want to find a stable job, even VN 2-3 million ($88-$132) salary a month, Hue said. Job loss, benefits loss According to Pham Van Men, Director of ong Nai Social Security, manual labour is a demanding job and workers are exposed to toxins, which gradually damage their health. When workers resign but fail to get another job, without access to health insurance, treatment costs can become a huge burden, Men said. ang Tuan Tu, Chairman of Changshin Viet Nams Union, said the unions stance remains that the workers should not resign. However, as both parties consent and no disputes arise from these premature resignations, unions cannot intervene. Union representatives said they have tried to persuade workers to keep working until they reach retirement age, showing them the benefits and the downsides of early contract termination. However, its not easy to convince workers especially as they dont fully grasp the governments insurance policy, they fear that social security premiums will soon soar. Province-wide, in 2016, ong Nai had 37,000 people registered for one-time insurance payment, while in just the first six months of 2017, the number stood at 27,000. According to the job centre for the Southern region (headquartered in Bien Hoa City, ong Nai), from 2017 May, the number of applicants for unemployment insurance in the province witnessed a worrying jump, standing at 4,000-5,000 people a month, most are long-time workers willingly leaving their companies when the contracts have not expired nor have they reached retirement age. A math problem Pouchen Viet Nam said while the salary it pays to old workers increases, their productivity remains unchanged, if not lower, hurting profits. With its machine automation plan, the company expects to cut its current staff by 10 per cent, or 2,000 workers. The company estimates that in 2017, it will have to dole out VN 39 billion ($1.72 million) for insurance premium payments for employees. Similarly, Changshin Viet Nam, currently employing 26,000 workers, 3,900 of which have worked for the company for more than 15 years, said by the end of May, 440 of these workers resigned and received the one-time payment (a total of VN 90 billion, or $3.96 million). According to the Management Board of Industrial Parks in ong Nai Province, the premature termination of contracts concerning long-time employees is a new phenomenon, and takes place mostly at manual labour factories. Some other companies are considering following suit, including Epic Designers Viet Nam Co. Ltd., the Japan-based machine part manufacturer Mitsuba M-tech and South Koreas footwear producer Taekwang Vina Industrial, among others. Big companies may be willing to part with large sums of money to oust long-time employees, while other small companies come up with ways to not use old workers. Pham Van Cuong, vice head of the management board, surmised the cause for this phenomenon as the basic salary (per region) increasing annually, in addition to pay rise policies in each company, while the productivity of senior workers does not improve, which makes businesses unwilling to keep long-term employees. Cuong said that workers with a 15-year tenure and basic monthly salary of VN 10 million ($440) and above can have the same productivity as a new employee with starting salary of VN 4 million ($176). From 2018, the social insurance premium rate will be calculated based on workers gross salary, not the basic salary level, so businesses are worried they will have to a lot of social insurance for long-time workers, cutting into their bottom line. In addition, manual labour like in textile industry requires little education, the workers just need to be healthy and young, plus, the companies only need to pay a much lower salary compared to senior ones, Cuong added. Vu Ngoc Ha, Director of Legal Council Centre for Labour Unions in ong Nai said theres little grounds for legal intervention for this kind of contract termination at present, but it cant be sure businesses will not resort to dirty tricks to oust long-time employees. According to Ha, Viet Nams law covers all important aspects of labour relations, the issue is State oversight on the implementation of such laws. VNS A NANG Ministers of labour from Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand and Viet Nam (CLMTV) agreed to improve their migration management system and share responsibilities in contributing to safe labour migration. The reaffirmation was included in the CLMTV joint declaration on safe labour migration at the 2nd Ministerial Conference on Labour Co-operation in CLMTV in a Nang yesterday. The ministers also committed to boosting information exchanges, and encouraging legal cross-border workers and employment through bilateral agreements among the five countries. Officials said each country must protect the rights of migrant workers and prevent human trafficking and illegal migration. Speaking at the conference, Deputy Prime Minister Vu uc am said labour migration is inevitable and crucial for economic development in CLMTV. He said migrant workers had boosted the economic growth rate from 6 to 8 per cent in each ASEAN country, and labour migration in CLMTV had increased by six times compared to 1990. Although earning positive growth over past decades, migrant workers created big challenges for every country in the region such as human trafficking and crimes resulting from illegal migrant labour, am said. The five countries should promote education and vocational training for labourers and exchange information or experience in management of migrant workers. Migrant workers must be given fair treatment like indigenous workers in each country. We should also boost dialogues on problems and risks at forums in ensuring social security and the rights of migrant workers. Deputy Minister of Labour, Invalids and Social Affairs, Doan Mau Diep, who chaired the conference, said the joint declaration on safe labour migration will improve co-operation among CLMTV in the context of globalisation. Each country committed to proper actions in dealing with risks that migrant worker face. Participating countries also agreed to build a common mechanism in supporting migrant workers, Diep told Viet Nam News. Deputies also raised the need for each country to develop its national policies on labour migration, including the recruiting, sending and receiving procedures, to be in accordance with international standards to promote safe labour migration, he said. Diep added members of participating countries stressed pre-departure education of employment contracts, skills, languages, laws, work disciplines and prohibitions in the countries of destination to avoid conflicts between migrant workers and local employers. The five countries also agreed to monitor the treatment of migrant workers to ensure they are protected by laws and regulations. The joint declaration also concerned the sharing of information among sending and receiving countries in CLMVT in the implementation of International Conventions and Recommendations on promoting decent work for migrant workers. According to the Ministry of Labour, Invalids and Social Affairs of Viet Nam, about 80,000 foreigners work in Viet Nam, while more than 600,000 Vietnamese labourers work aboard. Taiwan is the most popular destination for Vietnamese migrant workers with 70,000, while Japan hosted 40,000. Viet Nam inked an agreement with Laos on migrant employment from 1995, and the country has been co-operating with Thailand in expanding employment in different fields such as construction and fishing. Viet Nam and Thailand have also offered favourable conditions for migrant labourers. Thailands Minister of Labour, General Sirichai Distakul, said Thailand has been doing its share to promote safe and orderly migration and legal employment. Our collaborative effort to promote safe and orderly migration is to ensure that all the workers residing in Thailand can enjoy full legal protection and are entitled to all the rights and responsibilities as stipulated by the law, he said. Migrant workers contribute greatly to our economic growth, and action plans have been made and skills training curricula for workers, trainers and assessors are also specially designed to reflect the training needs, he added. The Thai Minister also said the newly implemented law concerning foreign workers employment and related measures aims to combat human trafficking and illegal employment. Myanmar has drafted new laws and amended laws in accordance with international practices and standard, according to the ministry of labour, immigration and population of Myanmar. Minister of Labour and Social Welfare of Laos, Khampheng Saysompheng, said Laos has been committed to reflecting the resolutions of ASEAN Meetings, particularly the ASEAN Declaration on protection and promotion of rights and interests of migrant workers. He said Laos had agreed memorandum of understandings on migration with Thailand and Viet Nam to protect the rights of international migrant workers. Viet Nam has offered skilled labourers from foreign countries working in high-tech industries and in the fields that the lacks high-quality manpower. VNS NINH BINH The Ninh Binh Peoples Committee has imposed an administrative fine of VN400 million (US$17,700) on the investor of the Ninh Binh Obstetrics and Paediatrics Hospital. The hospital investor has been fined for not having the environmental impact report for the past eight years. The investor of the project is the management board of the Ninh Binh Civil and Industrial Investment and Construction Project. Construction work on the hospital started in 2010; however, the investor did not have the environmental impact report as regulated by the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment. Inspectors from the Ninh Binh Department of Natural Resources and Environment on June 26 this year checked and proposed that the provincial Peoples Committee impose an administrative fine on the investor of the hospital. Nguyen Ngoc Thach, deputy director of the provincial Peoples Committee, signed the decision on the administrative fine, in which he temporarily suspended construction work on the hospital for 60 days. The management board of the Ninh Binh Civil and Industrial Investment and Construction Project was requested to complete all legal procedures related to environment protection to submit to the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment. The Ninh Binh Obstetrics and Paediatrics Hospital has total investment of VN2.7 trillion (US$120 million). At present, construction work on the hospital is temporarily halted due to a shortage of funds. A leader of the management board of the Ninh Binh Civil and Industrial Investment and Construction Project told the Dan Tri (Peoples Intellectual Standards) e-newspaper that the board took over the project from another investor, and was unaware that the hospital lacked environmental impact report. At present, construction work on the hospital has been halted until the report is complete and sufficient funds can be collected. The management board does not know when construction work will resume. VNS SANTIAGO Chiles Congress on Wednesday eased a strict ban on abortion in effect since the final days of the Augusto Pinochet dictatorship nearly three decades ago. The measure, which passed with a 22-13 vote, allows abortion in cases of rape, if the mothers life is at risk or if the fetus presents a deadly birth defect. It now awaits a ruling by the Constitutional Court at the request of the opposition. Until now, the South American country has been part of a small group of socially conservative nations that barred abortion under all circumstances including the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Gabon, Haiti, Malta, Nicaragua, the Philippines and Senegal. "We are satisfied. We have delivered alternatives, and safe health care options, to all women, regardless of the decisions they make," said Claudia Pascual, minister for women and gender equality. In this deeply conservative country, the measure has been a priority for leftist President Michelle Bachelet, Chiles first woman president and a pediatrician by training. Bachelet has worked since 2015 to overturn the strict ban on abortions put in place in 1989, in the final days of the Pinochet dictatorship. Under current law, abortion is punishable by up to five years in prison. Until the Pinochet-era change, abortion already was legal in Chile for five decades in case of danger to the mothers life or an unviable fetus. Bachelet, after serving a first term as president, became the first chief of UN Women the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women. She pledged to see the easing of the ban enacted before she leaves office in March 2018. Conservative groups have historically had great influence in Chile, though they have lost ground in recent years. Chileans had to wait until 2004 to be able to divorce, and until just two years ago to enter into same-sex civil unions. AFP DETROIT (AP) Courtroom 801 is nearly empty when guards bring in Bobby Hines in handcuffs. More than 27 years ago, Hines stood before a judge to answer for his role in killing a man over a friends drug debt. He was 15 then, just out of eighth grade. Another teen fired the shot that killed 21-year-old James Warren. But Hines had said something like, Let him have it, sealing his punishment: life in prison with no chance for parole. The judgment came during an era when many states, fearing teen superpredators, enacted laws to punish juvenile criminals like adults, making the U.S. an international outlier. But five years ago, the U.S. Supreme Court banned mandatory life without parole for juveniles in murder cases. Last year it made clear that applies equally to more than 2,000 who already were serving the sentence. Prison gates, though, dont just swing open. The Associated Press surveyed all 50 states and found uncertainty and opposition stirred by the courts rulings have resulted in an uneven patchwork, with the odds of release or continued imprisonment varying widely. Many victims families are battling to keep offenders in prison. They already had their chance, their days in court, their due process, says Candy Cheatham, whose father was killed by 14-year-old Evan Miller, the Alabama inmate at the center of the 2012 ruling. To bring this up and make the victims families relive this, thats being cruel and unusual. Hines, though, is in a county whose prosecutor has shown openness to paroling some juvenile lifers. Now 43, he bows his head when the murdered mans sister, Valencia Warren Gibbs, stands to address the judge. I want him to be out, she says. I want him to give himself a chance that he didnt give himself ... that day. The Supreme Courts decision last year was the fourth to find the harshest punishments are unconstitutionally cruel and unusual when imposed on teens. Justices cited research showing adolescents brains are still developing, making them susceptible to peer pressure and likelier to act recklessly without considering consequences. Officials in states with the most juvenile life cases long argued the ban on mandatory life without parole did not apply retroactively. Now, the AP found, states are heading in decidedly different directions. Some have resentenced and released these inmates. Others are pushing back, denying any real opportunity for a reduced term or possible parole. Its taking far too long to get ... judges and prosecutors to understand that the mandates of the Supreme Court are not optional, says John OHair, who saw more than 90 juveniles sentenced to life when he was prosecutor in Wayne County, Michigan, but has since criticized how some in his state are responding. Pennsylvania has resentenced more than 100 of its 517 juvenile lifers, and released 58. Attorneys there talk about working through all the cases in three years. Since the Supreme Courts ruling last year, two Pennsylvania inmates have been resentenced to life without parole, which the justices said should be reserved for the rare offender who exhibits such irretrievable depravity that rehabilitation is impossible. In Michigan, prosecutors want new no-parole terms for some 236 of 363 juvenile lifers, prompting lawsuits. Most of the cases are on hold until Michigans Supreme Court decides whether judges or juries should hear them. These are young Hannibal Lecters, says Sheriff Michael Bouchard of Oakland County, where officials want no-parole sentences in 44 of 49 juvenile-lifer cases. Elizabeth Calvin of Human Rights Watch says: I dont think anybody who is being honest about what is happening in American courtrooms can walk away and say, Yes, the system has carefully culled out the worst of the worst. Louisiana lawmakers spent two sessions debating what to do with 303 juvenile lifers, with district attorneys lobbying against eliminating no-parole terms. In June, the Legislature made juvenile homicide offenders eligible for release after 25 years, but prosecutors can still petition a judge for no-parole sentences. Thirteen other states have passed legislation prohibiting life without parole for juveniles since 2012. While many states have taken steps to make juvenile offenders eligible for parole, officials regularly deny release. In Missouri, the parole board turned down 20 of 23 juvenile lifers for release, says the MacArthur Justice Center, which sued. The AP found a number of juvenile lifers long ago rejected plea bargains that would have seen them released already. They include Kempis Songster, who was 15 when he joined in the Philadelphia drug house stabbing of a fellow gang member. You walk in there and see that theyre children and you say, Wait a minute, says Jack McMahon, who as a prosecutor offered Songster a plea deal that could have meant freedom in as few as eight years. Songster was recently resentenced to 30 years to life, making him eligible for parole in September. In many states, legal challenges are being mounted on behalf of thousands more former juvenile offenders who were sentenced to life without parole at the discretion of a judge or jury or who have parole-eligible sentences but are serving such lengthy terms they are unlikely to get out. The Supreme Court didnt address these cases, however, leading to different outcomes. Tennessee has refused to resentence juvenile lifers, because judges and juries there had a choice life in prison or life with parole possible after 51 years. In Oklahoma, juvenile life without parole isnt mandatory, either, but offenders are getting a second look. On the one hand this is a mandate from the U.S. Supreme Court, and we have to comply with it, says Scott Rowland, Oklahoma Countys first assistant district attorney. On the other hand, youre talking about disturbing sentences on crimes that may be three decades old, and very violent, heinous crimes. So the stakes are high. At Hines resentencing in March, the judge weighs his case before sentencing him to 27 to 60 years, making him immediately eligible for parole. Hes due to be released Sept. 12. I know what Im not going to do, he says, and thats get in trouble. DES MOINES The Harkin Steak Fry went by the wayside three years ago, but Polk County Democrats are reviving it. The event wont have Tom Harkins name attached, but its inaugural event will feature three prominent Democrats, including Rep. Cheri Bustos, D-Ill. Bustos has increasingly gained national attention as a prominent voice for the Democrats as they seek to regain their footing after President Donald Trumps election. She and two House colleagues, Reps. Tim Ryan, D-Ohio, and Seth Moulton, D-Mass., will be the guest speakers at the Sept. 30 fundraising event. The Harkin Steak Fry often was a showcase for rising political stars and those who wanted to position themselves to run for president. Bill and Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama all spoke there. Both Moulton and Ryan have been mentioned as possible 2020 candidates. As Politico pointed out Wednesday, that isnt the case with Bustos. However, she has been a key candidate recruiter for House Democrats. She also has been grooming candidates at the local level. Bustos said in a statement: Democrats believe in a better future, where all hardworking men and women have the opportunity to find a better job with better wages to support their families. This is the better deal were committed to delivering to the American people, and I look forward to speaking about how well turn this vision into reality for all Americans. The Harkin Steak Fry was an Iowa mainstay for decades, but it ended in 2014 as the senator prepared to retire from Congress. Sean Bagniewski, chair of the Polk County Democrats, said Wednesday local Democrats worked with Harkin for more than a year to get permission to bring the event back. Now called the Polk County Steak Fry, Bagniewski said he hopes the event will take on the importance it once had. In the meantime, the event will utilize some of the same organizers, vendors and caterers, he said. We lost part of our Iowa political legacy when it went away, he said. Bagniewski said he thinks Harkin may make an appearance. The steak fry will be at Des Moines Water Works Park. INDEPENDENCE The Independence Municipal Airport manager said personal attacks by some airport users drove him to leave for another community. Jonathan Walter, whos run the airport since 2012 and operates Walter Aviation Inc., asked the City Council to cancel his contracts to both manage the facility and serve as a fixed-base operator effective Sept. 30. While declining to go into great detail, Walter said he, his family and employees have endured harassment and attempts to undermine his operation of the airport for several years. Weve been managing another airport down in Perry, Iowa, he said. As a result of all the things that have been happening, we are moving everything down there. Council members voted unanimously July 24 to accept Walters request to cancel his contracts, with several members voicing disappointment with the decision and criticizing those who drove him to leave. Ive watched just stuff that was ridiculous to do to somebody, said Councilman Mike Lenius. Theres a handful of people that know that they were part of it, and I hope youre proud of what youve done. Councilman Bob Hill said he accepted Walters request with a heavy heart. Personally I think Jonathan has done a good job out there, Hill said. For him and for his family, they have put up with personal commentary long enough. Hes going to be an asset to another community, a loss for us. Mayor Bonita Davis said Walter should be very proud of the job hes done. Walter was an Independence High School graduate who had started two businesses by his mid-20s, including Walter Aviation, which provided flight lessons, a full-service maintenance shop, 24-hour full-serve fuel, aerial photography, agricultural surveying and scenic air tours. His mother, Lisa, addressed council members before the July 24 vote. He was undermined in many ways for no reason, and this affects more than just Jonathan, the comments that people say and the actions, she said. Jonathan is asking to leave Independence not because he has done anything wrong, but weve had enough. City Manager Al Roder said a council committee has recommended creating a citizen task force to really evaluate what is the next best step for the airport. That committee would look at whether the city should find a new contract manager, hire a city employ to manage the facility, create an airport commission or explore other options. Everythings on the table at this point as far as where we go with this, Roder said. The primary focus is lets just make sure we do the right thing for the airport and for the city. WATERLOO Members of a private housing development are at odds with their neighbors over a flood control berm built last fall. Members of the Waterloo Planning, Programming and Zoning Commission have now recommended the earthen mound along the north side of Silver Lake Estates be removed. Homeowners in the housing development off Foulk Road in the southeast part of the city built a sandbag wall to protect their homes from Cedar River and Sink Creek flooding in 2008. But they hauled in dirt to replace sandbags when flooding threatened again last September. The neighborhood is now seeking a special permit for the berm, which it should have received before construction, so it can complete grading and seeding the structure. We meant no harm to our neighbors; weve always tried to get along, said Denny Staebell, president of the Silver Lake Estates association. It was not anything we figured would be any worse than sandbagging. But several homeowners along Foulk Road northeast of Silver Lake Estates objected when the request went before the zoning commission Tuesday. Barb Culbertson believes the berm preventing water from flowing south into Silver Lake will instead cause it to back up into her yard. Im very concerned about anything blocking the flow of the land, she said. Neighbor Pete Christensen added, Its going to affect us, all of us along Foulk Road and, I think, along Shaulis (Road). Kirk Eschliman, an engineer hired by Silver Lake Estates to prepare the special permit application, said he didnt believe it would have a negative impact on surrounding property owners. Silver Lake Estates resident Jim Cook said the association has installed a culvert in Silver Lake itself to move water to the east, away from the Foulk Road homes. Instead of creating a problem, were only trying to protect our own property without it creating any more problems, Cook said. But the zoning commission voted 4-3 to recommend the Board of Adjustment deny the request. Tavis Hall, Jamie Castle, Sue Flynn and Craig Holdiman voted against it, while Marcia Buttgen, Bob Tyson and Eric Donat supported it. The Board of Adjustment is expected to consider the special permit at its Aug. 22 meeting. OSAGE This is a story of a Marine and his last goodbye to the buddy who saved his life one of the best leathernecks on four legs. Jon North of Osage recently traveled to Muskegon, Mich., to bid farewell to Cena, a black lab he served with for seven months in combat in Afghanistan in 2010-11. Cena contracted bone cancer and passed away last week. North was able to visit him a week earlier, at the Saginaw home of fellow Marine Jeff DeYoung. North served with Cena as part of the 1st Tank Battalion of the 1st Marine Division. He was paired with Cena during training in South Carolina after personality testing. The dogs are released one at time and pick their partner. Cena jumped out of the truck and ran over to me and sat down at my feet, North said. Their job was to clear areas of improvised explosive devices for advancing troops in and around the city of Marja in Helmand Province in southern Afghanistan. Cena detected many IEDs and saved many troops. He never missed one, North said, adding, He saved my life a couple of times. Often, they did their work under fire. There was a bounty for anyone who shot an American with a dog. So we got a lot of attention. And I was 6 7 and 230 pounds. North and Cena split up in California after their seven-month deployment. It was tough. After saving your ass and being in a place like that, you grow a bond so tight that by the end of your deployment, theyre like a child or a brother to you, North said. North lost track of Cena, but DeYoung contacted him via social media in 2015 to let North know he had adopted their canine comrade in arms. Then, in mid-July, DeYoung contacted North with the news Cena had cancer. After making arrangements with his employer, Minnis Woodworking in St. Ansgar, North made the nine-hour drive to Saginaw and spent a final weekend with Cena. It was emotional, North said. The last time hed seen Cena, he was two years old running and playing. This time he was less mobile; he had a broken shoulder. He looked up at me. He saw who I was and he hobbled over and laid down, in much the same fashion as when they first met. Cena, 10, received a heros farewell July 26 before being euthanized at the USS LST 393, a museum ship in Muskegon, and carried off in a flag-draped coffin. Hundreds of people came together to say a tear-filled final goodbye to the dog, who served three tours in Afghanistan. North did not attend, and said he wasnt quite sure he could have. He now has a German shepherd. WATERLOO -- A child who sustained life-threatening injuries has died after a car crash Wednesday evening in downtown Waterloo that injured nine others. Waterloo Police did not release any other information about the child, including an age, until family could be notified. The child was riding in a minivan with eight other people when it was involved in a crash with a pick-up truck at the intersection of East First and Sycamore streets around 6:30 p.m. Wednesday. The van rolled over several times in the crash. Waterloo Police Chief Dan Trelka told the Courier "several children" were among the injured. Police confirmed Thursday morning that all nine people in the minivan were taken to the hospital, as well as the driver of the pick-up, who was the only occupant of that vehicle. The crash scene is currently under investigation by the Iowa State Patrol, and happened near the Waterloo Post Office and the Fraternal Order of Eagles Lodge north of the First Street Bridge. Waterloo Police said "the rest of the investigation" is being done by their department. There have so far been no arrests or citations in conjunction with the crash. WATERLOO For Pam McKee Portillo, the finish line at the Irish Fest 5K on Saturday will feel more like a beginning than an end. For her, the race is just getting started. Portillo, who lost both legs in a boating accident last year, will walk alongside her niece. Im not one to just sit. Ive worked all my life, she said. I just made up my mind. Im not going to think about the injury. Im going to think about the healing. Aug. 1 marked the one-year anniversary of the accident for the 54-year-old Cedar Falls native and mother of five. She and her boyfriend, Chris Langenfeld, were on vacation with friends last year on Stockton Lake in Missouri. They headed out on the lake for a pontoon boat ride. It was wonderful out on the water. We were all swimming. It was a beautiful day, she said. At days end, Portillo took a seat at the back of boat to let her feet trail in the water for the trip back to the dock. She grabbed the gate to steady herself, and it gave way. The gate flew open with me hanging on. Within seconds the gate separated from the boat. The force just took me out, she said. Disoriented momentarily, she sprang to life when she realized she was under the pontoon. I knew exactly where I was, and it was not good. I started kicking to swim my way out of there. Turns out I was close enough to the propeller and went straight into it. It got me, she said. The current separated her from the pontoon by 40 to 50 yards. The boats motor died and wouldnt restart, so Langenfeld, still on the vessel, leaped into lake to assist Portillo and provide her with a life vest. I was treading water, but I was sinking, Portillo said. I tried to swim to the boat but I couldnt, and I didnt understand why. I thought I was OK. I didnt feel anything. I just thought I was exhausted. Passengers on a nearby speedboat helped pull the pair into their boat. I dont remember much after that. I went in and out of consciousness. All I could hear was whispers, Oh my God! Oh my God! she said. Portillos left foot and right leg below the knee had been mangled by the propeller. She was airlifted to a Missouri hospital where, a day later, doctors amputated her right leg 5 inches below the knee. Initially, surgeons hoped they could save her left foot, but the damage was too great. A week after her right leg was removed, her left leg was amputated 6 inches below the knee. Three months later, with Langenfeld, her children and grandchildren cheering her on, Portillo was fitted for prosthetics. I was ready for them, Im telling you. I was ready, she said. I have no regrets to this day. From the very beginning, losing my legs, I didnt feel sorry for myself. I just took what I had, looked at what my choices were. I only had two choices: I could sit in the wheelchair for years to come, or just keep pushing myself. Portillo, who now lives in Lake City, will push herself across the finish line on Saturday, hoping to inspire others to keep moving forward in the face of lifes challenges. One step at a time, one day at time, just keep going. Dont look back. Its getting harder to find purity in places where you once could count on it: In media, where anything labeled reporting was supposed to be free from commercial or politically motivated spin. In food, where growth hormones, GMOs, chemical pesticides and fertilizers werent structured into your dishes as a matter of course. In elections that were not skewed by gerrymandering or tainted by special-interest money. Or in medical advice that was not nudged by a pharmaceutical company paying a doctor, however circuitously, to push its drugs. One place you can look for purity is in literature. Love or hate a poem, novel or short story, if its someones authentic, original work, it has to be evaluated on its merit. So it breaks my heart a little to think the acclaimed University of Iowa Writers Workshop, which has for 81 years been turning out top-flight writers, could be accepting or rejecting people into its masters program with another consideration in mind that is less than pure: age. That would be a terrible blow to its illustrious legacy. In complaints filed with the University of Iowa and the U.S. Department of Education, Dan Thomson of Wisconsin alleges he was rejected from the program because at 68, they felt he was too old. Its possible that Thomson, who has done graduate studies in law and anthropology, just couldnt accept that his writing wasnt of the same caliber as the admitted students, and went looking for another explanation. But his research has unearthed some discouraging admissions statistics: In the past five years (2013 through 2017), only three of the 287 applicants older than the age of 40 were accepted into the fiction program. Not a single person older than 50 was, though 105 applied. The fresh-faced group of students pictured on the Writers Workshop home page tends to underscore the profile. As Thomson told the Des Moines Register, It seems like a program just for millennials. The workshops director, Lan Samantha Chang, has denied age is a factor in admissions decisions and said she and workshop faculty who assess applicants writing samples dont look at other materials like transcripts, which are handled by the graduate college. But Chang has access to them. The federal education department has said nothing, as is customary after receiving a complaint. The highly selective workshop, which admits only 25 students into the fiction writing program, has graduated such luminaries as Flannery OConnor, John Irving, Wallace Stegner, Jane Smiley and T.C. Boyle. Writers and poets affiliated with it have chalked up more than 24 Pulitzer Prizes and many other top awards. Its possible none of the writing samples from people older than 50 passed muster with the evaluating team those five years, but that would be an odd coincidence. Maybe they were so far superior to everyone elses work the workshop felt it had nothing to teach those candidates. But neither explanation is very satisfying. See, a writers age is beside the point when youre reading a good book. You dont even necessarily think of how the sentences are strung together or how the images are evoked. You feel the rhythm. You put yourself in the setting. You know the characters. Thats the craft that is honed in a place like the Writers Workshop. You feel a sense of anticipation each time you pick the book up, and a sense of loss when you finish it. What matters is whether the writer has something to say, and the talent to say it well. In excluding older writers, the workshop wouldnt just be depriving them of a chance to sharpen their writing skills. It would deprive readers of access to their work, and other students of their different life experiences and perspectives. Im sure the workshop strives for other kinds of diversity in the makeup of its classes. Im sure its leaders would be the first to argue having a good mix of socioeconomic and ethnic backgrounds is an essential part of the learning experience. Yet in our increasingly youth-centric culture, some employers find ways to justify excluding older workers by pinning it on a technology and social-media divide between young and old. Lets face it, because of their longer tenures, older workers tend to get paid more and cost employers more in benefits. Whether or not Thomson succeeds at his goal, which is simply getting admitted to the program, perhaps his lawsuit will force school officials there and everywhere to think harder before excluding an entire age group, whether unconsciously or deliberately. Perhaps the workshop will produce evidence to show why each of the students selected over the last five years were superior to those not chosen. But its also possible an advanced degree program is more interested in millennials because theyll live longer, hopefully go on to long and distinguished careers and have a longer window to earn awards and honors, publish books and bring acclaim and money to the institution. Maybe older students are deemed more set in their ways and less open to suggestion and criticism. Maybe the university wants to showcase a more contemporary face. Sure, those are considerations, but not very pure ones as far as great writers and literature go. And creative writing is meant to be pure. TeleSur notes that four countries support Venezuela's Constituent Assembly: China, Russia, Nicaragua, and Bolivia. Unwittingly, the article gives a long list of countries opposed but can only come up with four specific examples of supporters. (Oddly enough, they do not mention Cuba, which is unsurprisingly supportive). What this shows is how weak Venezuela's international position is. China's support is based on protecting its investments. The Chinese government made a statement that the voting was "generally held smoothly," which helped boost Venezuela's bonds. Last year China indicated it did not want to throw good money after bad, and it does not want default. Therefore it does not want unpredictable regime change. Russia's support is based largely on poking the United States. Russia has a long diplomatic relationship with Venezuela, which has fueled countless conspiracy theories, but for the most part it's a reminder to the United States that Russia is present in its back yard (with the obvious message that the U.S. should stay out of Russia's). At the same time, Russian companies are also exposed in Venezuela and so do not want more upheaval. Neither country will stick its neck out for Nicolas Maduro, and China in particular just wants reassurance about its investments. Nicaragua's support is Daniel Ortega's ingenious ability to support everything. He talks stridently about imperialism while working closely with the U.S. government. He can be counted on to stick with Maduro all the way, but would also be ready to work with anyone. He will not sacrifice much for Maduro. Evo Morales, meanwhile, is a true believer. He can be trusted to support Maduro to the hilt and blame all troubles on the U.S. He is one of the last of the leftist leaders who swept in over a decade ago still in office, and seems to see himself as the standard bearer of that era. Conspicuous by its absence here is Ecuador. Rafael Correa was a vocal leftist internationalist but Lenin Moreno is not, which is partly why they're beginning a Juan Manuel Santos/Alvaro Uribe type of feud. Moreno tends to keep his mouth shut about Venezuela, and definitely is not providing support. Overall, this is shallow support. Evo Morales is the key, as he can work the smaller countries in the hemisphere to reduce any majority in the OAS. Cuba is not particularly relevant diplomatically, and the rest will not stick their necks out too far. By West Kentucky Star Staff Aug. 02, 2017 | 12:34 PM | MAYFIELD, KY A traffic stop in Graves County Tuesday led to the arrest of a Fulton County woman on drug and other charges. Graves County Sheriff Dewayne Redmon says deputies assisted the Mayfield Police Department on a traffic stop on US 45 North. The Mayfield Police Department took a female passenger into custody on multiple arrest warrants. Police said the driver of the vehicle, 55-year-old Teresa Manning of Fulton, was found to be under the influence. Manning was then arrested and searched. She was found in possession of methamphetamine, drug paraphernalia and several other pills later identified as controlled substances. Manning was taken to the Graves County Jail. She's charged with four counts of possession of controlled substance, operating a motor vehicle under the influence, possession of drug paraphernalia and prescription controlled substance not in the proper container. Alec Baldwin sues to 'clear his name' in movie set death 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 International Union of Architects (UIA) has announced acclaimed Japanese architect Toyo Ito as the winner of the 2017 UIA Gold Medal, within the scope of the UIA Gold Medal & Prizes, given since 1961. The UIA Prizes are given in every 3 years to "honour professionals whose qualities, talents, and actions have had an international impact on the diverse sectors of architectural practice." This year, the UIA Secretariat received 46 nominations and selected Toyo Ito as the winner of the 2017 UIA Gold Medal, recognized as the UIA's top honor. Toyo Ito was nominated by the Japan Institute of Architects. Gifu Media Cosmos by Toyo Ito & Associates in Gifu, Japan (2015). Image 2017 Casey Bryant The Jury, composed of UIA Bureau Members, included President Esa Mohamed (Malaysia), Past President Albert Dubler (France), Secretary General Thomas Vonier (USA), Treasurer Fabian Llisterri (Spain), and Vice-Presidents David Falla (UK), Deniz Incedayi (Turkey), Carlos Alvarez (Costa Rica), Yolanda Reyes (Philippines) and Ali Hayder (Sudan). Pritzker Prize-winning architect Toyo Ito, 76, is a leading Japanese architect internationally known for conceptual and innovative designs. He graduated from Department of Architecture, University of Tokyo in 1965 and worked for Kiyonori Kikutake Architect and Associates until 1969. In 1971, he founded his own studio Urban Robot (URBOT) in Tokyo, which was renamed Toyo Ito & Associates, Architects in 1979. Koo Chen-Fu Memorial Library, College of Social Sciences, National Taiwan University, Taiwan (2014). Image courtesy of Howlingpixel Many of Itos works across Japan and overseas have made a strong impact on architectural design. He frequently challenges common practice and seeks to explore new potentials with creative interplay between form, structure, space, nature and contexts, resulting in unique spatial solutions never before seen. Among his critically-acclaimed projects are Sendai Mediatheque (2001), Serpentine Pavilion Gallery in Londons Hyde Park (2002), TOD'S Omotesando Building (2004), Tama Art University Library (2007). Recently, his awarded design for Japanese Pavilion in the 2012 Venice Architecture Biennale represented the concept of "Home-for-All" communal space for disaster survivors in Japan. Tama Art University Library in Hachioji campus, Tokyo, (2007). Image Ishiguro Photographic Institute It questioned a lack of humanity in modern design and brought back to the fundamental, primal meaning of architecture. Toyo Ito has been praised to receive several awards, including the Pritzker Architecture Prize in 2013, the 22nd Praemium Imperiale in Honor of Prince Takamatsu in 2010, the Royal Gold Medal from the Royal Institute of British Architects in 2006, and the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement from the 8th International Architecture Exhibition at the Venice Biennale in 2002. Taichung Metropolitan Opera House In Taiwan (2016). Image Lucas K Doolan His work has been published and exhibited extensively worldwide. He has taught as a visiting professor at several universities including the University of Tokyo, Columbia University, the University of California, Los Angeles, Kyoto University, and Tama Art University, and hosted an overseas studio for Harvard Universitys Graduate School of Design in 2012. The UIA's other prizes include: The Auguste Perret Prize for Applied Technology in Architecture will go to Nikolay Shumakov (Russia), nominated by the UIAs Russian Member Section. The Jean Tschumi Prize for Architectural Criticism or Architectural Education was attributed to Professor Ashraf M Salama (Egypt), nominated by the UIAs Egyptian Member Section. The Robert Matthew Prize for the Improvement of the Quality of Human Settlements went to South African Carin Smuts. Ms. Smuts was nominated by the UIAs French Section. The Vassilis Sgoutas Prize recognizing inventive, implemented architectural solutions for reducing poverty and indigence was awarded to Vietnamese Hoang Thuc Hao. Mr. Hoang was nominated by the UIAs Vietnamese Section. This year, the Jury decided not to attribute a prize for the Sir Patrick Abercrombie Prize for Town-Planning or Territorial Development. The winners will be presented with their medal at the Awards Ceremony on 6 September, which will culminate the activities surrounding the 25th UIA World Congress in Seoul, Korea. Top image Yoshiaki Tsutsui > via UIA The bill will go to the House of Representatives for a final vote in September. The U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee passed the bill known as the Nicaraguan Investment Conditionality Act of 2017, or Nica Act, Thursday, in an effort to impose economic sanctions on Nicaragua over alleged authoritarianism and corruption by President Daniel Ortega. Nicaragua currently relies on 70 percent of foreign funds for its budget. The bill seeks to add conditions to the provisions of aid from international financial institutions to the country. The committee's approval of the bill marks the last day before the summer recess of the U.S. Congress. The bill will now go to the House of Representatives for a final vote in September. The Nica Act initially went out of circulation in the House of Representatives when the 2016 congressional session closed, only to be reintroduced in the U.S. House and Senate by Republican Senators Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, as well as Democrat Albio Sires in April. The new bill, significantly more stringent than the original, seeks to impose economic sanctions on Nicaragua over alleged authoritarianism and corruption practiced by democratically-elected President Daniel Ortega and restrict the conditions of loans from multilateral organizations. The Nicaraguan government released a statement in April calling the Nica Act an irrational proposal conceived by insensitive minds. The U.S. Ambassador to Nicaragua Laura Dogu said earlier this week the U.S. government and congress members have "noted which countries support Venezuela," stating that Nicaragua does not have many friends in Washington, for the support it gives to Venezuela," affirming that congress most likely will vote in favor of approving the Nica Act, according to Bolsa de Noticias newspaper. Not mincing words, Dogu concluded that it is her belief that some members of the U.S. Congress would favor the Nica Act simply because of the support that Nicaragua is giving to Venezuela. Ortega is a proud ally of Maduro and used the anniversary of his nation's Sandinista Revolution as an opportunity to lambast U.S. interference and threats against Caracas. Washington is threatening to ratchet up the pressure ahead of Sunday's elections for the National Constituent Assembly called by the Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, imposing new sanctions on 13 senior officials Wednesday. Along with the Nica Act, the Foreign Affairs Committee also passed a resolution which condemns the political, economic, social and humanitarian crisis in Venezuela. The Sao Paulo Forum stressed unity and solidarity against the regions anti-democratic right-wing offensive and foreign intervention from the U.S. and Europe. Time is on the side of progressive and radical movements in Latin America and the Caribbean. The regions right-wing governments have no viable policy agenda to meet their peoples needs. Last week in Nicaraguas capital Managua, representatives of progressive and radical political movements from across Latin America and the Caribbean met at the 23rd Sao Paulo Forum to take stock and regroup in the face of renewed economic and diplomatic aggression from the United States and its allies. Coinciding with the 38th anniversary of the Sandinista Revolution of July 19, 1979, this years forum was a chance for the region's progressive political forces to reaffirm priorities and consolidate a common regional strategy. The forum stressed unity and solidarity against the regions anti-democratic right-wing offensive and foreign intervention from the U.S. and Europe. Besides regional delegates, the forum also included delegations from China, Europe, Vietnam and the Saharawi Democratic Republic. As Salvadoran President Sanchez Ceren said, Sao Paulo is the biggest meeting of the Left in the world and now in this forum important resolutions have been debated and decided, but more than that it has strengthened something you in Nicaragua have demonstrated, that without that unity of our peoples, it is more difficult to conquer our objectives. In that spirit, representatives at the forum gave categorical unqualified support to Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro. Nicaraguas President Daniel Ortega remarked, On the Constituent Assembly they have announced, in the first place, no one from outside has any reason to say whether it is good or bad. That is a sovereign right of the Venezuelan people; and it is the people who will decide with their votes. That is why we completely support the Forums Resolution not only to support the Assemblys proclamation but also to send a delegation from the forum to accompany this sovereign act of Venezuelas people. Venezuelas representative to the forum, Roy Daza, affirmed, We are going to win this decisive battle, insisting, The proposal by President Maduro for a Constituent Assembly has deep democratic roots. The forums agenda of integration and solidarity, unity and sovereignty also framed the July 19 celebrations in Managua of the Sandinista Revolution. Hundreds of thousands of people from all over Nicaragua filled the plazas and boulevards next to Lake Xolotlan listening to a festival of revolutionary and popular music, song and speeches. There was huge applause when President Ortega awarded Puerto Rican independence hero Oscar Lopez Rivera Nicaraguas highest distinction and another award for two Mexican journalists Pedro Talavera and Edgar Hernandez. Talavera and Hernandez risked their lives in 1979 filming the documentary The Final Offensive, reporting the desperately fought last days of the overthrow of the Somoza dictatorship. Their reports always began with Here, Free Nicaragua! Here, Free Nicaragua! The presence of Lopez Rivera, Talavera and Hernandez reinforced the message of Latin American unity, independence and sovereignty stressed throughout the Sao Paulo Forum, a message forcefully emphasized by all the speakers at the Sandinista commemoration in Managua. A common theme in all the speeches was the determination to reject and defeat the vindictive anti-democratic offensive by the regions reactionary right wing supported by the imperialist powers of North America and Europe. Ecuadors Foreign Minister Maria Fernanda Espinoza made clear the leading role of gender equality in that process, There cannot be just societies without equality and gender equality. Our peoples will be better with women leaders committed to justice. So we want to recognize here the historic career of beloved Vice President Rosario Murillo. Your presence, companera is an example for the women of Latin America. And all of you, beloved Nicaraguan women are an example that shows how to break the circle of injustice, including salary injustice and inequities between men and women. We cannot go on being one of the richest regions in the world but at the same time the most unequal region on the planet. This is a disgrace that demands of us greater commitment to our peoples. That is the fundamental rationale for our popular revolutions: to put an end to centuries of exclusion, misery and injustice. RELATED: Nicaragua Decorates Oscar Lopez Rivera with Highest Honor In his address, Bolivian president Evo Morales declared, We see every day and we hear every hour the crisis of the capitalist system spreading across the whole world, there is more poverty but also more military intervention by NATO and the United States. The capitalist system can no longer resolve its financial problems, its social problems and for that reason, we need to be stronger and more united and this enormous concentration in Nicaragua gives strength not just to the peoples of Latin America but to all the peoples of the world ... thanks to the unity and awareness of the peoples of various countries, we have freed ourselves democratically so as to develop, emancipate ourselves and guarantee the liberation of our peoples. I want to take the chance to express our solidarity with Cuba and Venezuela. Over the last few days and weeks we have heard new threats, new aggression against Cuba and Venezuela. That aggression is not just against Cuba and Venezuela but against all the peoples of Latin America, against life and all of humanity on the planet. That is why we express our solidarity with the worlds peoples. Now Cuba is not alone. Brother Maduro, Venezuela is not alone, we are all your people saying to you Maduro from here, 'Hit the North American empire as hard as you can!' Our peoples here dont accept any intervention, or permit any domination. We are peoples who set ourselves free and that process of liberation will continue not just in Latin America but the world over. All these speeches strengthened the message underlying the special tribute paid at the Sao Paulo Forum to Fidel Castro, Hugo Chavez and Che Guevara. That message is a reaffirmation of the revolutionary commitment those leaders embodied to a multi-polar world of sovereign countries working together in unity and solidarity for the common good of all the worlds peoples. While mainstream commentators talk wistfully about a non-existent conservative restoration, the reality across Latin America is the opposite. Only in very few countries do the right-wing elites enjoy a secure solid electoral majority. Nowhere does any right-wing political movement offer a credible policy program aimed at reducing poverty and inequality. In Argentina Mauricio Macris regime is set to pay a heavy political price in Novembers albeit limited legislative elections for duping voters into supporting his deceitful shell-game political program. In Brazil, Workers Party leader Inacio Lula da Silva is the clear favorite to win next years presidential vote. In Venezuela, President Maduros decision to call a Constituent Assembly has stripped away what little legitimacy the violent right-wing opposition retained after they frittered away chance after chance of winning broad political support following their decisive win in the 2015 National Assembly elections. Honduras has presidential elections this year with every sign that the countrys new progressive coalition will win decisively. In retrospect, this years Sao Paulo Forum will look like a watershed event prior to a new resurgence of progressive forces in Latin America and the Caribbean. MANCHESTER, ENGLAND, August 03, 2017 /24-7PressRelease/ -- Outsourced direct sales and marketing firm First Phoenix Promotions' mission is to grow nationally and internationally in the coming years. The firm is looking to open up in further UK locations by 2018 and pushes on into foreign territories with their existing business model and system in 2020. In five years time, First Phoenix Promotions wants to have spread their wings across Scandinavia, France and Canada. Mara Polansky, Managing Director of First Phoenix Promotions, finds it crucial to thoroughly plan the upcoming expansion, rather than rushing into it. The firm wants to be well prepared and well equipped, starting off strong in the new locations. About First Phoenix Promotions: http://firstphoenixpromotions.com/about.html "Our motivation is that the hard work and long hours we invest into the business now will lead to some sort of delayed gratification", explains Mara Polansky of First Phoenix Promotions. Her plan is to enter foreign countries and grab the market share of existing sales and marketing companies who are currently offering a below-par service. Based in the heart of Manchester, First Phoenix Promotions raises brand awareness on their clients' behalf and promotes and sells their products and services. What makes the firm unique, is their personalised face-to-face approach, spending a dedicated amount of time with each prospect to consult them accordingly depending on their needs. The firm's campaigns are not only cost-effective for their clients but build lasting relationships between consumers and the brand. Managing Director Mara Polansky is now keen to implement First Phoenix Promotions' personalised sales and marketing services and face-to-face interactions for a number of different clients around the globe. Mara Polansky comes originally from Phoenix, Arizona. When she first stepped into the sales and marketing industry, she was amazed at the growth potential of the industry and the opportunity to train and support other professionals, so they can become brand ambassadors and successful entrepreneurs and help achieve the business grow. "Our goals may seem far away for the moment. However we are already in the middle of the planning process for our UK-wide expansion", explains a spokesperson of First Phoenix Promotions. The firm has set short-term, medium and long-term growth goals to look up to moving forward and to create a constant reminder of the company's mission to open up further branches in Scandinavia, France and Canada in the next five years. For more information Follow @firstphoenixpromotions on Instagram and Like them on Facebook. # # # Aug 3, 2017 | By Benedict Bioengineers from the University of California San Diego and physicians from Rady Children's Hospital are using 3D printed models to improve surgeries for slipped capital femoral epiphysis, the most common hip disorder found in children ages 9 to 16. Use of models cut surgery time by about 25%. 3D printed hip models helped San Diego surgeons cut operation times by around 25 percent We see 3D printed medical models so frequently these days, it can be easy to accept their existence without questioning them. But have you ever wondered just how useful such models can bein numerical terms? While it makes total sense that a 3D printed model could improve a surgeons performance by allowing him or her to practice, sometimes its hard to gauge just how much improvement there really is. Thats what makes a recent study at the University of California San Diego and San Diegos Rady Children's Hospital so important. In the study, researchers created 3D printed models of patient hip joints, to allow surgeons to practice their procedure before doing the real thing. But they also used a control group, letting a few surgeons perform the procedure without a 3D printed aid to see exactly how much difference the 3D printed models were making. The study was published in a recent issue of the Journal of Children's Orthopaedics. In the study, Dr. Vidyadhar Upasani, pediatric orthopedic surgeon at Rady Children's and UC San Diego and the paper's senior author, operated on 10 young patients with slipped capital femoral epiphysis, a common hip disorder that affects about 11 in 100,000 children in the United States every year. Five of Upasanis operations were assisted with 3D printed hip models; five were not. Two other surgeons also operated on different groups of five patients, without using 3D printed models. Excitingly, the results of the study showed 3D printing in a positive light. In the group where Upasani used 3D printed models, surgeries were 38-45 minutes shorter compared with the two control groups. Student Jason Caffrey helped develop the 3D printed models And according to the studys researchers, these time savings would translate into at least $2,700 in savings per surgery. Given that the kind of 3D printer required for the models would only cost around $2,200, such equipment clearly represents a solid investmentso much so, in fact, that Rady Children's orthopedics department has already acquired its own. "Being able to practice on these 3D models is crucial," Upasani concluded. It's now hard to plan surgeries without them. To make the 3D printed models, two UC San Diego students, Jason Caffrey and Lillia Cherkasskiy, teamed up with Upasani, bioengineering professor Robert Sah, and their colleagues. They took CT scans of each patients pelvis, and used this data to make a computerized model of the bone and growth plate for 3D printing. Printing took between four and 10 hours for each 3D printed hip model. When completed, the 3D printed models allowed Upasani to visualize in 3D how the growth plate of each patient was deformed. This allowed him to familiarize himself with the patients physiology without using radiation-giving X-rays. Although this study only focused on one kind of procedure, the speed improvement of 25 percent will be music to the ears of medical 3D printing specialists, and may encourage more hospitals to adopt additive technology. Posted in 3D Printing Application Maybe you also like: Sarover Zaidi in Chapati Mystery: They ask me to tell them what Shahid means Listen: It means The Beloved in Persian, Witness in Arabic Agha Shahid Ali, In Arabic, 2003 Ali Shariati, the Iranian revolutionary and socialist, died mysteriously in 1977. Shariati, also a sociologist, wrote Jihad and Shahadat, a rendering of the historico-mythical battle of Karbala, retelling it as the first red revolution. Composed as a testimonial to the dead, Shariati portrayed the female protagonist Zainab as the last witness to this bloody battle of loss, death and mourning. Unfortunately, at the peak of Cold War politics, prior to Khomeinis rise to power in Iran (1979), Shariati had been found dead under mysterious circumstances (1977). Shariatis own death went without witnesses or testimonials, or the image and space of mourning it demanded. Forty years later, Azadeh Akhlaghi, a photographer, provides a testimonial to Shariatis death, in her experimental series By an Eyewitness. Akhlaghi works with 17 renditions of witnessing deaths and events that had slid under the archives or had not been allowed to have one. She provides in the hyper-image-fetishizing code of contemporary photography, an original injunction. Akhlaghis exhibit works with actors and staged sets to produce events that had missed photographic documentation and presence in the archive of a nation-state. Using newspaper reports, records and interviews, she, bit by bit, pieces together scenes of assassinations, accidents, political deaths and funerals. She seamlessly, brilliantly, and self-consciously provides the role of the fabricator in photography, but one that hinges on photographys original injunction, that of providing evidence, by staging 17 unaccounted for deaths in Iranian history. More here. Paul Halpern in Forbes: Abstract mathematics sometimes has surprisingly practical applications, to not only physics but other arenas as well. Take, for example, the work of extraordinarily innovative mathematician Maryam Mirzakhani, whose recent death at the age of 40 has been mourned around the world. One of the theorems she co-developed sheds light on several related longstanding physics quandaries having to do with ricocheting and diffusionof light, billiards, the wind, and other entities. Undoubtedly, given its generality, it will find many uses in science, sports, and beyond, for years to come. The class of problems Mirzakhani was interested in dates back more than a century. In 1912, Austrian statistical physicist Paul Ehrenfest and his wife, the Russian mathematician Tatjana Afanassjewa-Ehrenfest, proposed the wind-tree model as a way of trying to understand how impediments in a system affect diffusion. (In this context, diffusion means the spreading out of particles, light, gases, etc., due to their natural motion.) They imagined a bounded forest that was empty except for regularly spaced treessymbolized as rectangles forming a periodic pattern within a square lattice. Imagine the wind entering the forest from a certain direction and scattering off the various trees according to the law of reflection (incoming angle equals outgoing angle). How quickly, they wondered, would nearby streams of air particles separate from each other and spread throughout the entire forest? More here. Rafia Zakaria in The Baffler: On the second grim Friday following President Donald Trumps victory in the November elections, I attended a Friday service at the Womens Mosque of America. Held at a community center in Los Angeles, the service was organized entirely by a group of women seeking to further womens leadership within the American Muslim community. Unlike other mixed mosque congregations, women deliver the call to prayer, they give the sermon, they set up and they pick up, they talk and they pray. We did all of those things that day; we also worried and cried and listened to announcements about self-defense classesvery important, the speaker emphasized, given recent developments. I left both drained and heartened, feeling at once unsure of an America mired in Islamophobia and yet hopeful for an American Muslim community led by women. Could the two co-exist, I wondered? How long before the demands of survival as American Muslims wipe out the efforts of resisting patriarchy as American Muslim women? The same amalgam of terror and hope I felt that day is reflected in the results of a Pew survey[*] on American Muslims released last Wednesday. According to its results, the American Muslim community has changed markedly since the last time Pew polled them ten years ago. From the viewpoint of an ever-suspicious America, unsure of the assimilative abilities of troublesome American Muslims, the news is mostly good. Muslims are now more liberal, a fact meant to be celebrated. To get the party started, CNN helpfully highlights a statistic telling us that the numbers of those American Muslims who believe society should be tolerant of homosexuality has nearly doubled (up from 27 percent to 52 percent), with millennial Muslims leading the charge of change. Nearly two-thirds of Muslims believe in the validity of varying interpretations of faith, and 6 percent more than in 2007 self-identify as politically liberal. To top it off, the vast majoritynearly eight out of ten of the roughly 1,000 polledvoted accordingly, casting their ballots for Hillary Clinton. At the same time, while American Muslims are more liberal, they are also rather replete with dread, or, like me, just plain terrified. More here. The eclipse will be seen from Oregon to South Carolina over the course of about 90 minutes, with 14 states experiencing night-like darkness for about two minutes before nightfall. It is expected to start off the coast of Oregon at 10:15 a.m. PT and reach South Carolina at 2:50 p.m. ET. A total eclipse will occur along the path, and all of North America will experience at least a partial eclipse. No matter where you are in North America, whether its cloudy, clear or rainy, NASA wants as many people as possible to help with this citizen science project, Kristen Weaver, deputy coordinator for the project, said in a press release. We want to inspire a million eclipse viewers to become eclipse scientists. Participants will need to download the app, register to become a citizen scientist and obtain a thermometer to measure air temperature. Their observations will be recorded on an interactive map. The app and instructions can be obtained at observer.globe.gov/about/get-the-app. 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. Singapore 2nd August, 2017 Khun Thai Tea LLP, global franchisor for the Thai ice black tea brand that originated from a humble pushcart in Bangkok, is firing up plans for broad expansion throughout Asia. This comes hot on the heels of the brands first-ever outlets launched outside of Thailand, in the heart of Manila, Philippines. From Humble Origins To Big Dreams Ms Elis Chai, who co-founded Khun Thai Tea LLP along with Mr. Jeremy Lee, said that their company has retained global rights for the brand worldwide. Describing its origins, she said, Auntie Marlee, sole proprietor of the original pushcart at Sukhumvit Soi 11, created Khun Thai Teas Thai ice black tea recipe in 1955. Knowledge of her recipe for cha-yen was restricted to her family members. Her pushcart soon came to be Sukhumvit Soi 11s best-held secret. Its popularity rose in tandem with the streets fame, which was earning a well-deserved reputation as a famous dining and nightlife destination. Expats, revellers, tourists and locals would stumble across Auntie Marlees refreshing secret while converging on the streets many bars, restaurants and clubs. And that, Ms. Chai explained, was how Auntie Marlees Thai ice black tea became famous. As Auntie Marlee began getting on in her years however, she started searching for successors to carry on and expand on her pushcarts legacy. In 2016, her search finally bore fruit in the form of one Nancy Padilla. Launch of First Overseas Franchises In June 2016, SM Mall of Asia, located in Manila, Philippines, became home to the first food and beverage outlet in the world outside of Bangkok to reproduce Auntie Marlees secret Thai ice black tea recipe. Khun Thai Tea Shop (Philippines) is operated and owned by Filipino local Nancy Padilla, who named the franchise Khun (Respect), as tribute to Auntie Marlee. Two more Khun Thai Tea outlets soon opened in rapid succession: one at Star City Amusement Park, Manila, Star Parks Corporation Roxas Boulevard, and another at MegaMall Manila, in Metro Manilas bustling Ortigas business district. Filipinos at these locations loved the unique taste of Auntie Marlees Thai ice black tea, and sales quickly took off. Not long after, Khun Thai Tea LLP, headquartered in Singapore, was named global franchisor for the brand. Applications for new Khun Thai Tea franchises in the Philippines have been fast and furious; Mr. Lee reports that a slew of new branches are set to open in Manila over the second half of 2017. Said Mr. Jeremy Lee, The success of Khun Thai Tea in the capital city of Philippines has confirmed the potential of a Asia-wide market for our unique brand of Thai ice black tea. We are now planning for rapid expansion across Asia and will strive to bring a Khun Thai Tea branch to every Asian shopping mall. Singapores First Khun Thai Tea Outlet Confirmed As part of these plans, Mr. Lee announced that Singapore will be the first country outside of the Philippines to open a Khun Thai Tea franchise. Details concerning the location of Singapores first Khun Thai Tea outlet are still being firmed up, said Mr. Lee, but its opening in Q4 of 2017 is confirmed. He added, We will be announcing the location for the new Singapore branch in a later press release, but are letting the public know our plans first because we know Singaporeans, especially those who have visited our outlets in Manila, will be delighted to try out our range of snacks and beverages locally. Once it opens, Singaporeans will be able to experience Khun Thai Teas Thai Ice Black Tea firsthand, as well as our other unique snacks currently available only in the Philippines. A Taste Of Whats Coming The popularity of Khun Thai Tea in Manila has sparked a craze for cha-yen there, helped along by the chains inhouse variety of Asian-influenced snacks and beverages. Mr. Lee thinks Singaporeans will be equally enthused when it opens here. In addition to Auntie Marlees secret-recipe Thai ice black tea, on every franchises menu are our variations of popular beverages like Ice Cappuccino and Ice Mocha, spiced with a twist of Thai culture, said Mr. Lee. The menu also has items inspired by drink recipes from around the region, such as a mix of coffee and tea (Yuan Yang), which was first brewed in Hong Kong; Ice Bandung, inspired by the original popular Malaysian beverage recipe that combines the alluring taste of rose syrup with the velvety smoothness of milk; and the option of adding Taiwanese-style boba (small chewy tapioca balls) to your order. On the snacks menu, there are items influenced by Thai culinary culture, such as Crispy Kangkong, and Tea Toast, which has the complex flavours of Thai tea leaves accompanied by a variety of novel yet familiar toppings. Mr. Lee said that the newest additions to its menu Premium Ice Coffee also have Filipinos repeatedly going back to Khun Thai Tea outlets, and are sure to delight Singaporeans as well. Premium Ice Coffee is brewed with premium coffee beans and is a unique taste for new markets in Philippines. Said Mr. Lee, Since our trial introduction of Premium Ice Coffee to Khun Thai Tea in Philippines Manila, we have had tremendous receptive responses and it is fast becoming the best seller for us. The beans used in this premium coffee are lightly roasted, evenly ground and then finely sieved to achieve smooth, arousing flavours. Excited by whats coming? Keep your ears and eyes open, because Singapores first Khun Thai Tea outlet will be opening very soon location details are on the way! About Khun Thai Tea LLP Khun Thai Tea LLP holds global franchise rights for Khun Thai Tea, a recognised premium franchised Thai Ice Black Tea brand. The company aims to bring the authentic taste of traditional Thai iced-tea, made from Auntie Marlees closely- guarded 61 year old secret family recipe, to cities all around the world, beginning with Asia. Visit Khunthaitea.com for more information about Khun Thai Tea, Thailands most authentic overseas Cha-Yen Thai ice black tea! For more information, visit: https://www.facebook.com/khunthaitea/ Media Contact Company Name: Khun Thai Tea LLP Contact Person: Jeremy Lee Email: jeremy@khunthaitea.com Address:SM Mall of Asia Annex Building Coral Way Corner J.W Diokno Boulevard SM Mall Of Asia Complex 1300 City: Pasay State: Manila Country: Philippines Website: http://www.khunthaitea.com/ Updated Research Report by Independent Investment Research Sydney, Aug 3, 2017 AEST (ABN Newswire) - Mustang Resources Limited ( ASX:MUS ) ( GGPLF:OTCMKTS ) is pleased to announce the issuance of an updated research report compiled by Independent Investment Research ("IIR") for distribution to their network. This follows a site visit by the IIR analyst to the Montepuez Ruby Project at the end of June 2017. To view the full copy of the report, please visit: http://abnnewswire.net/lnk/Y96L3F6F About New Energy Minerals Ltd New Energy Minerals Ltd (ASX:NXE) (FRA:GGY) is an ASX listed junior mining company, that recently announced the divestment of the Company's Caula vanadium - graphite project and the Montepuez Ruby project in Mozambique. Kidston Solar Phase One 50MW Update Sydney, Aug 3, 2017 AEST (ABN Newswire) - Genex Power Limited ( ASX:GNX ) (Genex or Company) is pleased to provide shareholders with this latest update regarding the construction program for the Company's Phase One 50MW Kidston Solar Project (KSP1 or Project). Genex is pleased to report that the construction of KSP1 continues to remain on-time and on-budget for anticipated first generation in Q4 2017 and Practical Completion in Q1 2018. Key activities since the last update (refer ASX announcement 19 June 2017) include: - Continued installation of solar modules across the KSP1 site; - Continued installation of pilings; - Continued installation of trackers; - Continued installation of the substation earth-grid; and - Installation of the security fence perimeter around the KSP1 site. Commenting on the continued successful progress of the Company's 50MW Solar Project, Managing Director of Genex Power, Michael Addison said: "Construction has progressed as scheduled, remaining within the allocated budget. The Project was recently declared by the Queensland Government as a Critical Infrastructure Project in conjunction with the Phase Two Projects (270MW Solar and 250MW Pumped Hydro), 275kV transmission line easement and the Copperfield Dam easement." "Genex has now turned its attention to the development of Phase Two of the Kidston Renewable Energy Hub, with detailed discussions progressing with potential energy partners, debt financing entities and equity infrastructure firms. Genex has received first-round board approval from the Northern Australia Infrastructure Facility (NAIF) for potential debt funding for the Phase Two Projects. NAIF will now commence full due-diligence." To view figures, please visit: http://abnnewswire.net/lnk/1320M6SV About Genex Power Ltd Genex Power Limited (ASX:GNX) is focused on developing a portfolio of renewable energy generation and storage projects across Australia. The Company's flagship Kidston Clean Energy Hub, located in north Queensland, will integrate large-scale solar generation with pumped storage hydro. The Kidston Clean Energy Hub is comprised of the operating 50MW stage 1 Solar Project (KS1) and the 250MW Kidston Pumped Storage Hydro Project (K2-Hydro) with potential for further multi-stage wind and solar projects. The 50MW Jemalong Solar Project (JSP) is located in NSW and provides geographical diversification to the Genex Power Limited portfolio. JSP was energised in early December 2020 and commissioning is now underway. Genex is further developing its energy storage portfolio via the early stage development of a 50MW/75MWh standalone battery energy storage system at Bouldercombe in Queensland. With over 400MW of renewable energy and storage projects in development, Genex is well placed as Australia's leading renewable energy and storage company. Large Pit Growing in Size and Grade Perth, Aug 3, 2017 AEST (ABN Newswire) - Blackham Resources Ltd ( ASX:BLK ) ( BKHRF:OTCMKTS ) ("Blackham") is pleased to provide a revised Mineral Resource estimate for the East and West lodes at the Matilda/Wiluna Gold Operation. Mineral Resource estimates are currently underway for the Happy Jack - Bulletin and Adelaide - Moonlight areas and will be reported later this quarter. Highlights - Open pit resources within an A$1,800/oz pit shell for East and West lodes now sit at 8.5Mt @ 2.83g/t for 770Koz (76% Indicated) o high grade for an open pit o 23% increase in diluted grade from previous model o 80% of the resource falls into a A$1,400/oz pit shell o Pit designs and Ore Reserves are nearing completion - Open pit resources for all the Wiluna lodes now 12.9Mt @ 2.8g/t for 1.2Moz The latest Mineral Resource estimate for the East and West Lodes is reported within an A$1,800/oz optimised pit shell and is based on an additional ~30,000m of RC and diamond drilling completed between January and May 2017. This drilling has resulted in a significant improvement in the confidence level of the Mineral Resource with 76% now classified as Indicated. Mining studies which will allow an initial open pit Ore Reserve estimate for the East and West Lode are nearing completion. Managing Director Bryan Dixon said "Since drilling commenced in September last year a total of ~$4M has been spent on Resource and Reserve definition drilling on the East and West lodes. In this time the Mineral Resource has grown 860% in less than a year from 80,000oz to 770,000oz of which 76% is classified as Indicated. This represents a very attractive resource addition cost of $5.80/oz. This large resource base provides a very solid basis for the expansion plans with the Expansion PFS to be released this month." Wiluna Resource Update Following successful drilling campaigns, Measured, Indicated and Inferred Resource estimates have been updated for the East and West Lodes at the Wiluna Gold Project. Drilling during 2017 has focused on improving the confidence level of the Mineral Resource Estimates to allow Ore Reserves to be estimated as part of the expansion study. Resource estimates for the Bulletin - Happy Jack, Squib, Essex and Golden Age lodes are underway and will be reported later this quarter. Cube Consulting were engaged to produce the gold grade estimate for the Mineral Resource based on a mineralisation interpretation completed by Blackham geologists. The Mineral Resource was classified with guidance from Cube. The East-West open pit Mineral Resources reported within an A$1,800/oz optimised pit shell are now 8.5Mt @ 2.83g/t for 770Koz of which 76% is classified as Indicated. As drilling targeted mineralisation which is likely to fall within a pit, the underground Mineral Resource which contains all mineralisation beneath the A$1,800/oz optimised pit shell is essentially unchanged. A review of a range of optimised pit shells show that the East-West pits are relatively insensitive to gold price. As shown in Figures 1-4 (see link below), the A$1,400 pit shell is only slightly smaller than the A$1,800/oz pit shell, and contains 80% of the ounces, indicating that Resource to Reserve conversion is likely to be high. A breakdown of the East - West Mineral Resource estimate is provided in Table 1 (see the link below) and compared with the previous Mineral Resource estimate from December 2016. Previous Mineral Resources for the Wiluna deposits have been estimated using Ordinary Kriging (OK). However, a review of the December resource model by Cube Consulting suggested that although OK is an industry standard estimation method it may not be the most suitable method for the East and West Lodes due to the relatively high gold grade variability evident within the lodes. Under these circumstances, OK does not reflect the inherent variability of the orebody and tends to produce over-smoothed block grade estimates. Cube recommended that Localised Uniform Conditioning (LUC) would be a more appropriate estimation method to better predict the grade-tonnage distribution which could be expected during mining. The LUC process, as implemented in this case, has resulted in a Mineral Resource estimate that accounts for the majority of the anticipated dilution. Both the East and West lodes have been mined historically from underground which will potentially result in open voids within the planned pit. In this estimate, mineralisation immediately adjacent to historical stopes has been classified as Inferred due to uncertainty associated with the application of mining factors allowing economic extraction around the voids. This mineralisation had been classified as Indicated in the previous estimate. The significantly higher grade of Inferred compared with Indicated mineralisation in this estimate is primarily due to the occurrence of high grade mineralisation immediately adjacent to these historical stopes. Of the 180,000oz Inferred material within the A$1,800/oz pit shell, 108,000oz (943Kt @ 3.56g/t) lies adjacent to previously mined stopes. Many of the historical stopes intersected during mining of both the East and West pits by Newmont in the late 1990s were discovered to have been back-filled with material grading between 4g/t and 8g/t gold. Close spaced probe drilling by both Newmont and Apex found that most of the historical stopes beneath the current floor of the East pit have also been back-filled. Assays from this drilling indicate that the backfill contains significant mineralisation with gold grades similar to that of the previously mined backfill. However, for the purposes of this estimate the backfill has been treated as waste and assigned a grade of 0.0g/t for the pit optimisations and resource block models. Blackham is progressing work to confirm evidence of backfill within stope voids with potentially higher grades than the existing resource. This work will continue to strengthen and de-risk the already significant resource. Drilling completed for the December 2016 Mineral Resource estimate identified significant zones of mineralisation between the East and West Lodes. Understanding of the orientation of this mineralisation was limited at that time due to data constraints and consequently it was not included in the previous Mineral Resource estimate. Drilling completed between January and May 2017 targeting this mineralisation has since confirmed that it has a north-westerly strike and dips at ~70deg to the south-west. This mineralisation is included in the updated Mineral Resource estimate. Most of the remaining Inferred mineralisation (i.e. not adjacent to historical stopes) is contained within these structures. The inclusion of the cross structures has resulted in a larger pit compared with the December 2016 Mineral Resource (see Figure 5 in the link below). Further drilling is required to improve the confidence level of the mineralisation in these structures. Total resources for the Wiluna/Matilda Gold Project including depletions to the end of June 2017 now stand at 61Mt @ 3.1g/t for 6.2Moz (see Table 2 in the link below). Over the last 120 years the Wiluna/Matilda Operation has produced 4.3Moz of production from predominately refractory ores. A refractory processing facility is located less than 1km from the East West Pit which has operated for 19 of the last 24 years. Studies are underway on the potential mining and processing options which will provide the optimal outcome for developing the large Wiluna sulphide resources. This large open pit resource base will underpin the base load feed for the expansion plans. The Expansion PFS to be released this month. Wiluna Gold Deposit Summary The Wiluna and Matilda gold deposits are located within the Wiluna Goldfield, close to the town of Wiluna at latitude 26DEG 38'S, longitude 120DEG 15'E on the Wiluna (SG 51-9)1:250 000 scale map. Perth, the nearest capital city, lies 750km to the southeast. The closest regional centres are Kalgoorlie, 540km to the south and Meekatharra, 183km to the west. The gold deposits are categorised as orogenic gold deposits, with similarities to many other gold deposits in the Yilgarn region. The deposits are hosted within the Wiluna Domain of the Wiluna Greenstone Belt. Rocks in the Wiluna Domain have experienced greenschist-facies regional metamorphism and brittle deformation. The Wiluna Domain is comprised of a sequence of foliated basalts and high-magnesium basalts, with intercalated felsic intrusions, lamprophyre dykes, metasediments, and dolerites. Wiluna ores are typically oxide, refractory or free milling quartz mineralisation. The refractory ore has most gold occurring in either solid solution or as sub-microscopic particles within fine-grained sulphides. Mineralisation at Wiluna is principally controlled by the shear zones which have variable strike and dip orientations and typically flex along strike and down dip. These flexures in conjunction with favourable host rock composition act to form the best ore zones. Gold mineralisation in the East and West lode is predominantly hosted within a series of theoletic and high magnesium basalts and generally strikes north-west. In East Lode there is one dominant shear with numerous hangwall splays which are north to north-northeast striking and easterly dipping (80deg). These mineralised shear zones range in thickness from approximately 5m to 40m. Mineralisation at West Lode is hosted within a wide (up to 70m), steeply dipping, north-south striking anastomosing shear zone. This is characterised by two main shears linked by cross cutting shears of varying orientations. The interpretation of the mineralisation was carried out using a methodical approach to ensure continuity of the geology and estimated mineral resource using Surpac software. For the East and West Lode open pit resource a lower cut-off grade of 0.3g/t was used. All available geological data was used in the interpretation including mapping, drilling, oxidation surfaces and interpretations of high grade ore shoots. Only diamond and reverse circulation drilling samples were used in the final estimate however all available grade control data was used in the geological assessment. A range of criteria were considered when addressing the suitability of the classification boundaries to the resource estimate: o Geological continuity and volume models; o Drill spacing and available mining information; o Modelling technique o Estimation properties including search strategy, number of informing composites, average distance of composites from blocks, number of drillholes used and kriging quality parameters. The classification of the blocks was also visually checked and adjusted to remove any "spotted dog" effects. No measured resources were calculated. Estimated blocks that have been informed by predominantly historical drilling where QA/QC data has not been reviewed were assigned as inferred. To view tables and figures, please visit: http://abnnewswire.net/lnk/9A8ZO310 About Wiluna Mining Corporation Ltd Wiluna Mining Corporation (ASX:WMC) (OTCMKTS:WMXCF) is a Perth based, ASX listed gold mining company that controls over 1,600 square kilometres of the Yilgarn Craton in the Northern Goldfields of WA. The Yilgarn Craton has a historic and current gold endowment of over 380 million ounces, making it one of most prolific gold regions in the world. The Company owns 100% of the Wiluna Gold Operation which has a defined resource of 8.04M oz at 1.67 g/t au. In May 2019, a new highly skilled management team took control of the Company with a clear plan to leverage the Wiluna Gold Operation's multi-million-ounce potential. Ameesha Patel has been active on social media, and shes killing it with her hotness. Ameesha likes to interact with her fans, and those loyal fans seem to do anything for her. Even stalk her to the point that she threatens them to report it to the cops. Recently Ameesha returned to Mumbai after a show from Delhi. She was greeted by her fans who got the news of her arriving at the airport. The actor looked happy and obliged to click selfies with her fans and even spoke to some of her fans. Things turned ugly when one of her fans followed her home after she left the airport. And if sources are to be believed, the fan stayed there overnight just in the hope that he would get to meet his idol personally. It became so ugly that the actor had to threaten him to report him to the police. Well, that didnt go as planned. Meeting your fan is not always charming. There are many things that are upsetting Children these days and one of the biggest issues is child molestation. Children are abused, molested and raped but most of the victims in reported cases are girls. But recently Mumbai is shaken with two incidences, a 16-year-old boy suffered a horrific tale of sexual abuse, he was subjected to repeated rape for over a year by 15 teens in his locality. The incident comes on the heels of another teenaged boy in Mumbai who was raped by four men. He recently died of multiple organ failure after trying to commit suicide by drinking rat poison. His friend, a 10 year old, is believed to have been a victim of the same crime, and had also died under treatment. These are just the reported incidences that have disturbed us. There are many such cases that go unreported due to various reasons. We need to talk about boyhood sexual abuse and its aftermath for men can be difficult, even painful. But such interaction is absolutely needed. Lakhs of men are abused as children; continue to live with the devastating effects of shattered trust. The media has been of little help deepening the conversation about male sexual victimization. The recent coverage about the sexual abuse of boys has highlighted thwarting abuse, making sure sexual predators are sequestered from youthful prey, and moving on. While the media has mostly neglected these boys and the men they become, at least those scandals brought boyhood abuse into the public discourse. We can talk about it now, and we must do so, no matter how difficult this conversation can be. Its disturbing to think about what it means to a boy when someone he trusts, someone he knows and someone who was his friend or relative sexually abuses him. Abusers use their age or authority to satisfy their own needs without regard to those of their victims. Seemingly unbreakable bonds are broken when betrayal is introduced into these relationships. Subsequently, many sexually abused boys grow up distrustful, considering people dishonest, malicious, and unreliable. They often become anxious of emotional connection and isolate themselves. This may alternate with merging with loved ones so they hardly know where they end and others begin. Confusing affection with abuse, desire with tenderness, sexually abused boys often become men who have difficulty distinguishing among sex, love, nurturance, affection and abuse. They may experience friendly social approaches as seductive and manipulative. On the other hand, they may not notice when exploitative demands are made on them theyve learned to see these as normal and acceptable. Many believe sexually abused boys almost inevitably become sexually abusive men. But, while a significant proportion of male abusers were victims themselves, theres evidence that relatively few sexually abused boys actually become abusers. Because of the myth, however, many men fear theyll become abusive or worry that if they disclose their history, others will consider them predators. Sexually abused boys are also troubled if they were aroused while being abused. Irreversibly, when the abuser is male (and even sometimes when she is female), many boys whether straight or gay develop fears and concerns about sexual harrassment. Conventional wisdom says sexual abuse turns boys gay, although theres no persuasive evidence that premature sexual activity fundamentally changes sexual orientation. Nevertheless, a heterosexual boy is likely to doubt himself, wondering why a man chose him for having sex. A homosexual boy may feel rushed into considering himself gay, or may hate his homosexuality because he believes it was caused by his abuse. Whether boys are gays or straight, these manipulative introductions to sexuality can set lifetime patterns of exploitation and self-destructive behaviour. Boys who grow up without coming to terms with their childhood abuse often struggle as men with addictions, anxiety, depression, and thoughts of suicide as well as the inability to develop or maintain relationships. It is difficult for any child to report sexual abuse because they feel guilty, they may have received threats from the offender, they fear they wont be believed, and they dont want to cause family problems. But for male victims, there are additional barriers to disclosure. In our culture, boys are socialized not to be victims. Guys are expected still, to become mentally tough and not seek help. The bottom line is that it is up to adults to protect young people and the need for further education for parents and educators in this arena remains a constant call for clarity and direction. While much has been done in prevention and education regarding child sexual abuse, unfortunately there is more to do. We can start with creating emotionally safe environments for males to disclose sexual abuse and let it be known to boys that this can happen to them too. Boys should be taught more realistic roles to emulate other than the classic tough guy. (Any suggestions, comments or dispute with regards to this article send us on feedback@afternoonvoice.com) A 16-year-old boy in Mumbai has alleged that 15 boys raped him over the past one year. A class 9 student, living in Andheri (west) filed a complaint and told the DN Nagar Police that he revealed it to a friend when he felt unbearable pain two days ago after the last assault on June 26. The Mumbai Police has registered a case against all 15 accused, all between 15 and 17 years. Seven accused have been detained so far. The accused boys took the victim to a playground outside a municipal school in the area and raped him one by one, said a police officer. One year ago, a friend who was his neighbour first raped the boy. The alleged rapist shot a video of the act on his mobile and shared the clip with his other friends. The victim was very scared and did not inform his family about the abuse, said Police officer. The neighbour then started blackmailing the victim and forced him to have sex with others. Whenever I tried to resist, they would hit me, the boy mentioned in his complaint. Finally the boy complained of terrible pain due to repeated sexual assault. A medical examination conducted at the Cooper Hospital confirmed the sexual assault. After this report Afternoon Voice decided to probe this matter further. We spoke to many youngsters about the assault on boys in our society as they provided some shocking revelations Mannat, a gay on the condition of anonymity said, Sixteen is an awkward age for anyone, let alone those within the LGBT community. Having to deal with all the spots and hormones is hard enough without also having to come to terms with your sexuality. Many guys befriend a guy years older than them. They initially look and act like nice guys. But later on they get physical. This is where the molestation begins unknowingly. Dr. Swapna Patker: clinical psychologist said, Psychological disturbance in children are causing such issues and they land up committing heinous crimes. It is high time that the society should take mental health issues seriously. She further added that, The children who lack attention from the family usually refrain from expressing their problems with elders unless some casualty occurs. Hemant Darji: a student told this paper, Some sexual assaults of men are actually forms of gay-bashing, motivated by fear and hatred of homosexuality. Most of the time being sexually assaulted may lead a gay man to believe he somehow deserved it, that he was paying the price for his sexual orientation. Unfortunately, this self-blame can be reinforced by the ignorance or intolerance of others who blame the victim by suggesting that a gay victim somehow provoked the assault or was less harmed by it because he was gay. Vikas Kumar: an IT professional said, Every minute one gay is assaulted. Gay men may also hesitate to report a sexual assault due to fears of blame, disbelief or intolerance by police or medical personnel. As a result gay men may be deprived of legal protections and necessary medical care following an assault. In above case the guy was tolerating assault for past one year; one can imagine why he was quiet. Pranam a make-up artist and gay said, There are many apps like 1man Indian gay dating, the premier dating app for gays in India and for men interested in Indian gays. With such apps, you will be able to find and get in touch with thousands of like-minded males whether you are located in India, UK, US or elsewhere. There are many dating apps which are spoiling youth and luring them towards sex dates. Many young guys fall trap for adventure but they land up getting molested. NOTE: If you have not seen the VAXXED bus, and are within driving distance of the beautiful city of Burlington, Vermont, please plan a trip on September 8. I was fortunate to be in Tampa, Florida last year when the bus was also there. I Uber'ed over to the park and was instantly struck by the thought that the bus, covered with the names of vaccine injured Americans, mostly children, was a rolling memorial. Each name (including those near to my heart, since they grew under it) is a life changed. A family whose trajectory would never be the same. Because a vaccine caused an injury, and in some cases, death. I felt like a family member must feel at the Vietnam Veteran's wall. Our own Mark Blaxill will be at this event. We encourage you to participate as a spectator, and/or as a sponsor if you can. Click here for tickets. The daytime events are FREE. During the day on Friday, come and visit the Vaxxed bus, share your story, meet the team and sign the bus. With us will be: Vaxxed producer Polly Tommey, camera-man Anu Vaidya and Dr. Suzanne Humphries. Please click here to sign up in advance to get on the bus and tell your story. On Friday evening, join us for a very special event with Team Vaxxed! This event is brought to you by The Vermont Coalition for Vaccine Choice, in partnership with: Health Choice Massachusetts The Maine Coalition for Vaccine Choice Health Freedom New Hampshire. Cost: Web Toolbar by Wibiya Two French engineers reported spotting a UFO formation over the city of Vancouver on 6 July, 2017 at 9:25 PM. This report has been obtained from a testimony included in the database of Mutual UFO Network (MUFON) published on 15 July, 2017. The witness begins the report by saying that he was in Vancouver with a colleague when he saw the UFO. "I was in Vancouver for work last week. I saw an UFO with my colleague." He then says that they are French and engineers by profession and also talks about the date and time of sighting. "We are French and we are engineers. It was the 6th of July at 9:25 PM." He then talks about the location of the sighting and says that they were walking at that time. "We walked on the Cambie St. Brigde last week (the 6th) start from 9:15 PM to 9:30 PM." The witness then describes the shape of the UFO formation and also describes its colour. "We saw a form in the sky like a helicopter or spherical form but with a kind of tail (no tail on the photo) , grey color, quite dark, in a stationary flight." He further says that the UFO did not make any sound and describes the total duration of the sighting. "There was no wind , no sound, very high in the sky, total duration of the sightings more than 10 minutes." He then says that as they approached the end of the bridge it was sure to them that the object was a UFO and that it was fixed in the sky. "More we approached the end of the bridge (walking from south to north) more we are sure that it was not a known object, the object was totally fixed in the sky!" The witness then tells us that they took a photo of the object and says that training planes of the Canadian Air Force flew in the same direction but the object had disappeared by then. "We decided to take a photo... just after, 4 or 5 planes (with air-screw and seem to be black) certainly Canadian air-force training planes passed over our head (from north to the south) but of course the object had disappeared. we didn't see the object in movement." He then claims that he had seen a UFO in France 6 years ago. "For your information, I already seen an ufo in France 6 years ago." The witness finally tells us that the photo of the object was taken with his iPhone. "The photo was taken at 9:25 PM with an iPhone mobile." The above quotes were edited for clarity. Submit Letters to Editor on aliens. Web Toolbar by Wibiya The laws that govern the rights and responsibilities of every Canadian citizen are very clear when it comes to drawing a line between being placed under house arrest and forceful confinement. However, it is very sad and a slap in the face to realize that those who are supposed to know better, when it comes to the interpretation and enforcement of the law are rather twisting it to favour them. Ms D's unlawful confinement in her home raises a lot of eyebrows as to which laws some of the police personnel follow. As at now, it remains to be seen why the Ottawa Elderly Abuse Unit which falls under the jurisdiction of Ottawa Chief of Police, Charles Bordeleau decided to forcefully keep Dezrin in the same house that she has suffered continuous abuse from her husband. For over 2 years now, Ms D has been kept against her wish in a house where her abusive husband, Mr H also resides. This move by the police has rather given courage to Mr H to keep on abusing her wife. If the police are willing to subject an elderly woman to this kind of inhumane torture and abuse then it remains to be seen what an energetic young person will be taken through. It therefore comes as no surprise that Abdirahman Abdi was beaten into a pulp by this same police when they went to arrest him. There is a pattern that is being created by some bad elements within the Ottawa Police service. Ms D did the right thing by immediately lodging a complaint with her son who presented it to the Ottawa Police Department when her husband started abusing her. However, her complaints fell on deaf ears and her only protector in the house, Mr R her son, was also illegally evicted from the house. The only explanation given by the police at that time was to give husband and wife the much-needed privacy they needed. From the look of things right now, it can be explained that Mr H needed the so-called privacy just to further subject his own wife to further abuse. Right now Ms D, who was once energetic and lively has been rendered immobile and bedridden thanks to Ottawa Police Chief Charles Bordeleau and his dirty cop operatives. The worst part of it all is that her only source of joy and happiness, her son, has also been prevented from seeing her. The last time the two met was about two years ago. ABC News(WASHINGTON) -- A little more than six months into his presidency, Donald Trumps approval rate has fallen to a new low, according to a poll published on Wednesday. Thirty-three percent of American voters approve of the job Trump is doing as president, according to the poll conducted by Quinnipiac University, which reports a 3.4 percent margin of error. The polls findings also mark a new high for the presidents disapproval rating, which now stands at 61 percent of voters. Trumps approval rate fell from 40 percent points from the previous Quinnipiac poll published on June 29, while his disapproval rose 17 points, with undecided voters from January turning on him. It may come as no surprise that Democrats are largely against Trump. Only 2 percent of liberals approve of how Trump is handling his job. But support among his base has also dipped. Fifty percent of white voters without a college degree, a group that was instrumental in Trump's victory in 2016, now disapprove of the president's job performance. About one in four voters in his own party dont support Trump: His approval among Republicans is down to 76 percent, the poll found. Fifty-four percent of voters report that they are embarrassed to have Trump in office, while 57 percent believe he is abusing his presidential powers. Voters also responded negatively to questions about the presidents personal demeanor, with 71 percent saying he is not level-headed. Sixty-nine percent of voters also reported that Trump should refrain from using his personal Twitter account, which is the highest negative vote this category has seen thus far. A Gallup poll from August 1 shows similar levels of negative sentiment. According to the poll, which has a margin of error of 3 percentage points, 36 percent of voters approve of the president while 60 percent disapprove. This matches a previous low in Gallups polling of the presidents approval. Trump has often touted the Rasmussen polls approval rating. In a June tweet, he called Rasmussen, which reported his approval rating at 50 percent, one of the most accurate in the 2016 Election. The same poll now reports his approval at 38 percent, a record low for Rasmussen. Surveys conducted by Rasmussen do not meet ABC News' standards for polls due to their use of recorded, auto-dialed calls and lack of in-household participant selection. Copyright 2017, ABC Radio. All rights reserved. Marcus Allen Turner, 20, of Warrenville; Rakim Barton, 19, of Beech Island; and David Jerome Jacobs Jr., 24, of Beech Island, are each charged with murder of local cab driver and strong armed robbery. Aiken, SC (29801) Today Showers early, then partly cloudy overnight. Low 42F. Winds W at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 40%.. Tonight Showers early, then partly cloudy overnight. Low 42F. Winds W at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 40%. Turkey Wants to Clear the Region of Ancient Peoples Following a legislative amendment introduced in late 2012, the Governorate of Mardin established a liquidation committee. The Liquidation Committee started to redistribute in the city, the property of institutions whose legal entity had expired. The transfer and liquidation procedures are still ongoing. In 2016, the Transfer, Liquidation and Redistribution Committee of Mardin Governorate transferred to primarily the Treasury as well as other relevant public institutions numerous churches, monasteries, cemeteries and other assets of the Syriac community in the districts of Mardin. In mid June, more churches, monasteries, graveyards and other assets of the Syriac community in Mardin have been usurped and transferred to the state's Treasury and other relevant state institutions. Writer and analyst Jan Bet- Sawoce spoke about the Turkish state's seizure of Syriacs' property in Mardin and called these practices of the AKP regime a continuation of Ottoman policies which based on the blood of non-Muslim people. Commenting these practices as intentions to homogenize the region completely and to clear it from ancient peoples, Sawoce said the following: "The Ottoman policy was built at the expense of non-Muslim people. They enforced their policy throughout their history by stirring chaos under which disguise they grabbed the desired swathes of land and properties and tried to subjugate the peoples' will. Then they would always make sure that the owners could never remember that, by destroying all written records of those practices. And unfortunately it actually gets overwritten after two-three generations have passed. What should one expect from their future, how should one think of their own history, when former churches and monasteries are being used by them as mosques, state's offices and such for a long time?" "THEY WANT TO TURN THE REGION INTO A TURKISH-MUSLIM SYNTHESIS" Sawoce continued as follows: "Let me give an example, today the extent of the Turkish military base in Midyat used to be the Monastery of Mor Qatar Airways has dropped a plan to acquire up to a 10% stake in American Airlines, according to press reports. In a statement, the Middle Eastern carrier said that taking into account the latest public disclosure of American Airlines, the investment no longer meets our objectives. The US carrier had vociferously opposed Qatars intentions, announced in late June, to build up a significant stake in American. The carrier has been one of the leading protagonists in a campaign against what it sees as unfair public subsidies paid to Qatar, as well as to other Middle Eastern carriers such as Etihad and Emirates. American openly opposed Qatars plan to invest up to $800m in a 10% stake, pointing out that its board could veto any investment of more than 4.75% of its shares. It also cancelled a code-share agreement. The Middle Eastern carriers motivations for wanting to buy into the US airline are unclear. Publicly, it said that it saw a slice of American as a good investment. However, some analysts saw it as an attempt to try and defuse the campaign by American Airlines and other major US carriers against its alleged state funding. Qatars recent troubles with its neighbours Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Egypt have imposed a trade and air embargo over Qatars alleged support for extremist groups may also have been a factor in the airlines decision to draw in its horns. The embargo has forced Qatar Airways to cancel regional flights and ground some of its aircraft. Share this story August 2, 2017 CAIRO Mehmet Nur has been hiding out, spending time in mosques, living at friends houses and avoiding police at all costs since Egyptian authorities began a crackdown on Uighur residents, arresting scores of them in July. I am waiting to see what will happen to the detained students, Nur, a Uighur student at Al-Azhar University, told Al-Monitor after requesting a pseudonym for security reasons. Will they be released and allowed to move on with their studies, or will they be deported? I have to wait to see if I can enroll in university next semester. According to Human Rights Watch (HRW), the Egyptian police rounded up at least 62 Uighurs in Cairo on July 3 at the apparent request of the Chinese government. The New York Times reported on July 6 that Egyptian aviation sources had revealed that authorities had deported 12 members of the community and detained another 22 for immediate deportation. On the night of the raids, Nur was lucky to have been praying at a mosque far from Nasr Citys Hay al-Sabea neighborhood, where most foreign Al-Azhar students reside. We have a WhatsApp group, and a friend warned us not to go home or to a Uighur restaurant in that area, Nur said. Police raided the restaurant and then arrested some students at their homes nearby. I stayed out that night and ended up waiting under a building. Nur later traveled with 12 other students to Hurghada, where he spent four days at a hotel before going back to Cairo. Nur took some of his female colleagues to the Hurghada airport for flights to Turkey and was detained for an hour and a half. We didnt want to let the girls go to the airport alone, especially because they dont speak Arabic, Nur explained. I got detained and they asked for my passport. Luckily, I have my residency paperwork. They interrogated me and eventually let me go. I was scared they wouldnt. There is an arbitrariness to the process. Nur said that authorities had arrested more than 20 students attempting to travel to Turkey from Alexandrias Borg El Arab airport and that one friend was picked up at the Cairo airport. HRW reported similar claims. I dont know why they are arresting us, Nur said. I asked the police officer at the airport why they were doing this, and even he told me that he did not know why they had [received] these orders. Nur is now afraid to travel in case his name is on a travel ban list. Mohab Saeed, a lawyer specializing in students rights at the Association for Freedom of Thought and Expression (AFTE), told Al-Monitor that, according to their analysis, the fact that some Uighur members were allowed to flee to Turkey while others were not points to the probability of a list, but, he said, It is more likely that it was sent from China rather than written by Egypt. It is unclear on what the list is based, Saeed said. Nur, who has been able to stay in touch with a detained friend who smuggled a phone into prison, said that Chinese officials had interrogated the Uighur detainees in Tora. For years, China has cracked down on Uighurs, an ethnic minority from Chinas Xinjiang region, on the premise of fighting terrorism. There have been multiple cases of countries deporting Uighurs back to China, where they face persecution. Saeed and a group of lawyers have visited two Nasr City police stations and the Tora prison, but officers denied that there were any Uighurs there. So, officially, the state hasnt even recognized the arrest of these people, Saeed said. The states narrative has been one of denial. Mohamed Abdelsallam, the head of AFTE's research unit, told Al-Monitor, Knowing what possible future implication this situation holds depends on the Egyptian governments disclosure of information. Government officials and institutions have only issued scattered statements to journalists, he said. On July 9, an unnamed security source told Al-Masry Al-Youm that authorities had not deported the Uighur students and that the arrests concerned residency and paperwork checks. Abdelsallam said, If these students had real charges and accusations handed to them, then they should have been referred for prosecution and then put to trial in a court setting. This is not whats happening. Al-Azhar spokesperson Hossam Shaker told Al-Monitor, This is a private governmental matter, and the university has no relation to it. There were no students arrested at the university. On July 7, HRW and AFTE wrote a letter to the grand imam of Al-Azhar, Ahmed el-Tayeb, asking him to cease the mass arrests of ethnic Uyghurs. Shaker said that he does not know how many of the detainees were enrolled at the university, but that Tayeb had intervened to release 17 Al-Azhar students. There are currently 263 Uighurs finishing degrees at Al-Azhar, according to Shaker, who also noted, Some [of the detainees] might be students at other institutions. Saeed pointed to a discrepancy in the narratives, with the Interior Ministry denying the detentions and Al-Azhar sometimes saying this is a security matter they have no link to and then saying they have already released their students. Nur said that many of his friends have been sleeping in mosques in Old Cairo, while Abdelsallam said that some Uighurs have left Cairo for other cities in an attempt to avoid arrest. The police are still in Hay al-Sabea to arrest people, Nur remarked. Some of them have even asked the doormen of some of the buildings about the students. Nur explained that the Chinese crackdown fluctuates, stating, I came here in 2013, but I went back home in 2015 without a problem and stayed there for 22 days. Since 2016 over the past six months especially this has changed because of Chinese policy. Nur has not spoken to his family in four months. While he still has savings, they will not last for long. For now, he has chosen to stay in Cairo rather than Hurghada for financial reasons. We do know that a lot of [Uighurs] are having budget problems now, Saeed said. Their money is running out. There are also families that now do not have access to medical services because of the lack of money and their fear of moving around [lest police see them] Saeed added, Some of them who were applying for refugee status at the UNHCR cannot go there now either, because there is a police presence around the headquarters. Meanwhile, Shaker said, There is nothing against Uighur students following up with their studies and enrolling next semester as long as they have gone through their enrollment procedures and their paperwork is in order. In May and June, students began hearing rumors that police would start arresting them. Back home, Chinese authorities threatened some of their families to pressure the students to return, Nur said. In June, Interior Minister Magdy Abdel Ghaffar met with Chinese Deputy Public Security Minister Chen Zhimin and discussed future cooperation and exchange of information about countering extremism and extremist organizations. We really didnt expect [the arrests], though. I never thought Egypt would do this, Nur said. But it happened. August 2, 2017 On Aug. 1, the foreign ministers of Iran and Saudi Arabia surprised political observers by shaking hands with each other at the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) meeting in Istanbul. Given that the encounter came in the wake of months of direct verbal clashes between the two over regional developments, some saw the unexpected greeting as potentially signaling a glimmer of hope for improvement in the Iran-Saudi relationship. Following the warm greeting, Mohammad Javad Zarif told Iranian journalists Aug. 1 that what happened on the sidelines of the OIC summit was a diplomatic norm and based on mutual respect and a long-standing friendship with Adel al-Jubeir. He added that the brief encounter was not groundwork for the resumption of diplomatic relations, which Saudi Arabia cut following the storming of its diplomatic facilities in Iran over its execution of a dissident Shiite cleric. In response to a question about whether there was any link between the greeting with Jubeir and Iraqi Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadrs trip to Saudi Arabia on July 31, Zarif said Aug. 2, The policy that Saudi Arabia is pursuing in Iraq had no relation with this encounter. This was just a simple greeting. Zarif continued, The Islamic Republic of Irans policy is to cooperate with its neighbors, and if the neighbors are prepared and dont seek to create tensions, they definitely see Iran as a good partner and companion because it is in Irans interest to have a safe and stable region. Reformist and moderate Iranian media welcomed the warm greeting, while hard-liners have yet to comment on the matter. The Reformist Shargh daily reported Aug. 2, Iran is not seeking hostility toward Saudi. Zarifs greeting with Jubeir may be a prelude to the end of whatever that has created disagreement, [even] if the meeting was accidental. We should talk to Saudi Arabia diplomatically. Describing the handshake as the first positive step, Nosratollah Tajik, a former ambassador to Jordan, told a local news site Aug. 2, Whether this meeting was preplanned or coincidental, it indicates that both countries have the will to reduce the tensions and resolve the misunderstandings [between each other]. He added, That both foreign ministers decided to talk and greet instead of taunting and confronting each other shows that the atmosphere is being prepared for the beginning of talks. In other news, Ali Shamkhani, the secretary of the Supreme National Security Council, has reacted to the new US congressional sanctions against Tehran. Irans countermeasures against the US lack of commitment to the JCPOA [Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action] will be coordinated and [conducted in] parallel [with one another], Shamkhani said Aug. 2. The senior Iranian official continued, The US is seeking to withdraw from the JCPOA at the expense of Iran, while we would definitely not give that country [the US] such an opportunity. Nonetheless, this does not mean maintaining the JCPOA at any cost. He added, Practically, the five countries [UK, France, Germany, Russia and China] have stood up to the US, and all of them have clarified or have hinted that the US is breaching the JCPOA, and this is a political achievement for Iran, having paid the lowest price. Shamkhani said, In the view of the Islamic Republic of Iran, to curb this raging bull [the US], we should direct its energy to the preferred path so that we can reach our anticipated objective without any additional expense and damage. August 2, 2017 After months of speculation, Turkeys chief of the General Staff, Hulusi Akar, survived a shake-up of Turkey's top brass on Wednesday that saw the heads of the army, the air force and navy replaced. Doubt had fallen on the prospects for Akars continued leadership after the failed July coup attempt last year and conflicting accounts of his actions that day. The commander of the Turkish Land Forces, Salih Zeki Colak, will be replaced by the commander of the gendarmerie, Yasar Guler, who was detained and interned by the rebel officers during the coup. Navy chief Bulent Bostanoglu will cede his position to Adnan Ozbal, a vice admiral, and Hasan Kucukakyuz, the commander of the Turkish Warfare Air Force, replaces air force commander Abidin Unal. Gulers shift to the Land Forces Command suggests that the path has been cleared for him to become the next chief of the General Staff when Akar, whose handling of the coup is seen by many as riddled with contradictions and incompetence, likely retires next year. As Al-Monitor columnist Metin Gurcan has noted, Guler is known for his ferocious opposition to Fethullah Gulen, the Pennsylvania-based Sunni cleric the government has accused of orchestrating the July 15 coup. At a panel in Washington last month, Guler described the botched putsch as a terrorist act and called Gulen the leader of a radical terrorist organization. Fellow panelists rejected the notion that Gulenist perpetrators had joined forces with militantly pro-secular Kemalist officers in the attempt. Hakan Yavuz, a political scientist at the University of Utah, said, "The argument that Gulenists allied themselves with Kemalist officers isnt viable, because Gulenists would never ever even sit with the Kemalist officers, because they would hide their true identity at all times." The 63-year-old general is known as a a pugnacious advocate of Turkish military intervention in Syria and of armed support for the Syrian rebels. The reshuffle of the top military echelons coincides with the second day of the trial of nearly 500 people on charges of taking part in the coup. Gulen, the main defendant in the case, is being tried in absentia. The others include a former air force commander, Akin Ozturk, and other commanders from Ankara's Akinci air base, which is said to have been the nerve center of the failed operation. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Akar and the main opposition leader, Kemal Kilicdaroglu of the Republican People's Party, among others, have petitioned the court to testify at the hearings. The debate over who led and organized the coup has not abated, but some prominent columnists in the pro-secular media have echoed Gulers assertion that the Kemalists had nothing to do with the coup. Such labels can, however, be misleading, and power often trumps ideology in Turkeys once-omnipotent armed forces. Kemalist credentials long served as a fig leaf for those eager to rise in the ranks. In todays Turkey, unswerving loyalty to Erdogan topped with a dollop of overt piety appears to be the formula for success. One consensus opinion is that many Gulenist officers who knew they were going to be purged last year by the Supreme Military Council were at the forefront of the putsch but that assorted others opposed to Erdogan were involved as well. This explanation chimes with the broader pattern of Gulen marshaling all of his now-mostly-purged disciples in the security services and the judiciary to overthrow Erdogan. Another common narrative is that Erdogan had caught wind of the coup, but allowed it to unfold anyway, so he could smoke out his enemies. In any case, Erdogan has used the coup as a pretext to crack down on myriad adversaries, real and perceived. Thousands of officers, including at least 149 generals and admirals, and hundreds of military attaches posted at NATO facilities across Europe and the United States have been fired, prompting comments that the Turkish Armed Forces, NATOs second-largest army, is a lame duck. An administration official recently told Al-Monitor, We have few people left in the Turkish military that we can talk to. And the rest are too scared. On the bright side, military tutelage, at least on paper, is no longer a threat. Under new rules rammed through by the government last August, the land forces, navy and air force now all report to the minister of defense, a civilian. All military-run academies and lycees have been shuttered, and the president will appoint the rector of the National Defense University being established in their place. Graduates of Islamic clerical training schools, previously shunned by the military, will be permitted to enroll. Thus technically speaking, in the new Turkey, one can simultaneously be an imam and a general, rather like the Ottoman sultans, who were both caliph and commander. Then again, Erdogan might want to reserve those titles for himself. Correction: August 3, 2017. An earlier version of this article said that Yasar Guler rejected the notion that Gulenists had joined forces with Kemalist officers in last year's coup attempt. The quote in question was instead from Hakan Yavuz. Apologies. August 3, 2017 CAIRO Egypts Cabinet completed July 5 the drafting of the new water resources and irrigation bill, which calls for penalizing farmers who grow water-intensive crops, especially rice, outside the land plots authorized by the government on an annual basis. The sanctions come amid a water crisis in Egypt, which is expected to exacerbate with the opening of the Ethiopian Renaissance Dam. Article 32 of the bill states, The Ministry of Water Resources and Irrigation specifies the surface areas and regions allocated for rice cultivation yearly by virtue of a decision issued by the minister. The decision will also determine the areas and regions allocated for growing water-intensive crops yearly. The growing of rice and crops that require high water levels in places other than those determined by the ministerial decision will be prohibited. Article 126 of the bill says that any person who violates the provisions of Article 32 will be sanctioned by imprisonment for a period of not more than six months and a fine not less than 2,000 Egyptian pounds ($112), and not more than 10,000 pounds ($560) for each acre or fraction of an acre or with any of those two sanctions. The sanction will be doubled in case the violation is repeated, the article adds. The Ministry of Water Resources and Irrigation, in coordination with the Ministry of Agriculture, determines each year before the rice season the surface area to be cultivated with rice annually, according to the allocated water quantities to be pumped for agricultural use from Egypt's estimated Nile water quota of 55.5 billion cubic meters. The Ministry of Irrigation issued a decision Jan. 23 for the 2017 rice planting season to allocate 1.76 million acres to plant rice in specific places in only eight provinces, and said sanctions would be imposed on violators. The Ministry of Agriculture issued a report that was circulated in media outlets July 26 indicating that 227,000 acres have been planted in violation of the Irrigation Ministrys decision; violation reports were being drafted for 192,000 farmers. Both ministries have shared responsibility to determine rice planting, detect violations and set fines. Egypts government is seeking to shrink the rice cultivation area. Mohamed Abdel Ati, the minister of water resources and irrigation, decided on Oct. 26, 2016, to decrease by 34.6% the area allocated to rice production in the 2017 season. Although the annually cultivated area in 2016 exceeded 2 million acres and given that many farmers are inclined to oppose the government decision and grow rice outside the allocated lands, the Egyptian parliament has always intervened in previous years with the presidency and the government to obtain a decision exempting farmers from fines. The Ministry of Water Resources and Irrigation has raised its voice against this exemption in the last two years, insisting on removing the unauthorized rice crops by burning them and fining violators about 3,600 Egyptian pounds ($202) per acre for squandering irrigation water. The former head of the Egyptian Farmers Union, Mohamed Barghash, told Al-Monitor, The law is an ultimatum for farmers they either go to jail or face hunger." Barghash called on President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi to intervene, especially since the government imposes stringent sanctions that prevent farmers from growing rice crops annually without providing any alternative, knowing that some Egyptian farmers are forced to grow rice to counter the salinization of the soil, especially in areas near the Mediterranean Sea. He said, Egyptian farmers are never against the protection and rationalization of Egypt's limited water resources, but the government is not looking at the whole picture. Barghash called on the government to assess the role of agricultural research centers whose staff members are working in offices and not making any field visits to agricultural land and fields to promote the farmers attachment to their land and guide them to alternatives crops that may fill the food gap in Egypt, as well as achieve a balance whereby the kinds of crops grown due to the salinity of their agricultural land do not drain water resources. The referral of the bill from the government to Egypts parliament is expected to stir a wave of controversy among parliamentarians in light of the opposition of many lawmakers to the sanctions imposed in the bill, which include an imprisonment penalty. In 2016-17, the total fines collected by the Ministry of Irrigation and imposed on farmers cultivating rice in violation of the 1984 Irrigation and Drainage Law No. 12 amounted to 3.6 billion pounds. The undersecretary of the Egyptian parliament's Agriculture Committee, legislator Raef Tamraz, told Al-Monitor that he intends to mobilize the members of the committee to keep the new government bill from being approved by parliament. The government must first provide alternative solutions for rice production. The law will turn more than 1 million acres of Egyptian land into fallow lands, especially in the regions near the Mediterranean Sea in the Delta, which are only suitable for rice cultivation in summer as a result of salinization of the soil, he said. Parliamentarian Magdy Malak, also a member of the Agriculture Committee, has a different opinion. He told Al-Monitor, Members of parliament must support any steps that would regulate and maintain Egyptian water rationing especially as Egypt is expected to face an imminent water crisis if no agreement is reached with Ethiopia on the filling period of the Renaissance Dam in such a way that does not harm the flow of Egypt's Nile water quota. Hossam El-Imam, the director of the Regional Center for Water Ethics in the Ministry of Water Resources and Irrigation and official spokesman for the ministry, told Al-Monitor, The new sanctions are not meant to imprison and fine farmers but to prevent them from committing a crime by violating the water rights of other farmers. He noted, Egypt no longer has the luxury of growing crops with high water needs, given the scarcity of our water resources. It is not just about rice; other crops will soon be cut also. In the meantime, Cairo keeps deploying continuous efforts to face its water scarcity and to resolve its disputes with the Nile upstream countries over their demands to re-divide Nile water quotas on the one hand, and with Ethiopia to ease the anticipated impact from the filling of the Renaissance Dam on the other hand. August 2, 2017 BAGHDAD Iraq is working to recover the thousands of ancient artifacts illegally imported into the United States by Oklahoma City-based arts-and-crafts retailer Hobby Lobby. Iraqi and US officials are in constant contact, and the smuggled artifacts are in safe hands now with the US Homeland Security and the US judiciary, which will issue a final verdict on the case," Maysoon al-Damluji, a member of the Iraqi parliament's Committee of Culture and Information, told Al-Monitor. "Meanwhile, the Iraqi Embassy is communicating with the US State Department to retrieve the artifacts." Hobby Lobby was fined $3 million in July for buying some 5,500 artifacts in 2010 that had been smuggled into the United States through a dealer based in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), according to the US Justice Department. The company paid $1.6 million for the items, which were sent to three different addresses of the company in Oklahoma City. The antiquities include clay cuneiform tablets, cylinder seals and ancient clay bullae that were used to place authenticating seals on documents. Damluji said, The course of things is in favor of Iraq to recover its archaeological pieces. It is only a matter of the time needed for administrative and legal procedures in the United States. She was confident when she told Al-Monitor, "There is an atmosphere of optimism regarding positive responses from the United States to this effect, given the existent law ... whereby the trade in Iraqi artifacts and antiquities is not allowed, unlike the Gulf countries, including the UAE. A UAE-based dealer was involved in the [latest] smuggling operation because the UAE is not among the list of countries acceding to the UNESCO convention on smuggling of antiquities. The Iraqi Embassy in London and a legal team will work with the US Justice Department, "which has the final decision on the issue of returning the stolen artifacts to their rightful owners, Damluji said. Moreover, under a 2015 UN Security Council resolution, countries are required to return smuggled or looted antiquities to their countries of origin. The Justice Department said the Hobby Lobby acquisition "was fraught with red flags" and Hobby Lobby even ignored the warning of an expert it had hired who said the items might have been looted from Iraq. The company never met with the dealer who claimed to own the artifacts. Rather, a different dealer had the company wire payment to the personal bank accounts of seven other people, the Justice Department said. Iraq has a history of fighting to retrieve its stolen antiquities and has recovered 4,300 artifacts smuggled out of the country since 2014 after Islamic State (IS) militants seized control of vast areas of the country's north, east and west. The United States pledged a year ago to protect and restore historic sites and museums in Iraq, according to the US State Departments top adviser on Iraqi cultural heritage, John Russell. A source at the US Embassy in Baghdad, who asked not to be named, said that the embassys instructions regarding smuggling cases are very strict. Even before the Hobby Lobby case, government sources revealed that the Iraqi Embassy in Washington was following up on more than 5,000 antiquities smuggled from Iraq after 2003. The Iraqi Embassy in Cairo also has sought to restore manuscripts and other items smuggled to Cairo from Iraqi monasteries and churches in Mosul. In 2016, Iraq recovered the head of the King Sanatruq I statue, which is one the significant monuments registered in the Iraqi Museum of Antiquities. The statute was stolen in 2003. Iyad al-Shammari, rapporteur of the parliamentary Committee of Antiquities, told Al-Monitor that the Public Authority for Antiquities in Iraq has contacted UNESCO "to urge the United States to hand over [any] stolen Iraqi artifacts," and he expressed great hope of solving the issue soon. Iraq has been preoccupied for years in trying to retrieve antiquities smuggled outside, he said, adding that some of the archaeological pieces were lost and sold on the black market. In 2016, artifacts smuggled from Syria and Iraq were being sold on eBay. Shammari stressed that the Iraqi Ministry of Culture addressed the US Embassy in Baghdad to start the official and necessary procedures to recover the smuggled artifacts. Iraq also plans investigations to obtain the names of smugglers. August 2, 2017 Iraqs cash-strapped central government has parted ways with Democratic super-lobbyist Tony Podesta, according to a lobbying disclosure form made public today. The brother of Hillary Clintons campaign manager, Podesta would have had powerful influence if the Democratic candidate had won the presidency in November. Instead, his firms stock appears to have fallen since Republican Donald Trumps election, with three other clients, including Vietnam and Kosovo, ending their relationship over the past few months. An Iraqi official said Baghdad was looking to diversify its lobbying team when it added the Denver-based law and lobbying giant Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck to its roster shortly before Trumps presidential inauguration. As it happens, however, Baghdads budget woes are forcing the Iraqi Embassy in Washington to terminate that $40,000-per-month agreement as well. With the new administration, we wanted more of a bipartisan approach in our lobbying, the Iraqi official told Al-Monitor on condition of anonymity. But with the glut in the oil crisis [and] the cost of war [against the Islamic State] the government took measures to reduce financing for certain activities for Iraqi ministries in general and that directly affected us. So we had to cut the spending for the lobbying efforts for the time being. The Podesta Group has represented Baghdad since 2013 and was paid $720,000 last year for its efforts to solidify US support for the central government. The Iraqi source insisted that Baghdad was still happy with the companys services and intends to rehire the Podesta Group as soon as finances allow while also adding other firms to push its agenda in a Republican-dominated government. The Podesta Group did not respond to Al-Monitor's inquiries. Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck referred all questions to the Iraqi Embassy. Baghdad now finds itself without any Washington influence-peddlers just as centrifugal forces are gathering momentum amid the Islamic States rout. Over the past few months, an array of Sunni tribal interests and Christian militias have ramped up their lobbying presence to push Congress and the White House to embrace more regional autonomy for Iraq amid concerns that Iran-backed Shiite forces will dominate the central government. At the same time, the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) in Erbil is accelerating its lobbying efforts to make US officials and lawmakers more amenable to next months independence referendum in the northern region. Lobbying disclosure forms indicate that the Kurdistan Democratic Party, the KRGs ruling party, hired the conservative husband-and-wife team diGenova & Toensing late last month to lobby Congress and the Trump administration on the September 2017 Kurdistan referendum on independence and [Department of Defense] funding issues. The deal was signed soon after Al-Monitor broke the news that House lawmakers used their annual defense authorization bill to call on the Pentagon to stop paying the Kurdish peshmergas salaries if Erbil were to end its participation in the government of a unified Iraq. August 3, 2017 The United States today broke its silence over the unremitting slew of accusations about its supposed plans to undermine Turkey through its armed support for Syrian Kurds fighting against the Islamic State (IS). The US Embassy in Ankara refuted the claims in a statement published on its website in English and in Turkish and shared via Twitter. The statement read, Inaccurate reports by several outlets over the past few days have erroneously claimed that the United States has sent tanks and hundreds of truckloads of weapons into Syria to support the YPG [Syrian Kurdish Peoples Protection Units]. It also declared, The United States has not provided tanks to any groups fighting Daesh in Syria, Daesh being the Arabic acronym for IS. The embassy said that the majority of military assistance, which consists of light weapons and ammunition, was being sent to the Syrian Arab coalition, the assorted Arab groups fighting under the banner of the YPG-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). A much smaller percentage of weapons given to Kurdish elements of the SDF are limited, specific to task, and are only provided due to their importance in helping achieve the goal shared by all of us i.e., the capture of Raqqa and the destruction of Daesh, the embassy asserted. The statement was in response to a barrage of front-page stories in Turkey's pro-government media claiming that the United States is raining military goodies on the YPG. The state-run Anadolu Agency reported that Washington has so far sent 909 truckloads of weapons to the YPG. An array of outlets eagerly seized and elaborated on the story. The YPG is being armed. Is the target Turkey? asked Haber 10, an online news portal. Other outlets claimed that the United States had provided tanks and helicopters to the YPG and trained YPG militants to fly them. Yeni Akit, referring to the deliveries, proclaimed, The United States plan to occupy Turkey. An SDF commander speaking to Al-Monitor via WhatsApp from northern Syria called the reports risible. America did not give us any tanks, he said. The tanks we have were captured from Daesh. A question about receiving helicopters elicited loud guffaws. Analysts closely monitoring the conflict concur. Aaron Stein, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, has written extensively about the US-Syrian Kurdish partnership. The public list of weapons to be given to the YPG was obviously written with Turkey in mind. They are not game-changing weapons, Stein told Al-Monitor. Its mostly ammunition for guns the YPG already has. The United States has been giving military gear to the Arab component of the SDF for several years, drawing on the provisions of a program to arm and train the vetted, moderate Syrian opposition. The Pentagon only began arming the YPG directly after President Donald Trump, overriding Turkish objections, authorized it to do so in April. Stein argues that the real issue does not concern the nature of the weapons as such. Rather, he maintains, it is political. The US is giving military support to a partner force that Turkey views as its No. 1 security threat, he said, referring to the YPG's connection to the Kurdistan Workers Party, which has been fighting the Turkish army since 1984. American pledges to reclaim weapons from the YPG once the fight against IS is complete cuts little ice with Turkish officials, who insist it is only a matter of time before they end up being directed at Turkey. In any case the vast majority of the trucks crossing into Syria via Iraqi Kurdistan contain foodstuffs and medicine, the embassy stated. It added, Erroneous reporting suggesting otherwise is dangerous and distracts from our joint desire and objective to destroy Daesh. Turkey does not allow humanitarian aid to be channeled through its borders to the Kurdish-controlled chunk of northern Syria. It has began squeezing and in some instances shuttering international aid agencies that run their Syria operations from its soil. Some Trump administration officials have begun advancing the idea of shutting down US government aid operations in Turkey altogether because of the ever-thickening tangle of red tape. More importantly, there is growing concern about some of the supplies winding up in the hands of hostile elements, such as the al-Qaeda-linked Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, once it crosses the border. August 3, 2017 Expressing critical thoughts in Lebanon is risky business these days. Public criticism of human rights abuses by the army is met with threats from Lebanese figures the authorities and citizens alike that seek to prevent civil society activists, journalists and even lawyers from acting against racism and advocating for justice. This unusual situation is related to an increase in security measures against terrorism by the authorities. The rising social tension started June 30, after the Lebanese army raid on Arsal, a town near the Syrian border. Looking for terrorists in Syrian refugee camps, soldiers were met by five suicide bombers. The army arrested around 350 people, four of whom died in detention. More recently, the Hezbollah fight in the Arsal region against militants from the Islamic State and Jabhat Fatah al-Sham, followed by the national army that has taken up defensive positions around Arsal, has led to rising tensions among Lebanese citizens, who are divided on what to think of the current situation. On July 16, Interior Minister Nouhad Machnouk banned all protests. This came following calls by the leftist political group Socialist Forum to hold a sit-in July 18 with other human rights groups in support of Syrian refugees, blaming the army for mistreatment of detainees. Following the ban, the Socialist Forum issued a statement asking for accountability for the death of the four Syrians. We just wanted to highlight abuses and demand an independent investigation, Farah Kobeissi, a member of the Socialist Forum, told Al-Monitor. The violence against Syrian refugees is becoming more frequent and is normalized under this appellation of 'war against terror.' But even if the army is responsible, there needs to be accountability." An autopsy report of the bodies of the four Syrian detainees requested by military prosecutor Judge Saqr Saqr concluded that the deaths resulted from health complications. The report, however, was not made public. An independent medical analysis ordered by a Zahle judge, Antoine Abi Zeid, almost went through, until the lawyer representing the victims families, Diala Chehade, was compelled to hand over forensic samples to military intelligence officers in plainclothes. When we tried to protest, we were defamed and came under a violent backlash, Kobeissi said. We received threats from citizens and also from different political parties. It is something that needs to be looked at and we intend to file a lawsuit after following up with our lawyers. I think a war on terror is very dangerous when it acquires a place within public discourse. It constructs a national unity behind very authoritarian political parties and institutions within the state, creating the illusion of an enemy that is all Syrian men between 18 and 40. Since when did we become a country ruled by the army without being told so? Since when are we denied the right to question? It seems that the right to simply express a concern is being denied to many Lebanese citizens, as was the case of freelance journalist Fidaa Itani, who was summoned by the Internal Security Forces Cybercrime Bureau after publishing a blog post criticizing Foreign Minister Gebran Bassil, the Lebanese army and President Michel Aoun for what happened in Arsal. I was asked to remove the post and to sign a paper apologizing and promising not to write anything criticizing them again, Itani told Al-Monitor. I removed the post, but I didnt sign the paper. Since then, I dont go out of my house a lot. I receive threats, phone calls, but this is normal, Im just paying the price," Itani said." But we have to face what is happening. For 10 years Hezbollah has inherited the Syrian regime in Lebanon and is very well implemented in public services like with the head of General Security Abbas Ibrahim, who is very close to Hezbollah. This group and its allies now try to push away people like me or Diala [Chehade], by creating so much propaganda that anyone who is critical is seen as a traitor. I used to cover the Syrian war, and the last place where I expected to see everything collapsing around me is my own country. I didnt expect things to turn that way. Several political and human rights groups as well as local intellectuals have observed a rise in racism against Syrian refugees. Nearly 300 public figures signed a letter published July 24 in the daily French-language newspaper LOrient-Le Jour. Journalist and blogger Joey Ayoub translated the letter that reads: What follows these practices, such as the campaigns of incitement to hatred against Syrians across social media and in certain media outlets, or via declarations by certain politicians, is no less ugly as the criminal practices themselves. These do not just attack Syrians but the image of Lebanon itself and the conscience of the Lebanese. This does not represent us, but puts us in front of extreme options, including the need to purge our patriotism from its chauvinism. The position adopted toward refugees must become one of the criteria of our patriotism through which we want to consolidate democracy and the respect of human rights. Kobeissi noted, Syrian refugees lack education, medical care, infrastructure, jobs and basic rights, but still contribute to the economy while being blamed for unemployment, pollution and economical dysfunction. All those are marks of the lack of efficiency from our administration and government, so why not blame the policies responsible for this situation instead? For Farah Salka, the executive director of the Anti-Racism Movement, racism is reaching peaks of levels of violence and hatred toward refugees. Salka told Al-Monitor, Refugees have slowly and gradually turned into the 'black sheep' of this place and they are supposed to be silent, invisible, obedient, do as instructed or risk their lives, get killed and be blamed for it. On top of that and that's a first the black sheep label has extended to not only refugees but any person or group that stands in solidarity with them and speaks loudly about the violations they are enduring and their basic intrinsic human rights. These are such tragic and sad times. Salka has not been personally threatened for her opinion but admitted feeling the constant need to think twice before giving your opinion or going to a demonstration or writing something which is an indirect threat to your freedom to speak, express and take positions. She added, This is a slow way of shutting everyone up and making people of forced unanimous positions which we are not. Her advice to Lebanese citizens: We need to stick together against politicians and not allow them to divide us and laugh at us for being so easily swayed as we are now. An investment of about $139 million by three companies could produce as many as 265 new jobs in Morgan County. Wolverine Tube, United Launch Alliance and Dynetics made presentations Wednesday to the Decatur Industrial Development Board outlining their plans for growth in the area. State Sen. Arthur Orr, R-Decatur, also serves as chair of the Morgan County Economic Development Association. "Morgan County continues to attract new investment and jobs from both the aerospace and metals sector. We appreciate each company looking to spend their generous capital dollars in Morgan County to create and retain jobs in our community," Orr said in a statement following the meeting. Donald Trump apparently wanted to be a fictional President of the United States before his run for actual President. According to the Hollywood Reporter, Trump said yes to being cast as the President in 2015's "Sharknado 3: Oh Hell No!" But things didn't go as planned. The report says producers first wanted Sarah Palin to be the President, but when negotiations fell through, "Sharknado" star Ian Ziering suggested Trump. Ziering, you'll recall, was a contestant on the "Celebrity Apprentice." Trump reportedly loved the idea. So, what happened? The Hollywood Reporter says a contract was sent to Trump's attorney who let producers know he was thinking of running for the real President of the United States, saying "we'll get back to you." Syfy didn't want to wait too long, so it went with its backup plan of offering the role to Mark Cuban. Trump was not happy. According to the report, his lawyer said "How dare you? Donald wanted to do this. We're going to sue you. We're going to shut the entire show down." Well, Trump never shut production down and he never became President in any "Sharknado" movies. But, the rest is history. A massive drug operation led to the arrests of 26 accused drug traffickers, the majority of them with ties to east Alabama. According to a six-count federal indictment announced Thursday by Acting U.S. Attorney for the Middle District of Alabama A. Clark Morris, 13 suspects were arrested on federal narcotics and money laundering charges. An additional 13 suspects were arrested on state drug charges. The 18-month investigation stretched from Auburn to California. Only two of those arrested are from out of state - one from Atlanta and one from California. Fifteen of the suspects live in Auburn, and the rest are from Notasulga, Dadeville, Huntsville, Opelika, Tuskeggee and Thomasville. The indictment says those charged federally conspired to possess with intent to distribute, or did distribute, an array of drugs, including cocaine, marijuana, Xanax and methylenedioxy-methamphetamine, also known as MDMA or Ecstasy. Four of the suspects are also accused of money laundering. The 13 federal suspects are: - Alfred Lorenzo Cole, 36, Santa Rosa, California - Sakeya Monique Donaldson, 38, Atlanta, Georgia - Leanne Grimmett, 31, Auburn - Jermichael Lamar Hart, 31, Auburn - Worldly Dieago Holstick, 35, Auburn - Mackenzie Leigh Keith, 23, Auburn - Tyesha Lanise Lockhart, 20, Auburn - John Willie Maddox, Jr., 27, Auburn - Marquis Lanez Miller, 36, Auburn - Timothy Lamar Spinks, 42, Auburn - Erin Kristen Turner - 23, Auburn - Lateasha Lashun Williams, 30, Auburn - Lester Stephen Young, 34, Auburn The four charged with money laundering in addition to the drug conspiracy charges are Holstick, Turner, Cole and Grimmett. Those arrested on state charges are: - Shedrick Taryl Cannon, Notasulga -Travis Lamar Dowdell, Auburn -Carlton Antonio Goodman Jr., Dadeville -Blakely Elizabeth Kilgore, Huntsville -Samson Jermon Logan, Auburn - Keuntae Rajhun Mabson, Tuskegee - Adam Lee McPheeters, Auburn - Antonio Jermaine Mitchell, Opelika - Eric Kendall Smith, Auburn - Alexander White Jr., Thomasville - Caleb Andrew Whitworth, Notasulga - Eric Lamar Kellum, Opelika, distribution of a controlled substance - Quentin Eugene Turner, Auburn, possession of a controlled substance, marijuana, and drug paraphernalia. The cases are being investigated by the following agencies: DEA - Montgomery Resident Office, Auburn Police Division, Eufaula Police Department, Prattville Police Department, Alabama Attorney General's Office, Alabama Law enforcement Agency, Alabama HIDTA Task Force, Alabama National Guard, Autauga County Sheriff's Office, Central Alabama Drug Task Force (CADTF), Elmore County Sheriff's Office, Millbrook Police Department, Montgomery County Sheriff's Office, Montgomery Police Department, Lee County Sheriff's Office, Lee County District Attorney's Office, Opelika Police Department, Troy Police Department, and the United States Marshals. The federal case is being prosecuted by Assistant United States Attorneys Verne Speirs and John Geer. The state case is being prosecuted by the Lee County District Attorney's Office. Mostbet . , . , . Satirists use their platform not only to entertain the Yemeni public, but also to subvert rival media narratives. Satire has become an oasis for war-fatigued Yemenis a temporary escape from the gruelling realities of life in a combat zone. I think things have been so suffocating in Yemen that satire today embodies the only fulfilling means of venting, Yemeni TV host Mohammed al-Rabaa told Al Jazeera. Rabaa is one of the most popular political satirists in Yemen, having made his breakthrough during Yemens 2011 uprising with an amateur video satirising a local politician. He attributes the popularity of satire to its ability to speak far more to the Yemeni audience than traditional news media. Even though the uprising presented new opportunities for political satire in Yemen, the genre is not new in the country. In the 1950s, Abdullah Abdulwahab Noman launched the al-Fudhool satirical newspaper in the port city of Aden, providing a platform for satirical takes on current events. Issued every two weeks, the paper tackled everything from corruption to food insecurity, including a piece featuring a starving TV presenter who almost fainted while asking viewers to donate food. Q&A: Yemen has gone 100 years back in time In the ensuing years, satirists continued to parody their political leaders via song and on radio shows. The 1980s saw the launch of the famous satirical radio show Basmah (A Smile) on Sanaa State Radio. Established by the late Yemeni journalist Mohammed al-Mahbshi and journalist Ali al-Sayani, it airs each Ramadan and is re-run at other times throughout the year, satirising issues of corruption in the country. Under former Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh, Basmah satirised the lack of democratic elections in Yemen; today, it takes aim at the Saudi-led coalition and the government of Yemens president, Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi. The station on which it airs was taken over by Houthi rebels in September 2014. Since its creation in 1982, Basmah broke the mould and was certainly one of a kind, Suad al-Wisy, a host at Sanaa State Radio, told Al Jazeera. Today, it reflects the concerns and frustrations many feel in Sanaa, regardless of which authority carries the radio. However, I think the show doesnt enjoy the same listenership it used to have, as there is a rise of many other radio channels attracting our audience. Yemens satirical landscape is heavily infused with partisan and sectarian overtones. Satirists use their platform not only to entertain but also to subvert rival media narratives. Aden-born Karam Bahashwan, who began his career as a satirist via YouTube in 2013 in Aden, today hosts a weekly show called Wala Nakhs (Shut Up) that is broadcast into Yemen from Istanbul, Turkey, on the Belqees television channel, well known for its anti-Houthi/anti-Saleh reporting. Bahashwan, who began as a social satirist, shifted his focus to political satire as the Houthis began their armed fight in Aden in early 2015. In that violent and intense political situation, one cant help but shift to politics. I realised that the main source of all of Yemens problems was political, Bahashwan told Al Jazeera, noting that he hopes his show can bring laughter to the public, while also raising their political awareness. Satirising Hadis government and the Saudi-led coalition is a primary focus for Abdel Hafez Moujab, who hosts a daily programme on al-Sahat TV channel, presenting a counternarrative to pro-Hadi shows. His programme, Maa al-Akhbar (With the News) airs from Lebanon. After many years in journalism, I chose political satire eventually. I found it a useful way to expose lies, especially in light of the Yemen war and the media misinformation, Moujab told Al Jazeera. I aspire to offer a more truthful depiction through my simplicity and cynicism in analysing the news. I think my political humour brings the viewer closer to current events, and it grabs their attention more than the traditional media. ANALYSIS: How can war-torn Yemen find peace? With Yemen ranked one of the most dangerous places for media groups to operate, many such shows are being hosted outside the country. Media groups cant work inside the country freely, while there are increasingly attacks against the press, Ahmed al-Zurqa, an Istanbul-based Yemeni journalist, told Al Jazeera, noting that various media outlets within Yemen have come under the control of different armed groups. Its an extremely hostile situation for media. Meanwhile, anti-Houthi satirist Mohammed al-Athroui regarded by many Yemenis as a pioneer in the countrys political satire scene, having sung satirical songs on television since the 1990s, such as Toz (Whatever) and Ham Shaab (A Nations Concern) has continued his work throughout the war. His show Ghagha (Cacophony), which airs long-prepared episodes every Ramadan on the Islamist Party Islahs television channel, is broadcast from Saudi Arabia, as the channels official offices were looted by the Houthis in 2015. Ghagha includes sketches and songs that heavily mock Shia scholars, prompting fierce criticism from pro-Houthi media outlets. I respect our religion and all sects, and I dont aim to insult anyone, but [rather] to uncover some of the Houthis fictitious tales, Athroui told Al Jazeera. The dangers of his work are clear: A pro-Houthi judge in Sanaa recently issued a statement on Facebook advocating Athrouis death for his deliberate and repeated insults against prominent Shia religious figures. I am not scared; in fact, I am certain now that my show is very influential, Athroui maintained. Rabaa says he has also received death threats because of his work; in one instance, his home was hit by bullets. Over the course of Yemens war, Houthi supporters have tried to abduct my sister, attacked my brother and confiscated my house in Amran, he said. After more than two years of war, Yemen is now in the midst of a massive humanitarian crisis threatening millions of lives. Despite the appalling outlook, satirical shows have found a way to lighten the mood taking aim at everything from political oppression, to the crisis of unpaid civil-servant salaries, to the Houthis hijacking of military institutions. Rabaa says he remains determined to forge ahead. Yemenis are reminded of famine, disease and devastation all the time, but they have forgotten how to smile, and thats what we try to remind them of, Rabaa said. We dont mock our misery, but we mock those who led us to the misery. Wildlife conservation is big business in Kenya. The tourism sector, which is mostly wildlife-based, is regularly among the top three contributors to the countrys GDP. As a result, the Kenyan government and the Western media are more than eager to focus on the positive aspects of conservation. But, unfortunately, the real story is not that straightforward. In Kenya, there is an ongoing battle between white settler conservationists from the Laikipia plains and pastoralist communities occupying the neighbouring northern rangelands. Wildlife conservationists perceive pastoralism as a poor land use method with little economic value, which is detrimental to wildlife. Pastoralists, on the other hand, see wildlife conservation as a large-scale pastoral land grab. And as conservationists claim more and more land for wildlife protection, Kenyan pastoralists, who had been the true protectors of wildlife for centuries, are swiftly losing their livelihoods. In the past year, dozens of people have been killed or injured as a ravaging drought hit the pastoral communities and increased tensions between the two groups. A colonial legacy Discussions on wildlife conservation and pastoralism in Kenya are always cast in Manichean terms; wildlife conservancy is good and pastoralism is bad. This framing is rooted in Kenyas colonial legacy, which the post-colonial African government not only inherited, but also enhanced. Kenyas first post-independence development plan, published in 1965, shaped the countrys negative perception of pastoralism. The plan divided the country into low and high potential regions, stating that high potential regions regions expected to contribute significantly to the countrys GDP would receive more investment. READ MORE: Kenyas Ogiek win land case against government Since Kenyas northern rangelands and, by extension, pastoralism do not contribute considerably to the countrys GDP, the state limited its investments in this region and sector. By doing so, it placed itself on the side of conservationists against local communities who depend on pastoralism to survive. Framing the conflict in racial terms Unsurprisingly, the conflict between white settlers and the neighbouring pastoralist communities has attracted a lot of foreign media attention. The lack of transparency and adequate information about the manner in which new conservancies are established in Kenya adds to the anxiety of the pastoralist communities who already feel dispossessed as result of past 'land grabs'. by Articles on this issue showed up most frequently in British newspapers, since most of the white conservationists are of British descent. However, the media coverage failed to communicate the reality of the problem, as it was mostly shaped by the views of the well-heeled intergenerational wildlife conservation clique. These untouchable royals framed the discussion for their own benefit, using a well-choreographed, sleek PR machine. For instance, in a piece published by the British newspaper The Guardian, titled Who shot Kuki Gallmann? The story of a Kenyan conservationist heroine, the conflict between the ranchers and pastoralist communities is presented in a simplistic and paternalistic way. The article, which is peppered with manifestations of a messiah complex, casts pastoralists as the barbarians at the gate of civilisation, and Kuki Gallmann, whose life was immortalised in the movie I Dreamed of Africa, as a noble white saviour who is keeping the wildlife safe from, by implication, the neighbouring pastoralist communities. In general, Western media frame this conflict in racial terms, as a battle between the white rancher and the black pastoralist, and blatantly ignores the historical and colonial arrangement that sustains the present private wildlife management system and displaces native communities from their communal land holdings. Controlling Kenya in the name of wildlife conservation Currently, the Northern Rangeland Trust (NRT) is the main driver for the establishment of wildlife conservancies in Kenya. By some estimates, the NRT controls about 7.5 percent of Kenyan land mass in the name of wildlife conservation, that is, 44,000sq km (or 10.8m acres) of land. These lands are found in the Rift Valley, and the Northern part of the country, formerly known as the Northern Frontier District. READ MORE: Rare success story of wildlife protection in Kenya Presently, there are 140 conservancies spread across 22 counties. The conflict between conservationists and pastoralists is not restricted to the plains of Laikipia. For example, the neighbouring Isiolo County is having an even larger problem as a result of the friction between these two groups. The situation in Isiolo is compounded by two factors. First, Isiolo is the home to several mega infrastructure projects that are part of Kenyas Vision 2030 national development agenda. To complete these projects, the state acquired huge chunks of land, some of which were historically used by the pastoralists for pasture during the dry seasons. Second, the NRT has established several large conservation parks in Isiolo, bringing the area under conservancy to more than half a million hectares, massively reducing the land that can be used by pastoralists. According to the NRT, conservancies in this county are community-led initiatives that help pastoral communities work productively towards Kenyas conservation and development goals. As some locals manage to secure jobs as security guards and cooks in these conservancies, they argue that it is a win-win situation for pastoralist communities and wildlife conservationists. Those opposed to the conservancies, on the other hand, see them as a massive land grab from pastoralist communities by wealthy foreigners with local connections. They also argue that these conservancies prioritise wildlife welfare over the welfare of humans and livestock. Unsung custodians for wildlife The lack of transparency and adequate information about the manner in which new conservancies are established in Kenya adds to the anxiety of the pastoralist communities that already feel dispossessed as result of past land grabs. They view these new conservancy projects as Trojan horses for further annexation of pastoral rangelands. Conservationists argue that the broader economic gain from wildlife conservancies will eventually trickle down to the pastoralist communities living nearby. Yet, in most cases, there is not enough solid evidence supporting this argument. The overall consensus among the local populations is that conservancies cannot possibly give pastoralist communities the same kind of return that they can get from livestock. For instance, establishment of a conservancy in Oldo Nyiro in Laikipia led to the loss of community lands. The Massais in the neighbouring Nanyuki, the headquarters of Laikipia County, were forced to graze their livestock by the roadside because all of the formerly common lands that they had been using for grazing had been fenced off. OPINION: Kenyas election What will young people vote for? After decades of neglect from previous regimes, many believe that change is finally coming to Kenya through the new devolution model that decentralises power to the county level. There is now hope that newly empowered counties will take action to protect the pastoralist communities against wildlife conservancy. Pastoralist communities have lived harmoniously with the wildlife for centuries. They are the true but unsung custodians for the wildlife. For as long as they are not placed at the centre of wildlife conservation, Kenyas human-wildlife conflict will persist, to the detriment of all. Abdullahi Boru Halakhe is a security analyst from the Horn of Africa. The views expressed in this article are the authors own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeeras editorial policy. The US president has three options for dealing with North Korean aggression. And all three are bad. Unlike many of the other problems Donald Trump is facing, the North Korea issue is not of his own making. This ticking time bomb has been passed from Bill Clinton to George W Bush, to Barack Obama, and on to the current president. And now Trump is facing an adversary which has a well-running nuclear programme and is probably in possession of chemical and biological weapons of mass destruction. The only certainty around North Koreas nuclear weapons is that they are accelerating in both yield and delivery systems. In addition, North Korea has an army of a million soldiers, dozens of submarines, hundreds of jets, thousands of tanks and tens of thousands of artillery pieces. READ MORE: North Koreas nuclear weapons here is all we know If a conventional conflict without weapons of mass destruction breaks out, the death toll could be anywhere between 30,000 and one million. The last conventional war with North Korea (1950-1953) left over five million dead after three years of bloodshed. And there was no victor. If war breaks out today, it will progress much quicker than the last one. As North Korea is in the close proximity of several major population centres, the fear of overwhelming losses will demand a military response within less than 20 minutes. If weapons of mass destruction are used in the chaos that follows, the death toll would grow exponentially. Anything above a couple of dozen nuclear weapons could turn a regional conflict into a nuclear winter, which would have extremely dire consequences for the planet. If China, which is linked to North Korea via a treaty of mutual aid and cooperation joins the conflict, the World War III may break out. Such a scenario can even lead to the extinction of our species. Mr Trump has three options on how to approach resolving the North Korea crisis. Amplifying military preparedness In conjunction with his allies, and especially the president of South Korea, Moon Jae-in, Mr Trump may wish to amplify the military preparedness of the forces facing North Korea. More drills, exercises and deployments of soldiers, vessels and aircraft. Mr Trump and his allies could also choose to expand the THAAD system of missile air defence. Although the THAAD can be overwhelmed, tricked with decoys or outflanked by submarine launches, it offers, in theory, a type of defence against some missiles (but not the intercontinental ones). The risk with this approach is that it will lead to both North Korea and China rattling their sabres even louder. Although the chance of these planned events leading to intentional war is very small, the risks of unplanned events caused by paranoia, accidents, mistakes or uncontrolled anger make this one of the most dangerous situations facing humanity since we almost had a nuclear war over Cuba in 1962. It is impossible to obtain the comprehensive sanctions desired because some countries, especially China, do not wish to squeeze that hard on either the economic or diplomatic veins of their ally. by Tightening sanctions The second option Mr Trump has is to tighten the sanctions in the hope they will bring North Korea to the negotiating table as they have done with other countries which acted in defiance of the international community. The United Nations has been squeezing North Korea with sanctions since 2006. These have expanded from a ban on military supplies and luxury goods imports to shutting North Korea out of the global financial system and banning precious metal, coal and iron exports with only a few small exemptions. With the latest round of sanctions, a third of North Koreas exports will be affected. Mr Trump wants to make the sanctions even stronger by putting oil on the list, making the ban on coal total, banning their national airline, stopping their commodity exports and moving towards a total economic and diplomatic quarantine of the country. This is not a good option for two reasons. First, it is impossible to obtain the comprehensive sanctions desired because some countries, especially China (which accounts for about 85 percent of North Koreas trade) do not wish to squeeze that hard on either the economic or diplomatic veins of their ally. Second, even if China did agree to apply the highest level of sanctions possible and the country is made to feel extreme pain, Kim Jong-un does not care. This is the country that the 2014 Commission empowered by the UN Human Rights Council accused of crimes of extermination, murder, enslavement, torture, imprisonment, rape, forced abortions, persecution on political, racial and gender grounds, enforced disappearance of persons and prolonged starvation. READ MORE: Three things to know about North Koreas missile tests Weathering pain such as famine to achieve longer-term political goals is something North Korea is fine with. Unlike in Iran, where the pain of the sanctions upon their citizens made those in power listen and then negotiate, in North Korea, the hereditary power and Stalinist-like regime make rulers deaf and insensitive to the impact of sanctions. A call to Pyongyang The third option that Mr Trump has is to pick up the phone and talk to Kim Jong-un. The talk could be about concluding a peace treaty for the last Korean war which ended with a truce in 1953. A peace treaty could be supplemented with a number of confidence-building measures, such as the scaling-back of military exercises, removing the missile shield and taking steps towards ending North Koreas isolation. Promises of non-intervention into North Korea would carry some weight, but not much. Kim Jong-uns fear is that if he gave up his weapons of mass destruction, he would risk suffering the same fate as the other dictators in Iraq, Libya and Syria. Kim Jong-un also knows if he gave up his weapons, his country would be as secure as the Ukraine was next to Russia after they handed over their nuclear weapons on the promise that their sovereignty would be respected. OPINION: Is North Korea really a hollowed out state? This means that Mr Trump would have to accept North Korea having nuclear weapons, at least in the short term. This acceptance would be the same as America and the international community learning to live with both India (in 1974) and Pakistan (in 1998) breaking out of their promises not to obtain nuclear arsenals. If North Korea can keep their bomb, South Korea, and maybe Japan, will probably seek the same rights. This last option would destroy global efforts of nuclear non-proliferation and it would also chronically upset the balance of power in that part of the world. In that sense, Mr Trump has no good options on resolving the North Korea crisis. Alexander Gillespie is professor of international law at the University of Waikato, New Zealand. His research focuses on laws of war and armed conflict. He is the author of the three-volume set A History of the Laws of War and the three-volume set The Causes of War. The views expressed in this article are the authors own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeeras editorial policy. Congress rejects corruption charges, saving Temer from Supreme Court trial that could have seen him ousted. Brazils lower house of congress voted on Wednesday to reject a corruption charge against President Michel Temer for allegedly taking bribes, saving him from facing a possible Supreme Court trial that could have ousted him from office. At least 172 of the 513 members of the lower Chamber of Deputies had voted by late Wednesday against putting Temer on trial for allegedly orchestrating a scheme to line his own pockets with millions of dollars in illicit payments. Temer won enough ballots to keep the opposition from gaining the two-thirds of the vote or 342 votes required to move the corruption case forward to the top court. A final tally was expected later on Wednesday night. OPINION: Why is neoliberalism back in Latin America? The strong show of support for Temer raised the prospects that he can now move ahead with controversial economic reforms in an economy emerging from recession. Al Jazeeras Daniel Schweimler, reporting from Brasilia, said Temer was always confident he would win the vote and had pledged more than $1bn of government funds for projects to various members of congress to ensure their vote. So he is no doubt is breathing a sigh of relief for now at least, said Schweimler. But Temer is widely expected to face more corruption charges in the coming weeks, which would again put his presidency at stake. Tired of so much suspicion Opposition politicians, carrying briefcases stuffed with fake money, chanted Out with Temer! on the house floor at the start of the day-long tumultuous session. Temers main coalition ally, the Brazilian Social Democracy Party (PSDB), which seeks to win the presidential election next year, was split on whether to back Temer, whose economic policies it shares, or distance itself from his corruption-plagued government. PSDB leader Ricardo Tripoli, calling for the charge to be approved, said Temer must be investigated, not because we want to oust the president, but because Brazilians are tired of so much suspicion surrounding their politicians. To shield Temer only further undermines the credibility of Brazils political system, Tripoli said. Brazils top prosecutor Rodrigo Janot charged Temer in June with arranging to eventually receive a total of 38m reais ($12.16m) in bribes from the worlds largest meatpacker, JBS SA, in return for political favours. Temer and his legal team have denied any wrongdoing. Brazils stocks and currency rose earlier on Wednesday after a cloture vote signalled a victory for Temer and robust support for his reform agenda to cut spending and restore confidence in government accounts. This drama is by no means over Armando Castelar, a professor of economics at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, told Al Jazeera that, although Temers approval ratings are very low, the vote showed his strength in congress. He added that Temer would now be able to return to his economic agenda. Castelar said Temers pledge not to run for re-election in 2019 was a further strength. This usually facilitates support in congress because parties dont see him as a future opponent if things go well. So this may work for the better for the economy. Obviously its not a desirable situation for a political perspective, he said. But Brazil is in such a difficult position with the public sector accounts and low growth that maybe for this moment its not bad news, said Castelar. READ MORE: Brazils prisons A battleground in the drug wars Al Jazeeras Daniel Schweimler said that, while Temer says he wants to get on with running the country, the so-called Car Wash corruption investigation in which he and many others were implicated is still ongoing. The opposition are hoping that more revelations will come to light, especially as many of those implicated are plea-bargaining, theyre naming names, and the opposition are convinced that Michel Temers name will come to the fore again, said Schweimler. And [Temer] will no doubt be back in congress at some stage defending himself against new charges of corruption although he has said hes innocent and he wants to continue governing. So this drama is by no means over. Woman imprisoned for 18 months after making hundreds of thousands of dollars from illegal surrogacy services. A Cambodian court has sentenced an Australian woman to 18 months in prison for providing commercial surrogacy services in the impoverished country. Cambodia banned the womb for rent business last year after Thailand and India following a wave of scandals and allegations of exploitation blocked foreigners paying poor local women to be surrogates. Tammy Davis-Charles, who was arrested in November, appeared stunned as the judge read the guilty verdict and sentence on Thursday. Two Cambodian associates were also handed 18-month jail terms. Samrith Chan Chakrya, who served as an interpreter for Davis-Charles, cried when she heard the verdict and said she would appeal. The court also ordered Davis-Charles to pay four million riel, about $1,000, in fines to the state. The Cambodian defendants were fined two million riel ($500) each. READ MORE: After Nepal, Indian surrogacy clinics move to Cambodia Police said Davis-Charles moved from Thailand to take advantage of the demand for surrogates, charging Australian clients up to $50,000 for each request. More than 20 Cambodian surrogates were brought into the trade and received around $10,000 each. Judge Sor Lina said Davis-Charles was aware that launching surrogacy services was illegal in Cambodia but she continued working and convincing Cambodian women to be surrogate mothers. Lina said Davis-Charles provided surrogacy services to 23 Australian and American couples and paid Penh Rithy $600 to $800 to organise paperwork for babies born through Cambodian surrogate mothers so that they could leave Cambodia with their parents. Davis-Charles, who denied the charges, was also convicted of falsifying documents. In previous court appearances, she said she had lost everything since her arrest and wanted to be reunited with her family in Australia, including her twin sons. She has said she launched her business in Cambodia only after consulting three local lawyers who assured her the clinic was legal. During the trial, several Cambodian women who served as surrogates said they were not coerced. Developing countries are popular for surrogacy because costs are much lower than in nations such as the United States and Australia, where surrogate services are around $150,000. The surrogacy business boomed in Cambodia because of its cheap medical costs, a large pool of poor young women and no laws excluding gay couples or single parents. After shuttering the trade in late 2016, authorities have refused to recognise birth certificates for babies, leaving many foreign couples in limbo. However, in April this year, the government said it would allow foreign couples to return home with babies if they could prove they were conceived before the ban on commercial surrogacy. After Cambodias crackdown, the trade has shifted to neighbouring Laos. Taliban suicide bomber targets military convoy in Afghanistans capital in the latest attack to strike the country. At least three civilians have been killed in a suicide attack on a convoy of foreign forces in the capital of Afghanistan, Kabul, police officials told Al Jazeera. One NATO soldier was killed and six personnel including five soldiers and an interpreter were wounded in the attack, the coalition said. The patrol was conducting a partnered mission with the Afghan National Army when a personnel-borne IED (improvised explosive device) detonated in Qarabagh district in Kabul province, NATO-led Resolute Support said in a statement. READ MORE: Father of robotics team member killed in Herat attack The wounded are being treated at a US military hospital at Bagram airbase, the statement added. The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack. Thursdays bombing is the latest episode in a week of violence in the war-torn country. On Wednesday, two US soldiers were killed by a suicide bomber who attacked a convoy of foreign forces in the southern province of Kandahar. Dozens of people were killed in a suicide attack at a packed Shia mosque in the western province of Herat on Tuesday. Meanwhile, on Monday, a suicide bombing and gun attack claimed by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS) group on the Iraqi embassy in the capital killed two Afghan employees. Liu Xias lawyer tells UN body that she has not been seen since the July 15 funeral and burial of the Nobel laureate. The Chinese government is responsible for the enforced disappearance of Liu Xia, the widow of late Nobel peace laureate Liu Xiaobo, her US-based lawyer has said in a formal complaint filed with the UN. Liu Xia has been held incommunicado in an unknown location by Chinese government authorities since July 15, the day of her husbands funeral, he lawyer, Jared Genser, said in statement to the UN working group on enforced or involuntary disappearances on Wednesday. China faced a global backlash for its treatment of Liu Xiaobo when he died of liver cancer last month, making him the first Nobel Peace Prize laureate to die in custody since 1938 when German pacifist Carl von Ossietzky died while being held by the Nazis. Liu Xia, 56, was followed around the clock by security officials, and has not been in touch with anyone since about a day before her husbands death, Genser said. I demand that Chinese authorities immediately provide proof that Liu Xia is alive and allow her unhindered access to her family, friends, counsel, and the international community, he said in a separate statement emailed to AFP news agency. Genser said international law defined enforced disappearances as situations where government officials are involved in depriving a person of her freedom against her will, and refuse to acknowledge that deprivation or conceal the disappeared persons fate. He said all such conditions had been met in Liu Xias case. The UN working group did not acknowledge the receipt of Gensers complaint, but told AFP news agency that generally speaking, its process of issuing an opinion on the matter was a lengthy one that could take years. China would be free to dismiss that non-binding outcome. International pressure The US, the European Union and the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights have called on China to free Liu Xia, who had been under house arrest since Liu Xiaobo won the Nobel prize seven years ago, despite having never been charged with a crime. Last month, Germany said it was deeply concerned over what it called Chinas unwillingness to discuss lifting restrictions against Liu Xia, a source told Reuters news agency. In 2011, the UN working group on enforced or involuntary disappearances said that deprivation of liberty of Liu Xia is arbitrary. Zhang Qingyang, a Chinese government spokesman, declined to disclose Liu Xias whereabouts on July 15, saying only that it was best for her not to receive too much outside interference during this period. The relevant departments will protect Liu Xias legal rights according to law, he said. Chinese authorities have also said she is a free citizen who has been merely too grief-stricken by her husbands death to be in touch with any friends or counsel. Foreign journalists who have tried to visit the couples Beijing home have been rebuffed and physically harassed. READ MORE: Is China afraid of Liu Xiaobos legacy? Seven people are currently detained by Chinese police for commemorating Liu Xiaobo, the Chinese Human Rights Defenders said on Wednesday. Authorities released photographs and a video of Liu Xia at what rights groups have called a heavily scripted funeral and sea burial of her husband. Liu Xiaobo was a veteran of the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests who was jailed in 2008 after co-writing a petition calling for democratic reform, and sentenced to 11 years in prison for subversion a year later. He was diagnosed with late-stage liver cancer in May. In June, he was granted medical parole and moved to a hospital in Shenyang, where he was reportedly treated in an isolated ward under armed guard. China resisted strong international pressure to allow Liu Xiaobo to seek treatment abroad. US president grudgingly approves new sanctions in a move Russia says amounts to a full-scale trade war. US President Donald Trump has grudgingly signed into law new sanctions against Russia, a move Moscow says amounted to a full-scale trade war and an end to hopes for better ties with Washington. Congress overwhelmingly approved the legislation last week, passing a measure that conflicts with the Republican presidents desire to improve relations with Russia. While Trump signed the bill on Wednesday, he criticised it as infringing on his powers to shape foreign policy and said he could make far better deals with governments than Congress can. Dmitry Medvedev, Russias prime minister, called the sanctions tantamount to a full-scale trade war, adding in a Facebook post that they showed the Trump administration had demonstrated utter powerlessness. OPINION: Is Russia a real threat to the West? The hope that our relations with the new American administration would improve is finished, he wrote. Trumps litany of concerns about the sanctions, which also affect Iran and North Korea, nonetheless raised the question of how vigorously Trump will enforce them and pursue action against Russia. While I favour tough measures to punish and deter aggressive and destabilising behaviour by Iran, North Korea, and Russia, this legislation is significantly flawed, Trump said in a message to legislators. The new law allows Congress to stop any effort by Trump to ease sanctions on Russia. Trump said in a separate statement that he was signing the measure for the sake of national unity, even though he saw problems with it. Raises serious questions His hands were tied after the Republican-controlled congress approved the legislation by such a large margin last week that any presidential veto of the bill would have been overridden. Congress passed the measure to punish Russia over interference in the 2016 US presidential election and the annexation of Ukraines Crimea. The legislation has provoked countermeasures by Russian President Vladimir Putin, who said on Sunday the US diplomatic mission in Russia must reduce its staff by 755 people. Russia is also seizing two properties near Moscow used by American diplomats. Trump has repeatedly said he wants to improve relations with Russia. That desire has been stymied by US intelligence agencies findings that Russia interfered to help the Republican against Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. US congressional panels and a special counsel are investigating. Moscow denies any meddling and Trump denies any collusion by his campaign. Republican House of Representatives Speaker Paul Ryan welcomed the signing, saying in a statement it would send a powerful message to our adversaries that they will be held accountable for their actions. But Republican Senator Lindsey Graham said he was disappointed that Trump chose to sign the legislation behind closed doors, without the fanfare of television cameras and reporters present. The fact (that) he does this kind of quietly I think reinforces the narrative that the Trump administration is not really serious about pushing back on Russia, Graham said in a CNN interview. The Houses top Democrat, Nancy Pelosi, expressed concern about Trumps signing statement, saying it raises serious questions about whether his administration intends to follow the law, or whether he will continue to enable and reward Vladimir Putins aggression. The new sanctions Besides angering Moscow, the legislation has upset the European Union, which has said the new sanctions might affect its energy security and prompt it to act, too. Several provisions of the law target the Russian energy sector, with new limits on US investment in Russian companies. American companies also would be barred from participating in energy exploration projects where Russian firms have a stake of 33 percent or higher. READ MORE: Russia A resurgent superpower? The legislation includes sanctions on foreign companies investing in or helping Russian energy exploration, although the president could waive those sanctions. It would give the Trump administration the option of imposing sanctions on companies helping develop Russian export pipelines, such as the Nord Stream 2 pipeline carrying natural gas to Europe, in which German companies are involved. Iran also spoke out against the sanctions, which it called a bid to sabotage the 2015 nuclear deal but said it would not retaliate. We will not react with countermeasures, instead we will refuse to be drawn into this game and proceed with a level head, Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said, according to the ISNA news agency. European Court of Human Rights says health condition of two educators sacked in post-coup purge is not life-threatening. Europes top human rights court has dismissed a request for release by two detained Turkish educators on hunger strike, saying the condition of their health is not life-threatening. Teacher Semih Ozakca, 28, and 35-year-old academic Nuriye Gulmen began their strike on March 10 after losing their jobs, along with tens of thousands of state employees, amid a purge following last years failed coup. The pair, currently being held at Sincan Hospital in the capital Ankara under police watch, were arrested for allegedly being members of the outlawed far-left group DHKP-C. Medical reports dated July 28 by Ankaras Numune Hospital said both of them were in life-threatening health conditions and were unable to survive unaided. The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) rejected on Wednesday the pairs requests for freedom, saying that there was not an imminent risk to their lives. READ MORE: Turkey arrests head of Amnesty over Gulen links [The court] examined the applicants requests in the light of the medical reports and developments and it found that the applicants detention at the Sincan Hospital did not pose a real and imminent risk of irreparable harm to the life or limb of the applicants, a court statement said. It therefore rejected the applicants request that the court order the government to release them. The court informed the parties that it expected the government to take all necessary measures to ensure that the applicants rights are respected. In the light of the report by Numune Hospital, the court requested the government to ensure that adequate arrangements be put in place to assist the applicants in their day-to-day needs. Shallow decision Selcuk Kozagacli, a lawyer representing the applicants, told Al Jazeera that the ECHRs decision was unprecedentedly shallow and contradicted the courts principles. In the decision, the court almost fully repeats the arguments of the government, without considering our arguments and the documents we provided, he said. The file proves, in a definitive manner, that [Ozakca and Gulmen] are at imminent risk of losing their lives. Nevertheless, the decision taken by the duty judge claims that they [are not]. If the ECHR keeps making these kinds of decisions, it will contribute to unlawful practices going in Turkey under the state of emergency. And it will have to bear this responsibility. READ MORE: Turkeys Erdogan links detained rights activists to failed coup The government, which declared a state of emergency following the coup attempt, say the purges and detentions are legitimate, and are aimed at removing Gulen supporters from state institutions. The Turkish government blames US-based religious leader and businessman Fethullah Gulen and his followers for the coup attempt of July 15, 2016, while he denies any involvement. Local and international rights groups, as well as many of Turkeys European allies, say the measures are arbitrary, claiming that the government is using the coup attempt as a pretext to silence opposition. The Turkish Constitutional Court dismissed in June the appeals by Ozakca and Gulmen for their release over their health conditions. Follow Umut Uras on Twitter: @Um_Uras Tensions rise after slaying of rebel commander, with more deaths, the blocking of mobile internet and a curfew. Two Indian soldiers and two fighters were killed in clashes in Indian-administered Kashmir, where tensions are high following the killing of a prominent leader of the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) group. Early on Tuesday, Indian troops ambushed the two fighters in Kulgam, south of the main city of Srinagar. It was a deliberate and swift operation, an army officer told the AFP news agency. In a separate incident, two Indian troops were killed and another was injured in a gunfight with rebels in Shopian district, the officer said, speaking on the condition of anonymity. READ MORE: Kashmir Indian troops kill young tailor amid protests Three soldiers were evacuated by air, but two of them died before reaching a military hospital, a police officer said. The violence comes just days after Indian forces killed top commander Abu Dujana, who headed LeT in Kashmir. His death led to protests and violent clashes, in which at least two civilians including a teenage student were killed. Excessive force Akeel Ahmed Bhat, 17, died in hospital on Wednesday, a day after he was hit by government forces during a protest decrying the killing of Abu Dujana. Akeel is just another civilian victim of the excessive force against demonstrators, Parvez Imroz, a Kashmiri activist, told Al Jazeera. However, its the same pattern for government troops, they have been using disproportionate force against the protesters for a long time, he added. The government imposed a curfew on parts of Srinagar in anticipation of further protests against Indian rule. READ MORE: Security forces kill 15-year-old protester in Kashmir The army and police have been very brutal against demonstrators and beaten them up harshly. They also raided their houses and even beat up their women and children, Imroz said. Indian authorities have also suspended mobile internet in Kashmir. The use of social media is very frequent among Kashmiri youth. This reaction is not surprising for us. The troops want to stop young people coming together for demonstrations by suspending the mobile network, Imroz added. Kashmir is divided between two nuclear-armed rivals, India and Pakistan where each administers part of it, but both claim the Himalayan territory in its entirety. Rebel groups have been fighting since 1989 for the Indian-administered portion to become independent. WATCH: India and Pakistan Forever rivals? (25:25) Nearly 70,000 people have been killed in the uprising and the ensuing Indian military crackdown. India maintains roughly 500,000 soldiers in the territory. Anti-India sentiment runs deep among Kashmirs mostly Muslim population and most support the rebels cause against Indian rule despite a decades-long military crackdown to fight the armed rebellion. India accuses Pakistan of arming and training rebels, an allegation Pakistan denies. Officials claim that a large number of young people have joined the separatist ranks since last July, and say the number is growing after the killing of LeT groups leader. Additional reporting by Yigit Mahmut. Commander in control of the east issues orders to naval bases after Italy sends ship to halt people smugglers boats. The commander of Libyas self-styled national army has ordered his naval forces to confront any vessel entering the countrys waters without permission. The move by the renegade general, Khalifa Haftar, which was announced on Wednesday, comes after Italy instructed its navy to stop refugee boats heading to Europe from Libya. An Italian naval ship, Commandante Borsini, entered Libyan waters on Wednesday. Italy initially hoped to send six ships into Libyan waters but had to downsize the mission after objections from the administration in Tripoli. Haftar, who controls most of eastern Libya, said the order was applicable to bases in Benghazi, Ras Lanuf and Tobruk as well as the capital Tripoli, in the west, which he does not control. Italy sent the mission to help Libyas coastguard curb the flow of refugees and asylum seekers after a request by the UN-backed Government of National Accord (GNA) in Tripoli. Paolo Gentiloni, Italys premier, said Italys deployment responded to a request by the GNA, which later denied striking a deal with the Italians. Exporting crisis Libyas eastern-based parliament, rivals to Tripoli and allied with Haftar, strongly opposed the move. Returning refugees and asylum seekers back to Libya amounted to exporting the illegal migration crisis to Libya, it said. The development signals unresolved tensions between Haftar and Fayez Serraj, the GNA prime minister, who pledged to cooperate at a meeting outside Paris last week. At the meeting hosted by French President Emmanuel Macron last week, Haftar and Serraj committed themselves to a ceasefire, to work toward presidential and parliamentary elections, and to establish a roadmap to secure Libya against terrorism and trafficking of all kinds. Al Jazeeras Mahmoud Abdelwahed, reporting from Tripoli, said Haftars ability to translate his threats into action is open to question. Haftar does not have a military presence in the west and especially in the Libyan capital, Tripoli, he said, adding that forces loyal to Haftar near Tripoli would meet with resistance if they made any attempt to reach GNA-controlled ports. He said the EU and the US are helping Tripoli-controlled government forces monitor Libyan waters and airspace. Haftar doesnt have navy forces in the west. The only ships he controls are in the east, off the Mediterranean oil ports and Benghazi, Al Jazeeras Abdelwahed said. With the Sophia delegation monitoring Libyan waters, Haftar cannot move his ships. Operation Sophia is an EU mission to stop people trafficking and arms smuggling in Libya. Officials hope boats being sent back to Libyan ports will have a powerful deterrent effect on would-be refugees and asylum seekers considering paying traffickers for passage to Europe. Squalor and abuse The approach has been criticised by international rights groups who say people returned to troubled Libya face detention in squalid camps and abuse at the hands of traffickers. After years of saving lives at sea, Italy is preparing to help Libyan forces who are known to detain people in conditions that expose them to a real risk of torture, sexual violence, and forced labour, said Human Rights Watchs Judith Sunderland. Hundreds of thousands of refugees and asylum seekers are brought to Italy each year from Libya in overcrowded boats that are often not seaworthy. The Switzerland-based International Organization for Migration says 94,802 migrants have reached Italy this year. At least 2,221 people have drowned this year while attempting to cross the Mediterranean Sea from Libya. Libya descended into chaos following the 2011 civil war that toppled and killed Muammar Gaddafi and the country is now split between rival governments and militias. The draft law will allow residence to the children of Qatari women married to non-Qataris, and to some expatriates. Qatar plans to allow some expatriates to obtain permanent residency, state news agency reported, in the first move of its kind among Gulf Arab states. A draft law approved at a cabinet meeting will allow permanent residence to the children of Qatari women married to non-Qataris, as well as expatriates who provide outstanding services to Qatar, the Qatar News Agency reported on Wednesday. According to the provisions of the bill, the minister of interior may grant a permanent residency ID to a non-Qatari if they meet the conditions specified in the law, the cabinet statement carried by the agency said. Gulf Arab countries have a high number of expatriate workers but do not allow naturalisation of foreigners, except in rare cases. READ MORE: Qatar-Gulf crisis All the latest updates Qatar has a population of 2.7 million, including some 300,000 citizens, and has been reluctant to extend residency rights out of concern for the demographic balance. Holders of the new permanent residency can for the first time access free state education and healthcare. They will also have the right to own property and run some businesses without needing a Qatari partner. In June, four Arab countries including Saudi Arabia imposed sanctions on Qatar, accusing it of supporting terrorism, a charge it denies. A work-sponsorship system widely enforced in the Gulf and known in Qatar as kafala requires foreign workers to get their employers consent to change jobs or leave the country. QNA said a committee would be established at the interior ministry to review requests of granting permanent residency ID in line with the provisions of the law. President says nuclear deal is a sign of Tehrans goodwill as he is sworn in a day after US imposed fresh sanctions. Iranian President Hassan Rouhani vowed to continue his efforts to end the countrys isolation as he was sworn in for a second term, a day after US President Donald Trump signed a bill increasing sanctions against the Islamic Republic. We will never accept isolation, Rouhani told a packed audience of Iranian political and military officials in Tehran on Thursday. The nuclear deal is a sign of Irans goodwill on the international stage, he said, referring to the 2015 agreement to curb its atomic programme in exchange for an easing of sanctions. The US agreed the deal with world powers including Russia, Britain, France, China and Germany. Rouhani, a 68-year-old moderate who has faced fierce criticism from conservatives for his efforts to rebuild ties with the West, issued a call for unity. I declare once again that with the election concluded, the time for unity and cooperation has begun, he said. I extend my hand to all those who seek the greatness of the country. Trump, who during his election campaign last year called 2015s nuclear agreement the worst deal ever, signed new sanctions into law on Wednesday, along with measures against Russia and North Korea. The agreement had been negotiated by the administration of Barack Obama, former US president. Nuclear deal violated Iran had already said it would complain to the body that oversees the deal about the new measures, which were passed in Congress last week in response to an alleged missile development programme and human rights abuses. An Iranian official said on Tuesday that the new US sanctions break the terms of the nuclear deal. In our view the nuclear deal has been violated and we will show an appropriate and proportional reaction to this issue, Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi said in an interview with state TV, according to the ISNA news agency. While Russia has reacted to the sanctions by ejecting US embassy staff, Iran has no diplomatic relations or direct trade links with the US so its retaliation options are limited. Araqchi said Tehrans response would be intelligent. The main goal of America in approving these sanctions against Iran is to destroy the nuclear deal and we will show a very intelligent reaction to this action, Araqchi said. We are definitely not going to act in a way that get us entangled in the politics of the American government and Trump. The move by Trump is likely to embolden his hardline critics, who say the nuclear deal was a form of capitulation. If the sanctions are to be implemented, there will be problematic times for Iran and for the nuclear deal in general, Hassan Ahmadian, a professor at the University of Tehran, told Al Jazeera. Now in Iran, there is a growing debate if these sanctions violate [the nuclear deal] or not. And the second debate is, if these sanctions are to be implemented, how should Iran respond? Sanctions targeting individuals The US legislation imposes mandatory penalties on people involved in Irans ballistic missile programme. It would also apply sanctions to Irans Revolutionary Guard and enforce an arms embargo. READ MORE: US hits Iran with fresh sanctions over space launch The deal has seen European countries flocking back to invest in oil-rich Iran, with the French energy giant Total agreeing to develop a new phase of the South Pars natural gas field, the worlds largest. Araqchi said the Europeans would not allow Trump to destroy the nuclear deal. What Total did and the contract that was signed between this company and Iran sent a message from Europe to the Americans that whatever the conditions they will continue their economic relations with Iran, he said. Ellie Geranmayeh, an Iran analyst with the European Council on Foreign Relations, said the timing of the new US sanctions package was unfortunate. What will be absolutely critical is how the Europeans position themselves, she said, pointing to the burgeoning trade ties with Europe and their continued backing of the nuclear deal. President Paul Kagame enjoys support before vote that some observers believe is a foregone conclusion. Kigali, Rwanda Rwandas President Paul Kagame has campaigned in Gasabo, a suburb of the capital Kigali, in the run-up to the August 4 general and presidential elections. Tens of thousands of his supporters had to be beaten back by police brandishing baton sticks and fenced in on Wednesday as they fought to catch one last glimpse of their leader. Some claim the rally is evidence of the depth of Kagames support Kagame in the lead-up to Fridays poll. Its because the people love him. Hes our hero, through him we built this country from scratch. Rwanda was dead before and now we are alive, said Solange Mubaraki, the founder of Defence Spouses Alliance Cyuzuzo, a local support group of more than 250 wives of those serving in Rwandas security services. Everyone can see Rwanda is not about genocide, but development and peace because of the leadership of Kagame, he said. At least seven million voters are registered to cast their ballots in the third elections since the 1994 ethnic massacres. Kagame and the ruling Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) expect a victory that would award the post-genocide president a third term and another seven years in office. Although Kagame is widely popular, international rights observers have expressed concern over the political environment in which Fridays vote takes place. Climate of fear Last month, Amnesty International warned Rwandas elections risk being held under a climate of fear created by years of repression due to alleged state intimidation of opposition. Sarah Jackson, deputy director for Amnesty Internationals East Africa office called on the international community to remain watchful. In the immediate run-up to the elections, Rwandas international partners with a presence in the country should continue to closely monitor the situation and speak out about any violations they observe, she said in an email. The Democratic Green Party of Rwanda (DGPR), led by Frank Habineza, is running against Kagames RPF in an election race largely dominated by the RPFs tricoloured flags of red, white and blue in Kigali. UPFRONT: Rwanda Africas success story or authoritarian state? (12:45) Although the visibility of Rwandas leading opposition party is minimal in the local press and on television, Habinezas DGPR has managed to hold a series of small rallies. It promised, much like Kagame, to improve access to electricity, education and health services for Rwandas rural majority. Kagame is recognised for his 17-year track record of economic growth, stability and development. But Habineza and Diane Rwigara, a human rights activist and disqualified presidential candidate, accuse the RPF government of using indirect methods of intimidation to push its opponents out of the political race. The RPF strongly denies the charge. At Wednesdays rally, Kagame rejected accusations of dictatorship and said Rwandans were free to choose their leader. As the country prepares to make its choice, Amnestys Jackson urged political reform to ensure future elections avoid controversy. Whoever is elected president should commit to fundamental reforms to ensure the 2024 elections takes place in a context where the rights of freedom of expression, association and peaceful assembly are truly respected, she said. Follow Tendai Marima on Twitter @i_amten New laboratory research suggests scientists have made a big step towards preventing a list of inherited diseases. In a groundbreaking step, researchers have safely repaired a disease-causing gene in human embryos, targeting a heart defect best known for killing young athletes a big step towards one day preventing a list of inherited diseases. In a surprising discovery, a research team led by Oregon Health and Science University in the US reported on Wednesday that embryos can help fix themselves if scientists jump-start the process early enough. Its laboratory research only, nowhere near ready to be tried in a pregnancy. But it suggests that scientists might alter DNA in a way that protects not just one baby from a disease that runs in the family, but his or her offspring as well. And that raises ethical questions. OPINION: We need a march for science, but this is not the one I for one believe, and this paper supports the view, that ultimately gene editing of human embryos can be made safe. Then the question truly becomes, if we can do it, should we do it? Dr George Daley, a stem cell scientist and dean of Harvard Medical School, told the Associated Press. He wasnt involved in the new research and praised it as quite remarkable. This is definitely a leap forward, agreed developmental geneticist Robin Lovell-Badge of the UKs Francis Crick Institute. Al Jazeeras Gabriel Elizondo, reporting from Cambridge in the US, said that this was a major breakthrough for scientists all over the world. Some in the science community are comparing this breakthrough to the first moon landing its that big, he said. There are around 10,000 hereditary diseases including heart disease, cystic fibrosis, and Alzheimers. Today, couples seeking to avoid passing on a bad gene sometimes have embryos created in fertility clinics so they can discard those that inherit the disease and attempt pregnancy only with healthy ones, if there are any. Gene editing in theory could rescue diseased embryos. But so-called germline changes altering sperm, eggs or embryos are controversial because they would be permanent, passed down to future generations. Critics worry about attempts at designer babies instead of just preventing disease, and a few previous attempts at learning to edit embryos, in China, didnt work well and, more importantly, raised safety concerns. Molecular scissors In a series of laboratory experiments reported in the journal Nature, the Oregon researchers tried a different approach. They targeted a gene mutation that causes a heart-weakening disease, hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, that affects about 1 in 500 people. Inheriting just one copy of the bad gene can cause it. The team programmed a gene-editing tool, named CRISPR-Cas9, that acts like a pair of molecular scissors to find that mutation a missing piece of genetic material. Then came the test. Researchers injected sperm from a patient with the heart condition along with those molecular scissors into healthy donated eggs at the same time. The scissors cut the defective DNA in the sperm. Normally cells will repair a CRISPR-induced cut in DNA by essentially gluing the ends back together. Or scientists can try delivering the missing DNA in a repair package, like a computers cut-and-paste programme. Instead, the newly forming embryos made their own perfect fix without that outside help, reported Oregon Health and Science University senior researcher Shoukhrat Mitalipov. We all inherit two copies of each gene, from each parent and those embryos just copied the healthy one from the donated egg. The embryos are really looking for the blueprint, Mitalipov, who directs OHSUs Center for Embryonic Cell and Gene Therapy, said in an interview with AP. Were finding embryos will repair themselves if you have another healthy copy. It worked 72 percent of the time, in 42 out of 58 embryos. Normally a sick parent has a 50-50 chance of passing on the mutation. Previous embryo-editing attempts in China found not every cell was repaired, a safety concern called mosaicism. Beginning the process before fertilisation avoided that problem: Until now, everybody was injecting too late, Mitalipov said. Pushing a frontier Nor did intense testing uncover any off-target errors, cuts to DNA in the wrong places, reported the team, which also included researchers from the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in California and South Koreas Institute for Basic Science. None of the embryos was allowed to develop beyond eight cells, a standard for laboratory research. Genetics and ethics experts not involved in the work say its a critical first step but just one step toward eventually testing the process in pregnancy, something currently prohibited by US policy. This is very elegant lab work, but its moving so fast that society needs to catch up and debate how far it should go, said Johns Hopkins University bioethicist Jeffrey Kahn. And lots more research is needed to tell if its really safe, added Britains Lovell-Badge. What we do not want is for rogue clinicians to start offering treatments that are unproven, as has happened with some other experimental technologies, he stressed. READ MORE: US scientists urge ban on human genetic modification Among key questions: Would the technique work if the mother, not the father, harboured the mutation? Is repair even possible if both parents pass on a bad gene? Mitalipov is pushing a frontier, but its responsible basic research thats critical for understanding embryos and disease inheritance, noted University of Pittsburgh professor Kyle Orwig. In fact, Mitalipov said the research should offer critics some reassurance: If embryos prefer to self-repair, it would be extremely hard to add traits for designer babies, rather than just eliminate disease. All we did is un-modify the already mutated gene, he said. Stephen McGowan was the longest-held of a group of four foreigners taken hostage by armed group in Timbuktu in 2011. A South African tourist who was kidnapped in 2011 by al-Qaedas North Africa branch while travelling in Mali has been released and has returned back home, according to South Africas government. Stephen McGowan, who was released on July 25, was one of four foreigners touring Mali on motorbikes who were seized in a restaurant in Timbuktu. A German was killed in the kidnapping. A Dutch hostage was freed in 2015 in a raid by French special forces and a Swede was released in June this year. The kidnappers had wanted $5m for the Swedes release, but the government rejected the demand, Swedish Radio said. READ MORE: On the road with Nigers peacekeepers in Mali We would like to warmly welcome him back home and wish him good health, good fortune in his life as a free man, Maite Nkoana-Mashabane, South Africas foreign minister, said, adding that no ransom had been paid. McGowan, 42, is undergoing medical tests but had no major injuries, Nkoana-Mashabane said. McGowans mother died in May, but other close family members expressed their joy at his return. It was a big surprise when Stephen walked through the door, his father, Malcolm, said. He felt as sound and as strong as before. McGowans wife, Catherine, told the news briefing: The first thing he said to me was: Your hair has grown. I said to him Actually, your hair is longer than mine now.' Foreign hostages In early July, McGowan was included in a proof-of-life video released by the al-Qaeda-linked Nusrat al-Islam wal Muslimeen group in Mali. The video showed six foreign hostages shortly before French President Emmanuel Macron arrived in Mali for an anti-terrorism summit. No genuine negotiations have begun to rescue your children, a narrator of the video said. Al-Qaeda fighters are still believed to be holding a Colombian nun taken from Mali, an Australian doctor and a Romanian man seized at different times in Burkina Faso, and an American who was working with a nonprofit organisation in Niger. The armed group seized control of Malis north in 2012. While they were forced out of strongholds a year later by a French-led military intervention, al-Qaeda fighters continue to attack Malian and French soldiers and UN peacekeepers. Five regional countries Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Burkina Faso and Chad have now created a 5,000-strong multinational military force against the armed group. New study reveals that climate change in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh can drive heat and humidity to new extremes. Venturing outdoors may become deadly across wide swaths of India, Pakistan and Bangladesh by the end of the century as climate change drives heat and humidity to new extremes, according to a new study. These conditions could affect up to a third of the people living throughout the Indo-Gangetic Plain unless the global community ramps up efforts to rein in climate-warming carbon emissions. Today, that vast region is home to some 1.5 billion people. The most intense hazard from extreme future heatwaves is concentrated around the densely populated agricultural regions of the Ganges and Indus river basins, wrote the authors of the study, led by former MIT research scientist Eun-Soon Im, now an assistant professor at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. While most climate studies have been based on temperature projections alone, this one published on Wednesday in the journal Science Advances also considers humidity as well as the bodys ability to cool down in response. Those three factors together make up what is called a wet-bulb temperature, which is the air temperature taken when a wet cloth is wrapped around the thermometer. It is always lower than the dry-bulb temperature how much so depends on the humidity. It can help to estimate how easy it is for water to evaporate. It can also offer a gauge for where climate change might become dangerous. Scientists say human beings can survive a wet-bulb temperature of up to about 35 degrees Celsius (95 degrees Fahrenheit), beyond which the human body has difficulty sweating to cool down, or sweat doesnt evaporate, leading to heatstroke and ultimately death within just a few hours even in shaded, ventilated conditions. Extremely hazardous levels So far, wet bulb temperatures have rarely exceeded 31C (88-90 degrees F), a level that is already considered extremely hazardous. Most of those at risk in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh are poor farmworkers or outdoor construction labourers. They are unlikely to have air conditioners up to 25 percent in of Indias population still has no access to electricity. In some areas that have been deforested for industry or agriculture, they may not even have very much shade. OPINION: The case for collaborating on climate change What we see in this study is a convergence of intense weather projections and acute vulnerability, co-author and MIT environmental engineering professor Elfatih A B Eltahir said. For the study, the researchers carried out computer simulations using global atmospheric circulation models under two scenarios one in which the world comes close to meeting its goal of curbing emissions to limit Earths average temperature rise to 2 degrees C (3.6 degrees F) above pre-industrial levels, and one if it continues emitting at current levels. Both scenarios play out dangerously for South Asia. But with no limit on global warming, about 30 percent of the region could see dangerous wet bulb temperatures above 31 degrees C (88 degrees F) regularly within just a few decades. That is nearly half a billion people by todays population levels, though the full scale could change as the population grows. Meanwhile, 4 percent of the population or 60 million in todays population would face deadly highs at or above 35 degrees C (95 degrees F) by 2100. READ MORE: Leaders warn Trump against Paris deal withdrawal But if the world can limit global warming, that risk exposure declines drastically. About 2 percent of the population would face average wet bulb temperatures of 31 degrees C (88 degrees F) or higher. This is an avoidable, preventable problem, Eltahir said. There is a significant difference between these two scenarios, which people need to understand. Paris Agreement goals Experts say countries must work towards meeting the Paris agreement goals to limit average global warming to 2 degrees C (3.6 degrees F), especially since the world has already warmed by 1 degree C (1.8 degrees F). That average will play out differently across the planet, and South Asia is expected to be hit harder than other regions. But while scientists have warned for years that climate change will exacerbate the risks faced by South Asias poor, including storms, droughts and heatwaves, humidity hasnt always been considered. READ MORE: UN demands more ambition as US weighs climate pullout For India, it is a key factor. The country is a peninsula that experiences seasonal monsoon rains, which can make a day outdoors in July seem like a suffocating steam room. Infections fester. Mosquitoes flourish. People lie sprawled atop woven cots for hours a day, moving as little as possible as they wait out the heat. In 2015, a heatwave across India and Pakistan killed 3,500 people. Disaster management officials already have urged Indias cities and states to create heat action plans, after recording 13 of the countrys hottest 15 years on record since 2002. Leaked transcripts of January phone calls reveal rare insights into the US presidents style of diplomacy. US President Donald Trump pressured the Mexican president to stop voicing opposition in public to his plan to have Mexico pay for a border wall, according to transcripts of phone calls published on Thursday. Trump also told the Australian prime minister that a refugee deal struck between Australia and the United States prior to him taking office is a stupid deal that will make him look terrible. The Washington Post published on Thursday transcripts of calls Trump made to Mexicos Enrique Pena Nieto and Australias Malcolm Turnbull just days after he took office on January 20. The substance of the calls had previously been reported, but Al Jazeeras White House correspondent, Kimberly Halkett, said the transcripts reveal rare insights into a different style of diplomacy than we have typically seen from previous presidents. You cant say that In a January 27 call with Pena Nieto, Trump pressured the Mexican president to avoid saying in public that Mexico would not fund the planned border wall. The proposed wall, a Trump campaign promise aimed at preventing illegal immigration to the US, is a bone of contention between Mexico and Washington. Pena Nieto has repeatedly rejected Trumps promise that Mexico will end up paying billions of dollars for its construction. Trump told the Mexican leader in the call that if you are going to say that Mexico is not going to pay for the wall, then I do not want to meet with you guys any more because I cannot live with that, according to the transcript. You cannot say that to the press, Trump said. REPORTERS NOTEBOOK: Can Donald Trump build a wall? And what else? The White House has said the US government would pay for the wall initially to get the project off the ground but that Mexico will eventually reimburse it for the work. In their phone conversation, Trump said both leaders were in a little bit of a political bind due to Trumps campaign pledge to build the wall and have Mexico foot the bill. I have to have Mexico pay for the wall I have to. I have been talking about it for a two-year period, Trump said. He suggested that the two men avoid the issue of paying for the wall when asked. They are going to say, Who is going to pay for the wall, Mr President? to both of us, and we should both say, We will work it out,' Trump said. Pena Nieto said he understood Trumps position on how to refer to paying for the border wall and suggested seeking a creative way to jump over this obstacle, but reiterated that Mexico cannot pay for that wall. INTERACTIVE: Building Trumps border wall Towards the end of their conversation, Trump responded effusively to a comment by Pena Nieto about the Mexican leaders wish for a constructive relationship with the US. Your words are so beautiful. Those are beautiful words, and I do not think I can speak that beautifully, okay? Trump said. I want you to be so popular that your people will call for a constitutional amendment in Mexico so that you can run again for another six years, he said. By law, Mexican presidents can only serve one six-year term. Both the White House and Mexicos foreign ministry did not have any immediate comment on Thursday about the release of the call transcripts. Most unpleasant call all day Speaking to Australias Turnbull on January 28, Trump became irritated that the US was expected to honour an agreement made by his predecessor, Barack Obama, to accept as many as 1,250 refugees held in offshore prisons. Trump said that would make him look bad given his campaign promises to reduce the number of refugees entering the US, according to the transcript. Boy, that will make us look awfully bad, Trump says. Here I am calling for a ban where I am not letting anybody in, and we take 2,000 people. Really it looks like 2,000 people that Australia does not want, and I do not blame you by the way, but the United States has become like a dumping ground, Trump said. OPINION: Trump-Turnbulls dubious deal This is going to kill me. I am the worlds greatest person that does not want to let people into the country, Trump said. Turnbull countered, saying that this is a big deal, and I think we should respect deals. The US president also told Turnbull that their conversation was the most difficult he had held that day, after speaking to Russian President Vladimir Putin, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe among others. I have had it. I have been making these calls all day, and this is the most unpleasant call all day, Trump said. Putin was a pleasant call. This is ridiculous. Three years after ISILs attack on Iraqs Yazidis, UN says world powers have not done enough to address the genocide. ISILs genocide against Iraqs Yazidis is still ongoing and remains unaddressed by the international community, the UN has said, marking three years since ISIL began killing and capturing thousands of members of the religious minority group. The UN human rights Commission of Inquiry, which declared the killings of thousands of Yazidis by ISIL, or the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant group, to be a genocide, said on Thursday that the atrocity had not ended and that the international community was not doing enough to stop it. The genocide is ongoing and remains largely unaddressed, despite the obligation of states to prevent and to punish the crime, the commissioners said in a statement. Fighters were driven out of the last part of the Yazidi homeland in northern Iraq in May. However, most Yazidis have yet to return to villages they fled when the group overran Sinjar in the summer of 2014, killing and capturing thousands because of their faith. Nearly 3,000 Yazidi women and children remain in ISIL captivity, and control over Sinjar is disputed by rival armed groups and their regional patrons. Justice for the crimes Yazidis suffered, including sexual enslavement, has also so far proved elusive. The Yazidis wound is still bleeding, one man told Reuters news agency at a ceremony attended by several thousand people including the mayor and other local dignitaries, held at a temple at the foot of the mountain that dominates Sinjar. The Kurds and the Iraqi government are fighting for Sinjar and we are paying the price, the man said. ISIL fighters killed thousands of captured men during their attack on the Yazidis, a religious group whose beliefs combine elements of several ancient Middle Eastern religions and is abhorred by ISIL. About 3,100 Yazidis were killed with more than half shot, beheaded or burned alive and about 6,800 kidnapped to become sex slaves or fighters, according to a report published in the Public Library of Science journal PLoS Medicine. Enslaved women and girls are now reportedly being sold by ISIL fighters trying to escape the US-led coalitions assault on the groups Syrian stronghold of Raqqa, the UN commission said. Control over Sinjar The array of forces that drove ISIL, also known as ISIS, out of Sinjar are now vying for control of the area near the borders of Iraq, Syria and Turkey. Kurdish Peshmerga forces retook around half of Sinjar in late 2015, effectively annexing it to the autonomous region they hope to convert into an independent state. A referendum on independence is due to be held in September, which the government in Baghdad opposes. Mainly Shia groups, some backed by Iran, retook the rest of the Yazidi homeland in May, bringing them within metres of the Peshmerga forces. Another group, Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which is outlawed in Turkey, also gained a foothold in Sinjar and clashed with the Peshmerga earlier this year. OPINION: Can international law save Iraqs Yazidis? The PKKs presence has made the area a target for Turkey. People are worried about returning, General Ashti Kojer, the local head of Kurdish police, said. The [Sinjar] region has become a conflict zone. Kojer and another local official said the political environment was preventing international organisations from working on reconstruction and rehabilitation in Sinjar, further discouraging Yazidis from returning. Stop Yazidi Genocide In a speech at Thursdays ceremony, Mahma Xelil, the Yazidi mayor of Sinjar, said Nuri al-Maliki, the former Iraqi prime minister, was responsible for the tragedy because he was in charge when the ISIL fighters overran Mosul. Other Yazidis blame the Kurds, who were defending the area at the time, for failing to resist the ISIL onslaught. At the ceremony, people carried signs saying Stop Yazidi Genocide. Families streamed into cemeteries to remember their loved ones. Women wore bandanas saying Genocide. READ MORE: Remembering Yazidi suffering through art In the city of Sinjar, posters and banners hung up on roundabouts depict harrowing scenes from the attack three years ago: families fleeing and distressed women and children. Large parts of the city, which was also home to Muslim Kurds and Arabs, remain empty. Around 1,000 Yazidi families have returned to Sinjar since the city was retaken in 2015, according to Jalal Khalaf, the director of the mayors office in Sinjar. The city and the surrounding area had been home to around 400,000 Yazidis. Hours before a meeting at the Gainesville City Hall on upcoming renovations to the Institute of Black Culture and the Institute of Hispanic-Latino Cultures, UF sent a letter. We will not have representatives at the Aug. 1 event, wrote UF Vice President for university relations Jane Adams to the city, citing negotiations between students and administrators already in place. The Intervention Town Hall event scheduled for 3 p.m. Tuesday was then immediately canceled and postponed to Aug. 23, said District 1 City Commissioner Charles Goston. Goston said he proposed and sponsored the event to bring students, UF administrators and city commissioners together for an open conversation on the two-house design for IBC and the Institute of Hispanic-Latino Affairs, or La Casita, that UFs Multicultural and Diversity Affairs announced July 18. Before MCDA said it would abandon their conjoined U-shaped design and pursue a plan for two separate houses, UF students and faculty had been going back and forth for months. Goston said he felt Tuesdays City Hall meeting couldve been an opportunity to better the relationship between the students and administrators and move forward. Its disappointing, Goston said. I guess they felt like they would be attacked if they came to the event. UF administrators have been reinvited to the new Intervention on Aug. 23, Goston said. As of press time, it is unclear whether the university will send representatives. UF spokesperson Janine Sikes said the university will continue working with students on the two houses project, but not necessarily in the format Goston has proposed, which involves local government. We have not formally declined but our intention is to engage on this topic on our campus, wrote Sikes in an email. For Daniel Clayton, he feels its a shame that UF is looking at the event purely from a public relations standpoint. Clayton said he and his fellow student organizers involved with No La IBCita a coalition of students dedicated to having students voices heard in the renovations process now want the process to involve the entire Gainesville community, not just UF students and administrators. Enjoy what you're reading? Get content from The Alligator delivered to your inbox Subscribe Now The 22-year-old UF electrical engineering senior said he also sees the open-dialogue format of the intervention event as a way to keep all parties accountable. Its an opportunity for all parties to come together and say, Look, theres been a lot of drama lets find a way to move forward, he said. Yet another Summer B term has gone as quickly as it came, but there are still a few days left before the short break between semesters ensues. If you havent had the time to take advantage of the many different things our city has to offer, now is your chance. Although you have to be 21 or older to get a local beer at Swamp Head Brewery or First Magnitude Brewing Compnay, there are plenty of other things available for the college student in need of cooling off. Here are a few things to check off your Gainesville bucket lists before the short Summer Break is upon us. Catch a free concert on Bo Diddley Plaza One of the greatest things about the renovated Bo Diddley Community Plaza, located at 111 E. University Ave., is the Free Fridays concert series. Held every Friday from 8 p.m. to 10 p.m., this concert series brings talented bands from around the state of Florida to downtown Gainesville all for free. This Fridays show will be The Irie Ones, Gainesvilles longest running reggae band. Watch the sunset at Paynes Prairie Preserve State Park Located just a short drive down U.S. Route 441, Paynes Prairie Preserve State Park is the perfect spot to catch the sunset in Gainesville. Even though the park officially closes at 6 p.m., all you have to do is pull your car over on the side of U.S. Route 441 to get a good view. Plus, you may even get the chance to see alligators, wild horses or other wildlife while youre at it. Grab a local beer at Swamp Head Brewery or First Magnitude Brewing Company Although theres plenty of drinking to do in Gainesville, both Swamp Head Brewery, located at 3650 SW 42nd Ave., and First Magnitude Brewing Company, located at 1220 SE Veitch St., offer delicious local brews in environments that differ from the norm. With live music and food trucks on the weekends, both of these spots are good places to start your night before heading to Midtown or downtown. Float down Ginnie Springs Enjoy what you're reading? Get content from The Alligator delivered to your inbox Subscribe Now If you havent taken a daytrip to Ginnie Springs, located at 7300 Ginnie Springs Road, High Springs, now is most definitely the time to do it. Only about 45 minutes away from Gainesville, this extension of the Santa Fe River is the perfect place to float with friends or dive in some of the deep natural springs that feature crystal-clear water. This is one of the most inherently Gainesville things to do throughout your college years, and its definitely worth catching before the hustle and bustle of Fall picks up. Practice your yoga at Devils Millhopper Geological State Park One of the newest activities to take place at Devils Millhopper Geological State Park, located at 4732 Millhopper Road, is a free, all-levels yoga class hosted by Flow Space. This event takes place on the first Saturday of every month, with Augusts class taking place this Saturday at 8 a.m. Attendees can practice their yoga skills and enjoy all of the sights the state park has to offer after the session. Catch a comedy show at Rockeys Not only does Rockeys Dueling Piano Bar, located at 112 S. Main St., offer live music, but its also a great place to catch comedy shows every Wednesday night. Each week features local comedians who open up for a nationally-touring comedian. The bar hosted the likes of Carlos Mencia, Pauly Shore and more throughout the past year and no doubt will be bringing more great headliners, in addition to local talent, in the future. English News China vows to take all measures to protect border Alwihda Info | Par peoplesdaily - 3 Aout 2017 "The longer the standoff lasts between China and India, the worse it will be for India, and the situation could even affect the BRICS summit in September," Hu Zhiyong, a research fellow at the Institute of International Relations of the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences, told the Global Times on Tuesday. By Shan Jie Source: Peoples Daily and Global Times China released a statement on Wednesday on the illegal entry of Indian troops in Chinese territory, vowing to take all necessary measures to protect its legitimate and lawful rights and interests. Experts said the Chinese foreign ministry statement indicates an escalation of tensions, warning that military conflict is one step closer. "The China-Bhutan boundary issue is one between China and Bhutan. It has nothing to do with India," according to a statement the ministry released on Wednesday entitled "The Facts and China's Position Concerning the Indian Border Troops' Crossing of the China-India Boundary in the Sikkim Sector into the Chinese Territory." As a third party, India has no right to interfere in boundary talks between China and Bhutan, not to mention making territorial claims on Bhutan's behalf, it read. Foreign ministry spokesperson Geng Shuang said Wednesday that China released the document to "lay out the facts of the illegal trespass of Indian border troops to the international community and give a full account of the position of the Chinese government," the Xinhua News Agency reported. "What India has done not only severely violates China's territorial sovereignty but also poses a grave challenge to regional peace and stability and the international order, which will not be tolerated by any sovereign state," Geng said. "The foreign ministry document shows that the crisis on the China-India border has reached a crucial moment," Zhao Gancheng, director of the Center for Asia-Pacific Studies at the Shanghai Institute for International Studies, told the Global Times on Wednesday. The document has clarified China's bottom lines as well as the current situation. If Indian troops continue to stay in Chinese territory, the defense ministry may issue a warning next time, and then a military conflict would just be around the corner, Zhao added. The foreign ministry statement said that "since the incident began, China has shown utmost goodwill and great restraint, and sought to communicate with India through diplomatic channels to resolve the incident. But no country should ever underestimate the resolve of the Chinese government and people to defend China's territorial sovereignty." China will take all necessary measures to protect its legitimate and lawful rights and interests. The incident took place on the Chinese side of the delimited boundary, it said. Three photos were attached to the statement, showing the illegal trespass of Indian troops. The ministry said that on June 16, 2017, the Chinese side was building a road in the Donglang area. Two days later, over 270 armed Indian border troops, accompanied by two bulldozers, crossed the boundary in the Sikkim Sector at the Duo Ka La (Doka La) Pass and advanced more than 100 meters into Chinese territory to block the construction on the Chinese side. "The standoff has not been resolved because China and India see the incident from different perspectives. China was building a road, but India considers it a big threat to its national security," Zhao said. "However, if the current political conflict leads to a military one, China and India would face a very tough situation. Since people of both countries are tremendously patriotic, even economic cooperation between the two countries would be heavily affected," Zhao noted. As of July, there were still over 40 Indian border troops and one bulldozer illegally staying on Chinese territory, Xinhua reported. India at losing end "The longer the standoff lasts between China and India, the worse it will be for India, and the situation could even affect the BRICS summit in September," Hu Zhiyong, a research fellow at the Institute of International Relations of the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences, told the Global Times on Tuesday. "If Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi refuses to come to Xiamen for the BRICS summit, India will be in a more inferior position," Hu further noted. "Each time China and India talk, India would seek to use the border issue to haggle," Hu said, noting that India should drop its "immature strategic anxiety" toward China's development. Dans la meme rubrique : < > China accelerates green, low-carbon development World-class astronomical obervation base takes shape in Qinghai province China, Germany should keep to overall direction of bilateral ties from strategic height: Xi Pour toute information, contactez-nous au : +(235) 99267667 ; 62883277 ; 66267667 (Bureau N'Djamena) English News Study and Implement General Secretary Xi Jinping's Thought on Diplomacy in a Deep-going Way and Keep Writing New Chapters of Major-Country Diplomacy with Distinctive Chinese Features Alwihda Info | Par peoplesdaily - 3 Aout 2017 China has reached a new starting point, shouldering a new historic mission in conducting its diplomacy. We will rally even more closely around the CPC Central Committee with Comrade Xi Jinping at its core, and study and implement General Secretary Xi Jinping's thought on diplomacy in a deep-going way. We will forge ahead and keep writing new chapters of major-country diplomacy with distinctive Chinese features, greet the successful convocation of the 19th Party Congress with even more diplomatic accomplishments, and make even greater contribution to realizing the two centenary goals and the Chinese dream of national renewal. Yang Jiechi Since the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC), the CPC Central Committee with Comrade Xi Jinping at its core has, with great foresight and a comprehensive perspective, reflected deeply on the future and destiny of mankind as well as the general development trend of China and the whole world. Inspired by the two centenary goals (namely to finish building a moderately prosperous society in all respects by the centenary of the CPC in 2021 and to turn China into a modern socialist country that is prosperous, strong, democratic, culturally advanced and harmonious by the centenary of the People's Republic of China in 2049) and the Chinese dream of national renewal, the Central Party Committee has broken new ground in both diplomatic theory and practice while maintaining consistency and continuity of China's foreign policy. It has put forward new ideas and propositions with distinctive Chinese features that embody the call of our times and envision greater human progress. It is on this basis that General Secretary Xi Jinping's thought on diplomacy has been formed and established. General Secretary Xi Jinping's thought on diplomacy represents the CPC Central Committee's new governing philosophy and strategy as they apply to diplomacy and is an integral part of the theories of socialism with distinctive Chinese features. It is a vision that has greatly enriched and taken forward the diplomatic thinking and strategy of New China and will have extremely important and far-reaching significance in steering China's endeavor to keep pace with the times and make new progress in external work. I Diplomacy is an essential part of the overall work of the Party and the State. At a time when China's relations with the rest of the world are undergoing profound changes and the Chinese nation has entered a crucial stage of achieving renewal, General Secretary Xi Jinping's thought on diplomacy addresses new issues facing China's diplomacy with a Marxist position, viewpoints and approaches. It answers key questions such as what is major-country diplomacy with distinctive Chinese features and how to conduct it, and defines the guiding philosophy, basic principles, key tasks, strategies and tactics, and institutional arrangements of conducting external work in a new era. General Secretary Xi Jinping's thought on diplomacy is a comprehensive and profound system of theories with rich connotations. 1. Setting strategic goals and key missions for China's external work in a new era. Based on his assessment of the global trend and the historical stage China has reached, General Secretary Xi Jinping pointed out in explicit terms that we are closer than ever to the center of the global stage, that we are closer than ever to fulfilling the Chinese dream of national renewal and that we are more confident and able than ever to realize this goal. General Secretary Xi Jinping has stressed the following: In pursuing diplomacy, China will stay committed to peace, development and win-win cooperation, take into account both domestic and international situation and ensure both development and security. We will stay committed to peaceful development, resolutely uphold sovereignty, security and development interests and preserve and extend the major period of strategic opportunity for China's development so as to pave the way for achieving the two centenary goals and fulfilling the Chinese dream of national renewal. These important statements which expound on the nature, objectives and missions of China's diplomacy are a fundamental guide to the conduct of China's external relations. 2. Boosting confidence in China as a major socialist country with distinctive Chinese features. General Secretary Xi Jinping has repeatedly emphasized that the whole Party should have firm confidence in the path, theories, system and culture of socialism with distinctive Chinese features. The Chinese Communists and Chinese people are fully confident of offering Chinese input to human exploration of better social systems. Since the 18th Party Congress, China has overcome many difficulties and challenges on the diplomatic front, forged ahead in a changing international environment, and made outstanding achievements. It has been proven that socialism with distinctive Chinese features represents the biggest strength, the most salient characteristic and the greatest opportunity of China's external affairs. Having full confidence in the path, theories, system and culture of socialism with distinctive Chinese features underpins and drives China's external work, and ensures its success. 3. Laying out a great vision of building a community of shared future for mankind. With a keen sense of responsibility for the whole mankind and with the historical advance of the human society in mind, General Secretary Xi Jinping shows a deep understanding of the trend of the times and future of mankind. On this basis, he calls for building a new type of international relations featuring win-win cooperation and jointly fostering a community of shared future for mankind. By pointing out the direction and drawing a blueprint for the international community to achieve enduring peace, common development and sustained prosperity, this call represents China's global vision of pursuing both its own development and the development of the world, and demonstrates that China is ready to shoulder its responsibility as a major country. It therefore displays strong appeal, influence and vitality. Since the 18th Party Congress, China has championed this call at important multilateral forums like the United Nations and the World Economic Forum. In conducting external exchanges, China has followed the principle of seeking win-win outcomes and taken steps to achieve the long-term goal of building a community of shared future for mankind. China's endeavors have thus been well received and supported by the international community. 4. Pursuing all-round diplomacy to build a global network of partnerships. With the vision and strategic thinking of an outstanding statesman and strategist, General Secretary Xi Jinping has laid out an overarching plan for conducting China's external work. To this end, he has made vigorous efforts himself to visit various countries across the five continents and major organizations of regional and international cooperation. During these visits, General Secretary Xi Jinping engaged fully with foreign leaders, public figures and ordinary people. By citing touching examples of China's win-win cooperation with other countries and people-to-people friendship, he stressed the need for all countries and peoples to forge partnerships in pursuing a shared bright future. Since the 18th Party Congress, China has fully advanced its friendly relations with other countries, with neighboring countries and major countries being the priority of this pursuit, other developing countries serving as its foundation, and multilateral settings as its platform. We have deepened practical cooperation, enhanced mutual political trust, garnered popular support and improved institution building for this endeavor. China has boosted its all-round, wide-ranging and multi-tiered external exchanges, and China's circle of friends has covered the whole world. 5. Pursuing a new round of opening-up featuring the Belt and Road Initiative. Based on a keen appreciation of new dynamics in China's internal and external environment, General Secretary Xi Jinping put forward the Belt and Road Initiative (the Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road). This initiative aims to further advance China's opening-up and share China's development opportunities with other countries, and it will inject strong impetus into global development. Over the past four years since it was launched, the Belt and Road Initiative has been translated into action and delivered concrete outcomes. As a matter of fact, it has developed into an open and inclusive platform of international cooperation and a widely-welcomed public good for the global community. Over 100 countries and international organizations have expressed support for or participated in the initiative, and many landmark projects with wide impact have been launched. The complementarity between China's development strategy and those of many other countries has been enhanced and fast progress has been made in scaling up infrastructual connectivity. China has recently hosted a successful and productive Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation, creating more momentum for jointly pursuing the Belt and Road Initiative. 6. Demonstrating China's resolve to uphold its sovereignty and security interests. General Secretary Xi Jinping has unequivocally stated that China stays committed to peaceful development. China does not covet the rights and interests of other countries. Meanwhile, it will never give up its legitimate rights and interests. No country should ever expect China to trade off its core interests or swallow the bitter fruit that undermines its sovereignty, security and development interests. This is what we say, and also what we do. Since the 18th Party Congress, we have particularly staked out our positions on Taiwan, the South China Sea and other issues concerning China's major core interests. We have drawn a clear line of what is unacceptable, and acted forcefully to defend our core interests as well as legitimate rights. All this has greatly boosted the morale of the Party, the military and the general public and won international respect. 7. Exploring new approach to and practice of global governance. General Secretary Xi Jinping has tapped into the rich heritage of governance philosophy and wisdom unique to Chinese culture that is relevant today and given full expression to the shared aspirations of both the Chinese people and the people around the world. In response to major issues and challenges confronting global governance, General Secretary Xi Jinping has put forth a series of new propositions on global governance, security, development, justice, interests and globalization which are aimed at promoting a global governance system that is fairer, more equitable, inclusive and balanced. Since the 18th Party Congress, China has hosted the 2014 APEC Economic Leaders' Meeting in Beijing and the 2016 G20 Summit in Hangzhou, and taken part in many major multilateral diplomatic events. Through such active participation to help steer the global governance process, China has offered its vision and input for reforming and improving the global governance system and establishing a fairer and more equitable international order. 8. Exercising overall leadership by the Central Party Committee over China's external work. General Secretary Xi Jinping has stressed that the Party's role is central to running China's affairs well. The leadership by the Communist Party of China is both the defining feature and the biggest strength of socialism with Chinese characteristics. What is more, such leadership enables us to cope with internal and external challenges. Since the 18th Party Congress, the CPC Central Committee with Comrade Xi Jinping at its core has exercised overall leadership over the conduct of China's external work. It has further enhanced the role of the Central Foreign Affairs Leading Group and convened a meeting on neighborhood diplomacy and a central conference on work relating to foreign affairs to improve top-level design, strategic planning and coordination on external affairs. It has adopted and improved major regulations on foreign affairs management, advanced institutional reforms on external work and coordinated efforts of various departments and regions to form synergy. All these endeavors have provided powerful political support for us to overcome difficulties and forge ahead in external work. II General Secretary Xi Jinping's thought on diplomacy is an important component of the new governance philosophy and strategies developed by the CPC Central Committee with Comrade Xi Jinping at its core. It provides a solid theoretical foundation for and guidance to conducting China's diplomacy in the new era. To study and achieve a deep understanding of General Secretary Xi Jinping's thought on diplomacy is an important political task for all of us in conducting China's foreign affairs and diplomacy. It is also a very important guide to us in conducting a systematic review of the achievements and experience of China's external work since the 18th Party Congress and in making new progress in external affairs. Wide-ranging in coverage, rich and profound in connotation, General Secretary Xi Jinping's thought on diplomacy serves as a comprehensive and systematic guidance to the external work of the Party and the State. We should focus on the following four aspects in our efforts to gain a deep understanding of General Secretary Xi Jinping's thought on diplomacy: 1. We should have a keen appreciation of the sense of mission underlying General Secretary Xi Jinping's thought on diplomacy. Demonstrating a strong sense of historical mission and extraordinary political vision, General Secretary Xi Jinping has led us on the Long March of our generation toward the two centenary goals and the realization of the Chinese dream of national renewal. General Secretary Xi Jinping, bearing in mind the responsibility of the leader of a big country, has reflected deeply on the critical issue of what kind of a world we should build and how to build it, an issue that concerns the future of mankind. He has offered China's contribution and input to this endeavor. Since the 18th Party Congress, China has, as its capability permits, undertaken more international responsibilities and obligations. It has fully participated in international peacekeeping missions, played its part in meeting global challenges such as climate change and addressing major regional hotspot issues, and offered global public goods, particularly in the form of the Belt and Road Initiative. China has thus made an important contribution to advancing world peace and development. 2. We should have a keen appreciation of the profound significance of General Secretary Xi Jinping's thought on diplomacy to our times. With an incisive grasp of the growing interdependence among countries and recognizing the need to adapt to and sustain the trend of peace, development and win-win cooperation in our times, General Secretary Xi Jinping has set forth the important vision of building a new type of international relations and a community of shared future for mankind. He calls for making economic globalization a more open, inclusive and balanced process that delivers win-win outcomes to all. He also calls for building a global governance system that reflects well the changing reality of balance of forces in the world. His vision has thus set the direction and pathways to address thorny issues facing mankind such as deficit in peace, development and governance. General Secretary Xi Jinping's thought on diplomacy, formed and developed as China's relationship with the world is going through historic changes, bears a distinctive feature of our times and has great current and historical significance. 3. We should have a keen appreciation of the spirit of innovation embodied in General Secretary Xi Jinping's thought on diplomacy. General Secretary Xi Jinping views reform and opening-up as the defining feature of contemporary China. He has integrated the underlying principles of Marxism with the realities of present-day China, and he is bold in breaking new ground in both theory and practice. General Secretary Xi Jinping's thought on diplomacy builds on past success and is forward-looking in nature. Having drawn on China's fine cultural and philosophical tradition, it has enriched and taken forward the diplomatic thinking and strategy of New China, thus creating a system of theories of major-country diplomacy with distinctive Chinese features. Bearing in mind both China's own development and the world's common development and drawing inspiration from the ancient Silk Road, General Secretary Xi Jinping creatively put forward the Initiative of the Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road, thus building a new platform for China to share development opportunities with the world and developing a new model for international cooperation. The new thinking articulated by General Secretary Xi Jinping, such as upholding justice and pursuing shared interests, a new vision of security and a new vision of global governance, has provided theoretical guidance for countries to reject the Cold War mentality and zero-sum game in favor of peaceful co-existence and win-win cooperation. 4. We should have a keen appreciation of the strategic wisdom underpinning General Secretary Xi Jinping's thought on diplomacy. General Secretary Xi Jinping has always observed the prevailing trend in a strategic context and made strategic decisions accordingly. He has made a profound analysis of external opportunities and challenges facing China, taken into account both China's domestic and international interests, and attached importance to both development and security. On this basis, he has advanced China's external work in a well-planned and coordinated way on various fronts, such as relations with other major countries, the neighboring countries and other developing countries as well as multilateral diplomacy. General Secretary Xi Jinping has put forth a whole range of principles guiding China's diplomatic strategy and policies. He places high importance not just on top-level designing and strategic planning, but also on operations and policy moves. He is thus able to address core issues like pulling an ox by its nose and ensure good coordination among various fronts as a good pianist does with ten fingers, achieving a high degree of balance between firm commitment to principles and appropriate flexibility in policy implementation. Guided by General Secretary Xi Jinping's thought on diplomacy, China has become more confident in pursuing major-country diplomacy with Chinese characteristics, fully demonstrating its distinctive vision, style and way of conduct as a major country. As a result, China has secured a favorable strategic position in the complex and fluid international arena. We should fully appreciate the great political, theoretical, practical and methodological significance of General Secretary Xi Jinping's thought on diplomacy. We should, with a keen sense of mission, responsibility, purpose and commitment, work hard to study this thinking and implement it earnestly, systematically and thoroughly. We should strive to gain a deep understanding of the essence and core of this thinking, so that it will become a powerful source of inspiration and strength that guides us in conducting major-country diplomacy with distinctive Chinese features. III The world is now at a stage of major development, transformation and adjustment, and China's diplomacy is faced with both unprecedented opportunities and challenges. We must be fully aware of the need to uphold political integrity, keep in mind the bigger picture, follow the leadership core, and meet Party requirements. We must stay true to our ideal and mission and fulfill our responsibility. We must purposefully follow the CPC Central Committee with Comrade Xi Jinping at its core theoretically, politically and in practice, and fully implement General Secretary Xi Jinping's thought on diplomacy. This will enable us to make new progress in conducting China's external work, foster favorable external conditions for achieving the two centenary goals and realizing the Chinese dream of national renewal, and continuously make important contribution to the cause of peace and development for mankind. 1. We should strengthen strategic planning for foreign affairs to accomplish the central task of the Party and the State. We should have an accurate assessment of international situation and overall trend of world affairs, stay committed to peaceful development and national renewal as the theme of China's external work in the new era. We should take into account both our domestic and international interests, and adhere to the general principle of seeking progress while maintaining stability. We should explore new theory and practice in conducting major-country diplomacy with distinctive Chinese features, and consolidate and enhance China's favorable strategic position. Doing so will enable us both to ensure reform, development and stability at home and make new progress in pursuing major-country diplomacy with distinctive Chinese features. 2. We should foster a more peaceful and stable external environment by pursuing an all-round diplomatic agenda. We will continue to enhance friendship and cooperation with all other countries on the basis of the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence and work to build a global network of partnerships. We should strengthen coordination and cooperation with other major countries, continuously expand areas where our respective interests converge and put in place a generally stable framework of major-country relationship. We should stay committed to the principles of amity, sincerity, mutual benefit and inclusiveness, enhance friendship and cooperation with our neighbors, and work to consolidate strategic support in the neighborhood area. We should foster friendship, uphold justice, and pursue shared interests to further enrich South-South cooperation and strengthen mutual trust, solidarity and cooperation with other developing countries. 3. We should take solid steps in pursuing the Belt and Road Initiative and break new ground in opening-up. We should take the opportunity of the successful Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation to implement its consensus and outcomes in accordance with the principle of extensive consultation, joint contribution and shared benefits. We should continue to pursue the strategy of win-win cooperation and opening-up and embrace the world in a more extensive and diversified way. We should actively uphold the multilateral trade regime as the main channel, promote international trade and investment liberalization and facilitation, oppose protectionism in all its forms and endeavor to build an open global economy. 4. We should get fully involved in global governance and promote the establishment of a fairer and more equitable international political and economic order. We should champion and apply a new vision of global governance, uphold the core role of the United Nations as the main channel in addressing issues relating to international peace and security, follow through on the agreements reached at the G20 Hangzhou Summit, Hamburg Summit and the previous summits, and support APEC and other major global and regional cooperation organizations in playing a positive role. These efforts are designed to make the international order and system fairer and more equitable. We should enhance the BRICS mechanism and make the upcoming BRICS Xiamen Summit a success; and we should ensure that emerging markets and developing countries will have a greater say in the international governance system. 5. We should be on high alert against potential danger and effectively uphold China's sovereignty, security and development interests. Upholding core national interests is the noble mission of China's diplomacy. We will continue to uphold China's national interests as the starting point and basic goal of China's external work, and be firm in defending China's territorial sovereignty and legitimate maritime rights and interests. We will stay committed to the one-China principle, firmly oppose and fight against any separatist attempt for Taiwan independence and strive for China's reunification. We should enhance international cooperation in counter-terrorism, cyberspace and law enforcement to uphold and strengthen national security. We should put in place an efficient and well-functioning system to protect China's overseas interests and improve it to better protect the legitimate rights and interests of Chinese nationals and enterprises overseas. 6. We should actively communicate China's policies to the world and conduct public diplomacy to enhance China's moral appeal. We should enhance confidence in the path, theories, system and culture of socialism with distinctive Chinese features, and share our governance experience with other countries. We should give a good account of the theory and guidelines of socialism with distinctive Chinese features. We should endeavor to let the world know more about the profound connotations of China's policy of pursuing peaceful development and its vision of building a community of shared future for mankind. We should actively put forth new thinking, initiatives and plans aimed at resolving hotspot issues as China fulfills its role as a major responsible country. We should encourage dialogue among civilizations and social and cultural exchanges so that the Chinese dream and the dreams of other peoples will be pursued and realized together. China has reached a new starting point, shouldering a new historic mission in conducting its diplomacy. We will rally even more closely around the CPC Central Committee with Comrade Xi Jinping at its core, and study and implement General Secretary Xi Jinping's thought on diplomacy in a deep-going way. We will forge ahead and keep writing new chapters of major-country diplomacy with distinctive Chinese features, greet the successful convocation of the 19th Party Congress with even more diplomatic accomplishments, and make even greater contribution to realizing the two centenary goals and the Chinese dream of national renewal. (The author is State Councilor and Director of the Office of the Central Foreign Affairs Leading Group.) Dans la meme rubrique : < > China accelerates green, low-carbon development World-class astronomical obervation base takes shape in Qinghai province China, Germany should keep to overall direction of bilateral ties from strategic height: Xi Pour toute information, contactez-nous au : +(235) 99267667 ; 62883277 ; 66267667 (Bureau N'Djamena) The agreement, which was established in 1975, now expires in January 2020, at which point the transport of goods between Chile and Brazil could be carried out on ships of any flag. Brazils Chamber of Foreign Trade (CAMEX) says it has decided not to renew a 42-year-old maritime agreement with Chile which stipulates that only Brazilian- or Chilean-flagged vessels could operate between the two countries. The agreement, which was established in 1975, now expires in January 2020, CAMEX ruled in late July. After that point, the transport of goods between Chile and Brazil could be carried out on ships of any flag, which is expected to increase competition and reduce costs of shipping goods between the two nations. A study by the Institute for Applied Economic Research, a Brazil-based economic think tank, previously found that the maritime pact ads five percent to the final price of products in both countries. The arrangement between the countries currently gives two companies Alianca, the Brazilian unit of Hamburg Sud, which is now owned by Maersk Line, and CSAV, the Chilean subsidiary of Hapag Lloyd AG exclusive shipping rights between the two South American countries. In an action related to dropping the exclusionary maritime shipping agreement, CAMEX has also extended the waivers for roll-on/roll-on (ro-ro) and breakbulk transport, which arent currently subject to the above restrictions due to the low availability of specified Brazilian- and Chilean-flagged vessels. The waivers were extended for one year by CAMEX. It is no news that some Republicans have opposed Trump all along and do not support him as President. Anyone with a pulse knows that their opposition is budding into an insurrection, and some even make the case for a full blown putsch, as does Hoover Fellow Richard Epstein in "Presidential Chaos." Although, the Republican case against Trump is in the whispering phase, as no one wants openly to state the obvious, Epstein does just that. He argues that because a self-inflicted perpetual state of dysfunction and chaos has claimed the Trump presidency, he instructs "cooler heads in the Republican party to have a heart-to-heart with a stubborn President Trump, to create the needed political momentum for him to leave office -- for the good of his party, and, most importantly, for the good of the nation." Since there are no grounds for impeachment by either party, he suggests Trump be ousted by Republicans to prevent Democrats from controlling the narrative. Replace Trump, the Tweet Slinger, with Pence, the More Palatable, whom he believes is patiently waiting in the wings, prepared at any moment to pounce for the good of the party. Pence should continue to implement his boss agenda because Trumps accomplishments are solid (excepting immigration, trade, and ObamaCare), his appointments excellent, and his efforts scaling back Obamas engorged administrative state are bearing fruit. So there really arent any substantive grounds for his overthrow. It really comes down to the individual, the way he governs, the way he acts, and the chaos that flows in his wake, which is damaging the party and the country. If these were legitimate grounds for a legitimate ouster, pretty much every President would be vulnerable. Why dont these self-righteous senators and provocateurs who think they are Americas last best hope just stab the guy to death? It doesnt sound like theyll have a problem finding a Brutus. Et tu Jeff Flake, John McCain, Lindsay Graham? Im personally disgusted by the arrogance to openly call for his defenestration in blatant disregard for the electoral will. Who are they to decide our political fate? Let me make a suggestion -- its only four years. Let Trump have his run and, if hes that awful, he wont win another four years or is that what they are worried about? They are afraid he just might win another term and that must be thwarted at all costs -- now, in the least messy way possible. That would mean, no stabbings or beheadings -- way too public. Just leave him the gift of a decapitated horses head in his bed, like "Presidential Chaos." Maybe that will scare him into resigning, in which case the provocateurs can claim no hands were sullied in the making of this coup. Professor Provocateur readily admits Trump must be dealt with even though in Trumps six months, he has revitalized the economy, attacked regulation, unraveled Obama excesses, taken a tough stand on foreign affairs, made excellent cabinet choices, appointed Neil Gorsuch, allowed the Keystone and Dakota Access pipelines to proceed, and withdrawn from the Paris accords. Nevertheless, his transgressions against Jeff Sessions (which did light a fire under the AGs fanny), the Scaramucci brouhaha (dealt with), and the Boy Scout Jamboree (much ado about nothing), are so egregious he must be dethroned. Come on, really? Then, an even more incensed Professor Provocateur points to Trumps ill-considered tweet haphazardly announcing a ban on transgender people serving in the military, which everyone from a blindsided James Mattis on down regarded as a gratuitous insult to many transgender soldiers who have served with distinction. (Everyone? Really? With so many in the military and the general population supporting this, its hard to see how Epstein can attribute this sentiment to everyone. A little hyperbole there, Professor?). Who knew that social policies like this would be grounds for forced removal from the Oval Office? We could have simply used Dont Ask, Dont Tell to impeach Slick Willy instead of involving Monica Lewinsky and her blue dress. All of this prompts Professor Provocateur to ask: How many adults are currently in residence at the White House to keep the President in line? Unfortunately, Trumps own intellectual shortcomings and personal insecurities leave him without any secure internal compass on matters of policy. His clueless leadership was evident in the recent fiasco with Obamacare, where he could not explain how the implosion of the exchanges and the breakdown of Medicaid services required an immediate response. His lack of self-confidence in turn prevents him from including experienced old-hands like John Bolton or Karl Rove in his inner circle, where infighting between the Steve Bannon and Jared Kushner factions are slowing down the process of key government appointments and leading to huge political gaffes like Trumps first immigration order. Theres too much self-inflicted harm. [Italics added.] Never mind that self-inflicted harm is a malady common to every presidency and that Democrat presidents have historically been protected from its ill-effects by the media, whereas Trump has had to face daily blitzkriegs from a crazed and brazen media out for his head. Epstein seems to be operating under the delusion that Trump could be kept in line by appointing seasoned cogs in the establishment wheel, like John Bolton or Karl Rove. Can we all agree how absurd this is? As I said in "Trumps Game of Stones," the Karl Rove and Josh Bolton types had a place in yesterdays political universe, but are anathema to the political realities of today. Any establishment figure in the White House, as we saw with Reince Priebus, would be a colossal mismatch. Trumps election was the forgotten GOP bases way -- aided by the forgotten Reagan Dems -- of putting someone in office who would do what is best for the little guy -- not whats best for the party, for anyones re-election, or for establishment hacks. Simply put, the Forgotten Masses were tired of being left behind by the party, by people they elected, and by the establishment. Trump was put there to upend the status quo; Rove is the embodiment of the status quo. The very idea of keeping Trump in line with establishment overlords is an oxymoron. He is the very definition of someone who cannot be kept in line. Nor was he elected to stay in line. For that, we could have voted for Jeb! How many times do guys like Richard Epstein have to get conked on the head to get it -- as if Trump trouncing Hillary wasnt enough of a conk? When Trump didnt magically become more presidential in the Oval Office, again, a conk on the ol noggin. And for every nonpresidential tweet, and every little skirmish he survived, and every norm of expected presidential behavior he flouted, you could hear the conk, conk, conk on the supposedly cooler heads of Karl Rove, Chas. Krauthammer, and Bret Stephens. Hello, is anybody home? If theyre home, theyre certainly not listening. And if theyre listening, theyre definitely not comprehending. But theyre not that stupid, so, they must be comprehending, in which case they are up to no good: they want us to believe that Trump can and should get in line and any refusal to do so is grounds for us to force him out. Even if by some miracle we could rein in Trump, does anyone really think that would change the behavior or commentary of any left-winger or #NeverTrumper? The reportage would continue to be all about chaos and fiascos, self-inflicted harm, bumbling buffoonery, internecine squabbles, and the shortcomings and insecurities of President Trump. And even if Trump were out of the picture, what makes them think Pence would be embraced as the darling of the Democrat-Media Complex? He is socially much more conservative than Trump -- with his views on abortion, religion, and all things LGBTQRSTUVWXYZ, moderate conservatives and the left will eat Pence alive. The irony of it all is that Professor Provocateurs cooler heads are the very reason the elites and grassroots are at loggerheads. These cooler heads might want Trump to leave office, but the people who voted for him do not see that as a solution: how does forcing an outsider like Trump out of office benefit a party that was already on life support because of the cooler heads that have been in charge of the party for decades -- a party that was a breath away from irrelevance long before Donald Trump came into the picture? Trumps rise to power is symptomatic -- not the cause -- of a necrotic GOP controlled by the cooler heads Epstein lauds -- a GOP that used its grassroots to regain power, then turned its back on the very people it exists to represent. For those who think Epstein is onto something and the GOP has our best interests at heart, just look at the train wreck of repeal and replace under the stewardship of cooler heads like McConnell and Ryan. Theyve had eight years to plan for this -- eight years to pluck and institute ready-made health insurance plans from the desks of policy experts at Heritage and the Pacific Research Institute. So, what have they been doing for the last eight years with our tax dollars and campaign donations? How have those cooler heads performed on repeal and replace? When Nancy Pelosi had to get votes for ObamaCare, she whipped the bejesus out of her people -- threatening to withhold financial support in their re-election campaigns, to field other Democrats to run against them, to take away their committee assignments and relegate them to latrine duty. What did the Republican whips do? Play patty cake with Susan Collins in the hopes that a bit of bonding would win hearts and votes? Trump might be a disaster in the end, but it wont be because of his agenda, the way he comports himself, the competency of his communications team, or his tweets. It will be due, to a great extent, to the relentless attacks and fake news disseminated by the Democrat-Media Complex and the patent coup from the Democrats. But the real damage will be inflicted by the latent coup from within his own party. It is not so much presidential chaos, Professor Provocateur, as it is party chaos. If only cooler heads would prevail. The latest example of liberal Hollywood spin will turn American history on its head by radically reimagining the Southern states as victors of the Civil War (1861-1865), with slavery continuing to flourish into the present-day. David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, creators of HBOs award-winning adventure series Game of Thrones (2011-), have just been given the green light to produce a controversial new series titled Confederate. David Benioff and D.B. Weiss The shows historically distorted storyline will follow a broad swath of characters on both sides of the Mason-Dixon Demilitarized Zone -- freedom fighters, slave hunters, politicians, abolitionists, journalists, the executives of a slave-holding conglomerate and the families of people in their thrall. Frankly, Im not surprised that one of the networks next big pet projects will be to completely rewrite the most divisive chapter in American history. And for what? To promote more divisiveness? If the industrys declining reputation for actually entertaining audiences is any indication, then you can count on Confederate to stoke the flames of racial division. Malcom Spellman (Empire), who is on-board as both executive producer and writer, explained it best during an interview: Its deeply personal because we are the offspring of this history. We deal with it directly and have for our entire lives. We deal with it in Hollywood, we deal with it in the real world when were dealing with friends and family members.As people of color and minorities in general are starting to get a voice, I think theres a duty to force this discussion. A duty to force the discussion? America already had this forced discussion. It was called the Civil War -- the real one. It cost some 600,000 lives and the life of a U.S. President. Slavery was abolished. For Hollywoods limousine elites to play the victim card as if they personally experienced the painful horrors of real slavery is a shameful affront to every person who actually did. Later, Spellman was asked about his concerns over the possibility that the shows slave premise might prove to be wish-fulfillment for white supremacists and the alt-right. He said, Everyone knows that with Trump coming into power, a bunch of sh-- that had always been there got resurfaced. Maybe its just me, but Mr. Spellman seems more interested in inciting racism and keeping in concert with Hollywood groupthink than offering his own honest critique of race relations setbacks, most notably of the last 8 years under President Obama. Incredibly, he doesnt say a peep about it. Racial tensions between police and the black community skyrocketed following Obamas infamous police acted stupidly line in 2009. For example, we saw the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement, tragic shootings of young black men, destructive riots, and even random executions of police officers. According to a July 2016 Rasmussen Report, over 60 percent of likely voters thought race relations overall had deteriorated since the election of President Obama in 2007. Thats an 18-point jump from the previous poll in 2014. To completely ignore the obvious is a poor attempt at providing political cover to the Democratic Party for years of failed policies. Naturally, this makes me wonder whether the shows creators, who both claim to be history buffs, plan to incorporate any vitally important historical facts into their slave drama. Most relevant, of course, is that slavery was an institution supported by the Democratic Party. One only has to look at the Congressional Record of 1865 to see who voted for the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution that officially abolished slavery. Of the 118 Republicans in Congress at the time, all 118 voted in favor of the legislation, while only 19 of 82 Northern Democrats voted likewise (House and Senate). If youre wondering about Southern Democrats, they had already seceded from the Union and formed the Slaveholding Confederate States of America. While I would be happy to consult with Confederate producers about these pesky little facts, something tells me theyre going to brush them aside anyway. Its hardly a secret that many on the Left regard America as an illegitimate, racist country precisely because of slavery. Students have been taught this for decades, usually in isolation from a vastly more complex and broader world history. The result is a younger and far less informed generation that thinks about racism in the most petty terms, including culturally appropriating Hawaiian shirts, saying the Pledge of Allegiance, even BBQ. Their reality is so twisted that theyre totally ignorant about real racism, let alone real slavery. HBOs Confederate, with its alternate reality premise, risks creating even more confusion and disconnect. HBO Programming President Casey Bloys Perhaps this is the true motivation behind Confederate: condition impressionable youth into a particular way of thinking about America that helps to better facilitate radical political agendas. In no time they will join Leftists calls to fundamentally transform America. And into what -- a more socialist state? Communism? Ironically, slavery has continued to flourish under both socialism and communism, including North Korea, Venezuela, and parts of Africa. America, on the other hand, has no slavery. Unless, of course, you include the psychosomatic state of the Democratic Partys far Left who cant help but to hypocritically culturally appropriate from those around the world who still suffer from real slavery. If HBO really wants to put forward a series about slavery for the noble purpose of making a cultural impact rather than just mere propaganda, perhaps they should focus on one of the many other countries that has continued the practice, not the country that abolished it. Kimberly Bloom Jackson is a cultural/media anthropologist and author of White Identity Crisis: Inside the Movie and TV Industrys Dash to Diversity and What It Means for America (Summer 2017). She can be found at SnoopingAnthropologist.com. The partisan witch hunt being conducted against President Trump, his family, and supporters is a good example of the principle, The best defense is a good offense. Have you ever been falsely accused of something? Defense is difficult at best. No matter what you say or do in response, it always makes you sound guilty to your accusers, or worse, a whiner to the undecided. Why? Because innocent people and guilty people both declare their innocence. Of course, facts should matter. But facts are slippery creatures. I am tempted to qualify that with nowadays, but thus has it always been. Do you think false accusations are something new? It was a serious enough problem 3000 years ago, that Do not bear false witness made it into the Ten Commandments. Even, maybe especially, if you do not believe in the divine origin of that Commandment, you can still infer that false allegations have always been a serious problem. Why are we Americans obsessed with due process -- even to the point of paranoia? It is because we know how easily the innocent can be persecuted by determined enemies, in or out of government. The Salem witch trials are burned into our collective memories, as are the excesses of early English kings. Yet it is easy to believe the worst about our enemies, especially our political enemies. The current disgraceful witch hunt being perpetrated against President Trump is a good example of why special prosecutors (or counsels) are a bad idea. No crime has been charged against anybody. No specific wrongdoing has been alleged. All we have heard are vague hints of collusion with Russia to meddle in an election. How, one might ask? Silence. A few lucky people who have been shown classified facts opine that there was some kind of Russian meddling. Yet investigating through ordinary channels is said to be inadequate. The Attorney General was virtually forced to recuse himself because he had a couple of trivial encounters with Russians during the campaign. Make no mistake about it. The honorable Mr. Mueller seems to think his job description is to destroy the President by any means possible. That is wrong. That is un-American. That is an affront to the Constitution. It is hard enough to defend oneself against a concrete accusation. Here there is not even a potential accuser to bear false witness. Even unscrupulous fascist regimes usually come up with trumped up (sic) charges, but not our special prosecutor. Oh no, not him. He is too high and mighty to keep the public informed, other than by self-serving leaks. But then, there is no suspected crime being investigated. He ought to be ashamed of himself for participating in this farce. One can only hope that the federal bench scrutinizes subpoenas issued to Trump and his family for random information unrelated to Russian involvement in the election. No wonder President Trump is angry and upset. There is nothing he can say or do to quickly clear his good name. His enemies dont care about the truth. In frustration, he lashes out at AG Jeff Sessions, who is a loyal friend. First, he criticizes him for recusing himself, or for not informing the President of his intention to do so, if appointed. The latest complaint is that Sessions isnt being tough enough on Hillary, Obama, and other miscreants from the previous. Administration. I am loath to disagree with the President, even mildly, but I wish he would stop publicly attacking his friends. It merely plays into the hands of his enemies, who are also enemies of America. Jeff Sessions may have erred but he is a loyal American and has been a loyal friend to Trump. Let Trump say anything he wants to Sessions in private, but no more public discussion of it. It does a lot of harm and no compensating good. The most valid complaint against Sessions is that perhaps he is not pushing hard enough to investigate Hillary and the other true criminals. I say perhaps because I really have seen no public information on this topic. I will not rehash the charges, which are solid, tangible and based on hard evidence. Let me just describe the worst one. In return for financial compensation to her, her husband, her daughter, and her foundation, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton signed off on the sale of some 20% of U.S. uranium reserves to Russia. Bribery, espionage, treason, oh my! I think a law student from a mediocre law school with a rookie police officer could prove that case in court. Let alone the U.S. Department of Justice with the resources of the FBI at its disposal. If Sessions is literally refusing to pursue that case, it would be a grave error. I suspect that it is being pursued. Certainly, Sessions did not recuse himself from that! So, we come back to the initial observation that a good offense is the best defense. Now two wrongs do not a right make, but context is everything. Hillary in an orange jumpsuit would be a good antidote to the phony allegations that Trump did anything wrong. Indeed, it would be evidence that Putin actually preferred doing business with Hillary. I do not know if all the corruption in the Obama Administration can be handled in normal channels or not. But appointing a special counsel would send a powerful message to one and all. That person would have to be a loyal Trump backer, who could be counted on to follow the disgraceful example set by Mueller by appointing Trump donors to his team. After all, turnabout is fair play. Right? What a laugh! No, actually it should be an honorable prosecutor who could stand in sharp contrast to Mueller by conducting a fair, impartial, and open investigation. Did you catch that word, open? It means regular briefings instead of leaks. Too bad if that embarrasses anyone. Rudy Giuliani stands out for the job, but surely there are many good choices. The story evolves as some congressional Republicans are now echoing the call of the Base to appoint a second Special Prosecutor to investigate the prima facie corruption and criminality of the Obama/Clinton gang. If Hillary in an orange jumpsuit would be helpful, imagine if she were joined by Loretta Lynch, Susan Rice, and Samantha Power. A lovely foursome for bridge to pass the time! And there are plenty of men involved too. In fact, it appears that Jeff Sessions actually has been going after leakers. AG Sessions has also been working hard to thwart sanctuary jurisdictions. On the flip side, he seems to like civil asset forfeiture way too much. Dont he and the President realize that due process applies to everyone? In order to protect the President from his enemies, we may have to protect petty criminals from greedy law enforcement agencies. This is a serious and timely issue, deserving of an article in its own right. Not that the AG is asking for advice, but my advice is to uphold the Constitution as his top priority. After that, loyalty to the President and ruthless opposition to the Democrats should be next on his mission list. A public mutual re-affirmation of confidence and trust between President Trump and AG Sessions would do a lot to strengthen both men and America. Please, President Trump. I can think of no single move you can make right now which would do more to further your agenda and help to Make America Great Again. Ronald Reagan was the most successful president in the last century and, probably, the most successful president of all time. Reagan may, indeed, have been the greatest political leader the West has produced in modern history. As an example of how deeply Americans revered President Reagan, when he died thirteen years ago, despite having been out of the public eye for almost sixteen years, tens of millions of Americans spent hours waiting in line just to share a few moments with him before he was interred. No president who has been out of office for years has ever had anything remotely approaching that outpouring of genuine respect and heartfelt grief. Reagan was an incredibly successful president. On the first day of his presidency, Iran returned the Americans it had taken hostage, and soon thereafter, Reagan had completed much of his agenda tax cuts, regulatory reform, defense buildup, broad support of social conservatism, and a revival of federalism. He had a limited number of objectives, and he pursued them relentlessly. Obama, though he disagreed with almost everything Reagan had done, correctly saw Reagan as a transformative president, the sort who comes along only every fifty years or more. John Kerry, who had despised Reagan's presidency, felt compelled to pay homage to Reagan at his casket. Reagan could teach a lot to Donald Trump. Reagan, like Trump, dealt with lots of RINOs and most of these were far more leftist than RINOs today but Reagan tamed them by first reminding Republicans of his 11th commandment: Thou shalt not speak ill of any Republican. He honored that, and he insisted that other Republicans follow suit. They did, largely because his respect for that maxim left them no choice. Regan also declined to personally attack Democrats. This did not mean agreement with them politically, but rather that Reagan deliberately took the initiative in removing personal attacks from his policy objectives. One great example of that was his open friendliness to Speaker Tip O'Neill, who never supported Reagan's policies but found it hard to personally attack him. Even better was Reagan's decision in early January, after Democrats lost the Senate for the first time in a generation, of going to the Senate and personally telling Senate Democrats that he was reappointing Mike Mansfield to be ambassador to Japan. Mansfield has been Democrat floor leader in the Senate for 16 years and had been an opponent of almost every idea Reagan supported. But Mansfield was an excellent ambassador and a decent and honorable man. Senate Democrats gave Reagan a standing ovation and agreed that he could have done nothing better to gain their respect. Reagan remained both firm and friendly throughout his presidency. Democrats soon learned that attacking Reagan personally was bad politics, and even RINOs understood that if they wished to have any leadership role in the Republican Party, they should not attack the president or frustrate his policies. As for our current president, Trump needs to focus on a few important items and pursue little else until those items are achieved. Everything is not equally important, and winning major victories enhances his political clout. Reforming the tax system would be a major coup, but it cannot be done if Trump is pulling folks in a dozen different areas and engaging in tweet attacks almost every day. Petty attacks by a president over time earn nothing but apathy and annoyance. Second, Trump needs to understand that attacking Republicans publicly gains him nothing at all while it creates the opportunity for Republicans to attack him, and he can do little about that. His problem with Republicans is largely self-inflicted and does him absolutely no good. He needs them more than they need him. Third, Trump should grasp that olive branches to Democrats makes him look good and make it harder for Democrats to attack him. That costs him nothing and gains him a perceptible edge if Democrat leaders keep demonizing him. Obama grasped that and used it against Republicans with appalling ease. President Trump still has time but probably much less time than he imagines to go down as a good and successful president. We ought to hope he does, because much is at stake, but the track record so far is not encouraging. It is really up to Trump to see his mistakes and quickly learn from them. If he does not, expect his support to melt like ice on a hot August sidewalk. I could not help but think of the movie The Revenge of the Nerds yesterday, as a balding, slender Republican hit back when the cool kids from the media started implying racism. Progressive activists masquerading as reporters are not used to Republicans who hit back at their insinuations. But two of them encountered return fire at yesterday's White House briefing on the new merit-based Senate immigration bill cosponsored by David Perdue and Tom Cotton. White House policy adviser Stephen Miller fought back when CNN's Jim Acosta began insinuating that racism is behind the bill in the "last question" of the briefing, claiming a radical change in immigration policy and citing the Emma Lazarus poem added to the base of the Statue of Liberty. "What you're proposing," Acosta begins his sermon, "or what the president is proposing, doesn't seem, does not sound like it's in keeping with American tradition when it comes to immigration." He then looks at his notes and says. "The Statue of Liberty says " The Statue of Liberty says. "It says 'Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,' it doesn't say anything about speaking English or being a computer programmer," Acosta goes on, "Aren't you trying to change what it means to be an immigrant coming into this country if you're telling them they have to speak English." As David Harsanyi of The Federalist dryly commented, CNN's Jim Acosta read the Statue of Liberty poem and "had a meltdown when someone suggested immigrants be able to read it, too." In the seven minutes that ensued in the "last question," New York Times reporter (and MSNBC contributor) Glenn Thrush jumped in. You may remember that Thrush was revealed to be clearing his copy with the Clinton campaign (while working as a reporter for Politico) in the WikiLeaks dump of DNC emails, in one of which he described himself as a "hack." Following the revelation of his collaboration with the ostensible subjects of his reporting, he was rewarded with the New York Times and MSNBC gigs. The following video will provide you a worthwhile return on your investment of seven minutes: To me, the highlight was when Acosta suggested that an English requirement would restrict immigrants to the U.K. and Australia and is therefore racist. Miller hit back, attacking Acosta's ignorance, overlooking the roughly 80 nations that speak English, most of them nonwhite majority countries, including India, Nigeria, and Belize, and for implying that nonwhites can't learn English. But you may have your own favorites. Reporters are not used to having their own racism and knowledge questioned by administration officials, but in the Trump administration, old assumptions may not apply. Social media websites are fantastic tools that allow us to share the joy of fabulous news from friends, family, and neighbors, whether birthday greetings, wishes for the New Year, or thanksgiving. We are able to sympathize with our companions when they share their sad stories. We see news stories that can be disturbing, like the Syrian chemical attack, flash floods, blazes in forests, horrors in prisons, violation of human rights... There is no question about it: advanced smartphone technology has played a key role in shaping the influence of social media. But unfortunately, this fantastic tool, despite its easy use and access, is not available to all the people of the world. In 2014, Reporters Without Borders designated 19 countries as "enemies of the internet" for actions ranging from social media censorship in Iran to North Korea walling its citizens off from the global web entirely. Despite the "enemies of the internet" designation of shame, only six countries actively block social media networks around the world. Iran is the leading country that blocks its citizens from accessing internet. In Iran, the internet and social media apps are heavily restricted and censored, because the government views any form of internet freedom as a threat to its mullah regime. Iran bars social media and internet, yet it has long been a battleground there between the jubilant Iranians who seek freedom and the authorities who feel they must protect the regime from dangerous influences that could topple it. Websites and social media have been blocked in Iran since huge antigovernment protests exploded after the disputed presidential election in 2009. In the absence of a free and unrestrained press in Iran, users inside the country utilize Twitter to bypass state censorship mechanisms and challenge government narratives aiming at concealing the brutality of the government's violent crackdown on the protesters. They also use a social media app called Telegram to discuss news and politics. According to the recent report by the National Council of Resistance of Iran, as the regime in Iran faces a variety of crises, the deputy public prosecutor said concerns about cyberspace have become extremely worrisome for Tehran. Iranian supreme leader Ali Khamenei is cited in this report as saying, in his usual violent language, that cyberspace is the "killing ground" of the country's youth, in reality meaning that this is where they learn the truth about the regime ruling Iran. The mullahs claim to be concerned about the youth and Islamic values and how cyberspace activities and social media undermine them, but the reality is, they are thinking of themselves. With all the media assets at its disposal, why can't the regime properly confront this threat? The truth is that concerns about "religion and faith" are not the regime's concerns, as its own officials have in interviews acknowledged the fact that improper posts are blocked by Telegram administrators. "More than 30% of these Telegram channels are involved in criminal activities against the country's security and disrupting the entire nation," said Iran's deputy public prosecutor, Abdolsamad Khoramabadi. Of course, the main target of these remarks are the Telegram channels belonging to the Iranian opposition People's Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK). "[W]e are left incapable on the internet. The supreme leader has said time and again that this cyberspace is uncontrollable. ... [I]t is unacceptable to have 8,000 orders in this regard and not being able to do anything," Khoramabadi said. This official also admits that the MEK will continue its activities even without Telegram, yet this platform has provided the MEK the means to accelerate the pace of its efforts. In addition to speed, the Iranian people having access to MEK criteria has left the regime terrified. "The MEK Telegram channel inside Iran is very active[.] ... [A]ll the regime's opponents are providing the people all their books and written material through this online platform. If you seek to purchase them, you have to pay huge amounts of money. If you wanted to publish a book, it would be very demanding, but on the internet, it is quite easy," Khoramabadi added. While the Iranian regime can completely block these websites, why has this issue reached the media? The regime in Tehran is truly facing an impasse in the face of Telegram. It can't completely block the website, as it needs the platform for its own purposes, and it also cannot block only certain channels. If Iran blocks Telegram in its entirety, it will come with heavy political and social impacts, leaving this regime facing 40 million angry users. Furthermore, this will not resolve the entire issue, and these users will most certainly find another platform. The Iranian regime has time and again negotiated with Telegram's managers to block the MEK website and associated channels, only to be rejected each time. This has left Tehran facing an impasse. Either accept the MEK's vast network with all its grave consequences, or pay the ultimate price of blocking Telegram. The latter would raise even more questions. Hassan Mahmoudi is a human rights advocate, specializing in political and economic issues relating to Iran and the Middle East. @hassan_mahmou1 The day after DNC I.T. staffer Seth Rich's unsolved and suspicious murder one year ago was splashed all over the MSM, new reporting and analysis of former homicide detective Rod Wheeler's flip on the issue which resurrected the story and brought it back to media and public attention via a lawsuit continued to call into question Wheeler's latest spin on the story. A major development on Wednesday, August 2 was the appearance online of a seven-minute audio recording of Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist Seymour Hersh sharing his insights into the unsolved killing of Rich, which he says he has investigated. Hersh's musings, laced with obscenities and the tough talk of an experienced gumshoe reporter with impeccable inside sources, gives the lie to what Wheeler is now claiming via his lawsuit against Fox News, et al. Seth Rich. The Hersh audio, running almost seven minutes, went viral on Wednesday, August 2 and is now posted all over the internet, most often on YouTube. One posting of it by BigLeaguePolitics.com displays a published date of July 11, 2017. Whenever it first appeared, according to BigLeaguePolitics's analysis of the recording: Seymour Hersh confirms that Seth Rich had contacted WikiLeaks with sample emails from the leak [which, Hersh alleges, Rich pulled off from inside the DNC and not the Russians via a hack]. Hersh cites an FBI document as proof for his claim [about Rich's contacts with WikiLeaks]. At World Net Daily on Wednesday, Alicia Powe, who has been investigating and breaking news about the Rich murder for months, devoted an entire article to the Hersh recording: Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist Seymour Hersh appears to have dropped a bombshell in audio released Tuesday pointing out that the DNC emails obtained by WikiLeaks stopped pouring in after the mysterious murder of DNC staffer Seth Rich in 2016. In the audio, Hersh also claims an FBI report described to him by an insider confirms that Rich, the DNC voter-expansion data director, had taken some emails to WikiLeaks and requested payment for a full trove of DNC emails during the presidential campaign. Seymour Hersh. Powe continues to describe the Hersh recording (emphasis added): On the audio recording, Hersh says his information came from a source "on the inside," a "very high-level guy" who is "unbelievably accurate and careful." He said WikiLeaks was able to acquire access to a password-protected dropbox that contained the emails. Hersh also claims the DNC invented a story alleging Russian "hacking," with help from CIA Director John Brennan, as a cover story. While Hersh said he believes the MPD's "botched robbery" account of Rich's murder, he noted that the DNC staffer had been concerned for his safety at the time of his death. Meanwhile, a legion of independent journalists, analysts, and new media websites weighed in on Wednesday in an attempt to evaluate this latest unexpected new spin on the previously dormant cold-case investigation of the Rich murder. Attention centered on the archival trail of recordings featuring Rod Wheeler in a series of on-camera and on-mic interviews and conversations that he gave between mid-May and his sudden apparent flip to the other side that became apparent with his lawsuit on Tuesday, August 1. Wheeler now claims he was misquoted in his comments to the press in May about his investigations into the Rich murder, although he validated, in his own words, numerous times, on camera, what he was quoted by others as saying. Rod Wheeler appearing on the Fox News Channel, May 2017. I linked to a number of these earlier interviews with Wheeler, both video and audio, in an article I wrote for The Hagmann Report on August 2. Meanwhile, Ed Butowsky, one of the two individuals named in Wheeler's lawsuit (in addition to a Fox investigative reporter, the Fox News channel, and 21st Century Fox), filed in New York federal court on August 1, had this to say about the situation, according to the Washington Examiner: Butowsky has strong ties to Fox News as an unpaid political commentator and he said Tuesday night on CNN that Wheeler, a paid Fox News contributor, is motivated by money. Rod Wheeler is "broke" and simply "trying to get money." "Rod Wheeler was always looking for a job because he has no money," Butowsky said. "And by the way, this lawsuit is all about Rod Wheeler trying to get money because he messed up." To describe this evolving story as a can of worms or a Pandora's box is an understatement. So many of the interested parties in the Seth Rich murder including Democrat politicians at the highest levels have maximum agendas at play, and it is impossible to predict where this story will wind up. What should be kept in mind now on August 3, 2017 is that these latest developments in the story that broke two days ago on Tuesday morning should not be seen in a vacuum or in isolation. Rather, they should be seen as pieces of a larger puzzle involving efforts to undermine the legitimacy of the Fox News Channel and ultimately the viability of the presidency of Donald J. Trump. The Fox News Channel (FNC) emerged as a target in the early reporting on Wheeler's lawsuit by the MSM on Tuesday because it was FNC alone, last May, that reported Wheeler's claims about the Rich case. It was also Fox News, alone among the major media, that seemed to be interested in the Seth Rich case at all. FNC and its prominent prime-time host Sean Hannity (who interviewed Wheeler on May 16) therefore were sitting ducks for the MSM when Wheeler's lawsuit was first reported making as it also did wild and incredible accusations claiming that Fox News conspired with President Donald Trump last May to concoct a false narrative and plant fake news about the Seth Rich case. This latest news in the case of Seth Richs unsolved murder couldnt be more bizarre or potentially more interesting and revealing. Stay tuned for further developments. Peter Barry Chowka is a veteran journalist who writes about national politics, media, popular culture, and health care. He is a frequent contributor to American Thinker. His new website is AltMedNews.net. On August 1, Peter appeared on The Hagmann Report to discuss the breaking news in the Seth Rich case. The recording of the entire three-hour program is here, and Peter appears at 1 hour, 45 minutes, 50 seconds. If you're a civil rights organization, what's the best way to raise money? Frighten the crap out of the people you supposedly represent. The NAACP has hit upon a scheme to scare blacks all over the country during the age of Trump by issuing a "travel warning" for the state of Missouri. It's the first time they've ever taken such action, although other special interest groups have also issued warnings for gay people and for Hispanics traveling in the Southwest. Why does Missouri deserve this special treatment? Kansas City Star: Missouri became the first because of recent legislation making discrimination lawsuits harder to win, and in response to longtime racial disparities in traffic enforcement and a spate of incidents cited as examples of harm coming to minority residents and visitors, say state NAACP leaders. Those incidents included racial slurs against black students at the University of Missouri and the death earlier this year of 28-year-old Tory Sanders, a black man from Tennessee who took a wrong turn while traveling and died in a southeast Missouri jail even though he hadn't been accused of a crime. "How do you come to Missouri, run out of gas and find yourself dead in a jail cell when you haven't broken any laws?" asked Rod Chapel, the president of the Missouri NAACP. "You have violations of civil rights that are happening to people. They're being pulled over because of their skin color, they're being beaten up or killed," Chapel said. "We are hearing complaints at a rate we haven't heard before." At the same time, Chapel said, the state government is throwing up barriers to people seeking justice in the courts for discrimination. The travel advisory cites legislation signed by Gov. Eric Greitens that will make it more difficult to sue for housing or employment discrimination. Last time I looked, there were two sides to every discrimination suit. And, of course, it would be unheard of for any minority to sue a company with deep pockets because he wanted a big payday. We must believe every minority who says he's been discriminated against and, at the same time, make it harder for a defendant to defend himself. But that's only part of this nonsense. Warning people to stay away from Missouri because some blacks were called names? Really? Maybe we should issue a travel warning to whites for certain sections of Chicago, where the racial epithets hurled at white people walking down the street would make almost anyone blush. Where are the statistics that show that blacks are being pulled over "because of their skin color" or that there is an epidemic of people being beaten and killed because they're black? Perhaps Missouri blacks should be exempt from traffic laws. The NAACP would trash the reputation of an entire state based on anecdotal evidence that is accurate according to their word alone? This fundraising gambit is an outgrowth of anti-Trump hysteria. Scaring black people with lurid tales of racist Missourians is easier to do when you're already demonizing the president as Hitler. In Washington, Phil Kerpen, the president of the think-tank American Commitment, which promotes free enterprise, in an interview with CBN News on 02 Aug 2017, said congressional leaders approached Obama in 2013, asking him for an executive order to subsidize congressional health insurance by 72%, including the staff. How? Obama placed the House and Senate within the District of Columbia and called them a "small business," so Congress could enter the small business exchange. The key paragraph reads in the short post: At the demand of the American people, Obamacare included a provision dropping the previous coverage members of Congress enjoyed, requiring them to go into the Obamacare exchange, and providing no employer contribution. Barack Obama gutted that provision and allowed Congress to go on the small business exchange and force taxpayers to pay their premiums shielding them from the pain felt by Americans who lack employer coverage that they should be personally feeling. We cannot tolerate this illegal two-tier system. Congress should live under the law they wrote until they repeal it for everyone. Of course, a D.C. federal judge said in 2015 that these subsidies are okay, even though the D.C. exchange knowingly accepted the premise that Congress, employing thousands, is a small business. Is it any wonder that the Senate failed and the House struggled to get repeal and replace passed? Seventy-two-percent motive. It's time for a reckoning. Though I opposed Trump at first, I'm now in his corner legislatively, hoping he can get some more victories. Congress needs to pass a bill (even in an imperfect form) to repeal and replace disastrous Obamacare. Twenty-eighteen and 2020 may depend on it. James Arlandson's website is Live as Free People, where he has posted a Few Observations on Martin Luther. Donald Trump has been grappling with the question of what the U.S. should do in Afghanistan to salvage a worsening security and political situation. He has tasked several top aides to come up with a winning strategy and met several times with his top generals. What Trump has come to understand is that the only "winning" strategy involves sending thousands more American troops to the country, potentially further entangling the U.S. in what some observers say could be a losing cause. For Trump, this is unacceptable. At a recent meeting of generals tasked with prosecuting the Afghan war, he expressed his displeasure with the options being presented to him and is worried that the U.S. may be losing the war. NBC News: During the July 19 meeting, Trump repeatedly suggested that Defense Secretary James Mattis and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Joseph Dunford replace Gen. John Nicholson, the commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, because he is not winning the war, the officials said. Trump has not met Nicholson, and the Pentagon has been considering extending his time in Afghanistan. Over nearly two hours in the situation room, according to the officials, Trump complained about NATO allies, inquired about the United States getting a piece of Afghans mineral wealth and repeatedly said the top U.S. general there should be fired. He also startled the room with a story that seemed to compare their advice to that of a paid consultant who cost a tony New York restaurateur profits by offering bad advice. Trump is the third president to grapple with the war in Afghanistan. On Wednesday, two American troops were killed in Afghanistan when a convoy they were in came under attack. The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack. Trump's national security team has been trying for months to come up with a new strategy he can approve. Those advisers are set to meet again to discuss the issue on Thursday at the White House. The president is not currently scheduled to attend the meeting, though one official said that could change. Former presidents Barack Obama and George W. Bush went through multiple strategies over the course of their presidencies to try to stabilize Afghanistan. What set Trump apart in the July meeting was his open questioning of the quality of the advice he was receiving. During the meeting, Trump criticized his military advisers seated around the table in the White House Situation Room for what he said was a losing U.S. position in the war, according to the senior administration officials. At one point the president directed his frustration at Mattis, saying Trump had given the military authority months ago to make advances in Afghanistan and yet the U.S. was continuing to lose ground, the officials said. Trump wants results, and he's not getting any. He wants advice, and he thinks he's getting bad advice. He wants a viable plan for victory, and he's not getting it. I think it's pretty clear that there is a lack of boldness on the part of Trump's military leaders probably the result of eight years sitting at the table with the indecisive and timid Obama. It is a legitimate question for the commander in chief to ask if he has the right people in the job. For Obama, the Afghan war was always more of a political problem than a military one. Obama was terrified of sending more troops because he feared large numbers of casualties and the resulting loss of political support. Needless to say, this is no way to fight a war and win it. But is the Afghan war winnable? The hands raised against the Afghan government weak and corrupt as it is have increased in recent years with the rise of ISIS and the growing strength of the Taliban. The NATO-trained Afghan army is not up to securing the provinces from the Taliban, and the national police force seems incapable of dealing with ISIS terror attacks. So the president has a huge decision to make. A lot of American blood and treasure have been spent in Afghanistan since 2001, and it would be painful to withdraw and make the sacrifices of our soldiers almost meaningless. But at what point does the president look at Afghanistan and decide we've done our best and it's time to leave? I think Trump wants to make one last supreme effort to turn around the security situation but he wants to do it without sending tens of thousands of Americans into the country. If NATO were a real alliance, we'd get more help from its other members. But they don't want to deal with the rabid left wing in their own countries, who would make their lives miserable if they committed combat troops to a renewed effort to pacify the country. The U.S. as it always has been in Afghanistan is on its own. A month ago, U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson suggested that the new U.S. policy on Iran embraces an element of regime change in that country. "Our policy towards Iran is ... to work toward support of those elements inside of Iran that would lead to a peaceful transition of that government. Those elements are there, certainly as we know," he said at a hearing before the U.S. House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee, when pressed by lawmakers to elaborate on whether Washington supports regime change in Iran. Considering Tillerson's statement, one must ask the following questions: Who are those elements (that, according to Secretary Tillerson, exist)? How does the U.S. want to support these elements? How can the U.S. government assure the Iranian people that they will be supported if they rise up against the ruling theocratic regime? Historically, and to be more specific, during the past 20 years that ended with Obama's presidency, successive U.S governments turned their backs on the Iranian people, designating the main Iranian dissident group, the People's Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK), which opposed the ruling theocracy, as a terrorist organization. Worse still, in 2009, exactly when the Iranian people needed international support to overthrow the regime, then-president Obama sent stern letters to the regime and its supreme leader instead of actual support for the people. The atmosphere of suppression in Iran today suggests that the first step toward any change should begin by breaking through this pattern. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) is the most vital and effective repressive entity in the country today. The IRGC, and its various sub-units, is responsible for crushing any popular dissent and arresting dissidents, activists, and dual citizens. It is an entity so powerful in itself that, on occasion, it disobeys regime insiders and senior officials. Therefore, undermining the IRGC is one of the most effective steps to break the ubiquitous repression and atmosphere of fear in Iran. In this regard, designating the IRGC as a foreign terrorist organization (FTO) will be the correct message to the people inside Iran that the days of this repressive force are coming to an end. The likely consequence could be that the people will dare to rise up against their oppressors. The added bonus is that the IRGC FTO designation will actually protect and advance U.S. national interest in the Middle East. One other factor, which will encourage the Iranian people to stand up against and continue to challenge the mullahs daily, is to focus on the ongoing and past human rights abuses in the country. Referring Iran's human rights dossier to the U.N. Security Council is not only justified, but a constructive step forward. To be effective, such referral should hold the perpetrators of human rights crimes to account and bring justice for the victims, in particular in the case of the 1988 massacre of over 30,000 political prisoners in Iran's prisons. These actions above will send a strong message to the regime and its leaders that repression of the Iranian people will cost them heavily. Preventing export of technologies that assist the Iranian regime in its internet censorship and persecution of social media users and active assistance to help the average Iranian to break the walls of censorship are other effective ways to support growing popular dissent in Iran. Indeed, there are Farsi media financed by U.S. taxpayers such as Voice of America Persian and Radio Free Europe (Radio Farda), which are launched by the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG). Sadly, these broadcasters are rather promoting a regime-friendly line and back the illusion of reforms within the theocratic ranks. Their stories aim more to accommodate officials in Tehran than to report the actual truths from Iran, a country that is bankrupt due to corruption and a population held at gunpoint by repression. In this regard, Tillerson must answer how he seeks to support a policy of regime change in Iran while the BBG is controlled by individuals whose carriers are dependent on part of the Iranian regime. Last Nail in the Regime's Coffin Iran is a country with cultural and ethnic diversity, formed by at least five different nationalities, including the Fars, Turks, Kurds, Arabs, and Balouchis. Existence of a free and independent Iran is the best way to end the Middle East's current crisis. Some Iran pundits, experts, and diplomats claim that a majority of the Iranian people are concerned about the period following regime change. These voices, some of them genuinely concerned but many proponents of appeasing Tehran, claim that people's concerns include the lack of an alternative or disintegration of the country. In the case of Iran, the existence of a viable, competent democratic alternative in the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) will prevent a power vacuum and remedy any imaginable conflict that could emerge after regime change. When people of a nation present a popular alternative to a ruling tyranny, it means that they hope for and are ready to bring about change. The NCRI is the largest and the most organized Iranian opposition, formed by a broad coalition of Iranian organizations, groups, and personalities with diversity of thought and pan-Iranian ethnicities. For the U.S., recognizing the NCRI and the ten-point democratic platform presented by NCRI president-elect Maryam Rajavi as an alternative to the current theocracy and a roadmap to a free and democratic Iran should eliminate any such concerns. Despite the fact that Tehran has consistently attempted to demonize the NCRI through propaganda and malicious publications, Iranian youths find their rights realized in the NCRI's agenda. Consequently, politically acknowledging the NCRI will support the Iranian people to put the last nail in the regime's coffin. Hamid Bahrami is a former political prisoner from Iran. Living in Glasgow, Scotland, he is a human rights and political activist and works as a freelance journalist. Bahrami has contributed to Al Arabiya English and American Thinker as his work covers Iran's Middle East actions and domestic social crackdown. He tweets at @HaBahrami and blogs at analyze.com. "Schadenfreude" can be defined as feeling happy when something goes wrong for someone. In the case of the left's fascination with and praise for Venezuela over the years, the current catastrophe in that country has absolutely vindicated those of us who knew that the fall of the Chavistas was inevitable and that the moral blindness of the left to the authoritarian impulses of Hugo Chavez and his successor, Nicolas Maduro, would come back to bite them someday. Today is that day. James Kirchick in the L.A. Times: The list of Western leftists who once sang the Venezuelan government's praises is long, and Naomi Klein figures near the top. In 2004, she signed a petition headlined, "We would vote for Hugo Chavez." Three years later, she lauded Venezuela as a place where "citizens had renewed their faith in the power of democracy to improve their lives." In her 2007 book, "The Shock Doctrine," she portrayed capitalism as a sort of global conspiracy that instigates financial crises and exploits poor countries in the wake of natural disasters. But Klein declared that Venezuela had been rendered immune to the "shocks" administered by free market fundamentalists thanks to Chavez's "21st Century Socialism," which had created "a zone of relative economic calm and predictability." Chavez's untimely death from cancer in 2013 saw an outpouring of grief from the global left. The caudillo"demonstrated that it is possible to resist the neo-liberal dogma that holds sway over much of humanity," wrote British journalist Owen Jones. "I mourn a great hero to the majority of his people," said Oliver Stone, who would go on to replace Chavez with Vladimir Putin as the object of his twisted affection. On the Venezuelan regime's international propaganda channel, Telesur, American host Abby Martin who used to ply her duplicitous trade at Russia Today takes credulous viewers on Potemkin tours of supermarkets fully stocked with goods. It would be inaccurate to label the thoroughly unconvincing Martin, who combines the journalistic ethics of Walter Duranty with the charm of Ulrike Meinhof, a useful idiot. She's just an idiot. Most of Chavismo's earlier adherents have maintained a conspicuous silence in the face of the Venezuelan calamity. Those who do speak up, rather than apologize for getting things so wrong, blame collapsing oil prices for the country's fate. Yet the decline in the value of petroleum has not led to rioting on the streets of Oslo. The tragedy of Venezuela is the predictable result of what happens when a strongman wages, in Chavez's own words, "economic war on the bourgeoisie owners," cracks down on media, prints money with reckless abandon and implements all manner of harebrained socialist schemes. What is it about murderous thugs like Chavez, Castro, and Che that attracts love and giddy admiration from the left? The number-one attribute that makes these dictators acceptable in the eyes of lefties is their virulent anti-Americanism. The American left agrees with these thugs that America is trying to overthrow them and that their countries would be socialist paradises if the U.S. would only butt out. In the case of Venezuela, the left fervently believed that Hugo Chavez had, indeed, created a socialist paradise with his massive payouts to the poorest citizens a result of sky-high oil prices. What admirers of Chavez failed to notice was the lack of investment by Venezuela into their oil production infrastructure, causing oil output to plummet. When the crunch came, the Venezuelan economy collapsed despite predictions from the left that Chavez had created an economy immune to downturns. President Maduro blames the crisis on the U.S. But most leftists have kept silent during Venezuela's fall rather than advance that preposterous notion. It makes you wonder if leftists truly believe the propaganda they spew, or whether their anti-Americanism allows them to remain blind to the reality of the suffering of people in Venezuela. Jeff Foxworthy made it big with his "you just might be a redneck" routine. Foxworthy's success inspired me to flatter him, sincerely, with a "you just might be a Progressive Democrat" imitation. The take-off goes as follows: If you think you are the most tolerant person in the room but label all opposing views "hate speech," you just might be a Progressive Democrat. If you believe that being gay is hardwired and unchangeable but insist that male and female are merely social constructs and that folks can change their "gender identities" from one day to the next, there's a good chance you are a Progressive Democrat. If you lose sleep over a possible two-degree increase in global temperature over the next fifty years and believe that 97% of all climate scientists think the Earth is getting dramatically warmer due to greenhouse gases...and that buying a heavily subsidized Tesla will make things appreciably better, there's a good chance you're a no-windmills-in-my-backyard Progressive Democrat. If you have no idea who Richard Lindzen, John Coleman, Bjorn Lomborg, or Freeman Dyson is, you're probably a very Green Progressive Democrat. If you are passionate about protecting snail darters, spotted owls, and gray wolves but believe there's a constitutional right to dismember a nine-month-old human baby in his mother's womb, you are quite likely a Progressive Democrat. If you cite Pope Francis's comments about global warming and the environment, believing they come from one of the most morally insightful persons on the planet, but pay no attention to papal pronouncements concerning abortion and the family, there's a good chance you are a Nancy Pelosi, cafeteria-Catholic Progressive Democrat. If you support "diversity" but see nothing amiss with colleges and universities whose faculties are overwhelmingly leftist, or if you have no problem with major media that are similarly one-sided politically, you just might be a Progressive Democrat. If you don't know that the Progressive movement and the founder of Planned Parenthood, Margaret Sanger, are closely connected with racist eugenics, you're probably a historically illiterate Progressive Democrat. If you still think Benghazi was caused by an internet video and have no clue that the Coptic immigrant who produced the video was imprisoned for several months in Texas, you are almost certainly a mainstream media Progressive Democrat. If you aren't troubled by the use of the IRS to suppress conservative "Tea Party" groups prior to the 2012 election (and afterward), you just might be a Progressive Democrat. If you are outraged by Donald Trump's about-faces and inaccurate statements but aren't at all perturbed by President Obama's misrepresentations with respect to the Affordable Care Act ("if you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor; we'll lower premiums by up to $2,500 for a typical family per year"), there's a good chance you are a Progressive Democrat. If you think "Fast and Furious" is a remake of Eddie Murphy's 48 Hrs., you just might be a Progressive Democrat. If you were alarmed by the never confirmed accusation that a single person in a large Tea Party crowd hurled the "n-word" at a black congressman but are unperturbed when leftists actually riot, destroy property, endanger lives, and shut down political speech on campuses or when an organized group of Black Lives Matter protesters chant, "Pigs in a blanket, fry 'em like bacon," it is quite likely you are a Progressive Democrat. If you are "pro-choice" but don't believe in giving Americans choices when it comes to buying a firearm or choosing their kids' schools, you just might be a Progressive Democrat. If you are incensed by the income gap in this country but think nothing about the Obamas sending their kids to the elite Sidwell Friends School while opposing and even removing educational options for poor parents whose offspring are stuck in failing Washington, D.C. public schools, you are quite likely a teacher union-supporting Progressive Democrat. If you don't mind pressing 2 for English, you're more than likely a Progressive Democrat. If it doesn't give you a moment's pause to overturn marital traditions that have existed for millennia because a handful of possibly biased social science surveys say it's okay, you are probably a nearsighted, kid-unfriendly Progressive Democrat. If you don't acknowledge the violent history of Islam but instinctively associate Christianity with the Crusades, the Inquisition, and Salem's witch trials, there's more than a good chance you are a secular Progressive Democrat for whom "the enemy of my enemy is my friend." If you think "lack of economic opportunity" is the primary cause of the 70% out-of-wedlock birth rate among black Americans and that fatherlessness has little to do with high crime rates in that community, you just may be an ideologically blinkered, morality-averse Progressive Democrat. If you think the words "racist," "sexist," "homophobic," "ethnocentric," and "religiously bigoted" should be integral parts of the National Anthem and never give a thought to the fact that a million immigrants come to the U.S. each year, you just may be, and probably are, an angry, ungrateful, politically obsessed Progressive Democrat. If you want to get me fired or boycott my business for writing this piece, you're probably a Progressive Democrat. But you're too late. I'm already retired. Richard Kirk is a freelance writer whose book Moral Illiteracy: "Who's to Say?" is also available on Kindle. AfricaRice is a CGIAR Research Center part of a global research partnership for a food-secure future. It is also an intergovernmental association of African member countries. For more information visit: www.AfricaRice.org A propos dAfricaRice AfricaRice est un Centre de recherche du CGIAR un partenariat mondial de la recherche agricole pour un futur sans faim. AfricaRice est aussi une association intergouvernementale composee de pays membres africains. Pour plus dinformations, visiter : www.AfricaRice.org Two Italian fishing boats attacked between Libya, Tunisia Navy helicopter deployed to help Mazara del Vallo vessels (ANSAmed) - MAZARA DEL VALLO (TRAPANI), AUGUST 3 - Two Italian fishing boats from the Sicilian port town of Mazara del Vallo - the ''Aliseo'' and ''Anna Madre'' - were reportedly attacked by a boat off Zarzis, at the border between Libya and Tunisia, in international waters. An Italian Navy helicopter and a Tunisian military vessel reportedly intervened, persuading the vessel to back off, according to the president of the Sicilian fishing district, Giovanni Tumbiolo. The vessel reportedly belongs to Tunisian Customs authorities. The incident occurred on Wednesday night and is allegedly connected to the so-called local 'fishing war' amid a climate of tension in the Mediterranean for the Italian mission in Libya to confront the ongoing migrant crisis. The vessel reportedly fired shots at both fishing boats that immediately asked for help. An Italian military helicopter and a Tunisian Navy vessel forced the boat to back off. Tumbiolo expressed ''great appreciation for the joint action of the Italian foreign ministry and the Italian embassy in Tunis, as well as the Italian and Tunisian Navy'', while sounding the alarm on the ''fishing war that has been going on for over 50 years, endangering the safety of our fishermen'' to control fishing in the area. Well-informed sources in Rome confirmed the attack, which was probably carried out by a Tunisian cutter that allegedly wanted to force the two Italian vessels to dock at a Tunisian port to check on its fishing activity. The shots were allegedly fired as a warning, the sources said. The helicopter reportedly took off from an Italian Navy vessel in the area, forcing the Tunisian boat to desist from the attack and leave. The same well-informed sources said no Tunisian vessels intervened to defend the Sicilian boats, which resumed their activity on Thursday morning south of Lampedusa. Port authorities in Mazara del Vallo said they are in close contact with the ''Aliseo'' and ''Anna madre''.(ANSAmed). Avramopoulos says Sophia could be deployed in Libya (ANSAmed) - BRUSSELS, AUGUST 3 - European Commissioner Dimitris Avramopoulos told ANSA in an interview Thursday that it is possible that the Operation Sophia could be deployed in Libyan waters in the future. "At the moment, priority should be given to what can be done under the current mandate of Operation Sophia which was just renewed with added tasks," he said. "But the possibility of the Operation moving to a third stage working in Libyan waters was foreseen from the beginning. If the Libyan authorities ask for this, we should be ready to act". (ANSAmed). ROME - Gen. Khalifa Haftar, the strongman of the Tobruk government, has ordered his forces to bomb Italian vessels deployed in a mission to provide naval support to Libya, according to a tweet published by broadcaster Al Arabiya. Haftar's order reportedly follows by a few hours a vote of the Torbuk parliament tied to his faction, which expressed opposition to the Italian naval operation, saying the presence of foreign vessels in Libyan waters represented a ''violation of national sovereignty'', against the decision of internationally-backed Tripoli Premier Fayez Sarraj to carry out joint operations with Rome. The Italian Lower House and Senate Wednesday voted in favor of the government's naval mission to support the Libyan coast guard to combating human traffickers and help stem a migrant flow that is causing massive strain on the Italian authorities. Most of the over 95,000 migrants who landed in Italy so far this year started their journey across the Mediterranean Sea from Libya. Libya: Haftar's statements only reported by media so far, EU (ANSAmed) - BRUSSELS, AUGUST 3 - The spokesperson for EU foreign affairs and security policy, Catherine Ray, on Thursday commented General Kalifa Haftar's alleged statements that he has ordered his forces to bomb Italian ships deployed in an imminent mission to provide naval support to Libya as ''only media reports so far''. ''We are working in close contact and in coordination with Italy on the best possible way to manage the central Mediterranean route, in line with international standards and laws'', said Ray. ''So far Italy has been at the forefront of the EU in working to save lives and welcome refugees'', added the spokeswoman. Ray added that ''the EU is working to support a political solution in Libya and to help Libya manage migrant flows''. She noted that the EU's priority is to ''protect migrants''. According to a tweet published by Al Arabiya, Haftar, the leader of a rival Libyan government based in Tobruk, has ordered his forces to bomb Italian vessels deployed in the mission to provide naval support to Libya. Haftar's order reportedly follows a vote of the Torbuk parliament tied to his faction, which expressed opposition to the Italian naval operation. Haftar is a rival to the internationally-backed Tripoli-based Premier Fayez Sarraj. (ANSAmed). This autumn Barcelona may be the chosen one. If the European Medicines Agency (EMA) chooses our city among the nineteen candidates to host its HQ, it would be a major boost not only for the Health and Life Sciences sector (HLS), the pharma industry, biotech, medical technologies and other businesses, but also for the citys economy in particular and, in general, for Catalonias. If the EMA moves to Barcelona city, it will stay here. Unlike other events, which come, transform the city and become a significant source of income over a certain period, the EMA would remain part of our daily reality. The investment, the talent, the pool of companies and professionals, among others, would be steady. And the quantitative and qualitative leap in the field of health research would be a fact. For over a decade, Barcelona city has been immersed in a shift of productive model that advances towards the knowledge economy. In the last three years, the move to the knowledge economy has gained momentum and up to 175 businesses were set up in the city between 2013 and 2016 in the field of biomedicine and the HLS, 95 of which are spin-off companies endorsed by hospitals and research centres. Furthermore, Barcelona and its area of influence feature 31 biomedical, health sciences and animal health research facilities. EMA will find in Barcelona the main hub of biomedical research in southern Europe Barcelona is the worlds second smart city; in other words, it is the runner-up in the application of ITC technologies to improve peoples quality of life and the citys sustainability. It ranks ninth among the worlds 60 best cities for highly innovative start-ups. It features eleven university hospitals and outstanding scientific facilities, such as the Barcelona Supercomputing Centre (BSC), the ALBA Synchrotron and the CNAG (National Centre for Genomic Analysis). This strategy based on boosting research has allowed Barcelona city to become the fifth city in Europe and the seventeenth worldwide in volume of scientific production. As for Catalonia, a report published by Barcelonas Chamber of Commerce on the HLS sector shows that the Catalan economys turnover grew from 3.1 to 3.8 per cent between 2011 and 2014. The weight of the HLS industry is on a par with the catering and hospitality industrys, whose turnover was 18.49 billion in 2014. The report highlights the fact that the pharmaceutical sub-sector more than doubles the average productivity of the Catalan economy as a whole, and the salaries paid nearly double the Catalan average. It is the industrial sub-sector that invests the most in R&D. Between 2000 and 2016, it multiplied the volume of exports by five, which accounts for 7.8 per cent of all of Catalonias exports and 45 per cent of Spains pharmaceutical exports. As well as having a productive model increasingly based on the knowledge economy, the EMA should pick Barcelona because the city meets all the requirements in terms of having a suitable building within the set schedule (the iconic but equally functional Torre Glories), as well as the proposed HQs accessibility and international connectivity. Barcelona airport is the ninth in Europe in terms of passenger traffic, it boasts direct flights to 21 European capitals with over 80 direct flights per day. It also connects Barcelona with Asia and America daily. To sum up, the EMA will find in Barcelona the main hub of biomedical research in southern Europe and the city will find that the EMA is a decisive boost to consolidate its productive model, which aims to turn science into applied market technology to guarantee medicines that are safe and efficacious to improve the health of millions of Europeans. Barcelona city is officially a candidate now. Twenty-five years on, the Olympic spirit has been present in the coordination and joint efforts of the three administrations involved. They must continue working together, with the inestimable support of civil society (which they have), if we wish our candidature to succeed. All that is left now is for the necessary alliances to be forged in the assessment and voting system of the new HQ. We have already met all the goals and initial requirements, and we exceed most of them. Our cover story examines an unsuspected crypt discovered in a former church during redevelopment work. Although the space was too dangerous to enter, ingenious remote survey revealed that the crypt still contains numerous coffins, including at least two Archbishops of Canterbury. It is caverns rather than crypts that have surrendered the secrets of the humans colonising Britain around 15,000 years ago. We take a look at a world where people could cross the land bridge still connecting these isles to Europe, bringing Continental toolkits with them. By the Roman period, shipments from abroad had to be ferried in by boat, which is why a cargo of Samian ware ended up immersed off the coast of Whitstable. What can this tell us about Roman trade? A sea journey also brought the Native American princess Pocahontas to these shores. On the 400th anniversary of her death, we explore the traces of her trip. Finally, this issue is my last as editor, as Im moving on to Current World Archaeology. Before I go, thanks to all of you for reading, and to all our contributing archaeologists both volunteer and professional for generously sharing their time, their stories, and their expertise during my tenure. We are truly lucky to have such dedicated, innovative, and resourceful people teasing out the secrets of our past. I look forward to keeping up with their latest discoveries after CAs very own Carly Hilts takes over next issue. Matt Symonds IN THIS ISSUE: FEATURES EARLY HUMANS Meeting the humans who inhabited Britain 15,000-11,000 years ago In the last three decades, new discoveries have dramatically transformed our picture of the Upper Palaeolithic in Britain. We examine the latest evidence for how humans responded to the radically changing climate. PUDDING PAN On the trail of a Roman shipwreck Samian ware from a Roman ship lost off the Kentish coast has been resurfacing bit by bit over the last few centuries. Can this wreck be found? And what can its cargo tell us about trade? Discovering the hidden crypt in a Lambeth church Last year, archaeologists excavating at the church of St Mary of Lambeth came across a long-forgotten crypt containing a large number of coffins, including those of Archbishops of Canterbury. We investigate the burials at this former parish church and its connections with the neighbouring Lambeth Palace. POCAHONTAS IN LONDON Tracing a 400-year-old journey across the Atlantic When she arrived in England as an ambassador for the Virginia Company, Pocahontas sparked excitement in high society. We mark the 400th anniversary of her death in 1617 by tracing the material record of her visit. NEWS Stone square feature in Avebury circle; St Columbas cell revealed?; Roman diploma names 2nd-century seafarer; Neolithic longbarrow unearthed in Wiltshire; Hillforts atlas launched online; Exploring Sheffields steelworks; Expanding Auckland Castle; Norman no more; Barnwoods Roman remains revealed; Finds tray SPECIAL REPORT Roman writing tablets found at Vindolanda REGULARS Comment Joe Flatman excavates the CA archive Context Boating by the Broch of Mousa Reviews An Upland Biography; Cremation and the Archaeology of Death; Irelands First Settlers; Analysing Maritime Archaeological Archives; Photographing Historic Buildings; Ancient Rome Exhibition British Art: ancient landscapes at Salisbury Museum Calendar Our selection of exhibitions and events Interview CA speaks with the team behind the Ancient Identities in Modern Britain project Opinion John Schofield on why archaeology is still the best university degree Sherds Chris Catlings irreverent take on heritage issues Odd Socs Pontefract & District Archaeological Society Op-ed by Bob Shead In the second part of this article, I will discuss the various sectors of the Philippine tourism industry. The first part of the article, covering the opportunities and incentives for foreign investors in the tourism industry, can be read here. The main sectors of tourism in the Philippines are: Casino and Gambling The gaming/casino industry in the Philippines is becoming more developed, on the back of growing supply and heightened competition, a recent independent report stated. The Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corporation (PAGCOR), the gaming industry regulator, has said that the casino industry continues to grow. This has led to an 18.1 percent increase in PAGCORs net income in 2016 to P4.46 billion (US$89 million) from gaming operations. The total gaming revenues in 2016 increased by 22.9 percent to P53.31 billion (US$1.06 billion). PAGCOR also owns and operates 13 casinos in the Philippines, including three in Manila. A recent report by Fitch states, We expect high single-digit gross gaming revenues in 2017 driven by the opening of the US$2.4 billion Okada Manila Resort and the continued economic growth in the Philippines. Longer term, competition from Macau and other Asia Pacific countries will restrain growth. It should also be noted that junket sourced VIP business, makes up about one third of gross gaming revenues at private casinos. However, Fitch also noted that while the initial results of the first three casinos operating under the licenses granted by PAGCOR are encouraging, relative to the investments made, this may not be the case in the longer term. The current major private casinos, include Travellers International Hotel Group, a joint venture between Genting Hong Kong and a local conglomerate Alliance Global; Bloomberry Resorts Corporation, owned by Enrique Razon; City of Dreams Manila operated by Melco Resorts Leisure (PHP) Corporation, a subsidiary of Melco Resorts and Entertainment (Philippines) Corporation; and Tiger Resorts (still under construction) owned by Kazuo Okada. There is much speculation at present as to whether the interest in the Philippine gaming industry by Chinese nationals will continue to improve. The current Philippine Government has promoted stronger ties with China, as more tourists from the Chinese Mainland come to the Philippines to play. However, the Chinese Government has, in the past couple of years, also clamped down on Chinese nationals taking their funds outside of China. It is recognised that gaming companies, particularly casinos, stand to benefit the most from stronger ties with China as the growing number of tourists from China should boost gaming revenues. In the past four years, the number of tourists coming from China to the Philippines increased by 19.2 percent, and during the first eight months of 2016, Chinese tourist arrivals jumped 50.3 percent to 484,567. China is now the Philippines third largest visitor market, accounting for 12 percent of total tourist arrivals during the first eight months of 2016. Cruise Lines The Philippines is in the process of becoming one of Asias top international cruise destinations, and there is an increasing interest from Cruise Lines to boost infrastructure development in order to support international cruise ships. To date, Philippine ports have hosted cruise ships from Royal Caribbean Cruise Ltd (RCCL) and Star Cruises amongst other smaller expedition cruise companies. International cruise calls at ports in the Philippines grew annually at 27.8 percent from 2014 to 2016, and now expect to host approximately a hundred port calls in 2017, with around 122,000 passengers. The Department of Tourisms National Cruise Tourism Strategic Plan is targeting 300 port calls by 2020. The Department of Tourism (DOT) has said that cruise tourism is one of its priorities for 2017, and the agency plans to create more ports that will be attractive to, and able to meet the standards of, international cruise ships. Manila, Puerto Princesa in Palawan, Boracay, and Davao City in Mindanao, have been identified as cruise ship destinations. Included in the DOTs plans is the construction of a cruise port with a terminal in Manila that will be able to host international cruise liners carrying over 3,000 passengers. The DOT, along with the Province of Aklan recently signed an agreement with RCCL that allows Aklan Province to work with RCCL, who wish to develop a partnership to support the construction of a purpose built terminal in Caticlan, adjoining Boracay, the Philippines most popular beach resort. The Japanese cruise company JCL will now include the Philippines as a regular port of call, the DOT recently announced following an investment-promotion visit to Japan by the Philippines Secretary for Tourism Wanda Teo. Cruise tourism is one of the nine product portfolios identified in the DOTs National Tourism Development Plan (NTDP) which aims to enhance the countrys competitiveness as a tourist destination in the Asia-Pacific region. The promotion of cruises was further elaborated in the National Cruise Tourism Strategy, completed by the DOT last year, and the ASEAN Cruise Brand, an intra-regional and multi-country initiative. Island Resorts The Philippines is made up of 7,107 islands (only 2000 are inhabited); each island offers a rich biodiversity ranging from tropical rain forests, mangroves, and coral reefs to mountain ranges, world class beaches, beautiful islands and a diverse range of flora and fauna. There is increasing interest in investments in island resorts. Coron Islands in Palawan is a good example of recent environment friendly resort development. General Tourism/Business Visits and Hotels The hotel industry in the Philippines is expected to see a continued growth over the next five years, although a decline in hotel occupancy rates in the first half is forecasted. Hotel occupancy rates in Manila slipped to an average of 68 percent in the first half of 2016, lower than occupancy rates the previous year, however still better than in other ASEAN countries. Hotel chains continue to pursue their respective expansion projects. The Filinvest Group is increasing its hotel portfolio in both Alabang and Cebu, plus the Filinvest Groups Chroma Hospitality, that focusses on hotel management services, is investing P2.6 billion (US$52 million) for two Canvas brands a 228 room Canvas Hotel in Cubao, and a 185 room Canvas Hotel in Mactan. Additionally, Filinvest is introducing a Crimson Hotel in Boracay, Quest Hotels in Dumaguete and Tagaytay. It is planned that these hotels will open between 2018 and 2019. Chroma Hospitality is also looking to expand in Pasig, Quezon City, Batangas, Cavite, Laoag, Baguio, Cebu and Davao. Another leading investor, Ayala Land plans to launch the Seda hotel chain across the Philippines over the next five years. This will be in addition to Seda Hotels currently located in Bonifacio Global City, Cagayan de Oro City, Davao City and Laguna. Ayala Land are planning 2,000 new hotel rooms by 2018, and 6,000 hotel rooms by 2020. Red Planet, formerly Tune Hotel, is also planning to expand in the Philippines over the next five years. The rebranded hotel currently has 10 hotels, and plans to have 20 hotels in the Philippines over the next five years. Along with the anticipated 7 million foreign tourists this year, there are approximately 50 million domestic tourists. Obviously, the continuing improvements in infrastructure such as airports, roads and rail transport systems is seen as the key that can unlock the Philippines potential for tourism growth. Research has also found that tourists constitute 79 percent of total hotel guests outside Metro Manila. Yachting and Sailing Tourism in the Philippines has grown steadily during the last few years. There are increasing numbers of sailing enthusiasts looking for sailing and yachting experience amongst the Philippines archipelago. The only way to get to many of the Philippines islands is by sea, and many of the islands are inhabited. Palawan is one of the favourite destinations for those yacht and sailing enthusiasts. The main ports where charter boats can be rented, are Puerto Galera, Boracay, Coron, Puerto Princesa, and Cebu. The industry of yacht chartering in the Philippines is still in early stages. The yachting and sailing fleets available for rent are mainly composed of privately owned boats, and skippered by the owners who want to share the sailing experience in the Philippines. The priority destinations tend to be Boracay, Puerto Galera, Palawan, Subic Bay, Cebu and Bohol, with other destinations becoming popular. More generally, Southeast Asia is fast emerging as the yachting hub of Asia, with industry watchers highlighting the potential in markets like Thailand and Indonesia. However, there is not a large yachting culture in Asia, despite the regions growing wealthy population. Currently only 4.3 percent of the worlds super yachts are Asia-based, despite the region boasting a large number of high net worth individuals. For general information, a super yacht is typically at least 25-30 meters in length. The countries that have the highest potential in yacht growth are Thailand, Indonesia, the Philippines and Malaysia. This is due to the natural beauty of the islands, existing yacht clubs, a viable and strong tourism industry, as well as a strong expat community who have a history and support for yachting. Scuba Diving The Philippines have the most species in the least space of anywhere in the planet. Out of the planets 500 coral species, more than 400 are in the Philippines. The Philippines is at the center of the worlds Coral Triangle, and host to a very rich marine biodiversity, the whole Philippine archipelago can be considered a dive location. There are over 100 identified diving spots across the Philippine islands that are rich in corals and marine species. The Philippines is currently working at tapping a larger share of the worlds diving market. The current figures for foreign dive tourists in the Philippines is expected to be 200,000 in 2017. Previous figures released by DOT were 59,572 in 2010, 89,911 in 2011 and 126,200 in 2012. The biggest markets were South Korea, USA and Germany. Medical Tourism Medical tourism in Philippines is a rapidly growing market. In 2015, the Philippines was ranked eighth among the top medical tourism destinations globally, according to the International Healthcare Research Center and the Medical Tourism Association (MTA). Patients arriving in the Philippines for medical tourism, come mainly from East Asia (China, Japan, Korea, Taiwan), USA, Australia, and increasingly from Europe. The Philippine Government Departments of Tourism (DOT), Health (DOH), Trade and Industry Board of Investments (DTIBOI) have combined for a joint programme to promote Philippine medical tourism. This informal partnership has resulted in a programme that identified five major priorities in the medical travel sector tourists who come for wellness services; medical tourists, who need low-acuity medical procedures; medical travelers, who need more complex procedures; international patients, including overseas Filipino workers, including retirees; accompanying guests, and immediate next of kin. To date, medical tourism in the Philippines caters to approximately 80,000 to 250,000 patients or clients annually. Currently, 62 hospitals around the country are now internationally accredited, and to date, five Philippine medical institutions, the Asian Hospital and Medical Center (Muntinlupa City), Makati Medical Center (Makati City), St. Lukes Medical Center (Bonifacio Global City and Quezon City), and The Medical City (Pasig City) have been certified for international medical care and treatment. A 2014 study reported that the Philippine medical tourism industry generated US$145 million in 2014. Among the factors cited in the survey included competitive price for health and wellness services, high standards of healthcare provided in internationally accredited hospitals and English speaking healthcare professionals. The Philippines proximity to major international hubs, along with good tourism destinations for recovery periods were also factors. Negative Aspects of the Philippine Tourism Industry There is, of course, some issues concerning tourism in the Philippines, and these need to be discussed further. These mainly concern infrastructure, personal security and safety hazards. However, much is being done to improve these issues, and tourists must realise the potential problems before they chose to visit the Philippines. Although the recent Resorts World Manila tragic incident, that left at least 38 dead was very disturbing, and opened up many questions concerning security and safety, it is predicted that this is not likely to affect general investor sentiment although it may well affect tourism in general. The Philippine Travel Agencies Association (PTAA)has acknowledged that tourist arrivals would likely take a short term hit for this year, particularly also because of the ongoing crisis in Marawi City, Mindanao, which has led to a Presidential declaration of Martial Law in Mindanao. This has meant that security in general has been stepped up, especially in public places like shopping malls, resorts and hotels. It has also been recognised by organisations such as the Makati Business Club, the Philippine Chamber of Commerce and Industry, the American and European Chambers of Commerce that a better Crisis Management system is necessary and important. Although the Resorts World incident has been recognised as an isolated incident, it is recognized that, also in the light of the Marawi invasion that Crisis Management and security procedures must be improved, and that tourists will continue to feel confident to travel to the Philippines. Financially, all the casinos lost revenue in the days following the Resorts World attack and resulting tragic loss of lives. Conclusion However, at the end of the day, the Philippine tourism investment industry is increasing rapidly, despite the various and sometimes overplayed downsides. It is still a destination that to some extent is off the main radar of ASEAN countries, compared to Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore. However, this on the other hand makes it a more exotic destination for dedicated travelers and those who would like to get off the beaten track. Manila as a hub for the casino and gaming industry will increase in size, and stands a good chance of replacing Macao as the casino hub of Asia. The hotel and resort industry in the Philippines is rapidly expanding and of course, linked to the casino and gaming industry. This is especially true in the luxury 5 star hotel sector and luxury hotels continue to appear on the skyline in Manila. I will in the future cover the different aspects of the tourism industry in more detail, including the retirement programme. The tourism market in the Philippines is immense and diverse and will continue to remain so. About Us Bob Shead is ASEAN Briefings Philippines Correspondent and is based in Manila. He has 25 years experience as a diplomat in Asia. Asia Briefing, a subsidiary of China, India, Indonesia, Russia, the Silk Road & Vietnam. For editorial matters please contact us here and for a complimentary subscription to our products, please click ASEAN Briefing is published by, a subsidiary of Dezan Shira & Associates . We produce material for foreign investors throughout Asia, includingthe. For editorial matters please contact usand for a complimentary subscription to our products, please click here Dezan Shira & Associates provide business intelligence, due diligence, legal, tax and advisory services throughout the ASEAN and Asia. We maintain offices in Singapore, as well as Hanoi & Ho Chi Minh City, and maintain Alliance offices in Bangkok, Jakarta, Kuala Lumpur and Manila as well as throughout China, South-East Asia, India and Russia. For assistance with ASEAN investments into any of the featured countries, please contact us at provide business intelligence, due diligence, legal, tax and advisory services throughout the ASEAN and Asia. We maintain offices in Singapore, as well as Hanoi & Ho Chi Minh City, and maintain Alliance offices in Bangkok, Jakarta, Kuala Lumpur and Manila as well as throughout China, South-East Asia, India and Russia. For assistance with ASEAN investments into any of the featured countries, please contact us at asean@dezshira.com or visit us at www.dezshira.com Dezan Shira & Associates Brochure Dezan Shira & Associates is a pan-Asia, multi-disciplinary professional services firm, providing legal, tax and operational advisory to international corporate investors. Operational throughout China, ASEAN and India, our mission is to guide foreign companies through Asias complex regulatory environment and assist them with all aspects of establishing, maintaining and growing their business operations in the region. This brochure provides an overview of the services and expertise Dezan Shira & Associates can provide. An Introduction to Doing Business in ASEAN 2017 An Introduction to Doing Business in ASEAN 2017 introduces the fundamentals of investing in the 10-nation ASEAN bloc, concentrating on economics, trade, corporate establishment, and taxation. We also include the latest development news for each country, with the intent to provide an executive assessment of the varying component parts of ASEAN, assessing each member state and providing the most up-to-date economic and demographic data on each. How to Set Up in the Philippines In this issue of ASEAN Briefing magazine, we provide an introduction to the Philippines as well as analyze the various market entry options available for investors interested in expanding to the island nation. We also discuss the step-by-step process for setting up a business entity in the Philippines, highlighting the various statutory requirements for overseas investors. Finally, we explore the potential for Singapore to serve as a viable base to administer investors Philippine operations. New Delhi: The process of resolution of bad loans will start shortly, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said on Thursday in the Lok Sabha as it passed a bill which gives RBI the power to direct banking companies to resolve the problem of stressed assets. Replying to a debate on the Banking Regulation (Amendment) Bill, 2017, Jaitley said the Reserve Bank has already identified top 12 loan defaulters and more cases will be taken up by them for resolution. "No one can claim the right of equality in not paying banks back. RBI has taken up some difficult cases... I am sure they will take up more," Jaitley said. The Banking Regulation (Amendment) Bill, 2017, seeks to amend the Banking Regulation Act, 1949 and replace the Banking Regulation (Amendment) Ordinance, 2017, which was promulgated in May this year. The bill was later passed by the Lok Sabha by a voice vote. Winding up the debate on the bill, Jaitley said some laws were outdated and were acting as "impediment" instead of "expediting resolution". "We will shortly see the process of resolution coming... Any form of resolution is possible... We need to save the companies, the jobs and we need liquid companies to pay the banks," the finance minister said. Moving on fast-track, the RBI had in June identified 12 large loan defaulters who account for 25 per cent of the total bad loans in the banking sector. Action under the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code has already begun in certain cases, including Essar Steel, Bhushan Steel and Bhushan Power & Steel. Jaitley said the loans were given during the boom period before the 2008 global financial crises and the present government is trying to find a solution of the non-performing loans. Replying to opposition charge that bad loans are higher in public sector banks, Jaitley said PSU banks are leaders when it comes to lending for economic development and to industry. Private sector banks have safer portfolio and are more into retail banking, he said. "There is a risk in industrial financing and PSU banks do it," he said. With stressed assets reaching "unacceptably high level", the government had brought the Bill replacing the Ordinance. The measure allows the RBI to initiate insolvency resolution process on specific stressed assets. The RBI would also be empowered to issue other directions for resolution, appoint or approve for appointment, authorities or committees to advise the banking companies for stressed asset resolution. The executive chairman of Cisco also said that India will grow with the strength of its democracy and partnerships. India will figure among the top three economic powers in the world over the next 10-15 years, said Cisco Executive Chairman John Chambers. (Representational Image) New Delhi: India will figure among the top three economic powers in the world over the next 10-15 years, riding on the strength of its democracy and partnerships, according to Cisco Chairman John Chambers. Chambers, who is also the Chairman of the newly-formed US-India Strategic Partnership Forum, predicted that India would turn out to be a role model for the world economies. "You will not be a slow follower but a fast innovator. You will be the model for the rest of the world...India will be the example for the rest of the world not as an emerging country but as a developed country that reinvents itself again and again," he said at discussion on India-US Commercial and Strategic relationship. Chambers said if he were to bet on one nation for the future outside the US, his home country, "it would be India". Asked where he saw India in the coming 10-15 years, especially given ongoing flagship reforms like Digital India, smart cities and Make in India, Chambers said "India would not only be one of the three top economic powers of the world" but grow with the strength of its democracy and partnerships. He, however, cautioned that it was important to realise that one could get left behind very quickly in the dynamic hi-tech industry. Stating that Prime Minister Narendra Modi's vision for digital India was a model for the world, he said there are similar digital trends in countries like France and Israel. Chambers said that strategic partnership between India and the US needs to be seen beyond pure trade numbers and profits to include larger goals like meeting the needs of the economies, focusing on inclusion, fostering innovation and entrepreneurship and corporate responsibility. Confessing that he was a "champion of India", Chambers lauded the role of Modi in shaping progressive policies and innovative ideas. "My love for this country is no secret...I love the people of this country," said the high-profile tech czar. The film includes an interesting ensemble of actors including Rishi Kapoor, Rajat Kapur, Prateik Babbar and Taapsee Pannu. Mumbai: Veteran actor Rishi Kapoor is really looking forward to his next film 'Mulk' as he is really excited to visit to shoot in Benaras and Lucknow as he has heard 'such great stories' about the cities. Rishi, who will be visiting Benaras and Lucknow for filmmaker Anubhav Sinha's film 'Mulk' soon, said in an interview, "I have not done drama in a long time and when Anubhav narrated the film to me, I loved the concept of the film. Shooting in Benaras and Lucknow will be an added bonus since I have heard such great stories about the cities." The film includes interesting ensemble of actors including Rishi Kapoor, Rajat Kapur, Prateik Babbar and Taapsee Pannu, a star cast that will be working with the ' Tum Bin' and 'Ra One' director for the very first time. While talking about the story of the movie, Rajat Kapur reiterated, "I haven't come across a script in over 2 years that has creatively excited me after Kapoor and Sons. When I met Anubhav for the first time I was quite impressed with storytelling skills of Mulk and in fact I told him that this is will be a brand new challenge as this film is something he has never attempted in the past. It is a very unusual thriller that will make audiences sit up in their seats and take note." Taapsee is looking forward to being a part of the film where she will get to play a 'gritty character'. "I'm confident of this film to find place in the audience's heart as the content is very relevant. The best part of doing a social thriller is you get a chance to present a story that's been happening around all of us but no one really bothers to address it," noted the 'Naam Shabana' actress. The plot of the film revolves around the story of a joint family who hails from a small town in India, who are out to reclaim their honour after being embroiled in a controversy. Bond will be journeying to Croatia for a film based on the 2001 novel 'Never Dream of Dying' by Raymond Benson. London: James Bond fans, we have some good news for you. According to The Mirror, Bond will be journeying to Croatia for a film based on the 2001 novel 'Never Dream of Dying' by Raymond Benson, the author of 'Tomorrow Never Dies', 'The World is Not Enough' and 'Die Another Day'. According to sources, Bond scriptwriters feel it could be the perfect follow-up to 'Spectre.' They are hoping to film in Croatia next year. Other exotic locales the film is expected to traverse include Japan and the south of France, the setting of the novel's opening scene. The source claims that the film's working title is 'Shatterhand' and will see 007 come up against a blind villain. 'Never Dream of Dying' sees Bond start a relationship with Tylyn Mignonne, a film star whose husband is connected to The Union, a recurring crime organisation within the 007 novel series. In the running to replace Sam Mendes as director following 'Skyfall' and 'Spectre' are Yann Demange ('71), David Mackenzie (Hell or High Water) and 'Arrival's Denis Villenueve whose 'Blade Runner' sequel arrives in cinemas this October. Despite no official confirmation, Christoph Waltz and Dave Bautista are both expected to return as villains while Naomie Harris (Miss Moneypenny), Ben Whishaw and Rory Kinnear are all set to return. Bond 25 is scheduled to arrive in cinemas in November 2019. In a major breakthrough, LeT chief commander Abu Dujana of Pakistan was killed in an encounter on Tuesday morning. Earlier on Wednesday, suspecting presence of terrorists, the Indian Army and the police launched a cordon and search operation at the Sugan village of Shopian district.(Photo: ANI/Representational) Kulgam (Jammu and Kashmir): Two Hizb-ul-Mujahideen terrorists were killed in a brief gunfight with the security forces in South Kashmir's Kulgam district last night. "Encounter lasted half an hour, eliminated 2 Hizb-ul-Mujahideen terrorists who were involved in many cases," SSP Shridhar Patil said. In another incident, an encounter is underway between the security forces and militants at the Imam Sahab area of South Kashmir's Shopian district. At least two to three militants are believed to have been trapped in the area. Further details are awaited. Earlier on Wednesday, suspecting presence of terrorists, the Indian Army and the police launched a cordon and search operation at the Sugan village of Shopian district. In a major breakthrough, LeT chief commander Abu Dujana of Pakistan along with his accomplice Arif were killed in an encounter with security forces at Hakripora village in Jammu and Kashmir's Pulwama district on Tuesday morning. Following this, the separatists had called for 'bandh' to protest the killing of two Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) terrorists and a civilian. The civilian was killed in protest that erupted following an encounter in which LeT terrorist Abu Dujana and Arif were gunned down by security forces. During the search operation, the militants fired upon the party in which three army personnel were injured. A cordon and search operation was launched by Army in Zaipora area of Shopian during the night following intelligence inputs about the presence of militants there. (Photo: ANI) Srinagar: Two Army men, including a major,were killed and another jawan was injured when militants opened fire on a search party of security forces in Shopian district of south Kashmir, police said on Thursday. A cordon and search operation was launched by Army in Zaipora area of Shopian during the night following intelligence inputs about the presence of militants there, a police official said. He said during the search operation, the militants fired upon the party in which three army personnel were injured. The injured were taken to Army's 92 base hospital here, where two of them, including a major, succumbed, the official said, adding that the other jawan is undergoing treatment. At least two to three militants are believed to have been trapped in the area. The search operation at Zaipora is on, the official said. Two Hizb-ul-Mujahideen terrorists were killed in a brief gunfight with the security forces in South Kashmir's Kulgam district Wednesday night. In a separate incident that took place in neighbouring Kulgam district, two Hizbul militants were killed late Wednesday night. Srinagar: Two Army personnel including a Major and an equal number of militants were killed and a soldier wounded Thursday in separate gun battles in southern Shopian and Kulgam districts of Jammu and Kashmir. The police and Army sources said that an Army Major and two soldiers were critically injured in a fire fight with a group of militants holed up in a private house in Matribugh, Zainpora village of Shopian, about 70-km south of Srinagar. They were airlifted to Srinagars 92-Base Army Hospital where Major Kamlesh Pandey and sepoy Tenzin succumbed to their injuries whereas the condition of the third jawan Kripal Singh continued to be critical, the sources said. The troops from the Armys 62 Rashtriya Rifles had along with Jammu and Kashmir polices counterinsurgency Special Operations Group (SOG) and the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) laid siege to Matribugh late Wednesday night after learning about the presence of two to three militants. The contact with the holed up gunmen was established at around 2:30 am, the sources said. The terrorists opened fire as the security forces zeroed in on their hideout, triggering off the encounter. The Army suffered casualties in the initial fire of the terrorists, said a defence spokesman in Srinagar. The police sources said that the militants are believed to have escaped from the area after breaking the security dragnet. Hizb-ul-Mujahideen in a statement to a local news agency said the militants involved in the incident have returned to another hideout and that they are being rewarded for killing five Indian soldiers. Its spokesman Burhanuddin was quoted by the news agency CNS as saying, The valiant mujahideen of our organization laid an ambush and attacked the Army party from all sides. Five Indian soldiers were killed and many others were injured. The Mujahideen managed to reach their destinations safely after the daring attack. He threatened Such attacks will continue across Kashmir Valley. In a separate incident that took place in Gopalpora village of neighbouring Kulgam district, two militants were killed late Wednesday night, the police said. They have been identified as Aaqib Itoo and Suhail Ahmad, both local Kashmiris belonging to Hizb-ul-Mujahideen. The officials said that the duo was killed after the SOG and the Army jointly laid an ambush in the village on intelligence inputs about their movement in the area. Two terrorists were killed and two weapons were found on them, said defence spokesman Colonel Rajesh Kalia. The police added that one of the slain men was involved in the June 16 attack on a police van in which six policemen including Station House Office Feroz Ahmed Dar were killed at Tajwah, Acchabal in neighbouring Anantnag district. Shah, who was produced before the Patiala House Court, also said he was forced to sign the statements and few blank documents. New Delhi: Separatist leader and Democratic Freedom Party (DFP) chairman Shabir Shah on Thursday filed an application in a Delhi court, alleging inhuman behaviour and threat to life. Shah, who was produced before the Patiala House Court, also said he was forced to sign the statements and few blank documents. He also alleged all of the things hatched against him due to political vendetta, to which the Enforcement Directorate (ED) counsel responded by saying, "People like Shah are ruining the country". The ED lawyer further said, "Can Shah say 'Bharat Mata ki Jai'?" Following this, the court intervened and asked both not to convert the court into a TV studio. The ED has also submitted an application before the court for further remand of Shah in connection with the terror funding case. In its remand application, the ED submitted before the court that Shah is in continuous contact with anti-national elements/terrorists residing in Pakistan in garb of the Kashmir issue. Contacts from his mobile phone revealed that he is in regular touch with Pakistan, Dubai and England and that the same needs to be examined. On July 26, Shah was produced in the court, following which he was sent to a seven-day ED custody. On July 25, Shah was arrested from his residence, where he was under house detention for a very long time, in Jammu and Kashmir's Srinagar. The National Investigation Agency (NIA) has been tough on Separatists regarding the alleged funding by Pakistan for illegal activities in Kashmir. On July 24, the NIA arrested seven separatists over money laundering charges, for funding terror in the Kashmir Valley. All seven separatist leaders - Altaf Shah, Ayaz Akbar, Peer Saifullah, Mehraj Kalwal, Shahid-ul-Islam, Naeem Khan and Bitta Karate - were later sent to 10-day NIA custody. The accused have been charged under various sections of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) and the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act. The NIA visited Srinagar in May to probe the alleged funding by Pakistan for illegal activities in Kashmir, and questioned several separatist leaders on the issue of raising, collecting and transferring funds via the Hawala route and other channels to fund terror activities in Kashmir. The NIA sleuths specifically questioned separatist leaders Farooq Ahmed Dar alias Bitta Karate and Gazi Javed Baba at that time. The NIA is said to be probing all aspects of funding to separatist leaders and how they reportedly used these funds to fuel unrest in the Kashmir Valley. Swaraj lambasted Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi, without naming him, for meeting the Chinese ambassador on the Doklam situation. New Delhi: Amid the Doklam standoff, India on Thursday pitched for patiently finding a solution through bilateral talks, with external affairs minister Sushma Swaraj saying in Rajya Sabha that war cannot resolve problems. Articulating the governments position with eloquence during a discussion, Swaraj lambasted Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi, without naming him, for meeting the Chinese ambassador on the Doklam situation recently, without first ascertaining facts from the Indian government. The minister said Indias concerns emanate from Chinese actions on the ground which have implications for the determination of tri-junction boundary point between India, China and Bhutan, and the alignment of the India-China boundary in the Sikkim sector. She referred to a ministry of external affairs (MEA) statement of June 30 which made it clear that Indian troops had entered Doklam which both India and Bhutan consider as Bhutanese territory after Bhutan approached India in the wake of road-construction by the Chinese Army. War cannot resolve problems. So wisdom is to resolve (it) diplomatically. War is not a solution to anything. Even after war, there has to be a dialogue. So, have dialogue without a war... Patience, control on comments and diplomacy can resolve problems, Swaraj said, in what is being seen as a dig at Chinas repeated threats and warnings directed at India. Indian and Chinese troops have been locked in a face-off at Doklam for the past about six weeks. Swaraj was replying to the Oppositions allegation that the government did not have a stable foreign policy. The Opposition also asked the government to spell out its roadmap to deal with China.The minister said, We are maintaining patience and controlling comments. She was replying during a discussion on Indias foreign policy and engagement with strategic partners during which members voiced concern over the stand-off and raised questions over Indias policy. We will keep patience to resolve the issue, Swaraj said, adding, We will keep engaging with China to resolve the dispute. Criticising Gandhi, she said that the leader of the main Opposition party, instead of asking the Indian government about the (Doklam) situation, chose to ask the Chinese ambassador (instead). She added, You (Congress) should have first sought details from the government and then confronted the Chinese envoy. In response to questions about Indias military readiness, she said the Army is trained to fight wars. Reading out a separate prepared text on the Doklam issue, Swaraj said, Our relations with China have recently come under renewed focus due to developments in the Doklam area in the Sikkim sector close to the India-China-Bhutan tri-junction point... Our concerns emanate from Chinese actions on the ground which have implications for the determination of tri-junction boundary point between India, China and Bhutan and the alignment of the India-China boundary in the Sikkim sector... The Chinese action in the Doklam area is, therefore, of concern. Swaraj said boundary disputess in the Sikkim sector are yet to be settled along with other issues like nuclear suppliers group (NSG) and the blocking of UN sanctions against Jaish-e-Mohammad terror outfit chief Masood Azhar. The Chinese side has selectively quoted parts of (Indias first) Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehrus letter of March 22, 1959, pertaining to the India-China boundary in the Sikkim sector, she said.India believes that peace and tranquillity in the India-China border areas is an important pre-requisite for smooth development of bilateral relations. We will continue to engage with the Chinese side through diplomatic channels to find a mutually acceptable solution on the basis of the Astana consensus between our leaders, she said In this regard, in keeping with the unique and traditional friendship with Bhutan, we will also continue to maintain close consultation and coordination with the Royal Government of Bhutan, the minister said. Deputy chief of mission in the Chinese embassy Liu Jinsong warns India of serious consequences if it did not pull out all troops from Doklam. New Delhi: China continued its attack on India over the border standoff on Wednesday with the deputy chief of mission in the Chinese embassy here, Liu Jinsong, calling the deployment of Indian troops at Doklam as a risky and indisciplined move. He warned India of serious consequences if it did not pull out all troops from Doklam, adding that New Delhi must pullback its legs (boots on the ground). The senior diplomat said the current number of Indian troops in Doklam is 48, a claim denied by India which has maintained that 350 soldiers were still digging their heels in. We dont want Indian troops in Doklam for a single day, not even for a single hour. Your (Indias) legs are becoming too long. It is an indisciplined, risky and harmful move (by India), Mr Liu said. There is no room for discussion except that India withdraws its troops. There should be no stalling tactics (by India) or any illusions. The wrong-doer must correct its actions, said Mr Liu. He, however, maintained that China can deploy troops there as it is Chinese territory. While the Chinese foreign ministry has been routinely lambasting India on the Doklam stand-off, the raising of the pitch by a senior Chinese diplomat in New Delhi is meant to serve as yet another stringent warning from Beijing. Beijing said that it had notified New Delhi twice on May 18 and June 8 regarding road construction in the area out of goodwill but there was no response from India then. Mr Liu referred to President Xi Jinpings recent utterance that military option is the fundamental guarantee to protect Chinas unity and territorial integrity. The Chinese diplomat also accused India of embarrassing Bhutan by deploying troops in Doklam. Both India and Bhutan regard Doklam as Bhutanese territory but China refers to it as Dong Lang and claims it as its own. Indian and Chinese troops have been locked in a face-off at Doklam for the past about six weeks. When asked about Bhutanese objections in an official statement on the Chinese road-construction, Mr Liu claimed that Bhutan had said they did not know about Indian troop movement in Bhutan whereas top Indian government sources maintained that Indian troops were deployed in Doklam only after Bhutan approached India for help in the wake of the Chinese move to construct a road. The Chinese diplomat also hinted that Bhutan was not on the same page as India on the Doklam situation. He claimed that the Bhutanese reaction to the Doklam developments had been slow and that this was because Bhutan had been put in a difficult spot by India which, he said, was exerting undue pressure on it. At best, the difference in views are between Bhutan and China (on Doklam). What justification does India have (to intervene)? asked Mr Liu. The Chinese diplomat also maintained that the 1890 agreement between British India and China on the boundary between Sikkim (part of India) and Tibet (part of China) is binding on India. China and India have been engaged in the standoff in the Doklam area near the Bhutan tri-junction for the past one month. New Delhi: Minister of External Affairs (MEA) Sushma Swaraj on Thursday said in the Rajya Sabha that India has taken efforts to ease the standoff with China. She further stated that war cannot resolve problems and that the wisdom is to resolve issues diplomatically on the issue of border stand-off with China. "Bhutan is our neighbour and it wants help with its development. Modi's 'sabka saath, sabka vikaas' policy is not just for Indians but also for our neighbours," said MEA Sushma Swaraj. She also said that the government is not just negotiating on Doklam, but is also talking on the bilateral relations with China. "The solution will only come from that. Prime Minister Narendra Modi said let us not convert our difference into dispute," she said. She further stated that Prime Minister Modi is now shaping "global agendas." "How can the Congress ask us to not oppose the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor ( CPEC)? The previous government's foreign policy was 'PMO' driven," Sushma said in Rajya Sabha. "The Chinese are selectively quoting Jawaharlal Nehru's letter. Peace and tranquility with China is important. Doklam can be resolved through bilateral talks," she said. Swaraj further said that since 2012, Indian Government has not held any discussions on tri-junction with Bhutan and therefore, Chinese action in Doklam area is of "concern." The statement came after the Opposition on Thursday cornered the government in Parliament on the standoff with China over the Doklam issue. Congress leader Anand Sharma sought a reply from Prime Minister Narendra Modi, saying that he "should tell the nation what he discussed with Chinese President Xi Jinping. Even National Security Advisor (NSA) Ajit Doval didn't utter a word on his meeting in China." On July 2, China emphatically rejected India's interference in its ongoing boundary dispute with Bhutan in the Doklam area and again urged New Delhi to withdraw unconditionally and end the nearly two-month long stand-off. China alleged that India's intrusion into its territory under the pretext of defending Bhutan's territorial claims, has not only violated Beijing's territorial sovereignty, but also challenged Bhutan's sovereignty and independence. Indian and Chinese troops continue to be locked in a standoff in Doklam and both sides have moved additional troops, ammunition and military equipment to the area. The stand-off emerged after Chinese troops were stopped by the Indian Army from constructing roads along the Doklam border. India claims Sikkim border as part of its territory, while China has said that the area falls on their side as per the 1890 treaty signed between British and China. Consequently, China suspended the annual Kailash Manasarovar Yatra and conceded that the decision to suspend the pilgrimage was due to the border scuffle. It also alleged that the Indian troops had crossed the Sikkim sector of the Indo-China border. Beijing has accused New Delhi of violating a convention signed in 1890 between Britain and China relating to Sikkim and Tibet. In case of cross-voting, the anti-defection law disqualifies an MLA, but the use of Nota, however, does not invite automatic disqualification. New Delhi: In a setback to the Congress ahead of Rajya Sabha polls in Gujarat on August 8, the Supreme Court on Thursday refused to restrain the Election Commission from using Nota (None of the Above) option in ballot papers for the elections. The court rejected the partys contention that Nota was a recipe for corruption and questioned why it had not objected to the provisions use all these years. The permission to use Nota in Gujarat may impact the fate of Congress Rajya Sabha nominee Ahmed Patel, political advisor to party president Sonia Gandhi, amid desertions and alleged attempts by the BJP to poach Congress MLAs. Fearing trouble for Mr Patel, the Congress has lodged 44 MLAs from the state in Bengaluru to shield them from alleged poaching bids. The Congress fears that some MLAs may use Nota to defeat Mr Patel in his contest against BJP nominee Balwantsinh Rajput, who recently quit as a Congress chief whip. There are three vacancies of RS seats in Gujarat and four candidates, including Mr Patel. The other two BJP candidates, party president Amit Shah and Union minister Smriti Irani, are expected to sail through by virtue of the saffron partys majority in the legislature. In case of cross-voting, the anti-defection law disqualifies an MLA, but the use of Nota, however, does not invite automatic disqualification. A defiant MLA may, however, face disciplinary action, including expulsion. A three-judge bench headed by Justice Dipak Misra rejected the Congress petition and said, The use of Nota in ballot papers was first declared by the Election Commission in its circular in January 2014 and this was followed by another circular in November 2015. Anybody could challenge it after the 2014 circular. You cant wait till you are affected and come to us on the eve of the election. How many elections have been conducted since these circulars? Why didnt you challenge it then? When it suited you, you didnt challenge it, but when it doesnt, you raise objections, the court told counsel Kapil Sibal and Abhishek Singhvi appearing for petitioner, Shailesh Manubhai Parmar, chief whip of the Congress in Gujarat Assembly. We are at a loss to understand why didnt you challenge these circulars, first of which came long back in January 2014. The circulars clearly said they will be applied as and when elections take place, said the bench, also comprising Justices Amitav Roy and A.M. Kanwilkar. When Mr Sibal described the use of Nota as a recipe for corruption, Justice Roy asked whether he was apprehensive of losing the Rajya Sabha polls in Gujarat. Senior counsel Ashok Desai, appearing for the EC, submitted that Nota had been used in all the Rajya Sabha polls since the 2014 circular, including those in Maharashtra, Kerala, Odisha and Tamil Nadu. The petition had sought quashing of the August 1 circular issued by the secretary of the Gujarat Assembly. The circular said that Nota option will be made applicable in the Upper House elections. The Delhi police had lodged a murder case against convict Pawan Kumar on a complaint by the father of the victim in 2010. New Delhi: Allowing an appeal by a murder convict for converting his offence of killing his wife to causing her death on the spur of a moment without any intention, the Delhi high court has set him free with the term of imprisonment he had already undergone during the pendency of the case. The court later ordered his immediate release. The Delhi police had lodged a murder case against convict Pawan Kumar on a complaint by the father of the victim in 2010. The couple had got married in 2002 and two children were born out of the wedlock. The trial court had awarded him life imprisonment, holding him guilty of smothering his wife. Counsel for the convict did not challenge his conviction. Rather, he argued that it was a case of his client killing his wife in the heat of the moment without any intention. In the present case, we find that though it was the case of the prosecution that the appellant used to regularly beat his wife/the deceased, the same is belied by the medical evidence, the HC said. Refusing to pay for the cigarettes, a group of men got involved in a feud with the vendor, which soon turned ugly. o contain the issue, a team of policemen from Connaught Place (CP) was sent to the spot. (Photo:PTI) New Delhi: Four men were arrested on Thursday for opening fire at policemen near Shivaji Stadium in the high-security Lutyens Delhi, said police. Refusing to pay for the cigarettes, a group of men got involved in a feud with the vendor, which soon turned ugly. To contain the issue, a team of policemen from Connaught Place (CP) was sent to the spot. The accused were returning to Uttam Nagar after having dinner at a restaurant in CP in their Ertiga car when they came to the Shivaji Stadium bus terminal to buy cigarettes. When the owner of the kiosk asked for money, one of the six men brandished a pistol and pointed the butt towards him. A man standing at the kiosk quickly ran towards the police picket, said a senior police officer. We have arrested four persons after a brief encounter. The arrested accused has been identified as Aman Bhatia (25), Punit Bhatia (25), Sahil Verma (25) and Kamal (23), said a senior police official. When the cops reached the spot and ordered the accused, Aman Bhatia, to surrender, he refused and opened fire at him. Following this, a Delhi police team exchanged fire with Aman and the other members of his group. The accused also tried to flee the spot but was soon nabbed. Police said that the incident took place at around 11 pm when a passerby informed one of the inspectors about a quarrel outside Shivaji Stadium. A team led by SHO Pankaj Malik reached the place and found that one Aman Bhatia, who was recently released from the jail in a murder case, was pointing his country made a pistol to the kiosk owner. The DCP said, We have also recovered a country made pistol with two live cartridges from the possession of Aman Bhatia, who is found to be previously involved in a murder case. During the investigation, we found that this gang of criminals is also wanted in another case of a shootout in Connaught Place area about one month back. The police added that they are making efforts to arrest the other accused. The corporation's counsel Anil Sakhare submitted to the court that it has so far addressed over 500 complaints regarding potholes. Mumbai: The Bombay High Court on Thursday rapped the Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai (MCGM) for its failure to repair potholes and maintain roads in the megapolis which has resulted in the death of over 20 people since monsoon. "We read that because of potholes more than 25 persons have died this monsoon. How many more do you (MCGM) want to eliminate (kill) before next monsoon? The condition of the roads here are bad. We are not at all satisfied," said Chief Justice Manjula Chellur. A division bench of Chief Justice Chellur and Justice NM Jamdar was hearing a suo moto (on its own) public interest litigation on the poor condition of roads in Mumbai and the MCGM's failure to prevent and repair potholes every monsoon. The corporation's counsel Anil Sakhare on Thursday submitted to the court that it has so far addressed over 500 complaints regarding potholes to which the court quipped it was not concerned with how many complaints were attended to. "We want the roads to be repaired and maintained properly. The corporation is not just required to do so but it is obliged to maintain the roads," Chief Justice Chellur said. "From tomorrow onwards, I will personally note down how many potholes are there on the route I travel daily. If everyone starts doing it then entire Mumbai will be covered and then the corporation will know where there are potholes," Chief Justice Chellur said. When informed by Sakhare that there was a committee of the civic body in place to carry out surveys, the court said, "After the committee has been formed how many persons have died due to potholes and bad roads? It is a shame that we are at a stage where we have to supervise the committee. Where are things going wrong?" The court noted that the issue of potholes and bad roads persists not just in Mumbai but also in other cities and districts of Maharashtra. "We therefore implede as respondents in this petition all local municipal corporations and municipal councils of the state," the court said posting the petition for hearing after two months. The court has also appointed the member secretaries of Maharashtra State Legal Services Authority from each district as nodal officers. "Any person having complaint regarding potholes or any obstacles on roads that is causing accidents can forward the same to the concerned civic body and also the nodal officer," the court directed. Most chemist managers said they do not have a license to keep the stock of H1N1 medicines. From January to July this year, 366 casualties have been reported of which 103 have been reported in the month of July alone in the state. (Photo: Representational/PTI) Mumbai: Amidst the rise in swine flu cases, patients are finding it difficult to procure the anti-virus medicines for the flu, namely oseltamivir and zanavir (TamiFlu). This after the state called back its GR that directed all chemists to stock and sell the antivirals. Chemists in the city are confused whether they can store the stocks of these anti-viruses or not. Most chemist managers said they do not have a license to keep the stock of H1N1 medicines. From January to July this year, 366 casualties have been reported of which 103 have been reported in the month of July alone in the state. Ramesh Shah, the manager of the chemist outside the King Edward Memorial Hospital in Parel, said there is a shortage of H1N1 medicines for some days and some chemists do not have any stock of Tamiflu. Shiva Patil from Shivkripa Medical Store in Parel said, We have the license needed to stock the medicine. Moreover, the medicine is given only when the patients carry the prescription with them. State health minister, Dr. Deepak Sawant had asked all doctors to prescribe Tamiflu tablets to patients suffering from swine flu. Also, all chemist shops were granted permission to dispense Tamiflu to control swine flu. According to the state health department, The main reason behind the shortage of medicines is the people working in chemist shops are not aware that all these medicines should be given with urgency. They are failing to follow the new GR, which says they can keep the stock of swine flu in their stores, he added. The FDA circular in July alerted chemists that Oseltamivir and Zanamivir have been withdrawn from Schedule X and moved to Schedule H1. Nitin Maniyar, secretary, Chemist and Retail Dispensing Associations, said Many chemists arent aware that they require license to sell Tamiflu, which is a lengthy process. Hence, they do not have the stock. Mopalwar talks of land and money in audio clip. Mumbai: Bowing to pressure from the opposition Congress-NCP members, chief minister Devendra Fadnavis on Thursday finally removed controversial IAS officer Radheshyam Mopalwar as the managing director of Maharashtra State Road Development Corporation (MSRDC) till an inquiry on a corruption charge is completed against him. The opposition raised uproar in the Assembly on Thursday demanding Mr Mopalwars suspension over a controversial audio clip. After Mr Mopalwars removal from his post however, the opposition said it would not allow the Assembly to function until housing minister Prakash Mehta, who is facing accusations of favouring a builder, also resigns. In the alleged audio clip of Mr Mopalwar, two people are talking about a plot of land and one is convincing the other to pay a bribe in Mantralaya to get work done. Mr Fadnavis said he has already announced a probe against Mopalwar. The inquiry will be conducted in a months time, the CM said. Mr Fadnavis said that considering the sentiments of the opposition members about Mopalwar, he will be removed from the post. However, one needs to recall that Mopalwar was always given good postings during the Congress-NCP (Nationalist Congress Party) regime. The allegations against him are (from) during the Congress-NCP period, he added Raising the issue in the House, NCP leader Ajit Pawar said some new information has come forth against Mr Mopalwar. A new piece of information has been revealed now about Mopalwar. On January 9, 2017, the chief minister had given an order of inquiry to the crime branch in a matter that is related to Mopalwar. In fact, BJP MLA Anil Gote had only demanded the inquiry. Complaints have been registered five to six times against Mopalwar. Even the Prime Ministers Office has asked about the Mopalwar issue. This is a very serious issue and the government should not protect the officer, Mr Pawar said. Leader of Opposition in the Assembly, Radhakrishna Vikhe-Patil, alleged that the government is defending the officer by not taking any action against him. Who is Mopalwar and why is the government trying to protect him? The government boasts about transparency but now it is exposed. Eknath Khadse had resigned before allegations against him were proved. The officer should also be suspended, Mr Vikhe-Patil said. Amid the uproar, the Assembly was adjourned five times and then for the entire day after Mr Fadnavis removed the controversial officer from the post. Mr Fadnavis then attacked opposition leaders and said allegations being made against Mr Mopalwar with respect to some projects date back to when the Congress-NCP government was in power. There is no mention of the Mumbai-Nagpur Expressway project that the IAS officer was overseeing as the MSRDC managing director, he said. The `46,000 crore Expressway, also called Samruddhi Mahamarg (prosperity corridor), is being implemented by the MSRDC and considered a pet project of Mr Fadnavis. However, the opposition was not satisfied with action taken only against Mr Mopalwar. NCP leader Jayant Patil said, We are not satisfied with the state government because there is no announcement about Mehta. The minister has also made some mistakes and he should be punished as well. Sodomy probe slows down as minor witnesses refuse to open up. According to the guidelines issued by the HC, cops cannot produce minor kids in a court of law or take them to the police station for interrogation. Mumbai: In past one month, there have been two instances of three minor boys being sodomised in Andheri and Powai area, but the police has not been able to get the minor witnesses to speak up. The reason being that as per the law they cannot be brought to the police station, and have to be questioned in front of their parents. Both the victims in the Powai case have committed suicide. While seven teenage boys were arrested by the D.N. Nagar police on Wednesday for sodomising their 15-year-old friend for a period spanning two months, the perpetrators of sodomising two minor boys from Powai are still at large. The latter case happened on July 6, when three men allegedly sodomised the two boys aged 10 and 13 respectively. Sources in the Powai police station told this newspaper that in the latter case, the children in the area of Powai village are the only major lead that the police can get at this point of time. According to the guidelines issued by the HC, cops cannot produce the minor kids in the court of law or take them to the police station for interrogation. Whatever interrogation that has to take place is supposed to be done considering the childs convenience and the police officers should not be dressed in their uniforms. Navinchandra Reddy, deputy commissioner of police, zone 10 had told this newspaper, We suspect that the kids might be knowing something, but due to their parents fear, they are not opening up to the police. We are finding it difficult to take the probe forward, as there are very few leads to follow. He added, We also suspect that the perpetrators of the Powai crime have left the city. We have already sent a team to various places to nab the unidentified accused persons. The Powai police had also asked the shopkeepers in the locality if they had sold a spiked cold drink on July 6, but the shopkeepers have said they usually sell 50 bottles a day, and it is hard to remember something from 10 days ago. Sodomy cases in recent years 2009 The police arrested a 21-year-old labourer and a horse carriage driver for sodomising two young boys, in two separate cases. The incidents took place at Dharavi and Cuffe Parade. 2011 British paedophiles Duncan Grant and Allan Waters surrendered and were later convicted for sexual abuse of minor boys in Mumbai. 2015 Two years after his arrest, charges were framed against Fr Lawrence Johnson for allegedly abusing a teenage boy from his parish in Shivaji Nagar in 2017. Finance being prosperity and firepower, destruction thereof, the external posturing of the Dragon is more than understandable and expected. China today is 45.6 per cent rural and 54.4 per cent urban, a change from 53.4 per cent rural and 46.6 per cent urban populace in 1989. In comparison, India today is 69.8 per cent rural and 30.2 per cent urban. The Soviet-Afghan War was followed by the demise of the mighty USSR, unification of a divided Germany and the end of the Cold War. All were visibly momentous events of West-centric world order in developed Europe. Yet, there was also unfolding an invisible yet equally momentous story in developing Asia. Mainland China was changing fast and furious. Followed suddenly by the post-1991 India. China owes its growth to my way or highway posturing based on national interest by the single-party command regime with an alibi of communism and an enormous appetite for capitalism. Command, rather than consensus, transformed and reshaped Chinas countryside fast. Determinedly, China made things happen with a sense of urgency to catch up with lost opportunities of the past. How did India change? For some, that still remains a mystery. All the more, since India was forced to sell its gold reserves to alien land, in 1991, to avoid failing its international debt payment obligation. Thus, between the end of the Soviet-Afghan War in 1989 and 2013, both China and India, which never figured in the list of toppers except while counting of heads, burst into the league of top 10 economies of the world with Chinas performance being simply spectacular and Indias, though far from spectacular, yet, unexpectedly, exceptional. According to the 2013 figures, US $16.768 trillion economy was followed by Chinas $9.24 trillion. And the biggest surprise in the list was the 10th placed India with a $1.875 trillion economy. No doubt, the 2013 India was still way behind the world giants (like Japan $4.92 trillion, Germany $3.73 trillion, France $2.806 trillion, UK $2.678 trillion, Brazil $2.246 trillion, Italy $2.149 trillion, Russia $2.097 trillion), but it was way ahead of its imminent bankruptcy in 1991. To understand the reality further, one has to take a look at the comparative figures of the 10 biggest cities of the world between 1988 and 2015. From zero in 1988, Shanghai and Beijing took third and seventh positions, respectively in 2015 with Delhi and Mumbai filling second and fifth slots, respectively among the top 10. As mentioned above, the GDP growth apart, what made the scenario dramatic is the purchasing power parity (PPP) economics of China and India vis a vis the West. From being nowhere in the last quarter of the 20th century, by 2013 China with $16,162 billion and India with $6,784 billion took second and third positions, respectively in GDP PPP. To make matters further uncomfortable for the developed West, the list showed the most advanced falling behind the US, China, India. Thus, from the fourth-positioned Japan, the names in descending order were that of Russia, Germany, Brazil, France, UK, Indonesia, Italy, Mexico, South Korea, Saudi Arabia, Spain, Canada and Turkey. In one stroke, it transpired that both China and India constituted market par excellence market of cash-flushed consumers. Nevertheless, a stark and robust Chinese modus operandi too came to the fore. Adopting and adapting the conventional and classical economics of theory, China succeeded in translating the economic theory into applied economics, as Beijing became the hub of production, distribution and consumption. Luring the Western manufacturers with a congenial environment for industrial development, and conducive to growth of land, labour, capital, organisation, the four primary factors of production, China succeeded in developing its vast swathe of diverse landscape into an engine of growth and opportunity for multinational corporations, thereby virtually ensuring an unprecedented sort of flight of capital, labour and technology from the developed Occident to the developing Orient. Understandably, a strong motive of everything cost-effective, from land, labour, logistics, connectivity, tax policy to tariff rate and infrastructure facilities to marketing Made in China FMCG and growth of engineering and technology centres in no time, made hordes of Western corporations to shift production base. Not surprisingly, therefore, Chinas GDP of $9.24 trillion, second only to US $16.768 trillion, took the world by storm. With prosperity, however, there also emerged potential flashpoints. Compared to Indias 52.5 arable land as percentage of total land of 32,87,263 square km, China has to make do with 11.3 arable land as percentage of total land of 95,60,900 square km. Continued, and continuity in, self-sufficiency in food production, therefore is likely to be Chinas major challenge; all the more owing to the colossus loss of fertile and arable land, as rapid industrialisation changed Chinese landscape as well as labour market. China today is 45.6 per cent rural and 54.4 per cent urban, a change from 53.4 per cent rural and 46.6 per cent urban populace in 1989. In comparison, India today is 69.8 per cent rural and 30.2 per cent urban. In GDP and structure of employment too, the contemporary scenario has changed beyond recognition. Chinas structure of employment of 34.8 per cent agriculture, 29.5 per cent industry and 35.7 per cent services stands favourably with that of Europes economic powerhouse, Germanys 28.2 per cent employment in the industry sector. However, Chinas four per cent plus unemployed labour force with that of Indias five per cent and Germanys 5.5 per cent plus, constitute a formidable challenge to both the East and West. That said, there is no doubt that China today stands at a crucial juncture. Its leadership faces an unprecedented situation as Beijings four-decade-old growth model has run its course. Today, Beijing is a virtual victim of the sharp, cyclical downturn and structural flaws laid bare by the 2008 global financial crisis. And Chinas overdependence on exports exposed it to direct global economic fluctuations, thereby leading its line of production to overcapacity and the haunting possibility of a growth without employment (rather rising unemployment). Understandably, therefore, fewer things seem to be going right for Beijing. As Chinas economy goes jumbo and unmanageable, owing to weak growth, slack in demand in critical markets of the US, Europe, Japan, rising production cost and wages along with strong Chinese currency of yuan vis-a-vis dollar, is China losing its market competitiveness? Since for China, economics is foremost and fundamental, and Beijing, in the heart of hearts, prefers finance to firepower pertaining to mega consumer nations, the situation is indeed challenging. Finance being prosperity and firepower, destruction thereof, the external posturing of the Dragon is more than understandable and expected. Compulsion of domestic dictates and justifies the distant thunder like Doklam. The fact that Iran is working with the Russians in the Syrian theatre further pushes Iran away from the sensibilities of the West. The traditional Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been relegated to the background as a far more divisive undercurrent explodes within West Asia that dates back to the schism following the Prophets death and the subsequent disagreement on his successor. Today, the sectarian split in the Islamic world (ummah), translates into 85 per cent of the approximately 1.5 billion Muslims worldwide to be Sunnis, whereas the remaining are broadly Shias. The uncomfortable truce and living cheek-by-jowl in many countries flared up following the stunning Iranian Revolution in 1979, which suddenly galvanised latent Shia sentiments across the globe. Soon the theocratic Iranian regime assumed the extended moral guardianship for all Arab Shias, Turkic-speaking Azeri Shias, Shias in the Indian subcontinent, smaller Shia communities in Africa, besides their own Persian-speaking Shias. Further, the unintended consequence of removing the Saddam Hussein regime in Iraq was the emergence of the third Shia-ruled country in Baghdad. This seemingly innocuous development in the freedom of Iraq from the dictatorial clutches of Saddam Hussein unleashed the pent-up frustrations within the Iraqi Shia majority, who saw themselves as historically suppressed by the previous Sunni-ruled regime of Saddam Hussein. Thereafter, the vacuum created by the ill-advised US-ordering of the dissolution of the erstwhile Iraqi Army in 2003 was soon filled up an equally regressive and sectarian tenure of the Shia Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki (2006-2014), that saw the vengeful new Shia-dominated governmental forces and the private Shia militias reciprocating the historically perceived injustices, thus laying foundation for the most virulent strain of militant Islam in the form of ISIS (or Daesh). As the uber-puritanical and Sunni-supremacist ISIS furiously swallowed swathes of Sunni-dominated lands in the Iraqi-Syrian deserts, soon the retaliatory violence acquired a no-holds-barred dimension of open sectarianism. Expectedly, the Shia convergence of Iranian-Iraqi-Syrian forces joined hands and became the principal on-ground opponents of the ISIS caliphate. However, the festering sectarian faultlines in the extended region exploded at other places like Yemen (where the minority Shia-Houthi rebels stormed the capital Sanaa), in civil disturbances in Bahrain (where the restive Shia majority is ruled by the Sunni-monarchy), in Al Qatif in the eastern part of Saudi Arabia which hosts a minority Shia enclave, in the traditional stronghold of South Lebanon via the powerful Hezbollah etc. Suddenly all pretences of any other angularities like the anti-West, anti-Zionism or even anti-monarchies were thrown to the wind as the region got violently consumed by spectres of Iranian footprint asserting itself across West Asia. By 2004, sensing the revival of the powerful sectarian winds, King Abdullah of Jordan propounded the controversial term, Shia Crescent to describe an unbroken swath of crescent-shaped and Shia-dominated lands from the shores of Iran to the shores of Syria and Lebanon at the other end that cut across Iraq and Syria in an uninterrupted land mass of Shia influence. Adding momentum to the overall Iranian power was the signing of the Iranian nuclear deal, in the last days of the Barack Obama administration that unfroze billions of dollars of Iranian assets, besides ending the economically debilitating sanctions for Tehran. The traditional regional powers like Saudi Arabia watched in horror as Shia influence started encroaching into the traditional Saudi-Arab zones of influence and Iran emerged as a viable counter-power to the Saudis in the region. Certain knee-jerk reactions like the controversial hanging of Shia cleric Nimr-al-Nimr in Saudi Arabia, and the conceptualisation of the ostensibly anti-terrorist force of IMFAT could hardly belie the reality that all 39 countries that were part of this Saudi-led military alliance were Sunni-ruled countries, whereas, the three countries left out were the Shia trinity of Iran, Iraq and Syria. Suddenly, the underbelly of the Sunni-ruled countries like Yemen, Bahrain, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, which hosted a substantial minority population of Shias, squirmed at the prospect of meeting existential challenges from three fronts. First, against the democratic fervour unleashed by the Arab Spring that threatened these autocratic monarchies or dictators; second, having to deal with their home-grown ultra-orthodox groups like ISIS or the myriad Al Qaeda affiliates that were turning against the regimes; and then the third and added dimension of having to deal with the restless and emboldened Shia population within. Political correctness aside, the essentially sectarian term, Shia Crescent is slowly but surely taking shape with the Iranian-led forces defeating ISIS in Iraq and leading the fightback in Syria. In Lebanon, Hezbollah remains an undisputable and parallel force that routinely partakes military operation across the frontiers in Syria, on behalf of co-sectarian Bashar al-Assad. In Yemen, despite substantial military operations by Saudi Arabia, UAE and Egypt, the Shia Houthis are the most dominant force and are retaining the capital, Sanaa. Ironically, the parallel intra-Arab feuds have also facilitated the drift of the Sunni-ruled Qatari state towards Iran, besides the tactical support given to the Palestinian Hamas by the Iranians. With both military and economic might and operational results of the Iranian forces in full display the sectarian wounds and cleavage is becoming more painful and apparently irreconcilable. The Donald Trump administration has thrown its weight behind the Saudi-led bloc in a return to the anti-Iranianism that dominated US policies, before the Barack Obama tenure. The fact that Iran is working with the Russians in the Syrian theatre further pushes Iran away from the sensibilities of the West. In all, a radically different map with indelible watermarks of the politically-incorrect term, Shia Crescent is dawning over West Asia and an emerging Iran is now the latest disrupter of the existing power structures, by using the varied interpretations of Islam as instruments of aggressive foreign, economic and security policy. This sectarian divide that pre-dates the modern concept of nation states will soon start impacting the established global security, energy, trade and societal imperatives. The need for Bhutan to talk with China was possibly the most controversial suggestion His Majesty could have made. Thumbing through old files in the context of the India-China standoff on Doklan, a headline caught my eye: Need for talks with China: Bhutan King. The dateline is September 11, 1979. The King who made that bold assertion was Jigme Singye Wangchuk, the present Kings father, who now lives in thoughtful retirement. The King had, in fact, made that statement in a rare interview to this reporter. It was historic because never in history had the King spoken to the media. Why did the King make this departure from tradition? The need for Bhutan to talk with China was possibly the most controversial suggestion His Majesty could have made. Article 2 of the secret 1949 Treaty between Bhutan and India clearly states that, in the conduct of foreign affairs, Bhutan would be guided by Indias advice. This restrictive clause never erupted in contention, such was the delicacy with which relations with Bhutan were conducted. Even though geography dictated Bhutans need to have some minimal contact with China, Article 2 of the treaty caused hesitations. During Morarji Desais term as Prime Minister from 1977-79, Bhutan was allowed to upgrade its mission in New Delhi to a full-fledged embassy. Since the ambassador was also accredited to Bangladesh, over a period of time Dhaka too was allowed to open an embassy in Thimphu. This was considerable journey from 1971 when Bhutan opened its mission at the UN in 1971. And yet, the P-5 were discouraged from having missions in Thimphu because the Chinese would have to be a part of that concert. What caused the King to go public on sensitive bilateral issues was a particularly unhappy turn after Morarji Desai gave way to Charan Singhs prime ministership, which lasted five months. Charan Singh asked his newly-appointed external affairs minister, Shyam Nandan Mishra, to represent him at the Havana Nonaligned summit where Moscow and Washington (along with new friend China) were settling their Cold War scores over Indo-China. Washington and China goaded their NAM proxies to vote for Pol Pot to be seated at the summit. Since Vietnam had militarily forced Pol Pot out of Phnom Penh, replacing him with Heng Samrin, Moscows proxies, Vietnam included, were manoeuvring in his favour. Mr Mishra, sunk in the deepest layers of thought, emerged with a non-stand: he was not for Pol Pot but, well, not for Samrin either a Prince Hamlet in Havana. An exasperated King voted for Pol Pot. That this outcome was in sync with what the Chinese were lobbying for, the subsequent friction between the delegations caused an angry King to go public. Let me reproduce passages from the interview: embedded in these passages are seeds of tension that were corrected by an amended treaty in 2007. But some of which resonate in the background even in the current tensions at Doklam. Be mindful of the chronology; the king is speaking in September 1979. Recent intrusions by Tibetan graziers deep into Bhutanese territory have underlined the need for direct talks between Thimphu and Beijing with the explicit purpose of demarcating and delineating the boundary between the two countries. He said he learnt from Indian officials in Havana that some armed Chinese were also seen alongwith the graziers. But he would be able to confirm this fact only after making inquiries in Thimphu. He spoke on a range of issues ranging from Tibetans in Bhutan forming a state within a state, to the need for revising the treaty of 1949 which has so far guided Indo-Bhutanese relations. He dismissed as utter nonsense suggestions that Bhutan was aspiring to have close relations with China at the expense of its traditional ties with India. He reiterated Bhutans stand that it would have no trade or diplomatic relations directly with Beijing. This policy pursued by the Bhutanese over the years had recently been ratified by the National Assembly of that country, he said. While emphasising that a demarcated, internationally recognised border between Bhutan and China was an imperative, the king added that no definite decision on holding talks had yet been taken either by him or by the National Assembly. Moreover, our survey department is still in its infancy and we are in the process of building it up. However, New Delhi had agreed to make available such documents as might be useful in presenting Bhutans case. Once we feel that we have enough documents to make a satisfactory presentation, we shall conduct talks but only with the close understanding of the Government of India. The King was careful in his choice of words. He thought a close understanding preferable to close consultations consultations somehow implied that we are seeking Indias permission, which is not the case. What then was the relevance of the treaty of friendship between India and Bhutan signed in 1949? More specifically, Article 2 of the treaty, which states Bhutan shall seek Indian advice in the conduct of its foreign affairs. He said much had happened since 1949. If you want my candid reply and not a diplomatic one the treaty can certainly be brought up to date. Thimphu does not consider Indias advice in the conduct of Bhutans foreign affairs as binding on the kingdom. The two countries have not had serious difficulties or differences in the interpretation of Article 2. But why should we retain a treaty which can lend itself to loose interpretations. He said the basic understanding would be that Bhutan shall do nothing that would harm Indias vital interests. Giving details of recent intrusions by Tibetan graziers into Bhutan, he said this sort of activity was seasonal in north-west Bhutan. Even this year, let me emphasise, there was no crisis situation. But the graziers had penetrated deeper this year for reasons which are truly difficult to analyse. He confirmed that we have protested to the Chinese and have not yet received an answer. This is the legacy of having a traditional undemarcated border, he said. The Government of Bhutans view is that to leave the border undemarcated would be to the disadvantage of Bhutan in the long run. The issue of 4,000-odd Tibetans in Bhutan was fraught with grave danger, he said. A situation has arisen whereby the Tibetans have carved a state within a state, taking their instructions from Dharamsala, the Dalai Lamas headquarters. Since 1964, the Tibetans had been offered Bhutanese citizenship so they could be moved from the separate settlements and integrated with the Bhutanese people. But on one pretext or the other, they had resisted assimilation. And now we have proof they are paying taxes to Dharamsala and their representatives are attending their own assembly in that retreat. The situation is implicated because neither is India willing to accept them nor were they willing to adopt Bhutanese citizenship. He said it was wrong to say that Bhutan had taken a position at Havana on the question of Kampuchean representation at variance with India. If Bhutan had not asked for Pol Pots representatives to be seated at Havana, it would have been tantamount to endorsing Vietnamese armed intervention in Kampuchea. India took no position at all: Can you blame us if we took one and can our stand be described as being in opposition to Indias? He said that the Nonaligned Movement was in real danger of splitting into two camps moderates (Bhutan considers itself a moderate state) and radicals, led by Cuba. He said there was little doubt that Cuba was attempting to tilt the movement towards the Soviet bloc. He was asked that if Bhutan was not bound by Indias advice in foreign affairs and was a sovereign, independent nation, what inhibited it from having normal diplomatic relations with China? He said the Communist ideology practised in Beijing was incompatible with Buddhism. Mattis, McMaster and other top aides are putting together answers to Trump's questions in a way to try to get him to approve the strategy. Washington: President Donald Trump's doubts about the war in Afghanistan has led to a delay in completing a new US strategy in South Asia, skepticism that included a suggestion that the US military commander in the region be fired, US officials said on Wednesday. During a July 19 meeting in the White House Situation Room, Trump demanded that his top national security aides provide more information on what one official called "the end-state" in a country where the United States has spent 16 years fighting against the Taliban with no end in sight. The meeting grew stormy when Trump said Defense Secretary James Mattis and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Joseph Dunford, a Marine general, should consider firing Army General John Nicholson, commander of US forces in Afghanistan, for not winning the war. "We aren't winning," he told them, according to the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity. In addition, once the meeting concluded, Trump's chief strategist, Steve Bannon, got into what one official called "a shouting match" with White House national security adviser H.R. McMaster over the direction of U.S. policy. Some officials left the meeting stunned by the presidents vehement complaints that the military was allowing the United States to lose the war Mattis, McMaster and other top aides are putting together answers to Trump's questions in a way to try to get him to approve the strategy, the officials said. The White House had no comment on the accounts of the meeting. Another meeting of top aides is scheduled on Thursday. Although Trump earlier this year gave Mattis the authority to deploy US military forces as he sees fit, in fact the defense secretary's plans to add around 4,000 more US troops to the 8,400 currently deployed in Afghanistan are being caught up in the delay surrounding the strategy, the officials said. "It's been contingent all along informally on the strategy being approved," a senior administration official said of the troop deployment. Trump has long been a skeptic of lingering U.S. involvement in foreign wars and has expressed little interest in deploying military forces without a specific plan on what they will do and for how long. Officials said Trump argued that the United States should demand a share of Afghanistans estimated $1 trillion in mineral wealth in exchange for its assistance to the Afghan government. But other officials noted that without securing the entire country, which could take many years, there is no way to get the countrys mineral riches to market, except to Iran. Trump complained that the Chinese are profiting from their mining operations, the officials said. The oath-taking of the federal cabinet was expected on Wednesday but the Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz) failed to finalise a team. Islamabad: Newly-elected Pakistan Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi on Wednesday postponed the formation of new Cabinet for a day after holding consultations with ousted premier Nawaz Sharif. The oath-taking of the federal cabinet was expected on Wednesday but the Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz) failed to finalise a team. Mr Abbasi was elected as Prime Minister on Tuesday to replace Nawaz Sharif who was disqualified by the Supreme Court last week. Mr Abbasi travelled to Murree and held a meeting with his party leader Nawaz Sharif at the latters residence. Apart from the consultations over the federal cabinet, key political issues were discussed in the meeting between Mr Abbasi and Nawaz Sharif. Sources said the formation was discussed in the meeting that was also joined by PML-N leaders Ishaq Dar, Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan and Shehbaz Sharif. Insiders suggest former finance minister Ishaq Dar and former Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan are unlikely to feature in the new cabinet. However, the other names discussed by the PML-N leadership give an impression that mere cosmetic changes will be made in the cabinet, and old faces were likely to dominate the new cabinet. Sources said PML-N stalwarts Khawaja Mohammed Asif and Abdul Qadir Baloch were aspirants of the ministry of Defence. But the party is contemplating to hand the ministry of Interior to Mr Baloch, as Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khans induction in the new cabinet was in doubts. The name of Abdul Qayyum was also discussed for the ministries of Defence as well as the ministry of Defence Production. About the slot of Prime Ministers Advisor on Foreign Affairs, the party is considering Sartaj Aziz once again. PM Abbasi wishes to keep petroleum portfolio, with himself. Manish Shah has been released on bail and is scheduled to appear in court on August 31 at Barkingside Magistrates Court in London. The charges against him include one count of sexual assault on a child under age of 13 years. (File Photo) London: An Indian-origin doctor in London, United Kingdom was on Wednesday charged with a total 118 sexual offences. The man has been identified by the London Metropolitan Police as 47-year-old Manish Shah from Brunel Close, Romford in east London. The charges against him include one count of sexual assault on a child under age of 13 years. According to a press release by the Metropolitan Police, the other allegations against him include 65 counts of assault by penetration and 52 counts of other sexual assaults. According to the BBC, Dr Manish Shah has been released on bail and is scheduled to appear in court on August 31 at Barkingside Magistrates Court in London. "Manish Shah has been charged with 65 assaults by penetration, contrary to Section 2 of the Sexual Offences Act 2003, 52 sexual assaults, contrary to Section 3 of the Sexual Offences Act 2003 and 1 sexual assault on a child under 13 years, contrary to Section 7 of the Sexual Offences Act 2003," the Met Police said in a statement today. "The NHS (National Health Service) has a dedicated number for any individuals who may have concerns or questions. They can be contacted on 0800 011 4253," the Met Police said. The offences are alleged to have occurred between June 2004 and July 2013 and relate to 54 victims. The charges announced today follow a long-running investigation into Shah, who has been bailed several times after first being arrested in 2013. Russian PM Medvedev said that US had shown its weakness by handing over executive power to Congress in a humiliating manner. Prime Minister Medvedev fumed on Wednesday evening on Facebook that the move 'ends hopes for improving our relations with the new US administration.' (Photo: AP) Moscow: Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev labelled new US sanctions "economic war", as businesses in Moscow pledged on Thursday to shrug off the impact of the measures approved reluctantly by Donald Trump. The US president signed off on the new sanctions Wednesday, bowing to domestic pressure after the White House failed to scupper the bill or water it down. Expecting the move, Moscow already responded to the measures last week after they were passed by the Senate, ordering the US to slash staff at its diplomatic mission in Russia by 755 personnel. The Kremlin said Trump's formal approval did not "change anything" and no further retaliation was planned. But Prime Minister Medvedev fumed Wednesday evening on Facebook that the move "ends hopes for improving our relations with the new US administration." "It is a declaration of a full-fledged economic war on Russia," Medvedev wrote. "The Trump administration has shown its total weakness by handing over executive power to Congress in the most humiliating way." Trump signed the legislation behind closed doors and then bashed it in an angry statement as "significantly flawed." "In its haste to pass this legislation, the Congress included a number of clearly unconstitutional provisions," he said, including curbs on the president's ability to "negotiate" with Russia. "As president, I can make far better deals with foreign countries than Congress," Trump claimed. The legislation -- which also includes measures against North Korea and Iran -- targets the Russian energy sector, giving Washington the ability to impose sanctions on companies involved in developing Russian pipelines, and placing curbs on some Russian weapons exporters. It constrains Trump's ability to waive the penalties -- a statement of mistrust from the Republican-controlled Congress, which remains unsettled by the billionaire's warm words for President Vladimir Putin. The head of Russia's largest oil firm Rosneft -- which has already been targeted by earlier US sanctions imposed over the Ukraine crisis -- promised the company would try to avoid more pain. "We will seek to work in such a way as to minimise the impact of the sanctions," Igor Sechin told Russian news agencies, adding that sanctions had "started backfiring" to damage American interests. Iran reacted angrily, saying the new sanctions against it "violated" its 2015 nuclear deal with world powers, and warned it would respond "appropriately." The sanctions seek to penalise the Kremlin for allegedly meddling in the 2016 US presidential election and for Russia's annexation of Crimea. Washington has already slapped several rounds of sanctions on Moscow over Ukraine since 2014, and in December then leader Barack Obama turfed 35 Russian diplomats out due to accusations of election interference. Trump said he would "honour" some of the new bill's provisions, but stopped short of saying it would be fully implemented. The White House said only that Trump would give Congress's "preferences" mere "careful and respectful consideration." Read: The US Russia sanctions bill: What is in it? "I am signing this bill for the sake of national unity. It represents the will of the American people to see Russia take steps to improve relations with the United States," Trump said. Trump had received the legislation at 1:53 pm on Friday, but waited until Wednesday to sign it. The delay had raised speculation that Trump might veto or try to somehow shelve the sanctions, which were approved in a 98-2 Senate vote. By signing it, he avoided the humiliating prospect of Congress overriding his veto. Expecting the signature, Moscow preemptively ordered Washington to reduce its diplomatic presence in Russia to 455 people before September 1 -- bringing it in line with the size of Russia's mission in the United States The foreign ministry in Moscow said sanctions against Russia had put global stability at risk, calling them a "dangerous" and "short-sighted" policy. "We have already shown that we are not going to leave hostile acts unanswered... and we obviously reserve the right to take retaliatory measures," it said. US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said he will meet with his Russian counterpart Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov over the weekend, but warned US-Russia ties could still get worse. Tillerson said the US Congress's decision to pass the sanctions bill had made attempts to thaw ties "more difficult." A special prosecutor is investigating whether Trump advisers colluded with what US intelligence has concluded was an attempt by Russia to covertly support the real estate mogul's 2016 campaign. The US president, who often called for warmer ties with Moscow during the White House race, has furiously denied the charge. Iran has no diplomatic relations or direct trade links with the United States so its options are limited. Tehran: Iran said new sanctions imposed by US President Donald Trump on Wednesday break the terms of its nuclear deal with the United States and other world powers, and vowed an "appropriate and proportional" response. Trump, who during his election campaign called the nuclear agreement - negotiated under his predecessor Barack Obama - "the worst deal ever", signed the new sanctions into law along with measures against Russia and North Korea. Iran had already said it would complain to the body that oversees the 2015 deal - under which it accepted curbs on its nuclear programme in return for sanctions relief - about the measures passed in Congress last week in response to a missile development programme and human rights abuses. "In our view the nuclear deal has been violated and we will show an appropriate and proportional reaction to this issue," Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi said in an interview with state TV, according to the ISNA news agency. While Russia has reacted to the sanctions by ejecting US embassy staff, Iran has no diplomatic relations or direct trade links with the United States so its options are limited. Araqchi said Tehran's response would be "intelligent". "The main goal of America in approving these sanctions against Iran is to destroy the nuclear deal and we will show a very intelligent reaction to this action," Araqchi said. "We are definitely not going to act in a way that get us entangled in the politics of the American government and Trump." The new US sanctions, signed a day before Iranian President Hassan Rouhani takes part in a ceremony before being sworn in for a second term, are likely to embolden his hardline critics who say the nuclear deal was a form of capitulation. The United States is one of six countries to sign up to the deal with Iran, and the others - Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany - have said they see it as a success in easing concerns that Iran might be trying to develop nuclear weapons. The deal has also meant European countries flocking back to invest in oil-rich Iran, with France's Total agreeing to develop a new phase of the South Pars gas field, the world's largest. Araqchi said the Europeans would not allow Trump to destroy the nuclear deal. "What Total did and the contract that was signed between this company and Iran sent a message from Europe to the Americans that whatever the conditions they will continue their economic relations with Iran," he said. In a separate announcement, Tehran confirmed that Rouhani would keep on two important ministers for his second term: Oil Minister Bijan Zanganeh, who is largely credited for closing the Total deal, and Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, Iran's lead negotiator in the nuclear agreement. While stopping short of offering Qatari nationality the new measures constitute a first for the Gulf. Doha: Qatar, currently boycotted by four Arab states, on Wednesday created a new permanent residents status for certain groups of foreigners, including those who have worked for the benefit of the emirate. In a first for the Gulf, Qatar's cabinet ministers approved the measures, the official QNA press agency reported, in a move that will likely affect tens of thousands of resident foreigners. Under the new rules, children with a Qatari mother and a foreign father can benefit from the new status along with foreign residents who have "given service to Qatar" or have "skills that can benefit the country," the agency said. A specially created interior ministry commission will decide individual cases, according to the Qatar News Agency. Those deemed eligible for the new status will be afforded the same access as Qataris to free public services, such as health and education. They will also receive preferable treatment for jobs in the administration and armed services as well as being able to own their own properties and exercise some commercial activities without the need for a Qatari partner. While stopping short of offering Qatari nationality the new measures constitute a first for the Gulf. Naturalisation is extremely rare in the region and the status of the millions of foreigners working in the Gulf are strictly limited. Oil-rich Qatar has a population of 2.4 million people, 90 percent of whom are foreigners, including many from Southeast Asia working in construction. The move comes as Qatar languishes under a boycott imposed by Regional kingpin Saudi Arabia as well as Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates and Egypt. The four Arab states broke ties with Qatar on June 5, accusing the emirate of fostering Islamist extremist groups and of ties to Saudi arch-rival Iran. Qatar has denied the allegations. The four Gulf nations have closed their land and sea borders to Qatar and imposed economic and air traffic restrictions. Kuwait is leading mediation efforts in the crisis, the worst to grip the region since the 1981 creation of the six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council, which includes Saudi Arabia, UAE, Bahrain and Qatar. The two other GCC members, Kuwait and Oman, have not joined the Qatar boycott. China has signed up for increasingly tough UN sanctions against North Korea, but has also pushed for a resumption of dialogue. Speaking to reporters, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said China 'attached great importance' to Tillersons remarks and his reiteration of what Wang called the 'Four Nos' principle. (Photo: AP) Beijing: China on Thursday welcomed comments by Secretary of State Rex Tillerson that the United States does not seek to topple the North Korean government and would like dialogue with Pyongyang at some point, saying China had always supported talks. Tillerson reiterated that Washington sought to persuade North Korea to give up its missile and nuclear weapons programmes through peaceful pressure. The United States does not seek regime change, the collapse of the regime, an accelerated reunification of the peninsula or an excuse to send the US military into North Korea, Tillerson said. Speaking to reporters, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said China attached great importance to Tillersons remarks and his reiteration of what Wang called the Four Nos principle. We hope the U.S. side can put this Four Nos principle into actual policy towards North Korea, Wang said. Read: Trump ready for war to destroy North Korea over ICBM test: US senator The United States has recently been paying more attention to security issues on the Korean peninsula, and China has always believed security is the key to resolving the problem, he added. North Korea says it needs a strong military deterrent to prevent a hostile United States from attacking it. China hopes all sides can meet each other halfway and through talks find a way of resolving each others security concerns as this is the key for a resolution, Wang said. Read: China must decide on imposing stronger UN sanctions on N Korea: Nikki Haley In a separate statement sent to Reuters regarding Tillersons remarks, the foreign ministry said it had always supported dialogue between the United States and North Korea. On Saturday, Pyongyang said it had conducted another successful test of an intercontinental ballistic missile that proved its ability to strike the United States. Tillerson, who will also attend the ASEAN Regional Forum in Manila, is expected to press China and other regional nations to take tougher action against North Korea. China has signed up for increasingly tough United Nations sanctions against North Korea, but has also pushed for a resumption of dialogue and de-escalation by both Pyongyang and Washington. Tillersons remarks showed courage, said the state-run Global Times newspaper, which is usually known for its nationalistic bent. Read: North Korea isolated but gets what it needs from neighbours Many Americans would think Tillerson is showing weakness, but we see his statement as the most courageous expression from Washington regarding the Korean peninsula issue, it said in an editorial on Thursday. While (Washington) exerts pressure on North Korea, it should leave some alternatives for Pyongyang and make it believe that abandoning its nuclear and missile programmes will do more good than insisting on this path. Wang also urged all parties not to heighten tension on the Korean peninsula and said China had already clearly condemned North Koreas latest missile test. Regarding North Koreas recent missile launch, once again in violation of UN Security Council resolutions, China has already clearly expressed our opposition, Wang said. At the same time, we also call on all parties not to take any actions that will lead to an escalation in tensions. On Wednesday, China accused India of 'concocting' excuses over illegal entry of the South Asian nation's military into Chinese territory. Beijing: China is taking an increasingly tough line on a border row with India amid a rising crescendo of nationalism in state media, and President Xi Jinping looks set for an awkward encounter with Prime Minister Narendra Modi at a multilateral summit next month. Diplomats said Beijing would like to resolve the border issue before a summit of the BRICS nations - that also groups Brazil, Russia and South Africa - in the Chinese city of Xiamen in early September, and ensure nothing dampens what China wants to be a show of cooperation and friendship among developing countries. But that could be tough. On Wednesday, China ramped up the rhetoric, accusing India of "concocting" excuses over the illegal entry of the South Asian nation's military into Chinese territory. "China will take all necessary measures to safeguard its legitimate and lawful rights and interests," the Foreign Ministry said. The two sides' troops are confronting each other close to a valley controlled by China that separates India from its close ally, Bhutan, and gives China access to the so-called Chicken's Neck, a thin strip of land connecting India and its remote northeastern regions. Responding, India reiterated an earlier line that work by a Chinese road crew in the sensitive frontier area would have changed the status quo and urging "utmost restraint" by all sides. "India considers that peace and tranquillity in the India-China border areas is an important pre-requisite for smooth development of our bilateral relations with China," New Delhi's foreign ministry said in a statement on Wednesday evening. Most previous standoffs, such as one in 2014 just ahead of a rare trip to India for Xi, were resolved with both sides withdrawing their forces. There has been no shooting since a brief border war in 1962. Talks are happening behind the scenes, but with little apparent progress. Meantime, Chinese and India media have been taking a strident approach, with a Chinese state-run newspaper last week saying China could use force. An Indian magazine's front cover last month showing a map of China shorn of Tibet and self-ruled Taiwan also ignited public anger on Chinese social media with thousands of angry posts. "The problem is the media on both sides are whipping things up. This makes it hard for China or India to back down," said a Beijing-based source who is familiar with the discussions between the two sides. The Indian government has asked political parties to refrain from politicizing the issue and allow diplomacy to work. "Show What We Are Made of" China's defense ministry last week also warned India not to harbor any illusions about the Chinese military's ability to defend its territory. A source with ties to the military, who spoke recently to a senior Chinese officer involved in the stand off, said China has no appetite for conflict with India but could not be seen to be weak. "Nobody wants to fight about this, but if India keeps making trouble then we'll have to show them what we're made of," the source said, citing the conversation with the senior officer. China has repeatedly called on India to withdraw its forces. An Indian government source closely tracking the standoff said there was no change in the ground situation in Doklam, with the two sides remaining in a standoff. Indian military expert Nitin Gokhale said India was prepared for a long haul. "The decision is to stay resolute on the ground and reasonable in diplomacy," Gokhale said. China has been briefing foreign diplomats on the stand off, saying it wants a resolution but that its patience won't last for ever. "There's no easy solution," said an Asian diplomat, who attended a briefing, referring to both sides' insistence that they are in the right. For the time being, China looks ready to keep things calm, said another Asian diplomat, familiar with China's thinking on the issue. "China really wants to resolve this ahead of the BRICS summit. It doesn't want anything to affect the atmosphere," the diplomat said. "The gloves could come off after the summit though." China and India have long been suspicious of each other, a legacy of the 1962 border war, India's playing host to exiled Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama and China's close relations with India's regional rival Pakistan. India has privately raised objections to Chinese firm Shanghai Fosun Pharmaceutical Group's proposed $1.3 billion takeover of Indian drugmaker Gland Pharma, a source familiar with the matter said on Monday. Ajit Doval, India's national security adviser, visited Beijing last week for a BRICS security meeting, and had bilateral talks with his Chinese opposite number, top diplomat Yang Jiechi, who outranks the foreign minister. A Chinese government statement on that meeting did not mention the border issue. China and India are already suspicious of each other because of China's massive investments in Pakistan and Sri Lanka, including Chinese-invested ports in both countries India fears could one day become Chinese military bases, another senior Asian diplomatic source said. "Nobody wants to get caught in the middle of this," the diplomat said, pointing to the prospect for the border tensions worsening and becoming a wider Asian security issue dragging in other countries. Human rights groups have long accused Beijing of oppressing its Uighur population and inflaming a cycle of radicalisation. Hundreds, if not thousands of Uighurs who have fled China in recent years have travelled to Syria to join Islamic militant groups or simply escape persecution and find a new home. (Photo: Representational/AP) Beijing: Turkey has vowed to root out militants plotting against China as the two countries pledged to collaborate on a security issue that had been a source of friction. Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said Thursday in Beijing that Turkey would treat matters of China's security as its own, signalling close cooperation and a tougher stance against suspected Uighur militants hailing from China's Xinjiang region. Uighurs share cultural and linguistic ties with Turks and many have sought asylum in Turkey. Hundreds if not thousands of Uighurs who have fled China in recent years have travelled to Syria to join Islamic militant groups or simply escape persecution and find a new home. Human rights groups have long accused Beijing of oppressing its Uighur population and inflaming a cycle of radicalisation. Tensions have been high between the 2 nations amid a spree of ceasefire violations and cross-border infiltration from Pakistan side. Relations between India and Pakistan have been particularly worsened after the 2008 Mumbai attacks by Pakistan based terrorists. (Photo: ANI Twitter) Islamabad: Pakistan on Thursday said that it is in favour of having "sustained, meaningful and result-oriented dialogue" with India that addresses all issues, particularly the Jammu and Kashmir. "Pakistan wants to have sustained, meaningful and result oriented dialogue with India that addresses all issues particularly the Jammu and Kashmir," Radio Pakistan quoted the country's Foreign Office spokesman Nafees Zakaria as saying during a weekly press conference. He added that peace in the region is not possible without resolving the Kashmir dispute. Read: Pakistan says Kashmir still core dispute with India Tensions have been running high between the two Asian neighbours amid spree of ceasefire violations and cross-border infiltration from Pakistan side. Relations between India and Pakistan worsened after several terror attacks including one on an Indian military base in Uri and also on an Indian air force base in Pathankot. The situation between both the nations further deteriorated after a Pakistan military court announced a death sentence to former Indian Naval officer Kulbhushan Jadhav. Relations between the two nations have been particularly worsened after the 2008 Mumbai attacks by Pakistan based terrorists. by Mathias Hariyadi For Religious Affairs Minister Lukman Hakim Saifuddin, there will be no more prejudices based on ethnicity and religion." Yogyakarta Governor Sri Sultan HamengkuBuwono X was also present at the opening ceremony. For Archbishop Robertus Rubyatamoko of Semarang, chairman of the organising committee, the gathering " is a good opportunity for young Catholics in Asia to experience the true social identity of Asian nations: diversity and plural society. Yogyakarta (AsiaNews) The 7th edition of Asian Youth Day (AYD) in Yogyakarta, Diocese of Semarang (Java Island), has a strong inter-faith connotation, underlined by the theme of the event, Joyful Asian Youth! Living the Gospel in Multicultural Asia. The opening ceremony of the "Days in venues", the central part of the gathering (2-6 August), saw the participation of important political and Islamic representatives, a tangible proof of the favour with which Indonesian society welcomes the youth meeting of Asian Catholics. The dignitaries included Religious Affairs Minister Lukman Hakim Saifuddin, and Yogyakarta Governor Sri Sultan HamengkuBuwono X, who officially opened the event at the sound of the othok-othok, a traditional Javanese musical instrument. As a representative of Indonesian authorities, Minister Saffudin enthusiastically welcomed the 2,140 youth at the Jogja Expo Centre (JEC), 1,198 from Indonesia and 942 from 22 other Asian nations. Last night, the minister stressed the point that multiculturalism and diversity are part of human nature. "Since our birth, he said, we are immersed in a context where we are all different, in a society of different ethnicities, cultural contexts, languages, values and, last but not least, religious beliefs." He urged young Catholics to disseminate Biblical joy in all the countries of the Asian continent, whose diversity is a blessing of God. "It is in this very special social situation that we are called to promote tolerance and solidarity with other people, regardless of differences, he added. At some point, there will be no more prejudices based on ethnicity and religion." Indonesia, the most populous Islamic country in the world, has always promoted cultural and religious pluralism, this despite the rising number of sectarian incidents. The Catholic Church is an active part of interfaith dialogue and often distinguishes itself for initiatives and activities promoting peaceful coexistence. The sultan of Yogyakarta urged AYD youth to become pioneers of a social movement for love and respect in Indonesia. "This will enrich the true identity of Asia: its multiculturalism." Mgr Robertus Rubyatmoko, archbishop of Semarang and chairman of the AYD organising committee, said that this international youth event is a good opportunity for young Catholics in Asia to experience the true "social identity" of Asian nations: diversity and plural society. For this reason, "all are called to convey the joy of the Gospel to the neighbours and society." The contract signed by Fincantieri will give work to around 1000 Italians. 40 Italian companies operate in Qatar. Boosting national defense, at the expense of the Saudi-led regional system "Gulf Shield". Doha (AsiaNews / Agencies) - Qatar announced yesterday a $ 5 billion deal for seven warships to be built in Italy. The announcement took place in the presence of Foreign Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani (see photo) and his Italian counterpart Angelino Alfano. The ships - four corvettes, one amphibian and two patrol vessels - will be built by the Fincantieri and will give work to about a thousand Italians. The news given with enormous publicity emerges at a time when Qatar is suffering from a diplomatic crisis with four Arab countries (Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Egypt), which have also decided to close their airspace and trade relations. The great publicity is probably aimed at being a message to the international community: the country, albeit embargoed by its neighbors, still has the ability to honor commitments on the world market. More than 40 Italian companies are active in Qatar for a volume of trade that exceeds $ 5 billion. A preliminary contract with Fincantieri was signed in June 2016. In June this year, in the wake of a crisis that broke out on the 5th of the month, Qatar also signed a contract with the United States for the sale of about 36 F-15 fighter aircraft , worth $ 12 billion. By boosting national defense the country wants to distance itself from a regional defense system, the "Gulf Shield", that is under Saudi leadership. Saudi Arabia and its allies accuse Doha of supporting terrorism and entertaining relations with Iran, a rival in Riyadh in the Middle East. They also demand that Qatar close the Al Jazeera television channel, dismantle a Turkish military base in Doha, limit its relations with Iran. Qatar accuses them of violating its sovereignty and presented a complaint two days ago to the World Trade Organization stating the embargo imposed by its opponents "violates the fundamental laws and conventions of trade, goods, services and aspects related to the trade in intellectual property ". The conflict between Qatar and Saudi Arabia, as well as commercial and political, also has a religious veil: Doha supports the Muslim Brotherhood, an radical but modern Islam; Riyadh supports Wahhabism, a fundamentalist and bellicose Islam. Both are marked by a desire for "revenge" on the West, even with violent means, inspiring the militants of the Islamic State. So far, it is unknown what Italy will give in return for the contract signed yesterday. The official reaction to President Donald Trump's signature on the new sanctions voted by the US Congress against Iran, Russia and North Korea. The measures taken by Congress concern the Guardians of the Revolution, the ballistic weapons program, the human rights situation in the country, and support for groups such as Lebanese Hezbollah. Iran in turn adopts no less than 16 sanctions. Tehran (AsiaNews / Agencies) - The agreement on Iran's nuclear program signed between Tehran and the 5 + 1 Group (United States, United Kingdom, China, Russia, France and Germany) has been "violated" by the United States. This is the official Iranian reaction to US President Donald Trump's signing of new sanctions voted by the US Congress against Iran, Russia and North Korea. "We believe the agreement was violated with the imposition of these new sanctions by the US and we will react accordingly", attacked the deputy foreign minister of Tehran, Abbas Araghchi. Without going into details, the vice minister said that in the light of US decisions his country has adopted no less than 16 sanctions. The measures taken by Trump and wanted by the Congress concern t Guardians of the Revolution, the ballistic weapons program, the human rights situation in the country, and support for groups such as Lebanese Hezbollah considered terrorists by Washington. The United States, unlike Iran, does not adhere to the nuclear-related obligations, said Iran's Foreign Minister Javad Zarif (see photo). In an interview with CNN, he pointed out that the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) has stated seven times that Iran has met its obligations "unfortunately," he added, "We can not say the same for the United States". The reference is to the fact that Trump would take advantage of his visit to Hamburg on the occasion of the G20 to persuade leaders of other countries to have nothing to do with Iran. Zarif added that the agreement "does not prevent Iran from developing a civil nuclear program". As the General Audience resumes after the summer break, Pope Francis recalls the symbolism of ancient churches structured from west to east: the west is "where the light dies; The East is "the place where darkness is defeated by the first light of the dawn and calls upon us the Christ, the Sun raised from above on the horizon of the world". Christians "are oriented men and women: they do not believe in the darkness, but in the light of day." "The Church's Life is a Contamination of Light". Pilgrims from Iraq, Syria and Japan present. Vatican City (AsiaNews) - With the grace of baptism, "a Christian truly becomes a Bearer of Christ in the world," bringing hope and light to the "situations of mourning, despair, of darkness and of hate. " On the resumption of Wednesday audiences, Pope Francis broached the theme of "Baptism: A Gateway to Hope", dwelling on the symbol of light and darkness: "What does it mean to be Christian? It means to look to the light, to continue to practice the profession of faith in light, even when the world is wrapped in night and darkness. " There were delegations from Japan, Syria and the Chaldean Church of Baghdad under the leadership of Bishop Shlemon Warduni among the thousands of pilgrims at the audience, held in the Paul VI hall. Francis recalled the ancient rites of baptism in which the faithful, turning to the West, renounced Satan; Then turning to the east, they were questioned on the faith, to which they answered "I believe!". In ancient times, the churches were oriented in the west-east line. "The West - explained the Pope - is the cardinal point of the sunset, where the light is dying. The East, on the other hand, is the place where darkness is dispelled by the first light of the dawn and calls us to Christ, the Sun raised from above to the horizon of the world. " "In modern times we have partially lost the charm of this ritual: we lost the sensitivity to the language of the cosmos. There has naturally remained the profession of faith, according to the baptismal question, which is proper to the celebration of some sacraments. However, it remains intact in its meaning. What does it mean to be Christian? It means to look to the light, to continue to practice the profession of faith in light, even when the world is wrapped in night and darkness. Christians are not exempt from darkness, externally and even internally. They do not live out of the world, however, because of the grace of Christ received in Baptism, they are "oriented" men and women : they do not believe in the darkness, but in the light of day; They do not succumb to the night, but hope in the dawn; They are not defeated by death, but they desire resurrection; They are not bent over by evil, because they always confide in the infinite possibilities of good." "We are those who believe that God is the Father: this is the light! We believe that Jesus has fallen in the midst of us, has walked in our own lives, becoming a companion especially of the poorest and most fragile: this is the light! We believe that the Holy Spirit works without rest for the sake of humanity and the world, and even the greatest pains of history will be overcome: this is the hope that resounds in us every morning! We believe that every affection, every friendship, every good wish, every love, even the most minute and neglected ones, will one day find their fulfillment in God: this is the force that drives us to embrace our everyday life with enthusiasm! ". Pope Francis then recalled another sign of the light of the baptismal liturgy: the lighting of the candle from the Paschal candle. "This is - he explained the great candle that on Easter night enters the completely dark church to reveal the mystery of the Resurrection of Jesus; All candles are lit from that candle , the passing of the flame from neighbor to neighbor. In this sign we see the slow propagation of the Resurrection of Jesus in the lives of all Christians. The life of the Church is a contamination of light." "The most beautiful exhortation we can give to each other - he concluded - is to always remember our Baptism. We were born twice: the first to natural life, the second, thanks to the encounter with Christ, in the baptismal source. There we are dead to death, to live as children of God in this world. There we became human as we would have imagined. That is why all of us must spread the scent of the Chrism, with which we were marked on the day of our Baptism. The Spirit of Jesus lives and works in us, the eldest of many brothers, of all those who oppose the inelucability of darkness and death. What a grace when a Christian really becomes a "Bearer of Christ in the world! Especially for those who are going through mourning, despair, darkness, and situations of hate. And this is understood by so many small details: from the light that a Christian holds in their eyes, from the background of serenity that is not affected even in the most complicated days, by the desire to begin again despite many disappointments. In the future, when they are writing today's history, what will they say about us? That we have been able to hope, or have we hid our light under a bushel? If we are faithful to our Baptism, we will spread the light of God's hope and we will be able to convey reasons for living to future generations." How to Get Different Hairstyles With A Razor How To Get A Fresh Haircut Using One Tool You Already Own The AskMen editorial team thoroughly researches & reviews the best gear, services and staples for life. AskMen may get paid if you click a link in this article and buy a product or service. Our face, chest, and even our balls... Razors play a pivotal role in how men choose to shave their bodies. But what about haircutting and styling? As bugged out as it sounds, razors are now doubling as hairstyling tools, though very few of us carry know enough to how to accomplish the right do with just a blade and some other grooming essentials. If adventure is your middle name, we highly recommend gaining some experience using one razor to cut hair before making any attempts. Remember you can always put your trust in a trained and certified professional stylist. Shaving a hairstyle requires a man to take many things into consideration. His hair type, equipment, and skill level for instance. Youll also want to know what benefits come with using a razor on your mane rather than say a set of clippers. Look below for answers. Adds movement: Cutting ends can help bring out curves and waves. Cutting ends can help bring out curves and waves. Creative freedom: Youre given more flexibility to shape hairdos how you want. Youre given more flexibility to shape hairdos how you want. Hybrid cutting: With some hairstyles requiring multiple tools, razors work to give hair more interest and texture. With some hairstyles requiring multiple tools, razors work to give hair more interest and texture. Length control: Guards can aid in directing how much hair to take off. Guards can aid in directing how much hair to take off. Multi-purpose use: Of course, it proves to be an effective body hair-cutting tool. Sounds like your razor is an overachiever after all. But in settling on a bladed tool for the hair on your head, cram to understand that not any basic one will earn you these benefits. Deciding on the right razor type will dictate more or less what hairstyle you want to achieve. Choose Your Hairstyling Weapon Know that this isnt anything like choosing a pair of hair clippers or trimmers. Youre given way more options to work with on that end. Razors are limited in selection since not every type is designed to double as a hairstyling tool. Your options: the cartridge, straight or feather styling razor. Each promotes their special features and work best on specific hairstyles. Cartridge Razors: Developed in the 1950s, this modern-day essential has become the king in the chess game of grooming, primarily on the shaving tip. They normally carry between two and five blades and are set at a pre-determined angle. Because of the ergonomic shape of the head and handle, its positioned perfectly for the blade to cut in the motion of a double-edge razor. There is never a need to sharpen the blades because they are disposable, making it the most convenient of the trio. Developed in the 1950s, this modern-day essential has become the king in the chess game of grooming, primarily on the shaving tip. They normally carry between two and five blades and are set at a pre-determined angle. Because of the ergonomic shape of the head and handle, its positioned perfectly for the blade to cut in the motion of a double-edge razor. There is never a need to sharpen the blades because they are disposable, making it the most convenient of the trio. Straight Razors: Most known to many as the cut-throat razor, this shaving tool is normally made from stainless steel or high carbon steel and consists of a blade sharpened on one edge. The blade sits on a pin, which is attached between two scales and can be made from mother-of-pearl, celluloid, bone, plastic or wood. The scales protect the blade from getting damaged or the user from hacking themselves accidentally. Most known to many as the cut-throat razor, this shaving tool is normally made from stainless steel or high carbon steel and consists of a blade sharpened on one edge. The blade sits on a pin, which is attached between two scales and can be made from mother-of-pearl, celluloid, bone, plastic or wood. The scales protect the blade from getting damaged or the user from hacking themselves accidentally. Styling Razors: These modern marvels have emerged out of nowhere and have become the world's #1 haircutting razor. Some styling razors have been designed to fit a standard or texturizing blade. For your safety, a patented blade guard covers the blade with a snug fit leaving no room for chatter or any accidental mishaps that can occur when razor shaving your mane. It also prevents the user from being too creative and chopping off more than needed. Give or take your option, youll want to keep these away from thin hair since the lack of depth and texture can further damage those weakened strands. Same for permed dos since the blades can interfere when rolling hair around the perm rods. Dont say we didnt warn you. Understanding how these tools work, lets look at what hairstyles we feel would be easy money in the comfort of your own home with or without an extra hand. The Baldie The bald-head look remains a two-age old misconception. Its either viewed as the old mans way of bowing out of the hair game gracefully or a hairstyling technique for the lazy. But its grown to become one of the more popular looks amongst mature, young, and popular men. Thank Michael Jordan or your girls current Blockbuster movie heartthrob (Dwayne The Rock John, Vin Diesel, you pick). All cool factors aside, sporting the baldie can come with few disadvantages. Sunburn or sunstroke being the most popular, which forces guys to lather up on sunscreen or wear a nice fitted cap. Thats all common skincare protocol either way. Not anything thatll discourage you from owning the bad boy profile associated with going bald. Skill Level: Easy Step 1: Select the best razor that not only offers comfortable grip, but also delivers the smoothest glide across your dome. Select the best razor that not only offers comfortable grip, but also delivers the smoothest glide across your dome. Step 2: Trim down overgrown hair to stubble because anything longer will be too difficult and unpleasant to shave down. A good pair of hair clippers will work best. Trim down overgrown hair to stubble because anything longer will be too difficult and unpleasant to shave down. A good pair of hair clippers will work best. Step 3: Wet your hair by jumping into hot shower, so to make which hair softer to cut through. Wet your hair by jumping into hot shower, so to make which hair softer to cut through. Step 4: Apply shaving lather everywhere on your head. Skin tends to be different in certain section, so youll want something along the lines of an oil, gel or a traditional cream. Tools of Operation Harrys Shave Cream Not all shaving creams are made equal. It always comes down to fine ingredients. And Harrys has your manes best interest at heart with a strong blend of 12 natural oils and extracts for smooth shaving. Bless your blade with effortlessly glide across skin, plus enjoy the refreshing feeling it leaves on the scalp that keeps you confident when finishing off the job. The trio of licorice, cucumber, and peppermint do great with moisturizing skin, along with the aid of fresh eucalyptus that feeds your ego with an attention-grabbing scent. $8.00 at Harrys.com Harrys Truman Razor The myth of cartridge razors not providing enough of a close shave is just that. A myth. Harrys puts this illusion to rest with a quality shaver that contours smoothly across the head, reaching difficult spots normally impossible to cut with your pharmacy disposable. The zinc alloy five-German blade cuts close and precise with a Gothic Arch design thats helps you master shaving in angles. A lubricated strip loaded with aloe vera and Vitamin E keeps skin moist to give the razor some extra glide without stripping skin of its natural oils. Youll also find the rubberized hand keeps your grip slip-free. Choose from three different colors to compliment your own personal style or bathroom decor. $9.00 at Harrys.com Harrys Post Shave Balm Complete the grooming ritual with a soothing salve that saves the scalp from nasty razor burn. Harrys blends marula oil, aloe, cucumber, and licorice root into a formula that provides you with a cool and refreshed sensation, which leaves a nice fragrance that lingers throughout your day. Just apply a dab or two immediately after shaving and take in the coolness. Keep the scalp irritation to a minimal, while reliving it from that embarrassing clean-shaved tomato head look. $8.00 at Harrys.com The Classic Undercut A trending haircut thats been around since the 1940s, the classic undercut has undergone different looks and lengths over the decades, yet tends to generally be the same cut. Its similar looking to the razor fade, but without the fade. If that makes sense. Looking at familiar wearers like Brad Pitt and Justin Timberlake gives you a better idea. These guys have taken the most advantage of the many different undercut varieties. The greatest benefits of this hairdo are the low maintenance and easy styling that come with it. All thats needed is some good pomade or hairspray depending on length, texture or hairstyle. Skill Level: Medium Step 1: Wet hair until its entirely moist. Then use a comb as a guide to section hair from the temple, making a V-shape down to the crown area. Try to keep sectioning along the natural part line of your head and dont go further than the parietal ridgeline of the head. Wet hair until its entirely moist. Then use a comb as a guide to section hair from the temple, making a V-shape down to the crown area. Try to keep sectioning along the natural part line of your head and dont go further than the parietal ridgeline of the head. Step 2: Clip the top hair section up when done, which will be your top section of the hairstyle. Clip the top hair section up when done, which will be your top section of the hairstyle. Step 3: Keep a tight wrist when holding the razor, working from the center down at an angle for easier movement. Cut hair using the traditional razor over a comb in a downward motion, which is a better layering technique. Keep a tight wrist when holding the razor, working from the center down at an angle for easier movement. Cut hair using the traditional razor over a comb in a downward motion, which is a better layering technique. Step 4: Lift hair from the scalp and blow dry, giving it natural volume. To hold its shape we suggest using a volumizing hair spray for additional volume. Tools of Operation Baxter of California Large Comb Handcrafted in Switzerland, Baxters comb offers true hairstyling comfort at its highest quality. The Large Comb remains a hot seller for many reasons. One being its rounded tips, which protect you from scalp damage due normally experienced during aggressive combing. It feels great in the hand with a sturdy weight to give just the right amount of control. Parting hair and even combing your beard (yep, works for that as well) becomes a breeze with smoothly tapered teeth. The tortoiseshell finish is a classy finish that makes it easily identifiable and not to be confused for her comb. $20.00 at BaxterOfCalifornia.com Feather Styling Razor with Standard Kit The Feather Styling Razor has become one of the most practical shaving products on the market. Its cutting performance makes it a grooming essential for those looking to be creative with a bit of cutting control. The blade guard protects you from accidental mishaps that can occur when razor shaving your mane. Gain versatility with the handle fitting nicely in either hand and reaching snug spots. The model can fit either standard or texturizing blades. $42.00 at Amazon.com Big Sex Hair Firm Volumizing Hair Spray Holding those strands in place with little flexibility and super-shine takes the right hair spray. And with a brand like Big Sex Hair, results are guaranteed. Recreate hairstyles at any given moment without icky buildup or that chalky white film. Its lightweight solution keeps hair looking natural after styling multiple do-overs. No overpowering fragrances to manage here as the scent lingers just enough to keep you feeling masculine and fresh. The company recommends spraying it 8-10 inches away for the best results. $9.96 at Amazon.com The Straight Razor Fade Its the most common haircut amongst barbers and hairstylists alike. While they make it look effortless to perform, its difficult without the proper skill set, but doable. Many believe the best way to a achieve a bald taper is with the use of a pair of hair clippers that's because of the clipper guards in place. But with the use of a comb to grab the hair at the roots and a good straight razor, you would be surprised with the results. Now we dont recommend you doing the fade with a straight razor at home. Then again, thats your call. Whats awesome about this style is it can be combined with any hairstyle. Just depends on where you choose to begin the taper. This provides endless options. You may have seen this haircut on Utah Jazz small forward Gordon Hayward, who after recognizing its popularity has switched up from the messy mushroom cut to rocking the straight razor fade since his season 2015. Skill level: Hard Step 1: Dampen hair entirely throughout the scalp. Then along the right side of your head make a horizontal part from the temple to the back of the head in a V shape to meet at a point in the center of your head. Dampen hair entirely throughout the scalp. Then along the right side of your head make a horizontal part from the temple to the back of the head in a V shape to meet at a point in the center of your head. Step 2: Create a baseline with the razor over comb at the front of the end, beginning at the temple and ending at the center back of the head. Create a baseline with the razor over comb at the front of the end, beginning at the temple and ending at the center back of the head. Step 3: Starting blending all the way around to you reach the center back. Starting blending all the way around to you reach the center back. Step 4: Repeat the process on the left side of the head. Repeat the process on the left side of the head. Step 5: Create an edge along the baseline, add shave gel, and then straight razor cut from the baseline down to the hairline, which gives you a clean fade-out appearance from the baseline. Tools of Operation Harrys Shave Gel Keeping your head super smooth and hydrated is vital for any shaving done on the head. Harrys looks out for you with its well-recognized formula including aloe and cucumber, which keeps skin nourished and refreshed. The lathering system creates an opaque effect, letting you accomplish a close-to-perfect enough shave without affecting other spots. Notes of amber and lavender are left behind when youre done. Not many shaving products give you this premium performance at such a low cost. $6.00 at Harrys.com Kent The Hand Made Comb Purchasing a Kent comb is one of the finest investments a man can make. Its lineup of durable combs differs due to the use of cellulose acetate, a plant-based plastic making it not only amazingly flexible, but almost indestructible. Cheaper combs normally snag because of poor machining during production. Kents hand-polished, buffed out teeth keep the comb feeling good on your scalp, helping to avoid damages from sharp-spike teeth found in cheaply competitors. Works great on dry, wet, long, short, young, and old hair. $10.99 at Amazon.com The Art of Shaving Shavette Straight Razor The perfect shave is all dependent on the right straight razor. Enter the Shavette from Art of Shaving. With a stainless-steel body and blade hold, the razor wears well in wet environments. A red plastic sleeve secures the double-edge blade to keep beginners from breaking a sweat. Tapper the sides as short as possible with the assist from a solid comb. $55.00 at TheArtOfShaving.com Pacific Shaving Nick Stick Sometimes shaving incorrectly or in a rush can leaves your bathroom looking like a crime scene, with your head body-bagged as the victim. So having some form of antiseptic available aids in the healing process. The Nick Stick is a genius product with a liquid roll system that dries on clearly, saving you the embarrassment of placing toilet tissue squares across your skull. It contains aloe and Vitamin, two ingredients best known for repairing and soothing skin after shaves. We also like how picket-friendly it is so to shave on the go or at work. $5.99 at Amazon.com AskMen may get paid if you click a link in this article and buy a product or service. To find out more, please read our complete terms of use. Screen shot of active safety system research work courtesy of Toyota CSRC/YouTube. Toyotas Collaborative Safety Research Center (CSRC) announced 11 new vehicle technology research projects, launched in partnership with eight leading institutions in North America. The projects are the first launched under CSRC Next, the centers new five-year program aimed at supporting a safer transition to the future of mobility. The studies will focus on the impact of advanced technology on broader road safety trends and the interaction between humans and machines, according to CSRC. Research partners include the University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute, Virginia Tech, the University of Iowa, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Age Lab, the University of Wisconsin, Indiana University- Purdue University Indianapolis, the University of California at San Diego, and Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. Challenges include the integration of advanced active safety systems and passive systems, human experience design for advanced technology vehicles, driver state detection, and the use of analytics to help improve the study of naturalistic driving data. Autonomous and connected vehicle technologies are only just beginning to transform the transportation landscape, said Chuck Gulash, director of CSRC. By working together with world-renowned institutions and making our results public, we are proud to help realize the promise of advanced mobility solutions and a safe, convenient transportation future. Since its launch in 2011, Michigan-based CSRC has started and completed 44 research projects with 23 partner universities, publishing more than 200 papers and presenting at multiple industry conferences. CSRC projects have included research into human factors on vehicle safety and the efficacy of active and passive safety systems, as well as the collection of driving data and development of new tools to analyze that data. Launched in January 2017, CSRC Next builds upon insights gained from the centers first five years. The program will direct $35 million toward safety research into advanced vehicle technologies, including both autonomous and connected systems. CSRC Next will continue to support ongoing research programs at the Toyota Research Institute (TRI) and Toyota Connected (TC) to help accelerate development of autonomous and connected driving technologies and services, according to Toyota. CSRC projects will follow four research tracks: 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. A big mess remains on 4th Street North in St. Petersburg a day after after lightning knocked down a power pole and ruptured a water main. Water main break in 6100 block of 4th Street Happened Wednesday afternoon when lightning struck a power pole About a dozen customers affected RELATED: 'It was amazing!' St. Pete store owner describes lightning strike, light pole collapse Precautionary boil water notice information The northbound lanes of 4th Street remain closed between 54th and 62nd avenues and a precautionary boil water notice remains in place for surrounding businesses and residents. A 12-inch water main was ruptured in the 6100 block of 4th Street North, causing a water outage for customers along and east of 4th Street from SE Madison Circle through 62nd Avenue. Standing water has been cleaned out, power has been restored in the area and most of the businesses along the impacted area are set to reopen this week. "It struck a pole," said Andrew Michaels, the owner of Andrew's on 4th, of the lightning strike. "And the next thing you know, lightning went inside the store at mid-level and struck the back box. The whole panel popped off. "The next thing you know, the pole crashed on the building, and we had a humongous flood. It was pretty amazing." Street flooding followed, along with a public health warning about possibly contaminated drinking water. City workers were expected back at the site Thursday, doing more repair work and testing the water. The impacted neighborhoods include customers along and east of 4th Street, from southeast Madison Circle through 62nd Avenue. Stomach-hurling, whiplash roller coasters seem to have been a staple of teenage summers since they were invented. And while Six Flags sends fans head-over-heels screaming and boomeranging back for repeat thrills, the heyday for independent, kitschy theme parks was before the dominance of the Dallas-based chain Six Flags. For many Texans growing up in the '60s, '70s and '80s, AstroWorld was hands-down the ultimate rite-of-passage amusement park whether you lived in Houston or traveled hours to brave that rickety, terrifying Texas Cyclone. Firefighters had to rescue three people who got stuck on a malfunctioning bungee jump ride at the Ventura County Fair on Wednesday night. According to a press release from the City of Ventura Fire Department, a 19-year-old man was stuck upside down 30 feet above the ground on a bungee cord for over 30 minutes, and two other people were trapped in a cage 90 to 100 feet above the ground. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate Shortly after returning from a summer trip, a Lumberton teenager's health declined so rapidly that he had to be airlifted to a Houston ER and put into a medical coma while his mother feared for his life. Braden Carter, 16, a junior at Lumberton High School, began feeling ill while on vacation in Colorado. Doctors said he probably had mono, but his condition got worse. "My mom instinct was kicking in," said Tarin Starnes. "I had a gut feeling that my kid was really sick." Taken to the emergency room last week, Carter couldn't even walk. After several consultations with doctors, he went home with instructions to get plenty of rest and fluids. Hours after they got home, the family awakened to find Carter having violent seizures. "It was the most horrific site," Starnes said, of watching Carter be loaded into an ambulance and taken to Christus St. Elizabeth Hospital in Beaumont. There, he was placed into a medically induced coma and intubated with a ventilator. The next day, he was taken by helicopter to Texas Children's Hospital in Houston. "We thought we were going to lose him," Starnes said. Less than a week later, Carter is feeling better. He was taken off ventilators and has been able to walk, shower and even eat some Chick-fil-A. "It is just so amazing and so surreal," Starnes said. "To think he was on a helicopter on Friday. He's doing so much better." Doctors still are not sure what happened, Starnes said. She said Carter was diagnosed with the Epstein-Barr Virus (EBV), which is known to cause mono. The teen showed all of the symptoms of mono, and doctors think the EBV caused his brain to swell. "It was a perfect storm," Starnes said. Read more in Thursday's print edition of The Enterprise. While MS-13's extreme violence has made them America's most notorious gang, they are far from the biggest threat in Texas. The crown belongs to Tango Blast. The Texas Department of Public Safety rates Tango Blast and all of its associated cliques as one of only four Tier 1 groups in the latest Gang Threat Assessment report, which was published in July. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate It was 44 years ago this week that the infamous Chicken Ranch in La Grange was shuttered. The brothel, also the subject of ZZ Top's blues-rock jam "La Grange," was an open secret in Texas for some time. The Chicken Ranch was reportedly the oldest continuously operating brothel in the nation when it closed in August 1973 following an expose by KTRK consumer reporter and Houston broadcasting god Marvin Zindler. GOOD GOLF, GOOD FISHING: Remembering Houston media icon Marvin Zindler a decade after his passing This past week we remembered the life of Zindler on the 10th anniversary of his passing. For longtime residents of Houston he's achieved icon status, and it was the Chicken Ranch story that put him in the national spotlight. Now Playing: It's been ten years since Houston said goodbye to the man who protected us from slime in the ice machine and made miracles happen for the less fortunate. Video: Craig Hlavaty, KTRK-TV Zindler received a tip and ran with it. Story continues below... "Action 13 received an anonymous complaint about two alleged houses of prostitution," was how Zindler opened his nightly segment in late July that year. "The complainant said the houses were operating openly in our neighboring towns of Sealy and La Grange. It's illegal to operate a house of prostitution in Texas. And past history shows they cannot function without someone in authority protecting them." OLD SCHOOL COOL: Vintage pictures show Houston as it was in 1977 Gov. Dolph Briscoe ordered law enforcement to close the two "bawdy houses," as Zindler called them. The story received national attention and spawned "The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas" on Broadway and that really cheesy Dolly Parton and Burt Reynolds flick in 1982. A version of Zindler was campily played by Dom DeLuise. In 2013 Edna Milton Chadwell, the last madam of the Chicken Ranch, passed away at the age of 84. She died due to complications from injuries she received in a car wreck the previous year. In the late '70s she sold the rights to her story to writer Larry L. King, who wrote a piece for Playboy magazine and which was adapted by Peter Masterson for the stage. During her tenure running the brothel she established a good working and personal relationship with T.J. Flournoy, the Fayette County sheriff who put in a direct line to the Chicken Ranch so he could be easily apprised of any criminal activity. She also barred employees of hers from having any contact with locals other than that of a professional nature. She also insisted on weekly visits by the girls to a doctor, shopped with local merchants on a rotating basis, and gave generously to local charities. Everyone seemed to be happy with the setup. HAW HAW HAW: ZZ Top is coming to Sugar Land Anyone with older relatives who lived around these parts at the time might have a few interesting anecdotes related to the ranch. According to local lore, generations of students at nearby Texas A&M University discovered that a visit to the Chicken Ranch was an established rite of passage for freshmen. Legend also has it that a nearby military base ferried clients in by helicopter. Here are six recent ASC acquisitions and partnerships announced in July 2017. Hays (Kan.) Medical Center bought Centennial, Colo.-based Centura Health's shares in the Great Bend, Kan.-based St. Rose Health Center, an ASC. Atlanta Orthopaedic Institute Surgery Center partnered with Practice Partners in Healthcare, a surgical services provider, to develop and manage an ASC. Pittsburgh-based Allegheny Health Network and Highmark, an insurance company, partnered to create a 23,000-square-foot surgical center. Medical group Derby (Kan.) MedCenter sold its ASC operations to Southlake, Texas-based Candor Healthcare. Physicians Endoscopy signed a strategic agreement with Digestive Healthcare Center physicians on the company's 58th partnered center Central Jersey Ambulatory Surgical Center in Hillsborough Township, N.J. Sheridan Capital Partners portfolio company Dermatologists of Central States entered into a partnership with Battle Creek, Mich.-based Dermatology and Skin Surgery Center. On Aug. 2, Sheboygan, Wis.-based Acuity Insurance raised $10,000 for its plans to expand healthcare in the Sheboygan area, according to MySheboygan.com. Here are three highlights: 1. The payer raised the money through the Acuity Health Challenge, a two-mile run or walk in its sixth year. 2. Through the proceeds, Acuity Insurance plans to create the new Aurora Health Care medical center in Sheboygan. 3. The facility will house an ASC as well as a hospital and medical office building. Registered nurses at CHI St. Alexius Health in Bismarck, N.D., filed for a union election Monday, reports The Bismarck Tribune. The nurses aim to vote on whether to join the Minnesota Nurses Association. MNA in a Tuesday announcement said the formal unionizing process began when CHI St. Alexius RNs filed authorization cards "signed by an overwhelming majority of nurses" with the National Labor Relations Board. "Nurses want to provide top quality care to our patients in a hospital that's respected and an integral part of our community," CHI St. Alexius RN Chettie Greer said in the announcement. "We believe the best way we can advocate for patients is by coming together and gaining the authority and rights to ensure our voices will be heard." The next step, MNA said, is for the NLRB to look over the authorization cards, set a date for a unionization vote and conduct the election. Ellen Holt, the hospital's vice president of human resources, spoke out against the nurses unionizing in an emailed statement to Becker's Hospital Review. "We are proud of the high-quality and safe care our nurses and patient care team provide to our community. It has been our faith-based mission for more than 132 years to ensure our patients receive exceptional care at CHI St. Alexius Health," the statement reads. "We believe we can best continue our mission to serve our patients when CHI St. Alexius Health's associates are free to work directly with leadership in healthcare settings without going through a third party. "Caring for our patients has been and will remain our top priority. We will not let the latest step by the union distract from our longstanding commitment to our community." MNA currently represents nearly 22,000 nurses in Minnesota, Wisconsin and Iowa. More articles on human capital and risk: Nomad Health nurse staffing tool takes cue from online dating sites Mayo Clinic nurses in Albert Lea, Austin reach labor deal NewYork-Presbyterian sees backlash over ties to furniture company To continue following the latest news and information for Bedfordshire and surrounding areas, simply enter your full postcode below European airlines are opposed to the UK getting "any favourable deal" to secure air routes after Brexit, Ryanair boss Michael O'Leary has warned. The Dublin-based carrier's chief executive said EU airlines were "actively campaigning" for the UK to be offered a bilateral agreement that would be "almost unacceptable" to those in favour of a hard Brexit. Ryanair operates more than a dozen routes from Belfast International Airport, as well as flying out of City of Derry Airport. The single market for aviation, created in the 1990s, means there are no commercial restrictions for airlines flying within the European Union. But Mr O'Leary warned that flights between the UK and the EU would be grounded in the summer of 2019 if no deal is reached by September next year. He told a central London press conference that he had seen briefing documents put out by airlines that call for any future flights to be under the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice (ECJ). Mr O'Leary said: "There's no doubt in our minds that the German and French airlines, in particular, are opposed to the UK getting any favourable deal. "They are in favour and are actively campaigning for a bilateral with the UK under which the UK must accept ECJ jurisdiction. "They accept all past and future regulation of air travel by the European authorities. This makes it almost unacceptable to those who believe here in a hard Brexit. "They do not wish to be seen to bend the knee to the European Court of Justice or European regulations." He added that the airline logos on the documents included Lufthansa, Air France and KLM. Mr O'Leary met Transport Secretary Chris Grayling yesterday to discuss the impact of the UK's withdrawal from the EU. He said he stressed the need for an aviation agreement to be in place soon, but was "more sceptical" than the Government that it will be possible. "We think there's nobody on the other side that will be that willing to facilitate giving the British a great deal by September 2018," Mr O'Leary explained. "There's huge upside for German and French airlines in disrupting British Airways flights between the UK and Europe, disrupting easyJet's flights... and causing us some grief. "That means we have to move planes out of the UK into continental Europe. "If I was them, I would be doing exactly the same thing. If you can screw up your competition at reasonably little cost to yourself - they have very little capacity in the UK - then Godspeed." Mr O'Leary also told reporters that, if summer 2019 flights are cancelled, people from the UK will be left with "the option of driving to Scotland or getting the ferry to Ireland" for their holidays. He joked that this would appeal to "all those many millions who like to go to Spain, Portugal and Greece for the cheap sunny holidays". Arlene Foster has warned Taoiseach Leo Varadkar against "disrespecting" the decision of the United Kingdom to leave the European Union. Ahead of her party's meeting with Mr Varadkar tomorrow - during his first official visit to Northern Ireland - the former First Minister described recent remarks by the Fine Gael leader as unhelpful. Mr Varadkar had insisted he would not help design a post-Brexit border or work out how it should operate, which brought a warning from DUP MP Sir Jeffrey Donaldson against any return to "megaphone diplomacy" from Dublin. Mrs Foster said she was "looking forward" to the meeting, but dismissed Mr Varadkar's expression of hope that the UK will remain in the EU despite last year's referendum result. "He may be hopeful, but that is disrespecting the will of the British people. Brexit is going to happen. We are leaving the European Union," she said. "I just hope the Republic of Ireland will continue to work constructively with us in Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK, because it is very much in their interest to have a Brexit that works for them, as well as a Brexit that works for the UK." Referring to the Irish Government's decision to back Sinn Fein and SDLP demands for a stand-alone Irish Language Act - a key issue in the stalled talks to restore devolution - Mrs Foster (below) said the Taoiseach and other Irish ministers "should reflect on whether they are being helpful to the process here in Northern Ireland or not". "They have made various interventions recently in relation to Northern Ireland politics. It would be better if we focused on finding solutions to what is in front of us. We want to find ways forward," she said. "We know there are huge opportunities in relation to Brexit and we also accept there are short-term challenges. "To overcome all of that we have to work together. "The sort of megaphone diplomacy that has been engaged in is not helpful. We have to work together to get a European exit that works for everybody." Mr Varadkar, who is also meeting most of the other main parties involved in the negotiations, will give a major address at Queen's University focused on north-south relations. The Ulster Unionist Party said it will not meet Mr Varadkar during his visit, but denied it was a calculated snub. It said it was not in a position to meet the Taoiseach, who is to take part in a Pride event in Belfast on Saturday, because of "logistics". "We look forward to meeting Mr Varadkar in the not-too-distant future, where we will be discussing the issues around Brexit, his approach to relationships across these islands and also seeking a response to our request for information held by the Irish Directorate of Military Intelligence on terrorist atrocities such as Kingsmill to be made available to the appropriate authorities here," the party said. Meanwhile, TUV leader Jim Allister bluntly told Mr Varadkar to keep his nose out. "I believe it is totally inappropriate for him to attempt to interfere with the internal affairs of Northern Ireland," the North Antrim MLA said. "The legal definition of marriage is a Northern Ireland issue, not the plaything of foreign governments." Sinn Fein president Gerry Adams welcomed Mr Varadkar's decision to attend a breakfast Pride event in Belfast on Saturday. "That's good, and an important act of solidarity with the LGBT community," he said. "It will help focus attention on the need for marriage equality, available elsewhere throughout these islands, to be extended to citizens in the North." Mr Varadkar revealed he was gay in the run-up to the Republic's referendum on same-sex marriage in 2015. He told the Pride parade in Dublin in June he intends to "press for marriage equality across Ireland". But asked if his attendance at a Pride event in Belfast might cause annoyance to the DUP - which is opposed to same-sex marriage and used the Assembly petition of concern mechanism to block the issue last year - Mr Varadkar said he would make no compromises about his views. Same-sex marriage has now become one of the key issues in the talks to restore power-sharing at Stormont. Northern Ireland is the only part of Britain and Ireland where same-sex marriage is unlawful. Virgin Media's boss says Brexit "hasn't dampened our appetite to invest" as it rolls out its new 'ultrafast' broadband to more than 50,000 homes across Northern Ireland. Tony Hanway, chief executive of Virgin Media Ireland, was speaking to the Belfast Telegraph as the company announced that work has begun on its new faster broadband across Northern Ireland as part of an overall 3bn investment. "It's great news for Northern Ireland, a region of the UK that has experienced some of the slower broadband speeds," he said. "We will be connecting to a minimum of 100Mb/s to a potential of 300, or up to 350 for businesses. "We are not announcing any change in our tariffs, so it's an expansion of our network. The tariffs compare favourably to the competition for a far superior service." Mr Hanway said a lot of the work was already under way to install the new network across Northern Ireland. "Northern Ireland is getting more than its proportionate share of the programme. "We are very happy. We are growing the network. The brand is doing well in the province and attracting customers. "This is the next step for us. To bring more super-fast broadband. "It takes us on a whole new trajectory in terms of growth." But he said that while Brexit "hasn't dampened our appetite to invest", that the business would keep an eye on any changes. "It's definitely a factor we have looked at, but it hasn't dampened investment in the UK. "(We are) very much on track." He said the new faster broadband, which installs fibre optic into homes is "future-proof". "In many respects, this investment is going to stand the test of time much more than other technologies." Work has already begun in communities including Ballykelly, Bangor, Limavady, Newtownards, Strabane and Artigarvan, with customers benefiting from ultrafast speeds. "Families and businesses - from Bangor to Ballykelly - will soon benefit from ultrafast broadband 12 times faster than the average speed available today," Mr Hanway said. "Virgin Media stands ready to invest in Northern Ireland, without subsidy from Stormont, London or Brussels. "But, like any major infrastructure investment, we need support from local authorities and Government to cut through red tape so we can connect more homes and businesses more quickly." The new broadband's lowest tier is around four times as fast as average speeds in Northern Ireland, according to Virgin Media. Backed by parent company Liberty Global, Virgin Media says it is investing 3bn to extend its fibre broadband network to an additional four million premises, and to reach a total of 17 million homes and businesses when the scheme is completed. The sister of a renowned chef from Northern Ireland who died suddenly at the age of 46 has told how she will never get over the loss of the brother who meant the world to her. Many leading chefs, including Jamie Oliver, Michel Roux and Richard Corrigan, paid tribute to Darren Simpson on his passing less than two months ago. He died in June after a heart attack following a battle with alcoholism. Darren grew up in Lisburn and had two sons, aged 14 and 12. He was named UK Young Chef of the Year at 21 - the youngest ever winner of the prestigious accolade. From 1992 to 1999 he worked in restaurants such as Paul Rankin's Michelin-starred Roscoff in Belfast, Albert Roux's Michelin-starred Le Gavroche in London, and Sally Clarke's and Simon Hopkinson's Bibendum, also in the capital. His career then took him to Australia, where he enjoyed further success and appeared regularly on TV. Speaking to the Belfast Telegraph, Ruth said despite her brother moving away for work, they were "inseparable". "Darren was my best friend and brother in one," she said. "We were so close. He would have been back all the time and when he used to come home the excitement was like Christmas. "It was just full of laughter and fun. Darren had an amazing personality and he was brilliant to be around - I have nothing but good memories." She tearfully added: "I feel that Darren and I should have had another 30-plus years together, it's being robbed of that future with him. I can't imagine how hard it is for my mum." Ruth (36) said it's the worst thing that has happened or will happen in her life. "When I talk about him with my friends, they know the relationship we had and the bond and the connection - and he really was my everything," she said. "It drives me insane when I think I'm never going to speak to him or see him again." Heartbreakingly, Ruth, daughter Erin and mum Sally had booked to go to Australia when Darren was in hospital, but he died days before they were due to arrive. "I had this feeling that I needed to go to Australia to be with him," she said. "On the Wednesday I booked flights for Erin and I to go out and take a month and stay near the hospital. The plan was to see if he wanted to come home again for a while and we would all fly home together. My mum arrived here the next morning, she phoned every day to the hospital and she said: 'Darren, I love you and I hope you know we've been phoning every day'. "I got to tell him: 'Erin and I are coming to you and we love you'. And then he died that night." She added: "Darren knew how much he was loved and we know how much he loved us." Through her grief, Ruth finds solace in the happy memories of her brother and she especially cherishes the precious moments Erin had with her uncle, taking comfort in the loving relationship they formed. She said: "He was home in the last two years for six months at a time. "It was amazing to have him back, Erin is 10 and for her to build up that relationship with him was amazing. "It's special and I'm so thankful now that she has wonderful memories of him. He said home always called him. If he had been going through anything difficult or whatever, home was where he wanted to be, back with us." Ruth said she can't put into words how proud she is of everything he achieved - and recalled with joy the first time she and their mum dined in Roscoff, where he was working as a pastry chef. She laughed as she remembered Darren warning her not to ask for red sauce. She said: "It just came so naturally to him. I was about 10 or 11 and he had made the most beautiful dessert for me - and had me forewarned not to ask for ketchup. "He said: 'Do not ask for ketchup, we don't serve that in here'." She added: "I have every newspaper cutting, magazine, we have all the DVDs from his shows in Australia, so they have been on a lot." Ruth said Darren's passing has left a "massive void" in her life. But she takes comfort from the hundreds of messages she has received from the people whose lives he touched and the family often sit and read them together. "It's so lovely and my husband said to me: 'You are so lucky that you have all that'. "My mum kept saying: 'I'm never going to hear his voice again'. "This week she said: 'Ruth, the way he called me mum, it breaks my heart that I'm never going to hear him say that again'. "But, as my husband said, we are able to put on his DVDs and hear his voice and his laugh - he had the most brilliant laugh. "I know we are lucky, but it's still very hard." Half of Darren's ashes were scattered in Australia and the family plan to scatter the other half in Northern Ireland, at a spot picked by Erin. Unionists have denounced the first ever Irish parliamentary report on achieving Irish unity by peaceful means, although the man behind the document said he would welcome talks with them. Senator Mark Daly told the Belfast Telegraph that he hadn't spoken to the DUP or UUP but he had consulted grassroots unionists, including former security force members, when he was researching the report. "Their concerns about Irish unity first and foremost weren't economic. They were about protecting their British identity and concern that their land ownership rights may not be retained," he said. "Ex-security force members also had fears about retribution against them in a united Ireland." The Fianna Fail politician said that any road map to Irish unity must "address such concerns honestly". The report foresees the Stormont Assembly remaining in a united Ireland. Senator Daly said it was accepted by both nationalists and unionists that a referendum on Irish unity was inevitable. The report calls for the establishment of a New Ireland Forum made up of experts to discuss the issue. The Ulster Unionists slammed the Irish parliamentary document as "disingenuous" and a "united Ireland wish-list" while it was welcomed by Sinn Fein and the SDLP. Brexit And The Future Of Ireland: Uniting Ireland And Its People In Peace And Prosperity was compiled by an Oireachtas cross-party committee on the implementation of the Good Friday Agreement. It says the Irish Government must negotiate for Northern Ireland to be designated special status within the EU as well as a commitment that there will be no return to passport controls along the border. Senator Daly claimed that pre-Brexit research indicated that Irish unity would lead to a 35.6bn increase in GDP for the entire island within eight years. "Almost 100 years ago, it was a fact that Northern Ireland was better off economically in the UK. Current United Nations data doesn't support that," he said. He urged the Irish Government to fight for Northern Ireland not to be "disadvantaged" by Brexit. "If 'Richard' in Birmingham is prevented from going to study in Paris, then that is a matter for the Brexiteers. But they shouldn't be able to stop Richard in Belfast from having that opportunity," he said. The Ulster Unionists described the report as "disingenuous" and "a united Ireland wish-list dressed up as a Brexit report". UUP MLA Steve Aiken dismissed it as "poorly researched and highly biased 'evidence' gathering". He said: "Politicians in the Republic would be better served looking after their own domestic affairs and dealing with their own considerable European challenges rather than seeking to undermine the constitutional position of Northern Ireland. "The Belfast Agreement is clear: Northern Ireland is part of the United Kingdom until its people say otherwise." By recommending that Northern Ireland remains a part of the EU, the report undermined the Belfast Agreement and the principle of consent, Mr Aiken said. "Any attempt to create a border up the middle of the Irish Sea is totally unacceptable, unwanted and unworkable," he added. TUV leader Jim Allister said that Dublin's "transparent republican agenda" must be rejected. Alliance said it was "unhelpful" that the Oireachtas committee report into Brexit also discussed achieving a united Ireland. The party's deputy leader, Stephen Farry, warned of the dangers of the call for special status for Northern Ireland being seen as a means of hastening Irish unity. "The case for a special deal for Northern Ireland has to be built on a pragmatic response to the particular challenges posed by Brexit. It has to have cross-community support to be effective and sustainable. Any special deal must be understood as being consistent with the principle of consent," he said. Sinn Fein Senator Niall O Donnghaile welcomed the report and urged the Irish Government to "proactively plan and prepare for the reunification of Ireland". "On the issue of consent, the report makes clear that it supports consent but it also says that consent should not be an excuse for political inertia on the issue of ending partition and reuniting Ireland," he said. Senator O Donnghaile called for a joint Oireachtas committee on Irish unity to be set up to "help action and scrutinise government obligations on planning for unity" within the context of the Agreement and Brexit. SDLP leader Colum Eastwood said the report should prompt a "national discussion on unity" and "our constitutional and economic future". The SDLP believed that Irish unity was "the biggest and best idea around", he added. "Irish nationalism needs to get down to the kind of work undertaken by Scottish nationalists in advance of their independence referendum. "It's time we put in the hard yards to transform our political aspiration into a cogent and compelling future for the people of this island." Mike McClure, who has been working in the outdoor sector for over 30 years, has described how conditions in the Mourne Mountains can change quickly and dramatically, creating a dangerous and challenging environment The scene in the Mournes yesterday as emergency services moved into rescue the ramblers The Mournes form one of the most beautiful mountain ranges in the UK - but Northern Ireland's unpredictable weather can turn the scenic landscape into a deadly and treacherous trap, an expert has said. A group of 63 young people were rescued from the Co Down mountains yesterday in an emergency involving a group of cadets from England. The Cleveland Army Cadets Force were taking part in a summer camp when the weather quickly deteriorated and emergency services were called. Mike McClure, who has been working in the outdoor sector for over 30 years, has described how conditions in the Mourne Mountains can change quickly and dramatically, creating a dangerous and challenging environment. Mike, the manager of Tollymore National Outdoor Centre, said that recent heavy rainfall would have resulted in poor visibility. "One of the challenges is when it rains heavily, the rivers rise very suddenly," he said. "I've seen them rise two or three feet in an hour and that presents challenges too, like getting across flood water. "Poor visibility and high winds make walking difficult and people move slower. "The weather system in the Mournes is also a bit unique as the winds tend to be stronger because they are funnelled through the mountains. Rainfall tends to be much higher because the hills push the cloud level up, therefore you get heavier rain, so the visibility closes down and you can't see where you are going. "Having good navigation skills and being prepared is the key but sometimes things get a bit out of control. What happened on the Mournes wasn't a freak event, it was a bad day in the hills. "In those events people will get wet right through and become overly tired and exhausted, and their body doesn't cope properly. "The body starts to retain any heat that it has into the core. Your brain, heart and lungs - all the core organs - regulates your temperature and stops blood flow to your extremities, including your hands and feet." He said that problems arise when the body's core temperature starts to drop and that is what is known as 'exposure' and hypothermia. Some of the army cadets were treated for exposure by paramedics at the scene. Mike added: "The core temperature drops by a few degrees and that's easy to happen in really cold, wet and windy exposed conditions. Even with decent waterproofs you can get very cold pretty quickly in those conditions." While it has the potential to be serious, quick and effective attention can avert a serious outcome, says Mike. "In that situation you need to get people into as much shelter as you can - like a tent or shelter. "At Tollymore National Outdoor Centre we do what we call a risk benefit analysis as we believe there are huge benefits in taking people out into these environments and giving them the opportunity to be challenged and grow their own knowledge of working in a team. "Sometimes things go a bit wrong and people get wet and cold, and we deal with it as quickly as we can. "The Mournes is an unpredictable environment. "A day like yesterday would have been difficult for the helicopter to reach so it's generally a team on foot that will have to attend to them. It's an experience they won't forget." A spokesman for the Ministry of Defence said the group is safe and well, and praised the emergency services for their swift response. "The cadets were from Cleveland in England for their first summer camp in Northern Ireland," he said. "By all accounts the trip had been very successful so far, with adventure activities, cultural visits to the Titanic centre as well as building character and team leadership skills. "Every cadet force will have a summer camp, we have two battalions here who will go away each year. Our own cadets frequently do exercises in the Mourne Mountains and many other spots across Northern Ireland. "The weather took against them seriously and the leaders with them took the right decision. Some of the children had twisted ankles and there was lots of rain coming in. Quite rightly they made the decision to withdraw." Angela Rogan redeemed the Tesco vouchers on more than one occasion A woman has been jailed after taking advantage of a flaw in a voucher system run by supermarket chain Tesco to gather 955 worth of goods. Angela Rogan redeemed vouchers several times when they should only have been used once. She told police she did not believe this was dishonest and claimed she was "simply taking advantage of a flaw". But Dungannon Magistrates Court heard Rogan had a prolific career of thieving and dishonesty, and had racked up five sets of suspended sentences, but continued to offend. Rogan (41), of Barnfield Grange in Lisburn, pleaded guilty to one count of fraud by false representation and eight counts of possessing articles for use in connection with fraud. The offences occurred on September 21, 2013 when she handed over coupons ranging from 3 to 5 each. These were used as part-payments for various goods including cosmetics, nappies and washing powder. Described as "a career thief" by District Judge John Meehan, the court heard that Rogan had convictions dating back to her teens and had offended prolifically. The court was told police were called to Tesco in Cookstown after a manager became suspicious of the excessive amounts of vouchers Rogan was submitting for reductions on goods. He challenged her on the validity of the vouchers and refused to accept any further transactions. Rogan left the scene, driving off in a vehicle that was later traced to her home. She was questioned about the vouchers and claimed to have purchased them on eBay and understood they were genuine. Meanwhile, the vehicle was searched and police recovered 955 of goods including large quantities of baby wipes, nappies, deodorants, washing tablets and ink cartridges. A number of other discount vouchers were discovered, which were examined and found to be duplicates. During interview Rogan maintained her belief the vouchers were genuine. However, she admitted being aware of a flaw in vouchers for one particular supermarket chain, whereby they could be redeemed several times when it should only have been single use. Rogan told police she did not believe this was dishonest but instead claimed she was "simply taking advantage of a flaw". District Judge Mr Meehan expressed dismay at Rogan's "long and prolific record for theft and dishonesty" and noted she had been dealt with lightly in the past. He was also critical of her refusal to co-operate with probation services for a pre-sentence report and had attended court previously with two infant children - a move designed to invoke compassion, according to the judge. Referring to this as "the card in play", Judge Meehan remarked: "There is something exasperating about a woman who brings her children to court when she is to be sentenced for her persistent criminal offending career." Rogan was jailed for three months and ordered to pay fines totalling 400. She attempted to speak out from the dock but Judge Meehan silenced her. He told Rogan: "I get the impression you feel you can talk your way out of everything. The matter is closed." A huge 650-home development dating back almost a decade is due to be refused permission next week A huge 650-home development dating back almost a decade is due to be refused permission next week, it can be revealed. Plans were submitted for the housing scheme back in 2008, just outside Lisburn in Co Antrim. The development was due to be based at land to the north and east of Ballymacash Primary School, east of Mourneview Park and Glenbrae and south of Glenavy Road. The application was made back before planning matters were devolved to councils. It was made by O'Kane & Devine Ltd. But the company has since gone into administration. The reserved matters application is due to be voted on at next week's Lisburn and Castlereagh City Council planning meeting. A spokeswoman for the council said the application was "submitted to the department as planning authority in May 2008... the application was transferred undetermined to Lisburn and Castlereagh City Council on April 1, 2015." The council said the applicant, O'Kane & Devine Ltd, which made the application "no longer owns the land". "The application is included on the schedule of applications for determination by the planning committee at its meeting on August 7, 2017. "The recommendation presented to the committee is to refuse planning permission." A letter from planners to applicants this year says that it understands the "applicant's company has entered administration". "Further I understand the lands associated with this proposal may have passed to another party. In light of this it would be helpful if you now indicate how you wish to proceed with this planning application". Last year the Belfast Telegraph revealed major planning applications dating back more than a decade have still not been decided on. That lack of action was blasted by one planner, who said the huge delays create "uncertainty" which gives investors "a negative view of the Northern Ireland planning system". Around 10 major applications sitting with the department remained undecided at the end of 2016. Planning powers were devolved to Northern Ireland's councils in April 2015, but major and significant applications were retained by the Department of the Environment, now Department for Infrastructure, for decision. Emergency Services at the scene on an ongoing incident involving a group of children on the Head Road in Annalong on August 2nd 2017 (Photo by Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph) Emergency Services at the scene on an ongoing incident involving a group of children on the Head Road in Annalong on August 2nd 2017 (Photo by Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph) Emergency Services at the scene on an ongoing incident involving a group of children on the Head Road in Annalong on August 2nd 2017 (Photo by Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph) Emergency Services at the scene on an ongoing incident involving a group of children on the Head Road in Annalong on August 2nd 2017 (Photo by Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph) Emergency Services at the scene on an ongoing incident involving a group of children on the Head Road in Annalong on August 2nd 2017 (Photo by Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph) Emergency Services at the scene on an ongoing incident involving a group of children on the Head Road in Annalong on August 2nd 2017 (Photo by Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph) Emergency Services at the scene on an ongoing incident involving a group of children on the Head Road in Annalong on August 2nd 2017 (Photo by Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph) Rescue worker pictured at Carrick-Little car park Annalong. Army cadets, aged between 12 and 17, got into difficulties in the Mourne Mountains. Coastguard, ambulance and helicopter crews have been called to the scene. Medical staff are treating several of the children on the mountain. Weather conditions have been very poor. Press Eye Ltd - Northern Ireland Rescue worker pictured at Carrick-Little car park Annalong. Army cadets, aged between 12 and 17, got into difficulties in the Mourne Mountains. Coastguard, ambulance and helicopter crews have been called to the scene. Medical staff are treating several of the children on the mountain. Weather conditions have been very poor. Press Eye Ltd - Northern Ireland Rescue worker pictured at Carrick-Little car park Annalong. Army cadets, aged between 12 and 17, got into difficulties in the Mourne Mountains. Coastguard, ambulance and helicopter crews have been called to the scene. Medical staff are treating several of the children on the mountain. Weather conditions have been very poor. Press Eye Ltd - Northern Ireland. PressEye.com Emergency Services at the scene on an ongoing incident involving a group of children on the Head Road in Annalong on August 2nd 2017 (Photo by Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph) Emergency Services at the scene on an ongoing incident involving a group of children on the Head Road in Annalong on August 2nd 2017 (Photo by Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph) Emergency Services at the scene on an ongoing incident involving a group of involving 70 young people in the Mournes close to the Head Road in Annalong on August 2nd 2017 (Photo by Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph) Emergency Services at the scene on an ongoing incident involving a group of involving 70 young people in the Mournes close to the Head Road in Annalong on August 2nd 2017 (Photo by Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph) Emergency Services at the scene on an ongoing incident involving a group of involving 70 young people in the Mournes close to the Head Road in Annalong on August 2nd 2017 (Photo by Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph) Emergency Services at the scene on an ongoing incident involving a group of involving 70 young people in the Mournes close to the Head Road in Annalong on August 2nd 2017 (Photo by Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph) Emergency Services at the scene on an ongoing incident involving a group of involving 70 young people in the Mournes close to the Head Road in Annalong on August 2nd 2017 (Photo by Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph) Emergency Services at the scene on an ongoing incident involving a group of involving 70 young people in the Mournes close to the Head Road in Annalong on August 2nd 2017 (Photo by Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph) Emergency Services at the scene on an ongoing incident involving a group of involving 70 young people in the Mournes close to the Head Road in Annalong on August 2nd 2017 (Photo by Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph) Emergency Services at the scene on an ongoing incident involving a group of involving 70 young people in the Mournes close to the Head Road in Annalong on August 2nd 2017 (Photo by Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph) Military veteran Doug Beattie MLA has said lessons must be learned after 63 Army cadets were rescued from the Mournes in an emergency that saw several teenagers being stretchered off the mountain. The major incident involved 10 emergency teams rushing to the Mournes after the group - some as young as 12 - got into difficulties when the weather turned treacherous. The group from the Cleveland Army Cadet Force in England were two days in to their two-week trip to Northern Ireland and taking part in routine training. Read More The alarm was raised shortly after 11am yesterday and the Coastguard, NI Ambulance Service and helicopter crews were called to the scene in the lower regions of the Annalong Valley. While 56 of the group were guided down and taken to a nearby community hall, seven young people had to be stretchered off the mountain. Four of the cadets were treated for hypothermia and exposure, and five suffered ankle injuries after slipping, the MoD said. The Mourne Mountain Rescue Team said: "Seven of the group were stretchered as a precaution due to minor injuries and conditions. "The team have been joined by members of the PSNI search and rescue team and the North West team to assist. "The Northern Ireland Ambulance Service put in place their major incident plan to support the team with ambulance resources. "The incident remains within standard procedures and in the complete control of the various services in attendance." The Ulster Unionist MLA, who was awarded the Military Cross for bravery in Afghanistan, said it was a worrying incident. "It was such a large group of Army cadets up the mountain and then the weather turned so nasty maybe they were caught on the hop," he said. "Yes, there are lessons to be learned from this, but they weren't doing anything you wouldn't expect Army cadets to be doing. They are vulnerable people and we do have to look after them. "In hindsight, and having seen what happened, you would of course say no, it wasn't a good idea for the group to go up the mountain. "But when you take young people to places like the Mourne Mountains they do a very detailed risk assessment and make sure that they have very detailed plans in operation, and would have evacuation plans in place as well. I have worked with them on multiple occasions and fully understand what they do and why they do it and what they are trying to achieve. "They could have been doing some navigation, learning how to live out in the field, doing some camping or team-building and personal development." The children and 10 accompanying adults were brought to safety at 3pm. SDLP MLA Colin McGrath wished all those involved or injured a speedy recovery. "The entire incident does underscore the importance of having full respect for the mountains and how weather conditions can change and worsen in an instant and how groups need to have rigorous safety/exit plans from the mountains contained in their planning," he said. "As a former youth worker, I can understand that it is your worst nightmare having responsibility for other people's children when things go wrong - but it is important to acknowledge that even the best prepared plans cannot take account for swift weather changes." UUP councillor Jill Macauley said: "We have experienced some dreadful weather in the Mournes, but even so it came as a shock to learn that a large number of cadets required the assistance of the emergency services." All Creatures Great And Small actor Christopher Timothy has paid tribute to his late co-star Robert Hardy, who has died aged 91. Hardy was known for his role as Siegfried Farnon in the BBC series, which starred Timothy as vet James Herriot. Timothy told the Press Association: I was very sad to hear about Robert today, he played a big part in something that was an important phase of my life. We did meet up last year at a Herriot function and although he looked frail he still had his wit and humour. Great to see him. Expand Close James Herriots widow Joan Wight with their son James Wight (left) and All Creatures Great and Small actors Robert Hardy (right) and Christopher Timothy (John Giles/PA) PA Wire/PA Images / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp James Herriots widow Joan Wight with their son James Wight (left) and All Creatures Great and Small actors Robert Hardy (right) and Christopher Timothy (John Giles/PA) He has left an unbelievable legacy of fantastic work for many generations to enjoy and appreciate. A fascinating man, he didnt suffer fools I can tell you, but he was a good fellow. Prince Albert and of course Campbell were just two of the performances that stick in my mind. May he rest in peace. 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 JK Rowling also shared her memories of working with Hardy on the film adaptations of her Harry Potter books, in which he played the Minister for Magic Cornelius Fudge. She wrote: So very sad to hear about Robert Hardy. He was such a talented actor and everybody who worked with him on Potter loved him. The family of Hardy paid tribute to the gruff, elegant, twinkly, and always dignified actor as they shared the news of his passing. Hardys children Emma, Justine and Paul said in a statement: It is with great sadness that the family of Robert Hardy CBE today announced his death, following a tremendous life: a giant career in theatre, television and film spanning more than 70 years. Expand Close Robert Hardy (Ian West/PA) / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Robert Hardy (Ian West/PA) From the early start, post WWII, with the Shakespeare Memorial Company in Stratford, to his later role in the Harry Potter films as Cornelius Fudge, the Minister for Magic he will perhaps be most remembered for two iconic roles: as Siegfried Farnon in the long-running and much loved BBC series All Creatures Great And Small, and in his many and magnificently distinguished portrayals of Winston Churchill. They said that they will remember their father as a meticulous linguist, a fine artist, a lover of music and a champion of literature, as well a highly respected historian, and a leading specialist on the longbow. He was an essential part of the team that raised the great Tudor warship The Mary Rose. Expand Close Hardy at a memorial service for James Herriot (David Giles/PA) PA Wire/PA Images / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Hardy at a memorial service for James Herriot (David Giles/PA) Gruff, elegant, twinkly, and always dignified, he is celebrated by all who knew him and loved him, and everyone who enjoyed his work. Hardys children said they are immensely grateful to the team at the Denville Hall retirement home for their tender care during the weeks before his death. The BBC also recognised Hardys work on All Creatures Great And Small. Nick Betts, director of scripted at BBC Studios, said: Robert Hardy was an iconic British actor of stage and screen, much loved for his role of Siegfried Farnon in All Creatures Great And Small which ran on the BBC from 1978 to 1990. We are very sorry to hear of his passing today and our thoughts go out to his family and friends. Expand Close Robert Hardy (Lewis Whyld/PA) PA Archive/PA Images / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Robert Hardy (Lewis Whyld/PA) A familiar face in households across the country, Hardys other roles included Tite Barnacle in Little Dorrit (2008) and Arthur Brooke in Middlemarch (1994). He also took on the leading role in Churchill: 100 Days That Saved Britain (2015) and in Winston Churchill: The Wilderness Years (1981). One of his earliest TV jobs, in 1955, saw him take on Shakespeare as he portrayed Cassio in Othello. The Bafta-nominated star, from Cheltenham in Gloucestershire, was also awarded a CBE for his services to acting. 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 Harry Potter actor Chris Rankin, who played Percy Weasley in the films, wrote on Twitter that he was terribly sad to hear the news of Hardys death. He said: He was a very kind man who told wonderful stories. 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 British Film Institute posted: Were sad to hear Robert Hardy, best known for roles in the Harry Potter films & TV series All Creatures Great And Small, has died aged 91. Emma Willis (front L) with her paternal grandparents Edna & Bill Griffiths, her mother Cathy and her sister Sharon - circa 1980s. (C) Steve and Cathy Griffiths Big Brother presenter Emma Willis is shocked to discover one of her ancestors tortured and attempted to kill two Irish men during the latest episode of Who Do You Think You Are. The genealogy programme will air on the BBC on Thursday night and will follow The Voice UK host as she traces her roots from her home in Birmingham to Ireland. Before trailing through her family history, the 41-year-old admits that she doesn't want to find anything unsavory about her ancestors. She says: "I come from a kind family and I hope that has been history repeating itself. "I know nothing past my grandparents on either side and I think I've got to a point in my life where I want to know more. I want to know more about me. I want to know more about where I came from. "I don't know what's about to unfold. Hopefully it's a positive outcome." However Emma soon discovers that is not the case as she finds out her five times great grandfather Richard Fowler tortured and attempted to kill an Irish blacksmith and his son in the late 18th century during a time of religious tensions. Expand Close Emma Willis (front L) with her paternal grandparents Edna & Bill Griffiths, her mother Cathy and her sister Sharon - circa 1980s. (C) Steve and Cathy Griffiths BBC/Wall to Wall/Steve and Cathy Griffiths / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Emma Willis (front L) with her paternal grandparents Edna & Bill Griffiths, her mother Cathy and her sister Sharon - circa 1980s. (C) Steve and Cathy Griffiths Fowler, who was a Protestant, broke into Catholic man Michael Egan and his son Thomas' home and stabbed them with a bayonet before torturing them. It is said he believed they were making weapons in the fight against British rule. The pair were eventually rescued after a local man heard them screaming and chased Fowler and his accomplices away. A tearful Emma says of the discovery: "Thats horrific. How can you defend doing that to somebody? That was exactly what I didnt want to find out. Who Do You Think You Are? airs on BBC1 at 9pm on Thursday, August 3. A junior doctor from Belfast has become a online hit after posting a parody video of the Les Miserables hit 'I Dreamed a Dream' on Facebook. Conal Corr renamed the track 'I Bleeped a Bleep' to celebrate finishing his first year as a doctor in the Northern Trust. He told the Belfast Telegraph he made the video as a 'celebration' of the year, adding: "It's a wee tribute to changeover day or 'Black Wednesday' as it's commonly known. It was a bit of a farewell to my first job which I loved and to mark the big jump in responsibility. "It was just a way of making fun of the perils of the first year on the job and how easy it is to feel lost and helpless. But the reality is that the support is normally pretty fantastic. "I think the humour might help people remember that we're gonna be a bit lost today and finding our feet but we're all just one big team at the end of the day." Conal added: "I've previously done a lot of similar stuff and we were actually able to collate a lot of different medical songs into a bit of a spoof musical which raised over 2,000 for local Cystic Fibrosis and lymphoma and leukaemia charities." The hilarious video has been watched over 186,000 times on Facebook. Video courtesy of Conal Corr. Def Leppard's Vivian Campbell will receive this years Oh Yeah Legend Award, it has been announced. The Belfast guitarist (54) will be honoured at an event at the Mandela Hall on Saturday, November 11 which will run alongside the NI Music Prize. The presentation - which will mark the end of this year's Sound of Belfast festival - will be followed by a live performance from Vivian with his current band Last In Line. The musician said of receiving the prize: "I've been very fortunate that my life's work has also been my passion. It's an honour to be recognised for that, and especially so when that recognition comes from my fellow countrymen." The guitarist is one of the leading names in rock from Northern Ireland, beginning with the global success of his first band Sweet Savage. He has since written, performed, and toured with some of the biggest names in rock including Thin Lizzy, DIO, Whitesnake, Riverdogs, and Lou Gramm. In 1992 Vivian found a permanent home with rock legends Def Leppard and this year he celebrates 25 years with the band. Oh Yeah CEO, Charlotte Dryden, said: Vivian Campbell is a global rock name, hes fully deserving of this award, rock has played a massive role in the story of music in NI and Vivian is one of the trail blazers. "Were delighted to welcome back Blue Moon as our Live Music Partner for what will no doubt be a rousing night for fans of Vivian and a brilliant end to the NI Music Prize as well as the closing night of the Sound of Belfast programme. Previous recipients of the Oh Yeah Legends Award include Terri Hooley (2008), Henry McCullough (2009), The Undertones (2010), Stiff Little Fingers (2011), Gary Moore (posthumous) (2012), Therapy? (2014), Divine Comedy (2015) and Ash (2016). A serial thief with nearly 300 previous convictions has been sent to prison again after he confessed to stealing steak and sausages. Michael McNally (30) was handed a four-month sentence at Belfast Magistrates Court. District Judge Fiona Bagnall was told the past six weeks spent out of custody represents a new record for McNally. As he was being taken down to the cells once again he called out to the judge: "That's OK, see you later Fiona." McNally, with an address at Victoria Street in Belfast, appeared in court on four counts of theft and a further charge of handling stolen goods. He stole 10 packets of sausages valued at 11.80 and steaks worth 15.95 from a Maxol garage at Fortwilliam on consecutive days in June. He also took washing tablets priced at 4 from an Iceland store on the Antrim Road, and five packets of headache tablets valued at 7.45 from Centra on Great Victoria Street. Conor McMullan, who was one of the first people to be rescued by the air ambulance after a farming accident, talks to paramedic Glenn ORoark and pilot David OToole at the services base at the old Maze prison site in Lisburn A boy who was seriously hurt in a farm accident met the heroes who came to his aid as he helped to officially launch Northern Ireland's air ambulance yesterday. Conor McMullan was working on his family's beef and sheep farm in Castlewellan, Co Down, helping his sister with machinery, when the accident occurred on July 22. A tractor reversed, crushing Conor so badly it fractured his skull and left him fighting for his life. At the same time, in Lisburn, the air ambulance crew had been preparing for the service's launch when the call came through. They were able to fly Conor from the farm to Belfast in just eight minutes, shaving half an hour off the response time and saving the boy's life. Conor's father, John, said: "It's inevitable that it's going to happen somewhere - you get so many near-misses in farming and we've had many. We are calling this a near-miss too, although it's that bit closer than you'd ever want it to be. "I think everyone in the farming community knows the risks, but from a very young age we all get involved. You know the dangers and do your best to avoid them, but things can still happen. The road network near us is very poor - it takes at least 45 minutes to get to Belfast. "It was a typical Saturday. Conor and his sister were working with a piece of machinery. She was driving the tractor and Conor was trying to help her hook it off, but he became jammed between the equipment and the wall of the shed that they were in. "He sustained a fracture to the right side of his head and as a result lost consciousness. It really could have been a fatal accident, but this has helped to get him into the hands of the care that he needed - he's a very, very lucky boy. "Getting him into the hands of the hospital quickly definitely saved his life." Conor's mum, Helena, added: "We were just so, so lucky that the team were with the helicopter and ready to come. "The air ambulance was able to land in a field at the top of the lane, and Conor was stretchered to the helicopter. "The paramedics didn't want to move him because of his condition. They had to be so careful. Everybody's amazed by how quickly he's bounced back." Conor is one of five people who were rescued by the service before the air ambulance had officially launched. Yesterday's official ceremony, which was interrupted by a call-out, marked the culmination of a 12-year campaign. The fight for the service took on new energy after the death of Dr John Hinds in 2015. Dr Hinds, one of the 'flying doctors' of Irish road racing, was killed at a motorcycle event in July of that year. Those behind the air ambulance say public support will continue to be central to its survival. The service's medical team will be supported by Executive funding, but the costs - around 2m a year - must be paid for by fundraising and donations. After his week in hospital, Conor is looking forward to starting secondary school, but it will be a while before he is back on the farm. Dad John said: "He has a bit of healing to do yet, but I'm sure he'll be out again in the future. He enjoys it all and just does anything that needs done." One of the leading experts on gigantism is hoping early treatment can halt the excessive growth caused by the condition in some people in Northern Ireland. One part of Mid Ulster was recently identified as a 'giant hotspot' by scientists studying a gene defect that can be traced back 2,500 years and that causes people to grow abnormally tall. One in 150 people in Mid Ulster were found to carry the gene, called AIP, which is extremely rare outside Northern Ireland. It can result in too much growth hormone, which is produced and released by the pituitary gland, a pea-sized gland just below the brain. In a new BBC documentary, Bones, Professor Marta Korbonits, who discovered the Irish giant gene, said the key to curbing the excessive growth was to identify carriers early. "We cannot make people shorter. From that point of view, we cannot treat the giants", said the professor, an endocrinologist at Barts and the London School of Medicine. "We certainly can treat the disease. Gigantism is quite an awful disease with a huge number of complications." It is hoped that increased awareness and screening will identify those at risk of passing on the gene to future generations, leading to earlier diagnosis and treatment. Over-production of the growth hormone occurs as the result of a benign tumour in the gland, which can be removed through surgery. Medication can also be used to treat the condition, which has been narrowed down to 18 families. Patients usually start to show symptoms between the ages of 10 and 20, but children can now be treated from as young as three. Most carriers are unaffected, but around 20% are affected by the condition, which can be fatal if untreated. Tyrone man Brendan Holland, who is 6ft 9ins tall, was only diagnosed with pituitary gigantism after he went to London aged 20. "I was shocked when I heard the word 'giant' used, but I didn't consider myself that," Mr Holland said. Bone Stories id on BBC Radio Four at 1.45pm on August 14 Former Irish Taoiseach John Bruton has accused the DUP of dealing in "platitudes" and called for Ireland to push back against Brexit. Speaking on RTE's Morning Ireland radio programme, former Taoiseach Bruton said that it was "most likely" that Brexit will go ahead, but that Ireland should "do everything we can to stop it happening if we can". "Really the English have to change their opinion. The English are the ones that have initiated Brexit. The opinion in Northern Ireland was against Brexit, the opinion in Scotland was against Brexit, but that is being overruled by English opinion, so England has to change its mind," he said. On the DUP part in the Brexit process, the former Fine Gael leader said that "hard questions" had to be asked of the party and its leader Arlene Foster. "What sort of Brexit do they want? Do they want the UK in the Customs Union? What sort of agricultural policy do they want? Because that will have an impact on the border," he said. "The DUP, who are very influential now in Westminster particularly in the absence of Sinn Fein, they have a responsibility to answer some questions." He added that the DUP needed to give greater clarity Britain's post-Brexit future, and that so far the party had "just talked in platitudes". In the interview former Taoiseach Bruton also hit out at the British government for failing to put forward a clear plan for a post-Brexit border and accused them of "still having debates that they should have had three years ago". He also noted that Sinn Fein's abstentionist policy meant that there would be no nationalist representation to make amendments to the European Union (Withdrawal) Bill when it is tabled again on September 7 after the House of Commons returns from its summer recess. Mr Bruton's comments come ahead of Taoiseach Leo Varadkar's visit on Friday to Northern Ireland, with relations between the DUP and the Irish government growing strained in recent weeks. The Taoiseach drew the ire of the unionist party last month after there was some suggestion from his government that it could pursue the option of a sea border between Britain and Ireland. Ahead of her meeting with Mr Varadkar, leader of the DUP Arlene Foster said that the Taoiseach was "disrespecting" the view of the British people by saying that it was his hope that Brexit wouldn't happen. Northern Irish band Ash received the Oh Yeah award at the Mandela Hall in Belfast in 2016 A Def Leppard guitarist is to receive one of Northern Ireland's top music prizes for his exceptional contribution to the industry. Co Antrim-born Vivian Campbell, 54, will be awarded the Oh Yeah Legend Award this November after a stellar career during which he has scaled the heights of rock. The musician celebrates 25 years with Def Leppard this year and has also been a member of Whitesnake, Dio and Thin Lizzy. He said: "I've been very fortunate that my life's work has also been my passion. "It's an honour to be recognised for that, and especially so when that recognition comes from my fellow countrymen." Campbell had been engaged in a long struggle with cancer, the condition forcing him to pull out of a Def Leppard US tour two years ago. He joined the British band in 1992. The presentation will be followed by a live performance from Campbell with his current band Last In Line, at the Mandela Hall in Belfast on November 11. Oh Yeah centre chief executive officer Charlotte Dryden said: "Vivian Campbell is a global rock name, he's fully deserving of this award, rock has played a massive role in the story of music in Northern Ireland and Vivian is one of the trail blazers." Previous recipients of the Oh Yeah Legends Award include The Undertones, Therapy?, Divine Comedy and Ash. Emergency Services at the scene on an ongoing incident involving a group of children on the Head Road in Annalong on August 2nd 2017 (Photo by Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph) Emergency Services at the scene on an ongoing incident involving a group of children on the Head Road in Annalong on August 2nd 2017 (Photo by Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph) Emergency Services at the scene on an ongoing incident involving a group of children on the Head Road in Annalong on August 2nd 2017 (Photo by Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph) Emergency Services at the scene on an ongoing incident involving a group of children on the Head Road in Annalong on August 2nd 2017 (Photo by Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph) Emergency Services at the scene on an ongoing incident involving a group of children on the Head Road in Annalong on August 2nd 2017 (Photo by Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph) Emergency Services at the scene on an ongoing incident involving a group of children on the Head Road in Annalong on August 2nd 2017 (Photo by Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph) Emergency Services at the scene on an ongoing incident involving a group of children on the Head Road in Annalong on August 2nd 2017 (Photo by Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph) Rescue worker pictured at Carrick-Little car park Annalong. Army cadets, aged between 12 and 17, got into difficulties in the Mourne Mountains. Coastguard, ambulance and helicopter crews have been called to the scene. Medical staff are treating several of the children on the mountain. Weather conditions have been very poor. Press Eye Ltd - Northern Ireland Rescue worker pictured at Carrick-Little car park Annalong. Army cadets, aged between 12 and 17, got into difficulties in the Mourne Mountains. Coastguard, ambulance and helicopter crews have been called to the scene. Medical staff are treating several of the children on the mountain. Weather conditions have been very poor. Press Eye Ltd - Northern Ireland Rescue worker pictured at Carrick-Little car park Annalong. Army cadets, aged between 12 and 17, got into difficulties in the Mourne Mountains. Coastguard, ambulance and helicopter crews have been called to the scene. Medical staff are treating several of the children on the mountain. Weather conditions have been very poor. Press Eye Ltd - Northern Ireland. PressEye.com Emergency Services at the scene on an ongoing incident involving a group of children on the Head Road in Annalong on August 2nd 2017 (Photo by Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph) Emergency Services at the scene on an ongoing incident involving a group of children on the Head Road in Annalong on August 2nd 2017 (Photo by Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph) Emergency Services at the scene on an ongoing incident involving a group of involving 70 young people in the Mournes close to the Head Road in Annalong on August 2nd 2017 (Photo by Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph) Emergency Services at the scene on an ongoing incident involving a group of involving 70 young people in the Mournes close to the Head Road in Annalong on August 2nd 2017 (Photo by Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph) Emergency Services at the scene on an ongoing incident involving a group of involving 70 young people in the Mournes close to the Head Road in Annalong on August 2nd 2017 (Photo by Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph) Emergency Services at the scene on an ongoing incident involving a group of involving 70 young people in the Mournes close to the Head Road in Annalong on August 2nd 2017 (Photo by Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph) Emergency Services at the scene on an ongoing incident involving a group of involving 70 young people in the Mournes close to the Head Road in Annalong on August 2nd 2017 (Photo by Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph) Emergency Services at the scene on an ongoing incident involving a group of involving 70 young people in the Mournes close to the Head Road in Annalong on August 2nd 2017 (Photo by Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph) Emergency Services at the scene on an ongoing incident involving a group of involving 70 young people in the Mournes close to the Head Road in Annalong on August 2nd 2017 (Photo by Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph) Emergency Services at the scene on an ongoing incident involving a group of involving 70 young people in the Mournes close to the Head Road in Annalong on August 2nd 2017 (Photo by Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph) Dozens of young people were evacuated from the Mournes after Army Cadets got into difficulty while camping. A rescue operation was put in place on Wednesday after 73 people - including 10 adults- experienced difficulties. The young people from an Army Cadet force in Cleveland England were on an annual camp based at Ballykinlar. The Ministry of Defence said the Army Cadets involved were aged between 12 and 17. The Coastguard was contacted by the PSNI and Ambulance Service just before 12pm on Wednesday requesting assistance after receiving several reports that a large number of people were in difficulty after being caught in inclement weather. The Northern Ireland Ambulance Service confirmed that sixteen of the group suffered from hypothermia and some with minor injuries. An A&E crew set up at Annalong Community Hall to treat the walking wounded. The Coastguard said on Wednesday afternoon that most of the group were being walked down the mountain to safety but up to 20 people may require stretcher evacuation as they are suffering from exposure. A Ministry of Defence spokesman said the Army Cadet group were undergoing adventure training on the Mournes when the decision was taken to withdraw as the weather conditions worsened. Spokesman Ken Johnston said: "A fairly extensive support operation swung in and we are extremely grateful." Newcastle, Bangor and Kilkeel Coastguard Rescue Teams, and the UK Coastguard search and rescue helicopters based at Caernarfon and Prestwick attendend. In addition the Irish Coastguard Rescue 116 helicopter, Mourne Mountain Rescue Team, PSNI and NI Ambulance Service also attended. SDLP MLA Colin McGrath said they had been experiencing "woeful weather" and that there was a "substantial emergency vehicle response". He said: Such an incident will surely highlight the need for extreme caution when walking in the mountains especially on days such as today when weather conditions have been atrocious on street/town level never mind up in the mountains. I wish all involved a safe resolution to the incident and hope that no one is seriously injured as a result. Mourne councillor Henry Reilly said conditions are "unbelievably bad for August". He said: "People are in winter coats, so if it's like that in the low-land what's it like in the high-land?" The 58-year-old appeared before Belfast Magistrates' Court on three charges connected to an alleged incident in March. A Co Down man is to stand trial accused of a "disgusting" public sex act in the presence of a schoolgirl, a judge ordered on Thursday. David Bryan Douglas allegedly committed the offence in breach of a sexual offences prevention order (SOPO). The 58-year-old appeared before Belfast Magistrates' Court on three charges connected to an alleged incident in March. Douglas, of Park Drive in Bangor, is accused of loitering at a place frequented by children - an act he is prohibited from performing under the terms of the SOPO. He is also charged with committing a "lewd, obscene and disgusting" act outraging public decency. A third count against him involves intentionally engaging in sexual activity for the purpose of obtaining gratification, knowing that a girl under 13 was present or could see. No further details of the alleged offences were disclosed. Douglas, who was led into the dock from custody, declined to call witnesses or give evidence at this stage in proceedings. His lawyer did not contest prosecution submissions that he has a case to answer. District Judge Fiona Bagnall granted an application to have him returned for trial at Belfast Crown Court. The accused is to remain in custody until that hearing gets underway on a date to be fixed. The sudden resignation of a Presbyterian Minister in Co Tyrone has shocked his congregation, it has been reported. Rev Barry Reid, of the Caledon and Minterburn Presbyterian Churches, announced his immediate resignation in early July "for personal reasons". He had held the position for less than five years, having previously served as an Assistant Minister in Newcastle, Co Down. It's understood the Presbytery in Armagh has installed a temporary minister, with plans to appoint a permanent post later this year. Rev Reid graduated from Belfast Bible College in 2000, the same year he married his wife Ashley, with whom he has two children. In 2005, he furthered his religious training, graduating from Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia with a Master of Arts in religion. Commenting on his sudden departure from his role, a spokesperson for the Presbyterian Church in Ireland stated: "I understand that the minister of Caledon and Minterburn Presbyterian Churches resigned at the start of July for personal reasons. "The Armagh Presbytery has appointed one of its ministers to look after the congregations and will be giving further consideration to the matter, including putting more permanent arrangements in place when it meets in the autumn." It is the second time in recent weeks the Presbyterian Church in Co Tyrone has suffered major upset. In June, the Presbyterian Church in Co Tyrone suffered the sudden death of the Rev Roy Campbell of Clogher and Glenhoy Presbyterian Church, who died suddenly at the age of 47. He is survived by his wife and their two young children, and his cause of death remains unknown. The Presbyterian Church in Ireland has more than 225,000 members with 539 congregations in 19 Presbyteries. Police held keys to homes in the New Lodge area of north Belfast The PSNI has returned the master keys to the homes of Northern Ireland residents to the Housing Executive. The Housing Executive asked the police to take the keys for emergency situations or in a life or death situation, police said. Officers have used the keys a number of times to access people's homes. Police did not go into any details of these instances. Since police received the keys from the Northern Ireland Housing Executive, they have been secured in a safe environment for use only in those situations during which quick access to the properties could be the difference between life and death," Inspector Paul Noble said. The keys, which have been used on a minimal number of occasions, are no longer being used at the request of the Northern Ireland Housing Executive and have now been returned. The Police have been asked if they hold keys to other homes of residents, they have yet to respond. Asked for a response the Housing Executive said its investigations were ongoing. On Thursday morning, The Irish News revealed police held the keys to seven tower block in nationalist areas of Belfast. Residents told the paper they were concerned for their privacy and human rights The Dramatic moment three young children were saved from drowning at Ballycastle beech this evening after they were swept out to sea. PICTURES KEVIN MCAULEY/MCAULEY MULITMEDIA This is the modest hero who charged into the sea to rescue three young children who got swept out by currents off the beach at Ballycastle. Nataniel Hunter was out walking his dog with his wife Amy when they spotted three young children struggling in the water and screaming for help yesterday evening. Read More "It's what you do," he told the Belfast Telegraph from his family pub in Ballyvoy just outside the Co Antrim town. "Anyone would have done the same." The coastguard put in place a major rescue operation - the second within hours in Northern Ireland yesterday - after multiple 999 calls to them just after 7.30pm. Lifeboats and a helicopter were scrambled to the scene. However, the three young children- two girls and a boy aged 10, 11 and 12 - were already on the shore by the time the emergency services arrived on the scene, thanks to Nataniel's bravery. "I think they were playing in the Margy River, which had swollen with the rain and they got caught out by the tides," said the 34-year-old joiner, who is well used to the sea off Ballycastle as he would regularly use it to cool down after his hurling training. "It wasn't the warmest," he continued. "The furthest child out was probably about 50 metres or so out by the time I got to them. Expand Close Nataniel Hunter / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Nataniel Hunter "I took a buoyancy aid with a 25-metre tether and went out to the two that were the furthest out. "I got to the point I could throw it and was able to tow them in. "I was able to stand up most of the way. "Another fella went after the other girl who was closer to shore and brought her in. "They were panicking and distressed and maybe in shock, but thankfully okay." Nataniel left the children with the paramedics on the shore and headed off for a warm shower. The Coastguard said the children were safe after their ordeal, adding that they were left cold and shaken. The operation was stood down around an hour after the first emergency calls. A large crowd of people gathered at the scene to witness the dramatic events unfold. "It could have got out of hand very easily," said a Coastguard spokeswoman. She said the children had lost their footing before the current dragged them from the shallow waters of the beach and into the sea. She thanked all those who called to report the incident and all those who helped with the rescue. "If it wasn't for those people this could have been a whole lot worse," she added. "Those first few seconds are valuable and cannot be got back." The Coastguard urged people to be vigilant in the summer waters, saying currents could be deceptive and the sea very dangerous. Parents were urged to supervise their children at all times in the water. Nataniel laughed off his new hero status and said he will be back at work this morning for business as usual. "A man in a boat arrived shortly after us, so he would have got them," he said. "I had to do something, it could have been a tragedy - it's just one of the things you do. "Anyone would have done the same." Pictured at the launch of the Policing with Pride vehicles are (L to R) Superintendent Emma Bond, PSNI Hate Crime Lead, Deputy Chief Constable Drew Harris and Anne Connolly, Chair of Northern Ireland Policing Board. TUV leader Jim Allister has written to the Chief Constable challenging the decision to allow PSNI officers to march in Saturday's Pride parade. It comes as the PSNI defended the move to allow uniformed officers to march in the annual parade. Questions have been raised as to whether the decision will undermine the PSNI's stated neutrality in Northern Ireland after a senior officer conceded the event has a political dimension. Belfast Pride actively promotes the campaign to introduce same-sex marriage in Northern Ireland - the only part of the UK and Ireland where it remains outlawed. Deputy Chief Constable Drew Harris said the PSNI's objective in participating in Saturday's parade was to show support for a community that suffers a "disproportionate" number of hate crime attacks and to reflect the diversity of the police's workforce. Mr Harris added that the PSNI was "unlikely" to allow uniformed officers to take part in a Christian march that expressed a view that homosexuality was a sin. "We are a politically neutral organisation," he said. "Just step back from the narrow point about the societal change that some element of the gay pride event wishes to promote. "We are there, one, to assure that community of our protection in terms of hate crime and also to be a representative workplace." He insisted the PSNI was not undermining anyone's belief system. Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Previous Next Close Belfast Gay Pride 2015 Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye Press Eye - Belfast - Northern Ireland - 1st August 2015 - Thousands of people take part in the annual Belfast Gay Pride event in Belfast city centre celebrating Northern Ireland??s LGBT community. Organisers claim there was a larger than normal turnout in the wake of the recent same-sex marriage referendum in the Republic of Ireland. Picture by Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye. Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye BELFAST, NORTHERN IRELAND - AUGUST 1: Thousands of participants and supporters take part in the 25th annual Belfast Pride parade on August 1, 2015 in Belfast, Northern Ireland. Same-sex marriage whilst legal in the United Kingdom is still not recognised in Northern Ireland despite repeated votes on the issue. The governing Northern Ireland Executive has stated that it does not intend to introduce legislation allowing for same-sex marriage in Northern Ireland. (Photo by Charles McQuillan/Getty Images) Getty Images BELFAST, NORTHERN IRELAND - AUGUST 1: A religious protestor hands out pamphlets to participants taking part in the 25th annual Belfast Pride parade on August 1, 2015 in Belfast, Northern Ireland. Same-sex marriage whilst legal in the United Kingdom is still not recognised in Northern Ireland despite repeated votes on the issue. The governing Northern Ireland Executive has stated that it does not intend to introduce legislation allowing for same-sex marriage in Northern Ireland. (Photo by Charles McQuillan/Getty Images) Getty Images BELFAST, NORTHERN IRELAND - AUGUST 1: A man displays his rainbow coloured tights as thousands of participants and supporters take part in the 25th annual Belfast Pride parade on August 1, 2015 in Belfast, Northern Ireland. Same-sex marriage whilst legal in the United Kingdom is still not recognised in Northern Ireland despite repeated votes on the issue. The governing Northern Ireland Executive has stated that it does not intend to introduce legislation allowing for same-sex marriage in Northern Ireland. (Photo by Charles McQuillan/Getty Images) Getty Images BELFAST, NORTHERN IRELAND - AUGUST 1: A street party on Union Street takes place as thousands of participants and supporters take part in the 25th annual Belfast Pride parade on August 1, 2015 in Belfast, Northern Ireland. Same-sex marriage whilst legal in the United Kingdom is still not recognised in Northern Ireland despite repeated votes on the issue. The governing Northern Ireland Executive has stated that it does not intend to introduce legislation allowing for same-sex marriage in Northern Ireland. (Photo by Charles McQuillan/Getty Images) Getty Images BELFAST, NORTHERN IRELAND - AUGUST 1: Drag artiste Glitzy Glamour performs on stage in Union Street as thousands of participants and supporters take part in the 25th annual Belfast Pride parade on August 1, 2015 in Belfast, Northern Ireland. Same-sex marriage whilst legal in the United Kingdom is still not recognised in Northern Ireland despite repeated votes on the issue. The governing Northern Ireland Executive has stated that it does not intend to introduce legislation allowing for same-sex marriage in Northern Ireland. (Photo by Charles McQuillan/Getty Images) Getty Images BELFAST, NORTHERN IRELAND - AUGUST 1: Thousands of participants and supporters take part in the 25th annual Belfast Pride parade on August 1, 2015 in Belfast, Northern Ireland. Same-sex marriage whilst legal in the United Kingdom is still not recognised in Northern Ireland despite repeated votes on the issue. The governing Northern Ireland Executive has stated that it does not intend to introduce legislation allowing for same-sex marriage in Northern Ireland. (Photo by Charles McQuillan/Getty Images) Getty Images BELFAST, NORTHERN IRELAND - AUGUST 1: A man draped in a rainbow flag watches as religious protestors demonstrate against homosexuality while thousands of participants and supporters take part in the 25th annual Belfast Pride parade on August 1, 2015 in Belfast, Northern Ireland. Same-sex marriage whilst legal in the United Kingdom is still not recognised in Northern Ireland despite repeated votes on the issue. The governing Northern Ireland Executive has stated that it does not intend to introduce legislation allowing for same-sex marriage in Northern Ireland. (Photo by Charles McQuillan/Getty Images) Getty Images BELFAST, NORTHERN IRELAND - AUGUST 1: Religious protestors demonstrate against homosexuality as thousands of participants and supporters take part in the 25th annual Belfast Pride parade on August 1, 2015 in Belfast, Northern Ireland. Same-sex marriage whilst legal in the United Kingdom is still not recognised in Northern Ireland despite repeated votes on the issue. The governing Northern Ireland Executive has stated that it does not intend to introduce legislation allowing for same-sex marriage in Northern Ireland. (Photo by Charles McQuillan/Getty Images) Getty Images BELFAST, NORTHERN IRELAND - AUGUST 1: Religious protestors demonstrate against homosexuality as thousands of participants and supporters take part in the 25th annual Belfast Pride parade on August 1, 2015 in Belfast, Northern Ireland. Same-sex marriage whilst legal in the United Kingdom is still not recognised in Northern Ireland despite repeated votes on the issue. The governing Northern Ireland Executive has stated that it does not intend to introduce legislation allowing for same-sex marriage in Northern Ireland. (Photo by Charles McQuillan/Getty Images) Getty Images BELFAST, NORTHERN IRELAND - AUGUST 1: A drag queen takes a selfie with a friend as thousands of participants and supporters take part in the 25th annual Belfast Pride parade on August 1, 2015 in Belfast, Northern Ireland. Same-sex marriage whilst legal in the United Kingdom is still not recognised in Northern Ireland despite repeated votes on the issue. The governing Northern Ireland Executive has stated that it does not intend to introduce legislation allowing for same-sex marriage in Northern Ireland. (Photo by Charles McQuillan/Getty Images) Getty Images Picture - Kevin Scott / Presseye Belfast - Northern Ireland - Saturday 1st August 2015 - Pride Party in the Square Pictured is the pride party in the square at the Custom house square in Belfast Picture - Kevin Scott / Presseye Kevin Scott / Presseye Picture - Kevin Scott / Presseye Belfast - Northern Ireland - Saturday 1st August 2015 - Pride Party in the Square Pictured is the pride party in the square at the Custom house square in Belfast Picture - Kevin Scott / Presseye Kevin Scott / Presseye Picture - Kevin Scott / Presseye Belfast - Northern Ireland - Saturday 1st August 2015 - Pride Party in the Square Pictured is the pride party in the square at the Custom house square in Belfast Picture - Kevin Scott / Presseye Kevin Scott / Presseye Press Eye - Belfast - Northern Ireland - 1st August 2015 - Basil McCrea, centre, joins thousands of people take part in the annual Belfast Gay Pride event in Belfast city centre celebrating Northern Ireland?s LGBT community. Organisers claim there was a larger than normal turnout in the wake of the recent same-sex marriage referendum in the Republic of Ireland. Picture by Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye. Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye Press Eye - Belfast - Northern Ireland - 1st August 2015 - Thousands of people take part in the annual Belfast Gay Pride event in Belfast city centre celebrating Northern Ireland??s LGBT community. Organisers claim there was a larger than normal turnout in the wake of the recent same-sex marriage referendum in the Republic of Ireland. Picture by Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye. Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye Thousands of people take part in the annual Belfast Gay Pride event in Belfast city centre celebrating Northern Ireland's LGBT community. Picture by Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye. Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye Press Eye - Belfast - Northern Ireland - 1st August 2015 - Thousands of people take part in the annual Belfast Gay Pride event in Belfast city centre celebrating Northern Ireland??s LGBT community. Organisers claim there was a larger than normal turnout in the wake of the recent same-sex marriage referendum in the Republic of Ireland. Picture by Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye. Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye Press Eye - Belfast - Northern Ireland - 1st August 2015 - Thousands of people take part in the annual Belfast Gay Pride event in Belfast city centre celebrating Northern Ireland??s LGBT community. Organisers claim there was a larger than normal turnout in the wake of the recent same-sex marriage referendum in the Republic of Ireland. Picture by Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye. Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye Press Eye - Belfast - Northern Ireland - 1st August 2015 - Thousands of people take part in the annual Belfast Gay Pride event in Belfast city centre celebrating Northern Ireland??s LGBT community. Organisers claim there was a larger than normal turnout in the wake of the recent same-sex marriage referendum in the Republic of Ireland. Picture by Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye. Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye Press Eye - Belfast - Northern Ireland - 1st August 2015 - Members of Sinn Fein join thousands of people take part in the annual Belfast Gay Pride event in Belfast city centre celebrating Northern Ireland?s LGBT community. Organisers claim there was a larger than normal turnout in the wake of the recent same-sex marriage referendum in the Republic of Ireland. Picture by Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye. Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye Press Eye - Belfast - Northern Ireland - 1st August 2015 - Thousands of people take part in the annual Belfast Gay Pride event in Belfast city centre celebrating Northern Ireland??s LGBT community. Organisers claim there was a larger than normal turnout in the wake of the recent same-sex marriage referendum in the Republic of Ireland. Picture by Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye. Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye Press Eye - Belfast - Northern Ireland - 1st August 2015 - Thousands of people take part in the annual Belfast Gay Pride event in Belfast city centre celebrating Northern Ireland??s LGBT community. Organisers claim there was a larger than normal turnout in the wake of the recent same-sex marriage referendum in the Republic of Ireland. Picture by Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye. Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye Press Eye - Belfast - Northern Ireland - 1st August 2015 - Thousands of people take part in the annual Belfast Gay Pride event in Belfast city centre celebrating Northern Ireland??s LGBT community. Organisers claim there was a larger than normal turnout in the wake of the recent same-sex marriage referendum in the Republic of Ireland. Picture by Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye. Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye Press Eye - Belfast - Northern Ireland - 1st August 2015 - Christian protesters outside the City Hall as thousands of people take part in the annual Belfast Gay Pride event in Belfast city centre celebrating Northern Ireland?s LGBT community. Organisers claim there was a larger than normal turnout in the wake of the recent same-sex marriage referendum in the Republic of Ireland. Picture by Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye. Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye Press Eye - Belfast - Northern Ireland - 1st August 2015 - Thousands of people take part in the annual Belfast Gay Pride event in Belfast city centre celebrating Northern Ireland??s LGBT community. Organisers claim there was a larger than normal turnout in the wake of the recent same-sex marriage referendum in the Republic of Ireland. Picture by Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye. Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye Press Eye - Belfast - Northern Ireland - 1st August 2015 - Thousands of people take part in the annual Belfast Gay Pride event in Belfast city centre celebrating Northern Ireland??s LGBT community. Organisers claim there was a larger than normal turnout in the wake of the recent same-sex marriage referendum in the Republic of Ireland. Picture by Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye. Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye Press Eye - Belfast - Northern Ireland - 1st August 2015 - Thousands of people take part in the annual Belfast Gay Pride event in Belfast city centre celebrating Northern Ireland??s LGBT community. Organisers claim there was a larger than normal turnout in the wake of the recent same-sex marriage referendum in the Republic of Ireland. Picture by Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye. Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye Press Eye - Belfast - Northern Ireland - 1st August 2015 - Thousands of people take part in the annual Belfast Gay Pride event in Belfast city centre celebrating Northern Ireland??s LGBT community. Organisers claim there was a larger than normal turnout in the wake of the recent same-sex marriage referendum in the Republic of Ireland. Picture by Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye. Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye Press Eye - Belfast - Northern Ireland - 1st August 2015 - Teenagers look on as thousands of people take part in the annual Belfast Gay Pride event in Belfast city centre celebrating Northern Ireland?s LGBT community. Organisers claim there was a larger than normal turnout in the wake of the recent same-sex marriage referendum in the Republic of Ireland. Picture by Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye. Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye Press Eye - Belfast - Northern Ireland - 1st August 2015 - Thousands of people take part in the annual Belfast Gay Pride event in Belfast city centre celebrating Northern Ireland??s LGBT community. Organisers claim there was a larger than normal turnout in the wake of the recent same-sex marriage referendum in the Republic of Ireland. Picture by Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye. Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye Press Eye - Belfast - Northern Ireland - 1st August 2015 - Thousands of people take part in the annual Belfast Gay Pride event in Belfast city centre celebrating Northern Ireland??s LGBT community. Organisers claim there was a larger than normal turnout in the wake of the recent same-sex marriage referendum in the Republic of Ireland. Picture by Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye. Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye Press Eye - Belfast - Northern Ireland - 1st August 2015 - Thousands of people take part in the annual Belfast Gay Pride event in Belfast city centre celebrating Northern Ireland??s LGBT community. Organisers claim there was a larger than normal turnout in the wake of the recent same-sex marriage referendum in the Republic of Ireland. Picture by Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye. Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye Press Eye - Belfast - Northern Ireland - 1st August 2015 - Thousands of people take part in the annual Belfast Gay Pride event in Belfast city centre celebrating Northern Ireland??s LGBT community. Organisers claim there was a larger than normal turnout in the wake of the recent same-sex marriage referendum in the Republic of Ireland. Picture by Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye. Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye Press Eye - Belfast - Northern Ireland - 1st August 2015 - Thousands of people take part in the annual Belfast Gay Pride event in Belfast city centre celebrating Northern Ireland??s LGBT community. Organisers claim there was a larger than normal turnout in the wake of the recent same-sex marriage referendum in the Republic of Ireland. Picture by Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye. Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye Press Eye - Belfast - Northern Ireland - 1st August 2015 - Thousands of people take part in the annual Belfast Gay Pride event in Belfast city centre celebrating Northern Ireland??s LGBT community. Organisers claim there was a larger than normal turnout in the wake of the recent same-sex marriage referendum in the Republic of Ireland. Picture by Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye. Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye Press Eye - Belfast - Northern Ireland - 1st August 2015 - Thousands of people take part in the annual Belfast Gay Pride event in Belfast city centre celebrating Northern Ireland??s LGBT community. Organisers claim there was a larger than normal turnout in the wake of the recent same-sex marriage referendum in the Republic of Ireland. Picture by Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye. Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye Press Eye - Belfast - Northern Ireland - 1st August 2015 - Thousands of people take part in the annual Belfast Gay Pride event in Belfast city centre celebrating Northern Ireland??s LGBT community. Organisers claim there was a larger than normal turnout in the wake of the recent same-sex marriage referendum in the Republic of Ireland. Picture by Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye. Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye Press Eye - Belfast - Northern Ireland - 1st August 2015 - Thousands of people take part in the annual Belfast Gay Pride event in Belfast city centre celebrating Northern Ireland??s LGBT community. Organisers claim there was a larger than normal turnout in the wake of the recent same-sex marriage referendum in the Republic of Ireland. Picture by Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye. Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye Press Eye - Belfast - Northern Ireland - 1st August 2015 - Thousands of people take part in the annual Belfast Gay Pride event in Belfast city centre celebrating Northern Ireland??s LGBT community. Organisers claim there was a larger than normal turnout in the wake of the recent same-sex marriage referendum in the Republic of Ireland. Picture by Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye. Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye Press Eye - Belfast - Northern Ireland - 1st August 2015 - Thousands of people take part in the annual Belfast Gay Pride event in Belfast city centre celebrating Northern Ireland??s LGBT community. Organisers claim there was a larger than normal turnout in the wake of the recent same-sex marriage referendum in the Republic of Ireland. Picture by Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye. Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye Press Eye - Belfast - Northern Ireland - 1st August 2015 - Thousands of people take part in the annual Belfast Gay Pride event in Belfast city centre celebrating Northern Ireland??s LGBT community. Organisers claim there was a larger than normal turnout in the wake of the recent same-sex marriage referendum in the Republic of Ireland. Picture by Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye. Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye Press Eye - Belfast - Northern Ireland - 1st August 2015 - Thousands of people take part in the annual Belfast Gay Pride event in Belfast city centre celebrating Northern Ireland??s LGBT community. Organisers claim there was a larger than normal turnout in the wake of the recent same-sex marriage referendum in the Republic of Ireland. Picture by Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye. Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye Press Eye - Belfast - Northern Ireland - 1st August 2015 - Belfast Lord Mayor Arder Carson joins thousands of people take part in the annual Belfast Gay Pride event in Belfast city centre celebrating Northern Ireland?s LGBT community. Organisers claim there was a larger than normal turnout in the wake of the recent same-sex marriage referendum in the Republic of Ireland. Picture by Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye. Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye Press Eye - Belfast - Northern Ireland - 1st August 2015 - Thousands of people take part in the annual Belfast Gay Pride event in Belfast city centre celebrating Northern Ireland??s LGBT community. Organisers claim there was a larger than normal turnout in the wake of the recent same-sex marriage referendum in the Republic of Ireland. Picture by Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye. Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye Press Eye - Belfast - Northern Ireland - 1st August 2015 - Thousands of people take part in the annual Belfast Gay Pride event in Belfast city centre celebrating Northern Ireland??s LGBT community. Organisers claim there was a larger than normal turnout in the wake of the recent same-sex marriage referendum in the Republic of Ireland. Picture by Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye. Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye Press Eye - Belfast - Northern Ireland - 1st August 2015 - Thousands of people take part in the annual Belfast Gay Pride event in Belfast city centre celebrating Northern Ireland??s LGBT community. Organisers claim there was a larger than normal turnout in the wake of the recent same-sex marriage referendum in the Republic of Ireland. Picture by Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye. Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye Thousands of people take part in the annual Belfast Gay Pride event in Belfast city centre celebrating Northern Ireland's LGBT community. Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye Press Eye - Belfast - Northern Ireland - 1st August 2015 - Thousands of people take part in the annual Belfast Gay Pride event in Belfast city centre celebrating Northern Ireland??s LGBT community. Organisers claim there was a larger than normal turnout in the wake of the recent same-sex marriage referendum in the Republic of Ireland. Picture by Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye. Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye PRESS RELEASE IMAGE 1/8/15: Justice Minister David Ford showing his support for the LGBT community at Belfast's Pride Festival with Roisin Lavery, Equality Commission and Sean O'Neill, Festival organiser. Picture: Michael Cooper Michael Cooper / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Belfast Gay Pride 2015 On Wednesday TUV leader Jim Allister published his open letter to the PSNI's Chief Constable George Hamilton. Read More Within it he expresses his "dismay" at the decision and accused the PSNI of "selectivity" as he said that Orange Halls had been targeted in numerous arson attacks, "but no one is suggesting certainly, not me that the PSNI should show opposition to these hate crimes by participating in Orange parades", he writes. The letter states: "This is a highly politicised event with the demand for a change in the law to permit same sex marriage at its heart. Why is the PSNI joining in this political campaign? "The official slogan for this years event is Demand Change, which links directly to the campaign for same sex marriage, a point made very clear by the chair of Belfast Pride in the forward to the 2017 Festival Guide. "Why, then, is the PSNI involving itself in a political campaign? Just as I wouldnt expect the police to involve itself in demands to change the law on abortion, so, lending support to the demand to change the law on marriage is wholly inappropriate." Mr Allister also questioned the PSNI vehicles which will also be part of the parade, bearing banners with the Pride message: "Policing with Pride". He wrote that hate crime is "wrong whoever is the target" but added that he did not recall "any specially liveried PSNI vehicles proclaiming an anti-hate message at the Twelfth! So, why the partisan selectivity in elevating hate crime against LGBT community as alone worthy of police support?". Mr Allister concludes his letter stating that officers have been authorised to take part in a parade with a "divisive record". "You must also be aware this is a parade with a history of causing gratuitous offence to Christians with its infamous and blasphemous poster Jesus is a fag. Yet, as one who professes the Christian faith, you have authorised the participation of your officers in a parade with such a divisive record. What happens if such a poster is displayed again this year? "The fact that the parade is divisive and controversial is signified by the fact that it is marked as sensitive on the Parades Commission website. Notice of a protest has also been lodged. "Therefore, as well as the PSNI associating themselves with this overtly political event, there are legitimate questions about how the event can be impartially policed when officers are marching in the parade? I call on you to step in and cancel official PSNI involvement in this political parade." In response, the PSNI said: "Deputy Chief Constable Drew Harris said: Police officers and staff have been involved in the Pride event for many years. Participation in Pride does not imply that the Police Service of Northern Ireland endorse any political causes. We are a politically neutral organisation. Pride is an important series of events for those in the community who identify as being LGB+T. The PSNI sees Pride as an opportunity to highlight that hate crime in whatever form is wrong and the importance of reporting it. It also allows us to show that we are here to protect all members of our community. Hate Crime, including homophobic and transphobic hate crimes are well known to be under reported crimes and we have taken this opportunity to livery a number of vehicles to highlight that hate crime is unacceptable. The Police Service of Northern Ireland is committed to ensuring our workforce is totally representative of the community we serve and that we are seen as an employer of choice. Irish Minister for Foreign Affairs Simon Coveney spoke of the 'overwhelming' scale of humanitarian crises The Irish Government has donated an extra nine million euro in funding for areas hit by humanitarian crises across the globe. The money to the United Nations Central Emergency Response Fund (CERF) will provide aid in crisis areas like the Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Chad. The Irish Government has contributed 22 million euro to the CERF in 2017 so far. Foreign affairs minister Simon Coveney said the scale and severity of humanitarian crises globally is overwhelming. "Millions are on the brink of famine in the Horn of Africa, north east Nigeria and Yemen and diseases like cholera are ravaging people weakened by malnutrition, he said. Mr Coveney added: "Ireland has a proud history of supporting those in need. Our compassion for those who are suffering will not allow us to stand by while millions are in need of basic requirements like food, shelter and clean water. Minister of State Ciaran Cannon said the CERF is a "valuable mechanism." The Central Emergency Response Fund is a large UN fund that is used for immediate humanitarian response at the onset of emergencies. So far this year, CERF has allocated over 276 million US dollars to 28 crises around the world, including to crises in the Horn of Africa, Yemen and Nigeria. The wreckage was found near Trawsfynydd in the Snowdonia mountain range An inquest into the deaths of five family members killed in a helicopter crash has been opened and adjourned. Three brothers and two of their wives died in the crash in mountains in Snowdonia, North Wales, earlier this year. Those killed were Kevin and Ruth Burke, aged 56 and 49, Donald and Sharon Burke aged 55 and 48, and Barry Burke, 51. The five, from a wealthy Anglo-Irish family, who lived in the Milton Keynes area, were on their way to Dublin on March 29, for a party following the confirmation of another young relative. When their privately-owned Twin Squirrel aircraft failed to land in Ireland a major search was launched. Their bodies were later found with the wreckage of the helicopter in the remote Rhinog mountains near Trawsfynydd, North Wales. On Thursday, Dewi Pritchard Jones, senior coroner for North West Wales, formally opened and adjourned the inquest into their deaths at Caernarfon Coroner's Court. No members of the Burke family were present for the 10-minute hearing. The coroner said: "This is the helicopter crash that occurred on Wednesday the 29th of March this year. "Most of you will have heard of it in the press. "Tragically they were all in a helicopter which crashed. All of the bodies have been identified and funerals have taken place." He said the Air Accidents Investigation Branch (AAIB) was conducting an inquiry into the cause of the crash and from experience of previous inquests involving aircraft accidents, their work and final report would take up to a year to complete. He added: "The inquest into the deaths of these five people, all from the same family very tragically, is now adjourned and will remain adjourned until the AAIB report has been received." Kevin and Ruth Burke, from Hulcote near Milton Keynes - close to where the helicopter took off - were directors of Staske Construction, which owned a Twin Squirrel. The three brothers were the sons of an Irish couple who emigrated to Britain, according to the Irish Independent. A man has been seriously injured after he was shot a number of times while in a car outside a Meath home. The incident occurred in the village of Stamullen close to the border with Co Dublin at around 7pm. The victim was shot in the driveway of a house in Mill Close, Stamullen, Co Meath this evening at around 7pm A lone male entered the driveway of the house and fired a number of shots injuring the male driver of a car. The injured man was rushed to Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital in Drogheda and his condition is unknown at this stage. A 34-year-old man who was in a house near the scene said "I heard four or five shots. The shots were in very quick succession." He said gardai were very quick getting to the scene of the shooting. The ambulance was there. I saw the man being taken away on a stretcher. "He was lying on his side on the stretcher and he was grimacing. "I didn't see any blood." He went on to say"The garda Emergency Response Unit was here in their full gear and guns. "People were standing around. Everyone was very shocked. "It's not something you see every day," he said A full investigation has commenced and an incident room has been established at Drogheda Garda Station. Investigating Gardai are appealing for witnesses, particularly those people who were in the area prior to the incident and immediately after the shooting and who may have information or who may have seen anything unusual or suspicious to contact them at Drogheda Garda Station on 041 987 4200 The Garda Confidential Line, 1800 666111 or any Garda Station. Ian Paterson has had his sentence increased from 15 years to 20 years (Joe Giddens/PA) A surgeon who carried out needless breast operations has had his 15-year jail sentence increased to 20 years by judges. Ian Paterson, who left victims scarred and disfigured, was ordered to serve extra time behind bars by the Court of Appeal on Thursday. Lady Justice Hallett, Mrs Justice Carr and Mr Justice Goss, sitting in London, declared that the original jail term imposed in May was unduly lenient. Expand Close Lady Justice Hallett was one of the judges who decided to increase Ian Paterson's sentence (John Stillwell/PA) / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Lady Justice Hallett was one of the judges who decided to increase Ian Paterson's sentence (John Stillwell/PA) Their ruling came after the sentence was referred to the court for review by Solicitor General Robert Buckland. Paterson, 59, from Altrincham, Greater Manchester, watched proceedings via video-link from prison. He was convicted by a jury at Nottingham Crown Court of offences of wounding with intent and unlawful wounding against 10 patients. Brexit will still happen despite the UK becoming more aware of the density of problems during withdrawal negotiations, Jean-Claude Juncker has said. The European Commission president said he disagreed with the Maltese prime minister Joseph Muscat, who reportedly said last week he saw hopeful signs that Brexit will not happen. His comments come amid increasing Tory tensions over the Brexit process, with Cabinet ministers publicly disagreeing over the potential terms of a transition phase after Britains expected exit in March 2019. Expand Close Philip Hammond said last week that free movement of EU citizens would continue for three year transition period (Dominic Lipinski/PA) / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Philip Hammond said last week that free movement of EU citizens would continue for three year transition period (Dominic Lipinski/PA) Mr Juncker told Politico: People will become more and more conscious of the density of problems on a daily basis, without always being able to provide a coherent answer to these problems. But the Commission president said he still expected Britain to leave the European Union. I dont go as far as the Maltese prime minister who has not ruled out that it will not come to Brexit, he said. My working hypothesis is that it will come to Brexit. In a public Cabinet split last week, Chancellor Philip Hammond signalled that free movement of EU citizens would continue for a three-year transition period in all but name, with an added element of migrants having to register in the UK. 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 But International Trade Secretary Liam Fox insisted unregulated free movement of labour after Brexit would not keep faith with the EU referendum result and that the Cabinet had not agreed a stance on immigration Shadow Brexit secretary Sir Keir Starmer has suggested Labour could seek to exploit the Tory splits, saying the party will work with others to ensure a transition phase including membership of the single market and customs union. The UKs largest air traffic control provider has been told to improve its contingency planning after Ryanair claimed staff shortages were delaying flights. An investigation by the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) found that Nats, based in Swanwick, Hampshire, had too few operational staff following significant cuts, short-term sickness and a reluctance by controllers to do voluntary overtime. The regulator said Nats needs to boost its resilience by better understanding how shortfalls in resources affect airlines and airports. Expand Close Ryanair claimed air traffic control staff shortages were delaying flights (Rui Vieira/PA) / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Ryanair claimed air traffic control staff shortages were delaying flights (Rui Vieira/PA) Ryanair complained that more than 100,000 of its passengers in London were disrupted due to flights delayed by Nats staffing shortages in the first half of last year. In June 2016 some 139 flights to or from the capital were delayed by a total of around 5,000 minutes because of the issue, the Dublin-based carrier said. Stansted Airport in Essex accused Nats of discriminating against airlines using its airport in favour of those at Heathrow Airport, in west London. It stated that it was the worst performing airport in the UK for air traffic control-related delays in April 2016. Expand Close Stansted accused Nats of discriminating against airlines using the airport (Chris Radburn/PA) PA Archive/PA Images / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Stansted accused Nats of discriminating against airlines using the airport (Chris Radburn/PA) On the weekend of July 2 and 3 last year controller shortages meant just 10 flights per hour were allowed to land at the airport, down 65% on normal aircraft movements, according to Stansted. The CAA concluded that Nats had not breached its licence obligations, but did make a series of recommendations. Richard Moriarty, the CAAs director of consumers and markets, said: This is the first time that the CAA has used its investigatory powers under the Transport Act 2000 and highlights the potential seriousness of the complaint raised. In this instance our investigation has found no compliance breach, however improvements to operational resilience are key to ensuring service delivery levels are maintained in our increasingly busy airspace. Expand Close Nats controls 2.5 million flights per year (Steve Parsons/PA) PA Archive/PA Images / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Nats controls 2.5 million flights per year (Steve Parsons/PA) A Nats spokeswoman said: We welcome the CAAs confirmation today that Nats has fulfilled the requirements of its licence and the Transport Act 2000. This followed a lengthy investigation by the CAA after a complaint was made nearly a year ago. The safe air traffic control service that we provide to 2.5 million flights per year is recognised by our customers as one of the best and most resilient anywhere in the world. We continually seek to refine our operation particularly in light of the substantial and unforeseen growth of traffic across the South East of the UK since early 2016. Consequently, we are pleased to confirm that we have already taken a number of the actions referred to in the CAAs report. Britains favourite pastry makers, Greggs, has announced plans to roll out an array of drive-thru stores across the UK. The revelation comes just over a month after a successful trial of the initiative in Greater Manchester, in which locals were able to order the bakers popular pasties and pies from the comfort of their vehicles, without ever having to turn off the ignition. Chief executive Roger Whiteside told the Newcastle Chronicle he was surprised the company hadnt thought of the idea before. Expand Close Greggs chief executive, Roger Whiteside (Greggs) / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Greggs chief executive, Roger Whiteside (Greggs) He said: We opened our first Drive-Thru shop at Irlam, Greater Manchester, in June and have been encouraged by its popularity, indicating a demand for further drive-thru locations. We are very excited by it its got off to a flying start. Its been interesting and exciting to see how well customers have taken to it. Customers are very taken by the idea of not having to leave their cars. We wondered if they would be welcoming to do this, and its been very positive I dont understand why we havent done this years ago. 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 Whiteside said the Newcastle-based business was actively looking for new locations to place drive-thru shops, and that the service format was becoming increasingly prevalent in the retail industry. The news created a stir on social media, where Greggs enthusiasts across the country gladly showed their support. 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 If only there was a way to invent a drive-thru gym, we may all be able to gorge on baked goods for as long as our petrol tanks hold out. An American nurse has received thousands of messages of encouragement after her son wrote a heartfelt Facebook post in defence of her tattoos. Jordan Miller, 21, was driven to defend his mother, Misti Johnson, after a conversation in which she revealed how strict various health employers can be when it comes to visible body art. Talking to my mom tonight (who is a registered nurse) and she was telling me about how strict some hospitals are when it Posted by Jordan Miller on Tuesday, July 25, 2017 He took to Facebook where he passionately described Mistis amazing dedication to her job. He wrote: Talking to my mom tonight (who is a registered nurse) and she was telling me about how strict some hospitals are when it comes to employees having tattoos. I must say I am kind of confused. Ive seen my mom pull a lady out of a car before it fills with smoke and she suffocates. Ive seen her do stitches on an injured person on the side of the road following a car accident. Ive seen her come home after a 12-hour shift, dead tired after dealing with an abusive patient all day, and get back up and do it again the next day. Shes come home after holding a baby in her hands and watching it take their last breath. Shes saved a drug addicts life after overdosing in the hospital bed. Tattoos dont define the person. My mom has more tattoos than I can count and it has never, ever affected her work ethic. She will wake up at the same time everyday and save a life. I am absolutely blown away by the support for tattoos on nurses that my son wrote. Almost 400 likes and shared over 200 Posted by Misti Johnson on Thursday, July 27, 2017 Jordan said the multitude of positive comments had been overwhelming in the days since he wrote about the conversation. He said: I decided to make the post because my mom and I are both covered in tattoos and people are always surprised that we have professional jobs with the tattoos we have. She came home and we were talking about how some places are strict about making nurses wear long sleeves. The responses from the post have been overwhelming. Its insane. We appreciate everyones support and we love to hear everyones stories. My mom is filled with happiness to see the support from strangers all across the world. Wow we never expected National attention from the "tattoo nurse" post. I'm beyond honored. I know some won't and don't Posted by Misti Johnson on Tuesday, August 1, 2017 Misti, 38, who lives in Carrollton, Texas, later took to the social networking site to express gratitude for the tremendous feedback, after the post was shared on Facebooks Love What Matters page and subsequently went viral gaining over 85,000 likes and 67,000 shares in four days. She said: Its so amazing that many people support a tattooed nurse. The messages of support and the hundreds friends request Ive gotten since then is so heart warming. Thank you all so much. Russian officials and politicians have vented their frustration with US President Donald Trump's decision to sign a bill imposing new sanctions on the country. In an emotional Facebook post, Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev described the move as a humiliating defeat for Mr Trump. The Russian Foreign Ministry warned of possible new retaliatory measures. "The hope for improving our relations with the new US administration is now over," said Mr Medvedev, who served as Russian president in 2008-2012 before stepping down to allow Vladimir Putin to reclaim the job. The Kremlin had been encouraged by Mr Trump's campaign promises to improve the Russia-US ties that had grown increasingly strained under former president Barack Obama. With the White House preoccupied by congressional and FBI investigations into links between the Trump campaign and Russia, the hoped-for relationship reset has not materialised. "Trump's administration has demonstrated total impotence by surrendering its executive authority to Congress in the most humiliating way," said Mr Medvedev, who presided during a brief period of improved relations early in Mr Obama's presidency. "The American establishment has won an overwhelming victory over Trump," he added. "The president wasn't happy with the new sanctions, but he had to sign the bill. The topic of new sanctions was yet another way to put Trump in place." Mr Medvedev emphasised that the stiff new sanctions amount to the declaration of an "all-out trade war against Russia," but added that it will cope with the challenge and only get stronger. "We will continue to work calmly to develop our economy and social sphere, deal with import substitution and solve important government tasks counting primarily on ourselves," he said. "We have learned how to do it over the past few years." Without waiting for Mr Trump to sign the bill, which was passed by the US Congress with overwhelming, veto-proof numbers, Russia fired back on Friday. It ordered deep cuts in the number of personnel working at the US embassy and consulates in Russia and the closure of a US recreational retreat and warehouse facilities. It was the long-expected tit-for-tat response to Mr Obama's move to expel 35 Russian diplomats and shut down two Russian recreational retreats in the US following allegations of Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election. Asked whether Moscow planned additional steps in response to Mr Trump signing the bill, Putin spokesman Dmitry Peskov answered that "retaliatory measures already have been taken". But shortly after, the Foreign Ministry warned that "we naturally reserve the right for other countermeasures". It said the sanctions bill reflects a "short-sighted and dangerous" attempt to cast Russia as an enemy and would erode global stability. The ministry added that "no threats or attempts to pressure Russia will force it to change its course or give up its national interests". It added that "we are open for cooperation with the US in the spheres where we see it useful for ourselves and international security, including the settlement of regional conflicts," but warned that a constructive dialogue is only possible if Washington sheds the notion of "American exclusiveness". Konstantin Kosachev, who heads the foreign affairs committee in the upper house of the Russian parliament, said the bill Mr Trump signed "leaves no chance for a constructive cooperation with Russia." "Perspectives for the settlement of Iranian and North Korean problems look grim," Mr Kosachev said. "It means that real threats will exacerbate." AP Christopher Msando was found tortured and killed. (AP) A murdered Kenyan official crucial to the running of elections next week was tortured and then strangled, a post-mortem examination has revealed. Christopher Msando's body was identified on Monday at a city morgue. He was in charge of running biometric readers and electronic transmission equipment meant to greatly reduce incidences of electoral fraud. Government pathologist Dr Johansen Oduor said on Wednesday that strangulation was the cause of death. Mr Msando also had been hit by a blunt object and had deep cuts on his right arm, indicating torture. Dr Oduor said Mr Msando's trachea had collapsed, indicating that he may have been strangled using "bare hands". Concerns are growing that Kenya's election again could turn violent. A poll this week shows President Uhuru Kenyatta and top challenger Raila Odinga just one percentage point apart. AP Republican senators have said it is wrong for the US president to blame Congress for deteriorating relations with Russia. Senator Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania said he was shocked at a tweet by Donald Trump that said "you can blame Congress" for a relationship "at an all-time" and "dangerous" low. But many Republicans blame Russian president Vladimir Putin for the growing tensions. Maine Senator Susan Collins cited Russia's actions in Ukraine and Syria and its suspected interference in the presidential election. North Carolina Senator Thom Tillis said relations with Russia are bad "because they've done bad things". And Alabama Senator Richard Shelby said the two nations' relationship began deteriorating with the Russian Revolution of 1917, which led to Communist rule. Mr Shelby said: "I don't see how it's Congress' fault." Earlier, t wo members of the US Senate Judiciary Committee moved to protect special counsel Robert Mueller from being fired by Mr Trump, putting forth new legislation that aims to ensure the integrity of current and future independent investigations. Mr Tillis and Democratic Senator Chris Coons of Delaware said they introduced legislation letting any special counsel for the Department of Justice challenge his or her removal in court. A three-judge panel would review the dismissal within 14 days of the challenge. The bill would apply retroactively to May 17 2017 - the day Mr Mueller was appointed by deputy attorney general Rod Rosenstein to investigate allegations of Russian meddling in the 2016 election and possible ties between Russia and Mr Trump's presidential campaign. "This is something that lives long beyond this" situation involving Mr Mueller, Mr Tillis told reporters. "And I think it's also something that begins to re-establish the reputation for independence in the Department of Justice." AP Britain, France and Japan have called for a speedy vote on a UN resolution that would impose new sanctions against North Korea following its tests of an intercontinental ballistic missile. Russia said the text still needs to be discussed and there is no agreement yet. The US gave China, North Korea's neighbour and ally, a proposed resolution several weeks ago and ambassadors from both countries said on July 25 they were making progress. Several diplomats said the two countries are close to agreement. France's UN ambassador Francois Delattre said his government would like to see a resolution adopted "in the very coming days". Britain's ambassador Matthew Rycroft said he hopes it will be "very soon". Koro Bessho of Japan said "days rather than weeks". But Russia's new UN ambassador Vassily Nebenzia said there has been no discussion yet among the five permanent members of the Security Council - the US, Russia, China, Britain and France - so "there was no agreement yet". Mr Nebenzia said he had met privately on Thursday morning with China's Liu Jieyi and they discussed the possibility of a resolution. But he said even if there was an agreement between the US and China, it does not mean there would be agreement among the five veto-wielding permanent members or with the 10 elected members of the Security Council who have not yet seen the draft resolution. France's Mr Delattre said "quick action" and "strong additional sanctions" are needed in response to North Korea's nuclear and ballistic missile programmes, including two recent successful ICBM tests. "This is not a regional threat any more. It is a global threat and we take it very seriously," he said. "Only, in our view, maximum diplomatic pressure is likely to have an impact on DPRK behaviour before it's too late," Mr Delattre said, using the initials of North Korea's official name, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. Mr Rycroft said the DPRK's capability to launch an ICBM that could in theory hit the UK and most of Europe and the US poses "a huge threat to international peace and security". "The Security Council must respond rapidly and substantively with a new sanctions resolution," he said, "and I hope that that will come to pass in the near future". US ambassador Nikki Haley has refused to say what sanctions were being discussed with China. But in early July she told the Security Council that if it is united, the international community can cut off major sources of hard currency to North Korea, restrict oil to its military and weapons programmes, increase air and maritime restrictions, and hold senior officials accountable. She said on Sunday that a resolution that does not "significantly increase" pressure on Pyongyang "is worse than nothing, because it sends the message to the North Korean dictator that the international community is unwilling to seriously challenge him". AP One of the first points made by EU negotiators as they prepared to engage with the UK over Brexit was the special position of Northern Ireland and the need to protect the spirit as well as the letter of the Good Friday Agreement in order to ensure the peace process is not damaged. That was both a pragmatic and a sensitive approach to the situation in the province, the only part of the UK to share a land border with another EU state. It was clear that EU negotiators recognised the need to tread softly. Thus it is disappointing that new Taoiseach Leo Varadkar and some other politicians in the Republic have taken an approach that will win them no friends among unionists. Mr Varadkar, who is due to meet DUP leader Arlene Foster tomorrow during his first official visit, has been particularly outspoken on Brexit. He has expressed the hope that it may not even happen, which certainly runs contrary to the UK Government's position, and has angered politicians on both sides of the Irish Sea by saying that the Republic will not help design a border for Brexiteers. Such remarks coming alongside a report from an influential committee of parliamentarians in the Republic that says there is a need to begin preparing the case for a united Ireland, will do nothing but raise alarm among unionists. While the Good Friday Agreement says that a poll on Irish unity should be held if there is a realistic likelihood that it could succeed, there is no suggestion that such an outcome is possible, never mind probable, in the immediate future. All this discussion on the border and the somewhat belligerent tone of the Taoiseach do is bring an unwelcome blast of cold air to relationships between the two parts of this island at a time when co-operation is desperately needed. Brexit is the biggest challenge facing Ireland, north and south, and this is not a time for megaphone diplomacy or raising tensions. Of course, it is a matter of regret that Northern Ireland does not have a functioning power-sharing administration through which proper discussions can be channelled and a more measured tone adopted. We know the impact toxic exchanges can have on the political climate, as seen in the deepening rift between the DUP and Sinn Fein. Politicians from the Republic should be careful not to add to it. Airlines are warning passengers flying from Barcelona airport to arrive three hours before departure, as a sequence of strikes by security staff begins, affecting thousands of British and Irish travellers. Union members working for the Eulen security firm at Spains second-busiest airport are calling one-hour strikes at key times on Fridays, Sundays and Mondays. They are concerned about their workloads, including 16-hour shifts, and what they say is insufficient manpower when the airport is at its busiest. The workers staff the security checkpoints that all passengers and members of flight crew are obliged to pass through. The Independent understands that the proposed strikes are indefinite, and that there may be full-scale industrial action later this month. Whenever there is a strike that disrupts travel, the Spanish government stipulates a minimum service level in order to protect the fundamental right of freedom of movement. The level set for this dispute is 90 per cent. But even if nine out of 10 staff work normally, the strikes could prove disruptive. The stoppages are taking place on the busiest days of the week and are timed to hit peak passenger flows. The 60-minute strikes begin at 5.30am, 10.30am, 4.30pm and 6.30pm. There have been allegations that something approaching a work-to-rule is taking place already, with flight delays on Thursday of up to 90 minutes though it is not clear if these are related to security. Barcelona is a key hub for many travellers. It handles 45 million passengers a year, the same as Gatwick, and many of them are heading to or from the UK. The citys El Prat airport is the leading destination from Gatwick, with 16 flights each way on Friday. There are 37 additional flights each way from 15 other UK airports, likely to be carrying 18,000 passengers in total. Ryanair said it intended to operate a full schedule, and advised passengers to arrive at least three hours before the scheduled departure time of their flight. British Airways said in a statement: We are operating a normal schedule of flights to and from Barcelona airport on the days of potential strike action but are advising customers to allow extra time to go through airport security and immigration checks. New and more onerous passport checks on outgoing passengers at airports across Europes Schengen Area are leading to long delays, with some travellers missing flights. Monarch Airlines said: We advise customers to allow extra time for their journey through the airport to ensure they get to their departure gate on time. A spokesperson for Vueling, the low-cost airline based in Barcelona, said: We are informing our clients by social media and sending SMSs telling them to get to the airport with more time than usual. And easyJet said: Queue times for all passengers going through security are expected to be longer than usual. We are advising passengers to allow extra time to get through security, ensuring they arrive at the departure gate on time. My heart is troubled as I read a negative news story about a Minneapolis woman who called police because she thought a neighbor was being sexually assaulted. Somehow, when the police arrived on the scene, the caller was shot to death. At this point in time, there are no explanations as to why a police officer shot her when she approached their squad car. We know the officers body cameras were not on and that the woman, Justine Damond, is dead. The question is, Why? There is so much in the case we do not know. We are left to react to another negative news story. Negative news events like this place a city on edge. Emotions run high and often trigger more aggression and violence. The lawlessness we see in the streets of Chicago, the trouble of city gang violence, racial tension, the lack of civility, etc. We view this violence and unrest on screens every day. One has to wonder what all these negative images and stories do to a person. Basically, the impact can be depressing. When we see negative events, our brain goes into action. We are wired towards survival. Our danger detector (the amygdala) calls our attention to negative stories and events. So, we attend to bad news, in part, because of the threat of danger. Furthermore, the brain is biased to go negative. We all have a built-in hunger to hear and remember bad news in order to confirm our negative experiences. We are much more sensitive to bad versus good news. Our attitudes are even our dreams are more influenced by bad news. News organizations know that people are more attuned to bad news which is why one estimate is that 90% of the news is negative. All these negative stories create multiple events for the brain to react to and filter threats. And negative events are especially contagious and shared. There is also some evidence that we respond quicker to negative words and that bad news heightens our need to change and prevent more problems. But all this attention to bad news can lead to feeling down and depressed. Disturbing images stay with us longer. So how do we protect our minds and hearts, not grow bitter or cynical, and not lose our empathy for others? Begin by understanding that the more stressed, sick and tired you are, the more likely you are to be reactive to bad news. At those times, it wise to not pile on negative news stories. We may need to do what we teach childrenlimit our exposure. And when you do see a negative story, tell yourself that media prefers reporting bad news and disaster over slow and steady improvements in our society. You are not seeing the balance. Balance the news with encouraging and uplifting stories of triumph and overcoming. Keep a spiritual perspective. According to 2 Timothy 3: 1-5, we will see the ramping up of bad news. So while we dont want to stick our heads in the sand, replace fear with prayer: But mark this: There will be terrible times in the last days. People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, without love, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not lovers of the good, treacherous, rash, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God having a form of godliness but denying its power. This is not going away. But God has not given us a spirit of fear, so remind yourself of His truth, His power and His protection. Direct your worry or concern to prayer. God is telling us what is coming, but doesnt want us reacting in fear, rather in the hope we find in Him and the promise of a new day. This reality and hope must be balanced. Focus more of your attention on good reports. Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirableif anything is excellent or praiseworthythink about such things. Whatever you have learned or received or heard from me, or seen in meput it into practice. And the God of peace will be with you. Philippians 4:8-9. This is one way you balance the negative bias-renew the mind with the promises of God. The power of God is more than positive psychology. It is a belief that God holds all things in His hand and will accomplish His purposes. He has given us a book and His presence to help us on the journey. A U.N. agency said Wednesday it would cooperate with Malaysia over concerns that Islamic State (IS) militants might be mixing in with foreigners and asylum seekers who claim refugee status in the country. But the Kuala Lumpur office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) stopped short of saying whether it had agreed to share its database of some 150,000 refugees who are registered in the country and carry U.N. refugee cards. We are fully committed in our cooperation with the government to find ways that better protect refugees, which, at the same time, address any legitimate concerns about security, law and order, the agency said in a statement. It said it would work closely with the Ministry of Home Affairs by offering advice and assistance to a contracted company tasked with implementing a program to vet thousands of refugees who hold cards issued by UNHCR. The local office of UNHCR issued the statement two days after Malaysian Deputy Home Minister Nur Jazlan Mohamed expressed concern that IS militants and sympathizers may have obtained the refugee cards that allow them to move freely about the country. Nur Jazlan told Channel NewsAsia that the ministry had not received appropriate cooperation from UNHCR since the government in early April began implementing the Proof of Concept (POC) program, which is designed to help Malaysian authorities track down and stop transnational criminals, human traffickers and terrorists. So we want to know whether any IS links have penetrated, their numbers, Nur Jazlan said. And since the Malaysian public now is very concerned about the presence and high numbers of foreigners, its time the government identifies and closes all loopholes where they can enter. And the UNHCR route is one of them. As of June 2017, Malaysia was home to 149,200 refugees and asylum seekers registered with UNHCR, according to figures obtained from the agencys website. About 90 percent were from Myanmar, including 59,100 Rohingya Muslims, Chins and other ethnic groups. Around 67 percent were men and 37,000 of the refugees were children younger than 18, the agency said. About 16,700 refugees and asylum-seekers came from other countries such as Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Yemen, Somalia, Iraq and Afghanistan, it said. The POC program aims to assess the actual number of UNHCR-registered refugees in the country, by providing biometric data, thumbprints and iris recognition that would be accessible to law-enforcement agencies, including the immigration department, officials said. These people apply for refugee and asylum status and are given a card and then they live here in the country, Nur Jazlan told reporters after visiting the programs offices in Kuala Lumpur on Wednesday. This route is very dangerous for the country due to current developments of terrorist activities in the Middle East and now moving to the southern Philippines, he said. They could use Malaysia to come in. Nur Jazlan was referring to fighting in Marawi, where government forces have been trying to dislodge IS-backed extremists who seized the southern Philippine city on May 23. They have since engaged security forces in vicious gun battles that, according to official figures, have killed at least 491 militants, 114 soldiers and 45 civilians. Baseless statements The comments by Nur Jazlan angered rights activists and humanitarian-aid workers. Sharifah Shakirah, founder and director of the Rohingya Women Development Network, said the deputy home minister should be careful when making statements linking refugees with IS. Why do they need a UNHCR [Refugee Card] at first when they could obtain passports to enter Malaysia and freely travel around the world? Sharifah, a Rohingya refugee, told BenarNews. Lawyer Nurainie Haziqah, secretary-general of a local humanitarian aid group, said Nur Jazlans statements about potential IS links to refugees were baseless. Instead of working together with UNHCR, instead of working for policies and laws to help the refugees in Malaysia, they choose to make such accusations, she told BenarNews. Malaysia, which shares a land and maritime border with Thailand and sea borders with Singapore, Vietnam and Indonesia, has about 32 million residents, including almost 1.8 million legally registered foreign workers and about 2 million undocumented immigrants. Since July 1, more than 5,500 foreigners have been entangled in a massive crackdown on illegal immigration. In their separate crackdown against suspected IS members and sympathizers, Malaysian authorities have arrested 310 people since 2013. About 66 of those suspects have since been freed, according to government figures compiled by BenarNews. Hadi Azmi contributed to the report. Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte gestures during his state-of-the-nation address in Manila, when he vowed to carry on with a drug war that has killed thousands, July 24, 2017. Local government officials had been warned against involving themselves with illegal drugs, Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte said in his first public comments about the killings of a mayor and 14 other suspects during an anti-narcotics raid on July 30. Months before the raid in the southern city of Ozamiz, Duterte said he met with the countrys mayors and told them about the seriousness of his administrations war on drugs, which has left thousands of alleged addicts and traffickers dead since he took office in June 2016. He said Reynaldo Parojinog, the late mayor of Ozamiz, was among those officials who attended that meeting. On Sunday, police allegedly gunned down Parojinog along with his wife, brother and 13 other people. His daughter who was his deputy mayor, was arrested together with several people. Well, I will make it public. One time, I called for all of them. And I told them, Do not do it. Do not do it because my order is to destroy the organizations, Duterte said in a speech to tax officials in Manila on Wednesday, according to a transcript released by the presidential palace on Thursday. Parojinog was there and you can ask the ordinary citizens of Ozamiz about his reputation, Duterte said. They were running the city as if it was a feudal state of the family. Duterte had earlier publicly named the Parojinogs as among those on his list of 150 politicians, judges and members of the police and military who were allegedly involved in drug trafficking. The family had denied the allegations. Parojinog was the third mayor on Dutertes list to be killed in the drugs war. In all the cases, the police said the suspects fired at them first, triggering a gun battle. Since Duterte took his oath as president in June last year, at least 2,700 alleged drug addicts and drug peddlers have been killed, police said. About 5,700 drug-related deaths were also under investigation, including those blamed on vigilantes. Opposition politicians, including former President Benigno Aquino, have questioned the effectiveness of Dutertes crackdown on narcotics. International and local rights group have also raised doubts about the alleged shootout that killed the mayor, claiming that the Parojinogs may have been summarily executed. Duterte on Wednesday, however, backed the police, saying they were well within their rights to shoot at suspects who were fighting back. The police and the military should make sure that their enemies are dead, Duterte said. Otherwise, if the other guy can still pull the trigger, you will end up with a dead police or a dead military soldier. Why did I give that order? Well, I am the commander-in-chief of all the armed forces, remember that. Commander-in-chief of all armed forces in the Philippines, he said. A massacre by any standard But lawyer Ferdinand Topacio, who represents the Parojinog family, said his clients alleged that the raid was aimed at killing the mayor and his relatives. He said Princess Nova, the daughter, claimed that the police also tried to kill her but that they failed. A grenade was thrown at them but it did not explode, Topacio said. They were gathered together with other people. They were already being submissive to the police, when the alleged attempt occurred. He said there were lapses in the police raid that led to the big number of deaths, stressing that those slain were ordinary village watchers on guard duty for the mayors household. What happened was qualified as a massacre by any standard, Topacio said. Felipe Villamor in Manila contributed to this report. North Korean leader Kim Jong Un (second from right) inspects a Hwasong-14 intercontinental ballistic missile at an undisclosed location before the weapon was test-fired, July 4, 2017. The United States called Thursday on its partners in the Asia-Pacific to downgrade diplomatic ties with North Korea, ahead of an upcoming regional security meeting in Manila and a day after the Philippines criticized Pyongyang for its recent missile tests. The American embassy in Manila issued a statement encouraging all countries including ASEAN members to downgrade diplomatic engagements or exchanges with the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea (DPRK). The top diplomats from Pyongyang and Washington are set to join their counterparts from 25 other countries for the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) next week, where North Koreas missile tests and its nuclear weapons program figure to be among high on the agenda. We hope that all ARF members will use this forum, which is designed to address regional peace and security, to highlight that DPRK behavior has been unacceptable and call upon the DPRK to cease its unlawful actions, the embassy statement said. The statement came a day after this years Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) chairman, Philippine leader Rodrigo Duterte, branded North Korean leader Kim Jong Un as crazy for pushing his countrys nuclear ambitions. Duterte accused his North Korean counterpart of playing with dangerous toys that endangered the entire region, alluding to its missile tests that have provoked international condemnation. He said countries around the region should convince Pyongyang to stop with its nuclear tests, which he feared could deplete natural resources. ARF: A forum for dialogue The United States has criticized Pyongyang for testing intercontinental ballistic missiles on July 4 and July 29, and raising fears that the hermit state was on track to develop nuclear warheads that could reach the American mainland. Before the July 29 test, U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson had warned that the threat from North Korea necessitated an appropriate response because all affected countries were operating under a short period of time. Philippine foreign ministry spokesman Robespierre Bolivar said Thursday that the region was very much concerned about North Koreas missile testing, and noted that in April, regional diplomats had called on Pyongyang to stop its tests. And of course, all of us surrounding the region are very much concerned about the potential for escalation of this issue, Bolivar said. He said the ARF provides a very candid venue for all parties to express concerns about North Korea while finding peaceful ways to address the issue. The ARF is a forum for dialogue where all the parties to this issue on the Korean Peninsula are present, and there is an opportunity for them to exchange views on issues of concern, Bolivar said. Bolivar appeared to be reacting to comments to reporters by a State Department official in Washington a day earlier, who was asked about how the United States felt about North Korean being at the same table with other countries during the upcoming ARF meeting. What we have been sort of looking at is having a serious discussion of what it would take for a member to be suspended from this organization [the ASEAN Regional Forum] that is dedicated to conflict prevention and diplomacy, Susan Thornton, the acting assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific Affairs, told reporters during a briefing before Tillersons trip to Southeast Asia. She added that the secretary of state did not plan to meet face-to-face with his North Korean counterpart in the Philippine capital, and the U.S. was also looking to lobby other countries to apply more pressure in isolating Pyongyang over its nuclear weapons program. I think what we would expect to see this year at the meeting would be a general chorus of condemnation of North Koreas provocative behavior and pretty serious diplomatic isolation directed at the North Korean foreign minister, Thornton said, according to an official transcript. BenarNews staff in Washington contributed to this report. 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. 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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. The Kings of Israel and Judah are, collectively, a fascinating (and somewhat bloody) group of individuals. Among their number is the most righteous human ruler of God's people (David) and the wisest man who would ever live (Solomon). The group also includes some of the bloodiest rulers on earth. It is this last category of people that this article will discuss. We will briefly review several examples of mass murder committed by those who were allowed to govern all or part of the children of Israel. It should be noted that these bloody, heinous acts carried out by these kings (and one queen) were not approved of by God and did not fulfill his will. Saul was the first of three kings to reign over a united Israel. Because of his disobedience, however, God anoints David as the future ruler of his people. Viewing him as a threat, Saul seeks a bloody solution to his problem. One day, he is told that David travelled to the priestly city of Nob and received assistance from Ahimelech the High Priest. Angered that Ahimelech aided someone he believed a traitor, King Saul summons him and other Nob priests to meet him. When they arrive he accuses them of knowingly committing treason, even though he is told that they were unaware of his disagreements with his son-in-law (Samuel 22:12 - 15). The Suicide of Saul Pieter the Elder Bruegel, 1562 Saul, wanting the priests put to death, is unable to get any of his Israel born servants to do the task. He then commands Doeg, an Edomite, to carry out the bloody task of mass murder. Doeg kills all eighty-five priests in attendance. Not content with such mass carnage, he zealously travels to Nob and slaughters most of its innocent inhabitants, including women, babies and even animals (see 1Samuel 22). The Gibeonites were a people living in Canaan long before the kings of Israel existed. They secured with Joshua an agreement that insured their survival and that they could continue living in the land in spite of it being part of what God gave his people (Joshua 9:3 - 15). Years later Saul, for unknown reasons, slaughters many of the Gibeonites (2Samuel 21:1). God considers these bloody killings as a great sin and tells David he must rectify the situation in order to stop a three-year famine that was ravaging Israel (verses 2 - 9). Prophesied deaths Baasha was the third ruler over the Kingdom of Israel after it broke away from the Kingdom of Judah in 930 B.C. He assumed the throne after murdering Nadab (the son of Jeroboam) in the Philistine city of Gibbethon (1Kings 15:27). Soon after coming into power, he murders anyone else who was of the royal family (verses 27 - 29), a bloody act which was prophesied to occur. Ultimately, King Baasha was condemned for his many sins by the prophet Jehu, who foretold of the total destruction of his house just like the havoc he wrecked on Nadab's family (1Kings 16:1 - 5). The bloody queen Athaliah was the daughter of wicked Ahab and Jezebel who had ruled Israel for twenty-two years. She married Jehoram who was in Judah's royal lineage. After her husband's death their son Ahaziah ruled for only one year. The queen, immediately after her son died, quickly moved to assure that she, alone, would rule over the Kingdom. Athaliah initiates a mass murder against all of King David's male descendants, killing all those of royal blood except one (Joash, see 2Kings 11:1 - 2, 2Chronicles 22:10 - 11). Her bloody six-year rule ends when she is slain by the palace guard (2Kings 11:3 - 16). The most brutal Menahem was one of the most brutal and bloody kings of Israel. Soon after taking over the reins of power, through his murder of Shallum, he sought to enter into the border town of Tiphsah. Angered that he is refused entry into the city, he lays siege to it and kills anyone he finds. His murderous spree is uniquely brutal and unprecedented, even among other unrighteous rulers of Israel, as his anger at being snubbed drives him to violently rip open pregnant women (2Kings 15:16). King Manasseh reigned over the Kingdom of Judah for 55 years, the longest of any king who ruled solely the Jews or northern Israel. During his rule he slaughtered so many innocent people that the Bible states, "(he) shed very much innocent blood until he had filled Jerusalem from one end to another" (2Kings 21:16). Another Judean king, Jehoiakim, who ruled more than thirty years later, would also fill Jerusalem with his bloody murders (2Kings 24:4). For Immediate Release, August 3, 2017 Contact: Jonathan Evans, Center for Biological Diversity, (510) 844-7118, jevans@biologicaldiversity.org Christopher Ahlers, Clean Air Council, (215) 567-4004 x 125, cahlers@cleanair.org Lawsuit Launched to Fight Trump EPA Delays in Cleaning Up Dangerous Soot Pollution in California, Idaho, Ohio, Pennsylvania OAKLAND, Calif. Environmental and public health groups today filed a formal notice of intent to sue the Environmental Protection Agency and EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt for failing to enforce limits on dangerous soot pollution that causes thousands of deaths every year. Today's lawsuit seeks to force the EPA to ensure that communities in California, Idaho, Ohio and Pennsylvania are taking legally required steps to meet clean-air standards. Soot, otherwise known as particulate matter, is generated from fossil-fuels used in coal-fired power plants, cars, power plants and other industrial facilities. Every day of delay puts more Americans at risk for asthma and heart attacks, said Jonathan Evans, environmental health legal director at the Center for Biological Diversity. The Clean Air Act is one of the most successful tools for saving lives and protecting air, so we can't let the Trump-Pruitt team sacrifice lives through delay. The Clean Air Act requires the EPA to set nationwide health and public-welfare-based standards for particulate pollution and sets mandatory deadlines to develop plans to achieve and maintain air-quality standards. Today's notice, submitted by the Center for Biological Diversity, Center for Environmental Health and Clean Air Council, demands that the agency set up plans to reduce dangerous soot levels. The EPA and these states are ignoring their duty to clean up our skies to protect all of us from dangerous pollution, said Christopher Ahlers, staff attorney at the Clean Air Council. There's no reason for EPA to delay stronger protections that hold polluters accountable and protect Americans suffering from dirty air resulting from combustion activities. In his previous role as Oklahoma attorney general, Pruitt repeatedly sued the EPA to block lifesaving pollution-prevention measures. Pruitt is under investigation for misrepresentations about his use of a personal email account to communicate with the oil and gas industry about weakening the EPA's environmental standards while attorney general of Oklahoma. Background Soot, referred to as particulate matter by the EPA, is produced from the burning of fossil fuels. Particulate matter is made up of tiny particles about 30 times smaller than the width of the average human hair and can lodge deep in the lungs. It causes a range of health problems for people and wildlife, results in regional haze, harms plants and acidifies water bodies. An EPA study found that Clean Air Act programs to reduce fine particle pollution prevented more than 160,000 deaths, 130,000 heart attacks and 1.7 million asthma attacks in 2010 alone. The Clean Air Act has also helped to keep the U.S. economy healthy by creating jobs, with more than 1.7 million Americans employed in the environmental technology industry helping to keep our air clean. analytica Anacon India and India Lab Expo to capitalize on market growth Pharmaceutical industry continues to grow The Indian pharma industry has been growing at a compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) of more than 15% over the last five years and is expected to grow to US$ 100 billion by 2025. The Union Cabinet (Indian government) has given its go-ahead for the amendment of the existing Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) policy in the pharmaceutical sector in order to allow FDI up to 100 per cent under the automatic route for manufacturing of medical devices subject to certain conditions. The drugs and pharmaceuticals sector attracted cumulative FDI inflows worth US$ 14.53 billion between April 2000 and December 2016, according to data released by the Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion (DIPP). Pharma impacts laboratory and analysis market The Government of India unveiled 'Pharma Vision 2020' aimed at making India a global leader in end-to-end drug manufacturing. Such positive developments and investments in the pharma sector are likely to create more demand for laboratory, analysis and diagnostics. This implies increased usage of laboratory instruments and allied technologies by pharmaceutical companies, research labs, and others. While Indian market for laboratory instruments and analysis is majorly driven by pharma sector, some of the other key sectors which will drive the demand for laboratory and analysis market includes performance and R&D spending of chemical, food & beverages, oil & gas etc. According to the chairman of the pharmaceuticals Export Promotion Council Pharmexcil, Mr. Madan Mohan Reddy: The pharmaceutical sector will continue to grow in future and is expected to become third largest pharmaceuticals market by 2020 in terms of incremental growth and can generate USD 45 Billion in revenue by then. Indias leading trade fairs and conference for laboratory technology, analysis, biotechnology and diagnostics - analytica Anacon India and India Lab Expo will capitalize on this growth opportunity by bringing industry stakeholders together at one place. Manufacturers, suppliers, dealers and representatives of Indian and international manufacturers will display the best of laboratory technology, analysis and biotechnology products, solutions and technologies. Mr. Bhupinder Singh, CEO of Messe Muenchen India said: The growth in pharmaceutical industry is a positive news. It means more opportunities for the laboratory, analysis and diagnostics market in India. Navin Mehta, Managing Director, Newtronic Equipment, underlines the importance of analytica Anacon India and India Lab Expo as a platform for exchange in this growing sector and sums up his participation in the trade fairs in 2016. We have, as usual, received a great response from the pharma community in Hyderabad and really had successful three days. analytica Anacon India and India Lab Expo is co-organized with Indian Analytical Instruments Association (IAIA) and has received strong support from all major trade associations including Pharmexcil, Indian Drug Manufacturers' Association (IDMA), Indian Chemical Council (ICC) and many more. Scientists in research and industry develop new active ingredients and solutions to the latest problems in the pharmaceutical industry and medicine. State-of-the-art technology and corresponding know-how are guarantees of the industrys ability to innovate. Technology transfer, patents and approval procedures are key factors of success in the chemical and pharmaceutical industry. analytica Anacon India and India Lab Expo depict the industry in its entirely both in the exhibition and in the program of related events. Exhibitors present the latest equipment solutions and developments for the stringent demands of pharmaceutical research and demonstrate them being used in practical applications. Mr. Singh concludes: Our trade fairs, analytica Anacon India and India Lab Expo will continue to offer industry professionals - ample of opportunities to network, learn and see new technologies. Based on these positive economic forecasts, we are convinced that pharmaceutical and other industries which drive growth in laboratory and analysis market will continue their development. [Source: ibef.org, makeinindia.com and pwc.in] Analytica Anacon India and India Lab Expo will take place from 21-23 September 2017 at HITEX Exhibition Center in Hyderabad. Opinion | 04 November 2022 | Interviews India needs to connect OPD with the cashless insurance network to bring them into the digital economy After having raised $1.2 million from Entrepreneur First and GrowX Ventures in 2021, how do you see the perfor...Read more Anti-media rhetoric is fuelling violence against journalists across South Africa, The Gathering 2017 Media Edition, presented by The Daily Maverick, heard today from Press Council director, Joe Thloloe. Joe Thloloe Thloloe was on stage at the media edition of The Gathering series of events, held at the CTICC in Cape Town today, 3 August, to discuss critical issues facing the South African media. The event was sponsored by Nandos and EWN. Thloloe, who spoke on press freedom and regulation, said it was his ugly memories of Apartheid which stokes his passion for press freedom. He said we should never again be able to say I didnt know, as so many Apartheid perpetrators did. A free press was essential in making sure we understand what is happening in our country. Freedom of expression Thloloe also lamented the fact that we were still discussing these issues of press freedom, 21 years after it was enshrined in our new constitution. The Gathering, he said, should have been able to discuss new issues facing the media, instead of having to revisit this topic such as the technology revolution, fake news and improving the quality of our journalism. The constitution enshrines freedom of expression as a cornerstone of democracy. It is valued because of its intrinsic importance and its functionality in informing citizens and encouraging debate If society represses views it considers unacceptable, they may never be exposed as wrong. Open debate enhances truth finding and enhances values. He warned about chasing after red herrings (like fake news), while ignoring the things that are doing real damage in our society Thloloe said it was not just threats from the likes of the BLF, but also the harassment of journalists by protestors in Coligny in the North West and harsh treatment of media workers by the police. There is a more ominous threat that of the statuary media appeals tribunal that has been hanging over our heads since 2007. It is not just the threat of this that bothers the media. It is the anti-media rhetoric that accompanies this threat that could be fuelling the violence against journalists. The truth is that the ANC is inadvertently encouraging the BLF in its anti-democratic posture and protesters in Coligny. Very soon journalists will not be free to do their work in the country, in spite of a constitution that protects them. Media appeals tribunal The reasons the ANC was advancing for a media appeals tribunal, was that insufficient punitive measures were taken against publications that transgressed; and that the Press Council was not an independent organisation. The logic of this eludes me, said Thloloe. It is an unsubstantiated argument that regulation has failed. He also reiterated that the structure of the Press Council, with retired judges and jurors in place to handle arbitration, ensured its independence. So many people have lost their lives for us to get this freedom. Media freedom is not just for journalists, but for every individual in our society, for democracy, Thloloe concluded. Italtile and its shareholders will know by 30 September whether a planned acquisition of Ceramic, for a consideration of R3.61bn, will get the go-ahead from competition authorities. The possible tie-up, which was announced in April 2016, has met a number of obstacles. The Competition Commission prohibited the acquisition in October 2016. The group then filed a request for consideration with the Competition Tribunal. The matter, which was meant to be heard in March was heard only in July. The dates were beyond the fulfilment date of 30 June 2017 as stipulated in the binding offer and implementation agreement. Italtile said it had therefore requested and obtained a further extension from Ceramic, with the new fulfilment date set as 30 September 2017. "Italtile remains optimistic of a favourable outcome in terms of obtaining the required approvals from the competition authorities to proceed with the acquisition," the company said on Tuesday. "Shareholders will be apprised of the details of the ruling as soon as practicable thereafter," Italtile said. Italtile owns a number of brands including CTM, Top T and Italtile Retail. In a trading update, Italtile said it had failed to meet its own sales expectations in the year to June 2017. It said the trading environment had been affected by economic pressure and sociopolitical uncertainty. System-wide turnover of R6.21bn was 4.3% higher than the year-earlier period. Italtile defines system-wide turnover as the aggregate of the group's consolidated turnover as reported and the turnover of franchisees of the group. "While disappointing, sales and profit growth failed to meet management's targets, good progress was achieved in terms of the group's stated goals for the second half of the period to reduce operating costs and improve its working capital position," the company said. Italtile said it expected headline earnings per share to fall between 0.7% and 2.8%, from headline earnings per share of 86.9c in the year before. Source: Business Day Bata South Africa is currently restructuring, repositioning and revamping its operation nationwide to be in line with brand uniformity across the globe. Globally, Bata has 5,200 retail stores in more than 70 countries, as well as production facilities in 18 countries. The family-owned business, which locally owns shoe brands such as Tomy Takkies, Toughees and the Insolia line, has scaled down its retail operations to 70 retail stores nationwide and has kept its manufacturing plant in Loskop, Escourt in KwaZulu-Natal where it manufactures school shoe brand Toughees. Retail and wholesale divisions have been under the spotlight in 2017, new appointments have taken place in senior management and the manufacturing division will be reviewed in the near future. Transformation of the brand is already underway, with the closing of some stores and the revamping of others, says John Harman, Bata SA country manager. The aim is to reposition Bata from being predominantly wholesaler to more of a retailer by improving the overall shopping experience for the customer. Having conducted extensive research, the company is rationalising its retail footprint and focusing on escalating its presence in B and C grade malls. We would like to open more stores in the future similar to those in Durbans Gateway, Pretorias Menlyn and Cape Towns Canal Walk, Harman explains. Merchandise under review Merchandise and brands carried by Bata are currently under review. While Bata intends to retain its reputation as a supplier of affordable, reliable footwear, we are placing a lot more emphasis on promoting our trendy footwear lines. The Toughees brand has been a mainstay of Bata SA for decades and is estimated to hold 45% of the leather school-shoe market that is almost half of the 9 million pairs sold in South Africa annually. It will continue to promote this successful line but will also be introducing a new synthetic school-shoe range to stores. Both brands will be locally made. The Tomy Takkies line is also being repositioned. The brand has been part of the South African footwear scene since 1964 and will have all sectors including distribution, marketing and product development reviewed to elevate its position in the marketplace. Wholesaling will be increased in the various products in the Bata Industrials ranges. By expanding our wholesale presence and strengthening our retail operations, we are confident that we are just beginning to unpack our full potential, concludes Harman. LONDON, UK - British American Tobacco is being investigated for possible fraud regarding company activities in Africa, it announced on Tuesday. Britain's Serious Fraud Office said that "it is investigating suspicions of corruption in the conduct of business by BAT... its subsidiaries and associated persons", while a spokeswoman for the tobacco giant told AFP that the probe concerned allegations of misconduct in Africa. "We have been co-operating with the Serious Fraud Office and British American Tobacco has been informed that the SFO has now opened a formal investigation," BAT said in a statement. The BBC in 2015 had reported that BAT allegedly paid bribes to officials in east Africa. The claims were immediately denied by the London-based tobacco giant. Tuesday's update comes shortly after BAT completed its takeover of US peer Reynolds American. BAT, whose cigarette brands include Lucky Strike, Dunhill and Kent, has paid almost $50 billion for control of Reynolds in a move that targets the lucrative United States market and the fast-growing e-cigarette sector. The transaction, which was completed last month, added cigarette brands including Camel and Newport to BAT's portfolio. Source: AFP Speaking recently at a Leader's Angle talk hosted by the University of Stellenbosch Business School , anti-apartheid activist and academic Dr Mamphela Ramphele said that SA cannot be competitive "without vigorously tackling the gross under-performance of our education and training system that is stealing so many children's futures". Dr Mamphela Ramphele speaking at a Leaders Angle talk hosted by the University of Stellenbosch Business School. Business has a vested interest in ensuring that we promote the emergence of confident, skilled 21st century citizens from our schools and higher education and training system, she said. The World Economic Forums Global Technology Report places the performance of our grade nine maths and science learners last out of 143 participating countries - behind Yemen, DRC and Angola. Even worse still, our learners were competing with grade eight-level learners from other countries, she said. Education access and security African children were denied access to appropriate facilities to develop their capabilities. This ensured that they remained under-performers. The tragedy is that both black and white learners are now reaping the whirlwind of a poor performing school system and a demoralised teacher corp. She also said that businesses should step up and tackle these social injustice issues. Would it not be a great idea to agree as individual corporate entities on how you could contribute to enhancing education and training starting with your own employees (some are illiterate and unskilled); employees children and those of your customer bases? Business as active corporate citizens would have the leverage power to engage civil society and the public sector to work together to put our talent and knowledge development on a higher plane, she said. Embracing values of social justice In the same way that business leaders were able to enable the negotiations that led to our celebrated political settlement, can they not refocus on complementing that political settlement with conversations that would promote healing and embracing of the values of human dignity, equality and the rule of law and social justice? Is it not in the interests of business leaders to invest in promoting these civic values in their personnel development programmes so as to build shared value-based workplaces to enhance trust and productivity in business operations, she asked. Ramphele said the Gupta email leaks raise very worrying questions of corporate complicity with corruption and anti-competitive behaviour. "Public sector corruption does not thrive without complicity by private sector actors, she said. The challenge for the new generation of business leaders is to become active corporate citizens to remove obstacles to our prosperity, said Ramphele. Business leaders have the opportunity to re-imagine both their country and their roles as citizens so they can be guided by an image of a future they can shape and believe in. An estimated 17,000 employees at one financial services firm owe the National Students Financial Aids Scheme (NSFAS) more than R500m. On Tuesday, 1 August, the NSFAS said it had been struggling to retrieve student loans from many private sector employees who had been employed for a long time. The fund provides financial aid for needy tertiary students. The NSFAS requires of beneficiaries to start repayment once they earn R30,000 a year. Acting NSFAS CEO Lerato Nage said more than R390m had been recovered in 2016 but there had been challenges with repayments by graduates. NSFAS spokesman Kagisho Mamabolo said debtors with private sector jobs were not coming to the table, particularly in the financial services sector. One company in this sector employed more than 17,000 NSFAS debtors, he said. The NSFAS had furnished the company's CEO and human resources executives with a list of employees traced on the tax authority's database who were in their employ. Once feedback was received the NSFAS would proceed to contact the debtors. The retail sector was also highlighted as having high numbers of employees who were refusing to pay back their loans, even years after graduating and finding employment. Another challenge has been that the introduction of the National Credit Act repealed certain sections of the NSFAS Act, making it impossible for the NSFAS to automatically deduct loan repayments without getting positive consent from debtors. It is now compulsory for NSFAS applicants to give positive consent before they are allocated their loans. The South African Society of Bank Officials was not available for comment. Meanwhile, the NSFAS opened its application window for the 2018 academic year on Tuesday. It will close on 30 November. In 2016 the NSFAS was inundated with applications from more than 700,000 applicants seeking student loans. The organisation has partnered with the National Youth Development Agency to use the agency's centres countrywide for aspiring students to complete online applications and drop off manual applications. The NSFAS will announce its new CEO in the next few weeks, following the resignation of Msulwa Daca in January. Source: Business Day The listing of the first student accommodation group Inkunzi should encourage more companies focusing on student housing to go public. There is strong appetite for real estate companies that offer long-term growth prospects in a market where other traditional property types look saturated. Inkunzi Student Accommodation Fund will be the JSE's first specialist student housing real estate investment trust (Reit) when it lists in September. At listing, Inkunzi's R2.25bn portfolio will comprise 12 high quality assets housing 6,500 single students, mostly within walking distance from the University of Pretoria, the University of Johannesburg, Vaal University of Technology, North West University and the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University in Port Elizabeth. "We're excited about this listing as it addresses one of SA's key issues of student accommodation as well as driving a strong socioeconomic aspect in having a 25%-30% direct black ownership. Inkunzi brings something unique and fresh to the listed real estate space, offering investors direct access to a countercyclical asset class," said CEO Kameel Keshav. There is a shortfall of about 250,000 student beds at universities in SA, according to the Department of Higher Education and Training. This rose to about 750,000 beds if technical and vocational training colleges were included, said Keshav. Lawrence Koikoi, a listed property analyst at Stanlib, said the market was ready for student housing Reits. "Specialist Reits tend to attract a premium rating over time and this is also showing in our own market with a retail specialist Reit like Hyprop trading at 6.3% forward yield versus the South African long-term bond of 8.6%. "Student accommodation will expand investors' options in the specialist Reit segment of the market and if it is run well with increasing size and returns per share, it is likely to attract a good rating over time." Source: Business Day Astral Foods says a second outbreak of the highly pathogenic H5N8 avian flu virus has been confirmed and isolated at its poultry-breeding facility at the Grootdraai dam near Standerton in Mpumalanga. zdenet via pixabay The poultry producer said the new outbreak on the farm Welbedacht was "completely unrelated" to an earlier outbreak of the H5N8 flu strain in June at one of its poultry-breeding farms in Villiers near the Vaal River. Welbedacht is similar in size to the Villiers farm, having 48 poultry sheds. It is believed the virus poses little risk to humans. "At this juncture, the impact has been limited to only one poultry shed on the farm, and this outbreak is being managed with extreme care on the back of experiences gained with the first outbreak at Villiers," Gary Arnold, Astral's MD of agriculture, said on Wednesday. The infection had affected breeding stock and not broiler birds used for meat production. Migratory birds to blame Not including the new case, the Department of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries has confirmed 10 outbreaks of the virus. Four of these have been reported in commercial poultry operations, three in wild birds, one in captive birds and two in backyard poultry flocks. Astral said the protection of high-value poultry breeding stock in SA was imperative to prevent large-scale financial losses, ensure food security and prevent job losses. Group CEO Chris Schutte said on Wednesday he trusted the government would act swiftly in approving the use of vaccines against the virus in poultry-breeding stock. South African Poultry Association CEO Kevin Lovell said on Wednesday investigations indicated the disease had been transferred from migratory wild birds to wild birds in SA. "What is still outstanding is to determine how the disease has been transferred to poultry. Following the experience in Europe and elsewhere, the risks of infection will remain high until the summer," he said. Source: Business Day A joint operation between the South African Police Service (SAPS), the National Credit Regulator (NCR) and the South African Social Security Agency (SASSA) to curb fraud and illegal retention of SASSA cards has led to the arrest of 11 people. The operation focused on persons making withdrawals from ATMs in the Nigel, Johannesburg area in the early hours of this morning, just after SASSA grant recipients monies had been dispersed to their accounts. A total of 11 individuals were arrested, the suspects were found to be in possession of thousands of cards. Criminal cases have been opened and the suspects will appear in court tomorrow, said the NCR and the SAPS on Wednesday. The focus of Tuesdays operation said the regulator - which is an agency of the Department of Trade and Industry - is primarily to identify credit providers who are unlawfully, retaining pension cards, bank cards, identity documents and personal identity numbers (PIN) of their clients as surety. Retaining these cards is a contravention of the National Credit Act and it is a criminal offence, said the regulators Manager of the Investigations and Enforcements Department Jacqueline Peters. Peters said the NCRs partnership with SASSA and SAPS is part of the regulators ongoing strategy to root out predatory lending practices and to ensure that all credit providers, no matter where they conduct business, comply with the provisions of the National Credit Act. The exploitation of vulnerable and unsuspecting consumers by credit providers will not be tolerated, said Peters. The National Credit Regulator urged consumers who have handed over their ID books and pension cards to credit providers to go to the Nigel police station to collect them. Consumers are cautioned to avoid credit providers who require them to hand over their ID books or cards as it is a criminal offence and it is usually coupled with reckless lending and overcharging, she said. Compliance among vehicle financiers Meanwhile, the NCR is also conducting a compliance monitoring exercise on the license and registration fees payable by consumers under vehicle finance agreements. The National Credit Regulator is conducting a compliance monitoring exercise amongst vehicle financiers on license and registration fees payable by consumers under credit agreements to determine compliance with the provisions of section 102 of the National Credit Act 34 of 2005 (the Act). The regulator has sent a request for information for this exercise to credit providers that provide vehicle finance to consumers. The Act requires the credit provider not to charge a consumer the license or registration fee that is more than the actual amount payable by the credit provider for the licensing or registration of the motor vehicle, said acting Manager for Compliance at the NCR Mmabatho Senyarelo. This exercise is part of the NCRs ongoing monitoring of the credit providers compliance with the cost of credit provisions of the Act. Stuttaford Van Lines has been charged with 649 counts of collusive tendering in relation to tenders issued for the transport of furniture by the Presidency, Parliament, state-owned enterprises and other government departments. Competition Commission head of communications Sipho Ngwema said on Wednesday, 2 August 2017, this was the largest number of charges for any single company in the history of the body's anticartel enforcement. The commission said it would ask the Competition Tribunal to fine the furniture removal company the maximum administrative penalty of 10% of its annual turnover on each of the charges. This penalty is imposed only for the most serious breaches of the legislation. Ngwema said the commission's investigation revealed Stuttaford colluded with its competitors from at least 2007 through cover quotes. In terms of the collusive arrangement, the first removal company to be contacted for a quotation would offer to source two or more quotations on behalf of the customer. That removal company would subsequently request two or more of its competitors to provide quotes as cover quotes. The price would have been agreed on between the bidders and the winner would have been predetermined. "All the companies found to have colluded with Stuttaford have subsequently settled with the commission," said Ngwema. The other companies included JH Retief Transport, Cape Express Removals, Patrick Removals and De Lange Transport. Source: Business Day At the second Education Conversations event of 2017, held at the University of Johannesburg Soweto Campus on 25 July, Deputy Minister of Basic Education, Enver Surty, said every South African school would be digitally connected by 2018. Karel Joseph Noppe Brooks 123RF.com The intention is that, by the end of next year, every single school must be connected. As we speak, 98% of schools are connected for purposes of administration. He acknowledged that many young people use a tablet, an iPhone or an iPad, and so the country has to digitise its learning content. According to him, over 300 textbooks have already been digitised, with over 124 of these in the science and technology fields. We cannot teach without integrating Information and communication technology (ICT) into the school curriculum. It has become a core element in terms of the process of learning. We cannot say there is a qualitative improvement in the school system unless we are able to assess it. ICT is our opportunity to do this. It allows us to disseminate data banks for tests and assessments and to manage and oversee complex systems. We believe that, soon enough, we will be able to use ICT in such a purposeful and meaningful way that we could change the face of education in South Africa. There are currently 147 District Teacher Development Centres (DTDCs) in the country, which provide spaces designed to train teachers on how to integrate ICT into classrooms. These DTDCs are equipped with interactive boards, laptops, desktops, servers, data projectors, routers and printers. The view, the dream and the hope are that having passed the 65% mark in terms of the digitalisation of textbooks, by the end of 2018, every single textbook, for every grade in every subject, will be digitised and made available to every single learner, Surty concluded. Robust discussion Under the theme, Our vision for South African education, the event saw numerous students from UJs Faculty of Education in attendance, several of whom have had their contributions on the topic published in the Education Conversations Occasional Publications Series. Many posed difficult questions to the panel, which apart from the Deputy Minister, also included founder and executive director of Oratile Early Childhood Development Centre, Abram Kgari and Koketso Nthimbane, an education honours student at UJ. Further insights into the education sector were provided by UJ Professor, Caroline Long, who spoke about the merits of agency in effective teaching in South Africa. Radio and TV broadcaster Masechaba Ndlovu, who fielded questions from the audience through social networking site Twitter, facilitated the event. Next Education Conversation Education Conversations are organised by the Kagiso Trust, a leading development agency working for freedom from poverty, in partnership with the University of Johannesburgs Faculty of Education. Its interactive sessions create platforms for key education stakeholders, students and society at large to engage on matters that affect and impact South Africas education system, with a view to propose practical solutions to the sectors challenges. The next Education Conversations event takes place on 5 September 2017. More details can be found on Kagiso Trusts website. Marking its 60th anniversary, the Institute of Information Technology Professionals SA (IITPSA) is calling for nominations for its Annual IT Personality and Visionary CIO of the Year Awards. The IITPSA Annual Presidents Awards recognise South Africas leading CIOs and IT personalities at the ICT industrys premier gala dinner. The IITPSA serves and represents a vastly expanded membership from all levels of the ICT industry, as well as hosting its annual Presidents Awards. The IT Personality of the Year Award recognises a person who has made an outstanding impact on the SA ICT industry over the past year and a significant contribution to the IT profession. The Visionary CIO of the Year Award recognises an executive in the corporate IT environment who has demonstrated visionary leadership in applying technology to grow and transform business. The Distinguished Service in ICT Award recognises a significant, career length contribution to the ICT profession or the ICT industry, and the Fellowship of the Institute Award is given in recognition of an individual who has made an extraordinary contribution to the institute or the profession as a whole. Nominations can be submitted here by 20 August 2017. The Nelson Mandela Bay Municipality is mulling over the idea of renaming the Port Elizabeth Airport after struggle icon and former president Nelson Mandela. However, the proposal could receive resistance from the King Sabata Dalindyebo (KSD) local municipality, which for years has been lobbying to have Mthatha Airport named after Mandela. The potential name change was discussed at a mayoral committee meeting this week but was not pushed through as mayor Athol Trollip said there were too many unanswered questions. "There is a lot of confusion about what the city is called, not only abroad and for tourists, but for people in the city. "There are people who live in Uitenhage, Despatch, and Motherwell, and other parts of the city, who do not feel part of Port Elizabeth," Trollip said. "Brand identity as Nelson Mandela Bay Metropolitan Municipality" "We need to really brand our identity as Nelson Mandela Bay Metropolitan Municipality and this would help us tremendously to reinforce having an airport named after Nelson Mandela." He said it was important for the city to stake its claim as the KSD Municipality was keen to name Mthatha Airport after Mandela. Previously, during former Mayor Ben Fihla's term, it was mooted that the airport be named after Sipho Hashe, one of the slain Pebco Three members abducted at the airport in 1985 by apartheid-era security police. It is unclear if a decision was ever taken by the council to name the airport after Hashe, with Trollip saying yesterday that they could not find any such council resolution. Sports, recreation, arts, and culture political Head, Siyasanga Sijadu, said the department preferred to have the airport named after Mandela. "We are in the process of branding ourselves globally as the only city in the world that is named after an iconic hero Nelson Mandela and the only city to have an institution named after Nelson Mandela." We believe that our airport ought also to be named after him. Councillors agreed, saying it was an opportunity to market the city. Economic development, agriculture, and tourism political head Andrew Whitfield said it was important to consider synergy when renaming the airport. "I think because we are Nelson Mandela Bay our airport needs to reflect that name." Eastern Cape sports, recreation, and arts and culture MEC Pemmy Majodina said the two municipalities were yet to submit their applications to her department. "Both municipalities have not yet informed me of the resuscitation of the processes," she said. "However, they know what procedures to follow." A decision on pursuing the name-change was deferred for further investigation. Source: Herald Shazia Essa is a self-described 44-year-old, married woman and a proud mother of three boys who's also a qualified physiotherapist. But her CV doesn't stop there. Essa stepped onto the real estate scene about 10 years ago, partnering up with her husband Yusuf Essa, and so began her journey with the award-winning real estate brand Choprop Shazia Essa, principal, Choprop She's now the principal of the company, overlooking the administrative and managerial aspects of the business in addition to mentoring and assisting its trade partners. What started out as a Sunday afternoon house-hunting pastime has grown into an internationally recognised enterprise. In 2013/2014 and 2015/2016, Choprop was nominated and awarded by the International Property Awards in the categories of Highly Commended Lettings Agency for South Africa and Highly Commended Real Estate Agent for South Africa, respectively. We interviewed Essa to find out more about her transition into the real estate sector, what some of the challenges are for women in the industry, and her message for Women's Month. From physiotherapy to the property sector, that's quite a career change! Was it a difficult move for you? Shazia Essa: The transition from physiotherapy to real estate happened over a period of time. After graduating at the Medical University of Southern Africa, I practised for nine years and then joined my husband in his FMCG and telecommunications businesses in Mabopane which is in the North West province just north of Pretoria. These were retail businesses that were servicing the previously disadvantaged and emerging market. I came from a family who was also involved in township business, so this transition was not difficult for me at all. As a teen, I worked weekends in my father's supermarket and was well prepared for the new challenge. The move from retail to real estate just happened naturally as this was a hobby which later turned into a very successful business. Both my husband and I were purposefully passionate about property! What do you think is the biggest issue facing women in the property industry today? Essa: Some of the challenges that women face in the real estate industry are around safety and security; support from spouses and family as this profession involves a lot of long and odd hours, especially after hours and weekends when clients normally would like to view properties. This tends to compromise family and leisure time. Successful agents are those that can act on the power of now and be available at any given time. Running a home and being a wife and mother at the same time can also pose a challenge at times. Based on your experience, what advice would you give to women pursuing a career in your field? Essa: For any woman looking to pursue a profitable career in real estate, the following personality traits must be adopted: resilience, passion for the industry, passion for people, service driven, efficient and competent, ambitious, committed, disciplined, and, most of all, solution driven. The advice I would give any female who chooses this career is to adopt all of the above personality traits, love what you do and just strive to be the best. It is important when choosing a career path in real estate that you partner with the right brand as this can determine the difference between success and failure! Is there a female figure that has had a positive influence on your life? Essa: The one person that I can say has had the most positive influence in my life is my mother. She grew up without a formal education and was taken out of school at the age of 14. She always stood by me as I grew up and always encouraged me to be the best version of myself and motivated me towards achieving my degree. I will always be grateful to her for instilling these values in me. What is your message for Women's Month? Essa: My message to all women out there this Women's Month is to follow your dreams and your passion for it is never too late to achieve them. Please remember that if you love what you do, you will never have to work a day in your life! For a decade and a half, South Africa's premier gender parity platform, Standard Bank Top Women, has awarded outstanding women leaders and gender-strong companies across a host of market sectors. Their journeys to success ignite the ambition of Africa's women to pursue their own goals in business, government, science, tech and other fields, while showcasing the improved business performance that results from having more women in leadership roles. The awards attracted a flood of entries for this years 14th annual ceremony, which will take place at Emperors Palace on 17 August, before a host of business and government leaders, along with celebrities like Yvonne Chaka Chaka, Miss South Africa Demi-Leigh Nel-Peters, Locnville, Minnie Dlamini and Boity Thulo. All entries were evaluated against strict criteria of both gender empowerment and performance, in order to designate 150 award finalists, who will contest 26 very diverse award categories (the 27th traditionally goes to an honorary Lifetime Achiever, to be announced as the highlight of the ceremony). Women entrepreneurs being key to the economys growth, there is an award for the years Top Young Achiever under 40. Several categories showcase companies or organisations at the forefront of gender parity in their sectors. Theres a special award for the Top Male Driving Gender Empowerment(there are several top men in the running). In short, theres a category for everyone who advances the success of women and shares the vision of South Africas sheconomy - a new economy unfettered by tradition and thriving on full inclusivity of women - more than 51% of our population as a whole. This years panel of esteemed judges includes the likes of Kate Moodley, Franchise Director at Discovery Holdings; Phuti Mahanyele, Sigma Capital Executive Chairperson and Margaret Sibiya, C.O.O. for ICT-Works. Amongst the ranks of this years individual finalists are renowned women leaders like Veronica Motloutsi, Nokuthula Mcinga, and Patricia Boke Mahlangu. Meanwhile, gender-strong organisations in the running for trophies include Alexandra Forbes, Dimension Data and Hirschs. View the full roster of Standard Bank Top Women Awards finalists here. For any enquiries, please contact Asanda Munyu on az.oc.ocpot@uynum.adnasa. Martin Bester and Tumi Morake hosted advocate Thuli Madonsela at Jacaranda FM on their breakfast show this morning. Madonsela, who served as public protector of South Africa from 2009 to 2016, was interviewed on her thoughts around the ANC, the investigation into Nkandla, the #GuptaLeaks scandal and the upcoming Standard Bank Business Breakfast where shell be speaking later this month. Her talk at the event is going to be about making a difference where you can, she said. A lot of us these days are so fixated on whats wrong, whos doing wrong things, but the truth is this country moved forward during Apartheid because there were a lot of people that were working towards moving us forward, in the areas of business, areas of personal development. Ultimately, even in the area of corruption, we should stop talking and start doing." The most popular question that came in from the stations listeners was why she isnt running for president. While she is passionate about social justice, she has no ambition in that direction and believes her skills lie elsewhere. That said, she believes the ticking bombs of our time are gross inequality and extreme poverty, and that accountability is the one thing we need most. For all this and more, listen to the podcast below: Cadbury's (Mondelez) Martian campaign has landed in South Africa in the last few weeks and it's everywhere. All the usual above-the-line media platforms have been effectively utilised to give this campaign massive awareness and reach, but it's an out-of-this-world' platform that's targeting consumers right at the point of purchase. ATM Media from Guerrilla IMC has been used to give the campaign a highly unexpected, yet tactical degree of relevance. As consumers use ATMs at Engen Forecourts (the only place to get a Martian Figurine) theyve encounted these creatures right in the middle of their transaction process. And nowhere is a consumer more alert and focused then when using an ATM! Simon Allenberg, ATM Medias product lead at Guerrilla IMC, commented: Cadburys wanted an innovative and eye-catching presence at all Engen locations nationwide. Our ATM Forecourt holding fitted the brief perfectly and we actually extended the reach to include ATM screens within a 3km radius of Cadburys Milk Chocolate retail locations. Guerrilla IMC has partnered with the leading ATM providers to bring this innovative new marketing platform to life. Aside from geo-fencing selected areas using propriety location-based technology, advertisers can also segment by LSM, income level, language and choose to target specific types of locations such as petrol stations, retailers, shopping malls, bars, hospitals and clinics, etc. Also new for out-of-home is the ability to provide measurement, such as number of people who viewed or used the ATM during the campaign period. Cadburys (Mondelez) are the latest blue-chip brand who have identified ATM Media as a unique, measurable and highly effective communication platform. Nandos, Uber and Pizza Hut have all recently run campaigns on ATM Media with several new clients lined up for the rest of the 2017/18. For more information about ATM Media and Guerrilla IMC, get in touch with Simon Allenberg at az.oc.cmi-allirreug@nomis or 082 463 0599. The power woman behind Mando SA lets us in on how their fixed fee or promo risk management model is revolutionising local brands' sales promotions. At One Show 2017, Michael Farmer of Farmer & Co, author of the bestseller Madison Avenue Manslaughter, spoke of the biggest problem facing ad agencies: their lack of information, records or data on how much work they do, despite the fact that their fees have gone down every year and theyve gone through globalisation, the rise of procurement and many other challenges. Helen Joubert, general manager of Mando South Africa, explains thats where promotional insurance comes in. Farmers advice to brands was as follows: Number one do the simple thing. Have a policy of every client that we work on will document its scope of work within the agency, in a uniform format, and we will use that to renegotiate our fees and we will use that to review the performance of our client's heads to carry out that set of responsibilities. Helen Joubert, general manager of Mando South Africa Thats actually the secret to Mandos four decades of success. Client longevity and, as they work alongside the brand and agency, creating a solution thats to everyones benefit in creating campaigns with purpose and ensuring client objectives are met. They then simplify the promotion by guaranteeing a cost, allowing budgets to be focused elsewhere and increasing the probability of achieving those goals. Joubert adds that Mando was actually first incepted more than 40 years ago in 1927 in America, but as a film-processing company, where the name was derived from the joining of the two owners initials, M and O. Mando UK later began to generate incentives offering to drive customer acquisition and retention in 1978 and by 1981 natural progression led to their offering in-house handling and fulfilment. With plenty of growth and bags of potential, Mando was acquired by WPP in 1986 and is now the longest standing stand-alone company, in the worlds largest marketing communications group. It may seem a strange fit as WPP is mainly made up of marketing communications, but Mandos competencies and service underpin so many sales promotion activities that agencies and brands both inside and outside WPP call upon their expertise and assurance to formulate the most powerful promotional solutions. As a result, a few of their clients around the world include category leaders Coca-Cola, Kelloggs, Heineken and McDonalds. Thats because at Mando its all about fixed fee or promo risk management. Learn all about it in less than 80 seconds in the video embedded below: Next up, Mando is set to continue to expand worldwide in both promotional risk management and the promotional incentives market globally and throughout African nations with its new subsidiary Universal Card, which offers a complete branded solution for all payment and reward requirements. Here, Joubert lets us in on their work in SA as their newest territory, the importance of promotional risk management and current trends in the realm of data-driven promotions. BUJUMBURA, Burundi - Over 95% of Burundi's 11 million people lack access to electricity - this week solar-powered light islands' began appearing in the heavily-trafficked central bus station and nearby marketplace, extending commercial hours and personal safety. Burundi solar street lights. The new solar initiative is the result of an innovative partnership between Mayor Freddy Mbonimpa and Gigawatt Global, a founding member of United States Power Africa's Beyond the Grid program. The city of Bujumbura is very pleased to be working with Gigawatt Global on this important solar street lighting project, said Mbonimpa. This project will enhance security as well as provide opportunities for economic development to the citizens of Bujumbura. It is the hope and wish of all involved that this project can spread throughout the city, as well as expand to other cities in Burundi within the near future. Gigawatt Global is now in discussions to scale the solar-powered light islands program throughout the city and in other major Burundian towns. Said Michael Fichtenberg, managing director of Gigawatt Global Burundi: We intend to expand throughout the capital and to other locations as part of our larger program of green electrification in Burundi, with 40 'light islands' planned in the first phase of the program. Fichtenberg continued: Every country in which we develop commercial scale solar fields will receive additional benefits like these light islands and rural electrification with mini-grids. Africa rollout Gigawatt Global, which provides 100% financing for its projects, pioneered commercial scale solar power plants in sub-Sahara Africa, launching the first one in Rwanda in 2014, which is currently supplying 6% of the country's generation capacity. Gigawatt Global will complete a 7.5 Mw solar field in the Gitega region of Burundi in the next six months, which will supply 15% of the East African country's generation capacity. Similar projects are currently being developed in 10 African countries, including Liberia and South Sudan, among many others. Similar projects are currently being developed in 10 African countries, including Liberia and South Sudan, among many others. Over 95% of Burundi's 11 million people lack access to electricity. Gigawatt Global is honoured to play a role in advancing economic and social development through green power in the country, says Josef Abramowitz, CEO of Gigawatt Global. By expanding our investments from commercial scale projects to include off-grid installations, we are positively impacting the lives of millions of people in Burundi and throughout Africa, and are becoming a leading force in green energy projects across the continent. The light islands project in Bujumbura is produced by a team that includes local members Patrick Nzintunga, Gigawatt global regional coordinator, and Deo Hugere, Gigawatt global engineer. The engineering, procurement, and construction components of this project are being carried out by Asantys System. The pilot program is supported by the Energy and Environmental Partnership (EEP), an initiative of the governments of the United Kingdom, Austria and Finland, and with an impact investment from entrepreneur Alex Goldberg. This year's Cartoon Network's Imagination Studios competition will be 100% local, as the channel partners with some of Africa's finest talent across animation, copywriting, post production and audio creation, to inject some local African flavour into the first locally produced animated one-minute shorts. The Imagination Studios initiative was created to inspire, motivate and celebrate the imagination of children, allowing them to conceptualise and create their own Cartoon Network friendly character duo. The first place competition winners, from each of the four categories, will see their animated creations live on TV on Cartoon Network across Africa. The EMEA multiplatform initiative, which celebrates and champions creativity amongst the youth, has contracted with the Pan-African animation company MyChild TV, which will act as the executive producer, coordinating all parties involved in the completion of the Imagination Studios shorts. Authentic, African flair To write the script for the shorts, Cartoon Network has collaborated with Cape Town-based Punch Money Studios that won the Turner Kids Animation Pitching competition at Discop in 2016 for its Cloud Life project. It has also partnered with Mindseye Creative, a 2D animation studio based in South Africa and Audio Militia, an award winning post-production facility specialising in the original composition of music, sound design and final mix for a variety of media (TV, radio, film, games). Local comedians and voice over artists, including Nina Hastie, Trevor Gumbi, Richelieu Beaunoir and Alex Radnitz, will add an element of personification by lending their familiar local voices to the project. Together, the creative team will bring the winning drawings to life through motion, style and sound. We were so excited about Imagination Studios that we decided to take it a step further this year, by involving some talented, locally selected, third-party professionals. This local alliance will simply take what we have already previously perfected and rejuvenate it by injecting a unique, authentic, African flair, which will not only be engaging but relatable to our audience too, says a Turner spokesperson. Localised content We have been impressed by the creative energy present within each of the partners and this energy, together with the imaginative entries received in this years Imagination Studios competition, has reinforced our investment into localising content and our promise to further mentor the African animation industry. Nick Wilson from Animation South Africa adds, It is cool to see that international brands, such as Cartoon Network, are starting to localise their content fully in order to speak to and engage with their audience on a deeper, richer level. We are honoured and excited to have been selected to work on this project, presenting us with many areas of potential and growth for the African animation industry, ensuring that our creative voices as Africans continue to be heard. For more information, click here. LONDON, UK - A new technique using artificial intelligence to predict where deforestation is most likely to occur could help the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) preserve its shrinking rainforest and cut carbon emissions, researchers have said. antoine penda via Wikimedia Commons Congo's rainforest, the world's second-largest after the Amazon, is under pressure from farms, mines, logging and infrastructure development, scientists say. Protecting forests is widely seen as one of the cheapest and most effective ways to reduce the emissions driving global warming. But conservation efforts in DRC have suffered from a lack of precise data on which areas of the country's vast territory are most at risk of losing their pristine vegetation, said Thomas Maschler, a researcher at the World Resources Institute (WRI). "We don't have fine-grain information on what is actually happening on the ground," he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. Tracking the drivers of deforestation To address the problem Maschler and other scientists at the Washington-based WRI used a computer algorithm based on machine learning, a type of artificial intelligence. The computer was fed inputs, including satellite derived data, detailing how the landscape in a number of regions, accounting for almost a fifth of the country, had changed between 2000 and 2014. The programme was asked to use the information to analyse links between deforestation and the factors driving it, such as proximity to roads or settlements, and to produce a detailed map forecasting future losses. Overall the application predicted that woods covering an area roughly the size of Luxembourg would be cut down by 2025 - releasing 205 million metric tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) into the atmosphere. The study improved on earlier predictions that could only forecast average deforestation levels in DRC over large swathes of land, said Maschler. "Now, we can say: 'actually the corridor along the road between these two villages is at risk," Maschler said by phone late on Thursday. Where to focus efforts The analysis will allow conservation groups to better decide where to focus their efforts and help the government shape its land use and climate change policy, said scientist Elizabeth Goldman who co-authored the research. The DRC has pledged to restore three million hectares (11,583 square miles) of forest to reduce carbon emissions under the 2015 Paris Agreement, she said. But Goldman said the benefits of doing that would be outweighed by more than six times by simply cutting predicted forest losses by 10 percent. Reporting by Umberto Bacchi @UmbertoBacchi, Editing by Emma Batha. Thomson Reuters Foundation CAIRO, Egypt - Over 1,000 delegates are expected during Africa 2017' in Egypt, to discuss and collaborate on African trade and investment. Egypt is known across Africa and the Middle East to have developed pro-innovation ecosystems where emerging entrepreneurs have been able to flourish. Africa 2017 launches. Africa 2017, is a high-level forum offering participants an unparalleled platform for promoting trade and investment within Africa. The forum will be held 7-9 December 2017, in Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt. The three-day conference will convene high-level delegations of leaders in business and policy from across Africa and worldwide, including heads of state and some of the most important CEOs of the continent. Africa 2017 will kick-off with a Young Entrepreneurs Day (YED) that will bring together emerging entrepreneurs with more established ones, in addition to mentors, start-up hubs, angel investors and venture capital firms, to share ideas, network and help drive further the business ideas of tomorrow. In 2015, Egypt hosted the Tripartite Summit where a free trade agreement was signed, bringing together three regional economic communities, SADC, EAC and COMESA, effectively creating, with its 26 Member States, the largest trading block on the continent. This borderless economy would rank as 15th in the world in terms of GDP. Business reforms Speaking on the forum, Dr Sahar Nasr, Egypts Minister of Investment and International Cooperation, reiterated the African opportunity based on business-minded reforms taking place across the continent: The forum has the objective of promoting investments into our continent, and especially cross-border investments. In Egypt, we have undertaken an ambitious economic reform programme, of which a key ingredient is improving the business environment and overall country competitiveness. Such efforts go hand-in-hand with our commitment to serve as a strategic gateway for Africa and the world. As part of the forum, Egypt will be showcasing its flagship mega-projects including the construction of a new capital city 45km outside of Cairo, and a number of industrial and special economic zone projects along the Suez Canal, among others. This forum reinforces Egypts commitment to support and enhance the economic and cultural integration of Africa and to spur investment into what is still one of the fastest growing regions in the world. Commenting on the sustained investor confidence with regards to Africa and the forum, Heba Salama, COMESA regional investment agency director, said that, Africa, and in particular the COMESA region, continues to offer some of the best returns on investment in the world. Africa 2017 will be an unparalleled occasion to gather the architects of Africas future and drive further the transformative investment projects of tomorrow. The forum is by invitation only. Interested parties can apply for an invitation through the event website www.BusinessForAfricaForum.com. Subscribe to daily business and company news across 19 industries SUBSCRIBE Donald Trump has launched a new online show to list his achievements of the week. It is fronted by the US President's daughter-in-law Lara Trump and claims to showcase 'real news' from the White House. The government has announced the commitment to an additional 9m to go to underfunded humanitarian crises. Concern Worldwide has welcomed the contribution which will provide funding through the United Nations Central Emergency Response Fund. The move was announced today by Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade, Mr Simon Coveney, TD, and Minister of State for the Diaspora and International Development, Mr Ciaran Cannon, TD. This additional contribution comes at a time of extremely high levels of global humanitarian need, according to Concern. Concern Worldwide Chief Executive, Dominic MacSorley said we are witnessing a truly exceptional global humanitarian crisis. We very much welcome this additional funding from the Irish government at a time when millions of people face so much hunger and suffering, largely because of ongoing conflict and the effects of climate change, he said. The humanitarian response to the East Africa famine and food crisis alone is grossly underfunded, as are many other forgotten crises, so this injection of additional funds will save many lives. It reinforces Irelands long-standing focus on where the needs are greatest, setting an example to other donors to step up and stop ignoring those in greatest need, added Mr MacSorley. A Dublin Airport spokesman has down played fears of delays this weekend and has said the extra passport checks in place at airports within the Schengen Area did not apply in Dublin. For European flights Dublin Airport advises that passengers should continue to arrive 90 minutes beforehand and allow an extra 30 mins if parking a car. Passengers should allow longer for long-haul flights and should also check with their airline. Some hotels in Galway are reportedly charging more than 500 a night during the Races. It has sparked calls for the industry to be regulated. Jailed athlete Oscar Pistorius has been taken from prison to hospital for medical examinations, with South African media reporting he was complaining of chest pains. Department of Corrections spokesman Logan Maistry initially told the Associated Press that Pistorius was taken to hospital on Thursday and was expected to return to prison later the same day. Update: Donald Trump says Americas relationship with Russia is "at an all-time low and very dangerous" - hours after signing off new sanctions against the country. In a tweet, the US Presidents blamed elected politicians in Congress for voting the latest restrictions through. Last night, Russias prime minister called the new punishments a declaration of a "trade war". Earlier: Russian officials and politicians have vented their frustration with US President Donald Trumps decision to sign a bill imposing new sanctions on the country. In an emotional Facebook post, Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev described the move as a humiliating defeat for Mr Trump. The Russian Foreign Ministry warned of possible new retaliatory measures. "The hope for improving our relations with the new US administration is now over," said Mr Medvedev, who served as Russian president in 2008-2012 before stepping down to allow Vladimir Putin to reclaim the job. The US President's signing of the package of new Russia sanctions ends hopes for improving our relations https://t.co/UizYaTbSR6 Dmitry Medvedev (@MedvedevRussiaE) August 2, 2017 The Kremlin had been encouraged by Mr Trumps campaign promises to improve the Russia-US ties that had grown increasingly strained under former president Barack Obama. With the White House preoccupied by congressional and FBI investigations into links between the Trump campaign and Russia, the hoped-for relationship reset has not materialised. "Trumps administration has demonstrated total impotence by surrendering its executive authority to Congress in the most humiliating way," said Mr Medvedev, who presided during a brief period of improved relations early in Mr Obamas presidency. "The American establishment has won an overwhelming victory over Trump," he added. "The president wasnt happy with the new sanctions, but he had to sign the bill. The topic of new sanctions was yet another way to put Trump in place." Mr Medvedev emphasised that the stiff new sanctions amount to the declaration of an "all-out trade war against Russia," but added that it will cope with the challenge and only get stronger. "We will continue to work calmly to develop our economy and social sphere, deal with import substitution and solve important government tasks counting primarily on ourselves," he said. "We have learned how to do it over the past few years." Without waiting for Mr Trump to sign the bill, which was passed by the US Congress with overwhelming, veto-proof numbers, Russia fired back on Friday. It ordered deep cuts in the number of personnel working at the US embassy and consulates in Russia and the closure of a US recreational retreat and warehouse facilities. It was the long-expected tit-for-tat response to Mr Obamas move to expel 35 Russian diplomats and shut down two Russian recreational retreats in the US following allegations of Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election. Asked whether Moscow planned additional steps in response to Mr Trump signing the bill, Putin spokesman Dmitry Peskov answered that "retaliatory measures already have been taken". But shortly after, the Foreign Ministry warned that "we naturally reserve the right for other countermeasures". It said the sanctions bill reflects a "short-sighted and dangerous" attempt to cast Russia as an enemy and would erode global stability. The ministry added that "no threats or attempts to pressure Russia will force it to change its course or give up its national interests". It added that "we are open for cooperation with the US in the spheres where we see it useful for ourselves and international security, including the settlement of regional conflicts," but warned that a constructive dialogue is only possible if Washington sheds the notion of "American exclusiveness". Konstantin Kosachev, who heads the foreign affairs committee in the upper house of the Russian parliament, said the bill Mr Trump signed "leaves no chance for a constructive cooperation with Russia." "Perspectives for the settlement of Iranian and North Korean problems look grim," Mr Kosachev said. "It means that real threats will exacerbate." - AP People who witness acid attacks can have an "important role" in minimising the harm to the victim, leading emergency doctors have said. Public education is needed on how to deal with injuries caused by an acid attack, they said. After contaminated clothing is removed, it is "vital" that the affected area is irrigated with copious amounts of water to remove the chemical, the experts said. They added that victims often experience physical and mental distress for the rest of their lives. Writing in an editorial published in the British Medical Journal, Dr Johann Grundlingh, consultant emergency physician at Barts Health NHS Trust in London, along with emergency medicine trainee Dr Jessie Payne and Dr Taj Hassan, president of the Royal College of Emergency Medicine, say the "latest menace on our streets" is leaving victims blind or severely disfigured. They suggest that corrosive substances now "seem to be a replacement for carrying knives". The comments come after a recent spike in corrosive substance attacks, with more than 400 being carried out in the six months up to April this year, according to figures from 39 police forces in England and Wales. The authors wrote: "The number of high-profile 'acid' attacks has been increasing in recent years, especially in London. "The attacks, involving a range of corrosive substances, have brought into sharp focus the need for clinicians, law enforcement officers, and our lawmakers to find ways to deal with this latest menace on our streets. "Already 2017 has seen a big increase in acid attacks in the UK, relative to 2016. Whereas in the past most of the attacks were related to robberies, corrosive substances now seem to be a replacement for carrying knives. "Corrosive substances are easy to conceal and have even been used in an attack in a courtroom, as well as in nightclubs." They added: "Public education is needed on how to deal with these injuries, as immediate treatment can substantially improve the outcome. Similarly, ambulance service responders and health professionals in emergency departments must have clear guidance on immediate steps to minimise secondary harm and training on how to deal with these devastating, life changing attacks. "The medical director of the London Ambulance Service has provided advice on how to approach acid burns and advises thorough irrigation after removing contaminated clothing. "Bystanders who come to the aid of the victim of an attack can have an important role in minimising further injury. "The victim should be removed from ongoing exposure as soon as possible. Irrigation of the affected area with copious amounts of water is vital to remove the chemical and should be performed as soon as possible to minimise the long-term effects of scarring and need for surgical reconstruction." A woman who encouraged her suicidal boyfriend to kill himself in dozens of text messages and told him to "get back in" a truck filled with toxic gas has been jailed for 15 months for involuntary manslaughter. Michelle Carter, now 20, was convicted in June by a judge who said her final instruction to Conrad Roy III caused his death. Carter was 17 when 18-year-old Mr Roy was found dead of carbon monoxide poisoning in July 2014. Juvenile Court Judge Lawrence Moniz gave Carter a two-and-a-half-year jail sentence but said she had to serve only 15 months of that. He also sentenced her to five years of probation. He granted a defence motion that would keep Carter out of jail until her appeals in Massachusetts courts are exhausted. The judge called the case, which has garnered international attention, "a tragedy for two families". Carter's lawyer, Joseph Cataldo, had asked the judge to spare his client any jail time and instead give her five years of probation and require her to receive mental health counselling. He said Carter was struggling with mental health issues of her own - bulimia, anorexia and depression - during the time she urged Mr Roy to kill himself. "Miss Carter will have to live with the consequences of this for the rest of her life," Mr Cataldo said. "This was a horrible circumstance that she completely regrets." Prosecutor Maryclare Flynn called probation "just not reasonable punishment" for her role in Mr Roy's death. Prosecutors asked the judge to send Carter to state prison for seven to 12 years. In dozens of text messages, Carter had urged Mr Roy to follow through on his talk of taking his own life. "The time is right and you are ready... just do it babe," Carter wrote in a text the day he killed himself. The sensational trial was closely watched on social media, in part because of the insistent tone of Carter's text messages. "You can't think about it. You just have to do it. You said you were gonna do it. Like I don't get why you aren't," Carter wrote in one text. Mr Cataldo argued that Mr Roy was determined to kill himself and nothing Carter did could change that. He said Carter initially tried to talk Mr Roy out of it and urged him to get professional help, but eventually went along with his plan. Mr Cataldo also argued that Carter's words amounted to free speech protected by the First Amendment. In convicting Carter, the judge focused his ruling on Carter telling Mr Roy to "get back in" after he climbed out of his truck as it was filling with carbon monoxide and told her he was afraid. The judge said those words constituted "wanton and reckless conduct" under the manslaughter statute. Mr Roy's family told the court that they were devastated by his death. Conrad Roy Jr said it inflicted the "worst emotional pain" he has ever experienced. "I am heartbroken," the father said. A 13-year-old sister, Camden Roy, testified that she is "haunted" by the realisation that she will never see her brother wed or be an aunt to his children. Carter and Mr Roy met in Florida in 2012 while both were on holiday with their families. After that, they only met in person a handful of times. Their relationship consisted mainly of texting. - AP The judge had hoped a suspended jail sentence would be the second chance the offender needed to veer away from a life of drugs and crime and find "something useful to do" rather than burgle houses. "I do hope that we will not see you again," he'd said. Five years later, Dylan Dugdale returned to the ACT Supreme Court to learn his fate for more than 50 fresh offences stemming from a drug-fuelled burglary spree over four weeks in February and March. His wave of offending prompted a different judge, Justice Michael Elkaim, to recall his colleague's hopes for the man before the court and to observe: "It is obvious the offender found nothing else useful to do." Instead, Justice Elkaim found Dugdale, 25, was "effectively an experienced criminal with little prospect of rehabilitation" before he jailed him for four years, with a non-parole period of two years and six months. Administrators of collapsed education company Acquire Learning have sold it's single biggest asset - online job search site CareerOne - to a media group. Cor Cordis announced on Thursday it had sold Acquire's 90 per cent stake in CareerOne was sold for an undisclosed sum to Octomedia. Creditors will discover the sum at the next creditors meeting in September. Job ads company will live on. Credit:Louise Kennerley Octomedia and a group of sophisticated investors registered a new company called Career Media Group on July 31 for the purchase. Career Media Group is 33 per cent owned by Octomedia while four individuals own 16.7 per cent each. The individual investors include Octomedia's chairman, and Catch of the Day chief executive, Nati Harpaz, and Melbourne barrister Philip Crutchfield QC. Octomedia's chief executive, Oliver Ranck, said the purchase was the "perfect marriage" for its business, which publishes industry titles such as Inside Retail, Inside FMCG (fast moving consumer goods), Inside Small Business, and a magazine for charities and not-for-profits called Third Sector. "One of the key issues for businesses is to find those candidates who are not actively looking for jobs," Mr Ranck said. "We have the ability to integrate job positions with content and this will make it a more personalised experience." CareerOne receives about 5 million hits per month, he added. Acquire Learning was put into voluntary administration with Barry Wight of Cor Cordis on May 12, 2017. At the time it owned 90 per cent of the shares in CareerOne. Liquidators are trying to freeze $200 million of Clive Palmer's assets to recover millions in taxpayer funds used to pay out the former MP's axed Queensland Nickel workers. The federal government has appointed special purpose liquidators PPB Advisory to try to claw back almost $70 million in taxpayers' money that was used to cover the entitlements of workers who lost their jobs when Mr Palmer's company failed. PPB has filed an application seeking to stop Clive Palmer offloading or doing anything to devalue his assets. Credit:AAP PPB has filed an application in the Supreme Court in Brisbane, seeking to stop the former federal MP from offloading or doing anything to devalue his assets while efforts to recoup those funds continue. "The Special Purpose Liquidators of Queensland Nickel can confirm that an application has been filed with the Supreme Court of Queensland for orders in respect of the dissipation of assets held by Clive Palmer and associated entities," PPB said in a statement. "It's not one year that's doing the work," said Robert Naess, a portfolio manager at Nordea based in Bergen, Norway who did the analysis. Over the eight years he studied, he said in an interview, there was "only one year where they lagged the market." The annualised return for female-led firms, based on an equal weighting, was 25 per cent since 2009, compared with just 11 per cent for the broader market. It is illegal under section 27 of the Sex Descrimination Act for employers to ask potential candidates about their pregnancy plans. Credit:Jessica Shapiro The results, first reported by Bloomberg, found that on average, companies with a woman in either of those two top jobs at the end of the calendar year more than doubled the performance of the MSCI World Index in the following year. In recent years, some financial services companies have been introducing investment products that place bets on women-led firms, investing in companies that have either female chief executives or diverse boards of directors. New research from Scandinavia's largest bank shows why the wager might be a good one. Naess' study adds to a growing body of research aimed at examining whether gender diversity has an effect on corporate performance. Some studies show a link: Credit Suisse, for example, has found that having a woman on the board was associated with better performance, and that having more female top managers was associated with higher returns on equity, valuations and payout of dividends, as well as better stock performance. Other studies, meanwhile, have shown less clear links, with one study showing the stock price of Norwegian companies dropped after adding female directors to meet a mandate that 40 per cent of the country's corporate boards be female -- the drop was attributed in part to less experienced directors. Naess' analysis examined publicly traded companies from developed and emerging markets that had at least $US2 million in stock trading each year from both developed and emerging markets. He looked at nearly 400 companies over the period in which women held one of the two roles, examining how the performance of the company fared in the following year if a woman was CEO at the end of the year prior. As the co-portfolio manager for a $US40 billion fund that invests in "quality" companies with more stable earnings and less volatile stocks, Naess suggested a few possible explanations for the findings. One is that for whatever reason, women may tend to lead more of these less volatile companies. According to his numbers, about four per cent of the companies had a female leader in the broader market, compared with nine per cent of companies on an index that tracks these more stable firms. Another possibility, he said, is that analysts tended to have slightly lower earnings growth expectations for the companies in his data set with a woman at the helm -- at an average of 7.4 per cent, versus 9.7 per cent for the broader market. Again, while the reason for that is unclear, analysts overshoot expectations frequently, he said. Illegal strikes involving about 600 workers at three major Queensland government projects have resulted in two construction unions being fined $430,000. The Federal Court imposed a $300,000 penalty on the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union, while the Communications, Electrical and Plumbing Union of Australia was ordered to pay $130,000 over the May 2011 strikes. Two unions have been fined a total of $430,000 over illegal strike action. Credit:Bradley Kanaris Union officers encouraged hundreds of workers across several construction sites, including the Lady Cilento Children's Hospital, to down tools to campaign against "sham contracting". The court found the CFMEU was liable for $1000 for each of the 605 workers its officers encouraged to unlawfully strike while the CEPU was ordered to $800 for each of the contraventions it was involved with. A group of conservative Labor MPs are threatening to blow up any last-ditch attempt by Liberal rebels to legalise same-sex marriage, with the numbers in both chambers hanging by a thread. The Labor MPs have warned there has been no discussion within their party about how to deal with a private members' bill by Liberal senator Dean Smith, including on the need to suspend standing orders. It threatens to derail any back-door attempt to make same-sex marriage law, as has been contemplated by a handful of moderate Liberal MPs. Two Labor senators, Jacinta Collins from Victoria and Helen Polley from Tasmania, said there were procedural issues to work through and it should not be assumed that all Labor MPs would agree to debate a private members' bill. Under the traditional, paternalistic conception of marriage and the family unit with the master/husband/father at its head, a man has been legally allowed to beat and rape his subordinate wife until frighteningly recently. This is where the notion of "paternalism" comes from. It's using "protection" as a disingenuous excuse for exploiting people for your own benefit, under the pretense that it's for theirs. But how and whether he chooses to protect them is, of course, up to him. They're at his mercy. He may choose to be kind. But he may also choose to be controlling. The idea that a man "protects" his family and property is just part of the ownership deal. It's in his interests to do so. Domestic violence was only recognised as a criminal offence in the 1970s and it's only in recent years after massive campaigning efforts on the part of feminist advocates that the issue is actually starting to be treated with proper seriousness. Though women are still dying at the hands of their partners at alarming rates, and the government is only putting a fraction of the cash being thrown at terrorism towards domestic violence despite the number of deaths being far higher. For the reasons above and more, some members of the LGBT community have felt ambivalent about the fight for equal marriage rights, given many who are also feminists (particularly of the radical persuasion) have long preferred to see the institution dismantled. But marriage has also changed as women have been granted rights and our culture shifts towards equality between the sexes. The less it becomes about reproduction and male ownership of women and children, the more it becomes about a personal choice between a couple to love and commit to each other, the better. When people try to argue against extending marriage equality to same-sex couples because of tradition, because of children, because of some outdated notion of men "protecting" their wives, they are really arguing in favour of that model of marriage in which women were treated as men's possessions, their sole purpose to provide their husbands with a "legitimate" brood. Despite the progress made in recent decades, heterosexual marriage remains at least potentially problematic for women. Women are still broadly expected to surrender their names and put their jobs and their financial independence at risk to raise children while their husbands continue their careers. Many men continue to view their wives as their possessions, or at least as their subordinates, even if women are no longer treated as such by the law. Clive Palmer says he is tempted to take another punt at Canberra as he fights a government-led "witch hunt" to freeze $200 million of his assets. The former MP is representing himself in the Brisbane Supreme Court where special purpose liquidators are trying to recoup almost $70 million in taxpayers' money used to pay out sacked Queensland Nickel workers. Clive Palmer speaks to media after his court appearance earlier this month. Credit:Dan Peled/AAP In a surprise move on Wednesday, the liquidators lodged an application to stop Mr Palmer offloading his assets during the case to retrieve those funds. Justice John Bond described the move on Thursday as "impulsive" and noted it would have a significant impact on Mr Palmer and his companies. A wedge-tailed eagle, shot out of the sky on the outskirts of Gympie in south-east Queensland, will have to learn to fly again after life-saving surgery in Brisbane. But, despite "Sir Wedginald" having made it through that surgery, he may still need a bone graft before he can once again take to the skies. Sir Wedginald the Wedge-tailed Eagle has been recovering at the University of Queensland after he was shot in the wing. Credit:University of Queensland The eagle's injuries were so severe that the Brisbane Bird Vet, where Sir Wedginald was initially taken, did not have the equipment nor the experience to deal with them. So, Sir Wedginald was taken to the University of Queensland's Small Animal Hospital. Police Minister Michelle Roberts has accused the former Liberal government of spending money on "vanity projects" while WA Police were left lingering with two ageing helicopters, which now need replacing. But Shadow Police Minister Peter Katsambanis has hit back, claiming whilst WA Police did raise the issue of a staged replacement of their helicopter fleet last year, no formal request to the former government to fund replacement helicopters was ever received. The force's two current helicopters are both different models. In June WAtoday revealed exclusively that police bosses were poised to ask the McGowan Government for $30 million to buy two new state-of-the-art helicopters. The force's two current helicopters are both different models. One is a BK117 Kawasaki Bolkow and the other is a Eurocopter AS365 N3 Dauphin. The President: Mr. Prime Minister, how are you? Prime Minister Turnbull: I am doing very well. The President: And I guess our friend Greg Norman, he is doing very well? Prime Minister Turnbull: He is a great mutual friend yes. The President: Well you say hello to him. He is a very good friend. By the way thank you very much for taking the call. I really appreciate it. It is really nice. Prime Minister Turnbull: Thank you very much. Everything is going very well. I want to congratulate you and Mike Pence on being sworn in now. I have spoken to you both now as you know. I know we are both looking to make our relationship which is very strong and intimate, stronger than ever which I believe we can do. The President: Good. Prime Minister Turnbull: I believe you and I have similar backgrounds, unusual for politicians, more businessman but I look forward to working together. The President: That is exactly right. We do have similar backgrounds and it seems to be working in this climate it is a crazy climate. Let me tell you this, it is an evil time but it is a complex time because we do not have uniforms standing in front of us. Instead, we have people in disguise. It is brutal. This ISIS thing it is something we are going to devote a lot of energy to it. I think we are going to be very successful. Prime Minister Turnbull: Absolutely. We have, as you know, taken a very strong line on national security and border protection here and when I was speaking with Jared Kushner just the other day and one of your immigration advisors in the White House we reflected on how our policies have helped to inform your approach. We are very much of the same mind. It is very interesting to know how you prioritize the minorities in your Executive Order. This is exactly what we have done with the program to bring in 12,000 Syrian refugees, 90% of which will be Christians. It will be quite deliberate and the position I have taken I have been very open about it is that it is a tragic fact of life that when the situation in the Middle East settles down - the people that are going to be most unlikely to have a continuing home are those Christian minorities. We have seen that in Iraq and so from our point of view, as a final destination for refugees, that is why we prioritize. It is not a sectarian thing. It is recognition of the practical political realities. We have a similar perspective in that respect. The President: Do you know four years ago Malcom, I was with a man who does this for a living. He was telling me, before the migration, that if you were a Christian from Syria, you had no chance of coming to the United States. Zero. They were the ones being persecuted. When I say persecuted, I mean their heads were being chopped off. If you were a Muslim we have nothing against Muslims, but if you were a Muslim you were not persecuted at least to the extent but if you were a Muslim from Syria that was the number one place to get into the United States from. That was the easiest thing. But if you were a Christian from Syria you have no chance of getting into the United States. I just thought it was an incredible statistic. Totally true and you have seen the same thing. It is incredible. Prime Minister Turnbull: Well, yes. Mr. President, can I return to the issue of the resettlement agreement that we had with the Obama administration with respect to some people on Nauru and Manus Island. I have written to you about this and Mike Pence and General Flynn spoke with Julie Bishop and my National Security Advisor yesterday. This is a very big issue for us, particularly domestically, and I do understand you are inclined to a different point of view than the Vice President. The President: Well, actually I just called for a total ban on Syria and from many different countries from where there is terror, and extreme vetting for everyone else and somebody told me yesterday that close to 2,000 people are coming who are really probably troublesome. And I am saying, boy that will make us look awfully bad. Here I am calling for a ban where I am not letting anybody in and we take 2,000 people. Really it looks like 2,000 people that Australia does not want and I do not blame you by the way, but the United States has become like a dumping ground. You know Malcom, anybody that has a problem - you remember the Mariel boat lift, where Castro let everyone out of prison and Jimmy Carter accepted them with open arms. These were brutal people. Nobody said Castro was stupid, but now what are we talking about is 2,000 people that are actually imprisoned and that would actually come into the United States. I heard about this I have to say I love Australia; I love the people of Australia. I have so many friends from Australia, but I said geez that is a big ask, especially in light of the fact that we are so heavily in favor, not in favor, but we have no choice but to stop things. We have to stop. We have allowed so many people into our country that should not be here. We have our San Bernardino's, we have had the World Trade Center come down because of people that should not have been in our country, and now we are supposed to take 2,000. It sends such a bad signal. You have no idea. It is such a bad thing. Prime Minister Turnbull: Can you hear me out Mr. President? The President: Yeah, go ahead. Prime Minister Turnbull: Yes, the agreement, which the Vice President just called the Foreign Minister about less than 24 hours ago and said your Administration would be continuing, does not require you to take 2,000 people. It does not require you to take any. It requires, in return, for us to do a number of things for the United States this is a big deal, I think we should respect deals. The President: Who made the deal? Obama? Prime Minister Turnbull: Yes, but let me describe what it is. I think it is quite consistent. I think you can comply with it. It is absolutely consistent with your Executive Order so please just hear me out. The obligation is for the United States to look and examine and take up to and only if they so choose 1,250 to 2,000. Every individual is subject to your vetting. You can decide to take them or to not take them after vetting. You can decide to take 1,000 or 100. It is entirely up to you. The obligation is to only go through the process. So that is the first thing. Secondly, the people none of these people are from the conflict zone. They are basically economic refugees from Iran, Pakistan, and Afghanistan. That is the vast bulk of them. They have been under our supervision for over three years now and we know exactly everything about them. The President: Why haven't you let them out? Why have you not let them into your society? Prime Minister Turnbull: Okay, I will explain why. It is not because they are bad people. It is because in order to stop people smugglers, we had to deprive them of the product. So we said if you try to come to Australia by boat, even if we think you are the best person in the world, even if you are a Noble [sic] Prize winning genius, we will not let you in. Because the problem with the people The President: That is a good idea. We should do that too. You are worse than I am. Prime Minister Turnbull: This is our experience. The President: Because you do not want to destroy your country. Look at what has happened in Germany. Look at what is happening in these countries. These people are crazy to let this happen. I spoke to Merkel today, and believe me, she wishes she did not do it. Germany is a mess because of what happened. Prime Minister Turnbull: I agree with you, letting one million Syrians walk into their country. It was one of the big factors in the Brexit vote, frankly. The President: Well, there could be two million people coming in Germany. Two million people. Can you believe it? It will never be the same. Prime Minister Turnbull: I stood up at the UN in September and set up what our immigration policy was. I said that you cannot maintain popular support for immigration policy, multiculturalism, unless you can control your borders. The bottom line is that we got here. I am asking you as a very good friend. This is a big deal. It is really, really important to us that we maintain it. It does not oblige you to take one person that you do not want. As I have said, your homeland officials have visited and they have already interviewed these people. You can decide. It is at your discretion. So you have the wording in the Executive Order that enables the Secretary of Homeland Security and the Secretary of State to admit people on a case by case basis in order to conform with an existing agreement. I do believe that you will never find a better friend to the United States than Australia. I say this to you sincerely that it is in the mutual interest of the United States to say, "yes, we can conform with that deal - we are not obliged to take anybody we do not want, we will go through extreme vetting" and that way you are seen to show the respect that a trusted ally wants and deserves. We will then hold up our end of the bargain by taking in our country 31 [inaudible] that you need to move on from. The President: Malcom [sic], why is this so important? I do not understand. This is going to kill me. I am the world's greatest person that does not want to let people into the country. And now I am agreeing to take 2,000 people and I agree I can vet them, but that puts me in a bad position. It makes me look so bad and I have only been here a week. Prime Minister Turnbull: With great respect, that is not right It is not 2,000. The President: Well, it is close. I have also heard like 5,000 as well. Prime Minister Turnbull: The given number in the agreement is 1,250 and it is entirely a matter of your vetting. I think that what you could say is that the Australian government is consistent with the principles set out in the Executive Order. The President: No, I do not want say that. I will just have to say that unfortunately I will have to live with what was said by Obama. I will say I hate it. Look, I spoke to Putin, Merkel, Abe of Japan, to France today, and this was my most unpleasant call because I will be honest with you. I hate taking these people. I guarantee you they are bad. That is why they are in prison right now. They are not going to be wonderful people who go on to work for the local milk people. Prime Minister Turnbull: I would not be so sure about that. They are basically The President: Well, maybe you should let them out of prison. I am doing this because Obama made a bad deal. I am not doing this because it fits into my Executive Order. I am taking 2,000 people from Australia who are in prison and the day before I signed an Executive Order saying that we are not taking anybody in. We are not taking anybody in, those days are over. Prime Minister Turnbull: But can I say to you, there is nothing more important in business or politics than a deal is a deal. Look, you and I have a lot of mutual friends. The President: Look, I do not know how you got them to sign a deal like this, but that is how they lost the election. They said I had no way to 270 and I got 306. That is why they lost the election, because of stupid deals like this. You have brokered many a stupid deal in business and I respect you, but I guarantee that you broke many a stupid deal. This is a stupid deal. This deal will make me look terrible. Prime Minister Turnbull: Mr. President, I think this will make you look like a man who stands by the commitments of the United States. It shows that you are a committed The President: Okay, this shows me to be a dope. I am not like this but, if I have to do it, I will do it but I do not like this at all. I will be honest with you. Not even a little bit. I think it is ridiculous and Obama should have never signed it. The only reason I will take them is because I have to honor a deal signed by my predecessor and it was a rotten deal. I say that it was a stupid deal like all the other deals that this country signed. You have to see what I am doing. I am unlocking deals that were made by people, these people were incompetent. I am not going to say that it fits within the realm of my Executive Order. We are going to allow 2,000 prisoners to come into our country and it is within the realm of my Executive Order? If that is the case my Executive Order does not mean anything Malcom [sic]. I look like a dope. The only way that I can do this is to say that my predecessor made a deal and I have no option then to honor the deal. I hate having to do it, but I am still going to vet them very closely. Suppose I vet them closely and I do not take any? Prime Minister Turnbull: That is the point I have been trying to make. The President: How does that help you? Prime Minister Turnbull: Well, we assume that we will act in good faith. The President: Does anybody know who these people are? Who are they? Where do they come from? Are they going to become the Boston bomber in five years? Or two years? Who are these people? Prime Minister Turnbull: Let me explain. We know exactly who they are. They have been on Nauru or Manus for over three years and the only reason we cannot let them into Australia is because of our commitment to not allow people to come by boat. Otherwise we would have let them in. If they had arrived by airplane and with a tourist visa then they would be here. The President: Malcom [sic], but they are arrived on a boat? Prime Minister Turnbull: Correct, we have stopped the boats. The President: Give them to the United States. We are like a dumping ground for the rest of the world. I have been here for a period of time, I just want this to stop. I look so foolish doing this. It [sic] know it is good for you but it is bad for me. It is horrible for me. This is what I am trying to stop. I do not want to have more San Bernardino's or World Trade Centers. I could name 30 others, but I do not have enough time. Prime Minister Turnbull: These guys are not in that league. They are economic refugees. The President: Okay, good. Can Australia give me a guarantee that if we have any problems you know that is what they said about the Boston bombers. They said they were wonderful young men. Prime Minister Turnbull: They were Russians. They were not from any of these countries. The President: They were from wherever they were. Prime Minister Turnbull: Please, if we can agree to stick to the deal, you have complete discretion in terms of a security assessment. The numbers are not 2,000 but 1,250 to start. Basically, we are taking people from the previous administration that they were very keen on getting out of the United States. We will take more. We will take anyone that you want us to take. The only people that we do not take are people who come by boat. So we would rather take a not very attractive guy that help you out then to take a Noble [sic] Peace Prize winner that comes by boat. That is the point. The President: What is the thing with boats? Why do you discriminate against boats? No, I know, they come from certain regions. I get it. Prime Minister Turnbull: No, let me explain why. The problem with the boats it that you are basically outsourcing your immigration program to people smugglers and also you get thousands of people drowning at sea. So what we say is, we will decide which people get to come to Australia who are refugees, economic migrants, businessmen, whatever. We decide. That is our decision. We are a generous multicultural immigration nation like the United States but the government decides, the people's representatives decides. So that is the point. I am a highly transactional businessman like you and I know the deal has to work for both sides. Now Obama thought this deal worked for him and he drove a hard bargain with us that it was agreed with Obama more than a year ago in the Oval Office, long before the election. The principles of the deal were agreed to. The President: I do not know what he got out of it. We never get anything out of it - START Treaty, the Iran deal. I do not know where they find these people to make these stupid deals. I am going to get killed on this thing. Prime Minister Turnbull: You will not. The President: Yes, I will be seen as a weak and ineffective leader in my first week by these people. This is a killer. Prime Minister Turnbull: You can certainly say that it was not a deal that you would have done, but you are going to stick with it. The President: I have no choice to say that about it. Malcom [sic], I am going to say that I have no choice but to honor my predecessor's deal. I think it is a horrible deal, a disgusting deal that I would have never made. It is an embarrassment to the United States of America and you can say it just the way I said it. I will say it just that way. As far as I am concerned that is enough Malcom [sic]. I have had it. I have been making these calls all day and this is the most unpleasant call all day. Putin was a pleasant call. This is ridiculous. Prime Minister Turnbull: Do you want to talk about Syria and DPRK? The President: [inaudible] this is crazy. Prime Minister Turnbull: Thank you for your commitment. It is very important to us. The President: It is important to you and it is embarrassing to me. It is an embarrassment to me, but at least I got you off the hook. So you put me back on the hook. Prime Minister Turnbull: You can count on me. I will be there again and again. The President: I hope so. Okay, thank you Malcolm. Loading Prime Minister Turnbull: Okay, thank you. Chicago: The honeymoon did not last long. Just hours after saying "I do," a Tennessee bride pulled a 9mm pistol from her wedding dress, pointed it at her groom and pulled the trigger, according to court documents and media reports. Kate Elizabeth Prichard, 25, was still in her bridal gown when she was detained. Credit:Murfreesboro Police Kate Elizabeth Prichard, 25, of Kenton, Tennessee, faces a charge of aggravated domestic assault. Her husband, James Burton, was not injured in Monday's incident. "Responding officers let the husband know the honeymoon was over and his new wife was going to jail," Sergeant Kyle Evans of the Murfreesboro Police Department told WTVF-TV. Taunton, Massachusetts: A woman who encouraged her suicidal boyfriend to kill himself in dozens of text messages and told him to "get back in" a truck filled with toxic gas has been sentenced to 15 months in jail for involuntary manslaughter. Michelle Carter was convicted in June by a judge who said her final instruction to Conrad Roy III caused his death. Carter was 17 when the 18-year-old Roy was found dead of carbon monoxide poisoning in July 2014. Juvenile Court judge Lawrence Moniz on Thursday gave Carter a two-and-a-half-year jail sentence but said she had to serve only 15 months of that. He also sentenced her to five years of probation. Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, says he is often besieged by people who tell him they are standing by Trump. Credit:New York TImes In the last week alone, the White House has given the right plenty to applaud. Besides the transgender order, Trump announced plans to crack down on Latino gang activity, urging police not to be "too nice" in making arrests. A memo surfaced describing the Justice Department's plan to redirect resources against universities that have affirmative action policies it deems discriminatory to whites. And on Wednesday, the White House embraced reducing the number of people who can immigrate to the country legally, as one of the president's senior aides ripped into a reporter on live television for revealing his "cosmopolitan bias" by questioning the fairness of the proposal. Kellyanne Conway, the president's counsellor, says the goal of the administration has been to bring the movement inside after years in the political wilderness. Credit:Bloomberg In the coming weeks, the president will speak out more on the need to start construction on a border wall and step up pressure on Congress to approve the necessary funding. Despite his failure to push any of his major agenda items such as getting the Affordable Care Act repeal through Congress, the president has remained largely insulated from conservative backlash. His approval rating among conservative Republicans nationally is 89 per cent, according to Gallup almost exactly what it was on Inauguration Day. Republican strategists who have been looking at private polling in states where Trump won in November say he continues to outperform his national average among right-leaning voters. "If you're a conservative Republican voter, who are you more likely to blame, Trump or Mitch McConnell?" asked Frank Cannon, a Republican who advises conservative groups and candidates. "I think that question answers itself." Kellyanne Conway, the president's counsellor who was a pollster and strategist for conservative causes for two decades before joining the Trump campaign last summer, says the goal of the administration has been to bring the movement inside after years in the political wilderness. "So many of them look at this administration as a rescue mission years in the making," she says. "It's not just about policy but respect. And they just haven't felt respected." Not that there aren't disagreements. Perkins was among dozens of conservative activists who signed a letter last week in support of Attorney-General Jeff Sessions, who has been subject to ridicule and taunting by Trump on Twitter. "To lose his leadership would be disastrous for the president's policy agenda," they wrote. But Trump's willingness to grant conservative activists a seat at the table in the way that other Republicans have not has endeared the president to the movement. "People are becoming increasingly irritated with Republicans on Capitol Hill," says Jenny Beth Martin, co-founder of the Tea Party Patriots, who was also in the Oval Office meeting in March with conservative leaders. Speaker Paul Ryan, she added, has yet to ask her group into his office this year. Martin recalls reminding Trump in March that her group had made more than 2 million phone calls last fall to voters on his behalf "after a certain video came out" meaning the tape of the president boasting about grabbing women by the genitals. Trump turned to his chief of staff at the time, Reince Priebus, and ribbed him with a reminder that the speaker, who is Priebus' friend, had publicly disavowed Trump at the time and disinvited him from a rally in Wisconsin. Then he turned to Martin and said, "Thank you, Jenny Beth." Every Friday afternoon the White House sends an email to movement leaders called "The Trumpet", which lists the latest events and achievements that conservatives might find of interest and asks for their help in promoting the president's policies. "Please publicly push for tax reform that is simpler and fairer, that provides middle-class tax relief," one email implored last month. There are small Oval Office gatherings, dinners with the president at the White House, regular strategy sessions with his senior staff, meetings with Vice-President Mike Pence in his office and at his Naval Observatory residence. Trump does not spare the hyperbole. "Everyone's talking about you," he said in a voicemail message to Marjorie Dannenfelser, a leading anti-abortion activist, thanking her for her work during his campaign. "The job you did was incredible. Sort of record-setting." Perkins, who serves as pastor of a Louisiana church, says he is besieged with congregants who tell him they are standing by the president. "There's not a Sunday that goes by that I don't have people in the congregation that will grab me," Perkins says, "and say, 'How's the president doing? Did you see him this week? I'm praying for him every day and I'm just so angry at the media and how they're attacking him.'" Trump frequently reminds conservative leaders that he received 81 per cent of the white Evangelical vote adding, for good measure, that it was a "historic" number. He calls them "my people" and thanks them for their friendship. "You are my friends, believe me," he assured the audience at the National Rifle Association's annual leadership forum in April, becoming the first sitting president since Ronald Reagan to address the gathering. Dannenfelser says that a level of trust has built up between the movement and Trump, despite early misgivings, as it became clear to them that his allegiance was not fleeting. "He's comfortable with us because we have a deal that works," she says. "He's withstood all these pressures close to him. And I think that's because this is who he is, and how he wants to do politics." Tea Party activist Martin was in Washington last week during a last-ditch lobbying effort to pass the doomed Affordable Care Act repeal. New South Wales ($25,640) Victoria ($30,470) Queensland ($7,000) South Australia ($16,580) Western Australia ($14,915) Tasmania ($9,335) Northern Territory ($20,994) Australian Capital Territory ($18,249) New South Wales (3.8%) Victoria (5.2%) Queensland (1.6%) South Australia (4.1%) Western Australia (3.4%) Tasmania (3.3%) Northern Territory (4.5%) Australian Capital Territory (3.0%) New South Wales ($1,543) Victoria ($1,833) Queensland ($421) South Australia ($997) Western Australia ($897) Tasmania ($562) Northern Territory ($1,263) Australian Capital Territory ($1,098) Foreign investors purchasing a home in Sydney are paying almost four times as much stamp duty as locals, new data has shown.The finding comes from the latest Stamp Duty Watch report released yesterday (3 August) by the Housing Industry Association (HIA).Recent changes to stamp duty in NSW mean that foreign investors now pay almost $100,000 in transaction taxes to acquire a standard apartment in Sydney almost four times as much as local buyers, said HIA senior economist Shane Garrett With foreign investors a vital component of rental supply in major cities such as Sydney and Melbourne, he questioned whether more barriers should be placed in the way of new supply especially in current market conditions.The study found that when purchasing a median price unit in Sydney, foreign investors paid $93,865 compared with $68,970 in Melbourne and $28,905 in Brisbane.HIAs research also found that the average stamp duty bill for resident owner occupiers went up by 16.4% in the 12 months prior to June 2017 to $20,725 despite dwelling prices only increasing by 10.5%.Broken down state by state, the typical stamp duty bills as of July 2017 were as follows:On the owner occupier side, stamp duty drains family coffers of $107 each and every month over a 30 year mortgage term, Garrett said.Shelling out so much in stamp duty drains the household piggy bank of vital funds for their home deposit. Families are then forced to take out larger mortgages and incur heavier mortgage insurance premiums.HIA also looked at the burden that stamp duty presents on borrowers, finding the percentage of the size of the stamp duty bill compared to the median dwelling price in each market:Finally, the paper also looked at the additional yearly mortgage repayments resulting from stamp duty in each state or territory. These figures were based on a discounted variable mortgage rate of 4.5% p.a. with a 30 year mortgage term. HIA analysis found that the average Australian household has to pay an additional $1,248 per year thanks to stamp duty with a state-by-state breakdown found below: The Mortgage & Finance Association of Australia ( MFAA ) has teamed up with non-bank lender Pepper Money to deliver a series of workshops to new-to-industry brokers.These sessions will be free for MFAA member brokers and will provide realistic insights, planning tools, and profit and loss skills so participants can create an action plan for their individual business success.The program has been running for 12 months prior to the newly announced partnership and is being delivered in the five major capital cities.The workshops offer real value for brokers who need practical advice on business growth and performance measurement. Many of the participants are enthusiastic but these sessions also give brokers a realistic set of expectations which can often help them to establish the difference between a long-term business or failure, said MFAA CEO Mike Felton Additionally, the sessions develop a peer network that can offer support, along with feedback from the MFAA BDM on connections that can help deliver positive consumer outcomes.Pepper has stepped forward to support new-to-industry brokers as a way to create a more sustainable future in the broker channel. Through its support, the lender will also provide brokers with a better suite of solutions for clients.The truth is, every customer that comes through the door has a different set of circumstances and right now, 40% of them are underserviced. Its important for new brokers to know all the available options so that they can be a point of difference in the industry, said Pepper Moneys director of sales and distribution, Aaron Milburn.A lot of these non-conforming deals seem difficult, but with the right tools and support, brokers can achieve a successful business. We hope that we can provide that support together with the MFAA.Those attending these sessions will be provided with comprehensive workbooks reference materials which will guide them through the business management process.Seventy-two per cent of MFAA brokers who are new to the industry are still in the industry a year later, and this workshop program has certainly contributed to that success rate. The longevity of the broker channel relies on educated, savvy brokers joining and staying in the industry, and we are excited to partner with Pepper Money in making that happen, Felton said. Counterpoint, hosted by Scott Harris, is heard every Monday night on WPKN 89.5 FM, Bridgeport, CT between 8:00 9:30 pm ET. Webstreaming and audio archive at http://wpkn.org 1) Professor Jason Stanley, Jacob Urowsky professor of philosophy at Yale University and author of How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them, talks about the Republican Party's embrace of "white replacement theory," WRTs fascist origins, why Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has become a role model for much of the GOP -- and the dangerous rise of rightwing extremist political violence in the US.2) Cody Hounanian, Executive Director of the Student Debt Crisis Center discusses his group's response to President Biden's announced plan to address student loan debt, which includes forgiving up to $20,000 for millions of borrowers and extending the payment freeze one final time until the end of the year.3) Jenna Grande, Press Secretary with Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) discuss CREW's recent article, "Big Oil Has Given $1 Million to Fuel Seditionists," and related issues of Big Oil's influence on US energy, environment and climate policy.4) Liz Dupont-Diehl, Associate Director of the Connecticut Citizen Action Group discusses her group's recent reporting on CT based health insurance companies that are requesting double-digit premium increases for individuals and small businesses, as they spend billions on stock buybacks and excessive executive salaries, and lobbying.Some segments featured on Counterpoint are edited for re-broadcast on the syndicated Between The Lines radio news magazine. Visit their web site at http://www.btlonline.org for free subscriptions to mp3 - podcast audio files, program summaries and interview transcripts. An archive of current and past Counterpoint interviews are accessible for free at our Counterpoint Radio web site: http://counterpointradio.org The full 2-hour unedited program can be accessed for a 2 week period after the show, at the WPKN Radio archives: http://archives.wpkn.org/bookmarks/search/counterpoint 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 State Senator Steve Santarsiero (D-10) presented a check to Yardley Borough Police Chief Joseph Kelly for $68,600 for the purchase of a new police vehicle and motorcycle during a visit to the station. Our police put themselves on the line every day to keep our community safe, said Sen. Santarsiero. Dating back to when I was a Lower Makefield Township Supervisor more than... latest news October 31, 2022 Buddy TV In November, there are hundreds of new and returning TV showsit can be overwhelming to try and choose what to watch. That's why we've selected some of the best options... Rutgers vs. Michigan State: 5 takeaways from the Scarlet Knights' loss Rutgers football suffered a loss to Michigan State as it failed to take advantage of a vulnerable Spartans team. 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. Infosys co-founder N R Narayana Murthys concerns over governance lapses at the company have resurfaced. Murthy has asked the company to make the recent Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher report public. In a recent communication to the Infosys board, Murthy questioned why executives such as Ritika Suri who was a member of the team that acquired Israeli firm Panaya quit Infosys soon after the global law firm gave a clean chit. Suri, a former colleague at SAP of Infosys Chief Executive Officer Vishal Sikka, was head of corporate development and ventures, when the deal was signed in April 2015 and she quit the firm in June this year. Since then, several executives have quit Infosys, including its Americas Head Sandeep Dadlani, Anirban Dey, chief business officer of Edge products at EdgeVerve, and Yusuf Bashir, global head of Infys $500-million innovation fund. The summary findings made public by Infosys in June had looked at the questionable severance payout made to former chief financial officer Rajiv Bansal, expenses incurred by Sikka and whistleblower complaints to market regulators Sebi and the US Securities and Exchange Commission over alleged improprieties in the $200-million acquisition of Panaya. Murthy did not respond to an email seeking comment. Infosys said in a response that the company did not plan to make the report public. The investigation involved interviews of over 50 witnesses in India, the US, and elsewhere, the review of company policies, board minutes, public filings and internal documents, the collection, search and review by Gibson, Dunn attorneys of many thousands of internal emails and attachments, the use of forensic accounting experts to analyse technical and financial information, the review of public filings and media accounts in multiple countries, the review of the CAM reports and supporting documentation, and other investigative measures, said Infosys, pointing to the summary findings it released on its website in June. A former senior executive of Infosys said the recent exits of senior executives who were involved in this particular transaction and a company such as Infosys no plan to make the report public raises more questions than answers. Ever since Murthy made public his concerns on failing corporate governance public this year, Infosys has taken pains to address some of the questions, including changing policies that reflect better disclosure norms. It has obliged Murthy by taking his nominee D N Prahlad on the board and elevated Ravi Venkatesan, an independent director, as a co-chairman and the Chairman R Seshasayee, making public that he would retire next year. Murthys letter comes even as Sikka celebrates the completion of three years at the helm of Indias second largest software exporter. In a separate mail to employees on Thursday, Sikka emphasised the need to let go instead of holding on to the past without any reference to the ongoing tussle with Murthy. Recently, when I turned 50, another anniversary, a great teacher of my life gave me a rare book of reflections by Hermann Hesse. In it, I found this one gem: Some of us think holding on makes us strong, but sometimes it is letting go, wrote Sikka, asking nearly 200,000 Infosys employees to think of the future. The future is really a construction of now. A string of beautiful, momentous, nows. We live with an illusion of permanence, but all we really have is the now, with their beauty, their opportunity, their challenge, their ephemerality, he wrote to the employees. RealX, a Pune-based financial technology startup, is aiming to do transactions in fractional ownership of properties worth Rs 100 crore in the next one year. Recently, it executed the first ever digital fractional ownership transaction in the country. Mumbai-based has put off its plans to float a joint venture with private equity investors for its upcoming malls. It plans to use its internal cashflows and debt to invest in its upcoming malls instead. At a time when there have been allegations that Tamil Nadu is losing its sheen as an investment destination, the state government is expected to come up with an IT policy to replace the existing nine-year-old policy, according to sources. Ride-hailing behemoth Uber aims to double its base of drivers in India to one million by 2018, while putting out several fires including the search for a new CEO to replace founder Travis Kalanick. The number of villages in India is anywhere between 600,000 and one million, according to various government databases. The number and the definition of villages vary across databases, making it challenging to plan across sectors for a village development plan. There are around 649,481 villages in India, according to Census 2011, the most authoritative source of information about administrative boundaries in the country. Of these, 593,615 are inhabited. Pakistan on Thursday said though the bilateral dialogue with India has been stalled, a number of civil society organisations were engaged in backchannel talks to discuss contentious issues. Pakistan's foreign office spokesperson Nafees Zakaria, in his weekly briefing, said civil society organisations, that include people from different walks of life, are conducting such interactions occasionally. To a question on the current India-China stand-off in the Sikkim sector, the spokesperson said Pakistan was concerned at the "increasing Indian belligerence" in the region, which he said was endangering regional peace and stability. To a query on Indian External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj's statement linking Pakistan with terrorism in a speech this week, Zakaria termed it "baseless". He said India needs to introspect as Pakistan has suffered the most because of terrorism, both in terms of human and economic losses. He also said that India needed to introspect on its "own state-sponsored terrorism in Jammu and Kashmir and the belligerent attitude it has adopted towards its smaller neighbours". He blamed India for stalling of the bilateral dialogue process. He said since the Bharatiya Janata Party has assumed power in India, "the relationship has witnessed a downward trajectory". On Kashmir, Zakaria said the Indian government was trying to label the "indigenous" movement for self-determination as terrorism. He also condemned the "unlawful" detention of Kashmiri leaders Syed Ali Shah Geelani, Mirwaiz Umar Farooq and Mohammad Yasin Malik. (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.) Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the larger Sangh Parivar are upping the ante on the issue of . Finance Minister Arun Jaitley is scheduled to visit Kerala on Sunday to visit the home of the Rahstriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) worker who was killed recently. Indian job-seekers should not come to the United Arab Emirates (UAE) on and must authenticate their employment offers and entry permit visas before heading to the country, the Indian Consulate in Dubai has said. The advisory follows high numbers of calls and visits by Indian workers who have been duped by agents or employers on a regular basis, the Gulf News reported. In an interview with the daily, Vipul, Consul-General of India in Dubai, said the mission does not have a precise data on the number of such calls "because most such calls are complex and raise a variety of issues". However, he said most calls about duping were related to workers who come for employment or searching for employment on . "We have got several cases of people falling into trouble when they come for employment or for looking for employment on . There are also cases of women being forced to work as maids by dubious agents who get them to the UAE on visit visas as well as sending them to Oman and other countries," Vipul told the daily. When serious duping cases come to the notice of the Consulate, Vipul said the mission tries to mediate with the employers to get the passports of workers back and facilitate their return to India. The Consulate issued 225 air tickets in 2016 and 186 in the first half of 2017 to stranded workers, the report said. Indian missions in the UAE were also fighting duplicate and fake visas. "In the first six months of this year, several hundreds of fake visas were detected. Typically, these get detected because many people ask us about the genuineness of a job offer and the UAE visa." Vipul said such cases are hard to detect in India. "The workers would use the fake employment visas to board the flight from India and present their original visit visa on arrival here. When they gain entry, they realise that they don't have the offered job." To tackle such visa frauds, the mission has issued an advisory to the Indian jobseekers, providing them useful links from the UAE government departments through which they can make preliminary verification of the authenticity of the employment offers and entry permits. (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.) The flagship newspaper of China's People's Liberation Army (PLA) on Thursday demanded the immediate withdrawal of Indian troops from Doklam on the border, warning New Delhi not to harbour any illusions about Beijing's resolve to defend its territory. "The Chinese government will make no concession on territorial sovereignty, and any country should not underestimate our resolve to uphold territorial sovereignty," said a commentary in the PLA Daily, reports Xinhua news agency. Over 270 Indian troops crossed the Sikkim section of the China-India border and obstructed Chinese road work in Doklam on June 18. As of the end of July, over 40 Indian soldiers and one bulldozer remain in Chinese territory, it said. Chinese troops have taken initial counter measures at the area and will step up targeted measures, the commentary said. "The Chinese military does not demand a single inch of other's land and it won't give an inch of its own territory to others," it said. "We have no intention of aggression or expansion. However, we have confidence in defeating all aggression." The commentary urged India to acquire a clear understanding of the general trend of the world and contribute more to regional and world peace and development, instead of acting in reverse. A 47-year-old Indian-origin doctor in east London was on Thursday charged with 118 sex offences, including one assault on a child under 13, by the Scotland Yard. Dr Manish Shah, from Brunel Close in Romford area of the city, is accused of 65 counts of assault by penetration and 52 allegations of sexual assault, the Metropolitan Police said. The doctor is also charged with one count of sexual assault on a child under the age of 13. "Manish Shah has been charged with 65 assault by penetration, contrary to Section 2 of the Sexual Offences Act 2003, 52 sexual assault, contrary to Section 3 of the Sexual Offences Act 2003, and 1 sexual assault on a child under 13 years, contrary to Section 7 of the Sexual Offences Act 2003," the Met Police said in a statement today. Shah is out on bail and is due to appear on August 31 at Barkingside Magistrates' Court in London. "The NHS ( Health Service) has a dedicated number for any individuals who may have concerns or questions. They can be contacted on 0800 011 4253," the Met Police said. The offences are alleged to have occurred between June 2004 and July 2013 and relate to 54 victims. The charges announced today follow a long-running investigation into Shah, who has been bailed several times after first being arrested in 2013. US President Donald Trump is famous for his insults, so perhaps his habit of attacking subordinates should come as no surprise. He criticised Attorney General Jeff Sessions three days in a row last week, calling him very weak,blasting his conduct in the Russia investigation, and slamming him for not firing acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe who also Trump attacked, insinuating that he was corrupt. Trump also referred to the investigation into his firing of the previous FBI director as a witch hunt led by some very bad and conflicted people, in an apparent dig at Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein. China is taking an increasingly tough line on a border row with India amid a rising crescendo of nationalism in state media, and President Xi Jinping looks set for an awkward encounter with Prime Minister Narendra Modi at a multilateral summit next month. Raghuram G Rajan left the Reserve Bank of India as its Governor after completing his three-year tenure in September 2016. There were expectations that he might continue for a couple of years more. But about three months before his tenure was to end, Rajan shook everyone up on a Saturday afternoon by announcing that he had decided to get back to academia in the United States. Disclaimer: Views expressed are personal. They do not reflect the view/s of Business Standard. When it recently made a request to the Gujarat government to take 51 per cent equity in its beleaguered Mundra ultra mega power plant (UMPP), Tata Power marked the letter to the Prime Ministers Office (PMO). A copy was sent to the secretary to the Ministry of Power. rose for a third consecutive month in July to hit the highest in 31 months, with hot and dry weather in North America and some other parts contributing to the situation, according to a report released by the Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) of the United Nations on Thursday. Activity in the country's dominant service sector contracted at the sharpest rate in nearly four years in July after a new tax policy sowed confusion and sent new orders into free fall, a survey showed on Thursday. Initial confusion on the national goods and services tax (GST) led July's Nikkei/IHS Markit composite Purchasing Managers' Index, which measures both manufacturing and services activity, to sink to 46.0 - its lowest reading since March 2009 - from June's eight-month high of 52.7. The PMI for India's dominant service industry dropped to a near four-year low of 45.9 in July from 53.1. June's reading had been the highest since Prime Minister Narendra Modi banned high-value currency notes in November. The latest survey is the first time in six months where the services reading was below the 50 mark that separates growth from contraction. "PMI data for July highlight a reversal in fortunes across India, with the economy going into reverse mode after seeing a pick-up in growth momentum during June," said Pollyanna de Lima, principal economist at IHS Markit. "Most of the contraction was attributed to the implementation of the goods and services tax (GST) and the confusion it caused." Surging prices caused by the tax, implemented on July 1, dented demand for services and pushed the sub-index on new business to 45.2 in July, its lowest in nearly four years, from 53.3 in June. Similarly, confusion among manufacturers over the pricing of their products after the GST was implemented dragged factory activity to its lowest level in more than nine years in July, a sister survey showed on Tuesday. Despite initial GST disruptions, participants in the survey remained optimistic about growth in services activity over the coming year, which boosted the business expectation sub-index to an 11-month high. "Many will question how deep an impact the GST will have on the economy in the near- and long-term, firms seem convinced that prospects will brighten as the new tax regime becomes clearer," said de Lima. The GST aims to replace multiple cascading taxes. The change should help India reclaim its position as the fastest growing major economy this year, economists polled by Reuters last month said. On Wednesday, the Reserve Bank of India cut its policy rate by 25 basis points to 6.0 per cent, which should aid growth. The proposal of the to develop new airports and upgrade existing ones to boost air connectivity in Uttar Pradesh will unlock the untapped air travel potential in the state, especially for low-cost carriers. The Government of India encourages development of green airports. In order to develop airports in Andhra Pradesh as green airports, AAI has commenced installation of 1MWp solar power plant at Tirupathi and Vijaywada Airports. The Airports Authority of India (AAI) has set up Solar Power Plants at various locations/airports for its captive power consumption based on the capacity permissible under Net-Metering policy of States. AAI has completed installation of solar power plants at 29 airports/locations with a total capacity of 12.84 MWp. . . Earlier, the Cochin International Airport Limited (CIAL) became the first airport in the world, to be completely powered by solar energy. . . This information was given by the Minister of State in the Ministry of Civil Aviation Shri Jayant Sinha in written reply to a question in Lok Sabha today. . . Inter-State River Water Sharing Disputes On the complaint made by the State Governments, the Central Government has, so far, set up eight tribunals to settle water disputes among the States under the Inter-State River Water Disputes (ISRWD) Act, 1956. Government of Bihar sent a request on November 27, 2013 under provision of ISRWD Act, 1956 to this Ministry for constitution of a Tribunal for adjudication of river water disputes related to Sone basin. Negotiations were carried out by Chairman, Ganga Flood Control Commission and Chairman, Central Water Commission with the States of U. P. and Bihar. It has been agreed that the two States of U. P. and Bihar would meet periodically and try to solve the issue bilaterally. The dispute has since been settled. State of Odisha has also filed complaint dated November 19, 2017 under Section 3 of ISRWD Act, 1956 with respect to Mahanadi basin. The Central Government constituted a Negotiation Committee comprising members from basin States and concerned Ministries of Central Government, Central Water Commission, India Metrological Department, National Institute of Hydrology for settlement of the dispute through negotiation. The Negotiation Committee held two meetings on February 28, 2017 and May 22, 2017 and submitted its report in which it mentioned that any further meetings of this Committee would not be fruitful as there had been no participation from complainant State i.e. State of Odisha in both the meetings. Accordingly, the Ministry concluded that the dispute cannot be resolved by negotiation and it has been decided to constitute a Tribunal for adjudication of the dispute. Draft Cabinet Note in this regard has been prepared. The mechanism for settlement of water disputes is already available in the form of ISRWD Act, 1956. The ISRWD Act, 1956 has been last amended in 2002 whereby adjudication of the water disputes by tribunals has been made time bound after consultation with all State Governments. Further, Ministry of Water Resources, River Development and Ganga Rejuvenation adopted a revised National Water Policy (NWP) in 2012. As per Clause 12.2 of the Policy, a permanent Water Disputes Tribunal at the Centre should be established to resolve the disputes expeditiously in an equitable manner. In this regard, the Inter-State River Water Dispute (Amendment) Bill, 2017 has been introduced in Lok Sabha on March 14, 2017 to amend the existing ISRWD Act, 1956. The Bill has further been referred to the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Water Resources by the Speaker vide order dated March 14, 2017 for examination. In this regard, three meetings of the Standing Committee have been held on June 16, 2017, June 30, 2017 and July 10, 2017. This information was given by Union Minister of State for Water Resources, River Development and Ganga Rejuvenation Dr. Sanjeev Kumar Balyan in a written reply in Lok Sabha today. Samir/jk Kuwait NRI student Riddhiraj donates Prize Money to Indian Army Welfare Fund . Kuwait living NRI student Ma. Riddhiraj Kumar presented a cheque of Rs. 18,000 to the Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi as donation for Army Welfare Fund. He won total 80 KD (Kuwait Dinars), equal to his donation, as prize money from ACER. Ma. Riddhiraj Kumar met Shri Narendra Modi along with his mother, here today. . . Student from Indian Educational School, Kuwait, Ma. Riddhiraj won the International Bench Mark Test for Improving Learning Award for Excellence conducted by the Australian Council for Education Research (ACER). Ma. Riddhiraj excelled both in Mathematics and Science, for Middle East, to win a total of 80 Kuwait Dinars. . . Shri Narendra Modi congratulated Ma. Riddhiraj for his generosity and excellence in academics. The Prime Minister also learnt that the boy has several innovative projects to his credit. . . Smt. Krupa Bhatt, mother of the student, told the Prime Minister that she is working on Every Child is Genius Project and organising free seminars for the teachers in India, on identifying talents of the children. Prime Minister also congratulated her for the commitment she is showing in spreading innovative learning projects. . . To ensure quality education to be imparted in All India Council for Technical Education(AICTE) approved institutions, AICTE has set norms and standards to regulate the technical education by way of grant of approval for conducting courses and renewal of the same. In consonance with the provision of the University Grant Commission(UGC) (Establishment of and Maintenance of Standards in Private Universities) Regulations, 2003, the UGC has already conducted on the spot inspection of 159 out of 278 Private Universities to assess whether the Private Universities are fulfilling the minimum criteria in terms of programmes, faculty, infrastructural facilities, financial viability, etc., as laid down from time to time by the UGC and other concerned statutory bodies/councils. Copy of the UGC visiting committee report is sent to the concerned Private University to submit compliance in respect of the suggestions given by the UGC Committee. The report of the visiting committee alongwith the compliance submitted by the University is placed before a Committee of the Members of the Commission for consideration. The recommendations of this Committee are placed before the Commission to take final decision in the matter. As such, UGC is taking all the necessary steps to ensure quality of education in Universities. . . There is not a single Indian educational institution in the top 20 world class institutions, as per various world rankings. To increase investments in the infrastructure of higher educational institutions, the Higher Education Financing Agency (HEFA) has been set up with an initial capital base of Rs. 300 crores. The HEFA has been incorporated as a Section 8 Company under the Company Act, 2013 and would mobilize debt/Bond funds from the market to finance improvement in infrastructure and research facilities in the higher educational institutions. The loans would be serviced through the internal accruals of the institutions. . . This information was given by the Minister of State (HRD), Dr. Mahendra Nath Pandey today in a written reply to a Rajya Sabha question. . . At present, 26 airports are categorized as Hyper-sensitive and 56 airports as Sensitive. The State Police, Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) etc. have been deployed at the airports where CISF are not deployed. These agencies are providing security at airports as per the mandate of the Bureau of Civil Aviation Security (BCAS), the regulatory authority for civil aviation security in India. Counter Terrorist Contingency Plans (CTCPs) are prepared for Hyper-sensitive/Sensitive airports in coordination with State Governments, Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) and CISF in accordance with the mandate of MHA. . . This information was given by the Minister of State in the Ministry of Civil Aviation Shri Jayant Sinha in written reply to a question in Lok Sabha today. . . With his frequent refrains about Mexicans and the need for a wall to contain them, its no surprise that President Trump has made few friends in Mexico. An Australian nurse who managed a surrogacy clinic in Cambodia that matched foreign couples with local women was sentenced to 18 months in prison on Thursday, as authorities in the impoverished kingdom tackle the "rent-a- womb" businesses. Tammy Davis-Charles, 49, has been in custody since her arrest in November last year, weeks after Cambodia abruptly banned commercial surrogacy. Authorities moved to shut down the trade, which critics say exploits poor women, after a similar ban in Thailand pushed the shadowy industry across its borders. Davis-Charles is accused of moving from Thailand to take advantage of the surrogacy boom in Cambodia, which lacked regulations at the time and quickly mopped up demand from foreign couples, mostly from . Police said her clinic charged would-be parents up to $50,000, while Cambodian surrogates received around $10,000 each -- a vast sum in a nation where the average annual income is around $1,200. Davis-Charles, who advertised surrogacy services online, was accused of bringing more than 23 Cambodian women into the trade for 18 Australian and five American couples. "Tammy Davis-Charles was an intermediary between intended parents and Cambodian surrogate mothers," Judge Sor Lina said delivering the ruling. The Melbourne native was also convicted of falsifying documents. "The court sentences Tammy Davis-Charles to one-and-a- half-years in jail," the judge added. Two Cambodian colleagues were convicted of the same charges and also jailed for 18 months. In her defence statement in July, Davis-Charles broke down in tears in front of the court appealing for mercy from the bench, saying she had already "lost everything" during her six months in custody. During the trial she denied recruiting the surrogates, saying her role was limited to providing medical care. Davis-Charles had twins through a Thai surrogate before going into "the surrogacy business full-time... To help people everyday," according to her post on the website of her Bangkok-registered company. Surrogacy agencies started sprouting up in Cambodia in 2015 after neighbouring Thailand shut down the trade following a series of scandals, including tussles over custody. With cheap medical costs, a large pool of poor young women and no laws excluding gay couples or single parents, Cambodia quickly absorbed demand. But in late 2016 authorities shut down the trade and refused to recognise birth certificates for babies, leaving many foreign couples in limbo. In April this year the government said it would allow foreign couples to return home with babies if they could prove they were conceived before the ban on commercial surrogacy. While Cambodia's crackdown has slowed the tide of foreign couples, it has failed to snuff out an industry that remains a lure for some of the country's most vulnerable women. "There is certainly still surrogacy going on underground," said Sam Everingham, director of the Australia- based consultancy Families Through Surrogacy. The trade has also shifted over to neighbouring Laos which has yet to criminalise commercial surrogacy. Laos' role as the new surrogacy destination emerged after Thai authorities arrested a man attempting to smuggle six large refrigerated vials of sperm into the Communist country -- presumably for use in the booming surrogacy clinics. Some offer to carry out the embryo transfer in Laos and then provide pregnancy care for the surrogate in Thailand, a wealthier country with vastly superior medical facilities. Thai authorities banned the trade in late 2014 following a slew of scandals, including the discovery of nine babies in a Bangkok apartment fathered by a rich Japanese man using Thai surrogates. As the Trump administration moves to take on China over intellectual property, Washington will find it has limited firepower. Beijing has a strong grip on American companies, and global trade rules could favour China. According to new data from the UKs Office for National Statistics (ONS), 2016 saw the highest number of drug-related deaths since records began in 1993. Over half of these deaths involved an opiate such as heroin . Those aged 40-49 made up the largest group dying as a result of drug poisoning. Compared to the general population, this group are dying decades before they should. For the population as a whole, life expectancy has stalled since 2010. This is not inevitable as the UK is not yet achieving the average life expectancy of countries such as Japan and Sweden. In a recent blog, Sir Michael Marmot said there was an urgent need to determine if austerity had contributed to the shortening of lives. There is a "clear" risk of a trade war happening because of protectionist policies, the World Trade Organisation chief Roberto Azevedo has said. The WTO's director-general did not implicate any countries by name behind such policies, even though he was asked about the effects US President Donald Trump's "America First" stance could have on the global trading system. "The risk of a trade war is very clear," Azevedo told reporters yesterday during a visit in Panama. "Once a country, whichever one, applies unilateral measures, there is a response from others and we could see a domino effect," he said. "The reality is that, at the end of the process, if we have a trade war everybody without exception will be worse off than when it starts." Since entering the White House, Trump's administration has talked about the US trade deficit vis-a-vis several countries, notably China and Mexico. The president has said he is prepared to tear up the NAFTA free trade deal with Canada and Mexico. Yesterday, reports said the US was looking at probing China for unfair trade practices. Azevedo was in Panama for meetings with government officials and business representatives. "The problem we have is a global problem: we have an not growing sufficiently fast and that gives rise to temptations of unilateral protectionist actions," he said. (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.) announced it has dropped plans to buy a 10-percent stake in American Airlines, as Doha remains embroiled in a diplomatic row with its neighbours. A review of the planned move "demonstrated that the investment no longer meets our objectives," the company said in a statement, without elaborating. The Qatari airline's surprise plan to buy at least $808 million in American Airlines shares was disclosed by the US carrier in a securities filing June 23. The Qatari carrier said it would "continue to investigate alternative investment opportunities in the United States of America and elsewhere that do meet our objectives." The announcement comes as Qatar remains embroiled in the worst regional crisis in years. On June 5, Saudi Arabia and its allies including Egypt and the United Arab Emirates cut diplomatic and trade ties with Qatar, accusing Doha of backing extremist groups and being too close to Riyadh's arch-rival Iran. Qatar, a key US ally, denies the allegations and accuses the Saudi-led bloc of imposing a "siege" on the tiny emirate. On July 13, American Airlines announced its decision to no longer share flights with as part of its push against government subsidies of Middle East carriers. American Airlines -- along with fellow US carriers Delta Air Lines and United Airlines -- has called for the White House to crack down on an alleged $50 billion in state subsidies to carriers in the Middle East. The Texas-based US airline said the Qatari decision left American's immediate plans unchanged. "We respect Qatar Airways' decision not to proceed with its proposed investment in American Airlines," the company said in a statement. "This in no way changes the course for American. Thirteen crew members were rescued by the Bangladesh Coast Guard after two lighterage ships collided head on in the narrow Karnaphuli channel near the outer anchorage of Chittagong port last night. MV Nayeb 1 and Shantatul Haque 2 collided near buoy no. 2 around 8:30pm, leading to a fissure in the hull of MV Nayeb 1. No major harm was done as the ship immediately beached itself along the Patenga coastline,the daily star quoted Lt Commander Sheikh Fakhruddin, staff officer of Bangladesh Coast Guard as saying. Chittagong Port Authority has taken a series of measures to ease persisting vessel congestion which continues to cause huge losses in the country's export and manufacturing sectors. Lighterage is the process of transferring cargo between vessels of different sizes and to reduce congestion bigger container vessels were allowed at night and creating more space at the yard, procuring handling equipment, enhancing capacity of the off-docks, resuming capital dredging and keeping the port operational round the clock. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Commanding Officer of 55 Rashtriya Rifles (RR), Kamal Nauriyal, who led Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) terrorist Abu Dujana encounter, said that when the latter was asked to surrender, he adamantly refused to do so. "On July 31 night we got the input that Dujana is taking shelter in a house in Pulawama's Hakripura village. Therefore, it was easy for our team to plan this operation and we tracked his movement and got success. The owner of the house requested the company commander on duty to rescue them as Dujana was not letting them out of the house. The company commander then talked to Dujana through the house owner and asked him to surrender himself to which Dujana refused," Nauriyal told ANI. He further said that jointly with the Pulwama Police they launched the operation where they took help of the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF). "The CRPF did a commendable job in controlling law and order. The conversation between the house owner and the company commander indicates that public has trust in the Armed forces. The commander told Dujana that he is just merely a puppet in this whole act to which he responded very meekly and agreed with the fact," Nauriyal added. Meanwhile yesterday, the separatists in Kashmir called for 'bandh' to protest the killing of two LeT terrorists and a civilian on Tuesday. The civilian was killed in protest that erupted following an encounter in which LeT terrorist Abu Dujana and Arif were gunned down by security forces. Separatists Syed Ali Geelani, Mirwaiz Umar Farooq and Muhammad Yasin Malik have jointly called for 'Bandh'. They have also appealed people to offer funeral prayers in absentia after Zuhr prayers for slain militants and civilian. As a precautionary measure to avoid any untoward incident, the authorities have imposed restrictions under Section 144 of CrPC under the jurisdiction of five police stations- Nowhatta, MR Gunj, Rainawari, Khanyar and Safakadal- of district Srinagar. In a major breakthrough, LeT chief commander Abu Dujana of Pakistan along with his accomplice Arif were killed in an encounter with security forces at Hakripora village in Jammu and Kashmir's Pulwama district on Tuesday morning. Dujana was one of the most wanted terrorists and carried over Rs 15 lakh bounty on his head. On July 19, Dujana and two of his associates gave the slip to security forces in Pulwama district. According to media reports, the trio exchanged fire with the armed forces and managed to flee from the spot. The Indian Army in July released a list of 12 most-wanted terrorists operating in the Kashmir Valley and Dujana was among them. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Another bench of the Delhi High Court on Thursday recused itself from hearing a plea filed by Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Narottam Mishra. Mishra has challenged order by the Election Commission to disqualify him from contesting elections for three years. On July 16, the Delhi High Court's double bench dismissed stay application of the disqualified Madhya Pradesh Minister. Earlier, the High Court also dismissed disqualified Mishra's plea to vote in the presidential polls scheduled for July 17. "I respect the judgment. For justice, if I have to go to the Supreme Court, I will go. I am consulting with the legal authorities regarding this. We will see what can be done legally," Mishra had told ANI. Mishra then approached the Supreme Court to stall the EC's proceedings, but the apex court did not grant him any relief. The Election Commission of India had disqualified the MLA for three years to contest elections after finding him guilty of paid news. The EC has the power to disqualify a candidate if he fails to submit a clear and concise account of expenses within the designated time frame. The Election Commission's decision was taken based on a complaint lodged by former Congress MLA Rajendra Bharti in April 2009, alleging that Mishra hadn't filed certain details in his election expenditure during the 2008 Assembly elections. Mishra challenged the notice in the high court bench at Gwalior and managed to get a stay, in the light of former Maharashtra Chief Minister Ashok Chavan's case proceeding in the top court. The court, however, vacated the stay order after considering the facts submitted by the complainant's counsel. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Two men have been charged in Australia in connection with an alleged plot to bring down a passenger plane. A 49-year-old and a 32-year-old each were charged with two counts of "acts done in preparation for, or planning, a terrorist act," according to a statement from the Australian Federal Police (AFP). The maximum penalty for each offense is life in prison. This comes five days after four people -- including the two men -- were arrested by the police over what Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull described as an "elaborate conspiracy." Turnbull said the plot involved bringing down a passenger plane. A 50-year-old man was released without charge on Tuesday. One man remains in custody, CNN reports. Earlier Thursday, Turnbull said the threat to aviation in Australia had been "disrupted and contained" following the arrests and the level of security at airports was being lowered. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) A study has recently revealed that babies, who are born to kidnapped brides have 80 to 190 grams lower birth weight than other babies. According to researchers, bride kidnapping remains a common practice in a handful of countries and when young women are kidnapped into marriage, their babies pay the price. The researchers looked at the Central Asian republic of Kyrgyzstan, where bride kidnapping, abducting young women and girls for the purpose of marriage remains widespread. They found that the children born to kidnapped brides weighed 80 to 190 grams less than infants born in arranged marriages. Study author Charles Becker from Duke University in Durham, North Carolina said that the birth weight provides an important marker of both mothers' and babies' health. Lower birth weight is also been linked to greater risk of disease. "The practice of kidnapping encompasses events ranging from staged elopement to forced abduction," Becker said. Other researchers have found similarly between lower birth weight among babies and the mothers, who were assaulted during pregnancy. Bride kidnapping persists in countries as diverse as Armenia, Ethiopia, Kazakhstan and South Africa. In Kyrgyzstan, between 16 to 23 percent of marriages result from kidnapping, the authors stated. Kidnapped brides tend to be younger than other brides, the study found. In Kyrgyzstan, the mean age among those brides was 19. Not surprisingly perhaps, divorce rates also ran higher among marriages that resulted from kidnapping. Becker explained a striking feature of Kyrgyz society is that women have far more autonomy than in many if not most neighbouring societies. Becker hopes the new findings encourage stronger enforcement of anti-kidnapping laws. The research appears in journal Demography. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) A Bangladeshi citizen has been apprehended in Agartala airport while trying to smuggle large quantity of gold to Kolkata, said the senior official of Airport Authority of India. Director of Agartala airport S D Barman said, "A total of forty gold pieces weighing 1.2 kg were found hidden in pipe handle of a bolt-cutter during X-ray point scanning in the morning." The total price of the gold is said to be around Rs 33 lakh. Barman also said that the apprehended person has been identified as Shah Alam from Brahminbaria of Bangladesh and had entered India on July 29 through Haridashpur border. The accused was trying to smuggle the gold via Spice Jet flight SG277 from Agartala to Kolkata. Meantime, the apprehended person claimed that he is innocent and was not aware that gold was hidden in the handle. Police and Central Industrial Security Force (CISF) officials are interrogating the apprehended, who shall later be handed over to the customs department along with the gold. This is the fifth incident of recovery of huge quantity of gold or foreign currency from the Agartala airport in the last two months. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The hearing over sharing of the Cauvery river water between Karnataka and Tamil Nadu will continue in the Supreme Court today. The apex court on July 11 commenced final hearing on the appeals filed by Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Kerala against the 2007 Cauvery Water Disputes Tribunal (CWDT) final award. A bench of the apex court, headed by Justice Dipak Misra, had earlier directed the Karnataka Government to provide 200 cusecs of Cauvery water to Tamil Nadu till its further order. The top court, earlier in January, dismissed the plea seeking compensation from both Karnataka and Tamil Nadu Governments for the loss of property during the Cauvery water related dispute between both the states. Siva Kumar, a Tamil Nadu based activist, had earlier filed the petition in the apex court on the same. On January 9, the Tamil Nadu Government sought a compensation of Rs. 2,480 crore from Karnataka for not releasing water to the state despite getting the Supreme Court directive to do so. A bench of the apex court, headed by Justice Dipak Misra and comprising Justice Amitava Roy and Justice A.M. Khanwilkar, extended the interim order in the water issue, directing Karnataka to release 2,000 cusecs of Cauvery water per day to Tamil Nadu. The lawyer from the side of Tamil Nadu, Shekhar Naphade, urged the three-judge bench to bring the matter to a logical end for which there should be a continuous hearing. On December 9 last year, the apex court upheld its constitutional power and right to hear appeals filed by Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Kerala. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu had a review meeting with Andhra Pradesh Capital Region Development Authority (CRDA) officials, discussing the cost effective mass transit systems. In the review meeting held on Wednesday with the CRDA, Chief Minister Naidu discussed cost effective measures for mass transit systems that includes Elevated BRTS and light metro. The Vijayawada Metro Rail project is proposed by N. Chandrababu Naidu to reduce traffic congestion in the city and the survey work for the project began in 2014. RVR Associates was appointed to conduct household and traffic surveys. The completion of these two surveys was done following which topographical, environmental and soil surveys were also conducted. A detailed project report on the Vijayawada Metro was submitted by Principal Advisor of DMRC, E.Sreedharan to the Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu on April 27, 2015. The operation is estimated to start by 2020. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) United States Attorney General Jeff Sessions swore in Chris Wray as the new director of the FBI on Wednesday afternoon. Sessions praised Wray's "spirit' and "strength of character," and said, "I am confident that the FBI, the premier investigative agency in the world, is in great hands with Director Chris Wray at the helm." "As a former federal prosecutor and head of the Department of Justice's Criminal Division, Chris Wray has successfully prosecuted terrorists, drug kingpins, and white-collar criminals, and earned the respect of his colleagues at DOJ, as well as bipartisan support from the Senate," he added. In a statement issued by the FBI, Wray called his new role "the honour of a lifetime." "I long ago grew to know and admire the FBI from my earliest days as a line prosecutor to my years as assistant attorney general. I am excited, humbled, and grateful, therefore, to have this chance to work side-by-side again with these fine professionals for the good of the country and the cause of justice," he said. Wray has taken over the agency following the firing of former FBI director James Comey by President Donald Trump in May, amid the investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election and possible collusion with Trump campaign associates. Wray was confirmed by the Senate by a 92-5 vote on Tuesday. Wray formerly worked in the Department of Justice under former President George W. Bush. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Congress leader Anand Sharma on Thursday questioned Prime Minister Narendra Modi's foreign policy and asked the Centre its roadmap on dealing with Pakistan. Flagging its concern over the deteriorating ties between both the nations, Congress leader Sharma asked Prime Minister Modi as to why did he make that "dramatic" visit to Pakistan and till date he haven't told what happened in the meeting. "You were going to Afghanistan and got down at Lahore mid-way; till date the Prime Minister hasn't told nation what talks took place. On one hand, you get miffed and cancel talks after Pakistan invites separatists on a tea party, and on the other hand, you make a dramatic visit breaching all protocols," he said. In December 2015, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had 'unexpectedly' landed in Lahore to meet his counterpart Nawaz Sharif on his way back home after a day-long trip today to Afghanistan where he went after concluding a two-day visit to Russia. Continuing its tirade against the Government on India-China standoff, Sharma said these are matters of interest and it should be discussed. "Prime Minister Narendra Modi has not uttered a word about the discussion he had with China President Xi Jinping. Why is Prime Minister Narendra Modi silent? NSA did not share what was discussed in meeting, why? What is China's intent? I am not questioning my government. Why did China deny any discussion with my government? We have concerns that China's role in Pakistan is increasing. There are sovereignty concerns," he added. He further asked External Affair Minister Sushma Swaraj to give an idea as to when the stand-off can be resolved. "We would like to know from our foreign minister what is India's assessment and response to latest Chinese statement," Sharma said. Sharma further questions the "boastful" attitude of Prime Minister Modi after army's surgical strikes across PoK. "Indira Gandhi didn't do that even after we won war for Bangladesh... You don't even remember Indira Gandhi's sacrifices, and Bangladesh. But, I'm afraid no government, no leader, not even dictators can change history. History will triumph... Irrespective of which government sits, those who did something for the country cannot be insulted, they must be respected," he added. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The Congress on Thursday hit back at the Bhartaiya Janata Party (BJP) over the Income Tax department raid at the Eagleton Resort in Bengaluru where its 44 Congress MLAs from Gujarat are staying. The resort belongs to Karnataka Power Minister DK Shivakumar, who is taking care of Congress' MLAs from Gujarat. The Congress sent its 44 MLAs to Bengaluru after its six MLAs from Gujarat joined BJP. Arjun Modhwadia, Congress MLA from Gujarat, said that the BJP is just using its power in the Centre to target the members of Congress. He said, "We can see in CCTV that they came in with 7 CRPF members and took over the reception. They searched several rooms. A number of our MLAs were interrogated. " Modhwadia also said that the CCTV footage also showed that they didn't allow Karnataka Power Minister DK Shivakumar to sit in his own car and forcibly made him sit with the CRPF personnel. He said that if the BJP was truly interested in the money he possessed, they would have searched his property and not interrogated him for three hours. He added, "Amit Shah (BJP President) isn't in control of the police over here so they sent in the I-T personnel and CRPF officials to raid our property. Our MLAs weren't safe in Gujarat and they aren't safe over here as well" Earlier on Wednesday, the I-T raided the house and resort of Karnataka Power Minister DK Shivakumar. On Thursday morning, they raided his father-in-law's house and his property in Delhi. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Hitting back at External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj's statements in Rajya Sabha, the Congress on Thursday said that when it comes to China issue, India shall speak in one voice, there will be no two opinions on that. Speaking to the reporters here, Senior Congress leader Anand Sharma said, "Let me remind Sushma Swaraj that out of courtesy we did not interrupt. What I had said catering to the Congress Party is concerned; we are very clear that we stand with the government as one. When it comes to China issue; India shall speak in one voice- there will be no two opinions on that. Sushma Swaraj should not have tried to break that opposition consensus and unity. When India is united why is the government keen on creating a division and breaking the consensus". Further lashing out at the BJP, Sharma stated that the saffron party is the most irresponsible. "I'm very clear, that when it comes to Doklam or India security; we speak as one country. Congress was responsible in all endeavors they took up. But the BJP and the opposition is the most irresponsible when they kept on differing and attacking the government," he said. Resonating similar views, another Congress leader Pratap Singh Bajwa asked, "I would like to ask Sushma that does she still have diplomatic relations with China or is it broken? If it's broken then no harm but if not then what wrong did Rahul Gandhi do? If both want to give their opinion then what is wrong in that? Was there something illegal about it?" Earlier, Swaraj said in the Rajya Sabha that India has taken efforts to ease the standoff with China. She further stated that war cannot resolve problems and that the wisdom is to resolve issues diplomatically on the issue of border stand-off with China. She said that the government is not just negotiating on Doklam, but is also talking on the bilateral relations with China. "The solution will only come from that. Prime Minister Narendra Modi said let us not convert our difference into dispute," she said. The statement came after the Opposition on Thursday cornered the government in the Parliament on the standoff with China over the Doklam issue. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) A special health checkup camp for cattle and livestock was organised under the aegis of the Dinesh Shahra Foundation as part of their Gau Shakti Abhiyan initiative. The Cattle and Livestock Health Checkup Camp was held at Navarmari village, Nagpur recently. The camp was organised in association with Niramay Bahu-Uddeshiya Seva Sanstha, Nagpur and the Animal Husbandry Dept., Zilla Parishad, Nagpur. The camp saw a good response from the farmers with over 90 percent of families in the village participating in the camp and bringing their cattle and livestock to be checked by the attending veterinary doctors. The doctors included Dr. Manjusha Pundlik, Asst. Commissioner, Animal Husbandry, Regional Diseases Investigation Laboratory, Nagpur and Dr. Bhalerao from the Animal Husbandry Department, Butibori, Nagpur with supporting staff. "We are heartened by the positive response to our initiative under the Gau Shakti Abhiyan. The Health Checkup Camp for cattle and livestock has been appreciated by the farmers. This camp is part of the Foundation's mission to promote sustainable development of the rural economy and we look forward to organising many such camps in the future," said Dinesh Shahra, Founder and MD, Ruchi Soya Industries Ltd. and Trustee, Dinesh Shahra Foundation. The Chief Guests at the camp included Dr. Hirudkar, District Animal Husbandry Officer - Nagpur, Vishakha Bhagat, Sarpanch, Navarmari Group Gram Panchayat and Gulabrao Bhagat, Police Patil, Navarmari village. On behalf of the Dinesh Shahra Foundation, Dinesh Raut and Dr. Urmila Kshirsagar welcomed all guests and doctors by giving them Tulsi saplings. The girls of the village also performed a traditional welcome song. The camp was then inaugurated with the lighting of the lamp, worshipping the 'gaumata' and feeding the cow fodder. Dr. Kshirsagar, Panda and others from the Niramay Bahu-Uddeshiya Seva Sanstha then started the procedure of checking up the cattle and livestock with the other doctors. Free medicines were also distributed on the occasion. Around 650 cattle, goats and poultry were screened at the camp. The screening and tests included de-worming, Random Blood Test (CBC), fecal test, blood smear, collection of ticks for identification, infertility examination and pregnancy diagnosis. The treatments included parasitic spraying, tonic injection to all bullocks, mineral mixture distributed to all cows as well as weak oxen and calves, PPR vaccine to all goats, treatment to wounds, anti-diarrhea medicines and indigestion bolus. Dr. Hirudkar and Dr. Bhalerao spoke to the farmers on care of the cattle and livestock and importance of community participation and role of environmental hygiene for their well-being. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The Enforcement Directorate on Thursday submitted application before a Delhi Court for further remand of Kashmiri Separatist leader and Democratic Freedom Party (DFP) chairman Shabir Shah in connection with the terror funding case. In its remand application ED submitted before the court that Shah is in continuous contact with anti elements/ terrorists residing in Pakistan in garb of the Kashmir issue. Contacts from his mobile phone revealed that he is in regular touch with Pakistan, Dubai and England and that the same needs to be examined. Meanwhile, Shah was produced before the Patiala House Court earlier today. Shah's remand was extended for a day on August 2, in connection with a terror funding case. On July 26, Shah was produced in the Patiala House Court, following which he was sent to a seven-day ED custody. On July 25, Shah was arrested from his residence, where he was under house detention for a very long time, in Jammu and Kashmir's Srinagar. The Investigation Agency (NIA) has been tough on Separatists regarding the alleged funding by Pakistan for illegal activities in Kashmir. On July 24, the NIA arrested seven separatists over money laundering charges, for funding terror in the Kashmir Valley. All seven separatist leaders - Altaf Shah, Ayaz Akbar, Peer Saifullah, Mehraj Kalwal, Shahid-ul-Islam, Naeem Khan and Bitta Karate - were later sent to 10-day NIA custody. The accused have been charged under various sections of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) and the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act. The NIA visited Srinagar in May to probe the alleged funding by Pakistan for illegal activities in Kashmir, and questioned several separatist leaders on the issue of raising, collecting and transferring funds via the Hawala route and other channels to fund terror activities in Kashmir. The NIA sleuths specifically questioned separatist leaders Farooq Ahmed Dar alias Bitta Karate and Gazi Javed Baba at that time. The NIA is said to be probing all aspects of funding to separatist leaders and how they reportedly used these funds to fuel unrest in the Kashmir Valley. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) After giving four back-to-back hits in Mumbai, the makers of 'Mughal-e-Azam The makers of the play gave a sneak peak today. Feroz Abbas Khan, Deepesh Salgia directed the musical play, Manish Malhotra designed the costumes and choreographer Mayuri Upadhya and Farrahnaz Irani (NCPA) trained the artists. Theatrical director Feroz Abbas Khan told ANI, "I wanted to do something that was totally against my grain. I wanted to share this great piece of cinema with the people in Delhi. Especially for audiences in Delhi, we are bringing in the Mughal culture at even bigger scale than Mumbai." When asked about the time it had taken for the show to be staged in Delhi, Mr Khushroo Suntook, Chairman National Center of Performing Arts (NCPA), "Mughal-E-Azam has large sets, a 175-member crew and requires larger number of projections with a high tech infrastructure." "Delhi does not have a theatre that can stage a play of this scale (though two of them are under construction). The producers Shapoorji Pallonji & NCPA (that's us), have therefore made huge investments in setting up infrastructure at the Jawaharlal Nehru Indoor Stadium," Suntook added. Despite the huge challenges in setting up suitable infrastructure, the team ensured that 'Mughal-e-Azam' should be performed in the city of its origin. "Mughal-e-Azam's journey would be incomplete without Delhi being a part of it. It would have been unfair if the world had experienced Mughal-e-Azam without the heart of Mughal Sultanate experiencing it," added Deepesh Salgia. Manish Malhotra who has designed more than 500 hundred costumes for the play said, "The costumes reflect the traditions and tehzeeb of the Delhi Sultanate. The fabrics, textures and the embroidery showcase the grandeur of the Mughal era and I have tried to stay true to the times." The cast will comprise of the same team that has received a standing ovation across shows in Mumbai with live singing by actors of the evergreen songs from the film 'Mughal-e-Azam' and stunning choreography by trained Kathak dancers. The makers of 'Mughal-e-Azam' have collaborated with ticketing portal Bookmyshow.Com. The event would be showcased from September 9 to 17 at Jawaharlal Nehru Indoor Stadium in New Delhi. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JuD) chief and the mastermind of Mumbai terrorist attack Hafiz Muhammad Saeed has reportedly decided to launch his own political party in Pakistan by renaming his terror outfit JuD as Milli Muslim League Pakistan. According to reports, he would be registering his political party with the Election Commission of Pakistan. Saeed is likely to launch his political outfit on Pakistan's Independence Day at a function in Lahore. This is being seen as a major happening as Pakistan recently elected its new Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi after Nawaz Sharif was disqualified by the Supreme Court over the Panama Papers scandal. He is also said to have close relations with the Pakistani Army and the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI). Recently the government of Pakistan's Punjab province extended the house arrest of Jamaatud Dawa (JuD) chief Hafiz Muhammad Saeed and his four aides for 60 more days for their activities that were "detrimental to peace and security", The Express Tribune reported. Saeed is a wanted terrorist by India and the United States for his alleged role in masterminding the 2008 terror attacks in Mumbai that claimed 166 lives. He even carries a bounty of 10 million USD (approx. Rs 66 crore) on his head for his role in the attack. He is an internationally designated terrorist but continues to be an influential person in Pakistan's certain religious groups. Pakistan claims to have banned Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), but following the attack on the Indian Parliament in 2002, it re-emerged as Jamaat-ud Dawa (JuD). The United States has designated the JuD as a front for the LeT. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The Congress on Thursday said the Income Tax raids at a resort in Bengaluru were a tribute to Prime Minister Narendra Modi's proclamation of participatory federalism in the country and highlights the hypocrisy of the ruling government. "This is a tribute to Prime Minister Modi's proclamation of participatory federalism in this country. It is a clear example of patent hypocrisy of this government and of the prime minister himself, who talks of federalism and then ends up doing this, just to win a particular seat in Gujarat?," Congress senior leader Salman Khurshid told ANI. Khurshid said it is very shameful for the democracy of India, whose top leadership is taking such steps. Another Congress leader Charan Singh Sapra said the grand old party is not against any I-T raidsl, but the timing of the raids is of utmost important. "Prime Minister Modi and his government have been doing this witch-hunting in all spheres. The BJP wants to come in power and are desperate to have each and every seat,' Sapra told ANI. Earlier on Wednesday, the Income Tax department raided a resort on the outskirts of Bengaluru where 42 Congress MLAs from Gujarat were holed up to avoid poaching by the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in Gujarat. The I-T department raided on multiple locations linked to Karnataka Energy Minister D. K Shivakumar too, including his residence. The department recovered around Rs 7 crores from Shivakumar's properties that it found to be questionable. The Congress on the other hand said that there was a clear connection between the raids and the upcoming elections in Gujarat for three Rajya Sabha seats, while the I-T department said this was a pre-planned raid. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) India and Pakistan have agreed to meet in September in Washington D C to continue discussions over the Indus Waters Treaty. The Bank hosted the two-day secretary-level discussions between India and Pakistan on the technical issues over the Indus Waters talks, which concluded on Tuesday in a spirit of goodwill and cooperation and agreed to meet during the next round of talks which will also be held at the bank's headquarters in Washington. The Bank has said that India is permitted to construct the Kishenganga (330 megawatts) and Ratle (850 megawatts) hydroelectric power plants on Jhelum and the Chenab rivers as specified in the Indus Waters Treaty .But Pakistan has opposed whether the technical design features of the two hydroelectric plants contravene the treaty. "The plants are on respectively a tributary of the Jhelum and the Chenab Rivers. The treaty designates these two rivers as well as the Indus as the "Western Rivers" to which Pakistan has unrestricted use. Among other uses, India is permitted to construct hydroelectric power facilities on these rivers subject to constraints specified in Annexures to the treaty," the Bank stated in a factsheet. The Indus Waters Treaty was signed in 1960 after nine years of negotiations between India and Pakistan with the help of the World Bank, which is also a signatory. The World Bank stated in its factsheet that Pakistan has asked it to facilitate the setting up of a Court of Arbitration to look into its concerns about the designs of the two hydroelectric power projects.However, India has asked for the appointment of a Neutral Expert for the same purpose. World Bank Group President Jim Yong Kim had announced in December 2016 that the World Bank would pause before taking further steps in each of the two processes requested by the parties. Since December 2016, the World Bank has worked towards an amicable resolution of the matter and to safeguard the Treaty. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj on Thursday lauded Prime Minister on the successful bilateral relations with countries across the world saying that the latter has the guts to challenge US President Donald Trump. " has earned respect for the country. He has brought glory to India. Despite Trump's allegations on India taking bribes, Prime Minister Modi has the guts to stand against Trump and the US. The world sees India differently now. We have improved ties with our neighbours," Swaraj said while speaking in Rajya Sabha. Further, she slammed Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi's meet with the Chinese envoy while India is in a standoff with the PLA at the Doklam plateau. "He (Rahul) should have consulted with the Prime Minister first. The opposition should have taken the government's view before meeting the Chinese. Rahul should have consulted Prime Minister Modi before meeting Chinese envoy. The Opposition should have taken governments view before meet," Swaraj said. Swaraj's statement comes after senior Congress leader Anand Sharma attacked Prime Minister Modi for his foreign policies, saying that he has not uttered a single word on what he talked with Chinese President Xi Jinping during their meetings in Astana (Kazakhstan) and Hamburg (Germany). "It is his (PM's) duty to tell us. He cannot remain silent on matters of India's sensitive interests," he said. Sharma had also questioned PM Modi's Pakistan trip in 2016, while saying that Nehru had earned respect for his foreign policies. Income Tax (IT) Department on Thursday morning started raiding the house of Karnataka Power Minister DK Shivakumar's house in the Safdarjung area in Delhi. Earlier on Thursday morning, the IT department raided the house of the minister's father-in-law in Bengaluru. The IT department on Wednesday had raided Shivakumar's residence and at a private resort in Bengaluru where 44 Congress lawmakers from Gujarat are staying. The Congress on Wednesday created ruckus in both the Houses of Parliament over the IT raids and alleged that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) led Central Government was indulging in political witch-hunt just to defeat Congress candidate Ahmed Patel in Rajya Sabha polls in Gujarat. Due to the ruckus, the Rajya Sabha was adjourned thrice before being adjourned for the day. Raising the matter in Rajya Sabha, Congress leader Anand Sharma had said it is now becoming a trend of the Government to blatantly misuse powers of the state. Another Congress leader Ghulam Nabi Azad said, "Conduct raids on residences of those people from your party (BJP) who are offering Rs 15 crore. Congress alleges that the BJP was offering its Gujarat MLAs Rs 15 crore each to resign from Congress. Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah dubbed IT raids at residence of Shivakumar as 'undemocratic'. Congress has shifted its 44 MLAs from Gujarat to Bengaluru after its six MLAs resigned and joined BJP. However, Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley denied that the income tax raid at residence Shivakumar has any links with Rajya Sabha polls in Gujarat. The IT department also maintained that its raid at Karnataka Energy Minister's residence and resort has nothing to do with the Gujarat's Congress MLAs. Former Karnataka Chief Minister B.S. Yeddyurappa on Thursday said that the Income Tax raid at state's Power Minister D.K. Shivakumar's residences should not be linked with Rajaya Sabha polls in Gujarat. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Income Tax department on Thursday morning started raiding house of Karnataka Power Minister DK Shivakumar's father -in-law. The IT department on Wednesday had raided Shivakumar's residence and at a private resort in Bengaluru where 44 Congress lawmakers from Gujarat are staying. The Congress on Wednesday created ruckus in both the Houses of Parliament on Wednesday over the IT raids and alleged that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) led Central Government was indulging in political witch-hunt just to defeat Congress candidate Ahmed Patel in Rajya Sabha polls in Gujarat. Due to the ruckus, the Rajya Sabha was adjourned thrice before being adjourned for the day. Raising the matter in Rajya Sabha, Congress leader Anand Sharma had said it is now becoming a trend of the Government to blatantly misuse powers of the state. Another Congress leader Ghulam Nabi Azad said, "Conduct raids on residences of those people from your party (BJP) who are offering Rs 15 crore. Congress alleges that the BJP was offering its Gujarat MLAs Rs 15 crore each to resign from Congress. Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah dubbed IT raids at residence of Shivakumar as 'undemocratic'. Congress has shifted its 44 MLAs from Gujarat to Bengaluru after its six MLAs resigned and joined BJP. However, Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley denied that the income tax raid at residence Shivakumar has any links with Rajya Sabha polls in Gujarat. The IT department also maintained that its raid at Karnataka Energy Minister's residence and resort has nothing to do with the Gujarat's Congress MLAs. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Two militants are believed to have been killed in a brief gunfight with the security forces in South Kashmir's Kulgam district last last night. In another incident, an encounter is underway between the security forces and militants at the Imam Sahab area of South Kashmir's Shopian district. At least two to three militants are believed to have been trapped in the area. Further details are awaited. Earlier yesterday, suspecting presence of terrorists, the Indian Army and the police launched a cordon and search operation at the Sugan village of Shopian district. In a major breakthrough, LeT chief commander Abu Dujana of Pakistan along with his accomplice Arif were killed in an encounter with security forces at Hakripora village in Jammu and Kashmir's Pulwama district on Tuesday morning. Following this, the separatists had called for 'bandh' to protest the killing of two Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) terrorists and a civilian. The civilian was killed in protest that erupted following an encounter in which LeT terrorist Abu Dujana and Arif were gunned down by security forces. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Former Karnataka Chief Minister B.S. Yeddyurappa on Thursday said that the Income Tax raid at state's Power Minister D.K. Shivakumar's residence should not be linked with Rajaya Sabha polls in Gujarat. Yeddyurappa said that Shivakumar is a rich man and is in politics since many years, while adding that one should not prognosticate before the inquiry in the case ends. "Alleging political vendetta is not correct. The searches are still on. It is too early to say anything. Let us wait for inquiry to get completed," said Yeddyurappa. "Everybody knows that D.K. Shivakumar is a rich man and is in politics from so many years. These raids should not be linked with Rajya Sabha polls," he added. Further slamming the uproar created by the Congress party in the Parliament over IT raids, Yeddyurappa said that the BJP never instigated such unwarranted discussions in the Parliament. "It is very unfortunate that Congress party is protesting against it in the parliament. Such things never happened when the Congress was in power and we were in opposition. Even my house was raided but I kept quiet and cooperated," he added. The IT department earlier today started raiding house of Karnataka Power Minister DK Shivakumar's father -in-law. The IT department on Wednesday had raided Shivakumar's residence and at a private resort in Bengaluru where 44 Congress lawmakers from Gujarat are staying. The Congress on Wednesday created ruckus in both the Houses of Parliament on Wednesday over the IT raids and alleged that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) led Central Government was indulging in political witch-hunt just to defeat Congress candidate Ahmed Patel in Rajya Sabha polls in Gujarat. Due to the ruckus, the Rajya Sabha was adjourned thrice before being adjourned for the day. Raising the matter in Rajya Sabha, Congress leader Anand Sharma had said it is now becoming a trend of the Government to blatantly misuse powers of the state. Another Congress leader Ghulam Nabi Azad said, "Conduct raids on residences of those people from your party (BJP) who are offering Rs 15 crore. Congress alleges that the BJP was offering its Gujarat MLAs Rs 15 crore each to resign from Congress. Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah dubbed IT raids at residence of Shivakumar as 'undemocratic'. Congress has shifted its 44 MLAs from Gujarat to Bengaluru after its six MLAs resigned and joined BJP. However, Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley denied that the income tax raid at residence Shivakumar has any links with Rajya Sabha polls in Gujarat. The IT department also maintained that its raid at Karnataka Energy Minister's residence and resort has nothing to do with the Gujarat's Congress MLAs. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Asia Pacific Institute of Management (AIM), Delhi, is all set to welcome Dr Pawan Agrawal of Mumbai Dabbawalas fame on August 4, 2017. AK Shrivastava, Chairman of AIM, confirmed the visit of Dr Agarwal, who will enlighten the audience with his valuable opinion and views about the customer centric approach towards business and will share his experiences that revolutionized the working of Dabbawalas. "This will surely be a great opportunity for the management graduates as they will get to learn certain management and leadership skills from a top management Guru," said Shrivastava. Dr Agarwal has delivered numerous lectures world-wide talking about the great customer service and delivery system of Mumbai Dabbawalas. His clientele include many Fortune 500 companies and top educational institutes like Ted X, Cadbury, SAP, Volvo, Honda, Dell, IBM, Microsoft, Bosch, IIM, IIT and Cambridge University and so on. He is also a co-founder of various educational institutes & schools across India. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Police arrested three miscreants after a brief exchange of fire at New Delhi's Connaught Place on Wednesday night. The firing reportedly took place between the police and the miscreants at around 11 pm. near the Shivaji Stadium at the Connaught Place. The police also took three miscreants into custody and recovered weapons from their possession. However, no injuries were reported in the firing. New Delhi District Police Commissioner B.K. Singh said that the police had received a tip-off about the miscreants after which they reached the spot. The miscreants opened fire at the police when they saw them at the spot. The police also opened fired in counter-action. The police registered a case against the miscreants and is also interrogating them to ascertain as to why they were carrying the weapons. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The Government of Maharashtra has suspended Maharashtra State Road Development Corporation (MSRDC) Chairman Radheshyam Mopalwar from his post till an investigation of bribery charges filed against him is complete. Yesterday, the opposition in Maharashtra demanded Mopalwar's removal over some audio clips in which he was purportedly heard fixing a deal for a plot. Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis assured both the Maharashtra Assembly that an inquiry would be conducted and if found guilty, action would be taken against Mopalwar. An audio clip allegedly involving Mopalwar, has gone viral over social media since Tuesday. In the video, Mopalwar was trying to fix a deal of Rs 4 crore for a plot in Mumbai suburb for a slum redevelopment project. Moving an adjournment motion in the Legislative Council, Leader of Opposition Dhananjay Munde read out the transcripts of the purported conversation of Mopalwar with a businessman, allegedly pertaining to a deal for a plot in suburban Borivali. Munde then demanded that if Mopalwar cannot be suspended, he should at least be transferred from the Samruddhi corridor project or else the chief minister will lose peoples' faith. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The Myanmar Government has rejected to establish a trading zone in Tamu, which is on the Myanmar-India border, due to the insufficient basic requirements and the poor potential of trading. A high ranking commerce official told this in the House of Representatives (Lower House) in Nay Pyi Taw, Myanmar News Agency reported on Thursday. When asked by parliamentarians if there is a plan for the move, Deputy Commerce Minister U Aung Htoo replied that Tamu trading point has been opened since 1995 but the trading value has been only 45 million US dollars, accounting for only 0.6 percent of the total trade volume of all border trading points. "To implement successfully the Tamu Trade Zone, the Kalewa-Kyigone-Tamu Road on the Myanmar side needs to be upgraded, and there is no peace and tranquility in Moreh of Manipur State of India which borders the Tamu District of Myanmar. Therefore, the Sagaing Region government sent their opinion that the trade zone should be established only when the area becomes peaceful and better in security" said U Aung Htoo. For the purpose of promoting trade between the two countries, a series of joint committee meetings related to bilateral trade, border trade and border-market were then held. High-ranking officials from both the sides also had extensive discussions on opening trade zone in Htantalan in Myanmar's western Chin state and a new trade zone in Pan Khwar, Mizoram State in India, the Global Times quoted. According to official statistics, Myanmar-India bilateral trade amounted to 1.743 billion US dollars in the last fiscal year 2016-17 as of February with Myanmar's export to India taking 865.948 million dollars and its import from the neighbor representing 877.052 million dollars. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Afghanistan's President Ashraf Ghani on Thursday said that no mercy will be shown by his government on those who will commit acts of terrorism. Expressing his condolences to the families of last week's Taliban attack in Kabul on a bus carrying employees of the ministry of mines and petroleum, Ghani said that the government was investigating the incident and would soon identify those who planned the attack. "It should be clear to everyone that we will not surrender to those who believe only in killing and bloodshed." Tolo News quoted Ghani as saying. He also asked authorities to do what they can to address the problems of the victims' families. "The message of the ministry of mines and petroleum to the families of the martyrs is that we will remain alongside the families and will do all we can as we carry out all efforts to treat the wounded employees," said acting minister of mines and petroleum Nargis Nehan. At least 36 people were killed and 42 others wounded last week after a car bomb struck a bus carrying employees from Afghanistan's ministry of mines and petroleum in western Kabul. The blast occurred after a suicide attacker detonated a car bomb in Kabul's Gulaee Dawa Khana near the house of Mohammad Mohaqiq, the second deputy of Afghanistan Chief Executive Abdullah Abdullah. According to reports, three vehicles and 15 shops were also damaged in the attack. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The Supreme Court on Thursday refused to stay use of None of the Above (NOTA) option in the upcoming Gujarat Rajya Sabha polls to be held on August 8. The apex court also pulled up the Gujarat Congress, which filed plea seeking stay on NOTA, for raising question over the use of NOTA option and said as to why it is raising the issue so late when the Election Commission had issued the notification in January 2014. "Why are you so late in raising the question as Election Commission had issued notification in January 2014? the apex court asked the Congress. The Congress Party had on Wednesday moved the apex court against the Election Commission challenging the introduction of NOTA option in the forthcoming Rajya Sabha elections in Gujarat. The Congress Party has been protesting since the Election Commission notified that NOTA option will be available for the first time in upcoming Rajya Sabha elections in Gujarat. The elections of the Upper House do not take place by secret ballot as the voter has to show the marked ballot to the party's polling agent before putting it in the ballot box. Despite its six Gujarat MLAs joining the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), Congress is leaving no stone unturned to secure the Rajya Sabha berth for its leader Ahmed Patel. It has also decided to issue a whip to all the Congress MLAs, including Shankersinh Vaghela, who resigned last month to ensure that Ahmed Patel is voted back into the Rajya Sabha. The BJP has fielded party president Amit Shah, Union Minister Smriti Irani and Balwantsinh Rajput for the Rajya Sabha elections scheduled to be held on August 8. Meanwhile, the Election Commission (EC) has released a list of Rajya Sabha polls and bypolls that it has held with NOTA option since November 2014. The Supreme Court in its judgement on September 27, 2014 directed that the option of NOTA shall be provided on the ballot papers or Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs). The instructions were issued by the EC in October 2013 of providing NOTA as an option on the ballot after the name of the last candidate, whereas in January 2014 EC issued directions that the option of NATO shall be applicable in the elections to the Rajya Sabha. From January, 2014, biennial elections to Rajya Sabha covering all States and 25 bye-elections to Rajya Sabha have been held. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) A leading daily of Pakistan has, in an opinion piece, criticized the over USD 50 billion dollar China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), describing it as a "one-way street" venture that is more about expanding China's growth rather than benefitting Pakistan According to the Dawn which spoke with several Pakistani businessmen living in the border areas of Pakistan and China, before arriving at its definitive conclusion, frequent talk of the CPEC being a blossoming partnership, nourished with tens of billions of dollars of infrastructure investment is anything but that. A majority of Pakistani businessmen living and working on the Chinese side of the border; rubbished Beijing's claim of the CPEC enhancing its friendship with Pakistan once completed. One businessman, Murad Shah, who has a precious stones shop in Tashkurgan, 120 kilometers from the mountain pass that links up with the 1300-kilometer-long China-Pakistan Friendship Highway that leaders to the western Chinese city of Kashgar, told the Dawn, "There is no benefit for Pakistan. It's all about expanding China's growth." The remote town of Tashkurgan with a population of around 9,000 is at the geographic heart of Beijing's plans to connect Kashgar to Gwadar Port through the CPEC. The CPEC is being promoted as the crown jewel of China's One Belt, One Road (OBOR) initiative, a massive global infrastructure programme to revive the ancient Silk Road and connect Chinese companies to new markets around the . While both countries say the project is mutually beneficial, data reveals a different story. According to the Dawn, Pakistan's exports to China fell by almost eight percent in the second half of 2016, while imports jumped by almost 29 per cent. In May this year, Pakistan accused China of flooding its market with cut rate steel and threatened to respond with high tariffs. The daily quotes "There are all of these hopes and dreams about Pakistan exports," said Jonathan Hillman, a Fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, as saying, "But if you're connecting with China, what are you going to be exporting?" According to the daily, only small consumer goods such as medicines, toiletries, semi-precious stones, rugs and handicrafts would be traded and brought into Xinjiang. Pakistani businessmen in Xinjiang see few benefits from CPEC, complaining of intrusive security and capricious customs arrangements. On trader was said taxes on goods could vary from five percent to 20 percent in times to come. The Dawn quoted Lahore University of Management Sciences political economy professor Hasan Karrar, as saying that "independent Pakistani traders have benefited little from CPEC." Alessandro Ripa, an expert on Chinese infrastructure projects at Ludwig Maximilian University Munich, said the highway "is not very relevant to overall trade" because "the sea route is just cheaper and faster". "The project is a tool for China to promote its geopolitical interests and help struggling state-owned companies export excess production, he adds. The CPEC, it seems, is also being used to introduce unwarranted and oppressive security-related restrictions, such as walking through to through metal detectors at check points, showing of identification cards, frequent checking of mobile phones and computers for "illegal" religious content etc. Security drills take place four times a day in Xijiang and stores are closed for several days if shopkeepers refuse to participate. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Yoga Guru Baba Ramdev's Ayurvedic flagship, Patanjali Ayurved Ltd., is going to storm social media with its aggressive digital marketing campaign. Patanjali has announced it would collaborate with social media and tech giants, Facebook and Google, to give thrust to its digital marketing campaign. In a first for the company, Patanjali is looking to reap the benefits of advertising using digital media, in comparison to print and other channels of media. The company has strengthened its online presence in India, through its aggressive campaigning and promotional activities on Facebook and YouTube. The campaign, which was flagged off in February, garnered positive response, with Google searches registering an eleven-fold growth in four years, and an increase in YouTube viewership from 30 lakh to 15 crore. Patanjali was also well received on Facebook, with over 80 percent response registered from the youth concentrated in Karnataka, Orissa and Punjab, which was possible due to the promotional campaigns and live interactions held by the company. In a move to appeal to the southern states, Patanjali, aong with Google and Facebook localized its advertising campaign by introducing narratives in the local languages for Andhra Pradesh, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Telangana. Patanjali is also campaigning online for a boycott of foreign products, in lieu of the "Go Swadeshi" movement initiated by Baba Ramdev. With Independence Day round the corner, the Yoga Guru has formulated several campaigns to persuade the boycott of foreign goods, and resort to local produce, which will also be circulated with the help of active advertising on social media. (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 the wake of the recent nuclear provocations by the North Korean regime, Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte has described North Korean leader Kim Jong-un as a "fool", just days before Manila hosts an international meeting most certain to address Pyongyang's long-range missile tests. "This Kim Jong-un, a fool ... he is playing with dangerous toys, that fool," Duterte told tax officials in a speech, the South China Morning Post reports. "That chubby face that looks kind. That son of a bitch. If he commits a mistake, the Far East will become an arid land. It must be stopped, this nuclear war. "A limited confrontation and it blows up here, I will tell you, the fallout can deplete the soil, the resources and I don't know what will happen to us." This year, Duterte is chairman of the Association of South East Asian Nations (Asean). His foreign ministry will on the coming Monday host the Asean Regional Forum, which brings together 27 countries that include China, Australia, India, Japan, Russia, North and South Korea and the United States. Meanwhile, U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, who is due to attend the Manila meeting, has said he wanted dialogue with North Korea at some point, stressing it was not the enemy and the United States did not seek to topple the regime. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj on Thursday said that Prime Minister Narendra Modi has consistently flagged India's concerns over the detention of fishermen with the Government of Sri Lanka. "The fishermen matter was raised in each meeting of the Prime Minister Modi with Sri Lankan President and Prime Minister. Same has resulted in the release of 42 boats and 251 fishermen," Swaraj told members of the Rajya Sabha today. Communist Party of India leader and Rajya Sabha member of Tamil Nadu D. Raja questioned Swaraj as to what measures the government is taking to release Indian fishermen arrested by the Sri Lankan Navy. He also asked the number of fishermen arrested by the Sri Lankan Navy. "Whether it is fact that Sri Lankan Navy continues to arrest Indian fishermen and they have lately arrested fishermen from Mandapam and confiscated their two trawlers on charges of engaging in bottom trawling. What is the number of fishermen and trawlers in their custody and what measures are being taken to get them released," he asked Swaraj. Last month, at least seven Indian fishermen were reportedly arrested by the Sri Lanka Navy for trespassing Sri Lankan waters. The fishermen from Mandapam near Rameswaram were fishing at Neduntheevu Island in the Palk Straits, close to the island nation's coast. Two Fast Attack Craft belonging to the Northern Naval Command arrested seven Indian fishermen along with two fishing trawlers for crossing the International Maritime Boundary Line (IMBL) and engaged in bottom trawling in Sri Lankan territorial waters about 12.5 Nm and 9.5 Nm off Northwest of Delft Island on July, 12, Columbo page quoted the navy website. Sri Lanka recently passed a bill that allows the authorities to imprison bottom-trawling fishermen for two years and fine of Rs. 50,000. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Prime Minister Narendra Modi has written an emotional farewell letter to former President Pranab Mukherjee and said that he would always cherish the memory of working with him between 2014 and 2017. The Prime Minister shared the letter on his Twitter handle with a caption, 'Pranab Da, I will always cherish working with you.' "As you begin a new phase of your distinguished journey, I cannot but express my profound sense of admiration and gratitude for your immense contribution to the nation, particularly as President of India over the last five years. You have inspired us with your simplicity, high principles and exemplary leadership," the Prime Minister said in the letter. In the letter, Prime Minister Modi thanked Pranab Mukherjee for being a "father figure" and a "mentor". "Three years ago, I came to New Delhi as an outsider. The task before me was huge and challenging. In these times, you have always been a father figure and a mentor to me. Your wisdom, guidance and personal warmth have given me greater confidence and strength," he wrote. On my last day in office as the President, I received a letter from PM @narendramodi that touched my heart! Sharing with you all. pic.twitter.com/cAuFnWkbYn Pranab Mukherjee (@CitiznMukherjee) August 3, 2017 The Prime Minister further said that despite supporting different political parties and at times having different ideologies they worked together with synergy because of Pranab Mukherjee's 'intellect and wisdom'. "During your political journey and your presidency, you placed the well-being of the nation over everything else..You belong to a generation of leaders for whom politics was simply a means to selflessly give back to society. You stand as a great source of inspiration for the people of India," the letter added. Hailing Mukherjee as a humble public servant and an exceptional leader, Prime Minister Modi said the former would continue to guide the country with his democratic vision. "Your legacy will continue to guide us. We will continue to draw strength from your democratic vision of taking everyone along, which you have developed over a long and illustrious public life," the Prime Minister said in the letter. Mukherjee, who had demitted the office as President of India on July 25, also shared the letter on Twitter and said it "touched my heart". (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.) Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaaf leadership has raised objection to Pakistan Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi consulting ousted prime minister Nawz Sharif on the formation of a new federal cabinet. Former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif presided over a meeting of the Pakistan Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi and PML-N leaders held at his residence in Muree and consulted with them about the formation of new federal cabinet. "How can Nawaz Sharif chair party meetings after he was disqualified even from his party office under the Supreme Court verdict?" the Dawn quoted PTI spokesman Naeemul Haq, as saying. Abbasi served as petroleum minister in Sharif's previous cabinet, which stepped down after he was removed. According to the PTI spokesman, the party also expressed concern over what it described as a 'delay' by the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) in pursuing cases against the Sharifs. A legal team of the party gave a detailed briefing to PTI chairman Imran Khan. Another PTI leader Abdul Aleem Khan said the Sharif family had a history of deceiving the nation and for this reason Nawaz Sharif had been thrown out from the Prime Minister's House. He said Punjab Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif would also be deposed soon from public office like his brother, adding that arrangements were being made in Kot Lakhpat jail to welcome the whole Sharif family. The party also condemned the remarks of Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi about the superior judiciary in his first address to parliament. PTI spokesman Fawad Chaudhry slammed Abbasi for threatening and intimidating the judiciary and other state institutions and termed it extremely dangerous. He said that it was shameful to say that people had rejected the verdict of the apex court standing on the floor of the house. "Exhibition of posters of the disqualified prime minister Sharif on the dais of Abbasi is a disgrace to parliament," he added. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Data analytics deployer Qlik on Thursday announced the expansion of the Qlik Academic Program, which will now cover 50 education institutions across 25 cities in India. The initiative will enable more universities to improve the value of their offerings by teaching marketable data skills, and also help students advance their analytical and data literacy skills within every academic discipline. Offering free, full-year subscriptions to Qlik software, the Qlik Academic Program is open to any accredited university-level institution worldwide, for-profit and non-profit colleges alike. The program provides access to the Qlik Data Analytics Curriculum, which is designed as an easily adoptable university-level program that provides professors with ready-to-teach, free resources - including instructor-led content, in-class activities and student assignments. Students and professors can now also take advantage of the Qlik Continuous Classroom, a distance-learning platform with over 125 hours of online learning content. The Qlik Academic Program will be made available to students enrolled in renowned higher education institutions like IIM Bangalore, IIM Lucknow, IIM Indore, SP Jain School of Global Management, NIT Karnataka, NMIMS Mumbai, SCMHRD, Xavier Institute of Management Bhubaneshwar, IIFT, and IMT Ghaziabad, amongst others. Post the expansion, over 850 universities in more than 65 countries are now participants of the program. "Qlik is an easy to learn and modern tool for Data Analytics used by our students as an additional technology edge to enhance their career prospects. We found that it helped our students to get recruited quicker as a fresher compared to those without these skills. The online materials and timely guidelines given by the Qlik team is simple to roll out and very useful," said Dr Siddhartha Ghosh, Professor-Department of Computer Science and Engineering and Head-Placements, VJIT, Hyderabad. "Students preparing for careers in today's global data-driven environments need to raise the bar to succeed. They need exceptionally strong analytical and data literacy skills, along with the tools and know-how to keep pace with rapid change. To meet this growing demand, the Qlik Academic Program has expanded to give students the skills and tools they need to succeed - while ensuring that professors are empowered with the best course materials on the most modern data analytics platform," added Kevin Hanegan, Vice President of Knowledge and Learning, Qlik. With the recently added access to Qlik Continuous Classroom and Qlik Community, students and professors are empowered to find new ways to visualize and analyse data, and to share insights and findings through an interactive, collaborative team environment. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Veteran actor Rishi Kapoor is really looking forward to his next film 'Mulk' as he is really excited to visit to shoot in Benaras and Lucknow as he has heard "such great stories" about the cities. Rishi, who will be visiting Benaras and Lucknow for filmmaker Anubhav Sinha's film 'Mulk' soon, said in an interview, "I have not done drama in a long time and when Anubhav narrated the film to me, I loved the concept of the film. Shooting in Benaras and Lucknow will be an added bonus since I have heard such great stories about the cities." The film includes interesting ensemble of actors including Rishi Kapoor, Rajat Kapur, Prateik Babbar and Taapsee Pannu, a starcast that will be working with the 'Tum Bin' and Ra One director for the very first time While talking about the story of the movie, Rajat Kapur reiterated, "I haven't come across a script in over 2 years that has creatively excited me after Kapoor and Sons. When I met Anubhav for the first time I was quite impressed with storytelling skills of Mulk and in fact I told him that this is will be a brand new challenge as this film is something he has never attempted in the past. It is a very unusual thriller that will make audiences sit up in their seats and take note." Taapsee is looking forward to being a part of the film where she will get to play a "gritty character". "I'm confident of this film to find place in the audience's heart as the content is very relevant. The best part of doing a social thriller is you get a chance to present a story that's been happening around all of us but no one really bothers to address it," noted the 'Naam Shabana' actress. The plot of the film revolves around the story of a joint family who hails from a small town in India, who are out to reclaim their honour after being embroiled in a controversy. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) It seems like director Ron Howard is having the time of his life on the sets of 'Han Solo'. Howard took to Instagram and shared two new photos from the set of the young Han Solo movie, teasing a behind-the-scenes look at an orange-and-white astromech droid. He captioned one of the snap as, "These droids can be so damn intractable. But we'll go until we get it right!" Howard took over as the director of the upcoming Star Wars spin-off film in June after previous directors Phil Lord and Chris Miller left the project over "creative differences," and ever since, he's been sharing cryptic photos from the set. The still-untitled Han Solo movie stars Alden Ehrenreich as the space smuggler, with Donald Glover as Calrissian, Joonas Suotamo as Chewbacca, and Woody Harrelson as an unknown mentor figure. The flick is slated to hit the theatres on May 25, 2018. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The Supreme Court on Thursday will hear the plea filed by the Congress against the Election Commission of India (ECI) challenging the introduction of 'None of the Above' (NOTA) option in the forthcoming Rajya Sabha elections in Gujarat. The Congress Party moved the apex court against the decision of the poll body on Wednesday. The Congress Party has been protesting since the Election Commission notified that NOTA option will be available for the first time in upcoming Rajya Sabha elections in Gujarat. The elections of the Upper House do not take place by secret ballot as the voter has to show the marked ballot to the party's polling agent before putting it in the ballot box. The BJP also met the Election Commission over the removal of NOTA or 'None of the Above' options for voters in the Rajya Sabha elections. Despite its six Gujarat MLAs joining the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), Congress is leaving no stone unturned to secure the Rajya Sabha berth for its leader Ahmed Patel. It has also decided to issue a whip to all the Congress MLAs, including Shankersinh Vaghela, who resigned last month to ensure that Ahmed Patel is voted back into the Rajya Sabha. The BJP has fielded party president Amit Shah, Union Minister Smriti Irani and Balwantsinh Rajput for the Rajya Sabha elections scheduled to be held on August 8. Meanwhile, the Election Commission (EC) has released a list of Rajya Sabha polls and bypolls that it has held with NOTA option since November 2014. The Supreme Court in its judgement on September 27, 2014 directed that the option of 'None of the Above' (NOTA) shall be provided on the ballot papers or Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs). The instructions were issued by the EC in October 2013 of providing NOTA as an option on the ballot after the name of the last candidate, whereas in January 2014 EC issued directions that the option of NATO shall be applicable in the elections to the Rajya Sabha. From January, 2014, biennial elections to Rajya Sabha covering all States and 25 bye-elections to Rajya Sabha have been held. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The security forces, on Thursday, started cordon and search operations in Kanelwan area of Bijbehara, in Anantnag district. More details are awaited. Earlier on Tuesday, Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) chief commander Abu Dujana of Pakistan along with his accomplice were killed in an encounter with the security forces at Hakripora village in Jammu and Kashmir's Pulwawa district. Dujana was one of the most wanted terrorists and carried over Rs 15 lakh bounty on his head. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Separatist leader and Democratic Freedom Party (DFP) chairman Shabir Shah on Thursday filed an application in a Delhi court, alleging inhuman behaviour and threat to life. Shah, who was produced before the Patiala House Court, also said he was forced to sign the statements and few blank documents. He also alleged all of the things hatched against him due to political vendetta, to which the Enforcement Directorate (ED) counsel responded by saying, "People like Shah are ruining the country". The ED lawyer further said, "Can Shah say 'Bharat Mata ki Jai'?" Following this, the court intervened and asked both not to convert the court into a TV studio. The ED has also submitted an application before the court for further remand of Shah in connection with the terror funding case. In its remand application, the ED submitted before the court that Shah is in continuous contact with anti- elements/terrorists residing in Pakistan in garb of the Kashmir issue. Contacts from his mobile phone revealed that he is in regular touch with Pakistan, Dubai and England and that the same needs to be examined. On July 26, Shah was produced in the court, following which he was sent to a seven-day ED custody. On July 25, Shah was arrested from his residence, where he was under house detention for a very long time, in Jammu and Kashmir's Srinagar. The Investigation Agency (NIA) has been tough on Separatists regarding the alleged funding by Pakistan for illegal activities in Kashmir. On July 24, the NIA arrested seven separatists over money laundering charges, for funding terror in the Kashmir Valley. All seven separatist leaders - Altaf Shah, Ayaz Akbar, Peer Saifullah, Mehraj Kalwal, Shahid-ul-Islam, Naeem Khan and Bitta Karate - were later sent to 10-day NIA custody. The accused have been charged under various sections of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) and the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act. The NIA visited Srinagar in May to probe the alleged funding by Pakistan for illegal activities in Kashmir, and questioned several separatist leaders on the issue of raising, collecting and transferring funds via the Hawala route and other channels to fund terror activities in Kashmir. The NIA sleuths specifically questioned separatist leaders Farooq Ahmed Dar alias Bitta Karate and Gazi Javed Baba at that time. The NIA is said to be probing all aspects of funding to separatist leaders and how they reportedly used these funds to fuel unrest in the Kashmir Valley. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Punjab chief minister Shahbaz Sharif may not be contesting for the National Assembly constituency, NA-120 by poll in Lahore as former prime minister Nawaz Sharif is set to hold a high level meeting of PML-N leaders to review his decision of elevating Shehbaz to the Centre. An intense debate is going on over the Punjab chief minister's elevation to the Centre. "Some party leaders think Punjab is very important for the PML-N and Shahbaz Sharif should continue serving here, while others want to see him as premier. However, the party leadership will have to hold another parliamentary party meeting if it thinks it needs to revisit its earlier decision of endorsing Shahbaz for prime minister," Punjab government's spokesperson Malik Ahmad told Dawn. "As of now, there is no change in Shahbaz's candidature for the prime minister slot," a PML-N senior leader told Dawn on Wednesday. Meanwhile, many in the Nawaz camp suggested that new Pakistan Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi must retain the position for the remaining term of the PML-N government i.e. till 2018 elections. Immediately after the prime minister's ouster, the PML-N parliamentary party had endorsed his nomination as the next prime minister for 10 months till the next election. Subsequently, CM Sharif had reportedly pitched his son, MNA Hamza Shahbaz, as his possible replacement in Punjab.But Nawaz Sharif is not willing to allow Hamza rule Punjab while his father Shehbaz at the centre. "To be or not to be - that is the situation CM Sharif is facing these days. Statements of close aides, like provincial Law Minister Rana Sanaullah, that he should not leave the office of chief minister, are being construed by many in the PML-N as if the decision to elevate him to the Centre is not yet final," "Some tricky business is under way. We do not know what has happened after Nawaz Sharif nominated his brother for the PM slot. As of today, we are being told that Punjab is very important to the PML-N and it needs Shahbaz desperately...to continue his vigorous policies...the final decision of his elevation to the Centre will be taken in a few days," the party leader adds. There are also reports that Nawaz Sharif's refusal to nominate his nephew Hamza as the chief minister of Punjab has annoyed his brother, who might choose not to give up the post in the province because of it. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Five-time Grand Slam champion Maria Sharapova has withdrawn from the Stanford Classic ahead of her second round match due to soreness in her left arm. "Unfortunately, I have to withdraw from today's match," Sharapova said in a statement. "Toward the end of Monday night's match, I felt pain in my left forearm. After yesterday's scan, the doctor has recommended I don't risk further injury. Monday night's crowd was so special and I wish I could continue playing, but I have to make a preventative decision," she added. She was competing as a wildcard in her fourth tournament after a 15-month doping ban. The Russian player was scheduled to lock horns with Ukraine's seventh seed Lesia Tsurenko for a place in the semi-finals. Her early exit means Tsurenko advances to the third round by walkover. Sharapova made her return to the WTA after eight weeks away with a leg injury on Monday in Stanford, where she defeated Jennifer Brady, 6-1, 4-6, 6-0. "This is definitely tough for Maria," said Bank of the West Classic tournament director Vickie Gunnarsson. "She has so many fans which was evident by the support she received here on Monday night. We wish her a speedy recovery and hope to see her back on the court soon." The 30-year-old Russian, banned after testing positive for heart drug meldonium at the 2016 Australian Open, has had mixed results since re-joining the WTA Tour. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Luis Fonsi and Daddy Yankee's 'Despacito Remix,' featuring Justin Bieber has created history! With over 4.6 Billion streams worldwide, the song is now the most streamed song ever! To celebrate the song's huge success in India, where it's by far the biggest hit of 2017, Universal Music Group, along with ace choreographer Shiamak Davar, launched the '#DespacitoMovement' campaign last month. The digital led contest, in association with VH1 India, was a massive success with entries pouring in from across the country, all sending in their renditions of choreography to the beats of the hit song. One lucky winner was selected by Shiamak, who was presented with the life-time opportunity to feature in the 'India dance video' choreographed by the dance guru himself. The exclusive dance video was shot at different locales and streets of Mumbai. Shiamak is on top of his game as he choreographs beautiful Sari clad dancers, showcasing some incredible Indian dance moves. The video is a fusion of contemporary Indian and Western dance form and is a visual treat. Incidentally India is the only territory in the world to have launched this '#DespacitoMovement' campaign. Speaking on the video, Latino superstar Luis Fonsi commented, "Hello India! I'm in love with your Despacito Dance Video. You've taken Despacito to the next level. Thank you so much and I can't wait to see you guys!" Ace choreographer Shiamak Davar said, "Despacito is the biggest hit song this year internationally. So when Universal Music approached me to Direct and Choreograph the India video, I was very excited. They wanted a flavor of India with a global appeal. My Dance Company and I had a great time working on this video and we can't wait for people to watch it!" Devraj Sanyal, MD and CEO, Universal Music India and South Asia quoted saying, "It's been an incredible run with 'Despacito,' which is now by far the biggest International hit this year in India. Having said that, our objective was to get it cross-over into mainstream.thus this India dance video, which I believe is a marketing masterstroke. And who better than my old friend Shiamak to work this with....he's the original Dance Guru and what he's created with the video is sheer magic by capturing the true Indian essence in a gigantic Spanish song. We are confident that this will take 'Despacito' to a whole new audience in India while at the same time showcase the beauty and grace of Indian dancers to a massive global audience out there!" Apart from the 4.6 Billion audio stream record, the music video in its original form has been the fastest song ever in YouTube/VEVO history to cross the two billion mark in views. The 'Despacito Remix' currently spends its 11th consecutive week at the #1 spot on the Billboard Hot 100. In India, the song has been at #1 on Apple Music for consecutive 13 Weeks and #1 on Shazam India's Top 100 Songs for 11 consecutive weeks. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) After Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) leader Tejashwi Yadav charged Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar with including "tainted" people in his cabinet, Minister of State for Rural Development Ram Kripal Yadav on Thursday said that the former needed to introspect on his activities first before pointing fingers at others. Speaking to ANI, Yadav said, "If someone claims it, doesn't make it the truth. People should look at themselves before pointing figures at others. It is all baseless." Former deputy chief minister Tejashwi Yadav on Wednesday asked Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar if he would ask Prime Minister Narendra Modi to conduct a probe against those who have been named in Panama Papers leak case. Speaking at a press conference here, Tejashwi said, "The people of Bihar demand an answer to all the questions that Nitish Kumar and Sushil Modi have accused us of. Also would Nitish ask Prime Minister Narendra Modi to conduct a probe against people who have been named in Panama Papers leak case? That day will never come..as all accused are together". Further lashing out at Nitish, Tejashwi said that Chief Minister's arrogance will destroy the present government very soon. "Nitish's arrogance will destroy the present government very soon and he will also fail in completing his tenure. If Nitish didn't want to work with us then why did he wait so long? And why he has ruined four years of Bihar?" He alleged that 75 percent of the ministers in government are tainted, but the Chief Minister has kept mum on the issue. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Minister for External Affairs Sushma Swaraj on Thursday asserted that Prime Minister Narendra Modi was a "good" friend to Pakistan until they dubbed the most wanted regional commander of the Hizb-ul-Mujahideen, Burhan Wani as a "martyr." While speaking in Parliament, Swaraj said, "Prime Minister Modi had been such a good friend to Pakistan that he didn't even think about protocol. He stopped off in Pakistan on his way back, just because it was Nawaz Sharif's birthday. Things didn't even worsen after Pathankot attack. That happened only after Burhan Wani was killed, and Pakistan said he was 'martyred." Reiterating her take on government's road map to improve relation with Pakistan, Swaraj further noted that "terror and talks can't go together." Speaking on the issue of boycott of China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), Swaraj said Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK) is an integral part of India. "We boycotted CPEC because it was going through PoK. PoK is an integral part of India. It is a matter of India's sovereignty," she said. Earlier, then Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif paid tribute to Wani, saying his death "infused a new spirit in the struggle for freedom" in the Valley. Sharif reiterated that Pakistan remains shoulder to shoulder with their Kashmiri brethren and will continue their political, diplomatic and moral support in their right to self-determination. Pakistan Army Chief General Qamar Javed Bajwa had also praised Burhan Wani, saying, "Sacrifices of Burhan Wani and generations against Indian atrocities are a testimony of their resolve." Last year, India had criticised Sharif calling Wani a 'martyr'and said Islambad's terror support and sponsorship needs to be condemned by all. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Separatist leader and Democratic Freedom Party (DFP) chairman Shabir Shah will be produced before the Patiala House Court here today. Shah's Enforcement Directorate (ED) remand was extended for a day on August 2, in connection with a terror funding case. On July 26, Shah was produced in the Patiala House Court, following which he was sent to a seven-day ED custody. On July 25, Shah was arrested from his residence, where he was under house detention for a very long time, in Jammu and Kashmir's Srinagar. The Investigation Agency (NIA) has been tough on Separatists regarding the alleged funding by Pakistan for illegal activities in Kashmir. On July 24, the NIA arrested seven separatists over money laundering charges, for funding terror in the Kashmir Valley. All seven separatist leaders - Altaf Shah, Ayaz Akbar, Peer Saifullah, Mehraj Kalwal, Shahid-ul-Islam, Naeem Khan and Bitta Karate - were later sent to 10-day NIA custody. The accused have been charged under various sections of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) and the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act. The NIA visited Srinagar in May to probe the alleged funding by Pakistan for illegal activities in Kashmir, and questioned several separatist leaders on the issue of raising, collecting and transferring funds via the Hawala route and other channels to fund terror activities in Kashmir. The NIA sleuths specifically questioned separatist leaders Farooq Ahmed Dar alias Bitta Karate and Gazi Javed Baba at that time. The NIA is said to be probing all aspects of funding to separatist leaders and how they reportedly used these funds to fuel unrest in the Kashmir Valley. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Senior Superintendent of Police Kulgam on Thursday said that two terrorist which were gunned down last night in Kulgam District of Jammu and Kashmir belonged to Hizbul Mujahideen (HM) and had multiple cases registered against them. SSP Sridhar Patil said that the security forces got a tip off in connection with the presence of HM militants in the district following which they carried out the operation. Patil further said that the encounter lasted for half an hour where the two militants namely Akib Itu and Sohail Rather were killed. Both the militants were residents of Kulgam district. The security officials also recovered one AK 47 rifle, magazines, ammunition and one INSAS rifle which belonged to a guard from Budgam. "We got information about presence of militants of Hizbul Mujahideen outfit. During the encounter the terrorists tried to escape and fired upon our party. It lasted for half an hour in which we eliminated two terrorists of Hizbul Mujahideen outfit, their names are Akib Itu and Sohail Rather, both residents of district Kulgam," said Patil. "We have recovered one AK 47 rifle with magazine and ammunition and one INSAS rifle. The duo was involved in many cases." The investigation in the matter is underway. Two militants were killed in a brief gunfight with the security forces in South Kashmir's Kulgam district last last night. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The Bharatiya Jananta Party (BJP) on Thursday asserted that all the countries across the globe are with India because our Indian policy is based on righteousness. Speaking to ANI here, BJP leader Sudesh Verma said, "Indian diplomacy has been successful in the sense that all the countries across the globe are with India because Indian policy is based on righteousness." Verma also said that the time for India in the global order has arrived. Reiterating Sushma Swaraj's take on the issue of boycott of China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), the BJP leader said, "Kashmir is an integral part of India inclusive of Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK)". Hailing Swaraj's statements in Rajya Sabha, Minister of State for External Affairs M J Akbar said the former's speech speaks for itself. Earlier in the day, Swaraj lauded Prime Minister Narendra Modi on successful bilateral relation with countries across the world saying that the latter has the guts to challenge US President Donald Trump. "Narendra Modi has earned respect for the country. He has brought glory to India. Despite Trump's allegations on India taking bribe, Prime Minister Modi has the guts to stand against Trump and the US. The world sees India differently now. We have improved ties with our neighbours," Swaraj said while speaking in Rajya Sabha. Speaking on the issue of boycott of China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), she said Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK) is an integral part of India. "We boycotted CPEC because it was going through PoK. PoK is an integral part of India. It is a matter of India's sovereignty," Swaraj said. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) A top aide to United States President Donald Trump got into a heated exchange with a CNN reporter, while the former was addressing a press briefing and apprising the media about a Republican proposal to limit legal immigration. The journalist accused the White House of promoting a racist immigration policy because it requires migrants to speak English to be "able to work in the U.S." to which the White House aide responded by calling upon him for his "cosmopolitan bias." It all started when CNN reporter Jim Acosta asked presidential aide Stephen Miller if "the immigration proposal violated the principles engraved on the Statue of Liberty to 'give me your tired, your poor' huddled masses seeking freedom." When Miller said the poem was "added later" to the statue, Acosta retorted, "that sounds like some sort of National Park revisionism." Acosta, who said his father immigrated from Cuba before the Cuban Missile Crisis, questioned whether the White House's policy is in keeping with American tradition. "You are sort of bringing a 'press 1 for English' philosophy here to immigration and that's never been what the United States has been about," Acosta said. Acosta then asked if the requirement for immigrants to speak English was designed to "engineer racial and ethnic" immigration policy so that only people from Great Britain and Australia are allowed into the U.S. Miller replied, "I am shocked at your statement that you think only people from Great Britain and Australia would know English. It reveals your cosmopolitan bias to a shocking degree. This is an amazing moment. That you think only people from Great Britain or Australia would speak English is so insulting to millions of hard-working immigrants who do speak English from all over the world." Miller called the reporter's comments "outrageous, insulting, ignorant and foolish." The White House aide later apologised to Acosta before leaving the lectern, saying "things got heated", but added that the CNN anchor "made some pretty rough insinuations." Earlier in the briefing, Miller sparred with a reporter from The New York Times, Glenn Thrush, over the same legislation. Thrush asked Miller to cite "specific numbers that prove the correlation between those two things because your entire policy is based on that." Miller ticked through several studies, adding that they were also supported by "common sense." Thrush responded by saying, "I'm not asking for common sense. I'm asking for specific statistical data." "I think it's pretty clear, Glenn, that you're not asking for common sense," Miller shot back. At one point Miller suggested The New York Times could hire "less-skilled, low-paid workers from other countries" if the media outlet disagrees with the administration's new immigration policy. "See how you feel about it then," he said. Earlier in the day, Trump threw his support behind the legislation that looks to curb the level of legal immigration into the country by proposing a skills-based immigration system. Trump cast the proposal as a way to dramatically remake the current immigration system and to protect American workers by reducing unskilled immigration. The new system aims at creating a merit-based system that grades possible immigrants based on their "ability to work" in the United States. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) United States President Donald Trump has said that his country's relationship with Russia is at all time "dangerous low." "Our relationship with Russia is at an all-time & very dangerous low. You can thank Congress, the same people that can't even give us HCare!," Trump tweeted. Our relationship with Russia is at an all-time & very dangerous low. You can thank Congress, the same people that can't even give us HCare! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 3, 2017 Trump's remark comes a day after he signed a bill overwhelmingly approved by the Congress that imposes new sanctions on Russia. Trump also boasted his administration saying that business is looking better than ever with business enthusiasm at record levels and added that he will continue to get rid of costly and unnecessary regulations. "Business is looking better than ever with business enthusiasm at record levels. Stock Market at an all-time high. That doesn't just happen! I am continuing to get rid of costly and unnecessary regulations. Much work left to do but effect will be great! Business & jobs will grow," Trump said in a series of tweets. Business is looking better than ever with business enthusiasm at record levels. Stock Market at an all-time high. That doesn't just happen! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 3, 2017 I am continuing to get rid of costly and unnecessary regulations. Much work left to do but effect will be great! Business & jobs will grow. Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 3, 2017 The sanctions bill targets Russia's mining and oil industry and aims to punish the country for interfering in the 2016 presidential election as well for its military aggression in Ukraine. U.S. lawmakers on Thursday passed a legislation imposing new sanctions on Russia, Iran and North Korea and that will now head to the President Donald Trump's desk for his signature. The bill was approved overwhelmingly by the Senators 98-2 and that gives Congress new powers to block Trump from easing sanctions. It passed the House on Tuesday 419-3. This is one of the first major bipartisan pieces of legislation passed during Trump's presidency. "Since this bill was first introduced, I have expressed my concerns to Congress about the many ways it improperly encroaches on Executive power, disadvantages American companies, and hurts the interests of our European allies. My Administration has attempted to work with Congress to make this bill better," Trump said on signing the "Countering America's Adversaries Through Sanctions Act". "We have made progress and improved the language to give the Treasury Department greater flexibility in granting routine licenses to American businesses, people, and companies. The improved language also reflects feedback from our European allies - who have been steadfast partners on Russia sanctions - regarding the energy sanctions provided for in the legislation. The new language also ensures our agencies can delay sanctions on the intelligence and defense sectors, because those sanctions could negatively affect American companies and those of our allies," the statement added. Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev described the US sanctions as a "full-fledged economic war" on Moscow and said that Washington has crushed hopes for repairing the estranged ties. "It is regrettable that the law on sanctions against Russia has come into effect in the United States. Its very title - "Countering America's Adversaries Through Sanctions Act" - speaks for itself. Its initiators are trying to impress on the US public a certain image of our country. This is a very short-sighted and even dangerous policy fraught with undermining stability for which Moscow and Washington bear special responsibility," Russia's Information and Press Department said in a statement. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Ingersoll-Rand (India) fell 2.65% to Rs 833.50 at 10:29 IST on BSE after net profit fell 14.2% to Rs 13.53 crore on 1.5% decline in net sales to Rs 147.01 crore in Q1 June 2017 over Q1 June 2016. The result was announced after market hours yesterday, 2 August 2017. Meanwhile, the S&P BSE Sensex was down 178.55 points, or 0.55% to 32,298.19. On the BSE, 1,948 shares were traded in the counter so far, compared with average daily volumes of 3,746 shares in the past one quarter. The stock had hit a high of Rs 860.50 and a low of Rs 828 so far during the day. The stock hit a 52-week high of Rs 940 on 3 May 2017. The stock hit a 52-week low of Rs 645 on 31 January 2017. The stock had underperformed the market over the past one month till 2 August 2017, rising 1.36% compared with 4.06% rise in the Sensex. The scrip had also underperformed the market in past one quarter, falling 5.37% as against Sensex's 7.80% rise. The scrip had also underperformed the market in past one year, rising 15.36% as against Sensex's 17.26% rise. The small-cap company has equity capital of Rs 31.57 crore. Face value per share is Rs 10. Ingersoll-Rand (India) is primarily engaged in the business of manufacturing and sale of industrial air compressors of various capacities and related services, and its complete machines and spare parts. Powered by Capital Market - Live News (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Ministry of Railways has entrusted the work of redevelopment of Delhi Safdarjung Railway Station to IRCON along with RLDA by leveraging the commercial potential of the railway land around the station including RLDA's office as well as air space above the railway station. In the gracious presence of Shri Suresh Prabhakar Prabhu, Minister of Railways, Rail Land Development Authority (RLDA), a Statutory Authority under Ministry of Railways, Government of India signed an MoU for this purpose with IRCON International Limited, a Public Sector Undertaking under Ministry of Railways. Shri Rakesh Goyal, Vice Chairman RLDA and Shri S. K. Chaudhary, CMD IRCON signed the MOU. Delhi Safdarjung station is proposed to be developed on self-financing model for which finance will be raised through marketing of the commercial built-up area that will be developed on the surplus railway land and air space as part of the Station development project. The land and the constructed buildings will continue to remain under the ownership and control of RLDA and only the commercial built-up area will be leased for upto 45 years by RLDA . IRCON will carry out design, construction and marketing of the project. The Phase-I of the project will come up on the Moti Bagh side of the Station and is targeted for completion by January 2019. Powered by Capital Market - Live News (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Narayana Hrudayalaya fell 3.28% to Rs 299.50 at 13:15 IST on BSE after consolidated net profit dropped 36.66% to Rs 10.92 crore on 15.66% rise in total income to Rs 526.34 crore in Q1 June 2017 over Q1 June 2016. The result was announced after market hours yesterday, 2 August 2017. Meanwhile, the S&P BSE Sensex was down 123.95 points, or 0.38%, to 32,352.79. The S&P BSE Mid-Cap index was up 55.12 points, or 0.36%, to 15,467.08. On BSE, so far 5,969 shares were traded in the counter as against average daily volume of 55,225 shares in the past one quarter. The stock hit a high of Rs 305 and a low of Rs 297.25 so far during the day. The stock had hit a record high of Rs 375 on 10 November 2016. The stock had hit a 52-week low of Rs 286.80 on 6 July 2017. The stock had underperformed the market over the past one month till 2 August 2017, falling 2.01% compared with 4.06% rise in the Sensex. The scrip had underperformed the market in past one quarter, falling 1.78% as against Sensex's 7.80% rise. The scrip had also underperformed the market in past one year, declining 3.94% as against Sensex's 17.26% rise. The mid-cap company has equity capital of Rs 204.36 crore. Face value per share is Rs 10. Consolidated earnings before interest, taxation, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA) stood at Rs 55.60 crore in Q1 June 2017, reflecting a margin of 10.7% as against Rs 55.90 crore in Q1 June 2016. Ashutosh Raghuvanshi, Vice Chairman, Managing Director and Group CEO, Narayana Hrudayalaya said that while there has been an impact due to curb on cardiac stent pricing along with commissioning of new facility in Mumbai, the company remains on-track to deliver affordable quality healthcare to all with distinguished business model. Narayana Hrudayalaya is one of the leading healthcare service providers in India, operating a chain of multispecialty, tertiary and primary healthcare facilities. The company has a network of 23 hospitals and 7 heart centres across India and a single hospital overseas at Cayman Islands with close to 5,800 operational beds across all its centres and potential to reach a capacity of 7,000 beds. Powered by Capital Market - Live News (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) On 11 August 2017 Tamilnadu Jai Bharath Mills will hold a meeting of the Board of Directors of the Company on 11 August 2017 to consider , inter alia, the Un-audited Financial results of the company for the quarter ended 30.6.2017. Powered by Capital Market - Live News (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The Aam Aadmi Party's Goa unit on Thursday said it will not contest the upcoming by-elections to the state assembly. Calling it a "politically prudent" move, it said that the party had taken the decision in order to not confuse the electorate. "AAP Goa after a great deal of brainstorming has decided that it would be politically prudent for us to refrain from contesting the by-elections, rather than further confusing the electorate," it said in a statement issued here. "AAP Goa is convinced, however, that the people of Panaji and Valpoi will firmly reject the of opportunism, deceit and treachery played out by the current dispensation, which is foisting an unnecessary election at great expense to the public exchequer, only to compel a desired outcome," it said. Two assembly constituencies will go to by-polls on August 23. They include Panaji from where Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar, who is currently a Rajya Sabha member from Uttar Pradesh, is contesting. All India Congress Committee Secretary Girish Chodankar also will file his nomination on Friday for the Panaji seat. The other by-election will be held in Valpoi assembly constituency, where Health Minister Vishwajit Rane is contesting. He was elected in the February assembly elections on a Congress ticket but subsequently resigned to join the BJP. The AAP has also said that its alternative brand of was not endorsed by the Goan electorate in the February 2017 polls and that it is preparing at the grassroots level for the next general elections. "Unfortunately, the Aam Aadmi Party ideals were not recognised by the Goan electorate in the 2017 assembly polls and as such the party failed to win the trust of the people. Since then, AAP has been working hard to re-organise and rebuild the party at the grassroots level so as to be battle ready for the next big challenge of the general election," the statement said. --IANS maya/him/vt (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Accusing Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar of carrying out an "elaborate charade" to embrace the BJP, the CPI-M has said any alliance of "a motley bunch of secular parties" can't be expected to take on the Modi government. "The political somersault by Nitish Kumar will rank as one of the biggest of its kind in India's political history which is replete with such opportunistic behaviour by bourgeois politicians," the CPI-M journal "People's Democracy" said in an editorial. It said that after winning the Bihar election of 2015, Nitish Kumar had become the most prominent advocate of a grand anti-BJP alliance at the level. "In a sudden turn around, Nitish Kumar and the JD-U have broken their alliance with the RJD and the Congress in Bihar and within hours formed a coalition government with the BJP. "It is now clear that Nitish Kumar had utilized the filing of an FIR on corruption charges by the CBI against Lalu Prasad's son and Deputy Chief Minister Tejashwi Yadav to enact this elaborate charade," the editorial said. The Communist Party of India-Marxist said that with the architect of the Grand Alliance himself embracing the Bharatiya Janata Party camp, "the concept of a Grand Alliance lies in tatters". It said the CPI-M was concerned about building the widest unity against the Modi government and the BJP. "But ... this cannot be accomplished by putting together an alliance of a motley bunch of secular parties. "Why such a grand alliance is unworkable is the unreliable character of many of the regional parties. Most of the regional parties have embraced the neo-liberal policies and are prone to make opportunistic alliances. "With one or two exceptions, the regional parties have shown their willingness to ally with the BJP depending on when it suits their political interests. The current episode of the defection of Nitish Kumar underlines this character of the regional parties." The CPI-M said it had concluded "that with the regional parties as the main constituents, there can be no credible all-India alliance". But in the context of the need to forge wider unity for struggles on people's issues and communalism, the editorial said the CPI-M would strive to have joint actions and united platforms with some regional parties. It added that fighting the Modi government cannot be accomplished by aligning with the Congress, which it said was "primarily responsible for the imposition of neo-liberal policies and continues to advocate them... "That the Congress is not seen to be different from the BJP as far as basic policies are concerned is reflected by the fact that there is a steady flow of leaders and activists of the Congress to the BJP." The editorial said: "What is required today is not an opportunistic alliance of all opposition parties but developing the broadest united actions and platforms to take up the issues of the working class, peasantry and other sections of the working people and also to build a broad unity to fight against the communal forces." (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.) While men and women both tend to experience marital satisfaction with younger spouses, the satisfaction is likely to fade over time if there is a significant age gap between the partners, researchers have found. The findings showed that for the couples with a big age gap between the partners, the initial satisfaction tends to erode rapidly after six to ten years of marriage. However, when paired with a younger spouse, men and women both showed greater marital satisfaction. "We find that men who are married to younger wives are the most satisfied and men who are married to older wives are the least satisfied," said Terra McKinnish, Professor at University of Colorado Boulder. "Women are also particularly dissatisfied when they're married to older husbands and particularly satisfied if they're married to younger husbands," McKinnish added. One reason for this decline could be how the age difference between spouses affects the couple's ability to respond to negative economic shocks such as a job loss. The study found that marriages with large age gap between partners are also less resilient in the face of economic downturns relative to their similarly-aged counterparts. Similarly-aged couples are more in sync on life decisions that affect both partners (having children, general spending habits) and thus may be better equipped to adjust to a negative financial shock. By contrast, an unexpected financial shake-up could expose underlying tensions and mismatches in couples with a larger age gap, McKinnish said. For the study, published in the Journal of Population Economics, the team examined 13 years' worth of longitudinal data from 2001. The sample initially comprised of 7,682 households containing 19,914 individuals and participants are re-surveyed every year with questions that measure various aspects of life satisfaction. --IANS rt/amit/vt (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Over a hundred investors in the scam-tainted Rose valley Group's ponzi schemes on Thursday vandalised a premier property of the company protesting against non-refund of their deposits and the tardy pace of investigation by the central agencies. The angry investors gathered before a hotel run by the Group in south Kolkata's Minto Park and went berserk after the hotel authorities went back from their commitment to talk to them on payments, police said. The investors forcibly entered the hotel, vandalised its cafeteria and reception room, broke glass panes with stones and ransacked the furniture. According to police, the protesters shouted slogans against the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) and the Enforcement Directorate (ED) complaining against the delay in their probe into the multi-crore scandal. Police rushed in and detained two of the protesters. The ED has attached assets worth around Rs 1,950 crore of the group in its ongoing probe against the company for money laundering. Group's sole proprietor and Chairman Gautam Kundu, arrested over two years back, is still in judicial custody. The ED investigation revealed that the Rose Valley Group of Companies collected over Rs 17,000 crore from the public throughout India by luring depositors with false promise of high returns or interest on their deposits. In its first charge-sheet, the CBI indicted Kundu and other senior officials of the company for criminal conspiracy (Section 120B of IPC) and cheating (Section 420 of IPC), along with Section 4 and 6 of the Prize Chits Money Circulation Schemes Banning Act Later, the CBI filed a supplementary charge-sheet against three of the accused, including the company chief and two Trinamool Congress MPs Sudip Bandopadhyay and Tapas Pal, who were arrested earlier. Bandyopadhyay, a four-time Lok Sabha member and Minister of State for Health and Family Welfare in former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's cabinet between 2011 and 2012, was under arrest since January 3 when he was taken into custody by the CBI for his alleged links with the Rose Valley scam. He was granted bail in May. Paul, the other Trinamool MP, was arrested on December 30 last year, and still continues to be in jail. Thousands of people were allegedly cheated in West Bengal and Odisha through the ponzi schemes that allegedly promised astronomical returns to its depositors. --IANS ssp/nir (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) An Indian Army major and a soldier were killed early on Thursday in a militant attack in Jammu and Kashmir's Shopian district. The Hizbul Mujahideen outfit claimed responsibility for the attack. Police sources said militants ambushed an army patrol in Zaipora village. Three soldiers including Major Kamlesh Pandey, Sepoy Tanzin and Sepoy Kripal Singh were injured in the attack. "The injured were immediately airlifted to 92 base hospital in Badami Bagh cantonment area, where Major Pandey and Sepoy Tanzin later succumbed to their injuries," the sources added. The militants managed to escape after the attack, the sources said. Earlier two Hizbul militants were killed by the security forces in Kulgam district, police said. Weapons were recovered from the slain militants. --IANS sq/in/vm (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Reduce taxes to reduce prices. Which is precisely what the Assam government is mulling to prevent liquor being bootlegged from neighbouring states. "There is huge smuggling of IMFL (Indian Made Foreign Liquor) brands to Assam from neighbouring states like Meghalaya and Arunachal Pradesh, where the prices are less. This is causing revenue loss for Assam. We are comparing the prices of different IMFL brands with our neighbouring states. Our plan is to lower the taxes, which will result in comparative rates with the neighbouring states and we can check the revenue loss to the state," Assam Excise Minister Parimal Suklabaidya told IANS in an interview. The proposal awaits cabinet approval, added the senior BJP leader, who took charge of the department only a year back. "The brands we sell here are costlier than those in Meghalaya and Arunachal Pradesh. So people in bordering areas often smuggle IMFL meant to be sold in Meghalaya and Arunachal Pradesh to Assam. A huge smuggling racket is working and as a result the state is losing revenue," the minister noted. The extent of the problem can be gauged from the fact that at least 30 percent of the total IMFL consumed in nine districts of upper Assam are smuggled from Arunachal Pradesh. Suklabaidya has resorted to several bold steps after assuming charge and the excise revenue has gone up by more than Rs 150 crore in fiscal 2016-17 compared to 2015-16. While the state earned excise revenue of Rs 799.53 crore in 2015-16, this rose to Rs 966.33 crore in the 2016-17. The minister said his intention is not to encourage drinking but stop smuggling and increase revenues. "Those who have the drinking habit will continue with it. However, the state is losing revenue due to some administrative hitches. I want to make the system clear so that there is no smuggling," he asserted. He also listed the steps taken to prevent corruption and make the system more transparent. "We have taken the entire process of issuing licences for the production and sale of IMFL online to make it more transparent. Now, anyone can log on to our website and check the status of anything. This has not only helped us make things more transparent but we have been able to stop revenue leakages in the department," Suklabaidya explained. The minister has also lowered the rate for renewing licence fees for wholesalers and retailers. While the erstwhile Congress government had increased the fees by up to 500 percent, the BJP-led alliance government had reduced this from Rs 3 lakh to Rs 1 lakh for retailers and from Rs 30 lakh to Rs 5 lakh for wholesalers. "The results are amazing. The initiative has led to 21 percent increase in revenue," the minister said, adding that his target is to increase excise revenue to around Rs 1,400 in the current fiscal. (Aditya Baruah can be contacted at aditya.assam@rediffmail.com) (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull announced on Thursday his decision to lower a terror alert at airports following a raid that led to the arrest of four persons who were allegedly plotting an attack on an airplane. The threat level "was raised last week to 'probable' and has now been restored to its previous level", Turnbull said at a joint press conference with Justice Minister Michael Keenan here. The threat level at airports was raised on advice from the country's security and intelligence agencies after the alleged attack was thwarted, reports Efe news. Australian authorities are, however, planning to expand security measures to prevent any possible attacks on civil aviation. "Some of them will be obvious to travellers," Turnbull said. Last week, the Australian police arrested four persons, one of whom was released without charges, from the suburbs of Sydney. The three persons, who are still in custody -- Khaled Khayat, Mahmoud Khayat and Khaled Merhi -- are believed to have links with the Islamic State terror group. The Australian police suspect the detainees planned to hide a bomb in a kitchen meat grinder and smuggle it onto an Etihad Airways flight. Australia raised its terror alert in September 2014 and has passed a series of anti-terrorist laws to prevent attacks on its territory. The country has witnessed four violent incidents since then and security forces have disrupted 13 planned attacks and arrested 70 people in 31 operations. --IANS ksk/vt (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The Lok Sabha on Thursday witnessed disruption and a brief adjournment following angry exchanges between the Left and BJP members over political killings in Kerala. Communist Party of India-Marxist's P. Karunakaran took objection to the Kerala Chief Minister and the Secretary of his party's State Committee being named in the House. Immediately, Bharatiya Janata Party members raised their pitch in protest. This was countered by the Left members. As members from both sides created a ruckus, the House was briefly adjourned. When the House resumed at 12.30 p.m., Left members continued to protest and also trooped near the Speaker's podium. Speaker Sumitra Mahajan initially denied permission to Karunakaran to speak again, saying it would lead to similar scenes of protest. She later permitted him to complete what he was saying. Karunakaran said CPI-M workers have also been attacked "in large numbers" in Kerala. --IANS ao/in/mr (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Abidjan, Aug 3 (IANS/MAP) The Cote d'Ivoire government will launch an anti-vector campaign as the danger lurks of the dengue epidemic spreading in the country, officials said. The campaign will be launched in all municipalities of Abidjan and surrounding cities, an olfficial report said on Wednesday. Detected in April in the Cocody-Bingerville district, the dengue epidemic has claimed two lives out of the 911 suspected cases. Of these cases so far, 311 were confirmed. The report said that from July 3 to July 22, 153 new cases were recorded in the communes of Cocody and Bingerville. Called "tropical flu" in Cote d'Ivoire, dengue is a viral disease transmitted to humans by mosquitoes of the genus Aedes. It manifests itself in the appearance of a high fever often accompanied by headaches, nausea, vomiting, joint and muscle pain and a rash resembling that of measles. Dengue is considered a re-emerging disease and predominantly occurs throughout the intertropical zone. --IANS/MAP soni/vt (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) A Cambodian court on Thursday sentenced Australian Tammy Davis-Charles to one-and-a-half-years in prison for running a surrogacy clinic in the country which has banned the process. Judge Sor Linna also imposed a fine of 4 million riel ($978) on the 49-year-old Davis-Charles for falsifying documents and acting as an intermediary between pregnant women and the adoptive parents, reports Efe news. Cambodian nationals Samrith Chakrya, 35, and Pech Rithy, 28, who were working at the clinic, were also sentenced to 18 months imprisonment and fined 2 million riel each. Davis-Charles, Chakrya and Rithy were arrested in November 2016, weeks after the Cambodian government declared surrogacy illegal. --IANS ksk/vm (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The Lok Sabha on Thursday passed the Banking Regulation (Amendment) Bill, 2017, after Finance Minister Arun Jaitley declared that criminal and recovery proceedings will be started against defaulters of bank loans who divert money and asserted that no one can claim equality in not repaying loans to the banks. Replying to a debate on the bill, Jaitley said that a company defaulting on loans cannot claim the right of equality in treatment as regards repaying the loans. He said defaulting companies cannot ask why it was being targeted when some other defaulters were being let free. "No, that cannot be an argument. The system has the capacity to take only a certain number of cases. I'm sure they will take up more case," he said, referring to the 12 non-performing assets (NPAs) that have been identified for action by the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT). He said the government would go after those who diverted funds got through loans and defaulted on payments. "Many Non-Performing Asset (NPA) cases could be fraud, as money taken was diverted. These are not routine NPAs. Criminal proceedings will be carried out and bank will start recovery procedure for such accounts," Jaitley said. After the Minister's reply, the house passed the Bill, after rejecting a statutory resolution disapproving the Ordinance moved by a Congress member. Under the bill, the central government may authorise the Reserve Bank of India to issue directions to any banking company to initiate insolvency in respect of a default under the provision of the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code. It also has provisions empowering the Reserve Bank of India to issue directions to banks for resolution of stressed assets. "Many NPA cases could be fraud, as money taken was diverted. These are not routine NPAs. Criminal proceedings will be carried out and bank will start recovery procedure for such accounts," Jaitley said. The Minister said that the loans, which have turned NPAs, were probably given at a time when the economy was in a "boom" period and they seemed good investment proposals. "Nobody anticipated global crisis at that time... in last 3-4 years, prices of commodities collapsed. We're now trying find a solution for this difficult situation," he said. "Our laws are obsolete and impeding the recovery process... therefore this mechanism was set up. It will select defaulter, direct banks to move expeditiously against the defaulter. NCLT will dispose of the case within 180 days. This process will recover the public money, so no one should have objection," he added. Tracing the background of the NPAs problem of public sector banks (PSBs), Jaitley said that while private sector concentrates on retail lending for car and home loans, PSBs have been much ahead in industry and infrastructure lending for the overall growth of the economy and contribute to spending on social programmes. The Minister also noted the multiple options available for resolution of stressed assets. He said the options that the banks could offer the borrower were to exit from the business, bring in a partner for a joint venture, go for resolution through the asset reconstruction companies (ARC) or themselves take a haircut on the loan amount. "At the end of the day, we need to change. They are national assets and we need to save the companies, have companies which are able to pay the banks," Jaitley said. Referring to NPAs which amounted to more than 13 per cent of advances in 2001, the figure came down to less than 3 per cent in 2007-08, Jaitley said. The sectors most responsible for the accumulated NPAs are steel, power, textiles and infrastructure, he added. While the debt recovery tribunals (DRTs) set up in the 1990s liberalised the system, Jaitley said, there were still problems where honest bankers had to decide on loans. They had to operate in the context of the Prevention of Corruption Act (PCA), in which an honest decision can go bad and they had to face the legal consequences. "Some of our laws are obsolete... For instance, Section 13 of the PCA was drafted in 1988 prior to the liberalisation era to deal essentially with corruption. It can also be extended to decisions honestly taken but may look erroneous from another point of view." "Now, we have a complete situation. The consortium of banks or individual bankers when they take decisions... so an oversight committee has been established which will overlook the settlements made and advise them on reasonable settlement," he said. The Finance Minister said that a stalemate had developed over the whole NPAs, or bad loans, situation. "These NPAs are continuing for last 5-7 years, a stalemate situation had been reached. This process had to be broken." --IANS mm-bc-vsc/vt (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) China on Thursday asked the US to promptly investigate a shooting at the Chinese Consulate General in Los Angeles. A man of Asian origin fired multiple shots outside the consulate on Tuesday morning before shooting himself dead, reports Xinhua news agency. In response to a question about the shooting, Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said China attaches great importance to the incident and has made solemn representations to the US side. "China has asked the US side to investigate the shooting as soon as possible, demanding that necessary actions be taken immediately to ensure the safety and security of the compound and personnel of the Consulate General," Geng said. The shooting, however, did not injure anyone else. The shooter, who was in his 60s, was found dead in his vehicle parked 20 metres away from the consulate office building, according to local police. --IANS ksk/vm (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Christopher Wray was sworn in as FBI director, taking the helm of the agency after its previous director, James Comey, was abruptly fired by President Donald Trump in May, the media reported. "It is the honour of a lifetime to serve as director," Wray said in a statement after he was sworn in on Wednesday by Attorney General Jeff Sessions. "I long ago grew to know and admire the Federal Bureau of Investigation from my earliest days as a line prosecutor to my years as assistant attorney general. "I am excited, humbled, and grateful, therefore, to have this chance to work side-by-side again with these fine professionals for the good of the country and the cause of justice," Politico news quoted Wray as saying. After the swearing in, Sessions said: "As a former federal prosecutor and head of the Department of Justice's (DOJ) Criminal Division, Chris Wray has successfully prosecuted terrorists, drug kingpins, and white-collar criminals and earned the respect of his colleagues at DOJ as well as bipartisan support from the Senate." Wray, a veteran of George W. Bush's Justice Department, was confirmed by the Senate on Tuesday, in a 92-to-5 vote. During his confirmation hearing, Wray repeatedly pledged to act independently of the White House. He assured lawmakers that he had not taken an oath of loyalty to Trump, as Comey has alleged the President asked of him, and said he would adhere to the law and the Constitution. It was only the second time in history that a US Senator voted against a nominee for FBI director. The five "no" votes were Democratic Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, Ed Markey, Jeff Merkley, Elizabeth Warren and Ron Wyden, reports CNN. Comey, who was confirmed in 2013, received the only other opposing vote in history -- Senator Rand Paul voted no after raising questions about how the agency was using surveillance drones on American soil. --IANS ksk (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The Congress on Thursday attacked the government in the Rajya Sabha on its handling of foreign policy issues, especially the military stand-off with China, and said national security and the country's interest were in danger on account of it. Initiating a debate on foreign policy in the House, senior member Anand Sharma demanded a reply from Prime Minister Narendra Modi on what was discussed during his meetings with Chinese President Xi Jinping on the Doklam border stand-off. The Congress leader said the government should not dilute and deviate from the time-tested foreign policy and should uphold the country's interest. Referring to Prime Minister Modi's meeting with the Chinese President twice - on the sidelines of the SCO meet in Astana in Kazakhstan and G20 meeting in Germany's Hamburg, Sharma said, "Modiji met with Xi Jinping twice, once in Astana and in Hamburg, and we have been told that both of them had meaningful discussions. "But why did China deny this? I trust my government, but what is their intent in denying?" he asked. He also said that Modi has not mentioned even once what talks he has had with the Chinese President. "Even the National Security Advisors (NSAs) met; we are not asking them to divulge all the details of the meeting, but we should get a sense or idea if the stand-off can be resolved," he said. "It is our right to know on matters of strategic and national interest. The Prime Minister cannot remain silent," the Congress leader said. "When it comes to the issue of national interest and sovereignty we all are with the government," he added. "But we want Foreign Minister Sushmaji (Swaraj) to give diplomacy a chance. We believe that all diplomatic channels should be kept open for negotiations and safeguarding India's interest," Sharma said. Sharma noted that the relationship with China is very "complex and uneasy". "I hope the External Affairs Minister is fully aware about the confrontation with China in Doklam. Our security and national interest is at risk. China is acting unusually aggressive," he said. He also highlighted that the Chinese President has spoken on the issue twice. "We want to know what is the government's response on the Chinese statement," he said. --IANS sid-aks/rn (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) BJP MP S.S. Ahluwalia on Thursday called for a political dialogue for a peaceful solution to the unrest in Darjeeling and urged the West Bengal government to avoid repressive measures. Ahluwalia, the Lok Sabha member from Darjeeling, also urged the agitating political parties and groups in the hill district to come forward for the dialogue. "As an MP, I urge Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee and all the groups fighting for the cause to find a peaceful solution. There cannot be a solution by repressive measures," Ahluwalia told reporters here. Ahluwalia, also a minister in the Modi government, urged the protesters to create an atmosphere for the talks. "I demand them to withdraw the agitation. There must be talks among all the stakeholders. Peace must prevail there. Create an atmosphere for political dialogue. A way can be found only through democratic process," he said. He said he has witnessed all the tripartite talks related to the demand of separate state of Gorkhaland. "Decisions are not taken on roads. Laws are not formulated on roads," he said. Ahluwalia's remarks came after an all-party delegation, including the Gorkha Janmukti Morcha (GJM), met him in Parliament. He said the delegation will meet Prime Minister Narendra Modi and submit a memorandum. --IANS bns/in/mr (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The top-most bar of a window in a dingy toilet of Jahangirpuri police station in Delhi had a knot made from a piece of cloth -- from which was hanging the body of 32-year-old Raj Kumar in the early hours of Wednesday. Kumar, a farmer from Kasganj of Uttar Pradesh, was summoned to the Delhi police station on Tuesday evening to give statement on a missing woman. Early next morning, his body was found hanging from the window bar in the toilet, according to police. Kumar's family told IANS that although he died early on Wednesday, they were informed about his death only hours later, past 11 a.m. "Police called us first around 10 a.m. (on Wednesday) and told that he's in ICU of a hospital and asked us to come and meet him," Kumar's brother Hridesh Bharadwaj, 42, said. "But they didn't say anything about his death." "Then the SI (Sub-Inspector) called us after 11.30 a.m. and said that my brother had committed suicide by hanging," he added. Family members said the police did not attend their phone calls when they called back. After the first police phone call, Kumar's family in Uttar Pradesh contacted his nephew Ankit, who stays in Delhi, to enquire about what happened to him. "The SHO (Station House Officer) said he had no information about the death when I telephoned him around 9.30 a.m.," Ankit, 24, told IANS outside Babu Jagjivan Ram Hospital in Jahangirpuri where Kumar's body had been taken. Ankit said that Kumar had called him around 4.00 p.m on Tuesday and said he was going inside the police station and that he was a little scared. "I was in a flight from Mumbai to Delhi and my phone was on flight mode after that," he added. The 24-year-old scrolled through his phone to show two missed call alerts from Kumar's phone number at 7.44 p.m. and 8.38 p.m. on Tuesday. "What happened in those few hours that he decided to commit suicide? He came by himself to give the statement... Why would he do it? I don't believe this," said Ankit. "We don't know what happened, but there was no problem with my brother that could have driven him commit suicide," Hridesh Bharadwaj said. --IANS nkh/nir/vt (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) A court here on Thursday extended till August 9 the Enforcement Directorate's custody of Kashmiri separatist leader Shabir Shah in a money laundering case. Additional Sessions Judge Sidharth Sharma allowed the ED to quiz Shah for six more days after he was presented in the court on the expiry of his one-day custody. He was arrested from Srinagar on July 25 on charges of money laundering in a case dating back to 2005. At one point during the hearing, Public Prosecutor Rajeev Awasthi said if Shah believed in the Indian Constitution, can he (Shah) say 'Bharat Mata ki jai'. The remark came after a defence counsel said Shah had been behind bars for many years and deprived of his constitution rights. Shah's counsel claimed the case was politically motivated. The ED opposed this on the ground that the Kashmiri leader's action was ruining the country. The court asked the rival counsels to maintain decorum and not to turn it into a TV studio. Seeking extension of Shah's custody, Public Prosecutors Awasthi and Navin Kumar Matta told the court that the international ramifications of the case were to be unearthed. Shah's custody is required to examine and analyse the bank details, the money trail and 10,000 emails. The ED said it also had to ascertain the source of hawala transfers and further distribution of funds. The agency said a huge amount of money has been depoisted in cash and by cheque in the account of Hotel Baisaran, Pahalgam, in Jammu and Kashmir and Shah has 25 per cent partnership in the hotel with his elder brother. The money has been used for illegal activities, the ED told the court. Defence counsel M.S. Khan opposed the for Shah's custody and denied the charges. Shah's arrest relates to an August 2005 case when the Delhi Police Special Cell arrested a hawala dealer, Muhammad Aslam Wani. Wani had allegedly confessed that he gave hawala money of Rs 2.25 crore to Shah. In the 2005 case, the court had acquitted Wani of charges of criminal conspiracy and other offences but convicted him under the Arms Act, defence counsel Khan told the court. Khan said there was no material left to connect Shah to the case as it was not proved that the seized money was meant for him. The ED, however, said the accused had to be confronted with his international contacts, including from Pakistan. --IANS akk/tsb/mr (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) At least one case of snipping of a woman's hair in Delhi was found to be fake while not much progress has been made in another case, the police said on Thursday. Deputy Commissioner of Police M.N. Tiwari told IANS that the police investigation into a case reported from Tilangpur Kotla of northwest Delhi on Tuesday had concluded there was no involvement of any outsider in it. Three cases wherein braids of three women were allegedly cut were reported from Kangan Heri village in west Delhi's Chhawla area last Sunday. About three dozen women from Rajasthan and Haryana's Mewat area too have complained of their braids having been similarly chopped mysteriously. Police had received a call that the hair of 45-year-old Omvati were snipped around 11.10 p.m. on Tuesday at her house. "The entry of a stranger in the house was not possible as the main door was locked from inside, and so was the door to the first floor," the officer said. "Later, the family said they don't have a complaint to make," he added. "If anyone did it, it could only be someone in the house." Tiwari said a case was not registered as it is not a cognisable offence. "Everything is intact -- neither the doors not the windows of the house were tampered with," he added. A police officer, who visited the house after the alleged incident was reported, said no one from outside could have cut the woman's hair. "(These) Women want some attention and they're doing it themselves." Police said no progress had been made in another case reported from Niyal Vihar. Omwati of Tilangpur Kotla said: "As I came out of the washroom around 11 p.m., I felt something on my shoulders and then a gentle tug at my hair. I thought my hair were stuck in my sash. As I tried to feel my hair, I found my braid had been cut." As she shouted for help and fainted, the family rushed to her. Her son Krishan said her snipped hair were found lying next to her even though the house doors were locked from inside. Omvati said she had on Tuesday morning heard of reports of hair snipping in other areas. "Everyone was hanging lemons and green chillies outside their houses on Tuesday to ward off evil. I also did it," she said. "Till this was not hung, there was no problem. The day she did it, her braid was snipped," Krishan quipped, pointing to lemon-chillies strung together at the main door of their village house. --IANS nkh/tsb/vt (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) In an incident of road rage in the capital, a property dealer was brutally assaulted by two men at a petrol pump after his car grazed the autorickshaw they were in, police said on Thursday. The incident took place on Wednesday around 10.00 p.m when the victim, Saleem Malik, was returning to his residence after visiting an ailing relative in a Lajpat Nagar hospital in south Delhi. "Malik, who lives in Malviya Nagar, said in his complaint that he saw three inebriated persons in an autorickshaw being driven recklessly. When his car grazed the autorickshaw, they chased Malik's car for at least two kilometres looking for a chance to attack him, a police officer said. "When Malik stopped at a petrol pump in Jia Sarai, the two accused pounced on him, dragged him out of his car and bashed him up. They took care to park the autorickshaw outside the petrol pump so that its registration number was not recorded in CCTV cameras," the officer added. Police are trying to identify the culprits on the basis of CCTV footage. --IANS sp/nir/mr (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Given the current stand-off over the Doklam plateau, the fate of the annual India-China Hand-in-Hand joint military drill, first held in 2007, appears uncertain with no word from the Chinese side, which is supposed to host the exercise this year. An Initial Planning Conference (IPC) is usually held in the host country in June-July but so far there has been a studied silence from Beijing, sources said. "The IPC takes place in the country where the exercise would be held. We sent a message to the Chinese side but there was no response," the source said. "It should have happened latest but July end, but the IPC never took place," the source added. From all possible indications, the IPC is unlikely to take place any time soon. After the IPC, a Final Planning Conference (FPC) is held in the visiting country, usually in September. The exercise is usually held in October or November. "We asked for details of progress on holding the exercise, but we have no communication from the Chinese side it," the source said. So far, six editions of the exercise, which has focused on anti-terror operations in past years, have been held. The first joint exercise was held in 2007 Kunming in China's Yunnan province and in 2008 in Belgaum in Karnataka. However, following China's denyial of a visa to the Northern Army Commander in 2009, citing its "sensitivities" on Kashmir, the exercise remained suspended for almost five years. It was resumed in 2013 and had been held regularly since then, the last being at Pune's Aundh Military Camp in 2016. The Indian Army has in past said that the basic objective of the drill is to enhance confidence and trust between the two armies, which may be called upon to grapple with anti-terrorism operations under the UN mandate. The Indian Army has also said that the exercises is an important step to uphold the values of peace, prosperity and stability in the region. That, however, seems a distant dream as a stand-off continues since mid-June at the tri-junction of India, China and Bhutan when Indian troops moved in to prevent China from constructing a road on Bhutanese territory in the Doklam plateau. China claims the Doklam plateau is a part of South Tibet. Earlier this week, China claimed India had partially withdrawn its troops, which New Delhi firmly denied. On July 25, a Chinese transgression took place in Uttarakhand when Chinese troops came about one kilometer into Indian territory. Senior government functionaries should refrain from making boastful claims about diplomatic or military victories and the government should try to manage its neighbourhood well if it wants India to play a "meaningful regional and global role", the Congress said on Thursday. Initiating a short duration discussion in the Rajya Sabha over India's foreign policy and engagement with strategic partners, Congress leader Anand Sharma said: "India is a large country, a big economy. We have rightful aspirations to play a global role, a leadership role in the comity of nations. "But unless we manage our neighbourhood correctly, it will be impossible for India to play any meaningful role either regionally or globally," he added. Sharma demanded to know from the government what roadmap it had about engagement with Pakistan. "I was surprised like many others when we have claims at the highest level, at the level of Prime Minister and Ministers, that we have isolated Pakistan. Why? "A mature, large country does not make such claims or statements when it wishes to lead the region and be a leader in the world. I would urge the government to refrain from making such statements," he said. The supposed isolation of Pakistan was an "irresponsible and factually incorrect" claim, he said. Sharma said there was a strong military and economic access between Pakistan and China, between Pakistan and Turkey and Russia had entered into a defence MoU with Pakistan "for the first time in history". "Should it be a matter of concern to us or not?" Sharma asked. "So we should avoid making this boastful claim which does not resonate well with any country in the world and our major partners. "Nor should India ever have this intention to isolate. India, as a big country, should declare its intent to engage and resolve issues." He recalled how after leading India to the biggest ever military victory against Pakistan during the Bangladesh War in 1971 - which resulted in Pakistan's division and creation of Bangladesh - then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi did not boast about it. Sharma also took a jibe at Prime Minister Narendra Modi for his impromptu and "dramatic" landing in Lahore in December 2015 on his way back from Afghanistan. "The Prime Minister has not told the nation as to what transpired in the meeting there. And what did we get as a gift? Attack on Pathankot airbase." Sharma said the Prime Minister had travelled to 65 countries, including five times to the US, but he had not apprised Parliament even once as to what he discussed with leaders during his foreign visits. --IANS mak/mr (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The government has prepared a draft law to check frauds by chit fund companies which operate in more states than one, Finance Minister said in the Lok Sabha on Thursday. He also declared that criminal and recovery proceedings will be started against defaulters of bank loans who divert money. "We are bringing out a draft central law for chit fund companuies that operate in more than one state, which will be placed in the house for discussion," Jaitley said, adding that individual state governments had their own laws to deal with such companies operating within the state. Replying to the debate on the Banking Regulation (Amendment) Bill, 2017, the Minister said that pension schemes for senior citizens run by the Life Insurance Corporation (LIC) that provide 8 per cent interest will dissuade people from putting their savings in chit funds. Jaitley's disclosure on the move to check chit funds comes against the backdrop of several chit fund companies duping people of thousands of crores of rupees in several states. The Minister referred to states like West Bengal, Odisha and Punjab in the context of states having powers to regulate chit funds on their own. Earlier, members including Pappu Yadav of the RJD demanded strict measures to check the activities of chit funds. After the Minister's reply, the house passed the Banking Regulation (Amendment) Bill, 2017, after rejecting a statutory resolution disapproving the Ordinance moved by a Congress member. Under the bill, the central government may authorise the Reserve Bank of India to issue directions to any banking company to initiate insolvency in respect of a default under the provision of the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code. It also has provisions empowering the Reserve Bank of India to issue directions to banks for resolution of stressed assets. "Many NPA cases could be fraud, as money taken was diverted. These are not routine NPAs. Criminal proceedings will be carried out and bank will start recovery procedure for such accounts," Jaitley said. Speaking about the bill, Jaitley said that a company defaulting on loans cannot claim the right of equality in treatment as regards repaying the loans. He said defaulting companies cannot ask why it was being targeted when some other defaulters were being let free. "No, that cannot be an argument. The system has the capacity to take only a certain number of cases. I'm sure they will take up more case," he said, referring to the 12 non-performing assets (NPAs) that have been identified for action by the Company Law Tribunal (NCLT). The Minister said that the loans, which have turned NPAs, were probably given at a time when the economy was in a "boom" period and they seemed good investment proposals. "Nobody anticipated global crisis at that time... in last 3-4 years, prices of commodities collapsed. We're now trying find a solution for this difficult situation," he said. "Our laws are obsolete and impeding the recovery process... therefore this mechanism was set up. It will select defaulter, direct banks to move expeditiously against the defaulter. NCLT will dispose of the case within 180 days. This process will recover the public money, so no one should have objection," he added. Tracing the background of the NPAs problem of public sector banks (PSBs), Jaitley said that while private sector concentrates on retail lending for car and home loans, PSBs have been much ahead in industry and infrastructure lending for the overall growth of the economy and contribute to spending on social programmes. The Minister also noted the multiple options available for resolution of stressed assets. He said the options that the banks could offer the borrower were to exit from the business, bring in a partner for a joint venture, go for resolution through the asset reconstruction companies (ARC) or themselves take a haircut on the loan amount. "At the end of the day, we need to change. They are assets and we need to save the companies, have companies which are able to pay the banks," Jaitley said. Referring to NPAs which amounted to more than 13 per cent of advances in 2001, the figure came down to less than 3 per cent in 2007-08, Jaitley said. The sectors most responsible for the accumulated NPAs are steel, power, textiles and infrastructure, he added. While the debt recovery tribunals (DRTs) set up in the 1990s that liberalised the system, Jaitley said, there were still problems where honest bankers had to decide on loans. They had to operate in the context of the Prevention of Corruption Act (PCA), in which an honest decision can go bad and they had to face the legal consequences. "Some of our laws are obsolete... For instance, Section 13 of the PCA was drafted in 1988 prior to the liberalisation era to deal essentially with corruption. It can also be extended to decisions honestly taken but may look erroneous from another point of view." "Now, we have a complete situation. The consortium of banks or individual bankers when they take decisions... so an oversight committee has been established which will overlook the settlements made and advise them on reasonable settlement," he said. The Finance Minister said that a stalemate had developed over the whole NPAs, or bad loans, situation. "These NPAs are continuing for last 5-7 years, a stalemate situation had been reached. This process had to be broken." Researchers have found that the Ebola virus can persist in the semen of survivors more than two years after the onset of the infection. The research team also observed the detection of Ebola virus RNA in the semen of men who had previously had a negative test of their semen in some cases. The findings, published in the journal Open Forum Infectious Diseases, led the study team to suggest revision of the 2016 World Health Organisation guidelines relating to the sexual transmission of Ebola. The WHO guidelines call for men who survive Ebola virus disease (EVD) to undertake measures such as abstinence and the use of condoms for at least 12 months after the onset of EVD or until their semen has tested negative for Ebola virus RNA twice. "Our finding of long term persistence and intermittent detection of viral RNA in semen suggests we need to change how we think about Ebola as it is no longer only an acute illness, but also one with potential long-term effects," said the study's co-author William Fischer, Assistant Professor at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Medicine in the US. Male participants enrolled in a longitudinal cohort study of Ebola survivors in Monrovia, Liberia, consented to donating semen. Of the 149 men who provided samples, 13 tested positive for Ebola virus RNA. Of these 13 men, 11 had positive results even two years after the onset of Ebola infection. "It is becoming clear that in some survivors, evidence of the virus can linger in the male genital tract for long periods of time with important potential implications for transmission," Fischer said. Fischer noted that while there has been documented sexual transmission of Ebola earlier after acute infection, it is not known whether the presence of RNA serves as a correlate for infectious virus and if transmission is possible. The men whose samples tested positive for Ebola virus RNA were more likely to be older than those with a negative result, the researchers said. Those who had Ebola virus RNA detected in their semen also complained of vision problems at a higher rate than male survivors without evidence of Ebola virus RNA in their semen. The researchers said further studies are needed to investigate the source of viral persistence and whether the detection of viral RNA signifies the presence of infectious virus. --IANS gb/vm (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) A court here has overturned a decision by the Interior Minister to deport an Indian for allegedly obtaining a fake marriage certificate to stay in the country. In his ruling earlier this week, Justice Kweku T. Ackah-Boafo declared the move by Interior Minister Ambrose Dery "illegal" and said that the minister exceeded his jurisdiction by determining that the Indian had engaged in fraud and subsequently deported him, state-owned Daily Graphic reported. Ashok Kumar Sivaram was alleged to have acquired and forged a marriage certificate in support of his application for citizenship in 2015, said the report. Justice Ackah-Boafo said that the Interior Minister breached the rule of natural justice by not giving the plaintiff a hearing after he had accused him of allegedly committing fraud. "The minister arrogated to himself the role of prosecutor and adjudicator," Justice Ackah-Boafo said. "The right to be heard is a fundamental principle and cannot be ignored on the basis of administrative inconvenience," he said. Justice Ackah-Boafo also ruled that there was evidence to show that the fake marriage certificate was issued by the Kumasi Metropolitan Assembly (KMA). He said that if indeed the marriage certificate was forged, then Sivarma was a victim of the incompetence of a KMA official. The court ruled that any attempt by the state to prevent Sivaram from coming back to Ghana will be in contempt. The Interior Minister signed an order to deport Sivaram on May 15. He described the act as "fraudulent and criminal" and said Sivaram's presence was not "conducive to the public good". The Ghana Immigration Service deported Sivaram on June 1. Not happy with the deportation, Sivaram's lawyers filed an application for judicial review by way of certiorari for the order to be nullified by the High Court. (Francis Kokutse can be contacted at fkokutse@gmail.com) --IANS francis/soni/vm (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Negative global cues, coupled with heavy selling pressure in banking and metal stocks, dragged the Indian equity markets lower on Thursday. Stocks of banking majors like State Bank of India, Axis Bank and ICICI Bank and were among the top losers on the BSE. The wider Nifty50 of the National Stock Exchange (NSE) held on to the psychologically important 10,000-mark and provisionally closed at 10,004.35 points -- down 77.15 points or 0.77 per cent (at 3.30 p.m.). The 30-scrip Sensitive Index (Sensex) of the BSE, which opened at 32,502.55 points, closed at 32,237.88 points -- down 238.86 points, or 0.74 per cent -- from its previous close at 32,476.74 points. The Sensex touched a high of 32,502.55 points and a low of 32,194.58 points during intra-day trade. The BSE market breadth was bearish with 1,793 declines and 827 advances. On Wednesday, the benchmark indices were pulled lower to close on a subdued note on the back of broadly negative European markets and profit booking. The Nifty fell by 33.15 points, or 0.33 per cent, to close at 10,081.50 points, while the Sensex closed at 32,476.74 points -- down 98.43 points, or 0.30 per cent. --IANS ppg/vt (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The global food standard-setting body Codex Alimentarius Commission has decided to adopt three standards for pepper, cumin and thyme -- the first time spices have been included as commodities having universal standards, said an official on Thursday. Spices Board chairman A. Jayathilak on Thursday said the decision was made at CAC's just concluded meeting in Geneva. Jayathilak said it is not only a recognition of India's stellar role to benchmark and harmonise global spices trade but it could also herald the entry of more spices and herbs in the list for universal trading of safe and quality spices in various countries. "This feat was achieved after India's relentless efforts to set up the CCSCH (Codex Committee on Spices and Culinary Herbs) which conducted its three sessions at Kochi (2014), Goa (2015) and Chennai (2017) to create a common standardization process for global spices trade," said Jayathilak. He added that the Codex standards for black, white and green pepper, cumin and thyme were adopted by consensus with an overwhelming support from the member-countries of the CAC. --IANS sg/him/vt (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Opposition's Vice Presidential candidate Gopalkrishna Gandhi on Thursday rejected a suggestion that he should not take support of the Janata Dal-United in view of Nitish Kumar joining hands with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). "Nitish Babu's decision is his decision and his prerogative," Gandhi said when asked about Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) leader Tariq Anwar suggesting that he should publicly say no to JD-U votes in view of Bihar Chief Minister and JD-U chief Nitish Kumar crossing over to the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA). Nitish Kumar had announced support for Gandhi when he was heading the Grand Alliance government in Bihar backed by the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) and the Congress. He later dumped the two parties to join hands with the BJP but said he would still back Gandhi in the Vice Presidential election. Gandhi did not comment on Nitish Kumar's decision to head a coalition government with the BJP in Bihar. "In the present context, it is not for me to judge politicians... It is for them to assess the relative merits of the two Vice Presidential candidates," Gandhi told IANS in an interview. Gandhi also did not elaborate on the support being extended to him by the RJD, whose leaders are facing allegations of corruption. "It is again their (RJD's) decision and their prerogative," he said. Gandhi, who is being backed by the Congress and some major opposition parties, faces ruling NDA's M. Venkaiah Naidu in the Vice Presidential election scheduled for August 5. --IANS ps-sid/vsc/nir/vt (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The hackers who broke into HBOs internal networks werent able to compromise the networks e-mail system, said HBO President and CEO Richard Plepler. Plepler addressed the hacking incident in an internal email to the staff on Wednesday, reports variety.com. He wrote: "Many people have expressed particular concern about our e-mail system. At this time, we do not believe that our e-mail system as a whole has been compromised, but the forensic review is ongoing." Earlier this week, news broke that hackers had broken into the company's computer networks and possibly stolen as much as 1.5 terabyte of data. The hackers proceeded to leak unreleased episodes of a handful of shows, and promised to leak more data in the coming days. Plepler's email was apparently meant to calm the nerves of the network's staff, and address what he called "an enormous amount of speculation in the media". "It is important to understand that, as is often the case, things you read may very well not be true," he wrote. Plepler also wrote that HBO was working with an outside firm to provide free credit monitoring for its employees, suggesting that personal information of employees may have been part of the leak. --IANS sug/nn/sac (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Taking the liberty of staying connected with the world while teaching can prove costly for government school teachers in Haryana. The Education Department on Thursday announced that teachers won't be allowed to carry mobile phones to classrooms. Fresh guidelines issued by the Education Department could put teachers and school heads in the dock if they carry or use mobile phones in classrooms. Outlining the guidelines, an official spokesman said here that "henceforth no teacher shall take mobile phone to the classroom. "It shall be kept stashed away in the staff room or in an area earmarked by the head of school. The person the head of the school may like to make in charge of custody of cell phones may be head of school room, staff room, clerk or any other employee," the guideline said. If for some unavoidable reasons, a mobile phone was required to be taken to the classroom for academic use, prior permission should be taken from the head of school with reasons to be recorded in a register to be maintained for this purpose, the spokesman said. "To facilitate any emergency communication about teachers, it shall be ensured that the head of school makes available two contact numbers to all teachers. These two phone numbers for emergency call can be that of head of school, the second senior most in-charge of the school, or clerk or any other arrangement deemed fit by the head of school," say the guidelines. The use of mobile phone during non-class hours shall be confined to the area removed from the classes. The spokesman said any violation would lead to action against the head of school. The spokesman said the guidelines have been issued following complaints that many teachers take mobile phones to classrooms during teaching hours. "This amounts to misusing and diverting teaching hours to other purposes which are unproductive and do not in any way contribute to academic improvement of schools. This has to be checked," the official said. --IANS js/ahm/mr (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Acute shortage of water in India, particularly following the years there is low rainfall during the monsoon season, has started hurting its energy production badly. Electricity generation in the country is heavily dependent on coal-fired thermal plants and hydropower projects, which require consistent supply of large volumes of water to operate at optimal levels. Any disruption in water supply affects production and leads to power outages. For instance, related shutdowns in 2016 cost India roughly 14 terawatt-hours (TWh) of thermal electricity generation, enough to power neighbour Sri Lanka for an entire year, according to research by the World Resources Institute (WRI). The Washington-based research organisation compiled and analysed over 1,400 daily outage reports filed with the Central Electricity Authority between 2013 and 2016 to arrive at this conclusion. The loss of generation has significantly increased over the past three years from 1,258 million units in 2014-15 to 4,989 million units in 2015-16 and to 5,870 million units between April 2016 and January 2017, Energy Minister Piyush Goyal told Parliament in March. In 2016, as many as 18 thermal power plants had to lie idle for various lengths of time due to water shortages. If these plants had water supply during the shutdowns, they could have generated 14 TWh of electricity, about one per cent of the country's annual consumption, WRI's analysis showed. During the four years from 2013 through 2016, the thermal power sector lost more than 30 TWh of potential electricity due to water scarcity, Tianyi Luo, Research Associate at WRI's Water Programme, wrote in a recent report. It is worrying that most of the shutdowns happened between March and September, the hottest months in South Asia when demand for electricity is high not only for domestic and industrial use but also to irrigate farms during the main cropping season. "In other words, electricity generation was the most hampered when people needed it the most," Tianyi said. Although India is taking big steps to expand its renewable energy capacity, its power sector remains reliant mostly on thermal plants, which have a high water demand, mainly for washing coal and then for the boilers, from which the steam is funnelled to turn the power generation turbines. India depends on coal for about 60 per cent of its energy needs and aims to double its output to 1.5 billion tonnes by 2020, according to Niti Aayog, the government's policy think tank. It means that droughts, which last occurred in 2016, can lead to prolonged power outages, hamstringing the economy and endangering livelihoods. Climate change is likely to increase the frequency and intensity of droughts, and socio-economic development will intensify local water competition. "In the coming decades, we expect more water shortage-induced power shutdowns, unless steps are taken to reduce these risks," WRI said. To reduce water requirement in thermal power plants, there has been a move to install closed cycle systems in new plants instead of the once-through cooling systems, the Energy Ministry has said. Existing thermal power plants can also reduce water risk by adopting less water-dependent cooling technologies, such as dry cooling. Power plants are using other measures to conserve water such as installing ash water recirculation system, stopping discharge from ash pond effluents, adopting high and medium concentration ash slurry disposal systems, maintaining of high cycle of concentration in cooling towers and use of cooling tower blow down for disposal of bottom ash. These measures have helped bring down the total water requirement in a closed cycle system for a thermal power plant from seven cubic metres per MWh to about three cubic metres. But, considering the future water demand from upcoming thermal power plants and sectors like agriculture and domestic use, reducing water consumption in power plants will have only a short-term effect in improving overall water balance of the country, says a 2016 policy brief by The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI). Adopting a more comprehensive approach, thermal power plants must be asked to reduce the water footprints (rather than consumption) of their operations, said the brief titled Water Neutral Electricity Production in India: Avoiding the Unmanageable. To assess vulnerability of thermal power plants to water scarcity, there is need for detailed plant-level water withdrawal and consumption data, says WRI, which is working on a methodology by using satellite imagery to develop a water usage database for thermal power plants. As demand for energy grows and climate change impacts water availability and timing, this kind of analysis will become vital for all countries, Tianyi said. Indonesia on Thursday deported at least 143 Chinese and Taiwanese nationals on charges of cyber-fraud, an official said. The detainees were extradited to Tianjin, China, on Thursday morning, a spokesperson of the the Ministry of Justice and Human Rights told Efe news. On July 29, at least 306 people, including Taiwanese, Chinese, Indonesians and Malaysians, were arrested in Jakarta and other cities in Indonesia in connection to the alleged fraud. According to the police, the accused used computer experts to gather information on politicians and senior Chinese officials facing legal issues, then posed as law-enforcement officials and offered to help settle the cases in exchange for money. It is estimated that the criminal organisation operating in Indonesia conned people out of a total of 6 billion rupiah ($450 million). The extradition of Taiwanese citizens to the Chinese mainland by thirdparty countries has sparked diplomatic tensions between Beijing and Taipei in recent years, as the latter says the former does not have the jurisdiction to make an extradition request. --IANS ksk/vm (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Iraq's hardliner Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr on Thursday called Iraqi people to hold massive demonstrations across Iraq on Friday against wide spread corruption. "I wish the people are aware of what corrupt politicians are engaged with a dirty scheme to restore corruption which will not only control the people's food, but also their necks and blood. So that they would stage demonstration by millions to determine their fate," Sadr was q uoted by Xinhua. Sadr pointed out that the "sectarian storm", which engulfed the Iraqi people after the US-led invasion in 2003, made many Iraqis to close their eyes about what the politicians and the parliament blocs were doing. He said the politicians, who were seen as corrupts by many Iraqis, are planning to bring a new electoral commission and to approve an election law for the provincial elections that would take into account the interests of the same old large parliamentary blocs, according to the statement. Sadr demanded "a mass demonstration tomorrow (Friday) in Tahrir Square (In central Baghdad) and in the provinces. Demonstrations that will reveal the will of the people." Sadr's comments came two days after the parliament passed 21 articles of the draft of the coming provincial elections slated for 2018, including an article stating Saint-Lague system in counting the votes for the provincial councils' seats. Sadr and many political parties see the counting method is serving the interests of the large political parties. Sadr followers held many massive rallies in the past few years. In one occasion, the protesters broke into part of the Green Zone, including storming the parliament building. The popular protests forced Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi to make some reforms, which were aimed at confronting the country's economic crisis due to the sharp decrease in oil prices in global markets at the time that the security forces were in full-combat with Islamic State terrorist group in the country. However, Abadi's reforms, first gained popular support, but with the passing of time the reforms fell short to convince demonstrators who demanded that Abadi be more aggressive against the political parties that benefited from corruption and could reverse the reforms to their own good. --IANS ahm/ (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The Islamabad High Court has agreed to hear on Monday a petition calling for the names of ousted Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and his family members to be added to the Exit Control List (ECL). The petition, filed by lawyer Raees Abdulwahid on Thursday, asks that the names of Nawaz Sharif, his children, Hassan, Hussain and Maryam, son-in-law Mohammad Safdar, and former Finance Minister Ishaq Dar be barred from going abroad and their accounts frozen. The petition comes days after the Supreme Court, in a landmark ruling on the Panama Papers case, unseated Nawaz Sharif as Prime Minister. The July 28 judgement ruled that Sharif had been "dishonest" to the judiciary and Parliament. The apex court in its verdict had also ordered the National Accountability Bureau to open six cases against the Sharif family and others. In its Executive Board Meeting (EBM) on July 31, the NAB chairman also ordered 16 pending inquiries against Sharif and his brother, Shahbaz Sharif, to be completed. --IANS ahm/rn (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Finance Minister Arun Jaitley will visit the house of an RSS worker murdered by alleged CPI-M activists here when he visits Kerala on Sunday, a BJP leader said on Thursday. Jaitley will meet the family of 34-year-old E. Rajesh, who was hacked to death on Saturday night by Communist Party of India-Marxist workers, the Bharatiya Janata Party leader told IANS. "He will also visit the homes of BJP councillors whose homes came under attack from CPI-M cadres," said the BJP leader who did not wish to be identified. Police have arrested 10 people involved in the murder of Rajesh, an RSS 'Karyavahak'. --IANS sg/mr (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Japanese Prime Minister on Thursday reshuffled his cabinet and the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) executive line-up in a bid to restore the public's faith in the scandal-hit government. Taro Kono, former minister in charge of administrative reform, took over the Foreign Minister's portfolio from Fumio Kishida, reports Xinhua news agency. Kishida, widely believed to be a front-runner to take charge of the ruling party in the future, will henceforth chair the party's Policy Research Council. Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga retained his position as well as and Finance Minister Taro Aso. Following the abrupt resignation of Defence Minister Tomomi Inada over concealing a coverup scandal, House of Representatives member Itsunori Onodera, has been handed the portfolio in a repeat of the role he held between 2012 and 2014. The new cabinet comprises 13 members who have either served in the former cabinet or had previous experience in ministerial positions, and sees six new faces, with the revamped lineup aimed at restoring public trust. The reshuffle comes at a time when public approval ratings have sunk to their lowest since Abe retook office in 2012. The LDP leadership and the cabinet had sparked widespread public mistrust according to a number of media polls, partly due to an influencing-peddling scandal alleging the prime minister used his position to ensure the construction of new veterinary school to be run by his friend in a special deregulated zone. The reshuffle follows the resignation of the outgoing cabinet following a cabinet meeting held in Prime Minister's Official Residence earlier Friday. The new cabinet will be formally inaugurated at a ceremony at the Imperial Palace later in the day. Israel's leading defence company Rafael along with India's Kalyani Strategic Systems will manufacture Spike, the anti-tank guided missile (ATGM), at their state-of-the-art facility which was inaugurated here on Thursday. Kalyani Rafael Advanced Systems (KRAS), a joint venture between Kalyani Strategic Systems Ltd and Rafael Advanced Defence Systems will develop the new generation missiles. The facility, the first in the private sector to manufacture missiles, plans to start production in a few weeks. Baba N. Kalyani, chairman, Kalyani Group, told reporters that they were waiting for orders from the Indian Army, which he expects to be in thousands. Rafael, which was chosen as the partner for supply of the missiles to the Indian Army, is waiting for final approval to start production. "The order is somewhere closer to a billion dollars over a couple of years," said Kalyani. He said they so far invested Rs 60 crore to Rs 70 crore and would be adding a similar additional amount, once orders start coming in. Rafael President and CEO Yoav Har-Even said the total investment in the joint venture would be $70 million, covering various products. Termed as the largest yet FDI in defence, Kalyani holds 51 per cent in the JV while Rafael holds 49 per cent. The 24,000 square feet facility which has come up in record time of 10 months in Hardware Tech-Park on Srisailam highway will provide direct employment to 500 people and indirect employment through vendors and suppliers to 2,000 to 3,000 people. Kalyani said once they stabilise, they will look for exporting the missiles to the countries in Southeast Asia, subject to approval from the government of India. Telangana's Minister for Industries K.T. Rama Rao and Israel's Ambassador to India Daniel Cameron were present at the inauguration of the facility, which deals only with the manufacturing of missiles. Yoav said they also plan to produce air-to-surface missiles. He said the production of weapons systems will be at the request of the Indian armed forces. Rafael will transfer the technology for missile manufacturing but its CEO said it would be Indian Spike missile from Indian missile house with over 90 per cent localisation. Kalyani said it was "not a screwdriver assembly but a real manufacturing facility". The company has developed sub-contractors and supply system in and around Hyderabad. "We are hoping that we will have more business because we are looking at other products like glider bombs attached to aircrafts and are used by the Air Force," said Kalyani. He said the 250-pound bomb could prove far more cost-effective and cause more damage to enemy installation than a full-scale air-to-ground missile. The JV plans to have phase two of the project at another industrial location in Hyderabad. Kalyani described KRAS as India's first private sector missile sub-systems manufacturing facility. They chose Hyderabad as it is the epicentre of an eco-systems which deals with missiles and it is easy to get skilled people and suppliers here. Kalyani Group, the $2.5 billion conglomerate, is looking at four verticals in defence. Its JV with Rafael covers air defence and missiles. Kalyani said by manufacturing in India, they were looking beyond offset obligation to export the products to other countries. --IANS ms/in/vt (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) City-based businessman and BJP leader Shishir Bajoria, who was questioned by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) over Panama Papers leak investigation, on Thursday claimed that his overseas investments were through normal banking channel. "The Enforcement Directorate questioned me on Wednesday regarding my overseas investments and holding. They had asked me to submit all the documents and accordingly, I have given all the details that I have. During the interrogation, they asked me how did I make investments there. I explained to them," Bajoria told IANS. "All my overseas investments are through the normal banking channels under RBI rules and permission," he said. Bajoria explained that his family holds shares in IFGL Refractories Ltd, which is a subsidiary of IFGL Worldwide Holdings Ltd, a company based out of Isle of Man. IFGL Worldwide also has a subsidiary IFGL Monocon Holdings where members of the Bajoria family figure as directors. Bajoria who had also faced an Income Tax probe this year claimed that he made some investments routed to overseas destinations under Liberalised Remittance Scheme (LRS). He said that calling him for an investigation proved that in the present central government rule, all were "at par irrespective of one's party affiliations". --IANS bdc/nir (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Four men who forced a cigarette vendor to open his shop here at gunpoint were arrested after one of them opened fire at policemen, who fired gunshots in the air and overpowered them, officials said on Thursday. Two others escaped. Police said the incident took place around 11 p.m. on Wednesday in Connaught Place when six persons thrashed the vendor and told him to reopen his shop to sell them cigarettes. The four who were arrested were identified as Aman Bhatia, Puneet, Sahil and Kamal, Deputy Commissioner of Police B.K. Singh told IANS. Bhatia, who was released from jail a month ago after serving a sentence for murder, fired at the police when they intervened. But the bullet did not hit anyone. "The police then fired in the air and all the four criminals were arrested. One of them, Sahil, was also thrashed by a crowd," Singh said. He said a police team was checking vehicles on Sardar Bhagat Singh Marg when they were told that five or six persons were beating a shopkeeper. "A pistol was recovered from Bhatia," the officer added. All the accused, between 25 and 30 years, are residents of Uttam Nagar in west Delhi. A hunt has been launched for the two men who fled, the officer added. --IANS sp/him/mr (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Nearly two dozen armed Maoists attacked a railway station in Bihar's Jamui district and abducted a railway employee, officials said on Thursday. The man was later freed. A police official said the Maoists surrounded the Bhulai station near Jamui on Wednesday night and seized Muni Mandal, a gateman at a railway crossing. "He was freed within an hour after being taken hostage by Maoists," a police officer said. In New Delhi, Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) Deputy Inspector General M. Dinakaran told IANS that around 30-35 Maoists under the command of Parvesh mounted the attack. The officer said five teams of CRPF's CoBRA Battalion managed to free the railway employee after a gun battle with the Maoists in a joint operation with the police. The Maoists damaged a mobile tower in Manpur village before escaping. The attack disrupted railway services for six to seven hours on the busy Patna-Howrah section. The CRPF officer said a thorough search of the railway tracks was carried out before rail services were restored around 7 a.m. on Thursday. Jamui Superintendent of Police Jayant Kant said combing operations against the Maoists began early on Thursday in the nearby forested areas. Thursday was the last day of a "Martyrs Week" which began on July 28. It was on July 28, 1972 that Charu Mazumdar, who ignited the Maoist movement in India, died in a Kolkata prison. --IANS ik-rak/mr (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Over three dozen armed Maoists attacked a railway station in Bihar's Jamui district early on Thursday and kidnapped a cabin man, a CRPF officer said. The attack occurred at the Jatinder Halt station on the night of August 2-3. "Around 30-35 Maoists under the command of Parvesh mounted the attack. They kidnapped the cabin man," Central Reserve Police Force Deputy Inspector General M. Dinakaran told IANS here. --IANS rak/in/mr (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti joined the Army on Thursday in paying tributes to two soldiers, including a Major, killed in a militant attack in south Kashmir's Shopian district. Defence Ministry spokesman Colonel Rajesh Kalia said that the Chief Minister along with Deputy Chief Minister Nirmal Singh, Chinar Corps Commander Lieutenant General J.S. Sandhu and officials from the civil administration and other security forces operating in the Valley, paid rich tributes to Major Kamlesh Pandey and Sepoy Tanzin Chhultim at a solemn ceremony in Badami Bagh cantonment in Srinagar. Kalia said "The spirited and daring officer, Major Kamlesh Pandey, joined the Army in June 2012 and hailed from Almora, Uttarakhand. He is survived by his wife and a two-year-old daughter. "The 25-year-old martyr Sepoy Tanzin Chhultim of Lahaul Spiti, Himachal Pradesh, had joined the Army in September 2012. He is proudly remembered by his comrades as a highly professional soldier and a true patriot. He is survived by his parents." He said the bodies of the two soldiers will be taken to their native places for the last rites with full military honours. "The Army stands in solidarity with the bereaved families and remains committed to their dignity and well being," Kalia said. --IANS sq/rn (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) To empower people with disabilities to operate an on-screen mouse and keyboard, Microsoft has announced beta version of 'Eye Control' feature for Windows 10 that can be accessed by using eye movements. According to a blog post by Dona Sarkar, Software Engineer at Microsoft, the 'Eye Control' feature requires a compatible eye tracker, like the 'Tobii Eye Tracker 4C', which can unlock access to the Windows operating system. Once 'Eye Control' is turned on, a launchpad appears on the screen that allows a user to access the mouse, keyboard, text-to-speech and to reposition the User Interface (UI) to the opposite side of the screen. "To interact with the UI for 'Eye Control', simply look at the UI with your eyes until the button activates. A visual affordance will appear around the UI that you are looking at," Sarkar said. Users can control the mouse by simply selecting the mouse from the launchpad, position their eyes on the screen where they want the cursor to be placed. Users can select the keyboard from the launchpad and dwell at the characters they want to type. However, the new tool faces challenges in direct sunlight and, therefore, the company said the device might require new calibration when moving to a location with different lighting conditions. Also, the launchpad partially blocks the 'Tobii UI' during device calibration. "To work around this, turn off Eye Control during calibration and turn it back on when you are done," Sarkar noted. The 'Eye Control' feature currently supports only selected eye trackers of 'Tobii' hardware. --IANS qd/na/vm (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Muslim clerics in Uttar Pradesh on Thursday termed as "unfair" the state government's decision to make registration of all marriages mandatory. Clerics from the Darul Uloom Deoband Islamic school came out out strongly against the move, saying it was "completely unwarranted and unnecessary". Mufti Abul Qasim Naumani said while he was not against marriage registration per se, making it mandatory was against religious freedom. Another cleric, Maulana Ahmad Khijar Shah Masoodi, said it was unfair to deprive people of government benefits if they did not register their marriage. Clerics in Lucknow said the uneducated and poorer sections among Muslims may find it difficult to go through the registration process. According to Imam Ali Asgar, it was unfortunate that such orders were being given although they were a clear violation of one's religious rights. "Nikaah" itself is a marriage registration, he added. At a cabinet meeting on Tuesday, the state government ratified a proposal making marriage registrations compulsory for all. The former Samajwadi Party government also tried to pass a similar proposal but backtracked following stiff opposition. --IANS md/ksk/mr (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) North Korea on Thursday slammed the US for escalating military threat, the state-run KCNA news agency said. The US and South Korean military officials "openly stated that it will concentrate its latest strategic assets on the vicinity of the Korean peninsula in an explicit manifestation of its intention to carry out an armed attack on North Korea", KCNA quoted a Foreign Ministry spokesman as saying. He added that the military threats included the US dispatching two of its B-1B strategic bombers into the air above the Korean peninsula to conduct aerial bombardment drills for 10 hours as well as waging a drill simulating the interception of North Korea's ballistic missile and the deployment of additional THAAD launchers in South Korea, reports Xinhua news agency. The July 28 launch of the intercontinental ballistic missile Hwasong-14 by North Korea "was meant to send a stern warning to the US", the spokesman said, adding "Unfortunately, the US still thinks that its military bluff would work." Any form of military threat or blackmail by the US can never scare North Korea and on the contrary, it will only redouble the resolve of the Korean army and people to annihilate the enemy," he added. --IANS ksk/vm (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) A delegation of village chieftains from Nagaland met Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday and expressed hope that he will take the Naga peace process to a logical conclusion. An official release said the 15-member delegation from Nagaland Gaon Burahs (village chieftains) Federation called on the Prime Minister and expressed wholehearted support for the Naga peace process. "They also expressed the hope that the Prime Minister will take this process to its logical conclusion, and said that all civil society organisations and tribes have stated their desire for peace," the release added. Modi said he was happy to receive the delegation and to note that they came with a message of peace. The Nagaland GB Federation is a body of Gaon Burahs of all the Naga villages. --IANS ps/tsb/vt (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The Goa government does not plan to allow Ola other cab aggregators to operate in the state, Transport Minister Sudin Dhavalikar said on Thursday. Dhavalikar said this in a written reply in the assembly to a question from Nationalist Congress Party member Churchill Alemao. Several ruling BJP leaders, including Nilesh Cabral, have been demanding introduction of Ola and Uber like taxi services in the state, accusing a section of taxi drivers in the state of ruining Goa's reputation as a tourism destination by overcharging and unruly behaviour. Goa saw more than million tourists in the 2016-17 tourism season. --IANS maya/him/mr (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Naga People's Front (NPF) supremo and former Chief Minister Shurhozelie Liezietsu on Thursday won the assembly by-election from the Northern Angami-I constituency. Liezietsu, whose Democratic Alliance of Nagaland-led government was dismissed on July 19 after failing to prove his majority in the assembly, defeated his rival Independent candidate Kekhrielhoulie Yhome by 3,470 votes. The 80-year-old regionalist leader secured 8,038 votes and Yhome garnered 4,568 votes in the election held on July 29, Chief Electoral Officer Abhijit Sinha told IANS. "I am thankful to the voters who continued to support me," Liezietsu, who is now elected to Nagaland assembly, told IANS. The by-election was necessitated following the resignation of sitting NPF legislator Khriehu Liezietsu on May 24 enabling his father Shurhozelie Liezietsu to contest and enter the assembly. On February 22, Shurhozelie was forced to come out of retirement from electoral to take over as Chief Minister after T.R. Zeliang resigned following violent protest by tribal groups who were opposed to his move to hold civic polls with 33 per cent reservation for women. The NPF is facing a severe internal crisis, especially after Zeliang was sworn in as Chief Minister for the second time on July 19. Zeliang is supported by 36 NPF legislators, four Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) legislators and seven Independent members. The Shurhozelie Liezietsu-headed NPF has expelled 20 of its legislators and suspended 10 others, who were involved in toppling his government and for violating the party's constitution. Zeliang was the first to be expelled from the NPF for six years after taking oath as Chief Minister. On Tuesday, the Shurhozelie Liezietsu faction also suspended its lone Lok Sabha member Neiphiu Rio from primary membership of the party "for being directly involved in splitting the NPF legislators for furtherance of his hidden agenda". The action against Rio, a former Chief Minister, came after the NPF's legislature party led by Chief Minister Zeliang appointed him as the interim party president. This is the second time that Rio has been suspended from NPF. --IANS rrk/ksk/vm (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.) The Odisha government on Thursday requested the Centre open banks in the unbanked gram panchayats of Left Wing Extremism (LWE) affected areas in the state. The state government raised the demand while discussing on security and development related issues in the Maoists affected areas with Union Cabinet Secretary Pradeep Kumar Sinha through a video conferencing from New Delhi. Chief Secretary A.P. Padhi informed that in the absence of any bank in about 85 per cent gram panchayats of LWE affected districts, it becomes very difficult to carry forward the schemes aimed at financial inclusion. The issues relating to electrification of villages, establishment of solar parks, school education, literacy, skill development, promotion of entrepreneurship, financial inclusion, railway projects, tele connectivity, rural development and security matters were reviewed in the meeting. Focusing on the need for data connectivity in these areas, the Chief Secretary urged the Ministry of Telecommunication to upgrade the existing towers to 3G level. Padhi further requested the Cabinet Secretary for release of central grant of Rs 280 crore under security related expenditure the accounts of which was already audited and approved. He also requested for allocation of more funds to the state under solar water pump scheme and solar lantern as these schemes have been very successful and popular among people in LWE areas. Further, the chief secretary requested for starting the construction work of Jeypore-Malkangiri Railway Line (130 Kms). Padhi highlighted the need for the project for a backward and large district like Malkangiri. Notably, the Odisha government signed a MoU with Ministry of Railways in October last year for construction of the project under joint collaboration. As per the MoU, Odisha was to share 25 per cent of the construction as well as land cost for the project. But East Coast Railways, instead of starting the project work asked for more financial assistance from the state government in June this year. The state government communicated its inability for further contribution, said sources. Informing that a total number of 21 girls hostels were sanctioned for Koraput and Maakangiri district, the Chief Secretary said out of this 9 hostels are in finishing stage and the work of balance 12 hotels were in progress. Padhi apprised the Cabinet Secretary that only 50 per cent of the central grant has been received so far. He requested for early release of funds for completion of projects. Cabinet Secretary was also apprised about the 222 residential schools with a total borders of 83,981 being run by ST and SC development department in the districts of Koraput and Malkangiri. --IANS cd/ahm/vm (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz on Thursday decided upon members of the incoming cabinet under incumbent Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi, local media reported. The new federal cabinet is expected to consist of 46 ministers and state ministers, the sources said, Dawn reported. The cabinet is expected to take oath on Friday, reports said, naming a few of the appointments which have apparently been decided by the party: Khurram Dastagir: Defence Minister Ahsan Iqbal: Interior Minister Khawaja Asif: Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar: Finance Minister Saira Afzal Tarar: Health Minister Marriyum Aurangzeb: Information Minister Darshan Laal: Interprovincial Coordination Minister Balighur Rehman: Religious Affairs Minister Saad Rafique: Railways Minister Former interior minister Chaudhry Nisar has been left out of the Abbasi's cabinet. PML-N leaders Talal Chaudhry and Daniyal Aziz are expected to be appointed ministers of state, the sources said. The latest development comes hours after the PML-N's top brass held two back-to-back consultative meetings at Punjab Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif's Donga Gali residence. The party has been deliberating over membership of the new cabinet over the past few days, as well as its contender for the upcoming NA-120 by-poll for the seat left vacant by ousted Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif. --IANS ahm/nir (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Nearly 200 bystanders and roadside amenity providers were trained under a first aid trauma care programme by the International Road Federation (IRF) in association with AIIMS and the Ministry of Road, Transport and Highways, an official said on Thursday. The certification programme started from the 107-km-long National Highway-37 stretch of the Dibrugarh-Jorhat corridor in Assam. The All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) trauma centre, also known as Jai Prakash Narayan (JPN) Apex Trauma Centre, was the main training provider, an IRF statement said. On behalf of the Ministry of Road, Transport and Highways (MoRTH), the National Highway and Infrastructure Development Corporation (NHIDCL) participated in the programme. "About 200 persons including bystanders, roadside amenity providers like puncture shop owners, tea stalls, dhaba workers and petrol pump staff were trained and certified after stringent post-training evaluation done through case assignment, assessment/observation/ role play and viva voce," said K.K. Kapila, Chairman, IRF. The International Road Federation is a Geneva-based global body working for better and safer roads worldwide. According to Kapila, this was the first programme under the Enhanced First Aid initiative of IRF-JPN trauma centre of AIIMS. "The training imparted enhanced first aid and life-saving techniques, as a part of pre-hospital care, to bystanders and volunteers from roadside amenities to act as first responders and trauma care providers for road accident victims during the golden hour," said Kapila. The enhanced first aid training includes applying basic measures to clear victim's airway and control bleeding, clearing any obstructions and draining any fluid from victim's mouth, calling emergency services, performing first aid for the victim, safe handling and shifting techniques to avoid further injury to the victim till the emergency medical services reach the accident site. Skills such as to perform cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) through chest compressions, maintaining breathing, relieving choking at the accident site and dealing with different kinds of bleeding were also taught. In future, the organisations will be holding similar programmes in Tamil Nadu covering stretches recording a large number of road accidents. "The training will be organised in association with the Ministry of Health in the near future. The enhanced first aid training will also be undertaken in the states of Bihar and West Bengal," said Kapila. --IANS rup/amit/nir/sac (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) A group of protesters led by Naramada Bachao Andolan (NBA) on Thursday staged a demonstration at Jantar Mantar here against alleged forced eviction of people by the government in the wake of the Sardar Sarovar Dam gates on Narmada river being closed. Some project-affected people were also among the protesters, who blamed the government for evicting them without effecting proper rehabilitation work. Former legislator and farmer leader Sunilam said the central and Madhya Pradesh governments were using illegal and inhuman ways to evict the project-affected people from 192 villages in the Narmada Valley, which would be submerged once the dam gets operational. "There are over 40,000 families facing the threat of submergence. Instead of rehabilitating them properly, the government is trying to evict them forcefully and illegally. It wants these people to live in structures which are no better than shanties," Sunilam said. Kamala, one of the project-affected persons, said the government had deputed about 8,000-10,000 policemen in the area to "terrorise us". "We cannot leave our homes since the plots offered to us are on uneven land. They are also threatening us that we will lose Rs 80,000 compensation money as well if we do not leave our places immediately," she said. Another project-affected person, Kailash Avasya, alleged that the government had submitted false affidavits about rehabilitation to the Supreme Court. "No matter what the government does, we will not leave our places unless proper rehabilitation arrangement is in place," Kamala added. Anjali Bhardwaj of the National Campaign for the People's Right to Information, Annie Raja of the National Federation of Indian Women and Sandeep Pandey of the Socialist Party were among the protesters, who expressed their anguish over high-handed attitude of the Madhya Pradesh government and suppression of the protest in the Narmada valley. NBA leader Medha Patkar has been on indefinite fast in Chidhalda village of Dhar district of Madhya Pradesh for the last eight days, seeking proper rehabilitation of the project-affected people. --IANS spk/nir/vt (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Racist graffiti targeting Chinese students found in an Australian university has resulted in widespread outrage, a media report said on Thursday. The words "kill Chinese" were inscribed above a swastika in restrooms at the University of Sydney, the BBC. The varsity condemned the graffiti and said "any and all remnants" would be removed. "The University of Sydney is committed to ensuring that our community is a safe, inclusive and supportive one," it said in a statement on Thursday. "Any graffiti or posters placed around campus of a racist nature are immediately removed." A university spokesperson told Australia's SBS: "We do not know who is responsible, although the university's security people suggest that it appears to be the work of a lone individual." Poppy Wang, vice-president of the university's Chinese Students Association, told the BBC that the graffiti has made her feel less secure. Wang said she was disappointed the university had taken two days to remove the graffiti, which was found in the international students' lounge and the business school. "The university is not reacting fast enough." Last week, racist flyers directed at Chinese students were posted in University of Melbourne and Monash University. The flyers read: "Attention, entry into the campus of Chinese students should be strictly prohibited. If violated, you can be deported from the country." Both universities said the material was fabricated and unacceptable. The flyers have been reported to police. --IANS ksk/vm (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Saudi Arabia has slammed Iran for not allowing a Saudi diplomatic team to be a part of an investigation into attacks on the Gulf kingdom's embassy and consulate in Iran last year. A statement from the Saudi Arabian Embassy here on Thursday said that despite initial approval, Iran denied the Saudi team a role in probing the attacks on its embassy in Tehran and the consulate in the Iranian city of Mashhad in January last year. On January 2, 2016, Saudi Arabia executed Shaykh Nimr al-Nimr, a prominent Shia cleric, and 46 others on terrorism offences. After the execution, protesters stormed the Saudi embassy in Tehran and the consulate in Mashhad. Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and President Hassan Rouhani later condemned the attacks. "Iran's refusal to allow the presence of a diplomatic team in the investigations confirms that it is neither serious about conducting fair and transparent inquiries nor about pursuing the real culprits behind the attacks," the Saudi statement said. --IANS ab/mr/ksk (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Market regulator Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) on Thursday approved the launch of 85 additional derivatives in stock exchanges of Gujarat International Finance Tec-City International Financial Service Centre (GIFT City IFSC). SEBI elaborated that approval has been granted to BSE's India INX (International Exchange) and NSE IFSC at the GIFT City IFSC to launch derivatives on additional 33 and 52 Indian stocks, respectively. "SEBI had already operationalised two stock exchanges... and advised that all categories of exchange-traded products as available for trading in stock exchanges in FATF/IOSCO (Financial Action Task Force/ International Organisation of Securities Commissions) compliant jurisdictions shall be eligible for trading subject to prior approval of Sebi," the regulator said. The approval now allows India INX and NSE IFSC to offer trade in a well-diversified range of products spanning various asset classes which include Indian index derivatives, derivatives on Indian stocks, derivatives on foreign stocks, currency derivatives and commodity futures on gold, silver and base metals. According to Vikram Limaye, Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of the NSE, additional derivatives will encourage greater participation from foreign investors. "This will enhance the offering of NSE IFSC for India based products and encourage much greater participation from foreign investors to give GIFT city a competitive edge among international IFSC's," Limaye said. On its part, BSE's India INX said that 54 single stock derivatives will be offered for trade on its platform from Friday. "Starting August 4, 2017, a total of 54 single stock derivatives will be traded on BSE's India INX, clocking a market capitalisation of Rs 72,34,061.09 crore, which amounts to 55 per cent of Rs 1,31,77,196.54 crore on BSE," the stock exchange major said in a statement. The Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of India INX V. Balasubramaniam said: "We have sought more product approvals from the regulator and are looking forward to creating a robust ecosystem for our clients." --IANS ppg-rv/vt (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) BJP President Amit Shah on Thursday squarely blamed the Congress for the non-passage in the Rajya Sabha of a bill that sought to give constitutional status to the National Commission for Backward Classes. He accused the Congress of harbouring an "anti-OBC mindset" and said the bill was not passed due to the Congress opposition. "The BJP government, led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, is committed to the welfare of the backward classes and held out an assurance that a bill on according constitutional status to the OBC Commission will be passed in Parliament at any cost," Shah told the media in this Haryana town, 70 km from Delhi. "Since 1955, people belonging to the OBCs have been demanding constitutional recognition to the commission but due to the anti-OBC mindset of the Congress, the bill could not be passed in the Rajya Sabha." He said the Congress created hurdles in its passage. "The bill had been passed by the Lok Sabha but the Congress forced certain amendments in the bill, as a result of which it could not be passed in the upper house. If incorporated, these amendments would defeat the very purpose of the bill," he added. Shah said the Congress remained adamant on amendments as it did not want the bill to be passed. "Welfare of the people cannot be ensured merely by making tall claims. The Congress should work for the poor's interests by rising above party politics," he added. --IANS js/tsb/vt (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The Film Employees Federation of South India (FEFSI) on Thursday called off its strike over revising the daily wages of its members. "We end our strike. At the behest of several producers who were severely affected by the strike, we decided to end it. All the members of FEFSI will resume work and join shooting from tomorrow (Friday)," FEFSI President R.K. Selvamani told IANS. On Tuesday, the FEFSI began a strike as their request for revision of daily wages was turned down by Tamil Nadu Film Producers Council (TFPC). The strike has come as a big blow for over 20 Tamil films that are currently on floors. FEFSI, which comprises 24 unions of various crafts of the film industry and has over 25,000 members, and TFPC are at loggerheads after FEFSI had an altercation with producer-actor R.K. Suresh on the sets of his Tamil film "Billa Pandi". On Wednesday, superstar Rajinikanth urged FEFSI to call off the strike. "Whatever the problem is, if we discuss an issue without standing on pride, there can be a solution. As a senior artiste, I humbly request Producers Council and FEFSI to sit together and resolve the issue at the earliest," Rajinikanth said in a statement. --IANS hp/nn/vt (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Delhi Police on Thursday told a court that it was examining students and teachers to identify who allegedly raised anti-national slogans at Ramjas College in Delhi University. The police said the authenticity of a video footage provided by the complainant was not clear as it had been obtained from unknown social network and media websites and "apparently looks doctored". Police filed a nine-page Action Taken Report before Metropolitan Magistrate Abhilash Malhotra, who listed the matter for August 29 for further hearing. The court was hearing a criminal complaint of advocate Vivek Garg, who alleged that "massive anti-national slogans" were raised by members of the All India Students Association (AISA) and the Students Federation of India (SFI) at a Ramjas College event in March this year. On February 21 and 22, members of the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP), the students wing of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), and activists of the Left-leaning AISA clashed at the college campus. Police said they had asked the college principal to provide the CCTV footage or any video recording of the incident. Regarding the visuals provided by the complainant, the police said: "There is no authentic source of the media content and it appears that it has been made from antecedent events such as previous speeches of Umar Khalid." The police told the court it was analysing the footage. It said four police officers who were on duty at the college have already been suspended and departmental action was contemplated against them. --IANS akk/mr (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) JD-U leader Sharad Yadav on Thursday praised External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj saying while she was "a very capable minister" her service is "not being utilised properly". He also spoke about former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi and praised her for her "tactful foreign policy", which he said "is missing now". "I think we have a very capable External Affairs Minister, but I think her service is not being utilised properly," Yadav said, referring to Prime Minister Narendra Modi being talked of as virtually running the country's foreign policy. "I only want to urge Sushma Swaraj, the entire country is with you," he said during a discussion in Rajya Sabha on foreign policy. He said that India's relations with its neighbours "has worsened". On the Doklam crisis, he said: "The statements which come from China these days are very painful. Unless the people of our country are economically strengthened, only then will the security forces be strengthened." "We have not been able to strengthen the people of our country in 70 years. I am not blaming just one government. We have the highest number of poor people in our country, highest percentage of illiteracy. The most hardworking people in our country are economically very weak," he added. Praising Indira Gandhi, Yadav said: "I was in jail during Indira Gandhi's time. But I can tell you that she used her tact in taking control of Sikkim, but nobody got a whiff. This is also true that Russia always stood by us, the US was also there. But today the situation is different." "If the people are not economically strong, how do you expect the economic condition to be strong," Yadav said. "You say the forces should be strengthened, if there is no money how will you do it, and on top of it there is corruption in defence dealings," he added. Yadav said: "When I hear statements from China, it evokes anger. Had we been strong enough, this would not have happened. I am again saying we should strengthen ourself. This country became weak because of the Partition." --IANS sid/rn (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj on Thursday hit out at Congress Vice President for meeting Chinese Ambassador Luo Zhaohui here last month, amid the Doklam border standoff instead of trying to understand the situation from the Indian government. "I was very saddened that the opposition, instead of considering the point of view of the Indian government, went and met the Chinese Ambassador," said Sushma Swaraj, replying to a discussion in the Rajya Sabha on foreign policy. "They did not try to understand the situation (the border standoff) from the Indian government, instead approached the Chinese counterpart to get their point of view," she added. The Chinese Embassy in New Delhi had posted on its website about the July 8 meeting between Gandhi and Luo, but later withdrew it. The embassy had said in its WeChat account: "On July 8, Ambassador Luo Zhaohui met with Rahul Gandhi, vice-president of the Congress party. The two sides exchanged views on the current China-India relations and other business. Counsellor Zhou Yuyun attended the meeting." Gandhi had defended his meeting with Ambassador Luo, saying it was his job to be informed of critical issues. He had also met the Bhutanese envoy and former Security Adviser Shivshankar Menon, among other officials. Swaraj also took a dig at Congress MP Rajiv Shukla, who had said: "Why India did not take part in the One Belt, One Road (OBOR) meeting and also referred to China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC)." "Why did the Congress allow him to say this. How did this crop up in his mind? It is a matter of India's territorial integrity and sovereignty as POK is an integral part of India," Swaraj said. The Leader of Opposition Ghulam Nabi Azad stood up said that Shukla's remarks were his individual views. External Affairs Minister on Thursday said that India's roadmap vis-a-vis Pakistan is clear, that terror and talks cannot go together. The Minister blamed Pakistan for derailing the bilateral dialogue by continuing its support to terrorism and meddling in Kashmir. Replying to a discussion on India's foreign policy in the Rajya Sabha, said: "If you speak of the roadmap, we had prepared a roadmap. It was that of peace, friendship and Pakistan's stability. But roadmap cannot be implemented by one side alone." "Terror and talks cannot go together. This is the roadmap. The day when they stop terror, talks will start," she said. said that relations with Pakistan deteriorated not after the Pathankot air base attack in 2016, but after then Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif called militant commander Burhan Wani a freedom fighter and a martyr after he was killed in a shootout with Indian security forces last June. "Even after Pathankot things did not deteriorate. It was for the first time they did not go into denial like they used to do, and said they will cooperate in the probe," she said. "Things deteriorated only after Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif called Burhan Wani a freedom fighter and a martyr," she said. Defending Prime Minister Narendra Modi's decision to land in Lahore on way back from Kabul on December 25, 2015, Sushma Swaraj said it was part of a peace initiative India had started. "Our Prime Minister going to Lahore on way from Kabul was part of this initiative. Everything is in public domain. It was Nawaz Sharif's birthday on December 25. Modi wished him, and he asked Modi to come to make a stopover in Pakistan. Without caring for protocol the Prime Minister went there. "You cannot say that we did not extend the hand of friendship with Pakistan," she added. She recalled that when she went to Islamabad for the Heart of Asia conference on December 9, 2015, Nawaz Sharif sat with her and asked Sartaj Aziz to start a dialogue process on the way she had proposed. "In that bilateral meeting it was decided that Secretary level talks will happen. We gave it the name of Comprehensive Bilateral Dialogue so that no doubts should remain. It was decided then that Foreign Secretaries should thrash out the modalities," Sushma Swaraj said. Instead of looking at how to increase market share, Motorola's emphasis is on tapping the consumer mindset in India, a top Motorola executive has said. "The Indian market is very competitive when it comes to smartphones, a company needs to understand what customers actually want. If you deliver what consumers want, the market share is then just numbers," Sudhin Mathur, Managing Director, Motorola Mobility India, told IANS here. With the competition among the top smartphone manufacturers shifting to the retail market, Motorola on Thursday opened six "Moto Hubs" in Delhi-NCR and Mumbai. The first Moto Hub stores were officially opened at Great India Place and Logix Mall in Noida, Shipra Mall in Indirapuram and Xperia Mall, Korum Mall and Viviana Mall in Mumbai. "Motorola re-started its journey in India four years ago and the market has moved from 15-20 million units a year to 100 million devices a year. Every year, the dynamics are changing. Today we have reached a stage where consumers need to experience the product," Mathur added. The company plans to open 50 more Moto Hubs by the end of this financial year. "With this strategy, our intention is to be present in more cities and only in top tier towns," Mathur told IANS. "We believe with the launch of this new retail channel Moto Hub, we are giving the customers an opportunity to get access to the complete Motorola portfolio, our technology and devices, in an environment that is more open," Mathur told reporters. When asked about what impact the Good and Services Tax (GST) has on Motorola India, Mathur said July was a historic month for the company. "For us, Diwali came earlier. Taxations don't decide purchasing trends. Consumers buy because they need a device. Their will be no difference of prices online and at Moto Hubs," the executive noted. Moto Hub stores will be a key destination for consumers to experience the latest Motorola technology and get a hands-on demo of the entire product portfolio. These stores will house devices that are available exclusively online and will also showcase the complete portfolio of Motorola devices. --IANS sku/na/sac (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Tata Chemicals on Thursday said it has cancelled the transaction related to acquisition of Unnati Inorganics Private Ltd's precipitated silica operation due to "non-fulfilment of certain conditions". The company, in May, had said that it signed a business transfer agreement with Unnati Inorganics located at Dahej in Gujarat, to acquire their undertaking of precipitated silica operation on a slump sale basis for a consideration of Rs 34.20 crore. "In this regard, we wish to inform you that the company has cancelled the transaction in view of non-fulfilment of certain condition precedents set out in the agreement," Tata Chemicals said in a regulatory filing. The cancelled acquisition was part of the Rs 295-crore investment approved by the Tata Chemicals board earlier in February 2017 for this business. "The above (cancellation of transaction) decision does not affect the execution of the project with an investment of Rs 295 crore for manufacturing of precipitated highly dispersible silica as approved the Board of Directors... which is on track," the company added. --IANS bdc/ahm/vt (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) A third de-escalation zone has been set up in Syria based on an agreement reached last month, Russia's Defence Ministry announced on Thursday. "Under the agreement, from 12 p.m. onwards, detachments from the moderate opposition and government troops completely stopped fire from all types of weapons," Defence Ministry spokesman Maj. Gen. Igor Konashenkov said. The new zone, set up north of the city of Homs, includes 84 settlements with a population of over 147,000 people, reports Xinhua news agency. "Starting on Friday, the Russian military police will deploy two border checkpoints and three observation posts in the sections along the contact line on the sides of the Homs de-escalation zone," Konashenkov said. The agreement does not apply to terrorist groups like the Islamic State (IS) and the Nusra Front, he added. Participants in the talks on a peaceful settlement in Syria, held in Astana, Kazakhstan, agreed in July to set up four de-escalation zones in Syria, in which all kinds of hostilities would halt, aiming to ease tensions in the war-torn country. One zone in southwestern Syria and the other in the Eastern Ghouta countryside of Damascus have already been established. --IANS ksk/vt (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) In a first of its kind in Bihar, a mob in Bhojpur district led by cow vigilantes on Thursday thrashed a truck drive and two others on suspicion of transporting beef, police said. They also tried to set on fire the vehicle which was on its way to Muzaffarpur district. But the police said they foiled the attempt. The incident occurred in Shahpur near Ara town when the mob stopped the truck on suspicion that it was carrying beef and caught the three. All three men were arrested after being rescued from the mob, a police official said. "They will be interrogated whether they were carrying beef or buffalo meat," the official said. The protesters blocked the Ara-Buxar road demanding that the three men be handed over to them. The police refused to do that. "The truck driver has confessed that they were carrying buffalo meat and not cow meat," the official said. --IANS ik/in/mr (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) In a blow to the clean image of the Maharashtra government, Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis on Thursday removed MSRDC chief Radheyshyam Mopalwar, an IAS officer alleged to have amassed Rs 800 crore in disproportionate assets, till a probe against him is completed. In another setback, the state Opposition parties produced a letter that the Prime Minister's Office has sought a report from the state Chief Secretary on allegations of disproportionate assets against the Maharashtra State Road Development Corporation (MSRDC) head. The PMO's communication followed a letter by ruling BJP legislator Anil Gote who complained of Mopalwar allegedly having amassed disproportionate assets of over Rs 800 crore, spelling embarrassment for the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party-Shiv Sena alliance. The 1995-batch IAS officer was in-charge of Fadnavis' pet showpiece projects, including the Rs 46,000-crore Mumbai-Nagpur Super Communication Expressway. The fast-paced developments came after the opposition Congress-Nationalist Congress Party pushed the ruling BJP-SS saffron combine into a corner on the alleged corrupt dealing of Mopalwar and demanded that the government take action. "Mopalwar will not continue in his post till the probe in the matter is over," Fadnavis informed both houses of the legislature, in what was construed as a major victory for the opposition. The climbdown came a day after the ruling BJP-SS legislators 'walked out' of the Legislative Council after the Mopalwar issue hotted up with an alleged clip surfacing in which the officer was allegedly heard fixing a deal. However, Fadnavis asserted that the allegations of corruption against Mopalwar pertained to his tenure during the previous Congress-NCP regime - which had appointed him to the post. "It was during your tenure that he was given plum posting," Fadnavis said, attempting to turn the tables on the opposition. He announced the probe against Mopalwar would be completed within a month. Not satisfied with the announcement, Leader of Opposition (Congress) Radhakrishna Vikhe-Patil clamoured for the suspension of Mopalwar and demanded that Housing Minister Prakash Mehta, whose name figures in some other scams, should be asked to resign or sacked from the cabinet. "Mehta is exposed. He made notings on files even without consulting the CM. He should resign or made to quit and Mopalwar should be suspended pending the probe," Vikhe-Patil demanded. Senior NCP leader Ajit Pawar wanted to know why there were different yardsticks, saying in the past (former) Revenue Minister Eknath Khadse was made to resign, but Mehta continues in office. However, Finance Minister Sudhir Mungantiwar intervened and said that Khadse had tendered his resignation (in June 2016). On the letter from the PMO asking for a report on the allegations against Mopalwar, NCP leader Jayant Patil said "it is shocking that the letter was written by a BJP MLA. "The PM promises a transparent administration. Why is the CM trying to save Mopalwar. You can make him (Mopalwar) the chief secretary, we have no problems, but remove him as the needle of suspicion points at him," Patil said. Interestingly, in the late 1990s, when Mopalwar headed the Stamps Department, his name had figured in the Rs 2000 crore fake stamp-papers scam masterminded by Abdul Karim Telgi (convicted for life), but the officer maintained that he was actually the 'whistle-blower' who exposed it. --IANS qn/rn (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The Garo Hills State Movement Committee (GHSMC) on Thursday submitted a memorandum to Prime Minister Narendra Modi demanding creation of Garoland, to be carve out of tribal Garo inhabited areas in Meghalaya and Assam. The GHSMC -- a conglomeration of several Garo organisations, including the Garo National Council (GNC), a regional political party -- said that their demand was on the linguistic lines of the States Reorganisations Act, 1956. "Constitution has given a fundamental right under Article 29 (1) that those having a distinct language, script or culture can preserve the same," the committee stated in the memorandum, which was also submitted to President Ram Nath Kovind and Home Minister Rajnath Singh, among others. Stating that Garo people were unanimously demanding creation Garoland state, contiguous to state of Assam and Khasi Hills for Garo people, the GSHMC said: "We demand Garoland state to include original lands inhabiting by Garo people in Assam and Khasi Hills presently under Meghalaya." Reminding the Prime Minister of promised "Acche Din" for "Aam Admi" under the driving theme of "Sabka Sath-Sabka Vikas", the Committee said that they confidently looked forward to see "Garoland" state under Modi's "able leadership". Meghalaya became an autonomous state in 1971 and a full-fledged state on January 21, 1972. The GNC, one of the oldest regional political parties, has been demanding creation of Garoland for over two decades. However, it does not have any representatives in the 60-member Meghalaya Assembly. However, it has three members in the Garo Hills Autonomous District Council. On March 18, 2014, the Meghalaya Assembly had rejected a resolution for the creation of a separate "Garoland" state in Garo Hills in the western part of the state. --IANS rrk/nir (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Two militants were killed on Saturday in a gunfight with the security forces in Jammu and Kashmir's Pulwama district, officials said. According to police, the security forces surrounded Hajin Payeen village after receiving information about the presence of militants there. "As the cordon was tightened, the militants who were hiding opened fire. That triggered an encounter in which two militants have been killed," an informed source said. Reports from the area mentioned that the slain militants belonged to Jaish-e-Muhammad (JeM) outfit. Searches are underway in the area. --IANS sq/pgh/ (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.) Police in Ghaziabad have arrested two sharpshooters from the Balraj Bhati gang who were involved in two murders in Uttar Pradesh. A police officer said Pawan and Sanjay, both residents of Bulandshahr, were caught following a tip off. They carried a reward of Rs 5,000 each on their head. They confessed that they had, along with Balraj Bhati, killed one Gulab in 2014. When they were on bail, they killed one of the witnesses, Sanjay Tyagi, in 2016. Pawan was found involved in four criminal cases and Sanjay in one criminal case in Bulandshahr. The police recovered two pistols of .315 bore and four live cartridges from their possession. "The work of our police team is commendable," Superintendent of Police Akash Tomar said. --IANS sps/mr (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) To keep a tab on Russia's alleged efforts to influence public opinion in the US, a US-based non-profit organisation has launched a new web tool that provides a near real-time look at Russian propaganda and disinformation efforts online. Named 'Hamilton 68 dashboard,' the tool has been launched by the Alliance for Securing Democracy, a bipartisan project backed by the German Marshall Fund of the US (GMF). The top of the page shows tweets from, what the Alliance calls, "official Russian propaganda outlets" in English and a short post discussing the themes of the day. In a blog post, Laura Rosenberger, Director of the Alliance, wrote on Wednesday that since the 2016 US Presidential elections, Russia's efforts to shape what Americans think has continued and the US citizens deserve to know what messages Russian disinformation networks are pushing. The Alliance said its objective was to provide this dashboard to help ordinary people, journalists, and other analysts identify Russian messaging themes and detect active disinformation or attack campaigns as soon as they begin. The analysis done by the Alliance revealed that the disinformation networks include bots and trolls that synchronise to promote Russian messaging themes, including attack campaigns and the spreading of disinformation. According to Rosenberger, some of these troll accounts are directly controlled by Russia, while are users who on their own initiative reliably repeat and amplify Russian themes. The network, the Alliance claimed, sometimes amplifies stories that Russia likes and tweets about stories and people that Russia seeks to discredit or attack. "Our analysis is based on linked 600 Twitter accounts to Russian influence activities online, and the lower section of the dashboard features charts that display topics, hashtags, and links currently promoted by this network," Rosenberger added. To identify these accounts, the Alliance said they first tracked disinformation campaigns that synchronised with "overt Russian propaganda outlets like Sputnik and Russia Today (RT). "Second, we identified a group of users online that openly professed to be pro-Russian and tweeted primarily in support of Russian government policies and themes. Third, we identified accounts that appear to use automation to boost the signal of other accounts linked to Russian influence operations," the blog post read. Rosenberger said that exposing these messages will make information consumers more resilient and reduce the effectiveness of Russia's attempts to influence Americans' thinking, and "deter this activity in the future by making it less effective". American firm Ocean Infinity, that specialises in seabed exploration, has offered to resume the search for MH370, the Malaysia Airlines flight that went missing in 2014 with 239 people on board. Mark Antelme, of Ocean Infinity, told EFE news on Thursday that the company will resume the search for free and will ask for a reward only if it manages to locate the wreckage. The Malaysia Airlines plane had disappeared from the radar on March 8, 2014, around 40 minutes after it took off from Kuala Lumpur. According to the official investigation, someone had switched off the communications system and changed the plane's route towards the Indian Ocean. In January, Malaysia, Australia and China had called off the unsuccessful search that was carried out over an area of 120,000 square km at an estimated cost of $135 million. In July, experts of the Australian agency, Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), narrowed down the area where the flight might have disappeared to a 25,000 square kilometre block of the Indian Ocean. The scientists traced the aircraft with the help of ocean drift modelling in the laboratory using the aircraft's possible course, the amount of fuel it was carrying, and a model of the marine currents of the region to determine that the plane may have crashed near the degree 35 south of the "seventh arc", an area in the Indian Ocean. Meanwhile, the Voice370 group, comprising family members of the missing passengers, said they were disappointed at the lack of official response to Ocean Infinity's offer. Ocean Infinity claims to have the world's most advanced fleet of autonomous underwater vehicles to survey the seabed and carry out mapping up to a depth of 6,000 metres. So far, MH370 debris have been recovered from the beaches of the French island of Reunion, Mozambique, Mauritius, South Africa and Pemba Island (Zanzibar). --IANS soni/sac (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) US President Donald Trump on Thursday said that Washington-Moscow ties are "at an all-time" and "very dangerous" low. "Our relationship with Russia is at an all-time & very dangerous low. You can thank Congress, the same people that can't even give us HCare!" Trump said on Twitter, a day after he signed into law the US sanctions bill targeting Russia. The bill restricts Trump's own ability to ease sanctions in place against Moscow. It aims to punish Russia for its alleged meddling in the 2016 US elections, its actions in Ukraine and the annexation of the Crimean peninsula in 2014. Moscow -- which denies it interfered in the US presidential election -- had already retaliated last week when Congress passed the bill, by expelling 755 persons from the US embassy and consulates in Russia. The legislation also imposes sanctions on Iran and North Korea. Russia's Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev reacted strongly to the bill's signing, saying it showed a "fully-fledged trade war (has been) declared against Russia" and that "the Trump administration demonstrated complete impotence, in the most humiliating manner, transferring executive powers to Congress". In a statement, Trump expressed his own doubts about the legislation: "The bill remains seriously flawed -- particularly because it encroaches on the executive branch's authority to negotiate." In a Facebook post on Wednesday, Medvedev said any hope of improved relations between Washington and the Kremlin have "ended," and added he thought Trump was an "incompetent player (who) must be eliminated". Medvedev predicted future relations between Russia and the US "will be extremely tense, regardless of the Congress line up or the personality of the President", and threatened to escalate the matter to international courts. --IANS soni/vt (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The US has declared a full-scale trade war against Russia with the enactment of a new sanctions bill, said Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev. "The hope of improving our relations with the new US administration has come to an end," said Medvedev on Facebook on Wednesday, commenting on the signing of the bill by US President Donald Trump, Xinhua news agency reported. The bill was approved overwhelmingly early this month by the US Congress despite the Trump administration calling on lawmakers to grant the White House "flexibility" in dealing with Russia. The Trump administration demonstrated "complete impotence, in the most humiliating manner, transferring executive powers to Congress", said Medvedev. "The US establishment completely outplayed Trump. The President is not happy with the new sanctions, but he can not refuse to sign the law," said the Russian prime minister. According to him, the interests of US businesses are almost ignored, and anti-Russian hysteria has become a key part of US foreign and domestic policy. The sanction regime is codified and will last for decades as the new law allows the Congress to limit the President's power to lift anti-Russian measures, said Medvedev. "Therefore, the relationship between Russia and the United States will be extremely tense, regardless of the composition of the Congress or the personality of the President," he said. Against such a backdrop, Russia will continue to work quietly on economic and social development, count primarily on itself and reduce reliance on imports from the West, he said. Also on Wednesday, the Russian Foreign Ministry regretted the enactment of the bill and blasted the new sanctions as "short-sighted and even dangerous". Nevertheless, the ministry said in a statement that Russia remains open to cooperation with the United States in various areas, including on the settlement of regional conflicts. "However, fruitful cooperation is possible only if US politicians overcome their own delusions and cease to perceive the world around them through a reality-distorting prism of 'American exclusiveness'," said the ministry. In retaliation for the new US sanctions, Russian President Vladimir Putin on Sunday announced a decision to reduce the US diplomatic staff in Russia by 755 people by September 1. "Naturally, we reserve the right to take additional countermeasures," said the Foreign Ministry statement. --IANS pgh/ (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Iranian authorities on Thursday said the US ratification of a new sanctions bill was an attempt to destroy the nuclear agreement signed between Tehran and six major global powers in July 2015. Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said the main objective of the US by imposing sanctions against Iran was to destroy the agreement, adding that Tehran will react intelligently to those measures, reports Efe news. US President Donald Trump on Wednesday signed the law imposing new sanctions on Iran for its weapons programme and its support for militant groups such as Hezbollah. The package, which was passed by an overwhelming majority in the US Congress, also included measures against Russia and North Korea. According to Araghchi, the move shows that the US fears that the nuclear deal gives power to Iran, and so for Washington the situation must be reversed and Iran must be pressured. The nuclear deal between Iran and six major powers -- the US, the UK, Russia, France, China and Germany -- limits Tehran's atomic programme in exchange for lifting international sanctions. The Iranian authorities have already filed a complaint this week about the new sanctions imposed by Washington before the joint commission overseeing the pact, which has consistently verified Tehran's compliance with its commitments. In addition, the Iranian committee charged with monitoring the implementation of the nuclear agreement has announced that it will give a strong response to the new US sanctions. The bill that the Iranian parliament is preparing will reinforce the ballistic missile programme and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the targets of US sanctions, Araghchi said. --IANS ksk/mr (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Venezuela's newly elected National Constituent Assembly (ANC), a legislative body created to rewrite the nation's constitution, will meet for the first time on Friday, President Nicolas Maduro announced. Maduro made the announcement on Wednesday night in a televised speech, reports CNN. "This constituent assembly is the hope of an entire country," he said. The President also named Jorge Arreaza, a former vice president, as Foreign minister. Samuel Moncada, who was foreign minister, will become Venezuela's representative of the Organisation of American States (OAS). All of ANC'S 545 members are supporters of the leftist leader. The ANC will replace the opposition-led National Assembly, and critics fear it will erode democracy and give rise to dictatorship. The opposition boycotted the violence-marred July 30 election, calling it fraudulent. Venezuela's National Electoral Council said more than 8 million people, about 41.53 per cent of registered voters, cast ballots, CNN reported. More than 350 members of the new assembly were elected in open municipal votes. The remaining members were elected by people from certain social and industry groups (like students, pensioners or workers). The opposition had won control of the National Assembly in 2015 elections, and held 112 of the body's 167 seats. Meanwhile, Luis Almagro, OAS Secretary General, on Wednesday night called for an emergency council meeting regarding "the aggravation of the crisis in Venezuela". Almagro cited "illegitimate electoral acts for the installation of a Constituent Assembly, as well as electoral fraud of more than one million votes"m arguing that Venezuela is infringing on two articles of the Inter-American Democratic Charter. The meeting is to take place over the weekend. --IANS ksk (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Venezuelan Attorney General Luisa Ortega Diaz has announced the opening of an investigation into the alleged manipulation of results from the July 30 Constituent Assembly election. "I have appointed two prosecutors to investigate the four directors of the National Electoral Council (CNE) for this very scandalous act," Ortega said in a CNN interview on Wednesday after the company responsible for the election's voting system reported that the voter turnout data was "tampered with". "We are also evaluating to go to organisations, once we are facing possible crimes against humanity," the prosecutor added. According to the CNE, a total of 8,089,320 people or 41.53 per cent of the electorate participated in the election, on a day marked by nationwide violent protests and the deaths of at least 10 people during riots. However Antonio Mugica, CEO of Smartmatic, the company that installed around 24,000 electronic voting machines in Venezuela, said on Wednesday that the official figures significantly overestimate the number of citizens who actually went to the polls, reports Efe news. "We estimate the difference between the actual participation and the one announced by authorities is at least one million votes," Mugica said. Ortega said authorities must take action to address the allegations, which she said represents "one more element of the fraudulent, illegal and unconstitutional process" of the Constituent Assembly. The head of the public ministry also requested a new audit with "national and experts, but without the CNE directors because they are the first suspects". Ortega has been one of the most critical voices of the Constituent Assembly election, branding it a "dictatorial ambition" of pro-government groups. She said the assembly should be "convened by the people" and not by President Nicolas Maduro. "I have to give this country security, because this Constituent Assembly has infinite powers," Ortega said, stressing that the assembly, due to be inaugurated on Friday, "will be a body with superpowers". The opposition refused to take part in the Constituent Assembly election, considering it to be "fraudulent". The election was held amid ongoing political and social upheaval in the country, where at least 121 people have been killed during anti-government protests that began on April 1. China on Thursday said India should withdraw its forces from Doklam if it truly "cherishes peace", and accused New Delhi of building roads, stocking supplies and deploying military along the border in the Sikkim sector. It also said India's demand that Beijing pull back its troops from Doklam is unreasonable and shows its lack of sincerity to resolve the standoff. Beijing said India kept "peace on the tip of its tongue", but its deeds reflect that New Delhi by no means wants peace. It said India's troops were building roads, hoarding supplies and deploying a large number of armed forces on the Indian side of the boundary. "This is by no means for peace," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Geng Shuang said. "The Indian side is always keeping 'peace' on the tip of its tongue. But we should not only listen to its words but also pay heed to its deeds," Geng said. "If the Indian side truly cherishes peace, what it should do is to immediately pull back the trespassing border troops to the Indian side of the boundary," he added. Geng said there were 48 Indian troops in Doklam until Wednesday. Doklam is disputed between China and Bhutan. India says the area belongs to Bhutan. The crisis began when Indian troops stopped the Chinese army from building a road there in June. On Wednesday, Beijing in a 15-page statement said the number of Indian troops in Doklam had reduced from 400 to 40 by the end of July. India has denied any reduction in the troops at Doklam where both sides have been engaged in stand-off since mid June. Geng said despite being intimated twice about road construction - on May 18 and June 8 - India did not respond. "China had notified the Indian side in advance out of goodwill through the border meeting mechanism on May 18 and June 8 respectively and the Indian side didn't make any response." Geng said on June 18 over 270 armed Indian border troops driving two bulldozers crossed the boundary in the Sikkim Sector at Doka La pass and advanced more than 100 meters into Chinese territory to obstruct the road building of the Chinese side. "As of August 2, there were still 48 Indian border troops and one bulldozer illegally staying in the Chinese territory," Geng said. He said Indian troops have been staying on Chinese territory for more than a month and asked New Delhi for an immediate pullback. Geng said instead of withdrawing troops from Doklam, New Delhi made unreasonable demands to China which demonstrated its lack of sincerity for resolving the incident. "This is by no means for peace," he added. China has repeatedly asked India to withdraw troops from Doklam. India says it is ready if Beijing does so too. "The fact that the Indian border troops illegally trespassed the boundary is irrefutable. Under such circumstances, instead of deeply reflecting on its mistakes, the Indian side fabricated such sheer fallacies as the so-called 'security concerns', the 'issue of tri-junction' and 'at the request of Bhutan' as excuses to justify its wrongdoing. This is by no means for peace." --IANS gsh/rn CPI-M General Secretary Sitaram Yechury on Thursday criticised the Centre's foreign policy in the neighbourhood region and appealed to the government not to "cement" any India-US-Israel axis as it was "not in the country's interests". "Good neighbourly relations should be the backdrop of our foreign policy... and for heaven's sake please don't cement any US-Israel-India axis as it's not in the country's interests," said the Member of Parliament during a debate on foreign policy in Rajya Sabha. He disapproved of India's signing of the Logistics Exchange Memorandum of Agreement (LEMOA) in 2016 and called it a "worrisome" document. "We know nothing of it (the content). This has not been placed before the Indian Parliament," he said. The Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) leader cited a few clauses from the document in order to show supremacy of US interests over India, and wondered whether there was a "greater surrender of sovereignty" than this. "We are now the junior ally (of US) and a subordinate partner in our own neighbourhood," he said. "This is the last nail in the coffin of our independent foreign policy," he added. One of the four 'foundational agreements' that the US enters into with its defence partners, the LEMOA provides for cashless refuelling, replenishment and related services to the militaries of the two countries. Continuing, Yechury warned the government of the perils of conducting join naval military exercise in the Bay of Bengal with the US and Japan, saying it carried "the danger of sending the wrong message" to countries in the region. "I agree 100 per cent with the government on its stand to resolve the crisis with China through talks... But what is the meaning of conducting 'Malabar exercises' in the Bay of Bengal?" he said. Joint military exercises are done when two countries perceive a common enemy, and who is that common enemy is known to them (the regional nations), said the CPI-M leader. He slammed the government on its stand on Israel and the decision of Prime Minister Narendra Modi of not visiting Palestine during his latest visit. "Our solidarity with the Palestinians goes before our independence ... Today you have virtually given up on the entire approach of India's standing in world affairs," he said. Criticising the government on its handling of Pakistan, he mentioned that "the incidences of soldiers dying" have also doubled since the cross-border 'surgical strikes' of last September. --IANS vn/rn (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Rain and humidity make for a perfect breeding ground for bacterial growth, leading to infection. Urinary Tract Infection (UTI), in particular, increases in incidence during this time and women, more than men, are prone to it. What's more trendy, figure-hugging jeans and other tight clothing further increases chances of UTI. Doctors say that one in five women suffer from UTI at least once in their lifetime. The risk prevails right from birth -- paediatricians often advise parents to look out for their baby girls from contacting UTI. "In women, the urethra is shorter than in men, and is closer to the anal opening. So they are more prone to infections," urologist Jaswant Patil said. Improper cleaning techniques and exposure in an unhygienic swimming pool can increase chances of infection, he added. Gynaecologist Priti Vyas said chances of UTI increase with advancing age. "More women than men suffer from UTI and the numbers do not neutralise with age. In fact, as women reach peri-menopausal and menopausal stage, their estrogen levels in the vagina dips, thereby making the urethra more prone to catching urinary tract infection," Vyas told this correspondent. Similarly, lower estrogen levels in the very young makes baby girls more susceptible to such infections. Clothes can also play a big role in making for a perfect breeding ground for infections. Gynaecologist Ranjana Das said that tight clothing that traps moisture increases chances of UTI. "We see a lot of young college-going girls complaining of UTI. Wearing tight-fitting jeans that go unwashed for days is a big culprit because it does not allow ventilation and makes a conducive environment for bacterial growth. Using unclean washrooms is another reason," the doctor said. Avoiding public washrooms may not be possible, especially while travelling or at work. Even so, a lot of people, especially women, hold their urine for a long time when faced with the prospect of using public loos. This, Vyas said, also leads to UTI. Hence many people are now opting to carry toilet seat sanitisers. Vikas Bagaria and his wife Srijana, co-founders of one such product, PeeSafe, said that they realised its need after Srijana was hospitalised with a high-grade fever and acute UTI while on a road-trip. "We had to cut-short the road-trip in Rajkot and fly back to Delhi where Srijana was hospitalised. It was then she thought of a product that would keep women safe while using public washrooms," Vikas said. They discussed the idea, and he finally came up with the product that is now exported to different countries like Australia, Nigeria, Kenya and Singapore. Coming back to clothing, Patil also said that tight clothes "compromise blood circulation which leads to lowering of local immunity and makes one prone to infections". "Women with menstrual problems are more prone and should be cautious," he added. Nylon undergarments should also be avoided. To tackle the problem or keep risk at bay, doctors advise consumption of plenty of fluids -- although one may not feel as thirsty during the monsoon -- and alkaline food like fruits, vegetables and legumes. In hot and humid weather, the urine becomes more acidic and concentrated, and therefore chances of inflammatory UTI and then secondary infection spikes, which fluids can help avoid. Vyas also has a word of advice against certain products. "Female hygiene sprays, scented douches and scented bath products can sometimes cause severe inflammation and irritation; so they should be avoided," she said. (Azera Rahman can be contacted at azera.rahman@gmail.com) --IANS azr/vm/tb (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The Ministry of Corporate Affairs held a meeting with lawyers and other stakeholders to decide the fate of companies on the . Curiously enough, investment bankers who played a crucial role in the issue, were not invited. Yet, half a dozen bankers flew from Mumbai to Delhi and stormed into the meeting. When ministry officials asked if they were invited to the meeting, a banker said they were attending on "self-invitation". Congress vice-president today visited Assam's Lakhimpur district which is the worst affected in the flood-ravaged state. He crossed Ranganadi river in a small boat to reach this remote area and visited Amtola. The overflowing river had broken an embankment and caused large-scale destruction of human habitation and farmlands here. "There are floods in Assam and I thought I must come to meet you and hear about your pain and understand the situation," Gandhi told people here after listening to their problems. "I will fight for compensation, that is your right," he said. He said that Congress workers have been asked to help rebuild houses damaged by flood waters beside providing relief to the affected families. Prime Minister Narendra Modi had announced on Tuesday a total package of Rs 2,350 crore for all north eastern states for mitigating the impact of floods on the short and long term basis. An immediate release of Rs 250 crore was announced for Assam. Gandhi is scheduled to visit Silchar today to pay tributes to the Congress leader and former Union minister Santosh Mohan Dev who died yesterday. (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.) For the first time during the tenure of the Narendra Modi government, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Thursday became the single largest party in the Rajya Sabha. The Congress party on Thursday staged a protest in Bengaluru against the raids by income tax department on Karnataka Power Minister D. K. Shivakumar. The income tax department yesterday had conducted a raid at the residence of Karnataka Power Minister Shivakumar and a private resort in Bengaluru where 44 Congress lawmakers from Gujarat are staying. The raid was also carried out at the residence of Shivakumar's father-in-law today. The Congress had created a ruckus in both the Houses of Parliament after the I-T raid and alleged that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) led Central Government was indulging in political witch-hunt just to defeat Congress candidate Ahmed Patel in Rajya Sabha polls in Gujarat. Raising the matter in Rajya Sabha, Congress leader Anand Sharma had said it is now becoming a trend of the Government to blatantly misuse powers of the state. Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah dubbed as 'undemocratic'. However, Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley denied that the IT raid has any links with Rajya Sabha polls in Gujarat. The carefully orchestrated denouement of the Nitish-Laloo-Modi game may have been sudden and ferocious but the movement had been building up for months. In the last one year, Nitish Kumar had demonstrably moderated his language against Prime Minister Modi; had supported policy gambles like demonetization; and clearly expressed his discomfit with the Laloo Yadav family and its taint of corruption. In hind sight, it was the UP elections and the huge BJP victory which broke the camels back. Narendra Modi is the tallest leader in the Hindi heartland and any regional satrap which challenges him risks total oblivion. Three broad themes. With Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley scheduled to visit on Sunday the home of the recently killed Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) worker in Kerala, the larger Sangh Parivar is upping the ante on political violence in the state. Two Army men, including a major, were killed and another jawan was injured when militants opened fire on a search party of security forces in Shopian district of south Kashmir, police said on Thursday. A cordon and search operation was launched by Army in Zaipora area of Shopian during the night following intelligence inputs about the presence of militants there, a police official said. He said during the search operation, the militants fired upon the party in which three army personnel were injured. The injured were taken to Army's 92 base hospital here, where two of them, including a major, succumbed, the official said, adding that the other jawan is undergoing treatment. The search operation at Zaipora is on, the official said. (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.) Only 62.81 per cent schools in the country have electricity connections, the Rajya Sabha was informed today. Jharkhand is at the bottom of the list with only 19 per cent schools with access to electricity, Minister of State for Human Resource Development (HRD) Upendra Kushwaha said in response to a written question. The national capital along with Chandigarh, Dadar and Nagar Haveli, Daman and Diu, Lakshadweep and Puducherry top the list with 100 per cent schools with electricity connection. Assam has 25 per cent schools with electricity connection while Meghalaya has 28.54 per cent. Others in the list include Bihar (37.78), Madhya Pradesh (28.80), Manipur (39.27), Odisha (33.03) and Tripura (29.77). The Minister quoted the data collected through the Unified District Information System for Education (UDISE). (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) An FIR has been registered against seven policemen including three inspectors here for their alleged laxity in investigating a 2011 abduction and murder case, police said today. On NHRC (National Human Rights Commission) directives, an FIR has been registered against seven policemen including three inspectors last night, Superintendent of Police VK Singh told PTI here today. On June 12, 2011, Ramsaran (30), a resident of Samaichipur locality in Jalalabad area was abducted and an FIR in this regard was registered by his father Vedram, he said. After 11 days, Ramsaran's body was recovered from Bhamaura area in Bareilly. His father alleged that police was negligent and did not probe the matter due to which his son lost his life, and approached NHRC, which had ordered a CB-CID probe into the matter. After the report submitted by CB-CID, NHRC had ordered registration of FIRs against the accused policemen who were booked by the Jalalabad police yesterday. Further probe is on in the matter, the SP said. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Ninety-seven endangered Indian Star tortoises, illegally smuggled out of the country, will be brought back to their natural habitat in north Karnataka, according to an organisation working for animal conservation. The tortoises were smuggled into Singapore where they were rescued and are now undergoing quarantine, a spokesperson of Wildlife SOS said. The Karnataka Forest department and Wildlife SOS have initiated the process for repatriation of these 97 tortoises. Chief Wildlife Warden of Karnataka Anur Reddy along with others travelled to Singapore to hold discussions regarding the repatriation, the spokesperson said. During spot inspection in Singapore, most of the tortoises were found to be in good health while 12 are under treatment, said the spokesperson. A team of Veterinarians from Wildlife SOS India and ACRES Singapore will accompany the tortoises from Singapore to India. They will be released in their natural habitat in North Karnataka after being kept under observation for about six months in Wildlife SOS field station in Koppal. The Indian Star tortoises are rare and endangered species of land tortoise and are often poached from the wild and sold internationally to be used as pets and also as ingredients of "Chinese medicine", said Wildlife SOS co-founder Geeta Seshamani. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Slum dwellers and other inhabitants have encroached 798 acres of land belonging to the Airports Authority of India (AAI), the government said today. State-owned AAI, which manages 126 airports apart from carrying out other duties, possesses around 55,800 acres of land across the country. Minister of State for Civil Aviation Jayant Sinha informed the Lok Sabha that there is no surplus land available with the AAI. "Out of the overall land belonging to the AAI in the country, around 1.4 per cent, which is approximately 798 acres of land area is under encroachment by slum dwellers and other inhabitants," he said in a written reply. Sinha said that majority of land area under encroachment is around Mumbai and Juhu airports, and is inhabited by slum dwellers. "Around 127 acres of land area at Bhopal airport and 119.82 acres of land area at Hyderabad airport is also under encroachment," the minister noted. He also added that the AAI has undertaken all efforts in active manner to coordinate with state governments concerned to remove such encroachments. "The process of rehabilitation of illegal occupants is a subject matter of the concerned state government and the role of the AAI and other private operators is limited to assistance and persuasion," he said. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) A senior police official today allegedly pushed aside some TV journalists near 'Pragathi Bhavan', the official residence-cum-camp office of Telangana Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao, here, following which the police department ordered an inquiry into the incident. A purported video clip of the incident has gone viral. It shows a police official, who was later joined in by other personnel, pushing aside some TV journalists, including a woman reporter and cameramen, when they were covering a protest organised by a group of contract employees of the Health Department seeking enhancement of their wages, among other demands. The police official in the video was identified as Assistant Commissioner of Police (Panjagutta Division) Venkateshwarlu. Following the incident, Hyderabad Police Commissioner M Mahendar Reddy ordered an inquiry into the incident. Reddy asked Deputy Commissioner of Police (West Zone), A Venkateshwar Rao, to inquire into the incident and submit a report to him. "A group of protesters tried to gherao the camp office and police immediately shifted them away. It is alleged that some journalists were pushed away. An inquiry has been ordered over the behaviour of the ACP with journalists. I will get it inquired," the DCP told PTI. The Telangana State Union of Working Journalists condemned the incident and submitted a memorandum to the state Director General of Police, Anurag Sharma, seeking action against the police officials alleging that members of the media fraternity were "misbehaved" by the police. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Goa government has warned the educational institutes that their grant-in-aid will be stopped if they "extort" money from the students under some or the other pretext. Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar said he has received several complaints about various educational institutes who force students to buy uniform from a particular shop or fine them if they don't attend the annual picnic. "We will not tolerate educational institutes extorting money from the students under some or the other pretext. We will stop their grant-in-aid if they are found doing that," he told the state legislative assembly today. Parrikar said that the schools will have to follow certain guidelines which will be issued by the state education department. The chief minister, who also holds the portfolio of education, said the state government has given thrust to this segment. "In the next five years,the Gross Domestic Product on education will be five per cent," he said. Responding to the question on deteriorating quality of food provided under mid day meal scheme, Parrikar appealed to the parents to keep a check on it. "We have empowered parent teachers' association to certify the quality of bill before we sanction bill of the mid day meal provider," he said. The minister said next academic year onwards, the PTAs will have to classify the food under A, B or C grade. "Those food providers who get C grade will lose their contract, while those with A or A plus will get the bonus," he said. Parrikar also announced formation of Educational Development Fund under his chairmanship to provide infrastructure finance for educational institutes. He said that the fund would be non-lapsable and amount to the tune of Rs 100-150 crore would be provided under this fund. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Attacking Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar for breaking ranks with its grand alliance partners to join the NDA fold, the CPI(M) today said putting together an alliance of a "motley bunch of secular parties" will not help halt the BJP juggernaut. It said that the opposition unity was "unworkable" also because of the "unreliable" character of many regional parties, most of which have embraced neo-liberal policies and were "prone" to make opportunistic alliances. The Left party also averred the all-in-opposition unity to take on the BJP was "not feasible" as it has to include and be led by the Congress, which had "imposed" neo-liberal economic policies and is seen as "not different" from the saffron party when it comes to basic policies. Former CPI(M) general secretary Prakash Karat attacked the Congress, saying the main opposition party stands "discredited" due to years of its "misrule and corruption". Which is why, he argued, the Left and democratic forces cannot accomplish the task of stopping the BJP by allying with the country's oldest party. Instead of stitching an opportunistic alliance, Karat stressed there is a need to develop broadest united platforms to take up issues concerning the working class, peasantry and other sections and also to fight communal forces, projecting an alternative programme to the BJP and its policies. "Now that the architect of the mahagathbandhan (grand alliance) himself has crossed over to the BJP camp, the concept of a grand alliance lies in tatters. "The CPI(M) is as much concerned about building the widest unity in the struggle against the Modi government and the BJP. But it has always maintained that this cannot be accomplished by putting together an alliance of a motley bunch of secular parties," he said. Karat made the remarks in the editorial of the CPI(M) mouthpiece 'People's Democracy'. He accused the Narendra Modi government of aggressively pursuing neo-liberal policies and the Hindutva communal agenda and added the fight against the regime, hence, has to be two- pronged. "It is by combining these two struggles that the people can be mobilised to fight the BJP-RSS combine. This key task cannot be accomplished with the Left and democratic forces allying with the Congress," he added. Karat sought to drive his point by further saying that the steady flow of Congress leaders and activists to the BJP only reflects the oldest party is not seen as being different from the ruling party. The Marxist leader said that what is required today is not an "opportunistic alliance" of all opposition parties but developing the broadest united actions and platforms to take up the issues of the working class, peasantry and other sections and to build a broad unity to fight against the communal forces. Karat pointed towards the recent farmers' protest in Maharashtra over a range of issues as the example of such "united struggle". The united platform, he added, should have all mass organisations, democratic groups and social movements onboard and draw in students, the youth and women in large numbers. "Such movements must be accompanied by the relentless struggle against the Hindutva communal forces at the political and ideological level. "It is based on such a Left and democratic programme that we can move forward towards building a credible political alternative (to the BJP)," he said. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Almost all industries witnessed conservative appraisals, with banking, financial services and insurance (BFSI) receiving the least, a survey said. "Most industries witnessed conservative appraisals that were considerably lower than the two-digit salary hikes seen in the previous year. BFSI (8.1 per cent) followed manufacturing (9 per cent) were hit the most," the survey said. The survey- "Salary Trends and Attrition rates in Q1 (April-June 2017)"- was conducted by end-to-end online recruitment and career solution portal Wisdomjobs.Com, across 120 companies from 10 industries, including healthcare, BFSI, hospitality, retail, FMCG, pharma, IT, telecom, manufacturing and infrastructure. The average salary hikes seen among the top sectors saw a drop as compared to the last year. Ranking on top is pharma at 10.9 per cent followed by healthcare and retail sector at 10.8 per cent. It was followed by hospitality and IT with 9.9 per cent and 9.8 per cent salary hikes, respectively. FMCG and telecom gave a hike of 9.6 per cent, while employees in infrastructure got a salary hike of 9.2 per cent. "Most sectors have seen conservative appraisals first quarter due to several external factors that impacted them in the previous two quarters. The hiring outlook of Indian companies, although still positive, will be characterised by a wait-and-watch approach as they come to terms with the real impact of automation - especially in the IT sector - and the consequent need for re-skilling their employees. This is likely to continue for a couple of quarters before picking up again," Wisdomjobs.Com Founder and CEO Ajay Kolla said. The average salary hikes seen in the top cities are not very encouraging. Bangalore tops at a 9.7 per cent followed by Chennai and Pune at 9.1 per cent and 9 per cent, respectively. Hyderabad, Mumbai and Kolkata showed nearly similar rates at 8.9 per cent, 8.7 per cent and 8.5 per cent, respectively. The capital city, Delhi, showed the lowest hike rate at 7.7 per cent, the survey said. Further, the survey revealed that while layoffs, especially in the IT sector, contributed to maintaining the overall attrition levels, voluntary resignations declined in the first quarter of this year. "This can be attributed to the uncertainty in the job market, and the consequent slowdown in hiring across most sectors," Kolla added. The highest attrition being in IT at 24 per cent followed by telecom at 22 per cent and hospitality at 20 per cent. The lowest attrition was seen in the manufacturing sector at 11.1 per cent. When it comes to the city-wise attrition, Delhi was found to have the highest rate at 11.6 per cent, followed by Chennai and Hyderabad at 10.8 per cent and 10.2 per cent, respectively. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Arijit Singh, Amit Trivedi and Canadian music producer Spek will join the panel at India's first-ever annual music conference, titled 'All About Music'. Among other speakers at the conference, which will be held here on September 18 and 19, are lyricist Amitabh Bhattacharya, composer Sunny MR, Ed Peto, CEO of CD Baby. 'All About Music' is being organised by Tarsame Mittal Talent Management, whose head Tarsame Mittal said she aims to change the way music is standardised today. "I have been interacting with a lot of established and emerging talent, as well as music labels, publishers, copyright societies etc and I have noticed the lack of communique and information which in the long run is detrimental to the growth of music business. "All About Music is a platform curated to put the spotlight on the potential of the Indian music industry and set new benchmarks and goals. Our aim is to bring together all the different stakeholders of the music industry together on an exclusive platform to amplify the future of music," Mittal said in a statement. Through an intimate series of programs such as panel discussions, case studies, expert meet and greets, networking hub, the two-day conference will act as a catalyst for collaboration, exploration and expansion of the indigenous music industry and will culminate in a music showcase featuring a leading artist. With representation from over 10 states, the forum will play host to over 500 delegates and over 50 speakers and experts and will travel to Tier 2 & Tier 3 cities through mini conferences. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Samajwadi Party today said that the BJP government in Uttar Pradesh is "suppressing the voice of discontent" and that it will observe "Desh bachao, Desh banao" diwas on August 9, to protest against the 'anti-people' policies and 'communal politics' of the ruling dispensation. August 9 is observed as Kranti Diwas, a day to remember the historic 'Quit India Movement' initiated by Mahatma Gandhi in 1942. "The party will observe Kranti Diwas on Aug 9 as Desh Bachao, Desh Banao Diwas and all the district headquarters along with national president Akhilesh Yadav will be attending a rally in Faizabad district. "The day will be utilised to register protest against BJP, which is suppressing voice of discontent against it," Party spokesperson Rajendra Chowdhury said. In BJP regime, he said, farmers are ruined and women are unsafe, fate of youths and students hang in balance due to lack of right direction...SP will protest against it. On August 9, SP's district units will raise voice against anti-people policies and communal politics played by BJP government by holding public meetings, Chowdhury said. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) A BJP member today raised in the Rajya Sabha the issue of killings of RSS workers in Kerala. Vinay P Sahasrabuddhe said atrocities on dalits have been discussed several times, but now attrocities are taking place on "ideological untouchables" as well. He said dalit workers associated BJP and RSS have been killed in Thiruvananthapuram and Trissur. People associated with CPI too have been killed, he said. Several other BJP members including Shwait Malik and Vinay Katiyar associated themselves with Sahasrabuddhe. A V Swamy (Ind) talked about the alleged violation of land and forest rights due to implementation of compensatory afforestation projects. JDU member Ali Anwar Ansari talked about alleged prohibition of free speech and writings in Indian Institute of Mass Communication. He said during the last academic session a student was suspended for criticing functioning of the institution on a website, and other students were warned against writing on social media. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) More than 50 people were injured as explosions tore through a munitions dump in the Moscow-backed breakaway Abkhazia region of Georgia, Russian agencies reported. The explosions occurred yesterday at the facility in Primorskiy, near the Black Sea, the region's health minister Tamaz Tsakhnakia told the agencies. Nineteen holidaying Russians were among those who needed hospital treatment, most of whom had been hit by shrapnel. All the injured were in stable condition, Tsakhnakia added. The separatist province's interior minister Aslan Kobakhia confirmed no one had been killed at its munitions store on the shore of the Black Sea. Abkhazia is internationally recognised as part of the tiny ex-Soviet nation of Georgia, but has claimed independence since a conflict after the collapse of the USSR. Russia recognised the subtropical region -- along with another province South Ossetia -- as separate countries after a brief 2008 war with Georgia. Moscow has thousands of troops stationed in the regions in what Georgia calls a military "occupation", and supports the two provinces financially. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) A new book explores the enigmatic beauty of the Kumaon region through its unique 'pahari' elements, its traditions, craft, beliefs, flora and fauna. "In The Shadow of The Devi: Kumaon of a Land, a People, a Craft", writer-critic Manju Kak looks at Kumaon through the prism of woodcraft, unique in its aesthetic, documenting the styles, influences and techniques used by the craftsmen of Uttarakhand, as well as Kumaoni artisans' worldview and beliefs. In addition, she also documents the life of paharis and discusses about communities, forest policy and the status of women, analysing and unravelling facets of hill life. The coffee table book, published by Niyogi Books, has photographs by award-winning Kumaoni photographer Anup Sah, among others. Kak describes her book as the "story of a land, a people and a craft, all who flourish under the shadow of the majestic Nanda Devi range". "Kumaoni culture is undoubtedly a hybrid of many cultures. The Kumaoni dialect reflects the diverse cultures that have extended their influence in this area, The Kumaonis have a likeness to Bengalis, Nepalis and Rajasthanis," she writes. "Uttarakhand is, after all, a state made up of migrants, and any attempt to close its doors upon this fact, to call for an 'Uttarakhand for Uttarakhandis', is to ignore its varied heritage and history," she says. According to Kak, after the British 'discovered' Kumaon, the wholesome climate of the region attracted artists and scholars from all over Europe, many of whom settled there and assimilated with the local ethos. Through the early 19th century till Independence, the Almora hills continued to grow a reputation for seekers, poets and writers, she adds. But the new migration to the hills today is very different, Kak says. "While it is the summer influx that brings tourists from all over India to the mountains, increasingly, it is NGOs and development specialists who make them their home round the year," the book says. Whatever be the reason for migration, the salubrious climate has remained constant in its attraction for the people of the plains, Kak says. The book started as a personal journey for Kak, a "search for a narrative" of the Kumaon Hills where she grew up, spending 11 years at a missionary boarding school, St. Mary's Convent, popularly known as Ramnee. "Later in life, walking other footpaths, or khranchas, that crisscross the Kumaon hills, I began to look for clues to more intimately define the landscape I once thought I had known, and my search for a narrative began," she writes. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The border standoff with China cannot be resolved through war but bilateral talks, the government told Parliament on Thursday while advocating patience to address the issue. External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj said India is engaged with China to resolve differences, not only in the standoff at Dokalam but all matters like border dispute, Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) and the blocking of UN sanctions against Jaish-e-Mohammad terror outfit chief Masood Azhar. "Patience and control on comments are key to resolving problems. We are maintaining patience and controlling comments," she said in the Rajya Sabha replying to a discussion on "India's foreign policy and engagement with strategic partners" during which members voiced concern over the standoff and raised questions over India's policy. She read out a statement giving details and explaining India's position on the Dokalam stand-off which has been going on for over a month. "War is not a solution to anything. Even after war, there has to be a dialogue. So, have dialogue without a war... Patience, control on comments and diplomacy can resolve problems," the minister said. She said if patience is lost, there can be a provocation on the other side. "We will keep patience to resolve the issue," Swaraj said, adding "We will keep engaging with China to resolve the dispute." In response to questions, she said military readiness is always there as the military is meant to fight wars. "But war cannot resolve problems. So wisdom is to resolve diplomatically," the external affairs minister asserted. She expressed confidence that the issue can be resolved through bilateral talks. At the same time, Swaraj lashed out at the Congress and its leadership for meeting Chinese Ambassador over the border stand-off. She said the Congress leadership rushed to get the Chinese perspective instead of first seeking details from the own government. "You (Congress) should have first sought details from the governnment and then confronted the Chinese envoy," she said. Swaraj then said Jawaharlal Nehru, during the 1962 war, had convened sitting of Parliament after Atal Bihari Vajpayee wrote to him regarding this. She said she had called all parties in phases for two days to explain the entire Dokalam issue and the Opposition had left after being fully convinced. She also slammed the Congress for questioning why India had boycotted an international conference called by China over 'One Belt, One Road' (OBOR). "Do you know through where the OBOR passes? And you are asking these questions? It is a matter of sentiment (for India). You are the main Opposition party, You should speak with responsibility," she said, referring to the project which China proposes to build through Pakistan-occupied Kashmir. At this, Leader of Opposition Ghulam Nabi Azad said the remarks made by his party colleague Rajeev Shukla regarding OBOR were in his "individual" capacity. Swaraj then took a dig at the Congress, asking since when the party had become so democratic that each member speaks in own voice. Earlier, Congress leader Anand Sharma accused the government of mishandling foreign relations, particularly in the context of tensions with China. Referring to the border stand-off with China, he said the neighbouring country is being "unusually aggressive" and the "doors of diplomacy seem to be closing". "When it comes to country's interests, we stand as one and there is no division. It is clear...Diplomacy must be given a chance. We believe in making all possible diplomatic channels to de-escalate the situation on borders," he said. "De-escalation does not mean retreat. It is safeguarding India's interest," he said. Targeting Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Sharma said he had "not uttered a word" on what he has talked with Chinese President Xi Jingping during their meetings in Astana (Kazakhstan) and Hamburg (Germany). "It is his (PM's) duty to tell us. He cannot remain silent on matters of India's sensitive interests," he said Sharma also noted that Security Adviser Ajit Doval had visited China recently and wondered whether after that "a window has opened that this standoff would be resolved." He also said that India should avoid making boastful claims of isolating Pakistan. The Congress leader said it was a matter of concern that China has offered to mediate between India and Pakistan. He said managing of the periphery comes first and that is of critical importance, saying the rest comes later. "Unless we manage our neighbours correctly, it would be difficult or rather impossible to play a major role globally," he said, adding, "What is your roadmap? There is no stability in your policy. It keeps changing. First, you say we would talk and then stop talks." The Congress leader said India had succeeded in de- hyphenating India from Pakistan. "The real concern is that the hyphenation is back," he said. "We have concern because China's profile in Pakistan is increasing and Pakistan is getting emboldened of this support for China and that is our concern," he said. Talking about the surgical strikes, he said, "even a military victory must not be boasted upon." Ram Gopal Yadav (SP) said, "Today, the situation is that there is an attempt to corner India from all sides. The relations with neighbouring countries is not as it should be." Yadav expressed concern about growing friendship between China and Pakistan and said that the Russia's affinity towards India is also diminishing. In such a scenario, he said India has to think about its foreign policy and identify which country could be a reliable friend during the time of crisis. The SP leader said that Russia should have been taken into confidence when India signed the nuclear deal with the US. Yadav stressed on the need to give priority to the defence sector. "There is a need to strengthen our defence". Sharad Yadav of JD(U) said the relations with neighbouring countries are not good. He said the entire country is with the government but it should work to strengthen the nation internally and militarily. Yadav said the country has got an able foreign minister but felt that she was not utilised properly. He said India had become a lackey of the US. Sitaram Yechury (CPI-M) said there were serious ruptures in India's foreign policy which used to be independent and had a say in global policies. Demanding to know whether it is an independent policy now or aligned, he said unfortunately instead of multi-polarity, India has joined the unipolarity with the US. India has been reduced to a junior strategic ally of the US, he said. He said as per information available on the US website, in an agreement on logistics during the fourth visit of the PM, status of India has been shown as a "junior partner" to advance US interests in defence and security in South East Asia and greater region and termed it as the "last nail in our independent foreign policy." He said on PM's fifth visit there was no answer on HIB visa despite 5 lakh Indian youth in IT and industries in Silicon Valley being in jeopardy. Yechury said most of Russia which was a friend earlier had done a pact with Pakistan while India was doing a joint military exercise with US and Japan at the Bay of Bengal. Yechury took a jibe at the prime minister that real strength comes from friendship and not displayed by foreign tours or embraces or "jumle" (speeches). He mentioned a joke on Whatsapp which said that the PM during his last tour was asking which nation is this, only to know that it is India. Swaraj retorted to it that such light comment does not suit such serious discussion to which P J Kurien too said it was a serious discussion. Manish Gupta (Trinamool) said India has not learnt lessons from 1962 China transgression. Others who participated included A Navaneethakrishnan (AIADMK) and Dileep Kumar Tirkey (BJD). Public sector oil marketing company BPCL today said it has increased the commission offered to its dealers upto 50 per cent with effect from August 1 and it would have a positive impact on all, including the customers. The commission paid to dealers for various products had been revised upwards from a minimum of 20 per cent to a maximum of 50 per cent based on their category from August 1, Bharat Petroleum Corporation Ltd (BPCL) Chairman and Managing Director D Rajkumar said here. The revision would have a 'marginal impact' on the financials of the company, he said. "We have announced an upward revision in dealers' commission and it will have a positive effect on all the stakeholders including customers," he told reporters. Following the increase in revision, the outlets were mandated to provide clean toilets and transparency in quality and quantity of fuel supplied to customers, he said. The decision to increase the commission was taken after a meeting with dealer representatives on July 31. "Basically, it is like addressing all the issues of dealers. Depending upon their performance and considering the hardships (it has been revised). Whether it is low selling outlets or high selling outlets, we have adequately compensated", he said. To a query, he said the revision would cost Rs 50 to Rs 70 crore to the company. "Impact of this revision -- the company will absorb initially. Later, we will take a call depending upon the international crude oil prices.", Rajkumar said. Besides, employees working at fuel outlets would be paid Central Minimum Wages which was higher by approximately 50 per cent compared to state minimum wages."It will benefit almost 10 lakh families across the country," he added. Rajkumar said dealers had been instructed to ensure that employees of fuel outlets were covered under the Centre's social security schemes -- 'Pradhan Mantri Suraksha Bima Yojana' (accident death insurance) and 'Pradhan Mantri Jeevan Jyoti Bima Yojana' (life insurance). On some outlets forcing customers to buy premium fuels during month end to boost sales, he said suitable action would be taken against erring dealers if complaints were received. To a query on impact of daily price revision, he said from the date it was introduced (June 17), there was a maximum increase in the fuel price by 18 paise while reduction was 27 paise a litre. BPCL, the second largest OMC after IndianOil, accounted for 14,000 outlets of the total 55,000 belonging to the three public sector refiners, including HPCL, he added. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) : Bharat Petroleum Corporation Ltd (BPCL) plans to venture into gas business and diversify resources for source of fuels as part of its five-year plan, a top official said today. "BPCL under the next five-year plan has set a target of Rs one lakh crore to be spent for all its expansion activities which includes marketing, refining etc...," BPCL chairman and managing director D Rajkumar told reporters here. "We want our market cap to reach Rs 2.50 lakh crore. That is 2.5 times increase of what it is now. We have also planned to venture into gas business. That will be our next value chain," he said. To a query, he said, the company has taken up 'an experiment' to import crude oil from the United States under its 'diversification' exercise. "We have imported two cargos of crude (from US) as an experiment. That is one (cargo) with crude with high sulphur and another (cargo of) crude with low sulphur. One million barrels each. This is basically with a view to diversify resources that are available to us", he said. "We really want to ensure that the prices are kept within the limits. For that it is necessary we source it from the right sources. We have been looking at various sources. Whatever we import, the crude will be refined in our existing refiners within the existing configuration", he said. "Right now, what we are trying to do is to diversify our sources in an efficient manner.", he said. Talking about the company's financial performance, he said BPCL clocked Rs 2.42 lakh crore revenue with a profit after tax at Rs 8,339 crore. "We hold market share of 24 per cent and our market cap is more than Rs one lakh crore". To a query on expansion of outlets, he said the company currently has 14,000 outlets across the country. "In Tamil Nadu, we have about 4,524 outlets. Depending upon demand we will expand". (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Brazil's embattled president survived a key congressional vote that could have suspended him over a bribery charge, mustering enough support to stay in office and avoid being tried by the country's highest court. President Michel Temer needed the support of just one- third of the 513 members of the lower Chamber of Deputies, or 171 members. Hours after the voting began, he had received the votes of more than that number of legislators. In the end, 263 deputies voted for the president and 227 voted against him. The remaining were abstentions and absences. While Temer was clearly victorious, he won't likely have much time to celebrate. Attorney General Rodrigo Janot, who levelled the bribery charge against Temer, is expected to charge him with obstruction of justice by the end of the month. That would provoke a second vote, forcing his allies to once again decide whether to risk their own political futures by sticking with the deeply unpopular leader. All 513 seats in the chamber are up for election next year. The bribery allegation, which stunned even Brazilians inured to graft cases, was the latest in a bevy of scandals that has rocked the administration and created deep uncertainty and angst in Latin America's largest nation. The vote in the Chamber of Deputies began after a day of hearings and vote cajoling by both sides behind the scene. Opposition lawmakers tried unsuccessfully to delay the vote, an acknowledgement that they likely wouldn't get enough support to suspend Temer despite his dismal support nationwide. The latest national poll said just 5 per cent of Brazilians approval of Temer. Over the last several weeks, Temer has been frantically dolling out millions of dollars in pork to legislators to shore up support. Throughout the day, there was shouting and even periodic pushing between lawmakers. "Temer is a crook and he needs to sort out his situation with the Justice Department," said Elvino Bohn Gass, a member of the Workers' Party, one of the main opposition parties. "Brazil should not be governed by a gang of thugs." For the vote, which was telecast by the influential Globo network, each member was announced and asked his or her vote. While members voting against Temer were outspoken, most of those who supported him cast their vote without speaking, a sign that many preferred not to broadcast their support for the deeply unpopular leader. "Brazil can't change presidents three times in one year," said Sergio Moraes, a Temer supporter. "He will be investigated later." Temer, then vice president, took office about a year ago after Dilma Rousseff was impeached and removed as president for improperly handling government finances. Since taking power, Temer's administration has been rocked by repeated scandals while still managing to move unpopular legislation forward, such as a loosening of labour rules and proposals to trim pension benefits. The ambitious economic overhaul agenda, supported by Brazil's business class, has helped the 76-year-old Temer stay in office so far despite the uproar over corruption allegations. China's government is responsible for the "enforced disappearance" of late Nobel laureate Liu Xiaobo's widow, her US-based lawyer has said in a formal complaint filed to the United Nations. Beijing faced a global backlash for its treatment of Liu Xiaobo when he died of liver cancer last month, making him the first Nobel Peace Prize laureate to die in custody since German pacifist Carl von Ossietzky in 1938, who had been held by the Nazis. His widow, poet Liu Xia, 56, was followed around the clock by security officials, and has not been in touch with anyone since about a day before her husband's death, her lawyer, Jared Genser, said in a statement to the UN Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances. Liu Xia has been "held incommunicado in an unknown location by Chinese government authorities" since July 15, the day of her husband's funeral, the lawyer's statement read yesterday. "I demand that Chinese authorities immediately provide proof that Liu Xia is alive and allow her unhindered access to her family, friends, counsel, and the international community," said Genser in a separate statement emailed to AFP. He said international law defined "enforced disappearances" as situations where government officials are involved in depriving a person of her freedom against her will, and refuse to acknowledge that deprivation or conceal the disappeared person's fate - stating that all such conditions had been met in Liu Xia's case. The UN working group did not acknowledge to AFP receipt of Genser's complaint, but said that generally speaking, its process of issuing an "opinion" on the matter was a lengthy one that could take years. Beijing would be free to dismiss that non-binding outcome. The US, the European Union and the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights have called on Beijing to free Liu Xia, who had been under house arrest since her husband won the Nobel prize seven years ago - despite having never been charged of a crime. Chinese authorities have said she is a free citizen who was merely too grief-stricken by her husband's death to be in touch with any friends or counsel. A Chinese government spokesman Zhang Qingyang declined to disclose Liu Xia's whereabouts on July 15, telling the media only that it was "best for her not to receive too much outside interference during this period". "The relevant departments will protect Liu Xia's legal rights according to law," he added. Foreign journalists who have tried to visit the couple's Beijing home have been rebuffed and physically harassed. Seven people are currently detained by Chinese police for commemorating Liu Xiaobo, China Human Rights Defenders said yesterday. Authorities released photographs and a video of Liu Xia at her husband's funeral and also at a sea burial near the northeastern coastal city of Dalian. Liu Xiaobo was a veteran of the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests who was jailed in 2008 after co-writing a petition calling for democratic reform, and sentenced to 11 years in prison for "subversion" a year later. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) China has donated foodgrains worth 100 million Nepalese rupees to the people of Nepal in a food deficit region bordering Tibet. The food grains provided by China will be distributed among the people of Mugum Karmarong village of Mugu district, about 500 km west of Kathmandu, bordering China, officials said. The food items donated, include rice, wheat flour, sugar, and salt. The residents of 12 settlements of the village are asked to collect the donated food items from Tibet. China's influence in Nepal's economy continues to grow with reports of Beijing topping the list of nations who pledged maximum foreign direct investment into the Himalayan nation. As per figures provided by Nepal, China accounted for as much as 68 per cent of all FDI in Nepal during April-December 2016. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) China's Defence Ministry says a Chinese warship is assisting the US Navy in its search for a sailor who is missing and may have gone overboard during operations in the South China Sea. The ministry said in a statement today that the People's Liberation Army Navy's guided-missile frigate Liuzhou is coordinating with the US in the search for the sailor "in the spirit of humanitarianism." The US Navy's Pacific Fleet says the destroyer USS Stethem reported a man overboard around 9 a.M. Tuesday. Multiple searches of the destroyer were conducted but the sailor hasn't been found. China, which claims virtually all of the South China Sea, accused the US in July of trespassing in its waters when the Stethem sailed within 32 kilometers of Triton Island in the Paracel Group. The operation was aimed at affirming the right to passage and challenging what the US considers China's excessive territorial claims in the area. China sent ships to intercept the destroyer. China has strongly objected to repeated freedom of navigation missions by the US Navy in the South China Sea. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Cambodia has arrested more than 200 Chinese men and women suspected of running an online scam that persuaded victims to send nude photographs and then extorted them for cash, police said today. The sweeping arrests come as the Southeast Asian country cracks down on Chinese cyber-crime gangs who use web technology to target their fellow citizens from abroad. The gang allegedly used internet voice calls to contact victims in China, building up relationships with their targets over time before asking them to send nude pictures which they then used as blackmail, police said. After a tip-off from Chinese authorities, Cambodian police raided an apartment compound on the Thai border yesterday and detained 215 Chinese men and women. "We are questioning them. Nearly two hundred of them were involved with the crimes," Uk Heisela, a Cambodian immigration police officer, told AFP. China has become increasingly assertive about extraditing fraud suspects, who operate from abroad in a bid to avoid detection. Cambodia has deported hundreds of alleged Chinese telephone and internet fraudsters in recent years, including 74 Chinese nationals accused of running an online extortion racket last month. Last week it moved to deport another 31 fraud suspects, including seven Taiwanese, to mainland China. The move set off criticism from Taiwanese authorities who insist its citizens be returned to the island. Taiwan split from China in 1949, but Beijing -- one of Cambodia's closest allies -- still sees the self-ruling island a part of its territory waiting to be reunified. In July, a gang of 44 people from China and Taiwan were arrested in Thailand for allegedly running an elaborate phone scam that conned USD 3 million from scores of victims, mainly based in China. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Christopher Wray was sworn in by US Attorney General Jeff Sessions as the new FBI director on Thursday, with the latter lauding Wray's "spirit" and "strength of character." A former US Assistant Attorney for the Criminal Division, Wray replaces James Comey, who was abruptly fired by President Donald Trump amid a probe into the Trump campaign's alleged collusion with Russia to influence the last year's presidential election. Wray, 50, who was confirmed by the US Senate through an overwhelming majority of 92-5 votes on the Senate floor, termed it "the honour of a lifetime" to serve as the director. "It is the honour of a lifetime to serve as Director. I long ago grew to know and admire the FBI from my earliest days as a line prosecutor to my years as assistant attorney general," Wray said in a statement after he was sworn in by the US Attorney General Jeff Sessions. "I am excited, humbled, and grateful, therefore, to have this chance to work side-by-side again with these fine professionals for the good of the country and the cause of justice," Wray said. In a statement, Sessions praised Wray's "spirit" and "strength of character," saying: "I am confident that the FBI, the premier investigative agency in the world, is in great hands with Director Chris Wray at the helm." "I congratulate him for being overwhelmingly confirmed to that post and look forward to working with him every day to keep America safe," he said. As a former federal prosecutor and head of the Department of Justice's Criminal Division, Wray has successfully prosecuted terrorists, drug kingpins, and white-collar criminals, Sessions said. FBI directors are approved by the Senate to serve for 10 years, but the president has unilateral authority to fire them at any time. Christopher Wray today assumed charge as the new FBI Director and pledged to work for the good of the US and the cause of justice. A former US Assistant Attorney for the Criminal Division, Wray, 50, replaces James Comey, who was abruptly fired by President Donald Trump amid a probe into the Trump campaign's alleged collusion with Russia to influence the last year's presidential election. He was sworn in as the eighth Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation by Attorney General Jeff Sessions who lauded his "spirit" and "strength of character." Wray, 50, who was confirmed by the US Senate through an overwhelming majority of 92-5 votes on the Senate floor, termed it "the honour of a lifetime" to serve as the director. "It is the honour of a lifetime to serve as Director. I long ago grew to know and admire the FBI from my earliest days as a line prosecutor to my years as assistant attorney general," Wray said in a statement after being sworn in. "I am excited, humbled and grateful, therefore, to have this chance to work side-by-side again with these fine professionals for the good of the country and the cause of justice," he said. In a statement, Sessions praised Wray's "spirit" and "strength of character," saying: "I am confident that the FBI, the premier investigative agency in the world, is in great hands with Director Chris Wray at the helm." "I congratulate him for being overwhelmingly confirmed to that post and look forward to working with him every day to keep America safe," he said. As a former federal prosecutor and head of the Department of Justice's Criminal Division, Wray has successfully prosecuted terrorists, drug kingpins, and white-collar criminals, Sessions said. FBI directors are approved by the Senate to serve for 10 years, but the president has unilateral authority to fire them at any time. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) An endangered bat species with a UK population of less than 1,000 could be further threatened by the effects of global warming, a study has found. Scientists led by the University of Southampton warn that while conditions in the UK could actually become more favourable for the grey long-eared bat (Plecotus austriacus), populations in southern Europe that hold the key for the survival of the species as a whole could be devastated. The study, published in the journal Molecular Ecology Resources, focused on the grey long-eared bat and showed that its populations in Spain and Portugal are particularly at risk as conditions there become too harsh. This is of great concern to ecologists because the populations in these areas include pockets with the highest levels of genetic diversity, thanks to their ancestors having survived major climate change events such as ice ages. This makes them better suited to the hotter, drier conditions associated with climate change, researchers said. However, other populations in the region that lack such genetic diversity and are unable to adapt to the harsher conditions could become isolated if they cannot fly to more climatically suitable areas because the landscape in between is unsuitable, they said. This could also stop the bats from better-adapted populations - whose genes could help the threatened bat populations survive - from reaching them. "As climate change progresses and the environment becomes less suitable for the bats, they will not only struggle to survive where they are currently found but they will also find it more difficult to shift their range to climatically suitable areas," said Orly Razgour from the University of Southampton. "This reduced connectivity between populations will in turn affect the ability to adapt to changing climatic conditions because of reduced movement of individuals that are better adapted to warmer and drier conditions into the population," Razgour said. Razgour and her colleagues have developed a new framework to identify wildlife populations threatened by climate change. It uses ecological modelling and climate data to looking at where climate change is likely to be most extreme; gathers genomic data to assess which species are likely to be most sensitive to the effects of future climate change and considers range shift potential - the ability of a species to move from an unsuitable to a suitable area. Using these three measures, levels of risk are generated for each population - low risk, medium, medium-high and high risk, researchers said. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) A Delhi court extended today by six days the custody of Kashmiri separatist leader Shabir Shah allowing the Enforcement Directorate (ED) to interrogate him further in a decade-old money laundering case for alleged terror financing. The court allowed the plea of the ED seeking extension of his custody after its counsel alleged that sixty-four-year-old Shah was ruining the country by using foreign money to fund terror. "Let him say Bharat Mata ki jai," the ED counsel said in the court of Additional Sessions Judge Sidharth Sharma, who then remarked it was not a TV studio and directed the counsel to argue on merits. Advocate M S Khan, appearing for Shah, however, alleged that Shah was being pressured and compelled to give various statements during his custody by ED officials. The court had yesterday extended by a day Shah's custody for questioning by the ED which had said it was necessary to ascertain his role in "anti-national activities" as well as terror funding in India through hawala channels from countries like Pakistan, the UAE and the UK. The agency had told the court that Shah was in continuous contact with terrorists in Pakistan and received money several times through 'hawala' transactions for "disrupting the peace in Jammu and Kashmir". It had also said that Shah's associates were to be confronted with him and the "international ramification" of the financial involvement was to be unearthed. The agency was also trying to ascertain the movable and immovable assets of Shah, who was arrested on July 25, besides unearthing the sources of hawala transfers and further dissemination of the funds, it had said. The ED had said that during interrogation, Shah revealed that he was obtaining donations for the Kashmir issue in cash for which he was not filing any income tax returns. The records relating to the donations were to be recovered and the accused had to be confronted with them, it had said. Shah was arrested by the ED a day after several Hurriyat leaders were taken into custody of the National Investigating Agency (NIA) in a case of alleged terror funding in the Valley to fuel unrest. Investigating agencies like the NIA have cracked down on Hurriyat leaders like Syed Ali Shah Geelani's son-in-law -- Altaf Ahmed Shah, also known as Altaf Fantoosh -- and six other Kashmiri separatists. Shah was arrested in an August 2005 case in which the Special Cell of the Delhi Police had taken into custody Mohammed Aslam Wani (35), an alleged hawala dealer. The ED had claimed that Rs 63 lakh was recovered from Wani out of which Rs 52 lakh was allegedly to be delivered to Shah. The agency had earlier issued summonses to Shah in connection with the 2005 case, the prosecution had said, adding that Wani had claimed that he had given Rs 2.25 crore to Shah. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) A Delhi court snubbed today an overenthusiastic prosecutor for the Enforcement Directorate (ED) for asking Kashmiri separatist leader Shabir Shah to chant 'Bharat Mata ki jai' to prove his patriotism, saying it was not a television studio. Additional Sessions Judge Sidharth Sharma chided the lawyer for his remark and later allowed the ED's plea for extention of sixty-four-year-old Shah's custodial interrogation in a decade-old money laundering case. The ED's counsel Rajeev Awasthi alleged that Shah was ruining the country by using money to fund terror and breached the line by daring the separatist leader to chant 'Bharat Mata ki Jai' to prove his patriotism. However, an anguished judge stopped him, warning that the courtroom was not a "television studio." "Argue on the merits of the case," said the judge. During the proceedings, the ED submitted that foreign funds were used for terror activities including stone pelting on the security agencies in the Valley. The agency told the court that the source of funding of properties of Shah, worth hundreds of crores of rupees, had to be unearthed. The prosecutor told the court that Shah, arrested on July 25 in the money laundering, was "totally non-cooperative" during his questioning by the ED. Advocate M S Khan, appearing for Shah, however, alleged that his client was being pressured and compelled to give various statements during his custody by ED officials. He opposed the submission made by the agency, saying that it was not revealing the complete facts before the court. The agency said there was a need to probe a lot of cash transactions which were used for terror activities and stone pelting causing huge inconvenience in the Valley. The ED said it was ascertaining Shah's role in "anti- national activities" as well as the terror funding through 'hawala' channels from countries like Pakistan, the UAE and the UK. It told the court that the separatist leader was in continuous contact with anti-national elements, besides terrorists in Pakistan, and received money for "disrupting the peace of Jammu and Kashmir". It also said that Shah's associates were to be confronted with him and the "international ramification" of financial involvement was to be unearthed. The ED's application, seeking seven days' custody, also said that during interrogation Shah revealed that he was obtaining donations for the Kashmir issue in cash for which he was not filing any income tax returns. The records relating to the donations were to be recovered and the accused had to be confronted with them, the agency said. Shah was arrested by the ED a day after several Hurriyat leaders were taken into custody of the National Investigating Agency (NIA) in a case of alleged terror funding in the Valley to fuel unrest. He was taken into custody in the August 2005 case in which the Special Cell of Delhi Police had arrested Mohammed Aslam Wani (35), an alleged hawala dealer, claiming that Rs 63 lakh was recovered from Wani out of which Rs 52 lakh was allegedly to be delivered to Shah. The agency had earlier issued summonses to Shah in the case, the prosecution had said, adding that Wani had claimed that he had given Rs 2.25 crore to Shah. Investigating agencies like the NIA have cracked down on Hurriyat leaders like Syed Ali Shah Geelani's son-in-law -- Altaf Ahmed Shah, also known as Altaf Fantoosh -- and six other Kashmiri separatists. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Members of the Communist Party of India(M) and the Bharatiya Janta Party clashed in the Lok Sabha on Thursday after the former objected to some BJP members' remarks attacking them over the political . Raising the issue during the Zero Hour, senior CPI(M) leader P Karunakaran took strong exception to some BJP members calling Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan, the party's general secretary Sitaram Yechury and the party "terrorists" yesterday in the House. The BJP members indulged in heated exchanges as other CPI(M) members also vociferously protested the remarks made by two BJP members' remarks during the Zero Hour yesterday. Karunakaran also said as per rules, the BJP MPs cannot name or attack those who are not present in the House and are not in a position to defend themselves. The House witnessed noisy scenes and Karunakaran could not be heard further due to the din, forcing the Speaker to adjourn the House briefly. When the House met again, Speaker Sumitra Mahajan did not allow him to raise the issue again, saying whatever he had said had gone on record. Protesting Left members then trooped into the well with Mohammad Salim (CPI-M) being heard asking the Chair not to "succumb to pressure tactics" of the ruling party members. Mahajan then allowed Karunakaran to speak again. He said the Kerala chief minister has been holding meetings with members of the RSS, the Left and other stake holders to end violence and said many Left workers have been also been killed over the years. Yechury was also attacked, he said. As BJP members protested again, the Speaker said the BJP members should not turn the House into a 'Kurukshetra' but 'Dharmakshetra' where they could debate issues. (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.) Concerned over the huge pendency of child abuse cases in trial courts, the Delhi High Court today said it will pass appropriate orders in the matter. The issue came to the high court's attention when a bail plea of an accused in such a case was mentioned before a bench of Acting Chief Justice Gita Mittal and Justice C Hari Shankar. The lawyer for the accused told the bench he has moved the high court as the trial court, set up under the POCSO Act, set a date of July 25, 2018 for recording of the evidence in the case and also dismissed his bail plea and early hearing application. The lawyer, Vibhas K Jha, also told the bench that the trial court in Tis Hazari gave such a long date as 996 cases under the Prevention of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act were already pending before it. The court then asked the lawyer what was the situation in the other POCSO courts in Delhi, to which Jha said there was huge pendency of POCSO cases in all district courts except the one at Saket. Thereafter, the bench said it will ascertain the situation in all district courts with regard to POCSO cases and will pass appropriate orders on the administrative side. The Acting Chief Justice, according to the court staff, has forwarded the Tis Hazari court's order to Registrar General Dinesh Sharma asking him to find out the number of cases pending in each district court and submit a report. In the case under Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act, which was before the bench today, the accused was arrested on September 1 last year for allegedly raping a 12-year-old girl by showing a knife on August 31, 2016. Charges for the offences including under sections 363 (kidnapping), 376 (rape), 376 (2)(i) (raping a girl below 16 years of age) and 506 (criminal intimidation) of the IPC as well as section 6 (sexual assault) of the POCSO Act were framed against him on December 7 last year. The offence of rape under IPC and sexual assault under POCSO Act entail maximum punishment of life term. According to the bail plea moved by the accused, in POCSO cases the trial court has to start recording of evidence within one month of framing of charges. However, in the instant case, the date for prosecution evidence was initially fixed for July 15, on which date it was listed for recording of evidence on July 25 next year, the petition said. The bench allowed the matter to be listed for hearing tomorrow before the appropriate court. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Indians seeking jobs in the UAE should not come on visit visas and must authenticate their employment offers and permit visas before arriving in the country, the Indian Consulate here has said, amid growing cases of duping and visa frauds. The advisory follows a high number of calls and visits to the Consulate by Indian workers who have been duped by agents or employers on a regular basis. Consul-General of India in Dubai Vipul said the mission did not have the precise data on the number of such calls "because most such calls are complex and raise a variety of issues". He said most calls about duping were related to workers who come for employment or searching for employment on visit visas. "We have got several cases of people falling into trouble when they come for employment or for looking for employment on visit visas. There are also cases of women being forced to work as maids by dubious agents who get them to the UAE on visit visas as well as sending them to Oman and other countries," Vipul told Gulf . He said when serious duping cases come to the notice of the consulate, the mission tries to mediate with the employers to get the passports of workers back and facilitate their return to India. The consulate issued 225 air tickets in 2016 and 186 in the first half of 2017 to stranded workers. "In a recent case, in June, we repatriated 27 workers hailing from Uttar Pradesh who came to the UAE in February- March this year and were promised jobs. However, they were not given any jobs and were left to fend for themselves by the agents," he said. In another case, 15 people were promised some jobs, but on arrival they were told to work as labourers at a construction site, he added. In the first half of this year, the consulate received a total of 540 labour complaints of which over 250 have been resolved, the report said. Duplicate and fake visas are also a problem that the Indian missions in the UAE are fighting, the report said. "In the first six months of this year, several hundreds of fake visas were detected. Typically, these get detected because many people ask us about the genuineness of a job offer and the UAE visa. Sometimes, agents give genuine visit visas and fake employment visas," Vipul said. He said such cases were hard to detect in India. "The workers would use the fake employment visas to board the flight from India and present their original visit visa on arrival here. When they gain entry, they realise that they don't have the offered job," he said. To tackle such visa frauds, the mission has issued an advisory to the Indian jobseekers, providing them useful links from the UAE government departments through which they can make preliminary verification of the authenticity of the employment offers and entry permits. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Dreaded Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT) militant Abu Dujana apparently rejected an offer to surrender made by the security forces minutes before the encounter that led to his killing along with an aide in south Kashmir's Pulwama district. According to a recording of a purported telephonic conversation between Abu Dujana and an unnamed officer of security forces, the LeT militant commander said, "Why should I surrender? I have left (home) for martyrdom. I have to die either today or tomorrow." The officer made attempts to get the militant to give up by reminding him of his parents and wife. "I have not married. This is propaganda. My parents were dead for me the day I left them," he said in the audio recording. When the officer tells him that he must be aware that the conflict in Kashmir "is a game", Abu Dujana replied "I know the system. I know everything. What can I do, if anyone wants to play a game. I have to tread my own path". The wanted militant could afford a laugh or two when the officer told him how he has travelled distances to get him. He asked the officer about his well-being, saying it has been years since he heard from him. "When we played 'chor-sipahi'. Sometimes we are ahead, sometimes you. Today you caught me, congratulations," he said. The officer responded by saying he was only doing his duty. "I will fulfil my duty," the militant replied. The officer tells Abu Dujana that no one wants to kill anyone. "That's okay, but whoever gave you the information wants me dead," the militant said. "Listen to me, I cannot surrender. I know you have no animosity with me and that you are fulfilling your duty and I am mine. You do your duty and whatever is written in my fate, Allah will do that," he added. When told by the officer that what he was indulging in was not 'jihad', the militant said "Chalo yaar, kya karenge. (friend, what can we do)". The officer asked the LeT Commander to come out of the house to surrender and make people understand. "That is how this bloodshed will end," the officer said. "I have never indulged in bloodshed. They know it," Abu Dujana replied. When the officer told him that Kashmiris will listen to him, the militant disconnected the call. Dujana, believed to be in his late 20s, was killed on Tuesday in a well-planned operation by a joint team of the Jammu and Kashmir Police, Army and CRPF in Pulwama district of south Kashmir. The Enforcement Directorate has questioned West Bengal BJP leader Shishir Bajoria in connection with the investigation into investments in offshore firms, as revealed in the Panama Papers expose. Bajoria was yesterday questioned by the directorate's officials in Kolkata. "We had questioned him yesterday regarding his investments in offshore firms," a senior ED official said. When contacted Bajoria said, "I was questioned yesterday regarding my investments abroad. I had fully cooperated with the ED officials. All my overseas investment are through the normal banking channels under RBI rules and permission,". Bajoria said that ED interrogating him proves that for Prime Minister Narendra Modi government all are at par irrespective of their party affiliations. In April last year the International Consortium of Investigative Journalism published the Panama Papers exposing tax evasion by the world's elite through off-shore accounts and shell companies. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) A letter written by renowned German physicist Albert Einstein in 1919, concerning the arrangement of divorce to his wife and the education of his children, is expected to fetch over USD 15,000 at an auction. The noble award winner signed the two-sided letter dated December 5, 1919 as "Albert" on one side and "Papa" on the other. In beginning of the letter, Einstein talks about the arrangement of divorce to his wife Mileva Maric and the eduction of his son Hans Albert. "It seems that we are condemned to a kind of gypsy-life. Under the present circumstances I can understand you very well... I also prefer, of course, that Albert will not have to change schools. Completing school as soon as possible is not a good enough reason," he wrote. On the reverse side Einstein pens a letter, signed "Papa," to his sons Hans and Eduard about their education, reminiscing about his own education, referring to his teachers Adolf Hurwitz and Ernst Amberg. "I am pleased that you are taking lessons from Amberg. He is a very sympathetic man...He was an assistant to Hurwitz when I was a fledgling student; at that time I was tested by him in the Repetitozimmer. He was then quite young. Seiler was also an assistant in the Physics building when I was a student. I liked him less," Einstein wrote. "This is an exceptional handwritten letter offering details related to both Einstein's personal family life and his scientific legacy," said RR Auction house. The letter measures 9 x 11 inches and is in good condition. The online auction bidding will end on August 9. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) EU President Donald Tusk today testified in Warsaw as a witness in an investigation into the 2010 jet crash in Russia that killed Poland's then president and 95 others. Tusk, who was Poland's prime minister at the time of the crash, told reporters he "had no doubt" he was being targeted by his arch-rival in the current conservative populist government before questioning by Polish prosecutors. The ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski today told the Catholic-nationalist Trwam TV station that Tusk "has plenty to fear", adding that the crash probe "is one thing, but there are others". Kaczynski also unleashed an emotional diatribe in parliament two weeks ago, accusing Tusk's former liberal Civic Platform (PO) party of being responsible for the Smolensk crash that claimed the life of his twin brother, then president Lech Kaczynski. "Don't wipe your treacherous mouths with my late brother's name. You destroyed him, you murdered him, you are scoundrels," Jaroslaw Kaczynski told PO deputies. He has long insisted that the 2010 crash was no accident and accuses Tusk of "moral responsibility" for the death of his brother. Polish and Russian investigators found that pilot error, bad weather and poor air-traffic control were to blame for the accident. "What we heard in parliament from Jaroslaw Kaczynski in an outburst of rage and anger points unequivocally to the intentions behind this matter, so I have no doubts here," Tusk told reporters before testifying today. Grzegorz Schetyna, current head of Poland's Civic Platform (PO) opposition, told Polish media that "Tusk is today a political target for the PiS and the prosecutors who are openly fulfilling a political order." "This is part of a series of measures targeting him (Tusk). Someone is really afraid of him," Schetyna said. Prosecutors have said Tusk was due to testify today regarding "public officials who failed to comply with obligations" concerning crash victim autopsies. Tusk already testified for eight hours in the Polish capital in April as a witness in an investigation of two former military counter-intelligence chiefs accused of overstepping their duties in the initial investigation of the crash. He was first summoned days after EU leaders gave him another term as president despite strong opposition from Poland. After taking power in late 2015, the PiS launched a fresh probe into the 2010 crash that also killed a number of senior Polish officials and a commission of enquiry it controls suggested in April that an explosion likely caused the aircraft to break up in the air. The crash occurred as the presidential delegation was heading to a commemoration in Russia's Katyn forest for thousands of Polish army officers killed by Soviet secret police in 1940 -- a massacre the Kremlin denied until 1990. Prosecutors questioning of Tusk comes amid a high-stakes row between Warsaw and Brussels over rule of law concerns that could see the EU strip Poland of voting rights. The European Union announced Saturday it had launched legal action against Poland's PiS government over a new court reforms that it fears will erode judicial independence. Tusk said today that the PiS law "confirms that Jaroslaw Kaczynski is dreaming of a justice system that will answer to him. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Union minister Nitin Gadkari today asked officials of environment, road and other ministries to expedite approvals holding back the ambitious Rs 12,000 crore Char Dham connectivity project. Chairing a meeting of group of ministers on infrastructure, Gadkari said 18 proposals of the ambitious Char Dham project were scuttled in absence of various clearances which cannot be tolerated as the decision to build the new alignment was taken after a major catastrophe in Uttarakhand. "There should not be any delay in the Rs 12,000-crore project for developing 900 km of National Highways in Uttarakhand for improving connectivity to Char Dham pilgrimage centres," Gadkari said during the meeting, as per officials who were present in the meeting. The meeting was attended by Coal and Power Minister Piyush Goyal, Environment Minister Harsh Vardhan, officials of various ministries, including Railways and Defence, as well Uttarakhand. Prime Minister Narendra Modi had laid the foundation stone of the ambitious Char Dham project last year. The project aims at improving connectivity to Char Dham pilgrimage centres -- Kedarnath, Badrinath, Gangotri and Yamunotri in the Himalayas. Uttarakhand government officials present during the meeting pointed out a notification by the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change declaring 40 square km area near river Bhagirathi as eco sensitive zone. Gadkari urged his forest counterpart to look into the matter as this was not only holding up Char Dham project but causing delays in Namami Gange and Border Road Projects as well, the officials said. Asking the environment and forest ministry to expedite clearances to 32 other highway projects, the Road, Highways and Shipping Minister also requested for exempting NHIDCL projects within 100 km of LoC or international boundaries from sending proposals to regional offices of MoEFCC, as in the case of Defence. The issue of transfer of Defence land to National Highways Authority of India at various places was also discussed in the meeting as five such cases are pending, the officials said. Asking Railway officials to expedite rail projects in Maharashtra, Gadkari said delays in infrastructure projects were causing socio-economic imbalances. Besides, the Railways was requested to provide 35 acres of land at Varanasi for intermodal station. A number of port projects including that of JNPT, Kandla and Kamrajar were also discussed during the meeting. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Army chief Gen. Bipin Rawat today held extensive talks with his Kazakh counterpart in Astana and explored ways to ramp up defence and counter-terror cooperation between the two countries. Rawat is currently on a three-day visit to Kazakhstan. "He met Commander-in-Chief Land Forces of Kazakhstan today and discussed with him various aspects of cooperation between the two armies," the Army said in a statement here. It said both the sides agreed to take forward the joint exercise between their armies. The joint exercise is scheduled to be held at Bakloh, Himmachal Pradesh in November. At the meeting, Gen. Rawat also conveyed India's support for deployment of Kazakh forces in UN peacekeeping operations. "Kazakhstan further sought assistance for capacity enhancement in the areas of counter insurgency operations, military education and training of cadets in India. The Chief of Army Staff assured them of whole-hearted support. "He complimented the Kazakh Army for their professionalism as witnessed during the demonstration while visiting the 36 Air Assault Brigade," said the Army. Gen. Rawat will leave for Turkmenistan tomorrow. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Nepal Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba today said that his government is committed to holding the final phase of local-level polls on September 18 as part of the successful implementation the new Constitution. The immediate responsibility of the government is to increase the ownership of the new Constitution, he said. It is also the government's top priority to implement the new Constitution successfully, Deuba said while inaugurating the second Responsible Business Summit by National Business Initiative. "Two phases of the local-level elections have already been held and the government is committed to holding the final phase of polls on September 18," he said. The government has been making necessary preparations for provincial and federal parliament elections and the election Constituency Delineation Commission has started its work for the same, the prime minister said. Major political parties are gearing up for the third phase of the local-level polls to be held in the Madhesi province after it was postponed by the government. The local-level polls, being held in Nepal for the first time in almost two decades, is scheduled to take place in eight districts including in Bara, Parsa, Rautahat, Dhanusha, Saptari and Siraha of southern Nepal under the Madhesi- stronghold province No 2. Millions of Nepalese voted on June 28 in the second phase of the polls as the Himalayan nation took a crucial step towards cementing democracy amid political turmoil. Deuba said that "increasing gross domestic product, creating additional employment and increasing investment are the priorities for the government". Increasing national and foreign investment in the country is the government's top priority, he said. The government has amended certain laws and some other laws are in the process of amendment in order to attract more investment, he said. "We are preparing to remove administrative and legal hassles for increasing investment. Those showing interest in investment will get all necessary support," he said. The meaning of responsible business is to spend certain amount of profit for social programme and a major responsibility of a responsible businessman is also to abide by the state's rules and regulations, he said. Businessmen should try to address issues such as poverty alleviation, conflict management, ending financial inequality and environmental imbalance, Deuba said. More than a hundred traders and industrialists from India, China and Singapore, among other countries, have been participating in the two-day programme. Nepal has been witnessing political instability. Some Madhes-centric parties opposed the elections on the ground that the new Constitution be amended to accommodate their views: more representation in the Parliament and redrawing of provincial boundaries. The Nepal government has tabled a new Constitution amendment bill in the Parliament to address the demands of the agitating Madhesis. Madhesis, mostly of Indian-origin, launched a prolonged agitation between September 2015 and February last year against the implementation of the new Constitution which they felt marginalised the Terai community. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The Gujarat government today announced a special relief package of Rs 1,500 crore for the flood-affected Banaskantha and Patan districts. The announcement was made by Gujarat Chief Minister Vijay Rupani, who spent five days in that region to get first-hand information about the losses caused by the flood, a government release said. Prime Minister Narendra Modi had announced a flood-relief package of Rs 500 crore for the entire state during his visit on July 25. Now, the state government has announced the Rs 1,500 crore package for the northern districts, which have been officially declared as 'disaster-affected areas' through a gazette notification on Tuesday by the state revenue department. Out of this, Rs 1,311 crore will be spent to compensate for agricultural losses as well as for the land improvement measures. As per the release, Rs 75 crore has been alloted for electrification, Rs 20 crore for cattle loss, Rs 15 crore for compensating business losses and Rs 79 crore will be spent for various other schemes of the revenue department. For Dhanera town, which is the main commercial hub of Banaskantha district and was hit badly by the flood, the state government has announced a special package, wherein small traders, shopkeepers and vendors would get cash compensation ranging from Rs 15,000 to Rs 75,000, it said. For each cattle that died in the flood, the state would give a relief of Rs 40,000 while a compensation of Rs 6 lakh will be given to the kin of those who died in the deluge. It also includes Rs 2 lakh announced by the Prime Minister earlier. In Banaskantha alone, 60 people have died in various rain-related incidents, the release said. To prevent such a situation in the future, the state government would explore the possibility of building a flood protection wall outside Dhanera, Rupani was quoted as saying in the release. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) A vote by the Haitian Senate to ban gay marriage as well as "public demonstration of support" for homosexuality reflects the will of the people, the chamber's president has said. The Senate approved a bill late Tuesday that said "the parties, co-parties and accomplices" of a homosexual marriage can be punished by three years in prison and a fine of about USD 8,000. "All senators are opposed to same-sex marriage, so this simply reflects the commitments the senators made during their campaigns," Senate President Youri Latortue told AFP. Haiti's constitution established a secular republic but the country is marked by deep religious beliefs. "Although the state is secular, it is people of faith who are the majority," Latortue said, stressing the commonly held belief in Haiti that homosexuality is a Western practice only. "A country has to focus on its values and traditions. Some people in other countries see it differently, but in Haiti, that's how it's seen." Haitian law already defines marriage as a union between a man and a woman, making it unclear what consequences the bill, if passed, would have in practice. However, it also called for banning "any public demonstration of support for homosexuality and proselytizing in favour of such acts." It is this ambiguous wording that raises concern among Haitian homosexuals and their advocates. "We see this as an attack on the LGBT community in this country," said Charlot Jeudy, president of the Kouraj group, which defends the rights of homosexuals and transgender people. "This text divides our society, it reinforces prejudices and discrimination. It's really a shame." The two gay rights organisations still officially recognised by the state record daily instances of insults, threats and violence. Politicians "know very well that this will bring much more violence and prejudice against the LGBTI community," Jeudy said. Only police and the judicial system can intervene in response to reported violations under the measure. The bill now goes to the Chamber of Deputies for debate, though its passage into law is all but certain. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Nearly half of those who crack the civil services examination are engineering graduates and a large number of them do so by opting for subjects like public administration and sociology, union minister Jitendra Singh said today. During the Question Hour in Rajya Sabha, he also said that among the 20 toppers this year, 19 were engineers and one was a doctor. He was replying to supplementaries after BJP member Subramanian Swamy asked whether the government had received representations to include Ayurveda as an optional subject for civil services examination. In his written reply, the Minister of State for personnel, public grievances and pensions said the issue was under examination by the government. He also said that there are 48 optional subjects for the examination and added that Ayurveda not being an optional did not mean that Ayush graduates could not appear for the examination. Rathore said doctors and engineers cracked the examination but often chose subjects other than what they had studied during graduation. Not even ten per cent of the doctors opted for medical science as an option, he added. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The Madras High Court today ordered issuance of notice to Tamil Nadu Chief Minister K Palaniswami and four state ministers on a plea seeking their disqualification over a meeting the ministers reportedly had with jailed AIADMK general secretary V K Sasikala. The court's Madurai bench sought an explanation from Palaniswami over the allegation that he had not questioned his cabinet colleagues over their meeting a few months ago with Sasikala, currently serving a prison term in a graft case, to discuss "functioning of the government". When the PIL by Anazhagan, son of former AIADMK MLA late Thamaraikani, came up, a division bench of Justices K K Sasidharan and G R Swaminathan ordered issuance of notice to the chief minister and his cabinet colleagues, K A Sengottaiyan, Dindigul Srinivasan, Kamaraj and Sellur K Raju and secretary of the state assembly, returnable by August 7. The petitioner submitted that the ministers meeting the accused in the prison was a "violation" of the oath taken by them as ministers and they should be disqualified. The chief minister also should also be disqualified for not pulling them up, he contended. Sasikala had been convicted in the disproportionate assets case by the Supreme Court on February 14, and is undergoing imprisonment in a Bengaluru jail. The party's spokesperson, Gowri Shankar, had on February 22 in an interview to a private TV channel said the state government would be run "on the advice and guidance of AIADMK General secretary Sasikala," the petitioner had said, adding no minister had denied his statement. Besides on February 28, the four ministers had admitted that they had met Sasikala in prison and discussed the functioning of the government, he alleged. The "admission" by the ministers that their government was being run on the advise of Sasikala showed that the chief minister and the four ministers violated the Constitution, he said. The chief minister also had not given any view against the statement of the ministers nor had he denied it, he said. He then sought the intervention of the court and an order disqualifying the chief minister and the ministers. The petitioner also prayed for a direction to the speaker and secretary of the state assembly to do the same. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The Madras High court today asked the Union human resource development (HRD) ministry if it was possible to introduce Tamil as a compulsory subject till class 10 in the Navodaya schools in Tamil Nadu and file its reply before August 29. A division bench of the high court's Madurai bench, comprising justices K K Sasidharan and G R Swaminathan, was hearing a public interest litigation (PIL) filed by one Jeyakumar Thomas, seeking a direction to the Centre to set up Jawahar Navodaya Vidyalaya (JNV) schools in the state. It posed the question after S M Anandhamurugan, the petitioner's counsel, submitted that the Centre claimed that it was striving to develop Tamil language, but was "indirectly preventing it". The counsel for the state government said it was a state policy that a two-language formula should be followed -- "Tamil and English or an optional language," and that Tamil would not be taught in the JNV schools. JNV schools, affiliated to the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE), are residential institutions imparting education from class 6 to class 12. There is a 75-per cent reservation for the children from rural areas in these schools, which charge Rs 200 as fee. The HRD ministry has set up 600 such schools in the country, but not even one in Tamil Nadu. The Centre submitted that it was willing to set up JNV schools in Tamil Nadu, but the state government had not considered it. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The headmaster of a boys high school in West Bengal's Nadia district was arrested for allegedly assaulting a student, who reported bleeding in his ear after it. Police said today that the headmaster of Nashra Boys High School here was arrested on Wednesday following complaints by gaurdians of other students. The incident took place on Wednesday morning when the standard ten student Pradip Mondal reported for classes after a long absence. The headmaster allegedly pulled his ear, slapped him on his cheek and disallowed him from appearing for a class test. With the student bleeding from his ear after the assault, he was taken to a local pharmacy by the school authorities. The student's father rushed in on being informed by the school authorities. He said that he was worried that his son, who had undergone an appendicitis a couple of months ago, had fallen ill and alleged that the headmaster had behaved rudely with him. The headmaster, he alleged, had beaten his son brutally. The boy was first taken to Ranaghat sub-divisional hospital and later to Jawaharlal Nehru Memorial Hospital at Kalyani. He is still under treatment there, the family sources said. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Family of Sepoy Tanzin Chhultim from Lahaul and Spiti district who was killed in Kashmir by militants today would be givencompensation of Rs 20 lakh by Himachal Pradesh government. The state government has made a policy for giving uniform compensation to all the army persons killed during operations against militants and other actions, chief minister Virbhadra Singh said here. The government had taken a decision to enhance the amount of compensation from Rs 5 lakh to Rs 20 lakh in June this year and the decision has been implemented, he said. Major Kamlesh Pandey and Chhultim were killed and a jawan was injured in the firing by militants at Zainapora in Shopian district of Jammu and Kashmir during a cordon and search operation launched by security forces. Born on November 18, 1991 at Karpat village in Udaipur area of Lahaul and Spiti district in Himachal Pradesh, Tanzin Chhultim joined the Army in September 2012. He was unmarried and survived by his mother Tanzin Angmo. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Facing the opposition heat, Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis today removed IAS officer Radheshyam Mopalwar as managing director of the state undertaking MSRDC over audio clips in which he was purportedly heard fixing a deal for a plot here. As the issue rocked the state Assembly with the opposition accusing the officer of corruption, Fadnavis announced in the House that Mopalwar was being removed as vice-chairman and managing director of the Maharashtra State Road Development Corporation (MSRDC), pending an inquiry against him. He said though there was no evidence of graft against Mopalwar, he was being removed from the post till the inquiry was over. The Congress-NCP opposition demanded action against the bureaucrat after the audio clips, in which he is purportedly heard fixing a deal concerning a piece of land in suburban Borivali, surfaced. The clips remain unverified. "There is no direct evidence against Mopalwar, but going by the demand of the opposition, I am removing Mopalwar from his current post of MD of MSRDC, till the inquiry (against him is over). "I have already announced in the House that inquiry in this matter will be completed within a month," the chief minister said. Seeking to turn the table on the opposition, Fadnavis said the projects being discussed in the clips go back to the time when the Congress-NCP government was in power. There is no mention of the Mumbai-Nagpur Expressway project which the IAS officer was overseeing as the MSRDC managing director, he said. The Rs 46,000-crore expressway, also called Samruddhi Mahamarg (prosperity corridor), being implemented by the MSRDC is considered a pet project of Fadnavis. The opposition also raised the issue of alleged violation of norms by Housing Minister Prakash Mehta in transfer of development rights in a project in the city. "If Eknath Khadse (former revenue minister from the BJP, who quit following graft charges last year) could be removed why not Prakash Mehta (Housing Minister) and Mopalwar?" NCP leader Ajit Pawar asked. Mehta has been accused of transferring development rights to a project in the city without consulting Fadnavis. Pawar said, "BJP MLA Anil Gote had written to several investigating agencies against Mopalwar." Defending the government, Finance Minister Sudhir Mungantiwar asserted it will not protect anyone involved in corruption. "We will not protect any corrupt practice or person. Gote is a BJP MLA and he wants to fight against corruption. Hence, he wrote letters to various investigating agencies," he said. Jayant Patil (NCP) said, "We are not satisfied with the state government because there is no announcement about Mehta." Earlier in the day, the assembly witnessed noisy scenes and was adjourned twice as the opposition pressed for the ouster of Mehta and Mopalwar. Leader of the Opposition Radhakrishna Vikhe Patil (Congress) demanded a statement from the chief minister on Mehta. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The country may have a new force to guard its maritime boundaries, with a proposal coming up for discussion at a high-level meeting chaired by Home Minister Rajnath Singh today. The proposed force would guard maritime frontiers closer to the country's landmass. The Indian Coast Guard protects India's maritime interests and enforces maritime law, with jurisdiction over the territorial waters of India, including its contiguous zone and exclusive economic zone. The ICG has a larger mandate and territory to cover. The proposal for raising a new central armed police force - Coastal Border Police Force (CBPF) - was discussed at the meeting which was attended by the top home ministry officials and chiefs of central armed police forces (CAPF), a home ministry statement said. India has a vast coastline of 7,516 km touching 13 states and Union Territories (UTs). It also has around 1,197 islands. Apart from the raising of CBPF, the meeting discussed housing issues related to CAPF personnel, recruitment to fill up vacancies, shortage of doctors for central forces, setting up an institute of medical sciences for them. The cadre review of central forces, review of the BSF's air wing and issues related to procurement of various items for CAPFs also came up for discussion, the statement said. Singh said the home ministry will look at the issues raised by the forces favourably. Keeping in view the need for more young personnel for field jobs, the home minister asked the CAPFs to take necessary steps, the statement said. Ministers of state for home Kiren Rijiju and Hansraj Gangaram Ahir also attended the meeting. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) China on Thursday said India should show through deeds its willingness to maintain peace at the border and claimed that 48 Indian soldiers were at Doklam area backed by a "large number" of troops at the border to halt Chinese attempts to build a road on its side of the boundary. In a statement, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said the action of the Indian side amounts to that of "irresponsibility and recklessness." He said that until yesterday, "there were 48 Indian soldiers and one bulldozer" in Doklam area, describing it as illegal intrusion into Chinese territory. India, however, says that the area belongs to Bhutan. "In addition, there are still a large number of Indian armed forces congregating on the boundary and on the Indian side of the boundary," Geng said. "No matter how many Indian border troops illegally trespassed the boundary and still stay in the Chinese territory, it will not alter the nature of severely violating China's territorial integrity and contravening the UN Charter. This incident is illegal under the international law. The Indian side should bear corresponding responsibilities," the spokesman said. The Foreign Ministry had issued a 15-page fact sheet yesterday with maps and other details about the standoff since it began on June 16, saying 40 Indian troops stayed at Doklam till July end. Geng repeated once again today that on June 18 about 270 Indian troops "advanced more than 100 meters into the Chinese territory to obstruct the road building of the Chinese side." Reacting to yesterday's External Affairs Ministry statement that the peace and tranquillity of the India-China boundary constitutes the important prerequisite for the smooth development of bilateral relations, Geng said India should also show its words in "deeds". "Indian side is always keeping 'peace' on the tip of its tongue. But we should not only listen to its words but also heed its deeds," Geng said in the statement. It also accused India of sending troops to halt the road work without responding to advance notice about China's plans to build the road given twice earlier on May 18 and June 8. "However, the Indian side didn't make any response to the Chinese side through any channel for over one month. Instead, it flagrantly dispatched armed forces carrying equipment to illegally cross the boundary to obstruct China's road building. This is by no means for peace," it said. "The Indian border troops still illegally stay on the Chinese territory. Moreover, the Indian side is building roads, hoarding supplies and deploying a large number of armed forces on the Indian side of the boundary. This is by no means for peace," it said, claiming that it is "irrefutable" that the Indian troops illegally trespassed into the Chinese area. "Under such circumstances, instead of deeply reflecting on its mistakes, the Indian side fabricated such sheer fallacies as the so-called 'security concerns', the 'issue of tri-junction' and 'at the request of Bhutan' as excuses to justify its wrongdoing," it said. Referring to its diplomatic protests made in this regard, the statement said the "Indian side, rather than withdraw its trespassing troops and equipment, made unreasonable demands to China which demonstrated its lack of sincerity for resolving the incident. This is by no means for peace." "If the Indian side truly cherish peace, what it should do is to immediately pull back the trespassing border troops to the Indian side of the boundary," Geng said. He said building a road was a normal activity of China on its own territory which is completely lawful and legitimate. CEO Vishal Sikka has dismissed views suggesting senior-level exits at the company were a cause of concern, saying the attrition is "far lower" than other firms. In the last few months, the country's second largest software firm, has seen a number of senior-level executives resigning. They include Anirban Dey (Global head and chief business officer of Edge products), Yusuf Bashir (MD, Innovation Fund) and Ritika Suri (executive vice-president). "Not at all. This is a complete nonsensical myth that has been propagated in some parts," Sikka told CNBC-TV18 when asked if the series of exits of senior talent was a cause for concern. "It happens in every company. We actually did an analysis, both in terms of our own past as well as in terms of the other in our industry. And there are far more executives who have left every other company that we could think of," he said. Sikka who has just completed three years as the CEO of said the analysis by the company and some other recruiting firms revealed that Infosys was "far lower in terms of executive attrition than other companies". Some reports suggest that the exits are a worrying trend for Infosys as many of the officials, who have put in their papers, had joined Sikka from SAP his former employer. Sikka quipped that there is a "fixation" on Infosys, and exit of individuals, including assistants and engineers, keeps showing up on the list. Infosys has been battling both internal and external challenges in terms of uncertain global economic environment and high-profile founders flagging concerns around alleged corporate governance lapses at the company. Asked about co-founder NR Narayana Murthy's reported comments recently that he regretted leaving the organisation in 2014, Sikka said it was a conscious decision to have an independent board and a professional management. "This was something that we had very consciously established as an independent board and a professional management taking over from a founder-led board and a founder-led management. So, that is a big change," he said. (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.) State-owned IOC is stepping up purchase of crude oil from the US and will this month tender for second cargo as it looks at cheaper alternatives that have emerged due to a global supply glut. "We will this month tender to buy 2 million barrels of crude oil," Indian Oil Corp (IOC) Director (Finance) A K Sharma said here. IOC had sealed a deal last month to import 1.6 million barrels of crude from the US for delivery in the first week of October to its Paradip refinery in Odisha -- the first ever such purchase of US crude by an Indian state-run refiner. "There are 6-7 grades of US crude. The second cargo will be for delivery in November," he said. India, the world's third-largest oil importer, joins Asian countries like South Korea, Japan and China to buy US crude after production cuts by OPEC drove up prices of Middle East heavy-sour crude, or grades with a high sulphur content. After IOC, Bharat Petroleum Corp Ltd (BPCL) too has bought 1 million barrels of sour crude from the US for its Kochi refinery. The deals by IOC and BPCL comes within weeks of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's visit to the US when President Donald Trump talked of his country looking to export more energy products to India. IOC Chairman Sanjiv Singh said IOC bought crude from US for the first time after crude export ban was lifted in December last year. "This has opened new sources of crude oil," he said. Buying US crude has become attractive for Indian refiners after the differential between Brent (the benchmark crude or marker crude that serves as a reference price for buyers in western world) and Dubai (which serves as a benchmark for countries in the east) has narrowed. "Even after including the shipping cost, buying US crude proved to be very cost competitive to us and so we bought one very large crude carrier (VLCC) cargo through a tender from the spot (or current) market last month and will tender for another VLCC this month," Sharma said. But for importing crude from the US, the refiners have to take special permission from the shipping ministry. India allows import of crude oil only on Indian carriers (the buyer arranging for ships to ferry the oil). However, in case of US, this was not possible as VLCCs can't load on US ports and crude has to be first loaded on small ships and at high sea the same is put on a VLCC. So, IOC and BPCL had to obtain permission to buy the cargo on a delivered basis where the seller arranges for the ships. Sharma said IOC can buy 5-6 shiploads this year if the price differential stays favourable. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Iran said today that new US sanctions were a violation of its nuclear deal with world powers, piling pressure on President Hassan Rouhani as he started his second term. Rouhani vowed to continue his efforts to end the country's isolation as he was sworn in by supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei following his re-election in May. But the ceremony came less than 24 hours after US President Donald Trump confirmed fresh sanctions against Iran. Tehran says the new measures violate its 2015 deal with world powers that eased sanctions in exchange for curbs on its nuclear programme, an agreement which Trump has repeatedly threatened to tear up. "We believe that the nuclear deal has been violated and we will react appropriately," deputy foreign minister Abbas Araghchi said on state television. "We will certainly not fall into the trap of US policy and Trump, and our reaction will be very carefully considered." The mounting crisis creates a difficult position for Rouhani, a 68-year-old moderate who won re-election largely thanks to his efforts at repairing relations with the West. "We will never accept isolation," Rouhani said as he was sworn in in front of top political and military officials. "The nuclear deal is a sign of Iran's goodwill on the international stage," he added. Khamenei took a tougher line, saying Iran must not fall for Washington's "tricks". "The enemy's hostility has made us more resistant," he said. New US sanctions have emboldened Rouhani's hardline opponents, who say he should never have trusted the United States. "It's unfortunate timing," said Ellie Geranmayeh, an Iran analyst with the European Council on Foreign Relations. "What will be absolutely critical is how the Europeans position themselves," she said, pointing to the burgeoning trade ties with Europe and their continued backing of the nuclear deal. Britain, France and Germany -- who signed the deal along with Russia, China and the United States -- remain firm backers of the agreement and have criticised the Trump administration for threatening to scrap it. French energy giant Total defied US pressure in July by signing a multi-billion-dollar gas deal with Iran. "What Iranians are banking on at the moment, maybe overestimating, is that Europe will safeguard and build on the deal, and make it too politically costly for Trump to tear it up, or at least show Washington that if it walks away, it will be doing so alone," said Geranmayeh. The International Atomic Energy Agency has repeatedly certified that Iran is sticking by its commitments under the agreement -- a position that has been reluctantly accepted by the Trump White House. But with Iran gaining the upper hand across the Middle East, through its support for proxies in Syria, Lebanon and Iraq, US lawmakers appear determined to ratchet up tensions. Meanwhile, Rouhani also faces challenges as he tries to impose civilian control over the economy. Since the election, he has engaged in a war of words with the Revolutionary Guards over their outsized role in the economy -- although they have since sought to bury the hatchet with a public show of unity. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is suspected of crimes involving fraud, breach of trust and bribes in two corruption cases, Israeli police revealed. Police have been questioning Netanyahu for months over the cases but have released few details. It released a gag order Thursday night on reporting the details of talks that are underway to enlist a state witness. The document says the cases involving Netanyahu deal with "a suspicion of committing crimes of bribery, fraud, and breach of trust." Netanyahu's office has repeatedly denied wrongdoing over the investigations, portraying the accusations as a witch hunt against him and his family by a hostile media opposed to his hard-line political views. A statement from his office Thursday night said, "We completely reject the unfounded claims against the prime minister." It said the allegations are part of a campaign to "replace the government" and "there will be nothing, because there was nothing." One investigation, dubbed "File 1000," reportedly concerns claims that Netanyahu improperly accepted lavish gifts from wealthy supporters, including Australian billionaire James Packer and Hollywood producer Arnon Milchan. The second investigation, "File 2000," reportedly concerns Netanyahu's alleged attempts to strike a deal with publisher Arnon Mozes of the Yediot Ahronot newspaper group to promote legislation to weaken Yediot's main competitor in exchange for more favorable coverage of him by Yediot. Netanyahu, who took office in 2009, has long had an image as a cigar-smoking, cognac-drinking socialite, while his wife, Sara, has been accused of abusive behavior toward staff. Opponents have portrayed both as being out of touch with the struggles of average Israelis. The Income Tax Department raids onvarious properties linked to Karnataka Minister D K Shivakumar, who is hosting 44 Gujarat Congress MLAs at a resort on city outskirts, continued today at various places in the state for the second consecutive day. Official sources said the raids that began early morning yesterday went on till late in the night with the minister being grilled at his residence at a posh locality here and were continuing today as well. In a swoop down that raised a political storm, theIT department had yesterday conducted searches at 64 locations and properties linked to Shivakumar in a tax evasion case. IT officials said about Rs 10 crore cash has been recovered during the search at properties linked to the minister. He has been put in charge of 44 MLAs lodged in the resort, to keep the flock together for preventing the BJP from "poaching" on them ahead of the Rajya Sabha polls in Gujarat where Ahmed Patel, political secretary to Congress president Sonia Gandhi, is facing a tough battle. The ruling Congress in Karnataka will be holding a protest in the city later today against the raids on Shivakumar, accusing the Centre of "dictatorial" attitude and "murderingdemocracy". Shivakumar, hailing from a modest agrarian family, is an influential Vokkaliga community leader and also one of the wealthiest state ministers in the country. According to the affidavit filed by him for the 2013 Assembly polls, he had assets over Rs 251 crore, including those of his wife and children and liabilities of over Rs 104 crore. 55-year old Shivakumar, considered a resourceful troubleshooter for the Congress with proximity to the party high command, is a six-time MLA. He has also made known his chief-ministerial ambitions while making it clear he would bide his time. IT officials had yesterday said a "good amount" of jewellery has been recovered from a teacher's locker in a college here, adding it is in the name of a relative of Shivakumar. The officials had said that about Rs 7.9 crore cash has been recovered from Delhi and Rs 2.23 crore found at locations in the southern state. Certain investments linked to him in Singapore and few other foreign locations are also under the scanner of the department, they said, adding, some shell firms and their operatives allegedly linked to this case were being probed. The raids at the resort had yesterday sparked a huge political row with Parliament getting disrupted and Congress calling it "unprecedented witch-hunt" to win one Rajya Sabha seat. Chief Minister Siddaramaiah alleged it was a politically motivated action to silence the voice against the BJP. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Former Prime Minister on Thursday expressed disappointment over Indians lagging behind in linguistic research despite the language diversity in the country. He underlined that employment and business opportunities can open up if the latent potential of India's linguistic diversity is tapped by linguistics and computational sciences. He made the remarks during the release event of 11 volumes of the People's Linguistic survey of India (PLSI). The PLSI is a comprehensive survey of all living languages of India carried out by a large team comprising volunteers, field activists and experts under G N Devy, the chairman and chief editor of the mammoth study. "Despite this amazing language diversity, Indians seem to have lagged behind in linguistic research and scholars know all about Saussure and Chomsky, but they are not able to use the theories of Panini and Bhartrihari, Anandvardhan and Abhinavagupt with equal ease," Singh said. In the process, we have continued to imbibe and mime the colonial knowledge of languages and linguistics despite having such enormous wealth of theoretical resource in our own intellectual tradition, he said. Singh said, "A high level of employment and business opportunities can open up for the trained man-power in these fields if the latent potential of Indian linguistic diversity is tapped by linguistics and computational Sciences." Singh also emphasised on the "crucial importance" of research drawing upon the vast linguistic diversity for making fresh break-through in the fields of knowledge and nurturing innovations in sciences and technology. "This can be achieved through productive intellectual collaborations as the People's Linguistic Survey has done," he said. "In absence of such close collaborative and interdisciplinary research in Indian universities, institutes of technology and medical-sciences centres, other global players will turn their attention to exploring, documenting and processing the diversity of indigenous and non-scheduled languages in India," he noted. It may be most timely and appropriate to the global and the situation to encourage innovative research practices and to work the new trends in languages based science and technology to India's economic advantage, as well as to become the world leader in the field of language conservation and language diversity, the ex-prime minister said. The PLSI is being published in various state languages, Hindi and English as a series of 50 volumes, with a total of 92 titles. The publication of the series began in 2013. The PLSI is published by Orient Blackswan. As of August 2017, 37 titles have been published covering Jammu and Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh, Punjab, Haryana, Rajasthan, Gujarat, Maharashtra, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Bihar, West Bengal, Assam, Meghalaya, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh among others. The volumes for Goa and Sikkim will be released by the end of 2017. All of the 92 titles of the PLSI will be available in print form and as e-books by December 2020. Former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh today expressed disappointment over Indians lagging behind in linguistic research despite the language diversity in the country. He underlined that employment and business opportunities can open up if latent potential of India's linguistic diversity is tapped by linguistics and computational sciences. He made the remarks during the release event of 11 volumes of the People's Linguistic survey of India (PLSI). The PLSI is a comprehensive survey of all living languages of India carried out by a large team comprising volunteers, field activists and experts under G N Devy, the chairman and chief editor of the mammoth study. "Despite this amazing language diversity, Indians seem to have lagged behind in linguistic research and scholars know all about Saussure and Chomsky, but they are not able to use the theories of Panini and Bhartrihari, Anandvardhan and Abhinavagupt with equal ease," Singh said. "In the process," he said, "We have continued to imbibe and mime the colonial knowledge of languages and linguistics despite having such enormous wealth of theoretical resource in our own intellectual tradition." Singh said that a high-level of employment and business opportunities can open up for the trained man-power in these fields if the latent potential of Indian linguistic diversity is tapped by linguistics and computational Sciences. Singh also emphasised the "crucial importance" of research drawing upon the vast linguistic diversity for making fresh break through in the fields of knowledge and nurturing innovations in sciences and technology. "This can be achieved through productive intellectual collaborations as the People's Linguistic Survey has done," he said. "In the absence of such close collaborative and interdisciplinary research in Indian universities, institutes of technology and medical sciences centres, other global players will turn their attention to exploring, documenting and processing the diversity of indigenous and non-scheduled languages in India," he noted. It may be most timely and appropriate to the global and the national situation to encourage innovative research practices and to work the new trends in languages based science and technology to India's economic advantage, the ex- prime minister said. The PLSI is being published in various state languages, Hindi and English in a series of 50 volumes, in 92 titles. The publication of the series began in 2013. The PLSI is published by Orient Blackswan. As of August 2017, 37 titles have been published covering Jammu and Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh, Punjab, Haryana, Rajasthan, Gujarat, Maharashtra, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Bihar, West Bengal, Assam, Meghalaya, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh among others. The volumes for Goa and Sikkim will be released by the end of 2017. All of the 92 titles of the PLSI will be available in print form and as e-books by December 2020. At the event, Dr Devy also announced the next big project "Global Languages Survey" under which over 6,000 languages being spoken in the world will be surveyed and documented about. Talking about the project, Devy said, "India will be only country in the world with such a big repository of world languages. Global Language Survey Report aims to ensure that no language ever slips into oblivion. We aim to complete the entire exercise by 2022. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Kalyani group and Israel's state-run Rafael Advanced Defence Systems on Thursday started a Rs 70-crore anti-tank guided missile production facility at Hyderabad. Kalyani Rafael Advanced Systems, a venture of the two with 51 per cent ownership with Kalyani group, would be the first private sector entity to make such weapon systems in the country. Kalyani group chairman Baba Kalyani said the venture is ready to supply the missile, Spike, to army, and 90 per cent of its components will be sourced locally. "The Spike missile is a fully-built ATGM (anti-tank guided missile) unit except for the explosives and the propellants, and we can supply this weapon which has a 2.5 km range to the Army within a couple of weeks of getting orders," Kalyani said. The 24,000 sqft facility was set up in under 10 months and can produce "thousands of missiles", Kalyani said, adding the company will look for overseas customers if the Army delays orders. When asked what is making the Army delay its order as Spike is fully tested and approved by it, Kalyani said there were "procedural delays". It can be noted that the first 'Request for Qualification' for anti-tank guided missile production was invited in 2010 but nothing moved as there was a lack of policy clarity on FDI in the defence sector. Kalyani today said the JV is ready to invest another Rs 60-70 crore in the facility, depending on government or overseas orders over the next two years. "We see $1 billion worth business opportunity with this business vertical. We also have plans to begin production of Spike missile, which is an air-to-surface weapon, for the Air Force soon," he said. Kalyani Strategic Systems, the defence vertical of the $2.5 billion group having its origins in auto components, entered into the joint venture with $3 billion Israeli government-owned Rafael in 2015. "The JV will invest in high-end technology and advanced manufacturing techniques to design, develop and manufacture weapon systems for the Defence forces. "This venture will offer direct employment to 300 and around 1,000 people indirectly through its hundreds of vendors who are all in the small scale sector," Kalyani added. The plant was inaugurated by Telangana industries, commerce & IT minister Kalvakuntla Taraka Rama Rao in the presence of Israeli envoy Daniel Carmon. The facility will enable production of high-end technology systems for the Armed forces and will be engaged in developing a wide range of advanced capabilities like command control and guidance, electro-optics, remote weapon systems, precision guided munitions and system engineering for system integration. It will also aim to export products to other countries, especially to south-east Asia, said Yoav Har-Even, president & chief executive of Rafael Advanced Defence Systems. Rao said Hyderabad is home to over 30,000 defence electronic engineers as it houses almost all public sector entities working in this field. (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.) The Ken-Betwa project, the first river inter-linking project in the country, is set to "take off any day" now, the Lok Sabha was informed on Thursday. Water Resources minister Uma Bharti said all environmental and related clearances have been obtained and once the Madhya Pradesh and the Uttar Pradesh governments agree on the water sharing issue, the project's launch date would be announced. She said the inter-linking of all the planned rivers will help generate over 30,000 MW of power. Ken-Betwa link is one of the 16 river-linking proposals under Peninsular Component of Perspective Plan (NPP) for Water Resources Development for which feasibility report was prepared by the Water Development Agency in 1995 and circulated among the concerned state governments. A tripartite Memorandum of Understanding was signed by the union government and the governments of Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh on August 25, 2005, in the presence of the Prime Minister for the preparation of Detailed Project Report for the project. An Army Major and a jawan were killed while another was injured as militants opened fire on a search party in Shopian district of Kashmir, officials said. Major Kamlesh Pandey, Sepoys Tanzin Chhultim and Kirpal Singh were injured in the firing by militants at Zainapora in Shopian district during a cordon and search operation launched by security forces, they said. The injured soldiers were evacuated to Army's 92 Base Hospital here for treatment but Major Pandey and Sepoy Chhultim succumbed to injuries, the officials said. The security forces continued the search operation in the area but could not trace the militants. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Hollywood star Matthew McConaughey is looking forward to the new season of "True Detective" because of the casting of Mahershala Ali. The Oscar-winning actor starred as a homicide cop opposite Woody Harrelson in the show's first season in 2014, and he said casting Ali in the upcoming third series of the crime anthology programme was a brilliant move, reported Femalefirst. "Yeah, I heard the good . That was a great idea to cast Mahershala. "That's good for 'True Detective', and it's good for Mahershala. Nic (Pizzolatto's) writing is gonna be something that Mahershala will be very grounded in and bring to life. I'm excited to see what happens," McConaughey said. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Asserting that the prime reason for America's failure in Afghanistan is a "lack of successful policy and strategic guidance" from Washington, Top Republican Senator John McCain today urged the White House to resolve its internal differences on the Afghan policy. "The reason for this failure is a lack of successful policy and strategic guidance from Washington over many years, which has continued in the first several months of this new administration. Our commanders-in-chief, not our commanders in the field, are responsible for this failure," he said. McCain, the Chairman of the powerful Senate Armed Services Committee, was responding to a report that President Donald Trump wants to fire his commander in Afghanistan Gen John Nicholson. "Gen Nicholson has served our country with honour and distinction for 35 years. He has earned the trust and admiration of those he has served with. And he has earned my full confidence," McCain said as he referred to the testimony of Nicholson before the Armed Services Committee. Six months ago, Gen Nicholson testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee and warned that the United States was not winning the war in Afghanistan, said Trump who differed with both Trump and his predecessor Barack Obama on the US policy in Afghanistan. Trump, who participated in a veteran's health related event in the Roosevelt Office of the White House, however, did not respond to a shouted question on reports that he wants to fire Gen Nicholson. Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy told MSNBC that Trump isn't wrong in the sense that US policy in Afghanistan has failed in as much as that its goal was to rid Afghanistan of the Taliban. "The irony of all of this is that I think, by now, we should have figured out a military-only solution in Afghanistan will never work. That unless you purge that government of corruption, unless you give it legitimacy with the Afghanistan people, the Taliban will always be on the edges of that country ready to come back in," Murphy said. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) A rock like object which had fallen in Mukundpura village in the district on June 6 was a metroite, confirmed scientist at Geological Survey of India (GSI) centre here today. It is the 14th meteorite incident reported in Rajasthan, the GSI said in a release. A red-yellow coloured metroite weighing 2.23 kg had fallen at 3:15 pm in a field near Bhankrota in the village, nearly 100 meters away from a farm's owner residence. The meteorite had created a 43 cm round and 15 cm deep pit, the release said. The GSI had taken the meteorite in its custody on June 7 for a detailed study, which found that it broke into parts after falling from enormous height. The meteorite was dark black in colour and had sulphur like smell while the fusion crust of the meteorite was 1.5 to 2 mm in thickness, the GSI said. The chemical study of the meteorite revealed that its crust and inner part had mixture of several chemicals. It was found to be similar to carbonaceous chondrite stone. For further detailed study, the meteorite sample has been sent to meteorite and planetary science division of the National Center of Excellence in Geosciences Research (NCEGR), the release said. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Pakistan's former dictator Pervez Musharraf, who faces treason charges, has defended the country's previous military rulers, saying they have always brought the nation "back on track", while civilian governments derailed it. Musharraf, who toppled the civilian government of Nawaz Sharif in 1999 in a military coup, also claimed that the India policy of the ousted prime minister in his third tenure was a "total sell out", but did not explain what he meant by it. He said this in an interview to BBC Urdu, which was recorded in Dubai, where the 73-year-old has been staying since he left Pakistan in March 2016. He faces several charges, including treason for abrogating the Constitution and declaring emergency in 2007. Musharraf has also been charged with involvement in the murder of two-time prime minister Benazir Bhutto in 2007. "Whoever works actively against the welfare of Pakistan is against the country and should be killed," he said in the interview. Musharraf, who served as Pakistan's president from 2001 to 2008, defended his "intervention" in 1999, saying he wanted to "save the nation". "The Constitution can be ignored if there is a need to save the nation," he said, without explaining the nature of the threat Pakistan faced at that time. He defended the military "takeovers" of the civilian governments in Pakistan, saying that real development occurred only during military regimes and accused the civil governments of reversing the progress achieved during military rules. "Military rule has always brought the country back on track, whereas civilian governments have always derailed it," he said. "Dictators set the country right, whereas civilian governments brought it to ruins." The powerful army, which enjoys considerable influence over policy decisions in Pakistan, has ruled the country for much of its life since it gained independence 70 years ago. Last week after Sharif was ousted as prime minister after a Supreme Court ruling in the Panama Papers scandal, Musharraf posted a video on the social media hailing the verdict as "historic". He was criticised for the hypocritical remarks. On his return to the country, he appeared confident that the Pakistan Army would stand by him. "I have served as the head of the Army and the Army will always protect my welfare." He also held former Prime Minister Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto responsible for breaking up of Pakistan in 1971. He defended Gen Ziaul Haq's Afghanistan policy but agreed some of Haq's polices resulted in creating extremism. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) BJP chief Amit Shah today said Prime Minister Narendra Modi's letter to Pranab Mukherjee on his last day as president had set an example about the kind of respect and behaviour that should be shown towards the person holding the highest constitutional office. The letter was shared by the former president on Twitter today. Shah said Modi's letter spelt out the bond between the two leaders from different political ideologies and was an example of how by rising above party lines, the prestige of the highest constitutional post could be enhanced with mutual respect. "I read the letter after it was shared on the social media. Modiji is emotional by nature. But, the way he praised Mukherjee in the letter, I believe that in the coming decades, the kind of respect and behaviour a prime minister should have towards the president, PM Modi has set an example in this regard," he said at a press conference here. Shah also said, "The prime minister has always been of the belief that the prestige of the highest (constitutional) post should be protected and enhanced. Today, a good example has been set in the country's politics (over the PM's letter)". "Pranab Da, you have always been a father figure and a mentor to me," an emotional Modi had written in the letter to Mukherjee. "On my last day in office as the President, I received a letter from PM @narendramodi that touched my heart! Sharing with you all," Mukherjee said in a tweet. Modi responded by saying, "Pranab Da, I will always cherish working with you." Shah said "after the country's Independence, an example has been presented by Pranab Mukherjee ji and Modi ji", that if two persons occupying highest posts in this country, and within ambit of the constitution, respectfully work with each other, then how it enhances prestige of the two posts. "Pranab Mukherjee was never associated with the BJP. However, after becoming the president, when the BJP government was formed, neither the PM ever felt that Pranab Babu was not connected with the BJP nor Pranab felt that this government was of some other party," he said. The BJP national president, arrived here yesterday on a three-day visit to Haryana. With an eye on the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, he is on a countrywide tour to strategise and find ways to strengthen the party at the grassroot level. He also hit out at the Congress for stalling the OBC Commission Bill in the Rajya Sabha saying it shows the anti- OBC mindset of the opposition party. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Fresh incidents of chopping of braids were reported from different parts of the national capital even as the police have appealed to the people not to indulge in rumormongering. The Police Control Room has been receiving calls about such incidents. A woman and her daughter's hair was chopped off this morning while they were home in west Delhi's Mayapuri, the police said. They informed the police but did not file a formal complaint. In another case, a woman in southwest Delhi's Palam claimed she became a victim of the hair chopping twice. Her hair was chopped off when she was on her way to the bank and again when she went to the washroom today. Police said she had yesterday filed a complaint in this regard. In Rohini, a domestic help fell prey to hair chopping today but did not approach the police. District police units have appealed to the people not to indulge in rumour-mongering. Deputy Commissioner of Police (Outer) MN Tiwari said one of the incidents reported in his district turned out to be false. He said the incidents have created fear among children. The southwest district unit is scouring for clues and taking the help of psychiatrists from the Institute of Human Behavior and Allied Sciences who have met the complainants. The experts have ruled out the possibility of women chopping off their own hair. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) A civic body today decided to issue notice to stop functioning of actor Dileep's multiplex 'D Cinemaas' following alleged violation of rules and guidelines in its construction. The actor was arrested on July 10 in connection with a case of plotting the abduction and alleged sexual harassment of a South Indian actress. A decision to issue notice to stop the functioning of the D Cinemaas at Chalakudy in Thrissur district was unanimously taken at tne Chalakudy Municipality Council meeting, Municipality Chairperson Usha Parameswaran said. "We will issue the notice tomorrow," she told PTI. She said it was also resolved to quash the occupancy certificate and licence of the Cinemaas following allegedviolation of Kerala Municipality Rules and guidelines in the construction of the multiplex. A special meeting of the Council was held to discuss the issues connected withD Cinemaas. The decision was based on complaints of violation of rules and guidelines in the construction of the multiplex, she said. D Cinemaas is equipped with the latest in technology, with 3D and 3k projection. On February 17, the popular actress, who has worked in Tamil and Telugu films, was abducted and allegedly molested inside her car for two hours. Six persons, includingmain accused 'Pulsar' Suni, have been arrested in connection with the incident. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The Maharashtra government has launched a motorbike ambulance service to provide swift medical assistance to patients. Designed as an emergency first responder medical service, the ambulances, available through '108' free helpline, have teams of paramedics providing treatment, especially in places inaccessible to larger ambulances, to patients during the golden hour. As part of a pilot project, 10 motorbike ambulances were launched at Marine Drive in south Mumbai yesterday by Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis and Shiv Sena president Uddhav Thackeray. "Motorbike ambulances will be useful in Mumbai during peak hours of traffic and in Melghat like regions where 4 wheeler ambulance can't reach," CMO Maharashtra tweeted. Under the first phase of the project, these motorbikes have been deployed in Bhandup, Malad, Mankhurd, Dharavi, Nagpada, Charkop, Goregoan, Thakur Village, Kalina and Khar- Danda. They are being operated by BVG (Bharat Vikas Group), a leading integrated service provider. "After receiving a call at 108 control room, the nearest motorbike ambulance would be pressed into service. After reaching the spot, the paramedic would stabilise the patient till the four-wheeler ambulance arrives to attend him/ her," said a senior executive of BVG group. "The Royal Enfield motorbikes have been converted into ambulances with emergency medical equipment," she said, adding it would be a free-of-cost service. Speaking on the occasion, BVG Chairman H R Gaikwad said, "During the golden hour, when every single second counts, a lot of time is wasted in negotiating traffic and reaching to the patient. Therefore, immediate response will be a key feature of this service." Prime Minister Narendra Modi today took the cognisance of the service and retweeted CMO Maharashtra's tweet to his 3.23 crore followers. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Metropolitan Stock Exchange of India (MSE) today said it will conduct mock trading session in all the segments on Saturday, August 5. This monthly mock trading session will be held from the Disaster Recovery (DR) site of the exchange in New Delhi, as a periodical exercise to check the preparedness of the DR site to face any eventuality. -------------------------------------------------------------- RBL Bank appoints Shrinath Bolloju as COO Private sector lender RBL Bank today said it has appointed Shrinath Bolloju as chief operations officer. He joins the bank from German lender Deutsche Bank's Singapore operations, where he was heading the global securities transformation, the bank said in a statement. Bolloju will be reporting to the bank's head of risk and governance, R Gurumurthy. -------------------------------------------------------------- TCS launches learning hub for small businesses Country's largest software exporter TCS today said it is launching a learning hub to educate small businesses on GST. TCS Ion, a strategic unit of the Tata group company, will be hosting the 'GST Shiksha hub' on its digital learning hub, it said in a statement. It has partnered with small industries association Laghu Udyog Bharati, it added. -------------------------------------------------------------- Payback India announces former Amex executive as CEO Payback India, today announced the appointment of Gautam Kaushik as the new Chief Executive Officer (CEO) to further its journey as a growth-oriented and consumer-centric coalition loyalty program in India. Prior to joining Payback, Kaushik was working with American Express (AMEX) as Vice President (VP) and Chief Financial Officer (CFO). In his capacity as the new CEO, Gautam Kaushik will be spearheading the India operations and will be leading all the critical business areas including Strategic Business Planning and Development, Partner Management and Acquisitions and Customer Engagement. He aims to take Payback to the next level with expansion across new service categories and customer segments. -------------------------------------------------------------- Uber clocks double digit growth, completes 500m rides On demand ride-sharing company Uber today announced it has marked 'double digit' growth in the country, after completing 500 million trips. The company said it has clocked more than 2.5 times year-on-year growth as of June this year. -------------------------------------------------------------- Livspace' offers pvt modular lable to independent designers Home interior design platform Livspace.Com for homeowners and designers announced that its private modular label will now be available to independent designers and architects. The modular label includes kitchens, wardrobes and storage. Under the initiative, Livspace plans to engage over 25,000 professionals this year in Delhi, Gurgaon, Noida, Bengaluru and Mumbai, a statement said. -------------------------------------------------------------- RCI adds Hill Stream Resort, Dehradun to its portfolio Holiday exchange and part of the Wyndham Worldwide family of brands RCI today announced an agreement to affiliate the Hill Stream resort in Dehradun in Uttrakhand to its network. "With the inclusion of Hill Stream Resort, Dehradun to our list of properties, we embark on a journey to grow our affiliations in the northern valley. This latest partnership is consistent in our overall plan for India to grow and expand at a rapid pace," RCI India Managing Director Sabina Chopra said. RCI is the worldwide leader in vacation exchange with over 4,300 affiliated resorts in nearly 110 countries. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) ICAR-National Academy of Agricultural Research Management (NAARM) today said it targets to support scaling up of operations of a dozen agri-startups, having promising business model this year. The training will be conducted under a six month programme 'Agri Udaan' at its Hyderabad headquarter with the help of Indian Institute of Management - Ahmedabad's (IIM-A) Centre for Innovation, Incubation and Entrepreneurship (CIIE). A formal announcement in this regard will be made tomorrow. In the first batch of training conducted in 2015, eight were trained. Of which, three startups scaled up operations. "Agri-entrepreneurs are less in the country. So, we are trying to provide basic support those who have good business idea under the Agri Udaan programme," ICAR-NAARM Director Srinivasa Rao told reporters here. The applications have been invited to shortlist agri- entrepreneurs. About 40 startups will be shortlisted and out which 8-12 will be selected for final capacity building workshop, he added. The shortlisted candidates will get six month training on different aspects of technology commercialisation, product validation, business plant preparation, risk analysis, customer engagement, finance management, fund raising and others. The programme will culminate with demo day or investors meet at Hyderabad and Mumbai. To reach out to agri-entrepreneurs, ICAR-NAARM has decided to organise road shows in Chandigarh, Ahmedabad, Pune, Bangalore, Kolkata and Hyderabad. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Nepal has always been committed to the One-China policy and continues to remain "sensitive" towards the possibility of any anti-China activities being carried out from its territory, a minister said here today. Addressing a function organised to mark the 62nd anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic ties between Nepal and China, Minister for Information and Communications Mohan Bahadur Basnet said the cultural, religious and economic ties between the two countries were further getting consolidated. "The Nepal Government is always sensitive towards the possibility of any anti-China activities being carried out from the Nepali territory," the minister said. Basnet said Nepal had always been committed to the One- China policy which states that there is only one Chinese government and that the island of Taiwan is a breakaway province that belongs to China. China's non-interference in Nepal's domestic affairs and assistance in the time of natural disasters were testimony that both neighbours share strong, friendly and cordial relations, he said. China's Ambassador to Nepal Yu Hong said Nepal and China had old and deep-rooted relations extended to the people's level. "The Chinese Government is always positive toward the development of Nepal," she said, recalling the Chinese assistance for the construction of some big projects in Nepal. Former Ministers for Foreign Affairs Mahendra Bahadur Pandey termed the Nepal-China relations as "cordial" and "unique". Former Nepali Ambassador to China Tanka Karki said Nepal should always maintain balanced relations with India and China. China claims Taiwan which broke away from the mainland in 1949 as a part of the mainland. Taiwan leader Tsai Ing-wen has refused to recognise the 1992 Consensus since taking office in May 2016, which has led to the suspension of cross-Strait communication mechanisms between Beijing and Taipei. Earlier in May, China told Taiwan that there was no other way to "end the deadlock" between them than to accept the One-China policy. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Hollywood star Nicole Kidman said she wants to do more films in which she gets the chance to use her original accent often. The 50-year-old actress, who plays a woman called Yvonne in her upcoming film "The Upside", said the character was originally written as an American, but she decided to put an Australian spin on it, reported Sydney Morning Herald newspaper. "In my next film, I got to use my own accent again, something I want to do more of. I said, 'I think she'd be better as an Australian' and Kevin Hart and Bryan Cranston looked at me weirdly, as the role was written as an American, but (producer) Harvey Weinstein said, 'Yep, she's Australian'," Kidman said. The Academy Award-winning actress added she would love to work in her home country. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar today set a goal to increase gross enrolment ratio (GER) in higher education in the state. Kumar set the priority at a review meeting of education department, an official release said quoting Chief Secretary Anjani Kumar Singh. The chief minister has laid stress on several occasions earlier to increase GER in higher education to 30-40 per cent. Unofficial reports suggest that the GER in higher education in Bihar is about 8 per cent against the national average of about 20 per cent. The GER is the ratio of students between 18 and 23 years of age enrolled in higher education institutions against the entire population in that age group. In primary and secondary education, the enrolment ratio is nearly 100 per cent in the state. At the meeting, Kumar said student credit card scheme under which Rs 4 lakh interest-free loan is given to a youth to pursue higher education and post-matriculation scholarship would be implemented in a more focused manner through a registered society, the release said. The chief minister said e-learning would soon start in schools for promoting quality education in mathematics, science and English. Initially it would be started as a pilot project and expanded latter on, Kumar said at the meeting attended by Deputy Chief Minister Sushil Kumar Modi, Education Minister Krishnandan Varma, Chief Secretary Anjani Kumar Singh and Development Commissioner Shishir Sinha. After successfully constructing toilets in all schools in the state, the government would install overhead water tanks in 53,000 schools for regularly cleaning the toilets. On the dismal results in matriculation examination this year in which only 37 per cent passed, Kumar said schools with poor performance would be identified and education officers, principal and teachers would be penalised. He instructed Bihar Examination Board to make available model question papers along with answer. He also stressed on improving conduct of examination and evaluation process. As part of centenary celebration of Mahatma Gandhi's Champaran Satyagraha, a programme "Bapu Apke Dwar" (Bapu on your doors) would be launched from October 2. Programmes on Gandhi would also be organised in all the secondary and higher education schools. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The World Bank has said that discussions between India and Pakistan over Kishanganga and Ratle hydroelectric power plants are ongoing and no decision has been made yet. "The meetings earlier this week were held in a spirit of goodwill and cooperation. The parties have agreed to continue discussions and reconvene in September in Washington, DC," the World Bank said in a statement yesterday, a day after officials of India and Pakistan concluded their two-day meeting on the issue. In its statement, the World Bank described as "erroneous" reporting from some of the media outlets on the outcomes of the Indus Waters Treaty meetings. "The World Bank would like to clarify that the discussions between India and Pakistan about the Kishanganga and Ratle hydroelectric power plants are ongoing," the media statement said without giving any further clarification. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Eza Cohen-Watnick, a top intelligence director and a national security aid to the US President Donald Trump has become the latest person to be fired amid an ongoing shake-up at the White House. A White House statement yesterday said, "General McMaster appreciates the good work accomplished in the NSC's Intelligence directorate under Ezra Cohen's leadership. He has determined that, at this time, a different set of experiences is best-suited to carrying that work forward." Trump's national security adviser H R McMaster moved to replace Cohen-Watnick when the concerns were raised in March, but Cohen-Watnick appealed to Trump's top advisers, Steve Bannon and Jared Kushner, who got Trump to intervene to save his job. "General McMaster is confident that Ezra will make many further significant contributions to national security in another position in the administration," a White House official said, without giving any further details as to what the new assignment of Cohen-Watnick is going to be. Cohen-Watnick was part of the Trump Transition team and he joined the National Security Council of the White House along with Trump's first National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, who left the administration in the first few weeks. According to CNN, Cohen-Watnick, along with White House national security lawyer Michael Ellis, are believed to be the two individuals involved in assisting GOP Congressman Devin Nunes in gathering the intelligence materials. Nunes is chairman of the House Intelligence Committee. The White House did not give any reason for Cohen-Watnick being fired. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) BJP chief Amit Shah today said Pakistan is facing global isolation on the issue of terror, while India enjoys the support of the whole world in this regard. Shah said the support for India is a result of steps taken by the Narendra Modi government. The BJP chief, who is on a three-day visit to Haryana, was addressing a press conference here on the second day of his visit. He said the Modi government has taken several stringent steps to curb terror activities. "We succeeded in isolating Pakistan in the world in three years," he asserted. On steps to restore peace to the Kashmir Valley, Shah said action has been taken in that direction. "Never before was anyone arrested who indulged in Hawala transactions. If any government took tough action against terror funds, it was done by only Narendra Modi government," he said. On the farm debt waiver issue, Shah said the state governments concerned could take a decision at their own level as clarified by Finance Minister Arun Jaitley. The BJP chief, who was flanked by Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar, said the Modi government has been in power for three years, "but even the opposition has not been able to level any corruption charges." "It is a decisive government," he asserted. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) A sum of over Rs 11 lakh was found stolen from a Bank of Baroda ATM here, the police said today. The theft occurred on July 30 but the bank manager came to know of the incident only on August 2 when he visited the ATM and found a mismatch of the cash record, police said. A case has been lodged against unidentified persons. The police is scanning CCTV footage to identify the thieves. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) More than 96,000 cases of illegal mining for major and minor minerals were reported in various states, including Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh and Andhra Pradesh, in 2016-17, Parliament was informed today. The number of such cases was 1,10,476 in 2015-16. In a written reply in the Lok Sabha, Mines Minister Piyush Goyal said state governments have been empowered to make rules for preventing illegal mining, transportation and storage of minerals. As per the details based on the quarterly returns on illegal mining submitted by various states to the Indian Bureau of Mines (IBM), a total of 96,089 cases of illegal mining for major and minor minerals were reported in 2016-17. Maharashtra reported the highest number of such cases (31,173) followed by Madhya Pradesh (13,880) and Andhra Pradesh (9,703). The minister further informed that 20,569 FIRs have been registered during 2013-14 to 2016-17 and 2,13,650 vehicles were seized. Also, 57,758 cases were filed in courts. State governments realised fine of about Rs 1,736.76 crore during the period. Replying to another question, Goyal said the mines ministry has taken the initiative to adopt the use of space technology through mining surveillance system to support state governments in curbing illegal mining. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Pakistan today said maintaining regional peace is the responsibility of all the countries as it raised concern over the nearly two-month long standoff between the Indian and Chinese troops at Doklam area in Sikkim sector. Foreign Office spokesman Nafees Zakaria said that Pakistan had noted "Indian violation" at Sikkim border and was "concerned at the increasing Indian belligerence in the region, which is endangering regional peace and stability." He said it is in the interest of all the countries of the region to work for regional peace and cooperation. "Maintaining regional peace is the responsibility of all the countries. Pakistan has always desired peace and prosperity in the region," he added. He said it has been observed that ever since the present BJP government came to power in India, the Indo-Pak relationship has witnessed a downward trajectory. "India needs to understand that only through cooperation between the two countries will the good for the people of the region be achieved. For this to happen, we need to resolve all contentious issues, particularly the issue of Jammu & Kashmir. India has not been positive in this regard," he claimed. He also blamed India for "scuttling" the process of regional economic development by its "attitude" toward SAARC process. "SAARC is purely aimed at the economic development of the people of this region. I will not go into the details of how India scuttled this process. SAARC will be held at an appropriate time in Pakistan," he said. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) A Kolkata-bound passenger was apprehended at the Delhi airport for allegedly carrying a live bullet in his bag, an official said today. The man, identified as Sudhir Agarwal, was going through the security checks at the Indira Gandhi International airport here yesterday when a Central Industrial Security Force (CISF) personnel detected a "bullet-like object" in his luggage, said a senior official involved in airport security. "A live bullet was recovered from his (Agarwal's) bag. He was handed over to the police as he could not produce the valid documents for carrying the bullet," he added. Carrying arms and ammunition on board an aircraft is banned by law. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Actress Billie Lourd said playing the iconic role of Princess Leia took a toll on her mother, actress Carrie Fisher, as she found it difficult to leave the character behind when playing other parts. The 25-year-old said an artiste has to be careful while choosing roles as the fear of being typecast always looms, reported Town and Country magazine. "That was hard for her. It's tough, when you play an iconic character, to break away from it. You have to make sure you have a lot of variety, and make sure you choose roles that aren't similar to others, or else you get pigeonholed as one thing," Lourd said. The "Scream Queens" actress said she would have been a little uncomfortable to play a character like Princess Leia, that has acquired the status of a sex symbol in Hollywood. "I don't know if I would play a woman in space in a bikini. You also have to be careful about getting oversexualised, and that was hard for her. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) A policeman and a civilian were killed and two others injured in an attack by unknown assailants in Esna, about 55 km from Luxor in southern Egypt, security sources said. Three unknown attackers riding in a 4x4 vehicle yesterday opened fire on a policeman, killing him with four bullets. A civilian was also killed in the attack that left two other civilians injured, they said. One of the attackers was arrested while the search is on to nab the other two, the sources added. The forces also seized the vehicle of the attackers carrying a number of weapons, ammunition and a hand bomb in it. Egypt has witnessed many terrorists attacks since the January 2011 revolution that toppled former president Hosni Mubarak. The attacks, mainly targeting police and military, increased after the ouster of Islamist ex-president Mohamed Morsi in 2013 by military following massive protests against his rule. Hundreds of police and Army personnel have been killed since then. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis today said Housing Minister Prakash Mehta cannot be accused of corruption merely on the basis of a file noting made by him and that the allegations being made against the senior BJP leader are "politically motivated". Fadnavis' remarks in the Legislative Council came days after he ordered an inquiry against the minister over alleged violation of norms in a slum redevelopment project. Mehta had allegedly allowed unauthorised transfer of extra building rights in a slum rehabilitation authority (SRA) project in south Mumbai, originally granted to slum dwellers, to project affected people (PAPs), apparently to favour a developer. He had wrongly mentioned on the file that he had kept the CM in loop about the transfer, which was denied by Fadnavis. The Congress and the NCP have raised the pitch in the state legislature seeking removal of Mehta as minister. "As far as allegations against Prakash Mehta are concerned, how can he be accused of corruption when no decision was taken place in the first place (on the basis of the file)?" "Mehta had merely given his remarks on the file, over which no further action was taken. If the Opposition is still asking for his resignation, then these charges are politically motivated," Fadnavis told the Legislative Council. The issue was raised by Leader of Opposition Dhananjay Munde (NCP). The chief minister, his Cabinet colleagues and members of the treasury benches took part in the proceedings of the Upper House today, a day after MLCs of the ruling BJP and Shiv Sena staged a walkout in an unprecedented development. They had walked out in the Council accusing the Opposition of "high handedness" and against their "act of flouting rules, creating ruckus and disrupting the proceedings". The proceedings began today after Chairman Ramraje Nimbalkar laid down certain norms, regarding the conduct of business. Fadnavis said he has ordered inquiry against Mehta as his is a transparent government. "Remember you (the Opposition) did not even inquire into charges against your ministers when we (as Opposition members then) gave you ample proofs of wrongdoings against them," Fadnavis said. If found guilty, appropriate action will be taken against the minister, he added. As the proceedings began, Munde said the Opposition wanted the government to act on two demands, failing which, they would not allow the Upper House to function. "One demand is (about) corrupt practices of (IAS officer and MSRDC chief) Radheshyam Mopalwar. Despite being involved in a largescale corruption, he is involved in the CM's pet (Mumbai-Nagpur expressway) project. Unless he is suspended and a serious inquiry is conducted against him, we will not allow functioning of the House," Munde said. He said since there are allegations of a "massive corruption" against the housing minister, he cannot be allowed to hold office. "The chief minister should immediately ask him to resign and order a probe against him," he added. Responding to Munde and Congress member Sharad Ranpise, who made a similar demand, Fadnavis said Mopalwar will cease to hold the position of MSRDC chief, pending an inquiry against him. "Mopalwar has been temporarily asked to step down. An inquiry will be conducted against him within a month. If he is found guilty, we will not hesitate in even dismissing him," Fadnavis said. On Fadnavis' contention that Mehta had merely given his remarks on the file which were not acted upon, Munde said, "This is like a robber going to a bank to loot it, but failing to commit the act as the alarm goes off". (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi will visit flood-affected Banaskantha district in Gujarat tomorrow, a party statement said. Gandhi is scheduled to visit some of the worst affected areas in the district, such as Dhanera, where he would interact with the flood victims and share their pain, the release said. "Rahul Gandhi would first land at Dhanera from Rajasthan at around 2 pm tomorrow. After talking to the locals, he would then reach Malotara village to take stock of situation," it said. Later, he would visit Runi village of Thara taluka in the district. Gandhi would leave for Delhi from Ahmedabad airport late in the evening, the release added. The Gujarat government has declared both Banaskantha and Patan districts as 'disaster-affected areas' following the floods due to torrential rains last week. The announcement was made by the state Revenue Department through a gazette notification issued on Tuesday. Meanwhile, Gujarat Congress president Bharatsinh Solanki today visited Deesa town of Banaskantha district, where he interacted with the party workers about the ongoing relief work being carried out by the party in the region. Solanki asked the party workers to expedite the distribution of food, clothes, utensils and other items to the flood victims, the release said. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Days after a woman gave birth to a child outside a state-run hospital in Jaipur, a nurse was removed after she was found guilty of medical negligence, following an enquiry ordered by the state government. Rajasthan Health minister Kalicharan Saraf told PTI today that the nurse has been put under APO (awaiting posting order) status after a five-member committee found her guilty of negligence. The committee, which was constituted by the minister to look into alleged negligence on part of the hospital in denying the pregnant woman healthcare facilities last week, gave its report, following which the action against the nurse was taken yesterday. Ashoka Bai, a nomad woman who was suffering from labour pain, was brought to the Jaipuria hospital in the city by her family members last Friday night, but the doctor on duty refused to admit her while assessing that the delivery of the child was not likely to take place during the night. The family members took the woman outside the hospital, where she gave birth to a child. On being alerted, the police reached the spot and the woman and the newborn were later admitted to another hospital at Sanganer. After the incident came to light, the state health minister had ordered an inquiry into the matter and asked the chief medical and health officer of the district to submit a report in this regard. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Telecom operator Reliance Communications has pulled out from membership of industry body AUSPI raising uncertainty over future of the association, according to industry sources. RCom sent its letter to the Association of Unified Telecom Service Providers of India (AUSPI) to withdraw from the membership of the body recently, sources said. The reason for the withdrawal of the Anil Ambani-led firm is not known. His elder brother Mukesh Amabni's telecom firm Reliance Jio is a member of another industry body Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI). AUSPI officials could not be reached for comment, while RCom declined to speak on this. This development leaves two core members -- Tata Teleservices and Sistema Shyam Teleservices (SSTL) in the industry body. Considering that SSTL is in the process of merger with RCom, the latter's withdrawal from AUSPI pushes it into uncertainty. AUSPI stood for telecom operators who started their business with CDMA technology and also vigorously defended dual licence policy whenever it came under attack from rival telecom sector body COAI. It has two 'associate members' which include Chinese telecom gear maker Huawei and chipset maker Qualcomm. Incidentally RCom was member of COAI but left it in 2007 -08 after differences with incumbent telecom operators. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The Railways has rejected a Parliamentary standing committee recommendation to include a member in the Railway Board exclusively to deal with safety- related issues of the national carrier. In its reply, the railways has said the safety aspect is integral to the construction, certification, operation and maintenance of the railway system and each member is responsible for their respective departments like rolling stock, infrastructure, etc.. "Overall coordination is done by the Member (Traffic), Railway Board. Hence, the question of separate member for safety is not pertinent," it said. While making the recommendation, the committee had said having a nodal department for safety would help synchronise micro-level measures into a holistic macro-level railway operations, unaffected by inter-departmental differences on the issue. The standing committee report, which was tabled in the Lok Sabha today, said "such an attitude reflects the ministry's unwillingness to relinquish age-old practises and procedures." "The committee feels that the Member (Traffic) is fully engrossed with running of trains through the entire railway network in India and the related works on a daily basis. A separate member for safety would be able to exclusively focus on safety issues of railways," the committee said. It reiterated the ministry should review its stand on the matter and give serious consideration to "optimising the composition of the railway board". (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Seven persons were arrested on Thursday and Rs 5 crore in scrapped Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 currency notes were recovered from them following raid by police at a flat in here. Acting on a tip-off that a huge consignment of old currency notes were being transferred from Gurgaon to hawala operator, the Gurgaon Police crime branch team from Palam Vihar, led by inspector Sajjan Singh, raided a flat in Sector 15 this afternoon and recovered the money, Gurgaon Police PRO Ravinder Kumar said. The accused have been identified as Rajeev, Satish, Rajesh and Sandeep, all residents of Delhi, Dinesh--a resident of Nanital in Uttarkhand, Praveen from Rohtak in Haryana and Amit, a resident of Gurgaon whose flat was raided, the official said. "During questioning, the accused could not give satisfactory answer from where they got such a huge amount of old currency notes," Kumar added. He said that a team of Income Tax Department officials was also called and they are investigating the case. "All the old currency notes have been seized and probe has begun. They are interrogating them about the source of the money and where it was to be routed," the officer said, adding that there may be involvement of some hawala operators. The CBI has arrested Bharat M Shah, the managing director of Ruby Mills, a city-based cotton and blended fabrics manufacturing company, in connection with an alleged bank fraud case, a spokesperson of the agency said today. "Shah was arrested on August 1 in connection with the ongoing investigation in a bank fraud case," the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) spokesperson said. Shah was produced before a special CBI court, which remanded him in CBI custody till August 8, he said. The CBI spokesperson, however, refused to divulge any details regarding the alleged fraud or the quantum of money allegedly misappropriated. Ruby Mills, a listed company, is into manufacturing of cotton and blended fabrics and has its registered office at Dadar in central Mumbai. No company official was available for comment. The Ruby Mills scrip today shed 2.42 per cent to close at Rs 368.50 apiece on the BSE, as against the 0.74 per cent correction on the benchmark. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev lashed new US sanctions as a "full-fledged economic war" on Moscow, saying they crushed hopes for repairing ties and demonstrated President Donald Trump's "total weakness ... in the most humiliating way." Trump reluctantly signed off on the new sanctions Wednesday, bowing to domestic pressure after the White House failed to scupper the bill or water it down. Medvedev warned the move would have "consequences", saying "it ends hopes for improving our relations with the new US administration." "Second, it is a declaration of a full-fledged economic war on Russia," Medvedev said on his Facebook page. Taunting the notoriously thin-skinned US president, Medvedev added: "The Trump administration has shown its total weakness by handing over executive power to Congress in the most humiliating way". Trump signed the legislation behind closed doors and his reluctance was on full display in an angry signing statement in which he called the legislation "significantly flawed." "In its haste to pass this legislation, the Congress included a number of clearly unconstitutional provisions," he said, including curbs on the president's ability to "negotiate" with Russia. "I built a truly great company worth many billions of dollars. That is a big part of the reason I was elected. As president, I can make far better deals with foreign countries than Congress," Trump claimed. The legislation - which also includes measures against North Korea and Iran - targets the Russian energy sector, giving Washington the ability to impose sanctions on companies involved in developing Russian pipelines, and placing curbs on some Russian weapons exporters. Iran, too, reacted angrily, saying the new sanctions against it "violated" its 2015 nuclear deal with world powers, and warned it would respond "appropriately." With regards to Russia, the sanctions notably constrains Trump's ability to waive the penalties - a statement of mistrust from the Republican-controlled Congress, which remains unsettled by Trump's warm words for President Vladimir Putin. In his statement, Trump said: "The Framers of our Constitution put foreign affairs in the hands of the President. This bill will prove the wisdom of that choice." In a searing rebuttal, maverick Republican Senator John McCain said: "The framers of our constitution made the Congress and the President coequal branches of government. This bill has already proven the wisdom of that choice." "I hope the president will be as vocal about Russia's aggressive behaviour as he was about his concerns with this legislation." The sanctions seek to penalise the Kremlin for allegedly meddling in the 2016 US presidential election and for Russia's annexation of Crimea. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Disney star Sabrina Carpenter is being sued by her former music managers for allegedly not paying them commissions after she fired them. Stan Rogow and Elliot Lurie are suing 18-year-old Carpenter, along with her parents and manager, for breach of contract and are seeking damages and restitution, according to The Hollywood Reporter. Rogow and Lurie claim they were brought in after Carpenter signed with manager Bill Perlman because she wanted to boost her representation in the music industry. They signed a music management agreement in 2011, under which they wouldd get half of Perlman's commissions, according to the complaint filed Wednesday in Los Angeles County Superior Court. Carpenter signed a five-album deal with Hollywood Records and landed the role of Maya on the Disney series "Girl Meets World" - which Rogow says happened after he personally spoke with a network exec while working with the young star. "Plaintiffs worked tirelessly to promote Sabrina and her music until their service were terminated, without cause," attorney Neville Johnson said in the complaint. The duo was fired in August 2014. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Nearly 160 semi-naked sanitation workers, who were rendered "jobless" after the HUDA handed over maintenance of certain sectors to the municipal corporation, carried out a protest march here demanding restoration of their jobs. The protest march yesterday started outside the municipal corporation office and culminated at city's Neelam Chowk during which the workers raised slogans against the government and the administration. The Haryana Urban Development Authority (HUDA) had a few months ago handed over the maintenance of certain sectors and markets to the municipal corporation. These 160 workers, however, were assured of being "adjusted" in the municipal corporation, claimed Naresh Kumar Shastri, who led the protest which was held yesterday. He said on July 11 Principal Secretary, Haryana, R K Khullar had directed the corporation, Faridabad, that these HUDA employees be taken on duty with immediate effect. "The government has agreed to include 160 workers in the Faridabad Municipal Corporation. Official orders have been given but the implementation is getting delayed," he claimed, alleging civic body officials were delaying the process. "Names of our children have been struck off school registers because we are unable to pay their fees. We are unable to pay electricity bills and landlords are asking us to vacate houses," Shastri added. The workers said if their jobs are not restored, they will launch a protest on August 9 carrying "begging bowls" in their hands. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The Supreme Court today refused to stay the Election Commission's notification allowing none of the above (NOTA) option in the ballot paper for the upcoming Rajya Sabha polls on a plea of the Congress which has fielded sitting MP Ahmed Patel from Gujarat. Sixty-eight-year-old Patel, a seven-time MP from Gujarat and political advisor of Congress president Sonia Gandhi, is fighting for a Rajya Sabha berth from the state where four candidates are in fray for three seats. The BJP has named its national president Amit Shah, Union minister Smriti Irani and Balwantsinh Rajput for the polls which are scheduled on August 8. In what could be a setback for the party, the court rejected the contention of Congress's chief whip in the Gujarat Assembly, Shailesh Manubhai Parmar that the notification be stayed, otherwise it would "encourage corruption" and the MLAs might opt the NOTA option. The apex court said that the party had not challenged it earlier because the notification suited it. A bench, headed by Justice Dipak Misra, however, agreed to examine the constitutional validity of the NOTA provision in Rajya Sabha polls, saying that the issue needed to be debated. "The Election Commission of India (ECI) had enabled the NOTA provision in 2014, which came into effect in 2015. You (Congress) did not challenge the provision when it suited you," the bench, also comprising Justices Amitava Roy and A M Khanwilkar, said and issued notice to the poll panel. The bench said it was not going to stay the ECI's notification and would like to test the constitutional validity of NOTA in the present context. "We are not going to stay the notification. Even after the elections and results are declared as per the schedule, the matter will be heard on the constitutional issue," it said. It listed the matter for detailed arguments on September 18 and directed the ECI to file its reply within two weeks on the plea. The bench said that since the Centre has nothing to do with the notification, it was deleted from the list of the respondents. It, however, asked Attorney General K K Venugopal, the highest law officer of the central government, to assist the court during the hearing. At the outset, senior advocate Kapil Sibal, representing the Gujarat Congress leader, sought a stay on the notification, saying that if the NOTA provision was allowed in the Rajya Sabha polls, it would encourage "horse-trading and corruption". "It is for the first time there are four candidates for three Rajya Sabha seats in Gujarat. If NOTA is not disabled in the state, which is witnessing a close contest, it will be a recipe for corruption and the MLAs may exercise the option to make their votes invalid," Sibal said. "Are you afraid of losing?" the bench asked. Sibal replied that he was not afraid but, if the notification was not stayed, then the MLAs might exercise the provision and take money from the other side. The apex court said that the poll panel's notification was not a state-centric one. On being denied the stay, Sibal said, "Then it will make our pleas infructuous." The bench then said it meant that the Congress MLA was not "genuinely concerned" about the legal issue. Another senior advocate Abhishek Manu Singhvi, appearing for the Gujarat leader, said that it was a peculiar case where both the Congress and the BJP were on the same page. Another senior advocate Ashok Desai, representing the ECI, said that NOTA was first introduced in 2014 following an apex court verdict a year earlier and they (Congress) did not have any objection in subsequent polls as it suited them. Desai told the bench that senior advocate and Congress leader Vivek Tankha, who was in the courtroom, should assist it on the issue whether there was a NOTA provision when he contested the Rajya Sabha polls from Madhya Pradesh. "How would I know? I was a candidate then, I was not a voter," Tankha, also representing the Gujarat leader, said. Sibal intervened and said that it was an indirect election with proportionate representation and there was no scope for the NOTA provision as it was meant for direct elections. "I am not concerned with subsequent elections after 2014 notification enabling the NOTA option as no one had challenged it then. I am a legislator and I am a facing problem now and, therefore, I challenged it," he said. The court said that the ECI's notification was not state- oriented and whether was it right or wrong needed to be debated as to whether NOTA will apply in the Upper House polls. "The notification of the ECI is for Gujarat, West Bengal and Madhya Pradesh. The election should be taken in the widest sense. It has been already notified. Any interference will totally disrupt the polls," the bench said. It said, "Since 2014-15, you (Congress) did not say anything, but in 2017 you are saying it is unconstitutional. The ECI's notification is in a general sense and it will be for everyone (other political parties, individuals). (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) A US exploration company has offered to take on the search for flight MH370 which was suspended earlier this year, the firm and a Malaysian minister said today, offering new hope to families of the missing. No trace of the Boeing 777, which disappeared in March 2014 with 239 people on board, was found during a lengthy deep sea hunt in the southern Indian Ocean off western Australia, with the search called off in January. Ocean Infinity, a seabed exploration firm which says it has the world's largest and most advanced commercial fleet of underwater vehicles for conducting searches, said it had proposed continuing the hunt. "I can confirm that we have made an offer," a spokesman said in an emailed statement to AFP, without giving further details. Malaysia's Deputy Transport Minister Aziz Kaprawi confirmed a company had made an approach and was only asking for payment in the event they find the plane. He said the firm had made a "good offer", and added negotiations were ongoing with the country's Department of Civil Aviation. "The company is demanding payment in the event the wreckage is found," he told AFP. "We have to work out the details, what we want most is the wreckage and the black box." He added that the agreement of Australia and China would be needed for a deal to be reached. China, where most of the passengers came from, and Australia were both involved in the search. Grace Nathan, a Malaysian lawyer whose mother Anne Daisy was on the plane, urged authorities to accept the offer. "There is no point waiting any longer, we really do not lose anything," she said. "It seems to be a perfect offer from a company that is equipped to undertake this search." So far, three fragments of MH370 have been found on western Indian Ocean shores, including a two-metre wing part known as a flaperon. Australia's national science body CSIRO said in April that MH370 was "most likely" lying north of the former search zone -- a 120,000 square kilometre area largely defined through satellite "pings" and the flight's estimated fuel load. But the country's transport minister previously said the underwater probe would not resume unless new evidence about the specific location of the aircraft emerge. Ocean Infinity has a fleet of six underwater vehicles which can collect seabed data at a depth of 6,000 metres. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Shiv Sena legislators in Maharashtra today wrote to Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis, demanding withdrawal of criminal cases registered against farmers who had launched a state-wide agitation for loan waiver in June. "The government announced a loan waiver scheme for farmers only after they protested against the administration's inability to stop farmer suicides. They wanted their long-standing demand of loan waiver to be accepted, for which they went on strike," said senior Sena leader Anil Parab. The letter said that cases were registered against protesting farmers in police stations across the state during the agitation in the first week of June. "After the government agreed to their demand of loan waiver, it should withdraw all the cases," it said. Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis had recently announced that the government will set up a joint committee of legislators from both Houses of Maharashtra legislature to oversee the implementation of Rs 34,022 crore farm loan waiver. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The Senate confirmed President Donald Trump's choice to be the Energy Department's No. 2 official, even as a Republican senator vowed to block the Trump administration's plans to revive the long-stalled Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository in Nevada. Senators approved Dan Brouillette of Texas, an executive at USAA insurance company, by a 79-17 vote yesterday. Brouilette won the endorsement of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee in June, but his confirmation as deputy secretary was held up by Republican Senator Dean Heller of Nevada, a staunch opponent of the Yucca Mountain project. Heller, Democratic Senator Catherine Cortez Masto and other Nevada lawmakers say the project poses significant public safety and environmental threats and is overwhelmingly opposed by Nevada residents. Heller and Cortez Masto voted against Brouilette's confirmation, along with 14 other Democratic senators and independent Bernie Sanders of Vermont. Brouillette, who has been at USAA since 2006, has lobbied for Ford Motor Company and was staff director of the House Energy and Commerce Committee. He worked at the Energy Department under President George W Bush. Heller said in a statement yesterday that he remains concerned "not only with the Department of Energy's disregard for the significant public safety and environmental threats associated with reviving Yucca Mountain, but also its dismissal of a consent-based approach as a viable solution to our country's nuclear waste problem." He's working with Energy Secretary Rick Perry, the White House and his colleagues to ensure that "Yucca Mountain never becomes a reality," Heller said. "Nevada will not serve as our country's nuclear waste dump. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) BJP chief Amit Shah today hit out at the Congress saying the changes forced by it in the bill to accord Constitutional status to the commission for backward classes in Rajya Sabha, had exposed the "anti-backward mentality" of the opposition party. Accusing the Congress of creating "stumbling blocks" in the efforts towards the welfare of the country's backward sections, he said the Modi government would get the Constitutional amendment bill on backward classes cleared and "now nobody can stop it." Shah was referring to the proceedings in Rajya Sabha on July 31, when a united opposition pushed some changes in the Constitution amendment bill on backward classes, leaving the ruling side red-faced. Addressing media here, Shah said that the backward sections of the country had been demanding, since 1955, that the OBC Commission be given a constitutional status. "Never has any government in the past done anything in this direction," said Shah. It was the Modi government which made efforts towards giving the commission constitutional status, said Shah. "Congress proposed such an amendment in the Rajya Sabha which if implemented, the whole Bill would get stuck in a legal tangle. Because of this, such an amendment cannot be accepted. "Despite the BJP saying to the opposition party that the amendments that had been proposed were not possible, the Congress deliberately stuck to it and the bill was scuttled," claimed Shah. "What have they achieved?", he asked adding that the backward sections would now would have to wait for it for some more time. "Because of this incident, the anti-backward mentality of Congress has been exposed," said Shah. He asserted that the welfare of backward people was not possible alone through mere talks. There need is to take concrete steps, he said. "If you cannot do this and somebody else was doing, you should have supported them. These things should be seen as above politics," said Shah. Even as the Congress party creates many stumbling blocks, we must get this Bill cleared in both the Houses of Parliament and it will certainly become a law, nobody can stop it, he said. I want to tell the people of this country about how the Congress, which never did anything for backward classes, created hindrances when we tried to do something for them, he said. "The BJP and its government is committed towards this Constitutional amendment bill and in the coming days, we shall try to pass it in both houses of the Parliament," he emphasised. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Five-time Grand Slam champion Maria Sharapova withdrew from the WTA Bank of the West Classic just before her scheduled second-round match yesterday with a left arm injury, tournament officials announced. "We're sad to announce that @mariasharapova has withdrawn after doctor's advice regarding her left arm," a post on the tournament's Twitter feed said. Sharapova played her first US match in more than two years on Monday, defeating American Jennifer Brady 6-1 4-6 6-0 in an opening-round match at the hardcourt event in Stanford, California. "Toward the end of the Monday night's match, I felt pain in my left forearm," Sharapova said Wednesday. "After yesterday's scan, the doctor has recommended I don't risk further injury." The former world number one from Russia hadn't played in the US since March of 2015, before serving a 15-month doping suspension for the use of meldonium. Seventh-seeded Ukrainian Lesia Tsurenko advanced by walkover as a result of wildcard entrant Sharapova's early exit. "Unfortunately, I have to withdraw from today's match," Sharapova said. "Monday night's crowd was so special and I wish I could continue playing but I have to make a preventative decision." Sharapova told supporters after her Monday match that her cheers meant a great deal to her. "I feel like I just want to hug everyone and say thank you," Sharapova said Monday. "It's my first match in the States in a really long time, and it's the closest thing to home for me." The latest injury brings into question whether or not Sharapova will be fit in time for the US Open, which starts August 28, as well as for another key tuneup event in Cincinnati in two weeks for which Sharapova has also accepted a wildcard. Sharapova, 30, returned to competition in April, but her comeback was disrupted by a hip injury that forced her to withdraw from Wimbledon qualifying. Sharapova's ranking has fallen to 171 in the world. "I feel like I'm playing catch-up against everyone who has had a head start," Sharapova said after her match. "All that matters is that I keep playing." Tsurenko next faces American Madison Keys who survived a test from Caroline Dolehide to reach the quarter-finals, rallying from a set down for a 3-6 6-2 6-3 win. The other day session singles match saw No.5 seed Ana Konjuh edge Natalia Vikhlyantseva 6-4 7-5 to advance to the last eight, where she'll face Garbine Muguruza who cruised past American teenager Kayla Day 6-2 6-0. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The BJP today asked the West Bengal government to shun use of force in the tense Darjeeling, saying the crisis there could not be resolved through bullet. Union minister S S Ahluwalia, who represents the hilly region in the Lok Sabha, also sought a "high-level" probe into the alleged police firing in Darjeeling in which three protesters were killed, calling it "unpardonable". Addressing a press conference in which he was accompanied by members of the Gorkhaland Movement Coordination Committee (GMCC), Ahluwalia also expressed hope that peace will be restored there before August 15. "The crisis in Darjeeling cannot be resolved through bullet. Repressive measures and brutalities of police are not the solution," he said, making an appeal to the state's Trinamool Congress government and the GMCC for bringing peace and ending violence. This 50-day long crisis can only be resolved through political dialogue and for that peace was needed to be restored in the town, he said, requesting GMCC members to end their fast and call off their strike. "Gorkhas are known for their honesty and loyalty for the country. They never hesitate in sacrificing their life for the nation. So I would also request them to call off their fast and end the strike," Ahluwalia said. As the MP of Darjeeling, he will submit a memorandum on behalf of the GMCC to the prime minister and the home minister. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Six people were killed in northwestern Myanmar and two others are missing, the government and villagers said, in the latest flare up of violence in the conflict-scarred corner of Rakhine state. All are from the Myo ethnic group, a tiny Buddhist minority in the remote strip of land bordering Bangladesh that is mainly home to stateless Rohingya Muslims. The area has been gripped by violence since late last year when Rohingya militants attacked police posts, sparking a months-long bloody military crackdown that the UN believes may amount to ethnic cleansing. Myanmar's government has denied the accusations, saying troops were carrying out valid "clearance operations", but refused to allow in a UN fact-finding mission to investigate. The large-scale operation has abated but the area remains on lockdown, with sporadic killings by troops and almost daily reports in state media of villagers being murdered and abducted by masked assassins. "Security forces are hunting extremist terrorists after the bodies of six villagers from Kaing Gyi were found and two went missing," the state counsellor's office said in a statement. Troops and police found the bodies of three men and three women close to where gunshots were heard around 10:00 am (0330 GMT), it added. Kaing Gyi village leader Sein Hla Maung confirmed the toll and said a man and a woman were still missing. "They were stabbed with knives and shot as well," he told AFP by phone, the sound of crying women in the background. The government blames the violence on the self-styled Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army, which claimed last year's raids on the police posts, saying the militants are targeting villagers, including Muslims, seen to be close to the authorities. The group has denied killing civilians in statements issued through an unverified Twitter account. More than 70,000 Rohingya have fled to Bangladesh since October and the UN believes hundreds may have died in what may be the bloodiest chapter of Buddhist-majority Myanmar's years-long persecution of the Rohingya. The minority are widely reviled as illegal migrants from Bangladesh, although many Rohingya families say their ancestors have lived in the area for generations. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The six sacked Tripura Trinamool Congress(TMC) MLAs, who voted for NDA's presidential candidate Ram Nath Kovind, will formally join BJP on August 7. "The MLAs will meet BJP president Amit Shah in Delhi tomorrow. Their joining was finalized earlier following discussion with our central leaders," BJP spokesman Victor Shom said. He said, the MLAs along with their supporters would join in a public meeting on Monday in the presence of party General Secretary Ram Madhab, Convener of North-East Democratic Alliance and Assam Finance Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma, Union Petroleum Minister Dharmendra Pradhan and state party President, Biplab Deb and and the party's Tripura observer, Sunil Deodhar. The sacked MLAs had announced that they would not vote for a candidate in the presidential poll who was supported by CPI-M. Former Leader of Opposition in Tripura Assembly Sudip Roy Barman and five other MLAs had quit Congress in protest against the party's electoral understanding with the CPI(M) in the 2016 West Bengal Assembly elections and had joined the TMC. They were, however, sacked from TMC after they had openly announced their support for Kovind. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) A Taliban suicide bomber attacked a convoy of foreign forces in Afghanistan, killing one NATO soldier and wounding six other personnel, the coalition said. "The patrol was conducting a partnered mission with the Afghan National Army when a personnel-borne IED (improvised explosive device) detonated," in Qarabagh district in Kabul province," NATO said in a statement. The Taliban quickly claimed the attack on social media. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Scientists have designed new 'smart' solar glasses incorporated with coloured, semi-transparent organic solar cells that can generate electric power enough to operate devices such as hearing aids or step counters. Organic solar cells are flexible, transparent, and light-weight - and can be manufactured in arbitrary shapes or colours, said researchers from Karlsruher Institut fur Technologie (KIT) in Germany. They are suitable for a variety of applications that cannot be realised with conventional silicon solar cells. Researchers designed sunglasses with coloured, semitransparent solar cells applied onto lenses that supply a microprocessor and two displays with electric power. This paves the way for other future applications such as the integration of organic solar cells into windows or overhead glazing, researchers said. "We bring solar power to places where other solar technologies fail," said Alexander Colsmann, from KIT's Light Technology Institute (LTI). The 'smart' solar glasses are self-powered to measure and display the solar illumination intensity and ambient temperature. The solar cell lenses, perfectly fitted to a commercial frame, have a thickness of about 1.6 millimetres and weigh about six grammes - just like the lenses of traditional sunglasses. The microprocessor and the two small displays are integrated into the temples of the solar glasses. They show the illumination intensity and the ambient temperature as bar graphs. The solar glasses also work in indoor environments under illumination down to 500 Lux, which is the usual illumination of an office or a living area. Under these conditions, each of the "smart" lenses still generates 200 milliwatt of electric power - enough to operate devices such as a hearing aid or a step counter. "The solar glasses we developed are an example of how organic solar cells may be employed in applications that would not be feasible with conventional photovoltaics," said PhD student Dominik Landerer, who contributed to the solar glasses at KIT. According to Colsmann, another field of application is the integration of solar cells into buildings: Since the glass facades of high-rise buildings must often be shaded, it is an obvious option to use organic solar modules for transforming the absorbed light into electric power. The research was published in the Energy Technology journal. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The ruling Telugu Desam in Andhra Pradesh suffered a major blow today, days ahead of the crucial by-election for the Nandyal Assembly seat, as party MLC Silpa Chakrapani Reddy quit the party to join the opposition YSR Congress. Reddy also resigned from the MLC post, to which he was elected just three months ago. The Jaganmohan Reddy-led party has fielded Reddy's elder brother Mohan Reddy for the August 23 bypoll. The Reddy brothers had joined the TDP ahead of the 2014 elections after deserting the Congress. Mohan Reddy, a former minister, was expected to be fielded for the by-election from TDP, but the party chose Brahmananda Reddy, a member of the Bhuma family. The Silpa and the Bhuma families have a running feud in the faction-ridden Kurnool district. Piqued by this, Mohan Reddy quit the TDP and joined the YSRC last month, which fielded him for the bypoll. Since his brother's exit from TDP, Chakrapani Reddy had been staying away from the party activities in Kurnool district, giving rise to speculation that he too was on his way out. He then faxed a letter to TDP president N Chandrababu Naidu announcing his exit. Chakrapani Reddy faxed another letter to the Legislative Council (acting) Chairman, stating that he was resigning as the MLC. Mohan Reddy lost the 2014 Assembly elections as the TDP nominee to Bhuma Nagi Reddy of the YSRC. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The Telangana State Police Housing Corporation Ltd (TSPHCL) has set a turnover target of Rs 300 crore for the current financial year, up from Rs 200 crore achieved in last fiscal, a senior official said today. "The corporation has prepared plans to achieve a turnover of Rs 300 crore during this financial year by undertaking new works, including construction of police buildings in the newly formed districts," TSPHCL Chairman Koleti Damoder told reporters here. The TSPHC was carved out of the Andhra Pradesh State Police Housing Corporation and came into existence as a separate entity in August 2015. The corporation's turnover during FY 2013-14, prior to the division, was Rs 285.65 crore. Its turnover in the last fiscal stood at Rs 200 crore. The corporation has been established with the main objective of constructing buildings for police stations, commissionerates and barracks of police, prisons, fire and disaster management departments. However, it also undertook construction of buildings of other government departments such as technical education, forest, prohibition and excise, State Warehousing Corporation, PVNR Veterinary University, officials said. With financial assistance from the Centre, the corporation has also taken up construction of 30,000 police residential quarters and buildings housing offices of various wings of the force, they said. The state government has sanctioned Rs 375 crore for construction of buildings of 13 district police offices and two commissionerates, Damoder said. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The Telangana government will adopt Microsoft India's cloud-based analytics for its health care screening programme for children. The government today said it has signed an agreement with the US technology giant for using its platform for driving the programme, Rashtriya Bal Swasthya Karyakram. According to an official release, the state has also agreed to adopt Microsoft Intelligent Network for Eyecare (MINE), an Artificial Intelligence platform to reduce avoidable blindness. With this, Telangana has become the first state in India to deploy artificial intelligence for eyecare screening, it said. The state government and Microsoft had signed an MoU in November 2016 to use the latter's cloud technology to drive citizen services and digital inclusion. Under this MoU, Microsoft India conducted a cloud- based, advanced analytics pilot project to understand the health screening programme among children from birth to 18 years in 10 districts. K T Rama Rao, Minister of IT, said, "We are very pleased to announce that Telangana will be the first state in India to bring AI in public health screening and we are excited about how technology has the potential to make great social impact. "The collaboration between our health and IT departments and Microsoft is going to make a huge difference to the lives of the people in our country, starting with our state." Anil Bhansali, Corporate Vice-President, Cloud and Enterprise, and Managing Director, Microsoft India (R&D) Pvt. Ltd, said, "We have been focused on accelerating digital transformation in India using our advanced machine learning and cloud technologies. "We are pleased to strengthen our partnership with the Government of Telangana by bringing the combined power of data, cloud and advanced analytics to drive the state's missions around healthcare and digital inclusion. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Vikram Goud, a Telangana Youth Congress leader and the son of a former Andhra Pradesh minister, was arrested today, a week after he allegedly staged a gun attack on himself for "political mileage". Goud was arrested soon after he was discharged from a private hospital where he was receiving treatment for bullet wounds from the incident, police said. "He was today arrested and produced before a court," Deputy Commissioner of Police (West Zone) A Venkateshwar Rao told PTI. The episode took a bizarre turn when it was alleged that Goud, the son of former Andhra Pradesh minister Mukesh Goud, staged the attack on himself to gain people's sympathy and manage a ticket for the 2019 assembly elections. The Hyderabad Police arrested five persons in connection with the "attack" on Goud at his residence in Film Nagar area here on July 28. From being a 'victim', the 35-year-old Telangana Youth Congress leader has now become the prime accused in the firing incident. The young politician plotted the "murder attempt" on himself to gain sympathy of the voters of an assembly constituency from where he was planning to contest the next elections, Police Commissioner M Mahendar Reddy has said. Goud hired members of a criminal gang and offered them Rs 50 lakh for executing the plan, Reddy has said. The five arrested persons - S Nanda Kumar, Raees Khan, Shaik Ahmed, K Babu Jan and A Govind Reddy - spilled the beans on the sequence of events, police have said. "As per the plan, Kumar and the other accused procured a country-made weapon from Madhya Pradesh. On Goud's instructions, two of them, Raees Khan and Shaik Ahmed, reached his house in the early hours of July 28. Khan fired two rounds at Goud's hands before fleeing with Ahmed," Reddy has said. Goud, who has invested a lot of money in mining in Odisha and other businesses, is under heavy debt. The quantum of his debt is being ascertained, the Hyderabad Police chief has said. With Goud's arrest, six out of the eight accused are behind the bars now and efforts are on to nab the other two, police said. Police have registered a case against Goud and others under IPC sections related to criminal conspiracy, voluntarily causing grievous hurt by dangerous weapons or means, causing disappearance of evidence of offence and giving false information regarding an offence committed, among others. They have also been booked under relevant sections of the Arms Act. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The Film Employees Federation of South India today called off their two-day stir on a wage revision issue and announced resumption of work from tomorrow. FEFSI president R K Selvamani said it has decided to resume work in deference to the advice of senior actors Rajinikanth, Kamal Haasan, assurances of film producers, directors and several bodies of the film industry. Notably, the state government has assured that it would facilitate tripartite talks to resolve the issue with the Tamil Film Producers' Council (TFPC), he said. Speaking to reporters here, he said "our appeal is that all employees belonging to the (total) 23 affiliated bodies of FEFSI should be utilised without discrimination," adding "please do not divide us." He said they apprised the Labour Commmissioner on the stand-off with the film producers body which had announced that "pay will be cut," and "will not work" with employees under FEFSI. "We requested the labour authorities to find a solution and the tripartite talks proposed by them for today has been now deferred to tomorrow in view of the unavailability of TFPC office-bearers," he said. FEFSI chief said initially the producers body was unwilling for talks. Since TFPC had relented and now agreed to thrash out the matter through parleys, he said it was only appropriate for FEFSI to reciprocate. Hence "we are announcing resumption of work on a positive note," he added. Selvamani, also a noted yesteryear film director, said "we have no ego," citing Rajinikanth favouring a resolution sans ego. He said FEFSI had requested the government that TFPC chief Vishal should participate in parleys to resolve the issue. Selvamani had called on Rajinikanth yesterday whose upcoming 'Kaala' movie was also affected because of the stir. Days ago, the shoot of a Tamil film was disrupted when FEFSI members reportedly sought a hike in their wages, prompting TFPC to declare that the producers were free to hire employees of their choice to carry on their work. It had also said wages should be paid according to scales fixed by the producers' council. Irked by this, FEFSI had announced that only those registered with it should be employed by the producers. It announced that it would go on strike from August one over wage revision demanding a re-negotiation of 'general conditions,' which covers aspects including wages. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) A ceasefire between government forces and rebels went into effect in part of central Syria after Russia struck a deal with the opposition on a safe zone. The zone in northern parts of Homs province is the third to be established in Syria, which has been ravaged by six years of civil war that have left more than 300,000 people dead. "From 1200 local time (0900 GMT), units of the moderate opposition and government forces will completely stop firing," Russian defence ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov said today. Konashenkov said Moscow and Syrian opposition groups had reached an agreement on the "operational details" of a "de- escalation zone" north of third city Homs at talks in Cairo on July 31. Moscow has been behind a push to pacify Syria since the start of this year, after tipping the conflict in favour of the regime with its game-changing military intervention in 2015. Under a plan hammered out in May between Russia, Turkey and Iran at peace talks in Kazakhstan, four "de-escalation zones" were to be established across swathes of Syria. Last month, Moscow announced the establishment of the first two zones in southern Syria and in the rebel stronghold of Eastern Ghouta near Damascus. The zone in Homs province is expected to cover towns around Talbisseh, Al-Houla and Rastan. The fourth zone, in northwestern Idlib province, has yet to be established. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a monitoring group, said today there has been no violations of the ceasefire in the north of Homs province. In Talbisseh, shops and vegetable stalls reopened as motorbikes dashed along dust paths between destroyed buildings, an AFP photographer said. Children ventured out onto the main road and ran into a shop in a market area. Mustafa Khaled, an activist in the town, told AFP that representatives of Talbisseh, Al-Houla and Rastan were consulted on the deal. "It is quiet. There have been no violations in the first hour of the agreement," he said today. "But word in the street is that people don't trust the regime or the Russians," he added. Fellow Talbisseh resident Othman Taha said he hoped the ceasefire would hold after years of suffering. "We hope this is serious," he said. Al-Houla too was calm, resident Abbas Abu Osama said. "There had been escalating bombardment of the town with air planes and artillery. But we haven't heard a single gunshot from the checkpoints around us today," he said. And in Rastan, activist Mohammed Taleb said he welcomed any agreement to end the fighting. "We in the north of Homs province agree with any deal that stops the bloodshed and destruction," he said. There was no official announcement from Syria's armed forces, which had issued its own declarations of the ceasefires in the south and in Eastern Ghouta last month. The Russian defence ministry said Russian military police will set up two checkpoints and three observation posts along the boundaries of the Homs zone on Friday. Rebels have agreed to "unblock" part of a road running through the safe zone between Homs and the city of Hama further north, spokesman Konashenkov said. A "Committee for National Justice" made up of rebels and local groups would help oversee the implementation of the plan, he added. Moscow has also deployed military police in the southern ceasefire zone, created after Russia struck a deal with the United States and Jordan last month. Under a second agreement sealed with rebels in July, Russian forces set up two checkpoints and four observation posts in the rebel enclave of Eastern Ghouta. Negotiations on the Idlib zone have been complicated by conflicting interests between the international powers and by the presence of large numbers of fighters of former Al-Qaeda affiliate the Fateh al-Sham Front. Russia is planning a fresh round of talks in the Kazakh capital Astana in late August to thrash out more details of its peace plan. Both Russia and a US-led coalition have been carrying out bombing campaigns against areas of Syria still controlled by the Islamic State group that have exacted a mounting civilian toll. Separate raids by Russia and the coalition left at least 40 civilians dead on Wednesday, the Observatory said. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Syrian regime forces and "moderate" rebels will cease fire in northern parts of Homs province today after Russia struck a deal with the opposition on implementing a third safe zone, Moscow said. "From 1200 local time, units of the moderate opposition and government forces will completely stop firing," defence ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov said in a statement. Konashenkov said Moscow and Syrian opposition groups had reached an agreement on the "operational details" of a "de- escalation zone" north of the city of Homs at talks in Cairo on July 31. The zone is the third to be established in Syria under a Russian-led initiative aimed at halting fighting in four areas between President Bashar al-Assad's forces and rebels. It covers 84 towns and villages with a total population of 147,000 people, Moscow said. Russia has been behind a push to pacify Syria since the start of this year after tipping the six-year conflict in favour of Assad with its game-changing military intervention in 2015. Konashenkov said Russian military police will set up two checkpoints and three observation posts on Friday along the boundaries of the zone dividing the two forces. Rebels had agreed to "unblock" part of a road running through the safe zone between the cities of Homs and Hama and a "Committee for National Justice" made up of rebels and local groups would help oversee the implementation of the plan, he said. The northern parts of Homs province were recently being shelled by regime forces and hit by intermittent air strikes. Towns in the area were among the first to fall to Assad's opponents in 2012 after a revolt against his rule. They have remained outside the hands of jihadist groups including the Islamic State (IS), which do not fall under the Russian deal. Russia last month struck a deal with the United States and Jordan for a ceasefire in another southern zone, where Moscow has now deployed its military police. Under a second agreement sealed with rebels in July Russian forces also set up two checkpoints and four observation posts in an area covering conflict-ravaged Eastern Ghouta near Damascus. Under a plan hammered out between Russia, Turkey and Iran at peace talks in Kazakhstan one more safe zone is supposed to be established in the northwestern Idlib region. However, negotiations on that zone have been complicated by conflicting interests between the international powers. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) President Donald Trump today blamed Congress for "an all-time" and "very dangerous" low in US' relations with Russia, a day after he reluctantly signed into law a bill imposing tough sanctions against Moscow under mounting domestic pressure. Trump signed into law a legislation that imposes tough sanctions against Russia, Iran and North Korea and limits his ability to lift the curbs unilaterally. The signing of the bill put to rest questions about whether Trump would support the legislation passed overwhelmingly by Congress last week. "Our relationship with Russia is at an all-time & very dangerous low. You can thank Congress, the same people that can't even give us HCare!" Trump wrote on twitter. The "Countering America's Adversaries Through Sanctions Act," which enacts new sanctions on Iran, North Korea and Russia was passed by both the chambers of the Congress - House of Representatives and the Senate - by an overwhelming majority. In his signing statement, Trump had expressed his disagreement with certain provisions of the bill even though he said he supported new sanctions on Russia. "The bill remains seriously flawed - particularly because it encroaches on the executive branch's authority to negotiate. Congress could not even negotiate a healthcare bill after seven years of talking," Trump said. "By limiting the Executive's flexibility, this bill makes it harder for the United States to strike good deals for the American people, and will drive China, Russia and North Korea much closer together. The framers of our Constitution put foreign affairs in the hands of the President. This bill will prove the wisdom of that choice," he said. White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders told reporters that the President favours tough measures to punish and deter the rogue regimes in Iran and North Korea for the bad behaviour. "He also sent a clear signal that we won't tolerate interference in our democratic process by Russia," she said. "The bill was improved, but Congress has encroached on the power of the presidency, and he signed it in the interest of national unity. We've been very clear that we support tough sanctions on all three of those countries. We continue to do so," Sanders said. Russia has responded to these sanctions by reducing the size of US mission in Russia and asking several hundreds of American officials there to leave. Trump's presidency has been marred by accusations that his campaign team colluded with Moscow during last year's US presidential polls in which he defeated Hillary Clinton. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) US President Donald Trump wants to fire General John Nicholson, his top commander in Afghanistan, as he believes Taliban is increasingly gaining ground in the war-torn country, a media report said. Frustrated over the worsening security situation in Afghanistan, Trump at a White House meeting on July 19 "repeatedly suggested" that Defence Secretary James Mattis and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen Joseph Dunford replace Gen Nicholson, because he is "not winning the war", the NBC reported yesterday, quoting unnamed officials in the White House. The Afghan review lasted for about two hours, during which the president apparently asked for return on investment in Afghanistan. According to officials, Trump inquired about the United States getting a piece of Afghan's mineral wealth and repeatedly said the top US general there should be fired, NBC said. Notably, Trump is yet to meet General Nicholson, who was appointed to this position by his predecessor. Trump is the third US President to be grappling with the Afghan war, which began in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, when the then US President George W Bush sent troops to overthrow the Taliban rulers, who had sheltered Al-Qaeda and its leader Osama bin Laden. "We aren't winning," Trump complained, according to the officials. "We are losing," NBC quoted the official as saying what Trump felt over the situation in Afghanistan. Another official said Trump pointed to maps showing the Taliban gaining ground, and that Mattis responded to the president by saying the US is losing because it doesn't have the strategy it needs, the news channel reported. The White House declined to comment on internal deliberations. "That strategy has been worked carefully in the interagency process and while no decision has been made the president's team continues to develop options for him that address threats and opportunities to America arising from this vital region," Michael Anton, spokesman of the National Security Council told the news channel. According to media reports, Trump has been unhappy with the options bring presented to him. The Afghan policy review, which was of late scheduled to come up mid-July has been postponed for the time being. An inter-agency process is still working on it, after Trump sent the plan to the drawing board. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Two men have been arrested by the Customs for allegedly trying to smuggle into the country gold valuing about Rs 27 lakh at Delhi airport. The accused, both aged 32 years and native of neighbouring Haryana, were intercepted by the customs after their arrival from Bangkok yesterday. "A detailed personal and baggage search of both passengers resulted in the recovery of four gold springs total weighing one kilogram. The gold springs were found concealed in the hollow handles of kick scooters for kids," a press release issued today by the customs said. The gold, valued at Rs 26.79 lakh, has been seized and the duo arrested, it said. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) A 47-year-old Indian-origin doctor in east London was today charged with 118 sex offences, including one assault on a child under 13, by the Scotland Yard. Dr Manish Shah, from Brunel Close in Romford area of the city, is accused of 65 counts of assault by penetration and 52 allegations of sexual assault, the Metropolitan Police said. The doctor is also charged with one count of sexual assault on a child under the age of 13. "Manish Shah has been charged with 65 assault by penetration, contrary to Section 2 of the Sexual Offences Act 2003, 52 sexual assault, contrary to Section 3 of the Sexual Offences Act 2003, and 1 sexual assault on a child under 13 years, contrary to Section 7 of the Sexual Offences Act 2003," the Met Police said in a statement today. Shah is out on bail and is due to appear on August 31 at Barkingside Magistrates' Court in London. "The NHS (National Health Service) has a dedicated number for any individuals who may have concerns or questions. They can be contacted on 0800 011 4253," the Met Police said. The offences are alleged to have occurred between June 2004 and July 2013 and relate to 54 victims. The charges announced today follow a long-running investigation into Shah, who has been bailed several times after first being arrested in 2013. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The UN Security Council has unanimously adopted a resolution urging all countries to eliminate the supply of weapons to the Islamic State extremist group and other "terrorists" including by taking legal action against suppliers and marking arms to improve their traceability. The resolution, sponsored by Egypt, strongly condemns the continuing flow of weapons, military equipment, drones and improvised explosive devices to IS, al-Qaida and their affiliates as well as illegal armed groups and criminals. "This is one of the first resolutions aiming to prevent terrorists from acquiring weapons," Egypt's UN Ambassador Amr Abdellatif Aboulatta, the current Security Council president, said after the vote yesterday. "Arming of terrorists and terrorist groups ... Is a crime that is no less heinous than the terrorist act itself." The resolution reaffirms the commitment of all states to preventing weapons from reaching "terrorists." It urges the UN's 193 member states "to prevent and disrupt procurement networks for such weapons." It also urges all countries "to act cooperatively to prevent terrorists from acquiring weapons" including via the internet or social networks. Yury Fedotov, executive director of the Vienna-based UN Office on Drugs and Crime, told the council by video link that "terrorists obtain weapons by many means, in all parts of the world, facilitated by access to poorly secured stockpiles, weak border management, the use of online platforms including hidden marketplaces, and diversion linked to poor transfer controls." Fedotov stressed the complex challenges to keep weapons from falling into the hands of terrorists, citing "inadequate regulatory environments and data collection, lack of specialised skills and equipment, and lack of coordination within and between countries and regions." Interpol Special Representative Emmanuel Roux told the council that although the use of weapons by terrorists isn't new "today's threat landscape is one of unprecedented complexity." "Convergence is the key word: between organised crime and terrorism; between old and new technologies; between military and law enforcement efforts," he said. Roux said Interpol is seeing firearms used in conflict zones reappearing on streets of major cities, commercial products that are legal turned into improvised explosive devices, and guns manufactured decades ago for sale on the dark web. In parallel, he said foreigners who fight for terrorist groups may be exploiting their knowledge from the battlefield, the organised crime contacts and supply chains they used previously, "and technology allowing the creation of modular firearms and 3D printing, to access and use weapons." Roux said there are many "crucial actions" the international community can undertake including standardising end-user export controls, securely managing stockpiles, and strengthening and implementing strong national legislation. Jehangir Khan, acting head of the new UN Office of Counter-Terrorism, said the diversion of weapons from government stockpiles, through theft or capturing depots, is an important source of arms for terrorist groups and others. And he said the illicit online weapons trade on the dark web is "particularly worrisome." US Ambassador Nikki Haley accused Iran of deliberately and systematically contributing "weapons, training and funding for terrorist groups" in violation of its international obligations. "Terrorist proxies are doing the Iranian regime's will in Iraq and in Syria," she said. "Iran also supports Hamas and Bahraini terrorist groups. Through its partner Hezbollah, Iran is engaged in preparing for war in Lebanon. It is building an arsenal of weapons and battle-hardened troops. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Minister of state for Muslim Waqf and Haj Mohsin Raza and his wife today applied for their marriage registration, two days after the Uttar Pradesh Cabinet approved a proposal making registration of all marriages in the state mandatory. The UP Marriage Registration Guidelines, 2017 were approved by the Cabinet on August 1. "As a minister, I believe in setting an example for others. Hence, I along with my wife Fauzia Sarvar Fatima went to the Lucknow district collectorate today to complete formalities for registering our marriage. We stayed there for around 30 minutes, and completed all the formalities. We were told that the marriage certificate will reach our home," a visibly happy Mohsin Raza told PTI. Mohsin Raza married Fauzia Sarvar Fatima in 2001. Those who were present as witnesses included Zahida Beghum (mother of Mohsin Raza) and Jamal Hamid (father of Fauzia). Hajra Beghum, mother of Fauzia was also present on this occasion, the minister said. Lauding the move of the state government, Raza said, "This is certainly a good step, which will have a positive impact on the public. This will certainly go a long way in empowering and strengthening the women." He said it would also ensure that the women were not forced to move from pillar to post in order to prove their matrimonial identity. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) A leading American daily on Thursday posted highly classified transcripts of Donald Trump's conversations with Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto and Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, in yet another embarrassing leak for the US President. In his conversation with Nieto, according to the transcripts, Trump is heard pleading that the latter should stop saying that Mexico would not pay for the wall. In his conversation with the Australian Prime Minister, Trump is heard getting agitated on the refugee issue and eventually telling him that the call was the most irksome of the day. ALSO READ: Trump endorses Bill to cut legal immigration Transcripts of both the conversations that happened on January 27 and 28 respectively were posted by The Washington Post. The top American daily is now owned by Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos. Notably, in the last few days, Amazon has succumbed to the Chinese demands on restricted internet freedom. The White House today did not immediately comment on the embarrassing leak of Trump's conversations with world leaders. In a statement, The Washington Post said the transcripts were prepared by the White House but have not been released. "The Post is publishing reproductions rather than original documents in order to protect sources. The reproductions below also include minor spelling and grammatical mistakes that appeared in the documents," it said. As per the transcripts, Trump is heard asking the Mexican leader not to tell the press that Mexico would not pay for the construction of the wall along the US-Mexico border. The building of the wall was one of the major electoral promises of the US President. During his election campaign, Trump had said that Mexico would pay for the wall. Pena Nieto has repeatedly said that Mexico will not pay for the wall. "You cannot say that to the press. The press is going to go with that and I cannot live with that. You cannot say that to the press because I cannot negotiate under those circumstances," Trump told Pena Nieto, according to the transcripts. In his conversation with Turnbull, Trump says that accepting the refugees will "make us look awfully bad". "We have to stop. We have allowed so many people into our country that should not be here. We have our San Bernardino's, we have had the World Trade Center come down because of people that should not have been in our country, and now we are supposed to take 2,000. It sends such a bad signal. You have no idea. It is such a bad thing," Trump is quoted as saying in the transcripts. The conversation between the two leaders grew sour as Trump rejected an agreement to take refugees. "I have been making these calls all day and this is the most unpleasant call all day," Trump told Turnbull. "(Russian President Vladimir) Putin was a pleasant call. This is ridiculous," said the US President, as he abruptly ends the call. The United States has issued a ban prohibiting its citizens traveling to North Korea, a move triggered by the death of a US student imprisoned by Pyongyang during a tourist visit. The ban, which comes into effect September 1, was introduced after officials said the "serious risk" of arrest by Pyongyang officials during tourist travel presented an "imminent danger to the physical safety" of its citizens. "All United States passports are declared invalid for travel to, in, or through the DPRK unless specially validated for such travel," read the restriction in the US government's Federal Register, using the acronym for North Korea's official name. Strict warnings against travel to the North were already in place before the ban was first announced last month following the death of American student Otto Warmbier. Warmbier, 22, a student at the University of Virginia, died in June after being held by Pyongyang for more than a year on charges of stealing a propaganda poster from a North Korean hotel. He had been sentenced to 15 years' hard labour in the North, but was sent home in a mysterious coma in June and died soon afterwards. US President Donald Trump slammed Warmbier's detention and eventual death as "a total disgrace," pledging to "prevent such tragedies from befalling innocent people at the hands of regimes that do not respect the rule of law or basic human decency". The new ban will remain in effect for one year, unless it is revoked sooner by US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. Exemptions will be allowed in specific cases for humanitarian travel and journalists. Tour companies said the ban would significantly reduce the numbers of Western tourists to the impoverished country. "Currently US citizens make up about 20 percent of the Western tourist market, so it will reduce the industry by at least that much -- plus the collateral damage of others who may not want to go as a result of this," said Simon Cockerell, general manager of Koryo Tours, the market leader in Western tourism to North Korea. Some 5,000 Western tourists visit the North each year, with standard one-week trips costing about $2,000. The vast majority of tourists visiting North Korea are Chinese. Han Chol-Su, a senior North Korea development official, earlier denied that the loss of business would hurt his country's economy. "If the US government says Americans cannot come to this country, we don't care a bit," he told AFP in Pyongyang last month. North Korean state media "relentlessly presents Americans in the most negative manner; rapacious, war-mongering, and utterly filled with hatred of the Korean people," Cockerell said. Describing American visitors as "one of the best soft- power assets of the United States", he added that the ban would eliminate a counterweight to that propaganda. In Pyongyang, visiting US tourist Carolyn Dunlap described the move as "definitely not unexpected" in light of Warmbier's death and other detentions. "Honestly the current travel advice is not much different from a ban, the only difference is people can still physically go," she told AFP last week. She planned her trip before speculation of the move mounted, but its timing means she will be one of the last US tourists to the country for at least one year. A US lawmaker today sought freezing of illicit funds of a Pakistani-American, who had unhindered access to computers of over a dozen lawmakers and was being investigated for illegal transfer of more than USD 300,000 to Pakistan. Pakistani-American Imran Awan, who worked as an IT aide to top Democratic lawmaker Debbie Wasserman Schultz and several other Congressional colleagues of hers, has been accused of bank fraud for allegedly obtaining a loan "for a rental property he does not own" and then sending the money to Pakistan. Not being prominently reported by the mainstream media, Republican lawmakers allege that there needs to be a national security investigation into this entire episode. "The allegations levied against Imran Awan are alarming and could have serious national security ramifications. The Department of Justice must work to immediately mitigate the damage done by Awan and take whatever measures are necessary, including freezing illicit funds, in order to fully investigate this incident," Congressman Ron DeSantis said in a letter to US Attorney General Jeff Sessions. In his letter, DeSantis sought answers to several questions from Sessions. He asked if the Department of Justice has utilised the United States Department of Treasury Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) to investigate the financial records of Awan and his wife Hina Alvi to discover evidence of other potential crimes. "Have any US financial institutions filed reports of suspicious activity on any bank account held by Awan or his wife? Is the Department of Justice investigating whether any funds generated from the sale of stolen property of the House of Representatives were included as part of the wire transfer to Faisalabad, Pakistan?" the letter asks. DeSantis questioned whether the Department would seek a court order freezing the proceeds of any real estate transaction or from the sale of stolen technological equipment. DeSantis is a member of the Government Oversight Committee and chair of its National Security Subcommittee. Leading members of the House Judiciary Committee and Government Oversight Committee told the Washington Free Beacon that the appropriate congressional bodies should launch an investigation into the illicit IT activity, which could include asking for testimony from Schultz on the situation. Earlier this week, the White House said there should be a thorough investigation on this issue. "I do think that is something we should fully look into and there should be a thorough investigation on that," White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders told reporters at her daily conference. In an interview to Breitbart News, Republican Congressman Steve King claimed that Awan had access to all the communications of the House Foreign Affairs Committee. "They had access to the information on the multiple clients that they had, and that number is nearly a score, as I recall, they would have had access to all the information that came through all those computers in all those offices and access to...All the communications of the foreign affairs committee," King said. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The US Justice Department will probe allegations against the prestigious Harvard University that the Ivy League institution discriminates against Asian- American applicants in its admission process. The allegations were levelled in 2015 against the university by a coalition of 64 Asian-American groups, including four Indian-American organisations. The New York Times reported that the Trump administration intended to increase the Justice Department's efforts to target universities whose admission policies it deemed discriminatory against white applicants, a report in The Harvard Crimson, a student newspaper of the university, said. The Justice Department's Civil Rights Division will investigate the allegations. The Crimson report said that the university has repeatedly and emphatically denied allegations that it uses racial quotas in its admissions process. A Justice Department spokesperson said the investigation would focus on a single complaint filed in 2015 accusing Harvard in particular of discriminating against Asian- Americans in its undergraduate admissions processes, the Crimson report said. "The posting sought volunteers to investigate one administrative complaint filed by a coalition of 64 Asian- American associations in May 2015 that the prior administration left unresolved," Justice Department spokesperson Sarah Isgur Flores said in a statement yesterday. "This Department of Justice has not received or issued any directive, memorandum, initiative, or policy related to university admissions in general," the statement said. The complaint had been filed on behalf of Asian-American students "who, because of their race, have been unfairly rejected by Harvard College because of such unlawful use of race in the admissions process, and/or who seek the opportunity to apply for admission without being discriminated against because of their race". Among the 64 organisations were four Indian-American community associations -- American Society of Engineers of Indian Origin, BIT Sindri Alumni Association of North India, Global Organisation of People of Indian Origin-Los Angeles Chapter and National Federation of Indian American Associations. The Department of Education had later dismissed the complaint saying it was similar to an ongoing and separate federal lawsuit filed against Harvard. "To become leaders in our diverse society, students must have the ability to work with people from different backgrounds, life experiences and perspectives. Harvard remains committed to enrolling diverse classes of students," Harvard spokesperson Rachael Dane said. "Harvard's admissions process considers each applicant as a whole person, and we review many factors, consistent with the legal standards established by the US Supreme Court". The Class of 2021 is 22.2 per cent Asian-American, a record high for the university, the Crimson report added. Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro postponed by 24 hours the launch of a powerful new assembly, in the face of opposition protests and blistering claims of fraud. Attorney General Luisa Ortega, one of Maduro's biggest rivals, said she has opened an investigation into "scandalous" electoral fraud after the British technology firm contracted to handle the vote said Maduro had exaggerated the turnout. Maduro denied the accusations of trampling on democracy in Venezuela with Sunday's controversial election for an all- powerful "Constituent Assembly," dismissing them as a "reaction by the international enemy." The firm, Smartmatic, said in a London conference that the official figures from the election were "tampered with" to make turnout appear greater than it was. Ortega said the firm's assessment was just "one more element of the fraudulent, illegal and unconstitutional process" initiated by the socialist ruler. "We are facing an unprecedented, serious incident that represents a crime," Ortega told CNN. The electoral authority itself -- criticised as a Maduro mouthpiece -- denied the vote-tampering allegation as "an irresponsible contention based on estimates with no grounding in the data." The new 545-member body -- whose members include Maduro's wife and son -- will have sweeping powers to dissolve the opposition-majority congress, pass laws and write a new constitution. Despite months of violent protests and international condemnation, Maduro insists it is the solution to a drawn-out economic and political crisis gripping Venezuela. The assembly was originally due to start work today, but Maduro postponed the launch to Friday in the face of opposition plans for massive protests. "It has been proposed that the installation of the National Constituent Assembly, instead of being held tomorrow, be organized in peace and calm, with all necessary protocol, on Friday at 11:00 am (1500 GMT)," he said. He said the reason for the delay was that 35 newly elected members had not yet been officially declared by electoral authorities. Venezuela has been rocked by four months of clashes at anti-Maduro protests that have left more than 125 people dead. Sunday's vote brought the crisis to a boiling point, drawing international condemnation. The United States imposed direct sanctions on Maduro, calling him a "dictator," while the European Union joined the US, Mexico, Colombia and Argentina in saying it would not recognize the new assembly. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) A day before casting their votes in the vice-presidential election, NDA MPs will take part in a dummy voting exercise tomorrow as the ruling alliance works to minimise the possibility of any vote going invalid. The NDA MPs will also be joined by the lawmakers from the AIADMK, the TRS and the YSRCP, three regional parties supporting the candidature of M Venkaiah Naidu, the BJP sources said. Naidu will also address them, seeking their votes, they said. The dummy exercise will be followed by a dinner and Prime Minister Narendra Modi is expected to join the MPs then. He will also speak to them, the sources said. During the presidential poll, 77 votes in total were declared invalid and 21 of them belonged to parliamentarians, hailing from various parties. Both Modi and Shah in their addresses to BJP members have emphasised on voting correctly to rule out any vote going invalid. Unlike the presidential election in which the electoral college also includes MLAs, only MPs of the two Houses can vote in the vice-presidential poll. Naidu, the NDA candidate, is all but certain to win the election in which the opposition parties have put up Gopalkrishna Gandhi as their nominee against the former BJP president and Union minister. The current NDA strength in the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha is 337 and 80 respectively. The AIADMK, the TRS and the YSRCP have together 50 and 17 MPs in the two respective Houses. The electoral college comprises 790 members and parties with 484 members have already pledged their support to Naidu, who is also expected to be backed by several nominated members. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis today assured the state legislative council that he would investigate whether the pending results of the Mumbai University could not be declared before August 16. He was responding to a Congress member's information that the MU Vice Chancellor Sanjay Deshmukh himself has told his party delegation that results could not be declared before August 16. The opposition parties alleged that Fadnavis was being misled by the VC over the declaration of results. Raising the issue in the upper house, senior NCP member Sunil Tatkare said the prevailing mess and delay in declaration of results was due to the VC's "ignorance" and he should therefore be asked to resign. "The government should also tell the students about what went wrong with the assessment process and help those, who wish to go abroad for further studies. Their future has become uncertain because of the VC," Tatkare said. Participating in the debate, Congress member Sanjay Dutt said that although the chief minister as well as the state education minister had assured the House earlier that all the pending results would be out by August 5, the VC has himself admitted that completion of assessment was not possible before August 16. "A Congress delegation led by (city Congress chief) Sanjay Nirupam met the VC yesterday and he himself admitted that all the pending results cannot be declared before August 16. The VC has misled the CM and the education minister," he said. In his reply, Fadnavis said that the information provided by Dutt was new to him and he would investigate it. "Results are coming out everyday and I am getting a status report as well. However, the information provided today is new to me and I will investigate it," Fadnavis said. "The Governor is the appointing authority for the VC and he has taken up the matter seriously and probing it. The governor will ensure action against whoever is guilty," the chief minister added. Last week, the Maharashtra government had ordered an inquiry against Deshmukh over his role in implementing the new online assessment system, which has resulted in a delay in declaration of examination results. Minister of State for Higher Education Ravindra Waikar earlier told the state assembly that an inquiry would be initiated against Deshmukh about the manner in which the new assessment system was implemented. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) By Julie Zhu HONG KONG (Reuters) - Online Chinese services firm Meituan-Dianping, backed by Tencent Holdings <0700.HK>, is in talks with prospective investors to raise up to $5 billion, likely valuing the startup at as much as $30 billion, said a person with direct knowledge of the matter. China's largest on-demand services provider, which is akin to a mix of Yelp and Groupon and does food delivery, is in talks with several global institutional investors to raise $3 billion to $5 billion and obtain a valuation of $25 billion to $30 billion, the person said. About $1 billion of the new funds would come from an additional investment from Tencent, said the person, who declined to be identified as the talks were not public. Meituan-Dianping and Tencent declined to comment. Bloomberg reported earlier on Thursday that Meituan-Dianping is in talks to raise up to $5 billion. The latest fundraising plan comes as the startup looks to invest heavily in offline retail services in a strategy that will pit it directly against China's top e-commerce firms. Alibaba Group Holding and JD.com Inc are already channeling substantial resources into big data, artificial intelligence and logistics to tap new consumers in China's vast offline retail market - brick-and-mortar stores that still make up over 80 percent of total retail sales in the country. Alibaba invested in Meituan prior to the latter's 2015 merger with Tencent-backed Dianping, but its stake fell after the deal. It has since invested heavily in a separate group of on-demand service providers, including food delivery platforms Ele.me and Koubei and ticketing service Tao Piao Piao. Meituan-Dianping said in January last year that it had raised over $3.3 billion in funding, led by Tencent and Singapore's Temasek Holdings, that valued it at more than $18 billion, in one of the biggest fundraising rounds by a startup. It has more than $3 billion remaining from that funding round and has no plans for an initial public offering before completing setting up infrastructure for services including offline retail, Chen Shaohui, its VP of strategy, told in an interview last week. [nL3N1KH3K8] Meituan-Dianping, which has 200 million monthly active users, opened its first offline concept store last month, where consumers can go and buy grocery items and seafood using the company's app. It also looks to expand its base of strategic partners and invest in backend technology, small-scale ride-hailing services as well as in the travel ticketing business, Chen said. (Reporting by Julie Zhu; Addintional reporting by Kane Wu, Elzio Barreto and Sijia Jiang; Editing by Christopher Cushing and Muralikumar Anantharaman) (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) By Rishika Sadam - Cognizant Technology Solutions Corp raised the lower end of its 2017 revenue forecast, easing concerns of tighter spending from its healthcare clients amid uncertainty surrounding the U.S. healthcare policy. The healthcare sector's worry has been taking a toll on IT services providers lately, forcing them to give bleak forecasts. The Republican quest to scrap Obamacare, a major campaign vow by U.S. President Donald Trump, failed last week, after the Senate failed to dismantle the healthcare law. Cognizant gets a large chunk of its revenue from financial services and healthcare clients. However, Chief Executive Francisco D'Souza told the heavy investments in healthcare have been paying off and the company expected to see continued demand from the sector. Revenue from healthcare services rose 9.5 percent to $1.05 billion in the second quarter. Teaneck, New Jersey-based Cognizant raised its lower-end of full-year revenue forecast to $14.70 billion from 14.56 billion. The IT service provider now expects its 2017 revenue to be between $14.70 billion and $14.84 billion. Analysts on average were expecting revenue of $14.76 billion, according to Thomson I/B/E/S. "The investments are really paying off, creating strong growth in the first half of the year, which gives us the confidence to take our guidance up for the full year," Chief Executive Francisco D'Souza told Reuters. The company also reported a better-than-expected profit and revenue for the quarter, as its efforts to boost its digital services paid off. Cognizant's net income rose 86.5 percent to $470 million in the second quarter ended June 30, as the IT services provider benefited from lower income tax compared with the year-ago period. Cognizant said its subsidiary in India repurchased shares valued at $2.8 billion from its shareholders in May last year. As a result of the transaction, the company said it took an income tax expense of $190 million in the year-ago period. Excluding items, the company earned 93 cents per share, beating the analysts' estimate of 90 cents. Revenue rose nearly 9 percent to $3.67 billion, slightly above the average analysts' estimate of $3.66 billion. The company said it expected current-quarter revenue to be between $3.73 billion to $3.78 billion, largely in line with the average analysts' estimate of $3.76 billion, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S. Shares of the company, which gained nearly 23 percent this year, were slightly up on Thursday. (Reporting by Rishika Sadam in Bengaluru; Editing by Arun Koyyur) (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) By Marianna Parraga HOUSTON (Reuters) - Venezuela's state-run PDVSA has reduced crude sales to its U.S. refining unit Citgo Petroleum while increasing supply to Russia's Rosneft, following a plan signed in May to catch up on overdue deliveries, according to PDVSA documents, sources from the company and its joint ventures. Venezuela's oil output has declined since 2012 with the fall accelerating this year amid a lack of investment and payment delays to suppliers. Almost all of Petroleos de Venezuela's customers are receiving reduced volumes. That includes the United States, which has received less Venezuelan crude oil this year. PDVSA agreed in the catch-up plan to compensate Rosneft for the delayed cargoes, since the oil is being sent in lieu of payment for loans. Venezuela's Oil Minister Nelson Martinez at a forum in St Petersburg in June said Rosneft would receive some 70,000 barrels per day (bpd) as payment for a $1.5 billion loan extended to PDVSA in 2016. He did not disclose the reason for the supply agreement. Days later, Russia publicly released a renegotiation of bilateral loans with Venezuela, an OPEC-member. The Russian Audit Chamber said it would slash projected state revenue by nearly $1 billion this year to reflect expectations that Venezuela may not make timely payments. Since May, the "remediation agreement" with Rosneft has implied an extra supply of between 63,000 bpd and 105,000 bpd of Venezuela's diluted crude oil (DCO), according to a PDVSA document. "The agreement is linked to the debt refinancing. The idea is to catch up by reducing the number of pending cargoes (to repay debt)," a PDVSA source said. Rosneft and Citgo were not immediately available for comment. Rosneft has loaned between $4 billion and $5 billion to Venezuela in recent years, mostly to be repaid with oil. Terms of most agreements have not been disclosed, but renegotiations have taken place in recent months, including on the possible return of a collateral on a 49.9 percent stake in Citgo offered to Rosneft last year. COLLATERAL DAMAGE Because PDVSA will allocate more of its shrunken oil supplies to Rosneft, fewer barrels will be available to ship to other customers. Citgo's Gulf Coast refineries - in Corpus Christi, Texas, and Lake Charles, Louisiana - have combined processing capacity of 582,000 bpd. The two typically refine a high percentage of Venezuela's heavy crude. Since the remediation plan with Rosneft started, Citgo has been knocking on the doors of PDVSA's joint-venture partners for supplies of upgraded crude, one of the sources said. Some PDVSA joint ventures in the Orinoco Belt, Venezuela's main producing region, have agreed to allocate as much oil as possible to Citgo after supplying their regular clients, but PDVSA expects total exports of Venezuelan crude to Citgo will remain below 120,000 bpd versus some 230,000 bpd stipulated in the supply contracts, the sources said. Recent difficulties in finding Venezuelan crude supplies have increased prices for many heavy grades in the Atlantic Basin, which includes the Gulf Coast. Citgo last year started sending gasoline and other fuels to Venezuela in exchange for a portion of its crude supply. But Citgo has increased the volume of U.S. oil it refines, and has also has also expanded its crude import sources. Its 167,000-bpd Lemont, Illinois, refinery mostly processes Canadian oil, while Corpus Christi and Lake Charles this year have imported crude from Africa, Ecuador, Colombia, Brazil and Azerbaijan, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. U.S. President Donald Trump's administration has promised strong economic sanctions against Venezuela's government after a Constituent Assembly was elected last week in what United States called a "sham" vote. The new body will have power to rewrite the constitution and abolish the opposition-led Congress. If those sanctions were to constrain Venezuela's oil shipments to the United States, Citgo could be ahead of its competitors in finding new supply sources. (Reporting by Marianna Parraga; Editing by David Gregorio) (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) LONDON (Reuters) - Global demand for gold fell 14 percent in the first half of this year due mainly to a sharp decline in purchases by exchange traded funds, the World Gold Council said in a report on Thursday. Central bank buying also fell slightly in the first half but purchases of bars, coins and jewellery grew thanks to strong demand in India and Turkey, the industry-funded WGC said in its latest Gold Demand Trends report. Gold-backed ETFs saw record inflows last year to match a 30 percent rise in gold prices between January and June. But with prices rising only around 8 percent in the same period this year, funds added only 56 tonnes in the second quarter, down 76 percent from last year, bringing first half inflows to 167.9 tonnes. European ETFs accounted for 76 percent of first half inflows taking their holdings to a record 978 tonnes. "This year demand is a little more balanced," said Alistair Hewitt, the WGC's head of market intelligence. "While we saw huge inflows into ETFs last year, the physical markets of jewellery, bars and coins slumped to multi-year lows." Total global demand for gold amounted to 2,004 tonnes in January-June, down from 2,318.7 tonnes in the same period last year. For the second quarter alone, demand was 953 tonnes, the lowest quarterly total in two years. Jewellery purchases rose 8 percent over April-June helped by a rebound in buying in India ahead of a new sales tax and in Turkey thanks to a more stable economy, but first half buying remained below 1,000 tonnes for only the fourth time since 2000. Purchases of gold bars and coins were up 13 percent in the second quarter and 11 percent in the first half as Chinese, Indian and Turkish demand increased. Central banks bought 94.5 tonnes of gold in the second quarter as Turkey joined Russia and Kazakhstan in expanding its reserves, but first half purchases were down 3 percent at 176.7 tonnes. Hewitt said he expected central banks to buy 350-450 tonnes of gold over the full year and for total annual demand to be around 4,200-4,300 tonnes. That would be slightly below last year's 4,337.5 tonnes, the highest annual level since 2013. (Reporting by Peter Hobson; Editing by Susan Fenton) (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) China is taking an increasingly tough line on a border row with India amid a rising crescendo of nationalism in state media, and President Xi Jinping looks set for an awkward encounter with Prime Minister Narendra Modi at a multilateral summit next month. Diplomats say Beijing would like to resolve the border issue before a summit of the BRICS nations - that also groups Brazil, Russia and South Africa - in the Chinese city of Xiamen in early September, and ensure nothing dampens what China wants to be a show of cooperation and friendship among developing countries. But that could be tough. On Wednesday, China ramped up the rhetoric, accusing India of "concocting" excuses over the illegal entry of the South Asian nation's military into Chinese territory. "China will take all necessary measures to safeguard its legitimate and lawful rights and interests," the Foreign Ministry said. The two sides' troops are confronting each other close to a valley controlled by China that separates India from its close ally, Bhutan, and gives China access to the so-called Chicken's Neck, a thin strip of land connecting India and its remote northeastern regions. Responding, India reiterated an earlier line that work by a Chinese road crew in the sensitive frontier area would have changed the status quo and urging "utmost restraint" by all sides. "India considers that peace and tranquillity in the India-China border areas is an important pre-requisite for smooth development of our bilateral relations with China," New Delhi's foreign ministry said in a statement on Wednesday evening. Most previous standoffs, such as one in 2014 just ahead of a rare trip to India for Xi, were resolved with both sides withdrawing their forces. There has been no shooting since a brief border war in 1962. Talks are happening behind the scenes, but with little apparent progress. Meantime, Chinese and India media have been taking a strident approach, with a Chinese state-run newspaper last week saying China could use force. An Indian magazine's front cover last month showing a map of China shorn of Tibet and self-ruled Taiwan also ignited public anger on Chinese social media with thousands of angry posts. "The problem is the media on both sides are whipping things up. This makes it hard for China or India to back down," said a Beijing-based source who is familiar with the discussions between the two sides. The Indian government has asked political parties to refrain from politicizing the issue and allow diplomacy to work. "Show What We Are Made of" China's defense ministry last week also warned India not to harbor any illusions about the Chinese military's ability to defend its territory. A source with ties to the military, who spoke recently to a senior Chinese officer involved in the stand off, said China has no appetite for conflict with India but could not be seen to be weak. "Nobody wants to fight about this, but if India keeps making trouble then we'll have to show them what we're made of," the source said, citing the conversation with the senior officer. China has repeatedly called on India to withdraw its forces. An Indian government source closely tracking the standoff said there was no change in the ground situation in Doklam, with the two sides remaining in a standoff. Indian military expert Nitin Gokhale said India was prepared for a long haul. "The decision is to stay resolute on the ground and reasonable in diplomacy," Gokhale said. China has been briefing foreign diplomats on the stand off, saying it wants a resolution but that its patience won't last for ever. "There's no easy solution," said an Asian diplomat, who attended a briefing, referring to both sides' insistence that they are in the right. For the time being, China looks ready to keep things calm, said another Asian diplomat, familiar with China's thinking on the issue. "China really wants to resolve this ahead of the BRICS summit. It doesn't want anything to affect the atmosphere," the diplomat said. "The gloves could come off after the summit though." China and India have long been suspicious of each other, a legacy of the 1962 border war, India's playing host to exiled Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama and China's close relations with India's regional rival Pakistan.India has privately raised objections to Chinese firm Shanghai Fosun Pharmaceutical Group's proposed $1.3 billion takeover of Indian drugmaker Gland Pharma, a source familiar with the matter said on Monday. Ajit Doval, India's national security adviser, visited Beijing last week for a BRICS security meeting, and had bilateral talks with his Chinese opposite number, top diplomat Yang Jiechi, who outranks the foreign minister. A Chinese government statement on that meeting did not mention the border issue. China and India are already suspicious of each other because of China's massive investments in Pakistan and Sri Lanka, including Chinese-invested ports in both countries India fears could one day become Chinese military bases, another senior Asian diplomatic source said. "Nobody wants to get caught in the middle of this," the diplomat said, pointing to the prospect for the border tensions worsening and becoming a wider Asian security issue dragging in other countries. Tomato prices have gone through the roof in recent days. It's selling for as high as Rs 100 per kg in parts of north India. Protesting the recent surge in tomato prices, the Congress party has opened, what they are calling, the State Bank of Tomatoes in Lucknow . The Tomato Bank opens at 10 am and shuts at 5 pm every day. People are asked to visit the bank and deposit whatever amount of tomatoes they can afford. The bank promises a return of 5 times on the initial tomato deposit. Agriculture authorities have said that rains in Madhya Pradesh and Rajashtan have caused some damage to the crop. Also, there are transportation issues with trucks taking more than the normal time due to the rains. Lucknow (UP): In a unique protest against the rising prices of the tomatoes, Congress opens bank called State Bank of Tomato. pic.twitter.com/lNpAaexgMu ANI UP (@ANINewsUP) August 2, 2017 Believing in what was promised by the Congress, a customer has deposited 0.5 Kg tomatoes in the bank. News agency ANI tweeted about the customer who said: "I have deposited 0.5 Kg tomatoes, will get 1 kg after 6 months. I'm 103-year-old, never thought have to see this." I have deposited 0.5 Kg tomatoes, will get 1 kg after 6 months. I'm 103-year-old, never thought have to see this: Srikrishna Verma, customer pic.twitter.com/PlXdnSYGvK ANI UP (@ANINewsUP) August 2, 2017 The Congress' protest has come after tomato prices skyrocketed due to short supply after heavy rainfall. Price of tomatoes in Delhi has crossed Rs 100 per kg, while in Mumbai it is Rs 80, Rs 57 in Chennai and Rs 95 in Kolkata. Last week, Mother Dairy was selling the kitchen staple at Rs 92 per kg through its 300 retail stores in Delhi-NCR, online grocery platforms like Big Basket and Grofers were offering it at nearly Rs 100 per kg here. Local vendors are selling tomatoes in the Rs 80-100 per kg range depending on the quality. Prices have shot up about four times since the beginning of June when tomatoes were being sold at about Rs 25 per kg in the Delhi-National Capital Region market. Azadpur Tomato Merchants Association President Ashok Kaushik said that supplies have been hit badly in the national capital as the crop in neighbouring states has been damaged due to heavy rains followed by heat. The supplies from Haryana have stopped as the harvesting there has been completed early and the current arrival in the market is from Shimla, Himachal Pradesh, he said. Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Madhya Pradesh, West Bengal and Odisha are the major tomato growing states. President Donald Trump announced his support for a legislation that would cut in half the number legal immigrants allowed into the US while moving to a "merit-based" system favouring English-speaking skilled workers for residency cards. If passed by the Congress and signed into law, the legislation titled the Reforming American Immigration for Strong Employment (RAISE) Act could benefit highly-educated and technology professionals from countries like India. The RAISE Act would scrap the current lottery system to get into the US and instead institute a points-based system for earning a green card. Factors that would be taken into account include English language skills, education, high- paying job offers and age. "The RAISE Act will reduce poverty, increase wages, and save taxpayers billions and billions of dollars. It will do this by changing the way the US issues Green Cards to nationals from other countries. Green Cards provide permanent residency, work authorisation, and fast track to citizenship," Trump said at a White House event to announce his support to the RAISE Act. Standing along with two top authors of the bill - Senators Tom Cotton and David Perdue-Trump said the RAISE Act ends chain migration, and replaces the low-skilled system with a new points-based system for receiving a Green Card. This competitive application process will favour applicants who can speak English, financially support themselves and their families, and demonstrate skills that will contribute to our economy, he said, adding that the RAISE Act prevents new migrants and new immigrants from collecting welfare, and protects US workers from being displaced. "That's a very big thing. They're not going to come in and just immediately go and collect welfare. That doesn't happen under the RAISE Act. They can't do that. Crucially, the Green Card reforms in the RAISE Act will give American workers a pay raise by reducing unskilled immigration," he said. Trump said this legislation will not only restore America's competitive edge in the 21st century, but it will restore the sacred bonds of trust between America and its citizens. "This legislation demonstrates our compassion for struggling American families who deserve an immigration system that puts their needs first and that puts America first," he said. Noting that the current over a half-century old system is "an obsolete disaster", Senator Cotton said that it is time for it to change. "First, we bring over a million immigrants into this country a year. That's like adding the population of Montana every single year; adding the population of Arkansas every three years. The vast majority of those workers -- or those immigrants come here not because of their English-language abilities or their job skills, or their job offer, or their educational attainment," he said. In fact, only one in 15 out of a million new immigrants come here because of their job skills and their ability to succeed in this economy, Cotton said. The RAISE Act will be re-orienting Green Card system towards people who can speak English, who have high degrees of educational attainment, who have a job offer that pays more, and a typical job in their local economy, who are going to create a new business, and who are outstanding in their field around the world, he added. Senator Perdue said the current system does not work. "It keeps America from being competitive, and it does not meet the needs of the economy today," he said. "Today we bring in 1.1 million legal immigrants a year. Over 50 per cent of our households of legal immigrants today participate in our social welfare system. Right now, only one 1 out of 15 immigrants who come into our country come in with skills that are employable. We've got to change that," he said. Perdue said he looked at the at best practices. "We looked at countries like Canada, Australia, and others. What we're introducing today is modeled on the current Canadian and Australian systems. It's pro-worker, it's pro-growth, and it's been proven to work. Both have been extremely successful in attracting highly skilled workers to those countries," the Senator said. "We can all agree that the goals of our nation's immigration system should be to protect the interests of working Americans, including immigrants, and to welcome talented individuals who come here legally and want to work and make a better life for themselves. Our current system makes it virtually impossible for them to do that," said the Senator. According to Attorney General Jeff Sessions, the higher entry standards established in this proposal will allow authorities to do a more thorough job reviewing applicants for entry, therefore protecting the security of the US homeland. The additional time spent on vetting each application as a result of this legislation will also ensure that each application serves the national interest, he observed. "The American people deserve a lawful immigration system that promotes our national interest. The RAISE Act would give us a more merit-based immigration system that admits the best and the brightest around the world while making it harder for people to come here illegally," Sessions said. "The bill would end programme known to be rife with fraud and abuse and finally improve the vetting process, making our country and working class wages much safer and stronger," said the Attorney General. With the aim of feeding the poorest of the state, the Uttar Pradesh government led by Yogi Adityanath has decided to set up Prabhu ki Rasoi, a state-sponsored kitchen that will provide free food to people. The first of such kitchens will be inaugurated in Saharanpur on August 9 and will feed 300 poor people, the Economic Times reported today. The kitchens will serve a meal of rice, vegetables and dal from noon to 2 pm every day. This initiative will be the first of its kind which will provide free food in Uttar Pradesh. Earlier in April, Yogi Adityanath's office announced that it would launch Annapurna Bhojanalya to provide subsidised food to students, daily wage laborers, private sector employees working in low income group and attendants of patients. At Annapurna canteens, the government plans to provide three meals a day - breakfast, lunch and dinner - for just Rs 13. A presentation was already made before Chief Minister Yogi. The breakfast will cost Rs 3 while lunch and dinner will be available for Rs 5 each. The breakfast menu includes combinations of tea with either dalia, idli, sambhar, poha, pakoras or kachori while lunch and dinner will include six chappatis with vegetables of dal and chawal. Food will be served in steel plates and water purifiers will be installed in all canteens. Lucknow, Kanpur, Gorakhpur and Ghaziabad are the first four cities where government will kick-start the pilot project. The government plans to set up 200 Annapurna Bhojanalya across the state. Yogi Adityanath is not the first chief minister to launch such initiatives. Back in 2013, former Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa had launched Amma Unnavagam or Mother's canteen with a vision to provide low-cost meals for the people at large. The food chains primarily serve South Indian food including idli, saambar rice, curd rice, pongal, lemon rice, curry leaf rice and also chappathi. At Amma canteens, the dishes are offered at just Rs 1 for an idli, Rs 5 for a plate of sambar rice, Rs 5 for a plate of "Karuvapellai Satham" and Rs 3 for a plate of curd rice. Even the poorest of the poor can have a full meal within Rs 17-20 in Tamil Nadu. That there are jobs which involve protecting Earth from aliens is something you may have seen only in movies until now. However, NASA or the National Aeronautics and Space Administration is in search of a candidate who can defend earth and protect other objects in the space. The job opening, which is called 'Planetary Protection Officer', would entail duties like protecting planet Earth from alien contamination, and also prevent contamination of alien worlds and objects in the space. The full-time job offers a six figure salary of $124,406 to $187,000 per year. According to a report in Business Insider, there are only two such full-time roles in the world: One at NASA and the other at the European Space Agency. The job was created after the US signed and ratified the Outer Space Treaty of 1967. The job, which is posted on USAJobs.gov, states several responsibilities of Planetary Protection Officer (PPO). "The role is concerned with the avoidance of organic-constituent and biological contamination in human and robotic space exploration," reads the job opening. "The Planetary Protection Officer (PPO) is responsible for the leadership of NASA's planetary protection capability, maintenance of planetary protection policies, and oversight of their implementation by NASAs space flight missions," it adds. The job also involves travel to international space stations and overseeing extraterrestrial missions by robots. The officer will help ensure that humans don't accidentally contaminate the outer space where a robot is landing. Candidates must possess broad engineering expertise at least 1-year of which is in positions at or comparable to the GS-15 level. Must be a recognized subject matter expert possess advanced knowledge of Planetary Protection, its requirements and mission categories, reads the job listing. A job requires a advanced degree in physical science, engineering, mathematics or related engineering science such as mechanics, dynamics, properties of materials, and electronics. Since, space exploration involves multiple nations. An ideal candidate should demonstrated skills in diplomacy that result in win-win solutions during extremely difficult and complex multilateral discussions. This includes building coalitions amongst organizations to achieve common goals. Job aspirants should have demonstrated experience planning, executing, or overseeing elements of space programs of national significance. The job application is open until August 14. Since, the job has a 'secret' security clearance, only US citizens can apply. A one-year probationary period may be required "Tyler! Stop hitting your sister. Oh, look, hun! A bakery with an outdoor cafe! Let's stop in and get a treat for the kids. Whaddya say, Madison? Sound good? "Oooh, wow, it all looks good! So hard to decide. Well, I think I'll get a couple of the chocolate donuts for the kids... Oh! And I'll have some of that cherry cheesecake. Yummy... hm? What's that, hun? Oh, ok. ...And my wife would like a big ol' slice of the dong cake, please!" "Tyler! Get your face off the glass!" Ah, Europe! You're so... European. | BY Ricki Green | Students from Billy Blue Design School at Torrens University Australia; Shillington College Melbourne, Media Design School New Zealand; Victoria University Wellington and ACG Yoobee School of Design Wellington have won numerous awards recognising their outstanding contribution to the creative industries at The Rookies a global competition for young designers, creators, innovators and artists. Recognising the outstanding talent emerging from higher education institutions around the world, The Rookies International Awards was devised by visual effects industry professionals Andrew McDonald and Alwyn Hunt to showcase the achievement of young creatives, and to help them launch their careers. The honour roll includes students from both Australia and New Zealand: Motion Graphics Rookie of the Year Runner Up: Julz Lane, studying a Bachelor of Digital Media at Billy Blue College of Design at Torrens University Australia Film Production Rookie of the Year Runner Up: Jessica Hill, studying Master of Fine Arts (Creative Practice) in Film at Victoria University, Wellington, New Zealand Graphic Design Rookie of the Year Winner: Maria Fernanda Rodriguez, studying graphic design at Shillington College, Melbourne, Australia Rising Sun Pictures in conjunction with University of South Australia scholarship: Abigail Nath, studying Bachelor of Art & Design at Media Design School, New Zealand Visual Effects WETA Digital Winner (Oceania) internship: Tristan Lewis, Bachelor of Art and Design graduate from Media Design School, New Zealand Visual Effects WETA Digital Winner (Oceania) internship: Hening Wang, ACG Yoobee School of Design, Wellington, New Zealand Visual Effects Film of the Year Runner Up: Accidents, Blunders and Calamities, Media Design School, New Zealand, 3D Animation & VFX Web & Mobile Game of the Year Runner Up: Falafel & Finrod, Billy Blue College of Design, Bachelor of Digital Media students Other students from Australia who were awarded include Maris Fernanda Rodriguez from Shillington College Says Professor Justin Beilby, vice chancellor, Torrens University Australia: Were incredibly proud of the accolades awarded to students from both Billy Blue College of Design and Media Design School, New Zealand, who have worked tirelessly to showcase their creativity, ingenuity and hands-on expertise across a range of digital and design fields to an expert judging panel and they have been recognised not only for their technical expertise, but for their presentation skills and industry employability too. Achieving recognition at The Rookies this year will undoubtedly offer these students a huge boost in their pursuit of post-graduate careers in the growing digital and design industries. | BY Ricki Green | Effectiveness in the digital era will be top of the agenda this year, as The Communications Council welcomes a stellar line-up of industry heavyweights, including the worlds leading authorities in marketing effectiveness Les Binet and Peter Field, to Australia for a series of summits kicking off on August 31. Proudly presented by The Communications Council in association with the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising (IPA), this years EffWeek Australia program will be the biggest yet with three summits, two IPA Residential Courses, 20 bespoke in-house member agency events held in three capital cities, and with the 2017 Effie Awards in Sydney. The Effectiveness Summits Marketing Effectiveness on Trial will be held in: Sydney on August 31 Melbourne on September 7 Perth on September 11 (Binet in SYD and MEL only) Binet, who is head of effectiveness at adam&eveDDB London, and Field are scheduled to present the findings from their newly released IPA report, Media in Focus: Marketing Effectiveness in the Digital Era, which challenges the industry to reconsider approaches to efficiency in the changing media landscape. Based on their meta-analysis of IPAs Databank a database of advertising case studies submitted to every IPA Effectiveness Awards competition since 1980 Binet and Field found that short-term measurement or short-termism is undermining effectiveness in marketing, to the detriment of brands and their profit growth. Says Binet: It is an honour to be part of EffWeek in Australia and I look forward to sharing data insights from our latest research with delegates from around the country. After the summits, attendees will walk away with a new outlook on long-term effectiveness and brand building, to the benefit of their clients and agencies. Says Tony Hale, CEO, The Communications Council: Thanks in part to the sell-out success of last years program we are thrilled to welcome back Peter, and now Les, who are presenting their findings outside the UK for the first time. This is a not-to-be missed opportunity, not only with Peter and Les, but also to hear from renowned industry thinkers and leaders who are converging on Australia for EffWeek in 2017. It is a chance for agency marketers to challenge themselves, and to ensure they are equipped for the marketplace of tomorrow. Other confirmed speakers* include: Associate professor Rachel Kennedy (SYD only), associate director and co-founder of Ehrenberg-Bass Institute for Marketing Science, to discuss how science helps advertising creativity and effectiveness; Mark Earls aka Herdmeister (SYD, MEL, PER), who will reveal key findings from the latest #IPASocialWorks report, which includes a guide on leveraging social insight for success; Professor Karen Nelson-Field (SYD, MEL, PER), international digital media authority and professor at University of Adelaide, founder of Media Intelligence Co, and winner of News Corps Women in Innovation award. Off the back of the IPA report findings, Field says that there has never been a better time to return to Australia and revisit the key principles of effectiveness in the planning and creative processes. Says Field: By ignoring the enduring effectiveness truths of the changing media landscape, businesses are undermining the tremendous potential of the new tools at the marketers disposal. To remedy this, marketers should return to a more balanced perspective on long versus short-term objectives, with around 60% long-term brand building and 40% short-term activation still the best combination. On the flip side, the digital revolution has increased the potential effectiveness of most forms of marketing, including traditional media, and provided that agencies invest at the right level, and in the right way, mass marketing is working better than ever. Field (left) has more than 30 years experience in planning and consultancy and has co-authored highly-respected marketing and advertising texts, including: Marketing in the Era of Accountability, The Long & The Short of it, Brand Immortality, and The Link Between Creativity and Effectiveness. He is one of the authors of the worlds leading online qualification for advertising effectiveness, the IPA Eff Test, available exclusively in Australia through The Communications Council professional development program. Binet (left) is recognised as an expert in econometrics, and has won more effectiveness awards than anyone else in the UK. In 2014, the IPA awarded him The Presidents Medal, the highest honour it can bestow, in recognition of his achievements. Having studied Physics and Artificial Intelligence at university, Les joined the agency in 1987, and has devoted his career to measuring and improving the effectiveness of their advertising. He has written extensively on how advertising works, how to make it work better, and how to evaluate it. In particular, his work with Peter Field has attracted international attention. Says Nicole Taylor, managing director, DDB Sydney on Binets appearance at EffWeek Australia: DDB is proud to be helping bring Les Binet to Australia. He is renowned for his insights into marketing and advertising, and is someone we can all learn so much from. Together with Peter they are the worlds leading authorities on marketing effectiveness, and their work reinforces DDBs vision for our clients in Australia. EffWeek Australia is proudly presented by The Communications Council, in association with the IPA. The Effectiveness Summits are supported by DDB and ThinkTV. * Les Binet to appear at Sydney and Melbourne summits only. Rachel Kennedy to appear in Sydney only. Sydney Date: Thursday, 31 August 2017 Venue: Australian National Maritime Museum Members: $350 per person (including GST) Non-members: $550 (including GST) Melbourne Date: Thursday, 7 September 2017 Venue: Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre Members: $350 (including GST) Non-members: $550 (including GST) Perth Date: Monday, 11 September 2017 Venue: State Theatre of Western Australia Members: $220 per person (including GST) Non-members: $440 per person (including GST) | BY Ricki Green | Paramount Pictures Australia is promoting the upcoming release of Al Gores An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power with an out-of-home campaign, managed by MEC Australia, depicting how global warming is significantly impacting the Great Barrier Reef. The film opens in cinemas on 10 August. Spearheading the campaign is a special build across Adshel Immerse site on Flinders Street in Melbourne, which features a double-sided diorama of a reef undergoing coral bleaching, illustrating the gradual destruction of coral as global warming continues unabated. It includes a styrene rock formation with 3D printed coloured and bleached coral and an LED ripple projection that creates an underwater effect. The campaign went live on Monday (31 July) and is supported by a national Adshel Live and Adshel Rail campaign and a digital media component. An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power is an important film about a topic that every Australian and every global citizen should be talking about. MEC chose a high-impact out-of-home site to ensure maximum talkability, not just among passersby in Melbourne but also through word of mouth, and across social and earned media. Says Sarah Hunter, group business director at MEC: We love working with innovative clients at MEC and Paramount Pictures is definitely one of those. Outdoor remains a fantastic channel for high-impact, relevant and dynamic executions, and Adshel Immerse was the perfect way to communicate how the effects of climate change addressed in the film are affecting us in our very own backyard. Were very pleased with the result so far. | BY Lynchy | Reuter Communications has been appointed naked Hubs agency in China and Hong Kong after a competitive pitch. Founded by Grant Horsfield, naked Hub is Asias leader in premium co-working, reimagining the work environment to make it more fun, healthy, and productive. Today naked Hub has 41 Hubs across China, Hong Kong, Vietnam, Singapore, and other key Southeast Asian cities. Nick Cakebread, Managing Partner, Reuter Communications, said, naked Hub is an exciting, inspiring and dynamic company, pushing the boundaries and reinventing how people work. Were delighted to be partnering with naked Hub to develop their brand and awareness in the region. Jon Seliger, CEO, naked Hub, said, Finding the right communications partner is key for naked Hub. We want a nimble, flexible agency with an entrepreneurial mindset to ensure that our dreams and vision are translated into the right messaging and execution. We have been impressed with Reuter Communications and look forward to working together. Democrat Mark Kelly wins AZ Senate; Who will win Nevada?; live updates Democrats are within one seat of holding onto the Senate. The focus moves to Nevada as the balance of power in the 2022 midterm remains undetermined. The Human Rights Commission's survey of more than 30,000 students from Australia's 39 universities found about half of all university students were sexually harassed on at least one occasion in 2016, and 6.9 per cent of students were sexually assaulted on at least one occasion in the past two years. Millennial Moms Review: 2022 Acura MDX is pretty close to the perfect family car I dont know if perfect is attainable, especially considering weve got the world of options when it comes to modern vehicles. Were spoiled and, as such, we have very specific needs and wants. Driving-wise, the 2022 Acura MDX is one of my favourite ... State Sen. John DeFrancisco, a longtime central New York lawmaker, is exploring a run for governor in 2018. DeFrancisco, R-Syracuse, said in an interview Friday that he began traveling around the state to attend Republican events and float his name as a potential gubernatorial candidate. Last week, he attended the Saratoga County Republican Committee's summer picnic in Saratoga Springs. He has at least two stops planned this week in Erie and Oswego counties. His schedule for next week includes a stop in Livingston County. DeFrancisco, who was elected to the state Senate in 1992 and now serves as the chamber's deputy majority leader, insists that he's made no formal decision about the 2018 election. "I think it's just prudent to go around and see what level of support there is," he said. "And if there is, then I'll seriously consider it." Whether DeFrancisco runs or not, he wants a strong Republican candidate for governor. Gov. Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat, has indicated that he will seek a third term in 2018. He was first elected in 2010 and won re-election in 2014. A Siena College poll released in July found Cuomo's favorability is at 52 percent. His job approval ratings took a hit, especially among downstate voters. Overall, voters were split on whether Cuomo should return for a third term. And for Republicans like DeFrancisco that's an encouraging sign. "I want to make sure that people that this is a serious race and it's winnable and whomever the (GOP) candidate is you gotta get behind and try to change the direction of the state," he said. A major issue for DeFrancisco is New York's population loss, especially in upstate. The U.S. Census Bureau released an estimate at the end of 2016 that found the state's population declined for the first time in a decade. New York lost 847,000 people to other states, according to the Census Bureau. "That's pretty scary and people gotta think about those things and know that there's an alternative and hopefully, a good alternative candidate," DeFrancisco said. Those that know DeFrancisco best view him as a credible challenger if he decides to enter the race for governor. Cayuga County Republican Chairman Jeff Herrick hasn't endorsed a candidate for governor, but he lauded the Syracuse-area senator. DeFrancisco's district includes most of Auburn and a handful of towns in Cayuga County. "(DeFrancisco) has no problem publicly criticizing narcissistic Governor Cuomo and rightfully so," Herrick said. "Senator DeFrancisco understands more than anyone the dysfunction in Albany and is willing to make hard choices that would change the corrupted culture being run by Governor Cuomo." DeFrancisco is one of several Republicans who have been mentioned as possible gubernatorial candidates. Harry Wilson, a corporate restructuring expert who ran for state comptroller in 2010, is exploring a run for governor. Dutchess County Executive Marc Molinaro is also considering whether to seek the GOP nomination. Names from past races have been floated. Westchester County Executive Rob Astorino, who lost to Cuomo in 2014, hasn't ruled out running again in 2018. And Buffalo businessman Carl Paladino, Cuomo's opponent in 2010, announced in 2015 that he would explore another gubernatorial bid. Republicans haven't won a statewide seat in New York since Gov. George Pataki was re-elected in 2002. Pataki, a former state senator, was first elected in 1994. DeFrancisco said he was "instrumental" in helping Pataki in central New York. He sees similarities with the economic environment now compared to 23 years ago. "Quite frankly, the rallying cry was not a great movement for George Pataki but the rallying cry was 'Anybody but Cuomo,'" DeFrancisco recalled. "I just think that's the same situation we're in now, plus the flight out of the state already is at a critical stage at this point. Unless things change as to what our policies are, it's gonna get even worse." 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. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer asked President Donald Trump's U.S. ambassador to Canada nominee to urge Canada to reverse dairy trade policies that have negatively impacted upstate New York producers, including Cayuga Milk Ingredients. Schumer, D-N.Y., had a phone conversation Wednesday with Kelly Knight Craft, a prominent Republican fundraiser who Trump selected to serve as U.S. ambassador to Canada. During the call, Schumer urged Knight Craft to work with Canadian officials and reverse the controversial trade rules. The Canadian dairy industry implemented the policies, including a national ingredient strategy that U.S. producers say targets their ultra-filtered milk exports. Kevin Ellis, CEO of Cayuga Milk Ingredients in Aurelius, said his company lost $30 million in sales "overnight" due to the new Canadian trade rules. The dairy tussle with Canada has been a rare issue that Schumer and Trump have agreed on. The pair had a phone conversation about the restrictive trade policies in April. They both believe the policies are violations of existing accords, including the North American Free Trade Agreement. Schumer reiterated his stance during the call with Knight Craft. "Canada's restrictive daily trade and pricing policies are blatantly violating our trade agreements signed by the U.S. and Canada, and they are hurting New York's dairy producers who simply want to deal fairly with our Canadian partners," he said Thursday. The Canadian dairy policies were mentioned by Schumer when he visited Cayuga Milk Ingredients in March 2016. In September, he urged members of the Obama administration, such as then-Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, to investigate the new rules. The national ingredient strategy and Ontario's pricing policy encourage Canadian firms, especially cheesemakers, to use domestic goods instead of ultra-filtered milk imports from the U.S. But the impact has been felt by dairy producers in upstate New York, Wisconsin and other states. Schumer said that the rules "put our dairy farmers in grave jeopardy." "Our New York dairy producers work hard every day to provide for their families and export quality products to the world and they deserve to know that everyone's competing on a level playing field," he said. The Lexus LFA went out of production nearly five years ago but a new report is indicating the company still has a handful of new models in stock. When Autoblog was compiling its sales report for July, it came across an interesting statistic Lexus sold an LFA last month. This odd inclusion pushed the publication to reach out to the automaker and confirm it wasnt a mistake. The automaker responded by confirming the news and revealing U.S. dealerships still have 12 LFAs in stock. This is pretty incredible as Lexus only built 500 units and 12 models represents a little over two percent of the entire production run. The news is pretty surprising but the chances of getting your hands on one of these cars are slim. As the publication noted, dealers have held onto these vehicles for years so theyre probably not in a rush to sell them. The dealerships could also be using them as an investment or a display item. As a spokesperson for Lexus International explained, Some of these cars may never be sold, except perhaps by the dealers heirs. Photo Gallery PSA North America CEO Larry Dominique has revealed some new details about the companys plan to return to the United States. Speaking at the Center for Automotive Research Management Briefing Seminars in Michigan, Dominique told Wards Auto that building a new dealership network would cost billions of dollars so the company is looking for progressive, innovative, and digital-minded partners. The executive declined to go into specifics but seemed to suggest the company would avoid a Tesla-style approach due to dealership franchise laws. He went on to say PSAs return will be practical, traditional, and use technology. While a full launch is still several years away, PSA has already dipped its toes into American waters with its Free2Move car-sharing service. The service is currently up and running in Los Angeles and PSA has plans to expand the service to other cities in the future. Dominique described the Free2Move service as the companys first step towards entering the U.S. market and acknowledged the company is being cautious as We have a chance to do this once, and only once. It remains unclear when new Peugeot and Citroen models will arrive in the United States but PSA CEO Carlos Tavares has said the company is eyeing a 10-year reentry plan. Photo Gallery State Sen. Pam Helming will hold upcoming mobile office events in two Cayuga County municipalities. The first event is scheduled for 4 to 6 p.m. Thursday, Aug. 10 at Port Byron Library, 12 Sponable Dr., Port Byron. The next Cayuga County mobile office hours will take place from 2 to 5 p.m. Thursday, Aug. 24 at Sterling Town Hall, 1290 state Route 104A, Sterling. Helming, R-Canandaigua, will also hold mobile office hours in Tompkins County from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Thursday, Aug. 31 at Lansing Community Library, 27 Auburn Road, Lansing. Since the beginning of summer, Helming has held mobile office events across the 54th Senate District. Her previous stops were in Monroe, Seneca and Wayne counties. "I look forward to continuing our tour of the 54th district with office hours in Port Byron, Sterling and Lansing," she said in a statement. "It is important for me to meet with our constituents so that I can listen to their questions and concerns about state government." Helming has moved her main district office from Seneca Falls to Geneva. Her predecessor, retired state Sen. Michael Nozzolio, maintained his office in Seneca Falls. Helming kept that office during the transition, but eventually moved her district staff to an office in Geneva. The new district office is located at 425 Exchange St. in Geneva. The office is open from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday. Residents may call the office at (315) 568-9816. Helming also has a satellite office at the Wayne County Public Safety Building, 7376 Route 31, Suite 108 in Lyons. The office is open 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. on the second and fourth Thursdays of the month. The phone number for the Wayne County satellite office is (315) 946-6380. Mercedes-AMG believes that their fans dont need to see the C63 S going flat in order to fully appreciate it, as taking it slow would allow them to explore each and every feature of the car. This is the message behind the brands latest ad for the luxury compact saloon, which was put together by their Canadian team and shows a C63 S conquering the heart of its driver from the first touch, long before he starts the engine and engages the Sport+ mode. Challenging the likes of the BMW M3, the Mercedes-AMG C63 S uses the 4.0-liter twin-turbo V8 engine, which feeds 503hp (510PS) and 516lb-ft (700Nm) of torque to the wheels. The version that lacks the S suffix delivers only 470hp (476PS) and 479lb-ft (650Nm) of torque, and needs 4.2sec to reach 62mph (100km/h) from a standstill, or 0.1sec more than its more potent sibling. Going for the C63 S will not only land you with a more powerful variant of the engine, but a few additional extras too, such as the electronic locking rear differential, Ride Control suspension, dynamic engine mounts, 19-inch alloy wheels, and others. Buying a Mercedes-AMG C63 in the United States will set you back for at least $66,100, while the most affordable BMW M3 starts from $64,000. VIDEO The first half of B.C.'s summer has been filled with wildfires, and as the climate continues to change, things could get a lot worse. In B.C. alone, 501 wildfires larger than 0.1 hectares have burned as of Wednesday, burning an estimated 426,000 hectares - the third worst fire season on record. Kevin Skrepnek, chief fire information officer for the BC Wildfire Service said Tuesday more than 300 buildings have been burned in the province so far. The Canadian government expects conditions across the country to become even more fire-prone as the climate becomes warmer. This could potentially result in a doubling of the amount of area burned by the end of this century, compared with amounts burned in recent decades, states Natural Resources Canada on their website. Dr. John Innes, dean of UBC Vancouver's Faculty of Forestry, conducted a study on the impact of climate change on wildfires in the Kelowna area back in 2007. What we've seen and what we're predicting is that the fire season is going to get longer at either end ... and we are also seeing increased severity being predicted, so the fires will burn hotter, Dr. Innes said. That was about 10 years ago we did that and we predicted exactly whats happening. Dr. Innes says that while the weather's impact on wildfires fluctuates from year to year, there has been a trend of longer and more intense fire seasons since his study 10 years ago. "What we are seeing is an increase in the frequency...of fires, and we're also seeing a lot more interaction between humans and fires, he said. The more people who go out and recreate in the forest, the greater the risk is that someone is going to be careless with a campfire, and I think we're seeing exactly that happening right now. Looking towards a changing future, Dr. Innes says it will become more and more vital to create buffers between people's homes and potential fire areas, by clearing brush, bulldozing swaths of trees, or creating physical barriers. What we can do is try and ensure that we have buffer zones between settlements and areas that are likely to burn, and that's what the government has been trying to do but they haven't actually put much money into it, he said. I believe the area that has been treated up to date ... is only 10 per cent of what was recommended (in 2003). Photo: Tourism Vernon Tourism Vernon is getting the word out the North Okanagan is open for business. Vernon is open for business and tourists are taking advantage of what the North Okanagan has to offer. We are about 90 per cent full for the BC Day Long weekend at our motels and hotels, with expectation that the remaining vacancies will book out in the days to come, said Ange Chew, the citys tourism manager. Tourism Vernon has been getting the word out to residents in the Lower Mainland, Alberta and the U.S. that the floods are retreating and boating is now open on Okanagan and Kalamalka lakes. Tourism Vernon is working in partnership with Destination BC, the Thompson Okanagan Tourism Association and other tourism groups to clear up confusion regarding conditions in the Okanagan with the BC forest fires and provincial alerts such as explaining the Monte Lake fire is more than 70 kilometres away. Tourism officials are using social and digital media to expedite the message the region is "not on fire" and "open for business said Chew. Hashtags such as #OKtoplay #exploreVernon, #exploreBC and others are also promoting the area. And the message is getting out with brisk business being reported by many area hotels and motels. Vernon has intermittently experienced smokiness from the fires in the Cariboo, Monte Lake and Washington, but mostly we have had clear skies and hot sunny weather, the forecast for the next while is fantastic, she said. Chew said Vernon is and will be promoted daily with our new Vernon 365 digital campaign and through our daily social media updates we are reaching out to our key markets to entice them to visit Vernon this summer. Photo: Twitter A four-year-old Colorado girl enlisted some professional help to ensure her new home was monster free. Sidney Fahrenbuch met Longmont police officer David Bonday at a barbeque and invited him over to scour some nooks and crannies in her unfamiliar digs shortly after her family moved in last month. Sidney's mom, Megan, says her daughter doesn't really buy into the idea of monsters, but the aspiring policewoman smelled an opportunity to hang out with an officer. She even wore her own police uniform for the hunt, which turned up zero boogiemen. In video taken by Sidney's mom, Bonday tells the girl she's "super brave" as she peers under her sofa and its cushions with the officer's flashlight for any offending beasts. Photo: 20 Mile Ranch Wildfire conditions are expected to worsen in coming days as Southern B.C. faces a heat wave. "Temperatures are going to be in the 30s and above in the southern part of the province and the Cariboo with that relatively low humidity, so still quite dry and still, unfortunately, no significant rain in sight for southern B.C.," BC Wildfire Service spokesman Kevin Skrepnek said Wednesday. Meanwhile, Emergency Management BC reports more than 35,000 evacuees have registered as of Wednesday, including 10,000 in Prince George, more than 9,000 in Kamloops, and 5,000 in Southwestern B.C. Spokesman Robert Turner commended the work of the many volunteers who have donated their time and energy to help people affected by fires raging across the Interior. "There isn't a community in the province that hasn't stepped up," he said. "We really want to highlight the outstanding support that communities in British Columbia and individuals in British Columbia are providing to their fellow citizens during this time of need." There were 132 fires burning across B.C. as of Wednesday, 10 of which were added since Tuesday. More than 850 fires have consumed 4,730 square kilometres of land since April 1. Cayuga County residents are among those eligible to be honored by American Red Cross of Central New York, according to a press release from the organization. The group is asking for nominations for the 19th annual Real Heroes Breakfast, which recognizes those who have done heroic deeds while facing a life-threatening ordeal. The submission deadline is Friday, Aug. 25. People from Cayuga, Cortland, Madison, Onondaga and Oswego counties are eligible. The breakfast will be held at the Oncenter in Syracuse Wednesday, Dec. 6. Proceeds from the breakfast go to the Red Cross. There are 12 categories of Real Heroes: Adult Good Samaritan, Animal Rescue, Blood Donor/Services, Education, Fire Rescue, Good Neighbor, Law Enforcement, Lifeline, Medical, Military, Workplace Safety and Youth Good Samaritan. To nominate someone, or for more information, go to redcross.org/wcny and click on the "Real Heroes Breakfast" section. Photo: The Canadian Press There will be no provincial charges into a tailings dam collapse in British Columbia but the province's new environment minister says a mining company may still be held responsible through federal laws. George Heyman says the August 2014 disaster has had tremendous economic and environmental consequences and British Columbians deserve to know what went wrong at the Mount Polley mine near Williams Lake. A three-year deadline on charges will pass Friday in the midst of an ongoing investigation by B.C.'s Conservation Officer Service, and the head of the agency says he doesn't know when the probe will be completed. Chris Doyle says the service will hand over its investigation report to the federal departments of Environment and Fisheries and Oceans Canada, which are doing their own probes into the spill. The Mount Polley dam breached at the gold and copper mine, sending 24 million cubic meters of mine waste and sludge into nearby waterways. Two reports found the collapse at the mine operated by Imperial Metals Corp. was caused by a poorly designed dam that didn't account for drainage and erosion failures. Photo: wildfiretoday.com The ongoing threat of wildfires is all too common in many parts of British Columbia. When these fires occur, they can cause massive amounts of damage that it is virtually unmeasurable for those who may lose a home, their belongings and a lifetime of memories. Economically, aside from the tremendous costs in fighting forest fires, there is also the loss of Crown timber and a lack of fibre can ultimately threaten the viability of a lumber mill. From a health standpoint, the diminished air quality can cause harm to those with respiratory challenges who are often seniors. First responders and emergency service personnel can also be seriously stretched to the limit during a wildfire as is the situation in Kamloops and elsewhere in B.C. I mention all of these things as it is particularly disturbing to learn that some forest fires may well be intentionally set with the use of accelerants. More recently, we have heard alarming reports of critically needed firefighting equipment being stolen and worse for those who may be evacuated because of a wildfire threat, their homes or business may be looted. All these actions are deeply troubling and very concerning for all involved. Looting of evacuated homes of evacuees is particularly worrying as it places greater demands on law enforcement at a time when resources are already spread thin. Further, the evacuation process can be potentially undermined if residents feel their belongings might be stolen. All these things, including the deliberate setting of a wildfire are a serious cause of concern throughout many regions of B.C., including here in the Okanagan where two recent forest fires were intentionally set. One resulted in the loss of several homes in Lake Country and the other damaged a much loved public park. I'm raising these issues because there is no specific protection in the Criminal Code to deal with individuals who commit crimes of this nature. While theft and arson are subject to the Criminal Code, starting a wildfire or otherwise committing criminal offences in relation to a wildfire are not specifically recognized. This leads me to my topic for this weeks report should there be specific legal protection that refers to wildfire arson wildfire or committing acts of theft in relation to it? To do this, the Criminal Code would need to be amended. One possible approach would be to ensure that wildfire arson or committing an act of theft in relation to a wildfire would be considered an aggravating factor in the sentencing the offenders. By extension, the sentences for committing these types of crimes could also be stiffer. The use of aggravating factors in the sentencing of offenders already exists in the Criminal Code for cases involving offences around children and most recently for elder abuse. My question this week: Do you support the idea of implementing aggravating factors in sentencing offenders who are guilty of intentionally setting wildfires or engaging in criminal actions as a result of a wildfire? I welcome your comments, questions and concerns on this or any topic before the House of Commons. I can be reached at [email protected] or call 1-800-665-8711 toll free. This article is written by or on behalf of an outsourced columnist and does not necessarily reflect the views of Castanet. Photo: Flickr/BC Gov't British Columbia's New Democrat government has asked the province's utilities commission to review the $8.8-billion Site C dam, throwing into doubt one of former premier Christy Clark's major accomplishments. Energy Minister Michelle Mungall says the regulator will be tasked with determining the economic viability of the megaproject, with interim results in six weeks and a final report in three months. Read more Photo: CTV A Victoria man is in custody following a police chase prompted by reports of him driving with a needle dangling from his arm and holding a liquor bottle. Motorists alerted police to the dangerous situation in Sooke, Wednesday. Officers spotted the vehicle at a McDonalds drive-thru, which took off high speed, nearly hitting a police cruiser. The suspect almost hit another car head on during the chase. Police arrested the 44-year-old driver, who faces charges of dangerous driving and impaired driving. with files from CTV Vancouver Island Photo: RCMP Police are searching for a convict who bolted from his own mothers funeral in Port Alberni. David Blackmore was serving time at Nanaimo Correctional Centre and gave guards the slip after being allowed to attend the funeral, Wednesday. Blackmore fled out the back door during the service. He is described as Caucasian, 45, six feet tall and 161 pounds, with brown hair, brown eyes and a goatee and several tattoos. with files from CTV Vancouver Island Photo: CTV A neighbour dispute over a loud motorcycle has boiled over. Coquitlam Harley rider Rob Supeene says someone covered his ride in a sticky mess this week after leaving a note that read: If this wakes me up early morning again, it will get much worse. I know its a noisy bike, Supeene told CTV, but he said he does his best to keep the noise down. I literally push it off the driveway and down the alley." A week after he moved in, someone slashed the bike's seat and scratched the gas tank, he says. Then, on Tuesday, he woke to find a sticky goo covering the 2013 Wide Glide. It literally stripped the paint right off the rear fender, he said. A security camera caught the vandal in action, and insurance should cover the damage. How far are you going to go? an angry Supeene said. Stop. Grow up. with files from CTV Vancouver Photo: The Canadian Press This composite of images released by the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) shows Air Canada flight 759 (ACA 759) attempting to land at the San Francisco International Airport in San Francisco on July 7, bottom. (NTSB via AP) Newly released data and photos show how shockingly low an Air Canada jet was when it pulled up to avoid crashing into planes waiting on a San Francisco International Airport taxiway last month. The Air Canada pilots mistook the taxiway for the runway next to it and flew their jet to just 59 feet (18 metres) above ground before pulling up to attempt another landing, according to National Transportation Safety Board information released Wednesday. That's barely taller than the four planes that were on the taxiway when the incident occurred late at night on July 7. Pilots in a United Airlines plane alerted air traffic controllers about the off-course jet, while the crew of a Philippine Airlines jet behind it switched on their plane's landing lights in an apparent last-ditch danger signal to Air Canada. NTSB investigators said they have not determined probable cause for the incident that came within a few feet of becoming one of the worst disasters in aviation history. "It was close, much too close," said John Cox, a safety consultant and retired airline pilot. The investigators said that as the Air Canada jet approached the taxiway just before midnight after a flight from Toronto, it was so far off course that it did not appear on a radar system used to prevent runway collisions. Those systems were not designed to spot planes that are lined up to land on a taxiway a rare occurrence, especially for airline pilots. But the Federal Aviation Administration is working on modifications so they can, agency spokesman Ian Gregor said. Both pilots of the Air Canada Airbus A320 jet were very experienced. The captain, who was flying the plane, had more than 20,000 hours of flying time, and the co-pilot had about 10,000 hours. The pilots told investigators "that they did not recall seeing aircraft on taxiway but that something did not look right to them," the NTSB said. Investigators could not hear what the Air Canada captain and co-pilot said to each other during the aborted landing because their conversation was recorded over when the plane made other flights, starting with a San Francisco-to-Montreal trip the next morning. Recorders are required to capture only the last two hours of a plane's flying time. Peter Fitzpatrick, a spokesman for Air Canada, declined to comment, citing the ongoing investigation. Photo: CRD An evacuation order for Kluskus, Blackwater, Clisbako and Nazko area has been expanded on Wednesday. The evacuation route has been created along the Nazko Road to Quesnel. Due to immediate danger to life safety due to fire, members of the RCMP or other groups will be expediting the evacuation, states a release. An expanded evacuation alert has been issues for an area of Quesnel to Tatelkuz Lake Wednesday. The Cariboo Regional District has issued the alert for the south and west of Quesnel to Tatelkuz Lake on Tuesday and the area of south of Quesnel and west of the Fraser River issued on July 28. A wildfire in Tautri Complex and one near Baezaeko River has caused the alert. An alert mean residents have been issued to prepare to evacuate the premises or property if needed. The Cariboo Regional District also announced today that residents are now allowed to return to portions of the Wildwood area near Williams Lake. For more information visit this link. Photo: The Hunt Several styles of liquid-filled iPhone cases are being recalled due to reports of skin irritation and burns if they crack or break open. Health Canada says 16 styles of cases, which such names as Star Glitter and Leopard Snow Globe, contain liquid and glitter that float in the plastic case. If the cases break open or crack, the liquid can leak out and cause blisters or chemical burns. Health Canada says the distributor has no reports of injuries in Canada, but there have been 19 reports of leakage causing skin irritation in the U.S. In Canada, more than 11,000 of the Chinese-made units were sold at Victorias Secret retail stores, online and at airport duty-free shops. About 263,000 units were sold in the United States and about 400 were sold in Mexico. The recalled cases were sold from October 2015 to June 2017. A full list of the affected cases is posted on the Health Canada website. After months of winding its way through legislative committees where it received scant support from tribal lawmakers, a bill that would allow for a major tourism development on the Grand Canyons east rim could go before the Navajo Nation Council in October. The legislation would withdraw Navajo land for the development of the Grand Canyon Escalade project that includes a gondola tramway to the confluence of the Colorado and Little Colorado rivers as well as motels, restaurants and a Navajoland Discover Center on the canyon rim. Since it was introduced in August 2016, the legislation has been considered by four committees of council delegates, three of which voted it down. The other one tabled the bill. Those votes have no bearing on the bills fate before the entire council. Some were expecting the legislation to be considered by council at its summer session last month, but in the end it was not included in the final agenda. Now, the bill's supporters are looking for it to be heard at the councils fall session, which begins the third week in October. In the interim, the bills sponsor is floating the idea of a negotiating team that would work with project developer Confluence Partners LLC to make changes to the legislations master agreement before it goes to council. Confluence Partners Lamar Whitmer said his group would be open to such negotiations. In his view, Whitmer said lingering issues on the bill come down to the $65 million the tribe would be required to invest in roads and utilities to the Escalade site and a noncompete clause that prohibits the tribe from authorizing or establishing competing businesses near the Escalade project and its access road. For the Escalade's opponents, the idea of any sort of negotiations on the project is a nonstarter, said Renae Yellowhorse, with the group Save the Confluence. There is no room to negotiate especially for people in that area, Yellowhorse said. Even if they are asked, they will sit on there, but it will be no project. Not there, not here, not anywhere." She said that at this point her group is confident the Escalade legislation will get voted down if it goes to a vote of the full council in October. We just have to keep on the people who vote no and hope they don't change their mind, she said. Because of certain provisions in the bill, it requires a two-thirds vote of the councils 24 delegates to pass. President Russell Begaye has said he opposes the Escalade project, so a two-thirds vote would also be required to pass the legislation if Begaye vetoes the bill. It appears even the creation of the negotiating team could be contentious as well. Tom Platero, with the Navajo Nation Office of Legislative Services said it would take separate legislation to create a subcommittee or task force that would begin negotiations with Confluence Partners. Whitmer, however, said he would only support an ad-hoc committee and not one established via legislation. The council people I've spoken with indicated they want something done within the next few months, so legislation, going through that legislative process to get a negotiating team, we're not supportive of that. That's silly, Whitmer said. He also said that any modification to the $65 million investment required of the Navajo Nation could affect the cut of gross revenues Confluence Partners would be willing to pass along to the tribe. "If the $65 million is on the table, well then the revenue splits have to be on the table," Whitmer said. Council Delegate Ben Bennett, who is the sponsor of the Escalade legislation and was reported by the Gallup Independent to have brought up the concept of a negotiating team, did not respond to requests for comment on this article. Over the past 11 months, Bennetts bill has been repeatedly pulled from committee agendas, frustrating Escalade opponents that try to attend hearings and rally support for their cause. They are testing our resilience, said William Longreed, with Save the Confluence. The bill does have a deadline, though. It must receive a vote by the current council before December 2018, otherwise it must be reintroduced to the next council and go back to the beginning of the legislative process. Neighbours say the fire broke out before 7:30 a.m., on Penticton Indian Band land just south of Sunglo Dr. The Penticton Indian Band, Penticton Fire Department and BC Wildfire Service were quick to respond and tackle the blaze. PIB attacked from the top of the hill while the Penticton Fire Department managed the bottom flank. A frequently used ATV trail runs adjacent to the burned land, but neighbours did not report hearing any off-road vehicles around when the fire started. Off-road vehicle use is currently banned on City of Penticton and PIC lands due to extreme fire risk. Crews also found a glass bottle in the area that the fire broke out, but the cause of the blaze is still under investigation. Fire crews will remain on scene for most of the day dealing with hot spots. UPDATE: 8:15 a.m. City of Penticton CAO Peter Weeber says a grass fire on the West Bench this morning is now under control. Weeber says Penticton Fire Department crews will remain on scene attending to hot spots. There were no evacuations as a result, and no cause has yet been determined. ORIGINAL: 8 a.m. A small grass fire is burning in the West bench area of Penticton. Few details are available, however, pictures clearly show the fire is exhibiting open flame. Photo: Google Maps A water quality advisory has been issued for the Delcliffe water utility. A water quality advisory has been issued for residents on the Delcliffe Water Utility, on the east side of Okanagan Lake. Greater Vernon Water, in conjunction with Interior Health Authority issued the advisory Thursday for an area that includes Delcliffe Road and Cameron Road. Customers served by the Delcliffe Water Utility have water supplied from Okanagan Lake. Due to increasing water levels, the turbidity has exceeded 1.0 NTU at the Delcliffe water intake. The water quality is now rated as fair. The advisory remains in effect until further notice. A fair rating means that some customers should be careful when ingesting the water including: children the elderly people with weakened immune systems For these customers, water intended for the following uses should be boiled for one minute: Photo: Twitter - @davidkingham The annual Perseid Meteor Shower will fill the sky this August and the public is invited to watch it from the Dominion Radio Astrophysical Observatory, with unobstructed views. The special evening is one of the most "spectacular" meteor events to occur regularly and it's common to see up to 80 meteors an hour. The meteors will light up the sky on Saturday, Aug. 12, with doors opening at 7:15 p.m. Astronomers Ken Tapping, Roland Kothes, Tom Landecker, Chris Purton and Ryan Ransom will guide the publics observations with "enlightening talks," and the Royal Astronomical Society will reveal the "splendours" of the night sky with their telescopes. An astronomer will lead a educational talk from 8-9:30 p.m., followed by optimal meteor viewing between 9:30-11 p.m. For comfortable sky gazing, a blanket or lawn chair and warm clothing is recommended. Dominion Radio Astrophysical Observatory is located at 717 White Lake Rd., 16 km south of Penticton. Photo: Google Earth The quarry location The Prince George RCMP is investigating the theft of about $250,000 worth of gravel from a quarry on Highway 16. In November the owners of the quarry, Burnco, noticed the gate at "Hungry Quarry" had been breached with about 6,500 tons of gravel missing. Police suspect someone pretending to own the material sold it right at the site, and are looking to speak to anyone who may have bought gravel at the quarry in the last seven years. The site is about 75 km east of Prince George. "This is a substantial loss to the owner of this quarry" Prince George RCMP Cpl. Craig Douglass said. "It is unfortunate that there are persons in our community that believe they have the right to take whatever they want, with no consequences. We want to ensure there are consequences for this theft." Photo: Alanna Kelly Gas prices in the Okanagan have jumped eight to 10 cents a litre. Gas prices in the Okanagan Valley have taken a large jump over the past 24 hours. The price of a litre of unleaded gasoline is now pegged at $1.17.9 at most stations in Kelowna and Vernon. That's up between eight to 10 cents a litre depending where you liked to fill up. Dan McTeague, spokesman for Gas Buddy, said the increase has nothing to do with the upcoming long weekend or unrest in oil producing Venezuela. He said it all comes down to local gas station operators enjoying some of the healthiest profit margins in the country. At the current price, McTeague said Kelowna stations are realizing a margin of 14 cents per litre. The next closest is Vancouver at 12 cents. He said the margin just to the north in Kamloops is about three cents where there is competition from Costco, which sells its gas at cost. "If I'm a gas station owner, I was selling gasoline for about $1.09.9 a litre before the increase yesterday. I was buying gas at $1.02 to $1.04, so I was making about four to six cents a litre, which is unusual for Kelowna. It's usually about 12 cents," said McTeague. "I think this is why you've seen this move to $1.17.9. I've said this before, Kelowna is one of the best places for a gas station to make a bit of money versus most other communities." McTeague said prices have risen across Western Canada, but in many cases, stations had been selling gas at below cost. "They were bleeding red ink," he said. McTeague says in markets such as Kelowna where margins are pretty healthy, eventually, a big box store has come in to shave down those margins dramatically. "But, right now, the timing isn't great, and I can't apologize for it, I won't, because the fact is this is really a retail margin move." Photo: The Canadian Press Joseph Boyden poses for a portrait in Toronto on Thursday, October 20, 2016. Boyden has penned a lengthy essay for Maclean's magazine addressing critics who have questioned his claims of Indigenous heritage. Last year, Aboriginal Peoples Television Network reporter Jorge Barrera launched an investigation into claims of Indigenous ancestry the Toronto-raised novelist has made throughout his life, and the evidence - or lack thereof - to back it up. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Chris Young Joseph Boyden has penned a lengthy essay for Maclean's magazine addressing critics who have questioned his claims of Indigenous heritage. "Being Indigenous isn't all about DNA. It's about who you claim, and who claims you," says the subheadline on the piece, published online Wednesday. Late last year, Aboriginal Peoples Television Network reporter Jorge Barrera launched an investigation into claims of Indigenous ancestry the Toronto-raised novelist has made throughout his life, and the evidence or lack thereof to back it up. The probe made national headlines and sparked a debate on identity and who has the right to speak on behalf of Indigenous communities. In his new Maclean's piece, Boyden questions what it means to be Indigenous in Canada and writes that DNA testing has concluded his family members are "mutts." "Celtic DNA. Check. Native American DNA. Check. DNA from the Arctic. Cool. I didn't know that. Explains my love for winter. Some Ashkenazi Jew? I love it," he writes. "More scientifically minded family members than me have been exploring areas like autosomal DNA and mtDNA and haplogroups, and guess what? We are what our family's stories have always told us we are. And then some." Since the controversy erupted, Boyden says he's spoken with many elders and knowledge keepers who have supported him and told him he's going through a "rite of passage." The Scotiabank Giller Prize winner behind "Through Black Spruce" details the support he's received from some Indigenous communities and how Cree and Ojibwe families have traditionally adopted him both in Ontario and Manitoba. Photo: Contributed British Columbia's auditor general says the province isn't getting the best value for taxpayer dollars from its contract for a program that enforces child and spousal support. Carol Bellringer's report says the Ministry of Justice didn't follow good procurement practices and couldn't demonstrate that it achieved the best value when it agreed to the latest contract in 2006. The government paid $18 million to the contractor in 2015-2016 for the Family Maintenance Enforcement Program, which processed $210 million in support payments to families that year. Bellringer's report says the same company has had the contract for almost 30 years and the ministry failed to generate competition during the latest contracting-out phase. The audit also says the ministry has been attempting to negotiate a new contract with the company for the last 10 years and increasing program costs have resulted in the contractor regularly asking for and receiving additional funding. The ministry responded in the report, saying it has already implemented two of the recommendations, but it disputes the value for money comment, noting the audit didn't look at the quality of services that were delivered. "The (program) has successfully provided an essential service to B.C. families for nearly 30 years. It is part of the core family justice services of the ministry," it said. Bellringer says in the report that the audit focused on the management of the program by the Ministry of Justice, not the quality of service being provided, and "we made no findings in those respects." Photo: Contributed Data released by provincial officials suggest First Nations people in British Columbia are three time more likely to die of illicit drug overdoses. It's the first time the information has been released in B.C., but it's a year old because of various steps involved in making it public. The First Nations Health Authority also says Indigenous people are five times more likely than others to experience non-fatal overdoses. It says First Nations people are over-represented in British Columbia's overdose crisis, which claimed nearly 1,000 people last year and that trauma, racism and stigma are part of the problem. Dr. Shannon McDonald, the health authority's deputy chief medical officer, says more First Nations women fatally overdosed compared with their non-First Nations counterparts because of their "unspeakable experiences" as young girls. Mental Health and Addictions Minister Judy Darcy says the preliminary data will be used to identify actions that will best support First Nations communities. Photo: Getty Images The City of Toronto hopes to get 3 injection sites up and running. Toronto is speeding up the opening of three supervised injection sites and asking local police to consider having some officers carry the opioid overdose antidote naloxone as it responds to a spike in suspected opioid-related deaths in the city. The measures were among several laid out Thursday after the city's mayor held an emergency meeting with first responders, public health officials and some city councillors. "These are unimaginable tragedies and, make no mistake, an overdose death is a preventable death," Mayor John Tory said in a statement. "Today, I asked our first responders to ensure we are doing everything as fast as fast as possible to implement Toronto's overdose action plan." Many Canadian cities have grappled with drug overdose deaths in recent months. The most notable is likely Vancouver, which has recorded 25 deaths and nearly 600 overdose calls in June alone. The opioid crisis claimed 935 lives in the British Columbia last year. In Toronto, the issue has been thrust under the spotlight recently after the overdose deaths of four people between Thursday and Sunday last week. Two young women also died in an apartment in the city's west end Tuesday in what paramedics called suspected overdoses. While the cause of the incidents was not confirmed in most cases, police said they believed fentanyl may have played a role. The potent drug can be fatal, even in trace amounts that may have been laced into other drugs. The city already has a drug action plan, released in March, but on Thursday it announced ways to ramp up its efforts. Three supervised injection sites coming to central Toronto, which had been expected sometime in the fall, will open sooner, the city said. The sites allow people to use illicit drugs under the supervision of a medical professional. The city has also asked Toronto police to consider the targeted distribution of naloxone to some officers. The city further plans to step up training for paramedics and firefighters in areas flagged as having the highest number of calls for service, and will also increase public education on overdoses. The city is also mulling emergency bulk purchases of naloxone as part of its efforts for quicker distribution to necessary personnel. Coun. Joe Cressy, chair of the Toronto Drug Strategy Implementation Panel, said the city will provide naloxone kits to all firefighters by the end of the September, adding that paramedics already have access to the opioid overdose antidote. City officials are also in talks with Health Canada about providing drug testing services so users can determine if drugs are laced with fentanyl or other substances. "In the city of Toronto we've had an overdose crisis for a decade," Cressy said. "Unfortunately, this crisis is now escalating rapidly." Coun. Joe Mihevc, who is chair of the board of heath, said there is a lot of work be to be done to deal with the growing opioid problem in Toronto. "The public should rest assured, however, that the citys divisions and agencies are seized of the issue and are doing everything possible to be of assistance and save lives," he said. The city said it is also committing to better data sharing about overdose information and tracking whether naloxone has been used at calls where paramedics have been dispatched. Toronto Public Healths most recent data indicates that there were 87 opioid-related deaths in the city in the first six months of 2016, and there were 135 opioid-related deaths in 2015. Photo: CTV The Ontario SPCA is investigating after the heads of 3 cats were found in a field. Ontario's animal welfare organization says it is investigating after three severed cat heads were discovered in an open field over the past month. The Ontario Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals says the severed heads were found in the field along a set of old railway tracks in Frankford, Ont., north of Trenton, Ont. Alison Cross, a spokeswoman with the OSPCA, says the three heads were found at different times over the course of July. She added that no other body parts have been found, and that it isn't clear exactly what happened to the cats. The OSPCA says it is treating the discovery of the heads as suspicious and is asking anyone with information about the cats to contact them. PHOENIX Arizona needs its 920,000 foreign-born residents, both legal and otherwise, to fuel the state's economy, according to a new study and some business leaders. The report Monday by the New American Economy says those families had $21.4 billion in household income in 2014, the most recent figures available. They paid $1.7 billion in state and local taxes and have $16 billion in spending power. When just the undocumented are counted, their earnings were $3.5 billion and $3.1 billion in spending power. And the number of foreign-born immigrants living in Arizona grew faster between 2010 and 2014 than the overall rate of growth, both from births and people moving here from other states. Kate Brick, the organization's director of state and local initiatives, said all that means more money in the economy, more dollars into Social Security and Medicare, and more people buying homes which in turn keeps the value of housing here increasing. But the report, done for the Arizona Chamber of Commerce and Industry, also shows that migrants represent a disproportional share of people in lower-wage jobs, including 32 percent of janitors and building cleaners, 50 percent of grounds maintenance workers and 55 percent of people working as maids and housekeeping cleaners. And Randy Johnson, a vice president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, said up to 60 percent of the agriculture workforce is not just foreign born but also undocumented. More to the point, he said the industry is dependent on that. And Johnson said any federal legislation to require employers to electronically check the legal immigration status of their workers is dependent on farmers and others being able to get the laborers they need some way. "Let's just say it: They can't work without undocumented workers in the workforce," he said. Glenn Hamer, president of the state chamber, insisted it's not simply a matter of farmers paying higher wages to attract people who are here legally. First is the question of whether legal residents would take those jobs. That's not a new arguments. "I don't think I need to tell you that there are jobs that Americans will not do," U.S. Sen. John McCain famously said in 2008. And when audience members suggested the issue is paying higher wages, the senator offered $50 an hour to anyone who would pick lettuce in Yuma for the whole season. "You can't do it, my friend," he said. Hamer on Monday said it's irrelevant whether people will take certain jobs even if the wages are increased. "Those farms couldn't exist," he said. "They would go elsewhere." Hamer said that's already happened with some operations moving to Mexico. "Who wins there?" he said. "The entire ecosystem gets blown to smithereens," affecting not only the workers but the managers of those firms plus the ripple effect on everything from pizza parlors to barber shops that were supported by those employees. Johnson also denied that all the national chamber wants is cheap labor. "If we wanted just cheap labor, you're right, we wouldn't support legalization," he said, allowing those who are undocumented and already here to remain subject to some conditions, like a background check. Anyway, he said, it's better than "this sort of wink and a nod that we create through an I-9 system." That refers to the current requirement of employers to verify the legal status of workers by logging in documents they present, a system that is generally considered to be rife with loopholes and people using forged and stolen papers. But there's something standing in the way of interest of the business community in legalizing all the undocumented workers they are now using. State Rep. Noel Campbell, R-Prescott, said he doesn't have a problem with providing legal status to the estimated 11.3 million perhaps 325,000 in Arizona who are undocumented. But he said that there's a political reality to get the votes. "We have to have the border secured first," said Campbell who worked for 27 years for U.S. Customs and Border Protection, reflecting the views of many within his party. Brick acknowledged the concentration of foreign-born workers in some jobs but said the data shows they are not all concentrated in lower-wage jobs. She said they make up 17.3 percent in STEM jobs science, technology, engineering and math despite being just 13.7 percent of the state population. And Brick said if half of the state's 1,070 foreign students on temporary visas who earned advanced STEM degrees stayed in Arizona they would create more than 1,400 jobs for U.S.-born workers by 2021. And there's something else: 71 percent of foreign-born workers are of working age, compared with 47 percent of those born in this country. She said that helps fuel the economy. Photo: hellobc.com Shuswap Lake among top five favourites of boaters. Shuswap Lake has placed among the top five boating destinations in B.C. In honour of Canada's 150th birthday, Boating BC provided a list of 150 boating desitinations across the province. The list was narrowed to 10, and boaters voted for their top destination on social media. The top five included: 1 - Ganges Harbour, Salt Spring Island 2 - Desolation Sound 3 - Shuswap Lake 4 - Princess Louisa Inlet, Sunshine Coast 5 - Gwaii Haanas National Park, Haida Gwaii B.C. has 27,000 kilometres of coastline and thousands of lakes and rivers. Photo: Contributed The RCMP is announcing charges against an evacuee from Williams Lake for allegedly trashing a Kamloops hotel room. Police were called to a disturbance at a hotel on Columbia Street on July 28, and arrived to find a man that had been throwing things around inside of a room. The suspect had also broken a window, overturned a fridge and set some items on fire. The hotels fire suppression system worked effectively and extinguished the flames, but the water caused significant damage inside of the room and the hallway outside. Shane Dalton Dennis, 30, is facing charges of arson and mischief. He was staying in the hotel as an evacuee from Williams Lake and was previously known to police. When he was just 12 years old, Alexander Spencer made a decision that would change his life: he joined the cadet corps. Spencer said he was looking for a challenge and found one with the Canadian cadet program. Now, six years later, Spencer is spending seven weeks at the Vernon Cadet Training Centre teaching other new recruits all he has learned. Joining the program was one of the best decisions I have ever made in my life, said the Victoria native. Initially, I wanted to join cadets as a challenge, to break out of my shell and experience new things, he said. So far, to that extent, it has worked amazingly. Spencer has risen to the rank of Company Sergeant Major and is now working with the next generation of cadets. I have done things I would never thought I could do before. There are a lot of leadership opportunities, said Spencer who only has four months left in cadets before he is too old for the program. But when his time is up in the cadet corps, Spencer hopes to trade one uniform for another. Spencer has plans to join the RCMP. Photo: Contributed Ben Amos (Fund Holder) with Wynn Nordlund and Sasha Mandaione who were two of the three recipients of The Sharon Amos Legacy Fund for the Arts. The Community Foundation of the South Okanagan is announcing $44,000 in bursary funds for 17 local students this year heading into a variety of fields. This year four different endowment funds granted bursaries to local students of all ages. These endowment funds have been created by donors who believe in the value of education and its power to improve quality of life for an individual and their family. said executive director Aaron McRann. This year's bursaries and winners are as follows: The Dr. John and Kathy Scarfo Fund, 10 students, each more than $3,900. Awarded to students who live an active and healthy lifestyle and are pursuing education in an effort to improve life for themselves and their families: Emma Thomson, Brenna Hannon, Carson Stocker, Laura Doherty, Amaya Black, Emily Bowen, Lyndzie Caron, Meaghan Vetsch, Sasha Mandaione, and Josh Pozzobon. The Sharon Amos Legacy Fund for the Arts, three students, $1,000 each. Awarded to students who are pursuing education in the arts: Sasha Mandaione, Krista-Marie Goss, and Wynn Nordlund. The South Okanagan Aboriginal Bursary Fund, three students, $700 each: Lyndzie Caron, Morgan Grigg, and Melissa Kruger. New for 2017, The Bench Market Bursary Fund, to support students entering culinary art programs. The first recipient of this award is Kiara Felts. Photo: @Homicide Team 19-year-old Bhavkiran Dhesi ID'd as woman who died in burned SUV. Police in the Lower Mainland have identified the woman killed when her vehicle went up in flames in Surrey shortly after midnight Wednesday. Bhavkiran Dhesi, 19, has been identified as the woman found inside the vehicle. Surrey RCMP say she suffered injuries consistent with homicide. Dhesi was last seen leaving the family home about 9 p.m. Tuesday. The province's Integrated Homicide Investigation Team has taken the lead on the investigation. They are trying to determine her whereabouts prior to her murder. However, the investigation indicates her death was not gang related, police said. Police are working tirelessly to advance this investigation and want to speak with any friends and acquaintances that knew Miss Dhesi, said Cpl. Meghan Foster of IHIT. Miss Dhesi was a college student, and had recently recovered from a kidney transplant. This death is a crushing blow to Miss Dhesis family, and they are suffering terribly. Investigators believe the murder was not random. Anyone with information is asked to contact the IHIT Information Line at 1-877-551-IHIT (4448), or by email at [email protected] Should you wish to remain anonymous, please contact Crime Stoppers by phone at 1-800-222-TIPS (8477). Photo: Contributed A federally funded study has found that 20 per cent of sausages sampled from grocery stores across Canada contained meats that weren't on the label. The study, published this week in the journal Food Control, was conducted by researchers at the University of Guelph and commissioned by the Canadian Food Inspection Agency. It examined 100 sausages that were labelled as containing just one ingredient beef, pork, chicken or turkey. "About one in five of the sausages we tested had some off-label ingredients in them, which is alarming," said Robert Hanner, lead author of the study and an associate professor with the Biodiversity Institute of Ontario at the University of Guelph. The CFIA reached out to Hanner for the study after the European horse meat scandal in 2013, where food labelled as beef was found to have horse meat in some cases beef was completely substituted by horse meat. The goal of the study, the federal food regulator said, was to examine scientific methods used by Hanner to see if the CFIA could use them in its regulatory practices. The scientific tools showed promising results, the CFIA said. Seven of 27 beef sausages examined in the study contained pork. One of 38 supposedly pure pork sausages contained horse meat. Of 20 chicken sausages, four also contained turkey and one also had beef. Five of the 15 turkey sausages studied contained no turkey at all they were entirely chicken. None of the sausages examined contained more than one other type of meat in addition to the meat the sausage was meant to contain, Hanner said, noting, however that researchers were only testing for turkey, chicken, pork, beef and horse. "The good news is that typically beef sausages predominantly contain beef, but some of them also contain pork, so for our kosher and halal consumers, that is a bit disconcerting," Hanner said. The undeclared meats found weren't trace levels, Hanner noted. "The levels we're seeing aren't because the blades on a grinder aren't perfectly clean," he said, adding that many of the undeclared ingredients found in the sausages were recorded in the one-to-five per cent range. More than one per cent of undeclared ingredients indicates a breakdown in food processing or intentional food fraud, Hanner explained. A 15-year-old accused of killing a man in March at the Hal Jensen Recreation Center in Sunnyside has taken a plea deal. Fernando Enriquez plead guilty to second-degree murder and one count of armed robbery in Coconino County Superior Court on Wednesday. Superior Court Judge Jacqueline Hatch presided over the deal. The plea brings an end to a case that began on March 3 after Enriquez attempted to rob Jacob M. Allen, 20, and his friend Nicholas Tyler Woods, 19, during a drug deal. The incident ended with Enriquez fatally shooting Allen in the chest. Enriquez will be required to serve jail time for no less than 10 years and no more than 18, according to court documents. Enriquez is also required to pay restitution to Allens family totaling no more than $250,000. The deal also dismissed the original charge of first-degree murder as well as two other counts of armed robbery. Coconino County Attorney William Ring gave a written statement thanking police and Rec Center Supervisor Danny Neal. We are thankful to the Flagstaff Police Department for their exemplary investigation and we are also thankful to Mr. Danny Neal who has devoted much of his career to the success of the rec center and its coveted place as a safe zone, Ring wrote. We hope this plea agreement will restore peace and normalcy to the Sunnyside neighborhood, the rec center and the operations of the Flagstaff Department of Parks and Recreation. The Allen family attended the hearing and did not object to the plea deal, according to Ring. As Enriquez plead guilty to murder, family and friends of the victim cried and held each other. Enriquezs family also wept through the somber affair. When Enriquez was escorted out of the court room his father yelled to him, Stay strong and remember the rainbow. Enriquezs father could not be reached for clarification on his comment. A sentencing date is set for September 6, where Judge Hatch will decide jail time and the restitution amount. craigslist: thailand jobs, apartments, for sale, services, community, and events craigslist provides local classifieds and forums for jobs, housing, for sale, services, local community, and events On Thursday, kids in Fairbury learned that not only can electricity be dangerous, its also a terrible method for cooking hot dogs. At the 20th annual Jefferson County Progressive Ag Safety Day, 90 kids got a first-hand look at all the dangers that might be presented by rural life and how to prevent them. With lessons on diverse topics, such as how to stop a bleeding wound, how to escape a burning building and finding out how much sugar is in their favorite beverages, the kids learned ways to stay safe and healthy. A lot of what Ag Safety Day is all about is making good choices, said Lana Likens, the coordinator of the event. A lot of the kids will come back year after year, she said, so they try to change it up a bit each time. Theyll touch on similar topics, but have different demonstrations. It has really expanded over the years to include all kinds of safety things that affect kids, Likens said. We believe very strongly that it's important to educate our kids and try to teach them good habits and things that can help them to stay safe. At the Farmers Cooperative-sponsored sessions of reaction time and grain safety, the demonstrations showed how quickly an arm can be trapped in spinning machinery and how difficult it can be to pull yourself out of a grain bin. The lessons were somewhat graphic, but they reinforce the point that keeping away from danger is the best way to stay safe, said Dennis Kenning. Kenning walked over to a miniature grain bin filled with dry corn, with a doll resting on the top. He yanked on a lever, sending the corn through a chute and trapping the doll under the corn. We have a doll in there," he said, pointing to the dolls head sticking up above the kernels, "It shows just how fast you can get sucked down in there. During the lunch hour, kids were able to watch a demonstration from Norris Public Power District. Norris brought along a portable power line and zapped electricity through everyday items. Kids cheered as orange and blue plasma arced from a steel-belted radial tire and laughed as the room filled with hot dog-scented smoke from an electrified frankfurter. The hot dogmuch like the human bodyis about 70 percent water, so the burn marks on the meat showed just how unpleasant electrocution would be. I think the best was animal safety, probably so far, said Autumn LEcuyer as she finished her lunch. "We learned a lot. To not go near grain bins. And look at the lawn before you mow. Ready or not, the 2017-18 school year is coming. As families prepare children or the upcoming year, some area organizations are working to ensure no student is left out. The annual Ready, Set, Go! back to school program was held Thursday evening at the National Guard Armory in Beatrice. Available to low income families in Gage County, the program aims to supply and prepare students before the looming school year. Beatrice Community Hospital and Health Center and the Salvation Army partner to host the event, which offers free services and supplies for children. Last year, 206 children from 195 families were served at the event, and organizers were prepared for a strong turnout in 2017. Its a pretty nice day today, so we may have more than that, said Lorna Hohbein, Beatrice Community Hospital and Health Center community events coordinator. We prepare for about 275-300. We saw our numbers increase last year and we wouldnt be surprised if they increase this year. We feel theres a real need for it. It just helps give them a good start to their school year. The hospital offers a variety of health services and information at the event, including basic hygiene for the students. Several vendors attended the event to provide school items, haircut vouchers and dental checkups. The students also received vouchers for more items later on. We partner with the Salvation Army and they bring vouchers for backpacks filled with school supplies and full sets of clothing for the kids, Hohbein said. They get their vouchers here and they have a distribution day where they can go to the Salvation Army and get the items. That gives them time to assemble the age-appropriate clothing and backpacks that they need and dont miss anybody. While the items and services arent likely to last an entire school year, Hohbein said families appreciate the annual event to help prepare. Obviously, what we give them isnt going to last a whole year, but it gets them a good start and I think they depend on it to get that start, she said. Its definitely about the kids. We want them to feel good about their first day of school. Feel confident and more relaxed going to school. Nestled in the southwest corner of Kentucky, about an hour west of Bowling Green, is the city of Hopkinsville. Ordinarily known for its historical landmarks and hot, humid summers, Hopkinsville is home to about 32,000 people on a normal day. But "normal" is about to go out the window. Advertisement More than 100,000 visitors are expected to descend on Hopkinsville and the surrounding region for this month's historic solar eclipse. The city lies along what's known as the "path of totality," a swath of land stretching across the United States where, for a brief moment on Aug. 21, the moon will appear to completely block out the sun. The crush of people who've journeyed to Hopkinsville for the celestial occasion will need food. They'll need shelter. And, in an era of Instagram, Snapchat and live-streaming, they'll almost certainly need cellphone service. But the latter could be a problem: Cell service basically doesn't exist, at least not at eclipse viewing sites such as Orchardale Farm, barely a 15-minute drive from town. Advertisement "You could typically get zero to one bar of service at these locations," said Brooke Jung, the eclipse coordinator for Hopkinsville. Hopkinsville isn't the only place grappling with a need for sudden cell service in a rural area. On the other side of the country, Madras, Oregon, is a town of 6,500 that's bracing for an influx of anywhere from 85,000 to 150,000 visitors, according to Brian Crow, fair coordinator at the Jefferson County Fair Complex. "As they say in Canada, it's going to be a little bit of a (expletive)show," Crow joked. "But the great thing about our community is that we've been planning for over two years." When Crow first joined the planning effort last year, he made a point of asking about cellular service and the effect of having thousands of people vying for access to mobile data. All four nationwide carriers AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile and Sprint are addressing the problem by rolling out surge capacity. Some are going to be cells on wheels, or COWs. Others are known as cells on light trucks, or COLTs. But whatever they're called, they're all designed to do one thing particularly well: Boost wireless capacity, in some cases by more than 300 percent. Carriers expect localized spikes in cellular usage along the path of totality as the sun and moon move across the sky. That should help spread out the overall amount of demand coming from those areas. And even as places like Madras and Hopkinsville experience more demand than they are typically prepared for, the networks as a whole should absorb the surge as easily as they do in the event of, say, a major sporting event. If cellphone users are really having trouble sending photos to friends and family over Internet-based messaging apps like WhatsApp or Snapchat, they can always fall back on text messaging, said Scott Mair, senior vice president of network planning and engineering at AT&T. "The stress point is going to be at the individual cell site at the moment of viewing," he said. "That's why we've augmented the capacity there." In addition to Hopkinsville and Madras, you can expect temporary cells to crop up at four sites in Missouri, one site in Idaho, one in Illinois and one in Wyoming. For many of these communities, the best part is that it won't cost them a thing. In Madras, it'll run the other way around: the telecom companies will be paying rent. Advertisement "It's in the best interest of the providers to be here," said Crow. "They want coverage for their customers." The thousands of people who hope to catch the eclipse on their smartphones probably agree. But because the vast majority of them will go home after the event, the viewing sites won't be getting a permanent capacity boost. Instead, the COWs will be heading back to the barn. Thousands of low-income patients may have to scramble to find new doctors this month after University of Chicago Medicine became the latest major health system to break up with IlliniCare Health, an insurer that administers benefits for the state's Medicaid program. U. of C. Medicine follows Northwestern Medicine and Advocate Health Care in walking away from IlliniCare Health, one of 12 Medicaid managed care organizations in the state. Medicaid managed care organizations are insurers that handle benefits for Medicaid, a state- and federally funded health insurance program for the poor. Advertisement When the contract ends next month, about 8,000 IlliniCare members will no longer be able to get in-network services from U. of C. Medicine or University of Chicago Physicians Group, according to U. of C. Medicine. IlliniCare pegs that number closer to 4,000 patients. Dr. Amir Vafa, division chief of trauma surgery and surgical critical care at Sinai Health System, discusses the financial impact Chicago's heightened gun violence has on shooting patients, which can include follow-up care, physical therapy and mental health treatment. July 13, 2017. (Nancy Stone / Chicago Tribune) (Nancy Stone / Chicago Tribune) That includes members who are part of a program serving women, children and adults who gained coverage as part of Medicaid expansion under the federal Affordable Care Act as well as a program serving older adults, people who are blind, and people who are disabled. Advertisement "After nearly two years of working to resolve payment issues, we are disappointed to announce that our current contract with IlliniCare Medicaid is scheduled to end Sept. 3," U. of C. Medicine spokeswoman Lorna Wong said in a statement. But Michael Marrah, IlliniCare plan president and CEO, disputes the allegation of "payment issues" between it and the health system. "There is a challenge with being reimbursed by the state but IlliniCare has continued to pay all of its providers in well under 30 days and with 99.9 percent accuracy," Marrah said. He said it's not totally clear to IlliniCare why U. of C. Medicine is terminating its partnership with the insurer, though both parties say they're open to further talks. Both IlliniCare and U. of C. Medicine say they're working to help affected patients as they transition to new care. The health system has been getting about 100 to 200 calls a day from patients concerned about the termination after sending out notice last month. Representatives from Northwestern and Advocate didn't elaborate on the reasons their systems no longer contract with IlliniCare. Though it's unclear how large a role payment problems played in the U. of C. dispute, other Medicaid managed care organizations have struggled to pay their bills because of the state's budget problems. It's a situation that is "dramatically reducing the Medicaid recipients' access to health care," according to a June court order forcing the state to pay the insurers more money. About 2 million Illinois residents get coverage through Medicaid managed care organizations. Advertisement Another Medicaid managed care organization, Family Health Network, had paid "virtually none of its providers since February," according to the June court order. Three large hospital systems and four hospitals left Family Health Network's provider network as a result. A spokeswoman for Family Health Network declined to comment. Yet another Medicaid managed care organization, Aetna Better Health of Illinois, has threatened to leave the program if it doesn't receive more state payments. Since lawmakers approved a budget last month, the state has started to pay the insurers more, but it still owes Medicaid managed care organizations about $3.5 billion. Gov. Bruce Rauner announced in February that he planned to overhaul the state's Medicaid managed care program partly by narrowing the number of insurers that participate. Advocates of the change have said that would save money, streamline the program and improve health care. The idea behind Medicaid managed care, in general, is to improve patients' health and spend money more efficiently. Eight of the current 12 insurers responded to a request for proposals to participate. The state has not yet announced which insurers will be part of the revamped program. Advertisement lschencker@chicagotribune.com Twitter @lschencker Health care. Wage stagnation. North Korea. Russian hacking. Need something else to worry over? Advertisement How about robots? Over the years, robots automation have eliminated millions of manufacturing jobs. And we are being warned that jobs such as cashier, truck driver, waitress and waiter could also fall victim to automation within the foreseeable future. Advertisement That's millions of jobs. That's millions of people without anything to do for a living. And the likelihood of a robot takeover just received new impetus. Maybe you heard about the Wisconsin firm that is implanting microchips into some of its employees. The microchips are inserted under the skin of an employee's right hand between the thumb and forefinger. The chip allows employees to open doors and buy cans of soda from pop machines with the wave of a hand. Though having the microchip inserted is purely voluntary, it does raise many legal, privacy and ethical questions. And while these are serious issues, what aroused my interest was something else. Until now, robots, automated devices, required a human agency. Someone has to turn them on, direct what they do. They were instruments of humans. But, by implanting microchips into humans, no instrumentality is required. Humans have become the instrument itself. Advertisement It's like, say as an analogy, we humans used to use a screwdriver. Now, with microchips in us, we have become the screwdriver. We don't need a key to open a door at work. We are the key. The question is: How far can we go with this process? What microchips can be implanted into humans before we can do all tasks, until we become robots ourselves? What makes a human a human? And what makes a robot a robot? Advertisement It seems that we now are approaching robotization from two directions automation and a kind of microchipped human evolution. All of which leads me to ask how much longer will humans be the dominant species if robots can be referred to as a species? It may not be long before the only full human beings on earth may be only the highest forms of humans. Like, oh, say, newspaper columnists. Paul Sassone is a freelance columnist. Chicago Briskly forgettable, "The Dark Tower" gets 'er done, whatever "'er" is, in under 90 minutes, excluding the end credits. Pretty short in Earth minutes, in other words. For the record we've seen far, far worse movies this summer, "The Mummy" and "Transformers 5" among them. Apologies to Stephen King, author of the eight fantasy novels in the "Dark Tower" realm, but you can shove that "Mummy" right through the portal to Mid-World, where all the villainously bad movies go. "The Dark Tower" isn't one of them. It belongs in Middling-World. The books' dense alternative-universe mythology has vexed many an adapter in recent years. With several credited screenwriters on the final product, director Nikolaj Arcel's movie looks and feels like a series of cautious, nervous compromises and expository panics. Advertisement To little avail, the cast is very good. "The Dark Tower" stars Idris Elba as the Gunslinger, a good man struggling to survive in what's left of his crummy world. His nemesis is a well-dressed sorcerer played by Matthew McConaughey, with a "where's my Lincoln? Isn't this a Lincoln ad?" twinkle in his eye. Both fine actors murmur, methodically, in low tones throughout "The Dark Tower," which doesn't do much for the movie's forward drive. In a major change from the books, the movie doesn't use the Gunslinger as its entry point or even its protagonist. Back on Earth, in New York City, troubled middle-schooler Jake (Tom Taylor, genial enough) is possessed by visions of the Dark Tower and a man in black and a Western-style gunman in pursuit. He, and we, learn that Manhattan is crawling with demon-y humanoids passing for human. Soon enough Jake finds a portal to Mid-World in an old house in Brooklyn, the last un-gentrified property in the entire borough. Zwoop he goes, through the portal apparently borrowed from "Highlander 2: The Quickening," and from there "The Dark Tower" becomes a bit of a metronome, zwooping back and forth from Mid-Earth to midtown. The sorcerer wants Jake for his own nefarious purposes, because he's a "shine," or a psychic. Advertisement The tower's survival, we're told, is the key to the stability of the universe; the sorcerer wants it toppled, so the apocalypse can begin in earnest and the demons swirling just outside the universe proper can move in and mess up the neighborhood. The Gunslinger is the tower's protector. A security guard, basically, only he's armed with pistols forged from the steel of King Arthur's Excalibur (the weapon, not the hotel). King juggles mythologies like a Flying Karamazov Brother. The movie, alas, settles for relatively straight-faced world-building with very little humor, though there's a good scene with Elba's first encounter with New York City hospital staff. Is the movie good enough to do what it's designed to do? Not really. It's designed as a launching pad for a "Dark Tower" television series, scheduled to star Elba and Taylor. So this is an hour-and-a-half TV pilot; it just happens to be a big summer movie too. The filmmakers had two choices with this material: One, position "The Dark Tower" as an R-rated splatterfest with Elba as the new Clint Eastwood, in space. This would make some sense, since King acknowledges he borrowed ideas and imagery from "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly" for his stories. Option two: Go for the PG-13 rating and the Young Adult fiction crowd, and put the teenage boy at the center of things. They went with option two. As I said: Middling-World. Michael Phillips is a Chicago Tribune critic. mjphillips@chicagotribune.com Twitter @phillipstribune "The Dark Tower" 2 stars Advertisement MPAA rating: PG-13 (for thematic material, including sequences of gun violence and action) Running time: 1:34 Opens: Thursday evening [ RELATED: From 2007, Tribune film critic Michael Phillips' video review of the Stephen King tale "The Mist" ] [ From 2015, Michael Phillips reviews Idris Elba in "Beasts of No Nation" ] [ Matthew McConaughey touting the virtues of the Lincoln ] Watch the latest movie trailers. Expand Autoplay Image 1 of 126 Woody introduces the gang to a homemade spork toy with self-esteem issues in "Toy Story 4." Read the review. (Pixar / AP) Improbable action movies just got a new set of wheels: the increasingly scuffed-up Chrysler Town and Country driven down every stretch of freeway in the New Orleans area by a fiercely distraught Halle Berry in the child abduction thriller "Kidnap." In this picture, directed with tons of extreme telephoto close-ups by Luis Prieto designed to MAXIMIZE TENSION in the MOST OBVIOUS POSSIBLE WAY, most of the angsting takes place in the driver's seat, behind a steering wheel. Berry's waitress character, Karla, is like the train in "Unstoppable," if a train could drive a minivan. She's in hot pursuit of the skeezy Louisiana vermin (Chris McGinn and Lew Temple) who swipe her adorable son (Sage Correa) as part of the family child-abduction business. Advertisement The snatching takes place at a park when Karla takes a call from her divorce lawyer. She's wrangling over custody; the kidnapping puts those legal battles in the backseat for an hour or so of minimally diverting screen time, covering a day and a night of parental hell. Working from a no-frills script by Knate Lee, "Kidnap" wastes no time establishing who's gone where. Minutes after losing track of her son, Karla spies him being stuffed into the back seat of a putrid little Mustang with no license plates, whisked away at high speed. It's a chase movie and, in intention, "Kidnap" is more like "Speed" than "Taken." It comes down firmly on the side of vigilante justice and shots of Berry in extreme close-up, alternating with slam cuts to her foot hitting the gas pedal, followed by a shot of the speedometer hitting 60 or 80. Advertisement The police are worthless in a movie like this. When breathless Karla does report the kidnapping to a precinct outside New Orleans, she gets the hurry-up-and-wait routine, and then scans the bulletin board full of smiling faces of other abducted children, and that's that. It's go time. This is a managed care scenario, and clearly mom is the only one who manages to care. The minivan awaits, though when its time eventually comes (spoiler alert), Berry takes a moment to pat the minivan hood twice, lovingly, like it's Ol' Paint about to expire in a western. The vehicular homicides comes early, and often. The film's visual quality, full of second-unit digital fuzz and variable cinematography, doesn't help the film much. Audiences don't expect much from a movie like "Kidnap." The baseline requirements include at least one moment when the heroine tosses one of her adversaries straight out of the passenger door of Ol' Paint onto some hard pavement. Whatever director Prieto ("Bamboleho," "Pusher") can't offer, composer Federico Jusid provides in spades to compensate, slathering electronic "Sicario"-type chords of dread over every new threat. The plotting here is a series of eye-rolls: At one point; having temporarily lost sight of her enemies, Karla has the fine luck to drive by a random parking lot just as the antagonists are trading their Ford beater for a newer-model Volvo. Berry's own luck has been tougher. She hasn't had the breaks or the roles she deserves, in any genre, really. For years, decades, all Berry needed to be was gorgeous, and gorgeous has a way of working against a woman in Hollywood after a while, if not from the very beginning. With "Kidnap," which was filmed in 2014 and then delayed while one distribution deal collapsed and another took its place, Berry acts as producer as well as star, and the script is meant as an action makeover (though Berry's done her share of action movies). Call it a partial, tentative Liam Neesonization of her talents, though with director Prieto egging her on to exhausting levels of panic, the movie proves merely that it's hard to sustain an extreme, wild-eyed stress level for very long. Even so, "Kidnap" probably could've played into its feverish, violent, trashy side more aggressively. As is, something seems to be holding it back from its own monstrously exploitative premise, just as most of its highway pursuits appear to be stuck at O.J. Bronco speed, in the low 40 mph range. Sometimes realism is no fun at all. Michael Phillips is a Chicago Tribune critic. KIDNAP two stars MPAA rating: R (for violence and peril) Advertisement Running time: 1:34 Opens: Thursday evening [ RELATED: See the latest "Kidnap" trailer with Halle Berry ] [ RELATED: Read the Guardian's hilariously snarky assessment of an early "Kidnap" trailer ] [ RELATED: In Chicago, Halle Berry introduced a "Kidnap" sneak preview and talked to WGN-TV's Dean Richards because, honestly, wouldn't you? ] Watch the latest movie trailers. Expand Autoplay Image 1 of 126 Woody introduces the gang to a homemade spork toy with self-esteem issues in "Toy Story 4." Read the review. (Pixar / AP) A New York prosecutor said Thursday that a founding member of Grandmaster Flash and The Furious Five stabbed a homeless man to death in Manhattan after he became enraged because he thought the man believed he was gay and was hitting on him, and he feared he would be robbed. Rapper Kidd Creole whose real name is Nathaniel Glover was returned to jail without bail by Judge Phyllis Chu on Thursday after an initial appearance in a Manhattan criminal court on a second-degree murder charge. Assistant District Attorney Mark Dahl said Glover, 57, a lyricist with the pioneering group, gave a detailed account of the street encounter in midtown shortly before midnight Tuesday that Dahl described to the judge, saying he wanted to demonstrate "the strength of the case." Defense lawyer Patrick Watts told the judge the evidence was "circumstantial" as his calm client stood alongside him, a tightly wound gray braid draped halfway down his back. Outside court, Watts declined comment. Dahl said Glover was heading to his job at a building where he did security and maintenance when he encountered John Jolly, who asked him: "What's up?" Dahl said Glover told him after his arrest that he thought Jolly was hitting on him and thought he was gay "and that infuriated him." The prosecutor said Glover kept walking but became convinced Jolly was going to rob him when the 55-year-old man approached him in a "threatening voice and manner," saying: "All I said to you was 'What's up!'" Dahl said the two men were a foot apart when Glover reached into his left sleeve and pulled out a steak knife that had been tied to his arm with a rubber band, leaving Jolly with two stab wounds to the chest. Jolly, a registered sex offender who was homeless, picked up a beer after the stabbing and took a swig, the prosecutor said. As blood stains emerged on his chest, he collapsed and was taken to the hospital, where he was declared dead, Dahl said. Glover, meanwhile, "turned around and went to work" immediately after the stabbing, he said. The prosecutor said Glover washed blood off his hands and the knife in a bathroom sink at his workplace before deciding to go home after about 15 minutes. He said Glover told him he tossed the knife into a sewer grate in the Bronx. Jolly had served time for sexually assaulting and attacking a woman. He had been staying at a shelter in the Bowery and had at least 16 prior arrests. Glover was arrested in 2007 for possession of a gravity knife and had three other arrests dating back to the 1980s. Grandmaster Flash and The Furious Five is best known for their 1982 rap song, "The Message." The group formed in the late 1970s in the Bronx. The group became the first rap act to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2007. Associated Press researcher Rhonda Shafner contributed to this report. Thaddeus Tukes played timbales and vibraphone at Navy Pier's new City Stage after an evening rain on Aug. 2, 2017. (Brittany Sowacke / Chicago Tribune) For a while, it looked as if Wednesday night's installment of the Water Colors jazz series at Navy Pier was going to succumb to the elements. Two minutes before showtime, there was more water than color: A light rain prevented the 6:30 p.m. concert from starting. Advertisement But Chicago musicians and audiences are not easily daunted, both groups waiting an hour for the stage to be dried, the electronic equipment to be replaced and the clouds to roll by. "The weather tried to stop us, but we dance on!" Chicago vibraphonist Thaddeus Tukes told a crowd that grew as listeners waited. Advertisement Originally, the August performances were to be held on the Lake Stage of Navy Pier's new Polk Bros Park Performance Lawns, a visually stunning setting where the waters of Lake Michigan form a spectacular backdrop, boats periodically cruising right behind the stage. But the concerts have been moved to the adjacent City Stage, which as its name suggests faces not the lake but the skyline. The view proved impressive in its own way, tour boats gliding by in the distance along the Ogden Slip. The jazz series, which launched July 26 and continues every Wednesday in August, has been smartly programmed in conjunction with the nonprofit Jazz Institute of Chicago to spotlight up-and-coming Chicago bandleaders. Tukes fit this description admirably, the prodigious musician having already made an impression on Chicago listeners when he was an undergraduate at Northwestern University. Now an increasingly busy professional, Tukes led a quartet in an unavoidably truncated, 30-minute set that made you want more. For Tukes has grown musically quite a bit since his Northwestern days, and you could hear it in the fluidity of his playing, the flexibility of his approach to rhythm and the deep musicality of just about everything he performed. Leading a band that focused on Latin facets of jazz, Tukes opened strongly with an original, "Encantado," an immensely attractive tune evoking the elegance of the Modern Jazz Quartet, albeit with a bit more edge. Thanks to the contributions of Ernie Adams on drums, Joaquin Garcia on keyboard, Jeremiah Hunt on bass and Tukes periodically doubling on timbales, this band reveled in layers of overlapping, syncopated rhythm. Dizzy Gillespie and Chano Pozo's "Manteca" stands as a classic of Afro-Cuban jazz, but Tukes and friends steered clear of the cliches to which it's sometimes subjected. For starters, the ensemble offered an intriguing arrangement that at first barely hinted at the famous theme. When it did emerge, Tukes and colleagues swathed it in ambiguous harmony and intricate counterpoint. This was a brainy version of "Manteca" that sacrificed none of its swagger, especially in the recap. Kenny Dorham's "Blue Bossa" isn't often cast as a cha-cha, but Tukes' transformation of the song inspired rhythmic displacements of considerable interest. And even amid the showers of notes Tukes articulated in solos, he conveyed the melodic allure of this gorgeous tune. Throughout, keyboardist Garcia provided as much rhythmic tension as chordal complexity, and drummer Adams consistently brought crispness and clarity to the proceedings. Advertisement Like Navy Pier's Lake Stage, the City Stage offered fine acoustics for outdoor music-making (though a little less amplification would have helped). Notwithstanding the weather, this performance augured well for the concerts yet to come. Saxophonist Rajiv Halim will perform Aug. 9; pianist Julius Tucker, Aug. 16; drummer Greg Artry, Aug. 23.; and pianist-vocalist Cole DeGenova, Aug. 30; all concerts will begin at 6:30 p.m. and are free; for more information, visit www.navypier.com. Howard Reich is a Tribune critic. hreich@chicagotribune.com Twitter @howardreich [ RELATED: Navy Pier's new Lake Stage: An inviting new home for music ] [ RELATED: Remembering Dizzy in the centennial year of his birth ] [ RELATED: Reassessing Ella: The First Lady of Song at 100 ] Watch the latest movie trailers. Expand Autoplay Image 1 of 122 Sophie Turner as Jean Grey, anger management student, in "Dark Phoenix." The film, the latest in the "X-Men" franchise, costars James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender and Jessica Chastain. Read the review. (Twentieth Century Fox) "To think deeply about food is to also think deeply about the environment, the economy, immigration, education, community, culture, families, race, gender and identity," writes Julia Turshen in "Feed the Resistance: Recipes and Ideas for Getting Involved." (Gentl and Hyers) After marching in the national Women's March the day after President Donald Trump's inauguration, cookbook author Julia Turshen found a need to become more active in her community. A regular volunteer for hunger relief organizations, food pantries and other programs, Turshen wanted to take it a step further. She chronicles this in her forthcoming book, "Feed the Resistance: Recipes and Ideas for Getting Involved." Advertisement "A silver lining of this new administration is the transformation of so many folks, myself included, from being sometimes activists to being fully committed members of the resistance," she writes in the book's introduction. Turshen, who published the acclaimed "Small Victories" cookbook just last year, took baby steps into local activism by first attending immigrants-rights meetings in a local church, around the time of the administration's first travel ban. Soon after, she began volunteering at Citizen Action, a grassroots political organization with local branches throughout the country. Advertisement It was at Citizen Action that Turshen saw a way to weave her skills as an author and recipe developer into her personal brand of activism, and the idea for "Feed the Resistance" was born. "I realized the work I was doing in my own community could be exponential if I put some of it down on paper and shared it with you so that you can better feed your own resistance," she writes. Put together in just under a month, "Feed the Resistance" is more than just a cookbook. Interspersed with essays from contributors like Mikki Halpin (author of "It's Your World: If You Don't Like It, Change It"), Callie Jayne (organizer, Citizen Action of New York) and Tunde Wey (writer and cook), the book features resources for community building and political engagement. Feed the Resistance: Recipes and Ideas for Getting Involved, by Julia Turshen (Chronicle Books) "Making this book was a true community effort," said Turshen in an interview with the Tribune. "I value the range of voices who have contributed. It's such a wonderful mix of powerful writing and inclusive recipes." "So much of the book is providing a framework for the people who have had the privilege like me of not being part of the resistance until the current administration," she said. "It's a guide for what to do that's sustainable very practical advice to avoid being overwhelmed." A handful of essays speak of intersectional politics, creating a safe-space for discussion, and how food can build community, while Turshen and her contributors provide practical recipes for nourishing both veteran and new activists. Three sections break down the recipes: for those too busy resisting to cook; feeding a crowd; and baked goods and portable snacks "for the activist on the go," joked Turshen. "I wanted the recipes to be really useful," she said. "Everything leans toward affordable, and you can make something that will make you feel good. Activism begins with self-care like putting on your oxygen mask on a plane before your neighbor. Before you can show up anywhere and stand up for someone else, you need to be nourished with healthy food." Many of the dishes have stories rooted in community too. Take the large-format Filipino adobo sa gata or Brazilian fish pie soup, both of which speak to a legacy of breaking bread with your neighbors and feeding dozens of people. Baker Cheryl Day's chocolate espresso pie bars are inspired by the Club From Nowhere, a group of women who sold baked goods to offset transportation costs during the 1950s bus boycott in Montgomery, Ala., started by Rosa Parks. For Turshen, food is deeply tied to activism and community. "What we eat, where we buy groceries, what restaurants we visit all these things have meaning and potential impact," she said. "Food can inspire us in our daily lives to be more active and inclusive." Advertisement In the book, she writes, "to think deeply about food is to also think deeply about the environment, the economy, immigration, education, community, culture, families, race, gender and identity. Food is about people, all people. It is the most democratic thing in the world, lower-case 'd,' and affects all of us." The book won't be published until October but is now available for preorder on Amazon, with all proceeds from the book directly benefiting the American Civil Liberties Union. "I love that the simple act of buying the book supports something important," said Turshen. "There's a lot of solidarity in these pages." As for parting advice for those new to community organizing and grassroots activism, Turshen says to find a cause you believe in and start there. "There's no need to start something new. You don't have to reinvent the activism wheel it's sometimes best to find a wheel that works for you and just help spinning it." jbhernandez@chicagotribune.com Twitter @joeybear85 [ Pound cake to help you cope ] [ 'Girl Up:' A feminist field guide for a brave (complicated) new world ] [ If I had a Boy Scout, I'd tell him this about President Trump's Jamboree speech ] A federal judge Wednesday allowed a former Santee Community Schools superintendent to withdraw his guilty plea to a theft of $314,000 from a federal program. Paul D. Sellon had been set for sentencing. At a hearing last month, Senior U.S. District Judge Richard Kopf expressed concerns about the plea agreement, specifically a portion where the government agreed not to file charges against Sellon's wife, Sue Ann, if he pleaded guilty. He said he wanted to know if Sellon was pleading guilty solely to protect someone else and not because he was guilty, and continued the hearing so Sellon could talk to his lawyer. On Wednesday, they returned and Kopf allowed Sellon to withdraw his earlier plea, putting the case back on track for a trial. Assistant U.S. Attorney William Mickle said there were still efforts ongoing to resolve the case. Sellon was superintendent for the school district on the Santee Sioux Reservation from 2010 to 2014. During that time, the school district received annual school improvement grant funding, and Sellon contracted with Mastery Learning and Achievement, paying $683,000 in grant funds to the company, according to court records. The government alleges that, as a condition to being hired, Sellon said MLA needed to pay him a portion of the money it received. Company officials told investigators they believed they wouldn't get a contract unless they did. In the plea agreement, the government alleged MLA paid a total of $314,121 to Sellon through two businesses he co-owned with his wife. The account of the episode has the makings of a vacation horror story. Bonita Fetterman, a grandmother visiting South Carolina's popular Myrtle Beach with her family last week, was standing on the balcony of their hotel when she cut her leg on a chair, her granddaughter told local NBC-affiliate WMBF. The injury wasn't serious, so she didn't seek medical attention, and later went down to the beach. Advertisement On Saturday, the family went home to Lumberton, North Carolina. The grandmother noticed blisters on her leg. By that night, her leg had turned purple, with her blood pressure dropping. Her family took her to Southeastern Hospital. "If she stayed there, she had like a 10 percent chance of surviving, and they were to amputate her leg," said the granddaughter, who did not wish to be identified. Advertisement Fetterman would soon be airlifted to the University of North Carolina Medical Center in Chapel Hill. The story started capturing national attention after Fetterman's daughter, Marsha Barnes Beal, posted photos to Facebook on Sunday, July 30. "She was airlifted to Chapel Hill earlier today. She's now in ICU, heavily sedated, and on a breathing machine," the post said. One picture showed a leg below the knee, the bright red skin peeling and blistered down to the ankle. A video captures the moment Fetterman is put on a helicopter to be transported. "Please remember my Mama, Bonita Fetterman in prayer," the Facebook post says. "She's now in ICU, heavily sedated, and on a breathing machine. However, she is stable!" Beal then pointed out what she said was the cause of Fetterman's affliction. "She came in contact with a life threating[sic] flesh eating bacteria after putting her feet in the water at Myrtle Beach!" As of Tuesday evening, the post had more than 84,000 shares. Advertisement Necrotizing fasciitis, commonly called a flesh-eating infection, kills the body's soft tissue and can be "deadly in a very short amount of time," according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. About 700 to 1,100 cases have occurred each year in the United States since 2010, though there are likely more cases that go unreported. Ways to prevent infection include avoiding natural bodies of water if you have an open wound, the agency says. Fetterman's granddaughter told WMBF that a doctor had told her it was flesh-eating bacteria. Jamie Williams, a spokesman for UNC Medical Center, confirmed that Fetterman is patient at the hospital and said the family requested that information not be released. Beal did not immediately respond to a request for comment through Facebook. In a statement posted Monday, the city of Myrtle Beach said it was aware of the Facebook post but had no reports of issues at the beach, whose water is tested twice a week during swimming season, according to spokesman Mark Kruea. He said the city has reached out to the family on Facebook but has not received a response. "This person has a serious medical condition - we aren't saying there's no serious medical condition - we just don't know the what the why or the where attached to it at this point and we need more information." Some commenters on the city's statement on Facebook were skeptical. Advertisement "Pleease, I feel bad for this lady, but something is wrong here, compromised immune system. Just not adding up. I was in that water daily for the past few weeks." The South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control did not immediately respond to a request for comment, but spokesman Robert Yanity told myrtlebeachonline.com that the agency is aware of the news reports of a potential case of necrotizing fasciitis, adding that, "It's important to note that this type of condition is not necessarily associated with exposure to natural waters like oceans, lakes or rivers or poor water quality." Kruea, the Myrtle Beach spokesman, said there hasn't been a large number of phone calls from concerned visitors and that if the city knew the location of the alleged point of infection, it could order extra testing of the water. "We don't think the water is a factor, but in the absence of additional information I'm not sure what to do at this point." RELATED STORIES: Flesh-eating bacteria nearly kills man who thought he just had blisters from a hike Advertisement Woman claims Popeyes meal gave her flesh-eating worms 10 creatures that can ruin your day at the beach If you are unhappy with your child's teacher, set up a meeting with the teacher or principal. (Getty Images) As you get to know more about your student's teachers this year, some will immediately stand out, and others may raise a flag of concern. Particularly, in a sometimes-difficult subject like math, parents can be on high alert. "Most parents probably agree that math is very important for their child's future," said Tara Bhatta, founder of The Star Tutor in Chicago. "Given the role of math in a person's academic and professional life, a parent may be unhappy with a teacher who cannot spark interest in his or her students." Advertisement This type of concern speaks to the important role math teachers and other teachers play in a student's life. "Teachers perform very, very important jobs," said Mark Kriston, owner of two Mathnasium learning centers in Chicago. "But that's kind of a double-edged sword. It offers a great opportunity to help kids, but it can also create a situation where kids cannot receive the benefit of a good teacher and find themselves not liking the subject or feeling bored or frustrated." Advertisement If you feel your student is in this type of situation, it may be necessary to address your concerns. "As a parent, your first priority is to your child," Kriston said. "The reason you're trying to address your unhappiness with a teacher is because you are really advocating for your child and want them to have a good learning experience." Here are a few ways to go about resolving issues you may have with your student's teacher. Figure out why If you are unhappy with your student's teacher, your first step should be to figure out why you feel this way. "A parent might be unhappy with a teacher but they may not know exactly why," Kriston said. "They may see that their child is frustrated, or they may feel like their child is getting a bad grade. A parent sees the symptoms of a problem. "The last thing they should do is jump to the conclusion that this is because of a bad teacher," he said. A few contributing factors could be that the teacher isn't prepared or supported in his or her role because of staffing or budget shortages. Class size and school curriculum choices may be factors as well. Advertisement Also, consider your student. "Your child may not be putting forth the effort they need to," Kriston said. "If your student isn't prepared, it's going to be very hard for the teacher to connect with your child." Schedule a meeting It may be that the teacher or school administration is the cause of your concern. In this case, Kriston suggests setting up a meeting with the teacher or principal. But the most important advice he offers is to go in with an open mind. "I recommend that parents discuss their concerns with the teacher with an open mind and without rushing to judgment," he said. "Look at the teacher as a professional, like a lawyer or a doctor, someone you want to work with to remedy the situation." Advertisement It can also be helpful to ask the teacher questions to gather more information about the class and how the teacher feels your student is performing. If there is anything you think the teacher should know about your student, feel free to share. "Parents should understand the challenges associated with teaching a large group of students and giving individual attention to each student," Bhatta added. "Parents should communicate well with teachers in order to optimize the teaching-learning process." Seek outside help Sometimes a situation can't be remedied within the school year, and you don't want your student to fall behind or become uninterested in a subject. "Even if your child is having a less than optimal experience in the classroom, they can go somewhere else and get the support and encouragement they need to stay positive," said Kriston of Mathnasium, which operates more than 700 math-tutoring centers in the U.S. and Canada. Especially if your child is struggling, seeking outside help can prove helpful. Advertisement "Children often don't learn that easily with their parents," said Bhatta. "Sometimes, it's hard for parents to put themselves in their child's shoes. At that point, a tutor can be a great addition." Emily Perschbacher is a freelancer. [ 10 cool back-to-school backpacks ] [ How to tell a controlling parent it is time to let go ] [ Work, nap, clean: Parents and the first day of school ] Megan Stielstra is the author of "The Wrong Way to Save Your Life." Heidi Stevens thinks books can make the world a better place and Stielstras book does. (Christopher Jobson) Here's a Chicago story. It's about fear and kindness and how they sometimes cancel each other out, which is wonderful when it's kindness canceling out fear and awful when it's the other way around. Advertisement I went to a book release party Tuesday. My friend Megan Stielstra wrote "The Wrong Way to Save Your Life" (Harper Perennial), and she rented out Uptown Underground to mark the publication date. Chicago filled the place up. Advertisement Stielstra's DJ friends played music while she performed chapters from her book, and people stood in line for hours afterward to hug her. Writer Sarah Hollenbeck, co-owner of Andersonville gem Women & Children First bookstore, introduced Stielstra. Poet Parneshia Jones climbed on stage and read "What Would Gwendolyn Brooks Do." Did you see that, Ms. Brooks? Do you see what we've become? They are skinning our histories, deporting our roots, detonating our very right to tell the truth. It was one of those evenings when you're laughing one minute and ugly crying the next and not because of the drinks. Because of the words, and because of the city where you're hearing them our beautiful, broken city where people create art and die in unacceptable numbers. Advertisement I went alone. I figured I would know people when I got there, but when it was time to find a seat, I was gripped with seventh- grade anxiety that no one would want to sit by me. (Fear.) I found an empty seat and asked a nice woman if I could have it, and she said, "Of course!" (Kindness.) It turns out we know each other. We're connected on social media and share mutual friends. I spent almost an hour after the performances talking to her and her husband about Chicago's media landscape and parenting and the healing powers of a night like the one we were having. I ran into writers and friends I adore, met a few new folks, hugged Megan around 10:20 p.m. and headed outside for a cab exhilarated, grateful. My phone died while I was trying to order a cab, so I found myself walking a little farther than I'd like, a little later than I'd like, hoping an empty one would approach. Eventually one did. I hopped out near my block and walked a few steps before realizing I'd left my dead phone in the cab. It was too late to flag down the long-gone driver, and I had no receipt, no record of the ride and no recollection of the cab company. I walked into my house, filled in my husband, carried my sleeping son up to bed and sat on the couch to read Stielstra's book. Sleep wasn't likely too many fears about what a lost phone leads to. Advertisement Fear is woven through Stielstra's book, as a theme, as a thief, as a culprit. "If we're going to make it, we have to look at the fear," she writes. But kindness is too. "We say and do kind things" is a chapter about Stielstra's (and my) friend Sarah, whose daughter, Sophia, was diagnosed with a brain tumor when she was 2. "'What else can I do?' I asked when she dropped the boys at my house, the first morning of who knows how many rounds of chemo," Stielstra writes. "Her face was locked in a sunny smile: brave for Sophia, for the boys, for Scott. I thought she was a (expletive) warrior. I thought: This is what strength looks like. Not a bodybuilder with the biceps. Not Superman holding up a skyscraper. Not an army of thousands with their guns and their tanks and their bombs no. "Strength is a mother. "'At some point ' she said through the smile. Advertisement "'Name it,' I said. "'Not today ' "'You say when.' "'I will need to get drunk.' " Later, not that day, they go to Little Bad Wolf and share Old-Fashioneds, and Sarah tells a story about walking outside Lurie Children's Hospital to the park across the street and sobbing, alone, and no one asking if she's OK. "I wanted to show up at that park and yell at everyone walking past my crying friend," Stielstra writes. "I wanted to kick myself for all the times I could have helped but hadn't. I wanted to go back to med school and find a cure. I wanted to raise a gazillion dollars for research. I wanted to give Sophia a unicorn. I wanted to hug Sarah but the table was at a weird angle. I wanted a better angle. I wanted a better world. I wanted to be a better person." Advertisement Sarah went back inside the hospital and got on an elevator. A nurse got in. She took a look at Sarah and asked, "Do you need a hug?" "I'm afraid," Sarah told Stielstra. "And it was nice to feel something else. Even for only a second." It's a beautiful book. I think books can make the world a better place, and I think Stielstra's does. I spent Wednesday sneaking moments with it, between work and parenting and the 7,000 steps you have to take when you leave your phone in a cab, especially when the phone is issued to you by your employer. (Sorry, employer.) At the end of the day, post-work, pre-dinner, my husband and I took my son swimming at one of the few public pools in Chicago with a giant slide, the kind that even the grown-ups can use. On the drive back home, my personal phone rang. Advertisement "I think I have your daughter's phone," the voice said. It was in his cab. It was dead. He didn't notice it until now. "I'm so sorry I didn't call sooner. I called the number that says 'mom.' That is you?" That is me. I am mom. My daughter programmed my personal phone number into my work phone as 'mom.' I'm not sure why. Whatever. He had my phone. No one took it. No one sold it or tossed it out the window or used it to steal my identity or whatever you do with other people's phones. My son and I met him in a Walgreens parking lot, and I gave him enough money, I hoped, to cover his fare to my neighborhood. "You don't need to give me money," he said. Advertisement "Sure I do," I said. "Your kindness canceled out my fear." Fear about the consequences of a stolen phone, sure, but mostly fear that we don't help each other anymore. That we're too afraid to be kind. Fear is woven through Chicago too. Some people live with the constant, terrible, unjust fear of violence, of death, of loss. But so is kindness. It's not going to cancel out the violence, the death, the loss. We need wholesale change for that. But it can remind us to work for that change. It can quiet the voices that keep us from doing enough, doing more, doing something. "If we're going to make it, we have to look at the fear." Advertisement Stielstra's right. Let's get going. hstevens@chicagotribune.com Twitter @heidistevens13 [ Related: 'Happiness: A Memoir' explores life and love with a severely sick child ] [ When kids are murdered, I try to picture their last moments ] [ Tiny cancer patient cheered on by Cubs' Anthony Rizzo ] A 4-year-old boy was listed in good condition after falling from a third-floor window on the West Side in the East Garfield Park neighborhood. Chicago Fire Department paramedics were called Thursday morning to the 200 block of South Albany Avenue for a report of a child who had fallen from a third-floor window, fire officials said. Advertisement The boy was taken to Mount Sinai Hospital, where he was reportedly in good condition. The circumstances leading up to the fall were not immediately available. A former Des Plaines resident who spent a dozen years as a fugitive after being convicted of drug trafficking in DuPage County is back in the U.S. following his extradition from Canada, according to federal law enforcement authorities. Delroy McGowan, 44, appeared in federal court in Chicago on Thursday on a warrant charging that he fled local jurisdictions to avoid the consequences of his arrest on marijuana trafficking charges brought against him in 2001. Advertisement He was tried and found guilty in absentia in DuPage County in 2004, about six months after he failed to appear at a pretrial hearing. A judge issued a bench warrant in May 2004. After the trial, the judge sentenced McGowan to 16 years in prison for possession of more than 5 kilograms of marijuana with intent to deliver, according to court documents. Advertisement Toronto police had detained McGowan in April 2016 after receiving information he was living in the area, according to Toronto police officials. An FBI affidavit filed in early 2005 said McGowan had been arrested after an investigation conducted by a Chicago postal interdiction unit, an indication that McGowan may have been shipping drugs through the mail. The Des Plaines resident, records say, was indicted by a statewide jury and prosecuted by the Illinois attorney general in DuPage court. After his arrest, McGowan posted $30,000 cash bond, which was later forfeited when he failed to appear, according to court records. The 2005 FBI affidavit said McGowan likely fled to Florida from Illinois. A source told the FBI that he was living there, and federal authorities say Florida records showed that he obtained a driver's license under an altered name in March 2004. Canadian authorities say he likely then fled to Jamaica, where he is a citizen, and then entered Canada under an assumed name, according to authorities. A media report in 2014 that identified him as a "most wanted" fugitive led to information that resulted in McGowan's arrest, authorities say. Clifford Ward is a freelance reporter. Cynthia Lane breaks down crying while speaking with the news media. Lane's son Roshad McIntosh, 19, was fatally shot by Chicago police in 2014. The case was reopened after witness accounts were found to be different than accounts given by Chicago police. (Nancy Stone / Chicago Tribune) (Nancy Stone / Chicago Tribune) Chicago police oversight authorities have reopened their investigation into a 2014 shooting by an officer, again digging into the past of a Police Department and disciplinary system seeking to shake their reputation for excusing excessive force and misconduct. The Independent Police Review Authority will re-examine the death of 19-year-old Roshad McIntosh, who was shot by police three years ago on the West Side, agency spokeswoman Mia Sissac said. Advertisement McIntosh's family has filed a lawsuit alleging he was unarmed when an officer chased him onto a porch and shot him as he tried to surrender. He was shot in the chest and shoulder, autopsy records show. Police Department records and the lawsuit indicate that Officer Robert Slechter, a 12-year department veteran, shot McIntosh. Advertisement Slechter, who could not be reached for comment Thursday, told disciplinary investigators after the shooting that he fired because McIntosh pointed a gun at him, according an IPRA report. Police found a loaded 9 mm pistol at the scene, IPRA reported, and the agency ruled in October 2015 that the shooting was within department policy. Top IPRA officials reopened the case after receiving a request to do so from the family and conducting "a thorough review of the investigative file," Sissac said. She declined to say more specifically what caused IPRA to reopen the case. The case is one of several that disciplinary authorities have reopened in the 20 months since Mayor Rahm Emanuel was forced by a judge to release video of an officer shooting black teenager Laquan McDonald 16 times. The video of the October 2014 shooting sparked heated protests, political turmoil and promises of systemic change from Emanuel. Officer Jason Van Dyke is charged with McDonald's murder. IPRA's move comes as Emanuel tries to rebut criticism from reform advocates who say his commitment to improving the department has waned. In recent months, the mayor backed off his pledge to enter a consent decree an agreement for reforms enforced by a federal judge and instead pushed a plan for a monitor to oversee changes without court supervision. Emanuel had vowed to sign a consent decree in January as the U.S. Department of Justice released a damning report casting the police as poorly trained, loosely supervised and rarely disciplined. That promise, however, came before President Donald Trump was inaugurated and his administration made clear that it has little interest in intervening in local police departments. Emanuel's allies have cited changes he has already made as evidence of his dedication to true reform. But Obama-era Justice Department lawyers, reform advocates and some local officials have blasted him for backing off his vow, saying the department's problems are too broad and deep to fix without a judge's oversight. Advertisement Along with the Police Department, the city's police disciplinary authorities have been criticized as too tolerant of misconduct and excessive force. Tribune investigations have shown IPRA long conducted lax, drawn-out investigations that rarely resulted in discipline. Before the McDonald controversy, IPRA had ruled that only two out of more than 400 shootings by police violated policy. Early in the McDonald scandal, then-IPRA Chief Administrator Scott Ando resigned and Emanuel appointed former federal prosecutor Sharon Fairley to the post. Fairley has since ruled that several shootings violated policy. Emanuel has moved to replace IPRA with the new Civilian Office of Police Accountability, which is scheduled to open in September with more staff and funding. In IPRA's waning months, Fairley has reopened several controversial cases, including shootings. IPRA officials could not say Thursday exactly how many have been reopened or how many outcomes have changed. Advertisement One case that was reopened involved the death of Philip Coleman, 38, who died in 2012 after officers used a Taser on him and dragged him from a cell. IPRA had earlier closed the case, but the agency reopened it amid the McDonald scandal and last summer recommended lengthy suspensions for several officers. The investigation into McIntosh's shooting was closed the month before the McDonald video emerged. The IPRA report that came out with its ruling on the shooting reported that Slechter told investigators that he chased McIntosh behind a home and saw a silver handgun in his right hand. McIntosh refused orders to drop the gun and fled up a porch staircase, Slechter told investigators. McIntosh emerged from behind a staircase to the second floor landing and pointed the gun at Slechter, who fired three times, IPRA reported. Other officers corroborated Slechter's account, saying they saw McIntosh point the gun, according to IPRA. An attorney for McIntosh's family, Andrew M. Stroth, questioned the police account of the shooting but declined in an interview to offer any evidence for his stance. Advertisement "We believe the police narrative of what happened is not consistent with the truth and how Rashad McIntosh was shot and killed by the Chicago police," he said. As IPRA reopened the McIntosh shooting, activists called on Cook County State's Attorney Kim Foxx to bring charges against Slechter. Foxx defeated then-State's Attorney Anita Alvarez last year after heavily criticizing her for declining to charge Van Dyke with McDonald's murder until the same day the video came out. Prosecutors under Alvarez declined to charge anyone in McIntosh's shooting. In a statement Thursday morning, a spokeswoman for Foxx, Tandra Simonton, said the office had "no intention" of reopening the criminal investigation but that prosecutors would evaluate any significant new evidence. That enraged activists and McIntosh family members who gathered late Thursday morning near where he was killed at Polk Street and Francisco Avenue. "How dare she say she won't take a look at these police cases when that was the exact reason she was elected," said activist William Calloway. Advertisement McIntosh's mother, Cynthia Lane, said she hoped Foxx would charge the officer. Daywatch Weekdays Start each day with Chicago Tribune editors' top story picks, delivered to your inbox. > "I'm not gonna stop," Lane said. "I will ask, like I'm asking now, if she would reconsider and reopen my son's case and look at all of the evidence." Later Thursday morning, Simonton revised her statement, backing away from her earlier assertion that prosecutors did not intend to reopen the investigation. "We reviewed this case during the original IPRA investigation and based on the information presented at that time concluded there was no basis for criminal charges," she wrote. "In the event that IPRA's reopened investigation produces material new evidence, we will re-evaluate and determine whether such evidence impacts our decision as to potential criminal charges." A spokesman for the union that represents rank-and-file officers declined to comment on the decision to reopen the investigation into McIntosh's death, saying he had not reviewed the case. dhinkel@chicagotribune.com Advertisement wlee@chicagotribune.com tlighty@chicagotribune.com A woman pleaded guilty Thursday to three counts of fraud for bilking an elderly Palatine man out of nearly $4.5 million over a six-year period through an elaborate lottery scam. Corrine Dziesiuta, 39, who said she lived in Costa Rica before her arrest, faces up to 61/2 years in prison after admitting to a charge of knowingly devising and participating in a scheme to defraud the 87-year-old man. She persuaded him to wire funds from his U.S. bank accounts to banking institutions in Nicaragua and Costa Rica, authorities have said. Advertisement "I did make a mistake," Dziesiuta, dressed in an orange jail jumpsuit, told U.S. District Judge Thomas Durkin. "And I am guilty." Durkin scheduled sentencing for October. Dziesiuta has been in custody since her arrest last October. Advertisement According to a criminal complaint, Dziesiuta first contacted the man, identified only as Victim A, in 2010. Dziesiuta, who went by the alias "Lisa Conti," told him he'd won millions of dollars in prize money but needed to pay "various insurance, taxes and other fees" to protect the money because it was located in a foreign country. To keep the scam going, Dziesiuta sent a letter to the man in January 2015 purporting to be from a U.S. senator who provided assurances that the government was working to protect his interests, authorities said. The letter also stated the man was required by law to pay $386,000 to "re-register" an insurance policy meant to protect his net worth of $600 million, according to the complaint. Daywatch Weekdays Start each day with Chicago Tribune editors' top story picks, delivered to your inbox. > The complaint did not make clear when or how the FBI became aware of the scam, but between May and late September 2016, agents recorded 27 phone calls between the man and Dziesiuta. During one conversation, the man was instructed to tell Dziesiuta his bank would no longer allow him to wire funds, according to the complaint. Dziesiuta tried to persuade the man to switch banks or go through an attorney to send the money, authorities said. At the direction of agents, the man was instructed to tell Dziesiuta he was only willing to give her the money in person, according to the complaint. After a few months, Dziesiuta made arrangements to fly the man to New York so he could deliver a cashier's check for more than $3.7 million. Dziesiuta bought the victim an airline ticket and told him she was going to put him up at the Waldorf Astoria hotel in Manhattan in October, according to the complaint. She went to meet the victim at LaGuardia Airport, telling him she would wear a peach-colored dress so he could easily recognize her, authorities said. Dziesiuta didn't realize the victim had been cooperating with the FBI for months. When her phone rang as she stood in the baggage claim area, an FBI agent called out her alias, "Lisa." When she turned around, the agent arrested her. meltagouri@chicagotribune.com Advertisement Twitter @marwaeltagouri Wyndham Lathem, 42, left, and Andrew Warren, 56, are suspects in the stabbing death of Trenton Cornell-Duranleau, 26, in the 500 block of North State Street on July 27, 2017. (Terrence Antonio James / Chicago Tribune) (Terrence Antonio James / Chicago Tribune) Trenton Cornell-Duranleau showed promise as a young hairstylist in Michigan, but struggled to hold a steady job. The 26-year-old was funny and personable and always seemed to find a home wherever he landed, friends said, even when he moved to Chicago. Wyndham Lathem, 42, is known as a well-published researcher of infectious diseases at Northwestern University. An extremely private man, he nevertheless had a busy public life as an esteemed academic, invited to speak at conferences across the country. Advertisement Andrew Warren, 56, a reserved employee at Oxford University in England, lived quietly with his sister and his boyfriend. Still grieving the death of his father eight months ago, Warren suddenly flew to Chicago on July 24, his first trip to the United States. Three days later, the lives of all three men converged in a bloody scene in a Near North Side high-rise, authorities said. Advertisement Acting on an anonymous call, police found Cornell-Duranleau stabbed to death in an apartment belonging to Lathem, who apparently disappeared with Warren. Both Lathem and Warren were caught on surveillance video at the building, police said. Adding to the mystery surrounding the slaying, investigators believe the two made a $1,000 donation in Cornell-Duranleau's name at a library in Lake Geneva, Wis., shortly after the attack. Police aren't sure why. The gruesome attack has set off an intense nationwide search for the men and drawn international interest. Late Thursday, chief Chicago police spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said police have an idea where the two may have fled and don't believe they have left the country. The U.S. State Department has flagged their passports and travel documents, and the U.S. Marshals Service has joined the manhunt. "Our search efforts have intensified," Guglielmi said. "At this point, they can turn themselves in to any police department in the U.S. or their attorneys can contact (Chicago police). We are stressing that we want a peaceful and safe surrender." Authorities have so far offered little information about what may have led to the attack. Lathem and Cornell-Duranleau were involved in some sort of relationship and had "some type of falling out," Guglielmi said. He could not elaborate on the relationship and could not say how Warren knew Lathem and Cornell-Duranleau. A broken blade and blood everywhere Police believe Cornell-Duranleau was killed around 5 a.m. July 27, but officers were not alerted until someone called the front desk of the building around 8:30 p.m., more than 15 hours later. Advertisement "There may have been a crime committed in Room 1004," the male voice said, according to law enforcement sources. "You need to check it out." The caller hung up. The building's chief engineer rang the room and got no answer. Then he dialed 911. Officers responded and, after knocking, entered the apartment with a master key. They saw blood on the bedroom door, opened it and found Cornell-Duranleau lying face down, dead from stab wounds to his back, the report said. In the kitchen, police found a knife with a broken blade in the trash can and another knife near the sink. Blood was everywhere, the sources said. Police could not locate Lathem. Four days later, a judge issued arrest warrants for him and Warren, charging each with first-degree murder. A police alert said the two were last seen in a gray 2007 Hyundai. "Both subjects are to be considered armed and extremely dangerous," the alert warned. Advertisement The killing has stunned those who know the victim and suspects, and it's left them wondering what brought them together. Cornell-Duranleau's mother said her son's family in Michigan doesn't know the suspects. "Our family is deeply saddened by the death of our son," Charlotte Cornell said in a statement Thursday. "It is our hope that the person or persons responsible for his death are brought to justice." 'Energetic and young and talented' Cornell-Duranleau was around 6 when his biological mother died. He was adopted by a friend of his mother and grew up in the small town of Lennon in eastern Michigan. He attended high school in Grand Rapids and earned a state certification in cosmetology in 2011. He landed his first job about two years later at Timber's Salon in Trenton, Mich., a little more than 100 miles southeast of his hometown. A mutual friend helped arrange the opportunity, said Timber Baun-Crooks, who owns the business. Advertisement "He was a great guy. He was energetic and young and talented," she said. "He was an excellent hair dresser very creative but he wasn't from the area and he didn't build a clientele as fast as he would have liked." Cornell-Duranleau bounced from job to job at about six salons after that, Baun-Crooks said. Other friends from Michigan remember Cornell-Duranleau as funny, curious and a lover of video games and animated flicks. He sometimes relied on friends for a place to stay, the friends said. He took college classes to become a veterinary technician but found the workload too demanding and dropped out, said one friend who hosted him. "He doesn't put down roots very deeply. I used to tell him he was a nomad," said the friend, who spoke on condition of anonymity. "The last time I ever talked to him was early March of 2016. He said he was coming to Chicago for a job offer at a salon." It's not clear where Cornell-Duranleau worked in Chicago. He had lived in the 2200 block of South Wood Street in the Heart of Chicago neighborhood on the Near Southwest Side, according to the Cook County medical examiner's office. Advertisement In an obituary posted by his mother, Mischelle Duranleau said her son "loved music and animals. His enthusiasm for life was infectious. Trenton was a caregiver and loved to help others. His youthful free-spirit fueled his love of cars, video games and cartoons." 'A model scientist' At 42, Wyndham Lathem was known as a driven scientist whose work on the plague known as the Black Death made national headlines in 2015. He joined Northwestern in 2007 and worked primarily in a research lab within the Department of Microbiology-Immunology at the Feinberg School of Medicine. "At some point in the past few years he taught medical students or graduate students," said school spokesman Alan K. Cubbage. Lathem was an undergraduate at Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, N.Y., from 1992 to 1996. Adam McDaniel didn't share any classes with him, but the campus was small and they would run into each other at social gatherings, discussing movies or music. "He was a very kind, warmhearted, funny guy. Everybody loved him. He struck me as a genuinely good person," said McDaniel, who recalled Lathem as "fiercely intelligent." Advertisement McDaniel, a client relations administrator at Warner Bros. Entertainment in Burbank, Calif., said that when he first saw the news of the attack in Chicago, he thought Lathem had pulled a prank. "The current events go against every single impression I had of him in college," McDaniel said. "I hope that people will give him the benefit of the doubt." William Goldman, who advised Lathem as a postdoctoral student between 2003 and 2007 at Washington University in St. Louis, reacted similarly when he learned about the stabbing. "He was very private about his personal life," Goldman said Thursday in a phone interview. "I know his work is very important to him. He worked extremely hard when he was in my lab, and it meant a lot to him. I think he was driven by excellence. He's a model scientist." Goldman said he kept in touch with Lathem in the years since he moved on to Northwestern. He invited Lathem to speak at a seminar in 2016. They most recently talked on the phone about six weeks ago, discussing whether Lathem should take a job at a French research institution. He chose to stay in Chicago. Nothing seemed awry in that conversation, Goldman said. Advertisement Since the killing, Lathem has been placed on administrative leave and is banned from all Northwestern campuses, according to Cubbage. He was not currently teaching and was not scheduled to be in a classroom in the fall. Lathem's family declined to comment. 'Andy had gone' Andrew Warren was a senior treasury assistant at Somerville College, part of the Oxford University network, when he disappeared this summer. Investigators believe he traveled to the United States on July 24, according to police and British media reports. He made the trip without telling his sister or his boyfriend in Faringdon, Oxfordshire. "He didn't tell anybody about going to America. The first thing I knew was his sister rang me to ask whether I knew where Andy had gone," longtime friend Janice King told The Telegraph newspaper. Advertisement Friends wondered whether the death of his father in a car crash eight months ago played a role in his behavior. He had confided in them that he was depressed and still grieving. Neighbors told the Mirror that Warren had lived with his younger sister Tracey and his father, Dereck, in the house where he grew up. Daywatch Weekdays Start each day with Chicago Tribune editors' top story picks, delivered to your inbox. > They remembered him as a kid with a "strict" upbringing who would accompany his mother, Mabel, to bingo rather than playing with village children. Four days after his sister reported him missing, she posted a picture of herself with Andy and their dad on Facebook. She wrote: "Miss dad and wake up bruv life is too precious to waste." Oxford University released a statement saying that "we have been in contact with the police in the UK and are ready to help the US investigating authorities in any way they need. Andrew Warren's colleagues at Somerville College have now all been informed and are shocked to learn of the case." In Chicago, police spokesman Guglielmi said anyone with information can contact Chicago police anonymously, including through the department's new tips website, www.cpdtip.com. Advertisement echerney@chicagotribune.com rsobol@chicagotribune.com jgorner@chicagotribune.com A Nebraska State Patrol trooper has sued the state saying women are put through medically unnecessary and sexually invasive examinations to get jobs with the department that are not required of men. Brienne Splittgerber, who was part of the patrol's graduating class in 2015, alleged the exams are unconstitutional and discriminatory in a lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court on Tuesday. Splittgerber got no assurances from State Patrol leaders that they would stop the exams after she reported what happened during her required, pre-employment physical, her attorney, Thomas White of Omaha, said in the lawsuit. Splittgerber said Dr. Stephen Haudrich, the Lincoln physician selected by the State Patrol to do the exams, instructed her in a September 2014 exam to take off her pants, lie on the table and position herself to expose her genitalia and anus, apparently to check for a hernia. White said with the possible exception of one applicant, male candidates for State Patrol jobs were not given a similar exam. When Splittgerber told her regular doctor what had happened, she learned "there was and is no legitimate medical purpose for the above described procedure in a pre-employment physical examination, the attorney said. In the fall of 2014, she reported it to her sergeant and to other supervisors, but nothing happened, the lawsuit alleges. When she learned another class of female candidates would have to go through the exam by the same doctor, she went to her captain, who told her an investigation was being conducted. White said Splittgerber was "increasingly anxious and concerned by the command structures inaction, which created a hostile and dangerous workplace for women. She eventually asked Brad Rice, the head of the State Patrol until he was fired by the governor in June, about the status of the investigation Feb. 27. In March, Rice met with the state troopers union's attorney, Gary Young, and told him he wanted to resolve the issue, according to emails attached to the lawsuit. State Patrol legal counsel Wendy Wussow on March 31 told Young the agency planned to allow employees to ask for a medical provider of a specific gender to conduct the pre-employment exam or could have their own doctor do it. "They can have that doctor certify there is no issue with a hernia to avoid having a doctor they are unfamiliar with performing any exam that might make them uncomfortable," Wussow said in the email. Wussow also told the union lawyer that the agency informed the Lincoln doctor it was unhappy with his services and planned to put the contract up for bid before the next recruit class, the email said. Splittgerber sued Rice, Col. David Sankey who retired at the end of 2014 and unnamed others, who she alleges permitted them to cover up the sexual assault of female candidates seeking to become sworn officers of the State Patrol. She is alleging she was subjected to a hostile work environment and is seeking an unspecified amount of damages. State Patrol spokesman Cody Thomas declined to comment on the lawsuit Wednesday, saying the agency doesn't comment on pending litigation. Reached for comment on the allegations Wednesday, Gov. Pete Ricketts' spokesman Taylor Gage issued a statement. "Immediately upon learning of these allegations in June, the Governor instructed his Chief Human Resources Officer to review this matter, which has subsequently resulted in a criminal investigation by the State Patrol," Gage said. Splittgerber also is suing Haudrich, who didn't immediately respond to a request for comment Wednesday. Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle this week scaled back spending cuts she planned last month when the legal fate of the new sweetened beverage tax first was in question, even though a new appeal in the case means the tax's final outcome remains uncertain. Preckwinkle budget director Tanya Anthony notified other county officials that they should cut 5 percent of their spending for the remainder of this year instead of the 10 percent first called for. Advertisement "We are recommending that cost-saving measures be taken to preserve front-line staff," Anthony wrote, suggesting hiring freezes and other spending reductions. She gave officials until Monday to submit revised plans. That means many of the more than 300 county employees who received layoff notices now may be spared the ax, although the county doesn't yet have specifics. "We will not have full layoff figures until we receive revised budgets from departments and separately elected officials next week," said Edward Nelson, spokesman for the Bureau of Finance. Advertisement For some employees, however, the revision in cuts comes too late. For example, 17 prosecutors in the state's attorney's office who are not represented by a union and therefore can be laid off more quickly were let go Tuesday. The employment fate of 22 others in the state's attorney office who belong to a union and were issued layoff notices is "still being evaluated," said Tandra Simonton, a spokeswoman for State's Attorney Kim Foxx. The memo to county officials was sent out late Wednesday, the same day retailers started collecting the controversial penny-an-ounce tax on sugar- and artificially sweetened beverages. The county decided to implement the tax on those drinks after Cook County Circuit Judge Daniel Kubasiak last Friday dismissed a case challenging the tax on constitutional grounds. The county implemented the tax Wednesday even after an appeal in the case was filed Tuesday. Kubasiak originally prevented the county from launching the tax July 1 based on preliminary arguments made by lawyers for the Illinois Retail Merchants Association and several grocers. After that initial hold, amid expectations that the case would drag on, Preckwinkle made her initial call for 10 percent cuts. When she did, county budget officials estimated the county would lose out on $67.5 million in revenue for the remainder of the fiscal year that ends Nov. 30. But now with the tax in effect, county officials are placing this year's shortfall at $25.3 million because the county couldn't start collecting it when it originally had planned, Nelson said. The county also expects less money from the state for the rest of the year because of a new fee for collecting local sales taxes that is expected to cost the county $14 million each year, he added. But the shortfall still has the potential to grow if the First District Appellate Court strikes the tax down. The merchants association and grocers are asking the court to overturn Kubasiak's ruling and halt collection of the tax while the case is being considered, said Tanya Triche Dawood, staff attorney for the association. Even another temporary freeze on the tax could cause whiplash for some stores that planned to start collecting it July 1, saw it paused for about a month, and had to implement it to the chagrin of angry customers on Wednesday. Preckwinkle spokesman Frank Shuftan declined to say what the county would do if the appeals court temporarily blocked collection of the new tax. "We're not in the business of speculating," he said. "We'll be filing a response with the Appellate Court," he said. Advertisement The county, meanwhile, has asked the judge to order the merchants association and grocers to pay damages of $17 million the amount the tax is expected to raise per month. Kubasiak has yet to consider arguments over the damages but expressed initial reluctance to grant the motion. "I can tell you that I am troubled by this, the chilling effect of the government saying that you best not challenge us because if you are proven wrong we will come and get damages from you," he said Tuesday, according a court transcript. hdardick@chicagotribune.com Twitter @ReporterHal KANSAS CITY, Mo. NAACP officials say their recent travel advisory for Missouri is the first that the civil rights group has issued for any state. But the warning follows a recent trend of similar alerts issued by other groups for vulnerable people around the United States. Advertisement The travel advisory, circulated in June by the Missouri NAACP and recently taken up by the national organization, comes after travel alerts began appearing in recent years in light of police shootings in the U.S. and ahead of immigration legislation in Texas and Arizona. The Missouri travel advisory is the first time an NAACP conference has ever made one state the subject of a warning about discrimination and racist attacks, a spokesman for the national organization said Tuesday. Advertisement Missouri became the first because of recent legislation making discrimination lawsuits harder to win, and in response to longtime racial disparities in traffic enforcement and a spate of incidents cited as examples of harm coming to minority residents and visitors, state NAACP leaders say. Those incidents included racial slurs against black students at the University of Missouri and the death earlier this year of 28-year-old Tory Sanders, a black man from Tennessee who took a wrong turn while traveling and died in a southeast Missouri jail even though he hadn't been accused of a crime. "How do you come to Missouri, run out of gas and find yourself dead in a jail cell when you haven't broken any laws?" asked Rod Chapel, the president of the Missouri NAACP. "You have violations of civil rights that are happening to people. They're being pulled over because of their skin color, they're being beaten up or killed," Chapel said. "We are hearing complaints at a rate we haven't heard before." At the same time, Chapel said, the state government is throwing up barriers to people seeking justice in the courts for discrimination. The travel advisory cites legislation signed by Republican Gov. Eric Greitens that will make it more difficult to sue for housing or employment discrimination. Asked about the travel advisory on Friday in Kansas City, Greitens said he hadn't seen it yet. His office did not return messages seeking comment on Tuesday. The new law on discrimination lawsuits takes effect Aug. 28, and Chapel urged people to file any complaints they have before then. Chapel, who was silenced by a Missouri House committee chairman while speaking against the legislation earlier this year, said he was especially alarmed that the University of Missouri System backed an earlier version of the bill. Advertisement The NAACP's advisory also cites the most recent attorney general's report showing black drivers in Missouri were 75 percent more likely to be pulled over than whites. Those reports have been showing the disparity since the attorney general began releasing the data in 2000. In May, the owner of a Blue Springs barbershop found his shop windows stained with racial slurs. The same two words appeared on three separate windows in black paint: "Die (N-word)." Last week, national NAACP delegates voted to adopt the travel advisory, sending it to the national board for ratification in October. "The advisory is for people to be aware, and warn their families and friends and co-workers of what could happen in Missouri," Chapel said. "People need to be ready, whether it's bringing bail money with them, or letting relatives know they are traveling through the state." Travel advisories Traditionally, travel advisories come from the U.S. State Department to warn citizens of current dangers in all corners of the world. The department this year has issued more than 40 advisories alerting travelers to political instability, violence and hurricanes in various countries. Advertisement While the Missouri travel advisory may be a first for the NAACP, other groups have issued similar warnings around the country, often to draw attention to dangers faced by minorities. In 2016, the government of the Bahamas issued a travel advisory for the United States, urging its citizens to be careful when traveling in the U.S. and to exercise caution, especially when interacting with police. The advisory from the Caribbean nation, which is 91 percent black, came soon after fatal shootings of black men by police in Louisiana and Minnesota. In May, the American Civil Liberties Union issued a travel advisory for Texas, warning travelers of "possible violation of their constitutional rights when stopped by law enforcement." The alert came with the passing of a Texas law punishing local law enforcement for not detaining people on immigration violations, which the ACLU said would lead to police asking for immigration papers during routine traffic stops and widespread racial profiling. The ACLU had issued a similar advisory in 2010 when Arizona passed its own immigration enforcement law. Advertisement "We don't issue them lightly," said Edgar Saldivar, a senior staff attorney at the ACLU of Texas. "I think it serves the function of alerting people to what's going on in the states where they're traveling, but also advising people of their rights." Missouri reported 100 hate crimes in 2015, the most recent year statistics were available from the FBI's hate crime reporting program. That put the state at 16th in the country, though not all law enforcement agencies participate in the program. The Kansas City Star has joined a collaborative reporting project with ProPublica and journalists from nearly 40 news organizations across the country to create a national database of hate crimes. To understand the danger to travelers, one need only look at what happened to Sanders, Chapel said. Sanders had left his Nashville home on May 4 to go for a drive but got lost and mistakenly drove into Missouri, where he ran out of gas. He hitchhiked and eventually ended up in the small Mississippi County town of Charleston, where he approached police to ask for help. Sanders reportedly suffered from mental illness and asked police to see a counselor. He told police he had a warrant for his arrest in Nashville. Advertisement Police took Sanders to the jail for a mental evaluation. A mental health professional examined him and said he could be released. The arrest warrant didn't allow for him to be extradited to Tennessee authorities. Police planned to let him go. But for reasons that remain unclear, Sanders continued to experience mental distress and did not want to leave his cell. Another mental health evaluation recommended that Sanders be held for 96 hours. A series of conflicts between Sanders and jail staff followed, during which staff reportedly shocked Sanders with a stun gun at least three times and used pepper spray on him. Sanders collapsed and was taken to a hospital, where he was pronounced dead. Sanders' death is being investigated by the Missouri Highway Patrol. Missouri Attorney General Josh Hawley had previously charged the sheriff responsible for the jail with numerous crimes in separate cases and had him removed from office during the Sanders investigation. The Nebraska State Patrol has for years forced female recruits to submit to invasive, medically unnecessary pelvic exams performed by a male doctor before they can be hired, according to a new federal lawsuit that has prompted a criminal investigation. State Trooper Brienne Splittgerber filed the lawsuit Tuesday against the patrol, the state of Nebraska, two former patrol heads and various other people, accusing them of creating a hostile work environment for women. "Immediately upon learning of these allegations in June, the Governor instructed his Chief Human Resources Officer to review this matter, which has subsequently resulted in a criminal investigation by the State Patrol," Taylor Gage, a spokesman for Gov. Pete Ricketts, said in a written statement Wednesday. State Patrol spokesman Cody Thomas said no NSP recruits have undergone the pelvic exams since December 2016. Thomas did not comment on who was under investigation. The lawsuit seeks unspecified damages, saying women recruits for years have been required to undress from the waist down for a vaginal and rectal examination. The lawsuit says Splittgerber was told the exam was required to check for hernias, but male recruits were generally not required to undress or undergo such invasive exams. "Subjecting the plaintiff and other female trooper candidates to a medically unnecessary and sexually invasive procedure is outrageous conduct which goes beyond all possible bounds of decency and is utterly intolerable in a civilized community," according to the lawsuit, filed by Omaha attorney Tom White. Splittgerber submitted to the exam in 2014 before she was hired by the patrol in 2015, saying in her lawsuit that she was required by a Lincoln doctor hired by the patrol to remove her pants and lie on her back, then her stomach, to be examined. Splittgerber complained to her superiors after being told by her family doctor that there was no legitimate medical purpose for the exam. She was told an investigation was underway, the lawsuit says, but was disturbed that female patrol candidates from subsequent recruitment classes continued to be sent to the same doctor to submit to the exams. Dr. Karen Carlson, an OB-GYN with Nebraska Medicine in Omaha, said it would be highly unusual to conduct a pelvic exam for a possible hernia. Pressing the abdomen with a hand would be standard for such a check, she said. "There would be no reason to look in the genital or anal area," Carlson said. "We might have them loosen their pants, but I wouldn't think there would be any need to disrobe." An attorney for the State Patrol declined to comment Wednesday, citing the pending litigation, and referred questions to the Nebraska Attorney General's office, which will defend the patrol and state against the lawsuit. A spokeswoman for the Attorney General's office would say only that her office is currently reviewing the lawsuit. The lawsuit is the latest of several controversies that have hounded the patrol in recent years. Earlier this year, Ricketts fired Col. Brad Rice, who was the head of the Nebraska State Patrol during most of Splittgerber's tenure with the patrol. His firing came amid an internal review launched after officers were accused of changing their story about a crash that killed a South Dakota driver who was fleeing from a trooper. Rice's firing followed a union survey of state troopers that found widespread dissatisfaction among rank-and-file employees with the agency's management. Ricketts appointed Rice as head of the agency in 2015 despite concerns that Rice was complicit in gender discrimination while he was a captain in the patrol. Rice served on an interview panel that denied several promotions to a female sergeant, who successfully sued for gender discrimination. Rice was also accused of saying that women shouldn't be in law enforcement a comment Rice said was taken out of context. Rhino owner Lynne MacTavish mourns in 2014 after poachers killed two of her rhino cows, including one about to calf. Later an orphaned calf and a bull would die as an indirect result. (Charles Theron) Reporting from KLERKSDORP, South Africa Lynne MacTavish lives in a small wooden house on her South African game reserve with a fierce pet emu, a juvenile ostrich, a flock of geese, two Jack Russell terriers and her grandma's double-barreled shotgun to protect her rhinos. She keeps an ugly statue at her gate: a tokoloshe, or evil spirit in the local traditional belief, installed by a witch doctor to ward off superstitious rhino poachers. Advertisement Every night MacTavish gets up after midnight, grabs her shotgun, clambers into her SUV and patrols for poachers. She still gets flashbacks of the scene she found one windy October morning in 2014 and still cries telling the story. Poachers had killed two rhinos, including a pregnant cow she had known since the day it was born. Two more died as an indirect result of the attack and a calf, days from being born, was lost. Advertisement MacTavish, as tough as the spiky bush on her animal reserve in South Africa's northwest, struggles to cover the cost of security guards. One local poacher has threatened to kill her. South Africa is home to 80% of the world's 25,000 rhinos. Hamstrung by corruption and security lapses, it loses three rhinos a day to poaching, 85% of them in state reserves. Private owners such as MacTavish have become important to the species' survival, nurturing more than 6,500 rhinos on an estimated 330 private game reserves, spanning 5 million acres, that provide a relative degree of safety. But security is costly so much so that many reserves are closing their doors. To help generate revenue, private reserve operators have successfully sued to resume South Africa's limited trade in rhino horns, which had been banned since 2009. The government is finalizing new regulations that will allow foreigners to export up to two horns apiece for personal use. The measure has rocked the wildlife preservation world. Most wildlife advocates say opening the door even to "farmed" rhino horn sales could threaten an international effort to wipe out the trade across the globe. About 2,200 horns a year flow into the illegal trade, mostly poached, and opponents of the new trade rules argue that criminals will find ways to funnel poached horns into the new legal market. "Reopening a domestic trade in rhino horn in South Africa would make it even harder for already overstretched law enforcement agents to tackle rhino crimes," World Wildlife Fund policy manager Colman O'Criodain said in a statement. "There is no domestic demand for rhino horn in South Africa, so it is inconceivable that anyone would buy it, unless they intend to sell it abroad illegally, or they are speculating that international trade will be legalized." South Africa's Private Rhino Owners Assn. argues that a limited legal trade using trimmed horn, without killing the animals is the only safe way to meet demand in China and elsewhere in Asia. Selling horn, which regrows like fingernails, can help cover the huge cost of security and avert extinction, the owners contend. The population is so finely balanced that if either side happens to be wrong, rhinos could die out within a decade. Advertisement When you are looking at an animal youve known its whole life and you see what theyve done to it, its cruelty beyond words. Lynne MacTavish, South African private rhino owner who lost two rhinos to poachers South Africa's poaching crisis is so severe that many private rhino owners trim their animals' horns to deter poachers. But the cost of securing the horn in safe vaults is steep. This rhino belongs to the world's biggest private rhino owner, John Hume. (Robyn Dixon / Los Angeles Times) In the attack on MacTavish's reserve in 2014, poachers crept in at night and shot a female rhino she had named Cheeky Cow. The animal ran for several miles, leading the poachers away from her calf, but the killers backed her and three other females up against a fence line and shot her again, also hitting another young pregnant female, Winnie. They slashed Cheeky Cow's spinal cord with a machete so she couldn't move and while she was alive they smashed into her face with an ax to get her horns. Winnie was also alive when they hacked off her horns. When she found Winnie's body, MacTavish sat in the dirt and wept for half an hour. When Lynne MacTavish found Winnie, a rhino cow killed by poachers just as she was about to give birth, the owner sat in the dirt and wept bitterly for half an hour. Armed with her grandmother's shotgun, she gets up every night to patrol for poachers. (Charles Theron) "When you are looking at an animal you've known its whole life and you see what they've done to it, it's cruelty beyond words," MacTavish said. She knew then she had to dehorn her other rhinos "because you cannot bear the thought of any other rhino going through that horrific cruelty." She called the police to the scene, but they didn't investigate the rhino carcasses, footprints or crime scene. They were drinking beer, she said, and the police captain asked her to light a barbecue fire so as not to waste "good meat." MacTavish eventually called in vets to de-horn all her rhinos; her 32-year-old bull, Patrol, died during the procedure. Advertisement She strongly supports the decision to lift the eight-year ban on legal rhino horn trading in South Africa. "The ban has been disastrous," she said, because "it meant the only way to get horn was to poach it. The price skyrocketed." It created a huge temptation for employees of farms like hers to work with poachers, she added. "By just giving information to a syndicate, they can earn more money than they would in a year. The money is so high and the risk is so low because of our courts and policing. It just spells extinction." :: After her mother was killed by poachers, the surviving calf, Charlie, bonded with a young rhino named Sweet Chilli. But without her mother, she weakened and died. According to owner Lynne MacTavish, Sweet Chilli mourned Charlie, crying and refusing to leave her side. (Lynne MacTavish) At a much larger luxury private game reserve near Kruger National Park, the sign on the door of the security operations center reads: "War Room." Inside, black blinds cover one wall. Security chief Endrie Steyn, an ex-soldier with an air of reflexive suspicion, rolls up the blinds, revealing a board covered with spiderweb maps that include sightings of known poachers, suspects, contacts, photographs, addresses, meetings and car movements. Advertisement The reserve cut its annual poaching cases from 14 to two by installing high-tech equipment: thermal cameras capable of spotting poachers at night, CCTV cameras, sensors, fence alarms, a biometric system to check visitors' fingerprints and a reliable communications network. As two young rhino bulls munch contently by a creek on the reserve, hardened Angolan war veterans, with sunglasses and automatic weapons, cruise in jeeps. The technology was the brainchild of lodge owner Bruce Watson, who requested that The Times not identify the reserve for security reasons. Steyn has assembled a team of former police officers in the community as his eyes and ears, gathering intelligence by listening to conversations at taverns where would-be poachers gather. "Three years ago, we were running from carcass to carcass," adds reserve game warden David Powrie. "We lost a lot of rhinos. It was crisis management. Now we find out what's happening outside, before it happens." Sixty percent of poaching incidents in South Africa occur in Kruger National Park, home to about 9,000 rhinos. Rangers, police, soldiers, state wildlife officers and former officials are frequently caught poaching. Advertisement With funding from the Dutch and British lotteries, the park has installed radar surveillance capable of detecting poachers at night. American billionaire Warren Buffett donated two helicopters. But poaching syndicates are increasingly aggressive, with 2,882 known incursions into the park last year, a 30% increase from 2015. Yet fewer than 50 cases were prosecuted. Of those arrested, only 15% were convicted. :: This white rhino cow and its two calves belong to South African John Hume, who owns 1,500 of them. Rhino cows usually chase away an older calf when the next one is born, but this mother has accepted both. (Robyn Dixon / Los Angeles Times) John Hume, the world's biggest private rhino owner, sits in his SUV with two Jack Russell terriers on his lap, gazing at a rhino cow and her two calves. He owns about 1,500 white rhinos on a tranquil ranch on the wide flat plains of North West province. Poachers have killed 52 of his rhinos, but he has bred more than 1,000 calves in what he calls his private crusade to save rhinos from extinction. He says his ambition is to breed 200 a year, and last year he reached 180. It began as a retirement hobby 25 years ago for the former vacation resort developer, but now it's a $4.8-million-a-year operation, with more than half of that devoted to security. Hume was one of two private reserve owners who filed the lawsuit that successfully overturned the ban on private horn trading in South Africa. He has detractors among wildlife organizations, who see him as an opportunist who now stands to get rich selling horn. But Hume's supporters say his breeding operation has done as much as anyone else to save rhinos from extinction. Advertisement The horns of the rhinos on Hume's preserve are trimmed every two years to deter poachers. After darting a rhino cow, vet Michelle Otto is the first to approach the 2-ton animal to blindfold it, before the animal's horns are trimmed off, a painless process than takes about 10 minutes. Otto has darted rhinos about 7,000 times, more than any other South African vet. (Robyn Dixon / Los Angeles Times) Hume's ranch has a military-style security center nicknamed Afghanistan and a chopper that flies nightly. Only two rhinos have been poached in the last 18 months; neither of them had been de-horned because they were due to be sold to a safari park. Hume suspects that two of his employees, who knew the location of the two rhinos and the security routine, led the poachers to the two animals. (They failed lie detector tests about the attack and fled.) "The Achilles' heel in my project is people. That's what we need: Less people and more high-tech solutions," Hume said. He said he hopes that selling his horn will allow him to buy a $3-million radar system to detect nighttime incursions. Organizations such as the World Wildlife Fund fear that South Africa's domestic rhino horn trade will be a backdoor to international trade because the process of issuing government permits is corrupt. That, along with lax policing in Asia, could result in a flood of horns on the commercial market. Hume plans to auction off rhino horn in South Africa in August and predicts Chinese residents in South Africa will be the main buyers. Although black market prices for poached horn in Asia are reported to be $14,000 to $30,000 a pound, Hume expects to get a fraction of that: $2,700 to $4,500 a pound. "I don't believe we will ever be able to have no security, therefore I believe it's essential to the survival of this project that we sell the horn," he said. "Without selling the rhino horn, no breeding project will succeed." Advertisement A rhino security patrol at Lynne MacTavish's reserve in South Africa's North West province. She gets out of bed after midnight nightly to patrol for poachers. (Lynne MacTavish) Small private owners such as MacTavish cannot afford drones, helicopters, radars or sensors. According to the rhino owners association, at least 70 rhino owners gave up and sold their rhinos between 2009 and 2015. As a result, 500,000 acres of rhino range has been lost. MacTavish clings on, dedicating every spare cent to supporting her rhinos. She brought her children up in a converted ostrich shed before building her spartan little house. She helps make a living by hosting university study groups. By a dam on her property, she has erected a shrine to the rhinos she lost to poachers. At one side lies Cheeky Cow's skull, with its horrific injury. Despite her security detail, she lives in dread of another poaching incident. "You basically put your life on the line for these animals." But in April, it seemed worthwhile. A new calf was born in the middle of spectacular lightning and thunder. She called him Storm. robyn.dixon@latimes.com Advertisement @RobynDixon_LAT The White House directly contradicted President Donald Trump's own attorney on Tuesday. It confirmed that the president was involved in that misleading Donald Trump Jr. statement about his meeting with a Russian lawyer after Trump's attorney, Jay Sekulow, had issued two unmistakable comments asserting Trump wasn't. But this was hardly the first time that the Trump team has appeared to confirm something it previously denied. Below are eight examples. 1. That Trump was involved in Donald Trump Jr.'s Russia statement The denials "I do want to be clear that the president was not involved in the drafting of the statement and did not issue the statement." Sekulow on NBC News on July 16 "The president didn't sign off on anything. ... The president wasn't involved in that." Sekulow on ABC News on July 12 The confirmation "The president weighed in as any father would, based on the limited information that he had." White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders, after The Washington Post reported that Trump had changed the statement at the last minute to be more misleading. 2. That Trump is thinking about pardons The denial "Pardons are not being discussed and are not on the table." Sekulow on July 21 The confirmation 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 3. That Trump decided unilaterally to fire FBI Director James B. Comey The denials "No one from the White House. That was a DOJ decision." Sean Spicer on May 9 Asked whether Trump had already decided to fire Comey and asked Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein and the Justice Department to craft a justification for it: "No." Huckabee Sanders on May 10 "He took the recommendation of his deputy attorney general, who oversees the FBI director. ... He has lost confidence in the FBI director, and he took the recommendation of Rod J. Rosenstein." Kellyane Conway on May 10 The confirmations "I was going to fire Comey ... Oh, I was going to fire regardless of recommendation." Trump on NBC News on May 11 "On May 8, I learned that President Trump intended to remove Director Comey and sought my advice and input." Rosenstein on May 19 4. That Comey was fired because of the Russia investigation The denials "That's not what let me be clear with you that was not what this is about. That's not what this is about." Vice President Pence on May 10 Rosenstein's memo contained no mention of the Russia investigation and instead focused on Comey's unusual announcements about the Hillary Clinton investigation during the 2016 campaign: "I cannot defend the Director's handling of the conclusion of the investigation of Secretary Clinton's emails, and I do not understand his refusal to accept the nearly universal judgment that he was mistaken." Rosenstein on May 9 "Based on my evaluation, and for the reasons expressed by the Deputy Attorney General in the attached memorandum, I have concluded that a fresh start is needed at the leadership of the FBI." Attorney General Jeff Sessions in a letter May 9 The confirmation "And in fact, when I decided to just do it, I said to myself I said, you know, this Russia thing with Trump and Russia is a made-up story." Trump to NBC on May 11 5. That Michael Flynn discussed sanctions with Russia's ambassador The denial "They did not discuss anything having to do with the United States' decision to expel diplomats or impose censure against Russia. ... What I can confirm, having spoken to him about it, is that those conversations that happened to occur around the time that the United States took action to expel diplomats had nothing whatsoever to do with those sanctions." Pence on Jan. 15 The confirmations Asked whether Flynn discussed sanctions related to Russia's alleged 2016 election interference: "Right." Spicer on Feb. 14 "So just to be clear, the acting attorney general informed the White House counsel that they wanted to give, quote, 'a heads-up' to us on some comments that may have seemed in conflict with what he had said to the vice president in particular. ... The issue, pure and simple, came down to a matter of trust, and the president concluded that he no longer had the trust of his national security adviser." Spicer on Feb. 14 "What I would tell you is that the vice president became aware of incomplete information that he'd received on February 9, last Thursday night, based on media accounts." Pence spokesman Marc Lotter 6. That Trump's navy secretary nominee was going to withdraw The denial After CBS's Major Garrett reported that navy secretary nominee Philip Bilden was likely to withdraw, Spicer tweeted on Feb. 18: Those people would be wrong. Just spoke with him and he is 100% commited to being the next SECNAV pending Senate confirm. https://t.co/AfRZfQQCzG Sean Spicer (@PressSec) February 18, 2017 The confirmation "Mr. Philip Bilden has informed me that he has come to the difficult decision to withdraw from consideration to be secretary of the Navy." Defense Secretary Jim Mattis on Feb. 26 7. That Trump shared classified information with Russian leaders in the Oval Office The denial "The story that came out tonight, as reported, is false." national security adviser H.R. McMaster on May 15 The confirmations "It is wholly appropriate for the president to share whatever information he thinks is necessary to advance the security of the American people. That's what he did." McMaster on May 16 As President I wanted to share with Russia (at an openly scheduled W.H. meeting) which I have the absolute right to do, facts pertaining.... Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 16, 2017 8. That intelligence officials briefed Trump on an unconfirmed dossier that suggested Russia had compromising info on him The denial "And [the story] says that they never briefed him on it, that they appended two pages to the bottom of his intelligence report. ... [Trump] has said that he is not aware of that." Kellyanne Conway on Seth Meyers's show on Jan. 10. (The report had said he was, in fact, briefed.) The confirmation "I think [Comey] shared it so that I would because the other three people left, and he showed it to me. ... So anyway, in my opinion, he shared it so that I would think he had it out there." Asked whether it was used as leverage: "Yeah I think so." Trump to the New York Times on July 19 President Donald Trump has seized on a specific strategy to undercut political support for the Affordable Care Act, better known as Obamacare, tweeting: "If a new HealthCare Bill is not approved quickly, BAILOUTS for Insurance Companies and BAILOUTS for Members of Congress will end very soon!" "BAILOUTS for Insurance Companies" certainly sounds like the sort of thing that most Americans would oppose, and, by suggesting that Obamacare necessarily means giving handouts to insurers, Trump and his team clearly hope to shift the tide of popular opinion back in their direction. As is often the case with Twitter-length political rhetoric, though, the issue is more complicated than that. What Trump is referring to is what are called "cost-sharing reduction payments." As explained by the Kaiser Family Foundation's Larry Levitt: "The ACA requires insurers to offer plans with reduced patient cost-sharing (e.g., deductibles and copays) to marketplace enrollees with incomes 100-250% of the poverty level. ... To compensate for the added cost to insurers of the reduced cost-sharing, the federal governments makes payments directly to insurance companies. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates the cost of these payments at $7 billion in fiscal year 2017, rising to $10 billion in 2018 and $16 billion by 2027." In other words, the government makes insurers offer lower-cost policies for which it then reimburses the insurers. This isn't a bailout in the sense that insurers overstepped their bounds and need government support to survive. It's a reimbursement that has been part of the ACA from the outset. Such policies are relatively common with people who've enrolled for insurance coverage in an Obamacare marketplace. In March 2016, 57.3 percent of enrollees had a plan that qualified for cost-sharing. In most states, more than half of enrollees did, with Southern states having an even higher percentage than other places. So what happens if Trump decides to end these payments? In a tweet on Wednesday, Levitt noted that insurers would necessarily have to raise premiums to cover the costs of the policies. The amount of that increase would vary by state, too, but Levitt figures that it would be those same Southern states that ended up seeing premiums increase the most. On the surface, this looks like another example of how political action taken against Obamacare would disproportionately affect Trump's base. But the foot that's being shot isn't Trump's electoral one, it's the government's budgetary one. After all, the point of the Affordable Care Act is that care be affordable. The government would increase tax credits for those with cost-sharing reduction policies to offset the increase in premium prices. And according to Levitt's calculations, that would end up costing the government about $2.3 billion more than if they had paid the insurers at the outset. What's more, Levitt thinks that estimate is probably low. As Trump himself once said, "Nobody knew health care could be so complicated." Even when it seems as straightforward as ending "bailouts" to insurance companies. Sen. David Perdue, center, flanked by Sen. Tom Cotton, left, and President Donald Trump, introduces the Reforming American Immigration for Strong Employment Act at the White House on Aug. 2, 2017. (Zach Gibson / EPA) WASHINGTON President Donald Trump's endorsement of legislation to restrict and reshape legal immigration is based on some shaky assumptions, such as the idea that low-wage green-card holders are flooding in to take jobs from Americans. Trump swung behind a bill from Republican Sens. David Perdue of Georgia and Tom Cotton of Arkansas, calling it "the most significant reform to our immigration system in half a century" if made law. Advertisement A look at statements about the bill Wednesday: TRUMP: "The current, outdated system depresses wages for our poorest workers and puts great pressure on our taxpayers." Advertisement THE FACTS: That doesn't reflect the weight of recent economic research. Many economists dispute a major study, cited by the White House, that claims low-skilled immigrants hurt wages. Harvard economist George Borjas said the arrival of thousands of Cuban refugees in Miami in 1980 led to lower wages for existing low-skilled workers, but red flags have been raised about his methods. Much of the recent research suggests that immigration has no significant effect on job growth for U.S.-born workers in the long run. Most economists also say the benefits of immigration outweigh the costs a point made in a letter to congressional leaders in April that was signed by 1,470 economists, six of them Nobel laureates. Researchers have also found that in many states, the benefits of consumer spending by immigrants and taxes paid outweigh any government costs. In North Carolina, for every dollar spent on health care and education, the economy got $11 back from Hispanic residents in consumer spending and taxes paid a finding that includes immigrants in the country illegally, said James Johnson, a demographer at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. TRUMP: "The RAISE Act prevents new migrants and new immigrants from collecting welfare, and protects U.S. workers from being displaced. And that's a very big thing. They're not going to come in and just immediately go and collect welfare. " PERDUE: "Over 50 percent of our households of legal immigrants today participate in our social welfare system." THE FACTS: Over 50 percent is a stretch unless you define welfare in its broadest terms. Advertisement About 58 percent of immigrant families with children have used "any welfare," compared with 42 percent of U.S.-born families with children, according to the National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine. That includes even subsidized or free lunches offered generally in low-income schools, not specifically to people who have applied for assistance. As for the food-stamp program known as SNAP, 27 percent of children of immigrants have received such benefits, versus 25 percent of those with U.S.-born parents, according to a Migration Policy Institute analysis of the 2015 American Community Survey. The National Academies saw little difference between immigrant and non-immigrant families with children when it comes to cash welfare assistance. About 6 percent of families in both groups received such payments. TRUMP: "For decades, the United States ... has operated a very low-skilled immigration system, issuing record numbers of green cards to low-wage immigrants." THE FACTS: He misrepresented who many immigrants are. Immigrants are increasingly better educated than people born in the United States. This makes them more likely to earn decent incomes and less likely over time to rely on public assistance. Advertisement The Pew Research Center said in 2015 that 41 percent of immigrants who had arrived in the past five years held a college degree, much higher than the 30 percent of non-immigrants in the United States. And 18 percent held an advanced degree, also much higher than the U.S. average. The median household income headed by someone with at least a college degree was $94,934 in 2015, well above the national median of $58,044, according to the Census Bureau. I won't be joining the #NoConfederate protest, although I entirely understand what the Twittersphere is worried about. Social media exploded Sunday night with the hashtag, which was a trending topic both domestically and internationally. The social media campaign is a protest against "Confederate," the working title of HBO's planned alternate-reality show in which the Civil War came out the other way, and slavery remains legal in the Confederate States of America. The protest was timed to peak during HBO's broadcast of "Game of Thrones" because "Confederate" is the brainchild of David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, who created "Thrones" for television. The social media campaign is the brainchild of April Reign, creator of the #OscarsSoWhite hashtag, who has made her intentions unambiguous: "Our objective is for HBO to cancel this idea and spend no more money on it." Those who have joined the protest contend that the show may be traumatizing, and that the very concept cuts too close to reality. Advertisement As a writer, I could never endorse an effort to kill a project before it is begun. But in our racially fraught times, it's not hard to see where the fears come from. Like most African Americans, I am a descendant of the South's captive labor force. My great-great grandfather escaped three times from enslavement in Fauquier County, Virginia, and three times was nabbed by the slave catchers. On his third try he made it as far as Erie, Pennsylvania, a terminus of the Underground Railroad, before being dragged back to captivity. Years later, having bought his way to Canada, he was involved in the planning of John Brown's violent raid on Harpers Ferry, and nearly went along -- which would have led to his being hanged alongside Brown, as one of his friends was. I would hardly want to relive the family history every week. But given the remarkable, imaginative world Benioff and Weiss built for "Game of Thrones," I am more than willing to give the show a chance. The alternative history genre exists precisely to upset our expectations, to force us to re-evaluate our own era by appreciating how many twists and turns were necessary to get us here. In Amazon's "The Man in the High Castle" and Hulu's "The Handmaid's Tale," we have seen how powerfully frightening dystopias can move us when the narrative drama and the richness of characters are crafted with care -- both of which are signal accomplishments of "Game of Thrones." Advertisement The Civil War has long exercised an understandable attraction for the authors of speculative fiction. No episode in the nation's history did more to shape the nation's present. And the challenges to the way things worked out are genuine. Suppose Robert E. Lee had made better decisions at Gettysburg, won the battle and cut off Washington from the rest of the North? Suppose the rebel garrisons in Vicksburg and Atlanta had held out a few months longer than they did, and the peaceably minded George McClellan had defeated Abraham Lincoln in the 1864 presidential election? These are not merely details that tantalize those of us who continue to be fascinated by the era. They are challenges to our hindsight bias, our unspoken assumption that because the Union won the war its victory was inevitable. All of which is to say that although I sympathize with those who are upset, I would rather give Benioff and Weiss a chance to show what they can do. As a Civil War buff who recently taught a course on the law of slavery, and as an avid consumer of alternative history (and an occasional creator of it), I would, however, like to offer some concrete advice. Here are five suggestions: (1) The economy of the Confederacy must be plausible. Many professional economists doubt that slavery was a sustainable institution. Rather than simply offering a 21st-century version of the practices with which we are familiar, the show will have to portray an evolved version that comports with changing labor markets and modern technology. So, for example, we should see Southern blacks who are enslaved and yet also work in IT, in finance and so forth. One way the slaveocracy created incentives for its captives to work hard was by allowing them to earn money on the side. It's hard to see how the system could have survived for another 150 years without this device. (2) The history must be plausible too. Would there have been a Northern civil rights movement? How would this have resounded in the Confederacy? Similarly, the show will have to account for World War II, which the U.S. could not possibly have fought without the South. Different alternate histories have handled the question in different ways. A Hitler victory would slop over into "Man in the High Castle" territory. A Hitler defeat would be unpersuasive. This will be a tough nut to crack. (3) The social structure must also be plausible. Don't settle for yet another dystopian tale full of jackbooted thugs. No pure police state has survived so long. The Confederacy must have a believable ideology that could survive into the internet age without causing a massive rebellion among the young. (Will the South have an LBGTQ movement?) There will have to be a free black community, and if slaves are wealth, then some of them must be slave owners. (4) Resist the temptation to leap for the cheap comparisons to present-day politics. In "Thrones" such allusions have been so subtle as to be contestable. Keep that model. And bear in mind that during the era of Jim Crow, many Southern racists were also big progressives. (Franklin Roosevelt's landslides were mostly white landslides.) Try to draw a model of Confederate politics that includes pro-slavery liberals. (5) Cut the rape and torture. The big blemish on an otherwise masterful run of "Game of Thrones" has been the amount of screen time spent on needlessly long and explicit scenes of women being abused and prisoners being bloodied in various sadistic ways. A little of this goes a long way. And in the particular case of a show that purports to tell us what a slave society would be like today, explicit and bloody detail will certainly set off fresh rounds of protest. Surprises are fine; killing off beloved characters is fine (it's what prestige television nowadays does); but, please, fellas, cut down on the rape. Yes, the slave system presumed the sexual availability of black women to their masters. But it is hard to believe that the women's movement would somehow have skipped the Confederacy, or that simple public relations would not demand a different arrangement. This will be another tough needle for the showrunners to thread. But they're going to have to find a way. Advertisement If "Confederate" can avoid these and other pitfalls, the show might wind up being a powerful addition to this Peak TV era. HBO has expressed its faith that the writers "will approach the subject with care and sensitivity," and its hope that critics "will reserve judgment until there is something to see." That's certainly my plan. I do understand the protests, but I will confess that I'm rather looking forward to what Benioff and Weiss come up with. I'll judge it when I see it. Carter is a Bloomberg View columnist. He is a professor of law at Yale University and was a clerk to U.S. Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall. His novels include "The Emperor of Ocean Park" and "Back Channel," and his nonfiction includes "Civility" and "Integrity." A memorial for Nikia Betts, 27, sits in an alley, on Sunday, July 30, 2017, where she was shot to death in a shooting that also injured her 4-year-old son on the 5200 block of West Kamerling Avenue in the North Austin neighborhood of Chicago. (Alexandra Wimley / Chicago Tribune) Every day, an average of 19 children ages 17 or younger are killed or injured in shootings in the U.S., according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It's a statistic Chicago contributes to with infuriating regularity. Elijah Johnson was 4 when he was walking last Friday with his mother, Nikia Betts, 28, in the North Austin neighborhood on the West Side. Gunshots rang out. A bullet tore through Elijah's left forearm. Another grazed his right leg. As he ran, his mother lay on the ground, fatally shot in the head. Then came questions for Elijah from the police. What did the gunman look like? Elijah remembered he had tattoos on his face and arms, and that he fired while he was in a car. Advertisement Relatives say Elijah believes his mother is with Jesus now. But as years go by, how will he process what happened? How many nightmares will he have of that afternoon walk stopped by bullets? How will he cope with every future July 28? Children on the West and South sides are accustomed to careening from breezy moments on playgrounds and porches to terror-filled seconds as they duck for cover at the crack of a gunshot. What many kids witness at an early age, most Chicagoans don't witness in their lifetimes. Advertisement Earlier this summer, two of those kids were shot at Warren Elementary School in the South Side's Pill Hill neighborhood, young girls struck by bullets as they made water balloons at an end-of-the-school-year picnic. One girl, 13, was hit in her right hand. The other, 7, was struck in her right thigh. The attackers evidently belonged to a gang. According to prosecutors, they were shooting at what they thought were rival gang members. The girls were, as this city has seen far too many times, simply bystanders amid a hail of bullets, with nowhere to turn. "We didn't stand a chance," the older girl later told her father. Afterward, there was the familiar mix of fury and defensiveness from city leaders. "This makes me sick that kids are having an end-of-the-year picnic, and they have to get shot at," said Chicago police Superintendent Eddie Johnson. Chicago Public Schools CEO Forrest Claypool reminded the city that "there has not been a shooting incident involving a student at a Chicago public school in decades. This was a highly unusual situation." In the context of shots fired in a school setting, yes, this was unusual. In the context of bullets flying in a South Side neighborhood where children are playing, no, not unusual at all. What will these children remember from their childhoods? How will those memories manifest themselves? In flashbacks, in withdrawal, or worse? "Psychological resilience is developed with life experiences," clinical psychologist and Loyola University Chicago criminology professor Arthur Lurigio tells us. "Kids don't have that because they haven't lived long enough to develop that ability to cope. So kids are especially affected." Of course, eradicating the seeds of violence the joblessness, the disinvestment, the prevalence of guns, the hopelessness that leads to gang membership should be a consuming mission that Chicago never abandons. In the meantime, though, children who've known muzzle flashes and exit wounds need care and healing. We wish we knew that Elijah and all the others someday will be whole again. Join the discussion on Twitter @Trib_Ed_Board and on Facebook. Advertisement Become a subscriber today to support editorial writing like this. Start getting full access to our signature journalism for just 99 cents for the first four weeks. Cook county board president Toni Preckwinkle. The Cook County Democratic Party hears speeches from candidates for state and local offices June 22, 2017 in Chicago. (Nancy Stone / Chicago Tribune) While consumers have been busy rebelling against Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle's soda tax, she has been busy plotting revenge. Preckwinkle assigned her lawyers the task of punishing the group that sued her. According to Crain's Chicago Business, Preckwinkle's lawyers will try to extract a crushing $17 million from the Illinois Retail Merchants Association, a private interest group that represents retail stores. The group had challenged her tax in court, arguing that it was unconstitutionally arbitrary. Advertisement The retailers won a temporary order blocking the tax, but then suffered a loss they're appealing. So the penny-per-ounce tax took effect Wednesday, about a month later than Preckwinkle planned. A county spokesman says Preckwinkle believes the merchants association should pay the costs of her court fight and revenue the county couldn't collect. But really, the message is: Don't dare to challenge her, not even through the judicial system the branch of government in a democracy that, among other things, gives citizens a way to challenge heavy-handed governments. Don't dare. Advertisement Preckwinkle can deploy the taxpayer dollars to defend in the courts a possibly unconstitutional tax that many consumers are rejecting. Cook County residents understand that Preckwinkle tried to play them for chumps by claiming the sweetened beverage tax was for the public's health. No, it's for the politicians' revenues. From Wilmette to Calumet City, residents have been waking up. If only Preckwinkle understood the unrest. People resent public officials, unable to control their spending, exploiting the simplest of pleasures. A soda from the convenience store. A coffee with fancy whipped cream. Preckwinkle didn't get the anger a few months ago when taxpayers absorbed what was about to happen. By siccing county lawyers on merchants stuck with collecting her tax, she shows she still doesn't get the anger now. Join the discussion on Twitter @Trib_Ed_Board and on Facebook. Become a subscriber today to support editorial writing like this. Start getting full access to our signature journalism for just 99 cents for the first four weeks. Donald Trump had his worst day since he was elected president -- we'll just call it Friday -- and his worst week since the last one. Things can only get worser and worser, as the Bard would permit me to say. Let's start with the vote-a-rama and the "skinny repeal," which puts me in mind of a state fair ride and placing an order at Starbucks. I'd like a skinny repeal, please -- venti, with mocha. As all know by now, Sen. John McCain didn't get the skinny on repeal and shocked the chamber by voting no with a thumbs-down. Not even with a Republican majority could Trump dump Obamacare in its slimmest version yet. McCain, who postponed treatment for aggressive brain cancer and flew to Washington to cast his vote, joined fellow Republicans Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan Collins of Maine, as well as all the Democratic members, to put an end to any real hope of repeal this year, much less replace. In most ways, McCain's seemingly last-minute maneuver should have surprised no one. Always the maverick, McCain, who has defied death before, is no one's wingman. If he thought this vote might be his last stand in the arena, he would make it worthwhile and memorable. Next, we visit El Salvador, where, strangely, we find Attorney General Jeff Sessions. We know Trump wants to get rid of Sessions, but sending him into the maw of the beastly MS-13 gang seems excessively aggressive even for this president. While poor Sessions was practicing Spanish for "I have nothing against tattoos, but seriously?" Trump was making a play in Ohio for tighter immigration by focusing on the gang's murderous record. And, lest we ignore the gold coin Trump magically pulled from his ear, the president randomly ordered transgender people out of the military. What, no women bleeding this week? Health care, schmealth care, in other words. As buffer to the inevitable, Trump made sure to create a little sidebar drama -- expelling thugs and transgender people, rooting out leakers and traitors, and threatening to fire anyone who says Russia in his presence. So many shiny objects, so few left to fool. A few Trump loyalists may wait for the last lifeboat, but it's only a matter of time before this administration capsizes, titanically. Trump's first-year agenda is DOA along with health care reform. Going after Sessions has hurt him with conservatives. His chaotic White House operation is a constant reminder that no one's in charge. The cumulative effect of all of these affronts to normalcy, decorum and democracy is to reveal the profile of a deadly iceberg off the ship of state's bow. Light shifts to a small lifeboat off in the distance. Rowing slowly is an old man whose posture betrays a straight spine despite obvious injury to his arms and shoulders. A smile creases his face as moonlight catches a twinkle in his eye. A deep scar above it imitates a wryly arched brow. He chuckles at the memory of Trump saying he was a war hero only because he was captured and turns to make yet another final gesture. This time, he doesn't use his thumb. Illinois Speaker of the House Michael Madigan, D-Chicago, listens during the overtime session at the state Capitol, Sunday, July 2, 2017, in Springfield, Ill. (Justin L. Fowler / AP) It wasn't surprising when Democratic state Rep. Scott Drury of Highwood issued a blistering news release Monday attacking veteran Democratic House Speaker Michael Madigan, calling him out for "failed policies and leadership" and dubbing him "Illinois' own Dr. Frankenstein." Drury's on the outs with Madigan, having crossed him on some key votes. And what slim hope Drury has of prevailing in the crowded Democratic primary for governor next year relies on his ability to set himself apart from his rivals as the one with the most distance from the unpopular but powerful speaker. Advertisement "When Democrats had total control of Illinois, instead of promoting progressive ideas that helped the working class, Madigan promoted structural deficits, unfunded pension liabilities and education inequity," said Drury's release, in part. "Against this backdrop, Democrats lost the 2014 gubernatorial election, as voters searched for anything but more of the same. Madigan is Illinois' own Dr. Frankenstein the man responsible for creating a monster he cannot control." Again, not surprising. But illustrative. In his rant, Drury crisply outlined the challenge that will confront whichever Democrat ultimately faces incumbent Republican Bruce Rauner in 15 months: How much, if at all, do you defend the legacy of Mike Madigan? Advertisement Madigan himself is unlikely to be of help. He's a steely technocrat with a charisma deficit who seldom gives interviews and declines to engage the charge that, as House speaker for all but two of the last 34 years, he bears major responsibility for Illinois' worst-in-the-nation pension debt, its lagging business climate and crushing accumulation of bills. "Madigan has commented on the longevity question," his spokesman, Steve Brown, wrote when I sent him Drury's statement and asked for a considered response. After I reminded him that it wasn't longevity that I was interested in but culpability, his clipped answer was "not sure time to dig around." I asked the leading contenders in the Democratic gubernatorial primary about the potential of Madigan to be the albatross around their necks and how they'd respond to Drury's broadside. State Sen. Daniel Biss of Evanston: "Mike Madigan is part of the problem," he said in a phone interview. "But calling people names is a waste of time and counterproductive. We have a system that doesn't work and is keeping a lot of people locked out, and making this campaign about replacing one person and not replacing the system is a recipe for failure." Chicago Ald. Ameya Pawar, 47th: "The idea that one person is responsible for the state's problems ignores how both sides have contributed to them, and it does Bruce Rauner a great favor," he said in a phone interview. "Leaders of both parties haven't been willing to raise the money to pay for the services people say they want. They haven't been willing to tell voters that we live in a very wealthy state with a very regressive tax system." Businessman Chris Kennedy: "It's not my job to defend Mike Madigan," he said, also in a phone interview. "There's plenty of blame to go around. Rauner has fabricated the fiction that if it weren't for Madigan, we'd have a balanced budget, our credit rating would improve and all our problems would be solved. But speakers don't lead states, governors do. And ours has lacked strong governors with a strong vision." Kennedy renewed his charge that Madigan's role as a prominent property tax appeals lawyer is in conflict with his role as speaker, and he said he expects to be "oppositional" with Madigan during the primary season. Billionaire investor and entrepreneur J.B. Pritzker, thought to be Madigan's favored candidate, didn't respond to my numerous requests for comment. Advertisement (Update: Pritzker campaign spokeswoman Galia Slayen sent this quote Friday morning: J.B. is focused on holding Bruce Rauner accountable for the damage he has done across this state and for his failed leadership. As noted yesterday, J.B. believes the Illinois Democratic Party has improvements to make and he will lead those efforts as governor.) I certainly understand the political impulse to dance around or avoid altogether a confrontation with the legacy of the most powerful official in the General Assembly and the chairman of the Illinois Democratic Party. One person who embraced the challenge was House Deputy Majority Leader Lou Lang, who is not running for governor but provided a strong defense of Madigan's legacy. He argued that Madigan has "advanced investments that have directly benefited working families, reformed Illinois ethics and campaign finance laws and approved far-reaching social changes." I've published his response in full at chicagotribune.com/zorn. The challenge to the candidates won't go away. Rauner hasn't accomplished much in office, but he has succeeded in turning Madigan's name to mud with a virtually nonstop campaign of invective to which Madigan has barely responded. It's pretty clear that Rauner's re-election strategy will be trying to persuade voters that, feckless as he may be, at least he's a better choice than the guy from the party of Madigan. Drury has done the field a favor. With colorful spleen he's provided an early reminder that Illinois Democrats must look back with clear eyes before they can plausibly look ahead. They have to show an understanding of what's gone wrong over the decades, not just the last several years, and also explain how they plan to work with the dreaded speaker to set them right. Advertisement Anything less will just be more of the same. ericzorn@gmail.com Twitter @EricZorn For my Friday, Aug. 4, 2017 column, I reached out to the leading Democratic gubernatorial candidates to ask for their responses to Democratic state Rep. Scott Drury's recent blast at veteran Democratic House Speaker Michael Madigan. I also reached out to House Deputy Majority Leader Lou Lang of Skokie, who is not a candidate for governor but a top Madigan ally. I didn't have room in the column for his reponse, which was by far the most robust. Here it is in full: "On Mike Madigan's watch, Illinois has advanced investments that have directly benefited working families; reformed Illinois ethics and campaign finance laws; and approved far-reaching social changes applauded by progressives. "After Rod Blagojevich's impeachment, the legislature approved in 2011 a broad array of ethics reforms, including: increased transparency by limiting campaign contributions to legislative candidates and dramatically expanding online reporting of contributions and candidate financial reports; required lobbyists to disclose any 'gifts' they give to lawmakers, such as dinners, lunches, cocktails, books, plaques, etc.; created a new procurement process for goods and services that restricts contact companies seeking business with the state can have with agency staff and is overseen by independent Chief Procurement Officers confirmed by the Illinois Senate; established the Illinois Executive Ethics Commission to oversee investigations of state employees. "A 2009 capital program invested $31 billion in a job recovery program to rebuild roads, bridges, water systems, railroads, airports, and schools, a program which repaired 4,800 miles of roads and 500 bridges and which created hundreds of thousands of jobs. The 2011-12 Mc Pier labor-management reforms rescued Chicago's trade show industry, generating approximately $1.7 billion annually in economic activity while the conventions and trade shows support more than 15,000 jobs. The 2016 Exelon nuclear reactor rescue plan will save 4,200 direct and indirect jobs, including 900 workers at Quad Cities and 700 at Clinton. "On social progressive issues, Illinois has approved a bi-partisan plan to provide drivers licenses to undocumented immigrants; abolished the death penalty; adopted marriage equality; and in this spring the legislature approved legislation to protect a women's right to choose in Illinois if the Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade. "All on Mike Madigan's watch. "Since memory fades quickly even when it comes to recent history, I would also helpfully point out a few facts. The 2011 temporary tax increase addressed the budget's 'structural imbalance' and reduced unpaid bills from $9 billion to $3.9 billion over four years while making full pension payments. The permanent increase approved this year imposes a long-term 'structural balance' to the budget. "As you may recall, Madigan brokered the 2013 pension reform deal, approved by the legislature and signed by Pat Quinn, that sought to save taxpayers $160 billion in pension costs over 30 years, mixing benefit reductions and new funding. As you know, the Supreme Court struck down the law, but Madigan led the negotiations with the other leaders to strike the deal. Advertisement "Moreover, SB1, vetoed by Rauner, addresses statewide school funding inequities. And SB1, I remind you, comes on the heels of the 2011 bi-partisan school reform law, SB 7, (backed by then citizen Bruce Rauner) that reformed teacher tenure and layoffs, making them contingent on student achievement and providing school districts the ability to fired tenured teachers deemed non-performing based on student performance. "All on Madigan's watch. Advertisement "For Drury or anyone to argue that the big issues facing Illinois went ignored or unaddressed on Madigan's watch is shallow and absurd." Strong to severe thunderstorms will precede and accompany an eastward-moving cold front as it sweeps through northern Illinois into northwest Indiana Thursday afternoon/evening. The strongest storms could produce damaging winds, large hail, vivid lightning and localized flooding. Cold Canadian-source high pressure will follow, the center briefly settling into our area Friday before moving east Saturday. Friday's high temperatures will struggle to reach the 70-degree mark, falling short in many locations and very representative of early October, especially to the north and along the Lake Michigan shoreline. Advertisement Low pressure will bring a period of cloudiness/showers and thunderstorms Sunday into Monday, as temperatures stay below normal the first part of next week. Head to the "Wizard of Oz" Festival in Tinley Park this weekend. (Warner Home Video / HANDOUT) Do you have enough courage to venture outside of the city this weekend? Enough heart? Enough brains? OK, we'll stop, but seriously, the "Wizard of Oz" Festival is the most exciting thing to hit town since that fateful Kansas twister. The "Wizard of Oz" Festival, which originated in Chesterton, Ind. in 1982, is making its way to the Chicagoland area in Tinley Park. The festival will run from Friday, Aug. 4 to Sunday, Aug. 6. Advertisement Throughout the three days, "Wizard of Oz" themed activities, including character shows, crafts, readings and a costume contest will be aplenty. Attractions will include a recreated yellow brick road, inflatables, hay rides, duck races, a petting zoo, corn cannons, a corn box (think: a giant sandbox but with corn), a zip-line and a cow train. "Wizard of Oz" characters will also be available for photos. While at the fest, you can compete in an "Over the Rainbow" or "King of the Forest" singing contest, a witch-cackling contest and a pie eating contest. Advertisement Speakers throughout the fest include John Fricke, a "Wizard of Oz" and Judy Garland historian, film critic Ryan Jay, Emma Ridley, who acted in the live-action sequel to the "Wizard of Oz" and Mary Ellen St. Aubin, who married a "munchkin" from the film. Don't fall asleep in the poppy fields and miss out on this unique festival. Tickets are $10 at the door. For more information on the schedule of events visit midwestozfest.com. @AudreyGorden | agorden@redeyechicago.com Make the most of your weekend with fests ranging from the extravagant with a four-day Lollapalooza to the niche with a festival celebrating the community of Midwest lowrider owners. Lollapalooza Advertisement When: Aug. 3-6 Where: Grant Park Advertisement How much: $650+ The skinny: The four-day Lollapalooza extravaganza is back. General admission tickets are now sold out, but VIP and Platinum options are still available if you're ready to splurge. Buy a weekend-long pass if you dare, or choose your favorite day. We recommend Saturday, when Chicago favorite Chance the Rapper headlines. Follow all of RedEye's coverage here. Black Harvest Film Festival When: Aug. 5-31 Where: The Loop How much: $30-$55 The skinny: Spend the entire month of August admiring work that captures the African-American, Black African and African diasporic experience, hosted by the Siskel Film Center. Jeff Fest Advertisement When: Aug. 4-6 Where: Jefferson Park How much: $5 per person The skinny: Hop on the Blue Line to celebrate all Jefferson Park has to offer. Enjoy wine tasting, grub and performances from Chicago's School of Rock and Sixteen Candles. Edge Fest When: Aug. 5-6 Advertisement Where: Edgewater How much: $5 The skinny: Head to the top of the Red Line for Edge Fest, a celebration of the Edgewater neighborhood just off of the Thorndale CTA stop. The highlight of the weekend will be the pet parade on the morning of Saturday, Aug. 5, starting at 11 a.m. Slow & Low Community Lowrider Festival When: Aug. 6 Where: Pilsen Advertisement How much: $5 The skinny: Part of the Chicago Lowrider Preservation Project, the Slow & Low Community Lowrider Festival goes beyond just an "auto show" and seeks to celebrate the culture of lowrider classic cars and the custom work and craftsmanship that goes into each ride. Rogers Pork Barbecue, Arts and Music Festival When: Aug. 5 Where: Rogers Park How much: Free Advertisement The skinny: If you missed Chicago's other barbecue fests so far this summer, take a trip to Rogers Park for the Rogers Pork Barbecue, Arts and Music Festival on Saturday, hosted by R Public House. More than 40 artists, shops and food vendors will be on hand for your perusal. @shelbielbostedt | sbostedt@redeyechicago.com Expand Autoplay Image 1 of 60 Glenwood Avenue Arts Fest: Aug. 18-20 Want even more fests? Check out our ultimate guide to 135+ Chicago summer festivals. In the last few years, "dad rock" has been used as pejorative shorthand for critics to dismiss bands or music of a certain ilk. Such music is usually plaintive, nostalgic, seemingly simplistic, maudlin or sometimes just fringe complex and weird. Classically, Steely Dan, Springsteen, solo early Paul McCartney, Crosby, Stills & Nash and other artists have been hit with the phrase. Lately, Wilco, Bon Iver, Blitzen Trapper and Mumford & Sons have been dubbed modern dad rock. Say what you will, but these bands rule. Advertisement Yeah, I'm a dad. I heard "Maybe I'm Amazed" when I was 10 and didn't know what love was. But, I sure thought I did after I heard Macca dig deep into his lungs. I wanted to be a captain of a ghost ship when I first listened to Joel's "The Downeaster 'Alexa.'" I was probably 12. I unwittingly loved dad rock when I was a kid, and I love it, wittingly, now. I thought of this because I've been a food critic for almost 12 years, and while I'm not super old yet, I'm old enough to remember the younger version of me who stalked fancy prix-fixe restaurants like The French Laundry or Alinea like some people go on tour with Phish. I was fixated on food that was complex, artistic and technique-obsessed. I still love that stuff, much like I love Radiohead's "Kid A," which is decidedly not dad rock. Advertisement In the last few years, though, that's just not how I eat on the regular anymore. What I yearn for more is perfectly executed simplicitycacio e pepe pasta or roast chicken with a crisp skin bewitched to a beautiful brown. I think I love something I'm now going to calldespite the fact that father fodder has a more alliterative qualitydad food. Dad food is not a construction. It's a real thing. It is what many chefs cook as they mature. Think Paul Kahan's perfect fries soaked in beef tallow or Jason Vincent's shattering onion rings with a side of sticky barbecue ribs at Giant, for example. The restaurant that most recently crystallized for me this idea of dad food is Daisies in Logan Square. The chef: Daisies chef and co-owner Joe Frillman has recently become a dad himself. His 3-month-old cooed in the background while I interviewed him. Frillman actually started to hone his dad food aesthetic working with Chris Pandel back at the now defunct Osteria di Tramonto in 2006, long before fatherhood. He described his approach at Daisies, saying, "You know how Thomas Keller says stuff gets boring after a couple bites. I don't want to serve you huge portions. I want to make you a bunch of small simple pastas that are all awesome and you're going to want to order all of them, and they're small enough that you're going to be able to eat them all." The room: The walls are adorned with beautiful naturalistic watercolors and illustrations of rainbow carrots, turgid morels and striated red onions created by Frillman's sister Carrie. Daisies' dining room looks a little like an art gallery featuring awesome "Gray's Anatomy"-style vivisections of veg. There is also a dad-friendly turntable on the bar top, which happened to have a vinyl copy of Outkast's "Speakerboxxx/The Love Below." The back patiofeaturing industrial plastic tubes filled with string lights, hanging planters and handsome wooden tableshas a backyard Chicago dad vibe. The only thing missing is a fire pit and Dylan on acoustic. This may sound like ironic dismissal, but it's pure reverence. Advertisement The drinks: There are three roses on offer on the Daisies' wine list. When I asked the server to describe them, she described each one with nuance, recommending the 2016 Timbre "Opening Act" California pinot noir rose ($9) which tasted exactly like the strawberries and bright acidity she promised. There are some really fantastic and interesting bottles on this list, including a toasty sparkling blanc de blanc from L. Mawby ($14) of, all places, Michigan. I once met Mawby, who, in addition to making great sparkling wine in the upper part of the Michigan mitten, also once wrote a choose your own adventure-style experimental novel for his college thesis. Mawby is probably the epitome of dad rock winemakers. The food: What's more dad or family-like than partnering with your brother, a farmer, to provide produce for your restaurant? Indeed, many of Joe Frillman's plates include vegetables from Tim Frillman of Frillman Farms in Prairie View, Illinois. "My brother had a corporate job, but we had this land, eight acres, that we rented out to Didier Farms. I told him he should farm it himself and make a go of it. We started buying his stuff at Balena. But then I left and they didn't buy as much of it," Joe Frillman said. "I felt bad. Farming is hard. He works his ass off, and I kind of screwed him. Part of the reason I wanted to start Daisies was so we could use his great stuff." Nepotism doesn't always have a happy ending, but at Daisies it pays off. The planks of zucchini on one plate did not taste of water and air like most squash, but were grassy and herbaceous, floating above the bright and spicy acidity of Calabrian chiles and creamy funk of Gran Mugello cheese ($11). Although I enjoyed the dish, this was also one of the few missteps of the night as the zucchini had been overcooked on the grill and was a little mushy. And, what could be more dad-like than onion dip ($6)? You know your parents put out a bowl of Lipton French onion dip with Ruffles every New Year's Eve. My friend Harold and I were recently lamenting how every from scratch version of onion dip is never better than Lipton's. Frillman's version might be the exception, featuring not salty beef bouillon notes like Lipton, but the bright tang of sour cream and a caramelized Vidalia onion perfume. And, while I find Ruffles to be the perfect chip, Frillman's house fried thin waffle-cut chips (the technical term for this cut is gaufrettebut that sounds more like a bad French mime) served with the dip had me wishing I could mow my way through another bowl of them long after the dip was gone. Tender leeks splayed in creamy mustard hollandaise ($10) had a splendid imitation bacon bit-like crunch, courtesy of toasted and crumbled Publican bakery rye bread. The leeks could have used a touch more salt, but this was the kind of vegetable-centric dish that makes a carnivore believe they could happily renounce meat. Advertisement Oh, and the pasta! Unlike so many restaurants that use fancy extruders to make technically perfect spaghetti, all of Frillman's noodles are made by hand. They ooze the custard of golden yolks. Even pierogi ($18), which is technically more of a dumpling than pasta, here has a pillowy noodle-like quality; a softness mitigated by a crumble of lemon-butter-sauteed baguette crumbs. Paired with tender clams swimming in Moody Tongue lemon saison beer broth, it's like a spectacular riff on moules frites with the clams as mussels and the pierogi as potato proxy for fries. Pasta at Daisies restaurant in Chicago's Logan Square neighborhood. (Neil Burger / Handout) You will want to order all the pastas, including stracci ($18), tiny napkin-like noodle shreds strewn with perfectly toothsome peas and lamb as tender as Justin Vernon of Bon Iver's heart. But the one you will really want is the off-menu "kids noodle" tajarin ($7, kind of like sharp-cornered spaghetti) tossed with butter and Parmesan. I brought my young son on this trip, a son who still only eats butter, cheese and pasta, exclusively. He is not a vegetarian, but a pastatarian. He declared it the best pasta he has ever had. He was not wrong. Eat. Watch. Do. Weekly What to eat. What to watch. What you need to live your best life ... now. > There is also a cornflake chicken ($17), which is sort of like a Japanese chicken katsu or a German schnitzel, where the cornflake crust acts like a panko breading and makes for a superior and epic chicken nugget. The chicken comes with minted rhubarb compote that has sweetness and acidity, a role often played by honey mustard dip at your local franchise. Frillman could probably do a successful truck serving these chicken planks to drunk people on a late weekend night. The dessert: Everyone knows that with every great dad comes an even greater mom, and Frillman makes a tribute to his own mother with Nancy's Kahlua cake ($6) topped with strawberry compote. The cake is moist and a satisfying end to the meal, however, I yearned for a touch more coffee essence from the Kahlua. I think it might be better if Frillman splashed it with a little of the booze before service. The bottom line: Daisies is the ultimate in dad foodsimple dishes made great. With no complexity to hide behind, the execution here has to be perfect and the ingredients well-sourced. A few things needed a hint of salt or a touch of something extra, but generally Frillman has succeeded in creating simple, satisfying fare from local produce. He is making some of the best fresh pasta in Chicago right now, and for that he definitely deserves a World's Greatest Dader, Chefmug. Review: Daisies Advertisement 2523 N. Milwaukee Ave. 773-661-1671 Rating: ** 1/2 (out of four) [ Check out more of Michael Nagrant's restaurant reviews here. ] Michael Nagrant is a RedEye freelancer. Reporters visit restaurants unannounced and meals are paid for by RedEye. A lightning-caused fire destroyed a garage in a residential Lockwood neighborhood Tuesday night, also damaging a home on the property and an adjacent shed, according to the Lockwood Fire Department. No one was in the garage at the time of the fire and no injuries resulted, Lockwood Fire Capt. Keith Kober said. He estimated the total damage at more than $62,000. Kober said three engines and about a dozen firefighters were called to 3433 Tigard Ave. at 10:51 p.m., after lightning struck a horse statue on top of the garage. Firefighters were able to get the fire under control within about 30 minutes. Despite numerous strikes, Kober said no other fires were detected in the area during the Tuesday night lightning storm. "We had a lot of reports of grass fires, but nothing that ever developed," he said. Participants take part in a community dinner in downtown Batavia. This years dinner is set for Sunday. ( David Sharos/The Beacon-News ) Batavia MainStreet will host a community dinner Sunday in downtown Batavia. At the event, attendees can dine and mingle with neighbors at one very long table, organizers said. Advertisement Served food is farm to table, with most of the ingredients from Batavia Farmers Market vendors. Wine service is new this year and is part of the ticket price. Advertisement Tickets are $60 and can be purchased at downtownbatavia.com. All funds raised will be donated to the Batavia Interfaith Food Pantry. Last year, $1,200 was donated to the food pantry. Tickets are limited to six per person and only available for those 21 and over. The community dinner is at 4 p.m. on North River Street. Citizens Police Academy accepting applications The Kane County Sheriff's Office is now accepting applications for the fall 2017 Citizens Police Academy. The 10-week course provides citizens the opportunity to learn how policing works in their community and a behind the scenes perspective into many facets of law enforcement. Covered topics include traffic laws, crime prevention, identity theft, scams and fraud, patrol, investigations, corrections, gang identification and more. Each course topic is developed and led by a sheriff's deputy. The course is free and open to Kane County residents who are 18 years old and older and have successfully completed a background check. Advertisement For more information, visit kanesheriff.com. Fall classes will be held from 6 to 8:30 p.m. Tuesdays from Sept. 5 through Nov. 7 at the Kane County Sheriff's Office, 37W755 Route 38, St. Charles. Moonlight tours of historic Plano house Farnsworth House in Plano will host moonlight tours Friday and Saturday. The exclusive tours begin at dusk and return after dark, lasting approximately 90 minutes. Guests will be led along a lighted path with woods on one side and the Fox River on the other. Advertisement Farnsworth House was constructed by Mies van der Rohe in 1951. The house was conceived in 1945 and the model of the house was exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1947. Tickets are $30, or $40 for an interior photo permit. Tickets can be purchased at farnsworthhouse.org. The Moonlight Tours are at 7:30 p.m. Friday and Saturday at Farnsworth House, 14520 River Road in Plano. For information, call 630-552-0052 or email farnsworth@farnsworthhouse.org. 'Ask A Lawyer Day' in Kane County The Kane County Bar Association will conduct its monthly "Ask A Lawyer Day" Aug. 12. On the second Saturday of each month, members of the public are encouraged to call 630-762-1900 between 9 a.m. and noon for a free consultation with a volunteer attorney, according to a press release about the event. Advertisement Last month, callers were helped with legal problems regarding issues in real estate, landlord/tenant, criminal, estates and wills, divorce, child custody, collections, bankruptcy and traffic, according to the release. Online sellers group to meet in Yorkville The next meeting of the Fox Valley eBay & eCommerce Sellers group will be at 7 p.m. Aug. 16 in Yorkville. The event will be an open-mic night to work on members' problems. The Fox Valley eBay & eCommerce Sellers is a group for people currently selling on eBay, Amazon, Etsy and other internet venues who are interested in improving their selling skills, group officials said. For information on the meeting site, contact Sheri at 630-640-7382. Advertisement Got Pulse? Columnist Joy Davis is looking for interesting, quirky and just plain funny stories about people and places in the Fox Valley. Email her at joydavis234@gmail.com. The Writers Voice in Billings was named a recipient of the 2017 Montana Center for the Book Prize by The Montana Center for the Book, a program of Humanities Montana. The prize recognizes programs that offer creative and wide-reaching literary programming, such as family reading groups that promote youth literacy, reading series that encourage active engagement with the literary arts, and high school workshops that support student participation in slam poetry events. Writers Voice was founded in 1991 and has provided hundreds of programs to assist emerging writers in their artistic and professional development, to support accomplished writers, and to challenge the traditional definition of the literary arts while enriching all sectors of the community. Other recipients of the prize are: Wild Rose, on the Northern Cheyenne Indian Reservation; Classics Behind Razor Wire, in Deer Lodge; Plant a SeedREAD!, in Havre; and Cowboy Poetry, in Lewistown. Award-winning programs will each receive $1,000, be featured on the Montana Center for the Book web page, and have their events promoted by Humanities Montana. Prizes will be awarded in person, at events around the state. Pueblo East, Pueblo West football teams knocked out of playoffs Both Pueblo West and Pueblo East high schools had their faced stiff competition Friday night on the road. For the second time in two weeks, western Montana wildland firefighters returned to work on Thursday knowing one of their own died in action. The Hotshot firefighter killed in a tree-felling accident on the Lolo Peak fire Wednesday was 29-year-old Brent M. Witham of Mentone, California, according to the Missoula County Sheriffs Office. Witham was given CPR on the scene of the accident and airlifted to a Missoula hospital, but could not be revived. He was a member of the Vista Grande Hotshot crew based in Idyllwild, California, serving with 374 fellow firefighters in the mountains 10 miles southwest of Lolo. The 6,542-acre, lightning-caused fire continued to burn actively on Thursday after growing about 200 acres overnight. Most of the fire line defense has been arrayed along Lantern Ridge, overlooking the Highway 12 corridor west of Lolo. Mark Struble, the Lolo Peak fires public information officer, said Wednesdays death is something crews know can happen. The U.S. Forest Service even holds drills to prepare for something like this. We call it an incident within an incident, Struble said. You have to refocus after a situation like this. I think were taking it easy on people, letting them know if they need more time to handle the stress and debrief, its all part of the process when things like this happen. But everyone knows this is dangerous work, and even with the right protections and protocols, accidents can happen. Struble said Withams family in California was making memorial arrangements, and he didnt know if a service would also take place in Montana. The Vista Grande Hotshot crew has already returned to their base at the San Bernardino National Forest. The option was out there to stand down for other crews, but I dont know if any did, Struble said. You want your folks to be able to grieve their way, but the fire keeps burning. Hotshot firefighters are among the most highly trained and experienced ground crews in the wildfire force. Working in teams of 20, they exceed the physical fitness and technical skills of most Type I fire crews. Hotshots are typically qualified to use multiple firefighting tools from hand equipment to chainsaws, pumps, engines and communications gear. They often serve as initial attack forces, hiking into remote fire locations or using helicopters for access. Witham's death was the second firefighter fatality in two weeks in western Montana. On July 19, 19-year-old Trenton Johnson of Missoula died when he was struck by a tree while preparing to confront a half-acre fire northeast of Seeley Lake. Falling trees killed 4 percent of the 440 firefighters who died on the job between 1990 and 2014, according to statistics compiled by the National Interagency Fire Center. "As a department, our hearts go out to the Witham family, members of the U.S. Forest Service family, and all wildland firefighters across the nation,'' said sheriff's office spokeswoman Brenda Bassett. Gov. Steve Bullock memorialized Witham on Thursday, asking the public to keep firefighters in their hearts. "Lisa and I send our deepest condolences to the friends, family, and colleagues of Brent Witham," Bullock wrote in an email. "Mr. Witham lost his life protecting the people of Montana and we will remember him for his courage and sacrifice.'' A judge has dismissed a lawsuit filed by the first man in Wyoming to be exonerated of a crime based on DNA evidence. U.S. District Judge Scott Skavdahl ruled the claims brought by Andrew Johnson were similar to those Johnson made in unsuccessful lawsuits before his exoneration. Skavdahl pointed out a case can't be re-litigated once judged on its merits. Johnson served nearly 24 years in prison after being convicted in 1989 for sexually assaulting a woman and burglarizing her home. Decades later, DNA testing found a match for the woman's fiance but not Johnson, who was released in 2013. The Wyoming Tribune Eagle reports Johnson sued the city of Cheyenne and two police officers, alleging the police investigation damaged his life, well-being and ability to get a job. By Gidon Gautel This is Part 1 of a two-part article on Artificial Intelligence (AI) in China. In Part 2, we discuss how AI can optimize your China based operations. On July 20, 2017, Chinas State Council released a development plan for the countrys artificial intelligence (AI) industry. The plan aims for the total market size of AI related industries in China to exceed RMB 1 trillion (around US$150 billion) by 2020. By 2030, the plan aspires to reach 10 times this figure. Claims that China has the rest of the world beat in AI are hyperbolic. Although the country ranks first globally for widely cited AI related papers, 70 percent of these are self-citations, and China is still behind the US and UK in terms of publication influence. In 2017, the number of promising AI startups in China, according to McKinsey, was three. The US saw 39 that year. However, the possibility that China may overtake the US in the near future is looking increasingly likely. Indeed, one of the key goals in the State Councils AI plan is to reach world leading status in AI, and become the worlds AI innovation center by 2030. While total AI financing in the US is seven times that of China, AI-related patents of Chinese companies already outnumber those in America. China is set to vastly increase public spending while recent moves of the current US administration suggest cuts. The State Council plan includes all the key priorities for the healthy development of Chinas AI industry suggested by the McKinsey Global Institute earlier this year. It also promises widespread subsidies, tax breaks, and special AI industry parks. Given these developments, it is natural to explore what opportunities there are for Western AI companies in the Middle Kingdom. In sectors where opportunities exist, companies must think carefully as to whether, and how, they should enter the Chinese market. Western AI companies in China Chinas ambitious AI strategy indicates huge potential for growth in the industry, and many areas of opportunity are already emerging. Christopher Piazza, Product Marketing Manager, PCs and Smart Devices at Lenovo, remarks: The space for AI is very open and full of opportunity, whether Chinese or foreign driven. Both sides have methods in place that push platforms and services forward. Piazza identifies AI driven voice activated platforms, such as Amazons Echo, as an example. Foreign platforms for voice technology are ahead of Asian countries in general, not limited to China, and this is where they can ideally strike out and lead the pack. He continues: In this space, China isnt moving at break-neck speeds and, if anything, is playing catch-up to foreign competitors. RELATED: How China is Becoming a World Leader in Artificial Intelligence Domestic competition in China is already stirring, however. JD, Alibaba, and Xiaomi have all launched their own voice-enabled smart speakers, and domestic startups such as Mobvoi (Chumen Wen Wen) are rolling out voice assistants for use in areas such as driving and navigation. While these are still lagging Western voice assistant services in terms of user satisfaction, one should not underestimate the ability of Chinese firms to catch up to, and surpass, Western standards. Whether Chinese consumers will be interested remains to be seen. Home stereo systems are a novel concept in China, let alone smart speakers. Piazza agrees It is hard to pin down if this will lead to better market adoption as the space intrigues consumers, but hasnt won them completely over or sold them on the idea of a voice controlled home. Chinese vs foreign firms Asked whether current advantages enjoyed by Western AI companies could translate into superior market performance if they were to enter China, Piazza is split. Although foreign AI firms hold certain advantages, tracking the wants of Chinese consumers is challenging. Additionally, government policy for foreign companies is a double-edged sword. Government policy is always a bit tricky to navigate and can, at times, slow or quicken the process, Says Piazza. It is dependent on how seriously China commits to technology services and data acquisition, which is currently looking very promising. All things considered, however, Piazza puts his money on Chinese AI platforms in the long run, Simply because they can consolidate platforms to two or three major players, as opposed to the foreign sector which has quite a bit more, creating separate platforms that sometimes dont operate with each other. Thomas Zhang, Group IT Director at Dezan Shira & Associates points out another advantage for Chinese AI companies: They can find enough sample data and usage scenarios in China due to its huge population base. Even if only one percent of people try a product or service, a company can collect enough data for developing and evaluating their technology. Zhang states, This is a little difficult for foreign companies, especially for those countries with a small population. Zhang also notes, Another advantage is the big base of engineering talent in China. In the field of AI, not only doctors/researchers who play a lead role in AI are needed, but also lots of engineers who know AI well and can apply AI technology to a real product. For the former Zhang says, Most are talent who come from US/Europe after having studied there for years. For the latter, however, it will be China who holds the advantage. How should Western companies proceed? The key for foreign players wanting to crack Chinas market is cooperation. Much like other emerging technologies such as electric vehicles, teaming up with local players is the best, and often only route. While Chinas plan promises tax breaks and subsidies for AI industries, Piazza indicates, [this will be] a driver toward foreign investment into developing further the AI practices that already exist in China. The main objective in all of this is to build up Chinas route to market (RTM) for AI services. It needs to be fostered here and grown locally, a foreign company does not have the capacity to enter here. Pre-Investment, Market Entry Strategy Advisory Services from Dezan Shira & Associates Piazza goes on: If a foreign entity/company wants to operate in China they will have to conform to the local market, there really isnt too much wiggle room, though sparse examples do exist. He states frankly, Foreign companies cannot enter China unless they work with local companies already established in the space, which means setting up local servers, data centers, and offices within the mainland, similar to the steps Google has already been laying out over the past year. Zhangs views align. He reaffirms, The biggest difficulty for foreign companies is how to find the way to collect original data and use it for AI research. Chinas e-commerce market, for example, has been dominated by limited players, so foreign companies would have to cooperate with a local giant. Finally, companies should make themselves aware of restrictions that already exist as barriers to entry, and of any further regulatory changes that may affect their future outlook. No regulation currently exists in China specifically governing the development and sale of AI. However, a mix between existing regulations such as Chinas new Cybersecurity Law, and de facto practices, leaves some sectors difficult to enter for foreign companies. For example, some AI companies may provide platforms for customer services and management. However, state-affiliated entities will prefer to work with local firms in this area due to security reasons, making it practically impossible for foreign firms to sell their products or services to them. An AI future For foreign AI companies, Chinas rising dominance represents a struggle with entrenched local firms for the domestic consumers. Firms should look on the market to identify the most suitable partners with which to form joint ventures. Additionally, they should be searching for announcements of new regulatory incentives or development zones where local policy is favorable for setting up the necessary infrastructure to push into the market. Companies can look back at how foreign players have previously gone about entering Chinese markets for emerging technologies, and search for successful examples. Chinas AI industry, though competitive, presents a huge opportunity for foreign investors if they succeed in market entry. This is Part 1 of a two-part article on Artificial Intelligence (AI) in China. In Part 2, we discuss how AI can optimize your China based operations. About Us China Briefing is published by Asia Briefing, a subsidiary of Dezan Shira & Associates. We produce material for foreign investors throughout Asia, including ASEAN, India, Indonesia, Russia, the Silk Road, and Vietnam. For editorial matters please contact us here, and for a complimentary subscription to our products, please click here. Dezan Shira & Associates is a full service practice in China, providing business intelligence, due diligence, legal, tax, IT, HR, payroll, and advisory services throughout the China and Asian region. For assistance with China business issues or investments into China, please contact us at china@dezshira.com or visit us at www.dezshira.com Dezan Shira & Associates Brochure Dezan Shira & Associates is a pan-Asia, multi-disciplinary professional services firm, providing legal, tax and operational advisory to international corporate investors. Operational throughout China, ASEAN and India, our mission is to guide foreign companies through Asias complex regulatory environment and assist them with all aspects of establishing, maintaining and growing their business operations in the region. This brochure provides an overview of the services and expertise Dezan Shira & Associates can provide. An Introduction to Doing Business in China 2017 This Dezan Shira & Associates 2017 China guide provides a comprehensive background and details of all aspects of setting up and operating an American business in China, including due diligence and compliance issues, IP protection, corporate establishment options, calculating tax liabilities, as well as discussing on-going operational issues such as managing bookkeeping, accounts, banking, HR, Payroll, annual license renewals, audit, FCPA compliance and consolidation with US standards and Head Office reporting. Internal Control in China In this issue of China Briefing magazine, we provide foreign investors with best practices for implementing internal controls in China. We explain what makes Chinas internal control environment distinct, and why China-based operations need to prioritize internal control. We then outline how to execute an internal control review to gauge organizational resiliency and identify gaps in control points, and introduce practical internal controls for day-to-day operations. Finally, we explore why ERP systems are becoming increasingly integral to companies internal control regimes. Dezan Shira & Associates Heilongjiang province is launching a project to encourage more people to use the internet to learn the steadily dwindling languages of some ethnic groups. The first course in the use of a learning platform for the preservation of the Oroqen language and culture in northeastern China concluded recently in Tahe county. The two-day course attracted about 60 representatives, including experts, officials, teachers and Oroqen people. The language is only spoken; it has no written form. There are about 3,900 Oroqen people in Heilongjiang, accounting for 45 percent of all Oroqen people nationwide. Although there are no exact numbers, research indicates that there are "very few people who can speak the Oroqen language", said Liu Jie, who planned the project. "Most people younger than 50 do not speak the language anymore." "Despite government efforts to protect minority languages, these languages are in danger of disappearing due to modernization," said the retired civil servant, who works for the provincial ethnic affairs authority. Starting in June last year, the Heilongjiang Ethnic Affairs Commission began to build an online platform offering free learning materials to those interested in learning the dying ethnic language. After a year's trial run, the platform was officially rolled out in late July. "Through the platform, anyone who registers can obtain free learning sources, including recordings based on the textbook, vocabulary in Chinese and English, and cultural displays," he said. To promote the use of the platform, the commission organized a training course and received positive responses. "It is a platform that can provide accurate and scientific learning methods for those who want to study the language," said Guan Jinfang, 62, a master of Oroqen folk songs, dancing, traditional costumes and paper-cutting, as well as Shaman dancing and costume. "The older people, like me, can speak it fluently," she said. "But the younger generations of Oroqen are becoming similar to the Han people, and few of them can speak the Oroqen language. I hope the Oroqen traditions can be continued generation by generation. "Furthermore, in the internet era, the platform provides easy access to spread the Oroqen language and culture all around the world." Mo Renjie, 21, a junior at Wuhan University of Technology, is an Oroqen from Heilongjiang. He said he is ashamed every time a classmate asks him to speak his ethnic language. "I can only speak several words in Oroqen due to the lack of a language environment and good learning methods," he said. "I registered on the platform the first time I heard about it, and I will introduce the platform to my classmates." Liu, the platform project planner, said more training courses will be organized. In the next stage, his team will expand the platform to include other ethnic minority languages, including Hezhe, Daur, Ewenki, Kirgiz, Xibe. The Mogao Caves have survived 1,650 years of sandstorms and rain only to face their biggest threat yet tourists. Too many tourists put remote caves at risk.[File photo] Record numbers have been visiting the narrow caves carved from a sandstone cliff near Dunhuang in northwest China's Gansu Province. They have driven up temperature, humidity and carbon dioxide levels inside the caves, putting at risk the well-preserved but fragile Buddhist wall paintings inside. "The humidity level inside the caves should be below 62 percent. Increased humidity can accelerate the process of flaking and formation of salt deposits on the murals," said Chen Gangquan, chief of Dunhuang Academy's cave monitoring center. "Such damage is a slow process and is difficult to notice with the eye, but it is irreversible," Chen said. The academy is closely monitoring the temperature, humidity and carbon dioxide levels in all caves open to the public. If certain caves exceed the limits, they will be closed temporarily. The Mogao Caves have set a daily limit of 6,000 reserved tickets, plus an extra 12,000 emergency tickets to cater to the growing number of tourists . The caves have survived this long partly due to their remoteness. The site's Gobi Desert location kept the caves dry and visitor numbers low. Today, however, improved transport and China's growing wealth have fueled a huge boom in domestic tourism. Dunhuang is no longer too far off the beaten track. More than 1.34 million tourists visited in 2016, a rise of 70 percent from 2014. In the 1980s, the figure was around 10,000. The academy expected the number of tourists in July to surpass 350,000, a new high. The 735 caves carved along a cliff are home to a huge collection of Buddhist artwork, including more than 2,000 colored sculptures and 45,000 square meters of frescoes. Guan Yanru, a tour guide with Dunhuang Academy, has only had two days off in the past two months. She talks to visitors for four hours every day. "People can bear the pressure from the tourist overload, but the artwork can't," Guan said. The academy has taken measures to control tourist flow and protect the sculptures and murals. Since 2014, the UNESCO World Heritage Site has controlled the number of tourists during peak season. They are asked to register in advance and watch two 20-minute movies on the history of Dunhuang and the caves in a new exhibition center. Later, they are guided to see caves that are open to the public. The videos have helped reduce hourly visitors from 2,200 people to 1,200 during peak hours, said Li Ping, deputy director with the Mogao Caves administration committee. "It helps relieve the pressure on the caves, and with fewer crowds, visitors can have a better experience," Li said. Experts and officials from Dunhuang Academy and local tourism departments have been traveling to several cities, including Shanghai, to promote low season visits to Mogao, when ticket prices are halved. The efforts have proved effective. Statistics showed a 34 percent growth in tourist numbers from January to April this year compared with 2016. Facing threats of natural erosion and human-induced damage, Dunhuang Academy has been working on a digital archiving project since the 1990s. Digital Dunhuang (e-dunhuang.com) was launched in April last year, offering virtual views of 28 of the Mogao Caves. Behind the online experience is a huge amount of work, said Wu Jian, head of the academy's heritage digitization center. "More than 40,000 photos are needed to digitize just one small cave with 300 square meters of frescoes." "Dunhuang is a shared treasure of mankind," said Yang Xiuqing, secretary-general of the China Dunhuang Grottoes Conservation Research Foundation. "It is our responsibility to share Dunhuang's culture with the world," Yang added. "But we are in a predicament now," Chen said. "We cannot let tourists down since they come great distances. However, if they all swarm into the caves, the site may be harmed." The panda-shaped power plant constructed by Panda Green Energy Group in Shanxi Province. [Xinhua] In a seminar the other day, while in conversation with a few academics, I was asked to explain in one sentence, what is a better strategy in the developing world. I said, infrastructure, not intervention. The logic is simple. Infrastructure is something that we retain, and enhances individual capabilities for growth, whereas intervention is temporary. In simpler terms, the latter is a top-down approach and the former is bottom-up. In light of that, theres an interesting development. Panda Green Energy Group just constructed an unusually-shaped power plant, in Chinas Shanxi Province. The dark crystalline power plant, in the shape of a Panda, cost US$52 million to build, according to Panda Green Energy chief Li Yuan, as quoted by Reuters. The Hong Kong firm is in talks with countries including Australia and Italy for the construction of more such plants. However, the importance of the Shanxi plant lies elsewhere. There are plans for extending the Panda concept along the routes of the new Belt and Road Initiative in future. All of these 100mW power plants are expected to generate 3.2 billion kilowatt-hours (kWh) of energy over a quarter century of operation, providing power to some 10,000 households over that period. One can only imagine how much this will be needed in Central Asia. This provides an important lesson in strategy and history. History, as we know, tends to repeat itself even without us knowing it. It is said that China lacks the soft power of the West. In the era of the global supply chain, soft power is essentially mute. For example, the iPhone might be a product of the West, but without the 75 percent content of Chinese parts, it is redundant. There wont be any production of a phone if the production is undertaken in the West, as the production cost would rise significantly. That said, the power plants in the shape of a panda are a remarkable example of soft power as any. A symbol of energy production using the State symbol of China is a significant development. Historically, there have been two ways to achieve influence and development in the world. One is by conquest. This leads to a change in the top order, a new government. It is the top-down approach. In ancient times, Alexander the Great tried to take that road. The modern manifestation of that is regime change. Yes, of course theres development that happens in that way, but it mostly is a top-down and incremental approach. The reason is simple: In a top down approach, the interests of the new rulers are always paramount, but that tends to hamper development projects. In fact, most such projects essentially end in an influx of further foreign aid, which is squandered through corruption, which leads to further destabilization and then either further intervention, or a mass exodus of people migrating to another country. The other way is to build infrastructure. Historically, there were empires that invested massively in infrastructure. The Roman Empire is a perfect example, and Roman roads and architecture form the backbone of Europe from Britain to Tunisia and on to Turkey. In colonial times Britain took the same approach to empire. Although the colonial, imperial days are gone, the approach of rapid infrastructure building is still the best and valued way. The regimes go away, but the legacy remains. China's larger Belt and Road Initiative is being developed along an historic arc. This initiative aims at making China the leader of external affairs alongside Asia, underscoring 5 trillion dollars of investment in 68 countries including roads, bridges, power plants, gas pipelines, railways, and ports. There will be times when China will need to defend her interests, and accept a security burden across the investment corridor. Amid American isolationism, especially across Central Asia and Asia Minor, we will see more Chinese pandas in the coming years. Infrastructure will prove to be a better alternative than intervention and even invitation. Sumantra Maitra is a columnist with China.org.cn. For more information please visit: http://www.china.org.cn/opinion/SumantraMaitra.htm Opinion articles reflect the views of their authors only, not necessarily those of China.org.cn. Older people are dying on the job at a higher rate than workers overall, even as the rate of workplace fatalities decreases, according to an Associated Press analysis of federal statistics. Wyoming, specifically, ranks second in the nation, both in the rate of workplace fatalities and the rate of older workers dying on the job. In 2015, the fatal accident rate for workers in Wyoming was 11.51 per 100,000 workers. The rate was 18.23 per 100,000 workers ages 55 and older. Only North Dakota had higher rates in both categories. The trend is particularly alarming as baby boomers reject the traditional retirement age of 65 and keep working. The U.S. government estimates that by 2024, older workers will account for 25 percent of the labor market. Getting old and the physical changes associated with it could potentially make a workplace injury into a much more serious injury or a potentially fatal injury, said Ken Scott, an epidemiologist with the Denver Public Health Department. Gerontologists say those changes include gradually worsening vision and hearing impairment, reduced response time, balance issues and chronic medical or muscle or bone problems such as arthritis. *** In 2015, about 35 percent of the fatal workplace accidents involved a worker 55 and older or 1,681 of the 4,836 fatalities reported nationally. William White, 56, was one of them. White fell 25 feet while working at Testa Produce Inc. on Chicagos South Side. He later died of his injuries. I thought it wouldnt happen to him, his son, William White Jr., said in an interview. Accidents happen. He just made the wrong move. The AP analysis showed that the workplace fatality rate for all workers and for those 55 and older decreased by 22 percent between 2006 and 2015. But the rate of fatal accidents among older workers during that time period was 50 percent to 65 percent higher than for all workers, depending on the year. Thirteen of 34 accidental work deaths in Wyoming in 2015 involved workers ages 55 and older, or 38 percent, just above the national average of 35 percent. The rate of worker deaths in Wyoming has improved. In 2007, the overall rate was as high as 17.21 deaths per 100,000 workers. Among older workers, the rate was as high as 23.04 deaths per 100,000 in 2006. The number of deaths nationally among all workers dropped from 5,480 in 2005 to 4,836 in 2015. By contrast, on-the-job fatalities among older workers increased slightly, from 1,562 to 1,681, the analysis shows. During that time period, the number of older people in the workplace increased by 37 percent. That compares with a 6 percent rise in the population of workers overall. Ruth Finkelstein, co-director of Columbia Universitys Aging Center, cautions against stereotyping. She said older people have a range of physical and mental abilities and that its dangerous to lump all people in an age group together because it could lead to discrimination. She said shes not sure that older workers need much more protection than younger workers, but agreed there is a need for all workers to have more protection. We are not paying enough attention to occupational safety in this country, she said. The AP analysis is based on data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics Census for Fatal Occupational Injuries and from one-year estimates from the American Community Survey, which looks at the working population. It excludes cases where the cause of death was from a natural cause, including a heart attack or stroke. In most states, the fatal accident rates for older workers were consistently higher than comparable rates for all workers. Nevada, New Jersey and Washington had the greatest percent increase in fatal accident rates for older workers between 2006 and 2015. The three states with the biggest percent decrease were Hawaii, Oregon and Vermont. Eight states saw their overall workplace fatality rate drop, even as the rate for older workers increased: Massachusetts, Michigan, Montana, Nevada, New York, Texas, Utah and Washington. In two states North Dakota and Wisconsin the trend was reversed; older worker accident rates decreased while the accident rate overall increased. The National Center for Productive Aging and Work is pushing for changes in the workplace to make it safer for older workers. The year-old center is part of the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health. We advocate to make workplaces as age-friendly as possible, said co-director James Grosch. For example, increased lighting helps older workers whose eyesight has weakened with age. He said the center is emphasizing productive aging and looking at how people can be more productive, how their wisdom can be leveraged in a workplace. You are here: Home Flash China on Wednesday congratulated Shahid Khaqan Abbasi on becoming Pakistan's new prime minister, in the wake of the supreme court disqualifying former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif on corruption charges. Abbasi was sworn in Tuesday evening shortly after the parliament elected him with a clear majority. He belongs to Nawaz Sharif's Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz party. "China is convinced that the Pakistani government under the leadership of Abbasi will continue to work towards maintaining national unity and stability and boosting economic and social development," Foreign Ministry spokesperson Geng Shuang said. Geng said China would work with Pakistan to keep rapid growth of bilateral relations and build the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor. Flash The United States has declared a full-scale trade war against Russia with the enactment of a new sanctions bill on Wednesday, said Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev. "The hope of improving our relations with the new U.S. administration has come to an end," said Medvedev on Facebook, commenting on the signing of the bill by U.S. President Donald Trump. The bill was approved overwhelmingly early this month by the U.S. Congress despite the Trump administration calling on lawmakers to grant the White House "flexibility" in dealing with Russia. The Trump administration demonstrated "complete impotence, in the most humiliating manner, transferring executive powers to Congress," said Medvedev. "The U.S. establishment completely outplayed Trump. The president is not happy with the new sanctions, but he can not refuse to sign the law," said the Russian prime minister. According to him, the interests of U.S. businesses are almost ignored, and anti-Russian hysteria has become a key part of U.S. foreign and domestic policy. The sanction regime is codified and will last for decades as the new law allows the Congress to limit the president's power to lift anti-Russian measures, said Medvedev. "Therefore, the relationship between Russia and the United States will be extremely tense, regardless of the composition of the Congress or the personality of the president," he said. Against such a backdrop, Russia will continue to work quietly on economic and social development, count primarily on itself and reduce reliance on imports from the West, he said. Also on Wednesday, the Russian Foreign Ministry regretted the enactment of the bill and blasted the new sanctions as "short-sighted and even dangerous." Nevertheless, the ministry said in a statement that Russia remains open to cooperation with the United States in various areas, including on the settlement of regional conflicts. "However, fruitful cooperation is possible only if U.S. politicians overcome their own delusions and cease to perceive the world around them through a reality-distorting prism of 'American exclusiveness,'" said the ministry. In retaliation for the new U.S. sanctions, Russian President Vladimir Putin on Sunday announced a decision to reduce the U.S. diplomatic staff in Russia by 755 people by Sept. 1. "Naturally, we reserve the right to take additional countermeasures," said the foreign ministry statement. Flash U.S. President Donald Trump on Wednesday signed into law a sanctions bill on Russia, Iran and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), but he criticized the bill as "seriously flawed." In a statement released by the White House, Trump said while he favoured tough measures to "punish and deter bad behavior" by Iran and the DPRK and supported making clear to Russia that "America will not to tolerate interference in our democratic process," he criticized the legislation for including "unconstitutional provisions" and being "seriously flawed." "Still, the bill remains seriously flawed -- particularly because it encroached on the executive branch's authority to negotiate," said Trump. Unlike previous sanctions bills, the new legislation grants U.S. lawmakers power to block Trump from unilaterally lifting sanctions on Russia. The bill was approved overwhelmingly early this month by the U.S. Congress despite the Trump administration calling on lawmakers to grant the White House "flexibility" in dealing with Russia. "By limiting the Executive's flexibility, this bill makes it harder for the United States to strike good deals for the American people," said Trump in the statement. Despite his objections, Trump said he signed the bill "for the sake of national unity." "It represents the will of the American people to see Russia take steps to improve relations with the United States," said Trump. In retaliation for the new sanctions legislation, Moscow had already ordered the U.S. diplomatic mission in Russia to cut its staff by 755 people. Russian President Vladimir Putin on Sunday announced Moscow's decision to reduce the U.S. diplomatic staff in Russia by 755 people, including U.S. and Russian nationals, by Sept. 1. Flash Local police Wednesday said they will "close monitor" the surroundings of the Chinese Consulate General to ensure the safety of the consulate office building and diplomatic staff. Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) made the remarks after Tuesday's shooting incident outside the Consulate General. A security guard of the consulate said the shooting incident occurred at about 6 am local time Tuesday. A gunman, in his 60s, shot at least 17 bullets before killing himself in his car. No one was injured in the shooting incident. There are six obvious bullet holes in the consulate building, with one on the metal address plate of the building, two on the facade near surveillance cameras and three in the windows. It was not immediately clear if the gunman had any political motive, police said. "Why he did it and what he did still are on going investigation, so we would not know," Tony Im, LAPD public information officer, told Xinhua in a phone interview. "Police department put a security hold on the case, so no information or his identity is being released at this time," Ed Winter, assistant chief of operations for the coroner's office, told Xinhua. "They don't want any information out, so we can't discuss it," Winter added. On Tuesday, the consulate general expressed serious concerns about the incident and urged U.S. authorities to take necessary measures to protect the safety of the consulate office building and Chinese diplomatic staff. Flash Russia says terrorists attacked its embassy in the Syrian capital of Damascus with mortars on Wednesday, leaving no casualties. Two shells fell in the embassy and two more landed near the compound, resulting in slight material damage, the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement. "We strongly condemn the terrorist attacks against the Russian diplomatic mission in Damascus," it said, adding that Russia's principled and consistent line to carry out an "uncompromising" fight against "terrorists" in Syria will continue. The Russian embassy in Damascus has been shelled several times since Moscow started to participate in anti-terrorism operations in Syria in September 2015. Russia has withdrawn most of its troops from the war-torn country. However, it still supports anti-terrorism and humanitarian missions there. Flash The Pentagon said on Wednesday that two U.S. servicemen were killed in Afghanistan when their convoy came under attack. "I can confirm that two U.S. servicemen were killed in action in Kandarhar, Afghanistan, when their convoy came under attack," Pentagon spokesman Jeff Davis told reporters. "U.S. Forces Afghanistan will provide additional information as it becomes available," he added. The casualties came as U.S. President Donald Trump was mulling over increasing U.S. troops there. Former U.S. President Barack Obama had planned to reduce the current number of 9,800 U.S. troops in Afghanistan to some 5,500 by the end of 2015 and withdraw all troops by the end of 2016 when his presidency came to an end. However, given the deteriorating security situation in Afghanistan, the Obama administration repeatedly postponed the withdrawal. Currently, there are about 8,400 U.S. troops and another 5,000 forces of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) on the ground in Afghanistan to train and assist the Afghan forces against the Taliban, and conduct counter-terrorism missions. The new casualties also came at a time when senior U.S. officials warned of dire security situation in Afghanistan. In a congressional hearing in June, U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said that United States was still "not winning" the longest U.S. war in Afghanistan. U.S. National Intelligence Director Dan Coats also warned in May that the security situation in Afghanistan would most likely deteriorate in the future even if the United States and its allies offer more military aid. LARAMIE, Wyo. A 30-year-old Wyoming man has pleaded not guilty to first-degree murder in the death of his step-grandmother. Trevor Sanford is charged with killing 75-year-old Marilyn "Kay" Dlugosh in March. His trial is set to start on Jan. 10. Prosecutors say Dlougosh's body was found on March 29. KTWO-AM reports Dlugosh's son told Albany County investigators that Sanford had been living with his mother since March 23, when he was released from jail. Sanford had been jailed after leading officers on a pursuit in January. A detective testified during Sanford's preliminary hearing in June that other inmates had heard Sanford threatening to kill Dlugosh for not taking his phone calls from jail. Defense attorney Randy Hiller argued there was no evidence to absolutely put Sanford at the scene of the crime. ROCK SPRINGS Laid out on the table were memories. Several patches, a Russian pistol in its brown leather holster, an old map of Vietnam and many, many photos all memories six men brought with them here, to share and remember the time they spent together in Vietnam fighting a war a lifetime ago. Jerry Lenox, David Uhlenhake, Ernie Guthrie, Bill Woznick, Bill Rossetti and Paul Steinmetz had not seen each other for 46 years, not since 1971 and their time with the 23rd Infantry Division, Delta Company, 196th Brigade, 2nd Battalion, in Vietnam. They fell out of touch after the Vietnam War, each veteran going his own way, each dealing with the demons brought home from a small country a world away. But reunite they did, thanks to a three-year effort by Jerry Lenox and his wife Donna Lenox to find the members of the 23rd Infantry Division. The decision to meet in Rock Springs was made after learning that Rossetti would not be able to travel, and they gathered in July at American Legion Archie Hay Post 24. The men looked at the photos together and talked about the experiences they shared. It was a quiet meeting, not emotional except for a few choked words and a few tears brimming in the eye but not overflowing. These men had been brothers in arms, and their memories were forged in fire, creating a bond that requires composure and quietness to fully understand. They know what they went through and they share the experience daily, no matter the distance. The search So many years ago in Vietnam Jerry Lenox wrote a letter. In this letter were the names of his division members. He said he asked them to write down all their names because they were ordered into a valley Antenna Valley and the rumor was it would not end well. Lenox wanted the list just in case. Lenox sent the letter to his mother who, unbeknownst to him, eventually stored it away in a steel box. Fast forward to 2014. Lenox found the letter still in the steel box, after his mother passed away. He vowed to try and contact all people who signed their names to that letter. Lenox began with Terry Mezzacasa, who was his close friend in Vietnam. He tracked Mezzacasa down only to learn he had passed away. He then located Steinmetz in Lincoln, Nebraska, and was glad to hear he was still kicking. The third person he sought out was Paul Thompson; finding out he, too, had passed away, Lenox became too emotional to continue. His wife Donna took up the reins. She continued the search, eventually tracking down 24 soldiers of the 23rd Infantry Division, 12 of whom had passed away by that time. When the reunion was planned, some said they could not come. Donna explained many of these veterans still have a hard time with their memories, and she was glad to have the six who did say they would attend. Several members didnt come because the memories are so painful, she said. Many have terrible post-traumatic stress disorder, even now, so many years later. Struggling with the past Steinmetz offered a glimpse into their life in Vietnam, which in turn explains the struggles they have all had to face once they returned to the United States. Even now, their memories haunt them. Their battalion was what the military called a swing battalion, Steinmetz explained. This meant the battalion was sent where extra help was needed, and the battalion served in such capacities as blocking agents and search and destroy. Steinmetz said his battalion was sent most anywhere, from the demilitarized zone, which at that time divided North Vietnam from South Vietnam to the division headquarters at Chu Lai near the east coast to the mountains in between. This put us in a lot of unusual circumstances, he said. This was a highly decorated battalion; the battalion fought at the Tet Offensive (in 1968), and it had a reputation. Steinmetz recalled his first days with the company. He said he and several of the others in the room got there after the company lost an entire platoon in a helicopter crash. He remembers that Guthrie was the only one left after that crash and it was particularly hard for him since he remembered all the men who died. Steinmetz credits getting a job in a plant in Lincoln, Nebraska, with helping him deal with his memories upon his return to the states. He said there was another veteran who worked there with him, and the two would talk about their experiences; he believes being able to talk about it helped him through that first year back home. Donna Lenox said Jerry still will cry out in the night with his bad dreams and struggles with PTSD and his memories. Woznick said there are some memories he simply cant or will not remember. Donna Lenox added that all but one of the battalion members she has contacted has some malady that stems from the time they served in Vietnam, ranging from PTSD to a myriad of other physical ailments. Of the 12 that have passed away, three died from Agent Orange and one died tragically at the age of 34, she said. Other memories Not all of their memories from that time are difficult to face. While none can be described as happy, several of the memories are bittersweet, some even funny, in the telling. Guthrie held a photo of himself with his arm around a Vietnamese child. Guthrie said the company would periodically have an orphaned child in tow until a safer place would be found for the child. The child in the photo came to them after his company was taking fire and a village in the area was completely destroyed. The only person left alive in that village was this little boy, he said. He stayed with us for three days, and he would sleep next to me. He eventually went to an orphanage. Many did. Guthrie said there was a lot of collateral damage like that in the Vietnam War. Another story was told by Woznick. He recalled one mission where they ended up jumping from the helicopters into a rice paddy. He said most rice paddies would be filled knee-deep with water and the rice plants. Well I jumped right into a shell hole eight feet deep! Down I went, straight to the bottom, he laughed. Steinmetz said Woznicks helmet floated for a second on top of the water, before it too sunk below the surface. Because of the weight of his pack and other equipment, he had to be pulled out, Woznick added. They all had a good chuckle from that memory. Rock Springs connection Bill Rossetti is the Rock Springs connection in this group of six. He said he was born and raised here and of course came back to his roots after his service in Vietnam. He worked at Jim Bridger Power Plant for 35 years, starting in 1975 and retiring in 2010. I have lived here all my life, he said. Rossetti said he was sort of shocked when Donna Lenox first contacted him. It had been so long ago, and he said he had a hard time remembering the names mostly the last names of his division members. He credits Donna for all the work and time she put in to finding as many members as she has. Its pretty amazing, he said. She put a lot of work in it. When the reunion was planned, Rossetti wanted to see all the guys but was not confident about being able to travel. A neck injury years ago has left his legs weak and his ability to walk is limited. To his surprise, the guys were willing to come to Rock Springs. He called the gesture awesome. Rossetti said the reunion was particularly successful due to the cooperation of the many businesses in the area. People in the various eating establishments treated them wonderfully. The cooperation we got from people was amazing, he added. What about plans for another reunion? Rossetti said Guthrie is thinking about hosting a second reunion in late spring of 2018 down in Georgia. Several of the men have already said they will be there, Rossetti confirmed. From his time in Vietnam, Rossetti doesnt dwell on the fighting. Instead, he likes to remember the friendships and bonds that were created. Many never came back, so its important to stay close with those that did, he said. We watched out for each other. We helped each other make it through. It is good that Beijing has turned down New Delhi's request for negotiation to resolve the standoff in Donglang. Accepting it would have made a simple matter complicated, or even worse, changed the nature of it. It is better that it try to clarify the truths of the matter past and present as well as the Chinese stance, as the Ministry of Foreign Affairs has done by issuing a fact sheet, because whatever moves Beijing chooses to make next, or is pressed to make, it should first set the record straight. The fact sheet makes clear the essential truth that Indian troops have violated Chinese sovereignty by crossing an undisputed stretch of border and they refuse to withdraw despite repeated Chinese protests, requests and warnings. For outsiders with inadequate information about the matter, it provides an understanding of why China has refused to negotiate. And for New Delhi strategists hoping to ride the wave of recent Western anti-China propaganda that seeks to create an image of an "assertive" Beijing, this should be a wake-up call. Since there is no dispute at the Sikkim section of the China-India border, as the 15-page document clarifies, unconditional withdrawal of the transgressing Indian soldiers is mandatory; nonnegotiable. New Delhi may be betting on Beijing's preoccupation with ensuring stability for the upcoming BRICS Summit in Xiamen, East China's Fujian province. China needs stability both at home and on its periphery for its development, but China will not sacrifice its territorial integrity for it. As has been said by many on many occasions, never underestimate the country's determination when it comes to safeguarding its sovereignty. It is true that there is no tangible sign of a major military buildup on the Chinese side of the border, and that the standoff has been unusually restrained. And it is also true that Beijing is not in the mood for a fight. On the contrary, China sees the border disputes with India as legacies of a bygone era that should be resolved through constructive engagement. It also appreciates New Delhi's sensitive pride and has tried hard to make its goodwill toward it understood. However, New Delhi should not misread such restraint, for to do so could have dire consequences. Beijing has been correct in patiently insisting New Delhi withdraw its troops from Chinese territory. It should continue doing so until it is proven useless. A worst-case scenario should be avoided if at all possible. However, if good manners do not work, in the end, it may be necessary to rethink our approach. Sometimes a head-on blow may work better than a thousand pleas in waking up a dreamer. WINDHOEK - Standard Bank Namibia, one of the southern African country's oldest banking institutions, says its relationship with Chinese companies and business people has grown from strength to strength. The relationship started in earnest in Feburary 2015 when the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China Limited (ICBC) acquired shares in Standard Bank's London-based Global Markets business. The acquisition allowed both ICBC and Standard Bank to create a platform to serve the growing demands of Chinese clients for global commodities, fixed income, currency and equities products while continuing as a distribution platform for African risk. This union also allows for the Chinese community to transact in renminbi, which has vast benefits such as realising significant savings when US dollar conversion costs and liquidity constraints are removed; promotes price transparency and reduces the cost of international trade; to name a few. The renminbi cash exchange solution at Standard Bank Namibia's Windhoek branch was officially launched on Jan 21, 2016. Following its inclusion in the International Monetary Fund's Special Drawing Right basket of currencies, China's renminbi currency has became widely accepted for global trade. Standard Bank Namibia's chief executive officer Vetumbuavi Mungunda said in a statement Wednesday that he was proud that Standard Bank is at the centre of Chinese business, investments and projects in Namibia. According to Mungunda, this was because Standard Bank Namibia understands and responds to the needs and requirements of Chinese people in the country. Mungunda wishes that the great symbiotic relationship should grow not only in Namibia but across the continent as a whole for a long time to come. The Chinese business community in Namibia, he added, has contributed vastly to the socio-economic development of the country, making them a worthwhile ally. "Cognizant of this fact, Standard Bank has worked closely with various Chinese captains of industry, and recently held a gala dinner in their honour, drawing them closer into the fold," Mungunda said. Services deals and technology among ministers' major areas of agreement Trade ministers of BRICS countries have reached eight major consensuses, including establishing stronger digital networks at ports to ease trade and approving a service trade cooperation road map to boost economic complementarities and diversification, China's commerce minister announced on Wednesday. Zhong Shan, also chairman of the seventh meeting of trade ministers of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa in Shanghai, called on BRICS countries to work together to enhance intra-BRICS investment, and improve the capacity of services related to investment amid uncertainties in the global economic recovery. The ministers met on Tuesday and Wednesday. Other results include launching an e-commerce cooperation initiative, approving guidelines for intellectual property rights, endorsing the outlines for investment facilitation and producing a framework on strengthening the economic and technical ties among BRICS countries. Senior trade officials also agreed to continue supporting multilateral trading systems and promoting the China International Import Expo, which will start next year. The expo is seen as an important means for countries involved in the Belt and Road Initiative to gain access to the Chinese market. With the trade in services becoming a new driver for global economic and trade growth, the ministers decided to intensify cooperation on information exchange, capacity building and coordination within BRICS, as well as conducting practical actions in such priority fields as tourism, education and healthcare services. "Deepening technological progress and economic globalization presents to all countries unprecedented opportunities and an urgent necessity to enhance economic and technical cooperation," Zhong said. During the meeting, the ministers called for speeding up the implementation of the Bali and Nairobi ministerial conferences' outcomes, and the preparations for the 11th World Trade Organization's ministerial conference set for Buenos Aires, Argentina, in December. BRICS economies have created a new paradigm for mutual benefit among emerging and developing countries since the mechanism was established in 2006. Contributing nearly one-quarter of global economic output and half of world economic growth, they are capable of playing a powerful role in driving the global economy and governance. "To reach new goals, BRICS countries will further deepen economic and technical cooperation and capacity building in the area of trade and investment" said Zhang Shaogang, director-general of the Department of International Trade and Economic Affairs at the Ministry of Commerce. An investor watches an electronic board showing stock information at a brokerage office in Fuyang city, Anhui province, Aug 2, 2017.[Photo/VCG] Overseas institutional investors are adjusting their investment position and accelerating buying of China's A shares, Securities Daily reported Wednesday. As of Aug 2, a total of 17 listed companies' top 10 circulating shareholders saw the name of Qualified Foreign Institutional Investors (QFII) investors, the newspaper said quoting data from market intelligence provider Tonghuashun. The total number of shares hold by QFII investors reached 337 million, with market value of 20.53 billion yuan. The enthusiasm of foreign investors grew as strong renminibi drive up the cost of domestic funds, Fu Lichun, research director of Northeast Securities told the newspaper. According to the State Administration of Foreign Exchange, as of July 31, a total of 284 overseas institutions have received quotas amounting to $93.27 billion under the Qualified Foreign Institutional Investors (QFII) program, up 500 million from a month earlier. The quota in the RMB Qualified Foreign Institutional Investors (RQFII) program came in at 548.24 billion yuan, up 5.14 billion yuan from 543.1 billion yuan at the end of June. As the QFII quota continued a stable rise, signs that foreign investors are entering the A-share market are becoming more obvious, Fu said. On the one hand, accelerating foreign capital inflow provides additional incremental fund, and on the other hand, foreign investors' investment method could play a demonstration role for domestic investors, helping improve the globalization of the A share market. Recently, some foreign investment banks, including Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs, have turned more bullish on Chinese stocks. Morgan Stanley predicted in February that A shares will jump 42 percent in 2017, more than double the 20 percent growth for Hang Seng China Enterprises Index, the top-performing Asian equity measure so far this year. In March, Goldman Sachs also released a report and changed A shares from "nice to have" to "have to have" for global investors. Goldman Sachs said China's A-share market has shown low return correlations with global equity markets and does not look expensive relative to other key markets globally in terms of price/earnings to growth. Fu said these indicated foreign capital has confidence in China's economy and financial market. Also, northbound funds under the Shanghai-Hong Kong Stock Connect flowing into the A shares, and the inclusion of 222 Chinese shares in the MSCI, to some extent, will support the A-share market, Fu added. The amount of coal used by residential buildings in China should be capped at 230 million metric tons by 2020, according to a report released by Beijing Jiaotong University. "Green buildings and renewable energy are the right answers to improve housing energy efficiency in cities and rural areas respectively," Liu Jing, associate professor at the university, said. Speaking at a workshop on a coal consumption cap held on Wednesday in Beijing, Liu said that 50 percent of newly-built houses in urban areas were expected to meet green building standards, while 15 percent of rural houses will have adopted energy saving measures by 2020. Energy generated by biomass, solar, hydropower and wind will surpass the 100 million tons of standard coal in rural areas, added Liu. Heating from coal burning in winter is one of the major reasons for air pollution plaguing Northern China. Early this year, the country pledged to cut coal production capacity by 150 million tons in 2017, with the capital Beijing aiming to eliminate the use of coal by the end of this year. Through transforming the heating system of existing buildings by 2020, 70 percent of houses in 26 cities in North China's Heibei, Henan, Shandong, Shanxi provinces as well as Beijing and Tianjin will adopt central heating fuelled by clean energy. Coal will only make up 30 percent of energy used for winter heating in rural areas in the above regions, according to Liu. NAIROBI - China, a pivotal country to Kenya's progress, has injected needed investments to open up resource-rich but long-unexploited regions in the African country, said a Kenyan analyst in an interview with Xinhua. "China's investments and economic cooperation in least developed countries (LDCs) has catalyzed these nations' economic development," said Stephen Ndegwa, a lecturer at MultiMedia University. "It has motivated innovations that are both relevant and affordable in their national development needs," said Ndegwa, also a public policy analyst in Kenya. He took the China-contracted mine coal in Lamu County as an example, saying the multi-million dollar project will not only increase Kenya's power supply substantially, but also open up the hitherto-underdeveloped area for more investments. Ndegwa said Chinese establishment of manufacturing industries has expanded LDCs markets for raw materials and helped to add value at home. "The ensuing technological transfer will be invaluable in the medium to long term as more indigenous people acquire and utilize new, modern skills of doing business and procuring goods and services," said Ndegwa. With the recent launch of operation of Kenya's Mombasa-Nairobi railway, China's remarkable infrastructure capabilities are again being highlighted and promoting regional interconnectivity. Ndegwa regarded this railway as a game-changer, saying the project is ushering Kenya in a new era in the transport of goods and people from the coast to the hinterland and vice versa. The Chinese-built 472-km-long Standard Gauge Railway linking Kenya's capital Nairobi and East Africa's biggest port city Mombasa comes as part of ambitious efforts to build a 2,700-km East Africa corridor connecting Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, South Sudan and other East African countries. Not only Chinese businesses but also Chinese businessmen have acted as role models in this eastern African country. Chinese business magnate Jack Ma visited Kenya in July and lectured young entrepreneurs on the virtues of hard work, resilience and empathy, which was hailed as historic by citizens from all walks of life. "The recent visit by Jack Ma has helped to change the perception of youth in the country by inspiring them with the limitless potential of their ideas," said Ndegwa. SYDNEY - China-proposed Belt and Road Initiative will play a role in the European Union's drive to engage with the Pacific Islands, according to former head of the World Trade Organization (WTO) Pascal Lamy who made the remarks at a forum in Sydney on Thursday. Lamy was in Australia as part of a two-nation visit, having visited New Zealand last week, to discuss his belief that the European Union should more actively engage with the nations in the Pacific Ocean region. At the event, Lamy told Xinhua that the Belt and Road Initiative would play a role in facilitating the ease of connectivity between the European Union nations and the Pacific nations, helped along by the increased development that has been pegged for the region by China, and its initiative partners. "The Belt and Road Initiative is one signal which China is sending that cooperation is likely to grow," Lamy said. Lamy said that he believes that the China-initiated Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) will also assist in the development of what is currently an underdeveloped region. "I would not be surprised if the AIIB was to develop a relationship in this region," Lamy said. One of the key messages that Lamy, a renowned champion of free trade, wanted to emphasise was that in order for globalisation to truly be successful, it will in his eyes be dependent on a rules-based order for trade. "The rules of free trade will remain extremely important, because trade is a question of trust, and these rules play a big role in ensuring the sort of trust we need," Lamy said. Lamy was adamant that the value of having a "rule book" for trade will be crucial into the future, and stressed that despite larger countries often having disputes, the rules of trade and the "super-national" global environment will hopefully ensure all parties abide by the determinations of the WTO, despite recent actions in some quarters. The learned trade leader said he believes that "geo-economics will trump geo-politics," and that the relationship between China and the United States will continue to prosper and grow. "We now live in a planet that is so interwoven, interconnected, interdependent -- the costs of de-globalization are now so high that we should be protected from de-globalization." Lamy said. Having studied the past, and looking to the future, Lamy said that he believes that China will continue to have a large role to play in the shaping of the world's trade environments. "Asia will have a much bigger role in this world, and China has a much bigger role than it had 20 years ago." Proposed by China in 2013, the Belt and Road Initiative refers to the Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road, aiming at building a trade and infrastructure network connecting Asia with Europe and Africa along the ancient trade routes of Silk Road. Shanghai-based conglomerate Fosun Group, together with the Nanjing Nangang Iron and Steel United, announced a joint acquisition of a major stake in a German lightweight automotive company, Koller Beteiligungs GmbH, on Thursday. The announcement marks the first overseas investment for Nanjing Nangang, as well as Fosun's first overseas investment in the automotive industry. However, the exact proportion of stake, which the two Chinese companies hold in Koller, was not disclosed. In 2014, Hannover Finanz GmbH acquired 75 percent of Koller, and the founders of Koller have since remained in senior executive positions. With plants in Germany, Hungary and Mexico, Koller produces injection moulding composite parts, as well as pressing tools for automotive manufacturers who are looking to cut energy consumption and pollution emission by reducing the weight of the car. Leading automotive manufacturers, such as Volkswagen, Audi, BMW, Mercedes Benz and Land Rover, are all Koller clients. Max Koller, chief executive of Koller and co-founder of the company with his brother Thomas Koller, said the partnership will enable the organisation to expand their business into the Asian market. "With support from its new major shareholder, Koller will also strengthen its positioning in Europe and explore new production locations in China," he said. Guo Guangchang, chairman of Fosun, said environmental protection and energy saving techniques are key global initiatives, especially in China. "Lightweight technology could effectively decrease the energy consumption and promote sustainable development," he said. "I believe there will be greater demand for high quality, and innovative lightweight products and solutions." The three subsidiaries of Fosun set up the joint venture Nanjing Nangang with the Nanjing Iron and Steel Group in 2003 which helped with the latters mixed ownership reform. In the joint venture, the Nanjing Iron and Steel Group controls 40 percent of the project, while Fosuns three subsidiaries hold 30 percent, 20 percent and 10 percent respectively. Huang Yixing, chairman of Nanjing Nangang, said new material was one of the companys focuses for business transformation, which he hoped would grow into a core business in the future. "Koller's expertise in providing lightweight solutions is in line with the companys transformation direction," he said. A customer looks at an Apple Inc iPhone at a Maxim Store in Buenos Aires, Argentina. BLOOMBERG Apple Inc saw a nearly 10 percent decline in its China revenue in the latest quarter ending in July, as local consumers switched to newer domestic phone offerings and its 10th anniversary iPhone edition is yet to be released to invoke user enthusiasm. The US tech giant's revenue from China fell 9.5 percent to $8 billion, amid mounting competition from brands such as in the world's largest smartphone arena. The decline stands in sharp contrast to Apple's overall strong earnings report. Globally, its profit climbed 12 percent to $8.7 billion, and revenue increased 7 percent from last year to $45.4 billion, beating analysts' projections. "Sales in the Chinese mainland were actually flat year-over-year and, were it not for currency fluctuations, would have been up 6 percent," Apple CEO Tim Cook told a conference call with analysts. The company attributed the decline in China to weak sales in Hong Kong, which were affected by a reduction in tourism. Neil Shah, research director at consultancy Counterpoint, said China remains the problem child for Apple partly because of iPhone fatigue in the country. "Apple is losing share in the $300-$500 price band, as older iPhones fail to compete with affordable premium Chinese flagship models," he said. The iPhone's share of China's smartphone shipments fell to 9 percent in January-June, from a peak of 14 percent in 2015, according to Counterpoint. Apple is expected to unveil its 10th anniversary iPhone edition later this year, a crucial product aiming to outcompete local players, analysts said. The financial report came as the Cupertino-based company is stepping up investments in China, in a move to boost revenue from services, after its smartphone market share slipped. Apple announced in July that it will invest $1 billion to build its first China data center in Guizhou province, to meet local consumers' growing demand for better cloud services. CEO Tim Cook said on Tuesday that services in China "grew extremely strongly" during the most recent quarter, continuing the robust momentum in the January-March period. Jia Mo, an analyst at global consultancy Canalys, said Apple's service revenues were surging, partly because there was still a big user base for iPhones. "Hardware is the corner stone for Apple's business. As its China R&D facilities start operations, Apple can offer better localized products," Jia said. Representatives from the freelance media, and some from paid-content program platforms, gather in Beijing for a year-end party in 2016. DONG DALU / FOR CHINA DAILY A growing Chinese consumer audience has showed it will splash out on the right media and educational programs Online companies are finally cashing in on infotainment content after years of giving it away for free. Internet consumers have woken up to the fact that they need to pay for quality audio and visual programing as well as articles on a variety of topics. To cater for this growing audience, an array of fee-based audio apps have sprung up, dealing with topics ranging from makeup skills to macroeconomics. "This trend has been boosted by the convenience of online payment (portals) in China," said Liu Duo, director of the China Academy of Information and Communication Technology in Shanghai. Last year, Chinese consumers spent 212.3 billion yuan ($31.3 billion) on digital content online, including novels, audios and videos. This was a jump of 28 percent compared to the same period in 2015, data from a report released by Blue Lotus Research Institute in Hong Kong showed. Figures from the investment bank JP Morgan Chase& Co also revealed that paid content "viewership" is likely to jump from 70 million in the first quarter to 234 million by 2020. "Users are more willing to pay for quality digital content now," Liu said. Cultural habits have changed in the past few years from downloading everything for free to paying for the right sort of content by using online services such as Alipay, which is part of Alibaba Group Holding Ltd, and Tencent Holdings Ltd's WeChat Pay. In turn, this has triggered a new wave of online startups and podcasts like Luoji Siwei, or Logical Thinking, a talk show program. Wang Xiuqin, a university administration clerk in Shanghai, has been an avid fan for the past six months and watches it on her way to work. She also pays for it, forking out an annual subscription of 199 yuan. "Work can sometimes contain trivial stuff," the 33-year-old said. "But watching this show opens a window to economics and avantgarde arts. I love it." Luoji Siwei is aired on Ximalaya FM, which is run by Yu Jianjun, the co-chief executive officer. In recent years, he has noticed a distinct change in online consumer habits. "They are maturing and evolving from aimlessly accepting whatever is displayed online to consciously choosing content curators that can promise high-quality programs," Yu said. Naturally, Ximalaya has moved with the times after initially gaining a faithful following for audio books and user-generated content. Founded in 2012, the new media company has been pumping more resources into high-quality programing and professional content, although it declined to disclose detailed financial figures. A boy listens to an audio program presented by Ximalaya at a fair featuring audio books and user-generated content in Shanghai. PROVIDED TO CHINA DAILY Still, Ximalaya has generated 60 million audio feeds produced by more than 200,000 "experts" from a wide range of fields, including banking, insurance, literature and human resources. The platform has attracted 370 million subscribers, who are willing to pay an annual fee of between 10 yuan to hundreds of yuan depending on the content. "Most of these are 'self-help' tips for our viewers and listeners, who value self-motivation and lifelong learning," said Yu, who declined to disclose financial figures such as the company's revenue stream. Along with rivals Qingting FM, Lizhi FM and Koala FM, Ximalaya dominates the sector with the group carving out about 80 percent of the online audio market, according to consultancy SooToo Research in Beijing. Again, they have all moved into "professional and part-time user-generated content" by recruiting and training podcasters to produce top quality material. Qingting FM has signed up more than 12,000 grassroots content creators, online media publication Six Tone reported. Lene Bao used to work for a multinational cosmetics group and has now started her own business on cosmetic-related marketing. She also serves as a part-time online host at Zhihu Live, which was valued at $300 million in 2015, and has received funding from private equity firm Capital Today and Tencent. Bao has more than 30,000 followers, and gives beauty, skincare and makeup advice. "It all started when I wrote a skincare article online and it went viral," she said. "I realized there was a huge gap between cosmetics companies and their customers, so I decided to bridge that gap," she added. Bao's main source of income comes from copyright fees for columns, online advice, including a two-minute Q&A session with listeners, which costs just 8 yuan. She declined to give detailed financial figures, but did say she has a devoted and generous army of followers. But then, this rise in online paid content has only been possible after the government rolled out tough anti-piracy regulations to tame the wild west web. "The decision in 2015 to bring in increased anti-piracy rules, and (the government's) subsequent crackdown on illegal video and music sites have laid the groundwork for converting ad-supported users to paid ones," said Liu, of the China Academy of Information and Communication Technology. There are certainly rich pickings out there in cyberspace for the right content. On Ximalaya, a podcast on personal presentation techniques captured the imagination of consumers and brought in subscription fees of 5 million yuan. Back in December, an online 24-hour sale of courses and lectures from a legion of hosts attracted 50.88 million yuan in subscriptions. Yet only Dedao, or "I Get" in English, is exclusively staffed by professional presenters, as opposed to a mixture of full-time or part-time staff and amateur hosts. The app, which was launched last year, runs podcasts, which subscribers have to pay for. An eight-minute broadcast each day costs 199 yuan annually, the Wall Street Journal reported. In just seven months, Dedao has built a 570,000 subscription base for the 16 daily and weekly podcasts, and more than 440,000 subscribers for a weekly column that it sells for just one yuan, the Journal stated. "We need to change the way we think if we are to keep up with these ever-changing times," Luo Zhenyu, the Beijing-based creator of Dedao, said in his book, Information OverloadI Know How You Feel. "Change can be hardit pushes us to learn continuously, to understand new things, but it is only in change that we can see the future." Its painful to watch the national news. Partisan politics rule the day. The times when you made decisions by taking into account the best interests of your neighbor feel all but gone. We used to come together as one nation, indivisible, and chart out a course that we all could agree on. We used to meet in the middle. And in rural Montana, we still do. We have all seen the magic that occurs when diverse interests and stakeholders put their differences aside, and focus on their commonalities. Thats the real Montana not Republicans, Democrats, Libertarians or independents. Its neighbor helping neighbor solve problems and plan for a future where the grizzly and elk are plentiful, and where our kids and grandkids can still find moments of inspiration in mountain meadows. On the heels of the recent Montana state legislative session, there was a lot of talk about our public lands. Some radical folks on the right feel our federal public lands that are managed and protected for all to use and enjoy should be transferred to states, or sold completely to private parties. They arent happy with how these lands are managed by our Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management or National Park Service. We saw the same rancor on the left side of the spectrum, with extremists who toss wrenches into forest restoration activities with little consideration for simple yet hugely significant consequences for local economies and potential wildfire risks. We urge Montanans of all stripes to meet us in the middle, listen to each other, respect each other, and hash out a path forward where we all win. Over the last decade weve seen lots of bills come and go statewide and nationally that propose quick fixes to long-term problems. The only legislation that has passed, that has passed the litmus test of all Montanans, are the pieces of legislation where the solutions started around the kitchen tables of real Montanans. The Rocky Mountain Front Heritage Act, which permanently protected thousands of acres of prime wildlife habitat, was over 30 years in the making. Sure, there were folks on the left who said the habitat protections were not enough, and people on the right who said it was too much. But the overwhelming majority met in the middle. Montana is better for it. More recently, in the communities of Seeley Lake and Ovando, over a decade of listening, tweaking and compromise resulted in the recently introduced Blackfoot Clearwater Stewardship Act, which not only puts logs on trucks and promotes forest restoration activities, it also provides mountain bikes and snowmobiles with more terrain while permanently designating some of Montanas wildest landscapes such as Grizzly Basin and Monture Creek, as wilderness. We are seeing this collaboration elsewhere in the state. The Gallatin Range near Bozeman is currently seeing mountain bikers, hunters, horsemen, skiers, outfitters and conservationists working together to find permanent solutions for that vital corner of Greater Yellowstone. That collaborative spirit is also alive and well in Lincoln, where ranchers, timber mills, snowmobilers, business owners, fly fishermen, hunters and more are working together to create a positive future for the area. Each Montanan has the ability to come together, meet in the middle, and decide how Montana grows in the next hundred years and beyond. Sens. Jon Tester and Steve Daines, and new Rep. Greg Gianforte: Please, support our Montana-made solutions. Put your partisan leanings aside. Work on behalf of Montanans, who meet in the middle. Its in this place where the real work is done. By OUYANG SHIJIA in Beijing and YANG JUN in Guiyang | China Daily | Updated: 2017-08-03 07:52 Billboards of Zhihu.com, a Beijing-based knowledge-sharing website, have sprouted up in Nanjing, Jiangsu province. WANG QIMING / FOR CHINA DAILY There was a time when Chinese Q&A website Zhihu was an imitator and not an innovator. But that was back in 2011 when it was considered little more than a Quora copycat. Six years later, Zhihu has tens of millions of users, looking for advice and willing to pay for it. Unlike its California-based rival, it is transforming its business model to cater for the sharing knowledge economy. "It's a new phase in China's booming economy," said Zhou Yuan, founder and CEO of Zhihu. "We found people are willing to pay for knowledge and expertise. "It will also be an opportunity for us to extend services for paid content in fields such as IT, finance and careers," Zhou added. The Beijing-based website and app have proved to be smash hits with the online fraternity and investors. Indeed, Zhihu claims to have 84 million registered clients and 22 million daily active users. Back in January, the company announced it raised $100 million in its latest series of D-round financing, which gave it a "unicorn valuation" of more than $1 billion. Supported by new investment, the company is gearing up to expand its paid-for-content business. In May, the website introduced a new function on its app known as "market" to offer paid consulting, interactive online Q&As and lecture-type sessions for Zhihu Live and Zhihu Bookshop. For about 20 yuan ($3), an individual customer can access audio and texts from Zhihu Live, covering a range of lectures and professional discussions, which can last for hours at a time. More than half of the company's users access content through mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets. According to online data company Analysys Qianfan, Zhihu's app had 13.78 million active monthly users in June, a jump of 7.16 percent compared to May. "Free Q&A sessions provide a public space for users to talk and communicate with each other," Zhou said. "But knowledge payment is a commodity ... a way to satisfy demand for specific services. "Our company's revenues are mainly from advertisement," he added. "It will still take some time to develop the emerging knowledge payment market. In fact, future revenues are expected from fees collected from a paid audience." Last year, a survey released by Penguin Intelligence, an internet-focused think tank affiliated to Tencent Holdings Ltd, showed that up to 55 percent of China's online population paid for "knowledge content". In another report, jointly released by the State Information Center and the Internet Society of China, the country's sharing knowledge transactions were 61 billion yuan in 2016, a 205 percent year-on-year increase. Still, Huang Guofeng, an analyst from internet consultancy Analysys in Beijing, is convinced online companies need to up their game when it comes to "content consumption". "The emerging knowledge payment trend just caters to a specific group of users, especially those looking to further their careers," he said. "It's a good thing that startups are popping up in China, but they must improve the products and offer better services." By OUYANG SHIJIA and MA SI in Beijing and YANG JUN in Guiyang | China Daily | Updated: 2017-08-03 07:56 Huawei Technologies Co Ltd, one of the world's largest telecom equipment markers, launched its data center project in southwestern China's Guizhou province on Wednesday, responding to the company's growing need to build facilities that store online data and support global services. The move is part of a deal Huawei signed with the Guizhou provincial government last November and came as the technology juggernaut intensifies resources to compete globally. The first phase of the new data center is located in Guian New Area in Guizhou province. Covering 400,000 square meters, it will operate around 600,000 servers to store Huawei's global management data. "Guizhou province offers an ideal climate for operating data centers. It is also an important energy base in China, alongside its favorable data center polices. Taking these advantages, we aim to build an industrial park, which serves as a global management data storage center and a base to train the talents," said Ren Shulu, Huawei's senior vice-president. The Shenzhen-based firm said around 600 to 800 IT service engineers will maintain the server system and then be sent overseas to support its global services. It also plans to use the center to train selected employees. Last November, Huawei and the Guizhou provincial government signed a cooperation agreement to work on internet of things technology, construction of a smart city, intelligent manufacturing, and the application of big data and cloud computing. The company said the cooperation may save as much as $100 million annually in electricity charges, due to the lower cost of energy. Rolling out a range of preferential policies for the big data application and development, Guizhou province is becoming a new big data hub. Last month, Apple Inc announced it would open its first China data center in Guizhou province, which is part of a $1 billion investment in the area and will be operated by a local data management company. James Yan, research director at Counterpoint Technology Market Research, said he was optimistic about the prospects for the center's future development, as it will benefit greatly from the local government's supportive polices and big investment. Robots attract visitors at an industry expo in Beijing. CHEN XIAOGEN / FOR CHINA DAILY China's artificial intelligence-focused startups received record financing of 19.3 billion yuan ($2.87 billion) in the first half of 2017, with the mid and late-stage deals dominating the period, a report said on Wednesday. It predicted that the industry is very likely to "enter an adjustment period" in the next half year. According to a report issued by itjuzi.com, a Chinese website dedicated to data on tech investments, the number of deals to AI-enabled startups in the country reached 96 in the first six months. Top verticals for the period include healthcare, automobile, security, finance, logistics and warehouse. AI in intelligent robotics is the leading category for deals in 2017 so far, which accounts for nearly one-third of total deals. Companies leveraging natural language processing, a subfield of AI, received most capital. The report comes amid the AI-investment spree nationwide. In July, Chinese government released a national plan aiming to grow its core AI industries to 150 billion yuan by 2020, 400 billion yuan by 2025, and 1 trillion yuan by 2030. Part of the reason behind the forecast of "adjustment period" lies in the imbalance in cash flows between the well-funded and early-stage companies, said the report citing latest figures. Almost 60 percent of the capital was invested in the top five companies in terms of funding. By contrast, only 21 percent flowed to AI-related startups in series-A stage and earlier, which are still relatively nascent and account for 77 percent of total deals. Some businesses in computer vision and image, cloud computing equipment, natural language processing and aided driving are poised for growth. Those focusing their efforts on sensor components, laser radar, and technological platform are still at early stage. Two women ride Mobikes in Manchester in the United Kingdom. [Photo/Xinhua] BEIJING - Following its recent expansion to the British city of Manchester, Mobike, the Beijing-based world's largest bike-sharing operator, announced Tuesday it would enter the London market. Mobike's vice-president and head for overseas expansion, Chris Martin, is helping bring this Chinese innovation - a fully dockless bike-sharing system - to his hometown, London. The bike-sharing plan should grow into a "shared language worldwide" to facilitate travel of the public and help foreign visitors break the language barriers of the "Tower of Babel," Martin, wearing a T-shirt saying "Mobike-U.K.," told Xinhua in fluent Chinese on Aug 1. Martin said that just with a city map and a Mobike, every Mobike user may go wherever he or she wants regardless of language barriers. Mobike launched in the Chinese city of Shanghai in April 2016 and attempted its first ambitious overseas expansion in Singapore on March 21, 2017. This "silver and orange" storm, referring to the color of the bike body, has swept through the British cities of Manchester and Salford, Fukuoka and Sapporo in Japan, and Milan and Florence in Italy in the past five months. Martin said that Mobike has offered 1,000 bikes in Manchester in June, each of which serves nine or 10 users per day. As the riding range has expanded from the city center to the suburb, demands are increasing, he added. Mobike's plan will debut with 750 bikes available for pick-up in the London borough of Ealing and more to follow according to the market demand. Users shall pay a 29-pound ($38) initial deposit and 50 pence ($0.67) per half hour for each use. Martin said the bike-sharing plan is not merely China's business, and all the world can join the ride. Combining creativity, science and technology, as well as design, Mobike is attracting many potential cooperators. According to the man at Mobike's wheel, it is not always the operator that actively selects the location overseas, but some foreign cities that wish to promote cooperation with Mobike in their hopes of developing smart cities with an intelligent transportation system and internet of things (IoT). From Asia to Europe, the Chinese operator has made changes to its plan, taking specific regulations and customers' preferences into account. For instance, the bikes in London are all equipped with a forehead light as required. Mobike is willing to explore ways to better adapt to the needs of each target city, said Martin. He also said Mobike's manufacturing system has been accredited by international certification authorities such as TUV SUD, a global certification provider headquartered in the German city of Munich, and attained many internationally recognized standard certifications including the EU, British and Japanese standards. Mobike's cooperation with the global top telecommunication operators and IoT businesses paves the way for a broader international market. The company's globalization continues to accelerate. Data show that with a customer base of 100 million users in more than 150 cities in five countries around the world, the bike-sharing provider is used 25 million times every day. Its service network is scheduled to cover 200 cities globally by the end of 2017. Martin said domestic enterprises may easily acquire ideal capital resources, market opportunities and growth, but for transnational companies, high quality is the premise of development. Mobike pays special attention to science elements, brand value, social responsibility and environmentalism. "To be a quality bike-sharing operator" is in Mobike's DNA during its globalization process, said Martin. Six-year-old Mei Qingwen (left) is treated in the ICU at No 1 Affiliated Hospital of Harbin Medical University. Xiao Qi (right) shows how he tried to catch the falling girl.[Liu Mingxin/For China Daily] Xiao Qi, 38, an English teacher at No 11 Senior High School in Harbin, Heilongjiang province, didn't hesitate to open his arms to catch a 6-year-old girl who fell from a third-floor window on Sunday as she leaned out to call to her grandfather. On Wednesday, the girl, Mei Qingwen, was in the intensive care unit of No 1 Affiliated Hospital of Harbin Medical University, with kidney and lung damage and skull fractures, according to her grandmother, Yu Huilan. But the girl's condition seemed to be improving. "Fortunately, my granddaughter is now out of danger and has regained consciousness," Yu said. "The doctor said Xiao's heroic action greatly reduced the damage." Xiao explained the details: "On Sunday afternoon, as I was on my way home, I saw a girl leaning out the window on a building's third floor," he said. "I attempted to warn her with a loud shout, but she looked flustered and didn't seem to be listening." Mei was born with a hearing disability and only learned to speak after undergoing cochlear implant surgery to provide some sound through a tiny electrical device. But the implant was out of power at the time, so she couldn't hear Xiao. "I was not thinking about anything," Xiao continued. "I acted on instinct to save her life." Xiao sustained minor injuries to his arm as a result of the forceful impact of the catch. He was able to slow her descent considerably but couldn't hold on. "If I had caught her better, maybe she would be less seriously injured," he said with evident remorse. Xiao dialed the emergency 120 number and left without a word after the ambulance arrived. Yu, the grandmother, wanted to find the identity of the hero and asked a local broadcasting station for help the next day. "My neighbors told me only that he was a middle-aged, medium height and wore glasses," Yu said. "Working with many people together, we finally found him." "I can't express my thanks with simple words," she said. "I can't imagine what would have happened without his help. He is the savior of my whole family." Yu said that when the girl found that she had been left alone by her grandfather, who was going to the market, she wanted to signal to him through the window. Xiao was passing by at the time and acted quickly to catch her when she fell. His colleagues at the high school were not surprised. "Of course, he'd rush to help. He's very kind and willing to help others. He is a provincial-level excellent teacher, and in June we recommended him to be named among the city's Teachers of the Year," said Wang Zuosheng, the principal. "In my mind he is always my hero," said Peng Ana, Xiao's wife. "This is not the first time he's saved someone's life." Peng recounted an incident in the winter of 2003. Xiao found a young girl who seemed to be having thoughts of suicide on a busy traffic bridge. He spoke patiently with her. Finally the girl changed her mind. Li Bing, a physics teacher at Harbin No 3 High School was quoted in the Heilongjiang Morning Post saying the girl, who weighed about 20 kilograms, would generate as much as much as 75 kilograms of direct force in a fall of three stories. Netizens praised Xiao's heroism. "Such a good deed is a ray of sunshine that warms and encourages us," one person posted. "He is really the most beautiful teacher in the city, and I believe virtue will be rewarded." The counties that form the Xiongan New Area in Hebei province have shut down thousands of polluting companies since the move to create the area was announced in April. More than 7,200 companies that discharged heavy pollution were investigated and nearly 4,000 were closed, according to an announcement on the area's public WeChat account. About 100 people involved were arrested and detained for questioning about contaminating the environment. The severity of the punishment showed the determination of the area's leaders to tackle environmental problems, observers said. Officials in the Xiongan New Area, a zone established to advance the coordinated development of the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region, have been ordered to always put the environment first and to adhere to green development. When plans for the area were unveiled four months ago, one of the declared goals was to create a "naturally scenic city with blue skies, fresh air and clean water". Located about 100 kilometers southwest of downtown Beijing, Xiongan spans Xiongxian, Rongcheng and Anxin counties in Hebei province. It also covers Baiyangdian Lake, a major wetland that covers 366 square kilo-meters and is believed to be a key in improving the area's overall environment. But Baoding, in the new area, usually is one of the 10 cities with the country's worst air quality. Also, Baiyangdian's ecology has been damaged by years of pollution from fish-raising and industrial discharges. To control the pollution, the three counties have taken a series of measures. Anxin, which covers most of the lake, is focusing on eliminating fish net cages, which pollute the water with fish feces and leftover bait and have been in use for years. The county also ordered all illegal gas stations to be closed and demolished. Rongcheng has barred villages near Baiyangdian from raising livestock, which would endanger the lake's water quality. "All livestock farms must be closed by the end of October," the county's government said in a statement. The county also recently started a crackdown on factories - mainly garment factories, dyeing plants and paper mills - that illegally dispose of wastewater. Xiongxian will close all plastics factories, printing and platemaking plants, and any factory that discharges wastewater illegally. Novelty messages lose their fun when they announce your dirty secrets. Guanyun County People's Court in Jiangsu province has teamed up with a local telecommunications operator to design a phone message to embarrass debtors and pressure them to pay the money they owe. If anyone calls the debtor, the message plays: "The subscriber you are calling has been put on a blacklist by the Guanyun County Court for failing to pay debts. Please urge the person to fulfill his legal obligations. The Guanyun County People's Court appreciates your support. Thank you!" "The message is designed to warn debtors and get them to repay their debts as soon as possible," said Pan Xingjun of the court. "The message will disgrace debtors and force them out of hiding," Wang Yong, an employee of the court, told Paper.cn. "The debtors' relatives and friends will be reminded of the debtor's lack of credibility and they can avoid being swindled. "They cannot cancel the message themselves unless they repay their debts, and all mobile phone numbers registered under their name will be covered." Under China's real-name registration policy, ID cards must be provided to telecom operators to obtain new phone numbers. So far, 10 debtors have been put on the list by the Guanyun court. Most are self-employed people who have hidden assets or have transferred them to avoid paying debts. "They have the ability to repay, but refuse to carry out their legal obligations," the court said. "Some of them fabricated proof to resist repaying debts." The court said it would work with more telecom operators to further enforce the measure. When the message was launched on the morning of July 20, one debtor immediately called one of the judges in the afternoon to cancel it, promising to repay the 100,000 yuan ($14,800) he owed in installments. Huangshi, Hubei province, and Dengfeng, Henan province, recently introduced similar measures. Many debtors have tried a variety of ways to avoid repayment. On Friday, a court in Wuhan, Hubei province, said that a 59-year-old woman had plastic surgery in an attempt to disguise herself to avoid repaying 25 million yuan in debt. Xinhua Kevin Davy (right) with some of his students during a wine-tasting evening in Hong Kong.Provided To China Daily Wine culture is swelling on the vine in Hong Kong, with imports and re-exports thriving and giving rise to subsidiary enterprises that cultivate local connoisseurship, as Honey Tsang reports. After starting with a welcoming glass of sparkling wine, Kevin Davy and his first-time clients were set to embark on a vinous adventure. They sipped and reveled in glasses of wine poured from carefully chosen bottles. Davy, a sommelier-cum-wine educator, paired the drinks immaculately with nibbles. This is when the camaraderie between a wine educator and his students tends to gel - no notes or chalkboard, just banter. Through convivial conversation, the 28-year-old French national imparted knowledge to his students. However, they were not in a classroom, but a client's living room. In recent years, a new type of door-to-door wine education service has sprung up in Hong Kong, offering a fresh way for the city's wine lovers to understand and better enjoy wines in the comfort of their own homes. "Most learners are shy. They're often too intimidated to ask basic questions in front of strangers," said Davy, who worked as a professional wine educator in the French region of Provence before moving to Hong Kong. "When they learn at home, they are all just friends and are always happy to ask questions." This relatively soft approach to teaching people how to appreciate wine works particularly well with wine lovers who plan on exploring more but feel thwarted by the trappings of traditional wine schools. Davy's venture, Sommelier at Home - which he set up in Hong Kong in 2014 - has borne fruit. He's built a broad clientele, ranging from beginners to regular wine consumers, and even oenophiles, a rather fancy term for wine lovers. He attributes the success of his business to the locals' zeal for quality wines coupled with a growing thirst for advanced knowledge. He understands that the city's wine drinkers, at all levels, are now more eager to burnish their knowledge of wine as they strive to become smarter consumers. Copyright 1995 - . All rights reserved. The content (including but not limited to text, photo, multimedia information, etc) published in this site belongs to China Daily Information Co (CDIC). Without written authorization from CDIC, such content shall not be republished or used in any form. Note: Browsers with 1024*768 or higher resolution are suggested for this site. License for publishing multimedia online 0108263 Registration Number: 130349 Registration Number: 130349 An investment in educating 4- and 5-year-olds pays off over their lifetimes. But its often difficult to get public policymakers to put a high priority on early education, intervention and prevention of problems that mostly yield benefits in future years. Thats why Montanans have reason to cheer a pilot program that will make high-quality preschool available to more of our kids over the next couple of years. Last week, Gov. Steve Bullock visited Billings to announce the award of state grants to 16 early childhood programs, including Billings Head Start, Lockwood Public Schools, Beartooth Childrens Center in Red Lodge, Kountry Kare in Shepherd and Small Wonder Child Care Inc. in Lewistown. The 16 grants add up to $3 million this year and will serve 285 preschoolers, according to a news release from the governors office. If that sounds like a lot of money, consider that the average cost of childcare in Montana is $7,900 a year for a four-year-old child about 13 percent of the average familys income. Many studies have shown that every dollar spent on quality early childhood education generates several dollars in future savings for society. Children who get a good educational start in preschool are more likely to read at grade level in elementary school, more likely to graduate from high school and to earn more by working as adults. Funding preschool has been a priority for Bullock since he was elected governor, but it proved a tough sell in the Montana Legislature. In 2015 and again in 2017, Bullocks preschool proposals died in skeptical committees where lawmakers said the state shouldnt support preschools, complained that 4-year-olds are too young for education and insisted that the state couldnt afford preschool. Late in the session, Bullock, Montana hospitals and GOP legislative leaders settled on an unusual method of funding this two-year preschool pilot: The states largest hospitals agreed to be temporarily taxed to fund preschool grants if the state would preserve a separate hospital fee program that helps fund hospitals Medicaid reimbursements. The STARS grants are one time only appropriations. Bullock will have to persuade a majority of lawmakers to support any continuation of the program in the 2019 session. At the very least, 285 Montana children will have the opportunity to be ready for kindergarten and have a closer-to-even start on the rest of their education. HB639 requires the Montana Department of Public Health and Human Services to report to legislative committees by September 2018 with analysis of the pilot and recommendations for its future. Montana is one of just a handful of states that has not financially supported preschool. Unfortunately, the no-preschool states include our neighbors Wyoming, Idaho and the Dakotas. Our regions children certainly arent less in need of quality early education. In the rest of our great nation, states with Republican and Democratic leadership have recognized the importance of getting tots off to a good start. Its so much better for kids and communities to identify learning problems as early to prevent little learners from falling behind their peers. Starting this month, the STARS preschool pilot will make a real difference for dozens of children in Yellowstone County and a couple hundred more around the state. That accomplishment should make Bullock, lawmakers and hospitals proud. Russians could soon drink tea and eat pork from Ningxiang,Hunan province, while people in Hunan could soon get a taste of original vodka and chocolate from Russia. A company from Ningxiang and the biggest supermarket in Russia recently signed a $1 million agreement on supplying tea and cans, Changsha Evening Newspaper reported. XiPu Industrial, mainly focusing on import and export of agricultural and light industrial products in Ningxiang, also reached a tentative deal on 79 kinds of agricultural products and light industrial goods with Magnit, the biggest rural supermarket in Russia. The international trade platform called "Hunan products into Russia" has had a great influence on Russia through online and offline promotions, attracting many Russian retail companies and platform providers to work on deals. Magnit also showed keen interest in many agricultural products and light industrial products by undertaking a field trip in Ningxiang on Sept 27. "It's a great opportunity for us to explore Hunan and the Ningxiang economic development district to see products that our supermarket needs, and the government is also supporting us," said a top executive of Magnit. "It has made us believe that it's right to work together." Ningxiang economic development zone has always been devoted to the development of openness and innovation and has recorded an increase of over 20 percent in foreign capital and foreign trade for many years. XiPu Industrial is the forerunner of entrepreneurs involved in the Belt and Road Initiative. Its sale network includes 16 cities with population over a million in Russia, and also explores the national markets of Belarus, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Ukraine. Magnit is the biggest rural supermarket in Russia, with 14,059 retail stores, including 10,521 supermarkets, 237 markets, 194 family stores and 3,107 cosmetic outlets. In 2016 the merchandise trade between China and Magnit had reached $5 billion. Xin Wen contributed to this story. A Chinese scientist has retracted the study of a controversial gene-editing technology from a world-leading journal after the science community raised questions about the research's authenticity. In an announcement published on Wednesday, the research team led by Han Chunyu, an associate professor with Hebei University of Science and Technology, said they retracted the paper because of the continued inability of the research community to reproduce the key results in their paper on Argonaute protein (NgAgo), which they claimed to be a powerful genome-editing tool. "Despite the efforts of many laboratories, an independent replication of these results has not been reported. We are therefore retracting our initial report at this time to maintain the integrity of the scientific record," said the announcement published on Nature Biotechnology. Han and his colleagues published the paper in the journal in May last year, claiming that NgAgo was a better gene editor than the widely used CRISPRCas9 approach. The findings of the study were widely reported, especially in the Chinese media. According to the media monitor site Meltwater, nearly 4,000 Chinese news stories cited Han's paper in just the first two months after the publication. However, the failure of an increasing number of scientists from abroad and home to reproduce the results of the study raised doubts that the protein works as a gene editor. In November, Nature Biotechnology published an article to alert its readers to potential problems with the NgAgo paper, and asked Han's team to explain the failures of the science community to reproduce their results. A month later, Han's team and other independent groups provided new data claiming to have produced NgAgo gene-editing activity, but they were judged too preliminary to warrant publication, according to an editorial published by the journal alongside the retraction announcement. Before the decision to retract the paper, Han stood by his results, arguing that cell contamination may explain the failures to reproduce the study. The California Institute of Integral Studies, the largest training base for psychologists in North America, has launched its iconic course on expressive arts therapy in Guangzhou, capital of Guangdong province. "The therapy plays a very effective role for treating psychological problems, enhancing an individual's self-healing and reconstructing their confidence," said Kate T. Donohue, a psychologist with the institute. The institute opened its first training program at Guangzhou's Institute for Psychology of the Heart in late June, and more courses will follow, the institute said. Donohue said professors from the Californian institute will be sent to teach the program, which aims to develop Chinese psychologists. It is the first time the psychological therapy has been introduced in China. Expressive arts therapy refers to an approach used for individuals, couples, families, groups and communities that integrates a wide range of arts modalities in the service of human growth, development and healing. Incorporating writing, drama, dance, movement, painting and music, the therapy can be used as part of treatment strategies for a variety of behavioral, emotional and mental health conditions, according to Donohue, who is also the founder of the International Expressive Arts Therapy Association. Shen Heyong, a professor with the Guangzhou institute, said the programs will be taught online and offline in Chinese and will incorporate traditional Chinese culture. "There is a growing demand for psychological treatment in China. We need a complete training system to develop more local psychologists," Shen said. Guizhou province has opened its first air route for helicopter tours as it looks to meet the diversifying needs of visitors, Guizhou City News reported on Wednesday. The maiden flight left the eastern city of Kaili at 10:35 am on Tuesday and landed briefly in Xiasi, an ancient town known as Little Shanghai. It returned to Kaili at 11:33 am. The flight was in an Airbus H125, which can carry up to four passengers and has been used to fly over Qomolangma, the worlds tallest mountain, known in the West as Mount Everest. Selected groups will be invited to experience the tour at the cost of only 1 yuan (15 US cents) around the National Day holiday in October when a new helipad is finished, said Jiang Hongyan, who works in marketing for the tour operator, Beijing Capital Helicopter. The company, a subsidiary of HNA Group, plans to open more air routes to tourist attractions, according to the report. Guizhou authorities aims to build a general aviation network in 10 to 15 years, with almost every county reachable by helicopter. Wang Keju contributed to this story. A university graduate who was found dead in Tianjin was reportedly lured into a scam that disguised itself as a recruitment firm before he died. The incident has sparked fierce online discussion over the safety of online recruitment. The body of Li Wenxing, who graduated last year, was found on July 14 in a pool in Tianjins Jinghai district, which is noted for rampant fake recruiters. Local police said its highly possible that the man was lured as he had with him a notebook with a note attached related to pyramid scheme. Autopsy showed that he drowned to death. According to online media site jmdedu.com, which interviewed the victims family in Dezhou, Shandong, and friends, Li had received an offer from a companys branch in Jinghai via recruitment app zhipin.com and was asked to start work in May before he went missing. According to his family members, Li asked his mother in his last call to her not to give money to anyone and the 23-year-old, who never borrowed money, asked for money three times. Several media companies were able to register as recruiters with fake information though zhipin.com closed this loophole on Monday morning. Lis senior high school classmate Ding Xiangcheng said Li discussed with him the offer before he left for Tianjin. The company, which disclosed itself as Beijing-headquartered software company Csii, decided to recruit him only after a phone interview. Though suspicious that the offer might be a scam, he went to Tianjin. Li had been looking for work for a long time but had failed, said Ding. Csii, however, said the two people who contacted Li, Xue Tingting and Wang Wenpeng, via the recruitment app dont work for the company. Zhao Peng, CEO of Zhipin, said his company takes a zero-tolerance approach against fake recruiters, but one loophole that the scam artists could exploit is that the company does not verify registered recruiters if they post complete information and only post one position. The company said they have saved the data related to Li for police investigation. Some 5,000 people are expected to donate organs in China this year, almost double the figure in 2015. The number of people willing to donate after their death has steadily increased in recent years, the China Organ Transplantation Development Foundation said on Thursday. China recorded 2,766 donors in 2015 and 4,080 in 2016, the foundation said, adding that as of July 16, 293,000 people had registered as organ donors and 34,500 organs had been donated. This year, more than 15,000 organ transplants are expected to be carried out nationwide. The government made voluntary donations the only legal source of organs in January 2015 when it placed a ban using organs from executed prisoners. Despite there being more organ donors, large gaps still remain between supply and demand, as transplant surgeries are usually the only option for patients with terminal diseases. More than 40,000 people in China are waiting for a transplant, but only about 16,000 can actually have the surgery, according to Huang Jiefu, president of the foundation. A condom producer in Guangdong province is taking legal action against the Guinness World Records in a bid to retain the title of world's thinnest prophylactic manufacturer. Guangzhou Daming United Rubber Products Limited has taken Guinness World Records to court in Beijing after its product was deleted, even though it had previously been verified. Guinness World Records verified the company's aoni condom, which has an average thickness of 0.036 milimeters, as the world's thinnest in 2013. But the defendant deleted the record due to new internal regulations and rules it introduced in 2015. Li Xubo, legal officer from Guangzhou Daming United Rubber Products Limited, said Guinness should not use the regulations and rules which were introduced in 2015 to delete previously verfied records. "Guinness, which modified its rules at will, has run counter to the basic business ethics and the principle of good faith," Li said. Beijing Dongcheng district people's court has yet to hand down its decision after two public hearings took place in July. A total of 839 controlled knives Guangzhou customs seized were destroyed in the Guangdong provincial capital on Thursday, demonstrating customs officers' determination to fight against the smuggling of controlled knives in the southern metropolis. The knives which included soldier's swords, spring knives, choppers and sabres might have posed a very serious threat to the lives and safety of local residents if they had been smuggled into the city, according to Wu Xiaobo, deputy director of the Anti-Smuggling Bureau with Guangzhou Customs. "The knives were seized while they were being brought into the city by lawbreakers and suspected smugglers, being smuggled into Guangdong province in its waters and being mailed via express mail service to Guangzhou since 2015," Wu said at a press conference in Guangzhou. She hinted at the possibility of increasing special operations to fight against smuggling involving controlled knives in the months ahead to ensure a good and sound social security for the city's economic construction. Customs in Guangzhou which is the southern gateway to the mainland have detained 10 suspects after cracking down on eight major knife smuggling cases since 2015. Customs officers in Guangzhou Baiyun International Airport seized a total of 193 controlled knives in an inspection on express mail coming from Nepal in May last year. The shortest reached 12.6 centimeters while the longest of the controlled knives came to 28.1 centimeters. And Dachan customs under the administration of Guangzhou customs also seized a large number of soldier's swords and daggers when they inspected two vessels in the waters at the mouth of the Pearl River in a recent anti-smuggling campaign. China's Global Newspaper Sorry, the page you requested was not found. Please check the URL for proper spelling and capitalization. If you're having trouble locating a destination on Chinadaily.com.cn, try visiting the Chinadaily home page This week was a dream-come-true for military watchers. August 1 marked the 90th birth anniversary of the People's Liberation Army (PLA). Various events were held across the country, including a parade at an exercise field in Inner Mongolia for the first time in four decades. But the past seven days saw more than just fighter jets taking to the blue skies. Major storms delivered a double punch on the eastern provinces while other parts of the country sweltered under record heat. Here's the week's recap. Twenty-four helicopters fly in the formation of the number "90" symbolizing the epic journey of the People's Liberation Army in 90 years during a military parade at Zhurihe training base in North China's Inner Mongolia autonomous region, July 30, 2017. [Photo/Xinhua] The film Tunnel War [Photo/Mtime] In China, there is a type of film called red movie which center on moving stories and valiant efforts of Chinese military men. Red movies are a significant memory for a certain generation of Chinese people and some of the productions had huge social influence. As China celebrates the 90th anniversary of the PLAs establishment, lets review some iconic classic red movies. 1. Tunnel War Release year: 1965 Producer: August First Film Studio Plot: The movie focuses on villagers from a small town defending themselves from Japanese invaders using a network of tunnels during the War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression (1937-45). Social position: It is considered to be one of the first movies to discuss the use of tunnels in war. The military-themed movie Wolf Warrior 2 features Wu Jing in multiple roles, including director and star, and is set in an unnamed African country facing a civil war. The cast includes Chinese actress Yu Nan and US action star Frank Grillo, who is known for his role as Crossbones in Captain America movies. [Photo provided to China Daily] A sequel to the 2015 hit Wolf Warrior opened across the Chinese mainland on July 27 and raked in 1.7 billion yuan ($253 million) in five days, making it the highest-grossing movie in July. Xu Fan reports. It was a real-life adventure in Africa for him. At a recent event in Beijing, Wu Jing speaks of his experiences while working on the military-themed movie Wolf Warrior 2. He saw colleagues bitten by spiders, acted with lions and nearly drowned at sea. The movie, a sequel to the 2015 hit Wolf Warrior, opened across the Chinese mainland on July 27. It raked in 1.7 billion yuan ($253 million) in five days, and was the highest-grossing movie in July. The popular review portal Douban.com gives it 7.5 points out of 10 thanks to its action sequences. The film, which features Wu in multiple roles besides director and star, is set in an unnamed African country facing a civil war. Wu plays Leng Feng, a former Chinese special forces operative, who fights a US mercenary and his bloodthirsty soldiers. The cast includes Hong Kong actress Celina Jade and US action star Frank Grillo, who is known for his role as Crossbones in Captain America movies. Ou Hao plays the role of Communist general Ye Ting in The Founding of an Army. The general's grandson protests that Ou is "too sissy" to play the military legend. [Photo provided to China Daily] The summer blockbuster The Founding of an Army has sparked heated discussion on Chinese social media. Xu Fan reports. The much-anticipated The Founding of an Army has become a hot topic on Chinese social media, also because of opinions expressed by a revolutionary's grandson. Ye Dayingthe grandson of Ye Ting, the late Communist generalrecently made a series of posts to protest the movie on Sina Weibo, the Chinese equivalent of Twitter. First, he criticized the producers for casting young pop idol Ou Hao to star as his grandfather. He says he believes Ou is "too sissy" to play the military legend. Ye Daying also slams Bai Ke, whom he says shot to fame from comic roles and is not fit for serious war epics. Bai stars as Qu Qiubai, a Communist leader in the late 1920s and early '30s. Ye Daying, a filmmaker known for his patriotic movies, got more than 20 other descendants of revolutionary heroes to sign an open letter to the State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television, the sectoral regulator, demanding an apology from the producers. Set in the late '20s, The Founding of an Army, a follow-up to The Founding of a Republic (2009) and Beginning of the Great Revival (2011), cast more than 50 pop idols to play New China's founding fathers or historical figures. "It could have been a good thing if excellent young actors were hired for this. But the producers recruited heartthrobs for their popularity and the film's profit," Ye Daying wrote in the letter. Copyright 1995 - . All rights reserved. The content (including but not limited to text, photo, multimedia information, etc) published in this site belongs to China Daily Information Co (CDIC). Without written authorization from CDIC, such content shall not be republished or used in any form. Note: Browsers with 1024*768 or higher resolution are suggested for this site. 0108263 License for publishing multimedia online Registration Number: 130349 Registration Number: 130349 Poster of Earth: One Amazing Day [Photo/Mtime] Earth: One Amazing Day, the follow-up to Earth: The Movie, has just been launched in China. The latest documentary by BBC Earth Films was co-produced by several Chinese filmmakers under the UK-China production treaty. Traveling through the continents, oceans and across skies, Earth: One Amazing Day reveals the awesome power of the natural world from sunrise to sunset, using cutting-edge filming technologies. The feature film is not just breaking new technological ground for BBC Earth Films, it is also the first international natural history documentary to be fully released in China. The film is believed to have been inspired by an increasing interest in nature in Asia, especially among the younger generation. The directing team is made up of documentary director Richard Dale and Peter Webber, the director famous for Girl with a Pearl Earring, as well as Chinese Emmy award-winning documentarian Fan Lixin. At Tuesday's launch, the Chinese director shared his experiences while shooting the rarely seen white-headed langur monkeys in the mountains of southwestern China. "For example, when our team was filming the white-headed langur in Chengdu mountains in China, the crew used heavy drone flights to try to get the most stunning picture up close with the monkeys climbing up the steep cliff. In order to do that, they flew almost 20 days without filming a single frame just to habitualize the white-headed langurs with the noise of the drones. So we can see a lot of effort and technical creativity went into the production," Fan Lixin says. The cherry on top came when Hong Kong martial arts legend Jackie Chan was cast as the narrator for the documentary's Chinese-language version. Chan says he's a huge fan of animals and went all out during the six-hour long uninterrupted voiceover process. "I didn't learn from anyone about voiceover skills, except the pronunciation for some of the characters in standard Chinese. I narrated based on my own understanding and tried to be as natural as I could," said Chan. Earth: One Amazing Day took over four years to plan and three years to make. The feature film will premiere in Chinese cinemas on August 11th. Related: Jackie Chan to narrate BBC Earth documentary SHI YU/CHINA DAILY Russia has demanded the United States cut its diplomatic staff in Russia to 455 by September and could consider taking further action as part of its response to fresh US sanctions approved by Congress. US President Donald Trump is expected to sign the bill into law soon, imposing sweeping sanctions on Russia, Iran and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea that were approved by the Senate with an overwhelming bipartisan majority of 97 to 2. The "overlapping consensus" on the sanctions against the three countries, which primarily targets Russia, supposedly has something to do with the conclusion drawn by US intelligence agencies that Russia "meddled" in last year's US presidential election. It also signals an attempt to limit Trump's diplomatic powers and subject them to congressional approval, particularly when it comes to ties with Moscow. Even if Trump refuses to sign the sanction bill into law, the Congress can overrule him. In fact, the only way Trump can stall the bill is to propose tougher sanctions against the three countries, a move that risks shrinking Washington's diplomatic leeway in the Middle East and Korean Peninsula issues, as well as plunging US-Russia relations into uncertainty just one month after Trump met with Russian President Vladimir Putin at the G20 Summit in Hamburg. There is hardly any similarity between the latest US sanctions against Russia and those imposed by the Barack Obama administration. Unlike Trump, Obama had full presidential authority in devising the country's Russia policy, and his sanction proposals were in line with that of the European Union. But since domestic political entanglements have necessitated the US' new sanctions, they could strain its ties with the EU. The bill, which aims to penalize companies that contribute to Russia's energy development, could hamper plans for a natural gas pipeline from Russia to Germany called Nord Stream 2. In response to the US' move, European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker said: "America First cannot mean that Europe's interests come last". During Obama's presidency, the US-EU sanctions were basically about restricting Russian energy companies' financing channels and blocking their access to key oil production technologies. Moscow is heavily dependent on energy development as are many Russian political and economic heavyweights who run most of the country's oil and gas companies. Such "smart" sanctions from Washington and Brussels could apply the right amount of pressure on Moscow, without paralyzing EU-Russia energy cooperation or inviting Russian retaliation. After the US appeared to exploit shale gas at home, traditional gas exporters including Qatar decided to explore the European market, slightly reducing the EU's dependence on Russia for energy. Despite Brussels' pursuit of diversified energy suppliers, it is unlikely to cut its energy ties with Moscow, which explains why some EU leaders are angry at the US Congress's unilateral sanction bill. Tougher sanctions will do little damage to US-Russia trade, which reached just $20 billion last year, but they might deal a major blow to EU-Russia trade, which once reached 338.6 billion ($400.4 billion) before dropping to 191.3 billion last year. While the US' sanction bill may drive a wedge into the trans-Atlantic alliance, Russia could actually benefit from it by mobilizing support at home. And the resultant rift in Washington-Brussels ties could provide Moscow a moment of relief and enough time to use its diplomatic maneuvers amid toughening sanctions. The author is a professor at the School of International Relations and Public Affairs, Shanghai International Studies University. US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson speaks during a press conference after talks with Chinese diplomatic and defense chiefs at the State Department in Washington, US, June 21, 2017. [Photo/Agencies] As if to cover up their own helplessness on the issue, some countries have demonstrated a renewed penchant for pointing an accusing finger at China, alleging that China has not put enough pressure on the Democratic People's Republic of Korea to rein in its nuclear weapons program. As well as provoking a new round of vehement criticism and condemnation from the international community, the test-launch of a second intercontinental ballistic missile by the DPRK on Friday prompted Washington to once again claim Beijing is not exercising the influence it has over Pyongyang. US President Donald Trump tweeted after the launch that he was "very disappointed" with China and Beijing was doing "nothing" to curb Pyongyang's nuclear ambitions. Such accusations are unfair, as they are totally unfounded. China is doing all it can and employing whatever influence it has. It has consistently and fully implemented UN Security Council resolutions, and repeatedly urged the DPRK to respect the collective will of the international community and cease any activities that escalate tensions. Trump's implication that Beijing is somehow at fault for the US' current unease is simply a reflection of what has been his administration's inaccurate assessment of the situation. Which is why US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson's latest remarks on the issue are so welcome; they suggest the US has adopted a more rational perspective. At a US State Department briefing on Monday, Tillerson said the US does not blame China for the escalating tensions and the US is willing to sit down and negotiate with the DPRK over its nuclear weapons program in coordination with China. Tillerson's remarks hopefully signal Washington has adopted a more pragmatic approach to the issue and it is willing to engage in dialogue with Pyongyang in a bid to break the current impasse. No stakeholder can single-handedly resolve the Korean Peninsula issue. But instead of concerted efforts to defuse the volatile tensions on the peninsula, the finger-pointing has merely highlighted the growing divergences among stakeholders on how to resolve the issue, which has threatened to prompt reckless moves that would exacerbate the already fragile situation. It is hoped the US will now make concrete moves to translate Tillerson's words into action, and the DPRK will demonstrate its own sincerity to de-escalating tensions. A worker looks closely as containers are unloaded in Qingdao Port, Shandong province. [Photo/China Daily] Reports that US President Donald Trump is considering imposing restrictions on Chinese imports, with an announcement forthcoming as early as this week, are worrying, because the move, if taken, could spark a trade war between the world's two largest economies. The United States' grievances stem from its huge trade deficit with China, which now stands at $368 billion, and what it regards as China's weak protection of intellectual property rights. Section 301 of the US' Trade Act of 1974 allows Trump to impose tariffs or other trade restrictions to protect US industries from "unfair practices" without following the dispute settlement mechanism of the World Trade Organization. That Washington is backpedaling on the joint efforts the two countries have made to narrow their differences on trade will be a blow to the mutual trust that both sides have worked hard to build. It could also compromise the one-year action plan on economic cooperation they agreed at the Comprehensive Economic Dialogue in Washington on July 19. The plan for a year of discussions is aimed at building on the positive momentum achieved in the 100-Day Action Plan trade negotiations between the two sides initiated after the summit meeting in April between Trump and President Xi Jinping. The timing of the proposed move has sparked speculation that Trump is trying to punish China for what he sees as Beijing's failure to help him rein in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea's nuclear weapons program. But that assumption is unfounded, and politicizing the trade issue in this way risks harming Sino-US relations. Beijing always insists that trade disputes and frictions, which are inevitable given the size of the two economies, should be resolved through dialogue and consultations. And this is imperative given how complementary and interdependent the two economies are. If it resorts to a domestic law to address its trade disputes with China, rather than relying on dialogue or the dispute-settlement mechanism of the WTO, the US would belie its claim that it wants to build "fair, equitable and reciprocal" trade relations with China. And imposing tariffs and restrictions on Chinese imports would serve the interests of neither side, since China will have no choice but to take retaliatory measures, thus paving the way for a trade war. Both sides should work hard to avoid that damaging eventuality. Craig Letch (L), director of food quality and assurance for Beef Products Inc., interacts with governors from Kansas, Texas, Iowa, South Dakota, Nebraska during their visit to his beef plant in South Sioux City, Nebraska, March 29, 2012. [Photo/VCG] AS PART OF THE 100-DAY ACTION PLAN inked during President Xi Jinping and US President Donald Trump's meeting in Florida in April, China is once again allowing imports of US beef. Beijing News comments: The US beef being sold in China on e-commerce sites and in supermarkets is priced around 100 yuan ($15) to 300 yuan per kilogram, which is twice the price of domestic beef. But most of it has been fresh, rather than frozen, so it was transported to China by air, which pushed the price up. Thus some beef producers in China worry that as more frozen US beef is shipped to China by sea, its price will decline to that of domestic beef, or even lower. Such worries are surely unfounded, beef from Australia, Uruguay, New Zealand, Brazil and Argentina is already sold in China. The restructuring of the cattle industry and related processing industries has been underway since then. Competition selects the superior and eliminates the inferior, thus the US beef imports will make the Chinese industry more efficient. The backyard free-range cattle raisers have already largely disappeared given their low efficiency and lack of quality control procedures. After China entered the World Trade Organization in 2001, a prevailing worry at home was China's textile and auto industries would collapse. Yet, after a painstaking industrial adjustment, the two industries have become more competitive than before. They not only survived, but are also competing in foreign markets. It is the same now. The cattle farming and beef processing enterprises that survive the competition will do so based on their scale and the quality of their products. Wuxi National Sensing Innovation Demonstration Park in East China's Jiangsu province is cooperating with Aliyun, the cloud-computing arm of the e-commerce giant Alibaba, to build the city as an internet of things. Machine-to-machine communication built on cloud computing and networks will be used to interconnect things embedded with electronics, software, sensors and actuators in order to shape the city into an internet of things. Wuxi National Sensing Innovation Demonstration Park is the core demonstration zone approved by the State Council, China's Cabinet, to explore the technology and application of the internet of things. There are about 2,000 enterprises and more than 150,000 employees involved in the internet of things in Wuxi. According to their strategic cooperation agreement, Aliyun will provide technology and cloud computing services so the demonstration park can accelerate the application and commercialization of the internet of things. Canada is facing an "unprecedented" number of asylum seekers, who have crossed the border from the United States, officials said. "We've never seen those numbers," said Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) spokesman Claude Castonguay. "Even though our officers are patrolling 24 hours a day all year long, we've never seen such numbers coming in." RCMP intercepted almost 7,000 asylums seekers in the last six weeks in Quebec. Officials stressed that the influx can be handled and at no time has the security of the country been compromised. But they cautioned that while Canada remains an open, welcoming country, crossing into it is not "a ticket for permanent residence." "Coming to Canada, asking for asylum in Canada is not a guarantee for permanent residence in Canada," said Louis Dumas, spokesman for the immigration ministry in a Thursday press conference. About 80 to 85% of the asylum seekers are of Haitian descent, according to RCMP. The number of people intercepted in Quebec has soared in recent months from 781 in June and 2,996 in July to 3,800 as of August 15, according to RCMP. Dispelling misleading information Officials also tried to clear up misinformation spreading through social media and WhatsApp that claimed Canada is inviting people to claim asylum, reported CNN's partner CBC. "It is not a message from the government of Canada," Dumas said. "Strict processes are in place for all people claiming asylum, regardless of how they enter into Canada." He said 50% of Haitians who requested asylum in 2016 had their claims rejected. Quebec's premier Philippe Couillard had posted on his Facebook last week that it was a "very delicate situation." "It is unfortunate that these very vulnerable people were convinced that admission as a refugee in Canada and here in Quebec would be simple, even automatic. That's not the case at all. There is no guarantee that asylum applications will be accepted, given the strict rules that govern them." Why Haitians are leaving the US Many Haitians have headed to Canada over concerns that they'll lose their temporary protected status or TPS, in the US. Shortly after the devastating 2010 earthquake in Haiti, the Obama administration granted Haitian immigrants -- who had already been living in the US -- with temporary protected status. The program allowed them to work and shielded them from deportation. It also provided them temporary refuge considering that Haiti had suffered one of the deadliest earthquakes in history, and the country was seen as too unstable for people to return. The program had since been repeatedly renewed. But earlier this year, Department of Homeland Security officials said conditions in Haiti were improving since the earthquake -- and that the program could be terminated next year. DHS officials urged Haitian recipients to prepare for the program's potential expiration in January 2018. This has sent a wave of Haitians across the northern border. Many of them have expressed concerns they'll be deported if they stay in the US. But Canada ended its version of a program that was similar to the TPS for Haitians last year, the CBC reported. This means Haitians without status can be deported from Canada. Many asylum seekers have headed for Quebec where Montreal has a large Haitian community. Amid the influx, asylum seekers are being sheltered at Olympic Stadium, where Montreal had hosted the summer games in 1976. Taking their chances Experts have cautioned that it's not so easy to meet government requirements under Canadian asylum laws. They have said the fear of deportation from the United States isn't enough to make an asylum case in Canada. The process of making a case through the Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada can take months and end in rejection. But hundreds of people are taking their chances. In the border town of Champlain, New York, taxis arrive continuously as asylum seekers haul their belongings and help their children cross into Canada. Just footsteps away, the Canadian Border Services Agency have sent up tents where officers process the new arrivals, reported CNN affiliate WPTZ. The number of people arriving has created a bottleneck at the border with more than 1,000 people waiting to be processed, according to the RCMP. As of July, Canada processed 21,695 refugee claimants, according to government figures. It's already 90% of the total number that officials registered last year. CNN's Julian Cummings and Jethro Mullen contributed to this report. Russian and Thai commodities enter Chongqing market Updated: 2017-08-02 By Sun Hui, chinadaily.com.cn Russia Pavilion and Thailand Pavilion have entered trial operations for the first time in the Chongqing International Exhibition & Trading Center on Aug 1, making more foreign products available for local residents. Liu Xiaomin, manager of the Russia Pavilion, introduced that over 100 kind of Russian products, including wild honey, red wine, coffee, sea cucumber and cooking oil, are sold at the pavilion. "We will introduce more original Russian products into the Chongqing market, such as traditional crafts and electronic devices, in the future to meet the diversified demands of local consumers," Liu added. The Russia Pavilion enters trial operation at the Chongqing International Exhibition & Trading Center on Aug 1. [Photo/liangjiang.gov.cn] Commodities in the pavilion are purchased directly from Russia and stored at the Lianglu Cuntan Tariff Bonded Zone, which saves cost and cuts 10 to 20 percent from the products' sale price, according to Liu Xiaomin. The Thailand pavilion features rubber products, including pillows and mattress, which are 100200 yuan cheaper than domestic rubber products. The Thailand Pavilion enters trial operation at the Chongqing International Exhibition & Trading Center on Aug 1. [Photo/liangjiang.gov.cn] The trading center is a comprehensive business platform for the exchange of commodities, information and technology for customers. The center enjoys preferential and convenient customs clearance policies, providing all-round professional supply chain services. The Chongqing International Exhibition & Trading Center is located in the Liangjiang New Area of Chongqing. [Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn] Edited by Zachary Dye Britain's Prince Philip, in his role as Captain General, Royal Marines, attends a Parade to mark the finale of the 1664 Global Challenge, on the Buckingham Palace Forecourt, in central London, Britain August 2, 2017. The 96-year-old husband of Britain's Queen Elizabeth, made his final solo appearance at the official engagement on Wednesday, before retiring from active public life. [Photo/Agencies] LONDON - Prince Philip, husband of Queen Elizabeth II, carries out his final solo public engagement Wednesday before he retires from royal duties. The 96-year-old meets servicemen of the Royal Marines in a ceremonial parade at Buckingham Palace. As the Captain General of the Royal Marines, Prince Philip attends the ceremony paying tribute to personnel of the 1664 Global Challenge -- a series of strength and endurance challenges raising funds and awareness for charity. It is the 22,219th solo engagement he has carried out since 1952. It was announced in May that Philip would no longer undertake his own programme of engagements, though he may still accompany the Queen at certain events from time to time. According to calculation by Buckingham Palace, he has undertaken 637 solo overseas visits, delivered 5,496 speeches, and found time to write 14 books and carried out the role of patron for 785 organisations during his royal career. The Queen, 91, will continue her public schedule. The prince has been married to the Queen for 70 years. He had an exploratory operation on his abdomen in 2013 and was treated for a blocked coronary artery in 2011. When the announcement of his retirement was made this May, the royal consort was praised for his years of service, with British Prime Minister Theresa May offering the country's "deepest gratitude and good wishes". Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn wished him "all the best in his well-earned retirement". BRASILIA - The Brazilian Chamber of Deputies voted to dismiss the corruption charges against President Michel Temer. As a tense vote continued on Wednesday evening, the government's allies in the Chamber received more than a third of votes, or 172 out of 512, the threshold needed to dismiss the charges. This means that the charges filed against Temer, the first against a sitting president, by prosecutor-general Rodrigo Janot, will be dropped. Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan signs to approve decisions of the Supreme Military Council at the Presidential Palace in Ankara, Turkey, August 2, 2017. [Photo/VCG] ANKARA - Turkey on Wednesday replaced its top three military commanders - the army, navy and air force chiefs, a year after a coup attempt that shocked the NATO country. The changes were made during a meeting of the Supreme Military Council, which discusses the appointments and retirements of high-ranking staff officers, as well as removal of military personnel. The fight against the Fethullah Gulen movement, who alleged masterminded the failed coup that killed nearly 250 people the night of July 15th, 2016, was expected to be one of the main issues to be discussed at the session. Prime minister Bilani Yildirim and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan held a six-hour meeting in Istanbul on Tuesday prior to the critical meeting, reported TV channels. According to the decisions at this meeting, the Chief of General Staff, General Hulusi Akar, who was spectacularly held hostage during the coup attempt by plotters, will stay on duty until 2019, as expected. Land forces commander, General Salih Zeki Colak, Naval forces commander Admiral Bulent Bostanoglu and Air forces commander, General Abidin Unal, have been changed and replaced by other high-ranking generals, presidential spokesman Ibrahim Kalin told reporters after the meeting. General Yasar Guler, former commander of the Gendarmerie, has been appointed Land forces commander; Vice Admiral Adnan Ozbal has been appointed Navy commander and Hasan Kucukakyuz is the new Air Force commander, Kalin said. In lower-level reshuffles, 61 colonels have been promoted as general, indicated by a statement released by the Ministry of National Defense. The Turkish military is undergoing a comprehensive post-coup restructuring process. For the Turkish Armed Forces (TSK), the July 15 coup attempt was a humiliation from which it will take a long time to recover. It showed unmistakably that the network controlled by the US-based preacher Fethullah Gulen infiltrated massively the military organization in past decades despite warnings by military and civilian authorities. The Turkish Armed Forces, the second biggest in number after the United States in NATO, used to be the most trusted institution in Turkey. But that was before rebel soldiers fired at civilians resisting the putsch and national institutions were attacked by helicopters and fighter jets. Almost 4,500 officers have been dismissed from the TSK since the coup attempt. Among these are almost half of the generals and admirals previously serving in the armed forces. RAMALLAH - The Organization of the Islamic Cooperation (OIC) has decided to ask the UN Security Council to provide protection to Al-Aqsa Mosque, Palestinian Foreign Minister Riyad Malki said on Wednesday. Malki told Voice of Palestine radio that the OIC made the decision at the urgent meeting of OIC foreign ministers held Tuesday in Istanbul, Turkey. The ministers discussed the situation in East Jerusalem, where Israeli forces and Palestinian protesters had clashed over Israel's restrictions on Muslims' access to the holy site. That the OIC went beyond the tradition of only issuing verbal denunciation of Israel to adopt practical proposals to be implemented soon, Malki said. He said the OIC also called for providing financial support to strengthen the steadfastness of the Palestinians in Jerusalem and to boycott Israeli settlements' products. A committee was formed by the OIC to determine the mechanisms for implementing the outcome of the meeting, Malki added. Israel's installation of metal detectors and cameras at the entrances to the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound since July 14 after a shooting accident triggered off widespread protests from Palestinians and the Muslim word. The compound was regarded as the third holiest site in Islam, while also revered by Jews as the holiest site. The Palestinians and Muslim world denounced the Israeli security measures as an attempt to claim further control over the site. Under pressure, Israel removed all the detectors and cameras last week, though maintaining the restrictions that bar Palestinians under 50 from prayers at the mosque. China's e-commerce giant JD.com and the British enterprise network China-Britain Business Council have launched an online pop-up store to showcase some of the best-known, and up-and-coming British brands to Chinese consumers. A portal on JD.com's cross-border e-commerce platform JD Worldwide will advertise British cosmetics brands in August. In September, the store will focus on baby and maternal care products. Men's clothing and women's wear will follow later in the year. Li Kaisi, deputy general manager of JD Worldwide, said: "Many brands and retailers in the UK do not yet know just how easy it is to sell their products online in China, and how big the potential market is." He said UK-based brands no longer need to invest time and money on registering a business in China or setting up a warehouse or supply chain there. "With our end-to-end cross-border e-commerce platform, JD Worldwide, they can start selling to consumers in China quickly and easily." The move comes after JD.com founder Liu Qiangdong visited the United Kingdom in June, when JD.com invested $397 million in the British luxury online store Farfetch. The companies also signed a strategic partnership that gives the British business access to JD.com's infrastructure in China. Liu told British paper The Independent: "The Chinese middle and upper classes love British brands, particularly high-fashion and luxury goods. And those that have royal linkswe love them." Cosmetics brands currently featured on the new store include Argentum, Barry M, Bronnley, Cowshed, Fade Out, Little Butterfly, Living Sea Therapy, Re-Gen, Soft& Gentle, Technic, and The Organic Pharmacy. Joy Isaacs, CEO at Argentum, said: "Quality is so important for Chinese consumers and that's why we see such a huge opportunity on JD.com. The initial response from consumers during early tests has been fantastic." Jack Porteous, assistant director of retail at the China-Britain Business Council, said partnering with JD.com affords British brands a"massive market opportunity". In March, JD.com had 236.5 million active customer accounts. Porteous said: "There is huge and growing demand from Chinese consumers for high-quality, guaranteed authentic, British products, particularly in categories like cosmetics and beauty." JD.com and the business council launched a joint promotion in June 2016 that saw 30 British brands advertised on the site's landing page during a seven-day period. The business council and JD.com also signed a cooperative agreement on intellectual property protection last December. TOKYO Japan's prime minister Shinzo Abe has reshuffled his Cabinet, opting for seasoned party veterans to help restore his battered popularity. Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe (C) arrives at his official residence in Tokyo, Japan, August 3, 2017. [Photo/Agencies] Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga, who retained his post, announced the new lineup Thursday. Abe's approval ratings have suffered from a spate of scandals over alleged cronyism and other abuses. The shakeup Thursday was anticipated and was not expected to have a major impact on Japan's foreign policy or economy. The newly named ministers included many Cabinet veterans, including Itsunori Onodera, a former defense minister who again was named to that post. Last week, Abe's protege, Tomomi Inada, stepped down as defense minister after the disclosure that the ministry hid information about risks faced by Japanese peacekeeping troops in South Sudan. Agencies US experts have urged Indian troops to withdraw from the intruded Chinese territory and also called the two countries to resolve the issue diplomatically. Indian troops illegally crossed into the Sikkim section of the border between the two countries to Doklam, Chinese territory, in June, in an attempt to stop China's road construction going on there. The action drew strong protests from China. New Delhi has described China's road construction as a "significant change of the status quo with serious security implications for India", citing its geographic proximity to its vulnerable "Chicken's Neck" the narrow stretch of territory connecting the majority of India to its more remote northeast areas. Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi told reporters in Bangkok on July 24 that it is very clear who is right and who is wrong in the standoff in Doklam, and that even senior Indian officials have publicly said that Chinese troops have not intruded into Indian territory. "In other words, India admitted that it has entered Chinese territory. The solution to this issue is simple, which is that they behave themselves and withdraw," Wang said, as quoted in a Chinese foreign ministry's statement. Jon Taylor, a professor of political science at the University of St Thomas in Houston, said the Indian military breached both international law and treaty convention by entering Chinese territory shortly after their Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited the US. "The incursion can be viewed as part of a greater strategic competition between China and India, one that is influenced by Trump's push for a closer partnership with India," he said. Taylor said that despite India's actions, China has remained restrained and tolerant. "I believe that this is because China wishes to preserve friendly China-India relations," he said, adding the need for a swift resolution of the issue is clear. But he said India does not understand the breadth of China's established presence on the Donglang(Doklam) Pass, nor its resolve to maintain its presence in the Donglangregion since it is indisputably a part of China's territory and under its effective jurisdiction. "India would do well to remember China's response and resolve during the 1962 border war. Continued provocations could lead to a much wider, and uglier, conflict that would inevitably result in a Chinese victory, again". Ryan Hass, a foreign policy fellow at the Brookings Institution, said although the timing and final contours for resolving the dispute remain as yet unknown, there is cause for cautious optimism that the two countries have the wisdom to peacefully resolve the dispute. "Chinese and Indian leaders are among the most talented and creative diplomats in the world," he said. "Beijing and New Delhi would benefit by focusing their energies now on creating a conducive environment for peaceful solutions to emerge," said Hass, who served as director for the Chinese mainland, Taiwan and Mongolia at the National Security Council in the Obama administration. Ted Carpenter, a senior fellow of defense and foreign policy studies at the Cato Institute, said the dispute should be addressed through patient, creative diplomacy by Beijing and New Delhi. "Both governments need to make resolving this troubling issue a very high priority," he said. Hass said the US could use the dispute as an opportunity to clarify privately for both China and India its strategic interest in stable and productive relations between the two Asian powers. "Beyond that, the United States should avoid involving itself in the dispute, either privately or publicly, as any such involvement likely will not help to calm tensions, but could have the unintended effect of hardening each side's position as well as souring US relations with one or both of the disputants," he said. The US has not taken a side so far. State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauertsaid on July 18 that the US is concerned about the ongoing situation there, saying both sides should work together to try to come up with some better sort of arrangement for peace. Foreign Minister Wang Yi will attend a series of meetings of foreign ministers in the Philippine capital Manila from Sunday to Tuesday. Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang made the announcement in a written statement issued on the ministry's website on Thursday. Wang will meet with foreign ministers from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), Japan and the Republic of Korea, as well as those attending the East Asia Summit and the ASEAN Regional Forum. This year the Philippines takes the rotating chair of ASEAN and it also marks the 50th anniversary of ASEAN's founding. Wang will attend an event marking the anniversary, Geng said. zhangyunbi@chinadaily.com.cn The award-winning actor Jin Dong says in an interview with China Daily that he wants to bridge the gap between China and Europe. [Photo by Fu Jing/chinadaily.com.cn] The award-winning actor Jin Dong and actress Jiang Shuying flew to Belgium to shoot romantic scenes for their love series Mr Right, which is expected to hit TV screens soon. Chocolate, beer and diamond, Belgium's national treasures, were the ideal accessories for their love story and the nine-day shooting mainly takes place in Antwerp, the so-called global capital of diamond cutting and trading. Two scenes were filmed in a bar of De Coninck brewery and adjoining chocolate shop in downtown Antwerp. The Chinese crew team, consisting of about 80 members, will also shoot in the Port House and shopping streets of Antwerp. Jin and Jiang are main stars of the popular series Mr Right, which is about a dentist who offers love advice to other men. Jin has millions of fans in China as he always plays the role of "model man" in movies or TV series. "To give my audience something inspiring is my mission," said Jin during an interview with China Daily on Wednesday. "Nowadays, this kind of cross-cultural communication is vital for each country to boost mutual understanding." Jin, 41, said being an actor he can play such a role, especially in helping bridge gaps between China and Europe, two large civilizations. The series producer is Jia Yiqun, who was an exchange student in Antwerp during 2002-04. Antwerp province and Shaanxi province entered into sister province partnership 30 years ago. Jia said that Antwerp's most well-known products such as chocolate, beer and diamond symbolize the bitter-sweet taste of love. Anticipated US investigation targeting China's practices an 'abuse of status' China has put a strong emphasis on intellectual property rights protections and urged all WTO members to respect the rules of the organization, the Ministry of Commerce said on Thursday as US President Donald Trump prepares to launch a broad investigation into China's trade policies. "China and US trade cooperation is the 'ballast and propeller' of bilateral relations and is mutually beneficial. We hope the two countries will continue on a path of cooperation," Commerce Ministry spokesman Gao Feng said at a news conference. Trump is expected to make a speech and sign a memorandum at the White House on Friday targeting China's intellectual property and trade practices, the CNBC news channel reported. The Trump administration is considering initiating an investigation into Chinese trade practices under Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974. It allows the head of state to unilaterally impose tariffs or other trade restrictions to protect US industries from unfair trade practices of foreign countries. Since the World Trade Organization was established in 1995, US Section 301 investigations have not led to trade sanctions. It was adopted to levy tariffs against Japanese motorcycles, steel and other products in the 1980s. If the US initiates an investigation under Section 301, that would indicate that it wants to replace international law with its domestic law, said Zhao Ping, director of the department of international trade research at the China Council for the Promotion of International Trade. "The move would be unreasonable and violate international practice," she said. "A US attempt to use unilateralism to override multilateral rules would be an abuse of its status as a superpower on the world stage. It would show disrespect for other countries." The Trump administration might do so partly because it is looking to "divert attention from his (Trump's) domestic economic weakness," she added. China and the US agreed to initiate a comprehensive 100-day action plan to address the trade imbalance in April. Under the plan, China will resume US beef imports and allow rice imports for the first time. China-US trade volume reached 1.85 trillion yuan ($272 billion) in the first half of this year, up 21.3 percent year-on-year, according to the General Administration of Customs. Such a policy against China could "definitely harm workers and entrepreneurs in both countries", said Zhou Mi, a senior research fellow at the Chinese Academy of International Trade and Economic Cooperation. Wei Jianguo, vice-president of the China Center for International Economic Exchanges, said China's imports from the US will increase faster than its exports in the second half of 2017, so the US trade deficit with China is likely to be narrowed. Wei said that the US is expected to overtake the European Union as China's largest trade partner this year with such growth. "The world economy is currently on track to recover, but uncertain and unstable factors still exist," said Gao. "We are willing to work together with the US to jointly promote China-US economic and trade relations, as well as to inject fresh vitality into the world economy." Contact the writers at jingshuiyu@chinadaily.com.cn By WANG QINGYUN in Beijing and CHEN WEIHUA in Washington | China Daily | Updated: 2017-08-04 06:02 What India has done in its incursion into China's Donglang area (Doklam) is "by no means for peace", a Foreign Ministry spokesman said on Thursday. A Foreign Ministry photo released on Wednesday shows Indian troops encroaching on Chinese territory. Provided to China Daily Spokesman Geng Shuang responded after the Indian Ministry of External Affairs said that "peace and tranquility" of the border between the two nations constitutes the important prerequisite for the smooth development of bilateral relations. Geng said that China, "out of good will", notified India in advance through a border meeting mechanism on May 18 and June 8 about its road construction in the Donglang area, but "the Indian side didn't make any response to the Chinese side through any channel for over one month". "Instead, it flagrantly dispatched armed forces carrying equipment to illegally cross the boundary to obstruct China's road building. This is by no means for peace." By Wednesday, more than one month after the incursion, 48 Indian border troops and one bulldozer still illegally remained in the Chinese territory, according to Geng. India's action "amounts to irresponsibility and recklessness", and the incident "is illegal under international law", Geng said. What's more, India "is building roads, hoarding supplies and deploying a large number of armed forces on the Indian side of the boundary," which also "is by no means for peace", he said. The Foreign Ministry issued a paper on Wednesday elaborating on what has transpired and the Chinese government's position over the incident warning India not to underestimate China's resolve to defend its territory. Jon Taylor, a professor of political science at the University of St Thomas in Houston, said the Indian military breached both international law and a treaty convention by entering Chinese territory shortly after Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited the United States. "The incursion can be viewed as part of a greater strategic competition between China and India, one that is influenced by (US President Donald) Trump's push for a closer partnership with India," he said. Taylor said that despite India's actions, China has remained restrained and tolerant. "I believe that this is because China wishes to preserve friendly China-India relations," he said. Contact the writers at wangqingyun@chinadaily.com.cn FARGO Officer David Boelke was recently the subject of an internal investigation by the Fargo Police Department, and his job is apparently at risk. Chief David Todd confirmed Wednesday that a probe was opened in the spring and closed in June, but declined to discuss the nature of the investigation. He said Boelke is currently on paid administrative leave. According to an iPetitions page supporting Boelke, he was accused of dishonesty during an internal investigation (and) is now facing termination. But it also said he has provided substantial evidence in his favor including a lie detector test which he passed showing no deception. The petition, with more than 200 signatures, seeks Boelkes continued employment with the Police Department. Several people describing themselves as former colleagues said they would vouch for his character. Boelke was given the Life Saving medal in 2016, 2013, 2011 and 2009, according to Forum archives. He has also been president of the North Dakota Fraternal Order of Police Lodge No. 1. Records from the investigation and Boelkes personnel file have been requested. Sgt. Jared Crane with the departments Office of Professional Standards said he is still redacting the files and will provide them as soon as he can. A phone message left for Boelkes attorney, Mark Friese, was not immediately returned Wednesday. Todd said Friese has asked for time to respond to the investigation. The chief said he hopes to reach a disposition on the matter soon. What began with an email requesting medical and dental help has grown into a regular effort by a group of friends from multiple churches to serve the Yazidi refugee population in northern Iraq. That first email, received by Willy Tan, a lay member of a community church in Fullerton, led to a trip to Southeastern Turkey in 2015, and then a trip to the Kurdistan Region of Iraq in 2016, which consisted of providing medical and dental services to Yazidi refugees. Those initial trips then led to six more trips to Kurdistan, trips which have been called Project Nineveh. The most recent Project Nineveh trip took place in June, during which a team of 15 hosted English camps for a total of some 400 children and youth from three different Yazidi refugee settlements. Yazidis, a people group identified by their religion (Yazidism), have been severely persecuted by the Islamic State since 2014. Calling the Yazidis devil worshippers for their faith, ISIS militants have captured thousands of women and girls as slaves, and forced tens of thousands to flee their homes in Sinjar. Since 2015, members from multiple churches in Southern California have participated in the trips to Kurdistan, ranging in age from 15 to 65 years old, and coming from diverse occupational backgrounds, including professionals in the medical, dental, finance, IT, business, and educational fields. Now, Tan and several others who have gone on the Project Nineveh trips plan to make this a regular part of their lives: they are in the process of forming a non-profit organization called Habibi International. Habibi is an Arabic term of endearment also used by Yazidi individuals. Habibi International seeks to impact the lives of refugees in the Middle East by providing humanitarian relief and development in partnership with local organizations and NGOs, said Daniel Chung, a member of a Los Angeles church who participated in two Project Nineveh trips. Our primary means of achieving this is through a humanitarian imperative that encompasses healthcare, childrens, womens and young adult services throughout the year. One of the reasons members of Habibi International felt the need to start a completely new organization was to provide more opportunities to serve the Yazidi refugees. Only the United Nations and larger NGOs currently have a presence in Kurdistan, such as World Vision or Samaritans Purse agencies which not many in the community are able to gain access to. But more importantly, Tan hopes Habibi would be able to serve those in the Yazidi population in Kurdistan who may not be reached by aid workers from those larger agencies. We want to focus on serving the refugees in the settlements, not the UN-sponsored camps, Tan explained. He estimated that only about 60 percent of the Yazidi refugees in northern Iraq live in the UN-sponsored camps, and the remaining population live in settlements. Refugees living in the settlements areas where the Yazidi refugees have congregated on their own, located in places such as abandoned, unfinished apartment buildings have limited or no access to resources such as water, food, electricity, medical and dental care, and education, Tan said. Living conditions are often bleak. Seeing where they live, it made me think, How can anyone live here? Chung recalled during an information session hosted on Friday in Walnut, CA. The settlements also have large populations of children, particularly because Yazidi families tend to be large at least 10 children per family, according to Tan. But there arent enough schools to meet the educational needs of all of the children, and for many families, education is not a priority, he said. The English camp was a source of some stability for the children in which they can just learn, said Chung. And education is a means to be able to change whatever circumstance youre in. Though in the meantime, Habibi plans to continue hosting more short-term English camps for Yazidi children residing in the settlements, the hope is to provide a longer-term and broader spectrum of education as Habibi becomes an official organization. And with the establishment of Habibi, Tan and the other members hope that more sustainable and continuous forms of aid including food, water, and medical and dental care would be able to reach the Yazidi refugees as well. Habibi will be taking three trips to northern Iraq in October and November, during which it will be hosting English camps as well as providing more medical and dental care. For more information, contact Project Nineveh at info@habibi-international.org. Its been a hallmark of Protestantism for 500 years, but what do we mean when we base our faith on the Bible alone? Is it even possible to read the Bible without being influenced by the social and theological contexts in which one is immersed? Hasnt this doctrine, more than any other Reformation doctrine, been responsible for the fragmentation of the church? To help unravel such questions, editor in chief Mark Galli interviewed a scholar who has given much thought to the place of Scripture in the churchs life: Mark Noll, recently retired from the University of Notre Dame. He is the author of In the Beginning Was the Word: The Bible in American Public Life, 14921783, as well as an essay in Protestantism After 500 Years entitled, Chaotic Coherence: Sola Scriptura and the Twentieth-Century Spread of Christianity. Though the idea of sola scriptura predates Martin Luther, when did the idea surface in his life? It came in controversies with people defending indulgences and unquestioned obedience to the pope. In these disputes he appealed directly to the Bibleas with his dramatic statement to the Holy Roman Emperor at Worms in 1521: My conscience is captive to the Word of God. He took his stand on Scripture alone. The tension came when other Protestants asserted, Well, the Bible alone clearly teaches that when we celebrate the Lords Supper, this is a symbolic supper. Thats when Luther said, No, thats not right. You have to read the passages about the Lords Supper in connection with all the other passages and the best interpretations of past theologians. And so hermeneutical debates (controversies over interpretation) ... 1 You have reached the end of this Article Preview You have reached the end of this Article Preview To continue reading, subscribe now. Subscribers have full digital access. Have something to add about this? See something we missed? Share your feedback here. Eight days after a racially fueled confrontation in a Fargo parking lot, North Dakota lawmakers began examining the states refugee resettlement program Wednesday. The interim Human Services Committees study was prompted by legislation passed earlier this year that sought an examination of various aspects of resettlement, and the committee was tasked with reviewing the impact on workforce, government services, human services, education and health care. The study bill received some backlash during the legislative session over concerns it singled out refugees, and didnt account for the economic and cultural benefit they bring to their new communities. Committee Chairwoman Rep. Kathy Hogan, D-Fargo, said the panel should weigh the costs and benefits of resettlement, although some data may be hard to come by. If we have the cost, we should talk about it. I think we should be transparent, she said. But at the same time, we also have to look at the benefit. And if we do both equally, itll be alright. The number of refugees resettled in North Dakota every year has roughly tripled over the past decade, according to a Legislative Council memo. Last year, 558 refugees were resettled in the state, down from a recent high of 590 in 2014. In 2006, there were just 182. The state Department of Human Services moved most refugee-related services to Lutheran Social Services of North Dakota under then-Gov. John Hoeven in July 2010, according to the Legislative Council. LSS is the only federally recognized and approved refugee resettlement organization in the state. Committee members heard from Shirley Dykshoorn, vice president for senior and humanitarian services at LSS, along with state officials who gave an overview of agency programs that affect refugees. Recommendations to improve or modify the resettlement process must be included in the committees study, according to the Legislative Council memo. A legislative committee that studied refugee resettlement more than 20 years ago recommended providing school districts with more money for each student who had limited English proficiency. Wednesdays meeting came about a week after a confrontation between three Somali-American women and a white woman at a Fargo Walmart parking lot, where a parking dispute descended into an anti-Muslim outburst that went viral. The two sides later made up after Fargo Police Chief David Todd brought them together. But a leader in the Somali-American community said many other similar incidents go unreported. "The state and the city asking for how much it costs to have refugees in the community, while a sensible question from the financial standpoint, it has negatively impacted our image in the community," Hukun Abdullahi, the head of the Afro American Development Association, said at the Fargo City Commission's meeting on Monday. "And it also has increased the number of hostile incidents against the refugees." As introduced, the study bill would have allowed for a suspension of refugee resettlement if a community lacked sufficient absorptive capacity, or the ability of community and government services to meet residents needs. The governor would have been able to issue a statewide moratorium through an executive order. But Rep. Christopher Olson, R-West Fargo, the bills primary sponsor and a member of the interim Human Services Committee, asked that the bill be amended into a study after hearing hours of opposition testimony, including from new Americans who told stories of finding opportunity in North Dakota. Fargo City Commissioner Dave Piepkorn, who has expressed frustration about what he sees as a lack of local control in the resettlement process, thanked the committee Wednesday for taking up the study and encouraged legislators to pursue a full financial review. He pushed back against assertions that such studies cast a bad light on refugees. Finding out the truth and facts, that should be what were all about, Piepkorn said. Joel Hunter, the innovative megachurch pastor who spoke out on the national stage as an evangelical adviser to President Barack Obama, is stepping down from Northland Church in order to minister outside the four walls of the church. My call to the pastoral role in a church is fulfilled, wrote Hunter after serving 32 years as the Orlando-area churchs senior pastor and a previous 15 years as a United Methodist pastor. While grateful for Northlands accomplishments at discipling its congregants and community, he explained that, like Jesus, he now feels called to focus on those unincluded in the Kingdom outside religious settings. My experience, relationships, and apostolic gifting are at their highest potential, wrote Hunter, and I will spend them in the most productive way possible in this final season of my journey. There is no one like Pastor Joel, Northland wrote in a statement announcing Hunters plans, which he revealed to staff on Wednesday after returning from an annual sabbatical. Under his leadership, Northland grew from a couple hundred people in 1985 to 20,000 weekly attendees at three locations, and Hunter became an innovative leader among the early wave of pastors building multisite congregations with streaming services. Elders at his nondenominational congregation have not yet identified the best timing or plan for his transition following the announcement, which indicated that Hunter, 69, will not fully retire from ministry. Pastor Joel made it clear to us that he is not finished serving God and this community, stated Northlands lead pastor, Vernon Rainwater. However, he has completed his pastoral call. Hunter explained: Youve often heard me express a desire to serve at Northland for the rest of my life. So you may be asking, What changed? I believe God will continue using Northland in wonderful ways, but He is calling me to focus my life on a new season of ministry outside the four walls of the church. When I knelt at the altar to give my whole life to Jesus, I was a part of the Civil Rights movement. My focus on Jesus was not only for personal salvation after this life but also for compassion towards the marginalized in this life. My call to follow Jesus and serve the vulnerable is stronger than ever. Jesus often taught in different synagogues but the bulk of his teaching and work was outside established religious settings. Following his way, I will seek to include the unincluded in the Kingdom. Hunter explained he will initially focus on three initiatives: teaching a weekly Bible study where community members can ask questions; helping the Community Resource Network unite people and churches to address the problem of homelessness; and forming networks of Jesus followers in order to distribut[e] the church into everyday life. Rainwater praised Hunter for being a man of integrity, full of compassion for others and infectious love for Jesus Christ, as well as a catalyst for worship and service throughout this city and around the world. Meanwhile, Rainwater stated that Northland will remain focused on its purpose to bring people to maturity in Christ and will continue to be a community that includes the unincluded, the marginalized, and gathers to worship God for who He is and what He has done. Hunter, who serves on the boards of both the National Association of Evangelicals and the World Evangelical Alliance, famously served as a moderate evangelical (and registered Republican) on Obamas spiritual cabinet, having resigned from the Christian Coalition a couple years earlier. Politics is one venue in which the Lord can work, but his plan A has always been the local congregation, Hunter said in a 2009 CT profile. My calling is to be part of that frontline ministry. He explained more in his Northland bio: I am not partisan, nor am I politically oriented. But as God has ordained three institutionsthe family, the church, and the governmentI work as a pastor in all three of these arenas to promote love and caring and service, especially to those who need it most. Hunter served on President Obamas first Advisory Council on Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships, and published A New Kind of Conservative: Cooperation Without Compromise. In 2010, he decided to leave the Republican Party, explaining to CT: For 40 years I was a registered Republican like Paul was a registered Pharisee after he became a follower of Christwhen it furthered the agenda of the Gospel (as I understood it) then I was active as a Rep. When it didnt, I wasnt. I was never comfortable being identified with a political Party but the hyper-partisanship and the outside voices hijacking legitimate political debate is not something of which I will be a part. In 2011, Hunter was named to the Commission on Accountability and Policy for Religious Organizations, an inquiry led by the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability on behalf of Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, in the wake of his investigation of the finances of six televangelists. Hunter shared his response to Obamas same-sex marriage announcement in a 2012 interview with Leadership Journal, a CT sister publication. In Orlando, Hunter belonged to the group of pastors seeking dialogue and racial reconciliation in the wake of the Trayvon Martin shooting in 2013. He told CT that their partnerships ultimately built a much closer relationship between many of the African-American pastors and Anglo pastors in the area. When national tragedy struck the Orlando area again in 2016 with the Pulse Nightclub attack, his church joined in the citywide response. I was brokenhearted, not because I had so many relationships in the LGBTQ community, but because I had so few, he wrote in a reflection earlier this year. Was I complicit in the divisions that led to this destruction? Could anything I said, or preached, have led to this kind disrespect or prejudice or ostracism for that community? Back in 2008 and 2009, Hunter prayed at the Democratic National Convention (after first getting Billy Grahams advice) and on Obamas inauguration day, hopeful about evangelicals place in Americas political future. (CT recently examined the precarious task of praying with presidents.) There is great potential for the church to be part of the solution to the problems in our culture and the problems in our world, he told CT in a 2008 interview, if we can build coalitions that help enhance the common good that also enhances the Christian social agenda. Editors note: This post has been updated with Hunters personal statement, released Thursday morning. Churches and other faith groups collect tens of billions of dollars in donations each year. But not all of it ends up where its supposed to. About 1 in 10 Protestant churches has had someone embezzle funds, according to a new survey of 1,000 Protestant senior pastors from LifeWay Research. That figure isnt surprising, said LifeWay executive director Scott McConnell. Most churches rely on volunteers to handle their finances, he said. Those volunteers are usually honest. But churches often lack systems to catch those who arent. As a result, he said, money that could have been used for ministry goes missing. Churches run on trustbut they also know people are imperfect and can be tempted, said McConnell. Thats why safeguarding a churchs finances is an important part of ministry. Overall, 9 percent of pastors say that their church has had funds embezzled, while 91 percent say they are not aware of any embezzlement. Churches of Christ ministers are more likely to say their church had funds embezzled (16%) when compared to Baptist (7%) or Presbyterian/Reformed pastors (6%). Pastors of mid-sized churchesthose with 100 to 249 membersare less likely to say funds have been embezzled (6%) than those with 250 or more members (12%). LifeWays survey echoes a smaller 2012 study of churches in Kansas and Missouri, which found that 13.4 percent of churches had experienced embezzlement or other fraud. A study of more than 2,400 fraud cases at businesses and nonprofits by the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners found 2.4 percent of cases involved churches or other charitable groups. The average loss was $82,000. LifeWay researchers asked pastors when their churchs financial books were last audited and how much cash they had in reserves. Half of pastors (47%) say their church has had a complete audit in the last year. Two-thirds (66%) say their churchs books have been audited within the last four years. About a third of pastors (34%) say the most recent audit was more than five years ago (10%), never (10%), or unknown (14%). Among other findings: Methodist pastors are most likely (74%) to say their church had a complete audit within the last year. Baptist (17%) and Pentecostal (18%) pastors are more likely to say their church had a complete audit more than five years ago. Lutheran (3%), Methodist (4%) and Holiness pastors (4%) are less likely. Church of Christ (16%) and Pentecostal pastors (17%) are more likely than pastors of other denominations to say their church has never been audited. Presbyterian/Reformed pastors (7%), Lutheran (5%), and Methodist (2%) are less likely to say the same. African-American pastors (25%) are the most likely ethnic group to say their church has never had an audit. Most churches realize that having an audit can be good thing, said McConnell. Its another aspect of being a good steward of a churchs finances. Its helpful to have a second set of eyes look at the church books, he said. Many churches function with little margin for error when it comes to their finances. According to their pastors, 1 in 4 churches (26%) only has enough cash on hand to cover seven or fewer weeks. A similar number (24%) have between eight and 15 weeks of operating reserves. Meanwhile, 15 percent have between 16 and 25 weeks of reserves, while 12 percent have between 26 and 51 weeks. Almost 1 in 4 churches (23%) have a year or more of reserves. Smaller churches often have more weeks of reserves than larger congregations. Among small churchesthose with fewer than 50 people27 percent say they have a year of cash reserves. By contrast, 15 percent of churches with more than 250 people have a year of reserves. An earlier study found about a third of churches have struggled to make their budget, said McConnell. So its not surprising that some churches have few reserves. It takes a lot of faith to run a church, especially when finances are tight, he said. But some churches may be missing out on ministry, because theres not enough money in the bank to respond to needs and opportunities that arise. Methodology: The phone survey of Protestant pastors was conducted August 22September 16, 2016. The calling list was a stratified random sample, drawn from a list of all Protestant churches. Quotas were used for church size. Each interview was conducted with the senior pastor, minister or priest of the church called. Responses were weighted by region to more accurately reflect the population. The completed sample is 1,000 surveys. The sample provides 95 percent confidence that the sampling error does not exceed plus or minus 3.2 percent. Margins of error are higher in sub-groups. Child abuse is no longer the most common reason that churches go to court. For more than a decade, sexual abuse of a minor was the No. 1 legal matter involving US congregations. It made up more than 1 in 9 of all church lawsuits, according to CT sister publication Church Law & Tax (CLT). But last year, the top reason for church litigation became a different problem: property disputes. More churches went to court in 2016 due to their building itself rather than any abuse that occurred inside of it. The CLT analysisa review of state appellate and federal court rulingsfound that 8.7 percent of church court cases last year addressed property related-issues, down from 10.2 percent in 2015. However, property cases still ranked as the new No. 1 reason because child sex abuse fell even more, down to 8.3 percent in 2016 from 11.7 percent in 2015. There were fewer child abuse cases during 2016 than in prior years, said CLT senior editor Richard Hammar, an attorney and CPA specializing in legal issues for churches and clergy. Child abuse claims are dropping, but it is impossible to say if this an anomaly or a consequence of better risk management. The drop could be due to courts finally catching up with the backlog of lawsuits filed over past abuse. New suits are only likely to be for recent abuse situationsand heightened awareness in churches of the problem has hopefully reduced the number of new cases, said Howard Friedman, a law professor and church-state expert who runs Religion Clause. His blog has tracked property fights between congregations and their government officials, their neighbors, or their own traditions, as churches split from their denominations. Most property cases seem to arise from factional disputes between conservative and progressive wings of congregations, said Friedman. The increasingly divisive culture wars have moved into churches. A Minnesota appeals court in April ruled that a local congregation could keep its church after leaving the Presbyterian Church (USA). Last year in California, a state appeals court ruled that the Episcopal Church still owned the property of a breakaway diocese that changed its name when it became Anglican. Disputes over personal injury claims, insurance coverage, and zoning rounded out the top five types of cases. Together, these causes made up about a third of church cases last year. CT previously covered the 2013 rankings, when child abuse represented 1 in 7 of all court cases involving churches. Group Supports President Donald Trump's Calls on Republican National Committee to do More to Support Ban on Transgenders in the U.S. Military Contact: Public Advocate, 703-845-1808, email, twitter: @eugenedelgaudio WASHINGTON, Aug. 3, 2017 /Christian Newswire/ -- Public Advocate of the U.S. is hosting an event today at the Republican National Committee offices in support of President Donald Trump's policy to ban transgenders in the U.S. military, Thursday August 3rd at 11AM in Washington, D.C. Who: Group Supports Ban on Transgenders In Military Why: Speakers and citizens will express public support for Trump Where: 310 First Street, Southeast, outside the Republican National Committee When: Thursday, August 3, 2017 at 11 AM Eugene Delgaudio president of Public Advocate said: "A number of Generals wrote a letter of support Wednesday and Americans are responding favorably and supporting President Donald Trump's announced planned ban of transgenders in the military. And Americans equally support an end to the use of taxpayer funds to pay for elective sex change operations in the military. We are here to express support for President Trump and the Republican National Committee to do more to support this announced policy as well." The group will hold signs, sing some patriotic songs and chant "Tweet Trump Tweet." Public Advocate volunteers will gather at the Republican National Committee located at 310 First St SE, Washington, DC 20003 to urge members of Congress and other Republican officials to support the Trump ban. Retired veterans will be asked to speak in support of the proposed Trump ban on transgenders. Judicial Watch: Justice Department Blacks Out Talking Points on Lynch-Clinton Tarmac Meeting Contact: Jill Farrell, Judicial Watch, 202-646-5172 WASHINGTON, Aug. 2, 2017 /Christian Newswire/ -- Judicial Watch today announced that the Justice Department refuses to disclose the talking points developed by the Obama Justice Department to help it respond to press inquiries about the controversial June 27, 2016, tarmac meeting between Loretta Lynch and Bill Clinton at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport. The Justice Department heavily redacted the documents under Exemption b (5), which allows agencies to withhold draft or deliberative process material. The blacked-out material centers around talking points drafted and used by Justice to respond to press inquiries about the Lynch-Clinton meeting. The agency produced 417 pages of documents in response to Judicial Watch's FOIA lawsuit (Judicial Watch v. U.S. Department of Justice (No. 1:17-cv-00421) seeking: All records and/or transcripts of a meeting held between Attorney General Loretta Lynch and former President Bill Clinton in June 2016. All records of communication sent to or from officials in the Office of the Attorney General regarding the meeting held between Attorney General Loretta Lynch and former President Bill Clinton in June 2016. All records of communication sent to or from officials in the Office of the Deputy Attorney General regarding the meeting held between Attorney General Loretta Lynch and former President Bill Clinton in June 2016. All references to the meeting held between Attorney General Loretta Lynch and former President Bill Clinton contained in day planners, calendars and schedules in the Office of the Attorney General. One email exchange shows that Former Assistant Attorney General Peter Kadzik was brought in to assist with public relations issues on June 28, 2016, the day after the tarmac meeting. (Kadzik is a longtime friend of John Podesta and a Hillary Clinton donor, who was criticized as being conflicted when he was assigned as the Justice Department attorney to oversee the probe of Hillary Clinton's and her aide Huma Abedin's emails found on Anthony Wiener's computer.) Director of the Justice Department Public Affairs Office Melanie Newman sent an email to Richard P. Quinn, former National Security Assistant Special Agent, and Michael P. Kortan, who is currently the assistant director for Public Affairs for the FBI, advising them she wanted to "flag a story" about "a casual, unscheduled meeting between former president Bill Clinton and the AG." And she provides the AG's talking points. Lynch met privately with former President Bill Clinton on board a parked plane in Phoenix. The meeting occurred during the then-ongoing investigation of Mrs. Clinton's email server, and only a few days before she was interviewed by the FBI. Lynch later admitted that the meeting with Bill Clinton "cast a cloud" over the Justice Department/FBI investigation. A week after the tarmac meeting, FBI Director James Comey called Hillary Clinton's actions "extremely careless" but did not recommend charges and Attorney General Lynch ended the criminal investigation. MORE: www.judicialwatch.org/press-room/press-releases/judicial-watch-justice-department-blacks-talking-points-lynch-clinton-tarmac-meeting/ Share Tweet home World Eight Baghdad churches close amid decline of Christian population in Iraq Eight Christian churches in Baghdad have permanently closed their doors as the Christian population in Iraq continues to decline due to fear of persecution. International Christian Concern (ICC) reported that the Vatican decided to close down the eight churches in May 2017 after nearly seven years of low to no attendance. Christians represented 10 percent of the Iraqi population at the start of the 21st Century. But they began fleeing the region due to the steady stream of repression, conflict displacement and persecution. A former resident of Baghdad noted that the exodus of Christians can be divided into three different stages. "The first was from 2005-2007, [the] second was in 2010 when some extremists attacked [a] church during Sunday mass and the third stage was in 2014 when ISIS attacked [the] Nineveh Plain," the former resident told ICC. Sectarian conflict between the Sunni and Shia groups began in 2005, but Sunni extremists soon started targeting the Christian community as well. It was common for Christians to receive threats from the extremists in the form of an envelope containing bullets and messages promising bloodshed and death. "In early 2006, we forcibly left our house because we got an envelope tell[ing] us, 'You have to leave within 48 hours, all you have to take is your clothes, if you t[ake] anything else we will kill you," Seza, a former Baghdad resident recounted, noting that she still has the envelope and the three bullets she received from a gang. The second exodus began after six suicide bombers carried out an attack on a Syriac Catholic Church in Baghdad in October 2010 during a Sunday mass, killing 58 Christians and injuring 78. The third displacement of Christians from Iraq was directly related to the rise of the Islamic State terror group in 2014. The militants have killed and enslaved thousands of religious minorities and drove hundreds of thousands of people from their homes and villages in northern Iraq. Former U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and the European Parliament have both declared the acts committed by the terror group against Christians, Yazidis and other religious minorities as "genocide." ICC, which reports on the persecution of Christians around the world, reiterated that ISIS is not solely responsible for the mass exodus of Christians from Iraq. The human rights organization noted that Christians in the region have experienced various forms of persecution and discrimination from various forms of perpetrators in the past 15 years. The advocacy group is urging other Christians to pray and support the estimated 230,000 believers that remain in Iraq. home World Knights of Columbus launches fundraising effort to help resettle Christian refugees in Iraq The Knights of Columbus (KoC) has announced that it is raising $2 million to help rebuild the Iraqi town of Karamdes (or Karemlash), in the hopes of resettling Christian refugees there. Karamdes, which was liberated from the Islamic State late last year, was once a predominantly Christian town on the Nineveh Plains before the region was captured by the terror group in 2014. "The terrorists desecrated churches and graves and looted and destroyed homes," said Knights CEO Carl Anderson during his annual report at the fraternal organization's 135th annual convention. "Now we will ensure that hundreds of Christian families driven from their homes can return to these two locations and help to ensure a pluralistic future for Iraq," he added. The fundraising effort matches a similar donation by the government of Hungary, which recently donated $2 million to save Teleskov, another predominantly Christian town. About 1,000 Christian families have now returned to Teleskov, which has been seen as a proof that such efforts can work in restoring pre-ISIS populations to their homes and towns. The Knights will be working with the Archdiocese of Erbil, which is currently housing the largest population of Christian refugees in Iraq, in the resettlement and rebuilding project. "We've been hearing from the people in Erbil a the church running the refugee camps a that the next two months are critical," KoC Vice President Andrew Walther told The Stream, adding that the refugees may lose hope altogether and leave Iraq if they do not receive the support they need in rebuilding their homes and town. "It would be the end of a culture, the end of faith in the region," he continued. Walther noted that groups, churches and even individuals can help resettle a family for the amount of $2,000. "They can help maintain pluralism and help move the refugees back into their town," he said. The amount includes sorting out burn damages, rebuilding houses, cleaning up and making the place habitable. The church will be working with the Iraqi government to turn the power and water back on, while families will work with the church's structural engineers to ensure that their homes are safe. Since 2014, the KoC's Christian Refugee Relief Fund has donated over $13 million for humanitarian assistance, mainly in Iraq, Syria and the surrounding region. The organization's documentation of ISIS atrocities was instrumental in the U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry's 2016 genocide declaration for Christians and other religious minorities in the Middle East. home US US government withdraws request for permanent buffer zone around Kentucky's last abortion clinic The federal government has withdrawn a motion that seeks to create a permanent buffer zone around the last abortion clinic in Kentucky. In July, U.S. District Court Judge David Hale granted a request for a buffer zone outside the EMW Women's Clinic in Louisville to keep pro-life protesters away from the area. Hale's order came after 11 people blocked the doors to the clinic to keep pregnant women from obtaining an abortion. According to Christian News Network, a hearing was held last week regarding the government's motion asking Hale to extend the temporary, 14-day buffer zone around the abortion facility. Representatives for the clinic argued that it was necessary to create a buffer zone because the pro-life protesters are violent. However, the case fell apart after it was determined that there was no evidence of violence, or the threat of it, at the clinic. "The United States has withdrawn its motion for a preliminary injunction. There will be no long-term bubble zone at EMW," said defense attorney Vince Heuser told WAVE 3 News. Heuser noted that EMW Women's Clinic director Anne Ahola had admitted that Rusty Thomas, who was one of the 11 protesters arrested in May for blocking the entrance to the clinic, even went inside the facility and "shared love of Jesus, and she came out of the secure area of the clinic to talk face to face with him and they exchanged a hug." U.S. attorneys dropped the motion seeing that the extended injunction was not necessary and that they would not be successful in pursuing it. "The intimidating aspect, the threatening aspect of this case, went away instantly," Heuser stated. The temporary buffer zone, which was put in place ahead of Operation Save America's rally on July 22a29, was lifted by Saturday. During the rally, pro-life activists sang worship songs, preached the gospel, read Bible verses and prayed for an end to abortion. Several children at the rally stretched out their arms and prayed for the abortion facility escorts who were lined up along the sidewalk. U.S. marshals were sent to surround the facility throughout the event to ensure that women would be able to enter the clinic. Although the government withdrew the motion for a buffer zone around the clinic, it is still requesting that Hale order 10 of the 11 people who blocked the entrance to EMW to pay monetary damages to those who were unable to access the facility. One of the protesters was determined to be a minor and not included in the request. GreenSpace Holdings, a Houston-based self-storage developer, has launched its first project using recycled shipping containers to save money and help the environment. The company has broken ground on a 1,017-unit facility to be operated by CubeSmart at 2515 Westminister Road in Pearland. Site work is just getting underway on a two-acre parcel in a growing area with new shopping centers near Pearland Parkway north of FM 518. In the coming weeks, some 325 used shipping containers will arrive on site as the main building component of the climate-controlled facility. The containers will be arranged in a way that renders much of the concrete and structural steel typically used in such a project unnecessary. The building will be dressed up with stone, concrete masonry, glass and stucco. GreenSpace Holdings co-owners Rick Stockton and David Ledoux came up with the concept more than two years ago, and have been working with TMS Contractors to hammer out details. They now have a patent pending for their design. "We went to his house, thought through it and brainstormed, and just came up with this idea," Stockton said. "We actually sketched it on a napkin. We've got that napkin framed in our office." Getting the containers won't be a problem because the U.S. imports more containerized goods than it exports. The company's local supplier has 14,000 containers on the yard at any given time. GreenSpace Holdings will pay about $1,500 a pop, or $480,000, for materials for the Pearland facility. "It costs too much to move them back to China to fill them up with goods again, so they just stay here," Stockton said. The process shaves four to six months off the typical construction time of 10 to 12 months, according to Stockton. The design cuts multi-story self-storage construction costs by up to 50 percent. GreenSpace Holdings hopes to duplicate the process at 50 self-storage facilities across major cities in the U.S. over the next seven years. The company plans to retain some of the buildings, which generate cash flow, and sell some to investors. Chris Bergmann of JLL represented the company in the land purchase in Pearland, as well as a second location on two acres at 1050 Brittmoore Road near Interstate 10 in west Houston. TMS Contractors will also build the west Houston project. The 132,967-square-foot facility, also to be operated by CubeSmart, will have 1,401 units. Even though a lot of self-storage projects have been going up in the Houston area, the buildings are staying relatively full. The vacancy rate has fallen to 10 percent from 21.2 percent in 2011, according to Marcus & Millichap. Average rents for climate-controlled space inched up to $1.30 per square foot this year. The Pearland site fit the formula of being in a high-growth area where people have enough disposable income to buy stuff, and also store it, Stockton said. The property will have 24-hour surveillance and electronic-access control. Pearland's population doubled from 2000 to 2015, according to JLL. During that period, there was little construction of climate-controlled storage facilities. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate Need some help planning your week? We've gathered a list of activities going on in Houston the week of Aug. 3-10, for residents of all ages. Some big time names will be rolling into town, so be sure not to miss them. Lionel Richie, Mariah Carey, Jimmy Eat World, Queen, and John Mayer will be performing at various venues around Houston this weekend. You can check their times and dates in the gallery above. CHECK THIS: Southern Smoke 2017 tickets go on sale Aug. 7 If you're looking for a more family oriented event, Saint Arnold Brewery will be celebrating National Root Beer Float Day with a free and public event on Sunday, Aug. 6 from 12 to 5 p.m. Fat Cat Creamy Mexican Vanilla ice cream will be scooped into a Classic Root Beer Float for the kids, and boozier options for the parents will also be available. MUST SEE: Manuel Pucha to open French restaurant in the Heights The Hunters Extravaganza will also be in town at NRG Park on Friday Aug. 4 through Sunday, Aug. 6. The family can peruse and purchase the latest hunting equipment, clothing, and accessories, and kids 12 and under can enter for free. More fun and trendy events happening this weekend include White Linen Nights in the Heights and the Houston International Jazz Festival. Check out the gallery above for a list of activities and things to do in Houston for kids, young and old. Construction costs and home prices are rising in Texas due to President Donald Trump's approach on illegal immigration, according to a Fox News report that cited industry experts. "Half of the workers in construction in Texas are undocumented," Stan Marek, CEO of Marek Construction, told Fox News. "We do hear that there are a lot of undocumented workers that are leaving the state, going to other states that don't have the anti-immigrant sentiment and many of them are going back to Mexico." Some people looking to catch the solar eclipse later this month will only get a glance for a couple of minutes, but a group of NASA-funded scientists plans to grab a longer look with a little help from a pair of converted bomber jets and an airfield near Johnson Space Center in Houston, according to story published Wednesday from NPR. The solar eclipse on Aug. 21 will cause the moon to block out the sun. Those who view the phenomenon across North America are expected to grab about 150 seconds of the full solar eclipse, but a group of scientists hopes to see it for as long as seven minutes. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate Victoria's Secret gathered together some of the sexiest models right now (naturally) to showcase their fall 2017 lingerie lines. Models Stella Maxwell, Martha Hunt, Lais Ribeiro, Josephine Skriver, Jasmine Tookes, and Taylor Hill showed off their toned bods in the lingerie giant's The Body line, which include The Unlined Demi, The Lined Demi and The Perfect Shape bra. NEW TO THE CREW: Here are the report cards to Victoria's Secret's newest models Click through the gallery above to see the models show off the new line. Story continues below... The six models truly are sexy, but the brand's tweet announcing the new line wasn't received with 100 percent praise. Some of Victoria's Secret followers called out the brand for not including women of all body types, unlike competitor brands like Aerie, Nubian Skin, and Hips and Curves. ROUGH WATERS: Victoria's Secret #WhatIsSexy campain falls flat after voters pick thin, white winners list Though, others were quick to come to the brand's aid in standing up for the models. The debate of body image and Photosopping models continues to be an issue within the fashion industry. This week alone, body advocate and model Ashley Graham was accused of sharing a Photoshopped image on her Instagram account. "Love this woman, hate how terribly they photoshopped this," one user commented. Another said, "Girl you are gorgeous and you don't even need editing....But God these photo editors suck so bad." CONTROVERSY POST: Ashley Graham accused of Photoshopping her bum in post A recent report from the American Academy of Arts and Sciences calls for more attention to language teaching in the U.S. The report notes that U.S. students have much less access to foreign language instruction than students in other economically developed countries, and that Americans are thus much less likely to be bi- or multilingual. As an expert on language and literacy development in children, Ive talked to many immigrant parents who expect their children to grow up bilingual, only to be surprised that they end up as monolingual English speakers. Meanwhile, foreign language learning opportunities for English speakers are limited. Why is the U.S. so bad at producing bilinguals? Native language loss The dismal state of bilingual and multilingual fluency in the U.S. has a couple of sources. Notably, far too many of the children with the greatest potential to become good bilinguals the children of immigrants lose fluency in their parents language. Its estimated that by the third generation, immigrants have completely lost fluency in their heritage languages. Ongoing support (political and social as well as educational) for maintenance of minority languages is limited. Bilingualism can be impeded by a general sense that its more important for immigrants to learn English than to maintain their first language, and that these are somehow in conflict with one another. In my view, its ironic that we have students walking up staircases at one end of their school building to attend Spanish foreign language classes while at the other end of the same building native Spanish speakers are being taught English and content in ways that lead to their loss of Spanish. Foreign language classes 'fail' The other factor contributing to a lack of bilingual proficiency in the U.S. may be low expectations. Too many Americans accept the claim that foreign language instruction is a dismal failure, that a very large percentage of students will never become fluent in another language and that investing in foreign language learning is likely to be a waste of time. How do we explain, then, that l00 percent of students in Germany, Scandinavia, The Netherlands, Switzerland, Singapore and many other places achieve high levels of competence in English and typically in at least one or two other languages as well? Is the U.S. student population afflicted with some peculiar block to foreign language learning? I would argue that we as Americans do have a block to successful foreign language learning: our deeply unrealistic expectations about how it works. Can a few years of experience in middle school or high school classrooms (experience that likely adds up to less than 600 total hours of instruction) generate excellence in another language? Frankly, no at least not for most students. Moving forward through opportunity Despite the current limitations of most curricula, such classroom experience can, however, form a solid foundation for truly learning a foreign language. This is particularly true when a genuine communicative opportunity arises. Some lucky students get that opportunity on trips abroad. Others might seek it out by volunteering in refugee centers or programs serving immigrant youth, or by seeking digital contacts with native speakers. Jennifer Morrow, CC BY Many efforts to rethink the traditional foreign language classroom experience have been tried. These efforts include immersion, dual immersion and other bilingual school programs. Such programs typically recruit kindergartners and build second language skills by teaching content through the second language. They often work well, but starting at kindergarten is not a requirement for ultimate fluency. Immersion programs are effective and, in fact, generate equivalent learning in less time if started at later grades. Late immersion may be more efficient just because older students are better learners, and are generally more likely to have had a say in choosing the immersion program thus theyre also more motivated to learn. With such opportunities to improve foreign language instruction, lets not give up on it entirely lets figure out how to complement it with the experiences that enable students to exploit it optimally! *** Catherine Snow is a Professor of Education at Harvard University. This article was originally published on The Conversation. Send your tips and comments about this blog to Olivia P. Tallet. This story ran Oct. 11, 1992. Excerpts are reprinted here. Inside the Fiesta Mart on Blalock Road, just to the left of the talking mechanical monkey and the Delicious Red Apple display, First City Texas bankers casually take deposits and hand out cash for a line of waiting customers. Fiesta Chairman Donald Bonham would like to see more bankers plying their trade in his grocery stores. First City operates branches in five Fiesta stores, and he says the offices provide a convenience for his customers as well as one more reason for them to shop at his stores. But the 20 other Fiesta Marts are not likely to get bank branches anytime soon. First City has an exclusive contract to provide banking services in Fiesta stores, and because of its financial problems it is in no shape to open new branches. Meanwhile, Bonham is prohibited from recruiting another bank. "We found ourselves in a very bad situation with that (contract)," Bonham says. Fiesta's contract problem is one of a myriad of unusual situations that has stunted the growth of grocery store banking in Texas. Two grocery stores that want to add bank branches are blocked by old agreements. Banks that want to expand into more stores face grocers who don't want them. And banks that have access to stores but are still unsure of the business keep many supermarkets void of branches. One of bankers' oldest fears about grocery store branching - that customers would be offended by banking in the comparatively flashy environs of supermarkets - has dwindled as the lines have grown, according to bank branching consultants. In a Randall's Flagship store in one of Houston's more affluent neighborhoods, First Interstate Bank of Texas customers line up amid the din of carts smashing into carts and loudspeaker pleas for customer assistance at the registers. In Texas, Houston is the only city with a significant number of grocery store branches, and the numbers have not been growing. Most of the grocery store deals in the past few years involved failed thrift branches that banks bought and then, in many cases, closed. The fallout from some of those deals has tied up stores and made expansion difficult. First Interstate has embraced grocery store branching more heartily than any other Texas financial institution. It acquired the bulk of its 33 Randall's branches in June 1991 when it took over the failed Commonwealth Federal Savings Association. Eight of the Commonwealth Randall's branches closed within two months of the failure because they were close to existing First Interstate branches or in cities where First Interstate had no other presence. Chip Carlisle, executive vice president of community banking at First Interstate, is a fan of grocery store branching. The cost of opening a store branch runs about 10 percent to 15 percent of the cost of a new brick-and-mortar branch. He says the offices are cheaper to run than free-standing branches because the bank doesn't have to pay utility bills, and the branches use part-time employees and fewer of them. Marketing comes cheap because a good percentage of his potential customer base walks by the branch routinely, making mass advertising unnecessary. But First Interstate, which with one exception has all its grocery store branches in the Houston area, is finding it hard to expand the business into other Texas cities. Grocery stores in which the bank would like to install branches either are prohibited from taking its business or are not interested. In Dallas, the Tom Thumb grocers that have the biggest chain in the city have been cool to proposals for bank branches. The company recently hired a consulting firm to look at adding branches, but feeling no pressure from competitors, it never signed up a bank. "Nobody in Dallas does it," says Jim Stiles, chief financial officer at Tom Thumb. "We've just never seen fit to go forward with it." Kroger Co. would love to have a bank open branches in its Dallas stores, says Bill Parker, president of the Dallas marketing area for Kroger. "We've got a huge desire," Parker says. "I'll take one the first day I can get it." Parker came from Memphis, Tenn., where he says large branch networks in stores were great draws. But Kroger will not get a bank in any of its Dallas stores for at least a year, he says. An old contract Kroger signed with a now-defunct savings and loan - a contract now held by a company that operates automatic teller machines - prohibits the store from putting in competing machines. Parker says he has discussed store branching with several interested banks, but none wants to open a branch next to a competitor's ATM. Affiliated Computer Systems operates teller machines in all 55 of Kroger's Dallas-area stores. The five-year contract expires in October 1993, and Parker says he expects to sign up banks for full-service branches soon afterward. In San Antonio and Austin, where H.E. Butt Grocery Co. dominates the markets, bankers are even less likely to find store partners. Consultants who have tried to recruit H-E-B say the stores' owners are not interested in adding bank branches. H-E-B officials had no comment. Many Texas bankers are still leery of grocery store branching, says Bill Strunk, a local banking consultant who has helped several small banks find store slots. Some bankers fear the branches could only gather deposits rather than generate loans, which would push down profits, he says. Many still consider store branching an experimental business. NationsBank, which has a contract that allows it to put branches in Houston-area Kroger stores, is moving into the business very cautiously. The bank closed 12 of the 19 branches it purchased through the failed University Federal Savings Association because they were too close to existing NationsBank branches. NationsBank recently agreed to add two more store branches in Houston, and officials say they will monitor the performance of those locations before committing to store branches in other cities. Coastal Banc Savings tried store branches once, four years ago, and its leaders are in no hurry to get back into the business. Coastal shut its five store branches after taking over a failed institution with free-standing branches. Manuel Mehos, chairman of Coastal, says he is not convinced store branches make good business sense. BUSINESS & ECONOMY COMING NEXT THURSDAY Fast-talking pitchmen sell cars to Houstonians. BUSINESS & ECONOMY COMING NEXT THURSDAY Fast-talking pitchmen sell cars to Houstonians. Five men were arrested last month for online solicitation of minors after a combined effort from two police departments to identify and arrest suspected child predators, Galveston police announced on Wednesday. During the three-day operation between Galveston Police Department and La Marque Police Department, five men were arrested with bonds ranging from $30,000 to $80,000. Three men live in Galveston and two others traveled from Conroe and Cleveland. Want to help the poor? Promote a free market in health care. Thats the argument made by John C. Goodman, author of the new book Priceless: Curing the Healthcare Crisis. Timothy Dalrymple talked with Goodman about the best approach for restoring free-market pricing mechanisms into the market for medical care and health insurance: Arent there some people, however, who have little of money and lots of time, and would prefer to wait in order to receive cheaper care? There are 50 million Americans with foodstamps, who can buy any product you and I buy, and pay the same price. When they get to the checkout counter, they combine their foodstamps with cash and pay the market price and you never hear it said that poor people cant get access to supermarkets. They may have to get on a bus and go some blocks away, but food markets dont refuse people with foodstamps. Now, fifty million people, mainly the same people, are also on medicaid. And whats the biggest problem you have there? Finding a doctor who will see you. Because we make it illegal for people on medicaid to add to the government payment rate and pay the market price for care. There are about 1300 walk-in clinics in this country, and the ones in CVS are called Minute Clinic. As the name implies, they know that your time is valuable as well as your money. They provide very high quality care for a reasonable price. In Dallas, Texas, if you have an ear ache or a sore throat, the charge is about $75. Medicaid will only pay half that. So none of the minute clinics accept Medicaid patients. We make it illegal for the poor person to add to the medicaid rate and pay the market price. So a medicard patient has to go to a hospital or an emergency room and wait hours to get basic primary care. It certainly isnt delivered in a minute. If we just allowed low-income people to obtain health care in the same way we allow them to obtain food, we would make health care immediately accessible to millions of people. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate 3 1 of 3 James Durbin Show More Show Less 2 of 3 Occidental Petroleum Corp./Photographer Show More Show Less 3 of 3 Occidental Petroleum Corp. has tied company-wide compensation to a plan to bring costs low enough to break even at $40 a barrel oil, CEO Vicki Hollub said Thursday. After reshuffling its oil properties and pouring cash into the Permian Basin, the Houston oil company now has the most lucrative assets it has ever owned in its 100-year history, she said. The senate has approved San Antonio lobbyist Dan Brouillette as the deputy to Energy Secretary Rick Perry. An executive at USAA, the insurance and financial firm that exclusively caters to military and their families, Brouillette was confirmed by a vote of 79-17, according to the Associated Press. Brouillette moved easily through the confirmation process at the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee back in June. But a vote on the senate floor was held up, as Nevada senators Dean Heller Catherine Cortez Masto protested the Trump administration's plans to revive the development of a nuclear waste facility named Yucca Mountain. Brouillette is a veteran of Capitol Hill, having served on the staff of the powerful former Louisiana Congressman Billy Tauzin. RELATED: Energy Dept. nominee questions legality of Trump's oil reserve proposal As we reported earlier this year, at a hearing in May Brouillette questioned the Trump administration's proposal to sell off oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to help balance the federal budget during a Senate hearing Thursday. "The SPR was set up for a very specific reason... and the definitions and conditions under which it can be sold are very clearly defined," he said. "I am not familiar with the discussion the administration has had, but as a general matter I would stand by the federal law." Under federal law, the president can only sell oil from the reserve if, "required by a severe energy supply interruption or by obligations of the United States under the international energy program." Asked by Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-Louis., about Trump's proposal to eliminate a federal program that helps fund commercial clean energy projects, Brouillette, said, "I was not part of the budget process." "I understand this was the president's request to the Congress. But at the end of the day Congress will work, both the House and the Senate, to determine the final and appropriate numbers for these programs." New pigments and paints manufacturer Venator Materials goes public Thursday after spinning off from The Woodlands' Huntsman Corp. Venator's initial public offering raised $454 million, which was at the bottom of the $20 to $22 per share asking price of 22.7 million shares. Venator will trade on the New York Stock Exchange under the "VNTR" stock ticker beginning Thursday morning. A local developer has inked a deal with CHI St. Luke's Health to be part of a new medical district proposed in the far northeast corner of the Houston area. The Signorelli Co. said the "partnership" with the hospital group is a first critical piece in creating a complex that addresses the next generation of health care. Plans for what the hospital would build were not released. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate The teenager on the witness stand Wednesday explained - with damning specificity - the way she was pushed, prodded and pressured into sex by her Cypress-Fairbanks math teacher in the fall of 2015. The young woman, in a gray sweater and black-rimmed glasses, told jurors she was 16 when Alfredo Campos kissed her in his classroom, then convinced her to go on a dinner date, then, repeatedly, to a park where he cajoled her into the backseat of his red Mazda. "He's just really pushy," she testified about the 31-year-old forcibly kissing her as she sat at her desk waiting for class to start. "He just shoved his tongue down my throat." Story continues below ... All eight women and four men on the jury had furrowed brows and pursed lips as they listened to the teen explain that she worried about upsetting the "cool teacher" on campus. "I didn't know what to do," the teen testified as her voice cracked. "I'm not good at math and I thought he'd fail me." Campos pleaded guilty Tuesday as his trial was about to start on two felony counts of sexual assault of a child under 17. He admitted they had sex at least two times in his car, then opted to let a jury decide his punishment, which could range from probation to 20 years in prison. Defense attorneys for Campos are expected to cross-examine the teen Thursday. The defense has been tight-lipped about strategy, but are expected to remind jurors that the teen stayed close to Campos after the encounters ended. They are expected to point out that the teen enrolled in another semester of classes with Campos and continued to sit next to him at lunchtime tutorials. She even messaged the teacher after they stopped their encounters. On Wednesday, the teen testified for more than two hours that she did not want a physical relationship. "I feel like he's the worst person I've ever encountered," she said. "I didn't want to get on his bad side." IMPROPER PHOTOGRAPHY: Former Katy teacher gets probation She testified that after the first time he drove her to Bear Creek Park in northwest Houston, convinced her to watch a movie on a tablet computer in the backseat, then showed her his genitals, she felt she was "in too deep." She said she couldn't stop the blur of subsequent meetings. "I was in denial," she said. "I kind of made excuses for him." The jury heard that the married teacher told the teen he was having problems with his wife and that he was suicidal. She testified that Campos was a popular laid-back teacher who joked with the students and acted like a teenager himself. He was well-known at the school, she said, for rubbing student's shoulders, sitting "too close" to the female students and messaging students on social media. PRISON: Ex-teacher gets 15 years for abuse at Heights elementary Talking about the sessions at the park, she described in graphic detail the physical and emotional pain. "He would constantly make me feel bad for his problems, which weren't my doing," she said. "Pushing me to do things I didn't want to do." Cy-Fair ISD officials started investigating the Cypress Ridge High School math teacher in November 2016, a year after the sexual acts began, because of an anonymous tip. He was arrested days later after Campos admitted to the sex and said it was consensual. The sentencing phase is expected to last less than a week. brian.rogers@chron.com twitter.com/brianjrogers The family of a 36-year-old man who died in prison is suing the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, saying he died because of "willful and wanton indifference to undeniable dangers" of summer heat inside the facility. The Dallas-based parents and minor son of Quintero Devale Jones filed the federal wrongful death suit in Houston this week, noting the string of heat-related prison deaths in Texas that have garnered national attention. The lawsuit says that guards at the McConnell Unit in Beeville, where Jones was assigned, had already dealt with a number of inmate deaths caused by heat stroke - one in 2004 and two in 2011. Yet the guards ignored Jones' call for help and those of other inmates, family members said in court documents. Jones died during a heat wave in July 2015 as the result of an asthma attack, according to court records. Guards had previously confiscated his inhaler during a "shakedown" in the morning and he died after an asthma attack that same afternoon, the suit says. "It's unknown why they would not return to a prisoner an emergency breather that said 'keep on person' and they wouldn't give it back," said the family's lawyer John Schulman. Schulman said, beyond losing their son, Alice and Roy Jones, are deeply, deeply distressed by what happened at McConnell the day he died and how prison officials handled his asthma attack. "I believe they clearly have a duty -- not provide him a comfortable and cushy experience, but certainly to protect his life," Schulman said. Jason Clark, the spokesman for TDCJ, declined to comment on the Jones family's wrongful death complaint. Jones' death is not included among the 23 inmates that TDCJ says have died of heat stroke since 1998 - state officials have maintained that the last heat-related death occurred in 2012. A group of inmates at the Pack Unit sought an injunction in the wake of those heat deaths and U.S. District Judge Keith Ellison in Houston last month granted one. Ellison ordered state officials to provide a cooler living environment for heat-sensitive inmates, noting that heat deaths are commonly under reported. Prison officials are expected to unveil their plan on Thursday to cool the living units for the Navasota facility about 70 miles northwest of Houston. According to court documents, Jones had asthma and hypertension and took calcium channel blockers, all of which put him at high risk during hot weather. He had been seen for asthma attacks on June 5, 2015 and on July 28, 2015, and his medical records indicated he should keep his inhaler on his person at all times and use it multiple times per day. The lawsuit says the heat index in Beeville north of Corpus Christi had reached 110 degrees by 3:15 p.m. on July 31, 2015, when Jones began having an asthma attack. He was laying on the floor of his cell to avoid "the baking hot cinderblock walls" and his cellmates tried for 20 minutes to get guards to respond, according to court documents. By the time medical personnel began administering chest compressions, they could not record an independent heartbeat. His death was officially recorded shortly thereafter. His family is suing for violations of the Americans with Disabilities Act and the due process and equal protection clauses of the U.S. Constitution. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate An early-morning melee outside a downtown Houston club on Thursday left at least two people with gunshot wounds, at least one person injured by a car and one person assaulted. "It's a real confusing scene at this point," HPD Lt. Larry Crowson said shortly after the 2:30 a.m. incident. "We're not exactly sure who's the victim and who's the suspect in this." PHOTOS: Drake closes out Houston Appreciation Weekend at Spire Crowson said this is what police think happened at Spire, a nightclub on Main at Jefferson that hosted mega-rapper Drake just last week in its building, which property records show was a church until last year. Chaos broke out in the nightclub's parking lot after closing time. There was a fight. A car with three people drove into the crowd, apparently on purpose, and hit at least one person. The impact was hard enough to smash the car's windshield. At least one person in the crowd then pulled out a gun and shot at the fleeing car, hitting it several times. At least one of the occupants was shot, in the leg. 'KEEP THE INTEGRITY OF THE BUILDING': Owners discuss plans to turn downtown church into nightclub The car's driver backed up, hit a utility pole and started driving north on Travis - directly toward the Houston Police Department headquarters five blocks away at 1200 Travis. An HPD sergeant patrolling in the area was driving toward the sound of gunfire and saw the shot-up vehicle, which he stopped. When he found the occupant with a gunshot wound, he returned to his police vehicle to call for an ambulance. That's when the three men took off running - including the one with a gunshot wound to his leg. READ ALSO: I got into the Playboy Super Bowl party, and this is what it was like Officers searched for those three men from the car. According to an HPD news release later Thursday, two of those men were found nearby, in the 900 block of Bell, and taken to hospitals to be treated for gunshot wounds. The third car occupant remained at large as of 11 a.m. Thursday. Police also found a different man who was the victim of an assault; he was taken to Ben Taub Hospital in stable condition. Then police encountered a man in the same area who had suffered a gunshot wound to the face, possibly to his eye. He was taken to Memorial Hermann Hospital in serious but stable condition, and he is expected to survive. Police weren't immediately sure whether the two wounded men were connected to the nightclub incident. Investigators faced a difficult task reconstructing what happened because everyone involved - witnesses, victims and perpetrators - fled the scene. A camera at a nearby intersection might yield useful footage. The 12,000-square-foot club is owned by the group behind Cle, Saint Dane's, Christian's Tailgate, and other nightlife projects, the Chronicle previously reported. The nightlife group bought the building despite a historic preservation campaign that drew a letter from then-Mayor Annise Parker asking the congregation of First Church of Christ, Scientist to consider selling their historic building to the Houston chapter of the American Institute of Architects, which had said it would move its headquarters there, according to the local real estate blog Swamplot. When the new owners first sought an alcohol license in early 2016, they described the business as "1720 Main Reception Hall," Swamplot reported. The Spire nightclub did not immediately return a message seeking comment. The phone number listed on its Facebook page was disconnected. No charges were filed as of 11 a.m. Thursday, according to the HPD news release. Police ask anyone with information about the incident to call the department's Major Assaults Unit at 713-308-3600 or Crime Stoppers at 713-222-TIPS (8477). This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate According to El Pais, an international publication, two teenagers confessed to authorities that they were forced to eat the flesh of their victims as an initiation into the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG) in Mexico earlier this year. The publication reported that the 16- and 17-year-olds told officials in Tabasco, a Mexican state on the southern tip of the country, some flesh-eating occurred in May during an incident involving the CJNG. Cartel members, the publication reported, busted into a car dealership in Tabasco on motorcycles, decapitated five people and left a signed note on May 22. READ ALSO: 'This is not a game, nephew': Pile of bodies discovered outside Nuevo Laredo residence Four days later, another dismembered body was discovered west of Tabasco in Nacajuca, according to El Pais. After authorities connected both incidents to the CJNG, they discovered parts of the body found in Nacajuca stored in a freezer in one of the cartel's houses, according to El Pais. The teenage members of the cartel were drugged and had to eat some of the victim's flesh, the publication reported. This is not the first time acts of cannibalism within Mexican cartels has been reported. Earlier this month, a Mexican journalist told El Blog del Narco that a former Zetas cartel leader used to eat the flesh of his victims. RELATED: Report: Former Zetas cartel leader used to eat victims The journalist told the publication he had seen former Zetas leader Heriberto Lazcano, or "El Lazca," eat human flesh, according to El Blog del Narco. He said after the cartel leader would have someone killed, and then the victim would be cleaned and shaved, according to the publication. Lazcano would have the flesh prepared in a tamale dish, the journalist said in the report, and would consume skin from a victim's buttocks, the journalist said in the report. Lazcano was killed in 2012, according to news archives. kbradshaw@express-news.net Twitter: @kbrad5 Deliberations in the North Carolina murder trial of an Alvin man have been delayed for nearly a month after a juror who initially asked to be excused from the case was injured in a traffic accident. Last week, the judge sent the jury home after the juror asked to be excused because she couldn't properly evaluate the case of 24-year-old Eric Campbell of Alvin. It's a law enforcement job - actually more a calling - that often goes unrecognized and in which no two days are the same. But to crime victims, liaisons in police departments in Friendswood and Pearland are angels of mercy who help them navigate the legal system, recover possessions, access community resources, apply for compensation and get assistance in a host of ways. "Victims don't choose to be a victim," said crime-victim liaison Gina Mendez of the Friendswood department. "Many victims have no idea to what to expect. We help educate them and to recover and to navigate the criminal justice system." Although Friendswood is one of the safest cities in the state, according to NeighborhoodScout.com, the city deals with a steady stream of crime victims. More Information CRIME VICTIM LIAISON Pearland Police Department: http://bit.ly/2vtIbS1 Friendland Police Department: http://bit.ly/2vjyghs manslaughter trial A woman has been sentenced after an intoxication manslaughter conviction in the death of a Pearland police officer. Page X. See More Collapse Mendez gets more than 30 new cases a month, many of which relate to domestic violence. Plus, there are the ongoing cases. Once the police become involved in a crime against a person, Mendez is called to assist the victims. In the case of violent crime, she might also help victims apply for compensation from the state for crime-related expenses that can't be reimbursed by insurance or other sources. Those expenses might include medical bills, burial and court costs, counseling, lost wages and crime-scene clean up. If the victim doesn't live in Friendswood, Mendez puts them in touch with a police department closer to their home. "There are many resources available to the victim," said Mendez, who was a crime-victim liaison in Pearland and Alvin before coming to Friendswood 2 1/2 years ago. "Knowing what's out there for victims is important. We have to be knowledgeable of community resources." Texas law requires all police departments to designate a crime-victim liaison, with the positions funded through a state grant system. The state also provides for a crime victims' compensation program. Pearland has two crime-victim liaisons - Jessica Poe and Velma Guadiana. Poe handles felonies, which include sexual assault, robbery of a person and homicide, while Guadiana handles misdemeanors, many of which are related to family violence. Over the last few months, the number of cases has averaged around 100, of which a majority was either domestic violence or assault, Poe said. She said she sees one or two homicides a year and that those cases involve much more work and follow up. "My job is about keeping victims in the loop and ensuring they know their rights," Poe said. Another aspect of the liaisons' job is to increase awareness about crime and victims' rights. For instance, during October, which is Domestic Violence Month, the Pearland liaisons reach out to community groups to talk about domestic violence in the community. "Domestic violence is something people don't like to talk about," Poe said. "It's usually kind of hush, hush. But they have to report it in order for me to know about it." Jordan Confirms Attack on Guard, Reuters Conceals | Main | The Washington Post Minimizes Islamic Hate Preachers Sermon August 03, 2017 AFP Wrong on Western Wall In a series of captions earlier this week regarding the observance of Tisha B'Av, a Jewish day of mourning marking the destruction of the First and Second Temples as well as other catastrophes that fell on that day, Agence France Presse errs on the Western Wall, wrongly identifying it as "the last remaining vestige of the Second Temple." Examples of the erroneous captions follow: The Western Wall, a retaining wall of the Temple Mount, (not a wall of the Temple itself,) is not the last remaining vestige of the Temple complex. In fact, there are many extant remains of the Temple complex. The southern, eastern and northern retaining walls are also still extant. Surviving features abutting the southern walls include a broad stairway leading up to the Temple Mount's entrance and two gates, known as the Huldah Gates, which provided access to the Temple Mount (Hershel Shanks, Jerusalem: An Archeological Biography, p. 143.) Some of the interior part of the Herodian Double Gate (which is one of the Huldah Gates) is also still intact. There are also surviving underground remnants of the Temple complex, including the area known as Solomon's Stables. In addition, an area called Robinson's Arch, in the south-western corner of the Temple complex, still remains. In his book, Shanks provides details concerning numerous other vestiges. Multiple media outlets have corrected this same error in the past, including most recently The Los Angeles Times and Associated Press. CAMERA has contacted AFP about the errors, but editors have yet to correct. Posted by TS at August 3, 2017 02:18 PM Guidelines for posting This is a moderated blog. We will not post comments that include racism, bigotry, threats, or factually inaccurate material. Post a comment This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate It was July 4 and Michael Donald and his son were handing out bright red poppy flowers - a symbol that commemorates military personnel who died in war - at Tomball's Independence Day celebration. It was just two years ago that Donald, a veteran, was resisting a neighbor's efforts to get him to join the local Veterans of Foreign Wars post. Now, he's a member and a vocal advocate. Donald was on Facebook Live taking photos of veterans at Tomball's July 4 festivities. Other times, you can catch him and others soliciting donations outside the local Academy sporting goods store. It's that passion that helped Donald get through ranger school when he was younger. It's also what drives his efforts to help bring Tomball's VFW Post 2427 into a future that's younger and more diverse than the post's membership is and has traditionally been. Generational differences Donald had always looked up to his father, who served in the Korean War. His mind was set on the service by 11th grade - he served for 15 years. Donning a black Desert Storm hat one evening, Donald goes to chat with his neighbor and fellow veteran, Glenn Crews, at the post. Crews, 72, served in Vietnam. He was drafted the day before his birthday in December of 1965. "The Vietnam vets are in their 70s now. There's only a few guys from Afghanistan and Desert Storm," Crews said. "There are generational differences. You've got people stuck 20 years in past." Crews said internal tension - a lack of communication with veterans of different eras and elder veterans' indifference to expanding membership - has hurt the organization's ability to modernize. Donald, a photographer and videographer by trade, agreed. He remarks that he was tired of all things military and hoped to carve out a new life for himself when he returned in 2000. It's an endeavor that proved difficult for him and many other veterans. "The transition is difficult, more difficult than expected," Jeremy Newton, another veteran, said. "You find that you're entering a new world." Newton served in the navy for eleven years, spending most of that time as a flight instructor. When he left the service in 2012 (he was 33), he was confident that a master's degree and his experience as a liaison officer on Capitol Hill would afford him plenty of opportunities. Instead, he found hiring managers eager to discuss his overseas exploits but less interested to hear about what he could do in the present. Determining a new career to pursue, filling out applications and preparing for interviews, and understanding what you're qualified for can all be challenging too, especially without previous work experience or a college degree. "That's where VSO's (veteran service organizations) help out," Newton said. "They can take that guy who was leading a platoon and go through and checkoff the requirements he meets in a job description. To say 'don't use this word in your resume' or 'put that.'" Compounding that struggle is the social recalibration required to assimilate into civilian life. "It's hard trying to go about it on your own," Newton said. "Your stories don't make sense, they're not as funny, not as interesting. You feel like you can't connect." Lea Fauster, a therapist who works pro bono for Tomball's VFW post, has seen how such feelings of isolation can fester. She started lending her time to the post after losing "too many" friends to suicide. Fauster scoffs at the generalizations she's heard about veterans in the workplace: stoic, bossy, too serious. "Bootcamp shifts your mindset from civilian to paramilitary. People might slack off at work but there's a difference in reliability. In the military, if you don't do the right thing, you die," she said. "They're not machines," Fauster continued. "They carry those (combat) experiences with them always." Those shared experiences led veterans to mobilize to secure certain privileges in exchange for their years of service following the Spanish-American War. The Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW) - one of several veteran service organizations in the country - was established in 1899 and played an instrumental role in the development of the national cemetery system, establishing the Veterans Administration, and creating the GI bill, which provides educational assistance to service members and veterans. Despite such legislative victories however, internal tensions and inconsistent efforts to add younger veterans has led to declining memberships, with some posts closing as older members continue to age over time. Promoting the VFW Local veterans congregate in a building off Texas 249, down Alice Road. The property is hard to miss, unless you overlook the life-sized M60 tank and trainer plane flanking the entrance. Their mecca is a 70-year old, one-story white structure that's mostly unassuming from the outside, save for a protruding bar that gives off 1950's diner vibes from the outside. In the bar, burlap sand bags line the wall opposite the main entrance, stacked as if they were fortifying a trench. A display, just above, houses artifacts of war: a purple heart, Nazi flags, a model war ship. The bar itself is mostly unstaffed; they tend to use the honor system. The bar abuts a VFW staple; a commodious, dimly-lit bingo hall which holds about 400. Initially, Donald hadn't been interested in joining the VFW but visited Tomball's post last year after Crews eventually wore him down. He's since taken over PR for the post, proactively managing their social media accounts and faithfully pushing the post when provided the opportunity. "When my father was a vet, I didn't know about (the VFW)," Donald said. "When I moved across the street from Glenn, I told him I didn't have time because I was running a small business." Donald's hoping his efforts will ultimately help reinvigorate the post. To do that, he created YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram accounts which he updates religiously. Expect to see event flyers or clips from their latest concert - mostly rock or country - on each page. Like many VFWs, they host bingo nights and gun shows, but also job fairs. Donald is hoping to add voter registration and blood drives as well as tax preparation and pet vaccination on-site too. "The reason we push so many activities is because you have to start giving back to the community, and in the past the post hasn't really done that," he said. Continued support For a younger generation, the memories of a hazy pool hall engender less wistful emotions - for those who are even aware of the VFW's existence. "They bring to mind a smoky hall that your dad or grandfather went to," Newton said. "They wear the hats and have a women's auxiliary; it just feels kind of dated." To Newton, the VFW and traditional veteran service organizations failed to reach out to post-9/11 veterans as they returned home from service. In their place, a wave of newer organizations rose to meet the new generation's needs. "In Houston the need has been met at this point. It was almost like a start-up scene," he said. "There were needs that weren't being addressed and a lot of organizations popped up to meet those needs." Newton, 38, said groups like IAVA (Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America), a group that connects post-9/11 veterans, and Mission Continues, a group started in 2007 to help ease the military-to-civilian transition process, have accommodated the latest generation of veterans. It's through IAVA that Newton worked on Capitol Hill before he even left the service. "They're tech-savvy, they like to go out and do cool things, they're just more millennial-focused," he said of the newer organizations. "There are plenty to choose from and they each kind of serve a different purpose." "The VFW does great work, I know those guys are very influential," he continued, "but every generation of vets is going to have their own unique culture and issues and way of dealing with things." Heather DeShone, who served in the U.S. Air Force for eight years before leaving the service in 2012, has written and spoken about veterans in transition. DeShone also believes a collection of younger groups have stepped up to serve a generation's needs more wholly. She points to a group like Give an Hour, which provides mental health assistance to veterans and their families, for example. While DeShone is more hopeful about the future of VFWs, she's unimpressed with their lack of women, people of color, and LGBTQ members. She'd also prefer to see programs that incorporate regular legislative updates for veterans who don't follow national affairs. "I want something more active from a post," DeShone said. She lauds VFWs in Colorado, where she said some posts have created smoking bars. In Michigan, another has made meditation and yoga a part of weekly activities. "They're almost turning into community centers," she said. "I don't just want to go somewhere and sit. I want to spend time with my friends, yes, but I also want to learn through a lecture or go build the community up." It also wouldn't hurt to trade the bar chats and bingo nights for a few more picnics and happy hours, Newton added. He reiterates that the transition can be difficult, whether that be a social readjustment or the struggle to find the help and services one may need. Because of this, he recommends that younger veterans reach out to the IAVA or Combined Arms upon their return. While more traditional VSOs have more of a foothold in the political arena, he's partial to the younger groups for help through the transition. "I don't know what you do to attract younger members at this point if you're the VFW," he said. One woman was cut in the face and another stabbed in the arm with a machete when a man attacked them at a home north of downtown San Antonio, police said. Both were hospitalized in serious condition, authorities said. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate A Los Gatos, Calif. couple accused of adopting a 9-year-old Russian orphan before turning him into a sex slave for the remainder of his childhood was convicted Tuesday in a last-minute plea deal that spared the South Bay executives and their victim a jury trial. Ralph and Carolyn Flynn had faced 44 criminal counts, including felony charges of incest, sexual abuse of a child, unlawful sexual intercourse and lewd and lascivious acts. Ralph Flynn, 73, pleaded no contest in Santa Clara County Superior Court to three felony counts of lewd acts on a child and faces a 24-year sentence in state prison. Carolyn Flynn pleaded no contest to two counts of rape and faces a 12-year sentence. Both will be required to serve at least 85 percent of their sentences and register as sex offenders. Attorneys for the couple could not be reached for comment. The sexual abuse spanned 10 years, with Ralph Flynn initiating the molestation shortly after his adopted son, Denis, left the Russian orphanage and arrived in the United States. Six years later, Carolyn Flynn began to abuse him as well. Denis, now 25, shared his story with The Chronicle in 2016, after his parents arrests, describing the decade he spent as a sex slave in a five-bedroom home on the Lexington Reservoir at the base of the Santa Cruz Mountains, a Rolls Royce in the garage and a pool out back. The couple told Denis to keep silent about the assaults and rapes, that what they did was out of love, he said. He followed those instructions until he was 19, when he revealed the abuse to a friend and former teachers, who alerted the authorities. The plea deal came as jury selection loomed Thursday, and was unexpected, Denis said. I didnt celebrate or jump for joy or cry, he said. My heart relaxed and all this tension Ive been carrying all this time evaporated. Denis, who works as a massage therapist and lives in the Bay Area, had been bracing himself for months to testify at trial, to relive the horror. Old nightmares returned, he said. I was preparing to go to war and go into this battle and now I dont have to, he said Wednesday. I am feeling relief and peace after all these years and excited for the future and building my life up. Ralph Flynn, a direct-marketing executive, has been jailed since his arrest in 2015, in lieu of $2.5 million bail. His wife, a high-tech executive, remains free on $525,000 bail and is expected to begin her sentence Nov. 2. According to the 100-page arrest report, Ralph Flynn admitted to investigators that he not only molested Denis, but decades earlier had adopted another boy and sexually abused him as well. The report included detailed accounts of the abuse. Both Denis and the other boy told detectives that their adoptive mothers Flynns first and second wives participated in the molestation. Charges in the first case could not be filed because of Californias statute of limitations. Santa Clara County prosecutor Oanh Tran said the last-minute pleas took her by surprise. She had expected the trial to last three to four weeks, requiring Denis to testify in detail about the abuse and face two cross-examinations, one from each defense attorney representing his adoptive parents. He wont have to go through that, Tran said. Im really happy that Denis is getting justice, she said. Im happy that Ralph and Carolyn both took accountability for what they did. We have lost a true lesbian pioneer in the passing of Leslie Cohen. Whether opening the first upscale lesbian club Sahara in NYC in 1976 ... Sabotaged by Polish orthography This weekend my family was doing a bookstore event related to Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. One of the movie's characters, Jacob Kowalski, dreams of becoming a baker, and arrives to a bank appointment with a suitcase full of Polish confections, including paczki, a sort of Polish jelly donut. My wife wanted to serve these at the event. The little tail on the a in paczki is a diacritical mark called an ogonek, which is Polish for little tail. If I understand correctly, this nasalizes the sound of the a so that it is more like /an/, and furthermore in modern Polish the value of this particular letter has changed so that paczki is pronounced something like pawnch-kee. (Polish cz is approximately like English ch.) I was delegated to travel to Philadelphia's Polish neighborhood to obtain the paczki. This turned out to be more difficult than I expected. The first address I visited was simply wrong. When I did find the bakery I was looking for, it was sold out of paczki. The bakery across the street was closed, so I started walking down Allegheny Avenue looking for the next bakery. Before I got there, though, I passed a storefront with a sign listing its goods and services in blue capital letters. One of the items was PACZKI. Properly, of course, this should be PACZKI but Poles often omit the ogonek, especially when buying blue letter decals in Philadelphia, where large blue ogoneks are often unavailable. But when I went in to ask I immediately realized that I had probably made a mistake. The store seemed to sell toiletries, paper goods, and souvenirs, with no baked goods in sight. I asked anyway: Your sign outside says you sell PACZKI? No, replied the storekeeper. Pach-kee. I thought she was correcting my pronunciation. But I thought the ogonek made it pawnch-kee? No, not pawnch-kee. Pach-kee. For sending, to Poland. She pointed at a box. I had misunderstood the sign. It did not say PACZKI, but PACZKI, which I have since learned means boxes. The storekeeper directed me to the deli across the street, where I was able to buy the paczki. I also bought some interesting-looking cold roast pork loin and asked what it was called. A customer told me it was po-lend-witsa, and from this I was able to pick out the price label on the deli case, which said POLEDWICA. After my embarrassment about the boxes I was concerned that I didn't understand ogoneks as well as I thought I did. I pointed to the E. Shouldn't there be an ogonek on the E here? Yes, he said, and shrugged. They had left it off, just as I had (incorrectly) thought had happened on the PACZKI sign. I think the only way to win this one would have been to understand enough of the items in blue capital letters to guess from context that it really was PACZKI and not PACZKI. [ Addendum 20170803: A thirty-year-old mystery has been cleared up! When I was a teenager the news was full of the struggles of the Polish workers union Solidarity and its charismatic leader, Lech Walesa, later president of Poland. But his name was always pronounced walensa. Why? Last night I suddenly understood the mysterious n: the name was actually Walesa! ] [ (Well, not quite. That does explain the mystery n. But on looking it up, I find that the name is actually Waesa. The W is more like English v than like English w, and the is apparently very much like English w. So the correct pronunciation of Waesa is more like va-wen-sa than wa-len-sa. Perhaps the people who pronounced the e but not the W or the were just being pretentious.) ] [ Addendum 20170803: Maciej Cegowski says that paczki is more like packages than like boxes; Google translate suggests parcels. He would also like me to remind you that paczki and paczki are plural, the singulars being paczka and paczek, respectively. Alicja Raszkowska she loves my use of ogoneks (the English plural) in place of the Polish ogonki. ] [ Addendum: Maciej also says For Polish speakers, your post is like watching someone dive from a high platform onto a cactus. ] [ Addendum 20210710: Today I was looking at a list of common Polish surnames, and one was Dabrowski. Trying to pronounce this out loud, I suddenly understood where the American name Dombrowski comes from. As with paczki (pronounced like pawnch-kee), Dabrowski is pronounced something like dawm-brovski, with the nasalization of the /a/ sounding to an Anglophone more like an /m/ than an /n/ because of the following labial consonant. So Dombrowski is a pretty good representation English represenation of this name. ] [Other articles in category /lang] permanent link This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate For the first time, Texas charter schools have outperformed traditional public schools in reading and closed the gap in math, researchers at Stanford University have found. Students at Texas charter schools, on average, received the equivalent of 17 additional days of learning per year in reading and virtually the same level of education in math when compared to traditional public schools, according to a study released Wednesday by the Center for Research on Education Outcomes, or CREDO. Rather than looking at raw standardized test scores, CREDO researchers quantify the impact of a school by looking at student improvement on the tests relative to other schools. The researchers then translate those results into an equivalent number of "days of learning" gained or lost in a 180-day school year. The center's staff produced similar analyses in 2013 and 2015, finding Texas charter schools had a negative impact on reading and math performance. "The most recent results are positive in two ways. Not only do they show a positive shift over time, but the values themselves are both positive for the first time," the researchers wrote. CREDO's studies of charter school performance are widely respected in education circles. The center compares students from charter and traditional public schools by matching them based on demographic characters -- race, economic status, geography and English proficiency, among others -- and comparing their growth on standardized tests. Scores from 2011-12 to 2014-15 were analyzed for the most recent report. The Texas Charter School Association hailed CREDO's findings. The organization said the results show charter schools continue to improve, and that a 2013 law designed to close chronically failing charters is working. "Public charter schools are providing Texas students with an effective education helping them accomplish real results," the association's executive director, David Dunn, said in a statement. DATA: Students at top charter networks more likely to get 4-year degree About 240,000 students attended charter schools in 2014-15, equal to nearly 5 percent of all public school students. CREDO researchers drew several conclusions from the data, most notably: Hispanic charter school students, in particular, were learning more than their traditional public school peers. The impact was equal to 29 additional days of learning in reading and 17 days of math. Charter students perform significantly worse in their first year at their school. But by the second year, the results turn positive. While the average results are positive for charter schools, there are huge differences in performance based on the charter school operator. Students at several charter networks lost more than 100 days of learning per year. In the Houston area, the most prominent charter networks continued to show largely positive results. Yes Prep, home to 9,500 students, showed gains equal to 57 additional days of learning in reading and 51 days in math. KIPP Houston, which served 12,100 students, had 46 additional days of learning in reading, with negligibly positive results in math. The study found Harmony Public Schools, home to 31,600 students across the state, had 40 additional days of learning in reading and 68 days in math. (The study didn't isolate results for Harmony's 14 schools in the Houston area.) The region's top results were turned in by Houston Gateway Academy, which served about 1,900 students at four campuses. Students there had the second-best results in the state, with 86 additional days of learning in reading and 239 days in math. CHARTER: Houston ISD considers saving low-performing school Students at some of Houston's smaller charter operators, by contrast, fell dramatically behind, researchers found. At Promise Community School and The Varnett School, both home to roughly 1,700 students, students lost about 50 days of learning in reading. The 500 students at Excel Academy annually fell behind by a full year. Skeptics of CREDO's study typically offer three main criticisms of the research: it focuses exclusively on standardized test results, incentivizing schools that "teach to the test"; it ignores other advantages of traditional public schools, such as better access to extracurricular activities; and it doesn't account for the fact that charter school students are more likely to have strong, positive parental influence on their education. Charters enrolled a larger percentage of minority students than traditional public schools (72% to 60%) and a greater share of non-white students (83% to 70%) in 2014-15. Charters did take a smaller percentage of special education students (7% to 9%). This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate Relief may be in sight for hundreds of heat-sensitive inmates at the Pack Unit northwest of Houston. State officials on Thursday are set to roll out their plan for providing cool living quarters for medically vulnerable inmates at the geriatric facility after a federal judge found the swampy indoor conditions amounted to "cruel and unusual punishment." While U.S. District Judge Keith Ellison has not ordered the state to install air conditioning, his emergency injunction on July 19 called for cooled beds for 475 inmates who take medication or have diabetes, high blood pressure and other conditions that make it hard for their bodies to fight the heat. The ruling marked a turning point in the federal civil rights lawsuit, which has drawn national attention to the rights of people who lack the authority to adjust the thermostat and the freedom to leave the premises. Witnesses testified that inmates and guards alike had fainted from indoor temperatures that sometimes surpass 100 degrees. One inmate testified about heat-induced vomiting and another recalled a headache that felt like an ice pick to the brain. Story continues below ... Ellison ruled that officials at the Texas Department of Criminal Justice obstructed remedies and showed "deliberate indifference" to inmate suffering. He gave them until Aug. 8 to implement the plan, a draft of which is expected to be submitted to the court Thursday. About 80 percent of Texas prison inmates are assigned to living units without air conditioning, even during heat waves, according to Jason Clark, a spokesman for TDCJ. Since 1977, county jails across Texas have required that indoor temperature be kept between 65 and 85 degrees. All but seven of the 122 federal facilities run by the Bureau of Prisons offer air conditioning, an official said. Even the federal detention center at Guantanamo Bay, which drew attention for the treatment of high-profile international prisoners, has cooling units. TDCJ has not yet responded to a request by the Houston Chronicle for the total number of heat-sensitive inmates in state custody. However, prisoners' rights advocates estimate that thousands of people are under official "heat protection" designation at Texas facilities that lack air conditioning. Jennifer Erschabek, executive director of Texas Inmate Families Association, said she hopes state officials will consider the fate of its most vulnerable charges when implementing changes at the Pack Unit. "I can easily say there are thousands of people in the system who are on heart medication, diabetes medication, or have HIV, Hepatitis C or psychotropic medications that make them heat sensitive in these dire conditions," said Erschabek, whose group conducts an informal heat survey each year among inmates families. "People need to be housed in a place where it's not a life and death situation for them in the summer," she said. Breaking down heat deaths in Texas prisons Twenty-two people have died in Texas prisons from hyperthermia, or elevated body temperature, from heat exposure since 1998. Source: Texas Department of Criminal Justice. Created by Data Journalist Rachael Gleason | Houston Chronicle Erschabek said her organization has had small victories in addressing inmate grievances related to heat waves. Her group reached out to wardens at six TDCJ units where guards were reportedly unresponsive to inmates afflicted by extreme heat or failed to provide sufficient water, ice or cold showers. In every instance, she said, the wardens and regional directors took action. Melissa Brown, who runs a group called Adopt an Inmate, said she hopes TDCJ will extend heat protection fixes at the Pack Unit to all inmates. "The whole 'heat-restricted' thing is absurd because inside the cells it can be over 120 degrees, with 90 percent humidity," she said. "There is no inmate that isn't medically compromised in those conditions." Brown said prison transfer units, such as Holliday, Gurney, Garza East and Garza West, have metal roofs and no windows, so on hot days the floor fans just blow hot air around. She has heard reports of inmates smashing windows at another unit to get air flow during the hot months. The 2014 lawsuit filed in Houston was brought by six inmates at the Pack Unit after summer heat waves in 2011 and 2012 caused multiple inmates across the state to die from heat stroke. Since 1998, 23 inmates have died of hyperthermia, or heat stroke, in Texas prisons. Ellison noted in his recent ruling that heat deaths in the free world or otherwise are commonly under reported, since other medical problems contribute. The Pack lawsuit is among 10 lawsuits filed in Ellison's court by attorneys from Edwards Law in Austin and the Texas Civil Rights Project. Eight families of inmates who died of heatstroke have brought wrongful death suits and another inmate who survived a heat stroke has also sued TDCJ. In the Pack case, Ellison ruled that the inmates were likely to win at trial because the conditions they've endured violate the Eighth Amendment's prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment. In addition to the remedies for heat-sensitive inmates, Ellison ordered the prison to improve access to respite areas, develop a heat-wave policy and other measures. State officials have said they plan to appeal the ruling to the Fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. In the meantime, they must comply with the judge's injunction. Ellison's order remains in effect for 90 days, carrying through the hottest months. Local prison rights advocates say the prison heat problem should be treated as a humanitarian concern. "It's a human rights issue because these people do not have an option to go somewhere or do anything to enable them to cool off," Erschabek said. "They wet the concrete to lay down on cool concrete and put a fan on themselves but it's just biding time until the weather cools down. It's just horrendous." Following the spate of heat deaths in 2011 and 2012, the Human Rights Clinic at University of Texas Law School spent two years interviewing TDCJ inmates about the heat. Professor Ariel Dulitsky, a human rights lawyer who runs the clinic, said researchers concluded the state's treatment amounts to cruelty and torture, in violation of a United Nations Convention. "All these people are under the absolute control of Texas, of the state, and everything that happens to them is viewed through the actions or omissions of the state," he said. "At the end of the day, many of these situations amount to torture." He said it is a matter his students brought to the attention of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights in October 2014, but TDCJ officials declined an invitation to respond to the law students' allegations. Dulitsky said the students concluded that Texas had violated international law. "Due to the amount of suffering inflicted on many inmates, Texas is implicated in torturing inmates," he said. "If Texas does not remedy the situation it will implicate the U.S., not just Texas." This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate Texas prison officials will relocate 1,000 heat-sensitive inmates from the Wallace Pack Unit northwest of Houston to air-conditioned facilities as part of a plan to address stifling indoor temperatures that have proven deadly. The transfers will require the relocation of hundreds of other inmates to make room for those coming out of the Pack Unit in Navasota, according to court documents filed late Thursday in federal court by the Texas Department of Criminal Justice. "The transfer of Pack Unit inmates to these facilities will require TDCJ to make meaningful adjustments to its operations, but these changes are achievable in the short term," according to the court filing. "Security and classification concerns are being addressed in several ways." LAWSUIT: Inmate's family files over 2015 heat deaths The improvements are in response to a July order by U.S. District Judge Keith Ellison in Houston to arrange for cooler living quarters for hundreds of inmates who take medication or have health conditions such as hypertension and diabetes that make them vulnerable to heat. Story continues below ... A group of Pack inmates filed a federal lawsuit against the state prison system in 2014, following the heat-related deaths of multiple inmates at facilities across the state. Details of the plan are set to be finalized at a court hearing Tuesday. Ellison ordered the state to make the changes in July, following a hearing in June in which inmates testified about fainting and vomiting from unmitigated heat inside the dormitories. Ellison ruled the state had impeded remedies and showed "deliberate indifference" to the dangers, in violation of the Eighth Amendment's protection against "cruel and unusual punishment." He told prison officials they also should provide easier access to respite areas and develop a plan for dealing with a heat wave. TDCJ has said it plans to appeal the judge's finding. But in the meantime, the state will make immediate changes that will alleviate the dangers. K2 PROBLEMS: Synthetic marijuana invades Texas prisons "Adding temporary air conditioning in a prison not built for A/C would be costly and it's unknown whether untested equipment would bring the heat index to a level required by the court," said Jason Clark, spokesman for TDCJ. "While the temporary transfer will cause the displacement of many individuals, the agency has the capabilities and experience to move offenders and has done so in emergency situations." The plan unveiled Thursday involves moving 500 heat-sensitive inmates to Diboll Correctional Center in Diboll near Lufkin and another 425 inmates to the Travis State Jail in Austin. Both of these facilities are air conditioned. Other inmates at the Pack Unit with more significant medical needs will be moved to the Stiles Unit in Beaumont, which can accommodate CPAP machines and other necessary medical devices. The transfers will happen as soon as the judge signs off on the order, according to court documents. The prison system will also revise its respite program, making most of the air-conditioned sections of the Pack Unit such as the library available for inmates seeking relief from the heat. The new plan includes revised signage encouraging inmates to seek respite any time, regardless of whether they feel ill, and encourages guards to let inmates seek relief when they ask for it. The prison will also implement a new heat wave policy and install improved screens to keep out bugs. Since 1998, at least 23 inmates have died from heat-related illnesses, a number that Ellison said is likely under-reported. About 80 percent of Texas inmates live in prison units where no air conditioning is provided, even during heat waves, according to Clark. Since 1977, county jails across Texas have required that indoor temperature be kept between 65 and 85 degrees. All but seven of the 122 federal facilities run by the Bureau of Prisons offer air conditioning, an official said. Even the federal detention center at Guantanamo Bay, which drew attention for the treatment of high-profile international prisoners, has cooling units. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate A Houston police officer named in a lawsuit alleging excessive force had an explanation for why he pushed a drug suspect to the ground during a 2015 traffic stop, according to documents released in response to a Houston Chronicle records request. The lawsuit filed last month asserts Larry Moore Jr., 33, was violently beaten, harassed, taunted, wrongfully arrested and denied medical attention. Officer Kevin Hubenak wrote in the offense report that he was trying to protect Moore from possible gunfire after Moores passenger seemed to reach for something inside the car, possibly a gun. The city and the Houston Police Department previously declined comment and would not make the officers available for an interview, so the released offense report offers the closest thing to a first-person account from Hubenak, the only individual named in what a Houston Police Officers Union official called a frivolous lawsuit. Moore filed suit in state court on July 7, the two-year anniversary of the traffic stop that led to his arrest after HPD officers found 2 pounds of marijuana in his car. Moore alleged that Hubenak used excessive force and violated his constitutional rights. He seeks compensation from the officer, the police department and the city. The lawsuits key claim is that, when Moores passenger ran away from police, Hubenak suddenly and violently body slammed Mr. Moore on his neck, head and face, causing him to go into a brief state of shock, as well as a severe laceration and extreme swelling. READ MORE: Houston police officer beat man who wasn't resisting, lawsuit alleges Read the full lawsuit: In the written offense report submitted the day of the incident, the officer gave his account of why he pushed Moore. Hubenak said he was patting down Moore when he suddenly noticed his partner struggling with Moore's passenger, Michael Brooks. Hubenak wrote in his report: After a few moments Mr. Brooks broke free from (my partner's) grasp and dove toward the passenger side floor board of the vehicle. At this moment I knew the vehicle had not been searched and based upon many previous experiences I also knew beneath the front seats of vehicles is a common place to conceal handguns. While I feared Mr. Brooks may be retrieving a weapon I was also cognizant of the crossfire situation between (my partner), myself and Mr. Moore. In an effort to ensure Mr. Moore's safety I immediately pushed him away from the open driver side door and out of (my partner's) line of fire by placing my right hand on his left shoulder and pushing him to the ground to his right side. Upon hitting the ground Mr. Moore struck the right side of his face causing an abrasion and swelling to his right cheek area. Read the full offense report, with accounts from Hubenak, his partner and their sergeant. Personal information redacted by the Houston Police Department and the Houston Chronicle. Brooks led the two police officers on a foot chase that ended without injury. The three returned to the car, where Hubenak wrote that an armed Fiesta Mart security guard had stopped Moore when he tried to flee the scene. In the lawsuit, Moore contends he asked several times for officers to call an ambulance to treat his injuries. THIS SPRING: $11 million awarded to family in 2010 death of son arrested by Harris County deputy constables However, an HPD sergeant gave a different account in his use-of-force supplement attached to the officers' offense report. Sgt. G. Whitehead wrote that he came to the scene when he heard the officers on the radio reporting a foot pursuit. Whitehead wrote that he saw Moore had "a minor contusion under his eye with minor swelling in the same area." "I asked (Moore) if he need(ed) any medical attention and he stated he did not," the sergeant wrote. The officers then transported Moore and Brooks to HPD's central jail, according to the lawsuit and the offense report. The documents agree that medical staff refused to admit Moore as an inmate because of his injuries, leading officers to take him to Ben Taub Hospital for treatment. Moore's lawsuit says he lost his job because of recurrent headaches caused by injuries during the 2015 incident. In a 2016 court document, Moore wrote that he had a job with a temp agency for three years that ended "a couple days after I was charged." Moore's lawsuit alleges excessive force and "delay and denial of medical treatment and failure to protect while in custody." The suit seeks an unspecified amount of compensation for his injuries, pain, mental anguish and medical expenses, as well as punitive damages. Moore's attorney, Andre D. Evans, asked that the defendants disclose relevant information within 50 days. Hubenak and HPD were served with copies of the lawsuit on Aug. 1 and July 27, respectively, according to the Harris County district clerk's records. There is not yet a hearing scheduled in the case. HOUSTON AT THE HIGH COURT: U.S. Supreme Court declines to revive lawsuit of man paralyzed in 2010 HPD shooting In Moore's criminal case, court records show he accepted a plea bargain in May. Prosecutors dropped the felony charge of possessing several pounds of marijuana in exchange for Moore pleading guilty to a misdemeanor charge of possessing several ounces. He was sentenced to two days in jail as well as drug education. Moore's attorney declined to comment on the plea bargain except to say "there are some issues as far as that goes." Moore does not have any other criminal record in Harris County, and he does not appear to have any other criminal convictions. In addition to the offense report, HPD also released the public disciplinary histories of the two officers involved. The department sustained a citizen's February 2012 complaint of improper police procedure against Hubenak, who joined the Houston police force in 2008 after five years as a Missouri City officer. The only other sustained complaint listed is a July 2013 car crash in which he was found to be at fault. Hubenak's partner, who also joined HPD in 2008, had two internal complaints sustained after a January 2013 car crash. He was found at fault and found to have used improper police procedure. A Houston man will remain in jail without bail, after his charges were upgraded to capital murder because his wife died from injuries sustained in a shooting last week. James Hickam is accused of killing two people with a shotgun, then hiding from police in the crowd gathered to see the spectacle. The 58-year-old was already in jail, accused of shooting an innocent bystander while allegedly trying to shoot his wife outside their northwest Houston apartment complex on July 27. Prosecutor Lauren Byrne on Thursday said Hickam's wife came home about 2:30 p.m. to find him drinking and the two began arguing. As she fled the apartment, Hickam apparently went after her with a shotgun, firing into the parking lot. That shot hit Krystle Watson, a young mother in her 20s who was parking her car next to a car that Hickam's wife was trying to get in. The gunshot wound to the left side of Watson's head killed her in the driver's seat. She had just pulled up to the complex with her 2-year-old son who was not injured. In court, Byrne said Hickam fired the shotgun again, hitting his wife. Then, he put the gun away and hid among the crowd gathering to see the commotion. She said witnesses pointed him out to police. After state District Judge Michael McSpadden heard the allegations, he raised Hickam's bail from $100,000 to no bail. He also appointed attorney Bob Loper to the capital case. The intentional killing of two people during the same transaction is a capital crime. Investigators have said the couple had been arguing for several hours earlier that day, and Hickam's wife was trying to leave their apartment in the Windfern Meadows complex, in the 12900 block of Windfern, near Jersey Village. Hickam's wife died earlier this week. In 2004, Hickam pleaded guilty to assaulting a family member, his only prior charge in Harris County. AUSTIN - A bill that would stabilize health care costs for tens of thousands of Texas' retired teachers for the next two years sailed through the House on final reading Wednesday, although its future is far from certain in the Senate as the political drama between the two chambers intensifies. Lawmakers in both Republican-led chambers have said the state should bear some of the rising costs for premium, deductible and out-of-pocket health expenses facing the state's retired teachers, who are expecting to see their health care expenses soar in 2018. However, the two sides are at odds about how to pay for it. "This is the most important bill I think we have this session," said Rep. Dan Huberty, a Republican from Humble who chairs the House Public Education Committee. Beginning in 2018, retired teachers under the age of 65 could see skyrocketing health care costs under a plan passed into law earlier this year attempting to shore up funding of the Texas Retirement System. After receiving a flood of calls about the spike in costs, lawmakers agreed to devise a plan to lessen the blow, such as reducing the deductible for non-Medicare retirees from $3,000 to $1,500 and by reducing premiums for spouses by $100. In total, the legislation would change health care costs for more than 100,000, Rep. Trent Ashby, a sponsor of the House bill said. Since lawmakers returned to Austin for a 30-day special session, both the House and Senate have passed bills that would inject more than $212 million into the state's Teacher Retirement System to pay for those changes over the next biennium. While the two chambers agree on how much to spend, they are at odds about where to get the money. The House wants to pay for House Bill 20 out of the Economic Stabilization Fund, otherwise referred to as the state's rainy day fund. The fund has been used for one-time expenses, like construction projects, paying down debt and in recovering from natural disasters. For example, lawmakers spent $75 million from the fund to rehab the Alamo during the regular legislative session. However, the fund has often been used since its creation in the late 1980's to temporarily fund current operations, according to the Texas Taxpayers and Research Association. Although the House voted 135-13 in favor of the bill to lower health care costs, conservative lawmakers were hesitant to support a plan that would tap the state's piggy bank for recurring expenses. "It's really designed for when you have shortfalls as opposed to, 'Well, we didn't manage things quite in the budget the way we should have,'" said Rep. Bill Zedler, R-Arlington, who voted against the bill. The Legislature should use more restraint, he said. It's a philosophy echoed in the Senate which opted in Senate Bill 19 to defer payment of the plan by skipping a payment to managed care organizations at the end of the biennium in 2019. The state would catch up on payments in the next budget cycle. Ashby, a Lufkin Republican, banker and sponsor of the bill said he'd prefer the state avoid paying for the increased teacher benefits with the equivalent of a credit card. "Let's pay cash ... rather than incur more debt," Ashby told lawmakers on the House floor. "Maybe it's just my country common sense, but if you have money in the bank, let's pay for it." While the Senate and House are philosophically divided about how to pay for the program, the Senate bill is coupled with a plan to offer teachers a pay bump that has so far failed to gain traction in the House. Relations between the two chambers have soured during the special session, with House Speaker Joe Straus pushing back against major pieces of Gov. Greg Abbott's special session agenda, a slate of 20 mostly ultra-conservative issues backed by Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick. With two weeks left in the special session, Straus and Patrick are in a political standoff. They have traded public comments blaming each other for refusing to meet in person to talk about the special session. And several bills, including must-pass legislation to continue operations of the Texas Medical Board, have yet to pass despite both chambers agreeing on identical versions of the bill. Retired teachers found themselves frustrated this summer after learning their health care costs would climb next year after more than a decade of remaining unchanged. Retirees under 65 years old were being asked to pay for a larger part of their care in order to prop up the fund, which was facing an expected $1.5 billion shortfall by 2019. Lawmakers in the regular session unanimously approved a plan to begin shoring up the fund by increasing retired teacher premiums, deductible and out-of-pocket expenses, increase contributions from the state and local school districts and dip into reserves. The state's share totalled $350 million. The Texas State Teachers Association supports the plan to lower some of those rocketing costs, said Clay Robison, spokesman for the organization. "This will lessen the increases in health care costs that were in store for retirees. It is not the final answer to the financial problems with TRS-Care, but it gives the Legislature time to come up with a more permanent solution during the 2019 regular session." A Houston man is seeking $200,000 from a former Tinder date he claims defamed him online and cost him his job. Joseph Lazarus, 32, broke up with the woman he matched with on Tinder in 2014 and since then, he claims the woman has spread lies about him online and to two former employers, according to Harris County District Court documents filed Wednesday by Lazarus' attorney Joseph Mathew. The name of the woman is being withheld because she had not been notified of the lawsuit against her at the time of publication. A request for comment has been made with the woman. Story continues below... VINDICATED: Houston teacher cleared in revenge porn case Lazarus' relationship with the woman lasted about three months after the two matched on Tinder. During that brief time, he called their interactions normal. The two would go out to dinner and even attended a Houston startup convention together since Lazarus was working at an oil startup at the time and she was an aspiring entrepreneur. Lazarus claims the two just didn't hit it off, so he decided to break up with her in person. She wanted to remain friends; he did not. Within a few months after the breakup, Lazarus said he started receiving threatening messages from her. At one point he received a message from her demanding $10,000 from him or she would tell people he raped her. The threats became even more real in the fall of 2016. That's when Lazarus was called into his bosses office. Lazarus was working for a high end automobile broker in Houston at the time. The boss had seen posts about Lazarus on thedirty.com, a user-submitted gossip site, and couldn't risk his company's reputation. READ MORE: Katy teen charged with blackmailing woman with sex video in 'revenge porn' case The posts called Lazarus "creepy" and someone who "would have sex/rape fat chicks just to amuse his friends." Lazarus was fired that day. "I feel terrible. I feel like I'm living in a nightmare I can't escape," Lazarus told Chron.com. One of the first things he did was retain legal counsel. The court documents filed Wednesday include text messages the woman allegedly sent to one of Lazarus' friends. The messages claim that Lazarus would buy her dildos instead of flowers and that he was a "rapist, liar, cheater." "I don't know what she's talking about. I certainly didn't mail her any sex toys," Lazarus said. READ MORE: Woman successfully sues ex-boyfriend for posting 'revenge porn' online Mathew has taken on more than a dozen revenge porn cases in his six-year career. This is the first he's had where the alleged victim was a man. "There's no way Joe Lazarus can defend himself against these baseless allegations," Mathew told Chron.com. ""If anybody finds themselves in a similar situation and I encourage them to speak out and find legal representation. Everybody has the right to be left alone. That's all Joe Lazarus is asking, it to be left alone." Legislation to overhaul juvenile-justice systems, including how they handle education, easily passed the Senate on Tuesday. The Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Reauthorization Act, which passed the chamber by a voice vote, would for the most part prevent juveniles from being incarcerated for status offenses such as skipping school in states getting federal formula grants. (The exception would be if the child is subject to a valid court order.) The bill also puts a greater emphasis on screening and treatment for those with mental health issues, retaining educational records of juveniles in detention centers, and ensuring that students in juvenile-justice centers get appropriate credit for academic work while they are in the juvenile-justice system. Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, and Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., were the two primary authors of the Senate billGrassley is head of the Senate judiciary committee. Senators will now hold a conference with House lawmakers, who passed their own changes to the nations juvenile-justice law earlier this year, to hammer out final legislation. The bill includes important new accountability requirements that safeguard taxpayer dollars and prevent states from being rewarded when failing to provide the minimum standard of protections for minors, Grassley said in a statement after the bill passed. And in his own statement, Whitehouse said the legislation helps kids stay on track at school. The House legislation, written by Rep. Jason Lewis, R-Minn., and Rep. Bobby Scott, D-Va., also contains elements impacting the education of young people in the justice system . That bill passed the House in May. Both pieces of legislation address federal juvenile-justice law, which originally passed in 1974 and was last reauthorized in 2002. The Coalition for Juvenile Justice noted that while the Senate bill would allow young people to be put into the juvenile-justice system for skipping school in certain circumstances, the House bill would eventually disallow the practice entirely. Click here to read the Senate legislation . And read a fact sheet about the Senate juvenile-justice bill below: Follow us on Twitter at @PoliticsK12 . While MS-13's extreme violence has made them America's most notorious gang, they are far from the biggest threat in Houston or Texas. The crown belongs to Tango Blast. The Texas Department of Public Safety rates Tango Blast and all of its associated cliques as one of only four Tier 1 groups in the latest Gang Threat Assessment report, which was published last year. A 44-year-old man from Beaumont allegedly set his girlfriend on fire and threatened to kill her if she contacted police. According to a June 24 police report obtained by The Examiner, the victim told authorities Aaron Charles Hill set her on fire using rubbing alcohol because he thought "she was evil" and because he said she "had a snake on her." AUSTIN -- Days after Texas Gov. Greg Abbott penned a warning about so-called Obama Democrats' plans to return to power in Texas, a party consultant is firing back at Abbott for being fearful and passive-aggressive. The drama is playing out not in Austin, but in an online news site in Washington. In a July 29 op-ed piece in the Washington Examiner, the governor insisted that hedge-fund billionaire George Soros and other liberals are messing with Texas. "Still reeling from nearly a decade of devastating losses in statehouses across the nation as well as in the 2016 presidential election, Democrats in Washington, D.C. are plotting to pour hundreds of millions of dollars in state and local elections across the country," Abbott said in his missive. "With the help of hedge fund billionaire George Soros, the National Democratic Redistricting Committee hopes to wrest control from voters of congressional re-districting in 2021 when booming conservative states such as Texas will gain seats in the U.S. House of Representatives. All for the benefit of their special-interest donors. "That the first fundraisers for this self-described 'super group' were held in San Francisco and Los Angeles reveals one of their goals: to reinstate Rep. Nancy Pelosi as Speaker of the House. But they aren't stopping there." Matt Angle, founder and director of the Lone Star Project, a Texas Democratic research and communications organization, answered the blast with an op-ed piece of his own in the Examiner:. "It's disorienting for Texans that our current Republican Gov. Greg Abbott projects such a fearful, passive-aggressive profile. Abbott's recent Washington Examiner op-ed is the latest example of a nervous governor raising irrational fears and ringing false alarms to hide his own shortcomings. "Those of us in Texas working to rebuild Democratic political strength and bring balance and responsibility to our state's leadership find Abbott's panicky pander laughable. We know firsthand that nationally-based ideologically-left organizations pay little attention to Texas, invest even less financially, and have virtually no influence with Texas leaders. Abbott knows it too. "No state's citizens have more pride, a stronger sense of identity, or more deeply imbedded confidence than Texans. We generally handle problems by meeting them head-on and honestly. "We're having to get used to a governor who doesn't seem to share the same optimism or confidence." Read Angle's op-ed piece here. Mike Ward covers politics and state government for the Houston Chronicle. Follow him on Twitter @ChronicleMike and Facebook at Mike Ward. Send him tips at mike.ward@chron.com. Fast and Furious Family: Mom Arrested for Street Racing With Toddler Son in Car Sure, there are speed limits. But why would a car's speedometer go all the way to 150 mph if you were only supposed to drive 55? Well, one Texas mother put her speedometer, and her luck, to the test early Sunday morning. Kierra Beaty was arrested and charged with street racing and child endangerment after her car clipped a pole, spun out of control, and crashed. In the car with Beaty were three passengers and her 13-month-old son, who was allegedly unrestrained in the back seat. Police say Beaty hit speeds as high as 120 mph before the crash. Child Safety Fortunately, no one was seriously injured in the accident. A passenger who was holding the child in the back seat suffered a minor injury, but the boy himself was unscathed. Under Texas law, however, an injury does not have to occur in order for a person to be charged with endangerment of a child. Instead, someone who "intentionally, knowingly, recklessly, or with criminal negligence, by act or omission, engages in conduct that places a child younger than 15 years in imminent danger of death, bodily injury, or physical or mental impairment" can be charged and convicted of child endangerment. Given the circumstances -- the lack of restraining device, the speed, and the ultimate crash -- it's not difficult to see how Beaty placed her son in imminent danger of injury. As family members told Dallas' FOX 4, it's a miracle no one was really hurt. Speed Racing Racing on a highway in Texas is also illegal. As the traffic statute reads: A person may not participate in any manner in: (1) a race; (2) a vehicle speed competition or contest; (3) a drag race or acceleration contest; (4) a test of physical endurance of the operator of a vehicle; or (5) in connection with a drag race, an exhibition of vehicle speed or acceleration or to make a vehicle speed record. Although reports don't indicate who Beaty was racing or reference another car, a local business owner told Fox 4 said the area is known for street racing. While street racing is a class B misdemeanor in the Lone Star State, child endangerment is a felony, so Beaty could be looking at some serious jail time. Related Resources: 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. August 3 A series of alleged thefts from monasteries and residents in southern Shan State has villagers calling for increased security. Two monasteries were reportedly burgled in the space of a week, while a market shop and a village resident also reported robberies. Theft cases are happening every two days. Yesterday afternoon [August 2], K3 million was stolen from the Pitaka Monastery. The money had been entrusted to the elder monk by monks [studying at the monastery]. They asked for money from him when they needed it, a member of the monastery said. We have CCTV records. The police came and took photos. The Mway Taw Monastery reported a robber on July 28, while a Pang Mont Village alerted authorities to a July 31 theft. A Panglong Market vendor also reported three women who allegedly made off with K950,000 from the shop. Security has worsened because they are stealing even from monasteries. Over K400,000 was stolen from the Mway Taw Monastery as well as gold worth five tical [81 grams]. And K200,000 was stolen in Pang Mont Village. There may be other, minor thefts we havent heard of, the Pitaka Monastery member said. Panglong resident Sai Naung blamed drug use for fueling a number of vices in Panglong. Many youths are addicted to drugs. Thats why the number of theft cases is rising. We cant just lock up our homes and go out. Someone must stay behind. Security is very bad, he said. The township administrator and the police have a responsibility. Arent they doing their work? 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. Update: Here is the indictment. Hutchins is accused of making and selling a keylogger called the "Kronos banking trojan." Marcus Hutchins is the 23 year old security researcher behind the @MalwareTechBlog Twitter account; he's the guy who figured out that the Wannacry worm had an accidental killswitch built in and then triggered it, stopping the ransomware epidemic in its tracks. According to a US Marshals spokesman, Hutchins was arrested by the FBI shortly after the Defcon/Blackhat conference in Las Vegas, though no one has disclosed the charge. His friends cannot locate him. I've just run a series of searches on the Defcon and Blackhat schedules and couldn't find any presentations that Hutchins was on the program for, but that doesn't mean he didn't present there many of the presenters are on side-tracks whose schedules aren't easy to search. The friend told Motherboard they "tried to visit him as soon as the detention centre opened but he had already been transferred out." Motherboard granted the source anonymity due to privacy concerns. "I've spoken to the US Marshals again and they say they have no record of Marcus being in the system. At this point we've been trying to get in contact with Marcus for 18 hours and nobody knows where he's been taken," the person added. "We still don't know why Marcus has been arrested and now we have no idea where in the US he's been taken to and we're extremely concerned for his welfare." A US Marshals spokesperson told Motherboard in an email, "my colleague in Las Vegas says this was an FBI arrest. Mr. Hutchins is not in U.S. Marshals custody." Researcher Who Stopped WannaCry Ransomware Detained in US After Def Con [Joseph Cox/Motherboard] Copiii cu nevoi speciale din Stefan Voda au conditii de reabilitare mai bune, datorita UE si Fundatiei Soros Moldova Authorities closed off a popular bay on an Adirondack lake to boaters Monday, scuttling an annual alcohol-fueled party from being held there a year after a fatal boat crash followed the New York event last summer. Dave Wick, executive director of the Lake George Park Commission, said only two boats with people looking to party during what was known as Log Bay Day were turned away by police boats from the tree-lined bay on the lakes eastern shore. It seems like the whole thing has come together perfectly, Wick said. Log Bay Day, held on the last Monday of July for the past 20 years, typically attracted more than 250 boats and as many as 1,000 people to the shallow, sandy-bottomed bay, Wick said. A vacationing 8-year-old California girl was killed and her mother seriously injured last July when the family motor boat was hit by another boat driven by an impaired man who had spent the day partying at Log Bay Day. The tragedy prompted officials to take steps to end the party, started in the late 1990s by local musicians to give their friends in the local tourism industry a way to relax during the busy summer season. The party grew over the years as word spread through social media. The scenic bay became jammed with boats and people who left behind human waste and garbage, both in the water and on the shore. As Log Bay Days popularity rose, so did the number of arrests, with police charging dozens of participants with various violations, including boating while intoxicated. Last years Log Bay Day, held on July 25, ended in tragedy. Charlotte McCue, of Carlsbad, California, was killed and her mother, Courtney, was injured when a motor boat slammed into their boat as they returned to a relatives waterfront home after a sunset cruise along the lakes western shore. Alexander West, a 25-year-old local resident who had spent the day partying with friends at Log Bay, was driving the boat that struck the familys vessel. He was convicted in May of manslaughter and other charges and sentenced to five to 15 years in prison. Authorities discouraged this years party by announcing their plans weeks ago in the media. A Warrant County Sheriffs Office dive team held a training exercise in the bay Monday, and more than a dozen police patrol vessels were cruising nearby. A state police plane was being used to spot any efforts to shift the party to another location on the lake. It has been good, Sheriff Nathan Bud York said. Nobodys giving us a hard time. Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. EagleView Promotes Cook to Oversee Insurance Claims and Underwriting Technology EagleView Technologies, a provider of aerial imagery and data analytics for government, insurance and commercial sectors, has promoted Kenneth Cook, CPCU, CLU, ChFC, to senior vice president of EagleView OnSite Solutions. In this role, Cook will lead field services, while collaborating with engineering and product teams to strategically develop advanced solutions for claims and underwriting professionals in the property insurance space. Previously VP of Client Relations at EagleView, Cook has managed functions supporting major EagleView clients which include all major property and casualty insurance carriers. Cook holds the following designations: Chartered Property Casualty Underwriter (CPCU), Chartered Life Underwriter (CLU) and Chartered Financial Consultant (ChFC). Having worked in the insurance industry for 26 years, holding positions with insurance carriers such as State Farm Insurance and Farm Bureau Financial Services, Cook has vast experience in both underwriting and claims management. Graf takes Helm of Operations for Vanguard Claims Administration, Leads Rollout of Service Expansion Paul J. Graf, AIC, has joined Vanguard Claims Administration, Inc., as vice president of operations. With more than 27 years of multi-line claims management experience in the property and casualty insurance industry, Graf will oversee the daily operations of both Vanguard and the Vanguard Adjusters Group, Inc. In addition, he will be responsible for expanding Independent Adjuster operations into the Central Eastern Region, increasing capacity for TPA services in both the domestic and international Lloyds marketplace, as well as launching Vanguard Recovery Services a new entity providing subrogation recovery services. Graf is a member of the Richmond State Claims Association (former president) and the incoming president for the Virginia State Claims Association. In addition, he is the current northeastern regional vice president and national education chairman for the National Association of Independent Insurance Adjusters (NAIIA). Graf also is actively involved with the National Association of Subrogation Professionals (NASP), the Virginia Self-Insured Association (VSIA) and the Virginia Public Risk Insurance Management Association (VAPRIMA). Prior to joining Vanguard, Graf served as the senior vice president of a regional claims management firm that provided third party administrator, subrogation recovery, independent field adjustment and litigation management services. He also filled the role of regional claims manager for Utica National Insurance Company, where he led the regional workers compensation, auto/general liability, material damage, property/E&O and professional liability claims activities. Arbella Promotes Jansky to Director of Application Development in Information Technology The Arbella Insurance Group named Karen Jansky director of application development in information technology. Reporting to Matthew Postulka, assistant vice president of information technology, Jansky will oversee Arbellas core insurance systems, as well as agent and consumer applications. Jansky began her career at Arbella in 1998 as a programmer consultant, working on the Personal Lines Information System (PLIS) application. Soon after, she took on increasing levels of responsibility and quickly advanced to manager of the PLIS team and then manager of the personal lines & commercial lines portfolios. In 2013, she began managing Arbellas customer and agent portals, as well as the companys internet presence. By 2016, Jansky was leading Arbellas CAM, personal lines and commercial lines portfolios. Subrogation is the legal doctrine which allows one party, usually an insurance company, that pays a loss by its insured which was caused by a third party, to take over the rights of its insured against the third party and recover its claim payments. It wouldnt make much sense if, after paying a first-party insurance claim that its insured was partly responsible for, an insurance company could sue its insured to get their money back. It would defeat the purpose of insurance. Preventing precisely that sort of inequitable scenario is the purpose of the anti-subrogation rule (ASR). Sometimes known as the suing your own insured defense, the ASR was originally developed based on the logical premise that because the carrier stands in the shoes of its insured, it would essentially be suing itself. Therefore, no right of subrogation can arise in favor of an insurance company against its own insured. Wager v. Providence Ins. Co., 150 U.S. 99 (1893); The John Russell, 68 F.2d 901 (2nd Cir. 1934); Sherwood Trucking, Inc. v. Carolina Cas. Ins. Co., 552 F.2d 568 (4th Cir. 1977); Peavey Co. v. M/V ANPA, 971 F.2d 1168 (5th Cir. 1992) (insured or additional assured); Prestige Cas. Co. v. Michigan Mut. Ins. Co., 99 F.3d 1340 (6th Cir. 1996). Anti-Subrogation Rule Generally The public policy behind the ASR is two-fold: (1) the insurer should not be able to pass its loss on to its own insured, avoiding coverage which the insured has paid for; and (2) the insurance company should not be placed in a situation where there is a potential conflict of interest. However, this seemingly simple concept has many tentacles and each state has developed their own body of law with regard to how and when the ASR will be applied, setting forth numerous exceptions and rules regarding its application. Understanding and being able to navigate around the ASR and its exceptions remains a key skill necessary for an effective subrogation program. The ASR in each state is established either by case law or by statute. The application of the ASR can depend heavily on the facts of the case, the status and legal identity of each of the parties involved, and the terms, conditions, or exclusions of the insurance policy involved and any other written or oral agreements which may be involved. The identity of the insured as a co-insured, an additional insured, an indemnitor, an implied co-insured, or as a person or entity having some kind of a relationship with or duty to the insured, may play a role in determining whether the ASR is to be applied in a particular case. The ASR may prohibit subrogation against an entity which is considered to be an additional insured or co-insured, either by terms of the insurance policy, case law, or by statute. It may involve a situation where a separate agreement requires the insured to carry insurance for the benefit of a third party. The application of the ASR is complicated, but the result is simple: the carrier either can or cannot seek recovery of its claim payments from an insured. Paramount in the understanding of any ASR situation is the legal status of the tortfeasor. A parent corporation, subsidiary, affiliate, or partner of an insured might be considered a close enough relationship to prohibit subrogation by application of the ASR defense. It varies by state. The ASR prohibits actions by an insurer against its insured for recovery of a claim payment under the policy, but will sometimes not prohibit an insurance companys claim for reimbursement from the insured after the insured recovers from a third party who happens to also be insured by the same insurer. In states which do not prohibit subrogation under these circumstances, public policy does not prohibit reimbursement where the tortfeasor is insured under a separate policy. Economic Waste Doctrine In some jurisdictions, the ASR is considered to protect against the same risk of loss. An example is Connecticut, where the Connecticut Supreme Court in a case where the landlords insurer tried to subrogate against a tenant has held that where a lease did not remotely inform the defendant that they would be liable to their landlords insurer for fire damages to the landlords building, nor did it inform the defendant of the need to obtain fire insurance to cover the value of the entire multi-unit apartment building, the tenant would be considered to be an implied co-insured and could not be subrogated against due to the ASR. One of the reasons for establishing this default rule was to avoid the economic waste of forcing each individual tenant in a multi-unit apartment to insure the whole building. Implied Co-Insured Doctrine The ability of a landlords property insurer to subrogate against a tenant for property damage caused by the negligence of the tenant depends on which state the loss occurs in and the nature and language of the lease involved. There are generally three different approaches: (1) A minority of courts hold that, absent a clear contractual expression to the contrary, the insurance carrier will be permitted to sue a tenant in subrogation. (2) Seeking to avoid a per se rule, in some states the ability to subrogate must be assessed on a case-by-case basis and governed by the intent and reasonable expectations of the parties under the terms of the lease and the facts of case. (3) Known as the Sutton Rule, some states hold that, absent a clearly expressed agreement to the contrary, the tenant is presumed to be a co-insured on the landlords insurance policy and, therefore, the landlords insurance carrier has no right of subrogation against the negligent tenant. The rule of subrogation known as the Sutton Rule states that a tenant and landlord are automatically considered co-insureds under a fire insurance policy as a matter of law and, therefore, the insurer of the landlord who pays for the fire damage caused by the negligence of a tenant may not sue the tenant in subrogation because it would be tantamount to suing its own insured. The subject of when and under what circumstances a landlords property insurer can subrogate against a tenant is not covered in this chart, but is covered thoroughly in another chart that can be found HERE. Origins of the Anti-Subrogation Rule The origins of common law subrogation lie in equity the body of law which was developed in the English Court of Chancery that traditionally supplemented the common law where the application of the common law would have operated too harshly. This was done to achieve what is sometimes referred to as natural justice, or more simply speaking, fairness. Subrogation seeks to impose the ultimate responsibility for a wrong or loss on the party who, in equity and good conscience, ought to bear it. The equitable considerations that are the underpinnings of subrogation are (1) that the insured should not recover twice for a single injury, and (2) that the insurer should be reimbursed for payments it made that, in fairness, should be borne by the wrongdoer. Powell v. Blue Cross & Blue Shield of Alabama, 581 So.2d 772, 774 (Ala. 1990), overruled on other grounds by Ex parte State Farm Fire & Cas. Co., 764 So.2d 543 (Ala. 2000); see also Aetna & Cas. Sur. Co. v. Turner, 662 So.2d 237 (Ala. 1995); Star Freight, Inc. v. Sheffield, 587 So.2d 946 (Ala. 1991). The same equitable principles which gave birth to subrogation were eventually developed into a rule which prohibits an insurer from asserting a right of subrogation against its own insured if the defendant is the insured, a co-insured, or an additional insured under the subrogating insurers policy. Allowing subrogation in these cases would compromise the special relationship between the insured and the insurer. Purpose and Application of the Anti-Subrogation Rule There are five (5) fundamental reasons for the ASR: (1) An insurer who seeks subrogation stands in the shoes of the insured and can take nothing by subrogation but the rights of the insured. Because a person cannot sue himself for damages, that persons insurer, who stands in the persons shoes for subrogation purposes, cannot sue the person either. (2) Public policy. An insurer that has accepted premiums to cover certain risks should not be allowed to pass the same risks back to its insured in a subrogation action. Otherwise, the insurer would be allowed to avoid the coverage that the insured has purchased. (3) The relationship between an insurer and its insured are fraught with conflicting interests. (4) There is a possibility that, if insurers were permitted to sue their insureds for subrogation, the insurers would be able to obtain information from their insureds under the guise of policy provisions for later use in a subrogation action. (5) An insurers right to sue its insured could be interpreted by the insurer as a judicial sanction to breach the insurance policy. Stafford Metal Works, Inc. v. Cook Paint & Varnish Co., 418 F. Supp. 56 (N.D. Tex. 1976). To permit the insurer to sue its own insured for a liability covered by the insurance policy would violate basic equity principles, as well as violate sound public policy. Such action, if permitted, would (1) allow the insurer to expend premiums collected from its insured to secure a judgment against the same insured on a risk insured against; (2) give judicial sanction to the breach of the insurance policy by the insurer; (3) permit the insurer to secure information from its insured under the guise of policy provisions available for later use in the insurers subrogation action against its own insured; (4) allow the insurer to take advantage of its conduct and conflict of interest with its insured; and (5) constitute judicial approval of a breach of the insurers relationship with its own insured. Home Insurance Company v. Pinski Brothers, 500 P.2d 945, 949 (Mont. 1972). The ASR, therefore, serves two purposes: (1) it prevents the insurer from passing the loss back to its insured, an act that would avoid the coverage that the insured had purchased; and (2) it guards against conflicts of interest that might affect the insurers incentive to provide a vigorous defense for its insured. N. Star Reinsurance Corp. v. Contl Ins. Co., 624 N.E.2d 647, 653-54 (N.Y. 1993). Exceptions to the Anti-Subrogation Rule As with almost any rule, the ASR has its exceptions. The application of the ASR usually prevents inequitable results in cases involving a single insurance policy. An insurer who has paid a loss to its insured under a policy should not be allowed to sue that insured or a co-insured under the same policy to recover that same loss. Every state is different and some states have, over time, developed various exceptions to the application of the ASR. For example, if an insurer pays on behalf of one insured for damage caused by a second insured, under a policy that does not cover the second insured for the loss, the insurer might be allowed to subrogate against the second insured, an exception referred to as the no-coverage exception. Chubb Ins. Co. v. DeChambre, 808 N.E.2d 37 (Ill. App. 2004); Rosato v. Karl Koch Erecting Co., 865 F. Supp. 104 (E.D. N.Y. 1994). An insurer might also be able to subrogate for damage caused by a subcontractors negligence where the insured general contractors policy covered the subcontractor for property damage, but not liability. Employers Fire Ins. Co. v. Behunin, 275 F. Supp. 399 (D. Colo. 1967). Another exception is where an insured has impaired the subrogation rights of the insurer. The insurer may be able to proceed against the insured or payee under the policy without the ASR being an impediment. Maynard v. State Farm Mut. Auto. Ins. Co., 902 P.2d 1328 (Alaska 1995). Texas has a rather well-developed body of ASR law. While it is well-settled in Texas that the ASR applies if multiple insureds are covered under the same policy, the situation is less certain when insureds are covered under multiple policies issued by the same insurer. In that instance, the application of the ASR varies by state. As an example, if an independent contractor negligently repairs equipment, resulting in damage to the equipment and the destruction of the premises where the equipment is located, and the owner of the premises and the independent contractor are both insured by the same insurance company, but under different policies, the insurer for the owner may still be able to pursue the independent contractor even though it is technically the insurers insured. Texas exceptions to the ASR include: When the risk is not covered by the insurance policy. State Farm Mut. Auto. Ins. Co. v. Perkins, 216 S.W.3d 396 (Tex. App. 2006). The insurance company has paid a third-party claim involuntarily, in good faith, and under a reasonable belief that the payment is necessary to its protection. Keck, Mahin & Cate v. Natl Union Fire Ins. Co. of Pittsburgh, Pa., 20 S.W.3d 692 (Tex. 2000). Subrogation action of an excess insurer against a primary insurer and defense counsel for mishandling claim. Am. Centennial Ins. Co. v. Canal Ins. Co., 843 S.W.2d 480 (Tex. 1992). Other circumstances that involve multiple insurers participating in the first property insurance policy and the defendants have multiple insurers on their CGL policy. The ASR may be applicable in any case in which the tortfeasor has liability insurance with an insurer who is related to or the same as the subrogated carrier. The public policy underlying the ASR, the stated purposes for its application, and the exceptions to its application, must all be understood thoroughly in order to effectively subrogate and to avoid the elimination of subrogation in cases that it otherwise could have been avoided. Chinese walls can and should be erected to avoid the inadvertent sharing of information by an insurer at the expense of its insured. If an insurer is not the same, but they have some sort of corporate relationship, the ASR should be carefully scrutinized. If there is a large deductible, an excess insurer, or a large SIR involved, then some part of the subrogated claim may be barred by the ASR while other parts are not. Knowing which is which can make the difference between a large subrogation recovery and no recovery at all. A 50-state chart which provides an overview of the ASR and sets forth the exceptions to and nuances of its application in each state can be found HERE. Gary Wickert is an insurance trial lawyer and a partner with Matthiesen, Wickert & Lehrer, S.C., and is regarded as one of the worlds leading experts on insurance subrogation. He is the author of several subrogation books and legal treatises and is a national and international speaker and lecturer on subrogation and motivational topics. He can be reached at gwickert@mwl-law.com. Jacob Coz, co-author and summer legal intern at Matthiesen, Wickert & Lehrer, S.C. Nevada safety officials are recommending fines of $16,000 against a tourist-oriented exotic auto track near Las Vegas where a Canadian man and an instructor died in a fiery crash of a high-performance Lamborghini in February. The state Occupational Safety and Health Administration found that SpeedVegas had a substandard fire and safety plan and failed to properly train employees in fire suppression, the Las Vegas Review-Journal reported. However, the violations were not called a contributing factor in the wreck that killed Craig Sherwood of Thornhill, Ontario, and driving instructor Gil Ben-Kely of Henderson, Nevada. SpeedVegas chief executive Aaron Fessler told the newspaper the company is evaluating its response. It can contest the findings, and OSHA can reduce the fines. We are gratified to know that after a six-month investigation OSHAs findings support what our independent investigators concluded: the track design, safety protocols, instructor training and operations at SPEEDVEGAS are safe, the tracks chief operating officer, Johnny McMahon, said in a statement. We further agree with OSHA that there is nothing inherently unsafe in the design or operation of the experience. The Review-Journal said the investigation found no standards for track design apply to SpeedVegas, a 1.5-mile (2.4-kilometer) road track course that opened in 2016 several miles south of the Las Vegas Strip. It offers tourists the chance to drive high-performance cars such as Ferraris, Porsches and Mercedes faster than 150 mph. Fessler calls it a driving track, where cars run individually, not a racetrack where cars run at the same time. Authorities said the orange Lamborghini Aventador that Sherwood was driving slammed into a wall and burned at a curve following a half-mile straightaway that SpeedVegas advertises as the longest at an amateur track without a speed limit. The course was closed for 12 days after the crash, but reopened with SpeedVegas officials maintaining the track was safe. An employee driver reached a confidential out-of-court settlement with track owners in April of a legal dispute arising from his unwillingness to sign a safety waiver. Fessler told the Review-Journal he was pleased the state OSHA report didnt indicate that the track design or safety procedures were substandard. The agency citation listed two serious violations relating to firefighter training and use of portable fire extinguishers, two other-than-serious violations and three regulatory notices. Inspectors said that because the car burst into flames, the lack of a properly trained fire brigade was not considered a contributing factor to the crash. Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. AKRON, Ohio - If you're interested in incorporating more sustainable practices into daily life, you should check out Akron Sustainer. Akron Sustainer's home base is hard to miss. The 8-foot by 20-foot shipping container at 21 W. North St. at the Cascade Lofts was painted by the University of Akron Art Bomb Brigade in the group's signature multi-colored splendor. Launched through a $5,000 Torchbearers' Small Projects Achieving Real Change grant, by Torchbearer graduate Kaley Foster, Akron Sustainer is an educational hub designed to spark many small sustainability projects that generate lasting change. "This is to educate people on the reusing of materials, to minimize our impact on future generations," Foster said. "It's to get people to think differently." Foster partnered with Let's Grow Akron and Summit Reworks for a Sustainable Saturdays workshop series, which has covered everything from seed starting to rain barrels to making rugs and bags from upcycled plastic bags. The series will continue next year from April through October. An upcoming event is Kombucha & Fermentation on Aug. 12 from 11 a.m. to noon. Fermenting is used to preserve harvested food and Kombucha is a fermented tea used as an alternative to high-sugar soft drinks. Akron Sustainer also works with the Greater Akron Innovation Network for Sustainability, which educates the community and business professionals on sustainable practices. Foster, who has made Urban Buzz Beeswax candles since 2014, got the idea for a long-term sustainability project after debuting her wares and other sustainable items in the shipping container at the North Hill Better Block in 2015. "People were thrilled to have a shipping container in Akron," she said. "It's just an economical way to house things." True to the project's purpose, the container, which was featured in the 2017 Akron Home & Flower Show, is outfitted with furniture created from repurposed materials, some from the old Firestone and Selle buildings downtown. Informational materials for workshops and other events hang from upcycled pallets. Foster is also working to add a solar panel, a vegetative roof, a rainwater catchment system and a living wall, or habitat wall. The wall will be made of recycled and natural materials like pipes, tree branches, loose stones and stacked bark to provide habitat to bees, birds and bats. It will attach to the side of the shipping container. Foster recently was recognized for Akron Sustainer in the latest round of Emerging City Champions, which awards individuals $5,000 for the best ideas to build a better city. The program is part of the Knight Foundation's 880 Cities, which works to improve communities. She joined other winners at a June worship in Toronto to share ideas, hear presenters and participate in interactive sessions. "It showed me how much I don't know," she said. "The cool thing is we could do a lot of the projects in Akron." Foster would like to launch a kind of incubator park of eight to 10 shipping containers in downtown Akron. Emerging businesses could rent the spaces for retail, food, art and music for short periods as they're starting up, before committing permanently to a site. Want more Akron news? Sign up for cleveland.com's Rubber City Daily, an email newsletter delivered at 5:30 a.m. Monday through Friday. AKRON, Ohio -- Tony Huggins' brother was among the seven people who died in a house fire in May that investigators and prosecutors have called one of the deadliest in Akron's history, and an act of murder. Stanley Ford is charged with aggravated murder, arson and a string of other criminal charges in the May fire that killed Dennis Huggins, Angela Boggs and five children. Since his arrest in that case, Ford was also indicted in a similar April 2016 fire that killed Lindell Lewis and Gloria Hart. Together, the families of those lost forged a bond through their collective grief, but also in their desire to see justice served for the nine people whose lives were brought to an early end. "We want it to be over with but at the same time we want every stone turned over, we don't want to leave anything on the table so however long it takes," Tony Huggins said after a court hearing Wednesday. Ford, 58, entered a not guilty plea to 22 counts of aggravated murder, two counts of attempted aggravated murder, two counts of aggravated arson, and single counts of cruelty to animals, arson and aggravated menacing. He's currently being held on $7 million bond in the Summit County Jail. Tony Huggins said that he is relieved that the families of Lewis, 66, and Hart, 65, have some answers as to what happened to their loved ones as the case went unsolved for more than an year. The couple died when their Fultz Street house caught fire April 18, 2016. A third person escaped. "They have been waiting for an answer for over a year," Huggins said. "It's unfortunate that it happened the way it did." The May 15 fire also happened on Fultz Street. Dennis Huggins, 35; Angela Boggs, 38; Jered Boggs, 14; Daisia Huggins, 6; Kylle Huggins, 5; Alivia Huggins, 3; and Cameron Huggins, 1 all died in the fire. The fire also claimed family's pet dog. Lewis' son, Jordon, said Thursday that his father's girlfriend got into an argument with Ford before, but that he never suspected that he would burn down his father's home. He said they often squabbled about "neighborly things," and that Ford was "just an angry neighbor." "Usually you would just argue with him and back in the house," Lewis said. Hart's daughter, Monique Scott, broke down in tears toward the end of the reading of Ford's indictment which took just over an hour and a half. "Our lives have been changed forever," she said after the hearing with her family by her side. "I mean I just can't, I can't put it into words but they should be here now." She called Ford "cowardly" and hopes the prosecutors will seek the death penalty against him. "They didn't have a chance so why should he?" Scott said. "None of them (had a chance), those children; those children it's just, I just hate that it just took something else to happen to bring it all to light." When asked about the possibility of the death penalty, Huggins said the law has already been written and established. "There's a scripture that I like to quote that says that 'the powers that be are ordained of God,'" he said. "So the governments, the judicial systems, the laws and all those things, the people are in those places and in those positions because God has placed them there." The law is in their hands, Huggins said. "They didn't ask me when they wrote it, so I'm not going to ask them how to execute it," he said. Ford is scheduled for a pretrial hearing at 1 p.m. Aug. 8. If you'd like to comment on this story, visit Wednesday's crime and courts comments section. CLEVELAND, Ohio -- The Cleveland Metroparks has agreed to no longer apply its policy regulating patrons' free speech when it comes to individual people seeking petition signatures, according to court records. U.S. District Judge Dan Polster obtained the agreement from the Metroparks on Wednesday afternoon during a telephone conference in a lawsuit filed by a Rocky River woman this week. Rocky River resident Alison Abdul-Kareem argued that the Metroparks' policies that required permitting and restricting free speech to certain areas at each of the park system's properties were unconstitutional. The minutes from the telephone conference say Adul-Kareem is not required to get a permit to collect signatures for a petition to decriminalize marijuana in Cleveland during Thursday night's Edgewater Live concert. "She is free to circulate her petitions throughout the park," the minutes state. Polster dismissed the lawsuit, saying there is no longer a controversy that needs to be addressed. Metropark rangers stopped Abdul-Kareem twice on July 27 as she tried to collect signatures, according to the lawsuit. During the first instance, park rangers demanded that Abdul-Kareem cease her activities and leave. While they told her she would not be arrested if she continued, she was stopped a few minutes later and surrounded by park rangers. Eventually, the rangers left her alone, the lawsuit says. Abdul-Kareem argues Metroparks violated her free speech rights. While Polster addressed the immediate issue, Abdul-Kareem's attorney Brian Shrive said the judge did not address the issue of the Metroparks ranger's actions on July 27. The judge's decision to close the case means Abdul-Kareem has no opportunity to collect damages from Metroparks. Shrive anticipates either asking Polster to reconsider his decision to close the case or to file an appeal. While the Metroparks agreed to no longer enforce its policies as it pertains to an individual person circulating petitions, the parks system defended its policies earlier. It said in a court filing earlier Wednesday that "these are reasonable requirements that are narrowly tailored to balance an individual's rights with the public interest in a safe and orderly concert." Honolula has become the first major US city to ban texting while walking across the street, reports Christian Britschgi for Reason. The mere act of "looking in the direction of the screen of a mobile device" can earn you a ticket between $15 to $99. Interestingly, Honolulu does not have a serious problem with pedestrian deaths. "In Smart Growth America's ranking of 104 cities on their Pedestrian Death Index, Honolulu came in well below average at 82nd, with 1.76 pedestrian deaths per 100,000 residents," says Britschgi. So why did the City of Honolulu think it was important to pass such a law? It could be that the City wants yet another weapon in its ongoing campaign against Honolulu's homeless population. Snip: CLEVELAND, Ohio -- The ghosts of burlesque and a new wave of performers dance all over Cleveland, long after the city was renowned for shake-it sensibilities. Bring on the Ohio Burlesque Festival - at the Beachland Ballroom, 15711 Waterloo Road, Cleveland. The three-day soiree celebrates burlesque with enough shaking to make you dizzy (or hypnotized by pasties). You want high-heeled, feather-boa-clad performers from around the country and the area? How about 80 acts doing their thing? Well, the 7th installment of the OBF will feature a gaggle of giggles and titillation - along with a photo show that documents Cleveland resurgent burlesque scene. It opens Thursday Aug. 3 with "All That Glitters: Burlesque at the Beachland" at Space: ROCK Gallery, 15721 Waterloo Road, in Cleveland. The photo exhibition chronicles burlesque performances produced by Bella Sin and her 13-year-old burlesque troupe Le Femme Mystique at the Beachland Ballroom, which has been a regular host of the festivals and extravaganzas. Photographers include Eric Paul Owens, of Columbus, who shot the earliest installments of the festival; renowned Cleveland writer and photographer Anastasia Pantsios; official Le Femme Mystique photographer Bob Perkoski; and Scene magazine photographer and writer Emanuel Wallace. The opening reception runs 5:30-7:30 p.m., prior to the festival's opening night next door at the Beachland. It also runs 5-9 p.m. Friday, as part of the neighborhood's Wall All Over Waterloo. Day One rolls out performers from around the country and includes headliner Eileen Galvin (Columbus) and featured performers Tre De Marc (Minneapolis) and Dimples Diamond (Columbus). More than 20 other performers will be in the opening night show, including out-of-towners Helvetica Bold (Ottawa), Pearl Necklace (Raleigh), Ruby Spencer (Chicago), May Blush (Las Vegas), Madam Ofeelya Redd (Columbus), Alyce Dee (Rochester), Kougar DeVille (Colorado Springs), Lou Lou Roxy (Detroit), Honey Dynamite (Montreal), Dolce Dream (Austin), Amoxie Villain (Pittsburgh), Viola Volta (Toronto), Atomic Pixie (Toronto). Friday's floorshow is headlined by Egypt Blaque Knyle (California) and OBF founder Bella Sin. It also features Lilly Rascal (Chicago) and Noella Deville (Akron). The Saturday Night Gala is headlined by glittering showstoppers Hazel Honeysuckle (NYC) and the Mexican Spit Fire Ruby Champagne (San Francisco). Featured performers on the 25-act bill are Ruthe Ordare (Vancouver) and Miss Viva Las Vegas 2017 Frankie Fictitious (Oakland), The festival will include morning event and after-party events on Saturday at the Hyatt Regency Cleveland at the Arcade, 420 Superior Avenue. Single day tickets run $20-$25. $40 reserved. Weekend passes $50. For tickets and a complete schedule of events and performers, go to ohioburlesque.com or beachlandballroom.com or call 216-383-1124. CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Two years ago, the people behind SyFy's "Sharknado" franchise envisioned a world where Donald Trump was president. They even wanted to cast him for the role in "Sharknado 3: Oh Hell No!" It begs the question, if they were right about that, what are they trying to tell us about the scientific probability of shark-infested tornadoes? But I digress. Yes, the 45th president of the United States was indeed considered for the role he now plays in real life in "Sharknado 3" in 2015, according to a story in The Hollywood Reporter. When producers and Sarah Palin, the original choice to play the part, couldn't agree on a deal, star Ian Ziering suggested Trump, his old boss from "The Celebrity Apprentice." "The Donald said yes," David Latt, co-founder of the production house behind "Sharknado," told THR. "He was thrilled to be asked." While the casting director said producers and Trump's team "got pretty far" in the process, the future president's attorney eventually got back to them after weeks of silence. "Donald's thinking about making a legitimate run for the presidency, so we'll get back to you," Latt recalled Trump attorney Michael Coen telling him. "This might not be the best time." Trump, of course, did end up running for president, and so producers cast "Shark Tank" (of course!) star Mark Cuban to play the part. "Then we immediately heard from Trump's lawyer," Latt said. "He basically said, 'How dare you? Donald wanted to do this. We're going to sue you! We're going to shut the entire show down!'" They didn't and the series is now five films deep with "Sharknado 5: Global Swarming" premiering on SyFy on August 6 at 8 p.m. And while Cuban doesn't reprise his role as the president, the movie does have Charo as the Queen of England. Suspicion, Hartley Drive: At 9:35 a.m. July 30, a resident reported that a woman, a stranger, was in her back yard looking closely at her child's swing set. When the resident approached the woman, the intruder said she was merely looking for the name of the company that manufactured the swing set. The stranger then got in her car and drove away. The resident asked that police give special attention to her home in coming days. Overdose, Biltmore Road: At 8:15 p.m. July 30, police were called to a home where a woman, 37, overdosed on drugs. The woman was taken to Hillcrest Hospital and treated. Drug charges are pending. Custody dispute, Sunview Drive: At 6 p.m. July 30, a woman, 26, called police to report that her boyfriend assaulted her and took her young child. The man, 28, did not leave the home with the child. Police learned that the assault took place in Cleveland Heights and advised the woman to file a police report in that city. Officers assisted the woman in getting the child back from the man. DUS, Cedar Road: At 12:35 a.m. July 29, an officer stopped a car driven by a Cleveland Heights woman, 26, for making an illegal left turn. It was then learned that the woman was wanted on a Parma police warrant. Parma police could not pick up the woman, so she was held in Lyndhurst jail until bond was posted for the traffic offense. Suspicion, Lynd Avenue: At 6:40 p.m. July 28, a resident reported that a man approached his child and asked if the child wanted to come to his home. The father spotted the man and followed him to a nearby address. Police spoke with the man, 23, who, it was determined, had no criminal intent. Police explained to the man how his behavior could be misinterpreted as criminal. Assault, Blanchester Road: At 1:05 a.m. July 26, a woman, 34, reported that her boyfriend beat her. The man, 38, was intoxicated. When police arrived, the woman said she did not want to pursue assault charges. Police, however, charged the man with disorderly conduct. If you would like to discuss the police blotter, please visit our crime and courts comments page. CLEVELAND, Ohio -- A local memorial service on Monday, Aug. 7, will honor Elyria native Gary Leo Rehm Jr., one of seven U.S. Navy sailors killed when their destroyer collided with a cargo ship off the coast of Japan in June. The memorial service and celebration of life will begin with visitation, open to all, at 4:30 p.m. at VFW Post 1079, 500 Abbe Road South in Elyria. A chapel memorial service will be conducted at 7 p.m. by the Department of Ohio VFW, District 9, including a rifle volley and taps performed by the Post 1079 Honor Guard. Family and friends will be able to share their memories during the celebration of life after the service, which will include presentations by the city of Elyria and Lorain County commissioners. Rehm, 37, a Fire Controlman First Class, was eligible to retire in three months after 28 years of service. He was killed when the USS Fitzgerald collided with a Philippines-flagged container ship during the overnight hours of June 17. Official findings have not yet been released, but initial reports said Rehm was trapped below decks and drowned after heroically diving into a flooded berthing compartment to save his shipmates. A petition on change.org calls for the Navy's next new guided missile destroyer to be named for him. He will be buried in Arlington National Cemetery with military honors on. Aug. 16. A graduate of Oberlin High School who earlier attended Elyria West High School, Rehm lived in Virginia with his wife, Erin. His parents, Gary and Anita, also live in Virginia. "The Elyria Community began asking that a service be held for Gary as soon as the awful news of his death was reported," said Navy veteran David Root, post judge advocate at VFW Post 1079. "I started putting it together right away so our citizens and his family and friends could have the closure that they need." CUYAHOGA FALLS, Ohio - Homicide detectives are investigating after a man was shot and killed Wednesday in Cuyahoga Falls. Kevin Tiearney, 32, was shot just before 9:30 p.m. at an apartment building on American Avenue near Wyoga Lake Road, police said in a news release. Tiearney died after paramedics took him to a local hospital, police said. No arrests have been made. Detectives have not offered a motive for the shooting. Officers went to the apartment building for a report of gunshots. Tiearney was unresponsive when the officers found him, police said. The Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation and the Summit County Medical Examiner's Office are assisting in the investigation. To comment on this story, visit Thursday's crime and courts comments page. CINCINNATI, Ohio -- A man crashed his car into a tree, then tried to walk away from the scene, leaving behind his critically injured 10-year-old son, reports say. Adriel Holloway, 27, likely will face charges of OVI and aggravated vehicular assault, but they could be upgraded, WLWT Channel 5 reports. According to police, Holloway was driving at about 9:30 a.m. Tuesday in the city's Walnut Hills area when he struck the tree head-on. A witness to the crash, Danny Dickson, tells WCPO Channel 9 that Holloway got out of the car and began walking away as his injured son, Ariyonte Holloway, was still in the vehicle. "He was in the passenger seat," Dickson tells WCPO. "No seatbelt on. Just laying there, not making a noise. He wasn't breathing." Dickson followed the elder Holloway and managed to stop him with help from other passers-by. WLWT reports a surgeon from the University of Cincinnati Medical Center happened to pass by and began treating Ariyonte. The boy was taken to Cincinnati Children's Hospital and was listed in critical condition. The elder Holloway also was taken UC Medical Center and was listed in fair condition. To comment on this story, visit Wednesday's crime and courts comments page. PAINESVILLE, Ohio -- A spokesman for the Hispanic immigration support group HOLA said that David DeJesus Casillas was reunited with his wife, Beatriz Morelos Casillas, in the Mexican border city of Nuevo Laredo where she was deported Tuesday night. Director Veronica Dahlberg told the Plain Dealer that the couple was busy today trying to figure out the next step, but said that both were safe and together. There were some anxious hours Tuesday when the Casillas' attorney was unable to determine if Beatriz was being held in jail or if the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials had in fact deported her as anticipated. ICE refused to answer the question, so attorney Elizabeth Ford called and waited all day and into the night. Around 9:30 p.m. ICE confirmed that Beatriz was released in Nuevo Laredo. But it was not until 10:30 p.m. that ICE confirmed she was released "without incident." Beatriz Casillas, also known as Beatriz del Carmen Morelos Barajas, was arrested on July 24. When it was determined that she had previously been turned away at the border while trying to cross illegally 20 years ago, ICE determined that this was the second time she was found to be in the country illegally. Because of that, her deportation was expedited. Casillas is a Painesville mother of four who lived in the United States for about 20 years. She was arrested for failing to pull over far enough from a stopped police car stopped on a highway. Her husband, David, cried at a rally Thursday in Painesville as he addressed the crowd of supporters. He had their four children, ages 4 to 12, huddled around him. David, who has legal immigration status, flew to Nuevo Laredo to wait for his wife, despite the fact that the city is considered one of the most dangerous in all of Mexico. It is the city where another Painesville resident, Francisco Narciso, was kidnapped last week when he was deported there by American immigration officials. Narciso was held for five days, beaten and starved, until his girlfriend paid a $3,800 ransom and he was released. Ford said Monday that ICE was cruel for refusing to tell David when and where his wife would be deported. "He just wants to see his wife, that's not asking too much," she said. Deporting Mexicans has been a constant source of tension for Mexican officials worried that migrants become magnets for criminal groups who kidnap, extort and too often recruit them for criminal activities. "We have expressed our concerns to U.S. authorities several times in the past," said one Mexican official who spoke on the condition of anonymity. With additional reporting from Alfredo Corchado of the Dallas Morning News. HARTWELL, Georgia -- A woman has been charged with second-degree murder after her 20-month-old grandson was attacked and killed by her two pit bulls at her home, reports say. Sandra Adams, 70, also is charged with cruelty to children in the second degree and involuntary manslaughter. A news release from the Georgia Bureau of Investigation says Adams was outside with her grandson Tuesday afternoon when she opened the door to go back into her home. When Adams opened the door, the two dogs ran out, knocking her down and attacked her grandson, the GBI release says. Adams tried to pull the dogs off the child and to shield him from the attack. Adams eventually was able to get the dogs off her grandson and she drove first to pick up his mother, then to an urgent care facility in Hartwell. The child had suffered extensive injuries and was pronounced dead at the urgent care. "It was horrific," Hartwell Police Chief Anthony Davis tells WYFF Channel 4. The animals were taken from the home and currently are being kept in a kennel. Officials say the animals will be euthanized, the Atlanta Journal Constitution reports. GBI says Adams has been cited on multiple occasions by Hartwell police for maintaining disorderly animals. Adams was freed from jail after posting a $50,000 bond. To comment on this story, visit Wednesday's crime and courts comments page. Mary and Clyde Antrim are a married couple from Pueblo Colorado in their 80s. Mary and Clyde were upset when their car was stolen. Mary and Clyde were happy when Colorado Springs police found their stolen car. Mary and Clyde were unhappy when the police said they wouldn't give it back to them because it was being held for evidence. Mary and Clyde were mad a month later when they read online that the police were going to auction their car. Mary and Clyde were perplexed when the police department said it told them to come get the car, because the police never told them. Mary and Clyde were upset when they found out they had to pay they police $178 to get their car back even though charging crime victims is against Colorado Springs Police Department policy. Mary and Clyde were relieved when a local TV news station helped them get their car back. Mary and Clyde will be happy when the police department apologizes. From KOAA: "It is the policy of the Colorado Springs Police Department that victims of crimes whose vehicles are towed as part of the criminal investigation will not be charged tow/impound storage fees while at the Impound facility," Sgt. Garza wrote via email. Yet we found the department wanted to charge Mary $178 to get her car back. "I need my car for my doctors' appointments that I have to go to," Mary said. "That's my transportation and I'm 80 years old and I'd like to have my car back so I can do what I have to do." News 5 Investigates contacted Colorado Springs police on July 11th. The next day, Colorado Springs police called Mary and told her they would waive all impound fees and release her vehicle. "I think your calls obviously helped 100-percent," Mary said. We went to the Impound Lot to verify Mary's car would be released without any problems. We did confirm her vehicle was released for free. News / National by Staff Reporter Vice President Emmerson Mnangagwa yesterday urged Rwandan refugees to return home to vote in presidential elections this week.Mnangagwa re-affirmed the United Nations' call to repatriate Rwandese who fled to Zimbabwe, saying the troubled nation was now "safe".Rwanda has made a dramatic economic recovery in the two decades since 800 000 ethnic Tutsis and moderate Hutus were butchered by Hutu extremists."Let me take this opportunity to inform you that, as government we are proceeding with implementation of the Rwandan Cessation Clause," Mnangagwa said, referring to a repatriation strategy for Rwandan refugees who fled their country between 1959 and 1998 to escape inter-ethnic violence and armed conflict."To that end, I urge all Rwandans affected by the Cessation Clause to make plans to return to Rwanda and contribute in building of their nation. We as government together with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), will ensure smooth closure to the cases by December 31, 2017."As a sovereign state, we will continue to use our influence within Sadc and the AU to lobby for peaceful conflict resolution and work towards initiatives which guarantee peace and political stability."However, many of the Rwandans who continue to live in Zimbabwe remain unwilling to repatriate, citing fear of persecution by the government. Refugee rights organisations have also warned that human rights abuses by the current government have caused a continued exodus of Rwandan asylum seekers. News / National by Stephen jakes FOUR Harare residents were on Wednesday left hospitalised after they were assaulted by some Zimbabwe Republic Police (ZRP) officers upon arrest and while in police custody.The four Harare residents namely John Munikwa, Clyde Mauye, Petros Muchabaiwa and Fanuel Mapfumo sustained severe injuries after they were assaulted by some ZRP officers who arrested them on Monday 31 July 2017 for allegedly assaulting a police officer in Harare.The four only accessed medical attention after the intervention of their lawyer Gift Mtisi from Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights (ZLHR), who had been denied access to his clients since Monday when they were arrested.Munikwa, Mauye, Muchabaiwa and Mapfumo were set free on Wednesday evening after they failed to appear in court within 48 hours from the time they were arrested.The ZRP officers have since summoned the four residents to appear in court on Thursday 10 August 2017 and answer to charges of assaulting a police officer.Meanwhile, ZLHR lawyer Clifford Chinamatira has petitioned the High Court seeking the release on bail of eight Kwekwe residents who were denied bail by Kwekwe Magistrate Livard Phelimon on Friday 28 July 2017.The eight residents were arrested together with four others on Wednesday 26 July 2017 for allegedly protesting against rampant corruption within the ZRP ranks and were charged with public violence as defined in Section 36 of the Criminal Law (Codification and Reform Act) and participating in an unlawful gathering as defined in Section 37 of the same Act.The other four residents were granted $100 bail by Magistrate Phelimon on Friday 28 July 2017 while their co-accused were denied bail after ZRP officers claimed that their investigations were not yet complete. News / National by Staff reporter Cattle rustling is on the rise here, with daring thieves driving stolen beasts for sell, tens of kilometres across the border into neighbouring Mozambique.The cattle rustlers are also selling stolen livestock in Buhera, and other communities within and around Manicaland province.The startling revelations was made by headman Chiadzwa during a tombstone unveiling and cleansing ceremony at Chitangazuva reburial site last week."There is rampant cattle theft. Some are even taking the stolen cattle as far as Mozambique," Chiadzwa said.The escalating stock theft comes as unemployment is rampant in the diamond-rich area, with the headman making an impassioned plea to government to prioritise locals in employment and training opportunities."Please, hire my people, they will not steal from you," he said, as he responded to accusations that locals involved in illegal mining were a security risk.He also pleaded for the conversion of an accommodation complex built by Jinan, which has over 20 blocks, into a college."Can this infrastructure be turned into a college and be used to equip locals with skills that would be required in mining operations and support services," the traditional leader said.The Zimbabwe Consolidated Diamond Company (ZCDC) has conceded that there was need to empower locals through employment."We agreed with the local leaders that we employ from the communitywe will make sure to employ 50 percent of our workforce from Manicaland," said ZCDC chief executive, Morris Mpofu.The lack of jobs has been an emotive issue among locals who feel sidelined. Opinion / Columnist Claims by Zimbabwe Congress Trade Union (ZCTU) Secretary General, Japhet Moyo that there is need for Government to call for an early deployment of foreign election observers and monitors should not be tolerated as the nation is peacefully preparing for the 2018 harmonised elections.Moyo alleges that there are some political leaders who were being insincere on the issue of political violence. In as much as Government is doing its best to curb political violence in the country, party leaders should be encouraged to thoroughly educate their members on the dangers of political violence.In trying to control political violence in the country, the Zimbabwe Republic Police (ZRP) normally deploys security officers at political rallies and protests. Usually, political violence erupts at such platforms and sadly, opposition political party leaders have turned a blind eye to the unruliness of their supporters and many a police officers have lost their lives and property worth thousands of dollars destroyed.In 2016, a number of shops in the Harare's CBD were damaged while goods and commodities were looted in most shops during a protest by members of the National Electoral Reform Agenda (NERA), demanding electoral reforms.Moyo also stated that observers should be in the country by now since campaigning has already started. He also noted that the election process should be monitored and observed from voter registration up until the date of announcement of election results.The ZCTU Secretary General should be reminded that there is an electoral body, the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC), which deals with any issue concerning elections. Therefore, Moyo should be advised to direct his concerns to the appropriate institution and channels. Addressing the issue of elections in the media will not resolve anything.Just like in other countries, Zimbabwe has the potential of observing and monitoring its elections. In May this year, Namibian President, Hage Geingob, was reportedly quoted, saying he would not to allow foreign election observers, declaring that his country had the capacity to organise and supervise its own democratic plebiscites."I don't believe in observation of elections by foreigners. You see, in Namibia we don't need any foreigners to observe our election because the only observers must be Namibians. They will be the ones who will live for that situation, not observers coming for two weeks and going to write something," said President Geingob.President Geingob also said that Africans must be allowed to do things their own way without outside interference. He urged the Zimbabwean Government not to compromise its principles even in the face of hardships brought about by the illegal economic sanctions imposed by the West and the United States.Also, reports from the Izvestia newspaper, a Russian Publication, have it that Russia may also ban the presence of international observers in the Presidential election scheduled for next year, 2018.According to Deputy Chairman of the Temporary Commission of the Federation Council Committee on Foreign Affairs, Andrei Klimov, monitoring missions from other countries that do not permit Russian observers in their elections might be banned from attending the Russian Presidential election.Moyo unwittingly mentioned that there was need for political leadership in Zimbabwe to place the interests of the masses above political interests and commit themselves to defending and maintaining democracy, security and stability. Regarding that, Moyo should be reminded that the United Nations hailed Zimbabwe for its progress on monitoring and meeting its human rights obligations. The UN is credited for being the most capable international watchdog on matters of human rights. Error 500 Oopsour servers taking a break while we frantically figure out what went wrong. We apologize for ruining your day. If you keep running into this error, please let us know. We have more newsletters Something went wrong, please try again later. Invalid email Something went wrong, please try again later. Our weekend morning emails feature the very best news and exclusive content from our team of reporters An injured crewman has been airlifted to hospital after falling over on board a ship off Falmouth. The incident happened just before 10am on Thursday. The coastguard received a 999 call from the 160 metre cargo vessel which was moored in the Carrick Roads to say someone had fallen and been injured. Falmouth Coastguard Rescue Team, Falmouth RNLI lifeboats and the UK Coastguard search and rescue helicopter based at Newquay were sent to the scene, alongside the South West Ambulance Service. The casualty was airlifted to hospital by the Coastguard helicopter. No details of his condition have been released at present. Something went wrong, please try again later. Invalid email Something went wrong, please try again later. Sign up for our Daily Newsletter for the latest local news straight to your inbox Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn is coming to Cornwall on August 10 for a rally to save the NHS. He was chosen as party leader two years ago but struggled to win favour with fellow MPs and supporters. But that all changed on the 2017 General Election campaign trail and the result of the election, despite being a defeat at the polls, was seen by many as something of a rebirth for Corbyn. Immediately after the 2017 election, a Survation poll put Labour on 45% with the Conservatives on 39%, the first poll to show Labour ahead with Corbyn as leader. Corbyn then announced that the party was being placed on "permanent campaign mode" expecting another general election to be called soon. Now he's heading to Cornwall where he will lead an NHS rally at Heartlands. The rally was described on ticketing system Eventbrite as part of "a positive message" of new campaigning. "At June's General Election here in the South West we significantly increased our vote," it said. "This summer the party is campaigning across the UK taking our positive message to those seats we have to win to form the next government. "On the afternoon of Thursday 10th August we will be holding a large rally in Cornwall where Jeremy Corbyn will be speaking. "He will be joined by our Shadow Health Secretary Jonathan Ashworth and staff from the NHS. "Please arrive at the event from 1pm. Rally will begin at approx 2pm. Tickets are free but you need to register for them. "There will be a Labour Party stall selling Labour Party merchandise. "Parking is available at the site on a first come, first served basis - please follow the stewards who will guide you where to park. There is allocated Disabled parking and disabled facilites on site. "If you have any questions regarding this event please contact Hayley on hayley_jackson@labour.org.uk " It's not his first visit to Cornwall - last year he became the first Labour Party leader in a generation to visit the county on official business. To register for tickets, visit Eventbrite here. Something went wrong, please try again later. Invalid email Something went wrong, please try again later. Sign up for our Daily Newsletter for the latest local news straight to your inbox Poldark could come to an end after just five series, it's heartthrob star Aidan Turner has hinted. The actor told the fashion industry magazine Women's Wear Daily that the hugely popular BBC Sunday evening staple, which is nearing the end of its third series, might simply run out of skullduggery and bodice ripping story lines. Millions tune in every week to watch the tempestuous lives of Ross Poldark , played by Turner, and his fiery street urchin turned lady wife Demelza, played out against the gorgeous Cornish countryside. But Turner also suggested he missed acting on the stage and was keen to tread the boards again. He told the magazine: ""I think we run out of things to do after series five, I think that would be our last one." He added: "Four was green-lit, five hasn't been yet, and it wouldn't be fair of me to green light it, but it's probably looking like it may happen." The books, written by Winston Graham, run to 12 titles and the BBC adaptations condense around two novels into each series. The current third series is based on book five and six and Turner's comments suggest Debbie Horsefield, who has adapted the novels, may condense books seven to 12 into just two series. It may even mean the final book, published 12 years after its predecessor and a year before Graham's death in 2003, could be left out all-together. Turner also told Women's Wear Daily how he approached the portrayal of flawed hero Ross Poldark, whose story opens when he returns from fighting in the Americas to find his love Elizabeth betrothed to another man and his inheritance squandered. "He's real, he's not just a benevolent saint or a do-gooder, he tries to help as much as he can, he's a good person by nature, but he's also severely flawed," Turner said. "He's a gambler by nature, and there's a lawlessness to him that's not always attractive, it's irresponsible and dangerous. Getting into his psychology is fascinating, and I still can't figure this guy out three years in. He's the gift that keeps on giving." The actor said he was also returning to the stage, a discipline he said he misses. Turner also pledged to return to the stage following the end of the series, citing the theatre work he started out in as something he misses. "It's my background; it's where I come from. I've been away from it a long time, so it's about time." Something went wrong, please try again later. Invalid email Something went wrong, please try again later. Get the best and latest crime stories with our Court Insider newsletter A man who picked up his pregnant partner in a drunken rage has been jailed after being told by a judge he had reached the end of the road in terms of offending. Thomas Johnson, 24, of Kilkhampton, Bude , appeared at Truro Crown Court to be sentenced after previously pleading guilty to charges of criminal damage, two counts of assault by beating and using threatening words of behaviour. Two of the offences also placed him in breach of a suspended sentence handed to him previously at Exeter Crown Court for dangerous driving and driving with excess alcohol. Hollie Gilbery, prosecuting, told the court how on January 21 of this year Johnson had become involved in a verbal disagreement with Lee Derosa at The London Inn public house in Kilkhampton after the pair had a friendly chat earlier in the evening. (Image: Sally Adams) Comments were made and Johnson was asked to leave the pub. Mr Derosa then swung a punch at Johnson and missed before Johnson floored him with a punch and continued to strike him while on the ground a number of times. Johnson then kicked open the door to the pub causing about 100 of damage and Derosa was left with swelling and bruising to his eye and nose, forcing him to take a week off work to recover. Ms Gilbery said that on May 27 Johnson arrived outside his then-partner Jade Kirkum's parents house in Kilkhampton just after 4am. He shouted to her get your ass outside out the door or Ill knock you out and approached and kicked the front gate of the property. Pregnant Miss Kirkum came out and Johnson lifted her up, accusing her of seeing somebody else. Miss Kirkums father Scott went outside and attempted to intervene when Johnson subjected him to a torrent of abuse saying, you know Ill have you, your balls arent big enough and youre 12 stone of nothing, youre a nobody. The events of May 27 placed Johnson in breach of the suspended sentence he received in March for having driven through crowded streets in the centre of Bude before almost causing a serious accident by driving straight over a roundabout on Christmas Eve of last year. His driving was so dangerous that police twice abandoned pursuits in built-up areas because of the risk to the public. They used a stinger to deflate the tyres of his car but he carried on at speeds of 110mph until the tyres shredded and he was boxed in and stopped by police cars. In defence it was heard that Johnson had been in a destructive relationship with Miss Kirkum but the pair have now gone their separate ways. Johnson was said to be depressed, spending most days in his bedroom alone, and not a hardened criminal but someone in a destructive cycle that needed to be broken by moving out of the area to work with his uncle in Lincolnshire. Despite pleas for leniency Judge Simon Carr said Johnson reached the end of the line. He said: On January 21 of this year you clearly had too much to drink and got involved in a verbal disagreement at a local pub. I accept Mr Derosa attempted to hit you first but you hit him once and then continued to strike him when he was on the ground and posed no threat to you at all. In March you came before a judge at Exeter Crown Court for a serious case of dangerous driving and driving with excess alcohol. I have no doubt the judge gave you the firmest of warnings when sentencing you but the way you dealt with that warning was to two months later go to your partners parents house and create such a disturbance that she went out to try to talk to you. You then attacked her and she would undoubtedly have been terrified. Johnson was jailed for 11 months, of which he must serve half. A five-year restraining order was also put in place preventing him from contacting members of the Kirkum family. CORNWALL, Ontario In an email to Councillors, administration and the media, Councillor Mark MacDonald objected to Cornwall Fire Service getting involved in overdose prevention. In a media release on Aug. 2 the City of Cornwall announced that its Fire Services had been working with the Eastern Ontario Health unit (EOHU) in order to be able to administer Naloxone in cases of Opiod overdose. Representatives of the Fire Services said that as first responders, they want to be prepared before overdoses become an issue. The Cornwall Fire Service will provide this crucial Opioid overdose treatment before it becomes a major issue in Eastern Ontario, said Firefighter Eric Richer, CFS Medical Response Team Lead. All of our firefighters have received the proper training and providing this service will ensure that citizens get the care they need in a timely manner, supplementing the services that are already provided by Cornwall SDG Paramedic Services, added Fire Chief Pierre Voisine. Councillor Mark MacDonald said that this was municipal time and money that could have been better spent. The Fire Master Plan (FMP) deals directly with our needs and this not one of them, Councillor MacDonald said in an email. This is one of a number of issues that should be addressed by the new FMP Committee. The FMP points out very clearly that our citizens would be safer and better served if our fire service was meeting our basic needs under the FMP, rather than wasting time doing things that are not mandated. And since when does our fire service need a Medical Response Team Leader. This is going way beyond our legislative requirements. The Councillor went on to say that Fire Services was exceeding its legislative needs, while failing to adequately meet basic needs. At the present time, our fire service falls short, when it comes to meeting our very basic need regarding enough fire fighters responding to Moderate or High Risk calls, he wrote. This fact alone should send up a huge red flag regarding putting our citizens and the Corporation at risk. We should be focusing on meeting our basic needs when it comes to safety of lives and property. CORNWALL, Ontario Cornwalls Kinsmen are the latest to take up the One Bag Challenge for the Agape Centre. The Agape Centre is challenging the public to donate one bag to help them help the community throughout the summer. Summer is the most challenging time for the Agape Centre as they receive the least amount of donations, but still have to meet the same demand for their services. The idea is to donate one bag of groceries to the Agape Centre between now and the end of August. Participants are encouraged to challenge five of their friends to also take up the One Bag Challenge. The Cornwall Kinsmen arrived with not just one bag, but an entire shopping cart of donations to the Agape Centre. The Cornwall Kinsmen then challenged the other services clubs in town to take up the challenge themselves. United States Court of Appeals, Third Circuit. UNITED STATES OF AMERICA v. RACQUEL SANCHEZ, Appellant No. 15-3834 Decided: August 01, 2017 Before: McKEE, RENDELL, and FUENTES, Circuit Judges. OPINION* Defendant Racquel Sanchez appeals her conviction for conspiracy to distribute drugs in violation of 21 U.S.C. 846. Sanchez asserts that the evidence was insufficient to support a conviction for conspiracy to distribute methamphetamine because her one-time sale of a pound of methamphetamine only established a buyer-seller relationship, and not a conspiracy. For the reasons that follow, we will affirm the District Court's judgment of conviction. I. Sanchez met David Wallace in Tucson, Arizona. They became friends and met frequently thereafter until Wallace moved to Cleveland, Ohio. Wallace later visited Tucson to find drugs to sell to his buyer, Neil Thomas. On his trip to Tucson, Wallace met with Sanchez and told her that he was looking for methamphetamine. She had never sold methamphetamine before, but she told Wallace that she would try to find some for him. After finding the drugs for Wallace, she and Wallace decided that Sanchez would mail the drugs to Wallace's cousin's address in Cleveland, Ohio. Sanchez then flew to Ohio to retrieve the package of drugs and sell them to Wallace. When she arrived in Ohio, Wallace took the drugs, but told her that he did not have enough money to pay her for them. He offered to bring Sanchez to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where he would obtain the money to pay her after selling the drugs to Thomas. Sanchez agreed and missed her pre-paid flight back home. After Wallace processed the drugs for resale, Sanchez, Wallace, and Wallace's cousin travelled to Pittsburgh where they met Thomas. However, he did not have enough money to pay Sanchez for the drugs either. Accordingly, Sanchez, Wallace, and Wallace's cousin waited in Pittsburgh until Thomas sold some of the drugs. During their time together, Sanchez inquired about the packaging of the drugs and their sale price and monitored the sale of the drugs. Ultimately, Thomas could not gather enough money to pay Sanchez so Wallace partially paid Sanchez and returned approximately half of the remaining methamphetamine to her. Sanchez then returned to Arizona and did not contact Wallace again. After a three-day trial, Sanchez was convicted of conspiracy to distribute methamphetamine based on her sale of the pound of methamphetamine to Wallace. II. In a sufficiency of the evidence challenge, we review the record in the light most favorable to the prosecution to determine whether any rational trier of fact could have found proof of guilt [ ] beyond a reasonable doubt. Under this particularly deferential standard, we must be ever vigilant not to usurp the role of the jury by weighing credibility and assigning weight to the evidence, or by substituting [our] judgment for that of the jury. We must sustain the jury's verdict if there is substantial evidence, viewed in the light most favorable to the government, to uphold the jury's decision. III. To prove a conspiracy to distribute drugs in violation of 21 U.S.C. 846, the government must show: (1) a shared unity of purpose [between the alleged conspirators]; (2) an intent to achieve a common goal; and (3) an agreement to work together toward that goal. The conspiracy must be shown beyond a reasonable doubt, via direct or circumstantial evidence. The government need not show that each defendant knew all of the conspiracy's details, goals, or other participants. Further, although the prosecution must prove the defendant's knowledge of the conspiracy's specific objective, that knowledge need not be proven by direct evidence. In fact, [i]t is not unusual that the government will not have direct evidence. Knowledge is often proven by circumstances. A buyer-seller relationship, without any prior or contemporaneous understanding beyond the sales agreement itself, is insufficient to establish that the buyer was a member of the seller's conspiracy. Factors that demonstrate a defendant's involvement in a conspiracy, rather than a mere buyer-seller relationship, include: (1) the length of affiliation between the defendant and the conspiracy; (2) whether there is an established method of payment; (3) the extent to which transactions are standardized; (4) whether there is a demonstrated level of mutual trust; (5) whether transactions involved large amounts of drugs; and (6) whether the defendant purchased his drugs on credit.11 These factors suggest[ ] that a defendant has full knowledge of, if not a stake in, a conspiracy. IV. Based upon all of the evidence presented at trial, we conclude that Sanchez's single sale of methamphetamine to Wallace was sufficient to establish a conspiracy beyond a reasonable doubt. Her seven-day involvement in this transaction clearly went beyond involvement in a buyer-seller relationship and reflected an agreement and unity of purpose that is the hallmark of a conspiracy. Sanchez did not simply sell methamphetamine to Wallace. Nor was she merely aware of Wallace's transactions with Thomas. Instead, the evidence showed that she and Wallace agreed (i.e., conspired) to sell the drugs to Thomas. Moreover, Sanchez did not insist that Wallace pay for the drugs before she gave them to him. Rather, she consigned the drugs to him to allow him to resell the drugs to get the funds to pay her. This reflects a level of trust, a common purpose, and a shared stake in the success of the overall venture that is much more indicative of an illicit agreement between Sanchez and Wallace than it is of a mere buyer-seller relationship. In addition, Sanchez did not merely ship the drugs to Wallace. Instead, she shipped the methamphetamine to Cleveland, Ohio. She then went to Cleveland and waited with Wallace for the package with the drugs to arrive. They retrieved the drugs together after watching Wallace's cousin's house to ensure the package was not intercepted by law enforcement. This is additional proof of a shared interest in the success of the enterprise and reflects Sanchez's stake in the success of Wallace's subsequent sale. The fact that Wallace would attempt to resell only to pay Sanchez does not undermine the existence of a conspiracy. To the contrary, it is additional proof of a conspiracy because it shows that Sanchez is vested in Wallace's resale of the drugs. In addition, Sanchez watched as Wallace and his cousin processed the drugs for resale a resale that she would profit from. All of this evidence, when viewed together in the light most favorable to the government, establishes that there was more than sufficient proof of a conspiracy to support the jury's verdict. V. For the reasons set forth above, we will affirm the conviction. FOOTNOTES . United States v. Caraballo-Rodriguez, 726 F.3d 418, 430 (3d Cir. 2013) (alteration in original) (citation and internal quotation marks omitted). . Id. (citation and internal quotation marks omitted). . Id. (citation and internal quotation marks omitted). . Id. at 425 (citing United States v. Boria, 592 F.3d 476, 481 (3d Cir. 2010)); see also United States v. Bailey, 840 F.3d 99, 108 (3d Cir. 2016). . Caraballo-Rodriguez, 726 F.3d at 425. . Bailey, 840 F.3d at 108 (internal quotations omitted). . Caraballo-Rodriguez, 726 F.3d at 431. . Id. (alteration in original) (citation and internal quotation marks omitted). . United States v. Perez, 280 F.3d 318, 343 (3d Cir. 2002) (internal quotation marks omitted). . Bailey, 840 F.3d at 108 (internal quotation marks omitted) (citing United States v. Gibbs, 190 F.3d 188, 199 (3d Cir. 1999). . Id. at 10809 (citation and internal quotation marks omitted). McKEE, Circuit Judge. United States Court of Appeals, Eighth Circuit. Victor Gresham; Conquest Communications Group, LLC, Plaintiffs - Appellants, v. Lori Swanson, in her official capacity as Attorney General of the State of Minnesota, Defendant - Appellee. No. 16-3219 Decided: August 02, 2017 Before SMITH, Chief Judge, COLLOTON and KELLY, Circuit Judges. Victor Gresham is a political consultant and a managing member of a company called Conquest Communications Group, LLC. Gresham and his company use automated telephonic communications, known as robocalls, to engage in political speech on behalf of clients. He believes that Minn. Stat. 325E.27 unconstitutionally restricts him from conducting these calls in Minnesota. In Gresham's view, the statute violates the First Amendment by favoring robocalls from certain callers based on the content of their speech. He sought a preliminarily injunction against enforcement of the statute, and the district court denied his motion. Gresham and the company appeal; we will refer to them together as Gresham. Because Gresham is unlikely to succeed on his First Amendment claim, we affirm. Minn. Stat. 325E.27(a) provides that a caller may not make a robocall unless (1) the subscriber has knowingly or voluntarily requested, consented to, permitted, or authorized receipt of the message; or (2) the message is immediately preceded by a live operator who obtains the subscriber's consent before the message is delivered. Subsection (b) then provides that subsection (a) does not apply to: (1) messages from school districts to students, parents, or employees, (2) messages to subscribers with whom the caller has a current business or personal relationship, or (3) messages advising employees of work schedules. 325E.27(b). Subsection (b) also exempts from the requirements of subsection (a) messages from a nonprofit tax-exempt charitable organization sent solely for the purpose of soliciting voluntary donations of clothing to benefit disabled United States military veterans and containing no request for monetary donations or other solicitations of any kind. Id. Gresham complains that subsection (b) favors the speech specified therein over his speech based on its content and his identity. The district court, relying on this court's decision in Van Bergen v. Minnesota, 59 F.3d 1541 (8th Cir. 1995), concluded that the first three exceptions in subsection (b) are not content-based restrictions, but are valid time, place, and manner restrictions. The court rejected Gresham's argument that Van Bergen had been abrogated by subsequent Supreme Court decisions. The court also determined that the content-based exception for tax-exempt charitable organizations, which was added to the statute in 2009, was severable from the rest of the statute. See Minn. Stat. 645.20. The court therefore concluded that Gresham was unlikely to succeed on his claim and denied his motion for a preliminary injunction. A district court considering injunctive relief evaluates the movant's likelihood of success on the merits, the threat of irreparable harm to the movant, the balance of the equities between the parties, and whether an injunction is in the public interest. Dataphase Sys., Inc. v. C L Sys., Inc., 640 F.2d 109, 114 (8th Cir. 1981) (en banc). We review the denial of a preliminary injunction for abuse of discretion. Powell v. Noble, 798 F.3d 690, 697 (8th Cir. 2015). To justify an injunction, Gresham must establish that he is likely to succeed on his claim. On appeal, Gresham renews his contention that 325E.27 restricts speech based upon the identity of the speaker and the content of the speaker's speech. In Van Bergen, this court held that the exceptions in subsection (b)(1) through (3) were valid time, place, and manner restrictions, and that the statute did not violate the First Amendment. 59 F.3d at 1556. The legislature later added a content-based exception for messages from charitable organizations soliciting donations of clothing for disabled veterans, but we agree with the district court that this new exception is severable from the rest of 325E.27 under the severability analysis dictated by Minn. Stat. 645.20. The balance of the statute pre-existed the amendment, and we presume that the Minnesota legislature would have retained the pre-existing statute without the later provision. The statute remains complete and capable of execution without the disabled-veterans exception. Therefore, the new exception's constitutionality does not affect whether Gresham is entitled to an injunction. With the amendment severed, we are left with the same statute that this court considered in Van Bergen. That decision controls this panel unless an intervening Supreme Court decision has superseded it. See United States v. Anderson, 771 F.3d 1064, 1066-67 (8th Cir. 2014). Gresham argues that Citizens United v. FEC, 558 U.S. 310 (2010), and Reed v. Town of Gilbert, 135 S. Ct. 2218 (2015), abrogate Van Bergen. In a submission pursuant to Rule 28(j), Gresham suggests that Matal v. Tam, 137 S. Ct. 1744 (2017), where the Court held invalid the disparagement clause of the Lanham Act, also helps to illustrate why Van Bergen is no longer good law. Van Bergen reasoned that the enumerated exceptions in subdivision (b) exempt certain groups based on their relationship with the caller and not based on the content of their speech. 59 F.3d at 1550. The exceptions, reasoned the court, all rest on a single premise: that the caller has a relationship with the subscriber implying the subscriber's consent to receive the caller's communications. Id. Although the third exception, which exempts calls from employers advising employees of their work schedules, is content based on its face, Van Bergen concluded that it does not actually limit the content of employers' messages to employees: the second exception already establishes a broad exception for subscribers with whom the caller had a current business relationship, so employers may contact employees about matters other than scheduling. Id. at 1550 n.5. Because the exceptions merely identify groups of subscribers who already have consented to communications from the caller, the court concluded that 325E.27 was a valid, content-neutral time, place, and manner restriction on speech. Id. at 1551, 1556. Gresham argues that Citizens United and Reed undermine Van Bergen by making clear that the government cannot regulate speech based on the identity of the speaker. In Citizens United, the Supreme Court reiterated the well-established principles that the First Amendment stands against attempts to disfavor certain subjects or viewpoints and that restrictions distinguishing among different speakers, allowing speech by some but not others are prohibited. 558 U.S. at 340. In Reed, the Court explained that speaker-based distinctions are not automatically content neutral, because laws favoring some speakers over others demand strict scrutiny when the legislature's speaker preference reflects a content preference. 135 S. Ct. at 2230 (quoting Turner Broad. Sys., Inc. v. FCC, 512 U.S. 622, 658 (1994)). Gresham complains that 325E.27 impermissibly regulates speech based on content by allowing only certain callers to make robocalls without first using a live operator to obtain the subscriber's consent. He contends that the relationship-based rationale relied on in Van Bergen does not survive Reed's instruction that statutes drawing speaker-based distinctions are not automatically content neutral. He adds that Justice Kennedy's concurrence in Tam highlighted the dangers of viewpoint discrimination where legislation disfavors certain speech because of the government's disapproval of the speaker's choice of message. 137 S. Ct. at 1767 (Kennedy, J., concurring). Gresham argues that Minnesota impermissibly disfavors his robocalls because they are perceived as annoying. We do not believe that Citizens United, Reed, and Tam supersede Van Bergen. Van Bergen upheld 325E.27 because the statute does not prefer certain speech based on content, and does not disfavor certain ideas over others. The statute as a whole disfavors robocalls to strangers, but it allows them with consent. If a subscriber authorizes the automated calls, either expressly or impliedly, then the content of the message is irrelevant. The exceptions depend on the relationship between the caller and the subscriber, not on what the caller proposes to say. Accord Patriotic Veterans, Inc. v. Zoeller, 845 F.3d 303, 305 (7th Cir. 2017) (analyzing a materially similar Indiana law). Unlike the content-based restrictions in Reed, the permissions granted in the Minnesota statute do not reflect a content preference; they are based on an assumption of implied consent. The State does justify the statute in part based on an interest in protecting residential privacy against disruptive calls, Van Bergen, 59 F.3d at 1554, but this interest is not grounded in a preference for certain content. Where a subscriber has impliedly consented to receipt of pre-recorded messages, the caller may place a robocall about political campaigns, work schedules, or any other topic. Where there is no such implied consent, automated calls are banned entirely, regardless of their content. Gresham does not contend that the statute forbids him to communicate with any subscriber who has impliedly consented to receipt of his robocalls. The district court correctly concluded that Van Bergen is dispositive. The judgment of the district court is affirmed. FOOTNOTES . The Honorable David S. Doty, United States District Judge for the District of Minnesota. COLLOTON, Circuit Judge. Depending on where you sit and how long you stare, Venezuela can present as some, none, or all of many past sovereign debt crises. The tour that starts below with broad-brush analogies is not exhaustive, but still plenty depressing. Market and civil society observers have taken Venezuelan debt restructuring as a certainty for more than two years, putting it in contention for the worlds slowest train wreck and quite possibly the messiest. Designs abound , but even after last weekends vote followed by new U.S. sanctions , too many variables remain too far up in the air to start laying the yellow brick pavers quite yet. Romania Contrary to the stereotype of leftist repudiationism and its own anti-Yankee rhetoric, the Maduro government has scrupulously paid Wall Street bond lords while Venezuelan babies starve. Forward oil sales to China and joint ventures with Russia have brought periodic cash infusions, but the state is running out of stuff to sell, and oil prices are not recovering quickly enough. Which brings to mind one Nicolae Ceausescu. In the 1980s, the Romanian leader baffled observers with his insistence on repaying the countrys foreign creditors ahead of schedule. While people went hungry, Ceausescu cut essential imports, save for barter-style deals with other governments. Romania swapped tractors for oil with Iran, Iraq, and Libya on increasingly unfavorable terms. Shifting geopolitical winds made these arrangements unstable and costly: Romania kept getting the short end of the bargain, and never got all it was owed. For fear of losing policy autonomy, Ceausescu walked away from the IMF and the World Bank, and shunned debt restructuring throughout the decade famous for everyone doing it. Home-grown austerity policies undermined the governments promise of progress for the working people, and fueled unrest that culminated in Ceausescus execution, along with his wife. As the grim ending nears, rulers go to grossly destructive lengths to buy another day, week, or month. Puerto Rico Venezuelas debt stock is insanely complex. The simple partforeign-currency, foreign-law bondsis approximately $70 billion, roughly split between the sovereign itself and the state oil company PDVSA. PDVSA also reportedly owes more than $10 billion in loans and promissory notes to banks and suppliers. On the asset side, PDVSA holds oil concessions and stakes in a messy mille-feuille of subsidiaries and joint ventures, including U.S.-based CITGO. The subsidiaries have borrowed up a storm in their own name, and are tied up in a tangle of cross-guarantees (for a flavor, see pp. 70-83 of this). PDVSAs Corporate Structure (Source: PDVSA Offering Circular dated September 16, 2016) PDVSA pledged just over half of CITGO equity to bondholders in a $3 billion debt swap last year, and just under half to the Russian state-owned oil company Rosneft, as collateral for a $1.5 billion loan. If the subsidiaries creditors do not get hold of the U.S. assets first, these could also get caught up in sanctions against Russia, Venezuela, or both. Venezuelas and its state entities obligations to Russia and China top $30 billion by some estimates, but no one quite knows for sure; here too, contract and corporate complexity thoroughly obscure the economics. Tens of billions of dollars in domestic claims and investor-state arbitration awards round out the picture. The question of legal and structural priority among the various claimants looms large in trading strategies and policy designs, but remains largely unresolved. And I have not even touched on differences in contract language, which get their own rubric in the next post. Puerto Rico sheds some light on the consequences of structural complexity for public debt restructuring. The island commonwealth borrowed through more than a dozen entities and a variety of secured, unsecured, and quasi-secured debt contracts. Each creditor group seems to have gotten its own special package of legal and structural safeguards, which must have convinced them that their bonds alone would escape the inevitable carnage. (Source: The Financial Times) Variegated debt stocks are pretty common for corporate borrowers, which can have it all sorted out in bankruptcy; they are unusual for sovereigns, which cannot. Puerto Rico fits somewhere in between: it cannot file for bankruptcy, but it can seek federal legislation to cut through the complexity, at least in theory. In fact, the federal law that frames Puerto Ricos ongoing restructuring does little to simplify its debt structure, partly because it reflects intense lobbying by different creditor groups. A year into default and despite fairly comprehensive judicial oversight, the claim hierarchy is still not fully clear. The lesson of Puerto Rico so far seems to be that structural complexity fuels inter-creditor fights, detracts from debtor-creditor negotiations, and prolongs the workout and maybe also that government promises of priority through complexity should be taken with a big lump of pink Himalayan salt. Because Russia, China, or Uncle Sam will most likely eat your lunch. Russia and Turkmenbashi The subject of PDVSAs corporate separateness from the sovereign and the risk of PDVSAs bondholders being left with an empty shell of a debtor has dominated analysis for some time, and sensibly so. I have nothing profound to add, just this general sentiment. Sovereign borrowing through corporate entities always makes me think of post-Soviet Russia, even when there are other, closer analogies, because it seems so straightforward. The Soviet Union had borrowed abroad through Vneshekonombank (VEB). In 1997, Russia got foreign banks to exchange their loans to VEB for tradable notes, also issued by VEB, which promptly defaulted in 1999. The government then swapped $32 billion in VEB notes for $21 billion in pure sovereign bonds, cutting the net present value of the debt by more than half, but adding contract protections elevating the new bonds on par with other Russian-era bonds, which reflected a stronger political commitment to pay. Bondholders fear of being left with a bag of hot air played an important part in securing near-total participation. (The story is concisely told in Chapter 4 of this book.) Although VEB is alive and kicking today, the episode reinforced my hunch that there were two sure ways for state-owned entity bonds to get ahead of pure sovereign bonds in a general crisis: assets in hand and political favor. The intermittently popular bet that PDVSAs foreign bondholders come out ahead of the sovereigns is either a bet on purely political preference, or a view that PDVSA bondholders would have first dibs on its assets. The political preference theory is for experts on Venezuelan politics. As for the assets, color me skeptical. I pointed out earlier (as did PDVSA) that subsidiaries debts come ahead of the parent companys. Oil and gas belong to the state, not to PDVSA. Assuming there is anything left after subsidiaries creditors get paid, what would prevent PDVSA from transferring contracts and ownership stakes to the state (as it did with Pequiven in 2005), an offshore special purpose vehicle or a foreign partner (as seems to be happening a lot lately)? If all else fails, the government can simply ramp up the payments PDVSA remits to various public causes. If PDVSA or some part of it tries to file for bankruptcy and have the proceedings recognized in the United States, flagrant asset stripping might smell like a fraudulent transfer in which case marginally more modest and indirect asset stripping tracking the letter of PDVSAs bond contracts might do better. It all ends in the same bag of hot air. Rather than speculate about what might happen if and when PDVSA tries to restructure, I would worry that its foreign subsidiaries could be stripped of all attachable value in the desperate but still-ordinary course of business long before a judge gets a go at its debt contracts. Note this May 2017 Delaware opinion, rejecting a plea by Canadas Crystallex to stop PDVSA from "monetizing" CITGO and shipping the money out of the United States. Crystallex, which holds a confirmed $1.2 billion arbitration award against Venezuela, argued that the government, via PDVSA, made CITGO borrow $2.8 billion and upstream the money as dividends. The court concluded that it had no subject matter jurisdiction over the transfers because they presumptively took place in Venezuela, and were directed by a corporate entity distinct from the government. Citing earlier enforcement cases against Cuba and Argentina, the court held that [m]ere ownership and control of Delaware subsidiaries, and overlapping management would not create enough of a link between PDVSA, the state, and commercial activity in the United States. At the other extreme is this case involving Argentinas Bridas, cheated out of its interest in an oil and gas joint venture with a Turkmen state company whose identity was designated and re-designated at will by the President of Turkmenistan , and which was manipulated legally and economically to repudiate the contract with Bridas and then render it impossible for Bridas to collect damages. Yes, but Turkmenistan is in a wacky dictatorial league by itself. which leads me back to the simple old VEB episode. Sovereign bonds still seem like a safer bet unless you have oil in hand or make a compelling political argument for escaping haircuts (in which case even local law would not do you in). Next Up/Spoiler Alert: Comparisons to Ukraine, Iraq, Liberia, and Argentina are not comforting either. United States Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit. UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, Plaintiff - Appellee, v. TIMOTHY JOSEPH CARLSON, Defendant - Appellant. No. 14-30214 Decided: August 01, 2017 Before: MURPHY,**McKEOWN, and NGUYEN, Circuit Judges. MEMORANDUM* Defendant-Appellant, Timothy Carlson, pleaded guilty to one count of Receipt of Child Pornography and one count of Possession of Child Pornography. See 18 U.S.C. 2252A(a)(2), 2252A(a)(5)(B). Because of double jeopardy concerns, the district court vacated Carlson's conviction for the lesser-included offense of possession. The district court concluded Carlson's prior Washington state convictions for second degree child molestation triggered a statutory sentencing enhancement because the offenses relat[ed] to aggravated sexual abuse, sexual abuse, or abusive sexual conduct involving a minor. Id. 2252A(b)(1). 1. Section 2252A(b)(1) mandates a mandatory minimum sentence if a defendant convicted of Receipt of Child Pornography has a prior conviction under the laws of any State relating to aggravated sexual abuse, sexual abuse, or abusive sexual conduct involving a minor or ward. Id. Carlson argues that, under the categorical approach, his prior Washington convictions are not predicate offenses for purposes of the 2252A(b)(1) enhancement because the elements of Washington's child molestation statute are not identical to the elements of Sexual Abuse of a Minor, 18 U.S.C. 2243(a), 2244(a). See Descamps v. United States, 133 S. Ct. 2276 (2013) (applying the categorical approach in the context of the Armed Career Criminal Act). Carlson's position is contrary to established Ninth Circuit precedent. In United States v. Sullivan, this court considered and rejected the argument Carlson advances here. 797 F.3d 623, 638 (9th Cir. 2015) (rejecting defendant's argument that a prior conviction triggers a sentencing enhancement under 2252(b)(2) only if the statutory definition of the prior offense is equivalent to a federal generic definition). Under 2252A(b)(1), federal courts are not required to find that the state conviction is categorically the same as any particular federal offense, but only that the state conviction is one categorically relating to such federal offenses. Id. at 637-38. Accordingly, to qualify as a predicate offense under 2252A(b)(1), Carlson's child molestation conviction must only relate to (1) aggravated sexual abuse, (2) sexual abuse, or (3) abusive sexual conduct involving a minor. Id. at 636 (defining the federal generic offense as the class of offenses relating to any of three types of abusive sexual conduct). Under the applicable standard, Carlson is not entitled to relief. In United States v. Baron-Medina, this court held that [t]he use of young children as objects of sexual gratification is per se abuse. 187 F.3d 1144, 1147 (9th Cir. 1999); see also United States v. Lopez-Solis, 447 F.3d 1201, 1209 (9th Cir. 2006) (interpreting Baron-Medina as establishing that sexual contact with a minor under 14 necessarily involve[s] psychological abuse because a child that young cannot understand the nature of an adult's sexual advances). The holding in Baron-Medina was reexamined and confirmed in United States v. Medina-Villa, 567 F.3d 507, 515 (9th Cir. 2009). Carlson was twice convicted of violating a Washington law that criminalized sexual contact with children aged twelve and thirteen for purposes of sexual gratification. Wash. Rev. Code 9A.44.086(1) (1992). Under this court's precedent, Carlson's Washington convictions categorically involved conduct that was necessarily abusive. Medina-Villa, 567 F.3d at 515; Lopez-Solis, 447 F.3d at 1209; Baron-Medina, 187 F.3d at 1147. Accordingly, the Washington convictions also necessarily relate to sexual abuse of a minor. 2. Because Possession of Child Pornography is a lesser-included offense of Receipt of Child Pornography, the district court recognized it was required to vacate one of the convictions. See United States v. Davenport, 519 F.3d 940, 947 (9th Cir. 2008). The choice of which count to vacate is fundamentally a sentencing decision and a district court should use the sentencing factors set out in 18 U.S.C. 3553(a) as guidance. United States v. Maier, 646 F.3d 1148, 1154 (9th Cir. 2011). The district court should exercise its discretion to vacate the lesser-included offense, absent unusual circumstances and compelling reasons to vacate the greater offense. Id. (quotation omitted). Here, the district court expressly recognized that its decision implicated Carlson's sentence because the possession conviction carried a ten-year mandatory minimum sentence and the receipt conviction carried a fifteen-year mandatory minimum. The district court examined the 3553(a) factors, including Carlson's criminal history, his age and health, and the need to protect the public. As to the need to afford adequate deterrence, the district court expressed its serious reservations about whether lengthy sentences actually deter other would be possessors of child pornography, calling such sentences draconian but recognizing they were statutorily mandated. Based on its analysis, the district court concluded it was appropriate to vacate the lesser-included charge of possession. When the court imposed sentence, however, it stated that the fifteen-year minimum mandatory sentence was greater than necessary to comply with the purposes of 18 U.S.C. 3553(a). Carlson argues this statement indicates the district court abused its discretion when it dismissed the lesser-included offense because if it, instead, had dismissed the greater offense, it could have sentenced him to a term of imprisonment as low as ten years. When read in context, the district court's comment can be read in only one wayit is an expression of the court's personal belief that all statutory minimum sentences for child pornography crimes are excessive. Accordingly, the statement does not support Carlson's assertion the court abused its discretion when it dismissed the lesser-included offense instead of the greater offense. Affirmed. FOOTNOTES . The district court also ruled Carlson's 1986 Washington conviction for statutory rape was a predicate offense under 18 U.S.C. 2252A(b)(1). Because we conclude Carlson's child molestation convictions trigger the statutory sentencing enhancement, it is unnecessary to address this ruling. . Although United States v. Sullivan, 797 F.3d 623, 636 (9th Cir. 2015) addressed 2252(b)(2), the relevant language is identical. Compare 18 U.S.C. 2252(b)(2), with id. 2252A(b)(1). Channel programs News Former MSP Leaders Urge Clear Metrics And Close Management To Make New Salespeople Successful Michael Novinson Share this Solution providers should get their new salespeople used to making calls quickly and pay them to leave the company if they're unhappy, according to a panel featuring former MSP executives at CompTIA's ChannelCon in Austin, Texas. "Hiring salespeople is the hardest thing in the world," said Crash Lowe, Alpha Dog (leader) of Waterdog Technologies. "Because if someone's really good, why on Earth are they leaving where they're at?" Waterdog typically conducts 10 interviews before hiring a salesperson, one of which will usually take place in a bar so that Lowe can get a better sense of what a prospective employee might be like when they're not trying to impress him. And from the get-go, Lowe warns applicants that being a salesperson for Waterdog isn't a 9 to 5 job and that employees are often expected to put in 12-hour days. [Related: Solution Providers Told: Don't Leave Developers Out Of Business Conversations] "Then you get just a small number of people that apply, and those are the people that are really hungry," said Lowe, who previously worked at an MSP. Within the first 90 to 180 days, Lowe said solution providers should have a pretty clear picture of how the new salesperson if working out. At that point, Lowe recommends offering the new rep money to leave the company to facilitate an easy exit if the employee is no longer than interested in working at Waterdog. "It will cost you less to pay that person to leave in 90 days or 6 months if they're not working out than to have them bleed you dry for a year or two," Lowe said. Waterdog's vetting process has apparently worked well, as no employee has taken the Springfield, Mass.-based distributor up on its offer to leave, according to Lowe. Solution provider CEOs should also outsource oversight of their sales reps to an account manager to free up time for the top executives, according to Len DiCostanzo, senior vice president of community and business development for Autotask. Many channel partners likely have an engineer or someone else already on their staff who would be well-suited to fill this role, DiCostanzo said. "Have someone take that load off your back," said DiCostanzo, who founded and run a technology consultancy business for 17 years. "Go sell some more, and bring some more revenue in." Autotask historically threw its new sales reps into the fire, DiCostanzo said, and would have them on the phone talking with prospective customers on their second day in the job despite knowing very little about the business. Conversely, Waterdog likes to set the expectation that new sales reps will be on the phone, sending emails to customers, or even making site visits to prospective clients within their first week, Lowe said. "There's no expectation from it, but just to get them in the habit of doing it," Lowe said. "It's okay if they don't know all the answers. It's okay if they fail miserably." Metrics such as making 50 calls per day are key for new salespeople, DiCostanzo said, along with a sales quota they are expected to hit every month. "Your sales rep better know what the number is," DiCostanzo said. "And they better know what they have to sell to hit that number." But making a new salesperson successful is about more than just metrics or quotas, according to Nadia Karatsoreos, manager of channel development and enablement for SolarWinds MSP. Instead, she said much of it has to do with the screening during the initial hire process. "You can train them on everything except being hungry," Karatsoreos said. "If they're not hungry, they're just going to do the bare minimum." To assess hunger, Lowe said he likes to open up certain projects to multiple members of Waterdog's staff and see who bites at the opportunity. "The thing that every human wants is to be fulfilled in their work," Lowe said. "If you combine passion with your work, you're going to be successful." Techvera has been getting better quality salespeople since switching from using free job posting websites to a staffing and recruiting agency, according to Chief Technical Officer Leland Turnispeed. The Denton, Texas-based solution provider has shifted its focus during recruiting from technical skills to fit and culture, Turnispeed said, focusing in particular on how well the prospective employee would get along with Techvera's existing workforce. "By finding the people with the right attitudes, we've created a more cohesive process," Turnispeed said. Techvera has also reaped dividends from adding more structure to its training process, Turnispeed said, particularly as it relates to processes, storing documentation, and operating procedures. The company has attempted to create documents that walk new hires through every component of their job, he said. Channel programs News Cognizant Sheds 4,400 Employees As It Pivots Workforce Toward Higher-End Digital Skills Michael Novinson Share this Cognizant slashed headcount by 4,400 workers last quarter through voluntary separation packages and the performance evaluation process as the company seeks to boost operating margins. Yet despite the cuts, the Teaneck, N.J.-based company, No. 7 on the 2017 CRN Solution Provider 500, also made 10,800 "growth hires" in the most recent quarter to infuse its workforce with more higher-end consulting, design and data science capabilities, according to Karen McLoughlin, Cognizant's chief financial officer, on the company's second-quarter earnings call Thursday. Cognizant's attrition rate leapt from 17.1 percent a year ago to 23.6 percent last quarter due to reductions resulting from performance evaluations and the 400 employees who accepted voluntary separation packages, McLoughlin said. [RELATED: Reports: Cognizant Could Lay Off 6,000-10,000 Employees As Part of Digital Services Shift] The company will incur $35 million of severance-related costs from its voluntary separation packages which were initiated and concluded last quarter but expects to achieve an annualized cost savings of $60 million from the program, according to McLoughlin. All told, Cognizant's workforce stood at 256,800 at the end of June, down 1.7 percent from 261,200 three months earlier. "We will continue to hire and invest in critical skills needed to grow our digital business, and we expect attrition to decline in the coming months," McLoughlin said. "I think we've sort of reached a low point, at least for 2017 anyhow." Nonetheless, McLoughlin said Cognizant slowed its pace of hiring in the most recent quarter and is undertaking structural changes and realigning resources to improve its profitability through operational efficiency. The company reached an agreement with activist investor Elliott Management in February to boost its non-GAAP operating margins from 19.5 percent in 2016 to 22 percent by 2019. Reports in March indicated that Cognizant planned to lay off some 6,000 to 10,000 workers or between 2.3 percent and 5 percent of its workforce as the company shifts its focus from traditional to digital IT services. The moves were expected to go well beyond Cognizant's late March elimination of the bottom 1 percent of its workforce for non-performance. Meanwhile, the high-end consultants, designers and data scientists brought in by Cognizant last quarter will be expected to support the company's infrastructure business, McLoughlin said, as well as its fast-growing digital operations business. McLoughlin expects Cognizant's headcount to start picking back up as the company invests for growth in 2018 and beyond. In addition, Cognizant is investing tens of millions of dollars this year to broaden the skills and capabilities of its existing workforce around analytics, artificial intelligence, data science and digital security, according to Cognizant President Rajeev Mehta. The investment will be focused on workers in Cognizant's digital practice to ensure they stay on the cutting edge of technology trends, Mehta said. Cognizant saw sales in the quarter ended June 30 jump to $3.67 billion, up 8.9 percent from $3.37 billion a year ago. That edged out Seeking Alpha's projection of $3.66 billion. Net income skyrocketed to $470 million, or 80 cents per diluted share, up 86.5 percent from $252 million, or 41 cents per diluted share, last year. On a non-GAAP basis, earnings jumped to 93 cents per diluted share, up 6.9 percent from 87 cents per share a year ago. That beat Seeking Alpha's earnings estimate of 91 cents per share. Cognizant's shares climbed $0.25 (0.36%) to $68.77 in trading Thursday morning. The company announced its earnings before the market opened. Cognizant's financial services segment saw 4.1 percent year-over-year sales growth to $1.41 billion due to growth in insurance and among midtier banking accounts. Large banks, however, continue to take a conservative approach to spending and are focused on optimizing costs, the company said. Health-care segment sales grew 9.5 percent to $1.05 billion driven by both life sciences and health-care payer clients. Activity from payer clients increased due to pent-up demand from actors involved in mergers or acquisitions last year. Sales for Cognizant's products and resources segments increased 13.2 percent to $747 million due to high demand from manufacturing and logistics clients, particularly for enterprise digital transformation. And revenue from the communications, media and technology segment jumped 16.8 percent to $467 million due to digital content operations solutions that deliver personalized content to customers. On a geographic basis, Cognizant's North American sales increased 8.7 percent to $2.85 billion, while sales from Continental Europe skyrocketed 22.8 percent to $291 million due to strength in France and the Netherlands. Sales in the United Kingdom, however, fell by 7.4 percent to $288 million. Revenue from the rest of the world increased 21.2 percent to $240 million due to strength in India and Australia. For the coming quarter, Cognizant expects to deliver non-GAAP diluted earnings per share of at least 94 cents per share on sales ranging between $3.73 billion and $3.78 billion. That compares to Thomson Reuters projecting earnings of 95 cents per share on revenue of $3.76 billion. Security News Symantec To Sell Website Security Business To DigiCert For $950M Sarah Kuranda Share this Symantec plans to sell its web security and public key infrastructure (PKI) solutions business to DigiCert, a move that CEO Greg Clark said would allow the company to continue its focus on its Integrated Cyber Defense platform. Symantec said on Wednesday that it plans to sell the business for $950 million in cash and a 30 percent stake in the DigiCert business. DigiCert, which is majority owned by private equity firm Thoma Bravo, offers a broad portfolio of security solutions for web services and Internet of Things devices, including identity and encryption. In an interview with CRN, Clark said the divestiture will allow Symantec to hone its focus on its own platform. The website security and PKI solutions are not part of the Integrated Cyber Defense platform. [Related: Q&A: Symantec CEO On Company Transformation, How It Will Look To Define Future Of Platform Security] Clark said the acquisition will also help customers of the website security business, saying it will give the products the "focus that technology needs." He said that can be delivered by the combination of DigiCert and Symantec. "It allows the company to be there that can invest in the next generation and the next era of PKI We feel very, very good about what we have done for our customers in the DigiCert relationships. That's very pro-customer," Clark said. "I think it's really created a company that can thrive and be a big benefit to the web and PKI ecosystem." On Symantec's first quarter earnings call Wednesday, Clark said the sale will also allow Symantec to achieve higher growth. As a result, the company raised its revenue outlook for the coming quarter. The sale comes after rumors and reports of an upcoming sale of the business unit, dating back to July. It essentially undoes Symantec's $1.28 billion acquisition in 2010 of Verisign. CFO Nick Noviello said the website security business accounted for about $350 million of Symantec's revenue. The company reported $3.6 billion in total revenue in 2016. Noviello said Symantec will largely use the proceeds to pay down debts once the acquisition closes. The acquisition is anticipated to close in the third fiscal quarter of 2018, subject to closing conditions. The sale also comes after turbulent months for Symantec's certificate business. In particular, Google accused Symantec earlier this year of a "series of failures" to "properly validate certificates," which caused "significant risk for Google Chrome users" as the certificates verify if websites can be trusted. In an interview with CRN, Clark said he believes Symantec had a "good collaboration" with Google during the process. Symantec is making big moves around its security portfolio, too. In the past two weeks, the company has announced the planned acquisitions of threat isolation company Fireglass and mobile security company Skycure. Both acquisitions will build on Symantec's strategy to grow its Integrated Cyber Defense Platform strategy as it looks to provide a full, integrated platform of cybersecurity offerings to partners. CEO Clark said on the company's earnings call that the company has "no plans" for further divestitures. He said executives "always have their eyes open" for further M&A opportunities, but said the company doesnt have a "quota" of acquisitions it has to make. Steve Barone, president and CEO of Ferndale, Mich.-based CBI, a top Symantec partner, said the sale was "not a surprise" as the company looks to focus on its Integrated Cyber Defense platform. "The business just didn't seem to be consistent with the messaging from leadership," Barone said. Barone said CBI sold "some" of the website security business, but it was "never a dominant" part of the company's business with Symantec. He said the investments Symantec has made in acquisitions around the Integrated Cyber Defense platform, including the acquisitions of Skycure and Fireglass last month. The seventh Asian Youth Day has officially kicked off Author: Staff | Source: Rome Reports Separation of duties (SoD) is a key concept of internal controls and is the most difficult and sometimes the most costly one to achieve. This objective is achieved by disseminating the tasks and associated privileges for a specific security process among multiple people. SoD is already well-known in financial accounting systems. Companies of all sizes understand not to combine roles such as receiving checks (payment on account) and approving write-offs, depositing cash and reconciling bank statements, approving time cards and have custody of pay checks, and so on. The concept of SoD became more relevant to the IT organization when regulatory mandates such as Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) and the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (GLBA) were enacted. A very high portion of SOX internal control issues, for example, come from or rely on IT. This forced IT organizations to place greater emphasis on SoD across all IT functions, especially security. Now a new regulatory mandate, the EUs General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), set to take effect in May 2018, will require the C-suite to take a hard look at how its corporate organization charts support the new regulation and possibly re-think how required SoD will ensure GDPR compliance and pass audit. What is SoD? SoD, as it relates to security, has two primary objectives. The first is the prevention of conflict of interest (real or apparent), wrongful acts, fraud, abuse and errors. The second is the detection of control failures that include security breaches, information theft and circumvention of security controls. Correct SoD is designed to ensure that individuals don't have conflicting responsibilities or are not responsible for reporting on themselves or their superior. There is an easy test for SoD. First, ask if any one person can alter or destroy your financial data without being detected. Second, ask if any one person can steal or exfiltrate sensitive information. Third, ask if any one person has influence over controls design, implementation and reporting of the effectiveness of the controls. The answers to all these questions should be no. If the answer to any of them is yes, then you need to rethink the organization chart to align with proper SoD. [Related: General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) requirements, deadlines and facts] Moreover, the individual responsible for designing and implementing security must not be the same person as the person responsible for testing security, conducting security audits or monitoring and reporting on security. The reporting relationship of the individual responsible for information security should no longer be to the CIO, as has traditionally been the case. Here are a few possible ways to accomplish proper SoD: Have the individual responsible for information security report to chairman of the audit committee. Use a third party to monitor security, conduct surprise security audits and security testing. They report to the board of directors or the chairman of the audit committee. Have an individual (CISO) responsible for information security report to the board of directors. Have the individual (CISO) responsible for information security report to internal audit as long as internal audit does not report to the executive in charge of finances like the CFO. How the GDPR affects security SoD The GDPR requires businesses to protect the personal data and privacy of EU citizens for transactions that occur within EU member states. The GDPR also regulates the exportation of personal data outside the EU. The regulation also spells out roles within companies that are responsible for carrying out and reporting on the requirements. This means that companies need to review it carefully and apply necessary changes to customer data use and protection policies and ensure compliant SoD. The roles that the GDPR expects to be responsible for ensuring compliance are data controller, data processor and the data protection officer (DPO). The data controller defines how personal data is processed and the purposes for which it is processed. The controller is also responsible for making sure that outside contractors comply. Data processors may be the internal groups that maintain and process personal data records or any outsourcing firm that performs all or part of those activities. The GDPR holds processors liable for breaches or non-compliance. Its possible, then, that both your company and processing partner such as a cloud provider will be liable for penalties. The GDPR requires the controller and the processor to designate a DPO to oversee data security strategy and GDPR compliance. Companies required to have a DPO process or store large amounts of EU citizen data, process or store special personal data, regularly monitor data subjects, or are a public authority. GDPR clearly stipulates internal record keeping requirements, and that DPO appointments will be mandatory for those controllers and processors whose core activities comprise processing operations that require regular monitoring of data subjects on a large scale, of special categories of data, or data relating to criminal convictions and offenses. The DPO, then, is a pivotal role for ensuring compliance. The GDPR states that the DPO: Must be appointed on the basis of professional qualities and, in particular, expert knowledge on data protection law and practices May be a staff member or an external service provider Must be provided with appropriate resources to carry out their tasks and maintain their expert knowledge Must report directly to the highest level of management Must not carry out any other tasks that could results in a conflict of interest The importance of SoD for security The issue of SoD in security continues to be significant. It is imperative that there be separation between operations, development and testing of security and all controls to reduce the risk of unauthorized activity or access to operational systems or data. Responsibilities must be assigned to individuals in such a way as to mandate checks and balances within the system and minimize the opportunity for unauthorized access and fraud. [Related: How to write a CISO job description ] Remember, control techniques surrounding SoD are subject to review by external auditors. Auditors have in the past listed this concern as a material deficiency on the audit report when they determine the risks are great enough. It is just a matter of time before this is done as it relates to IT security. For this reason as well as objectivity, why not have a discussion about separation of duties as it relates to IT security with your external auditors? It can save you a lot of aggravation, cost and political infighting by getting what they view as necessary in your particular case. Security teams now operate in an environment where they face frequent and more potent threats as bad actors deploy increasingly innovative attacks - everything from more clever phishing schemes to turbocharged versions of ransomware. They are also hamstrung by the limitations of the state of the art in the field. Thanks to advances in machine learning, businesses should soon be better equipped to detect abnormal network behavior and combat threats that now hide beneath the radar. Computer scientists are building systems that function in intelligent and cognitive ways and developing learning technologies that teach machines to identify threats. Machine systems are not only getting more powerful, but they are also getting cheaper to develop. At the same time, actionable intelligence requires big data and theres no shortage of that. The amount of digitally available information is growing exponentially and will reach 44 zettabytes by the end of the decade, up from 4.4 in 2014. By 2018, analysts expect advanced analytics and machine learning will be finding their way into mainstream defensive schemes. Enterprises, they anticipate, will use packaged prescriptive analytics offerings to automatically deal with detected threats. If that timetable sticks and more tools based on data-driven science reach the market on schedule, CISOs will rejoice. Defenses that predict threats to IT assets would be a boon for overworked security managers who struggle daily with the limitations of current security systems. The hope is that enterprises will benefit from whats been described by the Harvard Business Review as algorithmic security to uncover suspicious transfer patterns. Its a futuristic scenario where the systems capable of the sort of 24/7 monitoring of larger data sets that humans couldnt ever possibly manage. In practice, it will mean that when certain types of information begin to flow from a server to a particular workstation, managers would receive alerts of possible unauthorized use. Same thing if it detected any other changes in traffic, CPU usage or port activity that indicated the presence of malicious activity. Other industries already use machine learningbased tools to automate decision processes, particularly in the financial services field. So why not cybersecurity? Some, who take a more conservative view of machine learning and behavioral analysis, caution against believing in silver bullets when it comes to data protection. And they are right to note that many cybercriminals understand machine learning and can be expected to apply their technical savvy to find ways to beat the system. In fact, hackers have already found ways to evade advanced fraud analytic systems in the banking industry. But its early to dismiss the potential of machine learning and behavioral analysis. We wont know for a while whether real-time automated threat detection marks a turning point. But this much is also clear: Security practitioners have been involved in whats essentially been a years-long war of attrition with shadowy and persistent nemeses.They can use the help. Even if the technologys not enough to immediately retake the initiative in this seemingly endless battle, it could still turn out to be a potent and valuable weapon. Cybersecurity luminary John McAfee was asked to share the 10 biggest hacks ever with CSO. Below is McAfees list and commentary, which he provided in an email exchange this morning. McAfees Top Hacks 1. Stuxnet (2010) Carried out by at least one Nation State, Stuxnet was, at the time, the most sophisticated hack to have hit the world stage. Able to determine its exact location and environment, it destroyed a sizeable number of Iran's nuclear centrifuges. Had it gone wrong, it could have indiscriminately destroyed centrifuges around the world. 2. U.S. Office of Personnel Management hack (2015) Certainly the largest espionage coup of all time, unknown actors walked off with detailed records of every employee and consultant of the U.S. government for the past 50 years, including all top-secret cleared employees. The OPM hack had been in progress for two years before it was discovered. 3. FBI hack by a 15-year-old boy (2016) A 15-year-old, in November of 2016, hacked the FBI and released detailed information about every undercover FBI officer in America. The data was released on the Dark Web. The notable and relevant point about this hack was the lack of sophistication and training on the part of the hacker. The (allegedly) most secure system within the U.S. government being vulnerable to a rank amateur hacker certainly ranks this among the great hacks. 4. The DNC hack (2016) Stemming from a trivial phishing hack, the hack on the Democratic National Committee (DNC) importance grew in direct proportion to its lack of understanding. I rank this as an important hack because it demonstrates how our government's and public's ignorance of the reality of hacking can be politically used to manipulate opinion and place blame. The totally false attribution of blame to the Russian State reached to the levels of the halls of Congress. 5. The Conficker worm (2008) The Conficker hack, first perpetrated in 2008, has not done the damage that more recent hacks have achieved, but it is notable in that it refuses to die. It is still replicating itself from one machine to another, turning each one into a zombie bot or into a keylogger that steals credit card information. The continued existence of this worm should be absolute proof to all that our existing antivirus paradigm (which I created) is no longer functional at any level. 6. The Home Depot hack (2014) This hack achieved the largest retail credit card breach in human history. Once they breached the first Home Depot store, the hackers worked their way throughout the continent. They monitored the payment transactions on over 7,000 of The Home Depot self-serve checkout registers and skimmed credit card numbers as customers paid for their purchases. This hack is noteworthy because it gained access, within less than a day, to over 50 million credit cards. 7. The eBay hack (2014) Many people downplayed this eBay hack, since no apparent financial or other objective damage was done. Yet, in my mind, this is one of the worst hacks in history. What was stolen was the personal information of 145 million eBay users. This is eight times the number of people compromised in the OPM hack and five times the exposure created by the Ashley Madison hack, which led to the suicides of dozens of people. We must wake up to the dangers imposed by the theft of our personal information. 8. J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. hack (2014) This hack of the largest bank in America took the personal financial information of more than 75 million customers of the bank. What puzzled investigators was that the hackers had breached an access level that would have allowed them to have stolen billions if they had chosen, yet they did not. To me, this is no mystery at all. Combining this hack with just one or two others (The Panama Papers hack, and the OPM hack, for example) might certainly prove many times more valuable in influence through blackmail and other avenues. We must learn to think in bigger terms when we assess the damage of a given hack. 9. The LinkedIn hack (2012) The notability of this hack is that more than 160 million records of personal information was stolen in a hack that began in 2012. It was not discovered for four years. If this is not the nail in the coffin of the antivirus paradigm, then please, tell me what that nail would be. Visit SteveOnCyber.com to read all of my blogs and articles covering cybersecurity. Follow me on Twitter @CybersecuritySF, or connect with me on LinkedIn. Send story tips, feedback and suggestions to me here. CTA has invested over 150,000 to investigate the technical and business feasibility of satellite data-enabled irrigation advisory services in Ghana, as it takes the lead in formulating a 'big proposal' to develop a project along similar lines to its Market-led User-owned ICT4AG-enabled Information Service (MUIIS) project in Uganda. The proposed service relies on satellite images to help improve farm yields by providing farmers with timely information on weather conditions, nutrient requirements and humidity, for example. In order to achieve this, CTA has brought together a consortium of five partners, including Farmerline Ghana Limited to provide the communication services at the end of the chain; eLEAF BV in charge of the optical satellite data; and SarVision responsible for the radar satellite data. The project will also work with the Ghana Irrigation Development Authority and the Ministry of Food and Agriculture, who are ultimately responsible for the end users (Ghanaian farmers). As part of the pilot project, which covers a number of irrigation schemes in Ghana, an inception workshop was recently organised by CTA in Accra. The workshop sought to engage the full range of stakeholders involved in the project, including farmer leaders, input dealers, and financial service providers, to define/refine a project strategy that addresses the key challenges various end users currently face. Discussions focused on the demand for more efficient water irrigation systems, better access and use of appropriate inputs such as improved seed and fertiliser, better access to financial services and stronger linkages between the key players in both the input and output markets. CTA is keen to ensure that the interests and requirements of investors are also taken into account in the design of this project, with the intention of building a business that will be self-sustaining long after the project grant runs out. To strengthen the business model of the proposal, CTA and Farmerline have met with a number of interested large input manufacturers as well as output aggregators, such as Yara Ghana Limited, and are discussing opportunities for collaboration with the National Farmers and Fishermen Award Winners Association of Ghana. "We are exploring an interesting model through this rich network of organisations and farmers, who see agriculture as a business and are poised to influence smallholder farmers to aspire to become award winning business leaders one day," explains Dr Benjamin Addom, Programme Coordinator at CTA. With financial support from the Dutch government's Geodata for Agriculture and Water grant programme which will bring the total budget for the big proposal up to approximately 4.5 m the project is expected to reach 300,000 farmers with at least 50% choosing to adopt the information products. In Sudan and Uganda similar satellite data-based advisory services have already been rolled out to farmers, including CTA's MUIIS project, resulting in increases in crop yields of well over 200%. Addom recognises the potential of this technology to transform agriculture, labelling it "a game changer", stating that CTA intends to continue working at the forefront of development to scale out the use of remote sensing technologies to farmers in ACP regions. Working alongside both public and private sector partners towards this end, CTA aims to ensure reduced poverty and increased food security in the wake of changing climate variabilities. Stew Leonard's is one of Connecticut's most celebrated businesses. Currently there are locations in Norwalk, Danbury, Newington and Yonkers, NY and Stew's is in the process of expanding in New York and New Jersey. So what makes Stew's different from other grocery stores (aside from the singing cartons of milk, the guy dressed as a cow and the little animal farm outside)? Click through to find out some things you may not know about Stew Leonard's. Contributed Photo / ST A massive restructuring in the past year is beginning to pay off for Terex, with profits up by more than half in the second quarter despite a drop in overall revenue. Under CEO John Garrison Jr., Terex increased profits 54 percent in the second quarter from a year earlier to $101 million, even as revenue dropped 9 percent to below $1.2 billion for the Westport-based maker of construction and materials handling equipment. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate Bars across the country are rich in history, some dating back centuries. The Daily Meal recently named the oldest bars in all 50 states, as well as Washington, D.C. The food site said it included bars "that have either been in continuous operation in one place for longer than anyone else in the state, or, in a few instances, bars that occupy spaces that were bars long ago and are continuing that tradition and atmosphere to the modern day." The Griswold Inn in Essex is home to the oldest bar in Connecticut, according to the report. The inn's website said its bar, called the Tap Room, was originally built as a schoolhouse in 1735. Click through the slideshow above for a look at some of the oldest bars in the U.S., and here for the full list. "The vast majority of these bars are well over 100 years old, reaching back into the 1800s, the 1700s, and in some instances, even the 1600s," the report writes. According to The Daily Meal, the bars on the list celebrate the past, often making visitors feel like they are stepping back in time. The Griswold's website acknowledges that they aim to maintain, "the charm of days gone by" but insist the experience is "anything but dated." On Facebook, it lands 4.5 stars from nearly 1,000 reviews. "One of my all time favorites. Especially around the holidays, it's spectacular! The Gris, however, is festive throughout the year," one reviewer wrote. "The wine bar is cozy and has great food and atmosphere. The tap room always has live music and is so much fun." George Washington, Mark Twain, Katharine Hepburn and Albert Einstein are among the notable guests who once ate and drank at the Griswold Inn. Contributed Photo / Bridgeport Police Department / Contributed Photo BRIDGEPORT City police have made an arrest in connection with an incident in April that was originally ruled an assault, but has since been ruled a homicide, police said Wednesday evening. Latia Quarles, 23, of Burnsford Avenue in Bridgeport, was charged with first-degree manslaughter Wednesday, police said. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate NEW FAIRFIELD Three of Connecticuts federal lawmakers have written to federal immigration authorities urging them to allow a Guatemalan man facing deportation to stay in the country while he tries to get legal status. Joel Colindres, who lives in New Fairfield with his wife, Samantha, a U.S. citizen, and their two American-born children, was told July 20 during a meeting with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement that he has to leave the country by Aug. 17. Colindres came to the United States in 2004, and says a mix-up with paperwork led him to miss a court date that year, resulting in an order for his removal. The order has created a barrier for him to receive legal status based on his 2010 marriage. Since then, his friends and family have pledged to fight his deportation. Last week, nearly 100 people gathered in Hartford at a rally while he was at another meeting with ICE officials. In their letter to ICE and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, U.S. Rep. Elizabeth Esty and Sens. Richard Blumenthal and Christopher Murphy, all Democrats, ask that ICE give a stay of his deportation full and fair consideration. ICE has confirmed that Mr. Colindres has committed no crimes, contributes to his community, is employed, pays taxes and is raising a family, they wrote in the letter. He should be granted every consideration possible to remain in the United States and continue his pathway to citizenship. Joel Colindres said on Monday that he was overwhelmed with emotion. I want to thank Senator Blumenthal, Senator Murphy and Congresswoman Esty for their hard work and support of our case, he said. I am so thankful for my amazing wife, friends, family and other supporters for everything. I am feeling a bit more hopeful today and just really amazed how wonderful this country is that so many people have come together to fight for me. The legislators letter says the Colindres family depends on his income and that his wife was recently diagnosed with two medical conditions that cause her pain on a daily basis. If he were forced to be separated from his children, they would not only suffer emotionally, but could also face homelessness, as Mrs. Colindres cannot afford their mortgage payments on her income alone, the legislators wrote. ICE spokesman Shawn Neudauer said in an email Monday that agency officials will respond directly to Esty, Blumenthal and Murphy, and declined to comment further on the letter. In a separate letter, Blumenthal wrote to Elaine Duke, acting secretary at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, imploring her to address the profound irrationality and cruelty of certain current deportation policies. I strongly urge you to grant stays and other temporary or permanent relief in cases nationally and in Connecticut involving undocumented individuals who have lived in our country for lengthy periods, raising families, working in stable jobs, paying taxes, and contributing to their communities - all without committing any criminal offenses or posing any danger to our nations security, Blumenthal wrote. Such people, he said, include Colindres; Nury Chavarria, of Norwalk, a Guatemalan native issued an emergency stay of her deportation last week order after she took sanctuary in a New Haven church; and Luis Barrios, of Derby, who recently found out he will have an opportunity to present his case for asylum. Hoping for more time In May, Colindres attorneys filed a request for a waiver from the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services, which if approved could help him get legal status. Colindres attorney, Erin ONeil-Baker, said since Colindres has a removal order, he cant get permanent residency and, if he leaves the country, wont be able to return for 10 years. If the waiver is granted, she said, it means in essence that it has been excused or forgiven. She added that it can take six to nine months for USCIS to decide on the waiver. The support from the CT Congressional delegation is so wonderful because this letter of support gets to the heart of Joels issue, which is he just needs a few months more time until he receives a decision on his waiver, said ONeil-Baker, who works in Hartford. Once his waiver is granted he can pursue his legal permanent residency, she said. He wants to do this final period of waiting here in the U.S. with his family and in his home and that is all he seeks. The next EnVision Bus Read more [...] This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate STRATFORD Sixty-five police officers in town are now equipped with body-worn cameras for all service calls, a department spokesman said said Thursday. Stratford police Capt. Frank Eannotti said said all Stratford Police Department officers have been trained in how to use the cameras, and that officers began to use them on patrol last week. Any time an officer is dispatched, initiates a call, conducts a motor vehicle stop or interviews a witness, Eannotti said, the cameras must be turned on. The point is to record your daily, job-specific duties, he said. The department has 112 sworn officers, according to its website. The 65 that received body cameras are officers on patrol, school resource and traffic division, Eannotti said. Eannotti said that if an officer is on break or personal relief, having lunch or just sitting in their car, that information doesnt need to be recorded. But there are certain situations in which a camera should be turned on normally that officers wold be required to actually turn off the cameras, Eannotti said. He said if officers are responding to a call that involves undercover officers or informants, the officer is not required to utilize their body camera. If an officer responds to a medical call, the officer does not need to record the incident unless the person is combative or violent, Eannotti said. Footage from medical calls and for incidents involving juveniles will not be released, he said. It may be recorded for safety, but it isnt releasable to the public, Eannotti said. If someone is looking for footage of an incident, Eannotti said a Freedom of Information Act request may be formally sent to the department and the person can receive the footage if the case is closed. If somebody requests a video and its an ongoing case, it will not be released, Eannotti said. Making copies can be costly and time-consuming, so Eannotti said there will be a fee involved with obtaining body camera footage. Other Fairfield County police departments have taken the plunge and purchased body cameras for officers. Milford, Ansonia and Westport police departments have officers using body cameras. Fairfield police participated in a pilot program using body cameras in 2016. But the cost of the body cameras and their storage tend to be an issue for police departments. The Bridgeport Police Department has not followed through on its plan for body cameras because of the cost of storage, Police Chief Armando Perez told Hearst Connecticut Media in April. Eannotti said the cost of storage varies based on the size of the department. He said the Stratford Police Department found its way around the expensive storage costs by working in-house. Rather than storing all the body camera footage in the cloud, Eannotti said the department purchased a server and a backup server that is kept at headquarters to store all the information. This move kept the departments cost for body cameras and storage to around $83,000, Eannotti said. He said less than $3,000 of that total cost came from taxpayers money. Through a grant process with the Office of Policy Management in Connecticut, Eannotti said, the department will be reimbursed for the body cameras and storage. Were looking at it as a positive tool. Its going to help improve our services, Eannotti said. People always talk about transparency and this will help that go both ways. 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 fiance of a man who can't speak after suffering a severe brain hemorrhage has revealed why she made a commitment to be with him for the long haul. Tess Delony, from Adelaide, said 'yes' when Sam Hensman, 25, proposed to her with a smile after she stayed by his bedside during his 10-month battle in hospital. He was diagnosed at the age of 23 with arteriovenous malformation (AVM) - a tangle of abnormal blood vessels connecting arteries to the brain. And more than a year on, the couple have proven their love can overcome any challenge after he asked her to marry him by pulling out an amethyst ring. Scroll down for video Tess Delony (pictured) has revealed why she made a commitment to be with her fiance Sam Hensman for the long haul after he suffered a severe brain hemorrhage The 25-year-old man, from Adelaide, asked the love of his life Tess to marry him last month Mr Hensman proposed to his girlfriend by smiling at her with a little jewellery box in his hands 'After getting to know him and spending a lot of time with him, I guess going through all of this with him... Yeah, he's the only man I want ever,' she told Sunrise. Just two months into their blossoming romance, Mr Hensman was rushed to hospital after he began experiencing dizzy spells, vomiting and shaking. The family were told there was nothing they could do as he would continue to suffer bleeding of the brain until he declines into a vegetable state or die. But nearly a year on, Tess said she never thought once to end their relationship as she opened up about her selfless decision on why she'll never walk away. 'I'd do what someone else would do for me,' she said. 'I think that's just the right thing to do as a human being because he's still there. I still see him, even when he was under sedatives and everything. 'You still see little glimmers of him there and that's enough to keep me going.' Tess said she never thought once to end their romance after he was left unable to walk and talk His mother Pam Blashki (left) was lost for words when she opened up about her son's heartbreaking condition The young woman (far left) has stood by his bedside during his 10-month battle in hospital His mother Pam Blashki was lost for words when she opened up about her son's heartbreaking condition. 'It's terrifying,' she said as she broke down into tears. This week, Tess told that the couple have put their wedding plans on hold as they focus on her fiance's recovery first. 'Obviously with the engagement there will also be a wedding on the cards eventually,' she told The Advertiser. 'I know that Sam would really love to be able to say his vows and to walk back down the aisle, so I'd like to wait a little while to give him the opportunity. 'I think focusing all of our time and energy on rehabilitating Sam is the most important thing right now, so we'll just take things as they come.' Mr Hensman and his girlfriend have proven their love can overcome any challenge after he pulled out a jewellery box with an amethyst ring - and she said yes The man, who was studying to become an electrician, was rushed to hospital after he fell ill Last month, Mr Hensman proposed to his girlfriend by smiling at her after his mother helped him pick out the engagement ring. 'As I came over he pulled out the little black box with this big smile on his face,' Ms Delony told nine.com.au. 'I started to get a bit teary because he couldn't say, "Will you marry me?," but the amethyst meant everything. He pulled me in for a hug and I said, "Yes" - it was really special.' Sydney neurosurgeon Dr Nazih Assaad initially suggested they would try to slowly reduce the growth before removing it to avoid damaging the brain. But just days before the surgery, Mr Hensman suffered stroke-life symptoms after he was struck down with a major haemorrhage. The man, who was studying to become an electrician, was at his partner's home when he couldn't feel his right arm, shortly before suffering a seizure. And after undergoing two rounds of life-changing surgeries, the AVM was removed. The man was diagnosed at the age of 23 with arteriovenous malformation (AVM) - a tangle of abnormal blood vessels connecting arteries to the brain But against all odds, Mr Hensman can now walk with aid after working to regain strength and communicate by using his arms to make hand signals However, when he woke, he couldn't move or speak. But against all odds, Mr Hensman can now walk with aid after working to regain muscle and improve his strength. And while he still can't speak, the man can communicate by using his arms to make hand signals. And despite his condition, Ms Delony revealed how she is now closer to his family. 'I would never wish this whole experience on anyone but it really does connect you in a way that not a lot of other people would get to experience - that's what makes it really special,' she said. His sister Prue Cartledge who set up a GoFundMe page said her brother has miraculously fought through his battle. 'Sammy is a real trooper and is working so hard to learn to do everything again,' she wrote. 'He is learning to stand, pull himself up in his chair, walk with help, communicate with hand signals and even manages to joke around. 'He is desperately trying to communicate with sound and use of his iPad and is quick to acknowledge help and support with his beaming smile.' And after undergoing two rounds of life-changing surgeries, the AVM was removed His sister Prue Cartledge (pictured) set up a fundraising page to raise money for his expenses But despite his improvements, the family have made an appeal to raise money for his medical expenses, as well as physiotherapy and speech therapy. 'While his therapists acknowledge his massive improvements, sadly the hospital are controlled by budgets and have decided his progress is not fast enough to warrant full time rehabilitation,' Ms Cartledge continued. 'Sam has fought so hard to live and is truly an inspiration to everyone that meets him. 'We believe that with help we will be able to keep him moving forward, so that he can eventually live an independent life and continue to grow as the amazing inspiration that he is.' Family and friends have rallied behind the young man, with more than $15,000 already raised to help him with his rehabilitation. To make a donation, please visit the GoFundMe page. A TV presenter and wellness expert has opened up about an ordeal which saw her being 'stalked' by a besotted airline employee. Sydney-born journalist and author Tali Shine, 34, who divides her time between Australia and London, took to social media on Tuesday to call out the behaviour of a Qatar airlines worker. 'Flew @qatarairways & the staff member took my personal info & stalking me. Qatar don't respond to complaints-any one else experienced this?' she wrote on Twitter. Opening up to 9Honey about her ordeal, Tali - who is the co-author of two books Good to Glow and Feeding the Future, an works as a wellness consultant at the presigious South Kensington Club in London - said her ordeal had lasted nearly five months. 'Its such a crazy situation,' the entrepreneur, who also has her own cosmetics range, told the publication. 'I booked my flight directly through Qatar Airlines' online site and then called the airline to change my journey home to a few days later. 'This man began sending me WhatsApp messages, he told me that he came across my picture accidentally and noticed that I had nice eyes. 'I blocked the number then started getting hourly phone calls from the same person.' She said she never replied to messaged and blocked the number to no avail. Tali Shine (pictured) opened up about an ordeal which saw her being 'stalked' by a besotted airline employee 'I hoped that if I just continued to ignore him and kept blocking his requests to follow me on social media, it would stop. However, months later Im still getting phone calls throughout the night.' Tali claimed Qatar Airways had not initially responded to her call, however after taking her plight to Twitter the airline responded publicly. In a statement, the company said it is 'committed to maintaining the highest level of privacy and confidentiality regarding customers data'. 'Confidential and private information about Qatar Airways customers is not used for any purpose other than that for which it was gathered and intended,' it said. 'We take Ms. Shines feedback seriously and we are investigating in full.' 'Flew @qatarairways & the staff member took my personal info & stalking me. Qatar don't respond to complaints-any one else experienced this?' she wrote on Twitter Tali claimed Qatar Airways had not initially responded to her call, however after taking her plight to Twitter the airline responded publicly 'I hoped that if I just continued to ignore him and kept blocking his requests to follow me on social media, it would stop. However, months later Im still getting phone calls throughout the night,' Tali said of her stalking ordeal 'Thank you for giving us a chance to investigate further. We're going to take a look at your DM and revert soon,' Qatar Airways said On her website, Tali is described as a 'health and wellness expert' who is known for her clean-eating recipes that are vegetarian, sugar-free and gluten-free. Her bio states she has covered Sydney, Paris, Milan, London and New York fashion weeks as an on air presenter - interviewing celebrities, models and designers on the red carpet, and backstage. She has also travelled extensively as a consultant to international spas and wellness centres. Tali said her ordeal began after the employee came across her picture and noticed that she had nice eyes Talking previously to Lifestyle You Tali said it was her father who had taught her the importance of seeing the world and experiencing different cultures. 'When I turned one my parents spent a year travelling around Europe with me. My first solid food and spoken words were Greek,' she told the publication. 'When I was old enough to understand, my dad would take me to Thailand and India and we would always visit the poorest areas to understand different ways people live, different cultures and to appreciate just how lucky we are to grow up with so many advantages in Australia and never to take this for granted. 'This sense of wanderlust has really rubbed off on me and I try to go to one new place every year,' she added. Victoria's Secret has tapped six of its sexiest Angels to showcase its new lingerie line - and they look incredible in the new shoot. Models Stella Maxwell, Jasmine Tookes, Martha Hunt, Lais Ribeiro, Josephine Skriver and Taylor Hill all displays their gym-honed bodies as they pose together in the shoot. The toned models, who have all strutted on the catwalk for the brand's annual show, showcase the lingerie giant's The Body range. The sexy six! Stella Maxwell, Martha Hunt, Lais Ribeiro, Josephine Skriver, Jasmine Tookes, and Taylor Hill have stripped off in a steamy shoot for Victoria's Secret The sexy six model were enlisted to debut three new styles including The Unlined Demi, The Lined Demi and The Perfect Shape bra. Model-of-the-moment Taylor Hill is among the models to star in the shoot - and it's another campaign to add to her string of successes. The Illinois-born beauty has enjoyed a hugely successful catwalk career; she was chosen as the face of Lancome in 2016 and appearing in editorials for American Vogue, Harper's Bazaar and LOVE among many others. Taylor has had a busy time of late, as she travelled to London for the launch of her own denim collection Taylor Hill x Joe's Jeans earlier this month. Model-of-the-moment: Taylor Hill, who is fast becoming the world's most in-demand model, is among the toned stars of the shoot Stunning: Josephine Skriver, left, and Jasmine Tookes, right, star in the shoot. The sexy six model were enlisted to debut three new styles including The Unlined Demi, The Lined Demi and The Perfect Shape bra She recently opened up about how much she enjoyed the designing process, in an interview with Women's Wear Daily, saying: 'I really loved it,' the beauty enthused. 'I thought it was something different. 'As a model, you dont really get to see this part, and I thought it was really cool to be a part of the process, and have an input, and make it my own.' She revealed that she had brought Pinterest images and moodboards along to creative meetings. And Taylor also returned to her natural modelling habitat for the line, appearing in the campaign images, shot by famed fashion photographer Mario Sorrenti. Beach body ready: Victoria's Secret has tapped six of its sexiest Angels to showcase its new lingerie line - and they look incredible in the new shoot Kristen Stewart's girlfriend Stella Maxwell is also among the models. She and Kristen made headlines when they crashed a wedding on Saturday in Winnipeg, Canada. The actress was pictured on Instagram posing with Kirsten and Kayleigh Jennings after their backyard wedding. The duo took their guests to Pizzeria Gusto for the reception when the manager of the establishment came up to the blushing newlyweds. This is the precious moment an elementary school teacher is led down the aisle - by 20 of her pupils. Indianapolis resident Marielle Slagel Keller, 25, invited her entire class to her wedding because she said the big day 'wouldn't feel right without them'. The girls donned white dresses and floated up the aisle carrying a garland while the boys trotted behind them, with one bringing up the rear and clutching the precious rings. Scroll down for video Special day: Newlywed Marielle Slagel Keller is an elementary school teacher in Indianapolis. She is pictured with her husband Mike on their wedding day 'Magical': The 25-year-old invited her entire class to walk her down the aisle at her wedding Important bond: Marielle said that her day was made all the more 'perfect' by having the children there with her Marielle said the ceremony was 'perfect', even though some of the little ones shielded their eyes when she locked lips with new husband, medical student Mike, 26. 'It was magical,' the newlywed said of the happy day. 'Having the children there was really special. 'Everyone was crying when I came down the aisle but it wasn't because of me, it was because all the kids were there. 'Before the day I talked to the class about my wedding and they said, "Are you guys gonna kiss?" 'A few shielded their eyes at that moment, but it all went to plan. The girls managed not to drop the flowers and the boys walked down the aisle perfectly. 'Teaching is my passion and I couldn't have imagined it without them. They're a part of who I am.' Mike asked Marielle, a teacher at IPS Butler University Lab School, Indianapolis, to marry him in April 2016. Heartwarming: The dedicated teacher said that she couldn't have imagined her wedding day without her students there Close connection: 'They're a part of who I am,' Marielle said of her young students Dedication: Marielle, who is pictured with her entire class, teaches at the IPS Butler University Lab School in Indianapolis He popped the question using a children's book he had made to tell the story of their relationship, and when she got to the end, he got down on one knee. As soon as they started planning the big day, Marielle from said she knew the children would have to be involved. The kindhearted teacher invited them - and their parents - with handwritten invites addressed to them individually which were placed in their school mailboxes. The children, who are aged five to seven, also helped plan the special day and even picked Marielle's dress after she narrowed it down to the final two. They walked down the aisle at First Baptist Church in Indianapolis on June 24. After the ceremony there was a special cupcake reception for the children with a private bash for friends and relatives afterwards. Helping hand: As well as walking her down the aisle, the children also had the chance to help Marielle plan out elements of her day, and offered their opinions on her wedding dress choice Precious: Marielle asked the children and their parents to attend her wedding with hand-written invitations that she placed in their school mailboxes Happy couple: Mike asked Marielle to marry him in April 2016 Cute: The girls all wore coordinating white dresses at the wedding One mom, Brooke Starnes, 34, whose seven-year-old daughter Annie is in Marielle's class and was a guest at the wedding, said it was 'fantastic'. The full-time mom-of-two said: 'Marielle is an amazing teacher. She has created a community of all the families and is really changing the lives of the kids. 'The wedding really was just the icing on the cake. Annie had the most magnificent experience. 'She went into the church knowing that it was quite a special thing to be invited to a teacher's wedding and even more so to be a part of the wedding party. 'It was the event of the summer for the entire class.' Marielle added: 'After the day Mike said to me, 'I didn't tell you this before but I thought it was a crazy idea inviting 20 six year olds to the ceremony.' 'But he said they were perfect. It was a risk but it paid off. 'When you spend eight hours a day with a group of people every day it feels like you live with them, so they had to be there. 'They are very deep thinkers and they are so kind. 'We have a great relationship - I feel like I've got 22 kids.' The lovebirds recently returned from their honeymoon to Italy and Greece. They made the nation's head spin with their vast knowledge of specialist subjects and now University Challenge's most memorable contestants are back to further bamboozle the public. Eric Monkman and Bobby Seagull were firm favourites among viewers during this year's famous quiz show and now they are set to make their return to the BBC with their very own radio show. The pair will join forces on BBC Radio 4 to present Monkman and Seagull's Polymathic Adventure on 21 August. University Challenge contestants Eric Monkman and Bobby Seagull will join forces on BBC Radio 4 to present Monkman and Seagull's Polymathic Adventure Monkman, who represented Wolfson College Cambridge, and Seagull of Emmanuel College, certainly relied on their wits when it came to University Challenge, but controversially their radio show will see the pair question how 'useful' intelligence is. According to the BBC the duo will 'explore whether being highly intelligent is actually a useful quality. 'They will discuss whether it's possible to be a useful polymath (a person of wide knowledge or learning) with guests including Stephen Fry.' The showdown between Eric Monkman and Bobby Seagull on the University Challenge semi-final was described as 'Ali vs Foreman with jumpers on' by fans. But while there may have been fierce rivalry between the brainy students on the show, off-set they have proved themselves to be great friends - as demonstrated by a series of chummy snaps shared on their social media feeds. Eric Monkman became a fan favourite during this year's install of the BBC 2 quiz show where he represented Wolfson College Cambridge Seagull, of Emmanuel College, came up against Monkman in the semi-finals with their showdown described as 'Ali vs Foreman with jumpers on' by fans The final in April saw Eric Monkman, 28, and his fellow Wolfson College Cambridge students lose out to Ballilol Oxford, who were crowned this year's champion's with 190 points to Wolfson's 140. Monkman, a favourite with viewers, was careful to thank the show's producers after his disappointment, but reserved a special mention for Seagull - much to the delight of University Challenge fans. Tweeting a photo of the pair together the Canadian Economics student wrote: 'How could I have forgotten to mention this guy? Briefly rivals, always friends.' His followers quickly erupted with praise for their friendship with the tweet receiving more than 350 likes. One of his followers Emilyeggmangle admitted she wanted to see more of the pair. She tweeted: 'Ok so there needs to be some sort of TV programme on this beautiful bromance. I'm just not ready to let the two of you go! #UCwithdrawals'. While there may have been fierce rivalry between the brainy students on the show, off-set they have proved themselves to be great friends Lee Holland agreed adding: 'This has a TV road trip written all over it. Move over @RobBrydon monkman seagull the trip #NewTVcouple'. The men represented rival Cambridge University colleges on the show, and were likened to Batman and Superman when they faced off in the semi-finals last month. Monkman captained his team from Wolfson College, Cambridge to a 170 to 140 victory over Emmanuel College, led by Seagull. Despite the gruelling semi-final, which was the closest fought battle in twelve years, Bobby Seagull and Eric Monkman remain on good terms long after the cameras stopped rolling. Bobby Seagull tweeted: 'Well done my friends @WolfsonCam on getting through to the grand final of #UniversityChallenge!' Monkman also shared a photograph after their face off, which captured the two friends sharing an embrace. He tweeted: 'After the match, we got up to shake hands, but spontaneously did this. Hoped it would be shown in the credits. Recreated it for you instead.' Since then the pair have been seen meeting up on several occasions, and capturing it all on camera for social media. Last night saw Monkman and his fellow Wolfson College students take second place after a heated final. With his shouty answers, razor-sharp intellect and teeth-gnashing, the Canadian Economics student was a favourite to secure the win for his team in this year's University Challenge, but it wasn't to be. Twitter users are roasting a news article that claimed big boobs are 'back' in fashionwith many women ironically lamenting the fact that they never stopped 'wearing' their own fleshy accessories even though they were apparently out of style. The story ran on the New York Post's website on Tuesday, prompting a social media firestorm that saw several people making fun of the idea that body parts can be deemed more or less trendy depending on the times. In the story, celebrities such as Rihanna and Emily Ratajkowski were hailed as examples of how larger breasts are enjoying a renewed moment in the spotlight after years of being shunned in favor of flatter chests. Trendy? Twitter users are roasting a news article that claimed big boobs are 'back' in fashion, which pitches Rihanna and Cara Delevingne as 'a perfect illustration of the contrasting camps' Names: Emily Ratajkowski (left) and Susan Sarandon (right) are referenced in the original story, which was published on Tuesday, and hailed as members of the 'big-boob movement' Retort: Several people responed to the story by making fun of the idea that body parts can be deemed more or less trendy depending on the times Humor: One woman ironically rejoiced that she hadn't thrown out her 'last set' of boobs now that they are once again deemed fashionable 'For the last year, those of us blessed with a chest have been slaves to the trend for curbing our curves,' the article reads in part. 'But now you can welcome the return of the out-and-proud cleavage.' While the story celebrates the perceived revival of bigger boobs, many women objected to seeing a part of their anatomy discussed like a fashion accessory. They poked fun at the idea in witty tweets, one of which reads: 'Apparently boobs are back! Happy I didn't throw out my last set! Being a woman is body parts going in & out of fashion.' Another person pretended to rejoice at the announcement that her breasts were now relevant again, writing: 'I have been alerted that boobs are back in style. *looks down* You hear that, girls? It's our time now. We out.' 'Uncool': Many women ironically lamenting the fact that they never stopped 'wearing' their own fleshy accessories even though they were apparently out of style Calling for help: Another person pretended it was necessary to call 911 and stay on lockdown due to boobs' reported return Meanwhile, one woman pretended she had put her own breasts in storage while she waited for them to become trendy again. 'Thank goodness boobs are back, I can finally get mine down from the loft,' she wrote next to an eye-rolling emoji. The initial story lists several recent instances of celebrities showcasing their cleavage on the red carpet, including Rihanna during the London premiere of Luc Besson's Valerian And The City Of A Thousand Planets. Cara Delevingne, who attended the event in a plunging jacket, is also included, but she and Rihanna are referred to as 'a perfect illustration of the contrasting camps'presumably because Delevingne has a flatter chest than her co-star. Ratajkowski, meanwhile, features in reference to her interview with Harper's Bazaar Australia last month, in which she said some people wouldn't book her for jobs because her breasts were deemed too big and 'too sexy'. Susan Sarandon is included too as a figure of the 'big-boob movement', and praised for stepping onto the Cannes Film Festival's red carpet in a plunging topa moment deemed one of 'old Hollywood glamour'. Camouflage print has a long and varied history. The emergence of aerial and trench warfare during World War I gave rise to the strategy of low-visibility uniforms. While camouflage's history encompasses hiding, in today's fashion climate the bold print is all about being seen. Stars like Kim Kardashian, Heidi Klum and Halle Berry have been sporting the pattern in very stylish ways. Get armed and ready for fall my shopping our favorite camouflage pieces. Ready for a night on the town: Kim Kardashian managed to create a glam look with her camo cutoffs. The mother of two paired her bottoms with a sheer top and accessorized with sparkly high-heel sandals and a few Yeezy gold pendants Kim Kardashian, 36, managed to create a glam look with her camo cutoffs. The mother of two was a vision as she stepped out in Soho, New York, this week. She paired her bottoms with a sheer top and accessorized with sparkly high-heel sandals and a few Yeezy gold pendants. Sleek strands and smoky eye make-up rounded out her fashionable look. From the streets to the carpet: Heidi Klum was seen in Tribeca, New York, wearing a Nili Lotan camouflage dress, while Halle Berry took the print to the red carpet Heidi Klum was seen in Tribeca, New York, wearing a Nili Lotan dress. The 44-year-old model fearlessly teamed the dress's green army print with a Givenchy snake bag. Saint Laurent platforms completed her trendy daytime ensemble. Halle Berry, 50, took camouflage to the red carpet. For the premiere of 'Kidnap' at ArcLight Hollywood in Hollywood, California, the actress paired a Church Boutique skirt with a white top by the label. Tamara Mellon strappy heels elevated her laid-back look. LA nights: Winnie Harlow and Sofia Richie were both seen out and about in California looking cool in camouflage prints Winnie Harlow was seen out and about in Los Angeles, Califorinia showing off her killer model body. The 23-year-old topped her LBD with a camo jacket worn off the shoulders. She completed the look with an MCM bag. Sofia Richie, 18, kept it causally cool for a night on the town in Los Angeles. The star wore drawstring army pants with a long-sleeve t-shirt and Adidas trainers. SHOP STYLISH ARMY PRINT GARB CURRENTLY ON THE MARKET: Left: Camouflage Shacket by Topshop, $85; topshop.com. Right: Lizzie Lace Up Camo Bodysuit by Boohoo, now $14; boohoo.com Beaded Tassel Clip Earring by Alexis Bittar, $945; alexisbittar.com Left: Ida dress by VIX, $250;net-a-porter.com. Right: Camouflage Cami Dress by Nili Lotan, $826; farfetch.com Left: Camo Faux Fur Slide Sandals by Charlotte Russe, now $18; charlotterusse.com. Right: Quilted Nylon Logo Backpack by Moschino, $595; nordstrom.com Metropolis Mini Camo-Print Leather Crossbody Bag by Furla, $378; saksfifthavenue.com Left: Small Sutton bag by MZ Wallace, $215; mzwallace.com. Right: Genuine Fox Fur Bag Charm by Rebecca Minkoff, $68; nordstrom.com Sweatshirt by H&M, now $12.99; hm.com Cards Against Humanity Gave $70K To Help Legalize Marijuana In Illinois By Stephen Gossett in News on Aug 3, 2017 7:32PM Less than a month after taking aim at the so-called "pink tax," the Chicago company behind your favorite deliberately offensive party game is taking its political conscience into green pastures: Cards Against Humanity announced today that they've donated $70,000 to help the effort to legalize recreational marijuana use among adults in Illinois. They're partnering up with the Marijuana Policy Project in the mission. The funds were raised from the sale of "Weed Packs," a special deck of cards that CAH released two weeks ago. The donation will support the effort to pass pro-legalization legislation that was introduced in March. If the bill passes, people 21 and over would be allowed to buy, grow and posses limited amounts of marijuana. Sales would be taxed and regulated. (Here's a primer on the legislation that Chicagoist published on 4/20.) Two weeks ago we released the Weed Pack. Today we're donating all Weed Pack profits in support of legalization: https://t.co/PNX9uzlzFM pic.twitter.com/sghx2WWrw4 CardsAgainstHumanity (@CAH) August 3, 2017 Were proud to support the Marijuana Policy Project because our current marijuana laws are failing, said CAH head writer Jo Feldman in a release. Nationally there are more arrests for marijuana possession each year than for all violent crimes combined. The MPP has been at the forefront of changing marijuana laws for the better, in Illinois and nationwide." "Also, I could really go for a bean chalupa," Feldman added, in vintage, prankster-y CAH fashion. The Weed Pack is still for sale, and proceeds will continue to fund the Marijuana Policy Project, according to CAH. You can still grab the Weed Pack for $5. We'll always donate all profits to the MPP. First, watch our commercial: https://t.co/ETgWKBFGh4 CardsAgainstHumanity (@CAH) August 3, 2017 Gov. Bruce Rauner earlier this year said he is "not a believer that legalizing more drugs will help our society" and called for a "thoughtful analysis" of states that have legalized marijuana. A study earlier this year found that 74 percent of Chicago voters are in favor of legalized recreational pot use. Supporters argue that the bill would improve community safety, help boost the economy and generate hundreds of millions of dollars for the state. A woman who invited Barack and Michelle Obama to her wedding received a signed card from the former president and his wife congratulating her on the happy occasion. Liz Whitlow sent an invitation to her nuptials in Pearland, Texas, to the former first lady and her husband in December, when Barack was still in office. She and her new husband, Eddie Edgar, received a response in March this year, but the bride's daughter, Brooke Allen, just found out earlier this week. Brooke took to Twitter to express her excitement and posted a photo of the Obamas' note along with the message: 'MY MOM DEADA** SENT THE OBAMAS A WEDDING INVITATION BACK IN MARCH AND JUST RECEIVED THIS IN THE MAIL. IM HOLLERING.' RSVP: Liz Whitlow sent the Obamas an invitation to her nuptials in Pearland, Texas, while Barack was still in officeand her daughter just found out about their signed response Message: The Obamas, who have been married for almost 25 years, sent the new couple kinds thoughts for the future and warmly congratulated Liz and her new husband Eddie Edgar Her tweet has since been shared more than 45,000 times and has received more than 212,000 likes. The bride, meanwhile, pointed out during a text exchange with her daughter that she didn't extend the same invitation to Donald Trump, who had just taken office when Liz and Eddie tied the knot. As Brooke pointed out on Twitter, it is possible for couples to send wedding invitations to the White House in order to receive a signed card in response, and save it as a keepsake if they want to. These invitations are typically addressed to the president and first lady and sent to the White House's greetings office on Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, DC. This means the invitations can only be sent to the president currently in office, and are presumably handled by staffers. Guess who didn't make the cut? The bride pointed out during a text exchange with her daughter that she didn't extend the same invitation to Donald Trump Letting them know: It is possible for couples like Liz and Eddie (pictured) to send wedding invitations to the White House in order to receive a signed card in response White the Obamas did not attend Liz and Eddie's wedding, their response congratulated them warmly for their marriage. 'Congratulations on your wedding,' the card reads. 'We hope that your marriage is blessed with love, laughter and happiness and that your bond grows stronger with each passing year.' The Obamas, who have been married for almost 25 years, sent the new couple kinds thoughts for the future. 'This occasion marks the beginning of a lifelong partnership,' their response continues, 'and as you embark on this journey, know you have our very best for the many joys and adventures that lie ahead.' Nasal sprays could prevent leg clots on long-haul flights, new research suggests. Anti-allergy drugs that suppress certain immune cells protect mice from deep vein thrombosis (DVT), a study implied. If effective in humans, such medication could replace current DVT treatments, which carry bleeding risks, according to the researchers. DVT, which usually causes blood clots in the leg, affects around 600,000 people in the UK each year. If the clot dislodges and travels to the lungs, it can result in a life-threatening pulmonary embolism. Nasal sprays could prevent leg clots on long-haul flights, new research suggests (stock) WHAT IS DEEP VEIN THROMBOSIS? Deep vein thrombosis (DVT) occurs when a blood clot forms in a deep vein, usually in the leg. It is associated with being inactive for a long time, such as after an operation or during a journey, as well as being linked to a family history of the condition, pregnancy and obesity. Symptoms include pain, swelling, redness and tenderness in the affected area. If the clot dislodges and travels to the lung, it can cause a deadly pulmonary embolism. This occurs in around one in 10 DVT cases. Anti-clotting drugs are given to prevent the thrombosis growing and dislodging. The risk of developing DVT can be reduced by wearing compression stockings and staying as active as possible while on flights. People should also maintain a healthy weight, not smoke and exercise regularly. Source: Bupa Advertisement 'Turning off' immune cells protects against DVT Researchers from the University of Birmingham genetically-modified mice to not express a certain type of immune cell, known as mast cells. 'Turning off' the gene that creates mast cells causes mice to be protected from DVT. The findings were published in the journal Circulation Research. Anti-allergy medications including inhalers, nasal sprays and tablets often work to suppress mast cells. The researchers plan to test human blood samples of DVT sufferers to determine if they express mast cells. If so, mast cell-suppressing medications could replace current DVT treatments, such as warfarin, which carry potential bleeding risks. Finding could significantly reduce bleeding risk Lead author Dr Alex Brill said: 'These findings offer new hope for the treatment of deep vein thrombosis without a risk of bleeding. 'If further human studies support our findings in mice, drugs to block mast cell production could be used in the future alongside lower doses of anticoagulants such as warfarin, significantly reducing bleeding risk. 'This is particularly exciting because this is a group of drugs which already exists, and some forms are approved for the treatment of allergies such as hay fever and asthma, meaning that this discovery could help people with DVT sooner rather than later.' Professor Jeremy Pearson, associate medical director at the British Heart Foundation, added: 'Those setting off on long haul flights this summer should be aware of the risk of DVT, which can be triggered by immobility. 'However there are ways to reduce your risk, such as walking around the aeroplane or wearing anti-DVT socks. 'This is even more important for people already at risk of DVT, who carry other risk factors such as old age, obesity, smoking, and being pregnant. 'It's far too soon to suggest people should start taking anti-allergy tablets to prevent DVT but this exciting discovery may pave the way for new treatments, and reduce some of the bleeding side effects which come with anticoagulants such as warfarin. 'However further research is needed to show that the same protective effect can be seen in humans.' A teenager dices with death every time he goes to sleep - because of a rare condition that means he stops breathing every time he nods off. Liam Derbyshire, 17, is one of a small handful of people in the UK living with congenital central hypoventilation syndrome. Sufferers simply forget to breathe whenever they fall asleep due to a fault in the neurological reflex that controls breathing. The condition, which affects less than 1,500 worldwide and is also know as Ondine's Curse, means Liam has to be plugged into a life support machine and be monitored by a carer every night to keep him alive. Doctors gave the adolescent just six weeks to live after birth, but the young man, from Gosport, South Hampshire, has defied the odds and will soon turn 18. Liam's parents Peter and Kim Derbyshire have to monitor their son round the clock Ther 15-year-old sleeps in his ventilator mask, which is essential to keep him alive Parents Peter and Kim are the main part of a team providing 24-hour care for Lian using specialised GPS equipment. Mrs Derbyshire, 56, said: 'We rely on a machine to make him breathe and without that, he wouldn't be alive. If he doesn't breathe, he dies - that's it. 'You are constantly on the alert and you worry that perhaps it's the last time you are saying good night. 'His condition is extremely rare and if we would have listened to some doctors he shouldn't be alive right now. 'He had the intent for life and so that became our job to make sure he was offered that.' The school boy hugs his parents, who say they never get a good night's sleep out of fear We are constantly on alert Liam's condition means he has a very strict bedtime routine. Mr Derbyshire usually takes charge of plugging his son into the ventilator machine and making sure everything is in order for the carer to sit and watch him sleep. He said: 'If you ask me if I had a good night sleep the answer is no, not since the day he was born to be quite frank. 'Liam's sleeping arrangements are the electric bed which has three positions in order to give him some quality sleep. 'On the left hand side we have all of his ventilator equipment. The idea is that a ventilator supplies positive pressure so that Liam is actually forced to exhale CO2, which normally you or I would [naturally]. Liam and his two cousins smile for the camera after playing football in the park 'There is also a plate under the mattress that will sense any sort of fitting and then the only way of making sure that he is still breathing is via that type of mask. 'Besides a medical room, it's also his room and so you have got his PlayStation, the set TV and then Liam's big forte - his Lego, which is all around the room.' Liam can lose weight extremely quickly Liam also struggles with a bowel condition, something unrelated to the syndrome, which means he must eat substantially large portions of food throughout the day to keep his body functioning. Mrs Derbyshire said: 'He lost a substantial part of his bowel when he was first born and now has an ileostomy bag, which he has had for many, many years. 'Food is a big issue for Liam. I have to plan every day and every way - the amount of food he goes through is quite terrifying. 'I have a budget given to me by my husband for food of around 800 a month but I would be lying if I didn't say we actually spend more than that. 'It can be quite terrifying when people say how much I actually have to spend to keep my son alive. But I don't have any choice. 'It's imperative that he has drugs with whatever he is eating or he can begin to lose weight extremely quickly.' We won't be around forever to look after Liam There are two prominent medications that Liam still takes - Tegretol, to monitor his seizures, and liquid Imodium for his stomach. His parents say his mental state is not the same as a typical 17-year-old. Mr Derbyshire said: 'Crossing the road and all of the other normal life skills are way behind the curve, if you will.' The arty pupil from Gosport has a large, supportive family and attends a normal school Mrs Derbyshire added: 'It's about trying to make him become more aware of what he is dealing with. We are not going to be here forever. 'You are trying to plan how he is going to cope on his own.' Liam has a large family with an older brother, two sisters, three half sisters and eight nieces and nephews, and he spends a lot of time socialising with them. He also manages to attend a normal school where he gets on well with both staff and students. Mrs Derbyshire said: 'His favourite hobby would have to be drawing - he has at least a thousand pens and also his Lego creations - he is fascinated with that. 'He is quite arty and I think he gets that from me. But his attention span isn't always great and you have to make the most of the few minutes you get.' ONDINE'S CURSE The condition is named after the myth of a water nymph, Ondine, who had an unfaithful mortal lover called Palemon who swore to her that his 'every waking breath would be a testimony of his love'. Upon witnessing his adultery, she cursed that if he should fall asleep, he would forget to breathe. The term is considered outdated for children with CCHS, who actually lack an arousal response to low oxygen levels and high CO2 levels in the blood when asleep. Around 300 children worldwide and 30 people in the UK have the life-long condition. The oldest CCHS patients today are in their 30s and 40s - CCHS young adults are in college, in the workplace, and some are having their own families. Advertisement Liam's future in unknown Doctors cannot say how long Liam could live to. He said: 'We have gone from nothing towards 18. The future for Liam I would say is, it's not going to be totally independent. 'To a certain extent he has been protected by his own condition that he doesn't understand certain things. 'I'm extremely proud of him. I personally would have given up a long time ago. I couldn't have lived with the condition he has and put up with what he has with the pain levels.' Mrs Derbyshire added: 'Liam is 17, nearly 18, so it's a big birthday this year! 'He is an annoying, grumpy teenager so he is no different to any other teenager but he does have a sense of humour and he is very caring - he's got a really soft side. 'You can't regret anything you have done - we've had 18 years of his life so day to day you can't regret anything.' The family of a baby boy born with a parasitic twin was going to throw him into the river before a local hospital offered him free surgery. Kuli Bai, 22, gave birth to the unnamed boy at her home in a small village, in Pindwara, northern India. Her family were so shocked by her son's two extra legs, hand and penis they were going to dump him in a nearby river. News spread through the village, until it reached Bharat Pal Danda, 35, who runs Matra Chhaya Hospital, in Pindwara, who quickly sent an ambulance to collect the mother and child. After removing the baby's extra limbs and intestines, he is said to be recovering well. Scroll down for video The unnamed baby boy's family were planning to dump him in a river due to his condition He was born with a parasitic twin but was healthy inside (pictured with his mother Kuli Bai, 22) WHAT IS A PARASITIC TWIN? Parasitic twins occur when a baby is born with the attached tissue of an undeveloped twin who died in the womb. The parasitic twin's tissues are dependent upon the 'host'. Parasitic twins arise when identical twins fail to separate. It is unclear why this occurs, but may be due to a restricted blood supply during pregnancy, which leads to the death and partial absorption of one of the twins. The condition occurs in around one in a million live births. Source: Live Science Advertisement 'Relatives were planning to kill the baby' Mr Danda said: I was very shocked when I heard these relatives, who seem extremely orthodox and superstitious, were planning to kill the baby by throwing him into the river. I couldnt sit back and do nothing. When they arrived I was upset to see the condition of the child. We did an initial diagnosis and gave him immediate treatment but the child was critical so we referred him to a better hospital. The boy was taken to the government hospital SMS Medical Institute and Hospital, in Jaipur, around 450 km from Pindwara. A team of four doctors successfully operated and removed the baby's parasitic twin. Being born with a parasitic twin gave the baby a total of four legs, three hands and two penises A nearby surgeon heard the news and offered to perform surgery to remove the limbs for free Four doctors successfully performed the operation for the second time in three months The baby is said to be recovering well but is still being checked over by doctors The child had four legs, three hands and two penises' Dr Parveen Mathur, senior professor and head of the pediatric department, who carried out the surgery, said: The child had four legs, three hands and two penises. 'The upper limb of the parasitic twin was underdeveloped. Even though he was internally fine, his condition was problematic due to the attached extra limbs and genitals. We have now removed the extra limbs and intestines that were restricted to the parasitic twin. The boy is currently doing fine but we will continue to keep him under observation for at least a week. The hospital had conducted similar surgery just three months earlier. Dr Parveen said: It feels good that both surgeries have been successful. Most people would rather die than live a long life thought to be a pedophile, a new psychology study reveals. Experts say the survey by researchers in Florida, North Carolina, and Australia emphasize how strongly humans care about their reputation. And they claim it could shed light on why online bullying can drive young people to depression, suicidal thoughts, or even to take their own life. The study, published this week, comes amid a major push to curb young suicide, as figures from the CDC reveal rates have doubled among teenage girls since 2007. Experts say the study by researchers in Florida, North Carolina, and Australia emphasize how strongly we care about reputation, and shed light on why online bullying can be so dangerous To investigate our attachment to reputation, the team from Florida State University, the University of North Carolina and the University of Queensland first looked at conundrums in four prior studies that examined pride. They found many examples that showed people would suffer gruesome and painful consequences to preserve their pride, honor and reputation. For example, when asked if they had to choose between having a swastika tattooed on their forehead or having their hand cut off. Most people chose to sacrifice a hand. Others were presented with the choice of living a long life as a known pedophile or being put to death right away. Most preferred death. The team then carried out their own survey. They gave volunteers fake tests designed to uncover hidden racism. They then told the volunteers they had said racist comments, and threatened to make the results public. However, they said, the participants could do something instead, to prevent the results being published. The options included putting their hand in a bucket of worms. Nearly a third chose to go with the worms or other equally gruesome options. The researchers said their findings show that people very strongly value their reputations and are likely to go to extremes to protect their honor. They concluded that the findings show how smearing somebody online is a very serious offense, and can quite easily drive a person to suicide. The researchers claim the study could shed light on why online bullying can drive young people to depression, suicidal thoughts, or even to take their own life. It comes amid a major push to curb young suicide, as figures (pictured) from the CDC reveal rates have doubled among teenage girls since 2007 This year, figures revealed depression rates have never been higher among teenage girls, and suicide rates are also going up. There were 1.5 million more suicide-related searches than expected during the 19 days following the series' release, according to a recent report by public health researchers at San Diego State University. The researchers said they believe this increase was triggered by the show 13 Reasons Why. The show, which debuted on March 31, was heavily criticized for 'glamorizing' suicide. In the final scene, the 17-year-old protagonist Hannah kills herself in a graphic scene in a bathtub. While the show's writers insist they aimed to raise awareness about mental illness, experts warn internet searches about suicide have become more practical than informative. WHAT IT MEANS WHEN A MAN FALLS FROM THE SKY by Lesley Nneka Arimah WHAT IT MEANS WHEN A MAN FALLS FROM THE SKY by Lesley Nneka Arimah (Tinder Press 14.99) This dazzling collection of sly, subversive stories, set in Nigeria and America, features headstrong, complicated, contrary heroines who venture into an unyielding world with yearning hearts, ready to face down the most intractable situations come what may. In the opening story, The Future Looks Good, Ezinma fumbles with a door key and doesnt see what came behind her a domino-fall of connected memories that leads to disaster. In Light, a father cherishes his fierce, funny daughter she is his brightest ember and he would not have her dimmed not quite realising that life, alongside her far more conventional mother, will do its level best to wick the dew off her. Brilliant. THE WORLD TO COME by Jim Shepard THE WORLD TO COME by Jim Shepard (Riverrun 16.99) In ten meticulously researched stories, Shepard elegantly places the emotional dilemmas of morose, melancholy, misunderstood characters against backdrops that emphasise the vastness of the world and the smallness of their hopes and dreams. In HMS Terror, a gloomy young man whos been unlucky in love heads to the frozen North and endures bad weather, no food and inexorable physical decline no-one has retained any vitality, so we accomplish what little we can very slowly, as if miming our own actions. Cretan Love Song a wonderful snippet of a story heads to 1600 BC, where a tsunami and a dying mans hopeless wish race towards a waiting woman, while in Telemachus, the weight of the ocean adds to the haze of inertia that engulfs a hapless submariner in World War II. THAT WAS A SHIVER by James Kelman THAT WAS A SHIVER by James Kelman (Canongate 14.99) In his ninth volume of short stories, Booker Prize-winner James Kelman pitches us into the restless, roving minds of a series of characters who are bamboozled by the world and the people who live in it, including themselves. There isnt much in the way of plot instead, Kelman tracks the thoughts of a trucker who revisits a familiar town, a father who heads next-door to confront the neighbours about noise thats keeping his children awake, and a man who buys a record thats in the wrong sleeve and then loses his temper at a stall selling dinner sets. Bus journeys, creative writing classes, the unexpected discovery of a bottle of strong cider in a ditch all lead to interior dialogues, recited in a brilliantly realised Scottish vernacular, in which the narrator describes what he sees and feels. A disorderly progression of impression and imprecation that is beguiling or bewildering. SUCH SMALL HANDS by Andres Barba SUCH SMALL HANDS by Andres Barba (Portobello 9.99) This brilliantly realised and sustained Spanish tale may have been inspired by actual events, specifically the grotesque murder in a Brazilian orphanage of a young girl by her peers. What is beyond doubt, however, is its ability to creep deep beneath the skin. Marina is seven when her parents are killed in a car crash. Sent to an orphanage, her presence arouses fascination, hostility and tenderness among the occupants, who narrate sections of the novel Greek-chorus style. She is dwarfed by emotions she lacks the language to express, but what she does possess is a formidable power to bend the other girls to her will. As fantasy seeps chillingly into reality, Barba repeatedly creates images that have the authentic strangeness of childhood imaginings: the gill-like mouths of sleeping children; the ancient, mask-like faces of caterpillars. It is an eerie, uncanny world, but then, as the novelist Edmund White observes in a glowing afterword: If we could suddenly enter the consciousness of a child, we would understand nothing. THE LOCALS by Jonathan Dee THE LOCALS by Jonathan Dee (Corsair 14.99) Dees slick, Franzen-esque novels have enjoyed greater success in his native America than on this side of the pond his 2010 saga The Privileges was a Pulitzer Prize nominee. The Locals is unlikely to prove Dees British breakthrough, however. Opening in Manhattan immediately after 9/11, there are suggestions of an American Psycho-type thriller as would-be entrepreneur Mark Firth is thrown into the orbit of a bona fide sociopath. This, though, turns out to be a red herring the latter disappears having performed the function of introducing Dees main concerns. Self-interest versus the greater good, austerity, the American Dream and the abuse of democracy all are themes played out here as we follow Firth back to his small New England town, whose community is the real focus. But while The Locals is big on timely issues, and Dees satirical jabs are sharp, its plot struggles across its five acts. And, as the focus slides from character to character, none of whom is quite developed enough, staying engaged is a challenge. SEEING RED by Lina Meruane SEEING RED by Lina Meruane (Atlantic 12.99) If youre at all squeamish, then youll want to give this one a miss. In the opening scene, narrator Lucinas eyes fill with blood, rendering her largely sightless. Lucina whose biography and medical condition overlap with her creators is a Chilean writer living in Manhattan. Over the course of 60-odd chapters she travels to her family in Santiago and back, and undergoes a gruesome operation. Among the many striking things about this relentlessly visceral novel is that, though little ostensibly happens, theres an inescapable, nerve-jangling sense that anything might. With her remaining senses and graphic imagination working overtime to fill the void, and the threat-filled physical world bearing down upon her, Lucinas narrative has a density and oppressive insistency that puts us vividly in her shoes. Yet she is anything but a victim, despite her almost total reliance on others. Defiantly discomforting, and highly impressive. WHEN IN FRENCH by Lauren Collins (4th Estate 8.99) WHEN IN FRENCH by Lauren Collins (4th Estate 8.99) If YOU marry a Frenchman and speak only English, you have a problem. If you then move to Switzerland, where there are four official languages German, French, Italian and Romansh you have a bigger problem. When the American journalist Lauren Collins met her future husband, Olivier, at a party in London, it was probably the first time I had ever spoken more than a few words to a French person. Fortunately, Olivier spoke excellent English and their courtship flourished. Still, she admits: I knew that a membrane, however delicate, would separate me from my family . . . Her foreboding was confirmed one morning when Olivier said sadly: Talking to you in English is like touching you with gloves. Tender, witty and intelligent, this account of learning to love in a foreign language rises effortlessly above the ordinary run of expatriate memoirs. ARE WE SMART ENOUGH TO KNOW HOW SMART ANIMALS ARE? by Frans de Waal (Granta 9.99) ARE WE SMART ENOUGH TO KNOW HOW SMART ANIMALS ARE? by Frans de Waal (Granta 9.99) We all know that animals greet their fellow creatures, often very enthusiastically: the internet is awash with tear-jerking videos of dogs hysterical with joy at the return of their soldier owners from a tour of duty. But what about saying goodbye? For humans, a farewell is heart-wrenching because we know that it marks a period of absence. Have animals the ability to envisage a future separation? In his elegant and persuasive study of animal intelligence, Frans de Waal argues that animals are capable of many behaviours once considered exclusively human. For much of the past century, science was reluctant to attribute intentions and emotions to animals. But now scientific opinion has changed: Nothing is off-limits any more, not even the rationality that was once considered humanitys trademark. BERYL BAINBRIDGE by Brendan King (Bloomsbury 10.99) BERYL BAINBRIDGE by Brendan King (Bloomsbury 10.99) All novelists fabricate things, that is their job. So it is strange that Brendan King who worked as Beryl Bainbridges assistant for 23 years until her death in 2010 should begin his biography of the writer with a plaintive account of her inveterate habit of making up things about her own life. She was born in 1932, not 1934. She didnt, as she claimed, meet the great pianist Paderewski in Stockport in 1945. He died in 1941. Her habit of embroidering her anecdotes may have made his role as her biographer harder, but affection and enthusiasm for the truth shine from every page. There is more emphasis on Beryls notably rackety personal life than her writing, and her whisky-soaked final years make melancholy reading. But one ends the book filled with admiration for Beryls astonishing resilience, as well as her talent. LEGENDARY AUTHORS AND THE CLOTHES THEY WORE by Terry Newman (Harper Design 20) I must remember to write about my clothes the next time I have an impulse to write, the novelist Virginia Woolf noted in her diary. My love of clothes interests me profoundly: only it is not love; & [sic] what it is I must discover. The popular image of a writer is of someone reluctant to waste intellectual effort on the trivia of fashion. But fashion journalist Terry Newman argues: Strands of fashion run through literature, both in the words writers put on the page and in the clothes they put on their backs. The 1968 memoir The Naked Civil Servant, by Quentin Crisp (pictured), recorded his courageous use of clothing and make-up to make a statement in the days when homosexuality was illegal in Britain The 30 stylish authors featured in Newmans book fall into three categories. Firstly are those whose appearance is inseparable from their work. The 1968 memoir The Naked Civil Servant, by Quentin Crisp, recorded his courageous use of clothing and make-up to make a statement in the days when homosexuality was illegal in Britain. Novelist and journalist Tom Wolfe coined the phrase radical chic and praised the secret vice of sartorial elegance, while Oscar Wildes glittering wit was matched by his extravagant turn-out in 1882, a New York Times interviewer found him dressed in a low-necked white shirt, with a turn-down collar of extraordinary size . . . a turban was perched on his head. He wore pantaloons . . . and patent leather shoes. Secondly are writers for whom clothes have intense intellectual and emotional resonance. Nancy Mitford gave her heroine, Linda Radlett, one of the most exquisite garments in all fiction, a ravishing ball-dress made of masses of pale grey tulle down to her feet. Mitford wore Parisian haute couture, and is pictured in the book, aged 66, looking formidably elegant in a chic mini-kilt, white woollen tights and black patent ballerina pumps. LEGENDARY AUTHORS AND THE CLOTHES THEY WORE by Terry Newman (Harper Design 20) Lastly, there is a group of writers on whom stylishness has been projected by others. Samuel Beckett, James Joyce and poet Arthur Rimbaud would be astounded (and probably appalled) to find themselves included in a book of literary style icons, but in each case a powerful sense of self informed their appearance as well as their work. Reading is fashionable, Newman writes, citing catwalk collections inspired by authors and books sold in fashion stores, and her volume is an elegant chronicle of the collision of two creative disciplines. She is evidently more at ease with the fashion aspects than the literary, but this is nevertheless an intriguing account of the idiosyncratic relationship of writers with their wardrobes. Karnataka is no stranger to the workings of blood brothers in politics. Be it Janardhan Reddy and his brothers, or now D K Shivakumar (DKS) and his brother, the common link between them all is a meteoric rise in both wealth and political clout. D K Shivakumar is a six-time MLA and current Energy minister who has always been known as the Man Friday (faithful aide) of the Congress. From Sathanur to Kanakapura, Shivakumar has previously faced corruption charges, be it illegal granite mining, disproportionate assets, forgery, cheating, impersonation or criminal conspiracy. Shivakumar - the trusted soldier of the high command has been in news once again after I-T sleuths raided his residences and offices in Bengaluru, Mysuru, Delhi and Hassan. Karnataka Energy minister D K Shivakumar at his residence in Bengaluru on Wednesday Over the years he has been linked to several cases of illegal mining and transporting granite illegally, and improper land distribution. Notices were issued in 2015 to Shivakumar and his family by the Karnataka High Court for illegal mining in Kanakapura and Ramanagaram districts of Karnataka. However this time the I-T department conducted searches at 64 locations and properties linked to Shivakumar in a tax evasion case. Security and media outside Karnataka Energy minister D K Shivakumar's residence in Bengaluru But who is DK Shivakumar? Known as the 'Tiger of Sathanur', he was born in Karnataka's Kanakapura, a village on the outskirts of Bengaluru. He joined politics when he was studying at RC College in Bengaluru. He later joined Youth Congress and was elected as general secretary of the state Youth Congress between 1983-85. Shivakumar contested against former Prime Minister HD Deve Gowda (pictured) for the Sathanur Assembly seat on a Congress ticket Shivakumar's rapid rise as a trustworthy political warhorse began in 1999 when he was urban minister in the SM Krishna government, but his most dramatic win has been the 2013 elections when he pulled 1,00,007 votes against veteran PGR Sindhia of the JD(S), who received 68,583 votes. The area around Kanakapura and the Lok Sabha contituency of Ramanagaram is largely a JD(S) bastion. Congress raids But it all started in 1985 when he first contested against former Prime Minister HD Deve Gowda for the Sathanur Assembly seat on a Congress ticket. Shivakumar lost the election, but Deve Gowda deserted the seat as he had also won from Holenarsipura. DKS won the by-election. But DKS fought another losing battle against Deve Gowda in Kanakapura in the 1989 Lok Sabha elections. He faced defeat again by the junior Gowda, HD Kumaraswamy, in 1994 when he contested Sathanur. Thereafter, he slowly gained control of rural Bengaluru. DKS got his brother DK Suresh elected from Bangalore rural Lok Sabha seat. olice and IT sleuths check the bag of a mechanic at the residence of Karnataka Minister DK Shivakumar He has several investments in cooperative banks, educational institutions, agricultural lands and flats in Mysuru, Mumbai, Kanakapura, Bangalore and Delhi. Today, he is one of the richest politicians of the party with a declared wealth of Rs 251 crore as mentioned in his election affidavit in 2013. Shivakumar also topped this list with liabilities of Rs 105 crore. There is a number of cases where has been booked under Prevention of Corruption Act. The film Tunnel War [Photo/Mtime] In China, there is a type of film called "red movie" which center on moving stories and valiant efforts of Chinese military men. Red movies are a significant memory for a certain generation of Chinese people and some of the productions had huge social influence. As China celebrates the 90th anniversary of the PLA's establishment, let's review some iconic classic red movies. 1. Tunnel War Release year: 1965 Producer: August First Film Studio Plot: The movie focuses on villagers from a small town defending themselves from Japanese invaders using a network of tunnels during the War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression (1937-45). Social position: It is considered to be one of the first movies to discuss the use of tunnels in war. Former president Pranab Mukherjee has shared a letter he received from Prime Minister Narendra Modi before leaving the Rashtrapati Bhavan. Pranab Mukherjee posted the letter on his Twitter account, and said how the kind words from the Prime Minister touched his heart. In the letter, Narendra Modi expreseed his gratitute to Pranab Mukherjee for being a 'father figure' and a 'mentor'. 'Your intellectual prowess has constantly helped my government and me,' the Prime Minister wrote. Prime Minister Narendra Modi (left) greets President Pranab Mukherjee Narendra Modi said despite belonging to different parties and at times having possessed different ideologies, it was because of the strength of Mukherjee's intellect and wisdom that they were able to work together with synergy. 'During your political journey and your presidency, you placed the wellbeing of the nation over everything else... You belong to a generation of leaders for whom politics was simply a means to selflessly give back to society,' Modi wrote in the farewell letter to Mukherjee. Hailing Pranab Mukherjee as an inspiration for people, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said, 'India will always be proud of you, a President who was a humble public servant and an exceptional leader.' The BJP leader praised the Congress veteran and former president for opening the Rashtrapati Bhavan to initiatives and programmes that recognised innovation and the talent of India's youth. As Pranab Mukherjee shared the letter, Narendra Modi was quick to reply reply: 'Pranab Da, I will always cherish working with you.' BJP national president Amit Shah, praised the gesture Meanwhile, BJP national president Amit Shah, praising the gesture said Modi's letter to Mukherjee on his last day as the president and his affectionate reply were instances of highest values in public life set by two men coming from different ideologies. 'At a time when bitterness in politics is on the rise, Modi's letter is an example of a mindset based on ideal public values and great traditions,' Shah told at a press conference in Rohtak. 'This is also ideal for the country's politics,' Shah said, adding 'Modi's intimate letter and Mukherjee's affectionate reply spelt out the bond between the two leaders drawn from different political ideologies. 'When two figures occupying high constitutional posts give each other respect as mandated by the Constitution, then the prestige of both the posts is enhanced.' The BJP chief continued: 'Modiji is emotional by nature. The way he praised Mukherjee in the letter, I believe he has set an example regarding the kind of respect a Prime Minister should have for a President.' Shah further revealed that Mukherjee was never associated with BJP, but when the BJP government was formed, neither the Prime Minister felt that Pranab belonged to a different ideology and nor did Mukherjee feel that the newly formed government was of some other party. The BJP national president had arrived in Rohtak on Tuesday on a three-day visit. With an eye on the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, he is on a countrywide tour to strategise and find ways to strengthen the party at the grassroots level. Central security agencies are now following the money trail left by separatist leaders allegedly involved in pumping money from Pakistan-based terror outfits to fuel violence in Kashmir. Around 80 properties in the Valley and national Capital are under scanner which are either owned directly or through relative and associates this includes malls, shopping complex, flats in Delhi, orchards, schools and bungalows. Hectic grilling The revelation came during the search and interrogation of eight arrested separatist leaders in connection with the terror funding case by the National Investigating Agency (NIA). Central security agencies are now following the money trail left by separatist leaders Documents seized by the team show that separatist leaders have amassed huge wealth and properties in Kashmir and Delhi worth several crore. According to the investigators, separatist leaders are suspected to be involved in routing money from their handlers in Pakistan to keep the Valley burning. They have been misguiding locals and exploited their sentiments but they themselves have raised castles. Separatist leader Shabir Shah (left) arrested for funding terror produced at Patiala Court in New Delhi on Wednesday 'Most of the properties belonging to separatist leaders are being owned by their associates or relatives. 'Even they will be called for questioning and will be grilled about their source of income. Most of them have no major business to purchase these properties,' said a senior officer to Mail Today. He added that if they fail to disclose their channel of income their property can be attached. Probes show Kashmiri separatist leaders had made huge wealth during last two and a half decades since the time Kashmir is facing Pakistan-sponsored militancy. The NIA is scanning close to 80 assets belonging to separatists, both on their own or kin's names and benami, which included malls, shopping complex, flats in Delhi, huge land, orchards, schools, bungalows, limestone and gypsum quarries, hotels and stakes in housing colonies. NIA so far has arrested eight separatist leaders - Hurriyat chief Syed Ali Shah, Geelani's son-in-law Altaf Ahmed Shah 'Funtoosh', Ayaz Akbar Khanday, Mehrajuddin Kalwal, Peer Saifullah (all from Geelani's faction of Hurriyat), Shahidul-Islam (of the faction led by Mirwaiz Umar Farooq), Nayeem Khan of the Jammu Kashmir National Front, Farooq Ahmed Dar aka Bitta Karatey of J&K Liberation Front (R) and Devinder Singh Behal. Villagers have increasingly protected the rebels by hurling rocks, and abuse, at Indian troops when they enter their areas. At least five civilians have been killed by government forces during such clashes this year The NIA had registered the case on May 30, accusing separatist and scessionist leaders of being in cahoots with terrorist groups. The case was registered over raising, receiving and collecting funds through various illegal means, including through hawala channels, for funding separatist and terrorist activities in the state and for causing disruption in the Valley by pelting security forces with stones, burning schools, damaging public property and waging war against India. Stone-pelting For last one and a half months, the NIA has been investigating communication records, which have revealed the links of the seven separatist leaders with around four dozen J&K youth tracked repeatedly amid stone-pelting mobs over the past year. Some telephonic conversations tapped showed connections with stone-pelters, who were in touch with Hurriyat leaders, who are allegedly connected to top separatists in J&K. The records also revealed a pattern that separatist leaders were passing money to local Hurriyat leaders who would pay the youth to pelt stones and unleash mob violence. Cyber nationalists from India and Pakistan are spoiling for a fight, after an anonymous hacker from India defaced the Pakistan government website just weeks before the two countries' independence days. Experts predict the attack on a Pakistani government website is bound to activate hackers from both the countries to try and breach each other's cyber space and over thousands of websites from both the countries face high risk of being hacked. An Indian hacker changed the Pakistani website by posting Indian national anthem and Independence Day greetings on its wall. The hacker posted Ashoka Chakra in Tricolour, along with Indian Independence Day message. Another message posted on the website read, 'Freedom in the Mind, Faith in the wordsPride in our SoulsLet's salute those great men, who made this possible.' The message was followed by the Indian national anthem. Even though the website was quickly restored by the Pakistan's IT team, the move was claimed as a 'victory' by Indian cyber nationalists. Pakistan's foreign office in Islamabad has not reacted to the incident. Experts say that August draws the maximum hacking of websites in the south Asia as techies from both the countries put their skills and nationalistic fervour to test by hacking each other's websites. The activity is usually limited to one month alone but this year, the India hacker may have riled Pakistani cyber experts by hacking one of the biggest government websites. An Indian hacker changed the Pakistani website by posting the Indian national anthem and an Independence Day greetings on its wall Action reaction A response in equal measure is expected soon where, observers say, Pakistani hackers will try to target prominent and sensitive Indian government websites. In the past, state police websites have been defaced by Pakistani hackers where they posted anti-India comments with an image of the Pakistan flag. 'In almost ritualistic attacks, every year underground hacking communities from both the countries launch cyber attacks on each other, ahead of August 14 and 15, the Pakistani and Indian independence days respectively,' said Kislay Choudhary, director of Indian Cyber Army. Choudhary said as Indian hackers have attacked where it hurts the most by taking their most prominent government website, Pakistani hackers will respond in kind by targeting Indian government portals, possibly where Indian take much pride. 'Elsewhere, attackers may try to steal data or acquire complete control over the infected network. But in the case of India and Pakistan, it's more a display of power and skills. 'Most of these hackers are school and college students,' said another cyber expert. This is not the first time when such an incident has taken place in Pakistan. India's digital warriors had crippled 30 Pakistan government websites earlier this year in virtual surgical strikes as protest against the neighbouring country's announcement of death penalty to former Navy officer Kulbhushan Jadhav. Indian and Pakistani hackers also fought pitched battles in cyber space after last September's terrorist attack on a military camp in Jammu and Kashmir's Uri sector. An entire Pennsylvania town was evacuated after a freight train carrying hazardous materials careened off the tracks and caught fire on Wednesday. Residents from the small town of Hyndman were told to leave their homes after 32 CSX cars carrying liquid petroleum gas and molten sulfur derailed around 5am. At least one of the dozens of cars leaked and caught fire, prompting 900 people to evacuate the town located about 100 miles southeast of Pittsburgh. It is not immediately known what caused the train to run off the rails but the fire continued to burn hours later, including at a nearby residential garage. Scroll down for video Residents of the small town Hyndman were evacuated after a CSX freight train carrying hazardous materials careened off the tracks and caught fire on Wednesday morning At least two cars carrying liquid petroleum gas and molten sulfur leaked, causing a fire Aerial footage of the derailment shows a number of cars stacked nearly perpendicular to the tracks while others landed in a burning, zig-zag pattern in a residential area where some structures seemed crushed and other ablaze The only confirmed structure fire was at the garage, but video from the scene seems to show more extensive damage. No injuries were reported, said CSX spokesman Rob Doolittle. The train was traveling from Chicago to Selkirk, New York. At least one car containing liquid petroleum gas and one containing molten sulfur leaked and caught fire, including the residential garage struck during the derailment, Doolittle said. Aerial footage of the derailment shows a number of cars stacked nearly perpendicular to the tracks while others landed in a burning, zig-zag pattern in a residential area where some structures seemed crushed and other ablaze. Hyndman resident Jim Shaffer told the (Cumberland) Times-News he was awakened by the sound of crashing rail cars. 'It woke me up. It was louder than a thunderstorm,' he said. 'I heard the cars banging into each other. Then I heard the fire whistle.' It is not immediately known what caused the train to run off the rails, and the fire continued to burn hours later, including at a nearby residential garage The only confirmed structure fire was at the garage, but video from the scene seems to show more extensive damage. No injuries were reported The train was traveling from Chicago to Selkirk, New York. Around 900 people were told to evacuate the town, which is located about 100 miles southeast of Pittsburgh Bedford County 911 coordinator Harry Corley said officials ordered everyone within a one-mile radius of the derailment to leave hours after the derailment. The order encompasses the entire town of Hyndman, and residents have been directed to two local churches for help with lodging and food. In a statement Wednesday night, CSX said it was unclear how long the residents would be evacuated or how long cleanup would take. Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf, in a phone interview from an evacuation center several miles away from the train, said some neighbors have refused to leave their homes. 'But everyone knows where they are and they're safe at this point,' Wolf said Wednesday afternoon. Only a few people were in the churches, as most evacuees chose to go to hotels or the homes of friends or relatives, he said. Emergency officials and CSX personnel gather near the site of a freight train derailment on Wednesday Bedford County 911 coordinator Harry Corley said officials ordered everyone within a one-mile radius of the derailment to leave hours after the derailment Wolf said officials were conducting air and ground studies to determine possible health effects. He said area residents have 'a lot of uncertainty and everyone's hoping for the best, praying for the best.' Asked about the risk of a propane explosion, Wolf said, 'There's always that possibility. I think, from what I hear, the potential of that happening has diminished somewhat.' A number of roads are closed, and some flight restrictions are in place. Federal investigators arrived at the scene late Wednesday afternoon but weren't able to assess the situation because the fires were still burning Wolf said officials were conducting air and ground studies to determine possible health effects and the possibility of a propane explosion Federal investigators arrived at the scene late Wednesday afternoon but weren't able to assess the situation because the fires were still burning. The National Transportation Safety Board spokesman Terry Williams said he expects them to get a better sense of the scene by Thursday. Amtrak suspended train service between Pittsburgh and Washington, D.C., providing buses to take passengers between the two stations. 'CSX apologizes for the impact that this incident is having on the residents of Hyndman,' Doolittle said. Hyndman is a town of just around 875 residents near the Maryland border. 'CSX's top priority is to work cooperatively with first responders and other officials to protect the public's safety, and CSX personnel are on the scene assisting first responders, providing information about the contents of the train and expertise on responding to railroad incidents,' Doolittle said. Mary Kay Letourneau is still living with husband Vili Fualaau months after they declared their marriage over, DailyMail.com can reveal. The former couple - who separated on May 9 after 12 years of marriage continue to share a rented apartment in Des Moines, Washington. DailyMail.com observed both Letourneau, 55, and Fualaau, 33, coming and going from the four-bedroom unit over a number of days. The living arrangement has led to speculation that the split is a 'sham' designed to allow Fualaau to become a legal marijuana distributor. Is it over? Mary Kay Letourneau, 55, and Vili Fualaau, 33, announced their separation on May 9, after 12 years of marriage, but the couple continue living together in their rented apartment in Washington Stressed: The 55-year-old was recently pictured wearing a black strapless sun dress appearing emotional as she gesticulated while on the phone. They have denied the divorce is a sham and claim they are living together because neither can afford to live on their own Marital troubles: Letourneau and Fualaau have seemed to have suffered financial strains during their marriage as the father-of-two was hit with a string of judgments over unpaid bills Mary Kay also did her bit to add extra strain to the relationship with a string of driving violations including driving with a suspended license in 2013 Hot for teacher: The two generated international headlines after it was revealed then-34-year-old Letourneau was sleeping with her 12-year-old student in 1996 It would be the latest twist in the extraordinary relationship between the two which started when he was 12, and she was his 34-year-old grade school teacher. After the announcement of the separation, Radar Online reported that Fualaau had said he still loves Letourneau, but that being married to a registered sex offender meant it was difficult to get a license to distribute marijuana, which is legal in Washington. Fualaau had aspirations to start a new marijuana business selling 'Cigaweed' cigarettes, the report claimed. 'Its not necessarily what you think,' he was quoted as saying. 'When you want to get licensed, they do background checks on both parties. If I decide to be a part of it, I have to be licensed, and I have to be vetted, and so does a spouse. She has a past. She has a history.' But Fualaau, through a lawyer representing him, is now denying that claim. Attorney Whitney Gardner told DailyMail.com that Fualaau never gave an interview and says the separation is genuine. Additionally Fualaau has used Facebook to post several shots of him spending time with his daughters solo. Gardner insists the pair still live together simply because neither can afford to pay rent on their own in Des Moines where they live. Rent on their current four-bed, one bath 1550 sq ft apartment is estimated at $2,200 a month on real estate site Zillow.com. On his own: Fualaau was seen getting a haircut at Salon Timmy in Des Moines, while Letourneau was spotted collecting mail outside their apartment and going to a neighbor's house The 33-year-old works at a Lowes Home Improvement store near Seattle and is a part time DJ, it is believed the pair have low income Newer two-bedroom apartments in Des Moines, King County average at around $2500-$3,000 a month, while a studio is around $1500 a month. Fualaau works at a Lowes Home Improvement store near Seattle and is a part time DJ, while Letourneau at one point worked as a legal assistant, meaning the pair have a low income. Gardner told DailyMail.com: 'Have you ever tried to rent a place in King County? It's expensive. 'They both just want to do the adult thing and do what is best for their family.' Ms Gardner said the pair is 'amicable' and say they will go their separate ways eventually. On claims Fualaau is setting up a marijuana business, she added: 'If you do your due diligence Vili has not filed to register a new business and he's not applied to get a marijuana license through the Liquor and Cannabis Board.' That hardly rules out the possibility of Fualaau doing so in the future, however. Family time: Fualaau, pictured with his two daughters, Audrey (center) 20, and Georgia (left) 18, is still living with his estranged wife because they want to do what is 'best for their family' his lawyer claims Solo: The father of two, has been sharing photos of only him and his two daughters on Facebook Happier times: The couple's children joined them during Fualaau and Letourneau's interview with Barbara Walters on their 10th wedding anniversary in 2015 To most people, living under the same roof as your estranged spouse will seem a little odd - especially as their daughters are now adults, Audrey, 20, and Georgia, 18 both of them born when their father was underage. Fualaau stated in court papers that the two children are no longer dependent. DailyMail.com witnessed Letourneau leaving the apartment to attend a party at a nearby park with one of her daughters. Fualaau was not with them, deciding to head elsewhere. Earlier Fualaau was seen getting a haircut at Salon Timmy in Des Moines, while Letourneau was spotted collecting mail outside their apartment and going to a neighbor's house. The pressure of her current circumstances seems to weigh heavy on the former school teacher who was recently seen on her cell phone deep in conversation. Troubled teacher tempts teen: Letourneau got pregnant with their first daughter Audrey in 1997 when Fualaau was just 13, and gave birth (left) shortly before pleading guilty to second-degree child rape. She was resentenced to seven years in 1998 after she was found having sex with Fualaau in her car Wearing a black strapless sun dress, Letourneau appeared emotional and stressed as she gesticulated while on the phone. While Letourneau may not be able to afford to move out of the property, it seems money troubles have been a long running issue for the couple. DailyMail.com revealed exclusively after their separation announcement that their marriage was beset with money problems, unpaid bills, debt collections, and scrapes with the law. The many issues in their personal lives will have added extra strain on the marriage. While Fualaau was hit with a string of judgments over unpaid bills, his wife also did her bit to add extra strain to the relationship with a string of driving violations including driving with a suspended license in 2013. MARY KAY AND VILI'S ILLICT LOVE AFFAIR 1996: Vili Fualaau, aged 12, is a student in 34-year-old Mary Kay Letourneau's class Summer 1996: Letourneau and Fualaau begin their sexual relationship March 1997: Letourneau is arrested while pregnant with Fualaau's first child May 1997: She gives birth to their first daughter, Audrey August 1997: Letourneau pleads guilty to second-degree child rape and is sentenced to six months in prison February 1998: Two weeks after her release, she is found having sex with Fualaau in her car - and is impregnated a second time. She is arrested and sentenced to seven years in prison October 1998: Letourneau gives birth to their second daughter, Georgia, while serving jail time August 2004: She is released from prison May 2005: Letourneau and Fualaau, then-age 21, get married May 2017: The couple announce their split Advertisement Her license had been suspended for failure to appear in court and a string of unpaid tickets for speeding and other traffic violations. She was forced to pay $5,000 to a bail bondsman to be released from jail. Letourneau was jailed in 1997 for seven years for second-degree child rape after admitting to having a sexual relationship with her then-12-year-old student Vili - a story that generated worldwide headlines. Fualaau was in Letourneau's second grade class in Seattle, but the teacher did not begin to have a sexual relationship with her student until four years later when he was 12. Letourneau, then 34, was fired from her job, got a divorce from her first husband, lost custody of her four children and was sent to prison. But the media attention and jail sentence did not stop her from marrying her younger lover shortly after her release in 2004. She gave birth to the couple's first child while out on bail that year, and their second while in prison. These days, Fualaau works at a branch of Lowes Home Improvement in Seattle, although he did post a message on Facebook suggesting he is planning a change. 'I might need a new job, hit me up,' he wrote. Letourneau was employed as a legal assistant, unable to teach due to her status as a sex offender, but it's not clear whether she is still working as one. Her sex offender status has been downgraded from Level 2 to Level 1 meaning her name no longer appears on a state-wide sex offenders register. Fualaau has also been working to get a DJ career up and running, spinning at a local bar on weeknights under the name DJ Headline. He and his estranged wife in the past hosted Hot for Teacher nights at a local bar although those are now defunct. Both Letourneau and Fualaau have declined a request for comment, with Fualaau's attorney saying they have requested 'privacy' until the legal case has concluded. A childhood friend of the Duchess of Cambridge has died after a three-year battle against a brain tumour in which she suffered 'the utmost pain, distress and loss of dignity', MailOnline can reveal. Isobel Kennerley, who was a member of Kate's Brownie pack and went on a pack holiday with Kate and her sister Pippa - succumbed to the disease in May at the age of 34. Now her mother Christine Eeley, who lives in Newbury, is calling for a change in the law to enable terminally-ill and mentally competent people to be able to 'control the manner and the timing' of their deaths. The 65-year-old mother-of-two, who was left 'traumatised' by her daughter's 'horrific' death, is supporting retired lecturer Noel Conway, 67, who has Motor Neurone Disease, in his High Court battle for a 'dignified death'. A verdict is expected in the autumn. Speaking to MailOnline, she said: 'Isobel became trapped in her body, as Noel Conway fears he will. She couldn't move a muscle, couldn't eat and couldn't speak at the end. Isobel Kennerley (top left) who was a member of Kate's Brownie pack (top middle) has died after a three-year battle against a brain tumour in which she suffered 'the utmost pain, distress and loss of dignity', MailOnline can reveal Isobel Kennerley, who was a member of Kate's Brownie pack and went on a pack holiday with Kate and her sister Pippa - succumbed to the disease in May at the age of 34. Pictured on her wedding day in 2010 with husband Scott Kennerley Kate (pictured back row, second from left), Pippa (front row centre with her hair tied back and hands on knees) and Isobel (middle row, far left) were all in the same Brownie pack in 1990 and went on a pack holiday to Macaroni Wood the following year Isobel, pictured during her fight against an incurable brain tumour. Her mother Christine Eeley is now calling for a change in the law to enable terminally-ill people to be able to 'control the manner and the timing' of their deaths 'She was bedridden for so long that she developed huge hideous, stinking bedsores on her back and buttocks. 'She cried out endlessly in pain and when she was able to mumble a few words, begged her husband and me every single day to help her to die.' Isobel, who had cerebral palsy, met Kate and her sister Pippa, in 1990, when they joined the 1st St Andrew's pack of Brownies. She was in Kate's six and joined the sisters on a pack holiday in Easter 1991. The trio slept in camp bunk beds in old RAF buildings, set in 17 acres at Macaroni Wood, in the Cotswolds, where they fed chickens, collected eggs, watched chicks hatch, bottle-fed lambs and kid goats and went for horse-and-cart rides. 'I really enjoyed it,' Isobel said afterwards. 'Everyone was really kind to me because I have a disability. 'I remember going to Brownie camp at Macaroni Wood and coming back to find an owl at the end of my bed. I don't remember what I did to deserve it but I remember feeling really pleased.' After Brownies, Kate and Isobel's paths diverged as the two girls went to different schools: while Kate went to the private prep school St Andrew's, in Pangbourne, and public school Marlborough, Isobel was a pupil at Engelfield Primary School and Newbury's St Gabriel's and Park House. Isobel (third from right) who had cerebral palsy met Kate (back row, five from right) and her sister Pippa (fourth from left, standing up) in 1990 when they joined the 1st St Andrew's pack of Brownies. She was in Kate's six and joined the sisters on a pack holiday in Easter 1991 Kate, pictured above, slept in a camp bunk bed in old RAF buildings, set in 17 acres at Macaroni Wood, in the Cotswolds, where she fed chickens, collected eggs and watched chicks hatch Isobel had fond memories of the Brownie holiday with Kate (right), recalling how she discovered an owl at the end of her bed after returning from a trip to Macaroni Wood Kate then went up to St Andrews University while Isobel did a degree in educational practice at Oxford Brookes University and later was presented with an award for outstanding achievement by Newbury College, where she was working at the time. She went onto become a teaching assistant at Newbury's St Bartholomew's School, specialising in caring for autistic children. It was while she was at Newbury College that she met her future husband Scott Kennerley, 33, who was working at a local hotel. The couple married in 2010 and set up home within walking distance of her mother. Yet four years later, after signing up for a distance learning masters' degree at Canterbury University, Isobel fell ill. 'She started to get pains in the left-hand side of her body,' said Mrs Eeley, who also has a son Alexander, 37, a project manager for insurance company. 'We all thought it was her cerebral palsy. 'She was really struggling. She gradually had to be in a manual wheelchair and then in a power chair. 'We went back to the GP time and time again but nobody got to the bottom of what was causing her pain. In the end I insisted we saw a neurologist.' Isobel was diagnosed with the tumour at Reading's Royal Berkshire Hospital in September 2014, after being given an MRI scan, and was referred to Oxford's John Radcliffe Hospital for treatment. It was there, after having a biopsy, that she discovered she had a Grade IV glioblastoma and there was no cure. 'We were just devastated,' her mother said. 'You never imagine that your child will die before you. But Isobel was so brave. She faced it head on.' The two girls' paths diverged after Brownies. Kate (pictured in Ypres this week) went up to St Andrews University while Isobel did a degree in educational practice at Oxford Brookes University Christine Eeley, who was left 'traumatised' by her daughter's 'horrific' death, is supporting retired lecturer Noel Conway (above in wheelchair), 67, who has Motor Neurone Disease, in his High Court battle for a 'dignified death'. A verdict is expected in the autumn Speaking to MailOnline, Christine said: 'Isobel became trapped in her body, as Noel Conway (above) fears he will. She couldn't move a muscle, couldn't eat and couldn't speak at the end' Over the next year, Isobel had six weeks of daily chemotherapy and radiotherapy treatment before undergoing another six months of chemo, which shrunk her tumour by 30 per cent. But by August last year she was unable to walk. Even then she did not give up and was awarded this year's Sue Ryder Southern Woman of Courage Award for her bravery. In March she went into Reading's Sue Ryder Hospice where she was given days to live. But she suffered for another seven weeks before dying in May at the age of 34. 'Isobel was the bravest girl imaginable,' said Mrs Eeley. 'She was born with cerebral palsy and was paralysed down the left side of her body but she lived life to the full, always pushing herself beyond her physical limits. 'She never ever complained about what life had thrown at her and, even as a child and after many operations to help her mobility, she just smiled her way through life. 'She certainly didn't deserve to die in the manner in which she did. I don't think she ever imagined that she would suffer so much or that it would get worse. It was just horrific. She begged us to end her life. 'We talk about people living with cancer but we never talk about people dying with cancer. 'That's why I feel so strongly that people should have the choice of how to end their lives.' A body was found Wednesday near the Black Bridge at the bottom of the Grand Canyon. The body is believed to be missing Texas doctor Sarah Beadle (above) The husband of a woman who died in the Grand Canyon this week says it appears she suffered from heat exhaustion. Park officials found a body late Wednesday near Black Bridge that they believe is Dr. Sarah Beadle. The bridge is just a half-mile form the Bright Angel Campground, where Beadle had a reservation to spend Tuesday night with her daughter and nephew. The 38-year-old from Fort Worth, Texas was reported missing when she didn't show up for the reservation. Her daughter Laura and nephew Evan, ages 10 and 11 respectively, were found safe and sound. The three had set off Tuesday morning from Grand Canyon Village, indenting to hike the South Kaibab Trail down to the campground at the bottom of the canyon. Dr. Beadle's husband Scott, says he was told that their daughter started feeling dizzy from heat exhaustion on the way down, after they ran out of water. Beadle pictured above with her daughter Laura (right) and another boy (who may or may not be her nephew Evan) on an earlier stop on the trip, to Yellowstone National Park The Texas doctor and her two kids, ages 10 and 11, were scheduled to spend the night at the Blue Angel Campground (above) at the bottom of the canyon but never showed up. Her children were later found safe Beadle was hiking down from Grand Canyon Village via the South Kaibab Trail (above) His wife left the kids in a safe location on the trail to go get help, but appears to have gotten lost. 'Somewhere along the trail, she made a wrong turn and got lost,' Scott said. 'The park rangers suspect she died of heat exhaustion. Another hiker found [the children], gave them some water and escorted them to the camp. Search and rescue was notified and I was contacted first thing [Wednesday] morning.' The two children were found safe and found and reunited with a relative who was looking after two of Beadle's other sons, two-year-old Andrew and three-year-old James. The couple has two older sons, 12-year-old Clint and seven-year-old Patrick, who were in Seattle at the time. Scott Beadle does not appear to have been on the vacation with his wife. Temperatures on Tuesday hit a high of 86 degrees in the Grand Canyon. Beadle leaves behind five children. From left: 10-year-old Laura holds two-year-old Andrew, 12-year-old Clint, Beadle holds three-year-old James and seven-year-old Patrick Beadle pictured above with her husband Scott on an Alaskan cruise Beadle pictured with her daughter and one of her younger sons on her national parks trip The National Park Service warns hikers that water is not offered along the South Kaibab Trail. 'Everyone needs to carry water! A common mistake is not carrying water or not carrying enough water,' park officials write in a flyer about the trail. 'When hiking in a group, each person should be carrying water. Remember to eat as well as drink while hiking, you use a lot of energy hiking the canyon.' The trail is 6.8 miles long and it takes most people four to five hours to get to the campground at the bottom. When she first went missing, authorities said that Beadle was an experienced hiker and had previously hiked the Grand Canyon in 2002. Beadle was on a trip to visit multiple national parks. 'Sarah loved traveling with her family and sharing so many wonderful experiences with all of us. I thank you all for your continued prayers and support,' her husband wrote on Facebook. Her brother Charles Lawrence Springer of Louisiana said that group had visited Yellowstone earlier on the trip. Beadle worked at Baylor Emergency Medical Center in Keller, Texas. National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster has warned Kim Jong-un that he 'has the whole world against him' and should not be sleeping easy at night. The lieutenant general said the North Korean despot is 'isolated' on the world stage after a series of recent missile tests and the development of an ICBM. While he would not confirm the range of that new missile, amid reports it could reach virtually the whole of the United States, he described it as a 'grave threat'. McMaster spoke as the State Department warned Americans inside North Korea to leave before all travel to the country is banned from September, and as President Trump signed new a new sanctions bill against the country. H.R. McMaster said Kim Jong-un has 'isolated' himself on the world stage after a series of provocative missile tests, calling the country's new ICBM a 'grave threat' McMaster said the dictator should not be sleeping easily at night, but was doubtful over whether removing him would cause his regime to collapse Speaking to Hugh Hewitt at MSNBC, who asked whether Kim should be sleeping easy, McMaster responded: 'No, I think he should not be. 'Because he has the whole world against him, right? He's isolated. He's isolated on this.' However, McMaster said it was impossible to tell whether removing Kim would cause the regime to collapse, saying the inner workings of the government 'is almost impossible to predict'. Quizzed on the range of North Korea's newest missile, the Hwasong-14, McMaster refused to confirm how far it could range. But he added: 'Whether it could reach San Francisco or Pittsburgh or Washington. How much does that matter, right? It's a grave threat.' A new ban on Americans traveling to the country is due to come into force on September 1 as Washington seeks to isolate the country even further. McMaster would not be drawn on whether North Korea's new Hwasong-14 ICBM could range the whole of the United States He spoke as the State Department warned all Americans to leave North Korea before a travel ban to the country comes into force. The ban was conceived because of the risk of 'long-term detention' in the country, after Otto Warmbier was jailed in 2016 for stealing a poster The State Department on Thursday warned all Americans to leave, though said journalists and humanitarian workers may apply for exceptions to the ban. The U.S. government last month said it would bar Americans from traveling to North Korea due to the risk of 'long-term detention' there. North Korea will become the only country to which Americans are banned from traveling. There are currently three Americans in detention in North Korea, following the release of Otto Warmbier earlier this year, who died shortly after being handed over to American authorities. The student was already in a coma when he was released on humanitarian grounds, with North Korea calling his illness a 'mystery'. Doctors who examined him in the US said he had suffered some form of brain injury, but were also unable to say how it had happened. On Wednesday President Trump signed the Countering America's Adversaries Through Sanctions Act, which imposed new restrictions on North Korea, Iran and Russia. The bill enforces shipping sanctions against the country and applies new sanctions in response to human rights abuses. Nebraska State Trooper Brienne Splittgerber, pictured above during her badging ceremony in 2015, has filed a federal lawsuit accusing State Patrol of requiring unnecessary pelvic exams for female recruits The Nebraska State Patrol has for years forced female recruits to submit to invasive, medically unnecessary vaginal exams performed by a male doctor before they can join the force, according to a new federal lawsuit that has sparked a criminal investigation. State Trooper Brienne Splittgerber filed the complaint on Tuesday against the patrol, the state of Nebraska, two former patrol heads and various other people, accusing them of creating a hostile work environment for women. 'Immediately upon learning of these allegations in June, the Governor instructed his Chief Human Resources Officer to review this matter, which has subsequently resulted in a criminal investigation by the State Patrol,' Taylor Gage, a spokesman for Gov. Pete Ricketts, said in a written statement Wednesday. Splittgerber's lawsuit names as defendants two recent superintendents of the Nebraska State Patrol, Col. Brad Rice and Col. David Sankey, along with several unnamed men and women. State Patrol spokesman Cody Thomas said no NSP recruits have undergone the pelvic exams since December 2016. Thomas did not comment on who was under investigation. The lawsuit seeks unspecified damages, saying women recruits for years have been required to undress from the waist down for a vaginal and rectal examination. Splittgerber's complaint claims the Nebraska State Patrol has for years forced female recruits to submit to invasive pelvic exams performed by a male doctor Sued: Splittgerber's lawsuit names as defendants two recent superintendents of the Nebraska State Patrol, Col. Brad Rice (left) and Col. David Sankey (right) The lawsuit says Splittgerber, a married mother-of-two, was told the exam was required to check for hernias, but male recruits were generally not required to undress or undergo such invasive exams. 'Subjecting the plaintiff and other female trooper candidates to a medically unnecessary and sexually invasive procedure is outrageous conduct which goes beyond all possible bounds of decency and is utterly intolerable in a civilized community,' according to the lawsuit, filed by Omaha attorney Tom White. Splittgerber, 37, was sworn in as a state trooper in May 2015 and received her badge from the hands of her father, retired Sgt. Morry Abshier. She submitted to the pelvic exam in 2014, saying in her lawsuit that she was required by a Lincoln doctor hired by the patrol to remove her pants and lie on her back and open her knees, then roll over onto her stomach, to her her genitals and anus examined. Splittgerber complained to her superiors after being told by her family doctor that there was no legitimate medical purpose for the exam. She was told an investigation was underway, the lawsuit says, but was disturbed that female patrol candidates from subsequent recruitment classes continued to be sent to the same doctor to submit to the exams. Dr. Karen Carlson, an OB-GYN with Nebraska Medicine in Omaha, said it would be highly unusual to conduct a pelvic exam for a possible hernia. Pressing the abdomen with a hand would be standard for such a check, she said. Splittgerber is a married mother-of-two, pictured above in 2011 with her husband and their older son Splittgerber had worked in law enforcement in Tennessee and Alabama before joining Nebraska State Patrol in 2015. She also has been moonlighting as a fitness instructor (right) A group photo shows new Nebraska State Patrol recruits during their badging ceremony in May 2015. Splittgerber is seen in the middle of the front row 'There would be no reason to look in the genital or anal area,' Carlson said. 'We might have them loosen their pants, but I wouldn't think there would be any need to disrobe.' An attorney for the State Patrol declined to comment Wednesday, citing the pending litigation, and referred questions to the Nebraska Attorney General's office, which will defend the patrol and state against the lawsuit. A spokeswoman for the Attorney General's office would say only that her office is currently reviewing the lawsuit. Before joining the Nebraska State Patrol, Omaha World-Herald reported that Splittgerber had served as an officer with the Fremont Police Department and also worked in law enforcement in Alabama and Tennessee. She also has been working on the side as a group fitness and boot camp instructor at a fitness center for women in Kearney. According to an old family blog, Splittgerber and her husband, Ryan, have two young sons together. Her brother is a retired US Marine who had served in Iraq. If her BBC bosses are to be believed, she is lacking in personality. But Vanessa Feltzs insipid chat appears to be working wonders as her BBC radio show has just pulled-in record figures, it emerged last night. The DJ has hit back in the best possible way with Rajar figures showing she has broken the 300,000 listener mark for her popular breakfast show which flies in the face of perjorative email remarks leaked earlier this week. In a confidential memo accidentally sent to staff by Radio London editor David Robey, Miss Feltzs presenting style was said to lack personality whilst the same critical performance review claimed it was a constant battle to get the broadcaster to achieve the pace of a breakfast show. Awkward! BBC boss accidentally sent a confidential memo regarding Vanessa Feltz's, pictured, progress on her radio show to staff Not surprisingly, the garrulous Cambridge graduate admitted she was distressed by the gaffe, but delighted to have been vindicated by these latest Rajar results. She told the Mail: Theyre the best Rajars weve had in the history of the station, so obviously I am delighted. Well yes, its a bit of a two fingers-up, and I cant pretend its been a nice few days. But I hope this marks the end of nasty, very distressing period of time of negativity which we now know was ill-founded. This job is my passion, my life, and my pleasure, yet it felt absolutely bizarre to read in the papers in the morning that Im presenting a failing show. But then my phone started to explode with messages from people telling me about the record figures, so all in all its been a pretty strange day. Sadly there hasnt been time for a knees-ups or a soiree of any kind yet, but hopefully there will be a celebratory pina colada at some point; everybody at the station is absolutely thrilled. Station editor David Robey, pictured left, accidentally sent the email which contained Miss Feltz's, pictured right, appraisal Work review: It was said that it was a 'constant battle' for Vanessa, who is paid up to 399,000 a year for her breakfast radio role, to keep up the hectic pace The stars comments come after her boss, Robey, ended-up publishing her annual performance review, instead of merely sending round a new TV trailer. It suggested that Miss Feltz, 55, has frustrated bosses with her slow presenting style, reading: Vanessa loves a long interviewbut its a constant battle to get her to suit the pace of breakfast. It went on to explain that the station had attempted reducing the number of stories that she covered in the three-hour slot, but it still felt constricted and lacking personality. Despite Robeys desperate attempt to convince staff to delete the email, news of the blunder quickly spread around the Corporation. It is even more embarrassing for the BBC given that it comes just a few weeks after Miss Feltz was revealed as the second-highest paid woman at the Corporation, on a salary of up to 399,000. The former Big Breakfast star took to the Radio 2 studio yesterday lunchtime to cover Jeremy Vines show - one of the most important slots of the day for the station. Performance: According to figures, 161,000 people a week tune in to Vanessa Feltz's, pictured both, BBC radio show - which is down a mammoth 208,000 from the previous year However, yesterday [Weds] the presenter revealed that a sheepish Robey had contacted her directly to apologise. It was leaked by mistake and I think everybody has pressed the send button at some point and wished they hadnt, she added. But actually, when I read the copy it wasnt in any way derogatory it was just about the bedding down of a new show, and a new schedule for the station. So I didnt take it in any way personally it was just the interpretation of it which has been unpleasant. The most hilarious thing of all, and something for which I have been teased endlessly by my friends, is the idea that I dont have much of a personality. You may not necessarily adore and worship every facet of the show, but no-one before has ever suggested Ive been lacking in it. In fact, a previous producer once had to ask me to project less! But that wasnt actually what he [Robey] said he meant that he hoped the format would be sufficiently flexible to show my personality. As far as Im concerned, alls well that ends well.' When Brent Johnson first arrived in Shanxi province in 1990 to study Chinese culture and history, it proved the start of a close bond with orphaned and disabled children there. Brent Johnson, his wife (center), his two daughters and Lin Lin, a former foster care child from China who used to live with the Johnson family in the United States.[Photo provided to China Daily] Then a junior at the University of South Carolina, he was enrolled at Shanxi University on a one-year student exchange program, during which he met his future wife, Serena, a fellow American who shares his affection for China. Their deep concern for poor people meant their dates were often spent at welfare institutes. Johnson was impressed by his year in China, and after returning to South Carolina to finish his medical degree, he and his wife decided to move to China in 1998 to start voluntary work with orphans. Since then, they have been dedicated to helping sick and disadvantaged children, and have traveled to many parts of northern China, including Beijing and the provinces of Heilongjiang, Shandong and Hebei, to carry out charity work. Johnson's ties with orphans in Shanxi date back to April 2004, when he approached Geng Kaiwen, the dean of the Taiyuan Social (Children) Welfare Institute, during a gathering in Beijing. He offered to fund treatment for the institute's disabled children through the China Care Foundation, a charity aimed at saving the lives of medically fragile orphaned children. Although touched by the doctor's sincerity, Geng hesitated because Johnson was a foreigner. However, Johnson did not give up. He went to Taiyuan, capital of Shanxi, and gave Geng a persuasive presentation. He also invited Geng to visit the foundation in Beijing. Seeing how the China Care Foundation operated eased Geng's concerns, and he was moved by Johnson's proposal to send sick children to the capital for treatment and return them to Shanxi after recovery. "Many children didn't get the treatment they needed in time due to a lack of funds and the outdated conditions in our institute," Geng said. "Johnson's proposal would address our problems and help those in need in a broader way." During a business trip to Taiyuan in 2005, Johnson needed to catch a late flight to Beijing, and Geng suggested they have dinner together. Considering the tight time and budget, he bought the American a simple bowl of rice noodles. Touched by Geng's frugal behavior, Johnson decided to nail down the funding agreement with the Taiyuan institute there and then. In addition to providing manpower, funding and technology, Johnson also founded a project in Taiyuan to create a cozy environment for children to recover after treatment and help find new permanent homes for orphans. Dang Xiaohua, born in 1992, had congenital scoliosis and was told she would not live to see her 18th birthday, as the surgery she needed was expensive and risky. As a result, she cut herself off from others. When he became aware of Dang's situation, Johnson contacted a hospital in the United States and paid for the surgery, which cost more than 400,000 yuan ($59,500). He also managed to arrange her adoption by an American family before she turned 14, the age limit for adoption. When Dang returned to Taiyuan 18 months later, Johnson said she had become an outgoing teenager who always had a smile on her face. Johnson has changed the lives of many disabled orphans. He has helped an estimated 1,000 orphans in Taiyuan since 2004, including several hundred who received free surgeries. He also raised 800,000 yuan to improve living conditions at the Taiyuan Social Welfare Institute. His kindness has not only warmed orphans' hearts, but also touched the people around him. Geng said he remembers Johnson's words, "Every life needs to be treated with respect, even if he is a disabled newborn." Johnson, now 49 and a father of six, returned to the US in mid-July after nearly 20 years of charity work. It was difficult for his friends in China to say goodbye. Lu Lu, a former colleague who witnessed Johnson's commitment to charity in China, said she can still recall the first time they met 11 years ago. "Johnson told me in Chinese that it was his hobby to help people, especially disabled orphans," she recalled. "He set a great example for Chinese charity workers, and built an all-Chinese team to continue his work. "We hope to inherit his spirit and sow the seeds of love across the country," Lu added. Theresa May was last night urged to sack four British trade envoys who have spoken out against Brexit. Former Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith said it was 'absurd' for those who were 'viscerally opposed to Brexit' to represent the UK during trade negotiations. David Cameron appointed a cross-party network of 20 'trade envoys' in 2012 to represent the UK in emerging markets around the world. But four of them are battling to keep Britain in the EU, even though this would make it much harder to strike trade deals around the world. Labour MP Rushanara Ali, Labour peer Lord Faulkner of Worcester and the Liberal Democrat peers Baroness Northover and Baroness Bonham-Carter all voted this year to frustrate the Article 50 legislation which paved the way for Britain's exit from the EU in March 2019. Former Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith urged Theresa May to sack four British trade envoys who have spoken out against Brexit., saying it was 'absurd' for those who were 'viscerally opposed to Brexit' to represent the UK during trade negotiations Mr Duncan Smith said the views of individual trade commissioners had been less important before Brexit when the UK was not free to forge its own trade deals. But he said those who saw no future for the UK outside the EU should now be asked to go, adding: 'It is quite absurd that at the moment the UK leaves the EU and starts to make new free trade deals, we should have as our trade representatives people who are viscerally opposed to Brexit. 'It is quite unacceptable and high time we appointed new people who believe that what we are doing is positive and full of new opportunity. We should act immediately we haven't a moment to lose.' One minister told the Brexit Central website there were also concerns within government about the views of the quartet. 'It's a critical time and all those representing the Government abroad ought to be putting on a united front,' the minister said. 'It's breathtaking that some of these envoys are supposedly promoting UK plc abroad while talking down our country at home. These double standards could damage our prospects and I know that others inside the Government feel the same way.' Labour MP Rushanara Ali, trade envoy to Bangladesh, voted against the Article 50 legislation, saying that leaving the single market and customs union would be 'devastating to our economy' Miss Ali, trade envoy to Bangladesh, voted against the Article 50 legislation, saying that leaving the single market and customs union would be 'devastating to our economy'. Baroness Northover, trade envoy to Angola, backed a wrecking amendment to the legislation, which would have forced the Government to hold a second referendum. She has described Brexit as a 'long and dangerous journey' and referred to Leavers as 'voices of little England'. Baroness Bonham-Carter, trade envoy to Mexico, also backed wrecking amendments to the legislation. She has warned Brexit will hurt the creative industries. Lord Faulkner, trade envoy to Taiwan, was one of 33 Labour peers who voted against the legislation. The trade envoy network was set up to promote the UK to emerging markets and 'support the drive for economic growth by building on the UK's existing relations with these markets and maximising bilateral trade'. Government sources last night said there were no plans to remove anti-Brexit envoys. A spokesman said: 'The voluntary roles are appointed by the Prime Minister and all envoys bring a wealth of experience to help support British businesses in growing and succeeding internationally.' None of the four envoys could be contacted yesterday. Ruthless hitman, Martin Corona, 53, has revealed the workings of a notorious cartel in his new book, Confessions of a Cartel Hit Man A ruthless hitman has revealed the workings of a notorious cartel in his new book and says he's written letters apologizing to his victims' families. Martin Corona, 53, was a top member of the Tijuana Cartel ran by Benjamin Arellano Felix and his brother Ramon. In a new book, Confessions of a Cartel Hitman, Corona, who was convicted of murdering eight people, revealed his failed assassination attempt of kingpin El Chapo and the moment he pulled a trigger on a pregnant woman in front of her seven-year-old daughter. Corona also confessed to having been involved in the brutal slayings of more people, including fathers, mothers and grandparents. When he shot the pregnant woman, Corona said he was unaware her daughter was watching. He also left the woman's sister permanently brain damaged. Both women survived the vicious attack, one that Corona said still haunts him to this day, according to the Mirror. Corona started working for the Tijuana Cartel at the age of 29. The deadly cartel often times rivaled with the El Chapo-led Sinaloa cartel. Corona said he failed to kill El Chapo during a hit in 1993, that saw the kingpin narrowly escape. Corona started working for the Tijuana Cartel at the age of 29. The deadly cartel was run by Benjamin Arellano Felix (left) and his brother Ramon (right) and often times rivaled with the El Chapo-led Sinaloa cartel He said the attack on El Chapo was a revenge attack requested by his bosses. Corona traveled to Guadalajara airport, where El Chapo was and shot at the drug lord, but missed. El Chapo is pictured in January 2016 He said the attack on El Chapo was a revenge attack requested by his bosses. Corona traveled to Guadalajara airport, where El Chapo was and shot at the drug lord, but missed. His bullet hit Cardinal Juan Jesus Posadas Ocampo instead. El Chapo was recaptured after escaping prison in January 2016 and extradited to New York on January 19 and has been held in solitary confinement in Manhattan ever since. His trial is set for April 2018. Meanwhile, Guzman is kept in a 20-by-12-foot cell for 23 hours a day in a wing often used to house high-risk inmates including terrorists. In May, he lost his bid to relax the terms of his confinement when US District Judge Brian Cogan concluded that his current accommodations were appropriate. Corona was over an elite killing crew, called the Death Squad, who were based in Mexico and waited for their orders to kill. His bullet hit Cardinal Juan Jesus Posadas Ocampo instead. Mourners are seen at the cardinal's open-casket funeral following his death on May 24, 1993 He told the Mirror that they would carefully select their weapons and 'geeky' outfits for the killings so as not to draw attention to themselves. A few times, they dressed as police officers and crossed the border to the US to kill their targets. 'It's an ugly business,' Corona told the New York Post, 'but it's a business'. 'I was a lost soul,' he said added. 'These people accepted me. They treated me with respect, and at the time, it seemed like admiration and love,' he said of the cartel. Corona said he has written letters of apology to the families of his victims. The hitman was sentenced to 25 years in prison in 2001 on a cocaine distribution charge after agreeing to cooperate with authorities. Corona was released from prison in 2014 and he now lives in a US government-run witness protection program. His book was published by Ebury Press and is available for purchase for $14.99. Jails are in crisis because of perverse reforms brought in by the Government, a senior governor warned yesterday. Andrea Albutt, who leads the Prison Governors Association, said a toxic mix of pressures had left them in a dire state and there was no quick fix. In an open letter criticising the Ministry of Justice, she said her colleagues have been left devastated by the complete decline of our service. Her letter was published the day after more than 100 inmates ran amok for two days at HMP The Mount in Hertfordshire, amid an epidemic of zombie drug spice. Andrea Albutt, who leads the Prison Governors Association, wrote an open letter criticising the Ministry of Justice, the day after more than 100 inmates ran amok for two days at HMP The Mount in Hertfordshire, pictured She said: We know many prisons are in crisis. I deliberately use that term, because it cant be dressed up in any other way. The governor warned that an unforeseen rise in numbers has left prisons with virtually no headroom to accommodate more inmates. She said prisoners were being moved across the country as a result of rioting, destabilising other prisons as they try to maintain order. The instability we are seeing is clearly linked to a poor regime, Mrs Albutt said. This toxic mix does not have a quick fix and the future looks like more of the same. She added: Reform is the answer to all our woes and wouldnt it be great if that was the case. Members are telling me that they have seen nothing tangible coming out of the MoJ to ease the burden to date. The decision to separate policy from operations seems a perverse one and certainly not cost-effective when we are given messages that budgets remain very stretched. The MoJ said it had taken immediate action to boost prison officer numbers and created Her Majestys Prison and Probation Service. This will create a professionalised frontline service in which much needed reforms will be delivered, a spokesman said. We need to create calm and ordered environments to help ensure effective rehabilitation, and we continue to work closely with the unions and all staff to help achieve these vital reforms and make prisons places of safety and reform, he added. John Podmore, a former governor of Brixton, Belmarsh and Swaleside jails and a former prison inspector, said the system was in a mess. He added: We are where we are because of a fundamental breakdown in staff-prisoner relationships. Prisons run on cooperation and in many jails not all, we have to say that cooperation has gone. Its about too few staff with too little experience, poor training and uncompetitive pay. Staff are demoralised and prisoners are frustrated. Lib Dem home affairs spokesman Ed Davey accused the Government of failing both prisoners and prison staff. It is astounding that repeated warnings about the state of our prisons seem to have fallen on deaf ears, he added. Violence continues unabated and it seems that either this government cant get a grip or simply doesnt care. One Queensland man's adventurous attempt at a running backflip off a pile of bricks has quickly turned into a calamitous fail - and it's been caught on camera. In the short clip from Oakey, 100 miles west of Brisbane, the man confidently approaches the stacked blocks before attempting to propel himself off the edge of the bricks. Yet what unfolds is far from the desired outcome as the man's foot completely misses the stack, much to the amusement of his friend filming. The Queensland man confidently approaches the stacked blocks before attempting to propel himself off the edge of the bricks on the rural farm in Oakey Yet what unfolds is far from the desired outcome as the man's foot completely misses the stack before slamming his back on the bricks - much to the amusement of his friend filming After hurtling towards the bricks, the unfortunate acrobat slams his back straight into the pile before his hat flies off. He immediately grasps his back in pain, while sheepishly rising to his feet to the sound of his companion's raucous laughter. Social media users were quick to take to Facebook to reveal their enjoyment at the unfortunate mishap for the rookie gymnast. 'Oh my goodness, I am speechless..' one shocked user wrote. 'Jeez look at that! Would hurt so bad,' another comment read accompanied by a laughing emoji. Kato Harris, 38, stood trial in July 2016 over three counts of raping a 14-year-old student but was cleared almost immediately A bungled rape investigation into an innocent teacher who was cleared by a jury in just 15 minutes cost 1million of public funds, it has been revealed. Taxpayers were hit with the 936,000 bill, including 181,000 towards Kato Harris's legal costs. Former geography teacher Mr Harris, 38, stood trial in July 2016 over three counts of raping a 14-year-old student during lunch breaks at a private London all-girls school. The girl's legal team, Mishcon de Reya, also put severe pressure on the Metropolitan Police before Mr Harris had been charged, including threatening to sue if certain leads were not pursued, according to the Sun. A letter from Alison Levitt, a partner at Mishcon, also urged the force to dismiss the officer leading the investigation. However, an independent review ruled that the law firm were not 'inappropriately given access to information.' In the aftermath of the trial friends said Mr Harris was crushed by the stress and emotionally beaten up. A letter from the Mishcon de Reya's boss, Alison Levitt, also urged the force to dismiss the officer leading the investigation Giving evidence in court, Mr Harris said he was taking a drug for anxiety which caused loss of libido, and insisted it would have been completely impossible for him to carry out the attacks. The court heard how the door of the classroom where the rapes were alleged to have happened, had a glass panel, could not be locked from the inside and was in a corridor patrolled during lunchtime by teachers. It also emerged during the trial that Sue Akers, a former deputy assistant commissioner at Scotland Yard who worked as an investigator at Mishcon de Reya, had asked the police for access to court papers and sought to give directions to officers about what they should do. But there is no implication that the firm acted illegally. Sue Akers, a former deputy assistant commissioner at Scotland Yard who worked as an investigator at Mishcon de Reya, had asked the police for access to court papers and sought to give directions to officers about what they should do. Speaking this year, nearly a year after the trial, Mr Harris revealed how teaching, a careeer which had been a lifelong ambition, had turned his life into a nightmare. I had to give up my dream because of a crime I didnt commit, he said in April. 'I am unemployed, living in a bedsit and will soon be on housing benefit. I am toxic. If I knew on the day I qualified what I know now, I would never have become a teacher. I will never work with children again I will never put myself in that position of vulnerability. A cot death charity has raised concerns about the safety of so-called baby boxes which are used for newborns to sleep in. The concept originates from Finland, where new parents are given a cardboard box, which can be used as a bed, filled with baby products and a mattress. The tradition, which has been taken up by a number of NHS organisations and was recently introduced in Scotland, has been cited as helping reduce the rate of sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) known as cot death. But now The Lullaby Trust, which works to reduce SIDS, has said there is no evidence to support the claim the boxes reduce infant mortality. Cot death charity The Lullaby Trust has raised concerns about the safety of so-called baby boxes It acknowledged that for some parents who do not have an enclosed space for their baby to sleep such as a cot or Moses basket a box may be a better alternative than a newborn sleeping in a hazardous condition. But the charity claimed it is not possible for baby boxes to fully comply with safety standards. British and EU regulations for nursery furniture only exist for traditional cots, cribs and bassinets and there is currently no specific standard for the use of a cardboard box as a sleeping place for an infant. The Lullaby Trust also raised questions over the safety of the mattresses in some boxes and has advised parents to check that they meet regulations before using them. Francine Bates, chief executive of The Lullaby Trust, said: We support all efforts to promote safer sleep for babies, however we do have concerns about the baby boxes being marketed as products which will reduce infant mortality and SIDS. We are not aware of any evidence, including in Finland, to support this claim. If parents choose to use the box to sleep their baby, we urge them to read and follow our advice, approved by our scientific and paediatric advisers. The charity has urged health and social care professionals who distribute the boxes as well as parents considering using one ensure they comply with safety regulations. The Lullaby Trust said that it will no longer allow its branded leaflets to be enclosed with baby boxes as this suggests we endorse the product. The concept originates from Finland, where new parents are given a cardboard box, which can be used as a bed, filled with baby products and a mattress In new advice, the charity also said that if a parent does decide to use a box, it should be used for daytime naps only, with a baby sleeping in a cot or a Moses basket next to their bed during the night. It also reminds parents not to lift or carry the box around the home if a baby is in it. In Scotland, parents of all babies born after August 15 this year will be presented with the boxes despite concerns over the cost. Included in them during the pilot scheme was a changing mat, a digital thermometer, a fleece jacket, several babygrows, a reusable nappy and liners, a baby book and an organic sponge. Cot sheets, a mattress and a blanket were also inside the boxes to give babies the best start in life. SIDS is the sudden unexplained death of an apparently healthy baby. There were 230 sudden infant deaths in the UK in 2014, following a downward trend in the last decade. In 2001, there were 330. The search continues for a 16-year-old girl who went missing ten days ago, and police have appealed for public assistance. Authorities are concerned for the welfare of the Caboolture teen, who was last heard from on July 28 when she contacted her parents via phone. She was last seen at her home on Petersen Road residence in Morayfield, Queensland on the afternoon of July 23. Police fear for the safety of a missing 16-year-old girl who wasn't been seen since July 23 She is described as Caucasian in appearance, approximately 171 cm tall with long brown hair and blue eyes. It is not known what she was wearing when she disappeared. Police request that anyone who may have seen her contact Policelink immediately on 131 444. Information can also be reported anonymously using the online form. A man who was living in the United States on a Dreamer status is accused of raping a teenager while she was working out at her apartment complex's gym. Salvador Diaz-Garcia, 23, faces charges of rape and assault from a horrific attack where an unnamed 19-year-old woman was raped and badly beaten on June 25. Diaz-Garcia, an undocumented immigrant who was a recipient of Deferred Action on Childhood Arrivals, allegedly attacked the woman while she was working out at her apartment complex's gym in Burien, Washington, which is a sanctuary city. The victim returned home following the assault wearing only a tank top with 'extensive injuries', including missing teeth, a ripped ear and a broken jaw, according to the King County Sheriff's Office. Diaz-Garcia also faces child molestation charges for allegedly assaulting a 14-year-old girl on the same day the 19-year-old was raped. Salvador Diaz-Garcia, 23, allegedly raped a woman, 19, in Burien, Washington, on June 25. She was working out at the Discovery Landing apartments' (pictured) gym when the attack occurred PRESIDENT TRUMP'S SOFT SPOT FOR DREAMERS After campaigning on a harsh, anti-immigration platform, President Trump surprised critics in February by promising to carry on his predecessor's Dreamers program. Pro-business Trump said those enrolled in the program had little to worry about with regard to his plans for their status, describing them as 'incredible kids' whose hard work and dedication to employment he admired. 'We are gonna deal with DACA with heart,' he said at a February 16 press conference. While conceding the issue had been 'very difficult' for him, he said of the program's participants: 'They shouldn't be very worried. I do have a big heart," he added. 'We're going to take care of everybody.' The program was threatened by the businessman's tough stance on immigration throughout the presidential campaign. President Obama established it in 2012 and made a direct plea to his successor to protect it when he handed over the Oval Office. 'His message was, those are good kids who didnt do anything wrong,' a lawmaker said of the appeal in January. Advertisement The incident occurred at the Discovery Landing apartments, where the 19-year-old lives. Diaz-Garcia lives adjacent to the complex at Maple Pointe, and both buildings are located in the 15400 block of Des Moines Memorial Drive, reported Seattle Pi. The victim told police she saw Diaz-Garcia follow her home after she got off a bus and he went inside the complex's gym after her, saying he also lived there. When she was on the treadmill, around 9.15pm, she allegedly asked Diaz-Garcia not to stand behind her and he kept asking her questions, reported Fox News. The last thing the woman said she remembers was going to leave before she woke up at Harborview hospital. The victim's mother said the teenager returned home around 10pm, stumbling, bleeding and unable to string together a sentence. Police reported that at the gym, they found blood covering the front of the treadmill, carpet and walls. Officials believe the victim was hit over the head with a kettlebell, which was covered in blood. The victim had a broken jaw, required several stitches and a black eye, according to reports. A rape kit found a male's DNA, although it is unclear if it belonged to the suspect. After the brutal attack, other witnesses came forward and claimed they had come in contact with Diaz-Garcia during other unsettling acts. The apartment's pool surveillance video showed him staring at young girls, including a 12-year-old, according to court documents. And a mother of a 14-year-old girl claimed that Diaz-Garcia had groped her daughter's butt while making an expletive remark, the same day as the alleged rape. After investigating, police arrested Diaz-Garcia on June 29 and allegedly found the victim's blood on his pants. Police reported that at the gym, they found the victim's blood covering the front of the treadmill, carpet and walls. Officials believe the victim was hit over the head with a kettlebell, which was covered in blood. Pictured: Stock photo of Discovery Landing's gym Diaz-Garcia's fiancee told police that the night of the rape, he had returned home out of breath, sweaty and 'acting in a way that scared her', according to reports. Diaz-Garcia is currently being held at Kings County Jail on $350,000 bond. Court records obtained by Fox News said: 'The state is extremely concerned for the defendants brazen, bold, and violent behavior towards young women.' Diaz-Garcia was granted Dreamer status three years ago in 2013 and has since renewed it twice, reported Fox News. His last renewal application was this past January but officials said his status was recently revoked. The Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program allows the children of undocumented immigrants who came to the US as youngsters to stay in the US legally as adults. Rap legend Kidd Creole has been arrested for allegedly stabbing a drunk homeless man to death in New York. The 57-year-old, whose real name is Nathaniel Glover, was taken into custody in the Bronx before being charged on Wednesday night. The homeless man, identified as John Jolly, was found stabbed on a sidewalk in Midtown just before midnight on Tuesday. Police say Glover got into a fight with the 55-year-old man. Glover reportedly thought Jolly, who is a convicted rapist, was hitting on him, sourced told the NY Daily News. Scroll down for video Rap legend Kidd Creole has been arrested for allegedly stabbing a homeless man to death in New York. He is pictured here by Pix11 in handcuffs on Wednesday night Rap legend The Kidd Creole has been arrested over the stabbing murder of a homeless man John Jolly, 55, on Tuesday night The homeless man was found stabbed on a sidewalk in Midtown just before midnight on Tuesday (above) 'He turned, interpreting that the guy was making an advance toward him. One thing led to another, and he shivved him twice in the chest,' the source said. Authorities responding to a 911 call had initially thought the man was passed out drunk until they saw he had suffered multiple stab wounds to his chest. The man was rushed to Bellevue Hospital where he was pronounced dead. Glover, who works as a security guard and handyman in the area, was tied to the stabbing via surveillance footage. 'They had no prior relationship. They had words. Things got out of hand. It was some sort of diss,' a police source told the NY Daily News. Police said the victim was well known to authorities with 17 prior arrests to his name, including rape and sexual assault, CBS reports. Throwback: Grandmaster Flash & the Furious Five are pictured in 1984. Kidd Creole is seen far right Glover was one of the members of Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five - a hip hop group founded in the Bronx in the 1970s. The group rose to prominence in the 80s and are credited as being one of the most influential hip hop acts. Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five were the first hip hop group to be inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2007. Glover was arrested in 2007 for possessing a knife and for possessing a gun in 1995 and 1982. Glover, AKA The Kidd Creole, was one of the members of hip hop group Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five. Scorpio, Melle Mel, Kidd Creole and Raheim (left to right) are pictured here being inducted into the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame in 2007 A suicidal prisoner with a history of self-harm cut off his own penis with a Bic razor blade given to him by guards. Surgeons worked for 26 hours to save the Peter Smith's organ after he slashed it at HMP Manchester, but were ultimately unable to save it. Now an inquiry is being demanded by his family as to how he was allowed to be in possession of the razor, given that he had tried to slash his wrists with a piece of plastic while he was being held in police custody. An inquiry is being demanded by army veteran Peter Smith's family as to how he was allowed to have the razor while at HMP Manchester (pictured) despite having a self-harming history Smith, a father-of-five and army veteran, was remanded in custody after being arrested on suspicion of firearm possession and drug offences. But just five days after his court hearing he was rushed to hospital when he was found in his cell in the wing for vulnerable prisoners at the jail - commonly known as Strangeways - where inmates are supposed to be checked every half-hour. His son, William, has claimed his father needs mental health treatment and is furious at how he was handled inside. He told the Mirror: 'It is disgusting. The prison is not doing their care of duty. 'My dad should not be allowed a razor and he definitely should not be allowed on his own with a razor. He added: 'I have never heard of anything like this in my life. He should not be in prison. He should be under the mental health act, it is not right.' The news comes on the day Andrea Albutt, president of the Prison Governors Association (PGA), launched a blistering attack on the Ministry of Justice (MoJ), saying its members had been left 'devastated at the complete decline of our service'. In an open letter published as riot officers were called to a prison for a second day, the governor said a recent increase in indiscipline among inmates is 'of grave concern'. He was rushed to hospital after he was found in his cell in the wing for vulnerable prisoners at the jail - commonly known as Strangeways In response, an MoJ spokesman said: 'We know that our prisons have faced a number of long-standing challenges, which is why we have taken immediate action to boost prison officer numbers and have created Her Majesty's Prison and Probation Service. 'This will help to create a distinct, professionalised frontline service and will ensure that policy and operations are working closely together to deliver these much needed reforms. 'We need to create calm and ordered environments to help ensure effective rehabilitation, and we continue to work closely with the unions and all staff to help achieve these vital reforms and make prisons places of safety and reform.' You are here: Home China's first cargo spacecraft Tianzhou-1 has successfully released a tiny satellite while in orbit, CCTV reported. China's first cargo spacecraft Tianzhou-1 blasts off from Wenchang Space Launch Center in South China's Hainan province, April 20, 2017. [Photo/Xinhua] It is the first time that a Chinese cargo spacecraft has successfully discharged a satellite after storing it for a long time. The Tianzhou-1 was launched into space with the CubeSat on board on April 20 and released it Tuesday, 104 days later. Scientists have tested different kinds of discharge technology, such as the separation and unlocking and connectivity between the in-orbit launcher and the satellite. CubeSat is an experimental satellite weighing less than 1 metric ton. After flying with the Tiangong-2 space lab for about two months, Tianzhou-1 separated from the space lab and entered a stage of independent operation in June. Tianzhou-1 is orbiting about 390 kilometers above Earth, conducting a variety of experiments. The spacecraft will later carry out an automated fast-docking with Tiangong-2 and conduct the third refueling of the space lab. Keanu Dallas (bottom right), the teenage son of former 'Bra Boy' gangster Cade Dallas (top right), will inherit at least $100,000 from his believed $30million empire The teenage son of a former 'Bra Boy' gangster will inherit at least $100,000 after his family finally agreed to end a bitter court battle over his father's $30 million empire. Cade Dallas, who grew up in the Sydney beachside suburb of Maroubra, died in 2012 after a two-week party binge in Bali - where he had moved to develop clothing brand 'Somewhere'. But shortly before his death Dallas allegedly penned a handwritten will signed with a smiley face, in which he asked for his fortune and business empire to be split evenly between his children. The legality and legitimacy of his will led to a bitter caught battle between Dallas' on again, off again, Balinese ex-wife Veny Amelia and his mother, Kerrie Dallas. But the debate over the alleged use of fake signatures, 'scandalous accusations' and how the will should be interpreted under Islam - Dallas' religion - was settled with his son Keanu Dallas awarded the $100,000 inheritance, The Advertiser reports. Before his death in Bali in 2002 after two weeks of partying, Dallas allegedly penned a handwritten will (pictured) signed with a smiley face, in which he asked for his fortune and business empire to be split evenly between his children Dallas (left) met Very Amelia (right) in 2002 while living in Bali, before the pair married later that year. They divorced in 2006, before reuniting, marrying and divorcing again in 2010 Dallas met Ms Amelia in 2002 while living in Bali, before the pair married later that year at which time he converted to Islam. They divorced in 2006, before reuniting, marrying and divorcing a second time in 2010. His alleged handwritten document was titled 'My Will' and signed on November 26, 2011. 'I Cade Dallas want to give my sons 50% each my money cash in the bank,' the document read. 'I would like trust funds set up for both boys, but money given to them every week for them and there (sic) mothers'. Before his death he had featured in the 'Bra Boys' documentary about the infamous surf-gang, which was narrated by Hollywood star Russell Crowe. The bitter court case began when Ms Amelia sued Mrs Dallas, claiming that after the 'Bra Boy's' death she had taken up the reins of his lucrative clothing company. However she claimed the mother of the gangster denied her son his inheritance and told Ms Amelia 'the business is mine', before using it to fund her 'lavish' lifestyle. The legality and legitimacy of his will led to a bitter caught battle between Dallas' on again, off again, Balinese ex-wife Veny Amelia and his mother, Kerrie Dallas (pictured) Before his death Dallas featured in the 'Bra Boys' documentary about the infamous surf-gang, which was narrated by Hollywood star Russell Crowe 'I'm not a greedy person like Kerrie... it's not about the money, I'm not here for money,' Ms Amelia told the Adelaide Supreme Court. 'I would like to claim my son's right.' Ms Amelia's lawyer had previously claimed Mr Dallas' signature was 'falsified' on the first divorce papers and said the mother was never served the second ones. He also claimed his client was entitled to part of the fortune with the papers being rendered invalid. However Mrs Dallas claimed the 'Somewhere' clothing brand was bankrupt, while saying Ms Amelia's claims did not have 'a skerrick of material' to support them. But the parties reached a deal on Monday, with Mrs Dallas agreeing to transfer Keanu up to $100,000 on top of all money left to him in trust funds in Indonesian banks. Each party will also pay their own legal costs, while Ms Amelia agreed not to sue Mrs Dallas again. Executive chairman Bob Mackenzie, 64, was fired for what the breakdown recovery firm called 'gross misconduct' A huge legal battle is brewing between the AA and its sacked former boss over a bonus pay-out worth up to 150million. Executive chairman Bob Mackenzie, 64, was fired for what the breakdown recovery firm called 'gross misconduct'. His shock departure sent the AA's share price crashing amid rumours of an altercation with a male colleague at a hotel bar. One source said that the sacking followed a 'Jeremy Clarkson' moment an apparent reference to the former Top Gear presenter's dismissal after he punched a producer. But the boss's family hit back by suggesting he had in fact resigned rather than being fired, and has since checked into hospital with mental health problems. The AA is now braced for a courtroom battle over whether its decision to sack Mr Mackenzie was justified and whether he will get any money from a lucrative bonus scheme. The former boss oversaw the firm's 1.4billion stock market listing three years ago. If certain targets are hit in the next few years, he stands to be handed 33million shares under a controversial bonus scheme and these could be worth as much as 150million. But if Mr Mackenzie is judged a 'bad leaver' then he will have to forfeit all the shares for just 1p. Insiders said the scene was now set for a bitter courtroom fight over whether this applied to the chief executive. But the boss's family hit back by suggesting he had in fact resigned rather than being fired, and has since checked into hospital with mental health problems Pictured: The dramatic collapse in the AA's shares came almost immediately after the announcement All the details will be made public if the case ever goes before a judge, and the two sides would be likely to rack up hundreds of thousands of pounds in legal fees. The episode has left the AA fighting criticism of both its lack of transparency and its management structure. Spokesmen refused to provide any details of what had happened as the company's share price tumbled, leaving a vacuum for gossip to spread. It is understood that even leading shareholders have been given no information beyond what was in the short stock market statement announcing Mr Mackenzie's sacking on Tuesday. There was also criticism of the boss's unorthodox role, which combined the positions of chief executive and chairman something strongly opposed by many in the City as it concentrates a large amount of power in one place. Chris Spencer-Phillips of head hunter First Flight warned this was 'asking for trouble'. The AA is now braced for a courtroom battle over whether its decision to sack Mr Mackenzie, pictured with his wife Jane on holiday last year, was justified and whether he will get any money from a lucrative bonus scheme Stephen Martin, director general of the Institute of Directors, said: 'This story is an important reminder of the reason why the corporate governance code calls for separation of powers between chairman and chief executive. 'There would have been considerably less uncertainty this morning had the company not lost its two most senior positions with the removal of one individual.' The AA declined to comment yesterday. A spokesman referred to its earlier statement which said: 'Bob Mackenzie has been removed by the board from his role as executive chairman, from his other roles and as a director and as an employee of the company, for gross misconduct, with immediate effect.' This version of events was disputed by Mr Mackenzie's son Peter, who said: 'My father tendered his resignation this morning and resigned his directorships due to acute ill health. 'A consultant clinical psychologist advised him last week that he needed to take at least six months' leave. 'He is very unwell and has been admitted to hospital.' Mr Mackenzie's dismissal is not thought to relate to financial impropriety. It is understood the police were not called at the time of the alleged barroom clash, and it remains unclear where it took place. Pictured: Passport queues at Palma airport Ministers yesterday vowed to take their foreign counterparts to task as anger grew over the shambles at European airports. The move came as it emerged passengers would not be compensated for missing flights if the lengthy waits for passport checks made them late. EU regulations that force airlines to pay compensation for delayed or cancelled flights do not apply if the carriers are not directly responsible. With passport control reportedly taking up to ten minutes to vet each passenger, airlines have accused officials of failing to recruit enough staff or install more kiosks in light of strict new vetting rules. Amid fears delays will erupt again this weekend, aviation minister Lord Callanan said he understood the frustration caused and promised to hold urgent talks with Portugal, Spain and Italy. Queues of up to four hours have been reported at EU airports following the bungled introduction of tougher security checks for those travelling into Europes Schengen zone. Lord Callanan said he would urge his counterparts to do all they can to reduce queues and allow travellers to get on with their holidays. Queues of up to four hours have been reported at EU airports following the bungled introduction of tougher security checks for those travelling into Europes Schengen zone The regulations were first proposed following the Paris terror attacks in 2015 but passengers have complained there are not enough staff or ePassport gates to cope. Ryanair boss Michael OLeary slammed new passport controls and blamed it on an increase in the number of delayed flights. Mr OLeary said he was jumping up and down in frustration at the disruption caused by passengers stuck in queues leaving the Schengen area. He added: If people are leaving your country, what is the problem? Youre at the peak of the travel period, the UK school holidays. Why youre going through outbound passport control in any European country is a mystery to me. Last night, ministers were accused of ignoring warnings over the passport chaos. Airlines UK, the industry body, said it had written to the Department of Transport in May warning ministers over the problems. Tim Alderslade, chief executive of Airlines UK, said he wrote to the then aviation minister Lord Ahmad in the wake of similar problems over Easter. However in June, Transport ministers said they were encouraged the situation had calmed down and no action was taken. Phil Davis, whose flight home from Frankfurt yesterday was delayed by 90 minutes, said the airport only had one security lane open to process a large number of international flights. Tory MP Huw Merriman said: Its a ludicrous state of affairs when fellow EU members cannot distinguish the UK from other non-Schengen countries. We are an EU member, and an island, after all, and have not given free access to the migrants which mainland EU has. I would have thought we would be welcomed as the safest of nations. The new rules, which must be rolled out across the EUs passport-free Schengen zone by October 7, mean passenger details of non-members are run through a database to alert authorities if they are known to pose a threat. Airlines UK revealed on Tuesday it had urged the Government to use whatever influence it can to pressure EU states to adequately staff their airports in light of the tough new measures. This appears to have had the desired effect, with Lord Callanan saying in a statement yesterday: Clearly it is right that other EU countries have appropriate border controls, but it is also in everyones interests that tourists are able to start their holidays and spend money across Europe. A Sydney pervert has exposed himself to two young school girls while riding an electric scooter through the city's east. The man was travelling along The Avenue in Randwick about 1.50pm on Wednesday before approaching the fence of a nearby primary school. He then exposed himself to two girls, aged seven and eight, who were playing within the school's grounds. The man was travelling along The Avenue in Randwick about 1.50pm on Wednesday before approaching the fence of a nearby primary school (pictured) After leaving the man returned for a second time, once again revealing himself to the girls before driving off towards Alison Road. Eastern Beaches police were notified by the school and began an investigation on arrival. Police are searching for a man they believe can assist with their investigation. He is said to be of a dark complexion with dark hair, between 25 and 30-years-old, about 165-175 cm tall with a slim build. He was last seen wearing an orange high-vis shirt riding an black and silver scooter with thick tyres. Anyone with information should call Crime Stoppers on 1800 333 000. MPs have come under fire for ignoring warnings over passport chaos - after airlines claim to have told them about problems as early as May. As thousands of beleaguered now Brits face queuing for hours in airports across Europe, Airlines UK, the industry body, said it had written to the Department of Transport over the Easter period warning ministers over the problems. Holidaymakers have found themselves in queues stretching back hundreds of metres in airports across Malaga, Majorca, Lisbon, Milan, Paris, due to stringent new passport checks. But Tim Alderslade, chief executive of Airlines UK, said he wrote to the then aviation minister Lord Ahmad in the wake of similar problems over Easter. British holidaymakers, seen here in the huge queues at Majorca's Palma airport - as MPs come under fire for ignoring warnings over passport chaos Tim Alderslade, chief executive of Airlines UK, (left) said he wrote to former aviation minister Lord Ahmad (right) in the wake of similar problems over Easter Queues of up to four hours have been reported at EU airports following the bungled introduction of tougher security checks for those travelling into Europes Schengen zone However in June, Transport ministers said they were encouraged the situation had calmed down and no action was taken. Ryanair boss Michael OLeary slammed new passport controls and blamed it on an increase in the number of delayed flights. Mr OLeary said he was jumping up and down in frustration at the disruption caused by passengers stuck in queues leaving the Schengen area. He added: If people are leaving your country, what is the problem? Youre at the peak of the travel period, the UK school holidays. Why youre going through outbound passport control in any European country is a mystery to me. Last night, ministers were accused of ignoring warnings over the passport chaos. Ryanair boss Michael OLeary slammed new passport controls and blamed it on an increase in the number of delayed flights This shocking picture shows stranded passengers in a queue stretching back hundreds of feet in at Palma Airport on July 18 Queues of up to four hours have been reported at EU airports following the introduction of tougher security checks for those travelling into Europes Schengen zone. The worst hit include Malaga, Majorca, Lisbon, Milan, Paris-Orly, Lyon and Brussels, which have seen a surge in tourists at the start of the summer holidays. The regulations were first proposed following the Paris terror attacks in 2015 but passengers have complained there are not enough staff or ePassport gates to cope. And stricken passengers have now been told they will not be compensated for missing flights if the passport checks made them late. Palma airport, pictured when the changes were first brought in, is among those hit by the changes. This was the scene there in June when passengers reportedly missed flights. Spanish officials said the new rules had 'complicated passport control for British tourists' Aviation minister Lord Callanan said he understood the frustration caused and promised to hold urgent talks with Portugal, Spain and Italy EU regulations that force airlines to pay compensation for delayed or cancelled flights do not apply if the airlines are not directly responsible. Aviation minister Lord Callanan said he understood the frustration caused and promised to hold urgent talks with Portugal, Spain and Italy. Lord Callanan said he would urge his counterparts to do all they can to reduce queues and allow travellers to get on with their holidays. British Airways is refusing to publish a report into the IT shutdown in May which left thousands of passengers stranded across the world. A power surge stopped online check-in, grounded planes and broke baggage systems over the Spring bank holiday weekend. The problem started at a data centre at Heathrow on the Saturday but BA staff needed days to rebuild the servers to get services back to normal. A power surge stopped online check-in, grounded planes and broke baggage systems over the Spring bank holiday weekend It was unable to resume a full schedule until the Tuesday. Around 75,000 passengers were stranded after their flight was cancelled, with many more enduring lengthy delays. Many passengers who did catch their flights were forced to wait days to be reunited with their bags. BA promised to launch an exhaustive investigation into what went wrong. Last week Willie Walsh, the boss of BAs parent company IAG, said the independent review is almost complete as it reported a surge in profits. Many passengers who did catch their flights were forced to wait days to be reunited with their bags But Mr Walsh has also made it clear that the independent report will never be published. BA says the report indicated that an engineer, said to have been employed by contractor CBRE was to blame for rebooting the system too quickly when the power failed. The company has set aside 58million to compensate passengers, but has been criticised for being slow to pay out. A sudden surge in the number of asylum seekers arriving in Canada from the US has prompted officials to use the country's Olympic Stadium for emergency housing. Authorities had to scramble for accommodation after thousands of migrants, most of them Haitians, crossed into the country. It has left services in crisis, Jean-Pierre Fortin, Canada's Customs and Immigration Union national president, said. The sudden influx of migrants has left services at 'crisis point', according to Jean-Pierre Fortin, Canada's Customs and Immigration Union national president Many Haitians in the United States, fearing deportation, quickly chose Montreal as their destination, said Guillaume Andre, director of a multiethnic community center in the city He told AFP: 'This is a major crisis... the system is not designed to handle such huge immigration demands.' He said 500 asylum seekers crossed the border Tuesday near the border post of Lacolle in southern Quebec, estimating that about 90 percent of them were Haitian. Increasing numbers of migrants seeking asylum have been arriving in Canada in recent months, and authorities had been housing them in places such as university dorms and hotels. But the spike in arrivals means the existing facilities are no longer adequate. Francine Dupuis of Praida aid the influx of refugees was 'another consequence of (US President) Donald Trump's immigration policy,' calling Montreal a 'sanctuary city' Dozens of cots were placed in the corridors of Montreal's Olympic Stadium, the main venue for the 1976 Games According to Montreal Mayor Denis Coderre, 2,500 migrants crossed the land border into southern Canada in July. Dozens of cots were placed in the corridors of Montreal's Olympic Stadium, the main venue for the 1976 Games. About 40 people were on the first busload of migrants to arrive at the stadium yesterday, including several children. 'During their temporary stay at the stadium, they are being fed, housed and given clean clothes,' said Francine Dupuis of Praida, a provincial program that helps asylum seekers. The new arrivals are 'cared for in terms of physical and mental health,' she said, and authorities will help them integrate, including for school-aged children in a few weeks as classes resume. About 40 people were on the first busload of migrants to arrive at the stadium yesterday, including several children While asylum seekers have been crossing the border into Canada since US President Donald Trump was elected, there was a sharp spike over the past week 'The city of Montreal welcomes Haitian refugees, you can count on our full cooperation,' Coderre said. He said the influx of refugees was 'another consequence of (US President) Donald Trump's immigration policy,' calling Montreal a 'sanctuary city.' The city was seeking medium-term solutions for housing, 'well-organized and adequately equipped facilities that could accommodate asylum seekers in the coming months,' Coderre's cabinet said. While asylum seekers have been crossing the border into Canada since Trump was elected, there was a sharp spike over the past week. US President Donald Trump's immigration policies have been blamed for the sudden influx of migrants into Canada The influx of Haitians is linked to the likely expiration in January of temporary US visas held by nearly 60,000 Haitians. The United States granted Temporary Protection Status (TPS) to many Haitian nationals after the January 12, 2010 earthquake, which killed more than 200,000 people. TPS made it possible for Haitians in the United States to stay after their visas expired, and to work legally. While diaspora organizations and international NGOs sought an 18-month renewal earlier this year, the US Department of Homeland Security gave only a six-month extension, urging Haitian immigrants to 'put their affairs in order.' Quebec province, and particularly Montreal, is home to one of the largest Haitian communities in the world. Many Haitians in the United States, fearing deportation, quickly chose Montreal as their destination, said Guillaume Andre, director of a multiethnic community center in the city. A Sinn Fein MP has claimed the Venezuelan election which has sparked riots and deaths as 'fair and transparent' - despite it being labelled a 'sham' by major Western powers. Polling company Smartmatic, which provided the Latin American country's voting system, has alleged large scale tampering during Sunday's election, which saw 10 people killed in violent clashes. But Mickey Brady, the republican MP for Newry and Armagh, has gone against the views of most British and US politicians, who have largely condemned Nicolas Maduro's victory and the subsequent violence. Mickey Brady (right, next to Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams) was in Venezuela to see the vote and labelled it 'fair' Nicolas Maduro's victory and the subsequent violence have been condemned by British and US governments Mr Brady, who was invited to the South American country's National Electoral Council to oversee the vote, claims it was conducted entirely legitimately. 'I was in Venezuela for four days and I and other international observers went to a number of voting centres,' he told The Times. 'The electronic voting system was very efficient and the election system was fair and equitable. 'International reports on the election made me think I was in a different place. The election was fair and turnout was substantial. I thought that the process was fair and transparent.' Violence swept the country as Maduro, 54, defied international condemnation to hold elections for a powerful new 'Constituent Assembly'. This was the scene as police clashed with protesters in Caracas yesterday A member of the national guard fires his shotgun at opposition demonstrators during clashes in Caracas over the weekend The claim of fixing comes as Maduro faces international pressure following the arrest of two opposition leaders in the wake of the weekend's vote. Experts have warned that Sunday's election means the cash-strapped country could be on the verge of defaulting on its $5billion of foreign debt. The country went to the polls to choose a much-condemned assembly that supersedes parliament. Smartmatic chief executive Antonio Mugica yesterday told a news briefing in London: 'We know, without any doubt, that the turn out of the recent election for a National Constituent Assembly was manipulated. Strong message: President Donald Trump called for the immediate release of two high profile critics of Venezuela's President Nicolas Maduro, branding Maduro a 'dictator' 'We estimate the difference between the actual participation and the one announced by authorities is at least one million votes.' Three of Britain's biggest unions have been urged to withdraw support for withdraw support for Mr Maduro after it emerged Unite, Unison and the GMB all have ties to the Venezuelan Solidarity Campaign. Jeremy Corbyn has also been urged to condemn his fellow socialist. On Mr Brady's visit, DUP MP Ian Paisley Jr said: 'Sinn Fein has a colourful record of supporting the most criminal regimes in the world. 'Why does Sinn Fein and Labour actively support this type of regime?' Three former New South Wales Labor ministers and one of their staffers engaged in serious corrupt conduct, the state's anti-corruption commission found. The Independent Commission Against Corruption's long-awaited report into controversial water infrastructure company Australian Water Holdings, was released on Thursday, three years after it was compiled. The ICAC found jailed right-faction powerbroker Eddie Obeid and fellow former Labor ministers Joe Tripodi and Tony Kelly engaged in serious corrupt conduct in relation to their actions concerning a lucrative public-private partnership proposal by AWH between 2007 and 2010. Jailed former Labor minister Eddie Obeid was found to have acted corruptly in water deal Former Labor right-faction powerbroker Joe Tripodi was also found to acted corruptly WATERMATE TIMELINE MARCH 2014 * Operation Credo begins looking into allegations of corrupt conduct involving public officials and persons with an interest in Australian Water Holdings * NSW Liberal Party refunds more than $75,000 worth of 'tainted donations' to Sydney Water APRIL 2014 * Barry O'Farrell resigns as NSW premier after admitting to misleading ICAC over a $3000 bottle of wine accepted as a gift DECEMBER 2014 * Federal assistant treasurer Arthur Sinodinos, who was the deputy chairman of AWH between 2009 and 2010, stands aside NOVEMBER 2016 * ICAC commissioner Megan Latham - who sat through the Credo proceedings - resigns after former premier Mike Baird pushed through controversial changes to the structure of the corruption watchdog, effectively forcing her out AUGUST 2017 * Former NSW Labor ministers Eddie Obeid, Joe Tripodi, Tony Kelly and staffer Laurie Brown are found to have engaged in serious corrupt conduct over AWH's involvement in a lucrative state government contract * ICAC recommends that the Director of Public Prosecutions investigate laying criminal charges against the four men * No corrupt findings made against Senator Sinodinos or anyone in the Liberal party. Advertisement The report also found Mr Kelly's former chief-of-staff Gilbert (Laurie) Brown engaged in serious corrupt conduct for his involvement in 'preparing a cabinet minute' from a 2010 standing committee on the budget. The corruption commission recommended that consideration is given to 'obtaining the advice of the Director of Public Prosecution with respect to the prosecution' of the three MPs and staffer. Meanwhile, it made no corrupt findings against Liberal senator Arthur Sinodinos, who was the deputy chairman of AWH in between 2009 and 2010. He stepped down from then prime minister Tony Abbott's front bench in December 2014 when he was drawn into the inquiry. Senator Sinodinos, who is now Industry Minister under Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, has responded to the report, noting there was no 'adverse findings or commentary' against him. 'This brings to an end a long and comprehensive process,' he said in a statement. 'I thank my family and colleagues for their support throughout.' The AWH board resolved in January 2011 to give Senator Sinodinos a five per cent equity share in AWH and a 2.5 per cent equity share bonus should AWH successfully negotiate a public private partnership with the NSW Government. Liberal Premier Barry O'Farrell was also forced to step down during the AWH saga, dramatically resigning in April 2014 after admitting he misled ICAC over a $3000 bottle of Grange Hermitage he had received in March 2011 shortly after winning the election. The AWH affair has infected both sides of politics in NSW, implicating cabinet ministers from governments led by Labor premiers Morris Iemma, Nathan Rees and Kristina Keneally. Gold Coast City council has rejected plans to double the size of an Islamic prayer room at a controversial mosque after heavy opposition from the local community. Building plans for the Muslim prayer centre at the Worongary site were first approved in 2012, with room for 40 worshipers and separate entrances for males and females. But furious residents took issue when an extension to increase the worship space to fit 200 people, an extra 57 square metres of land, went ahead without approval. After close to 700 submissions against the proposal, the council issued a show cause notice to the site developer for breaching the approval conditions. Gold Coast City council has rejected plans to double the size of an Islamic prayer room at a controversial mosque Building plans for the Muslim prayer centre at the Worongary site were first approved in 2012 The complainants said their biggest concerns were about traffic, construction noise and the unapproved expansion. Worongary Residents Group spokesman Sean Mann, who lives across the road from the mosque, said religion was not a driving factor in the community's opposition. 'We would have the same objections if it was a 24-hour McDonald's going there,' Mr Mann told the Gold Coast Bulletin. 'We are happy with the outcome but it's only a step. It's going to end up in court anyway.' Queensland's planning courts will make a final judgement on the expansion, which the site applicant says is so worshipers can face the north-west wall when praying. 'We're doing this for a good cause... the place is capped at 40 people and that's all that it will be,' site applicant Leon Jordan told 9 News. Worongary Residents Group spokesman Sean Mann, who lives across the road from the mosque, said religion was not a driving factor in the community's opposition A Catholic primary school has come under fire after it reportedly banned boys and girls from mixing in the playground. Don Bosco Catholic Primary School in Melbourne's Narre Warren told its Grade 5 and 6 students that girls and boys were prohibited from gathering and mixing outside of the classroom this week, 3AW Mornings reports. A 'puppy love triangle' between three students is behind the 'no socialising' rule, according to one parent who blasted it as 'disgusting.' The mother told the Herald Sun that her daughter's class had been told by teachers that they could be arrested if they didn't comply with the rule. Scroll down for audio A Melbourne primary school told its Grade 5 and 6 students that girls and boys were prohibited from mixing outside of the classroom this week 'My daughter came home upset because the class was told by teachers that the principal could delete her account and she could be arrested because of it,' she told the newspaper. 'I've been at the school for a long time and every year there are kids that like each other and sometimes date but it's all very innocent.' Another parent, identified only as Bill, told Neil Mitchell that his 11-year-old son had informed him about the ban, which appears to have been put in place after a school rule was broken. However, the school didn't inform parents of the move despite officials disrupting classes to tell students about what it on Wednesday. 'Apparently the grade or senior school had been told that during recess, lunch breaks, they're not to gather in groups with the other gender and not allowed to play piggy, those sorts of things unless it's all of the same gender,' Bill told Mitchell. He explained that it appeared the ban was due to a couple of students, of the same gender, misbehaving. 'I believe there's a couple of students that have not been following the guidelines of Grade 5 and 6, and now it looks like the whole senior level have been tarred with the same brush in regards to their consequences Children at Don Bosco Catholic Primary School in Melbourne's Narre Warren (above, file photo) were taken out of classes this week to be informed of the new rule 'They're not allowed to hang around in groups with males and females in the one group and there's certainly been no talk of racism or anything like that, more sexism, I suppose.' Mitchell blasted the decision as 'sexual segregation.' And Bill said that many angry parents contacting the school about the lack of communication. 'Once the word got around with the parents, there was a lot of discussion and I believe some of the parents, we haven't, but some of the parents have actually contacted the school as soon as they found out and there was some heated discussion.' 'If my kids were misbehaving, I'd be going to the parents and I'd wanna know about it but it seems there's just been a blanket rule.' It comes after the same school was slammed by parents for its decision to have asbestos removed from the premises during school hours. Some claimed the school breached its duty of care to students when it scheduled the clean-up in May, the Herald Sun reported. Daily Mail Australia has contacted the school for comment. A poem at the Statue of Liberty that is a national symbol for the country's embrace of immigrants is at the heart of a row at the White House. An angry exchange between a White House aide and a CNN reporter saw the verses, referring to 'huddled masses' dismissed by the official. Senior White House Advisor Stephen Miller instead said the Statue of Liberty is a 'symbol of American liberty lighting the world', and said it had little to do with immigrants. Scroll down for video White House senior policy adviser Stephen Miller has claimed that the Statue of Liberty has little to do with immigrants The Statue of Liberty is widely seen as a beacon to immigrants arriving in America from across the world A group of immigrants wait in line at Ellis Island to begin a new life in America Miller told reporters the poem, The New Colossus, written by Emma Lazarus in 1883, is not part of the original Statue of Liberty He was yesterday confronted by CNN's Jim Acosta, who asked if President Donald Trump's skills-based immigration system - which favors English speakers and those desired skills - fits with American traditions. In an angry exchange, Acosta asked: 'The Statue of Liberty says, "Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses" ... doesn't say anything about speaking English or being a computer programmer. THE NEW COLOSSUS BY EMMA LAZARUS Emma Lazarus wrote the poem in 1883 Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame, With conquering limbs astride from land to land; Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame. Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp! cries she With silent lips. Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door! Advertisement 'Aren't you trying to change what it means to be an immigrant coming into this country if you're telling them you have to speak English?' But Miller told reporters the poem, The New Colossus, written by Emma Lazarus in 1883, is not part of the original Statue of Liberty. Miller's comment prompted ridicule on social media and angry responses from immigrant rights advocates. He stated: 'The poem you were referring to was added later,' Miller said. 'It's not actually part of the original Statue of Liberty.' After Miller's comments, Steven Goldstein, executive director of the Anne Frank Center for Mutual Respect, wrote: 'Stephen Miller has turned himself simultaneously into a Statue of Arrogance and a National Monument of Ignorance. 'His subpar knowledge of American history, as reflected in Emma Lazarus' poem, means he couldn't pass President Trump's new immigration test. Therefore, Stephen, please leave.' The National Park Service says Lazarus' sonnet depicts the statue 'as the 'Mother of Exiles' - a symbol of immigration and opportunity - symbols associated with the Statue of Liberty today.' The statue was a gift from France commemorating its alliance with the United States during the American Revolution. Edouard de Laboulaye, a French political thinker and abolitionist, proposed the idea of the statue and made sure broken shackle and chain were at the right foot of the statue. Writers and authors later asked Emma Lazarus, a poet and descendant of Jewish immigrants, to write a sonnet to be sold at an auction to raise money for a pedestal to hold the Statue of Liberty. She wrote the poem having been inspired by the plight of immigrants and refugees and her own experiences. The poem appeared in Joseph Pulitzer's New York World and The New York Times. She died four years later and the poem eventually faded from public memory. In 1901, a Lazarus friend, Georgina Schuyler, found a book containing the poem and started an effort to resurrect the work. Her words were eventually inscribed on a plaque and placed on the statue's pedestal. The Statue of Liberty and nearby Ellis Island have since become welcoming symbols for immigrants and refugees coming to the United States. It draws thousands of visitors each day. The Statue of Liberty and nearby Ellis Island have become welcoming symbols for immigrants and refugees coming to the United States Miller was quizzed by CNN's White House correspondent Jim Acosta, who accused the Trump aide of 'National Park revisionism' Senior White House Advisor Stephen Miller instead said the Statue of Liberty is a 'symbol of American liberty lighting the world', and said it had little to do with immigrants The question which sparked the row was prompted by President Trump's new immigration policy During yesterday's White House exchange, Acosta asked: 'Can't people learn how to Speak English when they get here?' The question set in motion a lengthy back-and-forth between the 31-year-old Miller from the podium and the 46-year-old Acosta, whose father was a Cuban immigrant, seated in the briefing room's front row. Stephen Miller has turned himself simultaneously into a Statue of Arrogance and a National Monument of Ignorance Steven Goldstein, executive director of the Anne Frank Center for Mutual Respect At first, Miller's response was stern and academic. Miller, a key Steven Bannon ally in the West Wing, pointed out that in order to be naturalized, a person must speak English. 'So the notion that speaking English wouldn't be part of our immigration system would be very ahistorical,' the Trump aide said. 'Secondly,' Miller added, saying he didn't want to get into a 'whole thing about history here,' but pointed out that poem on the Statue of Liberty had been added later. Acosta sat miffed. 'You're saying that that does not represent what the country was always thought of, as with immigration coming into this country?' the journalist said. 'I'm sorry. That sounds like that sounds like some National Park revisionism.' Ian Paterson, 59, has been struck off after carrying out unnecessary operations (pictured in February at Nottingham's court) A surgeon jailed for 15 years after carrying out needless breast operations faces a bid to increase his sentence. Ian Paterson, who left victims scarred and disfigured, was handed the prison term in May following a trial at Nottingham Crown Court. But Court of Appeal judges are now being asked to rule on whether a term of 15 years for his crimes is 'unduly lenient' and should be increased. The case has been referred to the court by Solicitor General Robert Buckland. Lady Justice Hallett, Mrs Justice Carr and Mr Justice Goss will review the sentence at a hearing in London on Thursday. Paterson, 59, from Altrincham, Greater Manchester, was convicted by a jury of offences of wounding with intent and unlawful wounding against ten patients. Sentencing him to a total of 15 years, Mr Justice Jeremy Baker told Paterson: 'You deliberately played upon their worst fears, either by inventing or deliberately exaggerating the risk that they would develop cancer.' The judge added that Paterson therefore gained his patients' trust and confidence to manipulate them into consenting to the surgical procedures he carried out. Paterson in the dock in May. Tribunal chairwoman Valerie Paterson said the panel had seen no evidence of an apology or remorse on behalf of Paterson He also said Paterson used his 'charming and charismatic' characteristics to manipulate patients. Ian Paterson left victims disfigured and scarred, and used his 'charming and charismatic' characteristics to manipulate patients His trial heard evidence from nine women and one man who were treated in the private sector at Little Aston and Parkway hospitals in the West Midlands between 1997 and 2011. Victims told the court of how Paterson's crimes had left them in constant pain and struggling to trust medical professionals. The judge said that because of his actions, most of his victims were suffering from 'prolonged psychological conditions' including post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety and depression. In 2012, more than 700 patients of Paterson, who also worked in the NHS, were recalled after concerns about unnecessary or incomplete operations. Following his trial, Paterson was struck off from the medical profession. A tribunal ruled that his actions were 'serious' as well as 'intentionally harmful' over a period of 14 years. His failure to acknowledge any of his faults showed a lack of insight that indicated he still posed a serious risk to patients, the medical practitioners tribunal also concluded. Two transportation police officers were caught on video making a violent arrest of a man reportedly high on LSD outside a Macy's store in New York City. A passerby recorded the Metropolitan Transportation Authority officials wrestling a 'crazed' man to the ground and repeatedly punching him in the face Tuesday night. The unnamed man had allegedly tried to enter a stranger's car, prompting officers to get involved when they were called to the scene to talk with him. When the man reportedly tried to resist, the MTA officers began to use physical force, including pushing him to the ground and punching him in the face, in an apparent attempt to subdue him. Two Metropolitan Transportation Authority officers were recorded making a violent arrest of a unnamed man who was reportedly high on LSD outside a Macy's store in New York City on Tuesday night (pictured) The incident happened just before midnight on Tuesday night, outside the Macy's Department Store on West 34th Street in New York City. The man who recorded the video didn't want to be named, but told the New York Daily News that he witnessed the interaction when coming back from a concert. He said to the news outlet: 'At first we thought it was a normal fight but then we realized cops were involved so we started filming. 'When we saw the cop punching, thats when everyone started screaming, "Hey, whats going on?" 'I have friends that are officers, but some of these guys take what Trump said last week to heart that its okay to rough people up.' In the clip, the man can be heard crying out to passersby for help and cried out for his 'mom'. Officals were called to the scene after the man reportedly tried to enter a stranger's car In the clip, the man can be heard crying out to passersby for help and at one point cried out for his 'mom'. ABC News reported that the man later told officials that he was under the influence of LSD during the incident. He was later taken to Bellevue Hospital as an 'Emotionally Disturbed Person', according to the news outlet. The man has not yet been charged and the MTA said the incident was under review. The clip was uploaded to YouTube and entitled 'NYPD takes Trumps advice repeatedly punch unarmed guy in face'. President Trump appeared to advocate for the rougher treatment of people in police custody during a speech to New York law enforcement officers on Friday. The clip was uploaded to YouTube and entitled 'NYPD takes Trumps advice repeatedly punch unarmed guy in face'. Trump appeared to advocate for the rougher treatment of people in police custody during a speech to New York law enforcement officers on Friday (pictured) Trump spoke dismissively of arresting officers who protect suspects' heads while putting them in police cars in a speech in front of law enforcement on Long Island. He said: 'You can take the hand off,' drawing cheers from his audience. Trump also claimed that laws are written to 'protect the criminal' and 'not the officers.' He told the law enforcement officials that the 'laws are stacked against you' and need to be changed. The police department in the New York county where Trump make the comments condemned the practice later that day. A shocking video of a group of Teamsters racially abusing a Top Chef producer in 2014 surfaced on Wednesday as the men appeared in court. Boston labor union Teamsters John Fidler, Daniel Redmond, Robert Cafarelli and Michael Ross were picketing outside a restaurant where the show was filming in the suburb of Milton when they made the comments. The men claimed the production was taking work away from local people and are accused of demanding that workers from their union - the Brotherhood of Teamsters - be hired. They are all now facing extortion charges for their allegedly unlawful attempts to secure the work. During the encounter outside the restaurant, they hurled insults at producer Ellie Carbajal. Redmond was filmed calling her a 'f***ing towel head' and a 'c**t'. Later, he added: 'At least I'm not a scab like you'. Carbajal filmed their comments with her cell phone. It was used as evidence in court on Wednesday. What it did not capture was the men allegedly 'swarming' star host Padma Lakshmi's car later and threatening to 'smash' her 'pretty little face in'. When Lakshmi's car drove past, one of the men allegedly said: 'Thats the pretty one. We want to smash her face in.' According to witnesses, John Fidler also reached into Lakshmi's chauffeured van, threatened to hit her and called her a 'f****** w****'. Teamster Daniel Redmond (left) uttered the worst of the insults, calling the woman a 'f***ing towel head' and a 'scab'. Robert Cafarelli (pictured right) was also there for the incident Cafarelli later told Carbajal: 'You know what you are' while fellow union member Mark Harrington (right) filmed her. Harrington pleaded guilty to extortion last year but the others deny it The men later 'swarmed' Padma Lakshmi's car and one allegedly reached in to threaten to 'smash' her 'pretty little face' Producer Ellie Carbajal (pictured immediately after the attack) testified against the men Prosecutors say she was left 'paralyzed' by fear. Carbajal testified at the trial on Wednesday and said she was just as frightened. 'They got in my face. I was scared. I couldnt believe they were doing this,' she said, according to Page Six. 'They were grown men,' she said. Lakshmi is expected to testify against the men on Thursday. All have pleaded not guilty to extortion. Mark Harrington, another union member who was there, pleaded guilty to extortion last year. Police officers were at the scene but did nothing to intervene, claiming the men were within their rights. Afterwards, police received reports that the tires of several cars had been slashed at the scene. Two arguing motorists have jumped out of their vehicles and begun trading vicious punches in yet another shocking road rage attack to be captured on camera. Morning traffic at Forrestdale, in south Perth, was brought to a halt by the motorists as they stood in the middle of a busy road and attacked each other on Wednesday. Wrestling and scragging with one another, the two land multiple blows before they reached a stalemate and hopped back into their vehicles, allowing the backlog of traffic to clear, Seven News reports. Scroll down for video Two arguing motorists have jumped out of their vehicles and begun trading vicious punches in south Perth (pictured), in yet another shocking road rage attack to be captured on camera It is unclear if either man was injured in the brawl, with the pair yet to be identified by police. The road rage punch-on follows a number of similar incidents in recent weeks, many of which have been caught on dash camera. In one incident in Sydney last week, a 41-year-old man punched a 21-year-old woman as they came to a stop at an intersection. But in the lead up to the violence, police allege the woman threw objects out of her car window and at the man's vehicle. Bianca Lee Sams, the young mother who was filmed being punched in the face by a burly man in a horrific road rage attack, has been charged over her involvement in the incident Ms Sams (pictured left) uploaded two images showing a bruised and bloody upper lip (right) Despite initially appearing the victim, the young mother was been charged over her involvement in the incident. Just days before that another video emerged of four men brawling at an intersection after all hopping out of their cars at a red light. Footage captured by another driver stopped behind the men shows the four trading punches and kicks after earlier arguing. Two tradesmen wearing hi-vis work shirts took issue with the driver threatening them and burst out of the car The dramatic video begins with a man wearing sunglasses and a hoodie threatening another driver, before both drivers and their passengers hop out of their vehicles. More than 300,000 people viewed the battle between the driver and passenger of an Audi and two tradesmen wearing hi-vis fluro orange work shirts, online. The 22-year-old driver of the Audi handed himself into police on Wednesday and has been charged with various offences. A filmmaker who has been following Anthony Scaramucci for four years capturing his every move is now making The Mooch's life into a film. Andrew Muscato admits he 'got lucky' after the financier had one of the most dramatic political flame outs in recent history. The Mooch, who sold his multi billion dollar company SkyBridge Capital, was appointed as White House communications director for an impressively short tenure that saw him threaten to murder leakers. Filmmaker Andrew Muscato (right), who has been following Anthony Scaramucci (left) for four years capturing his every move is now making The Mooch's life into a film He also complained to a reporter about getting 'c*** blocked' by former chief of staff Reince Priebus, and claimed Steve Bannon was 'trying to suck his own c**k', before he was forced out just ten days after his appointment, by White House chief of staff John Kelly. Meanwhile, it emerged that his wife Deidre Ball, 38, had filed for divorce from Scaramucci while pregnant - and she gave birth to their child last week. Ball's lawyer, Jill Stone shot down rumors that Scaramucci's 'naked ambition' was the reason behind the split. Anthony Scaramucci dines at the Trump Hotel restaurant, DC.(to his right, Katrina Pierson, Trump loyalist and CNN contributor).Monday 31st July 2017 on the day he was out as White House communications director The drama has all been caught on camera by Muscato who has been following Scaramucci for years after the Mooch granted him full access. 'I'm lucky to have captured, for the past four years, one of the most fascinating people that I've ever known,' he told Page Six. Muscato left NYU film school, and moved to Japan and shoot The Zen of Bobby V - after recently fired Mets manager Bobby Valentine was hired by the Chiba Lotte Marines and led them to victory. Scaramucci was not only forced out by Kelly, he now has to settle up with the IRS. He had been so eager to join the Trump administration that he engineered the sale of his company, SkyBridge Capital, to a Chinese firm, this year. He was set to be the beneficiary of a government program that allows people who sell assets to join the White House to defer taxation. To cap off Scaramucci's tumultuous week, news broke late on Friday that his wife Deidre (pictured on Monday) had filed for divorce while she was eight months pregnant Scaramucci turned on journalist Ryan Lizza, saying he 'made a mistake in trusting a reporter' Scaramucci had yet to formally start his role as communications director, although he gave numerous TV interviews and spoke from the White House briefing room the day is hiring was announced. Scaramucci held a position at the Export Import Bank but was on leave. 'The rumor is Trump feels bad and is going to give Anthony a job as ambassador to The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD),' a source told the Post, which would allow hi to get his tax deferment If Scaramucci is sore at the president for cutting him loose, he isn't showing it. The night he got pushed out, he dined at Trump's luxury hotel in D.C., where he stayed over night. He dined at BLT Prime steak house, and was pictured by DailyMail.com with Trump loyalist Katrina Pierson and a member of the White House communications staff. His financial disclosure valued SkyBridge at more than $50 million and stated he owned a 44 per cent state, Politico reported before Scaramucci got axed. Bloomberg valued the deal at $200 million to $230 million. To cap off Scaramucci's tumultuous week last week, news broke late on Friday that his wife Deidre had filed for divorce while she was eight months pregnant A migrant mother is having to move her young family across Australia after being unable to find work. Suzan and Rafic Aliny moved to Australia in March from Dubai on the advice of her brother who fell in love with the country. Despite having more than a decade of experience in their respective fields, both Suzan and Rafic have been unable to attain employment for five months, forcing Rafic to move back to Dubai and Suzan to relocate her family to a remote mining town in Western Australia. 'This is my last chance in Australia,' she told Daily Mail Australia. Suzan Aliny (pictured) is having to move her young family across Australia after being unable to find work Her children, Robin (left) and Dora (right) have not seen their father in three months. Suzan says they are very happy at their school and she fears having to relocate them to Western Australia Suzan, who has worked as a pharmacist technician for more than 13 years and achieved her education at the University of Notre Dame and the University of Cairo, says the terms of her $7,000 visa only allowed her to live and work on the Sunshine Coast. 'The immigration department said they needed pharmacist technicians in Queensland. I was told I can't live in Brisbane or the Gold Coast, I had to live in a regional area,' she told Daily Mail Australia. 'I think they (Immigration Department) should exclude this area from the list and not encourage anyone to come here again. There are employment problems in the Sunshine Coast and they know that.' Suzan said she has not been made to feel comfortable by other residents and feels as though many feel threatened by her taking jobs from locals. 'Regional areas don't have any awareness that foreigners are coming to this country. People stop me on the street with my kids and ask why do you come to Australia, why do you come to the Sunshine Coast?' she said. 'The government should know the areas they are sending people to.' Suzan says she will allow the family two months to settle in Collie, a remote mining town more than 200km from Perth, and if it doesn't work they will return to Dubai The Aliny family are moving from the stunning Sunshine Coast (pictured) to a remote mining town in Western Australia She says she has been constantly denied jobs because of her lack of experience or unfamiliarity with the Australian medicine system and the software used. 'I have big experience and pharmacy work is not a huge difference between countries. The medicine is the same between the countries.' She says she applied for any role within a pharmacy and was denied. She also said she has been rejected for a number of other 'minor' roles, including a cleaner position, because she does not have experience. 'I tried as a cleaner and they didn't even accept me to do that. I tried for every minor job on the Sunshine Coast and nothing, even for the cleaner job which doesn't require any experience or qualifications, they rejected me for having no experience.' Suzan told Daily Mail Australia the family also experienced difficulty finding a home to rent, and only found one after agreeing to pay four months rent upfront. She says she was unable to even enjoy the beautiful coastal area in which she lived because she was so upset with her situation. 'We didn't even see Noosa. I didn't visit anywhere on the Sunshine Coast because I wasn't feeling good enough to leave my house.' Her husband has found similar difficulties getting a job. He works as a software engineer, working with sophisticated and intricate technology that is only used by the government and army, but because he is not an Australian resident he has been unable work in his field. 'My husband and I have applied for hundreds of jobs without reply,' she said. Rafic has had to return to his job in Dubai, and Suzan says he cannot take any more leave to return to Australia because he fears losing his job. The Aliny family have been living on the Sunshine Coast (pictured) since in March - but both Suzan and her husband Rafic have been unable to attain employment Suzan and her children are moving to Collie (pictured), a remote mining town more than 200kms from Perth Their children, Robin, 8 and Dora, 5, have not seen their father in three months. Suzan says they are very happy at their school and she fears having to relocate them to Western Australia. 'This is my last chance in Australia. I'm going to Western Australia, I got offered a job by an Egyptian friend of mine. If I applied i wouldn't be accepted, but he is a friend of my brother and he offered me the job because he knows I am suffering.' She says she will allow the family two months to settle in Collie, a remote mining town more than 200km from Perth, and if it doesn't work they will return to Dubai. 'If my kids are psychologically effected by the move we will return to Dubai. I will give it 2 months and if I see they are feeling bad, that they can't accept they have new friends and a new community I will turn my back, and lose a lot of money.' The family are leaving for Western Australia on Friday. The Immigration Department told Daily Mail Australia as a holder of the 489 visa Suzan was nominated by the Queensland Government and was able to relocate after consultation with the state. 'Applicants for this visa are sponsored by State or Territory governments based on their skills needs. States/Territories have their own requirements that applicants are required to meet to obtain sponsorship,' a spokeswoman said. 'Applicants applying for this visa may have to secure their own employment or demonstrate that they have an employment offer in place.' Scientists in Western Australia have observed large groups of dolphins engaging in what they described as 'homosexual behaviour' after the mating season finishes. The team at the Mandurah Dolphin Research Project noticed that after mating season was over, the male Bottlenose dolphins were 'mounting' and 'having genital contact' with each other. 'These dolphins, all but three of them juveniles, organised themselves in four subgroups in which they were observed engaging in socio-sexual behavior that included mounting and genital contact between individuals,' Murdoch University's Krista Nicholson told the Mandurah Mail. Researchers noticed Bottlenose dolphins spending time together after mating season ended (file picture) 'The subgroups joined, frequently forming a large group, and then split again in different group compositions.' She said that this behaviour was typical of Bottlenose dolphins, which are usually found in tropical oceans and warm waters around the world. Scientists who have extensively studied the Bottlenose dolphin population in Shark Bay, Western Australia, have observed bisexual behaviour and evidence of a social heiraechy. 'Apart from homosexual behavior, males, unlike females, in Shark Bay have also been recorded to perform synchronous displays,' Ms Nicholson explained. She said that in Shark Bay, two male dolphins are more likely to mate for life than two female dolphins or two dolphins of different genders. Two male dolphins 'more likely' to mate for life than two dolphins of different genders Unsurprisingly, homosexual behaviour also plays a role in establishing dominance between male dolphins, helping to cement 'social bonds'. The research team headed by Ms Nicholson were 'excited' to record the similarities between Mandurah and Shark Bay dolphins. Observing another group of dolphins in the same area exhibiting the same behaviour will further help their research into how and why the homosexual; behaviour occurs, according to NewsWeek. Researchers were 'excited' to record similarities between Mandurah and Shark Bay dolphins Scientists extensively study the Bottlenose dolphin population in Shark Bay, Western Australia Dolphin expert Janet Mann, who has spent decades at Shark Bay observing dolphins, suggests in her book that homosexual contact between male dolphins is 'practice' for mating season. 'Our understanding of the social structure and relationships in a larger context would suggest that male-male social-sexual interactions are...practicing courtship behaviours for adulthood.' Ms Mann also suggest that the behaviour serves multiple functions, including 'fitness' and 'alliance formation'. Travelling around Australia is often a once in a lifetime opportunity foreign backpackers take months planning and even longer saving for. But eight young hopefuls will be lucky enough to enjoy a pre-planned three month trip across the country - and won't have to pay a thing. Tourism Australia have teamed up with BuzzFeed Australia and are searching for a handful of aspiring content creators who will embark on an unforgettable trip that will take in some of the nation's most iconic spots. Courtesy of Tourism Australia and BuzzFeed, eight young hopefuls will be lucky enough to enjoy a pre-planned three month trip across the country - and won't have to pay a thing Potential suitors will be handed unique itineraries that will take them from the bright lights of some of Australia's biggest cities including Melbourne (pictured) A handful of aspiring content creators will embark on an unforgettable trip that will take in some of the nation's most iconic spots such as Ayers Rock (pictured) 'As far as working holidays go, I think you'd have to go a long way to beat this. It's the road trip to end all road trips,' said John O'Sullivan, Tourism Australia's Managing Director. Potential suitors from the UK, Italy, France and Germany will be handed unique itineraries that will take them from the bright lights of some of Australia's biggest cities to rural landmarks such as Ayers Rock and the Devil's Marbles. 'They will head off-the-beaten track and experience the very best of Aussie culture,' Lisa Ronson, Chief Marketing Officer of Tourism Australia told Daily Mail Australia. 'Imagine eating your way through the best delicacies of Tasmanias East Coast or watching the sunrise over Uluru, or snapping selfies with the famous Quokkas at Rottenest Island,' In return for the ultimate road trip, the adventurous nomads, to be known as 'Mates', will be asked to document their dream experience across social media with a view to attracting other travellers to venture down under. The eight successful candidates will learn to master the art of online media under the watchful eye of the BuzzFeed Australia editorial team, who have revealed their enthusiasm for the new project. In return for the opportunity, the adventurous nomads will be asked to document their experiences across social media to attract other travellers to venture down under Travellers from the UK, Italy, France and Germany will have the chance to view some of Australia's most iconic rural landmarks such as the Devil's Marbles in Karlu Karlu (pictured) 'We're excited to partner with Tourism Australia to give our audience around the world the opportunity to come and embed with the BuzzFeed Australia team, learn new creative skills and see the best of what this country has to offer,' BuzzFeed Australia's Editor-in-chief Simon Crerar said. Seeing as young travellers make up a quarter of all international arrivals to Australia and 44 per cent of visitor's expenditure, Federal Minister for Trade, Tourism and Investment, the Hon Steven Ciobo MP has stressed the importance of young travellers coming to Australia. 'The Turnbull Government recognises the importance of bringing more young people to Australia, both to travel and work, and that is why we have made improvements to the working holidaymaker program and committed $10 million to Tourism Australia for this campaign.' 'These eight-lucky young travellers have a life-changing trip ahead of them and one which we believe will motivate many more young international travellers to follow in their footsteps.' Interested applicants can apply via Tourism Australia's website until August 18 and are expected to have a deep understanding of the digital media landscape and a history of video production. 'The aim is to put Australia on the map as a memorable and desirable youth destination, highlighting the most unique attractions and life-changing experiences for young travellers, including those who want to combine travel with temporary work,' Ronson added. Celebrations to commemorate the 90th anniversary of the Peoples Liberation Army [Xinhua] Across China, joyous celebrations took place to commemorate the 90th anniversary of the Peoples Liberation Army. The U.S. medias coverage of these celebrations was predictable. The photos emphasized that China is displaying military strength. Some reports even hinted to the U.S. public that somehow these weapons were amassed, and these gatherings had taken place in order to threaten the United States. A great deal of the medias focus has been photographs of Chinese President Xi Jinping standing before military gatherings. With these images, the Western media subtly insinuates that Xi Jinping is a dictator and links him to figures like Saddam Hussein or Augusto Pinochet in the mind of the American public. This is a misrepresentation. The fact that China has a large military to protect its sovereignty, or that its population takes pride in this as an accomplishment, is nothing new. Military parades frequently occur in China and do not signify a threat of aggression toward anyone. While Chinas military strength is massive, the countrys record of military intervention beyond its own mainland is very limited. U.S. media missed the real significance of these 90th anniversary celebrations and what they mean for China and the world. In 1927, the Peoples Liberation Army was formed in a moment of desperation. The Chinese Communist Party had worked with Dr. Sun Yat-sen and other Chinese nationalists, and shared much of their vision for creating a strong, independent country. The Peoples Liberation Army was formed as a mechanism of self-defense, as Chinese Communists and the labor unions and community organizations aligned with them, faced outright persecution. The People's Liberation Army originated as a small group of fighters. It took 25 years of difficult struggles before the Peoples Liberation Army and the Communist Party ultimately created the Peoples Republic in 1949. This success can largely be credited to the armys unique methods. Mao Zedong famously wrote the The Three Rules of Discipline and Eight Points for Attention which soldiers were required to memorize. These strict guidelines for the activity of the PLA have been put to music, and specifically address how soldiers interact with people. While previous armies in Chinas history had a habit of plundering and stealing from the population, Mao Zedong instructed his troops Do not take a single needle or piece of thread from the masses. The Eight Points of Attention also addressed the treatment of captives, and forbid soldiers from even using foul language. The short list of rules specifically mandated that women be treated with respect, and not be subjected to any form of sexual harassment. This is an issue which the U.S. military has failed to adequately address, even 90 years later. Many American writers visited the territories controlled by the PLA during the 1930s and were deeply impressed. Edgar Snow, Agnes Smedley, Anna Louise Strong, among many others, saw something very unique about the PLAs organizational practices. During the Second World War, Hollywood film-makers were so impressed with the activities of the Peoples Liberation Army, known as the Eighth Route Army at the time, that they created a film called Gung Ho. The widely viewed Hollywood movie portrayed a group of U.S. Marines who adopt the PLAs methods in fighting against Japan. What began in the countryside with Communists seeking to protect their lives is today the largest army in the world. While the Peoples Liberation Army certainly captured the imagination of the people across the planet during the 1930s and 40s, over the past 90 years, its methods have proven to be more than just romantic, but largely successful. If Western reporters were interested in honestly reporting on the anniversary celebrations, they would have discovered far more than just a bombastic display of force. The Peoples Liberation Army, from its origins 90 years ago, to today as it opens a base in the African country of Djbouti, has a unique place in world history, by any objective measure. Caleb Maupin is a journalist and political analyst who resides in New York City focusing on U.S. foreign policy and the global system of monopoly capitalism and imperialism. Opinion articles reflect the views of their authors only, not necessarily those of China.org.cn. Cameron Peter White, 39, appears a far cry from his former self in this exclusive mugshot A bisexual teacher jailed for up to 11 years for sex crimes against three of his students promised to tell his class 'over 18' stories when they left school - and also trained teenage boys at the gym. Shocking new details can be revealed about Sydney geography teacher and former personal trainer Cameron Peter White's 'abhorrent' behaviour after he was sentenced for 19 offences this week. The incidents involved a 14-year-old boy, who he called 'my b****'', and two teenage girls. He told the court of one of the girls was like his 'little sister'. The offences included White receiving oral sex in the school fire escape and intercourse at his flat after the Year 12 formal. Bizarrely, one sexual rendezvous was at his mother's house. Another was a teen who he picked up after she visited the beach with friends. One of his students asked him for a written career recommendation. He said yes, but only if she had anal sex with him. Handing down his judgment, District Judge James Bennett SC said White was seen by the student body as a 'cool' teacher. That's made clear in exclusive video obtained by Daily Mail Australia, where the young man flexes his biceps for his class. Scroll down for video 'Mr White': It's understood the troubled teacher (left and right) taught geography at various schools White worked at three different school campuses when the offences were committed (stock photo) It was a position he 'abused' and 'exploited' for his own sexual benefit, the court was told. And it's one, Judge Bennett said, that he showed no remorse for. White, who came from a 'good family', protested his innocence throughout the criminal trial. According to a moving victim impact statement shown to the court, White even described one of his victims as like his 'little sister'. The victim, who cannot be identified, excoriated her former teacher in her statement. 'I'm still ashamed,' she wrote. 'To deny it all and say that I was like a 'little sister' is infinitely selfish, but worse it invalidates the emotional trauma and immense sadness I sometimes feel defines me today. 'I ricochet between suppressing the pain and feeling entirely numb and letting it consume me and feeling all the grief it has to offer. 'The damage caused has taken so much from me, and continues to take... 'My lows are milder than they otherwise would be, but my highs are hardly even high anymore. 'I can no longer feel much joy or see much hope in my future, and I hope this isn't taken the wrong way but it's not really a life worth living for me'. White was a teacher at three different schools over the course of the offending. Court appearance: Judge Bennett noted White is entering his 40th year and pegged his crimes at the mid-range of seriousness White was taken into custody after he was found guilty by a District Court jury in May. He's seen here, arriving the day of his verdict He worked at Woolooware High School in the early 2000s, the Peakhurst campus of Georges River College for periods in 2009 to 2011 and later, the Oatley campus. He also worked as a personal trainer with Fitness First. Former colleagues remembered him for often wearing knee-high socks and leaving grip powder everywhere. White was known to train several young men at the gym. Online videos show one of his proteges taking out an under 18s record in 2012. At one point, the now 39-year-old also worked as a bouncer at the Chinese Laundry nightclub in the Sydney CBD. He was previously found guilty of drug supply, claiming he had found the 32 coloured ecstasy pills at the club. Mr White is a former personal trainer who trained young men at the gym, sources said The court heard White used to work as a bouncer for the Sydney nightclub Chinese Laundry He was caught with 32 MDMA pills at the Harbourlife music festival A police sniffer dog caught him with 32 MDMA pills at the Harbourlife music festival in 2009. At the sentencing on Wednesday afternoon, Judge Bennett grew hoarse as he handed down his decision. 'He abused his position as a teacher and exploited their vulnerability for sexual gratification,' the judge said. 'But he was a very immature man'. White shook in the dock but showed few signs of emotion as the judge announced jail time. He will serve a minimum six years and a maximum of 11 years. The former teacher waved to his family and gave them a thumbs up as a uniformed guard escorted him to the cells. Tiffany Trump's best friend Andrew Warren broke his arm this past weekend trying to save a reveler who fell into a pond. The 'Just Drew' designer posted a photo of himself on his Instagram with his right arm in a cast. 'Out of commission for the next month (sic) #survivor,' he wrote in the caption. Tiffany Trump's best friend Andrew Warren broke his arm this past weekend trying to save a reveler who fell into a pond. The 'Just Drew' designer posted a photo (above) of himself on his Instagram with his right arm in a cast The 24-year-old (pictured with Trump) spent the weekend in Montauk with friends, including Trump. While they were at Fort Pond, he saw someone fall off an inflatable flamingo and into the water. He then jumped in to save the person, but broke his arm in the process According to Page Six, the 24-year-old spent the weekend in Montauk with friends, including Trump. While they were at Fort Pond, he saw someone fall off an inflatable flamingo next to the Surf Lodge and into the water. He then jumped in to save the person, but broke his arm in the process, according to the news site. Warren confirmed to Page Six that he jumped in the water after the person fell in. 'I went in the water to help them, my arm was either broken as I went in or when I was pulled out. 'I broke my right arm and I am in a cast for six weeks. It is especially hard because I use my right hand to design and for social media,' he said. Warren also posted a photo of himself and his crew, which included Trump, on Instagram before the accident. According to Page Six, Trump wasn't around when Warren broke his arm. Warren will be hosting his 'summer trunk show' in Southampton, New York, on Friday. Mark Zuckerberg has hired Hillary Clinton's chief campaign strategist, fueling further rumors that he may be eyeing a future in politics. The Facebook CEO hired pollster Joel Benenson's company to research for Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, the philanthropy run by Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan. Benenson has an impressive resume, running the Benenson Strategy Group and working with top Democrats, including Hillary Clinton and President Barack Obama. The hire adds more speculation that Zuckerberg is moving into the political world, as a recent poll showed he would tie with Trump if he ran in the 2020 election. Mark Zuckerberg hired Hillary Clinton's chief campaign strategist, Joel Benenson (right) to conduct research at his philanthropy, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative. The recent hire adds more speculation that Zuckerberg is trying to move into a political role While Beneson's new role isn't fully described in detail, Politico reported he would be conducting research for the social media giant's non-profit organization. The mission statement of the charity is 'advancing human potential and promoting equality', which could apply to politics and policy. Zuckerberg and Chan hired David Plouffe, Obama's 2008 campaign manager, as the philanthropy's president of policy and advocacy in January. They also tapped Amy Dudley, who worked with Virginia Senator Tim Kaine as his communications adviser, to be on the charity's board. Rounding out the experienced political staffers is Ken Mehlman, who ran George W. Bushs re-election campaign in 2004. Following Zuckerberg's much publicized cross-country tour of the US, a shock poll revealed he would be in a dead heat with Trump for the next election. After a much publicized cross-country tour of the USA, a polling group revealed the Facebook founder would be in dead heat with Trump. Pictured: Zuckerberg with his wife Priscilla Chan The data, released by North Carolina polling group Public Policy Polling, shows 40 percent of voters siding with Zuckerberg as a Democrat and 40 percent backing Trump. One in five voters said they were unsure who to vote for in the hypothetical match-up. The Facebook CEO, who is worth $68.4 billion dollars, attracted a lot of attention when he embarked on his 50-state tour of the US earlier this year. His visits to fracking sites in North Dakota, drug addiction clinics in Ohio and cattle ranches in North Dakota fueled speculation that he was preparing for a career in politics. However Zuckerberg has insisted that the trip was solely to broaden his perspective. On May he posted on Facebook: 'Some of you have asked if this challenge means I'm running for public office. I'm not. 'I'm doing it to get a broader perspective to make sure we're best serving our community of almost 2 billion people.' A young woman was caught stealing a McDoanald's condiment tray during a night out with her friends and bragged about it on Facebook A young woman has been branded the 'dumbest defendant' after being caught stealing a McDoanald's condiment tray during a night out with her friends because she bragged about it on Facebook. Kyara Blazely, 18, appeared at Darwin Local Court to plead guilty to a single count of stealing related to the incident in the early hours of March 26. She escaped without a conviction, but was ordered to pay a $150 victim impact levy, according to the NT News. Blazely stole the tray worth $72.30 - from a branch of the fast food chain on Smith Street in Darwin after ordering and paying for a meal during a night out. Prosecutor Sarah Day said Blazely was caught on the restaurant's security cameras and an employee of the branch saw her now-deleted Facebook post. Alongside a picture of herself with the tray, she reportedly wrote: 'I stole a tray of sugar from McDonald's.' A few days later, Blazely returned the undamaged tray to the Darwin police station. The court also heard that she admitted her crime and identified herself as the woman in the CCTV footage during a police interview. 'You certainly win the prize for dumbest defendant today, having a photo on Facebook of you and the tray and saying, 'I stole a tray,' Judge Elizabeth Morris told Blazely during the hearing. Blazely also admitted that she had returned to McDonald's a number of times since committing the crime. Venezuela's president has defiantly dismissed allegations of vote rigging, accusing Britain and the U.S. of trying to meddle in the results of the country's election of a constitutional assembly on Sunday. The head of a UK-based voting technology company said Wednesday that the results had been tampered with 'without a doubt' and that the figures were off by about a million. President Nicolas Maduro, who was yesterday branded a dictator by U.S. President Donald Trump, slammed the claims, calling the CEO 'stupid' and said he was 'pressured to the neck by the gringos and the Brits'. The state prosecutor's office has since announced it has opened an investigation into accusations the elections council manipulated turnout figures, which Maduro has denied. 'We are in the face of a grave and unprecedented action that could constitute a crime,' said Chief Prosecutor Luisa Ortega. Accusations: Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro dismissed allegations of vote rigging, saying the UK-based voting technology company Smartmatic had caved to pressure from the UK and the U.S. to claim turnout numbers were off by 'one million'. She said the accusations 'constituted another element in the fraudulent, illegal and unconstitutional process'. In his first meeting with assembly delegates Wednesday night, President Maduro also proclaimed that an additional two million people would have voted if they had not been blocked by anti-government protests. Following the election turmoil, the installation of the new constitutional assembly has been delayed by one day, and will convene on Friday in order to 'organize it well in peace and tranquility.' The assembly, which is empowered to rewrite Venezuela's constitution, were voted through on Sunday, with official voting figures tallying up to less than eight million - about a quarter of the country's 31.6m inhabitants. With the opposition boycotting the election, virtually all the candidates were supporters of Maduro's ruling socialist party, so turnout was watched as one of the only indicators of how much popular support there is for the constituent assembly. However, head of voting technology company Smartmatic said earlier Wednesday that the National Electoral Council's voter turnout number was off by at least one million, further darkening uncertainty over the veracity over the results. Clashes: President Maduro also claimed that an additional two million people would have voted if they had not been blocked by anti-government protests Protests: An anti-government demonstrator waves a flag against Maduro during a vigil in honor of those who have been killed during clashes between security forces and demonstrators in Caracas on Monday Antonio Mugica, CEO of Smartmatic, said that results recorded by the company's systems and those reported by the National Electoral Council show 'without any doubt' that the official turnout figure was tampered with. 'Even in moments of deep political conflict and division we have been satisfied with the voting process and the count has been completely accurate' previously in Venezuela, Mugica, whose company has been providing voting technology in Venezuela since 2004, said. 'It is, therefore, with the deepest regret that we have to report that the turnout figures on Sunday, 30 July, for the constituent assembly in Venezuela were tampered with.' President Maduro was quick to retaliate, saying: 'That stupid guy, the president of Smartmatic, pressured to the neck by the gringos and the Brits, said there were 7.5 million. 'I think there were 10 million Venezuelans who went out,' adding that some two million potential voters had been prevented from casting a ballot due to protests on election day. Maduro provided no evidence to support his claim, but his remarks were received with resounding applause from about 500 people elected to the assembly. Fraud claims: A pedestrian walks next to a message on a wall formed with Venezuelan currency that reads in Spanish: 'The Constituent Assembly is a fraud', in Caracas on Monday Tibisay Lucena, the head of the National Electoral Council, also dismissed Smartmatic's claim. She called it an 'opinion' of a company that played only a secondary role in the election and had no access to complete data. 'A company located outside the country does not guarantee the transparency and credibility of the Venezuelan electoral system,' Lucena said. Even before Smartmatic's statement, there were growing questions about the official turnout count. Leaders of the opposition, which is supported by a sizeable portion of the population, argued that the turnout number was inflated. And an independent exit poll concluded that less than half the government's figure actually cast ballots. Julio Borges, president of the opposition-controlled National Assembly, said Wednesday that lawmakers were asking the nation's chief prosecutor to investigate election commission members for potential crimes. 'They are going to install a fraudulent constitutional assembly and no one can say with certitude that these people ... were those who won or if they were the product of a scheme,' Borges said. Protection: Bolivarian National Guards stand guard inside the perimeters of the National Assembly in Caracas Luisa Ortega Diaz, the nation's top law enforcement figure and former government loyalist who has fallen out with Maduro, told CNN late Wednesday that her office would investigate. Mugica said his company's automated election system is designed to show when results are manipulated but requires that a large number of auditors participate, from both the ruling and opposition parties, which he said did not happen during Sunday's vote. 'This would not have occurred if the auditors of all political parties had been present at every stage of the election,' he said. Smartmatic, which supplies services worldwide, was founded by Venezuelans in Caracas and began providing voting technology during Chavez's presidency. In the past, opposition members have questioned the validity of results, but the firm has maintained its impartiality. Luis Vicente Leon, president of Datanalisis, a Caracas-based polling agency, said Smartmatic's finding was, 'without a doubt, the most devastating pronouncement yet for the credibility' of the nation's electoral council. Despite the unrest and plummeting popularity ratings, Maduro appears to have maintained the full support of the country's most important institutions, notably the armed forces. Top military figures have been given special status and are scattered throughout the government. They also are in charge of strategic areas such as food distribution in which Venezuelans say bribery is widespread. An Australian nurse has been jailed for running an illegal commercial surrogacy clinic in Cambodia. Tammy Davis-Charles, 49, was guilty of being a intermediary in surrogacy and engaging in falsifying documents along with her two Cambodian assistants. Cambodia was a popular destination for infertile couples seeking babies through commercial surrogacy before the practice was banned in 2016. Tammy Davis-Charles has been jailed for running an illegal commercial surrogacy clinic in Cambodia Davis-Charles sits in a car near the Municipal Court where she is on trial in Phnom Penh Davis Charles, and her assistants Penh Rithy and Samrithchan Chariya were sentenced to 1-1/2 years behind bars by Phnom Penh Municipal Court Judge So Lyna. Penh Rithy and Samrithchan Chariya knew about the commercial surrogacy ban but still engaged in the business, said the judge. Judge So Lyna said Davis-Charles charged foreign couples between $50,000 to $70,000 for surrogacy services and paid Cambodian women between $10,000 to $12,000 to carry babies on their behalf. She said Davis-Charles provided surrogacy services to 23 Australian and American couples and that Davis-Charles paid Penh Rithy $600 to $800 to organise paperwork for babies born through Cambodian surrogate mothers. A tearful Davis-Charles, who denied the charges against her, refused to answer reporters' questions after the verdict was read in court. The Australian Embassy in Phnom Penh did not reply to a request for comment. The Australian nurse has been jailed for running an illegal commercial surrogacy clinic in Cambodia She was found guilty of being a intermediary in surrogacy and engaging in falsifying documents along with her two Cambodian assistants. Davis-Charles (2nd left), seen with other detainees, is escorted by Cambodian police upon arrival at the Phnom Penh municipal court Davis Charles, and her assistants Penh Rithy and Samrithchan Chariya were sentenced to 1-1/2 years behind bars Davis-Charles, who has been detained in the Cambodian capital since Nov. 2016, told the court during the trial that her job was only to take care of surrogate mothers. She said she did not know surrogacy was illegal in Cambodia. Davis Charles was also fined $1,000 and Penh Rithy and Samrithchan Chariya were fined $500 each. As a result of the ban on commercial surrogacy in Cambodia and Thailand, many couples are now turning to communist Laos for In-Vitro Fertilisation (IVF) and surrogacy services. Despite banning commercial surrogacy, neighboring Thailand remains a key centre for surrogate births, thanks to sophisticated medical care. Cardinal George Pell was feeling the cold as he walked through Sydney's city centre, contemplating the historical sex abuse charges he is fighting in court. The world's third highest-ranking Catholic rugged up in a think black winter jacket on Thursday morning, a week after he pleaded not guilty in a Melbourne court. The 76-year-old was dressed smartly in a dark suit and blue business shirt with black Oxford dress shoes as he pounded the pavement. Scroll down for video Cardinal George Pell was feeling the cold as he contemplated the historical sex abuse charges against him on a walk through the Sydney CBD The world's third highest-ranking Catholic rugged up in a think black winter jacket on Thursday morning, a week after he pleaded not guilty in a Melbourne court Cardinal Pell arrived in Sydney on July 10 after Pope Francis gave him leave to defend himself against multiple charges. He was summoned on June 29 to appear before the court and chose to present himself instead of having his lawyer appear on his behalf. Following doctor's advice, he avoided taking a long-haul flight from Rome to Australia due to his heart condition. But the former archbishop and Ballarat priest took multiple flights between Sydney and Melbourne since then. The 76-year-old was dressed smartly in a dark suit and blue business shirt with black Oxford dress shoes as he pounded the pavement Cardinal Pell arrived at the Melbourne Magistrates Court last week to be charged with historical sexual offences (pictured) The 76-year-old didn't answer questions from the crowd of reporters outside and stared down at the ground for the majority of his walk As the highest-ranking Catholic official to be charged with sexual abuse, his court appearance last Wednesday has attracted intense media attention from Australian and international news organisations. The third most senior Vatican official sat quietly through the brief first hearing on the charges, which lasted six minutes, in a Melbourne court. A packed court room heard his lawyer Robert Richter QC tell the filing hearing that Pell denies the accusations. 'Cardinal Pell pleads not guilty to all the charges and will maintain his presumed innocence that he has,' Mr Richter told the court. Cardinal Pells has repeatedly denied the allegations and maintained he is innocent. Magistrate Duncan Reynolds has set October 6 as the date for the next mention of the matter. He was summoned on June 29 to appear before the court and chose to present himself instead of having his lawyer appear on his behalf He was screened by court security, like everyone else, and taken to a room somewhere in the court house (pictured) Pell did not speak throughout the hearing or when he arrived or left the court, shepherded by police officers through a crush of camera operators, reporters and photographers. Several photographers were knocked over as they climbed the steps into the court building. Supporters of the cardinal and abuse survivors also attended the hearing. Several people clapped as he arrived. Protesters yelled at him and held up signs while others shouted messages of support. After the court appearance, Pell returned to his lawyers' offices. The third most powerful person in the Catholic Church was confronted with a massive contingent of Australian and international media Police are seen clearing a path for Cardinal Pell as he approached the court Protesters were seen waving signs and wearing masks as they yelled at Cardinal Pell from the court's steps. Several people clapped as he arrived The filing hearing marks the first stage of what will be a lengthy legal process. As Pell was charged on summons, he could have asked for the magistrate's permission to be excused from appearing in person and have his lawyer represent him. As Cardinal Pell was charged on summons, he could have asked for the magistrate's permission to be excused from appearing in person and have his lawyer represent him. The former Sydney and Melbourne archbishop and Ballarat priest has repeatedly denied the allegations and maintained he is innocent. Cardinal Pell has said he is looking forward to finally having his day in court after a two-year investigation. 'News of these charges strengthens my resolve and court proceedings now offer me an opportunity to clear my name and then return to my work in Rome,' he said after being charged on June 29. Cardinal Pell walks with a heavy Police guard to the Melbourne Magistrates' Court Hundreds of students have been evacuated from an ultra-elite private school in Melbourne after a suspected bomb threat on Thursday afternoon. Emergency services were called to Scotch College, an all-boys Presbyterian day and boarding school in Hawthorn, just before 1pm. It's believed the threat was made by a man over the phone during a conversation with a school receptionist lasting several minutes, the Herald Sun reports. The school has been placed in lockdown and police tactical response squads are on the scene. Students were seen flooding out onto the school oval and neighbouring streets. Students have been evacuated from Melbourne's ultra-elite Scotch College after a suspected bomb threat on Thursday (pictured flooding onto school oval) Students were seen flooding out onto the school oval and neighbouring streets (pictured) One student told the Herald Sun he had heard 'rumours' of a possible bomb threat after being evacuated onto the school oval. 'Now we're being evacuated onto Glenferrie Road and the ovals across the road near the highway,' he told the publication. 'At first it was all a bit jokey but I'd be lying if I said it doesn't feel a bit wary.' Scotch College charges over $53,000 a year for boarding students. Victoria Police said they were conducting 'safety checks' and had evacuated the school as a 'precaution'. 'There may be some traffic disruptions around the school. The investigation is ongoing,' police said in a statement. Legendary political journalist Laurie Oakes has announced his retirement after more than 52 years of breaking stories in Canberra. The 74-year-old began covering state rounds for the Daily Mirror in Sydney in 1965, before he went on to become the face of Channel Nine's political coverage. A three-time Walkley Award winner, Mr Oakes has covered 13 prime ministers, some 20 federal elections and 51 federal budgets over his six decades in journalism, Nine News reports. Scroll down for video Laurie Oakes (left) has announced his retirement after 52 years of political journalism. During his time he has covered 13 prime ministers (pictured with John Howard) and 20 elections A setter of the political agenda often throughout his time in journalism, Oakes's list of biggest stories includes a number of iconic national moments. In 1974 he revealed Gough Whitlam offered role of Ambassador to Ireland to Vince Gair to shore up his parliament backing. It became known as the 'Gair Affair'. He revealed the infamous leadership pact between Bob Hawke and his deputy Paul Keating in 1988, about their debate over when Keating would take over the top job. He cost three ministers their jobs in the 'travel rorts scandal' of 1997. In 2002 he also revealed that Cheryl Kernot, who had defected from the Democrats and joined Labor in 1997, was having an affair with Labor front bencher Gareth Evans. In 2010 he revealed that when deputy prime minister, Julia Gillard had questioned a pension increase - a leak that derailed her campaign against Tony Abbott. Perhaps his biggest moment was the release of then treasurer John Howard's budget two days before it was due to be read out to parliament and the public in 1980. A setter of the political agenda often throughout his time in journalism, Oakes's list of biggest stories includes a number of iconic national moments Perhaps his biggest moment was the release of then treasurer John Howard's budget two days before it was due to be read out to parliament and the public in 1980 After meeting a contact in a carpark he was handed the budget speech, given just 15 minutes to look over it and so read the entire thing into a recorder. 'I gabbled the whole lot into a tape recorder while he went in and had a quick drink, and then I transcribed it back at the office,' Mr Oakes said today. 'That evening Mr Howard was at home with toddler daughter Melanie on his lap watching cartoons on TV. 'Then the news started and I came up blowing every detail of his Budget speech.' But while there has been plenty of serious moments, Mr Oakes has also been happy to see the funny side of his notoriety. But while there has been plenty of serious moments, Mr Oakes has also been happy to see the funny side of his notoriety changing his tie seven times during the TV coverage of last year's federal election in an effort to thwart a gambling market made by Sportsbet 'I thought why should anyone miss out? I wore all six colours, and in the end Sportsbet paid out on every bet,' Oakes said At last year's federal election he changed his tie seven times during the TV coverage all in an effort to thwart a gambling market made by Sportsbet. 'Sportsbet ran a bet on what colour tie I wear in the election telecast. There were six choices, yellow, blue, black green, or any other colour,' he explained. 'So I thought why should anyone miss out? I wore all six colours, and in the end Sportsbet paid out on every bet.' 'I like to think of myself as the punters protector.' A rebel gay Liberal MP was booted off a television interview after just 29 seconds when he refused to address the issue of same-sex marriage. Tim Wilson, a backbencher from Melbourne, has threatened to defy Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull's push for a plebiscite on changing the definition of marriage. However, he had nothing to say on the issue when asked by Sky News presenter, Peter van Onselen, about the idea of a secret ballot in the party room to sort out the Liberal Party's position. Liberal backbencher Tim Wilson was booted off Sky News after refusing to answer a question Sky News presenter Peter van Onselen wouldn't tolerate having an MP avoid the first question 'Thanks, Peter. I've said everything I've had to say on this issue and I make no plans to make any other comment at this time,' Mr Wilson said. 'I'd rather talk about something else that actually matters to the Australian population: the economy, energy prices, what's going on with Labor's tax slug. 'You pick it. I'm happy to talk about it. I've said what I've said on this issue.' Mr van Onselen, a former Liberal staffer who supports gay marriage, wasn't prepared to put up with that. 'Tim Wilson, thanks for your company,' he said, just 29 seconds after starting a live cross from Sky News' Sydney studio to Melbourne. Tim Wilson told ABC Radio's Dom Knight he just had 'nothing more to say right now' Mr Wilson was asked on Twitter by Sydney ABC Radio presenter Dom Knight why he as a 'gay man in a loving relationship' wasn't prepared to discuss the issue. 'Not running that. I just have nothing more to say right now,' Mr Wilson replied. The member for Goldstein, in Melbourne's south-east, is among a small group of Liberal MPs who are planning to defy Mr Turnbull and cross the floor if there is a conscience vote on gay marriage. This would undermine the Turnbull Government's election pledge last year to held a plebiscite on the matter. But with the Senate opposed to a national public vote on the issue, Mr Wilson and fellow gay Liberal politicians Trevor Evans, Trent Zimmerman and Dean Smith have threatened to cross the floor and vote with Labor and the Greens if there is a conscience vote. They also have support from former crocodile farmer Warren Entsch as they work to force a parliamentary free vote on gay marriage. The move comes just weeks after Christopher Pyne was caught on tape saying the government was planning a sooner-then-expected move on gay marriage, which has angered the right of the Liberal Party. That prompted former PM Tony Abbott to lash out at the senior frontbencher, calling him disloyal. A blind Australian woman who lived and worked with African orphans text her family and friends to say she feared being poisoned, just days before she was found dead. The body of Bronwyn Fielding was discovered in Uganda in late June, but more than a month on her heartbroken family continues to search for answers about her death. A mother-of-three, Ms Fielding moved to the landlocked east African nation in 2007 and founded her 'Good Samaritan Organisation' - a volunteer group helping orphans, disabled and the elderly. While an autopsy report stated the 37-year-old died of pulmonary embolism - a blood clot in her lung - a text message she sent to her family in the days prior to her death has them suspicious, the ABC reports. Bronwyn Fielding (pictured) died in Uganda in late June, but more than a month on from her death her heartbroken family continues to search for answers it has now been revealed Ms Fielding (pictured) text her family and friends to say she feared being poisoned, just days before she was found dead David Pagey, the uncle of Ms Fielding, said that since her death her family had heard 'three different of how she passed away' and was desperate to know the truth. 'We would like tissue samples taken and blood samples taken if possible, so we can have them tested here in Australia, to check for certain she wasn't being poisoned,' Mr Pagey said. 'It's been very difficult for us to obtain anything about what happened to Bronwyn and we are still none the wiser, in respect to what happened.' Upon moving to Africa in 2007 to take up a position as a volunteer, Ms Fielding left behind her children Kierra, Jack and Kaitlyn, in the care of her family. In 2011, she had a run in with a charity worker who she reported for fraud to police, leading to the man being jailed. In 2013 Ms Fielding married Michael Osago, a Ugandan man who she referred to over Facebook as 'her rock' and who was interviewed over his wife's death. David Pagey, the uncle of Ms Fielding, said that since her death her family had heard 'three different of how she passed away' and was desperate to know the truth (Pictured is her autopsy_ In 2013 Ms Fielding married Michael Osago (right), a Ugandan man who she referred to over Facebook as 'her rock' and who was interviewed over his wife's death Mr Osago denies any involvement in Ms Fielding's death and has not been charged by police. Ugandan authorities reportedly do not plan to take the case any further. 'They may think that maybe I'm a liar or I have done something wrong to her or anything. But I'm just requesting them, please, trust what I'm saying,' Mr Osago said. While Ms Fielding's family are heartbroken at not knowing exactly how their daughter died, of greater immediate concern is getting her body back to Australia. Lynn and Ian Fielding, who are pensioners from Brisbane, have been forced to ask for help on social media saying they can not afford to pay to fly their daughter home. Mrs Fielding said she planned to have her daughter cremated and her ashes flown to Australia, in an effort to give her grandchildren 'closure'. While the battle to bring her daughter home is affecting Mrs Fielding, the reasons why she went to Africa are seemingly still weighing on the mind of her three children 'She was making such a difference, giving all her love and kindness that she had to give to all the orphan children she touched,' Mrs Fielding said on Go Fund Me. But while the battle to bring her daughter home is affecting Mrs Fielding, the reasons why she went to Africa are seemingly still weighing on the mind of her children. 'It's ripping my little brother apart. He loved his mum,' Kierra, 17, told the ABC. 'He didn't like her choices none of us liked her choices but we really loved her.' You can donate to the Go Fund Me page to bring Ms Fielding's body home here. A young Australian mother has been left furious after 'shopping for hours' for baby formula only to watch gangs of shoppers sweep the shelves. Brisbane mum Jessica Hook, 27, feeds her daughter Aptamil Gold, a popular formula which is now, thanks to foreign buyers, difficult to find in the supermarket. Ms Hook's daughter goes through a tin a week - and the mother tries to buy a few at a time but says now when she finds one can on the shelf it is 'considered a win'. Brisbane mum Jessica Hook, 27, feeds her daughter Aptamil Gold, a popular formula which is now, thanks to foreign buyers, difficult to find in the supermarket Ms Hook's daughter goes through a tin a week - the mother tries to buy a few at a time but says now when she finds one can on the shelf it is 'considered a win' Supermarket chains introduced a four-can limit in an attempt to stop the shelves being left empty and Australian babies going hungry but it appears those buying the milk to make a profit now just travel in packs 'Last week, when I really struggled, I was phoning up stores asking if they had any. A lot of Woolies and Coles now will put a tin of each type in the locked-up cupboard where they sell cigarettes, to sell to desperate mums,' she told Newscorp. In frustration the mother snapped photos of the 'gangs' of shoppers she saw clearing her local supermarket out of formula. 'They're (the supermarket) very conscious of saying, it's not a racial thing, it's just always a particular demographic, they come in groups, work as a team and clear the shelves,' she said. Supermarket chains introduced a four-can limit in an attempt to stop the shelves being left empty and Australian babies going hungry, but it appears those buying the milk to make a profit now just travel in packs. In frustration the mother snapped photos of the 'gangs' of shoppers she saw clearing her local supermarket out of formula The woman's photographs show men and women in a supermarket with trolleys, arms and baskets full of tins of formula 'They're (the supermarket) very conscious of saying, it's not a racial thing, it's just always a particular demographic, they come in groups, work as a team and clear the shelves,' Ms Hook said The woman's photographs show men and women in a supermarket with trolleys, arms and baskets full of tins of formula. 'My little girl is eight months old, and for her entire life I have had trouble sourcing her milk due to the shelves always being empty,' she said. The shoppers, known as daigu, can make up to $100,000 a year by buying the milk products and sending them to China. The shoppers, known as daigu, can make up to $100,000 a year by buying the milk products and sending them to China The Commonwealth Bank of Australia have been accused of failing to report more than 53,000 transactions which took place through its cash deposit machines. More than $77 million worth of these transactions are believed to have been related to money laundering or terrorism financing. The Australian Transaction Reports and Analysis Centre filed civil charges against what is known as Australia's biggest bank on Thursday, and are seeking damages for a total of 53,751 contraventions. 'Each contravention can carry a maximum penalty of $18 million,' a spokesperson for the agency told Daily Mail Australia. The Commonwealth Bank has been accused of filing more than 53,000 threshold transactions late, with 1,646 contraventions believed to relate to criminal transactions Austrac claim the bank 'failed to report suspicious matters either on time or at all involving transactions totalling over $77 million'. In court documents submitted on behalf of Austrac, the agency claims 1,640 of the late threshold transaction reports were 'related to transactions connected with money laundering syndicates being investigated and prosecuted by the AFP'. Another six late TTRs 'related to five customers who had been assessed by the Commonwealth Bank as posing a potential risk of terrorism or terrorism financing'. The unreported or late reported threshold transactions took place between November 5, 2012 and September 1, 2015. Austrac claims the bank filed two of the reports on August 24, 2015, and the rest on September 24, 2015. The maximum penalty for each contravention is $18 million, though it is unlikely the bank would be required to pay the full amount The agency claims the late TTRs account for about 95 per cent of all threshold transactions which occurred through the bank's IDMs from November 2012 to September 2015. It says the transactions have a combined value of $624.7 million. It is also alleged the Commonwealth Bank were made aware of suspected money laundering on its accounts but did not monitor the customers to manage any risk. While the maximum penalty for the contraventions would reach nearly a trillion dollars, it is very unlikely the bank would be ordered to pay it. The Commonwealth Bank say they are 'reviewing the nature of the proceedings'. When questioned by Daily Mail Australia as to whether the allegations would affect customers, the bank declined to comment. The Commonwealth Bank declined to comment when asked if the civil proceedings would affect customers 'We have been in discussions with AUSTRAC for an extended period and have cooperated fully with their requests,' the bank said in a written statement. 'Over the same period we have worked to continuously improve our compliance and have kept AUSTRAC abreast of those efforts, which will continue. 'We take our regulatory obligations extremely seriously and we are one of the largest reporters to AUSTRAC. 'On an annual basis we report over four million transactions to AUSTRAC in an effort to identify and combat any suspicious activity as quickly and efficiently as we can. 'We have invested more than $230 million in our anti-money laundering compliance and reporting processes and systems, and all of our people are required to complete mandatory training on the Anti-Money Laundering and Counter-Terrorism Financing Act.' Shocking prison footage has emerged of an inmate being brutally king-hit with a pool ball. Benjamin Lightbody was caught on CCTV footage being viciously assaulted by a fellow-prisoner in 2013 in a New Zealand jail. Mr Lightbody's skull has been left with a huge indentation and disfigurement as a result of the incident at Mt Eden Corrections Facility. Shocking prison footage has emerged of an inmate being brutally king-hit with a pool ball Benjamin Lightbody's skull has been left with a horrific indentation and disfigurement as a result of the incident at Mt Eden Corrections Facility The footage shows Mr Lightbody standing alone in the small prison yard moments before the attack. Other inmates can be seen sitting near and walking past Mr Lightbody, before the aggressor approaches. A man enters from the corner of the footage and throws a vicious punch with a pool ball in his hand. Mr Lightbody can then be seen lying on the ground for several minutes, attempting to sit up before collapsing again. He suffered significant brain injuries and has had continued surgery and treatment on his head, resulting in the indentation. A man enters from the corner of the footage and throws a vicious punch with a pool ball in his hand Mr Lightbody can then be seen lying on the ground for several minutes, attempting to sit up before collapsing again He suffered significant brain injuries and has had continued surgery and treatment on his head, resulting in the indentation A police spokesperson told Stuff a 36-year-old man had been charged with wounding with intent to injure and given a three year eight month sentence. The resulting effects of the injuries include problems sleeping and eating, constant fatigue and seizures. Mr Lightbody says he also lost his relationship with his fiancee. Stuff report a prison inspector found four prison guards filed paperwork and ate lunch while Mr Lightbody lay gravely injured in the jail yard. The report says Mr Lightbody returned to his cell without medical treatment where he remained for two hours, before another inmate alerted security. An ambulance did not arrive for a further two and a half hours after officers were told. 'Newbie in cell four knocked out by cell five I told you this would happen!' the report says the inmate told a prison staff member. The Office of Human Rights Proceedings and Corrections Inspectorate investigated the case and charges were laid. The private prison security company used at the jail, Serco, was handed a $50,000 notice for inadequate staffing levels. An elaborate terror plot to blow up a plane was thwarted at the last minute by staff at Sydney Airport's check-in desk because the bag allegedly containing the bomb was too heavy to carry on board. The alleged ISIS-inspired plot reportedly came so close to being carried out that the device the men planned to use made it all the way into the airport's international terminal. The improvised homemade device - which was fashioned out of a meat mincer - was stopped from being taken on the flight when the passenger carrying it was told his bag was too heavy to be stored in the overhead cabin, The Sydney Morning Herald reported. An elaborate terror plot to blow up a plane was thwarted at the last minute by staff at Sydney Airport's check-in desk, because the bag allegedly containing the bomb was too heavy. Khaled Khayat (pictured) is one of the Lebanese-Australian men who were arrested on Saturday 'The person was going to be blown up without knowing they were part of a suicide mission,' a source said. The men (one pictured being led away by police) were arrested in dramatic raids in Sydney One of the arrested men is pictured with a bandaged head following his arrest on Saturday night Neither the passenger or the bag ever made its way onto the passenger jet, which is believed to have been an Etihad Airways flight leaving Sydney for Abu Dhabi. Police reportedly made the discovery in the days after raiding a number of homes in Sydney's suburbs on Saturday, which led to the arrest of four men. Brothers Khaled and Abdul Merhi, as well as father and son duo Khaled Khayat and Mahmoud Khayat were arrested during the raids. But Abdul Merhi, 50, was released without charge on Tuesday while the other three men remain in police custody. It comes as it was revealed the alleged terror cell planned to use a 'sacrificial lamb' to carry and detonate the bomb when on board the 500 seat passenger jet. 'The person was going to be blown up without knowing they were part of a suicide mission,' a source told The Daily Telegraph. Police are pictured searching for evidence at a block of flats in the Sydney suburb of Lakemba on July 31 The alleged ISIS-inspired plot reportedly came so close to being carried out that the device the men planned to use to blow up the passenger jet made it all the way into the airport's international terminal (stock image) 'It was as close to a major terror attack as we have ever come.' Having picked an international flight as their target, the men were forced into a last-minute change of plans when the baggage wasn't allowed on board. But Australian authorities were only alerted by overseas intelligence agencies when the alleged conspiracy was revived. Etihad Airways confirmed it was helping police with their investigation as authorities continue to sift through evidence from the counter-terrorism raids. 'The Etihad Airways aviation security team is assisting the AFP with its investigation and the matter is ongoing,' the airline said in a statement. A security source claims it was closest Australia has ever come to a major terror attack. Police are seen searching for evidence following Saturday's raids The target of the alleged terror plot was an Etihad flight from Sydney to Abu Dhabi with up to 500 passengers and crew on board (stock image) 'Etihad is complying fully with the enhanced security measures at airports in Australia and monitoring the situation closely.' Deakin University terror expert Greg Barton suggested the alleged plan may have centred around acetone peroxide - or TATP. It was the same chemical used in this year's Manchester Arena bombing and Paris attacks in 2015. Referred to as the 'mother of Satan' because it can kill those handling it, TATP is unstable but powerful and would not give off 'tell-tale' chemicals picked up by airport swab tests, Prof Barton said. Etihad Airways confirmed it was helping police with their investigation as authorities continue to sift through evidence from the counter-terrorism raids (stock image of Sydney airport) Deakin University terror expert Greg Barton suggested the alleged plan may have centred around acetone peroxide - or TATP. Authorities are seen sifting through evidence in Lakemba 'That makes it a candidate for using in this sort of attack.' TATP, which needs a pressure vessel to be packed in, could be placed in a grinder so it was opaque through an X-ray machine and appeared innocuous upon visual inspection. 'It might just pass (security),' Prof Barton said. That, I'm guessing, was their plan.' A terrifying list of 173 ISIS assassins prepared to carry out attacks in Europe has been found in Iraq. The list was found in a terrorist hideout in the shattered ruins of Mosul and includes names, photos and the country of origin of scores of fanatics. More than 130 of the fighters are from Iraq, but it also includes Tunisians, Moroccans and Jordanians as well as jihadists from Tajikistan and Saudi Arabia, according to German newspaper Die Welt. Six of the terrorists are Europeans - from Belgium, the Netherlands, France and Germany. A terrifying list of 173 ISIS assassins prepared to carry out attacks in Europe has been found in Iraq. A German was on the list, named as Sami J. (pictured), 27, from Solingen, formerly a leading member of the Islamist group Fillatu Ibrahim The list was found in a terrorist hideout in the shattered ruins of Mosul and includes names, photos and the country of origin of scores of fanatics Die Welt said Iraqi special forces apparently discovered the dossier in an ISIS hideout. American intelligence services have evaluated the papers and sent them to global police authority Interpol. In May, the paper writes, the list was distributed among all European security agencies including Britain's. The fear is of a spectacular outrage being planned somewhere in the West as the group's self-proclaimed caliphate dies in the Middle East. The lone German on the list is Sami J., 27, from Solingen, formerly a leading member of the Islamist group Fillatu Ibrahim. His current battle name is 'Abu Assid al-Almani' - the German. He is said to have left his homeland in 2012, travelled to Egypt, then Libya and later via Turkey to Syria to join ISIS. Europe lost some 6,000 men and women to the ranks of ISIS, nearly 1,000 of them from Germany His wife and child followed him but it is not clear whether he is still alive. In mid-July ISIS broadcast a report about his death via its propaganda service in Raqqa but without mentioning how he died. This is considered unusual and intelligence agencies believe may be false in order for him to be secreted back into Europe for a suicide mission. Die Welt says it has seen the list, adding: 'Each photo on the list is marked with a name and a date of birth, with a often martial-sounding battlename and information about the country of origin. 'Some smile joyfully, others seem shy, many serious and expressive. A few of the shots look like passport photos.' And it notes the speciality of the holy warriors. Next to the name Sami M. It says: 'Suicide bomber'. Europe lost some 6,000 men and women to the ranks of ISIS, nearly 1,000 of them from Germany. No one knows how many hard-hardened fanatics still remain in the embattled areas New footage has been released of the daylight 'face-melter' mugging showing two moped riders racing off as witnesses douse the victim with water. The incident happened at 8.33pm on Monday on Walton Place in Knightsbridge, London, near to Harrods department store. Footage filmed by a cyclist shows the moped speeding away after two people pulled up beside the man to launch their attack. New footage has been released of the daylight 'face-melter' mugging showing two moped riders racing off as witnesses douse the victim with water The incident happened at 8.33pm on Monday on Walton Place in Knightsbridge, London , near to Harrods department store. Bystanders rushed to douse the victim with water (pictured) The victim was seen on a cyclist's camera after the shocking attack in broad daylight His two assailants were waiting at traffic lights when they rode up to the man in the attempted mugging. The 47-year-old pedestrian was hosed down by firefighters and treated by paramedics at the scene before he was taken to hospital in Central London. The extent of the man's injuries has not been disclosed, however police said he had since been discharged. Following the attack police have been asking residents for CCTV to track the attackers. A police spokesman said: 'Dressed in dark clothing and wearing helmets, they made off from the scene in the direction of Draycott Avenue, SW3. 'Enquiries are ongoing to establish the full circumstances of the incident.' In an earlier video, a Good Samaritan shouted 'hey you f**kers leave him alone' as the two moped thugs tried to steal the man's iPhone 7 Plus and watch. Fouzi Kabir, 46, watched in horror as the two muggers rode up to the tourist, who is believed to be from Qatar, had left his friends at Harrods several minutes earlier to make a phone call. But as he walked back the robbers approached him and sprayed the liquid before Fouzi and a black cab driver intervened. The 47-year-old pedestrian was hosed down by firefighters and treated by paramedics at the scene before he was taken to hospital in Central London This is the shocking moment two thugs on a moped hunted down a man and threw acid in his face The chauffeur said: 'I was opposite where it happened and I got out of my car when I saw the two bikers spraying the liquid at the man. 'They were after his watch and his iPhone 7 Plus, the watch looked expensive it was gold with a leather strap. 'I shouted at them 'hey you f**kers leave him alone' but they did not reply, there was a guy in a black taxi that was trying to hit the bike, they saw us and ran away. 'He said to me afterwards that they were after his watch, he told me 'I was going to give it to them but they did not give me a chance.' 'He said he was from Qatar, he might have been on holiday. 'They were spraying liquid in his eyes, they were all itchy and red. The incident happened at 8.33pm last night on Walton Place in Knightsbridge, London, near to Harrods department store (file photo) 'It was scary, these two guys with helmets, you do not know what they are holding. 'The registration plate on the bike was flipped so no-one could see the number, maybe the bike was stolen? 'I thought maybe they had a knife, one of them was on the bike and kept circling around the man and the other guy just kept spraying liquid at him.' Fouzi added: 'After they had left I got water out of my car and poured it on his face and then walked him towards Harrods to see his friends. 'He had gone away to make a phone call and only gone away for a few minutes..' Scotland Yard said it is not known if the liquid was a corrosive substance One housekeeper said: 'Police came and asked if we had CCTV of what happened, they said the man was ok but shaken up. 'Apparently they tried to steal his watch as was walking past. It's scary, you don't expect things like this to happen around here.' Scotland Yard said it is not known if the liquid was a corrosive substance. A spokesman for the Metropolitan Police said: 'Officers from Kensington & Chelsea Borough are investigating, and at this early stage it is believed the liquid was thrown at the victim during an attempted robbery.' The force said no arrests had been made at this stage and appealed for witnesses or anyone with any information to come forward. The incident follows a recent spike in the number of attacks involving corrosive substances. More than 400 were carried out in the six months up to April 2017, according to figures from 39 forces in England and Wales. The Metropolitan Police has said its response cars will now carry equipment that will help officers to better deal with calls to such attacks. To give information anonymously, witnesses to last night's attack are urged to call Crimestoppers on 0800 555 111 or visit crimestoppers-uk.org A baby nearly died from meningitis after he was sent home from hospital twice, before having multiple seizures. Brock Morschel had a bad cold and his temperature spiked to 39C on July 10, so his mother Tegan Gilbert rushed him to hospital. Doctors at Shoalhaven District Memorial Hospital in Nowra said the four-month-old looked alert so they sent him home and told her to give him Panadol, she said. Four-month-old Brock Morschel nearly died from meningitis after he was sent home from a NSW hospital twice, hours before he had multiple seizures The little boy had a bad cold and his temperature spiked to 39C on July 10, so his mother Tegan Gilbert rushed him to hospital Three days later the little boy was drowsy and lethargic, unable to hold his head up, and had a fever so she took him to her GP. The worried mother said the GP told her to rush him straight to hospital, but because Brock smiled at the paediatrician, she was again told to take him home. Ms Gilbert claimed Brock was diagnosed with an acute upper respiratory infection, but only told to watch him. The next morning she took him straight back to Shoalhaven as he had not improved, and was almost turned away again because he took a sip from a bottle. But another doctor decided to keep Brock overnight for observation - a decision which may have saved the baby's life. 'That night he continued his 40C temperatures and started vomiting, and at this stage could not even open his eyes,' Ms Gilbert said. Doctors at Shoalhaven District Memorial Hospital in Nowra said the four-month-old looked alert so they sent him home and told her to give him Panadol, she said. The doctor suspected Brock might have inflammatory brain disease meningitis and gave him a lumbar puncture and nose swab to confirm. While they were waiting for the results, the small child began to have seizures due to the pressure on his brain. Brock tested positive for Influenza A and bacterial meningitis and was immediately started on antibiotics in an attempt to save his life. He continued to have seizures, one lasting longer than 10 minutes, and on July 16 was airlifted to Sydney Children's Hospital for specialised care. Shoalhaven Hospital said it had spoken with Brock's family to directly discuss concerns they may have about his care, and to extend its best wishes for his recovery. On his third ER visit, a doctor suspected Brock might have inflammatory brain disease meningitis and gave him a lumbar puncture and nose swab to confirm 'A preliminary review of the clinical notes indicates that at the time of presentation Brock was treated appropriately but his health unfortunately deteriorated,' it told Daily Mail Australia 'The district will undertake a more detailed review of the care Brock received at the Hospital to confirm this was the case.' Ms Gilbert said doctors in Sydney found Brock also had a blood clot, swelling and puss around his brain, and had suffered a small stroke. She claimed her son also contracted Rhino Virus and salmonella while in hospital. 'He continues to have strokes and seizures, the longest one so far has lasted 40 minutes,' she said. 'And the puss on his brain is getting worse so he still may require brain surgery.' He continued to have seizures, one lasting longer than 10 minutes, and on July 16 was airlifted to Sydney Children's Hospital for specialised care Ms Gilbert said Brock would stay in hospital at least another five weeks, having daily injections to dissolve his blood clot. 'We wont know of any long term effects his illnesses have caused for a few more months, maybe even years,' she said. Ms Gilbert said she was 'frustrated and disappointed' that her son was turned away from Shoalhaven twice and almost a third time. 'To have to go to the casualty three times, Ive got no words for it,' she told 9 News. 'But the one doctor that actually diagnosed him I could not fault him. If it wasnt for him I dont even want to think about what would have happened.' Ms Gilbert said doctors in Sydney found Brock also had a blood clot, swelling and puss around his brain, and had suffered a small stroke Brock's mother and father Jake Morschel remained by his side in Sydney while his 10 and 12-year-old sisters stayed in Nowra with family more than two hours drive away. 'They are struggling with his illness and separation,' Ms Gilbert said. However, after three weeks in hospital the family's bills were piling up as Mr Morschel had to take time off from his truck driving and construction job to stay by his son's side. 'Although he is stable at the moment, he's still a long way away from being in the safe zone. He needs his mummy and daddy here with him, just in case,' Ms Gilbert said. A GoFundMe page has raised more than $20,000 from 200 donors in less than a week to help Brock's family fund his treatment. South African police have thwarted an attempt to sneak a stolen Mercedes into Zimbabwe using donkeys to drag it across the Limpopo river. Photos showed the Mercedes Benz C220 stuck in the dry river bed near the town of Musina, surrounded by harnessed donkeys. The suspects had attached a metal sheet underneath the wheels to make it easier for the animals to drag. South African police have thwarted an attempt to sneak a stolen Mercedes into Zimbabwe using donkeys to drag it across the Limpopo river Photos showed the Mercedes Benz C220 stuck in the dry river bed near the town of Musina, surrounded by harnessed donkeys The car smugglers tried - and failed - to free the car from the sand before fleeing into the bushes towards Zimbabwe, police said. Authorities are now looking into whether a gang is behind the practice of smuggling cars across the border, the BBC reported. Police Brigadier Motlafela Mojapelo said officers found the suspects just as the donkeys - who were unharmed - became too tired to pull the car. The BBC suggested the men opted for this bizarre method to avoid the car being followed, as its in-built tracking device is only active while the car is running. The Limpopo River, which acts as the border between South Africa and Zimbabwe, is often used by illegal mirgrants sneaking between countries. Last December a car stolen in Durban - also attached to a group of donkeys - was recovered from the same river. Police Brigadier Motlafela Mojapelo said officers found the suspects just as the donkeys - who were unharmed - became too tired to pull the car. Pictured: One of the cars used to recover the Mercedes Last December a car stolen in Durban - also attached to a group of donkeys - was recovered from the same river Brigadier Mojapelo said the stolen Mercedes Benz was taken from car rental company in Durban. He added: 'It was apparently being smuggled into Zimbabwe when it got stuck. 'A 28-year-old suspect has been arrested for possession of suspected stolen vehicle.' The same anti-smuggling operation also recovered a Range Rover. Kareim Ali Muhammad Moore, 43, has been charged with abduction and felony assault and battery A father has been arrested for keeping a seriously-ill woman and two children captive for more than two years. The three escaped through a side door and made a run for freedom when deputies called at an address in Spotsylvania, Virginia, on Saturday. Kareim Ali Muhammad Moore, 43, has been charged with abduction and felony assault and battery. The 32-year-old woman is currently in a serious condition in hospital due to health problems which had been allowed to go untreated. It is not known what the relationship was between Moore and the woman, Spotsylvania Sheriff Lt C. A. Carey told CBS6. The two children, who Moore is the father of, are aged 11 and eight. Officers were making a welfare call to the home when the woman and children ran toward them. Officers were making a welfare call to the home when the woman and children ran toward them They had been contacted by a worried family member who was anxious that they had not seen the woman and children for a long time, the Fredericksburg Free Lance-Star reports. Officers said Moore was hesitant to let them into the home. It is not thought the children had ever been to school, and all three had not been allowed to leave the house for two years. Moore is currently being held without bond in the Rappahannock Regional Jail. Underbelly star Vince Colosimo was allegedly caught driving through Melbourne's CBD under the influence of ice, court documents reveal. Colosimo, 50, was charged with driving with the illegal drug in his system while his licence was suspended after the Australian actor was stopped and tested on March 5. Police spotted the actor's black Saab on Exhibition Street and a check of the registration plate showed his licence had been suspended for six months from February 24. Underbelly star Vince Colosimo (pictured) was allegedly caught driving through Melbourne's CBD under the influence of ice Vince Colosimo starred in the television series Underbelly (pictured) Colosimo had accumulated too many demerit points, leading to his suspension, according to a police brief released by a magistrate on Thursday. The fresh charges came two months after Colosimo was fined $1,000 for possessing ice while driving in North Fitzroy, where police found a small amount of ice inside a sunglasses case. His case was mentioned in the Melbourne Magistrates' on Thursday but the troubled actor did not appear. Court documents outlined the police intercept that led to the two charges. A police officer questioned Colosimo at the scene after a test detected methylamphetamine in his saliva. 'Have you consumed any illicit drugs?' Senior Constable Justin Holland asked. Vince Colosimo (pictured) in the 2008 show Underbelly 'No,' Colosimo allegedly replied. When asked why he was driving with a suspended licence, Colosimo replied: 'Sorry. I didn't believe it was suspended.' Magistrate Ross Maxted confirmed Colosimo was not required to be in court on Thursday, but seemed disgruntled the 'relatively simple case' was not progressing. 'Justice delayed is justice denied. We should progress this,' the magistrate said. 'It sets a poor example. I don't want to be playing favourite to anybody.' The case was adjourned for a contest mention in November. Vince Colosimo (pictured left) and Diana Glenn (pictured right) at the AACTA Awards Colosimo has recently been in the Queensland town of Dalby shooting new Australian psychological thriller, The Second, and was again interstate on Thursday, the court was told. The AFI Award-winning actor is known for playing Melbourne gangland figure Alphonse Gangitano in the TV crime series Underbelly. He's also appeared in Hollywood films Body of Lies and The Great Gatsby and Australian features Lantana, Chopper and The Wog Boy. Colosimo's case is due to return to court on November 3. The super rich and famous appear to be abandoning their glittering haven of Saint-Tropez for more affordable destinations. Super yacht owners are reported to be shunning the opulent coastal town on the French Riviera due to increasing berthing fees, fuel prices and crewing costs. A growing number of wealthy holidaymakers are now believed to be looking to dock in the likes of Portofino, Italy and Spain instead. The super rich and famous appear to be abandoning their glittering haven of Saint-Tropez (pictured) for more affordable destinations Super yacht owners are reported to be shunning the opulent coastal town on the French Riviera due to increasing berthing fees, fuel prices and crewing costs. Pictured: Model and actress Cara Delevingne holidaying in Saint-Tropez The rising costs on the Cote d'Azur are in part blamed on the fact that France strictly enforces EU regulations which make the procurement of marine diesel more expensive, the Telegraph reported. The revenue generated by the marina of the French Riviera is reported to have fallen by 30 per cent this year. The situation has forced three Riviera politicians - Riviera president Renaud Muselier, Nice Mayor Christian Estrosi and Toulon Mayor Hubert Falco - to ask President Emmanuel Macron for help. They have called for 'urgent harmonisation of tax and social regulations at the European level' and claimed the EU is allowing neighbouring European nations to undercut Spain and Italy. In an open letter to the media, they wrote: 'The gravity of the economic situation of the yachting sector in the Provence-Alps-Riviera region makes it necessary for us to appeal for your direct intervention. The rising costs on the Cote d'Azur are in part blamed on the fact that France strictly enforces EU regulations. Pictured: Singer Chris Brown parties in Saint-Tropez The revenue generated by the marina of the French Riviera is reported to have fallen by 30 per cent this year. Pictured: Leonardo DiCaprio on his yacht in Saint-Tropez Officials in the Riviera have called for 'urgent harmonisation of tax and social regulations at the European level' to stop people opting for the like of Barcelona (pictured) over Saint-Tropez The officials claimed the EU is allowing neighbouring European nations to undercut Spain and Italy (file photo of Cagliari, Italy, which is fast becoming a super yacht haven in its own right) A growing number of wealthy holidaymakers are now believed to be looking to dock in the likes of Portofino (pictured) The Riviera politicians held up the fact that refueling a 42-metre yacht in Italy - rather than France - offers 18,800-a-week in savings due to tax differences. They added: 'The additional cost of maintaining a seven-person crew in France is 268,000 a year.' The officials went on to say fewer French sailors are being hired as yacht crew - and sales my the largest fuel vendors had fallen by 50 per cent. Their fears were echoed by Laurent Falaize, head of the Riviera Yachting Network, who said: 'The British and the Americans are sending their yachts to refuel in Italy or Spain, where the interpretation of European tax rules is different from ours in France.' The Riviera politicians held up the fact that refueling a 42-metre yacht in Italy - rather than France - offers 18,800-a-week in savings due to tax differences. Pictured: Cara Delevingne in Saint-Tropez Riviera officials say fewer French sailors are being hired as yacht crew - and sales my the largest fuel vendors had fallen by 50 per cent (file photo of Antibes, France) The cost of insurance, health and other mandatory contributions boat owners must pay for their crew members has gone up from 15 to 55 per cent of their wages, according to Franck Dosne, manager of the Antibes harbour of Port Vauban The yachting industry provides tens of thousands of jobs and is already suffering following several wildfires in the region over an especially difficult summer. President Macron has yet to comment on the Riviera's woes. A father said he watched the execution by machine gun of the man who raped and murdered his three-year-old daughter with 'relief and satisfaction'. Yahya Almatari stood at the front of crowd of thousands as his close neighbour Muhammad al Maghrabi was shot at point blank range with an AK-47. The 41-year-old had been convicted by a Sharia court in Yemen of raping and strangling toddler Rana Almatari having snatched her off the street. Speaking exclusively to MailOnline after witnessing the brutal execution the toddler's father said: 'I feel as if I have been reborn. This is the first day of my life. I am relieved now.' Other family members had gathered with a crowd of thousands screaming 'long live justice' as al Maghrabi was dragged from the back of a police van. Killed: Rana Almatari was snatched off the street in Sanaa, the capital of Yemen and strangled by her neighbour Muhammad al Maghrabi Pumped with bullets: Muhammad al Maghrabi is pictured being executed with an AK-47 rifle after being convicted under sharia law Monster: The 41-year-old had been convicted by a Sharia court in Yemen of raping and strangling toddler Rana Almatari having snatched her off the street The child killer was forced to lie on his front on a rug with his hands tied behind his back while a police officer stood over him with an AK-47 machine gun. As the baying crowd in the Yemeni capital Sana'a cheered he was shot five times in the back killing him instantly. Mr al Almatari said justice had been served by the summary execution in accordance with the law of the land. He told MailOnline: 'Justice and the ruling of God and Sharia law have prevailed. 'I watched my daughter Rana's killer being executed in Tahrir Square in Sana'a then I went with the men of my family and neighbours and some of the people in the crowd to the hospital where Rana was in the morgue. Relief: Rana's father Yahya Almatari stood at the front of crowd of thousands as his close neighbour al Maghrabi was shot at point blank range 'We took her small body and buried her in the nearby cemetery. My wife Jamileh and I are grateful to God. Justice and the ruling of Allah have been done.' There had been fears that when the killer arrived in the city's main square he would be grabbed by the crowd and lynched such was the hatred towards him. Al Maghrabi had snatched Rana as she played outside her home in the Yemeni capital Sana'a during the festival of Eid. He took her back to his father's home where he raped and then strangled the toddler with his bare hands. The loner raped her lifeless body before dumping it near a mosque in the neighbourhood of Beit Miyad where she lived with her father Yaha and mother Jamileh. The death of the three year old had shocked the country that is in the grip of a civil war. The execution had been ordered by a court run by the Shi'ite Houthi rebels who control Sana'a. After al Maghrabi's arrest he was initially sentenced to 100 lashes having confessed to rape and murder. But such was the outrage across the nation the judge decided the punishment was not enough and imposed a death sentence. Al Maghrabi, a Moroccan national, was arrested two days after Rana went missing on June 25th. He was known to the victim's family and when police raided the basement where he lived with his parents they found pills and lubricants leading investigators to believe he had planned the crime. Taken: Al Maghrabi had snatched Rana as she played outside her home in the Yemeni capital Sana'a during the festival of Eid Beast: Al Maghrabi was known to the victim's family and when police raided the basement where he lived with his parents they found pills and lubricants leading investigators to believe he had planned the crime Al Maghrabi, a Moroccan national, was arrested two days after Rana went missing on June 25th. His execution was ordered by a court run by the Shi'ite Houthi rebels who control Sana'a After al Maghrabi's arrest he was initially sentenced to 100 lashes having confessed to rape and murder. But such was the outrage across the nation the judge decided the punishment was not enough and imposed a death sentence Mr Almatari described his daughter's killer as a monster. He said: 'What could be his motive, even an animal could have treated Rana mercifully. We have no enemies. 'Rana's body when it was found carried wounds so horrible only Rana knows about.' Describing the day his daughter went missing, Mr Almatari said she had gone outside to play with friends. 'Rana disappeared on the afternoon of the Eid. We told the police and the press and the national TV stations issued an appeal and neighbours helped searching for her,' he said. He showed MailOnline one of the missing posters that were plastered around his neighbourhood as the family frantically searched for her. The photo shows a smiling Rana with purple sunglasses perched on the top of her head. It is believed the killer's family, who lived two doors away from the Almatari family, tipped off police about their son's involvement. The dead girl's mother Jamileh fainted when she was told her body had been found in an empty shop and was rushed to hospital where she was treated for shock. She told MailOnline she had looked in vain for her daughter when she realised she was missing. Jamileh said: 'Rana walked out of the house to play with other children. After 10 or 15 minutes, I went out to find her. We looked everywhere, there was no sign of her, we sent friends, relatives and neighbours in cars to look for her. 'There was no signs of her. It was bizarre how Rana had disappeared, as if the ground had opened and swallowed her.' Rana's father Yahya Almatari is pictured arriving at the capital city's main square to watch her killer put to death so that he could see justice be done A crowd of thousands of people gathered screaming 'long live justice' as al Maghrabi was dragged from the back of a police van The loner raped her lifeless body before dumping it near a mosque in the neighbourhood of Beit Miyad where she lived with her father Yaha and mother Jamileh People gathered around the city's main square and climbed up telecoms poles and stood on the roof of a nearby building to get a vantage point of the execution Jamileh also witnessed her daughter's killer being executed by a policeman wielding the AK-47. 'We demanded the immediate ruling and punishment of the criminal and now Justice had prevailed.' said Rana's father after al Maghrabi's body had been taken away. Following the killer's arrest last month a large crowd had gathered outside the police station where he was being held with the mob demanding justice. A Ministry of Justice office read a statement to the crowd in an attempt to calm them down. Al Maghrabi is not thought to have shown any remorse while he was held in jail. Five police vans shadowed the prison van taking him to Tahir Square for the execution as a crowd of up to 10,000 gathered to witness his death. Before being shot a policeman read out the order from the judge for his execution. al Maghrabi turned his head to briefly look at his executioner before his life was ended. The execution was filmed and shown on national TV while many in the crowd used smart phones to capture his death. Sharia law is the source of all legislation in Yemen, according to a US State Department report. Under the law murder is punishable by the death sentence, though the family of the victim do have the power to lessen the punishment. While beheading is common, Sharia does not specify how the death sentence should be carried out. Rana's uncle Fouad Almatari said the family had decided only to bury her once her killer was dead. He said: 'Hell is written all over the killer's face. We demanded from our government and the justice department a quick ruling on this crime and according to the sharia law and as soon as possible so that we could rest and so that Rana's soul could rest in peace. Justice has now been done.' An irate minister and the NSW Police Commissioner have slammed Sydney's 'tent city' and vowed to evict its homeless residents. Dozens of tents have been erected in Martin Place since December with the number continuing to grow despite attempts by authorities to move people on. Family and Community Services Minister Pru Goward said the makeshift residence was making a 'mockery' of the city. Martin Place's 'tent city' (pictured) has been slammed by an irate minister and the NSW Police boss Dozens of tents have been erected in the Sydney forecourt since December with the number continuing to grow despite attempts by authorities to move people on 'This is a critical public safety issue that keeps me awake,' Mr Goward told 2GB Radio on Thursday. 'I'm not letting [Sydney Lord Mayor] Clover Moore off the hook... I don't care what it takes, we will move these people on.' NSW Police Commissioner Mick Fuller said the problem would persist as long as the council provided facilities such as mobile showers. 'The problem is that whilst ever local government puts in place activities that will make it of interest for homeless people, they will continue to set up camp,' he said. Family and Community Services Minister Pru Goward said the makeshift residence was making a 'mockery' of the city NSW Police Commissioner Mick Fuller said the problem would persist as long as the council provided facilities such as mobile showers 'The best way to resolve this is for the local government to use its powers to take away the tents, the barbecues, the gas bottles. Police will support that operation. 'If there is someone who is breaking the law, then we will put them in the back of a truck.' A spokesman for Lord Mayor Clover Moore hit back on Thursday and said mobile showers were funded by the State Government. The City of Sydney was focused on 'practical solutions for people sleeping rough and homeless', a statement read. A spokesman for Lord Mayor Clover Moore hit back on Thursday and said mobile showers were funded by the state government City CBD workers walk past a tent city housing the homeless in Martin Place directly adjacent to the main entrance to The Reserve Bank of Australia The spokesman reiterated calls to find a long-term solution and urged the State Government to accept a proposal for a development comprising 150 new affordable and social housing units. Mr Fuller will meet with Minister Goward to discuss the encampment on Friday morning. 'And we will drag, if we have to, kicking and screaming, someone from local government to get a resolution,' the commissioner told 2GB on Thursday. A spokesman for Lord Mayor Clover Moore (pictured)0 hit back on Thursday and said mobile showers were funded by the state government This is the bizarre moment a man in 1970s flares repeatedly performed strange leg kicks on a London street. The video taken in Finchley Road, north London, shows the man flicking his legs into the air. It starts with the man walking along the road in a shiny, striped shirt and flares. Oopsy daisy: On his first leg kick, the man moves his leg so high into the air that he falls flat on his backside before getting up and carrying on undeterred On his first kick, he moves his leg so high into the air that he falls flat on his backside before getting up and carrying on undeterred. The video was posted online by Anthony Morris who captioned it 'Worst John Cleese impression ever! Finchley Road' He was referring to the famous Monty Python sketch which sees actor John Cleese and his co-stars battle it out to walk in the silliest way. The video has been viewed thousands of times and attracted hundreds of comments. Jonny Hill said: 'Is he actually trying to kick himself in the face?' Dennis Stalin joked: 'He looks like a time traveller from the 80s who just watched a Bruce Lee film'. A Russian man suffered a devastating loss after becoming impaled on a metal fence in Kuznetsk, Penza Oblast, south west Russia. The 27-year-old severed his genitals after trying and failing to climb over the fence while drunk, local police say. The unnamed man's eventually freed himself and managed to stagger to a local hospital bleeding profusely. What a hangover: The unnamed man had tried to climb over a metal fence while intoxicated, but had become impaled on the railing, his genitals severed and left behind However, his genitals remained on the railing, along with his ripped jeans. Locals in Kuznetsk rushed to picture the torn-off penis still impaled on the fence, with images posted on social media sites. Police confirmed the incident to Progorod58 local news website. Excruciating: The unnamed 27-year-old eventually freed himself and managed to stagger to the local hospital in Kuznetsk, Penza Oblast Community support: Locals in Kuznetsk rushed to picture the torn-off penis still impaled on the fence, and images soon appeared on social media 'The man said no-one else was involved in the accident,' said a police source. 'He impaled himself while climbing over the metal fence.' 'What do you know about real pain, my boy?' said one web comment. 'Life is over for him,' said one comment. A man wrote: 'I would have killed myself under that fence.' Authorities in China's Xinjiang region have banned China's Muslims from using their language in schools. Last month, the Hotan government in north western China prohibited the use of the Uighur language from being used in schools including pre-school. The new move comes after strict restrictions on Muslims in the region including a ban on fasting during Ramadan. A teacher leads a group of children exercising in the school's grounds (File photo) Young Uyghur boys pose for a photo in Hotan, China's Xinjiang province (File photo) The move was announced in a notice on the website of Xinjiang's Hotan region. It said that the use of the Uyghur language was banned from pre-school, all the way to secondary school. The notice claimed that the move aimed to 'fully popularise the national common language'. Signs around the schools also have to be in Mandarin. The move will come into effect in September, in time for the new school semester. A Uyghur official told Radio Free Asia that 'even the Uyghur textbooks will be replaced with Chinese textbooks from inland China.' The news was confirmed by the World Uyghur Congress who say that the ban is currently in place in one prefecture of Xinjiang province. However it's not unlikely that the ban could spread province wide in the future. Uyghur women outside a mosque in Hotan, China's Xinjiang province (File photo) Two children wearing hats spotted in Xinjiang province (File photo) William Nee, researcher at Amnesty International told MailOnline: 'The Communist Party has been pushing bilingual education over the past few years, but in reality, it seems as that the real goal is to encourage Mandarin while hollowing out the role of the Uighur language, and in the long run, presumably weaken Uighur identity as a potential unifying, political force. 'However, many Uighurs are extremely concerned that their language and culture is being systematically suppressed, so this type of heavy-handed policy has the potential to backfire.' XINJIANG FIGURES Muslims in China make up 1.8 percent of the country's population. Xinjiang province is home to 10.37 million Uygurs. The province has some 24,400 Muslim mosques Source: Statistic Bureau of Xinjiang Advertisement Xinjiang is home to 10.37 million Uygurs who practice the Muslim faith. It is a four and a half hour flight from Beijing. Many Muslims in the country say they feel victimised by the government who have tightened control on the region. For some time, the Chinese government has been cracking down on Muslim activity in the region of Xinjiang under the guise of 'tackling extremism and terrorist behaviour'. In November 2016, China ordered that residents of Xinjiang return their passports to their local police station for it to be kept there. Those wishing to use their passports have to apply to the local police station for the return of their documents. While earlier this year, fasting during Ramadan was banned and restaurants were forced to stay open. Erika Kraus-Berlin, 85, who was allegedly killed by her grandson Christopher Fuhrer A grandson accused of accidentally choking his grandmother to death lived in her house with the corpse for five months because he was afraid of being made homeless. Queens man Christopher Fuhrer, 30, unintentionally killed Erika Kraus-Breslin on May 21 last year, according to prosecutors, who allege he made 'reckless contact' with her. When she died, he wrapped his grandmother's body in 16 garbage bags and filled them with paint to mask the smell after she died. The pair had been living together for five years with Fuhrer as the 85-year-old sole carer and he didn't report her death over fears he would be kicked out of the house. The grandson now faces manslaughter charges and prosecutors say the contact between the two 'compressed her neck' and caused her to choke to death, according to the New York Daily News. As well as pouring paint into the bags, which contained his grandmother's badly decomposing body, he sprayed Febreze air freshener on them to eliminate the odor. A lawyer for one of Kraus-Breslin's daughters got concerned and asked police to check on her on October 5. A police vehicle sits in front of a house, left, where officers conducting a welfare check discovered the decomposing body of Erika Kraus-Breslin Police entered the two-story home on 65th Street near 68th Avenue in Ridgewood and made the grim discovery. The grandmother was found in the corner of a bedroom on the second floor next to a fan. As well as the manslaughter charge, Fuhrer also faces jail for concealment of a corpse, and remains in prison on a $350,000 bail. The French ambassador to the UK has said Brexit as 'not a priority' for the EU and dismissed concerns about high levels of immigration as 'exaggerated'. Sylvie Bermann said that while Britain talks about Brexit at 'morning, lunch and dinner' Europe is determined to carry on its mission to 'strengthen the EU'. And in an apparent swipe at Theresa May, she said French President Emmanuel Macron was able to host Donald Trump in Paris because he enjoyed huge support in France. Mrs May has put off the US President's promised state visit to Britain until at least next year amid fears that it would spark massive protests. French President Sylvie Bermann said the UK is consumed by Brexit at morning lunch and dinner, whereas Brexit is not a priority in Europe. She also dismissed concerns over spiralling rates of immigration into Britain as 'scaremongering' In an interview to mark the end of her stint in Britain, Miss Bermann gave short shrift to the UK's looming departure from the Brussels club. She told The Guardian: 'Brexit in the morning, Brexit for lunch and Brexit for dinner. 'It is not the case in France or in Europe the priority in the EU is to protect and strengthen the EU and to deal with migration crisis. 'Brexit is not a priority for us.' Anger at EU free movement rules which had led to spiralling rates of immigration and undermined Britain's ability to control its own borders drove many to back Leave in last year's historic referendum. Theresa May, pictured meeting with the new French President Emmanuel Macron in Paris in June. The French ambassador appeared to take a swipe at Theresa May by contrasting the British PM's political weakness with the popularity enjoyed by Mr Macron Mr Macron, pictured in a long handshake with Donald Trump as their wives Melania Trump and Brigitte Macron watch on. Miss Bermann said the French President was able to host the US leader because he was politically strong But Miss Bermann dismissed these concerns telling the newspaper that 'generally speaking this scaremongering about immigration was exaggerated'. And she was scathing in her assessment of the campaign in the run up to the vote, saying 'there was no debate before the election'. The diplomat also appeared to take a dig at Mrs May over her weak position following the Tory Party election disaster. The Prime Minister had been predicted to lead her party to a stomping victory. But instead her majority was wiped out and she is propped up in No10 with the support of the DUP's ten MPs in exchange for pouring 1billlion into Northern Ireland, and has been dogged by questions over a possible leadership challenge. Ms Bermann contrasted the PM's wobbly position in Downing Street with the newly victorious Mr Macron, who swept into the French presidency and won a majority in the Assembly elections with his new party en Marche. The ambassador said the election of Mr Macron had made French people 'more optimistic' and boosted respect for the country across the world. The French ambassador described Philip Hammond as a 'very wise man' while she said she like Boris Johnson from his time as the hugely popular Mayor of London And it allowed him to invite the US President without fearing mass protests, she added. She said: 'You need to be strong internally to be able to have a strong diplomacy and I think that Emmanuel Macron was very firm with Donald Trump and that is why he was also able to invite him to Bastille Day [in Paris].' She added that for 'the time being it is probably easier for France to have a complete relationship with the US' as a Trump visit in Britain would trigger protests. She also cast her verdict on possible Tory leadership contenders Philip Hammond and Boris Johnson. She said the Chancellor is 'a very wise man, and he is a very knowledgeable man'. While she said she likes the Foreign Secretary form his time as London Mayor. She said: 'I like Boris Johnson. It is not about Brexit he was very supportive as mayor of London and he was the one who decided to illuminate Trafalgar square with the Tricolore.' A 40million smuggling ring responsible for bringing up to 2,000 people into Britain was smashed by police yesterday. Migrants as young as five were among those caught using false Spanish passports to board tourist flights during a decade of deception. Travellers, most of them affluent Iranians, paid at least 22,000 a time for a bespoke service in which they used genuine travel documents of people who looked like them or were given cutting-edge counterfeits. Police chiefs said the 'perfectly structured' people-smuggling gang is believed to have been one of the biggest ever discovered. Its mastermind, believed to be an Iranian national based in Malaga, was arrested at Heathrow airport as he tried to flee to Sao Paulo in Brazil via Dubai. More than 100 others, including his key henchmen, were held in raids across Spain and at airports across the continent. Police in Spain have smashed a gang which was charging illegal immigrants more than 22,000 to smuggle them into Britain The scale of the operation and the ease with which those involved beat British border controls will raise alarms at the highest level of Government. It appears that migrants with the means to pay the trafficking gang were able to obtain false or genuine European documents at will. They then took advantage of free movement rules to travel into London and other major cities before disappearing into society. Investigators believe that up to 200 people a year were smuggled by the gang across Europe over up to ten years. The vast majority were brought into Britain. Officers began to unravel the gang's activities after seven Iranian citizens were caught a year ago using fake passports to board a plane flying to this country from Germany. Their tickets had been bought at travel agency in Malaga in southern Spain, leading investigators to suspect a major migrant smuggling network was operating in the city. Europol, the EU's law enforcement agency, said each 'customer' was charged around 22,000 and provided with accommodation, transfers and flights. The hefty fee provided a premium package which almost guaranteed the safe arrival of migrants into Britain. It is understood that the smuggling ring grew rapidly as a result of its early successes through word of mouth among the Iranian community. As the well as the alleged ringleader who was arrested at Heathow in June, another 14 members of the ring were arrested at their Malaga HQ this week. A further 42 Spanish citizens were also arrested on suspicion of selling their documents for up to 2,680 each to help the gang carry out is smuggling operation. A total of 44 Iranians were detained at airports across Europe carrying forged passports in recent weeks as the smuggling operation was dismantled. Seven other Iranians, including a child aged five, were also found during searches carried out by Spanish police on Wednesday. More than 40 authentic Iranian and Spanish passports, 400 blank identity cards, firearms, cash, computers, printers and a 'high-end vehicle' were also seized during searches at safe houses. Footage released by the Spanish National Police showed officers examining dozens of pristine EU passports kept in a shoe box. One of the suspects, a young man wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with a skull, was pictured being led away by armed officers. Police are investigating whether the gang used the services of a prolific passport forger known as 'The Doctor', who was arrested in Thailand last year. Hamid Reza Jafary, 48, an Iranian, specialised in provided convincing fake European travel documents to several organised crime gangs for up to 2,000 each. They were used by people from the Middle East and South Asia to illegally enter Europe and Australia. Almost 200 fake passports were found at his rural home. A spokesman for Spain's National Police said the gang specialised in trafficking people from Iran to Britain. 'The organisation used Spain, where most of its members were based, as a transit country,' he said. 'Fourteen of the 15 heads of the organisation have been arrested in Malaga. The leader was held at Heathrow Airport.' A Europol spokesman said Spanish police had 'dismantled an international criminal network involved in smuggling Iranian nationals into the UK'. 'The criminal group was perfectly structured and each member had a defined role, ranging from recruiting the irregular migrants in their country of origin, to facilitating the transfers, hosting them in safe houses in Spain, and supplying the travel documents,' he said. 'In total, 101 individuals were arrested. Another 44 individuals of Iranian nationality were intercepted at different European airports carrying forged passports. Officers arrested 14 of the 15 suspected members in Malaga but the alleged ringleader was held at London's Heathrow Airport as he tried to flee to Brazil 'The leader of the criminal group was arrested by the Metropolitan Police at Heathrow airport. The suspect intended to take a flight to Brazil to evade justice.' A Home Office spokesman said: 'Immigration Enforcement has supported Spanish authorities in an operation targeting a suspected people smuggling ring.' Large numbers of Iranians have left the country in recent years in response to government repression and in search of a better life. Those who used the smuggling ring first travelled to Spain on tourist visas. Here they were brought into a highly-organised network of facilitators who smoothed their passage via their Malaga headquarters and a chain of safe houses. The traffickers either paid for cutting-edge counterfeits to be prepared or simply bought genuine documents from 'look-a-like' Spanish citizens. These individuals, of Middle Eastern or North African descent, were paid up to 2,600 for their passports. Once suitably equipped, the illicit travellers simply caught packed tourist flights to Britain. In many cases, it is understood, they disappeared into society with the help of Iranians who had already made the journey. Some will hope to lay low long enough to apply for citizenship. Iran has huge deposits of oil and gas, but it has suffered from high unemployment and inflation, and its economic growth was hit by international sanctions imposed over nuclear programme. Human rights groups have accused Tehran of suppressing freedom of expression and ill-treating those who are members of religious or ethnic minorities, gay, or political campaigners. Many Iranians have claimed asylum after arriving in Britain, with some arguing that they faced persecution if they were sent home. Flash Russia will not take new retaliatory measures following the signing of a new sanctions bill by U.S. President Donald Trump on Wednesday, said Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov. The U.S. Congress has passed the bill, which will finally become law even without the president's signature, said Peskov, adding that Wednesday's signing by Trump, therefore, actually changed nothing. The U.S. bill was approved overwhelmingly early this month by the Congress despite the Trump administration calling on lawmakers to grant the White House "flexibility" in dealing with Russia. "Still, the bill remains seriously flawed -- particularly because it encroached on the executive branch's authority to negotiate," Trump said in a statement released by the White House following his signing. In retaliation for the new U.S. sanctions, Russian President Vladimir Putin on Sunday announced a decision to reduce the U.S. diplomatic staff in Russia by 755 people by Sept. 1. Kim Jong-Un's 'cartoonish image' should not fool the international community into thinking he is not clever and rational, North Korea experts warn. They claim Kim's obsession with building nuclear missiles that can reach the U.S. is not an indication that he is looking to start a war - but to prevent one. The North Korean dictator, whose most recent nuclear missile test is claimed to have proven that his warheads can soon reach U.S. shores, was branded a 'chubby-faced maniac playing with dangerous toys' by Filipino President Rodrigo Duterte yesterday. Rational plan: Kim Jong-Un reportedly fears being ousted from power like the late Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, and hopes that nuclear weapons will deter military intervention However, experts say this could not be further from the truth, explaining that the North Korean nuclear missile program is Kim's 'insurance policy' against being ousted from power like Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. The late Iraqi dictator was deposed by U.S.-led international coalition forces following an invasion dubbed 'Operation Iraqi Freedom' in 2003 that preceded the Iraq War. Kim Jong-Un is allegedly hoping that by developing nuclear weapons that can threaten the U.S., he can prevent himself suffering the same fate. North Korea last week conducted its second intercontinental ballistic missile test, which led Kim to boast he could strike any target in the United States. A nuclear weapons program is 'the most powerful bargaining chip that North Korea has,' Joo Seong-ha, a North Korean defector told USA Today. Don't let this fool you: A U.S. North Korea expert has said that while it is easy to fall for the dictator's 'cartoonish' image, the idea that his nuclear obsession is 'irrational' is a myth North Korea last week conducted its second intercontinental ballistic missile test, which led Kim to boast he could strike any target in the United States Jenny Town, assistant director of the U.S.-Korea Institute at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, also disputed the view that the nuclear program is simply caused by Kim's obsession with weapons and power. 'The idea that Kim Jong Un's decisions, particularly about his nuclear weapons program, are irrational is a myth,' Ms Town told the news website. 'The caricature, cartoonish image of him is easy for people to believe.' This came after speech by Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte on Wendesday in which he warned that Kim could destroy Asia by triggering a nuclear war, branding him a 'son-of-a-w**** maniac'. Duterte said the tyrant is 'playing with dangerous toys' and that people should 'not be fooled by that chubby face that looks nice.' The Philippines leader teed off against 'crazy man' Kim ahead of a regional security meeting in his capital Manila this weekend, where the hermit state's ballistic missile tests will be a hot agenda item. North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un is a 'maniac' who could destroy Asia by triggering a nuclear war, Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte (pictured) has warned Durterte said the tyrant (pictured) is 'playing with dangerous toys' and that people should 'not be fooled by that chubby face that looks nice' North Korea is set to face a diplomatic barrage over its nuclear weapons programme, with the United States seeking to build a 'chorus of condemnation'. Foreign ministers from all the major powers involved in trying to curtail North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un's atomic ambitions will be in the Philippine capital for the event, offering a rare chance for face-to-face talks on the crisis. The United States and China have been wrestling with how best to respond to North Korea's second intercontinental ballistic missile test last week, which deepened global fears over Kim's nuclear weapons strike capabilities. US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson will seek to build diplomatic pressure on the North in Manila, with Washington pushing for another round of tough United Nations sanctions on Pyongyang, according to one of his top aides. 'What we would expect to see this year at the meeting would be a general chorus of condemnation of North Korea's provocative behaviour,' Susan Thornton, the acting US assistant secretary of state, told reporters in Washington. The annual forum, hosted by the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), brings together the top diplomats from 26 countries and the European Union for talks on political and security issues in Asia-Pacific. A person claiming to be fugitive Shaun Davidson - who escaped from a Bali jail nearly six weeks ago - has once again bragged about fugitive life. Days after a social media page believed to be run by Davidson tried auctioning off his story, the account has gloated of living life to the fullest, reports KIIS FM. The 33-year-old boasted he was too smart to be captured and had enough money to comfortably lead a jet-setting life for the rest of his years. Davidson, 33, (pictured) climbed through sewage pipe mid June escaping overcrowded prison I'm living life to the fullest travelling like i (sic) never could before, the message reads. I got enough to live out the rest of my life without an interview i just thought i'd put the offer out incase someone wanted one, doesn't bother me if i have one or not ill be free for the rest of my life you'll see im smart and wont be found. Im not hiding anywhere my facebook posts are exactly the truth.' It is the latest in a long line of gloating social media believed to be coming from the former Kerobokan inmate. Last week, Davidson reached out to the media for those interested in his 'first phone interview' since tunnelling out of the notorious jail. 'Ok Reporters, Correspondents, and Broadcast News Analysts if you would like to be considered for my first telephone interview while on the run please email me at contact.sr1davidson@gmail.com with these details,' the post reads. Davidson (pictured) spent four hours digging his way out of jail in the pouring rain in Bali Shaun Davidson last week auctioned off his story to the highest bidder, taunting police with yet another Facebook post '1. The amount your offering $$ (payment would be paid to a secondary party and will be a payment to facilitate the phonecall and not a payment for the interview) '2. Your name and the news company you are from. '3. A list of all questions that you may want to ask during the interview (As I will not answer anything that has not had prior approval) and if there is an offer i like or is close i will email you back with conditions or counter offer.' The Australian criminal tunnelled out of the prison with three other inmates in mid-June and has been on the run since. The Bali prison escapee has reached out to the media for those interested in his 'first phone interview' since tunnelling out of Kerobokan jail Davidson claims the payment will be to set up the interview rather than for his own benefit, but that is unlikely to matter to the Proceeds of Crime act and the Australian Federal Police. The act became active in 2003 and states it has the power to 'confiscate the proceeds of crime against foreign law or the proceeds of crime against State law.' 'The Act also provides a scheme that allows confiscated funds to be given back to the Australian community in an endeavour to prevent and reduce the harmful effects of crime in Australia.' The prison escapee has continued his taunt spree of law enforcement ages attempting to track him by posting mock wanted posters through his Facebook page. The wanted poster has a black and white photo of a shirtless Davidson and advertises a 'huge reward'. Prison escapee Shaun Edward Davidson posted his own wanted posters (pictured) online The Bali prison escapee has been on run for a month but teases police with posters (pictured) Since escaping, Davidson has been seen messaging police, cheekily asking them if they're close to finding him yet (pictured) A missing persons poster was posted to Facebook which has a photo of Davidson and says his last known location was Kerobokan Prison. His current possible location is 'not sure but we're close' - a reference to what Balinese authorities told media earlier this month. The Perth man also messaged Interpol, the world's largest police organisation, asking them if they were close to catching him. 'Hey hows [sic] it going just wondering when you say close how close are you really?' Davidson sent to Interpol. The escapee took to Facebook a week ago to display he had been a 'free man' for '30 full days'. 'I've left fans amazed police and governments dazed who wouldv thought I'd be ontop with my cheeky smarta** ways,' Davidson posted. Davidson, and three other men, escaped Kerobokan Prison through a tunnel (pictured) Two of the men were caught days later after escaping through the tunnel (pictured) but Davidson remains on the run The criminal used Facebook to check in to different locations, teasing police (pictured) Since escaping Kerobokan Prison (pictured) the escapee said wants to make light of his messy situation Jean Perrottet told police 'there's no way I had sex ... it's against my religion' after he was arrested over an alleged sexual assault, a New South Wales jury has heard. Jean Claude Perrottet, 20, was a virgin who didn't believe in sex before marriage when he allegedly raped a university student at her end-of-year formal, a NSW jury has heard. 'There's no way I had sex, I haven't had sex, it's against my religion,' Perrottet allegedly told a detective after he was arrested in October 2015. Jean Claude Perrottet (pictured) leaving Downing Centre Court in Sydney Jean Perrottet (pictured right) pleaded not guilty to three counts of sexual intercourse without consent after a drunken college formal at the University of Sydney At the Downing Centre District Court on Thursday, Perrottet clarified he hadn't had penile-vaginal sex, saying 'I believe you should wait until marriage'. Perrottet, the younger brother of NSW Treasurer Dominic Perrottet, has pleaded not guilty to three counts of sexual intercourse without consent after a drunken college formal at the University of Sydney. The young woman was allegedly raped in a campus car park after meeting and kissing Perrottet on the dance floor. 'You won't find anything that said I had sex with her,' he allegedly told police during a search warrant of his Sydney home. Back at the police station Perrottet called his brother Oliver to 'get some advice'. A detective heard him telling his brother: 'It was just second base.' Jean Claude Perrottet (pictured centre) is seen leaving Downing Centre Court 'There was a bit of hand work, she may have given me a head job but it was all consensual,' he said. In a series of text messages read out in court, Perrottet told friends he was a 'complete mess' on the night of the alleged attack and had a drinking problem. 'F*** man, I can't get that drunk. When I get that drunk my morals leave,' he told one friend. He apologised to another friend who had invited him to the formal 'for being a complete mess'. 'I need to stop getting next level f***ed every time I go out,' he said. 'Was I completely embarrassing myself? Jean Perrottet (pictured) appeared in Downing Centre Court on Thursday 'F***, like I am trying to remember things but the only thing I can remember is having an argument about politics with a leftie.' Perrottet drank a gin and lemonade, several beers, a glass of champagne and a French martini on the night of the alleged assault. The next day he messaged a third friend and said he's 'got an alcohol problem'. 'I realised I don't go out and have a drink,' he said in a message. 'When I go out I wake up with a bump on my head, dirt on my suit, lost my passport.' He told a fourth friend he 'made a serious fool' of himself and 'kissed someone' that night. The trial continues. An unprecedented financial crisis may have been unfolding across America at the time, but candid footage shows the 31st President was able to find some down time while in office. Film taken by First Lady Lou Hoover is the earliest color amateur footage taken at the White House. The rare footage shows Mrs Hoover and her husband President Herbert Hoover relaxing while off official duty, playing with their children and enjoying visits from relatives. The candid home movie was shot during Herbert Hoover's years in the White House, between 1929 and 1933 With America in the grips of the Great Depression, the footage shows the Hoover family were able to relax when not on duty It was initially thought that the movies were in black-and-white, but archivist Lynn Smith discovered they were in fact in color Mrs Hoover shot the video clips during President Hoover's reign at the White House from 1929 to 1933, during the Great Depression. Hoover, a lifelong Quaker, was eight months into his presidency when the Wall Street Crash sent the US economy into freefall, and huge government projects such as the Hoover Dam failed to spark a recovery. The home movies were known about but they were thought to be in black and white until Lynn Smith, an audio-visual archivist working at the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library, discovered that they were in fact in color. The candid footage shows the family on a fishing trip during the years Hoover was president The footage was shot using Kodacolor, which was a Kodak brand associated with early color motion pictures and it was first introduced in 1928 for 16mm film The fascinating footage was taken by First Lady Lou Hoover during the White House years Despite his large-scale intervention in the economy, the crisis only seemed to get worse every year under his leadership. He was convincingly beaten in the 1932 Presidential election by Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt. The couple had two children, Herbert Charles Hoover, born in 1903, and Allan Henry Hoover, born in 1907. His oldest son had two young children, Margaret and Herbert, born before Hoover's presidency, and granddaughter Joan was born while her grandfather was in the White House. The 31st President and his family are seen relaxing away from the strains of his official duties The couple are seen playing with their grandchildren, who were very young in the White House years The footage was shot using Kodacolor, which was a Kodak brand associated with early color motion pictures and it was first introduced in 1928 for 16mm film. The process used a special panchromatic black-and-white film stock used with the emulsion away from the lens. While Kodacolor was a popular color home movie format, it had several drawbacks. It could not yield multiple copies easily, special film was necessary to shoot with, and the additive image was colorful and clear, but inherently darker than subtractive processes. Lenticular Kodacolor was phased out after the introduction of 16 mm Kodachrome film in 1935. Advertisement Soldiers trudging through the mud as they haul their weapons through the thick sludge, ducking in fear as an explosion goes off and graphic images showing the extent of their war wounds. These harrowing images chronicle the 103 days of the hell the brave men and women lived through as they fought and in the Battle of Passchendaele in 1917. The battle, which took place between July 31 and November 7, became known for the high number of casualties and the treacherous conditions the British and German troops had to fight in. Cyclist Corp men fix their bicycles under fire during the Battle of Passchendaele which took place between July 31 and November 7 These harrowing images chronicle the 103 days of the hell the brave men who fought and lived through the battle of Passchendaele in 1917 Infantry are seen moving along a duckboard track which has been set down to help the soldiers trudge through the muddy conditions, which was due to a result of heavy rain that year There are debates over the number of casualties during the battle, but it is thought that at least 585,000 soldiers died or were injured. Pictured is one soldier's horrific injury and his subsequent operation to fix it While historians have debated what the actual number of casualties were on both the Allied and German sides due to different counting methods, it is thought that at least 585,000 soldiers died or were injured. Many people drowned in the mud as the men and women faced unusually wet weather in the rural area of Passchendaele, Belgium. In honour of the 100th anniversary this year, author Alexandra Churchill has released a book titled Passchendaele: 103 days in Hell. Using a combination of stunning photographs, first-hand accounts, military records and information from descendants of the men who fought, the book studies each of the conflicts that made up the battle in minute detail, to give the reader a real sense of horrors of Passchendaele. There are also distressing entries from nurses, chaplains and stretcher-bearers as well as airmen and combatants. Tanks are seen driving en route to battle. In honour of the 100th anniversary, author Alexandra Churchill is releasing a new book titled Passchendaele: 103 days in Hell Using a combination of stunning photographs, first-hand accounts, military records and information from descendants of the men who fought, the book studies each of the conflicts that made up the battle in minute detail. Pictured is the evacuation of the wounded by light railway British medical men regularly treated German toops up and down the Western Front, as seen here. The Battle of Passchendaele became famous not only for the sheer number of casualties, but also for the horrendous fighting conditions the men were forced to endure Two men are seen standing on top of a dugout in Flanders which has been flooded. British general Douglas Haig had long wanted the allies to launch an offensive on German positions in Flanders fields, aiming to break through their lines and reach the Belgian coast where they had a significant base of submarines he had hoped to immobilise The Battle of Passchendaele became famous not only for the sheer number of casualties, but also for the horrendous fighting conditions the men were forced to endure. 'Passchendaele has become a watchword for the wasteful horror of the Great War,' writes Ms Churchill in the book. 'Were the casualties justifiable in military terms? Were commanders amongst the army's hierarchy damningly responsible for heartlessly sacrificing British lives? If fought differently, would the consequences and the results of Passchendaele, more accurately referred to as the Third Battle of Ypres, have been any better? Maori troops relax on the Western Front. Writing in the book, Ms Churchill said: 'Passchendaele has become a watchword for the wasteful horror of the Great War' She adds: 'Were the casualties justifiable in military terms? Were commanders amongst the army's hierarchy damningly responsible for heartlessly sacrificing British lives? If fought differently, would the consequences and the results of Passchendaele, more accurately referred to as the Third Battle of Ypres, have been any better?' Evacuating the wounded under fire in Flanders. On July 31, after two weeks of sustained shelling which had seen more than 4.5 million shells dropped on German positions, the Allies launched their infantry attack Troops make their way across the battlefield at Pilckem Ridge. Within a few days of the launch of the infantry offensive, some of the heaviest rains for 30 years had turned the battlefield into a quagmire, trapping thousands of men and horses and making it impossible to effectively operate any military equipment 'These are questions for a different book. Passchendaele: 103 Days in Hell is concerned with the individual experience. What of the ordinary men in the field who fought in such a notorious campaign? The experiences of many tested the limits of human endurance time and time again as the Allies attempted to defeat Germany in 1917.' British general Douglas Haig had long wanted the allies to launch an offensive on German positions in Flanders fields, aiming to break through their lines and reach the Belgian coast where they had a significant base of submarines he had hoped to immobilise. So, on July 31, after two weeks of sustained shelling which had seen more than 4.5 million shells dropped on German positions, the Allies launched their infantry attack. A church service in Flanders in 1917 reveals a cross section of Plumeris Second Army. The men are seen gathered together and singing hymns A 15 inch Howitzer gun is loaded up by a member of the forces and prepares to strike the opposing side during the battle Left is two tunnellers at work at Messines, right is the cover of the book. But the plan was a catastrophe from the start. Within a few days of the launch of the infantry offensive, some of the heaviest rains for 30 years had turned the battlefield into a quagmire, trapping thousands of men and horses and making it impossible to effectively operate any military equipment. The attack resumed on August 16 but to little effect, with the inclement weather making any meaningful military manoeuvres nearly impossible. The two sides remained at a stalemate until September 20, when an upturn in the weather allowed allied forces to win three key battles at Menin Road Ridge, Polygon Wood and Broodseinde in the space of two weeks. These victories eventually led to British and Canadian forces taking what was left of the village of Passchendaele on November 6, but the capture came at a heavy price. There were an estimated 325,000 allied casualties during the Battle of Passchendaele, with a further 260,000 German casualties making it one of the bloodiest battles of the First World War. Most people agreed at the time it was launched that the offensive was a good idea, with the allies more able to sustain casualties than the Germans after America's entry into the war, but there was much controversy over General Haig's decision to continue the attack into November. Two alleged terrorists arrested over a plot to blow up a Sydney flight with 500 passengers on board have been charged. Khaled and Mahmoud Khayat will each face two counts of terrorism-related charges, while a third man remains in police custody. He is held under special anti-terror laws, while police investigations continue. He can be detained until the weekend under the current ruling. 'A 49-year-old Lakemba man and a 32-year-old Punchbowl man have each been charged with two counts of acts done in preparation for, or planning, a terrorist act,' Australian Federal Police said in a statement on Thursday. They are due to face Parramatta Court on Friday morning, and if found guilty could face life behind bars. A fourth man arrested over the alleged plot, Abdul Merhi, 50, was released without charge on Monday night. Khaled Khayat (pictured) is one of the men who has been charged over a plot to blow up a commercial flight from Sydney Four men (one pictured being led away by police) were arrested in dramatic raids in Sydney It comes after it was revealed the alleged plot was thwarted at the last minute by staff at Sydney Airport's check-in desk because a bag allegedly containing a bomb was too heavy to carry on board. Having allegedly picked an international flight as their target, the men were forced into a last-minute change of plans when the baggage wasn't allowed on the plane. Neither the passenger or the bag ever made its way onto the passenger jet, which is believed to have been an Etihad Airways flight leaving Sydney for Abu Dhabi. Australian authorities were reportedly only alerted by overseas intelligence agencies when the alleged conspiracy was revived. Reports suggest the alleged terror cell planned to use a 'sacrificial lamb' to carry and detonate the bomb when on board the 500 seat passenger jet. 'The person was going to be blown up without knowing they were part of a suicide mission,' a source told The Daily Telegraph. One of the accused is pictured with a bandaged head following his arrest on Saturday night The target of the alleged terror plot was an Etihad flight from Sydney to Abu Dhabi with up to 500 passengers and crew on board (stock image) Senior police on Thursday foreshadowed the charges, with NSW Police commissioner Mick Fuller describing the evidence as 'very strong'. Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull echoed his words. 'Investigations have proceeded very well in terms of uncovering evidence. The police have uncovered very substantial evidence.' he said. Meanwhile, Mr Fuller meanwhile backed the 'outstanding job' of his officers amid criticism one of the men arrested on Saturday but released without charge. 'We mobilised quickly and really from my perspective we stopped what could have been a terrible crime,' he said. New South Wales Police officers arrive at a crime scene in Surry Hills in Sydney on Monday One of the men who was arrested on Saturday is pictured with a bandaged head following the police raids Mr Merhi's lawyer, Moustafa Kheir, has declared he will review 'what basis police had to do what they did' and said his client's life had been 'turned upside down' following his arrest and subsequent release. Mr Fuller welcomed the scrutiny, saying he had a responsibility to protect the people of NSW. The aviation terror threat level has been lowered to 'possible' on advice from Australia's spy agency ASIO. The threat level was raised to 'probable' when the plot was discovered. 'Travellers will see progressive adjustments to airport security over the next 24 hours,' Mr Turnbull said in a statement on Thursday. 'This includes a return to normal arrival times at airports for check-in as advised by your airline.' Australian Federal Police and NSW Police officers are seen during the counter-terrorism raids Officials previously told the ABC the Lebanese-Australian suspects are thought to have links to Islamic State in Syria. Justice Minister Michael Keenan told the broadcaster he would not comment on the IS links, but stressed the significance of the attack if it had taken place. 'What is very clear is that, if these allegations were to have gone ahead, it would have been just an enormously dreadful thing to have happened to our country,' he said. 'It's clear that this has been inspired by radical Islamic ideology.' Deakin University terror expert Greg Barton suggested the alleged plan may have centred around acetone peroxide - or TATP. It was the same chemical used in this year's Manchester Arena bombing and Paris attacks in 2015. Referred to as the 'mother of Satan' because it can kill those handling it, TATP is unstable but powerful and would not give off 'tell-tale' chemicals picked up by airport swab tests, Prof Barton said. NSW Police and forensic officers at the scene of a counter-terrorism raid on a property in Cleveland Street in Surry Hills Three men remain behind bars after police thwarted the alleged plot to detonate a gas bomb disguised as a meat mincer (stock image) on an Etihad flight bound for Abu Dhabi 'That makes it a candidate for using in this sort of attack.' TATP, which needs a pressure vessel to be packed in, could be placed in a grinder so it was opaque through an X-ray machine and appeared innocuous upon visual inspection. 'It might just pass (security),' Prof Barton said. That, I'm guessing, was their plan.' Authorities in Australia are remaining tight-lipped the arrests and refuse to confirm if they were triggered by a tip-off from an overseas intelligence agency. Police are pictured at the scene of Saturday afternoon's terror raids in Surry Hills the following day Federal and State Police officers are pictured at a crime scene in Surry Hills following the raids US officials said communications between the alleged plotters in Sydney and ISIS militants in Syria were intercepted by a foreign spy service. The officials declined to identify the service and authorities in Britain refused to confirm or deny playing a role in detecting the alleged plot. Australia's national terror alert level was raised in September 2014 amid concerns over attacks by individuals inspired by organisations such as IS. A total of 12 attacks, before the latest one, have been prevented in the past few years and 70 people have been charged. Several terror attacks have taken place in Australia in recent years, including a Sydney cafe siege in 2014 which saw two hostages killed. A police officer who passed out at the wheel of his cruiser due to exposure carbon monoxide and smashed into another vehicle has been taken to hospital. The worrying incident in Auburn, Massachusetts, involved a Ford Explorer SUV, which tested positive for the potentially lethal gas after it was checked over by detectives. The officer, who has not been named by the force, also tested positive for carbon monoxide and the driver whose car he hit was injured in the crash on Wednesday. The Ford Fusion, left, was rear-ended by the Auburn Police Ford Ranger SUV, right, after the officer had passed out at the wheel Auburn Police Chief Andrew Sluckis said the level of exposure was not near a 'deadly level', according to CBS. The officer was taken to hospital while the woman whose car - also a Ford - was rear-ended was treated for minor injuries. Further testing has revealed 10 department vehicles at Auburn Police showed up traces of the gas as well as two other officers. Carbon monoxide detectors have now been ordered to avoid a repeat. Ford said in a statement it was too early to determine what had caused the crash and a spokesman told CBS: 'It's premature to draw conclusions from what happened today in Auburn after reports of carbon monoxide at levels of 13 parts per million in the vehicle.' The spokesman argued the level of the gas was low inside the SUV. Similar incidents elsewhere has led to speculation the installing of Interceptor Police equipment is causing leaks in the police vehicles. A charity has come under fire after it suggesting making life-like child sex dolls available on prescription for paedophiles. A judge ruled that the sex dolls - made in Asia to look like young girls and children - were 'obscene' at a court appearance of a British man who admitted importing them this week. But StopSo, a charity which offers therapy to sex offenders, later claimed the dolls could actually be given to would-be abusers by the government. The claims have been criticised by children's charities, who insist the dolls normalise child sex abuse and the trade in them should be stamped out. A charity has suggested child-like sex dolls imported by British paedophiles from Asia should be given out on prescription to would-be offenders StopSo's chairman Juliet Grayson ignited the row over the dolls when she suggested they could be handed out to potential offenders. She said: 'If someone comes forward and says, "I am attracted to young children, and I want help to ensure that I never act on that attraction, so that I never harm a child," then maybe society should consider the use of dolls in a carefully regulated way. 'Perhaps a "prescription" for the use of a child sex doll could be given, alongside therapy, mentoring and supervision, could help the individual remain law abiding and fully accountable for their behaviour.' She added: 'This carefully regulated use of child sex dolls might be one way to keep children safe. It feels like dangerous territory, but is certainly worthy of consideration.' The sick dolls, produced in China, are being intercepted by police in the UK 'Society needs to reach a point where a teenager can say to his mum, "I am a paedophile", and she will get him the right kind of help to manage his behaviours in pro-social ways.' Her views were dismissed by NSPCC's development head, Jon Brown, who said the dolls could actually embolden paedophiles to attack children. He said: 'There is no evidence to support the idea that the use of so-called child sex dolls helps potential abusers from committing contact offences against real children. 'And in fact there is a risk that those using these child sex dolls or realistic props could become desensitised and their behaviour becomes normalised to them, so that they go on to harm children themselves, as is often the case with those who view indecent images.' It emerged this week that UK border guards have seen a surge in seizures of the child-like sex dolls, leading investigators to identify dozens of previously unknown suspected paedophiles. The lifelike silicone sex aids, which weigh around 55lb (25kg) and can cost thousands of pounds, are being imported into the UK after being sold by traders on sites including Amazon and eBay, the National Crime Agency (NCA) said. Ex-primary school governor David Turner, 72, pleaded guilty to importing the dolls after an application to dismiss the charge was turned down. Ex-primary school governor and church warden David Turner admitted importing the dolls After his case came to court, the National Crime Agency said it was working to track down anyone who tried to import one of the dolls. A spokesman for the agency said: 'We believe that these dolls could normalise a sexual interest in children and have a desensitising effect which is obviously extremely dangerous. 'As is often the case, importers of dolls have been prosecuted for associated offending such as possession of IIOC. 'The dolls are a flag of interest in children in my opinion. If they hadn't been discovered we would not have been able to prosecute for other aggravating offences.' Children's charity Barnardo's also added its voice to those condeming the dolls. Its Chief Executive, Javed Khan, said: 'The importation of child sex dolls into the UK is an extremely disturbing new phenomenon and one that needs to be tackled with robust legislation and enforcement. 'Barnardo's specialist workers see first-hand the harm suffered by children who have been sexually groomed, exploited and abused. 'We are pleased authorities are working together to stamp out this growing problem which should help protect vulnerable children.' This high-fiving moggy has been branded the coolest cat in the world. A video filmed by Kevin Fox from San Francisco shows the cat greeting his owner in a very human fashion. It starts with the cat sitting on the arm of a chair in a corridor at home. Cool kitten: This high-fiving moggy has been branded the coolest cat in the world When its owner walks past and holds out his hand, the cat lifts his right paw and the the pair share a high-five. And then the owner holds up his fist and the cat hits it with his paw to replicate a fist pump. The video has been viewed thousands of times and attracted hundreds of comments from viewers online. One viewer wrote: 'I can watch this all day' while another added: 'I want that cat'. An Italian man strangled his girlfriend to death and drove through the night with her body in the passenger seat before turning himself in to police, it has been claimed. Francesco Mazzega, from Pordenone in north-eastern Italy, had picked up 21-year-old Nadia Orlando, from her home in nearby Vidulis, near the city of Udine, in his car. The 36-year-old took her to a local beauty spot, overlooking the Tagliamento River, where he allegedly strangled her, it has been reported. Francesco Mazzega strangled his girlfriend Nadia Orlando (pictured) to death and drove through the night with her body in the passenger seat before turning himself in to police, it has been claimed Mazzega (pictured) , from Pordenone in north-eastern Italy, had picked up 21-year-old Nadia Orlando, from her home in nearby Vidulis, near the city of Udine, in his car The 36-year-old took his girlfriend (pictured) to a local beauty spot, overlooking the Tagliamento River, where he allegedly strangled her, it has been reported Miss Orlando had told her parents, who were concerned about her relationship with the older man, that they were going for a short drive. Her family raised the alarm when they did not return. Mazzega handed himself into police at the town of Palmanova, also in Friuli-Venezia Giulia, the next morning. He reportedly walked into the town's police station and said: 'I'm afraid I have committed a murder.' Mazzega is said to have told police officers that he had driven all of the way to the city of Trieste, on Italy's border with Slovenia, with the body of his dead girlfriend by his side. But he said he had then turned around and driven straight back to Friuli-Venezia Giulia. Police found Miss Orlando's body on the passenger seat of Mazzega's Toyota Yaris car in the police station car park Police found Miss Orlando's body on the passenger seat of Mazzega's Toyota Yaris car in the police station car park. The couple had met through their work as colleagues for a local firm, Lima, which specialises in creating prosthetic limbs through 3D printing. Police said that Mazzega had declined to reveal why he had killed Miss Orlando and had also refused to speak to his own parents. He reportedly told officers: 'I'm too ashamed of what I did. I do not want to see my parents.' Mazzega was said to be tense and agitated and had to be given tranquilisers before he was remanded in police custody. Miss Orlando was described as a much-loved member of the local community who helped out as a volunteer with the local festival and newspaper. A cousin, who did not want to be named, told local media that Miss Orlando's father had been worried about her relationship with Mazzega. She said: 'Nadia's father was very worried, he spoke to me about his fears about this boyfriend, who he described as possessive and jealous, a few days ago. 'He broke down in tears not knowing what to do, after his daughter told him of her own concerns.' The police investigation continues. Flash The wall built by the U.S. along its border with Mexico would put more than 100 endangered species at risk, according to a news release published on Wednesday by Rice University of Texas. Scott Egan, an assistant professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at Rice University, said the wall would change the balance of nature along the border area, putting wildlife at risk, including more than 100 endangered species. Egan said there are two important phenomena to consider when building any type of barrier that interrupts animal or plant movement. First, a barrier like this would cause a population bottleneck, and second, a barrier to the natural exchange of genes would lead to inbreeding depression or the decreased fitness of the population. In addition to the risks to plants and animals, Egan said evidence also reveals negative impacts on humans as well. Furthermore, Egan is concerned by two other potential effects: cutting off natural migration routes and future range expansions driven by climate change. The father of missing airman Corrie McKeague says he does not believe his son's remains will be found at an incineration plant after police discovered bone fragments. Police are currently examining the human DNA to see if they belong to the 23-year-old, who went missing last September. A search of a landfill search in Milton, Cambridgeshire, was called off last month after officers spent 20 weeks sifting through 6,500 tonnes of rubbish. They said they would then search an incinerator at Great Blakenham, Suffolk, despite believing Mr McKeague's remains were somewhere on the sprawling landfill site. Martin McKeague, pictured with missing son Corrie, said he does not believe his son's remains will be found at a waste incineration site even though police have found bone fragments there The 23-year-old airman, left, went missing last September, prompting a huge search led by his mother Nicola Urquhart, second right, and girlfriend April Oliver, far right But his father Martin said he thinks the best hope of finding the airman is to keep searching the tip and doesn't believe the fragments are anything to do with his son. He said: 'They have found some bones which were expected and which could be animal bones, we're just going to have to wait and see until they're tested. 'Deep down I don't think it's Corrie. We remain focused on the facts, and those facts suggest we are looking in the right places. 'The police will let us know in due course about their findings from the incinerator facility, and we await the results of the review of the landfill site search.' On Tuesday, police issued a statement about the find which said: 'Police searching incinerated waste at the Great Blakenham energy-from-waste facility have recovered some material that requires further examination in order to establish whether it is in any way connected to the Corrie McKeague missing person inquiry. 'At this stage it cannot be confirmed whether or not this material is in any way linked to Corrie and so it will be subject to specialist examination and forensic analysis in the coming weeks. Officers spent 20 weeks sifting through 6,500 tonnes of rubbish at a landfill in Cambridgeshire, pictured, as part of the search Martin McKeague believes his son, pictured left and right, is most likely still in the landfill 'Police expected that it would be necessary to take items recovered from the search away from the site in order to examine them more carefully. 'Corrie's family have been kept updated about the search. The search of the incinerated waste is now complete.' Police called off the 1.2m search despite revealing they knew Mr McKeague regularly climbed into bins to go to sleep after a night out. It is feared he fell asleep in an industrial bin following a night out with friends in Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk, on September 24 last year. CCTV footage from that evening shows the airman entering a bin loading bay but never walking out. It is thought he had been in a rubbish bin that was emptied into a lorry and taken to a landfill site in Cambridgeshire. He was last seen in CCTV footage, pictured, in Bury St Edmunds on a night out last year MAP: Labelled at key sites in the Corrie McKeague investigation so far Mr McKeague is originally from Fife in Scotland and moved down to Suffolk to live at RAF Honington where he worked as a gunner and team medic in the air force. His girlfriend April Oliver gave birth to his baby daughter, Ellie-Louise Oliver, in June. An independent review is underway into Suffolk Police's handling of Corrie's disappearance. Anyone with information about his disappearance is asked to call the incident room at Suffolk Police on 01473 782019. Indian police are investigating attacks on women claiming to have been knocked unconscious and having their hair cut off. At least 55 women across five Indian states have reported waking to find their braids mysteriously cut off in the past month. The outbreak of 'braid chopping' is spooking villagers and has reportedly led to a murder, where a mob in Uttar Pradesh turned on a woman falsely accused of carrying out attacks and using the hair for'witchcraft'. Mystery: Monesh Devi, 55, is one of dozens attacked across India since July, a wave of 'braid choppings' which have caused panic and led to a murder of a woman accused of witchcraft Four new cases were reported on New Delhi's outskirts on Wednesday, just days after half a dozen similar cases were reported in Gurgaon, south of the capital. 'We heard her cries, and when we rushed she was lying on the floor unconscious,' said Rohit Yadav, whose 55-year-old mother Monesh Devi fell victim in July in Delhi. 'Her chopped off hair was lying next to her.' The string of unexplained attacks has occurred in largely rural areas, where superstitious beliefs sparks hysteria and allegations of witchcraft. Some villages have held special prayer sessions to ward off evil spirits and begun patrols to protect their women. Attacked: A 49-year-old woman who claimed her braid was chopped off in a mystery attack shows off what is left of her hair in Kanganheri village, the outskirts of Delhi Investigation: Forensic experts examine a 50-year-old victim in Kanganheri village, one of dozens of alleged attacks which have baffled police in India At least 55 women across five Indian states, including Delhi and Uttar Pradesh have reported waking to find their braids mysteriously cut off (stock image) None of the victims have been harmed in any physical way or robbed. A 65-year-old woman murdered by a mob in Agra - home to the Taj Mahal - was later branded a witch and accused of using sorcery to slice braids, despite no cases being reported in the city. 'She was beaten after they found her loitering in a nearby village. Someone accused her of being a witch and later linked her to the hair cutting incidents,' Dinesh Chandra Dubey, Agra police chief said. Authorities in Delhi are treating the assaults as crimes but have no leads thus far, said Surinder Kumar, deputy commissioner of Delhi police said. However they have dismissed claims of witchcraft, leaning more towards the theory that mental illness or cases of copycat attacks could be behind the bizarre events. 'Counsellors said they could be suffering from disorders and could have done it themselves but our investigating are broad-based,' Kumar added. The Syrian regime executed imprisoned activist Bassel Khartabil two years ago, his wife and Amnesty International has said. His wife Noura Ghazi Safadi claimed Khartabil, who was arrested in 2012, was transferred to one of Syria's most notorious prisons in October 2015 and executed days later. Khartabil's death has not been independently verified, nor is it clear how or where Noura received information regarding her husband's death. 'Words are difficult to come by,' his heartbroken wife Noura wrote on Facebook 'confirming' his death. The Syrian regime executed imprisoned activist Bassel Khartabil (pictured) two years ago, his wife and Amnesty International has said Khartabil's wife Noura Ghazi Safadi (pictured together) claims Khartabil, who was arrested in 2012, was transferred to one of Syria's most notorious prisons in October 2015 and executed days later She added: 'He was executed just days after he was taken from Adra prison in October 2015. 'This is the end that suits a hero like him. Thank you for killing my lover... This is a loss for Syria. This is loss for Palestine. This is my loss.' Khartabil, a prominent Palestinian-Syrian software expert, was plucked from the streets of Damascus during a wave of military arrests in March 2012. He was jailed for several years, during which time he was allowed to infrequently communicate with family members. But in October 2015, he was abruptly transferred to an undisclosed location. Khartabil, who also went by the name Bassel Safadi, was a champion and leading contributor to Arabic Creative Commons. 'Words are difficult to come by,' his heartbroken wife Noura (left, on their wedding day) wrote on Facebook 'confirming' his death Noura says her husband was executed just days after he was taken from Adra prison in October 2015 He helped them code legal rights which promote the open distribution of software and ideas. He ran a software development workspace in Damascus, which was known to the Syrian authorities. Trometer says his trial was held in secret, and the cause for his arrest was never given. 'We are deeply saddened and outraged at this awful news,' said Amnesty International's senior director of research Anna Neistat. 'Bassel Khartabil will always be remembered as a symbol of courage, who peacefully fought for freedom to the very end,' . In a statement, she said 'his death is a grim reminder of the horrors that take place in Syrian prisons every day'. Khartabil, who also went by the name Bassel Safadi, was a champion and leading contributor to Arabic Creative Commons Syrian authorities have killed at least 13,000 people since the start of the 2011, many at a prison near Damascus which detainees have branded 'the slaughterhouse', Amnesty said in a report earlier this year. The February report covered the period from 2011 to 2015, when Amnesty said 20 to 50 people were hanged each week at Saydnaya Prison in killings authorized by senior Syrian officials. The Syrian government rejected the Amnesty report and denied its findings. A grieving mother has been hit by a double tragedy after she lost both her sons in three weeks. Elaine Hunter, from Kirkcaldy in Fife, was already reeling from the loss of her son Ross Morrison, 41, on July 13, when police came to her door on Tuesday to inform her that her youngest, Ryan Hunter, 31, had also passed away. And now a campaign has been launched to help the grieving mother, who lost both her sons just three weeks apart. Elaine Hunter was already reeling from the loss of her son Ross Morrison (left), 41, on July 13, when police came to her door on Tuesday to inform her that her youngest, Ryan Hunter (right), 31, had also passed away A family friend has launched an online campaign in search of donations to pay for Ryan's funeral after Elaine had only just arranged Ross's A family friend has launched an online campaign in search of donations to pay for Ryan's funeral after Elaine had only just arranged Ross's. Carol Dick, a longstanding friend said that she felt moved to set up the Gofundme page after seeing the difficulty Elaine had endured in organising Ryan's funeral. 'I've known Elaine for 38 years,' said Ms Dick. 'I know how hard it was for her to get help for the first funeral. It's absolutely shocking. She's distraught. 'She's lost two sons in three weeks, so I'm trying to raise 2,000 to help with the costs for Ryan's funeral. 'No mother should have to bury her son, but for it to happen again like this is awful. 'She's still in shock. Police came to her door and she thought it was to do with Ross' death, but when they told her about Ryan, it just absolutely floored her. Carol Dick, a longstanding friend said that she felt moved to set up the Gofundme page after seeing the difficulty Elaine had endured in organising Ryan's funeral 'I'm very hopeful that we'll raise the money. Hopefully she'll find out how many friends she has.' Tom Glancey, became a friend of Mrs Hunter's 10 years ago when she was his cleaning lady. They have kept in touch. He said: 'She is just in pieces at the moment. I am heartbroken for her. 'To lose one son is bad enough, but to go through that twice is unimaginable. 'We have set up this Facebook page to try and help towards the cost of the funerals. 'Elaine doesn't keep the best of health so any little we can do to help her would be appreciated.' Police Scotland confirmed that enquiries are being carried out following the recent deaths, but neither death is being treated as suspicious. Reports have been sent to the procurator fiscal. Ross Morrison's funeral will take place at Kirkcaldy Crematorium today at 9.30am. The campaign to fund Ryan's funeral can be found at https://www.gofundme.com/much-need-help-mother-grieving A British tourist snatched from a hostel in north Africa and held hostage by al-Qaeda for six years has been freed. Stephen McGown, 42, was grabbed in the historic trading city of Timbuktu in northern Mali in 2011 alongside Swede Johan Gustafsson and Dutchman Sjaak Rijke. McGown, who is from South Africa but holds British citizenship, was released on Thursday and traveled back Pretoria where he was reunited with his family. But there was heartbreak after he learned his mother Beverly died in May after battling a long illness. Stephen McGown, 42 (right), a South African with British citizenship, has been released after six years being held hostage by terror group al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb Sadly Mr McGown's mother Beverly (pictured center, between wife Catherine and father Malcolm) passed away in May after a long illness and was not there to greet her son Father Malcolm McGown said: 'It didn't quite work out the way we wanted, but we say to Stephen... 'you are strong and you've got to do what you need to.' 'He'll pick himself up in a little while and return to normal life,' he said. It is not known why al Qaeda decided to release him after so long, but State Security Minister David Mahlobo insisted that no ransom was paid He said: 'We were able to actually release him without any conditions. 'Through our shrewd engagement supported by the African Union... Stephen is back at home. The relationship between the two presidents of the countries has been very important.' Malcolm added: 'It was a big surprise when he walked through the door -- when I gave him a hug, he was as sound and as strong as before, so he was obviously well treated up there.' McGown (centre), who is from South Africa but holds British citizenship, was released on Thursday and traveled back Pretoria where he was reunited with his family Al-Qaeda's North African affiliate Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) had claimed responsibility for the kidnappings of McGown and two other men Stephen opted not to attend the press briefing, though no excuse was given for his absence. As for the other former hostages, Gustafsson was released in June while Rijke was freed in April 2015 during a raid by French special forces. Rijke's wife had escaped during the jihadist assault on the Timbuktu hostel where they were staying, but a German who tried to resist was killed. Al-Qaeda's North African affiliate Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) had claimed responsibility for the kidnappings of the three men. 'We give him a warm welcome back home particularly that he lands home with a mother who has passed on during his incarceration,' said Foreign Minister Maite Nkoana-Mashabane. 'He was just a tourist in Timbuktu. We are happy that he is a free man.' Imtiaz Sooliman, chairman of the Gift of the Givers charity which was previously involved in negotiating for McGown's release, said at the time of his mother's death that Stephen's absence was beginning to 'take its toll'. Father Malcolm McGown said it was a 'surprise' to see his son walk through the door, and said when he hugged his son 'he was as sound and as strong as before' Catherine McGown, Stephen's wife, embraces South African State Security Minister David Mhlobo, who said his release was negotiated with no conditions 'We had seen the sadness in the mother's eye and watched how she patiently waited in dignified pain for the return of her son. We failed her -- my heart bleeds for her,' Sooliman told local media in May. Gift of the Givers reportedly dispatched a hostage negotiator to Mali in July 2015 to push for McGown's release but was forced to give up in May this year after hitting a 'dead end'. Catherine said that on being reunited, Stephen 'looked at me and said 'Your hair has grown', and I said, 'Well actually your hair is longer than mine'.' He is now undergoing medical checks. AQIM was one of several jihadist groups that took control of Mali's north in 2012 before being ousted by a French-led military operation launched in January 2013. The group had released several videos of McGown and Gustafsson over the years, but little was known about the kidnappers' demands. Extremists are still believed to be holding a Colombian nun taken from Mali, an Australian doctor and a Romanian man seized at different times in Burkina Faso, and an American who was working with a nonprofit organization in Niger. Islamic extremists seized control of Mali's north in 2012. While they were forced out of strongholds a year later by a French-led military intervention, jihadists continue to attack Malian and French soldiers and U.N. peacekeepers. Five regional countries - Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Burkina Faso and Chad - have now created a 5,000-strong multinational military force against the extremists. A British soldier who was bitten by Britain's most deadly spider was left with a gaping hole so deep it exposed his muscles. Matt Clarke was ravaged by a false black widow spider and was unable to walk due to the horrendous bite to his leg. The 31-year-old said he woke up with a 'tingly sensation' as he was bitten by the tiny brown spider, but brushed it off his leg and dismissed his injury at first. Yet just days, Mr Clarke was in agony as the wound burst open and he felt hot puss dripping down his leg. Scroll down for video Army man Matt Clarke was bitten by the false widow spider as he was lying in bed at home The gaping wound was so big it left him with a 'hole he could see his muscles though' and meant he was unable to carry out simple tasks. Mr Clarke, from Mansfield, said: 'I've been in the Army for ten years, I've been all over the world and slept next to more dangerous spiders and never got bit. 'But I got bit in my own bed.' When the pain from the wound became unbearable, Mr Clarke was forced to go to A&E. The false widow spider is the deadliest arachnid in Britain. It is believed the spider arrived in the UK on a ship from Madeira or the Canary Islands in a shipment of bananas Mr Clarke did not take much notice of the bite when it happened but the injury gradually became worse over time He added: 'I just felt this dripping down my leg and it was a painful type of burning sensation. 'I then checked it out and the bite area had burst open - it was a hole I could see my muscles through. 'I couldn't understand why the bite wasn't healing so I tried to find answers. 'I researched spiders and my symptoms, and I realised I had been bitten by a "false black widow".' The Mansfield native's bite became worse over time and eventually erupted with puss The bite on Mr Clarke's leg has left a dark brown scar on the squaddie's leg Doctor's confirmed Mr Clarke's fears, which forced the father-of-two back to hospital to undergo further scans. Spider experts claim the bite from the false widow which stuck his fangs into Mr Clarke is nothing more than a bee or wasp sting, yet medics said the bite was 'toxic' and needed to be monitored for infection. The false widow spider is not deadly, but can deliver a bite similar to the black widow which can kill within hours. The smaller false widow in Britain is usually harmless is native to the Madeira and the Canary islands and is thought to have arrived in Britain via cargo ships in the 19th century. Bears have the largest brains relative to their size of any land mammal. And this one proved just why they're considered the most intelligent land animals in North America. The beast impressively opened a car door while exploring in Asheville, North Carolina. This bear proved just why they're considered the most intelligent land animals of North America Footage taken from the house shows the bear walking up the car in the driveway before putting its paw on the handle and pulling backwards to open the door. The children filming can he heard screaming: 'Oh my god' as soon as the door is opened. They then shout to the car owner: 'There's bears in your car - they opened the car door' as the bear has a look around inside the car. After a few seconds, the bear realises there's no food in the vehicle and makes his exit. 'He's out, he's out,' says the person taking the video with relief in his voice. The baffled woman who owns the car then asks incredulously: 'How did he do that?' before the clip ends. Three months after an international cyber attack crippled business and government computers across 150 countries - including Britain's National Health Service - the hackers are finally trying to cash their ransom money. During the May 14 WannaCry attack, hackers broke into 230,000 computers and encrypted the files - demanding the owners pay them $300 to $600 in bitcoin to unlock them. Experts believe the Lazarus Group, a hacking group connected to the North Korean government, was behind the attack. Three months after the WannaCry cyber attack crippled business and government computers across 150 countries - including Britain's National Health Service - the hackers are finally trying to cash their ransom money. In total, the hackers gathered more than $140,000, which has sat untouched in three separate bitcoin accounts for the past twelve weeks. That was until Thursday, when a Twitter bot set up by Quartz recorded the funds moving. The first withdrawals were made at 11:10pm Eastern time, and made up about $70,000. Five minutes later, three more withdrawals. Ten minutes after that, the last withdrawal was made, leaving the accounts barren. The money was transferred into nine new accounts. The hackers appear to be putting the money through a 'mixer' or 'tumbler', which spreads the funds out so they are more difficult to trace. Law enforcement agencies around the globe are no doubt monitoring the money now that it's finally on the move. While bitcoin accounts are anonymous, their transactions are not. Anyone can follow the money, but by spreading the money out into many different accounts, it will make it harder to trace the hacking back to a single perpetrator. Law enforcement officers that specialize in financial crimes look for accounts that appear to be tied, then try to identify the owners of the accounts through their transactions. Jurors heard how Mr Marshall posed as a policeman and MI5 agent as part of a killing spree A bogus policeman caught on camera smothering a computer technician in a bondage sex session murdered a second man and tried to kill a third while posing as a secret agent, a court has heard. Jason Marshall allegedly stole 780 cash from Peter Fasoli, 58, and used his bank card to buy a ticket to Rome after attacking him in his own home in Northolt, north-west London, in January 2013. Jurors at the Old Bailey watched disturbing footage recorded on Mr Fasolis computer showing how Marshall, 28, allegedly tied up and gagged his victim before smothering him with cling film after meeting him on the Badoo dating website. After posing as a policeman Marshall set fire to the loners one-bedroom bungalow to cover up the killing and fled to Italy, the court heard. For nearly two years the death was thought to be accidental until his nephew found footage of his violent death on the hard drive after Mr Fasoli unwittingly filmed the session. An inquest in August 2013 - before the video was uncovered - recorded a verdict of accidental death. The video, which is nearly six hours long, shows Marshall interrogating Mr Fasoli in a sex session set to Classic FM. Prosecutor Edward Brown QC told jurors that on January 26 - less than three weeks after Mr Fasolis death - Marshall murdered Vincenzo Iale in his flat in Rome. Peter Fasoli, 58, was murdered by 'fantasist' Jason Marshall at home in January 2013, the Old Bailey heard Marshall met 67-year-old Mr Iale and strangled him with an electrical flex after also meeting him on Badoo. Mr Brown said police found his naked body on the floor of his home on the outskirts of Rome on February 3. 'The cause of death was found to be asphyxia caused by strangulation, probably with the electrical flex found around his neck.' Mr Iales car was stolen in the early hours and his bank card was used to make cash withdrawals from ATM machines, the court heard. His computer's hard drive had been removed from his home. Mr Fasoli accidentally filmed his own death in his north-west London home (pictured) Just over a week later, on February 3, Marshall, posing as 'Gabriel', contacted Umberto Gismondi on Badoo and they arranged to meet for sex. After being invited to the 54-year-old's Rome flat, Marshall pretended he worked at the British Embassy and was carrying a holster, utility belt, pistol, pepper spray and truncheon. Mr Brown said he bound, gagged and attacked Mr Gismondi with the truncheon and pepper spray, demanded money and tried to smother him with a cushion. 'He had false identification, suggesting employment at the British Embassy. 'Mr Gismondi told police that although he had undressed, Mr Marshall did not and displayed no interest in a sexual encounter while he was at the address. 'He bound and gagged Mr Gismondi, and assaulted him with the spray, and the truncheon, he demanded Mr Gismondis money, bank cards and PIN numbers, and then he attempted asphyxiate him with a cushion. 'Mr Gismondis shouting alerted his neighbours, who attended and Mr Marshall fled the scene.' The death of Mr Fasoli was thought to be accidental until his nephew found a video in the hard drive of his computer Marshall fled but was arrested later, jurors were told. He was convicted by an Italian court of Mr Iales murder, using threats to obtain his wallet and stealing his car. He was also found guilty in July 2014 of the attempted murder of Mr Gismondi, possession of a truncheon, and using violence to get his bank cards and 400 euro. Mr Brown told jurors that British police liaised with Italian counterparts to arrange to return Marshall to the UK. The defendant was flown back to Heathrow Airport in custody in February and arrested on suspicion of murder. When he was cautioned by police at the airport, he replied: 'Okay.' He was charged the same day. Jurors were told that an initial investigation into the fire at Mr Fasolis flat found it started on his bed and was most likely due to a faulty light. Mr Brown said evidence was consistent with the fire being started with a cigarette lighter. Marshall, of Forest Gate, east London, denies murder. The trial continues. This is the moment a lone traveller stumbled across acres of wild marijuana plants while trekking through the Nepalese Himalayas. The video shows Gabriel Morris, a YouTube travel videographer from San Francisco, pretending tongue-in-cheek to wake up from a nap to find himself lying on a hillside surrounded by the plant. The camera then pans to show marijuana growing as far as the eye can see. This is the moment a lone traveller stumbled across acres of wild marijuana plants while trekking through the Nepalese Himalayas Mr Morris, 45, has been travelling the world on and off since he was 18, and was on a hike over Thorung La Pass in Nepal when he made the remarkable discovery. He said that while he was aware the plant grew in this part of the world, he was never expecting to see it growing so freely next to the walking path. 'The first time I saw it was a couple weeks earlier when I was doing another trek to Annapurna Base Camp, which is in the same area,' he said. 'I wasn't really expecting to see it growing right along the trail so it was a little bit of a surprise, but really awesome to see it growing on its own right next to a hiking trail and near local Nepali villages. 'This area of the world is where cannabis comes from originally, so it's not uncommon to see it in certain areas where conditions are right for growing. I saw it a bunch of times in the course of my several weeks of trekking the Himalayas.' Mr Morris, 45, has been travelling the world on and off since he was 18, and was on a hike over Thorung La Pass in Nepal when he made the remarkable discovery The traveller says that while he was aware the plant grew in this part of the world, he was never expecting to see it growing so freely next to the walking path Mr Morris has visited a remarkable 45 countries during his travels, venturing from Canada to India, and says it's unusual experiences like the one he had in Nepal that keep him coming back for more. 'I've been traveling around the world off and on for 27 years, since the day after I turned 18 and went to Europe for the summer and yes, unusual, challenging, mind-blowing experiences are what it's all about,' he said. 'It's also a great way to learn about the world, people, cultures, yourself and break free from the limitations of society. My general approach is just do it really. He said: 'The first time I saw it was a couple weeks earlier when I was doing another trek to Annapurna Base Camp, which is in the same area.' 'I was born in Vancouver, Canada, raised in the woods of Northern California by pot-growing hippies, started hitchhiking when I was a kid, went to five universities including two in Alaska, and studied creative writing and world religions. 'I love to check out places that sound interesting, do some research, buy a flight and go. I don't do much pre-planning of my trips, just fly there and then plan things out a few days at a time.' Advertisement Pictures have emerged showing how teenagers in an Indonesian village have their teeth filed flat in agonising religious rituals. Young people from a village in southern Bali, are dressed in gold-coloured outfits and headdresses before being held down by villagers to 'ward off evil spirits'. In a tradition that predates Hinduism's arrival on the island in the 5th Century BC, a priest then uses a metal file to grind down their canine teeth so the teenager, who must stay silent throughout, can become 'fully human.' A cylinder of sugarcane is placed in the corner of the mouth to keep the jaws open before the filing begins. Girls and boys must pray for two days before the ritual is carried out in front of their friends and family, says French photographer Eric Lafforgue who captured these images. Pictures have emerged showing how teenagers in an Indonesian village have their teeth filed flat in agonising religious rituals. A cylinder of sugarcane is placed in the corner of the mouth to keep the jaws open before the filing begins Young people from a village in southern Bali, are dressed in gold-coloured outfits and headdresses before being held down by villagers to 'ward off evil spirits' All smiles: Teenagers show off their new look after having their teeth filed down by priests in an Indonesian village He said: 'The atmosphere looks more like a movie set than a religious celebration. 'The teeth of gods and spirits are always pointed and long. They are likened to those of ferocious evils, wild animals, or dogs. 'It's believed a Balinese may be denied entrance into heaven if the teeth are not filed because she might be mistaken for a wild creature.' He said the ceremony starts in a temple with the 'mebyakala' - purification with holy water made by a leading priest aimed at 'cleansing' teenagers before their teeth are filed. 'The aim of the ceremony is to symbolically 'cut down' on the six negative traits that are inherent in humans; lust, greed, wrath, pride, jealousy, and intoxication. In a tradition that predates Hinduism's arrival on the island in the 5th Century BC, a priest uses a metal file to grind down their canine teeth so the teenager, who must stay silent throughout, can become 'fully human.' Girls and boys must pray for two days before the ritual is carried out in front of their friends and family, says French photographer Eric Lafforgue who captured these images Before the filing begins, the priest utters religious verses before a ruby ring that is believed to have huge power is used to protect the teen from evil The ceremony starts in a temple with the 'mebyakala' - purification with holy water made by a leading priest aimed at 'cleansing' teenagers before their teeth are filed A young woman examines her teeth after being subjected to the filing tradition in a ceremony in Bali, Indonesia 'Tooth filing is a rite of passage into adulthood. The teens bow in front their parents and thanks them for everything they've since they were born. 'The teens show respect to her parents in front of the whole family and many end in tears.' They have to go through the ceremony when a boy's voice drops of a girl has her first period, Lafforgue says. Before the filing begins, the priest utters religious verses before a ruby ring that is believed to have huge power is used to protect the teen from evil. The stone touches the teeth as the protection symbol, and the priest writes sacred inscriptions on their front teeth. A young woman has her head held in place while a priest grinds down her canine teeth during a ritual in Bali, Indonesia The canine teeth of a teenager are regarded by the Balinese villagers as animal fangs. It comes from the belief that there is good and evil present in every person and the ceremony will serve as a way to balance between both Files are blessed to cleanse them in a move that is supposed to make the operation painless, Lafforgue said, adding that the tools are cleaned with an old toothbrush A symbolic ring is touched on the front teeth of a teenage girl before a priest takes a metal file to her canine teeth in Indonesia The files are then blessed to cleanse them in a move that is supposed to make the operation painless, Lafforgue said, adding that the tools are cleaned with an old toothbrush. 'As a foreigner, being invited to a tooth filing ceremony is a very high honor - only good friends and close family are allowed. 'The reason is simple - at certain stages of the ceremony, the teens undergoing the transition from child to adult are very vulnerable to the forces and influence of evil. The foreigner may be one of them.' The canine teeth of a teenager are regarded by the Balinese villagers as animal fangs. It comes from the belief that there is good and evil present in every person and the ceremony will serve as a way to balance between both, Lafforgue said. Rite of passage: Teenagers smile after having their teeth filed down in a ritual in a village on the Indonesian island of Bali A boy grimaces as he prepares to have his teeth filed down as part of the ancient tradition. The pictures were captured by a French photographer The teenagers have their mouths held open as the filing gets underway and relatives hold them down to ward off evil spirits A girl inspects her new look by using a mobile telephone after going through the ritual in Bali The photographer said 'it is the most important event of adolescence, and Balinese teens must endure it with not a sound of complaint' 'The parents and relatives of the teen surrounds her, holding her down. 'They are supposed to give her spiritual support as evils spirits can come at any moment on the weak teen, but most of them are too busy filming the ceremony with their mobile phones. 'The front two upper canines are filed so they're even with the upper incisors. The filing requires about only five minutes as many teens wait to have their new smile. 'It is the most important event of adolescence, and Balinese teens must endure it with not a sound of complaint. 'The ceremony is religious but priests like to make some jokes while filing the teeth, to divert the attention of the teen, like a dentist would do. But only the family is laughing.' Ian Paterson wounded victims by carrying out unnecessary breast cancer operations. His 'lenient' jail term was increased from 15 to 20 years at the appeal court today The victims of a rogue surgeon who carried out needless breast operations on hundreds of patients have welcomed a decision to increase his 15-year jail sentence to 20 years. Ian Paterson, who left victims scarred and disfigured, was ordered to serve extra time behind bars by the Court of Appeal today. Lady Justice Hallett, Mrs Justice Carr and Mr Justice Goss, sitting in London, ruled that the original jail term imposed in May was 'unduly lenient'. Their ruling came after the sentence was referred to the court for review by Solicitor General Robert Buckland. Diane Green, who was given two unnecessary double mastectomies by the surgeon, was not a victim in the criminal case, but is suing Paterson over her treatment. After his sentence was increased, she said: 'I lost everything my home, my job, my marriage as a result of what that man did. 'While no amount of jail time can repay or make up for what he did, a sentence 15 years which is really only seven and a half, was never going to be enough for maiming and butchering hundreds of women like me.' 'It is encouraging to see the Court of Appeal listening to victims like me and extending the sentence to 20 years.' Former patients Debbie Douglas and Tracey Smith wept and hugged as they heard the new at Ms Douglas's home in Birmingham. Victim Diane Green today welcomed the tougher sentence imposed on Paterson. She is pictured speaking after Paterson's trial in May Mrs Douglas, from Hall Green, said: 'When he got 15 years, I was just happy to see him put away, and that he was off the streets. But afterwards, we thought it was just too lenient for what he had done. 'Today, I feel some relief, but I feel like now we owe it to the other victims to get a full public inquiry.' During the Court of Appeal hearing, Paterson, of Altrincham, Greater Manchester, at one point shook his head. Miss Smith, 49, said it was it was typical of 'the showman, Ian Paterson' who had never displayed a shred of remorse throughout his patients' ordeal. The mother-of-one, also from Birmingham, said: 'He's still shaking his head - he shook his head for eight weeks in the trial and then again in the Court of Appeal. 'We went to trial to see him show even a little bit of remorse, but there was nothing. He's shown again he's not changed.' Paterson, 59, watched proceedings via video-link from prison. He was convicted by a jury at Nottingham Crown Court of offences of wounding with intent and unlawful wounding against 10 patients. The appeal court is one of the few courts in Britain in which proceedings can be broadcast. Senior judge Lady Justice Hallett ruled that Paterson's sentence was 'unduly lenient' Solicitor General Mr Buckland argued that Paterson's offending was 'so serious and so exceptional' that a jail term 'significantly higher' than 15 years was required. Mr Buckland said the surgeon's crimes had 'caused a very high degree of physical and psychological harm' to vulnerable patients. Victim Debbie Douglas called for a full public inquiry into why Paterson wasn't stopped sooner Lady Justice Hallett said: 'Both the harm and culpability here were exceptionally high.' She said the court was satisfied that the sentence imposed was 'unduly lenient', and that a 'just' term was one of a total of 20 years for 'multiple' offences. After the ruling, Mr Buckland said: 'Throughout our lives we are told and expected to trust doctors. Paterson woefully abused that trust - he deliberately preyed on people's worst fears and then mutilated them on the operating table. 'This is a truly sickening crime and my thoughts are with the victims and their families. I hope the increased sentence will help bring some closure for them.' Paterson was convicted by a jury of offences of wounding with intent and unlawful wounding against 10 patients. Sentencing him to a total of 15 years, Mr Justice Jeremy Baker told Paterson: 'You deliberately played upon their worst fears, either by inventing or deliberately exaggerating the risk that they would develop cancer, and thereby gained their trust and confidence to consent to the surgical procedures which you carried out upon them.' His trial heard evidence from nine women and one man who were treated in the private sector at Little Aston and Parkway Hospitals in the West Midlands between 1997 and 2011. Victims of Ian Paterson attend court on the day he was sentenced in May this year Victims told the court that Paterson's crimes had left them in constant pain and struggling to trust medical professionals. The new sentence means Paterson will not be eligible for parole until he has served half of the term, ten years, behind bars. He will serve the rest of the sentence on licence. Thompsons Solicitors is representing over 500 of Ian Paterson's former patients. The law firm's Linda Millband said today: 'Many of our clients were subjected to significant harm at the hands of Mr Paterson and some have been left with life-long conditions. 'While no length of sentence can undo this harm, it seems right and fair that this otherwise lenient sentence was revised, and extended by the courts.' A Sunshine Coast man has copped a $900 fine after sparking a lighter in the bathroom of an Tigerair plane mid-flight. James Lindley, 30, was flying from Brisbane to the Whitsundays on Thursday morning when he used the lighter. The man told Seven News he was 'just trying to get the lighter to work', but a spokesman for Queensland Police told Daily Mail Australia he was caught 'smoking a cigarette'. Scroll down for video A Sunshine Coast man has copped a $900 fine after lighting a cigarette in the bathroom of a Tigerair plane mid-flight He claimed he was just trying to get the lighter to work, but police say he had lit a cigarette Lindley, who was on his way to a fishing trip, had just 30 minutes of his flight left when he went into the bathroom. He was caught with his pants down - literally - by flight attendants after the lighter triggered the smoke alarm. 'I was seated on the toilet, so they would have had a right view, the poor things,' he said. The plane made an emergency stop in Proserpine, located in the north of Queensland, where Mr Lindley was met by police and given the $900 infringement notice. A statement from Tigerair said the matter was 'appropriately handled'. 'The passenger was met by AFP on arrival, as is standard procedure for an event of this nature,' the statement read. A father has been accused of chopping down 200 ancient beeches on farmland with his two sons - but claims he was asked to do so by the landowner. Kevin Smith, 65, is due to appear at Newport Magistrates Court on Friday after allegedly chopping down the 200-year-old trees on farmland. Inspectors were left mystified when they found hundreds of stumps in Blackwood, near Caerphilly, South Wales, in January this year. Kevin Smith, 65, is due to appear at Newport Magistrates Court on Friday after allegedly chopping down 200 trees on farmland with his two sons (Pictured is an inspector from Natural Resources Wales) Natural Resources Wales subsequently launched an investigation and said anyone wanting to chop down so many veteran trees would need a licence. Smith was later arrested and charged with breaching Forestry Act laws. The inspectors added they stopped the trees from being sold for timber on the open market. Inspectors were left mystified when they found hundreds of stumps in Blackwood, near Caerphilly, South Wales, in January this year Tim Jones, Executive Director for Natural Resources Wales said: 'Trees are incredibly important for the environment and wildlife, as part of the landscape and for our own health and wellbeing. 'The loss of these veteran trees, which were hundreds of years old, is devastating and it will take many generations for new trees to grow to replace them, if they grow at all. 'Like many things in our environment, trees are often taken for granted. Felling licences are part of the system we have in place so we can manage our trees and woodlands effectively, protecting them and making sure they continue to benefit us all now and into the future.' These are the Australian backyard warehouses feeding the huge Chinese demand for baby formula in what is known as the 'daigous' market. Footage shows a warehouse set up in a Melbourne garage where daigous teams are packaging boxes of the the tins to resell in Chinese markets. Despite Australian parents being left in the lurch as the tins fly off the shelves, suppliers are welcoming the booming trade, according to ACA. Footage shows a warehouse in a Melbourne garage where the tins are packaged to resell in Chinese markets A2 Milk Company Australia chief executive Peter Nathan said there was an opening in the market and they were happy to fill it. 'We understand that Chinese mothers want what is the best brand for their baby, and they're prepared to pay for it,' he said. Mr Nathan urged Australian parents to contact the company directly if the product is in short supply. 'What we are saying is this: we will provide you with the product you want, or the variants you want, if you contact us directly,' he said. But for some parents it is not enough and they are taking matters into their own hands. Brisbane mum Jessica Hook, 27, this week publicly shamed a group of daigous shoppers after catching them stripping supermarket shelves. Supermarkets introduced a four-can limit but teams now travel in packs Jessica Hook, 27, this week publicly shamed a group of daigous shoppers after catching them stripping supermarket shelves Ms Hook's daughter goes through a tin a week but said she has battled to find it in recent months, News.com.au reported. 'They're [the supermarket] very conscious of saying, it's not a racial thing, it's just always a particular demographic, they come in groups, work as a team and clear the shelves.' Supermarkets introduced a four-can limit to stop the shelves being swept, but 'daigous' teams have learned to travel in packs. A top drug company executive and an escort racked up $5.8million worth of charges on the firm's credit card, according to the FBI. Court filings, obtained by the Chicago Tribune, showed Scott Kennedy, 43, who worked for Nemera, and Crystal Lundberg, 31, spent thousands of dollars on plastic surgery, a San Diego mansion, a chauffeur for her children, dogs and even potted plants. The pair are both under investigation for fraud and money laundering, but records show criminal charges have not been filed against either. Kennedy says he let Lundberg dupe him into spending the millions because he wanted to be loved and had hoped it would lead to a family. Scott Kennedy, 43 (center), who worked for France-based Nemera, and Crystal Lundberg, 31, spent thousands of dollars on plastic surgery, a San Diego mansion, a chauffeur, dogs and even potted plants Kennedy met Lundberg (pictured) in 2012 through the classified ad website Backpage.com. Lundberg was working as a professional escort at the time Agents say Kennedy solicited Lundberg's (left and right) services between eight and ten times from 2012 to May 2015. By May 2015, she began seeking Kennedy's financial assistance At first Lundberg (pictured), her two daughters and her pets moved into Kennedy's suburban home in San Diego Soon enough, she moved into her own San Diego mansion (pictured) on Polvera Avenue, which cost $12,000-a-month in rent that the company covered Kennedy told the FBI that he first met Lundberg in 2012 through the classified ad website Backpage.com, which advertises sexual services. Lundberg was working as a professional escort at a time, and agents say Kennedy solicited her services between eight and ten times from 2012 to May 2015. By May 2015, Lundberg began seeking financial assistance from Kennedy. Soon afterwards, she, her two young children, and their pets moved in with Kennedy at his suburban home. That November, Kennedy gave Lundberg access to the company credit card for the first time after she asked for help buying Christmas gifts for her daughters, according to the filing. Over the next 16 months, the two burned through $5.79million of company cash, authorities alleged. Analysis conducted by Nemera found more than 8,800 improper charges to the company credit card between November 2015 and mid-March 2017. This included money to front Lundberg's own spa known as K&K Cosmetics, plastic surgery during a stay in Miami, two Rolex watches, a personal driver for her daughters, a maid, two purebred dogs and trips to numerous locations including Bali, Hawaii, France and Costa Rica. Almost $1million was spent on travel alone. In November 2016 , Kennedy gave Lundberg (pictured) access to the company credit card for the first time after she asked for help buying Christmas gifts for her daughters, according to the filing Lundberg (pictured) was given money to fund her own spa business, known as K&K Cosmetics Analysis conducted by Nemera found more than 8,800 improper charges to the company credit card between November 2015 and mid-March 2017 In addition, $24,000 was spent for movers to haul Lundberg's potted plants from her home in Illinois to the mansion Money was spent on two Rolex watches, a personal driver for her daughters, a maid, two purebred dogs and trips to numerous location include Bali, Hawaii, France and Costa Rica The company also unknowingly gave $585,000 for Lundberg to spend time at a medical spa called the Royalty Room BREAKDOWN OF COMPANY CREDIT CARD CHARGES Travel: $970,734 Bali France Costa Rica Hawaii Santorini Island in the Aegean Sea Bora Bora Fiji Clothing and Accessories: $606,887 Home decor and improvement: $552,662 Lodging: $441,312 San Diego mansion rent at $12,000/month Entertainment: $315,117 Jewelry $279,231 Two Rolex watches for $60,000 Health and beauty: $253,019 Movers for the potted plants: $24,000 Personal driver: $8,000/month Two purebred dogs: up to $6,000 Maid: $2,500/month Advertisement Lundberg moved to a 7,000-square-foot-mansion on Polvera Avenue in San Diego where the company footed the $12,000-a-month rent at the mansion. In addition, $24,000 was spent for movers to haul the woman's potted plants from Illinois. The company also unknowingly gave $585,000 for Lundberg to spend time at a medical spa called the Royalty Room. Kennedy told the Chicago Tribune he was duped by the escort because 'wanted to have a family'. 'I wanted to be loved and cared for. My heart kind of overrid my head and said, "Take a chance",' he said. 'Well, it blew up in my face. My mistake was trusting her. At this point, I have very little faith anything she told me ever was true.' Nemera said it became aware of possible improper financial activity by Kennedy earlier this year. After a review, by an independent accounting firm and outside counsel, Kennedy was fired in March. That is when the FBI confronted Kennedy. While he largely blamed Lundberg for the spending, he admitted to buying gift cards with the company card to pay for day-to-day expenses after Lundberg had allegedly maxed out his personal credit cards. He told the agency that Lundberg had led him to believe she would eventually reimburse him as she claimed she was adopted by a wealthy family as a child and, at age 30, she would be able to access $4million. But Lundberg, who filed for bankruptcy in 2009 reported to only about $100 in a checking account and income of about $200 a month with no mention of a trust fund. In May, prosecutors filed a warrant to seize Lundberg's business checking account and FBI agents raided her San Diego mansion (pictured) Kennedy said he was duped into the purchases because he 'wanted to be loved and have a family' He told the FBI that Lundberg had led him to believe she would eventually reimburse him as she claimed she was adopted by a wealthy family as a child and, at age 30, she would be able to access $4million But Lundberg, who filed for bankruptcy in 2009 reported to only about $100 in a checking account and income of about $200 a month with no mention of a trust fund Kennedy agreed to cooperate with authorities, including making undercover recordings of face-to-face and telephone conversations, according to the court filing. In May, prosecutors filed a warrant to seize Lundberg's business checking account and FBI agents raided her San Diego mansion. According to 10News, dozens of agents in full gear with guns stormed the residence, seizing a Jaguar and white grand piano, among other things. Recent photos seem to suggest, however, that Lundberg is still living in the residence. At the time, the mansion was the site of an estate sale advertised as 'Unexpected move for Chicago Heiress with Designer EVERYTHING'. A five-year-old picture of a young girl enjoying a Japanese-themed party has opened up a row over cultural appropriation after it resurfaced online. Opinions have been split over a blog post from 2012, which showed the schoolgirl with her face painted wearing a kimono. After it appeared this week on Tumblr, a Japanese poster leapt to the mother's defense, saying they are delighted to see culture being shared. The image was initially posted online in November 2012, but has surfaced again this week after being posted on Tumblr The image was first posted online by a Utah mother named Heidi on a site named the Gala Girls. One comment which appeared on the post this week read: 'This is racism and cultural appropriation at its finest. Not cute.' Heidi responded: 'I assure you the intent was only to share food, traditions, and cultures with kids in a positive and fun way.' The image sparked fierce debate when it was posted on Tumblr this week, with many leaping to the mother's defense One Tumblr one post read: 'A vast majority of Japanese people actually enjoy other people making an effort to spread and enjoy Japanese culture, and encourage it. 'Many make businesses in deliberately taking pictures of people in kimono. A common omiage (gift) for foreigners from japanese people is traditional japanese things such as kimonos, tea seats, shisa dog statues, ect (sic).' The comment praised the mother for the effort she had put into preparing Japanese costume and food, and rounded on the people who complained about it, writing: 'The only racist here is you.' Another wrote: 'You are literally throwing a tantrum over a child dressed up as something beautiful.' When it was first posted, one person wrote: 'Teach children this is not ok.' A Jamaican man who claimed four New York cops shoved a bullet up his rectum eight years ago in retaliation to an excessive force suit has had his case thrown out. Darius Burris is adamant he was sodomized back in October 2009 when two officers and two detectives pinned him down and assaulted him. A jury at a Brooklyn federal court could not decide whether the man, originally from Jamaica, was telling the truth or whether the force's version of events was what actually happened. They say the claimant, who was in a Manhasset precinct over assault and harassment charges at the time, put the bullet up there himself. The alleged incident was said to have happened here - the Sixth Precinct in Manhasset Having deliberated for two days, the jury could not come down one way or the other, prompting Judge Margo Brodie to declare a mistrial on Wedensday. Samuel Maduegbuna, prosecuting, described the outcome as a 'partial vindication', talking to the New York Daily News. None of the four police officers faced criminal charges or disciplinary action and three have since retired. Burris' lawyer back in 2010 said the case of his client was like the case of Abner Louima (pictured) who was sodomized with a broom handle They all took the stand during the trial. Talking to News Day, Burris said: 'They shackled me and took my shoes off my feet.' He claimed officers held him down on his back before someone put their knee on his chest and something was stuck up his rectum. Burris alleged the incident occurred in the basement of the Sixth Precinct in Manhasset on October 21. He was taken to hospital where doctors discovered a 'bullet-like foreign body in the rectum' after sending him for an x-ray. While the Nassau County cops staunchly opposed any wrongdoing, saying he had done it himself, Burris' attorney in 2010 John Nonnenmacher called it 'beyond outrageous'. He drew comparison to the case of Abner Louima in 1997 when an officer was jailed for 30 years for ramming a broken broomstick into his rectum in a Brooklyn police station. Burris, a former convict, had been arrested multiple times and convicted of assault, forgery, possession of stolen property, robbery, menacing and other offenses for which he had served time. Anthony Scaramucci was set to address Trump supporters and political gawkers on Friday in a webcast that would feature his version of the story that entranced West Wing watchers for 11 days last month. 'The Mooch' was planning to present the online spectacle with help from former Fox News executive Bill Shine, CNN reported. Scaramucci called it off this afternoon, though, in a tweet that foreshadowed a return to the private sector. 'No Press Event Tomorrow: Focusing on Family, My Work in The Private Sector. #MovingForward Stay Tuned!' he said. Anthony Scaramucci was set to address Trump supporters and political gawkers on Friday in a webcast that would feature his version of the story that entranced West Wing watchers for 11 days last month Scaramucci called it off this afternoon, though, in a tweet that foreshadowed a return to the private sector Scaramucci's estranged wife just delivered their second child. The former Trump aide was not with her when the birth happened. He was in Washington with the president. Trump's new chief of staff, John Kelly, fired Scaramucci on Monday - days after the embattled West Winger gave an expletive-infused interview to a New Yorker reporter. Among other things, he told the reporter that then-chief of staff Reince Priebus was the source of many White House leaks and blasted Steve Bannon as a self-promoter. 'I'm not Steve Bannon,' Scaramucci said. 'I'm not trying to suck my own c**k.' Scaramucci, Shine and a slate of Fox News hosts dined with President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania Trump last week, along with Kellyanne Conway, an event that the New Yorker's Ryan Lizza learned of and wrote about. That story is what led Scaramucci to call Lizza and vent about the West Wing's serial dysfunctions. Scaramucci gave an exit interview to the Huffington Post this week, telling the left-leaning outlet that he would 'go dark' after his high-profile ouster. 'Then I will reemerge,' he said. 'As me.' Former Fox News executive Bill Shine as planning to help The Mooch produce Friday's online event CNN reported after the interview that Scaramucci would be rising from the ashes sooner than expected. Now, the former hedge funder appears to have had second thoughts. The Mooch will reportedly wait until after Labor Day to announce the next chapter in his life. The White House confirmed this week that he no longer has any job in the Trump administration, including his former role as Chief Strategy Officer at the U.S. Export-Import Bank. A carefully worded statement on the matter suggested that the 53-year-old bundler for Trump's first presidential campaign could get his Ex-Im job back, though. Scaramucci was telling friends earlier this week that he wanted to stay in the Trump administration. Two sources familiar with his situation told DailyMail.com that Scaramucci was angling to go back to the Export-Import bank. The former financier sold his asset management company, SkyBridge Capital, in January in preparation for a job in the Trump administration. On June 19 he became a senior vice president and chief strategy officer at the Export-Import bank in Washington, D.C. He transitioned out of that job two weeks ago to become communications director at the White House. A source close to the ousted 53-year-old Trump aide said earlier this week that Scaramucci could end up at Ex-Im again. 'That's what Mooch is wanting,' the source said. Another insider also claimed that Scaramucci could go back to Ex-Im. Scaramucci did not respond to an inquiry from DailyMail.com on Thursday about his forthcoming plans. A gang of moped raiders armed with hammers, knives and a gun stole 1 million worth of mobile phones and tablets in 17 raids on stores across London, a court heard today. The group of young men allegedly raided Three Mobile shops where they would smash their way in with a battering ram. After making their way inside, the gang would break into the stock room and swipe the latest handsets, before escaping on waiting mopeds, the court heard. Security guards placed in some stores overnight were brutally attacked with chairs and hammers, while others grabbed phones and tablets from the store room. CCTV footage captured the moment gang members entered a Three Mobile shop in East Ham in September last year Bobby Kennedy (left) and Chris Costi (right) were both charged with conspiracy to commit aggravated burglary and conspiracy to rob In one brazen raid at the Three store in Oxford Street, central London, at 2.40am one of the raiders threatened a member of the public with a gun. The others then smashed their way into the store and stole dozens of devices worth 20,000. The phones, which were stolen in the early hours of the morning, were then flogged to shops in east London from where they would be sold abroad for just below market value. In just over six months the gang stole phones and tablets worth about 1million, it was said. Bobby Kennedy, 22, and Chris Costi, 19, were both charged with conspiracy to commit aggravated burglary and conspiracy to rob between May and November last year. Dylan Castano-Lopez, 19, Alfie Kennedy, 20, brother of Bobby, and Adam Atallah, 21, all previously pleaded guilty to their part in the conspiracy, the jury heard. Opening the case, prosecutor Michael Shaw, said: 'In the summer of last year, and into the autumn, a group of young men joined in a robbery and burglary spree in London. 'They armed themselves with weapons, knives, hammers, and guns, arriving on mopeds and using crash helmets as a disguise, and smashed their way into mobile phone stores owned by the network Three. 'They smashed their way into the stores' stock rooms taking about 1million worth of mobile phones which they sold to handlers in east London.' Referring to the gang, the prosecutor added: 'They are a team of individuals who know each other well and are prepared to use considerable violence when they come across security guards or police officers. 'They were prepared to use force and also weapons when the rewards were so large.' The jury were told the stolen phones were sold on to customers across the world wanting the latest handsets. Mr Shaw added: 'Phones have been found all round the world, in Bangladesh, Pakistan and they are worth a lot of money out there. 'That is money the defendants didn't work for, instead it was easier to smash their way into the mobile phone stock room and steal them.' The gang repeatedly targeted the same shops after they were restocked by the phone company, including one in Walthamstow, north London which was hit four times, the court heard. After a while Three Mobile began to put trackers in their phones in store and also had security guards stay in store overnight. Mr Shaw said: 'Threats to shoot people were made repeatedly. Threats of serious violence were also made. Two gang members are caught on a dashboard-mounted camera trying to flee after a raid in East Ham Adam Atallah (left) and Dylan Castano-Lopez (right) have already admitted their part in the conspiracy 'The message was if you get in the way you will get hurt, threats with hammers, threats with knives, with threats of being shot. 'This is a well organised group of thieves. These are organised professional criminals.' The jury was shown CCTV footage from the first burglary in Walthamstow on May 1, last year, at around 5am. Four burglars used two mopeds and two of the gang were seen smashing their way though the front window, wearing black clothes and crash helmets. Footage from inside the stock room shows the door smashed off its hinges and two burglars go in and swipe all the phones, with the whole raid taking just over three minutes. After getting away the raiders would dump the mopeds and then book a cab away from the area. Within hours after the raids the gang would then meet with two shop owners in east London, who would buy the phones off them, before selling them on to countries around the world. Alfie Kennedy, 20, (pictured) admitted his role in the conspiracy In another raid at the Wood Green store when police arrived on the scene, two officers were left with cuts when they wrestled with some of the gang, with two arrested at the scene. CCTV footage from inside one store of another raid showed a security guard, who had tried to hide, being attacked and beaten by the gang, hitting him with a chair. The jury was also shown dramatic footage from police helicopter of a ten mile chase of four of the gang on two mopeds through the streets of London after the last of the burglaries in October last year. It was after that raid in Walthamstow and police chase that the Kennedy brothers were arrested alongside Atallah in the early hours of the morning. The prosecutor: 'We say (Bobby) Kennedy, and his mate Costi, are both part of a gang who were burgling premises. 'But it wasn't a simple burglary. These were aggravated burglary, they had weapons with them and that was the tip of the iceberg- he was involved in other serious offences. 'We say they were involved in this conspiracy. This was quite a well organised, sophisticated plan. The offences that you are looking at are the manifestation of that plan. 'If we hadn't caught them they would still doing it now.' Kennedy, of no fixed abode, and Costi, of Hackney, east London, deny one count of conspiracy to commit aggravated burglary, and one count of conspiracy to rob. The trial continues. A British carer who fought on the frontline against ISIS in Syria has said he fears he will never be able to return to the UK without being arrested. Aiden Aslin, from Newark in Nottinghamshire, fought in Syria alongside a Kurdish unit, the Lions of Rojava, who have shown huge bravery in taking on ISIS. The 23-year-old is now doing humanitarian work in Greece. He said he was 'done with Britain's treatment towards us'. Freedom fighter Aiden Aslin, from Newark, is now doing humanitarian work in Greece Mr Aslin most recently left the UK in January this year to join the battle to take Raqqa from ISIS. He rejoined Kurdish forces following the cancellation of police bail that saw him surrender his passport to prevent foreign travel following his previous time spent in Syria and Iraq. During his last stint in Syria he had met with British and American servicemen during Kurdish attempts to capture the town of Jezra. He said: 'I had met members of the US 82nd Airborne Division just outside the town of Jezra during the operation to take it and, for a few days, got to know them by joking around the fire and socialising.' Mr Aslin said he had earned their respect and that of British Special Forces operating in the area, who had offered to provide intelligence. 'Over there we are allies, but when we return we are treated as the enemy,' he said. In a previous interview he said: 'Daesh is like a cancer. You leave it untreated and it is going to keep growing. 'Anti-war protesters have no idea what kind of people Daesh are. They can't be negotiated with.' Mr Aslin, who has fought against ISIS in Syria, said he fears he will be arrested when he returns home again After seven months in Syria he returned to the UK and armed police boarded his flight to arrest him as it touched down in Manchester on July 16. He said: 'I'm done with Britain's treatment towards us. I did my seven months in Syria and was just exhausted. 'So I came to Greece last month to do humanitarian work at a refugee camp for Kurds to help teach them English so they have a smoother time going though Europe and can better report exploitation and sexual harassment, missing family members and things like that. 'I'm probably going to live in Greece.' The 23-year-old first joined the fight against ISIS in April 2015 after being sickened by its barbarism and abuse of Kurdish people. He was arrested at Heathrow Airport in February 2016 as his flight home landed and was on police bail until October, while an investigation took place into what he had been doing. No charges were brought. Mr Aslin's grandmother, Pam Hall, said the family were unaware he was going back to Syria this year until he let them know he was there. The Home Office leaves it to individual police forces to decide what to do when non-military personnel return from fighting ISIS. A spokesman for Nottinghamshire Police said although Aiden had been released from his bail his case remained under investigation. A spokesman said: 'The matter currently rests with the Crown Prosecution Service and remains under investigation. We are currently awaiting further advice.' Cooper Harris was born five years ago this week There were no presents or colorful balloons to mark the occasion no birthday party with cake and ice cream or laughing young friends to help a happy little boy celebrate. Instead, Cooper's birthday present was a bronze marker that lies atop his Tuscaloosa, Alabama grave. It was a gift from scores of moms across the country who donated funds so that Cooper Harris would always be remembered. It was three years ago on a hot June afternoon that Ross Harris screeched into a parking lot in Smyrna Georgia, leaped from his car and frantically yelled for help. Harris told bystanders and police he realized only then that he had left his toddler son Cooper in his family's SUV while he worked at his Home Depot as a web developer. Scroll down for video Cooper Harris was finally given a grave marker for what would have been his fifth birthday. His father, Ross Harris, is serving life in prison after being convicted on several counts of first-degree malice murder and child cruelty Various groups on social media raised $1,800 in donations to give Cooper Harris a grave marker for his fifth birthday. His father said leaving Cooper in the hot car for seven hours was an accident, but the jury didn't believe him and the judge sentenced him to life in prison He told police investigators it was an accident. He said he simply forgot his son was in the car as he drove to work, even though Harris and his toddler son had shared breakfast only minutes earlier. A jury didn't believe him, and Harris was convicted in 2016 on several counts of first-degree malice murder and child cruelty. Prosecutors alleged Harris wanted his son dead so he could live a child-free life. He was sentenced to life in prison with no chance of parole. For three years since his death, the young boy's grave was an unmarked plot at the Tuscaloosa Memorial Park Cemewtery in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. Various groups on Facebook rallied to raise funds over the past two years so that his grave could be properly marked. Nearly $1,800 in donations were raised. Cooper's mom Leanna selected the marker and had it placed in time for Cooper's birthday. The first picture emerged earlier today. Cooper's mother Leanna selected the marker for her son's grave. She chose the Bible verse 1 Samuel 1:27 which reads in part: ' For this child I prayed.' The marker is also says 'Our little buddy, forever in our hearts' Leanna Taylor has maintained her ex husband is innocent, saying he was an engaged and involved father. During the trial it came to light that Ross Harris had multiple extramarital affairs and that he sexted teenage girls The bronze marker reads, 'Cooper Mills Harris, Aug 2, 2012 June 16, 2014'. There is scripture on the marker: 'for this child I prayed,' 1 Samuel 1:27', and an inscription, 'Our little buddy, forever in our hearts.' Leanna Taylor said she carries the memory of her son with her every day, and had an image of her son's footprint tattooed on her own foot. I try to hold on to everything and that can be difficult because the memory is a hard thing to hold onto sometimes,' she told reporters in June. While the couple divorced in 2016, prior to her husband's murder trial, she still believes Cooper's death was a horrible accident. Ross Harris was always an engaged and involved father, 'who wanted to be with his child, who wanted to spend time with his son,' she said. 'Cooper was what made him happy.' She doesn't believe he intentionally left Cooper in the SUV to die, but she hast not forgiven him for the long list of extramarital affairs, 'sexting' with underage teen girls and sex with a prostitute while they were married. The prosecution also alleged Ross was living a double life and had a second family in Alabama. Earlier this year Leanna told reporters her goal is to restore her son's legacy and to teach other parents about the dangers of leaving children inside hot cars Ross and Cooper went to get breakfast at Chick-fil-A on June 18, 2014. Ross drove to work after and said he 'forgot' his son was still in the SUV on the 88 degree day until he went to go home Ross Harris was addicted to pornography, Leanna said, and wished she knew of his obsession with sex earlier in their marriage. 'I did not know how bad it was,' she told reporters. During her testimony in 2016, Taylor said if she never saw her ex husband again she would be fine. She later admitted she would consider meeting Ross if he ever gets out of prison to seek closure. She said her goal now was to restore her son's legacy, and do what she can to prevent other children from dying in a hot car. The temperature that day rose to 88 degrees and WTVR weather experts said the temperature could have risen to 140 degrees inside the car. Leanna has returned to Alabama. Ross Harris, 36, is serving a life sentence in the Valdosta State Prison in south Georgia. The jury was shown one of the last known photos of Cooper Harris alive, which was shared between Ross and Leanna During the trial, the prosecution pointed to how Ross searched for articles about life without children on Reddit Before his son died, Ross visited a Reddit forum to search for articles on life without children. He also viewed videos that showed people dying - by suicide or execution, in some cases. It was also revealed that the couple had both a $2,000 and a $25,000 life insurance policy on their son they purchased three months after his birth. A search warrant revealed Ross tried to instruct family members while he awaited trial on how to collect the policies. The prosecution also claimed that Ross' wife 'was complaining about his purchasing, sporadic purchasing or overcharging credit cards.' She was not considered a suspect in her son's death. Ross also did not call 911 after finding his 22-month-old responsive, according to police. Derick Dillard lashed out at Jazz Jennings on Wednesday night, criticizing the transgender teen in a vicious and hurtful post on his Twitter account. The attack came in response to an innocuous tweet from TLC that let their followers know that a new episode of the program was beginning and urging them to watch. Derrick retweeted TLC and commented: 'What an oxymoron... a "reality" show which follows a non-reality. "Transgender" is a myth. Gender is not fluid; it's ordained by God.' The tweet came as a bit of a shock since the Duggar family's reality program 'Counting On' also airs on TLC, and is set to premiere next month. It also caught many off-guard due to the fact that Derick is a 28-year-old married father-of-two and Jazz is a 16-year-old teenager who is still in high school. Derick is the husband of Jill Duggar. TLC had no comment Thursday morning when DailyMail.com reached out to the network, but released a statement shortly after 4pm saying: 'Derick Dillards personal statement does not represent the views of TLC.' Scroll down for video Big man: Derick Dillard (above with wife Jill and son Israel) attacked Jazz Jennings on Twitter Wednesday night while her reality show was airing on TLC On the attack: 'What an oxymoron... a "reality" show which follows a non-reality. "Transgender" is a myth. Gender is not fluid; it's ordained by God,' wrote Derrick LGBTQ leader: Jazz, who is 16, was diagnosed with gender identity disorder at the age of 4 and two years later gave her first major interview to Barbara Walters on 20/20 Almost as soon as Derick had posted his comment, a Twitter follower wrote: 'Is it necessary for a grown man to throw shade at a teenage girl?' Derick then defended his actions, replying: 'I want to be clear. I have nothing against him. I only have issue with the words and definitions being propagated here.' Another Twitter user wrote: 'Very hypocritical of your family to profit from a network which airs content against your beliefs. Don't like it? Don't associate with it.' There were also a number of comments demanding that TLC take the reality show off the air. 'ARE YOU SERIOUSLY OK WITH THIS??? YOU'RE GONNA ALLOW A GROWN MAN CHILD TO BULLY A CHILD ON YOUR WATCH???,' wrote one woman. 'Time to get rid of the Duggars for good!!!!' added another. Derick meanwhile was targeted by another Twitter user, who wrote: 'I think you should consider transitioning into a real man. #CountingOn' Special delivery: Derick, who is 28 and a father-of-two, stars on the TLC series 'Counting On' (above with son Samuel last month) Response: Derick defended his tweet by writing: 'I have nothing against him' (above) And a young woman also questioned Derick's initial tweet by suggesting he had not right to determine what foes on the air given the fact that their show continued despite an actual scandal. 'Bet y'all won't leave your show. Y'all like that money way too much. Your "reality" show skips around your bro in law touching his sisters,' wrote that woman, referencing Josh Duggar's molestation of four of his five sisters when they were minors. That scandal led to TLC pulling the Duggar's original reality show, '19 Kids and Counting' off the air back in 2015, and replacing it with 'I Am Jazz.' The program follows the Jennings family and their daughter Jazz, a transgender teenager, as she navigated her teenage years while transitioning. This season she has been discussing gender reassignment surgery with her doctors. Targeted teen: Many are now calling on TLC to cancel the Duggar's reality show, which was previously taken off the air in 2015 after Josh's molestation scandal (Jazz above discussing gender reassignment surgery with her father and a doctor on the current season) Jazz was diagnosed with gender identity disorder at the age of 4 and began making appearances on national programs two years later to discuss her life and bring awareness to trans issues. She has always been a remarkably poised and collected young woman, refusing to stay silent when attacked. 'What is it with calling transgender people FREAKS?! We just happen to be humans too, so I think it's ABOUT time we get treated equally...' wrote Jazz last week after President Trump announced a ban on transgender men and women serving in the armed forces. The Duggars meanwhile have long spoken out against transgender individuals. Michelle Duggar previously campaigned against transgender individuals and their rights by narrating a robocall to local voters in 2014 over a proposed anti-discrimination ordinance in Fayetteville, Arkansas. In that call she compared transgender individuals to 'child predators.' Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev has bashed fresh US sanctions on Moscow, calling them a declaration of 'full-fledged economic war' and proof relations cannot be improved between the two countries. Medvedev posted a lengthy statement about the sanctions, which Donald Trump grudgingly decided to sign on Wednesday after the bill passed Congress by overwhelming margins sufficient to override a presidential veto. One of the key parts of the new measures is a limit on Trump's ability to lift sanctions imposed or return diplomatic compounds seized last year by Obama in response to Russia's interference in the 2016 election. In his statement, Medvedev outlined what he believes will be the consequences of the bill. Scroll down for video Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev has bashed fresh US sanctions on Moscow, calling them a declaration of 'full-fledged economic war'. Medvedev and Vladimir Putin are pictured together on July 5 'First, it ends hopes for improving our relations with the new US administration,' the prime minister wrote. 'Second, it is a declaration of a full-fledged economic war on Russia. Third, the Trump administration has shown its total weakness by handing over executive power to Congress in the most humiliating way. 'This changes the power balance in US political circles.' In a move perhaps designed to appeal to Trump's ego, Medvedev then accused the president of being outmaneuvered by Washington insiders - a group candidate Trump railed against repeatedly on the trail. 'The US establishment fully outwitted Trump; the President is not happy about the new sanctions, yet he could not but sign the bill,' Medvedev wrote. 'The issue of new sanctions came about, primarily, as another way to knock Trump down a peg.' 'First, it ends hopes for improving our relations with the new US administration,' prime minister Medvedev wrote on Wednesday Medvedev posted this statement on his official Facebook page on Wednesday night in response to the new sanctions He then went on to say the pressure applied on the president to sign the bill is a step along the path that could lead to Trump being removed from the Oval Office. 'New steps are to come, and they will ultimately aim to remove him from power. A non-systemic player has to be removed,' the prime minister wrote on Facebook. 'Meanwhile, the interests of the US business community are all but ignored, with politics chosen over a pragmatic approach. 'Anti-Russian hysteria has become a key part of both US foreign policy (which has occurred many times) and domestic policy (which is a novelty).' Medvedev then wrapped up his comments by stating the sanctions are proof US and Russian relationships will remain 'tense' - regardless of who sits in the White House. In his statement, Medvedev said pressure applied to Trump to sign the bill is a step towards the president being removed from power 'Thus, relations between Russia and the United States are going to be extremely tense regardless of Congress makeup and regardless of who is president,' he wrote. 'Lengthy arguments in international bodies and courts are ahead, as well as rising international tensions and refusal to settle major international issues.' The statement comes after Trump lashed out at the bill on Wednesday, saying it undermines a key pledge of his to improve relations with Moscow and Vladimir Putin. Trump said despite some changes, 'the bill remains seriously flawed particularly because it encroaches on the executive branch's authority to negotiate.' He called parts of it 'unconstitutional' and signaled fresh tensions with Republicans by criticizing their failure to repeal and replace Obamacare. Trump routinely said during his campaign and first months in office he wants to improve relations with Russia and Vladimir Putin Trump also said in a lengthy press statement that the White House sent out alongside a formal signing statement that he was 'signing this bill for the sake of national unity.' 'Congress could not even negotiate a healthcare bill after seven years of talking. By limiting the Executive's flexibility, this bill makes it harder for the United States to strike good deals for the American people, and will drive China, Russia, and North Korea much closer together,' he said. 'The Framers of our Constitution put foreign affairs in the hands of the President. This bill will prove the wisdom of that choice.' The president also complained about what he said were 'clearly unconstitutional provisions' in the legislation relating to presidential powers to shape foreign policy. Prior to it being passed, the White House had lobbied to water down restrictions in the bill. President Donald Trump continued to fume this morning about a veto-proof bill that thwarted his ability to lift congressionally-mandated sanctions on Russia on his own. The president signed the bill because he agrees with the punishing actions included in it on principle, the White House said Wednesday after Trump forcefully denounced provisions that checked his authority. Still seething, Trump tweeted on Thursday morning that Congress was to blame for the strain in relations with Vladimir Putin's government. 'Our relationship with Russia is at an all-time & very dangerous low. You can thank Congress, the same people that can't even give us HCare!' he said. SCROLL DOWN FOR VIDEO President Donald Trump continued to fume this morning about a veto-proof bill that thwarted his ability to lift congressionally-mandated sanctions on Russia. He's pictured with Putin at the G20 summit last month Still seething, Trump tweeted on Thursday morning that Congress was to blame for the strain in relations with Vladimir Putin's government Trump has waffled on Russia's involvement in the cyber attacks, saying more than once that it was probably the Kremlin, or another actor entirely - 'nobody really knows for sure' The sanctions that Congress cemented in the bill that Trump signed against his will were in retaliation for hacking and leaking schemes and other election meddling that US intelligence agencies have concluded were masterminded by the Russians. Trump has waffled on Russia's involvement in the cyber attacks, saying more than once that it was probably the Kremlin, or another actor entirely - 'nobody really knows for sure.' Four US intelligence agencies have said they are certain that Putin's government was behind the cyber assaults. The Kremlin wanted to undermine confidence in the United States democratic process, they've said. Trump claims that he pressed Putin on the issue twice during a recent summit, even though he argued at a press conference two days before that Russia may not have been the culprit. Trump signed legislation Wednesday that slaps new sanctions on Russia and limits his own ability to create waivers 'in the interest of national unity.' 'The president favors tough measures to punish and deter the bad behavior of the rogue regimes in Iran and North Korea,' White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders told reporters, 'and he also sent a clear signal that we won't tolerate interference in our democratic process by Russia.' He signed the bill away from the cameras and sent out statement revealing the depths of his unhappiness. Trump said despite some changes, 'the bill remains seriously flawed particularly because it encroaches on the executive branch's authority to negotiate.' He called parts of it 'unconstitutional' and signaled fresh tensions with Republicans by criticizing their failure to repeal and replace Obamacare. Trump also said in a lengthy press statement that the White House sent out alongside a formal signing statement that he was 'signing this bill for the sake of national unity.' 'Congress could not even negotiate a healthcare bill after seven years of talking. By limiting the Executive's flexibility, this bill makes it harder for the United States to strike good deals for the American people, and will drive China, Russia, and North Korea much closer together,' he said. 'The Framers of our Constitution put foreign affairs in the hands of the President. This bill will prove the wisdom of that choice,' Trump said in the statement. Trump said the legislation 'represents the will of the American people to see Russia take steps to improve relations with the United States. 'We hope there will be cooperation between our two countries on major global issues so that these sanctions will no longer be necessary.' In a message to Congress in response to the bill, Trump singled out provisions his lawyers considers in conflict with Supreme Court case law and asserts his own latitude to carry out the law as he sees fit. 'My Administration will give careful and respectful consideration to the preferences expressed by the Congress in these various provisions,' the president said in one point in language certain to irk lawmakers who consider the law much more than a preference. 'My administration ... expects the Congress to refrain from using this flawed bill to hinder our important work with European allies to resolve the conflict in Ukraine, and from using it to hinder our efforts to address any unintended consequences it may have for American businesses, our friends, or our allies,' he said. The president also complained about what he said were 'clearly unconstitutional provisions' in the legislation relating to presidential powers to shape foreign policy. 'The president favors tough measures to punish and deter the bad behavior of the rogue regimes in Iran and North Korea,' White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders told reporters, 'and he also sent a clear signal that we won't tolerate interference in our democratic process by Russia' The bill passed Congress by overwhelming margins sufficient to override a presidential veto. Trump could have allowed the bill to become law without his signature, but decided against it. The White House had lobbied to water down restrictions in the bill. It contains language meant to prevent the president from lifting them without approval from Congress provisions that got drafted amid concerns Trump would lift or limit sanctions amid his frequent praise for Putin and desire to improve ties between the two powers. Tillerson told reporters he shared misgivings with the president, as they try to improve relations with Russia. 'Neither the president nor I are very happy about that,' Tillerson said. 'We were clear that we didn't think that was going to be helpful to our efforts, but that's the decision they made.' The FBI and congressional intelligence panels are probing Trump campaign connections to Russians during the election. Trump during the campaign called repeatedly for better relations with Russia. The U.S. intelligence community concluded that the Russian government backed a campaign to interfere in the presidential election. Despite communications with Putin, capped off by two one-on-one meetings in Europe, Trump has struggled to meet his goal. Putin said last weekend that Russia would expel more than 700 U.S. diplomats from Russia in retaliation for the sanctions legislation. A report said Wednesday that Trump had talked to Putin on the phone before he put pen to paper, but Huckabee Sanders told reporters it was incorrect. Shocking video footage of the moment an Asian woman was punched repeatedly by a former Iraq security worker has emerged. The short clip shows Jing Song, 29, tell 34-year-old Steven Burke: 'You are punching a woman'. He then tells her to 'get out of my face' and appears to swing at her. Ms Song cries become more panicked and desperate as Burke continues to hit her, telling her to 'get out of my face'. Pictured: The injuries Jing Song, 29, suffered after being attacked by Steven Burke in October last year Blurry video footage shows the moment the man told Ms Song to 'get out of my face' before swinging at her repeatedly as she screamed for help The 29-year-old woman is then heard letting out a long, strangled call for help. The pair crossed paths as Ms Song was walking her dogs with a friend in Mosman about 11pm on October 3, 2016, when Burke reportedly made racist comments and told Ms Song to 'go back to China'. Burke, who denied saying those words, punched Ms Song up to five times in the face and kicked her in the stomach, a court heard. He pleaded guilty to recklessly inflicting grevious bodily harm on Ms Song, and was sentenced to nine months behind bars earlier this year. Downing Centre Local Court magistrate Karen Robinson jailed him on May 22 for at least nine months, noting Ms Jong's injuries and the women's account of the 'racial slur'. But the man was later released on bail and has been walking the streets for more than two months. Steven Burke pleaded guilty to attacking Ms Song, but denied hurling the racial insults. He was jailed for nine months in May, but has been on bail for more than two months as he lodges an appeal (pictured: Burke walking out of the NSW District Court on Tuesday after an appeal hearing) Burke is appealing against the 'severity' of his nine-month jail sentence Burke once worked as a security contractor in Iraq, which he claims left him traumatised He has launched an appeal against the 'severity' of his sentence, which is set to resume at the NSW District Court in six weeks. Ms Jong and Ms Guo had left their home with their dogs when Burke, who was walking his cocker spaniel, called out to them across Glover Street. Ms Guo saw Burke approach from across the road, according to a police statement before the court. 'He was talking but we couldn't hear what he was saying,' Ms Guo told police. 'He let go of his dog and walked across the road to us and said, "Get out of my place, get away with your dogs". 'He was moving his arms. He said "I'm going to punch you". He said, "f***ing Asians, go back to your country with your dogs." He said this three or four times.' The former security worker was walking his dog at the same time Ms Song was walking hers when the man, who was under the influence of alcohol, attacked her He had spent time in hospital being treated for post traumatic stress disorder and his mental health deteriorated in the lead-up to the assault, the court heard during his trial Ms Robinson said Ms Jong had suffered significant facial injuries, had to have surgery for multiple fractures, was off work for more than six weeks and suffered emotional trauma. 'The circumstances of the incident show, in my view, an unprovoked, unwarranted attack on [Ms Song] who was only going about her business taking her dogs out for a walk late at night in a quiet residential street,' Ms Robinson said. Burke, who had no criminal history, worked in the security industry and spent time in Iraq, which led to him being traumatised, the court heard. He had spent time in hospital being treated for post traumatic stress disorder and his mental health deteriorated in the lead-up to the assault. The magistrate was told Burke had not taken his prescribed medication on the day of the attack and had been self-medicating with 'an enormous amount of alcohol on a daily basis'. Before the assault, he had drunk three-quarters of a bottle of bourbon. 'Clearly, he was affected by that alcohol at the time of the offence occurring,' Ms Robinson said. In a police interview after the incident, Burke denied attacking Ms Song or hurling racial insults The woman Steven Burke (pictured) assaulted suffered serious facial injuries and trauma Burke initially denied the assault in a police interview, claiming he had been followed and scratched by an Asian man after an altercation between their dogs. 'I remember he was filming me and then he fell over,' Burke told police. 'He fell and hit the ground, the gutter, and I walked off. I think he tripped over some tree stumps.' Investigating officers had to tell Burke the victim was in fact a woman. Sergeant Patrick Schmidt said Burke had shown no remorse. 'Young women should be able to walk at night time without fear of this happening, putting aside suburbs or affluence,' Sergeant Schmidt said. Burke will appear again in the District Court on September 13. Blade-runner Oscar Pistorius has been rushed to hospital with 'chest pains' surrounded by armed guards, it has emerged. There were initial fears the shamed athlete had suffered a heart attack at Atteridgeville Prison in South Africa. But it is understood that the 30-year-old has since been discharged from Kalafong Hospital in Pretoria and is due to be sent back to the facility today. Pistorius, serving six years for killing his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp on Valentines Day in 2013, was brought into hospital by armed guards at about 8am today. Blade-runner Oscar Pistorius has been rushed to hospital with 'chest pains' surrounded by armed guards, it has emerged Correctional service spokesman Singabakho Nxumalo told The Citizen: 'We can state that offender Oscar Pistorius was taken to an outside hospital facility this morning for a medical examination, and is expected back in the facility later today.' Johan van Wyk, a spokesman for the family told the Citizen that Pistorius was 'okay'. The South African Paralympic gold medallist is serving a six year sentence for murdering Steenkamp at their home. He shot Steenkamp multiple times through a toilet cubicle door in his home in the pre-dawn hours of Valentine's Day, 2013. The South African Paralympic gold medallist (right) is serving a six year sentence for murdering model Reeva Steenkamp (left) on Valentine's Day 2013 In 2014 Pistorius was found guilty of culpable homicide similar to manslaughter in British law. Pistorius testified that he killed Steenkamp by mistake, thinking there was an intruder hiding in the bathroom. Prosecutors said he shot her intentionally after an argument. The initial manslaughter conviction was upgraded to the more serious offense of murder after an earlier prosecution appeal, leading to a new sentencing. In August last year, Pistorius received emergency treatment for injuries to his wrists prompting speculation that he had attempted suicide in jail. The Paralympian denied the injuries were a suicide attempt and claimed he had 'fallen out of his bed' in his cell at Kgosi Mampuru prison in Pretoria. Petra Ecclestone leaves court after the latest hearing in her divorce battle with her estranged husband James Stunt after he was admitted to hospital Former Formula 1 boss Bernie Ecclestone has vented his frustration after his daughter Petra chose to cancel a holiday to attend a divorce hearing that her husband missed through illness. James Stunt was unable to face his estranged wife in court for a case management hearing today due to illness - the couple's estimated 5.5billion split will be decided in October. Mr Stunt, 35, has separated with Ms Ecclestone, 28, and 'an awful lot of money' has already been spent on the legal battle, London's Family Court heard. Mr Ecclestone said his daughter had cancelled a family holiday to make the court date. The 86-year-old tycoon said: I dont know what is going to happen in October if he is ill again. It is frustrating for Petra. It would be better for her to get it over with. Petra is fine, she understands that this is the way the world goes around. She will now have to wait until October unless he [James] pulls out with an ingrowing toenail or something. The couple married six years ago in a lavish 12million ceremony in an Italian castle, and have three children together. But this year they started divorce proceedings and Mr Stunt was evicted from their 100million Chelsea mansion last month. Ms Ecclestone arrived at court alone in a Mansory Range Rover with a personalised number plate. She wore a pink suit, beige top and leopard skin heels, clutching a beige handbag with her hair in a ponytail, and entered the court with two security guards. Her 86-year-old father did not attend the hearing. Ms Ecclestone sat in the courtroom next to her high-profile lawyer Fiona Shackleton, who represented Sir Paul McCartney in his bitter divorce battle with Heather Mills. Her lawyers said they had received a letter from the Cromwell Hospital, a private hospital in Kensington, west London, confirming Mr Stunt was being treated there. However no detail was given about how long he has been there, or what he is being treated for. The couple, pictured in 2012, could end up making headlines by agreeing the largest settlement in celebrity divorce history Petra's legal team contains Baroness Fiona Shackleton - Britain's most famous divorce lawyer (right today) The court was told Ms Ecclestone had chosen to postpone a holiday with her children to attend proceedings. Nicholas Cusworth QC, representing Ms Ecclestone, said: 'The husband, Mr Stunt, is not in court. 'We did receive from his solicitors, Hunters, this morning a letter from the Cromwell Hospital indicating Mr Stunt is currently staying there. 'What we don't know is why he has been hospitalised. But we do know he isn't here.' Ms Ecclestone did not say anything during the hearing in front of Judge Robin Tolson QC. Mr Cusworth said: 'My client is here in court, having postponed her holiday with the children.' The hearing mainly consisted of discussions about technical aspects of proceedings. Ms Ecclestone had chosen to cancel a holiday with her children to attend proceedings - the second time they have tried to hold a case management hearing Ms Ecclestone did not say anything during the hearing in front of Judge Robin Tolson QC An issue between parties about an answer given by Mr Stunt had been resolved, the court heard. Mr Cusworth said: 'Firstly, my client's application to strike out those parts of her husband's answer which are entirely irrelevant. As of this morning, he has now conceded to this application, and all those parts can be struck out.' His answer had included reference to Ms Ecclestone throwing him a birthday party, and sending him a Valentine's Day card, the hearing was told. Mr Cusworth said: 'The application which the husband made - this is a separate application to amend his answer - is one we say was made fundamentally dishonest.' He said it introduced 'new matters', adding: 'What we object to about the application is those other parts that change the husband's case fundamentally. 'The way in which the husband was seeking to alter the case. 'This is an application which should be dismissed. It should be dismissed with costs.' But Judge Tolson said: 'It seems to me the sort of thing I will be dealing with at the final hearing.' Mr Cusworth said: 'An awful lot of time and money and energy has been spent. This is the second attempt at a case management hearing.' The judge replied: 'It will come out of the wash pretty rapidly once the parents give evidence. And I have absolutely no doubt, when I should revise, there should be an application for costs.' James Stunt leaves the home he shared with wife Petra Ecclestone in a convoy of Rolls Royces and a Lamborghini amid bitter divorce proceedings A full hearing has been scheduled for October which is due to last for two days. The former couple are expected to fight over their 158million mansion in Los Angeles and a Grade II-listed home in London's Chelsea, worth up to 100million. A family court hearing earlier this year was told Mr Stunt had signed a prenuptial agreement worth 16million. Mr Stunt's belongings were taken to a London hotel by the 35-year-old's entourage a day after he was evicted by his estranged wife last month. Among the playboy's possessions were his Rolls Royce, customised Range Rover, 300,000 Lamborghini Aventador and 180,000 Lamborghini Huracan. Petra went to court to return to their marital home in Chelsea and have Mr Stunt evicted His wife went to court to return to their marital home. Her billionaire father Bernie has previously spoken out about his daughter Petra's divorce from her husband James Stunt, telling MailOnline: 'She has suffered an awful lot and I couldn't bear for her to suffer any more'. He added: 'I don't like to see marriages broken up unnecessarily, she tolerated it for quite a long time. He has caused enough aggravation for Petra'. Extraordinary details of their bitter marriage were laid bare during a highly charged court hearing in early July. Mr Ecclestone said: 'It wasn't a divorce hearing, it was simply for Petra to be able to go back to her house. 'The case was for the judge to tell him to leave. It is a rather super house to live in which he would like people to believe he owns but he doesn't'. The Central Family Court heard that Mr Stunt had signed a prenuptial agreement worth 16million. His assets were also said to include a wine collection worth up to 15million and two Chelsea properties worth up to 4million each. The bad-tempered hearing boiled over when Mr Stunt slammed his hand onto a table and appeared to make a 'gun gesture' with his hand. He then pointed at Mr Ecclestone before calling him a 'c***' under his breath. Mr Stunt then tapped him on the shoulder and stormed out of the court room. Mr Ecclestone stood up as if to confront him and started to follow him before the judge intervened and denied he is the driving force behind the split. The billionaire said: 'This is the kind of behaviour I expect of him. He is not a quiet-natured guy. He explodes for very little. 'It is erratic behaviour, even the judge commented on it.[In court] He punched me in the back. I got up to have a conversation with him and the judge told me to leave it. 'He thinks I was behind Petra leaving him and it's completely the opposite. I don't want to see a marriage broken up'. President Trump indicated he was willing to launder his pledge to make Mexico pay for a border wall, according to a newly revealed classified transcript of his conversation with Mexico's president. Trump spoke to Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto on January 27 at the start of his own presidency, after having campaigned on repeated pledges to make Mexico pay for the wall. But in comments revealed by the Washington Post, Trump told his counterpart that it was his public statements that took precedence over the real bottom line. As for the funding, 'It will come out in the wash, and that is okay,' Trump said, according to the transcript reported by the Post. But 'if you are going to say that Mexico is not going to pay for the wall, then I do not want to meet with you guys anymore because I cannot live with that,' the president is quoted as saying. President Donald Trump told Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto payment for the border wall would 'come out in the wash' as he urged him not to say he wouldn't pay for it The president's comments show he was attuned to how the public would perceive any signs of backtracking on his campaign pledge to somehow force a sovereign nation to pay for something its leaders vehemently opposed. 'You cannot say that to the press,' Trump told him. Trump called the law identified as his among top campaign priorities 'the least important thing we are talking about, but politically this might be the most important.' Trump's Jan. 28 call with ally Australia's prime minister Malcolm Turnbull was contentious but his chat with adversary Russian President Vladimir Putin went far more smoothly, according to the president. 'I have had it,' Trump said over a spat about receiving previously agreed-upon refugees. 'I have been making these calls all day, and this is the most unpleasant call all day.' ART OF THE DEAL: Trump said the wall was the 'least important' issue on the table but the chief political concern Trump's conversation with Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto took place in English and Spanish In contrast, 'Putin was a pleasant call,' Trump said. 'This is ridiculous.' 'This is going to kill me,' Trump vented. 'I am the world's greatest person that does not want to let people into the country. And now I am agreeing to take 2,000 people.' The calls occurred when Trump was still getting a feel for how to interact with foreign leaders just days into the world's most powerful job. In their conversation, Pena Nieto who gave Trump a PR boost during the campaign by meeting him one-on-one was unequivocal about his opposition to paying for the wall. 'Let me tell you, Mr. President, this is not a personal difference. It has nothing to do with you personally, Mr. President. But it is an unthinkable that I cannot ignore this because we find this completely unacceptable for Mexicans to pay for the wall that you are thinking of building.' Trump said an early call with Russian President Vladimir Putin was much more 'pleasant' than his contentious talk with Australia's prime minister Trump repeatedly promised during his campaign to build a wall and make Mexico pay for it The president pleaded his own case, complaining about the trade deficit and factories moving to Mexico, before noting how her performed among hispanics in the election. 'I do not know if you heard, but with Cuba, I had 84 percent, with the Cuban-American vote. But overall generally, I had well over 30 percent and everyone was shocked to see this,' Trump said. 'In Ohio, they are having rallies for Trump right now because Trump has taken a hard stance on Mexico,' Trump told Pena Nieto. Pointing to Israel and its controversial wall, Trump said: 'Bibi Netanyahu told me the wall works.' Pena Nieto pleaded to find ways to move beyond the issue. 'Okay, Enrique, that is fine and I think it is fair. I do not bring up the wall but when the press brings up the wall, I will say, 'let us see how it is going let us see how it is working out with Mexico,' Trump said. 'Because from an economic issue, it is the least important thing we were talking about, but psychologically, it means something so let us just say 'we will work it out.' And if you want to do that, then we will go back to the negotiation table with Jared and Luis. And I am sure they can work something out that is good for both nations, and obviously that would be a positive thing. And I am sort of in this bad position because the deal that they are making is not nearly as good as the deal I could impose tomorrow in fact this afternoon. I do not have to go back to Congress or to the Senate. I do not need the vote of 400 people. I have the powers to do all of this.' Trump laid out the political dynamics. 'The only thing I will ask you though is on the wall, you and I both have a political problem. My people stand up and say, Mexico will pay for the wall and your people probably say something in a similar but slightly different language,' Trump told his counterpart. 'But the fact is we are both in a little bit of a political bind because I have to have Mexico pay for the wall I have to.' 'They are going to say, who is going to pay for the wall, Mr. President? to both of us, and we should both say, we will work it out. It will work out in the formula somehow. As opposed to you saying, we will not pay and me saying, we will not pay, Trump continued. Trump indicated a deal on the wall could be historic. 'I will say with you representing Mexico and me representing the United States we will have a good agreement and we will almost become the fathers of our country almost not quite okay?' he said. 'It is you and I against the world, Enrique, do not forget,' Trump said, trying to hold Pena Nieto closely. Trump even appeared to dangle the idea of a prolonged presidency to his counterpart. 'Good. I want you to be so popular that your people will call for a constitutional amendment in Mexico so that you can run again for another six years,' Trump said. Turning to the drug war, Trump used the 'tough hombres' line that he used on Twitter during the campaign. 'You have some pretty tough hombres in Mexico that you may need help with, and we are willing to help you with that big-league. But they have to be knocked out and you have not done a good job of knocking them out,' Trump scolded Pena Nieto. Then he cast the Mexican army, which has been battling drug lords for years amid assassinations and murders, as fearful. 'And I know this is a tough group of people, and maybe your military is afraid of them, but our military is not afraid of them, and we will help you with that 100 percent because it is out of control totally out of control,' Trump said. A local Canadian news reporter was the one making headlines when she accidentally dropped the F-bomb on live television after forgetting her lines. Video of Avneet Dhillon's slip-up on CBC News has since gone viral, garnering more than 15,000 views. But things started off smoothly for Dhillon as she began her segment on a 17-year-old girl who had been injured after falling off a skateboard. Scroll down for video Local Canadian news reporter Avneet Dhillon (right) has gone viral after she accidentally dropped the F-bomb on live television Things started off smoothly for Dhillon as she began her segment on a 17-year-old girl who had been injured after falling off a skateboard Dhillon explains in the clip that the girl was holding onto a Jeep when the car hit a speed bump, knocking her off the ground and running over her leg and pelvic area. 'Now according to the police report, the injuries were not serious but the girl was rushed to the hospital,' Dhillon says. 'There's no update at this time on her condition.' Dhillon then begins to read a statement by the Royal Newfoundland Constabulary, a police force in Canada, when she realized she had forgotten an important fact. 'In the meantime, the RNC has issued a statement saying that...' Dhillon begins, and then raises her eyebrows when the realization hits. 'The driver of the vehicle was also a 17-year-old girl,' she adds. Dhillon then begins to read a statement by the Royal Newfoundland Constabulary, a police force in Canada, when she realized she had forgotten an important fact 'The RNC says calls like this are not common, the...f**k,' Dhillon then utters under her breath She sheepishly smiles to the camera and raises her eyebrows when the realization hits that she has forgotten her lines 'The RNC says...' Dhillon then starts again, sheepishly smiling at the camera as she realizes she's forgotten her lines. 'The RNC says calls like this are not common, the...f**k,' Dhillon then utters under her breath, looking at the ground as she tries to remember the rest of the report. 'Calls like this are not common,' she repeats to herself again, taking a breath as she attempts to recall her lines. 'The RNC says calls like this are not common, now in the meantime they are urging people to...not,' she trails off again. The producer then finally cuts off the segment, returning back to the anchors. Dhillon then continues to walk back and forth on the street as she tries to recall her lines Advertisement The Pacific north-west is seeing temperatures nearing the triple digit mark for the first time in decades, sending residents scrambling to buy air-conditioners. An excessive heat warning is in effect for Seattle Thursday as temperatures continue to climb through the day to near 100 degrees. Forecasters had warned that Seattle could see its highest temperatures since the 1890s. The city has recorded only three days at 100 degrees or higher in the more than a century, according to the weather service. Even the lows are high. The National Weather Service says 'preliminary low in Seattle is 70. If it holds, it would be our 2nd warmest minimum temperature in 123 years of Seattle area records.' People are cooling off at the International Fountain at the Seattle Center during the heat wave People sunbathe and cool off in the Willamette River with the downtown skyline visible in the background in Portland, Oregon People embrace the rising temperatures by splashing around in Keller Fountain Park in Portland, Oregon One child bolts as others hold their ground as water begins to spray out at the International Fountain at the Seattle Center during a heat wave The National Weather Service says Thursday's low temperature could be the warmest in 123 years The Pacific Northwest's largest city opened about 30 cooling centers in air-conditioned libraries and senior centers. Seattle officials also encouraged people to use more than two dozen wading pools and spray parks. Residents are unprepared for such excessive heat as they are snatching up air-conditioners for the first time. Seattle does not normally experience such high temperatures, so only a third of homes have air-conditioning units. New York Times reports temperatures can climb as high as 104 degrees in the city. 'This is definitely not a town that was built on air-conditioning, and usually we don't need it,' Dana Felton, a National Weather Service meteorologist in Seattle, told The Seattle Times. 'We have only hit 100 or more on three days in 120 years of keeping records, and on average we have only three 90-degree-plus days a year.' Although around 70 per cent of homes in Portland have air-conditioning, it still means more than 270,000 do not. A child reacts to water pouring over her as she stands in the International Fountain at the Seattle Center Alex Farrell, center, of Lynnwood, Wash., stands in the mist of a fan at a cooling station at Seattle Seahawks NFL football training camp on Tuesday Davi Sobotta holds up her hands as she tries out the last, large tabletop fan available at a Home Depot hardware store ahead of an expected heat wave in Seattle Store greeter Danny Olivar, right, lends a hand to a customer to heft an air conditioning unit from a rapidly declining stock at the Seattle Home Depot The evening sun shines through a US flag flying in the wind against a sky made hazy with smoke from wildfires, Wednesday in Tacoma In normally temperate Oregon and Washington, warm days mean simply drawing shades and running fans. But a searing high-pressure system was making Portland and Seattle sizzle and leading residents to hunt for air conditioning. Portland hit 100 degrees on Wednesday and Seattle 90. Many concerned communities have opened cooling centers and warned residents to stay hydrated, avoid strenuous activity and keep their dogs out of parked vehicles. The National Weather Service issued an excessive heat warning for western Washington and Oregon and said the highs in Seattle on Thursday could hit 95 while Portland could reach 105 degrees. The Northwest is better known for its fall, winter and spring rainy seasons. Even July and August are relatively mild months. But the powerful high-pressure system arrived just at the height of summer. Patrick Burnette looks over the rapidly diminishing supply of fans and air conditioners at the store in Seattle Children stand in the International Fountain at the Seattle Center during a heat wave Alex Farrell, of Lynnwood, Wash., stands in the mist of a fan at a cooling station at the training camp in record-breaking temperatures A fan attending Seattle Seahawks NFL football training camp reaches toward a fan as he cools off at a misting station on Tuesday Portland's light-rail trains are operating at slower speeds amid concern that the heat will cause tracks to expand and risk a derailment. In exchange for the slow service, fare inspectors are not checking riders for tickets. Hun Taing uses the train to get to her job in downtown Portland, but she switched to an air-conditioned car because of the delays. She and a co-worker, Heather Heater, had a casual work meeting Wednesday at Director Park, dipping their toes in the fountain as children splashed in the water. They both have air conditioning at home - something they once lacked - and expressed more concern for the homeless and elderly than for their personal comfort. A man races away as a jet begins to spray toward him at the International Fountain at the Seattle Center during a heat wave Temperatures will hit their highest Thursday in the Pacific north-west, with some reports of Seattle climbing over 100 degrees Excessive heat warning throughout the Pacific north-west Thursday touching parts of Seattle as well as Portland 'I was in an apartment without AC when I just had my twins, and it was really difficult,' Taing said Wednesday. 'We had to pack ourselves in the car and just go somewhere, drive somewhere, because that apartment on the second floor was too hot for the infants.' Heater, who endures jokes about her last name, said having air conditioning was a requirement when she moved to the fourth floor in a recently constructed apartment building. Anna Miller, 27, lives in an older brick building - a situation faced by many young renters in Portland. 'It's going to be pretty warm, but I'll probably just go to a bar before going home,' said Miller, who wore a scarf and long sleeves outdoors Wednesday because the morning was chilly and she works in an air-conditioned office as an administrative assistant. Outside an Amazon warehouse in Kent, Washington, hundreds of people lined up in a hot parking lot for a job fair, waiting to enter an air conditioned tent to check in. One potential applicant left after being told he couldn't leave his dog in his car, even with the windows open. Ron Joslin, 55, of Tacoma, broiled in a lavender shirt and striped tie as he waited. He's been out of work since April, but the forecast almost kept him from the job fair, he said. His wife insisted he go. 'She heard about it on the news and was like, ''You need to go there.'' I said, ''It's going to be 100 degrees.'' She said, ''You need to go there.'' She's tired of me being around the house.' Amazon took lengths to keep the potential employees comfortable, handing out iced bottles of water. Some temporary workers hired for the day ferried trays of cups overflowing with blue, red and yellow shaved ice to the sweltering applicants. In the state capital of Olympia, 66-year-old Dave Thysell was two-thirds of the way through a 13-mile walk, a trek he said he made earlier than he usually does. 'I never exercise early, but today I did,' he said Wednesday. 'I don't like the extreme heat.' In Olympia, 'anything above 75 or 80 is too much.' Temperatures in the capital were supposed to be in the upper 90s Wednesday and surpassing the 100-degree mark on Thursday. In spite of the scorching conditions, Thysell said he's not rushing out to buy an air conditioner. Even if he wanted to, most stores are sold out. Seattle, which has experienced only three 100 degree days in 123 years, is unprepared for the heatwave about to hit the region (file picture) Some 68,000 households have had their benefits capped - ensuring those who rely on welfare hand-outs do not rake in more than hardworking families. The government has imposed tougher restrictions on the payments in an effort to curb welfare dependency and tackle the ballooning benefits bill hardworking taypayers are dumped with. Under new limits, households cannot receive more than 20,000 in benefits a year - the equivalent of earning 26,000 before tax - or 23,000 if they live in London. And figures released today by the Department for Work and Pensions show that an extra 52,000 households are now subject to the cap - bringing the total up to 68,000. While Work and Pensions Secretary David Gauke credited the policy with helping to encourage thousands of people into finding work. Work and Pensions Secretary David Gauke, pictured heading into No10 for a Cabinet meeting last month, said it is right that people on state hand out make the same tough decisions as those in work He said that 34,000 households previously subject to the cap having returned to work since it was introduced in April 2013. The Tory government set about reducing the cap after winning the 2015 election, with David Cameron warning that 'welfare is a safety net for those in hard times, not a lifestyle choice'. But Britain's new, tougher welfare cap faces the prospect of being watered down after the High Court recently ruled that single parents with children under two should not be subject to the cap. Ministers have vowed to fight on and appeal the ruling. The DWP says lone parents can still receive benefits up to the equivalent salary of 25,000, or 29,000 in London under the cap. Mr Gauke said: 'It is right that people who are out of work are faced with the same choices as those who are in work and these figures show that the benefit cap has been a real success. 'But behind these figures are thousands of people who are now better off in work and enjoying the benefits of a regular wage. 'With record levels of employment and over three quarters of a million vacancies at any one time, even more people have the opportunity to change their lives for the better.' The cap limits the total income households can receive from a series of benefits, such as jobseeker's allowance, housing benefit and child tax credits. The DWP figures show 15,000 new families had their benefits capped in March, April and May, with 13,000 families moving off the cap over the same period. The lower cap has also seen the proportion of capped households rise outside London. Around half of those subject to the cap have their income reduced by 50 a week or less. David Cameron said slashing the welfare bill would be one of his first priorities on being elected in 2015 - the government followed through and introduced a tougher benefits cap which helps ensure those on state handoutsare not better off than working families But Dalia Ben-Galim, director of policy at charity Gingerbread, said the cap is forcing families into poverty. She said: 'The High Court ruling on the benefit cap was unambiguous, single parent families with babies and children should be exempt from this policy. 'The figures today show that even greater numbers of the most vulnerable families are being affected by the cap for no good reason. 'It is not too late for the Government to withdraw its appeal. The current policy is driving families into poverty, rather than into work.' The Government has indicated it will appeal against the High Court's decision, with figures released to Parliament saying it could spend more than 100,000 on legal fees at the High Court and Court of Appeal. Shadow work and pensions minister Margaret Greenwood said: 'It is time that we urgently reviewed the benefit cap's impact and effectiveness.' Sir James Munby said he felt 'ashamed and embarrassed' that a UK-wide search had turned up no hospital that could take the teenager A family judge has warned the state will have 'blood on its hands' if an NHS hospital is not found for a suicidal 17-year-old girl within days. Sir James Munby said he felt 'ashamed and embarrassed' that a UK-wide search had turned up no hospital that could take the teenager. She is currently being held in a secure unit where the judge said she has had to be physically restrained 117 times to stop her killing herself. The judge described the girl, referred to as 'X', as 'existing' in 'shocking conditions' and added: 'I cannot bring myself to use the word living'. She is due to be released from the unit on August 14, and Sir James said her case was 'desperately urgent'. Medics treating her believed that, if released with nowhere to go but her home town, it will be nothing more than 'a suicide mission'. And Sir James said the case underlined the 'well known scandal' of the 'disgraceful and utterly shaming lack of proper provision' for children and young people with mental health problems. He added: 'If this is the best we can do for X, and others in similar crisis, what right do we, what right do the system, our society and indeed the state itself, have to call ourselves civilised. 'The honest answer to this question should make us all feel ashamed. 'For my own part, acutely conscious of my powerlessness - of my inability to do more for X - I feel shame and embarrassment. 'Shame as a human being, as a citizen and as an agent of the state, embarrassment as President of the Family Division, and, as such Head of Family Justice, that I can do no more for X. 'If, when in 11 days' time she is released from the unit, we, the system, society, the state, are unable to provide X with the supportive and safe placement she so desperately needs, and if, in consequence, she is enabled to make another attempt on her life, then I can only say, with bleak emphasis, we will have blood on our hands.' Sir James ordered that a copy of his decision be sent to the Chief Executive of NHS England and to the Secretaries of State for the Home Department, for Health, for Justice, and for Education. 'My judicial duty, as with every judge in this country, is 'to do right to all manner of people after the laws and usages of this realm'. There are occasions, and this is one, where doing 'right' includes speaking truth to power,' he said. 'The entrance to the Old Bailey, the Central Criminal Court, admonishes those who enter to 'Defend the Children of the Poor.' Is less required of the Family Court or of the Family Division of the High Court? I think not.' She is currently being held in a secure unit where the judge said she has had to be physically restrained 117 times to stop her killing herself The court heard earlier that the girl is being held under a Detention and Training Order imposed at the Youth Court. Sir James ordered her to be taken into care in June - after she made a series of 'determined attempts to commit suicide' - and urged Cumbria County Council to leave no stone unturned in seeking a placement for her in an NHS psychiatric hospital. Despite 'unrelenting efforts' by the council and other agencies to find somewhere for her to go, no suitable NHS bed had been found and the judge observed: 'I might as well have been talking to myself in the middle of the Sahara.' Staff at the secure unit are convinced that 'her goal is to kill herself' and, if she is sent back to her home town on release, it will be a 'suicide mission'. During less than six months in the unit, there had been 102 'significant incidents of self harm' and she had to be restrained 117 times. She had also damaged property and made '45 assaults and 25 attempted assaults on adults'. Sir James said that 'X's need for placement in a suitable, secure clinical/hospital setting is now overwhelming.' But a nationwide search had revealed that 'no such placement was availble anywhere in this country.' A giant brawl broke out among tourists and scenic spot workers leading to one person being knocked unconscious. Visitors and staff started fighting at the Wulong Mountain Forest Park in Chongqing, China on July 31 after the tourists were told to pay a 30 yuan (3) cleaning fee for bringing their own tents. According to Chinese media, one of the men involved was knocked into a coma. Shocking moment: One visitor was 'knocked into a coma' during the violent brawl The fight broke out after staff at the centre asked for extra cash for the use of tents Witnesses say that the visitors argued with park staff after they were asked to pay the clean-up fee. According to the tourists, they were using the tents to sit in and relax while enjoying the scenery. They refused to pay the fee and staff threatened to remove them from the park when the fight broke out. One of the tourists surnamed Yan told Huanqiu that they had already paid a 55 yuan (6.24) admission fee and were not made aware of the tent charge. Visitors asked for the park to provide documentation of the additional cost but refused Video footage shows the moment the fight broke out between the two parties They asked staff to provide documentation of the additional fee but they refused. Yan claims that at that point, staff started to beat them. Yan said that her three friends were injured. Video footage shows the moment the fight broke out between the two parties. According to the People's Daily Online, one man was knocked unconscious and had to be rushed to hospital. The park told reporters that there is a separate fee for entry and bringing a tent and those that do bring them will be asked to pay the fee. They said that the park will be investigating the incident further. Police have also confirmed that they are investigating. Natalia Sikorska, pictured arriving at Westminster Magistrates Court today, admitted theft A model who tried to steal 1,000 worth of designer goods from Harrods was let off with a slap on the wrist after a magistrate said she was a woman of 'considerable talents'. Natalia Sikorska, 28, a business management student, attempted to make off with a Markus Lupfer jacket, a pair of Claudie Pierlot shoes, a Pinko handbag and the silver knife on 5 July. But the Chelsea resident was stopped before she left the Knightsbridge, London, store with the haul worth 959.59. After she admitted theft Westminster Magistrate Grant McCrostie gave the Polish model and actress, who has recently moved to Britain, a conditional discharge for 12 months. He said: 'You are a newcomer to this country, you are a student with a place at university. 'You are obviously a woman of considerable talents, you are obviously intelligent. Mr McCrostie said if Sikorska, who is currently studying business management and economics at the University of Westminster, stays out of trouble for that period she will not face any further punishment. Continuing he sentencing, he added: 'Taking goods from any store, including Harrods is wrong. 'Your future has been put at risk by these actions. 'Because of the fact that you pleaded guilty at the earliest opportunity and you do have a potentially bright future, we will deal with this more leniently than we should have. She attempted to make off with a Markus Lupfer jacket, a pair of Claudie Pierlot shoes, a Pinko handbag and the silver knife on 5 July After she admitted theft Westminster Magistrate Grant McCrostie gave her a conditional discharge for 12 months 'It will be a conditional discharge for a period of 12 months.' 'You have been given another opportunity do not abuse the opportunity we have given you, stay out of trouble,' he said. WHAT SHE STOLE Sikorska, 28, attempted to make off with a Markus Lupfer jacket, a pair of Claudie Pierlot shoes, a Pinko handbag and a silver knife on July 5. She was stopped before she left the Knightsbridge store with the haul worth 959.59. Advertisement Sikorska replied: 'Thank you so much.' The defendant began studying business management at the University of Westminster in 2015, a year after she first moved to London to work as a receptionist. She is currently employed as a business development manager for drinks bottle manufacturers Aquatiser and as an interpreter. Before moving to England, she previously studied psychology at the University of Warsaw and has worked as a sales associate with variety of luxurious brands such as Saint Laurent Paris, Globe Trotter and Hugo Boss. Sikorska, of Chelsea, West London, was given a conditional discharge, ordered to pay 85 costs and a 20 victim surcharge. The Polish model and actress is currently studying business management and economics at the University of Westminster As well as being a model, actor, business development manager and student Sikorska works as an interpreter and studied psychology at the University of Warsaw. Sikorska, of Chelsea, admitted attempted theft from a shop. She was given a conditional discharge, ordered to pay 85 costs and a 20 victim surcharge Sikorska, 28, attempted to make off with a Markus Lupfer jacket, a pair of Claudie Pierlot shoes, a Pinko handbag and a silver knife on July 5 SENTENCING GUIDELINES FOR SIKORSKA'S THEFT As magistrate Grant McCrostie admitted, he dealt with the model 'more leniently than we should have.' Sentencing guidelines for sets the benchmark between 'Category 1' and 'Category 2' at 1,000. Because Sikorska's haul came to 40.41 under that threshold, she just missed being in the more severe Category 1. The sentencing guidelines for this level of theft range depending on the level of pre-planning and violence that went into the theft, coupled with any mental disabilities or if they were forced into it by others. As Sikorska showed no signs of either, it is likely that she would fall into the 2C category - the least serious of Category 2 theft. But, due to the high value of the items stolen, the sentencing guidelines recommend that judges or magistrates should issue the defendant with a fine, and not a discharge. It should be noted, though, that these are merely guidelines and not steadfast rules - magistrates have the power to deal on a case-by-case basis as they see fit. Advertisement The model was let off with a conditional discharge after a judge said she was a woman of 'considerable talents' The 28-year-old model was stopped before she left the Knightsbridge store with the haul worth 959.59 The 28-year-old has said she works as a model for 'Elite London Model' on her Facebook page Dramatic footage shows a rescue helicopter crashing into Austria's highest mountain while trying to save a mountaineer having a heart attack. It showed the rescue helicopter spinning out of control before plummeting into Austria's highest mountain, the Grossglockner, just a few feet away from a sheer cliff. The helicopter crew was on its way to a cabin near the summit, around 11,000ft above sea level, after receiving an emergency call about a mountaineer with heart problems. Dramatic footage shows a rescue helicopter crashing into Austria's highest mountain while trying to save a mountaineer It showed the rescue helicopter spinning out of control before plummeting into Austria's highest mountain, the Grossglockner If the helicopter crashed just a few feet away, it could have tumbled hundreds of feet down a steep cliff The pilot, 36, alongside a paramedic and flight rescuer, both 53, made their way to the cabin despite the approaching darkness on Tuesday evening. The rescue mission appears to be going successfully until the helicopter begins its take off with the patient on board. The pilot later told how a massive wind gust pushed the helicopter off balance and sent it into a spin. An eyewitness, who happened to be climbing the mountain at the time, filmed the terrifying scene from its peak. Amazingly, the pilot, flight rescuer and the patient were all unharmed in the crash - and the paramedic on board suffered only minor injuries. Amazingly, the pilot, flight rescuer and the patient were all unharmed in the crash (pictured) If the helicopter crashed just a few feet away, it could have tumbled hundreds of feet down a steep cliff. The mountaineer with the heart problem was flown away to hospital in a different chopper once the injured paramedic was taken to a local hospital. Flight experts say that, at this altitude, the situation is entirely different than down in the valley due to the thin air. With sudden wind gusts, the air can quickly become unstable. Flight operator and owner of the rescue helicopter Roy Knaus explained that such rescue missions are never without risks. Knaus said: 'The weather conditions can always change rapidly at this altitude.' An eyewitness, who happened to be climbing the mountain at the time, filmed the terrifying scene from its peak He said that after talks with the pilot and paramedics, a technical problem could be ruled out as the helicopter did have a capacity reserve. Michael Umschaden, a rescue helicopter pilot based in Klagenfurt, explained that pilots in such situations have only few seconds to react. Umschaden said: 'Constant winds helps with the flight, but sudden wind blows, which mainly occur in the mountains, are difficult to estimate.' A beach attendant has been hailed as a 'hero' for breaking up a gun fight over an inflatable octopus by whacking the armed man with a parasol. Wes Woodin noticed the argument on Okaloosa Island, Florida, late on Monday afternoon. He said the fight started as a dispute about a $2 (1.50) inflatable toy when suddenly one of the beach-goes pulled out a loaded weapon. Beach attendant Wes Woodin (pictured) has been hailed as a 'hero' for breaking up a gun fight over an inflatable octopus by whacking the armed man with a parasol 'This is what happens when you bring an umbrella to a gun fight,' wrote Wes Woodin in a post online. When the fight began to escalate, Woodin approached the man and quickly thumped him in the face with the beach umbrella. 'I swung the umbrella, hit him in the face, knocked him out,' Wooden told NWF Daily News. 'I pulled the gun out and cleared the chamber.' Woodin, who works for Coastal Beach Services, and another man held him until deputies from the Okaloosa County Sheriff's Office arrived. Woodin noticed the argument on Okaloosa Island, Florida, late on Monday afternoon He said the fight started as a dispute about a $2 (1.50) inflatable toy when suddenly one of the beach-goes pulled out a loaded weapon Both sides were questioned but neither wanted to press charges. The armed man was taken to the hospital for injuries from the umbrella. Commenting on the video, David Becker wrote: 'You're a hero!' Christopher Holley added: 'If you pull a gun you gotta be prepared for an umbrella concussion.' A 73-year-old Florida widower has been banned from a Florida beach after a parent complained that he was handing out business cards that read, 'Sugardaddy seeking his sugarbaby.' Volusia County Beach Safety Capt. Tammy Marris says officials are making Richard Basaraba stay off the beach and off walkovers for six months for violating an ordinance that prohibits soliciting on the beach. Basaraba, who is a father and a grandfather, tells The Daytona Beach News-Journal he's 'devastated' and 'embarrassed' by what he considers an overreaction. Indecent proposal: A 16-year-old girl told Florida officials Richard Basaraba, 73, handed her 18-year-old friend this business card on a Volusia County beach Basaraba was banned from all Volusia County beaches, beach walkways and public restrooms for six months A 16-year-old girl told officials Basaraba handed her 18-year-old friend a card Saturday that featured a picture of a young woman sitting on an older man's lap. The message on the card read, 'Ask me about your monthly allowance.' It also included an email address. The 16-year-old girl later told the authorities that after Basaraba learned her age, he held up a bra pad and said he was looking for someone to fill it. He told the teenager she 'would be perfect' and urged her to contact him when she turned 18. The 16-year-old's mother, Karolina Seaman (pictured), accused Basaraba of trying to entice her underage daughter into being his sugarbaby The teenage girl's mother, Karolina Seaman, of Oviedo, recounted the incident in an Instagram post on Saturday. According to Seaman's version of events, her family were spending the day near the Seabreeze beach ramp in Daytona Beach when a '60+ year old man' - later identified as Basaraba - approached her two daughters, one of them aged 16, and their friends. 'He singled out my youngest daughter, who is clearly underage, & attempted to recruit her to be his "sugar baby,'" the furious mother wrote. Seaman alerted the authorities about 'this sick perverted man' and Basaraba was soon detained, but according to the mom, he was not arrested because there was not enough evidence to charge him with a crime. Instead, the septuagenarian ladies' man was banned from all Volusia County beaches, beach walkways and public restrooms for six months. 'I raised my girls to be polite & to respect elders so they didn't think anything of it when he first approached them as who would expect for an elderly man on the beach to try to solicit minors,' Mrs Seaman stated in her post, adding that her daughters were shaken but not harmed. Basaraba insisted to the News-Journal that the entire incident hinged on a big misunderstanding, and that it was never his intent to solicit underage girls for anything inappropriate. Conversation starter: Basaraba has been walking around carrying this bra pad, offering women to 'fill it' He also claimed that Seaman's daughter and the other girls approached him first, and that he handed his business card to another woman who was 18. 'I engaged [the 16-year-old] before I knew she was 16 because of her bust size. I did make the mistake of saying, "Youre the cutest one here. Call me when youre 18,' he said. Basaraba, a retired engineer, lost his wife of 37 years in 2003 and never remarried. He says he barely has enough money to make ends mean, let alone fund a 'sugarbaby.' But Mrs Seaman was not swayed by his explanations. Speaking to WESH-TV, she had a message for Basaraba: 'If you want something go find it in a nursing home. Don't go to the beach approaching underage girls.' Basaraba says in the aftermath of the incident, he threw out the business cards and deleted the email account and a Facebook account where he posted pictures of women in bikinis. If given the opportunity, he says he would like to apologize to Karolina Seaman and her daughter. President Donald Trump told Australia's prime minister that a deal his predecessor struck up with the foreign government to accept 1,250 refugees was going to get him 'killed' and that he would be 'seen as a weak and ineffective leader' if he honored it. Trump voiced his concerns to Turnbull in a phone call that took place eight days after he was inaugurated. The tone and tenor of the conversation were already known - The Washington Post revealed snippets of the terse conversation several days later. The publication put out a full transcript of the conversation this morning, though, that reveals just how angry Trump was about the refugee deal. 'I have had it. I have been making these calls all day and this is the most unpleasant call all day. Putin was a pleasant call. This is ridiculous,' Trump tells Turnbull near the end of the January call. President Donald Trump told Australia's prime minister that a deal his predecessor struck up with the foreign government to accept 1,250 refugees was going to get him 'killed' and that he would be 'seen as a weak and ineffective leader' if he honored it. He's seen with Turnbull at a New York function three months later, in May As the talk grew tense Trump told him, 'You have brokered many a stupid deal in business.' Trump took the Oath of Office on Jan. 20. He spoke to Turnbull over the phone on Jan. 28. In the call the new president repeatedly misstated the number of refugees the U.S. had agreed to take on and opined that the deal with Australia put him in a 'bad position' his first week on the job. One Trump's first acts in office had been to sign a refugee ban prohibiting arrivals from citizens of seven countries on a temporary basis. The group included Iran, Iraq, Sudan and Somalia. Barack Obama's administration had previously agreed to accept 1,250 refugees of those nationalities and others who were being held in detention centers off Australia's coast in Papua New Guinea. Conditions at the detention centers had prompted United Nations condemnation. The U.S. said it would take in half of the population, so long as they passed security screening tests that other refugees have also been submitted to. On Feb. 1 the US embassy in Canberra said President Trump would honor the deal with Australia, despite his issuing an executive order that barred other refugees from those countries from setting foot on U.S. soil. Not too long after, Trump tweeted: 'Do you believe it? The Obama Administration agreed to take thousands of illegal immigrants from Australia. Why? I will study this dumb deal!' His tweet cast the United States' commitment to the deal into doubt, as well as its relationship with Australia, a key ally that it shares intelligence with as part of the 'Five Eyes' agreement. Vice President Mike Pence assured Australians in April during a visit to Sydney that the U.S. would hold up its end of the agreement. 'But it doesn't mean we admire the agreement,' Pence said during a news conference. 'Frankly looking back at the last administration, the President has never been shy about expressing frustration with other international agreements, most notably the so-called nuclear agreement with Iran.' Trump voiced his concerns to Turnbull in a phone call that took place eight days after he was inaugurated on Jan. 28 As Trump sat down with Turnbull in May for a conversation aboard the Intrepid in New York, he told reporters that earlier characterizations of their call were off base. 'We had a great telephone call. You guys exaggerated that call. That was a big exaggeration. We're not babies. That was a little bit of fake news,' he stated. The Washington Post had put out portions of the call to that point, but not the full transcript. An unedited copy of the conversation that it posted to its website this morning backs up its previous assertions. Trump suggested during the talk with Turnbull that he could renege on the refugee deal. 'I do not know what he got out of it. We never get anything out of it START Treaty, the Iran deal. I do not know where they find these people to make these stupid deals. I am going to get killed on this thing,' he said. Turnbull assures him, 'You will not.' Trump pushes back and says, 'Yes, I will be seen as a weak and ineffective leader in my first week by these people. This is a killer.' But his counterpart says, 'You can certainly say that it was not a deal that you would have done, but you are going to stick with it.' 'I am going to say that I have no choice but to honor my predecessors deal. I think it is a horrible deal, a disgusting deal that I would have never made. It is an embarrassment to the United States of America and you can say it just the way I said it. I will say it just that way,' Trump tells Turnbull 'As far as I am concerned that is enough Malcom.' Then, Trump fumes, 'I have had it. I have been making these calls all day and this is the most unpleasant call all day. Putin was a pleasant call. This is ridiculous.' He added, 'This is crazy.' Turnbull attempted to end the call on a high note, telling Trump, 'Thank you for your commitment. It is very important to us.' 'It is important to you and it is embarrassing to me. It is an embarrassment to me, but at least I got you off the hook. So you put me back on the hook,' Trump replied. The Australian leader stressed to Trump that he wouldn't regret it. 'You can count on me. I will be there again and again,' Turnbull asserted. TEN TIMES TRUMP SNIPED AT TURNBULL TRUMP: 'I do not know where they find these people to make these stupid deals. I am going to get killed on this thing.' TRUMP: 'I will be seen as a weak and ineffective leader in my first week by these people. This is a killer.' TRUMP: I think it is a horrible deal, a disgusting deal that I would have never made. It is an embarrassment to the United States of America.' TRUMP: 'I have had it. I have been making these calls all day and this is the most unpleasant call all day. Putin was a pleasant call. This is ridiculous. This is crazy.' TRUMP: 'The United States has become like a dumping ground.' TRUMP: 'Look, I spoke to Putin, Merkel, Abe of Japan, to France today, and this was my most unpleasant call.' TRUMP: 'I hate taking these people. I guarantee you they are bad. That is why they are in prison right now. They are not going to be wonderful people who go on to work for the local milk people.' TRUMP: 'You have brokered many a stupid deal in business and I respect you, but I guarantee that you broke many a stupid deal. This is a stupid deal. This deal will make me look terrible.' TRUMP: 'I say that it was a stupid deal like all the other deals that this country signed.' TRUMP: 'Can Australia give me a guarantee that if we have any problems you know that is what they said about the Boston bombers. They said they were wonderful young men.' Advertisement Calming down, Trump told him, 'I hope so. Okay, thank you Malcolm.' 'Okay, thank you,' Turnbull said before they disconnected. The official White House read out of the chat says the two leaders 'emphasized the enduring strength and closeness of the U.S.-Australia relationship.' WaPo's transcript of the talk emphasizes Trump's frustration with the refugee deal and the trouble he had wrapping his head round it. 'Who made the deal? Obama?' he says partway through. 'Yes, but let me describe what it is. I think it is quite consistent. I think you can comply with it,' Turnbull tells him. That was after Trump told him that taking in 2,000 people who are 'probably troublesome...will make us look awfully bad' in the context of his Syrian refugee ban. 'Here I am calling for a ban where I am not letting anybody in and we take 2,000 people,' Trump says. 'Really it looks like 2,000 people that Australia does not want and I do not blame you by the way, but the United States has become like a dumping ground.' Trump goes on to say: 'I love Australia; I love the people of Australia. I have so many friends from Australia, but I said geez that is a big ask, especially in light of the fact that we are so heavily in favor, not in favor, but we have no choice but to stop things. 'We have to stop. We have allowed so many people into our country that should not be here. We have our San Bernardinos, we have had the World Trade Center come down because of people that should not have been in our country, and now we are supposed to take 2,000. It sends such a bad signal. You have no idea. It is such a bad thing.' Turnbull informs Trump in response that the deal doesn't require the U.S. to take 2,000 people in. In fact, it doesn't require the United States to accept a single refugee, if they don't meet the vetting standards. He also tells Trump, a leading businessman in America before he was elected, that it's important to respect deals. 'Every individual is subject to your vetting. You can decide to take them or to not take them after vetting. You can decide to take 1,000 or 100. It is entirely up to you,' Turnbull says. He also assures Trump that 'none of these people are from the conflict zone.' 'They are basically economic refugees from Iran, Pakistan, and Afghanistan. That is the vast bulk of them. They have been under our supervision for over three years now and we know exactly everything about them.' Trump gives Turnbull a skeptical look as they arrive for a family photo on the first day of the G20 summit in Hamburg, Germany, on July 7. Trump met Putin in person for the first time at the convening of the world's most powerful economies The reason they cannot come onto the mainland is because Australia bars refugee arrivals by boat, Turnbull explains, to stop smugglers from trafficking them. 'We had to deprive them of the product,' Turnbull says. 'So we said if you try to come to Australia by boat, even if we think you are the best person in the world, even if you are a Noble [sic] Prize winning genius, we will not let you in.' Trump tells him, 'That is a good idea. We should do that too. You are worse than I am.' They then veer off into a discussion about Angela Merkel's refugee policy and its effect on Germany. 'I spoke to Merkel today, and believe me, she wishes she did not do it. Germany is a mess because of what happened,' Trump says. Trump later comes back to the '2,000' refugees he thinks the U.S. is taking in - and proclaims that he's also hear it's 'like 5,000 as well.' 'The given number in the agreement is 1,250 and it is entirely a matter of your vetting,' Turnbull informs him. Trump disagrees with him, then lays on his first insult. 'Look, I spoke to Putin, Merkel, Abe of Japan, to France today, and this was my most unpleasant call because I will be honest with you. I hate taking these people. I guarantee you they are bad. That is why they are in prison right now. They are not going to be wonderful people who go on to work for the local milk people.' From there, the conversation goes downhill, with Trump telling Turnbull that deals like this one cost Obama's party the presidential election. 'That is why they lost the election, because of stupid deals like this. You have brokered many a stupid deal in business and I respect you, but I guarantee that you broke many a stupid deal. This is a stupid deal. This deal will make me look terrible.' TALKING TO YOU IS WORSE THAN PUTIN: 'Look, I spoke to Putin, Merkel, Abe of Japan, to France today, and this was my most unpleasant call,' Trump tells Turnbull. Putin and Trump are seen meeting above for the first time at the G20 Turnbull politely rebuffs him, reminding him once again of the pre-existing commitment, and Trump says, 'This shows me to be a dope. I am not like this but, if I have to do it, I will do it but I do not like this at all.' 'I think it is ridiculous and Obama should have never signed it. The only reason I will take them is because I have to honor a deal signed by my predecessor and it was a rotten deal. I say that it was a stupid deal like all the other deals that this country signed,' Trump says. After a bit of back and forth Trump asks Turnbull, 'Can Australia give me a guarantee that if we have any problems you know that is what they said about the Boston bombers. They said they were wonderful young men.' 'They were Russians. They were not from any of these countries,' Turnbull responds. 'They were from wherever they were,' Trump tells him. Finally, Turnbull explains that the refugees are part of a trade. Australia agreed to accept Central American migrants Obama really wanted to relocate in exchange for the refugees. 'I am a highly transactional businessman like you and I know the deal has to work for both sides,' Turnbull says. 'Now Obama thought this deal worked for him and he drove a hard bargain with us that it was agreed with Obama more than a year ago in the Oval Office, long before the election. The principles of the deal were agreed to.' This is just before the end of the call, where Trump first says he's going to get 'killed,' then declares that he had a more pleasant exchange with Putin. When Trump met with Turnbull in May, he was careful to play down the tensions. He even told Turnbull in front of the cameras that he thought Australia has a better health system that the United States - a comment that also caused him problems. Trump said to Turnbull in dinner remarks that night, 'We had a nice phone call, right?' 'Now the record is straight -- we had a very nice phone call.' He admitted the talk was 'a little testy, but that's OK' and said he was 'very proud of that relationship.' The U.S. president had arrived hours late in New York after holding an impromptu celebration in the White House's Rose Garden with House Republicans. They had just passed an Obamacare repeal bill. That legislation did not make it out of the Senate, and lawmakers are still haggling over a health care deal. Residents of a quiet suburb in Britain were left stunned after a huge cat was spotted prowling near a children's play area. Onlookers were stunned after the lynx-like beast was spotted in Herne Bay, Kent. Maria Parkhouse said she was shocked by the size of the creature, which she said resembled 'something out of a movie'. Ms Parkhouse said: 'I was driving along Hampton Pier Avenue when I saw a family pointing into some bushes. 'I was intrigued so pulled over and saw a huge silver, grey cat with unusual markings and a distinctive face. It was so different to anything I have ever seen. Scroll down for video Maria Parkhouse said she was shocked by the size of the cat, which was spotted near a children's play area in Herne Bay 'The size of it took my breath away. There's was something about the ferociousness of its face. It was like something out of a movie.' Ms Parkhouse parked up to take a picture of the huge creature but it darted off into the bushes before she managed to capture the image. She told a local newspaper: 'I parked up to take a photo. 'It was about 10 metres away from me at that point and looked gnarled, likei t had been out in the wild. Its fur was matted. It was 60cm tall and a metre long with sharp features.' Ms Parkhouse's failure to take a decent picture of the cat left her determined to figure out the species of the feline. She added: 'I got home and started Googling to see what it could be,' she said. 'It looked like a cross between a bobcat and a lynx, but probably more the sizeof a bobcat. The siting of the large cat has sparked fears an animal from the local nature park may have broken free, although the head of the park moved to ease fears 'I am wondering if there have been any other sightings. I have never seen such a huge cat and wonder if there have been any pet attacks locally.' Nature park Wildwood - which is home to wolves, bears and lynx - is just three miles away, but no animals have been reported missing from their enclosures. Peter Smith, who runs the wildlife park, said: 'Lynx can look scary but there is nothing to fear as no humans, including children, have ever been attacked by one in the wild. 'The Wildwood Trust is dedicated to releasing lynx back to appropriate places in the UK and is part of efforts to reintroduce them to Northumberland.' Kushner Companies, a property development business owned by White House adviser Jared Kushner's family, has been subpoenaed over a 'golden visa' program. Federal prosecutors issued a subpoena, which includes a request for emails to be turned over, regarding the company's development One Journal Square in Jersey City, New Jersey, according to a source who spoke to the Wall Street Journal. Kushner's sister Nicole Kushner Meyer visited Beijing and Shanghai this year, soliciting $150million in financing for One Journal Square with the lure of green cards for investors who put down $500,000 through the EB-5 government program. Kushner's sister Nicole Kushner Meyer (right with her brother) visited Beijing and Shanghai this year, soliciting $150million in financing for One Journal Square The EB-5 program provides foreign investors permanent residency in exchange for investments of at least $500,000 in U.S. development projects (pictured, One Journal Square) The tagline on a Beijing event brochure read: 'Invest $500,000 and immigrate to the United States.' Others bristled at Meyers' mention of her brother's position during the event It remains unclear what potential violations are being investigated, and the company's general counsel Emily Wolf said the company had complied with the rules of the program. In a statement to the WSJ, Wolf wrote: 'Kushner Companies utilized the program, fully complied with its rules and regulations and did nothing improper. We are cooperating with legal requests for information. The subpoena was issued in May, the same month Nicole Kushner Meyer visited the Four Seasons Hotel and the Ritz Carlton in China seeking investments for One Journal Square, a 66-floor $976.4million project that's currently underway. Kushner Companies' general counsel Emily Wolf (pictured) said it complied with the rules of the government program The tagline on a brochure read: 'Invest $500,000 and immigrate to the United States.' The money would be provided though EB-5, a program that provides foreign investors permanent residency in exchange for investments of at least $500,000 in U.S. development projects that generate at least 10 jobs per investor. Some lawmakers claim the program sells citizenship to high-income foreigners. Meyer spoke to the crowd at one event in Beijing, which was organized by Chinese immigration agency Qiaowai, about how her grandfather immigrated to the U.S. to build a business from scratch. She discussed her brother's new position at the White house, but did not overtly mention the president. Richard Painter, an ethics lawyer under President George W. Bush, bristled at mention of Jared Kushner's position, saying: 'They clearly imply that the Kushners are going to make sure you get your visa.' The company then apologized, and a spokesperson said Jared Kushner 'has nothing to do with this project'. Reuters previously revealed Qiaowai's promotional materials online and on social media, including for the One Journal Square project, sometimes referred to a green card guarantee or 'safeguard' and the safety of capital invested in EB-5 projects. After Reuters contacted Qiaowai for comment, the phrases were deleted. Qiaowai has also dropped the phrase 'government-supported' from its online promotion of the One Journal Square project. Richard Painter, an ethics lawyer under President George W. Bush, said: 'They clearly imply that the Kushners are going to make sure you get your visa' (pictured, Jared Kushner) Jared stepped down as CEO of Kushner Companies, but retains assets in developments. He received capital gains between $1million and $5million from One Journal Square 'It is a fundamental rule of the EB-5 program that an applicant's investment must remain "at risk" up to the end of the alien's conditional permanent resident status, and a "guaranteed" investment fails this basic EB-5 test,' according to Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), who has long advocated for reform of the EB-5 program. 'If Qiaowai is in fact guaranteeing the safety of the investment principal, all related EB-5 petitions should be rejected by USCIS,' he added in a May 24 letter. Qiaowai's assurances to investors that their green cards were guaranteed and their funds were safe appeared to violate U.S. securities laws, Grassley's letter said. Kushner Companies also used the EB-5 program for another development Trump Bay Street, although its unclear if the subpoena relates to that property as well. While Jared Kushner stepped down as CEO of Kushner Companies in January before he joined the Trump administration, he retains assets between $1million to $5million in Trump Bay Street. He also received capital gains between $1million and $5million from One Journal Square, according to the personal financial disclosure form he filed in July. Reuters previously revealed Qiaowai's promotional materials online and on social media, including for the One Journal Square project, sometimes referred to a green card guarantee The majority of the students in the incoming freshman class at Harvard University are non-white for the first time in the school's history. Of the 2,056 students admitted as part of the Class of 2021, 50.8 percent are from minority groups, including African-Americans, Hispanics, Asian-Americans, Native Americans, and Native Hawaiians - up last year from 47.3 percent. The news comes as the Trump administration intensifies its focus on affirmative action policies and suggests it will investigate how colleges shape the racial makeup of their campuses. The majority of the students in the incoming freshman class at Harvard University (pictured) are non-white for the first time in the school's history, with 50.8 percent of the 2,056 admitted students identifying as minorities African Americans experienced a jump, making up 14.6 percent of the enrolling class from 11.4 percent. Harvard (pictured) admitted 22.2 percent of students who identified as Asians, a 0.4 percent decrease from last year African Americans experienced a jump, making up 14.6 percent of the enrolling class from 11.4 percent. Harvard admitted 22.2 percent of students who identified as Asians, a 0.4 percent decrease from last year. And Harvard, located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, is not the only school making efforts to attract minorities. The University of Massachusetts Amherst made great efforts to attract from high schools in cities such as Springfield and Boston, James Roche, the school's associate provost of enrollment management, told the Boston Globe. In turn, freshmen minority enrollment has climbed from 21 percent in 2010 to nearly 30 percent in 2016. But news came this week that the Justice Department is planning to redirect its resources from its civil rights division to investigating policies deemed to discriminate against white applicants. On Wednesday, the Trump administration said it was looking into a single complaint from a coalition of Asian-American groups filed in 2015. The coalition filed a complaint against Harvard University, alleging that the school and other Ivy League institutions had racial quotas that shut out high-scoring Asians. RACIAL BREAKDOWN OF CLASS OF 2021 White students: 49.2 percent Asian-Americans: 22.2 percent African-Americans: 14.6 percent Hispanics: 11.6 percent Native Americans: 1.9 percent Native Hawaiians: 0.5 percent Advertisement Edward Blum, the president of Students for Fair Admissions, which brought the lawsuit, said he was surprised by the Justice Department's interest in the case. Last year, the US Supreme Court ruled in a four-to-three vote that college admission officers could continue to use race as one of several factors in deciding who is accepted. However, universities are required to show, if challenged, they had no choice but to use race to create diversity on campus in place of other factors such as family income or a percentage of first-generation college students, according to Vinay Harpalani, a law professor at Savannah Law School, who specializes in affirmative action. 'The fact that the Trump [administration] may investigate this may make universities more wary about using race in their admissions policies,' he told the Boston Globe. 'Universities typically don't like to make details on their race-conscious policies public, because the line between legal and illegal policies is not fully clear...and because there are always potential lawsuits out there, and also because this is such a politically charged issue.' Awat Hamasalih, 35, was jailed for six years for membership of a terrorist organisation An ISIS secret agent has been jailed for six years after using Britain as a base to tip off military commanders, raise money and recruit new fighters. Awat Hamasalih, 35, was jailed for six years after he was found guilty of the unusual charge of membership of a terrorist organisation. Hamasalih, from Kingstanding in the West Midlands, had claimed to be 'an enthusiast who is proud to be British' and denied he supported the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). He had successfully fought extradition to Italy on terrorist charges after irregularities were shown in the prosecution. But the court heard he was an 'active and committed member' of ISIS who was using the internet to drum up support for the terrorist group and sending young men to join the fighting. It can be disclosed that they included Aras Mohammed Hamid, 27, an Iraqi refugee who tried to return to his home country and become a suicide bomber. Another, Shivan Azeez Zangana, 21 had only been in Britain for eight months when he was found sleeping in a mosque in Birmingham waiting for people smugglers to get him out of the country. Hamid was jailed for seven years and Azeez for three years in January this year. Hamasalih had been living in Britain since 2002 when he claimed asylum - apart from a year in Finland - and became a British citizen in 2008. But he was using Youtube, Facebook, Twitter and a broadcast website called Paltalk to drum up support for ISIS. He was receiving small amounts of money into his bank account from all over the country, using Twitter to drum up donations, the Old Bailey heard. Hamasalih, an Iraqi Kurd, had once fought for the Peshmerga in the late 1990s but had changed sides to join ISIS. He was also tipping off ISIS commanders about potential attacks, warning a commander called Khattab al-Kurdi about an impending attack by the Peshmerga on the city of Mosul (Pictured is a file photo of an ISIS member in Syria) He was found with the human resources files for two regiments of Peshmerga guerilla forces, the main Western-backed force fighting ISIS in Syria. He was also tipping off ISIS commanders about potential attacks, warning a commander called Khattab al-Kurdi about an impending attack by the Peshmerga on the city of Mosul. Paul Hynes QC said his client was 'an enthusiast who is proud to be British.' 'You have to be sure that his support goes beyond that support and we say there is no evidence that goes to membership,' he added. 'We don't expect you to like Mr Hamasalih or to like or to approve of him, we just want him to have a fair trial.' But Duncan Atkinson QC, prosecuting, told the court: 'The defendant was not just a supporter but an advocate, an ambassador, a rallying call for the values and beliefs espoused by ISIS.' It can now be reported that in November 2015 a British court turned down an application from Italy to extradite him as a member of the radical group Rawti Shax. He was also jailed for four years, to run concurrently, for three charges of possessing articles for a purpose connected to terrorism. A North Korea defector has revealed how the dictatorship manages to bypass international sanctions and fund it's nuclear weapons programme. Ri Jong Ho, 59, had been raising money for the regime for decades, but defected in 2014 and now lives in Virginia, U.S. He says UN sanctions against North Korea is futile as Pyongyang has long been able to work their way around attempts to cut off trade. Behind the curtain: Ri Jong Ho, who defected in 2014, said the sanctions against Kim Jong-Un are futile as Pyongyang has long been able to work their way around them Ri worked for Office 39 - a secretive organisation within North Korea's ruling Workers' Party that maintains a hard currency slush fund for the top leadership. US intelligence says Office 39 oversees a network of illegal money-making operations, including drugs smuggling and counterfeit currency, which Ri denied. A major part of his job was helping to ferry 'between $50 million and $100 million' from China to North Korea, he told CNN. However, he added, the general population never benefit from these money transfers, as the money is used to fund the lavish lives of Kim, his family and the Pyongyang elite. In lengthy interviews with CNN and other U.S. news outlets, Ri said the North Korean government are not affected by the sanctions imposed by the UN. Money incoming! Ri revealed that the millions he helped smuggle into North Korea went straight to Kim Jong-Un and other high-flyers in the regime He said that when a North Korean company is banned from trading with China, the government simply changes the name of the company and the relationship is resumed - and the Chinese companies are only interested in profits. 'Those companies who are paying North Korea, those are the ones that should be sanctioned by the US, not North Korean companies or North Korean leadership, for whom sanctions simply do not work. You should sanction the market, not the North Korean companies or the people in high positions,' Ri said in the CNN interview. 'Expecting Chinese companies to abide by international laws, that will not bear any fruit.' He also said that smuggling items in and out of North Korea is a long established business, using faked cargo lists for larger items and for anything small enough, the regime employs hundreds of small fishing boats going back and forth between China and North Korea. The revelations regarding widespread smuggling operations and Chinese companies disregarding UN sanctions could worsen the relationship between US President Donald Trump and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping (pictured in July) His revelations are likely to further enrage U.S. President Donald Trump, who took to Twitter to slam China, North Korea's main trade partner and ally, for not doing enough to stop the North Korean nuclear threat. 'I am very disappointed in China,' President Donald Trump tweeted after the North boasted last week that the entire mainland US was within range of its intercontinental ballistic missiles. 'Our foolish past leaders have allowed them to make hundreds of billions of dollars a year in trade, yet they do NOTHING for us with North Korea, just talk.' Trump has repeatedly urged China to use its economic sway over North Korea to curb the regime's nuclear programme, while Beijing insists dialogue is the only practical way forward. China has repeatedly countered that it does not hold the key to the crisis and rejected Trump's attempts to link the issue to the trade relationship. US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson stepped in on Tuesday to warn that the relationship with China had reached 'a pivot point'. 'Can we work through those differences in a way without it leading to open conflict and find the solutions that are necessary to serve us both?' he asked in a briefing to reporters. Tillerson has derided China and Russia as 'economic enablers' that bear 'unique and special responsibility' for the growing threat posed by the North. New York judge Leticia Astacio has been accused of violating the terms of her probation after her alcohol monitoring ankle bracelet reported a high level of alcohol in her blood A New York state judge recently released from a jail sentence following a drunk driving conviction has allegedly violated her probation by drinking again. Rochester City Court Judge Leticia Astacio received an early release from jail on July 13 and, within days, according to court documents, is said to have violated the terms of her probation, which stated that she wear an alcohol monitoring bracelet a transdermal testing SCRAM device and abstain from any alcohol consumption. Astacio, who was elected to a 10-year term in 2014, is due back in court today to face the probation violation charges. According to documents reviewed by the Democrat & Chronicle, her probation officer reported that Astacio failed to plug in the SCRAM's base unit when released. Then, over the course of her first two days of freedom, the device detected a peak blood alcohol concentration of .127 per cent. In New York, the legal BAC limit for being charged with driving while intoxicated is posted as .08 per cent. Both offenses are considered a violation of the terms of her three-year-long probation period. When queried, Astacio reportedly told her probation officer that the alcohol spike was due to the use of a cosmetic foot peel cream which contained a high level of alcohol. Astacio was convicted of drunk driving and sentenced to serve 60 days in jail. She was released early for time already served on July 13 and given three years probation Two days after her release from jail, Astacio's probation officer said that the alcohol-testing SCRAM device (seen here on her ankle) reported a blood alcohol content level of .127 per cent. In New York, the legal BAC limit for a DWI charge is .08 per cent WHEC reports that when recording the presence of alcohol, the SCRAM device does not differentiate alcohol present in drinks and in things like lotions, body washes or household cleaners. It is then up to experts to determine what specifically set off the SCRAM's positive alert. While Astacio's lawyer denied that the result was due to drinking alcohol, prosecutor Zach Maurer told WHEC that he was told the results were 'consistent with alcohol consumption, as opposed to some alcohol coming into contact with the device.' Even if it turns out that the SCRAM results were due to an overenthusiastic application of a foot sloughing lotion, authorities said that defendants issued SCRAM devices are asked to read a list of banned, non-consumable substances that contain alcohol and then sign a clause acknolweding that using those substances constitutes a probation violation. The Democrat & Chronicle reported that upon being told that she would be receiving a 60 day jail sentence and three years probation during her July 6 sentencing hearing, Astacio's lawyer, Mark Young, told the court that she was 'not willing to do probation' and that 'she will violate probation the moment you put her on probation.' In response, the judge said that he would then see her in court again. Prior to her conviction, Astacio failed to report for a random urine test following her February 2016 arrest for drunk driving. She claimed that she was unaware of the notice to appear for the test because she was traveling in Thailand at the time Astacio (pictured with former attorney Ed Fiandach) has continued to receive her $174,000 judge's salary despite having been stripped of judicial duties following her arrest Astacio made headlines after being arrested for drunk driving in February 2016, then claiming she skipped a random urine test a condition of her discharge on May 2 this year, due to being unaware the request came in because she was traveling in Thailand. She then failed to appear in court on May 30, resulting in a judge issuing a bench warrant for her arrest. Upon landing in the US, she was was taken into custody, where she remained until her July sentencing date. Astacio was released from jail early, after having been given credit for time already served. At her sentencing, Astacio told the court that it has been painful to be derided as the 'hashtag drunk judge' on social media. Astacio has continued to draw a $174,000-a-year paycheck, even though she's been stripped of her judicial duties for driving drunk to work and being jailed for skipping the court date. Since Astacio holds a 10-year term tenure as a judge, only the state Commission on Judicial Conduct can remove her from the bench. The commission won't say if it's investigating, and any action could reportedly take years. Laura Ramos (above) was hit with new charges of sexual assault on Wednesday A special education teacher who was arrested in June for having sex with one of her students has been arrested for having sexual relations with a second student. Laura Ramos, 31, turned herself into police Wednesday morning when she was informed that there was a warrant out for her arrest. She was booked on two counts of second-degree sexual assault, and released after posting $50,000 bond. The charge is the same one she was hit with earlier this summer, in the first case. Police are now saying that they believe Ramos has sex with at least four students, though she has only been formally charged in connection to two. Ramos' husband accompanied her to her first arraignment, but he was nowhere in sight on Wednesday as she was given the new charges. During the hearing, she sat alone in the back of the courtroom, combing her hair and staring into her pink cellphone, according to the CT Post. Judge William Holden ordered Ramos not to have further contact with her alleged victims. She is due back in court for that case on August 14. Ramos resigned from her job at Central High School in Bridgeport, Connecticut after her first arrest. Three days after she was arrested for having sex with a Central High School (above) student in June, police say a second victim came forward Three days after Ramos was arrested in June, police say another victim came forward and admitted to having sex with the teacher. The student said that in April, he went with Ramos to a restaurant in Fairfield and that after dinner the two had sex in her car in the parking lot. Later that month, they met up at another restaurant in Shelton, and had sex in the restaurant's 'electrical room'. This was after Ramos allegedly complained about her husband not wanting to have sex with her. After that, the teen said Ramos sent him a text message saying it was the best sex she had ever had. Police first started investigating Ramos on June 9, when they were called to the school following a complaint of sexual assault. Officers say a student at the school told a teacher Ramos had been having sexual intercourse with one of her students in the special education program. Police say Ramos told them she had a relationship with the victim from December 23, 2016 until April 2017. The relationship entailed a number of sexual encounters during this period, according to police. Another student told school officials that Ramos began a texting relationship with him, according to WFSB. In these text messages, Ramos allegedly confided to the student about her marital problems. 'Ms. Ramos would complain that her "man" or "guy" does not want to have sex or do anything with her,' according to police documents. The student said he began to suspect that one of his classmates was engaging in inappropriate relations with Ramos. 'Witness 1 noticed the victim would hang out in Ms. Ramos' class and... would watch them make eyes at each other like flirting,' court documents said. The witness also told police that the text messages included sexually-charged content. When detectives initially approached Ramos, she denied having a sexual relationship with the student. But she later admitted that she was so alarmed by the investigation that she talked to the student with whom she allegedly had her liaisons about denying their relationship, according to police. Ramos and the student discussed deleting text messages between them, police said. Eventually, she admitted to police that she and the student had sex 'a handful of times' in her car - the most recent encounter having taken place in April. On June 20, Ramos resigned from the school, even though the district had already started the process of terminating her employment. 'Please be assured that the safety and welfare of our students is our main priority at Bridgeport Public Schools, and we make every effort to ensure the ongoing safety of our students,' the district said in a statement. 'We take seriously all allegations of inappropriate conduct which threatens the well-being of our students, and such misconduct will not be tolerated.' A park in the middle of Brussels has filled up with camping migrants still hoping to find a way of sneaking into the UK. In the last week, dozens of migrants have set up camp again in the Maximilian Park in the Belgian capital, directly opposite from the Belgian Immigration Office. The migrants - largely from the east African countries of Sudan, Ethiopia and Eritrea - are said to be uninterested seeking asylum in Belgium. It comes shortly after France announced it would open two shelters for migrants sleeping rough in Calais, raising fears it could lead to a new 'Jungle' camp. In the last week, dozens of migrants have set up camp again in the Maximilian Park in the Belgian capital of Brussels Photos from Maximilian Park show sleeping bags laid out in the grass, as well as clothes hung out to dry It comes shortly after France announced it would open two shelters for migrants sleeping rough in Calais , raising fears it could lead to a new 'Jungle' camp (file photo) Ever since 100 migrants set up camp in Maximilian Park, fewer businessmen and tourists appear to be crossing through it. Photos show sleeping bags laid out in the grass, as well as clothes hung out to dry, though there do not appear to be any tents. Migrants are believed to drink and washing themselves using the park's water fountain. Hundreds of migrants camped out in Maximilian Park two years ago, awaiting their chance to sneak on board a train, bus or lorry bound for the UK from Brussels. Some of them, like the migrants Emmanuel, Filemon and Ali all in their 20s have already been waiting for quite a while. One of the migrants said: 'We have family in England, so we are going there for a better life. In our country it's not so good.' The Brussels authorities have so far not taken any action against the migrant camp in the park. Ever since 100 migrants set up camp in Maximilian Park, fewer businessmen and tourists appear to be crossing through it Migrants are believed to be drinking and wash themselves using the park's water fountain Meanwhile France has announced it will build two new migrant centres in the towns of Troisvaux and Bailleul, around 50 miles from Calais. Interior Minister Gerard Collomb said each one will have a capacity of 300, estimating the number of migrants currently in the northern port at between 350 and 400. Calais Mayor Natacha Bouchart said she would ignore the order, saying: 'The decision by the Council of State is unfair to the people of Calais because it threatens them with the emergence of yet another Jungle. 'In the absence of a national and European policy offering a global solution on controlling immigration, Calais will not implement the injunctions,' she declared in a statement. Collomb too had argued that the provision of services could have a pull effect on migrants who trek across Europe to Calais in the hope of stowing away on a truck crossing the Channel to England. France has announced it will build two new migrant centres in the towns of Troisvaux and Bailleul, around 50 miles from Calais (file photo of the Jungle camp) Calais Mayor Natacha Bouchart said she would ignore the order, saying: 'The decision by the Council of State is unfair to the people of Calais' (file photo of the Calais jungle) British MP Charlie Elphicke, who represents the coastal city of Dover, warns the softer approach will encourage thousands to return to the border. He said: 'There is a real risk that setting up these two new centres will make Calais even more of a migrant magnet. 'It means thousands more vulnerable people will be encouraged to make the perilous journey across Europe - with many falling into the hands of ruthless traffickers. 'We cannot allow a new Jungle or Sangatte to spring up in Calais yet again.' Nicole Ovchinnikova (pictured) started drinking after she arrived at a London hotel at 5.40pm A billionaire heiress who is friends with Kate Moss and Paris Hilton went on a 17-hour all-night drinking binge while looking after a child, a court heard today. Nicole Ovchinnikova, 37, started boozing at the Canary Wharf hotel in east London after she arrived at 5.40pm with the child and a male friend, and was still drinking at 10.30am the next day. Ovchinnikova claimed she was not drunk and only had two glasses of wine at dinner and said she was dragged into an argument her friend was having with hotel staff. The socialite denied one count of being drunk in charge of a child, but was found guilty following a day-long trial and was today ordered to pay just 1,170. The court heard she arrived at four star The International Britannia Hotel in Canary Wharf on March 1 with the child and a male friend called Paul Brierley. The child was said to be present and even sitting on her lap at 7am when police arrived the next morning. A manager said she could not walk or talk properly when he saw her in the lobby at 7am, and another witness said he thought the child had not slept all night. The Russian fashion designer also verbally abused police officers who said they could smell alcohol on her breath and there were a large number of empty glasses on the table where she had been sitting. Former PC Louise Wright said Ovchinnikova was 'shouting about paedophiles' and banged her hands on the floor of the police van as she was taken to Bethnal Green Police Station in east London. In a police interview Ovchinnikova admitted to sharing three bottles of wine with Mr Brierley. But Ovchinnikova then claimed to have only drunk a small part of the wine she was given during dinner. Ovchinnikova (pictured) claimed she was not drunk and only had two glasses of wine at dinner The socialite (pictured), who considers celebrities Paris Hilton and Kate Moss as friends, went on a 17-hour drinking binge while looking after a child Ovchinnikova was ordered to pay a 500 fine, 620 court costs and a 50 victim's surcharge She also argued both her and the child had went to bed before coming back down for breakfast the next morning at around 7am. During her trial she said she heard that day her former partner was having a baby with her best friend and this news made her very upset. Wearing a black and white stripped jacket and black skirt at Thames Magistrates Court today she sobbed as mitigation was given by her lawyer. Sonya Fox Smith, prosecuting, said: 'Staff raised concerns and the then night manager saw her in the hotel lobby with a male friend, he was of the view both were drunk. 'He said she couldn't walk or talk and at one point Mr Brierley fell over. 'Another member of staff said he also saw her when he started duty at 1am, but was not aware of the child. 'But the child was present at at 7am. Staff were concerned about the presence of the child and that it was not appropriate and called police. 'When police arrived they observed a number of glasses on the table and the child was present on Miss Ovchinnikova's lap. 'PC Wright considered her to be intoxicated. The Russian fashion designer (pictured) also verbally abused police officers who said they could smell alcohol on her breath The court heard she arrived at four star The International Britannia Hotel in Canary Wharf (pictured) 'At trial she said she was told her former partner was expecting a child with her best friend and as a result of that news which she found upsetting she then went in to the lobby and consumed alcohol. 'She made frank admissions to police under interview but at trial gave a different account. 'The Crown say this is because the reality of the situation at hit home.' Zarif Khan, defending, told the court she came from a 'respectable family' and there had been a great deal of coverage in the UK and Russia due to her connections. He said: 'A lot of what the night manager says is hearsay. But there was no concerns raised when he first observed her at 11pm. 'This was in the confines of a hotel and not in the open or out on the M4 or driving. It was a respectful hotel with CCTV and there were numerous people about. 'This case has had an enormous effect on her.' John Ryder, chair of the bench, said: 'This is the saddest possible case for you. It's quite clear you were drunk and so was your male friend. 'This was a public place and presumably had the hotel authorities be concerned they could have told you to go to bed but they didn't, so we can deal with this by a fine. 'We assume you are a person of means.' She was ordered to pay a 500 fine, 620 court costs and a 50 victim's surcharge. This isn't the first time that Ovchinnikova has made headlines run-ins with the law. In 2009, then known as Nicole Sconciaforni, was arrested and charged with driving under the influence, driving without a license and obstruction She had turned on her vehicle while smoking cigarettes and drinking behind the wheel when police spotted her and a friend. Given they had seen the two women with alcohol in the car, the police were concerned Ovchinnikova was over the legal alcohol limit to drive and asked her to step out of the Porsche and she was later charged At the time of her DUI, she was partying at a Mayfair nightclub with friends, including Sugarbabe Amelle Berrabah (left). She was also known to spend nights out with Sophie Anderton in the mid 2000s. They're pictured together above right in 2008. This isn't the first time that Ovchinnikova has made headlines for run-ins with the law. In 2009, then known as Nicole Sconciaforni, Ovchinnikova was arrested and charged with driving under the influence, driving without a license and obstruction. At the time, she was partying at a Mayfair nightclub with friends, including Sugarbabe Amelle Berrabah. She had turned on her vehicle while smoking cigarettes and drinking behind the wheel when police spotted her and Berrabah. Given they had seen the two women with alcohol in the car, the police were concerned Ovchinnikova was over the legal alcohol limit to drive and asked her to step out of the Porsche and she was later charged. In 2010, Ovchinnikova claimed that disgraced former England football captain John Terry tried to talk her into having a fling - under the nose of her boyfriend. She said the Chelsea star approached her moments after his partner Toni Poole left a nightclub in central London. She alleges that married Terry, who slept with a team-mate's former girlfriend, had clearly had a few drinks and tried to talk her into bed. She told the Mirror that Terry was 'very pushy' and that his approach led to a blazing row with her boyfriend, from whom she has now split. Australian intelligence and the French Navy have intercepted a record 1.464 tonnes of cocaine from a vessel in the South Pacific. The record-breaking 1.464 tonnes of cocaine was seized near New Caledonia on July 27 with four crew arrested who are believed to be Lithuanian and Latvian, the Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission said. ACIC officials worked closely with French authorities to foil the plot, which is believed to have been organised by a South American crime syndicate. The 1.464 tonnes of cocaine seized on a vessel in the South Pacific 'Congratulations to the Marine Francaise and Gendarmerie Nationale for their efforts in relation to this record seizure of cocaine,' ACIC executive director of intelligence Col Blanch said in a statement on Thursday night. 'We are thankful for the action taken by French authorities which has stopped a significant amount of drugs reaching the streets of Australia.' The drugs have an estimated street value of $322 million. The vessel has been towed to Noumea for further investigation and testing. Questions have been raised over whether Spain can be guaranteed a veto over a future Brexit trade deal. There was anger in March when the EU's negotiating guidelines specifically stated that Spain would need to approve any future arrangements involving Gibraltar. The clause sparked concerns that Madrid will use the negotiating process to renew its claim to the territory - which has been British for 300 years. However, experts have raised doubts about whether Spain could be given a veto if other members were denied one. A referendum on sovereignty in 2002 saw an overwhelming majority of Gibraltans vote to stay British EU law expert Professor Steve Peers told the Telegraph: 'Nothing is clear about the legal issues arising from Article 50.' Italian socialist MEP Isabella de Monte queried whether Article 50 provided legal underpinning for unequal treatment of members. Any legal challenge is unlikely to make much difference in practice, as a wide-ranging trade deal would almost certainly need to be signed off all 27 members at European Council level - meaning all states will have a veto. A referendum on sovereignty in 2002 saw an overwhelming majority of Gibraltans vote to stay British. The EU commission's negotiating guidelines, agreed in March, say: 'After the United Kingdom leaves the Union, no agreement between the EU and the United Kingdom may apply to the territory of Gibraltar without agreement between the Kingdom of Spain and the United Kingdom.' Meanwhile, EU commission chief Jean-Claude Juncker has said he believes Brexit will still happen despite the UK becoming more aware of the 'density of problems' during withdrawal negotiations. Mr Juncker said he disagreed with the Maltese prime minister Joseph Muscat, who reportedly said last week he saw 'hopeful signs' that 'Brexit will not happen'. Mr Juncker told Politico: 'People will become more and more conscious of the density of problems on a daily basis, without always being able to provide a coherent answer to these problems.' But the Commission president said he still expected Britain to leave the European Union. 'I don't go as far as the Maltese prime minister who has not ruled out that it will not come to Brexit,' he said. 'My working hypothesis is that it will come to Brexit.' EU commission chief Jean-Claude Juncker has said he believes Brexit will still happen despite the UK becoming more aware of the 'density of problems' during withdrawal negotiations In a public Cabinet split last week, Chancellor Philip Hammond said he wanted a three-year transition period after we formally leave the EU, during which a looser version of free movement could still apply. However, International Trade Secretary Liam Fox insisted unregulated free movement of labour after Brexit would 'not keep faith' with the EU referendum result and that the Cabinet had not agreed a stance on immigration An Afghan refugee has been charged in Germany with murdering an American soldier while fighting with the Taliban in his homeland. Identified only as Abdol Moghada S., 20, he is also charged with the attempted murder of two other US troops wounded in the same ambush. He was arrested at an asylum seekers home near to Traunstein in February this year and will stand trial in Munich in the autumn. Moghada is alleged to have joined the Taliban in the Logar province in 2013 and carried out attacks on military convoys in 2013 and 2014. The charges stem from the latter. Prosecutors haven't identified the soldiers who were attacked, but US service newspaper Stars and Stripes reports the only U.S. service member killed during that time in Logar province was Pfc. Christian Chandler. Afghan refugee Abdol Moghada S. (pictured) has been charged in Germany with murdering an American soldier while fighting with the Taliban in his homeland Identified only as Abdol Moghada S., 20, he is also charged with the attempted murder of two other US troops wounded in the same ambush (file picture) Moghada is alleged to have joined the Taliban in the Logar province in 2013 and carried out attacks on military convoys in 2013 and 2014. The charges stem from the latter. Prosecutors haven't identified the soldiers who were attacked, but US service newspaper Stars and Stripes reports the only U.S. service member killed during that time in Logar province was Pfc. Christian Chandler. Chandler, 20, was a Texas native assigned to Fort Drum's 10th Mountain Division 3rd Brigade Combat Team. At the time of his death, Fort Drum officials said Pfc. Chandler died when his unit was attacked in the Logar province. Moghada fled Afghanistan in 2015 and sought political asylum, claiming he was in danger because he had deserted the Taliban. As well as the murder and attempted murder charges he is facing further indictments for violating the War Weapons Control Act and Taliban membership. Prosecutors haven't identified the soldiers who were attacked, but US service newspaper Stars and Stripes reports the only U.S. service member killed during that time in Logar province was Pfc. Christian Chandler (pictured) And he is further accused of transporting to Kabul, on several occasions in 2014 and 2015, bombs made by the commander of his local Taliban unit that could be detonated by remote control. German prosecutors said He was trained in the use of weapons and passed a shooting course. 'He received, along with a fully automatic rapid-fire Kalashnikov rifle, a Russian pistol and two hand grenades,' according to the federal attorney's office. He adopted the nom de guerre Omar and prosecutors said that in the ambush where the American soldier was killed 'he gave numerous shots from his rapid-fire rifle in the attack on a convoy of eight to nine American armoured vehicles.' An outspoken Jewish activist has slammed a decision to ban the construction of a synagogue at Sydney's Bondi Beach, claiming the ruling is a 'submission to Islamic terror'. The Land and Environment Court on Wednesday backed Waverley Council's decision to prohibit the construction, partly because the place of worship could become a terrorist target. The decision has enraged Jewish leaders who claim the community is being prevented from practicing its religion because of the threat of Islamic extremism. Scroll down for video Outspoken Jewish gym owner Avi Yemini (pictured) has slammed a decision to ban the construction of a synagogue at Sydney's Bondi Beach, claiming the ruling is a 'submission to Islamic terror' The proposed synagogue was to be built on this block of existing tennis courts in Bondi Conservative Jewish activist Avi Yemini described the decision to ban the building as 'outrageous'. 'A Jewish synagogue has been banned in Bondi from building a community centre for Jews from the fear of it being a terror target,' he said in an online video following the ruling. 'Wake up Australia - we have officially submitted to Islam... If this is the road we are taking we have become a pack of cowards. 'We have let them dictate what religions are okay in Australia and not.' NSW Jewish Board of Deputies boss Vic Alhadeff told news.com.au the ruling set a 'dangerous precedent'. The decision has enraged Jewish leaders who claim the community is being prevented from practicing its religion because of the threat of Islamic extremism (stock image) 'It's a very sad day for Australia if an established community, which needs a house of worship, is refused permission to build it because of fear that others may pose a threat,' he said. 'This simply shows how we're all losing our freedoms. Those who want us to be afraid are winning, and this ill-conceived judgment represents a dangerous precedent.' Among the reasons Waverley Council previously refused the development were that the site was 'unsuitable for a synagogue because of the potential risk to users and other members of the general public'. In prohibiting the synagogue on Wednesday, commissioner Graham Brown noted 'a more sophisticated risk assessment process could be required for matters such as a potential terrorist threat'. NSW Jewish Board of Deputies boss Vic Alhadeff said: 'This simply shows how we're all losing our freedoms' Jewish leaders labelled it a 'very sad day' following the ruling. The Central Synagogue is pictured in Bondi Junction In a statement to Daily Mail Australia, Waverley Council noted the court ruling was based on a variety of factors. 'A number of residents agreed with the contentions raised by the Council and provided additional evidence against the development of the site,' the statement read. The council, reiterating the 'potential risk to users', said the proposal to build the synagogue did not respond to the 'character and streetscape of the area or provide sufficient residential amenity'. British actor Hywel Bennett, known for his role as Jack Dalton in Eastenders, has died aged 73. The actor, who was born in Carmarthenshire, Wales, also starred as James Shelley in Shelley, which was watched by 18million Brits each week. Bennett joined EastEnders in 2003 and played gangland boss Jack Dalton, who became involved in a grisly plot with Phil Mitchell before he was killed off by Sharon Mitchell's later partner, Dennis Rickman. British actor Hywel Bennett (left), who is best known for his role in the 1980s classic television sitcom Shelley, has died aged 73. He joined EastEnders in 2003 (right) Hywel Bennett's biggest break came in 1979 when he landed the role of playing James Shelley in the famous British sitcom Shelley (pictured) Bennett's character Jack was involved in a storyline with Phil Mitchell and was eventually killed by Sharon Mitchell's partner Dennis Rickman His agent confirmed that the actor, who also starred in shows called The Idiot and Redcap, had passed away. It is believed he died on July 25. Bennett's biggest break came in 1979 when he landed the role of playing James Shelley in the famous British sitcom Shelley. It lasted for 10 series and 71 episodes were shown on ITV between 1979 and 1984. He also featured in a number of films during the 1960s, including The Virgin Soldiers and The Family Way. He leaves behind one daughter, Emma, who he had with his former wife Cathy McGowan. Fans took to Twitter today to pay tribute to the British actor. Miles Evans wrote: 'Brilliant in Shelley, Malice Aforethought. Great voice and absurdly handsome too #RIP.' Linda Chapman added: 'Noooo! Not Hywel Bennett - such a stunning man in his youth! Shelly and The Family Way amongst my favourites! RIP.' In 2003, he joined EastEnders and played gangland boss Jack Dalton (pictured), who was later killed Advertisement Hundreds of mourners turned out to pay their respects at the funeral of a 20-year-old traveller who was battered to death with a shovel at a service station. The grief-stricken family and friends of Quhey Saunders marched through the streets of Essex as his coffin was led on its final journey by a horse-drawn carriage to a cemetery. Mr Saunders, 20, a member of the travelling community in Stanford-le-Hope, Essex, was attacked with the shovel in front of his parents at the M25 services in Cobham, Surrey, in June. Wails and moans of anguish could be heard as the mourners walked behind the ornate silver carriage in Standford-le-Hope, with many breaking down into tears. Hundreds of mourners gathered in Essex today to pay tribute to Quhey Saunders, 20, at his funeral in Stanford-le-Hope, where he was part of the local traveller community Mr Saunders, left and right with girlfriend Larosa Smith, died after being beaten to death with a shovel at a service station on the M25 in July Grief-stricken friends and family followed his coffin to the graveyard as it was carried by a silver ornate horse-drawn carriage, pictured, through the streets of his home town Mourners dressed in black and looked distraught, left, as they walked through the town to accompany Mr Saunders, right with his former girlfriend Miss Smith, on his final journey Six white horses ridden by military suit-clad riders carried Mr Saunders in the hearse, which had a giant red floral heart on top of it. A cavalcade of glamorous silver Rolls-Royce followed the precision with stragglers still heading to the service 15 minutes after the coffin passed. The well-wishers - mostly dressed in black - looked distraught as they passed towards Stanford Cemetery following a service at a local Catholic church. Mr Saunders' body travelled roughly nine miles from the brick church in the quiet nearby town of South Ockendon where the service was held. Cars, vans and pick ups blocked roads at Holy Cross Catholic Church, and colourful floral tributes sat outside the building. A cavalcade of silver Rolls Royces, pictured, were also part of the funeral procession, following behind the crowds Many of the mourners broke down into tears on the walk, while the carriage was also decorated with a giant love heart Tributes have poured in for Mr Saunders since his death, with a family statement saying he was a 'very kind hearted boy, always full of laughter, loved life and loved enjoyment'. Pictured are the crowds following the carriage A huge red and white wreath of flowers was being displayed on the back of a pick-up truck- with the words 'the heart of our family' on it. Girlfriend Larosa Smith paid tribute to Mr Saunders on Facebook today ahead of the funeral. She wrote: 'Haven't slept all night, my heart is broke. I love you my quhey (sic)'. After Mr Saunders died Miss Smith posted a heartbreaking tribute to Mr Saunders on social media on Wednesday, accompanied with photographs of him having fun with his friends. She said: 'I'm so lost without him, knowing I can't just ring his phone and hear his voice or fall asleep on the phone like we did every night. Even when we'd argue we would ring each other and not talk, just go to sleep on the phone. It's the little things [that] mean the most. 'I love you with all my heart my Quhey.' Mourners were mostly dressed in black and carried flowers as they made their way from a church in the village of South Ockendon where a funeral service was held Mr Saunders was attacked at this service station off the M25 at Cobham in Surrey, prompting a huge police investigation Officers attempted to save his life by performing CPR and he was airlifted to hospital in Tooting, London, but eventually had his life support machine switched off Police battled to try and save him before he was airlifted to St George's Hospital, Tooting, London, but his life support machine was switched off on June 28. Paying tribute to him after his death, his family said: 'Quhey was a very kind hearted boy, always full of laughter, loved life and loved enjoyment. He was very respectful to his elders and the sick. 'He was always laughing, always happy and loved every day of life. He lived life to the full and his life was taken very young. He had his whole life in front of him and was taken for no reason at all.' Quhey's mother, who asked not to be named, said: 'Quhey was the heart of the whole family. All our hearts are broken. The family is very close and he will be missed by his brothers and sisters. 'Quhey donated his organs and he has saved lives. I wish those people who have received Quhey's organs well and I hope they live a long and happy life.' Dating app Tinder has called on its users to stop posting pictures of themselves alongside heavily-drugged tigers. The company has said it is time for the selfies to go, claiming they take advantage of 'beautiful creatures that have been torn from their natural environment'. It follows calls from animal rights activists to act on the images, which they say appear frequently on Tinder. Animal rights activists have called on Tinder to take action against the number of people pictured posing with tigers The pictures 'take advantage of beautiful animals that have been torn from their natural environment' Such is their popularity among those looking for love that a number of Instagram accounts have been set up dedicated to sharing screenshots of users who pose with big cats. The company says it will donate $10,000 to a conservation charity if the pictures disappear. In a blog post, Tinder wrote: 'It's time for the tiger selfies to go. In a blog post, Tinder wrote: 'It's time for the tiger selfies to go'. It urged people to post pictures of themselves planting trees instead Pictures of people posing with tigers are widely shared on Instagram, prompting calls for the practice to end 'More often than not, these photos take advantage of beautiful creatures that have been torn from their natural environment. Wild animals deserve to live in the wild. 'We are looking to you, as part of our Tinder community, to make a change. Take down your tiger photos, and we will make it worth your while by donating $10,000 to Project Cat in honor of International Tiger Day.' Instead it encouraged singletons to try and attract partners by showing themselves doing things like planting trees or volunteering at animal shelters. A 22-year-old woman poses with a tiger on the popular dating app, which has asked users to take the pictures down Some believe that posting pictures of themselves with tigers makes them look well travelled and projects a positive image And the blog continued: 'We urge you to take down your tiger photos, tag your friends to do it too, or simply join the conversation on social with #NoTigerSelfies.' In a letter to Tinder co-founder Sean Rad, animal rights group Peta called for action. The organization wrote: 'What might, at first swipe, look like a harmless picture actually means that someone was caged, dominated, and tied down or drugged before their photo was taken and uploaded online. 'If this happened to one of your users on a Tinder date, you'd block the profile of the person responsible immediately. Unfortunately, this is the reality for tigers, lions, and other big cats who are featured in an alarming number of Tinder profile photos.' And it continues: 'Not only are these types of photos cruel to animals, unaware Tinderlings might also mistake them for cute, harmless pictures and be prompted to take part in this abusive industry themselves.' While some Twitter users congratulated Tinder for taking a stand, another wrote: 'This.. is really stupid. #NoTigerSelfies is just this organization virtue signalling. It does nothing.' Luke Reeves committed suicide after a four-month acne treatment A grieving father has accused a drug company of indirectly killing his son with acne medication that made him suicidal. Luke Reeves, 21, became irrational and lethargic as a four-month course of Roaccutane drastically changed his personality, an inquest heard today. A coroner ruled that he committed suicide by taking a drugs overdose in April 2016 and was found dead in his bedroom. His dad Robert Reeves, 50, accused drug manufacturers Roche of "murdering people" as he told Essex Coroner's Court that Luke's personality completely changed. He said trainee accountant Luke became much more irritable and attempted to take his own life twice before he killed himself. 'We know what the gun was and we know what pulled the trigger. 'The drug company are murdering people. 'The affects of it are under reported and he was still suffering from them four years after taking it. 'There is enough anecdotes about it - surely at some stage it becomes evidence.' Coroner Caroline Beasley-Murray said wasn't in a position to know if the drug had affected Luke's mental state, but conceded he was clearly not in his right mind. 'I think he was probably in a bad place. 'I am going to record a conclusion that Luke Reeves killed himself but I am also going to add a rider to say the balance of his mind was disturbed. 'I think very carefully before I say things like that but I think in this situation he was not thinking straight.' Mr Reeves said trainee accountant Luke couldn't be himself while taking his acne medication, which he blamed for him become irritable, lethargic and eventually suicidal Richard Reeves says the medicine company is murdering people as he and wife Becky Reeves face life without their son Mrs Beasley-Murray expressed her sympathy to Richard, his wife Becky, 45, and Luke's siblings Megan, 19, and Justin, 16. Speaking after the inquest Mr Reeves said his accusations were backed up by science. 'There has been research carried out which shows there can be a 21 per cent reduction in the orbitofrontal cortex of the brain after taking the drug for four months. 'This is the area of the brain responsible for decision making and cognitive processing. 'Luke tried to explain to friends he couldn't be his real self. 'He couldn't explain how he felt, he just knew he wasn't the way he used to be or the way he wanted to be. 'Luke was never the same after taking Roaccutane. 'It permanently changed him physically but more importantly it permanently damaged his brain. 'It changed his personality, it changed his ability to rationalise. 'They have withdrawn the drug in America and you expect to be protected by a drugs company. 'I believe the Government should investigate every suicide which has occurred since the drug was introduced and check each person's medical records. 'I will do whatever I can to raise awareness and want to stop people from taking it.' 'It permanently changed his brain,' Mr Reeves says roaccutane made his son suicidal After unsuccessful suicide attempts, Luke, from Copford, Essex, spent time in the Lakes mental health unit at Colchester General Hospital. Mr Reeves praised staff individually but said the service was underfunded. 'We fought for support from a psychiatrist but it was never quite there. 'We did not think he would try to do it again - he seemed happy to be alive. 'It was unexpected.' After Luke's death, drug manufacturers Roche said research did not link the drug with suicide and information on the risks to patients are included with tablets. In recent years there have been numerous cases of depression and at worst suicide which have been linked to Roaccutane. Figures from UK drugs regulator the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency showed that between 2012 and 2014 20 people took their own lives while on the drug. In 2013 James Sillcock, 26, took his own life after it had been a decade since he gave up the medication. However in a note to his parents, he said the treatment had left him 'in tatters' after triggering his extreme depression. In this he said: 'I used to love my life. There was nothing back then I would have changed. It really was perfect, and I was so lucky, with what I had. 'I could never have ever dreamt that taking Roaccutane, in the summer of 2002, ten years ago, could have brought the hell it has given me, changing my world completely, and leaving it in tatters.' Ten years ago, 22-year-old Jon Medland was in the final year of a medical degree course at Manchester University and was found hanged in his room after taking the drug. Similarly to Luke he was known to have been outgoing prior to this. Within three weeks of beginning to take it he became withdrawn and had suicidal thoughts and decided to stop taking the medication - before being found dead just days later. Links between Roaccutane and depression are widely talked about. But despite doctors being aware of the issue scientific studies have so far been unable to prove that Roaccutane causes psychiatric changes or suicidal thoughts. However it is deemed as extremely effective in treating acne. It has a 95 per cent success rate in clearing up acne in four to six months and around 70 per cent of those who take it say they never suffer from acne again after it. For confidential support call the Samaritans on 116 123, or visit a local Samaritans branch - see www.samaritans.org for details. Harry Potter creator JK Rowling has been named the world's most highly paid author with earnings of 72m this year Harry Potter creator JK Rowling has been named the world's most highly paid author with earnings of 72m this year. Rowling beat the likes of Dan Brown, Stephen King and John Grisham to top Forbes' list of the 10 highest earners in the global industry for the first time in almost 10 years. The announcement comes soon after her legions of worldwide fans celebrated the 20th anniversary of her first installment of the boy wizard series. She has written a further six Harry Potter titles, which have been turned into eight blockbuster feature films, and she last year made her screenwriting debut with a prequel movie, Fantastic Beasts And Where To Find Them. On Wednesday it was announced that the smash-hit stage play Harry Potter And The Cursed Child will move to Broadway next year. The mother-of-three, 52, first began writing about the wizarding world while struggling to make ends meet living as a single mother on benefits in Edinburgh. The books' popularity soon made her a multi-millionaire and she has since released several other novels, founded children's charity Lumos, and amassed more than 11 million Twitter followers keen to keep track of her regularly shared thoughts on political and social issues. The mother-of-three, 52, first began writing about the wizarding world while struggling to make ends meet living as a single mother on benefits in Edinburgh Aside from Rowling, the US business magazine's list also includes British authors Paula Hawkins and EL James - whose respective novels The Girl On The Train and 50 Shades Of Grey have both been turned into major movies in recent years - while the others are all American. List organisers added that Game Of Thrones creator George RR Martin, The Fault In Our Stars writer John Green and Divergent trilogy author Veronica Roth, just failed to make the top 10. Popular American crime author James Patterson was revealed to have earned 66million The Harry Potter author yesterday apologised 'unreservedly' after incorrectly accusing Donald Trump of ignoring a disabled child. Miss Rowling had called the US leader 'horrible' after an edited clip emerged appearing to show the US leader refusing to shake the boy's hand in the White House. She tweeted: 'How stunning, and how horrible, that Trump cannot bring himself to shake the hand of a small boy who only wanted to touch the President.' But her tweets backfired after the boy's mother, Marjorie Kelly Weer, said that Miss Rowling an outspoken critic of Mr Trump - had been mistaken and her three-year-old son had not tried to shake Mr Trump's hand. She added that her son was excited about a secret service patch he had been given, and was more excited about showing that off. Writing on Facebook she said: 'If someone can please get a message to JK Rowling: Trump didn't snub my son & Monty wasn't even trying to shake his hand.' Miss Rowling, who is said to be worth around 650million, apologised 'unreservedly' to the boy and his family in a series of Twitter posts but failed to apologise to Mr Trump. Dan Brown (pictured left) earned 15m while Stephen King (right) made 11million Eurocrats believe Britain's position on Brexit is so chaotic that we must be bluffing as part of an elaborate plan. Splits over the government's position on leaving the bloc have burst into the open in recent weeks with rows over chlorinated chicken and free movement. European diplomats have been so shocked by the divisions that they are growing convinced that it must be a tactical ploy to lull Brussels into a false sense of security. They are predicting that ministers will get their act together in the autumn and suddenly start flooding the EU with detailed position papers which exploit the weakness within the bloc. But the scathing assessment of the UK's position is likely to infuriate the Prime Minister who has insisted that her position on leaving the bloc has not changed. Brexit Secretary David Davis, pictured with EU chief negotiator Michel Barnier last month, has clashed with the EU over European judges and the Brexit divorce bill One European diplomat told the Politico website: 'I think it's tactics: They are playing for time on purpose, under the pretext of chaos in London. 'In September they're going to swamp us with [position] papers on the fault lines exactly the issues where they know we are divided.' Another diplomat added: 'Do they have a strategy? Or are they playing a bluff with the European Union? 'It could be a strategy because the British are always so organised.' European leaders have been left baffled at the apparent chaos as they have come expect Britain to be far more prepared. Maltese prime minister Joseph Muscat said last week: 'People who say the Brits don't know what they are doing are wrong. I have lived in Britain, I know the British mentality. 'A non-prepared British government official simply doesn't exist.' Another Western official said that Oliver Robbins, Britain's top Brexit civil servant, 'knows very well what he is doing'. They added: 'He is telling [David] Davis to wait By the end of the year, the tables will have turned.' Mr Davis, the Brexit Secretary, has held a series of meetings with his EU counterpart Michel Barnier after a series of talks to try to thrash out the beginnings of a deal. But the pair have clashed over the initial stumbling blocks of the role of EU judges, the Irish border and the Brexit divorce bill - which could be as much as 85billion. Mr Davis and his team, pictured on the left in Brussels last month, have been holding talks with the EU over Brexit. EU figures are so taken aback by Britain's chaotic position on Brexit that they think it is part of an elaborate plan that will be unveiled later in the tear Speaking after a round of talks lat last month, Mr Barnier demanded greater clarity from the British. He said: 'A clarification of the UK position is indispensable for us to negotiate and for us to make sufficient progress on this financial dossier, which is inseparable from the other withdrawal dossiers.' But since then the government has been hit with fresh chaos over its position on Brexit. Environment Secretary Michael Gove appeared to veto plans to lift the ban on chlorinated chickens just days after his Cabinet colleague Liam Fox said there was 'no health issue' with the practice. And Chancellor Philip Hammond over his call for an 'off the shelf' Brexit transition deal which could mean unfettered immigration from the EU essentially staying in place until 2022. But he was slapped down by Downing Street who insisted that free movement will end in March 2019. A bizarre row has been recorded between a black cab driver and TfL staff who tell him to remove a newspaper from his window because it has a 'misleading message' about Uber sex attacks. The argument took place outside Harrods in Knightsbridge, London, and was uploaded to Facebook on Monday. It has since been viewed more than 250,000 times online. The cab driver who uploaded the footage Danny Killington, from Hackney, wrote: 'This is what we as a trade are up against. 'A newspaper in the back of the cab stating a fact [about] an Uber driver found guilty in court and sentenced to 12 years in prison. 'These TFL divs are telling the driver he should take it down. Tfl are inept and corrupt.' The dispute was about a newspaper printed by the Licensed Taxi Drivers Association with a headline: 'Rapist Uber driver jailed for 12 years'. A bizarre row has been recorded between a black cab driver and TfL staff who tell him to remove a newspaper from his window because it has a 'misleading message' about Uber sex attacks In the video, one of the TfL workers says: 'It's a misleading message on the back of the newspaper. You shouldn't have unauthorised signage on your cab.' The driver asked the second TfL worker: 'Is it illegal to display an LTDA newspaper in the back of my cab?' She replied: 'It is when it displays messages which are anti-Uber, that may suggest to passengers that they are not safe taking rides with Uber.' The argument took place outside Harrods in Knightsbridge, London, and was uploaded to Facebook on Monday The driver added: 'Currently there is one person a week being sexually assaulted in an Uber.' In July, an Uber driver who waited outside popular east London bars looking for drunk women to rape was jailed for 12 years. Jahir Hussain was jailed for attacks on three separate women in London. He groped two and raped the third, cutting off their underwear with a knife after they fell asleep in the back of his cab. The cab driver who uploaded the footage Danny Killington, from Hackney, wrote: 'This is what we as a trade (London Black cab drivers) are up against' A spokesman at Uber said: 'We were appalled to hear about these horrific crimes and our thoughts are with the victims. While these attacks did not take place on a trip booked through our app, we were still able to support the police in bringing this man to justice.' Also last month, figures obtained by the Daily Mail via a Freedom of Information request suggested the number of sex attacks involving Uber drivers in London could now be running at one a week, having increased by 50 per cent in a year. Steve Burton, TfLs Director of Enforcement, said: 'Our compliance officers play a vital role in ensuring that both private hire and taxi drivers comply with the regulations which govern London taxis and private hire vehicles, which includes ensuring signage and other guidance is met. We are enquiring further to identify the full facts of the incident.' Most people complain if they find a hair in their food, but it's not every day you hear about bullets. Yet a Brisbane woman claims that's exactly what happened to her when she tucked into a kangaroo steak from Woolworths. Kath Milroy Pattingale took to Facebook to vent her outrage at the apparent nasty surprise in a post that has spread like wildfire. The Brisbane woman took to social media to claim she found a bullet in a kangaroo steak from Woolworths 'Mmmmmm thanks Woolies - nothing more appetising than a bullet in my kangaroo,' she wrote. The image has divided social media, with some casting doubt over its authenticity. 'Looks like a con to me. Seems like the bullet was placed there after cooking,' one commenter wrote. 'Certainly Woolworths would run their meats through a metal detector before sending it off,' wrote another. 'Considering it's not even cooked fully I think a bullet is the least of your worries. A Woolworths spokesperson told Daily Mail Australia an investigation has been launched. 'We take all customer concerns seriously and are investigating the issue raised.' Donald Trump has been urged to 'wave the white flag now' after North Korea threatened the US with what it described as unexpected gift packages in the aftermath of its missile tests. Rodong Sinmun, the newspaper used as Kim Jong-un's mouthpiece, claimed America was 'on the knife's edge of life and death' as it tore into the Trump administration. It comes just days after experts warned North Korea's nuclear missile programme had developed so rapidly that major US cities such as Los Angeles and Chicago. The threatening column was published in the Rodong Sinmun, which is used as a mouthpiece by Kim Jong-un (pictured) The launch of a Hwasong-14 intercontinental ballistic missile at an undisclosed location in North Korea which experts said could've reached the US if fired at a different trajectory Donald Trump, who was criticised heavily in the piece in the North Korean newspaper The paper issued the stark warning ordering Trump to surrender in a piece titled, 'Heed the Warning of Juche (self-reliant) Korea', in which it made a number of threats. 'Every minute and every second, the new reality that U.S. mainland is on the knife's edge of life and death is forcing U.S. administration to wave a white flag and fundamentally change her North Korea policy,' the editorial rant stated, according to Fox News. 'It is not the denuclearization of North Korea, but the security of US mainland which should be the top priority of Trump administration,' it added. South Koreans watch a television displaying news broadcasts reporting on North Korea's latest missile launch on July 29 True to form, the ruling party said a 'gift package' was on its way to the 'American b******s' The column continued: 'If the US still refuses to accept such a realistic demand and doggedly pursue hostile policy against North Korea in order to save face, she will receive unexpected 'gift packages' which we will continue to send.' Experts say the 'gift packages' North Korean leader Kim Jong Un promises are more planned missile tests, which are banned by the United Nations. Kim previously urged scientists to continue to 'frequently send big and small 'gift packages' to the Yankees as ever so that they would not feel weary.' Last week, the country's dictator expressed 'great satisfaction' after the Hwasong-14 missile reached a height of 2,314 miles and traveled 620 miles before accurately landing in waters off Japan. The test was aimed at confirming the maximum range and other technical aspects of the missile it says was capable of delivering a 'large-sized, heavy nuclear warhead.' Had it been fired at a standard trajectory, the rocket could have reached Los Angeles, Denver and Chicago and would have even had New York and Boston within its sights, according to analysts. In response, South Korea and the US teamed up to fire their anti-missile defence system, which would be deployed should Kim Jong-un attempt to fire a nuclear weapon over the Pacific In response, South Korea and the US teamed up to fire their anti-missile defence system, which would be deployed should Kim Jong-un attempt to fire a nuclear weapon over the Pacific. Pyongyang's continuing development of nuclear weapons is a growing cause of concern for leaders in the United States, South Korea and Japan. 'North Korea remains the most urgent threat to regional stability,' Pacific Air Forces commander General Terrence J. O'Shaughnessy said in a statement. 'If called upon, we are ready to respond with rapid, lethal, and overwhelming force at a time and place of our choosing.' Syrian refugees are being abused and humiliated by Turkish military as they try to cross the border, with the most recent incident showing men being made to wear lingerie. Images published on social media shows three men, reportedly Syrian refugees, all wearing brightly coloured women's underwear with visible bruising and lacerations on their arms and backs. The incident is said to have taken place at the border, just days after several Turkish soldiers were arrested for abusing Syrian refugees. Humiliated: The images, posted on Twitter, show three men, said to be Syrian refugees, being made to wear lingerie They are all dressed in boots, trousers and yellow, pink and red lingerie sets, standing next to a tank. The pictures, posted on Twitter by Syrian journalist Ahmad Alkhatib show three men all dressed in boots, trousers - and yellow, pink and red lingerie sets. 'Again and again #Turkish soldiers insulting some of the #Syrians who tried to went to #Turkey. Syrians still insulted,' Mr Alkhatib wrote alongside the images. The images are said to have originally been posted online by the soldiers themselves, emerge just days after three Turkish soldiers were arrested for abusing Syrian refugees. The trio filmed themselves beating up and verbally abusing four young Syrians who had attempted to cross the border illegally. Injuries: The three men have signs of physical abuse, and what appears to be bruising and lacerations on backs and arms The video, widely shared on social media but which could not be independently verified, appears to shows four Turkish soldiers kicking and beating the Syrians. The video was apparently filmed by one soldier, whose shadow appears in the footage. It was not immediately clear how the footage had been released. One soldier asks the Syrians: 'Will you come to Turkey again? Be quiet man! Don't shout.' One soldier is also seen repeatedly kicking a Syrian and then again once he is on the ground. Undignified: The incident is said to have taken place at the border of Syria and Turkey The Syrians are seen groaning in pain in the video. And the soldier asks another man: 'Why did you bring the refugees in? Are you a smuggler?' A court in the southern Turkish province of Hatay ruled three of the soldiers would be remanded in custody but released a fourth soldier, state-run news agency Anadolu reported. Before the arrests, the army said in a statement late Sunday that 'the personnel in question were taken into custody and all administrative and judicial procedures have been immediately started against them'. It said the Syrians who attempted to cross illegally were deported back after passing medical checks. Turkey is home to 2.9 million Syrian refugees, according to government figures, but the vast majority are scattered throughout the country rather than in camps. Ankara's allies have applauded the generosity shown by Turkey to its Syrian neighbours throughout the conflict although there have been signs of growing tensions recently. In July, Syrian refugee in Turkey was raped and bludgeoned to death by rock-wielding attackers just days before she was due to give birth, and her 10-month-old baby strangled, sparking outrage. In the early stages of the conflict, Turkey had an 'open-door' policy for Syrians seeking to flee to the country but in reality the border has tightened considerably since then. Bret Easton Ellis wrote on Thursday that he finds White House senior advisor Stephen Miller 'completely compelling' and wants to write a novel about him Since Donald Trump entered the White House, many have been comparing his senior advisor Stephen Miller to American Psycho villain Patrick Bateman. So perhaps it's no surprise that the novel's author, Bret Easton Ellis, has admitted that he's fascinated by the White House staffer. On Thursday, a day after Miller spoke with reporters about a new immigration policy, Ellis tweeted that he found Miller 'completely compelling' and wants to write a novel about him. The tweet emerged after Miller got into an argument with CNN reporter Jim Acosta at Wednesday's press briefing, when the journalist asked him whether the new policy prioritizing immigrants who speak English effectively puts citizens from counties like the UK and Australia at the front of the line. Miller responded by saying he was shocked Acosta thought only immigrants from English-speaking countries speak the language. Since early on in the Trump administration, people have been making connection between Miller (pictured Wednesday, left), and one of Ellis' most famous character - the serial killer Patrick Bateman (portrayed by Christian Bale right) Ellis tweeted about his fascination with Miller after the White House senior advisor got into an argument with CNN reporter Jim Acosta on Wednesday Twitter users responded to Ellis' tweet, saying that Miller was reminiscent of many of his characters 'That is one of the most outrageous, insulting, ignorant and foolish things you've ever said,' Miller said. Ellis' 2000 novel American Psycho follows Patrick Bateman, a serial killer investment banker Following the exchange, Ellis tweeted a picture of Miller and Acosta from the briefing, writing: 'Why do I find Stephen Miller completely compelling and want to write a novel about him? Why do I not want to write a novel about Jim Acosta?' Many fans responded to Ellis' questions, saying that Miller reminded them of many of his characters. 'Bret Easton Ellis novels are exclusively about pathological white dudes with deep-seeded emotional problems,' one Twitter user wrote. But more specifically, Twitter users found Miller to be in the vein of Patrick Bateman, the main character from Ellis' 2000 novel American Psycho. In American Psycho, Bateman is an investment banker who hides a dark secret - that he's a serial killer. 'Stephen Miller gives major Patrick Bateman vibes,' one user wrote back in February. 'That is the forehead and hairline of a sociopath.' Ellis has been particularly outspoken about the Trump presidency. Twitter users have been commenting on the resemblance between Bateman and Miller since as early as February In February, he spoke with the Irish Examiner and said that he's tired of all the protesting going on surrounding Trump. 'I didn't vote Trump, I'm just saying the hysteria is bothering me a lot more than the reality of what he's doing,' Ellis said. Ellis said he was mostly annoyed with all of the celebrities that have been continuing to speak out against Trump, like Meryl Streep. Streep used her speech at the Golden Globes to rail against Trump, which Ellis says is exactly 'hashtag why Trump won'. 'When celebrities become these kind of strident, political advisers, wagging their finger, really people dont buy it. 'It did not help Hillary Clinton at all having this mountain of celebrities on her side. Rejection, rejection,' be said. Ellis was somewhat of a soothsayer during the campaign, tweeting in February 2016 about how friends in heavily-blue Los Angeles were planning to vote for Trump. 'Just back from a dinner in West Hollywood: shocked the majority of the table was voting for Trump but they would never admit it publicly,' Ellis wrote. Claire Neal outside Newcastle Crown Court where she was accused of having a dog dangeorusly out of control The owner of a 'crazed Staffie' said "oh no, not again, when she heard it had mauled 12 children in a park - a year after an order was made for it to be put down for a similar attack. The brown and white dog wounded a dozen children after it escaped from Claire Neal's home in Blyth, Northumberland, on May 18 last year, Newcastle Crown Court heard. Neal, 38, has denied owning a dog dangerously out of control - claiming that Marley belonged to authorities after its destruction was ordered. Co-accused Leanne Patterson denied being in charge of the dog at the time of the attack. It is alleged that she was looking after the dog when it escaped from Neal's home. Prosecutors had told jurors how a court had previously ordered the destruction of the animal and disqualified Claire Neal from keeping dogs - after it bit a group of children in 2015. Today a parent told the court how his step-daughter was injured in the frenzied attack in the park on Burns Avenue. The prosecution witness said: 'Children were scattered about left right and centre. 'It was chaos, kids and adults everywhere. 'People were screaming and crying. Co-accused Leanne Patterson (left) denied being in charge of the dog at the time of the attack. It is alleged that she was looking after the dog when it escaped from Neal's (right) home 'It was mostly kids but adults were screaming too. 'When I pulled up I saw a Staffordshire Terrier tied to the fence. 'I asked everyone 'was that the dog that bit the children'. 'I looked at the dog and thought it couldn't have been that dog as it was too small and friendly. 'It was tied to the fence but did not look in distress. 'But I saw blood on it's mouth. On its teeth and tongue.' The court heard how the man's child had been bitten by the dog and needed to attend hospital to have her wounds cleaned. The witness continued: 'It looked like Swiss cheese with so many puncture wounds and there was a gash. 'It was deep.' Jurors were told how the concerned parent found out the dog's address from social media, and went around to talk to the owners what had happened. The witness continued: 'Claire Neal came out. She started crying and said 'oh no, not again'. 'She said she gave the dog away to someone in the Gosforth area. 'Claire was blaming Leanne. 'She said 'this is all your fault'. 'Leanne was upset at what had happened. Today a parent told the court how his step-daughter was injured in the frenzied attack in the park on Burns Avenue 'She said it was not her fault and she did not let the dog off the lead.' The witness told jurors how he went back to the address again the next day, that only Leanne was at the property. He said: 'Claire told her that if anyone else was to come to the door she was to say that they had given the dog away. 'She said that Claire had threatened her with a knife to her throat.' Neal, 38, of Chasedale Crescent and Patterson, 35, of Windmill Grove have been granted bail within the confines of the court. Before the attack the brown and white puppy Marley had been found looking 'lost and scared' by a teenage girl, who decided to walk the dog back to her house so that the RSPCA could be called, the court heard. However on her journey home, the dog entered a park and proceeded to maul the group of children who were playing. The trial continues. Dukes of Hazzard star Tom Wopat has been arrested and charged with indecent assault after he allegedly put his finger between a woman's butt cheeks. The 65-year-old actor, who played Luke Duke in the television series, has also been accused of cocaine possession. He was cuffed on Wednesday in Waltham, Massachusetts, where he is starring in a production of the musical '42nd Street.' According to the police report, on July 23 during rehearsals, Wopat walked behind a woman on set. She claims she felt his hand grab her butt and felt his fingers go between her butt cheeks, according to TMZ. Tom Wopat, 65, who played Luke Duke on 'Dukes of Hazzard,' was arrested for cocaine and indecent assault Left to right: John Schneider, Tom Wopat and Ben Jones as Bo Duke, Luke Duke and Cooter in the TV series 'The Dukes of Hazzard.' Wopat was arrested Wednesday on indecent assault Left to right: John Schneider, Catherine Bach and Tom Wopat in a promotional portrait for the TV show 'The Dukes of Hazzard' circa 1980 Wopat is expected to be performing in the '42nd Street' production at the Reagle Music Theatre of Greater Boston Thursday Cops say when one of the honchos confronted him about his behavior he denied touching the woman and said 'F*** them all.' There are two other incidents involving Wopat and women during rehearsals. In the police report one woman says he came up from behind her and wrapped his arm around her waist, and another woman says he peeled sunburned skin off her arm. When Wopat was arrested Wednesday he denied the claims but told police there was on incident with a woman where he 'lightly touched her hip' and said to her, 'I like the way you work.' Waltham Police told DailyMail.com when they searched Wopat's Ford Bronco they found two baggies with white powder they believe is cocaine. Police were actively looking for Wopat Wednesday night and pulled him over in his Bronco. Police found him and placed him under arrest at 10:53pm. The cocaine charge is a misdemeanor and the indecent assault is a felony. Wopat was released on $1,000 bail and plead not guilty in court Thursday to the drug and indecent assault charge,. He is expected to be performing Thursday night in the '42nd Street' production. It is the show's opening night. Al Gore has been accused of hypocrisy by a conservative think-tank claiming his estate uses '21 times more energy' than the average American home. The climate change expert and former vice president is accused of 'guzzling more electricity in one year than the average American family uses in 21 years' in a new report published by the National Center for Public Policy Research. The center - a self-described 'conservative, pro-liberty, pro-Constitution think-tank' - claims the former vice president consumed 230,889 kilowatt hours at his lavish, 20-room, 10,070 square-foot mansion in Nashville. The Energy Information Administration states the 'average annual electricity consumption for a US residential utility customer was 10,812 kilowatt hours, an average of 901 kWh per month.' Scroll down for video Al Gore has been accused of hypocrisy by a conservative think-tank claiming his estate uses '21 times more energy' than the average American home. Gore is pictured in his new film, An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power The NCPPR report, titled 'Al Gore's Inconvenient Reality', goes onto claim in September 2016 - a peak month - the former vice president's Nashville home consumed 30,993 kWh of electricity. That figure would be equal to about 34 times the monthly usage rate for the average American home. The report also claims Gore spends about $22,000 on his electricity bills every year, which equates to more than $1,800 a month. Drew Johnson, who wrote the NCPPR's report, claimed he was motivated to look into Gore's energy use after first seeing the Academy Award-winning film, An Inconvenient Truth, a decade ago. The new report claims the former vice president consumed 230,889 kilowatt hours at his lavish, 20-room, 10,070 square-foot mansion in Nashville. Gore's Nashville property is pictured Gore is also accused of burning through 30,993 kWh of electricity in September 2016 - a figure 34 times above the national monthly average 'I was watching all these celebrities on stage asking Americans to make sacrifices for the environment. You've got the Ed Begleys of the world who actually do strive for a carbon footprint of zero, so I wondered if Gore was one of them,' he told the Hollywood Reporter. 'It's frustrating if you're an environmentalist because Gore sets himself up as a prophet - but he's actually a fraud and a charlatan. 'You've got to ring the bell of hypocrisy here. It's like a religious leader cheating on his wife.' Gore purchased his Nashville home in 2002 for $2.3million. It has 33 solar panels, which the report states would have cost the former vice president 'an estimated $22,275'. Drew Johnson (left), who wrote the NCPPR's report, claimed he was motivated to look into Gore's energy use after first seeing the Academy Award-winning film, An Inconvenient Truth The above GIFs are some of the famous shots from Gore's first documentary, An Inconvenient Truth. They warn about the dangers of flooding to cities that would be caused by sea level rises An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power is due to be released this week The panels are one thing that has led Gore to say previously his homes are environmentally friendly, but Johnson dismissed that assertion. 'Even with the greatest benefit of the doubt, you could say he gets to about 20 percent in clean energy,' he said. The new report was released ahead of the premiere of Al Gore's latest film, An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power, on Friday. Gore has said he hopes some of his ideas will make it into people's homes. In it, he says people can help at home by tweaking their thermostats and using LED lighting, but he also advocates people vote for politicians who support renewable energy and keeping pressure up on elected leaders. The film explores successful efforts around the globe to combat climate change. This shot is from Gore's film, An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power, which is set to be released on Friday Gore is pictured meeting with Justin Trudeau in this shot from his new film, which hits cinemas on Friday The former vice president has previously compared the climate change battle to that of other 'great moral causes' like slavery, gay rights and South Africa's anti-apartheid movement. 'The climate movement, not least in cities, is right now in the tradition of all the great moral causes that have improved the circumstances of humanity throughout our history,' he said in Australia last month. 'The abolition of slavery, women's suffrage and women's rights, the civil rights movement and the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa... The movement to stop the toxic phase of the nuclear arms race and more recently the gay rights movement. 'Some of you may disagree with that. I don't. I did earlier in my life. 'But all of these movements have one thing in common. They all have met with ferocious resistance and have generated occasional feelings of despair from those who knew the right direction and wondered whether we could ever get there.' DailyMail.com contacted Al Gore for comment. Prince Henrik of Denmark announced on Thursday he does not wish to be buried next to his wife, Queen Margrethe of Denmark, saying he is unhappy he was never acknowledged as her equal. Henrik, nicknamed the 'world's grumpiest royal', married Queen Margrethe in 1967, and was later named the Queen's Prince Concort, but the 83-year-old has repeatedly complained of the title. Disappointed that his royal title was never changed to king when his wife became queen in 1972, Henrik has often spoken out about his discontent, which did little to endear him to his subjects. The couple will break with royal tradition by not being buried together in the Roskilde Cathedral. Prince Henrik of Denmark announced on Thursday he does not wish to be buried next to his wife, Queen Margrethe of Denmark in the Roskilde Cathedral Henrik, nicknamed the 'world's grumpiest royal', married Queen Margrethe in 1967, and was later named the Queen's Prince Concort, but the 83-year-old has repeatedly complained of the title. The prince consort nonetheless intends to be buried in Denmark. 'It is no secret that the Prince for many years has been unhappy with his role and the title he has been awarded in the Danish monarchy. This discontent has grown more and more in recent years,' the Royal Danish House's director of communications told tabloid BT. Despite not being buried with his wife, the prince consort nonetheless intends to be buried in Denmark The royal house confirmed the quotes to Reuters. 'For the Prince, the decision not to buried beside the Queen is the natural consequence of not having been treated equally to his spouse - by not having the title and role he has desired,' she added. Prince Henrik retired last year and denounced his title of Prince Consort. Since then he has participated in very few official duties and instead spent much of his time at his private vineyard in France, although he is still married to the queen and they officially live together. In 2015, too, Prince Henrik denounced his title, calling it discrimination. 'It makes me angry that I am subjected to discrimination,' he told the French newspaper Le Figaro. 'Denmark, which is otherwise known as an avid defender of gender equality, is apparently willing to consider husbands as worth less than their wives,' the Prince Consort said. 'Why just be His Highness but not His Majesty?' Since then he has participated in very few official duties and instead spent much of his time at his private vineyard in France, although he is still married to the queen and they officially live together. They're pictured together in 2015 in Indonesia It had been expected that the Prince would be buried next to the Queen, 77, who is to be interred in the Roskilde Cathedral in a sarcophagus made by Danish artist Bjorn Norgaard In Denmark, a princess traditionally becomes queen, when her husband takes the throne. It had been expected that the Prince would be buried next to the Queen, 77, who is to be interred in the Roskilde Cathedral in a sarcophagus made by Danish artist Bjorn Norgaard. Born Henri Marie Jean Andre de Laborde de Monpezat on June 11, 1934 in Talence, near Bordeaux, he met Margrethe, then the crown-princess, while he was stationed in London as a diplomat. Upon marrying her, he changed his name to Henrik, converted from Catholicism to Protestantism and renounced his French citizenship to become a Dane. By the time Margrethe acceded to the throne, the couple had two young children: Prince Frederik, born in 1968, and Joakim, born in 1969. Henrik retired from public service in January 2016. Marcus Hutchins, the British computer expert who helped shut down a world-wide cyber attack that crippled the NHS, has been charged with creating banking malware, the US Department of Justice said. Hutchins discovered a 'kill-switch' for the virus after it paralysed thousands of NHS computers and claimed hundreds of thousands of victims around the world - including US courier service FedEx and German rail company Deutsche Bahn - in May. But now the internet hero, also known as MalwareTech, has been arrested by the FBI in Nevada and charged with a role in making malware. The 23-year-old from Ilfracombe, Devon, is alleged to have played a role in 'creating and distributing the Kronos banking Trojan' between July 2014 and July 2015. Marcus, pictured, has been charged with creating and distributing a banking Trojan capable of stealing people's log-in information During his time in the US Mr Hutchins Tweeted that he rented a bright orange Lamborghini Marcus Hutchins prevented more than 100,000 computers across the globe from being infected with the WannaCry virus (pictured) in May The Department of Justice said in a statement: 'Marcus Hutchins ... was arrested in the United States on 2 August, 2017, in Las Vegas, Nevada, after a grand jury in the Eastern District of Wisconsin returned a six-count indictment against Hutchins for his role in creating and distributing the Kronos banking Trojan.' The indictment says Hutchins created the Kronos malware before conspiring with another defendant, whose name has been redacted, to advertise and sell it on internet forums. In August 2014 the unnamed defendant sold the software for 2,000 dollars (1,522) in a digital currency in June 2015, the legal document adds. The Kronos Trojan was first advertised on underground forums in July 2014 and claimed to be capable of stealing banking log-in details from web browsers including Internet Explorer, Firefox and Chrome. It was apparently being offered for sale on various sites for more than 5,300. Unwitting users could be duped into downloading the malware when opening emails containing seemingly genuine attachments. The details they used to access their bank accounts could then be stolen. Pictured: An example of a phishing email (with an attachment containing malware) used to transmit the Kronos banking Trojan Hutchins' mother, Janet Hutchins, said it was 'hugely unlikely' that her son was involved because he has spent 'enormous amounts of time and even his free time' combating such attacks. She added that she is 'outraged' by the charges and has been 'frantically calling America' trying to contact her son. Hutchins was being held at the Henderson Detention Center after being arrested at Las Vagas's McCarran International Airport but has since been moved to another facility, a friend told Motherboard. The friend, who also works in the cyber security industry, was attending the Def Con event in the Nevada city with Hutchins. He said: 'He checked into his flight and I think he was sitting in the Virgin upper class lounge. 'He was escorted out of the airport and never made his flight.' The cyber community expressed their concern over his arrest with Naomi Colvin, from civil liberties campaign group Courage, praising him for his earlier work. She said: 'In May this year, WannaCry malware closed hospitals in the UK, becoming the first ransomware attack to represent an actual threat to life. 'In halting the spread of WannaCry before the US woke up, MalwareTech did the world an enormous service - and to American businesses in particular.' Ms Colvin said he had been detained for 24 hours before information was released about his arrest and said he has still not been allowed to contact his family or lawyers. 'The US treats hackers far worse than other countries do, with much longer prison sentences, a dearth of vital health care and rampant solitary confinement,' she said. The anonymous friend added: 'We still don't know why Marcus has been arrested and now we have no idea where in the US he's been taken to and we're extremely concerned for his welfare.' Pictured: Hacker hero Marcus Hutchins The National Crime Agency confirmed Hutchins had been detained but said 'it is a matter for the authorities in the US'. The Foreign Office said it is supporting Hutchins' family and is in contact with authorities in Las Vegas. Hutchins, who works for Los Angeles-based firm Kryptos Logic, spent the weekend in May fighting off the ransomware attack - but stressed he is not a 'hero'. After his intervention he began working with the government's National Cyber Security Centre to prevent a new strain of the malicious software emerging. The security worker spent 8 registering the domain name the virus tried to connect with when it infected a new computer and pointed it at a 'sinkhole server' in Los Angeles. It caused the malicious software to enact an 'emergency stop', immediately halting its spread - but at first the cyber expert feared he had actually made the virus epidemic worse. He said: 'Essentially they relied on a domain not being registered and by registering it, we stopped their malware spreading.' Speaking of the moment he stopped the virus, the anti-malware expert previously told MailOnline: 'It should have been really nice but someone had made a mistake and told me that our registering of the domain actually caused the infection. 'When I found out that it was actually the opposite it was more a relief.' North Korea has been linked with the attack, but in May an official from the authoritarian regime said talk of a connection was 'ridiculous', His arrest comes as more than 100,000 of digital currency bitcoin that was paid by victims of the WannaCry attack was withdrawn from the hackers' online wallets. There is no indication that the two events are connected. Victims were asked to pay around 230 in Bitcoins to get back control of their systems and monitoring websites showed the wallets holding the payments had been emptied today. No one has claimed responsibility for the attack but experts have connected it to Lazarus, a group also linked to the 2014 Sony Pictures hack. Advertisement So would he still be president? Trump's mother and grandfather would have been turned back at Ellis Island under his own immigration plans Donald Trump this week unveiled his new immigration plan that would prioritize skilled workers who could speak English. But if Congress had adopted such rules in the past then relatives of most of his cabinet - and ancestors of the President himself - would likely never have been admitted to America. The immigrant backgrounds of many members of Trump's team are a matter of pride for them but our test suggests their ancestors' hopes of crossing the Atlantic to build new lives would have been broken on the rocks of the new immigration system the president wants Congress to pass. Key advisers and cabinet members including his son-in-law Jared Kushner would probably have had their ancestors turned away because they were not desirable enough. Vice President Mike Pence would definitely not be here as his grandfather was the penniless son of a tailor from rural Ireland. DailyMail.com looked into the past of the President and his top aides to see who would have been allowed in under Mr Trump's proposed rules. We also calculated an estimate of the score they may have received from a border agent upon their arrival, based on the guidelines from the Trump White House. Candidates need at least 30 points to even apply for entry to the US. Those with higher education, a confirmed job offer and English language skills will get higher points - and are therefore more likely to gain a green card. Here we put the White House to the test. Scroll down for full details of the points scheme - and see if you or your ancestors would have got through Ellis Island. DONALD TRUMP: GRANDAD NO ENGLISH, MOM NO SKILLS Total fail: DailyMail.com was unable to compute any points at all for Frederick Trump, the president's German grandfather Donald Trump's ancestors would almost certainly have been turned away from America if the President's proposed rules were in force today. His grandfather Frederick Trump listed his job as 'none' when he first arrived in the US in 1885. He barely spoke any English and had to get a job with a German speaking barber in New York's Lower East Side. Frederick, who gave his name as 'Friedr. Trumpf', moved to Seattle and made a fortune running brothels and bars during the Yukon gold rush. He returned home to Germany in the early 1900s but was threatened with deportation for failing to do his military service. In a 1905 letter to the German authorities he said: 'Why should we be deported? This is very, very hard for a family.' It didn't work and he was deported back to the US. Ancestor: Frederick Trump, grandfather Ancestor's age upon arrival in America: 16 Native country: Germany Ancestor's education: Basic Job: Listed as 'none' on immigration form. Previously apprentice barber Other factors: Came to America to avoid military conscription in Germany. Very limited English. Estimate of points: 0 Likely decision of immigration agent: DENIED Not coming in: Mary Anne MacLeod was well below 30 points The President's mother (right) would also likely not have made it through the US border. Mary Anne MacLeod was born in Tong, a village in the north of Lewis, an island in the remote Outer Hebrides in Scotland, and moved to the US in 1930 for a better life. By 1940 she had married Fred Trump, the President's father, and was a naturalized citizen. Ancestor: Mary Anne Trump, mother Ancestor's age upon arrival in America: 18 Native country: United Kingdom Ancestor's education: High school only but considered a bright pupil. Unknown if she left school with Scottish Highers, the diploma equivalent, but we are assuming she did. Job: None Other factors: Fluent English as a second language; first language was Gaelic. Of working age - just. Estimate of points: 18 Likely decision of immigration agent: DENIED MELANIA TRUMP: NO DEGREE, MORE QUESTIONS NEEDED Points deduction: Melania Knauss would have gone down from five points to one for her lack of higher education. She amended her website to acknowledge having no degree Mrs Trump, the First Lady, has said that she first arrived in the US on a B1/B2 visitor visa in August 1996, returned home to Slovenia and returned to America in October having obtained an H1-B visa to work as a model. Mrs Trump has said that she moved to the US - as Melania Knauss - because she 'wanted to follow my dream to a place where freedom and opportunity were in abundance'. Yet it is not clear if she would have been allowed in had her husband's strict policies been in place as immigration agents may have questioned whether being a model is a skilled profession. Mrs Trump had claimed on her personal website biography that she got a degree from undergraduate degree in architecture from the University of Ljubljana but later deleted it. Her circumstances mean the amount she could have expected to earn from modeling would be the deciding factor. Age upon arrival in America: 26 Native country: Slovenia Education: Claimed to have a degree in architecture but only had high school diploma equivalent Job: Model Other factors: English speaker, of working age, work lined up with modelling agency, growing profile as a model Estimate of points: 28 Likely decision of immigration agent: FURTHER QUESTIONING NEEDED Model: Melania Knauss, 26, would have made 28 out of 30 points, a DailyMail.com estimate suggests - which makes it likely she would have faced more questioning before having immigration denied or accepted MIKE PENCE: UNSKILLED PENNILESS GRANDAD IS A NO-NO Not coming in: Richard Cawley arrived in 1923 and his picture appears in federal records. But he would have failed the Trump points test - badly Vice President Mike Pence's grandfather would have stood no chance of getting into America under his boss' rules. Richard Michael Cawley arrived in New York in 1923 from County Sligo, Ireland where he left behind poverty and war. His father was a tailor and he enlisted with the Irish Free State's army to fight against the British. He then moved to England to try and get to America. The manifest for the S.S. Andania lists him as a coal miner but he was so broke his brother paid for the trip. Upon his arrival in the US Cawley moved to Chicago and a document filed by him 1923 called a 'Declaration of Intention' states that he was working as a motorman on the city's streetcars, hardly the kind of skilled job Trump is aiming for. Ancestor: Richard Michael Cawley, grandfather. His daughter Nancy is Mike Pence's mother. Ancestor's age upon arrival in America: 19 Native country: Ireland, but sailed from Great Britain and gave it as his citizenship. Ireland left the United Kingdom in 1921; Cawley fought for independence Ancestor's education: Barely any Job: Coal miner, former soldier Other factors: Of working age, English speaker. Estimate of points: 17 Likely decision of immigration agent: DENIED But he did get in: Mike Pence's grandfather was a motorman on Chicago streetcars when he started naturalizing in 1930 JARED KUSHNER: HOLOCAUST HEROES DON'T GET POINTS Kushner's grandmother Rae Kushner was a Jew who survived the Nazi slaughter in WWII but she would likely have been denied entry to the US under Trump's laws. Rae grew up in Novogrudok, Poland, which had a Jewish population of 12,000 people until the Nazis took over in 1939 and began exterminating them. After several massacres - Rae's mother and older sister were killed during one - the surviving 300 Jews were forced into a ghetto where they dug a 600ft tunnel to escape. The Nazis were waiting for them at the other end and only 170 people made it to safety, Rae among them. Jared has said that she joined the Bielski Brigade of resistance fighters and met his grandfather Joseph where they literally lived in a hole in the ground for three years, scavenging for food to survive. After the war they returned to Novogrudok, which in the aftermath of World War II became part of the Soviet Union and is now in Belarus, and found it was destroyed so they eventually emigrated to New York in 1949. Ancestor: Rae Kushner, grandmother. She married Yossel Berkowitz, who took her surname and anglicized his first name to Joseph. Their son Charles is Jared's father. Ancestor's age upon arrival in America: 26 Native country: Born in what was at the time Poland, left what had become the Soviet Union and is now Belarus Ancestor's education: basic high school but unclear if she had a diploma Job: none Other factors: refugee from WWII, survived slaughter of her family by the Nazis - but none of those get points Estimate of points: 14 Likely decision of immigration agent: DENIED Stuck under the Soviet boot: Rae Kushner, Jared Kushner's grandmother, would not have got into the U.S. in 1949 under the points system his father-in-law is promoting No points on the scale for resisting: Two of Jared Kushner's grandparents - grandmother Rae Kushner and gradather Yossef Berkowitz joined the Bielski Brigade of resistance fighters against the Nazis. But that would not help their STEVEN MILLER: YIDDISH LANGUAGE, LOW-SKILL FAMILY His ancestor failed the test: Stephen Miller's great-grandfather spoke Yiddish and had little else to get to 30 points under the White House planned test Stephen Miller, Donald Trump's senior policy adviser, has been one of the biggest champions of his boss's immigration reform. Yet Miller's family, who are Jewish, would still be living in poverty in what is now Belarus had the US not taken them in. His great-grandfather was Sam Glosser and, according to a report in the Jewish Journal, was part of a large family who moved to the US in the early 1900s and settled in Johnstown, Pennsylvania. They opened a chain of department stores called Glosser's that flourished and the family became millionaires. In a Facebook post David S Glosser, an uncle of Miller wrote: 'One by one they managed to come over to Johnstown to escape poverty, war, and ethnic persecution. 'Starting with exactly nothing, one branch of the family established the scrap yard business, and our branch built Glosser Brother's department store. The businesses ultimately employed thousands and served the needs of the working mangood stuff cheap in a friendly environment'. He also wrote: 'The Glosser family escaped Europe as dirt poor immigrants, joined the community, built businesses, and honestly sold goods'. Glosser signed off his post by saying pointedly: 'If in the early 20th century the USA had built a wall against poor desperate ignorant immigrants of a different religion, like the Glossers, all of us would have gone up the crematoria chimneys with the other six million kinsmen whom we can never know'. Miller, a presidential policy adviser, briefed the press Wednesday on immigration reform and got involved in spat with CNN's Jim Acosta, accusing him of 'cosmopolitan bias'. Ancestor: Sam Glosser, great grandfather. His son was Isadore Glosser, whose daughter Miriam Miller is Stephen Miller's mother. Ancestor's age upon arrival in America: Unclear but likely in his 20s or younger Native country: Russian Empire, now part of Belarus Ancestor's education: Unknown but likely basic Job: Not clear but appears to have had few skills on arrival Other factors: May not have even spoken English. Recorded later in census records as Yiddish native speaker, while his wife was recorded as having been brought up speaking Hebrew. Estimate of points: Under 10 Likely decision of immigration agent: DENIED Questions over English: The 1930 census, which recorded native languages, said that Samuel (Sam) Glosser was brought up in Yiddish. His descendant Stephen Miller is fronting a policy to give preference to English speakers. He had little else to get him near the 30 points the Trump White House wants STEVE MNUCHIN: BORDER QUESTIONS FOR ANCESTOR The Treasury Secretary's family would likely have faced more questions at the border given that his great grandfather Aaron, who emigrated to the US in 1916, was a Russian-born Jewish diamond dealer who had been living in Antwerp, Belgium after leaving his native Yelets. A year after he was admitted he sent for his wife Judith and their children who set off from Cadiz, Spain and arrived at Ellis Island in September 1917. Among them was Leon Mnuchin, Steven Mnuchin's grandfather, who was just seven. According to the 1930 US Census the family grew up speaking Russian, so it appears that they learned English after arriving in America. Possible approval: Steve Mnuchin, the treasury secretary, is the great-grandson of Aaron Mnuchin, a Russian-born diamond dealer who brought his young family to the United States after leaving his native Yelets (left) and spending time in Belgium They spoke Russian: The 1930 census tells the story of Steve Mnuchin's family quitting Russia, moving to Antwerp and then making their way to Ellis Island - and being brought up in Russian until their arrival in the U.S., which would be bad for the points score his boss Donald Trump wants immigrants to reach Ancestor: Aaron Mnuchin, great grandfather. Ancestor's age upon arrival in America: 48 Native country: Russia Ancestor's education: unclear Job: Diamond dealer Other factors: Job may entitle him to special consideration Estimate of points: Two - but we know too little of his past to be sure there aren't more points available LIKELY DECISION OF IMMIGRATION AGENT: FURTHER QUESTIONING NEEDED NIKKI HAYLEY: INDIAN PARENTS WOULD GET TOP POINTS The immigrants Trump wants: Nikki Hayley's father Ajit Singh Randhawa and her mother Raj Kaur Randhawa both had degrees, fluency in English and her father had a job offer as a professor when they immigrated - putting them well over 30 points. The Randhawas had two daughters, Nikki - full name Nimrata - and her sister Simran, who is now a radio host, and two sons, Mitti, an Army veteran who served in Desert Storm in 1991, and Charan, a web designer. One of the few Trump cabinet members whose family would have been admitted. The US ambassador to the United Nations was born in Bamberg, South Carolina, to American Sikh parents. Her father Ajit Singh Randhawa was a professor at Punjab Agricultural University and her mother obtained a master's degree in education. The family were from Punjab in India and first moved to Canada, where he was an academic at the prestigious University of British Columbia, before emigrating to the US in 1969 when Randhawa accepted a job as a professor with Vorhees College in South Carolina - which is likely to have had a salary significantly higher than the state average. We have calculated her father's points - but her mother has an almost identical resume aside from the job offer from Vorhees. Ancestor: Ajit Singh Randhawa, father Ancestor's age upon arrival in America: in his 30s Native country: India Ancestor's education: university level or higher Job: Professor at agricultural university Other factors: English speakers, highly educated wife, job offer Estimate of points: 38 Likely decision of immigration agent: APPROVED The New Yorker has released audio from the profanity-laden phone call Anthony Scaramucci made to a reporter that ended with his termination from his White House job. In the clip, Scaramucci is heard pressing Ryan Lizza, The New Yorkers Washington correspondent, to reveal who had leaked a piece of information to him about a dinner Trump attended. 'Come on, I can't tell you, buddy. You know I can't do that,' Lizza tells him in return. Scaramucci, who had just been installed as the White House communications director, threatened to fire his entire staff in order to punish the leaker. Among the various attacks at other White House staff members made by The Mooch, the two can be heard laughing and joking with each other, and that even though both use the term 'buddy', Lizza insists they are not friends. The tone between the financier and the reporter seems quite jovial and even light-hearted in spite of the fateful consequences. The New Yorker has released audio from the now infamous phone call former White House communications director Anthony Scaramucci (pictured, July 21) had with Ryan Lizza, The New Yorkers Washington correspondent, pressing him to reveal who had leaked a piece of information to him about a dinner Trump attended Lizza (pictured, April 29) revealed that he received the phone call at home at 10.30pm and that, when it ended, he immediately downloaded the audio and titled it 'Insane Scaramucci Interview' In the now infamous phone call that took place on July 26, Scramaucci railed on his colleagues. He called the former White House Chief of Staff Reince Preibus a 'f***ing paranoid schizophrenic' and a 'c*** blocker and accused him of leaking his financial information to ProPublica. He then accused senior White House strategist Steve Bannon of 'sucking his own c***'. Lizza revealed that he received the phone call at his home at 10.30pm and that, when it ended, he immediately downloaded the audio and titled it 'Insane Scaramucci Interview'. 'It was so unusual. In 20 years of doing this, I've never had a phone conversation like that,' he told David Remnick on the The New Yorker Radio Hour podcast. 'I got off the phone and just sort of stood there silently...I stood there shaking my head saying: "That is the most unusual conversation I have ever had with a senior government official". ' While Scaramuccis behavior and language were shocking to many, even by Trumps standards, Lizza believes that his appointment followed a familiar pattern. He said before the speech, he called Scaramucci to let him know. Among the profanity-laden insults, the two can be heard laughing and joking with each other and calling each other 'buddy'. In the July 26, phone call, Scaramucci called former White House Chief of Staff Reince Preibus (pictured, July 14), a 'f*****g paranoid schizophrenic' and a 'c**k blocker and accused him of leaking his financial information to ProPublica Scaramucci then accused senior White House strategist Steve Bannon (pictured, June 1) of 'sucking his own c**k '[Terms like] "Off-the record" and "background" are bargains between a source and a journalist,' he said. 'As I told him frankly the next day when I called him to tell him we were publishing this: "You speak for the most powerful institution in the world. A conversation like that is presumptively on the record and what you said is extremely newsworthy".' In an interview with HuffPost, Scaramucci said he felt burned by the published article. 'The Lizzas and Scaramuccis have been friends for over 50 years. My dad knew his dad from construction, and we were building a personal relationship,' he said, 'Most of what I said was humorous and joking. Legally, it may have been on the record, but the spirit of it was off. And he knew that.' CONVERSATION BETWEEN SCARAMUCCI AND LIZZA Scaramucci: Who leaked that to you? Lizza: Oh man, I cant tell you that. S: What did you say? L: I cant tell you that. S: Okay so what Im gonna do Ill eliminate everyone on the comps team and we'll start over. I asked these guys not to leak anything but they cant help themselves. Someone on the comps team leaked that to you? L: I cant tell you. [] S: Okay but youre an American citizen. This is a major catastrophe for the American country. So Im asking you, as an American patriot, to give me a sense of who leaked it. L: The only thing I can tell you is it's two people in the White House who wouldnt lie to me. You know what I mean? S: Who? L: Come on, I cant tell you, buddy. You know I cant do that. S: Is it an assistant to the president? L: I'm not gonna say anything. [] S: Reince is a f*****g parandoid schizophrenic, a paranoiac. [mocking Preibus] 'Oh, Bill Shine is coming in. Let me leak the f*****g thing and see if I can c**k-block these people the way I c**k-blocked Scaramucci for six months'. He leaked the CFIUS stuff on me? You know my financial disclosures have been leaked to Politico? L: Yeah. S: Which is a felony. [...] L: I wanna ask you if you want to be profiled? S: I dont want to be profiled L: What youre trying to do- S: I'm not Steve Bannon. I'm not trying to suck my own c**k. I'm not trying to build my own brand off the president. I'm here to serve the country. [...] S: Ok, 'The Mooch' showed up a week ago. This is gonna get cleaned up very shortly because I nail these guys. I got digital fingerprints on everything theyve done from the FBI and from the f*****g Department of Justice. They'll probably get prosecuted for the felony. Advertisement Before the story was published, Lizza said he called Scaramucci and said: 'You speak for the most powerful institution in the world. A conversation like that is presumptively on the record and what you said is extremely newsworthy'. Scramucci published the above tweet in return Preibus was let go the day after the story was published, but his replacement was retired four star gGneral John Kelly. Among Kelly's first acts was ousting the Mooch (pictured, July 21) after just 10 days in the communications director role Lizza debated this point, saying that he and Scaramucci are not friends. 'Ive only known Anthony in his capacity as a Trump surrogate and then White House communications director. We are not and have never been "old family friends", though I think our fathers knew each other, so maybe thats what hes talking about,' he told HuffPost. 'But again, that would not be a reason to suppress an explosive on-the-record interview.' Although Preibus was let go a day after the story was published, it soon became clear that Scaramuccis triumph was short-lived. Preibus's replacement was retired four star General John Kelly and among his first acts was ousting the Mooch after just 10 days in the communications director role. 'Perhaps it was as simple as John Kelly being a military guy, and a bit more of a grown up compared to some of the people in this White House telling Donald Trump: "This is an intolerable situation". '"I can't have a communications director who, one, doesn't even report to me and who, two, would call up a reporter at 10.30 at night and go off on a rant like this".' A New Jersey father has shelled out more than $5,000 to reprint a high school yearbook after his son's photo was censored to remove Donald Trump's famed campaign slogan. The devoted dad, Joseph Berardo, of Wall Township, New Jersey, has put up $5,279 towards the estimated $10,000 that it cost to reissue the Wall High School yearbook. The new yearbook would replace the doctored images with the original photos which featured the Trump reference. Joseph told APP.com that he kicked in more than half of the money required for the reprint because it seemed like 'the right thing to do' and didn't want the reprint money to be taken away from funding school programs. Grant Berardo, 17, was surprised to discover that the Trump slogan t-shirt he wore on school picture day (pictured here) was edited to look like he was wearing a plain blue shirt. His father, Joseph Berardo, has contributed more than $5,000 towards reprinting the yearbook Grant's t-shirt as it was originally photographed (left) and as it appears edited in the yearbook The remainder of the bill was covered by the yearbook photo studio, Lors Photography and a school district credit from yearbook publishers Jostens. Two hundred copies of the yearbook were reprinted, but so far only 28 of them have been claimed by students as of mid-July. The yearbook photography issue came to light in June, when it was discovered that Joseph's son's class picture had been notably altered. When he sat for the photo, Grant Berardo, 17, a high school junior, was wearing a navy blue t-shirt featuring President Trump's 2016 campaign slogan, 'TRUMP Make America Great Again.' But, in the yearbook that was passed out, the words had been removed so that Grant appeared to be wearing a solid navy blue shirt instead. Devoted dad Joseph Berardo said he donated the money because it was the 'right thing to do' Wyatt Dobrovich-Fago's image also suffered from yearbook editing. The Trump slogan as it appeared on picture day (left) and as it appeared in the yearbook. The school claims the cropping was necessary for the photo to fit into the allotted space provided Montana Dobrovich-Fago submitted a Trump quote to be used beneath her yearbook photo. The school admited that it was intentionally omitted from the page A deeper examination of the yearbook revealed that fellow junior, Wyatt Dobrovich-Fago, had his image cropped so as to cut off the 'MAGA' phrase on his vest. It was also found that a Donald Trump quote that Wyatt's younger sister, freshman Montana Dobrovich-Fago, had submitted for use below her image was omitted. While school district authorities admitted that Montana's Trump quote was purposely cut from the yearbook, it claimed that the only reason why the slogan on Wyatt's chest was cropped, was because the image had to be resized to conform with all the other student photos. After the yearbook controversy, the school district's superintendent, Cheryl Dyer, told parents that there was no dress code stipulation barring students from either wearing or expressing political viewers on their clothing. In the letter to parents, obtained by NJ.com, Dyer said that the school was investigating the 'allegation of censorship and the possible violation of First Amendment rights' and added that the school does not 'condone any censorship of political views' that its students hold. Meanwhile, Wall High School's yearbook advisor and technology and media teacher, Susan Parsons, was suspended. Wall High School is located in a Trump voter stronghold. The AP reports that he received almost 63 per cent of the townships votes, despite New Jersey itself going to Hillary. Grisly new details have emerged about the moment police found a 26-year-old hair stylist stabbed to death in a Chicago apartment, as investigators reveal the two suspects were seen on surveillance footage leaving the building the night of the killing. Trenton Cornell-Duranleau was found dead in a luxury Chicago apartment block about 8:30pm on July 27 after police received a mysterious call from an unidentified man telling them 'may have been a crime committed in Room 1004' of the Near North Side high-rise. Officers got into the apartment using a master key. Once inside, they followed a trail of blood into the bathroom where the 26-year-old was lying face down, with stab wounds to his back, the Chicago Tribune reports. Police sources told the Tribune 'there was blood everywhere', and that in the kitchen police found a knife near the sink and another with a broken handle in a trash can. Police in Chicago are looking for two murder suspects, Northwestern University professor Wyndam Lathem (left) and Oxford University employee Andrew Warren (right) Lathem and Warren are wanted on first-degree murder charges in the July 27 stabbing death of 26-year-old hair stylist Trenton H. James Cornell-Duranleau (pictured) In the days after the stabbing, it was determined 42-year-old Northwestern University professor Wyndham Lathem lives in the apartment. Lathem and 56-year-old Oxford University employee Andy Warren from Swindon, UK, are now on the run, and a nationwide manhunt is underway. Chicago Police spokesman Anthony Guglielmi provided an update on Thursday, saying investigators believe they know where Lathem and Warren are or are heading and that the search is getting closer to being complete 'by the hour'. 'The search has intensified and has narrowed,' he said. 'We know where they might be, and we have more information coming in. New reports state Cornell-Duranleau (pictured) was found lying face down in the apartment's bathroom and had multiple stab wounds to his back 'We want to facilitate a safe surrender.' Arrest warrants were issued against the pair four days after the killing of Cornell-Duranleau, and as of Thursday morning they were last seen in a 2007 gray Hyundai. The warrants are for first-degree murder. It is feared they could have fled the state of Illinois, and police warned in an alert the two men should be: 'considered armed and extremely dangerous'. Warren, a former bus driver and train buff who works in payroll at Oxford's Somerville College in the UK, is believed to have been just days into his first trip to the US when the murder took place. Lathem is an associate professor of microbiology at Northwestern, where he is an expert in immunizing against bubonic plague. On Wednesday, Guglielmi had urged the men to surrender to authorities on Wednesday night. 'Our search will only intensify. Prof Latham (sic) & Mr Warren, do the right thing & turn yourself in to any police dept,' he tweeted. New reports claim two knives were found in the apartment on the 10th floor of the Grand Plaza Apartments, where Lathem resides. One was near the sink, and another with a broken handle was in a trashcan Andrew Warren is a British national who had once worked as a bus driver and cashier - he is on his first trip to the United States Cornell-Duranleau, a native of Michigan, worked as a hair stylist and loved video games, cars and cartoons, according to his obituary shared on Facebook by his mother. Cornell-Duranleau and Lathem were friends on Facebook, although it's not clear when and how the two had first crossed paths. His mother, Charlotte Cornell, released a statement on Wednesday morning the family does not know Warren or Lathem. Cornell's statement said: 'Our Family is deeply saddened by the death of our son. It is our hope that the person or persons responsible for his death are brought to justice. 'We are asking that you allow our family to process and grieve this tragedy privately. 'We are asking all media outlets to not contact our family, friends or associates. When we have had sufficient time to morn our child's passing, we will release a more in depth statement if we believe it is appropriate to do so. 'She declined to say whether she or other family members had ever heard of them before her son was killed because the two suspects 'are at large and there's an ongoing investigation.' She said she hoped her written statement would provide some relief for relatives who have been inundated with calls from reporters around the world. An autopsy found the 26-year-old Michigan native died from multiple sharp force injuries and his manner of death was ruled a homicide 'Maybe this (statement) can calm things down for my kids, our parents,' she said. 'We are asking that we have a little space during this time.' Northwestern released a statement on Wednesday, stating Lathem has been placed on administrative leave and is banned from the university's campuses. 'This is now a criminal matter under investigation by the appropriate authorities, and Northwestern University is cooperating in that investigation,' vice president for university relations Alan Cubbage said. Warren's profile on the University of Oxford website was deleted on Wednesday night. The university said in a statement it was 'not aware' of the 'extremely disturbing case'. 'We will liaise with the relevant investigating authorities and provide any assistance that is required,' the statement added. Tesco has been accused of hypocrisy after objecting to a proposed new Aldi store on the grounds that it would harm local independent traders. The supermarket giant already has THREE stores in or around Stroud, Gloucestershire, but claims that another would have a 'significant adverse impact' on the town centre. Many locals say the posh town desperately needs a budget retailer and Tesco's objection is a classic case of the 'pot calling the kettle black'. Michael Purton, editor of local paper the Stroud News and Journal, said Tesco was 'simply trying to protect its own interests'. The supermarket giant already has three stores in or around Stroud, Gloucestershire, including this Express outlet in Stratford Road Local resident Karen Maggs said: 'I don't think Tesco should be allowed to comment on any proposed supermarkets as they are the biggest culprits for taking business from other shops.' Sue Scott, who lives in nearby Stow-on-the-Wold, added: 'What hypocrites. 'Tesco refuted that they would affect independent retailers when they wanted to build at Stow, but now THEY don't want another supermarket.' Aldi has applied for planning permission to build a 1,918 square metre store on the Bath Road Trading Estate, which is 1.5 miles from Tesco's superstore in Stratford Road. Tesco also has two other 'Express' stores within a 2.3 mile radius of the town centre - in nearby Nailsworth and Bussage. A letter of objection to Stroud District Council has now been submitted on behalf of Tesco by its planning consultants MRPP. Plans: What the Aldi in Stroud could look like if it is given the go-ahead by the council It argues that the site is designated as 'employment land' rather than retail in the Stroud Local Plan which was adopted in November 2015. The letter, signed by MRPP director Luke Raistrick, states: 'It is clear and unequivocal that the site 'will be retained for B Class uses. Redevelopment for alternative uses or changes of use from employment use will not be permitted on these sites'. 'Hence the proposal is contrary to the development plan, and the only reasonable decision that can be made here is the refusal of planning permission.' In regards to town centre impact it says: 'It is perfectly reasonable for the council to take the position that the expected trade diversion from Stroud town centre would lead to a significant adverse impact. Michael Purton, editor of local paper the Stroud News and Journal, said Tesco was 'simply trying to protect its own interests'. Pictured: One of the Express stores around Stroud 'The council's retail assessment finds that Stroud town centre is 'underperforming', falling 'considerably behind Cirencester and Yate' with 'information on rents and yields further substantiating this position'.' Mr Raistrick also points out that a previous similar application by Aldi for the site was rejected in 2016 because of the potential harm on local businesses. The letter continued: 'It is also noteworthy that planning application S.16/1023/FUL, for an identical foodstore proposal, was refused by the development control committee on November 29, 2016, with the first reason owing to the expected 'retail impact on Stroud, Nailsworth and Stonehouse town centres'. 'It is therefore only right that the committee should come to the same view this time around, given that the proposal, trade diversion analysis, and policy and wider context is unchanged.' Newspaper editor Mr Purton said many local people will value a budget supermarket in the town, which also has large Sainsbury's and Waitrose stores. He wrote in an editorial: 'Tesco claiming that an Aldi would harm the traders in the town centre is surely a case of the pot calling the kettle black. 'Make no mistake, this is simply a case of Tesco trying to protect its own interests and avoid having a new rival in Stroud for supermarket customers. 'The overwhelming view from the public is that Stroud does need a budget supermarket such as Aldi or Lidl to compete with the generally more expensive Tesco, Waitrose and Sainsbury's. Pictured: More plans for the Aldi in Stroud 'Sadly, there are very few businesses left in Stroud town centre which could be considered as direct rivals to Aldi, which mainly sells food and drink. 'Tesco, on the other hand, sells electrical items, greetings cards, stationery, toys, DVDs, books and clothes and is therefore far more of a direct competitor to the shops in the town centre, both independent and chain. 'We can only hope that Stroud District Council's planning committee dismisses the letter from Tesco when reaching a decision on the Aldi plans.' Aldi has already launched an appeal to the Secretary of State over the refusal of its 2016 application but not date has been set for a decision on this. Tesco's objection to the second application will be taken into consideration at the next development committee. A spokesman for Stroud District Council said a decision on the latest Aldi application will be made in September. A memo drafted almost 12 years after the assassination of John F. Kennedy reveals that a number of top intelligence workers believed that there may have been Castro-Cuban involvement in the fatal shooting of the president. That argument is based largely on the six-day trip that Lee Harvey Oswald took to Mexico just two months before the assassination, which is detailed for the first time in the 26-page memo. The assassination may have been carried out in retaliation to the attempts the CIA had made on Castro's life argues the memo, with Oswald possibly deciding it was crucial to murder Kennedy in order to save Castro. Politico was the first to report on this memo. New theories: A top secret memo from 1975 details the possibility of Castro-Cuban involvement in the assassination of John F Kennedy (Castro above in 1960) Theory: The memo argues that Kennedy (above in 1960) could have been killed in retaliation for attempts that had been made on Castro's life by the CIA and its operatives Oswald's ties to Cuba date back to 1959 according to the memo, with a man by the name of Nelson Delgado stating that Oswald has inquired as to how he might get a visa to go to the island in the months after Castro rose to power while they were both training at the Marine Corps Air Station in El Toro, California. Delgado suggested that he contact the embassy he said in excerpts from his interview with intelligence officers, and soon after Oswald received a letter with an official seal he claimed was from the Cuban consul in Los Angeles. From then on he would receive multiple deliveries and often wait by the post rather than go out according to Delgado, who said that Oswald received letter, books and pamphlets from Cuban contacts but never any letters from home. It was soon after he finished his time at El Toro that Oswald defected to Russia, returning with wife Marina in June of 1962 and moving the following April to New Orleans. The memo argues that the idea to assassinate President Kennedy may have first been put in motion when Oswald was in New Orleans and read an interview that Castro gave to an AP reporter in early September. Lee Harvey Oswald (above) may have been motivated to commit the fatal shooting after a September 1963 interview in which Castro lashed out at Kennedy Catro referred to Kennedy as a 'cretin' and 'the most opportunistic American president of all time' in that interview, while speaking about attempts to take out and kill Cuban leaders by the US government. 'We are prepared to fight them and answer in kind,' said Castro. 'US leaders should think if they are aiding terrorist plans to eliminate Cuban leaders they themselves will not be safe.' A few weeks after that interview ran in papers across the country, Oswald was in Mexico trying to get a new visa, spending five days shuttling back and forth between the Russian and Cuban embassies. He also found time for a little romance according to the memo, which claims that Oswald had an affair with Silvia Duran, the receptionist at the Cuban embassy. Duran was never formerly interrogated however the memo reveals, and instead allowed to avoid going in front of the Warren Commission during their investigation at the request of Mexican authorities. That meant the one person with first-hand details of Oswald's trip to Mexico was never formally questioned and all her statements accepted at face value as factual and accurate. She also did not have to answer to why her friend and co-worker Luisa Calderon was heard laughing and stating that she knew Kennedy was going to be shot in an intercepted phone call to the embassy just hours after the assassination. 'Yes, of course I knew it almost before Kennedy,' said Calderon according to the memo. 'Imagine, one, two, three and now, that makes three,' she added, laughing. She then noted 'what barbarians' before telling the caller a party that had been planned for the night at Duran's was being rescheduled so they did not appear to be celebrating in the wake of the shooting. The angling world is in mourning today after the death of Britain's biggest freshwater fish. The mighty mirror carp, called The Parrot, which weighed a record-breaking 68lbs 1oz, was found at 6am yesterday floating in its lake at the Wasing Estate, near Reading, Berkshire. The fishery manager believes the 25-year-old specimen died of old age but an autopsy will be carried out to confirm the exact cause. There are plans to stuff the fish so he can be proudly mounted on a wall at the fishery, which has a 10-year waiting list to become a member. Scroll down for video The Parrot, pictured with police officer Matt Bryant in 2013, has been found dead in its fishery The carp, pictured with Dean Fletcher in 2016, was the country's biggest freshwater fish and weighed at a whopping 68lbs 1oz The Parrot - so called because of its narrow mouth which resembled a bird's beak - was so revered that fishermen travelled from all over Britain for the chance to land him. Since news of his death was confirmed on social media anglers have paid tribute to the fish and shared their memories of catching him. Leading the testimonials was greengrocer Dean Fletcher who caught The Parrot at its top weight in January 2016 - a record that stands today. Mr Fletcher, 54, from Caversham, Berks, said: 'The Parrot was a true one off so it's terribly sad to hear that he's died. 'Obviously he was the biggest around and one that so many wanted to record as a catch. It a massive loss to the carp world. 'As the record holder I obviously have very fond memories of him, catching him was a very special moment.' The underwater creature was placed in the fishery in 1997, when he weighed just 12lbs. Mark Hibbs, Wasing Estate fishery manager and head gamekeeper with The Parrot when he weighed 25lb 8oz It is believed the 25-year-old specimen died of old age but an autopsy will be carried out to confirm the exact cause Its size and reputation grew over the years and after the death of legendary carp Two Tone, which weighed 67lbs 14oz, in 2010, The Parrot became the country's largest. Mark Hibbs, manager of the Wasing Estate fishery, said: 'I'm absolutely gutted. The Parrot was a once in a lifetime fish. 'I had a call at six o'clock yesterday morning from an angler saying that they had pulled him out. 'I saw him swim past me last Friday and he looked fine but that was the last time I saw him alive. 'Having caught him myself, I know first hand what a wonderful fish he was. 'I think he died from natural causes because there were no marks on him.' Other anglers posted their condolences online. Harry James, from Coventry, wrote: 'A sad day indeed, such a beautiful carp.... a real loss.' Daniel Bragan, from Tadley, Hants, posted: 'Sorry to hear this awful news - a sad day in carp fishing. RIP The Parrot.' Craig Runham, from Reading, Berks, added: 'Such a sad day for many.' A man and woman from Washington state were arrested after a sharp-eyed airline passenger spotted the man texting about sexually assaulting children while mid-flight. Michael Kellar, 56, of Tacoma, was arrested in San Jose, California after his Southwest Airlines flight landed at the city's airport on Monday night, according to authorities. San Jose police said that a fellow airplane passenger, seated in the row behind Kellar, alerted flight attendants once she realized that Keller was texting someone about sexually abusing children. Police arrested Michael Kellar, 56, on Monday night after a fellow airplane passenger spotted him texting about sexually abusing children while on a Southwest Airlines flight The plane passenger told authorities that Kellar was texting about the abuse using a large font on a large smartphone. The font and screen were so big that the passenger was able to take photos of Kellar's text conversation, police said. The passenger, who police didn't identify, alerted the flight crew. A flight attendant then notified an officer stationed at the airport, and Kellar was arrested once the inbound plane from Seattle landed. Police and FBI agents then questioned Kellar about the text messages. Authorities said Kellar allowed detectives to search his phone and reportedly claimed that the texts were merely fantasy and an effort at role-playing, reports the San Jose Mercury. An investigation into the text messages Kellar was sending led police to the home of Gail Burnworth, 50. Authorities say that two children, ages 5 and 7, were found in the home with her Following the interview, detectives reached out to the Seattle police department and FBI, in an effort to track down the recipient of Kellar's text messages. The texts led to the Tacoma home of Gail Burnworth, 50, where authorities said it appeared that two children, ages 5 and 7, who were also in the home, were being sexually abused. Burnworth was then arrested. Seattle and San Jose police declined to discuss the children's relationship to Kellar and Burnworth. They did not reveal how the two suspects knew each other, either. However, authorities said that, as a babysitter, Burnworth had access to children and that Kellar was getting to the victims through her. Kellar is accused of attempted child molestation and solicitation of a sex crime. Burnworth was arrested on suspicion of child rape and sexual exploitation of children. Kellar and Burnworth are in jail and it's was not known if they have lawyers to speak on their behalf. A man invaded a New Jersey home and tried to join a woman in the shower before she called the police, who arrived and found him washing the dishes. James King made his way into the Hackensack home through an open window and frightened a woman when she realized a stranger was in the bathroom, ready to strip off his clothes and climb into the shower with her, NBC reported. The woman quickly ran into the bedroom and called the police, who found King washing the dishes and claiming he was the family's caretaker. James King (left, mugshot, and right, during his arrest Wednesday) made his way into the Hackensack home through an open window and tried to join a woman in the shower The woman who was in the shower initially thought her sister Mikah Diaz had entered the bathroom before she realized it was a stranger who was taking his clothes off The woman who was in the shower initially thought her sister Mikah Diaz had entered the bathroom on Wednesday morning. But she soon realized it was a stranger in the bathroom, and screamed at him in horror as he started to take his clothes off, CBS reported. She quickly grabbed a towel, bolted out of the bathroom and locked herself in a bedroom where Diaz was watching her baby nephew. Diaz recounted her sister's panic while they called the police and hid in the bedroom waiting for them to arrive. 'She was having a hard time breathing. I think she was shocked. She locked the door and collapsed onto the floor,' Diaz told CBS. When the cops arrived, they found King in the kitchen, claiming he was the family's caretaker while he washed the dishes. She quickly grabbed a towel, bolted out of the bathroom and locked herself in a bedroom where her sister Mikah Diaz (pictured) was watching her baby nephew When the cops arrived, they found King in the kitchen, claiming he was the family's caretaker while he washed the dishes (above) Kelly Green, 32, (left with her husband Shane Green) moved from Eastbourne, East Sussex, in the UK to Tristan da Cunha (pictured), one of a remote group of volcanic islands in the South Atlantic Ocean, in July 2013. The whole island descends from just seven families and has a population of just 138 inhabitants. It is only accessible by boat from Cape Town, South Africa, and the journey can take anywhere from a week to 15 days - depending on the weather. After going through a tough break up, Kelly travelled to the island to visit her parents in 2010 as her dad was a diplomat posted there. Kelly said she 'fell in love' with the island and it was there that she met her now husband Shane Green, 33. Shane, a carpenter who has lived on the island for his entire life, had helped Kelly carry her luggage off the raft and they soon became besotted with each other. Kelly made the move to Tristan da Cunha permanently in July 2013 and the couple now have two children together - Savannah, eight, and Seren, who is 16-months-old. The Justice Department's special counsel Robert Mueller has empaneled a grand jury in the nation's capital to hear evidence that Russia interfered in the 2016 U.S. elections, and to investigate whether President Donald Trump's campaign colluded with Moscow to tilt the White House race in his direction. And the panel has already issued its first subpoenas, according to a Reuters report, making demands related to a 2016 Trump Tower meeting that included Donald Trump Jr. and a Russian lawyer who promised to disclose but never delivered dirt on Hillary Clinton. Grand juries can allow prosecutors to subpoena documents, interview witnesses under oath, and obtain criminal indictments where the evidence warrants it. Going that route signals that the probe is entering a new phase, and that Mueller believes he will need to demand documents and sworn testimony from a number of people. Prosecutors are also probing Trump and Trump family members financial ties, CNN reported. The Wall Street Journal reported the existence of the grand jury, which has been in session for weeks under the guidance of Mueller, himself a former director of the FBI. Robert Mueller, the special counsel investigating so-far unsubstantiated charges that Donald Trump's presidential campaign colluded with Russia to tilt the 2016 election, has empaneled a grand jury to hear testimony and examine evidence President Donald Trump has denied repeatedly that he or anyone in his presidential campaign colluded with Russia to undermine or otherwise impact the election Reuters reports that the first grand jury subpoenas have already begun to fly, related to a 2016 Trump Tower meeting that included Donald Trump Jr. (left) and a Russian lawyer The subpoenas indicate that Mueller will use his investigative powers to scrutinize a meeting between the president's eldest son and a Kremlin-linked lawyer in June of 2016. Donald Trump Jr. set up the meeting after being contacted via email by music publicist Robert Goldstone, who promised dirt on Clinton and mentioned Russian government support for Donald Trump. Trump Jr. immediately agreed to the meeting and subsequently invited Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner and former Trump campaign chair Paul Manafort to join him. The meeting was attended by Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya, a leading proponent of an effort to roll back anti-Russia sanctions in the 2012 Magnitsky Act a U.S. law deplored by Russian President Vladimir Putin. When the outlines of the meeting first came to light, Trump Jr. initially stated that it was mainly about Russia's prohibition on Americans adopting children from there, a ban that came about in response to U.S. sanctions. President Trump 'weighed in' on that statement while it as being written, the White House later confirmed. Trump Jr. ultimately released the email chain revealing the Clinton connection. Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya attended the 2016 meeting in Trump Tower which also included Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner and Paul Manafort The president has forcefully denied that he and his campaign were involved with the Kremlin's alleged efforts, calling the investigation a 'witch hunt.' But Washington, D.C. is an exceedingly Democratic district where Trump won just 4 per cent of the vote, meaning few potential grand jurors will be sympathetic to him. Three U.S. intelligence agencies concluded late last year that Russia was indeed behind an effort to undermine America's presidential election. Ty Cobb, special counsel to the president, said in a statement that he didn't know if a grand jury had been empaneled. 'Grand jury matters are typically secret,' he said. But Cobb suggested that the administration isn't spooked by the new development. 'The White House favors anything that accelerates the conclusion of his work fairly,' he said, adding that 'the White House is committed to fully cooperating with Mr. Mueller.' The White House press office added that former FBI Director Jim Comey 'said three times the President is not under investigation and we have no reason to believe that has changed.' Mueller (left) has a close relationship with ousted FBI director James Comey (right), a fact that Trump has used to try to delegitimize the probe as biased and a 'witch hunt' Thomas Zeno, a 29-year federal prosecutor before he entered private legal practice, told the Journal that Mueller's move 'doesn't mean he is going to bring charges' against anyone. 'But it shows he is very serious. He wouldn't do this if [the investigation] were winding down.' Special counsel investigations can proceed for years, and there has been no indication from Mueller or his team about how long the Russia probe could take to unfold. Federal grand juries typically sit for 18 months, and can hear evidence on more than one case. Judges can extend that period after the 18-month period ends. Federal grand jurors are expected to be available every weekday during their term of service, although the grand jury may not be called on to convene every day. Its role is to hear evidence from witnesses and examine documents with guidance from prosecutors, in order to decide whether 'probable cause' exists to charge someone with a crime. Mueller's grand jury, unlike most, will be tasked with examining classified information a feature that will add complexities to the situation. Trump has sought to publicly undermine the credibility of Mueller's legal team, telling a Fox news Channel interviewer last month that they are largely Democratic partisans engaged in a fishing expedition to harm his presidency. 'I can say that the people that have been hired are all Hillary Clinton supporters, some of them worked for Hillary Clinton,' he said. In addition, Trump has pointed out repeatedly that Mueller has a close relationship with James Comey, a former FBI director whom the president fired this year. The president has made the unusual decision to go after Mueller in public and told the New York Times he would consider it to be crossing a 'red line' if Mueller were to probe his finances or his family finances. Mueller's decision to impanel a new grand jury added new urgency to the question of whether Trump will ultimately fire him. The president avoided a question about whether he would fire Mueller as he approached Marine One Thursday en route to a campaign event in West Virginia. Two bipartisan pairs of senators have introduced legislation that would allow the Mueller to stay on if Trump fired him. The special counsel could seek a review in court if he got fired, according to the bill introduced Thursday by GOP Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina and Democratic Chris Coons of Delaware. Only a Senate-confirmed attorney general would be able to carry out his firing, under the bill a provision in response to Trump's public attacks on Attorney Gen. Jeff Sessions, who recused himself from the Russia probe, infuriating Trump. Trump outside attorney Jay Sekulow told Fox News: 'Well the president is not thinking about firing Robert Mueller so the speculation thats out there is just incorrect.' A dog that helped his owners escape a house fire died as a result of his heroic actions. Hemi, a pit bull lab mix, woke up his family with loud barks in their mobile home in Naples, Maine, at 4:30am on morning as the blaze broke out. Fire officials say the four people who were inside the home, as well as another dog, were able to escape. Hemi, a pit bull lab mix, helped his owners escape a house fire but died himself as a result of his heroic actions. He awoke his family with loud barks in their mobile home in Naples, Maine Inside the home were Vernon Brower (left); his girlfriend, Chelsye Mason (right); their daughter, Dakota (center); and Vernon's brother Gary. The couple's eldest daughter was not home at the time of the fire According to Naples Fire Chief Chris Pond, the fire started around 4.30am on Tuesday on Pleasant View Drive. The State Fire Marshals Office says the blaze originated in the living room area of the mobile home (pictured), but it is still investigating the cause One of the residents suffered severe injuries. According to Naples Fire Chief Chris Pond, the fire started around 4.30am on Tuesday on Pleasant View Drive. The State Fire Marshals Office says the blaze originated in the living room area of the mobile home, but it is still investigating the cause. Inside the home were Chelsye Mason; her boyfriend, Vernon Brower; their daughter, Dakota, and Vernon's brother, Gary. The couple's older daughter was not home at the time. According to a Facebook post by Mason, Vernon was taken to Maine Medical Center to be treated for burns after he went through the flames to wake up his brother. Mason said doctors told her Vernon is 40 percent burned from the back of his neck down to the buttocks as well as his shoulders, parts of his arms and head, and he may need skin grafts. Firefighters told local reporters that Mason told them Hemi started barking and woke the occupants up, which allowed them to get away in time. Mason believes that Hemi died following Vernon into the flames to wake up his brother. One of the problems with putting out the fire was getting water. Chief Pond told WCSH that because there are no hydrants in the area, water has to be trucked in and brought down the road with an above ground water mane. Although Hemi (left) died in the blaze, another dog, Kota (right), was able to escape with the family According to a Facebook post by Mason (left), Vernon (right) was taken to Maine Medical Center to be treated for burns after he went through the flames to wake up his brother. Mason said doctors told her Vernon is 40 percent burned from the back of his neck down to the buttocks and well as his shoulders, parts of his arms and head, and he may need skin grafts Fire marshals said the home is a total loss. A GoFundMe page has been set up to help cover medical expenses as well as other costs. So far, $740 has been raised out of a $10,000 goal In May, in Des Moines, Iowa, a miniature pinscher-Chihuahua-whippet mix named Capone saved a mother and her nine children from an electrical fire sparked by a microwave plug. And back in January, a mixed-breed named Jack saved a family of eight from a fire in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, after a second-floor bedroom caught on fire. Open since 1908 and moved to its current location in 1919, the historic Cobban Bridge between Jim Falls and Cornell possibly carried its last traffic Wednesday. Chippewa County shut down traffic on the bridge, fearing the bridge as it sits is a safety hazard. The decision to close the bridge was made after county officials did one last inspection at about 1 p.m. Wednesday. It became apparent that we needed to close the bridge, County Administrator Frank Pascarella said, adding the county was concerned about public safety and the countys liability if the structure failed. We understand the inconvenience we may be causing people in the area, and we apologize for it, he said. The fate of the bridge now will be determined by the Chippewa County Board, which will take up the issue at its meeting at 6 p.m. Tuesday at the county courthouse. Its unsafe. The county is liable if someone were to fall through. I think it should have been closed long ago, said Supervisor Leigh Darrow of District 15. Darrow said he doesnt have an opinion on whether the county should build a new structure. The countys Highway Committee on a 3-2 vote endorsed building a new bridge at the current bridge site. The price tag for that is estimated at $8 million, with Chippewa County picking up $3 million of that. But that is dependent on the county getting federal replacement funds, and a decision on that will not be made until this fall. The board last year endorsed a route south of the current bridge site. The estimated cost of putting the bridge there is $11 million, which would rise to $12.9 million if the bridge project is put off until 2025. It is also possible the board will opt for tearing down the current bridge and not replacing it. If it does that, the county would be responsible for the entire cost of tearing down the bridge, which would be over $1 million. The current bridge, built by the Modern Steel Structures Company of Waukesha and touted by the firm as the most modern and complete steel structural bridge of its time, still has its fans. Its not going to affect my business, said Aron Cote, owner of Lake Holcombe Marina. I was born and raised here; my family has been here since the 1860s. Theres a lot of history in this area thats been pretty much disposed of, he said. Im in favor of keeping it open. Doesnt matter to me if they keep it open for cars, use the money theyre spending to tear it out to keep it in and fix it up for bikes, ATVs. The Old Abe Trail is right there. Its a good jumping point from one side to another. To me its a beautiful piece of culture. However, Darrow doesnt see having the bridge as being about to stand up to continued use. I think its beyond a matter of foot traffic. The rating is 2.5 out of 100, Darrow said. Fracture The formal name of the structure is the Highway TT Bridge. The structure crosses the Chippewa River. The county said it conducted inspections of the bridge on July 19 and 20, when slight changes to the bridges conditions were noticed. The changes were reported to bridge engineers from the Federal Highway Administration and the Wisconsin Department of Transportation. They never told us that we should close the bridge, Pascarella said. But the engineers had concerns with the safety of continuing to use the bridge after fractures were found in critical steel components of the structure. Pascarella said when county officials went for Wednesdays inspection, cars were still crossing the bridge. He said the average daily traffic count over the bridge is about 300. Ambulances and fire trucks cannot access the bridge in its current state, he said. History The bridge was built as the Yellow River Bridge in 1908 at a cost of $12,744. Then between 1916-1918, what was then called the Wisconsin-Minnesota Power and Light Company (now Xcel Energy) constructed a hydroelectric plant. The resulting dam would form Lake Wissota, which is marking its 100th anniversary this year. The towns of Eagle Point and Arthur rescued the 486-foot structure, dismantled it and then put it up on its current site, 15 miles upstream from where it had been originally built. Bridge parts were transported during the winter months, using sleds. The Yellow River Bridge is the oldest of four Pennsylvania truss bridges remaining in Wisconsin, said Diana Kromm in a 1987 history of the bridge for the Wisconsin Historic Bridges Recording Project. Sean Spicer may be returning to TV soon, just not as a participant on a dance show. The former White House press secretary reportedly turned down an offer from Dancing with the Stars because he was too busy with other commitments. A source close to the senior adviser to President Trump told TMZ that Spicer wouldn't be a good contestant for the show because he's not 'a good dancer'. Spicer, who is set to clear out his office at the end of August, has been meeting with major news networks for a possible television deal. He told DailyMail.com Wednesday that he does not intend to stick around the White House longer than he initially said he would, shutting down speculation that he could become communications director now that Anthony Scaramucci is gone. Sean Spicer, the former White House press secretary, reportedly turned down an offer from Dancing with the Stars because he was too busy with other commitments for the fall A source close to the senior adviser to President Trump said Spicer wouldn't be a good contestant for the show because he wasn't even 'a good dancer' Spicer has reportedly been meeting with major networks for a possible television deal. However it seemed he wasn't interested in appearing on the ABC dance show. Pictured: Hosts Tom Bergeron and Erin Andrews Spicer was also rumored to be a DWTS contestant. The 25th season of the popular show returns on September 18. While flattered by the offer, Spicer ultimately had to pass on the opportunity because he plans to have an 'overwhelming number of commitments in the fall', reported TMZ. A source claimed that beyond his hectic upcoming schedule, Spicer is 'not a good dancer.' Spicer quit his White House position two Fridays ago after Trump named Scaramucci communications director. The president gave the fellow New Yorker authority to fire suspected leakers in the White House press shop and promised him unfettered access to the Oval Office, upsetting other senior White House staff. Chief of Staff Reince Priebus and Trump Chief Strategist Steve Bannon were up in arms. Spicer gave notice. Spicer told Fox News' Hannity the evening that Scaramucci was hired that he was stepping down to provide the incoming communications director and deputy press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders a 'clean slate.' Huckabee Sanders was immediately elevated to the position of press secretary. She's appeared behind the briefing room podium ever since. A statement from the president thanked Spicer for his six months of service and noted that he 'will continue to serve the Administration through August'. Spicer will clean out his office and leave 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue at the end of August The senior adviser to President Trump told DailyMail.com that he does not intend to stick around longer than he initially said he would, shutting down speculation about his plans now that Anthony Scaramucci is gone The next 10 days were a whirlwind. Scaramucci delivered a profanity-laden rant to a reporter the following Wednesday. The reporter published excerpts of the call on Thursday. Trump replaced Priebus as chief of staff on Friday. Retired Gen. John Kelly took charge of the White House on Monday. Kelly's first act as chief of staff was canning Scaramucci. The firing left the communications director position open once again, leading to talk that it would go to Spicer, the one aide Trump says he did not cut loose. Jason Miller, a former Trump aide who was tapped for the communications job in December and decided not to take it, encouraged Spicer in a Tuesday appearance on CNN to stay put until Congress passes tax reform. 'I think he's the person in the White House who's been working on this tax reform roll-out,' Miller said. Actor Joe Piscopo greets Spicer outside the White House last week on Tuesday. Spicer was photographed taking pictures for friends before President Donald Trump departed the White House that day for an Ohio rally A casually-dressed Spicer, as seen at the White House last weekend. Spicer is not expected to accompany the president on his two-week getaway to Bedminster, New Jersey, tomorrow Spicer has been relishing his new-found freedom, taking undisclosed meetings off campus that keep him out of the building much of the day Spicer left the impression at the time that he was considering it. 'Will let you know,' he told DailyMail.com then. Huckabee Sanders indicated in a Wednesday afternoon update that it was not going to happen after all, though. She told DailyMail.com during her daily briefing, 'Nothing has changed at this point.' 'As he said, I believe that was, gosh, a week or so ago. The days all kind of run together now. But he was going to stay on in a transition process through August, and nothing has changed,' she stated. Spicer chimed in later in an email. 'From the beginning I said (and I believe the statement reflects this) that I would stay thru the end of the month,' he wrote. He denied in the exchange that there had been any grayness associated with his plans in recent days. 'There's no confusion,' he said in his initial response. Tom Delay, the former Rep. for Texas appeared on the show in 2009 (left) and former Texas Governor Rick Perry (right) took part last year Spicer is not expected to accompany the president on his two-week getaway to Bedminster, New Jersey, tomorrow. Yet, he'll remain on staff, it would seem, through the break that's timed with West Wing maintenance. White House staffers will be displaced for a two-week period while the heating and cooling system is upgraded. They'll work next door in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, Real Clear Politics reported. Some will travel with the president to New Jersey. Spicer has been relishing his new-found freedom, taking undisclosed meetings off campus that keep him out of the building much of the day. At least once since his resignation, he didn't come into the office at all. A lucrative TV contract, like the ones his predecessors inked, hasn't materialized. Spicer joked last week, as reporters crowded around his office for a comment on Priebus, that he was considering the Dancing With the Stars gig. He's presumably been using his time during the day to interview for longer-term gigs, although Spicer sidestepped the question when it came up with reporters last week. As an assistant to the president and press secretary, the government pays Spicer nearly $15,000 a month, according to a disclosure form the White House made public in June. A court has ruled that the US Department of Justice must find and hand over any documents related to what some consider the 1950s-era 'purge' of gay federal employees. The document search and release applies to the activities of FBI employees who were operating under the instruction of then FBI director J. Edgar Hoover. The US District Court for the District of Columbia issued the ruling on July 28, in the lawsuit filed in 2016, listing the Mattachine Society of Washington, DC, as plaintiff and the Justice Department as defendant. A Washington, DC court has ordered that the Justice Department seek and turn over any documents relating to the 1950s-era 'purge' of gay federal employees by the FBI, which was headed up at the time by J. Edgar Hoover The lawsuit was related to a Freedom of Information Act request made by the Mattachine Society a gay rights organization to the FBI, seeking out documents related to President Dwight Eisenhowers Executive Order 10450, NBC News reports. The executive order, which was issued in 1953 and revolved around security requirements for government employment, authorized federal agencies to investigate whether government employees posed a security risk and then fire them if necessary. Buried within the order's list of activities that warranted official examination was any 'notoriously disgraceful conduct, habitual use of intoxicants to excess, drug addiction, sexual perversion.' The order did not specifically call for the investigation of homosexual male or female government employees. But, around the time frame that the order was issued, it was thought by some that gay people could be blackmailed into traitorous activities. The Mattachine Society's lawsuit claims that beyond ensuring that government workers were not inadvertent security risks, the actual reason for Executive Order 10450, was to give the FBI the legal authority to 'purge' thousands of gay employees from their government jobs. President Eisenhower's 1953 Executive Order 10450, related to identifying employees that could be national security risks, is believed to have initiated a 'purge' of gay federal employees Charles Francis, president of The Mattachine Society of Washington, DC, has said that the gay rights organization requested the '50s-era documents in an effort to examine the methods used to implement and enforce the suspected gay government workers purge Charles Francis, president of the Mattachine Society of Washington D.C., told NBC News that the organization's interest in the FBI files related to Eisenhower's executive was because the documents would 'reveal how that order was implemented and enforced.' Francis also noted that the order paved the way for 'six decades of devastating description against LGBT Americans,' effecting tens of thousands of people whose lives were ruined by being branded as gay during the '50s. According to LGBT historian Lillian Faderman, the government's efforts to seek out and remove gay employees from service began in 1947, with President Harry S. Truman's so-called 'Loyalty Order,' Executive Order 9835, aimed at eliminating communism's influence in government affairs. Truman's order, Faderman told NBC News, was 'enough ammunition to the State Department to begin witch hunting homosexuals,' a practice she says officially continued through to 1975 and then took place off-the-books until President Bill Clinton signed an order that ended the government from refusing security clearances based on sexual orientation in 1995. In 2013, The Mattachine Society of Washington, DC filed a FOIA act requesting documents regarding the Hoover-era investigations after Eisenhower's order was signed. According to US District Court for the District of Columbia documents, the government provided 552 the Mattachine Society with 552 pages of documents, witholding an additional 583 documents. The Mattachine Society believed that there should've been significantly more documents related to a program that endured for 40 years, so it filed the lawsuit on TK date, asking that the court order the Justice Department and FBI to release all of the materials, as well as engage in a more exhaustive search of their files for additional documents related to the FOIA request. The government, in turn, asked the court for a summary judgement, claiming that they had already done a suitable search and provided the documents are requested. On July 28, the court ruled that what the 'FBI's response fails to demonstrate that their search was reasonably calculated to uncover all relevant documents.' Among other claims, US District Judge Royce C. Lamberth refuted the FBI's claim that an additional search would produce an overwhelming number documents. Lamberth also wrote that it 'strains credulity' that a search for documents related to Chief Justice Warren Burger who served as assistant attorney general and enforced Eisenhower's executive order produced zero applicable results. Faderman told NBC News that the ruling was 'very significant,' while Francis stated that the suit had 'extreme relevance,' particularly in light of today's political climate. The court's ruling was entered on July 28, just two days after President Donald Trump tweeted, on July 26, that he intended to carry out a ban on transgender people serving in the military, seemingly based largely on the need to be 'focused on decisive and overwhelming victory,' without having to endure the 'tremendous medical costs and disruption that transgender in the military would entail.' Also on July 26, the Justice Department filed an amicus brief stating that employment discrimination based on gender, banned under Title VII of the Civil Right Act of 1964, does not extend to cover discrimination based on sexual orientation. Despite the legal victory, lawyers for the Mattachine Society said that it is impossible to know when, if ever, the Justice Department will hand over the documents the organization wants to examine. Lawmakers are rushing to craft legislation that would shield special counsel Robert Mueller from getting fired, as Mueller takes his Russia probe to a newly empaneled federal grand jury. President Donald Trump has gone after Mueller for overseeing what he calls a 'witch hunt,' as the former FBI director and his team of 16 lawyers pursues Russian election interference and investigates possible obstruction of justice. Now, senators are seeking to legislate a way to insulate him. Two bipartisan pairs of senators have introduced legislation that would allow the Mueller to stay on if Trump fired him. The special counsel could seek a review in court if he got fired, according to the bill introduced Thursday by GOP Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina and Democratic Chris Coons of Delaware. Senators have introduced legislation to try to protect Special Counsel Robert Mueller from getting fired by President Trump Mueller's decision to impanel a new grand jury added new urgency to the question of whether Trump will ultimately fire him. The president avoided a question about whether he would fire Mueller as he approached Marine One Thursday en route to a campaign event in West Virginia. The question followed news that Mueller has empaneled a new federal grand jury in D.C. and received subpoenas related to a meeting that Donald Trump Jr. had with a Kremlin-linked lawyer at Trump Tower in June 2016. Trump told the New York Times he would consider it a 'red line' if the special counsel were to probe his or his families financials. Under the new bill, only a Senate-confirmed attorney general would be able to carry out his firing a provision in response to Trump's public attacks on Attorney Gen. Jeff Sessions, who recused himself from the Russia probe, infuriating Trump. Trump outside attorney Jay Sekulow told Fox News: 'Well the president is not thinking about firing Robert Mueller so the speculation thats out there is just incorrect.' President Donald Trump has denied repeatedly that he or anyone in his presidential campaign colluded with Russia to undermine or otherwise impact the election. He didn't answer a question Thursday about whether he would fire Mueller Reuters reports that the first grand jury subpoenas have already begun to fly, related to a 2016 Trump Tower meeting that included Donald Trump Jr. (left) and a Russian lawyer Members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del., left, and Sen. Johnny Isakson, R-Ga., arrive on Capitol Hill in Washington, Thursday, Aug. 3, 2017 WASHINGTON, DC - AUGUST 03: Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) speaks about the Taylor Force Act while flanked by Sen. Bob Corker (R-TN) during a news conference August 3, 2017 on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC Members of Congress from both parties have expressed concern that Trump might dismiss Mueller, the special counsel appointed to determine whether there was collusion between his 2016 presidential campaign and Moscow. Trump could order his attorney general to carry out the firing, or name a new acting attorney general to carry it out if the current acting AG, Rod Rosenstein, refused. The Republican president on May 9 fired FBI Director James Comey, who was overseeing the investigation. With signs that Mueller's investigation is intensifying, members of Congress sought to protect the special counsel, who was appointed on May 17. Two sources familiar with the matter told Reuters on Thursday that Mueller had convened a grand jury in Washington to investigate the allegations of Russian meddling. Mueller (left) has a close relationship with ousted FBI director James Comey (right), a fact that Trump has used to try to delegitimize the probe as biased and a 'witch hunt.' Trump fired Comey after the former FBI director testified the president sought assurances of 'loyalty' and complained about the Russia probe The sources added that grand jury subpoenas had been issued in connection with a June 2016 meeting involving Trump's son, his son-in-law and a Russian lawyer. Moscow has denied any effort to influence the election, and Trump has disputed any allegations of collusion between his associates and Russia. "Our bill allows judicial review of any decision to terminate a counsel to make sure it's done for the reasons cited in the regulations rather than political motivation," said Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, who co-sponsored one of the bills with Democratic Senator Cory Booker. Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya attended the 2016 meeting in Trump Tower which also included Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner and Paul Manafort A second, generally similar, measure was introduced by Republican Senator Thom Tillis and Democratic Senator Chris Coons. Coons told reporters that he expected the two groups of senators would work together and seek more co-sponsors from both parties, to come up with a single bill. He said they were in discussions with the leaders of the Senate Judiciary Committee in the hope they would take up the bill, a step toward a vote in the full Senate. The legislation would be retroactive to protect Mueller. The measures were introduced as the Senate prepared to leave Washington for its August recess. Lawmakers will return in early September. Members of Congress, including some of Trump's fellow Republicans, have recently been pursuing legislation seeking to increase Congress' influence on U.S. policy. Last week, lawmakers voted almost unanimously for a sweeping sanctions bill that gave Congress the right to review any Trump effort to ease or lift sanctions on Russia. Trump signed that bill into law on Wednesday. For it to be enacted, the legislation would have to pass both chambers and be signed by President Trump. Trump reluctantly signed Russia sanctions legislation this week, despite saying parts of it were unconstitutional. But that legislation codified existing sanctions, while also wrapping in sanctions on North Korea and Iran. Up to 40million bottles of cheap red wine might have been passed off as high-quality French bottles in a multimillion-pound fraud, it has been revealed. The country's largest bulk merchant is under investigation for allegedly selling cheap table wine and passing it off as quality Cotes du Rhone and Chateauneuf-du-Pape. Guillaume Ryckwaert, CEO of bulk wine company Raphael Michel, based in Piolenc in Provence, was arrested on fraud charges and has since been released on a one-million euro (900,000) bail. France's largest bulk wine merchant, Raphael Michel, is under investigation for allegedly selling cheap table wine and passing it off as quality Cotes du Rhone (file photo left) and Chateauneuf-du-Pape (file photo right) It is feared that from 2013 up to 40million bottles of counterfeit wine were sold or are still on sale across Europe. The bottles were priced between 20 and 100, though their contents were allegedly cheap table wine from outside of the Rhone, despite claiming to be from the region. Wine experts say the content of the bottles is still drinkable, but believed to be a lower quality of wine than expected in such a bottle, The Mirror reported.. While the alleged fraud dates back to 2013, though French customs agents only recently found discrepancies in a routine audit. The bottles were priced between 20 and 100, though their contents were allegedly cheap table wine from outside of the Rhone (pictured), despite claiming to be from the region An investigation into the wine bottles started in the autumn of 2016. Ryckwaert, 39, has been CEO of the company since 2003 - and since sales have increased by up to 30 per cent a year. After his arrest he was suspended from contact with the company pending an investigation. Ryckwaert's lawyer, Olivier Morice, told Le Parisien that his client has many 'jealous rivals' according to Le Parisien newspaper. He suggested that some of the rivals might want to imede on Ryckwaert's recent successes. John Hesp at Bridlington Caravan Centre in East Yorkshire The past few weeks have been nothing short of bonkers for John Hesp and his wife Mandy. Early in July, the 64-year-old grandfather, who sells caravans, left his home in Bridlington on the East Yorkshire coast for Las Vegas, to take part in the World Series of Poker (WSOP) tournament. It is the premier poker tournament in the world, costs 7,000 just to enter, offers millions in prize money and attracts the creme de la creme of the worlds professional poker players and, this year, John, an inexperienced amateur who plays once every couple of weeks (if hes lucky) at Napoleons Casino in Hull and seldom goes over his 10 limit. According to his friend Dave Rand, he rarely wins and doesnt even have a poker face. So why on earth did he think he could play with the big boys? It was on my bucket list, he says. Id always wanted to take part. Mandy was fine about the entry money. I thought I might make it to the final thousand. He did better than that. Soon he was down to the last 500, then 300, then 200. His return flight came and went without him. Hed never dared think hed make it to the final week. I couldnt believe it, says John. I was living the dream. On and on he went, playing poker for up to 12 hours a day, surviving on bananas and water in the 20-minute comfort breaks. I have no idea how many bananas I ate, but it was an awful lot! he says. He played for up to 12 hours a day, surviving on bananas and by taking 20 minute comfort breaks John has just returned from the USA where he beat some of the World's best poker players and won 2,000,000 in prizes In his garish multi-coloured jacket loaned by Dave and a Panama hat, he stood out like a Christmas bauble among the professionals T-shirts and hoodies. I just wanted to brighten things up. Make it more fun, he says. After two weeks of back-to-back games, hed made it to the top table and, as he puts it, things were starting to go a bit crazy. The worlds media picked up the story. His phone started ringing off the hook. He popped up in newspapers, saying how he couldnt wait to get home, sleep in his own bed, have one of Mandys fry-ups and take Melody, their aged black labrador, for a walk. Finally, Mandy, 55, flew out to see what the fuss was about, just in time to see him come fourth out of 7,221 and win $2.6 million (2 million). Its tax-free, he says. The Americans have to pay 30 per cent tax on theirs! John regularly told reporters that he couldn't wait to get back home, sleep in his own bed and have a fry-up made by his wife Mandy When John didn't make his return flight home, his wife Mandy came over to see 'what all the fuss was about' The poker world was in shock. Particularly when John said the next thing on his bucket list was to host a major international poker tournament in his home town, and show everyone how great his beloved Bridlington or Brid, as he calls it really is. I met him at his caravan business. It was barely 12 hours since he had arrived from Vegas, hed had next to no sleep, barely time for one of Mandys legendary breakfasts and was still in his jazzy jacket and fairly battered hat. But he was bursting with energy. Beaming, glowing and basking in all the fuss. His caravan park was strewn with Well done John banners. His staff had been drinking prosecco at 5am in the background during his interview with Piers Morgan and Susanna Reid on ITVs Good Morning Britain and, unlike John, were starting to look jaded. Of course, its great if you win, he explains. But its not all about winning and money for me. I was just having fun I was playing poker the John Hesp way. Which, he explains, involves playing in a party mood. Some of the players are very quiet particularly the young ones. They were boring very poker-faced, if youll pardon the expression. He stood out at the table in his Panama hat and a garish jacket which had been loaned to him, as he said he wanted to bring fun to the game He doesnt even like champagne and is happier with a Bacardi and Coke and fish and chips than a glass of fine wine and fillet steak So he took it upon himself to lighten the mood a bit. Id start talking to my opponents; joke about a bit, be friendly. I suppose you could call it showboating. I made it fun, though at the beginning not everyone was so sure. Im not surprised. It must have come as a shock to some, particularly when he started showing them his cards for a bit of fun. But as he knocked out opponents like skittles, the tournament got behind him. I wasnt playing textbook poker, as Ive never read a book about poker in my life, he says. He has no truck with pre-match superstitions; no lucky pants, no special music to get in the zone. Instead, hes honed his game with all hes learned at Napoleons and a combination of gut, head he uses his experience as a caravan salesman to read body language mental stamina, bananas, jazzy jacket and, of course, luck. When I sat down at the World Series, I was terrified, he says. But I had a lot of nice cards. I had the most wonderful run. I think this was just my moment when it came to poker. It was a nice result. You can say that again. Two million pounds! Its a life-changing amount of money particularly in Bridlington, where a three-bedroom house costs 150,000. Or it would be, if John and Mandy actually wanted to change anything. I love my life already. It cant get any better, he says. Money doesnt buy happiness. The couple dont want to buy a new house. I like sleeping in my own bed, says John. Nor do they want to go on a spending spree. Ive offered to buy Mandy anything and she keeps saying no, he laughs. Benjamin Pollak, right, of France, leans on John Hesp, of Britain, at the final table after Hesp went all-in during the World Series of Poker I might buy a new bag, says Mandy. But some are ridiculously expensive. My idea of luxury is spending time with my family. She is already a full-time childminder for one of her grandsons. Neither are interested in expensive clothes, instead shopping at Primark, Matalan or Asda. Occasionally, if I want to push the boat out for a nice pair of trousers, Ill go to Next, John says. He doesnt even like champagne and is happier with a Bacardi and Coke and fish and chips than a glass of fine wine and fillet steak. What about a nice holiday? They look doubtful. John doesnt like the heat and I dont like flying, so were restricted, says Mandy. But were not bothered. We like going to our static caravan near Harrogate. Theres no phone signal, so its quiet. They are giving a bit of money to their four children, grandchildren and extended family and spending the rest on securing Bridlingtons future on the world stage. I want to achieve international fame for Bridlington. I want to bring it back to glory, says John. Its a lovely little town but weve had a hard time the young people of Bridlington have to leave to get jobs and the cafes, pubs, hotels and shops have been struggling. I want to bring the worlds leading players to Bridlington and put it on the map. Theyd love it. John is Bridlington through and through. He was brought up in a council house in a village just outside the town his father was a farm worker, his mother a cleaner. He left school at 15 to train as a motor mechanic, fell into caravan repairs and has been working for, and later running, his own static caravan company ever since. He is obsessed with caravans lives and breathes them. He even met Mandy at a Bridlington Caravan staff Christmas party 20 years ago. She was the receptionist for a caravan repair company, he was in his John Hesp party mode, trying to get everyone dancing. They were dancing next to each other, then a colleague propelled her into his arms. She had no shoes on and was very short, says John. And that was that. Shes lovely. The apple of my... no, the woman of my dreams and a bit younger than myself, too! They make a good couple albeit with different temperaments. The couple aren't big spenders and say they won't be buying a new house or even going on a holiday with the cash While Mandy is shy, softly spoken and is struggling a bit with the attention, he is in seventh heaven and is bouncing about energetically. He needs running off like a dog, one of his employees tells me. Were going to have to start chucking him a bone out there soon to wear him out. He never stops talking about poker, fish and chips, caravans, himself (often in the third person), the advantage of having attended the university of life and all the things hes got a downer on: Tony Blair, overpriced lawyers and the way the BBC has done away with received pronunciation. All these local accents! I like clarity. And take Jonathan Ross fancy employing someone with a speech defect! He adds: Mandy says I talk too much, but Im a social animal. She tells me people will get bored if I keep going on. Which is perhaps why shes never minded his Sunday evening casino trips. After all, he almost never wagered more than 10. Im in charge of the remote control for once and I do like to watch Call The Midwife, she says. Gambling has never been my thing. Wife Mandy admits she was too busy at home to really think about how far he had got, but she is proud of him Later, we head for fish and chips at his son-in-laws restaurant near the harbour and he throws his arms wide. Im not interested in being flashy, he says. Its just nice to bring a bit of publicity to this wonderful town. Drivers toot, waitresses wave, people embrace him in the street ask him if hes thought of standing for Parliament. Hes loving it. Just in case theyve not seen him on the front of the Bridlington Echo, or the banners at his caravan park, he asks everyone he meets if theyve been following his story. Does she ever get a word in edgeways, I ask Mandy. Not very often, she laughs. But Im proud. I never thought hed get this far I didnt really think about it, as I was quite busy at home. But hes done really well. He certainly has. A rank amateur against legions of professionals. And a classy winner, at that. Holidaymakers trying to return from Europe this weekend have been told to get to airports at least three hours early amid fears of mayhem at passport control. Airline bosses say thousands of UK travellers could miss flights as airports struggle to cope with new EU border rules on one of the busiest weekends of the year. There was chaos earlier this week as UK tourists were left queuing for up to four hours at passport checks in Spain and France. But with ten million people expected to pass through Europes airports tomorrow and on Sunday, airlines fear a complete meltdown that could leave passengers stranded. This was the scene at Barcelona's El Prat airport last night as the chaos of European airports continues. The problem in the Spanish airport has been exacerbated by an industrial dispute Passengers flying to European airports have suffered long waits at passport checks since the EU brought in more stringent passport checks on entering and leaving the Schengen area Last night, it emerged British Airways and easyJet were sending text alerts to customers urging them to turn up early. Ryanair said it was advising passengers to arrive at least three hours before departure on short-haul flights, instead of the usual two. But Airlines For Europe, which represents airlines including the three firms, said these measures may not be enough at the worst-hit airports and urged travellers to consider arriving even earlier. To make matters worse, passengers were warned they will not get compensation from their airline or be able to claim on their travel insurance if they miss a flight as a result. Staff at the El Prat airport (pictured) were already working to rule and deliberately taking the maximum of ten minutes to pass each passenger through security this week. Now they have pledged to strike beginning on August 14 or 15, adding to the chaos Barcelona, pictured this week, was one of the worst hit airports, along with Palma in Majorca, which is popular with British tourists The chaos has been caused by EU rules that mean travellers from outside the Schengen free movement zone are subject to stricter vetting at passport control. Instead of a few seconds, the process can now take up to ten minutes. Airports have been accused of failing to prepare for the tougher checks by employing more staff to cope with the holiday season influx. Destinations popular with British travellers have been the worst hit, as the UK is outside the Schengen zone. Airlines For Europe predicts this weekend will be one of the busiest of the year, with around five million people flying in and out of European airports both tomorrow and on Sunday double the average daily number. Palma airport in Majorca is expected to be one of the major flashpoints. Its passport control is expected to have to process a record 190,000 passengers tomorrow, as 1,117 flights pass through. Ryanair said it was advising passengers to arrive at least three hours before departure on short-haul flights, instead of the usual two. Pictured: The airline's CEO Michael O'Leary, who told of his frustration at new outgoing passport checks this week Thousands of beleaguered travellers were left standing for hours last month, including at one of the worst hit airports, Palma (pictured). Its passport control is expected to have to process a record 190,000 passengers tomorrow, as 1,117 flights pass through Even those flying back to Britain from Palma during off-peak periods this week reported hour-long hold-ups at immigration. On Tuesday night just four passport control guards were dealing with hundreds of passengers. Airlines are expecting bottlenecks at other airports such as Malaga, Amsterdam and Lyon. BA last night said it had already texted customers flying back from Lyon, Madrid, Barcelona and Milan Linate, but would extend the warnings. A spokesman said: Were texting customers flying from airports that we know are having issues to ask them to arrive early. Government sources yesterday insisted aviation minister Lord Callanan had received assurances from counterparts in Spain, Portugal, Italy and France that more border staff would be supplied to man the gates in coming days. Government sources yesterday insisted aviation minister Lord Callanan (pictured) had received assurances from counterparts in Spain, Portugal, Italy and France Frances interior ministry has already said it will put 100 more border control staff at both of Pariss main airports. Government officials instructed airports to give updates on any major hold-ups for British travellers. But ministers have come under fire from lobby group Airlines UK for ignoring warnings about the problem in May. Tory MP Charlie Elphicke said: EU countries urgently need to ensure they have enough passport control officers to avoid airport chaos. Given the mismanagement of borders by the EU, holidaymakers should leave extra time Clearly this is one of the biggest getaway weekends of the year, so long queues at airports are a real worry. Last night there were growing fears that passengers who miss flights could be left hundreds, or even thousands, of pounds out of pocket. The Association of British Insurers said the majority of policies will not pay out if a flight is missed because of delays at passport control. Most cover only specific mishaps such as mechanical failure, bad weather or strikes. Guy Anker of Moneysavingexpert.com said: It is vital that you get to the airport as early as possible and check your airlines advice there is a severe lack of safety nets if you do miss your flight. Pictured: Huge queues at the border of Barcelona's El Prat airport after it was hit by new, tougher EU checks Alex Neill of consumer group Which? said: Passengers who miss a flight due to security queues are unlikely to qualify for compensation from their airline, as the time it takes to get through security is out of the airlines control. But she added they could be protected in certain circumstances for example if there is a severe delay because the pilot faced a hold-up at passport control. Last night BA promised any passengers who miss a flight because of queues at border control can be rebooked on to a later flight for free. EasyJet and Ryanair last night refused to give similar assurances. Ryanair said it is customers responsibility to arrive in time and it is up to European regulators to resolve the delays. An EasyJet spokesman said its staff would try to assist in prioritising those whose flights are boarding. Robert Hardy was a rascal. A man of unbridled enthusiasm, with a voice like butter melting on a hot crumpet, he would tell his scurrilous anecdotes in perfectly composed prose, as if reading aloud. His language was so erudite, his grammar so meticulously correct, that it was hard to reconcile the sound of his educated voice with the sheer mischief of his favourite stories. The actor, who has died aged 91, became a household name as eccentric vet Siegfried Farnon, whom he played for 12 years in the BBC1 series All Creatures Great And Small, and for his portrayals of Winston Churchill Hardy claimed he held the world record, for being Churchill in 12 different TV, film and stage productions. To younger audiences, he was best known as the Minister for Magic, Cornelius Fudge, in four Harry Potter films. It was Hardys love of ribald stories, told with a gleeful lack of embarrassment, that eventually cost him that role, he believed. Much-loved: Robert Hardy as vet Siegfried Farnon (centre) with Christopher Timothy (far left) and Peter Davison in All Creatures Great And Small While the young cast were professionals, always ready for a scene, Hardy was more likely to be raising a rumpus on the fringes of the set with old friends such as Maggie Smith and Imelda Staunton. We did not work at least, I didnt, Hardy once said. We just mucked about and laughed a lot, and got shushed by whichever director it was: Could you PLEASE be quiet in there! Being quiet was one of the few things Hardy was incapable of doing well. As an actor, he achieved a feat that probably no other performer has managed; of being wholly identified with a single role (as Churchill), yet being even more celebrated for another TV series (All Creatures) while remaining a heavyweight of the theatre. On top of that, he was not merely a respected historian, but the worlds leading authority on the English longbow, and such an expert on Tudor artefacts that in 1982 he was an advisor to the team that salvaged Henry VIIIs flagship, the Mary Rose. Throughout his life, Hardy made achievement seem effortless. Born Timothy Sydney Robert Hardy in Cheltenham, in October 1925, he excelled at school helped by the fact that his father Henry was the headmaster of Cheltenham College. But he had a bad start in education. The youngest child of five, he was so unruly as a boy that he was sent to boarding school: I look back on it with hatred and loathing. I made it even more difficult for myself by behaving badly. At his secondary school, Rugby, his violin teacher had hopes that young Robert would become a professional musician, until seeing him in the school play. During the next music lesson, the tutor predicted: You will be a great actor. Hardy won a place at Magdalen College, Oxford, but joined the RAF in 1944, going to the U.S. to train as a pilot. Before he could see action, the war was over and Hardy returned to Britain to finish his degree not history, but English. His tutors included C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien, the creators respectively of Narnia and Middle Earth one nurtured his love of Shakespeare, the other taught him how to pronounce Chaucers English. Mesmeric: Hardy with second wife Sally. They were together for 25 years up until 1986 At Oxford, Hardy met another future star, Richard Burton. The two would be close friends for 40 years, but at first detested each other Hardy thought the young Welshman brash and uncouth. He soon revised his opinion, calling Burton the most extraordinary man that I ever met. Within two months of sitting his finals in November 1948, Hardy had a berth at the Shakespeare theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon. Self-deprecatingly, he claimed the war left thousands of places to fill, but this modesty was belied by his rapid rise. By 1953, he was reunited with Burton at the Old Vic, for a famously successful season which gave him one of his most outrageous anecdotes. With mock disapproval, in the plummiest tones, Hardy would describe how Burton reduced the cast of King John to hysterical onstage giggles: the star turned his back on the audience for an entire speech, unbuttoned his breeches and behaved disgracefully. Disgraceful behaviour was sometimes a speciality of his own. He married Elizabeth Fox, a wardrobe mistress, in 1952, but left her and their young son when he took up with his second wife, Sally Cooper. They had two daughters, but were divorced after 25 years. I have spent a good deal of my adult life married, but I dont think on the whole I did it very well, he admitted in 1995. It was wrong of me to quit my first marriage the way I did. As for my second marriage, I think the divorce papers came through on our silver wedding anniversary. I am not a very good partner. It may be because of the kind of person I am, but then I dont think actors are always ideal partners. I hate that special pleading for actors, as if we were a race apart who should be excused and forgiven a great deal. Drink played a part in his problems, he said, but his downfall was a tendency to fall in love with leading ladies . . . and sometimes to be unable to conceal his lust. Finest hour: Hardy said he played Winston Churchill a dozen times In 1960, he was Henry V in the landmark TV series An Age Of Kings, which combined several of Shakespeares histories. Aged just 26, Judi Dench was Katherine, Princess of France, and Hardy was briefly besotted unspeakably pretty and adorable and delicious, and had me really very, very hot under the collar. Anticipation got the better of him in their love scene. Its the only time I had trouble with my hose, he would say, referring to the Shakespearean tights. Fortunately, neither the camera nor the leading lady were aware of his excitement but when he confessed to her years later she was thrilled to bits! During the Sixties and Seventies, he was a fixture in costume dramas and prestigious serials, as the Earl of Leicester for example in Elizabeth R in 1971. But he made the step from acclaimed actor to national star in 1978, when he was cast as blustering, bullying, soft-hearted Siegfried Farnon, who ran a dysfunctional veterinary practice in the Yorkshire Dales during the Thirties. The hero was new young vet James Herriot, played by Christopher Timothy, and the heart-throb role went to Peter Davison, as Siegfrieds attractive but scatterbrained younger brother, Tristan. Yet Hardy stole the show. A glorious mixture of Captain Mainwaring and a mad duke, he roared, rumbled, goggled, growled, hallooed and harrumphed his way through every scene. Peter Davison later said: No two rehearsals with Robert were ever the same. Sometimes he would bark the lines at me, sometimes spit them at me, sometimes gesticulate wildly, sometimes coil himself in controlled fury. It was a television tour de force, completely inimitable, and for much of its 12-year run as the BBCs Sunday evening flagship, All Creatures was the most popular drama on TV. Hardy took it immensely seriously, demanding script approval to ensure that Siegfried never teetered over into caricature. But he continued to be his mischievous, irrepressible self, falling a little in love with both shows female stars, Carol Drinkwater and Lynda Bellingham, who variously played the role of Herriots wife, Helen. His second career, as the reincarnation of Sir Winston Churchill, began in 1981 when he starred in The Wilderness Years, a study of the great politician in the Thirties. He played him in one-off TV movies, in the 1989 mini-series War And Remembrance, in an episode of Agatha Christies Miss Marple, and most recently in 2015 in drama-documentary Churchill: 100 Days That Saved Britain. The part became his own for more than 30 years although Albert Finney gave him strong competition in 2002 but it was the one that challenged him most. My family complained loudly about my behaviour when I was playing him, Hardy said, and I can understand why. I started to inhabit another realm, and the reality of day-to-day life seemed fuzzy compared to what I was engaged in. Spellbinding: As Cornelius Fudge in Harry Potter with Michael Gambon Churchills volcanic temper also affected him, and made his daily moods volatile, mercurial. He shared the Grand Old Mans lack of tact ask Hardy what he thought of other actors and he would be unsparing. Timothy Spalls version of Churchill in 2010 film The Kings Speech was absolutely awful, he declared. His verdict on Daniel Craig as 007 was crushing: I dont think hes a good actor, but hes very good at jumping. He could also be immensely generous. Ten years ago, after I wrote to his agent requesting an interview, he phoned me one Sunday out of the blue. Is that the Christopher Stevens? he asked mockery and flattery, delivered with velvet charm. Then he offered a masterclass in stories of actors he had known. For all his flamboyance and brilliance, Hardy often wished he could have been an academic instead. He was prone to sudden bouts of depression, and his solace then would be to immerse himself in military history. When the Mary Rose was raised, the 138 longbows discovered in the wreck were delivered into his safekeeping. While they dried out in his cellar, he investigated every aspect of their manufacture. His book on the English longbow remains the definitive volume. Even well into his 80s, Hardy rebuffed all pleas from publishers to collaborate with a ghost writer and tell his extraordinary life story. I am a writer, he would say indignantly, and I will write it myself. The autobiography never appeared. We can only hope that in his effects, among the dusty scripts and learned papers, theres a handwritten manuscript containing all those shockingly funny anecdotes, as only Robert Hardy could tell them. A man who disemboweled his girlfriend after she called out her ex-husband's name during sex has been jailed for life without parole. Fidel Lopez, 26, murdered his 31-year-old girlfriend Maria Nemeth at their apartment in Sunrise, Miami, in September 2015. On Thursday, he apologized to her family as they wept in a Miami courtroom to see him jailed. Lopez pleaded guilty to murder and sexually battery charges last month as part of a plea deal to avoid the death penalty. Fidel Lopez, 26, was jailed for life without parole in Miami on Thursday for the 2015 murder of his girlfriend Prosecutors threatened to seek execution unless he admitted to killing Nameth who worked as a leasing agent for a real estate development. After lashing out and murdering her last year, Lopez pulled her intestines out of her, seemingly with his bare hands, then sexually molested her by inserting a beer bottle and a hair straightener in to her vagina. He then called 911 to report that she was having trouble breathing. When police arrived, they found the woman's lifeless, mutilated body in the bathroom. Lopez was sitting next to her crying. Once in custody, he claimed the pair had been having rough sex when she got up to go to the bathroom, complaining that she did not feel well. He said she vomited and then passed out. Lopez murdered 31-year-old Maria Nemeth after she called out her ex-husband's name during sex. Lopez and the woman are pictured Lopez killed the woman then pulled her intestines. He later told police she died after taking ill while the pair had rough sex Police found enormous blood stains on the floor of the couple's closet and on the wall There was also blood smeared on the walls of the home and on other floors Police quickly poked holes in his story, pointing to the large pools of blood on the bedroom carpet and blood stains that were found inside a closet. They also discovered bloody chunks of tissue at the scene. Lopez at first pleaded not guilty, sticking by the story he tried to give authorities at first. He then conceded that the pair had been having sex inside the closet when she called out the other man's name, sending him into a violent rage. On Thursday, he apologized to the woman's family through a translator. 'I ask for forgiveness. I hope they can find it and I hope that one day they can forgive me,' he said, according to CBS which attended the trial. Once in custody, Lopez admitted lashing out when his girlfriend called out the other man's name and called himself a 'monster' The woman's uncle wept in the gallery as he watched his niece's killer go to jail for life on Thursday His mother also appeared in court to apologize to the woman's relatives. 'We'd like to apologize. In the whole sense of the word, we are sorry. Everything that has happened to them has happened to us as well,' she said. Maria's uncle Juan Cavezudo sobbed from the gallery before giving a statement about his slain niece's character. 'It would be very difficult to express it in a few lines,' he said of her life, adding: 'She was and will continue to be a model of affection, effort, perseverance and love of humanity.' President Donald Trump's wish to have a border wall between the US and Mexico has elicited many questions. While most of these questions circulate around its building timeline and who will pay for the wall, biologists are also trying to understand what the ecological consequences of such a wall would be. According to a researcher at Rice University in Texas, such a border could put more than 100 endangered species at risk, including jaguars, ocelots and pronghorn antelopes. According to a researcher at Rice University, a border wall between the US and Mexico could put more than 100 endangered species at risk. Pictured is a border patrol vehicle along the US-Mexico border fence between San Diego, California, and Tijuana, Mexico 'Evolutionary effects from the wall can change the balance of nature along the US-Mexico border, putting wildlife in the area, including more than 100 endangered species, at risk,' said Dr Scott Egan, an assistant professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at Rice University in Texas. 'Some of the larger animals that will be threatened by the border wall are the jaguar, ocelot, jaguarundi, Mexican gray wolf, desert big horn sheep and pronghorn antelope.' Dr Egan says that building a barrier can affect animal and plant movement in two ways. BORDER WALL: SPECIES AT RISK Just one of the effects that a border wall between the US and Mexico would have is a population bottleneck: A sharp reduction in the size of a population caused by a barrier cutting a species into two parts. This reduces the number of breeding individuals and the amount of genetic variation in a population. The proposed border wall could also have two other negative effects: Cutting off natural migration routes and future range expansions driven by climate change. Pictured is a Mexican gray wolf, which could be put at risk if a border wall is built Lower genetic variation reduces the ability of a population to survive changes to the environment, for example climate change induced-changes or a change in resource availability. According to Dr Scott Egan, a researcher at Rice University, such a border could put more than 100 endangered species at risk. Some of the larger animals that will be threatened by the border wall include the jaguarundi (pictured) Some of the larger animals that will be threatened by the border wall include the: Jaguar Ocelot Jaguarundi Mexican gray wolf Desert big horn sheep Pronghorn antelope Advertisement Firstly, such a barrier would cause a population bottleneck: A sharp reduction in the size of a population caused by a barrier cutting a species into two parts. This reduces the number of breeding individuals and the amount of genetic variation in a population. Lower genetic variation reduces the ability of a population to survive changes to the environment, for example climate change induced-changes or a change in resource availability. This effect will be more severe for species with small ranges that overlap with the border, or with species with large ranges where just a small part is on one side of the wall, isolating that small group. The second problem barriers pose is that they block the natural exchange of genes in a population, which can increase inbreeding - when closely related individuals are more likely to mate and reproduce. Pictured is a Jaguar The second problem barriers pose is that they block the natural exchange of genes in a population, which can increase inbreeding - when closely related individuals are more likely to mate and reproduce. Inbreeding can increase homozygosity - having identical pairs of genes - in a population, which can increase the expression of disease-causing genetic mutations. Over time, this leads to inbreeding depression - the gradual decrease in the health of a population due to the accumulation of these mutations. Inbreeding can increase homozygosity - having identical pairs of genes - in a population, which can increase the expression of disease-causing genetic mutations. Pictured is an ocelot The Florida panther is an example of a human-induced isolation of an animal population, leading to both of the negative impacts described. 'The species historically lived across the Southeastern United States, but due to overhunting and habitat destruction, a small remnant set of populations lives in southern Florida isolated from all other panther populations,' Dr Egan said. According to a researcher at Rice University in Texas, such a border could put more than 100 endangered species at risk, including pronghorn antelopes (pictured) 'Just as evolutionary biologists predicted, Florida panthers experienced a reduction in genetic diversity and an increase in homozygosity. 'This has led to increased heart defects, low sperm counts and increased susceptibility to infection consistent with increased expression of deleterious mutations.' A border wall would not only put animals and plants at risk - it would also have negative impacts on humans. 'One highly relevant comparison comes from a border wall that was built between India and Pakistan in the Kashmir region,' Dr Egan said. The proposed border wall could also have two other negative effects: Cutting off natural migration routes and future range expansions driven by climate change. Pictured is a desert big horn sheep, which could be at risk if a border wall between the US and Mexico is built 'The border wall interrupted the natural movement of Asiatic black bears and leopards in this region, which decreased their access to natural prey and increased their movement into villages, sometimes targeting humans as prey. 'This then increased the frequency of humans killing the animals to prevent further attacks or to retaliate against previous attacks.' The proposed border wall could also have two other negative effects: Cutting off natural migration routes and future range expansions driven by climate change. President Donald Trump's wish to have a border wall between the US and Mexico could put more than 100 endangered species at risk, including ocelots and jaguars 'There are many animals that naturally migrate across the border each year, such as the black bears in West Texas, or the pronghorn antelope across the Southwest,' said Dr Egan. 'Interrupting these natural movements could have devastating effects on these species on both sides of the border. 'Similarly, the border wall will trap populations that continue to move north in response to a warming and changing planet, potentially killing individual animals and populations or resulting in the future extinction of entire species unable to find habitats south of the border to survive.' Ikea is to sell supersize rechargeable batteries for the home, linked to solar panels, which will run everything from the lights to the washing machine. The batteries, which use the same technology as those powering mobile phones, are small enough to fit on a kitchen wall and start at 3,000. Installing both a battery and a simple solar panel system on the roof will start at 6,925. The store giant claims the new system could cut a households electricity bills by as much as 70per cent. Ikea, pictured, wants to turn homes into mini power stations where they make their own electricity rather than relying on huge power stations - the cost of running a home like this could start at 6,925 Adding this saving to the money earned from selling excess solar power back into the national grid could amount to 560 a year. As a result, the company claims the system could pay for itself in just over 12 years. The move by Ikea brings solar power and batteries into the mainstream and heralds a revolution in how the nation will keep the lights on in future. The Government is backing the concept and recently announced plans to invest 246million to encourage the development of more efficient and powerful batteries for the home. Homes are effectively being turned into mini power stations where they make their own electricity rather than relying on huge, dirty, power stations hundreds of miles away. Millions of households are expected to install solar panels coupled to batteries. At the same time, new combined heat and power (CHP) boilers use gas to both run the central heating and hot water and generate electricity. The cost of these new technologies is falling rapidly, which means they are becoming affordable for ordinary families. Ikea said the fact that solar panels can be attached to batteries means families are less reliant on energy companies and their rip-off tariffs. Ikea wants to turn homes into mini power stations where they make their own electricity To date, solar systems have been flawed in that much of the electricity generated on sunny days is not needed. There was no way of capturing it to be used at night. Coupling efficient batteries to the system means families can dramatically cut down on the electricity needed from the national grid. It is claimed the system could cut household electricity bills by 70per cent a year. A 75 day trial on a home in Hampshire last year produced a lower, but still impressive, saving of 57per cent. The trial, which ran from August to October, found that 34.8per cent of a familys electricity needs were met directly by solar panels on the roof and another 22.2per cent from the batteries. One of the benefits of installing solar panels is that any excess electricity can be sold back to the national grid through a so-called Feed in Tariff, so earning money for the owners of the property. IKEAs service, selling solar panels, batteries and installation, is being done in partnership with experts at the company Solarcentury. (correct) The Swedish retailers sustainability manager for the UK and Ireland, Hege Saebjornsen, (correct), said: Were always looking for ways to help customers take positive actions at home for both the environment and their wallets. With energy bills already going up, theres never been a better time for customers to take back control of their electricity bills and maximise their savings by switching to solar and solar storage. Solarcenturys Susannah Wood said: Our business partnership with Ikea is a significant step forwards for the renewable energy industry. The cost of solar installations has dropped considerably in recent years and is in fact 100 times cheaper than it was 35 years ago. More people than ever before can profit financially and environmentally by producing their own energy. A La Crosse man turned to his passenger and grabbed a loaded firearm during a traffic stop early Monday as a La Crescent officer approached his car. Are you ready for this? Wyatt Helfrich asked his passenger, according to court records. Helfrich, 19, fired at officer Ryan Quanrud during the stop for speeding and other infractions about 1:30 a.m. on Hwy. 16 near Millers Corner, according to the complaint filed Wednesday in Houston County District Court charging him and his passenger with attempted murder and other crimes. The officer took cover and returned fire with a second officer, Christopher Frick. Helfrich and passenger, 19-year-old William Wallraff of Holmen, sped off and reached speeds of 100 mph through Hokah as Wallraff fired multiple shots at pursing officers, according to the complaint. One officer in pursuit said the car would slow to lure squads closer before Wallraff fired. The car struck spike strips and drove into a ditch on Hwy. 44 near Sanden Road. Police arrested the men minutes later after they fled into a cornfield, where they left behind a 20-gauge shotgun, rifle and ammunition. Helfrich was treated for a minor injury to the back of the neck. Wallraff was not injured. Neither La Crescent officer was injured, and both are on standard administrative leave. During interviews, the men said they removed Helfrichs monitoring bracelet and planned to flee with firearms, which earlier were locked and unloaded in the backseat of the car. They grew nervous when they saw two officers early Monday at the Kwik Trip in La Crescent and loaded the firearms in the front seat before the traffic stop, according to the complaint. Prosecutors charged both men with seven crimes, including two counts each of attempted first-degree murder, first and second-degree assault and fleeing police. Wallraff is jailed in Houston County on a $400,000 conditional bond or $800,000 unconditional bond. His next court date is Aug. 14. Helfrich on Wednesday waived extradition from Wisconsin and will return to Minnesota. At the time of Mondays shooting, Helfrich was free on a signature bond with GPS monitoring and house arrest issued for a possession with intent to distribute methamphetamine case in La Crosse County. Helfrich was on a signature bond in that case when he failed to appear for his preliminary hearing on June 14 and La Crosse County Circuit Judge Elliott Levine issued a warrant for his arrest. He was arrested July 9 for stealing a hat and phone charger from Shopko in Onalaska and a $1,000 cash bond was imposed by Circuit Judge Scott Horne. Circuit Judge Todd Bjerke converted it to a $2,500 signature bond on July 17. Since the 1970s, a buzzing noise has been playing from a mysterious Russian radio station, along with intermittent code words and numbers. The station, known as 'The Buzzer', or 'MDZhB', can be tracked to the middle of Russian swampland near St Petersburg. But what the Buzzer is doing, or who is broadcasting it, remains a mystery - with theories ranging from the Russian military to alien research. Scroll down for video Since the 1970s, a buzzing noise has been playing from a mysterious Russian radio station, along with intermittent code words and numbers. The buzzing plays out on a frequency of 4625 kHz, which anyone around the world can tune in to WHAT IS THE BUZZER? Most believe the Buzzer is a Russian military station. Exactly what it is transmitting, though, is a bit of a mystery. It may be that the station is transmitting data to spies and military groups around the world. The type of shortwave transmission used is well suited for this. Others, however, believe it is instead, or also, used for scientific research. A recent paper suggested the frequency was being used to bounce signals off the ionosphere. Delving into the more unlikely, it has been speculated the station may be a 'Dead Man's Switch' system. In the case of a nuclear attack against Russia, MDZhB would launch an automated counter-strike. Some have even suggested the whole thing may just be misdirection, as while people focus their attention on decoding the mystery of MDZhB, important communications may be carried out in another manner. Advertisement The Buzzer is a shortwave radio station of unknown origin that was first heard in the late 1970s, and was first recorded in 1982. Its noise has changed slightly over the years, but it has always involved some form of regular buzzing, interrupted by a voice on rare occasions seemingly reading out a message. The buzzing plays out on a frequency of 4625 kHz, which anyone around the world can tune in to. The transmission seems to originate from a swampland near St Petersburg, but no-one knows who is broadcasting it. Speaking to the BBC, Professor David Stupples, an expert in signals intelligence from City University, London, said: 'There's absolutely no information in the signal.' While they have never admitted it, the frequency is thought to belong to the Russian military. And a huge variety of theories on what the Buzzer could be used for have been put forward, ranging from making contact with aliens, to communicating with military spies. Another theory, is that the Buzzer acts as a 'Dead Man's Switch.' If this theory is right, in the case of a nuclear attack against Russia, MDZhB would stop playing the buzz, and launch an automated counter-strike. While none of these theories have been proven, there are several clues in the buzz itself. The signal is a 'shortwave', operating at a relatively low frequency compared to local radio, mobile or TR signals. The nature of the frequency used by the station allows the transmission to cover vast distances. This means for a global military or spy network, it would be possible to at least transmit outgoing messages. Stations like these are also often used as backup systems for when a satellite system is not operational. One theory is that the Buzzer acts as a 'Dead Man's Switch.' In the case of a nuclear attack against Russia, MDZhB would stop playing the buzz, and launch an automated counter-strike (pictured is a 1950s atom bomb) BENEFITS OF SHORTWAVE RADIO The nature of the frequency used by the station means the transmission can cover vast distances, covering almost the entire globe. This means for a global military or spy network, it would be possible to at least transmit outgoing messages. Stations like these are also often used as backup systems for when a satellite system is not operational. Also, being on an open channel like MDZhB prevents people form working out exactly where the message is being sent from - or to. Advertisement Another theory is that MDZhB is being used to detect how far away missiles are. Professor Stupples told the BBC: 'To get good results from the radar systems the Russians use to spot missiles, you need to know this.' But Professor Stupples believes that this isn't the case, as waves needed for this type of detection would sound more like a car alarm than a buzz. Others have suggested that the Buzzer has been used to instruct a network of Russian spies all over the world. The code words and numbers that are intermittently played amongst the buzz could be encrypted, meaning they are transformed into instructions to the spies. Professor Stupples said: 'If this phone call was encrypted you'd hear 'enejekdhejenw' but then it would come out the other side sounding like normal speech.' But Professor Stupples added that this type of encryption would leave traces in the signal, meaning that the station is unlikely to be used in this way. The nature of the frequency used by the station means the transmission can cover vast distances, covering almost the entire globe. Pictured is a shortwave radio Instead, the most commonly believed theory is that the Buzzer is a combination of two things. Firstly, the constant buzz could simply be a marker a way to stop other people from using it. And secondly, Russia may use the station in moments of crisis, instructing their worldwide spy network and military forces to standby in certain areas. The transmission seems to originate from a swampland near St Petersburg, but no-one knows who is broadcasting it This feature was recently tested, according to Maris Goldmanis, a radio enthusiast who regularly listens to the station. Ms Goldmanis told the BBC: 'In 2013 they issued a special message, "COMMAND 135 ISSUED" that was said to be test message for full combat readiness.' But despite all the theories and assurances, one thing remains a mystery: no one knows what the messages are saying or how to break the code. At first glance, you might mistake this enormous robot for a character from the latest Transformers blockbuster. But the 16 foot (five metre) tall machine is a robot called Eagle Prime that is ready to take on Japan in the Megabots Giant Robot Dual league. An incredible video has been released which shows the Eagle Prime in action ahead of the dual - which will be the world's first giant robot battle - taking place this month. Scroll down for video At first glance, you might mistake this enormous robot for a character from the latest Transformers blockbuster. But the 16 foot (five metre) tall machine is a robot called Eagle Prime that is ready to take on Japan in the Megabots Giant Robot Dual league THE EAGLE PRIME The Eagle Prime stands at 16 feet (five metres tall), weighs 12 tons, and has 430 horsepower. A human operator sits within the 'head' of the humanoid robot, controlling its movements. Despite its enormous size, Eagle Prime is faster than you might think. In the video, the enormous robot can be seen opening giant garage doors, quickly manouvering corners, demolishing piles of barrles and even blasting targets with its paintball cannon. Advertisement The robot has been created by San Francisco-based MegaBots, who set up the Giant Robot Dual league in 2015. On its website, MegaBots said: 'MegaBots uses cutting-edge robotics technology to create the giant piloted fighting robots of science fiction, videogames and movies. 'These robots fight in epic-scale arena combat the likes of which the world has never seen before.' The Eagle Prime stands at 16 feet (five metres tall), weighs 12 tons, and has 430 horsepower. A human operator sits within the 'head' of the humanoid robot, controlling its movements. Despite its enormous size, Eagle Prime is faster than you might think. In the video, the enormous robot can be seen opening giant garage doors, quickly manouvering corners, demolishing piles of barrels and even blasting targets with its paintball cannon. MegaBots said: 'As the robots battle, armour panels shear off and litter the field, smoke and sparks pour out of the chassis, massive robotic limbs tear off, and robots crumple to the ground until only one is left standing.' In 2015, MegaBots challenged Japan to a giant robot dual, and a team of experts from the country quickly accepted. The Eagle Prime robot stands at 16 feet (five metres tall), weighs 12 tons, and has 430 horsepower A human operator sits within the 'head' of the humanoid robot, controlling its movements during the battle Japan's robot is called Kurata. In 2015, the team revealed an early version of the robot, that included a gun capable of shooting 6,000 BB bullets a minute. But since, the Japanese team has not released any information or images of the machine that will take part in the dual against the US. MEET JAPAN'S KURATAS Kuratas can be operated using a 'Master-Slave system' where users control the robot's movements from outside using any device with a 3G network. It weighs 9,000 pounds and is controlled by a pilot in the cockpit or remotely using a smartphone or tablet. They can also step inside the suit to control its movements in the same way as exoskeletons are used for fictional characters such as Iron Man. Overall, the robot has around 30 hydraulic joints which the pilot moves using motion control. It comes in 16 colors, including black and pink. Currently Kuratas is not capable of walking, but is able to drive at 6mph (10 km/h) It can also be fitted with a futuristic weapons system, including a gun capable of shooting 6,000 BB bullets a minute, which fires when the pilot smiles. 'Automatic alignment allows you to lock on your enemy target. Kuratas will not allow any targets to escape,' the company writes. 'With the alignment set appropriately the system will fire BBs when the pilot smiles.' Realizing that there may be a flaw with this system of opening fire, a video warns the pilot against smiling too much while operating the Kuratas weaponry. However, there is another major caveat. The robot is advertised as a kit, which means whoever buys it will also have to put it together. Advertisement In May, Chinese robotics company GREATMETAL also announced that it too was joining the battle, unveiling its massive 'Monkey King' robot to take on the US and Japan. The quadrupedal, single-seat machine takes on the form of a monkey and weighs more than 8,000 pounds (four tonnes) and a video has suggested that the robot is equipped with a rotating head. The enormous robots have several cameras on the exterior, allowing the human controller inside to change its movements As the robots battle, armour panels shear off and litter the field, smoke and sparks pour out of the chassis, massive robotic limbs tear off, and robots crumple to the ground until only one is left standing Its creator, Shiqian Sun, said it took about two months to complete to this point, New Atlas reported. Although China is gearing up for battle, MegaBots is still deciding whether to allow the Monkey King to join the competition. A specific date for the battle has not yet announced, but MegaBots says it will be this month. The Eagle Prime robot looks very similar to many of the machines featured in the Transformers blockbusters THE MONKEY KING Chinese robotics company GREATMETAL has unveiled its robot to take on America's MegaBots and Japan's Kuratas. Called the Monkey King, this robot is able to fight while on two legs and also on all-fours. Chinese robotics company GREATMETAL has unveiled its robot to take on America's MegaBots and Japan's Kuratas The quadrupedal, single-seat machine takes on the form of a monkey and weighs more than 8,000 pounds (4 tonnes). And a leaked video has suggested that the robot is equipped with a rotating head. Advertisement Scientists have spoken out to warn against allowing babies to be born with edited genes. It comes after a world first technique was unveiled to fix an embryos faulty DNA, which could eventually eradicate genetic diseases like cystic fibrosis and breast cancer. Amid growing debate that the breakthrough could pave the way for designer babies, international experts have put out a statement which states it would be inappropriate for a woman to become pregnant with a genetically altered embryo. They say gene-editing of human embryos should be publicly funded but confined to the laboratory 'at this time'. Scroll down for video The statement comes a day after the news that scientists had used the Crispr-Cas9 technique to alter the DNA of human embryos to fix a heart failure condition. Pictured top is a previous technique, which saw some cells still with the mutation. Pictured bottom is the new technique, in which all cells are repaired WHAT DID THE GROUP AGREE ON? The statement published in The American Journal Of Human Genetics says work on regulated human genome editing should be permitted, but at present must stop short of producing a pregnancy. Allowing embryos with artificially altered genes to be implanted in the womb is illegal both in the US and the UK. In the US, taxpayers' money cannot currently pay for any research that destroys human embryos. The experts concluded there was 'currently no reason' to prohibit laboratory research on editing human inherited, or germline, genes or its public funding. Any future clinical application should only come after a full public debate on the issues involved and a 'compelling medical rationale' for introducing it. Advertisement Led by prestigious Stanford University in the US, they raise public concerns that editing an embryo to fix a genetic disease, as was done this week, could be seen as playing God in an effort to create only the best children possible. It could also damage the unconditional love parents have for their children by making them aware of genetic imperfections. The statement, endorsed by eight organisations including the Wellcome Genome Campus in Britain, took 17 months to produce. It concludes: At this time, given the nature and number of unanswered scientific, ethical, and policy questions, it is inappropriate to perform germline gene editing that culminates in human pregnancy. The expert opinion follows controversy over the ethics of the first successful attempt, led by scientists from Oregon Health and Science University, to use gene editing to cut out DNA from a fertilised egg. In a world first, scientists used a gene editing technique to correct a DNA mutation linked to hypertrophic cardiomyophathy in embryos, so that the defect would not be passed on to future generations. The research, reported in Nature, was hailed as a milestone that raised the prospect of saving future generations from thousands of inherited diseases. But the work raises deep questions about the ethics of tampering with the human genome, the complete set of coded instructions that make us what we are. This sequence of images shows the development of embryos after the sperm and CRISPR-Cas9 was injected into a healthy egg. Pictured are the eggs shortly after the injection (left), the embryos two days later (centre), and the embryos five days later (right) HYPERTROPHIC CARDIOMYOPATHY Hypertrophic cardiomyopathy is an inherited disease of your heart muscle, where the muscle wall of your heart becomes thickened. It is one of more than 10,000 inheritable diseases caused by an error in a single gene. This genetic disease manifests only in adulthood and affects an estimated 1 in 500 people. It can lead to heart failure and sudden death of apparently healthy people. Advertisement The new policy statement, published in The American Journal Of Human Genetics today, says work on regulated human genome editing should be permitted, but at present must stop short of producing a pregnancy. Lead author Professor Kelly Ormond, from Stanford University in California, said: 'Our workgroup on genome editing included experts in several sub-fields of human genetics as well as from countries with varying health systems and research infrastructure. 'Given this diversity of perspective, we are encouraged by the agreement we were able to reach and hope it speaks to the soundness and wider acceptability of our recommendations.' The experts concluded there was 'currently no reason' to prohibit laboratory research on editing human inherited, or germline, genes or its public funding. Any future clinical application should only come after a full public debate on the issues involved and a 'compelling medical rationale' for introducing it. Dr Derek Scholes, director of science policy at the American Society of Human Genetics, said: 'While germline genome editing could theoretically be used to prevent a child being born with a genetic disease, its potential use also raises a multitude of scientific, ethical, and policy questions. 'These questions cannot all be answered by scientists alone, but also need to be debated by society.' Allowing embryos with artificially altered genes to be implanted in the womb is illegal both in the US and the UK. Research into the gene-editing of human embryos should be publicly funded but confined to the laboratory 'at this time', experts from 11 organisations around the world have said (stock image) In the US, taxpayers' money cannot currently pay for any research that destroys human embryos. Congress has banned the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) from even considering the possibility of human clinical trials involving embryos with edited inherited genes. But Britain, whose rules on gene editing are more liberal, has already become the first country to officially sanction mitochondrial replacement therapy (MRT). The therapy involves replacing defective inherited genes in energy-generating structures called mitochondria in cells. At first glance, hummingbirds are one of the most captivating animals on the planet with their incredible flying abilities. However, look closer and you can see them in a whole new light - and a taxi service for mites. These incredible images, taken by Wildlife researcher and photographer Sean Graesser in Costa Rica, show the birds and their passengers up close. Graesser used a Canon MP-E 65mm 1-5x macro lens to capture the detailed shots of mites on hummingbird beaks in Costa Rica this past winter. Graesser, who in 2010 co-founded the Nicoya Peninsula Research Station, a volunteer-based facility on Costa Ricas Pacific Coast, is hoping to help protect the birds by showing that Ruby-throated Hummingbirds and other migratory species return each winter to the same small patch of forest. Graesser, who also works as a field biologist for Audubon Connecticut, photographs many of the birds he bands, and he believes those images can be just as important as the research itself. 'At some point I found that I was seeing all these amazing things that not a lot of people were seeing,' he told Aubodon. Scientists have observed detailed spectral lines - like 'fingerprints' - on an antimatter atom for the first time. Until now, researchers have only managed to catch a glimpse of antimatter spectral lines, but they say the new detailed look opens a 'new chapter' in antimatter research. The 50 physicists from 17 institutions who worked on the global project believe this discovery could lead to new insights about the mysteries of the universe. Scroll down for video The research was conducted at CERN, the world's largest particle physics laboratory. Until now, researchers have only managed to catch a glimpse of antimatter spectral lines, but they say the new detailed look opens a new chapter in antimatter research. WHAT IS ANTIMATTER? Antimatter is the mirror of ordinary matter. Normal atoms are made up of positively-charged nuclei orbited by negatively-charged electrons. However, their antimatter counterparts are the other way round. They have negative nuclei and positively-charged electrons, known as positrons. When matter and antimatter meet they instantly annihilate each other, releasing a burst of detectable energy. Advertisement 'By studying the properties of anti-atoms we hope to learn more about the universe in which we live,' Michael Hayden, the study's lead author and professor at Simon Fraser University said. He worked as part of a collective called the ALPHA Collaboration, which studies antihydrogen - the antimatter counterpart of the ordinary hydrogen atom. It's been known that 'spectral lines are like fingerprints.' Hayden said: 'Every element has its own unique pattern.' This applied to ordinary matter, but while matter and antimatter are believed to be mirror images of each other (which means spectral lines of antimatter atoms should be precisely the same as those of their normal atom counterparts), it was previously unknown if this was the case. Their experimental research showed a particular set of spectral lines in antihydrogen match those in hydrogen very well, meaning that even in antimatter the spectral lines match. The research was conducted at CERN, the world's largest particle physics laboratory. The team irradiated antihydrogen atoms with microwaves, similar to those used to communicate with satellites. This caused the anti-atoms reveal their 'identity' by emitting or absorbing energy at very specific frequencies. That pattern, or spectrum, of frequencies corresponds to the 'fingerprint.' 'One of the challenges we face is that matter and antimatter annihilate when they come into contact with one another,' said Justine Munich, an SFU physics PhD candidate. 'We have to keep them apart.' Inside the experiment: the team irradiated antihydrogen atoms with microwaves, similar to those used to communicate with satellites. This caused the anti-atoms reveal their 'identity' by emitting or absorbing energy at very specific frequencies the image shows a cut-away of the antihydrogen production and trapping region of the experiment (with the magnets that normally surround it removed). During the experiment, antiproton and positron plasmas are injected from either side before being mixed to form antihydrogen in the central region. 'We can't just put our anti-atoms into an ordinary container - they have to be trapped or held inside a special magnetic bottle.' The research could also give insight into why antimatter only seems to exist in limited quantities outside of the lab. 'We can make antimatter in the lab, but it doesn't seem to exist naturally except in miniscule quantities. Why is this?' Hayden said. 'We simply don't know - but perhaps antihydrogen can give us some clues.' Scientists have been trying to figure out where all the antimatter went for a long time. The Big Bang is thought to have produced equal amounts of matter and antimatter -but today, the universe is made up mostly of ordinary matter with almost no antimatter to be found. THE MYSTERY OF ANTIMATTER Scientists have been trying to figure out where all the antimatter went for a long time. The Big Bang is thought to have produced equal amounts of matter and antimatter -but today, the universe is made up mostly of ordinary matter with almost no antimatter to be found. This lack of antimatter is one of the biggest mysteries of the cosmos. Advertisement This lack of antimatter is one of the biggest mysteries of the cosmos. A 2015 study - in which scientists studied the forces that make these particles stick together - got researchers one step closer solving the problem and provided a base for the research happening today. It was the first time the forces between antimatter particles - in this case antiprotons have been measured. Researchers wanted to see if antiprotons behaved in a different way to protons, which are 'mirror images', ordinary protons. Their behavior could explain what has been termed the 'matter/antimatter asymmetry' in the universe. Scientists have previously used a laser to tickle atoms of antimatter and make them shine, a key step toward answering one of the great riddles of the universe. They used the ALPHA experiment (pictured) at CERN , which is located on the Swiss-French border. 'Although this puzzle has been known for decades and little clues have emerged, it remains one of the big challenges of science,' said Aihong Tang, a Brookhaven physicist. 'Anything we learn about the nature of antimatter can potentially contribute to solving this puzzle.' Using a particle smasher called the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) at Brookhaven, New York, physicists measured the force of interaction between pairs of antiprotons. They discovered that the force between antiproton pairs is attractive, like the strong nuclear force that holds protons together inside atoms. Zhengqiao Zhang, another scientist who studied the antiproton interactions using the RHIC, said: 'We see lots of protons, the basic building blocks of conventional atoms, coming out, and we see almost equal numbers of antiprotons. The globe of the European Organization for Nuclear Research, CERN, is illuminated outside Geneva, Switzerland 'The antiprotons look just like familiar protons, but because they are antimatter, they have a negative charge instead of positive, so they curve the opposite way in the magnetic field of the detector.' The experiment suggests that matter and antimatter to be symmetric. This means that some asymmetric quirk could not account for the continuing existence of matter in the universe and the scarcity of antimatter. Facebook is bringing Stories to the desktop. The company has previously added stories to Instagram, Messenger, WhatsApp and the Facebook mobile app, but this is the first time the feature will be on the desktop site. While it's still in test mode and only appearing for a small percentage of users, Facebook confirmed to TechCrunch a wider roll out of stories for desktop is expected soon. Scroll down for video While Stories were on the top on the app, on desktop feature is located on the top right of the page below notifications and above the trending news links FACEBOOK STORIES ON DESKTOP Facebook's testing Stories for desktop. While only appearing for a small percentage of users, Facebook confirmed a wider roll out of stories for desktop is expected soon. The company has previously added stories to Instagram, Messenger, WhatsApp and the Facebook mobile app, but this is the first time the feature will be on the desktop site. Many are calling the move a last-ditch effort to get the feature to catch on with Facebook users. Advertisement For those who have it already, the feature is located on the top right of the page below notifications and above the trending news links. Facebook Stories were introduced globally in March 2017 after testing the feature in Ireland. Initially, users could only share to friends or groups of friends. The feature was eventually updated to include public sharing - a move that some reviewers said caused their engagement to skyrocket higher than engagement on typical newsfeed posts. Yet Stories hasn't been a huge success for the company. Facebook users have taken to social media to point out that they wouldn't see a single Story posted despite having hundreds or thousands of people on their friends list. Critics have largely called it a failure, and user ship has been so low that in April the company began displaying grayed-out icons in the Stories section of the app to make it seem less empty. Many are calling the introduction of Stories to the newsfeed a last-ditch effort to get the feature to catch on with Facebook users. Critics have largely called Facebook Stories a failure, and user ship has been so low that in April the company began displaying grayed-out icons on the Stories section of the app to make it seem less empty While Stories hasn't been an extremely popular feature on the company's flagship platform, the shameless Snapchat clone has been a big success for the company's other entity, Instagram. Yesterday, the company released new stats to celebrate the one year anniversary of Instagram Stories and take aim at the claims in Snap's IPO filing. It revealed users under 25 are on the app for 32 minutes on average daily, while older users spend 25 minutes each day using it. That's three percent of younger users' waking hours. The announcement is designed to show off the success of the Stories feature, which Instagram has been widely accused of - and admitted to - stealing from Snapchat. 'Stories has also helped increase the amount of time people spend on Instagram,' reads the blog post. While Instagram has stolen several features - from disappearing messages to face filters, including the famed puppy face and flower crown - from Snapchat, stories was the big one. Yesterday, the company released new stats to celebrate the one year anniversary of Instagram Stories and take aim at the claims in Snap 's IPO filing Instagram Stories now has 250 million daily users compared to Snapchat's 166 million. That means that after just one year, Instagram Stories has 84 million more users than Snapchat, which launched almost five years ago on the disappearing content feature alone. The tension over this feature has been the biggest battle between the two social networks. In one breath, Instagram has admitted to lifting the feature from its competitor - CEO Kevin Systrom once said Snapchat deserves all the credit. While Instagram has stolen several features - from disappearing messages to face filters, including the famed puppy face and flower crown - from Snapchat, stories was the big one TOP 5 FACE FILTERS ON INSTAGRAM 1. Puppy ears 2. Sleep mask 3. Bunny ears 4. Love with heart-shaped darts 5. Koala ears Advertisement Yet in another, head of product Kevin Weil chopped it up to the classic ways of the tech industry in which 'good ideas spread.' 'I think if we're being honest with ourselves, this is how the tech industry works,' Weil said in May at TechCrunch Disrupt New York. 'And frankly it's how all industries work.' 'Good ideas start in one place and spread across the entire industry.' 'We've said multiple times, kudos to Snapchat for being the first to stories, but it's a format and it's going to be adopted widely across platforms.' 'In the same way hashtags started on Twitter and now you see them everywhere because they're just useful for categorizing information.' Instagram head of product Kevin Weil defended the company's move to steal Snapchat features when grilled about if employees felt guilty, if it's moral and if he sees any disadvantages to 'copying instead of building something original' The introduction of Stories has had a clear impact on Instagram's recent growth and Snapchat's recent decline. The monthly active user growth rate of the latter has plummeted from 17.2% per quarter to just 5%. The company's share price has also fallen from its $17 at it IPO to $13. Instagram has also seen massive success with businesses on the platform due to the stories feature. In the report released today, the company said in the last month, over 50 percent of businesses posted on Stories. We've all had days at work where the bare minimum is the best we can muster. And every one of the situations presented here reeks of pure, unabashed, employee apathy. One staffer at a British pub, whose boss's brief was clearly too vague, arranged a sign outside the establishment to read: 'I was told to change this sign so I did.' Another, tasked with painting yellow lines along a curb in England, decided that since his job didn't involve moving obstructing cars, he would merely paint right over a 4X4 that was in the way instead. Then we have the retail worker who looked square in the eye at a box that read 'Stop! Remove product from this box to display in store' - and just thought, nah. Here, MailOnline rounds up a selection of amusing photos depicting people who deemed their task, that day at least, to be frankly above their pay grade. Classic British pub: Perhaps this particular boss was a little too vague with the brief Fenced off: This employee took a short cut which, somewhat defeating the point, means pedestrians can also very easily take a short cut Delegation is key: Not the most reassuring sign to be presented with at a medical centre We've all been there: The struggle was all too real for this chap, and a nap was his only solution Obstacle: As far as this worker was concerned, painting yellow lines was within his job requirement - moving parked cars out of the way was not Heart-felt: Whoever ordered these flowers wasn't quite sure what they wanted to convey, as will have been glaringly obvious to the recipient when the card showed up Winging it: Two examples of retail employees who were feeling extra-specially lazy that day Not ideal: This was wryly captioned 'Just done repainting the lines for this busy road in the middle of a major public university, boss' Decisions, decisions: It appears these two may have noticed their error. The question is, will they correct it? What would Gordon Ramsay say? Sheets of cheese chucked unceremoniously over a dish of penne pasta does not a macaroni make Smart Alec: We're guessing this staffer's boss will have something to say about this creation Too much faff: Either this chap literally couldn't be bothered to erect his tent, or it collapsed while he was in it and he simply couldn't be bothered to fix it Entirely defeating the point: This water (left) will not taste lemony, and these Skittles (right) shall not dispense Lean back: The story behind this is unclear, but it seems highly unlikely that these fireman are actually dealing with a life-threatening situation That'll have to do: At least some token effort has gone into the display on the left... more than can be said for the job on the right What have we here? It would actually have taken significantly more effort to arrive at this loo roll monstrosity than to attach it normally - so is there a grudge behind it? The world's gone mad: A gentleman aghast at the asymmetry witnessed (left), and an employee who's making the best of a potentially boring day (right) Man with a plan: Some would call this laziness - mowing the lawn on a Segway - or you might label it pure genius Advertisement Anyone who's been watching Game of Thrones might have gained a new interest in dragons. And we all wish the beautiful, gentle, magical unicorn was a real thing. Alas, they are not, but the history behind these mythical creatures is certainly interesting to peer into. This new interactive map from Expedia reveals where in the world these various beasts emerged from - unicorns in China, for example, and dragons in Wales. This new interactive map from Expedia reveals where in the world these various beasts emerged from, and provides tales of their origins And many of them, while entirely fictional, do have roots in reality. The legend of Count Dracula, for instance, a fearsome vampire believed to have been stationed Transylvania, Romania, was based on a real prince who presided over the region during 15th century called Vlad III - and shares some bloodthirsty parallels. Read on to discover the origins and the curious tales behind other beasts, including Scotland's Loch Ness Monster, North America's Bigfoot, and the famed Yeti from the Himalayas. Unicorns, China In Chinese mythology, the unicorn - first referenced in the 5th century BC, had a voice like a thousand wind chimes, radiated exquisite colours, avoided fighting at all costs and walked so softly on its hooves that it made no sound Unicorns have played a central part in Chinese mythology since the first references were made to a creature called the 'qilin' in the 5th century BC. Since then, this mysterious single-horned creature has made appearances in a number of Chinese works of history and fiction, with one Emperor even claiming to have caught a live qilin in 122 BC. In Chinese mythology, the qilin had a voice like a thousand wind chimes, radiated exquisite colours, avoided fighting at all costs and walked so softly on its hooves that it made no sound. Specifically, it also had a 12-ft long horn. The qilin was very precious to the Chinese people in ancient times, and still is today. It's regarded as a creature of great power and wisdom that shows itself only at special times. Legend has it that the qilin would appear when a great leader was about to be born or die, or when a ruler was just and kind and presided over peaceful and prosperous times. Bigfoot, North America The oldest account of Bigfoot dates all the way back to 986 AD, but there still continue to be supposed 'sightings' around North America to this day This enigmatic man-ape has been regularly 'sighted' across North America for the last 200 years - or so people claim - although the oldest account of Bigfoot dates all the way back to 986 AD. Despite the frequent sightings, scientists tend to dismiss its existence, claiming it to be merely part folklore, part misidentification and part myth. If you find yourself in Oregon, the good news is that the region is known for its reported Bigfoot sightings, so much so in fact that Oregon Route 224, which heads south-east from Portland into the Cascades mountain range, has been coined the Oregon Bigfoot Highway. The Yeti, The Himalayas There has never been any conclusive evidence to prove that the yeti exists, but sightings of a creature have been claimed across the Himalayas - in Nepal, Bhutan, Tibet and India Stories of the yeti are so entrenched in Himalayan folklore that real scientific research has been commissioned time and time again to discover the truth behind the 'man-bear'. As yet, there's still no definitive answer to that question. There has never been any conclusive evidence to prove that the yeti exists, but sightings of a creature have been claimed across the Himalayas - in Nepal, Bhutan, Tibet and India but also as far north as Mongolia, and most recently, at the ski resort of Formigal in north-eastern Spain. The truth is that a lot of respected mountaineers, such as Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay, have claimed to have seen large and unexplained footprints in the snow. Hillary was so convinced by what he saw that he later mounted an expedition to search for the creature. The latest twist in this enduring and fascinating tale comes from the DNA tests run by a British scientist, Bryan Sykes. He examined hairs from two unidentified animals that were discovered in the Himalayas. The results found that the samples were a 100 per cent match with a sample from an ancient polar jaw bone found in Svalbard, Norway. The scientist believes the creatures could be a hybrid of a polar crossed with a brown bear, which would explain why the yeti has been seen walking upright. Vampires, Romania The fictional vampire character from the Dracula novel was in fact based on a Romanian prince of the 15th century, called Vlad III - and as the nickname suggests, Vlad was pretty bloodthirsty himself Many people think Transylvania is a fictional place, but this mountainous area in central Romania is very real, and also extremely picturesque. The famous Bran Castle is Transylvania's top tourist attraction, and although the author of the 1897 gothic novel Dracula, Bram Stoker, never actually visited Romania, he made the castle the home of the book's central character. It was this that gave rise to Transylvania's reputation as the vampire capital of the world. Bram Stoker's story of the dreaded 'Count Dracula' had its roots in real life. The fictional character from the Dracula novel was in fact based on a Romanian prince of the 15th century, called Vlad III. As the nickname suggests, Vlad was pretty bloodthirsty himself and had a reputation for brutally punishing his enemies. Vlad's preferred method of execution was impalement, but as well as being a sadistic way to dispose of his enemies, this was also a clever method of psychological warfare against his more powerful foes. When the Ottoman sultan Mehmet II invaded Wallachia, the region where Vlad ruled, he found nothing but the rotting remains of Ottoman prisoners impaled on spikes. This was Vlad's gruesome way of scaring away an enemy that was vastly superior in numbers. While some historians have suggested that Vlad himself drank human blood, their interpretations seem to be flawed. However, there is a 15th-century German poem that describes how Vlad liked to wash his hands in the blood of his victims before he ate. The Loch Ness Monster, Scotland It was a local news reporter from the Inverness Courier who broke the story of Nessie, in 1933. Within weeks, the beast was breaking news worldwide and interest remains huge to this day One of the definitive and iconic mysteries of British folklore, the Loch Ness Monster also known affectionately as 'Nessie' has been sought by adventurous travellers for almost a century. It was a local news reporter from the Inverness Courier who broke the story of Nessie, in 1933. Within weeks, the Beast was breaking news worldwide and interest was huge, with many parties heading to the area to attempt to photograph or capture it. The interest was so great that the Secretary of State for Scotland was moved to instruct local police to prevent attacks upon the creature. Whilst several long-lens photos were snapped, no great sighting or capture was made, and the sensation passed quickly into popular folklore. Today, you can have your own go at spotting Nessie, taking a cruise out to the atmospheric ruins of Urquhart Castle, with live sonar on board to maximise your chances of finding the Beast. Of course, Loch Ness is a quite remarkable location in its own right. The loch is enormous capable of holding more water than all the lakes in England and Wales put together. A deep cut between the mountainous Cairngorms to the east and the rugged, windswept west coast, the loch is an unmissable destination on any exploration of the Scottish Highlands and Islands. The Red Dragon, Wales In Welsh folklore, the red dragon has played such an important part that it enjoys pride of place on the country's flag Any fan of Game of Thrones will have become rather fond of these creatures by now. And in Welsh folklore, the red dragon has played such an important part that it enjoys pride of place on the country's flag. One legend goes that the dragon was the battle standard of King Arthur and other ancient Celtic leaders in the late 5th and early 6th centuries. Another fascinating story tells that the red dragon fought with an invading white dragon, but their shrieks became so loud that animals perished and plants became barren. So, the king of the time decided to dig a pit in the centre of Britain, fill it with mead and cover it with cloth. The dragons then drank the mead and fell into the pit, and they were imprisoned by the king in Dinas Emrys, in Snowdonia, still wrapped in the cloth. Some years later, King Vortigern tried to build a castle in Dinas Emrys. Inexplicably, every night the castle walls and foundations fell down. King Vortigern's advisers explained to him that a blood sacrifice was needed to stop the castle falling down, and the sacrifice had to be that of a fatherless boy. Vortigern's men came back with such a boy, named Merlin. Just as Merlin (the famous wise wizard) was about to get the chop, he said he knew the real reason the castle was falling down. He explained that there was a deep pit beneath the ground where two dragons lived, and every night they would fight, and it was this struggle that brought the castle walls down. Interestingly, in 1945 Dinas Emrys was excavated by archaeologists who not only found an unexplained deep pool, but also the ruins of a fortress dating back to Vortigern's time. More eerily still, the fortress walls showed signs of being rebuilt several times. The Ningen, Antarctica Said to measure between 65 to 100 feet in length, these creatures are rumoured to have 'human-like' appendages, including arms, legs and even five fingers, and were first 'spotted' in the Antarctic in the 1990s by Japanese ships Reports from Japanese 'whale research' ships in the 1990s first hinted at the possible existence of huge, completely white humanoid creatures beneath the waters surrounding the Antarctic. Said to measure between 65 to 100 feet in length, the creatures are rumoured to have 'human-like' appendages, including arms, legs and even five fingers, according to some descriptions. The Japanese word ningen in fact means 'human'. However, other reports describe the creatures as having tentacles, fins, mermaid-like tails, and a slit-like mouth. Although numerous videos have surfaced reportedly featuring footage of ningen in their natural Antarctic habitat, many remain highly sceptical about the creatures' existence, claiming that they're probably albino ocean-dwellers such as whales, skate or rays. Belugas and bowhead whales could be likely candidates for mistaken identity as they both frequent these teeming waters. So, whether you believe in the ningen or not, a boat tour off Punta Arenas is a must-do for animal-loving visitors to this striking corner of Patagonia. He's outspoken about his affection for his nephew George. And becoming a father in the near future might be on the cards for The Bachelor's Matthew 'Matty J' Johnson, if his female suitors have anything to do with it. A number of beautiful contestants from the reality show have opened up to OK! magazine about how they are 'absolutely ready' to settle down and start a family. Scroll down for video Clucky! Becoming a father in the near future might be on the cards for The Bachelor's Matthew 'Matty J' Johnson, if his female suitors have anything to do with it 'I'm absolutely ready to have kids and to have a family,' revealed Cobie Frost, 30, who works as a coal miner. The Georgia Love lookalike has been rumoured to be one of Matty's top seven picks this season. Her fellow hopeful Lisa Carlton, 25, said she had spoken about children with the Bachelor during a behind the scenes chat. 'I'm absolutely ready to have kids and to have a family,' revealed Cobie Frost, 30, who works as a coal miner 'Matty told me about George. I definitely want kids,' she expressed. The Victorian model, who has been a series front runner since her identity was revealed, has even been predicted as the winner by fellow contestants. Dutch stunner Florence Alexandra Sophia, 27, said she 'can't wait to be a mum'. 'Matty told me about George. I definitely want kids,' Lisa Carlton, 25, expressed Excited: Dutch stunner Florence Alexandra Sophia, 27, said she 'can't wait to be a mum' 'I want children,' she described. 'I'd want two or three.' Popular contender Tara Pavlovic, 27, who is a Queensland-based nanny, explained she is hoping for 'two children, boy-girl twins'. Matty told the magazine he is 'excited to have kids' and stated he would love to have his first child 'within five years' time'. Family ties: Popular contender Tara Pavlovic, 27, who is a Queensland-based nanny, explained she is hoping for 'two children, boy-girl twins' Samantha Armytage took Alan Jones' gags about her drinking on the chin, but she didn't bite her tongue. After the 2GB radio presenter joked about Sam's drinking habits during a hilarious spot on Sunrise on Wednesday, the 40-year-old called the shock jock a 'trouble maker'. 'That Alan Jones, he's a troublemaker,' she clapped back in a comical quip. On the chin: Samantha Armytage took Alan Jones' gags about her drinking on the chin, but she didn't bite her tongue The TV host did add that she in fact didn't mind a tipple, so Alan wasn't to far off despite his cheekiness. She admitted: 'I won't lie, I don't mind the odd G'n'T or two after a long day. Who doesn't?' The exchange began on Wednesday when Alan joked about Sam's consumption during a recent dinner. Alan, 76, was on the Seven Network breakfast show to comment on the Queen's alcohol consumption when he let slip about a recent night out with Sam. He said the Queen's reported consumption of six drinks a day was 'light-on' compared to the amount the blonde presenter drank at a dinner he had with her. Double double: After the radio presenter Alan Jones joked about Sam's drinking habits during a hilarious spot on Sunrise on Wednesday, the 40-year-old called the shock jock a 'trouble maker'. 'That Alan Jones, he's a troublemaker,' she clapped back in a comical quip 'Sam, you started with the gin and it was very straight with not much tonic water at all, you had the white and the red and you topped it up with some champagne,' he said. Laughing at the lighthearted teasing, she told him to 'shush.' 'Alan, this is not about me this is about the Queen,' she retorted. Why not: In April, Sam shared a picture of herself enjoying a drink between filming segments for Sunrise In April, Sam shared a picture of herself enjoying a drink between filming segments for Sunrise. The show was being broadcast from New Orleans and the presenter was enjoying one of the city's iconic cocktails a Hurricane. She captioned the image, shared to her Instagram account, 'At the end of a long week, in the commercial break, forgive a girl for having a sneaky Hurricane.' Life Legal Files Petition in Supreme Court Contesting Gag Order Against Daleiden NAPA, Calif., Aug. 3, 2017 / The National Abortion Federation (NAF) filed a lawsuit against David Daleiden and his Center for Medical Progress (CMP) just weeks after Daleiden released videos showing Planned Parenthood directors negotiating the sale of baby body parts for profit. NAF sought a gag order prohibiting CMP from releasing additional footage recorded at its annual conferences, fearing further public scrutiny of the unethical and illegal business practices of its members. Federal judge William Orrick, who previously served on the board of an organization that "partnered" with Planned Parenthood, issued the order. In doing so, he held that Daleiden contracted away his First Amendment speech rights when he signed the non-disclosure agreement NAF requires of all conference attendees, to avert public relations disasters like that which followed late-term abortionist Martin Haskell's unveiling of the new technique of partial birth abortion at a NAF meeting in the 1990's. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the order without fully reviewing the case, as is required when First Amendment freedoms are at stake. Life Legal's Vice President of Legal Affairs, Katie Short, notes that no federal appeals court has ever upheld a gag order that was based on the alleged agreement of the parties to hide information that is of significant public interest and concern. Even Judge Orrick acknowledged that the public "has an interest in accessing the NAF materials." Yet heand the Ninth Circuit in its affirmation of Orrick's rulingelected to protect the interests of the abortion industry over the interests of taxpayers who fund Planned Parenthood to the tune of $550 million annually. The Supreme Court has held the type of gag order issued by Judge Orrick to be unconstitutional prior restraints on speech, holding that prior restraints are "the most serious and least tolerable infringement on First Amendment rights." The Court has further held that the damage of gag orders "can be particularly great when the prior restraint falls upon the communication of news and commentary on current events," which is exactly what Daleiden's videos are. Quoting other Supreme Court authority, the petition notes that the "dominant purpose of the First Amendment was to prohibit the widespread practice of governmental suppression...of material that is embarrassing to the powers that be." "The abortion industry went after David Daleiden for one reasonto protect the reputation it carefully cultivated in four decades of public deception," said Life Legal Executive Director Alexandra Snyder. "Our hope is that the Supreme Court will agree that First Amendment freedoms must not be extinguished to remove from public scrutiny issues of fundamental social and political importance." Life Legal is defending Daleiden in two lawsuits filed against him by the National Abortion Federation and Planned Parenthood. About Life Legal Defense Foundation Life Legal Defense Foundation was established in 1989, and is a nonprofit organization composed of attorneys and other concerned citizens committed to giving helpless and innocent human beings of any age, and their advocates, a trained and committed voice in the courtrooms of our nation. For more information about the Life Legal Defense Foundation, visit Share Tweet Contact: Alexandra Snyder, Life Legal Defense Foundation , 202-717-7371NAPA, Calif., Aug. 3, 2017 / Christian Newswire / -- Life Legal Defense Foundation today filed a petition for writ of certiorari seeking review of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals decision in National Abortion Federation v. Center for Medical Progress.The National Abortion Federation (NAF) filed a lawsuit against David Daleiden and his Center for Medical Progress (CMP) just weeks after Daleiden released videos showing Planned Parenthood directors negotiating the sale of baby body parts for profit. NAF sought a gag order prohibiting CMP from releasing additional footage recorded at its annual conferences, fearing further public scrutiny of the unethical and illegal business practices of its members. Federal judge William Orrick, who previously served on the board of an organization that "partnered" with Planned Parenthood, issued the order. In doing so, he held that Daleiden contracted away his First Amendment speech rights when he signed the non-disclosure agreement NAF requires of all conference attendees, to avert public relations disasters like that which followed late-term abortionist Martin Haskell's unveiling of the new technique of partial birth abortion at a NAF meeting in the 1990's.The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the order without fully reviewing the case, as is required when First Amendment freedoms are at stake.Life Legal's Vice President of Legal Affairs, Katie Short, notes that no federal appeals court has ever upheld a gag order that was based on the alleged agreement of the parties to hide information that is of significant public interest and concern.Even Judge Orrick acknowledged that the public "has an interest in accessing the NAF materials." Yet heand the Ninth Circuit in its affirmation of Orrick's rulingelected to protect the interests of the abortion industry over the interests of taxpayers who fund Planned Parenthood to the tune of $550 million annually.The Supreme Court has held the type of gag order issued by Judge Orrick to be unconstitutional prior restraints on speech, holding that prior restraints are "the most serious and least tolerable infringement on First Amendment rights." The Court has further held that the damage of gag orders "can be particularly great when the prior restraint falls upon the communication of news and commentary on current events," which is exactly what Daleiden's videos are.Quoting other Supreme Court authority, the petition notes that the "dominant purpose of the First Amendment was to prohibit the widespread practice of governmental suppression...of material that is embarrassing to the powers that be.""The abortion industry went after David Daleiden for one reasonto protect the reputation it carefully cultivated in four decades of public deception," said Life Legal Executive Director Alexandra Snyder. "Our hope is that the Supreme Court will agree that First Amendment freedoms must not be extinguished to remove from public scrutiny issues of fundamental social and political importance."Life Legal is defending Daleiden in two lawsuits filed against him by the National Abortion Federation and Planned Parenthood.About Life Legal Defense FoundationLife Legal Defense Foundation was established in 1989, and is a nonprofit organization composed of attorneys and other concerned citizens committed to giving helpless and innocent human beings of any age, and their advocates, a trained and committed voice in the courtrooms of our nation. For more information about the Life Legal Defense Foundation, visit www.lldf.org She's the reality star who shocked Married At First Sight fans last month when she announced her split with Nick Furphy, 30. And on Thursday, Sharon Marsh admitted she was never deeply in love with her on-screen 'husband'. Speaking to OK! magazine, the 32-year-old divulged she subconsciously hindered their relationship from working out as she relocated from her hometown of Perth to Melbourne where Nick lives. Self sabotage! In an interview with OK! magazine on Thursday, Married At First Sight's Sharon Marsh (left) admitted she 'made excuses' to delay her move to Melbourne for Nick Furphy (right) because she knew she wasn't truly in love with him 'I made excuses [as to] why I couldn't move over to Melbourne straight away. My business, I needed to rent out my house, I'd miss my family and friends, my dog... Bullsh*t!' the blonde bombshell told the magazine. She continued: 'I realise if you are truly in love with someone and want to commit to them, you will make it happen.' As well as self-sabotaging her relationship, Sharon explained that while she and Nick are fond of one another, the now-friends are 'not in love with each other'. Still friends: While the pair are still on good terms, Sharon admitted she wasn't 'in love' 'You will make it happen': The reality star came to realise that if her feelings for Nick were strong enough, she would have found a way to make it work Sharon and Nick were the only couple who remained together from Married At First Sight's fourth season and seemed to be going strong as recently as June when they got inked with matching tattoos. However, just one month later the fairytale romance was over, with the duo calling time on their relationship. In July, Sharon took to Instagram to break her silence about the break-up, by posting a picture of a 'protection of life' necklace with the words: 'Things don't always go the way you hope.' Calling it quits: The couple were the last ones left standing from MAFS season four but ended their relationship in July this year The TV personality had earlier confessed to New Idea magazine that after moving to Melbourne for Nick, she became aware that her feelings weren't strong enough to prolong the union. 'I soon realised I'm not in love with him,' she admitted to the publication. Sharon added she left the carpenter heartbroken after she told him she 'wanted to feel more'. Victory: Kendall Jenner has been granted a permanent restraining order against a stalker who sent her a string of threatening letters Kendall Jenner has been granted a permanent restraining order against a stalker who sent her a string of threatening letters. Thomas Hummel must stay at least 100 yards away from the reality television personality for the next three years. In addition he is not allowed to contact her in any way, and is not allowed to own guns during that time. According to TMZ the 21-year-old model was not present for the hearing in downtown Los Angeles on Wednesday, however her representative presented a declaration from her head of security that persuaded the court action had to be taken. Court documents previously revealed the full catalogue of the abuse she suffered at the hands of her 62-year-old stalker. The model and reality star, 21, has obtained a temporary restraining order after he sent her several letters which had an 'increasing hostile and threatening tone.' Moreover, Hummel claims that Kendall has been in love with him since she was TWO years old - he says they met in the post office in 2008, and at Costco in 1998. Thomas must now cease all contact and remain at least 100 yards away from Kendall after pestering the star with dozens of letters which caused her 'emotional distress.' Kendall claims to have received letters on a daily basis from Hummel, enclosing a selection to show the intimidating nature of the words. In one, he writes that she is an 'internet w**re', who is 'cackling her way through life. Your behaviour puerile and self-centred.' In one letter, he accuses Kendall of being an 'internet w**re', who is 'cackling her way through life. Your behaviour puerile and self-centred.' Keeping safe: Kendall has obtained a temporary restraining order which means Thomas must cease to contact her and must keep at least 100 yards away from her He makes extraordinary claims that her mother, Kris Jenner, 61, pays 'unsafe' A$AP Rocky a million pounds a week to sleep with her and adds that she will want him to kill her for 100million. Even more shocking, he writes that Kris organised for her to be raped at a birthday party, which is of course completely untrue and unfounded. When Hummel is asked to stop contacting Kendall by her team, he demands that she calls him so he can hear it from her, claiming that she is being held 'prisoner.' NEED TO MUZZ Scary: She says she has received letters such as the above which have an 'increasing hostile and threatening tone', and are particularly offensive in nature When he does not hear from her, his tone becomes more sinister as he says: 'You make me want to die' and calls her 'simply corrupt.' He adds: 'You seem to be made of money and crassness. Is it fun? You've been living like this for years. You seem to think that piles of money justify anything.' According to TMZ, California native Thomas Hummel began sending the reality star love letters in February, even proposing marriage. But when Kendall's security team warned him in March to stay away, the tone of the correspondence took a very dark turn. In November a homeless man named Shavaughn McKenzie was sentenced to 178 days in jail for trespassing at her Hollywood Hills home, after he followed her car into her driveway. He left devoted fans disappointed after abruptly cancelling his Purpose World Tour last week. But Justin Bieber expressed his utmost gratitude to his supporters as he addressed his time-out from work in a heartfelt Instagram post on Wednesday, confessing that he let his 'broken relationships' dictate the way he treated others. The Canadian pop star, 23 - who has enjoyed high-profile relationships with singer Selena Gomez, 25, models Sahara Ray, 24, and Sofia Richie, 18 - admitted that he was 'never going to be perfect' but wasn't going to let resentment run his life. Scroll down for video Mind, body, and spirit: Justin Bieber expressed his utmost gratitude to his supporters as he addressed his time-out from work in a heartfelt Instagram post on Wednesday, confessing that he let his 'broken relationships' dictate the way he treated others (pictured in 2016) 'Im so grateful for this journey with all of you,' he wrote in an Instagram snap. 'Im grateful for the tours but most of all I am grateful I get to go through this life WITH YOU.! Learning and growing hasn't always been easy but knowing I im not alone has kept me going. 'I have let my insecurities get the best of me at time, I let my broken relationships dictate the way I acted toward people and the way I treated them! I let bitterness, jealousy and fear run my life.!!!! He added: 'I am extremely blessed to have people in the past few years help me build my character back up reminding me of who I am and who I want to be!!!. 'Reminding me of my past decisions and past relationships don't dictate my future decisions and my future relationships. Full story: The Canadian pop star, 23 - who has enjoyed high-profile relationships with singer Selena Gomez, 25, models Sahara Ray, 24, and Sofia Richie, 18 - admitted that he was 'never going to be perfect' but wasn't going to let resentment run his life Romance: Justin previously dated singer Selena Gomez, 25, models Sahara Ray, 24 Back then: Selena and Justin dated on/off from 2011 to 2015 (Pictured in 2011) Continuing: 'Im VERY aware I'm never gonna be perfect, and I'm gonna keep making mistakes but what I'm not gonna do is let my past dictate my future.. What I'm not gonna do is be ashamed of my mistakes. I wanna be a man that learns from them and grows from them.!!' (sic.) In the midst of his reflection, he revealed that he also wanted his 'mind, heart, and soul' to be 'sustainable' like his career so he could become a better man. 'I want you all to know this tour has been unbelievable and has taught me so much about myself...I am reminded of how blessed I am to have a voice in this world,' he expressed. Reflection: In the midst of his reflection, he revealed that he also wanted his 'mind, heart, and soul' to be 'sustainable' like his career so he could become a better man (Pictured in 2016) 'I've learned the more you appreciate your calling the more you want to protect your calling. Me taking this time right now is me saying I want to be SUSTAINABLE..I want my career to be sustainable, but I also want my mind heart and soul to be sustainable. He shared: 'So that I can be the man I want to be, the husband I eventually want to be and the father I want to be. 'This message is just an opportunity for you to know my heart, I'm not expecting anyone to understand, but I do want people to have an opportunity to know where I am coming from! 'THIS MESSAGE IS IS GRAMMATICALLY INCORRECT BUT ITS FROM THE HEART. BUT I THINK THERES SOMETHING SPECIAL ABOUT IMPERFECTIONS!!' 'Im so grateful for this journey with all of you': The hit-maker expressed his appreciation for his fans (pictured March 2017) Tatt's a close-up: On Wednesday, Bieber posted a black-and-white selfie that gave a clear view of his tiny, crucifix tattoo, inked right beside his eye However, singer Jonas Blue - whose real name is Guy Robin - believed the singer owed it to his fans to complete his Purpose World Tour. Speaking to the Daily Star newspaper, he said: 'I can understand it, Im no way near Justin Bieber in terms of profile, but it is hectic and stressful touring like that. 'Last weekend I was in five countries over two days so the pressure can take its toll. However, I also think you have responsibility to your fans as they put you up there in the first place. Hes young but he will be back.' The message came just hours after he posted a close-up snap of his meaningful crucifix face tattoo, inked right beside his eye. Looking good! Elsewhere, Justin has been branching out on a new project of plain $30 white tees, which will be on sale at a pop-up shop in Los Angeles on Sunday, according to TMZ Justin's close connection his faith has been making headlines lately, as it's been reported to be one of the reasons for why he had abruptly cancelled his Purpose World Tour. The superstar has a constant companion in his pastor Carl Lentz of the Hillsong Church, who many fans pointed the finger at over the cancellation and subsequent reports that Justin is seeking to open his own church. The Hillsong Church has denied the claims he cancelled the remainder of his world tour so that he could forge a deeper connection with the Christian denomination. Inspiration: The T-shirts from the x Karla collection were inspired by the ones Justin wore while on stage during his Purpose tour Elsewhere, Justin has been branching out on a new project of plain $30 white tees, which will be on sale at a pop-up shop in Los Angeles on Sunday, according to TMZ. The T-shirts from the x Karla collection were inspired by the ones Justin wore while on stage during his Purpose tour and are made out of Hanes tops. The shirts Justin sported during his performances were actually crafted out of extra large tops stylist Karla Welch, according to Vogue. 'Karla and I have always pushed boundaries together and this collaboration is a continuation of that,' Justin said, according to the website. Ryan Reynolds was suited up in red Wednesday, ready to shoot Deadpool 2 in Toronto, Canada. But it was costar Zazie Beetz who stole the show that day, descending upon the scene from a parachute above while donning a skintight jumpsuit and knee-high boots. The Berlin-born actress, who plays mutant crimefighter Domino in the upcoming sequel, wowed as she glided into her scene looking poised as can be before spitting a clever one-liner to the Marvel anti-hero. Dead man walking! Ryan Reynolds was suited up and ready while shooting Deadpool 2 in Toronto, Canada Wednesday While Ryan, 40, got equipped with the necessary firearms his costar Zazie was soaring high above set. The Atlanta starlet, 26, looked cool as a cucumber as she parachuted down from the sky donning a body-hugging jumpsuit and a glorious afro. She showed off a hint of cleavage in the tight outfit while donning black gloves that extended past her elbows with a collection of weapons on her belt. Flying high! While Ryan got equipped with the necessary firearms, his costar Zazie Beetz descending upon the scene from a parachute above in a tight jumpsuit and knee-high boots 'Fro real! The Atlanta starlet looked cool as a cucumber as she parachuted down from the sky sporting a glorious afro and elbow-length gloves Although it was clearly Reynolds on set today, Monday's shoot made it unclear the man in the suit was the film's Canadian-born star or a double standing in for him. At the start of the week Deadpool was seen dangling in front of a Toronto billboard for Hillside Amusement Park. A harness held the actor/stuntman steady as he filmed scenes for the upcoming action sequel. His turn in the sky! On Monday Deadpool was seen dangling in front of a Toronto billboard for Hillside Amusement Park, but it was unclear if Reynolds or a stuntman was sporting the suit Droning on: In addition to traditional filming methods, drones were seen capturing images while flying in the sky on the Vancouver set today and Monday In addition to traditional filming methods, drones were seen capturing images while flying in the sky on the Vancouver set today and Monday. Reynolds portrays Wade Wilson in the Marvel Comics series, a disfigured and mentally unstable antihero with superhuman abilities of accelerated healing and physical prowess - all paired with quick quips and a scandalous sense of humor. Beetz's Domino is a Marvel franchise favorite, but next year's Deadpool 2 will be the character's first time on the silver screen. Deadpool 2 is set for release June 1 2018. Chloe Crowhurst sent tongues wagging when she hinted there could be a Winter Love Island. And as reality TV hysteria sweeps the nation, a jaw-dropping 40,000 applicants are have replied to ITV's casting call in the hopes of joining the confirmed 2018 series. This is accompanied by reports that the hit show is already in negotiations with staple host Caroline Flack. Scroll down for video 'There's an extraordinary demand to be on the show': As reality TV hysteria sweeps the nation, a jaw-dropping 40,000 applicants are said to have replied to ITV's casting call in the hopes of joining the confirmed 2018 series A representative for Love Island told MailOnline on Thursday: 'Over 40,000 people have registered their interest in applying for the next series of Love Island.' There was no response to claims that moves have been made to secure host Caroline for a third year. This follows a casting call encouraging hopefuls over the age of 18 to apply for the show. The summer's hit series has already been commissioned to return in 2018, after achieving record breaking viewing figures. The seven week series saw islanders' antics become one of the country's biggest conversation topics, with record ratings making it ITV2's most successful format amongst 16-34s. 'It seems like more young people than ever want to go on TV, have sex, find love and maybe even make a million pounds': This is accompanied by reports that the hit show is already in negotiations with staple host Caroline Flack A source had originally inflated the numbers in conversation with The Sun and suggested that double the number had applied, citing 80,000 applicants. The source said: 'There's an extraordinary demand to be on the show next year.' They went on to say: 'It seems like more young people than ever want to go on TV, have sex, find love and maybe even make a million pounds. It's an irresistible combination,' they added. 'ITV2 are looking for vibrant singles from across the UK who want to head to the sun, in search of a summer of love,' the advert reads. 'The chosen cast will spend time in a luxury villa, getting to know one another.' 'ITV2 are looking for vibrant singles from across the UK who want to head to the sun, in search of a summer of love,' the advert reads Success: The summer's hit series has already been commissioned to return in 2018, after achieving record breaking viewing figures One episode smashed records, with the combined total audience across platforms garnering 3.8 million viewers. This comes as fans mourning the end ofLove Island's third series were giving a glimmer of hope, after Chloe Crowhurst fuelled speculation the dating show could be back sooner than we first thought. The reality star has exclusively revealed that she may be reprising her presenting role on This Morning to cover a winter-themed version of Love Island. Following her exit from the third series, fans had seen Chloe pop up on the daytime show to share the low-down on the latest gossip from the Love Island villa and remarked that show bosses had 'loved having her' on set. Hooked: The seven week series saw islanders' antics become one of the country's biggest conversation topics, with record ratings making it ITV2's most successful amongst 16-34s Love Island return? Chloe Crowhurst, 21, has exclusively revealed that there could be a winter series of the hit dating show and she's eyeing up a presenting role Chloe revealed: 'I love doing This Morning and they loved having me. There might be something with me coming back as their reporter for Winter Love Island.' Setting her sights on Caroline Flack's presenting job on Love Island too, Chloe then cheekily added: 'I'd love to be a presenter on the Winter Love Island series as well - which might work out. Let's see,' she teased. Reports had surfaced at the end of July suggesting Love Island could return ahead of the festive season, with show bosses said to be hoping to capitalise on its success this summer. Exciting: Chloe had been discussing her brief presenting stint on This Morning on behalf of Love Island and teased: 'There might be something with me coming back as their reporter for Winter Love Island' Coming soon? Her comments come after reports surfaced suggesting Love Island could return ahead this winter, with show bosses said to be hoping to capitalise on its success this summer According to Daily Star, producers have already got scouts looking for a new location that would ensure the contestants are still exposed to sunnier climes at that time of year. A source told the paper: 'The public have shown they can't get enough of Love Island and this year has been the show's 'water-cooler moment'. 'ITV is really keen to exploit the massive momentum it's got at the minute and bosses are thinking really big all the time.' MailOnline have contacted a spokesperson for ITV. Sensational: Chloe's comments came as she enjoyed an evening out in her hometown of Essex at hotspot La Sala to host a Love Island quiz New pals: She joined former stars of Love Island's second series Nathan Massey (L) and Scott Thomas (R) Topless entertaining has become somewhat of a trope in the headlines this week, with Bachelor contestants Leah and Simone both being revealed as working in the industry. And KIIS FM shock-jock Kyle Sandilands has explained the ins and outs of the occupation, revealing that many women become competitive on the job. 'I think what happens at a lot of these boat parties is that a lot of topless waitresses, they go to town against each other,' he told his co-host Jackie 'O' Henderson this Thursday. 'They go to town against each other!' KIIS FM shock-jock Kyle Sandilands has explained the ins and outs of topless waitressing, revealing that many women become competitive on the job 'They see each other as a threat. Maybe, I don't know,' he speculated. Turning to newsreader Brooklyn, Kyle asked: 'Have you ever been on a boat with a bunch of topless waitresses? And you watch the girls cat-fighting and hustling each other out of a dollar?' Brooklyn claimed he hadn't attended a party with topless wait-staff, prompting Jackie to interject with: 'Are they all vying for the most money?' How would you know, Kyle? 'Well they all get paid a certain amount, say $100 an hour to be topless on a boat with a bunch of blokes or at a buck's party or one of these things,' Kyle explained 'So how do they prove that? What do they do?' she quizzed Kyle. 'Well they all get paid a certain amount, say $100 an hour to be topless on a boat with a bunch of blokes or at a buck's party or one of these things,' Kyle explained. 'And in the form of tips... well everyone's probably got their own little path they go down.' 'And in the form of tips... well everyone's probably got their own little path they go down': Kyle remained mum on certain details about how topless waitresses can earn extra tips 'Like being super flirty?' Jackie asked. 'That's one way. Letting a couple of guys do whatever they want, that might be another way. Anything between- who knows what they're doing?' Kyle mused Kyle went on to comment on the apparent feud between Bachelor blondes Leah Costa and Simone Ormesher, both of whom have worked as topless waitresses. 'I would have thought these girls would have got on but they are arch enemies on the show,' he said. Holby City star High Quarshire has demanded a pay rise from the BBC after learning that Casualty's Derek Thompson earns up to 399,000 a year. The actor, who has played Ric Griffin on the show for 15 years, said he should be earning the same as his rival Thompson - who plays nurse Charlie Fairhead. The 62-year-old Ghanian thespian added that the BBC must pay BME talent more money than they currently are. Scroll down for video Opinionated: Holby City star High Quarshire has demanded a pay rise from the BBC after learning that Casualty's Derek Thompson earns up to 399,000 a year Hugh's comments come as he reacted to the news that Casualty star Derek, who has been on the show since it began in 1986, earns between 350,000-399,000 a year. This makes him the Corporation's highest-paid actor in the drama and comedy departments. Hugh told The Mirror: 'I didn't know that Derek Thompson earned double the amount of EastEnders (cast) and this plays into my hands and I can demand parity and demand a pay rise. 'As a BME member, I shouldn't be expected to take less, I should be up on there with parity with Derek. Tense: The actor, who has played Ric Griffin on the soap for 15 years, said he should be earning the same as his rival Thompson - who plays nurse Charlie Fairhead 'Only one in ten highest paid earners at the BBC are from an ethnic minority and I think it should be higher and it should be more even at the top level.' News that Thompson is paid such a high sum was not received well by many commentators, who said it was 'shameful' he earns that much to 'pretend to be a nurse'. Harrison Carter, a spokesperson for the British Medical Association, wrote on Twitter: 'Derek Thompson pretends to be a nurse on @BBCCasualty and gets paid 350-400,000. Real nurses face a 14% real terms pay cut #BBCPay.' Meanwhile, Councillor Ben Walker wrote: 'Casualty 'star' Derek Thompson is paid 350-400k to play a nurse. The average salary for a #NHS nurse is 23k. Shameful.' Honest: Hugh told The Mirror : 'I didn't know that Derek Thompson earned double the amount of EastEnders (cast) and this plays into my hands and I can demand parity and demand a pay rise However, the news was not considered as much of a shock within the TV industry and among fans of Casualty, particularly as the show is considered one of the BBC's prize assets. A source told the Daily Mail: 'Derek is the longest-serving actor on Casualty and has been working there for over 30 years. 'His pay was never going to go down each year and he must have just kept climbing the ladder. He's very well-liked in the industry, I doubt too many people would begrudge him that.' Having celebrated its 30th anniversary last September, Casualty won the Best Drama award at this year's National Television Awards, and it regularly draws a consolidated audience of 5million to BBC One each Saturday night. Other stars from the drama to feature on the list included Catherine Shipton, who earns up to 199,999 per year for her role as Duffy. She has worked as a topless waitress in the past. And Simone Ormesher has revealed she is considering getting her breast implants removed, saying she regrets getting them in the first place. The 25-year-old spoke with TV WEEK about the procedure and described her emotional time filming The Bachelor, where she spent most of her time 'crying'. Scroll down for video Evolving: The Bachelor's Simone Ormesher has revealed she is considering getting her breast implants removed and regrets getting them in the first place 'I dont really like them anymore,' she shared of her implants, which were paid for by an ex-boyfriend three years ago. 'My tops dont really fit me and I think natural looks better,' she continued. The Manchester-born office administrator spoke with friends about potentially removing the implants, but questioned if her boobs 'would then be saggy'. 'I dont really like them anymore,' she shared about the implants, which were paid for by an ex-boyfriend three years ago She also detailed how living in the mansion while taping The Bachelor was difficult, due to her tense relationship with fellow contestants Leah Costa and Jen Hawke. 'I spent most of my time crying in the mansion,' she admitted. She expressed shock at how 'grown women could act that way' in reference to Leah and Jen's constant bickering with her and her closest ally on set, Elora Murger. Changes: The Manchester-born office administrator spoke with friends about potentially removing the implants, but questioned if her boobs 'would then be saggy' Last month, photos surfaced of Simone working as a topless waitress in Melbourne. She in turn wrote a Facebook post saying she had initially felt 'ashamed' and 'embarrassed' of her past, but survived the turmoil thanks to her loved ones. The digital marketer then shared an upload with the inspirational quote: 'I survived because the fire inside me burned brighter than the fire around me'. Past career: Last month, photos surfaced of Simone working as a topless waitress in Melbourne Their movie Wind River is set to be released on August 4. And two days before the release, Jeremy Renner and Elizabeth Olsen stepped out in New York City for a screening of the film. Elizabeth wowed in a grey dress with red lipstick while posing alongside her co-star Jeremy, who sported a suit. Strike a pose: Jeremy Renner and Elizabeth Olsen stepped out in New York City for a screening of the film Wind River Elizabeth's floor-length frock featured a collared neckline, cuffed sleeves, a pleated skirt and pockets. The actress, 28, showed off her trim waist in the number, which had a black belt. The beauty, who is the younger sister of Mary Kate and Ashley Olsen, styled her blonde locks in waves with a deep side part. Elizabeth painted her pout a deep red hue, adding shimmery eye makeup beneath defined brows. What a beauty: Elizabeth, 28. paired a floor-length frock featured a collared neckline, a pleated skirt and cuffed sleeves Looking good: Elizabeth wowed in a grey dress with crimson lips while posing alongside her co-star Jeremy, who sported a suit Jeremy, 46, chose a navy blazer with matching trousers, adding a black tie and a white button up collared shirt. In the film, Jeremy plays Cory Lambert, a US Fish and Wildlife service agent; he finds a body at the Wind River Indian Reservation in Wyoming. Rookie FBI agent Jane Banner, played by Elizabeth, is brought in to help solve the mystery of the body. Getting along nicely: The actress showed off her trim waist with a black belt in the cuffed sleeved number; pictured with Jeremy What a lovely smile: The beauty, who is the younger sister of Mary Kate and Ashley Olsen, styled her blonde locks in waves with a deep side part Fancy: Elizabeth painted her pout a deep red hue, adding shimmery eye makeup beneath defined brows Staying close: Jeremy chose a navy blazer with matching trousers, adding a black tie and a white button up collared shirt; pictured with Elizabeth and co-star Teo Briones The film was written and directed by Taylor Sheridan; Wind River is his directorial debut. The movie will be released on August 4. Also at the NYC screening was fashion designer Rachel Roy, who chose a leopard print jacket with coordinating shoes; she added a maxi skirt and statement earrings. Fellow designers - Keren Craig and Georgina Chapman - of Marchesa - looked lovely in their lace numbers. Natural beauty: The film was written and directed by Taylor Sheridan; Wind River is his directorial debut Goddess: The actress finished off her ensemble with classic black pumps Dashing: In the film, Jeremy plays Cory Lambert, a US Fish and Wildlife service agent; he finds a body at the Wind River Indian Reservation in Wyoming Bold: Also at the NYC screening was fashion designer Rachel Roy, who chose a leopard print jacket with coordinating shoes; she added a maxi skirt with statement earrings Fellow designers - Keren Craig and Georgina Chapman - of Marchesa - looked lovely in their lace numbers Legs for days: Model Mariah Strongin chose a leather mini skirt with a striped blouse and knee-high boots for the screening She split from estranged husband Geoffrey Edelsten in September 2015, after five months of marriage. And now Gabi Grecko, 28, has moved on with journalist Terry Willesee's son, Jesse, 30. The American clothing designer and aspiring rapper took a swipe at her ex, 74, as she gushed about Jesse to Daily Mail Australia. Scroll down for video 'He's the youngest guy I've been interested in': Gabi Grecko, 28, takes a swipe at ex-husband Geoffrey Edelsten, 74, (pictured together) as she gushes over boyfriend Jesse Willesee, 30 'I think he's the youngest guy I've been interested in,' Gabi said. 'We both are constantly working on our rap, he's been in it but I'm a new artist, but we have this common interest in hip hop that I haven't had with anyone else so it's nice to be attracted to someone who is so similar to you, ' she said. She added the pair will be 'teaming up for some kind of rap piece' and are planning are trip to Australia, where she lived with Geoffrey. Smitten: Pictured is Jesse, with the pair set to visit Australia together soon and release some music Jesse and Gabi are both based in the US and are living in separate states. But the pair aren't letting long distance get in their way, and are planning a reunion in New York in two weeks. Jesse recently shared online a screen shot of their Facetime together, and said: 'She (sic) the baddest and I miss her.' Gabi replied, commenting that he was 'da (sic) cutest.' Sweet: Jesse recently shared online a screen shot of their Facetime together, and said: 'She (sic) the baddest and I miss her' Falling hard? He also shared a picture of himself online and wrote: 'Miss you Gabi' He also shared a picture of himself online and wrote: 'Miss you Gabi.' Jesse revealed that they met while he was living in Australia, presumably some years ago. On Thursday, Gabi took to Instagram to share a shot of her man in army-print pants and a pink cap, as he sat near Britney Spear's star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. 'Two weeks,' Gabi wrote, clearly excited for their New York reunion. He also shared shots online of Gabi, writing: 'Missing you. Can't wait to see you in New York.' The pair have also put each other's initials in their Instagram bios. Jesse previously dated Gabi's ex, French reality TV star, Angelique 'Frenchy' Morgan, 41. Alison Brie was working the red carpet when she stepped out for the Hollywood Foreign Press Association's Grants Banquet in LA on Wednesday. Wearing a flapper-inspired black and gold sequinned dress, the 34-year-old actress couldn't resist shimmying as she posed for photos ahead of the event. The perky star happily showed off her Thai Nguyen Atelier mini-dress, which featured a tassel hemline and low-dipped open neckline. Scroll down for video Going for a twirl... Alison Brie was working the red carpet when she stepped out for the Hollywood Foreign Press Association's Grants Banquet in LA on Wednesday Alison teamed her figure-hugging frock with a pair of strappy black stilettos, and accessorized with an Eva Fehren ring. Her bobbed brown hair was worn loose and tucked behind one ear, as the playful Glow actress put on a display for photographers. Other stars who turned out for the event included Katherine Langford. The 21-year-old 13 Reasons Why star looked stunning in a figure-hugging red and black dress, printed with roses. Adding some sparkle... The perky star happily showed off her mini-dress, which featured a tassel hemline and low-dipped open neckline Feeling happy: Wearing a flapper-inspired black and gold sequinned dress, the 34-year-old actress couldn't resist shimmying as she posed for photos ahead of the event Turning on the charm... Her bobbed brown hair was worn loose and tucked behind one ear, as the playful Glow actress put on a display for photographers The Australian actress posed for photos alongside her co-star from the breakout Netflix series, Dylan Minnette, 20. Like Katherine, Elisabeth Moss also opted for florals. The 35-year-old actress stepped out in a black dress printed with colorful flowers. Close co-stars: 13 Reasons Why actress Katherine Langford posed for photos alongside her co-star from the breakout Netflix series, Dylan Minnette Flower girl: Elisabeth Moss also opted for florals. The 35-year-old actress stepped out in a black dress printed with colorful flowers The Handmaid's Tale star's calf-length dress featured an asymmetrical hemline, and she teamed it with closed-in black stilettos and a yellow box clutch purse. Elizabeth Chambers looked chic in a black mini-dress, which she paired with a statement necklace. But the 34-year-old's best accessory was her 30-year-old husband, Armie Hammer. Cute couple: Elizabeth Chambers looked chic in a black mini-dress, which she paired with a statement necklace. But the 34-year-old's best accessory was her husband, Armie Hammer Checking out: Kumail Nanjiani also stepped out with his spouse, wife Emily V. Gordon, 38. The 39-year-old Big Sick actor looked handsome in a grey check suit Kumail Nanjiani also stepped out with his spouse, wife Emily V. Gordon, 38. The 39-year-old Big Sick actor looked handsome in a grey check suit. Jenny Slate also put in an appearance at the event. The right stripes: Jenny Slate also put in an appearance at the event. The 35-year-old donned a striped grey, black and white silk skirt and matching blazer, which she tied with a robe belt Going glam: This Is Us star Chrissy Metz, 36, opted for a knee-length red and black patterned velvet dress, which she teamed with strappy black flats Following a pattern... Actress and writer Zoe Lister-Jones wore an eye-catching patterned red, orange, white and black mini-dress The 35-year-old actress donned a striped grey, black and white silk skirt and matching blazer, which she tied with a robe belt. She also added some silver Ileana Makri earrings. This Is Us star Chrissy Metz, 36, opted for a knee-length red and black patterned velvet dress, which she teamed with strappy black flats. Actress and writer Zoe Lister-Jones wore an eye-catching patterned red, orange, white and black mini-dress. Suits him: Matt Bomer was also in attendance. The dashing 39-year-old looked handsome in a tailored charcoal grey suit Handsome: Other men who suited up for the event included actors Anthony Mackie, 38, and Dustin Hoffman, 79 The 34-year-old Life In Pieces star carried a nude-colored box clutch purse and wore strappy nude stilettos. Matt Bomer was also in attendance. The dashing 39-year-old looked handsome in a tailored charcoal grey suit. Sheer beauty: Chelsea Handler, 42, also attended, wearing a figure-hugging black dress with sheer black sleeves and embroidered foliage Flying solo: Despite leaving new hubby Dave Franco at home, the former Mad Men actress appeared to have been having a great time. Flaunting it: Alison confidently showed off her slim figure and cleavage in the body-conscious dress as she stepped onto the red carpet Mellow yellow: How To Get Away With Murder's Aja Naomi King also stepped out for the charity gala. The 32-year-old actress looked stunning in a floor-length yellow dress Other men who suited up for the event included actors Anthony Mackie, 38, and Dustin Hoffman, 79. Chelsea Handler, 42, also attended, wearing a figure-hugging black dress with sheer black sleeves and embroidered foliage. Her blonde hair was worn swept back in an updo with just a few face-framing layers. Taking to the stage... Aja was just one of the stars to speak onstage during the function, alongside Anthony and Sir Patrick Stewart Living legend: The 77-year-old iconic Star Trek actor confidently stepped up to the microphone to speak at the banquet Standing together: Elisabeth also took to the stage alongside Chrissy to speak at the fundraiser How To Get Away With Murder's Aja Naomi King also stepped out for the charity gala. The 32-year-old actress looked stunning in a floor-length yellow dress. Aja was just one of the stars to speak onstage during the function, which is held annually to distribute funds to entertainment-related charities. For a good cause... The Hollywood Foreign Press Association's Grants Banquet is held annually to distribute funds to entertainment-related charities Sweet: Chelsea was seen giving Dustin an affectionate hug and kiss on the cheek as they spoke together Reunited: The Oscar-winning actor was also spotted chatting with his former Midnight Cowboy co-star Jon Voight, 78 Lending his support... A serious looking Robert Pattinson looked handsome as he took to the lectern Joining her was Anthony and Sir Patrick Stewart, 77. Elisabeth also took to the stage alongside Chrissy. Chelsea was seen giving Dustin an affectionate hug and kiss on the cheek. The Oscar-winning actor was also spotted chatting with his former Midnight Cowboy co-star Jon Voight, 78. People in high places... The actor spoke alongside HFPA President Meher Tatna, who appeared overjoyed to be standing next to the 31-year-old Twilight hunk Hug it out: A smiling Meher was seen happily embracing the handsome actor as they spoke to the star-studded crowd Speaking out: Alison also took to the lectern at the event, alongside 54-year-old actor Bob Odenkirk Addressing the audience... Kumail also gave a speech opposite 44-year-old actress Kathryn Hahn Robert Pattinson spoke alongside HFPA President Meher Tatna, who appeared overjoyed to be standing next to the 31-year-old Twilight hunk. Alison also spoke, alongside 54-year-old actor Bob Odenkirk. And Kumail also gave a speech opposite 44-year-old actress Kathryn Hahn. 2Day FM breakfast hosts Em Rusciano and Harley Breen are furious that anti-vaccination movie 'Vaxxed' was screened in Melbourne this week. 'Shown at Village crown, 100's turned up and there were children and babies in the crowd!' Em, 38, decried on-air Wednesday. In a message directed at 'idiot' parents, the mother to two daughters begged: 'Don't make my kids sick!' Scroll down for video 'Don't make my kids sick!': 2Day FM breakfast hosts Em Rusciano (pictured) and Harley Breen are furious that anti-vaccination movie 'Vaxxed' was screened in Melbourne this week Alongside co-host Harley Breen, she discussed the controversial film, which was pulled from The Tribeca Film festival in 2016 because it links vaccination to autism. Vaxxed reportedly aired in secret at Village Crown in Melbourne this week, with interested parties told an hour beforehand via text message. 'Vaccine preventable diseases are on the rise again, because people aren't vaccinating their children,' the former Australian Idol star continued. 'People who had the fortune of being vaccinated, you know?' Harley added. 'People aren't vaccinating their children': The co-hosts were furious the film aired in secret in Melbourne this week, with interested parties told an hour beforehand via text message Em also slammed the film's director and former doctor Andrew Wakefield, who was stripped of his medical licence in the 90's for making the claims. 'Not one study had conclusively linked vaccination with autism,' she insisted. Trying to sympathise with people who believe the autism theory, Harley said: 'As a father of two, I don't want to put sharp things into my child.' Slammed! Em also slammed the film's director and former doctor Andrew Wakefield, who was stripped of his medical licence in the 90's for making the claims 'But unfortunately, we have to wear seat belts when we drive because there's idiots that might crash into me... Unfortunately, to keep my boys safe, I have to vaccinate.' Em, who is a mother to daughters Marchella, 15, and Odette, 10, theorised that parents who don't vaccinate their children need to understand the consequences. 'I wonder if we can put these anti-vaxxers in a room with a child who is dying with measles, so they can see the consequences of not vaccinating,' she said. It's not that easy! Trying to sympathise with people who believe the autism theory, Harley (pictured) said: 'As a father of two, I don't want to put sharp things into my child' The facts: He continued: 'But unfortunately, we have to wear seat belts when we drive because there's idiots that might crash into me, unfortunately, to keep my boys safe, I have to vaccinate' 'Vaccinate your children': Echoing her co-host, the mother to two daughters said: 'don't put other people's kids at risk, do your research and don't make my kids sick!' 'Vaccinate your children, don't put other people's kids at risk, do your research and don't make my kids sick!' The screening at Village Crown in Melbourne is the latest instance of the once-shunned film's resurgence. Last week, a principal claimed he was tricked into hiring out his school's hall for a screening of the anti-vaccination documentary. Campaigners booked Gold Coast public school Miami State High on Tuesday night under the guise of a seminar about organic vegetables, it was claimed. Resurgence: The secret screening comes after a principal claimed he was tricked into hiring out his school's hall to show the anti-vaccination documentary last week Nicole Kidman has made her name in Hollywood, using a convincing American accent on screen. But after using her native twang in two projects in a row, the 50-year-old is now demanding to continue the trend. 'In my next film (The Upside) I got to use my own accent again, something I want to do more of,' she tells Stuff.co.nz. Convincing: Nicole Kidman has made her name in Hollywood, using a convincing American accent on screen. But after using her native twang in two projects in a row, the 50-year-old is now demanding to continue the trend 'I said, "I think she'd be better as an Australian" and Kevin Hart and Bryan Cranston looked at me weirdly, as the role was written as an American. 'But Harvey Weinstein (producer and film studio boss) said, "Yep, she's Australian,"' she continued. Nicole also got to use her homegrown accent in the recent Australian mini-series Top of the Lake: China Girl. She tells the website that the experience of working at home was immensely satisfying. Walk the talk: 'In my next film (The Upside) I got to use my own accent again, something I want to do more of,' she tells Stuff.co.nz Accented: Nicole also got to use her homegrown accent in the recent Australian mini-series Top of the Lake: China Girl (pictured) 'I would like to. I love being here and being apart of this industry. I love being able to use my own accent,' she said. Nicole made her name in Australian films like BMX Bandits, Emerald City and Flirting. She caught the eye of Hollywood after a turn in the grueling mini-series Bangkok Hilton. Fame: Nic caught the eye of Hollywood after a turn in the grueling mini-series Bangkok Hilton In March, there were rumours Nicole and husband Keith Urban were in secret negotiations to return to Australia permanently. Two independent sources in Keith's hometown of Caboolture have confirmed the couple is actively hunting for a stunning bush property. Caboolture is a quiet community in Southern Queensland, where the superstar couple could live with their daughters Sunday, 8, and six-year-old Faith. She's starred as policewoman Kat Chapman on Home And Away since 2015. But now, actress Pia Miller could be stepping away from the show that made her a star on Australian TV. The 33-year-old was spotted running and screaming as she filmed a dramatic episode in Palm Beach on Tuesday, with a source telling Daily Mail Australia that these were some of Pia's final scenes for the Channel Seven drama. End of the road? Home And Away star Pia Miller (pictured) was spotted running and screaming as she filmed scenes in Palm Beach on Tuesday that are rumoured to be her last for the show It is thought that she has a few more scenes that will be filmed elsewhere. Sporting her character's large baby bump, Pia had a look of anguish on her face as she gave chase. The actress donned casual attire for what appeared to be an adrenaline-pumping drama for her character. Desperately sprinting along the road, Pia wore distressed blue jeans, black Converse trainers and a grey top matched with an unbuttoned beige shirt. Run for her money: The actress was snapped desperately sprinting along the road Dramatic! The actress, who plays Kat Chapman, was screaming and yelling in the scenes Leaving the show? A source told Daily Mail Australia that they were Pia's final scenes Joining her in several shots was co-star George Mason, who portrays Martin 'Ash' Ashford. The character sported an equally troubled facial expression and could also be seen appeared to cry out as he ran. At one point, the New Zealand-born actor seemingly tried to flag down a blue ute, which contained co-stars Jake Ryan and Penny McNamee. Growing belly: Pia's character's baby bump can be seen on display in the images Upset: Pia sported an anguished facial expression in many of the images Turmoil: George Mason (pictured) who plays Martin 'Ash' Ashford, looked equally distressed Jake plays Summer Bay's resident bad boy while Penny portrays a doctor called Tori Morgan. Dressed in activewear, Penny's character appeared to be forced against her will to accompany her tattooed companion, indicating the dramatic scenes could possibly involve her kidnapping. Meanwhile, in other images Pia had added a black jacket to her ensemble, and appeared to be enjoying a chat with her co-star George and their fans when the cameras weren't rolling. Screaming: The New Zealand-born star screamed and gave chase Stop that car! George's character appeared to be desperately attempting to flag down a ute Is someone in danger? The vehicle Ash was trying to stop possibly contained a kidnap victim Driving away: Inside the ute was Summer Bay's resident bad boy, portrayed by Jake Ryan (left) and doctor Tori Morgan, played by Penny McNamee (right) On the move: Tori appeared to be forced against her will to accompany Jake's character Dramatic scenario: A kidnapping could possibly be taking place in the scenes Elsewhere, Pia could be seen cradling her baby bump at a boat shed and in other images the star was pictured with Penny - now wearing a blue top and denim shorts -at the same location with blue police tape visible on the set. Also at the boat shed in what appeared to be happier scenes were the show's stalwarts Alf Stewart (Ray Meagher) and his daughter Roo (Georgie Parker). They were joined by a brown-haired teen who donned a watermelon-patterned shirt and denim shorts. Hanging out: George and Pia appeared to be chilling out together between scenes Waiting around: The stars have worked together for several years on the show Fan interaction: George and Pia could be seen allowing fans to take photos of them New location: The actors were also snapped filming at a boat shed, with Pia cradling her bump Do not enter: The set featured blue and white police tape She's back! Penny - dressed in a blue top and denim shorts - joined Pia at the new location Different pace: Summer Bay stalwarts Alf Stewart (Ray Meagher, left) and his daughter Roo (Georgie Parker, right) were seen experiencing a less dramatic scene New boy in town? Joining Alf and Roo was a brown-haired young man dressed in a watermelon-patterned shirt and denim shorts She's reportedly dating Diego Luna, but the handsome Mexican-born actor was nowhere in sight when Suki Waterhouse was spotted leaving a party in LA on Wednesday night alongside a mystery man. The pair had just left a cast party for the 25-year-old actress' upcoming movie, Carte Blanche, which was held at the iconic Chateau Marmont. The movie is also set to star Dylan Sprouse and model Jordan Barrett. Heading home: Suki Waterhouse was spotted leaving a party in LA on Wednesday night alongside a mystery man As for her love life, Suki is rumored to be dating the 37-year-old Rogue One: A Star Wars Story actor after they were spotted holding hands during a vacation in Mexico back in January. Since then, they've been spotted out together on numerous occasions, but neither has confirmed the relationship. Prior to that, they were seen kissing on the streets of London back in 2015. Suki looked stunning as she left the party in an ankle-length black dress with white polka dots. Party people: The pair had just left a cast party for the 25-year-old actress' upcoming movie, Carte Blanche, which was held at the iconic Chateau Marmont Spot on: Suki looked stunning as she left the party in an ankle-length black dress with white polka dots The flowy ensemble featured a tapered waist and split up one side. It sat off one shoulder and featured a frilly neckline. The smiling star teamed it with a pair of black flats. She also carried a small black handbag on one shoulder. Feeling happy: The stunning star appeared to be in a great mood as she left the famed Hollywood hot spot, smiling and laughing Love interest: Suki is rumored to be dating Diego Luna after they were spotted holding hands during a vacation in Mexico back in January The fresh-faced model appeared to have stepped out with minimal makeup, showing off her glowing complexion. Her long blonde hair sat loose around her shoulders as she made her way down the street with her mystery companion. The stunning star appeared to be in a great mood as she left the famed Hollywood hot spot, smiling and laughing. She let it all hang out - literally - while skinny dipping on Wednesday night's episode of The Real Housewives Of New York City. So when Bethenny Frankel arrived to appear on Watch What Happens Live in a sheer lace top that same evening, it actually appeared conservative in comparison. The 46-year-old reality star and Skinnygirl founder arrived for the Bravo after show in the sheer top which was paired with high-waisted black pants. Blackout: Bethenny Frankel wore an all-black outfit as she made her way into Watch What Happens Live on Wednesday night Frankel paired the all-black outfit with black heels but had a purple manicure for a pop of color. She was on hand at Bravo boss Andy Cohen's live show to discuss the latest episode of RHONY, which was described by fans on Twitter as the 'perfect' episode. Bethenny joked about having a lesbian interlude with co-star Sonja Morgan after they both stripped naked to skinny dip in a pool following a day of tequila tasting at Bethennys Skinnygirl distillery in Punta Mita, Mexico. Skinnygirl's skinny dip: Frankel, 46, went completely nude for a dive in the water on Wednesday night's Real Housewives Of New York City, while the girls vacationed in Mexico Flashing the flesh: Her sheer top seemed conservative in comparison to her naked antics Famously body confident Bethenny led the way, pulling off her bikini to reveal her breasts and derriere as she bragged: I have the best boobs ever! Sonja then jumped into the pool with a still-naked Bethenny, happily climbing out again to give another eyeful when she wanted more drink, their nudity blurred on the screen. Sonja tried to grab her for a cuddle as Bethenny stripped completely naked, running and jumping in the pool to the other womens screams of shock and delight at the mogul going skinny dipping. Showing off: Famously body confident Bethenny pulled off her bikini to reveal her breasts and declared I have the best boobs ever! Chatty: She recapped the racy episode with her Bravo boss Andy Cohen on Wednesday night On WWHL, Bethenny was shown a montage of Morgan's various come-on's to the other ladies during their trip. Of the moment where Sonja went to make out with her, Frankel told Cohen, 'I felt compassion because, you know when a guy is at a bar at 2 am and they've tried every girl and it's like, someone dance with this guy!' She then went on to reveal that she once witnessed Sonja 'kind of making out' with former cast mate Alex McCord on a boat in St John. 'Lesbian interlude': Frankel and co-star Sonja Morgan joked about having a fling on their trip He's the dedicated host of Australian Survivor. And Jonathan LaPaglia has opened up about surviving his own health battles during the taxing reality show. The 47-year-old spoke with OK! on Thursday about suffering from 'Samoan belly' disease this season, after claiming he 'maybe got Zika last year'. Scroll down for video Issues: Jonathan LaPaglia has opened up about surviving his own health battles during the taxing reality show Australian Survivor, including a condition called 'Samoan belly' 'At least this year I didn't get a mosquito-borne illness,' he expressed, referring to his earlier claims in The Daily Telegraph he 'maybe got zika' during a previous season. He described experiencing 'Samoan belly' during the 'tough gig', which appears to be a self-diagnosed illness. 'I had it [the entire time] - everyone gets hit at one point, but the problem is that I can't stay at home,' he detailed. 'At least this year I didn't get a mosquito-borne illness,' he expressed, referring to his earlier claims he 'maybe got zika' during a previous season 'Sometimes it was bearable and other times it got out of control. It was not fun,' he continued. During Tuesday's episode, the Channel 10 program suffered lower ratings in some cities than Channel Nine's 15-year-old re-run of Kath and Kim. It now appears the network has cut the show back to just two episodes per week. 'Sometimes it was bearable and other times it got out of control. It was not fun,' he continued In interviews ahead of the show's premiere, Jonathan as host promised a more action-packed, surprising season than ever. The long-running show looked like a promising contender in the ratings contest against The Block. But Channel Nine's renovation show recorded 1,044,000 viewers, almost double Survivor's 600,000. Disappointing: In interviews ahead of the show's premiere, Jonathan as host promised a more action-packed, surprising season than ever Her return to the small screen will see her portray one of her darkest characters to date. And Jessica Biel proved there's no scene she'll shy away from as she made her acting prowess clear for all to see during the debut of chilling new thriller The Sinner on Wednesday night. Kicking off the hotly-anticipated American series, the 35-year-old star stripped off for raunchy sex scenes, before murdering a man in cold blood. Scroll down for video Dare to bare: Jessica Biel filmed a number of raunchy scenes as she made her debut in USA series The Sinner on Wednesday night The stunning actress no doubt set more than a few pulses racing as she shot an intimate romp with her onscreen husband Mason Tannetti, played by Christopher Abbott. Though that was just one in a flurry of bold scenes, as the star also bared her naked rear as she washed her blood-drenched body after violently stabbing a man to death. Like a good Colombo mystery the USA series lets you know who the murderer is in the very first scenes. Leaving no stone unturned! Kicking off the hotly-anticipated American series, the 35-year-old star stripped off for raunchy sex scenes, before murdering a man in cold blood Racy: The stunning actress no doubt set more than a few pulses racing as she shot an intimate romp with her onscreen husband The gimmick of the show is figuring out why this mother and wife decided to stab a man to death in the first place. Biel plays Cora Tannetti, a depressed woman, who seemingly out of nowhere kills a man in front of her son and husband. We learn quickly that she claims not to be acquainted to the man and offers no explanation for the murder. The detective trying to solve the crime is Harry Ambrose (capably played by veteran Bill Pullman). Queen of the sceen: Though that was just one in a flurry of bold scenes, as the star also bared her naked rear as she washed her blood-drenched body after violently stabbing a man to death It's about the journey! Like a good Colombo mystery the USA series lets you know who the murderer is in the very first scene Bloody: The gimmick of the show is figuring out why this mother and wife decided to stab a man to death in the first place Graphic scenes: Biel plays Cora Tannetti, a depressed woman, who seemingly out of nowhere kills a man in front of her son and husband It will take all eight episodes of the mini-series to learn why she murdered this man. 'I have challenges standing up for myself sometimes. Times when I don't trust my own voice. And that's the stuff I needed to bring out and explore to understand Cora,' Jessica recently explained to Marie Claire. But she said examining her dark side through Cora was a transformative experience. 'It's like a drug, like an adrenaline rush. There's a real catharsisyou're exhausted, you are free; you feel a lot of different things. For me, it's like a rebirth. Like I'm a phoenix rising up out of the ashes.' Puzzling: We learn quickly that she claims not to be acquainted to the man and offers no explanation for the murder Piecing it together: It will take all eight episodes of the mini-series to learn why she murdered this man Picture perfect: Christopher Abbott plays Cora's hunky husband Mason Tannetti She was trying to win over the crowds with her grandmother's tumeric chicken recipe. But supermodel Miranda Kerr failed to do so as she appeared on the latest episode of Gordon Ramsay cooking series The F Word. In the latest episode of the American version of the series - which aired in the states on Wednesday night - the Australian beauty, 34, joined the frantic cook, 50, for a bit of friendly competition. Scroll down for video Chicken... out! Newlywed Miranda Kerr fails to woo Gordon Ramsay into defeat as he beats her in cook-off challenge on The F Word Recipe for success? She was trying to win over the crowds with her grandmother's tumeric chicken recipe The pair took part in a cook-of, in which Miranda made her chicken dish, which is a family recipe, while Gordon whipped up a fish plate. As they flirted back-and-forth (with Gordon claiming it was a matter of beauty Vs him) the pair quickly whipped up their dishes, ready to try and impress a trio of female judges. The banter was rife between the duo, with lots of kissing and high-fives and hugs. Kitchen comforts: The banter was rife between the duo, with lots of kissing and high-fives and hugs Too many cooks? Miranda - who has recently married Snapchat founder Evan Spiegel - revealed she was taught to cook by her grandmother Watch your mouth: Gordon didn't watch his language though around the lady, with the bleeper at the ready while he dropped clangers here and there Gordon didn't watch his language though around the lady, with the bleeper at the ready while he dropped clangers here and there. Miranda - who has recently married Snapchat founder Evan Spiegel - revealed she was taught to cook by her grandmother, and teetered around the kitchen in a simple black T-shirt and jeans with her brunette locks tied tightly away from her face. She sported a fresh and natural complexion, off-set with a bold jut of red lipstick. Naturally stunning: The model teetered around the kitchen in a simple black T-shirt and jeans with her brunette locks tied tightly away from her face Hugging it out: As they flirted back-and-forth (with Gordon claiming it was a matter of beauty vs him) the pair quickly whipped up their dishes Classic look: She sported a fresh and natural complexion, off-set with a bold jut of red lipstick And while Gordon admitted her sauce was really good, the judges voted in his favour, prompting him to declare: 'My reputation is intact!' The F Word has been produced in both the UK and the US... and Gordon was reminded of an episode from seven years agoby chat show host James Corden earlier in the week. Appearing on his series The Late Late Show, Gordon was treated to a flashback clip of when he made James eat a fish eye on the show. And in an act of revenge, James finally got his own back on the notoriously spiteful chef when he forced him to do the same thing on his US series. What's cooking? The duo battled it out in the kitchen The finished product: The pair took part in a cook-of, in which Miranda made her chicken dish, which is a family recipe, while Gordon whipped up a fish plate Taste test: The pair were ready to try and impress a trio of female judges Chef Rams-eye! Gordon is left GAGGING after James Corden forces him to eat a slimy raw fish eyeball on The Late Late Show Retelling what happened on The F Word, James explained that he had appeared on the series with his family and agreed to eat the fish eye after Gordon promised to buy dinner and wine for them all. James ran the footage of the incident, before claiming that Gordon had in fact not kept his promise. James' parents Malcolm and Margaret - who had been with them on The F Word - backed up James' claims, with Malcolm even telling Gordon: 'You've got a restaurant in Hollywood and I'm free Saturday night!' James then produced the fish eye and told Gordon he would return the favour and buy him a dinner and wine if he ate it. Gordon sniffed the eye and pulled a face, prompting James to spur him on with the words: 'It's been seven years. Eat the eye!' Seven years later...: Gordon Ramsay made James Corden eat a fish eye on The F Word. And in an act of revenge, James finally got his own back on the notoriously spiteful chef when he forced him to do the same thing on his US series The Late Late Show An eye for an eye: Retelling what happened on The F Word, James explained that he had appeared on the series with his family and agreed to eat the fish eye after Gordon promised to buy dinner and wine for them all The chef gingerly started to eat the eye but when he tried to wash it down with a drink he gagged and spat everything out on to the table in front of him. This delighted James who was seen laughing uncontrollably. Fellow guest Brendan Gleeson was seen patting Gordon on the back in an attempt to make him feel better. Flashback: James ran the footage of the incident, before claiming that Gordon had in fact not kept his promise Just desserts: James then produced the fish eye and told Gordon he would return the favour and buy him a dinner and wine if he ate it Gross: Gordon sniffed the eye and pulled a face, prompting James to spur him on with the words - 'It's been seven years. Eat the eye' It's only fair: The chef gingerly started to eat the eye but when he tried to wash it down with a drink he gagged and spat everything out on to the table in front of him Revenge is best served cold... and slimy: This delighted James who was seen laughing uncontrollably They met in the Love Island villa and saw their romance to blossom in the week before they were dumped from the island. And after working on their relationship away from prying eyes, Georgia Harrison, 21, and Sam Gowland, 22, decided to return to the scene of their love story with a romantic getaway in Spain. Clearly feeling the love and unable to keep their hands off each other, the pair put on a very affectionate display as they shared a steamy smooch on the sand on Wednesday. Scroll down for video Cute couple: Love Island's Georgia Harrison, 21, and Sam Gowland, 22, decided to return to the scene of their love story with a romantic getaway in Spain It was no wonder Sam couldn't keep his hands off the blonde bombshell as she looked sensational in a white bardot bikini. Showing off her tanned and toned figure, the skimpy two-piece offered a look at her taut abs as well as her enviably lean legs as she cosied up to her beau. Wearing her glossy gold locks in loose waves, the former TOWIE star was a vision of beauty on the outing. Sam showed off his musclebound physique in a pair of navy swimming trunks. Tanned and toned: It was no wonder Sam couldn't keep his hands off the blonde bombshell as she looked sensational in a white bardot bikini Whilst the duo only had eyes for each other on the outing, they weren't entirely alone for the duration. The pair decided to hire a jetski to get a good look at the Spanish coastline, and continued to pack on the PDA as they hopped aboard, much to the amusement of their driver. Oil rig worker Sam and the stunning starlet were allowed some brief time alone on the equipment, however, with the helpful driver stepping aside to give them some privacy. Pucker up: Clearly feeling the love and unable to keep their hands off each other, the pair put on a very affectionate display as they shared a steamy smooch on the sand on Wednesday Legs eleven! Showing off her tanned and toned figure, the skimpy two-piece offered a look at Georgia's taut stomach as well as her enviably lean legs as she cosied up to her beau Life's a peach: Georgia showed off her perky posterior in the scanty bikini bottoms Looking good: Sam showed off his musclebound physique in a pair of navy swimming trunks Cute couple: The duo made for a handsome pair as they enjoyed their day at the beach Speculation had surrounded the couple after they admitted they were doubtful that their relationship could work outside the villa on the ITV2 show. However, they arrived hand in hand at the Love Island reunion bash on Sunday, showing that they are still very much together. The couple placed sixth during their run on the ITV2 show which concluded last Monday. Two's company: Georgia and Sam walked hand in hand across the shore on the beach Cruising: Whilst the duo only had eyes for each other on the outing, they weren't entirely alone for the duration Cosy: The pair decided to hire a jetski to get a good look at the Spanish coastline, and continued to pack on the PDA as they hopped aboard, much to the amusement of their driver Alone time: Oil rig worker Sam and the stunning starlet were allowed some brief time alone on the equipment, however, with the helpful driver stepping aside to give them some privacy Cruising: The pair were loving life as they sped across the ocean on a jet ski Hold on tight: The pair cosied up to one another as they cruised along Cruising: The lovebirds seemed in great spirits as they sped along the ocean Off they go: The pair seemed to be loving life as they cruised through the water Although they have not revealed if they are officially boyfriend and girlfriend yet, they have been spending a lot of time together even though the cameras have stopped rolling. On Saturday, they both shared a series of social media videos revealing Sam had stayed the night at Georgia's Essex home and had got so drunk the night before she'd had to carry him home. Sam kicked things off by confessing: 'I do not remember getting home last night.' Making moves: The pair looked rather unsteady on their feet as they hopped off the jetski Down she goes: Georgia's long legs came in handy for jumping off the jetski Follow the leader: The pair watched on as the driver instructed them Wading through: Georgia made her way across the sea Speeding: The pair held on tight as they cruised along the waves Georgia swiftly interjected: 'I remember carrying him home. 'You were sick in a bucket all night while I rubbed your back. You were naked on the floor in my bathroom.' Tattooed hunk Sam gave a cheeky wink at the camera and tried to insist it was 'all lies' before they both burst out laughing. The telly star later scooped major brownie points as she presented her lover with a tasty-looking breakfast in bed before they took to the bathroom for some shower banter. She entered the mansion with helium balloons and shares Matty's love for animals. So it was fitting Matty J invited Cobie for a single date on Thursday night's episode. And she was understandably impressed when Matty told her she'd be going for her first ever horse ride. Pucker up! Matty J had his second kiss of the season on Thursday's episode of The Bachelor with brunette beauty Cobie And it turns out a romantic ride in the rain laid the perfect foundation for some playful flirting. It continued back at the stable, where what started as a cheeky spray with the hose from Matty J eventuated in them both being completely drenched. Gloomy weather nor Cobie wearing a white singlet could dampen the mood as the date progressed into the afternoon. Lip locking: They went for a horse ride and ended the date with a kiss Into it: She started hesitant, but ended up sealing the deal 'It's super romantic' Cobie said of their candlelit surroundings after they dried up and sipped whiskey. The bubbly brunette recited a heartfelt poem for Matty, prompting him to pass over a rose. 'I really want to kiss you' Cobie admitted, before confessing she was scared Matty would reject her and pull away. Smooth moves: Cobie recited a heartfelt poem and scored herself a rose...plus a kiss! Smooch: She asked and she received! But her fears were soon distinguished as Matty lent in for a passionate kiss. 'I'm waiting for you to come halfway, so I can meet you halfway there,' Cobie said, before Matty teased her with his lips. The kiss signified a much-needed 'shifting of gears' for Matty, and Cobie was understandably satisfied it as well. 'I feel really confident where I'm at with Matty,' she told the camera. In the moment: 'I'm waiting for you to come halfway, so I can meet you halfway there,' Cobie said Fears removed: Matty lent in for a long and passionate kiss after Cobie said she was scared of being rejected But fans weren't sold on the chemistry of the kiss. Many quickly took to social media to express their concerns that the kiss wasn't 'authentic'. 'That kiss was awkward af,' one fan wrote. She scored a kiss from him earlier in the episode during their single date But Cobie was still keen on some special time with Matty during the cocktail party. And a normally very polite Cobie, was verbal about her desire to steal as much 'Matty time' as she could. Scroll down for video Awkward: Leah busted in on Cobie's time with Matty J, only to be told 'no' and that she'd bring him back in two minutes Causing a rift between herself and the rest of the women certainly was no concern for the brunette. And despite some believing she'd had enough of Matty for one day, Cobie was determined to achieve her goal for the evening. She disturbed what was a very brief between chat between Matty and Simone, and it didn't go down well among the other women. Not happy: She disturbed a chat between Matty and Simone, and it didn't go down well among the other women Not only was Simone off-put by Cobie's swift moves, the rest of the girls weren't too impressed either. 'So, I'd just literally gone into the chat with Matty - I think I was there for, like, three minutes before little Cobie comes trotting along. Oh, well. Oh, my God,' Simone complained to the group. She later told the bachelorettes it was 'unfair': 'She's pissed me off. She's had two group dates and a single date ... The minute I was trying to get, like, he was getting to know me, she walked in.' One on one: Cobie wanted to rectify her actions from earlier in the day where she opted to not kiss him during a group date Series villain Leah was quick to vent her frustration: 'That was horrible. So, for Cobie to go and interrupt when she's safe and she has a rose, super disrespectful. Didn't sit well with me,' she said. The 24-year-old student then marched into Cobie's private time with Matty, informing Cobie of the 'tension' she had caused. 'I'm playing devil's advocate here, is it OK if I grab you and return you to the party?' Leah asked. 'Devil's advocate' Leah was quick to tell Cobie that she'd upset the other girls, busting in on her private conversation with Matty Tough crowd: Not only was Simone off-put by Cobie's swift moves, it seems the rest of the girls weren't too impressed either 'Actually, you can't. No, you can't. And I will return him in, like, two minutes,' Cobie responded. Leah was quick to report back to the rest of the women, telling them Cobie had told her she 'didn't care' that she'd upset them by interrupting Simone. Alix defended Cobie, saying: 'I'm sure Cobie has her reasons. We all love the fact that Cobie went on a one-on-one date. She's not doing it out of any type of spite.' Jen was particularly disturbed by the information, 'the fact that she said, "I do not care" - tell me she's not a hustler,' she reported to the crowd. Pointing the finger! 'The fact that she said, "I do not care" - tell me she's not a hustler,' Jen exclaimed Laura also jumped to the defense of Cobie, standing up for her actions and saying she didn't think she was at all malicious. 'I really love Cobie... I have seen how venomous people get as soon as you've had a single date and how people's feelings towards you change instantaneously,' Laura said. Refusing to go back on her word, Leah said 'I'm just passing it on,' even accusing Cobie of throwing her finger in her face. During the rose ceremony, Osher explained that Cobie was safe because she had already received a rose during her single date. She's gone under the knife countless times and boasts an impressive collection of tattoos, rendering her almost unrecognisable from her former self. Yet Jemma Lucy's stunning sister Lulu serves as a reminder for how the inked-up CBB star, 28, used to look as previously unseen snaps show the striking resemblance between the pair. Lulu - who lives in Australia - has not appeared to follow her sister's lead in body modification, boasting no visible surgery or inkings. Scroll down for video Sister sister: Jemma Lucy's stunning sister Lulu serves as a reminder for how the inked-up CBB star used to look as previously unseen snaps show the striking resemblance between the pair A sweet snap from 2012 shows the similarities between the stunning sisters before Jemma dyed her hair and went under the knife. Jemma has had two boob jobs, a Brazilian butt lift and lip fillers and previously claimed she had been disowned due to her appearance. In a Snapchat video she said: 'My own mum disowned me purely because of the career that I have and the tattoos that I have quite a while ago. 'I now don't have a mum or relationship with a mum because of the way I look.' CBB star: Jemma gone under the knife countless times and boasts an impressive collection of tattoos, rendering her almost unrecognisable from her former self Au natural: Lulu - who lives in Australia - has not appeared to follow her sister's lead in body modification, boasting no visible surgery or inkings Before surgery: A sweet snap from 2012 shows the similarities between the stunning sisters before Jemma dyed her hair and went under the knife It comes as Jemma's secret wealthy upbringing was unearthed, with the news that she attended a 37k-a-year boarding school and was given 150 pocket money as a child. She grew up in a luxurious house with maids and staff in Singapore, where her parents Jayne and Robert Henley, a shipping company director, still live. After being expelled from an international school at the tender age of 11, Jemma was sent to the UK - where she was expelled from two more schools. These included the elite St Marys Calne, where boarding fees cost 18,000 a term or 37,000 a year. Before: Jemma (pictured in 2011) has had two boob jobs, a Brazilian butt lift and lip fillers and previously claimed she had been disowned due to her appearance Out of touch: Jemma will no doubt be missing her sister Lulu now that she's in the Celebrity Big Brother house with no means of contacting the outside world Despite being given 150 every two weeks by her dad, Jemma turned to crime and was arrested three times for shoplifting. She admitted to just 'taking' things that she wanted and didn't have the patience to save for from shops along Chelsea's exclusive Kings Road. And it seems she was always destined for notoriety, as Jemma appeared on Channel 4's Brat Camp aged 15 after her exasperated parents ran out of options. On the show, Robert called his daughter a 'spoilt brat' and complained about her explicit language towards her. Speaking from a sprawling country house in England, he admitted: 'As a parent, one tries to bring ones children up with certain standards, and being told to f**k off is pretty hard to take.' Revealed: It comes as Jemma's secret wealthy upbringing was unearthed, with the news that she attended a 37k-a-year boarding school and was given 150 pocket money as a child Secret past: She grew up in a luxurious house with maids and staff in Singapore, where her parents Jayne and Robert Henley, a shipping company director, still live 'I felt my parents favoured my sister over me, especially when I was a child and I think the way I behaved all through school and my teenage years was a big reflection of that, she told The Sun. 'I was crying out for attention from my Mum, all I wanted was to be important in her eyes.' Jemma confessed that her mother branded her many tattoos 'disgusting', and that they fell out over a year ago over her unconventional appearance - but recently started speaking again. Unconventional upbringing: Jemma appeared on Channel 4's Brat Camp aged 15 (pictured_ after being expelled from three schools and being arrested for shoplifting three times Tension: On the show, Robert called his daughter a 'spoilt brat' and complained about her explicit language towards her And her mum will have ample opportunity to watch her daughter, as she entered the Celebrity Big Brother house earlier this week. The Ex On The Beach star entered the house on Tuesday and has wasted no time discussing her sex and love life. Chatting to YouTube star Trisha Paytas she discussed her bisexuality, explaining: 'I can do the sex but I cant love them [women]. As soon as I have sex with them, I'm like "go home". 'I always date girls who fall for me faster. I'm still working stuff out for myself, but I know I want to be with a man at the end of the day.' The pair then bonded over their history of stripping, which Trisha did for seven years from the age of 18 till she was 25. The social media personality, who said she was a devout Catholic, confessed: 'I used to escort and do a bunch of bad things. 'Then I found God and Jesus. It [stripping] was so much money, it was hard to walk away from. I started out stripping and then I did escorting. In LA you get to do all the celebrities.' Jemma added: 'I used to do stripping, I made so much money. I only did it to get by while I was modelling. 'I want a nice car and I want a nice house and nice things. It made me more confident actually.' He's best known for his leading role as Captain Ross in Poldark. But Aidan Turner looked worlds away from his BBC character as he slipped into a selection of sharp suits for a Dunhill London campaign. Swapping his 18th century garms for a more modern look, the 34-year-old actor showed off his rugged good looks and dapper style for the shoot. Scroll down for video Suave: Aidan Turner looked worlds away from his BBC character as he slipped into a selection of sharp suits for a Dunhill London campaign With his trademark curls chopped and swept into a sweeping style, Aidan cut a suave figure in a series of dashing ensembles. The star proved that he is equally as talented at modelling as he is acting, which could come in handy if Poldark comes to an end after series five, which he recently hinted at. Despite already having the green-light for series four, Aidan claimed they will have 'run out of things' to do after the fifth instalment has come to an end. As seen on screen: He's best known for his leading role as Captain Ross in Poldark Speaking to WWD, the actor said: 'I think we run out of things to do after series five, I think that would be our last one. Four was green-lit, five hasn't been yet, and it wouldn't be fair to me to green light it, but it's probably looking like it may happen.' A source also told the Sun: 'Aidan and Eleanor have become huge stars on Poldark. "They are getting more and more big offers including Hollywood roles. 'Pinning them down to any more is likely to be tricky, not to mention costly - and bosses only have the option to extend his current contract until series five.' Looking good: Swapping his 18th century garms for a more modern look, the 34-year-old actor showed off his rugged good looks and dapper style for the shoot Meanwhile, Aidan has been linked to his Poldark co-star Eleanor Tomlinson - who he is said to be 'growing close' to in wake of her newfound single status. The Daily Mail exclusively revealed that Eleanor, 25, has split from her long-term boyfriend Ben Atkinson and is now thought to be single. The pair were spotted cosying up to one another in a members club in London, whilst pictures showed them looking close as they walked together through the capital and visited a newsagents together. Hair raising new looks: With his trademark curls chopped and swept into a sweeping style, Aidan cut a suave figure in a series of dashing ensembles The chemistry between the co-stars, who play husband and wife Ross and Demelza in the Cornish drama, has undoubtedly contributed to making the show a hit. And a source who saw them at the Groucho Club in London said: The chemistry between them was clear to see, she was stroking his arm and they were really close. It really looked like more than just a friendship. Hello handsome! Aidan showed off his dashing good looks in the clothing campaign Aidan is recently single after it emerged he has split from his girlfriend Nettie Wakefield. According to The Sun, the star parted ways with his girlfriend of six months, after the pair were driven apart by conflicting work schedules. The good-looking couple, who were first spotted together in October, are thought to have called time on their relationship, after they sadly 'drifted' due to their hectic careers. Suited and booted: A black and white snap saw the star model a fitted tuxedo A source told the paper: 'Things were great for a time and they were getting serious - but it just wasn't to be and busy schedules drove them apart. 'They've drifted and things have cooled off but there are no hard feelings. Aidan's incredibly busy with his career and Nettie's art is really taking off so they had a lot on their plates.' Proving to still be on good terms however, the insider added: 'It's all very amicable.' Kylie Jenner has a makeup line to promote as well as the Sunday debut of her new reality TV series Life Of Kylie. So it's no wonder the 19-year-old daughter of Kris and Caitlyn Jenner shared a lusty Throwback Thursday photo. The LipKit founder looked sexy in a white crop top and sweatpants with clear heels as she sat on a sofa. She stared ahead as if she was in a trance. This comes just as E! announced they were doing a Snapchat series with the pinup. Scroll down for video Looking good KJ: Kylie Jenner shared this alluring image on Throwback Thursday 'Throwback,' was all the teen wrote in her caption. Jenner is launching her first original mobile series Ask Kylie. It will debut on Snapchat Discover on Saturday, August 12, with five additional episodes to follow on Saturdays leading up to the new episodes of Life of Kylieon E! Life of Kylie premieres with back-to-back episodes Sunday, August 6 at 9pm ET/PT. Each episode of Ask Kylie on Snapchat will feature Kylie opening up about several subjects her fans have asked her opinion on. 'closet cleaning & shoot day': The model was at it again on Wednesday, posting a photo of herself in a large black bra-lette and baring her toned midriff Kylies sister Khloe Kardashian, best friend Jordyn Woods, executive assistant Victoria Villaroel and grandmother MJ will all appear. 'We are thrilled to launch E!'s second Snapchat Show with one of the biggest stars on the planet,' said Adam Stotsky, President, E! Entertainment. 'Kylie's fans are ravenous for more of her stories and it's an exciting opportunity to engage her fans in a unique way on a platform where we know they live and breathe.' On Wednesday Jenner posted a photo of herself in a large black bra-lette and baring her toned midriff. The ex of rapper Tyga wore black bottoms and tied part of her hair up as she said she was cleaning out her closet. Rows of shoes could be seen in the background. Coming right up: E! gave the Keeping Up With The Kardashians star a spin-off of her own called Life Of Kylie, which will premiere this Sunday The younger sister of Kendall Jenner and half-sister of Kardashians Kourtney, Kim, Khloe and Rob wrote her itinerary in her caption: 'closet cleaning & shoot day.' The family members are known for selling their old wares on ebay, giving 10% of the money to charity. This posting comes just four days before her spin-off Life Of Kylie debuts. On Tuesday a preview the series shows Kylie recalling missing out on prom because 'I was home-schooled.' Pals: On Tuesday a preview of this coming Sunday's episode hit the Internet care of E! News and shows Kylie recalling missing out on prom because 'I was home-schooled' She told her personal assistant Victoria Villarroel: 'It was really sad, actually. I had to unfollow all my friends that I went to school with. 'They probably all thought I hated them, but I just couldn't see it, you know?' she reminisced, explaining: ''Cause they would always post photos, and they were all at the prom, and I was just like: "Can't see it." You know, just made me sad.' She was getting ready to go to a high school prom with a fan in Sacramento called Albert Ochoa, who had been rejected by the prospective date he had originally asked. As DailyMail.com had reported back in April, Albert then got in touch with Kylie, who set off pandemonium when she entered Tsakopoulos Library Galleria with him. In a trailer for her forthcoming reality series that had appeared on YouTube in May, she said: ''There's two sides of me: there's an image that I feel constantly pressured to keep up with, and who I really am around my friends.' Calling Life Of Kylie 'a gift for my fans,' she pointed out that 'I do feel pressure to not let anybody down,' maintaining that 'Nobody has perfect life.' She fell head-over-heels with hunky scaffolder Alex Bowen infront of the nation's eyes on 2016's installment of Love Island. And following a whirlwind engagement, Olivia Buckland, 23, has revealed she's already starting to feel the pressure of planning her big day, admitting she's already turning into a bridezilla. Speaking exclusively to MailOnline at the launch of W7's Very Vegan beauty range, the Essex beauty discussed her anxiety ahead of her nuptials and the possibility of televising her wedding day. Scroll down for video Pressure: Olivia Buckland, 23, has revealed she's already starting to feel the pressure of planning her big day, admitting she's can feel herself becoming a bridezilla Having met on the 2016 series of ITV2's Love Island, Olivia and Alex came in second place behind friends Cara de la Hoyde and Nathan Massey - who have since broke up. Following their stint on the popular series, the couple quickly moved in together in her native Essex in August 2016, before Alex popped the question during a romantic trip to New York in December after just five months of dating. Now in the midst of planning their nuptials, Olivia revealed that she's already feeling the pressure of organising her special day, admitting that she's on the path to becoming a bridezilla after saying yes to a 2,069 Sophia Tolli dress on the TLC reality show in May. 'Its good. Im so busy that wedding plans have taken a back seat because Ive been so busy,' the calm reality star stated. 'But Ive got one of my best friends, who is a wedding planner on the case. Candid: Speaking exclusively to MailOnline at the launch of W7's Very Vegan beauty range, the Essex beauty discussed her anxiety ahead of her nuptials and the possibility of televising her wedding day Head over heels: Olivia met Alex on the 2016 series of ITV2's Love Island where 12 single contestants battled it out for a prize fund of 50k in Majorca The dress: Now in the midst of planning their nuptials, Olivia revealed that she's already feeling the pressure of organising her special day, admitting that she's on the path to becoming a bridezilla after saying yes to a 2,069 Sophia Tolli dress on TLC's reality show in May 'Shes helping me, weve started to get into it now. Were ordering different invitation templates, we might look at the venue next week so weve started to get the ball rolling but I think its going to be one of those ones where Ill need all hands on deck. Before adding: 'I think I might turn into Bridezella at some point, just waiting for it to happen.' Discussing the strain wedding planning can have, she explained that she has confined in her mother as she knows she'll get overwhelmed by the arduous process, like many brides. On the case: She said: 'Its good. Im so busy that wedding plans have taken a back seat because Ive been so busy. But Ive got one of my best friends, who is a wedding planner on the case' Waiting: Before adding: 'I think I might turn into Bridezella at some point, just waiting for it to happen' (Pictured her beau Alex) Meltdown: She added: 'I went for dinner with my mum and we were talking about it,' she shared. 'She asked how Ill even cope with it (wedding planning) because I get such high anxiety from things that I know Im going to have a meltdown over it' 'I went for dinner with my mum and we were talking about it,' she shared. 'She asked how Ill even cope with it (wedding planning) because I get such high anxiety from things that I know Im going to have a meltdown over it. 'She said she didnt know how I was going to cope because Ill whittle down to nothing before the wedding. I do love being in control over things like that so there could potentially be a bridezilla on our hands.' As the nation watched them fall in love on 2016's Love Island, Olivia revealed that they have been in talks to televise their wedding day, something she would 'never say never' to. Document: As the nation watched them fall in love on 2016's Love Island, Olivia revealed that they have been in talks to televise their wedding day (Pictured with Alex on Love Island in 2016) Interested: She admitted: 'Weve hand people come to us and ask if wed be interested, were always in the mix about it in different meetings but theres nothing been confirmed yet' 'Never say never': 'Were just waiting with what the deal is with the people that have approached us. Wed never say never' She admitted: 'Weve hand people come to us and ask if wed be interested, were always in the mix about it in different meetings but theres nothing been confirmed yet. 'Were just waiting with what the deal is with the people that have approached us. Wed never say never.' Away from the whirlwind of wedding chat, Olivia opened up about her Love Island co-star Emma-Jane Woodham's pregnancy - which she announced earlier in the week. The 20-year-old beauty is currently expecting her first child with her childhood sweetheart Jordan - five months after splitting from Terry Walsh - and according to Olivia, she couldn't be happier. Expecting: Emma-Jane Woodhams confirmed she is pregnant with her first child after reuniting with her childhood sweetheart Jordan (pictured above) Moving on: News of the brunette beauty's pregnancy comes five months after her ex-boyfriend Terry Walsh confirmed their split 'I know we only found out on Tuesday as well,' she said. 'It was a shock to us as well. Shes really please and happy so its good to know shes happy about it. Theyre childhood sweethearts so it's quite a sweet little tale really. 'We've a girl Islanders whatsapp group where we all chat about it, Cara is in there as well so two babies on the way.' Emma-Jane previously starred in the 2016 series of Love Island where she coupled up with tattooed Terry, bedding the hunk weeks after he also bedded Malin Andersson during the same series. Following the series, they dated for eight months before calling time on their romance on February, with Terry announcing the split on Twitter: 'For people asking me or who it concerns me n Em have broken up. Were still friends. One chapter closes another must open.' Weighing in: Reflecting on what Emma's ex would say about her pregnancy, Olivia shared: 'I havent talked to Terry in a really long time so I wouldnt really know what hed think about it' Happy: She shared: 'Hes not really involved in any of that anymore, I dont know if him and Emma speak anymore so not sure. I guess hed just be happy for her. They left on quite good terms' Reflecting on what Emma's ex would say about her pregnancy, Olivia shared: 'I havent talked to Terry in a really long time so I wouldnt really know what hed think about it. 'Hes not really involved in any of that anymore, I dont know if him and Emma speak anymore so not sure. I guess hed just be happy for her. They left on quite good terms.' And while her pals Cara and Emma are expecting, Olivia insisted that she's too busy to think of kids just yet, but will be more than happy to babysit. She said: 'Im so busy and always out and about, it would kind of be even impossible for me to try. I couldnt be pregnant because Im running around too much. Success: The TV darling has seen her rise to fame overnight but while some of her former Islanders have faded into the background, Olivia has managed to carve a successful career, attaching her name to projects she believes in New project: And now make-up fiend Olivia has teamed up with W7 Cosmetics for their Very Vegan collection - which has been fully certified by The Vegan Society 'Its nice that I have close friends having babies so I can cuddle them then give them right back. Im going to have to do so much babysitting.' The TV darling has seen her rise to fame overnight but while some of her former Islanders have faded into the background, Olivia has managed to carve a successful career, attaching her name to projects she believes in. And now make-up fiend Olivia has teamed up with W7 Cosmetics for their Very Vegan collection - which ranges from 6.95 to 14.95 and has been fully certified by The Vegan Society. Adapting to their customers needs, the brand - which has never tested on animals -released their new collection which includes highlighter to an eyebrow kit and eyeshadow tin. Helping hand: Lending her name to their new campaign, Olivia Buckland visited the Blue Cross Animal Hospital in London, which provides treatment for the pets of owners who cannot afford private vets' fees All smiles: Following her visit, Olivia revealed she was delighted to be apart of the campaign and visit the animal hospital Lending her name to their new campaign, Olivia Buckland visited the Blue Cross Animal Hospital in London alongside YouTube star Stephanie Lange, which provides treatment for the pets of owners who cannot afford private vets' fees. Following her visit, Olivia revealed she was delighted to be apart of the campaign and visit the animal hospital. 'It was really nice to do things I truly believe in and I learnt a lot while I was there,' she gushed. 'When you start in the public eye, you start seeing things you never saw before and you use your platform to show it. 'Its really eye-opening and I think thats the key to being successful, stay true to yourself and do things your passionate about.' He has already spent 400,000 on more than 150 body-changing operations and procedures - including liposuction, six-pack implants and Botox. Now Rodrigo Alves has revealed the results of his latest enhancement, porcelain veneers as part of his latest 35k cosmetic surgery tour in Iran. Speaking exclusively to MailOnline, the Human Ken Doll, 33, revealed he was delighted by the results, remarking: 'I look like Rylan [Clark-Neal]!' Scroll down for video He can handle the tooth! Rodrigo Alves has revealed the results of his latest enhancement, porcelain veneers as part of his latest 35k cosmetic surgery tour in Iran Struggling to talk somewhat as he adjusted to life with his new gnashers, the star was still in great spirits as he showed off his dazzlingly pearly whites and praised his dentist, Dr Same Keshavarzian. The porcelain veneers were changed from his resin fangs as 'they chipped', and was a necessity after doctors accidentally broke his front teeth during his tenth nose job. The surgery came after he was warned that having any more cosmetic enhancements on his nose could cause it to fall off. Grinning guys: Speaking exclusively to MailOnline, the Human Ken Doll, 33, revealed he was delighted by the results, remarking: 'I look like Rylan [Clark-Neal]!' Big smiles: Struggling to talk somewhat as he adjusted to life with his new gnashers, the star was still in great spirits as he showed off his dazzlingly pearly whites Transformed: Rodrigo had veneers, rhinoplasty and a new chin implant fitted at a total cost of 35k during his trip to Iran Loving life: Rodrigo praised his dentist, Dr Same Keshavarzian But Rodrigo told MailOnline he's taking the risk, opting for his tenth rhinoplasty at a hospital in Kish,Iran, at a cost of 22k, after a short stay at the lavish Burj Al Arab in Dubai. While he's there, the star is also set to have a new chin implant fitted, which is 'less square'. With the total cost of the procedures totting up to 35k, Rodrigo, who has already spent around 400k on cosmetic procedures, says the latest work is a 34th birthday present to himself. Cracking job: The porcelain veneers were changed from his resin fangs as 'they chipped', and was a necessity after doctors accidentally broke his front teeth during his tenth nose job He nose the truth: The surgery came after he was warned that having any more cosmetic enhancements on his nose could cause it to fall off Still smiling: The star stayed positive even whilst having eye surgery Wheeling along: Rodrigo was kitted out in his hospital garms for the surgery Sitting in his hotel room in Iran, he told MailOnline: 'I am just waiting for my chin to arrive actually. It's custom made and it's coming in the post. 'I don't want to have to have another nose operation, but I have no choice. 'I wanted to look better, but now I can't breathe at all. So it is hard to deal with it. It's going to be very painful and risky. 'When I appeared on Botched, they had to subtitle me because I sound so nasal. People attack me online for having a huge head because my chin implant is too big. New surgery: Rodrigo told MailOnline he's taking the risk, opting for his tenth rhinoplasty at a hospital in Kish, Iran, at a cost of 22k, after a short stay at the lavish Burj Al Arab in Dubai Warning: Earlier this month, he appeared on E! series Botched where the doctors warned him that his nose could turn black and fall off - which was filmed in 2016 'I've done a lot of research and Iran is the country where people have the most nose jobs in the world, so therefore they have had more practise.' Rodrigo consulted two doctors in a recent episode of Botched, which was filmed over a year ago and aired on E! earlier this month. In the show, Rodrigo cannot breathe through his nose after getting three rhinoplasties in just 12 to 15 months. Devstating: In the show, Rodrigo cannot breathe through his nose after getting three rhinoplasties in just 12 to 15 months In order to remedy the situation, Rodrigo wishes he could get another procedure done, but the back-to-back surgeries have left the skin tissues so damaged, they will die if Rodrigo attempts to have any more work done. Rodrigo at one point developed a MRSA infection on his nose caused by a staph bacteria. The show's doctor told him: 'This is one of the worst results and complications that I've seen in my entire career. Nassif then breaks a devastating news to Rodrigo, who hopes that one more surgery could salvage his nose. Damage: In order to remedy the situation, Rodrigo wishes he could get another procedure done, but the back-to-back surgeries have left the skin tissues so damaged, they will die if Rodrigo attempts to have any more work done 'Your nose on the inside you have no airway. And it's short. So this is all scarred together. And now, since you just had surgery three months ago, it's going to scar down more. It's in a healing phase,' the surgeon explains. Rodrigo tries to interject, but the doctor continues. 'If you try to insult your skin one more time now while it's healing, there's a high possibility that if you let one of these doctors touch your nose now, this will turn back and then die and fall off.' And Rodrigo says that while he has been living a champagne jet-setting lifestyle, he admits that in reality, he has been worried sick and has been over-eating to make himself feel better. Procedures: In his pursuit of what he believes is a perfect look, Rodrigo has had a face, neck and eye lift, silicone implants to give him the appearance of six-pack abs He said: 'I have been stuffing my face like crazy and I've gained more weight than ever. 'All I want is to get this over and done with so I can focus on my new fashion collection and get in shape so that I can show off the clothes to the best of my ability. 'I hope that by September I will have full use of my nose and be able to start training in the gym and eating right. Brazil-born Rodrigo, 34, recently also filmed himself having his face cut to make cat eyes 'I have been suffering from anxiety lately which lead me to gain nearly three stone in weight and all my outfits are feeling really tight.' The latest spend comes just two days after the the plastic surgery fan filmed himself while doctors performed an operation to give him eyes like a cat. The TV presenter who currently lives in London travelled to Tehran in Iran to have his eyes pulled, sliced and stitched into a feline shape. Gwyneth Paltrow is summertime chic. The 44-year-old actress was spotted while dressed perfectly while out in the ritzy Hamptons neighborhood of New York in Wednesday. No doubt she was taking in the day of fun in the sun as she joined some pals at the highly-popular Duryea's Lobster Deck. Out and about: Gwyneth Paltrow was spotted while dressed perfectly while out in the ritzy Hamptons neighborhood of New York in Wednesday She opted for casual cool digs including a flowy white shirt, Daisy Dukes, and strappy white leather Birkinstock sandals. Gwyneth accessorized with a large white fedora, shades, and a tote bag draped over her shoulder. She tucked her signature blonde locks under her headwear and let her natural looks shine by going make-up free. Leggy lady: The 44-year-old actress opted for casual cool digs including a flowy white shirt, Daisy Dukes, and strappy white leather Birkinstock sandals Not seen on the outing, however, was the Oscar-winner's producer boyfriend Brad Falchuk. Gwyneth and the American Crime Story producer have been together since 2014, but only became Instagram-official on Gwyneth's account in March, on Brad's 46th birthday. Bonding time: No doubt she was taking in the day of fun in the sun as she joined some pals at the highly-popular Duryea's Lobster Deck She shared a cozy snap of the pair at the time, captioned: 'Happy birthday, handsome.' The Seven beauty rarely comments on her relationship with Brad - who also created Scream Queens - but seems to be making it clear that they are consciously-coupled. It's one of the very few times he's popped up on her social media - he made an appearance in a montage at Thanksgiving but is noticeably absent most of the time Going public: Gwyneth posted a shot with her boyfriend Brad Falchuk in March, which was the first time she had posted anything with him since they started dating Brad, on the other hand, has shared a few pictures of the Shallow Hal star - who shares her two children Apple, 12, and 10-year-old Moses with her Coldplay frontman ex Chris Martin, from whom she split in 2014. He posted a picture of his girlfriend alone outside the White House, after they attended Barack Obama's farewell party in January, as well as a snap together on vacation in Iceland last year. Brad shares his two children Brody and Isabella with his ex-wife Suzanne Bukinik. Kim Kardashian's pink latex dress caused a serious sartorial stir when she debuted it in November 2014. And Tamara Ecclestone paid tribute to the now iconic Atsuko Kudo garment as she slipped her svelte physique into a similar number for a sultry photoshoot. The mother-of-one, 33, gave the Keeping Up With The Kardashians star a run for her money in her skintight dress, which she showcased in a photo on Instagram. Scroll down for video Seeing double: Tamara Ecclestone paid tribute to Kim Kardashian's now iconic Atsuko Kudo dress as she slipped her svelte physique into a similar number for a sultry photoshoot Tamara captioned the sizzling photo, which was captured by photographer Karis Kennedy: 'This is what we get up to early on Sunday morning.' She wore her dark tresses in glossy tumbling waves and pouted while a group of make-up artists milled around her, ensuring she was preened to perfection. Kim Kardashian, 36, wore the original version to promote her new fragrance Fleur Fatale at a Spice Market event in Melbourne in 2014. The dress has since been worn by several other celebrities, including Rita Ora, Pixie Lott and American actress Nicola Peltz. Taking centre-stage: Tamara captioned the sizzling photo, which was captured by photographer Karis Kennedy: 'This is what we get up to early on Sunday morning' The original: The 36-year-old donned this latex frock to promote her new fragrance Fleur Fatale at a Spice Market event in Melbourne, Australia in November 2014 Tamara's sexy photoshoot comes after she recently opened up about her attachment to her child in an interview with Happiful. Talking about her mental health revelation, which refers to excessive fear or anxiety about separation from a child - Tamara admitted that it is becoming a daily struggle while she worries that her daughter is in constant danger. Discussing her daughter's first day at nursery in January, the socialite revealed that she was left crying in her car for three hours after she left her for fear something might have happened to her. 'I sat outside in the car for three hours, crying my eyes out and Jay was telling me that I was a lunatic. I was watching my phone, thinking: The nursery staff are going to need me to come back." It's a trend: Nicola Peltz, who is dating Bella Hadid's brother Anwar, sizzled as she wore a black version last July Pretty in pink: Rita Ora put her own stamp on the dress with a choker, embellished neckline in March 2015, while Pixie Lott rocked a pale pink version 'But they didnt. I feel like Im always worried. Is she going to fall over? Have I forgotten something? Is her smock clean for school? Everyone has a certain level of anxiety. Nobodys life is perfect. Continuing: 'Ive just got to get my head around the fact that Im not going to be there to pick her up every time she falls over, and thats the brutal reality.' Her candid admission comes after Tamara hit back at critics who said she should no longer be breastfeeding Sophia. Ladies first: Tamara Ecclestone took her daughter Sophia for a girls' day out in London on Friday Defiant: Tamara recently hit back at critics who said she should no longer be breastfeeding Sophia, who is three years old With the likes of model Jodie Kidd recently weighing in on the debate, Tamara said she believes only a mother knows what is best for her children. Speaking on This Morning in June, she revealed: 'Everything comes with its critics. As a mum we want to do whats best for your kids. 'People are focused about breastfeeding yet no one worries when people are going to take dummies or comforters away from kids. My intention was not to breastfeed till past three but I know one day shell be done.' He left fans 'cringing' after reuniting with just four members of Blazin' Squad for an impromptu performance on the Love Island reunion show. But Marcel Somerville sent followers into a frenzy on Wednesday night, as he met up with all 10 members of the Noughties pop group for the first time in a decade. The 31-year-old beamed as he posed proudly with his old friends for the Instagram shot, amid the welcome news that the band will fully reform and even start touring. Scroll down for video See you at the crossroads! Marcel Somerville sent followers into a frenzy on Wednesday night, as he met up with all 10 members of Blazin' Squad for the first time in a decade Capturing the group as they met for drinks, Marcel captioned the shot: 'In the beginning there were 2 decks and a microphone, in the end the #blazinsquad stood alone.' The photo featured Kenzie, Oliver 'Freek' Georgiou, Marcel 'Rocky B Plat'num' Somerville, Chris 'Melo-d' McKeckney, Stuart 'Reepa' Baker, Lee 'Krazy' Bailey, Sam 'Spike-e' Foulkes, James 'Flava' Murray, Tom 'Tommy-B' Beasley and Mustafa 'Strider' Omer. Nine members of the band also reunited for a smart group shot back in June, which Ollie tweeted alongside the cheeky caption: 'New profile pic.' The sweet shot comes after fans were left underwhelmed when just four members of Blazin' Squad stormed the stage during the Love Island: Aftersun reunion party. Noughties sensations: Nine members of the band also reunited for a smart group shot back in June, which Ollie tweeted alongside the cheeky caption: 'New profile pic' Back in the day: Blazin' Squad, whose career spanned from 2001 to 2004, saw their Spotify streams soaring by 2,500 per cent since Love Island started thanks to Marcel's endless subtle mentions of the band Marcel was in for a surprise as waiting in the wings to surprise him had been his former bandmates who stormed into the studio singing Blazin' Squad hit Flip Reverse. The Islanders gathered in the studio went crazy for the boys as did the viewers at home, with many rushing to social media to comment on the appearance of the squad. Marcel couldn't hide his excitement at seeing his friends and was quick to jump up on stage and join them as they belted out their track. However, their performance garnered a mixed reaction from viewers. Surprise: Four members of Blazin' Squad had delighted the Love Island studio audience with an impromptu performance of Flip Reverse on Sunday night's reunion show Ecstatic: Marcel Somerville was left shocked to see his boys and couldn't resist jumping up on stage to join them While some insisted they had been 'fangirling' over Marcel and Blazin Squad and credited Flip Reverse for being a 'TUNNEEEE', others branded the moment as 'cringey'. Blazin' Squad, whose career spanned from 2001 to 2004, saw their Spotify streams soaring by 2,500 per cent since Love Island started thanks to Marcel's endless subtle mentions of the band. The Chingford pop group released two albums - In The Beginning and Now Or Never - and had seven top ten hits including Crossroads, a Number 1 cover of the Bone Thugz N Harmony original, and Number 2 single Flip Reverse. They reformed in 2009, with their comeback single Let's Start Again, but were dropped after the track only reached number 51 in the Official UK Singles Chart. Baffled: Although, viewers were quick to point out that hardly any of the Squad had actually showed up, given the large number the band was made up of back in the day (above in 2003) Blast from the past: Their performance was a slice of nostalgia for everyone in the studio and the viewers at home But with Marcel's newly boosted profile after Love Island's success, the group have confirmed they are set to take centre-stage once again. Bandmember Ollie told Metro: 'It will be the original line up, obviously there's 10 of us. I'm not sure if all 10 of us will be doing it, but there will be a good chunk of doing it.' The group will play Now That's A Festival in Dagenham on August 12, and have confirmed that tour dates and new music are coming up. 'If we do do a tour and and start getting it all together then there will be new music,' Ollie said. 'We wouldn't rely on old stuff and a lot of it would be done by Marcel because he's very creative.' Loving it: As Marcel stormed up on stage, his girlfriend Gabby looked on adoringly as she danced with show host Caroline Flack Mixed reviews: While some viewers were left 'fangirling' over the boys, others branded their performance cringey Meanwhile, Marcel explained that while working alongside Blazin' Squad, he would also like to launch a solo career. He told OK! Online during a Facebook Live: 'Obviously we did A Little Bit Leave It in the villa it was a good song I'm not gonna lie, I did the majority of that song. 'But for me, I'm working on music that I believe in. I don't want to do a novelty single, I want to produce something that I'm fully behind, so I'm going to focus on my own stuff.' He continued: It's more on a solo basis, but I will still do little bits with the Blazin' Squad, they're my boys and I love them, but I kind of want to focus on my own stuff because that's what I've been doing the past few years.' A photo released by police shows the gold replica of a 1969 Apollo 11 lunar module stolen from a museum in Ohio A gold replica of a lunar landing module gifted to US astronaut Neil Armstrong by French jewelers has been pilfered from an Ohio museum, with security footage offering little help to police. The artifact was stolen late Friday from the astronaut's namesake museum in his small hometown of Wapakoneta. Local police are working with only a blurry image of the thief taken via security camera, which has not helped them identify the suspect. The five-inch (13-centimeter) tall solid gold model of the 1969 Lunar Excursion Module, which took the first humans to the Moon, was one of three made by Cartier. They were given to Apollo 11 astronauts Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins during their visit to Paris, as part of a celebratory world tour following their return from space in 1969. Authorities were unable to give an estimated value for the object, but the museum said the loss could not be measured in dollars and cents. "Theft from a museum is a theft from all of us," the Armstrong Air & Space Museum said in a Facebook post. "For every day that an item is missing, we are all robbed of an opportunity to enjoy it and our history." Wapakoneta police believed more than one person was involved in the burglary, but only one entered the museum by breaking in through the front entrance on Friday near midnight. Along with the gold replica, other items in the same exhibit display were also taken, including award medals and presentation coins, police said. The museum employed video surveillance, door alarms and other security measures, which it would not specify. Authorities did not say how the thief managed to best those measures. "This is an ongoing criminal investigation," said Wapakoneta Police Chief Russel Hunlock in a statement. "I will continue to release information as I can, but I will not tarnish the integrity of the investigation." The theft occurred just days after the 48th anniversary of the first Lunar landing on July 20. The museum held a celebration featuring Aldrin to mark the occasion. Israeli border guards stand outside Damascus Gate in Jerusalem's Old City on June 16, 2017 A Palestinian stabbed and critically injured an Israeli in a town near Tel Aviv on Wednesday, police said. Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said the 19-year-old Palestinian stabbed the 42-year-old Israeli in a "terrorist" attack in Yavne. The suspect was apprehended at the scene, and the victim taken to hospital with "critical" injuries, a later police statement added. The Shin Bet security agency named the assailant as Ismail Ibrahim Abu Aram, born in 1998, and said he had no previous record of security-related offences. Israeli soldiers later searched Abu Aram's home in Yatta, near Hebron in the occupied West Bank, a spokeswoman confirmed. Footage released by Israeli authorities showed the man apparently browsing in a supermarket before attacking an employee. The man manages to fight off the attacker but is stabbed several times. A wave of unrest that broke out in October 2015 has killed more than 290 Palestinians or Arab Israelis, 44 Israelis, two Americans, two Jordanians, an Eritrean, a Sudanese and a Briton, according to an AFP toll. Israeli authorities say most of the Palestinians killed were carrying out knife, gun or car-ramming attacks. Others were shot dead in protests and clashes, while some were killed in Israeli air strikes on the Gaza Strip. The violence had greatly subsided in recent months but tension around the highly sensitive Al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem saw a spike in July. The trapdoor spider, or Moggridgea rainbow, is only found on Kangaroo Island off the south Australian coast and lives a sedentary land-based lifestyle A species of spider that usually travels no further than a few feet from where it was hatched, likely made an epic sea journey on a "land raft" from South Africa to call Australia home, a study said Thursday. The Australian trapdoor spider, known scientifically as Moggridgea rainbow, is only found on Kangaroo Island off the south Australian coast and lives a sedentary land-based lifestyle, rarely moving far. Research in the journal PLOS ONE said DNA sequences shows it actually belongs to a genus of trapdoor spiders otherwise found only in South Africa and split from its closest relatives between two and 16 million years ago. "Conventional wisdom had suggested the spiders became split from their South African relations with the separation of Africa from Gondwana around 95 million years ago," said University of Adelaide researcher Sophie Harrison. "But our research showed that the divergence of Moggridgea rainbow from African Moggridgea trapdoor spiders occurred sometime between two and 16 million years ago, well after the Africa-Gondwana separation." The timing -- established using "molecular clock" dating technology -- also rules out the alternative theory that they arrived with humans, who set foot in Australia much later. This leaves long-distance travel across the Indian Ocean as the only other logical explanation, the study said. "At first thought, this does seem incredible," said Andrew Austin, from the same university. "But there are precedents of such ocean travel. Moggridgea (a separate species) are also found on the Comoros volcanic islands, 340 kilometres from mainland Africa. "However this is a relatively short distance compared with the 10,000 kilometres from South Africa to Kangaroo Island." The research suggested a colony could have made the trip on a large chunk of land and vegetation washed out to sea. "The burrows they live in are quite stable and they would have been quite secure in their silk-lined tubes with their trapdoors closed -- it was probably quite a safe way to travel," said Harrison. The spider lives in banks close to the ocean on Kangaroo Island with the mother laying her eggs in a burrow which, when the conditions are right, then hatch. They move a couple of metres, set up their own burrows, and stay there for the rest of their lives, lunging out of their trapdoors at night to catch passing prey. Security at major Australian airports has been strengthened after four men were arrested in Sydney on Saturday and accused of planning an attack Two men have been charged with terrorism offences after Australian police thwarted an alleged plot to blow up a plane, authorities said Thursday, as pilots warned of major airport security gaps despite efforts to tighten screenings. Four men were arrested in Sydney on Saturday accused of planning an attack using an improvised explosive device, prompting authorities to increase security at airports across the nation. One of the four was released on Wednesday, while two others -- aged 32 and 49 -- were each charged with two counts of "acts done in preparation for, or planning, a terrorist act", Australian Federal Police said. They face maximum sentences of life imprisonment if found guilty and are due to appear in a Sydney court on Friday. The charges came as pilots -- who have to be screened alongside air crew, retail workers and passengers at airports -- said similar requirements were not in place for ground staff, who are instead issued with security cards. "Pilots and cabin crew are routinely screened along with passengers but a lot of ground staff can access aircraft on the tarmac without the same level of scrutiny," Australian Airline Pilots Association president Murray Butt said late Wednesday. "We believe it would enhance airport security if all airline staff who have access to aircraft, were screened to the same level as personnel entering through the terminal." The concerns followed a report by Sydney's Daily Telegraph citing sources who alleged that the plot involved using an unwitting passenger to carry a bomb onboard, with Etihad Airways confirming this week it was helping the investigation. Aviation experts have also warned of loopholes, such as the use of private-sector security guards instead of government employees at airports, and no photo ID checks for passengers at domestic terminals. Butt said Australia needed to emulate the US requirement for photo ID checks for passengers, while a former Sydney Airport security chief said security databases should be linked to booking systems. "The scary thing is domestic airlines have no idea who is really on their aircraft," Mike Carmody told The Australian Financial Review. "There is very little coordination. Unless you happen to be someone who really stands out, you are going to fly right through security." - 'No room for complacency' - In response to calls for ID checks, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said Thursday airport security measures were "constantly under review". He told reporters in Perth that the times passengers had been advised to arrive at airports would return to normal after being extended in response to the alleged plot which "has been disrupted and it has been contained". Transport Minister Darren Chester defended the current safety measures, saying workers with access to large passenger planes must hold a security card only issued after thorough checks. "We've endeavoured to toughen up regulations around getting access to those cards, and making sure that people who have access to the airport environment are trusted," he told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. "So it's been recognised that there are issues around the world in relation to the threat provided by the so-called trusted insider... and we are taking measures to keep the Australian travelling public safe." Police have until the weekend to hold the fourth man without charge after obtaining a court extension. New South Wales Police Commissioner Mick Fuller said earlier Thursday of the allegations against the men: "The evidence gathered is very strong." Australia's national terror alert level was raised in September 2014 amid concerns over attacks by individuals inspired by organisations such as IS. A total of 12 attacks, before the latest one, have been prevented in the past few years and 70 people have been charged. Several terror attacks have taken place in Australia in recent years, including a Sydney cafe siege in 2014 which saw two hostages killed. Film director Kim Ki-duk has been accused of hitting an actress while shooting a movie South Korean prosecutors opened a criminal investigation into multi-award-winning filmmaker Kim Ki-Duk on Thursday over allegations that he hit an actress while shooting a movie, a spokesman said. Kim's glittering career prizes include the Golden Lion for best film at the 2012 Venice Film Festival for "Pieta" and Berlin's Silver Bear for "Samaritan Girl" in 2004. According to the South's Yonhap news agency, an actress whose identity is being withheld filed a complaint with prosecutors accusing Kim of slapping her in the face on the set of his 2013 film "Moebius", insulting her and forcing her into a nude scene. She subsequently quit the movie, a thriller themed around incest, and her role was taken over by another actress. "A criminal complaint has been filed against director Kim Ki-Duk and prosecutors have opened a probe into the case", the Seoul Central District Prosecutors' Office spokesman told AFP. He declined to elaborate, citing privacy. In a statement, Kim said he would "take responsibility for his wrongdoing" but denied allegations of assault. "Since it was four years ago, I don't have a clear memory but it happened in the process of demonstrating how to make the acting more real," he said, adding they were filming a violent scene about a fight between a married couple. "In any case, it happened as I focused on efforts to increase the film's reality as a director... and I had no personal feelings," Kim added. "Moebius" was initially banned from being screened in South Korea on grounds of obscenity before being allowed to be released after some controversial scenes were removed. It was screened out of the competition at the 70th Venice Film Festival. Donated cosmetics are a simple way to boost morale and free up cash for female inmates in Thai prisons Desperate to brighten up the gloom of Thai prison life, Prontip Mankong and her fellow female inmates used to sneak food colouring from the kitchen and mix it with Vaseline to create a homemade lip gloss. After serving two years for violating Thailand's royal defamation law, the former political prisoner is now on the other side of the prison gate. But she is drawing on the same spirit of ingenuity to make recycled cosmetics for those still stuck in Thailand's notoriously bleak jails, which are bursting at the seams in a country with the highest female incarceration rate in the world. "The lip gloss boosted our confidence and gave us a sense of self-expression in a place where freedom is limited," said Prontip Mankong, who was jailed for her role in a satirical play that authorities said mocked the royal family. Prontip Mankong, a former political prisoner, now spends time creating cosmetics for female inmates in Thai prisons. On a recent Sunday, the 29-year-old and other female ex-cons spent the afternoon slicing off the tops of thousands of donated lipsticks and grouping them into baskets by colour. The waxy chunks were boiled down over a stove into shimmering pink and magenta liquids, and then poured into small containers which will be donated to a women's prison after they cool. Of all the deprivations of prison life make-up may seem a minor one. Yet Prontip sees the donated cosmetics as a simple way to boost morale and free up cash for inmates, whose lives are just as governed by money as those on the outside. Inmates earn small incomes from jobs like cooking and making crafts, which they use to buy sanitary pads and other basic necessities from small convenience stores, where purchases are limited to around $10 a day. Thailand has the highest female incarceration rate in the world "Getting cosmetics was very difficult and expensive," she told AFP, explaining that some inmates would buy out all the beauty products from a small prison store and then jack up the price for other buyers. This type of black market economy permeates the prison yard, with cash via prison jobs and relatives the only way to secure other comforts like longer showers or pain medicine. "This money doesn't go to the prisons but goes to the pockets of the influential inmates," said Prontip, whose chipper attitude cracks when she starts recalling her own time behind bars. - Thailand's prison problem - Thailand's exploding prison population stems from the kingdom's harsh anti-drug laws, where the possession of just a few methamphetamine pills is enough to land offenders a decade in jail. Prontip Mankong, a former political prisoner, cuts up donated lipstick tubes to be melted down and recycled into new gloss pots for current female inmates in Bangkok The kingdom jails more women per capita than any other nation, with more than 80 percent of its 39,000 female convicts in prison on drug-related offences, according to the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH). Successive Thai governments have done little to reform drug laws or tackle dire overcrowding in prisons. Many inmates sleep on hard linoleum floors in cells so cramped they have to rest on their sides or lay their limbs on top of one another. Fluorescent lights are kept on throughout the night and dozens of prisoners have to share a single toilet in the back of the cell, with not even a curtain for privacy. In conditions like these, small comforts can go a long way. "Beauty can help," said Watinee Chaithirasakul, a fashion blogger who helped collect cosmetics for Prontip's project. "It's about helping them have a mentality that will allow them to live in that space." Police said Tammy Davis-Charles (2nd L) moved to Cambodia to take advantage of the continued demand for surrogates, charging Australian clients up to $50,000 for each request An Australian nurse who ran surrogacy services in Cambodia that matched foreign couples with local women was sentenced to 18 months in prison Thursday, as authorities in the impoverished kingdom tackle the "rent-a-womb" businesses. Tammy Davis-Charles, 49, has been in custody since her arrest in November last year, weeks after Cambodia abruptly outlawed commercial surrogacy. Authorities announced a blanket ban on the trade, which critics say exploits poor women, after similar curbs in Thailand pushed the shadowy industry across its borders. With cheap medical costs and no laws excluding gay couples or single parents, Cambodia quickly mopped up demand from foreign couples, mostly from Australia. Davis-Charles told the court she moved to Phnom Penh after commercial surrogacy was restricted in Thailand, where she had been working. The nurse said lawyers told her surrogacy was legal in Cambodia at the time. But the judge said Davis-Charles continued to run the business and lure Cambodian women into the trade even after she knew the industry had been outlawed. "Tammy Davis-Charles was an intermediary between intended parents and Cambodian surrogate mothers," Judge Sor Lina said delivering the ruling. The Melbourne native, who wept after the verdict was handed down, was also convicted of falsifying documents. "The court sentences Tammy Davis-Charles to one-and-a-half-years in jail," the judge added. Two Cambodian colleagues were convicted of the same charges and also jailed for 18 months. Police said Davis-Charles' clinic charged would-be parents up to $50,000, while Cambodian surrogates received around $10,000 each -- a vast sum in a nation where the average annual income is around $1,200. Davis-Charles, who advertised surrogacy services online, was accused of bringing more than 23 Cambodian women into the trade for 18 Australian and five American couples between 2015 and her November 2016 arrest. - Pushed underground - In her defence statement in July, Davis-Charles broke down in tears in front of the court appealing for mercy from the bench, saying she had already "lost everything" during her six months in custody. During the trial she denied recruiting the surrogates, saying her role was limited to providing medical care. Davis-Charles had twins through a Thai surrogate before going into "the surrogacy business full-time... to help people everyday," according to her post on the website of her Bangkok-registered company. Surrogacy agencies started sprouting up in Cambodia in 2015 after neighbouring Thailand shut down the trade following a series of scandals, including tussles over custody. But in late 2016 Cambodia barred the industry and refused to recognise birth certificates for babies, leaving many foreign couples in limbo. In April this year the government said it would allow foreign couples to return home with babies if they could prove they were conceived before the ban on commercial surrogacy. While Cambodia's crackdown has slowed the tide of foreign couples, it has failed to snuff out an industry that remains a lure for some of the country's most vulnerable women. "There is certainly still surrogacy going on underground," said Sam Everingham, director of the Australia-based consultancy Families Through Surrogacy. The trade has also sprung up in neighbouring Laos which has yet to criminalise commercial surrogacy. Laos' role as the new surrogacy destination emerged after Thai authorities arrested a man attempting to smuggle six large refrigerated vials of sperm into the Communist country -- presumably for use in the booming surrogacy clinics. Some offer to carry out the embryo transfer in Laos and then provide pregnancy care for the surrogate in Thailand, a wealthier country with vastly superior medical facilities. Thai authorities banned the trade in late 2014 following a slew of scandals, including the discovery of nine babies in a Bangkok apartment fathered by a rich Japanese man using Thai surrogates. Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe (C) has seen public support rates plummet in the past few months over an array of political troubles Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on Thursday was set to announce new defence and foreign ministers as part of a cabinet revamp he hopes will stem a decline in public support after a series of scandals and missteps. Political blueblood Abe, in office since late December 2012, has pushed a nationalist agenda alongside a massive policy effort to end years of on-off deflation and rejuvenate the world's third-largest economy. But he has seen public support rates plummet in the past few months over an array of political troubles, including allegations of favouritism to a friend in a business deal -- which Abe strongly denies. Abe will reportedly reappoint former defence minister Itsunori Onodera to the post after close political ally and fellow hawk Tomomi Inada resigned last week following a scandal at the ministry over the handling of military documents. He is also set to tap as ministers some who have opposed his policies, including Taro Kono, the son of a dovish former foreign minister known for issuing a 1993 apology as chief cabinet secretary over Japan's use of "comfort women" -- a euphemism for sex slavery -- in World War II. US-educated Kono is set to replace Fumio Kishida, who served as foreign minister since Abe came to power. Kishida, often tapped as a future prime minister, is moving to a top post in the ruling Liberal Democratic Party. "I deeply regret that my shortcomings have invited this situation," a chastened Abe said ahead of the formal announcement of the cabinet changes. Abe's LDP suffered a drubbing in local Tokyo elections last month, which analysts and newspapers blamed on an increasing "arrogance" on the part of the prime minister. Kono, 54, is known as an independent-minded, anti-nuclear power advocate, in sharp contrast to Abe's support for atomic energy. Meanwhile, Seiko Noda, 56, once hailed as Japan's most likely first female prime minister and who once tried to challenge Abe for the party leadership, was expected to serve as internal affairs minister. Returning defence chief Onodera, 57, held the post for nearly two years until September 2014, and has vowed to restore unity and confidence within the ministry. His expected appointment also comes amid rising tensions surrounding North Korea's missile development. Pyongyang launched its latest missile late Friday, just hours after the US and Japan moved to step up sanctions against it following its earlier test of an ICBM capable of reaching parts of the US. Meanwhile, Abe was seen leaving some key posts, such as finance minister and chief cabinet secretary, unchanged. North Korea is set to face a diplomatic barrage at the Association of Southeast Asia Nations (ASEAN) Regional Forum (ARF) in Manila North Korea is set to face a diplomatic barrage over its nuclear weapons programme at a security forum in Manila starting this weekend, with the United States seeking to build a "chorus of condemnation". Foreign ministers from all the major powers involved in trying to curtail North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un's atomic ambitions will be in the Philippine capital for the event, offering a rare chance for face-to-face talks on the crisis. The United States and China have been wrestling with how best to respond to North Korea's second intercontinental ballistic missile test last week, which deepened global fears over Kim's nuclear weapons strike capabilities. US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson will seek to build diplomatic pressure on the North in Manila, with Washington pushing for another round of tough United Nations sanctions on Pyongyang, according to one of his top aides. "What we would expect to see this year at the meeting would be a general chorus of condemnation of North Korea's provocative behaviour," Susan Thornton, the acting US assistant secretary of state, told reporters in Washington. The annual forum, hosted by the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), brings together the top diplomats from 26 countries and the European Union for talks on political and security issues in Asia-Pacific. This year they will express "grave concern" over North Korea's missile tests, according to a draft copy of the chairman's statement obtained by AFP. Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte also set the stage for the talks on Wednesday with a blistering critique of Kim. "He is playing with dangerous toys and this crazy man, do not be fooled by his face, that chubby face that looks nice," Duterte said, as he warned Kim could trigger a nuclear war that would destroy Asia. "That son-of-a-whore maniac, if he makes a mistake then the Far East will become an arid land." - Defiance - Top diplomats from 26 countries and the European Union are to meet in Manila for talks on political and security issues in Asia-Pacific The draft of the chairman's statement flagged the North, to be represented by Foreign Minister Ri Yong-Ho, will offer a typically defiant response to the diplomatic pressure. "The DPRK (North Korea) claimed during the meeting that its nuclear weapons programme is an act of self-defence against a hostile policy towards it," said the statement, which is due to be released at the end of the meeting on Monday. Tillerson will not hold direct talks with Ri in Manila, according to Thornton. But Tillerson is expected to meet with the top envoys from the other nations in stalled "six-party" negotiations aimed at reining in Pyongyang's nuclear programme: China, Russia, Japan and South Korea. The 10 ASEAN foreign ministers will first hold talks among themselves on Friday and Saturday, during which the region's other major flashpoint issue -- rival claims in the South China Sea and China's growing presence there -- will be a top agenda item. China claims nearly all of the strategically vital sea, including waters approaching the coasts of ASEAN members Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia and Brunei. Beijing has in recent years expanded its presence in the sea by building artificial islands capable of holding military bases. ASEAN will endorse a framework on a code of conduct for the sea, which has been brokered with China, and call for talks to create a formal pact to begin "as soon as possible", according to a draft of their joint statement obtained by AFP. However, while the Philippines and China have been promoting the framework as an important development, analysts caution it is only a minor step that comes 15 years after negotiations began. "Of course a code is only as good as its implementation and enforcement, and we are still a long way from seeing it in action," Ei Sun Oh, an adjunct senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore, told AFP. The Philippines, under previous president Benigo Aquino, had been a leading voice against China's expanionism in the sea and used ASEAN events to pressure Beijing. But Duterte, who took office last year, immediately reversed that policy. He has sought to play down the dispute in favour of building warmer ties with China and attracting billions of dollars worth of Chinese investments and aid. Indian paramilitary troopers stand guard after Kashmiri seperatists called for a one-day strike to protest a civilian killing in Srinagar on August 2, 2017 Two Indian soldiers and two rebels were killed in armed clashes on Thursday, officials said, in another day of bloodshed in Kashmir where tensions are high following the death of a prominent militant. The rebels were killed in Kulgam, south of the main city of Srinagar in Indian-administered Kashmir, when they walked into an ambush laid by Indian soldiers. "It was a deliberate and swift operation," an army officer told AFP. In a separate incident, two Indian troops were killed and another injured in a shootout with militants in Shopian district, the officer said on condition of anonymity. The soldiers came under fire as they surrounded a house suspected of harbouring militants, and were evacuated from the scene. It was not clear if the rebels inside evaded capture. "Three soldiers were evacuated by air but two of them died before reaching a military hospital," a police officer said. The violence comes just days after Indian forces killed top militant commander Abu Dujana, who headed the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) group in Kashmir. His death sparked protests and violent clashes across Kashmir, in which two civilians, including a teenage student, were killed. Schools and colleges remained shut Thursday amid fears of further protests against Indian rule. Kashmir has been divided between India and Pakistan since the end of British colonial rule in 1947. Both claim the restive region in full. For decades rebel groups, including LeT, have fought 500,000 Indian soldiers deployed in the territory, demanding independence or a merger of the former Himalayan kingdom with Pakistan. The fighting and India's counterinsurgency campaign since 1989 has left tens of thousands, mostly civilians, dead. A Boeing airplane operated by Lion Air was taxying along the runway after landing at Kualanamu airport on the island of Sumatra when it clipped the wing of a Wings Air craft waiting to depart for Meulaboh in Aceh province Two passenger planes collided at an airport in the Indonesian city of Medan on Thursday, an airline spokesman said, the latest incident to hit the country's beleaguered aviation sector. A Boeing airplane operated by Lion Air was taxying along the runway after landing at Kualanamu airport on the island of Sumatra when it clipped the wing of a Wings Air craft waiting to depart for Meulaboh in Aceh province. No one was injured in the incident and authorities are investigating the cause of the collision. Pictures on social media showed damage to the left wing of the Lion Air plane and the right wing of the Wings Air craft, which are both part of the Lion Group. "All passengers are in good condition, no one was injured. Both planes are now at the apron..." Andy Saladin, a spokesman for Lion Air said. Indonesia's air travel industry is booming, with the number of domestic passengers growing significantly over the past decade, but it has a dismal air safety record and reputation for chaotic regulation. In May 2016, two planes from Lion Air collided in Jakarta's Soekarno-Hatta airport, while in April 2016 a plane operated by Batik Air -- part of the Lion Group -- clipped a TransNusa plane. In 2013 a Lion Air jet with a rookie pilot at the controls undershot the runway and crashed into the sea in Bali, splitting the plane in two. Several people were injured in the crash, although no one was killed. Last week the Indonesian air traffic controllers association revealed that state-run air navigation company AirNav often allows 84 take-offs and landings per hour in Jakarta, increasing the chance of accidents. Police stand guard outside a special corruption trial court in Bangladesh, ranked as the 13th most corrupt nation in the world by Transparency International Bangladesh's new anti-graft hotline has been overwhelmed with tens of thousands of calls about acts of corruption in its first week, an official said Thursday. Hotline number 106 was launched last Thursday by state authorities in an effort to crack down on graft in Bangladesh, which has been listed by a global watchdog as one of the world's most corrupt nations. "Since July 27 around 75,000 people called our hotline," Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC) spokesman Pranab Kumar Bhattacharya told AFP. The hotline is manned by just five government employees, with a substantial number of calls being forwarded to a voicemail messaging system. Bhattacharya said most callers who got through had complaints that were beyond the agency's jurisdiction, including personal family disputes and dowry demands. The commission is empowered to investigate bribes in government offices and agencies, misappropriation of state assets or money, embezzlement of state funds, amassing of wealth through illegal means, money laundering and bank fraud. More than 200 relevant complaints were forwarded to the ACC to investigate. Local English daily The New Age said most complaints were against land record offices, followed by utility services, state-run hospitals, government-run schools and railway and road transport authorities. "Most complaints are related to land," Rajib Ahsan, an official at the ACC's hotline cell, told AFP. Some women had complained of dowry demands from their husbands, he said. Last year Bangladesh was ranked as the 13th most corrupt nation in the world, according to the graft perception index prepared annually by Berlin-based Transparency International. Last week Bangladesh's Finance Minister A.M.A. Muhith, while inaugurating the hotline, acknowledged the depth of the problem and said in the past corruption was an act of shame but it had now taken root in the country of 160 million people. "We are all overwhelmed by corruption. Those in power spread corruption," he said. "It could not continue if everyone were not involved. We are all indirectly involved." Syrian regime forces and "moderate" rebels will cease fire in northern parts of Homs province, Moscow says Syrian regime forces and "moderate" rebels will cease fire in northern parts of Homs province on Thursday after Russia struck a deal with the opposition on implementing a third safe zone, Moscow said. "From 1200 local time (0900 GMT), units of the moderate opposition and government forces will completely stop firing," defence ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov said in a statement. Konashenkov said Moscow and Syrian opposition groups had reached an agreement on the "operational details" of a "de-escalation zone" north of the city of Homs at talks in Cairo on July 31. The zone is the third to be established in Syria under a Russian-led initiative aimed at halting fighting in four areas between President Bashar al-Assad's forces and rebels. It covers 84 towns and villages with a total population of 147,000 people, Moscow said. Russia has been behind a push to pacify Syria since the start of this year after tipping the six-year conflict in favour of Assad with its game-changing military intervention in 2015. Konashenkov said Russian military police will set up two checkpoints and three observation posts on Friday along the boundaries of the zone dividing the two forces. Rebels had agreed to "unblock" part of a road running through the safe zone between the cities of Homs and Hama and a "Committee for National Justice" made up of rebels and local groups would help oversee the implementation of the plan, he said. - Idlib zone unresolved - The northern parts of Homs province were recently being shelled by regime forces and hit by intermittent air strikes. Towns in the area were among the first to fall to Assad's opponents in 2012 after a revolt against his rule. They have remained outside the hands of jihadist groups including the Islamic State (IS), which do not fall under the Russian deal. Russia last month struck a deal with the United States and Jordan for a ceasefire in another southern zone, where Moscow has now deployed its military police. Under a second agreement sealed with rebels in July Russian forces also set up two checkpoints and four observation posts in an area covering conflict-ravaged Eastern Ghouta near Damascus. Under a plan hammered out between Russia, Turkey and Iran at peace talks in Kazakhstan one more safe zone is supposed to be established in the northwestern Idlib region. However, negotiations on that zone have been complicated by conflicting interests between the international powers. .Moscow has been flying a bombing campaign to support regime forces, while Assad's international opponents have been striking IS from the air as part of a US-led coalition. Russia is planning a fresh round of talks in the Kazakh capital of Astana in late August to thrash out more details on its peace plan. A group of women playing a game at the West Sea Barrage beach outside the coastal city of Nampho, southwest of Pyongyang Take several dozen North Korean clams. Arrange vent-down on concrete slab. Douse liberally with petrol. Ignite. Add fuel until cooked. It is a simple recipe, but one that avoids the need for electricity or a piped gas supply in the isolated, energy-poor country. The "petrol clams" are fleshy and flavourful -- the secret to avoiding a hydrocarbon taste is not to inhale while slipping them into the mouth -- and a speciality of the West Sea Barrage beach at Nampho, southwest of Pyongyang. A woman cooking clams using gasoline, at the West Sea Barrage beach outside the coastal city of Nampho The sandy beach lies at the far end of the eight-kilometre barrier across the Taedong river mouth -- ostensibly built for flood control, but which also blocks access to Pyongyang, a few dozen kilometres upriver, for any invading navy. At the beach, children equipped with pastel inflatable rings play in the shallows, while adults shelter from the sun under tents to enjoy clams and grilled pork, liberally washed down with soju, a Korean alcoholic drink. Most visitors to such seaside spots are on organised outings -- strict controls on movement and a dearth of disposable income put trips like this beyond the reach of the vast majority of North Koreans. Two men carrying a karaoke machine at the West Sea Barrage beach Many making their way to Nampho are work groups -- North Koreans are often expected to socialise with their colleagues -- and some are equipped with portable karaoke machines. The hugely popular North Korean song "Mother's birthday" blasted out from one -- the parent in this case being the ruling party. "My mother - our mother - is the most tender in the world," the lyrics go. "Workers' Party of Korea - mother's birthday." Crew members looking out the cockpit windows of a RNZAF P3 Orion during search operations for wreckage and debris of missing Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 in 2014 A US exploration company has offered to take on the search for flight MH370 which was suspended earlier this year, the firm and a Malaysian minister said Thursday, offering new hope to families of the missing. No trace of the Boeing 777, which disappeared in March 2014 with 239 people on board, was found during a lengthy deep sea hunt in the southern Indian Ocean off western Australia, with the search called off in January. Ocean Infinity, a seabed exploration firm which says it has the world's largest and most advanced commercial fleet of underwater vehicles for conducting searches, said it had proposed continuing the hunt. "I can confirm that we have made an offer," a spokesman said in an emailed statement to AFP, without giving further details. Malaysia's Deputy Transport Minister Aziz Kaprawi confirmed a company had made an approach and was only asking for payment in the event they find the plane. He said the firm had made a "good offer", and added negotiations were ongoing with the country's Department of Civil Aviation. "The company is demanding payment in the event the wreckage is found," he told AFP. "We have to work out the details, what we want most is the wreckage and the black box." He added that the agreement of Australia and China would be needed for a deal to be reached. China, where most of the passengers came from, and Australia were both involved in the search. Grace Nathan, a Malaysian lawyer whose mother Anne Daisy was on the plane, urged authorities to accept the offer. "There is no point waiting any longer, we really do not lose anything," she said. "It seems to be a perfect offer from a company that is equipped to undertake this search." So far, three fragments of MH370 have been found on western Indian Ocean shores, including a two-metre wing part known as a flaperon. Australia's national science body CSIRO said in April that MH370 was "most likely" lying north of the former search zone -- a 120,000 square kilometre (46,000 square mile) area largely defined through satellite "pings" and the flight's estimated fuel load. But the country's transport minister previously said the underwater probe would not resume unless new evidence about the specific location of the aircraft emerge. Ocean Infinity has a fleet of six underwater vehicles which can collect seabed data at a depth of 6,000 metres (19,700 feet). Two men (centre) riding bicycles from a sharing company in Shanghai China on Thursday issued national guidelines governing bike-sharing operations to nurture a new industry credited with spurring a transport revolution while addressing mounting complaints over an accumulation of millions of bikes on city streets. Jointly issued by the Ministry of Transport and nine other ministries and agencies, the guidelines urged cities to come up with plans for integrating use of the rentable bikes into overall traffic planning, in the latest official vote of confidence for the sector. But it also called on authorities to tighten controls on parking of bikes, devise systems to penalise offenders, develop standards on maintenance and bicycle life spans, and banned their use by children under 12. The bikes, which can be unlocked by GPS using a mobile phone app and left anywhere, have been seized upon by commuters as a cheap and convenient way to navigate congested cities. But the stampede into the market by providers has cluttered sidewalks in Shanghai, Beijing, and many other urban centres with bikes that are often broken down or left haphazardly parked by users outside of designated zones. Safety issues also have arisen, including the reported death of a Shanghai primary school student who was struck by a bus in March. Shanghai and Tianjin had announced their own regulations in July, mandating a service life of three years for bikes and requiring companies to hire at least one maintenance employee for every 200 bicycles, Xinhua news agency reported. The sector has exploded from virtually nothing about a year ago into an urban transport phenomenon. More than 10 million such bikes are estimated to be on the streets, operated by more than two dozen companies. China's government has thrown its support behind the concept as a green transport option, and leaders like Ofo and Mobike have attracted increasingly large amounts of venture capital in a series of fund-raising rounds. Ofo raised more than $700 million in its latest round, the company told AFP Thursday, after rival Mobike raked in $600 million in June. Both had already raised hundreds of millions in earlier rounds. The new national guidelines, expected to be implemented by city authorities, also urged closer government supervision of bike-share companies' financial operations to head off rising customer disputes, as well as establishment of mechanisms for handling complaints. Ofo released a statement "warmly welcoming" the guidelines, and pledged to cooperate. Xinhua news agency last month quoted a Shanghai consumer affairs official saying there were more than 2,600 complaints about shared bikes in the city alone in the first four months of 2017, nine times more than the same period last year. It also quoted officials saying Shanghai had more than a million such shared bikes in operation, twice what was needed, but far too few maintenance personnel to deal with broken-down bicycles. The Chinese gang, arrested in Cambodia Wednesday, allegedly persuaded victims to send nude pictures which they then used as blackmail Cambodia has arrested more than 200 Chinese men and women suspected of running an online scam that persuaded victims to send nude photographs and then extorted them for cash, police said Thursday. The sweeping arrests come as the Southeast Asian country cracks down on Chinese cyber-crime gangs who use web technology to target their fellow citizens from abroad. The gang allegedly used internet voice calls to contact victims in China, building up relationships with their targets over time before asking them to send nude pictures which they then used as blackmail, police said. After a tip-off from Chinese authorities, Cambodian police raided an apartment compound on the Thai border on Wednesday and detained 215 Chinese men and women. "We are questioning them. Nearly two hundred of them were involved with the crimes," Uk Heisela, a Cambodian immigration police officer, told AFP. China has become increasingly assertive about extraditing fraud suspects, who operate from abroad in a bid to avoid detection. Cambodia has deported hundreds of alleged Chinese telephone and internet fraudsters in recent years, including 74 Chinese nationals accused of running an online extortion racket last month. Last week it moved to deport another 31 fraud suspects, including seven Taiwanese, to mainland China. The move set off criticism from Taiwanese authorities who insist its citizens be returned to the island. Taiwan split from China in 1949, but Beijing -- one of Cambodia's closest allies -- still sees the self-ruling island a part of its territory waiting to be reunified. In July, a gang of 44 people from China and Taiwan were arrested in Thailand for allegedly running an elaborate phone scam that conned $3 million from scores of victims, mainly based in China. A member of the Iraqi forces walks in the rubble near the destroyed ancient leaning minaret known as the "Hadba" (Hunchback) in Mosul's Old City on July 30, 2017 With Mosul in ruins and nearly a million displaced, Iraq now faces the enormous task of restoring order and rebuilding its second city after driving out Islamic State group jihadists. After eight months of gruelling fighting against IS, Iraqi forces are in control of Mosul. But the famed Old City has been reduced to rubble and the iconic leaning minaret of its Al-Nuri mosque, the image of which adorns the 10,000 dinar note, lies in ruins. The ancient, crowded alleys have become a silent maze of stone and iron skeletons, marked by mountains of rubble, craters and burned-out cars emitting a putrid odour of decaying bodies. "The price of freedom is very high," said Omar Fadel, a municipality employee who returned a month ago to his neighbourhood of old Sinaaya, close to the ruins of the Al-Nuri mosque. "We lost our houses, our money and above all, people, our loved ones." Lise Grande, the United Nations' humanitarian coordinator for Iraq, told AFP that Mosul represents "the biggest stabilisation challenge the UN has ever faced -- the scale, the complexity, the scope of it." An Iraqi woman, carrying an infant, walks by the destroyed Al-Nuri Mosque as she flees from the Old City of Mosul on July 5, 2017 Out of 54 residential quarters, "15 are destroyed, 23 moderately damaged, 16 lightly damaged," she said. In eight months of combat, 948,000 people fled their houses, far beyond the UN's most pessimistic predictions of 750,000 displaced. Like Fadel, some have already returned. But 320,000 are still living in camps and another 384,000 are staying with relatives or in mosques, living on humanitarian aid, according to the UN. - 'Can't hold the area' - Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi declared the city "liberated" on July 9, but the threat of violence has not disappeared. An unknown number of jihadists mingled with the flood of civilians fleeing the fighting. With few resources, "the local police can't, at this stage, hold the area," said Mohammed Ibrahim, a security official at the provincial council of Nineveh, of which Mosul is the capital. Iraqis who fled the violence around the northern city of Mosul walk at the Jadaah camp on July 19, 2017 The job of securing the city might be entrusted to a "joint force" made up of Iraq's counterterrorism service, the federal police and the army, which led the battle, a US advisor to the federal police said. Authorities also set up a provincial intelligence centre, the first in Iraq, two months ago to "locate terrorist bases and sleeping cells, arrest and hand suspects over to the judiciary," Ibrahim said. Meanwhile, workers have begun the laborious task of clearing the damage left by the fighting, revealing hundreds of civilians buried under the rubble. The streets need to be cleared of explosive devices left by the jihadists. Next begins the work of rebuilding. The UN says the first phase of "stabilisation" -- providing infrastructure, housing, education and a police force -- will cost at least $707 million (597 million euros). "In the heavily damaged districts that are almost completely destroyed, we have to expect that this will take months, if not years," Grande said. "The families who come from those districts -- we are talking about 230,000 to 240,000 families -- will probably not be able to go back to their homes for a very long time." The UN has called for more international aid to help reconstruct the city, but less than half the aid needed for 2017 has been donated so far. Iraqi civil defence and rescue workers search for the bodies of victims under the rubble in western Mosul's Zanjili district on July 26, 2017 Mosul residents do not want to see rebuilding efforts confined to Iraq's government, which is seen as corrupt, sectarian and distant. In Baghdad, "they think that all of Mosul is Daesh," said Issam Hassan, a young man in an east Mosul market, using an Arabic acronym for IS. Political analyst Ziad al-Zinjari said he was "not optimistic" about Mosul's future. "There are signs that the city will go back to square one, that the same mistakes will be repeated," he said. Many fear that "corrupt people and thieves" will take over important posts, armed groups will emerge again and the authorities are "lagging behind in the reconstruction and resumption of public services," he added. Despite the defeat suffered by IS, the groups that united to fight it could easily splinter as rivalries re-emerge. Civil society activist Majed al-Husseini said that unless Mosul is declared a disaster zone and foreign organisations are involved in reconstruction, "political conflicts will bring back murders in the streets". "Shiite militias are setting up in the city, which the Sunni majority sees as a provocation... the Kurds have their sights on the disputed areas (and) Sunni politicians have conflicts between them for personal interests," he said. Years of rule by IS has also created divisions. Iraqi forces walk amid the destruction in Mosul's Old City on July 9, 2017 Some pro-government tribes are demanding "compensation" from other tribes who had pledged allegiance to the jihadists before they will allow them back into the city. "The most important national priority is national reconciliation," Grande said. But on both sides of the Tigris river dividing Mosul, residents say communal divisions are mainly a political creation. "Ask around and see who hasn't got a Shiite or Christian friend. Everyone has," said Fadel. "The city's architecture will never be the same again, but the spirit of Mosul, the solidarity of the inhabitants, will not change." Late Nobel laureate Liu Xiaobo's wife Liu Xia (C) and his brother, Liu Xiaoguang (L), holding a portrait of Liu Xiaobo and receiving the ashes (R) in an urn at a funeral parlour in the Chinese city of Shenyang China's government is responsible for the "enforced disappearance" of late Nobel laureate Liu Xiaobo's widow, her US-based lawyer said on Wednesday in a formal complaint filed to the United Nations. Beijing faced a global backlash for its treatment of Liu Xiaobo when he died of liver cancer last month, making him the first Nobel Peace Prize laureate to die in custody since German pacifist Carl von Ossietzky in 1938, who had been held by the Nazis. His widow, poet Liu Xia, 56, was followed around the clock by security officials, and has not been in touch with anyone since about a day before her husband's death, her US-based lawyer, Jared Genser, said in a statement to the UN Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances. Liu Xia has been "held incommunicado in an unknown location by Chinese government authorities" since July 15, the day of her husband's funeral, the lawyer's statement said. "I demand that Chinese authorities immediately provide proof that Liu Xia is alive and allow her unhindered access to her family, friends, counsel, and the international community," said Genser in a statement emailed to AFP. He said international law defined "enforced disappearances" as situations where government officials are involved in depriving a person of her freedom against her will, and refuse to acknowledge that deprivation or conceal the disappeared person's fate -- stating that all such conditions had been met in Liu Xia's case. The US, the European Union, and the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights have called on Beijing to free Liu Xia, who had been under house arrest since her husband won the Nobel prize seven years ago -- despite having committed no crime. Chinese authorities have said she is a free citizen, but too grief-stricken since her husband's death to be in touch with any friends or counsel. A Chinese government spokesman Zhang Qingyang declined to disclose Liu Xia's whereabouts on July 15, telling the media only that it was "best for her not to receive too much outside interference during this period". "The relevant departments will protect Liu Xia's legal rights according to law," he added. Foreign journalists who have tried to visit the couple's Beijing home have been rebuffed and physically harassed. Authorities released photographs and a video of Liu Xia at her husband's funeral and also at a sea burial near the northeastern coastal city of Dalian. Liu Xiaobo was a veteran of the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests who was jailed in 2008 after co-writing a petition calling for democratic reform, and sentenced to 11 years in prison for "subversion" a year later. The alleged operation was unprecedented -- even for an authoritarian country that closely tracks its critics at home and routinely throws them behind bars Portrayed by the Vietnamese government as a Lexus-driving tycoon who flaunted his wealth while costing the state millions of dollars, Trinh Xuan Thanh fled the country as he fell under the cross-hairs of a corruption crusade by communist authorities. But his year-long sanctuary overseas was brought to an abrupt end last month in dramatic circumstances that could be culled from a spy thriller. German media reported that Thanh, the former head of a state-linked construction firm, was bundled into a car on July 23 as he visited Tiergarten park in downtown Berlin by several armed Vietnamese security agents. The alleged operation was unprecedented -- even for an authoritarian country that closely tracks its critics at home and routinely throws them behind bars -- and quickly triggered a diplomatic bust-up. Germany, one of Vietnam's largest European trading partners, on Wednesday decried the "scandalous violation" of its sovereignty, furiously dressing down the Vietnamese ambassador and booting out one of the country's spies. The official narrative from Vietnam is that Thanh, a former communist party member, turned himself into authorities in Hanoi on Monday to face corruption charges, including one that carries the death penalty. On Thursday a spokeswoman for Vietnam's Ministry of Foreign Affairs called the German response to the matter "very regrettable". Observers say Thanh's downfall is a sharp warning by an increasingly strident ruling communist party to its enemies and the business-political elite. His slow-motion downfall began in 2013 at the end of his tenure as head of the powerful PetroVietnam Construction (PVC) -- a subsidiary of the state oil giant. Observers say Trinh Xuan Thanh's downfall is a sharp warning by an increasingly strident ruling communist party to its enemies and the business-political elite He was shuffled into several other official jobs, including as the deputy head of Hau Giang province, a powerful government position in the south. But in May 2016 photographs emerged of his luxury Lexus tagged with government plates -- a brash violation of regulations on owning expensive cars while in office. Local media ran the photos, prompting public outrage in a country where the communist party has been stung by graft allegations and is waging an anti-corruption purge. Mismanagement charges followed, related to Thanh's time at PVC -- he was accused of causing losses worth $150 million. Additional accusations cascaded down, including an embezzlement charge related to real estate deals, which carries the death penalty. Two months after the photos were shared, Thanh quietly slipped out of the country. - 'Jungle law' - His escape turned him into Vietnam's most wanted man. "We are determined to catch Thanh. He cannot hide forever," communist party chief Nguyen Phu Trong said in state media in December. Thanh, an urban planning graduate, sought asylum in Germany, where he had spent a five-year stint working during the 1990s. The alleged operation to snatch him from the streets of a major European capital is an extraordinarily brazen and risky move by Vietnam and a dramatic escalation for the one-party state, which has waged an aggressive anti-corruption drive in recent years. "It was very, very surprising because they think that Berlin is like Hanoi or any small city in Vietnam where they can exercise the law of the jungle," political observer and dissident Nguyen Quang A told AFP. Vietnam has witnessed a broader crackdown in recent months since a new administration came to power last April. A record number of dissidents have been jailed, many with heavy prison terms, as well as officials accused of wrongdoing. Thanh's unravelling is not the first time the communist party has gone after one of its own, but analysts say anti-corruption punishments are normally driven by party infighting rather than a real commitment to reform. It is not clear what is next for Thanh, who has still not been seen since he handed himself over to officials this week. Vietnamese media was silent on the allegations emerging from Germany on Thursday morning. Construction of the Mass Rapid Transit (MRT) system is approaching its final phase, with building set to finish next year and commuters expected to be able to use the service from March 2019 Deep below Jakarta's traffic-choked streets, a warren of transit tunnels could prove the key to easing the city's crippling gridlock. Every day millions of commuters make the tortuous slog to work in slow moving cars and on motorbikes in the oppressively hot, smog-choked Indonesian capital. But hopes are high that the completion of an underground rail network could provide a solution to the worsening traffic problem in one of Asia's largest cities. Construction of the Mass Rapid Transit (MRT) system is approaching its final phase, with building set to finish next year and commuters expected to be able to use the service from March 2019. The railway will eventually stretch more than 110 kilometres and include 13 stations, with seven elevated and six underground Beneath the iconic Hotel Indonesia roundabout in central Jakarta, workers are toiling around the clock to lay tracks in the cavernous concrete tunnels that will eventually whoosh residents around the city. Problems with land acquisition have delayed the project, but it will be close to completion by year's end, MRT Jakarta, the company appointed to build and operate the railway, said on Thursday. "Despite the challenges the progress is still on track," William Sabandar, the company's president director, told AFP. Jakarta's massive traffic problems, combined with decrepit roads and inefficient public transport are often cited as obstacles to growth and investment. The rail system will not be finished before the Asian Games in August next year, but Sabandar said it would help reduce congestion. "If we have 100,000 commuters everyday, assuming there are two people in each car, we will be able to prevent 50,000 cars from entering the business area, it will be very significant," Sabandar said. The first phase of the project, which commenced in 2013, will connect a 16-kilometre route between Lebak Bulus in southern Jakarta to the Hotel Indonesia roundabout in the city's centre. Jakarta's massive traffic problems, combined with decrepit roads and inefficient public transport are often cited as obstacles to growth and investment Once operational, it is expected to transport around 173,000 passengers per day. The railway will eventually stretch more than 110 kilometres (70 miles) and include 13 stations, with seven elevated and six underground. The metro system will be integrated with the city's existing commuter train line and busway, providing a much needed alternative to the fleet of smog-belching and ageing buses currently in place. Najib Razak, then defence minister, oversaw the deal worth nearly one billion euros ($1.18 billion) to buy two Scorpene-class submarines and one Agosta-class submarine from French naval dockyards unit DCN Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak faced renewed questions Thursday over a 2002 sale of submarines to his country after a close associate was charged in France over alleged kickbacks. Najib, then defence minister, oversaw the deal worth nearly one billion euros ($1.18 billion) to buy two Scorpene-class submarines and one Agosta-class submarine from French naval dockyards unit DCN, which is linked to French defence group Thales. Abdul Razak Baginda advised Najib at the time. An investigation into the deal was launched in 2010 in response to a complaint from Malaysian rights group Suaram, and investigators allege Abdul Razak received kickbacks. He was charged in July in France with "active and passive complicity in corruption" and "misappropriation of corporate assets", a French judicial source told AFP this week. He denies wrongdoing, saying in a statement after the news broke that he had "not committed any crime of corruption or breached any laws in the matter". On Thursday Suaram, in a joint statement with NGO The Center to Combat Corruption and Cronyism, urged Malaysian authorities to take action. "It is no longer tenable for the Malaysian authorities to dismiss the Scorpene deal as above board and keep silent on the damning developments in France," the statement said. "Najib was the defence minister that signed on the contract then -- we urge for him to answer for what happened then, and what would be the steps taken by Malaysian institutions." A spokesman in Najib's office did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Najib has previously denied any link to the graft allegations, rejecting them as a politically motivated smear by the opposition. As part of the deal DCN agreed to pay 30 million euros to Thales' Asian unit, Thales International Asia (Thint Asia). The investigation revealed that another company, Terasasi, whose main shareholder was Abdul Razak, received an equivalent sum for what was billed as consultancy work, but which investigators believe was really a front for kickbacks. Under the French legal system, a suspect is charged if there is "serious" proof of wrongdoing. The case is examined by an investigating magistrate, who has the power to decide either that there is no case to answer, or to send the matter for trial in court. The person who has been charged will almost certainly be interviewed by the magistrate investigating the case. The affair emerged spectacularly in 2006, when Abdul Razak's Mongolian mistress -- who was said to have demanded a payoff for working as a language translator in the deal -- was shot dead and her body blown up with plastic explosives near Kuala Lumpur. He was later cleared of abetting the murder. An Aldabra giant tortoise is pictured at the menagerie of the Jardin des Plantes botanical garden in Paris The escapee is female, weighs 55 kilogrammes (121 pounds) and has a "gentle" disposition -- but a history of running away. A Japanese zoo said Thursday it was searching for its giant tortoise, which has escaped for the second time in less than two weeks. The reptile, measuring about one metre (three feet, three inches) in length, was captured on security cameras as she wandered out of the main entrance of Shibukawa Animal Park in western Japan's Okayama prefecture on Tuesday morning, according to zoo staffer Yoshimi Yamane. The tortoise "won't immediately die because it will eat grass available around the zoo, but we're all very worried", Yamane told AFP. "She's quiet and gentle," Yamane said, adding that the zoo has received no reports of sightings of the approximately 35-year-old tortoise. Tuesday's escape was the second time in less than a fortnight that the fleet-footed reptile, which is allowed to walk freely inside the park during opening hours, fled the zoo. Yamane said it was found walking down the road 150 metres away from the zoo on July 21. "I spotted her on the way to the zoo. I stopped my car and asked my colleagues to help," she said. "She can walk faster than we can ever imagine." Qatari artist Ahmed al-Maadheed stands next to his picture of Qatari Emir Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani titled "Tamim the Glorious" at a gallery in Doha on July 28, 2017 As Qatar finds itself at the centre of a diplomatic storm, a young artist has shot to stardom with a sketch of the emir -- now the emblem of Qatari nationalism. In the capital Doha, Qatari Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thani's face is everywhere, thanks to a silhouette of the ruler's profile and the slogan "Tamim al-majd" -- Arabic for "Tamim the Glorious" -- on bumpers, shop windows, concrete walls and mobile phone cases. "I have no words to describe what I feel when I see my illustration everywhere," says Ahmed al-Maadheed, who created his design hours after Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Egypt cut ties with Qatar on June 5 for its alleged support for Islamist extremism and ties to Iran. Qatar has denied the allegations. "It's a gift from God to have the honour to draw his majesty's portrait and have it become a symbol", Maadheed told AFP in Doha. Maadheed posted a portrait of the emir, sketched hastily in black and white immediately after Saudi Arabia and its allies announced the sanctions against Qatar, to his personal Twitter and Instagram accounts. Qataris write on a wall bearing a portrait of Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thani in Doha on July 6, 2017 The emir's profile, and the line "Tamim the Glorious" in intricate Arabic calligraphy, spread like wildfire in Qatar after a retweet by the emir's brother, finding its way into the streets as posters, stickers, flags and even jewellery. The design also resurfaced as a graffiti stencil, frequently painted in black and accompanied by the red-and-white Qatari flag. The success of "Tamim the Glorious" propelled the then-unknown artist into the limelight overnight, and by the end of June he had exhibited his work at an annex of Qatar's art museum and one of Doha's top hotels. Nearly all the paintings sold that month. Maadheed's paintings are frequently patriotic, featuring portraits of the royal family and even Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan -- an ally of Sheikh Tamim who has come to Qatar's aid with food supplies and military training in the Gulf crisis. "I draw inspiration from my culture, from nature ... but also from well-known figures", Madheed said. A man displays car stickers portraying Qatar's Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thani at a shop in the capital Doha on June 11, 2017 The emblem of the emir has since been translated to English for the country's sizeable expatriate community, who make up 80 percent of Qatar's 2.5 million population, and stickers and banners in English are now visible across the Qatari capital. Madheed, who runs a small advertising agency by day, said he had been offered $10 million (8.4 million euros) for the original Arabic design by a private party, but opted instead to gift it to Sheikh Tamim. "I'm thankful God gave me the chance to create this sort of work ... which expresses my love for the emir," Maadheed said. ties have warmed as Turkey has sought to pivot away from the West and toward Asia, seeing in China a wealth of economic possibilities Turkey's foreign minister vowed Thursday to "eliminate" anti-China forces from his country, signalling a shift in Ankara's stance towards Beijing's treatment of Muslim minorities. The two countries have sparred in the past over Beijing's treatment of the mostly Muslim Uighur minority in China's far western region of Xinjiang, who have cultural ties with Turkey and speak a Turkic language. "We treat China's security as our own security," Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu told reporters in Beijing during a joint press conference with his Chinese counterpart. "We absolutely will not allow any activities opposing or aimed against China within Turkey or its territories, and we will take measures to eliminate any media reports aimed against China." Cavusoglu's remarks followed a meeting with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi in which both sides vowed to work together to combat terrorism. Beijing blames unrest in Xinjiang on Islamist separatists seeking independence for the region, while Turkey in the past repeatedly expressed concerns about Beijing's treatment of the minority -- with Erdogan even accusing Beijing of "genocide" in the region. But ties have warmed as Turkey has sought to pivot away from the West and toward Asia, seeing in China a wealth of economic possibilities. As part of China's expansive Belt and Road initiative, an economic corridor will be established between the two countries, as well as a highspeed rail linking the eastern and western regions of Turkey. "We greatly praise China for the work it has done so far to tackle the issues confronting Islamic countries," Cavusoglu said Thursday. A Syrian girl holds a woman's hand as she walks down a street in Talbisseh on August 3, 2017, after a ceasefire took hold in the rebel-held town in central Syria A ceasefire between government forces and rebels went into effect in part of central Syria on Thursday after Russia struck a deal with the opposition on a safe zone. The zone in northern parts of Homs province is the third to be established in Syria, which has been ravaged by six years of civil war that have left more than 300,000 people dead. "From 1200 local time (0900 GMT), units of the moderate opposition and government forces will completely stop firing," Russian defence ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov said. Konashenkov said Moscow and Syrian opposition groups had reached an agreement on the "operational details" of a "de-escalation zone" north of third city Homs at talks in Cairo on July 31. Moscow has been behind a push to pacify Syria since the start of this year, after tipping the conflict in favour of the regime with its game-changing military intervention in 2015. Under a plan hammered out in May between Russia, Turkey and Iran at peace talks in Kazakhstan, four "de-escalation zones" were to be established across swathes of Syria. Last month, Moscow announced the establishment of the first two zones in southern Syria and in the rebel stronghold of Eastern Ghouta near Damascus. The zone in Homs province is expected to cover towns around Talbisseh, Al-Houla and Rastan. The fourth zone, in northwestern Idlib province, has yet to be established. - 'No violations' - A man rides a bicycle down a street past a damaged building in the central Syrian rebel-held town of Talbisseh, north of Homs, on August 3, 2017 The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a monitoring group, said Thursday there has been no violations of the ceasefire in the north of Homs province. In Talbisseh, shops and vegetable stalls reopened as motorbikes dashed along dust paths between destroyed buildings, an AFP photographer said. Children ventured out onto the main road and ran into a shop in a market area. Mustafa Khaled, an activist in the town, told AFP that representatives of Talbisseh, Al-Houla and Rastan were consulted on the deal. "It is quiet. There have been no violations in the first hour of the agreement," he said on Thursday. "But word in the street is that people don't trust the regime or the Russians," he added. Fellow Talbisseh resident Othman Taha said he hoped the ceasefire would hold after years of suffering. "We hope this is serious," he said. Al-Houla too was calm, resident Abbas Abu Osama said. Syrian President Bashar al-Assad (C) visits Russia's Hmeimim air base in the Mediterranean coastal province of Latakia on June 27, 2017 "There had been escalating bombardment of the town with air planes and artillery. But we haven't heard a single gunshot from the checkpoints around us today," he said. And in Rastan, activist Mohammed Taleb said he welcomed any agreement to end the fighting. "We in the north of Homs province agree with any deal that stops the bloodshed and destruction," he said. There was no official announcement from Syria's armed forces, which had issued its own declarations of the ceasefires in the south and in Eastern Ghouta last month. - Russian military police - The Russian defence ministry said Russian military police will set up two checkpoints and three observation posts along the boundaries of the Homs zone on Friday. Rebels have agreed to "unblock" part of a road running through the safe zone between Homs and the city of Hama further north, spokesman Konashenkov said. A "Committee for National Justice" made up of rebels and local groups would help oversee the implementation of the plan, he added. Moscow has also deployed military police in the southern ceasefire zone, created after Russia struck a deal with the United States and Jordan last month. Under a second agreement sealed with rebels in July, Russian forces set up two checkpoints and four observation posts in the rebel enclave of Eastern Ghouta. Senior Russian military commander Sergei Rudskoi holds a briefing on May 5, 2017 in front of a map of the four safe zones planned for Syria. The new zone established on August 3 is second from the top Negotiations on the Idlib zone have been complicated by conflicting interests between the international powers and by the presence of large numbers of fighters of former Al-Qaeda affiliate the Fateh al-Sham Front. Russia is planning a fresh round of talks in the Kazakh capital Astana in late August to thrash out more details of its peace plan. Both Russia and a US-led coalition have been carrying out bombing campaigns against areas of Syria still controlled by the Islamic State group that have exacted a mounting civilian toll. Separate raids by Russia and the coalition left at least 40 civilians dead on Wednesday, the Observatory said. Hong Kong tycoon Li Ka-shing (C) said he was "cautiously optimistic" about his company's future, as an upturn in major economies was weighed by geopolitical risks Hong Kong tycoon Li Ka-shing's flagship CK Hutchison on Thursday saw profits up seven percent in the first half of 2017, boosted by its European telecoms operations. The billionaire, who turned 89 on Saturday, said he was "cautiously optimistic" about his company's future, as an upturn in major economies was weighed by geopolitical risks and renewed uncertainty over commodity prices. Europe's economic recovery helped Li, who announced last week that his conglomerate and its property arm agreed to buy German energy management firm Ista International GmbH for $5.3 billion. CK Hutchison Holdings continues to count Europe as a significant income source, with its joint Italian telecom venture Wind Tre being a main contributor to its growth for the reported period, the firm said in a statement Thursday. Net profit for the company rose to HK$15.9 billion ($2 billion) in the first six months of 2017, compared with HK$14.9 million for the same period a year earlier. But that fell short of the HK$16.2 billion average estimate in a survey of three analysts by Bloomberg. Li said first half growth was adversely affected by currency changes, especially with the British pound. Looking ahead, he said China's One Belt, One Road initiative -- a massive network of ports, railways, roads and industrial parks in Asia, Europe and Africa -- would provide new opportunities. "With its close economic connectivity and geographical proximity to the mainland, as well as its advanced economic development and diversity, Hong Kong is in a unique position to benefit from potential growth opportunities ahead," Li said in a statement. Li offloaded major property investments in China after investing heavily there in the 1990s, in a move seen as a quest for stability for the tycoon's vast empire and a sign of diminishing confidence in the region. Analysts called him a maverick at the time, but his moves irked Chinese critics. His relations with China have since appeared to warm up again, as he dismissed calls for an independent Hong Kong and shared a prolonged handshake with Chinese President Xi Jinping -- a gesture typically seen as symbolic -- when Xi visited Hong Kong last month. Thursday's statement made no mention of Li's retirement, playing down reports in June that he might step down and hand over his company to his son and deputy chairman Victor Li before he turns 90. A Chinese Coast Guard ship (R) using a water cannon to attack a Vietnamese Fisheries Surveillance boat near the site of a Chinese oil rig in disputed waters of the South China Sea in 2014 Spanish oil giant Repsol said it has suspended a multi-million-dollar oil exploration project in an area of the South China Sea off Vietnam claimed by both Hanoi and Beijing, amid reports of a spike in tensions between the communist neighbours. Vietnam and China have long traded barbs over competing claims in the strategically important waterway, through which $5 trillion in trade passes annually. Tensions erupted in 2014 when Beijing moved an oil rig into waters claimed by Hanoi, sparking deadly anti-China protests in Vietnam that lasted several weeks. Vietnam has continued oil exploration activities in the sea since then, which analysts have said risk stoking anger from its powerhouse neighbour. "Operations have been suspended," said Miguel Martinez, Repsol's chief financial officer, talking to analysts. He added that Repsol has spent $27 million on the exploration off the southeastern coast of Vietnam to date and would continue to work with the country's officials and main state-run oil firm PetroVietnam. The BBC reported last month that Vietnam had agreed to suspend the project under pressure from China, but officials in Beijing and Hanoi refused to confirm the report. Vietnam's foreign ministry on Thursday defended its right to explore natural resources in its territory. "Oil and gas exploration in Vietnam with a Spanish partner are normal economic activities," spokeswoman Le Thi Thu Hang told reporters. Vietnam is often seen as shying away from confrontations with its much more powerful neighbour in the South China Sea, and the latest episode appears in line with that track record. "This is an apparent backdown," said Vietnam expert and analyst Carl Thayer. "Vietnam needs time to explore its options and this will include diplomatic contacts with Beijing... the situation is now wait and see." Vietnam is rich in oil and gas reserves, though revenues from the sector have decreased along with a dip in global crude prices. In June, a scheduled meeting between senior military officials on the Vietnam-China border was abruptly cancelled, raising suspicions that tensions may have flared behind closed doors. Beijing and Hanoi officially said the meeting was cancelled due to a scheduling conflict. A 23-year-old giant panda is equivalent in age to an 80-year-old human Zookeepers never expected the 23-year-old giant panda to give birth again when she was moved to a nature reserve in southwest China to live out the rest of her days. But Haizi started showing interest in courtship this spring, resulting in a blind date with a male panda suitor and -- four months later -- twin cubs that have made her the world's oldest panda mom, China's Giant Panda Conservation and Research Center announced Thursday. A 23-year-old giant panda is equivalent in age to an 80-year-old human. According to the center, Haizi gave birth to a 175-gram (6 ounces) female and a 123.1-gram male on July 30 at southwest Sichuan province's Wolong National Nature Reserve, where 21 panda cubs have been born this year. Haizi last delivered a pair of panda twins when she was 19 years old. In Chinese culture, a set of boy-girl twins are called "dragon-phoenix babies." "Generally, the maximum breeding age for giant pandas is 20 years old, and pandas older than that are not encouraged to participate in breeding," Li Desheng, a giant panda expert at the breeding center, said in a statement. "But Haizi's success demonstrates the advanced degree of care offered at our center -- it is a breakthrough in panda breeding." The US this week passed new sanctions targeting Iran's ballistic missile programme, alleged human rights abuses and its support for the Lebanese Hezbollah, which Washington calls a terrorist group All the parties to the Iran nuclear deal are abiding by its terms, the European Union said Thursday, despite Tehran's charges that new US sanctions breach the agreement. Tehran says the new measures violate its 2015 deal with world powers that eased sanctions in exchange for curbs on its nuclear programme, an agreement which US President Donald Trump has repeatedly threatened to tear up. "So far we consider that all parties have been implementing their commitments under the deal," Catherine Ray, a spokeswoman for EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini, told a press briefing in Brussels. "We expect their continued adherence," Ray said when asked to comment on the Iranian charges. Ray based her expectation on a July 21 meeting in Vienna of the Mogherini-chaired commission that brings together Iran and the other parties to discuss the deal's implementation. Mogherini's office issued a statement at the time saying the meeting's participants confirmed their continued adherence and "stressed the need to ensure its full and effective implementation in a constructive atmosphere." Ray said the joint commission allowed for the Iranian view on new US sanctions to be widely discussed. The United States enacted Wednesday new sanctions targeting Iran's ballistic missile programme, alleged human rights abuses and its support for the Lebanese Hezbollah, which Washington calls a terrorist group. Following the nuclear deal, Washington and the EU lifted sanctions related to Iran's atomic programme that the West alleged was for military purposes but Tehran said was peaceful. Mogherini is due in Tehran on Saturday for the inauguration of Hassan Rouhani, who was re-elected to a second term as president in May. EU countries Britain, France and Germany -- which signed the deal along with Russia, China and the United States -- remain firm backers of the agreement and have criticised the Trump administration for threatening to scrap it. African Parks officials load elephants into a truck, to be translocated from Majete Game Reserve in southern Malawi to Nkhotakota Game Reserve to increase the animal population and boost tourist attraction in the country's central region. Malawi on Thursday celebrated the successful conclusion of a two-year project moving 520 sedated elephants by truck to a reserve where the animals had been nearly wiped out by poaching. Described as one of the biggest-ever wildlife translocations, the elephants were transported 350 kilometres (220 miles) from two southern parks to the Nkhotakota reserve in the centre of the country. "We have taken extraordinary measures to secure a future for Malawi's elephants, and at the same time are helping people who live around these critically important wild areas," said Brighton Kumchedwa of the national parks department. The elephant population in Nkhotakota fell from 1,500 to just 100 in 2015. Since then security work and community relation programmes have made the reserve safe for wildlife. Africa Parks, a conservation organisation that led the translocation, described it as "historic", adding that 261 elephants were moved last year and the remainer this year. Only two elephants died in the process, which was completed on August 2. The elephants were selected family by family and darted from a helicopter, before being winched by their legs into crates on the back of 30-tonne trucks. They were driven overnight from the two parks, which had a overpopulation of elephants, to their new home in Nkhotakota. Their new home is now surrounded by a high electric fence and has also re-filled with buffalo, antelope, warthog and zebra. "This successful translocation is a pivotal moment for Malawi," said Peter Fearnhead, head of African Parks. "Rehoming more than 500 elephants, and knowing they will thrive in Nkhotakota, is a story of hope and survival, and a real example of what is possible with good collaboration." Britain's Prince Harry assisted in the first stage of the relocation. Project organisers said there were more than 10 million African elephants 100 years ago, but only an estimated 450,000 remain today. About 40,000 are poached every year to feed the insatiable demand for ivory. Deeply poor Niger has the world's highest birth rate, and its population of 18 million is growing at close to 4 percent a year Niger's president has sounded the alarm over his country's world-leading birth rate, labelling the average of over seven children per household a "handicap" to development in the impoverished west African nation. Mahamadou Issoufou said that at the current rate, Niger's population would more than double by 2035 and hit 75 million by the middle of the century. "Common sense compels us to reflect now on this future," he said Wednesday during a televised address on the 57th anniversary of Niger's independence from France. "If we cannot educate, train and care for our youth and offer them employment opportunities... they will become a handicap, or even a menace to social cohesion and prosperity." Deeply poor Niger has the world's highest birth rate of 7.6 children per household, and its population of 18 million is growing at close to four percent a year. The United Nations estimates that the population of west Africa could reach a billion people by 2050 and senior politicians in the region last month called for measures to half birth rates. Niger has a number of factors contributing to its ballooning population, not least the fact that three quarters of women are married before they reach 18 and that contraceptive use is just 12 percent nationwide. "We need to act now," Issoufou said during his address, adding that the government wanted to put a stop to underage marriage and increase education rates among girls. Tunisian police patrol the beach in front of the Riu Imperial Marhaba Hotel near in Tunisia on June 27, 2015, a day after a gunman shot and killed 38 tourists, most of them British holidaymakers in an attack claimed by the jihadists Islamic State group Britain on Thursday applauded Tunisia's "patient hard work" to boost security following the 2015 jihadist attacks that killed dozens of tourists, including 30 Britons at a beach resort. "We know that these days there can never be a situation when there is no risk at all but we are being very pleased to advise our citizens that returning to Tunis, returning to the resort areas, is something that we would like them to do," said Britain's junior foreign minister for the Middle East and North Africa, Alistair Burt, on a visit to Tunis. Gunman Seifeddine Rezgui killed 38 people, including 30 British tourists and three Irish citizens, in a shooting spree in June 2015 at the Riu Imperial Marhaba hotel on Tunisia's Mediterranean coast in Sousse. The attack was claimed by the Islamic State group. "The United Kingdom is very conscious that following the tragic events of 2015, the change in the nature of our travel advice, which was necessary to protect all our citizens, has had a significant impact," he said. "The reason our travel advice has been changed is because of the patient hard work done by the Tunisian government and the security services to respond to the needs of those who visit this country for tourism or any other purpose." Burt told a news conference: "Hard work has been done in terms of aviation security, maritime security, response to terrorist attack, and the United Kingdom has worked in partnership with security officials here." Britain's advisory against travel to Tunisia was lifted last week, although it continues to caution its nationals against visits to remote areas and near the borders with Libya and Algeria. A British inquest criticised the Tunisian police response to the massacre as "at best shambolic, at worst cowardly". Tunisia's economy is heavily dependent on tourism and authorities had repeatedly asked for the British travel advisory to be lifted. Before the beach attack, more than 400,000 British tourists visited Tunisia annually. But last year just 20,000 British visitors were recorded, official Tunisian figures show. Ultra-Orthodox Jews walk at the site of a cornerstone ceremony for a new neighbourhood in Beitar Illit, the largest settlement in the Israeli-occupied West Bank on August 3, 2017 Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Thursday that his government had done more than all its predecessors to boost Jewish settlement, prompting the Palestinian presidency to denounce Israeli "provocations". He spoke as he laid the foundation stone for a new neighbourhood in Beitar Illit, the Israeli-occupied West Bank's biggest settlement with a population of 50,000 ultra-Orthodox Jews. "No other government has done as much for settlement in the land of Israel as the government which I lead," he said, referring to the biblical Holy Land which many believers see as belonging to the Jews by divine right. Settlements in the occupied West Bank and Israeli-annexed east Jerusalem are illegal under international law and are seen as one of the greatest obstacles to peace between Israel and the Palestinians. The spokesman of the Palestinian presidency, Nabil Abu Rudeina, accused the Israeli government of "provocations" and called for "immediate international intervention", the Wafa news agency reported. Netanyahu has said he still supports a two-state solution, but peace advocates say his actions show otherwise. His right-wing coalition government leans heavily on the support of settlement advocates. Israel occupied the Palestinian territories in 1967 in a move never recognised by the international community. More than 600,000 Israelis now live in settlements alongside nearly three million Palestinians in the West Bank and east Jerusalem. In December, the United Nations Security Council declared all such settlements to be illegal after outgoing US president Barack Obama decided not to veto its resolution. Since US President Donald Trump came to power, however, Washington has remained largely quiet as Israel has announced thousands of new settlement homes. The new development in Beitar Illit will have more than 1,000 homes. A senior Palestinian official on Tuesday said the White House's silence over settlement growth and its failure to support the two-state solution encouraged "apartheid" Israeli policies. The criticism by the secretary general of the Palestine Liberation Organisation, Saeb Erekat, came after the Palestinians had previously been careful not to antagonise the new US leader since his inauguration in January. The Jerusalem Post daily said it was the first time since the 2009 start of his current run in office that Netanyahu had taken part in a settlement stone-laying ceremony. "We are working energetically for settlement in every part of the land," he said Wednesday. He also pledged to act speedily to construct new homes for the roughly 40 families evicted from the wildcat outpost of Amona in February after Israel's supreme court ruled their homes had been built illegally on private Palestinian land. The new developement, named Amichai, will be the first government-sanctioned Jewish settlement built in the Palestinian territories in some 25 years. Construction in settlements in the West Bank increased by 70 percent in the 12 months to March, according to data from Israel's central bureau of statistics. The numbers do not include Israeli-annexed east Jerusalem. Nigeria is aiming to ramp up reserves, output and boost revenue in the face of dwindling oil earnings Nigeria has signed financing deals with oil majors Shell and Chevron to develop projects that would boost reserves and revenue, the state-run oil firm said on Thursday. "Two sets of alternative financing agreements on Joint Venture (JV) projects to boost reserves and production in line with government's aspiration were executed in London on Monday," said a statement by the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) in Abuja. "The two projects are expected to generate incremental revenues of about $16 billion within the assets' life cycle including a flurry of exploratory activities that would generate employment opportunities in the industry, boost gas supply to power and rejuvenate Nigeria's industrial capacity utilisation," it said. The NNPC said the deal with Chevron would see the development of the Sonam project, hitherto financed through cash calls. The project with a potential for reserves of 211 million barrels of crude and gas reserves of 1.9 trillion cubic feet was expected to begin to bear fruits in the next three to six months, it said. The NNPC said the agreement with Shell would facilitate the development of of 156 development activities on some oil fields in the Niger delta. Andy Brown, Shell Global Upstream Director said the alternative funding arrangement was an innovative financing plan that would enable the company commence exploration activities hitherto stalled due to funding challenges. Oil majors have always complained of Nigeria's inability to pay its cash calls -- counterpart funding -- under their joint venture projects in the oil-producing region. Nigeria is aiming to ramp up reserves, output and boost revenue in the face of dwindling oil earnings. Nigeria, Africa's biggest oil producer and exporter, accounting for some two million barrels per day, relies on the sector for 90 percent of foreign exchange earnings and 70 percent of government revenue. Low oil prices since mid-2014, worsened by outages after militant attacks on facilities, have cut production and hammered revenue. Ongoing government peace talks with the rebels have halted attacks on oil facilities. US woman risks being sent to prison for up to 20 years over boyfriend's suicide A US woman risks being sent to prison for up to 20 years by a Massachusetts judge on Thursday for encouraging her teenage boyfriend to follow on plans to kill himself while she was still a juvenile. Michelle Carter was convicted of involuntary manslaughter by Judge Lawrence Moniz on June 16 in a case considered to break new ground in a state that has no law against encouraging someone to commit suicide. Her boyfriend, Conrad Roy, 18, was found dead from carbon monoxide poisoning in his pickup truck in a parking lot in July 2014. Carter, who was 17 years old at the time of his death, is due to return to a juvenile court in Taunton, south of Boston on Thursday for a sentencing hearing scheduled at 2:00pm (1800 GMT). US media says one of Roy's relatives is seeking the maximum 20 years, but that Carter's father will instead plead for probation. Carter and Roy exchanged hundreds of text messages in which the young woman repeatedly urged him to follow through on his plan to kill himself, conceal it from his parents and lie to his mother. - 'She called no one' - Some legal experts had questioned whether Carter's actions were enough to secure a conviction under involuntary manslaughter. But Moniz said it was her instruction to Roy to get back into the vehicle -- during a telephone call after he stepped out -- and her failure to sound the alarm that was crucial to the conviction. The defense said Roy had been on a path to suicide "for years" and sought to minimize Carter's role, saying the pair were in a "long-term texting relationship" and had met in person only a handful of times. The judge agreed that Roy "took significant action" toward ending his life, but said he broke that chain by getting out of his vehicle and pausing to tell someone what he was doing. He did the same thing during two previous attempts on his life -- telling first a parent and then a friend who got him help. But it was different when he told Carter, in July 2014. Prosecutors told the trial that the defendant stayed on the telephone listening to her boyfriend as he died in the truck. "She called no one," Moniz said in June, despite knowing where Roy was and having his family's telephone numbers. "And finally, she did not issue a simple additional instruction: 'get out of the truck.'" The judge rejected a theory of involuntary intoxication raised by psychiatrist Peter Breggin, a defense witness who testified that Carter's own medication would have hindered her state of mind. "In reality, there are no winners," prosecuting attorney Katie Rayburn told reporters in June. "Two families have been torn apart and will be affected by this for years to come." President Donald Trump urged his Mexican counterpart Enrique Pena Nieto not to say Mexico won't pay for the US leader's long-promised border wall US President Donald Trump pressed Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto to stop saying publicly that Mexico would not pay for his promised border wall, according to a transcript of their January conversation obtained by The Washington Post. "You cannot say that to the press," Trump told Pena Nieto according to the transcript of the January 27 call published by the Post on Thursday. "I have to have Mexico pay for the wall -- I have to," Trump said. "I have been talking about it for a two-year period." The US president acknowledged the domestic political difficulties of the issue for Pena Nieto and said a "formula" could be worked out for funding the wall along the southern US border with Mexico. "We should both say, 'We will work it out.' It will work out in the formula somehow," Trump said. "As opposed to you saying, 'We will not pay,' and me saying, 'We will not pay.'" "(But) if you are going to say that Mexico is not going to pay for the wall, then I do not want to meet with you guys anymore because I cannot live with that," Trump said. Pena Nieto pushed back saying the issue was "related to the dignity of Mexico and goes to the national pride of my country. "My position has been and will continue to be very firm, saying that Mexico cannot pay for the wall," he said. But the Mexican president agreed to "stop talking about the wall" and "look for a creative way to solve this issue." - Turnbull to Trump: 'A deal is a deal' - The Post also published the full transcript on Thursday of an acrimonious call Trump held the next day with Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull. In the call, Trump, who campaigned for the White House by taking a hardline on immigration, expressed his displeasure over a deal made by the Obama administration to accept refugees held in Australian detention centers. "This is going to kill me," Trump said. "I am the world's greatest person that does not want to let people into the country and now I am agreeing to take 2,000 people." Turnbull repeatedly pressed Trump to stand by the agreement and noted they were economic refugees who would only be accepted after strict US vetting. "There is nothing more important in business or politics than a deal is a deal," Turnbull said. "You can certainly say that it was not a deal that you would have done, but you are going to stick with it." "I have had it," Trump said finally said after more back and forth on the issue. "I have been making these calls all day and this is the most unpleasant call all day." "Putin was a pleasant call," Trump said, referring to his conversation with the Russian leader Vladimir Putin. "This is ridiculous." The extraordinary leak of the contents of presidential conversations comes just a day before Attorney General Jeff Sessions is reportedly to hold a press conference about cracking down on government leaks. Syrian refugees and militants evacuated from northeastern Lebanon are seen just before crossing into the rebel-held area of Al-Saan in Syria's central Hama province on August 3, 2017 Nearly 8,000 Syrian refugees and fighters from Lebanon arrived in central Syria Thursday as part of a ceasefire deal that also saw five Hezbollah fighters released, a monitor and the Shiite militant group said. The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group said the refugees and fighters from Al-Qaeda's former Syrian branch arrived in bus convoys to a region held by rebel and jihadists. In return, the jihadist group released five fighters from Syria regime ally Hezbollah, the Observatory and Hezbollah's "War Media" outlet said. The swap was part of a broader ceasefire deal announced last week between the two sides which ended six days of fighting in the mountainous Jurud Arsal region in the restive border area between Lebanon and Syria. "The operation is now over," Observatory head Rami Abdel Rahman told AFP. "All five convoys of buses carrying fighters from Fateh al-Sham Front and (Syrian) civilians have reached the area" in central Hama province held by rebels and jihadists, he said. As each convoy reached its destination, the jihadist group -- once known as Al-Nusra Front and later as Fateh al-Sham Front -- released one Hezbollah fighter, the Lebanese movement's "War Media" and the Observatory said. A source close to Hezbollah said the five fighters had been captured by the former Al-Qaeda affiliate during clashes in Aleppo province. An AFP correspondent in Al-Saan in Hama province, said dozens of trucks transported masked fighters who carried light weapons as well as Syrian civilian refugees, including women and children. - Hideout for militants - Masked and armed militants walk past a bus during an operation that saw thousands of jihadists and refugees evacuated to Syria from Lebanon in return for the release of five Hezbollah fighters The fighters and the civilians were later seen getting off the buses and boarding others vehicles belonging to local humanitarian organisations for an unknown destination. Relief workers handed out water bottles and food to the evacuees, the correspondent said. On Wednesday, a total of 7,777 people -- mostly civilians -- were evacuated from Jurud Arsal in line with the ceasefire. Under the deal -- which also calls for the release of three detainees from a Lebanon prison -- the bodies of nine Syrian fighters were swapped for the remains of five Hezbollah fighters. Al-Nusra Front was Al-Qaeda's affiliate in Syria until mid-2016 when it broke off ties, before going on to found a new jihadist-led alliance called Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), which now controls large swathes of Syria's northwestern Idlib province. Jurud Arsal had been used for years as a hideout by Syrian militants, but was also home to an unknown number of refugees seeking shelter from Syria's six-year war. Hezbollah launched the offensive on the Syrian militants on July 21, and had cornered rival fighters in a small pocket of territory when it announced the truce. Tens of thousands of Syrian refugees live in the town of Arsal, adjacent to the border region, and an unknown number are also thought to have taken shelter in the surrounding mountains. More than one million Syrians are registered with the United Nations as refugees in Lebanon, a country of just four million people. Kenneth Blanco, acting chief of the Justice Department's criminal division, said the case showed the US could pursue cybercriminals operating in other countries A US judge on Thursday sentenced a Russian citizen to 46 months in prison for his role in a global computer fraud that took in millions, the Justice Department announced. Following his 2016 extradition from Finland, Maxim Senakh, 41, pleaded guilty in March in a federal court in Minneapolis to wire and computer fraud. He will be deported on his release from prison, the department said. Prosecutors said Senakh used malicious computer code dubbed "Ebury" to infect thousands of computers around the world to harvest user names and passwords. The conspirators then used the log-in credentials to redirect internet traffic for click-fraud and email spam. Kenneth Blanco, acting chief of the Justice Department's criminal division, said the case showed the US could pursue cybercriminals operating in other countries. "We have the ability and the determination to identify them, find them and bring them to justice," Blanco said in a statement. Senakh was extradited from Finland in January of last year despite strong objections from Moscow. Finland shares an 830-mile (1,340-kilometer) border with Russia and Helsinki has worked to main stable relations with its larger neighbor since the end of World War II. US prosecutors have reduced the charges against an executive of German carmaker Volkswagen for his involvement in the company's ongoing emissions cheating scandal US prosecutors reduced the charges Thursday against a Volkswagen executive who has agreed to plead guilty to his part in covering up the "dieselgate" emissions-cheating scandal that has rocked the company. The change come a day before Oliver Schmidt, who led the German automaker's US regulatory compliance office until 2015, was scheduled to appear in a Detroit court to enter his plea. Prosecutors dropped a wire fraud charge, which carried a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison. They retained a fraud conspiracy charge and a charge of violating the US Clean Air Act, which together carry a maximum sentence of seven years. VW admitted in 2015 to equipping about 11 million cars worldwide with defeat devices to evade emissions tests, including about 600,000 vehicles in the United States. Diesel cars marketed as clean were in fact spewing 40 times the permissible limits of nitrogen oxide during normal driving. Schmidt would be the second VW employee to plead guilty, after former company engineer James Liang admitted last year to helping devise the defeat devices. An FBI affidavit cited him as a cooperating witness. The company pleaded guilty in March to charges it defrauded the US and conspired to violate the Clean Air Act and agreed to pay $4.3 billion in penalties. That was on top of $17.5 billion in civil settlements. Volkswagen still faces an array of legal challenges in Germany and worldwide, and has so far set aside more than 22 billion euros ($24.4 billion) to cover dieselgate costs. Experts estimate the final bill could be higher. Ivory is put into a crusher during #IvoryCrush in Central Park, New York US officials destroyed nearly two tons of carved illegal ivory worth $8-10 million in New York's Central Park on Thursday to denounce poaching that kills nearly 100 elephants a day in Africa. On a brilliant summer's day with Manhattan's skyscrapers visible above the trees, decorative objects were placed on a conveyor belt and sent into a crusher, sending plumes of dust into the air to cheers. The haul, which was the result of three years of hard investigative work in New York state, represents ivory from around 100 elephants. John Calvelli, a senior official from the Wildlife Conservation Society, which helped organize the event, said 96 elephants are killed in Africa on average each day or around 35,000 a year. The event was the third time authorities have staged a public ivory crushing in the United States since 2013. "We're sending a message to the rest of the world. Stop buying ivory and lets save these elephants," Calvelli told AFP. US federal officials, Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance and New York Republican Congressman Dan Donovan were among the hundreds of supporters who attended the event. "It's not ok to be selling these goods anymore and perpetuating and prolonging the agony of the situation," said British rocker Mick Fleetwood of Fleetwood Mac fame, who turned out to lend his support. The international trade in ivory was outlawed in 1989. China remains the largest market, with the United States in second place Speaking to AFP, he denounced the rate of elephant killing as "beyond imagination." "If you're dealing in the proceeds of wildlife crime, if you are trading ivory, you're going to get prosecuted and it's not going to be pretty," Vance told supporters at the event. The New York State Department of Environmental Conservation carried out the crushing of tusks, trinkets, statues and jewelry. The international trade in ivory was outlawed in 1989. China remains the largest market, with the United States in second place. Beijing has said it will ban all ivory trade and processing by the end of 2017, a move that conservationists have hailed a "game changer." Calvelli said the three largest markets in the United States -- California, Hawaii and New York -- have fundamentally closed in recent years. Elephant tusks are highly prized, particularly in Asia, where they are carved into ivory statuettes and jewelry. The WWF estimates that in the early 20th century, there may have been as many as three to five million African elephants, but says there are now around 415,000. Montreal Mayor Denis Coderre greets a busload of Haitian asylum seekers from the United States as it arrives at the Olympic Stadium in Montreal on August 3, 2017 Officials in Canada scrambled Thursday to find enough cots and empty beds to accommodate hundreds of mostly Haitian asylum seekers from the United States, even putting Montreal's famed Olympic stadium to use as a makeshift dormitory and welcome center. Authorities said 500 migrants turned up Tuesday, traversing a border crossing at the southern Quebec town of Lacolle. Another 300 people turned up on Wednesday, further taxing already overwhelmed immigration facilities. On average, "we've gone from 50 (asylum) requests per day to 150. We're overflowing," Quebec's Minister of Immigration, Diversity and Inclusiveness Kathleen Weil said, sounding somewhat stressed. Nevertheless, she assured listeners on local Quebec radio that the government was coping and was working with federal authorities to get the situation under control. Authorities said asylum seekers have been crossing the border into Canada since Donald Trump was elected president in the United States, and began making good on his campaign pledges on immigration. The United States granted Temporary Protection Status (TPS) to an estimated 60,000 Haitian nationals after the January 2010 earthquake which killed more than 200,000 people. With many of those visas set to expire in January, increasing numbers of migrants have been arriving in Canada, fearful the Trump administration could send them packing. Warm, hospital weather, and an approaching visa deadline, are believed to be responsible for a huge increase in arrivals. Many Haitians in the United States have settled on Quebec and especially, Montreal, home to one of the largest Haitian communities in the world. "Welcome to Quebec" read the sign a woman from Montreal's Haitian community waved furiously, as she stood behind a barricade separating from the newly arrived migrants, who had just spent their first night in the Olympic stadium. Authorities have been housing the migrants in university dorms and hotels, but are quickly running out of beds. Dozens of cots were placed in the corridors of Montreal's Olympic Stadium, the main venue for the 1976 Games, to try to make up the shortfall. "We are in control of the situation," said Quebec's Health Minister Lucie Charlebois, who said officials had tapped every hotel, motel, dorm room and YMCA for emergency lodging. Officials said they are worried about the academic year fast approaching, when the college dorms that have provided housing for hundreds will no longer be available. A participant attends the annual Jerusalem Gay Pride parade on August 3, 2017 Thousands of revellers attended Jerusalem's Gay Pride parade under police protection on Thursday, bringing the rainbow flag to the traditionally conservative city. More than 10,000 people attended the parade through central Jerusalem, police said, with dozens of roads closed off by security two years after a 16-year-old girl was stabbed to death by an ultra-Orthodox Jew during the event. All marchers were inspected before joining, with carrying a weapon of any kind prohibited. Police said 22 people had been arrested before and during the parade, including one carrying a knife. Revellers carried rainbow flags, banged drums and sang songs against homophobia. Many laid flowers under a picture of Shira Banki, who was killed at the 2015 march. Banki was attacked by Yishai Shlissel, an ultra-Orthodox Jew who also stabbed five other people and is now serving a life sentence. Participants attend the annual Jerusalem Gay Pride parade on August 3, 2017 Shlissel had spent 10 years in jail after a similar attack on the 2005 Jerusalem Gay Pride march, and had been released just three weeks before the event, leading to criticism of the police. Israel has the most open attitude to homosexuality in the Middle East, with a large and influential gay community. But conservative Jerusalem, a heavily religious city sacred to Jews, Muslims and Christians, is far less gay-friendly than liberal Tel Aviv. More than 100,000 people attended the seaside Tel Aviv Pride march in June. Ahead of Thursday's parade, one of Jerusalem's two chief rabbis was quoted in local media as condemning it, saying it contradicted "the holiness of Jerusalem that is so important to us". "Holding the parade in the city streets is causing more damage to its supporters than benefiting them," Rabbi Aryeh Stern said. Participants attend the annual Jerusalem Gay Pride parade on August 3, 2017 But Roi, an Israeli taking part in the march, said he thought the majority of Jerusalemites were tolerant of homosexuality. "There is always going to be some part of the ultra-religious, ultra-Orthodox that don't like us, but they have their own parade today," he said, gesturing towards around 50 protesters opposed to the pride march. Same-sex marriage is recognised but not performed in Israel, where there is no civil marriage, meaning that gay couples must travel abroad to wed. Separately on Thursday, Israel's High Court postponed for six months a ruling that would allow same-sex couples to arrange surrogate births. Michelle Carter and Conrad Roy exchanged hundreds of text messages in which the young woman repeatedly urged him to follow through on his plan to kill himself, conceal it from his parents and lie to his mother A Massachusetts judge on Thursday sentenced a 20-year-old woman to two and a half years, of which 15 months would be served behind bars, for encouraging her teenage boyfriend to make good on plans to kill himself. Judge Lawrence Moniz told Michelle Carter in the Bristol County House of Corrections that after the 15 months, the balance of her sentence would be suspended until August 1, 2022 on probation. Moniz said it had been important to balance punishment and rehabilitation for her role in the death of Conrad Roy, 18, who died from carbon monoxide poisoning in his pickup truck in July 2014. Carter and Roy exchanged hundreds of text messages in which the young woman repeatedly urged him to follow through on his plan to kill himself, conceal it from his parents and lie to his mother. Carter, who was 17 years old at the time of Roy's death, stood to hear the sentence in a juvenile court in Taunton, south of Boston, her hands clasped in front and her eyes cast down. She wore red pants and a cream blouse. Reading a victim impact statement, Roy's father, Conrad Roy Junior, told the court he was heartbroken over the loss of his son and accused Carter of exploiting his battle with depression as a pawn in her own well-being. "How could Michelle Carter behave so viciously and encourage my son to end his life? Where was her humanity? In what world is this acceptable?" he asked. "I pray that his death will save lives one day," Roy's mother said in a statement read out by the prosecution. "I pray that a law comes so forth so another mother doesn't have to endure what I am." The prosecution had sought a sentence of between seven and 12 years, accusing Carter of waging "a deliberate, well-thought-out campaign" to cause Roy's death in a bid to seek attention and sympathy. "Her actions killed Conrad Roy. She ended his life to better her own," the prosecuting lawyer told the court. "She has not accepted responsibility," she said. "She has shown no remorse." The defense requested five years of supervised probation attached to conditions, including mental health counseling, and said Carter herself suffered from depression, had been on anti-depressants, and battled eating disorders. High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy / Vice-President of the Commission Federica Mogherini speaks during a press conference July 25, 2017 Amnesty International on Thursday urged EU diplomatic chief Federica Mogherini to use a visit to Iran this weekend to demand that Tehran immediately release all imprisoned human rights activists. London-based Amnesty called on the European Union to take a tougher stance as the group published a report accusing Iran of a "vicious crackdown" that it says has dashed hopes of rights reform under President Hassan Rouhani. Amnesty's Iran researcher Nassim Papayianni said the rights organisation is urging Mogherini to request a meeting with jailed human rights defenders, and ensure they are not targeted later as a result. "We would also call on her to forcefully call for the release, immediately and unconditionally, of all human rights defenders that are imprisoned in Iran," Papayianni told AFP. The Amnesty report published Wednesday highlights 45 cases of activists, some of whom were jailed for 10 years or more for simple acts such as being in contact with the UN, EU or human rights organisations including Amnesty International. Shorter prison sentences were handed down to activists fighting for justice in cases of mass extrajudicial executions and enforced disappearances in the 1980s. Papayianni said Mogherini should ask to meet with activists including Narges Mohammadi, the former head of the Centre for Human Rights Defenders in Iran. Amnesty said the criminal case against Mohammadi was opened in reprisal for a 2014 meeting she had with Mogherini's predecessor, Catherine Ashton. The report's lead researcher Philip Luther said "the EU must not stay silent over the outrageous treatment" of activists and should press for their release "instead of appeasing Iranian officials." Mogherini's spokeswoman Catherine Ray told a press briefing Thursday that her boss would "raise the topic" of human rights when she visits Tehran for Rouhani's inauguration ceremony on Saturday. "Human rights remain a central feature of our engagement with Iran," Ray said, without saying whether she would call for the activists' release. A British security researcher has been indicted and accused of creating and distributing malware to attack banks A British computer security researcher hailed as a hero for thwarting the "WannaCry" ransomware onslaught was in US custody on Thursday after being indicted on charges of creating malware to attack banks. Marcus Hutchins, known by the alias "Malwaretech," was charged in an indictment dated July 12 and unsealed this week by federal authorities in Wisconsin. The US Justice Department said in a statement Hutchins was arrested Wednesday in Las Vegas, where a major Def Con hacker security conference took place over the weekend. Twitter postings from other security researchers said he was detained as he prepared to fly back to Britain. Hutchins faces criminal charges including conspiracy to commit computer fraud, according to the US Department of Justice. The indictment accuses Hutchins and another individual of making and distributing Kronos "banking Trojan," a reference to malicious software designed to steal user names and passwords used at online banking sites. Since it was created, Kronos has been configured to work on banking systems in Britain, Canada, Germany, Poland, France, and other countries, according to the DOJ. The indictment set the time of the activity by Hutchins as being from July 2014 to July of the following year. - 'Dark markets' - Hutchins was part of a conspiracy to distribute the hacking tool on so-called dark markets, according to the indictment signed last month by US Attorney Gregory Haanstad. Kronos was evidently first made available through certain internet forums in early 2014, and was marketed and distributed through a hidden online AlphaBay marketplace, according to US prosecutors. AlphaBay was shut down by US and European police in a crackdown on two huge "dark web" marketplaces that allowed the anonymous online trade of drugs, hacking software and guns. The timing of the indictment of Hutchins raises questions as to whether insights mined from the AlphaBay probe lead to his arrest. Underground websites AlphaBay and Hansa Market had tens of thousands of sellers of deadly drugs like fentanyl and other illicit goods serving more than 200,000 customers worldwide. AlphaBay, the largest dark web market, had been run out of Thailand, and filled a gap left behind by the notorious Silk Road online market, shut down by authorities in 2013. Officials at the time said shutting down the two markets and the arrests of administrators enabled them to collect extensive intelligence on buyers and sellers, including criminal gangs. Their names were being distributed to law enforcement in 37 countries. - From hero to accused - Prosecutors say the British researcher indicted in the United States created the Kronos banking Trojan that stole credentials for the financial system Lawyers at the San Francisco-based online rights group Electronic Frontier Foundation said they were looking to contact Hutchins. "The EFF is deeply concerned about the arrest of Marcus Hutchins, a security researcher known for shutting down the WannaCry ransomware. We are looking into the matter, and are reaching out to Hutchins," a statement from the group said. A spokesperson for the British Embassy in Washington said only that they "are in touch with local authorities in Las Vegas following reports of a British man being arrested." Hutchins was hailed as a hero in May for finding and triggering a "kill switch" for a WannaCry ransomware attack that was spreading wildly around the world, locking away data on computers and demanding money for its release. Andrew Mabbitt, another security researcher who was with Hutchins in Las Vegas, said he did not believe the allegations. "He spent his career stopping malware, not writing it," Mabbitt said on Twitter. Michelle Carter and Conrad Roy exchanged hundreds of text messages in which the young woman repeatedly urged him to follow through on his plan to kill himself, conceal it from his parents and lie to his mother A judge on Thursday sentenced a 20-year-old Massachusetts woman to two and a half years, with 15 months to be served behind bars, for encouraging her teenage boyfriend to make good on plans to kill himself. A tearful Michelle Carter stood with hands clasped and eyes cast down to hear her fate over the death of Conrad Roy, who died from carbon monoxide poisoning in July 2014. In an extraordinary case seen as breaking new ground in a state with no law against encouraging suicide, Carter swapped hundreds of text messages with Roy, repeatedly urging him to follow through on his plan to kill himself and conceal it from his parents. The defense argued that Carter, who was 17 years old at the time, was racked with depressive disorders, on anti-depressants and suffered from eating disorders, all of which swayed her judgment. She had faced up to 20 years in prison at her sentencing in a juvenile court in Taunton, south of Boston. But Judge Lawrence Moniz, who convicted Carter of involuntary manslaughter in June, said it was important to balance punishment and rehabilitation for her role in Roy's death in his pickup truck in a parking lot. Moniz said that after 15 months behind bars, the balance of her sentence would be suspended until August 1, 2022. The sentence was stayed pending expected appeals. Roy's father, also named Conrad Roy, accused Carter of exploiting his son's battle with depression for her own self-aggrandizement. "How could Michelle Carter behave so viciously and encourage my son to end his life? Where was her humanity?" he asked. "I pray that his death will save lives one day," Roy's mother said in a statement read out by the prosecution, calling for changes in the law to guard against other families enduring the same torment. The prosecution had recommended a sentence of between seven and 12 years, accusing Carter of deliberately engineering Roy's death in a bid to seek attention and sympathy. - 'Terrible tragedy' - "Her actions killed Conrad Roy. She ended his life to better her own," the prosecutor told the court. "She has not accepted responsibility," she said. "She has shown no remorse." Carter's lawyer urged the judge for leniency, saying his client, dressed in red pants and a cream blouse, hoped to build a career in real estate after graduating from high school, was still in counseling and was not a danger to the public. "This is a terrible, terrible tragedy and she very much regrets this," said Joseph Cataldo, requesting five years of supervised probation attached to conditions such as mental health counseling. But the case has divided legal opinion on whether Carter's actions were even enough to secure a conviction under involuntary manslaughter. In convicting Carter, Moniz said it was her instruction to Roy to get back into the vehicle -- during a telephone call after he stepped out -- and her failure to sound the alarm that was crucial to the guilty verdict. Prosecutors said Carter stayed on the telephone listening to her boyfriend as he died in the truck. "She called no one," Moniz said in June, despite Carter knowing where Roy was and having his family's telephone numbers. "And finally, she did not issue a simple additional instruction: 'Get out of the truck.'" He rejected a theory of involuntary intoxication raised by psychiatrist Peter Breggin, a defense witness who testified that Carter's own medication would have hindered her state of mind. The American Civil Liberties Union criticized the prosecution's theory that she killed Roy with her words, saying in June that the conviction "exceeds the limits of our criminal laws and violates free speech protections." But David Rossman, law professor at Boston University, said the case was so extraordinary that it was unlikely to open the door to a rash of prosecutions, such as manslaughter cases against doctors treating terminal patients. "It's possible," he told AFP. "But that would be a careless use of what happened in Massachusetts, because it would be ignoring what the court said." The attack came a day after a Taliban suicide bomber killed two US soldiers in Afghanistan's restive southern province of Kandahar when he rammed a vehicle filled with explosives into a convoy of foreign forces, the aftermath of which is seen here A Taliban suicide bomber attacked a convoy of foreign forces in Afghanistan late Thursday, killing one NATO soldier and wounding six other personnel, in the latest blow to the international coalition in the war-torn country. The deadly attack near Bagram Airbase comes at the peak of the Taliban summer fighting season and just a day after the insurgent group killed two US soldiers in the restive southern province of Kandahar. "One Resolute Support Soldier was killed and six personnel (five troops and one interpreter) were wounded Thursday evening when their patrol was attacked by a suicide bomber," Nato said in a statement referring to the name of its Afghan mission. "The patrol was conducting a partnered mission with the Afghan National Army when a personnel-borne IED (improvised explosive device) detonated," in Qarabagh district in Kabul province. "The RS personnel who were wounded are being treated at the U.S. military hospital at Bagram Airfield. All of the wounded are listed in stable condition," it added. The nationality of the dead soldier and injured was not immediately known but Qarabagh district is located near Bagram Airbase, the largest American base in Afghanistan, around 50 kilometres north of the capital Kabul. The Taliban quickly claimed the attack on social media and in Whatsapp messages to journalists. Civilians were also reported to have been wounded in the nighttime attack. "#Afghanistan explosion in Qarabagh district, 12 wounded brought to our #Kabul hospital so far," tweeted an Italian-run hospital in the capital which specialises in dealing with victims of bombings. The attack came after two US soldiers died on Wednesday when a Taliban suicide bomber rammed a vehicle filled with explosives into a convoy of foreign forces in the big poppy-growing region of Kandahar. NATO forces ended their more than a decade-long combat mission in Afghanistan at the end of 2014. Since then Afghan troops and police, beset by soaring casualties, have struggled to beat back the resurgent Taliban, while facing the growing menace of the Islamic State group. The Taliban have been ramping up their campaign against beleaguered government forces, underscoring rising insecurity in the country during the summer fighting season, when the warmer weather tends to spur an increase in militant attacks. Early last month a US soldier was killed and two others wounded in an attack in Kandahar's neighbouring Helmand province while conducting operations against the Taliban. The attacks come as United States President Donald Trump weighs sending more American troops to Afghanistan nearly 16 years after the US invasion to topple the Taliban regime. US troops in Afghanistan now number 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. American military commanders in Afghanistan have requested thousands of extra boots on the ground and Defense Secretary Jim Mattis is believed to be close to presenting a new US military strategy for Afghanistan to Trump. US President Donald Trump is pushing for a crackdown on "illegal leaks" to the press For months, US President Donald Trump has repeatedly fumed on Twitter about leaks to the "fake news" media seen as casting his administration in a bad light. Now he apparently plans to do something about it. Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats are to hold a briefing on Friday to address "leaks of classified material threatening national security." The announcement comes after six months of political intrigue and open feuding in the White House, which has manifested itself in a torrent of damaging revelations to the media. It also comes after a leak that was unusual even by the standards of this administration -- the publication by The Washington Post of the contents of private phone calls between Trump and foreign leaders. The newspaper published the full transcripts Thursday of conversations the Republican billionaire leader held in January with Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto and Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull. Trump urged Pena Nieto, according to the transcripts, to stop saying publicly that he would not pay for the promised border wall with Mexico and he told Turnbull, after an acrimonious exchange, that theirs was his "most unpleasant call all day." While Trump has yet to address the leak of his personal calls, he has raged against "illegal leaks" in the past and even went so far as to lash out publicly at Sessions last week for taking what he called a "very weak" position on the issue. In a move seen in part as a bid to impose more discipline on the White House, Trump last week also named John Kelly, a no-nonsense retired Marine Corps general, to be his new chief of staff. Leaks have long been the currency of politicians and journalists in the US capital, and they figured prominently in the 2016 presidential campaign with the publication by WikiLeaks of emails from Hillary Clinton's campaign. But the extraordinary leak of the transcripts of private phone calls between a US president and foreign leaders was met with some concern -- even from outspoken Trump critics. "Leaking the transcript of a presidential call to a foreign leader is unprecedented, shocking, and dangerous," David Frum, a former speechwriter for president George W. Bush, wrote in The Atlantic. "It is vitally important that a president be able to speak confidentially -- and perhaps even more important that foreign leaders understand that they can reply in confidence," said Frum. "If these calls can be leaked, any call can be leaked -- and no leader dare say anything to the president of the United States that he or she would not wish to read in the news at home." - 'Dangerous to our foreign policy' - John Kirby, who served as spokesman for both the Pentagon and the State Department under president Barack Obama, agreed with Frum. "Regardless of one's politics or of reasons behind the leak, it is dangerous to our foreign policy," Kirby said on Twitter. "I would've lost my mind if transcripts of Obama's calls to foreign leaders leaked," said Tommy Vietor, Obama's former National Security Council spokesman. "He wouldn't have sounded so dumb, but it's still absurd," Vietor said on Twitter. The Republican staff on the Senate Committee on Homeland Security published a report last month that concluded there has been an "unprecedented wave of potentially damaging leaks of information" since Trump took office in January. "Under President Trump's predecessors, leaks of national security information were relatively rare," the report said. "Under President Trump, leaks are flowing at the rate of one a day." "The sheer volume and scope of the sources indicates that they are coming from across the government," the report said, adding that most of the leaks so far have concerned the various investigations into alleged collusion between Russia and members of the Trump election campaign. "But the leak frenzy has gone far beyond the Kremlin and has extended to other sensitive information that could harm national security," the report said. MEXICO CITY (AP) - Mexico's surveillance scandal widened Wednesday to encompass a pair of prominent human rights attorneys probing a multiple homicide case whose victims include a photojournalist and an activist. The internet watchdog Citizen Lab said Karla Micheel Salas and David Pena were targeted in 2015, weeks after they questioned prosecutors' handling of the killings of activist Nadia Vera, journalist Ruben Espinosa and three other women in a Mexico City apartment in July that year. The victims were tortured and shot to death. The lawyers' cellphones were targeted by messages designed to infect them with the same spyware that Citizen Lab previously determined was sent to 19 Mexican individuals or groups, the cyber-sleuths said in a research note. One said she believed she was infected by it. FILE - In this Aug. 3, 2015 file photo, a photograph of murdered photojournalist Ruben Espinosa sits among flowers and candles in front of his casket inside a funeral home before his wake begins in Mexico City. Mexico's surveillance scandal widened Wednesday, August 2 2017, to encompass a pair of prominent human rights attorneys probing a multiple homicide case whose victims include a photojournalist and an activist. The internet watchdog Citizen Lab said Karla Micheel Salas and David Pena were targeted in 2015, weeks after they questioned prosecutors' handling of the killings of activist Nadia Vera, journalist Ruben Espinosa and three other women in a Mexico City apartment in July that year. The victims were tortured and shot to death. (AP Photo/Marco Ugarte, File) Other Mexican targets of the sophisticated Pegasus spyware, made by Israel-based NSO Group, have included journalists investigating high-level corruption, opposition politicians and activists, and international experts critical of the government's probe into the 2014 disappearance of 43 students from a rural teachers college. NSO Group says it only sells Pegasus - which lets attackers siphon away the contents of cell phones and clandestinely convert them into eavesdropping devices - to governments for use against criminals and terrorists. University of Toronto-based Citizen Lab said those conditions were clearly violated in Mexico - though it says it has no conclusive proof of government involvement. President Enrique Pena Nieto has dismissed any suggestion that his government is responsible. The Attorney General's Office, one of the state agencies that bought Pegasus, has opened an investigation. But victims have said they doubt its impartiality and have called for an independent, international probe. John Scott-Railton, a senior Citizen Lab researcher, said "a pattern has emerged" in the Mexico cases: "Lawyers and investigators whose work contradicts official accounts have been targeted with NSO spyware on at least three occasions." Salas and Pena were both targeted with links sent to their cell phones that Citizen Lab said pointed back to the same online infrastructure used to sow the Pegasus malware in the other Mexico cases. "I think the only people interested in spying on us are state agents," Salas told The Associated Press. Pena said he didn't fall for either of two infection attempts. But Salas said she did, on Oct. 1, 2015. The message purported to include information about a wake for a friend's deceased father. Salas is worried. Her phone contained sensitive information that could put lives in jeopardy. When her phone was infected, Salas and Pena had just presented a report to the Mexico City council on 10 emblematic crimes in the capital that had gone unpunished. The two attorneys have constantly questioned official accounts in high-impact cases, including their representation of the families of Vera and two of the women killed with her. Vera and her friend Espinosa had fled the state of Veracruz after receiving death threats from agents of the state government, which was then headed by Javier Duarte, who is currently in prison facing corruption charges after being extradited from Guatemala. Pena said he thinks he and Salas could have been targeted because of their handling of the quintuple homicide "for its relevance, for its complexity and to find out what we know, which has implications in Veracruz and with groups of hitmen operating in Mexico City." The capital's Human Rights Commission has accused the prosecutor handling the case of negligence, violating due process and of dishonesty. A Mexican cyber expert who has worked with Citizen Lab on the investigation, Luis Fernando Garcia of the collective R3D, said they are currently analyzing more messages in an attempt to identify additional Pegasus victims. __ Bajak reported from Houston. ST. JOHN'S, Newfoundland (AP) - Canadian officials are investigating the death of yet another endangered North Atlantic right whale. The federal fisheries department confirmed this week that a whale was found dead in the Gulf of St. Lawrence after washing ashore on the west coast of Newfoundland. In all, the carcasses of 10 of the large mammals have been found in the Gulf since June 7, concerning researchers who say only about 525 are believed to be alive. The department says the "unprecedented number of right whale deaths is very concerning" and it is taking steps to protect the dwindling population. Those include closing the snow crab fishery to prevent gear entanglements, aerial surveillance, asking fishermen to report whale sightings and urging mariners to reduce their speed to reduce ship strikes. ISTANBUL (AP) - Turkey's state-run media says authorities have arrested a French national for alleged links to a Syrian Kurdish group that Turkey considers to be a terrorist organization. Anadolu Agency, quoting unnamed security sources, said Wednesday that the Frenchman was detained on July 26 after he crossed into Turkey from Iraq's autonomous Kurdish region. He was questioned by anti-terrorism police and later by court officials who ordered him arrested on charges of "aiding and assisting a terrorist organization." Anadolu said police found pictures on a social media site showing the French national posing with Syrian Kurdish militia. Investigators also found pictures and reports that the Frenchman had made about the group's life and weapons, it said. MOBILE, Ala. (AP) - Jaguar fur surrounds a federal case in which prosecutors say an Alabama clothing consignment shop violated the Endangered Species Act. Prosecutors say in a criminal complaint that the shop, which does business as Hertha's Second Edition, violated the federal act by selling a fur coat to a customer in Biloxi, Mississippi. Authorities say the coat was made partly from the hide of a jaguar. A lawyer representing the store and its affiliated firm, Hershey's Girls LLP, didn't immediately return phone and email messages. No one answered the phone at its store in Mobile, Alabama, early Wednesday. The complaint filed this week provides no details on the jaguar, but says the coat was sold between Jan. 13 and Feb. 6. If convicted, the charge is punishable by up to a year in prison. NEW YORK (AP) - Andrew Zimmern, host of Travel Channel's "Bizarre Foods," thinks he's misunderstood. He says he's known as "fat guy runs around world, eats bugs," but adds, "I don't think I've eaten a bug or an organ in 'Bizarre Foods' in years." "I purposely set out to make a show that's entertaining," he said. "At the same time I try to be very thoughtful and thought-provoking and I try to educate and I take the cultural lessons of the show very, very, very seriously." In this Thursday, July 20, 2017 photo, Travel Channel's "Bizzare Foods" host Andrew Zimmern, a four-time James Beard award-winning chef, samples Taiwanese noodle soup and pork roll at Happy Stony Noodle in Elmhurst, Queens in New York. His new show, "The Zimmern List," debuts in early 2018 showcasing his personal favorite places to eat when the cameras aren't rolling. (AP Photo/Kathy Willens) The show's current season focuses on American destinations, along with their history and social context. And a new show, "The Zimmern List," debuts early 2018 showcasing his favorite places, "where I actually go when the cameras aren't rolling." Zimmern - a chef who's won four James Beard awards - invited The Associated Press to follow him in Queens, New York, for a glimpse of what "The Zimmern List" will be like. In the Astoria neighborhood, he sampled cured meats and pastries at Muncan Food Corp., founded by an immigrant from the former Yugoslavia; then had a goat dish called katakat at Kababish, which serves Pakistani, Indian and Bangladeshi food in Jackson Heights; and finished with Taiwanese noodle soup, pork roll and minced vegetables at Happy Stony Noodle in Elmhurst. Faisel and Hera Shaikh, from Ashburn, Virginia, were picking up food from Kababish when Zimmern appeared. After taking a few selfies with him, Faisel Shaikh said he's dined at places recommended by Zimmern around the world, from Dubai to Australia. "I see his show and I write it down," Shaikh said. "Wherever he goes, I go." Shaikh says he likes the show because Zimmern tells "the whole story ... the culture, the society, the background, about where the food comes from." Here are some excerpts from AP's wide-ranging chat with Zimmern, including advice on using social media to find good food when you travel, and a message of hope for families struggling with addiction. FINDING GOOD FOOD WHEN YOU TRAVEL "I google local food writers. ... I look up who are the most famous chefs on the Eater Heatmap but I also look on the Michelin guide and see who are the three-star Michelin chefs." "People forget that if you go onto Instagram or Twitter, you can actually click on someone's feed and look at their timeline and you can flip back and back and back. So if I want to know where's great to eat in Italy, I'll look and see where Michael White and Mario Batali and all these other chefs have eaten when they've been in Italy last year. When I want to look up where's fun to eat in Paris, I'll look and see where Daniel Boulud went and ate last year when he was in Paris." RELATIONSHIP WITH ANTHONY BOURDAIN "We're friends, we do hang out. I did his stage show with him when he came to Minneapolis. ... We were both part of the Jose Andres tribute dinner last February, that was the last time we saw each other. We went outside on the deck and locked the door behind us, so we could just be alone, and spend a half-hour catching up. I don't think we're competition at all actually. I think Tony would probably say the same thing." "I absolutely adore what Tony does because of his storytelling ability. And it's shot beautifully." ON ADDICTION: NOBODY IS HOPELESS "I've been sober for 25 years. I was a heroin addict. An alcoholic, I was a criminal. I was homeless. So I have a very, very low bottom story. Tried to kill myself by drinking myself to death, didn't work, living in an abandoned building, stealing purses (left) on chairs to live. So I've come a pretty long way." "I hope family members or loved ones who have someone (struggling with addiction) hear it loud and clear. Don't listen to the statistics. There is recovery available for everyone. There is no one so hopeless as to actually be hopeless. It just does not exist. Sometimes intervention is necessary. Actually separation from substances. And a lot of families don't go down the intervention route fast enough. ... There are tons of great places out there." MOST BIZARRE FOOD EVER EATEN "In Samoa, we had a coral worm that swims up from the bottom of the ocean, thousands of feet, and dies in the sun and then falls back down and fertilizes the coral. ... To eat that worm when it floats to the surface with the natives, I can't think of something stranger. Enset, which is a bread, made from pounded palm roots that's buried in the ground for months and fermented before it's baked, that some of the tribal Ethiopians still make in that country ... that's certainly strange. Everybody wants me to call out some horribly fermented, heinous - like casu marzu, the maggot-infested cheese of Sardinia, but the term bizarre in Webster's means unique and interesting. People always ask me, 'What's the strangest thing you've ever eaten?' and I'm just like, 'None of it is strange to the people who are eating it there.' I've not eaten any of those foods, enset, or sea worm or the casa marzu, in America. I get up in the morning, I make eggs and have cereal with my kid, roast a chicken for dinner." ___ Listen to AP Travel's podcast interview with Andrew Zimmern at http://bit.ly/2f87geF In this Thursday, July 20, 2017, photo, Faisel Shaikh, left, of Ashburn, Virginia, embraces "Bizarre Foods" host Andrew Zimmern, during a chance encounter outside Kababish, a takeout store in the Queens borough of New York that specializes in serving Pakistani, Indian and Bangladeshi takeout dishes. Shaikh's wife Hera and the couples teenage son watch from the store's entrance. Faisel Shaikh said he's dined at places recommended by Zimmern around the world, from Dubai to Australia. "I see his show and I write it down," Shaikh said. "Wherever he goes, I go." Shaikh added that he likes the show not just for the food but for the way Zimmern tells "the whole story ... the culture, the society, the background, about where the food comes from." (AP Photo/Kathy Willens) In this Thursday, July 20, 2017 photo, homemade sausages and other cured meats hang above the counter as the staff at Muncan Food Corp waits to serve customers from behind the meat counter, in the Astoria Queens neighborhood of New York. The Travel Channel's "Bizarre Foods" host Andrew Zimmern, a four-time James Beard award winning chef, likes to come to Muncan and similar lesser-known places when the cameras aren't rolling. Zimmern will feature his personal favorites, places he goes when the cameras aren't rolling, in a new show called "The Zimmern List," debuting in early 2018. (AP Photo/Kathy Willens) In this Thursday, July 20, 2017 photo, the Travel Channel's "Bizarre Foods" host Andrew Zimmern snaps a cell phone photo of chicken kebabs, far left, a dish composed of organ meats, center, and a goat dish called katakat at Kababish, a Pakistani, Indian and Bangladeshi takeout food shop in the Jackson Heights section of New York. Zimmern says, "I purposely set out to make a show that's entertaining," he said. "At the same time I try to be very thoughtful and thought-provoking and I try to educate and I take the cultural lessons of the show very, very, very seriously." A new show, "The Zimmern List," debuts early 2018 showcasing his favorite places, "where I actually go when the cameras aren't rolling." (AP Photo/Kathy Willens) In this Thursday, July 20, 2017 photo, Travel Channel's "Bizzare Foods" host Andrew Zimmern, a four-time James Beard award-winning chef, takes a cell phone photo of his Taiwanese noodle soup at Happy Stony Noodle in Elmhurst, Queens in New York. The chef's new show, "The Zimmern List," debuts early 2018. It showcases Zimmern's favorite places, "where I actually go when the cameras aren't rolling." (AP Photo/Kathy Willens) In this Thursday, July 20, 2017 photo, customer favorites duck and goose pastrami, are shown at Muncan Food Corp., in Astoria, Queens, in New York. The shop is a personal favorite of the Travel Channel's "Bizarre Foods" host Andrew Zimmern. The four-time James Beard award-winning chef will be showcasing personal favorites like Muncan in early 2018 in a new show called "The Zimmern List." (AP Photo/Kathy Willens) In this Thursday, July 20, 2017 photo, the Travel Channel "Bizarre Foods" host Andrew Zimmern snaps a cell phone photo of his order of Taiwanese noodle soup, pork roll and minced vegetables at Happy Stony Noodle in Elmhurst, Queens in New York. The four-time James Beard award-winning chef's new show, "The Zimmern List," debuts early 2018. It showcases Zimmern's favorite places, "where I actually go when the cameras aren't rolling." Happy Stony Noodle is one of those restaurants. (AP Photo/Kathy Willens) In this Thursday, July 20, 2017 photo, spicy chicken kebabs from Kababish, which serves Pakistani, Indian and Bangladeshi dishes, are lined up so Travel Channel's "Bizarre Foods" host Andrew Zimmern can taste them, in the Jackson Heights section of New York. (AP Photo/Kathy Willens) In this Thursday, July 20, 2017 photo, homemade sausages and other cured meats hang above the counter at Muncan Food Corp. in the Astoria, Queens neighborhood of New York. Founded in 1978 by brothers Tima and John Muncan, immigrants from the former Yugoslavia, the shop is now run by one of the brothers' grandsons, and is known for it's many sausage, bacon and prosciutto varieties. The Travel Channel's "Bizarre Foods" host Andrew Zimmern, a four-time James Beard award winning chef, likes to come to Muncan and similar lesser-known places when the cameras aren't rolling. Zimmern will feature his personal favorites, places he goes when the cameras aren't rolling, in a new show called "The Zimmern List," debuting in early 2018. (AP Photo/Kathy Willens) In this Thursday, July 20, 2017 photo, Travel Channel "Bizarre Foods" host Andrew Zimmern holds a tray of poppy seed cake prepared by Muncan Food Corp. in Astoria, Queens, in New York. Founded by an immigrant from the former Yugoslavia, the shop specializes in cured meats. (AP Photo/Kathy Willens) In this photo taken Thursday, July 20, 2017, "Bizarre Foods" host Andrew Zimmern holds a piece of bacon after savoring it at Muncan Meats in Astoria, Queens, in New York. A new show in early 2018, "The Zimmern List," will showcase his personal favorites, the eateries where he goes when cameras aren't rolling. Zimmern, a four-time James Beard-award winning chef, also offers hope for families struggling with addiction. A former addict himself, he's been sober for 25 years. (AP Photo/Kathy Willens) ISTANBUL (AP) - The spokesman for Turkey's president has announced a reshuffle of the country's senior military officials, replacing commanders of its three military branches. Following an annual meeting of the Supreme Military Council Wednesday, Ibrahim Kalin said Yasar Guler, Adnan Ozbal and Hasan Kucukakyuz will take command of the country's army, navy and air force respectively. Since the July 15, 2016 coup attempt, Turkey has arrested 169 generals and admirals suspected of involvement in the attempted overthrow of the government and president. Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim, front, army commanders and ministers follow a guard of honour at the mausoleum of Turkey's founder Mustafa Kemal Ataturk before a meeting of High Military Council in Ankara, Turkey, Wednesday, Aug. 2, 2017. Yildirim joined top commanders for one of the military's most important meetings to promote officers or dismiss others for disciplinary reasons. (AP Photo/Burhan Ozbilici) Prime Minister Binali Yildirim chaired the meeting, which included top ministers and current military commanders. State-run Anadolu news agency said it's the third time since last summer's failed coup that the previously "top secret" meeting is being held at the prime ministry in Ankara, instead of at the military's headquarters. Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim, center with red tie, army commanders and ministers follow a guard of honour at the mausoleum of Turkey's founder Mustafa Kemal Ataturk before a meeting of High Military Council in Ankara, Turkey, Wednesday, Aug. 2, 2017. Yildirim joined top commanders for one of the military's most important meetings to promote officers or dismiss others for disciplinary reasons.(AP Photo/Burhan Ozbilici) Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim waves toward the media members as he visits the mausoleum of Turkey's founder Mustafa Kemal Ataturk before a meeting of High Military Council with army commanders and ministers, in Ankara, Turkey, Wednesday, Aug. 2, 2017. Yildirim joined top commanders for one of the military's most important meetings to promote officers or dismiss others for disciplinary reasons.(AP Photo/Burhan Ozbilici) ROME (AP) - Italian authorities ordered a German group's migrant rescue boat seized Wednesday on suspicion it was used to aid human traffickers in Libya who are engaged in "clandestine immigration." The Dutch-flagged boat ordered by prosecutors to remain in port in Lampedusa, a tiny fishing island off Sicily, is operated by Berlin-based migrant rescue group Jugend Rettet. Italian national police based in Trapani, Sicily said in a statement that the Iuventa "is regularly devoted to the rescue of migrants near the Libyan coast" and that an investigation opened in October has uncovered information to suggest the vessel was used "to aid and abet clandestine immigration." The Iuventa Ship of the German NGO Jugend Rettet is docked at Lampedusa' harbor, Italy, early Wednesday, Aug. 2, 2017. The German NGO migrant rescue boat has been put under preventive seizure in a Sicilian island port as Italian authorities investigate what they suspected could be aiding "clandestine immigration." (Elio Desiderio/ANSA via AP) A judge in Trapani, Sicily ordered the preventive seizure at the request of Trapani Deputy Prosecutor Andrea Tarondo. Earlier in the day, Jugend Rettet tweeted that crew of the 33-meter (100-foot) -long boat was interviewed in Lampedusa, which it said had happened before. It said it had not received any information about being the target of an investigation. Prosecutors in Trapani and in Catania, another Sicilian city, previously announced that they suspected some non-governmental organizations were using vessels to rescue migrants and at the same time helping the traffickers. MINNEAPOLIS (AP) - The father of Philando Castile, a motorist fatally shot by a suburban Minneapolis police officer last summer, wants a portion of the $3 million settlement reached in his son's death. Phelix Frazier Sr. is serving a life term in federal prison on drug trafficking charges. The Star Tribune reported that Frazier has asked a judge to give him $500,000, disputing claims that he was absent from his son's life. Castile's mother, Valerie Castile, has petitioned the court for $2 million, with the remaining amount going to attorneys. A Hennepin County judge was expected to review the petition during a Wednesday hearing and will approve how the funds are distributed. FILE - In this July 6, 2017, file photo, a bouquet of flowers adorns the grave of Philando Castile on the one year anniversary of his death at Calvary Cemetery in St. Louis. Phelix Frazier Sr., the father of Philando Castile, a motorist fatally shot by a suburban Minneapolis police officer last summer, wants a portion of the $3 million settlement reached in his son's death. Frazier is serving a life term in federal prison on drug trafficking charges. (David Carson/St. Louis Post-Dispatch via AP, File) Castile, a 32-year-old elementary school cafeteria worker, was shot in July 2016 during a traffic stop seconds after he informed St. Anthony police Officer Jeronimo Yanez that he was carrying a gun. Authorities later discovered Castile had a permit for the firearm. The case got widespread attention after Castile's girlfriend, who was in the car with her then-4-year-old daughter, began livestreaming the shooting's aftermath on Facebook. Yanez was acquitted of manslaughter in June after testifying that he feared for his life and that Castile ignored commands not to reach for the gun. Yanez has since left the police force, and the city of St. Anthony agreed to the monetary settlement with Valerie Castile. Valerie Castile's attorney, Robert Bennett, wrote in a petition that Frazier, Castile's five half-siblings and other relatives made no claims on the money. But in a July 25 letter, Frazier said he made no claim because he assumed Valerie Castile would share the money. "It was not just Valerie's loss," he wrote. "On some level I believe I will miss Philando (more) than most because of what we 'were not' able to do together." Bennett wrote in an affidavit that Frazier ran a heroin trafficking ring. "Mr. Frazier is surely upset about what happened to Philando," Bennett wrote. "But his meager relationship with Philando, hopes of running a successful modular home company, and desire to hire attorneys to help in additional appeals of his sentence do not entitle him to any portion of this judgment - let alone $500,000 - especially in light of what he was convicted of." ___ Information from: Star Tribune, http://www.startribune.com PHILADELPHIA (AP) - The city plans to make civilian complaints about police misconduct available to the public online, the mayor said Wednesday. Mayor Jim Kenney has signed an executive order to post narratives, locations and official findings of complaints against officers. He said the measure is intended to increase public awareness about how the city handles complaints against the police department. "The release of this data is a common-sense reform that I hope will serve to increase community-police trust," he wrote in a statement. "Everyone who works for the city of Philadelphia is a public servant, and the public deserves to know we will take their complaints about any city service seriously." Under the measure, which will go into effect in November, certain information such as the names of complainants and police officers will be redacted in the online postings to maintain the safety of those involved. The Democratic mayor says the records can currently only be viewed in person at the police Internal Affairs Bureau. Advocates said the online disclosures would help people keep police accountable for misconduct. "Providing more transparency about police misbehavior is almost always a good step," said Witold Walczak, the legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union's Pennsylvania chapter. "Unless the public knows how government officials are behaving, they can't take steps to hold them accountable." Complaints from the previous three years are to be posted by early next year. Some other cities make such data available in annual reports, said Liana Perez, the director of operations at the National Association for Civilian Oversight of Law Enforcement, but she wasn't certain how many post the misconduct reports online. New York City, however, offers a searchable map online that lists the number of complaints per police precinct. MOSCOW (AP) - The Russian mission in Georgia's breakaway region of Abkhazia says dozens of people have been injured by explosions at a munitions depot. The Russian embassy in Abkhazia said the explosions ripped through a military arsenal in the village of Primorskoye on Wednesday, injuring about 50 people, 27 of whom were hospitalized. The mission said in a Facebook statement that those hospitalized included 19 Russian tourists. Abkhazia broke away from Georgia in the early 1990s as the Soviet Union collapsed. Moscow effectively gained complete control over the lush Black Sea province and a second breakaway Georgian region, South Ossetia, after a brief war with Georgia in 2008. Russia has recognized both regions as independent nations, drawing international opprobrium. SALT LAKE CITY (AP) - The polygamous sect leader caught recently after he was on the run for a year was in a pair of accidents in the late 1990s that must be investigated to determine whether the head injuries he suffered caused brain damage, his lawyer said Wednesday. A decision on whether Lyle Jeffs will argue that he is unfit to stand trial on food stamp fraud, money laundering and failing to appear in court won't be made until after experts assess the old medical reports and evaluate his mental health, the lawyer, Kathryn Nester, said in an email to The Associated Press. She first revealed the accidents in a request Tuesday asking a federal judge for a four-month delay for Jeffs' Sept. 18 trial so she can obtain the records and determine whether he may have mental or physical problems stemming from the accidents that happened long before Jeffs ran into legal troubles centering on his leadership of the Mormon offshoot sect headquartered in a small community of Utah-Arizona border. FILE - This Jan. 21, 2015 file photo, Lyle Jeffs leaves the federal courthouse in Salt Lake City. Jeffs, the polygamous sect leader caught recently after he was on the run for a year, was in a pair of accidents in the late 1990s that must be investigated to determine whether the head injuries he suffered caused brain damage, his lawyer said Wednesday, August 2, 2017. (AP Photo/Rick Bowmer, File) The first accident happened 1997 when Jeffs fell three stories at a construction site, hit his head on concrete and rocks and was left unconscious, Nester said in a court filing. Doctors said he suffered traumatic brain injuries and could experience a personality change, the documents said. A year later, Jeffs was in a car accident in the Salt Lake City area that left him unconscious with cuts on his forehead and required treatment for traumatic brain injuries, Nester said documents. Nester has requested full medical records on both accidents, plans to hire experts to assess Jeffs' mental health and said she will not decide whether to mount a defense saying he is unfit to stand trial until the experts conclude their evaluations. Jeffs is jailed after he was captured in South Dakota on June 14 while apparently living out of his pickup truck. He had been a fugitive since June 18, 2016 after he slipped off an ankle monitor authorities put on him during home confinement in Salt Lake City while he awaited his trial. He is a brother of Warren Jeffs, the sect's leader who is serving a life sentence in Texas for sexually assaulting girls he considered wives. Known as the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, or FLDS, the group believes polygamy brings exaltation in heaven - a legacy of the early Mormon church. The mainstream Mormon church abandoned the practice in 1890 and strictly prohibits it today. Jeffs faces up to 10 years in prison if convicted on a failure-to-appear charge. Counts of benefits fraud and money laundering carry possible 5- and 10-year sentences. He was first arrested last year along with 10 other members of the group on accusations that they knowingly broke the law donating products purchased with food stamps to a communal storehouse while also diverting funds to front companies to pay for a tractor, truck and other items. Authorities have said sect leaders lived lavishly while low-ranking followers suffered. Nine of the 10 defendants took plea deals and one had his case dismissed. Federal prosecutors have said they will take a different approach with Lyle Jeffs, who they consider the lead defendant. The revelation about the possible brain injuries will force the judge to be cautious in rulings about the case, said Amos Guiora, a University of Utah law professor who has studied Jeffs' group. "The court must be careful to avoid any appearance of injustice, especially given the high profile nature of this case," Guiora said. "Anything FLDS-related brings attention other trials don't bring." It was unclear when U.S. District Court Judge Ted Stewart will rule on the trial delay request, but Jeffs is scheduled to appear in court Thursday. New White House chief of staff John Kelly called Attorney General Jeff Sessions to reassure him that his position was safe despite the recent onslaught of criticism he has taken from President Donald Trump. In one of his first acts in his new post, Kelly called Sessions on Saturday to stress that the White House was supportive of his work and wanted him to continue his job, according to two people familiar with the call. The people demanded anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly about a private conversation. Kelly, who was appointed to the post the day before, described the president as still miffed at Sessions but did not plan to fire him or hope he would resign. Trump has seethed at Sessions, his one-time close ally, since the attorney general recused himself from the probe into Russia's meddling into the 2016 election. The president viewed that decision as disloyal - the most grievous sin in Trump's orbit. Safe... for now? John Kelly (left pictured with Jeff Sessions in April) told the Attorney General he wasn't going anywhere despite President Trump's belittling of him That simmering anger burst to the surface last week. In an unprecedented display of a president publicly criticizing a sitting member of his own Cabinet, Trump unleashed repeated attacks via Twitter. He called Sessions 'beleaguered' and 'very weak' and belittled his decision not to investigate Hillary Clinton. He said he was 'disappointed' in Sessions and suggested that, had he known he would recuse himself, he never would had offered him the attorney general post. And he dismissed the value in Sessions' early endorsement - he was the first senator to back Trump - while privately musing to aides about firing the attorney general. 'We will see what happens,' Trump said of Sessions' future when asked at a news conference last week. 'Time will well. Time will tell.' Trump is known for openly considering staffing changes without following through. Likewise, Sessions' newfound job security could also be viewed as temporary and subject to the president's whims. The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the conversation. The Department of Justice also did not immediately respond. Trouble from the top: He called Sessions 'beleaguered' and 'very weak' and belittled his decision not to investigate Hillary Clinton White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said Monday that 'the president has 100 per cent confidence in all members of his Cabinet' and dismissed talk that Sessions or other Cabinet members could be moved. Kelly, a retired general, was brought in from the Department of Homeland Secretary to restore some discipline and stability to a chaotic White House. The outreach to Sessions appears to have been a top priority in that effort. Despite Trump's continuing anger, his allies quickly recognized the danger in attacking Sessions. The longtime Alabama senator was the forefather of many of Trump's hardline immigration policies and remains very popular among the president's conservative base. Sessions and Kelly have also been allies and traveled together to the Mexican border in April to highlight immigration plans when the chief of staff was in his former post as head of homeland security. Moreover, many Republican senators and influential members of the conservative media rushed to the attorney general's defense when Trump went on the attack last week. They suggested that Sessions has been the most effective member of Trump's Cabinet delivering on campaign promises, while some White House aides feared that firing Sessions could spark a significant political backlash. Instead, the White House has recently embraced some of Sessions' directives. On Friday, Trump traveled to Long Island, New York, to tout his administration's efforts to combat the MS-13 gang at the same time Sessions was in El Salvador for events concerning the same violent cartel. Though Trump did not mention Sessions by name, the attorney general told The Associated Press that he hoped to remain in the post and would serve as long as Trump wanted him. And on Wednesday, senior White House aide Stephen Miller - a former Sessions staffer who has written most of Trump's speeches on immigration - delivered a full-throated case for slashing legal immigration. The proposal is unlikely to become law since it is opposed by several Republican senators, yet it is popular among much of the president's base. MIAMI (AP) - A U.S. military judge ruled Wednesday that pretrial hearings may resume for five men accused in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attack after a delay over travel logistics at the Guantanamo Bay detention center was resolved. Army Col. James Pohl lifted his own stay on proceedings issued in July, the latest in a series of procedural delays in the prosecution of the five suspects before a military commission for alleged roles planning and adding the attacks. For years Pohl and other judges presiding over terrorism cases at Guantanamo had traveled across the bay from an airstrip to the courthouse in a small Coast Guard speedboat instead of a ferry used by most other visitors to the isolated base. But in June the detention center commander abruptly said they could no longer use the vessel, for reasons that were never made public. In response, Pohl and the judge presiding over a separate case put future proceedings on indefinite hold. They said the change interfered with their attempts to avoid mixing with witnesses and other case participants and could jeopardize their effort to ensure a fair trial. They said they should have been consulted beforehand. Pohl said in his ruling Wednesday that the military agreed to provide a small boat to transport the judges and their staff, resolving the issue in time for a pretrial hearing scheduled to last up to five days later this month. The five men charged in the Sept. 11 case have been held at Guantanamo since September 2006 and were arranged in May 2012 on charges including terrorism and nearly 3,000 counts of murder in violation of the law of war. They could get the death penalty if convicted. No trial date has been set. SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - A teenage passenger was taken to a hospital for mental health treatment after he opened an emergency door on an airplane minutes after it landed in San Francisco then slid down the wing to the tarmac, officials said Wednesday. The teen traveling on Copa Airlines Flight 208 from Panama City was not injured during Tuesday's incident at San Francisco International Airport, airport spokesman Doug Yakel said. The 17-year-old - a U.S. citizen - was traveling alone and appeared to be in emotional distress during the flight, Yakel said. The teen's name has not been released. City police Officer Grace Gatpandan said Wednesday he was taken for treatment and will not be charged by local authorities. However, Copa Airlines said it is a violation of federal law to open an emergency door without having been instructed to do so by the crew. Federal prosecutors in San Francisco did not immediately respond to a message seeking comment. After jumping from the plane, the teenager was held by an airfield construction crew until police arrived and arrested him. Witnesses said the teen seemed fidgety and anxious throughout the seven-hour flight. He was already on the ground and running by the time passengers realized the door had been opened. "It was as if he was like flying out, like it was really fast," passenger Sophia Gibson told San Jose television station KNTV. Emergency exits over wings are intended to be opened by passengers at lower altitudes to allow evacuations in emergencies, the airline said. Copa confirmed in an email to The Associated Press that the boy was sitting in an exit row during the flight and that personnel had followed Federal Aviation Administration rules requiring passengers seated in an exit row to be at least 15. Flight attendants also followed security and safety procedures after the teenage pushed open the door, the Panama-based airline said. A crew member closed the door and the plane proceeded to a gate where passengers and crew safely left the aircraft, it added. Passenger Matt Crowder said people sitting near the exit row stood up and shouted when the boy jumped. "They were yelling, 'Tell the flight attendants. Relay the message back. The door's open. Someone jumped off,'" Crowder told the television station. "It was pretty crazy." Passenger Isaac Rodrigues said a flight attendant used her body to block the gap where the door had been. "We were on the runway for about an hour," Rodrigues said. No other flights were affected, Yakel said. Digital voting machines are in the spotlight in Venezuela, where the head of Smartmatic, a maker of election systems used in the country's tumultuous constituent-assembly election, said Wednesday that the official turnout figure had been "tampered with ." The company's CEO said the count was off by at least 1 million votes - possibly in either direction. Tibisay Lucena, head of Venezuela's National Electoral Council, dismissed that allegation as an "irresponsible declaration" that might lead to legal action. The government-stacked electoral council claims more than 8 million people voted in the election for a nearly all-powerful constituent assembly. Independent analysts have expressed doubts at that number. Here's a look at the technology and politics of voting machines and election systems. FILE - In this Dec. 6, 2013, file photo, a member of the Venezuelan National Electoral Council waits for a voting machine to charge during the preparation of a polling station in Caracas, Venezuela. Digital voting machines are in the spotlight in Venezuela, where a maker of election systems used in the country's tumultuous constituent-assembly election said Wednesday that the turnout figure had been "tampered with." That meant it was off by at least 1 million votes - possibly in either direction. (AP Photo/Fernando Llano, File) WHO MAKES VOTING MACHINES? The voting-machine market is a speck in the prodigious tech sector. Iowa University computer scientist Douglas Jones estimates its annual revenues in the United States at less than $200 million - roughly what Google pulls in every day. It's much harder to get reliable information about the fragmented global market for election systems. The biggest U.S. player, ES&S, is private and has just 450 full-time employees. Because the U.S. voting landscape is so disperse and because it's controlled largely at the county level, it's not all that attractive to major corporations. One major player, ATM-maker Diebold, left the election-systems market a decade ago after computer scientists repeatedly identified vulnerabilities in its machines. Although paperless machines that are essentially impossible to audit are still used in 14 U.S. states, the trend is toward optical-scan machines that record votes electronically but leave a paper record. The machines used in Venezuela, supplied by Smartmatic, produce a paper record for each voter. WHO OVERSEES VOTING SYSTEMS? The regulation of voting machines and tabulation systems varies by country. Usually, a national electoral authority certifies the voting technology used. Often, outside election observers sponsored by groups such as the Organization of American States monitor elections for irregularities. In the U.S., individual states provide certification of voting equipment. The federal government plays only a loose coordinating role. HOW COULD TAMPERING TAKE PLACE? Tampering is easiest when a voting system leaves no paper trail. That's one reason researchers want the U.S. to move entirely to paper ballots. Paper can't be remotely hacked, and makes it possible to audit election results after the fact. Many advanced democracies require paper ballots, including Germany, Britain, Japan and Singapore. The Dutch moved this year to the complete hand-counting of ballots. If all counting at the local level is transparent - and the chain of custody of ballots is closely observed and monitored by impartial observers and participants - it's very difficult to tamper with an election even at the highest levels of government. An exception is if an outcome is extremely close. WHY WOULD A VOTING MACHINE COMPANY PUBLICLY ACKNOWLEDGE TAMPERING? Blowing the whistle on a client might not seem very good for business. But an election-systems company might see no other option if it believes a government is making unrealistic claims about election turnout, as appears to be the case with Smartmatic in Venezuela. Failing to speak out could make the company complicit in potential voter fraud. Sunday's election was in Venezuela was internationally condemned as an unconstitutional power grab, and that criticism might have influenced Smartmatic's decision. SALT LAKE CITY (AP) - Utah lawmakers on Wednesday recommended the Mormon church's chief lobbyist for a top job overseeing the Legislature's office that drafts laws, gives legal advice and staffs committees. The appointment illustrates what is sometimes seen as a thin line between Utah's government and The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, a faith to which most state lawmakers and residents belong. John Q. Cannon's nomination to head up the Office of Legislative Research and General Counsel drew no public debate or questions from lawmakers or government watchdog groups in Utah, and a bipartisan group of dozen lawmakers unanimously and quickly recommended him for the job. John Q. Cannon poses for a photo after a hearing Wednesday, Aug. 2, 2017, where Utah lawmakers recommended him for a top job over seeing the legislature's office that drafts laws, gives legal advice and staffs committees. The panel of Utah lawmakers is recommending the Mormon church's top lobbyist take a new job overseeing the Legislature's office that drafts laws, gives legal advice and staffs committees. (AP Photo/Michelle Price) But the Freedom From Religion Foundation - which represents atheists, agnostics and others who advocate broad separation between religion and government - said the choice seems far too cozy and perpetuates a national impression that the Mormon church runs the Utah Legislature. "This would seem to entangle it completely," said Annie Laurie Gaylor, the foundation's co-president. "It's the appearance, and it's the conflict of interest. He was paid to promote Mormon doctrine at the legislature. . . How could he possibly be anything but a patsy for the Mormon church in his new position?" Cannon is expected to resign from his job with the church and step into his new role Sept. 1, but his appointment is still subject to a final approval from the full Legislature early next year. The position pays between $100,000 and $160,000 annually and includes overseeing a staff of about 65 attorneys, policy analysts and other workers. In addition to drafting laws and advising lawmakers on legal matters, the nonpartisan office gives guidance on constitutional issues and legislative rules and provides information technology services. Democratic Rep. Brian King of Salt Lake City said he understands concerns that the church, to which about 60 percent of Utah's population belongs, has too much influence over the Legislature and why the appointment might raise eyebrows. "I get the fact that it's a concern, but I just think that the kind of work that he has been doing for the church, the LDS Church, is something that he can easily transition away from," said King, who co-chaired the hiring committee. Cannon beat out four other finalists for the job. He spent two decades working in that legislative office before he left to work for the church in 2012. He said his qualifications and his longtime experience at the Legislature - not his role as the church lobbyist - got him the job. "I will answer to and be completely loyal to the Legislature and the people that they represent," he said ahead of the hearing. After his recommendation, Cannon said was honored to get the job. The Mormon church has a right to address issues it believes are important, Cannon said, adding that he thinks "people will be surprised at how little the church actually lobbies." The church has said in the past that it reserves the right to express its views on issues that have community or moral consequences or that affect church interests but it does not direct its members how to vote. A telephone message seeking left with the church's public affairs office was not returned. Two state lawmakers who are Mormons publicly criticized the faith and its influence last year, saying opposition from church leaders snuffed out legislative proposals to pass a medical marijuana law and beef up the state's hate crimes law with protections for LGBTQ people. Four members of the six-person hiring subcommittee, including King, said they are members of the Mormon faith but said religion was not a consideration and that Cannon's experience made him the best choice. Lawmakers know Cannon well and his time working for the church is just "part of a work experience and a life," said Sen. Gene Davis, D-Salt Lake City. The choice doesn't show much respect for the line between church and state, said Russell Arben Fox, a lifelong Mormon and political science professor at the liberal arts college Friends University in Wichita, Kansas. Cannon could be overseeing legislation he helped promote recently, Fox said. "I don't think that a lobbyist for a church should be able to immediately go to work overseeing legislation in the same way that I don't think a lobbyist for Koch Industries should immediately be able to be hired by Congress to serve on an environmental staff," Fox said. "You want to at least maintain in principle some divide." ___ Associated Press writer Brady McCombs in Salt Lake City contributed to this report. CHICAGO (AP) - The Latest on the battle over public school funding in Illinois (all times local): 6:40 p.m. Gov. Bruce Rauner has reignited an age-old but divisive political strategy on a new front in Illinois: Schools. The Republican used his veto powers to extract money for Chicago Public Schools from a proposal needed for all Illinois public schools to get funding this fall. Pitting Chicago against the rest of Illinois has been a popular tool for the first-term governor. He drummed up enough support outside of the Democratic stronghold in 2014 to become the state's first GOP governor in over a decade. But this time it's a particularly risky move ahead of Rauner's 2018 re-election bid, with schools statewide potentially paying the price. Educators are on edge, especially in rural areas and small towns which helped Rauner get elected but where budgets are tight. NEW YORK (AP) - One of the founding members of the 1980s hip hop group Grandmaster Flash and The Furious Five was arrested in New York in connection with the fatal stabbing of a homeless man, police said. Nathaniel Glover, 57, also known as The Kidd Creole, was arrested Wednesday night on murder charges. Information on his lawyer wasn't immediately available. The stabbing happened in midtown Manhattan shortly before midnight on Monday. Police said the 55-year-old victim was found with multiple stab wounds to his torso. It's not clear what sparked the stabbing. FILE - In this March 12, 2007, file photo, The Furious Five, from left, Scorpio, Melle Mel, Kidd Creole and Rahiem appear in the press room at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony in New York. The Furious Five is being inducted into the Hall of Fame with Grandmaster Flash. One of the founding members of the 1980s hip hop group Grandmaster Flash and The Furious Five has been arrested in New York in connection with the fatal stabbing of a homeless man. Police say 57-year-old Nathaniel Glover, also known as The Kidd Creole, was arrested Wednesday night, Aug. 2, 2017, on murder charges. (AP Photo/Stuart Ramson, File) Police described the victim, who lived in a shelter, as a level 2 sex offender. His identity has not yet been released. Video shows a handcuffed Glover, his gray hair pulled back into a tightly-wound pony tail, being escorted out of a police precinct Wednesday night. Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five is best known for their 1982 rap song, "The Message." The group was formed in the late 1970s in the Bronx. The group was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2007, the first rap act to be inducted into the hall. BOSTON (AP) - A federal appeals court in Boston has decided the fate of the nation's oldest synagogue, overturning a lower court's decision that put control of the building and a set of bells worth millions of dollars in the hands of the congregation that worships there. The 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals announced its decision Wednesday. That means control of the nation's oldest synagogue, Touro Synagogue in Newport, Rhode Island, will no longer be in the hands of the local congregation but rather under the control of the nation's oldest Jewish congregation, Shearith Israel in New York. FILE - In this July 30, 2009 file photo, visitors stand outside the Touro Synagogue in Newport, R.I. The 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston announced Wednesday, Aug. 2, 2017, that the nation's oldest synagogue, Shearith Israel, had won its case over the ownership of Touro Synagogue, in Newport, the nation's oldest synagogue building. The appeals court ruled that Shearith Israel owns both the synagogue building and historical Jewish ritual objects that have gone with the synagogue. (AP Photo/Eric J. Shelton, File) The decision also gives Shearith Israel ownership of a set of silver Colonial-era bells, called rimonim, valued at $7.4 million. Shearith Israel had appealed last year's lower court ruling removing it as trustee of the 250-year-old Touro Synagogue. The judge at the time rejected the New York congregation's arguments that it was the rightful owner of the bells and the synagogue. "Congregation Shearith Israel is gratified by the First Circuit's unanimous decision reaffirming our lawful, outright ownership of Newport's Touro Synagogue and the precious rimonim at issue here," said attorney Louis Solomon. Attorneys for the Newport congregation did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Touro Synagogue holds an important place in the history of the nation's commitment to religious liberty. In 1790, George Washington visited Touro, and then sent a letter to the congregation pledging America's commitment to religious liberty. The synagogue, dedicated in 1763, is a national historic site that draws thousands of visitors each year. By 1820, all of the Jews had left Newport, and Congregation Shearith Israel became trustee of Touro. It was reopened later that century as Jews began to move back to the city. The dispute over ownership began when the Newport congregation, which was struggling with money, formed a plan to establish an endowment by selling the bells to the Museum of Fine Arts. The New York congregation objected, arguing that the sale would violate religious law and would be akin to selling a "birthright." ___ This story has been corrected throughout to clarify that Shearith Israel in New York is the nation's oldest Jewish congregation and Touro Synagogue in Newport, Rhode Island is the nation's oldest synagogue building. UNITED NATIONS (AP) - The U.N. Security Council expressed alarm Wednesday over reports of torture and extrajudicial killings in Burundi and about an increasing number of refugees who are fleeing the tiny East African nation, now totaling over 416,000 people. A presidential statement reiterated the council's intention to pursue sanctions against all those inside and outside the country "who threaten the peace and security of Burundi." Burundi has been plagued by sporadic violence since April 2015, when President Pierre Nkurunziza's decision to seek a third term led to street protests. Nkurunziza won another term in disputed elections three months later and remains in power, but Burundi has stayed unsettled and more than 500 people have been killed, according to the U.N. At least one armed group has announced a rebellion and sporadic attacks have sparked fears of a return to civil war. In 1993, civil war erupted when Tutsi paratroopers assassinated the country's first democratically elected president from the Hutu majority. A cease-fire was declared in 2006 but it took several years for fighting to end, and 300,000 people died. The Security Council said it remains "deeply concerned" at the political situation and the government's failure to implement a resolution adopted last year calling for the deployment of 228 U.N. police and human rights monitors. The government also refused to allow the African Union to send 5,000 peacekeepers, and the council reiterated its concern that the AU has so far been able to deploy only 40 human rights observers and eight military observers. The council underscored "its deep concern regarding the continued worsening of the humanitarian situation, marked by nearly 202,000 internally displaced persons, 3 million people in need, and more than 416,000 Burundians seeking refuge in neighboring countries." It strongly condemned human rights violations including extrajudicial killings, sexual violence, arbitrary arrests, torture, restrictions on fundamental freedoms, and harassment and intimidation of civil society including women's organization and journalists. Council members strongly condemned statements from inside and outside the country "that incite violence or hatred towards different groups in Burundian society, including calls for forced impregnation of women and girls." They welcomed the condemnation of these statements by Nkurunziza's ruling party and called on the government to ensure that those responsible are held accountable. The council commended regional efforts to help find a political solution and strongly backed the East African Community's decision to launch an inclusive inter-Burundian dialogue, stressing that this is "the only viable process for a sustainable political settlement in Burundi." But council members said they remain "deeply concerned over the lack of progress in this dialogue" and urged all parties "to take further measures to overcome the current political impasse." MIAMI (AP) - Using peanut butter to escape from the Walker County Jail in Alabama isn't as crazy as it sounds. Belinda Ann Weldon, an Alabama attorney familiar with the jail who represents the last of 12 inmates to be captured after escaping Sunday, said she can see how a guard watching remotely could be fooled if inmates partially obscure the number that identifies each door. "That placard has a number on it; it's an off-white. They covered it in peanut butter. Say the number was an 8; they made it look like a 9," she said. "He pushed the button for a door that instead of going into a dorm went to an outside door." This photo provided by the Martin County, Fla., Sheriff's Office, shows Brady Kilpatrick under arrest Tuesday, Aug. 1, 2017, the last of 12 inmates who used peanut butter to escape from an Alabama jail. The inmates escaped Sunday by writing a number in peanut butter over a cell door. An inexperienced guard in a control room thought he was opening the cell, but the number released a door to the outside. (Martin County Sheriff's Office via AP) Authorities said the inexperienced guard, watching 150 inmates through security cameras from a control room, thought he was opening the cell at an inmate's request. But a dozen inmates were able to flee, throwing off their orange jail uniforms and running in every direction. The first 11 inmates were captured within hours of their escape, never leaving the county, but Brady Kilpatrick, 24, made it all the way to Martin County, Florida, persuading his sister to drive him, authorities said. Martin County Sheriff William D. Snyder announced Tuesday night that investigators "zeroed in" on a house on a quiet street in Tequesta, just north of West Palm Beach, where a car with an Alabama license plate was parked outside. A short time later, Kilpatrick was arrested, along with his sister, Jensen Davis Lefan, 18; her boyfriend, Hayden Thomas Mayberry, 24; and Mayberry's childhood friend, Dakota Anthony, 23. Lefan, of Cordova, Alabama, told investigators her brother called her shortly after the escape, asking for a ride. She and Mayberry borrowed a car from his roommate and picked up Kilpatrick a short time later. He hopped in and told her "Go!" according to an arrest affidavit. Five to 10 minutes later, he told them he'd escaped from jail, cutting his hands when he climbed a 15-foot fence topped with razor wire. Lefan and Mayberry, of Jasper, Alabama, took turns driving with Kilpatrick in the backseat, she said. They ended up at the home of Anthony, a childhood friend of Mayberry's, after stopping for food - paying in cash - and sleeping in a Wal-Mart parking lot. She feared getting caught, but said she had to try to help her brother because "they are family," the sheriff said. Mayberry - who told authorities they planned to marry soon - told investigators he knew that what they did was wrong, but said "you do crazy things for love." In Florida, Snyder praised his department and other agencies for using a "good tactical approach" once they located the home in Tequesta, where a car with an Alabama license plate was parked outside. "Let's suffice it to say we had an overwhelming force and more than adequate resources as he made the unwise decision of trying to escape out of the house," he said. Jail records don't list attorneys for any of the arrestees. Lefan and Mayberry face charges of facilitating escape and hindering apprehension of a fugitive in Alabama, as well as aiding and abetting a fugitive in Florida. Anthony was charged with possessing a controlled substance. Kilpatrick - initially jailed in Alabama on charges of possessing drugs and paraphernalia - now faces prosecution on much tougher crimes. Walker County Sheriff James Underwood in Alabama did not immediately return a call seeking comment on the arrest of Kilpatrick, which happened only a few hours after he predicted it would. The other 11 fugitives had been rounded up by Monday afternoon. Kilpatrick appeared in court Wednesday in Stuart, Florida, where a judge ordered him held without bail pending his return to Alabama. Lefan and Mayberry also remained in the jail, with $7,500 bail set for each. Snyder said he tried to hide in the wrong county. "Look, I don't like to brag," the sheriff told reporters, "but we've never had an escape from the Martin County Jail. I can tell you this, he won't be getting any peanut butter." ___ Associated Press writer Jay Reeves in Birmingham, Alabama, contributed to this report. This photo provided by the Martin County, Fla., Sheriff's Office shows Brady Kilpatrick, who was arrested Tuesday, Aug. 1, 2017, the last of 12 inmates who used peanut butter to escape from an Alabama jail. The inmates escaped Sunday by writing a number in peanut butter over a cell door. An inexperienced guard in a control room thought he was opening the cell, but the number released a door to the outside. (Martin County Sheriff's Office via AP) This photo provided by the Martin County, Fla., Sheriff's Office shows Jensen Lefan after she was arrested Tuesday, Aug. 1, 2017, with her boyfriend Hayden Mayberry, on charges including hindering apprehension of Lefan's brother, fugitive Brady Kilpatrick. Kilpatrick was among 12 inmates who escaped from the jail in Walker County, Ala., on Sunday, after using peanut butter to alter a number over a cell door. Authorities said an inexperienced guard punched in the peanut-buttered number, unwittingly releasing a door to the outside. (Martin County Sheriff's Office via AP) CANTON, Miss. (AP) - It's now up to workers at Nissan's Mississippi assembly plant to decide if they will be represented by the United Auto Workers union. Voting began inside the plant at 2 a.m. Thursday in the election conducted by the National Labor Relations Board. Ballots can be cast until 7 p.m. Friday. On one side are workers who say the 3,700 Nissan Motor Co. assembly and maintenance workers need a union to give them a voice in their workplace, to protect against arbitrary treatment, and to bargain for better benefits and pay. In this Tuesday, Aug. 1, 2017, photo, actor and human rights activist Danny Glover addresses UAW members and Nissan employees at the UAW Canton, Miss., headquarters during a work rally, near the Nissan vehicle assembly plant. Glover participated in the small rally to maintain workers' morale, while UAW workers set up an informational line outside employee entrances at the Nissan plant. In voting that begins early Thursday, Aug. 3, some 3,700 direct employees at Nissan Motor Co.'s car and truck assembly plant in Canton will decide whether they want a union. The polls close at 7 p.m., local time on Friday. (AP Photo/Rogelio V. Solis) Opposing them are other Nissan employees who reject the idea of a union speaking for them. They warn that the UAW would be an economic albatross burdening an employer who pays them well. Outside analysts assume the union is an underdog, since the UAW has never fully organized a foreign-owned auto plant in the southern United States. But no one knows for sure. "The vote will tell us the truth," said Bo Green, a Nissan worker who opposes the union. So far, only maintenance workers at a Volkswagen AG plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee, have been persuaded to join the UAW. But worldwide, the only Nissan factories without unions are the Canton plant and two plants in Tennessee. It's not an overstatement to say the world is watching - French politicians have been involved, and crowding into a sweaty union meeting Tuesday night were actor Danny Glover, a Brazilian unionist and a Japanese journalist. About 6,400 people work for Nissan and its suppliers in Canton, where Frontier and Titan pickups, Murano SUVs and NV vans are assembled. But only direct employees can vote. Excluded are managers, engineers, clerical workers, guards, and hundreds of contract laborers who do the exact same work on the factory floor. Union supporters say the UAW can prevent arbitrary treatment by managers and empower workers to bargain for better pay, working conditions and safety protections. They point to a worker in Mississippi who lost several fingers on an assembly line, and another in Tennessee who was killed on the job. Foreign automakers came to these states in part to avoid unions and keep wages low. Mississippi, for its part, granted the Japanese-based company subsidies and tax breaks that could be worth more than $1 billion over 30 years. As Senate Majority Leader, Mississippi Republican Trent Lott promised that Nissan would "revolutionize" the state's economy, and Mississippi's business and political leaders still mostly line up against the union. Republican Gov. Phil Bryant calls UAW supporters "socialists." "I don't think we need a union to come in there and tell us how to make a better automobile," Bryant said during a speech last week. "They can get back on the Bernie Sanders bus and go back to New York, and I'll pay their way." The independent senator from Vermont and many of Mississippi's African-American politicians back the UAW, which spent years cultivating ministers and other local leaders. With the Canton plant's majority African American workforce in mind, the union has promoted historic ties between the labor and civil rights movements. In response, Nissan has saturated local television with campaign-style ads and posted "vote no" signs along roads for miles around. "It's kind of brutal, the constant bombardment of 'The UAW is the most terrible thing ever,'" said union supporter Earnest Whitfield, who works with machines that stamp steel into parts for the cars and trucks. UAW Secretary-Treasurer Gary Casteel accuses Nissan of breaking federal labor law by pressuring workers to vote "no," and the NLRB has alleged eight violations of federal law. Rodney Francis, the plant's human resources director, told The Associated Press on Monday that Nissan is merely trying to dispel the union's "false promises." It's illegal for managers to threaten layoffs ahead of a union election. Nissan has turned the argument around, blaming the UAW for the troubles of General Motors, Ford and Chrysler over the years. "Look at the UAW's record on strikes and plant closing and layoffs," Francis said. "Unions make the company less able to be flexible and to meet the market demand." Green, the union opponent, sees the plant closing if the UAW gets in. He says three relatives lost jobs when GM closed its plant in Shreveport, Louisiana, but Nissan has never laid off a direct employee. "You've got one company that's doing good. They don't got the UAW," said Green. "You've got another company that's doing poorly. They've got the UAW." Analysts say Nissan won't likely abandon a $3.3 billion investment in the plant, which has an annual capacity of 450,000 vehicles, about 8 percent of Nissan's worldwide production. And union supporters say management is to blame for the historic downturns of the Detroit Three. "All of a sudden, if we have a union, is management going to stop managing the way they have in the past?" Whitfield asked. ___ Follow Jeff Amy at: http://twitter.com/jeffamy . Read his work at https://www.apnews.com/search/Jeff_Amy In this Tuesday, Aug. 1, 2017, photo, UAW members use their signs to block Nissan company signs at one of the entrances to the vehicle assembly plant in Canton, Miss. In voting that begins early Thursday, Aug. 3, some 3,700 direct employees at the Nissan plant will decide whether they want a union. The polls close at 7 p.m., local time on Friday. (AP Photo/Rogelio V. Solis) In this Tuesday, Aug. 1, 2017, photo, actor and human rights activist Danny Glover speaks with reporters after addressing UAW members and Nissan employees at the UAW Canton, Miss., headquarters during a work rally near the Nissan vehicle assembly plant. Glover participated in the small rally to maintain workers' morale, while UAW workers set up an informational line outside employee entrances at the Nissan plant. In voting that begins early Thursday, Aug. 3, some 3,700 direct employees at Nissan Motor Co.'s car and truck assembly plant in Canton will decide whether they want a union. The polls close at 7 p.m., local time on Friday. (AP Photo/Rogelio V. Solis) In this Tuesday, Aug. 1, 2017, photo, UAW members and Nissan employees participate in a videoconference with U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and Democratic National Committee Chairman Tom Perez, at the Canton, Miss., UAW headquarters. The visit is part of a union vote effort two days before 3,700 workers begin voting on whether the UAW should represent them. (AP Photo/Rogelio V. Solis) In this Tuesday, Aug. 1, 2017, photo, Nissan employee Earnestine Mayes speaks during a comment period with UAW members and Nissan employees at the UAW Canton, Miss., headquarters during a work rally near the Nissan vehicle assembly plant. In voting that begins early Thursday, Aug. 3, some 3,700 direct employees at Nissan Motor Co.'s car and truck assembly plant in Canton will decide whether they want a union. The polls close at 7 p.m., local time on Friday. (AP Photo/Rogelio V. Solis) In this Tuesday, Aug. 1, 2017, photo, UAW members and Nissan employees applaud an address by actor and supporter Danny Glover at the UAW headquarters in Canton, Miss. In voting that begins early Thursday, Aug. 3, some 3,700 direct employees at Nissan Motor Co.'s car and truck assembly plant in Canton will decide whether they want a union. The polls close at 7 p.m., local time on Friday. (AP Photo/Rogelio V. Solis) In this Tuesday, Aug. 1, 2017, photo, Nissan employee Betty Jones speaks in support of unionizing the vehicle assembly plant during a comment period before UAW members and Nissan employees at the UAW Canton, Miss., headquarters during a work rally near the Nissan plant. In voting that begins early Thursday, Aug. 3, some 3,700 direct employees at Nissan Motor Co.'s car and truck assembly plant in Canton will decide whether they want a union. The polls close at 7 p.m., local time on Friday. (AP Photo/Rogelio V. Solis) In this Tuesday, Aug. 1, 2017, photo, UAW members set up an informational line outside an employee entrance at the Nissan vehicle assembly plant in Canton, Miss. Most shifts arriving and leaving met union members armed with posters, flyers and singing union chants at each of the plant's employee entrances, reminding workers to vote for the union. In voting that begins early Thursday, Aug. 3, some 3,700 direct employees at Nissan Motor Co.'s car and truck assembly plant in Canton will decide whether they want a union. The polls close at 7 p.m., local time on Friday. (AP Photo/Rogelio V. Solis) In this Tuesday, Aug. 1, 2017, photo, a UAW member holds up a flyer to be given to Nissan workers as they leave the Nissan vehicle assembly plant in Canton, Miss. Union members met most shifts arriving and leaving waving posters, flyers and singing union chants at each of the plant's employee entrances. In voting that begins early Thursday, Aug. 3, some 3,700 direct employees at Nissan Motor Co.'s car and truck assembly plant in Canton will decide whether they want a union. The polls close at 7 p.m., local time on Friday. (AP Photo/Rogelio V. Solis) In this Tuesday, Aug. 1, 2017, photo, UAW member Albert Byrd, of Detroit, staples a double-sided yard sign, while CWA members Tim Case, right and Jerome Thompson, back center, prepare and repair damaged signs at the UAW headquarters in Canton, Miss. In voting that begins early Thursday, Aug. 3, some 3,700 direct employees at Nissan Motor Co.'s car and truck assembly plant in Canton will decide whether they want a union. The polls close at 7 p.m., local time on Friday. (AP Photo/Rogelio V. Solis) This Tuesday, Aug. 1, 2017, photo, shows one of the anti-UAW mailers sent to residents of mid-Mississippi, in Canton, Miss. Both the UAW and Nissan, with help from the business community, have launched aggressive campaigns for worker support. In voting that begins early Thursday, Aug. 3, some 3,700 direct employees at Nissan Motor Co.'s car and truck assembly plant in Canton will decide whether they want a union. The polls close at 7 p.m., local time on Friday. (AP Photo/Rogelio V. Solis) LOS ANGELES (AP) - Jerred Kiloh's eyes narrowed as he checked his mirror again. The black Chevy SUV with tinted windows was still behind him. It had been hanging off Kiloh's bumper ever since he nosed out of the parking lot behind his medical-marijuana dispensary with $40,131.88 in cash in the trunk of his hatchback. Kiloh was unarmed, on his way to City Hall to make a monthly tax payment, and managing only stop-and-start progress in the midday traffic. He was afraid of one thing above all else: getting robbed. In this June 27, 2017, photo, carrying $40,131.88 in cash in his shoulder bag, Jerred Kiloh, owner of the Higher Path medical marijuana dispensary, enters the office of finance tax and permit division at Los Angeles City Hall to pay his monthly tax in cash in Los Angeles. For Kiloh, the cash is a daily hassle. It needs to be counted repeatedly to safeguard against loss. State and local taxes must be set aside and stored, sometimes for a month or more. When vendors show up, they get paid in cash, too. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong) That fear is a constant part of doing business in California's flourishing medical cannabis industry, in which transactions are conducted mostly in cash, sometimes in stunningly large amounts. "The thing I need the least right now is to have to go through any sort of money disappearing," Kiloh said. On Jan. 1, recreational pot will become legal in California, creating what could be the world's largest legitimate marijuana economy. It comes more than two decades after the state gave its blessing to medical cannabis. But the emerging marketplace with a projected $7 billion value has a potentially crippling flaw: Many people who work in it can't use a bank. Banks don't want the risks of doing business with companies whose product remains illegal under federal law. So while the sneaker shop next door to Kiloh's storefront on Ventura Boulevard can send a check to City Hall to cover its taxes, or wire the money from a laptop, Kiloh has to make a stress-filled, 15-mile (24-kilometer) freeway drive each month to downtown Los Angeles. California is to marijuana what Iowa is to corn, and what Kentucky is to bourbon - the nation's bud basket, its heartland for production. The transformation of such a vast illegal economy into a legal one hasn't been witnessed since the end of Prohibition in 1933. The state expects to collect $1 billion in new tax revenue annually from pot within a few years. In L.A. - which is already estimated to have anywhere from 1,000 to 1,700 medical marijuana dispensaries, only about 200 of which paid city taxes in 2016 - the take is projected at $50 million next year alone. However, governments will almost certainly miss out on money without an easy, secure way for businesses to pay. With no bank records, it will be harder to regulators to track funds and identify shady operators. And those who operate by the book will be undercut by those who don't. Without banks, "everyone loses," said Nicole Howell Neubert, a marijuana industry lawyer. Kiloh, a 40-year-old with a graying mohawk and a degree in economics, counts 15 years in the pot industry as a seller and cultivator and is a partner and business manager at a San Francisco dispensary and the owner of the one in Los Angeles. In the absence of a bank, Kiloh has become his own. Twist and turn through a warren of rooms inside his shop, go through a door with a keypad lock, and you will come to a closet-like space that contains twin steel vaults, standing head-high. The walls around them are reinforced with steel. Overhead, more than 50 cameras scan his offices and hallways and keep watch outside the building as well. An armed guard stands at the door to the sales floor. On a typical day, $15,000 can change hands in his dispensary, where a steady stream of customers pick from shelves stocked with 700 products, from fragrant buds and perfectly rolled joints to cannabis-infused lip balm and potent concentrates known as "shatter" that look like thin sheets of amber glass. For Kiloh, the cash is a daily hassle. It needs to be counted repeatedly to safeguard against loss. State and local taxes must be set aside and stored, sometimes for a month or more. When vendors show up, they get paid in cash, too. "When now everyone makes payments through their cellphone, it's tough to see that I'm left to the archaic version of counting money," he said. With all the cash on hand - he grossed $4 million last year - crime is a gnawing fear. His dispensary on a bustling commercial strip has been robbed twice - once by thieves breaking in through the roof. The Los Angeles Police Department did not immediately respond to a request for statistics on crimes against marijuana dispensaries, and many cases are believed to go unreported anyway, since many businesses are loath to go to the police. Last year, though, a dispensary owner shot and wounded two armed men during a holdup in the Los Angeles suburbs. And a security guard at a dispensary was killed in an attempted robbery in Aurora, Colorado, another one of the nine states to legalize recreational pot. To keep criminals guessing, Kiloh avoids arriving at the same time each day and staggers the times he leaves. He goes in and out different doors. He keeps an eye on cars parked around his shop. Once a month, Kiloh telephones to make arrangements to drop off his tax payment at the city Finance Department, which gets 6 percent of his gross revenue. They want to know he's coming - it's dangerous for them, too. The agency has seen bags of cash from pot businesses as large as $300,000 come through the door. His journey to the tax office starts at a windowless back room at his shop, where stacks of $20 bills flip through the counting machine at his desk with the whir-slap-whir-slap of a weed-whacker. He and his staff then wrap the bills into neat $2,000 bundles and wedge them into a long cardboard box, which is then covered in plain paper and stuffed into a shoulder bag that goes into the trunk. From the moment he pulls out of his parking lot, he is watching, assessing. "I find myself looking in my rear-view mirror hundreds of more times than I usually would in just normal traffic, making sure that I'm not being followed," Kiloh said. "That's what a lot of this industry has been about: Just stay under the radar, and that's your best defense. That's your best kind of safety." It was on Kiloh's drive to City Hall in late June that he noticed the ominous-looking Chevy. He watched it intently, taking note of the man behind the wheel - glasses, mid-40s to 50s - as he leaned into the accelerator. Eventually, the Chevy disappeared, but Kiloh wasn't home free yet. Exiting the freeway, he tried to enter a parking lot near City Hall but was turned away, forcing him farther down the block. Once inside a garage, he looped around until he found a spot near a stairwell. Lifting his satchel from his trunk, he scurried toward the door. "I try to not stay in confined places like an elevator, so I'd rather take the standard stairs, plus the standard stairs have video cameras," he said. The steps opened to a sun-soaked plaza teeming with people. With the cash over his shoulder, he made his way briskly toward City Hall, his head swiveling. "It's tough when people make eye contact with you," he said. "There is always the fear of what do they know?" Kiloh spotted a police officer walking across the plaza - an instant source of comfort. Finally at the granite-faced tower, Kiloh darted up the steps and slipped behind a pair of glass-and-wood doors. He emerged about 20 minutes later, his tax bill paid, and drew in a slow, deep breath. "You just feel the relief," he said, "to know that I don't have to look over my shoulder." In this June 27, 2017, photo, bundles of $20 bills are placed on a table as Jerred Kiloh, owner of the Higher Path medical marijuana dispensary, prepares a trip to Los Angeles City Hall to pay his monthly tax payment in cash in Los Angeles. For Kiloh, the cash is a daily hassle. It needs to be counted repeatedly to safeguard against loss. State and local taxes must be set aside and stored, sometimes for a month or more. When vendors show up, they get paid in cash, too. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong) In this June 27, 2017, photo, with $40,131.88 in cash hidden in a shoulder bag in his trunk, Jerred Kiloh, owner of the Higher Path medical marijuana dispensary, makes a trip to Los Angeles City Hall to pay his monthly tax in cash in Los Angeles. For Kiloh, it's a stressed-out freeway drive each month from his shop to downtown L.A. The problem: Banks generally don't want the risk of doing business with companies linked to a product that remains illegal to the federal government. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong) In this June 27, 2017, photo, Jerred Kiloh, owner of the Higher Path medical marijuana dispensary, stocks shelves with with cannabis products in Los Angeles. On a typical day, $15,000 can change hands in his dispensary, where a steady stream of customers pick from shelves stocked with hundreds products, from cannabis-infused lip balm to potent concentrates that look like thin sheets of amber-colored ice. For Kiloh, the cash is a daily hassle. It needs to be counted repeatedly to safeguard against loss. State and local taxes must be set aside and stored, sometimes for a month or more. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong) In this June 27, 2017, photo, two security guard workers at the Higher Path medical marijuana dispensary owned by Jerred Kiloh in Los Angeles. Kiloh's dispensary on a busy commercial strip is a target for robbers and it's been hit twice, once by burglars who broke in through the roof. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong) In this June 27, 2017, photo, popcorn shaped marijuana nuggets are seen in a plastic container at the Higher Path medical marijuana dispensary owned by Jerred Kiloh in Los Angeles. On a typical day, $15,000 can change hands in his dispensary, where a steady stream of customers pick from shelves stocked with products, from cannabis-infused lip balm to potent concentrates that look like thin sheets of amber-colored ice. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong) VIENNA (AP) - An Austrian consumer watchdog says 69 women in the country given leak-prone breast implants made by a French company have received 3,000 euros (over $3,550) each in damages. The VKI - Union for Consumer Information - says the compensation was paid by German and French testing companies TueV Rheinland and TueV Rheinland-France after a court found them responsible for approving the rupture-prone implants. VKI says Thursday the sums already have been paid out. It describes the compensation as preliminary. Tens of thousands of women worldwide received implants made by French company Poly Implant Prothese, or PIP. The implants were found to contain industrial-grade silicone instead of medical silicone. PIP's owner was sentenced to prison for fraud, but his bankrupt company couldn't pay damages. MUNICH (AP) - Liverpool manager Juergen Klopp is concerned about the prospect of Neymar moving to Paris Saint-Germain for a record transfer fee. News agency dpa reported that Klopp said in Munich on Wednesday night: "I believe and hope that this is not the next step (trend). I think it will remain an exception." PSG would have to meet the cost of a buyout clause of 222 million euros ($262 million) to secure the Brazil star's transfer from Barcelona. Klopp said: "I thought 'Financial Fair Play' was invented so that something like this wasn't possible." Klopp was in Munich for the Audi Cup pre-season tournament. Liverpool lost on penalties to Atletico Madrid in Wednesday's final. BANGKOK (AP) - Floods in Thailand's northern and eastern regions have killed at least 23 people and left two missing with damage estimated at around $300 million. The Interior Ministry says 10 provinces have been flooded due to heavy rains, affecting 721,500 people. Mongkol Tunsuwan, the president for the northeastern region of the Thai Chamber of Commerce, says the floods are expected to set the region back by at least 10 billion baht ($300 million). According to the Interior Ministry, around 1,554 square kilometers (600 square miles) of rice farming land has been affected. The hardest hit is Sakon Nakhon province, around 640 kilometers (400 miles) east of Bangkok, which has recorded nine deaths. Schools and department stores in the province remain shut. AMMAN, Jordan (AP) - A military appeals court in Jordan has upheld the life sentence of a Jordanian soldier in the shooting deaths of three U.S. military trainers last year. First Sgt. Marik al-Tuwayha, was sentenced by a military court last month to life in prison with hard labor for killing the Americans at the entrance to an air base in southern Jordan. Al-Tuwayha had opened fire at a U.S. convoy, claiming he feared the base was coming under attack. However, security camera video released after the verdict showed that he kept firing as two of the Americans took cover and waved their arms, in an apparent effort to stop the shooting. The news website Hala Akhbar, linked to the Jordanian military, reported on Thursday that a five-judge military appeals court upheld al-Tuwayha's sentence. CHEEKTOWAGA, N.Y. (AP) - An off-duty officer in upstate New York is being praised for saving a man who collapsed while exercising at a gym. Erie County Sheriff's Deputy Richard Lundberg was working out at the gym in the Buffalo suburb of Cheektowaga (cheek-tuh-WAH'-guh) Wednesday when he noticed another man exercising had collapsed. Police say Lundberg sprang into action, immediately performing CPR on the unresponsive man. Lundberg then used an automated external defibrillator to help revive the man. Police say by the time first responders arrived, the man was responsive with a steady heartbeat. Lundberg's no stranger to heroic actions. The sheriff's office says Lundberg's K-9 found a lost autistic teen in 2016. And in 2014, the deputy used a defibrillator to help revive a man who had passed out in a Springville restaurant. MADRID (AP) - Spanish police say they have dismantled a criminal network that smuggled Iranian nationals with false documents into Britain. A National Police statement said Thursday 101 people - mostly Iranians and Spaniards - have been arrested in a year-long operation coordinated with British and police and Europol. It said the ring leader was arrested in London at the end of June as he prepared to take a flight to Brazil. Police said the network operated out of Spain's southern city of Malaga, where 14 members were arrested between June and July. Police said 42 Spaniards were arrested for selling identity documents to the group and 44 Iranians were intercepted at different European airports. The organization charged the migrants some 25,000 euros ($30,000) for fake Spanish passports, travel and accommodation arrangements. WASHINGTON (AP) - The Latest on the Russia sanctions bill signed by President Donald Trump(all times local): 1:40 p.m. Republican senators say it's wrong for the president to blame Congress for deteriorating relations with Russia. FILE - In this July 7, 2017, file photo, President Donald Trump meets with Russian President Vladimir Putin at the G-20 Summit in Hamburg. Trump signed on Aug. 2, what he called a "seriously flawed" bill imposing new sanctions on Russia, pressured by his Republican Party not to move on his own toward a warmer relationship with Moscow in light of Russian actions. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci, File) Sen. Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania says he was shocked at a tweet by President Donald Trump that says "you can blame Congress" for a relationship "at an all-time" and "dangerous low." But many Republicans blame Russian President Vladimir Putin for the growing tensions. Maine Sen. Susan Collins cites Russia's actions in Ukraine and Syria and its suspected interference in the presidential election. North Carolina Sen. Thom Tillis says relations with Russia are bad "because they've done bad things." And Alabama Sen. Richard Shelby says the two nations' relationship began deteriorating with the Russian Revolution of 1917, which led to Communist rule. Shelby says, "I don't see how it's Congress' fault." ___ 8:40 a.m. He grudgingly signed a package of sanctions against Russia. Now the president's blaming Congress for relations with Russia being at what he calls "an all-time" and "very dangerous low." President Donald Trump tweeted early Thursday, "Our relationship with Russia is at an all-time & very dangerous low." He adds: "You can thank Congress, the same people that can't even give us HCare!" Trump calls the sanctions he signed "seriously flawed." He's pushed for warmer relations with Moscow but has bowed to resistance from both parties in Congress in signing the measure. He signed it without holding a public event. And Trump sent out a written statement accusing Congress of overstepping its constitutional bounds, holding back his ability to negotiate with foreign countries and lacking any ability to strike deals. ___ 3:29 p.m. President Donald Trump has bowed to resistance from both parties to his push for warmer ties with Moscow and grudgingly signed a bill that imposes new sanctions on Russia. Trump signed the most significant piece of legislation of his presidency Wednesday with no public event. And he coupled it with a written statement that accused Congress of overstepping its constitutional bounds, impeding his ability to negotiate with foreign countries and lacking any ability to strike deals. The legislation is powerful evidence of the roadblock Congress has erected to Trump's efforts to reset relations with Russia at a time when federal investigators are probing Moscow's interference in the U.S. presidential election and possible collusion by the Trump campaign. The sanctions are aimed at penalizing Moscow for that interference. FILE - In this July 31, 2017, file photo, President Donald Trump in the East Room of the White House. Trump signed on Aug. 2, what he called a "seriously flawed" bill imposing new sanctions on Russia, pressured by his Republican Party not to move on his own toward a warmer relationship with Moscow in light of Russian actions.(AP Photo/Alex Brandon, File) FILE - In this July 28, 2017, file photo, the U.S. Embassy in Moscow, with a monument to Russian revolutionary workers in the foreground. President Donald Trump on Aug. 2, signed what he called a "seriously flawed" bill imposing new sanctions on Russia, pressured by his Republican Party not to move on his own toward a warmer relationship with Moscow in light of Russian actions. Moscow has responded to a White House announcement that Trump intended to sign the bill, by ordering a reduction in the number of U.S. diplomats in Russia. (AP Photo/Alexander Zemlianichenko, File) FILE - In this July 21, 2017 file photo, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson speaks at the State Department in Washington. Tillerson says neither he nor President Donald Trump is "very happy" about new sanctions on Russia that Congress has voted to put in place. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin, File) Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., and other members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, arrive on Capitol Hill Washington, Wednesday, Aug. 2, 2017, for a closed-door meeting with Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Defense Secretary James Mattis. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite) Senate Foreign Relations Committee member Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis. talks to reporters on Capitol Hill Washington, Wednesday, Aug. 2, 2017, following a closed-door meeting with Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Defense Secretary James Mattis. Earlier, President Donald Trump signed a bill to impose new sanctions on Russia which passed Congress with overwhelming support. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite) AMSTERDAM (AP) - In Syria, Mishleen Kafa was terrified when her mother went out shopping - that she would never come back or that someone would kill Mishleen and her brother while they were alone in their apartment. Now the 10-year-old's home is a former Dutch prison, but she's much happier than in Damascus. "I play all the time, I have many friends and I feel safe, I'm so happy that we are in the Netherlands," she said. "I go to school, am learning Dutch, I know how to roller-skate and I have a Dutch friend called Eva whom I met in a church during a Sunday mass. I want to grow up here and become an eye doctor." In this Monday, June 26, 2017 photo, Meza Negadtu, 29, a migrant from Eritrea, prays inside her room at the former prison of Bijlmerbajes, in Amsterdam, Netherlands. With crime declining in the Netherlands, the country is looking at new ways to fill its prisons. The government has let Belgium and Norway put prisoners in empty cells and following the huge flow of migrants into Europe, several Dutch prisons have been temporarily pressed into service as asylum-seeker centers. (AP Photo/Muhammed Muheisen) She and her family are among about 600 people living in the Bijlmerbajes prison complex in the southeast part of Amsterdam. Most have fled war, discrimination or poverty in countries like Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq and Eritrea. The influx has slowed - from 58,900 asylum applications at the height of Europe's migrant crisis in 2015 to 31,600 in 2016, according to the Dutch Immigration and Naturalization Service - but people are still coming. Meanwhile, with crime declining in the Netherlands, the country is looking at new ways to fill its prisons. The government has allowed Belgium and Norway to put their prisoners in empty cells and several Dutch prisons have been temporarily pressed into service as asylum-seeker centers. In the Bijlmerbajes complex, four of six towers are being used to house refugees and migrants. Most already have permission to stay in the Netherlands but are waiting for housing. Meanwhile, they participate in activities designed to help them integrate into Dutch society, said Menno Schot, who runs the center. "We do our best to make the residents, new and old, feel part of a community as we are their guide in Holland," Schot said. "We often hear from residents who moved to their homes that they miss the days they had at the Bijlmerbajes." Nadia Gattas, an 82-year-old Syrian refugee whose home in Deir el-Zour, Syria, was destroyed, can't wait to move to a permanent home. She praised the COA, the Dutch government agency responsible for housing asylum-seekers. "Regularly I visit doctors and feel safe and happy to be surrounded by my sons and grandchildren," she said. "I miss my home in Deir el-Zour so much, however if we remained there we would have died." COA board member Janet Helder said it's important that the COA not just shelter people, but also provide language courses and help them get to know Dutch society and the job market. "We believe that a fast integration and participation within the Dutch society is so important for a great future in the Netherlands," she said. Zafar Sahil, who fled violence in Kabul, Afghanistan, in 2015, was housed in another former Dutch prison before being moved to Bijlmerbajes. He was separated from his mother and younger brother in Iran as they tried to reach Turkey and he still isn't sure what happened to them. He said exercise and a positive attitude help him get through the days as he waits to find out if he will be granted residency. "I never felt I am in a prison," he said. "It's the opposite - I made many new friends from several countries and met many neighboring Dutch people who visited us and I was invited to their places and they helped us to understand the Dutch culture." ___ Muhammed Muheisen is The Associated Press' chief photographer for the Middle East, Pakistan and Afghanistan and a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner. ___ Follow Muhammed Muheisen on Twitter: https://twitter.com/Muheisen81 and on Instagram as https://www.instagram.com/mmuheisen In this Friday, July 7, 2017 photo, refugees and migrants play football at the former prison of Bijlmerbajes in Amsterdam, Netherlands. With crime declining in the Netherlands, the country is looking at new ways to fill its prisons. The government has let Belgium and Norway put prisoners in empty cells and following the huge flow of migrants into Europe, several Dutch prisons have been temporarily pressed into service as asylum-seeker centers. (AP Photo/Muhammed Muheisen) In this Saturday, July 22, 2017 photo, Afghan refugee Zafar Sahil, 22, exercises in a yard at the former prison of Bijlmerbajes in Amsterdam, Netherlands. With crime declining in the Netherlands, the country is looking at new ways to fill its prisons. The government has let Belgium and Norway put prisoners in empty cells and following the huge flow of migrants into Europe, several Dutch prisons have been temporarily pressed into service as asylum-seeker centers. (AP Photo/Muhammed Muheisen) In this Thursday, July 13, 2017 photo, Ethiopian migrant Mako Husa, 40, looks out from a window of a corridor at the former prison of Bijlmerbajes in Amsterdam, Netherlands. With crime declining in the Netherlands, the country is looking at new ways to fill its prisons. The government has let Belgium and Norway put prisoners in empty cells and following the huge flow of migrants into Europe, several Dutch prisons have been temporarily pressed into service as asylum-seeker centers. (AP Photo/Muhammed Muheisen) In this Saturday, July 29, 2017 photo, Angel John, 25, right, a migrant from Sierra Leone, cleans the ground in front of his room, while a Filipino migrant, bottom left, sits by the doorway of his room at the former prison of Bijlmerbajes in Amsterdam, Netherlands. (AP Photo/Muhammed Muheisen) In this Wednesday, July 26, 2017 photo, Bacardi Zouberou, 25, a migrant from Cameroon, sits in a corridor opposite his room at the former prison of Bijlmerbajes in Amsterdam, Netherlands. With crime declining in the Netherlands, the country is looking at new ways to fill its prisons. The government has let Belgium and Norway put prisoners in empty cells and following the huge flow of migrants into Europe, several Dutch prisons have been temporarily pressed into service as asylum-seeker centers. (AP Photo/Muhammed Muheisen) In this Wednesday, July 19, 2017 photo, Syrian refugee girls, from left, Shahd Alamar, 8, Lana Alkhawaja, 9, Maya Alamar, 4, holding balloons, Amal Sakkal, 8, and Hala Alhalaby, 8, play in a corridor known as Kalverstraat, referring to a busy shopping street in Amsterdam, at the former prison of Bijlmerbajes in Amsterdam, Netherlands. With crime declining in the Netherlands, the country is looking at new ways to fill its prisons. The government has let Belgium and Norway put prisoners in empty cells and following the huge flow of migrants into Europe, several Dutch prisons have been temporarily pressed into service as asylum-seeker centers. (AP Photo/Muhammed Muheisen) In this Tuesday, June 27, 2017 photo, Mariam Traore, an 8-month-year-old migrant from Ivory Coast, moves on a chair near her mother's room at the former prison of Bijlmerbajes, in Amsterdam, Netherlands. With crime declining in the Netherlands, the country is looking at new ways to fill its prisons. The government has let Belgium and Norway put prisoners in empty cells and following the huge flow of migrants into Europe, several Dutch prisons have been temporarily pressed into service as asylum-seeker centers. (AP Photo/Muhammed Muheisen) In this Monday, June 26, 2017 photo, a Syrian refugee man and his son smoke a waterpipe, or shisha, in a yard of the former prison of Bijlmerbajes in Amsterdam, Netherlands. With crime declining in the Netherlands, the country is looking at new ways to fill its prisons. The government has let Belgium and Norway put prisoners in empty cells and following the huge flow of migrants into Europe, several Dutch prisons have been temporarily pressed into service as asylum-seeker centers. (AP Photo/Muhammed Muheisen) In this Thursday, July 6, 2017 photo, migrants carry a bag while walking back to their room at the former prison of Bijlmerbajes in Amsterdam, Netherlands. With crime declining in the Netherlands, the country is looking at new ways to fill its prisons. The government has let Belgium and Norway put prisoners in empty cells and following the huge flow of migrants into Europe, several Dutch prisons have been temporarily pressed into service as asylum-seeker centers. (AP Photo/Muhammed Muheisen) In this Sunday, July 9, 2017 photo, Iranian migrant Adel Nazari, 32, trims his beard in his room at the former prison of Bijlmerbajes in Amsterdam, Netherlands. With crime declining in the Netherlands, the country is looking at new ways to fill its prisons. The government has let Belgium and Norway put prisoners in empty cells and following the huge flow of migrants into Europe, several Dutch prisons have been temporarily pressed into service as asylum-seeker centers. (AP Photo/Muhammed Muheisen) In this Wednesday, June 28, 2017 photo, refugee Hani Nashed, 53, from Aleppo, Syria, offers prayers while his young neighbour Lith Mashhadi, 3, a Syrian refugee from Aleppo, peeks on, at Hani's room in the former prison of Bijlmerbajes, in Amsterdam, Netherlands. With crime declining in the Netherlands, the country is looking at new ways to fill its prisons. The government has let Belgium and Norway put prisoners in empty cells and following the huge flow of migrants into Europe, several Dutch prisons have been temporarily pressed into service as asylum-seeker centers. (AP Photo/Muhammed Muheisen) In this Tuesday, June 27, 2017 photo, 20-month-old Naya Mahmoud, a refugee from Aleppo, Syria, sleeps in a crib inside her family's room at the former prison of Bijlmerbajes in Amsterdam, Netherlands. With crime declining in the Netherlands, the country is looking at new ways to fill its prisons. The government has let Belgium and Norway put prisoners in empty cells and following the huge flow of migrants into Europe, several Dutch prisons have been temporarily pressed into service as asylum-seeker centers. (AP Photo/Muhammed Muheisen) In this Friday, June 30, 2017 photo, refugee Sandi Yazji, 5, from al-Hasaka, Syria, holds a mobile phone while standing inside her room at the former prison of Bijlmerbajes in Amsterdam, Netherlands. With crime declining in the Netherlands, the country is looking at new ways to fill its prisons. The government has let Belgium and Norway put prisoners in empty cells and following the huge flow of migrants into Europe, several Dutch prisons have been temporarily pressed into service as asylum-seeker centers. (AP Photo/Muhammed Muheisen) In this Monday, June 26, 2017 photo, Ugandan migrant, Mariam Nebas, 31, holds her 5-month-old son Imran at her room in the former prison of Bijlmerbajes in Amsterdam, Netherlands. With crime declining in the Netherlands, the country is looking at new ways to fill its prisons. The government has let Belgium and Norway put prisoners in empty cells and following the huge flow of migrants into Europe, several Dutch prisons have been temporarily pressed into service as asylum-seeker centers. (AP Photo/Muhammed Muheisen) In this Friday, July 7, 2017 photo, Syrian refugee Ahmad Alshebly, 25, left, checks his mobile phone while Iranian migrant Hussein Azari, 25, is having a haircut by Iranian migrant Mohammed, 33, in a room at the former prison of Bijlmerbajes in Amsterdam, Netherlands. With crime declining in the Netherlands, the country is looking at new ways to fill its prisons. The government has let Belgium and Norway put prisoners in empty cells and following the huge flow of migrants into Europe, several Dutch prisons have been temporarily pressed into service as asylum-seeker centers. (AP Photo/Muhammed Muheisen) In this Wednesday, July 12, 2017 photo, an elderly Iraqi refugee man walks back to his room through a corridor of the former prison of Bijlmerbajes in Amsterdam, Netherlands. With crime declining in the Netherlands, the country is looking at new ways to fill its prisons. The government has let Belgium and Norway put prisoners in empty cells and following the huge flow of migrants into Europe, several Dutch prisons have been temporarily pressed into service as asylum-seeker centers. (AP Photo/Muhammed Muheisen) In this Friday, June 30, 2017 photo, elderly refugee Nadia Gattas, 82, from Deir el-Zour, Syria, sits by a doorway at the former prison of Bijlmerbajes in Amsterdam, Netherlands. With crime declining in the Netherlands, the country is looking at new ways to fill its prisons. The government has let Belgium and Norway put prisoners in empty cells and following the huge flow of migrants into Europe, several Dutch prisons have been temporarily pressed into service as asylum-seeker centers. (AP Photo/Muhammed Muheisen) In this Thursday, June 29, 2017 photo, refugee Sondos Alnaji, 17, from Damascus, Syria, hangs her laundry outside her room at the former prison of Bijlmerbajes, in Amsterdam, Netherlands. With crime declining in the Netherlands, the country is looking at new ways to fill its prisons. The government has let Belgium and Norway put prisoners in empty cells and following the huge flow of migrants into Europe, several Dutch prisons have been temporarily pressed into service as asylum-seeker centers. (AP Photo/Muhammed Muheisen) In this Friday, July 28, 2017 photo, Syrian refugee girls, Mishleen Samir, 10, right, from Damascus, and her friend Claire Alzain, 10, from Damascus, run after each other while playing in a yard at the former prison of Bijlmerbajes in Amsterdam, Netherlands. With crime declining in the Netherlands, the country is looking at new ways to fill its prisons. The government has let Belgium and Norway put prisoners in empty cells and following the huge flow of migrants into Europe, several Dutch prisons have been temporarily pressed into service as asylum-seeker centers. (AP Photo/Muhammed Muheisen) In this Monday, June 26, 2017 photo, refugee brothers from Baniyas, Syria, from right, Izzeldein Moustafa, 6, Abdulrahman, 10, Ahmad, 12 and Amir, 8, play table foosball in a corridor known as Kalverstraat, referring to a busy shopping street in Amsterdam, at the former prison of Bijlmerbajes in Amsterdam, Netherlands. With crime declining in the Netherlands, the country is looking at new ways to fill its prisons. The government has let Belgium and Norway put prisoners in empty cells and following the huge flow of migrants into Europe, several Dutch prisons have been temporarily pressed into service as asylum-seeker centers. (AP Photo/Muhammed Muheisen) In this Thursday, July 20, 2017 photo, a group of Syrian refugee girls enjoy a swing ride in a yard at the former prison of Bijlmerbajes in Amsterdam, Netherlands. With crime declining in the Netherlands, the country is looking at new ways to fill its prisons. The government has let Belgium and Norway put prisoners in empty cells and following the huge flow of migrants into Europe, several Dutch prisons have been temporarily pressed into service as asylum-seeker centers. (AP Photo/Muhammed Muheisen) In this Monday, July 3, 2017 photo, Aimable Nasbimana, 37, right, a migrant from Burundi, teaches his Congolese friend Prosper Baseka, 37, how to ride a bicycle in a yard at the former prison of Bijlmerbajes in Amsterdam, Netherlands. With crime declining in the Netherlands, the country is looking at new ways to fill its prisons. The government has let Belgium and Norway put prisoners in empty cells and following the huge flow of migrants into Europe, several Dutch prisons have been temporarily pressed into service as asylum-seeker centers. (AP Photo/Muhammed Muheisen) In this Sunday, July 16, 2017 photo, Rawaiz Bhatti, 26, a migrant from Peshawar, Pakistan, plays guitar and sings in his room at the former prison of Bijlmerbajes in Amsterdam, Netherlands. With crime declining in the Netherlands, the country is looking at new ways to fill its prisons. The government has let Belgium and Norway put prisoners in empty cells and following the huge flow of migrants into Europe, several Dutch prisons have been temporarily pressed into service as asylum-seeker centers. (AP Photo/Muhammed Muheisen) In this Sunday, July 9, 2017 photo, Eritrean migrant Ksanet Goitom, 23, points at pictures that she brought with her from Eritrea showing family members and friends, displayed at her room in the former prison of Bijlmerbajes in Amsterdam, Netherlands. With crime declining in the Netherlands, the country is looking at new ways to fill its prisons. The government has let Belgium and Norway put prisoners in empty cells and following the huge flow of migrants into Europe, several Dutch prisons have been temporarily pressed into service as asylum-seeker centers. (AP Photo/Muhammed Muheisen) In this Friday, June 30, 2017 photo, refugee Nadia Gattas, 82, from Deir el-Zour, Syria, right, lies on a bed in her room in the former prison of Bijlmerbajes in Amsterdam, Netherlands. With crime declining in the Netherlands, the country is looking at new ways to fill its prisons. The government has let Belgium and Norway put prisoners in empty cells and following the huge flow of migrants into Europe, several Dutch prisons have been temporarily pressed into service as asylum-seeker centers. (AP Photo/Muhammed Muheisen) In this Friday, July 7, 2017 photo, Eritrean migrant Solomun Drat, 7, sleeps on a bed at his family's room in the former prison of Bijlmerbajes in Amsterdam, Netherlands. With crime declining in the Netherlands, the country is looking at new ways to fill its prisons. The government has let Belgium and Norway put prisoners in empty cells and following the huge flow of migrants into Europe, several Dutch prisons have been temporarily pressed into service as asylum-seeker centers. (AP Photo/Muhammed Muheisen) MILAN (AP) - Italian bank UniCredit on Thursday said second-quarter profits grew by 3 percent as it undergoes a major turnaround under CEO Jean Pierre Mustier, who was appointed one year ago. Since then, Italy's biggest bank by assets has disposed of its Pioneer investment arm, the Pekao Polish subsidiary and raised 13 billion euros in capital, while reducing personnel and branches in overall cost-cutting moves. The bank said net profit was 945 billion euros ($1.1 billion) in the three months ended June 30, compared with 916 million euros a year earlier, as the bank disposed of non-core units, cut costs and saw higher fees and commissions. UniCredit Bank CEO, Jean Pierre Mustier arrives for a press conference in Milan, Italy, Thursday, Aug. 3, 2017. UniCredit on Thursday reported second-quarter profits grew by 3 percent as the Italian bank undergoes a major turnaround under CEO Jean Pierre Mustier, who was appointed one year ago. (AP Photo/Luca Bruno) The Pekao sale, completed in July, cost the bank 310 million euros in negative currency devaluations; excluding the Pekao disposal, net profit improved to 1.3 billion euros, the bank said. "UniCredit's good 2017 second-quarter results confirm the early positive impact of Transform 2019, already seen in Q1," Mustier said, referring to the turnaround plan. "All our teams remain focused on the execution and the successful delivery of the plan." UniCredit has been working under the leadership of Mustier to raise capital, after the bank had one of the weakest showings in Europe during a stress test last year. His actions come against the backdrop of a government bailout of smaller Italian banks taken to shore up trust in the Italian banking system. "We are very convinced that the risk profile of the Italian banking sector is going down, thanks to the government's actions," Mustier told journalists. "Now there are no more risk or systemic impacts which can be seen in the Italian banking sector, which is very good for the country." Revenues were down 8 percent, an as increase in fees and commissions was offset by lower interest income and trading income. The quarter also included deep cost-cutting and a decrease in its non-performing loan portfolio. The bank's Core Tier 1 ratio, a measure of its health, was 12.8 percent in the quarter, up from 11.45 percent at the end of March. BEIRUT (AP) - The Islamic State group called on young men to take up arms in eastern Syria, where government forces are on the march as the extremists who are under pressure there and in Iraq. In a statement distributed in Deir el-Zour province that borders Iraq, IS called on all men between 20 and 30 who are able to fight to head to mobilization offices within a week. The call comes as the extremists have lost large parts of areas they once controlled in Iraq and Syria, where they declared a caliphate in 2014. Syrian government forces are on the march toward the Deir el-Zour province after capturing areas from IS in the northern province of Raqqa and the central province of Homs. U.S.-backed fighters of the Syrian Democratic Forces are marching inside the group's de facto capital of Raqqa. In neighboring Iraq, IS recently lost the northern city of Mosul, the largest urban area they ever held. Iraqi forces now control large parts of northern Iraq where the extremists once held sway. "They have suffered large setbacks and defeats," said Omar Abu Laila, a Europe-based opposition activist from Deir el-Zour. He added that preachers are expected to urge young men to join and fight for IS during their Friday sermons. The group has in the past called on young men to carry arms but this is the first time that they say all young men should join and those who don't will be punished. The statement, obtained by The Associated Press from activists in eastern Syria, warns that those who do not join will be undergo questioning and possibly be punished. COPENHAGEN, Denmark (AP) - A 23-year-old man has been sentenced to nine months in prison for throwing rocks at police - the first verdict connected to clashes in Copenhagen in March. Prosecutor Martin Top-Madsen said Thursday the man, who was not named, had pleaded guilty to throwing two rocks during the March 1 clashes, which were sparked by protests marking the 10th anniversary of a squatter eviction in Copenhagen. Seven people have so far been charged in connection with the clashes, which saw protesters hurling rocks, fireworks and bottles at riot police. No one was reported injured, but dozens of shop windows were smashed. Squatters were evicted in 2007 from an abandoned building in Copenhagen that had been a center for young leftists and punk rockers for nearly three decades. KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) - The manager of Afghanistan's all-girl robotics team says the father of a team member died in the horrific suicide assault on a Shiite mosque this week in western Herat. AliReza Mehraban told The Associated Press on Thursday that Asif Qaderian, the father of Fatima Qaderian, died of his injuries in the Herat Hospital. Tuesday's brutal attack on the Shiite mosque killed 33 worshippers as they prayed and wounded another 66, according to provincial officials. The all-girls robotics team won a silver medal in the U.S. competition last month. The team garnered attention after they were twice denied visas but finally went to the United States to compete after President Donald Trump intervened. Mehraban said Fatima's father was her biggest supporter. His death has devastated her and her family, he said. MAHANOY CITY, Pa. (AP) - A Pennsylvania woman has been sentenced to up to 32 years in prison after being convicted in the suffocation death of her 14-month-old granddaughter. Pietrina Hoffman still maintains her innocence after being found guilty of third-degree murder in the death of Neveah Doyle. Prosecutors say Hoffman had taken several medications before she fell off a couch onto the baby, suffocating her. Neveah was found dead on the floor in Hoffman's Mahanoy City home in January 2016. An autopsy showed the baby was smothered to death. Hoffman's lawyer says she had no reason to kill the child and was distraught about what happened. The Schuylkill County District Attorney said after the hearing Wednesday that she was disappointed Hoffman did not get the maximum sentence of up to 40 years in prison. The federal government has returned to a Pennsylvania village that became a flashpoint in the national debate over fracking to investigate ongoing complaints about the quality of the drinking water. Government scientists are collecting water and air samples this week from about 25 homes in Dimock, a tiny crossroads about 150 miles north of Philadelphia. "Take a skunk and every household chemical, put it in a blender, puree it for five minutes and take a whiff," said Dimock resident Ray Kemble, 61, describing the smell of his well water. "It burns the back of your throat, makes you gag, makes you want to puke." FILE - In this Sept. 20, 2012 file photo, Ray Kemble, of Dimock, Pa., holds a jug of his well water on his head while marching with demonstrators against hydraulic fracturing outside a Marcellus Shale industry conference in Philadelphia. Federal government scientists are collecting water and air samples in the first week of August 2017 from about 25 homes in Dimock, Pa., a tiny, rural crossroads about 150 miles north of Philadelphia that became a flashpoint in the national debate over fracking to investigate ongoing complaints about the quality of the drinking water. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke, File) He said investigators from the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, a federal public health agency, were at his house Monday to collect samples. Fracking is a method that uses huge amounts of pressurized water, along with sand and chemicals, to extract oil and natural gas from rock formations deep underground. Dimock was the scene of the most highly publicized case of methane contamination to emerge from the early days of Pennsylvania's natural gas-drilling boom. State regulators blamed faulty gas wells drilled by Cabot Oil & Gas Corp. for leaking combustible methane into Dimock's groundwater. Cabot, one of the largest natural gas producers in the state, has consistently denied responsibility, saying methane was an issue in the groundwater long before it began drilling. "Numerous sets of data collected over the past several years in Dimock, by both EPA and DEP, have confirmed there is no threat to human health and the environment," said company spokesman George Stark, referring to federal and state environmental agencies. The Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry said Thursday it is testing the water for bacteria, gases and chemicals. The agency is also testing indoor air for radon. Sampling results are expected in the fall, which will be shared with residents. A report will be released to the public next year. "Residents have continued to raise concerns about natural gas activities impacting their private water well quality," the agency said in a statement to The Associated Press. It said the investigation will "determine if there are drinking water quality issues that may continue to pose a health threat." It's the first time ATSDR itself has tested private well water in Dimock. The Environmental Protection Agency conducted testing in 2012. ATSDR analyzed those samples and found explosive levels of methane in some wells, along with hazardous chemicals "at levels high enough to affect health." It did not link the problems to drilling, citing a lack of pre-drilling test data. For a time, Dimock was ground zero in environmental activists' fight against fracking, the technique that has given energy companies the ability to reach enormous, previously inaccessible deposits of oil and natural gas. The village was featured in the Emmy Award-winning 2010 documentary "Gasland," which showed residents lighting their tap water on fire. Drilling supporters have long accused Dimock residents of seeking money and attention. Kemble, who became a high-profile anti-drilling activist after his water well was contaminated, said his water got worse after Cabot fracked three wells near his house. He said he continues to fill a large plastic tank on his property with clean water he hauls from a neighboring community. "It's all still bad. That's why they're back up here," said Kemble, who was among dozens of plaintiffs who settled a lawsuit against Cabot in 2012. In April, a federal judge threw out a $4.24 million jury verdict against the Houston-based driller and ordered a new trial in a lawsuit alleging that Cabot contaminated the well water of two families who were not part of the 2012 settlement. HUNTINGTON, W.Va. (AP) - President Donald Trump said Thursday he hopes for a "truly honest" outcome from the Russia investigation that has consumed the opening months of his presidency, and he challenged Democrats to either continue their "obsession with a hoax" or begin serving the interests of the American people. At a boisterous campaign rally in Trump-friendly West Virginia, Trump slammed the investigation as a "fake story that is demeaning to all of us and most of all demeaning to our country and demeaning to our Constitution." He commented hours after news broke that Robert Mueller, the special counsel leading the investigation, had empaneled a grand jury in the case. "I just hope the final determination is a truly honest one, which is what the millions of people who gave us our big win in November deserve and what all Americans who want a better future want and deserve," Trump told thousands of cheering, sign-waving supporters packed into an arena in Huntington. President Donald Trump speaks at a campaign-style rally at Big Sandy Superstore Arena in Huntington, W.Va., Thursday, Aug. 3, 2017. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh) Trump overwhelmingly won the state in the November election, partly due to his promises to revive a slumping coal industry. The president, who remains agitated over the investigation into allegations of coordination between his campaign associates and Russian government officials, said Democrats have a decision to make. "They can continue their obsession with the hoax or they can serve the interests of the American people," he said. Trump maintains there were no ties between his campaign and Russia and says no wrongdoing was committed. His frustration over the investigation peaked in recent weeks as he began attacking Attorney General Jeff Sessions for recusing himself from the investigation. Sessions, most recently a U.S. senator, was an early and ardent Trump supporter. "Most people know there were no Russians in our campaign. There never were," he told the cheering crowd in West Virginia. "We didn't win because of Russia. We won because of you." Trump argued that Democrats are pushing the "totally made-up Russia story" because "they have no message, no agenda and no vision." "The Russia story is a total fabrication. It's just an excuse for the greatest loss in the history of American politics," he said, referring to his victory over Hillary Clinton. "It just makes them feel better when they have nothing else to talk about." His suggestion for Democrats: "Try winning at the voter booth. Not going to be easy, but that's the way you're supposed to do it." ___ Follow Darlene Superville on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/dsupervilleap President Donald Trump holds a sign before speaking during a rally Thursday, Aug. 3, 2017, in Huntington, W.Va. (AP Photo/Darron Cummings) YOSEMITE NATIONAL PARK, Calif. (AP) - Authorities say the woman found dead in Yosemite National Park was from China. Park spokesman Scott Gediman says the woman has been identified as 27-year-old Chaocui Wang of China. Officials on Monday confirmed the death on the Pacific Crest Train, in the northwestern portion of the California park. About a week ago, the body of a Japanese tourist who was hiking the Pacific Crest Trail was found in a river in Kings Canyon National Park. The body of 32-year-old Rika Morita was found July 23 submerged in the south fork of the Kings River at the 10,000-foot (3,000-meter) level of the park. The body was retrieved a day later. Runoff from a record winter snowfall in the Sierra Nevada has swollen rivers, making them swift and treacherous. SOMERSET WEST, South Africa (AP) - Oscar Pistorius was taken from prison to a public hospital on Thursday with chest pains and will stay overnight for observation. "He's fine now," Pistorius spokesman Johan van Wyk told The Associated Press. Van Wyk said South African media reports that the former track star and convicted murderer had a suspected heart attack in jail were untrue. Pistorius, the double-amputee Olympic runner who is serving a six-year prison term for the 2013 murder of his girlfriend, was taken to the hospital Thursday morning and had been expected to return to the prison later the same day, Department of Corrections spokesman Logan Maistry told the AP. However, Pistorius will now stay overnight in the hospital "for observation," Maistry said. FILE - In this July 6, 2016, file photo, Oscar Pistorius leaves the High Court in Pretoria, South Africa, after a judge passed a new sentence of six years imprisonment after his conviction was changed to murder for shooting girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp in 2013. Pistorius has been taken from prison to a hospital for medical examinations and will be kept at the facility overnight, it was reported on Thursday, Aug. 3, 2017. South African media reports say he was complaining of chest pains. (AP Photo/Marco Longari, Pool Photo via AP, File) Maistry declined to give details of Pistorius' medical complaint, citing department rules preventing the divulging of information about offenders. He said only that Pistorius was having "medical examinations." But van Wyk confirmed that Pistorius had complained of chest pains and was taken to Kalafong Hospital in the South African capital, Pretoria. Reports said he was rushed from Atteridgeville Prison to the hospital's emergency department, escorted by armed guards. Maistry declined to comment on those reports. This is the second time Pistorius has left jail for a hospital visit. Last year he was taken to the hospital for treatment to cuts on his wrists, which prison authorities said he sustained after falling in his cell. The 30-year-old Pistorius was first imprisoned at the Kgosi Mampuru II Prison in central Pretoria but was moved to Atteridgeville because it was better suited to handle disabled inmates. Pistorius, the multiple Paralympic champion, has served a year of his sentence for the fatal shooting of girlfriend Reeva Steekamp. Pistorius was convicted of murder in 2015 after an appeal by prosecutors against an initial manslaughter verdict. He killed Steenkamp in the early hours of Valentine's Day 2013 by shooting her multiple times through a toilet cubicle door at his Pretoria home. Pistorius claimed he mistook his girlfriend for a nighttime intruder. Prosecutors have announced their intention to appeal again, this time against Pistorius' six-year sentence, which they say is too lenient. The National Prosecuting Authority said it will appeal to South Africa's Supreme Court, and the appeal could be heard this year, opening another chapter in a case that has lasted nearly five years. Pistorius faces having his sentence increased to 15 years if prosecutors are successful. There is no death penalty in South Africa. ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. (AP) - A judge has ordered a government sand-dune construction project in New Jersey that has created huge ponds of bacteria-laden water and blocked off access to parts of the beach shut down for at least a week. A state judge on Thursday ordered all sides to work out a remedial plan. The ponds of standing water are exactly what Margate residents had warned of in previous, unsuccessful litigation against the government's plan to build the protective sand dunes at the coastal town south of Atlantic City. The work is part of a statewide effort to protect New Jersey's 127-mile coastline following the devastation that Superstorm Sandy caused in 2012. But Margate has opposed it as unnecessary and harmful to its shoreline, and now a public health hazard. WASHINGTON (AP) - Drug and medical device makers would pay higher user fees under legislation the Senate approved and sent to the president on Thursday. The revenue raised would help pay for the government reviews required to bring their products to the market. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said the bill's passage will ensure the review of medical devices and medicine won't come to a screeching halt in a few weeks. The current law governing these fees expires Sept. 30. The legislation cleared the Senate on a vote of 94-1. The bill also includes measures to help an array of patient groups around the country such as children with cancer and people with hearing problems. The legislation rejects the Trump administration's recommendation to fund FDA reviews entirely through user fees. Doing so would have upended several months' worth of negotiations over the fees, which will generate between $8 billion and $9 billion over five years. The administration had argued that "in an era of renewed fiscal restraint, industries that benefit directly from FDA's work should pay for it." The House approved the bill last month. It is one of the final measures the Senate planned to consider before lawmakers leave Washington for their August recess. The legislation covers much more than user fees. In a bid to improve treatment options for children in cancer, the bill requires companies developing cancer drugs for adults to also study their suitability for children when there is an indication it could help kids as well. Patient groups say there is little market incentive for the pharmaceutical industry to develop pediatric oncology drugs because the population is small compared to the adult population. Most drugs used for pediatric cancer were specifically approved for adults, and the advocacy group Kids v Cancer reports that there are almost 900 drugs in the adult cancer pipeline, but only a handful in development for children. The bill also instructs the FDA to revise its regulations to establish a category of hearing aids that could be sold without a prescription. The idea behind the change is to give people with mild to moderate hearing loss greater access to hearing aids in the same way that people can buy reading glasses. Supporters said the measure will drive down the cost of hearing aids. The lone "no" vote came from Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders. Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wisc., lifted objections to taking up the bill after securing a vote for separate legislation aimed at allowing terminally ill patients to get investigational medical treatments where no alternative exists. Johnson's legislation also passed the Senate on Thursday. While the FDA user fee bill had widespread support, the Project on Government Oversight, a watchdog group, said Congress should rethink a system that leaves the FDA so beholden to industry for funding and the terms of the funding. JERUSALEM (AP) - Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is suspected of crimes involving fraud, breach of trust and bribes in two corruption cases, Israeli police revealed Thursday. Police have been questioning Netanyahu for months over the cases but have released few details. It released a gag order Thursday night on reporting the details of talks that are underway to enlist a state witness. The document says the cases involving Netanyahu deal with "a suspicion of committing crimes of bribery, fraud and breach of trust." Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu attends the weekly cabinet meeting in Jerusalem, Sunday, July 30, 2017. (Amir Cohen, Pool via AP) Netanyahu's office has repeatedly denied wrongdoing over the investigations, portraying the accusations as a witch hunt against him and his family by a hostile media opposed to his hard-line political views. A statement from his office Thursday night said, "We completely reject the unfounded claims against the prime minister." It said the allegations are part of a campaign to "replace the government" and "there will be nothing, because there was nothing." One investigation, dubbed "File 1000," reportedly concerns claims that Netanyahu improperly accepted lavish gifts from wealthy supporters, including Australian billionaire James Packer and Hollywood producer Arnon Milchan. The second investigation, "File 2000," reportedly concerns Netanyahu's alleged attempts to strike a deal with publisher Arnon Mozes of the Yediot Ahronot newspaper group to promote legislation to weaken Yediot's main competitor in exchange for more favorable coverage of him by Yediot. Netanyahu, who took office in 2009, has long had an image as a cigar-smoking, cognac-drinking socialite, while his wife, Sara, has been accused of abusive behavior toward staff. Opponents have portrayed both as being out of touch with the struggles of average Israelis. CAIRO (AP) - The Egyptian government has increased the prices of drinking water and sewage fees up to 50 percent as part of an extensive economic reforms program aimed at closing the budget deficit. The decision reported on Thursday goes into effect in August. The hike saves L.E. 1 billion in subsidies, said Mohi el-Serafi, spokesman the country's water and sewage agency. Egyptians will be paying between L.E. 00.30 and L.E. 00.45 for the consumption of up to 10 cubic meters (13.08 cubic yards) of water and from L.E. 00.70 to L.E. 1.20 for up to 20 cubic meters (26 cubic yards) Egypt is taking steps to reform its economy including flotation of the currency. The measures meet demands by the International Monetary Fund, which secured a $12 billion bailout loan to Egypt. WASHINGTON (AP) - The Trump administration is greenlighting a nearly $600 million sale of high-tech attack planes to Nigeria, officials said Thursday. The goal is to shore up the West African nation's ability to fight Boko Haram and other extremists, despite U.S. concerns about human rights abuses by Nigerian security forces. The sale will let Nigeria buy up to 12 Embraer A-29 Super Tucano aircraft from Colorado-based Sierra Nevada Corp., according to officials who were briefed on the matter but spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss it publicly. The aircraft come with sophisticated targeting equipment that the U.S says will help Nigeria fight terrorism, trafficking, insurgency and illicit trade. In his final days in office, former President Barack Obama put the planned sale on hold after a Nigerian fighter jet repeatedly bombed a camp near the Cameroon border housing civilians who had fled Boko Haram. Local officials have said more than 230 people were killed, in an incident that brought new attention to alleged abuses by Nigeria's forces. A few weeks later, newly inaugurated President Donald Trump told Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari that he supported the sale. Trump told the Nigerian leader in their first phone call that it would increase American exports and help Nigeria fight terrorists, according to officials. The move is Trump's latest to arm countries despite questionable rights records in some cases. On his first trip abroad as president, Trump announced a $110 billion sale of military equipment to Saudi Arabia, including precision-guided munitions that Obama had cut off over concerns about high rates of civilian casualties in Yemen. Saudi Arabia is at war with Iranian-backed Shiite rebels in Yemen. Despite approving the sale to Nigeria, the U.S. is keeping up the pressure on Buhari's government to improve its forces' human rights practices and ensure accountability for violators, a U.S. official said. The aim of the sale is to help Nigeria and its neighbors strengthen their ability to fight Boko Haram and an Islamic State group affiliate in West Africa. Other countries in the region fighting similar threats already have the Super Tucano, the official noted. The State Department notified Congress late Wednesday of its plans to approve the sale. That triggered a 30-day review period in which lawmakers can try to block the sale. While several Democrats in particular have raised concerns, Congress is unlikely to stop the administration from proceeding. John Campbell, a Nigeria scholar at the Council on Foreign Relations, said concerns have receded somewhat as Nigeria has taken steps to address shortcomings, including granting the International Committee of the Red Cross access to some Nigerian detention facilities. "There are signs of some progress," Campbell said. Still, he said Nigeria had a "long way to go." If the sale goes forward, the U.S. will have to send employees or contractors to Nigeria to provide logistical support and train teams on how to use the aircraft. They also would provide guidance on international laws for protecting civilians, officials said. The Nigerian air force has been accused of bombing civilian targets several times in recent years. The State Department said in report last year that the Nigerian government has taken "few steps to investigate or prosecute officials who committed violations, whether in the security forces or elsewhere in the government, and impunity remained widespread at all levels of government." Amnesty International also has accused Nigeria's military of war crimes and crimes against humanity in the extrajudicial killings of an estimated 8,000 Boko Haram suspects. Buhari promised to investigate the alleged abuses after he won office in March 2015. No soldier has since been prosecuted. Nigeria is Africa's largest consumer market, with 170 million people, and the continent's second-largest oil producer. It is strategically located on the edge of the Sahel, the largely lawless semi-desert region bridging north and sub-Saharan Africa where experts warn of Islamic extremists expanding their reach. More than 20,000 have been killed and about 3 million displaced in Boko Haram's insurgency since 2009, in which the extremist group has sought to enforce strict Islamic rule. ___ Associated Press writer Richard Lardner contributed to this report. NEW YORK (AP) - Yaritza Mendez is an American citizen thanks to an immigration system that has been built around family connections for more than 50 years. Since 1965, immigrants-turned-American citizens can serve as sponsors to their parents, children and siblings and help them become legal residents and then U.S. citizens. It's a system that allowed Mendez's grandmother to bring her son to the U.S. from the Dominican Republic about a decade ago, which in turn allowed him to sponsor her. The family-based immigration system would be completely upended by proposed legislation that got an endorsement from President Donald Trump on Wednesday. The proposal would drastically reduce who's eligible for family visas and cut overall immigration by 50 percent within 10 years, giving a preference to English speakers, educated immigrants, high-wage earners and others. Yaritza Mendez, a citywide outreach coordinator for the non-profit Make the Road New York, stands for a photo at the organization's office, Thursday, Aug. 3, 2017, in New York. With changes in proposed legislation that would shift the country from a family-based immigration system to one that gives preference to skilled workers over family connections, Mendez, who is also attempting to petition for her mother to live in the U.S., and organizations like Make the Road, are staying busy advising clients seeking help in navigating the system. (AP Photo/Julie Jacobson) The bill from Republican Sens. David Perdue of Georgia and Tom Cotton of Arkansas has little chance of getting anywhere, with Democrats dismissing it and even fellow GOP legislators showing little interest in any kind of immigration action. Opponents are decrying it as an attack on immigrants and on legal immigration itself, one that has echoes throughout American history. "I do contribute to this country as much as a born American," said Mendez, who works as an organizer at Make the Road New York, an immigrant advocacy organization. "I do pay my taxes on time. I work and I go out and vote. I should have, and do deserve, the right to be with my mom." The current system was enacted by President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1965. Before that, the U.S. had quotas that allowed a set number of people from certain countries, like those in Europe, to come but essentially barred people from other parts of the world. The change was backed by the American families of European immigrants who wanted to bring over their relatives. Congress decided to do away with the country-of-origin system in favor of one where visas were divided between all nations, but with preference going to those people with family ties to U.S. citizens. At the time, many assumed the change would continue to mainly benefit European immigrants. But immigrants from Asia and Latin America used the family categories to bring over their relatives, creating a more diverse nation over time. "Asian-Americans in particular upended it and transformed who we are as a people here in the United States, made it a far more diverse place and that wasn't the goal," UCLA history professor Kelly Lytle Hernandez. The law marked a dramatic reversal from earlier immigration acts that Lytle Hernandez said helped "construct the nation as a European immigrant, white nation." The 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act barred workers from that country from coming here. A 1924 immigration law barred people from whole parts of the globe, like Asia, from entering. European immigrants were allowed in, in small numbers and with emphasis on those from Northern Europe. Trump's supporters praise the cuts and believe the emphasis on a skills-based immigration system will improve the economy. Roy Beck, executive director of NumbersUSA, which supports the legislation, welcomed both cuts to the numbers of people allowed into the country and focusing on what an immigrant would bring to the U.S. as a determining factor of whether they are allowed to come. "It should be, 'who do we need,'" he said. Asked about the hardship that naturalized citizens would face if they were no longer allowed to bring in parents, adult children and siblings, Beck said there were ways, like technology, to stay in touch despite distance. Mendez said implementing a system like that would be akin to creating second-class status for naturalized citizens like herself. Now that she is a citizen, she hopes to serve as a sponsor for her mother to allow her to become an American. ___ Follow Deepti Hajela at www.twitter.com/dhajela and see more of her work on apnews.com and the APNews app. SANTO DOMINGO, Dominican Republic (AP) - Riot police and soldiers have spread out across a city north of the Dominican Republic's capital following protests over the killing of an activist during a demonstration against the local government. Many businesses closed Thursday in San Francisco de Macoris and public transit ground to a halt as the city braced for possible protests over the death of university student and activist Vladimir Lantigua. He was shot and killed Tuesday during a protest calling for more spending on infrastructure and demanding the prosecution of a former city official accused of corruption. Protest group leader Raul Monegro said many believe the 24-year-old was shot by police and they are demanding an investigation. Police spokesman Nelson Rosario said officers had withdrawn from the area when the shooting occurred and were not involved. SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) - Puerto Rico's governor made a last-ditch effort Thursday to persuade a federal control board that furloughing tens of thousands of government workers would be an unnecessary blow to the U.S. territory's struggling economy. Gov. Ricardo Rossello spoke at a news conference looking ahead to a Friday meeting at which the board that oversees the island's finances is scheduled to vote on whether to order furloughs and other measures to rein in spending by the debt-laden government, whose revenues have been strained by a 10-year recession. Rossello said the Puerto Rico administration has nearly $1.8 billion in cash, which he says is far more than what the board has required to avoid furloughs. The governor has vowed to go to court to fight any furloughs, which he said Thursday would have a $600 million negative economic impact. "We will defend the people of Puerto Rico in any forum," he said. "This measure is unnecessary and foolish." The board has not publicly said whether it will vote in favor of furloughs or take other actions during its meeting Friday. Board members did not immediately reply to a request for comment. In setting up the board last year, Congress gave the board wide-ranging power to oversee the island government's finances, but Rossello said he is ready to fight it. "The one who decides public policy here is Puerto Rico's government," he said. The board earlier this year proposed furloughs of two days a month for teachers and four days a month for other government workers as a way to cut government spending by up to $40 million a month. In addition, all Christmas bonuses could be eliminated by fiscal year 2018. The board also is expected to talk on Friday about ways to reform the public pension system, which faces nearly $50 billion in liabilities. More than a dozen municipalities across Puerto Rico already have implemented their own furloughs in recent months as they struggle with shrinking budgets. Some have eliminated up to 20 hours a week, which means a salary cut of up to $500 a month for some workers. Overall, Puerto Ricans have been hit with new taxes, higher utility rates and other austerity measures as the government seeks to restructure a portion of its more than $70 billion public debt through a lengthy, bankruptcy-like process that recently began in federal court. The U.S. territory has defaulted on millions of dollars' worth of government bonds in recent years, angering creditors seeking to recuperate a portion of their investments via lawsuits. NEW YORK (AP) - Ex-New York Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver can ask the U.S. Supreme Court to review his case rather than go straight to a retrial after appeals judges cleared the way Thursday. The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said the Democrat can ask the high court to look at his case after lawyers for the longtime state power broker argued that it was better to do it now than after a retrial. A three-judge panel of the appeals court tossed out his 2015 public corruption conviction in July, citing a recent Supreme Court decision that reversed the public corruption conviction of Virginia Republican ex-Gov. Bob McDonnell. But it also said there was sufficient evidence to conduct a retrial. Prosecutors vowed to appeal, a promise they repeated on Thursday. "We still plan to retry this case as soon as possible," said Nicholas Biase, a spokesman for prosecutors. In court papers, prosecutors had opposed Silver's request for the 2nd Circuit to suspend the effect of its decision long enough for a Supreme Court review, saying the move was a "delay tactic." "Silver's retrial is inevitable, regardless of the outcome of any one of his claims in the Supreme Court," wrote Assistant U.S. Attorney Tatiana Martins. "There is no good cause for delay." She also noted that one of the key witnesses against Silver is over age 80 and said Silver should not be allowed to use the remote chance the Supreme Court would take up the case to delay a retrial for months and gain a strategic advantage. The 73-year-old Silver was convicted in a $5 million scheme and was sentenced to 12 years in prison. When the 2nd Circuit tossed out the conviction, it described how instructions on the law by the judge to the jury were correct by longtime legal precedent in New York, but was inconsistent with how the Supreme Court narrowed the definition of public corruption in its McDonnell decision. Steven Molo and Joel Cohen, lawyers for Silver, praised the 2nd Circuit in a statement Thursday. "The court recognized the significance of the issues we will be asking the Supreme Court to review. It halted the trial court proceedings to allow us to do that," they said. Anthony Joshua is preparing to begin a training camp on August 22 in the expectation Wladimir Klitschko will sign for their proposed November 11 rematch in Las Vegas. The 27-year-olds preference is for a return after their date at Wembley on April 29 was widely spoken of as the most exciting heavyweight fight since its last glamour era of the 1990s. Press Association Sport understands Joshuas promoters Matchroom awaits only Klitschkos decision before confirming the fight at Vegas T-Mobile Arena, and the IBF and WBA champion expects a resolution by the end of August. The alternative would be a bout against his Bulgarian mandatory challenger Kubrat Pulev, but Joshua told Press Association Sport: I hope we can put a seal on it before the end of the month. If we fought November 11, starting August 22 is a three-month camp, so towards the end of the month, one way or the other (Im expecting to know), because Ive got to crack on. It was just fun, it was just entertaining. Id do it again, definitely. And going to Vegas opens the door for the (WBC champion Deontay) Wilder fight. Finishing up training earlier... so I'm prepared for later #AJBXNG pic.twitter.com/jqXRB1OCIc Anthony Joshua (@anthonyjoshua) July 31, 2017 (Klitschkos) not going to top what hes already done but for 10 years people said he was boring because he was so dominant, but he got a lot of respect in defeat, so that should give him a real motivation (for a rematch). Hes got another chance to do it. Id do it if I was him. Almost immediately after their fight in April, Klitschko insisted he had conceded victory by not pursuing the stoppage when in the sixth round he heavily dropped Joshua for the first time in his professional career. There have also been suggestions his older brother Vitali has apologised to him after advising him from the corner to remain patient, before Joshua gradually recovered and secured victory in the 11th. Anthony Joshua was dropped to the canvas for the first time in his career by Wladimir Klitschko Joshua, however, has dismissed both as nonsense, even repeating the admission of Klitschkos late trainer Manny Steward that the Ukrainian lacks killer instinct. Theres a lot more to it than I let him off the hook; thats the only reason he beat me, I took my foot off the gas, he told Press Association Sport. Thats nonsense. Hes been champion for 10 years, he knows better than that, so thats not a good enough excuse. You have to have a killer instinct. No matter what people tell you, sometimes youve got to do it your way. Maybe Wladimir came up short for those reasons. The rematch between Anthony Joshua and Wladimir Klitschko could take place on November 11 in Las Vegas (Nick Potts/PA) Maybe its protecting his reputation. I can believe he said to himself Cool, Ive got him hurt, Im going to get him out in three rounds but I need to gain my energy back because Im too tired. (But) he was cautious: he knows that if he comes steaming in hes going to get knocked out himself, he was jittery, he was tired as well. Theres a lot more to it. Its not that he let me off the hook: I dont think I gave him an opportunity to finish me. Anthony Joshua and Emily Skye joined Lucozade Sport at the launch event for its new drink FitWater. Brexit will still happen despite the UK becoming more aware of the density of problems during withdrawal negotiations, Jean-Claude Juncker has said. The European Commission president said he disagreed with the Maltese prime minister Joseph Muscat, who reportedly said last week he saw hopeful signs that Brexit will not happen. His comments come amid increasing Tory tensions over the Brexit process, with Cabinet ministers publicly disagreeing over the potential terms of a transition phase after Britains expected exit in March 2019. Philip Hammond said last week that free movement of EU citizens would continue for three year transition period Mr Juncker told Politico: People will become more and more conscious of the density of problems on a daily basis, without always being able to provide a coherent answer to these problems. But the Commission president said he still expected Britain to leave the European Union. I dont go as far as the Maltese prime minister who has not ruled out that it will not come to Brexit, he said. My working hypothesis is that it will come to Brexit. In a public Cabinet split last week, Chancellor Philip Hammond signalled that free movement of EU citizens would continue for a three-year transition period in all but name, with an added element of migrants having to register in the UK. Great letter by my colleague @PaulBlomfieldMP - uncertainty for EU nationals already leading to discrimination. https://t.co/W3KzWMxCVQ Keir Starmer (@Keir_Starmer) August 2, 2017 But International Trade Secretary Liam Fox insisted unregulated free movement of labour after Brexit would not keep faith with the EU referendum result and that the Cabinet had not agreed a stance on immigration Shadow Brexit secretary Sir Keir Starmer has suggested Labour could seek to exploit the Tory splits, saying the party will work with others to ensure a transition phase including membership of the single market and customs union. A surgeon who carried out unnecessary breast operations has had five years added to his jail sentence for his truly sickening crimes. Ian Paterson, who left victims scarred and disfigured, watched via video-link from prison as Court of Appeal judges in London declared that a just sentence of 20 years should replace the unduly lenient 15 years he was given in May. Solicitor General Robert Buckland, who referred the case to appeal judges for review, said afterwards: Throughout our lives we are told and expected to trust doctors. Paterson woefully abused that trust he deliberately preyed on peoples worst fears and then mutilated them on the operating table. This is a truly sickening crime and my thoughts are with the victims and their families. I hope the increased sentence will help bring some closure for them. Paterson, 59, from Altrincham, Greater Manchester, was convicted by a jury at Nottingham Crown Court of 17 counts of wounding with intent and three counts of unlawful wounding against 10 private patients. Asked if 20 years was enough, Mr Buckland said: I dont think any term of imprisonment can ever be enough to fully reflect what happened to the victims in this case but I do think that a high degree of justice has been done today. surgeon Ian Paterson in the dock at Nottingham Crown Court (Elizabeth Cook/PA) Referring to the fact that Paterson spent much of the hearing shaking his head, Mr Buckland said: He is in a state of denial but the facts speak for themselves. Lady Justice Hallett, sitting with Mrs Justice Carr and Mr Justice Goss, said on Thursday: Both the harm and culpability here were exceptionally high. Patersons trial heard from nine women and one man who were treated in the private sector at Little Aston and Parkway Hospitals in the West Midlands between 1997 and 2011. Some of the victims arrive at Nottingham Crown Court (Joe Giddens/PA) Victims said Patersons crimes had left them in constant pain and struggling to trust medical professionals. Lady Justice Hallett said: How any doctor, let alone one who had earned an enviable reputation, could have engaged in this level of offending we will never know. Greed, self-aggrandisement, power however, they do not come close to explaining how a doctor can falsely tell a patient he or she has cancer when they have not, with all that such a diagnosis entails for a patient and members of their family. Nor how a doctor can then insist that he or she undergo unnecessary operations, including mastectomies, with all the physical and psychological pain such operations cause. Victims outside Nottingham Crown Court Patients trusted him implicitly. They could never have imagined that he would put them through the agony of a diagnosis of cancer and mutilation of their breasts when there was no justification for it. With some of his patients, he put them through their ordeal more than once. They must feel no sentence could properly reflect their suffering and that of their families. The mother of murdered model Sally Anne Bowman has told how her ashes were exhumed after cruel people repeatedly desecrated her grave. Linda Bowman was left having to guard her 18-year-old daughters resting place, after it began attracting absolute fruit loops who would vandalise the grave at night. Speaking to the Daily Mirror, the grieving mother told how the grave was damaged four times in six months, including occasions when the headstone was smashed and ghoulish cards were left at the site. Sally Anne Bowman (Metropolitan Police/PA) Miss Bowman was raped and stabbed to death by serial violent sexual predator Mark Dixie in a frenzied attack outside her home in 2005. Her body was eventually laid to rest in a cemetery in Croydon, south London. We had to have Sally Annes remains exhumed and her ashes brought home because someone kept destroying her grave and her headstone, she told the newspaper. We used to have funny men hanging around over there. Myself and her dad had to go through the Ministry of Justice to have it exhumed. Linda Bowman (Ian Nicholson/PA) Miss Bowmans ashes were exhumed four years ago following the traumatising incidents that included her grave being covered with dirt and dead flowers. The harrowing experience brought memories of their daughters death flooding back, Mrs Bowman said. There are some cruel people out there who get a kick out of these things. So shes no longer there, she said. Dixie, a father-of-three who worked as a chef, was jailed for life, with a minimum of 34 years, in 2008 over the killing. Convicted with the help of DNA evidence, he maintained his innocence until eventually confessing in 2015. Mark Dixie is serving a life sentence for the rape and murder of Sally Anne Bowman (Metropolitan Police/PA) In July the 46-year-old admitted carrying out brutal sex attacks on two other women, including raping a woman in her own car in an isolated south London car park in 1987, when he was just 16, before tying her up inside and setting it on fire. The second attack, in 2002, saw him bludgeon a woman with a chefs steel normally used to sharpen kitchen knives before telling her Im going to kill you and molesting her. During a hearing at Southwark Crown Court in London a detective told how he fears the dangerous sexual predator may have more victims. He is due to be sentenced in September. British Airways mixed fleet cabin crew will strike for a further two weeks this month, including the August bank holiday, in a long-running pay dispute. Members of the Unite union, who are already in the middle of a lengthy walkout, will prolong the strike from August 16 to the end of the month. Unite national officer Oliver Richardson said: Strike action will continue until the end of August unless British Airways hammers out a deal with Unite to resolve this dispute. The airline needs to get around the negotiating table and start recognising that punishing low-paid workers fighting for fairer pay is no way for a premium airline to behave. Unite calls on British Airways to hammer out a deal to avoid more August strikes https://t.co/mdEugRmNCM #BAlowpaynoway #BAStrike pic.twitter.com/ebSz7oLKEd Unite the union: join a union (@unitetheunion) August 3, 2017 The workers, who joined BA since 2010, were taking their 58th day of strike action on Thursday, and unless the deadlock is broken, the action will have lasted for the whole of July and August. Unite said the action has forced British Airways to spend millions of pounds on leasing aircraft to cover the striking cabin crew. The union described an offer by the airline to reinstate travel concessions for workers who have been on strike as half-hearted. Unite is pursuing legal action on behalf of cabin crew who have faced sanctions, including the removal of bonus pay and travel concessions. Protesting BA staff A BA statement said: As we have done in previous periods of industrial action, we will ensure our customers reach their destinations. More than three months ago, Unite agreed that our pay deal was acceptable, but have since refused to ballot their members on it. Last week, we took the significant step of offering to return staff travel to crew who had been on strike, which was the biggest outstanding issue in the dispute, in order to bring the dispute to an end. Unite has now chosen to reject this offer and call yet more strikes. Protesting BA staff Mr Richardson said: The offer to reinstate travel concessions for striking workers is half-hearted and fails to deal with the money British Airways has taken away from low-paid workers. In robbing striking workers of hard-earned bonuses the airline has sought to sow division and effectively blacklisted workers for taking lawful industrial action. Last week's massive profits show British Airways can afford to tackle poverty pay rates and settle this dispute" #BAstrike #BAlowpaynoway https://t.co/U0GKvHAA23 Unite the union: join a union (@unitetheunion) August 3, 2017 Mr Richardson said BA should drop its divisive sanctioning of striking cabin crew. He added: We would urge British Airways to start treating our members fairly and drop the bullying tactics to avoid the escalating cost and disruption that continued industrial and legal action brings. BA said it confirmed earlier this year that the cabin crew would be eligible for the 2017 bonus. Oscar Pistorius has been taken from prison to hospital for medical examinations amid South African media reports that the former track star and convicted murderer was suffering from chest pains. He was taken to hospital on Thursday morning and was initially expected to return to prison later the same day, Department of Corrections spokesman Logan Maistry said, but he will now stay overnight for observation. Mr Maistry declined to give details of any medical complaint, and said only that the Paralympian was having medical examinations. Reports claimed Pistorius was suffering from chest pains and was taken by ambulance from Atteridgeville Prison to the emergency department at Kalafong Hospital in the South African capital Pretoria, escorted by armed guards. The Paralympic champion is serving a six-year jail term for murder (PA) Pistorius, the double-amputee Olympic runner and multiple Paralympic champion, is serving a six-year jail term for murder over the shooting of girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp in 2013. He has served a year of his sentence. The 30-year-old was first imprisoned at Kgosi Mampuru II Prison in central Pretoria but was moved to Atteridgeville because it was better suited to handle disabled inmates. This is the second time Pistorius has left jail for a hospital visit. Last year he had treatment to cuts on his wrists, which prison authorities said he sustained after falling in his cell. Oscar Pistorius leaves the High Court in Pretoria Pistorius was convicted of murder after an appeal by prosecutors against an initial manslaughter verdict. He killed Ms Steenkamp in the early hours of Valentines Day 2013 by shooting her multiple times through a toilet cubicle door at his Pretoria home. He claimed he mistook her for a night-time intruder hiding in the cubicle. Prosecutors have announced their intention to appeal again, this time against Pistoriuss six-year sentence, which they say is too lenient. The National Prosecuting Authority said it will appeal to South Africas Supreme Court, and the appeal could be heard this year. Pistorius faces having his sentence increased to 15 years if prosecutors are successful. There is no death penalty in South Africa. Leicester have completed the signing of Kelechi Iheanacho from Manchester City for an undisclosed fee. The 20-year-old striker put pen to paper on a five-year contract on Thursday, having undergone a medical at the clubs training ground earlier in the week. The deal represents quite a coup for new manager Craig Shakespeare and Iheanacho, who was also a reported target for West Ham earlier this summer, could make his Leicester debut in Fridays friendly against Borussia Monchengladbach at the King Power Stadium. Kelechi Iheanacho Iheanacho told to LCFC TV: It feels good and Im happy to be part of this team. I know the ambition of the team and speaking with the manager, he let me know what I need to do - to help the team achieve what they want. I was convinced and Im happy to be here. He becomes the fourth new arrival at Leicester during the close season following the acquisitions of midfielder Vicente Iborra, goalkeeper Eldin Jakupovic and defender Harry Maguire. Iheanacho will wear the number eight shirt and joins fellow Nigeria internationals Wilfred Ndidi and Ahmed Musa at the 2016 Premier League champions. Leicester boss Shakespeare said: Its a great signing for us. Kelechi is an enormously talented player that has shown a huge amount of promise at every level in which hes played. Weve tracked his progress for some time, so we know how much quality hell bring to the squad. Hes young, hes hungry, hes ready for the next stage of his development and Im delighted that will be with Leicester City. Iheanacho signed a new contract with City until 2021 at the beginning of last season but saw his first-team opportunities at the Etihad curtailed by the arrival of Brazil forward Gabriel Jesus in January. The academy product still made nine starts and 21 substitute appearances for Pep Guardiolas team last term, scoring nine goals, but he has now decided on a fresh start. In total he scored 21 goals in 64 games in all competitions since making his debut for City in 2015, while he has scored six goals in 10 appearances for Nigeria. City said in a statement: Everyone at Manchester City wishes Kelechi all the best with his new challenge. MOSCOW, Aug 2 (Reuters) - Russia's Defence Ministry on Wednesday denied a Reuters report about a rise in the losses suffered by Russia in its military campaign in Syria, calling it "a lie from beginning to end", Russian news agencies reported. "This is not the first time that Reuters is attempting to discredit by any means Russia's operation aiming to destroy Islamic State terrorists and return peace to Syria," the agencies cited Defence Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov as saying. The exclusive report, published by Reuters on Wednesday and based on accounts from families and friends of the dead and local officials, estimates the actual death toll among Russian soldiers and private contractors was at least 40 so far this year, higher than official figures. That tally over seven months exceeds the 36 Russian armed personnel and contractors estimated by Reuters to have been killed in Syria over the previous 15 months, indicating a significant rise in the rate of battlefield losses. (Reporting by Maria Kiselyova; Writing by Dmitry Solovyov; Editing by Christian Lowe) WASHINGTON, Aug 2 (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump and two Republican senators on Wednesday will unveil a plan at the White House to overhaul the rules for legal immigrants, a proposal that would slash numbers overall and focus on skilled immigrants, the White House said. Trump will discuss his support for a bill developed by senators Tom Cotton of Arkansas and David Perdue of Georgia that they had said would cut legal immigration by 50 percent over 10 years by reducing the kinds of relatives immigrants can bring into the country. "Right now, only one in 15 immigrants come here because of their skills. And we don't prioritize ultra-high-skilled immigrants," a White House official said, speaking on background ahead of the announcement, which is slated for 1130 a.m. ET (1530 GMT). The White House believes the changes proposed by the senators would raise wages and create jobs, the official said. (Reporting by Roberta Rampton; Editing by Alden Bentley) BEIJING, Aug 3 (Reuters) - Venezuela's close ally China said it believed voting in the country's Constituent Assembly election was "generally held smoothly", brushing off widespread condemnation from the United States, Europe and others and evidence of voting irregularities. The U.S. government slapped sanctions on Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro earlier on Monday in response to Sunday's election, which it called a "sham". Governments from Spain to Canada to Argentina and Peru joined Washington in denouncing the vote, which was boycotted by the opposition and widely seen as an affront to democracy. Venezuela inflated the turnout figures for its constituent assembly election by at least 1 million votes, the company that provides the country's voting machines said on Wednesday, an accusation the government quickly dismissed as "irresponsible." But in a statement late on Wednesday, China's Foreign Ministry said it had noted that the elections were "generally held smoothly", though it also noted "the reaction from all relevant sides". China does not believe in interfering in the internal affairs of other countries, it added. "We sincerely hope that all sides in Venezuela can orderly resolve the relevant issue with peaceful dialogue within a legal framework, and protect the country's stability and socio-economic development," the ministry said. "China believes that the Venezuelan government and people have the ability to properly handle their internal affairs. A stable developing Venezuela accords with all sides interests." China and oil-rich Venezuela have a close diplomatic and business relationship, especially in energy. (Reporting by Ben Blanchard; Editing by Michael Perry) TOKYO, Aug 3 (Reuters) - Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's pick for his new foreign minister, Taro Kono, is known for his close ties with Washington and his reputation as a political maverick who does not shy away from speaking his mind, even on politically sensitive issues. Kono, 54, is the son of former chief cabinet secretary Yohei Kono, who wrote a landmark 1993 apology to "comfort women" who were forced to work in Japanese wartime military brothels. A fluent English speaker educated at Georgetown University in Washington, Kono will replace Fumio Kishida, who has rarely differed in public with Abe since taking office in December 2012, after a Cabinet reshuffle on Thursday. "(His) extremely strong and deep connections in the U.S. range from personal relationship with senators and congressmen and State Department officials all the way to A-team venture capitalists and entrepreneurs," said Jesper Koll, head of equity fund WisdomTree Japan. "In the current state of confusion and flip-flop in Washington, Kono's deep and broad network of personal connection will be a huge asset," he said in an email. One of his major tasks will be to coordinate closely with the United States, Japan's closest ally, in the face of North Korea's worrying missile and nuclear development programmes, as well as China's growing regional clout. Kono was head of the National Public Safety Commission, a Cabinet-level post, for 10 months to August 2016, and was responsible for security for the G7 summit in Ise-Shima while doubling as an administrative reform minister. First elected to parliament in 1996, Kono has said he wants Japan to commit to phasing out nuclear power by shutting down reactors when they reach 40 years of service, contrasting the government's policy of maintaining its nuclear reactors as a core energy source. He has also criticised the government's resistance to opening the door to immigrants as a way to address a shortage of workers as Japan's population ages and shrinks. Despite his record as a political maverick, analysts said they expected a more modest approach to diplomacy, just like Kishida, with no major changes to Japan's foreign policy likely. "I see a good overall balance between Kono, who is a dove, and Prime Minster Abe, who is on the hawkish side. It will be like what it was between Abe and Kishida," said Tomoaki Iwai, political science professor at Nihon University. In 2002, Kono donated part of his liver to his father, who was suffering from cirrhosis. (Reporting by Linda Sieg and Kiyoshi Takenaka; Editing by Paul Tait) SOFIA, Aug 3 (Reuters) - These are some of the main stories in Bulgarian newspapers on Thursday. Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy. -- Bulgarian President Rumen Radev praised the friendship treaty signed by Balkan neighbours Bulgaria and Macedonia. "A new European page has been opened today in the bilateral relations between Bulgaria and Macedonia," Radev said (Trud, Standart, 24 Chasa, Monitor, Sega) -- Number of illegal immigrants, detained in Bulgaria in the first half of 2017 dropped by nearly 85 percent to 413, compared to the same period last year, a report from the interior ministry said (Monitor, Telegraf) -- Bulgarian government decided to transfer more than 60 million levs ($36.34 million) from the finance ministry to the indebted state railway company BDZ, Transport Minister Ivaylo Moskovski said (Standart, Monitor) -- The motto of the Bulgarian presidency of the Council of Europe next year will be "Unity Makes Strength", the government decided at its meeting. Minister in charge of Bulgaria's EU Council Presidency Lilyana Pavlova said the slogan is extremely relevant to the situation in which a united Europe is today (Standart, Trud, 24 Chasa, Sega) -- Bulgaria will prepare a special emission of coins to be used as gifts during the presidency, Minister of Bulgarias EU Council Presidency 2018, Lilyana Pavlova said (Standart, Monitor, Trud) ($1 = 1.6512 leva) ROME, Aug 3 (Reuters) - Italy's service sector posted its fastest growth for a decade in July, a survey showed on Thursday, boosting prospects for economic output in the euro zone's third-largest economy. The Markit/ADACI Business Activity Index (PMI) for services companies leapt to 56.3 from 53.6 the month before, well clear of the 50 mark that separates growth from contraction. The index beat all forecasts in a Reuters survey of eight analysts, which pointed to a reading of 54.1. Businesses from bars to banks received a surge in orders, pushing the new business sub-index to 57.5 from 55.6 in June, its highest level for 11 years. Markit's survey for the manufacturing sector, released on Tuesday, showed steady expansion in factory activity although at a fractionally slower rate than in the previous month. The composite PMI for services and manufacturing rose to 56.2 from 54.5 in June. Robust PMI readings have begun to be reflected in indicators for the broader Italian economy, long the euro zone's most sluggish, since growth picked up in the first quarter. Economists have raised their full-year forecasts for growth to as high as 1.4 percent. - Detailed PMI data are only available under licence from Markit and customers need to apply to Markit for a licence. To subscribe to the full data, click on the link below: http://www.markit.com/Contact-Us For further information, please phone Markit on +44 20 7260 2454 or email economics@markit.com (Reporting by Isla Binnie; Editing by Catherine Evans) By My Pham and Mai Nguyen HANOI, Aug 3 (Reuters) - Vietnam's state television broadcast images on Thursday of a former oil executive saying he had voluntarily returned home to face justice for corruption after Germany said he was abducted in Berlin and taken back by force. The German foreign ministry said on Wednesday that Vietnam had seized Trinh Xuan Thanh, 51, a former official at state oil company PetroVietnam, who is accused of financial mismanagement that caused losses of around $150 million. In response, Berlin ordered a Vietnamese intelligence officer to leave Germany within 48 hours and demanded that Thanh be allowed to return to claim asylum. Germany said it was considering other measures against Vietnam. Thanh, 51, a former high flyer in the Vietnamese oil industry, appeared on state television looking tired, dressed in a polo shirt and with his hair tousled. It was unclear if he was speaking freely. "I wasn't thinking maturely and decided to hide and during that time I realised I need to return to face the truth and ... admit my faults and apologise," Thanh said in a prime-time bulletin on Vietnam Television. "I decided out of fear to hide in Germany, where I lived a precarious and anxious life," television quoted Thanh as saying in a signed confession dated July 31. "I returned to Vietnam and presented myself to the investigative authority." Police said he had turned himself in on Monday after a 10-month international manhunt. His lawyer ruled out that version of events. "He would never have done that. He was scared of going back and what the consequences might be," his asylum lawyer in Germany, Victor Pfaff, told Reuters. He said witnesses had described how armed men violently bundled a man and a woman into a car with Czech registration plates outside the Sheraton hotel in western Berlin. German officials say the account of the kidnapping - which media have compared to Soviet abductions before the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 - is plausible. The foreign ministry blamed the Vietnamese intelligence service and embassy for what it called an unprecedented and glaring breach of German and international law. Vietnam's foreign ministry expressed regret over a statement from Germany accusing Vietnam of kidnapping him. "Vietnam very much respects and wants to develop the strategic partnership relation between Vietnam and Germany," foreign ministry spokeswoman Le Thi Thu Hang told reporters in Hanoi. It was not clear whether Thanh had legal representation. Closed-door trials are common in Vietnam where the one-party state keeps a tight clamp on dissent. An anti-corruption drive and the biggest roundup of dissidents in years follow a shift within the party leadership last year towards security-minded conservatives. OUTCRY OVER LEXUS Thanh was an executive at PetroVietnam Construction JSC, part of the state energy company PetroVietnam. He came to public attention in mid-2016 when he was found to have a luxury Lexus car with a government license plate, causing an outcry in a country where officials are expected to live modestly. Communist Party chief Nguyen Phu Trong ordered an investigation into his career and how he had been promoted despite alleged losses at PetroVietnam Construction. Thanh took sick leave last year and went abroad, vanishing from the public eye until now. Germany's Sueddeutsche newspaper reported he had requested asylum after his arrival in Germany and had been due to appear at a hearing about the request on July 24. His asylum application was not completed and was still being processed, the foreign ministry in Berlin said on Thursday. Some residents in Hanoi said they could not access social networks, including Facebook, Instagram and Twitter late on Wednesday and early on Thursday, but they said the sites were now back to normal. It was not immediately clear why the social network platforms were inaccessible and whether it was in relation to Germany's accusations. It is not unusual for social media to be temporarily closed in Vietnam where authorities often censor news. Nguyen Quang A, a retired computer scientist and vocal government critic, said on his Facebook page someone had tried unsuccessfully to hack his account 16 times early on Thursday. He said the kidnapping was "stupid" and would cause severe diplomatic consequences. Other activists have also publicly criticised the government over the kidnapping allegations. (Additional Reporting by Mi Nguyen and Madeline Chambers in Berlin; Editing by Richard Balmforth and Robin Pomeroy) DUBAI, Aug 3 (Reuters) - The government of Oman has raised $3.55 billion through a loan from a group of Chinese financial institutions, the latest fundraising by the sultanate which has borrowed over $10 billion this year to replenish coffers hit hard by lower oil prices. Oman signed the senior unsecured term loan, with a five-year maturity, on July 11, the finance ministry said in a statement on Thursday. The loan saw strong interest from "leading Chinese banks," it said, without naming the financial institutions. The transaction - the largest ever for a regional borrower in the Chinese market - was increased from an initial target of $2 billion because of the strong interest received. "With this loan we have successfully completed the financing requirements for the expected 2017 fiscal deficit, and also been able to meet the refinancing needs in relation to some of the loan installments that fell due during the year," said the undersecretary of the ministry of finance, H.E. Nasser Khamis Al Jashmi. The loan, arranged by the country's newly established debt management office, part of the ministry of finance, was targeted exclusively at Chinese lenders and "introduced a new pool of investors to the Sultanate of Oman," the statement said. The fundraising brings to over $10 billion Oman's external borrowing in 2017. The government issued a $5 billion multi-tranche bond and a $2 billion sukuk, or Islamic bond, earlier this year. Oman, which according to Moody's is likely to miss its budgetary targets in 2017 for the second year in a row, is also in early stage talks for additional loan and bond financing options, sources told Reuters this week. (Reporting by Davide Barbuscia; Editing by Jason Neely and Mark Potter) BEIJING, Aug 3 (Reuters) - Turkey regards China's security as akin to its own and will move to stamp out any anti-China reports in its media, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said on Thursday, after meeting his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi. China and Turkey have repeatedly vowed to step up cooperation on security and counter-terrorism, amid Beijing's concerns about ethnic Uighurs from its restive far western region of Xinjiang fighting with militants in the Middle East. "We take China's security as our security," Cavusoglu said, speaking through a Chinese translator during a joint news briefing with Wang in Beijing. "We absolutely will not allow in Turkey any activities targeting or opposing China. Additionally, we will take measures to eliminate any media reports targeting China," he added, but did not give details. Uighurs are a largely Muslim, Turkic-language speaking minority from China's western Xinjiang region. Hundreds, possibly thousands, keen to escape unrest in Xinjiang have travelled clandestinely via Southeast Asia to Turkey, with which many see themselves as sharing religious and cultural ties. Beijing says some Uighurs then end up fighting with Islamist militants in Iraq and Syria. It denies accusations that it restricts the Uighurs' religious freedoms. European leaders have been alarmed by Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan's crackdown on opponents since a failed coup attempt last year, and what critics see as his attack on free speech. About 150 media outlets have been shut and around 160 journalists jailed, the Turkish Journalists' Association says. Turkish authorities say the crackdown is justified by the gravity of the coup attempt, in which rogue soldiers tried to overthrow the government, killing 250 people, mostly civilians. In 2015, Turkey angered China by expressing concern about reports of restrictions on worship and fasting by Uighurs in Xinjiang during the holy month of Ramadan. Turkish protesters have marched on China's embassy and consulate in Turkey over the treatment of Uighurs. The two countries have also quarrelled over Thailand's deportation of Uighur migrants back to China. But Ankara is keen to tap into Beijing's ambitious Belt and Road infrastructure investment plan to link China with the rest of Asia and the world. Erdogan visited China in May when President Xi Jinping hosted his first Belt and Road summit. "China is willing to work with Turkey to enhance the ancient spirit of the Silk Road, ... and in jointly promoting the Belt and Road plan unlock new cooperative potential," Wang added. (Reporting by Michael Martina; Editing by Clarence Fernandez) By Mfuneko Toyana PRETORIA, Aug 3 (Reuters) - A South African tourist who was kidnapped in 2011 by al Qaeda while travelling in Mali has been released and is back home, foreign minister Maite Nkoana-Mashabane said on Thursday. Stephen McGowan was one of four foreigners touring Mali on motorbikes who were seized in a restaurant in the town of Timbuktu. One, a German, was killed in the kidnapping. A Dutch hostage was freed in 2015 in a raid by French special forces and a Swede was released in June this year. The kidnappers had demanded $5 million for his release, but the government rejected it, Swedish Radio said. "We would like to warmly welcome him back home and wish him good health, good fortune in his life as a free man," South African foreign minister Maite Nkoana-Mashabane told a news conference, adding that no ransom had been paid. McGowan, who was not present at the news conference, is undergoing medical tests but had no major injuries, Nkoana-Mashabane said. McGowan's mother died in May, but other close family members expressed their joy at his return. "It was a big surprise when Stephen walked through the door," said McGowan's father, Malcolm. "I gave him a big hug and he felt as sound and as strong as before. We simply had to say to Stephen: 'A lot of water has passed under the bridge but you're strong, you've got to get up and carry on with your life.'" McGowan's wife, Catherine, told the news briefing: "The first thing he said to me was: 'Your hair has grown.' I said to him 'Actually, your hair is longer than mine now.'" In a video that emerged a month ago, after the Swede, Johan Gustafsson, was released, a bearded McGowan appeared to have no idea his six-year ordeal would soon be over. "It's a long time to be away," he said. "Until when do you think this will come to an end?" Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb began as a spin-off from an Islamist movement that fought Algeria's government in the 1990s. It was pushed across the border into Mali the following decade, where it pledged allegiance to Osama bin Laden's movement and built a network of fighters across the Sahara responsible for dozens of kidnappings of Westerners and attacks on security forces across West Africa. (Reporting by Mfuneko Toyana in Pretoria and Wendell Roelf in Cape Town; Writing by Ed Cropley and James Macharia; Editing by Robin Pomeroy) TOKYO, Aug 3 (Reuters) - Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said on Thursday Japan plans to soon hold a "two plus two" meeting of foreign and defence ministers with the United States to boost the alliance's deterrence in the face of North Korea's continued missile tests. Abe made the comment in a news conference following a cabinet reshuffle, in which Taro Kono, who has strong ties with Washington, replaced Fumio Kishida as new foreign minister. "North Korea's recent ICBM (intercontinental ballistic missile) launches clearly showed that the threat posed by North Korea have grown markedly for both countries," Abe said. "I believe strengthening the Japan-U.S. alliance is more necessary now than any other time," he said. (Reporting by Kiyoshi Takenaka; Editing by Tom Hogue) By Kizito Makoye DAR ES SALAAM, Aug 3 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Florence Nightingale would turn in her grave if she heard some of the stories circulating in Tanzania about how nurses treat their pregnant patients. Tales of bullying. Scolding. Verbal abuse, face slapping and of women being tied to their beds, such is the breakdown in trust between some hospital nurses and those in their care. "I dont want to remember that day. Only God knows how my baby and I survived," said Rahel Gunze, recalling how she gave birth on a cold tiled floor at the capital's Palestina hospital. It was two years ago but the memory remains vivid; Gunze calls it the most traumatic experience of her life. "I was desperate and needed urgent care but I did not get it," she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. Gunze said she got to hospital close to midnight, racked by labour pains and gripped with an irresistible urge to push. Her husband Emmanuel tried frantically to find a midwife who would help his 28-year-old wife, only to find the staff had reconvened to a nearby cafe, where they sat cracking jokes. As Emmanuel and one of the midwives rushed back, they found Gunze upright but semi-squatting, already pushing out a baby girl who fell to the floor in a gush of blood and shrill tears. Gunzes husband watched the midwife slip into disposable gloves to save the baby, who was engulfed in blood from the raptured umbilical cord. Mother and healthy baby were discharged three days later. Long enough for Gunze to see how the nurses ran their wards. "I saw one nurse slapping a pregnant woman who was refusing her orders," Gunze said. She recalled seeing one woman tied to her bed with a khanga - a traditional piece of cloth worn around their waist - so she could be examined and deliver her baby safely. The hospital's chief medical officer denied the allegation. SALT TO AN INJURY Tanzania has one of the world's highest maternal mortality rates at 556 deaths per every 100,000 delivering mothers, according to the 2016 Tanzania Demographic Health Survey, which was conducted by the government. Relations between staff and patients are also shaky, with horror stories circulating that contradict the hallowed reputation nurses enjoy in most societies. Palestina Hospital's Chief Medical Officer Mariam Maliwa said any patients who claim to have been mistreated should have voiced grievances through "official channels". Karim Mizungumiti, a public health expert working with Management and Development for Health Organisation - a local health charity - said poor communication was to blame. "When an overworked nurse uses foul language, it is likely to add salt to the injury in an already frosty relationship with patients," he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. Nurses in public hospitals admit there are some uncaring - or worse - members on their teams but cite low pay, a poor working environment and scarce supplies as factors. Wages are low - the equivalent of about $200 a month for a qualified nurse, some $45 less than a teacher earns each month. Because of staff shortage in many public hospitals, most nurses work long shifts in ageing infrastructure, and some feel they get scant respect from the public. Most nurses are not promoted and get no bonus, said Agnes Mndallah, a seasoned nurse at Dar es Salaam's Police Hospital. "Some nurses do a really good job and take their responsibilities very seriously," she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. "But there are few bad nurses who are not God-fearing." CURSE OF THE NURSE Maria Teweli was put on bed rest at Mwananyamala hospital in Dar es Salaam while waiting for her due date a month ago. Teweli accused one nurse on the ward of "cursing" the expectant mothers rather than helping them prepare for labour. "She said I was lazy and that I would certainly give birth to a stillborn baby," she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. According to Dar es Salaam's Aga Khan University, patient neglect after birth is the major cause of death to mothers and their newborns in the week after a delivery. Adelvina Temu, a member of Tanzania Midwifes Association, a local charity founded in 1992, said some nurses use harsh language because they lacked ethics and communication skills. " A trained nurse should always listen more and talk politely with a patient," she said. But Magdalena Kalewa - who stopped taking her anti-malarial medications once pregnant - said she was verbally abused by a nurse during a routine check up at Palestina hospital. "She told me: `You do not deserve any mercy because you did not take your medications, people like you should be left to die," Kalewa said. Kalewa said even heard talk that some pregnant women diagnosed with sexually transmitted diseases were branded as `prostitutes by the nursing staff. Rebecca Nyoni, a midwife at Palestina hospital, denied the allegations, saying no nurse took delight in abusing patients. "Nurses are also humans, they have emotions, they get tired or may use harsh words to force patients to comply with treatment requirements," she said. Some nurses admit they have colleagues who pale next to Nightingale, considered the founder of modern nursing for her pioneering work in the Crimean War. But Agnes Mtawa, director of nursing services at Muhimbili National Hospital, said any nurse found guilty of abuse deserved a fair hearing before any disciplinary action, including dismissal. And, she said, nurses often feel obliged to have all the answers though their most important skill is to listen. "When someone is in pain, sometimes they dont want solutions, they just want to be heard," she said. (Reporting by Kizito Makoye Shigela. Editing by Lyndsay Griffiths. Twitter:@kizmakoye, kizmakoye@outlook.com; Editing by Lyndsay Griffiths. Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers humanitarian news, women's rights, trafficking, property rights, climate change and resilience. Visit news.trust.org to see more stories.) BELGRADE, Aug 3 (Reuters) - Serbia will take counter-measures against Croatia if a dispute over Zagreb's decision to raise import fees on some agricultural products by more than 2,000 percent is not resolved, a senior foreign ministry official said on Thursday. On July 14 Croatia raised its fees for phyto-sanitary controls on fruit and vegetables at its borders to 2,000 kuna (270 euros) from 90 kuna, citing compliance with European Union standards. The move has left its Balkan neighbours up in arms. Croatia, which just recently joined the European Union, is a vital entry point for imports to the bloc from Serbia, the Western Balkans' largest economy and a candidate for EU membership. Fellow EU candidates Macedonia and Bosnia have also warned Croatia of possible counter-measures, though neither they nor Serbia have indicated what form these might take. "We sought an explanation from the European Commission, the best thing would be to seek a bilateral solution, but if that fails we will be forced to impose counter measures," Veljko Odalovic, the Secretary General of Serbia's Foreign Ministry told Reuters. Serbia on Wednesday sent a letter of complaint to the European Commission, another Serbian government official said on Thursday, arguing that Zagreb's move violates Serbia's Stabilisation and Association Agreement with the bloc - a pre-accession treaty that unlocks EU funds and eases investing and commerce with the bloc. In a letter to the European Commission, Bosnian Foreign Trade and Economic Relations Minister Mirko Sarovic said the new fees will put his country's producers in an unequal position in Croatian markets. "As a EU member, the Republic of Croatia has committed itself to adhere to the Stabilisation and Association Agreement ... (under which) the signatories pledged they will mutually abolish import taxes and fees and abolish all quantity limitations on exports," the letter said. Sarovic later also said Bosnia will consult with Serbia and Macedonia about a common response. "It is too early to say what the response will be but I can confirm that we will seek to protect our producers in the same way that Croatia protects its own," he said. A joint ministerial meeting next week in Sarajevo will discuss a joint response to Croatia's measures, but Serbian government officials did not say whether Croatia will attend or whether it will be invited. Most countries in the region import more than they export to Croatia. Only Serbia operates a trade surplus with its neighbour, with exports in 2016 reaching 116 million euros ($137 million) versus imports worth 79 million euros. Relations remain strained between the two former Yugoslav countries and bitter foes during the Balkan wars of the 1990s, despite improvements in investments, the flow of people and capital. (1 euro = 7.4044 kuna) ($1 = 0.8443 euros) (Reporting by Aleksandar Vasovic in Belgrade and Maja Zuvela in Sarajevo; Editing by Raissa Kasolowsky) By Michelle Martin BERLIN, Aug 3 (Reuters) - Germany's Greens may struggle to capitalise on dissatisfaction among voters with this week's agreement by carmakers to reduce diesel emissions, a leading pollster said. Just seven weeks before a national election, the party is languishing at around 8 percent in polls after enjoying double-digit ratings for most of 2016. It hopes its criticism of the government's response to the diesel emissions scandal and pledge to stop the approval of new vehicles with combustion engines from 2030 will help. But Manfred Guellner, managing director of polling institute Forsa, warned against too much optimism. "It won't bring the Greens new voters ... Most people know that carmakers make claims that don't match the reality." German politicians and car bosses decided on Wednesday to overhaul engine software on 5.3 million diesel cars to cut pollution after the diesel crisis was splashed across the front pages for much of the last week. But the step has been widely criticised by environmental groups, politicians and the media for not going far enough. While Chancellor Angela Merkel was once hailed as the "climate chancellor" for her green energy push, she has more recently earned the epithet "car chancellor". Her Social Democrat (SPD) coalition partner is meanwhile seen as more interested in pleasing the unions than environmentalists. With Merkel's conservatives and the SPD often accused of being too cosy with the car industry, the Greens look like an obvious home for angry voters. Greens co-leader Cem Ozdemir has said his party has the "best offer" for "whoever wants Germany to remain an automotive production site -- and, under the circumstances, that is only possible with low-emission and then emission-free cars". Polls suggest there is plenty of pro-environment sentiment for the Greens to tap into. This week, an Emnid survey found climate change was currently the biggest worry for Germans and a poll in Die Welt newspaper showed 73 percent thought politicians were too lenient with the automobile industry on air pollution. But Guellner said respect among Germans for the car industry given its importance for the economy was another reason why the party might struggle to improve its polling. The sector is Germany's biggest exporter and provides about 800,000 jobs. A Forsa survey conducted last week showed only 9 percent of Germans thought diesel was an important issue ahead of the Sept. 24 vote from which Merkel is expected to emerge as the winner but need a coalition partner. That could be the Greens, who were kingmakers for the SPD from 1998 to 2005. Political scientist Gero Neugebauer said the Greens were sending a confused message, reflecting internal divisions. Winfried Kretschmann, Greens premier of the region where Daimler is based, cooperates with the auto industry while others are taking a more radical approach, he said. (Reporting by Michelle Martin; Editing by Madeline Chambers and Catherine Evans) ATHENS, Aug 3 (Reuters) - A brush fire south of the Greek capital injured three firefighters and damaged homes and cars on Thursday but has now been contained, authorities said. Authorities had ordered the evacuation of dozens of homes in two communities in Lagonissi, a coastal area some 30 km (19 miles) from Athens with homes scattered across land plots. Around 40 firefighters, 20 fire trucks and two water-dropping helicopters battled the blaze, which locals say broke out around 1100 GMT (2 p.m. local) and was fanned by strong winds. Three firemen were lightly injured and two trucks suffered damage, a fire brigade official said. At least three homes were damaged by flames. Summer wildfires are common in Greece. Hundreds died in 2007 during the most serious outbreak in decades. (Reporting by Alkis Konstantinidis, Karolina Tagaris, Angeliki Koutantou; Editing by Matthew Mpoke Bigg) By Andrea Shalal STUTTGART, Germany, Aug 3 (Reuters) - The U.S. military is moving toward more global exercises to better prepare for a more assertive Russia and other worldwide threats, a senior officer said in an interview with Reuters. Air Force Brigadier General John Healy, who directs exercises for U.S. forces in Europe, said officials realised they needed to better prepare for increasingly complex threats across all domains of war - land, sea, air, space and cyber. Some smaller-scale war games with a global focus had already occurred, but the goal was to carry out more challenging exercises by fiscal year 2020 that involved forces from all nine U.S. combatant commands - instead of focusing on specific regions or one military service, such as the Marines. "What we're eventually going toward is a globally integrated exercise programme so that we (are) ... all working off the same sheet of music in one combined global exercise," Healy said in an interview this week. He said war games and training were imperative to rehearse for possible conflicts and they needed to reflect the global nature of today's military threats, including cyber warfare. Healy said Russia was his main focus in Europe, and officials were keeping a close watch on Moscow's Zapad military exercises that begin next month and which experts say could involve about 100,000 troops. He said Russian observers attended recent U.S. and NATO exercises in the Black Sea region, but Moscow had not extended a similar invitation to its own war games. "They're not being as transparent as we are," he said. Moscow says its war games will involve less than 13,000 troops and so do not require invitations to outside observers. Healy said an initial assessment of a range of exercises conducted across Europe this summer with over 40,000 U.S. and allied forces had been positive, but a deeper assessment would be completed in October. As a deterrent to Russia after its 2014 annexation of the Crimea region of Ukraine, U.S. and NATO forces have boosted their presence and training in Europe. This has included the addition of four NATO battle groups with 1,000 soldiers each in Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia and Poland, all of which have borders with Russia. Next year, the U.S. military plans 11 major exercises that will take in a range of NATO allies from Iceland to Britain, the Baltic states, and possibly Finland, according to Healy. Those exercises too will bring together air, ground and naval forces. (Reporting by Andrea Shalal; editing by Mark Heinrich) LUSAKA, Aug 3 (Reuters) - Police arrested a Zambian opposition leader on Thursday and said he would be charged with defaming President Edgar Lungu, an offence that carries a maximum five-year prison term. Officers did not say how Saviour Chishimba, the head of the United Progressive People (UPP) party, had defamed the president. Chishimba hit the headlines in July criticising Lungu's decision to impose emergency powers and suggesting the president should go to hospital for mental tests. Political tensions in Zambia, once seen as one of Africa's more stable and functional democracies, have been rising since main opposition leader Hakainde Hichilema was arrested on treason charges in April. Lungu said on July 6 that he had invoked emergency powers to deal with "acts of sabotage" by his political opponents, after fire gutted the southern African country's biggest market. The president said the measure would safeguard investments in Africa's second-biggest copper producer which is in talks with the International Monetary Fund over a financial aid package. Police said Chishimba's offence took place between July 1-8. "He has since been detained in police custody and will be charged once the officers are done with processes," police spokeswoman Esther Mwaata-Katongo said. (Reporting by Chris Mfula; Editing by Andrew Heavens) LIMA, Aug 3 (Reuters) - Peru may sever diplomatic ties with Venezuela to protest Sunday's election of a legislative superbody in the country that has been widely criticized as undemocratic, Peruvian Foreign Minister Ricardo Luna said on Thursday. Luna said Peru wanted to discuss appropriate measures with his regional counterparts in a meeting set for Tuesday before acting unilaterally, however. Peru called for the meeting as Venezuelans broadly boycotted Sunday's election of a constituent assembly, designed to enhance the powers of leftist President Nicolas Maduro. Asked by reporters if Peru has ruled out cutting diplomatic ties with Venezuela, Luna said, "Not at all. All options are on the table." "We're going to see how other countries taking part in the meeting feel and, depending on that, see what can be done collectively," said Luna. "That doesn't tie our hands or condition any unilateral decision that we might take." Peru has said it expects foreign ministers from Canada, Brazil, Mexico, Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Panama, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Honduras and Paraguay to attend Tuesday's meeting in Lima. Maduro has become increasingly isolated as an economic crisis and political crisis deepens in his once prosperous OPEC nation. About 120 people have been killed during anti-government protests in recent months. Countries around the world have condemned the constituent assembly as a bid to extend Maduro's rule indefinitely and give him unbridled power. Maduro says the creation of the political body was necessary to address an unprecedented economic decline and help restore peace in the volatile country. No nation has cut ties with Venezuela in response to the vote so far. But Peru has been one of the region's most outspoken critics of Maduro's government since President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski, a conservative economist and former Wall Street banker, took office a year ago. Peru recalled its ambassador to Venezuela in March after the country's Supreme Court took over the opposition-led congress, but the move was later reversed. Maduro has denounced criticism from Peru and other countries as part of "imperialist aggression" orchestrated by U.S. President Donald Trump. "The president of Peru has called for a meeting in Lima on Tuesday to prepare an economic, political, diplomatic and military aggression against Venezuela," Maduro said on Wednesday. (Reporting by Mitra Taj; Addiitonal reporting by Hugh Bronstein in Caracas; Editing by Tom Brown) Donald Tusk has said Poland's future inside the EU is 'uncertain' amid an escalating row with the country's ruling conservative party. The European Council President, who was the country's Prime Minister until 2014, said he 'understands' the concerns of Poles who are fearful about the direction their country is taking. President Andrzej Duda and his Law and Justice party have been accused of undermining democracy as they exert growing control over state media, and attempt to seize power from the judiciary. Donald Tusk has said Poland's future inside the European Union is 'uncertain' amid a deepening row with Jaroslaw Kaczynski, leader of the country's ruling conservative party Tusk spoke after testifying at a trail over a 2010 plane crash that killed President Lech Kaczynski - Jaroslaw's twin brother - and 95 other senior government figures Tusk spoke in Warsaw after testifying in a case related to the 2010 plane crash that killed President Lech Kaczynski and 95 other senior officials. Some see the trial as a politically-motivated attempt to discredit Tusk driven by Jaroslaw Kaczynski, the leader of the Law and Justice party and the twin brother of the dead former President. Tusk said: 'There is a question mark over Poland's European future today. 'I do understand emotions of Poles who are concerned about courts, or Poland's future in the EU.' Kaczynski holds no government position but is widely seen as the man who directs all major government decisions. Ahead of Thursday's questioning in Warsaw, Kaczynski warned that Tusk 'should be afraid'. Kaczynski has also suggested that Germany should pay 'huge' reparations to Poland for crimes committed by the Nazis during the Second World War. 'We are talking about huge sums and also the fact that the Germans have for years rejected their responsibility for World War II,' he said. While tensions between Tusk and Kaczynski have been simmering for years, the latest crisis was caused when his party attempted to reform the Supreme Court. Kaczynski's Law and Justice party, which won power from Tusk's own party in 2015, has attempted to reform the country's media and Supreme Court in a way that would hand massive powers to the government in a move that many consider undemocratic The government recently attempted to pass a bill that would allow ministers to force Supreme Court judges into retirement before picking their replacements. It passed both houses of the national assembly and was only stopped after widespread protests pressured President Dudas into vetoing it, in a major snub to Kaczynski. Tusk's centrist Civic Platform party was in power for eight years until the Law and Justice party won the 2015 elections and swiftly moved to introduce reforms. Although some Poles view their judiciary as corrupt and dominated by communist-era ways of thinking, others see the PiS-driven reform efforts as a power grab inimical to democracy. 'There are plenty of issues where the Polish government's actions seem very controversial from the point of view of the whole EU. Including Budapest, sometimes,' Tusk said. Hungary, normally Poland's ally, voted for Tusk's re-election to the top EU post in March, disappointing the PiS. Tusk also criticised Prime Minister Beata Szydlo's government over the logging in the primeval Bialowieza Forest. The European Court of Justice ordered an immediate halt to the logging last week, saying that Warsaw's attitude in the case hinted at 'a prelude to an announcement that Poland does not need the European Union and the European Union does not need Poland.' LONDON, Aug 3 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - European authorities have smashed a human trafficking gang smuggling Iranians, some as young as five, into Britain, making more than 100 arrests, the European police agency Europol said on Thursday. Europol said the criminal network, operating from the southern Spanish city of Malaga, was charging migrants about 25,000 euros ($30,000) for fake Spanish passports, flights, transfers and accommodation. After a year long investigation, Spanish police arrested 14 members of the group in Malaga and another 42 people accused of selling their Spanish documents to the gang. Europol said another 44 Iranian citizens were intercepted at different European airports carrying forged passports while the leader of the group was arrested at London's Heathrow airport trying to take a flight to Brazil. "The criminal group was perfectly structured and each member had a defined role, ranging from recruiting the irregular migrants in their country of origin, to facilitating the transfers, hosting them in safe houses in Spain, and supplying the travel documents," Europol said in a statement. Britain's Home Office confirmed the arrests but declined to comment further as the investigation is ongoing. Europol said the investigation began after seven Iranians were caught a year ago trying to catch a flight from Hamburg in Germany to Britain carrying forged and authentic passports, most of them Spanish. Investigations revealed the flight tickets were bought through a travel agency in Malaga and further enquiries led to the discovery of a migrant smuggling network there. Seven Iranians, including a 5-year-old child, were found during searches of safe houses in Spain. The operation involved the Spanish National Police, Britain's Immigration Enforcement, the Portuguese Immigration and Borders Service (SEF), and Europol. ($1 = 0.8425 euros) (Reporting by Belinda Goldsmith @BeeGoldsmith, Editing by Sebastien Malo; Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers humanitarian news, women's rights, trafficking, property rights, climate change and resilience. Visit http://news.trust.org) DUBAI, Aug 3 (Reuters) - Yemeni troops, backed by the United States and the United Arab Emirates, conducted several raids against the local affiliate of al Qaeda in Shabwa province on Thursday, the Emirati state news agency WAM said. Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) has taken advantage of a civil war pitting the Houthi movement against the Saudi-backed government of President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi to try to widen its control and influence in Yemen. "Since early morning on Thursday, Yemeni troops and Hadrami (from Hadramout province) Elite Forces, with U.S. and UAE backing, moved to smash elements of the terrorist organisations, especially AQAP," WAM reported. WAM did not say what kind of support the UAE and U.S. militaries had provided or give details on the outcome of the raids. Air strikes by U.S. drones and manned aircraft against the militant group are frequent. But large-scale ground operations by regional troops have been rare since 2015, when the group was driven out of the mini-state it had established in the port city of Mukalla. Shabwa, one of the key southern Yemeni provinces, is where the U.S. military carried out an air strike in June that killed Abu Khattab al Awlaqi, one of the emirs of AQAP, along with two other militants. It is also the site of Yemen's only gas terminal, in the province's port of Belhaf port, and the pipeline feeding the terminal has been targeted several times by AQAP, al Qaeda's most active branch. The terminal stopped operating after foreign experts were evacuated from the facility in 2015. Operations against the militants are complicated by the Yemeni civil war. A Saudi-led coalition is fighting Houthi rebels backed by Iran and troops loyal to former President Ali Abdullah Saleh, in a campaign to restore the internationally recognised government of President Hadi. The forces are largely stalemated, but the fighting has plunged millions into poverty, displaced millions of others and killed more than 10,000 people. (Reporting by Aziz El Yaakoubi, editing by Larry King) ABUJA, Aug 3 (Reuters) - Nigeria will legalise illegal mini refineries in the Niger Delta oil hub and supply them with crude at a reasonable price, the presidency said on Thursday, fulfilling a demand from community leaders. "The Federal Government has started the process of replacing illegal refineries in the region with modular ones," the presidency said in a statement as Acting President Yemi Osinbajo met Niger Delta community leaders in Abuja. (Reporting by Felix Onuah; Writing by Ulf Laessing; Editing by Louise Ireland) By Daniela Desantis and Julie Ingwersen ASUNCION/CHICAGO, Aug 3 (Reuters) - Weather damage to crops in Paraguay has robbed the international wheat market of more supplies of the high-quality grain needed to make bread and snatched an opportunity for the country to cultivate customers other than its massive neighbor, Brazil. Frost has been so bad that Paraguay may lose as much as half the 430,000 hectares sown this year, leaving it with just enough crop to cover domestic demand, Jose Berea, president of Paraguay's chamber of exporters, known as Capeco, said this week. Now Paraguay may even have to join the scramble for supplies of high-quality wheat that pushed benchmark prices on the Chicago Board of Trade to a two-year high in July, as drought has shrivelled output in major exporters including the United States and Australia. "It is too early to know if we will have good-quality wheat. There is a chance that we will need to make some specific imports to improve the quality," Berea said in an interview. Paraguay was the world's 15th-biggest exporter of wheat in 2016/17. The small, landlocked country of 6.7 million has spent decades developing strains that would grow in its climate, which is hotter than most wheat-growing countries. Its wheat is also of such high quality - above 12 percent protein - that Egypt, the world's biggest wheat importer, in November added Paraguay as the 14th country on its list of acceptable suppliers for state purchase tenders, although no shipments there have yet materialized. Most of its wheat exports go to neighboring Brazil - a situation that Paraguay has been keen to change. "It's a concern to depend on one market," said Santiago Bertoni, president of the Paraguayan Institute of Agrarian Technology. "We are working to diversify." In the previous crop year, Chile and Vietnam also bought wheat from Paraguay, and exports have previously gone to Uruguay, the Middle East and Africa, according to Sonia Tomassone, the international trade adviser for Capeco. This year, buyers are looking for high-protein wheat to replace lost volumes from exporters including the United States and Australia. But Paraguay may miss out. Its farmers had already cut back on acreage because of low revenue last season, prompting the U.S. Agriculture Department to forecast output of 850,000 tonnes in 2017/18, down from 1.284 million tonnes the previous year. That could now fall even more because of frost damage, Berea said. "I believe we will supply our local market, but there will be very little or nothing left for exports," he said. HIGH STANDARDS, HARD WORK Half a century ago, Paraguay relied on wheat imports. The country's evolution into an exporter took decades of work by wheat breeders and farmers, who struggled to find varieties that would yield well in its warm and humid climate. "Paraguay had problems with a combination of high humidity and high temperature. Whatever (wheat) was there got smashed by the diseases," said Mohan Kohli, a wheat scientist who played a leading role in the country's effort to boost production. Kohli worked for the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center, known by its Spanish acronym, CIMMYT. He and his colleagues used wheat varieties from countries like India, Bangladesh and Sudan that could adapt to high temperatures. "We started our own hybridization program here, which started combining the best of the best" in wheat genetics, Kohli, who retired from CIMMYT in 2005, said in a recent interview. By 1986/87, Paraguay was self-sufficient in wheat and it began exporting a few years later. Exports peaked at 1.2 million tonnes in 2010/2011, USDA records show. Tomassone said Paraguay needs to produce at least 3 million tons constantly to become a significant exporter. "We need to have volume and stability in the international market, so people can know us and pay more for our wheat," she said. (Additional reporting by Mariel Cristaldo in Asuncion; Editing by Matthew Lewis) The French embassy and the Alliance Francaise de Kotte in partnership with Black Cat Cafe welcome the French photographer Cedric Gatillon for an exhibition dedicated to Sri Lanka, at the Black Cat Cafe between the 15th and the 25th of Julyfrom 8am to 10pm. The artist presents a series of photographs taken during a recent stay in Sri Lanka. They try to capture the ordinary life of Sri Lankan men and women, in their everyday work, and leisure activities. Cedric Gatillon combines formal composition and emotions in order to comply with the reality. However his pictures do not follow the traditional and academic codes of photojournalism. Cedric Gatillon wants the viewer to understand the peculiarities of this country apart from any political or symbolic message. Cedric Gatillon is a contemporary freelance Graphic Designer and teacher with a unique and original voice. His multi-disciplinary, auteur-like approach blends his own photography and digital imagery with typography to express ideas and design solutions for a multitude of high end clients. His unique approach is the result of an international design education at LEcole Estienne in Parisand then in London at Camberwell College of Arts and Crafts. Therefore Cedric Gatillon is not only agraphic designer and a teacher, he is also a gifted photographer. The 105-storey Ryugyong Hotel, the highest building under construction in North Korea, is seen in Pyongyang. The ban is to remain in effect for one year, unless it is revoked sooner by US secretary of state Rex Tillerson HINDUSTAN TIMES, 2 August 2017 - The United States on Wednesday officially set September 1 as the start date for a ban prohibiting its citizens from travelling to North Korea. The department of state has determined that the serious risk to United States nationals of arrest and long-term detention represents imminent danger to the physical safety of United States nationals travelling to and within the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea (DPRK), read the restriction as it appeared on Wednesday in the US governments federal register. All United States passports are declared invalid for travel to, in, or through the DPRK unless specially validated for such travel, it added. A similar situation arose 21 years ago, in 1996 when the employees of the Ceylon Electricity Board (CEB) struck Another handicap with the CPC employees strike was that it didnt have the support of the general public Fuel staions rub dry without petrol The indefinite work stoppage launched by the trade unions of the Ceylon Petroleum Corporation (CPC) on July 25 was the most absurd and foolhardy trade union action resorted to by any trade union in the recent times. The absurdity and the folly in the strike lay in its professed indefinity. One can imagine the situation that would have prevailed in the country had the strike been indefinite, in its professed sense. The government had only three options in the light of the CPC employees strike. The first was meeting the demands of the strikers. Then the authorities would have had to abandon the leasing out of the Hambantota Port and the related bunkering facility to a Chinese company and some of the Tanks at the oil tank farm in Trincomalee to India. Reviving of the Sapugaskanda Oil Refinery was also another demand by the CPC unions. The government has resorted to lease out the Humabntota Port and the bunkering facility as well as the Tricomalee tanks as a way out of the current economic mess, especially the debt burden it is faced with. In the eyes of the government leaders these are the best options left with them to resolve these issues. Therefore meeting these demands, except for the one on the Sapugaskanda refinery, is out of the question. The second option was to ignore the strike and allow it to go on unhindered as the government had done during many trade union actions recently. However, the bearing that an indefinite strike by the petroleum workers would have had on other sectors in the country would be totally different from what any other strike would have ha d.That was somewhat felt by the country during the only day the CPC workers stopped distribution of oil, before their struggle was crushed by the government. Had the CPC workers strike reall y been indefinite and allowed to continue unhindered, there would not have been trains on tracks and vehicles on roads initially and within days it would have had a chain reaction on all offices and work places. If this happened, employees would have found it difficult to report for work for want of transport facilities. Had all workplaces such as banks, harbours, shops, hospitals, factories, schools etc. come to a standstill and thereby halting the supply of food, water, electricity and medicine, that would have been the end of the government. The masses would have definitely revolted against it. Therefore no sane person should have expected any government to tolerate such a situation. Then the only option that would be left with the government was the crack down on the trade union action which was what happened. This is no doubt a highhanded act by the government and not in anyway good governance. But this action was invited by the workers as a result of the indefinity of the strike, in spite of the question remaining whether their demands were reasonable or not. A similar situation arose 21 years ago, in 1996 when the employees of the Ceylon Electricity Board (CEB) struck work putting forward several demands to be met, during the Presidency of Chandrika Kumaratunga. Both parties to the conflict, the government and the CEB trade unions were so adamant in their stances that several rounds of talks collapsed without any tangible results. Even the common man was affected After several days of strike the then Minister of Power and Energy and Deputy Minister of Defence General Anurudda Ratwatte said that his role as the Power and Energy Minister was over and he was going to act as the Deputy Defence Minister. The Army was deployed to track down the trade union leaders and other employees who had by then gone into hiding. They were brought to their respective workplaces and forced to resume work. Conditions hadnt been ripe last month for an indefinite strike by the CPC employees. Such a strong strike would have crippled all other sectors of the economy and also social life. Even the government itself would have been crippled. Given its indefiniteness, it was a revolt against the government. On the other hand the government wasnt so unpopular for it not to crack down on such a drastic trade union struggle at this stage. If such an indefinite strike is to succeed it should be a part of a wider revolt that is aimed at capturing power. Hence the CPC strike was tantamount-as the then JVP Leader Rohana Wijeweera described the general strike of July 1980-to launching of an intercontinental ballistic missile at the beginning of a war between two countries. Vehicles queue up for petrol The time for the CPC strike was also inopportune. The petroleum workers resorted to their trade union action at a time when the people had become fed up with and sick of demonstrations that cause traffic congestion for hours almost daily and strikes, especially the life threatening work stoppages by the government doctors. The masses irrespective of their political parties were hankering for the petroleum strike to stop even without wanting to know the demands of the strikers, as every aspect of their life had been affected with it even before it started. And they were unfortunately happy when the army took over the CPC terminal premises in Kolonnawa while thugs attacked the strikers. The flip side was the government being emboldened and encouraged to take similar suppressive measures against other trade union actions as well. Had all workplaces such as banks, harbors, shops, hospitals, factories, schools etc. come to a standstill and thereby halting the supply of food, water, electricity and medicine, that would have been the end of the government. The masses would have definitely revolted against it Although both main political parties, the United National Party (UNP) and the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) had a track record of cracking down on trade unions and student movements and using thugs in those measures, the UNP, the main party taking all important decisions of the incumbent government, has the worst history in that sense. It was during its 17-year-rule that more than 40,000 workers were sacked from government and semi-government institutions for engaging in the famous 1980 July strike, demanding a mere Rs 10 increment in their daily wage. On June 5 in the same year, workers of trade unions, affiliated to various political parties, had launched a national day of protest demanding the same wage increase. The UNP Government deployed its goons against the demonstrators during which Trade Union Leader Somapala was beaten to death. As the saying goes old habits die hard, the UNP leaders used thugs this time as well to attack the strikers at the CPC terminal in Kolonnawa. UNP parliamentarian S.M.Marikkar who has been entrusted with the Kolonnawa electorate had ridiculously told that it was the people of the area who had attacked the workers. That too was history repeating itself. When the former ministers Lalith Athulathmudali and Gamini Dissananayke were attacked by thugs during a demonstration in front of the Fort Railway Station, after they broke away from the UNP Government of President R.Premadasa, the then Prime Minister D.B.Wijetunga told parliament that it was the people inconvenienced by the demonstration who attacked the demonstrators. Another handicap with the CPC employees strike was that it didnt have the support of the general public, mainly because they didnt know what was going on and what the workers were demanding for. The Government had very cleverly confused the country divided on party lines by comparing the deals that were made by the previous Government of President Mahinda Rajapaksa in respect of the Hambantota Port and the outright sale of lands to the foreign companies. All in all,, the incidents at Kolonnawa were a clear indication of where the country is heading for in the future, especially with regard to trade union struggles. Pix by Nisal Baduge AFP/Getty Images It is better to show up than to give up Bernie Sanders As Barack Obama celebrates his 56th birthday today, his first in retirement, plans are underway by his allies to push another African-American, a former Massachusetts Governor and a close friend of Obama, Deval Patrick, for 2020 Presidency. This came at a time when a whole host of democrats including Obamas Vice President Joe Bidden and Attorney General during Obamas Presidency, Eric Holder had dropped hints about their 2020 ambitions. The ever increasing number of Democratic contenders is largely owing to the plummeting approval ratings of Donald Trump, which is fast ruling out a second term for him or any other GOP candidate. Among the hopefuls are two women, 53-year-old Kamala Harris, a daughter of a Tamil Indian mother and a 51-year-old former New York Senator Kirsten Gillibrand. In general, Obamas backing is likely to give any candidate a head start in the democratic nomination. However, one wonders whether the former President is making the right choice this time. While Obama nostalgia is almost palpable, it is also true that Barack Obama would not have become the US President had he not been the son of a white mother and been absorbed within the white culture. Son of black parents, 61-year-old Deval Patrick is the Managing Director of Bain Capital and was also the one time Vice President of The Coca Cola Company. Even otherwise being youthful and holding an enviable war record alone is unlikely to appeal to the young Though he had served under President Bill Clinton as the United States Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division, Patricks reputation today however is more of that of a businessman than a Government official. Chances of US citizens favouring another businessman over a politician after Donald Trump are quite dim. Besides, Bain Capital is co-founded by Mitt Romney, Republican Partys nominee for 2012, who was in the eye of scandals in 2012 as Obama camp launched scathing attacks on Romneys record at Bain Capital. One may well ask how ethical it would be for the Obama camp to field another boss from Bain Capital after ruining Romneys chances over the same outfit. Among the hopefuls is also a 38-year-old Congressman Seth Moulton, one time US marine, who at the age of 25 led one of the first US platoons to Baghdad in the US war in Iraq. The young Moulton, who also headed a platoon in the do or die Battle of Nasiriyah and served four tours in Iraq, has earned the Bronze Star Medal for his performance in the war. Moulton who is also armed with three degrees from Harvard is a favourite among a few hawkish democrats. However, Moulton has been dubbed too ambitious, brash and grandstanding by many, especially after his demand to remove Nancy Pelosi, the minority leader in house, claiming that she should be replaced by youngsters like him. Even otherwise being youthful and holding an enviable war record alone is unlikely to appeal to the young. For instance, during the 2016 Presidential Primaries, it was the 75-year-old Bernie Sanders, who was often accused of dodging the Vietnam War draft as a conscientious objector that drew the largest number of millennials to meetings. The Vermont Senator, who lost to Hillary Clinton in the Presidential Primary even today attracts thousands of youngsters to his meetings. The longest standing independent US Senator, Sanders loss at the Primary is today seen by most US citizens as the greatest US tragedy in this millennium. A closet nationalist with four decades of a political career, Sanders has an appeal that goes well beyond parochial party confines. Youngsters think he is progressive, someone whom they can rely on. The adults today believe he is the steadiest of all US politicians with a clean and consistent career record. According to latest surveys almost 40% of Democrat voters think that Sanders will run for 2020 despite his age. This week he launched his proposal for medical health care, a Government- run health care system for all citizens, with a massive advertising campaign on Facebook and Google. Even with Obamas support the likes of Patrick will find it really tough to match up to Bernie Sanders, undoubtedly the best candidate the Democrats can boast of today. The Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA) Navys most advanced hospital ship 'Ark Peace' would arrive in Sri Lanka on a goodwill visit from August 6 to 9. Issuing a statement, the Chinese Embassy today said the hospital ship would provide medical assistance to Sri Lankans free of charge on August 8. Upholding the concept of peace, development, cooperation and win-win as well as actively carrying forward international humanitarianism and Nightingale spirit, Ark Peace has been sincerely involved in actions to heal the wounded and rescue the dying, spreading friendship and love, the statement said. It said Ark Peace had sailed altogether 170,000 nautical miles for over 13,000 hours, visited 29 countries covering three oceans and five continents and provided medical service to over 120,000 people overseas since her commission in December 2008. The Chinese PLA Navys hospital ship Ark Peace is a large maritime medical platform designed and built in China. From August to November 2010, Ark Peace visited Djibouti, Kenya, Tanzania, Seychelles and Bangladesh providing medical service. From June to August 2014, Ark Peace sailed to Hawaii and participated in the RIMPAC-2014 joint exercise. During the mission, she held four academic forums, participated in 13 multilateral medical exchange sessions as well as maritime rescue and other 56 exercises under actual combat background. From August to September 2014, Ark Peace visited Tonga, Fiji, Vanuatu ,and Papua New Guinea ,where she provided medical service to 22456 persons and successfully performed 212 surgeries. From September 2015 to January 2016, Ark Peace visited 7 Pacific countries: Australia, French Polynesia, America, Mexico, Barbados, Grenada and Peru, and provided free medical service and humanitarian assistance. It has become nothing but humdrum when it comes to warning the general public in taking precautions against dengue. Something that we all know, despite every measure being taken, is that the disease cant be eradicated overnight. This has to be said in the backdrop of the inevitable number of citizens falling victim to dengue everyday. So the situation has now aggravated and more attention is being paid to dengue cures and treatments. What has become really important is to find light at the end of the tunnel and that amounts to a medically curative method. The good news is that the worlds first licensed dengue vaccine, approved by the World Health Organization, is available and now in use as a treatment for dengue. The vaccine is currently been used in 18 countries. Its also available in Asian countries such as Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia and Thailand apart from being used in other continents. The licensed dengue vaccine is a live attenuated recombinant tetravalent vaccine which is given on a 3 dose series on a 0, 6 and 12 month basis. The vaccine is recommended for people in the age range of 9 - 45 years in dengue endemic countries. Perspective of Medical Personas According to Professor in Medicine Arjuna De Silva, attached to the Faculty of Medicine in Ragama, the dengue vaccine seemingly is an effective method to help control dengue in the country. The vaccine is WHO approved. The vaccine has an overall effect against all four dengue serotypes. This seems to have highly probable positive effects to help treat dengue patients and so far has been reported safe. Also 7 of the Asian countries have implemented the vaccine, Professor De Silva said. While a vaccine for dengue seems so essential for a country like Sri Lanka-which is now battling a dengue crisis-declaring the use of this vaccine has not been simple, hence the delay in it being used in medical practice in the country. For the record around 300 dengue related deaths have been reported. A dengue patient receives treatment at a government hospital When the reasons for the delay in the dengue vaccine were inquired from the GMOA Secretary, Dr. Haritha Aluthge, he stated that the vaccine is yet to be studied and trial tested. Aluthge said that it is only then that it can be approved for medical use in the country. He said that such trials and tests are essentianl as a possible risk entails the implementation of a new vaccine. Before the vaccine can be used on patients, a trial test has to be done to ensure safety. We should also refer to the trial tests done in other countries. The vaccine has to be studied and trial tested before it can be used medically. There is a procedure to follow with regard to the National Medical Regulatory Authority (NMRA) of the country before approving a vaccine. The vaccines should be affirmed in terms of cost effectiveness as well. We should also consider the success rate of the vaccine in other countries. Generally the procedure to introduce a new vaccine to a country is something that takes time. We cant use Sri Lankan patients as guinea pigs, he warned. Reports reveal that Sri Lankans have flown to Singapore on various occasions to get the vaccine. While opulent citizens may be able to get vaccinated, the less affluent have been left without such an opportunity in obtaining the vaccination. These happenings have led to the questioning about the delay in the use of the vaccine in Sri Lanka given that its already being used in a country like Singapore. But according to Dr. Aluthge, the results of the vaccine can change from country to country. That is why trial tests are necessarily. The dengue vaccine is a new vaccine which hasnt been used on patients for a long time. The vaccine doesnt have a history of being used in medical practice for more than 20 or 30 years. So its a risk. There are instances where medicine that works for one country hasnt proven successful in another. So a trial test has to be done on a scientific basis before officially introducing the vaccine to a country. It has to be decided whether the trial is going to be performed islandwide or in a selected province. There is an advisory committee with regard to national vaccines. The decision to be made with regard to this vaccine is up to this committee. Rather than talking about this topic while being in the dark, its better to obtain approval for the vaccine through a methodical manner, he said. On behalf of the GMOA, what I can say is, if the vaccine is to be implemented, it has to be done using a scientific basis with respect to the laws of the country and it has to be done without unnecessary delay. The vaccine has to be passed as a national policy following the act of the NMRA with its approval, he further said. Straight from the Source The approached Sanofi Pasteur, to obtain details of the vaccine. Sanofi Pasteur is the vaccines division of the French multinational pharmaceutical company, Sanofi , deemed as one of 4 companies that produces the vaccine for yellow fever globally. Spokesperson for Sanofi Pasteur referred to background details of the vaccine which include the countries that have used the vaccine. The overall effectiveness of the vaccine in treating the dengue disease was specified. Sanofi Pasteur dengue vaccine is the culmination of over two decades of scientific innovation and collaboration, as well as 25 clinical studies in 15 countries, involving 40,000 volunteers, around the world. Currently approved in 18 countries including Brazil, Mexico, Australia and Singapore, the dengue vaccine has been proven to be efficacious against all four serotypes that cause the disease. Pooled Phase III clinical study results among at-risk populations of 9 + years old, over a 25-month period, showed that the vaccine can prevent 8 out of 10 hospitalizations, 9 out of 10 of severe dengue cases and has an overall efficacy of 65.6%, the spokesperson said. The vaccine has an overall effect against all four dengue serotypes. This vaccine so far has been reported safe Professor Arjuna De Silva When the company spokesperson was asked about their approach with the vaccine to Sri Lanka and the Sri Lankan response to the vaccine proposal, the spokesperson stated that the company had submitted an application to the NMRA for approval in June last year. The NMRA in response had informed the necessity of the assessment of surveillance data during a time period of one year from countries where the vaccine was implemented before it (vaccine) can be approved. We submitted an application to obtain marketing approval to the Sri Lankan regulatory authorities in June 2016. In March 2017, the NMRA informed us that they would like to assess post-marketing surveillance data from countries in which the vaccine has been used for a period of 1 year before making a decision on approval of the vaccine. Sanofi Pasteur responded to the queries of NMRA in a letter dated April 4th, 2017 and provided long-term safety and efficacy data from clinical trials involving over 35,000 subjects and post-marketing safety surveillance. Since then, we have been closely engaged with the NMRA and await their decision on approval of the vaccine for use in Sri Lanka, the spokesperson further said. Generally the procedure to introduce a new vaccine is something that takes time. We cant use Sri Lankan patients as guinea pigs GMOA Secretary, Dr. Haritha Aluthge The spokesperson stressed on the vaccines performance and effectiveness accentuating its safety and high efficacy. We have long-term data on the safety of our vaccine for 6 years post vaccination from a Phase IIB efficacy study involving 4002 subjects and for 5 and 4 years respectively from two phase III studies conducted in 10 dengue-endemic countries inAsia and Latin America involving more than 31,000 subjects. The results consistently showed a continued reduction of hospitalized dengue cases. In addition, 2 Periodic Benefit-Risk Evaluation Reports have been published in between a 6-months interval since the post-marketing approval. These include safety data collected by Sanofi Pasteur from worldwide sources, since the vaccines approval in December 2015 till 07 December 2016, and do not warrant any significant Regulatory Authority actions.(e.g., restrictions in approved indications, suspensions or withdrawal of a marketing authorization, new contraindications for use, new or strengthened warnings), the spokesperson said. The company believes that the vaccine will help make a difference in the dengue situation in the country, all the while assuring its safety and efficacy. The long-term data on our vaccine and the post-marketing safety surveillance reassure us of the long-term efficacy and safety of the vaccine. This new tool will have a significant impact on our fight against dengue, when used along with other dengue control measures.Sanofi Pasteur stands ready to provide the vaccine to Sri Lanka and believes that this vaccine, coupled with other preventive measures, can make a difference in Sri Lanka in fighting this terrible disease, the spokesperson added. A much provoked inquiry The question of the delay with regard to the implementation of the vaccine in Sri Lanka is a much provoked inquiry in many a mind. But in actuality this query must be rephrased to questioning the suitability of the vaccine to be used on Sri Lankans. The question, Are we ready for the dengue vaccine to be used in Sri Lanka? was addressed in the Weekly Epidemiological Report issued by the Epidemiology Unit for March 18- 24 2017 It accentuated the necessity to approach the implementation of a vaccine program using a scientific approach. The report stressed that the current disease surveillance system in Sri Lanka is inadequate to assess dengue transmission dynamics at a national and sub national level. The current surveillance system doesnt capture morbidity data from out-patient departments, laboratories and the community. Therefore the patients who dont get admitted to hospitals, particularly those with mild symptoms or clinically unapparent infections are unlikely to be reported and arent reflected in the morbidity figures. From the inpatients too, a proportion of cases may be missed from hospitals in different parts of the country. Consequently, under reporting is a significant problem with the routine surveillance mechanism currently in place, the report reveals. The importance of an assessment to evaluate the vulnerable ages and the serological extent of dengue transmission has also been highlighted in the epidemiology report, in attempts to recognize the state of the dengue burden. It is important that we have an understanding of the sero-prevalence of dengue in the country or at least in the high- risk areas like western province or in the Colombo district. In this back drop, a community based descriptive study of dengue sero-epidemiology in the Colombo district is being carried out by the epidemiology unit. Age-specific dengue sero-prevalence in the metropolitan, urban and rural populations in the Colombo district will be assessed in this study, the report states. The study will prove helpful as age-stratified sero-surveys are currently deemed as the best way to select populations suitable for vaccination. When this is directed at a sub national level, it will help guide vaccine decision making. The Epidemiology Report stated that this knowledge is acclaimed important for evidence based effective control and as preventive strategies for future introduction of the vaccine. The outcome of this study is said to be important in accurately sizing up the dengue dilemma and preventing it from wreaking havoc in the country. Vaccine Technicality Referring to the Weekly Epidemiology Report (Vol.44, No.12) issued by the Epidemiology Unit for the time period between March 18-24, 2017, one dengue vaccine has been registered in several countries while there are several other vaccines for dengue being developed at the moment. When it came to effectiveness of the vaccine in the trials, it has varied from each individual and also the country. Vaccine efficacy varied from country to country in the studies, ranging from 31.3% in Mexico to 79% in Malaysia, the report states. It was also further explained in the report that age and various scientific reasons such as sero-prevalence affected the effectiveness of the vaccine. Age and sero-positivity have depicted a higher correlation in the trials. It was further reported that during vaccine studies, an instance of an increased risk of hospitalization for dengue was seen particularly in the age group of 2-5 year olds. There have been several hypotheses to suggest the cause with regards to medical science, but nothing has been confirmed. This result led to the decision of vaccinating patients starting from the age of 9 years. The sero-positivity or sero-negativity of a dengue patient seems to have an effect on an individuals response to the dengue vaccine. Vaccination may be ineffective or may theoretically even increase the future risk of dengue illness in those who are sero-negative at the time of first vaccination regardless of age. If this is the case, even in high transmission settings there may be an increased risk among sero-negative persons despite a reduction in dengue illness at the population level, the report further states. A different report revealed that vaccine efficacy was high against dengue types 3(71.6%) and 4 (76.9%) in comparison to dengue types 1 (54.7%) and 2 (43%). Vaccine efficacy was observed to be high in sero-positive individuals in comparison to sero-negative individuals. In the Asian trial of the vaccine, the efficacy for sero-positive individuals was 74.3% whereas the efficacy was 35.5% for sero-negative individuals. The Latin American trail begged to differ with higher efficacies with sero-positive acquiring 83.7% and sero-negative efficacy being 43.2%. The current surveillance system doesnt capture morbidity data from out-patient departments, laboratories and the community The Weekly Epidemiological Report also stated that mathematical models have been developed under various assumptions to predict the impact of dengue vaccines when administered in a routine immunization programme. The cost-effectiveness of the vaccines were also considered at in the modelling comparison. As the cost of vaccine procurement and delivery was unknown, the analyses were presented as costs per fully vaccinated person. One DALY averted was valued at around US$ 2000 based on benchmarking the costs against alternative interventional strategies being carried out to prevent dengue. Against this benchmark, in settings with sero-prevalence in the range of 50%90% at age 9 years, vaccination was predicted to be cost effective if the total cost of fully vaccinating one person were less than US$1540 in the public health perspective. It should be noted, however, that the modelling comparison results were based on regional indicators and should be used as a substitute for country-specific analyses to effect local decision-making. WHO has specified on the target groups for the vaccines. In defining populations to be targeted for vaccination, prior infection with dengue virus of serotype, as measured by sero-prevalence, should be approximately 70% greater, in the age group targeted for vaccination, in order to maximize public health impact and cost effectiveness. A different report stated that vaccination of populations in between the recommended age groups with sero-prevalence in the range between 50-70% is acceptable, but the impact may be lower than the desired level while the vaccination of populations with sero-prevalence below 50% is not recommended. The Weekly Epidemiological Report further stressed that positive effects cant be expected from the vaccine alone and that it should be considered part of a dengue control mechanism. Dengue vaccination introduction should be carried out as a part of comprehensive dengue control strategy, including well-executed and sustained vector control, evidence based best practices for clinical care for all patients with dengue illness, and strong dengue surveillance, the report stresses. However it was also noted that though the dengue vaccination may be introduced as part of an overall dengue control strategy, its not expected to make a significant impact in the wake of an outbreak. The debate regarding the vaccine was taken to the streets when the Dailymirror made inquiries from the public to note down their opinions. This was mainly because we think that ultimately its the general public that must be the beneficiaries of a medical scheme thats put to use. Citizens expressed a rainbow of views that included a dislike for the vaccine as well as those who supported it. Some opined that the implementation of a vaccine for dengue would be a good step while others harboured fears regarding the safety of the vaccine. I completely agree with the implementation of a dengue vaccine. But I also think that the vaccine should be reinforced along with medical recommendations of a doctor, said Wathsala. I am all for the implementation of a dengue vaccine under safety assurances. I think it will prove beneficial as a treatment for dengue which is a dreadful disease, said Manosha Fernando No, I dont agree with a vaccine. Implementation of a vaccine isnt childs play. It could lead to dangerous consequences. Rather than approaching a vaccine, I think that there are many other actions that must be taken to suppress the dengue condition in the country. Though these vaccines are said to be used in countries like Singapore, we cant ignore the fact that they are developed countries unlike Sri Lanka. So the success of the vaccine here is questionable. But if the vaccine is approved by doctors, then it could be a considerable step, said Christaline Fernando The fact that the vaccine is being used in other countries is assuring. After all, most of the medicines used in Sri Lanka are from other countries as well. In any case, the vaccine would be a good thing. It would be good for the children, said Ishan Perera As a mother of two daughters, I am concerned for their safety, so I dont agree with a vaccine if it isnt approved by the Health Ministry and medical professionals. My daughters just recovered from dengue and I know the severity of the disease, but even so I wont opt for a vaccine unless its approved medically in Sri Lanka, said Niranjala During the past 40 years, the decline in quality of life of the majority, runs parallel to increasing accumulation of wealth in Colombo The cardinal rule with every government has been that development requires as much FDI as possible Forty years ago this day, Ranil Wickremesinghe was only 28 years old when sworn in as a UNP Member of Parliament from the government ranks. It was also 40 years ago that J. R. Jayewardene (JRJ), as Head of State and after leading the UNP government to victory in 1977 July, opened up the economy for free trade. Now as PM of this Yahapalanaya Unity Government, Wickremesinghe is using his 40th year political anniversary for image boosting, something which most Sinhala politicians- being in politics for a long time-usually do. The stress on the wordSinhala is because Tamil political leaders like R. Sampanthan and V. Anandasangaree-who have been in active politics for over 57 years for now-havent been seen taking steps to boost their images this way. Perhaps the Sinhala political culture is different and less rich than Tamil, to say it diplomatically. This nevertheless isnt about Wickremesinghes image boosting campaign, done with or without his approval through the Ministry of Home Affairs. Its Minister Vajira Abeywardena, a trusted ally of PM Wickremesinghe, who would have instructed his ministry secretary to officially organise religious and public campaigns islandwide, vide urgent ministry circular number HAF-1/04/--- dated 27 July 2017. A two-day campaign that would use State officers and public funds, a massive violation that would have gone to the PRECIFAC if it was during the Rajapaksa era. That being another peripheral aberration of the 40-year rule on unrestricted free trade coming with inherent corruption, this is about development on a neo liberal economy during the past 40 years, PM Wickremesinghe sounds proud about. There were two major changes that JRJ introduced immediately after he led the UNP to a stunning electoral victory in July, 1977. One was the turnaround in the economy from a State controlled market economy on import substitution to one with total freedom on trade and investment for export manufacture. The other is the adopting of the second Republican Constitution with an almighty President entrusted with Executive Powers. These are two fundamental changes, no political party with many electoral promises have never been able to change to date. Both introductions supplementing each other in creating this society with all its mega corruptions in governance, breakdown of law and order, education, health, public transport, serious debilitation of democratic structures, inefficiency and lethargy in every limb of the State apparatus and also a total devaluation of social values, professional ethics and morals leaving out rural society in every form of economic and socio-cultural life. During the past 40 years, the decline in quality of life of the majority, runs parallel to increasing accumulation of income and wealth in Colombo and its suburbs.These developments have sustained an increasing middle class within a free market along with rapid increase in every form of corruption and fraud. This was evident with every government with the ones taking over being more corrupt than the previous regime. It was common talk that the Premadasa era was more corrupt than the Jayewardene era, the Kumaratunge era being more corrupt than the Premadasa era, the Rajapaksa era being more corrupt than the Kumaratunge era and now this 30-month Wickremesinghe-Sirisena rule being far more corrupt compared to the Rajapaksa era. Many dozens of those nomadic dollar traders had simply vanished without paying the workers All that is based on a single approach to development defined on borrowed investments. Every government, green, blue and red and even this blue-green and saffron government has worked only on encouraging FDI Foreign Direct Investments where sociocultural development is reduced to economic growth. The cardinal rule with every government to date has been that development requires as much FDI as possible.With that, the most important issue is how much we as a country has benefited from all these investments made during the past 40 years at a very heavy socio-economic cost. This government and all its economists who celebrate 40 years of heavily liberalised free market economics should tell the people how much of the due income in Rupees have been forfeited by all governments during all these years to investors as tax holidays, tax waivers, tax concessions, tax rebates and special infrastructure and land as exclusive facilities for investments including free electricity in some instances. What will the total cost to the people be, when all tax waivers, holidays, concessions and rebates are added up? How will the balance sheet look like with what the people have gained against all that forfeited income legitimately due to them? The fact is, with all that massive doling out as incentives for FDI, the Motorola company that Jayewardene said was waiting to arrive in Sri Lanka- when he opened the Katunayake FTZ- hasnt sighted Sri Lanka so far. The Volkswagen assembly plant that Wickremesinghe was boasting about during elections turned out to be a total fraud. In between the elusive Motorola and the fraud that was Volkswagen, most investors who came to enjoy the incentives were fly by night dollar traders. They collaborated with local swindlers and brought no investments to Sri Lanka. Factories were begun with BOI approval on hardly scrutinised proposals on huge loans obtained from local banks. Many dozens of those nomadic dollar traders had simply vanished after a few years, without paying the workers their due EPF and ETF contributions, gratuity and even the last few months salary and overtime pay. Most, if not all, have also fled having defaulted on bank loans obtained. The apex body-that is mandated to approve all investments that come to Sri Lanka, and also regulate them- the BOI, has no clue where these investors actually came from as once told by then Labour Minister Lokuge. In 2013 January, he reported these issues to the then President Rajapaksa and said he was helpless in resolving the cases of thousands of stranded workers as the BOI couldnt take any legal action against any of the defaulters who had fled the country. Its not just the concessions in trillions of rupees that had been doled out to these unknown investor quacks. Arguments are flaunted by the local business community that industrial and labour law should be either relaxed or made flexible to have more investments.Over the past few decades, there has been an apparent lack of interest in law enforcement. During this period, laws have been amended and there has been no special flow of new investments either. One instance is the amending of the law on night work for female workers and the increase in the number of hours regarding overtime. These happenings resulted in the heavy exploitation of labour and didnt bring in more investments. This hoax about investments for export manufacture as the only way out for Sri Lanka is being carried through with numerous figures and statistics. These statistics mean nothing to the majority of people. Increase in per capita income is one such globally certified farce. We are told that Sri Lanka is almost there as a middle income country with an annual per capita income of US 3,500 dollars. Year 2018 is marked for per capita income to reach US 4,000 dollars. This per capita income of 4,000 dollars wouldnt mean, all 21 million citizens of Sri Lanka earn that much. Hardly 20 per cent can boast of such permanent income that works out to Rs.52, 000 per month. Over 250,000 plantation sector workers may have to work 03 months to earn that sum. Over 300,000 FTZ and apparel sector workers have to toil day in day out to even reach the half way mark on that income. In public service the majority dont earn more than 30,000 rupees per month. In the private sector, where workers are paid the lowest, the minimum wage is only Rs.13,500 per month. The joke in Sri Lanka is that the poverty line is drawn at Rs, 4,000 per month. This is less than one third the poorest salary of the private sector worker. Every one earning Rs, 4,100 isnt poor and therefore isnt counted within the 5.9 % poor. Wonder how 1.3 million people live with just 4,000 rupees per month! In plain English, this free market economy over the past 40 years has created a super rich 10 per cent of the population. Meanwhile the bottom 20 per cent kept growing poorer and the next 20 per cent just above them struggles to survive every month. Oxfam issuing a research paper ahead of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland- which PM Wickremesinghe also attended this year- said that even in Sri Lanka, the super rich 10 per cent of the population have grown richer by 15 per cent while the poor have become poorer by 15 per cent. This explains why around a hundred thousand young women from rural society migrate to the Mid East every year despite heart breaking news about stoning and nailing women. They dont go as housemaids for big money. The salary they earn in the Middle East is about 30,000 rupees; a figure they cant ever earn in their own villages. Far worse is that this yawning disparity- that keeps increasing social injustice- is kept unchallenged by fanning majoritarian extremism. Its the same in India with the increasing Hindutva campaigns and Sinhala Buddhist extremism here in Sri Lanka and in Myanmar. Another major reason that has aided this scenario during the past 40 years has been the Sinhala Buddhist violence against both Tamil and Muslim people. Yes, its 40 years for now with ever increasing corruption, growing poverty hidden under glowing numbers and fanning violence against Tamils and Muslims leaving conflict resolution harder by the day. Do we have to celebrate these 40 years? REUTERS, 2 August, 2017 - Attacks on the Iraqi embassy and a Shiite mosque in Afghanistan have reinforced fears that Islamic State militants are seeking to bring the groups Middle East conflict to Central Asia, though evidence of fighters relocating from Iraq and Syria remains elusive. The choice of target in the Iraqi embassy attack, three weeks after the fall of Mosul to Iraqi troops, appeared to back up repeated warnings from Afghan security officials that, as Islamic State fighters were pushed out of Syria and Iraq, they risked showing up in Afghanistan. The United States, which first came to Afghanistan in 2001 after Al Qaedas attacks on New York and Washington, is considering sending more troops to Afghanistan, in part to ensure the country does not become a haven for foreign militant groups. In April, during a visit to Kabul by U.S. Defence Secretary James Mattis, the commander of NATO forces in Afghanistan, Gen. John Nicholson, said that, while ISIS had an aspiration to bring in fighters from Syria, we havent seen it happen. REUTERS, 2 August 2017 - Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stopped an Israeli lawmaker from taking on a Jordanian counterpart in a fist-fight on Wednesday over a diplomatic crisis between the two neighbours. Oren Hazan, a member of Netanyahus rightist Likud party had tweeted on the day of the shooting that Jordanians who we keep supplied with water and whose butts we defend day and night needed re-education. His comments prompted a challenge from a similarly fiery lawmaker in Jordan. Let him meet me, if he is a man, Yahya Soud said on Twitter. As the appointed time neared, both men posted images of themselves on social media driving to the King Hussein/Allenby Bridge crossing between Jordan and the Israeli-occupied West Bank. But Hazans journey was cut short after Netanyahus office ordered him to turn around. A statement from the prime ministers office did not say why Netanyahu had stopped the fight from proceeding. In 1994, Jordan became the second of only two Arab countries to make peace with Israel. The no-confidence motion signed by 32 Joint Opposition MPs against Foreign Affairs Minister Ravi Karunanayake was handed over to the General Secretary of Parliament this afternoon. The motion was submitted by a group of MPs led by MP Bandula Gunawardena. Deputy Secretary General of Parliament Neil Iddawala confirmed that a No Confidence Motion had been received against the Minister. He told the Daily Mirror that a large group of Joint Opposition MPs came and handed over the motion at the Speaker's Office. He said it would be placed on the Order Book by the Speaker. As per the Parliamentary practice, when a No-Confidence Motion is handed over against a Minister or an MP, it is normally given precedence over other matters. A No-Confidence Motion lapses on the prorogation of the House. MP Mahindananda Aluthgamage said the Minister should resign forthwith rather than waiting to be unseated after a vote of No-Confidence based on this motion. He said the allegations against the Minister were serious. "When I raised them, nobody took into account. I made the same charges. Today, they are proven," he said. (Yohan Perera) Abdul Cader - Director of Sales Seredib Flour Mills speaking to guest As part of its ongoing effort to engage with bakers across the country, Serendib Flour Mills recently conducted a series of get-togethers and meetings for bakery owners. The events brought together small, medium and large scale business owners together and enabled them to learn more about the 7 Star brand and its key product values and properties. The get-togethers focused on creating greater awareness about the 7 Star range of products, whilst highlighting the stringent best practices, processes and systems that are used by the company to produce the finest quality of wheat flour products. The get-togethers so far have taken place in Ampara, Marawila, Kandy, Kurunegala, Jaffna, Anuradhapura, Batticaloa, Badulla, Bandarawela and most recently in Galle and Matara. Serendib Flour Mills also hopes to host similar events across other key areas of Sri Lanka in the coming months. Commenting on SFMLs endeavour to connect and collaborate with the countrys leading local bakers, Kalinga Wijesekera Head of Marketing & Communications, Serendib Flour Mills (Pvt) Ltd, said, Local businesses are important contributors to our economy and society and its important for us to support and work together with them. By offering bakers across the island the finest choice of wheat flour and at an affordable price, we enable them to supply a high-quality range of savoury and sweet products to their valued customers. Quality control, consistency and safety are also important issues for bakers, and we were pleased to have this opportunity to share our key production protocols and management systems with them, so they can rest assured that our flour is milled in adherence with globally accepted food hygiene and safety standards and also deliver consistent levels of quality. Gampha Bakers get together Recently two 7-Star wheat flour variants in the Serendib Flour Mills (SFML) portfolio recently received SLS certification from the Sri Lanka Standards Institution (SLSI), making 7 Star Flour, the first wheat flour brand in the country to receive the certification for meeting the necessary quality standards. The 7 Star flour range has won the hearts of consumers across the island, and in a very short time period, the brand has become synonymous with value, nourishment, quality and trust. Aside from enabling bakers to create tasty treats for their customers, the 7 Star products also ensure that consumers get optimal nutrition. The Fortified Flour products in the range are packed with essential nutrients and minerals and are ideal for creating wholesome items such as fish buns, rolls, patties and much more. Operating from a state-of-the-art milling facility at the Colombo Port, Serendib Flour Mills adheres to the highest standards of quality and safety, and implements stringent best practices and protocols throughout its entire operation. Serendib Flour Mills also strives to make efforts to cut down its impact on the environment by minimizing greenhouse gas emissions and waste whilst championing energy and water conservation through its operations. Serendib Flour Mills supplies the local market through its 7 Star portfolio of products and also serves as a supplier of leading wheat flour brands across the region. Bakers Get together in Bandarewela Bakers get together in Badula Baker Get together at katunayake Baker Get together at katunayake Kevin O Leary -CEO of Serendib Flour Mills and Abdul Cader - Director of Sales, serendib flour mills Mr Kalinga Wijeseakara - Head of Marketing - Serendib Flour Mills addressing the bakers in Katunayake Mr Kalinga Wijeseakara - Head of Marketing - Serendib Flour Mills welcoming the guests All in all, the government won last week. The petrol strikers were put down after briefly flirting with uncertainty: we didnt know what the officials would do, and frankly we were worried they wouldnt do anything. By resolving their issue without resorting to brute force (for the first time, our president made significant use of those extraordinary powers vested in him by declaring the distribution of fuel an essential service), the bad guys were demarcated as the strikers. Not the government. This was and is true also for the University students: we have grown so used to their rhetoric over SAITM that we are merely tired whenever they demand action on the streets. The truth is that weve been selling ourselves for the past 60 years. The truth is that this government is no different to its predecessors. Everything that the previous government had a hand in shaping, including SAITM and the sell-out to China and Wilpattu, was effectively turned into campaigns against the President and the Prime Minister. Most of these protesters have actually subverted their own aims. Fuel has come to be something of a necessity to the entire country, Constitutional amendments are to this government what protests against them are to the Joint Opposition. The fuel strike wasnt totally unsuccessful, as I pointed out earlier. But it did teach us some lessons. Pertinent, timeless lessons. Predominantly in the political sphere. We can choose to heed them, or we can choose to ignore. Either way, weve lost. Sri Lanka to sign Port Deal with China! screams the headlines from the New York Times, The Guardian, and The Economic Times. The petrol strike was a corollary to what was perceived as the governments sell-out of strategic assets to foreign entities, which proved so controversial, in fact, that while the strike was ongoing we ended up revising the terms of the agreement with China (regarding the Hambantota Port) from an 80:20 share distribution to a 69.55:30.45, divided between China Merchants Port and the Sri Lanka Ports Authority. So the strike wasnt totally unsuccessfully: we brought up our share of the lease by 10.45 percentage points. Notwithstanding the way they inconvenienced the public, and any future action they may take to inconvenience us even further, I personally think they were trying to make an important point. You may argue (as Rajitha Senaratne did at a press conference) that Mahinda Rajapaksa is behind these strikes, that he is financing them with the money he looted from the public coffers (or the deals he struck to build those roads even those who hate him admire), but the truth is that when a set of impoverished, hard-done-by state workers resort to the streets despite the threat of dismissal, they deserve more than a passing glance. Nobody has spoken for them. The truth is that nobody wants to. As I noted in my column last week, we are so shrouded in ambivalence that even those who strike in our countrys name are laid aside. The truth is that weve been selling ourselves for the past 60 years. The truth is that this government is no different to its predecessors. But the protesters arent bemoaning that. They should be, but they arent. They are not shouting about the process, but about those who are heading that process. In that sense, these protests are politically motivated. And in that sense, those who chose to remain silent when the previous regime capitulated with the SAITM issue are being selective now. Forget this though. In politics theres something called the opportune moment. Protest campaigns and feel-good slogans are based on that moment. Everything that the previous government had a hand in shaping, including SAITM and the sell-out to China and Wilpattu, was effectively turned into campaigns against the President and the Prime Minister. For the record, they have not been unsuccessful there. Those who have through articles or speeches compelled the state to take a firmer hand against the protesters are, by that logic, caving into what the Joint Opposition wants them to do: diminish their own legitimacy by doing more of what they did in their time. Given this its no surprise that the government is weighing its options. Trade Unions arent elected representatives: they are selected, sometimes by secret ballot, and they cant speak for the people. The State knows this, which is why it claims that pressure groups cant override what the people want. But what do the people want? Roughly the same thing the State wants! Its friends are ours, its enemies are ours. The Bills it enacts, the legislation it crystallises and later amends, are all ours. It would be subverting the very basis of democracy if we were to let Trade Unions dictate to the State. And to a considerable extent, we would be inclined to agree. These protests are not achieving what they set out to do, not surprisingly. The stark truth is that whatever the protest may be, unless were in a totalitarian Orwellian dictatorship, all their arguments, regardless of how cogent they may be, can be trivialised with the simple counterargument But you dont represent the people! Unless you count a particularly unique political predicament (think of Chandrika Kumaratungas clumsy handling of the war and the subsequent shift of power in and outside parliament to the Jathika Hela Urumaya, regardless of their numbers), an outside pressure group cannot and will not be allowed to influence State policy. Trade Unions arent elected representatives: they are selected, sometimes by secret ballot, and they cant speak for the people. The State knows this, which is why it claims that pressure groups cant override what the people want. But what do the people want? Roughly the same thing the State wants! And thats not all. Most of these protesters have actually subverted their own aims. Fuel has come to be something of a necessity to the entire country, as have doctors and engineers and bus drivers, but these have a considerable impact on the poor. The middle classes will be squeezed beyond endurance when petrol stations run out of petrol, but when doctors vacate their hospitals their absence will be felt mostly by the not-so-affluent, i.e. those who cant afford to visit a private hospital. The governments enemy is not the peoples enemy, certainly not all the time. But when you have doctors out of hospitals and when the generator that fuelled up the garment factory you earned your daily stipend from runs out of diesel, you do tend to worry more about your economic plight. We are selfish, yes. But so is everyone else. When a prominent yahapalanist Marxist and apologist (yes, they are both, sometimes at the same time) contended some months back that the government must address grievances through constitutional amendments and affirmative legislative enactments, I fired back contending that the ordinary Sinhalese, Tamil, Muslim, Burgher, and whatever-else man, woman, and child on the street will not bother about them without first thinking of his or her daily bread. Constitutional amendments are all fine and well, but without the necessary economic backdrop to them, they will run out of fuel. Now it would be hypocritical of me to suggest that this doesnt hold valid for the other side: i.e. the nationalist, anti-federalist, and anti-yahapalana side. In the end, these protests will only deepen political rifts. Those who support the government, while not exactly salivating over it, will see Rajapaksa and his cohorts behind the protesters Constitutional amendments are to this government what protests against them are to the Joint Opposition. In both cases, what is ignored is the simple fact that the people will not be placated by political slogans if their economic needs arent met. When it comes to the middle class especially (because the middle class has become more politically empowered), no amount of feel-good rhetoric about the future of the country will move them. This means, whether we like it or not, that no amount of fuel strikes and power cuts will awaken the nationalist in us until and unless we can be sure that the economic prerequisites to being a nationalist are fulfilled. In the end these protests will only deepen political rifts. Those who support the government, while not exactly salivating over it, will see Rajapaksa and his cohorts behind the protesters. Those who support the Rajapaksa Cabal, and especially those fiercely attached to it, will lambast the government whenever the CEB decides to cut power. We dont need that, clearly. We need a pressure group movement thats better organised, not prone to frequent strikes, and whore genuinely concerned about this countrys plight without ignoring its need for an economic backdrop. Regrettable, but thats the way it is. In the eighties the conventional wisdom was that the economy was more important than the country, which explains why an entire generation grew up hating the arts, ignoring our history, and rubbishing our heritage And why? Because that backdrop is what conditions us. Regrettable, but thats the way it is. In the eighties the conventional wisdom was that the economy was more important than the country, which explains why an entire generation grew up hating the arts, ignoring our history, and rubbishing our heritage. Culture can be salvaged only by selling it! was what our leaders propagated around town, and we swallowed the pill they gave us. We are still paying for those sins, but until we stop paying, and until we let go of that inferiority complex and colonial hangover we suffer from even today, the truth is that we will continue to be ruffled, troubled, and altered by economics. When that petrol station runs out of fuel, when food shortages and power cuts are the order of the day, and when the generator at your office shuts down and with it your office too, we will eventually bother less about the country. The fuel strike wasnt totally unsuccessful, as I pointed out earlier. But it did teach us some lessons. Pertinent, timeless lessons. Predominantly in the political sphere. We can choose to heed them, or we can choose to ignore. Either way, weve lost. Referring into the relationship between Arjun Aloysius and Minister Ravi Karunanayake, Additional Solicitor General Dappula de Livera yesterday submitted travel details pertaining to Aloysius and the Minister and said that there were 13 visits to Singapore by both with coinciding dates. The ASG produced the travel details relating to the time period between September 2016 and April 2017. When questioned whether he had met Aloysius in Singapore, the Minister said he had met Aloysius there on a few occasions. The Minister said he met Aloysius at the Finance Asia Conference, which was sponsored by the Perpetual Treasuries Ltd. and on the Christmas in 2016. The Minister said he did not travel to Singapore to meet Aloysius. The ASG referring to one travel detail questioned the witness whether he and Aloysius had travelled together to Singapore. The witness said he cannot recall such an instance. However, after the examination conducted by Presidents Counsel Anuja Premaratne, who appeared for Aloysius, it was explained to the commission that even though they were in the same flight, their destinations were different. Justice Prasanna Jayawardena asked the witness, whether he had travelled to Singapore to meet Aloysius, the Minister said he did not. (Shehan Chamika Silva) U.S. President Donald Trump has signed legislation imposing new sanctions on Russia into law, a White House official said on Wednesday. The U.S. Congress voted last week by overwhelming margins for sanctions to punish the Russian government over interference in the 2016 presidential election, annexation of Ukraines Crimea and other perceived violations of international norms. Trump, who has made clear he wanted to improve relations with Russia, grudgingly accepted the new congressional sanctions, which also included Iran and North Korea. The bill had enough support in Congress to override a presidential veto. Trumps signing of the bill followed some conflicting signals from the administration in recent days about the sanctions. U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson told reporters on Tuesday that he and Trump did not believe the new sanctions would be helpful to our efforts on diplomacy with Russia. Vice President Mike Pence said that the bill showed Trump and Congress were speaking with a unified voice. White House adviser Kellyanne Conway confirmed the signing during an interview with Fox News. Trumps desire for better relations with Moscow has been hamstrung by findings of U.S. intelligence agencies that Russia interfered to help the Republican against Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. U.S. congressional panels and a special counsel are investigating. Moscow denies any meddling and Trump denies any collusion by his campaign. The Russian rouble weakened slightly following the initial report that Trump had signed the bill. - REUTERS, 02nd AUGUST, 2017 Minister Ravi Karunanayake said that the undated letter, sent to the then Central Bank Governor Arjuna Mahendran was completely an oversight. He said that he had not indicated the date and the reference due to an oversight. When Additional Solicitor General wanted to know the reason as to the origin of such a letter the Minister explained the situation he had as the Finance Minister in the beginning of the 2015. He said that there was an unaccounted debt in balance and an outstanding repayment amounting Rs. 100 billion, when they assumed duties as the new Government in 2015. The witness said there was a meeting on February 26, 2015 with Mr. Malik Samarawickrama and Kabir Hashim over the fund requirement of Rs. 75 billion for road development projects. The meeting was held prior to the controversial bond auction that took place on February 27, 2015. When questioned he confirmed that there was no sudden need to raise money in February but the funds were required for the payments in RDA projects. The witness said Mr. Mahendran requested him to send a letter relating to what happened at the February 26, 2015 meeting between the three ministers and thereby he had sent the letter in May 2016. This letter contained the idea that it was decided at the meeting on the fund requirement of the Government for Rs 75 billion. The ASG questioned the witness as to why there was no date or reference in the letter. The witness said it was an oversight. Then the ASG asked whether there was a copy or corresponding Ministrys file relating to the letter. The witness said he forwarded the letter in response to a request made by Mr. Mahendran. The ASG repeatedly questioned him as to why he had not mentioned the person who requested the letter. The ASG was of the view that this letter was created very recently because when it was produced before the PCoI, the letter was apparently new and crisp. However, the witness denied the ASGs stance and maintained what he said. When the ASG was attempting to question further as to how the letter originated, the Commission said it was a waste of time because the witness has already made his stance before the Commission. However, there was a heated argument thereafter between the Commission and the ASG over the relevancy of further questioning on the matter. (Shehan Chamika Silva) DAILY MAIL, 2 August, 2017 - The US Air Force has successfully launched an intercontinental ballistic missile just days after North Korea tested its latest rocket which could potentially hit NYC. An unarmed Minuteman III missile was fired from Californias Vandenberg Air Force Base at 2.10am local time on Wednesday. Military chiefs said the launch had been long-planned and was not directly in response to North Koreas rapidly accelerating nuclear programme. Its raining cats and dogs in Bengal. Pipinghot Khichidi is on Bengali platter sans its partnerilish maach bhaja (fried Hilsa fish). The hot Jodi of the monsoon is missing. Where have the illish gone? It was the financial year 2012-13. West Bengal suddenly saw a 67 per cent dip in Ilish (Hilsa) supply. The preceding fiscal had just been unimaginably good: an unprecedented 29,331 tonnes of Ilish (Hilsa) in the Bengal markets and consequently a long Hilsa season of mouth-watering delicacies ilish bhnapa, doiilish, ilish bhaja in the Bengali kitchen. The plunge from 29,331 tonnes to 9,532 tonnes within a years time took everyone by shock. While scientists were pondering over physiological, environmental and other sundry reasons behind the supply going down, diplomats had something else to worry about. The year 2012-13 of poor supply saw zero export from Bangladesh. The previous year, however had seen 5,210 tonnes of Padmar Ilish, the tasty variety of fish, coming to Bengal in crates. Swimming back in time to September 2011, it was also the year, which was to see two countries India, Bangladesh being netted together over the Teesta Water sharing pact. There was bonhomie in anticipation of the deal and Bangladesh was all set to welcome the Indian guests with a sumptuous Hilsa spread. The then Prime Minister of India Dr Manmohan Singh was all set to fly to Bangladesh with Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee, in tow as getting the latter on board to sign the agreement was crucial. But Mamata pulled out at the last moment citing that the Teesta water sharing pact would be conflicting in the interest of the state. The agreement could not be signed and the Hilsa lunch thrown in honour of the guests could not be relished. As speculation went rife as to how would Sheikh Hasina digest the ditch, within months it came to be known that Bangladesh would not export Hilsa to Bengal. New hopes were rekindled in 2016 when Mamata Banerjee won the Assembly election and Sheikh Hasina sent her 20kg carton of Hilsa as a symbolic gesture that the silver beauty from across the border would perennially land on Bengals platter, provided there was no lock-jam over Teesta water deal. Since then, the Teesta water pact has got mired into new controversies and Hilsa from Padma never came officially. Hilsa or the silver crop of the waters started falling after the 2.24km Farakka barrage with 106 lock gates came up across Ganges in Farakka in Murshidabad district in 1975. The barrage was constructed for diversion of 40,000 cusec water at Farakka to downstream Hooghly for flushing out the siltation, but it in turn destroyed the Hilsa corridor. Prior to the barrage, Hilsa would migrate beyond Farakka to Rajmahal, Bhagalpur, Ara and Samstipur in Bihar, Allahabad in UP and Agra in Delhi to spawn and lay their eggs in upstream Ganges. The route got dammed and Bihar and Agra got deprived of a reasonably huge catch of 30,000 tonnes a year. Even Bengal was at the receiving end as Hilsa, known for being choosy about the place of breeding was looking for estu aries with reasonably good flow of fresh water and a deep draught, said fish research scientist and former professor and head of marine science in Calcutta University, Amalesh Chaudhury. Hilsa requires a minimum 20 meters depth of water for migration. Where is that depth in the estuaries of Hooghly? Heavily silted and on top of that untreated sewerage, chemicals, industrial pollutants and discharge of unused fuel by the 14,000 fishing trawlers, going for Hilsa catch, are messing up the river mouths and the estuaries of the Sundervans delta. According to Bijan Maity of Kakdweep Fishermen Welfare Association such is the pressure of fishing that even the ban on Hilsa fishing in the breeding months late August to October, was forgotten. The crisis precipitated after 2014 when the Central Inland Fisheries allowed fishing boats to venture out from June 15th, which happens to herald the onset of monsoon and the peak migratory season for Hilsa for laying eggs in Bengal. Catching juvenile fish means wiping out a generation and this has been going on for the last six-seven years. Talking of the crisis, Maity rued that such is the situation that this year the fishermen couldnt even catch 10 per cent of what they fished last year. Last year we could supply at least 15- 20 tonnes daily to the Kolkata market. This year, getting three tonnes is becoming a challenge, said Maity. As a result, Ilish keeps eluding the Bengali tastebuds. Just when you think things couldnt get worse for Pakistan, the country goes ahead and surprises you. Pakistan had already been put on notice by the Trump administration that it cannot be business as usual till it acts against terror, its relations with India have reached their nadir and the International Court of Justice verdict on alleged Indian spy Kulbhushan Jadhav went against it. Its economy is a shambles, local terrorist groups are flourishing, and now its democratically elected prime minister has been ousted in a judicial coup. Not that this is the first time. Since 1947, Pakistan has had as many as 18 prime ministers, with none completing their full term. Between 1958 and 1971, the office of the prime minister itself was dissolved, and not for the last time. Pakistani prime ministers have met various fates assassination, overthrow by the army, dismissal by the president and even disqualification by the Supreme Court. In contrast, India has had 14 prime ministers in the same period and if their terms have been truncated, it has been because of parliamentary defeats. Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif has been removed from office, this time by a five-member bench of the countrys Supreme Court which barred him from electoral politics for at least five years. It gives him the dubious honour of being removed three times while in office once by the president, then by the army and now by the Supreme Court. India Today cover story, Crisistan, for August 14. The reason? Violation of Articles 62 and 63 of Pakistans Constitution, which demand that members of Parliament be "sadiq" and "ameen" "truthful" and "righteous". The provocation? The Panama papers, the popular term for the work of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, which showed illegal money laundering by Nawaz Sharif in the 1990s when he served as prime minister twice. This was followed by a court-appointed joint investigation team amassing a 275-page report on his familys misdemeanours, which sealed his fate. As ever, given our shared history, nothing that happens in Pakistan stays in Pakistan. For India, a civilian administration is always easier to deal with than a country under military rule. Nawaz Sharif was an early friend to the Narendra Modi government, accepting with alacrity an invitation to his swearing-in in 2014 and then being a happy host as Modi dropped in on his granddaughters wedding in December 2015. The attack on the Pathankot air base within a week of that visit indicated the Pakistani armys displeasure with the incipient peace process. Things have gone downhill from there ever since, with renewed militancy in the Kashmir Valley. The cover story this week focuses on the troubles in Pakistan, as it struggles to reform its economy, comes to terms with the "snakes in its own backyard" and grapples with Chinas increasing intervention in its affairs. Lahore-based independent journalist Wajahat S Khan looks at the road ahead, as well as at Nawaz Sharifs successor and the next potential prime minister, his brother Shahbaz Sharif. Executive editor Sandeep Unnithan analyses the impact of this political uncertainty on India. Nawaz Sharif was seen as the peacemaker with whom Modi could do business. Pakistans diarchy of military power and civilian government always poses a dilemma of who India should deal with. Ideally, India should work with the duly-elected government but every time any sort of agreement is reached, it is sabotaged by the army. What happens now that Nawaz Sharif is gone? New Delhi will possibly wait and watch till after the next general election in Pakistan, due in May 2018. Its a grim prospect for India. With no hope for dialogue, friction on the border will continue as will the sponsoring of militants who stoke unrest in Kashmir. Even assuming elections are held as scheduled, will the person who wins the popular mandate be allowed to run the country? Perhaps, it is time for India to forget diplomatic niceties and reconcile itself to talking with the generals as well. Maybe peace can come only by engaging with those who make war. COLUMBUS Gov. Pete Ricketts called a local corn processing plant a key mover in Nebraskas golden triangle corn to ethanol to power that's helped fuel the states economic growth, create jobs and provide energy independence. Its a great day to celebrate, Ricketts said Wednesday during an anniversary event at ADM Corn Processing on the city's eastern edge. The plant has brought 25 years of value-added ethanol and 25 years of jobs for Columbus families. Ricketts said the Columbus plant processes nearly 200 million bushels of corn a year while showing continued growth during the 15 years since ADM bought the facility in 2002. Thats a big deal, the governor said while congratulating ADM and community leaders. Those 200 million bushels represent 7 percent of Nebraskas annual corn production and would consume the entire crop from Platte, Colfax, Madison, Butler and Polk counties, according to information from ADM. Corn is delivered by semitrailers and rail and stored in concrete silos with a capacity of 3 million bushels to provide a steady supply for the plant to process. ADM produces an estimated 1.1 million gallons of ethanol per day at the Columbus site and roughly 400 million gallons each year. The governor, along with Mayor Jim Bulkley, District 22 Sen. Paul Schumacher of Columbus and ADM and Loup Public Power District officials, were the dignitaries who spoke to about 100 visitors Wednesday at the companys training facility across the road from the East Eighth Street plant on the edge of town. Bulkley recalled what the original 200-acre site looked like before Minnesota Corn Processors broke ground on the ethanol plant in 1992. Its amazing, this was a cornfield 25 years ago. Today, its a massive facility, said Bulkley, adding that he especially enjoyed the view of the plant under the nighttime skies, with the plants lights putting its size on full display. We wish you much success and, hopefully, another 25 years, Bulkley said. Loup Power officials were there at the beginning of the corn processing plants operations and to mark the 25-year milestone. Retired executives Robert White and Dwayne Smith helped recruit Minnesota Corn Processors to Columbus. ADM is our largest customer, with power sales of about $25 million a year, said Neal Suess, president and chief executive officer of the Columbus-based utility. The processing plant represents about 25 percent of Loups annual power sales. Were really excited for them. Weve done a lot of work for them, along with Nebraska Public Power District, Suess said while looking over 25 years of the Columbus plants memorabilia lining the walls at the training center. The Charlottesville City Council, Police Chief Al Thomas, other city officials and Virginia State Police representatives met behind closed doors Wednesday to discuss matters related to the planned Aug. 12 Unite the Right rally that have been alarming many city residents. After spending nearly four hours in a closed session to receive legal advice regarding the rally in Emancipation Park, city officials declined to provide reporters waiting outside the City Hall conference room details about what had been discussed. In an official statement following the hearing, city spokeswoman Miriam Dickler said that the city will share more information with the public as soon as possible. There is no further comment at this time. She said a press conference will be held next Monday. I think people should take the fact that this took a long time and that Im being so cautious in responding right now as a reflection of how careful we need to be about every aspect of this issue, said Mayor Mike Signer. I think what youre hearing from us right now is care. In recent weeks, residents have become increasingly worried about the rally, fearing that the intense division and rancor between radical activists on opposite ends of the political spectrum will cause violence and disruption throughout that weekend. Public safety is the top concern for all of us, said Councilor Wes Bellamy. We want all of our community to be safe, and were going to do everything we can to make sure that everyone is safe. The rallys organizers are associated with the alt-right, a populist movement that features many followers calling for the creation of a white ethno-state. The rallys stated purpose is to protest the planned removal of the citys Robert E. Lee statue and to promote 1st Amendment Rights. Those opposed to the alt-right and the rally have been calling for the city to prohibit the event, saying that its speakers and supporters are advocating for violence against minority groups and political leftists that are expected to protest the event. According to city officials, Thomas has been attempting to convince rally organizer and pro-white activist Jason Kessler to relocate his rally. Kessler has said that any attempt to have his rally moved away from Emancipation Park would violate his civil liberties as the rally is meant to protest the removal of the Lee statue, which is located in the park that until recently was named after the Confederate general. Officials Wednesday did not say whether they discussed relocating or canceling the event. The effort to remove the statue is part of a national movement to remove Confederate monuments and displays that are located throughout the failed separatist state in the south and in parts of the north. The rally later this month is expected to attract extreme far-right elements that advocate for segregation and a new state that will reserve citizenship for white people only. Earlier in the afternoon Wednesday, Lawrence Gaughan, a former Democratic candidate for the Virginia 5th Congressional district and founder of the nonprofit voter engagement organization GOV360, held a press conference to announce the formation of a new bipartisan unity coalition. Gaughan said he coordinated the creation of the new group to foster more peaceful civil discourse. The group is being supported by Don Gathers, the former chairman of the commission which recommended the removal the statue, and Elliott Harding, a Republican activist and an attorney who is part of the legal team that has sued the city for planning the removal of Lee. Former city Mayor Dave Norris said he is also supporting the group. We are making it clear that we dont want violence to occur, Gaughan said of the tension surrounding the rally. When civil discourse dies, thats the next logical step. Gaughan said he would like the new coalition to start from a foundation that builds from the center outward. He said the coalition would exclude any political extremists. What we have here is extremist coming out of town using our enlightened city as a staging ground for a very destructive and very costly theater of the absurd, Gaughan said. Thats not going to help the city move forward. CLARKSON David Kucera has always enjoyed a good tall tale. Any adventure story or whodunit with action and intrigue hooks him from the start. The Clarkson man used this love of stories to start writing his own 25 years ago. Ive written all kinds of short stories, Kucera said. Those were written for some co-workers who seemed to enjoy them. It all kind of grew from there. This hobby turned into three published books. The latest, Murder at Masons Mesa," hit the presses in June. Its about a college professor who takes students on an archaeological dig, Kucera explained. During their time, they encounter bad weather, bandits and drug smugglers. During the whole process the main character, Dr. Charles Quincy Kruse, gets involved with another professor. Their relationship turns sour, though. Beyond the bad weather, bandits and romantic mishap, Dr. Kruse finds himself rescuing his love interest, Dr. Page, from a kidnapper. Together they use their wits to solve the mystery behind the vandalism, arson and murders that come about during the dig. When Kucera needs inspiration on how to create a characters personality, he looks to his children. Dr. Kruse is based on Kuceras son Charles mannerisms. Two other books have made it from Kuceras writing desk to publishers. The first, "Ali Meet Sally," came out in June 2015 and Bennett Prince of Ziemia was released last summer. I wrote 'Ali' about five years ago, Kucera said. I wasnt going to publish it, but my wife and daughter kind of goaded me on about it. So I went ahead with it. Bennett Prince of Ziemia is described as a fantasy book for children. Kucera enjoys writing about the flights of fantasy and the marvels of magic for youth to wrap their minds around. The writing process normally takes about six months per book. He said the best part of writing is getting a reaction from his readers. What I like is when people get something from what I write, Kucera said. It means a lot to me to hear when someone likes a character in my stories and tells me they can relate somehow to the personalities. Kucera is a graduate of the former Wentworth Military Academy in Missouri and Wayne State College. He earned a Bachelor of Science degree in biology before working as a laboratory supervisor in chemistry and microbiology, then with veterinarians. Albemarle County is addressing several issues designed to make local taxes fairer to residents, as we noted in an Aug. 2 editorial. Maybe the commonwealth of Virginia should follow Albemarles lead in tax equity. Nelson Countys award-winning Silverback Distillery is expanding. That would be good news if the company were expanding in Virginia. Instead, its heading to Pennsylvania, where tax policy is more favorable. Virginia laws are holding us back, said co-owner Christine Riggleman. Even though Pennsylvania is [also] a commonwealth, the laws are a lot friendlier in terms of expanding, and you can keep more of your money, where Virginia takes more money from our bottle sales. Some of the companys products will continue to be made in Virginia, but Pennsylvania will reap the benefits of the expansion. The Riggelmans will hire 14 to 17 people for a tasting room there. Here, they say, the revenue they earn from bottle sales wont even pay the wages of two distillery workers. And they could move the whole operation at some point, abandoning Virginia entirely. At issue, they say, are this states rules on sales of bottles, from which we suspect the most profit is to be gained. Tasting room bottle sales are taxed at 54 percent. Thats a stiff tax any way you look at it. But its even worse when compared to the treatment given producers of other types of alcohol. Cideries, breweries and wineries receive 100 percent of sales from bottles sold in-house, said Ms. Riggleman. Meanwhile, Pennsylvania treats distilleries the way Virginia treats wineries, breweries and cideries: 100 percent of in-house bottle sales stays with the business. Virginia should wish to encourage the health of all its businesses. The state takes pride in its reputation for great wines and plethora of wineries; craft breweries are fast gaining their share of popularity; and cideries are also an important part of the mix. All these businesses help preserve rural spaces and boost agriculture, including the growing of grapes, apples, hops, and grains. Of course, Virginias Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control wants to rake in all the tax money it can get. But thats self-defeating if the tax burden suppresses growth or pushes businesses to leave the state. And then, of course, theres simply the equity issue. We see no reason for distilleries to be singled out for harsher taxation. COLUMBUS When Zebulun Wolff "completed" suicide in 2009, his mother Donna Wolff said the pain of losing her 18-year-old son was exacerbated by the judgment she felt from others. If my son had died in a car accident, I would have been treated differently, she said. But because it was a suicide there was a lot of blaming and finger-pointing. Thats why she says someone completed suicide instead of committed." That adds to the shame, she said. My son did not commit a crime or a sin. He was struggling in his brain. Wolff is president of the Northeast Nebraska Suicide Prevention Coalition, which received a $10,000 grant from the Columbus Area Future Fund this week to grow its programs in Columbus. The Norfolk-based coalition has been getting more involved in the Columbus area because of how great the need for these types of services is here. I am not alone, said Wolff. There are many, many families that have lost their loved ones to suicide. In February, the coalition started a support group for people whose lives have been impacted by suicide, giving them an opportunity to talk about the issue. The group is also planning a series of training sessions for anyone who wants to learn how to spot warning signs. If we can catch the warning signs and treat it early, there is always hope and there is always help," Wolff said. The training is not limited to counselors or medical professionals. Wolff said its important, especially with the shortage of behavioral health professionals in the area, for everyone in the community to look out for each other. Sometimes somebody doesnt need a counselor. They just need someone to listen to them, she said. So many people are too busy with their lives and they dont take the time to listen and truly care. The grant will also allow the coalition to bring actor and playwright Joshua Rivedal to town to perform his play about his fathers suicide, which will be followed by a discussion on youth suicide prevention. Wolff hopes this type of open discussion changes the discussion about suicide. When someone commits suicide, there's often the lingering question of "why?" That's why Wolff felt her family was being judged and blamed for her sons death. Our society insists on saying it had to happen for a reason, she said. That is not helpful to the families that are left behind. Please just let us mourn our loved one." She prefers people think of suicide like a teacup that gets filled, drip by drip, until it spills over. Theres no single drop responsible. Its an accumulation over time. Its such a combination of different things, she said. We will never really know what tipped a person over to where they felt they had no other option. Wolff sees these programs as a first step toward the community talking more openly and less judgmentally about suicide, which she believes could save some lives. The brain is an organ of the body, she said. You dont have to die of a disease of the brain. Rivedals performance will be 6-8 p.m. Sept. 25 at the United Methodist Church Outreach Center, 3602 16th St. COLUMBUS U.S. Rep. Jeff Fortenberry has heard from people with both positive and negative experiences under the Affordable Care Act. Letters from two of the Republican congressmans constituents he shared Wednesday during a town hall meeting in Columbus highlight how the law has helped and hurt Americans. One letter was written by a farmer named Scott who noted that his insurance costs rose under the health care law approved by the Obama administration. Another from a woman named Catherine, who was previously uninsured, called the Affordable Care Act a lifesaver. Whos right? Is it Scott or is it Catherine? They are both right, Fortenberry told a crowd of about 90 people inside the Columbus City Council Chambers. Most of the more than hour-long meeting focused on health care. Fortenberry, who represents Nebraskas 1st Congressional District, also fielded questions from the standing-room-only crowd during the local stop, one of six town hall meetings he scheduled this week. He said both parties must come together to fix the broken health care system by replacing it with a model that lowers costs while protecting the vulnerable. Republicans and Democrats are going to have to own this together, he said. When asked about the subsidies he receives to pay for his health care coverage and whether he'd be willing to take a cut, Fortenberry said no because he needs it to support his family. The congressman said nothing changed for him as a federal employee under the Affordable Care Act, except he is now required to get his insurance through the marketplace in the District of Columbia instead of Nebraska. I get the same subsidy, basically, that any federal worker gets, which is about 70 percent, and Im confined to the D.C. exchange, he said. Fortenberry was pressed to explain why he voted for the House version of a health care bill. He said the bill had innovative and problematic pieces. He voted in favor of the plan to move the system along to try to get to a better place. I think doing nothing is not acceptable. I told everyone that in the beginning of all this, that Im not going to do nothing, Fortenberry said. He said health care is more than just financing. It is also about delivering those services, and innovation is needed. Social Security was brought up by a 34-year-old working father who was concerned the program will dry up. If nothing changes, Fortenberry said, the benefits offered through Social Security could be reduced, but won't go away entirely. This is a very important program that I think we ought to protect and nurture and strengthen, Fortenberry said, adding that he benefited from Social Security after his father passed away when he was a child. There are ideas on the table to address Social Security, he said, but it wont be dealt with immediately. Government tends to focus on only whats in front of it rather than whats down the road, because its very hard, honestly, politically to deal with something that hasnt happened yet, he said. Other issues addressed in the town hall were funding for the arts, trade, tax reform and immigration. When you have chaos and disorder at your border, you cant have a just and orderly immigration system. Border security is a priority for me and it needs to be a priority for the nation, Fortenberry said. LINCOLN Thomas Rogers Kimball, an architect who administered the construction of Nebraska's iconic State Capitol, is the newest member of the Nebraska Hall of Fame. Kimball was chosen on the second ballot Wednesday after members of the Hall of Fame Commission narrowed the field of nominees from 12 to three. The other finalists were George E. Johnson, former chief engineer and general manager of the Central Nebraska Public Power and Irrigation District, and Howard Hanson, a nationally renowned composer and musician who was born in Wahoo. Kimball will become the 26th member of the Hall of Fame when he is formally inducted in 2019. In the meantime, private funds will be raised and a sculptor chosen to prepare a bust that will be displayed at the Capitol. A national leader in the architectural profession, Kimball created a number of Nebraska landmark buildings and exhibition facilities, including planning and designing the 1898 Trans-Mississippi Exposition in Omaha. In 1920, the Nebraska Capitol Commission chose him to be its professional adviser. Kimball, who was born in Ohio in 1862, died in 1934 shortly after completion of the Capitol in 1932. Hall of Fame Commission member Sara Crook of Nebraska City said all of the 12 nominated candidates deserve recognition. "We should make sure their names are prominent in their hometowns," she said. "There should be schools named after these people, parks named for them." Others on the list: Solon Hannibal Borglum, a sculptor; Calvin Chapman, a cooper who played a role in the Underground Railroad; Charles Gere, a former state senator, University of Nebraska regent and Lincoln newspaper owner and editor; Thomas Vincent Golden, who was instrumental in bringing Irish immigrants to Nebraska; Omer Madison Kem, three-term Populist congressman; Rachel Abbie Holloway Lloyd, a chemist who helped spur Nebraska's sugar beet industry; Francis Patrick Matthews, Omaha attorney and businessman; Anna Sadilek Pavelka, associate of Willa Cather; and Matthew Savidge, pioneer Nebraska aviator. About 30 people sat in on Wednesday's discussion at the Capitol and gave the commission a round of applause at the end. Nominees to the Hall of Fame need to have been deceased for at least 35 years and no more than one person can be added every five years. George W. Norris, legendary U.S. senator and father of Nebraska's unique non-partisan, one-house state Legislature, was the first inductee in 1961. Other familiar figures who are members of the Hall of Fame include Willa Cather, John J. Pershing, Father Edward Flanagan, Buffalo Bill Cody, William J. Bryan, Mari Sandoz, Chief Standing Bear, Chief Red Cloud and Susette LaFlesche Tibbles. Baba Ramdev is ready to foray into the branded garments market with his new swadeshi clothesline. Mumbai: After creating a new wave in the country with his Ayurvedic products, Baba Ramdev is ready to foray into the branded garments market with his new swadeshi clothesline. Baba Ramdev, who is often given credits for offering homegrown products at affordable prices, is ready to venture into the world of branded apparel by April, 2018, reported Livemint. The swadeshi line of clothes will be available for men, women and children and aims to target Rs 5,000 crore in its first year. Patanjali will have different products in each categoryvalue-for-money clothes for the masses and apparel that would have the snob value meant for the classes. Well start with woven clothes, knitwear and machine-made apparel, including denims, said spokesperson S.K. Tijarawala. Paridhan is a name that may be on the cards for Patanjalis exclusive branded-wear. Tijarawala also said that the company may launch more than one brand. The brand will be made available across 250 exclusive retail outlets next year. Moreover, it will be available at Big Bazaar stores also, with which Patanjali already has a tie-up. It may also consider selling the apparels through state-run Khadi and Village Industries Commission (KVIC). Patanjali has already made arrangements with a few hundred handloom weavers in northern India. Besides, we will have arrangements with apparel makers, and we will set up our own manufacturing units for making clothes, Tijarawala told Livemint. Patanjali has evolved from a brand offering Ayurvedic medicines to one that houses every possible thing one uses in their daily lives. It also recently tapped into the private security market with its Parakram Suraksha Pvt. Ltd. New Delhi: Yoga Guru Baba Ramdevs Ayurvedic flagship, Patanjali Ayurved Ltd., is going to storm social media with its aggressive digital marketing campaign. Patanjali has announced it would collaborate with social media and tech giants, Facebook and Google, to give thrust to its digital marketing campaign. In a first for the company, Patanjali is looking to reap the benefits of advertising using digital media, in comparison to print and other channels of media. The company has strengthened its online presence in India, through its aggressive campaigning and promotional activities on Facebook and YouTube. The campaign, which was flagged off in February, garnered positive response, with Google searches registering an eleven-fold growth in four years, and an increase in YouTube viewership from 30 lakh to 15 crore. Patanjali was also well received on Facebook, with over 80 percent response registered from the youth concentrated in Karnataka, Orissa and Punjab, which was possible due to the promotional campaigns and live interactions held by the company. In a move to appeal to the southern states, Patanjali, aong with Google and Facebook localized its advertising campaign by introducing narratives in the local languages for Andhra Pradesh, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Telangana. Patanjali is also campaigning online for a boycott of foreign products, in lieu of the Go Swadeshi movement initiated by Baba Ramdev. With Independence Day round the corner, the Yoga Guru has formulated several campaigns to persuade the boycott of foreign goods, and resort to local produce, which will also be circulated with the help of active advertising on social media. Snapdeal may trim its workforce to half from the current 1,200 employees over the next few months as it pursues an "independent" path. New Delhi: Snapdeal may trim its workforce to half from the current 1,200 employees over the next few months as it pursues an "independent" path post calling off merger with bigger rival Flipkart, according to company sources. After turning down Flipkart's USD 900-950 million offer earlier this week, the e-commerce firm has started working on its new roadmap which it calls 'Snapdeal 2.0'. Snapdeal will trim its operations and over the next 2-3 months, the workforce could be pared to about 500-600 people, two people familiar with the company's plans said. They did not wish to be identified as they are not authorised to speak on the matter. Snapdeal did not respond to emailed queries. Snapdeal is estimated to have about 1,200 staffers currently. Over the past few months, the beleaguered company has seen a steady exit of employees across levels. One of the persons said there could be a higher level of attrition in the coming days. Many employees were waiting for the Flipkart deal and see if things would turn around, the person said adding that now that the deal has been called off, these staffers may look at other opportunities. Once inspired by China's Alibaba model, Snapdeal is now said to be moving to a 'Taobao' model with a consumer-to-consumer e-commerce marketplace. The company had started operations as a deals and coupons platform and pivoted to a marketplace model around 2012. However, over the last few quarters, the SoftBank-funded company has seen its fortunes failing amid intense competition from US-based Amazon and homegrown player Flipkart. CHENNAI: Oil marketing major Bharat Petroleum Corporation Ltd (BPCL) has set a target of Rs 1 lakh crore to be spent on all its expansion activities including marketing and refining in the next five years and also has plans to venture into gas business and diversify resources for the source of fuels as part of its five-year plan. We want our market cap to reach Rs 2.50 lakh crore. That is 2.5 times increase of what it is now. We have also planned to venture into gas business. That will be our next value chain, said D. Rajkumar, BPCL chairman and managing director. Speaking to reporters here on Thursday he said, company has taken up an experiment' to import crude oil from the United States under its 'diversification' exercise. We really want to ensure that the prices are kept within the limits. For that it is necessary we source it from the right sources. We have been looking at various sources. Whatever we import, the crude will be refined in our existing refiners within the existing configuration, he said in reply to a question, and added right now, what we are trying to do is to diversify our sources in an efficient manner. Kochi Refinery final commissioning by August-end: The final commissioning of the expansion project of its Kochi Refinery is expected to happen by August-end. Talking to reporters on the sidelines of an announcement of revised commission for its dealers and the benefits it would fetch for the company, Mr Rajkumar, chairman and managing director of BPCL, said, Kochi refinery expansion has already been completed. While the original plan was to spend around Rs. 16,800 crore, we have been able to complete the entire project at Rs 16,000 crore. Mechanically, the project has been completed and the commissioning process is on. Revises dealers' commission: BPCL said that the company has revised the dealers' commission between 20-50 per cent based on their category, which would help it to improve the brand image and provide benefits to the dealers, employees working in the petrol pumps and the customers. Mr Rajkumar said dealers were instructed to ensure that employees of fuel outlets were covered under the Centre's social security schemes - 'Pradhan Mantri Suraksha Bima Yojana' (accident death insurance) and 'Pradhan Mantri Jeevan Jyoti Bima Yojana'. On the impact of daily price revision, he said from the date it was introduced (June 17), there was a maximum increase in the fuel price by 18 paise while reduction was 27 paise a litre. BPCL, the second largest OMC after IndianOil, accounted for 14,000 outlets of the total 55,000 belonging to the three public sector refiners, including HPCL, he added. New Delhi: Top US bosses are backing a new effort to build strategic ties with India, following Prime Minister Narendra Modi's first meeting with President Donald Trump. The US-India Strategic Partnership Forum (USISPF) seeks to reset and broaden the relationship between the world's two largest democracies, and to supplant an existing body that operates under the umbrella of the US Chamber of Commerce. While PM Modi's bear hug with President Trump and a clutch of deals at their encounter in June symbolised a budding friendship, trade between the two nations has underperformed and Washington wants to narrow a $31-billion deficit. "What we are announcing today is an organisation redesigned for the future," said John Chambers, the executive chairman of Cisco Systems Inc, who is also chairing the USISPF that was launched on Wednesday. The rollout follows a schism in which the management team of the US-India Business Council (USIBC), headed by Mukesh Aghi, has joined the new organisation. Chambers met PM Modi on Tuesday to brief him on the initiative and share its new logo - featuring interlocking blue and gold circles that symbolize the "win-win" nature of the project. The new body will not only focus on trade but also promote business startups, innovation and education - areas that PM Modi has prioritised in his three years in power. Describing PM Modi as "fearless", Chambers praised his decision last year to scrap high-value bank notes to cleanse the economy of illicit wealth. He also backed a new national sales tax launched last month, saying it was vital for Asia's third-largest economy to scale up manufacturing and achieve strong long-term growth. "India is moving faster than any other country in the last three years," Chambers told a small group of reporters in New Delhi. "India used to be known as a very slow follower, and now it's a fast innovator." Unanimous Vote To Split The strategic partnership initiative followed a unanimous vote on July 10 by the USIBC's board to separate from the US Chamber of Commerce. The new body's board includes high-profile chief executives, such as Indra Nooyi of Pepsico Inc and Ajay Banga of Mastercard Inc. Thomas Donohue, president and chief executive of the US Chamber of Commerce, last month criticised the breakaway as a "curious action". In a letter to members he described the USIBC as "alive and well". "The USIBC and its staff continue their hard work on key issues affecting the critical relationship between our two countries," the Chamber of Commerce said in answer to Chambers' announcement. "We continue to receive strong support from our member companies as we focus our efforts on strengthening commercial ties," it added. "We will have more to say in the weeks ahead." One source familiar with the move said it was motivated in part by perceptions that the US Chamber of Commerce had become too close to the Republican Party, and tended to deliver public lectures detrimental to the two-way relationship. This included controversy over the issue of so-called H-1B visas widely used by India's $125 billion software industry to send engineers and programmers on assignments to the United States. Trump administration officials were briefed on the strategic initiative and were supportive, added the source, who declined to be identified because of the sensitivity of the matter. Trump, despite clashing with leaders from allies such as Germany and Australia, turned on the charm for PM Modi, whose trip to Washington was deemed a success by both sides. Lisa Curtis, point person at the National Security Council for South and Central Asia, attended the inaugural forum. Joining her was Acting Assistant Secretary of State Alice Wells, the US embassy said. Chambers said the Trump administration's commitment to India was "unparalleled", adding: "This is the only strategic partnership that the Trump administration has really talked about." LINCOLN Calling the potpourri they peddled at their Lincoln head shops poison, a federal judge sentenced mother and son business owners to prison time Tuesday and fined them millions. Allen Peithman's and Sharon Elder's sentencing -- Peithman to nine years and seven months and Elder to five years and three months -- capped a federal prosecution that started in 2015, on the heels of more than 100 locals landing in the hospital after smoking the drug often called K2, spice or synthetic marijuana. In hearings Tuesday that ran more than five hours, defense attorneys argued that Elder, who was running operations at Dirt Cheap and Island Smokes, was trying to stay on the right side of the law, going so far as to get advice from an attorney and consulting with Lincoln Police. If police were so concerned about a health crisis, why didn't they ask Elder to stop selling it, attorney Korey Reiman asked. He said they were more concerned with building a case than public safety. "The government's whole role here was to bankrupt AJ Peithman and Sharon Elder, and they've done it," Reiman charged. But Senior U.S. District Judge Richard Kopf told Reiman he wasn't going to convince him that Peithman and Elder didn't know people were buying the potpourri to smoke it and get high. "They'd have to be deaf, dumb and blind not to think it made some of them sick," he said. Kopf said Peithman and Elder thought they could skate around the law knowing there was a possibility the stuff was illegal. Much of the argument, which the judge referred to as "an intellectually vigorous exchange," involved whether he could use evidence of conduct the jury had acquitted them of to arrive at their sentences. In March, the jury found Peithman and Elder guilty of conspiracy to sell misbranded drugs, commit mail fraud, receive illicit profits and structure bank deposits to avoid financial reporting. Individually, jurors found Elder guilty of conspiring to sell drug paraphernalia for pipes and Peithman of violating his supervised release. But it acquitted them on what Reiman termed the more serious counts they faced, including a drug dealing conspiracy and money laundering charges. "You don't think selling something that made 110 people deathly ill is a serious crime?" Kopf shot back. In the end, just before the judge gave Peithman the prison term, ordered him to pay $5,186 in restitution, and fined him and AEP Properties $950,000, Peithman said he cares about his community and never meant for all of this to happen. "It was a gray area. That's how I looked at it," the 38-year-old said. But, had he known firsthand "people were dropping," Peithman said, he would've told his mom to stop selling it. "My mom's not a criminal, it falls on me," said Peithman, who got another 14 months for violating his supervised release on a meth charge. She is supposed to be retired, he said of Elder. But because of something he started, she was there, and he's going to have to live with that for the rest of his life, Peithman said. Elder didn't give a statement before Kopf sentenced her to the prison time, to start in two months, and fined her $500,000 and her now defunct business, Cornerstone Plaza, $2,060,000. Attorney Bob Creager argued for less for the 72-year-old grandmother with serious health problems, describing her as a woman who stepped in for her son when he went to prison, not the gun moll she's been made out to be. Underneath this was an evil that needed to be prevented and a signal that needed to be sent, he said. But, Creager argued, Kopf did that with Peithman. "Sharon was dragged into this, maybe a little bit naive and maybe relying on bad advice," he said. But Assistant U.S. Attorney Sara Fullerton said the evidence at trial was clear, Elder knew what was going on. "She did it purely to make money," the prosecutor said. Kopf said Elder paid $1,492,000 to buy the potpourri, claiming it was just incense to be burned to make a home smell more palatable. "With respect, you just can't pay that amount of money and be innocent," the judge said. The millions in fines levied are on top of a $1.2 million monetary judgment he entered against them. Tuesday likely won't be the end of it. Appeals are expected. New Delhi: Niti Aayog Vice Chairman Arvind Panagariya has described his two-and-a-half year tenure 'a dream come true', saying that it was a very courageous move on part of Prime Minister Narendra Modi to have appointed 'an outsider' at such a high position. Panagariya, the first Vice Chairman of the Niti Aayog, had written to the Prime Minister that he be relived of his duties by August 31 as his leave from Columbia University is coming to end. "It has been a true privilege for me to serve under you these past two and a half years. I would like to say that this has been dream come true but even that would fall short of what has happened. The opportunity and experience you have made possible, have been well beyond anything I had dreamt of. No previous leader has shown the courage to appoint 'an outsider' at this level in the government of India," he said. He further said: "When we last met, I had mentioned that my leave from Columbia University will soon be ending and that, after two and a half years, my wife is keen to return closer to children. Accordingly, I am writing to request that I may be relived of my duties as the Vice Chairman of Niti Aayog by August 31". Panagariya also suggested to the Prime Minister, who is the Chairman of Niti Aayog, to find a full-time Sherpa for G20 talks as India's role is expanding in the global arena. "During the past two years, the responsibilities of the Niti Aayog have multiplied at a fast pace. This has meant rapidly rising demands on the time of Vice Chairman. Simultaneously, under your leadership, the stature of India on the global stage has rapidly risen...this means that going forward, the word of G20 Sherpa would expand. This means that going forward, the work of G20 Sherpa would expand. To ensure that work of Niti Aayog and G20 engagements receive due attention, it may be worth considering separating these roles in the future," he said. "A full time G20 Sherpa would in any case be a necessity if India were to host the G20 summit in the future," he added. Sherpas, who are representatives of leaders of G20 member countries, coordinate on the agenda of a summit. As per the practice, the deputy chairman of the erstwhile Planning Commission used to be the Sherpa for G20 talks. During the UPA regime, former deputy chairman of Planning Commission Montek Singh Ahluwalia was Sherpa for G20 talks. Panagariya was India's Sherpa for the 12th G20 summit held on July 7-8 in Hamburg, a major port city in Northern Germany. The G20 is the central forum for international cooperation on financial and economic issues. The G20 nations account for more than 80 per cent of gross world product and three-quarters of global trade, and are home to almost two- thirds of the worlds population. Dilip Kumar has been facing health issues regularly in the last few years. Mumbai: Legendary actor Dilip Kumar was on Wednesday admitted to a private hospital after suffering from dehydration and urinary tract infection. The 94-year-old thespian was admitted to Lilavati Hospital in suburban Bandra in the morning, a relative said. "He was admitted due to dehydration and urine (tract) infection. He is not in the ICU... He is in a normal room. He is fine now, there is nothing to worry," Kumar's nephew Rehan told PTI. "He is under observation and expected to be in the hospital for two days," he said. The renowned actor, whose real name is Mohammad Yusuf Khan, has acted in several superhit films during his six-decade long career such as 'Madhumati', 'Devdas', 'Mughal-e-Azam', 'Ganga Jamuna', 'Ram Aur Shyam' and 'Karma'. He was last seen on screen in the 1998 film 'Qila'. The veteran actor was honoured with the Dadasaheb Phalke Award, India's highest award in cinema, in 1994 and the Padma Vibhushan, the country's second-highest civilian award, in 2015. Mumbai: Veteran actor Dilip Kumar, who was admitted to Mumbai's Lilavati hospital late Wednesday, is in ICU now. According to the hospital sources, his condition is no better since his admission due to the kidney issues; creatinine level is rising in his blood. The superstar, who has been suffering from age-related problems in recent years, was accompanied by his wife Saira Banu on Wednesday. In April last year, he was hospitalised due to fever and nausea. Known as the 'Tragedy King', Kumar has acted in over 65 films in his career and is known for his iconic roles in movies like 'Devdas '(1955), 'Naya Daur' (1957), 'Mughal-e-Azam' (1960), 'Ganga Jamuna' (1961), 'Kranti' (1981), and 'Karma' (1986). Last seen on the big screen in 'Qila' in 1998, the actor was honoured with the Dadasaheb Phalke Award in 1994 and the Padma Vibhushan in 2015. Shah Rukh Khan is currently busy with the promotions of 'Jab Harry Met Sejal.' Mumbai: Shah Rukh Khan is among the celebrities with the maximum number of endorsements and is a bankable name for companies looking to pull up the sales of their products. However, when a product endorsed by him turns out to be faulty, consumers would obviously be a disappointed lot. One such person claimed that he developed rashes on his face after using a shaving cream endorsed by Shah Rukh. The man filed a complaint against the superstar at Bhopal consumer court for misleading people with the advertisements, following which notices were sent to him as well as the manufacturing company, local store owner and director of Madhya Pradesh Food and Drugs Department. Shah Rukh Khans spokesperson has now responded to the allegations, saying, First and foremost, Mr. Shah Rukh Khan is currently not the ambassador of the said brand. The contract between the shaving cream brand and Mr. Khan terminated in April 2016. Also, we have not received any notice so far. Shah Rukh Khan is currently gearing up for the release of his production 'Jab Harry Met Sejal.' Mumbai: Nawazuddin Siddiqui's film 'Babumoshai Bandookbaaz' has been given 48 cuts by the censor board despite getting an 'A' certificate and the actor says the abuses in the movie are justified to make the characters look authentic. Directed by Kushan Nandy, 'Babumoshai...', is a quirky story about a small-time contract killer (Nawazuddin). It has run into trouble with the Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC), which has raised objections to the cuss words and some scenes in the film. "When conditions (referring to CBFC rules) are such that you are scared to even improvise and say something wrong, that's a scary situation to be in," Nawazuddin told reporters in Mumbai during a press conference. The actor said in a film, characters will speak the language of the area as it makes them authentic. "Sometimes abuses are added to give weight to the character and add a local flavour. The more local the film is, the more global it will be. If you wash out films like this, then our outcome on the international platform will be zero," he said. The makers of 'Babumoshai Bandookbaaz' are disappointed with the 48 cuts given by the CBFC and are even planning to approach the Tribunal. Director Kushan Nandy said he didn't mind the 'A' certificate given by the censor board to 'Babumoshai Bandookbaaz', but he would challenge the 48 cuts suggested by the film certification body. Kiran Shroff, a co-producer, also alleged that some members of the censor board used objectionable language about her while discussing the film, starring Nawazuddin Siddiqui. "The list of cuts they've given me shows carelessness and a harassing attitude. One of the Central Board Of Film Certification (CBFC) member even asked me why I made the film," Kushan told reporters at the press conference. "A lady in the committee even asked Kiran why she had made the film being a woman herself. In reply, some men said since she was wearing pants and shirt, she couldn't be called a lady. We were speechless. It was harassment," Kushan alleged. The director said he even met CBFC chief Pahlaj Nihalani, but it did not help as the latter told him that he was lucky to get his film cleared with the cuts. "He (Nihalani) said 'I would have banned your film, you have opened an entire dictionary of abuses in the film'. He called it an adult film and asked me how would I be able to stop children from watching the film? I told him it's a law and order problem, not mine. But he ripped apart the film, there's nothing left with all the cuts," Kushan said. Nihalani told him to approach the revising committee but said that they will double the cuts, said Kushan, who now has gone to the tribunal. Explaining the cuss words in the film, Kushan said since the story is set against the rural backdrop, the colourful language is a necessity. "If the film is cut, it takes away its meaning. They (CBFC) tried to cut the entire flavour of the film," he said. Kiran said the producers didn't expect a barrage of objections from CBFC. "They asked us to explain the objectionable words and scenes in the film. We discussed the cuts for nearly two hours, and the attitude (of CBFC members) was very careless. We figured we can go straight to the tribunal. We are hopeful and positive they will see the film the way we have made it," she said. Producers of the film have also filed a complaint with the Indian Film and Television Directors' Association (IFTDA). "IFTDA condemns all the cuts given to the film. We condemn the act where two members of the committee misbehaved with a lady (Kiran Shroff). We request the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting to sack them with immediate effect," CBFC member and filmmaker Ashoke Pandit said. "Also, Shyam Benegal committee's report should be implemented soon so that we stop this and all of us have a clarity (regarding the role of CBFC)," he added. Nihalani was not available for comment. Despite her last film Mister ending up as a disaster, actress Lavanya Tripathi is going places. The actress next film Yudham Saranam opposite Naga Chaitanya is all set to release this month, followed by the bilingual Mayavan, a scifi thriller releasing in both Telugu and Tamil. The actress also recently replaced Megha Akash in a film opposite Ram Pothineni and is expected to join the shoot from next week. Interestingly, director Parasuram, who she had earlier worked in Srirastu Subhamastu, has roped her in again for his next film opposite Vijay Devarakonda. Parasuram initially roped in Madonna Sebastian, and even shot a few scenes with her. But due to second thoughts, he replaced her with Lavanya, says a source. The deadly Ebola virus can persist in the semen of survivors for more than two years after contracting the infection. (Photo: Pixabay) Washington: The deadly Ebola virus can persist in the semen of survivors for more than two years after the onset of infection, a study has found. Researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in the US also detected Ebola virus RNA in the semen of men who had previously had a negative test of their semen in some cases. These findings led the team to suggest revision of the 2016 World Health Organisation (WHO) guidelines relating to the sexual transmission of Ebola. The guidelines call for men who survive Ebola virus disease (EVD) to undertake measures such as abstinence and the use of condoms for at least 12 months after the onset of EVD or until their semen has tested negative for Ebola virus RNA twice. Of the 149 men who provided samples, 13 tested positive for Ebola virus RNA. Of these 13 men, 11 had positive results even two years after the onset of Ebola infection. "Our finding of long term persistence and intermittent detection of viral RNA in semen suggests we need to change how we think about Ebola as it is no longer only an acute illness, but also one with potential long-term effects," said William A Fischer, an assistant professor at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. "It is becoming clear that in some survivors, evidence of the virus can linger in the male genital tract for long periods of time with important potential implications for transmission," said Fischer, co-author of the study published in the journal Open Forum Infectious Diseases. He noted that while there has been documented sexual transmission of Ebola earlier after acute infection, it is not known whether the presence of RNA serves as a correlate for infectious virus and if transmission this far out is possible. The study team also reports that the men whose samples tested positive for Ebola virus RNA were more likely to be older than those with a negative result. Those who had Ebola virus RNA detected in their semen also complained of vision problems at a higher rate than male survivors without evidence of Ebola virus RNA in their semen. The researchers recommend future studies investigate the source of viral persistence and whether the detection of viral RNA signifies the presence of infectious virus. Washington DC: There is a need for early detection and intervention of adolescent depression as a study reveals that teen depression increases the risk of violence. The research examined the longitudinal association between depression and subsequent violence from three representative samples in the Netherlands, United Kingdom and Finland. Researchers for these three cohorts used complementary measures of depression, including self-report and clinical diagnoses, and different measurements of violence including informant reports of violence and official convictions for violent crimes. The research team, led by Professor Seena Fazel, from the Forensic Psychiatry Group at the University of Oxford, United Kingdom, found modest increases in risk of violence in depression. In absolute terms, for instance, in the Finnish sample, 7.1% of individuals with depression were convicted of one or more violent crimes, compared with 3.6% in the general population without depression. In relative terms, across samples and measurements, the study shows a consistent pattern of increased relative risk of later violence. In the Dutch and UK samples, an increase in depressive symptoms was associated with a significant elevated risk of later violence. In the Finnish sample, the odds of violence in individuals with a diagnosis of depression were increased two-fold, compared to those without depression. These findings highlight the need for active and early treatment of depression in adolescents and young people. The mechanisms behind this link need further investigation, and may involve increased impulsivity, hostility and poor self-regulation. "We know that high rates of depression have been reported among adolescents in juvenile detention and correctional facilities (e.g.,11% in boys and 29% in girls)," said Dr. Rongqin Yu, lead researcher at the Forensic Psychiatry Group at the University of Oxford, United Kingdom. "However, the longitudinal link between depression and violence was unclear. Our longitudinal design allowed us to take into account previous violence, enabling us to test whether adolescent depression is associated with changes in violence over time. We found a consistent pattern of increased risk of later violence across samples. Both depression and violence are prevalent in adolescents and young adults; our findings indicate the importance of early detection and treatment of depression." Professor Fazel said: "This research is important for two main reasons. First, it adds to the evidence of the many potential harms of untreated depression in young people. Second, it suggests that closer liaison between criminal justice and mental health might prevent violence in high-risk individuals." The study has been published in the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry (JAACAP). People who are thin and carry little extra weight on their hips and thighs have a lower risk of heart attack, stroke or diabetes (Photo: AP) Women, if you were worried that your big bum made you look bad, think again. A new study reveals that a big bottom does not only look good in those curvy jeans, but apparently protects your health as well. Popular celebrities who have a pear-shaped body include J-Lo and Beyonce Knowles. On the contrary, people who are thin and carry little extra weight on their hips and thighs have a lower risk of heart attack, stroke or diabetes. However, for every one in five people who have a normal weight but are considered metabolically unhealthy, the risk of the killer diseases up by three times. German researchers say women who are pear-shaped tend to escape this group, as the bottom and thighs are safer places to store fat on the body. According to the scientists, the hips and thighs act like a sponge that soaks up fat and stops it from travelling around the body and into the heart and liver where it can cause diseases. Scientists further revealed that fat on the hips and bum is stored for months whereas belly fat, the most dangerous of them all, is released about two hours after meal. Researchers from the Department of Internal Medicine IV of the University Hospital Tubingen and the Institute for Diabetes Research and Metabolic Diseases in Munich conducted the experiment to come to the conclusion. However, the findings do not apply to obese people. The study was published in the journal Cell Metabolism. Chennai: In a case of wicked irony, a staffer of the Metropolitan Transport Corporation (MTC) was robbed of his motorbike by a duo at knifepoint when he ventured to help out a woman supposedly robbed near the police commissioners office early Thursday morning. Krishna Moorthy (33), a driver with the MTC, was on his way to work when he noticed a woman raising alarm near the YWCA bus stop on EVR Salai around 5. 30 am. When I asked her what was wrong, she mentioned that her mobile phone was robbed and pointed at a man running, Krishna Moorthy told DC. The man then set off in his bike and intercepted the robber on Ritherdon road off EVR Salai. As he got off the bike and frisked the robber to return the mobile phone, the man had flashed a knife at him. Another man, meanwhile, took Krishna Moorthys bike and drove off along with the robber. When the man returned to the bus stop, the woman was also not found following which he filed a complaint at Vepery police station. Police suspect it to be a case of attention diversion and the woman also to be hand in glove with robbers. We are securing CCTV footage from the area and are trying to establish the identity, a police officer said. LINCOLN New administrative structures, policies and processes for employees at the University of Nebraska will reduce expenses by $24 million in the coming years, President Hank Bounds said Wednesday. Staring down the barrel at a $49 million revenue shortfall in the next biennium, university administrators pledged to enact $30 million in cuts from its $950 million budget funded through state tax dollars and tuition revenue. NU announced its plans to achieve about 80 percent of the targeted cuts in the near term, while hinting at more budget cut announcements to come next month. The immediate cuts Bounds specified in a news conference were recommended by a series of budget response teams convened in January to centralize, decentralize, consolidate or do away with certain university services. The goal at the end of the day is to think differently about how we run the university, to be as efficient as possible so we can continue to serve our students and to serve the state with fewer resources, Bounds said. Most of the efforts to cut university system costs from information technology, human resources, facilities and energy, and procurement and purchasing will require consolidation and centralization of individual campus offices into single, university-wide teams. NU began consolidating its IT offices into a centralized office 10 months ago, with the ongoing effort expected to net $6 million in savings once fully implemented, Bounds said. Mark Askren, NUs vice president of information technology, is overseeing the system IT office that will rely on specialists on one campus to lend expertise to other campuses. We will have a fewer number of people doing more work ultimately, Askren said, adding the office would reduce its headcount through attrition. We werent fully leveraging economies of scale to the extent we are today. Mark Miller, the assistant vice chancellor of facilities planning and construction at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, will oversee the system-wide efforts to reduce costs in facilities and energy by $7 million by implementing standard project management software and uniform energy reduction polices. UNLs Bruce Currin, the assistant vice chancellor for human resources, will cut $4 million across the system through initiatives like reducing the retirement enrollment offerings to a semi-annual basis and reducing the costs of printing materials. NU also plans to dramatically slash its mileage reimbursement rate -- from 53.5 cents per mile set by the state Department of Administrative Services to 25 cents per mile -- to save as much as $550,000 per year. Under state policy, agencies have the flexibility to set their own mileage rate as long as it does not exceed the federal General Service Administration's allowance rate, according to state accounting administrator Jerry Broz. As another cost savings measure, NU employees will also be asked to file expense reports through a new digital system designed to cut down on printing and labor costs. Maggie Witt, UNLs director of procurement services and strategic sourcing, is now tasked with overseeing the university-wide procurement efforts to save costs on purchases for things like fuel, vehicle purchases and maintenance to save $6.8 million. Each area of savings identified is expected to be ongoing over time, reducing NUs cost of doing business on a permanent basis, Bounds said. The University of Nebraska Medical Center's Dr. Rodney Markin, the associate vice chancellor for business development, will coordinate the activities of the new university-wide teams created through the consolidations as chief operating officer, NU said. Next month, NU will announce down in the weeds strategies on how it plans to achieve savings after faculty, staff and students return to campus, he added. I think youll see a lot more specifics on the types of strategies that will be implemented, Bounds said. And you might also see some more strategies in the areas were lifting up. Marjorie Kostelnik, the former dean of UNLs College of Education and Human Sciences tasked with implementing the recommendations of the budget cut teams, said the work by those teams will be ongoing. Before September, the budget response teams will review the recommended cuts for duplication, ways to leverage certain services or if certain cuts should be implemented in a particular sequence, Kostelnik said. We really have to think through how were going to implement the various proposals that come forward, she said. A lot of this involves people having to figure out very intentionally how to do some work very differently. Like the IT offices, Kostelnik said NUs libraries have developed a formal plan to spread expertise and resources out across all four campuses, rather than duplicate efforts at each location. It's a model that will likely be duplicated across the university system. You will see over the next year to two years, I think, a lot of effort being put into this idea of collective effort and collective impact across all of the campuses, she added. NU will keep its eye on state tax receipts in the coming months as it decides how quickly to implement further cuts, or if those cuts will extend into the academic enterprise -- a last resort if the states financial picture continues to worsen, Bounds said. After lawmakers reduced NU's state appropriation by $13 million this year to $570 million, university regents approved a series of tuition hikes for the next two years -- 5.4 percent and 3.2 percent, respectively -- that could generate an additional $19 million in revenue. But the university will also dip into its cash reserves for $8 million to $10 million to fund its operations until the full cuts go into effect, which weakens the university's bond rating. Sen. Adam Morfeld of Lincoln, who represents UNL and its students in the Legislature, praised the university's leadership in enacting what he called unnecessary cuts by Gov. Pete Ricketts and other state senators. "Continuing to cut an institution that is a proven economic driver in both rural and urban Nebraska is short sighted and dangerous during a statewide economic downturn," Morfeld said in a statement. While the university and states financial future remains precarious, Bounds remains optimistic about NUs future. Times are tough, no question, he said. But I think a lot of people have been really smart about how this has been designed and these changes absolutely allow us to keep our momentum. Chennai: At least 12 passengers, including the driver, were injured after a MTC bus rammed into the steel pole of a signage board near Spencers plaza on Anna Salai on Tuesday morning. Traffic on the arterial stretch was thrown out of gear following the accident, in which a two-wheeler and mini truck were also damaged. The incident happened around 11 am. Police said that the MTC bus (route no.18k), plying from Saidapet (west) was going towards Broadway when it met with the accident near the shopping mall. An injured passenger was taken to the Royapettah government hospital. (Photo: DC) Investigations revealed that the bus driver, Elumalai, had attempted to avoid hitting an autorickshaw when he swerved to his right and hit the pole of the signage board. The pole got uprooted and the board fell on the bus and two other vehicles, a police officer said. In the melee, passengers in the bus suffered injuries. Around 50 passengers were said to be on the bus when the accident happened. Public and police personnel rushed to the aid of injured passengers and moved them to the Government Royapettah Hospital. The passengers were treated for their injuries and later discharged, a police official said. All I could recall is that there was a loud thud and some of us were thrown out of our seats. I feel lucky that nothing major happened, said Krishna Ammal, one of the passengers in the bus. Elumalai Driver Elumalai (32) suffered injuries on his leg. While passengers in the bus were lucky to have survived with minor injuries, the same cannot be said of the motorists as vehicular traffic moved at snails pace following the accident. The traffic pile up led beyond the Gemini flyover and it took almost two hours before the bus and the pole was removed from the scene. Pondy Bazaar Traffic investigation has registered a case and is investigating. New Delhi: After a top Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) commander operating in Kashmir, was killed in an encounter with the security forces in Pulwama, Central Reserve Police Force Director General Rajiv Rai Bhatnagar on Tuesday hailed the success saying it was a "well coordinated" operation by the Jammu and Kashmir police, the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) and the Army. "As you all know there was a very successful operation took place. Two terrorists were neutralized and their bodies have been recovered and identified. It is a very big success on the part of the security forces. It was a well coordinated operation by the Jammu and Kashmir police and the CRPF and the Army," DG Bhatnagar said. He further added that one AK-47, one pistol and huge cache of ammunition were recovered from their possession. "They were active since 2010 and have done many attacks on the security agencies. They also attacked a convoy in June 2016 where 8 of our jawans were killed," he added. Meanwhile, schools and colleges in Kashmir valley have been shutdown and internet services have also been blocked following the killing of Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) chief commander Abu Dujana. These steps have been taken as precautionary measures to contain the possible law and order situation. LeT Chief Commander Abu Dujana of Pakistan along with his accomplice were killed in an encounter with security forces at Hakripora village in Jammu and Kashmir's Pulwama district on Tuesday morning. Earlier, J Sandhu, General officer Commanding (GoC) 15 corps Lt. Gen J.S. Sandhu said Abu Dujana was a category A++ LeT terrorist. "He was not really involved in many attacks, he was just having fun. Basically, he was just a nuisance," he added. IG, Kashmir, Munir Khan, said the quantum of fire from the terrorists' side was very heavy. "Quantum of fire from terrorists' side was very heavy. Terrorists Abu Dujana and Arif were killed. There has been one civilian casualty," he said. The security personnel who killed Dujana came under heavy stone pelting from locals after various news channels reported that Dujana had been eliminated in the encounter. Dujana was one of the most wanted terrorists and carried over Rs. 15 lakh bounty on his head. On July 19, Dujana and two of his associates gave the slip to security forces in Pulwama district. According to media reports, the trio exchanged fire with the armed forces and managed to flee from the spot. The Indian Army in July released a list of 12 most-wanted terrorists operating in the Kashmir Valley and Dujana was among them. An inundated village at Suprakandhi in flood-hit Karimganj district of Assam on Sunday July 30. (Photo: PTI) Guwahati: Congress Vice-President Rahul Gandhi on Thursday visited worst flood-hit district of North Lakhimpur in Assam and assured the victims to raise it in the parliament. Gandhi who was on his way to Silchar in Barrak Valley to attend the funeral of veteran Congress leader Santosh Mohan Dev, landed at North Lakhimpur airport where leader of opposition in the Assam assembly Debabrata Saikia and other senior Congress leaders received him. Gandhi took a country-boat to cross over the stream of a river to meet the flood victims. He also went to see the houses ravaged by floods in nearby villages. Gandhi while talking to flood victims said, Maine socha ki aap sab ke beech aakar dekhun ki kya nuksaan hua aur madad karun. Hum flood ka mudda parliament mein uthayenge (I thought of meeting you all and see how much loss has taken place and help. Well raise the flood issue in the Parliament). He said that it is the victims right to get compensation and if needed Congress will fight on their behalf. Apka hak banta hai, apko compensation milna chahiye, aapki ladai hum ladenge (it is your right to get the compensation, well fight for you). However, some of the flood victims who were waiting for Gandhi expressed their unhappiness also for not interacting with them. We were waiting for him for so long, but he left without talking to us. Even Assam Governor who visited us during the floods, heard our grievances but Gandhi could not spare even five minutes to listen to our grievances, said angry women folks to local television reporters. The Congress leader Bhupen Bora who accompanied Gandhi accused the state government of failure in giving adequate relief to the flood victims. Earlier, former Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi alleged that state government has failed to present the real picture of the damage caused by the floods in Assam. For the Ganga rejuvenation project, the NDA government has allocated Rs 20,000 crore package but for entire northeastern states, Prime Minister announced a package of Rs. 2000 crore only, said Gogoi. Karnataka Energy minister D K Shivakumar at his residence in Bengaluru on Wednesday.(Photo: PTI) Bengaluru: The Income Tax department on Thursday raided the house of Karnataka Power Minister DK Shivakumar's father-in-law. The I-T department had on Wednesday raided Shivakumar's residence and questioned him at a private resort near Bengaluru, where 44 Congress lawmakers from Gujarat are staying. The Congress on Wednesday created ruckus in both the Houses of Parliament over the I-T raids and alleged that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) led Central Government was indulging in political witch-hunt just to defeat Congress candidate Ahmed Patel in Rajya Sabha polls in Gujarat. Due to the ruckus, the Rajya Sabha was adjourned thrice before being adjourned for the day. Raising the matter in Rajya Sabha, Congress leader Anand Sharma had said it is now becoming a trend of the Government to blatantly misuse powers of the state. Another Congress leader Ghulam Nabi Azad said, "Conduct raids on residences of those people from your party (BJP) who are offering Rs 15 crore. Congress alleges that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) was offering its Gujarat MLAs Rs 15 crore each to resign from Congress. Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah dubbed IT raids at residence of Shivakumar as 'undemocratic'. Congress has shifted its 44 MLAs from Gujarat to Bengaluru after its six MLAs resigned and joined BJP. However, Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley denied that the income tax raid at residence Shivakumar has any links with Rajya Sabha polls in Gujarat. The IT department also maintained that its raid at Karnataka Energy Minister's residence and resort has nothing to do with the Gujarat's Congress MLAs. Bengaluru/New Delhi: Cash of over Rs 11 crore has been seized till now by the Income Tax Department as part of the ongoing searches at multiple premises linked to Karnataka Energy Minister DK Shivakumar and his associates in connection with a case of alleged tax evasion. The minister has been overseeing the stay of 44 Gujarat Congress MLAs at a resort on the outskirts of Bengaluru, who have been brought to the Karnataka capital in view of the Rajya Sabha polls in their state. The raids, which are continuing at many locations for the second day on Thursday, saw I-T sleuths seizing a number of documents, account books and financial papers. About Rs 8.33 crore cash has been seized from Delhi, Rs 2.5 crore from Bengaluru and Rs 60 lakh from Mysuru till now, a senior official said. "About Rs 11.43 crore cash has been seized till now from various locations. Some searches and surveys are still on," the official said. He added that the valuation of some jewellery found during the searches is being done as of now. Documents related to investments in real estate, including some alleged benami ones, are being analysed by the department, the official said. Meanwhile, the Siddaramaih-led Congress government in Karnataka has protested against the use of Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) personnel during the raids. In a letter addressed to union financial services secretary Hasmukh Adhia, Karnataka Home Department additional chief secretary Subhash Chandra questioned the use of CRPF during the raids, despite the fact that the law and order is the responsibility of the state police, according to reports. The Income Tax department has said that it is investigating Shivakumar in a case of alleged tax evasion and huge undisclosed investments in real estate, jewellery and other sectors. Certain investments linked to him in Singapore and few other foreign locations are also under the scanner of the department, they said. Some shell firms and their operatives allegedly linked to this case are also being probed, the department sources had said yesterday. In a swoop down that raised a political storm, theI-T department had yesterday conducted searches at 64 locations and properties linked to Shivakumar. He has been put in charge of 44 MLAs lodged in the Eagleton resort near here to keep the flock together for preventing the BJP from "poaching" on them ahead of the Rajya Sabha polls in Gujarat where Ahmed Patel, political secretary to Congress president Sonia Gandhi, is facing a tough battle. The ruling Congress in Karnataka will be holding a protest in the city later today against the raids on Shivakumar, accusing the Centre of "dictatorial" attitude and "murdering democracy". Shivakumar, hailing from a modest agrarian family, is an influential Vokkaliga community leader and also one of the wealthiest state ministers in the country. According to the affidavit filed by him for the 2013 Assembly polls, he had assets over Rs 251 crore, including those of his wife and children and liabilities of over Rs 104 crore. 55-year old Shivakumar, considered a resourceful trouble shooter for the Congress with proximity to the party high command, is a six-time MLA. He has also made known his chief-ministerial ambitions while making it clear he would bide his time. The raids at the resort had yesterday sparked a huge political row with Parliament getting disrupted and Congress calling it "unprecedented witch-hunt" to win one Rajya Sabha seat. Chief Minister Siddaramaiah alleged it was a politically motivated action to silence the voice against the BJP. Earlier on Wednesday, suspecting presence of terrorists, the Indian Army and the police launched a cordon and search operation at the Sugan village of Shopian district.(Photo: PTI/Representational) Kulgam (Jammu and Kashmir): Two Hizb-ul-Mujahideen terrorists were killed in a brief gunfight with the security forces in South Kashmir's Kulgam district on Wednesday night. "Encounter lasted half an hour, eliminated 2 Hizb-ul-Mujahideen terrorists who were involved in many cases," SSP Shridhar Patil said. In another incident, an encounter is underway between the security forces and militants at the Imam Sahab area of South Kashmir's Shopian district. At least two to three militants are believed to have been trapped in the area. Further details are awaited. Earlier on Wednesday, suspecting presence of terrorists, the Indian Army and the police launched a cordon and search operation at the Sugan village of Shopian district. In a major breakthrough, LeT chief commander Abu Dujana of Pakistan along with his accomplice Arif were killed in an encounter with security forces at Hakripora village in Jammu and Kashmir's Pulwama district on Tuesday morning. Following this, the separatists had called for 'bandh' to protest the killing of two Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) terrorists and a civilian. The civilian was killed in protest that erupted following an encounter in which LeT terrorist Abu Dujana and Arif were gunned down by security forces. Roads reduced to mounds of debris are a common sight in Bengaluru. The rules say that no road can be dug up within a year of being relaid, but without a mechanism in place, the BBMP has no way of keeping track. Government agencies and cable companies run amock, destroying newly-laid roads without proper consent. With nobody willing to bear responsibility and clueless authorities, its time the BBMP delivered on its promise to set up an external monitoring agency. With the monsoon hardly making its presence felt, the city remains hot and dusty and being out in the streets is not easy for either pedestrians or motorists. Their discomfort is compounded by the dug up roads that seem to appear from nowhere and overnight in many localities, leaving people with the unenviable job of negotiating the rubble and rising dust in their path. Far from being confined to some neighbourhoods, the phenomenon is widespread and seen equally in Koramangala, Madiwala, HSR Layout, Whitefield, Chamarajpet, Ramamurthy Nagar, Bellandur, Mysore Road, Hosur Road and Ballari Road where unsurfaced or shoddily resurfaced roads make the lives of motorists and pedestrians miserable. Vannarpet While the water board dig up roads to replace water and sanitary lines or to attend to complaints of leakage, the electricity board digs them up to lay or maintain power lines underground. BBMP is the owner of roads in the city. But the owner seems to be not aware of the government and OFC service providers who are digging roads Nitin Seshadri, Koramangala 3rd Block Resident Welfare Association This apart, the Optical Fibre Cable (OFC) mafia quietly digs up roads overnight , leaving them a mess for the unsuspecting motorist. Although permission is not granted for digging roads that have been asphalted less than a year previously, it doesnt seem to be stopping the various agencies from doing their worst. With the traffic already unruly in most parts of the city, the dug up roads only make things harder for most commuters. Says Mr Nitin Seshadri of Koramangala 3rd Block Resident Welfare Association, "As the BBMP is the owner of roads in the city, all agencies be it the BWSSB or BESCOM, are required to take its permission for road cutting. They are also supposed to deposit funds with it for resurfacing the roads, but in reality this doesnt happen. Even OFC service providers dig up roads and there is no one to question them. TV tower, J.C. Nagar BBMP does not have a proper mechanism in place to monitor road cutting. Both government agencies and service providers are exploiting the situation which ultimately affects citizens" Sandeep Anirudhan, volunteer of citizens group- Whitefield Rising Mr Sandeep Anirudhan, a volunteer with the citizens group, Whitefield Rising, recalls that the ECC Road in Whitefield was redeveloped only a year ago. The drain covers were to be levelled with the road, but they are all protruding above the road level causing accidents. Also, the roads were dug up to lay sanitation pipes towards the Inner and Outer Circle, but they have not been resurfaced yet. The Athashri Road, which was dug up to construct drains, hasnt been resurfaced either, creating a lot of inconvenience for the residents," he laments. BBMP officials agree that the BWSSB and BESCOM often do not bother to resurface the roads they dig up and expect it to do their job . Even if these agencies resurface the roads, they do it shoddily and the asphalt gets washed away in heavy rain, they note. Ask Mayor G Padmavathi and she too acknowledges that government agencies hardly inform the BBMP when digging up roads. Some OFC service providers too dig up roads without taking the needed permission, she regrets. So whats the solution? The Mayor says an agency could be set up to monitor the road digging in the city. We are in talks for setting up a private agency. A decision will be taken on this soon, she reveals. Can Bengalureans then hope for better maintained roads in future? Only time will tell. Private agencies flout rules, cut roads at night without consent BBMP is struggling to keep a tab on rampant digging across the city. Civic bodies-BWSSB, BESCOM do not care to take BBMP's permission for digging roads. OFC mafia takes permission for digging only one portion of road. But use the same permit to dig at multiple locations." BBMP Engineer A engineer from BBMP who did not wish to be named admitted that BBMP isn't efficient in monitoring digging activities. He recalled that Bengaluru Development Minister Mr K J George while inspecting areas around Palace Road, Jayamahal and Cantonment areas last year lost his cool. To curb rampant digging, he insisted on setting up a separate private agency. "But till date that separate private agency isn't set up" lamented the engineer. On who this separate agency will solve the problem, the engineer explained "Once this separate private agency is set up, whoever wishes to dig roads be it government agencies like BWSSB and BESCOM and private OFC service providers should first deposit the charges for road cutting and also for relaying in advance to BBMP." Once this process is completed, the private agency will dig the road where the permission is sought. After the work taken up is completed, agency will use the funds already deposited to restore the road, he said. Not stopping there he went on to explain how OFC service providers are spoiling newly laid roads he said "Permissions are not granted to dig roads relaid within one year. But OFC firms do it during night hours without anybody's knowledge." This apart they have another modus operandi. In the areas where citizens are proactive and keep an eye on such illegal digging, OFC firms fool citizens by producing permission letters, he said and added that "OFC mafia take permission for digging only one portion of road. But use the same permission to dig at multiple locations." Q & A with Mayor: Govt agencies dig up roads without BBMP nod Q: We see rampant digging by government agencies or private ones at many spots in the city. Are they all legal? A: Yes, the BBMP is aware of such rampant digging. Permission for road cutting should be taken online and it is granted after consulting the zonal officer concerned. We cannot say that all of the digging in the city is legal as government agencies hardly inform us when they do it. Some OFC service providers also illegally dig roads without taking the required permission. Q: If all the digging is not legal, then what is the BBMP planning to do about it ? A: Illegal digging takes place as government agencies do not inform us and the private party take permission to dig say 300 meters of road but end up digging up the whole road. At a recent meeting we warned OFC operators to declare their intention and pay the required money to the BBMP or face action. All the illegal OFC cables will be cut without mercy from the coming week starting with the TenderSURE roads. Q: With the BBMP struggling to monitor road cutting, will a private agency be asked to do the job? A: We are in talks for creating such a private agency. A decision will be taken on this soon. Top Lashkar commander Abu Dujana was killed in Pulwama during a joint counter-terror operation carried out by the Jammu & Kashmir police, CRPF and the Army. (Photo: Screengrab) Srinagar: Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) commander Abu Dujana alias Hafiz, who was killed along with another militant in an encounter with the security forces in Jammu & Kashmir's Pulwama district on Tuesday, had refused to surrender, saying that God will decide his fate. Aaj bhi marna hai, kal bhi marna hai (one has to die today or tomorrow), he responded to the plea of an Army officer made during a phone call. The Army officer asked Dujana, a Pakistani national who figured on top of a list of most dangerous terrorists released by the Army in June this year, to surrender during the 9-minute conversation. The Army officer tried to persuade him saying, You have married (a local girl). Think about her, think about yourself. But Dujana denied it. He said, Koi shadi nahi ki hai. Sab jhoot hai. Propaganda hai (Ive not married anyone. It is all falsehood. It is propaganda). The Army officer then counselled him to think about his parents, who live across the border (in Pakistan). Think of them, at least, the officer said. The militant commander quips They died for me the day I left them. The Army officer tried to reason with Dujana, But you have not died for them. Dujana tried to avoid the talk and said that he was speaking to the officer after several years and asked him about his welfare. Yeh konsa waqt hai haal chaal poochnay ka (Is this opportune time to ask for each others welfare), the officer asks him and tells him to end this game. The officer also pleaded with him that times have changed and something has to be done to avoid further bloodshed in Kashmir. It is people of Kashmir who are dying, he told him. Dujana then congratulated the officer for tracking him down eventually. "Kabhi hum aage, aap peechhe; kabhi aap aage, hum peechhe; aaj aapne pakad liya, mubarak ho aapko (sometimes we are ahead, sometimes you are ahead. Today you have caught me, congratulations). On this, the officer again pleaded, Aisa kuch nahi hai (It is nothing like that). He then told Dujana, Leave it now. Accept (surrender offer). Nothing (bad) will happen to you. I will take care of it. He, however, cautioned Dujana that the people he was with would also die if he doesnt surrender. No one here wants to kill anyone. Maan ley meri baat. Dujana quipped, But the person who gave you the information about my presence here wants that I should die. The officer responded Im not here. Im somewhere in Awantipora. Have you ever seen me (being part of a cordon-and-search operation)? Dujana replied Yes, I saw you there a number of times. The officer also told him, We have no enmity against you. Listen to me and surrender. Dujana: Mujhe pata hai tumhari mujh say koi dushmani nahi hai. Laikin mein surrender nahi karsakta. Aap apni duty do, mein apni duty deta hoon. Jo meri qismat mein hoga, Allah wohi karega (I know you dont keep enmity against me. But I cant surrender. You do your duty, I will do my duty. God will decide my fate) Army officer: God doesnt wish bad for people. He will be with you. He is with all. He is same for you and for us. Dujana: Why are you talking while standing outside? Do come inside. Army officer: Im not outside. Im somewhere else. If I was outside you would have known that by hearing voices. Im not here. Im at a far off place. Im sitting in Awantipore. It was my area where you are now. I have been to each and every corner of that place. I chased you a lot and that not because of any hatred against you but to perform my duty. You know what kind of game is being played here. Dujana: I know all that is happening here and what the game like it is. Army officer: Then why dont you understand that. This is not jihad that is being fought here. You left home to fight jihad but this is not jihad here. If you come out and make people realize then alone the blood-letting will stop. If you dont tell them then who will listen to us? You are the main commander and if you dont tell them about the reality, the Kashmiris will continue to fall prey. Do something and make you mind up. An unmoved Dujana disconnected the line. Dujana had escaped several such operations in the past. During one of these, his close associate Abu Okasha who was allegedly involved in the August 5, 2015 ambush on a BSF convoy near the garrison town of Udhampur was among those killed in Pulwamas Padgam Pora-Wandakpora village in March this year. But on Tuesday he was along with a local militant Arif Nabi Dar alias Reehan alias Arif Lalhari trapped in Pulwamas Hakripora village after the Army along with J&K polices counterinsurgency Special Operations Group and the CRPF launched an operation at 4 am. As the security forces zeroed in on the militants hideout, the latter opened fire at them triggering the encounter, the officials had said. Later the security forces used explosives, mortars and possibly improvised explosive devices to blow two houses up. A few hours later the charred bodies of Dujana and Arif were retrieved from smouldering debris. While the body of Arif was handed over to his family and he was subsequently buried in cemetery of his native village Lalhar, that of Dujana is lying in a mortuary and the police had said on Wednesday that it would through Union Home Ministry approach the Pakistan High Commission in New Delhi to take it home. The fire brigade officials, who were engaged in the rescue operation, suspected an electric short-circuit to be the reason behind the fire mishap. (Photo: DC) Bhubaneswar: In a tragic incident, four members of a renowned businessmans family and their maid died due to a fire mishap at Bhudheswari Colony early on Thursday morning. One other member of the family was also injured in the incident. The deceased were identified as Gaganpal Singh (40), his wife Bhavna Singh (35), son Rubir Singh (8) and daughter Sohabi Singh (15) and maid Khusi Das alias Tanu (15). Gaganpal Singh is the younger son Satpal Singh, chairman of Pal Heights Group which owns a few luxury hotels in the city. The fire brigade officials, who were engaged in the rescue operation, suspected an electric short-circuit to be the reason behind the fire mishap. We suspected electric short-circuit in the air-conditioner (AC) could be the reason of behind the mishap. The victims died because of the thick smoke that billowed in rooms on the top of the three-storey building, said Ramesh Majhi, deputy fire officer, who led the rescue operation. A scientific team reached the spot and started investigation into the incident. Subrat Das, an eyewitness, said he saw the incident at around 4.45 am and immediately informed the police control room. At around 4.45 am, I saw smoke billowing out of the third floor of the house and immediately informed the police. The police also immediately reached spot and called up the fire brigade officials who immediately arrived on the scene and rescued the persons trapped in the fire. While Gaganpal and his wife had died by the time they were rescued, their children were gasping. They along with the maid were sent to Capital Hospital, said Subrat. Sources said the children and the maid died on their way to the hospital. By the time the five persons were rushed to the hospital, they were all dead, the Capital Hospital authorities said. The bodies have been kept the mortuary for post-mortem. Hyderabad: As part of eco-friendly initiatives planned by the state government, over a lakh of clay Ganesh idols will be distributed before the upcoming Ganesh Chaturti. This was announced by Minister K.T. Rama Rao on his Twitter handle. But almost instantly, the statement was rebuked by Sunita Pandey, a rese-archer from the city, who re-tweeted, Ok. Nice plot. Clay fills up lake gradually. Once lake dies, seemingly natural death. Prime land all across Hyderabad available for land grabbing (sic). This caught the attention of the tech-savvy minister, who makes it a point to check tweets that flood his handle every hour. He retorted by saying, By far, this has to be the most imaginative and cynical tweet I have ever seen. Madam, you should start writing fiction. Good luck to you. This twitter interaction provoked several reactions from netizens, with some of them backing the government, while others alle-ging that the state administration remained a mute spectator while lakes were encro-ached upon in the city. One Seshagiri Rao re-tweeted, Live fiction is Tellapur Lake that was encroached by a builder but this is not visible to GHMC. Same case with Anandbagh and Kapra lakes (sic). A user named Mahesh felt that Sunita Pandeys point about lakes being encroached by builders was valid. He hoped the government would restore all lakes in Hyderabad. HMDA readies 30,000 nature-friendly idols The Hyderabad Metropolitan Development Authority (HMDA) will be distributing 30,000 clay Ganesh idols (small size) on subsidised rates this year. While it was supported by JICA last year, the urban body is taking up the initiative on its own this year. The idols will be 8-10 inches tall. The urban body has spent Rs 26 on the making of each idol. However, it will distribute those at subsidised rate of Rs 13 per piece. These clay Ganeshas will be distributed at HMDA main office and parks located at various places in the twin cities. 1. U.S. acceptance of coexistence as the only alternative to atomic war. 2. U.S. willingness to capitulate in preference to engaging in atomic war. 3. Develop the illusion that total disarmament of the United States would be a demonstration of moral strength. 4. Permit free trade between all nations regardless of Communist affiliation and regardless of whether or not items could be used for war. 5. Extension of long-term loans to Russia and Soviet satellites. 6. Provide American aid to all nations regardless of Communist domination. 7. Grant recognition of Red China. Admission of Red China to the U.N. 8. Set up East and West Germany as separate states in spite of Khrushchev's promise in 1955 to settle the German question by free elections under supervision of the U.N. 9. Prolong the conferences to ban atomic tests because the United States has agreed to suspend tests as long as negotiations are in progress. 10. Allow all Soviet satellites individual representation in the U.N. 11. Promote the U.N. as the only hope for mankind. If its charter is rewritten, demand that it be set up as a one-world government with its own independent armed forces. (Some Communist leaders believe the world can be taken over as easily by the U.N. as by Moscow. Sometimes these two centers compete with each other as they are now doing in the Congo.) 12. Resist any attempt to outlaw the Communist Party. 13. Do away with all loyalty oaths. 14. Continue giving Russia access to the U.S. Patent Office. 15. Capture one or both of the political parties in the United States. 16. Use technical decisions of the courts to weaken basic American institutions by claiming their activities violate civil rights. 17. Get control of the schools. Use them as transmission belts for socialism and current Communist propaganda. Soften the curriculum. Get control of teachers' associations. Put the party line in textbooks. 18. Gain control of all student newspapers. 19. Use student riots to foment public protests against programs or organizations which are under Communist attack. 20. Infiltrate the press. Get control of book-review assignments, editorial writing, policymaking positions. 21. Gain control of key positions in radio, TV, and motion pictures. 22. Continue discrediting American culture by degrading all forms of artistic expression. An American Communist cell was told to "eliminate all good sculpture from parks and buildings, substitute shapeless, awkward and meaningless forms." 23. Control art critics and directors of art museums. "Our plan is to promote ugliness, repulsive, meaningless art." 24. Eliminate all laws governing obscenity by calling them "censorship" and a violation of free speech and free press. 25. Break down cultural standards of morality by promoting pornography and obscenity in books, magazines, motion pictures, radio, and TV. 26. Present homosexuality, degeneracy and promiscuity as "normal, natural, healthy." 27. Infiltrate the churches and replace revealed religion with "social" religion. Discredit the Bible and emphasize the need for intellectual maturity which does not need a "religious crutch." 28. Eliminate prayer or any phase of religious expression in the schools on the ground that it violates the principle of "separation of church and state." 29. Discredit the American Constitution by calling it inadequate, old-fashioned, out of step with modern needs, a hindrance to cooperation between nations on a worldwide basis. 30. Discredit the American Founding Fathers. Present them as selfish aristocrats who had no concern for the "common man." 31. Belittle all forms of American culture and discourage the teaching of American history on the ground that it was only a minor part of the "big picture." Give more emphasis to Russian history since the Communists took over. 32. Support any socialist movement to give centralized control over any part of the culture--education, social agencies, welfare programs, mental health clinics, etc. 33. Eliminate all laws or procedures which interfere with the operation of the Communist apparatus. 34. Eliminate the House Committee on Un-American Activities. 35. Discredit and eventually dismantle the FBI. 36. Infiltrate and gain control of more unions. 37. Infiltrate and gain control of big business. 38. Transfer some of the powers of arrest from the police to social agencies. Treat all behavioral problems as psychiatric disorders which no one but psychiatrists can understand. 39. Dominate the psychiatric profession and use mental health laws as a means of gaining coercive control over those who oppose Communist goals. 40. Discredit the family as an institution. Encourage promiscuity and easy divorce. 41. Emphasize the need to raise children away from the negative influence of parents. Attribute prejudices, mental blocks and retarding of children to suppressive influence of parents. 42. Create the impression that violence and insurrection are legitimate aspects of the American tradition; that students and special-interest groups should rise up and use united force to solve economic, political or social problems. 43. Overthrow all colonial governments before native populations are ready for self-government. 44. Internationalize the Panama Canal. 45. Repeal the Connally reservation so the United States cannot prevent the World Court from seizing jurisdiction over nations and individuals alike. External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj speaks in the Rajya Sabha during the ongoing monsoon session of Parliament, in New Delhi on Thursday. (Photo: PTI) New Delhi: External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj on Thursday said the standoff between India and China in Doklam area of Sikkim will be resolved through diplomatic channels and negotiation, not war. Swaraj was speaking in the Rajya Sabha about the BJP-led NDA governments foreign policy, the discussion on which was started by Congress leader Anand Sharma. "Bhutan is our neighbour and it wants help with its development. Modi's 'sabka saath, sabka vikaas' policy is not just for Indians but also for our neighbours," Swaraj said. She also said that the government is not just negotiating on Doklam, but is also talking on the bilateral relations with China. War is not a solution to any problem. India-China relations need to be sorted through bilateral talks and negotiation, she said, responding to Opposition's queries on India's policy on relations with its neighbouring countries. "The solution will only come from that. Prime Minister Narendra Modi said let us not convert our difference into dispute," she said. She further stated that Prime Minister Modi is now shaping "global agendas." "How can the Congress ask us to not oppose the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor ( CPEC)? The previous government's foreign policy was 'PMO' driven," Swaraj said in Rajya Sabha. "The Chinese are selectively quoting Jawaharlal Nehru's letter. Peace and tranquility with China is important. Doklam can be resolved through bilateral talks," she said. Swaraj further said that since 2012, Indian Government has not held any discussions on tri-junction with Bhutan and therefore, Chinese action in Doklam area is of "concern." Speaking on relations with Pakistan, Swaraj ruled out the possibility of bilateral talks with Islamabad until terrorism ends. Pakistan has been time and again held responsible for sponsoring terrorism. She added that the government had decided to initiate a dialogue with Islamabad last year, but the decision was put on hold when Pakistan's former prime minister Nawaz Sharif called slain Hizbul militant Burhan Wani a martyr. "At the Heart Of Asia Conference last year, it was decided to start a 'Comprehensive Bilateral Dialogue.' We have always favoured peace talks and have made efforts to maintain stability in the region." We adopted the road map of peace and friendship, but it cannot be one-sided. Terrorism and talks can't go together, the external affairs minister said, adding that the talks will resume only when terrorism ends. The statement came after the Opposition on Thursday cornered the government in Parliament on the standoff with China and on relations with Pakistan. Congress leader Anand Sharma sought a reply from Prime Minister Narendra Modi, saying that he "should tell the nation what he discussed with Chinese President Xi Jinping. Even National Security Advisor (NSA) Ajit Doval didn't utter a word on his meeting in China." China and India have been engaged in the standoff in the Dokalam area near the Bhutan tri-junction for the past one month after a Chinese Army's construction party attempted to build a road. Indian troops stopped road construction by Chinese soldiers on June 16. On July 2, China emphatically rejected India's interference in its ongoing boundary dispute with Bhutan in the Doklam area and again urged New Delhi to withdraw unconditionally and end the nearly two-month long stand-off. China alleged that India's intrusion into its territory under the pretext of defending Bhutan's territorial claims, has not only violated Beijing's territorial sovereignty, but also challenged Bhutan's sovereignty and independence. Indian and Chinese troops continue to be locked in a standoff in Doklam and both sides have moved additional troops, ammunition and military equipment to the area. The stand-off emerged after Chinese troops were stopped by the Indian Army from constructing roads along the Doklam border. India claims Sikkim border as part of its territory, while China has said that the area falls on their side as per the 1890 treaty signed between British and China. Consequently, China suspended the annual Kailash Manasarovar Yatra and conceded that the decision to suspend the pilgrimage was due to the border scuffle. It also alleged that the Indian troops had crossed the Sikkim sector of the Indo-China border. Beijinghas accused New Delhi of violating a convention signed in 1890 between Britain and China relating to Sikkim and Tibet. The only respite is that the falls located in the Yelagiri hills in Vellore has come alive and the Nagala forest located in the Tamil Nadu Andhra border has started recording surface runoff, said informed PWD source. (Photo: DC/File) Chennai: Aadi Perukku, the monsoon festival celebrated on the 18th day of the Tamil month Aadi, lost its usual fervor on Thursday. The festival endemic to Tamil Nadu where devotees pay tribute to rivers and water bodies by offering prayers was celebrated along the banks of Cauvery starting from Salem to Triuchy. Though the state public works department (PWD) has been releasing around 2,500 cusecs of water from Mettur since last week, the arid condition and uncontrolled sand mining ensured that there was no run off the water along the delta districts disappointing farmers and public. According to PWD and weather office sources, Tamil Nadu received its normal amount of rainfall that is due for the current southwest monsoon, but there is no inflow of water into any of the catchment area or reservoirs catering to northern districts of Tamil Nadu including gr-eter Chennai. The only respite is that the falls located in the Yelagiri hills in Vellore has come alive and the Nagala forest located in the Tamil Nadu Andhra border has started recording surface runoff, said informed PWD source. The only respite for the entire state is that Mettur now has 10 tmc ft of water and this can meet, only the drinking water requirement of western districts. After three spells of the southwest monsoon, the drinking water supply in Nilgiris, Coimbatore, Salem, Dindigul and Kodaikanal has improved. Aadi Perukku used to be gala event along the Cauvery banks, starting from Srirangam to Tiruchy suburb, but with no run off water and parts of Tiruchy facing drinking water shortage several families remained indoor without celebrating Aadi Perukku, said K. Brinda, a biologist with Tiruchy based Biodiversity Conservation Foundation. Musuri, known for large tracts of paddy fields and terrestrial birds, is now dry like a barren land due to the removal of river sand, she added. The Forum against Corruption in Science, an association of Hyderabad based scientists had lodged a complaint against the usage of this chemical in beauty products with the Bureau of Indian Standards (Representational Image) Hyderabad: The Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) is sitting pretty on the review of a potentially dangerous ingredient currently used in beauty products, allege Hyderabad scientists. Polyacrylamide is a harmful chemical and has proven carcinogenic features. It is used in many beauty products. The Forum against Corruption in Science, an association of Hyderabad based scientists had lodged a complaint against the usage of this chemical in beauty products with the Bureau of Indian Standards. The issue was proposed as part of the agenda of the Cosmetics Sectional Committee meeting of the BIS in the first quarter of 2017. In a reply to Mr G.V. Rao of Forum against Corruption in Science, the BIS had stated, The proposal of amendment of rules to suspend the use of Polyarcylamide will be put as one of the agenda points in the next meeting of Cosmetics Sectional committee, planned in early 2017. But though the first quarter meeting took place as scheduled in March 2017, the issue was not considered. When the Forum against Corruption in Science recorded their protest, the BIS officially stated, The complaint of Mr V. Rao was not on the agenda of the last meeting of the Cosmetics Sectional Committee that took place on March 7, 2017. The content of the complaint has been circulated to the technical committee members for their comments and inputs. The content of the complaint will be discussed by the committee after the comments and inputs have been received from the technical committee members. Meanwhile, Mr G. V. Rao has alleged, Polyacrylamide can be absorbed by the skin and break down into acrylamide causing histopathological and physiological changes in various organs of animals leading to cancer. The International Agency for Research on Cancer has designated Acrylamide as a probable human carcinogen based on the bioassay data and evidence for a DNA reactive mechanism. He added he had filed the complaints with BIS asking them to amend the necessary rules that would ban polyacrylamide in cosmetics companies from using Polyacrylamide as an ingredient. Students demand that the authorities should soon to take strict action against the students involved in the question paper leakage. (Representational image) Hyderabad: MPhil students from Telugu University boycotted the Ph.D common exam, saying the paper was leaked after a student tried to copy by attending the exam with answers written on his hands on Thursday. The University to soon announce the date of re examination. Students demand that the authorities should soon to take strict action against the students involved in the question paper leakage. Professor S V Satyanarayana, Vice Chancellor of Potti Sreeramulu Telugu University said, we have formed a committee to look into the matter and strict action will be taken if it is proved. The decision will be taken only after the committee completes its investigation in this matter. 8,000 GOs have not uploaded been uploaded. A majority of them pertain to land allotments, withdrawal of police cases, disciplinary action on officials and staff. HYDERABAD: Decisions taken by ministers and top officials on appeals submitted by people will not remain secret any longer. They have discretionary powers to take decisions on appeals that they receive from the people on land disputes, disciplinary action on employees and administrative issues etc. These decisions were never made public; only petitioners are informed. Now, the government has decided to upload the details online for scrutiny. The government feels that this will bring in transparency, hold ministers and officials accountable and check corruption and favouritism. Complaints lodged by the people, especially with regard to demand for bribes, are referred to heads of departments for inquiry. If they are found to be genuine, they are referred to the minister concerned to initiate action. Lobbying begins at this stage by the guilty personnel. Most of the complaints are closed at this stage without action being taken against errant staff. The petitioners are informed orally that the government has issued the staff a warning, or that nothing wrong was found. When petitioners insist that officials give the information in writing, they refuse citing rules. The issue came up for discussion at a recent meeting conducted by Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao to review the status of appeals. A GAD official said, The CM opined that it was not proper to maintain secrecy on decisions taken by ministers and officials on the appeals. He said the information should be made public. He asked us to begin this initiative with the revenue department, which receives a large number of appeals, and later extend it to other departments. He said the information will be available for public in English initially and in Telugu later on the government website. TS orders end of A secret affair CHENNAI: With TTV Dhinakaran set to resume his activities as AIADMK deputy general secretary, political corridors were abuzz with speculation that Chief Minister Edappadi K Palanisamy will finally speak out publicly against VK Sasikala. He is expected to use the public opinion against the jailed AIADMK leader, who has been convicted for corruption by the Supreme Court, as a powerful argument. Social media was also full of speculation about Palanisamy breaking his silence in the public domain on the Sasikala family on Friday, a day before Dhinakaran is expected to come to the AIADMK headquarters after a three-month hiatus. Sources said the EPS camp feels that the Chief Minister himself speaking publicly against the Sasikala family including Dhinakaran, Dhivakaran and Dr Venkatesh will put an end to all speculation and accusation against him by the O. Pannerselvam camp that he was indirectly being led by Sasikala. Palanisamy, in fact, led his cabinet colleagues in deciding not to have any truck with the Sasikala family in April but has not spoken against them in public. For the past few days, the chief minister has been holding meetings with his ministers and senior party colleagues on the need to stay together in their resolve to keep the family out of the party. HYDERABAD: Refuting the accusations of Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao during his media conference, the PCC president N. Uttam Kumar Reddy described Mr Raos remarks as a result of frustration and fear of losing the elections. Addressing the media along with Mr Mallu Bhatti Vikramarka and Mr Ponnala Lakshmaiah at the Gandhi Bhavan on Thursday, Mr Uttam Kumar Reddy said the Chief Minister had crossed all limits to target the Congress by spreading falsehoods. He said the Congress had nothing with the petitions filed against regularisation of contract employees of the energy department or dependent jobs in SCCL, and demanded an unconditional apology. They said the people have a fundamental right to approach courts, and Mr Rao could not suppress this right. He said that the language that Mr Rao used does not suit the stature of a Chief Minister. His body language and tone were full of arrogance laced with frustration, he said. Congress activists try to hang an effigy of Telangana Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao on a tree as a part of their protest at Polo Ground. Leaders of the Opposition K. Jana Reddy and Shabbir Ali along with MLC Ponguleti Sudhakar Reddy condemned the language used by the Chief Minister. Mr Jana Reddy said most of the cases in court were filed by TRS workers. He said the Chief Minister had become intolerant of criticism and court judgements. He said Congress had never objected to the development of state but only exposed the flaws in governace. Mr Shabbir Ali said that the CM was proving to be despotic (rakshana palana) which was not good for democracy. He demanded that Mr Rao withdraw his remarks on the Congress and a issue a public apology for his silly and shameful public conduct. What Mr Rao has done so far is deceiving the people with false poll promises, he alleged. At a separate media interaction, TD working president Revanth Reddy asked Mr Rao to explain why he did not close down TRS when the party got 10 seats out of the 46 it contested in 2009, and going by his logic tat only seats and votes would decide the future of political parties. Karachi: Whenever an abnormal change in Pakistans political superstructure has taken place the chargesheet against the deposed politician(s) has included some derogatory remarks about the system in vogue. The ouster of Nawaz Sharif through a judicial order also will give rise to some criticism of the parliamentary democracy that allows the kind of crimes the PM was accused of. The criticism of the system has, however, been quite sketchy. Ghulam Mohammad justified the sacking of the Constituent Assembly on the grounds of its failure to draft a constitution, which was incorrect. While replacing an elected government with martial law, Iskander Mirza not only abused politicians, he also denounced as unworkable the 1956 Constitution that he had sworn to uphold. Gen. Ayub Khan too rejected Western democracy while condemning politicians because, firstly, democracy could not be cultivated in Pakistans climate and, secondly, it did not suit the people. This was not challenged as many people were waiting to eat out of the dictators palm. The man who went after the parliamentary system with a vengeance was Gen. Zia ul Haq. In the beginning, he found little wrong with the 1973 Constitution except for the need to insert a few Islamic provisions, which he did. Then he noted an imbalance between the powers of the president and the PM and corrected it by increasing his own powers, including the acquisition of the power to sack elected governments under Article 58-2(b). Finally, he came out in favour of the presidential form of government. Unfortunately, even the Shura committee on reforms did not agree with him. In the course of his campaign, Gen Zia relied for a short while on a diary of the Quaid-i-Azam in which the latter was reported to have favoured the presidential system. This did not help him because between 1938 and 1940 the Quaid was rejecting any form of representative government for India as it would turn Muslims into a minority. Besides, Zia did not come to the Quaid with clean hands. He rejected Jinnahs ideal of excluding religion from politics, his pledge of equal citizenship for non-Muslims, and his affirmation of the sovereignty of Parliament; Zia feigned ignorance of the Quaids declaration that the Constitution would be made by public representatives. The case in favour of the parliamentary form is quite simple. It is the system ordinary citizens have become familiar with. It is based on diffusion of power which is preferable to the concentration of power in a single persons hands. This is fundamentally important in a federation as concentration of power in the hands of the president can spell disaster. The most decisive argument against the presidential system is that it has already been tested and found unsuitable. What is ignored in the debate on the presidential vs the parliamentary form of government is the fact that both will have difficulty in surviving in Pakistan because they are not in tune with its culture. Democracy cannot flourish in a country that permits faith-based discrimination, where pseudo-religious practices are treated as divinely ordained, where feudal norms dominate and land reform is forbidden by law (and the Supreme Court cannot decide the challenge to this gross injustice for years), and where civilian authority holds power at the pleasure of the military. Because of these factors, no attempt to improve the system through controlled democracy, the induction of technocrats in parliament and restricting parliaments membership to graduates has been fruitful. The main charge against all the governments is that they failed to remove the boulders lying across the path to democracy. The problem is that democracy cannot be abandoned, for to be ruled by elected representatives is a basic human right. And the people of Pakistan have confirmed their allegiance to democracy by sweeping away dictatorships. Respect for that will of the people is the only issue in Pakistan. By arrangement with Dawn Anger was expressed in both Houses of Parliament on Wednesday by the Congress, the main Opposition party, which saw income-tax raids on its minister in Karnataka, D.K. Shivakumar, as reprisal for the Congress leader sheltering 40-odd Gujarat Congress MLAs on the run from the BJPs threats and blandishments on the eve of the Rajya Sabha polls, at his guesthouse in Bengaluru. With the bringing down of the secular Mahagathbandhan government in Bihar by roping in Chief Minister Nitish Kumar himself in the exercise of overturning the popular mandate, and the direct mounting of pressure on West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee, both on corruption-related allegations like the Bengaluru events, the actions of the BJP and its government appear to have imparted a degree of urgency to Opposition concerns. The drive of the secular Opposition parties seems to be in the direction of accelerating the process of coordinating their efforts, and recover from the recent betrayal by the Bihar CM. The proposed rally on August 27 in Patna called by RJD supremo Lalu Prasad Yadav is likely to give us a glimpse into the state of the preparedness of the parties ranged against the Narendra Modi governments policies, and the BJPs ideology and political style of arm-twisting opponents and subverting established democratic norms. The raids on Mr Shivakumars properties in Bengaluru and New Delhi, ostensibly to gather evidence, were done with the CRPF in attendance. The use of Central forces for such a purpose is shocking. In contrast, the Opposition parties point to several cases against BJP leaders being slackened or ended, like those pertaining to the Assam and Chhattisgarh chief ministers, to say nothing of former ministers in Punjab when it was under NDA rule until not long ago. It has also not gone unnoticed that this sudden burst of activity to root out corruption in the country has focused exclusively on Opposition parties. Leading officials and BJP leaders from Gujarat, facing trial in criminal cases that were subjects of household discussions when Narendra Modi was chief minister, are being let off by the courts one by one, as if by divine providence. Indias political democracy is lubricated by corruption. No party, big or small, can be said to be above board. An important part of the reason is the way elections are conducted. Changing the template of the system needs the concerted cooperation of all political parties. But the present government appears to be going after its political opponents with a vengeance in the name of targeting corruption. This suggests lack of seriousness on its part. Evidently, the government is keen to slay its political opponents long before the 2019 Lok Sabha elections. Thumbing through old files in the context of the India-China standoff on Doklan, a headline caught my eye: Need for talks with China: Bhutan King. The dateline is September 11, 1979. The King who made that bold assertion was Jigme Singye Wangchuk, the present Kings father, who now lives in thoughtful retirement. The King had, in fact, made that statement in a rare interview to this reporter. It was historic because never in history had the King spoken to the media. Why did the King make this departure from tradition? The need for Bhutan to talk with China was possibly the most controversial suggestion His Majesty could have made. Article 2 of the secret 1949 Treaty between Bhutan and India clearly states that, in the conduct of foreign affairs, Bhutan would be guided by Indias advice. This restrictive clause never erupted in contention, such was the delicacy with which relations with Bhutan were conducted. Even though geography dictated Bhutans need to have some minimal contact with China, Article 2 of the treaty caused hesitations. During Morarji Desais term as Prime Minister from 1977-79, Bhutan was allowed to upgrade its mission in New Delhi to a full-fledged embassy. Since the ambassador was also accredited to Bangladesh, over a period of time Dhaka too was allowed to open an embassy in Thimphu. This was considerable journey from 1971 when Bhutan opened its mission at the UN in 1971. And yet, the P-5 were discouraged from having missions in Thimphu because the Chinese would have to be a part of that concert. What caused the King to go public on sensitive bilateral issues was a particularly unhappy turn after Morarji Desai gave way to Charan Singhs prime ministership, which lasted five months. Charan Singh asked his newly-appointed external affairs minister, Shyam Nandan Mishra, to represent him at the Havana Nonaligned summit where Moscow and Washington (along with new friend China) were settling their Cold War scores over Indo-China. Washington and China goaded their NAM proxies to vote for Pol Pot to be seated at the summit. Since Vietnam had militarily forced Pol Pot out of Phnom Penh, replacing him with Heng Samrin, Moscows proxies, Vietnam included, were manoeuvring in his favour. Mr Mishra, sunk in the deepest layers of thought, emerged with a non-stand: he was not for Pol Pot but, well, not for Samrin either a Prince Hamlet in Havana. An exasperated King voted for Pol Pot. That this outcome was in sync with what the Chinese were lobbying for, the subsequent friction between the delegations caused an angry King to go public. Let me reproduce passages from the interview: embedded in these passages are seeds of tension that were corrected by an amended treaty in 2007. But some of which resonate in the background even in the current tensions at Doklam. Be mindful of the chronology; the king is speaking in September 1979. Recent intrusions by Tibetan graziers deep into Bhutanese territory have underlined the need for direct talks between Thimphu and Beijing with the explicit purpose of demarcating and delineating the boundary between the two countries. He said he learnt from Indian officials in Havana that some armed Chinese were also seen alongwith the graziers. But he would be able to confirm this fact only after making inquiries in Thimphu. He spoke on a range of issues ranging from Tibetans in Bhutan forming a state within a state, to the need for revising the treaty of 1949 which has so far guided Indo-Bhutanese relations. He dismissed as utter nonsense suggestions that Bhutan was aspiring to have close relations with China at the expense of its traditional ties with India. He reiterated Bhutans stand that it would have no trade or diplomatic relations directly with Beijing. This policy pursued by the Bhutanese over the years had recently been ratified by the National Assembly of that country, he said. While emphasising that a demarcated, internationally recognised border between Bhutan and China was an imperative, the king added that no definite decision on holding talks had yet been taken either by him or by the National Assembly. Moreover, our survey department is still in its infancy and we are in the process of building it up. However, New Delhi had agreed to make available such documents as might be useful in presenting Bhutans case. Once we feel that we have enough documents to make a satisfactory presentation, we shall conduct talks but only with the close understanding of the Government of India. The King was careful in his choice of words. He thought a close understanding preferable to close consultations consultations somehow implied that we are seeking Indias permission, which is not the case. What then was the relevance of the treaty of friendship between India and Bhutan signed in 1949? More specifically, Article 2 of the treaty, which states Bhutan shall seek Indian advice in the conduct of its foreign affairs. He said much had happened since 1949. If you want my candid reply and not a diplomatic one the treaty can certainly be brought up to date. Thimphu does not consider Indias advice in the conduct of Bhutans foreign affairs as binding on the kingdom. The two countries have not had serious difficulties or differences in the interpretation of Article 2. But why should we retain a treaty which can lend itself to loose interpretations. He said the basic understanding would be that Bhutan shall do nothing that would harm Indias vital interests. Giving details of recent intrusions by Tibetan graziers into Bhutan, he said this sort of activity was seasonal in north-west Bhutan. Even this year, let me emphasise, there was no crisis situation. But the graziers had penetrated deeper this year for reasons which are truly difficult to analyse. He confirmed that we have protested to the Chinese and have not yet received an answer. This is the legacy of having a traditional undemarcated border, he said. The Government of Bhutans view is that to leave the border undemarcated would be to the disadvantage of Bhutan in the long run. The issue of 4,000-odd Tibetans in Bhutan was fraught with grave danger, he said. A situation has arisen whereby the Tibetans have carved a state within a state, taking their instructions from Dharamsala, the Dalai Lamas headquarters. Since 1964, the Tibetans had been offered Bhutanese citizenship so they could be moved from the separate settlements and integrated with the Bhutanese people. But on one pretext or the other, they had resisted assimilation. And now we have proof they are paying taxes to Dharamsala and their representatives are attending their own assembly in that retreat. The situation is implicated because neither is India willing to accept them nor were they willing to adopt Bhutanese citizenship. He said it was wrong to say that Bhutan had taken a position at Havana on the question of Kampuchean representation at variance with India. If Bhutan had not asked for Pol Pots representatives to be seated at Havana, it would have been tantamount to endorsing Vietnamese armed intervention in Kampuchea. India took no position at all: Can you blame us if we took one and can our stand be described as being in opposition to Indias? He said that the Nonaligned Movement was in real danger of splitting into two camps moderates (Bhutan considers itself a moderate state) and radicals, led by Cuba. He said there was little doubt that Cuba was attempting to tilt the movement towards the Soviet bloc. He was asked that if Bhutan was not bound by Indias advice in foreign affairs and was a sovereign, independent nation, what inhibited it from having normal diplomatic relations with China? He said the Communist ideology practised in Beijing was incompatible with Buddhism. Page Content Within the framework of the opinion on "Regeneration of Port Cities and Port Areas" led by Mr Stanislaw Szwabski, Member of Gdynia City Council, the European Committee of the Regions jointly with the Maltese Presidency are cooperating to put that matter on the European agenda. For centuries, ports and their cities developed hand in hand, the port generating prosperity for the city. Relationships between ports and cities have also evolved. Globalisation and consolidation of the terminal industry, port concentration and the growth of cities have intensified this challenging relationship between ports and urban authorities. Whilst ports can play a role in urban logistics and the smart city concept, the impact of port industrial activities is one of the most sensitive issues in the relationship between ports and cities. This workshop will include testimonies from cities, port authorities and terminal operators on what kind of challenges and opportunities have to be faced to revitalize port cities and areas. Representatives of the European Commission will explain how the Union can support these projects from different angles. Finally, participants will have the opportunity to know more on best practices related to the promotion of ports and cities synergies to achieve integrated territorial development. This workshop is co-organized in closed cooperation with the EFIP, ECSA, ESPO, FEPORT and the AIVP whose representatives will enrich the discussion. To register please contact: tte.maltarep@gov.mt Google says that they have been working hard to change this male:female ratio of new Internet users in rural India by introducing the Internet Saathi program. If you talk to a few women deep within the rural village areas of India, and ask them what they wish, you will be probably be surprised by their answers. We want to find jobs online, I want to see temples, I want to be able to buy from my mobile, I want my kids to learn English, We wish we could talk to our phones in our own native language. These are a just a bunch of answers that a few women revealed. Previously, these women were afraid to even touch a smartphone, worried that they will spoil it. However, things are soon changing. They are now demanding services that can help them get more from the Internet they have come a long way. Even as India has taken the lead to become the fastest growing Internet user market in the world, Google states that most of Indias Internet is still dominated by its male users. The digital gender divide is even wider in rural India where digital literacy amongst women continues to be a challenge, this combined with socio-economic challenges are the major barriers that prevent women from using the Internet, says Google. Google says that they have been working hard to change this male:female ratio of new Internet users in rural India by introducing the Internet Saathi program. Launched with a pilot in Rajasthan in July 2015, they announced their plans to scale the program, to cover 300,000 villages across India in December 2015. Google now shares that the Internet Saathi program, in partnership with Tata Trusts, is live in over 100,000 villages across ten states in India. There are over 25,000 Internet Saathis who are working everyday across these villages, and are helping over 10 million women learn about the Internet and how they can use it in their daily lives. Several Internet Saathis in rural India are learning about the Internet or their own needs and for their families, kids and their communities. These Saathis are now increasingly seen as change agents in their villages and continue to find more support from the communities and village heads for their work. Google has reached this milestone and is looking at measuring the impact of the program. Findings of the research from IPSOS, a market research company on the socio-economic impact of improving digital literacy amongst women in rural India, is providing Google with insights on what more needs to be done. Almost 90 per cent of women who have attended the trainings with the Saathis have a better understanding of Internet, and on an average 25 per cent of women who have learned to use the Internet continue to use the Internet today. At 35 per cent, Gujarat is presently having the highest percentage of women continuing to use the Internet after attending the program, while Rajasthan rides at 17 per cent, which is the lowest. The research findings state that the primary use case for Internet is to learn new skills and find information. The research also stated that the cost of smartphones is the biggest barrier for internet usage after training and over half of the women trained cannot afford to buy the phone Impact on social standing of women in rural India: Seven per cent of women trained under the program feel that their social standing has improved. They believe their social standing has improved at individual, household and community level they feel more informed, more confident about themselves Economic Impact: Overall, 33 per cent trained women think that their economic condition have improved by learning new skills on the Internet. Women feel that Internet has helped them to supplement their income in their existing occupation; income increased by an additional 1 per cent in the villages where training was conducted; and those who continue to use internet in their daily lives believe they have upped their income additionally by another 4 per cent. Loaded with insights and learnings from the last two years, Google is continuing to expand the program further and have started to roll out Internet Saathi program in Haryana and Bihar, covering around 1,000 villages, and 7,000+ villages respectively. Click on Deccan Chronicle Technology and Science for the latest news and reviews. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter. The fire broke out at a three-story building around 1:20 pm IST (0750 GMT), burning around 200 square metres (2,150 square feet) of the area, public broadcaster NHK said. (Photo: AP) Tokyo: A fire broke out on Thursday just outside Tokyo's famed Tsukiji fish market -- the world's biggest -- with flames and thick grey smoke spewing out of old wooden buildings. Dozens of firefighters scrambled to battle the blaze at Tsukiji's outer market, which is crowded with small shops and restaurants, but local media said there were no immediate reports of injuries. The fire broke out at a three-story building around 1:20 pm IST (0750 GMT), burning around 200 square metres (2,150 square feet) of the area, public broadcaster NHK said. A total of 43 fire engines were deployed to extinguish the fire, NHK said. "I could tell immediately that it's a fire," said Kiyoshi Kimura, the head of the Sushizanmai restaurant chain, who was at his office in the area when the fire broke out. "So I called managers and had everyone evacuated from our restaurants," Kimura said. The fire comes after Tokyo Governor Yuriko Koike said in June that the fish market will be moved to a new location. Plans to uproot the decades-old market have been in the works for years, with advocates citing the need for upgraded technology as they pointed to Tsukiji's antiquated refrigeration systems. Koike said last summer that the current site would eventually be redeveloped to capitalise on Tsukiji's globally recognised brand. Prime Minister Medvedev fumed on Wednesday evening on Facebook that the move 'ends hopes for improving our relations with the new US administration.' (Photo: AP) Moscow: Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev labelled new US sanctions "economic war", as businesses in Moscow pledged on Thursday to shrug off the impact of the measures approved reluctantly by Donald Trump. The US president signed off on the new sanctions Wednesday, bowing to domestic pressure after the White House failed to scupper the bill or water it down. Expecting the move, Moscow already responded to the measures last week after they were passed by the Senate, ordering the US to slash staff at its diplomatic mission in Russia by 755 personnel. The Kremlin said Trump's formal approval did not "change anything" and no further retaliation was planned. But Prime Minister Medvedev fumed on Wednesday evening on Facebook that the move "ends hopes for improving our relations with the new US administration." "It is a declaration of a full-fledged economic war on Russia," Medvedev wrote. "The Trump administration has shown its total weakness by handing over executive power to Congress in the most humiliating way." Trump signed the legislation behind closed doors and then bashed it in an angry statement as "significantly flawed." "In its haste to pass this legislation, the Congress included a number of clearly unconstitutional provisions," he said, including curbs on the president's ability to "negotiate" with Russia. "As president, I can make far better deals with foreign countries than Congress," Trump claimed. The legislation -- which also includes measures against North Korea and Iran -- targets the Russian energy sector, giving Washington the ability to impose sanctions on companies involved in developing Russian pipelines, and placing curbs on some Russian weapons exporters. It constrains Trump's ability to waive the penalties -- a statement of mistrust from the Republican-controlled Congress, which remains unsettled by the billionaire's warm words for President Vladimir Putin. The head of Russia's largest oil firm Rosneft -- which has already been targeted by earlier US sanctions imposed over the Ukraine crisis -- promised the company would try to avoid more pain. "We will seek to work in such a way as to minimise the impact of the sanctions," Igor Sechin told Russian news agencies, adding that sanctions had "started backfiring" to damage American interests. Iran reacted angrily, saying the new sanctions against it "violated" its 2015 nuclear deal with world powers, and warned it would respond "appropriately." The sanctions seek to penalise the Kremlin for allegedly meddling in the 2016 US presidential election and for Russia's annexation of Crimea. Washington has already slapped several rounds of sanctions on Moscow over Ukraine since 2014, and in December then leader Barack Obama turfed 35 Russian diplomats out due to accusations of election interference. Trump said he would "honour" some of the new bill's provisions, but stopped short of saying it would be fully implemented. The White House said only that Trump would give Congress's "preferences" mere "careful and respectful consideration." "I am signing this bill for the sake of national unity. It represents the will of the American people to see Russia take steps to improve relations with the United States," Trump said. Trump had received the legislation at 1:53 pm on Friday, but waited until Wednesday to sign it. The delay had raised speculation that Trump might veto or try to somehow shelve the sanctions, which were approved in a 98-2 Senate vote. By signing it, he avoided the humiliating prospect of Congress overriding his veto. Expecting the signature, Moscow preemptively ordered Washington to reduce its diplomatic presence in Russia to 455 people before September 1 -- bringing it in line with the size of Russia's mission in the United States The foreign ministry in Moscow said sanctions against Russia had put global stability at risk, calling them a "dangerous" and "short-sighted" policy. "We have already shown that we are not going to leave hostile acts unanswered... and we obviously reserve the right to take retaliatory measures," it said. US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said he will meet with his Russian counterpart Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov over the weekend, but warned US-Russia ties could still get worse. Tillerson said the US Congress's decision to pass the sanctions bill had made attempts to thaw ties "more difficult." A special prosecutor is investigating whether Trump advisers colluded with what US intelligence has concluded was an attempt by Russia to covertly support the real estate mogul's 2016 campaign. The US president, who often called for warmer ties with Moscow during the White House race, has furiously denied the charge. The charges against him include one count of sexual assault on a child under age of 13 years. (File Photo) London: An Indian-origin doctor in London, United Kingdom was on Wednesday charged with a total 118 sexual offences. The man has been identified by the London Metropolitan Police as 47-year-old Manish Shah from Brunel Close, Romford in east London. The charges against him include one count of sexual assault on a child under age of 13 years. According to a press release by the Metropolitan Police, the other allegations against him include 65 counts of assault by penetration and 52 counts of other sexual assaults. According to the BBC, Dr Manish Shah has been released on bail and is scheduled to appear in court on August 31 at Barkingside Magistrates Court in London. "Manish Shah has been charged with 65 assaults by penetration, contrary to Section 2 of the Sexual Offences Act 2003, 52 sexual assaults, contrary to Section 3 of the Sexual Offences Act 2003 and 1 sexual assault on a child under 13 years, contrary to Section 7 of the Sexual Offences Act 2003," the Met Police said in a statement today. "The NHS (National Health Service) has a dedicated number for any individuals who may have concerns or questions. They can be contacted on 0800 011 4253," the Met Police said. The offences are alleged to have occurred between June 2004 and July 2013 and relate to 54 victims. The charges announced today follow a long-running investigation into Shah, who has been bailed several times after first being arrested in 2013. Tehran: Iran said new sanctions imposed by US President Donald Trump on Wednesday break the terms of its nuclear deal with the United States and other world powers, and vowed an "appropriate and proportional" response. Trump, who during his election campaign called the nuclear agreement - negotiated under his predecessor Barack Obama - "the worst deal ever", signed the new sanctions into law along with measures against Russia and North Korea. Iran had already said it would complain to the body that oversees the 2015 deal - under which it accepted curbs on its nuclear programme in return for sanctions relief - about the measures passed in Congress last week in response to a missile development programme and human rights abuses. "In our view the nuclear deal has been violated and we will show an appropriate and proportional reaction to this issue," Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi said in an interview with state TV, according to the ISNA news agency. While Russia has reacted to the sanctions by ejecting US embassy staff, Iran has no diplomatic relations or direct trade links with the United States so its options are limited. Araqchi said Tehran's response would be "intelligent". "The main goal of America in approving these sanctions against Iran is to destroy the nuclear deal and we will show a very intelligent reaction to this action," Araqchi said. "We are definitely not going to act in a way that get us entangled in the politics of the American government and Trump." The new US sanctions, signed a day before Iranian President Hassan Rouhani takes part in a ceremony before being sworn in for a second term, are likely to embolden his hardline critics who say the nuclear deal was a form of capitulation. The United States is one of six countries to sign up to the deal with Iran, and the others - Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany - have said they see it as a success in easing concerns that Iran might be trying to develop nuclear weapons. The deal has also meant European countries flocking back to invest in oil-rich Iran, with France's Total agreeing to develop a new phase of the South Pars gas field, the world's largest. Araqchi said the Europeans would not allow Trump to destroy the nuclear deal. "What Total did and the contract that was signed between this company and Iran sent a message from Europe to the Americans that whatever the conditions they will continue their economic relations with Iran," he said. In a separate announcement, Tehran confirmed that Rouhani would keep on two important ministers for his second term: Oil Minister Bijan Zanganeh, who is largely credited for closing the Total deal, and Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, Iran's lead negotiator in the nuclear agreement. The 100-day deadline set by Punjab CM Capt Amarinder Singh for a drug-free Punjab triggered to a sizable crackdown on drug paddlers in the state even as the problem still persists on the ground today. None other than an MLA of the Congress publicly said this a couple of days ago maintaining that the white power drug (Chitta) was freely available on the streets of Punjab even today. That he eventually found refuge by blaming the media for twisting his comments after being hauled up by the CM is a different story altogether. In the first four months of Capts rule, on an average, nearly 50 persons were arrested each day- a whopping in excess of 5575 persons till the last count since mid-March this year. Over 4820 cases have been registered under the NDPS Act during this period. These are phenomenal numbers in this short span. The performance on the drug front under Capt in the first four months far outweighs the last 12-months of the SAD-BJP rule. But not many outside the Congress are willing to vouch for Capts claims in totality. Eradication of the drug menace is a far cry, at least for now. The big fish still eludes the special task force that is dedicated to weed out drugs. Since mid-March, seizures of high priced heroin have been over 71 kg. Punjab DGP Suresh Arora maintains the drug supply lines have been broken and the big fish have run away from Punjab. Experts opine that the assumption of a drug-free Punjab in this short span of time is as unrealistic as Capts 100-days pledge to free Punjab of the menace. It's work-in-progress. There are reports that the crackdown by the STF has led to an increase in the price of Chitta drug. Those hooked to drugs will find ways to lay their hands on it any which way. But Capt has manifested the resolve to weed out drugs from Punjab and has also delivered to a large extent. The government now is in the process of introducing a my buddy programme to encourage community participation in fighting drugs. This volunteer grouping scheme for schools and colleges will focus on rehabilitation, enforcement and prevention. Two soldiers, including an Army Major, and as many militants were killed in two separate encounters between security forces and ultras in south Kashmir areas on Thursday. Major Kamlesh Pandey and sepoy Tanzin Chhultim were killed while sepoy Kripal Singh was injured after militants fired upon a joint team of Army's 62 Rashtriya Rifles and special operations group (SOG) of J&K police at around 2:30 am. Reports said the team had launched a cordon-and-search operation at village Matribugh, Zoipora in Shopian following a tip off about the presence of some militants. SSP Shopian while confirming the killing of two army men including Major Pandey said that the search operation to track down the militant group was still going on in the area. However, sources said the militants believed to be three in number managed to escape after the encounter taking advantage of darkness during pre-dawn hours. Indigenous militant outfit Hizb-ul-Mujahideen has claimed the responsibility for the attack. A local news gathering agency CNS quoting Hizbul spokesperson Burhanuddin warned that such attacks will continue across Kashmir valley. The Shopian encounter came just a few hours after another gun battle in Gopalpora area of Kulgam district where security forces gunned down two Hizbul militants in an overnight encounter following a search operation. A police spokesperson said one of the slain militants Aaqib Itoo was involved in an attack on a bank cash van in the district on May 1 in which five policemen and two bank guards were killed. One INSAS rifle, one AK rifle and two magazines were recovered from the encounter site," he said. The latest encounters took place just two days after the most wanted commander of Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) Abu Dujana was killed by security forces in southern Pulwama district. Another LeT militant Arif Lilhaari was also killed in that encounter. With militancy, especially home grown, on rising, security forces have launched a massive operation to flush out the ultras. Nearly 120 militants have been killed so far this year, which is highest in the last eight years. The security forces are going after militants as part of operation "hunt down" and on the basis of a hit list of militants. JPMorgan Mauritius Holdings IV and Copthall Mauritius Investment have sold 1.70 per cent stake in healthcare provider Narayana Hrudayalaya for an estimated over Rs 100 crore. According to a BSE filing today, JPMorgan Mauritius Holdings IV and Copthall Mauritius Investment decreased their shareholding in the company to 1.43 per cent, from 3.13 per cent, by selling 34.77 lakh shares in the open market on July 6. The transaction was carried out on July 6. Based on the weighted average price of Rs 299.93 per share on the BSE, the deal is estimated to be worth Rs 104.29 crore. On Wednesday, Narayana Hrudayalaya reported a 36 per cent decline in net profit at Rs 10.9 crore for the first quarter ended June. Its consolidated total operating income grew 15.3 per cent to Rs 521.1 crore. Biddeford-Saco-OOB Courier "When you shake a veteran's hand today, look them in the eye and give them a heartfelt thank you," said USAF Ret. Col. Jen Fullmer, parade grand marshal, who spoke at the event. The Election Commission on Wednesday sought a report from the Ministry of Finance of the Union Government over Income Tax officials' raids on Karnataka Energy Minister D K Shivkumar's residence and other places. The Commission has asked to submit the report by Friday. The EC sought a factual report from the Finance Secretary over alleged use of central paramilitary forces in the Income Tax officials' raids in Bengaluru, sources in the poll-panel said. The commission asked for the report after the Congress accused the Union Government led by Bharatiya Janata Party of using the Income Tax officials to influence the August 8 polling to elect three members to the Rajya Sabha from Gujarat. The Congress shifted its 44 MLAs in Gujarat to a resort in Bengaluru after some of them resigned in moves that could help the BJP win all the three Rajya Sabha seats from the western State. Shivkumar was tasked by the Congress top brass to make arrangements for the party MLAs from Gujarat. The Congress complained to the EC that its Gujarat MLAs staying in a resort in Bengaluru were being terrorized by the BJP-led Government at the Centre. A delegation of Congress leaders comprising Kapil Sibal, Vivek Tankha, Rajiv Shukla, Manish Tewari, Randeep Surjewala and Madhu Goud met Chief Election Commissioner A K Joti and Election Officer O P Rawat and sought the poll-panel's intervention in ensuring that no coercive steps were taken against its MLAs to "force" them to switch sides. In these circumstances, it is imperative that in order to ensure free, fair and transparent elections, no coercive steps be taken against these MLAs till the casting of votes on August 8, the Congress said in its memorandum submitted to the EC on Wednesday. As a Constitutional watchdog for ensuring transparency, free and fair elections, we implore the Election Commission to immediately issue appropriate directions to ensure that the safety and security of the MLAs is not jeopardised and their liberties protected to enable them to effectively cast their votes on August 8, the Congress urged the poll-panel. The United States has issued a ban prohibiting its citizens traveling to North Korea, a move triggered by the death of a US student imprisoned by Pyongyang during a tourist visit. The ban, which comes into effect September 1, was introduced after officials said the "serious risk" of arrest by Pyongyang officials during tourist travel presented an "imminent danger to the physical safety" of its citizens. "All United States passports are declared invalid for travel to, in, or through the DPRK unless specially validated for such travel," read the restriction in the US government's Federal Register, using the acronym for North Korea's official name. Strict warnings against travel to the North were already in place before the ban was first announced last month following the death of American student Otto Warmbier. Warmbier, 22, a student at the University of Virginia, died in June after being held by Pyongyang for more than a year on charges of stealing a propaganda poster from a North Korean hotel. He had been sentenced to 15 years' hard labour in the North, but was sent home in a mysterious coma in June and died soon afterwards. US President Donald Trump slammed Warmbier's detention and eventual death as "a total disgrace," pledging to "prevent such tragedies from befalling innocent people at the hands of regimes that do not respect the rule of law or basic human decency". The new ban will remain in effect for one year, unless it is revoked sooner by US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. Exemptions will be allowed in specific cases for humanitarian travel and journalists. Tour companies said the ban would significantly reduce the numbers of Western tourists to the impoverished country. "Currently US citizens make up about 20 percent of the Western tourist market, so it will reduce the industry by at least that much -- plus the collateral damage of others who may not want to go as a result of this," said Simon Cockerell, general manager of Koryo Tours, the market leader in Western tourism to North Korea. Some 5,000 Western tourists visit the North each year, with standard one-week trips costing about $2,000. The vast majority of tourists visiting North Korea are Chinese. Han Chol-Su, a senior North Korea development official, earlier denied that the loss of business would hurt his country's economy. "If the US government says Americans cannot come to this country, we don't care a bit," he told AFP in Pyongyang last month. North Korean state media "relentlessly presents Americans in the most negative manner; rapacious, war-mongering, and utterly filled with hatred of the Korean people," Cockerell said. Describing American visitors as "one of the best soft- power assets of the United States", he added that the ban would eliminate a counterweight to that propaganda. In Pyongyang, visiting US tourist Carolyn Dunlap described the move as "definitely not unexpected" in light of Warmbier's death and other detentions. "Honestly the current travel advice is not much different from a ban, the only difference is people can still physically go," she told AFP last week. She planned her trip before speculation of the move mounted, but its timing means she will be one of the last US tourists to the country for at least one year. The Supreme Court on Monday pulled up Karnataka government for raising a bill of about Rs 15 lakh for police escort, accompanying Kerala's People Democratic Party leader Abdul Nazeer Maudany on his visit to home state for attending son's marriage. "Is this the way you carry out the orders of the Supreme Court? Don't scuttle these things. We expect some seriousness on the part of the state," a bench of Justices S A Bobde and L Nageswara Rao told Karnataka standing counsel Joseph Aristotle. "Why you want to make it impossible," the bench further asked the state. Advocates Prashant Bhushan and Haris Beeran, representing Maudany, submitted that the apex court's order of July 31 for allowing him to visit Kerala was sought to be frustrated by the state government. They said the state raised a demand of Rs 15 lakh from Maudany for providing him escort during his stay over there from August 2 to 14. They also questioned huge posse of policemen, 19 in number, in the escort. Karnataka counsel, for his part, maintained that the amount charged on Maudany was as per 1991 circular. He contended that the state had already spent Rs 6 crore on Maundany. The court, however, pointed out these policemen were otherwise being paid salary. The state can only charge to the extent of TA/DA. The bench granted time till Friday to the state counsel to take instructions on the issue. During the hearing, the court also came down heavily on Kerala government counsel G Prakash as he expressed readiness of the state to provide security to Maudany during his stay. "You don't have anything to do with it. He is in custody of Karnataka police," the bench told him. The court had on July 31 allowed Maudany to visit his home state to attend his son's wedding. However, it had refused to alter the direction to bear the cost of police escort by him. 51-year-old Maudany, facing trial in the 2008 Bengaluru serial blasts case, challenged the city court's order of July 24, declining him to attend son's marriage functions between August 8 to 20. Though the trial court allowed him to visit his ailing mother between August 1 and 7, it refused the permission to attend the marriage function scheduled on August 9. The Bengaluru court told him to bear cost of police escort, which, petitioner claimed, would be around Rs 20 lakh. Maudany sought permission to visit Thallasery, Ernakulum and Kollam to attend various functions, ceremonies and reception of his son's wedding. A Hizbul Mujahideen militant, who was involved in a deadly attack on a bank cash van in May, was among two ultras killed in an encounter with security forces in Kulgam district, a police official said today. Security forces launched a cordon and search operation at Gopalpora village in Kulgam district late last night following information about presence of militants there, the official said. He said in the ensuing gunfight, two local militants were killed. They were identified as Aqib Hussain Itoo and Sohail Ahmad Rather. The official said one of the slain militants was involved in an attack on a bank cash van in the district on May 1 this year which left five policemen and two bank guards dead. He was also involved in the killing of a police constable in Yaripora area of Kulgam district last month. The security forces have recovered two weapons from the site of the encounter, the official said, adding further details are awaited. The Airports Authority of India (AAI) owns around 55,800 acres of land across the country out of which 798 acres under encroachment, Minister of Civil Aviation Jayant Sinha informed Lok Sabha on Thursday. The use of land under AAI is restricted to discharge its functions related to airports but the National Aviation Policy 2016 envisages to unlock the potential of land by liberalising the end-use restrictions for existing and future airports, he said. "AAI possess approximately 55,800 acres of land all over India, which is under use for safe and secure airport operations and there is no surplus land," Sinha said in a written reply. Out of the overall land belonging to AAI, Sinha around 1.43% or 798.47 acres is under encroachment by "slum dwellers and other habitants". The majority of the land area under encroachment is around Mumbai and Juhu airports, which are inhabited by slum dwellers. The land under encroachment here is 358.15 acres. Other major encroachments are in Bhopal -- 127.37 acres -- and Hyderabad 119.82 acres. The Mumbai International Airport Ltd has entered into an agreement with the Government of Maharashtra in order to remove the encroachment from airport land in coordination with AAI. In the case of Bhopal airport, Madhya Pradesh government has agreed to exchange 96 acres of land with AA and provide an alternate site for the remaining land area. "The process of rehabilitation of illegal occupants is a subject matter of concerned state governments and the role of AAI and other private operators is limited to assistance and persuasion. Nonetheless, AAI has undertaken all efforts in an active manner to coordinate with the concerned state governments to remove such encroachments," Sinha said. The Lok Sabha on Thursday passed the Banking Regulation (Amendment) Bill 2017 that seeks to replace the NPA (non performing assets) Ordinance promulgated on May 7 with Finance Minister Arun Jaitley saying that RBI is expected to refer more cases for insolvency proceedings. Jaitley said the government was also in the process of drafting a Central chit fund law to save poor people from dubious schemes. "In the first round, the RBI had referred 12 cases to the banks to be taken up for insolvency proceedings. In all the 12 cases, the insolvency process has been initiated. Shortly, we expect to see the process of resolution in these 12 cases," Jaitley said replying to the discussion on the bill. Later the House passed the bill by a voice vote. The bill will amend the Banking Regulation Act 1949. He said most of the NPAs were build up due to sectoral stress in steel, road, power and infrastructure sectors. The government is trying to solve them through multiple mechanisms. The Centre has also authorised the Reserve Bank of India through the NPA Ordinance to asks banks to take insolvency resolution in respect of defaults, he said adding several laws such Sarfaesi Act and Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code have helped in resolving stressed asset problems to an extent. Replying to a separate query on chit funds, Jaitley said there was a need for a pan-India law to deal with chit fund schemes in addition to the existing state laws. He said the Securities and Exchange Board (Sebi) was looking into it. There are state laws for chit funds in Bengal and Odisha. But what to do with those who run operations throughout the country. We are drafting a central law and very soon we will bring it before you," Jaitley said. In a setback to the merger move between two AIADMK warring factions in Tamil Nadu, corruption charges against State government by the Rajya Sabha MP in the rebel group led by former chief minister O Panneerselvam (OPS) on Thursday triggered controversy. Adding fuel to the issue, MLA Shanmuganathan in OPS camp too alleged that he was offered Rs 5 crore by Sasikala's nephew TTV Dinakaran group to shift loyalties. Rajya Sabha member Maitreyan, one of the top honchos of OPS faction, came out with a hard hitting statement alleging that there was corruption in every department in the present AIADMK government. Soon after Maitreyan's allegations against the Edappadi K Palaniswami government was endorsed by Panneerselvam, several senior ministers reacted sharply towards MP's remarks. Reacting to OPS faction's allegations, Law minister C Ve Shanmugam alleged that Panneerselvam has no rights to talk about the ruling government since he had links with sand mining baron Sekhar Reddy. A few days back Finance Minister D Jayakumar asserted that the merger between two AIADMK group will happen soon. Sources from Edappadi group said that the Maiteryan's controversial corruption charges against the State government and MLA Shanmuganathan's allegations will surely affect merger talks. In an apparent last ditch effort, Tamil Nadu government has approached the Union Government to obtain the permission for promulgating an ordinance seeking to exempt the State from National Eligibility and Entrance Test (NEET). State health minister Vijayabaskar, who met Prime Minister Modi and several Union ministers during the last two days, said here on Thursday said that he had requested the Centre to exempt Tamil Nadu from NEET for at least one year. State health department sources said that Modi's intervention was sought since concern ministry including law has rejected Tamil Nadu's proposal for an ordinance. Amid mounting pressure from the Opposition parties including DMK demanding that NEET should not be implemented in Tamil Nadu, the government is also urging the Centre to get the Presidential nod for the two Bills passed in the Assembly, so that the State could continue to admit medical students based on plus-2 marks. As the time running out for medical admissions for the current year, several thousands of plus-2 students in Tamil Nadu were under severe pressure whether they would get medical admission based on 12th standard marks. In a major setback to the AIADMK government here, which steadfastly opposing NEET, the Madras High Court also recently dismissed a State's petition challenging single judge order quashing the provision of 85% reservation in the government quota of UG medical seats to students from the state board. Pakistan's former dictator Pervez Musharraf, who faces treason charges, has defended the country's previous military rulers, saying they have always brought the nation "back on track", while civilian governments derailed it. Musharraf, who toppled the civilian government of Nawaz Sharif in 1999 in a military coup, also claimed that the India policy of the ousted prime minister in his third tenure was a "total sell out", but did not explain what he meant by it. He said this in an interview to BBC Urdu, which was recorded in Dubai, where the 73-year-old has been staying since he left Pakistan in March 2016. He faces several charges, including treason for abrogating the Constitution and declaring emergency in 2007. Musharraf has also been charged with involvement in the murder of two-time prime minister Benazir Bhutto in 2007. "Whoever works actively against the welfare of Pakistan is against the country and should be killed," he said in the interview. Musharraf, who served as Pakistan's president from 2001 to 2008, defended his "intervention" in 1999, saying he wanted to "save the nation". "The Constitution can be ignored if there is a need to save the nation," he said, without explaining the nature of the threat Pakistan faced at that time. He defended the military "takeovers" of the civilian governments in Pakistan, saying that real development occurred only during military regimes and accused the civil governments of reversing the progress achieved during military rules. "Military rule has always brought the country back on track, whereas civilian governments have always derailed it," he said. "Dictators set the country right, whereas civilian governments brought it to ruins." The powerful army, which enjoys considerable influence over policy decisions in Pakistan, has ruled the country for much of its life since it gained independence 70 years ago. Last week after Sharif was ousted as prime minister after a Supreme Court ruling in the Panama Papers scandal, Musharraf posted a video on the social media hailing the verdict as "historic". He was criticised for the hypocritical remarks. On his return to the country, he appeared confident that the Pakistan Army would stand by him. "I have served as the head of the Army and the Army will always protect my welfare." He also held former Prime Minister Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto responsible for breaking up of Pakistan in 1971. He defended Gen Ziaul Haq's Afghanistan policy but agreed some of Haq's polices resulted in creating extremism. The government today slammed the Opposition for alleging that the foreign policy was faulty and vehemently rejected the charge that India was standing isolated at the world stage. A combative External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj asserted in the Rajya Sabha that the country's foreign policy under Prime Minister Narendra Modi was so strong that India was setting the world agenda. Replying to a discussion on 'India's foreign policy and engagement with strategic partners', she answered point-by- point the questions raised and concerns voiced by the Opposition parties, mainly targeting the Congress. She said the "concerns" voiced by the Congress regarding Chinese involvement in construction of Gwadar port in Pakistan and Hambantota in Sri Lanka were "born" during the previous UPA rule and the present government was settling these. She also rejected the Opposition contention that Prime Minister Narendra Modi was not taking her into consideration with regard to the foreign policy. "You say that India stands alone. This is far from the truth... All countries are with India... What I am saying is with evidence," she told the opposition. Swaraj said it was due to the success of the new foreign policy that both the US and Russia are with India and so are Israel and Palestine as also Saudi Arabia and Yemen. Germany, France, European Union, United Kingdom are also friends and so is the UAE, she added. "India's foreign policy is so good now that Prime Minister Narendra Modi is setting the global agenda on the world stage," she said and cited example of how he played a crucial role at the Paris Climate Summit and at G-20 or other world fora. "The opinion formed by the Opposition in the House that all our neighbours have turned against us is far away from the truth," Swaraj asserted. "It is not a fact that all our neighbouring countries are against us. Whenever there is a crisis in any neighbouring country, they look up to India and we are the first to respond to them," she said. Swaraj hit out at the opposition saying that the concerns raised now over Chinese transgressions, Gwadar and Hambantota are all born during the time when Congress was in power. In a series of posers to the Congress, she said, "Hambantota's first phase was started in 2008. Whose governnent was there at that time? The first phase got completed in 2011. Whose government was then? Gwadar happened during whose government? "Today, you are expressing concern. Why did you not express concerns in 2011 or 2013? You are the ones who gave birth to all these concerns. These concerns were born during your time. We only secured Hambantota. We addressed concern that arose during your time," she said. Asserting that India under the Modi government has been helpful and reaching out to its neighbours, she gave examples. When water crisis hit Maldives, India sent a plane carrying water within 90 minutes after she got the first call at 7 in the morning, Swaraj said. She said when there was an earthquake in Nepal, India was the first responder, besides helping in Sri Lanka floods. She said India committed one billion US dollars for the DONER conference, even though they were looking at China. Blasting the Congress for saying that India's relations with its neighbours had deteriorated, she said that for 17 years, no Indian PM had visited Nepal which included the UPA tenure. Tauntingly, she said, "When no Indian Prime Minister goes to Nepal, then the relations are good? But when Indian Prime Minister goes twice, then relations are bad?," On the blockade with Nepal about two years back, she said such a situation had been seen even during Rajiv Gandhi's tenure. She if Bangladesh and Bhutan had best ties with anyone, it was India. The External Affairs Minister lauded former Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru for his foreign policy initiatives, but said "while Nehru built and enhanced his personal image, Prime Minister Modi is enhancing the entire country's image through his initiatives." Rejecting the opposition charge that PMO is running the Foreign policy and she was not made to accompany the prime minister, she asked former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh as to how many times he had taken on foreign tours along with him his foreign ministers S M Krishna or Salman Khurshid. Swaraj said the Prime Minister always conuslt her on all foreign policy issues and charged that it was PMO driven in the previous government. Earlier, Satish Chandra Mishra (BSP) said India should not stop dialogue and it should continue to make efforts to maintain good relations with neighbours. He also said that the government should not do politics over foreign policy and the focus should be to ensure safety of the people in the country. On India-China relations, Mishra said the government should inform the neighbouring country that if border tension heightens, then it could take steps on bilateral economic policies that may impact its business. He also sought higher budget allocation to army and better facilities to soldiers. Vandana Chavan (NCP) said the relations with neighbouring nations has reached "very low". The strengthening of Pakistan-China relations has become a "concern". "These are trying times for us. ...message should not go that markets are open, so are our borders to China," she said, adding that the government should overlook Chinese parts getting into the defence making. Expressing concern about deteriorating relations with many of the neighbouring states, Kanimozhi (DMK) sought to know about status of rahabilitation of Sri Lankan Tamils and renegotiating fishing rights at Katchatheevu island, administered by Sri Lanka. Rajiv Shukla (Cong) said to improve relations with Pakistan, India should work both with democratically elected head of that country as well as with army. "You need to understand their system and work accordingly." Shukla also warned the government not to be crazy about media and use it to score points as this will not benefit always. "Instead of maximum publicity and minimum thought, go for maximum thought and minimum publicity," he said. Sapan Das Gupta (Nom) and Vijaysai Reddy (YSRCP) also participated in the debate. Nearly half of those who crack the civil services examination are engineering graduates and a large number of them do so by opting for subjects like public administration and sociology, union minister Jitendra Singh said today. During the Question Hour in Rajya Sabha, he also said that among the 20 toppers this year, 19 were engineers and one was a doctor. He was replying to supplementaries after BJP member Subramanian Swamy asked whether the government had received representations to include Ayurveda as an optional subject for civil services examination. In his written reply, the Minister of State for personnel, public grievances and pensions said the issue was under examination by the government. He also said that there are 48 optional subjects for the examination and added that Ayurveda not being an optional did not mean that Ayush graduates could not appear for the examination. Singh (rpt Singh) said doctors and engineers cracked the examination but often chose subjects other than what they had studied during graduation. Not even ten per cent of the doctors opted for medical science as an option, he added. The Madras High Court on Thursday sent a notice to the Tamilnadu Chief Minister Edappadi K Palaniswami in connection with four ministers meeting V K Sasikala in the prison. Reacting to the petition filed by Aanazhagan, son of former AIADMK MLA Thamaraikani, Justices K K Sasidharan and G R Swaminathan in the Madurai bench of Madras High Court sent notices also to the ministers K A Sengottaiyan, Dindigul C Sreenivasan, R Kamaraj and Sellur K Raju. The petitioner contended that the four ministers had violated the oath of office and secrecy by meeting Sasikala, who was convicted and jailed in a corruption case. The petitioner also wanted the ministers to be disqualified including Chief Minister for being inactive on the issue. The country may have a new force to guard its maritime boundaries, with a proposal coming up for discussion at a high-level meeting chaired by Home Minister Rajnath Singh today. The proposed force would guard maritime frontiers closer to the country's landmass. The Indian Coast Guard protects India's maritime interests and enforces maritime law, with jurisdiction over the territorial waters of India, including its contiguous zone and exclusive economic zone. The ICG has a larger mandate and territory to cover. The proposal for raising a new central armed police force - Coastal Border Police Force (CBPF) - was discussed at the meeting which was attended by the top home ministry officials and chiefs of central armed police forces (CAPF), a home ministry statement said. India has a vast coastline of 7,516 km touching 13 states and Union Territories (UTs). It also has around 1,197 islands. Apart from the raising of CBPF, the meeting discussed housing issues related to CAPF personnel, recruitment to fill up vacancies, shortage of doctors for central forces, setting up an institute of medical sciences for them. The cadre review of central forces, review of the BSF's air wing and issues related to procurement of various items for CAPFs also came up for discussion, the statement said. Singh said the home ministry will look at the issues raised by the forces favourably. Keeping in view the need for more young personnel for field jobs, the home minister asked the CAPFs to take necessary steps, the statement said. Ministers of state for home Kiren Rijiju and Hansraj Gangaram Ahir also attended the meeting. India will start dialogue with Pakistan the day it stops promoting terrorism against this country, External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj said in Parliament today, while making it clear that terror and talks cannot go together. A combative Swaraj rejected the Opposition contention that the Modi government has no policy with regard to Pakistan, asserting that it had laid the "roadmap" envisioning peace and normalcy even before it took over. "But it can't be one-sided... Terror and talks cannot go together. The day they stop promoting terror, we will start the talks," she said replying to a discussion on "Indias foreign policy and engagement with strategic partners". "You are asking what is our Pakistan roadmap? We had declared it even before the swearing-in. We had invited prime ministers of all the neighbouring countries and all came... Bilateral meetings were also held and I was present," Swaraj said. She recalled that the then Prime Minister of Pakistan Nawaz Sharif along with leaders of all other neighbouring countries had been invited to the swearing-in ceremony of the Modi government in May 2014. Since then, the relations with Pakistan have been witnessing ups and downs, she said. The external affairs minister said when she visited Pakistan for the 'Heart of Asia Conference' on December 9,2015, Sharif had said the dialogue should be started in a new format and it was given the name of Comprehensive Bilateral Dialogue. Afterwards, Modi went to Lahore as part of that initiative, taking an 'out-of-box' decision, she said. The relations with Pakistan were at such height that on December 25, 2015, when Modi wished Sharif on his birthday, the Pakistani leader asked him to greet him personally. Modi then visited Lahore to so, putting protocol aside. She said even after the terror attack on Pathankot Airbase on January 1, 2016, Pakistan, shedding its past practice of being in denial, set up an investigating team to probe it. "The story changed after (the killing of Hizbul Mujahideen commander) Burhan Wani (in an encounter) when they (Pakistan) declared him as a martyr," Swaraj said. She also slammed the Congress for questioning the Modi government's foreign policy, telling the Opposition party that all the concerns that it was talking about now were born during the previous UPA rule. "You are the ones who gave birth to the concerns raised now," she said. She praised former Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, saying he had done good work at international level. However, while Nehru enhanced his personal image, the present prime minister is enhancing the country's image through his efforts across the world. China on Thursday said that it could no longer accept the presence of even a single soldier of India in Doklam the scene of the current military face-off between the two. Beijing also contradicted New Delhi's statement that Bhutan had asked India to send troops to Doklam to stop Chinese People's Liberation Army to build a road. The Chinese embassy in New Delhi put the number of Indian soldiers currently deployed in Doklam (or Dong Lang) precisely at 48. The number of Indian soldiers (present in Dong Lang) is not important. What is important is the nature of their presence. They have trespassed into the territory of China. Their presence in Dong Lang is illegal, Liu Jinsong, Deputy Chief of Mission in Embassy of People's Republic of China in New Delhi, said. Even the presence of one Indian soldier in Chinese territory is unacceptable and intolerable to us, Liu said while briefing a select group of journalists on the current India-China military face-off. Indian Army had initially deployed over nearly 400 soldiers at the scene of the face-off with Chinese PLA personnel. But a note brought out by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Chinese Government in Beijing on Wednesday said that over 40 Indian soldiers and a bulldozer were illegally staying in the territory of the communist country, as of end of July. Beijing's note indicated that India had substantially brought down the number of soldiers it had initially deployed to stop Chinese PLA personnel to build a road in Doklam Plateau along the disputed China-Bhutan boundary. Sources in the Ministry of Defence in New Delhi, however, told jounrnalists on Wednesday that India had not brought down its troop strength and maintained it at the same level as it had been in the early days of the face-off in Doklam. Liu, however, declined to confirm if the Chinese PLA too had brought down the number of soldiers it had deployed in Doklam. This is a military secret of China. Besides, it does not matter how many troops we have in Dong Lang, as it is our own territory, he said, reiterating that New Delhi should immediately and unconditionally withdraw its troops from the scene of the face-off. He said that China and Bhutan did not have any dispute over Doklam, only a difference in perception over alignment of the boundary. Referring to the statement released by Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Bhutanese Government on June 29, he said that it had contained no word to indicate that Thimphu had asked New Delhi to send soldiers to Doklam to stop the Chinese PLA personnel from constructing the road. He went on to say that Bhutanese Government had not even been aware that Indian Army's move. Bhutan had on June 29 stated that construction of the road in Doklam Plateau by Chinese PLA was a direct violation of its agreements with China to maintain peace and tranquillity in their border areas pending a final settlement of the boundary dispute. A day later, India had said that it had sent its soldiers to Doklam in coordination with Bhutanese Government. After a brief courtroom drama and allegations of coaxed confessions, the Enforcement Directory succeeded in securing the custody of Kashmiri separatist leader Shabir Shah for six more days. The ED has been probing a 10-year money laundering case for alleged terror financing in which the separatist leader is said to be involved. Additional Sessions Judge Sidharth Sharma granted extension of Shahs custody after the EDs counsel insisted that the Kashmiri leader should chant Bharat mata ki jai. To this, the judge asked him not to turn the court into a television studio, and instead argue the case based on its merits. M S Khan, appearing for Shah, claimed in the court that he was pressured into giving statements to the officials, which the ED challenged. On Wednesday, the court extended Shahs custody by a day to allow questioning by the ED, which linked him to funding of anti-nationals and organising protests in the Valley. Investigators claimed he used hawala channels to route money to Kashmir from Pakistan, the UAE and the UK. The ED also told the court that Shah was in continuous contact with Pakistan-based terrorists and received money from them through hawala to create trouble in Kashmir. The ED arrested Shah a day after the National Investigation Agency swooped down on separatist leaders said to have funded terror in the Valley and fuelled unrest. The NIA arrested seven people, including extremist leader Syed Geelanis son-in-law, in connection with the case. The arrests came after the agency scrutinised phone data of 50 Kashmiri youth, repeatedly spotted at stone-pelting protests. Abu Dujana, the most wanted commander Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT) had refused Army's offer to surrender minutes before he was killed in an encounter in south Kashmir's Pulwama district on Tuesday. What is believed to be an army officer's phone call to Dujana when he was cornered in a house surrounded by security forces, Dujana, one of Lashkars most dreaded commanders in south Kashmir greeted the officer saying, How are you? "Kya haal hai? Maine kaha, kya haal hai (How are you. I asked, how are you)?" Dujana is heard asking the officer. The officer replies: "Humara haal chhor Dujana. Surrender kyun nahi kar deta. Tu ne shadi ke he uss ladki se, galat kar rha hai (Why don't you surrender? You have married that girl. What you are doing isn't right.)" Sources said the house owner where the militant commander was hiding was asked to dial Dujana before the officer took over. Why are you getting killed? You get ready. I will arrange your surrender, the security officer was heard telling Dujana during the conversation. To this Dujana, who was an A++ category militant and carried a bounty of more than Rs 15 lakh on his head, replies to the officer: "Kabhi hum aage aap peechhe, kabhi aap aage hum peechhe, aaj aapne pakad liya, mubarak ho aapko (sometimes I am ahead, sometimes you are ahead. Today you have caught me, congratulations") The officer tries to persuade Dujana to surrender so that he could explain the Pakistan's game plan in Kashmir. "Unless you come out and explain to people, there will be blood-letting. Who will persuade these people? Unless you speak up, Kashmiris will keep getting killed..." "I didn't start the bloodshed...I know the whole game," Dujana replies and cuts off the line, saying: "Achha theek hai yaar (ok then)." Dujana, who had given slip to security forces a number of times, was finally trapped on Tuesday morning at Hakripora, Pulwama and gunned down along with his associate after he refused to surrender. Dujana had taken over operational command of LeT in late 2015 following the killing of Abu Qasim. However, police sources said, he was disarmed by his group after a rift within the ranks of the terror organization a few months back and he was in close contact with Zakir Musa, who was recently appointed by international terror organisation al-Qaeda as head of its Kashmir cell. Dujana, who had infiltrated into Kashmir in 2010 and had been named by police as the mastermind in several militant attacks across the state, according to police sources, had gone to meet his newly wed wife during the night and had followed a pattern tracked by police during his previous visits. IT major Infosys on Thursday declined to make public the investigation reports on the Panaya deal as sought by its co-founder N R Narayana Murthy. Amidst the re-emergence of the differences between the companys board and its founder/promoter, the Bengaluru-based IT company told DH: The company does not plan to make the report public. Recently, Murthy wrote to the board of the company asking them to make the investigation reports public. The company had commissioned an independent investigation after two whistleblower complaints to market regulator Sebi alleged irregularities in its $200 million acquisition of Israeli company Panaya. The investigation was also conducted over the severance payout made to former CFO Rajiv Bansal and alleged excessive expenses incurred by its current CEO Vishal Sikka in Palo Alto. The company had published the conclusion of the independent investigation by Gibson Dunn & Crutcher, LLP an international law firm, and Control Risks, a global risk consultancy on June 23, 2017. Murthy, who wants the board to make the entire report and its scope public, to enhance transparency and accountability, is currently in US. He, however, did not respond to an email query sent by DH, till the time of going to press. A day before its AGM, the audit committee had said that, We found no evidence supporting the whistleblowers allegations regarding the acquisitions there were no conflicts of interest or kickbacks, required approvals for the acquisitions were obtained, thorough due diligence was conducted, the valuations of the target companies done by an outside financial advisor were reasonable, and the purchase prices were within the range of values determined by that advisor. Social activist Nikhil Dey and four others have been acquitted in an RTI-related case a month after they were convicted by a lower court. The court had held them guilty of criminal trespass and causing simple hurt in a 19-year-old RTI-related case in Harmara village. The activists Dey, Naurti Bai, Ram Karan and Chotu Lal have now been acquitted by the Additional District Judge (ADJ) court in Kishangarh. They were earlier sentenced to four months in jail by a court in Ajmer after it held them guilty. However, all of them were released on bail soon after the conviction. The four RTI activists had appealed against their conviction when the complainants approached them, offering to withdraw the case. The complainants stated they wanted to put an end to continual and unnecessary dispute. The formal application, signed by the complainants, was to be placed in the ADJ court, requesting the withdrawal and compounding under Section 320 of the CRPC; (deemed acquittal) of the case. The application stated that Om Prakash and Manisha (brother and niece of the erstwhile sarpanch) would withdraw the case to conclude the matter. Patidar quota stir leader Hardik Patel and nine of his associates were on Thursday detained while trying to protest outside a religious trust. Hardik sought entry into the trust to hold a press conference on the attack on his close aide, Dinesh Bhamaniya. His outfit Patidar Anamat Andolan Samiti (PAAS) claimed that activists of the ruling BJP attacked Bhamaniya with weapons late on Wednesday night in Ahmedabad. The attackers also destroyed the car he was travelling in. An injured Bhamaniya was hospitalised later. On Thursday, employees and trustees of Umiyadham Trust, where Hardik was to hold the press conference, locked up the premises and vanished before he could arrive with his supporters. The police were present in a sizeable number at the trust premises to uphold law and order. The venue belongs to our community and we have paid an advance to hold the event, Hardik told the media gathered outside the building. Police say that the trustees have informed them that permission has been cancelled. But we were not informed in writing. How can police prevent us from entering our own community premises, he asked. Hardik said he was disallowed from holding the event due to pressure from the ruling BJP. Hardik, who spearheaded the agitation for quota for the Patel community in educational institutions and government jobs, has announced that he would hold the next phase of his protest from August 5. PAAS said it would hold a mega gathering of its convenors from 7,000 villages across the state at the same venue in Ahmedabad on Saturday. The leaders would chalk out the plan for the future course of action. Facing stiff opposition from many quarters, Chief Minister Siddaramaiah on Thursday said his government will not denotify any lakes. Thanks for the letter @DVSBJP. This is a huge misconception. No lake is going to be denotified. We are in fact reviving & filling them (sic), the Chief Minister tweeted in reply to Union Minister and former Karnataka chief minister D V Sadananda Gowdas letter urging him to drop any proposal to disown dried and defunct lakes. The Revenue department has proposed to the government to give up control and ownership of parts of lakes that have dried up and lost their original features. The department had identified about 1,500 such lakes. The aim was to regularise illegal structures built on these one-time lakes. Opposition parties, the BJP and the JD(S), and a number of non-governmental organisations have vehemently opposed the proposal and threatened to launch protests if the government did not drop the plan. A 31-year-old IIT alumnus has been arrested for developing a mobile app that provides unauthorised access to Aadhaar data. Police said Abhinav Srivastav, prime accused in the data leak case, was a resident of Yeshwantpur. He hails from Kanpur and graduated from IIT, Kharagpur. On July 26, after the leak came to light, the UIDAI complained to the High Grounds police. The case was transferred to the cyber crime police on July 29. The culpability of two UIDAI insiders an authentication user agency and a KYC user agency has not been established, a policeman told DH. AUAs authorise access to biometric details such as fingerprints and iris scans, and KUAs provide demographic details such as name, date of birth, address and contact numbers. Hospital gateway Investigations revealed that Aadhaar data was accessed through the e-Hospital application on the National Informatics Centres server. The centre enjoys access to UIDAI data as it is an AUA. NICs e-Hospital is an open-source health information management system. It is designed to manage multiple hospitals seamlessly. Investigators said Srivastav had designed and developed the app, called Aadhaar e-KYC Verification, and showcased it on Google Play Store for download and use by the public. Users could access Aadhaar-related information hosted by NIC, police said. Abhinav Srivastav developed the mobile app Aadhaar e-KYC Verification in January this year. It was something he did on his own, moonlighting after his day job with Ola Cabs. By the time the leak came to light, the app had been downloaded by about 50,000 mobile users, and he had earned Rs 40,000 from advertisements. Srivastav worked as a software developer for Ola Cabs in Koramangala. His salary was Rs 42 lakh a year, police said. An MSc in industrial chemistry from IIT Kharagpur, he has developed five other mobile apps, all under investigation now. Police have seized a CPU, four laptops, a tab, four mobile phones, six pen drives and other material worth Rs. 2.25 lakh from him. He was produced before a magistrate on August 1. Police are interrogating him in custody. The state Congress is exploring various options to politically take on the BJP following the I-T raids on Energy Minister D K Shivakumar. Senior Congress leaders have accused the Modi government of indulging in political vendetta by using the I-T department as a weapon to conduct raids. KPCC president G Parameshwara met Chief Minister Siddaramaiah on Thursday morning to discuss the raids and the partys strategy to counter the BJP. The party will continue its district-level protests against the raids. In Bengaluru, the protest will be held in front of Mahatma Gandhi statue near Maurya Circle at 12.30 pm. A section of Congress leaders is said to be keen that the party should hit back at the BJP by pursuing criminal cases against its leaders. The thinking is that the state government should file appeals in higher courts challenging the acquittal by lower courts. Besides, cases pending against senior BJP leaders including B S Yeddyurappa, K S Eshwarappa, Shobha Karandlaje among others could be revived. Pending cases There were reports in a section of the electronic media that Siddaramaiah had summoned Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB) officials to his residence and sought infor- mation about cases pending against BJP leaders. However, sources in the chief ministers office denied any such development. Parameshwara told reporters that the I-T raids on Shivakumar is the BJPs way of undermining his political power. The BJP knows the political power Shivakumar wields. The raid was the BJPs attempt to crush him. The raids on his house are politically motivated. The Centre should not stoop to such levels, he said. Transport Minister Ramalinga Reddy said the raids will damage the BJP politically. The public can see how agencies like Income Tax department , CBI, Enforcement Directorate and even the Election Commission are being used to settle political scores. This did not happen during the UPA regime, Reddy said. Jill Williams understands how much people adore their pets, creating pieces for them to always remember their fur babies. The Del Mar resident has been painting pet portraits for the last five years. Pets are like family to people, she said. They are great company. Even if you have to clean up the litter or take them for a walk, you just love your pet. Williams, a six-time published writer and former Broadway playwright who moved to Del Mar from Arizona three months ago, began painting the portraits about five years ago after discovering a knack for the art by creating murals of Navajo rug designs on her Tucson homes walls. Eventually, someone asked her to paint a dog, who had recently passed away. Challenge accepted, Williams thought. Since then, she has painted more than 500 dogs, cats, birds, reptiles, pigs, horses and chickens. Williams, a senior citizen who lives alone with her feline Fattycat, said painting the animals gives her something to look forward to doing every day. She estimates she paints about two portraits a week, with each creation taking about three to five days to complete. Its a great way to live and be excited about your life, she said, adding she only paints animals, not humans. I see so many seniors who dont know what to do with themselves. I wake up every morning and I cant wait to start painting. Williams only works off of photos sent to her of the pets. She starts off by blowing out the picture so she can cut out the outline of the animal. The dimensions will be correct, she said. The rest is creativity. Paintings sell for either $66.50 for a 7-inch-by-9-inch piece or for $91.50 for a 10-inch-by-13-inch piece. Williams will give insight on her work at upcoming lectures. The first will take place at the Cardiff-by-the-Sea Library, 2081 Newcastle Ave., on Aug. 10 at 6:30 p.m. She will also hold lectures at the Del Mar Library, 1309 Camino Del Mar, on Aug. 23 at 6 p.m.; the Point Loma Library in San Diego, 3701 Voltaire Street, on Aug. 27 at 6 p.m.; and the Encinitas Library, 540 Cornish Drive, on Sept. 6 at 3 p.m. For more information and to contact Williams about her upcoming talks or to consult about a possible portrait, visit www.texturedpetportraits.org. Bill Altaffers son recently asked him how many countries he had only been to once. Altaffer, a lifelong traveler who says he has visited every country on Earth (the United Nations has 193 member states), had to think, and could only come up with about a dozen. But even though the 74-year-old Carmel Valley resident said he has long exhausted his personal bucket list of travel destinations, he has no plans to let his suitcase gather dust in the closet. He still has trips he wants to take, especially with his family wife Ching, son Joe, 16, a student at Canyon Crest Academy, and daughter Lena, 20, a junior at USC. I just really want to show my family some of the highlights of places Ive been, he said. For decades, Altaffer led tour groups to destinations around the globe, while also settling down between trips for stints at such jobs as ski instructor and high school history and geography teacher. He also loves to lecture and give slide shows about his travels at libraries, retirement communities and travel clubs, such as the Adventurers Club of Los Angeles, where he is a member. In mid-July, he and his family returned from a 14-day river cruise in Siberia. Russia is one of his favorite destinations, having first visited the country some 50 years ago. He said he has been to all 92 Russian states. On this recent trip, the family cruised along Siberias Ob River, beginning in Salekhard, the only city located directly on the Arctic Circle. Because the town is vital to Russias oil and gas trade, permits to visit are difficult to obtain. The family also spent several days taking in the sights in Moscow. Previously, Altaffer has taken his family to such exotic destinations as Assam, a region of northeast India, and North Korea. I take them to places that are uncommon, difficult trips that no one else would go to, he said. I want them to see stuff thats really unique. Altaffer, who has been to North Korea a dozen times, conceded that, my wife would kill me if I took my kids back again. Trips he would like to take include Namibia, on Africas so-called Skeleton Coast, and river cruises through Myanmar, Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam. He avoids such events as Rios Carnaval or the Olympics, figuring the crowds make it difficult to see much of the country. A native Southern Californian, Altaffer said he has been traveling since he was 7, when he went to Alaska with his parents, and he ultimately logged some 65 countries on trips with his mother and father. He has made a name for himself in travel circles. Hes a member of the Travelers Century Club, for visiting at least 100 countries or territories, and can also be found on the website MostTraveledPeople.com. The site considers that the world is made up of 875 parts, which include countries, territories, island groups, enclaves and large provinces of individual countries. Altaffer is currently fourth on the web sites list of most traveled people, having visited 822 places. However, he ranks No. 1 on the list of having visited the most UNESCO World Heritage sites, with 952 visited and 100 remaining. He earned bachelors and masters degrees in history from USC, then moved to Mammoth to become a ski instructor, before being hired by a travel agency to lead tours. Later in his career, he taught high school, both in Mammoth and South Central Los Angeles. While hes been in tense situations during his travels, including countries under martial law, he said the most dangerous situations have involved flying on airplanes. Out there in the world its never felt really dangerous except flying in West Africa, he said. Once, when flying out of Luanda, the capital of Angola, he said, the planes engine caught fire during takeoff and the flight had to be aborted. Another time, he said, he and some companions were flying to an island off he coast of Somalia when the engine also caught fire on takeoff. Because there was only one flight a week and they wanted to get to the island, Altaffer said, they stayed on the plane while the flames were doused. It took off again and we made it, he said. He also recalled flights in Siberia when he looked out the window of the plane and saw the landing gear patched with duct tape. Fortunately, he said, the quality of the Russian air fleet has improved. Now retired, Altaffer is convinced his life has been enriched by his travels. The greatest wealth in the world is to see the world. I dont want a politician telling me what its like somewhere. I go there, he said. On Aug. 1 at 3:12 p.m., a resident of 117 Via de la Valle, Del Mar called 911 and reported an unknown male had just entered his residence. Sheriffs Deputies from the North Coastal Sheriffs Station responded to the address. It was quickly determined the male who had entered the residence was suffering from a psychiatric emergency, according to a San Diego County Sheriffs Department news release. Sheriffs Deputies established a perimeter around the residence and summoned for the Psychiatric Emergency Response Team (PERT). PERT arrived on scene and negotiations began with the male. The male, without warning, jumped from the third story balcony of the residence, landing inside the swimming pool below. Sheriffs Deputies were able to assist the male from the swimming pool, at which point, he was safely taken into custody. The male was transported to Tri-City Hospital for evaluation, according to the news release. WATCH: Shah Rukh Khan, Anushka Sharma And Diplo's Phurrr From Jab Harry Met Sejal Will Get Your Feet Tapping! Something went wrong, please try again later. Invalid email Something went wrong, please try again later. Sign up for our newsletter to get the latest and breaking local news for the day The police officer investigating one of the fatal crashes that occurred this week has said the state or condition of the road were not a contributing factor to the tragic incidents. Sgt Ollie Tayler, lead investigator with the Devon roads policing department, said people need to look at their own driving habits if collisions such as those on Sunday and Monday are to be avoided. On Sunday a crash near the West Buckland junction on the A361 North Devon Link Road tragically led to the death of a nine-year-old girl. The girls mother and a seven-year-old child also suffered serious injuries. Less than 24 hours later, a mother and her 12-year-old twins were killed when their car collided with a lorry just a few hundred metres away from the previous days incident. Sgt Tayler, who is the lead investigator for the crash which occurred on Sunday, said any collision where a death occurs is tragic, but that these two incidents which involved the death of three children were particularly so. Speaking to Devon Live, Sgt Tayler said: Roads are not inherently dangerous, they only become so when you put drivers on them peoples decisions make them dangerous. Both myself and the other officer investigating Mondays fatal crash are not looking at the road as a contributing factor to either crash. For many years and more so since both these recent crashes many have claimed that the design of the road is in itself dangerous and believe it encourages motorists to perform dangerous overtaking manoeuvres. But Sgt Tayler said it is people who must drive according to the conditions. He said: If there are limited overtaking lanes, drivers must exercise patience does it really matter if you end up reaching your destination five minutes later? The engineering of the road is not the answer, education is the answer. No one forces you to speed or use a mobile phone while driving, they are your decisions and they are avoidable. (Image: Apex News) People need to learn not to take these chances. It puts themselves and other motorists at risk and the consequences far outweigh the benefits. Sgt Tayler urged drivers to take more care on the link road, particularly during the summer months. He said: Now we are well into the holiday season, there will be tourists driving to North Devon who may not be familiar with the roads and may be driving slower as a result. Please exercise patience it is better to get there late than not at all. Earlier this week Transport Minister Jesse Norman announced a 5 million upgrade to the surface and drainage of the North Devon Link Road. Plans are also in the pipeline for a proposed 250 million scheme to upgrade the road between South Molton and Bideford which would include improvements to several junctions. Councillor John Hart, leader of Devon County Council which is responsible for highways, said: Our thoughts are with the families who lost loved ones in these tragic collisions this week and we are awaiting the results of the Police investigations into the collisions. The Government has helped fund our studies into a proposed 250 million scheme to upgrade the route between South Molton and Bideford. We are analysing the results of the consultation, which has only just finished, and we have informed the Transport Minister that we will submit an Outline Business Case for improvements to the Department for Transport in December. Road safety charity Brake urged the improvements to be made as soon as possible. A spokesman said: This is a tragic incident and our thoughts are with the family and friends during this very difficult time. It is awful to see that this dangerous stretch of road has claimed yet another life, and as a charity that supports road crash victims and their families, we would back any calls to ensure that the safety of this road is improved. The government, its agencies and local authorities have a major part to play in tackling crash hotspots. We would also reiterate calls for the introduction of an independent road casualty investigation branch, to help drive down casualties in Britain. Anyone who witnessed either of the crashes on the North Devon Link Road this week is asked to contact the police on 101 or via Crimestoppers. Something went wrong, please try again later. Invalid email Something went wrong, please try again later. Sign up for our Torbay newsletter and you'll never miss a big story again Fresh from their sell-out performances of The Lock In Christmas Carol, the Breaking Tradition Dance Company return to Ye Olde Fighting Cocks for a comical new version of their critically acclaimed folk and hip hop dance show The Lock In. With live music from The Demon Barbers (Winners of Best Live Act @ BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards) they will be bringing some of the UKs oldest forms of dance bang up to date with some of the youngest, in a high energy celebration of dance culture. A group of hip hop dancers arrive at an apparently deserted pub, but local rumour has it that this tumble-down inn is frequented by other worldly characters and as the regulars arrive, a clash of cultures soon turns into a dance floor stand-off. Combining elements from Grimms classic fairy tales with a funked up musical score and colourful new choreography, along with audience favourites such as Hip Hop Morris and Pool Cue Longsword, The Lock In Remixed is hailed as one of the most exciting theatre events of 2017. Fusion loving landlady, Grandma, is nowhere to be seen. Shes left the pub in the hands of the mysterious and stubborn Jasmine, whos determined to stamp out the fun and keep things strictly traditional. There is hope though, in the form of a mystical woodcutter who may just have some tricks up his checkered sleeve. Can the woodcutter succeed? Will the regulars get the party started? Will we ever find out what happened to Grandma? The show is at the Paignton Palace Theatre on Friday September 1. Something went wrong, please try again later. Invalid email Something went wrong, please try again later. Sign up for our Torbay newsletter and you'll never miss a big story again Sections of the crumbling South Devon coastline are being protected by thousands of tonnes of granite - from Cornwall. Thousands of tonnes of heavy grade "rock armour" from Chywoon Quarry, near Falmouth, are being shipped up the coast for a major protection scheme where cliffs at Hollicombe are crumbling and threatening the branchline from Torquay to Paignton. Cllr Robert Excel, Executive Lead for Community Services from Torbay Council, said: "This is a significant investment for us and we are working with KML to do all we can to protect sections of our precious coastline. "Not only will these works also ensure the safety of residents who use the beach and protect the cliffs from further erosion, the works will also ensure that the main train line into Paignton is protected." The project, overseen for Torbay Council by the Torbay Development Agency, has seen almost fifteen and a half thousand tonnes of granite boulders extracted by Cornish marine contractor Keynvor MorLift from Chywoon quarry, transported to Falmouth Wharves for installation on the KML's rock barges using 50t specialist excavators with large rock grabs. Granite will be used to help protect cliffs at Oil Cove near Hollicombe, Paignton from further erosion. Using KML's fleet of multi-purpose vessels, the rock barge is towed out to Hollicombe Beach, where the stone is discharged onto the beach and placed into the rock revetment, protecting Hollicombe's and adjacent Oil Cove's crumbling cliffs and the railway line behind, from erosion by the sea and extreme weather. The last time such vast quantities of Cornish granite were shipped from the vicinity was in the 1950s when Freeman's Yard was still operating its stone masonry business further up river on its wharf in Penryn. During its long and distinguished history, Freeman's cut and shipped granite bound for major projects including the building of lighthouses and London embankments.] Diccon Rogers, Managing Director of Keynvor MorLift which means 'Ocean Sealift' in Cornish, said: "This has been a working river for hundreds of years and it's a matter of huge pride for us to see our historic Falmouth Wharves still used for marine industries. "This current work is also a great South West success story Cornish granite and a Cornish company with the capacity and expertise to ship and place it, working with a Devon council with the foresight to proactively safeguard its coastline from the elements." When finished in August, KML's rock armour project will provide protection to two lengths Hollicombe Beach, which stretches 110 metres from further wave damage in extreme conditions. Something went wrong, please try again later. Invalid email Something went wrong, please try again later. Want all the latest Devon crime news direct to your inbox? Sign up for our new email updates on Crime & Punishment The Devon man credited with stopping the cyber-attack that crippled the NHS and a host of other European institutions earlier this year has apparently been arrested in Las Vegas Marcus Hutchins, AKA MalwareTech, previously registered a specific domain included in the ransomware's code, which stopped the malware from spreading. In May, WannaCry infected hospitals in the UK, a Spanish telecommunications company, and other targets in Russia, Turkey, Germany, Vietnam. Marcus, a researcher from cybersecurity firm Kryptos Logic, who is originally from Ilfracombe, inadvertently stopped WannaCry in its tracks by registering a specific website domain included in the malware's code. But the 23-year-old has been detained by US authorities, American Tech blog Motherboard is reporting. At the time of writing it is not clear what charges, if any, Hutchins may face. Motherboard have verified that a detainee called Marcus Hutchins, 23, was being held at the Henderson Detention Center in Nevada early on Thursday. A few hours after, Hutchins was moved to another facility, according to a close personal friend. The friend told Motherboard they "tried to visit him as soon as the detention centre opened but he had already been transferred out." Motherboard granted the source anonymity due to privacy concerns. "I've spoken to the US Marshals again and they say they have no record of Marcus being in the system. At this point we've been trying to get in contact with Marcus for 18 hours and nobody knows where he's been taken," the person added. "We still don't know why Marcus has been arrested and now we have no idea where in the US he's been taken to and we're extremely concerned for his welfare." A US Marshals spokesperson told Motherboard in an email, "my colleague in Las Vegas says this was an FBI arrest. Mr. Hutchins is not in U.S. Marshals custody." The FBI acknowledged a request for comment but did not provide one in time for publication by Motherboard. Shortly before his arrest, Hutchins was in Las Vegas during Black Hat and Def Con, two annual hacking conferences. "We are aware a UK national has been arrested but it's a matter for the authorities in the US," a spokesperson for the UK's National Crime Agency told Motherboard in an email. A spokesperson from the UK's National Cyber Security Centre t old Motherboard in an email, "We are aware of the situation. This is a law enforcement matter and it would be inappropriate to comment further." The keen surfer, who lives in Devon, was praised by the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) for his part in tackling the ransomware's propagation around the world. He became an international sensation after he prevented hundreds of thousands of computers from being infected by the virus that wreaked havoc across the NHS. The blogger said he was "jumping around a room with the excitement" after he discovered that activating a specific web domain could disable the worm. MalwareTech said he had also been providing the NCSC with data to help notify infected companies, warning that computers which had not had their security brought up to date will be vulnerable to further attack. Something went wrong, please try again later. Invalid email Something went wrong, please try again later. Sign up for our Exeter newsletter and you'll never miss a big story again Three stonemasons from Exeter Cathedral will travel to Norway later next week to take part in an international festival dedicated to their craft. The trio will swap the 14th century gothic architecture of the Cathedral for the "Steinhoggerfestivalen" in Oslo which begins on August 11. For three days they will join stonemasons from around the world in carving Norwegian stone using only hand tools, with the final pieces eventually unveiled to members of the public. Matt Hoskins joined the team at Exeter Cathedral in 2013 after gaining experience working on other historic buildings, and is looking forward to his first stone carving festival. He said: "I am really excited to meet some new people, have a great time and to see what I can carve at Steinhoggerfestivalen. It's also a great opportunity for us all to share our experiences of working here at Exeter and some of the challenges that come with helping to conserve such a historic building for future generations." The competition in Norway has no set theme and offers all the masons the chance to explore their creative side in a way that their Cathedral employment doesn't always allow. Stonemason Anna Steinmetzer added: "We spend a lot of time producing and restoring architectural stonework, and any stone carving needs to follow carefully planned and agreed designs. We have already learned a lot as a team from some of our recent projects and we're all looking forward to putting those skills into practice in the festival." Joe Milne (Advanced Apprentice Stonemason) completes the line-up. Joe attended Steinhoggerfestivalen in 2016 and recently won the David Collier Draughtsmanship Prize and 2nd year prize at the Weymouth College Boss Stone Competition. The Cathedral's works department is responsible for the care and conservation of the building and employs five stonemasons. Their current projects include the carving of a new pinnacle at the top of the East Gable, as well as conservation work along the roof of the South Quire Aisle. We have more newsletters Something went wrong, please try again later. Invalid email Something went wrong, please try again later. Want all the latest Devon crime news direct to your inbox? Sign up for our new email updates on Crime & Punishment The former boss of a Plymouth taxi firm has been banned from driving after failing to identify a speeding driver - for the THIRD time in a year. Leslie Palmer, 73, was also slapped with fines and costs amounting to well over 1,000 after appearing at Plymouth Magistrates' Court on Wednesday. The 73-year-old was previously convicted in March on two counts of failing to identify a driver who was breaking the speed limit. He was handed six penalty points for the two offences, plus fines and costs totalling 890. On Wednesday, Palmer, the former boss of Silverline Taxis, was back in court charged with failing to identify the driver of a speeding people carrier. He was the registered keeper of the blue Seat Alhambra, magistrates heard. Palmer, aged 73, has faced three similar charges this year The ex-Silverline boss, of Saltash Road in Keyham, was given another six penalty points. That resulted in a six-month driving ban, plus fines and costs totalling 1,272. The Road Traffic Act 1988 places an obligation on the registered keeper of a vehicle to provide the identity of the driver of the vehicle at the time of the alleged offence. MPC Ralph Delbridge, of the Peninsula Road Safety Partnership, said: "There is a legal requirement on the public to furnish the police with information when required to do so. "The courts will not tolerate members of the public attempting to undermine the legal process and this is reflected in the level of costs and fines we see being issued." Palmer has previously told The Herald he was seeking compensation after being wrongly convicted of money laundering. In 2011 he was convicted by a jury of conspiracy to convert criminal property for a heroin gang. He was sentenced to three years in prison and spent 16 months at Dartmoor Prison. But three of the country's most senior judges at London's Appeal Court later quashed the conviction saying there was no evidence to implicate him. Something went wrong, please try again later. Invalid email Something went wrong, please try again later. Get the best and latest crime stories with our Court Insider newsletter A gang of masked ram raider have been jailed for a total of 21 years for stealing 200,000 worth of brand new Macbooks and iPhones. The seven men from London used two Transits with cloned plates to travel to the Marsh Barton estate in Exeter where they attacked a warehouse in the early hours of the morning. They crashed one of the trucks through the roller doors at the Stormfront Retail business at Thorverton Road and then loaded as much loot as they could into the back of one of them. The gang selected high value Apple products, including phones, tablets and computers before setting off back to London. The loot was carried in the lead van with two of the raiders while the rest followed in the second. They were caught because they tripped an alarm at the warehouse and a watchman alerted police who were able to use traffic cameras to watch them driving onto the M5. They were tracked from the air by helicopter before the van with the five men inside was stopped at the Weston-super-Mare exit and the other at the Leigh Delamere services on the M4. The men had all got involved because they thought it was an easy way to make money. One needed cash for a wheelchair for his disabled son and another wanted to pay off a student loan. Jamie Cox, aged 36, Kenneth Cozens, aged 36, Alan McIntyre, aged 36, Gary McIntyre, aged 35, Darren Grant, aged 27, Bobby Ryan, aged 36, and Brian Hitchcock, aged 37, all admitted burglary. 'You knew the stakes were high' They were all jailed for three years by Judge Geoffrey Mercer, QC, at Exeter Crown Court. He told them:"This was planned, professional crime. It was the burglary of targeted premises to obtain high value goods and used two vans on cloned plates which were driven from London. "Balaclavas were worn and the doors were rammed to gain entry. You may all regret your involvement now but you went into this with your eyes open. You knew the stakes were high." Miss Caroline Bolt, prosecuting, said phone evidence suggested one of the gang had carried out a scouting expedition before the raid on June 24. One of the Transits had been stolen in West London a few weeks earlier and phone tracking suggested at least one of the group was in the area at the time. Both vans came to Devon in convoy and one was used to ram the doors before they both left. The police were aware of the attack immediately and tracked the vans before they were stopped. 'It was not very sophisticated' She said:"The property was recovered. It had a significant value of around 200,000. We say this was a deliberate and targeted raid. It was a gang who came equipped for the raid." Lawyers representing all the men said they were driven to take part by family circumstances, including sick children and debts. Mr Matthew Pardoe, for Alan and Gary McIntyre, said: "Although there was a degree of planning it was reported within moments by a security guard and they were followed back and stopped. "It was not very sophisticated. Within minutes the CCTV was on them and the guard had raised the alarm." Get the pick of the week's best stories and fascinating features direct to your inbox every Saturday and Sunday morning in our exclusive Weekender newsletter Health minister Jeremy Hunt has praised some pioneering work being done in South Devon to care for the community in the community. The Secretary of State and Ruth May, executive director of nursing at NHS Improvement, met with management and staff at Torbay Hospital as part of their visit to South West hospitals yesterday and today. As well as fielding staff questions, the minister also had a demonstration of how different sectors of health and social care are working together in Teignmouth and Dawlish. With the help of a new high tech communications programme being developed in South Devon, one of the first of its kind for the NHS which could potentially be used to link staff in hospitals but also in care homes and patients own homes, Mr Hunt saw how staff in the many different healthcare and welfare sectors are already working closely together. (Image: Andrew Barrand) He also discussed with staff and management the preparations for winter pressures and the focus on patient safety being made by South Devon Foundation Trust - a pioneering integrated organisation which cares for adults in both hospitals and at home. The Minister watched one of the regular weekday meetings under way in Teignmouth where intermediate care staff discuss the needs of residents they are caring for in Teignmouth and Dawlish Coastal team which includes GPs, therapists, community nurses, volunteers, pharmacists and social care assessors. Mr Hunt asked for examples of how the new way of working was keeping people out of hospital and said he had been impressed with what he had seen. He said: A big thank you for all you are doing. Its really impressive, this is a real model for what we want to see happening in the rest of the country. I think I was particularly excited to hear you are sharing the electronic health records across the system which I think will make a massive difference. I am not aware of any other part of the country where the people in the social care system can access those records. I think that is a really important step forward. Richard Baker general manager from the Coastal health and wellbeing team said it was the fantastic people they had that made it possible to work. (Image: Andrew Barrand) Chairman of the Torbay and South Devon Healthcare Trust Sir Richard Ibbotson said after the meeting they had used the opportunity to press on the minister their fears that the integrated care organisation could be affected by the wider Devon NHS review. He said: I wanted to get it firmly in the Secretary of States mind that we are doing something rather special in South Devon and that the integrated care organisation is worth both his attention and his support against a backdrop where the NHS transformation plan and the broader Devon changes could potentially put some of what we are doing at risk. ] We are in some cases so far ahead of the rest of the country in terms of integrated care and it would be a great shame to prejudice that by any future developments. I think we got that across to him and he has gone away enthused by what we are doing here and acknowledging that an awful lot of it makes sense and is aligned to the NHS five year plan. Torbay MP Kevin Foster said staff obviously had concerns for example on budgets, the quality of care homes, and he himself raised issues such as the impact of winter pressures on services and the emergency department meeting the four hour target though recently 100 per cent of patients were seen. He said Mr Hunt was already aware of his opposition to the closure of Paignton Hospital. Mr Foster said: In a two hour visit you can only get an idea of what is happening. The real driver of our healthcare services is how we deal with long term chronic conditions, in care, on the edge of care, coming out of hospital, our elderly population. It was interesting to see the multi-disciplinary team working together for those, and it was encouraging to see some of the improving performance indicators. But as the local MP I am aware of the clear pressures and challenges in the system, for example with GPs. But as we approach the winter we will see how it performs under that pressure. The Health Secretary had earlier visited the Royal Devon and Exeter Hospital where he heard first-hand how staff at the Royal Devon and Exeter NHS Foundation Trust are putting patient safety first. The minister met groups of staff from across the trust in the Research Innovation Learning and Development (RILD) building and told them that safety was a key focus for the health service since he had been appointed. He was accompanied by senior clinical advisor Professor Sir Norman Williams. (Image: RD&E) RD&E Medical Director, Adrian Harris and deputy chief nurse, Tracey Reeves also updated the Health Secretary on the progress staff had made on improving patients safety, emphasising that it is the people delivering the programmes and not only the programmes themselves, that lead to the greatest improvements in patient safety. The Trust had the opportunity to showcase some examples of the good progress it is making on patient safety, including: The development of a Quality Improvement Academy (QIA), which was set up in 2013 to support Junior Doctors in implementing quality improvement and patient safety projects at the Trust. A relentless focus on Infection Control which has resulted in multiple achievements such as attaining a Hospital Acquired Infection Rate that is 52 per cent lower than the national average and achieving the lowest rate of Clostridium difficile cases in the South West in 2015/16. Work that is underway to drive medication safety optimisation across the trust. The introduction of an innovative laryngectomy and tracheostomy swimming service which enables patients who breathe through their neck to re-enter the water safely. (Image: RD&E) Staff then had the chance to ask the minister questions, covering topics including recruitment and how to attract people to nursing profession, delivering more care in community, the important role of GPs and how they will be supported. Finally, the minister met with RD&E Chief Executive Suzanne Tracey to briefly visit the Trusts Emergency Department and discuss the Trusts winter resilience plans for 2017/18, which builds on successful work last year to help the hospital manage high demand for services during the busy season. Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt said: "I was pleased to discuss patient safety with the staff of the Royal Devon and Exeter. We were in agreement that people, culture and behaviour are the most important ingredients for delivering safe patient care. In particular I want to congratulate staff on progress made on pressure sores and sepsis - long may you continue the good work." Adrian Harris, Medical Director at the Royal Devon and Exeter NHS Foundation Trust, said: Providing safe, high quality care for our patients remains our top priority at the RD&E. This visit was a valuable opportunity for us to showcase the important work being undertaken by our staff every day to deliver this key aim and to highlight ways in which we are constantly striving to provide a better and safer service to our community. (Image: RD&E) Suzanne Tracey, Chief Executive of the Royal Devon and Exeter NHS Foundation Trust, added: We were delighted to welcome the Secretary of State for this visit and we hope that he gained a constructive insight into the way that we care for our patients at the RD&E. We are very proud of our high standard of patient safety across the Trust and this was a great occasion to shine a spotlight on just some of the innovative work being developed by our teams to keep safety at the top of our agenda. The video will auto-play soon 8 Cancel We have more newsletters Something went wrong, please try again later. Invalid email Something went wrong, please try again later. Get our ultimate guide to things to do with DevonLive's FREE What's On newsletter Concerned parents have slammed Primark for selling padded bras aimed at children as young as seven. The budget high street chain which has branches in Exeter, Torquay, Barnstaple and Plymouth now sells a 'My First Bra' range for girls aged seven to 11. The polka dot bras, which are available at stores across the country, cost 5 for a pack of two. Several parents have taken to social media to criticise the shop, accusing it of sexualisation. Twitter user Miss Tyler B is one of the people who has contacted Primark to raise their concerns. Family Affairs actress Emma Linley has also raised concerns after spotting the bras while out shopping with her daughters. She posted a long Facebook status venting her anger and has threatened to start a campaign to get them taken off the shelves. She told the Sun : "Do Primark sell padded pants for seven to 13-year boys to make their genitals seem bigger? "So boys are OK as they are but girls need enhancement? "I have two young girls. I do not want them facing puberty with this c**p to deal with." Many other shoppers have also voiced their outrage at the bras. A spokesman for Primark told Mirror Online : "Primark's bras for girls are designed and shaped purely for support, comfort and modesty, and adhere to the BRC's (British Retail Consortium) childrenswear guidelines." Googles Internet Saathi digital literacy initiative aimed at empowering women in rural India has expanded to Haryana and Bihar. Google has announced that the program has reached a milestone of 100,000 villages Continuing with its digital literacy initiative aimed at empowering women in rural India, Google India announced a milestone of 100,000 reached villages with its Internet Saathi program. The program was launched as a pilot in Rajasthan in July 2015 along with Tata Trusts. Google announced its plans to cover 300,000 villages across India in December 2015. It is August 2017 and Google has reached a milestone of 100,000 villages. In its two-year journey, the program is live in ten states in India. 25,000 fully trained Internet Saathis are working everyday across these villages to help women and children learn about the Internet. Google says that in total, over 10 million women have gained from the program so far and have become familiar with the benefits of using the internet in their daily lives. Google also announced the expansion of the internet Saathi program in two new states - Haryana and Bihar. In Haryana, the program has already started to roll out and will be covering 1000 villages and in Bihar the program has kicked off from Ramnagar, Bagaha, Lauria, Manjha and Chakai villages and will be covering 7000+ villages expanding it further later in the year. Speaking about reaching the milestone, Sapna Chadha, Director Marketing, South East Asia and India, Google said, From being afraid to touch a smartphone, worried that they will spoil it, to now demanding services that can help them get more from the Internet - women in rural India have come a long way. Even as India has taken the lead to become the fastest growing Internet user market in the world, Indias Internet is still dominated by male users. The digital gender divide is even wider in rural India where digital literacy amongst women continues to be a challenge, this combined with socio-economic challenges are the major barriers that prevent women from using the Internet. Were delighted with the progress we have made with the Internet Saathi model, and it is remarkable to see the passion of these women learning about the Internet, not just for their own needs but for their families, kids and their communities. Internet Saathis are now increasingly seen as change agents in their villages and continue to find more support from the communities and village heads for their work. She added. Digit had the opportunity to visit Sewakapura, a small village in the easternmost part of Rajasthan to check out the internet Saathi program. You can read our experience of the program here. Save my User ID and Password Some subscribers prefer to save their log-in information so they do not have to enter their User ID and Password each time they visit the site. To activate this function, check the 'Save my User ID and Password' box in the log-in section. This will save the password on the computer you're using to access the site. Note: If you choose to use the log-out feature, you will lose your saved information. This means you will be required to log-in the next time you visit our site. Subscriber content preview By RICARDO ALONSO-ZALDIVAR Associated Press WASHINGTON President Donald Trump's bold threat to push Obamacare into collapse may get harder to carry out after a new court ruling. The procedural decision late Tuesday by a federal appeals panel in Washington has implications for millions of consumers. The judges said that a group of states can defend the legality of government cost-sharing subsidies for copays and deductibles under the Affordable Care Act if the Trump administration decides to stop paying the money. . . . Subscriber content preview BIRCHWOOD, Alaska (AP) Construction at an Alaska police training facility is nearing completion and project managers have said it should open this fall. The Southcentral Law Enforcement Tactical Training Center in Birchwood will have four shooting ranges for local, state and federal law enforcement agencies. . . . Honolulu tower fire damage hits $100M HONOLULU (AP) Officials say a deadly fire in a Honolulu high-rise apartment building caused an estimated $100 million or more in damage. Honolulu Fire Captain David Jenkins said Tuesday the blaze is considered one of the most destructive in Honolulu's recent history. He says more than 80 units were damaged by fire, heat or smoke, and 30 of those units are considered a total loss. Another 130 units sustained water damage. China is reported to have stepped up construction activity all along the international border even as India on Wednesday called for a status quo on the disputed border. After intruding into Uttarakhand a few days ago, China has now stepped up road-building and construction activities across the Himachal border where residents of villages in the remote districts of Kinnaur and Lahaul and Spiti have reported spotting Chinese helicopters and increased activity. India on Wednesday reiterated that peace and tranquility in the border areas is an important prerequisite for smooth development of bilateral relations with China. In an official response to a Chinese government document addressing the impasse at Doklam, India said its position on the issue had already been articulated in a press statement released on 30 June. "India is deeply concerned at the recent Chinese actions and has conveyed to the Chinese government that such construction would represent a significant change of status quo with serious security implications for India... It is essential that all parties concerned display utmost restraint and abide by their respective bilateral understandings not to change the status quo unilaterally," the press release had stated. Himachal shares a 260 km porous border on its northeastern side with China and three battalions of the Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP) are maintaining constant vigil since the Doklam faceoff in mid-June. Heightened Chinese activities on building roads and infrastructure were reported in the mountainous and arid Tibetan region after the India-China standoff over Doklam across the Sikkim border in the eastern sector. Residents of villages in the remote districts of Kinnaur and Lahaul and Spiti have reported spotting Chinese helicopters and increased road-building and construction activities across the border. ''Though we have been seeing construction activities for the past year, there has been a marked acceleration in the past four months,'' said a government official. Reports say Chinese construction activities could be seen from Shaktot village, about 5 km from the Indian border point of Kaurik, which is the last village situated beyond Sumdoh. The standoff has affected the annual cross-border trade through traditional mountain trails and passes, which begins in the last week of June and ends in November. The local administration has approved trade permits to 52 applicants this year, but is yet to give them permission for go to China. The Chinese foreign ministry had issued a 15-page dossier notifying India to take "concrete actions" by immediately pulling back troops+ from Doklam. It further stated that India's "intrusion" into Chinese territory under the pretext of Bhutan has not only "violated China's territorial sovereignty but also challenged Bhutan's sovereignty and independence". "We are willing to talk but both sides should take back their army to original position. As long as it was between China and Bhutan, we had nothing to do with it. But we are involved in tri-junction this time and its directly related to us. If china will change status quo, then this is a threat to our security," external affairs minister Sushma Swaraj had said in the Rajya Sabbha. The dispute at Doklam emerged on 16 June, when the Indian Army stopped Chinese troops from constructing roads along the India-China border in the Sikkim sector. India claims Sikkim border as part of its territory, while China has said that the area falls on their side as per the 1890 treaty signed between China and British. China on Wednesday issued a statement on Indian border troops' crossing of the China-India border in the Sikkim sector to appraise the international community on its stance on the matter, according to a press statement by foreign ministry spokesman Geng Shuang. India's action "severely violates" China's territorial integrity and poses "grave challenges" to regional peace and stability, said Geng. According to the Chinese foreign ministry, over 270 Indian troops crossed the Sikkim sector of the China-India border and obstructed Chinese road works in the Dong Lang area (Doklam) on 18 June. It also pointed out that as of end July, over 40 members of the Indian military and one piece of heavy earth-moving equipment remained in Chinese territory. India, however, maintained that it has not reduced troop strength in the area and that 340 security personnel are stationed there to guard against any Chinese activity. Irish Water is investing 2.7 million in flow monitoring and performance sampling equipment in wastewater treatment plants in Donegal and across the north west. The project is part of a nationwide initiative that Irish Water said will provide enhanced protection for rivers and coastal waters. They said the equipment will also allow Irish Water to identify where investment is needed in the wastewater infrastructure to facilitate future development in towns and villages. The work in Donegal will involve wastewater treatment plants in Downings, Dunfanaghy/Portnablagh, Dunkineely, Kerrykeel, Kilmacrennan, Milford, Ballyliffin, Bridgend, Burnfoot, Carrigart, Castlefin, Clonmany, Creeslough, Falcarragh, Kilcar, Killea, Manorcunningham, Rathmullan, Fahan, Lifford, Newtowncunningham, Raphoe and Mountcharles. In a statement, Irish Water said the equipment will make wastewater flow and load data available on a consistent basis for the first time, saying this will help improve the performance of treatment plants while helping to protect waterways into which treated wastewater is discharged. Irish Water said that when the work is completed, plant operators and engineers will have the data and tools to enable them to better manage the treatment processes, measure performance and react more quickly to sudden changes, such as a storm event. There are three separate contracts under way in the region. The first has been completed and represents a 1.7 million investment in Donegal, Galway, Leitrim, Mayo, Monaghan and Sligo. A second contract, for 500,000, is under way in parts of Cavan, Galway, Monaghan and Roscommon; and a third contract, also for 500,000 is under way in Donegal and Mayo. John McElwaine, Irish Waters Capital Programmes Regional Lead, said Irish Water collects wastewater from more than 1,000 separate communities connected to the wastewater network and treats about 1.6 billion litres of wastewater daily before it is discharged safely back into rivers, harbours and coastal areas. This project will allow us to monitor and improve the quality of this discharge, thereby protecting our coasts and waterways, he said. About 10 million is being invested across 400 wastewater treatment plants of varying sizes nationwide. Prathima S. Kumar used to be a real estate agent in Canada but shed never thought of taking her interest in property to a whole new level. It was not a fancy during her childhood in India, and not in all her years raising her children with husband, Satish, as an immigrant citizen of Canada. No, her idea came later in life, just after her boys were grown. The dream of owning a hotel was born on the ocean just a few short years ago. As for the notion of refurbishing a long-empty hotel in Marianna to make it come truethat part of the plan, she said, was borne to shore on the wings of destiny. It all started about two years ago. She and her husband were enjoying a cruise, having departed from Floridas Cape Canaveral for the Bahamas. She was looking across the vast ocean one day on deck when a current of inspiration shot through her mind and soul. It was urging her to look for a place in Florida to establish a lodging place. Her sons were both in college, studying in disciplines that would help them become experts in the family business she had in mind. When she and her husband got home from their cruise, she started looking in earnest for hotel properties up for sale on auction sites. She first tried to buy one in Orlando, was poised to do it, but some last lingering issues on the owners side of the deal shot that down at the last minute. She tried again in Jacksonville, but again some similar issues on the owners side shut things down in the late stages. Then, the Marianna property caught her eye. It had sat empty for years after the old Ramada Inn there had shut down. It has shown signs of resurrection at one pit, having been extensively renovated in 2011 with plans for another hotel chain to take over as a leasee. But that deal eventually fell through, and once again the space had fallen silent. Sensing this could finally be the deal she was looking for, Kumar started researching the property. With no background in hotel ownership, shes been on a steep learning curve ever since. She knew nothing of tiles, air conditioning, electricity, contractors, or plumbing. She knew nothing about pools or the nuts and bolts of lodging infrastructure. But she moved to Marianna a year-and-a-half ago, absorbing all she could about all those things as she made her way through the process of putting her dream deal together. Now she knows which contractors to trust and which ones to steer clear of. She knows a whole lot more about the work they do, too. The 25X50 ft. hotel pool had to be rebuilt, basically, from the bottom up. All the rooms had to have new air conditioning/heating units. New furnishings, new paint, new purpose went into the big project. She and her sons researched some of the issues that customers of hotels complain about most often, so they could make sure to avoid those problems, like sketchy access to promised free Wi-Fi, for example, beds that are too small, and the skimpy free continental breakfast layouts they found disappointing. Son Abhishek got with the Wi-Fi provider to make sure that wouldnt be a problem, setting up a deal that would make it possible to add access strength at a moments notice if the hotel guest list is so full at a given time that it threatens to weaken. The family opted to outfit the rooms with queen and king-sized beds only, rejecting doubles. They also put together a full continental breakfast plan and may later offer hot breakfasts as well. Theyre also mulling over the idea of opening a family-run restaurant in the cafe space already there, or letting someone lease it. Kumars already got her hotel sign installed, and expects her Residence Hub to open in a few short weeks. Perhaps by the first of September shell be ready for business. After a soft opening and some time to let any kinks work out, shell have a big grand opening. The 80-room hotel opening will be unfurled in stages, Kumar said, with the upper-story rooms devoted primarily to longer-term renters who might stay for months instead of a few days. Shes hoping to partner with Chipola College somehow to attract students to those spaces, which will share a common kitchen where guests can cook if they want. The other 40 rooms will be devoted to shorter-term guests and at least the first 10 rooms will be ready for occupancy in a few weeks, after all the proper permits and inspections are finalized, Kumar said. Each of those rooms will have a small refrigerator, microwave and individual air/heat units, as well as other common amenities, like coffee pots. The continuing renovation will be ongoing at a pace consistent with need as the hotels reputation and popularity grows, she said. 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. A bus user has spoken to the Dundalk Democrat about an incident today along the Louth border in which the bus he was travelling on was pulled over by members of An Gardai and passengers were asked to produce ID. The incident occurred this afternoon on the border between Louth and Northern Ireland. Roger Cross, explained to The Democrat what happened. "I was on a Bus Eireann Express service from Newry to Dublin and somewhere around the border, we were stopped by an unmarked Garda car. "Two uniformed members of An Garda Siochana boarded the bus and called for passengers to produce passport or ID. I'm on a bus from Newry to Dublin and we just got pulled over by Louth Gardai on the border. Everyone was asked for their passport/ID. Roger Cross (@rwcbl) August 3, 2017 "One member went to the back of the bus and began checking ID while his colleague worked from the front of the bus. They did not pay a lot of attention to IDs but rather glanced at them. "The whole matter took 3-4 minutes. I am not aware of the reason for the stop." Although Gardai and customs officials have carried out such searches in the past, the onset of Brexit leads many people living and traveling along the border to ponder if such incidents will increase in scale and number. An 80-acre residential farm in Heynestown in Co Louth, set a new high in land value, when it was sold yesterday, at an overall sale price of 1,377,000. The entire farm of the late TJ Lavelle, Heynestown, sold for over 17,000 per acre, in 4 separate lots. Michael Lavelle Estate Agents reported a very strong turnout for the sale by public auction of the farm. Commenting on the farm at the auction, auctioneer Joanne Lavelle said: 'This is a great reflection on the excellent land in County Louth. A farm of this quality is rare, but local demand is very strong' The four lots sold as: Lot 1 The farmhouse with yards and over 40 acres of dry lands sold for 800,000. Lot 2 A three division holding of lands with road frontage, sold for 290,000 Lot 3 8.7 acres of zoned land sold for 152,000 Lot 4 Six-acre field with future potential sold for 95,000 Michael Lavelle Estate Agents will hold an auction of farm equipment and machinery at Heynestown on Saturday 2 September at 2pm. For more details, contact 042-9332482, email: info@lavelles.ie or check out www.lavelles.ie Whats your main concern when it comes to cooking healthy yet fast meals for your family? Mine would be the desire to cut the amount of fat in all the meals I prepare. I would like to make meals where I can use less cooking oil of none at all. But how can I do this when the familys favorite dish include fried chicken, lechon kawali, crispy pata, menudo, tinola, nilagang baka and adobo. Dishes that are really delicious but fat content are like way over the radar. Fortunately, everyone has a chance to cook less fatty meals, especially oil free dishes with the help of Philips Healthy Kitchen Solutions. Recently, Philips launched their Nothing Beats Healthy Eats campaign where they encourage Filipinos to make healthier choices . At the event they had Mothers Who Brunch tandem Michelle Aventajado and Sabrina Go , celebrity Chef Jose Sarazola, and Philips in-house Chef Jaced Bayangos showed a healthy spin on preparing Filipino favorites as a solution to the dilemmas everyone face when cooking meals that also taste good. Michelle and Sabrina prepared Bibimbap using the Philips Avance Collection Sensor Touch Rice Cooker and Philips Viva Collection Juicer to make their homemade corned beef. Chef Jose and Jaced made no oil Lechon Kawali using the Philips Avance XL AirFryer and Bulalo with the Philips Electric Pressure Cooker. They had me at the no oil Lechon Kawali and Bulala in 30 minutes. Plus it was comforting to know that I can make my own corned beef and not need to worry if the red coloring in it is natural or artificial! Watching them prepare the meals I realized that while we can pick the best ingredients, a bigger part on preparing healthy meals is still up to our kitchen appliances . It is best that we invest in the best appliances so as to enjoy a healthy hearty meal. Imagine having to eat all those delicious meals in less time and less fat. The best part is its home cooked so you know what you put in your food and no second guessing if its good for you or not! At the event we were given a hand in preparing our own fruit juices using the Philips Advance Collection Juicer and Philips Avance Collection Blender and I was surprised about how fast I can juice an apple and how the juicer is virtually noiseless! Im sold. Cant wait to have my own Philips Healthy Kitchen Solutions at home and do what I and my family love cooking and eating, but this time healthier eats #NothingBeatsHealthierEats . To find out more about the Philips healthy lifestyle innovations visit www.philips.com.ph Stay gorgeous everyone! FYI P. S. I was one of the winners of a Philips Airfryer and I cant wait for it to be delivered at home soon. My other mommy blogger friends won the rice cooker, juicer and pressure cooker! I also won an Philips Onion Chef for best flatlay and brought home a Philips Soy Milk maker as their token at the event. I am super happy with my new kitchen helpers that I want a bigger kitchen! The following guest post was written by Friend of the Blog Barb Byrum (D-Onondaga). Barb is currently serving her second term as the Ingham County Clerk. Before that, Clerk Byrum served in the Michigan House of Representatives for six years. She currently serves as the Co-Chair of the Legislative Committee of the Michigan Association of County Clerks (MACC) and also the Chairperson of the District V Region of MACC. Clerk Byrum has been awarded the national title of Certified Elections/Registration Administrator (CERA) and currently serves on the Security Task Force Subcommittee with other national members for Election Center. Enjoy. Up until 2015, it was illegal to even attempt to hack a voting machine (due to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act). But in 2015, the Library of Congress granted an exemption to permit good faith research to find security flaws in certain types of technology. Last week, hackers met at the DEF CON Cyber Security Conference in Las Vegas to expose voting machines flaws and after a mere 90 minutes, they had gotten in! One hacker was able to break into a U.S. voting machine, turn it on and off, read all of the information stored within and said he felt he could probably change some votes if the system was actually in use. Although the election equipment used for the DEF CON experiment was old, similar equipment was used in Ingham Countys May 2017 Election, and similar equipment continues to be used around Michigan and the United States. Since 2012, I have been advocating for new election equipment in Michigan. Ingham County had been utilizing decade-old Sequoia equipment, which was (and continues to be in many locations) operated on a content management system that was determined to be unsecure. In light of these concerns, we should examine every part of the hacks from the conference and assess the potential threats to our elections. Election vendors can learn from the DEF CON hackers that nothing can be called un-hackable or totally secure, as a hacker would likely be able to find a way into any machine if given unrestricted access. Please keep in mind, however, that no one has unrestricted access to the election equipment on Election Day, as multiple poll workers are tasked with monitoring various points of the Election Day process. The election equipment is never unattended, and the poll workers must have two people of opposite political parties to do anything with the machines or ballots. Michigan is unique and, arguably, more secure than other states, as our election process continues to be carried out with paper trails from the voter application, to the ballot, and even the ballot stub. Although Michigan election officials do not know how an individual voter voted, we do know who votes during each election. Michigan utilizes County Boards of Canvassers to certify the results of each and every election. These boards are made up of an equal number of Republicans and Democrats who are charged with checking vote totals, even re-tabulate voted ballots to check validity and make certain vote totals match. Further, Michigan has the ability to conduct hand recounts, which many counties did after the November 2016 General Election. Ingham County was one of the first to complete the 2016 Presidential Recount resulting in the same outcome. After nearly every election, Michigan County Clerks conduct random voting precinct audits to make sure that all election procedures and protocols were followed. Finally, I would be remiss if I did not point out the attacks on election integrity as heard from the mouth of President Trump. When a public official makes unsubstantiated claims of rigged elections or voter fraud, they put the very fabric of our Republic at risk. With uneducated claims, our President has put the public trust and the peaceful transfer of power in danger. In Michigan, our election equipment must be certified by the Election Assistance Commission (EAC), and the Secretary of State, which many other states do not require. The Secretary of State, County and Municipal Clerks have been working to get new election equipment in Michigan for years and now it is finally coming to fruition. If Trumps Election Integrity Commission (EIC) really wanted to protect elections in our country, it would look to create funding sources for the purposes of updating and further securing election technology. Determining best practices and election security is something that the EAC, which until recently was facing total elimination, is already in a position to do. The EAC has identified elections systems as critical infrastructure for our nation. In fact, they just held an elections cyber security meeting last week with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to address these specific needs and processes associated with information sharing in elections systems. We do not need a commission using false claims of voter fraud to make it harder for eligible citizens to vote, which the EIC will likely do, we need a commission to help make elections more secure. States should consider modeling some of their election procedures after Michigans. States that currently use direct-recording electronic (DRE) voting machines would not be able to conduct hand true recounts, as they are computers and as vulnerable as any other computing device. We need to continue using paper ballots, post-election audits and bipartisan boards of canvassers to certify official election results to maintain checks and balances. Equally important, we must focus on security regulation. As an Election Official, I stand behind my election results and know that the elections that I run are safe and secure. I encourage others to learn more and get involved in elections by serving as an election worker or county canvasser. Rather than making claims that election machines are un-hackable, lets focus on working to create secure election procedures and identify and minimize attacks and supporting organizations, like the EAC, that are doing this work nationwide. [CC photo credit: Tom Arthur | Wikimedia Commons] Its becoming an all too familiar news story in Michigan these days: A failing public school system faces competition from a charter school that sucks even more resources and students away from the traditional schools and then, when they cant make enough money, the charter school closes and things are worse off than they were before. For example, it happened in Muskegon Heights which turned its entire school system over to charter schools. When Mosaica, the for-profit charter school management company couldnt make a profit, they walked away leaving the newly created charter school district in a lurch. The district is back to being run by the local folks and, in just one year, they erased the debt that sent Mosaica running for the hills. Well, it has happened again this year. The Michigan Technical Academy in Detroit was a charter school running both an elementary and middle school. They were authorized by Central Michigan University and, earlier this year, CMU ended their contract because MTA students were showing poor academic progress and the district was over $16 million in debt. Unfortunately for everyone but CMU and the MTAs creditors, the contract that was negotiated between their creditors and Matchbook Learning, the schools management company, required that the bondholders and banks get paid back first and payments can be accelerated if the arrangement fell apart (which it clearly did.) The upshot is that the teachers who elected to have their paychecks spread out over the entire year (rather than the 10 months of the year when school was in session) were told they would not be receiving paychecks for the work they did. Matchbook Learning, which had been running the school since 2015, had a contract with the schools board that expired on June 30, George wrote in the email to teachers. Matchbook Learning never received and does not expect to receive any funds from the MTA Board, CMU or the bondholders to fund payment of any July or August payroll meaning Matchbook Learning is not in a position to make payment to you, [Matchbook Learning CEO Sajan] George wrote. Unfortunately, the closing of MTA has had a severe effect on everyone involved. We thank you for your time at MTA, sympathize and empathize with your position, and wish you the best in your future endeavors. [] He said Matchbook asked the school board to approve payments that would enable the teachers to get paid in July and August. The board knew it would receive payments from the state in July and August and authorized a portion of that money to go toward paying teachers. But the bondholders are priority creditors, meaning they get paid first. The bondholders have refused to allow money to go to the teachers, George said. [] The school borrowed about $16 million for building improvements when it first opened and only about $1 million had been paid off when the school closed last month, George said. Had the school stayed open, it would have continued to receive money from the state that could have been used to make payments on the debt. Without money coming in, the creditors moved to collect as much as they could. [] Some creditors of Michigan Technical Academy have ordered an acceleration of payments due on Academy loans, [Governor John Engler Center for Charter Schools at Central Michigan University spokesperson Janelle] Brzezinski wrote in an e-mailed statement. The acceleration of payments means that the Academy received no funds from the scheduled July 20, 2017 state school aid payment sent by the state of Michigan. The Academy board and the Center had been working with the Michigan Department of Education and Michigan Department of Treasury officials to ensure continued flow of state aid through July and August to allow the Academy to meet payroll and other outstanding obligations. Unfortunately, the decision of the creditors to accelerate payments under the Academy loans means that there will not be sufficient funds for the Academy to process the July 31, 2017 scheduled payroll and there may not be sufficient funds to meet the August payrolls. Teachers, who had already done the work, were out as much as $7,300. Matchbook Learning, which is owed $200,000 itself, has tried to appeal to their creditors to help the teachers get paid but that seems pretty unlikely. They would rather stiff some teachers than to lose any more money on their investment. Id say this is a cautionary tale about the disastrous trend of putting charter schools in charge of public education but weve gone far beyond cautionary tales. Its clear that far too many of these charter schools and their management companies, most of which are for-profit, dont see education as a social good for them to foster, nurture, and encourage. Rather, its just one more way to siphon public education tax dollars into the coffers of corporations. Just because Matchbook Learning is a rare charter management company that is not for-profit doesnt mean that they and their creditors didnt hope to enrich themselves by investing in education. The cognitive dissonance regarding education in Michigan (and elsewhere) is truly mind-boggling. It is a mindset that is promoted primarily by Republicans who have the inane idea that they can solve the problem of failing public schools by forcing them to compete on an uneven playing field with diminishing resources and that they can do it by spending LESS money on our childrens education. Its been proven time and time and time again. Gov. Rick Snyders school district for misfit schools the Education Achievement Authority is the most egregious and outrageous example of this and, for a time, Republicans wanted to make it a statewide program rather than just exploiting the brown children in Detroit. It was only because of the light shown on their colossal failures by Eclectablog and Michigan Radio and others that the push to expand the EAA was killed. But, as the situation with the Michigan Technical Academy shows, that fight is far from over. One more thing: MTAs website talks about their Student Centered Learning focus. Its the same approach taken by the grifters than ran the EAA and tried to do so on the cheap. The idea is a fine one IF YOU PROVIDE THE NECESSARY RESOURCES. But you simply cannot run a program using such a resource-intensive approach WITH LESS RESOURCES. It is not possible. And no amount of fairy tale thinking about how businesses can run things better than government or school districts will change that. This domain is pending renewal or has expired. Please contact the domain provider with questions. Comcasts Terms of Service for its Xfinity Internet service gives it, its agents, suppliers and affiliates the right to reproduce, publish, distribute and display the content worldwide. It also lets third parties copy, republish or distribute material posted or transmitted using Xfinity Internet. This would include confidential information sent by a company employee or an independent contractor to authorized persons over the service, independent security analyst Randy Abrams warned Tuesday. The excessively broad language of Comcasts ToS should be of concern, Abrams told the E-Commerce Times. There are no limitations or privacy controls with ISPs, he pointed out. The revised language in our Residential Services Agreement is meant to make it clear that we are expressly authorized by the customer to send around what the customer wants to send around where we are the conduit or intermediary, said Comcast spokesperson Jenni Moyer. We are not taking their content, she told the E-Commerce Times. Its not just Comcast. Googles ToS gives it and the third parties it works with a worldwide license to use, host, store, reproduce, modify, create derivative works, communicate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display, and distribute content users upload, submit, store, send or receive to or through its services. This license continues even if a user stops using Googles services but the rights then apply to the limited purpose of operating, promoting and improving Googles services, and developing new ones. Where Google and Comcast Differ Some Google services may offer users ways to access and remove content that has been provided to them, and some have terms or settings that narrow the scope of Googles use of the content users submit to those services. I have availed myself of these limitations at times, Abrams said. Google doesnt scan all traffic emanating from your computer, he pointed out. Most importantly, I do not have to use Google services. I can use 00000DuckDuckGo instead of [Google Search]. I can use Tutanota for email. Google doesnt have protected monopoly status in any market, Abrams observed. Due to government-granted regional monopolies, cable Internet service has one choice and no competition in many respects. The Danger of Sweeping Rights The way Comcasts and Googles ToSes are worded suggests that even if you store information with them they can use and repurpose it, said Rob Enderle, principal analyst at the Enderle Group. The wording suggests that these services own the content sent through their services, which would make defending intellectual property nearly impossible, he told the E-Commerce Times. Users would want to encrypt pretty much everything in order to protect it, Enderle suggested, but even if you do so, these firms would still have rights to the content if they could prove you used their services to store or transmit it. But Everybodys Doing It Like Google and Comcast, Facebook asserts that users give it a non-exclusive, transferable, sub-licensable, royalty-free worldwide license to use any IP content such as photos and videos they post on or in connection with Facebook, subject to their privacy and application settings. This IP license ends when users delete their IP content or their account unless their content has been shared with others and they havent deleted it. The online services assertion of rights over users content can be considered the industry norm and a frightening one, Enderle remarked. If these companies employ users IP, they could argue they already had a license to it. Authors and publishers couldnt defend copyrights and even patent rights could be considered assigned. That said, the contracts are so one-sided that I have severe doubts whether the courts would defend positions like this [in the U.S.], Enderle said. It would be like a bank claiming ownership of anything you put in its safe deposit box or had on you when you walked into the bank. Amazon has hailed its third-annual Prime Day promotion as its single biggest global shopping event ever. The sales event, held earlier this week, reached US$1 billion in sales, according to some analyst estimates, surpassing year-ago sales by 60 percent and beating the companys prior Black Friday and Cyber Monday records. More members joined Prime on this years Prime Day than on any other single day in the companys history, Amazon said, although it did not release any figures to back up that claim. However, tens of millions of the companys estimated 85 million Prime members made a purchase on the site on Prime Day 50 percent more than a year ago, according to the company. First and foremost, Prime Day is a retention and acquisition tool for [Amazons] valuable Prime program, in addition to being their biggest opportunity to sell their own products to customers, Clarus Commerce CEO Tom Caporaso told the E-Commerce Times. Smart Speaker, Smart Sales Amazon struck the jackpot with record sales of its Echo Dot mass market smart speaker which sold better than any other product on offer from all manufacturers and across all categories after it slashed its already low price from $49.99 to $34.99. Amazon sold seven times more Echo Dot devices on this Prime Day than on Prime Day 2016, it said. Prime Day also marked the biggest single sales day for Amazon devices ever, with record sales of Echo smart speakers, Fire tablets and Kindle devices. The discounted Element 55-inch 4K Ultra HD Smart LED TV Amazon Fire Edition, was the top selling television set in Amazon history, the company said, setting the record after only four hours. Tens of millions of customers made purchases on the Amazon app more than double the total who used it on last years Prime Day. Amazon sold 3.5 million toys on Prime Day. Amazons Prime Day performance demonstrated the companys ability to continue growing the customer ranks of its key Prime membership program, which offers users free two-day shipping, plus access to its increasingly important music, book and video libraries. The promotion of additional subscription-based services only furthers the membership push, whilst also upselling existing Prime members not using these services, noted Rob Nowell, senior marketing officer at BrandView. Third-Party Celebration Amazon reported huge sales from its third-party sellers, including small business and entrepreneurs, which indicates Amazon may be moving more toward becoming an online sales facilitator and less of a direct e-commerce seller, Nowell told the E-Commerce Times. Sales for Furbo Dog Camera, one participating seller, shot up by 500 times on Prime Day, with top sellers in four categories, including pet supplies and home monitoring equipment, the company reported. Site Sustains Amazons website performed well, in terms of keeping up with order demand, according to Catchpoint, a firm that monitors Web performance. Aside from a minor glitch in the first hour, Amazon had very fast load times despite the heavy traffic of Prime Day, Catchpoint CEO Mehdi Daoudi told the E-Commerce Times. This is especially notable because their sites were heavy with many product images, yet they still loaded faster than the competition. Amazons site loaded in 2.3 seconds on computer desktop sites, compared with 4.73 seconds for rival Walmart, according to Catchpoint. On mobile apps, Amazon loaded in 1.14 seconds, compared with 5.56 seconds for Walmart. Still, Amazon cannot take its success for granted, BrandViews Nowell warned, as rival retailers are pushing back. eBay, for example, has promised to match or offer lower prices on 50,000 items from a number of top retailers. 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International election observer missions have warned of election chaos risk if there is a perception that the electoral process in Kenya is mismanaged and the murder of a top electoral official has heightened tensions. South Africa's State broadcaster, SABC said the groups include the European Union, Kenya's National Cohesion and Integration Commission, as well as several local and civil society organisations have raised these concerns ahead of the August 8 elections. Church leaders in Kenya are urging peaceful voting and acceptance of results, in an effort to forestall violence during and after the general elections, the World Council of Churches said Aug. 3. Anxiety soared after a Kenyan election official was found murdered earlier this week. He was found dead from manual strangulation and had incision marks on his right forearm, Kenya's chief government pathologist told CNN on Thursday. The official, Chris Msando, was head of information technology for Kenya's Integrated Electoral Management System. His department is responsible for voter-identification and result-transmission technology for the national elections. The National Council of Churches of Kenya and the continent-wide All Africa Conference of Churches, Kenyan communities expressed their hopes for peace in the lead-up to the elections. On Aug. 8 more than 19 million voters will cast ballot to elect a president, senators, governors, representatives and civic leaders in hotly contested elections. This is the sixth general election since declaration of multi-party democracy in 1992 and the second under a new constitution agreed upon in 2010 - which is pegged on devolution of resources and good governance, Fredrick Nzwili reported from Nairobi for the WCC. President Uhuru Kenyatta, a Roman Catholic, the leader of the Jubilee Party and Raila Odinga, an Anglican who leads the National Super Alliance, an umbrella opposition coalition are the front runners. The elections have attracted eight presidential candidates. Analysts say the elections are significant for the citizens, but are also closely being watched in the region, where several countries are in conflict. For decades, Nairobi has acted as the pivot for UN and humanitarian agencies, which move humanitarian aid to the neighbouring countries in conflict. These include South Sudan, Somalia, Burundi and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) whose relief operations are managed from the city. CHURCH LEADERS URGE LARGE TURNOUT As the campaigns entered the final stretch, church leaders were urging a large turnout, but as they stress free, fair and credible elections, fear over post-election violence has also heightened. On July 2, the national churches council urged the frontrunners to calm the country, amid reports that residents fearing violence were moving from Nairobi, Nakuru, Eldoret and Mombasa cities to rural areas, where they hope they will safe. "They (front-runners) must assure the country that the heated messages expressed in campaign rallies are political, not a provocation to violence and ethnic division," said Rev. Canon Peter Karanja, NCCK general secretary in a statement. The churches have emphasized peace and security as paramount during and after the elections. They have reminded Kenyans of their responsibility to reject any provocation to incite violence. The churches, mosques and temples are neutral, according to the leaders, even though most leaders have a religious affiliation. The leaders have in the past been accused of accused of taking sides. "The Kenyan churches do not have candidates, but their followers will vote for candidates that are on offer - some of them who are church members," said Karanja in late July. Ten years ago, the role of the faiths as peace makers registered strongly, when the groups found themselves compelled to deal with the aftermath deadly post-election violence, in which thousands were displaced from their homes. At least 1,200 people were killed and over 600,000 forced into camps during violence that occurred between 27 December 2007 and 28 February 2008. The violence ignited after Mwai Kibaki, the incumbent president, was declared the winner and the main opposition leader Raila Odinga rejected the result as rigged. Now, Kenya cannot afford a repeat of the violence, the leaders say. "It is very unfortunate that exercising of our democratic right, turns out to be such a fearful event," said Rev. Connie Kivuti, general secretary of the Evangelical Alliance of Kenya (EAK). "The right to make a democratic choice and decision ought to be done without fear," stressed Kivuti. The principal of a co-ed school accused of banning boys and girls from playing with one another in the playground has spoken out. Don Bosco Catholic Primary School parents claimed that their children were called to an emergency assembly yesterday and instructed not to socialise in the playground during breaks. One parent said there had been no consultation about the new rules from the school and that he had only found out about it after his 11-year-old son told him. He told us that the senior school students werent allowed to gather in groups with the other gender at recess or lunchtime anymore, the parent told 3AW. Child psychologist Michael Carr-Gregg contacted the radio program this morning to say the move was a possible violation of the UN declaration on the rights of the child. However, the schools principal, Mark Linden, denied that children were told to separate based on gender. Rather, the policy was only designed to separate certain groups of students due to a schoolyard conflict. It was about trying to deal with playground issues, Linden told Neil Mitchell on 3AW. (the rule) was done around the issue of the problems that were gender based, he said. Linden said he had since clarified with the students that they can can choose to play with whomever they like at any time and there was no segregation in the school. The school has been contacted for further comment. A renowned education expert has spoken out where Australias education system is going wrong, and what can be done to improve it. Speaking at the annual Ann D Clark Lecture to more than 700 teachers and principals in Catholic Education Diocese of Parramatta on Tuesday night, Finnish education expert, Dr Pasi Sahlberg, said the success of his countrys schools is based on more than academic achievement. Its not about human capital, or what teachers know, or how well they can teach. Its about social capital and how teachers engage with one another and the students, he said. The culture of the school is most important. I would spend more money on developing social, collaborative, and networking skills among teachers themselves. Primary school teaching is among the most popular professions in Finland, with more than 8,000 applicants competing for just 800 university positions each year. Sahlberg said the competition between teaching graduates is harder than even law or medicine, yet about a third of the successful applicants score below 60% in their final high school exam. Universities are accepting school leavers with lesser results because they are great athletes, musicians, actors, community leaders, those who have great personalities and many other things and have the ability to engage students, he said. Sahlberg said that unlike Australias NAPLAN testing for Year 3, 5, 7 and 9 students, the Finnish education system has only one final year exam for students aged 18 or 19, and there were no progressive measuring tests during a students time at school. It is simply not true that we are ditching traditional subjects, such and as literacy, maths and science, he said. We have curriculum framework across the nations 3,000 schools, and each one writes its own curriculum. Teachers write it and we trust our teachers to do this. He added that every school in Finland must include one period of time every year to incorporate all subjects, and without a set time. Sahlberg pointed to the importance of homework, government spending on education and being original thinkers by not relying too heavily on the Internet, which he said can deter the urge for people to be investigative. Dont imitate, but create. Ive seen people from Singapore or Canada come to Finland try to copy our system but a lot of our ideas wont work in their countries. Its better to create your own models for your own different circumstances, he said. And dont just download facts discover them. We are at a watershed moment culturally in the world of fake news. There is no investigation and no reading. We have to encourage a culture of understanding. Catholic Education Diocese of Parramatta executive director, Greg Whitby, told The Educator that rather than making schools better, we need to completely transform them. Whitby said education authorities should stop focussing on NAPLAN and PISA results and copying from other jurisdictions. We need to take the competition factor out of the race because it is clearly not working, he said. Whitby added that quality teaching was vital in the transformation of learning in schools and governments needed to invest more in teaching collaboration. The days of a teacher standing in front of classroom and talking most of the time is simply not engaging. Students say its boring. We need teacher collaboration because teachers working together, rather than on their own, makes learning engaging, he said. Politicians and communities need to trust teachers and schools as we move forward into the 21st century. Honduran producers to pilot GAA's Biosecurity Area Management Standard Grupo Granjas Marinas S.A. and Seajoy (Deli) Group have reached a landmark agreement in Choluteca, Honduras, to collaborate in piloting the Global Aquaculture Alliance's (GAA) draft Biosecurity Area Management Standard. The two shrimp producers have a number of farms adjacent or in close proximity to each other in the Gulf of Fonseca and therefore face similar disease challenges. "The draft standard is an excellent platform for us to base our collaboration and examine the mutual benefits we can achieve. Our success will attract more producers to join and we welcome that," said Brad Price, vice president of Seajoy (Deli) Group. Shrimp production in Honduras is based in and around the Gulf of Fonseca and the majority of producers operate in a semi-extensive fashion with very large open water farms. Victor Wilson, chief executive of Granjas Marinas, said: "The Gulf has a unique ecosystem, and we have evolved and will continue to evolve our production system to take account of the local conditions and disease threats. We can't eliminate pathogens given the large scale of our farms. We have to concentrate on shrimp adaption and breeding resistance." "This is a real test for the GAA draft standard. This is not an environment where a biosecurity 'fence' is feasible or even desirable," Iain Shone, development director at GAA, said. "This pilot is exactly what we need to ensure we are developing standards that are able to add value across all production systems in the world of aquaculture." The draft BAP Biosecurity Area Management Standard focuses on reducing disease through the implementation of cohesive area-wide risk assessments and management. The standards apply to groups of cooperating farms that nurture a collective, risk-mitigating model of good governance across a defined aquaculture area. They are not species-specific and cover all production methods, including flow-through, partial exchange, and closed or recirculating water systems operated in ponds, cages, net pens, tanks, raceways or closed-containment vessels. The standards went through a public consultation in late 2016 and early 2017, and are currently being introduced in Chile, Colombia and Honduras. Further pilots maybe considered. - GAA HYNDMAN, Pa. Nearly three dozen cars of a freight train carrying hazardous materials careened off the tracks in a small Pennsylvania town Wednesday, igniting fires in some rail cars and a garage and forcing emergency officials to evacuate the whole town. No injuries were reported. At least 32 cars on the CSX freight train derailed about 5 a.m. in Hyndman, about 100 miles (161 kilometers) southeast of Pittsburgh, said CSX spokesman Rob Doolittle. The train was traveling from Chicago to Selkirk, New York. At least one car containing liquid petroleum gas, and one containing molten sulfur leaked and caught fire, Doolittle said. A residential garage struck during the derailment also caught fire, officials said. It was not immediately known what caused the train to run off the rails, and the fire continued to burn hours after the derailment. The only confirmed structure fire was at the garage, but video from the scene seems to show more extensive damage. Aerial footage of the derailment shows a number of cars stacked nearly perpendicular to the tracks while others landed in a burning, zig-zag pattern in a residential area where some structures seemed crushed and other ablaze. Hyndman resident Jim Shaffer told the (Cumberland) Times-News he was awakened by the sound of crashing rail cars. It woke me up. It was louder than a thunderstorm, he said. I heard the cars banging into each other. Then I heard the fire whistle. Bedford County 911 coordinator Harry Corley said officials ordered everyone within a 1-mile radius of the derailment to leave hours after the derailment. The order encompasses the entire town of Hyndman, and residents have been directed to a local church for help with lodging and food. Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf, in a phone interview from the evacuation center several miles away from the train, said some neighbors have refused to leave their homes. But everyone knows where they are and theyre safe at this point, Wolf said Wednesday afternoon. Only a few people were in the church, as most evacuees chose to go to hotels or the homes of friends or relatives, he said. Wolf said officials were conducting air and ground studies to determine possible health effects. He said area residents have a lot of uncertainty and everyones hoping for the best, praying for the best. Asked about the risk of a propane explosion, Wolf said, Theres always that possibility. I think, from what I hear, the potential of that happening has diminished somewhat. A number of roads are closed, and some flight restrictions are in place. Amtrak suspended train service between Pittsburgh and Washington, D.C., providing buses to take passengers between the two stations. CSX apologizes for the impact that this incident is having on the residents of Hyndman, Doolittle said. Hyndman is a town of just over 800 residents near the Maryland border. CSXs top priority is to work cooperatively with first responders and other officials to protect the publics safety, and CSX personnel are on the scene assisting first responders, providing information about the contents of the train and expertise on responding to railroad incidents, Doolittle said. 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Weather Weather Donald Trump is a winner. Just ask him. After all, he won the presidential election. They dont get much bigger than that. And winners find it distasteful to hang with losers. And that is exactly what someone filled his staff with. Big-time losers. Which is why they are getting replaced faster than lead changes in a NASCAR race with staggered starts and the cars outfitted with 12-ounce gas tanks. The Republican Senate similarly failed the president in their gazillionth attempt to undo ObamaCare. And although he cant fire them, he did intimidate and insult and threaten members of his own party through a series of devastating tweets. You could say, his adept contempt for their inept attempt was to a major extent not exempt of torment. But you probably wont. After kicking around the idea of how to replace ObamaCare for seven years, Republicans found themselves bereft of ideas and unraveled to where their mantra of Repeal and Replace shrank to a faint echo of Repeal Now and Then Maybe Replace with Something Else Later On. Maybe Not. With the emphasis on the not. In a rare televised 2 a.m. vote the GOP Senate proved unable to convince three of their own to vote on something called the Skinny Repeal. And it all crashed down to the Senate floor with a thud that could have stirred Everett Dirksen out of his slumbering repose. The Skinny Repeal was a last ditch effort after the Fat Repeal was discarded for lacking public support. Neither did the Plump, Portly, Rotund or Tubby Repeal display much appeal amongst people destined to lose coverage. And nobody ever talks about the Pudgy or Obese Repeals, which were mothballed without ever seeing the light of day, presumably gathering dust in Senator Ted Cruzs closet. The most dramatic moment in the demise of the Skinny Repeal was not the final count, 51 nays to 49 yeas, but the way it went down. Senator John McCain strode briskly forward and cast a decisive thumbs- down, mercifully sending a sleepy Vice President Mike Pence home, who was only hanging around to break a tie. Way past his bedtime. Not surprisingly, McCains motivation is now being questioned. Is this a return to his normal irascible renegade self, or is he purposely sticking it to a President he sees as morally vacant, or after being diagnosed with brain cancer, did he find it repugnant to leave a publicly paid hospital stay in his home state of Arizona, to fly on the taxpayers dime to throw millions off health care so rich people could have more money? Hes not talking. Since the Skinny Repeal failed, Senator Mitch McConnell reportedly has scuttled attempts to fashion a Scrawny Repeal much less a Slender, Gaunt, Malnourished, Emaciated or Anorexic Repeal. And the Cadaverous Repeal is dead on arrival. The upshot being, the Majority Leader might be forced to actually compromise with Democrats. His worst nightmare come true. Then, next week, locusts. President Trump immediately tweeted his preferred remedy is to let ObamaCare implode. Because having a leader willing sacrifice constituents to prove a point is one sure way to Make America Great Again. And Donald Trump will continue to be a winner. Perhaps the only one. Room for Manx patients opens at Liverpool airport A quiet room for patients travelling back to the Island from medical appointments in the UK has opened at Liverpool John Lennon Airport. Members of the Manx Breast Cancer Support Group, who provided funding for the facility, have officially opened the room. The area is designed to give those waiting for flights back to Ronaldsway with a comfortable seat and somewhere quiet to wait. The facility includes a room with a drinks machine, a separate area for people to sit quietly and a prayer room. Lok Sabha passes NABARD (Amendment) Bill, 2017 Published: August 3, 2017 The Lok Sabha has passed the National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (Amendment) Bill, 2017 by voice vote. The Bill seeks to amend the NABARD Act, 1981. NABARD is responsible for providing and regulating facilities like credit for agricultural and industrial development in the rural areas. Key Features of the Bill Increase in capital of NABARD: The Bill allows Union Government to increase capital of NABARD to Rs 30,000 crore from Rs. 5000 crore. Further, it allows Union Government to increase it to more than Rs 30,000 crore in consultation with the RBI, if necessary. Transfer of the RBIs share to Union government: The Bill provides that the Union Government alone must hold at least 51% capital share of NABARD. Further, it transfers share capital held by the RBI valued at Rs 20 crore to the Union Government. Currently RBI holds 0.4% of the paid-up capital of NABARD and the remaining 99.6% is held by the Union government and this causes conflict in the RBIs role as banking regulator and shareholder in NABARD. Adds Micro, small and medium enterprises (MSME) terms: The Bill replaces the terms small-scale industry and industry in the tiny and decentralised sector with the terms micro enterprise, small enterprise and medium enterprise as defined in MSME Development Act, 2006. Further, it allows NABARD to provide financial assistance to banks if they provide loans to the MSMEs. Consistency with the Companies Act, 2013: The Bill substitutes references to provisions of the Companies Act, 1956 with references to the Companies Act, 2013. It includes provisions dealing with definition of a government company and qualifications of auditors. Month: Current Affairs - August, 2017 Topics: Bills and Amendments CLAT Lok Sabha NABARD NABARD Amendment Bill RBI Latest E-Books BJP 14 : ; 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 teenager from Witham has admitted she beat up her mother because she did not side with her in an argument. Phoebe Hayward, 19, pleaded guilty to the assault by beating of Jane Hayward, on June 23, when she appeared before Chelmsford Magistrates' Court yesterday morning (August 2). She also pleaded guilty to one count of criminal damage, in that she smashed a mobile phone belonging to her brother, Alexander Hayward, following an argument on June 24. Outlining the facts of the case, prosecutor Grace Court explained how the altercation between parent and child erupted after the defendant accused her mother of not siding with her following a row with her brother at their home in Leicester Court , Silver End. After following her mother upstairs to her bedroom, Hayward proceeded to push her onto the bed and pinned her down in a struggle which lasted for around a minute. The victim suffered soreness to the arms and discomfort to the hips as a result. "She has remained living in the family home since the incident," said Ms Court. "The mother, in her statement, says she does not support prosecution." The day after the fight, the defendant became involved in a disagreement with her brother, exacerbated by the fact she thought he was recording her, said Andrew Clowser, who represented Hayward. "Her relationship with her brother is some what strained," he said. "She was concerned he was recording their disagreement on the phone." This argument led to Hayward smashing the phone, causing 360 worth of damage . Mr Clowser also reaffirmed that Hayward, who is unemployed, had the full support of her mother who sat outside the courtroom. Following a short adjournment to allow a pre-sentence report to be compiled, a member of the probation service told the court that Hayward had no previous convictions and sometimes volunteered at a charity shop, aspiring to one day work in retail. It was also revealed that she had a difficult start to life, having moved to the United States only to be forced to return to Witham aged nine when her parents' relationship broke down. This led to resentment towards her brother who remained in contact with their father. Passing sentence, District Judge John Woollard said: "Whatever is going on within your family household, the act of pinning your mother down on the bed and assaulting her is not acceptable." Hayward was given a six month community order, ordered to carry out 10 rehabilitative activity days and fined 10. In addition, she was ordered to pay 50 towards prosecution costs and an 85 statutory surcharge. No compensation was ordered as Mr Clowser made assurances that the damage caused to Alexander Hayward's mobile phone had been paid for by his mother. Judge Woollard ordered that the total sum of 145 be deducted from the defendant's universal credit payments. Google is reportedly pitching a new YouTube deal to publishers. According media reports, Google is offering publishers more control over their ad inventory when they use YouTubes native video player. To provide even more of an incentive, content owners will gain access to the player and accompanying analytics for free. YouTube has generally restricted sale of ads in its video player so this move will be of some interest to publishers. On the flip side, some publishers might also be wary of how much more influence they would want to give to Google. We spoke to a few publishers and content creators in India but it seems the model is yet to be introduced in the country. Nickhil Jakatdar, CEO and Founder of VuClip, told us that the move was long overdue and is part of YouTubes play, to remain relevant in the premium content space. All the premium content publishers were taking their content off of YouTube while the big video publishers will want to create their own portals, this should help with the next tier of content companies. I think the success of this model in the US will trigger them replicating this in India soon after, he told us, while adding that as very few publishers are allowed to do direct ad sales on their YouTube videos, the move will be viewed favourably by publishers. Obviously, the main reason YouTube is taking this step is to counter the growing dominance of Facebook in the online video space. Facebook has been aggressively courting content creators and publishers while also releasing new video tools. Jakatdar agreed that something like this will help YouTube to combat Facebook video on more equal terms. However, Facebook is being equally aggressive with the same CPs so this is going to be a tough fight between them, he said. Usually, the larger publishers tend to develop their own in-house video solutions while the mid-range or smaller ones prefer to use solutions like Brightcove and Ooyala. Using an independent video platform is a preferred solution as it ensures that there is some mediation of monetisation and traffic, said Swapnil Shrivastav, CTO (AdTech and Colombia) at Times Internet. Videos as a platform have a lot of promise and Googles products are always of high quality, he told us, adding that this might be of interest to some publishers. Manan Kotak, Partner and Digital Head at Chitralekha Group, feels if this model does come to India, it will be good for the mid-sized publishers. Its a good push by YouTube to further integrate their services with publishers and provide them with further control over video ads. According to me it is good news for mid-sized publishers, for servicing their advertisers, providing YouTube analytics (which will be trusted more by them) and to continue having the convenience of YouTube video searchability, shareability and overall experience. The question is whether the big/top publishers would be willing to adopt YouTube (video player) and share revenues, he said. Read more news about (internet advertising India, internet advertising, advertising India, digital advertising India, media advertising India) Just wanted to say my wife received her visa today, and I have stalked this forum a lot for help and advise. So thank you to everyone who contributes. It is a very harsh process but try and stay positive, we were convinced it would be refused because she didn't have Ukvi approved language test but some how it was approved! So keep believing! Thanks Dear all, Need some help for Canada Immigration for NOC 2171 I am a senior software consultant with a total of 7+ years of work experience I need to apply for NOC 2171 My profile is, 1) I have done BSc Hotel Management 2006-2009 (WES completed Canada equivalency : Bachelor degree 3 years) 2) Worked in a BPO full time - 2008 - 2010 (started this job before I completed my graduation) 3) Since 2010 working in IT - (IT analyst/software engineer/software consultant and now senior software consultant) Queries: a) Am I eligible to apply with NOC 2171? b) Should I consider showing the BPO experience with code 1211 in my profile as it coincides with final year of my graduation Please help me by providing me with the detailed guidelines do my education fall in noc code 2171 for assessment. thanks in advance. harneet85 said: Can experience individual provide a timeline for OINP turn around , or time taken till Visa grant Click to expand... No, such things are impossible.It's impossible to know when the province will issue a nomination.It is impossible to know when the Express Entry draw will be low enough to include a particular CRS threshold to receive an Invitation to Apply (ITA).It is impossible to know how long it will take for the government to process an ITA.Unlike in Australia, the Express Entry program is continuous intake; there are no quotas and Rounds of Invitation draws are not on a fixed schedule. XDoodle****** said: The girl next door said: I laughed alot ..thank you for responding ..see in these situations you need a smart women ..from my side ( i come from a family that has an open mentality ..they all studied abroad ) what i did ..is ..i introduced him to my brothers..as if he's my colleague in work..so now..if we are going out..we take him with us..extra brother in the road haha ..you guys need to stop overthinking ..would a question harm a girl? Ask her.. is it fine to have your number? Just a question!.. My cousin she married an American man *so handsome *..so I'm so jealous of her , not fair Click to expand... I think you just proved Stevesolar's point, what will happen when your brothers find out this guy is a lover and not a "colleague" and "extra brother"? By the way, I do find Emrati women attractive, but would never ask one out for this very reason unless we were out of country. Did your cousin meet her husband in the US or here? I think you just proved Stevesolar's point, what will happen when your brothers find out this guy is a lover and not a "colleague" and "extra brother"?By the way, I do find Emrati women attractive, but would never ask one out for this very reason unless we were out of country. Did your cousin meet her husband in the US or here? Click to expand... Thank you for respondingThats the issue , you guys always take the worst case scenario .. i have been in a relationship for 7 years..and my family never knew about it , we know how to manage , maybe the only thing he would be retrieved from is i cant live with him ( as a girlfriend) ..but other stuff , its all available..If the girl is worth waiting for? Can he not sacrifice a little ?Ok let me be honest with u.. the british guy was soo into me...but when i started showing him..that im not easy to get ( not sleeping in the first day..not even the second ..and maybe not fourth! ..it all depends on me ..feeling that he's the right guy for me...i dont do one night stands..i consider myself more classy..he started confronting me that all the ladies that he has been with...slept in the first date.. i told him sorry it just goes against my beliefs ..And all I'm asking is to wait ..( if your thinking i made him wait for a year..!..no it wasn't even a month ! ..our first date was after 3 weeks of texting..So he said i dont think its gonna work..let us be friends because we have different cultural backgrounds..And i starting saying your having fun with me right ? And in science! Opposite attracts ! ..it will just take extra effort for us to adapt with the new things to come..To be honest it made me sad..i never told him that..but i felt he let me go too soon , Because i had my own beliefsAnyways about my cousin , first she meet him .. here in dubai ..he was a tourist ( in a gym ) ..and then he went back to America .. so she convenienced her family that she would like to work there for a year to gain experinceAnd she did...i think its Faith or destiny what brought them together ..And she married him ..her father wasnt pleased in the beginning..( her father is a minister !) ..but now she has two beatiful kids ...blonde..tan skin.. arabic features ..haha wearing candoras( the white arabic clothing) ..so cute Country Afghanistan Albania, People's Socialist Republic of Algeria, People's Democratic Republic of American Samoa Andorra, Principality of Angola, Republic of Anguilla Antarctica (the territory South of 60 deg S) Antigua and Barbuda Argentina, Argentine 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Ireland United States Minor Outlying Islands United States of America Uruguay, Eastern Republic of Uzbekistan Vanuatu Venezuela, Bolivarian Republic of Viet Nam, Socialist Republic of Wallis and Futuna Islands Western Sahara Yemen Zambia, Republic of Zimbabwe Mexicos envoy to the U.S. said he fears that the states so-called sanctuary cities bill could lead to racial profiling and incite violence against both legal and illegal immigrants in Texas. We do have concerns that legislation such as SB 4 can result in racial profiling and can result in a general environment of aggression against the immigrant community, even those who are here absolutely legally, Geronimo Gutierrez, Mexicos ambassador to the U.S., said after a meeting at the Mexican Consulate General in San Antonio Wednesday. Gutierrez was there as part of a working group created to educate Mexican immigrants in Texas about the new law and their rights. We have already expressed that concern to the state authorities, he said. The new sanctuary cities law, which takes effect Sept. 1, allows local police officers to question detainees about their immigration status and penalizes law enforcement and public officials who dont comply with federal immigration law. Gov. Greg Abbott and other proponents say the new law will improve public safety and prevent a patchwork of policies dictating whether or not officers can check immigration status. They say a precedent for the law was set by a similar measure in Arizona that largely survived a Supreme Court challenge. Opponents argue it equates to racial profiling and will hurt the Texas economy as groups move events elsewhere and companies yield to pressure to pull their business from the state. Reform Immigration for Texas Alliance released a study Tuesday that placed the cost at $13.8 billion and 248,000 lost jobs. Police chiefs in the states largest cities argue the law strips power from local officials to run their departments as they see fit. Its only one of the multiple messages being sent that says were going to separate some people from other people, which is the opposite of the way we are as Mexicans, as Latinos. Were very inclusive, said Lionel Sosa, an author and longtime Hispanic media strategist. Sosa joined Gutierrez and Reyna Torres Mendivil at a separate panel discussion sponsored by the San Antonio Chamber of Commerce and the San Antonio Hispanic Chamber of Commerce. Any legislation that tries to divide people in my opinion is not good legislation. Torres, Mexicos Counsel General in San Antonio, said the law would only further discourage Mexican nationals from traveling and spending money here and in other Texas cities. Although reports so far are anecdotal, border officials complain tourism and cross-border shopping excursions by Mexicans are down some 30 percent since President Donald Trumps election. It serves no one if there is a negative image in Mexico concerning Texas, she said. Gutierrez also addressed last months tragic smuggling attempt that led to 10 people dying after being transported to San Antonio from the border in an overheated trailer. San Antonio was recently the place where a very terrible incident took place, and irrespective of the details, this is a human tragedy, he said. And neither, I think, the government of the United States nor the government of Mexico can or should feel satisfied that the way we approach an issue of shared responsibility, which is managing the migration phenomenon between the nations we cannot be satisfied, I dont think, with what is going on. 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. When asked about the Mexican governments position on the U.S. governments decision to detain adult survivors of the trailer incident, Gutierrez said, They should be treated as victims. They are victims and accordingly they should be given every possible relief that is permitted by law here. Although the first months of the Trump administration have been a roller coaster, Gutierrez gave hope that the North American Free Trade Agreement will survive in some form. I think that weve reached a point in which both sides think and believe the other side is trying to reach a deal, Gutierrez, who served as executive director of the San Antonio-based North American Development Bank before being tapped as ambassador in January. But a deal needs to be a deal in order to work for everybody. He sounded notably more optimistic than in February, when he said the relationship between the U.S. and Mexico was at a critical point. LBrezosky@express-news.net Texas has long been a leader in energy production, which puts our politicians in a unique position when it comes to climate change. While politicians need to protect one of their state's booming industries, they also must balance the fact that at least some of the energy Texas produces is harming the environment. For Texas, the question of strict regulations on coal-fired plants has some of the most severe consequences, but 69 percent of the state's adult population still believes they should be imposed, according to a climate change opinion map put out earlier this year by the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication. It doesn't help that the state is often cited as having a lot of climate change deniers in office. But that contradicts the belief of many of the state's population - 69 percent of Texans believe global warming is happening and 57 percent of them are worried about it, according to Yale's data. The map can be broken down by state, congressional district, metro area and county and lists the opinion of adults in each area about things like climate change, what causes it, who is impacted by it and whether anything should be done about it. You can read about how Yale collected its data on the website's methodology tab. If it continues, according to NASA's Earth Observatory, global warming could impact rainfall patterns, melt ice caps and glaciers and alter the ranges of infectious diseases. Some of those things are already happening, the site says. Many of Texas's representatives have made their views on climate change - or at least energy production - public on their website. A few have successfully avoided the topic, or kept their views opaque. Dallas Republican Rep. Pete Sessions was criticized in 2016 for trying to pass a resolution that would recognize magic as an art form but not recognizing climate change as a global threat, but quoting him on his environmental views is a tough task. Others have made their views on climate change known. For example, in a section of blake.com, Rep. Blake Farenthold (R-27) calls global warming "a scare tactic used by groups with a political agenda." The site was updated as recently as 2016, but it isn't the website he currently uses as an elected official. In Farenthold's district, 68 percent of adults believe global warming is happening, 57 percent are worried about it and 65 percent of them support strict CO2 limits on existing coal-fired power plants. San Antonio Democrat Rep. Lloyd Doggett also has a strong opinion about climate change. After President Donald Trump announced the United States' withdrawal from the Paris Climate Agreement, Doggett updated his website to reflect his views on the subject. "...I strongly oppose President Trump's disastrous choice to withdraw from the Paris Climate Agreement," his website reads. "He abandons American families to the growing harm of climate change and surrenders leadership on renewable energy to foreign competitors, like China and Germany." According to Yale's map, 76 percent of adults in Doggett's district support regulating CO2 as a pollutant and setting strict limits on coal-fired power plants. Rep. John Carter R-31 wrote a piece on his website in 2012 called The Return of the Warmers, in which he wrote, "We do face a global threat. But it's not global warming, it is global tyranny from this crowd of liars the Warmers." The piece was removed, but it lives on in the internet archive. Sixty-seven percent of Carter's constituents believe global warming is happening and about 56 percent of them are worried about it. The map itself has a lot to offer in terms of the nation's views on climate change. For example, 52 percent of Texas adults believe global warming is caused mostly by human activities, which is just below the national average of 53 percent. Less than half of all Americans believe that most scientists think global warming is happening. Most Americans support regulating and even limiting CO2 production. Questions like whether human activity causes global warming and whether scientists can be trusted on the subject vary greatly between folks all over the country. AUSTIN A bill that would stabilize health care costs for tens of thousands of Texas retired teachers for the next two years sailed through the House on final reading Wednesday, although its future is far from certain in the Senate as the political drama between the two chambers intensifies. Lawmakers in both Republican-led chambers have said the state should bear some of the rising costs for premium, deductible and out-of-pocket health expenses facing the states retired teachers, who are expecting to see their health care expenses soar in 2018. However, the two sides are at odds about how to pay for it. This is the most important bill I think we have this session, said Rep. Dan Huberty, a Republican from Humble who chairs the House Public Education Committee. Beginning in 2018, retired teachers under the age of 65 could see skyrocketing health care costs under a plan passed into law earlier this year attempting to shore up funding of the Texas Retirement System. After receiving a flood of calls about the spike in costs, lawmakers agreed to devise a plan to lessen the blow, such as by reducing the deductible for non-Medicare retirees from $3,000 to $1,500 and by reducing premiums for spouses by $100. In total, the legislation would change health care costs for more than 100,000, Rep. Trent Ashby, a sponsor of the House bill said. Since lawmakers returned to the capitol city for a 30-day special session, both the House and Senate have passed bills that would inject more than $212 million into the states Teacher Retirement System to pay for those changes over the next biennium. While the two chambers agree on how much to spend, they are at odds about where to get the money. The House wants to pay for House Bill 20 out of the Economic Stabilization Fund, otherwise referred to as the states rainy day fund, which is normally reserved for one-time expenses, like construction projects and paying down debt. During the regular legislative session, lawmakers spent $75 million from the fund to rehab the Alamo. Although the House voted 135-13 in favor of the bill to lower health care costs, conservative lawmakers were hesitant to support a plan that would tap the states piggy bank for recurring expenses. Its really designed for when you have shortfalls as opposed to, Well, we didnt manage things quite in the budget the way we should have, said Rep. Bill Zedler, R-Arlington, who voted against the bill. The Legislature should use more restraint, he said. Its a philosophy echoed in the Senate which opted in Senate Bill 19 to defer payment of the plan by skipping a payment to Medicare organizations at the end of the biennium in 2019. The state would catch up on payments in the next budget cycle. Ashby, a Lufkin Republican, banker and sponsor of the bill said hed prefer the state avoid paying for the increased teacher benefits with the equivalent of a credit card. Lets pay cash ... rather than incur more debt, Ashby told lawmakers on the House floor. Maybe its just my country common sense, but if you have money in the bank, lets pay for it. Both the House and Senate bills have passed both chambers. While the Senate and House are philosophically divided about how to pay for the program, the Senate version is coupled with a plan to offer teachers a pay bump which has so far failed to gain traction in the House. Relations between the two chambers have soured during the special session, with House Speaker Joe Straus pushing back against major pieces of Gov. Greg Abbotts special session agenda, a slate of 20 mostly ultra-conservative issues backed by Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick. With two weeks left in the special session, Straus and Patrick are in a political standoff. They have traded public comment blaming each other for refusing to meet in person to talk about the special session. And several bills, including must-pass legislation to continue operations of the Texas Medical Board, have yet to pass despite both chambers agreeing on identical versions of the bill. Retired teachers found themselves frustrated this summer after learning their health care costs would climb next year after more than a decade of remaining unchanged. Retirees under 65 years old were being asked to pay for a larger part of their care in order to prop up the fund, which was facing an expected $1.5 billion shortfall by 2019. Lawmakers in the regular session unanimously approved a plan to begin shoring up the fund by increasing retired teacher premiums, deductible and out-of-pocket expenses, increase contributions from the state and local school districts and dip into reserves. The states share totalled $350 million. The Texas State Teachers Association supports the plan to lower some of those rocketing costs, said Clay Robison, spokesman for the organization. This will lessen the increases in health care costs that were in store for retirees. It is not the final answer to the financial problems with TRS-Care, but it gives the Legislature time to come up with a more permanent solution during the 2019 regular session. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate AUSTIN It was bipartisan storytime on the Capitol lawn Wednesday as two House members read the Dr. Seuss environmental tale The Lorax to dozens of school-age children who showed up to oppose legislation that would overturn local tree preservation ordinances. Sitting under the shade of a historic oak tree on the east side of the building, 10-year-old Selis Tufekci held a blue-and-pink sign that read, We speak for the Texas trees. Trees hold the ecosystem, birds, so much life, said Selis, who came from Houston with a few classmates and her teacher. If you cut them all down, like in The Lorax, all those animals have to leave. A Senate-passed measure would bar cities, including San Antonio, from enforcing rules that prevent homeowners and small developers from cutting down trees on their property. Gov. Greg Abbott, who set the special session agenda, has advocated overturning such ordinances, which he has called socialistic. The House version, which mirrors a bill Abbott vetoed during the regular session because he said it didnt go far enough, would let people plant new trees to offset fees. Democratic Rep. Carol Alvarado of Houston, who read The Lorax alongside Republican Rep. Wayne Faircloth of Galveston, said the House-approved measure represents a compromise among builders, city governments and environmentalists. Thats what the House has an appetite for, Alvarado said. I think that the Senate bill, that I think is very overreaching and has a lot of pre-emption in it, wont stand tall. Faircloth, who has several 150-year-old oak trees on his property, echoed that sentiment. We just feel like the people that live and work and invest their time and raise their families there, they know best how to order their own lives, he said. More than 50 cities in Texas have regulations that preserve trees. San Antonios ordinance requires that new development meet certain canopy cover requirements,which vary depending on the property use. If the rules arent met, property owners can pay a fee or plant new trees. Following the reading, which was organized by Texas Campaign for the Environment, attendees sang Big Yellow Taxi and later delivered 60 copies of The Lorax to lawmakers. AMorris@express-news.net This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate Trying to balance revenue concerns with protection of a military base, city staff urged council members Wednesday to abandon part of an annexation plan that would bring a number of small commercial corridors and enclaves into San Antonio. The discussion happened amid an ongoing fight at the Legislature in Austin, where lawmakers are pursuing bills that would give residents the right to vote on whether they want to be annexed by large cities such as San Antonio. Several council members Wednesday referenced that debate, which would completely overhaul Texas annexation law. At their June 29 meeting, the last before San Antonio council members left for their July summer break, staff recommended the city annex nine areas that together total almost 20 square miles. Individually, each is far smaller than other annexations the city has more recently pursued. COMMENTARY: Annexation is taxation without representation On Wednesday, city staff slightly changed course, recommending that the council only annex five of those areas: one along Babcock Road; commercial corridors along Potranco Road and West Loop 1604, near Joint Base San Antonio-Lackland; an area near Vance Jackson and Loop 1604; an area near Foster Road on the Northeast Side; and one near Interstate 10 East and Loop 1604. All but one of those areas will result in a revenue gain for the city over 20 years, or wont result in San Antonio losing money during that time. The city would lose more than $86 million over two decades by adding the Potranco Road-West Loop 1604 corridors. Deputy City Manager Peter said staff wants to annex this area anyway because of its close proximity to Lackland. The city has said it wants to retain the ability to manage development and land use near military installations, a major issue surrounding the legislation being floated in Austin. COMMENTARY: Abbott wrong about annexation and military bases However, the city recommended against annexing a tiny commercial corridor along I-10 West that isnt far from Camp Bullis, a large Army training facility, but would result in the city losing $72 million over 20 years if it were added. Zanoni said the city would be able to protect a larger area near Lackland than the one near Camp Bullis. We can only do so much, he said. With our budget we have to make a decision. Staff also recommended the city no longer pursue annexation of commercial corridors near Culebra Road and Alamo Ranch Parkway, and Wiseman Boulevard in fast-growing, far West Bexar County. The city would lose $25.7 million on those annexations over 20 years. Parts of a ninth area that the city considered for annexation is actually within the jurisdiction of Hill Country Village, a suburban city along U.S. 281 surrounded by San Antonio. Zanoni said the city is talking with Hill Country Village about possibly taking over that area. It wasnt immediately clear Wednesday which direction council would take. Mayor Ron Nirenberg said he was surprised the I-10 West commercial corridor had a negative revenue result. He also remained concerned that the San Antonios ordinances limiting development over the Edwards Aquifer Recharge Zone are more lax than the rules in the its extraterritorial jurisdiction, a 5-mile area that extends out from the city limits. He said he was comfortable pursuing the staffs recommendation as long as the area near Lackland was included. Immediately after the meeting, the city held the first of several public meetings on the annexation plan. All nine areas were included in the presentation. Seven people spoke, and six were against it. One of them was Brian Chessman, who is in the process of closing on a home hes building off Wiseman Road in one of the areas staff has recommended the city not annex. Chessman factored county taxes into his decision to build in this new neighborhood for his family of six. If I have to pay city taxes, I will likely not be able to close on this home, Chessman said. Two hearings are scheduled for Wednesday: at 2 p.m., in front of the citys Planning Commission; and at 6 p.m., again in front of City Council. Zoning Commission will vote on the annexations Aug. 15. The city has scheduled a meeting for 7 p.m. Aug. 10 at Fair Oaks Ranch City Hall, because residents in the I-10 West corridor petitioned for a hearing in their area. Zanoni said this meeting could be canceled if the council agrees not to pursue this annexation area. City Council will make its final decision Aug. 31. That means these annexations will not be affected by the legislation under consideration in Austin. In Austin on Wednesday, more than a dozen homeowners, many from Bexar County, showed up at a four-hour House Land and Resource Management Committee hearing on HB 6, one of two bills that would give residents the right to vote on annexation. They warned annexations threaten to increase their tax bills without adding any benefits, and said homeowners deserve a vote on whether to be incorporated into a neighboring city. I feel like were getting bullied, said Mike Mouser, fearful that San Antonio may soon annex his home in the Alamo Ranch development. Although staff in San Antonio recommended Wednesday against annexing a smaller commercial corridor near Mousers master-planned community, officials have not yet decided whether to pursue annexation of the larger, residential Alamo Ranch area. HB 6 was widely opposed by municipal officials, including two from San Antonio, who testified they need annexation to manage city growth and, more important, to control development around military bases. While the bill, by Rep. Dan Huberty, R-Houston, would allow for a half-mile buffer around military bases, San Antonio officials said that distance should be extended to five miles as recommended by a Joint Land Use Study. The military just wants to be able to train safely for their servicemen and -women and to protect the community, said Juan Ayala, San Antonios director of military affairs. The committee did not take action on HB 6 onWednesday. HB 6, and SB 6, a similar bill in the Senate, would invalidate existing nonannexation agreements San Antonio has in place, including one the council adopted in March with residents who live along U.S. 281. If the bills pass, it would not affect the smaller annexations council talked about Wednesday. Because each area has fewer than 100 residential properties, state law allows the city to move forward with the annexation process quicker, before any of the new laws go into effect. However, the bills being considered would eliminate this ability in the future. If either bill passes, the annexation of a 15-square-mile area along Interstate 10 West in North Bexar County will likely go to a vote. The council voted last September to annex this area, home to about 13,000 people, but the annexation wont be complete until 2019, making it subject to any laws passed this summer. VDavila@express-news.net This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate A proposal to permanently paint a rainbow crosswalk on Main Avenue in recognition of San Antonios commitment to the LGBT community was passed unanimously Wednesday afternoon by the Governance Committee. District 1 Councilman Roberto C. Trevino, who filed the request in June, left the meeting in high spirits saying there was a lot of enthusiasm for the project in both the community surrounding the crosswalk and the committee itself. There were some concerns about the cost; theres also some concerns about safety. I think weve answered those questions, Trevino said. I feel really good about the message were sending. At a total cost of $68,000, city officials said the crosswalk will be installed as part of a pilot program in either late November or early December. Deputy City Manager Peter Zanoni said $20,000 will come from the citys general fund, which is equivalent to the cost of a traditional crosswalk with light reflective material. The remaining $48,000 will be raised by the District 1 community, officials said. No fundraisers were immediately announced, but Trevino said the community is in the process of organizing them and that several businesses have pledged their support. Zanoni said the cost covers labor, materials and equipment, which includes prefabricated sheets that are adhered to the ground via heat. Once the crosswalk is in place, the city will conduct a six-month-long study to see what, if any, safety concerns arise and look at maintenance cost. Mike Frisbie, director of the citys Transportation and Capital Improvements Department, previously had said the crosswalk could pose a danger for pedestrians who might attempt to take selfies with it. These concerns are valid, which is why we agreed a pilot program is fine, Trevino said. With all due respect to the director of TCI, we think this is going to move forward and its going to actually increase public safety, he added. There are several cities that weve looked that that have had this for years, Zanoni said. Theres no incidences of any worse pedestrian or vehicular accidents than a regular white crosswalk. The results of the completed study will be submitted to the transportation committee. They will decide the policy and process for similar artistically themed crosswalks should any other district communities wish to have their own. There have been requests over time of other things to be placed in a crosswalk like famous quotes or passages from famous people, Zanoni said. This will be the first time weve done them. Exactly how the crosswalk will look is still up in the air for example, whether the rainbow will be horizontal or vertical on Main but that detail will be decided by the community, Trevino said. In a chalk version of the rainbow crosswalk painted last month, Trevino said an impromptu blue line was placed for fallen San Antonio Police Department officer Miguel Moreno, one of two officers critically wounded in a June 29 shootout near Main and East Evergreen Street. It was not immediately known if that blue line would be in the final design of the crosswalk, but Trevino said the fact that community members included one in their early version was a testament to the spirit of the community. I think what were going to see is a great example that will be set for the city and maybe the entire state of Texas on why these things are done and how communities that feel disenfranchised and maybe even unsafe can still make such compassionate and strong statements of inclusivity for our public safety officers, Trevino said. JBeltran@express-news.net Twitter: @JBfromSA This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate WASHINGTON Legislation that would scrap long-honored policies for legal immigration in favor of judging applicants on how they could help America won a ringing endorsement Wednesday from President Donald Trump. With the White House as their stage, Republican Sens. Tom Cotton of Arkansas and David Perdue of Georgia proposed a merit system for would-be immigrants and a reduction by half in the current 1 million grants of permanent legal residence annually. The bill also sets a ceiling on refugee resettlement at 50,000 a year. The legislation resembles Trump proposals during his presidential campaign and suggest an effort by the White House to return immigration to center stage after recent policy failures, chief among them an inability to repeal the Affordable Care Act. Introducing the senators, Trump asserted that the legislation would be the most significant reform to the immigration system in a half-century. For decades, the United States was operated and has operated a low-skilled immigration system, issuing record numbers of green cards for low-wage immigrants. This policy has placed substantial pressure on American workers, taxpayers and community resources, the president said. This competitive application process will favor applicants who can speak English, financially support themselves and their families and demonstrate skills that will contribute to our economy, he said. The Reforming American Immigration for Strong Employment (RAISE) Act would overhaul a system based heavily on family ties in which many immigrants come to the United States to join people already living here. It would eliminate green cards for extended family, which already have decades-long wait times for immigrants from some countries, including Mexico. Low-skilled, temporary visas would not be affected, nor would the minor siblings of U.S. citizens and the spouses and minor children of citizens and green card holders. Rep. Joaquin Castro, D-San Antonio, said Trump has vilified immigrants to our nation, but claimed he only sought to curtail undocumented immigration. This new proposal is based on the false premise that all immigrants, including those who enter the country legally, are a drag on our economy. It runs counter to the spirit of our nation and everything that makes the United States a world leader. The Senate sponsors, who had met with Trump while drafting their legislation, said they had modeled their proposal after programs in Canada and Australia. Perdue said current policies diminish American competitiveness, asserting that more than half the households of legal immigrants receive social welfare of some sort. Weve got to change that. We business guys, Mr. President, you and I, understand we need a new approach. We need to fix this immigration system, he said. U.S. Rep. Lamar Smith, R-San Antonio, has been working closely with the senators and intends to sponsor identical legislation in the House. In a statement, Smith referred to U.S. immigration policy as the most generous in the world. However, our current system fails to prioritize immigration based on skills and abilities. Less than 15 percent of green card holders are admitted based on education and skills. The House version of the legislation stands the best chance of success. But the Senate, where a filibuster-proof 60 votes is needed for controversial matters, poses a significant hurdle. Republicans hold a 52-48 Senate majority. The legislation spells out a complicated point system under which English-speaking people with advanced education degrees and those with wealth and extraordinary achievement would score the highest. A Nobel Laureate would receive 25 points and the winner of an Olympic medal 15 points in competition for points-based immigrant visas. An applicant who agreed to invest $1.8 million in foreign currency in a new commercial enterprise, maintain that investment for three years and be active in managing the business would be allocated 12 points. But if that investment dropped to $1.35 million, just six points would be awarded. Reaction to the plans split along predictable lines. Washington-based Federation for American Immigration Reform, which advocates curbs on people entering the United States, praised the legislation for ending chain migration stuck in a time warp for the last 50 years. Dan Stein, the groups president, said in a statement: Nothing underscores the failure of our current immigration system like the constant clamoring from the business sector for more skilled workers, while we import over 1 million immigrants each and every year, with nearly one-quarter lacking even a high school diploma. San Antonio immigration lawyer Gerardo Menchaca called the point-based system redundant. All those people already speak English, he said of employment visa recipients. They all support themselves. They all have skills and can contribute to the economy. The bill comes on the heels of the smuggling tragedy in San Antonio that left 10 people dead. After 100 people were herded into a trailer in Laredo and driven to San Antonio, causing dozens to be hospitalized, some placed blame on an immigration system that they said doesnt provide enough legal opportunities to come to the U.S. The bill does nothing to address the unintended consequence of our current immigration laws, such as the death of the 10 immigrants at the hands of the human smugglers last week, Menchaca said. The law also would eliminate the visa lottery system, which issues up to 50,000 green cards a year and is intended to offer residency to immigrants from countries that dont send large numbers of people here through family visas. That sort of comes out of nowhere, Menchaca said. Thats a program Ive never heard anyone complain about, and people complain a lot about immigration. Geronimo Gutierrez, Mexicos ambassador to the U.S., was asked about the legislation at a news conference Wednesday morning San Antonio. He said he hadnt seen it, but added that he thinks its good the debate is reignited about the need for immigration reform here in the United States. Im pretty sure the Mexican government would prefer working closely with the United States in trying to find common ground with respect to immigration. Gutierrez also said, I believe the average American wants to find and establish a better migration policy and legal framework. I believe that the average Mexican understands some of the concerns that are voiced by the American people regarding migration. I think the average Mexican wants to have a useful and law-abiding mechanism to better manage the migration phenomenon. Critics contended the curb on refugees runs counter to tradition of offering safe haven to people fleeing violence and persecution. Among critics was HIAS (founded as the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society), which asserted the United States and the American Jewish community both were founded by immigrants and refugees. Restricting the future of these populations in America will only restrict the future of America itself, HIAS president Mark Hetfield said in a statement. Buch reported from San Antonio. blambrecht@express-news.net This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate Raul De La Garza first tried to join the military right after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, but there was just one problem. He was only 14. I heard it on the radio, so I decided I have to join any kind of armed forces to help the United States, he said. That was his first try, but not the last. De La Garza kept pushing his reluctant father, Antonio, to sign consent papers, arguing the next year when he was 15 that he just had to enlist, saying, I need to help out. I need to do something for my country. In time he got his way, enlisting in the Navy at 17. Seventy-four years later, former Petty Officer 3rd Class Raul De La Garza sat in a wheelchair as Rep. Joaquin Castro presented him with eight medals, service ribbons and pins for his service aboard the USS Nevada in World War II and another ship in the early 1950s. It was a moment hed awaited for a long, long time. De La Garza had never gotten his medals, even after serving two hitches in the Navy. Now 90, he maintained a military bearing as Castro stood before him. Frail and in declining health, he thanked the congressman as a crowd of close to two dozen family members and friends looked on. Its been many years, but now he got them, Castro, D-San Antonio, told reporters after the ceremony. De La Garzas path to war is a classic American story. Ready to fight after Dec. 7, 1941, he quit school in the eighth grade and went to all the recruiting stations. They all turned him down, saying he was too young. He was very disappointed and devastated about it, said his wife, Dora De La Garza, 74, of San Antonio. He would keep on asking, Come on, Dad, sign for me, sign for me. No, no, no. And finally they said OK. Antonio and Felicitas De La Garza had reservations, but their persistent future petty officer proved persuasive. When they did sign the paperwork, a man-to-man talk followed over a cold one. He said, Now that you joined the Navy, youre big enough to drink your first beer, Dora De La Garza said. Goodbyes were said, and the young De La Garza boarded a train bound for San Diego, California, and basic training. The tracks it was on took him past the West Side neighborhood he grew up in, prompting tears of sadness. I think I made a wrong decision, he thought. Once in the Navy, though, he adapted. A mustachioed De La Garza, wearing his white service uniform, appears tough and confident in a photo of him with a group of sailors. Aboard the Nevada, the lead battleship in its class when commissioned in 1914 and a survivor of Pearl Harbor, he served off Iwo Jima and Okinawa. In the battle for Okinawa, the ship came under attack by a Japanese kamikaze aircraft. De La Garza said he shot down three planes while manning a 40 mm anti-aircraft gun. One suicide plane made it through, killing 11 men. Like many of the 16 million people who served in World War II, De La Garza did his bit for the country, came home to work at an uncles dry cleaning shop in his case and started a family. He never talked much about the war, but that changed over the past few months. Memories of the kamikaze attacks werent far from mind. He came out and told me what he did, and what he saw, and how it affected him, said his younger brother, Fred De La Garza, who was 4 years old when Raul went to boot camp. When they had an air attack, there were kamikazes at Iwo Jima or Okinawa, and like he would help with the wounded and the dead, he added. He said he shot down three aircraft. Back home, with the war behind him, De La Garza endured the back-to-back deaths of two young children. Raul Jr. died of polio on Aug. 3, 1950, at the age of 1. A baby girl born months afterward, Sylvia Ann, died the following summer. The family doesnt know the cause, other than her death was natural. Crushed by their deaths, De La Garza re-enlisted on Nov. 17, 1951, and served aboard the USS Kirkpatrick, named for a chaplain killed on the USS Arizona at Pearl Harbor. He came home for good just before Thanksgiving 1955, having earned the Navy Combat Action Ribbon, China Service Medal, American Campaign Medal, and Asiatic-Pacific Campaign Medal with three bronze service stars. In the ceremony just before noon at the federal building, Castro also presented De La Garza with the Navy Occupation Service Medal with an Asia clasp, World War II Victory Medal, Honorable Service Lapel Button for World War II, and the Navy Honorable Discharge Button. The military was forever a sore subject for Felicitas De La Garza. Her son, Jerry De La Garza, 68, of San Antonio, said she didnt talk much about his brothers service and had a visceral reaction to Jerrys Army uniform after he returned from Vietnam. When I got home from the service she disposed of it, he recalled. I dont know if she burned it or not. I guess she had too many people in the military. Wearing a USS Nevada cap, Raul De La Garza sat quietly in his wheelchair after the ceremony ended at the federal building in Hemisfair Park. At one point, he proudly displayed a framed black-and-white photo of him in his Navy uniform, his mother in the middle and Fred, then around 4 or 5, next to her. In the twilight of his life, De La Garza has coped with high blood pressure, heart problems and dementia, and is in a wheelchair. When night comes his wife works a puzzle with him so he can relax. She asks if he has prayed yet and then tells stories of her childhood. There I go, jumping up and down in the tractor with little pony tails and skinny skinny, almost holding onto the tire or the wheel or what, Dora De La Garza said, and he starts laughing and laughing and laughing, and he says, OK, then its time to go to sleep. sigc@express-news.net For more stories about military issues see our Military City section. Its often been said that extinction is forever, but sometimes that label can be applied prematurely. Consider the 7.5-inch-long Tachira (TAH-chee-rah) Antpitta. It has not been seen since the mid-1950s when ornithologists first recorded and described it. The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) lists the species as critically endangered, and many feared it was extinct. That natural history mystery has now been solved, and the news is good. Search An international team of researchers working deep in the mountainous forests of western Venezuela have rediscovered the Tachira Antpitta, a plump, short-tailed brown bird not seen since it was first recorded in the 1950s. Last year, scientists from the Red Siskin Initiative (RSI), a conservation partnership between the Smithsonian and several scientific organizations in Venezuela, organized a team to search for the antpitta. The team was led by Jhonathan Miranda of RSI and included colleagues Alejandro Nagy, Peter Bichier of the University of California at Santa Cruz, and Miguel Lentino and Miguel Matta of the Coleccion Ornitologica Phelps (COP). The American Bird Conservancy (ABC) provided financial support as part of its ongoing Search for Lost Birds. Challenges The team set out in June 2016 knowing that several factors were likely to make the antpitta especially challenging to find if in fact it still existed. The species inhabits dense undergrowth at altitudes of 5,000 to 7,000 feet in a rugged and hard-to-reach region of the Andes. It is difficult to see, much less identify visually. This antpitta differs in coloration only subtly from related species. On the other hand, antpittas are easier to hear than to see, but with no recordings of their voices, nobody knew what to listen for. From personal experience, I know that antpittas are notoriously difficult to see in their preferred dense jungle habitat. In 2011 a local guide led me on a jungle hike to see antpittas in Ecuador. We saw four different species. However, if I had been alone, I doubt I would have found even one. Discovery Fortunately, the team searching for the Tachira Antpitta in Venezuela had one advantage. They knew where to look. We followed the route described in the earlier expeditions field notebooks to locate the original site of the discovery, Miranda said. To reach the remote location, part of what is now El Tama National Park, the team traveled by foot on steep and narrow Andean trails, with a mule train to carry their gear. From their campsite, the team hiked two hours in the dark to reach appropriate habitat at dawn, the best time to hear the birds sing. The first day there, Miranda and Nagy heard the distinctive song of an antpitta they had not heard before. We were thrilled to re-find the Tachira Antpitta during our first day in the field, said Miranda, and we think they persist in more places we have not yet searched. Hope Over the next week, the team was able to confirm the mysterious song as that of the long-lost Tachira Antpitta. They photographed it and recorded its voice for the first time. The rediscovery provides hope and inspiration that we still have a chance to conserve this species, said Daniel Lebbin, ABCs vice president of international programs. We hope this rediscovery will lead to improved management of and attention for protected areas like El Tama National Park. Jhonathan Miranda and his RSI colleagues have resolved one of South Americas great bird mysteries, and we hope their findings will contribute to a renewed effort to conserve this species, said Lebbin. In the coming months, the team plans to publish the full details of their findings in a scientific journal, including how the Tachira Antpittas voice and appearance differ from other antpittas. Additional fieldwork is necessary to learn more about this mysterious bird. Similar habitats can be found nearby in Colombia, and the species might also occur there. This study will help future researchers determine the species full range, ecology and habitat requirements, and how best to ensure its survival. Hello again! Back when I had more hair than now, I can remember implementing The Food Security Act of 1985. One of the major changes to farm programs was the introduction of Conservation Compliance on Highly Erodible Land and Wetlands. Eligibility for FSA (ASCS then) and NRCS (SCS) programs required producers to have a conservation plan in order to plant on Highly Erodible Land (HEL) and had restrictions on planting on soils determined to be wetlands. This was a hot topic then and, as an agency, we watched over this like a hawk. When producers picked up a new farm, we would require them to meet with the local district conservationist and get a plan, specific to them, for planting on this type of ground. We set flags so that payments couldnt be made until this act was completed. About 96 percent of the farms nationwide got plans and everybody felt good about this, including Congress. All the conservation problems were solved. Really? In time, rules were changed and someone with a grade scale higher than mine made the decision that once a plan was written it would stay with the farm and it became the producers responsibility to find out what the plan was and if he couldnt follow it, he was responsible to get a new one. Producers were also allowed to follow their own conservation system. Each year, producers would come in and sign their AD-1026 forms, a certification that they were in compliance with Conservation Compliance on all the land they operated. It became almost a cursory signing. No one was ever really spot checked in depth. Lets fast forward to today. When corn and beans reached $7 and $14 a bushel, respectively, a lot of ground that used to set idle started getting farmed. Farmers had money for tile and places that used to be too wet started getting farmed. Ground was being cleared and trees were being dozed out and new ground was coming into production. This also seems to correspond with the extreme downpours that we now seem to get. It no longer rains on my farm, it pours. At the same time, someone in Washington decided that more spot checking for conservation compliance needed to be done and nationally they started sending down selected farms. Guess what? We started finding producers out of compliance. Penalties for violations can be anywhere from hurtful to downright pocket book breaking. The new farm bill (2014 crop year) also increased the ante by requiring that not only are FSA and NRCS programs subject to this provision, they have also added producers who get crop insurance. Failure to comply on a farm that has 200 acres of corn and a disastrous yield and losing your crop insurance payment is no joy in my book. What you should know Here are a few tips to keep in mind to help avoid this situation. Many counties within the Muskingum Watershed Conservancy District watershed have been getting grants to fall seed rye on highly erodible land. Bean stubble and corn silage ground doesnt provide much residue and planting a fall cover crop is a good start to keeping in compliance. Contact your local SWCD office to see if they offer this program or encourage them to. Also, before creating new drainage systems, leveling, dredging, land clearing and stump removal should be evaluated by NRCS before doing as such. Maintaining existing drainage systems is OK, but improving them without consulting your local NRCS is dicey at best. Talk with your local district conservationist about planting on highly erodible ground. Corn and bean rotations are popular and no-till is great for this situation, but sometimes its not going to keep you in compliance. A few weeks ago, there was an FSA Andy article on CRP and, if I recall, waterways might have been mentioned. Thats the only way I know of stopping gully erosion. I know landowners dont want to sign up for stuff like that, but truthfully, its the best thing they could do for their land. They get cost-share payments for installing them, yearly payments and you stay in compliance. What a deal! Thats all for now, FSA Andy In May, I did my first riparian planting as a watershed coordinator. Prior to working in the Captina Creek watershed, I worked as a watershed coordinator in the Grand Lake St. Marys and Wabash Watershed. The stance on riparian areas is different in the flat parts of Ohio. East and west So much so, that when I began working in the rolling Captina watershed, someone asked me what I thought after seeing my first tree. I laughed and replied that things certainly are different here. Of course, we have trees on the west side of Ohio, not nearly as many in the eastern and southern parts, but the land serves a different purpose. Flat land allows for expansive fields, while the hilly land allows for untouchable ravines and hollers. But I am not here to talk about geography. Rather, I want to talk about the differences I have experienced in trying to implement a riparian project on the west and east sides of the state of Ohio. Riparian First, some basics. A riparian area is an area of land adjacent to a river or a creek. Riparian areas are important for a variety of reasons: to act as a buffer zone between the water and the land use, provide terrestrial habitat, enhance aquatic habitat, and reduce soil erosion and undercutting of banks. As a landowner, when a soil and water conservation district contacts you, whether by phone, in person, or by mail, these are probably some of the thoughts you have. What do they want now? I never got any letter. I dont want government money. My creek bank is fine, but what about this other non-related issue? What you may not realize is the work that goes into picking your property as an ideal site for, in this case, a riparian enhancement project. Research I spent hours looking at current and historical imagery on Google Earth and referencing various sections in the Captina Creek Watershed Action plan for areas identified when the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency did a comprehensive study on the watershed for stream attainment statuses. I spent time working with GIS data to determine low percentages of canopy cover and areas of high-risk habitat impact and researching tree species ideal for certain riparian uses. On the western side of the state, sites were looked at based on erosion potential. Because of the large expanses of land, fields are cultivated up to the edge of the stream bank (the last point when equipment can safely be maneuvered). There are varying reasons why this happens: the shade of the riparian areas decreases crop yield, I have viable ground, Im going to use it, and its been this way forever. On the eastern side of the state, to which I am still adapting, sites were evaluated on lack of tree cover. Because of the topography of the land here, riparian areas are utilized as pasture ground (or a field if the parcel is big enough) or kept clear in lower parts of yards. The reasons are about the same here: I have ground, Im going to use it, and the ground is more productive in the bottom lands. It is difficult to convince a farmer to take land out of production in any part of the state which I get. Grant After all those hours, what did I learn from my first project? I worked closely with the Captina Conservancy and we were very grateful to receive a grant for this project. Our intention was to do a meaningful restoration of riparian areas, but our funds could only get us so far. After doing some site visits and windshield tours of other locations, we realized that several sites needed work beyond the capabilities of our funds. Were talking earth work to counter some extensive erosion. It wasnt worth anyones time and money to try to establish vegetation in some of those locations only to have it washed out in the next heavy rain, which there has been no lack of this year. Finding landowners Reaching out to land owners proved difficult as well. We attempted to involve landowners who had not been targeted in prior projects, and we also placed articles in the local papers to help call out to anyone we might have overlooked. A letter was sent to identified landowners with a detailed project plan along with a map of the ideal riparian focus areas. With no response and the timeline constraints of the grant funds, we resorted to enhancing known riparian areas that were getting thin. This was a first-time project for all involved partners and has provided a valuable learning experience for future riparian-focused projects, especially plantings. So, when you get those letters from your Soil and Water Conservation District or Land Conservancy, dont disregard them. Your land is important to us and was identified for a purpose. You might not know it, but you might be sitting on top of an ecological gold mine. Or we might have been trying to protect you from paying for land that is slipping away with every rain. UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. A team of undergraduates from Penn State Universitys Block and Bridle and Dairy Science Clubs competed in the American Society of Animal Sciences (ASAS) Academic Quadrathlon competition July 7-8, at the 2017 ASAS annual meeting and Trade Show in Baltimore. Team members were Amber Gabel Smith, Newport; Alexa LeCrone, Huntingdon; Amy Middleton, Mill Hall; and Sarah Shoup, Trout Run. They were accompanied by Ben Williamson, instructor of Animal Science. The competition is designed to be a comprehensive academic overview of animal sciences, with a team of four working together in each of the four segments, which include a lab practicum, written exam, quiz bowl and oral presentation. Penn State placed first in the practicum and the written exam and placed second in the quiz bowl and in the oral presentation. They won the opportunity to represent the northeast at the American Dairy Science Association Northeast Student Affiliate contest held in Rhode Island in February. Teams from California State University-Chico, Kansas State University and Texas Tech University also competed in the four events. The written exam covered the comprehensive body of work students learned in their collegiate career including genetics, physiology, reproduction, nutrition, animal products and animal management. Teams had one hour to complete the test. In the laboratory practicum, team members demonstrated their ability to perform physical skills, working at each station for 15 to 20 minutes as an entire team. Each of the eight individual activities had a different emphasis involving a species or a disciplinary area. For the group oral presentation, teams selected one of five current topics related to animal agriculture and had one hour to prepare a 12-minute educational presentation. The quiz bowl contained wide-ranging questions about all domestic animals, livestock and companion animals, as well as questions on nutrition, genetics, reproduction, meat science/muscle biology, physiology and lactation. Following the competition, the students participated in the ASAS annual meeting, which is an international scientific conference with a focus on Animal Science and Technology: Ensuring Food Security. Ms Kershaw hoped the results of the study would be back in time for the Spring Field Day on September 21 and invited all farmers in the Great Southern region to consider joining or at least engage with them on the cooperatives design. But this new one will now do all the spraying along with spreading and all the odd jobs. But realistically now so many farmers need only short-term seasonal staff, their employees need to be more able to come in and be productive within days, which was a big expectation for all involved, and as there was no opportunity to recoup training, they had to start again the next season. Now in its fourth year, the competition prize will award at least 10 young rural Australian women with a chance to rub shoulders with politicians and chief executives, leadership and public speaking training, a tour of Parliament and much more. Everything we have achieved has exceeded my initial expectations and it makes me feel like Im doing something to help, and hopefully Keren, Juan and the kids can look around and see that everyone is doing this because we love them and want to support them. Only subscribers with PAID Print or E-Edition subscriptions enter here to gain access. If you are not a Current Paid subscriber do not go through this portal. Please return to the subscription page to purchase one of our offers. Thank you! A blog about life under, and resisting, a dictatorship Preparing teens for their futures with soft skills Businesses of every size and industry continue to identify labor shortages as a top challenge across the country and... Where to find non-partisan ballot information Thank you for your non-biased bullet points explaining the three state ballot proposals in "A look at the three state... The air quality in the mid-Willamette Valley worsened Thursday as smoke from a wildfire burning near Mount Jefferson, as well as smoke from more distant fires in British Columbia, continued to move into the region. The Oregon Department of Environmental Quality rated the air quality Thursday afternoon in Corvallis and Albany as unhealthy. The environmental agency had rated the air quality in the area as moderate Wednesday, but the rating declined Thursday morning. The wildfire near Mount Jefferson, known as the Whitewater fire, tripled in size in 24 hours, surging to 4,579 acres as of 11 a.m. Thursday, according to the U.S. Forest Service. The fire grew as a result of 100-degree temperatures and low humidity. High temperatures and stagnant air also are causing increased levels of ozone in the atmosphere, which is contributing to the poor air quality, said Shawn Weagle, a meterologist with the National Weather Service in Portland. The Department of Environmental Quality advised Oregon residents to avoid strenuous outdoor activity in smoky conditions. People with heart disease, asthma or other respiratory ailments, or who are over 65, have a higher risk of illness from wildfire smoke, the agency said. Small children and pregnant women are also at increased risk. The National Weather Service expects the air quality could improve in the region on Friday. Winds should push smoke from the Whitewater fire east, the Weather Service said. But its unpredictable how much the fire will burn and how much smoke will be put out, Weagle said. Those are the wildcards. Even if there is less smoke in the air, the hot, stagnant conditions will ensure poor air quality in the region, at least for a time, he said. Its still going to be a little bit unhealthy for people until we get some light sea breezes, but that probably wont happen until next week, Weagle said. Wednesday and Thursday brought triple-digit temperatures to the mid-Willamette Valley. The Weather Service reported high temperatures for Wednesday and Thursday, respectively, of 106 and 104 degrees at the Corvallis airport. Both were records for those dates. The Hyslop weather station between Corvallis and Albany recorded a high of 104 on Wednesday, breaking the record of 101 set in 1939. But Tuesday's high at Hyslop was 99, short of the 102 record set in 2015. Hyslop temperatures typically are cooler than those recorded at the airport. Temperatures are expected to cool some, but will still be in the 90s through early next week, Weagle said. I think were done with the hottest part of it, he said. Valley residents should continue limiting their exposure to the outdoors for the next few days, especially if theyre sensitive to smog and heat, Weagle said. With all of these days in the 90s and even 100s, it sort of takes an accumulative toll on people, he said. People really need to take it easy and drink a lot of water. Before they know it well return back to typical Pacific Northwest weather. A local manufacturer that wants to upgrade its pollution control equipment will have to wait at least two more weeks for a decision. The Corvallis Planning Commission continued a hearing on a request by Hollingsworth & Vose for a Willamette River Greenway conditional development permit for its glass fiber plant at 1115 SE Crystal Lake Drive. After a request was made to hold the record open for additional testimony, Planning Commission Chair Jasmin Woodside announced that the hearing would be continued until Aug. 16. H&V wants to replace the old wet scrubbers at its plant with new dry filtration equipment that the company says will do a better job of controlling air pollution. The company also proposes to make visual improvements to its plant, including new landscaping, screening walls, ornamental fencing and sidewalks along Crystal Lake Drive. Some new pollution control equipment already has been installed. But because part of the project is within the Willamette River Greenway, a special land use designation aimed at protecting the river, the company needs a special permit to do the rest of the work. The plant, which makes glass fibers for use in specialized battery separator and filtration applications, has long been a sore point for residents of the adjoining neighborhood, who worry about glass particles and other emissions from the operation. Those concerns have intensified since December 2015, when the state Department of Environmental Quality determined that the facility had been operating under the wrong class of permit for nearly 20 years and had been emitting much higher levels of carbon monoxide and fluoride compounds than its permit allowed. DEQ fined the company but allowed it to continue operating at existing production levels while it began the process of applying for the proper permits. Ken Fausnacht, vice president of operations for the Massachusetts-based company, told the commissioners that the project would significantly reduce particulate and fluoride emissions while slashing water use and virtually eliminating the steam plume coming out of the plants smokestacks. "We've come out and we've listened to the community and we've tried to address those concerns," Fausnacht said. "Our intent and we know we have to continue to work at that is to be a respected and valued member of the community." Ten people came to the microphone to testify in support of the application, including several employees of the company. Four people spoke against the request, and two gave neutral testimony. "We are good, hard-working people who take pride in doing our best all the time," said H&V employee Tom Doverspike, flanked by two co-workers. "This project represents one more way this company is striving to be a good neighbor and a good corporate citizen." But Tony Howell, speaking in opposition, raised questions about whether it made sense to allow the company to make improvements to the site when it's still going through a remedial permitting process with DEQ. "I think it's awkward to approve a new permit when they're in violation of their old one," he said. The hearing will resume at 7 p.m. Aug. 16 at the downtown fire station, 400 NW Harrison Blvd. The public will have the chance to submit additional written testimony until Aug. 9, and the applicant will have seven days after that to submit its written response. Comments can be emailed to aaron.harris@corvallisoregon.gov. Three people were killed on Highway 20 west of Philomath near milepost 31 on Wednesday afternoon in a head-on collision involving three cars, according to a report from Oregon State Police. A 2015 Chevy Equinox SUV was traveling westbound, followed by a 2005 Honda Odyssey, when the Chevy was struck head-on by a 2003 Dodge Dakota that had crossed the center line. The Honda was unable to stop and crashed into the other two vehicles. The Dodge caught fire and was quickly engulfed. Its two occupants were pronounced dead at the scene. Their identities were not released pending identification. The occupants of the Chevy have been identified as Michael Steenkolk, 52, and his passenger, Kathleen Olive, 48, both from Toledo. Steenkolk was pronounced dead at the scene, and Oliver was airlifted to Legacy Emanuel Hospital in Portland with life-threatening injuries. Lucy Jaeger, 17, the driver of the Honda, and her passenger, Joseph Schmidt, 20, both of Corvallis, received minor injuries and were transported by ambulance to Samaritan Hospital in Newport for evaluation. Highway 20 was closed for about three hours. OSP was assisted by Lincoln County Sheriff's Office, Toledo Police Department, Toledo Fire Department, Newport Fire Department, Oregon Department of Forestry Fire, Pac West Ambulance, LifeFlight, the Lincoln County District Attorney's Office, the Lincoln County Medical Examiner's Office, AA Rowley's Towing, Bateman's Mortuary and the Oregon Department of Transportation. Authorities do not yet know the cause of a fire that destroyed a historic three-story home at 480 E. Ash St. in Lebanon on Sunday night. Lebanon Fire District Division Chief Jason Bolen said the investigation began on Monday morning once the fire was completely out and continued until Tuesday afternoon. Members of the Linn-Benton Fire Investigation Team as well as a deputy from the Oregon State Fire Marshal's Office were called in Tuesday to assist with the investigation. This was because most members of the Lebanon Fire Investigation Team were fighting the 25-acre Mount Hope fire, which had started Monday evening. That fire is also under investigation. "We were able to determine that the fire originated in a breezeway behind the garage." Bolen said. "However, there was just not enough remaining evidence to point to the exact cause." Investigators did learn that homeowner Joel Larsen, 73, had been using a tailgate Traeger pellet grill set atop a metal filing cabinet for about 30 minutes when he noticed an orange glow from his seat inside the home. He looked out the back door of the house to see the attached breezeway, which shared a wall and roof with the detached garage, fully involved in flames. The house and garage were built in 1912. The two were connected by a covered breezeway, and initial evidence indicates that the fire started under the covered area to the main home where it then entered the structure via the eaves and soffits. Homes built in the early 20th century often used balloon construction, which featured walls with no fire stops between the basement and the attic space. Once fire enters the walls, it can quickly engulf an entire home in a matter of minutes. Two firefighters and a resident were injured during the July 30 incident, according to a Lebanon Fire District news release. Authorities received a 9-1-1 call at about 10:44 p.m. that evening for a garage fire in the 400 block of Ash Street. The first crews were on scene within minutes. One firefighter was injured when he was struck in the helmet by a flying portion of a home oxygen cylinder that had ruptured. Another firefighter suffered a back strain while battling the blaze. Both were treated and released. Three residents were in the home at the time of the fire and all were able to evacuate safely before firefighters arrived. One of the residents was treated at the scene for smoke inhalation. Crews remained on scene until 3:30 a.m. Monday, mopping up and extinguishing hot spots. Fire departments from Albany, Sweet Home, Brownsville and Tangent provided mutual aid during the fire. HOODOO Fueled by nearly triple-digit temperatures and high winds, the Whitewater fire in the Mount Jefferson Wilderness area 20 miles east of Detroit exploded to at least 1,500 acres between Tuesday and Wednesday. The rapid expansion of the fire concerns Linn County Commissioner Will Tucker, who has been monitoring it since it was reported July 23. It moved mostly west overnight, Tucker said. I plot it every day and I am concerned because fires that come out of wilderness areas are often larger and more fierce than if they had started in a nonwilderness portion of the forest. Tucker said he is pleased the Forest Service increased the number of helicopters dropping water on the fire from three to five. A total of 175 staff members are working on the fire. What worries me today is the amount of heat and wind, he said Wednesday. Fires in other parts of the state are starting to pop up and there will soon be competition for firefighting resources. Although the fire is in Marion County, it is only about two miles from the Linn County line. We are watching it every day, Tucker said. I havent been to the fire site yet, because its not in Linn County, but we are very concerned. The Forest Service planned to add planes that drop fire retardant to the aerial attack. All the ingredients for extreme fire behavior are present today, said Steve Zeil, fire behavior analyst for Team 7. Meteorologists have issued a red-flag warning, predicting temperatures up to 100 degrees, humidity levels between 9 and 13 percent and ridge-top wind guests to 20 mph. Numerous trails in the area remain closed, including all trails into Jefferson Park and an 11-mile stretch of the Pacific Crest Trail. The Linn Fire Board has banned all fires in the county except for propane or charcoal barbecues in approved sites. Craig Pettinger of the Oregon Department of Forestry said the summer wildland fire crew is fully staffed and equipment is ready. We have not sent anyone to the Whitewater fire, but we are closely monitoring it, he said. I was in discussions with our folks up there last night and our detection cameras saw it blow up. Pettinger added that all days off have been canceled for the crew due to the extreme heat and the fact some 15,000 people will be in Sweet Home for the annual Oregon Jamboree music festival. More people, more chances for problems, he said. We will also be answering fire calls in Sweet Home, helping our neighbors over the weekend. Pettinger said smoke patrols will be working all weekend throughout the area. Cascade Timber Consulting, Inc., based in Sweet Home, has closed its more than 140,000 acres of forest lands to the public due to the current weather situation. The company is asking the public to report all smoke sightings by calling 911 or the Oregon Department of Forestry at 541-367-6108. Tucker reminded the public to be especially cautious using any equipment around yards or farms that might start a fire, such as a lawn mower or chainsaw. Offset obligations. We love to hate them. While governments champion offset programs as a way to create social and economic benefits from international defense spending, aerospace and defense companies must begrudgingly accept them and then labor tirelessly to fulfill them. For compliance professionals, offsets represent a potential fount of corruption risks. For readers who dont wrestle with offsets on a regular basis, heres a brief primer. Offsets also referred to as countertrade or industrial cooperation are financial obligations imposed on a defense contractor by a foreign government customer. As a condition of purchasing defense equipment or services, the foreign government imposes a requirement for the defense contractor to create or support transactions that cause a specified amount of financial benefit to flow into the purchasing country. For every dollar (or yen, euro, riyal, dinar, shekel, etc.) of financial benefit the defense contractor creates in the country in question, it is given credit towards satisfying its obligation. Thus, it is common to express approved offset transactions in terms of the credits granted by the local government. Sometimes an offset transaction relates directly to the defense equipment sold, such as when a contractor hires a local firm to supply components that will be integrated into the product in question. These arrangements are known as direct offsets. In other circumstances, the offset transaction bears no connection to the defense contractors products or services. For example, a contractor might satisfy some of its offset obligations by providing financial support to a local software firm that wants to open an office in Silicon Valley. These so-called indirect offset requirements have historically constituted roughly 60 percent of the obligations imposed by foreign governments on defense contractors, and they are notoriously difficult to satisfy. Defense contractors are frequently afforded scant guidance on how to find in-country businesses to support, and must also compete with their fellow contractors to identify viable indirect offset projects. To make matters worse, offset obligations come along with deadlines. If a defense contractor fails to discharge its obligations by the deadline, it could face liquidated damages or even blacklisting. Needless to say, offsets are considered a thorn in the side of the defense and aerospace industry. There is, however, no escaping offset. Approximately 80 countries impose offset obligations on aerospace and defense contractors as a condition to buying their wares, and the size of these obligations is awe-inspiring. According to the U.S. Commerce Department, U.S. defense firms incurred over $34 billion in new offset obligations over the last five years. To put this number in perspective, U.S. contractors secured contracts with foreign governments worth approximately $74.5 billion during the same time period. In other words, U.S. contractors offset obligations were almost half as large as the total value of their foreign defense sales. Defense and aerospace contractors outside the United States surely face comparable requirements. A sizeable burden indeed. The combination of massive requirements, draconian penalties for missing deadlines and little official guidance on how to find transactions that will generate credits, offset obligations are fertile ground for compliance missteps. In this series of posts, Ill review the common sources of risk, and outline practical steps for addressing them. First, Ill tackle offset advisors third parties engaged by defense and aerospace companies to identify and structure transactions that will (hopefully) generate offset credit, and then help interface with the government offset authority. Many advisors work on a contingency fee basis, often calculated as a percentage of the value of the credits awarded by the government. Government interaction and contingent compensation certainly familiar sources of corruption risks. Second, Ill delve into indirect offset partners. As described above, these are typically private businesses located in the country imposing the offset burden, and who receive some form of financial support from a defense contractor. The contractor hopes to earn offset credits in return for the support. In some very high profile cases, indirect offset partners were nothing but conduits for bribes paid to government procurement officials. Third, Ill examine the risks presented by direct offset subcontractors, who provide the defense contractor with components and services that are directly related to the products sold. In many situations, government customers afford defense contractors no choice in who to work with. Such requirements make sense when the subcontractor is a going concern with existing capabilities to provide the products in services in question. This, however, is not always the case. Fourth, well review situations in which governments offer companies the opportunity to discharge offset obligations in exchange for large cash payments. Cash for credit schemes are on the rise, and while delivering large amounts of money into the hands of a government agency might make compliance professionals squirm, I believe that these programs are viable, provided theyre subject to robust due diligence and appropriate controls. Finally, Ill share my thoughts on how to implement a practical process to review and manage compliance challenges in offset transactions. Ill draw on prevailing best practices in the industry, and demonstrate that companies can discharge their offset obligations and toe the line on compliance. ______ Bill Steinman is a Contributing Editor of the FCPA Blog. Hes the senior partner at Steinman & Rodgers LLP, a boutique law firm in Washington, D.C. specializing in international anti-corruption compliance and investigations. Satisfying offset obligations is hard. Readers will recall that offsets are financial obligations imposed on defense contractors by foreign government customers as a condition to defense procurements. For every dollar of financial benefit the defense contractor creates in the country in question, it is given credit towards satisfying its obligation. Approximately 40 percent of offset obligations directly relate to the equipment sold. This includes requirements to engage local subcontractors and suppliers whose wares will be integrated into the relevant product. The remaining 60 percent consists of indirect offset obligations, which have no relationship to the contractors products and services. Think of a company that manufactures attack helicopters providing funds to build a desalination plant. In some circumstances, the local government will lend a hand, steering the contractor to key development projects. The U.A.E., for example, has built a lot of cooling towers stand-alone industrial air conditioning facilities with money from defense contractors seeking to satisfy their offset obligations. However, in the vast majority of cases, the defense contractor is left to its own devices to find local projects to support. Ive been told by offset professionals on numerous occasions that finding a suitable indirect offset deal is like looking for the needle in the proverbial haystack. Many defense contractors maintain separate departments whose sole responsibility is to find and evaluate indirect offset transactions. But even a full-time staff of professionals seeking out the right deals just isnt enough. It turns out that Ringo Starr was right sometimes you need a little help from your friends. Enter offset advisors. Much like the international sales agents and consultants with which we are all familiar, offset advisors provide crucial and legitimate services. They help companies identify and structure transactions that will earn offset credits. Offset advisors frequently assist with preparing and submitting applications for offset credit to the governmental authorities that administer offset programs. And just like marketing intermediaries, offset advisors present potential corruption risks. These risks take several forms, from structuring sham transactions that funnel money into the hands of foreign officials to paying bribes to offset officials to secure credit for their principals. Before delving into the risks, let me say that I have worked with numerous offset advisors over the years, and have found the vast majority of them to be highly creative and dedicated to ethical business conduct. The purpose of the analysis that follows is not to warn companies off of engaging offset advisors. Instead, its important for all parties to be cognizant of the potential concerns, and address them appropriately. Lets review some common sources of risk, and how to address them. First, as with any third party business partner, defense contractors should determine whether their offset advisors have any connections to foreign officials. Offset advisors of course expect compensation for their services. If the advisor is owned or controlled by foreign officials, then payment to the advisor will inure to the direct benefit of those officials. Its equally important to identify familial connections to foreign officials. You should be waving red flags if the spouse of your offset advisors managing director is a defense procurement official, a senior customs officer or an employee of the offset authority. Second, defense contractors should be concerned with the risk that an offset advisor could offer or pay bribes to help secure credits (or any other improper advantage, for that matter). The review and approval of indirect offset transactions involves significant interaction with foreign officials. Offset regulations generally require the supplier to submit a written application to the offset authority a governmental body to be awarded credit for a proposed indirect offset transaction. In many jurisdictions, the review of a proposed indirect offset transaction is a two-step process. In the first step, the supplier seeks pre-approval from the government that it intends to grant credit for a proposed transaction. This gives the supplier a preliminary thumbs-up from the government before the supplier actually spends any money. In the second step, the supplier seeks final, definitive approval of offset credits once it has actually provided financial support to an indirect offset transaction. The length and complexity of the application process means that offset advisors have a significant interaction with foreign government officials. Just as contractors must be concerned with third party agents paying bribes to help them win contracts, so too must they be wary of offset advisors making corrupt payments to help them secure offset credits. As discussed in my first post about offsets, companies face draconian penalties for failing to satisfy their offset obligations in the time allotted. Consequences range from fines to blacklisting. It is therefore in an advisors best interest to help its client avoid these consequences. Its also important to bear in mind that many offset advisors are compensated using a contingency fee. If their principals dont receive offset credits, they dont earn a dime for their troubles. As with commissions sales agents, this raises potential corruption risks. Finally, beware spurious offset transactions. Ill talk about the specific risks that arise from indirect offset transactions in my next post, but Ive seen numerous situations in which offset advisors have proposed transactions that proved to be conduits for bribery. Ive seen circumstances where an offset advisor knowingly recommended that my client provide funding to a company that turned out to be merely a shell, with no ongoing business operations. After a little digging, it became clear that the offset support funds would flow directly into the coffers of a foreign official. In other cases, the offset advisor proposed economic support for a legitimate project, but where the profits flowed to a foreign official. In one example, the offset advisor recommended that my client provide funds for the construction of an industrial park. The good news is that my client was able to verify that the construction company was a bona fide business, and was indeed in the process of building the site. The bad news is that the construction company was beneficially owned by a local defense procurement official. In both of these situations, the offset advisors in question were quite aware of connections to foreign officials. So how should defense contractors deal with these challenges? The answer is robust due diligence. I consistently advise clients to subject their offset advisors to the same risk-based due diligence that they apply to their sales agents. It makes sense to do so. Just like sales agents, offset advisors have regular contact with foreign officials. They might not assist defense contractors to win contracts, but they assist contractors to secure a governmental benefit, which certainly falls within the broad obtain or retain business language of the FCPA. From a practical standpoint, conducting due diligence on offset advisors likely wont impose significant additional compliance burden. Even my clients with offset obligations in the hundreds of millions of dollars have only a handful of third party offset advisors. In other words, the marginal cost is immaterial, and the compliance benefits are substantial. Defense contractors should also subject potential offset projects to due diligence. Again, I recommend a tailored, risk-based review, to determine whether they are bona fide projects, raise any red flags, comport with applicable law, and have any worrisome connections to foreign officials. As I said before, I firmly believe that the vast majority of offset advisors provide legitimate services. They help defense contractors, faced with onerous indirect offset obligations, to navigate local economies and find viable projects. They help defense contractors wrestle with complex regulations governing the submission of requests for offset credits. But as with every international third party relationship, particularly those with interactions with foreign governments, bribery risks abound. Provided that contractors expend the effort to weed out dubious advisors and spurious projects, they can navigate those risks unscathed. _____ Bill Steinman is a Contributing Editor of the FCPA Blog. Hes the senior partner at Steinman & Rodgers LLP, a boutique law firm in Washington, D.C. specializing in international anti-corruption compliance and investigations. In a popular post last month for the FCPA Blog that stirred lots of discussion, Frances McLeod made the case why companies should audit culture change as part of their compliance programs. Frances, a founding partner of Forensic Risk Alliance, sat with me recently to talk more about the importance of developing an assessment tool to better understand leaderships values with respect to compliance and ethics. We also talked about how that assessment tool should be used and by whom. Frances, pictured above, is a former investment banker. She holds a Masters degree from Wadham College, Oxford and speaks English, German, French, and Mandarin Chinese. Heres our 15-minute discussion. _____ Richard Bistrong is a contributing editor of the FCPA Blog and CEO of Front-Line Anti-Bribery LLC. In 2010 he pleaded guilty to a conspiracy to violate the FCPA and served fourteen-and-a-half months at a U.S. federal prison camp. He was named to Compliance Weeks list of Top Minds in 2017 and was one of Ethispheres 100 Most Influential in Business Ethics in 2015. His popular real-life compliance training video, Behind the Bribe, produced in cooperation with Mastercard, was released in June. To request a demo of the full eleven-minute video or a licensing fee schedule, please click here. Paris Jackson believes true beauty comes from "integrity and intentions". Paris Jackson The 19-year-old model insists what is inside and how a person behaves is far more important than what they look like on the outside and she thinks people should be more accepting of their appearance. She said: "Beauty is not measured by numbers, or symmetry, or shapes, or sizes, or colours, or anything like that. "Beauty, true beauty, should be measured by the soul, the character, integrity, intentions and mindset of a person, what comes out of their mouth. How they behave. Their heart." And Paris - who is the daughter of the late Michael Jackson - is proud of her own flaws because she is "human" and "not a dress-up doll", and she's rather indulge in her favourite foods than worry about her size. She told i-D magazine: "I'm not symmetrical, I'm not a size zero, I eat hella burgers and endless amounts of pizza. I can't fit into a runway sample size of designer clothes, I have scars and stretch marks and acne and I have cellulite. "I'm human. Not a dress-up doll. The idea that we all have to fit one idea of beauty is outrageous and ridiculous because 'perfection' is just an opinion" Last month, Paris and her godfather Macaulay Culkin, 36, got matching tattoos. The pair each got a spoon inked on their arms during a weekend bonding session in Los Angeles and Paris shared a snap of them smiling and showing off the body art on her Instagram story. And in June, Paris got a tattoo in tribute to her late father when she had the word "Applehead" - a pet name she had for her dad - inked on her left foot. Showing off her tribute on Instagram, Paris wrote: "with every step i take, you lift my foot and guide me forward. love you (sic)." Martha Hunt only wears red lingerie for "special occasions". Martha Hunt The 28-year-old Victoria's Secret model, who acquired her angel wings in 2015, has admitted a black bra and matching knickers are her go-to underwear staple, unless there is a significant event coming up then she will opt for a bolder shade. Speaking about her wardrobe preferences to Us Weekly, the blonde-haired beauty said: "My favourite type of lingerie for day-to-day is the demi bra. It's the perfect bra because it gives you subtle shape and it's very comfortable and it disappears under clothes. If you want to show it off, you can add a little lace too. "Personally, my favourite is black, but my next favourite would be red, but red is for special occasions." And the catwalk icon feels her "sexiest" and most empowered when her undergarments co-ordinate. She continued: "I feel my sexiest when I'm wearing matching lingerie. Even if it's under my clothes, it's an empowering feeling knowing that I have it on." Martha boasts a super slender physique, which she has credited to regular pilates and yoga sessions. However, the star has recently taken part in a pole dancing class, which she has become a huge fan of. Speaking about her fitness regime, the American fashion muse said: "Workout wise, lately I've been switching it up to all sorts of stuff, like pilates and yoga. I also took a pole dancing class recently and had the most fun ever, so I highly recommend pole dancing classes." Meanwhile, Martha has revealed she has a "pretty simple" beauty regime, and she will apply cosmetic products to make sure she looks fresh-faced and her skin is glowing. She explained: "I like to keep it pretty simple actually. I like to feel really fresh - maybe a lip stain, like the Victoria's Secret velvet lip matte stain. I'm not even kidding, it's my favourite lip right now. I've been wearing it all summer. And I just like a little bit of mascara and a nice stain. And glowing skin, I'm all about glowing skin." Joseph Ruben is the man in the directors chair for brilliant new action-packed drama, The Ottoman Lieutenant. Starring Ben Kingsley, Josh Hartnett, Michiel Huisman and Hera Hilmar, the film is a star-studded affair that tells the wartime story of a strong-willed woman named Lillie (Hilmar), who leaves America after meeting American doctor Jude (Hartnett) who runs a remote medical mission within the Ottoman Empire. Josh Hartnett stars as Jude Today, Female First can bring you an exclusive Q&A with Hartnett all about his role in the film. Check it out below: What attracted you to the role? Honestly, this movie came to me in the regular fashion. My agent sent me the script, said the director Joe Ruben would like to talk to you, and then the movie all came together very quickly. He asked if we could have a Skype meeting, then we had subsequent meetings about the character and thats what drew me to the character. The fact that Joe and I could collaborate and expand on the character. Thats always exciting to me because then you can bend yourself into the character, the character starts becoming a part of you and then you become the character. Joe was also a big reason because he was so open and warm, also very specific about what he liked but was able to allow me to bring my own spin into it. What was it about the character that resonated with you? I like Jude because he was not your typical character, as far as most of the characters that are sent to me. Jude doesnt get the girl. Jude is known for and prides himself from being a moral person. Hes not a bad boy, hes not a heart throb, and hes a man on the edge of his known existence. Doing what he feels is morally correct and living in a world that is chaotic at best. I loved that he was so driven by his ideas, that he was a person that respected concepts, that enjoys the simplicity thats so far removed from what he understands. I think that Jude is not necessarily running away from the U.S., but once he left the U.S. that simple way of life is what suits him. Because he was allowed to be much more human out there, in the civilisation that he knew. I just admire a guy like this. Can you tell us about Judes relationship with Lillie and Ismail? Michiel Huismans character Ismail doesnt have any real ambitions at the beginning but he is charming enough, and they (Ismail and Lillie) find themselves on an adventure as they travel towards Van (Turkey). And during that time, circumstances being what they were, they fall in love. Love is about timing. In my opinion, love is about the circumstances that surround it, and unfortunately for Jude he never gets a chance. By the time shes arrived in Van, it doesnt matter how great he is, shes already smitten with another guy. And it doesnt matter how wrong he is, shes still smitten with him. So the story really revolves around Lillie dealing with that incongruity in her own concept of love, and finding out for herself and what it really is. And unfortunately for Jude, that brings him from a place of peace, tranquillity and a sense of assurity about what he does with his life and what he means to the people around him. The opposite to Ismail who comes from a place of chaos, a place of anger and potential place of homicidal rage. So its not a good story for Jude. Can you share how you developed your character (Jude)? I thought a man who was well-educated coming from New England and educated in the late 1800s would have spoken with a Mid-Atlantic accent. I also think the development of Jude had to do with the way he expresses himself. And this contributes to the voice and structure of the character. I think that Jude thinks before he speaks because he is an introvert, ultimately. He sort of plans everything he says, and his sentences are very thought out. Rarely, does Jude find himself mid-sentence, not knowing where the sentence is going to end. From my perspective thats completely unusual because Im someone who likes to ramble. I wanted to portray every aspect of Jude as soft. And this was done by softening up his physical appearance, especially through his clothing and hairstyle. Jude is a guy who doesnt really care about his appearance on a day-to-day basis. Hes a surgeon and hes meant to comfort and give peace to those who cant be comforted. Jude needed to be portrayed as compassionate and intelligent, and the way he speaks and dresses really contributes to that. The Ottoman Lieutenant is available now on digital download and comes to Blu-ray and DVD from August 7. Kathryn Drysdale thinks Prince Harry will propose to Meghan Markle "soon." Meghan Markle The 'Two Pints of Lager and a Packet of Crisps' actress portrays the brunette beauty in the comedy soap opera 'The Windsors' and has admitted she doesn't think it will be long before the flame-haired royal pops the question to his beautiful partner. Speaking to The Sun newspaper, she said: "I hear Prince Harry's going to propose - how exciting for her if that happens! I think Meghan has got her sights set on becoming a humanitarian and possibly a royal. She's been thrust into the limelight, but I think she's very well equipped. She may be sweet and charming but she's probably got nerves of steel. I think she can handle it. That's the impression I get." But Kathryn thinks Meghan knew what she was getting herself into before her relationship with the 32-year-old royal took off last year. She explained: "You don't get into something with a member of the Royal Family lightly. And especially someone who's mixed race. "Being not only a commoner but an American also being part African-American is a deal. You don't get into something like that without planning ahead." And she's pleased that they had a few months together before people found out. She said: "And they had a good couple of undercover months for her transitionary period from TV actress to possible future royal. It must have been thrilling when it was all secret but now it's out, it's a lot more serious. But it's a lifelong commitment, you know. I think the royals learnt from Princess Diana's struggles that these ladies need protecting and nurturing. But the younger generation of royals are much more grounded and down to earth. And I think they know that they don't dare make a mistake and marry someone who they don't want to spend the rest of their life with." Hywel Bennett has died. Hywel Bennett The Welsh actor - who was best known for playing the lead role of James Shelley in sitcom 'Shelley' - passed away last month at the age of 73, his agent has confirmed. 'Shelley' ran from 1974 to 1984 and told the story of an unemployed man, living in a bedsit in London. He reprised the role again in the late 1980s, when 'The Return of Shelley' ran from 1988 to 1992. Hywel had also previously worked on shows including 'Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy' and 'Last Of The Summer Wine' and played gangster Jack Dalton in 'EastEnders', until he was killed by Dennis Rickman. He also featured in the Dennis Potter mini-series 'Karaoke' and 'Cold Lazarus', starred as Peter Baxter in 'The Bill' for five years and his last known role as in 'The Last Detective' as Reggie Conway. His movie credits included 'The Family Way', in which he appeared alongside Hayley and John Mills, and went on to be godfather to their son, Kula Shaker frontman Crispian Mills, and 'The Virgin Soldiers' opposite Lynn Redgrave. The actor - who had a daughter, Emma, with his ex-wife, 'Ready Steady Go!' presenter Cathy McGowan, who he split from in 1988 - retired due to ill health in 2007 and is believed to have been living in Kent until his death. WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - 21st Century Fox Inc. (FOX) is in talks to operate local television stations across the U.S. with Ion Media Networks Inc., potentially paving the way for Fox to dump Sinclair Broadcast Group Inc. as an affiliate partner, Bloomberg reported citing people familiar with the matter. Closely held Ion would contribute its more than 60 independent stations to the joint venture, while Fox would throw in its 28 local stations, which include big markets such as New York and Los Angeles. As part of the deal, Fox would consider switching its affiliation to Ion from Sinclair for 26 stations that are up for renewal this year. Fox may also seek to switch 14 stations owned by Tribune Media Co., which is being acquired by Sinclair, upon the change of control, the report said. Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX Werbehinweise: Die Billigung des Basisprospekts durch die BaFin ist nicht als ihre Befurwortung der angebotenen Wertpapiere zu verstehen. Wir empfehlen Interessenten und potenziellen Anlegern den Basisprospekt und die Endgultigen Bedingungen zu lesen, bevor sie eine Anlageentscheidung treffen, um sich moglichst umfassend zu informieren, insbesondere uber die potenziellen Risiken und Chancen des Wertpapiers. Sie sind im Begriff, ein Produkt zu erwerben, das nicht einfach ist und schwer zu verstehen sein kann. SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA -- (Marketwired) -- 08/02/17 -- Well-known Australian retailer Forcast is excited to announce it has successfully launched in Singapore Zalora -- the first international stockist for the brand. Forcast is in good company, happily nestled amongst premium international designers such as Michael Kors, Victoria Beckham, Dolce & Gabbana, Tommy Hilfiger and Australian brands Cotton On, Forever New, Bardot and Gorman. This is an exciting time for the fashion-forward retailer, which has gone from strength to strength since its inception in 1992. Over the last two and a half decades, Forcast has established itself as household name for women's fashion, providing timeless feminine style throughout 45 stores across Australia. Taking the leap into the international market is a big step for the brand, says Managing Director Paul Chea, who is enthralled with the announcement. "Being stocked on Singapore Zalora is an exciting new step! We are looking forward to seeing our presence flourish in the international market. We are sure our size range, styles and price-point will appeal to customers in South East Asia," says Chea. The arrival of Forcast to Singapore Zalora is a testament to its supreme quality garments that are designed to dress the modern woman, and appeal to consumers globally. Forcast also boasts a smaller size offering beginning from size 4 (-12) which will appeal to petite Asian women. Fashion conscious women will have access to a large selection of Forcast favourites from dresses, blouses, pants, knitwear and pencil skirts that can be easily incorporated into any wardrobe. Forcast is excited by the prospect of being stocked on one of the largest online retailers in South East Asia, which dominates the online fashion and lifestyle market in Malaysia, Indonesia, Philippines, Brunei, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Singapore. Although Forcast offers international shipping to South East Asia from its Australian website, Zalora will offer unprecedented exposure to these regions, boasting over 90 million visitors in 2016. Customers from Singapore who wish to view the full Forcast range can visit the Australian website with an international shipping as low as AUD10. https://www.forcast.com.au https://www.zalora.sg/forcast/ Image Available: http://www2.marketwire.com/mw/frame_mw?attachid=3159973 For more information on the above please contact: Stephanie Price Email Contact Shimadzu's products utilize advanced robotic capabilities and next-generation digital imaging technologies LONDON, Aug. 3, 2017 /PRNewswire/ --Based on its recent analysis of the general radiography market, Frost & Sullivan recognizes Shimadzu Corporation with the 2017 Global Frost & Sullivan Award for Product Line Strategy Leadership. Constant innovations and upgrades to Shimadzu's radiography product portfolio have ensured that the products stay relevant and in high demand in an evolving radiography market. Its comprehensive product range enhances automation, efficiency, image quality, and overall clinical value by enabling flexible positioning, reduced radiation dose, and versatility in viewing bone and soft tissue images. Shimadzu has the entire range of general radiography solutions, from fixed ceiling-mounted to floor-mounted systems and mobile X-ray solutions, with or without one to two arms. These are all available all in entry-level to high-end configurations. In 2016, it introduced new technologies such as digital multi-slice tomography with flexible positioning to offer a view of oblique cross sections of the spine and hip joints. Other products include: SONIALVISION G4, a fluoroscopy product with multi-functionality features RADspeed Pro EDGE package, a high-performance general radiography equipment MobileDaRt Evolution MX7 Version, mobile X-ray with digitization features. RADspeed Pro EDGE and MobileDaRt Evolution MX7 have already been adopted by more than 100 hospitals worldwide within a year of their introduction. "In response to customer demand, Shimadzu introduced a sophisticated, remote-controlled, auto-positioning feature in the RADspeed Pro EDGE package. This feature helps the radiographer effortlessly position the tube and fine-tune this positioning to improve patient safety and reduce radiation dose," said Frost & Sullivan Consultant Poornima Srinivasan. "Similarly, it incorporated removable grids to lower radiation exposure during pediatric imaging, and a dose area product meter on the collimator to measure the dose of radiation the patient is exposed to." Shimadzu's products have proven their utility in guiding hospitals towards the era of value-based healthcare. They achieve that by incorporating a host of novel features and technologies. The RADspeed Pro EDGE employs cutting-edge technologies like tomosynthesis, speed stitch, and dual energy subtraction. Tomosynthesis combines cone-beam computed tomography (CT) reconstruction with digital image processing so that any number of cross-sectional images can be obtained. The systems also incorporate 'T-smart,' the metal artifact reduction technology that decreases metal artifacts in orthopedic patients. Additionally, it uses speed stitch technology, which combines multiple images that are captured while the X-ray tube is in motion at various angles. Finally, its dual energy subtraction, imaging algorithm, couples with low and high voltages to offer images of soft tissue and bone images separately. employs cutting-edge technologies like tomosynthesis, speed stitch, and dual energy subtraction. Tomosynthesis combines cone-beam computed tomography (CT) reconstruction with digital image processing so that any number of cross-sectional images can be obtained. The systems also incorporate 'T-smart,' the metal artifact reduction technology that decreases metal artifacts in orthopedic patients. Additionally, it uses speed stitch technology, which combines multiple images that are captured while the X-ray tube is in motion at various angles. Finally, its dual energy subtraction, imaging algorithm, couples with low and high voltages to offer images of soft tissue and bone images separately. SONIALVISION G4 is capable of a wide range of examinations and is ideal for inter-departmental shared services. The field of view (FOV) flat panel detector (FPD) is available in five sizes and provides an extensive imaging area, ultra-high definition and dynamic images, less radiation exposure, a ceiling-mounted telescopic arm, and a wall stand with a portable FPD. It incorporates technologies such as: is capable of a wide range of examinations and is ideal for inter-departmental shared services. The field of view (FOV) flat panel detector (FPD) is available in five sizes and provides an extensive imaging area, ultra-high definition and dynamic images, less radiation exposure, a ceiling-mounted telescopic arm, and a wall stand with a portable FPD. It incorporates technologies such as: The SUREengine-Advance, an image processing technology that delivers quality fluoro and radiography images SLOT Advance, an optimal technology for long-view images with a minimal X-ray dose T-smart, the latest tomosynthesis technology that aids in iterative reconstruction with metal artifact suppression The MobileDaRt Evolution MX7 Version incorporates a large LCD monitor and LED collimator light that increases brightness up to 40% and saves electricity by 80% when compared to its competing products. It also has a user-friendly design with wireless capability, which allows it to extend its scope of application. "Shimadzu has leveraged the expertise of key opinion leaders (KOLs), designed training and educational programs, expanded geographically, and made the most of cross-selling opportunities in line with its business goals," noted Ms. Srinivasan. "Additionally, it has partnered with universities to optimize the existing systems and develop further innovations and efficiencies. Shimadzu's discussions with international channels, and focus on gathering input from healthcare professionals have played a huge role in its development of unique products and provision of a rich customer experience." Each year, Frost & Sullivan presents this award to the company that has developed a comprehensive product line that caters to the breadth of the market it serves. The award recognizes the extent to which the product line meets customer base demands, the overall impact it has in terms of customer value, as well as increased market share. Frost & Sullivan Best Practices awards recognize companies in a variety of regional and global markets for demonstrating outstanding achievement and superior performance in areas such as leadership, technological innovation, customer service, and strategic product development. Industry analysts compare market participants and measure performance through in-depth interviews, analysis, and extensive secondary research to identify best practices in the industry. About Shimadzu Corporation Shimadzu Corporation has remained committed to commercializing cutting-edge technology and providing it to customers in a wide array of industries for more than 140 years. Our brand statement, "Excellence in Science", reflects our desire and attitude to diligently respond to customers' requirements by offering superior, world-class technologies indispensable for analytical and measuring instruments, medical systems, aircraft equipment and industrial machinery in the area of human health, safety and security of society and advancement of industry. In the ever-changing landscape of challenges of society, Shimadzu aims to partner with customers to meet their needs with unique technologies and solutions. About Frost & Sullivan Frost & Sullivan, the Growth Partnership Company, works in collaboration with clients to leverage visionary innovation that addresses the global challenges and related growth opportunities that will make or break today's market participants. For more than 50 years, we have been developing growth strategies for the global 1000, emerging businesses, the public sector, and the investment community. Contact us: Start the discussion. Contact: Ana Arriaga P: 210.247.3823 F: 210.348.1003 E: ana.arriaga@frost.com Logo- http://mma.prnewswire.com/media/541662/Frost_Sullivan_Shimadzu_Corporation_Award_Logo.jpg VANCOUVER, BC -- (Marketwired) -- 08/03/17 --Liberty One Lithium Corp. ("Liberty One Lithium" or the "Company") (TSX VENTURE: LBY) (OTCQB: LRTTF) (FRANKFURT: L1T), an emerging exploration company focused on the acquisition and development of high grade lithium brine deposits, is pleased to announce that it has completed and filed a National Instrument 43-101 compliant technical report regarding its 39,183 acre mineral option in the Pocitos Salar located in the Altiplano-Puna region of South America known as the Lithium Triangle, a region proven to host the largest portion of lithium brine resources in the world. Highlights of the Technical Report are as follows: Previous, and in some instances historic, exploration followed up with geophysics, suggests that multiple brine-bearing aquifers may occur to a depth of some 450 meters, with a particularly responsive target between 200 to 450 meters depth. More recent geophysics studies published by Liberty One Lithium and others, including partner-operators Millennial Lithium (TSX VENTURE: ML) (FRANKFURT: A3N2) (OTCQB: MLNLF), targeted various parts of the salar, and all indicate the potential for brine bearing sediments at depth. The author notes that recent developments in other lithium resource areas have shown that the more highly enriched brine resources and more transmissive aquifers are found at greater depths in the salars of the region. The author summarizes that the Pocitos West project appears productive for lithium and suggests that it offers a reduced level of risk justifying further exploration efforts and expenditures. Recommendations conclude the large target (150 square kilometers) can be tested to determine the potential for development of a resource in a rather short time. If initial deep reconnaissance drilling is successful in identifying lithium-bearing brine of commercial interest, further exploration work will be undertaken to determine the resources of lithium in brine, the effective recovery of brine, and the economic viability and subsequent mining and refining operations. A proposed staged workplan will be presented to the board for approval and is outlined within the report. Company CEO, Brad Nichol, stated, "We are thrilled with this report, as it confirms Liberty One's enviable position within the Lithium Triangle. The report also endorses at least one of the three pillars upon which Liberty One was built -- Location. Within the roughly 400km x 400km famous Lithium Triangle we have secured what could become a prolific lithium asset that lies within 40km of several successful and significant lithium brine discoveries. A world-class team, Liberty One's second pillar, has bolstered its impressive track record by the strength of this report. Finally, Liberty One's third pillar, capital discipline, should be mentioned, as the Company has demonstrated the foresight to have successfully raised sufficient capital to undertake a staged work plan and fund operations for the next year." Nichol added, "These are the three principles upon which I made my decision to join, and make a significant investment in, Liberty One. My assessment was disciplined and researched, and this report is the very first step in validating that decision." The technical report entitled "Technical Report on the Pocitos West Project, Salta Province, Argentina" dated effective June 22, 2017 in accordance with National Instrument 43-101 - "Standards of Disclosure for Mineral projects" provides extensive details of the Pocitos West Project under option by Liberty One Lithium. The Technical Report was prepared by Nivaldo Rojas, FAusIMM of Rojas Mining Advisors, a "qualified person" for the purposes of NI 43-101. As previously disclosed, the Company was granted the sole and exclusive right and option to acquire up to an eighty (80%) percent undivided beneficial right, title and interest in the Property pursuant to a mineral option and joint venture agreement with Millennial Lithium Corp. (see press release dated June 15, 2017). Readers are cautioned that this Technical Report was prepared to fulfill continuous disclosure requirements and the Technical Report does not disclose a compliant resource estimate. A copy of the Technical Report has been filed on SEDAR. Nivaldo Rojas, FAusIMM, an arm's length party to the Company, is the Qualified Person responsible for the technical disclosure in this news release, in accordance with National Instrument 43-101. For further information about Liberty One Lithium Corp., please visit www.libertyonelithium.com or view the Company's filings at www.SEDAR.com. ON BEHALF OF THE BOARD OF DIRECTORS "/s/ Brad Nichol" Brad Nichol President & CEO About Liberty One Lithium (TSX VENTURE: LBY) (OTCQB: LRTTF) (FRANKFURT: L1T) Liberty One Lithium Corp. is an emerging exploration company focused on the acquisition and development of high grade lithium brine deposits. The Company believes that strategic global resources are the key to a robust energy strategy to protect economic stability worldwide. Find out more at: www.libertyonelithium.com. Cautionary Statement Regarding "Forward-Looking" Information Some of the statements contained in this press release are forward-looking statements and information within the meaning of applicable securities laws. Forward-looking statements and information can be identified by the use of words such as "anticipates," "plans," "expects," "intends," "is expected," "potential," "suggests" or variations of such words or phrases, or statements that certain actions, events or results "may," "could," "should," "would," "might" or "will" be taken, occur or be achieved. Forward-looking statements and information are not historical facts and are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties beyond the Company's control. Actual results and developments are likely to differ, and may differ materially, from those expressed or implied by the forward-looking statements contained in this news release. Accordingly, readers should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements. The Company undertakes no obligation to update publicly or otherwise revise any forward-looking statements, except as may be required by law. Neither TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulations Services Provider (as that term is defined in policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release. CONTACT Walter Spagnuolo Invictus Investor Relations Office: +1.604.343.8661 Email: investors@l1lithium.com Website: www.libertyonelithium.com ASKER, Norway, 2017-08-03 07:01 CEST (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Following the authorization from the Annual General Meeting on 9 May 2017, the Board of TGS NOPEC Geophysical Company ASA has resolved to distribute a quarterly dividend of the NOK equivalent of USD 0.15 per share (NOK 1.19 per share). Key information relating to the cash dividend: Dividend amount and declared currency: USD 0.15 per share (equivalent to NOK 1.19 per share) Last trading day including right: 9 August 2017 Ex-date: 10 August 2017 Record date: 11 August 2017 Payment date: 24 August 2017 Date of approval: 2 August 2017 Company summary TGS-NOPEC Geophysical Company (TGS) provides multi-client geoscience data to oil and gas Exploration and Production companies worldwide. In addition to extensive global geophysical and geological data libraries that include multi-client seismic data, magnetic and gravity data, digital well logs, production data and directional surveys, TGS also offers advanced processing and imaging services, interpretation products, and data integration solutions. For more information visit TGS online at www.tgs.com. Forward-looking statements and contact information All statements in this press release other than statements of historical fact are forward-looking statements, which are subject to a number of risks, uncertainties and assumptions that are difficult to predict, and are based upon assumptions as to future events that may not prove accurate. These factors include TGS' reliance on a cyclical industry and principle customers, TGS' ability to continue to expand markets for licensing of data, and TGS' ability to acquire and process data products at costs commensurate with profitability. Actual results may differ materially from those expected or projected in the forward-looking statements. TGS undertakes no responsibility or obligation to update or alter forward-looking statements for any reason. TGS-NOPEC Geophysical Company ASA is listed on the Oslo Stock Exchange (OSLO:TGS). TGS sponsored American Depositary Shares trade on the U.S. over-the-counter market under the symbol "TGSGY". This information is subject to the disclosure requirements pursuant to section 5-12 of the Norwegian Securities Trading Act. For additional information about this press release please contact: Sven Brre Larsen Chief Financial Officer Tel: +47 90 94 36 73 Email: sven.larsen@tgs.com Will Ashby VP HR & Communication Tel: +1 713 860 2184 Email: will.ashby@tgs.com Werbehinweise: Die Billigung des Basisprospekts durch die BaFin ist nicht als ihre Befurwortung der angebotenen Wertpapiere zu verstehen. Wir empfehlen Interessenten und potenziellen Anlegern den Basisprospekt und die Endgultigen Bedingungen zu lesen, bevor sie eine Anlageentscheidung treffen, um sich moglichst umfassend zu informieren, insbesondere uber die potenziellen Risiken und Chancen des Wertpapiers. Sie sind im Begriff, ein Produkt zu erwerben, das nicht einfach ist und schwer zu verstehen sein kann. CANBERA (dpa-AFX) - The Australian dollar weakened against other major currencies in the Asian session on Thursday. The Australian dollar fell to more than a 3-week low of 1.4957 against the euro and more than a 2-week low of 87.59 against the yen, from yesterday's closing quotes of 1.4879 and 88.22, respectively. Against the U.S. and the Canadian dollars, the aussie dropped to an 8-day low of 0.7914 and a 2-day low of 0.9962 from yesterday's closing quotes of 0.7966 and 1.0014, respectively. The aussie edged down to 1.0700 against the NZ dollar, from an early 2-week high of 1.0746. If the aussie extends its downtrend, it is likely to find support around 1.51 against the euro, 86.00 against the yen, 0.77 against the greenback, 0.98 against the loonie and 1.05 against the kiwi. Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX Werbehinweise: Die Billigung des Basisprospekts durch die BaFin ist nicht als ihre Befurwortung der angebotenen Wertpapiere zu verstehen. Wir empfehlen Interessenten und potenziellen Anlegern den Basisprospekt und die Endgultigen Bedingungen zu lesen, bevor sie eine Anlageentscheidung treffen, um sich moglichst umfassend zu informieren, insbesondere uber die potenziellen Risiken und Chancen des Wertpapiers. Sie sind im Begriff, ein Produkt zu erwerben, das nicht einfach ist und schwer zu verstehen sein kann. RALEIGH, N.C., Feb. 08, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Percona (http://www.percona.com/), the company that delivers enterprise-class MySQL, MariaDB and MongoDB and other open source database solutions and services, today revealed the line-up of in-depth tutorials (https://www.percona.com/blog/2018/02/08/tutorial-schedule-percona-live-2018/) for the Percona Live Open Source Database Conference 2018 (https://www.percona.com/live/18/), taking place April 23-25, 2018 at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara, Calif. Sponsorship opportunities for the conference are still available. Percona Live Open Source Database Conference 2018 is the premier open source database event. The theme for the upcoming conference is "Championing Open Source Databases," with a range of topics on MySQL, MongoDB and other open source databases, including time series databases, PostgreSQL and RocksDB. Session tracks include Developers, Operations and Business/Case Studies. A major conference focus will be providing strategies to help attendees meet their business goals by deploying the right mix of database solutions that obtain the performance they need while managing complexity. Tutorials take place throughout the day on April 23, 2018. Tutorials provide practical, in-depth knowledge of critical open source database issues. Topics include: Amazon Aurora with PostgreSQL Compatibility - Jignesh Shah, Amazon Web Services The Full MySQL (5.6, 5.7 and 8.0) and MariaDB (10.0 and 10.1) Parallel Replication Tutorial - Jean-Francois Gagne, Booking.com; Eduardo Ortega, Booking.com Orchestrator High Availability - Shlomi Noach, GitHub MySQL Migrations - Gillian Gunson, GitHub; Brian Cain, DropBox; Mark Filipi, SurveyMonkey InnoDB Tutorial for MySQL 8.0 - Peter Zaitsev, Percona Percona XtraDB Cluster - Matthew Boehm, Percona PostgreSQL 10 Highlights & Deep Dive - Robert Treat, OmniTI MySQL InnoDB Cluster in a Nutshell - Frederic Descamps, Oracle; Kenny Gryp, Percona Monitoring MySQL Performance with Percona Monitoring and Management (PMM) - Michael Coburn, Percona MongoDB Basics Tutorial - Rick Golba and Adamo Tonete, Percona MongoDB Advanced Tutorial - Barrett Chambers and David Murphy, Percona MySQL Performance Schema in Action - Sveta Smirnova and Alexander Rubin, Percona MySQL in a Nutshell - Dimitri Vanoverbeke and Tom De Cooman, Percona Hands on ProxySQL - Rene Cannao, ProxySQL; Derek Downey, Pythian MySQL Break/Fix Lab - Pep Pla Sanz and Matthias Crauwels, Pythian The Accidental DBA - Jenni Snyder, Yelp Getting Started with Vitess - Sugu Sougoumarane, YouTube; Rafael Chacon, Slack Sponsorships Sponsorship opportunities (https://www.percona.com/live/18/become-a-sponsor)for Percona Live Open Source Database Conference 2018 are available and offer the opportunity to interact with the DBAs, sysadmins, developers, CTOs, CEOs, business managers, technology evangelists, solution vendors, and entrepreneurs who typically attend the event. Contact live@percona.com for sponsorship details. Diamond Sponsors - Continuent, VividCortex Gold Sponsors - Facebook, Grafana Bronze Sponsors - SolarWinds, TwinDB, Yelp Media Sponsors - Datanami, EnterpriseTech, HPCWire, ODBMS.org Percona Live Conference Details What: Percona Live Open Source Database Conference 2018 Where: Santa Clara, Calif. When: April 23-25, 2018 Company Information Press Contact Brigit Valencia For Percona (360) 597-4516 bdbvalencia@gmail.com (mailto:bdbvalencia@gmail.com) About Percona With more than 3,000 customers worldwide, Percona is the only company that delivers enterprise-class solutions for both MySQL, MongoDB and other open source databases across traditional and cloud-based platforms. The company provides Software (https://www.percona.com/software), Support (https://www.percona.com/services/support), Consulting (https://www.percona.com/services/consulting), and Managed Services (https://www.percona.com/services/managed-services) to large, well-known global brands such as Cisco Systems, Time Warner Cable, Alcatel-Lucent, Rent the Runway and the BBC, as well as smaller enterprises looking to maximize application performance while streamlining database efficiencies. Well established as thought leaders, Percona experts author content for the Percona Database Performance Blog (https://www.percona.com/blog/) and the Percona Live Open Source Database Conferences (https://www.percona.com/live/) draw attendees and expert technical speakers from around the world. For more information, visit www.percona.com (https://www.percona.com/). Percona, XtraBackup, TokuDB and Fractal Tree are registered trademarks of Percona LLC or its subsidiaries. All other registered and unregistered trademarks in this document are the sole property of their respective owners. HANOVER (dpa-AFX) - Continental AG (CTTAY.PK), a German automotive supplier and tire manufacturer, reported that its net income to shareholders of the parent for the first half of 2017 declined to 1.50 billion euros from 1.64 billion euros last year. Earnings per share were 7.48 euros, down from 8.19 euros a year ago. EBIT for the period decreased to 2.27 billion euros from 2.29 billion euros in the prior-year period due to sharp increase in raw material prices for the Rubber Group. First-half sales were 22.03 billion euros, an increase of 10 percent from 20.04 billion euros last year. Adjusted sales were 21.72 billion euros, compared to 20.04 billion euros in the prior year. For fiscal 2017, the company now expects sales of more than 44 billion euros, compared to previous estimate of more than 43.5 billion euros. The company also reiterated its earnings outlook for the year. Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX Werbehinweise: Die Billigung des Basisprospekts durch die BaFin ist nicht als ihre Befurwortung der angebotenen Wertpapiere zu verstehen. Wir empfehlen Interessenten und potenziellen Anlegern den Basisprospekt und die Endgultigen Bedingungen zu lesen, bevor sie eine Anlageentscheidung treffen, um sich moglichst umfassend zu informieren, insbesondere uber die potenziellen Risiken und Chancen des Wertpapiers. Sie sind im Begriff, ein Produkt zu erwerben, das nicht einfach ist und schwer zu verstehen sein kann. European Solar Portfolio Expands to 85 MW Global Renewable Portfolio Stands at 1,520 MW VIENNA, Aug. 3, 2017 /PRNewswire/ --ContourGlobal signedyesterday an agreement for the acquisition of a group of companies owning ~20MW of operational solar photovoltaic ("PV") plants in Italy from ErgyCapital S.p.A. The plants, located in the regions of Puglia, Piemonte, Lazio and Campania, are in close proximity to ContourGlobal's existing Italian solar portfolio and benefit from approximately 12 more years of Feed-in-Tariff. The acquisition further expands ContourGlobal's Italian power business and leverages the company's existing Italian thermal and renewable operating platform consisting of high efficiency QuadGeneration facilities serving Coca Cola Italia and rooftop and ground mounted solar facilities throughout the country. ContourGlobal's Chief Operating Officer, Mr. Karl Schnadt, said: "We are pleased to continue to expand our business in Italy where we have operated now for almost a decade. Our operating platform enables us to efficiently integrate these new facilities into our existing European renewable business." The Enterprise Value of the transaction is 68m. The transaction contemplates either refinancing or assuming approximately 47m of project finance debt. Closing of the transaction, subject to certain customary and transaction specific conditions, is expected in September 2017. About ContourGlobal ContourGlobal is an international power-generation company with approximately 4,100 MW in operation in 19 countries and three continents. ContourGlobal operates a portfolio of 69 thermal and renewable power plants across Europe, Latin America, and Africa utilizing a wide range of technologies. Forward Looking Statements This press release contains forward-looking statements. Actual results may differ materially from those reflected in the forward-looking statements. The company undertakes no obligation to release publicly the result of any revisions to these forward-looking statements which may be made to reflect events or circumstances after the date hereof, including, without limitation, changes in ContourGlobal's business or to reflect the occurrence of unanticipated events. BANGKOK, Aug. 1, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- By sharing its Sufficiency Economy Philosophy as a model, Thailand is helping other developing nations achieve the Sustainable Development Goals, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, stated. Of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations, the final goal - revitalize the global partnership for sustainable development - may be the most compelling of all. Because the only way we can build a better world is by working together. So many of the challenges we face, from climate change to eradicating diseases, are borderless. Although we measure results on a nation-by-nation basis, unless nations can find ways to work together for the good of our planet and its peoples, our future will ultimately be unsustainable. As the 2016 chair of the Group of 77 - the largest coalition of developing nations at the United Nations - the Kingdom of Thailand made its primary mission to enhance cooperation between North and South and also to strengthen South-South Cooperation. This exchange of resources, technology and knowledge between developing countries, often referred to as the Global South, can be complementary to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals. As chair country, Thailand worked to transform this vision into action. Even before its chairmanship, Thailand had been sharing its own model of development among countries grappling with the challenges of a changing world. That model is known as the Sufficiency Economy Philosophy. Initiated by the late monarch King Bhumibol Adulyadej through decades of working to uplift the nation's poor people, the Sufficiency Economy Philosophy is an approach to development and to life that is based on moderation, reasonableness and prudent decision-making. It prescribes living in harmony with the environment and making wise use of resources in order to build resilience and wellbeing. Its principles can be applied to farmers, communities, businesses and nations. In the context of the philosophy, sufficiency does not mean living in isolation. It calls for communities to work together for the common good - the essence of partnerships. Thailand understands the value of working together. Once a country in need of development assistance, Thailand is now a donor nation, providing fund and sharing its resources of knowledge, technical assistance, scholarships and capacity building with less developed nations. In 2015, the Kingdom provided $78 million in Official Development Assistance to other countries through the Thailand International Cooperation Agency, while foreign direct investment surpassed $58 billion, with much of it going to the developing world. While generous funding is important, even more value lies in Thailand's willingness to share its knowledge and experience with the Sufficiency Economy Philosophy. To date, representatives from 105 countries have participated in workshops, seminars and training courses hosted by Thailand on the philosophy and its applications. Thailand has been partnering with several countries to help them implement their own development projects based on Sufficiency Economy Philosophy principles and methods. Timor-Leste is employing decision-making processes based on the philosophy's framework for sustainable agriculture projects and to support the launch of small businesses. Cambodia has established a Sufficiency Economy village as a pilot for more communities. Indonesia is using sufficiency principles shared by Thai advisors for ecological farming projects that raise incomes and quality of life for villagers. And neighboring Myanmar is working with Thai partners to establish sustainable development centers and rural development projects on sufficiency principles. Far beyond Asia, the Sufficiency Economy Philosophy is being adopted for the benefits of local peoples. In the southern African nation of Lesotho, Thailand has supported the establishment of a center to introduce integrated farming and agro-forestry farming that is protecting that nation's environment while providing greater food security and livelihoods for participants. Several nations in South America have also been applying approaches based on the philosophy. "Development approaches like the Sufficiency Economy Philosophy of Thailand, that promotes development with values, which not only complement the [SDG] agenda, but our own national development framework, will certainly help us in implementing the SDGs,' Guillame Long, Ecuador's Minister of Foreign Affairs, told the UN General Assembly last year. Achieving the Sustainable Development Goals by 2030 will require commitment and perseverance. For some countries in the Global South with limited resources and capacities, the tasks at hand may appear enormous. Despite its own limitations, Thailand achieved the Millennium Development Goals ahead of schedule, owing a significant degree of that success to the Sufficiency Economy Philosophy. Thailand is willing to partner with any country seeking knowledge, expertise and a proven path to sustainable development. Because there is only one way to build a better world - and that way is together. CONTACT: Ministry of Foreign Affairs Tel. +662 203 5000 ext. 22050 Photo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/540501/Foreign_Affairs_Thailand.jpg View original content:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/thailand-promotes-partnerships-for-a-sustainable-world-300498931.html LONDON (dpa-AFX) - Ashtead Group Plc. (AHT.L), an equipment rental company, announced the pricing of the offering of $600 million aggregate principal amount of 4.125% second priority senior secured notes due 2025 and $600 million aggregate principal amount of 4.375% second priority senior secured notes due 2027 by Ashtead Capital, Inc., an indirect wholly owned subsidiary of Ashtead. This is further to the announcement regarding the notes offering issued yesterday. The issue price is 100 percent of the principal amount of the 2025 Notes and 100 percent of the principal amount of the 2027 Notes, respectively. The offering is expected to close on 9 August 2017. Ashtead said that the notes will be fully and unconditionally guaranteed on a senior secured basis by the company and certain of its direct and indirect subsidiaries. Ashtead intends to use the net proceeds of the offering to repurchase all or any of Ashtead Capital's outstanding 6.50% second priority senior secured notes, pay related fees and expenses, and also repay a portion of the outstanding amounts borrowed under its first priority senior secured credit facility. The closing of the offering will not be conditioned on consummation of the offer. Ashtead's chief executive, Geoff Drabble, said, 'This new offering, combined with the recent extension of our $3.1 billion senior secured credit facility on the existing terms, which now matures in 2022, means our average debt maturity is almost 7 years. This enhances the flexibility of our debt package and further strengthens our balance sheet.' Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX Kostenloser Wertpapierhandel auf Smartbroker.de SAINT HELIER (dpa-AFX) - Gold producer Randgold Resources Ltd. (RRS.L, GOLD) reported that its profit before income tax for the second-quarter increased to $150.16 million from $80.30 million last year. Profit attributable to owners of the parent was $84.03 million or $0.88 per share up from $49.03 million or $0.52 per share in the prior year, reflecting the increase in profit from mining, partially offset by the increased depreciation charge. Chief executive Mark Bristow said, 'At this stage the outlook is positive, and Randgold is trending towards the top end of its 2017 production guidance range at a total cash cost below $600 per ounce.' Total revenues for the quarter grew to $336.79 million from $276.84 million in the prior year. Gold sales for the quarter of $422.1 million increased by 3% from $409.6 million in the previous quarter. Group sales for the quarter of 336 516oz was in line with the previous quarter. Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX Werbehinweise: Die Billigung des Basisprospekts durch die BaFin ist nicht als ihre Befurwortung der angebotenen Wertpapiere zu verstehen. Wir empfehlen Interessenten und potenziellen Anlegern den Basisprospekt und die Endgultigen Bedingungen zu lesen, bevor sie eine Anlageentscheidung treffen, um sich moglichst umfassend zu informieren, insbesondere uber die potenziellen Risiken und Chancen des Wertpapiers. Sie sind im Begriff, ein Produkt zu erwerben, das nicht einfach ist und schwer zu verstehen sein kann. SHENZHEN, China, Aug. 3, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Together with Honeywell, Huawei delivered the gigabit network and provided a Passive Optical LAN (POL) solution to achieve smart network inside the Brisbane Skytower, Australia. "We're excited to work with Huawei to build a gigabit network for Skytower, Brisbane's iconic 270-meter, 90-story residential tower. The network is the first-ever installation to utilize one common fiber optic cable for telephony/data and building services." --Mark Dunn, Executive General Manager, Honeywell Building Solutions Background Brisbane Skytower is a landmark building under construction in Brisbane, Queensland, Australia. Located in Brisbane's central business district, this iconic residential tower will become Brisbane's tallest building when completed in 2018/2019. Skytower will be an exemplary smart building leveraging advanced technology solutions from Honeywell and Huawei to make it more sustainable, secure and energy-efficient. Challenges Smart buildings are rapidly evolving to become more networked, human-centric and intelligent. The growing use of The Internet of Things (IoT), cloud computing, and Big Data, enables seamless interoperability between building intelligence and information systems, changing the building industry and accelerating the development of smart buildings. The network for smart buildings needs to keep pace with this new paradigm and be smart enough to connect people together, which needs to shift from simply providing telephone services to delivering all-round services such as Wi-Fi, and environmental awareness. It needs to tackle the following challenges: Higher bandwidth is needed: A growing number of smart devices such as smartphones, 4K Internet TV are being used in buildings. Buildings are adopting more building control, energy management, and sensing equipment. All these bandwidth-intensive applications place increased pressure on overburdened networks. Ubiquitous network access is required: Occupants now expect anytime, anywhere access to applications and services in rooms, elevators, underground parking garages, etc. Property management owners also need a simpler, faster-to-deploy, and easier-to-manage network to reduce costs while improving efficiency. These challenges were primary considerations for Billbergia Group, Skytower's property management company. The Group wanted a technology provider that could provide a comprehensive smart building solution. Bill McGarry, Development Manager of the Billbergia Group, understood the importance of "preparing building for the next wave of technology upgrades" and needed to be confident the Skytower technology solution was going to deliver the best outcome. Solution Billbergia Group approved Honeywell's proposed technology solution integrated with Huawei's POL solution, delivering a complete smart building solution. Honeywell Solution Honeywell will provide Skytower with its Enterprise Buildings Integrator, a building automation system that takes charge of system integration, covering the Heating, Ventilation, and Air Conditioning, security protection facilities, etc. Additionally, Honeywell will centrally manage various building sub-systems, provide a visualized management portal and alarm management and work-order management services, designed to deliver efficient facility management, fast response, and predictive maintenance. Huawei Solution Huawei is the ideal ICT vendor to deliver the gigabit network and provides a POL solution to achieve smart network inside the Skytower. In contrast to a traditional complex LAN which limits the performance of bandwidth-intensive applications, Using POL technology, an enterprise can combine data, voice, video, and other weak-current systems into one optical network. Prominent features include high bandwidth, high reliability, comprehensive security authentication, easy deployment, and Wi-Fi coverage. As part of the POL solution, Huawei's network management system U2000, OLT (MA5608T), ONU (MA5626, M5671, and MA5620), and ONT (HG8242H) are included to unlock the passive network's full potential. Benefits Huawei's POL solution makes the followings possible in Skytower: The building automation system shares the same network with triple-play services, eliminating the need to build standalone networks. One single fiber bears all services, simplifying cabling and dramatically reducing Capital Expenditure. Passive splitters take place of switches in the middle layer without the need of powering and cooling, which greatly saves riser space. Smooth evolution to 10G PON while reusing existing cables for maximal investment protection. The U2000 centrally monitors the faults and alarms of all network equipment and provide added visibility to end-to-end service rollout. Future Plan for Smart Building At the 2017 Huawei Partners Summit held in Sydney, Honeywell won the 2017 Award for Solution Breakthroughs for its excellent work on the Skytower project. In addition to smart buildings like Brisbane Skytower, Huawei and Honeywell have agreed to jointly explore opportunities in education and enterprise campuses, business buildings, and industrial parks in high growth regions, including China, Southeast Asia, the South Pacific, Western Europe, the Middle East, and India. The companies will jointly pursue large-scale smart city projects throughout the world to help build intelligent urban infrastructures that enable to control costs while providing a more favorable living environment. To know more about Huawei helping enterprises achieve digital transformation, please visit http://e.huawei.com/topic/leading-new-ict-en/index.html?utm_campaign=lni17-minisiteen&utm_medium=hwdc&utm_source=ebghome-en&source=eebghq175155l BRUSSELS (dpa-AFX) - At 3:45 am ET Thursday, Markit Economics is due to release its services PMI figures for Italy. PMI reports for France and Germany are due at 3:50 am ET and 3:55 am ET, respectively. The services PMI for the Eurozone is due at 4:00 am ET. Ahead of the reports, the euro showed mixed trading against the other major currencies. While the euro fell against the pound and the Swiss franc, it held steady against the U.S. dollar and the yen. As of 3:40 am ET, the euro was trading at 0.8952 against the pound, 1.1487 against the Swiss franc, 1.1843 against the U.S. dollar and 131.04 against the yen. Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX Werbehinweise: Die Billigung des Basisprospekts durch die BaFin ist nicht als ihre Befurwortung der angebotenen Wertpapiere zu verstehen. Wir empfehlen Interessenten und potenziellen Anlegern den Basisprospekt und die Endgultigen Bedingungen zu lesen, bevor sie eine Anlageentscheidung treffen, um sich moglichst umfassend zu informieren, insbesondere uber die potenziellen Risiken und Chancen des Wertpapiers. Sie sind im Begriff, ein Produkt zu erwerben, das nicht einfach ist und schwer zu verstehen sein kann. LONDON, August 3, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Grant's is searching for a new Global Brand Ambassador for 2018 and this extraordinary role needs an interview to match - an all-expenses-paid trip to take Grant's to the world Forget CVs, Grant's is looking to test the mettle of their candidates on location at some of the world's most exciting cities, armed with a suitcase of Grant's whisky. To view the Multimedia News Release, please click: https://www.multivu.com/players/uk/8150651-grants-whisky-greatest-job-interview/ Applications are now open for the interview of a lifetime - a 10-day world tour - launched by Grant's Whisky as part of its search for a new Global Brand Ambassador for 2018. In a job interview like no other, three final candidates will each travel to a trio of countries, ranging from Colombia to Poland, India and South Africa equipped with a suitcase full of Grant's to share with the friends they're yet to meet. Their journey will echo the legendary trip taken in 1909 by Charles Grant Gordon, the son in law of the founder of Grant's Whisky, William Grant. Charles set sail with a suitcase of Grant's and an ambition to introduce it to the world. 110 years later, Grant's chosen Global Brand Ambassador will follow in his footsteps throughout 2018. The Grant's Global Brand Ambassador needs to be resourceful, charismatic, talented, and have a passion for writing, travelling and mixology. Putting these traits to the ultimate test, the final three candidates will need to use their suitcase of Grant's as bargaining power, swapping drams for unforgettable adventures that take whisky to the world. If this is the interview, imagine what the job is like. Oliver Dickson, Global Brand Director, explains: "The role goes way beyond being able to make great cocktails. We're looking for somebody to embody the 'Stand Together' spirit of the brand and who can spearhead Grant's into the next stage of its global journey. "In today's society, lots of people seek more flexibility and adventure from their work than a 9 to 5 day in an office. This job offers travel, freedom, independence and a good salary too! We wanted an interview process to match the exciting and challenging nature of the role." For more info http://www.grantswhisky.com/interview (Photo: http://mma.prnewswire.com/media/540529/Global_Brand_Ambassador_2018.jpg ) Video: https://www.multivu.com/players/uk/8150651-grants-whisky-greatest-job-interview/ BERLIN (dpa-AFX) - German drug major Merck KgaA (MKGAY.PK) reported Thursday higher net profit in its second quarter with increased sales. The company generated improved sales in Healthcare and Life Science segments, and all regions except Europe. Meanwhile, EBITDA, a key earnings metric, declined. Looking ahead, the company maintained its fiscal 2017 adjusted earnings view, but trimmed sales forecast on exchange rate impacts. For the second quarter, profit after tax climbed 34.6 percent to 423 million euros from 314 million euros last year. Earnings per share grew 34.7 percent to 0.97 euro from 0.72 euro a year ago. Earnings per share pre exceptionals were 1.54 euros, compared to 1.55 euros last year. Operating result or EBIT increased 14 percent to 628 million euros, and margin grew to 16.1 percent from 14.5 percent last year. EBITDA, meanwhile, dropped 5.8 percent to 1.01 billion euros, and margin dropped to 25.9 percent from 28.1 percent a year ago. EBITDA pre exceptionals1 was down 5.6 percent to 1.09 billion euros, and margin declined to 28.1 percent from 30.4 percent a year ago. Net sales increased 2.3 percent to 3.89 billion euros from 3.81 billion euros last year. The slight sales increase was due to organic growth generated by the Healthcare and Life Science business sectors, the company noted. With organic sales growth of 2.6 percent, Healthcare sector generated sales of 1.78 billion euros, accounting for an unchanged 46 percent of Group sales. Life Science achieved a growth rate of 4.6 percent, largely thanks to organic sales increases, and accounted for 38 percent of Group sales. Performance Materials business sector reported a slight decrease in sales. Sales in Europe declined 1.5 percent, while all other regions posted improved results. Looking ahead, for fiscal 2017, Merck continues to project adjusted earnings per share of 6.15 euros to 6.50 euros, compared to last year's 6.21 euros. The company still expects that Group EBITDA pre exceptionals between 4.4 billion euros and 4.6 billion euros. The company now assumes that foreign exchange rate effects will be neutral, compared to the previous view of a slight positive effect of 1 percent to 2 percent on net sales. Owing to the new exchange rate expectations, the company now forecast net sales of 15.3 billion euros to 15.7 billion euros for the Merck Group in 2017. This is in comparison to previously expected net sales of between 15.5 billion euros and 16.0 billion euros. Merck said it continues to expect slight to moderate organic net sales growth compared with the previous year. For the Healthcare business sector, the company backed full-year outlook of a slight organic increase in net sales and adjusted EBITDA in a range of between 1.9 billion euros and 2.0 billion euros. In Germany, Merck KgaA shares were trading at 93.09 euros, up 0.18 percent. Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX Kostenloser Wertpapierhandel auf Smartbroker.de NEW YORK, NY -- (Marketwired) -- 08/03/17 -- Dewmar International BMC, Inc. (OTC PINK: DEWM) announced today that as a result of a major marketing and sales promotion at The Shops at Essence in conjunction with Walmart Supplier Diversity Program at the 2017 Essence Music Festival, it SOLD OUT of all of its Kush Cakes premium relaxation brownies in the month of July in all of its online fulfillment centers. Dewmar International CEO, Dr. Marco Moran stated, "As a result of our team passing out thousands of Kush Cakes promotional fliers with a coupon code for $10.00 off per box to many of the up to 400,000 attendees at the Essence Festival the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center at the beginning of July, we sold out of all of our product made available for e-commerce in less than 30 days. The promotion is set to last until September 1st so we immediately replenished both of our fulfillment centers so that we can continue with the significant increase of sales through our continued success of working with Walmart to promote both Lean Slow Motion Potion and Kush Cakes." Currently, Dewmar sells Kush Cakes and Lean Slow Motion Potion via Virtual Exchange, Inc. of Raleigh, NC on Walmart.com and Amazon.com e-commerce sites. Additionally, the Company utilizes Epic Fulfillment Center in Broomfield, CO for the shipment of Kush Cakes sold on Amazon and www.MyKushCakes.com as well as fulfillment of other hemp-infused products as part of its U.S. Hemp Corporation's hemp incubator program. Dewmar remains grateful to be a member of Walmart's exclusive supplier diversity program that allows veteran-owned and minority-owned companies to participate in special events to help increase sales. The Company is scheduled to have a planning call with its new Walmart Snack and Beverage Buyer during the first week of September to discuss future growth opportunities. About Dewmar International BMC, Inc. Dewmar International BMC, Inc. is a certified service-disabled veteran-owned business concern, new product development, manufacturing and brand management company. Established in 2003, Dewmar's primary business strategy has been in creating high profit margins with functional foods and beverages, such as Lean Slow Motion Potion; the longest placement period of all relaxation beverages in Walmart's history and Kush Cakes; the top selling relaxation brownie in the U.S. market. The company has offices in Clinton, MS; Houston, TX: Denver, CO and New Orleans, LA. The Company host an investor's conference call at 5:30 PM EDT on today, August 3, 2017 to discuss the company's business prospects, promising future, financial results and recent corporate activities. The call can be accessed live by domestic callers by dialing the toll-free number of (888) 802-2239. International callers can access the call by dialing (719) 325-4916. The Conference ID is 6753125. Follow Dewmar on its official Facebook and Twitter sites where the CEO is inclined to provide information, sometimes on a daily basis, about some of the Company's current activities and key staff activities. Also, subscribe to our Company Newsletter on the bottom right of our homepage on our website to receive updates as well. Click here for the Safe Harbor Statement. Investment & Company Information Dewmar International BMC, Inc. InvestorRelations@DewmarInternational.com LONDON, Aug. 3,2017 /PRNewswire/ --Chubb UK and Ireland, has announced the appointment of Chris Savvas as Head of PI, as the company continues to develop its financial lines and professional indemnity capabilities. In his new role, Chris will be primarily responsible for the management of Chubb UKI's PI portfolio and business. He will be based in London and report to Grant Cairns, Financial Lines Manager, UKI. Chris's appointment is a promotion from his previous role as Senior PI Underwriter and is effective immediately. Chris has more than a decade of insurance industry expertise. He joined Chubb in December 2016 from QBE where he ran the MENA PI portfolio for three and a half years and was based in Dubai. Prior to that, he spent seven years at Travelers, where he began his career as a graduate trainee, in a variety of underwriting positions. Grant Cairns, Financial Lines Manager, UKI said: "It is a testament to the quality of our underwriting talent pool that we are, once again, able to promote from within the organisation. I very much look forward to continuing to work with Chris in his new capacity as he develops this important line of business." About Chubb Chubb is the world's largest publicly traded property and casualty insurance company. With operations in 54 countries, Chubb provides commercial and personal property and casualty insurance, personal accident and supplemental health insurance, reinsurance and life insurance to a diverse group of clients. As an underwriting company, we assess, assume and manage risk with insight and discipline. We service and pay our claims fairly and promptly. The company is also defined by its extensive product and service offerings, broad distribution capabilities, exceptional financial strength and local operations globally. Parent company Chubb Limited is listed on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE: CB) and is a component of the S&P 500 index. Chubb maintains executive offices in Zurich, New York, London and other locations, and employs approximately 31,000 people worldwide. Additional information can be found at: chubb.com/uk Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160121/324916LOGO TORONTO, August 3, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Richmont Mines Inc. (TSX: RIC) (NYSE: RIC) ('Richmont' or the 'Corporation') announces operating and financial results for the three and six months ended June 30, 2017, driven by solid results from the Island Gold Mine. The Corporation will host a conference call and webcast on Thursday, August 3, 2017, beginning at 8:30 a.m. Eastern Time (details below.) (All amounts are in Canadian dollars, unless otherwise indicated.) Second Quarter Highlights Company-wide production was 31,249 ounces of gold (35,040 ounces sold) for the quarter, primarily driven by solid production from the Island Gold Mine of 26,110 ounces of gold (29,534 ounces sold). Company-wide cash costs [ 1 ] for the quarter were $725 (US$539) per ounce, positively impacted by record low cash costs from the Island Gold Mine of $580 (US$431) per ounce. for the quarter were per ounce, positively impacted by record low cash costs from the Island Gold Mine of per ounce. Company-wide All-In-Sustaining Costs [ 1 ] ("AISC") of $957 (US$711) per ounce, positively impacted by record low AISC of $677 (US$503) per ounce from the Island Gold Mine. ("AISC") of per ounce, positively impacted by record low AISC of per ounce from the Island Gold Mine. The Island Gold Mine remains on-track to meet, or beat, annual production and cost guidance. Second quarter revenues of $59.3 (US$44.1) million . . Earnings of $10.5 (US$7.8) million , or $0.17 (US$0.12) per share. , or per share. Operating cash flow [ 1 ] (before changes in non-cash working capital) was $24.9 (US$18.5) million , or $0.39 (US$0.29) per share. (before changes in non-cash working capital) was , or per share. Net free cash flow [ 1 ] was $19.2 (US$14.3) million , or $0.30 (US$0.22) per share. was , or per share. Cash balance at the end of the quarter increased to $95.9 (US$73.9) million , an increase of $20.7 (US$15.4) million over the first quarter; working capital increased to $81.4 (US$62.7) million . , an increase of over the first quarter; working capital increased to . The results of the Expansion Case Preliminary Economic Assessment ("PEA") were released during the second quarter, supporting strong production growth of 22% at low industry cash costs and a robust cash flow stream over an initial eight-year Phase 1 period. The ramp-up is currently advancing and the mill is anticipated to achieve the target run rate of 1,100 tonnes per day in the latter part of 2018 once the expansion is completed. On July 27, 2017 the Corporation provided an update from its strategic exploration drilling program currently underway at the Island Gold Mine. Recent exploration drilling has intersected high-grade, wide mineralization in the down plunge extension of the main Island Gold deposit with Hole MH8-4 intersecting 19.85 g/t gold over 8.4 metres (true width and assays capped at 70 g/t gold). "The positive results for the quarter were supported by another consecutive quarter of solid production and record low cash costs reported from our cornerstone Island Gold Mine. This strong operational and cost performance drove robust cash flow streams even during a period of accelerated investment in our strategic expansion and exploration programs at Island Gold," stated Renaud Adams, CEO. He continued, "Company-wide, our focus remains on creating sustainable shareholder value by driving ongoing operational and cost efficiencies throughout the organization and maintaining our disciplined approach to capital allocation. Over the balance of the year, we will continue to focus on further unlocking the potential of the Island Gold Mine as we position the operation to be one of the lowest cost producers in the Americas." Financial Highlights Quarter ended Quarter ended Six-Months ended Six-Months ended (in thousands of $, except per share amounts) June 30, 2017 June 30, 2016 June 30, 2017 June 30, 2016 Revenue from mining operations 59,278 40,618 105,740 93,252 Net earnings per share, basic 0.17 0.04 0.25 0.19 Operating cash flow, per share[(1)] 0.48 0.25 0.68 0.54 Operating cash flow (before non-cash changes in working capital), per share[(1)] 0.39 0.19 0.65 0.55 Net free cash flow, per share[(1)] 0.30 0.05 0.31 0.07 Revenue from mining operations (US$) 44,073 31,521 79,236 70,104 Net earnings per share, basic (US$) 0.12 0.03 0.19 0.14 Operating cash flow, per share[(1)] (US$) 0.36 0.19 0.51 0.41 Operating cash flow (before non-cash changes in working capital), per share[(1)] (US$) 0.29 0.15 0.49 0.41 Net free cash flow, per share[(1)] (US$) 0.22 0.04 0.23 0.05 [(1)] Non-IFRS performance measure. Refer to the Non-IFRS performance measures section contained in the Q2 2017 Management's Discussion and Analysis. Operational Highlights Quarter ended Quarter ended Six-Months ended Six-Months ended June 30, 2017 June 30, 2016 June 30, 2017 June 30, 2016 Gold produced (oz) 31,249 23,320 60,650 55,689 Gold sold (oz) 35,040 24,888 63,568 57,127 Average cash costs per ounce ($)[(1)] 725 895 754 841 Average AISC per ounce ($)[(1)] 957 1,322 1,031 1,193 Average realized gold price per ounce ($) 1,688 1,628 1,659 1,629 Average cash costs per ounce (US$)[(1)] 539 695 565 632 Average AISC per ounce (US$)[(1)] 711 1,026 773 897 Average realized gold price per ounce (US$) 1,255 1,263 1,243 1,225 [(1)] Non-IFRS performance measure. Refer to the Non-IFRS performance measures section contained in the Q2 2017 Management's Discussion and Analysis. Island Gold Mine Highlights Quarter ended Quarter ended Six-Months ended Six-Months ended ISLAND GOLD MINE June 30, 2017 June 30, 2016 June 30, 2017 June 30, 2016 Gold produced (oz) 26,110 18,617 49,882 45,206 Gold sold (oz) 29,534 20,147 52,183 46,178 Cash costs per ounce ($)[(1)] 580 757 618 706 AISC per ounce ($)[(1)] 677 1,029 751 927 Realized gold price per ounce ($) 1,686 1,627 1,659 1,627 Cash costs per ounce (US$)[(1)] 431 588 463 531 AISC per ounce (US$)[(1)] 503 799 563 697 Realized gold price per ounce (US$) 1,254 1,263 1,243 1,223 Underground tpd 1,148 911 1,084 882 Mill tonnes 85,578 79,924 168,943 155,830 Mill tpd 940 878 933 856 Head grade (g/t gold) 9.73 7.51 9.46 9.36 Recoveries (%) 97.6 96.5 97.1 96.4 Sustaining costs ($000's) 2,877 5,480 6,949 10,193 Project costs ($000's) 5,970 7,946 11,899 14,933 Non-sustaining exploration ($000's) 4,889 3,624 8,651 7,394 Sustaining costs (US$000's) 2,139 4,253 5,207 7,663 Project costs (US$000's) 4,439 6,166 8,916 11,226 Non-sustaining exploration (US$000's) 3,635 2,812 6,483 5,559 [(1)] Non-IFRS performance measure. Refer to the Non-IFRS performance measures section contained in the Q2 2017 Management's Discussion and Analysis. Island Gold Mine Highlights Production for the quarter was 26,110 ounces of gold (29,534 ounces sold). The mine is now well positioned to achieve, or exceed, the high-end of annual production guidance for the year. Record low cash costs for the quarter of $580 (US$431) per ounce, significantly below annual cash cost guidance. The mine is now well positioned to achieve, or beat, the low-end of annual cash costs guidance for the year. per ounce, significantly below annual cash cost guidance. The mine is now well positioned to achieve, or beat, the low-end of annual cash costs guidance for the year. AISC for the quarter were $677 (US$503) per ounce, significantly below annual AISC guidance for the year. per ounce, significantly below annual AISC guidance for the year. For the quarter, project capital, primarily related to the expansion, was $6.0 (US$4.4) million and exploration expense was $4.9 (US$3.6) million . and exploration expense was . Mill head grade for the quarter was 9.73 g/t gold, partially resulting from lower than planned dilution in development ore and the impact of development in the high grade portions of the wider sections of veins located on the 800 and 820 metre levels. Record underground mine and mill productivities for the quarter, averaging 1,148 and 940 tonnes per day, respectively, with lower-grade underground ore stockpiled for future processing, also contributing to the improved overall mill head grade for the quarter. During the quarter, long-hole stope mining continued in the first and second mining horizons and development in ore was advanced as planned in the higher-grade third mining horizon. Stoping in the lower grade extensions of the third mining horizon is expected to begin in the fourth quarter. The eastern portion of the main ramp system has achieved a vertical depth of 860 metres as planned, allowing the development of the western portion of the main ramp system to begin during the second quarter. For the first six months, development of the 620 metre and 840 metre level exploration drifts advanced 250 metres and 80 metres, respectively, supporting ongoing exploration and delineation drilling both laterally to the east and at depth. During the quarter the transition from underground development contractors to the internal workforce was initiated as planned, this is expected to further reduce development costs over the balance of the year. The results of the Expansion Case PEA were released during the second quarter (see May 29, 2017 press release). The study represents another step in a multi-phased approach to unlock the potential of the Island Gold Mine. The PEA confirms the increase in underground mine and mill productivity to 1,100 tonnes per day supporting strong production growth of 22% at low industry cash costs and a robust cash flow stream over an eight-year Phase 1 period, for a low incremental capital cost of $28.2 (US$20.9) million . The ramp-up to 1,100 tonnes per day is currently advancing and the operation is anticipated to achieve the target run rate in the latter part of 2018. press release). The study represents another step in a multi-phased approach to unlock the potential of the Island Gold Mine. The PEA confirms the increase in underground mine and mill productivity to 1,100 tonnes per day supporting strong production growth of 22% at low industry cash costs and a robust cash flow stream over an eight-year Phase 1 period, for a low incremental capital cost of . The ramp-up to 1,100 tonnes per day is currently advancing and the operation is anticipated to achieve the target run rate in the latter part of 2018. On July 27, 2017 the Corporation provided an update Island Gold Mine exploration drilling program where recent exploration drilling intersected high-grade, wide mineralization in the down plunge extension of the main Island Gold deposit with Hole MH8-4 intersecting 19.85 g/t gold over 8.4 metres (true width and assays capped at 70 g/t gold). Please refer to the Corporation's July 27, 2017 press release for additional information about the results from the drilling program. Beaufor Mine Highlights Quarter ended Quarter ended Six-Months ended Six-Months ended BEAUFOR MINE June 30, 2017 June 30, 2016 June 30, 2017 June 30, 2016 Gold produced (oz) 5,139 4,703 10,768 9,318 Gold sold (oz) 5,506 4,741 11,385 9,778 Cash costs per ounce ($)[(1)] 1,502 1,484 1,380 1,439 AISC per ounce ($)[(1)] 1,791 1,897 1,682 1,810 Realized gold price per ounce ($) 1,697 1,635 1,660 1,642 Cash costs per ounce (US$)[(1)] 1,117 1,152 1,034 1,082 AISC per ounce (US$)[(1)] 1,332 1,473 1,260 1,361 Realized gold price per ounce (US$) 1,262 1,269 1,244 1,234 Underground tpd 339 286 346 304 Mill tonnes 31,414 28,281 61,423 57,599 Head grade (g/t gold) 5.21 5.27 5.60 5.11 Recoveries (%) 97.7 98.1 97.4 98.4 Sustaining costs ($000's) 1,596 1,958 3,450 3,632 Non-sustaining exploration costs ($000's) 214 - 354 - Sustaining costs (US$000's) 1,187 1,519 2,585 2,730 Non-sustaining exploration costs (US$000's) 158 - 265 - [(1)] Non-IFRS performance measure. Refer to the Non-IFRS performance measures section contained in the Q2 2017 Management's Discussion and Analysis. Beaufor Mine Highlights Production for the quarter was 5,139 ounces of gold (5,506 ounces sold). Production in the quarter was lower than anticipated, primarily due to lower grades mined as higher than expected dilution was reported from one stope located in the Q Zone. Cash costs of $1,502 (US$1,117) per ounce, higher than annual guidance, are primarily related to lower production achieved for the quarter. per ounce, higher than annual guidance, are primarily related to lower production achieved for the quarter. AISC for the quarter were $1,791 (US$1,332) per ounce. per ounce. Exploration expense was $0.3 (US$0.2) million for the quarter. for the quarter. Underground productivity was 339 tonnes per day. During the quarter, the majority of mining activities were within the main Q Zone, however beginning in Q3 mining flexibility is expected to improve as additional ore will be sourced from new parallel structures. During the quarter, the Corporation advanced the review of strategic alternatives regarding the Beaufor Mine and Camflo Mill. Financial Statements and Management's Discussion and Analysis The financial statements and related Management's Discussion and Analysis can be found on the Corporation's website at http://www.richmont-mines.com or under the Corporation's profile on http://www.sedar.com and with the Securities and Exchange Commission at http://www.sec.gov/edgar.shtml. 2017 Second Quarter Results Webcast and Conference Call Senior management will discuss second quarter financial results during a conference call and webcast scheduled on Thursday, August 3, 2017 at 8:30 a.m. E.T. Webcast access http://event.on24.com/r.htm?e=1464043&s=1&k=2332374CD8C93FEF484C8DE7AA03A11F Telephone access Toll free ( Canada & U.S.): 1-888-390-0546 & U.S.): 1-888-390-0546 Toronto local & International: +1-416-764-8688 A replay will be available until August 17, 2017 by dialling +1-416-764-8677 (Toronto local and international) or 1 888 390-0541 (toll free in Canada and U.S.), using pass code 269710#. The webcast and presentation slides will be archived on the Corporation's website at http://www.richmont-mines.com. Non-International Financial Reporting Standards ("IFRS") Performance Measures "Cash cost per ounce", "All-in Sustaining Costs", "net free cash flow" and "operating cash flow" are non-IFRS performance measures, and may not be comparable to similar measures presented by other companies. The Corporation believes that, in addition to conventional measures prepared in accordance with IFRS, the Corporation and certain investors use this information to evaluate the Corporation's performance. Accordingly, these measures are intended to provide additional information and should not be considered in isolation or as a substitute for measures of performance prepared in accordance with IFRS. For full disclosure and reconciliation of these measures, refer to the Non-IFRS Performance Measures section contained in the Q2 2017 Management's Discussion and Analysis. About Richmont Mines Inc. Richmont Mines currently produces gold from the Island Gold Mine in Ontario, and the Beaufor Mine in Quebec. The Corporation is also advancing development of the significant high-grade resource extension at depth of the Island Gold Mine in Ontario. With more than 35 years of experience in gold production, exploration and development, and prudent financial management, the Corporation is well-positioned to cost-effectively build its Canadian reserve base and to successfully enter its next phase of growth. Forward-Looking Statements This news release contains forward-looking statements that include risks and uncertainties. When used in this news release, the words "estimate", "project", "anticipate", "expect", "intend", "believe", "hope", "may", "objective" and similar expressions, as well as "will", "shall" and other indications of future tense, are intended to identify forward-looking statements. The forward-looking statements are based on current expectations and apply only as of the date on which they were made. Except as may be required by law or regulation, the Corporation undertakes no obligation and disclaims any responsibility to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements or information, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise. The factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those indicated in such forward-looking statements include changes in the prevailing price of gold, the Canadian-United States exchange rate, grade of ore mined and unforeseen difficulties in mining operations that could affect revenue and production costs. Other factors such as uncertainties regarding government regulations could also affect the results. Other risks may be set out in Richmont Mines' Annual Information Form, Annual Reports and periodic reports. The forward-looking information contained herein is made as of the date of this news release. Cautionary note to US investors concerning resource estimates Information in this press release is intended to comply with the requirements of the Toronto Stock Exchange and applicable Canadian securities legislation, which differ in certain respects with the rules and regulations promulgated under the United States Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended ("Exchange Act"), as promulgated by the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (the "SEC"). The requirements of National Instrument 43-101 - Standards of Disclosure for Mineral Projects ("NI 43-101") adopted by the Canadian Securities Administrators differ significantly from the requirements of the SEC. U.S. Investors are urged to consider the disclosure in our annual report on Form 40-F, File No. 001-14598, as filed with the SEC under the Exchange Act, which may be obtained from us (without cost) or from the SEC's web site: http://sec.gov/edgar.shtml. National Instrument 43-101 The scientific or technical information in this news release has been reviewed by Mr. Daniel Adam, Geo., Ph.D., Vice-President, Exploration, an employee of Richmont Mines Inc., and a qualified person as defined by NI 43-101. __________________________________ [1] Non-IFRS performance measure. Refer to the Non-IFRS Performance Measures contained in the Q2 2017 Management's Discussion and Analysis. Media contacts: Renaud Adams President and CEO Phone: 416-368-0291 ext. 101 Anne Day Senior Vice-President, Investor Relations Phone: 416-368-0291 ext. 105 ALISO VIEJO, California and HONG KONG, August 3, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- The 4-year Contract is for the supply of Information Technology Services to all its Departments UST Global (Singapore) Pte Ltd, a subsidiary of UST Global Inc., today announced that the Hong Kong Government has awarded the company with the Standing Offer Agreement for Quality Professional Services for the supply of Information Technology Services to all of its 80+ bureaus and departments. (Logo: http://mma.prnewswire.com/media/540539/UST_Global_Logo.jpg ) Through this award, UST Global (Singapore) Pte Ltd will be participating in the provision of the Category 1 Pre-implementation Services such as Departmental Information Technology Planning and Feasibility and Technical Study, and also Independent Programme/Project Management Services; and Category 2 Ongoing IT professional Services for System Maintenance and Support and Network Support for the Hong Kong Government departments between 31st July, 2017 to 30th July, 2021. The contract was awarded by the Government Chief Information Officer, Mr. Allen Yeung, at the award ceremony held in Hong Kong on July 17th, 2017. Commenting on this award, Gilroy Mathew, GM - APAC, UST Global Inc, said, "We are delighted to be awarded the contract by the Hong Kong Government to provide innovative and creative IT services. This award is a testimony to our continuous growth and investment into our Digital Transformation initiatives within the APAC region for both Public Sector and Global 1000 customers. We look forward to working with the Hong Kong Government as we embark on this journey for the next 4 years." About UST Global UST Global is a fast-growing digital technology company that provides advanced computing and digital services to large private and public enterprises around the world. Driven by a larger purpose of 'Transforming Lives' and the philosophy of 'fewer clients, more attention', we bring in the entrepreneurial spirit that seeks the fastest path to value in today's digital economy. Our innovative technology services and pioneering social programs make us stand apart. UST Global is headquartered in Aliso Viejo, California and operates in 21 countries. Our clients include Fortune 500 companies in banking and financial services, healthcare, insurance, retail, high technology, manufacturing, shipping, and telecom. UST Global believes in building long-lasting, strategic business relationships through agile and client-centric global engagement models that combines local experts & resources with cost, scale, and quality advantages of global operations. Media Contact: Manoj M Mani Manoj.Mattamana@ust-global.com +91-9632000553 Media Relations Media.Relations@ust-global.com TEANECK (dpa-AFX) - Cognizant Technology Solutions Corp. (CTSH) said that it expects non-GAAP earnings per share for third-quarter to be at least $0.94, and revenue of $3.73 billion to $3.78 billion for the third-quarter. Analysts polled by Thomson Reuters expect the company to report earnings of $0.95 per share and revenues of $3.76 million for the third-quarter. Analysts' estimates typically exclude special items. Looking ahead for full year 2017, the company now projects non-GAAP earnings per share to be at least $3.67, and revenue of $14.70 billion to $14.84 billion. Previously, the company had expected non-GAAP EPS to be at least $3.64 and revenue of $14.56 billion to $14.84 billion for full year 2017. Wall Street currently is looking for fiscal year 2017 earnings of $3.67 per share on annual revenues of $14.76 billion. GAAP net income for the second-quarter was $470 million, or $0.80 per share, compared to $252 million, or $0.41 per share, in the second quarter of 2016. The second quarter of 2016 GAAP EPS included the effect of incremental income tax expense related to the one-time $2.8 billion cash remittance from our subsidiary in India to non-Indian Cognizant entities. Non-GAAP EPS was $0.93, compared to $0.87 in the second quarter of 2016. Revenue for the second quarter of 2017 rose to $3.67 billion, up 8.9% from $3.37 billion in the second quarter of 2016. Analysts expected the company to report earnings of $0.91 per share and revenues of $3.66 billion for the second-quarter. The Company has declared its quarterly cash dividend of $0.15 per share on Cognizant Class A Common Stock for shareholders of record at the close of business on August 22, 2017. This dividend will be payable on August 31, 2017. Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX Kostenloser Wertpapierhandel auf Smartbroker.de MONTREAL, QUEBEC -- (Marketwired) -- 08/03/17 -- Sphinx Resources Ltd. ("Sphinx" or the "Corporation") (TSX VENTURE: SFX) and its partner SOQUEM are pleased to announce the continuation of the exploration work on the Calumet-Sud zinc project (the "Project"). The first phase of this additional work has been approved by Sphinx and SOQUEM following the receipt of the encouraging results from the 2017 drilling program (press release of July 13 2017). These results confirm the significance of the mineralization identified on surface and demonstrate the potential to identify high-grade, carbonate-hosted zinc on the Project. The work that will be conducted this summer include: -- A detailed soil survey at a spacing varying between 25 to 100 m centers to better delineate the strong zinc and lead anomalies identified during previous surveys. This new program will also investigate the trend of the anomalies to the south where no work has been conducted. The soil analyses will be performed directly in the field using a hand-held XRF; and -- A detailed analysis of drill core from the 2017 drill program to determine the geophysical rock properties and the lithogeochemical characteristics of both the zinc mineralization and host rocks intersected in drill holes. This will significantly refine the ability to utilize the 2016 and 2017 geophysical surveys in 3D in order to better target areas of potential for high-grade zinc mineralization. The results of this work will allow robust planning and targeting of the next phases of exploration which will include a focus on additional drilling. The Project consists of 21 claims (12 km2) and is located in the MRC Pontiac region in southwestern Quebec. To the north, the Project is adjacent to the historic zinc-lead-silver-gold New Calumet mine and Sphinx's Green Palladium project. In addition, Sphinx issued a total of 2,846,154 common shares of Sphinx to Gardin Inc. ("Gardin", which is wholly-owned by Michel Gauthier, a director of the Corporation). This share issue was planned under the terms of the agreement between Gardin and Sphinx and the approval of the transaction received from the TSX Venture Exchange. The Project is also adjacent to the Green Palladium project consisting of 86 claims (49 km2) held 100% by Sphinx. The latter project includes also a significant surface area of un-tested and potentially zinc-bearing rocks. In addition to the work on the Project, a soil sampling program (approximately 150 samples) will be carried out on the Green Palladium project in the area underlain by the potentially zinc-bearing rocks. The technical information presented in this press release has been approved by Normand Champigny, President and Chief Executive Officer of Sphinx, and a Qualified Person as defined by NI 43-101. About SOQUEM SOQUEM, a subsidiary of Investissement Quebec, is a leading player in mineral exploration in Quebec. Its mission is to explore, discover and develop mining properties in Quebec. SOQUEM has participated in more than 350 exploration projects and contributed to major discoveries of gold, diamonds, lithium and other minerals. About Quebec and Sphinx Quebec has established itself as one of the world's most attractive mining jurisdictions, ranking 6th globally (Fraser Institute press release, February 28 2017). The Quebec government has created market confidence by following a proactive approach to mining policy. Quebec's mining sector has also been encouraged by the clarity and certainty of the legal and regulatory framework adopted by its government. Sphinx is engaged in the generation and acquisition of exploration projects in Quebec. Neither TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release. This press release may contain forward-looking statements that are subject to known and unknown risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results and activities to vary materially from targeted results and planning. Such risks and uncertainties include those described in Sphinx's periodic reports including the annual report or in the filings made by Sphinx from time to time with securities regulatory authorities. Contacts: Sphinx Resources Ltd. Normand Champigny President and Chief Executive Officer 514.979.4746 info@sphinxresources.ca www.sphinxresources.ca Werbehinweise: Die Billigung des Basisprospekts durch die BaFin ist nicht als ihre Befurwortung der angebotenen Wertpapiere zu verstehen. Wir empfehlen Interessenten und potenziellen Anlegern den Basisprospekt und die Endgultigen Bedingungen zu lesen, bevor sie eine Anlageentscheidung treffen, um sich moglichst umfassend zu informieren, insbesondere uber die potenziellen Risiken und Chancen des Wertpapiers. Sie sind im Begriff, ein Produkt zu erwerben, das nicht einfach ist und schwer zu verstehen sein kann. TEL AVIV, ISRAEL -- (Marketwired) -- 08/03/17 -- InspireMD, Inc. (NYSE MKT: NSPR) (NYSE MKT: NSPR.WS) ("InspireMD" or the "Company"), a leader in embolic prevention systems (EPS) / thrombus management technologies and neurovascular devices, today announced that an endovascular interventional procedure featuring the CGuard EPS performed by the team of Dr. Anibal Damonte, Interventional Cardiologist, Director of Interventional Cardiology at the Cardiovascular Institute of Rosario, and Vice President of the Argentine College of Interventional Cardiology, as well as Dr. Maximiliano Rossi, Interventional Cardiologist at the Cardiovascular Institute of Rosario was recorded and broadcast at the SOLACI CACI Congress of Cardiology 2017 (SOLACI CACI '17) in Buenos Aires. The case, entitled "Self Expanding Stent to Avoid Distal Embolization: Carotid InspireMD Stent Case presentation," was displayed to the entire congress. SOLACI CACI '17 is the official annual meeting of the Latin American Society of Interventional Cardiology and the Argentinian School of Interventional Cardiologists, and is the largest meeting of cardiologists and interventional cardiologists in Latin America. SOLACI CACI '17 is taking place from August 2-4, 2017. Dr. Anibal Damonte, commented, "The CGuard EPS performed exceedingly well in a challenging case. The MicroNet technology enables us to treat carotid artery disease safely in cases that would not have been possible with conventional carotid stents." "We are proud to have been selected to have our CGuard EPS featured in an endovascular interventional procedure to the entire congress at SOLACI CACI '17," said James Barry, PhD, Chief Executive Officer of InspireMD. "We are truly honored and grateful to have Dr. Damonte and Dr. Rossi, two of the top key opinion leaders in Latin America perform this procedure. We believe the selection of a clinical case conducted with CGuard by the Congress organizers further illustrates the growing interest and support for our technology." Additionally, InspireMD, is hosting an event to provide local distributor training, in addition to its booth on the general floor of SOLACI CACI '17 featuring the Company's MicroNet technology including CGuard Embolic Prevention System and MGuard Prime. About InspireMD, Inc. InspireMD seeks to utilize its proprietary MicroNet technology to make its products the industry standard for embolic protection and to provide a superior solution to the key clinical issues of current stenting in patients with a high risk of distal embolization, no reflow and major adverse cardiac events. InspireMD intends to pursue applications of this MicroNet technology in coronary, carotid (CGuard), neurovascular, and peripheral artery procedures. InspireMD's common stock is quoted on the NYSE MKT under the ticker symbol NSPR and certain warrants are quoted on the NYSE MKT under the ticker symbol NSPR.WS. Forward-looking Statements This press release contains "forward-looking statements." Such statements may be preceded by the words "intends," "may," "will," "plans," "expects," "anticipates," "projects," "predicts," "estimates," "aims," "believes," "hopes," "potential" or similar words. Forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance, are based on certain assumptions and are subject to various known and unknown risks and uncertainties, many of which are beyond the Company's control, and cannot be predicted or quantified and consequently, actual results may differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. Such risks and uncertainties include, without limitation, risks and uncertainties associated with (i) market acceptance of our existing and new products, (ii) negative clinical trial results or lengthy product delays in key markets, (iii) an inability to secure regulatory approvals for the sale of our products, (iv) intense competition in the medical device industry from much larger, multinational companies, (v) product liability claims, (vi) product malfunctions, (vii) our limited manufacturing capabilities and reliance on subcontractors for assistance, (viii) insufficient or inadequate reimbursement by governmental and other third party payers for our products, (ix) our efforts to successfully obtain and maintain intellectual property protection covering our products, which may not be successful, (x) legislative or regulatory reform of the healthcare system in both the U.S. and foreign jurisdictions, (xi) our reliance on single suppliers for certain product components, (xii) the fact that we will need to raise additional capital to meet our business requirements in the future and that such capital raising may be costly, dilutive or difficult to obtain and (xiii) the fact that we conduct business in multiple foreign jurisdictions, exposing us to foreign currency exchange rate fluctuations, logistical and communications challenges, burdens and costs of compliance with foreign laws and political and economic instability in each jurisdiction. More detailed information about the Company and the risk factors that may affect the realization of forward looking statements is set forth in the Company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), including the Company's Annual Report on Form 10-K and its Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q. Investors and security holders are urged to read these documents free of charge on the SEC's web site at http://www.sec.gov. The Company assumes no obligation to publicly update or revise its forward-looking statements as a result of new information, future events or otherwise. Investor Contacts: InspireMD, Inc. Craig Shore Chief Financial Officer Phone: 1-888-776-6804 FREE Email: craigs@inspiremd.com Crescendo Communications, LLC David Waldman Phone: (212) 671-1021 Email: NSPR@crescendo-ir.com SAN DIEGO, CA -- (Marketwired) -- 08/03/17 -- Generation NEXT Franchise Brands (OTCQB: VEND), whose Reis & Irvy's frozen yogurt robots launched in April of 2016, commenced fiscal 2018, with bookings aggregating $2,197,500 in July 2017, representing the sale of 53 robots to 10 new franchisees. Additionally, the company secured over 40 location contracts for its franchise network. Other notable items in July are as follows: Reis & Irvy's total franchise network aggregates over 185 franchises; Reis & Irvy's frozen yogurt robots aggregate over 760 units; Notable locations secured include in July; University of Tennessee, Neyland Stadium; Luxor Hotel, Las Vegas; The Mob Museum, Las Vegas; The Charles H. Wright Museum, Detroit; Stratosphere Hotel and Casino, Las Vegas; Texas Tech University, Lubbock, Texas; and Seattle Children's Museum, Seattle, Washington; The company raised proceeds totaling $626,000 in the form of an equity offering; We repaid $461,250 in debt principal during July 2017; The company's next generation robot prototype commenced performance testing that included 300,000 cycles for its robotic arm with zero failures; The company executed its first international Master License Agreement for Israel. The Agreement calls for the Israeli Master Licensee to purchase $3.6 million in robots over the next five years; The company released a newly developed Reis & Irvy's video animation, which will be activated on the 24" screen positioned inside each robot and which runs for 65 seconds during each customer transaction. Visit https://vimeo.com/228136639/fe24d4815e "Our first month of fiscal 2018 allowed us the opportunity to grow the franchise network conservatively based on upcoming production efforts and schedules. We continue securing premiere locations for franchisees with limited resources available to us in the form of actual units in the field. We anticipate even better results once we begin installations during the second quarter of fiscal 2018," stated Nicholas Yates, Chairman and Founder. "Our ability to promote the product with actual case studies in the form of location testimonials and media coverage opens up opportunity on so many levels. We are also pleased with our efforts to raise a total of approximately $3 million in the form of equity and will decide if this is to continue on the same set of terms in the coming weeks. We are extremely excited about the prospects that lay ahead and look forward to executing in this transition year." For more information on the revolutionary Froyo Robots or to learn more about how you can own your own Reis & Irvy's Froyo Robot franchise, visit the Reis & Irvy's website at http://www.reisandirvys.com/. To learn more about Generation NEXT Franchise Brands, please visit www.gennextbrands.com or call toll free 888-902-7558. This information is not intended as an offer to sell, or the solicitation of an offer to buy, a franchise. It is for information purposes only. No Reis & Irvy's franchises will be sold to any resident of any state until the offering has been exempted from the requirements of, or duly registered in and declared effective by, such state and the required FDD (if any) has been delivered to the prospective franchisee before the sale in compliance with applicable law. Currently, the following states in the United States regulate the offer and sale of franchises: California, Hawaii, Illinois, Indiana, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, New York, North Dakota, Oregon, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Virginia, Washington, and Wisconsin. If you reside in one of these states, or even if you reside elsewhere, you may have certain rights under applicable franchise laws or regulations. Generation NEXT Franchise Brands Generation NEXT Franchise Brands, based in San Diego, California, is a publicly traded company on the OTC Markets trading under the symbol: VEND. Generation NEXT Franchise Brands is parent company to Fresh Healthy Vending LLC, the market's leading healthy-choice vending machine franchise, Reis and Irvy's, Inc., the world's first robotic frozen yogurt vending kiosk, 19 Degrees, a corporate-focused frozen yogurt robot brand and Generation NEXT Vending Robots, our newly established owner/operator model. The Company has sold over 500 franchises throughout the United States, Canada, Puerto Rico and the Bahamas, and continually looks to partner with like-minded entrepreneurs who share its vision. Cautionary note on forward-looking statements This press release contains "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended. Forward-looking statements include, among others, statements concerning our future financial performance, including statements regarding fiscal 2018 forecasts, our ability to launch beta testing and full scale production, our ability to expand our sales opportunities, and our ability to extend our master license program with foreign entrepreneurs. The Company bases these forward-looking statements on its current expectations, estimates and projections about future events and the industry in which it operates using information currently available to it. Actual results could differ materially from those discussed in, or implied by, these forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements are identified by words such as "believe," "anticipate," "propose," "expect," "intend," "plan," "will," "may," "estimates," variations of such words and other similar expressions. In addition, any statements that refer to expectations, projections or other characterizations of future events or circumstances are forward-looking statements. Factors that could cause actual results to differ from those implied by the forward-looking statements contained in this press release are set forth in our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), including our most recent Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended June 30, 2016, our subsequent Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q and our Current Reports on Form 8-K. Be advised that developments subsequent to this press release are likely to cause these statements to become outdated and the Company is under no obligation (and expressly disclaims any such obligation) to update or revise any forward-looking statements whether as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise. Media Contact: Generation NEXT Franchise Brands info@gennextbrands.com VANCOUVER, British Columbia, August 3, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- MYM Nutraceuticals Inc., (CSE: MYM) (OTC: MYMMF), (the "Company" or "MYM") is pleased to announce that it has reached an agreement with BIGIS Expert Conseils of Weedon, QC to conduct environmental tests for the Weedon project. The initial agreement will see BIGIS Expert Conseils conduct environmental tests for phases one and two of the Weedon project. The tests will focus on all proposed outbuildings and greenhouse sites. The tests are expected to conclude Summer 2017. BIGIS Expert Conseils is a local engineering firm from Weedon, QC. MYM is committed to creating meaningful contacts within the community demonstrated here by partnering with the local engineering company. To further the goal of creating a lasting relationship within the community of Weedon, MYM has set up quarters in the Weedon Community Centre to better deal with onsite business and community relations until suitable office space is constructed. Further to local environmental testing and community relations, MYM is on the cusp of beginning a social impact study with regards to the Weedon project. About MYM MYM Nutraceuticals Inc. is an innovative company focused on acquiring Health Canada licenses to produce and sell high-end organic medicinal cannabis supplements and topical products. To ensure a strong presence and growth potential within the industry, MYM is actively looking to acquire complementary businesses and assets in the technology, nutraceuticals and CBD sectors. MYM shares trade in Canada, Germany and the USA under the following symbols: (CSE: MYM) (OTC: MYMMF) (FRA: 0MY) (DEU: 0MY) (MUN: 0MY) (STU: 0MY). ON BEHALF OF THE BOARD "Rob Gietl" Rob Gietl, CEO MYM Nutraceuticals Inc. http://www.mymarijuana.ca This news release may contain forward-looking statements based on assumptions and judgments of management regarding future events or results. Such statements are subject to a variety of risks and uncertainties which could cause actual events or results to differ materially from those reflected in the forward-looking statements. The company disclaims any intention or obligation to revise or update such statements. For a description of the risks and uncertainties facing the Company and its business and affairs, readers should refer to the Company's Management's Discussion and Analysis and other disclosure filings with Canadian securities regulators, which are posted on http://www.sedar.com . This news release does not constitute an offer to sell or solicitation of an offer to buy any of the securities described herein and accordingly undue reliance should not be put on such. Neither the Canadian Securities Exchange (CSE or CNSX Markets), nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in policies of the CSE), accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release. This news release does not constitute an offer to sell or a solicitation of an offer to buy any of the securities described herein in the United States. The securities described herein have not been registered under the United States Securities Act of 1933, as amended (the "U.S. Securities Act"), or any state securities law and may not be offered or sold in the "United States", as such term is defined in Regulation S promulgated under the U.S. Securities Act, unless registered under the U.S. Securities Act and applicable state securities laws or an exemption from such registration requirements is available. MYM Investor Relations Contact: Terry Brown +1(855)696-2261 WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - Apache Corp. (APA) reported a turnaround to profit in the second quarter as flat revenues were more than offset by lower expenses. However, adjusted loss for the quarter was wider than analysts' estimates and revenues missed their estimates. For the second quarter of 2017, Apache's net earnings were $572 million or $1.50 per share, compared to net loss of $244 million or $0.65 per share in the year-ago period. Excluding items, adjusted loss for the quarter was $79 million or $0.21 per share, compared to adjusted loss of $99 million or $0.26 per share in the year-ago period. Total revenues for the quarter were $1.384 billion, compared to $1.382 billion in the year-ago period. On average, analysts polled by Thomson Reuters expected the company to report loss of $0.01 per share for the quarter on revenue of $1.41 billion. Analysts' estimates typically exclude special items. Operating expenses declined to $1.38 billion from $1.66 billion in the same period last year. Apache said it expects to complete its previously announced exit from Canada in August. In addition to the total $713 million sales price, the Canadian exit will result in several important financial benefits. This includes a reduction of approximately $800 million in asset retirement obligations from the balance sheet and positive implications for G&A, average cash margins per Boe, earnings per share, free cash flow and corporate-level returns on capital employed. Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX Kostenloser Wertpapierhandel auf Smartbroker.de AMITYVILLE, NY -- (Marketwired) -- 08/03/17 -- Iconic Brands, Inc. (OTC PINK: ICNB) announced today that Bellissima Prosecco is now approved and will soon be shipping to Maryland, District of Columbia, and Virginia . Bellissima Prosecco is now available in over 45 states and growing. The company is also very pleased to announce the Liquor Control Board of Ontario (LCBO) has approved Bellissima Prosecco DOC Brut for sale in the region; this LCBO placement represents over 40% of the Canadian market. We are looking forward to the first order from Canada, and will continue to push into the rest of the country as well as work to introduce the full portfolio, but are thrilled at the initial market entry, and for the opportunity to share Bellissima Prosecco with our neighbors to the north. The company is also pleased to announce certain marketing initiatives. Bellissima will take to the sky over the beaches of Long Island this weekend with our new aerial banner. This will be seen by hundreds of thousands of people in the Hamptons, Montauk, Fire Island, Jones Beach and throughout the miles and miles of beautiful Long Island Seashore all the way to Coney Island, passing above the Rockaways as well . The company will also commence a radio campaign this weekend for markets in NY and Vermont. Iconic Brands CEO Richard DeCicco stated "I'm very pleased with the progress of our markets and the continued sell through of the product. We see strong demand from consumers, and have begun pushing select marketing initiatives as well as bolstering our social media presence to further brand awareness. The company and I truly want to thank our consumers and shareholders for their continued support and for embracing Bellissima, the best Prosecco in the world!" Please visit our website and join the mailing list at and see our product availability map: Christie's appearance schedule which we will continue to update, and great new recipes; also follow us on twitter at @BellissimabyCB. Please visit our website www.bivivodka.com to learn about the finest Sicilian Craft Vodka on the market today. Please watch the great videos with Chazz Palminteri to learn about our brand and see the map for our list of current retailers. About Iconic Brands, Inc. Iconic Brands Inc. ("Iconic") is a beverage company with the highest expertise of developing, from inception to completion, alcoholic beverages for itself and third parties. Iconic Brands markets and places products into national distribution through long standing industry relationships. Iconic is also a leader in "Celebrity Branding" of beverages, procuring superior and unique products from around the world and branding its products with internationally recognized celebrities. Currently offering Bivi Vodka, www.BiviVodka.com and Bellissima Prosecco, www.BellissimaProsecco.com. Forward-Looking Statements This press release may contain forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties. These statements relate to future events or our future financial performance. In some cases, you can identify forward-looking statements by terminology including "could", "may", "will", "should", "expect", "plan", "anticipate", "believe", "estimate", "predict", "potential" and the negative of these terms or other comparable terminology. While these forward-looking statements, and any assumptions upon which they are based, are made in good faith and reflect our current judgment regarding the direction of our business, actual results will almost always vary, sometimes materially, from any estimates, predictions, projections, assumptions or other future performance suggested in this report. Except as required by applicable law, we do not intend to update any of the forward-looking statements so as to conform these statements to actual results. Investors should refer to the risks disclosed in the Company's reports filed from time to time with the Securities and Exchange Commission and available at www.sec.gov. Iconic Brands, Inc. Info@IconicBrandsUSA.com NEW YORK, NY -- (Marketwired) -- 08/03/17 -- Alphaserve Technologies, a global provider of managed IT, cloud and cybersecurity services, and Cornerstone Information Technologies, LLC (Cornerstone.IT), a leading IT business solution and managed services provider, announce they have entered into a strategic alliance to better serve the legal IT market. Under the agreement, Alphaserve and Cornerstone.IT clients gain access to the full breadth of services of each company to better streamline their IT management. Alphaserve recently expanded services within the legal market, having re-engineered its proprietary platform for managing technology infrastructure and applications. The company now offers a scalable model that allows midsize and small law firms to enjoy the premier services previously available only to large firms. Alphaserve also recently introduced a version of its popular AI consulting service for the legal market. The company offers data science as a service to improve law firm business processes, leveraging its own intellectual property including ITIL-based processes, a proprietary tool and more than 200 experts around the globe. Cornerstone.IT is a prominent technology business solution and managed services provider primarily for the legal industry, delivering expertise in key systems such as Citrix, Microsoft and iManage. Firms rely on Cornerstone.IT's expertise as a Citrix partner and desktop virtualization expert to skillfully solve problems that cause sluggish, poorly performing systems. They trust Cornerstone.IT's leading Microsoft engineers, who are at the forefront of migrations to Office 365 and Azure, to help them fully take advantage of Microsoft cloud platforms. Firms also turn to Cornerstone.IT's seasoned experts to install and maintain iManage, which delivers enterprise-class functionality that enables the creation, sharing, governance and security of work products. "Alphaserve is excited to work with Cornerstone.IT, a leader among technology services providers in the legal industry, to further expand our offerings as we aim to deliver critical managed IT solutions to law firms of all sizes," says Arup Das, CEO of Alphaserve Technologies. "This strategic alliance is a milestone for Alphaserve, in that it represents another step in our growing commitment to serving the legal market." "Cornerstone.IT chose to align with Alphaserve because they are passionate about their managed services. Their proprietary monitoring and machine learning systems are unique to the industry and solve many of the problems of standard managed services," says Jim Moreo, co-founder and principal of Cornerstone.IT. "Cornerstone's clients will have access to Alphaserve's industry-leading Security Operations Center through this alliance." The two companies will formally launch their strategic alliance at ILTACON 2017, being held August 13-17 in Las Vegas, Nevada. ILTACON is the annual conference hosted by the International Legal Technology Association and widely considered among the premier legal technology educational and networking events of the year. Alphaserve and Cornerstone.IT are sharing a platinum demo room, on Tuesday, August 15, where attendees can learn more about offerings from both companies and how they can work together to implement custom solutions to address the unique needs of each firm. About Alphaserve Technologies Alphaserve Technologies is a global provider of smart-sourced IT services to the asset management industry (hedge funds, broker dealers, private equity), law firms and other general markets like media, government and health care. Alphaserve Technologies is a privately held firm of technology and business professionals serving clients in 300 cities and 38 countries, ranging from multinational blue chip firms to small boutique financial companies. Our accomplished team has practiced their craft together for more than 15 years in the most demanding market sectors in the world. Visit www.alphaserveit.com to learn more. About Cornerstone Information Technologies, LLC (Cornerstone.IT) Cornerstone Information Technologies, LLC (Cornerstone.IT) is a full-service IT business solution and managed services provider that keeps companies' IT systems secure, productive and profitable. Founded in 2003, Cornerstone.IT specializes in providing services to legal, accounting, finance, media and retail industries. With offices in New York City, Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., and Los Angeles, Cornerstone.IT's highly trained, knowledgeable engineers deliver expertly designed systems with careful implementation that provide minimum disruption. Cornerstone.IT monitors, maintains and supports systems post project, saving businesses time, money and stress. For more information on Cornerstone.IT's services, visit www.cornerstone.it. Media Contacts: Arup Das Alphaserve Technologies Email Contact (212) 763-5503 Adriana Vitale Cornerstone Information Technologies, LLC Email Contact (646) 530-8925 MIAMI, FL -- (Marketwired) -- 08/03/17 -- Grand Havana, Inc. (OTC: GHAV), a retailer and wholesaler of specialty blend coffees and teas in the U.S., announces that the company was granted trademark status for "Grand Havana" by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (PTO). The now registered name Grand Havana will enhance the company's brand image and help distinguish itself even further from other manufacturers, according to Steve Polisar, founder and General council (Attorney) of the company. "It really sets our brand name apart from the other manufacturers in the industry," says Polisar. "With years of sales in the industry and proving the value of our name, it took a long time [for us] to be granted this designation." Most business experts suggest that registering or trademarking a business name is a good idea. Although it is not required by law, trademark registration can provide powerful protection against a trademarked name's misuse by others. Some firms register or trademark their business names just within the state they are located. However, if they do business in multiple states or around the world, registering a business name with the PTO puts other businesses on notice that the name is taken -- and it makes it easier to protect the name from misuse. "For us, this is all about branding the Grand Havana name," notes Polisar. "Now, after all these years, the term is officially and legally ours." Grand Havana is the sole shareholder of Grand Havana Master, LLC and Grand Havana, LLC. About Grand Havana Coffee Company Grand HAVANA Coffee is a Miami-based specialty coffee retailer and wholesaler. GH specializes in the small-batch roasting of Cuban style espresso coffee beans, masterfully blended by legendary roaster, Luis Bustelo, the original master blender of the Cuban espresso. The company focuses on taking the product mainstream following the massive popular demand for our specialized roasting blend, with over 3.5 million cups of espresso served. Grand Havana Coffee is the consumer's brand of choice for delving into the essence, allure and nostalgia of old HAVANA, with all its coffee products roasted and packaged in Miami, Florida USA. Safe Harbor Statement: The information posted in this release may contain forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. You can identify these statements by use of the words "may," "will," "should," "plans," "explores," "expects," "anticipates," "continue," "estimate," "project," "intend," and similar expressions. Forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those projected or anticipated. These risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to, general economic and business conditions, effects of continued geopolitical unrest and regional conflicts, competition, changes in technology and methods of marketing, and various other factors beyond the Company's control. Contact Info: Robert Rico-CEO Robert@grandhavanacoffee.com 305-542-5932 SEATTLE, WA -- (Marketwired) -- 08/03/17 -- CFN Media Group ("CannabisFN"), the leading creative agency and digital media network dedicated to legal cannabis, announces the publication of an article discussing ABcann Global Corporation's (TSX VENTURE: ABCN) (OTCQB: ABCCF) tremendous progress from its reverse takeover transaction in May to having $43 million in cash now (with a market cap of about $90 million), and where the company is headed over the coming quarters. High Quality Product ABcann has spent considerable resources on developing consistent pharmaceutical-grade products that are organically grown without pesticides. This avoids many of the recall issues that other licensed producers have experienced involving the use of banned pesticides. At the same time, the company's $1.5 million, three-year investment in research and development has helped it double industry average yields to cultivate products at a very low cost per gram. In a recent conversation ABcann CEO Aaron Keay said, "We have spent years mastering our proprietary growing techniques to avoid the use of pesticides. This has led to a repeatable, standardized product the public can trust. Not only that, as our reputation grows in the patients' eyes the word has spread to where we will be expanding our business -- globally. Our dedication to provide a pesticide free, organic, standardized product has resulted in inquiries from industry leaders, competitors, celebrities, and governments." The high yields of pesticide free, standardized product are especially important when comparing various licensed producers. Production capacity is of course an important metric, and ABcann's proprietary growing methods mean that the company can get much more product out of much less space. Additionally, sizable recalls due to pesticides have impacted several producers' bottom lines, but ABcann removes that possibility by using no pesticides at all. Rapid Expansion Strategy ABcann is investing the cash on its balance sheet into an ambitious expansion strategy, which should limit shareholder dilution and accelerate its growth rates. With its proprietary growing technique, the company is in a great position to deploy capital and production knowledge on a massive scale, while competing on both price and quality. On July 26, the company confirmed that plans to commence construction at its Kimmett facility in the third quarter remain on track and the previously announced plans for a 71,000 sq. ft. Phase I plan have been expanded to 100,000 sq. ft. The company also announced an immediately expansion and construction effort at its production facility in Vanluven to double production capacity and serve its growing patient base on an expedited timeline. The company believes that its $43 million cash position will be sufficient to complete both the Phase I 100,000 sq. ft. Kimmett facility and the expansion at Vanluven. The Vanluven expansion should begin producing results in Q1'18, while the Kimmett facility should come online by Q4'18. The near-term revenue from these expansion efforts should be sufficient for financing future expansion efforts as recreational legalization goes into effect next year. Please follow the link to see the interview and read the full article: http://www.cannabisfn.com/abcann-goes-rto-43-million-cash-3-months/ Learn how to become a CFN Media featured company, brand or entrepreneur: http://www.cannabisfn.com/become-featured-company/ Download the CFN Media iOS mobile app to access the world of cannabis from your smart phone: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/cannabisfn/id988009247?ls=1&mt=8 Or visit our homepage and enter your mobile number under the Apple App Store logo to receive a download link text on your iPhone: http://www.cannabisfn.com About CFN Media CFN Media (CannabisFN) is the leading creative agency and media network dedicated to legal cannabis. We help marijuana businesses attract investors, customers (B2B, B2C), capital, and media visibility. Private and public marijuana companies and brands in the US and Canada rely on CFN Media to grow and succeed. Disclaimer: Except for the historical information presented herein, matters discussed in this release contain forward-looking statements that are subject to certain risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by such statements. Emerging Growth LLC, which owns CFN Media and CannabisFN.com, is not registered with any financial or securities regulatory authority, and does not provide nor claims to provide investment advice or recommendations to readers of this release. Emerging Growth LLC may from time to time have a position in the securities mentioned herein and may increase or decrease such positions without notice. For making specific investment decisions, readers should seek their own advice. Emerging Growth LLC may be compensated for its services in the form of cash-based compensation or equity securities in the companies it writes about, or a combination of the two. For full disclosure please visit: http://www.cannabisfn.com/legal-disclaimer/. CFN Media Frank Lane 206-369-7050 flane@cannabisfn.com Vilnius, Lithuania, 2017-08-03 15:00 CEST (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- On 3 August 2017, Apranga APB has signed with Ogmios pulsas UAB an agreement on the sale of office and warehouse premises and other assets located in Kirtimu str. 51 in Vilnius. The value of the transaction of the sale of assets totalled EUR 6.05 million (including VAT). The transaction will have a positive impact of approximately EUR 3.4 million on results of year 2017. "The company is located in Kirtimu str. 51 for almost 50 years, since 1970. We have been growing rapidly over the past few decades, expanding our network in three countries, with a great deal of technological change that has an impact on everyday activities. With a growing team of employees, we have come up with a new, modern and high-standard office and logistics center in order to offer the best possible work conditions. We focused on analysing international experience, interested in innovations and the latest technological solutions in the process of designing. We hope, that will not only facilitate the daily work processes of our employees, but also contribute to the creation of their welfare in the workplace and ensure optimal speed and product movement in all three Baltic States", - Rimantas Perveneckas, the General Director of Apranga Group, said. Apranga Group will lease the new complex, which will provide 15 400 square metres of space. According to plans nearly 200 employees will settle in the new premises in the first half of 2018. The complex of buildings will consist of one-three storey buildings, which will stand out with unique architecture, the highest technical requirements and energy efficiency. The new Apranga Group administrative complex is developed by MG Valda, one of the largest real estate management and development companies in Lithuania. Apranga APB temporarily will lease complex of buildings in Kirtimu str. 51 from a new owner Ogmios pulsas UAB till the new headquarters will be built and equipped. Rimantas Perveneckas Apranga Group General Director +370 5 2390801 Kostenloser Wertpapierhandel auf Smartbroker.de CALGARY, ALBERTA -- (Marketwired) -- 08/03/17 -- CANEX Metals Inc. (TSX VENTURE: CANX)("CANEX" or the "Company") is pleased to announce the Company has received exploration permits for the Gibson gold-silver project in British Columbia. The permits allow the Company to excavate up to 10 trenches and construct and drill from 6 drill pads at Gibson. A reclamation bond of $10,000 has been posted as part of the Gibson exploration permit. The Company will mobilize a crew and equipment to Gibson next week to commence Phase 1 trenching which will focus on uncovering and extending the known high-grade gold and silver targets. The trenching program is expected to take up to 3 weeks. Exposed mineralization will be mapped and sampled with assay results expected by late September. If Phase 1 successfully uncovers high-grade gold and silver mineralization the zones would be drill tested later in the year during a Phase 2 drill program. The Gibson Prospect The Gibson prospect is 887 hectares in size and located in central British Columbia, approximately 95 kilometres northwest of Fort St. James. The area is accessible via a network of all weather logging roads. Gibson contains mesothermal gold-silver mineralization hosted in highly altered volcanic rocks adjacent to the Hogem Batholith. The zone was discovered and explored by Noranda Exploration Company from 1989 to 1991. Following soil sampling and induced polarization geophysical surveys Noranda exposed precious metal mineralization in hand trenches with surface samples returning 12.86 g/t gold and 144.7 g/t silver over 1.5 meters and 5.35 g/t gold and 2136 g/t silver over 1.7 meters. Noranda subsequently drilled 9 holes with 8 of the 9 holes intersecting significant gold and silver mineralization. The best drill intercept returned 4.26 metres grading 6.77 g/t gold and 1828 g/t silver. No follow up trenching or drilling has been conducted at Gibson since the highly successful Noranda program and the mineralized zone appears to be about 4.5 metres wide and at least 400 metres long and remains open in all directions. The Noranda hand trenching and drill results are reported in BC Assessment report 21762 for Noranda Exploration Company by Stewart and Walker 1991. This drilling was done prior to NI 43-101 and should be considered historic in nature. The results have not been verified by CANEX and should not be relied upon. About CANEX Metals Inc. Canex Metals is a Canadian based exploration company focused on acquiring and advancing high grade gold and silver deposits in stable mining jurisdictions. Company Management has a proven track record of exploration success, with key personnel being involved in discoveries in Mexico, Newfoundland, and British Columbia. Dr. Shane Ebert P.Geo., is the Qualified Person for CANEX Metals and has approved the technical disclosure contained in this news release. Shane Ebert, President/Director Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its regulation services provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release. Except for the historical and present factual information contained herein, the matters set forth in this news release, including words such as "expects", "projects", "plans", "anticipates" and similar expressions, are forward-looking information that represents management of CANEX Metals Inc. internal projections, expectations or beliefs concerning, among other things, future operating results and various components thereof or the economic performance of CANEX. The projections, estimates and beliefs contained in such forward-looking statements necessarily involve known and unknown risks and uncertainties, which may cause CANEX's actual performance and financial results in future periods to differ materially from any projections of future performance or results expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. These risks and uncertainties include, among other things, those described in CANEX's filings with the Canadian securities authorities. Accordingly, holders of CANEX shares and potential investors are cautioned that events or circumstances could cause results to differ materially from those predicted. CANEX disclaims any responsibility to update these forward-looking statements. Contacts: CANEX Metals Inc. Shane Ebert 1.250.964.2699 Jean Pierre Jutras 1.403.233.2636 www.canexmetals.ca NEW YORK, NY -- (Marketwired) -- 11/29/17 -- MoviePass, the nation's premier movie-theater subscription service, today announced two key additions to its business development team. Khalid Itum, an accomplished tech entrepreneur, investor, and advisor joins the company as Vice President of Business Development; and former Preferred Content Vice President, Zac Bright, has been appointed Director of Business Development. Itum joined MoviePass in a full-time capacity after three years of advising the company on business strategy and capital formation. In his current role, Khalid is responsible for driving revenue through studio and independent distributor partnerships, brand partnerships, and will continue to support the company's efforts across the investor community. Bright will further expand MoviePass' entertainment footprint and will oversee cross-functional partnerships for MoviePass across the industry with filmmakers, content owners, distributors and film festivals. Itum and Bright's hires come as MoviePass subscriptions continue to surge following the company's August 2017 $9.95 per month offering. Late last month, MoviePass announced that it had surpassed 600,000 members. "Both Itum and Bright bring years of experience and vast knowledge spanning the media, film and technology sectors," said MoviePass CEO Mitch Lowe. "They both possess a proven track record putting deals together that will not only help MoviePass accelerate its industry footprint, but will also benefit the overall entertainment ecosystem. As we continue to build out our company leadership, we are demonstrating our commitment to strengthening our relationships with the major studios, Hollywood's independent distributors and the filmmaker community at large." Prior to joining MoviePass full-time, Itum actively advised and/or invested in a number of technology start-ups including TopFan, Quietly, Divy, DeepGreen Resources, and KANNUU, and served as a Venture Partner for NextGen Venture Partners. He also founded KALEIDOSCOPE, an experiential content marketing firm. Previously, he was the lead strategist at Slate Studio, a boutique multi-platform design & development agency based in Venice, CA, where he led strategy on the development of Lionsgate and Tribeca Enterprises' OTT platform, Tribeca Shortlist. Bright joins MoviePass from Preferred Content, a film and television sales, packaging, and advisory company. At Preferred Content, he oversaw the agency's complete slate of narrative and documentary projects seeking distribution and delivered over $15M of revenue to independent creators during his 5-year tenure. Prior to joining Preferred Content, Bright worked in the Brand Coverage and Digital Content departments at the Creative Artists Agency. About MoviePass MoviePass is a technology company dedicated to enhancing the exploration of cinema. As the nation's premier movie-theater subscription service, MoviePass provides film enthusiasts the ability to attend unlimited movies. The service, now accepted at more than 91% of theaters across the United States, is the nation's largest theater network. For more information, visit www.moviepass.com. Press Contact Gavin Skillman Email Contact ELKO Alaina Iliff has been named manager of Greater Nevada Credit Unions Elko branch at 2944 Mountain City Highway, inside the Walmart Supercenter. Iliff has been with GNCU for more than two years, most recently as senior member service representative assisting the branch manager with daily operations. In her new role as branch manager, Iliff will oversee the branchs operations, member service team, and community involvement. Her volunteerism includes serving as a team captain for the American Cancer Society Walk for Life for the past two years. For more information about Greater Nevada Credit Union, open to everyone in Nevada, visit gncu.org or call 775-882-2060. Vancouver, British Columbia--(Newsfile Corp. - August 3, 2017) - Fairmont Resources Inc. (TSXV: FMR) ("Fairmont" or the "Company") announces that no superior offers have been received for the Rome Lithium Property, and as a result the Company has agreed to move forward with the previously announced transaction (Press Release dated June 29, 2017) with Jourdan Resources Inc. ("Jourdan") Upon TSX approval, Fairmont will receive $25,000 cash ($25,000 was received as part of a Right of First Refusal associated with signing the Letter of Intent), 1,500,000 shares of Jourdan, and a 2% NSR on the Rome property. Grabasa Fairmont has received notice that its appeal of the Spanish Court's termination of Fairmont's offer to acquire certain assets of Granitos de Badajoz ("Grabasa") has been denied. On July 7, 2017, the Spanish Court declined Fairmont's appeal and upheld the decision to terminate Fairmont's bid for the Grabasa assets. Fairmont is currently assessing its options. Fairmont is still free to bid for the asset in an open competition, and continues to work with potential funding partners. Eureka Trading Fairmont has also made a decision not to appeal the Spanish Court's Decision with respect to Eureka Trading's claim for a success fee relating to the failed attempt to purchase the Grabasa assets. The Company has determined that launching a proper appeal in Spain, which could continue for years, would cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, and that the company's resources are best directed elsewhere. The Company is working on settlement options with respect to this issue. Other Canadian Projects The past producing Lac Brule Quartz Mine that Fairmont Resources completely surrounds was recently sold by the previous owner and dewatering of the open pit has commenced. It is unclear at this time if the new owner is looking to produce quartz or aggregate. Additional information will be provided on the Company's website as it becomes available. The sampling for PCC from the Baie Comeau Quartzite property has been collected and arrangements to ship the sample to Germany are underway. Several interested parties have approached Fairmont with respect to the acquisition of both the Forestville and Baie Comeau Quartzite properties, but no decision has been made with respect to the offers. Fairmont would consider JV partners to help accelerate the development of these projects, and interested parties are encouraged to contact the Company. With respect to the Buttercup property, which is under binding letter agreement with Prophecy Development Corp. (announced on July 21, 2017), developments towards extracting aggregate are moving forward and Fairmont and its consultants in Quebec are assisting Prophecy in contacting local drilling, blasting, crushing and hauling contractors who had previously been working with Fairmont to develop the project. Fairmont is very encouraged by the dedication that Prophecy's management team is giving to the project, and the Company expects aggregate extraction equipment to be on site in August 2017. The closing of the transaction is subject to Prophecy being satisfied with the results of its due diligence that may include bulk sampling. About Fairmont Resources Inc. Fairmont Resources Inc. is a rapidly growing industrial mineral company trading on the Toronto Venture Exchange symbol FMR. Fairmont's Quebec properties cover numerous occurrences of high-grade titaniferous magnetite with vanadium, with the Buttercup property having a permit to quarry dense aggregate. Where these occurrences have been tested they have display exceptional uniformity with respect to grade. Fairmont also controls three quartz/quartzite properties, with the Forestville property having independent end user testing confirming the suitability of quartzite from Forestville for ferro silicon production. On behalf of the Board of Directors, Michael A. Dehn President and CEO, Fairmont Resources Inc. Tel:647-477-2382 michael@fairmontresources.ca www.fairmontresources.ca For further information please contact: Doren Quinton, President QIS Capital Tel:250-377-1182 info@smallcaps.ca www.smallcaps.ca Forward-Looking Statements Information set forth in this news release contains forward-looking statements that are based on assumptions as of the date of this news release. These statements reflect management's current estimates, beliefs, intentions and expectations. They are not guarantees of future performance. Fairmont cautions that all forward looking statements are inherently uncertain and that actual performance may be affected by a number of material factors, many of which are beyond Fairmont's control. Such factors include, among other things: risks and uncertainties relating to Fairmont's ability to complete the proposed private placement financing, limited operating history and the need to comply with environmental and governmental regulations. Accordingly, actual and future events, conditions and results may differ materially from the estimates, beliefs, intentions and expectations expressed or implied in the forward looking information. Except as required under applicable securities legislation, Fairmont undertakes no obligation to publicly update or revise forward-looking information. NEITHER TSX VENTURE EXCHANGE NOR ITS REGULATION SERVICES PROVIDER (AS THAT TERM IS DEFINED IN THE POLICIES OF THE TSX VENTURE EXCHANGE) ACCEPTS RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE ADEQUACY OR ACCURACY OF THIS RELEASE. Vancouver, British Columbia--(Newsfile Corp. - August 3, 2017) - Pan Andean Minerals Ltd. (TSXV: PAD) ("Pan Andean" or the "Company") announces today that it has entered into a non-binding Letter of Intent (LOI) for the processing of mineralized rock that may be produced from its Peruvian assets Pucacorral and Chanape, (the "Properties") with Great Panther Silver (TSX: GPR) ("Great Panther") at Great Panther's Coricancha mine and mill facilities in Peru. Coricancha is an integrated operation (currently on care and maintenance) consisting of a mine, mill, concentrator, and bio-oxidation plant, all located near the town of San Mateo, approximately 90 kilometers east of the capital city of Lima. The Coricancha facilities are about 15 kilometers from the Properties and are a previous producer of concentrated products containing silver, gold, zinc, copper and lead. Gary Anderson, CEO of Pan Andean said "We look forward to working with Great Panther and desire to make this relationship a win-win for both parties". Historic mining on the Pucacorral property targeted polymetallic veins in the San Mateo mine, whereas on the Chanape property Fulvia Vein was the largest system mined. These veins were mined for their gold, silver, copper, lead and zinc content. Highlights of Proposed Terms of a Processing Agreement with Great Panther Some conditions of the non-binding letter of intent are: Great Panther and Pan Andean (the "Parties") will jointly study the processing of mineralized rock from the Properties at Great Panther's Coricancha milling facility in Peru. The Parties shall consider other areas of cooperation (synergies) within the footprint of the Properties. This may include but not be limited to areas of geology, exploration, mining, engineering, environmental and community relations. The Parties agree that a potential way forward on a processing agreement will involve the following phases with each phase dependent on sign off by both parties and on successful development of the Properties: Phase 1 - Drilling and Metallurgical Sampling Phase 2 - Bulk Sample shipped to the Coricancha mill Phase 3 - Production An agreement is conditional upon Great Panther completing its prefeasibility study on its Coricancha project and having excess milling capacity for treating Pan Andean mineralized rock. Any and all processing agreements will be subject to regulatory approvals in Peru and board approvals by the Parties. Any processing agreement will be subject to the successful exploration and development of the Properties and there are no assurances that any mineralized rock will be produced from the Properties or that any acceptable commercial arrangement with Great Panther will be reached. Pucacorral and Chanape Properties As part of a recent NI 43-101 Technical Report on the Pucacorral property, grab samples were taken on a number of veins on surface, underground and from mineralized stockpiles left behind from previous mining activities. On the Lourdes Vein, assays from grab samples yielded peak values of 131 g/t of Silver, 13.75% Zinc, 7.4 % Lead, 0.48 % Copper, 0.445 g/t Gold. On the Sarita Vein on Pucacorral, grab samples had peak levels of 93 g/t of Silver, 2.27 % Zinc, 1.84% Lead, 3.52% Copper and 0.664 g/t Gold. The Company cautions that grab samples are selective by nature and may not be representative of the material being sampled. 2016 geological work by Pan Andean indicated that Pucacorral is an independent porphyry locality, on which there seem to emerge two potential resource targets: the upper, epithermal Ag-Zn-Pb-Cu-Au-bearing vein breccias, and the potential lower Cu-Au porphyry target. More information on the sampling completed on Pucacorral and the potential copper porphyry system is available from Pan Andean press releases of December 5, 8, and 16, 2016. The full NI 43-101 technical report (dated November 30, 2016) is available on the company's website www.panadeanminerals.com and on SEDAR. Qualified Person Victor Jaramillo, M.Sc.A., P.Geo, a qualified person as defined by National Instrument 43-101, has read and approved all technical and scientific information contained in this news release. Mr. Jaramillo is responsible for the company's Pucacorral project development. Financial Disclosure As a result of the delay in filing its Annual Financial Statements and MD&A for the year ended February 28, 2017, (the "Annual Filings"), the Company will also be delayed in filing its interim financial statements and accompanying MD&A for the period ending May 31, 2017 (the "Q1 Filings"), which were otherwise due to be filed by July 31, 2017. It is anticipated that the Q1 Filings will be made shortly after the filing of its Annual Filings. Private Placement Update Pan Andean has been given an extension to September 6, 2017 to complete its private placement as originally disclosed in a news release dated June 23, 2017. Advisor to Pan Andean Pan Andean has retained Mark Trevisiol (P.Eng.) as an advisor to the Company. Mark is former President, CEO and board member of Silver Bear Resources and former President, CEO and board member of Crowflight Minerals. About Pan Andean Minerals Ltd. Pan Andean is a Vancouver-based junior resource company that has been listed on the TSX Venture Exchange for 10 years, with a focus on copper and gold exploration. The Company acquires prospective gold and copper-gold exploration properties considered to have significant mineral potential by staking, option or purchase agreements. The Company currently has a portfolio of properties in Peru and Yukon with the focus being Peru. Gary W. Anderson Executive Chairman 604-857-2556 gwaa123@gmail.com Neither TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release. CRESCO, PA -- (Marketwired) -- 08/03/17 -- NSAV Holding, Inc. (OTC: NSAV), today announced a record date of August 22, 2017, for the spin-off of its Hemp Beer Inc. subsidiary, which then will become a separate publicly traded company. The Company will spin-off 20% of Hemp Beer Inc. to its shareholders, who will be awarded with a share dividend based upon their holdings of NSAV on the record date. Shareholders will receive approximately one share of Hemp Beer Inc. common stock for every 17 shares of NSAV common stock that they hold on the record date. The dividend will be payable on or around September 5, 2017. James Tilton, president of NSAV, stated, "The Hemp Beer spin-off caps off a truly monumental week in the annals of NSAV. With our financial statements near completion and the launch the lifesaving cardiology program, http://www.heartrescue.net, I can't think of a better time to be an NSAV shareholder or its CEO. NSAV's vision is the establishment of a fully integrated technology company that provides turnkey technological solutions to the legal medical cannabis and hemp industries, as well as other areas of the medical industry. Over time, the Company plans to provide a wide range of services such as software solutions, e-commerce, advisory services, financial services, patents and trademarks and information technology. For further information please contact NSAV at 1 (570- 595-2432) or info@nsavholdinginc.com The NSAV corporate website can be accessed at http://nsavholdinginc.com The NSAV Twitter account can be accessed at https://twitter.com/NSAV_MJTechCo The NSAV Facebook account can be accessed at https://www.facebook.com/NSAVHolding/ This press release contains certain forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, which are intended to be covered by the safe harbors created thereby. Investors are cautioned that, all forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties, including without limitation, the ability of NSAV Holding, Inc. to accomplish its stated plan of business. NSAV Holding, Inc. believes that the assumptions underlying the forward-looking statements contained herein are reasonable, any of the assumptions could be inaccurate, and therefore, there can be no assurance that the forward-looking statements included in this press release will prove to be accurate. In light of the significant uncertainties inherent in the forward- looking statements included herein, the inclusion of such information should not be regarded as a representation by NSAV Holding, Inc. or any other person. Contact NSAV 1 (570- 595-2432) info@nsavholdinginc.com WASHINGTON, Aug. 3, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- IFS, the global enterprise applications company, has today been confirmed as the number one vendor of enterprise asset management (EAM) software for the aerospace and defense (A&D) sector. This is the ninth consecutive year that IFS has been named as the global market leader by the major research and advisory firm ARC Advisory Group. The ARC "Enterprise Asset Management Global Market Research Study" found IFS has continued to increase its A&D market share, and now has a commanding market share lead over the next highest participant. These 2016 figures do not include the gains following the acquisition of the A&D maintenance management software provider Mxi Technologies that closed in January 2017. IFS has a strong and growing customer base in aviation and defense that includes BAE Systems, Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics, SAAB, GE Aviation, Pratt & Whitney, HAL, Emirates, LATAM, Qantas, China Airlines, Air France-KLM, Southwest Airlines. and most recently PSA Airlines. The company's partner ecosystem continues to grow in support of the A&D sector with Malaysia's G7 Aerospace most recently joining the IFS Partner Network. "IFS is particularly strong in the aerospace and defense industries worldwide," Ralph Rio, Research Director for Enterprise Software, ARC Advisory Group said. "The company extended its lead by acquiring Mxi Technologies." Scott Helmer, SVP, Aviation and Defense Business Unit at IFS added: "With the move towards servitization and the complex support requirements of next-generation equipment, EAM is a top priority for defense and commercial aviation organizations. The flexibility, agility and market-leading record of IFS's EAM solution means it is second to none in helping these organizations monitor and maintain assets, keeping them operational for as long as possible." For more information on ARC's findings, visit here to view an overview of the report. Find out more about how IFS supports its aerospace and defense customers here. CONTACT: Anders Lundin, PR Manager for IFS Strategic Marketing and Communications.Phone: +46-8-58-78 45-00, press@ifsworld.com Amanda Patton, Analyst Relations. Phone: +1-47-969-8919, amanda.patton@ifsworld.com This information was brought to you by Cision http://news.cision.com http://news.cision.com/ifs/r/arc-advisory-group-names-ifs-leader-in-aerospace-and-defense-eam-software-for-ninth-consecutive-year,c2321624 The following files are available for download: WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - Two members of the Senate Judiciary Committee have introduced legislation designed to protect Special Counsel Robert Mueller from being fired by President Donald Trump. Republican Senator Thom Tillis, R-N.C., and Democratic Senator Chris Coons, D-Del., introduced the legislation on Thursday. The bill mandates that only the Attorney General or the most senior Justice Department official in charge of the matter would have the power to remove the special counsel. Additionally, the special counsel would be allowed to challenge his or her removal in court under the legislation. In the event a panel of three federal judges finds there was no good cause for the removal, the individual would be immediately reinstated as special counsel. The legislation is retroactively effective as of Mueller's appointment on May 17, 2017, and applies to any special counsel appointed or after that date. Tillis said in a statement that it is critical that special counsels have the independence and resources they need to lead investigations. 'A back-end judicial review process to prevent unmerited removals of special counsels not only helps to ensure their investigatory independence, but also reaffirms our nation's system of check and balances,' Tillis said. The president has been critical of Mueller's investigation of alleged Russian meddling in last year's election and possible collusion with the Trump campaign. Recent reports have claimed Trump's legal team is looking for ways to discredit the probe by Mueller, searching for conflicts of interest. Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX Werbehinweise: Die Billigung des Basisprospekts durch die BaFin ist nicht als ihre Befurwortung der angebotenen Wertpapiere zu verstehen. Wir empfehlen Interessenten und potenziellen Anlegern den Basisprospekt und die Endgultigen Bedingungen zu lesen, bevor sie eine Anlageentscheidung treffen, um sich moglichst umfassend zu informieren, insbesondere uber die potenziellen Risiken und Chancen des Wertpapiers. Sie sind im Begriff, ein Produkt zu erwerben, das nicht einfach ist und schwer zu verstehen sein kann. Washington D.C.--(Newsfile Corp. - November 1, 2017) - The Securities and Exchange Commission today announced that David Glockner, Director of the Chicago Regional Office, is planning to leave the agency later this month. Since late 2013, Mr. Glockner has led a staff of approximately 270 enforcement attorneys, accountants, investigators, and compliance examiners involved in the investigation and prosecution of enforcement actions and the performance of compliance inspections in the nine-state Chicago region that is home to roughly 20 percent of the nation's population. Mr. Glockner also has served as chair of the SEC's Cybersecurity Working Group and is generally recognized as one of the agency's experts on cybersecurity matters related to examinations and enforcement. "David has been a trusted advisor and a real visionary in heightening public awareness of the important intersection between enforcement and cybersecurity," said Stephanie Avakian, Co-Director of the SEC's Enforcement Division. "David helped grow the Chicago office's expertise, spearheaded significant initiatives, and led the office to having a tremendous impact in the Chicago region," said Steven Peikin, Co-Director of the SEC's Enforcement Division. "David has been a tireless advocate for investors during his time in the Chicago Regional Office," said Pete Driscoll, Director of the SEC's Office of Compliance Inspections and Examinations (OCIE). "His thoughtfulness and leadership on examination issues has greatly contributed to the advancement of OCIE's mission." Mr. Glockner said, "I am proud of the work that the SEC's examiners and enforcement staff in Chicago do every day to protect investors. The SEC's Chicago staff has built a culture that is thoughtful and innovative in its approach to a range of important issues, and it has been a privilege to work alongside these talented and dedicated public servants." During Mr. Glockner's tenure as Regional Director, the Chicago office has brought many significant enforcement actions, including charges against: State Street Bank and Trust Company, which agreed to pay $12 million to settle charges that it conducted a pay-to-play scheme through its then-senior vice president and a hired lobbyist to win contracts to service Ohio pension funds National audit firm Grant Thornton LLP and two of its partners for improper professional conduct arising from ignoring red flags and fraud risks while conducting deficient audits of two publicly traded companies - Broadwind Energy Inc. and Assisted Living Concepts Inc. Navistar International Corp. and its former CEO for misleading investors about its development of an advanced technology truck engine that could be certified to meet U.S. emission standards The City of Harvey, Ill. and its comptroller for a fraudulent bond offering that the city marketed to investors A former official of the nation's third largest public pension fund and two brokers for orchestrating a pay-to-play scheme to steer billions of dollars to certain firms in exchange for luxury gifts, lavish vacations, and tens of thousands of dollars spent on cocaine and prostitutes Two exchanges formerly owned by Direct Edge Holdings and since acquired by BATS Global Markets for failing to accurately describe the order types being used on the exchanges Robert W. Baird & Co. for compliance failures within its wrap fee programs R.T. Jones Capital Equities Management for failing to establish required cybersecurity policies and procedures in advance of a breach that compromised the personally identifiable information of approximately 100,000 individuals, including thousands of the firm's clients Several alleged perpetrators behind a $78 million pump-and-dump scheme involving the stock of Jammin' Java During Mr. Glockner's tenure, the National Examination Program staff in Chicago significantly increased its examinations of investment advisers and broker-dealers, and expanded its use of data analytics and its risk-based approach to examinations. Mr. Glockner also enhanced coordination between examination and enforcement teams, deepened relationships with law enforcement authorities, and assisted the Commission's expanded examination and enforcement efforts relating to public finance. Before Mr. Glockner joined the SEC in December 2013 as the Chicago office's Regional Director, he was a managing director and head of the Chicago office of a digital risk management and investigations firm. Mr. Glockner also spent nearly 25 years as a criminal prosecutor in the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Northern District of Illinois, including 11 years as chief of the office's criminal division. Prior to joining the U.S. Attorney's Office, Mr. Glockner began his legal career as a law clerk to the Honorable Brian Duff of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois. He earned his bachelor's degree from the University of Chicago in 1982 and his J.D. from Stanford Law School in 1985. Study Published in Journal of the National Cancer Institute Cancer Research UK Awards Grant to Professor Gareth Thomas of the University of Southampton to Develop Clinical Strategy for GKT831 in Oncology Regulatory News: Genkyotex (Paris:GKTX) (Brussels:GKTX) (Euronext Paris Brussels: FR00011790542 GKTX), a biopharmaceutical company and the leader in NOX therapies, announced today that data in multiple preclinical models showed that GKT831, the Company's NOX1 and NOX4 inhibitor, efficiently targeted cancer associated fibroblasts (CAFs) and delayed tumor growth. The results from this study were published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute (https://doi.org/10.1093/jnci/djx121). Professor Gareth Thomas at the University of Southampton, United Kingdom (UK), senior author of the study, was also awarded a Small Molecule Drug Discovery grant by Cancer Research UK (CRUCK) to further evaluate the optimal clinical development strategy for GKT831 in oncology. CRUCK is a leading cancer research and awareness charity based in the UK. The objective of the funded program is to inform the design of a potential clinical trial of GKT831 in combination with current chemo- and immunotherapeutics. The tumor stroma is composed of extracellular matrix produced by CAFs and also includes immune cells and blood vessels. The presence of CAFs is associated with poor survival in many cancer types and are thought to have a number of different roles in cancer development, including promoting metastasis, resistance to chemotherapy and shielding tumors from the immune system. Accordingly, CAFs are a promising therapeutic target. In the published study, Professor Thomas and his colleagues demonstrated that an abundance of CAFs was linked to patient survival, and identified NOX4 as a critical regulator of CAF accumulation in many common cancer types. GKT831 prevented CAF formation in tumors, slowed tumor growth and reversed the CAF phenotype in cells grown from patients' tumors. "Based on our results, we believe that GKT831 has the potential to be an effective adjunctive cancer treatment," said Professor Thomas. "We are excited to initiate a translational research program to further evaluate GKT831 in oncology. We are now focused on assessing the impact of GKT831 on improving the response of certain common cancers to immunotherapy and chemotherapy. We are grateful to CRUK for their continued support of our work." "We are very impressed by these results which suggest that NOX4 inhibition with GKT831 can effectively target the tumor stroma," said Philippe Wiesel, M.D., Executive Vice President and Chief Medical Officer of Genkyotex. "Importantly, this may have broad applicability across many common cancer types." Genkyotex recently announced the initiation of patient enrollment into a Phase 2 study of GKT831 in primary biliary cholangitis, a progressive fibrotic liver disease. Dosing of the first patient is expected shortly with interim top-line results anticipated in the first half of 2018, and full results expected in the second half of 2018. About Genkyotex Genkyotex is the leading biopharmaceutical company in NOX therapies, listed on the Euronext Paris and Euronext Brussels markets. A leader in NOX therapies, its unique therapeutic approach is based on a selective inhibition of NOX enzymes that amplify multiple disease processes such as fibrosis, inflammation, pain processing, cancer development, and neurodegeneration. Genkyotex's platform enables the identification of orally available small-molecules that selectively inhibit specific NOX enzymes. Genkyotex is developing a pipeline of first-in-class product candidates targeting one or multiple NOX enzymes. The lead product candidate, GKT831, a NOX1 and NOX4 inhibitor entered a phase II clinical trial in primary biliary cholangitis (PBC, a fibrotic orphan disease) in the second quarter of 2017. This product candidate may also be active in other fibrotic indications. Its second product candidate, GKT771, is a NOX1 inhibitor targeting multiple pathways in angiogenesis, pain processing, and inflammation, and should enter a phase I clinical study at the end of 2017. Genkyotex also has a versatile platform well-suited to the development of various immunotherapies (Vaxiclase). A partnership covering the use of Vaxiclase as an antigen per se (GTL003) has been established with Serum Institute of India Ltd (Serum Institute), the world's largest producer of vaccine doses, for the development by Serum Institute of cellular multivalent combination vaccines against a variety of infectious diseases. This partnership could generate up to $57 million in future revenues for Genkyotex, before royalties on sales. For further information, please go to www.genkyotex.com Disclaimer This press release and the information it contains does not constitute an offer or solicitation to buy, sell or hold Genkyotex shares in any country, in particular any jurisdiction in which such offer, solicitation or sale would be unlawful prior to registration, exemption from registration or other qualification under the securities laws of any such jurisdiction. This press release may contain forward-looking statements by the company with respect to its objectives. Such statements are based upon the current beliefs, estimates and expectations of Genkyotex's management and are subject to risks and uncertainties such as the company's ability to implement its chosen strategy, customer market trends, changes in technologies and in the company's competitive environment, changes in regulations, clinical or industrial risks and all risks linked to the company's growth. These factors as well as other risks and uncertainties may prevent the company from achieving the objectives outlined in the press release and actual results may differ from those set forth in the forward-looking statements, due to various factors. Without being exhaustive, such factors include uncertainties involved in the development of Genkyotex's products, which may not succeed, or in the delivery of Genkyotex's products marketing authorizations by the relevant regulatory authorities and, in general, any factor that could affects Genkyotex's capacity to commercialize the products it develops. No guarantee is given on forward-looking statements which are subject to a number of risks, notably those described in the registration document (document de reference) registered by the French Markets Authority (the AMF) on 29 June 2017 under number R.17-048., and those linked to changes in economic conditions, the financial markets, or the markets on which Genkyotex is present. Genkyotex products are currently used for clinical trials only and are not otherwise available for distribution or sale. View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20170803005998/en/ Contacts: Genkyotex INVESTORS NewCap Dusan Oresansky Tristan Roquet Montegon Emmanuel Huynh +33 1 44 71 94 92 genkyotex@newcap.eu MEDIA ALIZE RP Caroline Carmagnol Margaux Pronost +33 6 64 18 99 59 +33 1 44 54 36 65 genkyotex@alizerp.com or US LifeSci Advisors, LLC Brian Ritchie, +1-212-915-2578 britchie@lifesciadvisors.com DUBLIN, August 3, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- The "Release Liners Market - Global Forecast to 2022" report has been added to Research and Markets' offering. The global release liners market is projected to reach USD 93.02 Billion by 2022, at a CAGR of 6.4% from 2017 to 2022. Release liners are used on a sticky surface to prevent premature adhering. These liners are coated with a release agent on one or both sides which prevent them from bonding with the material. Release liners are used in labels, pressure-sensitive tapes, hygiene, medical, graphics and industrial application segments. This growth of these applications drives the release liners market, globally. In 2016, the labels application segment accounted for the largest share of the global release liners market and is expected to continue to lead during the forecast period. Release liners are used in the labels industry as a carrier of the label laminate during printing and converting. Based on substrate type, the films segment is projected to grow at the highest CAGR from 2017 to 2022. Films release liners that exhibit superior properties over other substrate types, including superior caliper control and is suitable for high speed dispensing applications. Film release liners provide high subsequent adhesive rate and stable release performance. These properties are expected to drive this segment during the forecast period. Growth in the packaging and labeling industries has led to an increase in the demand for release liners. In 2016, the Asia Pacific region accounted for the largest share of the global release liners market. China is estimated to account for the largest share of the Asia Pacific release liners market in 2017, whereas, this market in India is anticipated to grow at the highest CAGR during the forecast period. Due to the growing concern over the waste produced by the release liners, manufacturers are adopting the liner less technology to manufacture labels and tapes. This technology eliminates the waste and reduces the cost associated with label manufacturing. This can act as a restraint to the growth of the market. Companies Mentioned Ahlstrom-Munksjo Eastman Chemical Company Gascogne Lintec Corporation Loparex Mondi Group Polyplex Corporation Ltd. Sappi Limited The 3M Company UPM Others... Key Topics Covered: 1 Introduction 2 Research Methodology 3 Executive Summary 4 Premium Insights 5 Market Overview 6 Release Liners Market, By Material 7 Release Liners Market, By Substrate 8 Release Liners Market, By Labeling Technology 9 Release Liners Market, By Application 10 Release Liners Market, By Region 11 Competitive Landscape 12 Company Profiles For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/73ghlg/release_liners Media Contact: Research and Markets Laura Wood, Senior Manager press@researchandmarkets.com For E.S.T Office Hours Call +1-917-300-0470 For U.S./CAN Toll Free Call +1-800-526-8630 For GMT Office Hours Call +353-1-416-8900 U.S. Fax: 646-607-1907 Fax (outside U.S.): +353-1-481-1716 CALGARY, ALBERTA -- (Marketwired) -- 08/03/17 -- Manson Creek Resources Ltd. (TSX VENTURE: MCK) ("Manson") is pleased to announce it has completed incorporating a subsidiary based in Washington State, USA, and begun field work to acquire and evaluate properties of merit in known historical or currently producing Jade areas of the western United States. Field work, consisting of historical occurrence reviews, prospecting, land claim status verification and staking has begun and updates will be provided as milestones are achieved. Keithly Mountain, BC A first pass reconnaissance at the Keithly Mountain project, located in the Cariboo goldfields in central British Colombia, identified extensive areas of locally subcropping to outcropping serpentinized ultramafic rocks, which are typical hosts to nephrite deposits in British Columbia. In addition, numerous zones of fibrous secondary riebeckite mineralization (asbestos) were found in situ, confirming the potential of the property to host nephrite jade, as these asbestos veins are often associated with some of the larger jade deposits in BC, and as the jade historically found on the property in float has been associated with such mineralization. The project remains a valid target for further work, however, it is being evaluated in the context of numerous other such projects and the Company will focus on conducting further first pass evaluations before committing to its best opportunity for the current field season. On Behalf of the Board of Directors, Jean-Pierre Jutras, President/Director The TSX Venture Exchange has neither approved nor disapproved of the contents of this press release. Except for the historical and present factual information contained herein, the matters set forth in this news release, including words such as "expects", "projects", "plans", "anticipates" and similar expressions, are forward-looking information that represents management of Manson Creek's internal projections, expectations or beliefs concerning, among other things, future operating results and various components thereof or the economic performance of Manson Creek. The projections, estimates and beliefs contained in such forward-looking statements necessarily involve known and unknown risks and uncertainties, which may cause Manson Creek's actual performance and financial results in future periods to differ materially from any projections of future performance or results expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. These risks and uncertainties include, among other things, those described in Manson Creek's filings with the Canadian securities authorities. Accordingly, holders of Manson Creek shares and potential investors are cautioned that events or circumstances could cause results to differ materially from those predicted. Manson Creek disclaims any responsibility to update these forward-looking statements. Contacts: Manson Creek Resources Ltd. Jean-Pierre Jutras 1.403.233.0464 www.manson.ca According to the latest market study released by Technavio, the global SCADA market is expected to grow at a CAGR of close to 7% during the forecast period. This Smart News Release features multimedia. View the full release here: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20170803005715/en/ Technavio has published a new report on the global SCADA market from 2017-2021. (Graphic: Business Wire) This research report titled 'Global SCADA Market 2017-2021' provides an in-depth analysis of the market in terms of revenue and emerging market trends. This market research report also includes up to date analysis and forecasts for various market segments and all geographical regions. The global SCADA market is growing at a relatively higher rate owing to the growth in economies such as India, China, Taiwan, South Korea, Turkey, South Africa, Brazil, and Mexico. As the scope for growth in established manufacturing hubs in these economies is higher, the demand for automation across industries in these countries is also growing rapidly, resulting in the demand for SCADA systems. This report is available at a USD 1,000 discount for a limited time only: View market snapshot before purchasing Buy 1 Technavio report and get the second for 50% off. Buy 2 Technavio reports and get the third for free Technavio's analysts categorize the global SCADA market into eight major segments by end user. They are: Oil and gas Power industry Water and waste water treatment Chemicals and petrochemicals Pharmaceutical Automotive Electrical and electronics industry Others Looking for more information on this market? Request a free sample report Technavio's sample reports are free of charge and contain multiple sections of the report including the market size and forecast, drivers, challenges, trends, and more. The top three segments based on end-user for the global SCADA market are discussed below: Global SCADA market in the oil and gas industry The oil and gas industry is a major source of income in EMEA, and the market for SCADA is expected to grow at a faster rate because of the increasing complexities of production and distribution. The oil and gas industry contributed a major share of close to 26% to the global SCADA market in terms of revenue in 2016. It is expected that there will be a huge investment of more than USD 360 billion during the forecast period to streamline processes in oil and gas industry. According to Raghav Bharadwaj Shivaswamy, a lead automation research analyst from Technavio, "These systems play a crucial role in the communication between remotely located units. The emergence of open architecture and control architecture, which is moving from a centralized to distributed model, is the major trend propelling the growth of this market. Offshore explorations in the US, China, India, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia are driving the demand for the market in the Americas and APAC." Global SCADA market in the power industry The power industry is the second major contributor to the global SCADA market, occupied a share of almost 15% in 2016. The US is a major contributor in terms of revenue with respect to another geographical region. SCADA system is used in power plants for transmission and distribution systems to collect, store, and analyze the data from both national and regional networks. "The smart grid technology in the power industry is a major trend, which is widening the scope of implementation of SCADA in countries such as India and Brazil to meet their high demand. The existence of a gap between demand and supply in these countries is forcing the industry to optimize the process," says Raghav Global SCADA market in the water and wastewater treatment industry The water and wastewater treatment industry is the third major contributor to the global SCADA market. It is one of the emerging markets because of the demand it has generated in APAC, which is a direct effect of the increase in pollution in this region. The function of SCADA system is to regulate the water distribution system, lift stations and pumps, and water treatment plants by providing overall data and facilitating the overall system visibility. SCADA is being used for upgradation of existing plants in the water and wastewater treatment industry in developed countries such as the US. Most of the governments in developed nations are replacing their old water infrastructure, thereby, boosting the market growth for SCADA systems. The top vendors highlighted by Technavio's research analysts in this report are: ABB Emerson Electric Honeywell International Schneider Electric Siemens Browse Related Reports: Automated Oil Tank Cleaning System Market in EMEA 2017-2021 Global Universal Process Controllers Market 2017-2021 Global Industrial Ethernet/IP Market 2017-2021 About Technavio Technavio is a leading global technology research and advisory company. Their research and analysis focuses on emerging market trends and provides actionable insights to help businesses identify market opportunities and develop effective strategies to optimize their market positions. With over 500 specialized analysts, Technavio's report library consists of more than 10,000 reports and counting, covering 800 technologies, spanning across 50 countries. Their client base consists of enterprises of all sizes, including more than 100 Fortune 500 companies. This growing client base relies on Technavio's comprehensive coverage, extensive research, and actionable market insights to identify opportunities in existing and potential markets and assess their competitive positions within changing market scenarios. If you are interested in more information, please contact our media team at media@technavio.com. View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20170803005715/en/ Contacts: Technavio Research Jesse Maida Media Marketing Executive US: +1 630 333 9501 UK: +44 208 123 1770 www.technavio.com ELKO Elko native Vince Juaristi is considering a bid for governor of Nevada in 2018. It is true that several powerful and wealthy Nevadans have reached out to persuade me to toss my hat in the ring, he stated in a recent online post. Juaristi earned his masters degree in public policy from Harvard University and is the CEO of a management consulting company in Alexandria, Virginia. He is also the author of Back to Bizkaia: A Basque- American Memoir and Basque Firsts, People Who Changed the World. Juaristi said he would run as a Democrat for the seat held by Republican Gov. Brian Sandoval, who will have reached his term limit. Clark County Commission Chairman Steve Sisolak, also a Democrat, has declared his candidacy while others including Republican Attorney General Adam Laxalt have been mentioned as contenders. This would be Juaristis first run for office, but he is no stranger to politics. He served as a policy advisor to Nevada Gov. Bob Miller in the late 1990s; he was appointed by President George W. Bush to the Corporation for National Community Service from 2004-2009, and served in Afghanistan as Justice Center director for the U.S. State Department in 2010-11. If he decides to run, Juaristi said he would likely self-finance his campaign. I am definitely giving the idea deep and sincere consideration, he said. I do so, however, not because powerful and wealthy voices have encouraged me. Rather, I consider it because I care more for people who feel powerless and poor, who want good jobs and better schools, who come to our state with nothing and want only to work, and who in their heart of hearts know that as good as Nevada is, it can be so much more. Thats the story of my family, my immigrant father who was a sheepherder and my mother who was a bookkeeper. Their focus on the future never dimmed. The sky was always pacific blue, fresh and clear. They wanted only opportunity. Thats a good story, a very American story, and all people should have an equal chance to make it their story, too. Juaristi said he would announce his decision sometime this month. LOS ANGELES, CA / ACCESSWIRE / August 15, 2017 / Lundin Law PC, a shareholder rights firm, announces a class action lawsuit against Tahoe Resources Inc. ("Tahoe" or the "Company") (NYSE: TAHO) for possible violations of federal securities laws from March 12, 2015 through July 5, 2017, inclusive (the "Class Period"). Investors, who purchased or otherwise acquired Tahoe shares during the Class Period, should contact the firm prior to the September 5, 2017 lead plaintiff motion deadline. To participate in this class action lawsuit, click here. You can also call Brian Lundin, Esq., of Lundin Law PC, at 888-713-1033, or e-mail him at brian@lundinlawpc.com. No class has been certified in the above action yet. Until a class is certified, you are not considered to be represented by an attorney. You may also choose to do nothing and be an absent class member. According to the lawsuit, during the Class Period, Tahoe made false and/or misleading statements and/or failed to disclose: that consultation obligations relating to the permitting of the Escobal mining license were not met; that the Escobal mining license is subject to suspension; and that as a result, the Company's public statements were materially false and misleading at all relevant times. On July 5, 2017, Tahoe revealed that the Supreme Court of Guatemala issued a provisional decision suspending the Escobal mining license of its subsidiary Minera San Rafael, in connection with an action brought by CALAS against Guatemala's Ministry of Energy and Mines ("MEM"). CALAS alleges that MEM violated the Xinca Indigenous people's right of consultation in advance of granting the Escobal mining license. Following this news, Tahoe's stock price lowered significantly, which harmed investors according to the Complaint. Lundin Law PC was established by Brian Lundin, Esq., a securities litigator based in Los Angeles dedicated to upholding the rights of shareholders. This press release may be considered Attorney Advertising in certain jurisdictions under the applicable law and ethics rules. Contact: Lundin Law PC Brian Lundin, Esq. Telephone: 888-713-1033 Facsimile: 888-713-1125 brian@lundinlawpc.com http://lundinlawpc.com/ SOURCE: Lundin Law PC Regulatory News: Pershing Square Holdings, Ltd. (LN:PSH) (NA:PSH) today announces that it has purchased, through PSH's agent, Jefferies International Limited ("Jefferies"), the following number of PSH's ordinary shares of no par value (ISIN Code: GG00BPFJTF46) (the "Shares"): Date of purchase: 3 August 2017 Number of Shares purchased: 36,650 Shares Highest price paid per Share: 1,106 pence 14.53 USD Lowest price paid per Share: 1,092 pence 14.35 USD Average price paid per Share: 1,101.71 pence 14.48 USD PSH intends to cancel these Shares. The net asset value per Share related to this Share buyback is USD 18.31 GBP 13.87 which was calculated as of 31 July 2017. After giving effect to the above Share buyback, PSH has 238,553,329 outstanding Shares. The prices per share in USD were calculated by Jefferies. The number of PSH Management Shares and the 1 special voting share (held by PS Holdings Independent Voting Company Limited) has not been affected. About Pershing Square Holdings, Ltd.: Pershing Square Holdings, Ltd. (LN:PSH) (NA:PSH) is an investment holding company structured as a closed-ended fund that makes concentrated investments principally in North American companies. View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20170803006054/en/ Contacts: Maitland James Devas, +44 20 7379 5151 Media-pershingsquareholdings@maitland.co.uk Toronto, Ontario--(Newsfile Corp. - August 3, 2017) - Icon Exploration Inc. (TSXV: IEX.H) ("Icon" or the "Company") announces that it received NEX conditional approval to and has today issued 950,000 shares at a deemed price of $0.05 per share to settle an aggregate of $47,500 debt. These shares are subject to a hold period expiring four months plus a day after their date of issuance. The settled debt included the issuance of 300,000 shares (approx. 1.2% of Icon's issued shares) to Joseph Heng, CFO and a director of Icon, to settle $15,000 debt and 300,000 shares (approx. 1.2% of Icon's issued shares) to Rob Fia, the CEO and a director of Icon, to settle $15,000 debt. Mr. Heng now owns a total of 1,870,329 shares (approx. 7.4% of Icon's issued shares) and Mr. Fia now owns a total of 4,077,812 shares (approx. 16.1% of Icon's issued shares). These debt settlements are related party transactions as defined in Multilateral Instrument 61-101- Protection of Minority Security Holders in Special Transactions ("MI 61-101"). The Company is exempt from the formal valuation requirement and the shareholder approval requirement of MI 61-101. In addition, the Company has closed a private placement and has issued 1,000,000 units for gross proceeds of $50,000. The issued securities are subject to a hold period expiring four months plus a day after the date of their issuance. The Company engaged Kingsdale Capital Markets Inc. (the "Agent") to act as the agent for the private placement. In conjunction with the closing of this financing, the Agent has received a cash commission in an amount equal to 8% of the gross proceeds raised and a total of 80,000 agent warrants representing an amount equal to 8% of the units issued under the financing, with each warrant being exercisable into one common share of the Company at an exercise price of $0.10/share for a period of one year. This news release does not constitute an offer to sell or a solicitation of an offer to buy nor shall there be any sale of any of the securities in any jurisdiction in which such offer, solicitation or sale would be unlawful, including any of the securities in the United States of America. The securities have not been and will not be registered under the United States Securities Act of 1933 (the "1933 Act") or any state securities laws and may not be offered or sold within the United States or to, or for account or benefit of, U.S. Persons (as defined in Regulation S under the 1933 Act) unless registered under the 1933 Act and applicable state securities laws, or an exemption from such registration requirements is available. ON BEHALF OF THE BOARD Icon Exploration Inc. "Rob Fia" Rob Fia, CEO & Director For further information: Email: rfia@kingsdalecapital.com Tel: 416-867-2353 Fax: 416-867-4566 Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release. NOT FOR DISSEMINATION OR DISTRIBUTION IN THE UNITED STATES MILPITAS, CA -- (Marketwired) -- 08/03/17 -- Mobiveil, Inc., a fast growing supplier of silicon intellectual property (IP), platforms and IP-enabled design services, today announced immediate availability of its Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA)-based solid state drive (SSD) development platform targeting the latest 3D NAND devices. Additionally, Mobiveil announced its NVM Express Controller (UNEX ) is compliant with NVMe version 1.3 and its PCI Express Controller (GPEX) supports the Gen4 specification. Both silicon-proven controllers offer a flexible and configurable design for enterprise-, cloud- and client-class solutions used in PCIe-based SSDs. Mobiveil's FPGA platform and IP will be demonstrated in Booth #610 during the Flash Memory Summit August 8-10 at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara, Calif. "These offerings address the challenges of Flash storage through greater speed and configurability," says Ravi Thummarukudy, chief executive officer of Mobiveil. "As a key IP supplier enabling the industry's transition to NVM Express-based Flash storage solutions, Mobiveil is fully committed to supporting the latest technology specifications targeting the latest NAND flash devices. By offering early availability, we can accelerate a designer's product development and enhance its capabilities." Mobiveil's FPGA-based NVMe SSD platform is a fully verified Flash storage subsystem with PCI Express, DDR and ONFI/Toggle interfaces. It enables rapid development of NVMe storage for high-performance and low-power SSD solutions, allowing users to prototype their storage solutions quickly and cost effectively. Error correction is performed using ether BCH or LDPC. It includes the basic Flash Translation Layer (FTL) firmware targeting the latest 3D devices. By supporting NVMe 1.3, the NVMe controller capabilities have been extended to handle directive types that include streams. The streams directive enables the host to indicate to the controller that the specified logical blocks in a write command are part of one group of associated data. This information can be used by an implementation to store related data in associated locations or for other performance enhancements. The NVMe controller supports a multi-port configuration for efficient I/O virtualization and multi-path I/O and namespace sharing. Mobiveil's silicon-proven PCI Express solution has added Gen4 support for up to 16 lanes at 16G line rate with availability of 512 bit Data path user interface. The PCI Express controller offers AXI4 interface and DMA capabilities for seamless integration into an ARM Advanced Microcontroller Bus Architecture (AMBA)-based system-on-chip (SoC) implementation. Pricing for both is available upon request. Mobiveil's silicon-proven IP solutions are used by semiconductor companies worldwide to differentiate their enterprise-, cloud- and client-class storage products. About Mobiveil, Inc. Mobiveil is a fast-growing technology company that specializes in the development of Silicon Intellectual Property (SIP), platforms and solutions for the networking, storage and enterprise markets. It leverages decades of experience in delivering high-quality, production-proven, high-speed serial interconnect SIP cores, and custom and standard form factor hardware boards to leading semiconductor companies worldwide. For the PCI Express-based Flash Storage market, Mobiveil developed NVMStor, a subsystem comprised of GPEX, the PCI Express Controller, NVM Express Controller (UNEX), Universal Memory Controller (UMMC) and a Flash Memory Controller. Mobiveil is headquartered in Milpitas, Calif., with engineering development centers located in Chennai and Bangalore, India, and sales offices and representatives located in U.S., Europe, Israel, Japan, Taiwan and China. Engage with Mobiveil at: Website: www.mobiveil.com Twitter: @Mobiveil LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company-beta/2725746/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Mobiveil For more information, contact: Nanette Collins Public Relations for Mobiveil (617) 437-1822 Email Contact HERCULES, CA -- (Marketwired) -- 08/03/17 -- Bio-Rad Laboratories, Inc. (NYSE: BIO) and (NYSE: BIO.B), a global provider of life science research and clinical diagnostic products, announced financial results today for the second quarter ended June 30, 2017. Second-quarter 2017 net sales were $504.7 million, a decrease of 2.3 percent compared to $516.8 million reported for the second quarter of 2016. On a currency-neutral basis, quarterly net sales decreased 1.6 percent compared to the same period last year. The sales decline in the second quarter of 2017 was largely due to a slowdown in productivity related to the recent go-live of our global ERP system in Western Europe as well as the absence of sales that were pulled forward into the first quarter in anticipation of our ERP deployment. The Life Science segment net sales in the second quarter of 2017 were $179.4 million, a decrease of 0.3 percent compared to the same period last year. On a currency-neutral basis, Life Science segment sales increased 0.3 percent compared to the second quarter of 2016. Currency neutral sales growth was primarily driven by sales of Droplet Digital PCR (ddPCR) instruments and reagents, offset by a decline in process chromatography media sales, as well as some of the ERP-related disruption mentioned above. Also, during the quarter the Life Science segment posted increases from the acquisition of RainDance Technologies. The currency neutral sales increase was reflected in North America, China, and Asia Pacific, offset by slowness in Europe, Latin America and Japan. Net sales for the Clinical Diagnostics segment in the second quarter of 2017 were $322.1 million, a decrease of 3.5 percent compared to the second quarter of 2016. On a currency-neutral basis, sales decreased 2.7 percent compared to the same period last year. Results from the second quarter reflected a substantial slowdown of European sales, especially in infectious disease and immunohematology products, directly related to the disruptions post go-live of the new ERP system. The currency neutral sales results also reflected slowness in the Americas, partially offset by growth in Asia. Net income for the second quarter of 2017 was $5.0 million, or $0.17 per share on a fully diluted basis, compared to $18.0 million, or $0.61 per share during the same period last year. Net income for the second quarter of 2017 versus the second quarter of 2016 was negatively impacted by the lower sales and corresponding lower gross profit as well as increased acquisition-related expenditures for new products and technology and higher expense for the implementation of new systems and operations in Europe. "The second quarter of 2017 has been one of our most challenging with sales growth being significantly tempered by the slowing of productivity resulting from our major ERP deployment in Western Europe as well as from lower than expected sales in our process media business and in the Americas," said Norman Schwartz, Bio-Rad President and Chief Executive Officer. "These sales results, along with substantial spending related to implementing new systems and operations in Europe, as well as increased expenditures for newly acquired products and technology, combined to produce a disappointing operating result for the quarter. However, we remain confident that these investments will lead to increased sales and margin expansion over the coming years," added Mr. Schwartz. The following table compares certain non-cash or non-recurring items from Q2 2017 to Q2 2016: -------------------------------- (in millions) Q2 2017 Q2 2016 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Purchase accounting amortization COGS $ 7.1 $7.2 SG&A $ 1.8 $1.7 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Acquisition-related expense R&D $11.5 $2.4 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Contingent Consideration SG&A ($1.3) ($0.6) ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Europe Restructuring $0.0 $11.7 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Total impact to operations $19.1 $22.4 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- The effective tax rate for the second quarter of 2017 was a 350 percent benefit, compared to a tax rate of 33 percent for the same quarter in 2016. The unusually low tax rate used in the second quarter of 2017 reflects discrete tax benefits related to share-based compensation as well as the transfer of intangibles related to our European reorganization. On a reported basis, net sales for the first half of 2017 increased 1.7 percent to $1.0 billion compared to $988.0 million for the same period in 2016. On a currency-neutral basis, net sales grew 2.3 percent. Year-to-date net income for 2017 was $17.4 million, or $0.58 per share on a fully diluted basis, compared to $30.3 million, or $1.03 per share, respectively, during the same period in 2016. 2017 Financial Outlook For the full year 2017, the Company continues to anticipate currency-neutral organic sales growth of approximately 4 percent, which assumes a substantial portion of the lower revenue due to the transition to a new ERP system will be recovered by the end of the year. Further, the addition of the recently acquired RainDance Technologies could add up to another 1 percent of growth in sales for the full year. With the lower than anticipated operating profit in the first half of 2017 and including the addition of RainDance, the Company is lowering its estimate for currency-neutral operating profit for the full year from the previously stated 7 percent of sales to now be in the 6 to 6.5 percent range. "While 2017 will be another year of relatively modest operating margin especially with the inclusion of substantial acquisition-related expense, we are focused on completing these foundational investments and harvesting the benefits of a more efficient and cost effective operating model," Mr. Schwartz said. "We look forward to sharing more insight to our long term plans with the investment community at our Investor Day to be held in New York later this year." Management will discuss these results in a conference call at 2 PM Pacific Daylight Time (5 PM Eastern Daylight Time) August 3, 2017. Interested parties may access the call at 855-779-9068 within the U.S. or 631-485-4862 outside the U.S., conference ID: 50367493. You may also listen to the conference call live via a webcast that is available on the "Investor Relations" section of our website under "Quarterly Results" at www.bio-rad.com. The webcast will be available for up to a year. About Bio-Rad Bio-Rad Laboratories, Inc. (NYSE: BIO) and (NYSE: BIO.B) develops, manufactures, and markets a broad range of innovative products and solutions for the life science research and clinical diagnostic markets. The company is renowned for its commitment to quality and customer service among university and research institutions, hospitals, public health and commercial laboratories, as well as the biotechnology, pharmaceutical, and food safety industries. Founded in 1952, Bio-Rad is based in Hercules, California, and serves more than 100,000 research and healthcare industry customers through its global network of operations. The Company employs more than 8,350 people worldwide and had net sales exceeding $2 billion in 2016. For more information, please visit www.bio-rad.com. This release may be deemed to contain certain forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These forward-looking statements include, without limitation, statements we make regarding estimated future financial performance or results, the growth of our business, our ability to recover revenue, expectations regarding operating margin and foundational investments, realizing increased sales and margin expansion over the coming years, our expectations regarding the recently acquired RainDance Technologies and regarding our products and our release of new products. Forward-looking statements generally can be identified by the use of forward-looking terminology such as, "believe," "expect," "anticipate," "may," "will," "intend," "estimate," "assume", "continue," or similar expressions or the negative of those terms or expressions, although not all forward-looking statements contain these words. Such statements involve risks and uncertainties, which could cause actual results to vary materially from those expressed in or indicated by the forward-looking statements. These risks and uncertainties include our ability to develop and market new or improved products, difficulties in implementing our global enterprise resource planning system, our ability to integrate acquired companies, products or technologies into our company successfully, our ability to compete effectively, foreign currency exchange fluctuations, recent and planned changes to our global organizational structure and executive management team, product quality and liability issues, international legal and regulatory risks, reductions in government funding or capital spending of our customers, supply chain issues, changes in the healthcare industry, global economic conditions, and natural disasters and other catastrophic events beyond our control. For further information regarding the Company's risks and uncertainties, please refer to the "Risk Factors" and "Management's Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations" in the Company's public reports filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission (the "SEC"), including the Company's Annual Report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2016, and its Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q for the fiscal quarter ended June 30, 2017 to be filed with the SEC. The Company cautions you not to place undue reliance on forward-looking statements, which reflect an analysis only and speak only as of the date hereof. Bio-Rad Laboratories, Inc. disclaims any obligation to update these forward-looking statements. Bio-Rad Laboratories, Inc. Condensed Consolidated Statements of Income (in thousands, except per share data) (UNAUDITED) Three Months Ended Six Months Ended June 30, June 30, ------------------------ ------------------------ 2017 2016 2017 2016 ----------- ----------- ----------- ----------- Net sales $ 504,666 $ 516,777 $ 1,004,717 $ 987,974 Cost of goods sold 231,367 236,545 461,431 443,713 ----------- ----------- ----------- ----------- Gross profit 273,299 280,232 543,286 544,261 Selling, general and administrative expense 213,027 205,536 407,967 395,252 Research and development expense 62,623 49,811 112,111 98,397 Impairment loss on long-lived asset - 2,360 - 2,360 ----------- ----------- ----------- ----------- Income (loss) from operations (2,351) 22,525 23,208 48,252 Interest expense 5,770 5,632 10,811 11,212 Foreign currency exchange losses, net 2,516 1,237 4,305 2,366 Other (income) expense, net (11,757) (11,208) (13,175) (12,385) ----------- ----------- ----------- ----------- Income before income taxes 1,120 26,864 21,267 47,059 Benefit (provision) for income taxes 3,915 (8,850) (3,819) (16,769) ----------- ----------- ----------- ----------- Net income $ 5,035 $ 18,014 $ 17,448 $ 30,290 =========== =========== =========== =========== Basic earnings per share: Net income per basic share $ 0.17 $ 0.61 $ 0.59 $ 1.03 =========== =========== =========== =========== Weighted average common shares - basic 29,613 29,398 29,597 29,381 =========== =========== =========== =========== Diluted earnings per share: Net income per diluted share $ 0.17 $ 0.61 $ 0.58 $ 1.03 =========== =========== =========== =========== Weighted average common shares - diluted 30,006 29,589 29,962 29,549 =========== =========== =========== =========== Bio-Rad Laboratories, Inc. Condensed Consolidated Balance Sheets (In thousands) June 30, December 31, 2017 2016 -------------- -------------- (UNAUDITED) Current assets: Cash and cash equivalents $ 321,584 $ 456,264 Short-term investments 395,828 387,736 Accounts receivable, net 392,842 372,348 Inventories, net 580,581 524,961 Other current assets 135,693 103,215 -------------- -------------- Total current assets 1,826,528 1,844,524 Property, plant and equipment, net 503,329 488,614 Goodwill, net 530,287 477,115 Purchased intangibles, net 184,819 161,609 Other investments 1,040,959 830,790 Other assets 57,537 47,852 -------------- -------------- Total assets $ 4,143,459 $ 3,850,504 ============== ============== Current liabilities: Accounts payable, accrued payroll and employee benefits $ 277,566 $ 296,473 Current maturities of long-term debt 505 334 Income and other taxes payable 33,308 28,124 Other current liabilities 143,731 146,391 -------------- -------------- Total current liabilities 455,110 471,322 Long-term debt, net of current maturities 434,386 434,186 Other long-term liabilities 442,966 358,237 -------------- -------------- Total liabilities 1,332,462 1,263,745 Total stockholders' equity 2,810,997 2,586,759 -------------- -------------- Total liabilities and stockholders' equity $ 4,143,459 $ 3,850,504 ============== ============== Bio-Rad Laboratories, Inc. Condensed Consolidated Statements of Cash Flows (In thousands) (UNAUDITED) Six Months Ended June 30, 2017 2016 -------------- -------------- Cash flows from operating activities: Cash received from customers $ 999,779 $ 1,020,149 Cash paid to suppliers and employees (970,116) (935,587) Interest paid, net (10,315) (10,911) Income tax payments, net (19,066) (11,085) Other operating activities 5,918 7,141 -------------- -------------- Net cash provided by operating activities 6,200 69,707 Cash flows from investing activities: Payments for acquisitions and long-term investments (73,573) (11,477) Other investing activities (74,102) (98,851) -------------- -------------- Net cash used in investing activities (147,675) (110,328) Cash flows from financing activities: Payments on long-term borrowings (149) (156) Other financing activities (246) 3,450 -------------- -------------- Net cash (used in) provided by financing activities (395) 3,294 Effect of foreign exchange rate changes on cash 7,190 (1,571) -------------- -------------- Net decrease in cash and cash equivalents (134,680) (38,898) Cash and cash equivalents at beginning of period 456,264 457,549 -------------- -------------- Cash and cash equivalents at end of period $ 321,584 $ 418,651 ============== ============== Reconciliation of net income to net cash provided by operating activities: Net income $ 17,448 $ 30,290 Adjustments to reconcile net income to net cash provided by operating activities: Depreciation and amortization 70,688 71,668 Changes in working capital (91,965) (54,026) Other 10,029 21,775 -------------- -------------- Net cash provided by operating activities $ 6,200 $ 69,707 ============== ============== Investor and Financial Contacts: Bio-Rad Laboratories, Inc. Christine Tsingos Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer Ron Hutton Vice President, Treasurer 510-724-7000 Email Contact MOUNT LAUREL, NJ -- August 3, 2017 -- inTEST Corporation (NYSE MKT: INTT), an independent designer, manufacturer and marketer of thermal management products and semiconductor automatic test equipment (ATE) interface solutions, today announced financial results for the quarter ended June 30, 2017. 2017 Second Quarter Summary Second quarter 2017 bookings were $14.6 million, compared with first quarter 2017 bookings of $15.0 million and second quarter 2016 bookings of $12.6 million. Second quarter 2017 results include the acquisition of Ambrell Corporation, which was completed May 24, 2017. Second quarter 2017 bookings excluding Ambrell were $12.3 million. -- $5.9 million, or 40%, of second quarter bookings were derived from non-ATE, compared with second quarter 2016 non-ATE bookings of $4.4 million, or 35%. -- $5.9 million, or 40%, of second quarter bookings were derived from non-ATE, compared with second quarter 2016 non-ATE bookings of $4.4 million, or 35%. Second quarter 2017 net revenues were $15.9 million, compared with first quarter 2017 net revenues of $14.2 million and second quarter 2016 net revenues of $10.5 million. Second quarter 2017 net revenues excluding Ambrell were $13.9 million. -- $5.7 million, or 36%, of second quarter 2017 net revenues were derived from non-ATE, compared with second quarter 2016 non-ATE revenues of $2.5 million, or 24%. -- $5.7 million, or 36%, of second quarter 2017 net revenues were derived from non-ATE, compared with second quarter 2016 non-ATE revenues of $2.5 million, or 24%. Second quarter 2017 gross margin was $8.4 million, or 53%, compared with first quarter 2017 gross margin of $7.7 million, or 55%, and second quarter 2016 gross margin of $5.3 million, or 51%. On a GAAP basis, second quarter 2017 net earnings were $1.4 million, or $0.14 per diluted share, compared with first quarter 2017 net earnings of $2.1 million, or $0.20 per diluted share, and second quarter 2016 net earnings of $486,000, or $0.05 per diluted share. Consolidated results for the second quarter of 2017 included Ambrell transaction related expenses of $849,000. -- On a non-GAAP basis, second quarter 2017 adjusted net earnings were $1.7 million, or $0.16 per diluted share, compared with first quarter 2017 adjusted net earnings of $2.1 million, or $0.21 per diluted share, and second quarter 2016 adjusted net earnings of $523,000 or $0.05 per diluted share. -- On a non-GAAP basis, second quarter 2017 adjusted net earnings were $1.7 million, or $0.16 per diluted share, compared with first quarter 2017 adjusted net earnings of $2.1 million, or $0.21 per diluted share, and second quarter 2016 adjusted net earnings of $523,000 or $0.05 per diluted share. Cash and cash equivalents at June 30, 2017 were $7.6 million, compared with $27.5 million at March 31, 2017. inTEST Executive Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer Robert E. Matthiessen commented, "We are very pleased with our results for the second quarter. On the heels of an exceptionally strong first quarter, second quarter revenue increased 33% year-over-year, excluding the impact of the additional net revenues from the acquisition of Ambrell, and we marked the Company's 31st consecutive quarter of profitability." Mr. Matthiessen added, "We are seeing immediate benefits from the recently closed acquisition. Ambrell's induction heating technology complements our current thermal technologies and firmly establishes our position in industrial markets with a diverse customer base in a broader manufacturing space, including in many emerging markets, consumer product packaging, fiber-optic, automotive and other markets. We are well positioned to capture market share in the markets we serve, while expanding inTEST's footprint in additional thermal test and industrial markets. As we head into the second half of 2017, we anticipate seasonal declines, consistent with our peers, given the strength in the test industry in the first part of this year. As we continue to execute on our differentiated product strategy, we believe the conditions for our long-term success remain firmly in place and we are solidly on track for a strong 2017." 2017 Third Quarter Financial Outlook inTEST expects that net revenues for the third quarter of 2017 will be in the range of $17.5 million to $18.5 million and that on a GAAP basis, earnings per diluted share will range from $0.12 to $0.16. This outlook is based on the Company's current views with respect to operating and market conditions and customers' forecasts, which are subject to change. 2017 Second Quarter Conference Call Details inTEST management will host a conference call on Thursday, August 3, 2017 at 5:00 pm Eastern Daylight Time. The conference call will address the Company's second quarter 2017 financial results and management's current expectations and views of the industry. The call may also include discussion of strategic, operating and product initiatives and developments, and other matters relating to the Company's current or future performance. To access the live conference call, please dial (815) 680-6269 or (866) 900-9241. The Passcode for the conference call is 51056990. Please reference the inTEST 2017 Q2 Financial Results Conference Call. 2017 Second Quarter Live Webcast Details inTEST Corporation will provide a webcast in conjunction with the conference call. To access the live webcast, please visit inTEST's website www.intest.com under the "Investors" section. 2017 Second Quarter Replay Details (Webcast) A replay of the webcast will be available on inTEST's website for one year following the live broadcast. To access the webcast replay, please visit inTEST's website www.intest.com under the "Investors" section. Submit Questions In advance of the conference call, and for those investors accessing the webcast, inTEST Corporation welcomes individual investors to submit their questions via email to lguerrant@guerrantir.com. The Company will address as many questions as possible on the conference call. Non-GAAP Results In addition to disclosing results that are determined in accordance with GAAP, we also disclose non-GAAP performance measures. These non-GAAP performance measures include adjusted net earnings and adjusted net earnings per diluted share. Adjusted net earnings is derived by adding acquired intangible amortization to net earnings. Adjusted net earnings per diluted share is derived by dividing adjusted net earnings by diluted average shares outstanding. These results are provided as a complement to results provided in accordance with GAAP. Adjusted net earnings and adjusted net earnings per diluted share are non-GAAP performance measures presented to provide meaningful supplemental information regarding our baseline performance before acquired intangible amortization charges that may not be indicative of our current core business or future outlook. These non-GAAP performance measures are used to make operational decisions, to forecast future operational results, and for comparison with our business plan, historical operating results and the operating results of our peers. A reconciliation of net earnings and net earnings per diluted share to adjusted net earnings and adjusted earnings per diluted share, which are discussed in this earnings release, is contained in the tables that follow. The non-GAAP performance measures discussed in this earnings release may not be comparable to similarly titled measures used by other companies. The presentation of non-GAAP measures is not meant to be considered in isolation, as a substitute for, or superior to, financial measures or information provided in accordance with GAAP. About inTEST Corporation inTEST Corporation is an independent designer, manufacturer and marketer of thermal management products and ATE interface solutions, which are used by semiconductor manufacturers to perform final testing of integrated circuits (ICs) and wafers and by manufacturers in other diversified industries. The Company's high-performance products are designed to enable semiconductor manufacturers to improve the speed, reliability, efficiency and profitability of IC test processes. Other industries into which the Company's products are also sold include: the automotive, consumer electronics, defense/aerospace, energy, industrial and telecommunications markets. Specific products include temperature management systems, manipulator and docking hardware products and customized interface solutions. The Company has established strong relationships with its customers globally, which it supports through a network of local offices. For more information visit www.intest.com. Forward-Looking Statements This press release includes forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These statements do not convey historical information, but relate to predicted or potential future events and financial results that are based upon management's current expectations. These statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied by such statements. In addition to the factors mentioned in this press release, such risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to, changes in business conditions and the economy, generally; changes in the demand for semiconductors, generally; our ability to integrate Ambrell into our business successfully or operate Ambrell profitably; changes in the rates of, and timing of, capital expenditures by our customers; progress of product development programs; increases in raw material and fabrication costs associated with our products and other risk factors set forth from time to time in our SEC filings, including, but not limited to, our periodic reports on Form 10-K and Form 10-Q. inTEST undertakes no obligation to update the information in this press release to reflect events or circumstances after the date hereof or to reflect the occurrence of anticipated or unanticipated events. SELECTED FINANCIAL DATA (Unaudited) (In thousands, except per share data) Condensed Consolidated Statements of Operations Data: Three Months Ended Six Months Ended -------------------------------- --------------------- 6/30/2017 6/30/2016 3/31/2017 6/30/2017 6/30/2016 ---------- ---------- ---------- ---------- ---------- Net revenues $ 15,888 $ 10,485 $ 14,180 $ 30,068 $ 19,132 Gross margin 8,421 5,329 7,728 16,149 9,396 Operating expenses: Selling expense 1,871 1,471 1,668 3,539 2,806 Engineering and product development expense 982 982 935 1,917 1,973 General and administrative expense 3,286 2,145 1,994 5,280 3,790 Operating income 2,282 731 3,131 5,413 827 Other income 54 18 41 95 46 Earnings before income tax expense 2,336 749 3,172 5,508 873 Income tax expense 891 263 1,094 1,985 306 Net earnings 1,445 486 2,078 3,523 567 Net earnings per share - basic $ 0.14 $ 0.05 $ 0.20 $ 0.34 $ 0.05 Weighted average shares outstanding - basic 10,277 10,296 10,265 10,271 10,343 Net earnings per share - diluted $ 0.14 $ 0.05 $ 0.20 $ 0.34 $ 0.05 Weighted average shares outstanding - diluted 10,335 10,311 10,295 10,315 10,357 Condensed Consolidated Balance Sheets Data: As of: -------------------------------- 6/30/2017 3/31/2017 12/31/2016 ---------- ---------- ---------- Cash and cash equivalents $ 7,596 $ 27,455 $ 28,611 Trade accounts receivable, net 11,938 9,817 5,377 Inventories 6,212 3,921 3,676 Total current assets 26,375 41,567 38,006 Net property and equipment 1,525 934 944 Total assets 56,704 46,353 42,844 Accounts payable 2,823 1,833 1,368 Accrued expenses 4,919 2,975 3,113 Total current liabilities 9,732 6,433 5,056 Noncurrent liabilities 5,354 - - Total stockholders' equity 41,618 39,920 37,788 Reconciliation of GAAP to Non-GAAP Net Earnings: Three Months Ended Six Months Ended ------------------------------- -------------------- 6/30/2017 6/30/2016 3/31/2017 6/30/2017 6/30/2016 --------- --------- --------- --------- --------- GAAP net earnings $ 1,445 $ 486 $ 2,078 $ 3,523 $ 567 Acquired intangible amortization 250 57 53 303 116 Tax adjustments (16) (20) (17) (33) (43) --------- --------- --------- --------- --------- Adjusted net earnings $ 1,679 $ 523 $ 2,114 $ 3,793 $ 640 ========= ========= ========= ========= ========= Average shares outstanding: Basic 10,277 10,296 10,265 10,271 10,343 Diluted 10,335 10,311 10,295 10,315 10,357 Net earnings per share - basic GAAP Net earnings $ 0.14 $ 0.05 $ 0.20 $ 0.34 $ 0.06 Acquired intangible amortization 0.02 - 0.01 0.03 0.01 Tax adjustments (0.00) (0.00) (0.00) (0.00) (0.00) --------- --------- --------- --------- --------- Adjusted net earnings per share - basic $ 0.16 $ 0.05 $ 0.21 $ 0.37 $ 0.06 ========= ========= ========= ========= ========= Net earnings per share - diluted GAAP Net earnings $ 0.14 $ 0.05 $ 0.20 $ 0.34 $ 0.06 Acquired intangible amortization 0.02 - 0.01 0.03 0.01 Tax adjustments (0.00) (0.00) (0.00) (0.00) (0.00) --------- --------- --------- --------- --------- Adjusted net earnings per share - diluted $ 0.16 $ 0.05 $ 0.21 $ 0.37 $ 0.06 ========= ========= ========= ========= ========= Contacts inTEST Corporation Hugh T. Regan, Jr. Treasurer and Chief Financial Officer Tel: 856-505-8999 Investors: Laura Guerrant-Oiye Principal Guerrant Associates lguerrant@guerrantir.com Tel: (808) 960-2642 WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - Allscripts Healthcare Solutions, Inc. (MDRX) affirmed its non-GAAP earnings per share growth target of between 10 to 15 percent for 2017. The company increased its non-GAAP revenue outlook of between $1.71 billion and $1.74 billion to a range of between $1.79 billion and $1.82 billion. Separately, Allscripts announced a definitive agreement to acquire McKesson Corporation's (MCK) hospital and health system IT business, Enterprise Information Solutions, for $185 million in cash, subject to adjustment for net debt and working capital. Allscripts also announced a change in the 3-year CAGR targets for 2018-2020 that incorporates the addition of the Enterprise Information Solutions business and its subsequent impact on non-GAAP revenue through 2020. The company increased its non-GAAP earnings per share target from a range of 12-15 percent to 17-20 percent. Allscripts noted that the increase in non-GAAP earnings per share assumes an accelerating contribution from the Enterprise Information Solutions business to Allscripts profitability through 2020. The company increased its non-GAAP revenue target from a range of 6-8 percent to 9-11 percent. Non-GAAP earnings per share in the second quarter of 2017 were $0.15, compared with $0.14 in the second quarter of 2016. Non-GAAP revenue totaled $428 million, improving 8 percent year-over-year. Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX Werbehinweise: Die Billigung des Basisprospekts durch die BaFin ist nicht als ihre Befurwortung der angebotenen Wertpapiere zu verstehen. Wir empfehlen Interessenten und potenziellen Anlegern den Basisprospekt und die Endgultigen Bedingungen zu lesen, bevor sie eine Anlageentscheidung treffen, um sich moglichst umfassend zu informieren, insbesondere uber die potenziellen Risiken und Chancen des Wertpapiers. Sie sind im Begriff, ein Produkt zu erwerben, das nicht einfach ist und schwer zu verstehen sein kann. VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA -- (Marketwired) -- 08/03/17 -- Fancamp Exploration Ltd. (Fancamp) (TSX VENTURE: FNC) has filed an NI 43-101 technical report from independent consulting firm, Met-Chem which follows the review of the British Columbia Securities Commission. The report outlines an Indicated Resource of 74.7 million tonnes grading 31.6% T-Fe (total iron) and an Inferred Resource of 229.3 million tonnes grading 30.4% T-Fe, using a conservative cut-off grade of 15%T-Fe. The resource model focused on the typical banded iron formation containing magnetite, hematite with bands of quartzite but does not include a substantial number of core samples containing magnetite with pyroxene bands. To quote the report, "magnetic susceptibility readings of this unit reveal significant quantities of magnetite in some areas." This distinct lithological unit "contains magnetite but is not considered as mineral resource in this estimate since more characterization work is required. If some of the magnetite in this unit can be economically recovered, this would constitute a potential for the project." Future work will focus on characterization of this lithology in order to quantify this portion of the deposit which management feels will add substantial tonnage to the resource estimate. This news release was prepared, reviewed and approved by Mr. Mike Flanagan, M.Sc.A, P. Geo., the Lamelee South Project Manager, a Qualified Person under NI 43-101 standards. No stock exchange or securities regulatory authority has reviewed or accepted responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release. Some of the statements contained in this release are forward-looking statements, such as estimates and statements that describe the Company's future plans, objectives or goals, including words to the effect that the Company or management expects a stated condition or result to occur. Since forward-looking statements address future events and conditions, by their very nature, they involve inherent risks and uncertainties. This press release contains certain forward-looking statements, including, without limitation, statements containing the words "may", "plan", "will", "estimate", "continue", "anticipate", "intend", "expect", "in the process" and other similar expressions which constitute "forward-looking information" within the meaning of applicable securities laws. Forward-looking statements reflect the Company's current expectation and assumptions, and are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those anticipated. These forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties including, but not limited to, our expectations regarding the acceptance of our projects by the market, our strategy to develop new projects and enhance the capabilities of existing projects, our strategy with respect to research and development, the impact of competitive products and pricing, new product development, and uncertainties related to the regulatory approval process. Such statements reflect the current views of the Company with respect to future events and are subject to certain risks and uncertainties and other risks detailed from time-to-time in the Company's on-going filings with the securities regulatory authorities, which filings can be found at www.sedar.com. Actual results, events, and performance may differ materially. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements. The Company undertakes no obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements either as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as required by applicable securities laws. S.E.C. Exemption: 12(g)3-2(b) Contacts: Fancamp Exploration Ltd. Peter H. Smith President +1-514-481-3172 www.fancampexplorationltd.ca NEW YORK, NY / ACCESSWIRE / August 3, 2017 / The Law Offices of Vincent Wong announce that a class action lawsuit has been commenced in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York on behalf of investors who purchased Axiom Holdings, Inc. ("Axiom Holdings") (OTC PINK: AIOM) securities between October 14, 2016 and June 19, 2017 . Click here to learn about the case: http://www.wongesq.com/pslra-sb/axiom-holdings-inc?wire=1.There is no cost or obligation to you. According to the complaint, throughout the Class Period, the Company issued materially false and misleading statements and/or failed to disclose that: (i) Axiom lacked control over the merger process sufficient to ensure that the Agreement with CJC would be completed; (ii) accordingly, the Agreement with CJC Holdings, Ltd. ("CJC") was never completed; (iii) the Company's issuance of shares to the CJC Shareholders was thus improper; and (iv) as a result of the foregoing, Axiom's public statements were materially false and misleading at all relevant times. On June 19, 2017, Axiom issued a press release revealing that it identified discrepancies related to prior news announcements in response to a subpoena from the Securities and Exchange Commission. The following day, the Company issued another press release, advising investors that "it now appears the merger was never completed" and advising investors that it would rescind the shares that were issued to CJC Shareholders in connection with the merger. If you suffered a loss in Axiom Holdings, you have until August 21, 2017 to request that the Court appoint you as lead plaintiff. Your ability to share in any recovery doesn't require that you serve as a lead plaintiff. To obtain additional information, contact Vincent Wong, Esq. either via email vw@wongesq.com, by telephone at 212.425.1140, or visit http://www.wongesq.com/pslra-sb/axiom-holdings-inc?wire=1. Vincent Wong, Esq. is an experienced attorney that has represented investors in securities litigations involving financial fraud and violations of shareholder rights. Attorney advertising. Prior results do not guarantee similar outcomes. CONTACT: Vincent Wong, Esq. 39 East Broadway Suite 304 New York, NY 10002 Tel. 212.425.1140 Fax. 866.699.3880 E-Mail: vw@wongesq.com SOURCE: The Law Offices of Vincent Wong CANBERA (dpa-AFX) - Australia will on Friday release June figures for retail sales, highlighting a modest day for Asia-Pacific economic activity. Sales are expected to add 0.2 percent on month after rising 0.6 percent in May. For the second quarter of 2017, sales are called higher by 1.2 percent after gaining 0.1 percent in the three months prior. Also, the Reserve Bank of Australia will release its statement on monetary policy. Japan will provide June figures for real and labor cash earnings. Real cash earnings are expected to add 0.1 percent on year following the flat reading in May. Labor cash earnings are called higher by an annual 0.5 percent after rising 0.6 percent in the previous month. Indonesia will release Q2 numbers for gross domestic product; in the previous three months, GDP contracted 0.34 percent on quarter and gained 5.01 percent on year. Malaysia will see June figures for imports, exports and trade balance. In May, imports were worth 73.9 billion ringgit and exports were at 79.4 billion ringgit for a trade surplus of 5.5 billion ringgit. Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX Werbehinweise: Die Billigung des Basisprospekts durch die BaFin ist nicht als ihre Befurwortung der angebotenen Wertpapiere zu verstehen. Wir empfehlen Interessenten und potenziellen Anlegern den Basisprospekt und die Endgultigen Bedingungen zu lesen, bevor sie eine Anlageentscheidung treffen, um sich moglichst umfassend zu informieren, insbesondere uber die potenziellen Risiken und Chancen des Wertpapiers. Sie sind im Begriff, ein Produkt zu erwerben, das nicht einfach ist und schwer zu verstehen sein kann. London, England and Lausanne, Switzerland-based Rewired has launched a robotics-focused studio and venture capital fund. Tej Kohli, a principal investor in multi-family office Cascade Global, backed Rewired. To start, the firm is investing $100m in applied science and technologies that advance machine perception. Rewireds first thesis is that improving machine perception will unlock the next generation of smart robotics. To that end, the firm is focusing on the sensors, software, and systems that help autonomous machines to interact with unpredictable environments and collaborate with humans. Led by venture partners Santiago Tenorio, Andy Hickl, Nova Spivack, Gleb Chuvpilo, and investment manager Jae-Yong Lee, Rewired is launching with an active portfolio that includes Open Bionics and Raptor Maps and is currently investing in a number of other companies addressing high-growth opportunities in machine perception, machine learning, and cognition. Advisors include Dr. Eduardo Castello Ferrer, Dr. Mirko Kovac, Raul Bravo, Fady Saad, and Thomas Estier. Based in London and Lausanne, the firm will soon be expanding to East Asia and the United States. FinSMEs 03/08/2017 Sugarfina, a Los Angeles-based luxury confections brand, raised $35m in funding. Private equity firm Great Hill Partners made the investment. In conjunction with the funding, Great Hills Michael Kumin and Peter Garran will join Sugarfinas board of directors. The company, which has raised over $50m in total funding, intends to use the funds to continue scaling the omnichannel brand across web, mobile, retail, wholesale, and corporate gifting, as well as to expand internationally to the Middle East, Europe, and Asia. Sugarfina currently operates in the U.S. and Canada and will begin its overseas expansion in early 2018. Launched online in the summer of 2012 by Rosie ONeill and Josh Resnick, Sugarfina is known for confectionary creations including recent collaborations with Casamigos Tequila and Pressed Juicery. The brand, which today operates 24 boutiques and 14 shop-in-shops in in major cities such as Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco, Boston, Chicago, and Vancouver, launched Whispering Angel Rose gummy bears in 2016. After posting nearly $25 million in revenue in 2016, Sugarfina is on track to double its revenue in 2017. FinSMEs 03/08/2017 Tokyo Smoke, a Toronto, Canada-based lifestyle cannabis brand, held the first closing of its Series B funding at approximately CAD$4m. The current funding round led by Aphria Inc. and Green Acre Capital Fund I LP is expected to exceed the initial target of $5m CAD by the end of August 2017. Other backers included: W. Brett Wilson (iBanker, CBC Dragon Emeritus), Charles Broderick (one of the largest early investors in Canadas medical cannabis market, founder of Uji Capital LLC). The company will use the funds for continued retail expansion across North America, marketing and strategic acquisitions. Led by Alan Gertner, co-founder and CEO, Tokyo Smoke is a cannabis brand that operates immersive experiences and designer retail spaces selling coffee, clothing and designer products. The company recently completed the acquisition of fellow designer cannabis brand Van der Pop, as well as developed Nesta Brand Co (a brand expansion company bringing the best cannabis products to the Canadian market). FinSMEs 03/08/2017 The TSB Community Trusts commercial arm has reached an agreement to acquire the 51% shareholding in Fisher Funds it does not currently own. The TSB Community Trust, through its Group companies, has had a shareholding in Fisher Funds since 2013. The group, which currently owns 49% of Fisher Funds having increased its shareholding from 26% in September 2015, had an option to acquire the balance of the company in 2017 and has chosen to exercise that option. In addition, TSB Group has reached agreement to initially sell a 24.99% shareholding in Fisher Funds to TA Associates, a global growth private equity firm with extensive funds management experience. The intention is that the TA Associates shareholding will subsequently increase to 34% following receipt of required regulatory approvals, leaving the Group with a controlling 66% stake in the Company. With over 270,000 clients and $7 billion under management, Fisher Funds is New Zealands 5th largest KiwiSaver provider and 5th largest fund manager overall. It will continue to be led by Chief Executive Bruce McLachlan and there will be no change to the personnel or operations of the Company as a result of this transaction. Carmel Fisher, who retired from her executive role in May 2017, will remain as a Director on the Fisher Funds board and a member of the Investment Committee. The Fisher Funds Board of Directors will remain largely unchanged, being: Sir John Wells (Chair) Carmel Fisher Jonathan McHardy Anne Blackburn David Clarke Edward Sippel Settlement will be completed in August 2017. FinSMEs 03/08/2017 There is no reason that we cannot transform our tremendous talent pool and our potential for pharmaceutical research into solutions for advanced and affordable treatments. To realize the goals of Universal Health Coverage (UHC) and to bring down the rising burden of non-communicable disease in the country, we need to steer our efforts towards intensifying innovation in the pharma sector. For this, stakeholders and policy makers should work towards creating an environment in the country where domestic and international players can work in tandem to build capacity for sustained drug innovations with focus on those in need. According to WHO (World Health Organization), in the year 2014, non-communicable diseases (NCDs) contributed to an estimated 61 percent of all deaths in India, and it is projected that by the year 2030, this number will rise to 67 percent. This is more than half of the deaths caused by infectious diseases, malnutrition related diseases, accidents and other reasons. This changing burden of disease, from communicable to non-communicable, can only be countered by ensuring affordable and effective healthcare at the community level. For this, we need to intensify drug innovation and focused disease research in the country, in parallel with health insurance cover for all Advancements in drugs and devices is key to bringing far-reaching benefits to patients, because it helps improve healthcare systems and benefits the economy by enabling patients access to improved cures. Dramatic improvement in cancer treatment across the globe is a fine example of how drug innovation could make the treatment of one of the most feared and high-cost diseases, effective and reasonable. Continued research in cancer has helped expand our knowledge of how the disease develops and how medicines can target specific cancer types. The success in cancer treatment drugs shows that pharmaceutical research does not end once a medicine is approved by the Drug Regulatory Authority, rather it is the beginning of a sustained and focused effort. This also reveals how the dedicated investment in research helps improve clinical outcomes, simplify treatment regimens and increasing availability. The rise in the incidences of NCDs is not limited to the developing countries, but is a worldwide phenomenon. Government bodies and regulatory pathways across the globe are aligning policies to boost innovation. It is high time that India leverages this international momentum for new technologies and pharma innovations to develop affordable and groundbreaking therapies in the interest of patients. Data from 30 developed and developing countries show the powerful impact of pharma innovation on longevity, productivity, and medical expenditure. Why should Indian patients be denied such innovation? To take advantage of this global drive, we need more investment in our fund-starved pharmaceutical infrastructure. Acknowledging the investment gaps in Research and Development (R&D), the government of India is not only relaxing its policies on foreign direct investments (FDI) but also initiating dialogue on international platforms to build synergies in terms of knowledge sharing and technical proficiencies. While the overall idea is to push the domestic pharmaceutical market with funds and capacities, changes at policy level should also be aimed at drawing the attention of international players towards the Indian market, by encouraging collaboration and creating a conducive ecosystem for such investments. In fact, to attract foreign investors, not just to invest but to build their R&D infrastructure in the country, the government has also proposed changes in drug regulation and patent policies. To increase trust and certainty among investors, the new drug approval policy has some major amendments such as increased transparency and single window clearance for clinical trials. Another important factor which can become a major driving force for increased innovation and sustained development in the pharmaceutical sector is securing Intellectual Property Rights (IPR). The idea is to have a healthy reward-oriented culture that is based on mutual trust and shared benefits. In India, where 71 percent of all healthcare expenses continue to be out of pocket and each year 39 million people are sinking into poverty while covering healthcare costs, there is an urgent need to ensure safe, effective and inexpensive treatments. Taking leads from increased political will, the time is right to align and intensify our efforts towards increasing pharma innovation in the country. At the same time, it is critical to increase health insurance to cover medicines. India also needs to do a lot of work on improving accessibility to OPD and IPD health Insurance cover for all. With improved economic prosperity, social mobility, growing segment of prescription drugs and increased access to advanced healthcare, we are perfectly placed to leverage the global drive in biopharmaceutical research and develop a dynamic ecosystem that delivers effective and affordable treatment to all. (The author is a founder, Partnership for Safe Medicines (PSM) India) Legendary actor Dilip Kumar was hospitalised on 2 August after he suffered from dehydration. Although the hospital sources had said that his condition had stabilised, it now seems his health has worsened. According to a report by The Indian Express, the 94-year-old actor might face kidney failure if his condition keeps deteriorating. One of the doctors from Lilavati Hospital, where Kumar is admitted, told the newspaper, "Dilip Kumar's creatinine levels are rising. He is going into renal failure. Given his age, it is serious." Earlier, doctors had said that he seems to be improving. "He is completely stable and the only major issue was dehydration. Since dehydration also affects kidney and other organs momentarily he suffered minor urinary issues, otherwise, there is no major complication," maintained doctors. Kumar was initially admitted to the ICU, but once his condition got better he was shifted to a private room. But now, the doctors are reportedly taking him back to the ICU for monitoring purposes. Since he will be administered antibiotics through IV drip, he has to be in ICU as the procedure demands. The doctors also said that they will observe him over a period of time, and if there are signs of improvement, Kumar will be shifted back to the room. Kumar was earlier admitted to Lilavati in December 2016 as well, after developing a fever and swelling in his limbs. However, he was discharged within a day as his condition had stabilised. Dilip Kumar aka Yusuf Khan, remains one of the Hindi film industry's screen legends. He is popularly known as the 'tragedy king' of Bollywood for his films like Devdas, Mughal-e-Azam, Ga nga Jamuna, Naya Daur and Madhumati to name a few. He was conferred the Dadasaheb Phalke Award in 1994 and Padma Vibhushan in 2015. The trailer for Angelina Jolie's upcoming Netflix original film, First They Killed My Father was released on 2 August. Based on the 2000 memoir by Loung Ung, it chronicles the Khmer Rouge genocide that rocked Cambodia under the dictatorial regime of Pol Pot during the 1970s. Ung lost her parents and two of her siblings in the mayhem. The trailer of the film is intense and nerve-wracking. To imagine what little Ung might have gone through during the conflict gives the viewer chills. The trailer aptly captures the entire period of militancy, social unrest, war, deaths, deprivation through the protagonist's eyes, which is one of the most remarkable aspects of the film. The trailer starts with a happy family and then gradually builds the tension both in audio and video. Jolie has been able to show that, although the film is about Ung's ordeal, it also encompasses the whole society. Hence, it is a people's film on a micro-level. The film, shot entirely in Cambodia, was recently mired in a controversy when Vanity Fair reported about a "strange method" that was used during the casting of the film. In order to draw the deepest, realest and rawest emotions from the actors of the movie, the makers decided to give money to an impoverished Cambodian child and subsequently take it away. Based on the reaction, Srey Moch was selected for the lead role in the movie, as she was "overwhelmed with emotion." After Vanity Fair published it, Jolie and her team received flak from critics and people from all over the world. However, Jolie later explained how the information divulged to the popular magazine was misunderstood and falsely reported. She explained that Vanity Fair's narrative was indeed a legitimate scene from the film and not a casting procedure. Speaking to The Huffington Post, Jolie said, "Every measure was taken to ensure the safety, comfort and well-being of the children on the film starting from the auditions through production to the present. I am upset that a pretend exercise in an improvisation, from an actual scene in the film, has been written about as if it was a real scenario. The suggestion that real money was taken from a child during an audition is false and upsetting. I would be outraged myself if this had happened." Cambodia is a place that is very close to Jolie's heart, most importantly because she had adopted her son Maddox from this very country. First They Killed My Father is the largest production the country has ever seen since the conflict. The film will be streamed on Netflix on 15 September this year. Watch the trailer of the film here: Now that it's been confirmed Daniel Craig will reprise his character of James Bond in the next 007 adventure, mirror.co.uk has reported the iconic British spy will travel to Croatia for the film, titled Shatterhand. According to the report, this 25th Bond film of the successful franchise will be based on Raymond Benson's 2001 novel Never Dream of Dying. The author also has books like Tomorrow Never Dies, The World is Not Enough and Die Another Day to his credit. The producers of the film reportedly feel that this film would be a good follow-up to Spectre. "James Bond, 007, finally comes face to face with his most cunning nemesis the enigmatic blind criminal mastermind behind the sinister organisation known only as the Union," reads the synopsis of the novel on amazon.com. 007 also gets entrapped in a romantic liaison with the criminal's wife, Tylyn Mignonne, who is a successful film star. One clue leads to another and Bond takes off on yet another nail-biting adventure. Not just Croatia, but other locations like Japan and southern parts of France are being considered, reports Independent. Although Craig's inclusion in the film as the lead is almost certain, the hunt for a director is still on. Earlier Firstpost had reported that filmmakers Yann Demange, Denis Villeneuve and David Mackenzie were being considered to helm the project. The previous Bond films featuring Daniel Craig were directed by Martin Campbell (Casino Royale, 2006), Marc Forster (Quantum of Solace, 2008) and Sam Mendes (Skyfall, 2012 and Spectre, 2015). The upcoming film will be written by Neal Purvis and Robert Wade, who have also written all the above Bond movies. The new film is slated to release on 8 November 2019. New Delhi: Accusing Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar of carrying out an "elaborate charade" to embrace the BJP, the CPM has said any alliance of "a motley bunch of secular parties" can't be expected to take on the Modi government. "The political somersault by Nitish Kumar will rank as one of the biggest of its kind in India's political history which is replete with such opportunistic behaviour by bourgeois politicians," the CPM's journal People's Democracy said in an editorial. It said that after winning the Bihar election of 2015, Nitish Kumar had become the most prominent advocate of a grand anti-BJP alliance at the national level. "In a sudden turn around, Nitish Kumar and the JD-U have broken their alliance with the RJD and the Congress in Bihar and within hours formed a coalition government with the BJP. "It is now clear that Nitish Kumar had utilized the filing of an FIR on corruption charges by the CBI against Lalu Prasad's son and Deputy Chief Minister Tejashwi Yadav to enact this elaborate charade," the editorial said. The Communist Party of India (Marxist) said that with the architect of the Grand Alliance himself embracing the Bharatiya Janata Party camp, "the concept of a Grand Alliance lies in tatters". It said the CPM was concerned about building the widest unity against the Modi government and the BJP. "But ... this cannot be accomplished by putting together an alliance of a motley bunch of secular parties. "Why such a grand alliance is unworkable is the unreliable character of many of the regional parties. Most of the regional parties have embraced the neo-liberal policies and are prone to make opportunistic alliances. "With one or two exceptions, the regional parties have shown their willingness to ally with the BJP depending on when it suits their political interests. The current episode of the defection of Nitish Kumar underlines this character of the regional parties." The CPM said it had concluded "that with the regional parties as the main constituents, there can be no credible all-India alliance". But in the context of the need to forge wider unity for struggles on people's issues and communalism, the editorial said the CPM would strive to have joint actions and united platforms with some regional parties. It added that fighting the Modi government cannot be accomplished by aligning with the Congress, which it said was "primarily responsible for the imposition of neo-liberal policies and continues to advocate them. "That the Congress is not seen to be different from the BJP as far as basic policies are concerned is reflected by the fact that there is a steady flow of leaders and activists of the Congress to the BJP." The editorial said: "What is required today is not an opportunistic alliance of all opposition parties but developing the broadest united actions and platforms to take up the issues of the working class, peasantry and other sections of the working people and also to build a broad unity to fight against the communal forces." Rohtak: BJP president Amit Shah said on Thursday that the action initiated by the Central government to stop terror funding in the Kashmir Valley had happened for the first time. "Regarding finding a solution to the Kashmir problem, the action has been done in that direction only. Never have people who had been doing so much hawala been caught. If any harsh action has been taken against those involved in terror funding, it is the BJP government of Narendra Modi that has done it," Shah told the media. Thursday is the second day of his three-day visit to Haryana. Shah said that India had been able to isolate Pakistan on the issue of terrorism. "We have isolated Pakistan on the issue of terrorism in the entire world successfully in these three years." He added: "We have killed so many terrorists (in recent months). That has not happened before. When there is a fight, the damage is on both sides. Bullets are being fired from both sides." Shah evaded the issue of Article 370 which gives special status to Jammu and Kashmir. "You all know that there are many requirements (for this)." The BJP leader said the country had seen a decisive government for the first time. "The government has taken steps to ensure that India becomes a global economic power. We have provided a decisive and corruption-free government. Not even the Opposition parties have been able to point a finger over corruption." Among the "50 big things" the Modi government had done were opening of bank accounts for the poor, providing gas connections, streamlining the tax structure, implementing the much-delayed one rank one pension scheme, carrying out surgical strike against Pakistan, reducing prices of medicines, crackdown on shell companies, curbing black money and health card for farmers. New Delhi: The BJP on Thursday asked the West Bengal government to shun use of force in the tense Darjeeling, saying the crisis there could not be resolved through bullet. Union minister SS Ahluwalia, who represents the hilly region in the Lok Sabha, also sought a "high-level" probe into the alleged police firing in Darjeeling in which three protesters were killed, calling it "unpardonable". Addressing a press conference in which he was accompanied by members of the Gorkhaland Movement Coordination Committee (GMCC), Ahluwalia also expressed hope that peace will be restored there before 15 August. "The crisis in Darjeeling cannot be resolved through bullet. Repressive measures and brutalities of police are not the solution," he said, making an appeal to the state's Trinamool Congress government and the GMCC for bringing peace and ending violence. This 50-day long crisis can only be resolved through political dialogue and for that peace was needed to be restored in the town, he said, requesting GMCC members to end their fast and call off their strike. "Gorkhas are known for their honesty and loyalty for the country. They never hesitate in sacrificing their life for the nation. So I would also request them to call off their fast and end the strike," Ahluwalia said. As the member of Parliament of Darjeeling, he will submit a memorandum on behalf of the GMCC to the prime minister and the home minister. Mumbai: The Congress-NCP Opposition in both the Houses of the Maharashtra Legislature on Wednesday demanded the removal of Maharashtra State Road Development Corporation (MSRDC) vice chairman and managing director Radheshyam Mopalwar over some audio clips in which he was purportedly heard fixing a deal for a plot. The opposition members in the Legislative Assembly also shouted slogans demanding removal of housing minister Prakash Mehta over the transfer of development rights to a project in the city without consulting Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis. Fadnavis assured both the Houses that an inquiry would be conducted in the alleged wrongdoings by the official and, if found guilty, action would be taken against him. Moving an adjournment motion in the Legislative Council, Leader of Opposition Dhananjay Munde read out the transcripts of the purported conversation of Mopalwar with a businessman, allegedly pertaining to a deal for a plot in suburban Borivali. "There have been a total of 550 calls by Mopalwar to fix the deal. When these call recordings are sent to a forensic laboratory, it will be clear that the person is indeed Mopalwar. These calls have been recorded, transcribed and translated by a company approved by the Maharashtra government", Munde said. Responding to the opposition charge, Fadnavis said all important posts to Mopalwar were given during the previous Congress-NCP government. "I have heard the audio clip that was aired by a news channel and I am verifying it. Even the news channel has given a disclaimer that the clip is unverified. However, we will conduct an inquiry over the clips within a month. If he is found guilty, strict action will be taken against him", Fadnavis said. Munde then demanded that if Mopalwar cannot be suspended, he should at least be transferred from the Samruddhi corridor project or else the chief minister will lose peoples' faith. To this, Fadnavis said that Mopalwar's current position has no relation with the audio clips that have surfaced. However, if the government finds him that he is in a position to influence the inquiry, he will be transferred. Fadnavis had two days back ordered an inquiry into the transfer of development rights to a project in the city, after the opposition targeted housing minister Prakash Mehta over the issue. Rejoice, ye Not Required Indians, the Cabinet has cleared the option of voting by proxy. This supersedes the current clumsy scenario of having to fly in on vote day to ones constituency and cast the vote. Considering that as high as 70 percent of the 20 odd million Indians in the Gulf countries dont come home more than once in two years this path was indeed a prickly one and the coincidental presence of a few resulted in about ten thousand NRIs casting their vote across the nation which hardly constituted a vote bank. The relationship between the mother country and the great Indian diaspora has been ambivalent at best. Despite those Pravasi Bharatiya Divas seminars and a great deal of hooray Henry rhetoric love is noticeable by its screaming absence. Prejudice against the NRI as being at least a partial traitor for walking away still manifests itself. This is not made any more palatable by NRI conduct and the smug, judgmental attitude that often comes across as highly presumptuous. With 30 million and counting Indians living in foreign lands, you would think there would be more realistic relationships by now. While there is a high quotient of patriotic fervour it is not always translated into fiscal investment and that is where the rub lies. Efforts to improve the relationship have been made with the appearance of every new government but they soon fade away and the spasm of hope that maybe this time around there will be tangible changes is usually stillborn. NRIs have mockingly called themselves Not Required Indians and may have unwittingly contributed to the process of distance and disaffection during the 'foreign goods' period. In the 70s and 80s, Indians abroad were supercilious and contemptuous and this social arrogance underscored by a fistful of dollars and the craze at home for buying foreign commodities. Even as Indians at home resented these 'visitors' they flocked to buy their used goods...just because they were made abroad. That desire has largely evaporated in India but the residual suspicion remains. India's officialdom has also done little to inspire goodwill. Slow moving clearances and permissions are compounded by old habits of payoffs that just don't die. Petty bureaucracy still demands its ounce of financial flesh. Yet, who is more conservative on foreign soil than the Indian who resides there. Whether it is religion, festivities or traditions, there is an almost hectic desire to fall back on cultural conduct long forgotten at home. An across the board fallback from the ultra protectionist days also promotes a feeling of deep alienation from the industrial base in the region under recce towards the foreign based Indian entrepreneur. Local industrial echelons believe NRIs demand too much concession. NRIs feel that indigenous companies are mollycoddled and afraid of competition. In this list of negatives, the inconstancy of subsequent governments and the very real fear that fragile governments create fragile policy has a role to play. NRIs need assurance and adequate guarantees. To expect them to invest out of stirred up guilt is unfair and unacceptable. Why put money into arrangements that might collapse with the government in power? Some visible and immediate window dressing will be vital to get this issue to fly. The first genuine step has been to activate the right of franchise not in the clumsy fashion it is now but in a more genuine manner. There was no explicable reason why Indians with domestic passports should be denied the right of franchise and now there is a genuine vote bank. This constitutional premise would, ipso facto, emphasise the sense of Indianness and reduce the political isolation that NRIs are bound to feel when called upon to rally around but not given the courtesy that should go with it. By that very token the next imperative is to upgrade the concept of an NRI cell within certain central ministries and convert it into a proper and vibrant ministry with, at least, a minister of state commanding a council of representatives. For years there has been an unheeded call to elect or appoint, through the president, two members of Parliament who are NRIs. Since this cannot be done without franchise and there are some very real logistics problems to voting for individuals around the world the appointment could be done from distinguished NRIs who are now back in India. That would suffice until a system evolves for democratic elections. One would be hesitant to submit that the BJP finally acknowledges NRIs as a genuine fiscal force. There could be a little expediency about the few courtesies that have been extended. But since it would be foolish to snub these concessions there is hope that they can be built upon. To do so effectively, the Indian government must clean up the ground clutter in a seven point programme. Clear up the credibility of the NRI brigade by ending the patronisation of scam artistes who pretend to represent the community through patently useless NRI seminars and symposia, many of which have the stench of total corruption about them. Send out teams of technocratic and business experts along with politicians and bureaucrats to NRI strongholds so they talk the same language and establish a genuine and durable rapport. Reduce the red-tapism that still exists in getting things done. Make charges of corruption at home a very serious matter. Give NRIs real time frameworks for NOCs and clearances and stick by them, thereby realising they do not have the time to cool their heels. Eliminate middlemen and brokers when dealing with NRIs. Offer long-term business investments that pay dividends comparable to the international markets. If Modi means business the NRIs will do business. Ahmedabad: A week after torrential rains leading to flood wreaked havoc in north Gujarat, state revenue department has declared Banaskantha and Patan districts as 'disaster-affected areas'. The announcement was made by the department through a Gazette notification issued on Tuesday, which was made available on Wednesday. These districts were declared as flood-affected areas as per the provisions of 'Gujarat State Disaster Management Act of 2003', said the notification. The decision to declare these two districts, which were hit the most by the flood, as 'disaster affected', was based on the recommendation of respective collectors of these districts, it said. As per the notification, all the tehsils of both these districts were affected by heavy rain and flood. These districts will remain in the category of 'disaster-affected areas' till 15 August, it said. As many as 218 people were killed in various rain-related incidents across the state this monsoon season. Among these, 61 deaths were reported in Banaskantha alone, while seven had died in neighbouring Patan district, according to the State Emergency Operation Centre. Gujarat chief minister Vijay Rupani has been camping in the flood-affected areas since last five days to monitor the relief operations. During this period, Rupani has visited many villages and towns of both the districts, said a release on Tuesday. Ahmedabad: Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi will visit flood-affected Banaskantha district in Gujarat on Friday, a party statement said. Gandhi is scheduled to visit some of the worst affected areas in the district, such as Dhanera, where he would interact with the flood victims and share their pain, the release said. "Rahul Gandhi would first land at Dhanera from Rajasthan at around 2 pm tomorrow. After talking to the locals, he would then reach Malotara village to take stock of situation," it said. Later, he would visit Runi village of Thara taluka in the district. Gandhi would leave for Delhi from Ahmedabad airport late in the evening, the release added. The Gujarat government has declared both Banaskantha and Patan districts as 'disaster-affected areas' following the floods due to torrential rains last week. The announcement was made by the state Revenue Department through a gazette notification issued on Tuesday. Meanwhile, Gujarat Congress president Bharatsinh Solanki on Thursday visited Deesa town of Banaskantha district, where he interacted with the party workers about the ongoing relief work being carried out by the party in the region. Solanki asked the party workers to expedite the distribution of food, clothes, utensils and other items to the flood victims, the release said. Ahmedabad: The Gujarat government on Thursday announced a special relief package of Rs 1,500 crore for the flood-affected Banaskantha and Patan districts. The announcement was made by Gujarat Chief Minister Vijay Rupani, who spent five days in that region to get first-hand information about the losses caused by the flood, a government release said. Prime Minister Narendra Modi had announced a flood-relief package of Rs 500 crore for the entire state during his visit on 25 July. Now, the state government has announced the Rs 1,500 crore package for the northern districts, which have been officially declared as 'disaster-affected areas' through a gazette notification on Tuesday by the state revenue department. Out of this, Rs 1,311 crore will be spent to compensate for agricultural losses as well as for the land improvement measures. As per the release, Rs 75 crore has been allotted for electrification, Rs 20 crore for cattle loss, Rs 15 crore for compensating business losses and Rs 79 crore will be spent for various other schemes of the revenue department. For Dhanera town, which is the main commercial hub of Banaskantha district and was hit badly by the flood, the state government has announced a special package, wherein small traders, shopkeepers and vendors would get cash compensation ranging from Rs 15,000 to Rs 75,000, it said. For each cattle that died in the flood, the state would give a relief of Rs 40,000 while a compensation of Rs 6 lakh will be given to the kin of those who died in the deluge. It also includes Rs 2 lakh announced by the prime minister earlier. In Banaskantha alone, 60 people have died in various rain-related incidents, the release said. To prevent such a situation in the future, the state government would explore the possibility of building a flood protection wall outside Dhanera, Rupani was quoted as saying in the release. Supreme Court on Thursday refused to stay the Election Commission's notification, a plea by the Congress, to allow 'None of the Above' (NOTA) option in the Gujarat Rajya Sabha elections. "Why did you (Congress) not challenge it when Election Commission issued NOTA in 2014 and 2015?" CNN-News18 quoted the apex court as saying. The Gujarat Rajya Sabha polls will now be held with the NOTA option. PTI further reported that the Supreme Court, however, agreed to examine the Constitutional validity of the Election Commission's notification for NOTA in elections. "Issue notice. We will examine it. We are not going to stay the proceedings," the bench said when senior advocates Kapil Sibal, AM Singhvi and Harin Raval, representing Gujarat Congress chief whip Shailesh Manubhai Parmar, sought an interim stay on the operation of the poll panel's notification. The apex court did not agree to the contention of Sibal that NOTA provision "will encourage corruption". The court further said that the results for the upcoming polls will be declared as per schedule and sought the Election Commission's response on the plea filed by Parmar. On Wednesday, the apex court had agreed to hear a plea moved by the Gujarat Congress challenging the decision to use NOTA option in the upcoming Rajya Sabha polls in the state. A bench headed by Justice Dipak Misra had agreed to hear the plea after senior advocate Kapil Sibal mentioned the matter before it and sought urgent hearing. Sibal had told the apex court that there is no statutory provision with regard to NOTA in the Constitution. As per government officials, the directions to use NOTA in Rajya Sabha elections were enforced in January 2014 after the Supreme Court in 2013 made it mandatory to have NOTA option in EVMs. On Tuesday, Congress had approached the Election Commission against the use of NOTA option in the upcoming Rajya Sabha elections, claiming it was violative of the Constitution and electoral laws, but the poll panel maintained that it was not a new direction and was introduced in 2014. Four candidates are in the fray for three Rajya Sabha seats to which the election will take place on 8 August. Apart from BJP president Amit Shah and Union minister Smriti Irani, the ruling party has decided to field Balwantsinh Rajput against the lone Congress candidate, Ahmed Patel. In the Rajya Sabha polls, the MLAs have to show their ballot paper to an authorised party agent before putting it in ballot box. If a voter (MLA) defies the party directive and votes for someone else or uses NOTA option, he cannot be disqualified as a legislator. But the party is free to take disciplinary action including expulsion. The defiant voter can continue to be an MLA and his vote can also not be invalidated for defying party directions, the EC rules say. With inputs from PTI Bengaluru: Cash of over Rs 11 crore has been seized till now by the Income Tax Department as part of the ongoing searches at multiple premises linked to Karnataka energy minister DK Shivakumar and his associates in connection with a case of alleged tax evasion. The minister has been overseeing the stay of 44 Gujarat Congress MLAs at a resort on the outskirts of Bengaluru, who have been brought to the Karnataka capital in view of the Rajya Sabha polls in their state. The raids that are continuing at many locations for the second day on Thursday, saw I-T sleuths seizing a number of documents, account books and financial papers. About Rs 8.33 crore cash has been seized from Delhi, Rs 2.5 from Bengaluru and Rs 60 lakh from Mysuru till now, a senior official said. "About Rs 11.43 crore cash has been seized till now from various locations. Some searches and surveys are still on," the official said. He added that the valuation of some jewellery found during the searches is being done as of now. Documents related to investments in real estate, including some alleged benami ones, are being analysed by the department, the official said. The department has said that it is investigating Shivakumar in a case of alleged tax evasion and huge undisclosed investments in real estate, jewellery and other sectors. Certain investments linked to him in Singapore and few other foreign locations are also under the scanner of the department, they said. Some shell firms and their operatives allegedly linked to this case are also being probed, the department sources had said on Wednesday. In a swoop down that raised a political storm, the I-T department had on Wednesday conducted searches at 64 locations and properties linked to Shivakumar. He has been put in charge of 44 MLAs lodged in the Eagleton resort near here to keep the flock together for preventing the BJP from "poaching" on them ahead of the Rajya Sabha polls in Gujarat where Ahmed Patel, political secretary to Congress president Sonia Gandhi, is facing a tough battle. The ruling Congress in Karnataka will be holding a protest in the city later today against the raids on Shivakumar, accusing the Centre of "dictatorial" attitude and "murdering democracy". Shivakumar, hailing from a modest agrarian family, is an influential Vokkaliga community leader and also one of the wealthiest state ministers in the country. According to the affidavit filed by him for the 2013 Assembly polls, he had assets over Rs 251 crore, including those of his wife and children and liabilities of over Rs 104 crore. 55-year old Shivakumar, considered a resourceful trouble shooter for the Congress with proximity to the party high command, is a six-time MLA. He has also made known his chief-ministerial ambitions while making it clear he would bide his time. The raids at the resort had on Wednesday sparked a huge political row with Parliament getting disrupted and Congress calling it "unprecedented witch-hunt" to win one Rajya Sabha seat. Chief Minister Siddaramaiah alleged it was a politically motivated action to silence the voice against the BJP. Islamabad: The Islamabad High Court on Thursday admitted a petition seeking adding of ousted prime minister Nawaz Sharif and his family members' names to the Exit Control List (ECL) and freezing of their accounts. The first hearing over the petition, filed by lawyer Raees Abdulwahid, will be held on Monday. The petition seeks that the names of Sharif, his children Hassan, Hussain, Maryam, son-in-law Captain Safdar, and former finance minister Ishaq Dar be placed on the ECL and their accounts frozen, Dawn News reported. The petition comes days after the Supreme Court in a landmark ruling on the Panama Papers case ordered Sharif to step down as prime minister. The Supreme Court on Friday disqualified 67-year-old Sharif from premiership for dishonesty and ruled that corruption cases be filed against him and his children over the Panama Papers scandal, forcing him to resign. The Islamabad High Court Registrar's Office removed objections to Abdulwahid's petition, setting 7 August as the date for its first hearing. The Supreme Court was also petitioned to place the names of members of the Sharif family and Dar on the ECL. The petitioner contended that those named in the petition may flee the country to avoid the NAB references ordered by the apex court in the prime ministers disqualification verdict. The petitioner pleaded for the bank accounts of the Sharif family to immediately be frozen and the money recovered from them to be deposited in the national exchequer. Srinagar: Twenty-seven-year-old Firdous Ahmad Khan returned home around the time Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) commander Abu Dujana was trapped in a house, barely a few kilometres from his Begam Bagh village in Pulwama. Firdous had travelled hundreds of kilometres from Jammu, where he would often go to sell vegetables. Early next morning, he went out to water his paddy fields close by, where Dujana was trapped and engaged in a gun battle with the security forces. He saw that the roads leading to his house were sealed by a heavy deployment of forces. A security cordon had been laid down in the surrounding areas since 10:45 pm on Monday. Unaware of the ongoing encounter operation, Firdous died within few hours of leaving his house as a gun battle ensued between the forces and the holed-up militants. While the police claim that Firdous had died because he was caught in the crossfire, his family and the local villagers deny those claims. His family members say that Firdous was targetted by the forces and had received a bullet to his hip. He died while being shifted to a hospital in Pulwama. Firdous's death left his family in a state of deep remorse. His pregnant wife wailed over his body draped in a shroud before his burial and had to be admitted to the hospital after she developed pregnancy-related complications. She now has to take care of their one-year-old daughter and remains in a state of pathos. On a grille in front of his house, a banner of many slain militants including Hizbul Mujahideen commander Burhan Muzafar Wani could be seen. Mohammad Shaban Khan, his father, wept as he blamed himself for his son's death. "My son had come home only yesterday from Jammu and I only told him to go to the field and water the paddy," he rued, as he welled up. Firdous's cousin, Raja Maqbool, said that he had received a bullet to the hip at around 10:30 am on Tuesday and was shifted to the Pulwama hospital, but had died on the way. The police statement issued after Dujana's death, however, said that Firdous was injured near the encounter site during the crossfire and was shifted to the hospital, where he succumbed to his injuries. According to the police, the encounter had taken place between Dujana and his associate and a joint party of Pulwama Police, 55 Rashtriya Rifles, 182 and 183 Battalion of the CRPF. "At some places, miscreants tried to create disturbances by pelting stones in Pulwama and the adjoining areas. While dealing with the situation, 10 persons were injured," the police said. The locals, however, said that the government forces had evacuated the people from the area before the gunfight. Maqbool said the family had received information about the bullet injury to Firdous only after a while. He said that he was targetted and that the doctors had declared him brought dead. In the adjoining villages of Harkipora, people said that the forces had resorted to indiscriminate firing, that had left scores injured. In Narbal area, Ali Mohammad Wani, a baker, showed the bullets holes left on the walls of his shop. "When the forces were moving out after the encounter was over, they fired indiscriminately and we were terrified," he said. Sakina Banoo, a 30-year-old woman from Narbal, was among the at least 10 injured in the firing by security forces in the village after the encounter on Tuesday. Sakinas mother, Rashida Banoo, said that she had gone to a nearby village, where she worked as an Anganwadi teacher when she was fired upon. A bullet had pierced her leg and she was immediately shifted to a hospital in Srinagar. A local youth, Muzafar Ahmad Khan, said that after Sakina was injured she was rushed by him and some other villagers to the hospital. "The bullet had ripped through her leg. The doctors at Pulwama hospital advised us to shift her to the hospital in Srinagar," he said. He said that the forces also used pellets, besides bullets, to carry out the targetted attacks on people. Another resident, Ali Mohammad Khan, said that many were surprised when the forces fired indiscriminately upon people. "Our village is many kilometres away from Hakripora, where the encounter took place... they targetted us as well," said the elderly Khan. Mumbai: Shiv Sena legislators in Maharashtra wrote to Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis on Thursday, demanding the withdrawal of criminal cases registered against farmers who had launched a state-wide agitation for loan waiver in June. "The government announced a loan waiver scheme for farmers only after they protested against the administration's inability to stop farmer suicides. They wanted their long-standing demand of loan waiver to be accepted, for which they went on strike," said senior Shiv Sena leader Anil Parab. The letter said that cases were registered against protesting farmers in police stations across the state during the agitation in the first week of June. "After the government agreed to their demand of loan waiver, it should withdraw all the cases," it said. Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis had recently announced that the government will set up a joint committee of legislators from both Houses of Maharashtra legislature to oversee the implementation of Rs 34,022 crore farm loan waiver. New Delhi: Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia has lauded the Centre's decision to scrap the no-detention policy, saying it was poorly implemented. However, he, in a letter to Union HRD Minister Prakash Javadekar, said the rollback of "this important reform is a moment for us to introspect about education reforms in the country". "The no-detention policy was a progressive education reform and it is unfortunate we had to roll it back. And the reason we have had to do this is that it was poorly and thoughtlessly implemented," he said. "The decision (scrapping) was needed as an emergency measure to end the current crisis across the country where academic standards of schools are rapidly deteriorating," Sisodia said. The Union Cabinet had yesterday approved the scrapping of the no-detention policy in schools till Class 8. An enabling provision will be made in the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Amendment Bill which will allow states to detain students in Class 5 and Class 8 if they fail in the year-end exam. However, the students will have to be given a second chance to improve via an examination before they are detained. The bill will now be placed in Parliament for approval. Under the present provision of RTE Act, students are promoted automatically to higher classes till class 8. This is one of the key components of the RTE Act which came into force on April 1, 2010. New Delhi: The Congress on Thursday attacked the government in the Rajya Sabha on its handling of foreign policy issues, especially the military stand-off with China, and said national security and the country's interest were in danger on account of it. Initiating a debate on foreign policy in the House, senior member Anand Sharma demanded a reply from Prime Minister Narendra Modi on what was discussed during his meetings with Chinese president Xi Jinping on the Doka La border stand-off. The Congress leader said the government should not dilute and deviate from the time-tested foreign policy and should uphold the country's interest. Referring to Modi's meeting with the Chinese president twice on the sidelines of the SCO meet in Astana in Kazakhstan and G20 meeting in Germany's Hamburg, Sharma said, "Modiji met with Xi Jinping twice, once in Astana and then in Hamburg, and we have been told that both of them had meaningful discussions. But why did China deny this? I trust my government, but what is their intent in denying?" he asked. He also said that Modi has not mentioned even once what talks he has had with the Chinese president. "Even the National Security Advisors (NSAs) met; we are not asking them to divulge all the details of the meeting, but we should get a sense or idea if the stand-off can be resolved," he said. "It is our right to know on matters of strategic and national interest. The prime minister cannot remain silent," the Congress leader said. "When it comes to the issue of national interest and sovereignty, we all are with the government," he added. "But we want Foreign Minister Sushmaji (Sushma Swaraj) to give diplomacy a chance. We believe that all diplomatic channels should be kept open for negotiations and safeguarding India's interest," Sharma said. Sharma noted that the relationship with China is very "complex and uneasy". "I hope the external affairs minister is fully aware about the confrontation with China in Doka La. Our security and national interest is at risk. China is acting unusually aggressive," he said. He also highlighted that the Chinese president has spoken on the issue twice. "We want to know what is the government's response on the Chinese statement," he said. Two army men, including a major, were killed and another jawan was injured when militants opened fire on a search party of security forces in Shopian district of south Kashmir, police said on Thursday. A cordon and search operation was launched by army in Zaipora area of Shopian during the night following intelligence inputs about the presence of militants there, a police official said. He said during the search operation, the militants fired upon the party in which three army personnel were injured. The injured were taken to Army's 92 base hospital in Srinagar, where two of them, including a major, succumbed, the official said, adding that the other jawan is undergoing treatment. The search operation at Zaipora is on, the official said. Meanwhile, in Kulgam district of south Kashmir, two militants were killed on Thursday morning in an encounter with security forces, the police said. A police official said one of the slain militants was involved in an attack on a bank cash van in the district on 1 May this year in which five policemen and two bank guards were killed. On 1 May, one of the attackers was arrested while another had managed to escape. The van was returning to a bank in the village of Pumbai in Kulgam district, around 70 kilometres south of the main city of Srinagar, when it had come under fire. The security forces on Thursday recovered two weapons from the site of the encounter. Two militants killed by @JmuKmrPolice and SF in Gopalpora Kulgam. One of them was involved in killing of 5 policemen & guards of bank Van. J&K Police (@JmuKmrPolice) August 3, 2017 The encounters have taken place two days after Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) divisional commander Abu Dujana was gunned down by security forces after an encounter broke out on Tuesday in south Kashmir's Pulwama district. Another LeT terrorist Arif Lilhaari was also killed in the encounter. As the security forces were engaged in the counter-militancy operation, over 100 protesters pelted stones on them, an army official had said. The security forces had launched a cordon and search operation in Hakripora area of Pulwama on Monday night following information about presence of Abu Dujana and his local aide, Arif Lilhaari, in the area. Dujana hailed from Gilgit Baltistan, which is a part of Pakistan-occupied-Kashmir (PoK). Dujana joined LeT when he was 17. According to India Today, Dujana first infiltrated into India in 2010 after which he developed LeT's network across Jammu and Kashmir, especially south Kashmir, which has been a hotbed of militancy since the past year. With inputs from PTI. In his latest 'Mann Ki Baat' broadcast, Prime Minister Narendra Modi asked citizens to send him ideas on what he should say in his Independence Day speech. The prime minister did this so that he could set the trend for the next year of governance. So, for his consideration, here are my top five areas he could focus on, both in his speech and administration: #1: Make peace, not war Do not allow the India-China border row to devolve into war. Even though China's propensity to breach agreements and encroach on our land needs to be curbed and keeping in mind Niccolo Machiavellis axiom that wars which we avoid today will have to be fought tomorrow and at a greater disadvantage every attempt to avert war must be made. Without compromising our interests and repeating the overly pacifist mistakes of the past, we should look to defuse the situation. While China is looking to become a global leader, India also has global aspirations. Even a protracted face-off or stalemate is more desirable than war. #2: Improve business environment Will Make In India alone spawn the jobs we need? Or are we trying to trying to flog a dead horse? Do we also need Skill in India, Research in India, Heal in India and Educate in India to generate employment? Nuanced reforms which improve the business environment are also welcome. However, certain cultural mores which curb industries that employ many thousands of workers should not be encouraged. Without government support, such movements shrivel and die. We must also mobilise alternative wellsprings to create employment. Let business be governed by the fundamentals of business. Do not let excessive control or tradition sap an industry of its dynamism. #3: Cultivate a scientific temperament As a society, we do not prize the scientific temperament. Nor do we encourage scientific pursuits. And it's reflecting in our falling scores. While we look to our glorious past to help regenerate our lost national pride, we must remember that those civilisations who pursue such avenues overzealously become fossilised and unable to move with the times. Society becomes zombified. The youth engages in anachronistic pursuits which are injurious to the new world order. Today, the common man oft says: The minority was becoming hardline and aggressive. The BJP is doing well to put it in its place. Even assuming this sentiment is true which is no sure thing citizens would do well to remember that old adage by Nietzsche: He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. The answer to communalism is not counter-communalism. It is reform which makes such sectarian appeals impotent. The answer to casteism is not counter-casteism. It is reform which makes caste irrelevant. While I am proud of my heritage, I am also proud of the present. Too much focus on the past suggests a bankruptcy in the here and now. Today's India is far from such a situation. Society needs to be deradicalised and a scientific temper must be inculcated in citizenry. We were the greatest scientists once. We can be again. We need to scale new heights. #4: A new kind of politics The BJP's political expansion comes mostly from its determined leadership. Also, it is utterly unafraid to bend the rules, taking comfort in the fact that it is only following the precedent set by its predecessor: The Congress. It's time for a clean break from the past. In Modi, we have a political leader with both the courage and calibre to do so. Cases against MPs with criminal ties must be fast-tracked. They must be wiped off the political map. The establishment of the Lokpal must be expedited. Politicians must refrain from exerting undue influence on institutions such as the CBI and ED for mere political gain. #5: Efficiency, not arrogance Efficiency in the bureaucracy is on the rise. Corruption at a senior level is virtually non-existent. Symbols of power such as red beacons have been done away with. However, when the old ways of expressing arrogance have been discarded, new methods of displaying hubris are often found. The bureaucracy is starting to hang its arrogance on new pegs such as nationalism. Dissenting views could be drowned out by ad hominem attacks. For example: The proponent's western education does not allow him to appreciate our glorious past and is responsible for his deplorable lack of love for the motherland. Few Indians would contest the nationalist sentiment. We need to fear those that have cloaked their prejudices in the garb of such arguments. They could wreak havoc. It is not nationalism we have to worry about per se but some unsavoury elements who hide in the shadows. Thus, my very last wish: Wipe out the VVIP culture. Ask bureaucrats to talk less, listen more and smile a lot more. Also, don't be afraid to contradict those higher on the food chain. If not in public, then at least in private. On Wednesday afternoon, the road leading to the residence-cum-office of Tehreek-e-Hurriyat chairman Syed Ali Shah Geelani in Srinagar wore a deserted look. Outside, the policeman inside a bunker-type vehicle, with a CCTV camera fitted on to it, scanned every passerby coming towards the residence of the octogenarian leader who has been mostly confined to this house since 2010 by the state government. No one comes here these days, the policeman on duty said from inside the stationed vehicle. Not even his relatives visit this place now. It has never been peaceful like this. The building, owned by Jamaat-e-Islami, has been the official address of the ailing leader for nearly two decades. But for the last seven years, it has been turned into his prison. Barring some journalists, the members of his group hardly come to visit him and inside, there is only Geelani, his wife and a cook, the policeman said. The raids carried out by the National Investigation Agency probing the terror funding in Kashmir have created fear psychosis among the workers of both factions of Hurriyat Conference, so much so that there is no one to take charge of the positions left vacant after the arrest of leaders from both factions of Hurriyat Conference. Geelanis lifetime aide, Muhammad Ashraf Khan, has been detained at his home in Bhagat locality of Srinagar. Peer Saifullah, personal secretary of Geelani, and Altaf Shah, who was holding the office of public relations, have been arrested. Ayaz Akbar, the spokesperson, and Mehrajuddin Kalwal, who heads the Hurriyat's district offices in Srinagar and Ganderbal, have also been arrested. Since the raids started, seven top leaders have been detained by the NIA after several rounds of interrogation in Srinagar and New Delhi. After being formally arrested in Srinagar, they were sent to ten days remand by a court in New Delhi. Geelani has been left with no one and is acting without the support of anyone. Hardly anyone dares to enter his office these days. What is surprising is that no one is ready to take the role of the people who have been arrested, fearing detention by the investigating agencies. The National Investigation Agency had summoned Geelani's second son, Nassem Geelani, a university professor too in the terror funding case. On Wednesday, he was supposed to address a press conference in Srinagar but police arrived at the local hotel and the junior Geelani did not reach the venue as well. Both sons of Geelani, Naeem Geelani and Naseem Geelani, have been summoned by the investigative agency. The agency on Monday raided the ancestral home of a Jammu advocate Devender Singh Behal, who was arrested a day earlier over his alleged links with Geelani. The moderate faction of the Hurriyat Conference is also facing the heat as well as the shortage of men, with its main spokesperson, Shahid-ul-Islam, who is also the political adviser of Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, arrested by NIA last week. Outside the house of Mirwaiz, policemen stood guard at the gate, refusing entry to strangers. Mirwaiz said on Wednesday that the "Delhi-based media" was carrying out a smear campaign against the Hurriyat leadership at the behest of the government through falsehoods and distortion of facts, attempting to vitiate the atmosphere in India against the leadership. One cannot argue or engage with lies, especially when propaganda is used as a war weapon by a mighty adversary who controls all the resources to do so, Mirwaiz, the chairman of the moderate faction of Hurriyat Conference, said in a statement. Geelani claims to have thousands of basic members of the party with more than two hundred behind the bars. Almost all the district chiefs are serving jail terms for participating in pro-freedom protests and a few, who were not arrested, have either disappeared or are not showing up at Geelani's residence. On Wednesday evening, Geelani released a 25-word statement over the killing of civilians in Pulwama district. The statements by Geelani have always been laden with historical background and are usually long and verbose. This statement lacked all those qualities. The reason that there are no long statements these days is because there is no one to write them. Geelani saheb is not keeping well and his associates have either been put behind bars or are detained in their homes, Ghulam Hassan, a worker of Geelanis Hurriyat Conference, said. Maharashtra State Road Development Corporation (MSRDC) managing director and vice chairman Radheshyam Mopalwar has been removed from his post over allegations of corruption and an inquiry initiated, Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis informed the Maharashtra State Assembly on Thursday. The chief minister also said that the inquiry will be concluded within a month after careful consideration of the corruption charges against Mopalwar. Fadnavis addressed the House on Thursday, two days after an audio clip of Mopalwar where he allegedly told a middleman about the functioning and dealings in the Mantralaya became viral on social media. Mopalwar is allegedly also heard discussing under-table cash transactions in the Mantralaya in the audio clip. The interesting thing, however, is that the state government and Chief Secretary's office were seemingly aware of the corruption allegations against Mopalwar well in advance. The various central agencies including the Income Tax Department, Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), Central Vigilance Department and the Prime Minister's office (PMO) have been communicating the allegations against Mopalwar to the state government since December 2016. However, the state government and Chief Secretary's office ignored their request and reminders to conduct an inquiry against Mopalwar. There are allegations of corruption and misappropriation of assets and properties worth hundreds of crores against Mopalwar. An IAS officer of 1995 batch, Mopalwar, MD of MSRDC, is also in-charge of Fadnavis's dream project the Mumbai Nagpur Samruddhi Expressway. Mopalwar, however, has termed all the allegation as "false" and that the truth will come out after the inquiry. Firstpost is in possession of copies of the letters and documents that the central agencies wrote to Maharashtra government and the Chief Secretary office, where they alleged corruption against Mopalwar. In December 2016, the PMO sent an online complaint against Mopalwar to the state General Administration Department (GAD). But the GAD (and the home ministry) both headed by Fadnavis took no action against Mopalwar. Later, Deputy Director (Vigilance), Verghese Joseph, who sits at the Income Tax departments headquarters in Delhi sent letter to the Director General (Investigations) of Income Tax Department on 3 February, 2017. Joseph raised the allegations of corruption raised by BJP MLA Anil Gote against Mopalwar in the letter. Letter to Director General of Income Tax (Vigilance) Income tax vigilance writes letter to IT investigation department Two days later, on 15 February, 2017, CBIs Anti Corruption Bureau (ACB) sent the letter to the director of general at Maharashtra's ACB, seeking appropriate action against the suspected IAS officer in Maharashtra. On 20 February 2017, KC Raju, Under Secretary, Department of Personnel and Training, sent a letter to the office of the Chief Secretary, Maharashtra, and asked them to examine the matter and send a detailed report to the department immediately. Letter to CBI's Anti Corruption Bureau wing Complaint to Additional Chief Secretary, Maharashtra Undersecretary of Government of India Jitendra Singh writes to chief secretary Firstpost has the copy of a correspondence that took place on 9 January, 2017, where Fadnavis had asked the director general of police, Maharashtra to take action against the officer. The chief minister also directed an urgent and appropriate inquiry to be made by the crime branch. But even after seven months no action has been taken against Mopalwar. Home Department writes letter to Director General Of Police, Maharashtra Gote, who has been continuously coordinating with the central government on benami properties of Mopalwar, told Firstpost that his fight against corruption will continue. "I will not keep quite till Mopalwar is behind the bar," he said. Letter to BJP MLA Anil Gote However, when Firstpost contacted Mopalwar for his version of the story, the IAS officer claimed that the audio clip was doctored. "These forged and doctored audio clips are created through voice modulation, and made viral by individuals who've background of committing technical crimes like procuring call data records (CDRs) illegally," Mopalwar said. Though Mopalwar refused to give any names, he seems to be aware of the person behind the audio clip. "This individual is on bail in such CDR crimes as well as in a case of attempted extortion through the underworld and a rape case. Since an inquiry to check the veracity of these clips has been announced on the floor of the House, the truth will come out soon," he added. While former chief minister Prithviraj Chavan has demanded a judicial enquiry against Mopalwar, former deputy chief minister Ajit Pawar has demanded Mopalwar's immediate suspension. "Why is the chief minister shielding such an officer? There are so many non-corrupt officials in the state who will complete Fadnavis' dream project, the Mumbai-Nagpur Expressway," Pawar said, adding, "There are 36 such recorded data, in which Mopalwar is clearly doing the negotiations worth crores of rupees." The Maharashtra Assembly and the State Legislative Council was adjourned thrice, and later adjourned for the day before 12 noon. Earlier, replying to Opposition's demands for Mopalwar's suspension, the chief minister assured the Lower House that the state government will conduct a detailed inquiry and audio testing of the clips. "The enquiry will be completed within one month and till then Mopalwar is removed from the post of MD and vice chairman of MSRDC. There is no question of shielding anybody for any wrong thing, and if Mopalwar is found guilty then we will ask the central government to terminate his service," Fadnavis said on Thursday. The interesting thing is Mopalwar is set to retire after seven months in February 2018. Visakhapatnam: Union minister of state for Social Justice and Empowerment Ramdas Athawale Thursday said that his party was supporting the Modi-led government because of its social welfare policies for all communities. Athawale was addressing a media conference here on Thursday. "The NDA government has launched several welfare schemes for all communities particularly Dalits in the country. Hence, the Dalits are supporting the BJP government at the Centre," he said. "The BJP government is treating all communities in an equal manner, and it is not against minority communities in the country," the minister said. Athawale added that his ministry was providing scholarships for students of the the backward communities in the country. With a view to encourage intercaste marriages in the country, he said his ministry has been providing Rs 2.50 lakh to such couples. Athawale urged Andhra Pradesh chief minister N Chandrababu Naidu to encourage more such intercaste marriages in the state. On the issue of separate states, he said his party was supporting the demand for separate Vidarbha in Maharashtra and Purvanchal in Uttar Pradesh. New Delhi: Union Minister Smriti Irani Thursday alleged that law and order in Kerala had "broken down" and the CPM-led state government was not taking action against the killing of RSS workers as it was "politically beneficial" for it. Irani's remarks came as the BJP stepped up an attack on the Pinarayi Vijayan government after a 34-year-old RSS worker Rajesh was hacked to death near Thiruvananthapuram. His left arm was chopped off, and there were several injuries all over his body. "It is very evident that the government of Kerala is not taking effective action to curb the killing of RSS workers as it is politically beneficial for it. It is a shame that law and order has completely broken down in the state," the minister told reporters here. Irani was accompanied by BJP general secretary Bhupender Yadav who claimed that in last 17 months more than 17 workers were killed. Meanwhile, Union minister Arun Jaitley will visit the house of Rajesh on 6 August. He will also hold discussions with state BJP leaders on the issue, the Kerala unit of the BJP said in a statement. Jaitley would also visit the houses of BJP ward councillors, which were attacked allegedly by CPM activists in various parts of Thiruvanathapuram last week, it said. "No part of the world has been put to such a long march of blood soaked sacrifices as RSS workers are witnessing in Kerala, and that too, only for the reason that they chose to side with nationalist views," Yadav said, adding that in the last 25 years, more than 85 Sangh workers were killed. He said that it seems the state police is also acting like CPM cadre and not taking required action against the guilty. "Now our main focus is rehabilitation of our workers, boosting the morale of the organisation and fighting in democratic manner," Yadav said. He alleged that Kerala has witnessed large scale violence perpetrated by CPM men, but Kannur stands out for the scale and intensity of violence "carried out by the Left party workers with the aid and support of the state government". A series of clashes between CPM and BJP-RSS activists had rocked Thiruvanathauram last week. The BJP had alleged that the CPM was behind the murder of Rajesh on 29 July, a charge denied by the ruling party in the state. Governor P Sathasivam had summoned Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan and DGP Loknath Behara to ascertain the action taken by the government following the killing of the RSS worker. The state government also decided to convene an all-party meeting on 6 August to check political violence. Lucknow: Samajwadi Party on Thursday said that the BJP government in Uttar Pradesh is "suppressing the voice of discontent" and that it will observe Desh Bachao, Desh banao diwas on 9 August, to protest against the 'anti-people' policies and 'communal politics' of the ruling dispensation. 9 August is observed as Kranti Diwas, a day to remember the historic 'Quit India Movement' initiated by Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi in 1942. "The party will observe Kranti Diwas on 9 August as Desh Bachao, Desh Banao Diwas and all the district headquarters along with national president Akhilesh Yadav will be attending a rally in Faizabad district. "The day will be utilised to register protest against BJP, which is suppressing the voice of discontent against it," party spokesperson Rajendra Chowdhury said. In BJP regime, he said, farmers are ruined and women are unsafe the fate of youths and students hang in balance due to lack of right direction...SP will protest against it. On 9 August, SP's district units will raise voice against anti-people policies and communal politics played by BJP government by holding public meetings, Chowdhury said. On Wednesday, the hearing on the issue of right to privacy was concluded, and the judgment has been reserved. Giving an indication of the approach it may take to privacy, the Supreme Court outlined a 3-tiered approach, dividing privacy into intimate, private and public aspects. This approach and the observations of the bench during the hearing, indicate that Supreme Court will take modern uses of personal data into consideration. The right to privacy may be designed so such uses and innovation in this sector are not hindered. Three tiers of intimate, private and public zone After the completion of the hearing, the bench gave the following 3-tiered approach to privacy: Intimate Zone: This is the most intimate zone of privacy, concerning marriage, sexuality and relations with family. The law should frown upon any intrusion. The state may still intrude on this zone in exceptional circumstances, subject to meeting stringent norms. Private Zone: This involves the parting of personal data, through use of credit cards, on social networking platforms, IT declarations, etc. Here, the data can be used only for the purpose for which it had been shared. Public Zone: This is where minimum regulation is required for privacy protection. In this zone, personal data shared does not mean that the right to privacy has been surrendered. The individual retains his privacy to body and mind. Bench to consider use of personal data in service sector Personal data of users today forms the backbone of the knowledge economy and in big data analytics. The bench has taken the significance of this sector into account, noting that the choices and personal preferences of 1.4 billion people generates demand in the service sector. It was noted that the decision taken will have an impact on the growth of the service sector. Describing this as a critical sector, the bench stated that it will keep in mind that this sector depends on the personal data of the Indians using the service. Privacy should not stifle innovation Similar observations were also made by the court during the course of the hearing. The counsel for the Centre had, on Tuesday, argued that all technology is life-enhancing, and this must be kept in mind while laying this right down. To this, the bench responded that privacy must not hinder innovation in the IT sector or take away the benefits of the knowledge economy. The bench noted that privacy must develop in a socio-cultural context. Scope of misuse of big data The service sector, in fact, forms one of the biggest sources of misuse of data and privacy violations. With the era of big data also came the era of big privacy violations. For example, cookies, ostensibly for targeted advertising and other such purposes, enable constant tracking of a persons every move online. Tracking on mobile phones through apps collects still more data. Even in the public sector, even though the State has declared it to be impossible, there is huge potential for collection of data through Aadhaar. The amount of data that can be linked to Aadhaar in future is immense, including data from PAN, IT returns, bank accounts, suits, property deals, to name a few. Purpose limitation principles to be applied Given the volume of data and the potential for its abuse, it is essential that its collection and usage be subject to strict safeguards. Applying principles like limitation on purpose, collection, use and disclosure, and effective data anonymisation to data use in these sectors is essential. The Supreme Court has discussed the adoption of at least one of these principles the purpose limitation principle. This can be seen in the second tier the private zone, where the use of data in this zone is to be limited to the purpose for which it was shared. Life-enhancing nature of technology to be encouraged This issue also arose again in Wednesdays arguments, while arguing for the life-enhancing nature of technology and the need for its use to the maximum. To this, the bench again emphasised the importance of limitation of purpose. The State, expectedly, was not happy with the idea of purpose limitation, arguing that such fetters on the use of data will make foreign entities like Google more powerful than the Indian state. Yet another argument made by the State was that privacy as a fundamental right will no longer be waivable by contract. It must be remembered here that purpose limitation restrictions will not result in making private companies more powerful. A fundamental right to privacy (if granted) which binds the state will also bind private companies in the future, be it as a private company performing a public duty which is bound by fundamental rights, or through a privacy law in future which enshrines a fundamental right to privacy. Entrusting data to state does not put it in the public domain When questioned on their apprehensions with purpose limitation restrictions on data use, the counsels for the State responded that privacy as a right does not mean that every law should be struck down on the grounds of privacy. To this, the bench reminded the counsel that entrusting data to the state is different from putting it in the public domain. Non-existence of privacy in the digital age Another issue raised was that privacy was practically non-existent in todays digital age. The bench observed that the fact the privacy is non-existent is not a reason to say that it should not exist. The bench further observed that even if privacy is practically broken down, this doesnt thereby destroy a constitutional notion of privacy. In fact, it is more necessary now. Privacy with liberty seen in several fundamental rights The emphasis of the court on the importance of a constitutional notion of privacy gives hope for a recognised right to privacy. While considering the contours of the right to privacy, the bench also observed that taking a straitjacket interpretation of the constitutional status of the right to privacy will be difficult. This is due to the link between privacy and liberty, which can be seen in several fundamental rights guaranteed in Part III of the Constitution. On the whole, the Supreme Court can be expected to take a wholesome view of the matter, including the constitutional possibility for a right to privacy and the advantages and disadvantages of data use in the digital age. (Sources of the arguments include written submissions at the Bar and Bench and live coverage of the case on the Twitter handle of Prasanna S.) Mumbai: The Shiv Sena has claimed that "invisible" hands of the NCP are supporting its senior ruling ally, the BJP, with a party MLC Thursday citing "various instances" in ongoing session of the state legislature wherein the Sharad Pawar-led party has "backed" the BJP. After Presidential polls, Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis had said that "invisible hands" would support his government in Maharashtra if it is in trouble, which was viewed as a reference to the NCP. Sena MLC Anil Parab claimed the "invisible hands" that are supporting the ruling BJP are that of the NCP. "The NCP has proved this by opposing the privilege motion moved by me against Education Minister Vinod Tawde in the Upper House recently," he said, adding that the NCP had even praised the chief minister in the Assembly. Parab moved a breach of privilege motion against Tawde on 1 August over the delay in declaration of results by the Mumbai University (MU) despite the minister's earlier assurance that they will be declared on time. Meanwhile, another Sena MLC claimed the "cosiness" between the BJP and the NCP has grown in the last few days. "We wanted to prove to everybody whose invisible hands the BJP is banking upon. The NCP opposed my privilege motion and tried and shield the government on various other issues. In the Lower House as well it was NCP members who praised the CM," Parab told PTI. Senior NCP MLC Sunil Tatkare, who is also Maharashtra unit president of the party, stood in support of Tawde in Upper House on Wednesday against Parab. Furthermore, when Congress and NCP members were aggressively demanding the resignation of Housing minister Prakash Mehta, Tatkare suddenly "diverted" the issue towards the delay in declaration of results by the Mumbai University, the Sena MLC said. He said NCP's Jayant Patil had sung a song which has gone viral on social media in the Assembly. The song "Sonu tuza BMC var bharavsa nahi ka"? (Sonu, don't you trust the BMC?). The song, popularised by an RJ on social media, had riled the Sena which is in power in the Mumbai civic body. "The act of praising the BJP and the chief minister by Jayant Patil, Tatkare and (Dhananjay) Munde all NCP proves that the invisible hands supporting the BJP are that of the NCP," Parab said. Responding to Parab's claim, Tatkare said he wanted to "expose" the Sena when Parab had moved the motion. "As per the rule, seven members should stand in favour of such a motion. I want to see whether Sena ministers stood by Parab despite being in the government," Tatkare said, questioning how could a member of the ruling party move a privilege motion against his own government? "Being a member of the Opposition party, it was my duty to expose them. This should not be taken as if we are supporting the BJP," Tatkare added. The 15-page document released by China on Wednesday is a remarkable statement that is open to layered interpretations. This piece concentrates on a few quick takeaways while examining certain claims for veracity. At the outset, let us understand the reason behind releasing this paper at this juncture nearly 50 days into the deadlock at the Doka La area in Sikkim sector. Why did China bother to put out such a lengthy document, painstakingly clarifying its position, when its oft-repeated official stance is that no "meaningful dialogue is possible" unless Indian troops unilaterally and unconditionally withdraw from the tri-junction? What are the motives behind it? Several possibilities should be considered. The ostensibly tough and uncompromising language, designed to mirror China's rigid stand, masks a flexible subtext which makes the lengthy treatise counter-intuitive in nature. There are clues that China wants a resolution to the dispute and is ready to even consider some compromises to initiate a de-escalation but these are embedded in clever semantics. China, for instance, states that India has already started withdrawing troops and from a high over 400 at one point, only 40 remain. India insists that there has been no change in the number of 350 soldiers who are camping in the area in a non-threatening posture. Paragraph two of the Chinese statement reads: "On 16 June, 2017, the Chinese side was building a road in the Dong Lang area. On 18 June, over 270 Indian border troops, carrying weapons and driving two bulldozers, crossed the boundary in the Sikkim sector at the Duo Ka La (Doka La) pass and advanced more than 100 meters into the Chinese territory to obstruct the road building of the Chinese side, causing tension in the area. In addition to the two bulldozers, the trespassing Indian border troops, reaching as many as over 400 people at one point, have put up three tents and advanced over 180 meters into the Chinese territory. As of the end of July, there were still over 40 Indian border troops and one bulldozer illegally staying in the Chinese territory." India has rejected the claims. The external affairs ministry had a very short response to the elaborate Chinese communique. "Indias position on this issue and related facts have been articulated in our press statement of 30 June. India considers that peace and tranquillity in the India-China border areas is an important prerequisite for smooth development of our bilateral relations with China." Incidentally, columnist Ajai Shukla, a retired colonel of the Indian Army, quotes army sources in claiming that major de-escalation of troops has already begun and both sides are now reduced to 40 each. And as per Chinese statement y'day, which says Indian troops down from 400 to 40. My sources say Chinese down to 40 soldiers in Doklam too! Ajai Shukla (@ajaishukla) August 3, 2017 In his piece for Business Standard, he writes, "The 45-day confrontation in Doka La has begun de-escalating. Top army sources tell Business Standard that the number of Chinese border guards at the contested border tri-junction between India, China and Bhutan is now down to just 40, from a peak of over 300 at the end of June. Meanwhile, many Indian troops have also been pulled back. From a peak of almost 400 at the height of the crisis, there are now just 150 Indian soldiers in the contested Doka La bowl." So, who is speaking the truth - India or China? The answer is irrelevant. The aftermath of the cross-border surgical strikes on terrorist assets in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK) carried a valuable strategic lesson. Having made its move, India gave Pakistan the necessary space for denial to prevent a loss of face at home. Similarly, any solution to the sticky crisis must include an option of honourable exit for both sides, as Firstpost argued in a recent piece. In an effort to wage a psychological war against India, China has painted itself into a non-negotiable corner. Any de-escalation without any tangible gains will be interpreted as a "surrender" back home a possibility which no Chinese president can afford, much less a macho nationalist like Xi Jinping who wants to be the 'new' Mao Zedong and is widely expected to seal power for a second term and even beyond in the upcoming Communist Party Convention. It is entirely possible that both countries have struck a deal and have agreed upon a mutual withdrawal of troops. In such a scenario, it is inconceivable that a return to the status quo before 16 June (when China attempted to build a motorable road in the tri-junction) wouldn't be the fulcrum. If that is so, it would meet India and Bhutan's strategic needs of containing the crisis and forcing China to thrash out a final settlement on the basis of a trilateral agreement, not a unilateral change of "facts on ground." As Shukla writes, it also serves for India the dual purpose of honouring its special relationship with Bhutan and keeping Chinese troops away from the sensitive Siliguri corridor. China, it seems, is even ready to renegotiate the terms of the Sikkim sector even while insisting on the sanctity of 1890 convention. "The Chinese and Indian sides have been in discussion on making the boundary in the Sikkim Sector an 'early harvest' in the settlement of the entire boundary question during the meetings between the Special Representatives on the China-India Boundary Question The boundary in the Sikkim Sector has long been delimited by the 1890 Convention, which was signed between then China and Great Britain. China and India ought to sign a new boundary convention in their own names to replace the 1890 Convention. This, however, in no way alters the nature of the boundary in the Sikkim Sector as having already been delimited." This is a far cry from the rigidity of earlier positions. These developments sound suspiciously like a "win" for India. To prevent this narrative, China possibly felt compelled to release a statement which appears rigid and virulent in appearance. Not only is a strategic defeat perilous for 'tough guy' Xi in terms of domestic politics, it would also be disastrous for China's image as an assertive, revanchist superpower that demands total deference from other sovereigns. As strategic thinker and CPR fellow Brahma Chellaney writes in Times of India, "China, if it is to save face, needs India's help to extricate itself from a mess of its own making. Beijings coarse statements and threats, while integral to its psywar, are also part of a negotiating ploy to secure a compromise on largely its terms." There is yet another reason behind the release of the "tough statement" which is being interpreted by Chinese media as the "final warning". The world has little appetite for China's claims of "peaceful rise". Its repeated bullying of smaller nations and confrontational stance against powerful ones have caused it a grave reputational damage. In the current standoff, the international community has appeared to be on India's side, a fact that has caused Chinese media much heartburn. This statement, which goes into minute cartographic details is, therefore, a strident attempt to regain the narrative and position itself as the victim of "Indian aggression". The aim is to claim the moral high ground, a seat China has voluntarily given up as it goes about employing its revanchist policies. If the statement ends on a note of goodwill, "China and India are the worlds largest developing countries. The Chinese government always values the growth of good-neighborly and friendly relations with India and is committed to maintaining peace and tranquillity in the border area between the two countries," it could be taken as an attempt to address the growing hostility among ordinary Indians on China. As the beneficiary of a major trade imbalance, it is important for China not to take one of the most lucrative markets in the world for granted. Some of the claims China makes in the statement are easily refuted. Beijing violates all bilateral agreements to base its claim on a Convention that is underwritten by poor survey work. Firstpost has described in elaborate detail why Article 1 and 2 of the Anglo-Chinese convention are mutually incompatible a result of erroneous 19th-century cartography. China claims the tri-junction at Mount Gipmochi but the ridge line on Himalayan terrain supports India's claims that it lies on Batang La. In fact, analyst Claude Arpi, who specialises in Tibetan history, writes in his blog that "According to Sikkimese records, Gipmochi is Batang La, 5 km north of Doka La." There is enough confusion on the ground to merit a trilateral discussion, which is what India and China agreed on in 2012 and which has all along been India's stated position. Chinese claims that Sikkim sector is "delimited", is also a lie. A final point of reiteration. An international bdy is 'delimited' only after it is 'defined' and 'delineated' and 'demarcated'. 3 steps. https://t.co/C7PrxS3CGg Srinath Raghavan (@SrinathRaghava2) July 20, 2017 Instead of tilting at the windmills, we should take note of what's happening on the ground. Those developments suggest that we are possibly closer to the endgame. New Delhi: As China struck a tough posture again on the Doka La stand off, India on Wednesday refused to be drawn into giving counter arguments, and merely said that it reaffirms its 30 June statement and called for peace and tranquility along the border. "India's position on and related facts have been articulated in our press statement of 30 June, 2017," external affairs ministry spokesperson Gopal Baglay said in response to a question. "India considers peace and tranquility in the India-China border areas as an important prerequisite for smooth development of our bilateral relations with China," he said. On Wednesday, China claimed that it had informed India that it would be constructing a road in Doka La area in Sikkim sector and again asked New Delhi to withdraw its troops immediately from the area. Beijing sought to firm up its claim over the disputed region by citing a document of 2006, according to which India and China agreed on the boundary alignment in the Sikkim sector where their armies are now locked in a stand-off. In a 15-page document, the Chinese foreign ministry also said the number of Indian troops in Doka La since the beginning of the crisis in mid-June had fallen from 270 to 40 by the end of July. Indian officials have denied any pullout has taken place. China also said India should not make territorial claims on Bhutan's behalf in the Doka La standoff even as it maintained that it valued good neighbourly and friendly relations with New Delhi and to keep peace on the border. China also claimed that it had informed India that it would be constructing a road in that area. Beijing, which earlier said it won't talk to New Delhi until the Indian troops leave, also hinted that the two sides were in touch to resolve the dragging dispute on the Sikkim section of the border. New Delhi sees the road as a threat to the nation's security as it is very close to the arterial Siliguri corridor, which connects northeastern India with the rest of the country. In its 30 June statement, India said that on June 16, a PLA construction party entered the Doka La area and attempted to construct a road, which was protested by the Bhutan government. In coordination with the Bhutan government, Indian personnel, who were present at general area Doka La, approached the Chinese construction party and urged them to desist from changing the status quo. It said the matter has been under discussion between India and China at the diplomatic level in the Foreign Ministries since then. The June 30 statement said that India is deeply concerned at the Chinese actions in Doka La and has conveyed to the Chinese government that such construction would represent a significant change of status quo with serious security implications for India. New Delhi: External affairs minister Sushma Swaraj on Thursday hit out at Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi for meeting Chinese ambassador Luo Zhaohui in July, amid the Doka La border stand off instead of trying to understand the situation from the Indian government. "I was very saddened that the Opposition instead of considering the point of view of the Indian government, went and met the Chinese ambassador. "They did not try to understand the situation (the border standoff) from the Indian government's prespective, instead approached the Chinese counterpart to get their point of view," said Sushma Swaraj, replying to a discussion in the Rajya Sabha on foreign policy. The Chinese Embassy in New Delhi had posted on its website about the 8 July meeting between Gandhi and Luo, but later withdrew it. The embassy had said in its `WeChat' account: "On 8 July, Ambassador Luo Zhaohui met with Rahul Gandhi, Vice President of the Congress party. The two sides exchanged views on the current China-India relations and other business. Counsellor Zhou Yuyun attended the meeting." Gandhi had defended his meeting with the Chinese ambassador saying it was his job to be informed of critical issues. He had also met the Bhutanese envoy and former NSA Shivshankar Menon, among other officials. Ever since J Jayalalithaa's demise, the AIADMK regime which has a notorious history of autocratic tendencies has gotten worse. Whether it is the Jallikattu protests, agitations for farmers' rights or ecological issues, demonstrations against NEET and GST, the state government has either been neglectful or has responded in a high-handed manner, curbing rights to collectively mobilise. Activists belonging to civil society organisations, who have taken up these issues, have been targeted by the state. Thirumurugan Gandhi of the 17 May Movement, and Daison Jose, Ilamaran, and Arun of the Tamizhar Vidiyal Katchi were arrested by the Tamil Nadu Police on 21 May, 2017, under the Goondas Act. These activists were arrested for organising a remembrance of the genocide of Eelam Tamils by Sri Lanka. None of the arrested activists was involved in any form of violence, nor did they instigate any. This draconian act incidentally was introduced in the rule of MG Ramachandran, considered by many to be a staunch supporter of the Eelam Tamil cause. From then till now, the Goondas Act has been evoked several times to stifle criticisms of the ruling government. This time though, it was used to prevent criticisms of the actions of a neighbouring state. Sri Lanka's war crimes have been documented in several reports and the state has been accused by a panel of renowned international jurists and human rights experts of the Permanent People's Tribunal of having committed genocide on the Eelam Tamils. Gandhi and others did nothing that was even mildly anti-social by organising something as simple as a candlelight vigil to remember an event that is indelible in Tamil history. The arrested activists have been denied bail. Amnesty International, PUCL, writers and intellectuals, activist groups in India and abroad have condemned the detention of Gandhi and others on such flimsy grounds. The Leader of Opposition MK Stalin has also criticised the arrest of Gandhi "for lighting candles at the Marina beach". If the state attempts to silence such civil society activists at one end, at another, 'subalterns' who claim offended sentiments try to do the same. One such recent target of enraged subalterns is Divya Bharathi, the Madurai district convenor of the All India Students Association. Divya's 'crime' was to have made a documentary on manual scavenging. Kakkoos (toilet), a hard-hitting documentary, shows how different oppressed castes are forced to engage in this cruel, inhuman work. A nasty shock hit this woman activist when the most violent reactions against this documentary came not from casteists and those in power, but rather from a section of the Dalits themselves. Dr Krishnaswamy of the Puthiya Tamizhagam, a party representing the Pallars of south Tamil Nadu, allegedly took offence to this documentary for showing Pallars in a negative light. Following this, several supporters of his party have taken to showering abuse on Divya. These include hundreds of threatening calls, WhatsApp texts and vulgar sexist messages on social media. Apparently, activists of the BJP, who are trying to build a base among the Pallars, have also joined the assault on her. Though she has complained to the police, no action has been taken. The irony of the situation is that the Pallars, who often claim facing oppression at the hands of the intermediate castes and resisting the same, are now offended that this documentary has shown them as oppressed. Pallars, who fashion themselves as Deventhira Kula Vellalars, have a horror of being identified with Arunthathiyars. The latter are considered 'lowest' among the Dalit castes of Tamil Nadu and have faced violence not just from the so-called 'caste Hindus' but also from other dominant Dalit castes like the Pallars and Paraiyars. It is worthy to note that Arunthathiyar groups have welcomed Divya's documentary. Both Gandhi and Divya belong to a new generation of civil society activists in Tamil Nadu. Without any familial political backing or caste networking, these activists have created a name for themselves in spaces that they operate. While their politics differ, and while one may also have differences with their politics, both have opposed casteist and communal forces in the state of Tamil Nadu as a matter of principle. It is indeed a pity that while the logic of the state is invoked to silence the voice of one, offended sentiments are used as an excuse to shame and shut down the other ultimately serving the interests of the status quo. Those who genuinely believe in 'freedom of expression' must have the courage to confront the draconian laws of the state; equally, they must also not fear political correctness in challenging the politics of subalternity when it goes haywire. Hyderabad: In an interesting twist to the recent attack on Telangana Youth Congress leader Vikram Goud, police claimed that the leader had hatched a conspiracy to harm himself to gain people's sympathy and manage a ticket for the 2019 legislative Assembly elections. Goud, son of former Andhra Pradesh minister Mukesh Goud, was shot at in his residence in Film Nagar area of Hyderabad . Hyderabad Police cracked the case by arresting five persons on Wednesday, who spilled the beans on the conspiracy. They are among the eight accused, including Goud who is currently undergoing treatment at a hospital, while two others are absconding. The 35-year-old Youth Congress leader hatched the plan of a "murder attempt" on his life to gain sympathy of people of a city constituency from where he was planning to contest, a senior police officer said, adding Goud also wanted to win the sympathy of his family and friends. "It all started in April this year, when Vikram Goud hatched the plan and told the accused that he wanted to get a ticket for the next elections. He then asked them to procure a weapon and make an attempt on him to gain popularity as well as sympathy", Hyderabad Police Commissioner M Mahendar Reddy told reporters. Goud wanted the police to believe that the act was committed by his political rivals, he said. Reddy said the accused demanded Rs 50 lakh from Goud to execute his plan. "As per the plan, S Nanda Kumar and other accused procured a country-made weapon from Madhya Pradesh. On Goud's instructions, two of them, namely Raees Khan and Shaik Ahmed, reached his house in the early hours of 28 July. Khan fired two rounds at Goud's hands before fleeing along with Ahmed", the commissioner said. Two other accused arrested on Tuesday have been identified as K Babu Jan and A Govind Reddy. Goud's wife Shipali M, after hearing the gunshots, rushed to the ground floor of the house only to find her husband lying with bullet wounds. Goud told her that a person shot at him before fleeing. Following a complaint from her, the police had registered a case of attempt to murder. However, during the course of investigation, it was revealed that it was Goud who had hatched the plan to pass off the incident as a genuine bid on his life. "His (Goud's) entire thought process was if this incident goes undetected and the culprits are not identified, it will remain a mystery and he will be able to secure sympathy of people of the constituency from where he was planning to contest as MLA in 2019. "Apart from this, he probably also thought that he could settle score with the people with whom he had financial disputes", Reddy said. Goud, who had invested a lot of money in mining in Odisha and also in other businesses, is indebted and quantum of his debts is being ascertained, the officer said. The top cop said Goud also wanted to get a weapon license and gunmen for his protection. "His wife is not aware about the incident (conspiracy), however, since she was not the eyewitness, whatever her husband has indicated she has just mentioned in the complaint. We have recorded Goud's statement and he has confessed to whatever others (those arrested) have told," the officer said. We would arrest Goud once he gets discharged from the hospital, he said. The Telangana Youth Congress leader and eight others have been booked on relevant sections of IPC besides the Arms Act. Lucknow: With rumours about braids of women getting mysteriously chopped off doing the round, the Uttar Pradesh police on Thursday issued an advisory directing senior officials to contact locals and advise them against paying heed to any untrue reports. An advisory issued by the ADG, law and order, Anand Kumar also asks people to promptly inform police about those spreading rumours and not to take law in their hands, an official spokesman said. The rumours need to be checked by involving villagers, peace committees as well as special police officers and prompt action should be taken against mischievous elements, the spokesman said quoting the advisory. He said that social media should be used for creating awareness against such rumours and for immediate denial. Seminars at the district, police thana and chowki level should be organised and youth and social volunteers active on social media be used for forcefully denying such rumours, he said. No organised gang is involved in it, he said. The spokesman said that one person, a sorcerer who had allegedly advised a girl to cut off her braid for immediate relief from some ailment had been arrested in Gorakhpur. The sorcerer (ojha) had allegedly advised a 17-year-old girl in Campierganj police station area to chop off her plait for immediate relief from fits of unconsciousness which the girl had followed, the spokesman added. New Delhi: Opposition's vice-presidential candidate Gopalkrishna Gandhi on Thursday rejected a suggestion that he should not take support of the Janata Dal-United in view of Nitish Kumar joining hands with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). "Nitish Babu's decision is his decision and his prerogative," Gandhi said when asked about Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) leader Tariq Anwar suggesting that he should publicly say no to JD(U) votes in view of Bihar chief minister and JD(U) chief Nitish Kumar crossing over to the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA). Nitish Kumar had announced support for Gandhi when he was heading the Grand Alliance government in Bihar backed by the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) and the Congress. He later dumped the two parties to join hands with the BJP but said he would still back Gandhi in the vice-presidential election. Gandhi did not comment on Nitish Kumar's decision to head a coalition government with the BJP in Bihar. "In the present context, it is not for me to judge politicians... It is for them to assess the relative merits of the two vice-presidential candidates," Gandhi told IANS in an interview. Gandhi also did not elaborate on the support being extended to him by the RJD, whose leaders are facing allegations of corruption. "It is again their (RJD's) decision and their prerogative," he said. Gandhi, who is being backed by the Congress and some major opposition parties, faces ruling NDA's M Venkaiah Naidu in the vice-presidential election scheduled for 5 August. Betul (Madhya Pradesh): Four persons were allegedly thrashed by a vigilante group on the suspicion of being cow smugglers in a remote tribal village in Betul district, with the video of the incident going viral on social media. The alleged cow smugglers were arrested but the assailants were absconding, police said. After a video of the incident, which reportedly took place last week, went viral on social media, police registered separate cases against the assailants as well as the alleged cow smugglers. The video showed the four youths tied up and being beaten brutally in front of a crowd at the village, about 110 km from Betul district headquarters. Sub Divisional Officer of Police Prem Singh Thakur said on Wednesday that, "A case was registered against Shyam, Manak, Sundar Parate and others (part of the cow vigilante group) for assault". All of them were absconding. Also, another case was registered against the four persons, all residents of Rehatgao in neighbouring Harda district, for alleged cow smuggling, he said. "These cow smugglers have been arrested. We are investigating the video clip, and will take further action accordingly," the police officer said. Kolkata: West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Thursday accused the Centre of not helping the state government tackle the 'havoc' caused by the recent floods in the state. She said flood waters washed away roads, bridges and crops in several districts. At least 50 people were killed in 14 districts and nearly 4 lakh hectares of agricultural land washed away in incessant rains and resultant water discharged by the Damodar Valley Corporation through its dams. "They (Centre) are not at all helping us in tackling the flood havoc," Banerjee said, adding that districts like Howrah, Hooghly, Birbhum and two Midnapores have been badly hit. Banerjee said she would speak to Chief Secretary Malay Dey, who is currently in New Delhi, in this regard once he is back. Meanwhile, a senior official at the state agricultural department said around 36,110 hectres of land out of the 1,24,144 hectres, where vegetables were planted, is under water. "The maximum damage was witnessed in districts like East Midnapore and South 24-Parganas. In East Midnapore, around 6,984 hectres of land lay under water while in South 24 Parganas the figure is 8,242 hectres," the officer said. Paddy damage in East Midnapore was estimated at 16,940 hectres while in South 24-Parganas it was at 13,263 hectres, the officer said. There are several studies and counter studies challenging the benefits of breastfeeding across the world. Be it the long-term impact on cognitive development of a child, the myth around breast feeding helping reduce the chances of breast cancer, or developing a maternal instinct. With World Breastfeeding Week (August 1 to 7) being celebrated in more than 170 countries to encourage breastfeeding and help improve the health of babies around the world, Firstpost takes a look some of the advantages of breastfeeding for the child and the mother as well as some of the myths associated with it. What is World Breastfeeding Week? On 1 August 1990, a group of policymakers at a WHO/UNICEF meeting in Florence, Italy, produced and adopted a declaration to promote breastfeeding across the world. The declaration, hence known as the Innocenti Declaration was the first such attempt at a global level to promote, protect and support breastfeeding. World Breastfeeding Week is a celebration of that Innocenti declaration (and aims to help achieve the Global Strategy for Infant and Young Child Feeding developed jointly by the World Health Organisation (WHO) and the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) in 2002). From 2016, the World Alliance for Breastfeeding Action (WABA), which organises the event, has transformed it from a celebration for one week in a year into a showcase of the efforts made to protect, promote and support breastfeeding for all 51 weeks in a year. The focus of the current edition of the World Breastfeeding Week, which turned 25 in 2017 is about working together for the common good and will call upon advocates, activists, decision-makers and celebrants to help promote policies that make it easier for women to breastfeed. Advantages of breastfeeding Breastfeeding is the best way to provide newborns with the nutrients they need. WHO recommends exclusive breastfeeding until a baby is six months old, and continued breastfeeding with the addition of nutritious complementary foods for up to two years or beyond. : For the baby: Breast milk is the healthiest form of milk for babies. The colostrum (a yellow, watery pre-milk) that breasts make during the first few days after birth helps in development and functioning of the digestive system of the baby. Breast milk is easily digestible and breast-fed babies tend to have less constipation and fewer feeding problems compared to bottle-fed babies. Though the long-term impact of breastfeeding in developing cognitive skills are still debated, there is evidence that the fatty acids in the breast milk help develop babys brain. Breastfed babies are at lower risk of infections, diarrhoea, asthma, obesity, allergies, and colic. The antibodies in the breast milk develop babys immunity, which is responsible to fight sickness. Breast-fed babies have a significantly lower risk of a condition referred to as sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) where typically the infant is found dead after having been put to bed, and exhibits no signs of suffering. For the mother Breastfeeding helps create a unique emotional bond between a mother and child. It is always available and is cheaper compared with bottle feed. There is evidence to suggest that breastfeeding helps reduce the incidence of post delivery depression. Breastfeeding releases oxytocin, a hormone which helps the uterus contract and return to its normal size more quickly and thus helps in reducing excessive bleeding after delivery. It helps lose weight faster. Breastfeeding reduces the risk of developing breast cancer and evidence is accumulating to suggest that breastfeeding helps reducing risk of developing uterine and ovarian cancer. Equally, there is evidence that breastfeeding helps reduce the incidence of post delivery depression Myths around breastfeeding While the benefits of breastfeeding have been known for over centuries, there are also several misconceptions that have emerged around some supposed benefits of the practices including its impact on breast cancer. Here is a list of some common myths surrounding breastfeeding: There is a misconception that breast cancer does not occur during pregnancy and lactation. Breast cancer can indeed occur during pregnancy and lactation. Being breast aware is absolutely important even during pregnancy and lactation. Should there be any new changes, a specialist consultation is essential to rule out any abnormality. There is no evidence to suggest that breast cancer is transmitted through the milk of the mother. However, breast feeding should not be given whilst the mother is receiving chemotherapy as the drugs can harm the baby. Breastfeeding is also not recommended during the active phase of tuberculosis as infection can be passed on to the baby. Harmful effects of some medicines taken by the mother can be transmitted through breast milk. It is always advisable to check with the doctor before breastfeeding. Women taking drugs are advised not to breastfeed. Many women believe that breastfeeding should be stopped when there a breast infection (lactation induced mastitis). The fact remains that breastfeeding should not be stopped when there is breast infection (mastitis). In fact, breast feeding keeps the ducts patent and may help improve breast infection. It is important to see a specialist as soon as there are signs of breast infection. Antibiotics are initially used to control the infection. If an abscess has developed, an ultrasound guided aspiration of abscess should be attempted. If all the conservative measures fail, a formal incision and drainage of abscess should be performed to evacuate the pus. Screening mammograms should not be done during pregnancy and lactation. A screening mammogram is the X-ray of the breasts for asymptomatic women to detect early impalpable breast cancer. Although the radiation dose from a Mammogram is small (equivalent to a dental X-ray), it is best to avoid radiation exposure to the fetus or infant. According to World health Organisation (WHO) recommendations released in 2009, in low and middle income Countries, HIV Positive mothers can breastfeed provided they commence taking antiretroviral therapy (ART) from 14th week of pregnancy to prevent mother to child transmission of HIV. This therapy must be continued through till the end of breastfeeding. WHO recommends that mothers known to be HIV positive should exclusively breastfeed their infants until six months of age introducing appropriate complementary foods thereafter and continue breastfeeding for the first 12 months of life. The clear message is that breastfeeding is a good option for every baby including HIV positive mothers when they have access to antiretroviral therapy (ART). P Raghu Ram is the president of the Association of Breast Surgeons of India. Like the wicked tiger Shere Khan in Jungle Book, the Congress refuses to learn lessons. Possessed with an overpowering desire to kill Mowgli but with no feasible plan, Shere Khan finally dies a horrible death in a wildfire. Obsessed with routing the BJP in general and Prime Minister Narendra Modi in particular, but equipped with no meaningful strategy, the Congress appears to be working towards its own end in state after state. Goa is a classic example. After its historic goof-up in missing the chance to form the government in Goa, despite emerging as the single-largest party in the February assembly elections, it has slipped into a political abyss deeper than before. Since then, it has seen four of its MLAs cross vote for the NDAs presidential candidate Ram Nath Kovind and has lost a Rajya Sabha seat. And even as the 23 August by-elections to two assembly seats, Panaji and Valpoi, near, the grapevine has it that some five Congress MLAs, of the total of 16, may desert the party and get on board either the ruling BJP or its allies. For the upcoming bypolls, the Congress has barely managed to even find a candidate for Panaji, where Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar will seek election to the Assembly. It seems that nobody was terribly interested in fighting the Panaji seat on a Congress ticket leader after leader politely refused the partys offer till at last the choice fell on vice-president Rahul Gandhis chum and AICC secretary Girish Chodankar on Wednesday. The Panaji seat fell vacant after BJPs Siddharth Kuncolienkar, who was elected from there in February, quit the seat to facilitate Parrikars entry into Assembly. Valpoi will have a by-election because Vishwajit Rane, who won from there on a Congress ticket, resigned to join the BJP and become Parrikars health minister. He will seek re-election on BJP ticket and face Congress candidate Roy Ravi Naik, son of a former minister. Congress working for Congress-mukt Bharat? To understand the continuing goof-ups that plague the Congress across India, one only needs to take a close look at Goa, the countrys smallest state its just as big as Maharashtras Bhandara district (3,700 sq km) and has as much population as Thane town (18 lakh). It looks as if Narendra Modis best and most dependable ally in achieving his life-time goal of Congress-mukt Bharat is Congress itself. First, the party bungled in forming a government after the assembly poll results were announced in March, as state unit dilly-dallied and Rahul Gandhi Delhi-dallied in choosing alliance partners, while the BJP snatched up smaller parties and stole power. In April, Gandhi came up with his characteristically simplistic solution: he stripped AICC general secretary Digvijaya Singh of his Goa responsibility. Then in July, Gandhi replaced state party chief Luizinho Faleiro with 71-year-old former MP, Shantaram Naik. Soon after Naiks appointment, four Congress MLAs cross-voted in the presidential election. Then Naik himself lost his Rajya Sabha election, gifting to the BJP its first-ever seat in the Upper House from Goa. Congress bid to topple Parrikar fails Undaunted, Gandhi apparently decided that the best way to teach Modi a lesson that he would never forget in his lifetime was to get rid of the Parrikar government. Last month, he ordered Naik to do the needful. Naik promptly asked a man called Atansio Monserrate to do the needful. Monserrates colourful political career was marked by party-hopping at a dizzying speed and a string of criminal cases including extortion and rape. He became a lone wolf after the Congress expelled him in 2015 for helping the BJP in the Panaji by-election. Monserrate, a man with muscle and money power, agreed to get Parrikar ousted by "arranging" for the defection of three members of the Goa Forward Party (GFP), an ally of the BJP. As part of what seemed like a buy-one-and-get-one-free arrangement, Monserrate also offered to be the Congress candidate in Panaji against Parrikar in the upcoming by-election. Gandhi and Naik heaved a collective sigh, convinced that they had straightened everything out. Everything indeed got straightened outfor the BJP. Then Monserrate dealt a cruel blow to the Congress by announcing that he was joining the GFP and would campaign for Parrikar in Panaji! Leave alone toppling Parrikar, Naik had a desperate run-around before Chodankars candidature was finalised for the Panaji seat. The reasons that led to the failure of the Congress in forming the government continue to bedevil the party: an inactive state unit and a rudderless high command led by a highly confused Rahul Gandhi. Monseratte attributed his sudden volte face to the non-serious attitude of the Congress towards building the party. It was the same story at the time of government formation. Though the BJP won only 13 seats in the February elections, against 17 of the Congress in the 40-member assembly, it crossed the halfway mark with 22 with support from three members each of the Maharashtrawadi Gomantak Party (MGP) and the GFP, and three Independents. The MGP and GFP could have easily gone the Congress way. The MGP competes for the same Hindu vote that BJP thrives on and would have indeed been more comfortable in the company of the Congress. And the GFP approached the Congress for an alliance both before and after the assembly elections. But the Congress leaders were undecided as well as divided over accepting help from the two parties and lost the opportunity to form the government. Learning lessons from the past? Forget it. The author tweets @sprasadindia Mumbai: Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis on Thursday said housing minister Prakash Mehta cannot be accused of corruption merely on the basis of a file noting made by him and that the allegations being made against the senior BJP leader are "politically motivated". Fadnavis' remarks in the Legislative Council came days after he ordered an inquiry against the minister over alleged violation of norms in a slum redevelopment project. Mehta had allegedly allowed unauthorised transfer of extra building rights in a slum rehabilitation authority (SRA) project in south Mumbai, originally granted to slum dwellers, to project affected people (PAPs), apparently to favour a developer. He had wrongly mentioned on the file that he had kept the CM in the loop about the transfer, which was denied by Fadnavis. The Congress and the NCP have raised the pitch in the state legislature seeking removal of Mehta as a minister. "As far as allegations against Prakash Mehta are concerned, how can he be accused of corruption when no decision was taken place in the first place (on the basis of the file)?" "Mehta had merely given his remarks on the file, over which no further action was taken. If the Opposition is still asking for his resignation, then these charges are politically motivated," Fadnavis told the Legislative Council. The issue was raised by Leader of Opposition Dhananjay Munde (NCP). The chief minister, his Cabinet colleagues and members of the treasury benches took part in the proceedings of the Upper House, a day after MLCs of the ruling BJP and Shiv Sena staged a walkout in an unprecedented development. They had walked out in the Council accusing the Opposition of "high handedness" and against their "act of flouting rules, creating a ruckus and disrupting the proceedings". The proceedings began on Thursday after Chairman Ramraje Nimbalkar laid down certain norms, regarding the conduct of business. Fadnavis said he has ordered an inquiry against Mehta as his is a transparent government. "Remember you (the Opposition) did not even inquire into charges against your ministers when we (as Opposition members then) gave you ample proofs of wrongdoings against them," Fadnavis said. If found guilty, appropriate action will be taken against the minister, he added. As the proceedings began, Munde said the Opposition wanted the government to act on two demands, failing which, they would not allow the Upper House to function. "One demand is (about) corrupt practices of (IAS officer and MSRDC chief) Radheshyam Mopalwar. Despite being involved in a large-scale corruption, he is involved in the CM's pet (Mumbai-Nagpur expressway) project. Unless he is suspended and a serious inquiry is conducted against him, we will not allow functioning of the House," Munde said. He said since there are allegations of a "massive corruption" against the housing minister, he cannot be allowed to hold office. "The chief minister should immediately ask him to resign and order a probe against him," he added. Responding to Munde and Congress member Sharad Ranpise, who made a similar demand, Fadnavis said Mopalwar will cease to hold the position of MSRDC chief, pending an inquiry against him. "Mopalwar has been temporarily asked to step down. An inquiry will be conducted against him within a month. If he is found guilty, we will not hesitate in even dismissing him," Fadnavis said. On Fadnavis' contention that Mehta had merely given his remarks on the file which were not acted upon, Munde said, "This is like a robber going to a bank to loot it, but failing to commit the act as the alarm goes off". Panaji: The Aam Aadmi Party's Goa unit on Thursday said it will not contest the upcoming by-elections to the state assembly. Calling it a "politically prudent" move, it said that the party had taken the decision in order to not confuse the electorate. "AAP Goa after a great deal of brainstorming has decided that it would be politically prudent for us to refrain from contesting the by-elections, rather than further confusing the electorate," it said in a statement issued in Panaji. "AAP Goa is convinced, however, that the people of Panaji and Valpoi will firmly reject the politics of opportunism, deceit and treachery played out by the current dispensation, which is foisting an unnecessary election at great expense to the public exchequer, only to compel a desired outcome," it said. Two assembly constituencies will go to by-polls on 23 August. They include Panaji from where Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar, who is currently a Rajya Sabha member from Uttar Pradesh, is contesting. All India Congress Committee Secretary Girish Chodankar also will file his nomination on Friday for the Panaji seat. The other by-election will be held in Valpoi assembly constituency, where Health Minister Vishwajit Rane is contesting. He was elected in the February assembly elections on a Congress ticket but subsequently resigned to join the BJP. The AAP has also said that its alternative brand of politics was not endorsed by the Goan electorate in the February 2017 polls and that it is preparing at the grassroots level for the next general elections. "Unfortunately, the Aam Aadmi Party ideals were not recognised by the Goan electorate in the 2017 assembly polls and as such the party failed to win the trust of the people. Since then, AAP has been working hard to re-organise and rebuild the party at the grassroots level so as to be battle ready for the next big challenge of the general election," the statement said. Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on Wednesday, while speaking on the issue of the Income Tax department raids on locations linked to Karnataka minister DK Shivakumar, said that he was trying to destroy documents crucial for the probe. The Income Tax department had on Wednesday morning conducted searches at multiple properties of the Karnataka energy minister, who was also overseeing the stay of 44 Congress MLAs from Gujarat at Eagleton resort in Bengaluru, in connection with a tax evasion case. "Now, a person whose home is being raided has to be consulted and questioned. That is why I-T department authorities went to the (Bengaluru) resort. When the officials reached the resort, they found that he was trying to tear up some documents," Jaitley said in Rajya Sabha. The finance minister had also said that the searches had no connection with Rajya Sabha polls in Gujarat. Giving a statement in Rajya Sabha, he had said that according to the information received from the I-T department, officials went there just to nab "one particular individual", referring to the Karnataka minister. Officials privy to the early morning raids had said that the I-T sleuths reached the resort to question the minister, who was staying there for the night. He was then taken to his house in Bengaluru. The department is investigating the charges of huge transfer of illegal funds. The I-T department had said that the timing of the search was decided well in advance. Rs. 7.5 crore recovered during IT raids at two flats of Karnataka Minister DK Shivakumar in Delhi. pic.twitter.com/Au81NpKb4N ANI (@ANI_news) August 2, 2017 "The search is the continuation of an investigation which has been in progress for a considerable period of time. They added that the timing of the search was decided well in advance," the I-T department had said in a statement. "The events involving certain MLAs of another state being brought to Karnataka were unforeseen and unpredictable events," the statement had stated. The search, described as an "evidence gathering exercise", was conducted by the Karnataka Investigation Wing of the Income Tax department. "The search under Section 132 of the Income Tax Act is an evidence gathering exercise which is being carried in compliance with all statutory requirements. The search is the continuation of an investigation which has been in progress for a considerable period of time," the I-T department had said. The move has set off a political slugfest as the Congress is keeping its Gujarat MLAs in the Eagleton resort to prevent defection and horse-trading ahead of the Gujarat Rajya Sabha polls. The raids also sparked a fresh political storm with Opposition creating ruckus in both the houses of Parliament. Congress had condemned the raids and called it political vendetta. Ghulam Nabi Azad, Leader of Opposition in Rajya Sabha, sought to know why the searches were being carried out now and not a month later or before. "What is happening in this country? This House as well as the Election Commission will have to ensure free and fair elections," he had said. Later, Congress had also approached the Election Commission asking it to ensure the safety and security of its Gujarat MLAs staying in Eagleton resort. With inputs from agencies New Delhi: Members of the CPM and the BJP on Thursday clashed in the Lok Sabha after the former objected to some BJP members' remarks attacking them over the political violence in Kerala. Raising the issue during the Zero Hour, senior CPM leader P Karunakaran took strong exception to some BJP members calling Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan, the party's general secretary Sitaram Yechury and the party "terrorists" on Wednesday in the House. The BJP members indulged in heated exchanges as other CPM members also vociferously protested the remarks made by two BJP members' remarks during the Zero Hour on Wednesday. Karunakaran also said as per rules, the BJP MPs cannot name or attack those who are not present in the House and are not in a position to defend themselves. The House witnessed noisy scenes and Karunakaran could not be heard further due to the din, forcing the Speaker to adjourn the House briefly. When the House met again, Speaker Sumitra Mahajan did not allow him to raise the issue again, saying whatever he had said had gone on record. Protesting Left members then trooped into the well with Mohammad Salim (CPM) being heard asking the Chair not to "succumb to pressure tactics" of the ruling party members. Mahajan then allowed Karunakaran to speak again. He said the Kerala chief minister has been holding meetings with members of the RSS, the Left and other stake holders to end violence and said many Left workers have been also been killed over the years. Yechury was also attacked, he said. As BJP members protested again, the Speaker said the BJP members should not turn the House into a 'Kurukshetra' but 'Dharmakshetra' where they could debate issues. Thiruvananthapuram: Union minister Arun Jaitley will visit the house of slain RSS functionary Rajesh, hacked to death by a gang near Thiruvananthapuram on 6 August. Jaitley would also visit the houses of BJP ward councillors, which were attacked allegedly by CPM activists in various parts of Thiruvanathapuram last week, a BJP statement said on Thursday. The finance minister is visiting the state in the wake of increasing attacks on BJP-RSS workers allegedly by the activists of ruling CPM, the statement said. A series of clashes between CPM and BJP-RSS activists had rocked Thiruvanathauram last week, which culminated in the killing of Rajesh. He was hacked to death by a gang, allegedly led by a history-sheeter, on 29 June. His left arm was chopped off and there were several other injuries all over his body. The BJP had alleged that CPM was behind the murder, a charge denied by the ruling party. "Jaitley will hold discussions with state BJP leaders on the issue. BJP MPs had visited the Union home minister seeking the Centre's intervention in this regard the other day," the statement said. BJP MP Meenakshi Lekhi also raised the issue of attack against BJP workers in Parliament recently, it added. Governor P Sathasivam had summoned Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan and DGP Loknath Behara to ascertain the action taken by the government following the killing of the RSS worker. The government also decided to convene an all-party meeting on 6 August to check political violence. In what was perhaps a first in the history of the Maharashtra Legislative Council, members of the ruling party staged a walk out on Wednesday. Accusing the Congress and NCP of repeatedly disrupting the proceedings, the BJP and Shiv Sena decided to protest on Wednesday by leaving the Council. While the Opposition has 52 members in the Council, the ruling party has only 26 members. The Opposition used its huge numbers advantage to create a ruckus, accusing bureaucrat Radheshyam Mopalwar of being involved in corruption over land transactions and demanding the resignation of housing minister Prakash Mehta. They caused three continuous adjournments. NCP MLC Kiran Pawaskar, alleging corruption in the Slum Redevelopment Authority (SRA), called an Attention Motion. Minister of State for Housing Ravindra Waikar attempted to respond to Pawaskar but the Opposition stormed the Well of the House. Parliamentary affairs minister Girish Bapat, PWD minister and leader of the House Chandrakant Patil, Waikar and other BJP and Shiv Sena members then walked out of the House to protest the Opposition not allowing legislators to speak. Chandrakant Patil, speaking to Firstpost, said: "Everyone needs to follow the rules. We are a lawmaking body. Opposition have the majority, which is why they are not letting the minister speak. So we walked out. The members of the ruling party will not participate until the Chairman gives us assurances that the Council will function smoothly." Opposition leader Dhananjay Munde alleged that every day, new scams were being unearthed in the SRA. Munde demanded the resignation of housing minister Prakash Mehta."This is the first time in the history of the Legislative Council that the ruling party has walked out in protest," says Munde. "They had no answers to the questions raised by us. They are trying to crush us. We are against the government's corruption and favouritism." The House was adjourned three times and in the absence of the ruling party, adjourned for the day. After being cornered by the Opposition, Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis ordered an inquiry in the alleged irregularity in the SRA project at MP Mills compound in Tardeo, south Mumbai. A belligerent Sushma Swaraj took the floor in Rajya Sabha on Thursday, saying the Narendra Modi government in three years has done more for India on the foreign policy front than the previous UPA government could in 10 years. She said Prime Minister Modi and her external affairs ministry have tried to be friends with every country in the world, especially so in the immediate neighbourhood. Calling India the "very definition" of a good friend, she said, "We have tried to maintain friendly relations with everybody. When Maldives was facing drought, India sent an entire ship full of drinking water. When Bangladesh or Sri Lanka faced their problems, we again helped them out. Narendra Modi was the first prime minister in 17 years to visit Nepal on an official visit. No other country has done for its neighbours as much as India has." The friendship even extended to Pakistan, Swaraj said, though ties between the two neighbours have often been strained. "When Modi was being sworn in, Nawaz Sharif was in attendance. We were hoping the two countries could reverse the acrimony and be amicable to each other. When Modi was on his way back from Afghanistan, he even made an unscheduled stop in Lahore just to attend Sharif's birthday. Relations between the two countries had improved to such an extent that we weren't even thinking of protocol," the external affairs minister said. Talking about the point when things started going wrong, she denied it was the Pathankot attack. "Things were fine even after Pathankot. Pakistan assured us they would cooperate with the investigation and we took their word for it. Things actually worsened after Burhan Wani was assassinated in July. Sharif stood in Islamabad and condemned the action we took. That was when things went awry," she said. India is the only country, Swaraj said, which has good relations with countries on every side of every geopolitical divide. "We are friends with both Russia and the US. We are friends with Britain and EU though they are undergoing their Brexit separation; we are friends with Saudi Arabia and Yemen though Riyadh is attacking the latter. We are even friends with both Israel and Palestine," she said, talking about how many people claimed New Delhi's growing closeness with Israel is coming at the cost of the Palestinian cause. "Even when Mahmoud Abbas met me, he personally told me that Palestinians think India is a friend of theirs and will help ease relations with Israel," the external affairs said. However, she warned, India's friendliness shouldn't be mistaken for weakness. "Just because we want to have friendly relations with our neighbours, they shouldn't cross the line. India always wanted smooth relations on relations with China. But the alignment of boundaries involving India, China and Bhutan has to always be finalised in consultation with all three countries," she said, regarding the standoff India and China have been having at the tri-junction border at Doka La involving Bhutan as well. "China's actions in the tri-junction is therefore a matter of concern since we haven't had any dialogue in this regard," Swaraj told Parliament. She also attacked the Congress party and its vice-president Rahul Gandhi for visiting the Chinese ambassador. "I am saddened that the leader of Congress, in an attempt to know about the India-China standoff, didn't ask the government of India, but chose to meet the Chinese ambassador," Swaraj said. As six Congress members and one from TMC are to be elected to Rajya Sabha unopposed, all eyes are on Gujarat, which has three vacant seats but four contesting candidates. While the terms of nine Rajya Sabha members from Gujarat and West Bengal will be ending on 18 August, bypoll to the Upper House seat from Madhya Pradesh will also be held following the demise of Union environment minister Anil Dave. Here's a look at all the candidates set to contest for the ten seats during the 8 August elections. West Bengal CPM general secretary Sitaram Yechury was not renominated for a third consecutive term while Trinamool Congress (TMC) supremo Mamata Banerjee renominated the partys sitting Rajya Sabha MPs Derek OBrien, Sukhendu Sekhar Roy and Dola Sen for the elections. Apart from these three candidates, Shanta Chhetri and Manas Bhunia of the TMC are set to enter the Upper House unopposed including Pradip Bhattacharya of the Congress. The tenure of the outgoing members will end on 18 August. Derek O'Brien, 56 (TMC) The widely-known quiz master is the national secretary and chief national spokesperson of the TMC. He has been renominated to the Parliament from West Bengal. Education: Bachelor of Arts from Scottish Church College Assets: Rs25.4 crores Dola Sen, 50 (TMC) Sen, one of Mamata's closest confidantes, was the national president of TMC's labour arm Indian National Trinamool Trade Union Congress (INTTUC). Education: Bachelor of Science (Mathematics) Assets: Rs22.9 lakh Pradip Bhattacharya, 72 (INC) Bhattacharya is a veteran Congress leader. Between 1972-1977, he was the member of West Bengal Legislative Assembly.He has also served as Minister of State, Labour in West Bengal. He has been a member of Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha. Since 2011, he has been on the Committee on Urban Development. Since 2012, he has also a member of Committee on Commerce in the Parliament. Education: Master of Arts, Burdwan University, Bachelor of Arts (Hons) at SURI Vidyasagar College Assets: Rs3.1 crore Sukhendu Sekhar Roy, 68 (TMC) Roy was elected to the Rajya Sabha from West Bengal in 2011. Education: MA, LLB Assets: Rs1.6 crore Shanta Chhetri, 60 (TMC) The former Gorkha National Liberation Front (GNLF) leader will be the face of the hills in Parliament. A three-time GNLF legislator from Kurseong, Chhetri had unsuccessfully contested from the same constituency on a TMC ticket in 2016 Assembly polls. She lost the elections to Gorkha Janmukti Morcha (GJM). Education: Masters of Commerce from North Bengal University, Bachelor of Commerce from Siliguri College of Commerce, Pre-university Kurseong College Assets: Rs88 lakh Manas Bhunia, 65 (TMC) Bhunia has served as the Minister for Irrigation and Waterways and the Minister for Small & Micro Industries and Textile. He was lected from the Sabang constituency in the West Bengal 2011 Assembly election. A former state Congress chief who switched to the All India Trinamool Congress in 2016, was nominated as a TMC candidate for the upcoming Rajya Sabha polls by Banerjee. Bhunia, a six-time Congress MLA from Sabang of West Midnapore district had joined the TMC last September. Education: MBBS, NRS Medical College Assets: Rs5.5 crore Madhya Pradesh After the death of Union minister Dave, his seat in the Rajya Sabha fell vacant. By announcing emerging tribal leader Sampatiya Uikey as the party candidate, BJP has attempted to give representation to the tribal community in the Upper House. Sampatiya Uikey, 49 (BJP) Uikey will serve the remainder of Dave's term till June 2022. She is currently the district panchayat president in Mandla. She had contested the 2013 Assembly Elections but had failed to get a seat in the Rajya Sabha. Education: Class XII Assets: Rs3.14 crore Gujarat While the elections are crucial for the ruling BJP with its party chief Amit Shah contesting for a Rajya Sabha seat for the first time, veteran Congress leader Ahmed Patel who is looking for a nomination for the fifth time is facing a tough fight. Both Shah and Patel are credited with having crafted numerous election victories for their respective parties, in state as well as national elections. Amit Shah, 53 (BJP) The BJP president will make his debut in Parliament after he was nominated as the party's candidate to the Rajya Sabha from Gujarat. Shah is currently a legislator in the Gujarat Assembly. His victory will pave way for a bigger role for the BJP in the Centre. Education: Bachelor of Science (Second Year), Gujarat University Assets: Rs34.31 crore Smriti Irani, 41 (BJP) Irani is already a Rajya Sabha member from Gujarat, and has been re-nominated. She headed the HRD ministry before she was shifted to the Ministry of Textiles. Irani now also holds additional charge of the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting. Education: Bachelor of Commerce(Part I), School of Open Learning (Correspondence), University of Delhi Assets: Rs8.8 crore Balwantsinh Rajput, 55 (BJP) Rajput is one of the three legislators who left Congress in July to join the saffron camp. An MLA from Sidhpur, BJP fielded Rajput as a candidate against Congress' Ahmed Patel. Prior to his exit, he was the Congress chief whip in the Gujarat Assembly. In the 2017 Rajya Sabha polls, Rajput is the richest candidate. Education: Bachelor of Arts, Barkatullah University Assets: Rs 315 crore Ahmed Patel, 57 (Congress) Patel, who is Congress president Sonia Gandhi's political secretary, is credited for the partys wins in 2004 and 2009 and for helping build the alliance with other parties to form the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance government. Patel has been a Rajya Sabha MP from Bharuch since 1993. Losing in his home state would severely hurt his and the partys prospects in the Gujarat Assembly elections due later this year. Congress is confident of Patel's victory as it is counting on NCP and JD(U) support. Education: Bachelor of Science, South Gujarat University Assets: Rs6.50 crore New Delhi: A day before casting their votes in the vice-presidential election, NDA MPs will take part in a dummy voting exercise on Friday as the ruling alliance works to minimise the possibility of any vote going invalid. The NDA MPs will also be joined by the lawmakers from the AIADMK, the TRS and the YSRCP, three regional parties supporting the candidature of M Venkaiah Naidu, the BJP sources said. Naidu will also address them, seeking their votes, they said. The dummy exercise will be followed by a dinner and Prime Minister Narendra Modi is expected to join the MPs then. He will also speak to them, the sources said. During the presidential poll, 77 votes in total were declared invalid and 21 of them belonged to parliamentarians, hailing from various parties. Both Modi and Shah in their addresses to BJP members have emphasised on voting correctly to rule out any vote going invalid. Unlike the presidential election in which the electoral college also includes MLAs, only MPs of the two Houses can vote in the vice-presidential poll. Naidu, the NDA candidate, is all but certain to win the election in which the opposition parties have put up Gopalkrishna Gandhi as their nominee against the former BJP president and Union minister. The current NDA strength in the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha is 337 and 80 respectively. The AIADMK, the TRS and the YSRCP have together 50 and 17 MPs in the two respective Houses. The electoral college comprises 790 members and parties with 484 members have already pledged their support to Naidu, who is also expected to be backed by several nominated members. New Delhi: NDA vice-presidential candidate M Venkaiah Naidu has sought support from all parliamentarians, assuring them that he will uphold the spirit and principles of the Constitution and dignity of the office of the vice-president. In a letter to all MPs who constitute the electoral college on Tuesday, Naidu gave an account of his long years in public life. "I would like to assure that on being elected as the vice-president, it shall be my endeavour to defend and uphold the ideals that propelled the freedom struggle, the spirit and the principles of the Constitution of India, including justice, liberty, equality and fraternity and the cherished values of national unity and integration," Naidu said. Naidu said he was firm believer in the principle of cooperative federalism. He noted that the Rajya Sabha may be required to play an "even more important role" in the years ahead to build a new and modern India. He said there is responsibility of overcoming poverty, illiteracy, social and gender discrimination, corruption and debasement of politics. Naidu said that he was "fully conscious" of the role and responsibility of Parliament in furthering the cause of the nation. "With my long experience of legislative work, I am also conscious of the rights, responsibilities and privileges of our MPs, the law makers," he said. Naidu said that Parliament and all the successive governments since Independence have played their part in the nation taking major strides in different spheres but still there is lot to be done. "We today face the challenges posed by terrorism, climate change, economic and cultural globalisation and the opportunities and disruptions of technology," he noted. Naidu said that it would be his "endeavour to facilitate" the proper conduct of the Rajya Sabha so that all MPs can contribute their best to the making of a "new India". "I can assure you that I will uphold the dignity of office and protect the collective constitutional inheritance," he said. hidden Software major IBM on 3 August opened its first "Machine Learning (ML) Hub" in Bengaluru which would provide a physical space to organisations for hands-on training on machine learning. Through the 'ML Hubs', data professionals, business analysts and engineers could work with IBM's data science experts to understand and learn the technology to visualise, analyse and interpret data. "'Machine Learning' termed by an IBMer decades ago has evolved significantly. Today, it is the entry point to the cognitive era, enabling enterprises to drive critical insights. With India's focus on digitisation, it's an apt time for organisations to make this transition," said Gaurav Sharma, Vice President, IBM India Software Labs and Vice President, Growth IBM India & South Asia. IBM 'ML Hub' also provides a platform for like-minded enterprises to collaborate and transform their data science processes. The company has similar 'ML Hubs' in Toronto, San Jose, California, at IBM's Silicon Valley Lab, Beijing, and Boblingen, Germany. This news comes after IBM announced earlier that more than 40 global clients in industries as varied as financial services, healthcare and education have joined the IBM Watson for Cyber Security beta program. The program uses the Watson AI to provide security services to these companies. Clients include Sun Life Financial, SCANA, California Polytechnic State University and Avnet. With inputs from IANS PTI Indian companies could lose Rs 11 crore to data breaches this year, up 12.3 percent from last year, a report by tech giant IBM today said. A breach is described as an event where an individual's name and a medical/financial record is potentially put at risk - either in electronic or paper format. Interestingly, the average cost of a data breach globally is expected to decline by 10 percent this year to $3.62 million (Rs 23.35 crore) compared to last year. The study, conducted by Ponemon Institute, found that the average per capita cost of data breach increased from Rs 3,704 in 2016 to Rs 4,210 in 2017. Forty-one percent of the Indian companies said they experienced a data breach as a result of malicious or criminal attacks. Another 33 percent experienced a data breach as a result of system glitches, while 26 percent of data breaches involved employee or contractor negligence (ie human factor). "Services, financial, industrial and technology companies had a per capita cost well above the mean of Rs 4,210, while public sector, research and transportation companies had a per capita cost well below the mean," the study added. The study, in its sixth edition this year, examined the costs incurred by 39 Indian companies in 13 industry sectors. "The study clearly outlines the rapidly changing threat scenario through a significant rise in both number and sophistication of breaches," IBM India/South Asia Integrated Security Leader Kartik Shahani said. He added that securing data on the cloud is of top priority as cloud services have become the key for digital enterprise transformation. "Enterprises need to ensure that robust security practices are adopted, incident response plans are in place and regular security training given to all stakeholders of the company," he said. The study found the average number of breached records was around 33,167. Both indirect and direct costs related to data breaches have surged over the past year. Indirect costs, which refer to the amount of time, effort and other organisational resources spent to resolve a breach, increased from Rs 1,923 to Rs 2,212 per capita. Direct costs - expenses like purchasing a technology or hiring a consultant - rose from Rs 1,781 to Rs 1,998 per capita. tech2 News Staff Samsung is expected to release an 'Active' variant of the Samsung Galaxy S8 soon. While Samsung has yet to give out any official details about this handset, a post on Android Police has revealed plenty of images of a prototype handset with Galaxy S8 Active branding. The images and videos were first leaked on Reddit by a friend of a Samsung employee who later took down the post. Android Police managed to procure some of the images, shown below. The leaked Samsung Galaxy S8 Active shows the model number SM-G892A on the back of the device. The display of the prototype is reportedly a 5.8-inch unit, which is the same as the standard S8 variant; just that this one is flat and not curved. Unlike the Active models in the past, Samsung seems to have gone with on-screen navigation keys this time. According to the post, the smartphone houses a 4,000 mAh battery (that is bigger than the S8+) while the body of the device is made of poly-carbonate with the sides protected by metal inserts around the corners. All of this addition insulation and protection makes the Samsung Galaxy S8 Active 1.5x thicker than standard Samsung Galaxy S8. Samsung has ditched the re-programmable Active key as seen on earlier Active devices with a Bixby button (that should only open the Bixby Assistant). The phone is pre-loaded with Android Nougat 7.0 and also features the underwater camera mode that is not present on the standard Galaxy S8. The device as mentioned by the website is expected to get the same internal hardware specifications as Samsung Galaxy S8. Samsung Galaxy Active is expected to pack in a Qualcomm Snapdragon 835, 4 GB RAM, 64 GB of internal storage, 12 MP primary and 8 MP secondary camera on the front of the device. There were reports of Samsung bringing another small and rugged version of Samsung Galaxy S8. Samsung recently launched the two variants of its flagship smartphone, the standard Samsung Galaxy S8 and Samsung Galaxy S8+, which is also available in a special 6 GB RAM variant in India. hidden A group representing major technology companies has aligned itself against Qualcomm Inc in its legal dispute with Apple Inc by calling on regulators to reject Qualcomm's bid to ban the import of iPhones. A lobbying group that represents Alphabet Inc's Google, Amazon.com Inc, Microsoft Corp, and Facebook Inc filed comments with the U.S. International Trade Commission. They argued that barring Apple from importing foreign-assembled iPhones that use Intel Corp chips, as Qualcomm has requested, would cause "significant shocks to supply" for phones and would hurt consumers. Qualcomm declined to comment. Intel and Apple rival Samsung are members of the group, called the Computer & Communications Industry Association. Apple is not a member of the group. "If the ITC were to grant this exclusion order, it would help Qualcomm use its monopoly power for further leverage against Apple and allow them to drive up prices on consumer devices," Ed Black, the CEO of the group, said in a statement. Whats at stake here is certainly the availability of iPhones and other smartphones at better prices." Qualcomm supplies so-called modem chips to Apple, which help iPhones and iPads connect to cellular data networks. The two have been locked in a sprawling legal battle in which Apple has objected to Qualcomm's business model of requiring customers to sign patent license agreements before buying chips. In turn, Qualcomm has accused Apple of directing its contract manufacturers like Foxconn to withhold license payments in a bid to hurt Qualcomm. The conflict has taken a toll on Qualcomm's profit outlook. Earlier this month, Qualcomm sued Apple on separate allegations that Apple infringed six patents around making iPhones work better without draining the battery. Simultaneously, Qualcomm filed a complaint with the U.S. ITC seeking to ban iPhones that use chips "other than those supplied by Qualcomm affiliates." Apple began using Intel chips in the iPhone 7. IANS Instead of looking at how to increase market share, Motorola's emphasis is on tapping the consumer mindset in India, a top Motorola executive has said. "The Indian market is very competitive when it comes to smartphones, a company needs to understand what customers actually want. If you deliver what consumers want, the market share is then just numbers," Sudhin Mathur, Managing Director, Motorola Mobility India, told IANS here. With the competition among the top smartphone manufacturers shifting to the retail market, Motorola on Thursday opened six "Moto Hubs" in Delhi-NCR and Mumbai. The first Moto Hub stores were officially opened at Great India Place and Logix Mall in Noida, Shipra Mall in Indirapuram and Xperia Mall, Korum Mall and Viviana Mall in Mumbai. "Motorola re-started its journey in India four years ago and the market has moved from 15-20 million units a year to 100 million devices a year. Every year, the dynamics are changing. Today we have reached a stage where consumers need to experience the product," Mathur added. The company plans to open 50 more Moto Hubs by the end of this financial year. "With this strategy, our intention is to be present in more cities and only in top tier towns," Mathur told IANS. "We believe with the launch of this new retail channel Moto Hub, we are giving the customers an opportunity to get access to the complete Motorola portfolio, our technology and devices, in an environment that is more open," Mathur told reporters. When asked about what impact the Good and Services Tax (GST) has on Motorola India, Mathur said July was a historic month for the company. "For us, Diwali came earlier. Taxations don't decide purchasing trends. Consumers buy because they need a device. Their will be no difference of prices online and at Moto Hubs," the executive noted. Moto Hub stores will be a key destination for consumers to experience the latest Motorola technology and get a hands-on demo of the entire product portfolio. These stores will house devices that are available exclusively online and will also showcase the complete portfolio of Motorola devices. tech2 News Staff Online payments company PayPal has announced a partnership with Microsoft-owned Skype to enable peer-to-peer transactions via the platform. With the updated Skype mobile app, Skype users in around 22 countries will be able to send money to other Skype users. India is currently not in that list. The feature only allows you to send money to friends and family and is not yet meant for business payments. PayPal can leverage the Skype mobile app, which boasts of around 300 mn active users, to increase its reach. You will need the latest version of Skypes mobile app. While conversing with friends or family, you can go to Find on the top bar and select the Send Money feature, type in the amount followed by confirming the payment and then sending it. In terms of charges levied, the rates are similar to PayPals peer-to-peer payments. If you are using PayPal balance or debit card in the US, there are no charges. For credit cards, the fee charged is 3.4 percent of the transaction amount in addition to a fee of $0.30. The feature will roll out today to Skype users on iOS and Android. The entire list of countries which will be supporting this feature on the updated version of the Skype mobile app is thus: the US, the UK, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Cyprus, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Portugal, San Marino, Slovakia, Slovenia and Spain. Recently, PayPal announced that it would be partnering with Apple to make its payment system available on iOS for transactions made on the App Store, iTunes Store and Apple Music. The roll-out initially began with Canada and Mexico and eventually went live to the rest of the countries including Spain, Italy, Israel, France, the UK, Australia, and Germany. Once the feature is activated, all in-app purchases and subscriptions can be paid through PayPal with your Apple account, no matter what device youre using . It will be added as a direct payment option on iOS, which was not available previously. hidden Qatar said on 18 July, 2017 that a U.S. media report had shown that the United Arab Emirates was involved in an alleged hack of Qatar's state news agency in late May that helped spark a diplomatic crisis in the Gulf. The UAE said the Washington Post report was untrue, and that four Arab powers were discussing imposing new sanctions on Qatar. Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain and Egypt all cut off diplomatic and transport ties with Qatar on June 5, accusing it of financing Islamist militant groups and allying with their regional adversary Iran - allegations Qatar denies. The move came two weeks after Qatar's news agency, QNA, carried a story quoting Qatar's emir, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani, as praising Gaza's ruling Islamist Hamas movement and calling Iran an "Islamic power". Qatar said its emir had never given the speech, and that the story had been planted electronically, but its allies were outraged, and one of the most serious feuds in years between Western-aligned Gulf states began. "The information published in the Washington Post on 16 July 2017, which revealed the involvement of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and senior Emirati officials in the hacking of Qatar News Agency, unequivocally proves that this hacking crime took place," Qatar's government said in a statement on 18 July, 2017 . U.S. officials have said that experts from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) helping Qatar investigate the incident are convinced QNA was hacked, but that identifying the culprit will take time. In the meantime, Qatar's neighbors have banned its aircraft from their airspace, among other measures, and the wealthy natural gas producer has had to find alternative sources for the food imports on which it relies. Diplomatic efforts by Washington and Kuwait to broker a resolution have yielded little. Hacks "Discussed in May" The Washington Post cited unidentified U.S. intelligence officials as saying they had learned last week of newly analyzed information showing that top UAE officials had discussed the planned hacks on May 23, the day before they occurred. If confirmed, a hack of QNA would be a striking example of a cyber attack shaping global politics. The officials were quoted as saying it was unclear if the UAE had hacked the sites itself or paid for them to be hacked. Fellow Gulf states had already rejected Qatar's explanation and said Sheikh Tamim's reported remarks reflected deliberate ambiguities in Qatar's policies that have undermined stability in the region. "The Washington Post story today that we actually hacked the Qataris is also not true," UAE Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Anwar Gargash told the Chatham House think-tank in London. He said the four Arab powers were in the process of discussing additional sanctions on Qatar but did not elaborate, saying only that "there will be some tightening of the screws". Gargash said the UAE would not ask foreign companies to choose between doing business with it or Qatar, but suggested international monitoring of Qatar was needed. Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry told his Kuwaiti counterpart that the sanctions were being maintained "in light of what the quartet states see as Qatar's stalling and procrastination, and lack of concern for the concerns of the four states". The demands include Qatar curtailing its support for the Muslim Brotherhood, shutting down the pan-Arab satellite broadcaster Al Jazeera, closing a Turkish military base and downgrading relations with Iran. Qatar has for years parlayed its enormous gas wealth and Al Jazeera's reach into broad influence in the region, and in 2011 supported "Arab Spring" revolts across the Middle East. But its Gulf Arab neighbors and Egypt have long been irked by its support for anti-establishment movements and for the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood that briefly won power in Egypt, which they regard as a political enemy. Reuters IANS The Computer and Communications Industry Association, which represents several tech companies, lodged a formal letter with the US International Trade Commission (ITC) last week, saying Qualcomm's proposed import ban on foreign-assembled iPhones using Intel chips would cause "significant shocks to supply" for the wider smartphone market, Apple Insider reported on 24 July, 2017. It was followed by Intel's standalone declaration, supporting Apple. The declaration asserted that Qualcomm maintained a monopoly over the chip market through "anticompetitive practices". Apple continues to reassert claims it made in its lawsuit against Qualcomm, saying "the chipmaker supplies Apple with a single connectivity component, but for years have been demanding a percentage of the total cost of our products - effectively taxing Apple's innovation." The global chip maker had filed a new patent infringement lawsuit against Apple a few months back and now expects 'out of court' settlement with the Cupertino-based iPhone maker. Qualcomm had lodged a complaint with ITC requesting an import and domestic sales ban on iPhone and iPad models produced outside of the US. More specifically, the chipmaker seeks an exclusion order that applies only to handsets that implement wireless modems made by Intel. Apple first began sourcing Intel modems with the iPhone 7 last year. Earlier this year, Qualcomm filed a complaint with the ITC, accusing Apple's iPhones and iPads of infringing six of its mobile patents. Qualcomm said all iPhones and iPads that contain competing mobile communications chips should be barred from the country. Apple responded to this, saying that the company had tried to negotiate before suing and that Qualcomm is abusing its position. Saying that its third quarter results were negatively impacted by Apple's contract manufacturers not paying royalties, chip giant Qualcomm reported its revenue declined 11 percent over the previous year. tech2 News Staff Reliance Communication (RCom) has announced a new offer for USB dongle users. The plan includes a bundle offer where one can get an RCom 4G SIM card with 1 GB Data per day, in addition to a Wi-Pod Dongle. The company has priced this bundle offer for Rs 5,199 for the first year. RCom is trying to keep up with Reliance Jio and its exchange offer for JioFi. The RCom Wi-Pod Dongle is manufactured by Chinese Telecom equipment maker ZTE and looks similar to Jio's JioFi dongle. The device has dimensions of 95 x 57 x 16 mm and weighs approximately 80 grams. It is powered by Qualcomm MDM9307 processor with support for microSD cards with capacity up to 32 GB. The device also comes with a micro-USB port and a SIM card slot. It has a 2300 mAh battery which can power the device for 5-8 hr and it can support up to 31 devices at any given time. Wi-Pod is priced at Rs 3,200 but RCom has made it free as part of the bundle pack with 1-year validity. The SIM card available as part of the bundle also comes with 1-year validity. RCom is also offering EMI options for the bundle pack with the most affordable option starting from Rs 500. Interested buyers can choose from a wide range of options in terms of both the length of time for the EMI as well as different offers from various banks. Disclaimer: Reliance Industries Ltd. is the sole beneficiary of Independent Media Trust which controls Network18 Media & Investments Ltd. Anirudh Regidi Were a very possessive people when it comes to our smartphones and myriad gadgets. A phone is an integral part of our lives. Its an extension of our persona. Even at a subliminal level, our choice of phone, the layout of the home screen, choice of case are a representation of us. Theres a community around these devices as well; you know an Apple guy or an Android guy when you see one. Companies like Xiaomi and OnePlus are making their living off these communities and theyre an integral part of mobile culture. Few companies have transcended that gulf that separates your run-of-the-mill device maker to a brand that inspires emotion. Apple, Nokia and BlackBerry are among the few brands that have done so. BlackBerry and Nokia, yesteryears heroes, lost their communities when they failed to innovate in time to meet the challenge presented to them by the coming of the iPhone and the rise of Android. Both brands still inspire emotion in a lot of people, but those people will now be proper adults, with some nearing their sixties. Roots are important Nokia is attempting to rebuild itself by heading back to its roots. For me, the defining factors of a Nokia phone were its ruggedness and dependability. I was always confident in my phone, that it would last me a week on a single charge and that it wouldnt fall apart at the slightest touch, that I could type without looking at the keyboard. The Nokias of today seem the same. For users of the original BlackBerry devices, Im sure the story was very similar. After all, it was in the early 2000s that the company hit its peak, a time before the iPhone took over the world and when Android was still in its infancy. Speak to a BlackBerry user about their previous devices and theyll go all nostalgic about emails that came the instant they were sent (push mail), a red connectivity light that never died, BlackBerry Messenger and of course, that fantastic keyboard. The thing is, BlackBerry had a laser focus when it was building its devices in 2010. As with Nokia, buying a BlackBerry device assured you of three things: Unmatched email access, an unmatched messaging experience and unmatched security. These are not the hallmarks of a BlackBerry device today. Nokia is making a comeback precisely because the brand, at its core, hasnt changed. The devices weve seen from the company arent cheap knock-offs with Nokia branding, theyre well-built devices infused with the companys original ethos. What is BlackBerry? Coming back to BlackBerry, the original three defining characteristics of the brand arent present in any of the devices today. While most Blackberry addicts (CrackBerries?) will wax lyrical on the benefits of BBM, the QWERTY keyboard and the Hub, its more important to remember that these are just features that were appropriate for their time. BBM is no longer unique nor the gold standard for messaging apps. Apples Messages, WhatsApp, Telegram, Signal and a hundred other apps perform the same function today. Yes, BlackBerrys enterprise clients may beg to differ, but thats a niche audience with deep pockets and a very specific set of requirements. The Hub was useful in 2010, but with no developer interest or proper app integration, its current avatar is worse than Androids Notification Centre. You cant respond in-line, for example. The same goes for email and typing. The former is now ubiquitous and push mail is normal, the latter was introduced a time when touchscreen keyboards werent good enough. Im not saying that a physical keyboard is bad, by the way, all Im saying is that current software keyboards are so good, that few will miss a physical keyboard. Most of those who do miss it will likely be grandparents by now. The BlackBerry experience was never about the keyboard Start polishing your pitchforks if you like, but Ill stick my neck out and say that the BlackBerry experience was never about the keyboard, or the hub, or BBM, or any other feature of the pre-QNX phones. Full disclosure: Yours truly has never owned an old a pre-QNX BlackBerry, but has spent his childhood with people whove sworn by BlackBerry and would build a shrine to the company if they could. I believe that the BlackBerry experience was defined by the ease with which we could perform certain tasks. Intelligent design. In the early 2000s, no other device in the market offered better email, messaging, typing or connectivity capabilities. The entire device was built around enabling this experience. The keyboard, Hub and BBM were simply a by-product of this aim. Somewhere down the road, BlackBerry forgot what it was about, the guiding principles of the company, if you will. In 2017, BlackBerry is simply offering an Android phone with a physical keyboard. The device hasnt revolutionised the way we work; it simply exists in name. Theres nothing innovative or revolutionary about the device. The latest KEYone is not going to trigger nostalgia in anyone. Sure, the new phones have a hub, BBM and a keyboard, but these are no longer the best way to interact with your phone. The keyboard, for example, is touch-sensitive, which is interesting, but the feature isnt well integrated and Id describe the experience as janky at best. Why cant you move the cursor with the keyboard, say? Isnt a BlackBerry device all about elevating the typing experience? On Android, Gmail is a better email client, WhatsApp is arguably a better messaging service (though not necessarily a more secure one) and the Android Notification Centre is already a better hub. Why would anyone want a BlackBerry smartphone in 2017? Wheres the innovation, that drive to create something special? How do these Android-based BlackBerrys make you more productive? One can understand BlackBerrys predicament, but it was its own complacency that landed it where it did. The world has changed and the company was too slow to innovate. Even though BlackBerry did make a valiant effort to return to relevance with BB10, an OS without apps, no matter how good, is doomed to fail. Despite that, I still think that BlackBerry should have persisted, it was the company's last passion project, after all. BlackBerry should just stop making devices until it can make up its mind to try harder. hidden Music streaming company Spotify is close to agreeing to a new licensing pact with Warner Music Inc, the last big music royalty deal it needs before pushing ahead with a US stock market listing, four sources familiar with the situation said. The parties are positive a deal could be signed by September as major issues such as granting loss-making Spotify a more favorable revenue split in return for making some new albums accessible only to its paying subscribers for a defined period have already been agreed, the sources said. However, the precise revenue split and the size of a potential guaranteed upfront payment to the label, home to artists including Ed Sheeran and Muse, have yet to be agreed, said two of the sources. "The negotiations are at a crossroads," said one of the sources, asking not to be named because the talks are private, adding discussions were taking place daily. "There are still a number of key points that remain to be agreed. If we manage to come to terms on these points, then it could lead to a very quick transaction. If not, any deal would remain at bay." Others saw a deal being done by late summer."Given the way talks are progressing, I would be surprised if we don't have a deal in September," said another source on the other side of the table. Spotify Takes Wing Sweden's Spotify has grown in less than a decade into the world's most popular streaming music service, but its financial sustainability hinges on its ability to strike music licensing contracts at less onerous royalty rates. Basic features of Spotify are free and supported by advertising while paying subscribers enjoy unlimited listening and other premium features. It faces mounting competition from far bigger internet players such as Apple and Amazon, which can afford to subsidize their push into music by drawing on money they make in other businesses. The streaming firm, which was recently valued at $13 billion, is pushing for a 50-50 revenue split but Warner Music is demanding it retains at least 52 percent of the royalties, in line with the other labels, according to the sources. Under the terms of their current agreement, Spotify pays 55 percent of royalties to Warner. Warner is also pushing to receive a guaranteed upfront payment regardless of subscription growth, said one of the sources. The label, owned by billionaire investor Len Blavatnik's Access Industries, is also asking for protection against the potential rise of unsigned artists who could over time reduce its revenue share. This follows recent press reports that Spotify was filling its playlists with anonymous or little-known artists to reduce the influence of the majors, said one of the sources. Warner would be ready to reduce its royalties rate from 55 percent to 52 percent provided these issues were resolved, said the same person. Spotify declined to comment. Other Deals Earlier this year, the Swedish company struck a licensing deal with Vivendi's Universal Music Group to pay the world's largest label a lower royalty rate. This was recently followed by a similar agreement with Sony Music. Spotify didn't disclose the terms of the deals but it was widely reported that the streaming firm had managed to lower the royalty rate from about 57 percent to 52 percent, based on growing volumes of paying listeners. In return, the streaming service agreed to restrict new albums to paying subscribers for a couple of weeks before offering access to free users. As of June, Spotify had 53 million paying users or 40 percent of streaming music subscribers worldwide, according to MIDiA Research. It has more than 140 million active users, including free listeners. By comparison, Apple had 19 percent, or 28.2 million music subscribers, in June, up from 20 million in December, while Amazon held 12 percent, or 16 million subscribers, MIDiA estimated. Heading for the Market One of the sources said Spotify, which hired Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley to advise it on a stock market listing, is still aiming to go public via a direct listing toward the end of this year or the beginning of the next. Spotify recorded revenues of 2.9 billion euros for 2016, up 51 percent from 2015, according to company filings in Luxembourg in June. Operating losses grew 48 percent to 349.4 million euros, but including financing costs, its losses before tax leapt 133 percent to 539 million euros. Last year, Universal held a 28.9 percent share of global music label revenue, Sony Music generated 22.4 percent and Warner 17.4 percent. Independent labels made up the remaining 31.3 percent, according to MIDiA Research. The company has faced boycotts from some top music artists who have complained its free services undercut the value of their work but the major label licensing deals have gone some way toward easing these tensions, according to analysts. Reuters Reuters Cyber security company Symantec Corp has agreed to sell its business that helps verify the identity of websites to buyout firm Thoma Bravo LLC, people familiar with the matter said on Wednesday, a move that extricates it from a feud with Alphabet Inc's Google . Thoma Bravo is planning to merge its own Web certification company called DigiCert with the Symantec unit it will acquire, the sources said, asking not to be identified ahead of an official announcement expected later on Wednesday. Symantec stands to receive close to $1 billion in an upfront cash payment as a result of the deal, and will retain a minority stake in the new company that is merged with DigiCert, the sources added. Thoma Bravo and Symantec declined to comment. DigiCert did not immediately return a request for comment. The Symantec unit has become a point of contention with Google's Chrome and other Web browser owners, which have criticized the way Symantec validates its Web certificates. Symantec and DigiCert both issue these Web certificates which help verify the identity of websites so that they can be trusted by those browsing the Internet. Google demanded major changes to the division's underlying technology and business practices in order for its browser, Chrome, to continue respecting Symantec certificates, and the two sides have been negotiating since then. Google did not respond to a request for comment on Wednesday. Symantec acquired most of its Web certification business in 2010, when it paid $1.28 billion to buy Verisign Inc's security business. Thoma Bravo bought a majority stake in DigiCert in 2015 for an undisclosed sum. The sale comes more than a year after Symantec parted with its data storage business Veritas in a $7.4 billion deal with private equity firm Carlyle Group LP. Under Chief Executive Officer Greg Clark, Mountain View, California-based Symantec has been one of the few cyber security companies to pursue large deals. Symantec completed its $2.3 billion acquisition of LifeLock Inc in February, a move that bolstered its consumer security business. That followed the purchase of Blue Coat Inc for $4.65 billion last year, which expanded its product line for large corporations. PTI Seeking a follow-up of open house discussion on contentious issue of call connect charges, telecom operators body COAI has alleged that the regulator TRAI is "acting in undue haste" to conclude review of the matter and to meet the procedural requirements. In a communication to the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India, COAI has alleged that TRAI is "acting in undue haste to conclude the review of IUC (interconnection usage charges)". Telecom operators levy interconnection charge (IUC) on incoming calls from the network of other operator. These charges are passed on to mobile subscribers by service providers. TRAI fixes IUC which has several components. Charges levied for interconnecting mobile calls dominate the IUC issue. A telecom operator charges 14 paise per minute for every incoming mobile calls that it receives from other operators network. Incumbent operators -- Bharti Airtel, Vodafone and Idea Cellular -- on Tuesday sought doubling of mobile termination charge (MTC), a part of IUC, saying that terminating incoming calls on their networks costs 30-35 paise per minute. When contacted, Cellular Operators Association of India Director General Rajan S Mathews said the industry body has asked the regulator to share the model that it used in last consultation process and the one that it plans to use for upcoming review of IUC. In the letter, COAI had requested TRAI to postpone the open house discussion on review of IUC scheduled for July 20,2017 to a date which is at least four weeks after the sharing of cost models. "The letter was written before TRAIs workshop (held on July 18). We were expecting TRAI to share the model that it plans to use to determine IUC but the regulator said that it will finalise model based on all the discussions. We told TRAI that once it takes the decision then share the model with stakeholders so that we can point out shortcoming if any," Mathews said. He said that last time the regulator had missed to include some of elements in IUC like spectrum cost which was added later. Mathews said that COAI will request TRAI to hold another round of discussion after it shares cost model for IUC that it firms up for ongoing review. The COAI in the letter said "it seems that the process is being followed mechanically to comply to the procedural requirements for framing the regulation under the TRAI Act, rather than actually sharing the models with the stakeholders followed by detailed deliberations." Mathews said COAI wants TRAI to complete the review process after listening about all the aspects of IUC. Any change in IUC has a direct impact on mobile call rates as the charge is taken into account while setting telecom tariffs. Mathews, however, said "Some people have wrongly carried the perception that MTC can drive up retail tariffs for the consumer. This is wrong, as the retail tariffs are driven by market dynamics and competition and MTC can be one of the many components in retails prices. The industry body which represents all the leading telecom operators said that Aircel and Reliance Jio have divergent view on the subject and will represent individually before the regulator. Disclaimer: Reliance Jio is owned by Reliance Industries, who also own Network18, the publisher of Firstpost and Tech2. hidden Thai police have seized nearly $21 million worth of assets, from cars to cryptocurrency, belonging to the late founder of dark web marketplace AlphaBay, who died in a Bangkok jail this month, they said on 24 July, 2017. Alexandre Cazes, a 25-year-old Canadian citizen, was arrested in Thailand on July 5 at the request of the United States. Thai police on 24 July, 2017 confirmed he was the administrator of AlphaBay, an online site devoted to the sale of illicit goods, ranging from computer hacking tools to drugs and weapons. AlphaBay was widely considered the biggest online black market for drugs, estimated to host daily transactions totaling hundreds of thousands of dollars. Cazes was found dead in his cell at the Narcotics Suppression Bureau in Bangkok on July 12 before he was due to be extradited to the United States, deputy national police chief Chalermkiat Sriworakan said. "We have seized over 700 million baht worth of assets, cars, and cryptocurrency," Chalermkiat told Reuters. The sum is equivalent to $21 million. Cazes faced charges related to narcotics distribution, identity theft, money laundering and other crimes. It was unclear if Cazes had been provided a lawyer or if police had appointed one for him, as is sometimes the case in Thailand. His Thai wife, Sunisa Cazes, also faces a money laundering charge. She is in custody and Reuters was unable to reach her for comment. Cazes, referred to as "DeSnake" by some in the online community, operated chiefly from Thailand, where media said he owned several properties and had connections in many countries. His arrest followed a police operation called Bayonet, which involved authorities in six countries including the FBI, the Dutch National Police and the Royal Thai Police. AlphaBay was "the largest dark net marketplace in history", U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions said last week, when he announced its shutdown by the U.S. Justice Department. Reuters The Rs 30,000 smartphone segment is an interesting one indeed. Popularly known as the budget-flagship segment, this price bracket sees phones that offer a compelling package of features that sets them apart from the run-of-the-mill smartphones in the market. The Samsung Galaxy A5 falls in this very segment and brings with it a nice assortment of features that help it stand apart. But is that enough? Let's find out. Build and design: 7.5/10 I quite like the build of this phone. It has a metal frame and is covered by 2.5D glass on the front and back. The back is a bit of a sore point because it's a fingerprint magnet, and also because it doesn't seem very scratch resistant. I say this because the review unit we received was heavily scratched on the back, which doesn't lend me much confidence in its ability to survive the hardships of day-to-day use. Scratch-able back aside, the phone feels heavy and sturdy and the front glass was pristine. Two volume buttons are present on the left side and the power button is on the right. At the bottom you will find the USB-C port and a 3.5 mm headphone jack. Strangely enough, the single speaker is present on the right side of the device, above the power button. It's an odd placement and we'll talk about that later in the performance section. A home button with an in-built fingerprint sensor is at the bottom of the front face. Backlit capacitive buttons are present on either side of the home button. I like the fact that the glass curves rather seamlessly into the frame, and I must admit, I like the phone's design. It's understated in black and looking at the phone, you know it's worth the asking price, at least in terms of build quality. It doesn't feel cheap and it's well-finished. Features: 8.5/10 The actual hardware powering the phone is a bit underwhelming. You get an Exynos 7880 octa-core processor which is clocked at 1.9 GHz. This is backed by 3 GB of RAM. Internal storage is only 32 GB, but at least it can be expanded by up to 256 GB via a microSD card. The problem here, of course, is that the similarly priced OnePlus 3T offers a Snapdragon 821, 6 GB of RAM and 64 GB of storage at the same price. The A5 offers a 5.2-inch Amoled display with a Full HD resolution (1920x1080). The front and rear cameras are 16 MP f/1.9 units. You get the expected assortment of connectivity options including 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.2, GPS, etc. While you do get a USB-C port, it's a USB 2.0 port, so transfer speeds are limited. A 3,000 mAh battery provides the juice. As mentioned earlier, these specs are underwhelming. However, the speciality of the A5 is the fact that it fully supports Samsung Pay including MST and that it's IP68 water and dust resistant. These are some pretty handy features to have on a smartphone, especially at this price. Display: 7.5/10 There's really not much to say about the display. It's a 5.2-inch Full HD Amoled display that's almost exactly like every other Amoled display that Samsung makes. Colours aren't that great, but they're not that bad either. Brightness is good, but it's best to adjust it manually. Indoors, the display just seems too dull. I had to keep adjusting it manually for best effect. It's bright enough to use in bright sunlight, however. The pixel density is over 400 so everything is quite sharp as well. Since it's an Amoled display, Samsung supports an always-on mode, which is nice to have. Software: 7/10 It's disappointing that Samsung didn't include Android 7.0 Nougat support for the phone. It comes with Android 6.0 and a great deal of Samsung customisation. As a Samsung veteran, you'll not find the customisations to be anything new. You get the usual rounded squares for icons, a detailed control panel and a handful of customisation options. All these are normal for Samsung. The feature that stands out is Samsung Pay integration. Put simply, if you have an account with a supported bank, you can use Samsung Pay for any kind of card payment in the wild. This includes payments via magnetic strip- and NFC-based card readers. The best part is that the Samsung Pay card is persistent on the home screen, lock screen and within some apps. It's always at the bottom of the screen with a little tab sticking out. Whenever you want to pay, you simply pop out your phone, swipe up from the bottom to pull up a card you want to use and then authenticate the transaction with your fingerprint. Given that the phone has a few redeeming features, I'd assume that one of the primary reasons you'd pick up this phone is for Samsung Pay support. Since it's so well-integrated, you won't have any complaints with the feature. There is an assortment of Samsung bloatware, but it's easy to ignore all of it. Performance: 7.5/10 Performance is where the Samsung Galaxy A5 falls far short of expectations. The OnePlus 3T set very high expectations as far as performance figures are concerned in this price range and is easily 2-3 times as powerful as the A5. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that the A5's performance was simply acceptable and nothing more. The phone stutters regularly, especially when using heavy apps, and the moments when everything felt smooth and functional were very few. I expected a fluid experience, and didn't get one. The Exynos 7880 chipset that powers the phone isn't a very powerful one, but it should have been sufficient to make the device seem smooth. To add insult to injury, a Rs 12,000 Xiaomi Redmi Note 4 handily beat the A5 in a number of benchmarks, that's how bad the performance is. The speaker is another sore point here. While the odd positioning of the speaker on the right side of the device is not such a big deal, the tinny audio it manages to churn it out is downright disappointing. I could barely make out the audio even in a quiet room. Samsung should have had the sense to use a more powerful speaker. Samsung Pay worked perfectly. It was one of the few highlights of the phone. Payment was smooth and easy and there were never any hiccups in my experience. The IP68 rating means that the phone is water and dust resistant. I tested the water resistance by leaving the phone under a running tap and also in a bucket of water. Other than a notification that there was water in the charing port, the phone ran exactly as it should have. There was no water damage at all. Performance in games was alright. Games were playable and the phone didn't get too hot in use. Camera 7.5/10 The 16 MP front and rear cameras on this phone are actually quite nice. They captured some very nice colours and detail in good lighting. There are a number of manual camera settings in the camera app, but I found that the camera was good enough that I didn't really need to mess with the settings. The selfie camera also managed to take detailed and sharp selfies as sharp as can be expected from the puny sensor on a smartphone. The camera response was also quite fast. Low light performance wasn't too great, but at this price, few cameras can offer more, so I'm not complaining. If you want a better camera though, the Huawei Honor 8 is a better bet. For better selfies, the Vivo V5 Plus is a better option. If you don't care that much, the A5's camera is not bad at all. Battery life: 8.5/10 At almost 13 hours in our standardised testing, the battery life was quite impressive. Despite being a 3,000 mAh unit, Samsung's power management solution appears to be working wonders as far as battery life is concerned. The phone routinely lasted me a full work day, which includes dozens of calls, hundreds of messages and emails and at least a couple of hours spent listening to music and browsing the web. Battery life is impressive. Verdict and price in India I'm in two minds about the Samsung Galaxy A5. On the one hand, Samsung Pay and IP68 certification are really nice. On the other hand, the OnePlus 3T offers dramatically more performance for the same price. Even when it comes to cameras, the Vivo V5 Plus offers a better selfie camera and the Huawei Honor 8 offers a better rear camera. The A5 is not a bad phone, but it's not the best by any means. It's well-built, but not exceptionally so. It has a good camera, but it's definitely not the best option around. It's also limited to Android 6.0 for now. In the end, I think this phone lives or dies by Samsung Pay. If you want Samsung Pay, this is the phone for you. If not, there are far better alternatives to be had. Find latest and upcoming tech gadgets online on Tech2 Gadgets. Get technology news, gadgets reviews & ratings. Popular gadgets including laptop, tablet and mobile specifications, features, prices, comparison. Beijing: China's government is responsible for the "enforced disappearance" of late Nobel laureate Liu Xiaobo's widow, her US-based lawyer has said in a formal complaint filed to the United Nations. Beijing faced a global backlash for its treatment of Liu Xiaobo when he died of liver cancer last month, making him the first Nobel Peace Prize laureate to die in custody since German pacifist Carl von Ossietzky in 1938, who had been held by the Nazis. His widow, poet Liu Xia, 56, was followed around the clock by security officials, and has not been in touch with anyone since about a day before her husband's death, her lawyer, Jared Genser, said in a statement to the UN Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances. Liu Xia has been "held incommunicado in an unknown location by Chinese government authorities" since 15 July, the day of her husband's funeral, the lawyer's statement read on Wednesday. "I demand that Chinese authorities immediately provide proof that Liu Xia is alive and allow her unhindered access to her family, friends, counsel, and the international community," said Genser in a separate statement emailed to AFP. He said international law defined "enforced disappearances" as situations where government officials are involved in depriving a person of her freedom against her will and refuse to acknowledge that deprivation or conceal the disappeared person's fate - stating that all such conditions had been met in Liu Xia's case. The UN working group did not acknowledge to AFP receipt of Genser's complaint but said that generally speaking, its process of issuing an "opinion" on the matter was a lengthy one that could take years. Beijing would be free to dismiss that non-binding outcome. The US, the European Union and the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights have called on Beijing to free Liu Xia, who had been under house arrest since her husband won the Nobel prize seven years ago - despite having never been charged with a crime. Chinese authorities have said she is a free citizen who was merely too grief-stricken by her husband's death to be in touch with any friends or counsel. A Chinese government spokesman Zhang Qingyang declined to disclose Liu Xia's whereabouts on 15 July, telling the media only that it was "best for her not to receive too much outside interference during this period". "The relevant departments will protect Liu Xia's legal rights according to law," he added. Foreign journalists who have tried to visit the couple's Beijing home have been rebuffed and physically harassed. Seven people are currently detained by Chinese police for commemorating Liu Xiaobo, China Human Rights Defenders said on Wednesday. Authorities released photographs and a video of Liu Xia at her husband's funeral and also at a sea burial near the northeastern coastal city of Dalian. Liu Xiaobo was a veteran of the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests who was jailed in 2008 after co-writing a petition calling for democratic reform and sentenced to 11 years in prison for "subversion" a year later. Washington: Christopher Wray was sworn in by Attorney-General Jeff Sessions as the new FBI director, with the latter lauding Wray's "spirit" and "strength of character." A former US Assistant Attorney for the Criminal Division, Wray replaces James Comey, who was abruptly fired by President Donald Trump amid a probe into the Trump campaign's alleged collusion with Russia to influence the last year's presidential election. Wray, 50, who was confirmed by the US Senate through an overwhelming majority of 92-5 votes on the Senate floor, termed it "the honour of a lifetime" to serve as the director. "It is the honour of a lifetime to serve as director. I long ago grew to know and admire the FBI from my earliest days as a line prosecutor to my years as assistant attorney general," Wray said in a statement after he was sworn in by the US attorney-general Jeff Sessions. "I am excited, humbled, and grateful, therefore, to have this chance to work side-by-side again with these fine professionals for the good of the country and the cause of justice," Wray said. In a statement, Sessions praised Wray's "spirit" and "strength of character," saying: "I am confident that the FBI, the premier investigative agency in the world, is in great hands with Director Chris Wray at the helm." "I congratulate him for being overwhelmingly confirmed to that post and look forward to working with him every day to keep America safe," he said. As a former federal prosecutor and head of the Department of Justice's Criminal Division, Wray has successfully prosecuted terrorists, drug kingpins, and white-collar criminals, Sessions said. FBI directors are approved by the Senate to serve for 10 years, but the president has unilateral authority to fire them at any time. On Tuesday, the US Senate confirmed Christopher Wray as the new FBI director. Fifty-year-old Wray was confirmed with overwhelming bipartisan support from the Senate, and replaces James Comey, who was fired by President Donald Trump in May this year. However, if Trump hoped that he would replace Comey with a stooge, he's sorely mistaken. In fact, Wray has contradicted the president on several topics since he was announced as the FBI nominee. He reportedly told the Senate he would resign if Trump asked him to do anything illegal and that he would consider any efforts to stop the Russia probe headed by special counsel Robert Mueller as "unacceptable". Trump won't like the sound of that. After all, Mueller's all-star legal team is not only probing the Trump campaign's alleged links to Russia, they have also reportedly expanded the investigation into the president's finances. Russia's meddling Trump has sought to play down the Russia probe at every turn, consistently referring to it as "fake news" and stating that special counsel Robert Meuller was on a witch hunt. Trump has tweeted: Former Homeland Security Advisor Jeh Johnson is latest top intelligence official to state there was no grand scheme between Trump & Russia. Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 22, 2017 You are witnessing the single greatest WITCH HUNT in American political history - led by some very bad and conflicted people! #MAGA Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 15, 2017 During his confirmation hearing on 12 July, Wray, a former justice department official, had testified that he did not consider the Russia story as fake news, and didn't think Mueller was on a witch hunt. Sen. Graham: Do you consider this endeavor a witch hunt? Wray: I do not consider director Mueller to be on a witch hunt. pic.twitter.com/ZOIXWAhQdy CBS News (@CBSNews) July 12, 2017 Wray, while refraining from commenting on the email communication between Donald Trump Jr and Russian sources who wanted to share information about Hillary Clinton, stated that any threat or effort by any other nation or non-state actors was the type of thing the FBI would want to know. "I think Russia is a foreign nation that we have to deal with very warily," he stated. Loyalty pledges James Comey, during his testimony to the US Senate, recalled Trump telling him, "I need loyalty. I expect loyalty." Comey stated that he was concerned that Trump was attempting to create "some sort of patronage relationship" which greatly concerned him, as the FBI had traditionally been independent from the White House. While Trump denied demanding such an oath of loyalty from Comey, the US president added that there was nothing wrong if he had in fact, demanded such a pledge. Wray, subtly rebuking the president during his confirmation hearing, said, "The role of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the FBI director needs to be one that is independent of partisan politics. I believe to my core that there is only one right way to do this job, and that is with strict independence, by the book, playing it straight, faithful to our Constitution, faithful to our laws, faithful to the best practices of the institution." He added that no one asked him for any type of oath of loyalty during his confirmation process and that he wasn't about to offer any either. He said his loyalty was to the US Constitution and the rule of law. James Comey: Not a nut job In May, Trump reportedly told Russian officials, including Ambassador Sergey Kislyak, during an Oval Office meeting that firing Comey eased the pressure on him and that the former FBI director was a real "nut job" and was crazy. Wray has categorically stated that he does not think Comey was a nut job. Wray and Comey have history together. Both served under President George W Bush: Wray as the head of the justice department's criminal division and Comey as deputy attorney-general. Trump should have remembered that old saying: Be careful what you wish for. You may get it. With inputs from agencies Doha: Qatar, facing a Saudi-led boycott, has approved a draft law to grant residency cards to qualified foreigners who live in the country, a media report said. The move would be the first in the Gulf region, where the privileges of nationals have been zealously guarded but expatriates' access to public services and property rights is sharply curtailed, the official Qatar News Agency (QNA) has said. According to the new law, cardholders will be treated like Qatari nationals and will benefit from elements of the state's generous welfare system, including education and healthcare services. Holders of the new permanent residency will have the right to own property and run some businesses without a partner or sponsor, QNA reported, according to Xinhua. Under the law, those eligible for the card include children of Qatari woman married to foreigners and the expats who have extended notable services to the country. "According to the provisions of the bill, the interior minister may grant a permanent residency card to a non-Qatari if he or she meets the conditions specified in the law," said a statement carried by QNA. Qatar has approved the legislation after the country's ruler, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thani, instructed officials to expedite measures to lure investments and to reduce the economy's reliance on energy after Saudi Arabia and three other Arab countries severed their diplomatic and transport ties with Doha on 5 June, accusing Qatar of backing extremist groups. Qatar has repeatedly denied the charges. Tehran: Iran's supreme leader on Thursday slammed the new US sanctions on Tehran signed by President Donald Trump the previous day, and vowed his country would continue its missile program despite international pressure. Washington will "use any excuse to make a fuss" against Iran said Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, speaking at a ceremony marking the formal endorsement of President Hassan Rouhani for his second term in office. "You launch a satellite-carrying missile, they make noise," he said, describing the Iranian launch as a "scientific and technical job that is routine and necessary." "The response to the hostility is to become stronger," Khamenei added and described the US government as "the top aggressor and the most shameless "enemy of Iran. "Some have sharply applied hostility (against Iran), like those who today are in office in the US," Khamenei said, without mentioning Trump or the US president's signing of the legislation on Wednesday. The law also imposed new sanctions on Russia and North Korea. According to a letter sent to the UN Security Council and obtained Wednesday by The Associated Press, the United States and three Western allies called Iran's recent launch of a satellite-carrying rocket "a threatening and provocative step" that is "inconsistent" with a UN resolution endorsing the 2015 nuclear deal with world powers. Iran last week launched the country's most advanced satellite-carrying rocket into space, marking the most significant step forward for the Islamic State's young space program. In the letter to the Security Council, the US, France, Germany and the United Kingdom complained that the Simorgh space launch vehicle, if configured as a ballistic missile, would have the range and "payload capacity to carry a nuclear warhead." Iran maintains the 2015 nuclear deal that put caps on its uranium enrichment program a possible pathway to nuclear weapons and the Security Council resolution endorsing that deal do not ban the country from ballistic missile activity. Russia, one of the five world powers that brokered the nuclear deal, has agreed with Tehran. On Tuesday, Iran's Parliament Speaker Ali Larijani announced that Tehran has officially complained to the UN Security Council over the latest US sanctions. Khamenei, who has final say on all state matters, said Iran should continue to stand powerful in the face of its enemies. "International engagement should not lead to ignoring hostility of the enemies," Khamenei said at the ceremony, broadcast live on state TV. He added that "despite all the sanctions and enmities, the Islamic Republic is stronger" than before. Rouhani, who will be formally sworn into office on Saturday in parliament, said the nuclear deal has been a sign of "good faith" by Iran and that t brought the nation respite from most difficult UN sanctions. "Transition from the most difficult sanctions was achieved through a combination of the power of diplomacy and deterrent defensive power," said Rouhani. He said that in his second term in office, Iran will "insist on constructive engagement with the world more than before." Earlier Thursday, the state TV website quoted deputy foreign minister and senior nuclear negotiator Abbas Araghchi as saying that Iran will come up with a "smart" reaction to the last US sanctions. Araghchi reiterated Iran's stance that the US legislation signed by Trump amounts to a "hostile" breach of the landmark 2015 nuclear deal. Tehran has prepared measures that Iran would take against the US action, he added without elaborating, except to say some of the measures will "improve" Iran's armed forces. The US legislation imposes mandatory penalties on people involved in Iran's ballistic missile program and anyone who does business with them. It would also apply terrorism sanctions to Iran's prestigious Revolutionary Guard and enforce an arms embargo. New York: Former FBI Director James Comey has a book deal. Flatiron Books told AP on Wednesday that Comey is writing a book about leadership and decision making that will draw upon his career in government. Comey will write about experiences that made him the FBI's best-known and most controversial FBI head in recent times, from his handling of the bureau's probe into Hillary Clinton's private email server to allegations of ties between Russia and Donald Trump's presidential campaign. Trump fired Comey in May and soon after told NBC News that he was angered by the FBI's investigation into "this Russia thing with Trump and Russia," which he called a fake story. Comey has since testified before Congress that Trump asked him to end an investigation into former National Security Adviser Michael T Flynn and kept memos about his meetings with the president. According to Flatiron, Comey will cite "examples from some of the highest-stakes situations in the past two decades of American government" and "share yet-unheard anecdotes from his long and distinguished career." The book is currently untitled and scheduled for publication next spring. "Throughout his career, James Comey has had to face one difficult decision after another as he has served the leaders of our country," Flatiron Publisher and President Bob Miller said in a statement. "His book promises to take us inside those extraordinary moments in our history, showing us how these leaders have behaved under pressure. By doing so, Director Comey will give us unprecedented entry into the corridors of power, and a remarkable lesson in leadership itself." Comey was represented by Matt Latimer and Keith Urbahn of Javelin. Financial terms were not disclosed, but several publishers bid for the book and three officials with knowledge of the negotiations said the auction topped $2 million. The officials asked not to be identified because were not authorised to discuss the book. Over the past two decades, Comey has been praised and criticised by both Democrats and Republicans. In 2004, he was among the Justice Department officials who threatened to quit after White House officials in the George W Bush administration pressured then-Attorney-General John Ashcroft, who was recovering from gallbladder surgery, to authorise a domestic surveillance program begun in response to the 9/11 terrorist attacks. (The program was eventually restructured). During the 2016 presidential campaign, Comey was twice at the centre of news involving the FBI's investigation of whether Clinton, the Democratic candidate, broke any laws when she used a private email server while secretary of state. In June 2016, Comey announced that while the bureau had concluded there was no reason to bring criminal charges, he chastised Clinton and her associates for being "extremely careless in their handling of very sensitive, highly classified information." In late October, less than two weeks before Election Day, he issued a letter to Congress saying that the FBI had found emails that "appear to be pertinent" to the investigation. While Comey announced two days before the election that no charges would be recommended, the renewed attention to Clinton's emails is widely believed to have damaged the candidate, who lost narrowly to Trump. Comey was appointed as FBI director by President Barack Obama in 2013. On Tuesday, the Senate confirmed his successor, Christopher Wray, a former high-ranking official in President George W Bush's Justice Department who oversaw investigations into corporate fraud. Washington: The White House said Wednesday that compliments President Donald Trump described receiving from the Mexican president and the Boy Scouts of America happened just not on the phone, as Trump had claimed. "I wouldn't say it was a lie. That's a pretty bold accusation," White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders told reporters. "The conversations took place, they just simply didn't take place over a phone call. ... He had them in person." It was the latest episode in Trump's rocky relationship with facts, raising questions about his credibility six tumultuous months into his presidency. A Quinnipiac University National Poll conducted between 27 July and 1 August found that only 34 percent of Americans say Trump is "honest," an all-time low for him. Sanders was responding to questions about a statement from the Mexican government denying what Trump described as a recent phone call with Mexican president Enrique Pena Nieto. Trump said earlier this week that Pena Nieto had called him to praise his immigration policies. "As you know, the border was a tremendous problem and they're close to 80 percent stoppage. Even the president of Mexico called me. They said their southern border, very few people are coming because they know they're not going to get through our border, which is the ultimate compliment," Trump said Monday. Sanders said Trump had been "referencing a conversation that they had had at the G20 summit where they specifically talked about the issues that he referenced." Meanwhile, the Boy Scouts denied Wednesday that the head of the youth organisation called Trump to shower praise on his politically aggressive speech to its national jamboree in West Virginia. President Randall Stephenson and Chief Scout Executive Mike Surbaugh later apologised to members of the scouting community who were offended by Trump's political rhetoric. Trump told The Wall Street Journal in an interview last week, "I got a call from the head of the Boy Scouts saying it was the greatest speech that was ever made to them, and they were very thankful." Politico published the transcript of the interview on Tuesday. Sanders said the president was making reference to "multiple members of the Boy Scout leadership" who "congratulated him, praised him and offered quite powerful compliments following his speech." But she acknowledged no member of the leadership called the president. Huckabee's statements come as Foxconn Technology Group refused to confirm Trump's statement Tuesday that it plans to invest $30 billion in the United States. Trump announced to a group of small business leaders at the White House that CEO Terry Gou told him "off the record" that the Taiwanese electronics manufacturer could invest as much as $30 billion in the US. The company signed a deal with Wisconsin last week to build a $10 billion display panel manufacturing plant, and Trump did not specify where the additional spending would be. Trump said on Wednesday during an immigration event that "I think the $10 billion is going to end up being $30 billion." Islamabad: Punjab Chief Minister Shehbaz Sharif has been barred by the Election Commission of Pakistan from taking part in his own by-election campaign to a National Assembly seat left vacant after the disqualification of his elder brother and former prime minister Nawaz Sharif. According to the code of conduct issued by the the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP), constitutional dignitaries, including the president, the prime minister and the provincial chief ministers, have been barred from visiting the constituency or a polling station after the issuance of the schedule for the 17 September polls. "All these public office-holders, including the Punjab chief minister who is a potential candidate for the by-election to Lahore National Assembly seat (NA-120), have been restrained from visiting the constituency or a polling station after the issuance of the poll schedule," it said. The ECP also told candidates that their election expenses should not exceed Rs 1.5 million and they must use a dedicated account for all transactions related to poll expenses, the Dawn newspaper reported. The code of conduct came into effect this week immediately after the ECP announced the election schedule for Lahore National Assembly seat. The ECP warned that legal action would be taken against any individual found violating the rules. Terming the ECP code of conduct "confusing", political observers wondered how the holder of a public office could be barred from taking part in his own election campaign even though the law permitted a legislator to contest election for another house without tendering resignation. A senior official of the ECP said a clear picture would emerge after the submission of nomination papers by 65-year-old Shehbaz for the by-election. "This is a unique situation because if the chief minister of Punjab files nomination papers, he will not be campaigning for somebody else but for himself and this right can in no way be taken away from him," the official said. Nawaz Sharif was disqualified by the Supreme Court on Friday in connection with the Panama Papers scandal. The 67-year-old veteran politician resigned from his position that evening. Islamabad: Pakistan on Thursday said though the bilateral dialogue with India has been stalled, a number of civil society organisations were engaged in backchannel talks to discuss contentious issues. Foreign office spokesperson Nafees Zakaria, in his weekly briefing, said civil society organisations, that include people from different walks of life, are conducting such interactions occasionally. To a question on the current India-China stand-off in the Sikkim sector, the spokesperson said Pakistan was concerned at the "increasing Indian belligerence" in the region, which he said was endangering regional peace and stability. To a query on Indian external affairs minister Sushma Swaraj's statement linking Pakistan with terrorism in a speech this week, Zakaria termed it "baseless". He said India needs to introspect as Pakistan has suffered the most because of terrorism, both in terms of human and economic losses. He also said that India needed to introspect on its "own state-sponsored terrorism in Jammu and Kashmir and the belligerent attitude it has adopted towards its smaller neighbours". He blamed India for stalling of the bilateral dialogue process. He said since the Bharatiya Janata Party has assumed power in India, "the relationship has witnessed a downward trajectory". On Kashmir, Zakaria said the Indian government was trying to label the "indigenous" movement for self-determination as terrorism. He also condemned the "unlawful" detention of Kashmiri leaders Syed Ali Shah Geelani, Mirwaiz Umar Farooq and Mohammad Yasin Malik. Islamabad: Pakistan on Thursday said maintaining regional peace is the responsibility of all the countries as it raised concern over the nearly two-month long standoff between the Indian and Chinese troops at Doka La area in Sikkim sector. Foreign Office spokesman Nafees Zakaria said that Pakistan had noted "Indian violation" at Sikkim border and was "concerned at the increasing Indian belligerence in the region, which is endangering regional peace and stability." He said it is in the interest of all the countries of the region to work for regional peace and cooperation. "Maintaining regional peace is the responsibility of all the countries. Pakistan has always desired peace and prosperity in the region," he added. He said it has been observed that ever since the present BJP government came to power in India, the India-Pakistan relationship has witnessed a downward trajectory. "India needs to understand that only through cooperation between the two countries will the good for the people of the region be achieved. For this to happen, we need to resolve all contentious issues, particularly the issue of Jammu and Kashmir. India has not been positive in this regard," he claimed. He also blamed India for "scuttling" the process of regional economic development by its "attitude" toward SAARC process. "SAARC is purely aimed at the economic development of the people of this region. I will not go into the details of how India scuttled this process. SAARC will be held at an appropriate time in Pakistan," he said. Islamabad: Pakistan's new prime minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi on Wednesday delayed the formation of his Cabinet, saying it would be announced in a couple of days. "Cabinet will be announced in one to two days," Abbasi told reporters, but did not say why the decision was delayed when arrangements had been made for the oath-taking ceremony on Wednesday. Abbasi had met Nawaz Sharif at the ousted former prime minister's Murree residence earlier on Wednesday. He was accompanied by Sharif's brother Shehbaz, who will take over from Abbasi after being elected to the National Assembly later this year. Sharif has been staying in Murree since he vacated the official residence two days ago after the Supreme Court disqualified him in connection with the Panama Papers scandal. According to the National Accountability Bureau, the Sharif family will face four cases for allegedly possessing offshore assets following the court's direction that graft cases be filed against Sharif and his children. The press information department said in a statement that the Cabinet was to take oath at 5:30 pm local time, but it has been postponed. The formation of the Cabinet is a challenge for the new prime minister as former interior minister and senior party leader, Nisar Ali Khan, is supposedly not ready to join it. Khan had announced on Thursday he would resign from Cabinet and parliament after the supreme court verdict on Friday. Though, he automatically lost his seat in the Cabinet after Sharif's ouster, he has not yet relinquished his seat in the National Assembly and was sitting in the front row during the voting to elect Abbasi as the new prime minister on Tuesday. Khan has accused Sharif of excluding him from his "inner circle" despite a 32-year-long association with the party. The ruling Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) is trying to convince Khan to join the Cabinet to put up a united face ahead of general elections next year. Abbasi would have to find a suitable replacement for Khan if he refuses to join the new government. He would also have to fill the post of minister for petroleum and natural resources which he controlled before his elevation to the top job. The new government may also come up with a permanent foreign minister as previously Sharif kept the portfolio with himself and ran it through his foreign affairs advisor Sartaj Aziz. The information ministry had to be run by minister of state Marriyum Aurangzeb during the latter part of Sharif's tenure after Pervaiz Rashid was sacked following The Dawn leaks episode. There is a strong possibility that Abbasi would appoint a senior party leader as information minister. There are reports that former railway minister Khawja Saad Rafique, a close confidante of Sharif and party loyalist, may be appointed the information minister. Islamabad: Pakistan's former dictator Pervez Musharraf, who faces treason charges, has defended the country's previous military rulers, saying they have always brought the nation "back on track", while civilian governments derailed it, in an interview to BBC Urdu, which was recorded in Dubai, where the 73-year-old has been staying since he left Pakistan in March 2016. Musharraf, who toppled the civilian government of Nawaz Sharif in 1999 in a military coup, also claimed that Pakistan's India policy of the ousted prime minister in his third tenure was a "total sell out", but did not explain what he meant by it. He faces several charges, including treason for abrogating the Constitution and declaring emergency in 2007. Musharraf has also been charged with involvement in the murder of two-time prime minister Benazir Bhutto in 2007. "Whoever works actively against the welfare of Pakistan is against the country and should be killed," he said in the interview. Musharraf, who served as Pakistan's president from 2001 to 2008, defended his "intervention" in 1999, saying he wanted to "save the nation". "The Constitution can be ignored if there is a need to save the nation," he said, without explaining the nature of the threat Pakistan faced at that time. He defended the military "takeovers" of the civilian governments in Pakistan, saying that real development occurred only during military regimes and accused the civil governments of reversing the progress achieved during military rules. "Military rule has always brought the country back on track, whereas civilian governments have always derailed it," he said. "Dictators set the country right, whereas civilian governments brought it to ruins." The powerful army, which enjoys considerable influence over policy decisions in Pakistan, has ruled the country for much of its life since it gained independence 70 years ago. Last week after Nawaz Sharif was ousted as prime minister after a Supreme Court ruling in the Panama Papers scandal, Musharraf posted a video on the social media hailing the verdict as "historic". He was criticised for the hypocritical remarks. On his return to the country, he appeared confident that the Pakistan Army would stand by him. "I have served as the head of the army and the army will always protect my welfare." He also held former Prime Minister Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto responsible for breaking up of Pakistan in 1971. He defended General Zia-ul Haq's Afghanistan policy but agreed some of Haq's polices resulted in creating extremism. He did it grudgingly. Despite calling it "seriously flawed", Donald Trump finally caved in and signed into law a package of sanctions against Russia, North Korea and Iran. Even Secretary of State Rex Tillerson was not happy about it. But the legislative branch was unanimous in its stance that the controversial bill was necessary. This was evident from voting numbers 439-3 in the House and 98-2 in the Senate. It had clear bipartisan support, with Republicans and Democrats both saying they are happy with it, and House speaker Paul Ryan saying the bill sends a "powerful message to our adversaries that they will be held accountable for their actions". But now that it is law, what exactly is in it? Constraints Perhaps the most important provisions, and certainly the most contested, relate to the limits on President Donald Trump's authority to cancel existing sanctions. Former president Barack Obama imposed sanctions targeting individuals and firms connected to Russian cyber-espionage and its intervention in Ukraine. He did this through executive orders. These executive orders are now enshrined in law, and if Trump wants to waive them perhaps as part of talks to improve ties with the Kremlin he will have to consult Congress. These include an updated executive order in December 2016 targeting Russian intelligence agencies accused of trying to interfere in the 2016 White House race. The new law also requires new sanctions targeting Russians identified by the US government as being involved in cyber-attacks, political subversion in Europe, corruption, rights abuses, the arming of Syria or crucially investment in the oil sector. It orders the US state department to look at measures to help Ukraine find new sources of energy, and shake off its reliance on gas from Russia. However, in most cases, the authority to decide which Russian targets fall foul of the new law still rests with the president and his advisers and it is not clear to what extent Trump will use this. Targets The text of the bills makes Congress' concerns clear, and draws a roadmap to tougher measures. The law, for example, demands that the administration draw up a report within 180 days to identify "political figures and oligarchs in the Russian Federation, as determined by their closeness to the Russian regime and their net worth". These elite figures are to be listed, along with their family assets and income streams, and thus could be targeted in future rounds of sanctions. A separate report is also ordered, to "identify, investigate, map and disrupt illicit financial flows linked to the Russian Federation if such flows affect the United States' financial system or those of major US allies". The bill also accuses Russia of using corruption and subterfuge to disrupt political life in Europe and former Soviet republics in Eurasia. Russian actions, it alleges, "sow distrust in democratic institutions and actors, promote xenophobic and illiberal views, and otherwise undermine European unity". The law mandates the US government to spend $250 million over the 2018-19 financial year to counter Russian propaganda. Iran and North Korea The bill is not merely restricted to Russia, though that is the one aspect which has received the most media attention. It also directs Trump to impose tougher sanctions on Iran's ballistic missile programme and expands sanctions targeting the covert wing of Iranian Revolutionary Guards to the entire corps. And it toughens sanctions on North Korea, including new rules to prevent foreign banks from opening US accounts to assist North Korean entities, while asking the state department to revisit the question of designating Pyongyang a state sponsor of terrorism. Affected countries aren't happy Russian prime minister Dmitry Medvedev called the sanctions a "full-fledged economic war" on Moscow, saying they crushed hopes for repairing ties and demonstrated President Donald Trump's "total weakness... in the most humiliating way". Medvedev warned the move would have "consequences", saying, "It ends hopes for improving our relations with the new US administration." Taunting the notoriously thin-skinned US president, Medvedev added, "The Trump administration has shown its total weakness by handing over executive power to Congress in the most humiliating way." Russia's foreign ministry called the sanctions "dangerous" and "short-sighted". In a statement, it said global stability is at risk, a matter that Moscow said the US must bear responsibility for. "We have already shown that we are not going to leave hostile acts unanswered... and we obviously reserve the right to take retaliatory measures," it said. Iran said that the new sanctions were a violation of its 2015 nuclear deal with world powers which had eased sanctions in exchange for curbs on its nuclear programme, an agreement which Trump has repeatedly threatened to tear up. "We believe that the nuclear deal has been violated and we will react appropriately," deputy foreign minister Abbas Araghchi said on state television. The mounting crisis also creates a difficult position for President Hassan Rouhani, a 68-year-old moderate who won re-election largely thanks to his efforts at repairing relations with the West. EU ready to retaliate if need be To date, the sanctions have been coordinated on both sides of the Atlantic to maintain a united front. However, that could change as the EU said it was ready to retaliate within days if need be against the sanctions if they affect European energy firms. "If the US sanctions specifically disadvantage EU companies trading with Russia in the energy sector, EU is prepared to take appropriate steps in response within days," the commission said. Bill will throw up complications The signing of the bill is clearly not the last we've heard on the matter. The Trump administration is not happy with the bill and this could affect its functioning in a negative manner. Russia is incensed and will certainly react in due time, as will North Korea and Iran. Even the US' steadfast ally, the European Union, is not very comfortable with proceedings. It will be interesting to see how it all plays out in the coming months. With inputs from AFP Syrian regime forces and "moderate" rebels will cease fire in northern parts of Homs province on Thursday after Russia struck a deal with the opposition on implementing a third safe zone, Moscow said. "From 1200 local time (0900 GMT), units of the moderate opposition and government forces will completely stop firing," defence ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov said in a statement. Konashenkov said Moscow and Syrian opposition groups had reached an agreement on the "operational details" of a "de-escalation zone" north of the city of Homs at talks in Cairo on July 31. The zone is the third to be established in Syria under a Russian-led initiative aimed at halting fighting in four areas between President Bashar al-Assad's forces and rebels. It covers 84 towns and villages with a total population of 1,47,000 people, Moscow said. Russia has been behind a push to pacify Syria since the start of this year after tipping the six-year conflict in favour of Assad with its game-changing military intervention in 2015. Konashenkov said Russian military police will set up two checkpoints and three observation posts on Friday along the boundaries of the zone dividing the two forces. Rebels had agreed to "unblock" part of a road running through the safe zone between the cities of Homs and Hama and a "Committee for National Justice" made up of rebels and local groups would help oversee the implementation of the plan, he said. Idlib zone unresolved The northern parts of Homs province were recently being shelled by regime forces and hit by intermittent air strikes. Towns in the area were among the first to fall to Assad's opponents in 2012 after a revolt against his rule. They have remained outside the hands of jihadist groups including the Islamic State (IS), which do not fall under the Russian deal. Russia last month struck a deal with the United States and Jordan for a ceasefire in another southern zone, where Moscow has now deployed its military police. Under a second agreement sealed with rebels in July Russian forces also set up two checkpoints and four observation posts in an area covering conflict-ravaged Eastern Ghouta near Damascus. Under a plan hammered out between Russia, Turkey and Iran at peace talks in Kazakhstan one more safe zone is supposed to be established in the northwestern Idlib region. However, negotiations on that zone have been complicated by conflicting interests between the international powers. .Moscow has been flying a bombing campaign to support regime forces, while Assad's international opponents have been striking IS from the air as part of a US-led coalition. Russia is planning a fresh round of talks in the Kazakh capital of Astana in late August to thrash out more details on its peace plan. Lahore: Pakistan's newly-elected Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi is likely to continue as premier for the remaining 10-month tenure of PML-N as the party chief Nawaz Sharif has hinted retaining his younger brother Punjab Chief Minister Shehbaz Sharif in the key province. Former prime minister Sharif who was disqualified by Supreme Court in the Panama Papers case on 28 July had nominated Shehbaz to succeed him after winning a by-election on his vacant seat in Lahore. Abbasi, 58, was endorsed by Sharif to hold the post for interim arrangement of 45 days (till mid-September) till Shehbaz makes to Islamabad. "Sharif is holding a high-level huddle of PML-N senior leaders today (Thursday) in Murree to review his earlier decision to elevate Punjab Chief Minister Shehbaz Sharif to the Centre or not," a PML-N senior leader told PTI. After Abbasi was elected prime minister on Tuesday, he said many in the Nawaz camp suggested that the former retain the position for the remaining term of the PML-N government as Punjab is very important for the party and cannot be left to an "inexperienced hand". "The PML-N legislators including Punjab law minister Rana Sanaullah have conveyed to Sharif that it will not be a wise move to elevate Shehbaz in the Centre as there will be no experience hand in the party to run the largest province in his absence," he said, adding that the Sharif camp does not want Shehbaz in the Centre as well. There are also reports that Sharif's refusal to nominate Shehbaz's son Hamza as the chief minister of Punjab has annoyed him who might choose not to give up the post in the province because of it. "Nawazs daughter Maryam is against handing over Punjab to Hamza while his father is at the Centre. But Shehbaz appeared too keen to keep both posts in the family. This is another reason of Shehbaz's reluctance to leave Punjab to someone other than his son," another PML-N insider said. The Shehbaz governments spokesperson Malik Ahmad Khan told PTI that the party leadership is sitting together to revisit its earlier decision of endorsing Shehbaz for prime minister. "The final decision whether Shehbaz Sharif will contest from the Lahore National Assembly seat (NA-120) to succeed Abbasi will be taken in a day or two," he added. Tokyo: Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on Thursday was set to announce new defence and foreign ministers as part of a cabinet revamp he hopes will stem a decline in public support after a series of scandals and missteps. Political blueblood Abe, in office since late December 2012, has pushed a nationalist agenda alongside a massive policy effort to end years of on-off deflation and rejuvenate the world's third-largest economy. But he has seen public support rates plummet in the past few months over an array of political troubles, including allegations of favouritism to a friend in a business deal which Abe strongly denies. Abe will reportedly reappoint former defence minister Itsunori Onodera to the post after close political ally and fellow hawk Tomomi Inada resigned last week following a scandal at the ministry over the handling of military documents. He is also set to tap as ministers some who have opposed his policies, including Taro Kono, the son of a dovish former foreign minister known for issuing a 1993 apology as chief cabinet secretary over Japan's use of "comfort women" a euphemism for sex slavery in World War II. US-educated Kono is set to replace Fumio Kishida, who served as foreign minister since Abe came to power. Kishida, often tapped as a future prime minister, is moving to a top post in the ruling Liberal Democratic Party. "I deeply regret that my shortcomings have invited this situation", a chastened Abe said ahead of the formal announcement of the cabinet changes. Abe's LDP suffered a drubbing in local Tokyo elections last month, which analysts and newspapers blamed on an increasing "arrogance" on the part of the prime minister. Kono, 54, is known as an independent-minded, anti-nuclear power advocate, in sharp contrast to Abe's support for atomic energy. Meanwhile, Seiko Noda, 56, once hailed as Japan's most likely first female prime minister and who once tried to challenge Abe for the party leadership, was expected to serve as internal affairs minister. His expected appointment also comes amid rising tensions surrounding North Korea's missile development. Pyongyang launched its latest missile late Friday, just hours after the US and Japan moved to step up sanctions against it following its earlier test of an ICBM capable of reaching parts of the US. Meanwhile, Abe was seen leaving some key posts, such as finance minister and chief cabinet secretary, unchanged. New Delhi: Given the current stand-off over the Doka La plateau, the fate of the annual India-China Hand-in-Hand joint military drill, first held in 2007, appears uncertain with no word from the Chinese side, which is supposed to host the exercise this year. An Initial Planning Conference (IPC) is usually held in the host country in June-July but so far there has been a studied silence from Beijing, sources said. "The IPC takes place in the country where the exercise would be held. We sent a message to the Chinese side but there was no response," the source said. "It should have happened latest but July end, but the IPC never took place," the source added. From all possible indications, the IPC is unlikely to take place any time soon.After the IPC, a Final Planning Conference (FPC) is held in the visiting country, usually in September. The exercise is usually held in October or November. "We asked for details of progress on holding the exercise, but we have no communication from the Chinese side it," the source said. So far, six editions of the exercise, which has focused on anti-terror operations in past years, have been held.The first joint exercise was held in 2007 Kunming in China's Yunnan province and in 2008 in Belgaum in Karnataka. However, following China's denyial of a visa to the Northern Army Commander in 2009, citing its "sensitivities" on Kashmir, the exercise remained suspended for almost five years. It was resumed in 2013 and had been held regularly since then, the last being at Pune's Aundh Military Camp in 2016. The Indian Army has in past said that the basic objective of the drill is to enhance confidence and trust between the two armies, which may be called upon to grapple with anti-terrorism operations under the UN mandate.The Indian Army has also said that the exercises is an important step to uphold the values of peace, prosperity and stability in the region. That, however, seems a distant dream as a stand-off continues since mid-June at the tri-junction of India, China and Bhutan when Indian troops moved in to prevent China from constructing a road on Bhutanese territory in the Doklam plateau. China claims the Doka La plateau is a part of South Tibet. Earlier this week, China claimed India had partially withdrawn its troops, which New Delhi firmly denied. On 25 July, a Chinese transgression took place in Uttarakhand when Chinese troops came about one kilometer into Indian territory. United Nations: The UN Security Council has unanimously adopted a resolution urging all countries to eliminate the supply of weapons to the Islamic State extremist group and other "terrorists", including by taking legal action against suppliers and marking arms to improve their traceability. The resolution, sponsored by Egypt, strongly condemns the continuing flow of weapons, military equipment, drones and improvised explosive devices to the Islamic State, al-Qaeda and their affiliates as well as illegal armed groups and criminals. "This is one of the first resolutions aiming to prevent terrorists from acquiring weapons," Egypt's UN Ambassador Amr Abdellatif Aboulatta, the current Security Council president, said after the vote on Wednesday. "Arming of terrorists and terrorist groups ... is a crime that is no less heinous than the terrorist act itself." The resolution reaffirms the commitment of all states to preventing weapons from reaching "terrorists." It urges the UN's 193 member states "to prevent and disrupt procurement networks for such weapons." It also urges all countries "to act cooperatively to prevent terrorists from acquiring weapons" including via the internet or social networks. Yury Fedotov, executive director of the Vienna-based UN Office on Drugs and Crime, told the council by video link that "terrorists obtain weapons by many means, in all parts of the world, facilitated by access to poorly secured stockpiles, weak border management, the use of online platforms including hidden marketplaces, and diversion linked to poor transfer controls." Fedotov stressed the complex challenges to keep weapons from falling into the hands of terrorists, citing "inadequate regulatory environments and data collection, lack of specialised skills and equipment, and lack of coordination within and between countries and regions." Interpol Special Representative Emmanuel Roux told the council that although the use of weapons by terrorists isn't new "today's threat landscape is one of unprecedented complexity." "Convergence is the key word: between organised crime and terrorism; between old and new technologies; between military and law enforcement efforts," he said. Roux said Interpol is seeing firearms used in conflict zones reappearing on streets of major cities, commercial products that are legal turned into improvised explosive devices, and guns manufactured decades ago for sale on the dark web. In parallel, he said foreigners who fight for terrorist groups may be exploiting their knowledge from the battlefield, the organised crime contacts and supply chains they used previously, "and technology allowing the creation of modular firearms and 3D printing, to access and use weapons." Roux said there are many "crucial actions" the international community can undertake including standardising end-user export controls, securely managing stockpiles, and strengthening and implementing strong national legislation. Jehangir Khan, acting head of the new UN Office of Counter-Terrorism, said the diversion of weapons from government stockpiles, through theft or capturing depots, is an important source of arms for terrorist groups and others. And he said the illicit online weapons trade on the dark web is "particularly worrisome." US Ambassador Nikki Haley accused Iran of deliberately and systematically contributing "weapons, training and funding for terrorist groups" in violation of its international obligations. "Terrorist proxies are doing the Iranian regime's will inIraq and in Syria," she said. "Iran also supports Hamas and Bahraini terrorist groups. Through its partner Hezbollah, Iran is engaged in preparing for war in Lebanon. It is building an arsenal of weapons and battle-hardened troops." New York (United States): The near-supersonic rail system known as hyperloop has passed another key milestone on its path to become reality, the US startup Hyperloop One said Wednesday. Hyperloop One, which is developing a system theorized by entrepreneur Elon Musk, said that a test last week of a full hyperloop system at its private facility in the desert near Las Vegas was a success, hitting record speeds. "That's a huge milestone for us," said Hyperloop One co-founder and executive chairman Shervin Pishevar. "Now we've shown that the hyperloop actually works. And now this is the dawn of the commercialisation of the hyperloop. So from this point on we move to the commercialisation process." During what the startup referred to as Phase 2 testing, a pod fired through a tube depressurised to the equivalent of 200,000 feet (60,000 meters) above sea level reached an unprecedented speed of 192 mph (310 kilometers per hour). All components were successfully tested, including motors, controls, the vacuum system, and the magnetic levitation that lets pods zip along tracks without touching them, the company said. "We've proven that our technology works, and we're now ready to enter into discussions with partners, customers and governments around the world about the full commercialisation of our Hyperloop technology, said chief executive Rob Lloyd. Hyperloop One had originally promised a full-scale demonstration by the end of 2016, after a successful test of the propulsion system. Pishevar said Wednesday that he now sees the system "getting operational in the new few years." Hyperloop One engineering chief Josh Giegel said the company is now starting "production level development how we take this prototype and actually scale it to making hundreds or thousands of units and then actually deploying that around the world." Likely born abroad The hyperloop system is designed to send pods carrying cargo or people through low-pressure tubes for long distances at passenger jet speeds. Hyperloop One early this year disclosed a list of locations around the world vying to put near-supersonic rail transit system to the test. Viable submissions had to be condoned by government agencies that would likely be involved in regulating and, ideally, funding the futuristic rail. It was expected to be several years before a hyperloop system was up and running. The startup set a goal of having one running by 2021. Pishevar said, he expected the first hyperloop system to be built outside the US because "the speed at which other governments work" could be an advantage. Hyperloop One, which has raised more than $160 million, was set on an idea laid out by billionaire Elon Musk, the entrepreneur behind electric car company Tesla and private space exploration endeavor SpaceX. Pods would rocket along rails through reduced-pressure tubes at speeds of 1,200 kilometers (750 miles) per hour. Hyperloop One says the system offers better safety than passenger jets, lower build and maintenance costs than high-speed trains, and energy usage, per person, that is similar to a bicycle. Port colossus DP World Group of Dubai last year invested in the concept, joining backers including French national rail company SNCF, US industrial conglomerate General Electric and Russian state fund RDIF. Musk's involvement in hyperloop is for now limited to potentially building the tunnels with his latest startup The Boring Company. Tunneling is certainly an option, but building hyperloop tubes above ground, perhaps where traditional rail lines already exist, would be faster and cheaper, according to Hyperloop One executives. Several companies are now exploring the market, including Northeast Maglev, Hyperloop One and Hyperloop Transportation Technologies. Musk said last month he'd received tentative approval from the government to build a conceptual "hyperloop" system that would blast passenger pods down vacuum-sealed tubes from New York to Washington but stopped short of offering details. Google Earth has updated its iOS app with a couple of features. The redesigned app for iPhone and iPad includes the new interactive stories feature Voyager, 3D maps and more. The Voyager feature shows interactive stories from places around the world with information about museums and landmarks. Google Earth now gets support for 64-bit iPhone and iPad CPUs thereby making it compatible to run on iOS 11. Moreover, the Google Earth app now gets new Knowledge Cards, which tell you facts and more details about places and landmarks that you are checking out. It also brings 3D View at the press of a 3D button to see any place from any angle. Google has included multi-day itineraries for 17 cities under the Travel category, including Paris with Kids and Beyond the Beaches of Rio de Janeiro. Google said there are more than 140 stories in eight languages available. There is a new Im feeling lucky feature that allows Google to choose a random spot for you to explore. The Google Earth app was first updated for Android and web in April. Google Earth Source As small businesses keep hiring, many owners discover that being a do-it-yourself human resources manager is the wrong job for them. Becky Robinson handled hiring, payroll and other HR needs when she started her marketing company, Weaving Influence, five years ago. But during periods when she focused on HR, the company's revenue took a dip. She realized she needed to keep her focus and turn those tasks over to a director of operations and an HR consultant. "The only way for us to grow is for me to delegate and not get bogged down in the details of HR," says Robinson, whose four-employee company is based in Lambertville, Michigan. Payroll provider ADP said Wednesday that small businesses added 50,000 jobs last month may mean that owners are taking on more human resources tasks while they're also trying to get new business and develop products and services. A recent study released by ADP shows that HR at 70 percent of small businesses is handled as a side job by the owner or a staffer with other primary responsibilities. In many companies, the people doing it don't have any HR training, says Brian Michaud, a senior vice president at ADP. Human resources tasks, which can include complying with government labor laws and regulations, handling disciplinary problems and administering employee benefits, are no different from chores like keeping the books that many owners could hand off but don't. Sometimes it's because they want to keep costs down, so if they have just a handful of employees they don't want to hire an in-house HR manager or contract with a company that supplies HR services. Many entrepreneurs also find it hard to delegate. "They hate to let anything get out of their control," says Gene Marks, owner of The Marks Group, a small-business consulting firm based in Bala Cynwyd, Pennsylvania. Owners are particularly unwilling to share information about their companies with anyone else, he says. Robinson had handled recruiting for her company, and hired from referrals by people she knew. But as her business grew and she needed experienced staffers with specific skills, she realized she needed help from someone more knowledgeable about recruiting and with more contacts to find job candidates. So her HR consultant now finds prospective hires and does initial screenings and interviews. At staffing company Omega Talent, "we cobbled together our HR duties among three or four people on staff," says owner Craig Sherman. "It wasn't cohesive or effective, that's for sure," says Sherman, who has a staff of 12 as well as 45 employees whom the company places at client businesses. Omega Talent, which is based in Clinton Township, Michigan, ran into occasional problems with the patched-together approach. Sometimes mistakes were made or Sherman and his staff were caught by surprise after employment laws or regulations changed. Earlier this year, Sherman turned the tasks over to a company that provides HR services. "We are extremely happy with our decision," he says. Nathan Miller handles his HR needs himself, but he also keeps an eye on how much that's taking him away from developing his business, Rentec Direct, which sells real estate property management software. He's found that mediating occasional disagreements among his 10 full-time employees can be a distraction. "I should probably be setting up a new partnership or vetting a new tool instead," says Miller, whose company is based in Grants Pass, Oregon. Miller says he'll consider hiring some help for HR if those tasks take up more than four hours of his time a month. He's also aware that the expansion plans he has he hopes to double his staff within a few years will likely force him to relinquish HR responsibilities. Many owners realize they need help when faced with the multiplicity of employment laws and regulations at the federal, state and local level. Employers must comply with laws related to pay, working hours and conditions, benefits, disability, discrimination and harassment. In a growing number of states and municipalities, workers must be allowed to accrue paid sick leave. If they're government contractors, there are additional requirements, such as a higher minimum wage than the general federal minimum of $7.25 an hour. Laws and regulations that frequently change raises the possibility that some companies might inadvertently be in violation of them. That's why Guilford Cantave hired an HR provider. "I was looking to do everything right from the first opportunity," says Cantave, president of FermiTron, an electrical engineering and manufacturing firm based in Orlando, Florida. "It wasn't something that I wanted to experiment with or have half the truth about." Many owners are forced to get HR help when something goes wrong, Marks says, such as an owner missing a deadline for paying payroll taxes or filing required documents with the government. "You start realizing how much you're in over your head," he says. A bad hire convinced Amy Baxter to outsource part of her hiring process. Baxter, owner of VibraCool, the maker of a medical device aimed at reducing pain, did her own recruiting and hired someone who said she could create marketing materials. She couldn't. "If I had known more about the world of HR before, it would have saved a lot of time and drama," says Baxter, whose company is based in Atlanta. She's still handling other HR tasks herself. But Baxter also realizes that anything she can outsource, she should. "I should spend my time making connections and developing products," she says. _____ Follow Joyce Rosenberg at www.twitter.com/JoyceMRosenberg. Her work can be found here: https://apnews.com/search/joyce%20rosenberg Quotes displayed in real-time or delayed by at least 15 minutes. Market data provided by Factset. Powered and implemented by FactSet Digital Solutions. Legal Statement. Mutual Fund and ETF data provided by Refinitiv Lipper. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. 2022 FOX News Network, LLC. All rights reserved. FAQ - New Privacy Policy Warren Buffett's investment results have garnered him a great deal of fame and a huge fan base. The annual Berkshire Hathaway meeting is more of a pilgrimage to see Buffett and partner Charlie Munger in person than it is about learning the ins and outs of the conglomerate's recent financial results. But you don't have to go all the way to Omaha, Nebraska, to figure out what Buffett is doing and how you can emulate his approach. Seritage Growth Properties (NYSE: SRG), McCormick & Company (NYSE: MKC), and U.S. Bancorp (NYSE: USB) are stocks that are just right for Buffett fans, according to these three Motley Fool contributors. Bumping up the rent Reuben Gregg Brewer (Seritage Growth Properties): Warren Buffett owns 5.7% of Seritage, a retail-focused real estate investment trust (REIT). That's a direct investment, too, so the famed investor is playing with his own money here. That said, with a tiny 1.9% dividend yield, this REIT isn't a play on income -- it's about rental growth. In the second quarter, Seritage was able to replace old tenants paying around $4.30 a square foot with new ones paying roughly $14. That's a massive jump that speaks to the immense opportunity here. But here's the twist: Seritage was created in 2015 to own Sears Holdings retail properties so the troubled retailer could raise much-needed cash. Seritage has done a great job of shifting its tenant mix away from Sears and Kmart stores as those retailers shutter locations, but Sears Holdings still accounts for 43% of its portfolio. That's both an opportunity and a risk, since there's no sign of a turnaround at Sears Holdings. A bankruptcy could leave Seritage with a lot of empty buildings all at once. The trend, however, has been far more orderly so far. And even in a worst-case scenario, the opportunity to raise below-market rents to market levels is huge. Which is exactly why Buffett bought into Seritage shortly after it went public. Add in the fact that Berkshire Hathaway recently provided $2 billion in financing to the REIT, and even a worst-case scenario doesn't look like it will derail the potential here. If you like Buffett, you'll probably like the risk/reward situation at Seritage. Spice up your portfolio Demitri Kalogeropoulos (McCormick): Buffett has a soft spot for consumer-focused companies that pair strong brands with market-leading pricing power. Spice giant McCormick fits that mold perfectly. The company recently posted a 19% sales spike powered by an acquisition that added the powerhouse condiment brands of French's and Frank's to its already stellar portfolio of spices and flavorings. And, in contrast to most packaged-foods specialists, McCormick's profitability is rising right now, with gross margin jumping 3.4 percentage points last quarter to pass 43% of sales. The flavorings specialist is expecting to grow earnings from 14% to 16% this year despite increased marketing spending in support of its brands. That profit outlook also includes aggressive plans to pay down the $4 billion of debt that management took on when it acquired the Reckitt Benckiser condiment portfolio. McCormick's strong cash flow and leading position in the industry make it possible for executives to make these investments while still delivering robust overall returns to shareholders. These assets also help support a premium valuation for the stock that should persist as long as McCormick continues accumulating market share in its attractive industry niche. A Buffett bank Jordan Wathen (U.S. Bancorp): Buffett's extraordinary investment record is the byproduct of his skill investing in just a handful of industries, and banking is one industry where he has reaped exceptional returns for his investors. U.S. Bancorp is part of Berkshire's portfolio, and has been for a long time. That's because this bank stands out for having below-average loan losses, exceptionally low operating costs, and valuable fee-based businesses that help keep the lights on even when loan losses turn for the worse. About 45% of U.S. Bancorp's net revenue comes from non-interest sources -- things like card processing, mortgage banking, and investment management services. This fee-based income covers the majority (roughly 76%) of U.S. Bancorp's operating costs, which means it doesn't have to take outsize risk in its loan portfolio to generate attractive returns for investors. Its conservative underwriting culture is best demonstrated by its performance during the financial crisis, when net charge-offs peaked at 2.17% of total loans, despite heavy concentration in credit cards and home equity loans, which sent other banks spiraling toward bankruptcy court. In banking, it often pays to be "boring." The banks that survive and thrive through multiple economic cycles have low-cost operations, high-quality loan portfolios, and fee-based sources of revenue that provide steady profits in all economic conditions. At about 16 times consensus estimates for 2018, U.S. Bancorp shares offer a fair value as a bank you can confidently buy and hold for the long haul. Time for a deep dive At least one of these stocks (if not all of them) is worth further research for fans of Warren Buffett. Seritage is an aggressive play on a fundamentally strong business making an important shift away from Sears Holdings stores. McCormick has the kind of business that Buffett likes and has been doing well while peers have struggled. And U.S. Bancorp is a boring bank that can underpin a portfolio with steady returns -- no matter what the market throws at it. 10 stocks we like better than US BancorpWhen investing geniuses David and Tom Gardner have a stock tip, it can pay to listen. After all, the newsletter they have run for over a decade, Motley Fool Stock Advisor, has quadrupled the market.* David and Tom just revealed what they believe are the 10 best stocks for investors to buy right now... and US Bancorp wasn't one of them! That's right -- they think these 10 stocks are even better buys. Click here to learn about these picks! *Stock Advisor returns as of August 6, 2018 Demitri Kalogeropoulos owns shares of Berkshire Hathaway (B shares). Jordan Wathen has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. Reuben Gregg Brewer has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool recommends Berkshire Hathaway (B shares) and McCormick. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy. An Arizona rancher who fought for years to retain sole use of his "Bar 7" cattle brand won a big victory Thursday in the Arizona Supreme Court when the court ruled the state did not have the legal right to let another cattle company use it to brand its cows. The unanimous court ruling said the state violated a decades-old law that bars an identical cattle brand from being used by two ranchers. Rancher David Stambaugh called the decision that also awarded him his attorneys fees "awesome." "After 5 years jiminy Christmas unbelievable," he said. Stambaugh, 50, has owned the Bar 7 brand since he was 10, when a retired rancher who was friends with his family sold it to him along with 10 cows for $10. He operates a farm near the small city of Eloy 65 miles (105 kilometers) south of Phoenix and runs about 30 head of cattle on land near the tiny town of Winkelman. Stambaugh objected when the state Agriculture Department allowed the Eureka Springs Cattle Co. to use the identical brand in a slightly different part of its cows' bodies. The company also had operations in California, where it has rights to the same brand. Eureka Springs owner Roger Warner said he wanted to be able to send his young cattle from Arizona to California so sought the same brand in Arizona. Two appeals court judges said in a ruling last year that the department had the discretion to issue the brand because it was to be placed on the cows' left rib area and Stambaugh branded his cows on the left hip. One judge said registering identical brands was not legal. The Supreme Court, in an opinion written by Justice Robert Brutinel, said there was no discretion allowed. "The statute clearly provides that a brand with an identical design or figure may not be recorded," Brutinel wrote. Stambaugh said in an interview after the Court of Appeals ruled last year that that leaving the lower court ruling in place would lead to confusion and questions about ownership at livestock auctions and other places where brand inspectors check cattle ownership. Under the lower court ruling, the state could issue identical brands for six different spots on a cow, left and right hip, rib and shoulder. If cows were transferred to another rancher with the same brand, it could wreak havoc at an auction, Stambaugh said. Warner said Stambaugh's concerns were unwarranted. "Everything that Mr. Stambaugh said was going to happen hasn't happened we haven't had one problem at all," he said. Warner first tried to register the brand more than five years ago, and the department's brand clerk twice rejected the effort because it was the same Bar 7 brand, according to the Supreme Court's case summary. Eureka Springs then enlisted the help of the Arizona Cattle Growers' Association. Warner and the association executive director Patrick Bray then went to the department together and the clerk issued the brand in 2012. Stambaugh praised the clerk, saying she "did her job, but was forced not to do it." Bray said he did not know the brand request had been turned down earlier and did not exert influence or choose one rancher over another. Warner, who runs hundreds of cattle on a ranch between the small southeastern Arizona cities of Safford and Willcox, said that before the new ruling Colorado was the only other state prohibiting using the same brand in different places on cows. He said he met with Stambaugh several times to try to negotiate a deal, but Stambaugh refused. He said after the ruling that he will probably have to rebrand hundreds of cows. Cosmetics maker Avon Products, which has been under pressure from activist investor Barington Capital, said on Thursday Sheri McCoy will step down as chief executive in March next year. Barington had been pushing for management changes at the company since 2015, but backed off for a year after Avon signed a deal to sell its U.S. business to private-equity firm Cerberus Capital Management and added an independent director to its board. Barington renewed its pressure after Avon reported a surprise loss in the quarter-ended March and demanded McCoy be removed, accusing her of overseeing "a tremendous destruction of shareholder value" and questioned her ability to manage the business effectively. Since McCoy took the top job at the cosmetics maker in April 2012, the shares have fallen nearly 85 percent. The company has reported higher quarterly sales only twice since 2015. Avon on Thursday reported a 3 percent drop in quarterly revenue as demand fell in most of its markets including the northern part of Latin America and Europe, Middle East & Africa. Barington did not immediately respond to a request for comment outside regular business hours. Avon said on Thursday it had retained executive search firm Heidrick & Struggles to identify McCoy's successor. The company's shares were marginally down in premarket trading. (Reporting by Sruthi Ramakrishnan in Bengaluru; Editing by Shounak Dasgupta) Jerred Kiloh's eyes narrowed as he checked his mirror again. The black Chevy SUV with tinted windows was still behind him. It had been hanging off Kiloh's bumper ever since he nosed out of the parking lot behind his medical-marijuana dispensary with $40,131.88 in cash in the trunk of his hatchback. Kiloh was unarmed, on his way to City Hall to make a monthly tax payment, and managing only stop-and-start progress in the midday traffic. He was afraid of one thing above all else: getting robbed. That fear is a constant part of doing business in California's flourishing medical cannabis industry, in which transactions are conducted mostly in cash, sometimes in stunningly large amounts. "The thing I need the least right now is to have to go through any sort of money disappearing," Kiloh said. On Jan. 1, recreational pot will become legal in California, creating what could be the world's largest legitimate marijuana economy. It comes more than two decades after the state gave its blessing to medical cannabis. But the emerging marketplace with a projected $7 billion value has a potentially crippling flaw: Many people who work in it can't use a bank. Banks don't want the risks of doing business with companies whose product remains illegal under federal law. So while the sneaker shop next door to Kiloh's storefront on Ventura Boulevard can send a check to City Hall to cover its taxes, or wire the money from a laptop, Kiloh has to make a stress-filled, 15-mile (24-kilometer) freeway drive each month to downtown Los Angeles. California is to marijuana what Iowa is to corn, and what Kentucky is to bourbon the nation's bud basket, its heartland for production. The transformation of such a vast illegal economy into a legal one hasn't been witnessed since the end of Prohibition in 1933. The state expects to collect $1 billion in new tax revenue annually from pot within a few years. In L.A. which is already estimated to have anywhere from 1,000 to 1,700 medical marijuana dispensaries, only about 200 of which paid city taxes in 2016 the take is projected at $50 million next year alone. However, governments will almost certainly miss out on money without an easy, secure way for businesses to pay. With no bank records, it will be harder to regulators to track funds and identify shady operators. And those who operate by the book will be undercut by those who don't. Without banks, "everyone loses," said Nicole Howell Neubert, a marijuana industry lawyer. Kiloh, a 40-year-old with a graying mohawk and a degree in economics, counts 15 years in the pot industry as a seller and cultivator and is a partner and business manager at a San Francisco dispensary and the owner of the one in Los Angeles. In the absence of a bank, Kiloh has become his own. Twist and turn through a warren of rooms inside his shop, go through a door with a keypad lock, and you will come to a closet-like space that contains twin steel vaults, standing head-high. The walls around them are reinforced with steel. Overhead, more than 50 cameras scan his offices and hallways and keep watch outside the building as well. An armed guard stands at the door to the sales floor. On a typical day, $15,000 can change hands in his dispensary, where a steady stream of customers pick from shelves stocked with 700 products, from fragrant buds and perfectly rolled joints to cannabis-infused lip balm and potent concentrates known as "shatter" that look like thin sheets of amber glass. For Kiloh, the cash is a daily hassle. It needs to be counted repeatedly to safeguard against loss. State and local taxes must be set aside and stored, sometimes for a month or more. When vendors show up, they get paid in cash, too. "When now everyone makes payments through their cellphone, it's tough to see that I'm left to the archaic version of counting money," he said. With all the cash on hand he grossed $4 million last year crime is a gnawing fear. His dispensary on a bustling commercial strip has been robbed twice once by thieves breaking in through the roof. The Los Angeles Police Department did not immediately respond to a request for statistics on crimes against marijuana dispensaries, and many cases are believed to go unreported anyway, since many businesses are loath to go to the police. Last year, though, a dispensary owner shot and wounded two armed men during a holdup in the Los Angeles suburbs. And a security guard at a dispensary was killed in an attempted robbery in Aurora, Colorado, another one of the nine states to legalize recreational pot. To keep criminals guessing, Kiloh avoids arriving at the same time each day and staggers the times he leaves. He goes in and out different doors. He keeps an eye on cars parked around his shop. Once a month, Kiloh telephones to make arrangements to drop off his tax payment at the city Finance Department, which gets 6 percent of his gross revenue. They want to know he's coming it's dangerous for them, too. The agency has seen bags of cash from pot businesses as large as $300,000 come through the door. His journey to the tax office starts at a windowless back room at his shop, where stacks of $20 bills flip through the counting machine at his desk with the whir-slap-whir-slap of a weed-whacker. He and his staff then wrap the bills into neat $2,000 bundles and wedge them into a long cardboard box, which is then covered in plain paper and stuffed into a shoulder bag that goes into the trunk. From the moment he pulls out of his parking lot, he is watching, assessing. "I find myself looking in my rear-view mirror hundreds of more times than I usually would in just normal traffic, making sure that I'm not being followed," Kiloh said. "That's what a lot of this industry has been about: Just stay under the radar, and that's your best defense. That's your best kind of safety." It was on Kiloh's drive to City Hall in late June that he noticed the ominous-looking Chevy. He watched it intently, taking note of the man behind the wheel glasses, mid-40s to 50s as he leaned into the accelerator. Eventually, the Chevy disappeared, but Kiloh wasn't home free yet. Exiting the freeway, he tried to enter a parking lot near City Hall but was turned away, forcing him farther down the block. Once inside a garage, he looped around until he found a spot near a stairwell. Lifting his satchel from his trunk, he scurried toward the door. "I try to not stay in confined places like an elevator, so I'd rather take the standard stairs, plus the standard stairs have video cameras," he said. The steps opened to a sun-soaked plaza teeming with people. With the cash over his shoulder, he made his way briskly toward City Hall, his head swiveling. "It's tough when people make eye contact with you," he said. "There is always the fear of what do they know?" Kiloh spotted a police officer walking across the plaza an instant source of comfort. Finally at the granite-faced tower, Kiloh darted up the steps and slipped behind a pair of glass-and-wood doors. He emerged about 20 minutes later, his tax bill paid, and drew in a slow, deep breath. "You just feel the relief," he said, "to know that I don't have to look over my shoulder." Maine Sen. Susan Collins says the federal government is awarding nearly $8 million to build more rail capacity in the northeastern part of the state. Collins, a Republican, says the money will fund the Maine Railroad Bridge Capacity project, which will repair and upgrade 22 rail bridges. The bridges are located on the Madawaska Subdivision of the Maine Northern Railway. Collins says the 151-mile section of railway will be able to carry 286,000 pounds of rail car weight when the work is completed. She says one of the bridges will be replaced completely. Collins says the rail link is used every day by manufacturers, and increasing its capacity will create jobs. Sturm Ruger (NYSE:RGR) recorded a decline in gun sales during the second quarter, saying demand has cooled off after an election-year surge. In a conference call with analysts on Thursday, Ruger CEO Christopher Killoy said demand slowed considerably compared to the same period in 2016, when gun sales got a boost from the presidential election. Last year, background checks conducted by the FBI, including purchases and permit applications, hit a record 27.5 million. The pace of background checks has slowed this year, indicating weaker consumer demand. The sales boom preceding the election likely pulled some potential 2017 sales into 2016, Killoy noted. I think there was a big hangover coming off the election cycle, for sure, that had to be worked off, he said. Ruger reported second-quarter net sales that fell 22% to $131.9 million. Earnings slipped to 57 cents per share, missing Wall Streets estimates. Hunting and outdoors retailer Cabelas (NYSE:CAB) experienced a similar trend, as weaker sales of firearms and shooting accessories weighed on the companys quarterly results. On Thursday, Cabelas CEO Tommy Millner said the company continued to see a slowdown in gun-related sales since the election. Cabelas reported a 9.3% drop in second-quarter sales in stores open at least a year. The firearms and shooting category was responsible for half of that decline. Shares of Ruger were down 9.6% at $52.15 in recent trading. American Outdoor Brands (NASDAQ:AOBC), the owner of Smith & Wesson, fell 4.4%. Despite the rough second quarter, Ruger expects consumer demand for rifles and handguns to remain strong. Killoy said the industry is returning to a normalized, seasonal pattern, and summers are traditionally a tougher period for sales. He also said retail inventories are healthier because stores limited gun orders in reaction to slower sales. Its not all gloom and doom, Killoy added. Former Ruger CEO Michael Fifer, who retired earlier this year, told analysts after the election that gun sales will continue to thrive, despite some projections that President Donald Trumps support for gun rights would keep potential gun buyers on the sidelines. In recent years, gun-control proposals stoked fears of new restrictions on the federal and state levels, leading to buying sprees. Killoy suggested that the firearm industry will continue to benefit from an influx of new customers. Yes, 2016 was maybe a little supercharged due to the political events going on and the election. But by and large, were not hearing anything negative from our customer base. Were just hearing that theyre taking a little bit of a breather, he said. We just have to encourage our customer base to get back out to the range, enjoy the sport and get back into the store. And remember how much fun it is to start buying a few more guns for fun, not just because you think they might be banned in the future. The Latest on federal government testing of water wells in Dimock (all times local): 4:45 p.m. A gas driller says the water in a northeastern Pennsylvania village does not pose a threat to "human health and the environment." Cabot Oil and Gas Corp. released a statement Thursday after learning that government scientists are collecting water samples from about 25 homes in Dimock, where some residents continue to blame the driller for contaminating their drinking water. The Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry is testing the water for bacteria, gases and chemicals. Dimock became ground zero in the national debate over the safety of fracking. The town was featured in the Emmy-winning 2010 documentary "Gasland." ___ 10:35 a.m. The federal government has returned to a Pennsylvania village that became a flashpoint in the national debate over fracking to investigate ongoing complaints about the quality of the drinking water. Government scientists are collecting water samples this week from about 25 homes in Dimock, a tiny crossroads about 150 miles north of Philadelphia. Dimock was the scene of the most highly publicized case of methane contamination to emerge from the early days of Pennsylvania's natural-gas drilling boom. The town was featured in the Emmy-winning 2010 documentary "Gasland." The Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry told The Associated Press on Thursday that residents are still concerned that gas drilling is affecting their wells. The agency says it's testing the water for bacteria, gases and chemicals. Sixty percent of the nearly one million personal bankruptcies filed in the United States last year resulted from medical bills.-- Steven Brill, America's Bitter Pill: Money, Politics, Backroom Deals,and the Fight to Fix Our Broken Healthcare System (2014) Most of us know how steep medical bills can be, but Mr. Brill points out just how damaging they often become, leading millions into bankruptcy over the years. Whether you've been a patient in a hospital, or are just struggling to pay healthcare costs despite your health insurance, there are programs that can help. Here are some ways to get help with medical bills and keep them under control. Minimize big medical bills One great strategy is to try to avoid big healthcare bills in the first place. Getting as healthy as you can get, and staying that way, is one way to do so -- but it's not foolproof. Even fit and healthy people can get sick, or suffer injuries. Being smart about your health insurance is another approach. For example, it can make good sense to get a plan with a high deductible, especially if you're healthy and expect low healthcare bills. Remember, though, that if a health crisis strikes, you'll be on the hook for some hefty cash outlays. Can you afford them? Give that some thought. Be sure that you understand how your plan works, too. Many plans will cost you less when you see in-network doctors and/or are cared for at in-network facilities. It can pay to be sure that any care you're getting, including diagnostic tests and procedures, is entirely within your network. If a biopsy is sent to an out-of-network pathologist for evaluation, you may receive a surprising bill. When it comes to prescription drugs, most insurers have lists of drugs that are preferred and for which they'll charge you less. Use that list, and share it with your doctor, so that he or she can keep it in mind when prescribing medicine. Whenever possible, generic alternatives are usually the best bet. It's also worth asking your doctor if he or she has any free samples of prescribed medicine. They often do, and that's free -- often saving patients a small bundle. Many times, though, you'll do all you can to reduce your healthcare bills, but you can end up with steep bills anyway -- or with the prospect of steep bills around the corner -- for care you know you need. Fortunately, there are some programs and solutions that can help. (And remember, too, that many medical expenses may end up as tax deductions, especially if they're substantial.) Check for errors! The first thing to do if you're holding a steep healthcare bill is to examine it closely for errors. It's not uncommon at all for there to be mistakes that many people will not see, and will just pay for without realizing it. According to U.S. News and World Report: "A surprisingly large proportion of medical bills contain clerical errors that result in overcharges -- anywhere from 50% to 80% -- depending on who you ask. A recent NerdWallet analysis found that 49% of Medicare claims had errors, while medical billing advocates will tell you 80% of the claims they analyze have errors." The folks at NerdWallet found common errors to include duplicate charges, canceled tests or procedures, incorrect quantities, and "upcoding" -- which is illegal, but happens anyway. This occurs when a provider, such as a hospital, enters a code for a higher-level (and more costly) service than the one you received. Negotiate Hospital and doctor bills are not set in stone. Many providers are willing to negotiate with you -- especially if it means getting paid something instead of getting paid nothing. It won't always work, but it's usually worth trying to get your bill reduced. It can help to research what a typical cost is for a certain service, and then ask to be charged that. You may even be able to negotiate with your health-insurance company -- and at least get an extended payment plan. Some providers may be willing to accept less if you simply offer what you can pay today, as it will assure them of some payment, and save them the trouble of chasing payment later. Don't expect them to accept $10 instead of $5,000, though. Get a copy in writing of any agreement reached. Providers or insurers may be able to connect you with helpers, such as social workers, who can help you, too. Seek assistance in disputes If you're not coming to any agreement in a dispute over healthcare costs, you might contact your state's insurance commissioner. They can often help -- or they might be able to steer you to some help. The Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) As I write this, Obamacare is under attack and may soon not exist in its current form, if at all. But for now, it does, and it can be a great help, offering a range of plans and subsidies for those who need help paying for premiums. Click over to www.healthcare.gov and learn about plans available to you, and when you can sign up. For most people, the Open Enrollment Period for a 2018 plan runs from November 1, 2017 to December 15, 2017. Hospital care Hospitals are not all alike. Some are for-profit and some are non-profit. You can probably guess which kind is most likely to offer free or reduced-cost care for those who need it. It's best to look into what help is available before you check in to a hospital, so do some digging early, if you can. Even for-profit hospitals may have some kind of program to alleviate the financial burden of medical bills, or some kind of discounted-care program. Prescription help Yes, some medications cost an arm and a leg. Know, though, that some of the companies that make and sell these drugs also have programs to help financially strapped people -- typically ones without prescription-drug coverage -- get medicine for free, or at a reduced rate. You might have to check with each company, and you may end up needing your physician to fill out and send in some forms for you. Two sites that can be of particular help: RXAssist.org and Partnership for Prescription Assistance. Also, check out The Assistance Fund and the Patient Access Network Foundation (PAN). Specific diseases If your steep medical bills are due to your dealing with a particular disease, there may be organizations or programs that can help you. A little Googling online can turn up some possibilities. Below are some examples of organizations or programs that help people deal with certain diseases, as well as some that offer broader aid, generally for people of limited financial means: Dental care If you're elderly, disabled, or not well, you may qualify for free or discounted dental care from the Donated Dental Services (DDS) program, which is a network of more than 15,000 dentists nationwide. Vision care If you are, or your child is, aged 18 or younger, and either one of you is uninsured and in a low-income household, you may be able to get free vision examinations and glasses from Sight for Students. EyeCare America, Vision USA, and New Eyes for the Needy offer eye care from volunteer eye specialists and/or glasses to qualifying people. If you can't afford cataract surgery, Mission Cataract USA may offer it to you. Hearing care You can look into available help with hearing problems via the Hearing Loss Association of America, and if you are or care for someone aged 19 or younger with a hearing or listening aid, you may qualify for financial help from The HIKE Fund. Find available assistance There are many more programs to help those struggling with medical bills -- and facing other problems, too. You can (anonymously!) look up government benefits (both federal and state) that you might qualify for by visiting Benefits.gov. Social workers specializing in healthcare issues may be able to help, too. Hire an advocate There are people you can hire -- medical billing advocates and private patient advocates -- who can do a lot of the work negotiating with healthcare providers to resolve steep bills. Some can help oversee your care, too, as they know lots of ways to improve your care, such as finding clinical trials you might qualify for, or monitoring your bedside care, or even helping you with decisions you're asked to make. They don't generally work for free, though, and they may charge you a percentage of what they save you, or hundreds or thousands of dollars. Even so, that can be well worth it, as they can improve your care, take a lot of work and worry off your plate, and save you more than they cost you. Crowdfunding This may seem like an extreme step, and it may feel uncomfortable, but if you're really stuck, you might appeal to the generosity of strangers through a crowdfunding site such as GoFundMe and YouCaring. Try to spread word of your campaign online, in order to reach as many possible helpers as possible. Fund an emergency fund Finally, a great way to be able to pay surprisingly large medical bills is to be prepared for the possibility of them -- by having a fully stocked emergency fund. It's generally advised that such a fund hold at least three to nine months' worth of all your living expenses, including housing, food, transportation, utilities, etc. It can save you if you experience a sudden job loss -- or also a medical emergency. Clearly, there is a lot of assistance available if you need help paying your medical bills. Finding the help you need is easier said than done, though, so the list of resources and suggestions above should help. The $16,122 Social Security bonus most retirees completely overlook If you're like most Americans, you're a few years (or more) behind on your retirement savings. But a handful of little-known "Social Security secrets" could help ensure a boost in your retirement income. For example: one easy trick could pay you as much as $16,122 more... each year! Once you learn how to maximize your Social Security benefits, we think you could retire confidently with the peace of mind we're all after. Simply click here to discover how to learn more about these strategies. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy. Oil prices fell on Thursday, as cautious buying dried up after U.S. crude rose to near $50 a barrel, with concern about high crude supplies from producer club OPEC offsetting the previous day's data showing record U.S. gasoline demand. Benchmark Brent crude settled down 35 cents a barrel at $52.01 a barrel. U.S. light crude was 56 cents lower at $49.03. U.S. crude traded at a session high of $49.96 a barrel. OPEC crude oil exports rose to a record high in July, driven largely by soaring exports from the group's African members, according to a report by Thomson Reuters Oil Research. U.S. light crude has remained below $50 a barrel, capped by robust domestic supplies. "The market needs continuing signs of improvement in the inventory picture to really drive the prices higher," said Gene McGillian, director of market research at Tradition Energy in Stamford, Connecticut. Strong demand in the United States has been supporting prices. The U.S. Energy Information Administration reported record gasoline demand of 9.84 million barrels per day (bpd) for last week and a fall in commercial crude inventories of 1.5 million barrels to 481.9 million barrels . That was below levels seen this time last year, an indication of a tightening U.S. market. But traders said high production by the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries was limiting price gains. OPEC and other producers including Russia have promised to restrict output by 1.8 million bpd until the end of March 2018 to help support prices and draw down inventories. Yet OPEC output hit a 2017 high of 33 million bpd in July, up 90,000 bpd from the previous month, a Reuters survey showed this week, led by a further recovery in supply from Libya, one of the countries exempt from the deal. Ample supply is likely to keep a lid on prices, many analysts said. "Our view of the oil market is that a major rally is unlikely in 2017," National Australia Bank analysts said in a note. "Absent further production cuts or a sustained uptick in demand, prices are likely to remain in the low to mid $50s for the remainder of the year." There are signs that the oil industry has adapted to an era of low prices and can produce and operate at levels that would previously have been uneconomic. U.S. investment bank Goldman Sachs said this week the oil industry had successfully adapted to oil prices around $50 per barrel. (By Jessica Resnick-Ault; Additional reporting by Christopher Johnson in London and Henning Gloystein in Singapore. Editing by David Gregorio and Lisa Shumaker) Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) investors were unfazed by the automakeras wider second-quarter loss, as shares rallied on news that Model 3 orders picked up following the caras official launch. The electric car maker has cautioned that its rollout of the Model 3, its first attempt at a mass-market car, would face challenges. At an event to deliver the first 30 Model 3s last week, CEO Elon Musk repeated his warning that Tesla will be in amanufacturing hella as it ramps up production. But investors have long bet on Teslaas future, and Muskas reassurances that the $35,000 Model 3 will be a success refueled the stock on Thursday. Shares jumped 7% to $348.54 in recent trading. Tesla is up 63% since the start of 2017. In a post-earnings call with analysts, Musk said Tesla has received 1,800 orders per day since the launch event on July 28. He also reaffirmed Teslaas production target, saying there should be azeroa concern. Tesla has said it expects to build around 500,000 vehicles in 2018 to meet demand for the Model 3. aWhat people should absolutely have zero concern about, zero, is that Tesla will achieve a 10,000 unit production week by the end of next year,a Musk said. Investors are closely watching the Palo Alto, California-based company as it attempts to rapidly expand production. Teslaas previous launch, the Model X crossover, faced production delays. By the end of 2017, Tesla intends on building 5,000 vehicles per week, half of its 2018 goal. Tesla has received 500,000 orders for the Model 3. Tesla is shipping production models to employees and investors first, saying it will use early adopters to discover quality issues. Also, the first editions of the Model 3 will be more expensive than the sedanas $35,000 starting price. Tesla has said it will start by building Model 3s that include optional packages. Tesla reported a net loss of $336 million for the second quarter, more than the $293 million loss it booked in the same period a year ago. On an adjusted basis, Tesla lost $1.33 a share. Wall Street expected a steeper loss of $1.82 a share. Revenue of $2.79 billion also beat expectations. U.S. traded oil settled sharply lower Thursday as downbeat sentiment drove futures into negative territory, ahead of a key OPEC meeting to discuss compliance with an agreement to curtail global output. On the New York Mercantile Exchange, light, sweet crude futures for delivery in September finished the day off 56 cents, or 1.1%, at $49.03. Although there was no fundamental catalyst for the retreat, some market participants pointed to news that prominent oil trader Andy Hall was shuttering his energy-focused hedge fund after wrongway bets that oil prices would climb faster. Oil has been stuck in a range for the past several months. Some investors speculated that the unwind of Hall's Astenbeck Master Commodities Fund II may result in more oil contracts hitting the market, driving prices lower. Still, traders and investors said that although the oil market is sensitive to news, it has mostly been in an uptrend. A coming two-day meeting of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries in Abu Dhabi on Aug. 7-9 remained the main focus for investors, and could help the determine oil's near-term future. Copyright 2017 MarketWatch, Inc. White House senior policy advisor Stephen Miller and CNNs Jim Acosta got into a heated exchange over President Trumps immigration plan. The clash began while Miller was briefing reporters Wednesday on Trumps proposed changes to the green card application process. What youre proposing or what the presidents proposing here does not sound like its in keeping with American tradition when it comes to immigration, Acosta told Miller. The CNN senior White House correspondent even quoted the Statue of Liberty Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses and questioned whether Miller is changing the meaning of being an immigrant in the United States. Miller responded by saying, The Statue of Liberty is a symbol of liberty and lighting the world. Its a symbol of American liberty lighting the world. The poem that you are referring to was added later is not actually part of the original Statue of Liberty. Watch the entire exchange in the video above. A founding member of Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five stabbed a homeless man to death after a passing remark made him think the man was hitting on him, a law enforcement official said Thursday. Kidd Creole, whose real name is Nathaniel Glover, was walking in midtown Manhattan on Wednesday near where he worked security and maintenance when he passed by 55-year-old John Jolly, police said. Jolly said something that offended Glover, and they argued, said the official, who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because of the ongoing investigation. The fight escalated until Glover stabbed Jolly and then walked off, authorities said. The official said it was an argument that got out of hand. Police later found Jolly and thought he was passed out, but then noticed him bleeding. He was taken to a hospital, where he later died. Glover was arraigned Thursday afternoon in a Manhattan criminal court on a murder charge and was returned to jail without bail by Judge Phyllis Chu on Thursday after an initial appearance in a Manhattan criminal court on a second-degree murder charge. Assistant District Attorney Mark Dahl said Glover, 57, a lyricist with the pioneering group, gave a detailed account of the street encounter in midtown shortly before midnight Tuesday that Dahl described to the judge, saying he wanted to demonstrate "the strength of the case." Defense lawyer Patrick Watts told the judge the evidence was "circumstantial" as his calm client stood alongside him, a tightly wound gray braid draped halfway down his back. Outside court, Watts declined comment. Dahl said Glover was heading to his job at a building where he did security and maintenance when he encountered John Jolly, who asked him: "What's up?" Dahl said Glover told him after his arrest that he thought Jolly was hitting on him and thought he was gay "and that infuriated him." The prosecutor said Glover kept walking but became convinced Jolly was going to rob him when the 55-year-old man approached him in a "threatening voice and manner," saying: "All I said to you was 'What's up!'" Dahl said the two men were a foot apart when Glover reached into his left sleeve and pulled out a steak knife that had been tied to his arm with a rubber band, leaving Jolly with two stab wounds to the chest. Jolly, a registered sex offender who was homeless, served time for sexually assaulting and attacking a woman. He had been staying at a shelter in the Bowery and had at least 16 prior arrests. Glover, 57, a lyricist with the pioneering group, was being held pending an arraignment on a murder charge. It wasn't clear whether he had an attorney who could comment on the charges. Glover was arrested in 2007 for possession of a gravity knife and had three other arrests dating back to the 1980s. Video shows a handcuffed Glover, his gray hair pulled back into a tightly wound ponytail, being escorted out of a police precinct Wednesday night. Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five is best known for their 1982 rap song, "The Message." The group was formed in the late 1970s in the Bronx. The group was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2007, the first rap act to be inducted into the hall. How much does ones social media following affect their ability to become a star? According to Game of Thrones actress Sophie Turner, a lot. The actress spoke to Porter magazine and revealed some pretty interesting things about Hollywood and whats important and whats not. I auditioned for a project and it was between me and another girl who is a far better actress than I am, far better, but I had the followers, so I got the job," she told the magazine, via The Telegraph. "Its not right, but it is part of the movie industry now. Turner got her big break when she was cast in HBOs immense hit Game of Thrones in 2011. Since then, her following on social has climbed high with roughly 1.34 million followers on Twitter, 5.4 million on Instagram and 2 million on Facebook. Likely in an effort to stay professional, Turner stopped short of naming the actress or the project in question. It could be her big role as Jean Grey in X-Men: Apocalypse or a myriad of other post-Thrones projects such as Huntsville or Berlin, I love You. It seems that the high social following and ability to generate buzz around a project are a big deal for movie stars right now. As Vanity Fair notes, stars like Dwayne Johnson and Vin Diesel have such large followings and are so active with their fans that studios allow them to drop trailers and teasers directly to their followers on Facebook. Former "Good Times" star Jimmie Walker is supporting President Trump. At least most of the time, said the veteran comedian, who considers himself "a logical Independent." Of Trump he said, "I'm for probably 90 percent of the things he does." He clarified, "That means I'm not against Trump, but he makes mistakes, too." AMY SCHUMER IS THE ONLY WOMAN ON FORBES' HIGHEST-PAID COMEDIANS LIST Walker, who shot to fame with his "Good Times" sitcom catch phrase "Dynomite!" in the 1970s, said he differs greatly from his fellow Hollywood comedians when it comes to politics. There's not one positive Trump joke out here, he explained. No President has been attacked in recent years because you couldn't attack [Barack] Obama because he was black but Trump, they have come out guns blazing against him, but even though I don't like everything he does, why, heck, darn it, I think he deserves some sort of praise but you can't say that in Hollywood." Walker, who was shooting an upcoming episode of ABCs Battle of the Network Stars when he spoke with Fox News, added: "I think anything that anybody says really is scrutinized. It's nothing personal! Everybody takes everything so hard! I think that's really what the problem is. Everybody is too sensitive." Walker pointed to the recent controversy over Bill Maher using the N-word on his HBO show "Real Time," for which Maher later apologized. It was a joke! said Walker. Come on, people! I love Bill Maher even though Bill Maher has not put me on his show in about 10 years Bill Maher is not a racist calm down." And according to Walker, Kathy Griffin was wrong to blame being a woman for her problems after she faced backlash over holding up a fake severed bloody head of Trump. He felt bad for her, however, because of "how hard she's worked to get where she's gotten. I hate to see that she goes down like this because in Hollywood, I've said this a million times comedy is a left-wing affair, he said. There is no right-wing comedy." Elaborating on his political thoughts, Walker said, "Reagan I think was a very good president [but] my favorite president has always been Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Many of my good friends on the right still hate him for social security, but I think it's still a thing that really works well." Walker revealed he also liked "Ike, or President Dwight Eisenhower, for creating American jobs in the auto industry and getting freeways built. "I think what people are looking for [now] is an industry where everybody can go and put widgets and didgets and make a nice living," he said. "...There's no easy way out now, not to say being in an industrialized car, auto [or] fabric industry was easy, but it was a way to go, where people could, go, 'I can make this amount, I can have a house, I can go to Disneyland.' Those days are over, baby. It's going be tougher and tougher to make that kind of living nowadays." Walker, who does standup comedy 300 days a year, will be featured on Thursdays episode of Battle of the Network Stars in the upcoming episode TV Moms and Dads TV Kids. From the top of the rap heap to a maintenance job to an arrest over a fatal stabbing of a homeless man. That is Kidd Creole's trajectory. The founding member of the first hip hop group inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Grandmaster Flash emcee Kidd Creole was arrested Wednesday for fatally stabbing a homeless man. He was arraigned Thursday afternoon in a Manhattan criminal court on a murder charge and was returned to jail without bail. His lawyer declined comment. Nathaniel Glover, Kidd Creole's real name, was walking in midtown Manhattan on Wednesday near where he worked a security and maintenance job when he passed by 55-year-old John Jolly, police said. Jolly said something that offended Glover, and they argued, said the official. The fight escalated until Glover stabbed Jolly and then walked off, authorities said. Glover reportedly confessed to stabbing the homeless man and is expected in court later Thursday. But this isnt Glovers first brush with trouble in a career that started with a flash, before it fizzled. Glover the poet Born in the Bronx, Glover became interested in poetry. The poems were a way that he could express himself in a creative way, according to his website. RAPPER KID CREOLE ARRESTED FOR FATAL STABBING OF HOMELESS MAN His website says that Glover was shy and average at sports and would rhyme in order to talk to girls. Along with his brother Melvin Glover known as Melle Mel Glover developed their own unique style of rhyming and began to use emcees in their songs. Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five Robert Keith Wiggins, known as Keef Cowboy, joined the Glovers in 1976 and formed the group Grandmaster Flash and the 3 MCs a precursor to the Furious Five, according to the groups website. When Eddie Morris, called Mr. Ness and Scorpio, and Guy Todd Williams, called Rahiem, joined the group, it became Grandfather Flash and the Furious Five. RAPPER DMX BUSTED ON TAX FRAUD CHARGES Joseph Saddler, also known as Grandmaster Flash, would bring his turntables and speakers to parks, and the group became renowned for its live performances. Wiggins who died in 1989 was especially known for his scat routine, according to the hip hop groups website. The group eventually signed with Sugar Hill Records. The groups most famous song, The Message, was called a breakthrough in hip hop by Rolling Stone. Its lyrics include the line, Don't push me 'cause I'm close to the edge. Im trying not to lose my head. Released in 1982, the song was credited as revealing urban life and highlighting urban decay. It was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2012. The group was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2007 becoming the first hip hop group to do so. RAPPER GETS ONE-YEAR SENTENCE FOR TWEETS PRAISING TERROR While the band officially broke up years ago, Glovers Twitter page features an advertisement that says the Furious Five are expected to play at Lady Bs Annual Basement Party with several other artists, including the Sugarhill Gang, on August 20 in Philadelphia. Other arrests Glover was arrested in 1982 for possession of weapon, according to PIX 11. He was also arrested for the same charges in 1995 and 2007. RAPPER TROY AVE SHOT TWICE IN NEW YORK CITY A 1997 arrest record for Glover is sealed, PIX 11 reported. Deadly stabbing Glover encountered the man in midtown Manhattan Wednesday and reportedly told police that he heard a gay slur. He said the pair exchanged heated words before Glover shivved him twice in the chest, a police source told the New York Daily News. Glover thought Jolly was hitting on him, the source said. At the time of the altercation, Jolly was drunk, the Daily News reported. Jolly, a registered sex offender who was homeless, served time for sexually assaulting and attacking a woman. He had been staying at a shelter in the Bowery and had at least 16 prior arrests. Police initially thought Jolly had passed out from the heat but eventually discovered that he was bleeding from the chest. The temperature in New York Wednesday reached the mid-80s with high humidity. Glover was taken into custody at his Bronx home on Wednesday and was later charged with murder. The Associated Press contributed to this report. Sadie Robertson opened up for the first time about her two-year relationship with ex-boyfriend Blake Coward. The "Duck Dynasty" star and Coward split in March 2016 but this is the first time Robertson is letting her fans know what lead to their break up. "We created this false love for ourselves," Robertson wrote on her blog LiveOriginal.com, adding that they fought like "like cats and dogs." The 20-year-old said she thought her relationship with Coward was right because they were full of "passion." However, she said it was "a lie." SADIE ROBERTSON 'THANKFUL' AFTER BEING FOLLOWED BY 3 MEN IN A VAN "We were so ... 'passionate' and to me, it seemed like that couldn't possibly be a negative thing, because I heard the word passion at church all the time. That was a huge LIE and created so much confusion for me." She added, "Over time, we welcomed sin in and allowed it to create a wedge between us and God." Robertson recalled a huge fight she had with Coward while she was in New York City with her family for fashion week. "I remember sitting outside of my hotel room in New York City after walking in fashion week. I was trying to hide from my family and friends so they would not see the makeup that was running down my face after an intense fight I just had on the phone," she wrote. SADIE ROBERTSON: SPLIT WAS 'FOR THE BEST' Robertson said she wants to help fans who are in similar situations. "Although it is normalized in our society, I want you to know that fear, jealousy, pain, selfishness, impurity, manipulation and degrading comments are all UNHEALTHY components in a relationship and should not be considered normal," she shared. She concluded her lengthy post by saying it had been approved by her ex. "Ps : This was Sadie written and Blake approved. I know what y'all were thinking, all is well mates," she wrote. An employee at a Dunkin Donuts in New York City is accused of denying service to two NYPD officers, saying I dont serve cops, according to the New York Post. Detectives Endowment Association President Michael Palladino is calling the discrimination disgraceful, saying Thursday that it should not go unattended, the Post reports. In reaction to the incident, Palladino is calling for a boycott of the chain. I assume it is an isolated incident. Nevertheless, Dunkin Donuts corporate should issue an apology to the NYPD and until that happens, I have asked detectives and their families to refrain from patronizing the stores, he said. He also believes the citys political leaders are partly to blame for the incident, saying that they have encouraged this type of behavior by constantly demonizing cops and pushing their decriminalization agenda. Its time for the same politicians to step up, take some responsibility and condemn what occurred. BULLEIT BOURBON HEIRESS CLAIMS SHE WAS FIRED BECAUSE SHES GAY Shortly after noon on Sunday, the two cops plainclothes patrol officers assigned to the 73rd Precincts detective squad entered Dunkin Donuts at 1993 Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn to get Baskin-Robbins. The officers, dressed in suit pants, shirts and ties, with badges and pistols on their belts, waited in line to order. When they got to the counter, the store clerk ignored them and asked the customer behind them what he wanted. When the customer said the cops were there before him, the clerk replied, Yeah, I know, but I dont serve cops, according to the Post. A manager at the store is disputing the incident. He claims that, according to security footage, the officers were waiting at the wrong counter, where you pick up your order. You can see on the security tape: they stand here for five minutes, while other customers were being served. One customer even ordered ice cream, and they mustve not liked that because they left the store, he told the Post. The manager, who wouldnt give his name, did not allow the Post to view the video. He said the store began receiving phone calls from other police, asking why they didnt serve the two officers. And I kept trying to explain that we serve everyone, we have nothing but respect for the police, and that they were standing at the wrong counter. It was busy at the time, and we were busy serving customers, he said. On Thursday afternoon, a reporter at NBC News Radio sent out a tweet with a statement from Dunkin' Donuts on the incident. FOLLOW US ON FACEBOOK FOR MORE FOX LIFESTYLE NEWS "Dunkin Donuts is aware of the recent situation at a franchise in Brooklyn and we continue to monitor this matter. The franchisee who owns and operates this restaurant informed us immediately upon learning of this situation earlier this week, he contacted one of the police officers involved to personally apologize for any negative experience he may have had in his store. Dunkin Donuts has a long history of supporting local law enforcement and all those who do so much to ensure the safety of our neighborhoods and our country, the statement reads. Our franchisees are committed to serving each and every guest with respect and courtesy. The franchisee of the Brooklyn restaurant is meeting with the police officer he spoke to earlier this week in person to hopefully bring this to a satisfactory conclusion for all involved. Right about now, youre getting the kids ready for going back to school. Youre shopping for school supplies, meeting new teachers, and getting your kids updated on important shots. While you may be already considering the flu and cold season by stocking up on the essentials, there is another health concern to watch out for in the crowded school hallways. Though you dont always hear much about it, scabies can spread easily in children at school. In one recent case at Winchester Hospital, a patient was admitted for treatment without the staff realizing that he had an active infection. Once he was in the hospital, over 20 staff members began showing signs of scabies and required treatment right away to prevent it from spreading. SHOULD TEENS CONSIDER GETTING NOSE JOBS? According to Winchester Hospitals statement in the Boston Globe, Scabies is highly contagious, but also highly treatable. Contagious is an understatement when youre looking at the numbers. The World Health Organization reveals that scabies affects over 100 million people worldwide. People from all races and social classes can get the infection, but it has a high prevalence in children and older adults living in crowded or poor conditions. Because scabies does happen more often in crowded areas and transfers easily through skin contact, schools offer the perfect opportunity for this infection. Learn to recognize scabies and voice your concerns if you suspect that a child in school is infected. What Is Scabies? Scabies is an infection that occurs because of a human mite called the Sarcoptes scabiei. This tiny mite burrows into the skin, producing an intensely itchy rash. The mites then live in the skin and lay eggs, causing the infection to spread. MICHIGAN BABY FACING LIFE-THREATENING DISEASE SIMILAR TO CHARLIE GARD'S DIAGNOSIS As people touch and interact with other humans, the person infected can easily spread it to the people surrounding him. In school, children often stand close together in hallways, and younger classes may even hold hands as they walk in line. To deepen the problem, people with the infection may not know about a problem for up to 6 weeks since the body takes time to react to a new infestation. Once they do show symptoms, the person may then itch the area, allowing bacteria to settle in and potentially spreading the mites to other parts of the body. Scabies often occurs around the wrist and forearm, in between the fingers, on the bottom of the feet, around the ankles, and sometimes on the scalp. The infection can also spread to the genitals in many cases. In rare instances, a person may get crusted scabies, where the rash crusts over due to an over-abundance of the mites living in the skin. If this severe case is not treated immediately, it can lead to complications such as sepsis and kidney damage. Crusted scabies is also even more contagious than its common counterpart because the mites can live within the crust for several days without human contact. Treating Scabies in Children If your childs school does have an outbreak, you should get professional treatment right away. You should not try to self-treat this condition. Again, many people wont notice any symptoms for several weeks. If your child has the infection unknowingly, he can cause further problems to family and friends during that time frame. IS LIPOSUCTION SAFE IN PEOPLE WITH TYPE 2 DIABETES? Once you seek medical treatment, a dermatologist will often prescribe a topical medicine with specific instructions. If a young child is infected, there are options for children as young as one-month old. For a severe case of scabies, the doctor may prescribe a strong oral medicine. In either instance, he may also recommend taking an antibiotic for bacterial infection and an antihistamine or another medicine to control the itching. How to Prevent Since a scabies infection can occur in even neat, clean people, you likely wont see the risk coming your way. However, if a friend or family member is getting treated for scabies, you should consider treatment as well. To prevent further spreading, you should wash and dry all linens, towels, clothes, and washcloths that youve had contact with recently. If needed, dry clean items that cannot be washed or seal them in a plastic bag for 1 week. Vacuum the entire house and throw away the vacuum bag. You do not need to treat pets since scabies is a human mite. Scabies is a common infection globally; so you should not feel discouraged if youre dealing with this problem. However, to avoid them, watch for the common itchy rash in children at school. If you see something of concern, alert a school official and get proper treatment for your child if necessary. This article first appeared on AskDrManny.com. We all have our dirty little secrets, but the celebrities who so often live their lives in the limelight don't always have the same benefit. Indeed, due to our culture's constant fascination with the lifestyles of the rich and famous, we've learned more about these A-listers than we may know about our closest friends. That is, we sure know a lot about their sex lives. However, in the past few years, apart from the constant speculation about romances, breakups and everything in between, there have been some particularly surprising revelations made by our favorite stars. From George Clooney to Adam West to Martha Stewart, here are some of the juiciest details we've learned about the sex lives of Hollywood's finest. Andy Serkis In July, Serkis, who is best known for his role in the Lord of the Rings series as the scheming Gollum, revealed in an interview with the Guardian that he has sex "four, five times a day." Nick Cannon and Mariah Carey This celebrity couple has since split, but when they were married in 2012, Nick Cannon revealed to Howard Stern that he and Mariah Carey would make love to her own music. And that's not all: He admitted to masturbating to her song, "Hero." "Why not?" he said. "Sometimes you gotta be reminded of what's at home." RELATED: 30 WAYS TO HAVE MORE SEX Jane Fonda The 79-year-old film and fitness icon, who now stars in Netflix's Grace and Frankie, candidly explained in March how she prepared for her role in the show, when her character started a business selling sex toys to adults. "We tried all different kinds of vibrators. Use it or lose it, right?" she said. "I have one that hangs around my neck and it looks like a beautiful piece of silver jewelry." Adam West The late Batman, who passed away in June, once revealed that his days of donning a cape and tights made him into quite the ladies' man. His sidekick, Robin, played by actor Burt Ward, benefitted as well. Burt and I were like kids in a candy store. It was the Swinging Sixties with free love and women threw themselves at us, he said. I remember one night with eight different women. Orgy is a harsh word, but it was eight at one time. Id have young female co-stars in my dressing room at 7:45 in the morning. James Franco At this point, it's hard to be surprised by anything about Franco's sexuality; after all, the celebrated actor is starring in an upcoming HBO drama about the porn industry, and has been unabashedly honest about his sex life in the past. However, his 2010 admission about his masturbation habits is still enough to take anyone aback. The man is, shall we say, prolific. "When I'm alone, I do masturbate a lot. I don't know why," he told the Hollywood Reporter. "It's like you have those days where it's just like, I have a ton of writing to do, or a ton of reading to do, and you're just like, OK, I'm going to be on the couch all day or in bed all day just doing that I tend to have a four- or five-time day." RELATED: JAMES FRANCO TALKS ABOUT DIRECTING SEX SCENES FOR HBO PORN DRAMA Martha Stewart The queen of home decor and crafting may have a more adventurous sex life than you. During a 2013 interview on Andy Cohen's Watch What Happens Live, the businesswoman coyly responded with a "maybe" when asked if she'd ever had a threesome. George Clooney The silver fox's description of his first orgasm is perhaps the most surprising entry on this list. In a 2011 sit-down with Rolling Stone, Clooney enthusiastically explained how he first experienced the sensation, saying that it happened when he was a boy. "I believe it was while climbing a rope when I was six or seven years old," he told the music mag. "I mean, nothing came out, but all the other elements were there. I remember getting to the top of the rope, hanging off the rope, and going, 'Oh, my God, this feels great!'" John Legend and Chrissy Teigen It may not surprise you that these two are members of the mile-high club, but anyone should be shocked by how covertly Legend and Teigen were able to pull off commercial airline sex during a trip to Thailand, as she revealed in a 2014 Cosmopolitan profile. "We were on our way to Thailand to see my parents, flying commercial first-class," she said. "We were under a blanket. We weren't even in one of those pod things. I feel like we should get a trophy for that." This article originally appeared on Mens Health Dear Abby is often thought to be an expert on all things etiquette, but shes recently had to apologize for the advice she gave to a concerned mom. In a June edition of her advice column, Jeanne Phillips who publishes Dear Abby under the pen name Abigail Van Buren, just like her mother before her told a mom from New Jersey that it was off-putting to ask other parents if they have guns in their homes before allowing her daughter to play at their houses. Because you are concerned for your child's safety, why not offer to have the kids visit your house for playdates? added Phillips. I'm sure many of the parents will be glad to have some free time, and it shouldn't offend anyone. ENTIRE FAMILY WEARS HELMETS IN SUPPORT OF CHILD Less than a week later, however, Phillips had received a large number of complaints, prompting her to clarify her statements. I have heard you loud and clear, tweeted Phillips on June 27. She also stated that ensuring a childs safety means asking whether there are weapons on the premises, and advised parents not to send their children to another childs house if they feel its an unsafe environment. Now, more than a month after the offending advice, Phillips has outright apologized for those initial remarks in a column she published on Monday. FOLLOW US ON FACEBOOK FOR MORE FOX LIFESTYLE NEWS In response to a Yale-educated pediatric nurse (and psychiatrist nurse practitioner) who took Phillips to task for not encouraging the mom to follow through with her questions about gun safety, Phillips walked back her original response. Of course you are right. The womans question wasnt about etiquette. It was about child safety, Phillips told the nurse in a column titled Vigilant Moms Cant Shy Away From Asking About Gun Safety. A large number of readers besides you agreed my perspective was off, she added. I have heard all of you loud and clear, and I apologize. MILLENNIALS CHEAT LESS THAN THEIR PARENTS, ACCORDING TO RESEARCH In doing so, Phillips also earned the praise of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, a group that was initially critical of her advice, according to Today. "Dear Abby has gone beyond just correcting the record; I'm proud to consider her an advocate now too, said Dan Gross, the president of Brady Center. Our children's safety is something we call ALL get behind and all speak out for." One month after the election, President-elect Donald Trump made a victory tour of states that had helped deliver his surprise win. In Fayetteville, North Carolina, Trump introduced his choice for Secretary of Defense, Gen. James Mattis, and pledged the following: We will stop racing to topple foreign regimes that we know nothing about, that we shouldnt be involved with. Instead, our focus must be on defeating terrorism and destroying ISIS, and we will. He appears to be fulfilling the second part of that pledge, less so the first. Think North Korea, Iran, Russia, and now even Venezuela, which has had new sanctions placed on it following fraudulent elections giving dictatorial power to President Nicolas Maduro. While Venezuela is no threat to America and Russia is a major headache, North Korea and Iran are clear and present dangers. These two rogue regimes are committed to developing nuclear weapons capable of reaching U.S. cities no matter what we do. Clearly this cannot be allowed to happen, but the question is how to stop them short of all-out war that has the potential to kill millions and create a doomsday scenario reminiscent of Cold War movies like Fail Safe, Dr. Strangelove and On the Beach. The best offense really is a good defense. When Ronald Reagan proposed his Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) in a nationally televised address on March 23, 1983, many on the left mocked him. They called his proposal science fiction and unworkable, derisively labeling it Star Wars. Theyre not mocking that proposal now. The Defense Department has had several successes with its Terminal High Altitude Defense (THAAD) anti-missile system, but only at targets that represent medium-range missiles. In May, the U.S. Missile Defense Agency also successfully intercepted an intercontinental ballistic missile during the first test of its ground-based intercept system. Thats not science fiction. Readers should revisit Reagans speech as a template for dealing with modern threats. In that address from the Oval Office, Reagan said the risk of war is lessened when the U.S. has a strong deterrence, which he defined as making sure any adversary who thinks about attacking the United States, or our allies, or our vital interests, concludes that the risks to him outweigh any potential gains. Once he understands that, he wont attack. We maintain the peace through our strength; weakness only invites aggression. Reagan said the strategy of deterrence had not changed, but what it takes to deter had changed. While acknowledging it might take decades to achieve his Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), Reagan said he wanted to take the first step. He concluded his address: I am directing a comprehensive and intensive effort to define a long-term research and development program to begin to achieve our ultimate goal of eliminating the threat posed by strategic nuclear missiles. This could pave the way for arms control measures to eliminate the weapons themselves. We seek neither military superiority nor political advantage. Our only purpose one all people share is to search for ways to reduce the danger of nuclear war. My fellow Americans, tonight were launching an effort which holds the promise of changing the course of human history. There will be risks, and results take time. But I believe we can do it. As we cross this threshold, I ask for your prayers and your support. President Trump should emulate his predecessor, making his first televised address from the Oval Office during which he explains to Americans why North Korea and Iran pose an immediate, or ultimate, threat to the United States. He should announce a fast-track effort to escalate THAAD so it can destroy ICBMs. A space-based, anti-missile system should then complement our defenses in order to protect America and our allies from nuclear attack. As Reagan noted, weakness encourages tyrants. Tehran and Pyongyang must be encouraged at what appears to be instability in the Trump administration. A credible missile defense system would send them a message more powerful than words. What if the federal government captures in real time the contents of every telephone call, email and text message and all the fiber-optic data generated by every person and entity in the United States 24/7/365? What if this mass surveillance was never authorized by any federal law? What if this mass surveillance has come about by the secret collusion of presidents and their spies in the National Security Agency and by the federal government's forcing the major telephone and computer service providers to cooperate with it? What if the service providers were coerced into giving the feds continuous physical access to their computers and thus to all the data contained in and passing through those computers? What if President George W. Bush told the NSA that since it is part of the Defense Department and he was the commander in chief of the military, NSA agents could spy on anyone, notwithstanding any court orders or statutes that prohibited it? What if Bush believed that his orders to the military were not constrained by the laws Congress had written or the interpretations of those laws by federal courts or even by the Constitution? What if Congress has written laws that all presidents have sworn to uphold and that require a warrant issued by a judge before the NSA can spy on anyone but Bush effectively told the NSA to go through the motions of getting a warrant while spying without warrants on everyone in the U.S. all the time? What if Presidents Barack Obama and Donald Trump have taken the same position toward the NSA and ordered or permitted the same warrantless and lawless spying? What if the Constitution requires warrants based on probable cause of criminal behavior before surveillance can be conducted but Congress has written laws reducing that standard to probable cause of communicating with someone who has communicated with a foreign national? What if a basic principle of constitutional law is that Congress is subject to the Constitution and therefore cannot change its terms or their meanings? What if the Constitution requires that all warrants particularly describe the place to be searched or the person or thing to be seized? What if the warrants Congress permits the NSA to use violate that requirement by permitting a federal court to issue general warrants? What if general warrants do not particularly describe the place to be searched or the person or thing to be seized but rather authorize the bearer to search indiscriminately through service providers customer data? What if most Americans have offered the view that they have nothing to hide from the government? What if the government has no moral, constitutional or legal right to personal information about and from all of us without a valid search warrant consistent with constitutional requirements? What if raw intelligence data comes to the government without any proper names on it? What if in order to find those proper names, the government goes through a procedure called unmasking? What if lawful unmasking can only occur when the government knows that a national security problem is afoot and it needs to know the identity of the person whose communications it has in hand? What if the Obama administration made it easier for political appointees to unmask members of Congress and other government officials without demonstrating a national security need as a reason for doing so? What if unmasking for political purposes is a felony? What if there are 17 federal intelligence agencies that collect raw intelligence data from Americans? What if for generations these agencies needed to keep the secrets they acquired to themselves, unless the dissemination of the secrets or the unmasking of the communicants was necessary for national security purposes? What if after Trump was elected president, the Obama administration issued regulations that permitted the indiscriminate sharing of raw intelligence data among agents from any of the 17 federal intelligence agencies? What if, after this raw intelligence data sharing was permitted, some of it ended up in The New York Times and The Washington Post? What if President Trump himself was a victim of indiscriminate sharing and criminal unmasking? What if no one has been prosecuted for this? What if the use of raw intelligence data for political purposes is a serious threat to personal liberty? What if we in America are the most watched, photographed and copied society in history? What if we never agreed to this? What if instead we have a Constitution that was written in large measure to prevent this? What if the purpose of the probable cause requirement and the specificity of warrants requirement was to protect the individual right to be left alone? What if our personal rights are inalienable as the Declaration of Independence states? What if the government cannot morally, constitutionally or legally interfere with inalienable rights without a jury trial? What if the whole purpose of the primacy of the Constitution was to establish the federal government and at the same time prevent its interference with inalienable personal rights without probable cause or a jury trial? What if we fought a revolution against a British king because his agents were interfering with inalienable rights without first proving to a court any wrongdoing on the part of those whose rights were trampled? What if because of weakness or fear or secrecy or lethargy or slick arguments, we have a new normal in the U.S. in which every persons inalienable right to be left alone is violated by the federal government so thoroughly, quietly and continuously that we dont even notice it until it is too late? What if when the feds know enough about us to harm us, it will be too late? What if it is already too late? What do we do about it? Eight months have passed since the election, but on the Left the shock has not abated. For them, each new week brings fresh revelations why Donald Trump shouldn't be president. I've stopped trying to convince them that Trump isn't the monster they think he is. Instead, though I disagree, I go along with all their judgments and add, "But it's your liberalism that put him there." Huh? The conversation continues. Liberalism has fallen into a position in which it can make few moral arguments against the other side. Thats the real frustration liberals have with President Trump. "Yes," I say, "you call him vulgar and crass, but youve praised vulgar and crass characters from George Carlin to Madonna nonstop. You celebrate them as groundbreakers and boundary-pushers. Well, now youve got someone taking it all the way to 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. The guy is sullying the dignity of the office, they charge. But you love edgy counter-cultural gestures, the CEO who shows up to meetings in a t-shirt, the lefty rock star who shouts at the Golden Globes This is f------ brilliant. Remember how you labeled Tipper Gore an uptight Puritan after she led the charge against indecent rock lyrics? Well, now youve got a president who is no Puritan." "Yeah, he's nothing but a reality TV star," they grumble. "He's a braggart and a bully." "Wait a minute," I reply. "You ate up the braggadocio of Muhammad Ali. And just listen to the liberal ESPN and note how often it showcases trash-talkers and the 'swagger.' Ill take Joe Frazier any day, but you put the strong, silent type away long ago with your Sixties anti-hero." "Look at how he talked about women on that bus!" they charge. "C'mon," I remind them, "President Obama told Rolling Stone that he was hip to the rappers Nas ("see that p----y, they hand it to me") and Lil' Wayne ("I love a cute ho"). And dont forget Maureen Dowds New York Times column Dirty Words from Pretty Mouths (Feb 28, 2015), which praised female writers and actresses for their own version of male raunchiness. Thats the feminism that said women can be just as sexually aggressive as men. The Left has forgotten the link between political and cultural liberalism. Political liberalism, broadly speaking, seeks state solutions to private problems. Cultural liberalism operates on one principle: Do your own thing. The error is to believe that the two can remain separate. Liberals thought that they could create a culture of individual freedom, but keep politics on the straight and true line of progressive change. But rampant individualism was bound to erode public manners and mores; we see the moral anarchy of our world every time we turn on the TV. It was inevitable that the deterioration would filter into American politics, too. Why, then, should people who voted for Donald Trump pay any attention to liberal criticisms of his lifestyle and language, his divorces and reality-TV celebrity? Everything liberal opponents attack him for on cultural grounds could be turned right around on themselves. When Robert De Niro told Brown University graduates that in four years the United States has gone from an inspiring uplifting drama to a tragic dumbass comedy, Trump supporters remembered that Black Lives Matter, Jon Stewart, The View, and a hundred other left-wing voices have never treated America as uplifting and inspiring. Liberalism has fallen into a position in which it can make few moral arguments against the other side. Thats the real frustration liberals have with President Trump. He is the ultimate realization of liberal cultureand yet he still (rightly) believes in God and country. Imagine if Donald Trump, meeting a Kenyan for the first time, asked, You are a woman, arent you? Or, if during a recession, he muttered, Everybody was saying we must have more leisure. Now they are complaining that they are unemployed. Or to a group of Australian Aborigines: Do you still throw spears at one another? Fortunately, these are not Trumpisms. The president has his own collection of doozies, whether in public gatherings or leaked by his oh-so-loyal administration. No, the above gaffes and hundreds more are the wit, wisdom and legacy of Prince Philip, the royal consort of Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom. When Philip, 96, retired from public life this week, he took with him not only a royal standard for patriotism and devotion to duty, but a scalding some might say scarlet -- streak of biting sarcasm. He loved what Britain stood for, though even he could see its weak spots. People think theres a rigid class system here, but dukes have been known to marry chorus girls. Some have even married Americans. Born into Greek royalty in 1921, Philip was a dashing naval officer who wooed and wed Elizabeth, the young woman who would become queen. Even before the term political correctness had been coined, Philip was politically incorrect. I would like to go to Russia very much, he said in 1967, although the bastards murdered half my family. After attending a concert by Tom Jones, Philip asked the crooner, What do you gargle with, pebbles? He did not mellow with age. On a visit to China in 1986, he warned a group of British exchange students, If you stay here much longer, youll all be slitty-eyed. Years later, he defended his comment. The Chinese werent worried about it, so why should anyone else (be)? It wasnt just foreigners he offended. He once asked a driving instructor in Scotland (home of scotch whiskey), How do you keep the natives off the booze long enough to get them through the test? Some of his witticisms damaged not only his reputation, but his wifes popularity. Imagine being at the dinner table at Buckingham Palace after some of his comments became public. Yet to the outside world, the queen and Philip presented a rock-solid image of unity. As he removes himself from the glare of publicity, Philip will be remembered not only for his caustic wit, but his unfaltering loyalty to the crown, and the traditions of Great Britain. He loved what Britain stood for, though even he could see its weak spots. People think theres a rigid class system here, but dukes have been known to marry chorus girls. Some have even married Americans. Enjoy your rest, your royal highness. Youve earned it. Southern Methodist University will not budge on its decision to move a 9/11 memorial ignoring the urgings of students, alumni and even the governor of Texas. The private university generated national controversy after it banned the Young Americans for Freedom chapter from posting nearly 3,000 American flags on a prominent campus lawn. Click here for a free subscription to Todds newsletter: a must-read for Conservatives! This display is not political. It is not partisan. It is not controversial. This is about our nation united, Gov. Greg Abbott wrote in a letter to SMU President R. Gerald Turner. The Dallas Morning News first obtained a copy of the correspondence. Each flag represents a life taken, the soul of a family destroyed, the governor wrote. "Yet each flag also represents a symbol of hope, for as a people united we remain unbowed. But SMU remains unbowed in its decision to relocate all lawn memorials to what students called a less prominent campus location. The university had objected to the location of the display, citing a revised policy aimed at protecting students from harmful or triggering messages. The school revised the language of the policy earlier this week removing the words harmful or triggering. SMU respects the rights of all campus community members to express their opinions, as well as their right to be free from coercion and harassment, SMU spokesman Kent Best told me. The university also said its decision was based on the fact that some classes are held on the lawn. The Dallas Hall Lawn had long been a gathering place for memorial displays without any objections from the university. Grant Wolf, the leader of SMUs Young Americans for Freedom chapter, told me the university permitted them to display their 9/11 memorial for the past two years. But he suspects the policy was changed because of a controversy surrounding the schools pro-life group. Last year, Mustangs for Life filled the lawn with thousands of crosses to symbolize children lost to abortion. The outrage from pro-abortion activists was considerable. Someone had clearly been offended and complained and the university caved to their pressure, Wolf told The Todd Starnes Show. The university stressed that the policy change had nothing to do with the 9/11 memorial but Wolf is not buying their argument. The policy specifically referenced displays that contained crosses or flags, he told me. They essentially argued that crosses and flags were too offensive and triggering to be displayed on the center lawn. Southern Methodist University seems to believe that free speech must be muted to prevent a college snowflake from being offended. That belief is not only unconstitutional, it is also un-American. Its unfortunate SMU refused to listen to the sound reasoning of Young Americans for Freedom and Gov. Abbott. Perhaps the university will consider listening to the deep pockets of their donors and alumni instead? When Mikheil Saakashvili was voted out of office as president of Georgia in 2012, he had no place to go. His political opponents were now in power, and they sought to settle scores. Saakashvili's friend from their student together - Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko - offered a lifeline. He not only granted his friend Ukrainian citizenship, he made him governor of Ukraine's Odessa region, appreciative of Saakashvili's record of reforms in Georgia and his administrative gusto. But Saakashvili repaid Poroshenko's kindness by resigning from the post in 2016 and launching a wave of reckless and unsubstantiated corruption charges against Poroshenko and the government. Then, last week, the Ukrainian Migration Service announced that Saakashvili failed to inform the agency that he was facing criminal charges in Georgia when he applied for Ukrainian citizenship. The government can annul citizenship if an individual acquires citizenship in another country or submits false documents, which Saakashvili did. So Ukraine stripped Saakashvili of his Ukrainian citizenship. In response, Saakashvili has lashed out, trying to hit Poroshenko where he thinks it will hurt the most: He said President Donald Trump's spurious allegations about Ukrainian meddling in the 2016 U.S. presidential election are true. Saakashvili went even further, alleging unspecified foul play initiated by some Ukrainian oligarchic circles. This is especially hypocritical coming from Saakashvili. His closest associate is turncoat Ukrainian politician Serhii Leshchenko, a former Poroshenko ally who became a vocal critic of the president. Leshchenko was also involved in the scandal surrounding former Trump campaign manager Paul Manaforts lobbying work for former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych. Further, Saakashvili's indignation at losing his Ukrainian citizenship rings hollow. When he was president of Georgia, Saakashvili tried to strip the citizenship of political rival Bidzina Ivanishvili, a move that was later overturned by the Georgian Supreme Court. If the annulment of Saakashvili's citizenship is baseless, as he says, why was the decision confirmed by the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU), the investigative body set up to root out corruption at all levels of Ukrainian society? It's worth noting that the NABU is headed by Artem Sytnyk and employs Gizo Uglava - two strong Saakashvili allies. Is Saakashvili saying his close associates are puppets of the alleged "oligarchic foul play?" His allegations make no sense. Saakashvili's brief turn as governor of Odessa was long on PR and short on performance. He made a great initial show of immersing himself into his region, but eventually began spending much more time in Kiev, and on television talk shows, working to raise his national profile and setting his sights on Prime Minister Arseniy Yatseniuk. Known as a reformer in Georgia, he seemed well-suited to rooting out Odessa's endemic corruption. But, again, it was more show than substance. At a high-profile Odessa forum in December, Saakashvili claimed to have unearthed a corruption scandal totaling $5 billion per year, grabbing headlines, as he intended. He said that the Ukrainian state railway accounted for 40 percent of the $5 billion figure. But Saakashvili arrived at that figure without an audit or detailed analysis. It was quickly refuted by the nation's minister of infrastructure, noted corruption-fighter Andriy Pivovarsky, who showed routine audits of the railway and close cooperation with the European Investment Bank. Saakashvili's blustery and baseless attacks on Ukraine's government continued. He said the nation's Cabinet of Ministers is at the apex of corruption. Saakashvili's time as president of Georgia deserves praise for tackling corrupting and jump-starting the economy. But it came at a price - diminished democracy. He amended the constitution to accrue more power. He suppressed protests. He restricted the press. Saakashvili may think that his statements are exacting revenge on Poroshenko, but in truth he is taking revenge on Ukraine, the country he claims to love. He also might think that such claims will win Trumps favor. In fact, such egocentric grandstanding may threaten U.S. support for Ukraine. Saakashvili has said that Ukraine must pay a price for its leaders incompetence and behind-the-scenes games. But he knows as well as anyone that such a price - the direct result of his attacks and allegations -- will not be paid by his enemies, such as Poroshenko, Leshchenko and Sytnyk. The price would be paid by ordinary Ukrainians who defend their country and need the support of the U.S. and Europe in fighting Russia's ceaseless aggression against Ukraine. But this is Saakashvili's preferred method of politicking. As Foreign Policy wrote: Most worrying is Saakashvili's eagerness to go after his political opponents primarily by accusing them of criminal activity rather than by challenging their ideas through normal democratic politics. Ukraine stripped Saakashvili of his citizenship because he failed to disclose pending charges of corruption filed against him by the government of Georgia. But, during his short time as a Ukrainian citizen, he did nothing to show he was putting his new country above himself and his own towering ambitions. Saakashvili has every right to be angry that Ukraine has stripped him of his citizenship. He has a right to fight in the courts and the media to regain citizenship in the country he professes to love. But if he does indeed care for Ukraine, he will not go on trying to inflict harm on the nation, as he has. Two weeks ago I was in Russia, touring Saint Petersburg with a guide. She reminded us of a terrorist attack on their subway a few weeks earlier and hinted darkly about a false flag. People are saying Putin did it to boost his popularity. Like most of her friends, she disliked Putin. Wow, I thought. Russians are really paranoid if they go for crazy conspiracy theories like that. But then I realized that were no better. Weve seen no evidence that Trump was influenced by shadowy Russian figures, but weve still seen a media feeding frenzy about it. But the absence of evidence doesnt seem to matter, because along the way our politics became Russified through media-fed conspiracy theories. It started with stories about the Kremlins influence on the Trump campaign. There was no evidence, just innuendo, but in the Russified mainstream media you dont need evidence. Pretty soon it was hard to tell the difference between the Washington Post and the National Inquirer. So I have a message for the conspiracy-mongers on the right. Lay off Mueller. Stop with the lunatic speculations about firing him. What that gave us was Attorney General Sessions recusal from the investigation, the Comey firing, and the appointment of Robert Mueller as special counsel to investigate the matter. Weve had a long experience with special and independent counsels, and its a mixed bag. In Nixons time, special counsels were given a broad mandate to investigate any wrongdoing by the president, and Nixons decision to fire independent special counsel Archibald Cox was the proximate cause of the presidents downfall. In other cases, however, giving someone unlimited resources and the broadest mandate to go after a public official didnt seem like the greatest idea. Liberals loved it when special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald indicted Scooter Libby, but were considerably less happy when independent counsel Ken Starr took a probe about financial irregularities into an investigation of Bill Clintons sex life. Thats why, when Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein appointed Mueller, he gave him a narrow mandate. Mueller was asked to investigate any links or coordination between the Russian government at the Trump campaign, or any matter that may arise directly from this, or (given the Comey firing) any obstruction of justice. So what should Mueller do now? Let me mention a helpful Law Latin tag: ex abundante cautela. It means out of an abundance of caution. Its how lawyers should practice their profession, if they dont want to be sued for malpractice. And in an abundance of caution, Mueller and his team should diligently follow every lead in the exercise of their mandate. That means looking for any evidence of a financial payoff from Russia to Trump or a member of his team made to influence the campaign. An abundance of caution also includes empanelling a Grand Jury, to take evidence under oath. That might prove a headache for someone like Paul Manafort who served as a lobbyist for the Russian-backed former president of Ukraine. Its not going to be a problem for Trump himself, however. So he might have sold some condos to a Russian private citizen ten years back. Thats chicken feed to Trump. With his kind of money, hes basically non-bribable. It would like trying to bribe Bill Gates with twenty smackeroos. Theres another reason why things that happen ten years back dont matter. Muellers mandate was to investigate the Trump campaign, which didnt begin until he launched it in June 2015. Can you imagine some Russian in 2007 telling Trump, Hey, maybe youll run for president in 2016, so let me buy an oceanfront today so I can join the campaign. Even my paranoid Russian guide wasnt that crazy. So I have a message for the conspiracy-mongers on the right. Lay off Mueller. Stop with the lunatic speculations about firing him. He was a Marine platoon commander in Vietnam, where he won a Bronze Star and Purple Heart. Hes one of the most respected people in Washington, a 72-year old Republican who doesnt owe anything to anyone. And lay off his staff. Yes, theyve donated to the Democratic Party, most of them. Thats doesnt mean much. Just about every lawyer in D.C. has donated to the Dems. And theyd be happy to wrap this up quickly to get back to their high paying jobs in private practice. And maybe start believing Trumps professions of innocence. If only because the alternative is so unbelievable that it takes you into Russian-style paranoia. Leave that for the Washington Post. Expect that, when the Mueller probe winds down, probably in a year, there will be no indictments except possibly for a few greedy souls lower down on the food chain. And very possibly not even that. Lets not get sucked into conspiracy theories left or right. How about we go back to the assumption that, until proven otherwise, people should be given the benefit of the doubt, that they should be presumed to be honorable. Thats a message for Trump too: Be cool. Three years ago this week, when ISIS rolled into the town of Karamdes, home to several hundred families of Iraqi Christians, the first thing its thugs did was behead every statue of a saint. Next they destroyed the churches. Then they went after civilians. The sacking of Karamdes by maniacal Islamic terrorists, in the Nineveh plains, forced most of its 3,500 or so residents to flee 50 miles across the desert to Erbil, where they found temporary shelter. Those who didnt get out in time were given a stark choice: convert to Islam or die. Fortunately, most of them fled before ISIS could carry out its threat. Fr. Thabet Habib, a Chaldean priest in Karamdes, described the destruction of churches, the desecration of graveyards, the exhumation of the bodies of priests and others, and the air of terror that ISIS brought with it. Now that ISIS has been driven out of the Nineveh area, its Chaldean and Syriac Christian populations want to return home. The problem is, their town, and its places of Christian worship, have been decimated. Now that ISIS has been driven out of the Nineveh area, its Chaldean and Syriac Christian populations want to return home. The problem is, their town, and its places of Christian worship, have been decimated. And while the U.S. Congress recently earmarked funds to aid religious minorities in the Middle East, so far, none of that money has reached Karamdes. Enter the Knights of Columbus, the Connecticut-based Catholic charitable organization that helps Christians in need around the world. It costs $2,000 to make an ISIS-damaged home habitable and move a family back in, Andrew Walther, the vice president of the K of C, told me. Our goal is to get several hundred families rehoused by the end of August. ISIS may have been defeated militarily, but ISISs goal is the de-Christianization of Iraq, says Walther. Its important that these ancient communities survive. If they dont, even though ISIS has been driven out, they will have won ideologically. The Knights CEO, Carl Anderson, is asking church groups and individuals to help make this initiative come to life for the people of Karamdes. The Knights of Columbus takes no administrative fees. If helping Christianity stay alive in Iraq appeals to you, visit Christiansatrisk.org and make a donation. Lets assume President Trump decides the Iran Deal is not a good thing for the United States, which is becoming clearer every day, and he wants to exit. What can he actually do? The answer is: Pretty much anything he wants. Because President Obama flagrantly refused to treat this treaty as a treaty, it has very little legal standing. If he is willing to take the political and diplomatic heat, President Trump could take it out onto the West Lawn at the White House, douse it with lighter fluid and burn it. If he chooses a more conventional method, he has several options and requirements both domestically and at the UN, where President Obama expanded the Joint Coordinated Plan of Action (JCPOA) into a UN Security Council resolution. One option is to declare that an agreement this important deserved to be done in accordance with the Constitution. He can submit it to the Senate for their advice and consent and then see if 67 Senators want to sign on. They wont, because they know this deal is a debacle. They punted via filibuster and didnt even vote when it came up under the Corker-Cardin act which was designed to give a fig leaf of Congressional oversight. This option has two major pluses: it remedies a bad piece of executive overreach by President Obama in pretending an obvious treaty was not one to avoid a Senate vote; and it also involves Congress in the decision to withdraw from the deal. Since this will be a provocative and in some ways dangerous move, it would be important to have as much U.S. cohesion as possible to show a strong front to the world. It will be dangerous to withdraw from the deal. But failing to withdraw will leave the Iranians on a glide path to full nuclear capability and that is a much more dangerous prospect. This or any other repudiation of the deal by President Trump would still leave the UN Security Council Resolution UNSCR 2231 intact. But there is a mechanism in the resolution that allows the U.S. to state Iran has not complied with the deal and then use our veto to stop any pushback against that claim. If we hold fast, then the sanctions on Iran that have only been suspended snap back into place. A second option is to pressure Iran in ways that ultimately lead them to withdraw. Iran has been acting in bad faith all along. They got their reward in cash from the Obama administration and removal of sanctions, but never really meant to stop their goal of becoming a nuclear power. If the deal becomes inconvenient, theyll walk away themselves. The Iranians seem to be starting down that road on their own. They just brought a list of their complaints about U.S. non-compliance to the JCPOA commission tasked with hearing disputes. It is a stunning act of chutzpah for Iran to be the onecomplaining, but it may offer a way for the president to let them talk themselves out of the deal. That would free us to put actual pressure on them. The main impediment to President Trump acting on his promises and good instinct to get us out of this awful deal is the collective inertia of his cabinet to leave it in place. The State Department is heavily invested in it, and several other senior leaders have urged him not to withdraw. But the president rightly believes this deal is bad and dangerous, and told them he did not want to certify Iran as compliant again and assigned other advisers to work the issue. It will be dangerous to withdraw from the deal, as Iran will almost certainly react in troubling ways. But failing to withdraw will leave the Iranians on a glide path to full nuclear capability and that is a much more dangerous prospect. The Justice Department is pushing back on a New York Times article that claimed officials were reshuffling resources in its civil rights division to go after colleges affirmative action policies. The story ignited a firestorm after it was published, with civil rights groups and Obama-era education officials quickly condemning the DOJ for what they perceived as an assault on affirmative action. Late Wednesday, DOJ spokeswoman Sarah Isgur Flores issued a statement calling the press reports inaccurate. This Department of Justice has not received or issued any directive, memorandum, initiative, or policy related to university admissions in general, she added. The Department of Justice is committed to protecting all Americans from all forms of illegal race-based discriminations. Instead, Flores said the department was looking for lawyers to investigate a 2015 complaint filed with the Department of Education over Harvard University's race-based quota system. The complaint alleges the Ivy-League school requires Asian students to have SAT scores 140 points higher than white students, 270 points higher than Hispanics and 450 points higher than black students. Late Tuesday, The New York Times reported that it obtained an internal DOJ job announcement that sought lawyers interested in a project on investigations and possible litigation related to intentional race-based discrimination in college and university admissions. While the notice doesnt come right out and say which races and ethnicities are considered by the Trump administration as at risk for discrimination, the reported implication was that Jeff Sessions DOJ could go after affirmative action policies. Those programs are meant to diversify campuses but The Times reported that the new effort could be used to sue universities over admissions that allegedly go too far and discriminate against white and Asian applicants. The news triggered an avalanche of criticism directed at the DOJ. NAACP Legal Defense Fund Associate Director Janai Nelson told Fox News the Trump administration's "assault on affirmative action" is "a dismantling of the pillars of our democracy. "This administration through this Justice Department is taking us backwards," she said. John King, former education secretary under President Obama, said he was deeply disheartened by the Trump administrations hard line against efforts to increase campus diversity rather than focusing on addressing the persistent opportunity gaps facing students of color and low-income students. Anurima Bhargava, who led the Educational Opportunities Section of the DOJ's Civil Rights Division under Obama, also called the reported move a scare tactic intended to drum up a bunch of fear and intimidate schools who are trying to provide a pipeline to leadership for all Americans. When contacted by Fox News Wednesday morning, the DOJ stopped short of denying the existence of the job posting but insisted it wasnt a policy announcement. One senior U.S. government official told Fox News that the story in the Times appeared to assume that the memo referred to white students without evidence. Whenever theres a credible allegation of discrimination on the basis of race, the department should look into it, a DOJ official told Fox News. Supporters and critics say the DOJ push is intended to target admissions programs that give blacks and Latino students an edge over applicants with similar academic records, the newspaper reported. Affirmative action policies in the United States have been controversial almost from the start and have been fought in court. Last year, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the use of race in college admissions for the University of Texas, rejecting a challenge brought by a white student. In that case, the court ruled in favor of the university. The ruling made it easier for public colleges and universities to justify reasons for using race in the admissions process. SUPREME COURT UPHOLDS USE OF RACE IN UNIVERSITY AFFIRMATIVE ACTION CASE University of Virginia law professor Deborah Hellman questioned the claims made in the Times. The court has recently reaffirmed this positon, so why is the Justice Department looking into bringing cases? Hellman told Fox News. The Times also reported the DOJ is looking to redirect resources from the departments civil rights division. Rather than run the operation through the DOJs Educational Opportunities Section, it will be handled by the divisions front office which is composed of Trumps political appointees. The Washington Post reported two sources had told them that hand-picked Trump appointees would run the project because the career staffers who specialize in education issues refused to take part, saying it was a violation of the DOJs long-term stance on civil rights in school admission policies. Dennis Parker, director of the American Civil Liberties Unions Radical Justice Program, said any DOJ push to roll back affirmative action policies would mark an alarming shift in direction that threatens progress made by civil rights advocates and the department itself. Fox News' Samantha Mendiguren, Bill Mears and Jake Gibson contributed to this report. Hillary Clinton had a lot on her plate as secretary of state: the Arab Spring, the ill-fated Russian 'reset' and Iran's nuclear ambitions, to name a few. But newly released emails show hotel caliber was another recurring concern. The emails, obtained by conservative watchdog group Judicial Watch, show Clinton aide Huma Abedin paying very close attention to whether accommodations for the then-secretary of state were up to snuff. Abedin sent one email on Nov. 14, 2011 to Clinton, asking about hotel arrangements, apparently relating to an upcoming trip to Asia. Do you want to stay with potus? Abedin wrote. Hes at the horrible Sheraton. We had previously talked about staying elsewhere. Best hotel is peninsula. Presidential is gone and so is second largest but they have some suites left so I want to sign the contract if you are open to that. Clinton, labeled H, responded: I think it would be hard not to be in same hotel as POTUS so try to get the best option there. Another email from Abedin to Clinton sent later that month discussed concerns with hotel room size again. Reminder you are at the second tier hotel cause the nice hotel owner was problematic, Abedin wrote to Clinton about their trip to Burma, adding that they planned to do a brief. [T]heres a little space in your suite and also a room nearby to accommodate more people. The emails offer a glimpse into Clinton's penchant for luxury accommodations. FAVOR FACTORY? HUMA EMAILS REVEAL CLINTON ALLIES SEEKING JOBS, MEETINGS On election night 2016, Clinton stayed on the top floor of The Peninsula Hotel, a five-star hotel just a block from Trump Towerthough the presumed victory party would be at the Javits Center, located across town in the Hells Kitchen section of Manhattan. The Clintons had their own suite, and they reportedly rented out the rest of the floor for staff workspaces and aides, including private bedrooms for then-campaign chairman John Podesta and Abedin, according to an account in the book Shattered, written by journalists Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes. The rest of the emails obtained and published by Judicial Watch appear to show Clinton allies seeking favors from those in her State Department as well as the discussion of sensitive information. But former Clinton spokesman Brian Fallon told Fox News that the emails don't matter at this stage. Hillary Clinton is not in government anymore or a candidate for office, Fallon told Fox News. Excerpts of Anthony Scaramuccis now-infamous phone call to New Yorker writer Ryan Lizza reveal a casual, if awkward, conversation in which the reporter repeatedly laughed off the White House officials attempt to get him to reveal his sources. I cant tell you, buddy. You know I cant do that, Lizza said. The New Yorker posted snippets of the audio online Thursday, as part of a podcast with the writer. Scaramucci can be heard unleashing his well-documented, profanity-laced slams at former colleagues Reince Priebus and Steve Bannon (though the most objectionable parts are bleeped out). But before that, the audio reflects the two in a friendly-sounding sparring session as Scaramucci tried to get the writer to reveal how he learned about a White House dinner with President Trump, Fox News Sean Hannity and others. SCARAMUCCI'S MEDIA STRATEGY REVEALED When Lizza said he couldnt do that, Scaramucci said: What Im gonna do is Im gonna eliminate everyone in the comms team and well start over. Lizza could be heard laughing at the threat. He did so again when Scaramucci pressed him, as an American citizen and American patriot, to give him the information. Lizza subsequently published an explosive story on the phone call. Scaramucci was ousted as White House communications director on Monday, reportedly on the recommendation of new Chief of Staff John Kelly. While the audio revealed just how unguarded Scaramucci was in the conversation, Lizza has defended the publication of the phone calls contents by maintaining it was on the record. There were no ground rules set, Lizza said on the podcast. He said there was no agreement about the call being on background or off the record. In 20 years of doing this, Ive never had a phone conversation like that, he said. Scaramucci originally was planning to speak out Friday in what was billed as an online event. However, he tweeted Thursday the event was being cancelled: "No Press Event Tomorrow: Focusing on Family, My Work in The Private Sector. #MovingForward Stay Tuned!" Democratic Rep. Alcee Hastings (Fla.) has paid a convicted money launderer nearly $75,000 for "part-time" work out of a district office, salary filings show. Dona Nichols-Jones, the wife of Mikel Jones, a former staffer to Hastings who served as his district administrator from 1993 to 2011, is currently listed as an "aide" in his Palm Beach County office. Dona Nichols-Jones, along with her husband, were convicted in 2011 of money laundering, conspiracy, and fraud after they had used hundreds of thousands of dollars from a business loan for personal use, the FBI announced in November 2011. The couple's scheme stemmed from a loan that Mikel received to help finance a Philadelphia law firm he owned. Jones secured a multi-million line of credit from Stillwater, a New York-based lender, and agreed to only use the credit for legitimate expenses in relation to his firm's operation. The Joneses set up a shell company and created fake invoices in order to funnel money to themselves. The stolen money was used to pay credit card bills and purchase tickets to sporting events. The Joneses also laundered $160,000 through Dona and her daughter's Florida bank account. This money was then used to replenish funds Jones had taken from his law firm trust account. From 2008 to 2009, the Joneses obtained $350,000 using fraudulent invoices and false representations. Click for more from The Washington Free Beacon. Conservative watchdog group Judicial Watch is clashing with the Trump Justice Department over access to talking points the DOJ prepared under the Obama administration to explain the controversial tarmac meeting between Loretta Lynch and Bill Clinton last year. Judicial Watch is seeking the documents as part of a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit. The group complained late Wednesday that it had received heavily redacted emails pertaining to the department's internal preparations last year to press inquiries on the Lynch-Clinton meeting. Its jaw-dropping that the Trump administration is blacking out key information about how the Obama Justice Department tried to spin Loretta Lynchs scandalous meeting with Bill Clinton, Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said in a written statement. The tarmac meeting fueled Republican complaints at the time that then-Attorney General Lynch had improperly met with the husband of an investigation subject, Hillary Clinton, just before the probe into her personal email use was completed with no charges filed. Fired FBI Director James Comey, in Senate testimony in June, described that tarmac meeting as problematic. Judicial Watch says Peter Kadzik, then-assistant attorney general, was involved in handling the Justice Departments response to media inquiries regarding the tarmac meeting at the time. But one email exchange shows a redacted response from him to an email with the subject line: DRAFT: Statement/Talking Points on June 28, 2016. Another email shows then-director of the Justice Department Public Affairs Office Melanie Newman emailing with colleagues to flag a story about a casual, unscheduled meeting between former President Bill Clinton and the AG. Kadzig did not immediately respond to Fox News' request for comment. Newmans assistant told Fox News she had no comment. President Trump should order the full and immediate release of these materials, Fitton said. Judicial Watch has begun criticizing Trump administration agencies for continuing to protect Clinton and the Obama administration. While the DOJ does not comment on ongoing litigation, a Justice Department spokesperson referred Fox News to a letter sent by the DOJ Office of Information Policy on Aug. 1, 2017 to Judicial Watch explaining their decision to maintain redacted materials. A senior attorney wrote to Judicial Watch that all 315 pages are appropriate for release with excisions made by pursuant to Exemptions 5 and 6 of FOIA. The letter explains that those sections pertain to certain inter- and intra-agency communications protected by the deliberative process privilege, and information release of which would constitute a clearly unwarranted invasion of the personal privacy of third parties. A Justice spokesperson told Fox News that decisions to claim the deliberative process exemption are routine. Brian Fallon, a former spokesman for Hillary Clinton, brushed off Judicial Watchs claims against the Jeff Sessions-led Justice Department. Judicial Watch must be getting pretty desperate if it is now accusing Trump's own Justice Department of orchestrating a cover-up to protect the Clintons, Fallon told Fox News. The meeting between Clinton and Lynch occurred just days before the former secretary of state was interviewed by the FBI about her personal server and email use while leading the State Department. A week later, Comey called Clintons actions extremely careless but did not recommend charges. The criminal investigation was closed and then briefly re-opened in October prior to the 2016 presidential election. In his June testimony, Comey cited concerns with Lynch's handling of the investigation. Comey told lawmakers that Lynch directed him to describe the email probe as a matter and not an investigation. COMEY SAYS LYNCH TARMAC MEETING, DIRECTIVE TO DOWNPLAY PROBE PROMPTED HIM TO GO ROGUE ON CLINTON CASE Comey said the tarmac meeting was a deciding factor in his decision to act alone to update the public on the Clinton probeand protect the bureaus reputation. That was one of the bricks in the load that I needed to step away from the department, Comey said, later adding that he was concerned Lynch was trying to align the DOJs comments with the way the campaign was talking about the probe. That gave me a queasy feeling. Last month, a group of congressional Republicans called for a second special counsel to investigate Comey, Lynch and Clinton. A day before Attorney General Jeff Sessions is set to discuss a new leak crackdown, the transcripts of two heated January phone calls President Trump held with foreign leaders spilled into the headlines. The Washington Post reported, based on those leaked documents, that Trump pressured Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto on Jan. 27 to stop publicly saying his government would not pay for a border wall. The report also aired new details over the presidents infamously tense phone call the next day with Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull. Both phone calls were widely reported in February, in one of the first major leaks out of the Trump administration that have since become a constant headache. But the Post claimed Thursday to have obtained the full transcripts, which reportedly were produced by White House staff and based on records kept by White House note-takers. SESSIONS TO UNVEIL LEAK CRACKDOWN The reported transcripts give a fuller picture of what went down on those calls. According to the Post, Trump got on Pena Nietos case about vows to never pay for his promised border wall. You cannot say that to the press, Trump said, according to the Post. Trump reportedly said the money issue will work out in the formula somehow it will come out in the wash, and that is okay but if the Mexican leader insists on saying he wont pay, then I do not want to meet with you guys anymore because I cannot live with that. TRUMP, KELLY, SCARAMUCCI HIT BY NEW GUSHER OF LEAKS Trump reportedly called the wall the least important thing we are talking about, but politically this might be the most important. The call with Turnbull broke down over Trumps disappointment with a U.S. agreement from the Obama administration to take refugees from Australian detention centers. This is going to kill me, he reportedly told Turnbull. I am the worlds greatest person that does not want to let people into the country. And now I am agreeing to take 2,000 people. He called the deal horrible and said, I hate taking these people I guarantee you they are bad. He warned the refugees could become the Boston bomber in five years, according to the report. Holding nothing back, Trump told the Australian PM this was the most unpleasant call all day. The report comes as Sessions is expected to discuss efforts to crack down on leaks during a press conference Friday. The announcement may provide more of an overview of what the DOJ hopes to accomplish rather than specific prosecutions at this stage, Fox News is told. Last month, a report written by Republicans on the Senates homeland security panel warned that the Trump administration faced an alarming amount of media leaks that posed a potential threat to national security. The 24-page report, titled State Secrets: How and Avalanche of Media Leaks is Harming National Security, estimated the Trump administration has had about one leak per day. The White House also has battled internally to plug the leaks. Anthony Scaramucci had vowed to tackle the problem when he was named communications director, but he was ousted Monday as Chief of Staff John Kelly took over. Special Counsel Robert Mueller has impaneled a grand jury to investigate Russias meddling in the 2016 election, The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday. The move is seen as a sign the investigation into election interference and possible collusion with the Trump campaign is heating up and entering a new phase. Reuters also reported that grand jury subpoenas have been issued in connection with the meeting Donald Trump Jr. had with a Russian lawyer and others last year. Russia has denied having a hand in the U.S. presidential election. President Trump, too, has strongly denied allegations of collusion and has frequently called the investigation a witch hunt. Grand juries allow prosecutors to subpoena documents and get witness testimony on the record. They also can seek indictments. Ty Cobb, special counsel to the president, told Fox News on Thursday he wasnt aware that Mueller had impaneled a new grand jury but said, "We favor anything that brings this investigation to a swift conclusion." Cobb also told reporters that, "Grand jury matters are typically secret," and the White House is committed to fully cooperating with Mr. Mueller." Trump attorney Jay Sekulow downplayed the significance of the grand jury, calling it "a standard operating procedure when you've got a situation like this." We have no reason to believe President Trump is under investigation, Trump attorney John Dowd told Fox News. White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders noted that former FBI Director James Comey repeatedly said Trump was not under investigation earlier this year. Mueller, who now has a team of 16 attorneys, was brought on as special counsel in May. Prior to his involvement, federal prosecutors reportedly had been using another grand jury, in Alexandria, Va., to help with their criminal investigation into former national security adviser Michael Flynn. The Flynn case focuses on his work in the private sector on behalf of foreign interests. Asked Thursday about the Journal report, the special counsel's office had no comment. Trump and his allies have in recent weeks openly criticized Mueller, with one Republican lawmaker even calling for him to step aside. Other lawmakers have responded with proposals that could serve to shield Mueller from being fired. Trump also has fumed about Attorney General Jeff Sessions' decision to recuse himself from the Russia case, which cleared the way for Mueller's eventual appointment -- though Sessions has recently been told by the White House his job is considered safe. Thomas Zeno, a former federal prosecutor, told the Journal that impaneling a grand jury is confirmation that this is a very vigorous investigation going on. Zeno cautioned the step does not automatically mean Mueller will bring charges but added it shows he is very serious. He wouldnt do this if [the investigation] were winding down. Fox News' John Roberts contributed to this report. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. 2022 FOX News Network, LLC. All rights reserved. Quotes displayed in real-time or delayed by at least 15 minutes. Market data provided by Factset. Powered and implemented by FactSet Digital Solutions. Legal Statement. Mutual Fund and ETF data provided by Refinitiv Lipper. A bipartisan group of senators introduced a bill Thursday that would ensure a judicial check on the executive branchs ability to remove a special counsel. The Special Counsel Independence Protection Act (SCIPA) would require any action by the attorney general or acting attorney general to remove a special counsel from office to first be reviewed by a panel of federal judges. The bill, introduced by Sens. Lindsay Graham, R-S.C., Cory Booker, D-N.J., and co-sponsored by Sens. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., and Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., comes amid concerns that President Trump could issue a directive to oust Special Counsel Robert Mueller. Mueller is overseeing the investigation into Russian meddling and potential collusion with Trump campaign officials in the 2016 presidential election. Checks and balances have served the country well for the past two hundred years, Graham said in a statement. Our legislation would allow judicial review of the firing of any special counsel that was impaneled to look at the President or their team regardless of party. Graham acknowledged that special counsels must act within boundaries, but said that they must also be protected. Booker said that the bill would protect special counsels from any intimidation that would come from investigation revelations, and insure that any removal is for legitimate reasons instead of political motivations. The bill also mandates that an attorney general could only remove a special counsel after petitioning to a federal court to establish that there was, or is, misconduct, dereliction of duty, incapacity, conflict of interest, or other good cause for removal. Meanwhile, another bipartisan Senate duo are sponsoring a similar effort. Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., and Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del., sponsored legislation that would allow any special counsel for the Justice Department to challenge his or her removal in court, with a review by a three-judge panel within 14 days of the challenge. Their bill would be retroactive to May 17the day Mueller was appointed by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein. A back-end judicial review process to prevent unmerited removals of special counsels not only helps to ensure their investigatory independence, but also reaffirms our nations system of checks and balances, Tillis said in a statement. SESSIONS' JOB SAFE, WHITE HOUSE OFFICIALS SAY, AS LAWMAKERS LOOK TO SHIELD MUELLER President Trump, and some Republicans, such as Rep. Trent Franks of Arizona, who, earlier this week called for Mueller to step down due to his ubiquitous conflicts, have been critical of Mueller and his legal team. The president has also publicly warned Mueller that he would be out of bounds if he dug into the Trump familys finances. Mueller and his team have also faced criticisms due to the fact attorneys brought on to the special counsel team have a history of political donations to both President Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. MUELLER PROBE: MEET THE LAWYERS WHO GAVE $$ TO HILLARY, NOW INVESTIGATING TEAM TRUMP Rosenstein currently is charged with Muellers fate because Sessions recused himself from overseeing the Russia probe. Fox News' Chad Pergram contributed to this report. New White House chief of staff John Kelly recently called Attorney General Jeff Sessions to assure him his job was safe, Fox News has learned from a senior White House official and another source within the Trump administration. Kelly called Sessions on Saturday to emphasize that the White House supported him and wanted him to continue leading the U.S. Department of Justice, the sources said. The assurance comes despite tweets and comments about Sessions from President Donald Trump that came after the attorney general recused himself from the Russia collusion investigation. Meanwhile, two members of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee are readying legislation intended to help special counsel Robert Mueller who is leading the Russia collusion probe keep his job as well. Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., and Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del., plan to introduce the legislation Thursday. It would allow any special counsel for the Justice Department challenge his or her removal in court, with a review by a three-judge panel within 14 days of the challenge. The bill would be retroactive to May 17 -- the day Mueller was appointed by deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein to investigate Russian meddling in the 2016 election and possible ties to Donald Trumps campaign. It is critical that special counsels have the independence and resources they need to lead investigations, Tillis said in a statement. A back-end judicial review process to prevent unmerited removals of special counsels not only helps to ensure their investigatory independence, but also reaffirms our nations system of check and balances. Mueller was appointed as special counsel in May following Trumps firing of FBI Director James Comey. Mueller, who was Comeys predecessor as FBI director, has assembled a team of prosecutors and lawyers with experience in financial fraud, national security and organized crimes to investigate contacts between Moscow and the Trump campaign. Trump has been critical of Mueller since his appointment, and his legal team is looking into potential conflicts surrounding the team Mueller has hired, including the backgrounds of members and political contributions by some members to Hillary Clinton. He has also publicly warned Mueller that he would be out of bounds if he dug into the Trump familys finances. Mueller has strong support on Capitol Hill. Senators in both parties have expressed concern that Trump may try to fire Mueller and have warned him not to do so. Ensuring that the special counsel cannot be removed improperly is critical to the integrity of his investigation, Coons said. Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., another member of the Judiciary panel, said last week that he was working on a similar bill that would prevent the firing of a special counsel without judicial review. Graham said then that firing Mueller would precipitate a firestorm that would be unprecedented in proportions. The Tillis and Coons bill would allow review after the special counsel had been dismissed. If the panel found there was no good cause for the counsels removal, the person would be immediately reinstated. The legislation would also codify existing Justice Department regulations that a special counsel can only be removed for misconduct, dereliction of duty, incapacity, conflict of interest or other good cause, such as a violation of departmental policies. In addition, only the attorney general or the most senior Justice Department official in charge of the matter could fire the special counsel. In the case of the current investigation, Rosenstein is charged with Mueller's fate because Sessions recused himself from all matters having to do with the Trump-Russia investigation. Fox News Serafin Gomez and the Associated Press contributed reporting to this story. The U.S. House must pass a bold tax reform plan by Thanksgiving -- or Washington will have nothing to be thankful for in the new year, a top Republican warned Wednesday. Rep. Mark Meadows, of North Carolina, predicted that no reform would happen at all if negotiations go past November, saying his fellow lawmakers could get skittish about rocking the boat during an election year if the debate continues into 2018, the Washington Times reported. If it doesnt get to the presidents desk by Thanksgiving it isnt going to happen, Meadows, chairman of the conservative House Freedom Caucus, said at an event at the Newseum in Washington. The minute we go past January, everybody starts saying, Well, we cant do anything too bold. Its the political reality in those midterm years. Everything starts to slow down and you do things around the edges. Meadows said he would like to see Congress aim for a corporate tax rate thats lower than 20 percent instead of the current rate of 35 percent. He also rejected the notion of accepting a higher rate for a smooth passage of a final plan. Go bold, and the minute you start negotiating like that youre negotiating against yourself, he told reporters after his speech. I made a very good living negotiating. I would never agree to that. A new tax reform plan is just one item on an already packed schedule for Congress when it returns from recess in the fall. Lawmakers will need to immediately pass legislation to fund the federal government past Sept. 30, and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin recently gave Congress a Sept. 29 deadline to raise the debt ceiling. The Freedom Caucus has demanded that any increase in the debt ceiling should be coupled with spending cuts, but Meadows said it will ultimately get raised one way or another. We will raise the debt ceiling, and there shouldnt be any fear of that, he said. Meadows and his caucus of nearly three-dozen conservatives have a strong influence on the House. With no Democratic support, opposition from enough members of the Freedom Caucus would be sufficient to sink any tax reform plan. We actually need the text of what were talking about so that we can start going through that and figure out whats good and bad, he said. Other conservative groups are pushing for a tax reform plan to be approved before the end of the year. Matt Schlapp, chairman of the American Conservative Union (ACU), told Fox Business in an exclusive interview Wednesday that his organization will hit the road from the August recess through the end of the year to help promote the presidents lawmaking priorities, including tax reform and health care. Terry Compton arrived at 7:30 a.m. just to see him. I would have stayed here all week just to see [President] Trump, she said. I love him. At least 1,000 Trump supporters lined the streets of Huntington, West Virginia, a sleepy college town, fervently waving signs, wearing their red Make America Great Again hats, and intermittently breaking out into chants of "USA! USA! USA!" They were all waiting for Trump to speak at the Big Sandy Superstore Arena at about 7 p.m. TRUMP'S BOY SCOUT JAMBOREE SPEECH CALLS FOR HEALTH CARE ACTION, 'MORE LOYALTY' IN DC Most had waited for hours, with some even arriving Wednesday night. The atmosphere was electric, frenzied and humid. The president had promised to make a very big announcement. Hours before the rally was set to start, Fox News confirmed that the Democratic governor, Jim Justice planned to announce a switch to the Republican party. President Trump on Thursday accused Congress of bringing relations with Russia to an all-time & very dangerous low after sending him a sanctions bill which he reluctantly signed a day earlier legislation that prompted a furious response from Russias prime minister. Our relationship with Russia is at an all-time & very dangerous low. You can thank Congress, the same people that can't even give us HCare! Trump tweeted. The accusation came after Trump signed the sweeping package of sanctions, which had passed both houses of Congress with a veto-proof majority. In signing the bill, Trump issued a written statement complaining that Congress was overstepping its constitutional bounds and impeding his ability to negotiate with foreign countries. The sanctions were answered with a stinging rebuke by Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev. TRUMP SIGNS RUSSIA SANCTIONS BILL He tweeted that the administration had shown total weakness by handing over executive power to Congress in the most humiliating way. In a Facebook tirade, he also said the legislation ends hopes for improving our relations with the new US administration. He seemed to acknowledge that Trump was pressured into signing the bill but went on to suggest its all part of a sweeping process to ultimately oust him as president. The issue of new sanctions came about, primarily, as another way to knock Trump down a peg. New steps are to come, and they will ultimately aim to remove him from power. A non-systemic player has to be removed, he wrote. He added that relations between Russia and the United States are going to be extremely tense regardless of Congress makeup and regardless of who is president. The breakdown in any sense of comity between Washington and Moscow follows Trumps high-profile meeting with President Vladimir Putin on the sidelines of the G-20 summit in Germany last month. At the time, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said the two leaders "connected very quickly" and had "positive chemistry," focusing on ways to move forward as opposed to "relitigating" the past. The sanctions bill, though, opens a new phase of tensions. The legislation is aimed at penalizing Moscow for election interference and for its military aggression in Ukraine and Syria, where the Kremlin has backed President Bashar Assad. It bars Trump from waiving the Russia sanctions without first securing approval from Congress, and also imposes new financial sanctions on Iran and North Korea. Trump said the law will "punish and deter bad behavior" by the governments of Iran and North Korea as well as enhance existing sanctions on Moscow. But he made no secret of his distaste for what the bill does to his ability to govern. "The bill remains seriously flawed -- particularly because it encroaches on the executive branch's authority to negotiate," he said in a statement. Last week, the House overwhelmingly backed the bill, 419-3, and the Senate rapidly followed, 98-2. Those margins guaranteed that Congress would be able to beat back any veto attempt. Putin also said Sunday the U.S. would have to cut 755 of its embassy and consular staff in Russia. The congressional review section of the bill that Trump objects to was a key feature for many members of Congress. Trump will be required to send a report explaining why he wants to suspend or terminate a particular set of the sanctions on Russia. Lawmakers would then have 30 days to decide whether to allow him to do so. Tillerson echoed the president's sentiments that the measure poses more diplomatic hindrances than solutions. "Neither the president nor I are very happy about that," Tillerson said Tuesday. "We were clear that we didn't think that was going to be helpful to our efforts, but that's the decision they made." The Associated Press contributed to this report. What has eight legs and wants to cook? A tarantula on a kitchen cabinet. A Scripps Ranch family was shocked to see a tarantula on their kitchen cabinet on August 1. All I wanted was a snack," 19-year-old Hannah Dafferner told Fox 5 San Diego. Dafferner first spotted the the spider, but didn't think it was real initially. It didnt move at first. I thought my sister put a Halloween decoration there or something. Then it moved its leg. I screamed bloody murder." SHARK CAUGHT IN 'FISH TORANDO': PHOTOGRAPHER CAPTURES STUNNING PICS The tarantula is described as being a three to four inch male. After the initial shock, Hannah's father came to the rescue, using a pitcher to capture the spider. It really cooperated. I think it was afraid of all the screaming, her dad said. The eight-legged story spread around the neighborhood after the Dafferner family posted pictures to Facebook. They then received a message from a 9-year-old girl in the neighborhood asking if she could have the giant arachnid. The private message was can we have it? Who am I to say no?" Hannah's mom, Alli Dafferner said to Fox 5 San Diego. "Happily. Tarantulas are known to live in San Diego County and throughout Southern California. TONGUE-TIED: GENE SIMMONS LOOK-ALIKE CALF BORN IN TEXAS Males can require between 7 and 10 years to reach maturity, but only live a few months after reaching maturity. Conversely, females can live up to 25 years. Many people may look to the skies on Aug. 21 to watch a total solar eclipse pass over the United States - but its important to protect your eyes and use the correct tools to safely view the event. Heres what you should know. What is a total solar eclipse? It is this wonderful time when everything has to align just perfectly, Dr. Michelle Thaller, assistant director of science for communications at NASAs Goddard Space Flight Center, told Fox News. A total solar eclipse is when the moon from where youre standing completely covers the Sun, she explained. During this type of eclipse, the moon will cast a shadow down onto Earth, Thaller said. SOLAR ECLIPSE 2017: NASA ISSUES SAFETY WARNING For a total solar eclipse, its only safe to look directly when totality takes place - meaning the approximate two-and-a-half minutes that the sun will be entirely blocked by the moon, she said. Eclipse glasses Thaller called these types of solar filters the easiest and most direct method of safely watching the eclipse. If youre using eclipse glasses, NASA says online that they ought to meet the ISO 12312-2 international safety standard for solar radiation, and have the manufacturer name and address printed on them to distinguish them from counterfeit glasses. Consumers should keep in mind that eclipse glasses shouldnt be used if they are more than three years old or if the lenses have wrinkles and scratches. EARTH WILL HAVE ITS LAST TOTAL SOLAR ECLIPSE IN ABOUT 600 MILLION YEARS On its website, the American Astronomical Society features a list of Reputable Vendors of Solar Filters & Viewers, and indicates endorsed glasses can be bought at places like 7-Eleven, Lowes and Walmart. Pinhole viewing Thaller said that if you cannot use eclipse glasses, the next best option is to punch a small hole in something, or use an object with holes like a kitchen colander. You dont look up at the sun through the hole, she said, giving an example that if you let sunlight shine through a hole in a piece of cardboard, you can see the sun projected through the hole. 2017 TOTAL SOLAR ECLIPSE WILL BE 'ONE OF THE EVENTS OF THE CENTURY' Thaller also suggested to look for opportunities in nature, giving an example of a tree. NASA explains online that you can just look at the shadow of a leafy tree during the partial eclipse; you'll see the ground dappled with crescent Suns projected by the tiny spaces between the leaves. Other considerations Interested in looking at the eclipse with the help of a telescope? It should have a solar filter. Never look through a telescope without a solar filter on the large end of the scope, NASA cautions. THE 2017 SOLAR ECLIPSE MAY PROVE THE SUN IS BIGGER THAN WE THINK The space agency also says, No matter what recommended technique you use, do not stare continuously at the sun. Take breaks and give your eyes a rest! Where specifically can I see the total solar eclipse? If youre interested in watching the total solar eclipse, you need to get yourself in a 70-mile wide strip from Oregon to South Carolina, Thaller said. However, she said that everyone in North America will be able to see a partial solar eclipse, which will last about four hours. With a partial eclipse, only a portion of the sun is blocked, and the sky may be bright, according to Thaller. Divers have recovered the main telegraph machine from the Lusitania, the wreck at the center of one of the most infamous maritime disasters of the 20th century. Irish heritage officials confirmed that the telegraph was recovered and brought to the surface Tuesday (July 25) and is now undergoing conservation on land. [Sunken Treasures: The Curious Science of 7 Famous Shipwrecks] The bronze artifact was "undamaged and in excellent condition," Heather Humphreys, Ireland's minister for culture, heritage and the Gaeltacht (areas where Irish is still spoken), said in a statement. The Lusitania was the largest ship in the world when it made its maiden voyage in 1907. The British ship was bound forLiverpool after a transatlantic crossing in 1915, when it was struck by a torpedo from a German submarine off the southeast coast of Ireland during World War I. It sank in just 18 minutes. Of the 1,962 passengers and crew aboard at the time, 1,198 died, most of them from drowning and hypothermia. The attack on civilians prompted diplomatic outrage (though there is still debate over whether the ship's cargo secretly included war supplies and munitions). As 128 Americans were killed in the disaster, the event helped push the United States into World War I. The 787-foot-long (240 meters) shipwreck now lies on its starboard side, at a depth of about 300 feet (91 m) off the coast of County Cork. Retired American venture capitalist Gregg Bemis has been the sole owner of the wreck since 1982 and has occasionally clashed with the Irish government over his plans to explore the wreck and recover artifacts, according to a profile in Fortune. Bemis is particularly interested in investigating the cause of the second explosion that rocked the Lusitania after the initial torpedo strike, which could help to explain what made the ship sink so quickly. The successful recovery of the telegraph comes after a failed attempt to raise the artifact along with its pedestal in July 2016. Details of that botched mission came to light in March, when an Irish parliamentary committee heard that a diver working on behalf of Bemis lost the telegraph when the lift bag bringing the artifact to the surface burst. Ireland's National Monuments Service was criticized for allowing the private operation to go ahead without an archaeologist present. Recreational divers spotted the lost telegraph this month and marked its position on the seabed. Bemis and government officials gave approval for the artifact to be brought to the surfacethis time, under the supervision of an archaeologist, according to the announcement from Humphreys. Bemis plans to put the telegraph and the pedestal on display in a local museum, along with other artifacts that have been recovered during earlier dives, "which is great news for the local community," Humphreys said. Original article on Live Science . In a major scientific breakthrough, researchers have harnessed a gene-editing tool to correct a disease-causing gene mutation in human embryos, preventing the mutation from passing to future generations. In the stunning discovery, a research team led by Oregon Health and Science University reported that embryos can fix themselves if scientists jump-start the process early enough. There was no indication how soon ordinary patients could take advantage of this technique. The new technique, which was tested on clinical-quality human eggs, uses the CRISPR-Cas9 gene-editing tool to target a mutation in nuclear DNA that causes hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, according to the researchers. Hypertrophic cardiomyopathy is a common genetic heart disease that can cause heart failure and sudden cardiac death. The disease affects approximately 1 in 500 people and is a common cause of sudden heart failure in young people, particularly young athletes. The research was published Aug. 2 in the journal Nature. SCIENTISTS EDIT GENES OF HUMAN EMBRYOS IN U.S. FOR FIRST TIME While the procedure is nowhere near ready to be tried in a pregnancy, the research suggests that scientists might alter DNA in a way that protects not just one baby from a disease that runs in the family, but his or her offspring as well. Every generation on would carry this repair because weve removed the disease-causing gene variant from that familys lineage, said the reports senior author, Dr. Shoukhrat Mitalipov, director of OHSUs Center for Embryonic Cell and Gene Therapy, in a statement. By using this technique, its possible to reduce the burden of this heritable disease on the family and eventually the human population. The research offers fresh insight into a technique that could apply to thousands of inherited genetic disorders affecting millions of people worldwide, according to the experts. The team programmed the CRISPR-Cas9, which acts like a pair of molecular scissors, to find that mutation a missing piece of genetic material. Researchers injected sperm from a patient with the heart condition along with those "molecular" scissors into healthy donated eggs at the same time. The scissors cut the defective DNA in the sperm. BABY SAVED BY FIRST-OF-ITS-KIND IN UTERO SURGERY Normally, cells will repair a CRISPR-induced cut in DNA by essentially gluing the ends back together. Or scientists can try delivering the missing DNA in a repair package, like a computer's cut-and-paste program. Instead, the newly forming embryos made their own perfect fix without that outside help, reported Mitalipov. We all inherit two copies of each gene, one from dad and one from mom and those embryos just copied the healthy one from the donated egg. "The embryos are really looking for the blueprint," Mitalipov said in an interview with the Associated Press. "We're finding embryos will repair themselves if you have another healthy copy." DNA DISCOVERY IDENTIFIES LIVING DESCENDANTS OF BIBLICAL CANAANITES It worked 72 percent of the time, in 42 out of 58 embryos. Normally a sick parent has a 50-50 chance of passing on the mutation. Previous embryo-editing attempts in China found not every cell was repaired, a safety concern called mosaicism. Experts have lauded the study as a major leap forward in genetic research. This is incredibly important work, CRISPR expert and professor at Harvard and MIT George Church told Fox News, via email. Few people realize how common are genetic diseases. SCIENTISTS FIND POSSIBLE CLUE TO ANCIENT 'GHOST SPECIES' OF HUMANS Church, who is not affiliated with the research, noted that genetic diseases affect about five percent of births, causing great suffering. The mainstream medical approaches today kill embryos and this offers a route to avoid that be (a process of) engineering the eggs, he explained. Shoukhrat Mitalipov's team has made two huge breakthroughs in efficiency and precision. The researchers behind the study say that the gene-editing technique, which was done in concert with in vitro fertilization, could also increase the success of IVF by increasing the number of healthy embryos. If proven safe, this technique could potentially decrease the number of cycles needed for people trying to have children free of genetic disease, said report co-author Dr. Paula Amato, associate professor of obstetrics and gynecology in the OHSU School of Medicine, in a statement. While gene editing holds great potential for the battle against genetic diseases, it has, however, prompted fears that it could be harnessed for designer babies. NEW DNA TECHNOLOGY CREATES DIGITAL 'SKETCH' OF TERRORISTS' FACES The scientists behind the breakthrough study noted that their research is consistent with recommendations issued earlier this year by the National Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Medicine joint panel on human genome editing. The recommendations laid out three major settings where gene editing can be used in biomedicine: basic research on human disease and its treatment, clinical applications to prevent disease or disability in non-productive cells and clinical applications to prevent disease or disability in productive cells. The Associated Press contributed to this article. Additional reporting by Chris Ciaccia. Follow James Rogers on Twitter @jamesjrogers A security expert claims hackers could turn the Amazon Echo into a covert microphone. MWR Info Security researcher Mark Barnes was able to hack the smart speaker, letting him hear an audio stream of everything the device hears, in addition to letting him take control of it. "The Amazon Echo is vulnerable to a physical attack that allows an attacker to gain a root shell on the underlying Linux operating system and install malware without leaving physical evidence of tampering," Barnes wrote in a blog post, announcing his findings. "Such malware could grant an attacker persistent remote access to the device, steal customer authentication tokens, and the ability to stream live microphone audio to remote services without altering the functionality of the device." AMAZON SAYS ALEXA COULD NOT CALL 911 Barnes was able to initiate the hack by peeling off the rubber base of the Echo and exposing a grid of electrical contacts. From there, Barnes was able to watch the Echo turn on, figure out its configuration and insert software that took control of the device. Though Barnes describes hacking the device is "trivial," a potential hacker would need physical access to the device, which the researcher describes as "a major limitation." The 2015 and 2016 versions of the Echo are susceptible to the hack, while the 2017 edition is not, Barnes added. Amazon has worked with major hotel chains, including the Wynn Las Vegas, to put the Amazon Echo in hotel rooms. In a statement to Fox News, an Amazon spokesperson said,Customer trust is very important to us. To help ensure the latest safeguards are in place, as a general rule, we recommend customers purchase Amazon devices from Amazon or a trusted retailer and that they keep their software up-to-date. Barnes added that the Echo device does include a mute button which allows users to disable the microphone so that sensitive information is not picked up. "Although the Echo brings about questions of privacy with its 'always listening' microphones, many of us walk around with trackable microphones in our pockets without a second thought," the researcher wrote. AMAZON MAY LET DEVELOPERS READ YOUR CHATS The findings come at a time when the U.S. government is working to try to protect the so-called "internet of things" and make it more secure. A bipartisan group of U.S. senators is planning to introduce legislation to address these types of vulnerabilities, according to Reuters. The bill would require devices that connect to the internet, such as smart speakers, refrigerators, televisions and other everyday objects to ensure their devices can be patched and meet safety and security standards. "While government Internet of Things devices are one threat vector, in the coming years we will need guidelines to direct how data is protected in the vendors ecosystem, like childrens toys, or devices that are not regularly connected to the internet, like video cameras," Michael Daly, CTO, Raytheon Cybersecurity & Special Missions told Fox News via email. "It is critical for government and consumers that we address new vulnerabilities as the threat landscape rapidly expands." The bill is being sponsored by Republicans Cory Gardner and Steve Daines and Democrats Mark Warner and Ron Wyden. The Echo responds to voice commands such as "Alexa, tell me what time it is" or "Alexa, tell me the news." Since being unveiled in the U.S. in June 2015, there are more than 15,000 "skills" (akin to apps on a smartphone) for the Echo and it has become one of Amazon's hottest selling products. SMART SPEAKER REVOLUTION: WHY WE'LL HEAR MUCH MORE FROM AMAZON'S ECHO At its most recent Prime Day holiday, Amazon said members of its $99-a-year service, Amazon Prime, purchased "seven times more Amazon Echo devices globally than on Prime Day 2016." Amazon has not broken out exact sales figures for the device. However, a survey by Consumer Intelligence Research Partners estimates Amazon has sold more than 10 million Echo devices in the U.S. Follow Chris Ciaccia on Twitter at @chris_ciaccia This story has been updated to include Amazon's statement and comments from Raytheon CTO. This is a rush transcript from "The Story," August 1, 2017. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated. DANA PERINO, GUEST HOST: Breaking tonight, President Trump urging his team to go on the offense against damaging distractions and leaks that threaten to derail his agenda, and the attorney general stepping to the plate with a major new effort that could land to leakers in jail. That's "The Story." Good evening, I'm Dana Perino in for Martha MacCallum. Fox News confirming that Attorney General Jeff Sessions, is preparing a major announcement unveiling a high profile criminal leak investigation, specifically targeting those behind an unauthorized breach of sensitive intelligence information. In moments, we'll be joined by Charles Krauthammer on what he thinks is behind this new Justice Department effort. But first, Chief National Correspondent, Ed Henry, live at the White House on what we may hear, Ed. ED HENRY, FOX NEWS CHANNEL CHIEF NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, Dana, Fox News has learned that Jeff Sessions will announce this crackdown as early as Friday. Really, a critical move, because President Trump and his top aides believe that this parade of leaks has not only been damaging to his administration, but some of them have involved classified information, it would actually involve breaking the law. So, top officials here tell us that the announcement by Sessions will be an overview of the Justice Department's battle plan to take a much sharper look at some of the recent news reports with some of this sensitive intelligence material, rather than an announcement of specific prosecutions. Now, while Sessions and his advisors stressed that this crackdown has been in the works for some time, we have to note the context of this, of course, is coming after the president put intense pressure on his attorney general to act with tweets last month. They call Sessions beleaguered and demand of action on leaks; one tweet declaring "Ukrainian efforts to sabotage Trump campaign -- 'quietly working to boost Clinton.' So, where is the investigation, attorney general?" He also cited our own Sean Hannity, followed by a second presidential tweet declaring, "Attorney General Jeff Sessions has taken a very weak position on Hillary Clinton's crimes (where are e-mails and DNC server) and Intel leakers!" Now, in an exclusive with our own Tucker Carlson, Sessions was blunt in declaring he expects this will get the ball rolling on actual criminal prosecutions. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) JEFF SESSIONS, ATTORNEY GENERAL: Go to jail, if we can make cases they are going to jail. That will be our advocacy, which we've been working on before. And the president has every right to ask the Department of Justice to be more aggressive in that, and we intend to. (END VIDEO CLIP) HENRY: So, the attorney general saying that he will zero in on actual criminal leaks, while the legal but damaging palace intrigue leaks we've seen in the media, now have to be plugged, of course, by the new chief of staff General John F. Kelly, after he ousted Anthony Scaramucci who had been making that one of his principal duties. With the hours of Scaramucci's exit yesterday, though, there was this major leak, yet again in the Washington Post alleging that President Trump himself directed what became a misleading statement about his son Donald Trump Jr.'s meeting at Trump Tower last summer, Dana. PERINO: All right. And that leak, certainly, wouldn't be under the attorney general's purview, but you're right, the new chief of staff. Thank you, Ed. Here with more is Charles Krauthammer; he's a Syndicated Columnist and a Fox News Contributor. So, Charles, we know that the president wanted this to be a priority of the attorney general. It sounds to me like he's not going to be frog-marching anybody in front of the cameras, but he's going to say, we are getting serious about this. And I assume that the attorney general hopes that that will stop what they're calling it "culture of leaks." What do you think? CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER, FOX NEWS CONTRIBUTOR AND SYNDICATED COLUMNIST: Well, generally speaking, you'd expect something this splashy would be there frog-marching of a perpetrator or two. A little bit of handcuffs, a little bit of drama, and actually have cases to present. No cases to present, it makes you think that this is part of Attorney General Sessions trying to keep his job. Now, there's nothing wrong with going about looking for illegal leaks, particularly from the administration: unmasking, and all of that stuff -- that's right. But given the context, to use a word Ed Henry used, this is clearly an attorney general under siege, being humiliated, and attacked by his own president, trying to show that he's a good soldier. I don't think it actually does him a lot of credit having to be so obsequious about the president's demand, but that's the way that is and that's how he'll keep his job. PERINO: But if it keeps the tweet against him at bay -- I get that maybe helps him do the rest of his job. But if I can pray upon your previous experience, what is the psychology behind leakers? Do you think that -- are they trying to further a story? Is it out of the goodness of their hearts? Or do they want fame and fortune? Or maybe like they want attention from the press? Where does it come from? KRAUTHAMMER: Well, this is on nonmedical diagnosis here. Generally speaking, it's people who are committed to a cause and think that the cause will be advanced by the leak. Either a negative cause, meaning, you want to bring people down whom you think are hurting the country, or that you want to expose the truth like in Watergate. I mean, some people, I guess, do it for the glory of it, but leakers, generally, don't get glorified. You end up like Julian Assange, hiding out for six years in the Ecuadorian Embassy. That's not exactly glory. PERINO: So, there are two different types of leaks; what Attorney General Jeff Sessions will talk about is the National Security- related intelligence information leaks that are criminal. KRAUTHAMMER: Right. PERINO: But now, as Ed Henry was suggesting, so we have a new Chief of Staff, General John Kelly, is coming into a White House that has had leaks about, sort of, what's going on inside the White House that they don't like either. What can a chief of staff actually do to stop that kind of thing? KRAUTHAMMER: Fire people, who are caught, and try to make it very clear that that will be the penalty so that you get a deterrent effect. There was a sense up until Kelly's had session a day ago, that the White House was a free fire zone, where if you had a personal enemy or you had certain ambitions forwarded by arrival in the White House, you could just be leaking crazily to try to embarrass, hurt them, or to bring them down. You know, Scaramucci was pretty open about it, and he wasn't exactly a secret leaker; he was more of a suicide bomber who too took a whole bunch of people down with him. So, you've got this culture of free-for-all and what you needed. And I think Trump did exactly the right thing: you bring in a Marine general who has a sense of the chain of command and order to read everybody the Riot Act. And presumably, it will reduce the number of leaks in the future. But it isn't going to do a thing about the ones that have already leaked out, and which have been so damaging up until now. PERINO: I know that I would've never wanted to disappoint chiefs of staff -- Andy Carter and Josh Bolten -- when I worked there. If I could ask you just one last question about the other piece of this that Ed Henry brought up, which is the leak in the Washington Post last night about this statement that was written about Donald Trump Jr.'s meeting in Trump Tower with the Russian lawyer, that the White House basically said today that the president just weighed in like any father would do. Do you think that that will pass muster with either the press or maybe even the investigation? KRAUTHAMMER: There's no way around it. This is bad news for the White House. It's not a felony; it's not criminal to mislead the American people. God knows, Bill Clinton did that a million times, and he was nailed for what he said in the deposition, which is a whole different thing. But if lying or misleading or a criminal offense, we'd have to empty out the congress. Nonetheless, it looks very bad. First, because the White House had said, the president was not involved whatsoever; you got that from Jay Sekulow, the president's own lawyer repeatedly said that, so that is not true. And second, because it implicates the president in an event, the meeting with the agent of the Russian government who was peddling dirt on Hillary, which is the one episode of collusion that is simply undeniable. Again, not necessarily criminal -- PERINO: Right. KRAUTHAMMER: You don't impeach somebody over that, but that is collusion. Bungled collusion, (INAUDIBLE) collusion, is nonetheless collusion. And you've got the first time the president is involved even if indirectly and after the fact. PERINO: All right. Charles Krauthammer, thank you so much. KRAUTHAMMER: My pleasure. PERINO: All right. Joining me now is Charles Hurt, a Columnist for the Washington Times and a Fox News Contributor; and Mary Anne Marsh, who is a Democratic Strategist. If could just be four-week ago to you, I want to have you listen to Corey Lewandowski who talked about the leaks that are actually happening within the West Wing. Let's listen to that. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) COREY LEWANDOWSKI, FORMER MANAGER OF THE TRUMP CAMPAIGN: Look, I think the president's frustration was probably what the amount of leaking coming from the White House. If Reince couldn't control those leaks and also he's continued to permeate, then, he was the one who's ultimately responsible. And General Kelly is brought in to make sure those leaks do not continue. (END VIDEO CLIP) PERINO: Now, Charles, let me start with you because you're a journalist. I've assumed that you are probably the recipient of some leaks, possibly, even back in the day when we work together when I was at the White House. What do you make of this whole thing? And do you think General Kelly will be able to stop leaks coming from inside the West Wing, at least? CHARLES HURT, FOX NEWS CONTRIBUTOR AND COLUMNIST FOR THE WASHINGTON TIMES: Well, certainly, it's going to be -- it's going to be a tall order for him, but I do think that that kind of discipline that he brings to it is exactly what's needed. And of course, you know, anybody in the press loves leaks. We love, you know, any sort of information that we can get. But what I think is so interesting about so many of the leaks that we see now, first of all, a lot of the leaks turned out not to be true. A lot of stories that are printed based on those leaks wind up later not being true. But the other thing that I think is so disturbing about a lot of it is that the leaks are so damaging to the president. And there are -- so many of the accusations and the smear is directed at the president. And there are two things there: one is there's a real discipline problem that the administration has to fix. But the other thing is, and this is something that I think that a lot of people, it's sort of a badge of honor in some sorts is the degree to which so many people inside the administration who are not necessarily loyalist but who feel threatened by this president and really do want to do him damage, because he's going to change the way things operate around here. And you know, that's not a bad thing, but they have to get a control of these things. PERINO: So, Mary Anne, certainly leaks are sometimes strategic, right? Sometimes the -- leaks come in all sort of different forms. And there have been some reporters who were trigger-happy and went with leaks that ended up not being true. Do you think the Democrats run any risk of overplaying their hand, thinking that every leak is going to lead to the impeachment of President Trump? MARY ANNE MARSH, DEMOCRATIC STRATEGIST: Well, I think only the truth could lead anywhere and take you down that path. But I think the real point here is, look at why people are leaking from the White House about Russia. And there are only two reasons: one is you're trying to persuade Trump to do something and change his behavior that you failed to do privately, and you hope he'll do it if he sees it publicly in the media which he's a voracious consumer of. The other reason is to save yourself. And neither one of those things puts you in a very good place if you're at the White House because that means you're trying to outrun the truth if you're Donald Trump. Trump has basically made the bet that it would hurt him more, to tell the truth, today, than to tell a lie and get caught tomorrow. And when you're in that place, things don't get better from here. Could the Democrats overplay their hand? It is possible, but what we've seen time and time again is when Donald Trump and the White House has one thing, more often than not including today, it's the truth is something totally different and it starts to add up. And that's a bad place to be for any White House. PERINO: I have wondered, Charlie, why the White House doesn't just continue to refer to the investigation and not answer everything single question that comes up? Or do you think that that actually would be more damaging for them? Because there are these little drifts that come out like last night about the statement that was drafted for Air Force One, what do you think? HURT: Well, I think that to some degree, you know, these guys are at this for six months. And before this, they have -- you know, the only experience they have with politics is, of course, running their campaign that wound up being spectacularly successful, though no one expected it to be. They're sort of reinventing the wheel all the time which is a great thing about Donald Trump, but it's a maddening thing in situations like this. Because you're exactly right, they should just refer everything to the investigation, because nobody, and nobody outside of Democrats, and outside of people in Washington cares about any of this stuff. And you really could get -- PERINO: What do you make -- Mary Anne, let me give you the last word, because you hear that a lot that the White House has, well, actually, nobody cares about this, and some of the polling bears that out, what do you think? MARSH: I think that people care about it a lot. They may not respond to that particular issue, but look at Donald Trump's polling; he's under water everywhere in every single poll now. And you've seen the level of trust that he holds with the American people is at the lowest place it's been in -- since he's gone into the office. That line has only gone down, and you cannot earn trust back. It's the most valuable commodity you have in elected office, but certainly, if you're in the White House. And to earn that back, would take years, it's not years more; it's nearly impossible. And in six months, Donald Trump has lost the trust of the vast majority of the American people, but for 35 percent of the country who still support. PERINO: Although with that number, he actually -- I mean, it's not that much lower than what he won the presidency with. So, he hasn't gone down too much in that regard. All right, thank you both. HURT: Thanks, Dana. MARSH: Thank you. PERINO: Coming up, new signals from the White House tonight, suggesting that we may be hearing their plans to deal with North Korea in the not-so- distant future, that is still ahead. Plus, one feminist writer suggested it would be "a betrayal of every woman who has ever supported the Democratic Party," the latest issue dividing the left is next. And the Democrats squabble, the Republicans on the Hill are getting ready to make tax reform the next legislative goal. Karl Rove is here to take us through exactly how the president can win the looming battle. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: We'll be submitting an infrastructure bill in the not very distant future. We're going to be submitting a tax bill in the very near future. (END VIDEO CLIP) (COMMERCIAL BREAK) (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) SEN. CHUCK SCHUMER, D-N.Y.: We stand for three simple things. First, we're going to increase people's pay. Second, we're going to reduce their everyday expenses. And third, we're going to provide workers the tools they need for the 21st-century economy. (END VIDEO CLIP) PERINO: Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer's message to his party being largely ignored that according to Politico that wrote some on his own party are wondering whether they need a message at all besides resistance. The dustup comes as the chair of the Democrats House campaign arm is saying his party should be willing to support candidates who oppose abortion rights, setting off some prominent progressives. Ilyse Hogue, President of the pro-choice group NARAL, tweeting: "Any compromise is akin to allowing a far-right, religiously warped, anti-Democratic force to infect the Democratic Party so that they can write laws that control women." Writer Lauren Duka adding, "This will be a betrayal of every woman who has ever supported the Democratic Party." Joining us now: Dana Loesch, she's host of "Dana" on The Blaze T.V.; and Richard Fowler, Senior Fellow at New Leaders Council and, of course, a Fox News contributor. So, I wanted to talk about the abortion messaging for a second. Because, Richard, the man in charge of (INAUDIBLE), who is basically the one for the Democrats trying to make sure that the Democrats can win some House seats. He said you know, look, we should be open to the fact that some people that want to run as Democrats are going to be pro- life. And that set all of these other progressive women off. And I just wonder from your perspective, is it a good idea for the Democrats to be shrinking their tent at this point? RICHARD FOWLER, FOX NEWS CONTRIBUTOR AND SENIOR FELLOW AT NEW LEADERS COUNCIL: It's not a matter of shrinking their tent. Thanks for having me, Dana. It's a matter of really understanding where the party is and sticking to what we believe in. One thing you can learn from Donald Trump, whether you like him or not is he has a message and he's sticking to it. Was it unpopular with some Republicans? Absolutely. Did people -- did some Republicans say that they were never Trump-ers? Absolutely. But he's President of the United States. This issue, now, when I say pro -- and I want to be very clear, I am pro- choice, I am not pro-abortion. I think pro-choice means more than just, you know, a woman being able to have access to, you know, abortion care, but also means having access to contraception, it means being able to get birth control, it means they will go to planned-parenthood clinic, it means all of these things, right? And so, when you say that we're going to endorse candidates that against that, that speaks to moving away from who we are as Democrats and who we've always been. PERINO: But Dana, I have followed the stuff pretty closely. I haven't heard of a Republican in years saying that -- you know, (INAUDIBLE) Republican saying they want to restrict contraception. I think that this issue has actually matured, and you had Republicans actually running on -- well, Cory Gardner of Colorado, the Senator, he ran on a platform saying he thought birth control should be widely available and over-the-counter. DANA LOESCH, THE BLAZE TV HOST: Exactly. PERINO: So, I just feel like the Democrats are trying to keep Republicans in a box that they've actually broken out of it. LOESCH: That's right, Dana, it's so good to see you. It's a strong man argument that they use because -- and you hit the nail on the head. Republicans are the party that's push for over-the-counter birth control, of course, that endangers some of the special interests that fund the Democratic Party. I'm not, Dana, I'm not going to criticize Democrats for finally coming around and adopting a Republican platform. And even though it's not based on the sanctity of life; it's on the sanctity of getting votes, I'll take that if it saves some infants. I will all totally take that all day long. I'm excited to see it. It's actually one of the first real smart things that I've heard from Democrats in the past eight years. They're looking to expand their coalition, and they have to. When you look at the amount of Democrats that voted for Donald Trump, not because they liked him, but because they loathed Hillary Clinton and Democrats have nobody else to put up. I mean, they really need to expand their base. They realize they've got to pick up 24 seats, and the only way to do that, Dana, is to expand that coalition. PERINO: Well, and the other thing I would say is that the president stuck to a message during the campaign about economic opportunity and growth. And Richard isn't that what Chuck Schumer was saying the other day, which is we've got to figure out a way to get back to those issues so that we can take those voters who had voted for Obama, then voted for Trump to try to get them back in the category. Talking about abortion, I don't think it's necessarily going to be the winning thing, but it's more about the economy. And do the Democrats even need a national message because, pretty much, it seems like letting a thousand flowers bloom is the new strategy? FOWLER: Well, I think we do need a national message. And I'm happy to see a better - the better deal that came out last week that Chuck Schumer announced, and I think Democrats should be talking about it. But let's be very clear here, you know, having a pro-choice message and having an economic message isn't mutually exclusive. Those two things didn't exist by themselves. And another point to speak to what, Dana, mentioned about this idea of Republicans being for contraception, if you remember correctly during the Affordable Care Act fight seven or eight years ago, it was Republicans that blocked health care companies from covering birth control for women who worked at religious institutions -- PERINO: Richard, that is not -- FOWLER: That is true. LOESCH: That's false, Richard. FOWLER: That is true. PERINO: That is -- no. LOESCH: No. They only -- FOWLER: It was Republicans. LOESCH: No, no, Richard. Richard, as a woman, let me, a woman, explain to you. PERINO: Then I'll give you the last word as a woman. LOESCH: Insurance companies were not -- they were not blocked from offering contraception. They covered contraception for women's health needs; it was for recreational, sexual recreational purposes that companies were not forced, and insurance was not forced to cover it. So, there is a difference. FOWLER: But they should be forced to cover it in all cases. That's -- (CROSSTALK) PERINO: Well, that was the dispute. LOESCH: If I want to buy condoms, why am I going to ask you to pay for my sexual active recreational birth control? FOWLER: Wait a minute. Wait a minute. PERINO: Last word to you, Richard, then we got to go. FOWLER: Because Insurance companies already cover Cialis and Viagra, that's recreational sex (INAUDIBLE), so why can't they cover condoms? LOESCH: And they cover for -- birth control for health reasons, not for recreational. FOWLER: I mean, why can't they cover birth control? LOESCH: Not for recreational, but for health reason. FOWLER: But if they cover Cialis and they cover Viagra, why can't they cover birth control? PERINO: OK. We got to run. LOESCH: Dana, good to see you. PERINO: All right. Don't forget my book, Dana. You're the one that we're going to write in the future. LOESCH: Yes, I know right. I have (INAUDIBLE) on you. PERINO: Tweets we never sent: this is what it's going to be. (LAUGHTER) PERINO: All right. Coming up, Senator Marco Rubio is here to tell us why he just delivered a national message to Venezuela. Plus, talk about some provocative comments from one of his fellow GOP senators. And despite the seeming chaos inside the walls of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, the White House is quietly working to uphold one of President Trump's biggest campaign promises; filling our nation's courts with conservative judges, an update on the progress ahead. Plus, he was the man behind the strategy that led to the Bush tax cuts. Up next, Karl Rove explains how Trump can go even further. (COMMERCIAL BREAK) PERINO: President Trump setting his sights on tax reform earlier today at the White House. And with the newly minted the chief of staff, John Kelly at the helm, Republicans on Capitol Hill are hopeful that a tax overhaul is coming soon. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) SEN. MITCH MCCONNELL, R-K.Y., SENATE MAJORITY LEADER: What we intend to do is to take up tax reform when we come back after Labor Day. I don't think that this is going to be 1986 when you had a bipartisan effort to scrub the code. (END VIDEO CLIP) PERINO: So, how exactly should the White House roll out their messaging on this? Joining us now with his tips is Karl Rove, former Senior Advisor to President George W. Bush and a Fox News Contributor. So, in this debate, Karl, I think that there are optimists and pessimists. Optimists say, well, obviously we need tax reform; the country needs it for sorts of reasons, for fairness, and for economic growth. And then, you have pessimists who say, well, it's not been done for 30 years, it's going to be so hard; they couldn't get health care done. Which are you, an optimist or a pessimist? KARL ROVE, FOX NEWS CONTRIBUTOR AND FORMER SENIOR ADVISOR TO PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: Well, I'm generally an optimist. I'm one of those kids like Ronald Reagan described, you got up and saw the pile of manure under the Christmas tree and dug into it trying to find the pony that was supposed to be in there. So, even after health care went down, I'm hopeful and I'm actually pretty optimistic that they're going to get tax reform measure done, a tax cut done. It's not going to be as big and as bold as we probably would've liked it to have been, particularly after the health care defeat, but it's going to be big enough and hopefully strong enough to give us a go -- PERINO: So, what would -- what do you think they should do? We heard that the president will be traveling in August. He's going to hit some battleground states, I understand to try to sell this message. How else should they try to get this across the finish line? ROVE: Well, first of all, lower expectations. I noticed there's a tendency among members of the administration say we're going to get done now, or we're going to get it soon, and it's going to be big, and it's going to be great. This is going to be a tough lift because getting it passed the house they've got a pretty good discipline there, but even there it's tough. And then getting it through the senate with 52 votes is going to be tough. So lower the expectations. Second of all, dial up the coordination. The good news is that seems to be being done. You notice there're been regular meetings between Paul Ryan and Congressman Kevin Brady of Texas, chairman of ways and means, Leader McConnell, and the chairman senate finance committee Orin Hatch, Plus Steven Mnuchin, Gary Cohn, and other White House. PERINO: And outside groups. ROVE: And outside groups, which is -- let me come to that in just a minute. But keep that coordination going forward because you need to stay it out. And third, expand the number of voices that are being heard in this. And you're right, the outside groups, particularly the business community are getting revved up about this, and it's important to do that. But overall, you need to have the president delivery a more, I think, persuasive, consistent, and educational message. He's got to tell the American people why he wants this in more than 140 characters. This is going to require set piece speeches. It's going to require marshaling the evidence as to why this is important to describe in reasonable terms what might happen. Don't raise the expectations. Don't oversell this. Don't promise that, you know, people are going to able to keep their plans of they like their plan, that kind of thing. PERINO: We have Bill McGurn of the Wall Street Journal on later in the show, and he argued today in the Wall Street Journal that the president should give an oval office address on tax reform. Would you advocate for that? ROVE: Oh, I agree. And I think even more important than just one address was, what I took away from that article was is that the president has a bully pulpit, and Bill was saying make regular use of it, and that means you need to have a plan. The White House has been without a planner. Sure, they have a press secretary, but as you and I both know, the communication director principle function is to develop a plan to make all of the parts of the administration move in unison with their allies on Capitol Hill. PERINO: Yeah, because basically you are running a campaign. ROVE: Absolutely. PERINO: Speaking of the campaign, the president made promises about making sure that we were getting for the country, conservative judges, across a slate of judges in the country. Is he fulfilling that promise from your standpoint? ROVE: Oh, absolutely. His nominees for not just the Supreme Court with Judge Gorsuch, but his nominees for the pellet bench and these district benches, I just keep hearing terrific things about the people that he's putting forward. And I think this is going to be one of the great achievements in his first year in office is that he has done so well in this regard. And again, it's a lesson for us because he has not -- this has not been insular. Don McGahn, the president's council has been reaching out to outside groups, the federal society, and Leonard Leo and other conservatives who are interested in this have been hearing from the White House, asked for their suggestions. They've been doing a lot of consultation with senators about this. I think this is a lesson for the White House on how they can be more successful by relying on allies outside the west wing. PERINO: Rights. So, high impact but not a lot of headlines, but still getting a lot of that done. All right. Karl Rove, thank you so much. Still ahead in the wake of North Korea's longest range missile test yet, new indications suggesting the administration is ready to act. Ed Henry is coming up with some interesting quotes from the White House tonight. Plus, a series of power grabs from Venezuelan president, Nicolas Maduro, spark deadly protest in a country spiraling into chaos. Senator Marco Rubio is here on the heel of his address to the Venezuelan people to explain why this should matter to America. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) (FOREIGN LANGUAGE) (END VIDEO CLIP) (COMMERCIAL BREAK) (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) (FOREIGN LANGUAGE) (END VIDEO CLIP) PERINO: That was shocking new videos showing two prominent opposition leaders being dragged away to prison after being seized from their homes in the middle of the night by state security agents. This comes just days after an illegitimate election ignites deadly protest, and yields more power to the dictatorship rule of Nicolas Maduro. He's now one of just four heads of states personally sanctioned by President Donald Trump. Joining me now to discuss America's stake in this story, is one of Maduro's most ardent opponent, the man who just delivered a speech on Venezuela TV, Florida Senator Marco Rubio. Senator, thank you for joining me. I know that this is not a new issue to you. You've been covering it for a while. And I wonder if you could explain to people what is happening there, and why you decided to be the Americans that stood up and gave a speech in Spanish to the people of Venezuela. What did you say to them? SEN. MARCO RUBIO, R-FLA.: Well, first of all, let's see what's happening there. What's happening there, Hugo Chaves dies leaves behind what's already kind of a disaster because he's given away all those oil to spend money through a socialist model. This new guy takes over, and basically realizes he can't win an election. His party lost the election. He lost the legislative branch. So he comes with this idea called the constituent assembly. They're wiping out the national assembly, their congress, and replacing it with a Cuban style governments, where basically there're no more direct elections of their representative, all designed to fortify themselves in power. What this leads to -- why this matter to the United States, number one, thousands of asylum-seekers from Venezuela are already applying the fastest growth of any country in the world, so it's placing migratory pressure on the United States. Number two, it's our value and it is our hemisphere, we have not had a dictatorship emerge in this region in this way in 40 years. This is the first lost or attempted loss of a democracy since the Sandinistas in Nicaragua. But third, let's play this out. So you've got Venezuela now in play with Maduro and things they're doing. They can now destabilize Columbia, because the narco-traffickers in Colombia are people they've aided for a long time, important ally to the United States, and then move west. That takes you into Central America, because that's where the migratory and drug trafficking pressure comes against the United States. They now threaten the government of Honduras with a leftist candidate. They've already threaten El Salvador is already halfway there with its current leadership. Nicaragua is already all the way there. Guatemala is on the verge of being a failed state because of the challenges it faces. All of this pushing into Mexico who itself has a left of center Chavez-type figure running for president a year from now. And so, you can very quickly see within four years if this works in Venezuela, you could see it spread to Colombia, Honduras, Guatemala, Nicaragua it's already there, El Salvador, and ultimately into Mexico and right to the U.S. border. So this is -- you've got to think forward on a couple of these things, but these dominoes begin to fall, and suddenly we have a very unstable region where anti-Americanism and narco trafficking are putting tremendous pressure on our country, and not to mention the migratory pressures that follow. PERINO: Sir, you are the only U.S. senator who could have delivered that speech last night in Spanish, what was your main message to them? RUBIO: My main message is I've seen this happen before. I'm not seeking to interfere in the internal affairs of Venezuela. All we're asking for is for the government of Venezuela to follow its own constitution. Hold free and fair election, and let the people vote for whoever they want. But I also spoke to them as someone who was born and raised in a community shaped by the tragedy of this hemisphere, by the Sandinistas' in Nicaragua, by the Castro's in Cuba, and by the tyranny that results -- that leads to corruption, which we've seen massive amounts of corruption. And so my point to them is the United States like any sovereign country has a right to decide who they deal with and on what terms. And we are not going to stand by and watch as this anti-American dictator consolidates himself in power, violates the rights of his people, and ultimately in the long term threatens the United States. So it's a message of solidarity and in support for what President Trump has done and what he intends to do in the days to come. PERINO: Senator, did you see the report in the Washington Post that says that there might be a change of a mission statement language at the state department taking out the two words, justice and democracy, so that it would maybe say something like, we promote the security, prosperity, and interest of the American people globally, does that concern you that the state department might be taking those words out? RUBIO: It does, because I think democracy and stability and prosperity go hand in hand. Here's the bottomline, when in a country where people get to vote and choose their leaders, they're less likely to start a war, and they're more likely to be more prosperous, because those leaders, every two, every four, every five years have to answer to their people. This is not about left versus right. One of the things I made last -- points I made last night, in Argentina they have presidents on the left and on the rights, but they're elected. Brazil is going through a constitutional crisis right now, but it's being decided through their court system. Mexico has elections. Chile has gone left and right from one time to another. That's not the issue. The issue is when people -- democracies don't generally start conflicts with other democracies, because their people won't tolerate it. Dictatorships do because they don't have to answer to anybody. PERINO: It doesn't seem like the best time to be actually revising that mission statement, in particular, but I guess we'll wait to hear from the secretary on that. I get to ask you one last question, I've just talked to Karl Rove, we are talking about tax reform, and I asked him if he was an optimist or a pessimist that could get done, he said optimist. And I know you have a great interest in this, especially, when it comes to working with Ivanka Trump on the tax credit. Where are you, optimistic? RUBIO: I am, because I think we're -- unlike health care, I think there's a strong consensus in the Republican Party for pro-growth tax strategy. In fact, we have to do it. A lot of this economic growth we're seeing now is because that expectation of tax reform is already built-in to the growth. They're anticipating it, and that's what it's growing. And if it doesn't happen, we could see the reverse effect very quickly, and we'll be the blame. So we've got to get it done. And I do believe that we need to be the pro-family party, the most important institution in society is the family. The most important job any of us have is to be a parent. It simply cost more money than it ever cost before to raise children now in the 21st century. Our tax code should account for that. And that's why I met with Ivanka on it again today. We're going to get that done as well. PERINO: It's really important to talk about children. We've talk a lot about the older population as we should, but the children need more attention. Thank you, senator. We really appreciate your time. RUBIO: Thank you, Dana. Thank you. PERINO: Up next, we go back to the White House as some new comments may indicate the U.S. is ready to make its move against Kim Jong-un. Plus, the president says twitter is his best way to cut through the noise, but is he ignoring a better way to get out his message? Bill McGurn and Howard Kurtz, straight ahead. (COMMERCIAL BREAK) (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) REX TILLERSON, SECRETARY OF STATE: We're trying to convey to the North Koreans, we are not your enemy, we're not your threat, but you're presenting an unacceptable threat to us. And we have to respond. (END VIDEO CLIP) PERINO: Secretary of State Rex Tillerson strongly suggesting that the U.S. is on a brink of making its move against an increasingly aggressive and antagonistic North Korea. His comments putting the world on notice with some speculating that the U.S. may take preemptive action against a rogue nation. Fox News chief -- national correspondent Ed Henry is back with some new messaging coming from the White House tonight on North Korea. Ed. ED HENRY, FOX NEWS: Well, Dana, you're right. It's very significant that for the last two days Sarah Huckabee Sanders at that White House podium has not ruled out the possibility of a so-called first strike, that the U.S. could launch an attack against North Korea to try and deter its nuclear weapons program, this coming because the stakes could not be any higher right now. After the testing late last week of an intercontinental ballistic missile by North Korea, national security experts now warning us that they may be able to reach -- be able to reach any big city in the United States with any of their missiles in the days ahead, that's right, North Korea may now have the range to attack major U.S. cities ranging from L.A. to even New York and Boston. And yet, that's getting very little attention right now compared to the health care failure, White House staff moves, or Russian interference. In fact, Jerry Seib frame it perfectly today in the Wall Street Journal when he wrote that North Korea may soon launch, quote, another underground test of a nuclear device, a problem a lot more important than who's up and who's down in the White House this week. President Trump has been direct in recent weeks about saying China has not done nearly enough to help deter this threats. And today, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson made clear this is an urgent situation, but the administration is still optimistic that a diplomatic solution can be reached. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) TILLERSON: We do believe China has a special and unique relationship because of this significant economic activity to influence North Korean regime in ways that no one else can. That's why we continue to call upon them to use that influence with North Korea to create the conditions where we can have a productive dialogue. (END VIDEO CLIP) HENRY: Still the possibility of war is very much alive. Republican Lindsey Graham, today, declaring the only military option for President Trump is to destroy not just North Korea's nuclear program, but to destroy the nation of North Korea itself. Pressed on that again at the podium, Sarah Huckabee Sanders said all options are on the table, but she stressed as we've heard before from this president, he's not going to telegraph what he plans to do in the days ahead, Dana. PERINO: All right. Ed, thanks so much for keeping tabs on that. While the president said today that twitter is the best method for getting his message out, Wall Street Journal editorial board member Bill McGurn suggested today there is an even more powerful tool, the oval office address. And there are some suggestion that we could see one sooner rather than later. Joining me to discuss is Bill McGurn, the former chief speechwriter for President George W. Bush, and Howard Kurtz, Fox News media analyst and host of Media Buzz. So Bill, you argue that one of the best tools that a president can use is the power of an oval office address, because of what it will mean and what it shows. Do you think he should do that on tax reform? BILL MCGURN, FORMER CHIEH SPEECHWRITER FOR PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: Yes, I think he ought to have done it on health care reform. He might have had a different outcome. Look, I'm not saying that twitter is not useful, but it is one of the tools of the presidency as we talked before. When a president gives the state of the union, for example in congress, just think of it, the opposition, which ever party, it always look so diminished because their stage is not nearly as grand as speaking to both houses of congress. Same thing with the oval office, it's a chance for the president to speak directly to the American people, take them into the oval office, he's usually behind the desk as you know, and make his case. It's one of the greatest tools. Like gems, it has to have a certain rarity to have some value. But it was surprising to me that it went unused, tremendous bully pulpit. PERINO: So it's been six months, Howie, that the president has been in office, and we haven't really seen anything major oval office address, do you think that there is some reluctance from the White House to do it? HOWARD KURTZ, FOX NEWS MEDIA ANALYST: I'm really been puzzled, Dana, by the president's avoidance of the major TV speech. It was the missing element of the health care fight. And, as you know, there's a whole process, you have to ask the networks for TV time. Hardly a problem in a cable news environment where even his spokesman's briefings are all carried live. And then it's the media build up, the most important speech of Donald Trump presidency. Then come the speech -- and debating the speech for a couple of days. It's really is the way of moving public opinion. And I'm surprised it's a tool, as Bill says, the president has not chosen to use so far. PERINO: The other reason to an oval office address, Bill, that you argue is because it lets congress know what the president wants, what his policies will be, what his priorities would be, and in this case with tax reform, especially if you have some Democratic senators in red states, they might feel that pressure from their constituents. MCGURN: Yeah, all of them might. In this case, maybe Republicans from some states might have felt some pressure. Look, it's a chance -- the president is the only one then can speak to the nation like this and give his priorities. The example I use was Reagan in '81 on tax cuts, which a lot of people were skeptical about. July 27, 1981, he went on the oval office, gave his address, spoke to the American people, and then he asked them, call your congressman and senators and let them know. And Tip O'Neill said it was like the greatest blitz he has ever seen. And that was missing. So, again, I don't want to say twitter is useless or so forth, but this is a powerful -- I mean, Reagan was an actor and he recognized the stage is important. PERINO: But that is an interesting thing, Howie, because when you think about this president who understand television and how things look, the power of an oval office address and all the lead up to it, I mean they can make this last like two weeks. KURTZ: Absolutely, but I think the president just naturally prefers to sort of riff at these rallies. PERINO: Oh, sure. KURTZ: . these freewheeling speeches. I mean, there's a lot to be said to that. PERINO: I will tell you, Howie, that Bill and I work for a president who did not like to sit down behind the desk and read from a teleprompter, because you feel -- even though you're speaking to the world, you feel all alone, and it feels like you're talking into a box. And you can't see anybody and you can't get a feel for it. (CROSSTALK) KURTZ: I think beyond that, Dana, Donald Trump views that -- the traditional press conferences, the traditional speech, as kind of too slow, too traditional, too 20th century, and in fact, you know, it is a tool that influences the elites. You say, who cares about elite opinion, but that in turn could affect public opinion people, write op-ed, they go on cable news segments, and so, you know, president has a lot of tools available. This is one he has not chosen to use. PERINO: I have to say, my little piece of advice has been, I think that the president should just surprise everyone, walk in, and do a big press conference and just change all the news. KURTZ: You'll get the credit if he does it in the next couple of days. PERINO: OK. We've got to go. Thank you so much. We'll be right back. (COMMERCIAL BREAK) PERINO: Thanks for being a part of "The Story" tonight. Tucker is up next. He'll have part two of MS-13 series he's doing. Then, stay tuned to see me and the gang on "The Five" at 9. Have a great night. 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. A doctor has been charged with groping a 16-year-old girl who was seated beside him on a United Airlines flight to Newark Liberty International Airport. According to a federal complaint obtained by Consumerist, the teen girl was flying unaccompanied from Seattle to Newark on July 23 when she awoke to find the man touching her thigh. He removed his hand and she fell back asleep, only to wake up to the man touching her groin and inner thigh and trying to place his hand in her pants a short time later. The girl notified the crew of the mans behavior and moved to another seat. She also told her parents about the incident upon landing, but as the Washington Post reported, United Airlines seemingly did nothing to prevent the man from leaving the airport, much to the distress of her family. 6 OF UNITED AIRLINES' BIGGEST CONTROVERSIES The FBI was called in to handle the investigation. After showing the girl a photo lineup they put together based on the flight manifest, the girl was able to identify the man who assaulted her as 28-year-old Vijakumar Krishnappa, who, according to the girls mother, is a foreign doctor studying in the United States under a fellowship. This is such a horrific and despicable act on his part, said Johnny McCray, the girls attorney, in a statement to the Post. And for him to be a doctor its concerning. Krishnappa has been charged with knowingly engaging in sexual conduct with a minor. The Post adds that he was released on bond and placed under electronic monitoring. He has also been told to refrain from any contact with minors, although his attorney, John Yauch, says Krishnappa adamantly denies any charges. But its not just Krishnappa who is under fire; the girls family has also filed a complaint against United Airlines for failing to detain Krishnappa after the incident, NJ.com reports. FOLLOW US ON FACEBOOK FOR MORE FOX LIFESTYLE NEWS A representative for United tells Fox News the airline is currently reviewing the case with authorities. The safety and security of our customers is our top priority, wrote United. We take these allegations seriously and continue to work closely with the proper authorities as part of their review. The 16-year-olds case comes to light just a month after American Airlines passenger Chloe King revealed how a fellow passenger masturbated in an adjacent seat while she slept. In Kings case, however, she claims American didnt even allow her to switch seats. An Idaho teen was seriously injured after a large adult man jumped from a bridge and landed directly on her stomach while she was floating in a river. Cienna Cook, 19, was enjoying the water Sunday when a 250-pound man leaped and fell feet-first on her abdomen in the Boise River, news station KBOI reported. Imagine the worst punch in the gut you ever got by a guy who was falling from a distance of maybe twenty feet who was 250 pounds, her mom Heidi Cook told KBOI. Her family said the jumper apologized, but then fled and left the 19-year-old college student unable to move in the water. Bystanders rushed to pull the teen to shore and she was brought to a local hospital, where she was treated for internal bleeding. The teens mom said that they believe that the jumper, whose identity is unknown, was trying to intentionally hurt her for a cheap thrill. I guess it was a large group of guys and it was their idea of fun, to pick people as they were going down and they would just jump down and try and get as close to them as they could, Heidi Cook said. Her mom is calling for authorities to track down and charge the man. I believe its a criminal action whether he hurt her or not, she said. Friends have created a GoFundMe page to raise money for the teens medical costs. Read more from the New York Post. A North Carolina YMCA was closed Wednesday after a sodium hypochlorite leak sent 42 people to area hospitals, including six children in serious condition. Durham police said in a statement that the chemical was released around 2:45 p.m. at the downtown YMCA. The statement said 34 children and two adults were treated for non-serious injuries. Authorities say the six children in serious condition were exhibiting symptoms such as vomiting, respiratory illness, and skin and eye irritation. Their injuries were not believed to be life-threatening. Durham Deputy Fire Chief Chris Iannuzzi said there was a report of a leak in the pool's disinfection system, and a hazardous materials team was on the scene trying to determine how to stop it. Local YMCA spokeswoman Jennifer Nelson told WRAL a lifeguard noticed a strong chemical odor near the indoor pool pump room. Durham County spokeswoman Dawn Dudley told the News & Observer that thirty-nine people were actually in the pool at the time of the leak. The Associated Press contributed to this report. Four employees with the Massachusetts Registry of Motor Vehicles (RMV) have been accused of producing fake IDs for illegal immigrants in exchange for cash. In October 2015, state police received an anonymous letter alleging that a corrupt RMV clerk was selling stolen identifications and drivers licenses, according to the Justice Department. After investigating, authorities found that a number of RMV clerks, along with outsiders, operated an identity theft scheme and arrested six people on Wednesday. MS-13 DOESN'T FEAT TRUMP, RIVAL GANGS OR THE POLICE - BUT THEY ARE TERRIFIED OF LA SOMBRA NEGRA The clerks accused in the case include Evelyn Medina, 56, Annette Gracia, 37, David Brimage, 46, all of Boston, and Kimberly Jordan, 33, of Randolph. The two non-RMV employees include the alleged document vendor, Bivian Yohanny Brea, 41, of Boston and dealer Rafael R. Bonano, 32, who is also known as "Flako." The scheme would work like this, according to investigators: Flako, working as a document dealer, would sell a Puerto Rican birth certificate and U.S. Social Security card to Brea, the document vendor, for around $900. Brea would then allegedly sell the stolen identities for more than $2,000 to people looking for valid IDs in the state of Massachusetts. BLACK LIVES MATTER MINNEAPOLIS APOLOGIZES ABOUT PHOTO OF 'LYNCHED' MAN Brea would then use fake documents and identities to register people to vote in Boston, according to officials. Brea and the client would take the stolen identities to the Haymarket RMV, where the four clerks would allegedly accept cash to issue authentic RMV documents, including state licenses and ID cards. The DOJ alleges the clerks also accepted cash to use the RMVs system to run queries, including Social Security number audits, to confirm that the identities the clients were stealing actually belonged to verifiable individuals. The clients who paid for the fake documents included illegal immigrants, previously deported people, and an individual who admitted to previously facing drug charges, according to the DOJ. CONCEALED-HANDGUN CARRY BILL TRIGGERS PUSHBACK FROM COASTAL MAYORS, POLICE CHIEFS Fake identification creation within the Massachusetts RMV has repeatedly been a problem, Fox 25 has reported. In 2013, an employee allegedly created at least 200 fake IDs to people who traded a Puerto Rican identification in exchange for cash. The six people arrested were charged Wednesday in federal court with aggravated identity theft. A home intruder made himself comfortable inside a New Jersey residence Wednesday morning, stripping off his clothes and trying to get in the shower with someone inside before cleaning dirty dishes in the sink, police said. James King, of Jamaica, Queens was charged with burglary and lewdness for the 9 a.m. invasion of a home in Hackensack, N.J., cops said. Sixteen-year-old Mikah Diaz, her 21-year-old sister and her sisters baby were home alone when King came busting in the house through an unlocked door of the First Street home, Diaz told CBS New York. PENNSYLVANIA MAN SHOT DEAD 45 MINUTES AFTER LEAVING COURT Diaz was watching her nephew while her sister was showering when her sister came running from the bathroom, saying there was a man in the house. She runs into the room with only her towel on, and shes on the phone with the police, Diaz told the news outlet. Click for more from The New York Post. A federal appeals court in Boston has decided the fate of the nation's oldest synagogue, overturning a lower court's decision that put control of the building and a set of bells worth millions of dollars in the hands of the congregation that worships there. The 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals announced its decision Wednesday. That means control of the nation's oldest synagogue, Touro Synagogue in Newport, Rhode Island, will no longer be in the hands of the local congregation but rather under the control of the nation's oldest Jewish congregation, Shearith Israel in New York. The decision also gives Shearith Israel ownership of a set of silver Colonial-era bells, called rimonim, valued at $7.4 million. Shearith Israel had appealed last year's lower court ruling removing it as trustee of the 250-year-old Touro Synagogue. The judge at the time rejected the New York congregation's arguments that it was the rightful owner of the bells and the synagogue. "Congregation Shearith Israel is gratified by the First Circuit's unanimous decision reaffirming our lawful, outright ownership of Newport's Touro Synagogue and the precious rimonim at issue here," said attorney Louis Solomon. An attorney for the Newport congregation said he was disappointed with the panel's ruling. "We are reviewing our legal options on behalf of the Touro Synagogue and Jeshuat Israel, the Congregation that has prayed there for over a century," attorney Gary Naftalis said. Touro Synagogue holds an important place in the history of the nation's commitment to religious liberty. In 1790, George Washington visited Touro, and then sent a letter to the congregation pledging America's commitment to religious liberty. The synagogue, dedicated in 1763, is a national historic site that draws thousands of visitors each year. By 1820, all of the Jews had left Newport, and Congregation Shearith Israel became trustee of Touro. It was reopened later that century as Jews began to move back to the city. The dispute over ownership began when the Newport congregation, which was struggling with money, formed a plan to establish an endowment by selling the bells to the Museum of Fine Arts. The New York congregation objected, arguing that the sale would violate religious law and would be akin to selling a "birthright." ___ This story has been corrected throughout to clarify that Shearith Israel in New York is the nation's oldest Jewish congregation and Touro Synagogue in Newport, Rhode Island is the nation's oldest synagogue building. A Pennsylvania man who had just been sentenced for drugs was found shot to death -- execution style -- in his car less than an hour after his trial. Anthony Reaves, 41, pleaded guilty to being a member of a drug organization, conspiracy and drug charges while at court in Delaware County on Monday. Reaves was granted eight years of probation with no jail time, but 45 minutes after walking out of court, he was dead, according to reports. We would call it an execution. I mean they meant to do this guy, they get him from both sides of the car. Over a dozen ballistic pieces of evidence, John Apeldorn, an expert with the Citizens Crime Commission, told Fox 29. BALTIMORE POLICE OFFICER MISTAKENLY RECORDS HIMSELF WITH BODY CAM PLANTING DRUGS AT CRIME SCENE Reaves had been a defendant in Operation Bennett Trifecta," an undercover bust which took down a drug gang. The gang allegedly was using a housing development project to traffic millions of dollars in cocaine deals, according to former Attorney General Kathleen Kane. Reaves was not a witness in the pending trial, although he did cooperate with authorities, according to an attorney general spokesman. Despite being offered relocation twice, Reaves had declined. An attorney handling Reaves' drug charges called the murder awfully coincidental. Click for more from Fox 29. Authorities said a 43-year-old man has been arrested with abducting his girlfriend and her two children and holding them captive for at least two years inside a Virginia home. Kariem Ali Muhammad Moore has been charged with three felony counts of abduction along with felony assault and battery. More charges could be filed against Moore, according to the Spotsylvania County Sheriff's Office. Last Saturday afternoon, deputies responded to a home in Fredericksburg for a welfare check after receiving a call from a concerned family member who had not seen their 32-year-old female relative and her two kids, ages 8 and 11, for a long period of time. NORTHWESTERN PROFESSOR SOUGHT IN STABBING DEATH After arriving at the home, deputies said they met Moore at the home, who appeared hesitant to allow them inside. While speaking with Moore, a woman and two kids ran out of a side door to the deputies. The sheriffs office said the victims told deputies that they had not been allowed to leave the home for at least two years. Click for more from Fox 5. Police department cameras appeared to show officers in Baltimore planting evidence and Tennessee deputies repeatedly using a taser on a restrained teenager, as the department's own video footage is spurring case dismissals and lawsuits that are beginning to draw national attention. Surveillance video of a November incident showing Jordan Norris being repeatedly tased by Cheatham County Sheriff's deputies in Tennessee surfaced after a lawsuit was filed accusing the officers of using excessive force, The Tennessean reported. Norris, who was 18 at the time, is seen being held down by three deputies -- identified as Mark Bryant, Josh Marriott and Jeff Key -- with a white rag placed over his mouth. A stun gun is pushed on his chest four times, sometimes close to his heart. MOB BEATING ABOARD DALLAS TRAIN CAUGHT ON VIDEO Norris suffered at least 40 pairs of taser burns throughout his body after being tased, indicating there could have been more shocks that weren't shown on camera. The Tennessean reported. The Use of Force report indicated the deputies stunned Norris multiple times because he was being "very combative," forcing them to use the taser on him to "gain compliance." But the lawsuit said the deputies were acting in a "sadistic and malicious nature in repeatedly tasing Plaintiff Norris, such that the force was unreasonable." Norris also suffered a mental health episode a few days after the November arrest. The deputies continued to stun Norris while yelling "stop restraining" even when they continued to hold the teenager down, the suit claimed. SKETCH RELEASED OF SUSPECT IN DEADLY PACKAGE EXPLOSION Bryant, Marriott and Key were placed on administrative leave after the lawsuit was filed. Cheatham County Sheriff Mike Breedlove also released a statement Friday saying "not all the video footage was presented at the time of the briefing." The incident comes as the Baltimore police department is embroiled in its own controversy surrounding police actions caught on camera -- this time body cams. Earlier this week, charges were dropped in a case after police body-camera video "appears to depict multiple officers working together to manufacture evidence," a public defender said. The footage, which was released on Tuesday, showed officers coming up empty during an initial vehicle search, the Baltimore Sun reported. But 30 minutes later, an officer leans down to the same area -- this time picking up a bag of alleged drugs that seemed to appear out of nowhere. Public defenders said the officers manipulated evidence and planted drugs in the woman's vehicle. This was the second video showing officers allegedly fabricating evidence, according to the Baltimore Sun. The first video, released last month, showed an officer placing a bag of white pills in a lot in January. He then goes out to the street and flips the camera on to record him picking up the seemingly planted "drugs" in the lot. The camera, however, automatically captures the 30 seconds before the officer activates it, which is how the cop's drug drop was accidentally recorded. RACIALLY-CHARGED MEME LEADS TO LOUISIANA ASSISTANT POLICE CHIEF'S RESIGNATION Though the two criminal cases were dropped, Baltimore Police Commissioner Kevin Davis told the Baltimore Sun Wednesday there was "no doubt" illegal drugs were recovered in both incidents despite what the cameras show. Davis added an investigation into the incidents are being conducted, but warned about jumping to a conclusion. "It would be premature of me to stand in front of you and reach a conclusion as to exactly what happened," Davis said. "But I do know that its not healthy to jump to a conclusion that police officers did something criminal." A former Connecticut special education teacher and married mother, who is currently awaiting trial for allegedly having sex with one of her students, surrendered to police Wednesday after allegations surfaced of sex acts with another student -- and police say there are least two more victims. Laura Ramos, 31, was placed on administrative leave when the first allegations surfaced. She later resigned and has been awaiting trial. Ramos gave herself up to Bridgeport police Wednesday when she was told about a warrant for her arrest for allegedly having sexual relations with a student inside a restaurant in Shelton, CTPost reported. The Milford woman has been charged with two counts of second-degree sexual assault and released on $50,000 bond. My client voluntarily surrendered to police and we are awaiting the paperwork indicating the basis for the new charges, said Ramoss lawyer, Edward Gavin. Laura Ramos continues to maintain her innocence and we look forward to the progression of the case. Superior Court Judge William Holden issued an order barring Ramos from contacting her alleged victims. He continued the case to Aug. 14. A Connecticut man who immigrated nearly 20 years ago to the United States -- where he held a stable job and raised his family -- got deported to his native Jamaica, despite a last-minute plea for the Trump administration to intervene on his behalf, his lawyer said to Fox News on Thursday. "It was my hope that somebody would hear my cries for fairness and justice," attorney Ryan McGuigan said of his client, Hugh Williams, who was deported July 27 -- leaving behind his wife and children, all of whom are U.S. citizens. "The administration certainly has a duty to protect our borders and to evict people who are not here lawfully and who commit crimes," said McGuigan. "Nevertheless, there are exceptions to every rule." By most accounts, Williams' life represented the American Dream -- a Jamaican immigrant who came to Connecticut nearly 20 years ago, working as a supervisor at the Home Depot to provide for his wife and three sons, one of whom is in the U.S. military. But Williams was deported to Jamaica over a 2002 felony marijuana conviction his lawyer said was the result of shoddy legal advice given by an attorney who is now disbarred. In an interview last week, the 37-year-old Williams' told Fox News he was hoping for a pardon from President Trump, saying the deportation order would "break my family apart." The deportation order was issued in 2012 but not enforced until President Donald Trump unveiled new immigration policies that have consequently brought old deportation orders to new life. Williams was arrested in 2002 for felony possession of marijuana his first and only arrest in his life, McGuigan told Fox News. Based on advice from his attorney at the time, Williams pled guilty to felony possession of marijuana and served three years of probation without incident. The attorney, Joseph Dimyan -- who was later disbarred for stealing money from his own clients -- also advised the father of three to use a pseudonym while he was in court, according to Williams. "Had Mr. Williams been charged with the same offense today, he could have used a drug program or pled to an infraction," McGuigan said. On a return trip from Jamaica in 2012 -- 10 years after the marijuana arrest -- Williams was held up in U.S. Customs at John F. Kennedy International Airport after a fingerprint scanner revealed he had previously been convicted of a drug charge using a false name. Williams was soon issued a deportation order, though it was not enforced. Under the Obama administration, many immigration lawyers said their clients often were told they faced no immediate risk of being deported and could temporarily remain, so long as they committed no crimes. Shortly after Trump took office, however, Williams was told his time here is up. "It was the new enforcement from the Trump administration that became the issue," McGuigan said. "This is what happens when you cast a wide net. Obviously there are dangerous felons who need to be deported -- people who came here illegally with the intent of committing crimes in our country. And then there are many people, like Mr. Williams." In early June, Williams was informed by Immigration and Customs Enforcement that he would be deported to Jamaica on July 27. "My client was deported last Thursday pursuant to ICEs order," McGuigan said. "We had filed every emergency appeal that we could have to try and keep him in the country but to no avail." An ICE spokesman was not immediately available when contacted Thursday about the case. The agency told the Associated Press in June that it is tracking nearly 970,000 immigrants with deportation orders. The majority 82 percent have no criminal record, according to the AP. Williams, who was a longtime supervisor at a Home Depot in Connecticut, has three teenage children. His 19-year-old son is currently training with the U.S. military. "In the last 15 years, my client has been a law-abiding citizen and pursuant to that he left the country in accordance with the law," added McGuigan, who said he will try to bring Williams back into the U.S. "There should be some sort of review board the administration puts together to see that some people should be allowed to stay in this country," he said. "There should be some understanding that the people theyre retaining -- they're getting them because they're not lurking in the shadows. They're out there pursuing the American dream. "You have to have some sort of humanity," McGuigan said. A Kentucky teenager sitting on a hammock was killed Tuesday when a tree collapsed and toppled on her, crushing her to death. Michelle Chalk, 15, was in the backyard of a Ford Thomas home Tuesday night when she and her friend decided to spend some time sitting on a hammock, FOX19 reported. One of the two trees the hammock was tied to collapsed on top of her. Officials found the teenager dead at the scene. Her friend was not seriously injured. GEORGIA MOM FINDS OUT SON IS DEAD WHEN SHE PULLS UP TO CAR WRECK It's unclear what caused the tree to collapse. Police ruled her death an accident. Chalk was expected to start classes at Highlands High School later this month. She danced at Cincinnati Ballet and was described as a treasured member of the group. "We are deeply saddened to lose Michelle who was a vibrant and beloved member of our young performers cast," Victoria Morgan, artistic director of the Cincinnati Ballet, told FOX19. Click here for more from FOX19. New Jersey police are on the hunt for a man accused of performing a lewd act in the vicinity of children during a showing of The Emoji Movie. Police in Howell told News12 that a mother was watching the film with her children at the Xscape Movie Theater Friday when she noticed a man sitting alone in the back row had his hands down his unzipped pants. The theaters manager asked the man to leave after the mother told staff what she saw. Howell police released a photo of the man, described as a heavyset individual who had facial hair and was wearing a white dress shirt and black pants. Click for more from News 12. Cpl. Kionte Storey is working hard to get his stamina into tip-top shape before he attempts to reach the summit of Africas tallest peak in about two weeks. The Marine Corps veteran has been pushing his body and mind to conquer his latest challenge since losing his leg in Afghanistan in 2010. On Aug. 17, he is traveling to Tanzania to climb Mount Kilimanjaro as part of the new campaign called #Give2Veterans by the Bob Woodruff and the Steven & Alexandra Cohen foundations. When they reached out about climbing Kili, in short, its raising money, but its a challenge in and of itself, Storey told Fox News on Thursday. I am not letting my injury define me and I want to show that we can do anything and nothing is impossible. Mount Kilimanjaro's peak stands at 19,341 feet. He will be joined by Jake Rath, of the Steven & Alexandra Cohen Foundation. Storey, who lives in San Diego, Calif., joined the Marines in 2007. He was deployed to Haditha, Iraq in 2008, where he served until February 2009 as part of Operation Iraqi Freedom. In March 2010 he was deployed to Afghanistan for Operation Enduring Freedom. Storey, as a team leader, was conducting a morning patrol in September of that year, clearing out a building. There was an IED on the floor, he recalled. Everyone stepped over it, but I hit the trigger. He sustained the loss of his lower right leg below the knee and compartment syndrome to his left leg. [After my injury] I started to go on a downward spiral. I was abusing my pain meds; I was feeling very lost and confused, Storey recalled. I didnt like who I was becoming. He added: I didnt know where life was going to take me. The now 29-year-old old said eventually he needed to change the course of his life. He went cold turkey off his medication and started doing Paralympic camps. He had gone on to try out for the London and Rio Paralympic teams and has medals in the Warrior Games track and swimming events. In 2013, he became the first African-American and first amputee to reach the summit of Antarcticas Mount Vinson. Those challenges caused by his injury became the biggest motivation. He sees them as ways of showing people that despite any injury, anything can be achieved. I want to challenge myself as an amputee, Storey said. I look for these things. I want to find my weakness as an amputee and then challenge them. He added: We see a lot of able-bodied athletes and many of us make our own excuses. I try to defy any of those excuses. Once Storey returns from Africa, he has enrolled in school to get his degree as a physical therapist. "Kionte's efforts on Kilimanjaro demonstrate how much veterans can accomplish, in spite of their challenges, when they receive the support they need," said Anne Marie Dougherty, executive director of the Bob Woodruff Foundation, an organization which works to create long-lasting, positive outcomes for post-9/11 impacted veterans and service members. "The awareness he's raising around the #Give2Veterans campaign will help BWF continue to provide grantees with life-changing resources that support post-9/11 veterans in very meaningful ways," Dougherty added. By sharing the hashtag #Give2Veterans, the Steven & Alexandra Cohen Foundation will donate $1 to BWF, up to $500,000. Alexandra Cohen, president of the Steven & Alexandra Cohen Foundation, said we have an "obligation" to help our veterans. We are deeply committed to supporting military veterans and their families, said Alexandra Cohen, president of the Steven & Alexandra Cohen Foundation. We all have an obligation to give back to those that have served and protected our country men and women, like Kionte Storey, that embody true heroism and whose courage and strength inspire us all to continue doing more for our heroes. A Massachusetts woman who was convicted of involuntary manslaughter for encouraging her boyfriend to kill himself was sentenced Thursday to 2 1/2-years in prison, but in a shock to the victims family, the judge ruled to let her free pending an appeal of the case. Michelle Carter, 20, was sentenced to 2 1/2-years behind bars, but only has to serve 15 months of that. Carter was also sentenced to five years of probation. The judge granted a defense motion that would keep Carter out of jail until her appeals in Massachusetts courts are exhausted. Carter was convicted in June of involuntary manslaughter and faced up to 20 years in prison. Prosecutors requested Carter be sentenced to at least seven years in state prison, but no more than 12 years. Carter's attorney recommended five years of supervised probation with mental health counseling. TEXTING SUICIDE VERDICT: MICHELLE CARTER GUILTY OF INVOLUNTARY MANSLAUGHTER As family members of Conrad Roy III, Carter's deceased boyfriend, left the courtroom, there were tears and a vocal question: "How can she still be out?" one family member asked. Another family member said, "This ain't over," along with some profane words. During the sentencing, the prosecutor said Carter showed no remorse and should be punished for her actions. "All she had to do was say [to Roy] 'get out of the truck,'" the prosecutor said. But Carter's attorney insisted her client will be better off on probation with mental health treatment. Roy's father, Conrad Roy Jr., also said in his impact statement that Carter "exploited" his son's weakness and used him as a "pawn." "I am heartbroken. Our family is heartbroken," Roy said. "Where is her humanity...in what world is this acceptable?" MASS. TEEN ACCUSED OF ENCOURAGING BOYFRIEND'S SUICIDE STANDS TRIAL Carter was 17 in 2014 when she persuaded Roy, 18, to kill himself with a series of texts and phone calls, prosecutors said. Roy died when his pickup truck filled with carbon monoxide in a store parking lot in Fairhaven, Mass. "You can't think about it. You just have to do it. You said you were gonna do it. Like I don't get why you aren't," Carter wrote in one text. Carter was tried as a youthful offender, so the judge could have committed her to a Department of Youth Services facility until she turns 21 on Aug. 11. He could also have combined a DYS commitment with an adult sentence, or given her an adult sentence of anything from probation to the maximum 20-year term. Roys aunt, Kim Bozzi, said in a statement Carter should be given the maximum amount of prison time, the Boston Herald reported. Twenty years may seem extreme but it is still twenty more than Conrad will ever have, Bozzi said in her statement. In a letter to the judge, David Carter, Michelles father, said his daughter made a tragic mistake. He asked for probation and continued counseling. Joseph Cataldo, Carters lawyer, argued that Roy was determined to kill himself and nothing Carter did would have changed his decision. He also argued that Carters words were protected as free speech by the First Amendment. On June 16, a judge found Carter guilty for telling Roy to get back in after he climbed out of his truck as it was filling with carbon monoxide. Fox News' Bryan Llenas and The Associated Press contributed to this report. Democrats are pushing a slew of proposals aimed at improving the nation's ailing health care system after Senate Republicans last week endured a high-profile failure of their skinny repeal amendment bill. Given the difficulty of locking down enough GOP support, Republicans have welcomed the prospect of bipartisan talks. But as Democratic ideas threaten to increase the federal deficit, Dems may find little support from the GOP. SESSIONS JOB SAFE, WHITE HOUSE OFFICIALS SAY, AS LAWMAKERS LOOK TO SHIELD MUELLER New White House Chief of Staff John Kelly recently called Attorney General Jeff Sessions to assure him his job as head of the Justice Department was safe, a senior White House official confirmed. The assurance comes despite tweets and comments critical of Sessions from President Donald Trump after the attorney general recused himself from the Russia collusion investigation. NEW US SANCTIONS ARE BREACH OF NUCLEAR DEAL, IRAN SAYS Iran on Thursday reiterated its assertion that new U.S. sanctions against the Muslim country constitute a breach of the 2015 nuclear deal between Iran and Western powers. Abbas Araghchi, Irans deputy foreign minister, said Iran has prepared a list of 16 measures to take against the U.S. action. The U.S. sanctions impose penalties on people involved in Irans ballistic missile program, enforce an arms embargo and apply terrorism sanctions to Irans powerful Revolutionary Guard. SECOND BODY FOUND AFTER MINNEAPOLIS SCHOOL EXPLOSION, COLLAPSE A second body has been found in the rubble of a collapsed school building in Minneapolis after an explosion killed a school employee and injured several others, fire officials said Wednesday night. The explosion at the Minnehaha Upper School at approximately 10:20 a.m. caused two floors of the Christian private school to collapse over a sub-basement. Family members and co-workers identified one victim as Ruth Berg, whose body was recovered Wednesday afternoon. The second body, of janitor John F. Carlson, was recovered later in the day. FOX BUSINESS COVERAGE WHITE HOUSE TAX PLAN GETS SUPPORT FROM ANOTHER KEY OUTSIDE KEY GROUP BACK-TO-SCHOOL: HOW MUCH IS IT COSTING YOUR FAMILY? COMING UP ON FBN 8:00 a.m. ET Ken Langone, Co-Founder, Home Depot and Invemed Associates Chairman, will be a guest on Mornings with Maria. 3:00 p.m. ET Nicholas Akins, American Electric Power Chairman & CEO, will be a guest on Countdown to the Closing Bell. The assistant police chief of a small Louisiana community resigned Tuesday night after he posted a racially-charged meme on his personal Facebook page. Wayne Welsh, the second in command in Estherwood, a village of fewer than 1,000 people in Acadia Parish near Lafayette, left his post after sharing the meme Saturday night. According to KADN, Welsh shared a meme Saturday that depicted a mother holding the back of her daughters head, pushing her face down into a bathtub full of water. The picture was captioned with: When your daughters first crush is a little Negro boy. CLICK HERE TO SEE THE MEME. The post, as well as a screenshot of Welshs Facebook account, quickly went viral, with many calling for his resignation. Several people described the post as disgusting. According to KATC, Welsh responded to the criticism, saying in a subsequent post: Its not against. The law if you share stuff on. Facebook. Its Social Media. Internet. A few hours later, he posted an apology. Well, I posted something on Facebook that made a lot of people mad, Welsh wrote. Well, Im sorry for what happen. Ya have a blessed day. "I shared somebody else's posts and everybody mad at me again," he wrote. "So Facebook police mad at me." The Facebook account has since been deactivated or made private. Welsh's apology, however, did not sway Estherwood Police Chief Ernest Villejoin, who suspended his second in command. When I found out about it, I couldnt believe I had to call him. I called him at work and asked him what the hell is going on, Villejoin told KADN. Howd this come out, I dont know He done it. He said it and he realized what he had done after he done it, and he deleted it but it was too late. Welsh resigned Tuesday night. Villejoin said the statements made by Welsh do not reflect the Estherwood police. I know Wayne didnt do this on purpose. He didnt do this [to] offend anybody. I apologize that it offended, believe me, he said. Its unclear how long Welsh was part of the police department. An upstate judge who did a stint behind bars for DWI, and whose lawyer told the court at her sentencing "She will violate probation the moment you put her on probation," is accused of violating her probation just hours after she was released. Leticia Astacio, 35, was released from jail on July 13 after serving a 60-day sentence for driving under the influence of alcohol, USA Today reported. Astactio was arrested in February 2016 and sentenced on July 6 -- though she had already served most of her jail time. She was ordered to serve three years of probation and required to wear an ankle monitoring bracelet for six months. MACHETE-WIELDING MAN SLASHES 2 WOMEN, LEADS COPS ON HIGH-SPEED CHASE But apparently Astacio -- much as her lawyer predicted -- couldn't make it through one day. The judge's ankle bracelet registered her blood alcohol content as 0.127 percent on July 14, a report filed by her probation officer stated. She initially also failed to plug in the base unit for an ankle monitor, according to USA Today. The report said Astacio claimed her Boscia foot cream contained alcohol and triggered a high alcohol reading, though her probation terms also state she cannot use products containing alcohol. Astacio's lawyer also denied to WHEC that her client violated her probation. Astacio is expected to appear in court Thursday. At her July 6 sentencing, Astacio's lawyer told the judge her client "is not willing to do probation. GRAND JURY: DRIVER WAS TEXTING WHEN SHE KILLED 2 TEEN GIRLS "She will violate probation the moment you put her on probation," the lawyer said, to which the judge replied: "Then we will come back [to court]." A petition to have Astacio removed as a Rochester County judge has also been circulating, urging officials to remove her because is "grossly unfit" for the job. Kushner Cos., the New York property development business owned by the family of White House senior adviser Jared Kushner, has been subpoenaed by New York federal prosecutors regarding its use of an investment-for-immigration program, according to people familiar with the matter. The subpoena concerns at least one Jersey City, N.J., development financed in part by a federal visa program known as EB-5: twin, 66-floor commercial-and-residential towers called One Journal Square, said a person familiar with the subpoena. A spokesman for the Brooklyn U.S. attorneys office, which issued the subpoena, declined to comment. The Kushner Cos. general counsel, Emily Wolf, said in a statement that Kushner Companies utilized the program, fully complied with its rules and regulations and did nothing improper. We are cooperating with legal requests for information. Kushner Companies utilized the program, fully complied with its rules and regulations and did nothing improper. We are cooperating with legal requests for information. Emily Wolf, general counsel, Kushner Cos. The subpoena, received by the company in May, was a document request that included a demand for emails, according to a person familiar with it. It isnt clear what potential violations are being probed by the U.S. attorney. In early May, the company drew attention for a marketing campaign in Beijing and Shanghai that solicited Chinese investors for One Journal Square, saying that up to 300 individuals who put $500,000 each into the project could be eligible for green cards under the EB-5 program, according to marketing materials reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. The EB-5 program, which offers green cards to aspiring immigrants who invest at least $500,000 in certain U.S. businesses that have been determined to create at least 10 jobs per investor, has been at the center of debate in Washington. Critics say the program is being used to boost wealthier areas of the country instead of aiding poorer ones as intended. A green card permits a foreign national to live and work in the U.S. indefinitely. The majority of EB-5 visas go to wealthy Chinese individuals. Kushner Cos. used the EB-5 program for another Jersey City property known as Trump Bay Street. It is unclear whether the scope of the subpoena concerned that project as well. The marketing push in China, held for potential investors at hotels, was led by Mr. Kushners sister Nicole Meyer, a principal at Kushner Cos., and included a video clip and photo of President Donald Trump, the Journal reported in May. Ms. Meyer also mentioned Mr. Kushner during her pitch, according to the New York Times. After public criticism, the company said that Ms. Meyer wanted to make clear that her brother had stepped away from the company in January and has nothing to do with this project. It added: Kushner Companies apologizes if that mention of her brother was in any way interpreted as an attempt to lure investors. That was not Ms. Meyers intention. The company subsequently canceled its additional appearances in China at presentations for the project. Mr. Kushner, who is married to Mr. Trumps daughter Ivanka, had been running the Kushner business before last years election. Mr. Kushner subsequently resigned from the business and sold his personal stake in some projects and assets to family members and others. Mr. Kushner, however, retains a stake in Trump Bay Street, according to his latest personal financial disclosure form, filed in July, which lists assets in that property worth between $1 million and $5 million. He also disclosed receiving between $15,000 and $50,000 in rent or royalties from that property. For One Journal Square, Mr. Kushner reported receiving between $1 million and $5 million in capital gains. Mr. Kushners personal attorney said in a statement Wednesday that he had recused himself from matters concerning the EB-5 programs. The EB-5 program is particularly popular with high-end developers in New York, who recruit heavily in China. Sen. Chuck Grassley (R., Iowa), who heads the Senate Judiciary Committee, asked the Department of Homeland Security and the Securities and Exchange Commission in May to investigate Qiaowai Group and the U.S. Immigration Fund, companies involved in marketing the Kushner One Journal Square project. In a letter dated May 24, Mr. Grassley said he was concerned about the companies allegedly telling investors they could guarantee both visas and that the investments would be successful, and worried about potential violations of federal law and securities regulations. A representative for Qiaowai Group couldnt be reached for comment. spokesman for the U.S. immigration fund declined to comment. The U.S. government limits EB-5 visas to 10,000 each year. Lawmakers and others have raised questions about whether the visas are appropriately obtained in some instances, and the SEC and Justice Department have brought several cases in recent years alleging fraud by those who raised funds through the program. Click for more from The Wall Street Journal. The woman accused of killing two teens and severely injuring another because she was distracted by text messages, was indicted Wednesday in Ohio. A Summit County grand jury indicted Natasha Boggs, 24, on 11 counts, including four felonies: two counts of involuntary manslaughter, two counts of aggravated vehicular homicide, one count of tampering with evidence and one count of vehicular assault. The investigation revealed she was texting while driving. Ill leave it at that, Summit County Sheriffs Inspector Bill Holland told CantonRep.com. Of the tampering with evidence charge, Holland said, It was found there were things done on her cellphone after the accident. Boggs is also charged with two counts of vehicular homicide, one count of negligent assault, one count of marked lanes violation and one count of texting while driving. In May, Boggs drove over the marked lane on the side of the road, striking and killing two 14-year-old girls, Taylor Galloway and Amber Thoma, and severely injuring a 15-year-old boy, officials said. NO CHARGE IN INMATE'S DEATH; FAMILY SAYS GUARDS BEAT HIM UP Boggs appeared in court last month and asked for her bond to be lowered, saying she has a 6-year-old child, lives with family, has a full time job and suffers from a heart condition. The judge continued her $150,000 bond and said there is an infirmary in jail that could treat her. Boggs is scheduled to be arraigned on Aug. 9. Click for more from Fox 8. A missing Israeli womans body was found by police last week after her Palestinian boyfriend confessed to brutally murdering her -- as part of a bizarre plot to free Palestinian prisoners. Muhammad Harouf told police he strangled his pregnant girlfriend, 29-year-old Michal Halimi, and bashed her head with rocks in an effort to release the prisoners, The Jerusalem Post reported. Police launched an investigation to find Halimi after she was reported missing in May. ISRAEL POLICE SAY PALESTINIAN STABS, SEVERELY WOUNDS ISRAELI Halimi, who was married to another man in Israel, had left her home in the West Bank settlement of Adam to move in with her boyfriend, of Nablus, a city 30 miles north of Jerusalem. Police said Halimi and Harouf apparently had planned to get engaged, the Post added. Haroufs initial account of events during interrogations led police to investigate the couples relationship further, including questioning a number of witnesses who knew the two. NETANYAHU STEPS IN TO STOP BRAWL OF ISRAELI, JORDANIAN PM The Palestinian eventually confessed to killing his girlfriend, and reportedly reconstructed the murder for police. Halimis body was found July 24. Newsweek reported she was eight months pregnant. According to his version, he met the deceased in the Holon area, choked her, threw stones at her head, covered her body, and left the scene in her car in order to release Palestinian prisoners, police said about Harouf's actions. At his court hearing, Harouf reportedly kicked a guard and shouted, Ill kill all the Jews, according to Ynetnews.com. ARCHAEOLOGISTS UNEARTH 2,700-YEAR OLD RESERVOIR IN ISRAEL Halimis husband told Ynet that his wife was five months pregnant when she disappeared and that their relationship was very good, and we were waiting for the child. This is entirely a nationalistic issue and not a romance. The Post reported Harouf was arraigned on first-degree murder charges. Australia's prime minister says there is no longer any threat to Australia's aviation industry from an alleged plot to bring down an airplane. Officials say they will modify some heightened security measures that have led to long delays at airports this week. Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull says the country's intelligence agency is restoring the aviation threat level to what it was before four men were arrested in Sydney on Saturday in connection with what authorities dubbed a credible threat to bring down a plane. Security was increased at all major Australian international and domestic terminals following the arrests, leading to massive lines and delays for travelers. Turnbull said Thursday while enhanced security measures will continue, they will be modified to reduce delays. Flash floods triggered by heavy rains have killed seven people and left 27 others missing in northern Vietnam. Disaster official Luong Tuan Anh said Thursday two people died and 13 are missing in the worst hit province of Yen Bai. Some 900 government forces have been mobilized to search for the missing. The other casualties were reported in the neighboring provinces of Son La and Lai Chau. A government delegation led by Deputy Prime Minister Trinh Dinh Dung is in the area to direct relief efforts. Vietnam is prone to floods and storms, which kill hundreds of people each year. France, Britain and Japan are hoping for a speedy vote on a U.N. resolution that would impose new sanctions against North Korea following its tests of an intercontinental ballistic missile. But Russia says the text still needs to be discussed and there's no agreement yet. The United States gave China, North Korea's neighbor and ally, a proposed resolution several weeks ago and ambassadors from both countries said on July 25 they were making progress. Several diplomats said the two countries are close to agreement. France's U.N. Ambassador Francois Delattre said Thursday his government would like to see a resolution adopted "in the very coming days." Britain's U.N. Ambassador Matthew Rycroft said he hopes it will be "very soon." And Japan's U.N. Ambassador Koro Bessho said "days rather than weeks." Indonesia has deported more than 140 Chinese and Taiwanese suspects to China, where they are wanted for impersonating police and blackmailing businessmen and politicians in a scam said to have earned several hundred million dollars. Immigration office spokesman Agung Sampurno said the 121 Chinese and 22 Taiwanese deported Thursday would face charges in China. He said they were handed over to Chinese officials and flown to China on two aircraft. Indonesian police caught the mostly male suspects in a weekend raid of houses in Jakarta, Surabaya and Bali. Two suffered gunshot wounds to their legs while attempting to escape. National police spokesman Rikwanto has said the scammers operated from Indonesia to avoid being tracked down at home and earned $450 million. next Image 1 of 2 prev Image 2 of 2 Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's Cabinet has resigned ahead of a reshuffling of the leadership meant to shore up the ruling Liberal Democratic Party's ailing approval ratings. Abe was due to announce a new Cabinet lineup later Thursday. Abe's popularity has suffered from a spate of scandals over alleged cronyism and other abuses. Last week, Abe's protege, Tomomi Inada, stepped down as defense minister after the disclosure that the ministry hid information about risks faced by Japanese peacekeeping troops in South Sudan. The widely expected Cabinet shakeup was not expected to have a major impact on Japan's foreign policy or economy. Local media report that the new Cabinet will likely include many Cabinet veterans as public reassurance. Japans Prime Minister Shinzo Abe reshuffled his Cabinet on Thursday, adding party veterans in a bid to restore his battered popularity. Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga, who retained his post, announced the new lineup. Abes approval ratings have suffered from scandals over alleged cronyism and other abuses and objections to the ruling Liberal Democratic Partys tendency to force unpopular legislation through parliament. The shakeup reflects Abes recognition that despite the Liberal Democrats overwhelming majority in parliament, his own once seemingly invincible position may be imperiled. But plans for the reshuffle were disclosed weeks in advance, and it was not expected to have a major impact on the foreign policy or economy of Americas biggest ally in Asia. The newly named ministers include many Cabinet veterans, including Itsunori Onodera, a former defense minister who again was named to that post. Last week, Abe protege Tomomi Inada stepped down as defense minister after the disclosure that the ministry hid information about risks faced by Japanese peacekeeping troops in South Sudan. Abe also re-appointed Taro Aso as finance minister and deputy prime minister, Reuters reported. Aso has held both positions since Abe came to power in late 2012. Abe also re-appointed Hiroshige Seko as trade minister, and Taro Kono as foreign minister, the Reuters report said. Japans stock market initially shrugged off the changes, most of which were initially disclosed Wednesday. This story includes reporting from the Associated Press. An official says a policeman has been killed after suspected Islamic extremists attacked a police station in the northern Kenyan county of Mandera. North Eastern regional coordinator Mohamud Saleh said Thursday al-Shabab are suspected in the attack on Lafey police station. Two vehicles were burnt in the early morning attack. The incident comes a day after three people died in a suspected al-Shabab attack in southern Kenya and days before Tuesday's national elections. Al-Shabab has threatened to disrupt the elections. Al-Shabab in recent weeks has stepped up deadly attacks in Kenya's border counties of Lamu and Mandera. The group has carried out more than 100 attacks inside Kenya, calling it retribution for the East African nation's deployment of troops to Somalia in 2011 to fight the extremists. The lawyer for one of Venezuelas most prominent opposition leaders, who was dragged in his pajamas from his home on Tuesday in a police raid, says that the Maduro administration has refused to tell him where his client is or allow him to speak with him. Antonio Ledezma, the former mayor of a Caracas district, was first arrested in 2015 when President Nicolas Maduro accused him of scheming with the knowledge of the United States -- to overthrow his government. He later was placed under house arrest pending his trial. Omar Estacio, Ledezmas attorney, told Fox News in an interview from Caracas that the former mayor has been cut off from his family and his lawyers. His family and lawyer say the governments arrest and detention of Ledezma with no information about his whereabouts amounts to nothing less than a kidnapping. We have not been able to speak with him, Estacio said. Were not even really sure about where he is. This is a coerced disappearance. Ledezma is legendary in Venezuela for his vocal and persistent condemnation of the Maduro administration, calling it oppressive and corrupt. The arrest of Ledezma, and another opposition leader and former mayor, Leopoldo Lopez Jr., came shortly after an election on Sunday to choose members of a constituent assembly that will implement Maduros controversial mandate to rewrite the Constitution. Estacio said authorities were conjuring up fabrications to justify the arrest of his client in 2015 and again earlier this week. He said they had characterized Ledezma as a flight risk, and accused him of violating terms for his arrest that called for him not to make public comments about the government. In no way was it a part of the process for his house arrest an agreement that he not exercise his constitutional right to make public statements, Estacio said. Ledezma, nonetheless, was less vocal -- for a while , at least, during his house arrest -- in his denunciations than he typically had been, Estacio said. He noted that it was due to personal reasons, the advice of his lawyers that it might be more prudent. After the election, which occurred under widespread doubt among many Venezuelans and experts abroad about its legitimacy, many accused the Maduro government of manipulating the results and turnout estimates. The Constitution and new assembly basically dissolve the opportunity for political opponents to hold office and punishes disloyalty. Both Lopez and Ledezma publicly denounced the election and what they said was the continuing deterioration of democracy in Venezuela. Sensing he would be detained and returned to jail, Lopez pre-recorded a video in anticipation of being arrested and urged Venezuelans to keep fighting for their country. Ledezma also recorded a video, saying the country was in the grip of a tyranny, and taking his fellow Maduro opponents to task for not mounting a more vigorous fight. In the video, which was posted online Monday, Ledezma denounced the election as fraud, plain and simple." "We know that our public institutions have become instruments of a totalitarian regime, of a tyranny, which decided to continue damaging and destroying our rights," Ledezma said. With national pride flying as high as one of its recent intercontinental ballistic missile tests, North Korea threatened the United States -- again -- on Thursday, warning with typical hyperbolic abandon that the rogue regime would soon send "unexpected 'gift packages," claiming America is "on the knife's edge of life and death" and slamming the Trump administration. Rodong Sinmun, the newspaper of North Korea's ruling party, issued the threat in a column titled "Heed the Warning of Juche Korea" in which the authors asserted the Trump administration is being forced to "wave a white flag" amid tensions with Pyongyang. NORTH KOREA ICBM TEST LONGEST IN HISTORY OF REGIME, PENTAGON SAYS "Every minute and every second, the new reality that U.S. mainland is on the knife's edge of life and death is forcing U.S. administration to wave a white flag and fundamentally change her North Korea policy," the piece stated. "It is not the denuclearization of N. Korea, but the security of U.S. mainland which should be the top priority of Trump administration," it added. Consistent with the other threats the country has issued before, North Korea cautioned that another so-called "gift package" would be heading its way to the "American bastards." "If U.S. still refuses to accept such a realistic demand and doggedly pursue hostile policy against North Korea in order to save face, she will receive unexpected 'gift packages' which we will continue to send," according to the column. WOULD JAPANESE NUKES STOP NORTH KOREAN AGGRESSION? TOKYO TABOO WEAKENS AMID NK TESTING Experts say the "gift packages" North Korean leader Kim Jong Un promises are more planned missile tests, which are banned by the United Nations. Kim previously urged scientists to continue to "frequently send big and small 'gift packages' to the Yankees as ever so that they would not feel weary." North Korea's latest threat comes as U.S. Pacific Air Forces commander Gen. Terrence J. OShaughnessy said the U.S. and its allies are prepared to use "rapid, lethal and overwhelming force," if necessary, against the regime. "North Korea remains the most urgent threat to regional stability," O'Shaughnessy said. US, ALLIES PREPARED TO USE 'OVERWHELMING FORCE' IN NORTH KOREA, GENERAL SAYS North Korea's latest ICBM test was the longest such test in the history of Pyongyang, flying five minutes longer than its previous launch. The missile flew 2,300 miles into space, about 600 miles higher than the July 4 ICBM. Experts believe it could reach a substantial portion of the U.S. mainland. Earlier this week, the U.S. military also conducted a "successful" test of its THAAD anti-ballistic missile system. The medium-range target ballistic missile was launched over the Pacific Ocean and the THAAD weapon system tracked and intercepted it in Kodiak. U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haleys warning statement earlier this week on North Korea has added to already significant pressure on China and Russia to support a new draft resolution on Pyongyang. The new U.S.-sponsored resolution reportedly would punish North Korea by tightening existing sanctions and possibly adding new ones. Haley upped the ante on Sunday when she wrote in a statement, the time for talk is over, as she called on China to take a stand. At the same time, a Security Council diplomat said an agreement between the U.S. and China on a draft resolution will play out over the next few days. Earlier in the week, Chinese Ambassador Liu Jieyi responded by putting the onus on the U.S. and North Korea to reduce tensions. No matter how capable China is, Chinas efforts will not yield practical results as it depends on the two primary parties, they hold the primary responsibility to keep things moving, he said. While the proposed U.S. sponsored resolution had been stalled since Pyongyangs launch of its first ICBM on July 4, some analysts believe last weeks second ICBM launch might have pushed the sides closer together on agreeing a text. The last two launches have put us at a critical juncture and the credibility of the Security Council is clearly at stake, Frances Ambassador to the UN, Francois Delattre, told reporters. Great Britains Ambassador to the world body, Matthew Rycroft, said he hoped that new sanctions would come soon, given the threat North Korea embodies. Its a huge threat to international peace and security that DPRK now appears to have the capability to launch an intercontinental ballistic missile that could in theory hit the UK, could hit most Europe, could hit most of the United States, Rycroft said. The new resolution is likely to tighten already existing sanctions and introduce new ones to a sector that has not previously been under sanctions. Russia has been criticized for slowing down the progress of the resolution by refusing to accept the two launches were ICBMs, even as the North Koreans claimed both were. According to objective data that we possess it was not an ICBM, said Vassily Nebenzia the new Russian ambassador to the United Nations. He told reporters that instead, it was an inter-range ballistic missile. The Security Council diplomat said this was yet another example of Russias so-called analysis fitting their policy. Hugh Dugan, a former American diplomat who served under 15 U.S. ambassadors to the UN, said the way Russia will vote on this will send a signal on its future intentions. Russias decision to join the effort or spoil forward motion will reveal much about Moscows longer term view, he said. Haleys strong statement over the weekend brought needed urgency to her repeated calls for action. She knows that there is value in UN collaboration instead of each country gambling on its own hunches against North Koreas bids and flinches, said Dugan, a visiting fellow at Seton Hall University School of Diplomacy and International Relations. Fox News Kayla Haley contributed to this report. The brutal Yemeni war between the Houthi rebels and Saudi-led coalition is about to enter its fourth year and Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), which is based in the cholera-ridden country, is regaining strength as increasing U.S. involvement draws international criticism. Nevertheless, Yemens U.S. ambassador insisted the government, while not wanting U.S. boots on the ground, still needs American help. We need the U.S. government to continue to lend its political and logistical support to the legitimate government and the Arab coalition, Ahmed Awad bin Mubarak told Fox News this week in an exclusive interview. This will, in turn, help reinstating the government institutions, which will curb AQAP operations and lead to its demise." The conflict, according to the U.N., has claimed the lives of more than 10,000 people, displaced millions and gutted the infrastructure of the country, already considered the poorest in the Middle East before the war began. Over the past few months, Yemen has been devastated not only by bombs and bullets, but has experienced a severe return of the once almost extinct and under normal circumstances highly treatable cholera. American involvement in the fight is increasing. Although the U.S. was forced to shutter its embassy in Yemen in 2015 and pull out special operations forces pursuing AQAP operatives as the conflict spiraled, the American military is increasingly embroiled in the embattled nation. U.S. troops have returned in small numbers, and the Trump administration has vastly accelerated the number of operations in the region in recent months. Americas engagement inside Yemen and its backing of the Saudi-led coalition, which supports Mubarak and the rest of the internationally-recognized government, is steeped in controversy. Much of the international media and human rights bodies have accused the U.S. of propping up a bloody Saudi-initiated war, a criticism Mubarak sharply denies. Some of the criticism may reflect a misunderstanding of the history and nature of the conflict. While many have framed the war as a Sunni-Shia sectarian conflict, Mubarak insists the two groups of Muslims, Shia and Sunni, have co-existed in Yemen for a very long time. ISIS, SQUEEZED OUT OF IRAQ AND SYRIA, NOW 'REGROUPING' IN LIBYA, ANALYSTS SAY AL QAEDA IN AFGHANISTAN: HOW TERROR GROUP SURVIVES, THRIVES YEMENI REBELS SAY TARGETED UAE SHIP OF SAUDI-LED COALITION Both have prayed at the same mosques, intermarried. It was not until the Houthis war that such rivalry was instigated, he added. The government does not want to annihilate the Houthis from the face of the Earth. We just want them to become a political party like everyone else, to realize political gains can only be attained by returning to the negotiating table not by force. The Yemeni civil war was sparked in September 2014 when a group of Houthi rebels and fighters loyal to former president Abdullah Saleh predominantly Shia Muslims from the north took control of the capital, Sanaa, and have since held it. Four months later, the militias deposed the reigning government, led by President Abed Mansour Hadi, who has since been forced to establish a lateral government in the southern city of Aden. Mubarak himself was kidnapped by a Houthi militia in Yemen in early 2015, while serving as President Hadis office director, and was released ten days later. This was done to put pressure on the president and to thwart the political process, he contended. My experience, at a personal level, was very difficult during my captivity. The fighting then intensified in March 2015 when neighboring Saudi Arabia launched a sea, air and land military campaign across its border, under the auspice that the Houthi threat on its border was Iran-backed. The Saudi-led coalition, backed by several Sunni Arab states, receives its weapons and logistical support from the U.S. and U.K. Mubarak said the Houthis misread the Obama administrations attempts to resolve the conflict through high-level meetings with their representatives as positive political gains. These meetings, instead of resolving the conflict, had the opposite effect and fed the Houthis illusions, he said. The U.S. continued support to the legitimate government would eliminate any false illusions the Houthis might have and would therefore facilitate a peace agreement. The conflict, he asserted, is fed by Iranian involvement. Iran uses the Houthis as a cheap means to expand their revolution and influence the Arab world, he said. If ambitions are not challenged and put at bay, Iran might succeed. Tehran officials continue to deny accusations of directly aiding the Houthis, but officials have voiced their desire to bring an end to the conflict. Last month, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif called the current fighting in Yemen the "worst humanitarian nightmare you can think of" and said he hoped it would not escalate into full-scale war between Iran and Saudi Arabia. "We certainly hope that if we don't agree with each other about the situation in Yemen or about the situation in Syria we can still work with each other in order to bring those situations to an end," he noted. Yemen's government, meanwhile, has expressed the hope that its advances against the Houthis opens a door for talks, Mubarak said. Government forces now control more than 80 percent of Yemen, with Houthis constantly losing ground, he said. Though the path to peace remains long, the first step, he said, is at least getting the Houthis to commit to a ceasefire. New U.K. Treasury chief Jeremy Hunt has reversed most of an economic package announced by the government just weeks ago, including a planned cut in income taxes. Hunt said Monday he was scrapping almost all the tax cuts announced last month by the Conservative government of Prime Minister Liz Truss, and also signaled that public spending cuts are on the way. It was a bid to soothe turbulent financial markets spooked by fears of excessive government borrowing. The move raises questions about how long the beleaguered prime minister can stay in office, though Truss insisted she has no plans to quit. She vowed to lead the Conservatives into the next general election, but many in the party want her gone. The woman accused of misusing large sums of money intended to care for rescued horses as part of a former nonprofit, Peaceable Farm, will continue to face 13 counts of embezzlement when the case goes to bench trial Dec. 7. Orange County Circuit Court Judge Daniel Bouton denied a defense motion Thursday to consolidate the felony charges against 58-year-old Anne Williams into one under the single larceny doctrine argued by defense attorney Joseph King, of Alexandria. He contended that the 13 charges should be merged into a single count because the alleged embezzlement all involved the same intent, and, in various cases, the same vendor for purchasing horses for breeding and related equipment, including semen. It appears to be the same impulse, if this is embezzlement, said King, seated next to co-counsel Emily Beckman and Williams. He also argued that the time frames listed in the indictment overlap, resulting in duplicative charges. Orange County Commonwealths Attorney Diana OConnell disputed the characterization of overlapping time frames, saying state law allows prosecutors to lump embezzlement charges occurring over six months into one count, or to pursue each one individually. Its like writing checks from a churchs accountyou didnt intend to take it all, she said. We think we are on solid ground the way we charged it. In denying the defense motion, Bouton said there was insufficient evidence to support the single larceny doctrine. He left open the possibility for some consolidated charges as the case progresses to trial, and said the defense can reintroduce its motion in the future. It is the commonwealths case that Williams, as former president of Peaceable Farm, wrote checks from the nonprofit animal rescues account on at least 13 different occasionsfrom October 2012 to January 2015to purchase horses to breed and to sell their foals for a profit. She created the animal rescue in 2011 in Barnesville, Md., with her now ex-husband, Anthony Goland, who was treasurer, before moving the operation in 2012 to Somerset. According to court documents, it was a nonprofit operated exclusively for the prevention of cruelty to animals, as well as a sanctuary program. Bouton partially favored the defense in hearing another motion Thursday seeking to exclude from trial any privileged marital communications between Williams and Goland. Such testimony is permitted, said Beckman, only when the one spouse is a victim of the other spouses alleged crime. Mr. Goland is not the victim, the defense attorney said. It was not his personal property that was misused. This is the property of a charitable organization. Beckman said Williams and Goland were married during the period of alleged embezzlement and that any communication from that time intended as private would be improper evidence. The commonwealth argued that Goland was a victim of the alleged embezzlement because he was treasurer of Peaceable Farms. Bouton agreed with the defense in ruling that Goland was not the victim, that the organization was, and said that confidential communication between spouses is protected and excluded from evidence. However, the judge added, the facts are often intertwined with confidential and nonconfidential communication. The court will have to sort out which fall into the confidential category and which do not. OConnell said the commonwealth never intended to elicit confidential communication between Goland and Williams, that it would all be business-related. Finally, Bouton declined a final ruling on a defense motion to exclude prior bad acts at the embezzlement trial related to the separate case against Williams charging her with 27 counts of animal cruelty. Its not relevant to the embezzlement charges, she said Thursday. Beckman argued that the time period of the alleged embezzlement does not coincide with the animal cruelty charges, which were placed in October 2015 following the discovery by authorities of dozens of dead, dying and emaciated animals at Peaceable Farm. The commonwealth has always treated them as separate cases, Beckman said. Being a poor manager of a nonprofit is a different question than whether she was diverting funds for her own use. OConnell argued that the animal cruelty evidence was probative, relevant, material and an element of the embezzlement. These horses were being cared for by a rescue organizationmore than $1 million was given for these animals, she said. These were the animals from which the money was taken and diverted for other uses by the defendant. Bouton said the question of allowing evidence of the alleged animal cruelty at the embezzlement trial would be a critical issue. The court is not going permit the commonwealth to try the animal cruelty cases in the context of the embezzlement, the judge said. On the other hand, the commonwealth is not required to present evidence in a vacuum or sanitize it to exclude all prejudicial evidence. Bouton said he would allow evidence about the ways the embezzled money was supposed to be used related to the care of animals at Peaceable Farm. That would not include pictures or veterinary reports, he added, saying that would perhaps be going too far. The judge said he would reserve judgment on the issue as the case progresses. In addition to a new trial date, a motions hearing date was tentatively scheduled for Nov. 9. The animal cruelty case is set for trial Oct. 31 in Orange County General District Court. Lorane James thought the nearby home at 3600 Mine Road in Spotsylvania County was vacant. Various people had lived there over the last several decades, she said, including a family with chickens and goats and a kindhearted grandmother. But lately, she had not seen any activity in the modest ranch house with a deteriorating driveway and weeds sprouting from the lawn. It was strange, said James, 85, whose home is about 500 feet away, separated by only a couple of fenced, well-manicured yards in Watford Village at Lees Hill. Then, on Wednesday night, her niece delivered some shocking news while dropping off groceries for James and her husband. A man had been arrested at the seemingly empty house on charges that he had held a woman and their two children, ages 11 and 8, captive there for at least two years. My shoulders down to my hands just had chill bumps, recalled James, who moved into her home on Mine Road in 1979. I didnt know how to believe it. She said she wonders about the childrens care and whether they had enough to eat. Spotsylvania deputies arrested Kariem Ali Muhammad Moore, 43, Saturday on three felony counts of abduction and felony assault and battery during a welfare check at the home. The owner of the home and Moores apparent landlord politely declined to comment on the case in an email. Because this is an active investigation and because I want to exercise an abundance of caution to not impede in any way the investigation I am not going to comment at this time, wrote the owner, who purchased the 52-year-old, single-story home for $160,000 in 2013. On Thursday morning, two cars sat on the 4-acre propertyan SUV with Virginia plates and a dirty Mercury Mystique with Pennsylvania plates and an expired inspection sticker. The Mercurys tires were partially covered by sticks and dead leaves. An empty plastic cigarillos wrapper lay nearby. The homes blinds were drawn and sheets covered the small, rectangular windows on the front door. A woman whose Watford Village yard abuts the property declined to comment. Dave Larrabee, executive director of operations for The Lamb Center, which provides services for the homeless in Fairfax County, said Moore dropped by the facility with his wife and children over several months in 2012 and 2013. He said the family lived in a car at the time, though he thinks a homeless shelter eventually took them in. Larrabee said Moore had been incarcerated in the past and would sometimes shout in frustration over his situation. But Larrabee said he was able to calm him down. Moore would sometimes discuss his Christian faith and seemed to care about his family, Larrabee said. Still, he added: We never know the full story of anyone. We just walk the journey with them and try to get to know their names and their story and provide physical and spiritual services. Joyce Samuels, 74, who has lived on Mine Roadnear where Moore was arrestedfor 24 years, said she thinks shes seen the suspect driving past her home on a scooter. She said she thought he was too big for such a small scooter, but that he raised no red flags. I didnt know anything was actually happening down on this road, she said. She later added: My neighbors look out for me, and I look out for them. James, who also was interviewed by multiple television reporters, said she noticed that the homes grass was getting tall. Otherwise, she said, everything seemed peaceful on the stretch of Mine Road with protected Civil War battlefield land on one side and homes on the other. And to think I let my door stay unlocked, James said. A preliminary hearing has been scheduled for Sept. 1 for a man accused of holding a woman and two children captive in Spotsylvania County for at least two years. Kariem Ali Muhammad Moore, 43, is charged with three felony counts of abduction and assault and battery. He is being held without bond in the Rappahannock Regional Jail. The investigation, which has already garnered widespread media attention, started Saturday when the Spotsylvania Sheriffs Office got a call from a person requesting that police check the welfare of a family at 3600 Mine Road. Sheriffs Lt. C.A. Carey said the caller did not say anything about anyone being in danger and said the call was similar to others police get on a regular basis. But when deputies arrived, they found Moore on the front lawn and he resisted their requests to go inside to check on those inside. While deputies were talking to Moore, authorities said, a 32-year-old woman and her two children, ages 8 and 11, ran out a side door toward deputies. They later told investigators that Moore had not allowed them out of the house for at least two years. Moore, who the children identified as their father, was arrested at the residence. The woman and children were taken for medical attention. Carey said the woman was in serious condition with issues that had been neglected for some time. Her whereabouts were not clear Thursday evening. The children were turned over to out-of-state relatives who came to pick them up after Saturdays incident, Carey said. Detective Kelly Mills is heading the ongoing investigation, and Carey said more charges are anticipated. Investigators are still trying to determine how long Moore, the woman and children had lived in the rental home. Court records show that both Moore and the woman previously lived in the Philadelphia area, where Moore had a relatively minor criminal record that includes convictions for giving false identification to police and possessing marijuana. Moore has no previous criminal history in Spotsylvania, but Carey said the investigation shows he was in the county as far back as 2014. The children were never enrolled in Spotsylvania schools. Carey said authorities would have no way of knowing the children had been brought into the county unless their parents or someone else reported their presence. Investigators are still looking into whether the woman and children were physically restrained during the alleged ordeal and how the family was making ends meet. Carey said all police know right now is that neither adult was employed and their bills are paid. The preliminary hearing will be held in Spotsylvania Juvenile and Domestic Relations Court, though such hearings are often delayed before actually taking place. In case you havent noticed itor want to hide your head in the sand and ignore itour federal government is in a real mess. We have a White House that is in chaos and a Congress so divided it has become all but dysfunctional. Our relationship with Russia is at an all-time & very dangerous low. You can thank Congress, the same people that can't even give us HCare! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 3, 2017 We are in effect at war in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria and military action against North Korea and Venezuela is on the table. Relations with Russia are so poor that we seem a stones throw away from re-entering the Cold War we thought we left behind almost three decades ago. Folks, this is serious stuff that the American people should not ignore. We cannot go on like this forever. Somewhere along the line, the rubber band may snap. Some are not ignoring it. Last week I was approached by a man who, out of the clear blue, began ranting and raving about his belief that Washington is corrupt to the core. This guy was furious. This guy was also a Republican and is frustrated because things were supposed to change when the GOP both occupied the White House and held a majority in Congress. Thats the case now and still nothing is getting done. Five years ago, when the tea party began to gain strength, I wrote several columns stating that the Republicans had split into two factions and was no longer one party. Some GOP members laughed. No one is laughing now, because the GOP majority seems to split on almost every issue that comes before Congress, the one exception being sanctions against Russia. And the Republicans can no longer blame the Democrats for congressional inaction, because the GOP holds the majority of seats. But as a citizen, I can blame the Democrats just as I blame the Republicans. Arizona Sen. John McCain hit the nail on the head in his recent speech. Nobody seems to care about the country. All they care about is their own party. Compromise appears to be an antiquated word in the halls of Congress these days. Instead, never give an inch seems to be the motto of modern politics. Unfortunately, that is not true only between parties but within parties, especially the GOP. My way is the right way, the only way! Some members of Congress call it principle, but it seems to be turning into pure hardheadedness. This country was built on compromise because our forefathers understood that sometimes you have to give a little for the sake of the nation as a whole. The only thing that is working in this country right now is the economy, and God help us if it turns sour, because the leadership in Washington is so weak and divided that the next recession might take decades to get turned around. I dont know where were headed, but I am more worried about our future today than ever before. An administration where officials last 11 days, a president who terms everything he doesnt agree with fake news, a Congress that cant agree on anything. Nothing is getting done. America has come to a standstill. The swamp that was supposed to have been drained by now has become a festering cesspool of political inaction. We are in a real mess and nobody wants to admit it. Oh, things are gonna get better. Youll see. Yeah? When? Im still waiting. I am not a Democrat and I am not a Republican. I am an American and I like this country. And when I see it in trouble, it is my duty to speak up, not sit quietly and watch it go down the toilet. Thats why the Constitution grants us free speech. We are a nation divided not only by politics but also by a plethora of social issues that some expected Donald Trump and a Republican Congress to fix overnight. It hasnt happened, it is not going to happen and we might as well admit it. Things have not gotten better; they have gotten worse. And if we are not careful, things could get out of hand because the frustration is building all over this country. But then maybe if we ignore them, the problems will go away. Maybe my concerns are just fake news. Or maybe the rubber band will snap. We shall see. RUMORS are swirling that U.S. Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy, the Republican-appointed judge whose swing vote has preserved detente between the courts left and right for nearly a generation, may announce his retirement in the next year. The mere idea that Kennedys seat could get filled by President Donald Trump and the conservative Republican Senate has sent many on the left into a tailspin of anxiety and despair. In the 29 years Kennedy has served on the court, he has authored opinions or cast tie-breaking votes in major, divisive cases, including decisions that preserved a constitutional right to abortion, recognized social and sexual liberties for gays and lesbians, granted habeas corpus protections to Guantanamo Bay prisoners, confirmed a Second Amendment right to own a handgun in the home, and applied the First Amendment to corporations engaged in political speech. To many liberals, Kennedys replacement with a strict originalist like Justice Neil Gorsuch would feel downright apocalyptic. Indeed, Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, told reporters in April that the battle to replace Kennedy will be Armageddon. Liberals arent the only ones who get anxious over Supreme Court appointments, of course. When it seemed Antonin Scalias seat would go to Merrick Garland, which would have created a more liberal majority on the court, the Republican-led Senate refused to give Garland any hearings or votes for an unprecedented 293 daysuntil Obama was no longer presidenta maneuver that led to bitter resentment and set a worrisome precedent for future vacancies. Meanwhile, some liberals are so worried about the health of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who is 84, that theyre sending her kale recipes. Things are clearly out of hand. This level of speculation, fear and dramatic suspense over when any single public official retires is a sign that the stakes of Supreme Court appointments are simply too high. To lower the stakesand attending dysfunctionof each court appointment, both parties would do well to consider a scheme put forward by two Northwestern University law professors. In a 2006 paper for the Harvard Law Review, Steven Calabresi and James Lindgren proposed that Supreme Court justices should serve 18-year terms, with a new judge appointed every two years. Each president would in effect get to nominate two justices for every term in office, and the Senate would agree to promptly consider them on a regular schedule. The sitting court would be composed of the nine most recent appointees. More senior judges would continue receiving full pay and would sit as judges on lower federal appellate courts or back on the Supreme Court to fill a vacancy or recusal. The plan has the advantage of potentially being achievable by statute, rather than requiring a constitutional amendment. Of course, a justice might unexpectedly die, retire, resign or be impeached. But for the most part, Supreme Court appointments would become more quotidian, like other executive or judicial nominations. The public, the press and Congress would know what to expect and when to expect it. With a new justice always around the corner and a built-in limit to the length of any one persons influence, the Senate could more easily accept an opposing presidents nomination, breaking the go-nowhere tit-for-tat cycle of congressional partisanship that stalled the appointment of Garland. Such a system would also eliminate the tyranny of the young, whereby presidents seek to appoint the youngest possible justices in a calculated effort to further their legacies for the greatest number of decades. New voices and ideas could more easily populate the court, and brilliant, innovative judges wouldnt be sidestepped for being too old. The frequency of appointments might allow presidents to experiment a little, perhaps by appointing a trial judge or a politician. It might also encourage minority parties and interest groups to limit their cries of impending doom. The Constitutions Article III has long been interpreted to grant judges life tenure. But the text actually has some leeway. It states that judges shall hold their offices during good behaviour and receive a compensation, which shall not be diminished, while in office. The rest of the Supreme Courts structure, and what it means to hold the office of a Supreme Court justice, is left to Congress. The benefits of life tenure are clear. By eliminating the ability of political actors to remove judges, the Constitution frees judges to make decisions based on reason and their honest understanding of law, rather than to protect their positions by pleasing a political patron. But life expectancy today is a full 30 years greater than it was in 1789. In the countrys first 200 years, the average Supreme Court justice served for 15 years; Kennedy is creeping up on 30. Gorsuch, fit and 49 years old, could serve for the next 35 years or more. Thats a very long time for an unelected official to exercise such vast public authority. Ben Feuer is chairman of the California Appellate Law Group, a law firm that practices in the U.S. Supreme Court. He wrote this for the Los Angeles Times. The bottom line: Tanning parlors actually give people UV radiation, which is harmful for their skin, Thompson said. Ultraviolet light, no matter if youre exposed indoors or out in the sun, damages your DNA in a way that can lead to the development of cancer. You dont have to burn to damage your skin. A tan, no matter how it is acquired, is a sign of damage. After UV damage, your skin protects itself by producing melanin the pigment responsible for brown and black skin tones. However, most people dont realize that the amount of protection conferred by melanin is tiny, said SCCA skin cancer physician Dr. Lee Cranmer. Even the darkest coloration of the skin with melanin only has an SPF [sun protection factor] equivalent to about 5, Cranmer said. So, in comparison, the small amount of melanin that a fair-complexioned person would get as a result of a so-called base tan isnt really going to provide significant protection, he said. The best solution, Cranmer said: Use sun-blocking clothing and sunscreen, and avoid the sun from late morning until late afternoon. And never visit a tanning salon. Myth 3: Its OK as long as Im not a frequent user of a tanning salon. So you want to go to a tanning salon "just this one time" to get that sun-kissed look for a special event? Skip it, researchers say. According to a systematic review of research by the International Agency for Research on Cancer, any use of a tanning bed before age 35 is associated with a 75 percent increase in risk for melanoma. The reviewers also identified an increased risk of squamous cell carcinoma, one of the most common types of skin cancer, from tanning bed use before one's mid-30s. The increase in risk from even limited use of tanning beds is so impressive and disturbing, Lee said. Each time is hugely damaging. Also, a growing body of evidence supports the idea that tanning has an addictive quality. Exposure to UV releases endorphins, the pleasure chemical of the human body that stimulates the brains reward center. But that rush can be dangerous. There are some people who are prone to addictive behavior who are prone to suntanning for the same reasons, Cranmer said. Other skin cancer myths In addition to tanning salon myths, Fred Hutch experts highlighted other skin cancer fallacies: Myth 4: I need to get out in the sun without sunscreen to get my vitamin D. Many Americans are deficient in vitamin D, and certain groups like older adults, obese people and people with dark skin are at higher risk of a deficiency. And its true that UV exposure without the protection of sunscreen causes your skin to produce vitamin D. Vitamin D is important for promoting strong, healthy bones and has even been linked to lower risks of certain types of cancer. But, Lee said, there are safer and more efficient ways of getting enough vitamin D: namely, taking vitamin D supplements and eating vitamin-fortified foods like some milk and cereal products. According to the definitive 2010 report on vitamin D from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine, there is no research to support the idea that you can safely get vitamin D from UV light without also increasing your risk of developing skin cancer. Myth 5: After a long, dark winter, its not so bad to enjoy a little bit of sun without sunscreen for once. Fred Hutch is based in Seattle, a city famous for its seasonal gloom. And Seattleites can vouch: There is no sight as glorious after a dark and rainy Northwest winter as a sunny blue sky. On the first warm days of the year, we crawl out of our winter hiding places, burst out of our GoreTex exoskeletons and throw our exposed flesh into the welcome rays. Theres nothing wrong with enjoying the sunshine, Lee said. But slap on that sunscreen first. Getting a sunburn, even infrequently, boosts your risk of melanoma. People dont realize that sporadic sun exposure can really cause a lot of damage, Lee said. The problem is people very naturally feel like they havent seen sun all year, or they go on vacation to Hawaii or the Southwest, and they feel like they dont really need sun protection. And they get fried. Myth 6: Im definitely applying my sunscreen correctly. Are you sure? Its pretty common that people dont apply it frequently enough, Lee said. I think its common that people just apply it early in the day, but it really should be applied every two hours if youre out in the sun. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends applying a thick layer of a broad spectrum sunscreen (that is, one that protects against both UVA and UVB light) of at least SPF 15 before going outside, even on cloudy or cool days. Sunscreen should be reapplied after two hours in the sun or after swimming, sweating or using a towel. Myth 7: Skin cancer is not that big of a deal. It is true that the most common types of skin cancers are not as deadly as many other malignancies. According to the American Cancer Society, 8.7 million people are diagnosed with the two most common types of skin cancer each year basal cell carcinoma and squamous cell carcinoma and very few will die from these cancers. The U.S. records about 2,000 deaths from these two cancer types every year, according to the society. In comparison, the biggest cancer killer in the U.S. lung cancer takes the lives of more than 150,000 Americans a year. 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. Visitors to the exhibition themed ASEAN - Peace and Development (Source: nhandan.com.vn) With the participation of representatives from the Embassies of ASEAN members in Vietnam, the event was an opportunity to review achievements of the block over the past 50 years and help cadres, Party members and ethnic people in the province to study more about specific cultural values of ethnic groups in ASEAN. It was also a motivation for the promotion of friendship cooperation, cultural and economic development between Vinh Phuc province and ASEAN countries, making positive contribution to building a peaceful and sustainable ASEAN community. Over the past years, Vinh Phuc province has always paid attention to promoting cooperation with partners from ASEAN, and exchanges with people in ASEAN countries. The province currently records 27 projects by ASEAN investors. In education and training, the province has assisted Laos in training hundreds of tertiary and post-tertiary students. In addition, Singapore and the Philippines have helped the province train hundreds of English teachers under the governments project on teaching and studying foreign languages in the national education system for the 2008-2020 period. Indonesian Ambassador to Vietnam Ibnu Hadi appreciated the responsibilities of and contributions made by Vietnam in promoting unification and stability for a powerful ASEAN. He emphasized that achievements made by Vietnam will be a stable foundation for a bright future of ASEAN and successful integration of Vietnam in the international community. After the opening ceremony, a music exchange between the ASEAN members and an exhibition themed ASEAN - Peace and Development were held./. There currently are 93 Fisher Houses in the United States and in Europe with plans for more. Party leader Nguyen Phu Trong shakes hands with Director of the General Department of Politics of the Lao Peoples Army Vilay Lakhamphong (Photo: VNA) The Party chief made the statement when receiving Director of the General Department of Politics of the Lao Peoples Army Vilay Lakhamphong in Hanoi on August 2nd. Trong hailed growing engagements between the two armies over times and outcomes of talks between their senior officials. Highlighting achievements secured in bilateral defence cooperation, a pillar in the Vietnam - Laos relations, he urged the two armies to expand their joint work to fulfil their political missions. For his part, Vilay Lakhamphong informed his host on Laos recent affairs, cooperation outcomes between the two defence Ministries and results of his talks with officials of the General Department of Politics of the Vietnam Peoples Army. He stated in any circumstances, the Lao Defence Ministry will always work closely with its Vietnamese equivalent body to carry out their cooperation plans and agreements sealed by high-ranking officials from both nations. The Lao Party, Government and army will do its best to cement the special friendship with Vietnam for benefits of both peoples and for peace, stability, cooperation and development in the region and in the world./. Movies playing in mid-valley theaters as of Friday. Complete and updated Movie Scene listings can be found online. NEW THE DARK TOWER (Horror-fantasy, PG-13, 95 minutes, playing at the Regal 7 in Albany and the Regal 4 in Corvallis) An imaginative boy is transported to a fantasy realm, where he gets caught up in an epic battle between a noble gunslinger named Roland Deschain (Idris Elba) and the villainous Man in Black (Matthew McConaughey). Roland's quest to defend a magical tower from the Man in Black leads him to follow the boy back to Earth. Adapted from the Stephen King novels. (Drama, PG, 94 minutes, playing at the Darkside in Corvallis) Terrence Malicks 1978 masterpiece stars Richard Gere and Brooke Adams in a drama about a hot-tempered farm laborer who convinces the woman he loves to marry their rich but dying boss so that they can have a claim to his fortune. The movie also stars Sam Shepard, who died earlier this week. DETROIT 4 stars (Historical drama, R, 143 minutes, playing at the Regal 7 in Albany, the Regal 4 in Corvallis and the AMC Corvallis 12). Arriving almost exactly 50 years since the Detroit riots of 1967, Kathryn Bigelow's "Detroit" is a searing, pulse-pounding, shocking and deeply effective dramatic interpretation of events in and around the Algiers Motel, where police tortured, abused and assaulted a dozen "suspects," murdering three of them. (Richard Roeper, Universal Press Syndicate) A GHOST STORY 3 stars (Fantasy drama, R, 93 minutes, playing at the Darkside in Corvallis) Killed in a car crash, a musician (Casey Affleck) is reborn as a mute, silent presence witnessing the grief of his wife (Rooney Mara) at their house, and much more. It's roughly 60 percent disturbingly beautiful and 40 percent achingly self-conscious. (Richard Roeper, Universal Press Syndicate) KIDNAP 2 stars (Action thriller, R, 81 minutes, playing at the AMC Corvallis 12) Halle Berry is onscreen almost every second as a mom giving minivan chase to the captors who just snatched her 6-year-old son. It's decent escapist action, but repeats itself to the point of becoming ridiculous. (Richard Roeper, Universal Press Syndicate) THE LION KING (Animated, 88 minutes, G, playing at the AMC Corvallis 12) Disneys 1994 animated masterpiece is re-released into theaters. Its about Simba, a lion cub, whos searching for his identity but faces a real enemy in his uncle Scar. Matthew Broderick, Jeremy Irons, Nathan Lane and others provide the voices. CONTINUING ATOMIC BLONDE 3 stars (Action thriller, R, 115 minutes, playing at the Regal 7 in Albany and the AMC Corvallis 12) On the strength of this ultra-violent and deliriously entertaining thriller and "Mad Max: Fury Road," Charlize Theron now is officially an A-list action star. The camerawork in one brutally funny fight sequence is cinematic jazz amazing to behold. (Richard Roeper, Universal Press Syndicate) THE EMOJI MOVIE (Animated comedy, PG, 90 minutes, playing at the Regal 7 in Albany and the AMC Corvallis 12). In a world set inside a smartphone, an emoji named Gene (voiced by T.J. Miller) is ashamed that he has multiple facial expressions while his colleagues only have one each. So he sets out on an adventure to be like everyone else. Other voices are provided by James Corden, Anna Faris, Jennifer Coolidge, Patrick Stewart, Sofia Vergara, and Maya Rudolph. NEITHER WOLF NOR DOG (Drama, no MPAA rating, 110 minutes, playing at the Darkside in Corvallis) A white author is summoned by a Lakota elder who wants him to write a book from his perspective. Eventually, the writer is sucked into a road trip into the heart of the contemporary Native American landscape. This independent flick is based on a novel by Portland author Kent Nerburn. DUNKIRK 4 stars (War drama, PG-13, 106 minutes, playing at the Regal 7 in Albany, the Regal 4 in Corvallis and the AMC Corvallis 12) Christopher Nolan's faithful and deeply respectful retelling of one of the most pivotal battles in World War II is a gripping, deeply involving and unforgettable film that ranks among the best war movies of the decade. (Richard Roeper, Universal Press Syndicate) GIRLS TRIP (Comedy, R, 122 minutes, playing at the Regal 4 in Corvallis) Four black girlfriends (Regina Hall, Tiffany Haddish, Jada Pinkett Smith and Queen Latifah) decide to get back together after five years apart, and set their sights on partying at the Essence Festival. Larenz Tate, Mike Colter and Kate Walsh co-star in director Malcolm D. Lees new flick. MAUDIE 3 stars (Biography, PG-13, 117 minutes, playing at the Darkside in Corvallis) Treated as an outcast, a fisherman's housekeeper (Sally Hawkins) in Nova Scotia becomes something of a celebrity for her paintings. This is one of the most beautiful, life-affirming, uplifting movies of the year, capable of moving us to tears of appreciation for getting to know the title subject. (Richard Roeper, Universal Press Syndicate) VALERIAN AND THE CITY OF A THOUSAND PLANETS (Sci-fi fantasy, PG-13, 137 minutes, playing at the Regal 7 and the AMC Corvallis 12) Based on a series of French comic books, the new film from director Luc Besson follows adventurers Valerian (Dane DeHaan) and Laureline (Cara Delevingne) as they try to stop villains from destroying Alpha, an intergalactic metropolis where thousands of alien species live in harmony. Clive Owen, Rihanna, Elizabeth Debicki and Ethan Hawke also star. THE BIG SICK 4 stars (Romantic comedy, R, 119 minutes, playing at the AMC Corvallis 12) In a fictionalized version of real events in his life, Kumail Nanjiani plays a comedian whose new girlfriend (Zoe Kazan) falls ill and goes into a medically induced coma. Funny and smart and wise and silly, it is without a doubt one of the best romantic comedies I have seen in a long time. (Richard Roeper, Universal Press Syndicate) WAR FOR THE PLANET OF THE APES 3 stars (Sci-fi action, PG-13, 133 minutes, playing at the Regal 7 in Albany, the Regal 4 in Corvallis and the AMC Corvallis 12) Vengeful after a human attack on their compound, Caesar (Andy Serkis, brilliant and heartbreaking) and his ape allies go on a mission to take out the officer responsible (Woody Harrelson). The result is a war movie more serious and much darker than most big-budget midsummer blockbusters. And a whole lot more captivating. (Richard Roeper, Universal Press Syndicate) SPIDER-MAN: HOMECOMING 3 stars (Action adventure, PG-13, 133 minutes, playing at the Regal 7 in Albany and the AMC Corvallis 12). The best thing about the latest Spider-Man (the terrific and well-cast Tom Holland) is that he's still more of a kid than a man. Even with a goodly amount of explosions and action, this scaled-down adventure plays less like an ultimate-stakes battle than a John Hughes teen-angst romance/comedy meshed with a superhero saga. (Richard Roeper, Universal Press Syndicate) BABY DRIVER 4 stars (Action, R, 113 minutes, playing at the AMC Corvallis 12) Edgar Wright's "Baby Driver," about a savant of a getaway driver (Ansel Elgort) working for a criminal mastermind (Kevin Spacey), crackles with originality and dark humor and teems with perfectly timed action sequences. If you see this movie and tell me you didn't have a great time, we're going to have to talk about your idea of a great time. (Richard Roeper, Universal Press Syndicate) DESPICABLE ME 3 1 stars (Animated, PG, 90 minutes, playing at the AMC Corvallis 12) Gru, the lovable villain from the first two Despicable movies, must cope not just with a long-long brother but a new baddie: Balthazar Bratt, a former child star. Steve Carell returns to voice Gru and Trey Parker of South Park voices Balthazar. Other voices include Russell Brand, Miranda Cosgrove, Kristen Wiig and Steve Coogan. There are Minions as well, but the overall film is less than the sum of its parts: Its wacky but dull. (Katie Walsh, Tribune News Service) WONDER WOMAN 3 stars (Fantasy/action-adventure, PG-13, 141 minutes, playing at the AMC Corvallis 12) Director Patty Jenkins' origin story is packed with heart and empathy, and we have the endearing lead performance of Gal Gadot to thank for that. It's a fully realized, three-dimensional characterization of a superhero that has never gotten her due until now. (Richard Roeper, Universal Press Syndicate) GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY VOL. 2 3 stars (Sci-fi action comedy, PG-13, 136 minutes, playing at the Pix in Albany) Writer-director James Gunns sequel to his surprise hit featuring a motley band of Marvel Comics backbenchers actually may be an improvement over the original; its a silly, soupy spectacle and it doesnt seem quite as pleased with itself as the first outing. Chris Pratt and Zoe Saldana lead a big cast, and newcomers include Kurt Russell and Sylvester Stallone. It packs a bright and shiny and sweet punch. (Jake Coyle, Associated Press) CARS 3 3 stars (Animated adventure, G, 100 minutes, playing at the Pix in Albany) Just when you thought this Disney-Pixar franchise was out of gas, along comes a lovely, clever and entertaining generational tale with tons of heart, a simple and effective storyline, wonderful candy-colored visuals and winning voice work from the talented cast of returning regulars and welcome newcomers. (Richard Roeper, Universal Press Syndicate) This log includes incidents in which there might have been a public disturbance or a risk to the public. Information comes from the Corvallis Police Department and the Benton County Sheriffs Office. It does not include all calls for service. The status of incidents might change after further investigation. Locations are approximate. People arrested or suspected in crimes are considered innocent until proven otherwise. Corvallis Police Department TUESDAY, AUGUST 1 CAR VS. PEDESTRIAN CRASH: 3:46 p.m., Northwest Ninth Street and Northwest Buchanan Avenue, Corvallis. Police cited a driver for failing to yield to a pedestrian. Officers determined the driver had turned left onto Northwest Ninth Street and struck a woman using the crosswalk. The woman declined to be taken to the hospital. ASSAULT: 4:28 p.m., 1000 block of Northwest Kings Boulevard, Corvallis. A man reported to police a man he did not know followed him to his work. The stranger tackled the man. The man told police his girlfriend tried to intervene and was hit in the face. The attacker fled the scene. Police were unable to locate the suspect. The man and woman were not injured. PUBLIC INDECENCY: 7:34 p.m., 600 block of Northwest Second Street, Corvallis. A woman reported a man wearing a towel on his lap had exposed his penis to her in a gravel area near the river. WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 1 PUBLIC INDECENCY: 2:10 a.m., 300 block of Southeast Goodnight Avenue, Corvallis. A woman reported seeing a man looking in her windows. Officers located Randy Wayne Broderick, 42, near the womans home. At the time, Broderick had his pants undone and his penis was partially exposed. Police arrested Broderick for indecent exposure and second-degree trespassing. Smoke from wildfires in British Columbia, as well as from a wildfire near Mount Jefferson, has moved into the Willamette Valley, according to the National Weather Service. The smoke intensified overnight and could stick around until Friday, said Meteorologist Matthew Cullen. But that is dependent on the behavior of the fires, he said. The smoke could stay in the valley longer if the fires worsen or new fires start. Inhaling the smoke is certainly not beneficial, Cullen said. If you have respiratory issues or are sensitive to smoke, stay indoors. According to Oregon Department of Environmental Quality ratings, the air quality index in Corvallis fluctuated Wednesday between moderate and good. The DEQ said Willamette Valley residents should avoid strenuous outdoor activity in smoky conditions. People with heart or lung problems, as well as young children, are especially vulnerable, the agency said. The smoke could keep temperatures a few degrees cooler, Cullen said. This is because the smoke is thick enough to block some sunlight from getting through. Temperatures still were expected to surpass 100 degrees Wednesday, he said. It will still be quite hot, Cullen said. The hot weather plus the smoke means itll be good to stay indoors in the air conditioning today and tomorrow. There's a 1972 sketch by the comedy troupe Monty Python called "Eclipse of the Sun." (You can track it down on YouTube or on the album "Monty Python's Previous Album.") In the sketch, radio announcers purport to give a play-by-play account of a solar eclipse. The excitement builds: "I can't see anyone stopping it now!" one of the announcer says. That's when the rain starts to fall. "The rain is beginning to come down now here," an announcer morosely notes. "Light's going, too," another announcer observes. "Yes, going really quite fast." "Mind you, it's getting quite murky up here now." We stumbled across this Python bit while we mused over the continuing preparations for the Aug. 21 total solar eclipse. We find it oddly satisfying that the one thing we know for sure about the Aug. 21 eclipse is that it will take place, beginning in the U.S. mainland at about 10:15 a.m. in Newport and working its way across the country until it hits the South Carolina coast about 90 minutes later. Everything else the number of people who will flock to Oregon to witness the event, for example, or what the weather will be like that day is open to speculation. We've reported estimates suggesting that 400,000 people could be headed to the mid-valley to view the eclipse. We've heard government officials working on contingency plans to deal with swarms of people and potential traffic gridlock that could start the weekend before the eclipse and stretch through Tuesday. Don't get us wrong: It's good to prepare for those possibilities, and it makes sense to build those preparations on the worst-case scenarios. But we are starting to see signs that the eclipse fever is starting to cool off just a bit in the mid-valley. Consider, for example, the experience of Philomath officials who put out the word that eclipse campers could rent camping spaces at the site of the annual Frolic; the response has been lukewarm. Now, it could be that everyone who is headed to the mid-valley for the eclipse already has a place to stay. It could also be that eclipse watchers are beginning to gravitate toward eastern Oregon, which has better odds of having clear skies on the morning of the eclipse. To that end, we also have stumbled across a website maintained by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration that looks at the last 10 years of weather data to determine the chances that skies will be clear at any of a number of locations along the path of totality. (The online version of this editorial includes a link.) According to the site, Newport has a "viewable percentage" of 44 percent, meaning theres a 56 percent chance that viewability will be affected by clouds. (The site warns that the percentage is an estimate of average conditions, not a guarantee for this year.) So worries about traffic along Highway 20 from Newport to Corvallis on Monday morning in the event of cloud cover on the coast might be warranted. The site does not offer numbers for either Albany or Corvallis, but it does report on Salem, which has a viewable percentage of 67 percent. We assume that the percentage would roughly be the same in Albany and Corvallis, so that means there's a 1 in 3 chance that cloud cover here could obstruct the view of the eclipse. So you couldn't blame a hardcore eclipse hunter for heading east of the Cascades, to locations with better chances. Here's another wild card: What happens if wildfires continue to belch smoke into the mid-valley, the way they are this week? No one knows. But one thing is certain: Regardless of cloud cover, regardless of smoke, regardless of traffic, it will get dark for about two minutes on the morning of Aug. 21. Other than that, prospects are quite murky indeed. (mm) American settlement in Plittersdorf : Set back for canal work on Steubenring Bonn-Plittersdorf Residents who live in the American settlement in Plittersdorf may think construction workers are tearing up the work they have already completed but this is not the case. Teilen Teilen Weiterleiten Weiterleiten Tweeten Tweeten Weiterleiten Weiterleiten Drucken It looked like the canal work was all finished on Steubenring and then the road was opened up again. A power shovel began digging out the foundation again, and this was once again carried away in a truck, observed a resident. He had heard that there was a danger the road may sink. Monika Fromgen, deputy spokesperson for the civil engineering bureau of the City of Bonn, said that the ground conditions were different than preliminary examinations indicated. She explained that ground or soil conditions are tested as part of the road construction work to make sure the quality is high enough to withstand a sufficient amount of pressure. Workers determined that the road did not have a high enough load-bearing capacity. Test samples were taken in coordination with the road surveyor to determine which measures were most suitable, said Fromgen. The result is that the gravel base has to be strengthened with ten centimeters more gravel and a textile grid has to be built in for stabilizing the subsoil. The test areas will be removed again. It is not the new foundation that is being dug up, explained Fromgen. As well, the old frost protection layer must also be removed. The work has been hampered by the heavy rain in the last weeks. The spokeswoman also said work on water drainage system was more intensive than initially planned. This week, the road base should be put down so that the street can be used again. The next phase of work on Steubenring will be completed in September. Again, they will be testing a portion of that road for load capacity. One resident in the neighborhood wrote to GA that residents had praise for the construction workers carrying out the road work. The writer felt that nearly all the residents found the construction crews to be a really great group. They kept a clean and tidy construction area, and were considerate of parked cars in the area, something the writer had personally not experienced before. It is not a bad thing for us, that the route known as the Goldene Strae or the Golden Road as we will get to know it- has escaped the attention of so many. It has been spared being overrun by hordes of tourists and as you will discover the bayonel3 at 3-08-2017 12:32 PM (5 years ago) (m) This Nigerian lady based in the United States of America is simply recognized as Ms Damn. She is very influential on Instagram where she boasts of over a million followers, even bigger than some of our celebrities down here. (Don Jazzy follows her too) She specializes in twerking and known for doing the #walktwerkclapaway as seen on her Instagram bio. She is very proud of her Nigeria heritage and she refers to herself as the Naija Princess which she includes on over 70% of the contents on her page. This Nigerian lady based in the United States of America is simply recognized as Ms Damn. She is very influential on Instagram where she boasts of over a million followers, even bigger than some of our celebrities down here. (Don Jazzy follows her too) She specializes in twerking and known for doing the #walktwerkclapaway as seen on her Instagram bio. She is very proud of her Nigeria heritage and she refers to herself as the Naija Princess which she includes on over 70% of the contents on her page. She is also known to be very friendly with Nigerian guys on social media. She has a page on Connect Pal where each member pays about $12 dollars per month just to watch her dance seductively and display her bosom and bum. According to reports, her page has thousands of subscribers making her a very rich young girl who merely sits back at home to smile to the bank without a regular job. The curvy young lady who has a passion for stripping is also into event promotions as she is invited to nightclubs and other social gatherings to serve as a centre of attraction with handsome rewards. Much personal details about her real names, education and family background remain fuzzy. She is also known to be very friendly with Nigerian guys on social media. She has a page on Connect Pal where each member pays about $12 dollars per month just to watch her dance seductively and display her bosom and bum.According to reports, her page has thousands of subscribers making her a very rich young girl who merely sits back at home to smile to the bank without a regular job.The curvy young lady who has a passion for stripping is also into event promotions as she is invited to nightclubs and other social gatherings to serve as a centre of attraction with handsome rewards. Much personal details about her real names, education and family background remain fuzzy. Post Reply I scour the world wide web to bring you interesting stories from around the globe. [email protected] Posted: at 3-08-2017 12:32 PM (5 years ago) | Hero The content you are looking for has either been removed or requires you to login to view Please login below or register for an account With Naijapals.com Overall, dont let the bhoot mislead you, nothing bhootiya about this story. Had the makers tried to push the envelope, the idea could have been outstanding for a bhootiya comedy. Deadly combination of cholera, hunger and conflict pushes Yemen to 'edge of a cliff' - senior UN official 1 August 2017 Describing the situation in Yemen as "very bleak," with "no end in sight," a senior United Nations official envoy today said the war-torn country, already reeling from malnutrition and dwindling health care, is plummeting into further distress amid a deadly cholera outbreak and looming famine. "Historically, Yemen has been one of the poorest Arab nations if not the poorest with [poverty] and corruption, poor governance and poor infrastructure. The war has simply made it much worse," said Auke Lootsma, UN Development Programme (UNDP) Country Director, briefing journalists in New York via teleconference from the capital, Sana'a. He compared the situation in the country to a bus "racing towards the edge of a cliff." Instead of hitting the brakes and turning around, Mr. Lootsma said, "the one controlling the direction of the bus keeps going and pushes the accelerator, all but certain to crash." He stressed that the Yemeni people are enduring incredible hardship, with 70 per cent of the population some 20 million people in need of humanitarian assistance. Additionally, some 400,000 cases of cholera recorded in the past few months have resulted in 1,900 deaths. Mr. Lootsma emphasized that due to the scope of the crisis combined with a lack of funding and access, humanitarians "are asked to cover gaps that are well beyond" their mandates and capacities. The country is on the brink of famine, with 60 per cent of the population not knowing where its next meal is coming from, according to the UN envoy. He made clear that "the current food security crisis is a man-made disaster not only resulting from decades of poverty and under-investment, but also as a war tactic through economic strangulation." Pointing out that Yemen imported 90 per cent of its food even before the crisis, he painted a picture of the difficulty in bringing food into the country now. "Although food may be physically available in the market, it is actually financially out of reach for many of the poor families at this point in time," explained Mr. Lootsma. The UNDP Country Director said that while cholera is not new to Yemen, "the collapse of the health, water and sanitation sector due to a lack of salaries and damaged infrastructure" exacerbated the situation. Time is running out to 'stop the bus from going off the cliff' He added that almost half of the health facilities are no longer functioning because they are partly or completely damaged, a situation made worse because "doctors and nurses are not coming to work because they have not been paid and looking for income elsewhere." With almost 1.2 million civil servants having not been paid since September 2016, many businesses have collapsed. The conflict continues unabated as remaining infrastructure continues to be shattered garbage is piling up and water treatment facilities are marginally functioning, creating ideal conditions for diseases and civilian casualties continue to mount, rendering Yemen as the world's largest cholera crisis, according to Mr. Lootsma. With its population set to double by 2050, pressing development challenges including changing climate, negative production and malnutrition will have a great impact on Yemen's future. Mr. Lootsma called on the international community to redouble their efforts, warning that time is running out to find the brakes to stop the bus before it goes off the cliff. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Report Links Kiir, Machar to Recent South Sudan Crimes By Ayen Bior, Waakhe Simon Wudu August 01, 2017 A new Human Rights Watch report accuses nine leaders in both of South Sudan's warring parties of committing serious rights violations and possibly war crimes during 2016 and 2017. It recommends placing sanctions on all nine men, including President Salva Kiir, former First Vice President Riek Machar, and former army chief of staff Paul Malong. Jehanne Henry of Human Rights Watch's Africa division, says that based on HRW's research, the leaders are implicated in abusive operations across the country. "We have come to the conclusion now after almost four years of conflict in South Sudan, that there is mounting evidence of the role of key commanders in the ongoing atrocities," Henry told VOA's South Sudan in Focus. "There are two components to it. First is overseeing troops that are committing these atrocities, which gives a certain liability to the top commanders. But the second is failing to prevent them or stop them," she said. HRW is also recommending sanctions on South Sudanese army Lieutenant General Bol Akot, and General Johnson Olony, an opposition commander who allegedly recruited child soldiers in the Upper Nile region. The rights group has long called for an arms embargo on South Sudan and targeted sanctions against top leaders in the government and opposition forces. Six individuals are already on the U.N. sanctions list, which includes a travel ban and an assets freeze. Alleged ethnic killings Tuesday's report focused on civilian testimony from KajoKeji in the former Central Equatoria state as well as Pajok in neighboring Eastern Equatoria state, involving events between June 2016 and this past May. The report said government soldiers committed serious crimes against civilians on the basis of their ethnicity. Witnesses described at least 47 unlawful killings by government soldiers in KajoKeji, telling researchers they saw soldiers enter the homes of neighbors, and shoot and kill the elderly and people with disabilities. Henry said researchers believe the number of cases is actually much higher. "People are very afraid to remain and even to go back. We met with refugees living in the settlements in northern Uganda and they almost all said that they were afraid to return home and those few who did were collecting food or for guarding their livestock reported facing various types of dangers as well," Henry said. Denials Kiir's spokesman Ateny Wek Ateny denies the president or his generals bear any responsibility for the crimes documented in the report. "There are a number of individual violations that may happen, individuals may take laws into their hands but that doesn't mean that the government has a policy of killing the civilians," Ateny said. The report said government soldiers deployed to fight rebels in counter insurgency operations committed many crimes against civilians including arbitrary detention, torture, and enforced disappearances. General Oyet Nathaniel, the SPLA-In Opposition designated governor of Imatong State, denied Riek Machar bears any responsibility for the rights violations described in the report. "Our chairman Dr. Riek Machar is innocent. He is a victim of human rights [violations] himself. He cannot be sanctioned together with perpetrators of human rights [abuses]. It is Salva Kiir and his government that deserve sanctions because they blocked the peace agreement," Nathaniel said. In January, a report by the Office of the High Commissioner and the United Nations Mission in South Sudan said during the renewed violence in Juba that erupted a little over a year ago, both government and rebels committed "serious human rights violations and abuses, and violations of international humanitarian law, some possibly amounting to war crimes." Human Rights Watch reiterated the commission's mandate to collect and preserve evidence that can be used to prosecute those responsible for war crimes and crimes against humanity in fair and credible trials. Under the Obama administration, a U.S.-backed U.N. resolution to enact an arms embargo and sanctions on South Sudan failed in December. Russia, China and 6 other Security Council members abstained from voting, effectively killing the resolution. In April, U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Nikki Hayley urged the Security Council to impose an arms embargo and additional sanctions on South Sudan. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Coalition Strikes Target ISIS in Syria, Iraq From a Combined Joint Task Force Operation Inherent Resolve News Release SOUTHWEST ASIA, Aug. 2, 2017 U.S. and coalition military forces continued to attack the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria yesterday, conducting 12 strikes consisting of 16 engagements, Combined Joint Task Force Operation Inherent Resolve officials reported today. U.S. Central Command continues to work with partner nations to conduct targeted airstrikes in Iraq and Syria as part of the comprehensive strategy to degrade and defeat the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, or ISIS. Officials reported details of yesterday's strikes, noting that assessments of results are based on initial reports. Strikes in Syria In Syria, coalition military forces conducted nine strikes consisting of 10 engagements against ISIS targets: -- Near Abu Kamal, a strike destroyed three ISIS wellheads. -- Near Dayr Az Zawr, a strike destroyed an ISIS oil refinery. -- Near Raqqa, seven strikes engaged four ISIS tactical units and destroyed four fighting positions, two ISIS headquarters, an improvised explosive device, an ammunition cache and a fuel supply point. Strikes in Iraq In Iraq, coalition military forces conducted three strikes consisting of six engagements against ISIS targets: -- Near Huwayjah, a strike destroyed a piece of ISIS engineering equipment and a front-end loader. -- Near Rawah, a strike destroyed a vehicle-borne bomb. -- Near Tal Afar, a strike engaged an ISIS tactical unit and destroyed four front-end loaders, a supply cache and a command-and-control node. Previous Strikes Additionally, seven strikes consisting of 10 engagements were conducted in Syria and Iraq on July 30-31 that closed within the last 24 hours. -- On July 30, near Raqqa, Syria, four strikes engaged four ISIS tactical units. -- On July 31, near Raqqa, Syria, two strikes engaged two ISIS tactical units. -- On July 31, near Kisik, Iraq, a strike illuminated an area. Part of Operation Inherent Resolve These strikes were conducted as part of Operation Inherent Resolve, the operation to destroy ISIS in Iraq and Syria. The destruction of ISIS targets in Iraq and Syria also further limits the group's ability to project terror and conduct external operations throughout the region and the rest of the world, task force officials said. The list above contains all strikes conducted by fighter, attack, bomber, rotary-wing or remotely piloted aircraft; rocket-propelled artillery; and some ground-based tactical artillery when fired on planned targets, officials noted. Ground-based artillery fired in counterfire or in fire support to maneuver roles is not classified as a strike, they added. A strike, as defined by the coalition, refers to one or more kinetic engagements that occur in roughly the same geographic location to produce a single or cumulative effect. For example, task force officials explained, a single aircraft delivering a single weapon against a lone ISIS vehicle is one strike, but so is multiple aircraft delivering dozens of weapons against a group of ISIS-held buildings and weapon systems in a compound, having the cumulative effect of making that facility harder or impossible to use. Strike assessments are based on initial reports and may be refined, officials said. The task force does not report the number or type of aircraft employed in a strike, the number of munitions dropped in each strike, or the number of individual munition impact points against a target. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Artillery units embrace 'hide and seek' tactics to gain decisive edge By Capt. Brett Tinder (3rd ABCT, 4th ID) August 2, 2017 GRAFENWOEHR TRAINING AREA, Germany -- Self-propelled artillery batteries from 3rd Battalion, 29th Field Artillery Regiment, have become proficient in eluding enemy forces following two consecutive multinational exercises in Germany and Romania, where the unit exploited its mobility and survivability skills. "We've adopted new fighting tactics, techniques and procedures to counter the tactics of a near-peer enemy that really makes it difficult for a threat to target our positions," said 1st Sgt. Timothy S. Harris, senior noncommissioned officer of Battery C, 3rd Battalion, 29th Field Artillery Regiment, also known as the "Pacesetters." The 3rd Armored Brigade Combat Team, 4th Infantry Division artillery unit emphasized "hide and seek" tactics during a two-week combat training center rotation with 10 participating nations at the Joint Multinational Readiness Center (JMRC) in Hohenfels, Germany, as part of exercise Combined Resolve VIII. The skills gained in these courses also proved handy in July during a combined arms live-fire exercise with six nations, part of exercises Getica Saber 17 at the Cincu Joint National Training Center, Romania. "Unlike towed howitzers, our M109A6 Paladin platform operates on a self-propelled tracked chassis," said Harris. "During a mission, we're emphasizing this maneuverability by creating mobility corridors in line with where we need to fire." These "Paladin Highways" enable battery guns to relocate rapidly, thus confusing enemy efforts to detect firing positions, but maintain responsive fires in a controlled manner. The Pacesetter Battalion is currently providing fire support for 3rd Armored Brigade Combat Team, 4th Infantry Division as it serves as a deterrent to aggression in eastern Europe as part of U.S. Army Europe's Operation Atlantic Resolve. Its training, both internally and with NATO allies and partners during the brigade-level multinational exercises, calls for the Pacesetters to provide 24/7 fires in all-weather conditions to support maneuver forces. As Battery C prepared for Combined Resolve VIII -- working alongside the Romanian 1st Battery, 817th Artillery Battalion, 81st Mechanized Brigade -- the Soldiers painted their desert tan 155mm Paladin howitzers dark green to adapt to the forested terrain of Europe. The 3rd Battalion, 29th Field Infantry Regiment also employed tactics to counter small unmanned aerial systems by adopting tactics normally used by multiple rocket launch system units. "Section chiefs would embed their Paladin and M992A2 ammunition carriers into a wood line, and our gunnery sergeants would verify they were concealed from observation," said Harris. "The most effective firing battery over a protracted fight is the most survivable." Beyond concealing guns, the battalion also considers the hide tactics of its logistical elements. That means keeping palletized loading systems, which "pull" ammunition resupply, hidden to prevent a large resupply signature from unmasking a unit's location. 1st Lt. James Kelly, Battery C executive officer, said, "This is the first time we've pulled all resupply -- fuel, ammunition and water -- from a concealed position behind the gun-line." Kelly said the art of effectively hiding and seeking targets to pop out and shoot depends on quick synchronization and constant communication back and forth from battalion, battery and platoon fire direction centers. "The aim is to minimize the time between receipt of a fire mission and inputting it into the Paladin's digital fire control system. By carefully anticipating fire missions, we have time to maneuver the Paladins out their hides and into position while minimizing the impact of movement time on our ability to fire accurately," Kelly said. These hide-and-seek tactics are far different from what the Pacesetters employed during previous deployments to the open deserts of Kuwait and Iraq. A potential fight in defense of a NATO ally or partner in Europe likely would mean embedding in dense foliage, with artillery potentially dispersed across multiple kilometers with impassable ridge lines in between. "The terrain here challenges us from a fires perspective but also in terms of resupply and communications systems. But our training during these exercises in Germany and Romania the last couple months has really helped us fine tune our abilities to quickly and accurately shoot without being seen," Kelly added. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Army improving simplicity, strengthening capabilities with mission command network updates By Dan Lafontaine, PEO C3T Public Affairs August 2, 2017 ABERDEEN PROVING GROUND, Md. -- The U.S. Army is implementing a plan to update mission command network software and hardware across 400 Army, Army Reserve and Army National Guard units beginning later this year and continuing through 2019. This robust effort will reduce the number of disparate software and hardware systems in today's command-post environment, mitigating system complexity and allowing for easier network initialization and sustainment. The ultimate goal of the effort will be to reduce more than a dozen mission command network software and hardware versions across the Army to one standard baseline. "The rapid pace of deployments in the past 15 years has led to a significant increase in the Army's mission command systems as units have requested additional capabilities," said Col. Troy Crosby, project manager for Mission Command, who has the lead for implementation of the fielding efforts. "The Army is changing how it fields and sustains these systems, necessitating a move to a single baseline today, while we continue developing the next baseline as part of the Army's Common Operating Environment effort." In May 2017, the Army's G3/5/7 issued an Army-wide directive for tactical units to consolidate to a single software baseline for mission command applications by the end of 2019. To execute the order, elements from Program Executive Office Command, Control and Communications-Tactical are mobilized to support fielding up to 280 units within the next year and to the remainder of the Army in 2019. This innovative approach will encompass fielding new systems, training units that require it, and providing field support where needed. The Army G3/5/7, with coordination across Army Forces Command and other stakeholders, has prioritized unit fielding by taking into consideration operational and regional alignment of units to ensure all are upgraded at the right time and place. Army Reserve and Army National Guard tactical units will also receive the software and hardware improvements with careful coordination to ensure unit availability and training schedules are taken into account. Fielding will begin in August 2017, with an aggressive completion timetable of 28 months to the more than 400 total units, from battalion through corps echelons. ACCELERATED FIELDING TIMELINE The Army will employ Unit Set Fielding practices to execute the baseline reduction effort. USF, initiated in 2006, works as a "one-stop-shop" for units by managing the planning and implementation of fielding and reset for network capabilities. USF is synchronized with units' long-range training calendars, reset and support. It is also closely aligned with the Army's Sustainable Readiness Model for building trained and ready forces. Through the USF process, capabilities are provided to a unit in a sequenced order until a complete kit is received. Because network capabilities require technical knowledge, training and support are provided throughout the process. "Through unit set fielding, we typically touch between 80 and 100 units per year," said Thane C. St. Clair, PM Mission Command's materiel fielding branch chief. "The Army is asking us to do in two years what we normally do in a five-year process (as part of technical refresh). This is a key readiness effort, so we increased the size of our new equipment training team from 28 to 94 people to have the global reach to get the job done." To meet the accelerated schedule, Army fielding representatives will bring together active Army, Reserve and National Guard units from across a region to a central site, usually a large installation, instead of traveling to every unit's location. To date, Fort Campbell, Kentucky, and Fort Hood, Texas, have been identified as initial regional target locations. Mission Training Centers and National Guard training hubs will also be leveraged to allow for sufficient capacity. The greatest anticipated challenge with this initiative is the amount of unit training needed to familiarize signal, general purpose user and maintainers with the upgraded capability, St. Clair said. Balancing the training need with worldwide deployments, readiness exercises, permanent change of station moves and unit rotations will be a challenge. This effort will take continuous planning events across Army Staff, the program community, FORSCOM, Army Reserve and Army National Guard. Planning teams are meeting regularly to ensure up-to-date information flows to receiving units over the course of the next two years. Currently, units stationed in the Pacific will begin to receive fielding and training in fiscal year 2018, those in Europe and Southwest Asia in 2019, and those within the United States are scheduled for both years. The new hardware and software that units will receive depend on the versions they were last fielded. If hardware can accommodate mission requirements and the latest software (termed software block 11.16), it will not need replacement. The length of training and travel requirements will depend on the unit type/echelon and number of hardware and software updates needed to achieve a common baseline. REDUCING TRAINING BURDEN, IMPROVING SIMPLICITY Over the last 16 years of continuous combat, multiple, interdependent mission command software versions were fielded at the same time to meet units' operational requirements. In some cases software baselines were specific to the mission or the region in which the unit was being deployed. Although this approach met mission requirements, it resulted in arduous training, sustainment and interoperability issues. "In the last several years, the program office has been answering requests from Soldiers for additional capability or software patches and we kept enhancing new features and functionalities," said Kim Reid, product director for PM Mission Command's Strategic Mission Command. "Now we must simplify and automate the tools that we've added and improve the Soldier's ability to stand up infrastructure, install software, as well as configure and connect it to units around them." Currently across Army tactical units, there are as many as five laptop models and four versions of server stacks. The fielding effort will reduce the varieties of tactical laptops and servers to two baselines of common hardware. This will ultimately enable end users to manage hardware sustainment and warranties more easily, while reducing the hardware footprint in the command post. Standardization of mission command software will be a major priority of the baseline fielding effort. Although mission command application functionality is similar across tactical units, different software versions have created varying user experiences, sustainment issues, interoperability challenges and training gaps. A universal baseline decreases the number of software patches and security updates that must be developed, tracked and then implemented in the field. It also helps with release of new software by creating an environment for interoperability. As an example, today the Army operates eight versions of the Command Post of the Future application that provides leaders with a common operational picture. At the end of FY 2019 when the baseline fielding is complete, there will be one updated CPOF version throughout all tactical units. "Although the task of fielding to more than 400 units in just two years is challenging, reducing the mission command network baseline is critical to enable less complex and assured communications," Crosby said. "This effort will not only deliver a better capability, it will also ease Soldiers' training burden when they move to a new duty station or between the echelons from battalion to division. By the end of 2019, they will have the same mission command experience with the same version of software, anywhere they are." -------- The U.S. Army Program Executive Office Command, Control and Communications-Tactical develops, acquires, fields and supports the Army's mission command network to ensure force readiness. This critical Army modernization priority delivers tactical communications so commanders and Soldiers can stay connected and informed at all times, even in the most austere and hostile environments. PEO C3T is delivering the network to regions around the globe, enabling high-speed, high-capacity voice, data and video communications to a user base that includes the Army's joint, coalition and other mission partners. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Army's new integrated head protection system test jumps from the sky By Mr. Rod Manke August 2, 2017 FORT BRAGG, N.C. -- Successful implementation of new body armor technology requires more than just engineers designing prototype systems in a lab. Feedback from Soldiers who will be using the technology is critical to ensuring that the U.S. Army continues to field world-class technology for its fighters. Recently, Airborne Soldiers here played a vital part in the feedback process when they recently jumped with a groundbreaking new Integrated Head Protection System (IHPS) during operational testing. Soldiers from the 57th Sapper Company, 27th Engineer Battalion, 20th Engineer Brigade, geared up to work with the U.S. Army Operational Test Command's Airborne and Special Operations Test Directorate to test the new armor. "Operational Testing is about Soldiers. It is about making sure that the systems developed are effective in a Soldier's hands and suitable for the environments in which Soldiers train and fight," said Col. Brad Mock, director of ABNSOTD. The IHPS is one of the six components of the Soldier Protection System (body armor), providing a larger area of protection for the head and face, and includes a system to measure head trauma. According to Leon L. Price, a test officer with ABNSOTD, the purpose of operational test using Airborne paratroopers is to collect data to evaluate the suitability and safety of the IHPS when worn during static line Airborne operations. Overall, IHPS is only a little lighter than the current Army Combat Helmet, while including numerous accessories, like a mandible, visor, night vision goggle attachment device, rails and a modular ballistic applique (not attached during airborne operations). During the test, Soldiers participated in New Equipment Training, which included familiarization, fitting, and suspended harness. All this was followed by a live parachute jump from a C-17 high performance aircraft at 1,250 feet above ground level over Fort Bragg's Sicily Drop Zone. "I gave fair, honest and comprehensive feedback on the IHPS helmet," said Cpl. Samuel Emling, a Combat Engineer with the 57th. "I enjoyed the testing. The test personnel were extremely professional." "Soldiers and test units have the ability to impact the development of systems by training while executing doctrinally-realistic missions, and then provide direct input to the combat developer of the system," said Lt. Col. Vinny Intini, executive officer at ABNSOTD. "Their feedback is invaluable." Test Manager Steve McNair, of Program Manager Soldier Protection and Individual Equipment out of Fort Belvoir, Virginia, said the Army is expected to field 7,000 systems to separate brigades during fiscal year 2018 before moving to full rate production for fielding across the force. "I think I benefitted personally by doing this," said Spec. Aaron Adams, another Combat Engineer with the 57th. "It helps me with being comfortable jumping with new equipment. I enjoyed participating in the testing because we were the only Airborne unit to do so." "OTC is the U.S. Army's only independent operational test organization," Mock added. "Any time Soldiers and their leaders get involved in operational testing, they have the opportunity to use, work with, and offer up their own suggestions on pieces of equipment that can impact development of systems that future Soldiers will use in combat." "Operational testing is OTC's opportunity to contribute to readiness; anything less compromises the Army's ability to provide the forces that fight and win the Nation's wars," added Intini. ~~ The U.S. Army Operational Test Command is based at West Fort Hood, Texas, and its mission is about making sure that systems developed are effective in a Soldier's hands and suitable for the environments in which Soldiers train and fight. Test units and their Soldiers provide feedback, by offering input to improve upon existing and future systems with which Soldiers will ultimately use to train and fight. The Fort Bragg, North Carolina-based ABNSOTD plans, executes, and reports on operational tests and field experiments of Airborne and Special Operations Forces equipment, procedures, aerial delivery and air transportation systems in order to provide key operational data for the continued development and fielding of doctrine, systems or equipment to the Warfighter. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Carl Vinson Underway for Carrier Qualifications Navy News Service Story Number: NNS170802-13 Release Date: 8/2/2017 1:59:00 PM By Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Z.A. Landers PACIFIC OCEAN (NNS) -- The Nimitz-class aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson (CVN 70) departed her homeport of Naval Air Station North Island to complete fleet replacement squadron (FRS) carrier qualifications (CQ), July 31. During the underway period, Carl Vinson will conduct qualifications with the Strike Fighter Squadron (VFA) 122 "Flying Eagles" based at Naval Air Station (NAS) Lemoore and the Electronic Attack Squadron (VAQ) 129 "Vikings" based at NAS Whidbey Island. The Fleet Logistics Support Squadron (VRC) 30 "Providers" and the Helicopter Sea Combat Squadron (HSC) 4 "Black Knights" will also operate with the ship in support of carrier qualification operations. Carl Vinson Air Operations Officer Cmdr. Joshua Hammond said carrier qualifications are important because they allow Carl Vinson to practice launching and recovering aircraft while helping qualify new pilots. "Being at sea for FRS CQ gives us practice at what we do on deployment: launching and recovering aircraft," said Hammond. "We can't always be underway with Carrier Air Wing (CVW) 2, so these operations help us stay sharp and hone our craft while helping new pilots gain proficiency." Hammond went on to say the purpose of FRS CQ is to qualify new naval aviators for duty operating with an aircraft carrier. "Carrier qualifications allow fleet replacement squadrons to get pilots carrier qualified, so they can join their fleet squadrons," said Hammond. "Some are brand new and have never flown fleet aircraft. Some are transitioning aircraft or are requalifying in their original aircraft. Practicing launching and recovering from Carl Vinson will be their last step before going to a fleet squadron." Hammond said the work done during FRS CQ benefits not just Carl Vinson and the squadrons, but the entire fleet. "These operations support the larger mission of sending qualified pilots into the fleet to join their squadrons," said Hammond. "While these pilots will be sent to squadrons across the fleet, some of them could very well be assigned to Carl Vinson's air wing when we depart for [the] next deployment." Carl Vinson is currently underway conducting carrier qualifications off the coast of Southern California. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Exercise Saxon Warrior '17 Begins Navy News Service Story Number: NNS170802-09 Release Date: 8/2/2017 11:10:00 AM By Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class Mario Coto, USS George H.W. Bush Public Affairs ATLANTIC OCEAN (NNS) -- The George H.W. Bush Carrier Strike Group (GHWBCSG) began participation in Exercise Saxon Warrior '17, Aug. 1. Saxon Warrior is an exercise designed to develop theater-specific combat skills, as well as enhance cooperation between U.S. and U.K. forces and governmental agencies. Led by the Royal Navy's Flag Officer Sea Training (FOST), Saxon Warrior '17 presents a myriad of challenges to the multinational and multi-platform force by creating a diverse and unpredictable war environment based on fictional geo-political and military scenarios. "Saxon Warrior allows both U.S. and U.K. naval forces a chance to hone our interoperability skills," said Rear Adm. Kenneth Whitesell, commander, Carrier Strike Group 2. "Particularly important is the alignment of U.S. carrier strike groups and the U.K. carrier strike group. This unique opportunity affords the spectrum of warfighting for both strike group staffs, strengthening our military understanding and capability." The exercise presents an opportunity to face a variety of scenarios that change day to day, providing a tactical contrast that builds upon the in-depth, extended timeline scenario training that began during GHWBCSG's composite training unit exercise (COMPTUEX). The U.K. carrier strike group commander is embarked with their team and is excited to begin an interoperability exercise with our long-standing NATO partners. "Building on a long history of strong U.S./U.K. relations, Saxon Warrior '17 will demonstrate the key role that the U.K., as a leading NATO nation, plays in regional security," said U.K. Carrier Strike Group Commander Cdre Andrew Betton OBE, Royal Navy. "The exercise will focus on our ability to train together using advanced warfighting capabilities and contribute toward the generation of the U.K. Carrier Strike Group." Elements from the George H.W. Bush CSG working in concert with the United Kingdom's CSG and maritime units from Germany, Norway and Sweden will sharpen the skills needed for increased interoperability, and proficiency in conducting vital maritime operations around the world. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Bonhomme Richard Departs Brisbane Navy News Service Story Number: NNS170802-01 Release Date: 8/2/2017 8:57:00 AM From USS Bonhomme Richard Public Affairs CORAL SEA (NNS) -- The amphibious assault ship USS Bonhomme Richard (LHD 6) departed Brisbane, Australia, Aug. 1, following a scheduled four-day port visit. During the visit, Bonhomme Richard Sailors and Marines of the 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit (MEU) hosted shipboard tours, participated in community relations (COMREL) projects, and took advantage of tours offered through Bonhomme Richards' Morale, Welfare and Recreation (MWR) office. As part of the COMREL events, Sailors from Bonhomme Richard volunteered at the Brisbane Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary and visited the Lady Cilento Children's Hospital. "For me it's always good to be a part of something bigger," said Senior Chief Logistics Specialist Sheryl Gutierrez, a COMREL volunteer at the Lady Cilento Children's Hospital. "This is most likely the only time we'll meet these kids, but that exchange for just a minute or two, and being able to make these kids feel a little better about everything, makes it all worth it." The crew was able to become more familiar with the culture and community of Brisbane through the MWR tours, which were designed to highlight local recreational opportunities. A few Sailors and Marines also had the opportunity to play a friendly game of rugby against local members of the Australian army. Brisbane was the second port visit for Bonhomme Richards' crew since beginning operations in the 7th Fleet area of responsibility in June, and the first since concluding exercise Talisman Saber 2017 (TS17). As the crew prepares to continue at-sea training and shipboard evolutions, many said they will always remember the visit. "It was so beautiful every day in port," said Fireman George Baker, from Strongsville, Ohio. "My favorite things about Brisbane were the food, the people and the weather. It was a really cool environment. Sometimes it even reminded me of being back home." Bonhomme Richard, flagship of the Bonhomme Richard Expeditionary Strike Group, is operating in the Indo-Asia-Pacific region to enhance partnerships and be a ready-response force for any type of contingency. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Trump "weighed in" on son's statement of Russia-related meeting: White House People's Daily Online (Xinhua) 14:00, August 02, 2017 The White House said Tuesday that U.S. President Donald Trump "weighed in" on a statement his eldest son had made about a controversial Russia-related meeting. The statement that Donald Trump Jr. issued "is true", said White House spokeswomen Sarah Sanders in a briefing on Tuesday afternoon. "There is no inaccuracy in the statement." The meeting between Trump Jr. and a Russian lawyer during the 2016 campaign was brought back into limelight after Trump reportedly dictated the July 8th statement that claimed the meeting was "primarily" about American families adoption of Russian children. Sanders pushed back the story, saying Trump "certainly didn't dictate" the statement but he "weighed in as any father would, based on the limited information that he had." The matter was "of no consequence", Sanders stressed. But her remarks appeared to have contradicted with Jay Sekulow, one of the attorneys representing Trump in the Russia probe, who has repeatedly denied that the president played a role in drafting his son's statement. Sekulow has denied in previous interviews that Trump had any involvement in the drafting of the statement, which, he said, was written by Trump Jr. with consultation with his lawyer. A Washington Post report said on Monday Trump dictated the document while flying back on Air Force One from the G20 summit in Hamburg, Germany, held on July 7-8. "Apart from being of no consequence, the characterizations are misinformed, inaccurate, and not pertinent," Sekulow said in a statement to the Post after the story was released. It was revealed last month that Trump Jr. met a Russian lawyer last year in New York after being promised "damaging" information about Hilary Clinton, the then Democratic presidential candidate running against his father. After issuing the misleading statement in attempt to "clarify" himself, Trump Jr. made public a chain of emails with an intermediary about the meeting to be what he called "totally transparent." But he was later accused of violating a federal act by conspiring to solicit a contribution from a foreign national during the campaign because of what he revealed. A federal special counsel and several congressional panels are conducting the Trump-Russia investigations. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address U.S. mulls dispatching 2 aircraft carriers to Korean Peninsula: S.Korean media People's Daily Online (Xinhua) 13:58, August 02, 2017 The United States was mulling dispatching two aircraft carriers to the Korean Peninsula in an apparent show of force following the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea (DPRK)'s test-launch of what it called an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), South Korea's Yonhap news agency reported Wednesday. An unidentified South Korean government source was quoted as saying the military authorities of South Korea and the U.S. had considered the mobilization of the U.S. aircraft carrier to the peninsula for the joint annual war games, codenamed Ulchi Freedom Guardian (UFG). The mobilization date would be moved up, before the computer-assisted simulation exercise that was scheduled to kick off on Aug. 21, according to the source. The two U.S. aircraft carriers to be mobilized would reportedly be USS Carl Vinson and USS Ronald Reagan aircraft carrier strike groups, which were sent to the waters near the peninsula in late May. The source was quoted as saying that reviews were underway over the dispatch of two U.S. aircraft carriers and an undefined number of U.S. nuclear-powered submarine in the third week of this month, before the joint U.S.-South Korea war game kicks off. The mulling of the dispatch followed the DPRK's test-firing last week the ICBM that flew about 1,000 km and was lofted as high as over 3,700 km. It was an advanced version of Hwasong-14 that traveled 933 km at a maximum altitude of 2,802 km at the July 4 test-launch. The source was quoted as saying the mobilization of the two U.S. supercarriers would have the meaning of issuing a strong warning against the DPRK to deter any further provocation, describing the upcoming UFG war game as a high-intensity joint drill to show force against the DPRK in waters near the Korean Peninsula. The DPRK has denounced the U.S.-South Korea war game as a dress rehearsal for northward invasion. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Beijing's firm stance on China-India border dispute People's Daily Online (CNTV) 16:02, August 02, 2017 China stated its position on Indian border troops trespassing into its territory from the Indian state of Sikkim on Wednesday. The Chinese Foreign Ministry said Beijing will take all necessary measures to safeguard its legitimate rights and interests. The Ministry released a report on Wednesday, "The Facts and China's Position Concerning the Indian Border Troops' Crossing of the China-India Boundary in the Sikkim Sector into the Chinese Territory", which lays out the facts of the illegal trespass of Indian border troops to the international community and gives a full account of the position of the Chinese government. The China-India border dispute broke out when Indian border troops illegally crossed the Sikkim sector of the China-India boundary and entered into Chinese territory on June 18. Since then, China has strongly condemned the illegal trespass by the Indian side, and demands the troops to immediately withdraw back to their side. However, the Indian side has been refusing to do so and keeps finding excuses to justify this trespass. The China-India boundary in the Sikkim sector was delimited by the 1890 Convention Between Great Britain and China Relating to Sikkim and Tibet. It is a defined sector of the boundary that is recognized by both the Chinese and Indian governments. "This not only severely violates China's territorial sovereignty but also poses grave challenges to regional peace and stability and normal international order, which will not be tolerated by any sovereign state," said Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang. "China is committed to not only defending its territorial sovereignty but also safeguarding the basic principles of international law and the basic norms governing international relations and upholding justice and righteousness. The Chinese side is convinced that the right cannot be wronged and justice will prevail, " Geng said. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Venezuela's election turnout figures tampered with: Election company Iran Press TV Wed Aug 2, 2017 5:47PM A voting technology company claims that the turnout figures for Sunday's vote for the Constituent Assembly in Venezuela have been manipulated. Venezuela's National Electoral Council said over eight million Venezuelans had participated in the vote to elect a powerful new congress, which will be allowed to rewrite the constitution and can dissolve the current opposition-led legislature. But Smartmatic CEO Antonio Mugica said on Wednesday that the turnout officially announced by authorities was inflated by at least one million. "It is with the deepest regret that we have to report that the turnout numbers on Sunday 30th July for the Constituent Assembly in Venezuela were tampered with," Mugica said at a news briefing in London. When asked why he had not contacted Venezuelan authorities, Mugica said he thought they "would not be sympathetic" to his comments. The international software company provided nearly 24,000 machines for Venezuelans to cast their votes electronically. He said the company's system had recorded the correct number of voters but authorities announced the altered results instead. However, he declined to give the precise figure, saying a full audit would have to take place. While Venezuela's old allies, Bolivia, Cuba, Nicaragua and Russia, supported the Sunday vote for the formation of the new 545-member body, the United States, the European Union, Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Mexico, Spain, Canada and Peru denounced the vote, saying the Constituent Assembly can destroy the Venezuelan democracy and institutionalize autocracy there. The Sunday elections took place amid a wave of clashes and violence, with protesters attacking polling stations and barricading streets. The opposition, which had already boycotted the vote, rejected the election results as sham and called for further anti-government protests against the new assembly. The unrest led to the engagement of anti-government protesters and security forces in street battles as voting was underway, leaving at least 10 people dead and bringing the death toll from four months of protest rallies to more than 120. President Nicolas Maduro has on several occasions touted the planned rewriting of the constitution as necessary for resolving the widening political crisis in the impoverished but oil-rich country, saying that reforms would help the nation through the current economic crisis. He blames the crisis in the country on the United States, saying Washington has incited the opposition. 'Iran backs democratic processes in Venezuela' Meanwhile, Iranian Foreign Ministry Spokesman Bahram Qassemi on Wednesday expressed his country's support for "democratic processes originating from the Venezuelan nation's resolve that would solve the country's current issues in a peaceful and legal way." Qassemi expressed hope that the recent election in Venezuela would restore stability and peace and pave the way for national dialogue and reconciliation in the Latin American country. He underlined the need for respecting other countries' sovereignty and independence within the framework of international law. The Iranian official also rejected unilateral US sanctions against Venezuela, saying "using sanctions as a tool to exert pressure on independent countries and nations to undermine and break their resolve is a futile and inefficient move." NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Qatar signs deal with Italy for warships amid row with Saudi Arabia Iran Press TV Wed Aug 2, 2017 1:42PM Qatar has signed a 5-billion-euro deal with Italy for seven warships amid a nearly two-month diplomatic row with Saudi Arabia and its regional allies. Foreign Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani made the announcement on Wednesday at a joint news conference with his visiting Italian counterpart Angelino Alfano in Doha. "We have signed a contract on behalf of the Qatari navy to acquire seven warships from Italy for five billion euros ($5.9 billion)," media outlets quoted the Qatari minister as saying. He gave no further details and did not name the companies involved. In June last year, Italy's state-controlled shipbuilder Fincantieri said it had signed an agreement to build ships for Qatar. At the time, Fincantieri said it would supply the Persian Gulf state with four corvette warships, two support vessels and an amphibious landing platform dock. The company also pledged support services in Qatar for 15 years after delivery. A company official said at the time that Italian defense company Leonardo would supply electronics and weapons systems for the ships and receive about a third of the value of the deal. The so-called quartet of states, known as the siege countries led by Saudi Arabia, have said they have no concessions or compromises to make over their list of demands that requires Qatar to change its policies, including Doha's alleged support for terrorism, as an unprecedented diplomatic rift further deepens in the Persian Gulf region. The widening rift occurred on June 5, when Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Egypt, and the United Arab Emirates severed ties with Doha, officially accusing Qatar of supporting "terrorism" and destabilizing the Middle East, allegations that Qatar says are unjustified and stem from false claims and assumptions. To further pressure Qatar, Saudi Arabia has totally closed its land border with its tiny neighbor, through which much of Qatar's food supply crossed. Later in June, the four Arab countries urged Qatar to abide by a 13-point list of demands if it wanted the crippling blockade lifted. The demands included shutting down the Doha-based Al Jazeera broadcaster, scaling back cooperation with Iran, closing the Turkish military base in Qatar, and paying an unspecified sum in reparations. They have also listed "six principles" they want Qatar to adopt. The defiant Doha government, however, strongly refused to comply, calling the wide-ranging demands "unrealistic, unreasonable and unacceptable." In return, the four feuding countries vowed to impose further sanctions on Doha. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Bomb attack hits foreign convoy in Afghanistan Iran Press TV Wed Aug 2, 2017 9:57AM A bomb explosion has targeted a convoy of international troops near the airport in the southern Afghan city of Kandahar, causing some casualties, security officials say. "At around noon, a car bomb targeted a convoy of foreign forces in Daman area of Kandahar," said provincial police spokesman Zia Durrani. NATO also confirmed in a statement that a convoy was attacked and did "cause casualties." US military spokesman in Kabul Damien Horvath also said they were trying to collect information. Death toll from earlier blast in Herat rises Shia Muslims are, meanwhile, preparing to take to the streets in the western city of Herat in protest to the authorities' failure to protect them following a deadly bomb attack, which targeted a mosque on Tuesday night and has so far claimed the lives of at least 30 people, including young children. Officials said the death toll had risen to 30 by Wednesday, saying it was expected to rise even further because many of those who were wounded in the bombing were in a critical condition. At least 64 people were injured in the blast. The attack occurred when a man opened fire on worshipers gathered for evening prayers inside the 12th-century mosque known as Jama Mosque in Herat on Tuesday night before blowing himself up. A second explosion came 10 minutes later. The locals who witnessed the attack said police abandoned them after the two assailants struck the mosque. A man said there was a police checkpoint around 100 meters from the mosque. "They didn't even try to stop the attackers. They all fled when they heard the blasts," he said. This sparked anger among people, who then clashed with the police and set the check post on fire, according to witnesses. They said police officers opened fire, injuring some people. No group has so far claimed the responsibility for the bombings. "We are going to bury the bodies this afternoon and then hit the streets demanding justice," said the man. "I lost all my loved ones. They even killed children as young as seven. This wasn't an attack on Shias, this was an attack on all Afghans, all Muslims." Meanwhile, authorities have tightened security ahead of a mass funeral for the victims of last night's attack, which will be held on Wednesday afternoon. According to provincial spokesman Jilani Farhad, the planned Shia protest will also be held just before the victims' burial. Iran condemns Herat bombing Iranian Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Bahram Qassemi on Wednesday condemned the bombing in Herat. Qassemi said that the people of Afghanistan had gone through decades of pain, and it was time that regional countries, international organizations, and the government of Afghanistan ended the violent situation that existed in Afghanistan. He said Iran would stand by Afghans on the path to that goal. At least three million Shias currently live in Afghanistan. Daesh has claimed responsibility for several attacks on Afghan Shias in the past, including twin explosions in July 2016 that ripped through crowds of Shia Hazaras and killed at least 85 people and wounded more than 400. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address China-Japan oil, gas field dispute flares up again Iran Press TV Wed Aug 2, 2017 9:33AM China has rejected Japanese protests to its oil and gas prospecting in the East China Sea, saying the operations occur in areas "indisputably" under its jurisdiction. Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida said Tuesday said Japan had lodged a protest with China over its apparent deployment of drilling rigs near the median line separating the two countries' economic zones in the East China Sea. Japan also urged China to swiftly resume stalled negotiations to cooperate over oil and gas resources in the area. Those talks began in 2008 but broke down two years later amid rising tensions. Both countries claim the East China Sea islands which are controlled by Japan. Tokyo says China has built oil and gas extracting structures on its side of the median line, which may siphon off resources from beneath the Japanese side. A Japanese government official said Tuesday China's mobile drilling ships had been spotted in the region, and were believed to have been boring for gas. It was "extremely regrettable that China is unilaterally continuing its development activity" near the median line, Japan's top government spokesperson Yoshihide Suga told reporters. China's Foreign Ministry on Wednesday dismissed the remarks, saying "the so-called issue of 'unilateral exploitation' does not exist." "China's oil and gas activities in the East China Sea are all located in maritime areas indisputably under Chinese jurisdiction," it was quoted as saying. The gas field reportedly lies in an area where both countries' exclusive economic zones EEZs overlap but they bitterly disagree on how it should be demarcated. While Japan says the median line between the two nations should mark the limits of their respective EEZs, China insists the border should be drawn closer to Japan, taking into account the continental shelf and other features of the ocean. On Wednesday, China's Foreign Ministry said it rejected the idea of a median line, calling it "Japan's unilateral proposition." With tensions rising in the East China Sea, a seafood-packed body of water through which nearly $5 trillion in trade flows each year, the US has waded into the dispute. President Donald Trump pledged earlier this year that the US would rally behind Japan in a possible serious showdown with China. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address China offers aid to new friend Gambia Iran Press TV Wed Aug 2, 2017 4:13AM China has offered to support Gambia in the sectors of infrastructure, agriculture, tourism, and other areas, following the African country's severance of formal ties with Taiwan. At a meeting in Beijing, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi told his visiting Gambian counterpart Ousainou Darboe that China was ready "to enhance cooperation with Gambia" in the aforementioned fields, the Chinese Foreign Ministry announced on Tuesday. Gambia cut formal ties with Taiwan a self-ruled island that China claims sovereignty over and resumed ties with Beijing last year. The Chinese government says Taiwan has no right of establishing diplomatic relations of its own. Wang did not offer details on a timeframe and the scope of the cooperation offered; however, he said the resumption of diplomatic ties had not only brought bilateral relations back to the right track but also opened up broad prospects for cooperation. China is among the foreign countries interested in building up Gambia's Atlantic port of Banjul to become what industry sources say could be a rival to neighboring Senegal's Dakar. Gambia's new government, which took over from former long-time leader Yahya Jammeh this year, has pledged to broaden its relations with Beijing. The Chinese Foreign Ministry cited Darboe as saying that Bangui was looking forward to pragmatic cooperation with China in various fields. Sao Tome and Principe, an island country in the Gulf of Guinea, followed Gambia in December and adopted the "One China" policy, which recognizes Chinese sovereignty over Taiwan. In Africa, only Burkina Faso and Swaziland now recognize Taiwan. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Georgian President Says Pence Reassured Tbilisi Over NATO Bid RFE/RL August 02, 2017 Georgian President Giorgi Margvelashvili says his country's territorial integrity and its eventual membership in NATO were "clearly defined" during U.S. Vice President Mike Pence's July 31-August 1 visit to the South Caucasus country. In an interview with Voice of America on August 2, Margvelashvili also said he has seen "continued stable support" for Tbilisi from President Donald Trump's administration during its first six months in office. The interview with Margvelashvili took place as Pence was on the final leg of a four-day tour of Estonia, Georgia, and Montenegro -- all countries where leaders have expressed concerns about Russia's intentions in their regions. Estonia and Montenegro are NATO members, while Georgia has expressed the desire of eventually joining. Margvelashvili said he had received reassurances from Pence about an eventual invitation for Georgia to join NATO. "Vice President Pence mentioned that the future of Georgia will be in NATO and that the U.S. is backing up the 2008 NATO summit decision on future prospects of Georgia," Margvelashvili said in the interview. In 2008, a NATO gathering in Bucharest proclaimed that Georgia would someday become a member of the alliance. Those aspirations have been cited as a chief catalyst for the five-day war later that year in which Russian forces drove deep into the South Caucasus country. After the brief war, the Kremlin recognized Georgia's breakaway regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia as independent countries, and Moscow maintains thousands of troops in the two regions. Pence "was clear in his language as he spoke of freedom, our territorial integrity, our sovereignty, our partnership with the U.S.A.," Margvelashvili said. "The most important issue for my country is territorial integrity and reunification of Georgian sovereignty...This was clearly defined by Vice President Pence." Margvelashvili said his country has also seen strong support from both Republicans and Democrats in the U.S. Congress. "The language we have seen from [Capitol] Hill supports Georgia," he said. He cited a visit in early 2017 by a bipartisan group of U.S. senators led by Republican John McCain, who was "clear and precise" about U.S. support for Georgia. "So, during this administration, we've enjoyed interest, cooperation, support, and appropriate political wording of all of this significant attitude and support in respect to Georgia," he said. Source: https://www.rferl.org/a/georgia-president-interview- margvelashvili-pence-nato-trump/28655330.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 Pence Says U.S. To Hold Russia 'Accountable For Its Actions' RFE/RL August 02, 2017 U.S. Vice President Mike Pence has told leaders of the Western Balkans that the United States will continue to hold Russia "accountable for its actions." "We must be resolute and uncompromising in the face of aggression from an unpredictable country that casts a shadow from the East," Pence told a summit of the Adriatic Charter in Montenegro on August 2. "Russia continues to seek to redraw international borders by force, and here in the Western Balkans Russia has worked to destabilize the region, undermine your democracies, and divide you from each other and from the rest of Europe," Pence said. "The United States of America rejects any attempt to use force, threats, or intimidation in this region or beyond," he added. "The Western Balkans have the right to decide your own future." The gathering in Podgorica was also attended by heads of states and governments of Albania, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia, Kosovo, Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia, and Slovenia. Earlier on his Montenegrin trip, Pence said the future of the Western Balkans is "in the West." The visit is his final stop of an Eastern European tour aimed at reassuring U.S. allies in the region in the face of an emboldened Russia. "We truly believe the future of the Western Balkans is in the West," Pence said ahead of a summit with Montenegrin and regional leaders in Podgorica on August 2. "We look forward to reaffirming the commitment of the United States to build the relationships that will strengthen the ties between the European community, the Western Balkans, and the United States of America," he told reporters. He also called Montenegro's accession to NATO in June a "historic achievement" for the country and "a sign of the strength of this country 10 years after its independence" from former Yugoslavia. He was speaking alongside Montenegrin Prime Minister Dusko Markovic, who said the small Balkan nation had "irrevocably" tied itself with the West and its values when it joined NATO. He said his country's ascension to NATO "will have a long-term positive effect and encourage our neighbors who are walking the same or a similar path." Markovic added that countries of the Western Balkans should be proactive in shaping their future "rather than waiting for others to do it for us." At a dinner with Montenegrin President Filip Vujanovic, Markovic, and other Montenegrin leaders on August 1, Pence said his trip to the nation of 620,000 is "testament to the fact that America has no small allies -- only strong allies." "Your courage, particularly in the face of Russian pressure, inspires the world, and I commend you for it," he said. Pence arrived in the tiny Balkan nation, NATO's newest member, after a visit to Georgia, where he denounced Russia's "aggression" and "occupation" of the Caucasus country's territory. "America stands with Georgia," Pence said at a joint press conference with Prime Minister Giorgi Kvirikashvili. The Kremlin recognized Georgia's breakaway regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia as independent countries after fighting a five-day war against Tbilisi in 2008. Russia maintains thousands of troops in the two regions. "The United States supports Georgia's sovereignty and territorial integrity within its internationally recognized borders," Pence said. "And under President Donald Trump, the United States of America will object to any claim at any time by any nation that undermines this enduring principle." Pence also reiterated that the United States "strongly" supports the Caucasus country's aspirations to become a NATO member. Georgian President Giorgi Margvelashvili said during a troop review with Pence at the Vaziani military air base outside Tbilisi that Russian troops remain deployed as occupiers in Abkhazia and South Ossetia where they are supporting separatist leaders. "Some dozen kilometers away there are barb wire fences built and installed to prohibit citizens of my country from free movement," Margvelashvili said. "Just a few kilometers [from here], people are persecuted just because they are Georgians." With reporting by AFP, dpa, Reuters, civil.ge, and Interfax Source: https://www.rferl.org/a/georgia-president-interview- margvelashvili-pence-nato-trump/28655330.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 Venezuelan Parliament Urges Prosecutors to Investigate Fraud in Elections Sputnik News 20:45 02.08.2017 According to Venezuelan lawmaker Enrique Marquez, the Smartmatic's statement proved that the voting turnout data provided by the authorities were rigged, and it should be regarded as abuse of peoples' will and electoral fraud. MEXICO CITY (Sputnik) The opposition-led Venezuelan parliament unanimously agreed on Wednesday to authorize the country's Office of the Prosecutor General to open investigation into possible electoral fraud during the recent elections to the country's Constituent Assembly. Earlier in the day, Antonio Mugica, CEO of the Smartmatic company which provides electronic voting systems worldwide, said that the results of the election were manipulated, and the actual turnout might differ by at least one million. According to Venezuelan lawmaker Enrique Marquez, the Smartmatic's statement proved that the voting turnout data provided by the authorities were rigged, and it should be regarded as abuse of peoples' will and electoral fraud. On Sunday, the election of delegates to the Venezuelan Constituent Assembly, which would be in charge of rewriting the country's Constitution, took place at the initiative of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro. The election was harshly criticized by the opposition and led to mass protests across the country. According to the National Electoral Council, a total of 41.53 percent of Venezuelan voters cast their ballots during the election to the Constituent Assembly, or 8.1 million people. The figures are disputed by the opposition which posted photos of empty polling stations throughout the election day, saying that over 90% of the voters did not attend. Sputnik NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Turnout Figures in Venezuelan Assembly Vote Manipulated - Election Company Sputnik News 20:01 02.08.2017 The past elections of the Venezuelan Constituent Assembly faced the participation data manipulation, according to CEO of the Smartmatic company, which has provided electronic voting technology for elections in Venezuela. MOSCOW (Sputnik) The results of the Venezuelan Constituent Assembly election were manipulated, and the actual turnout might differ by at least one million, the Smartmatic company, which has provided electronic voting technology for elections in Venezuela, said Wednesday. "Due to the existence of this robust automatized voting system we can know, without doubts, that the past elections of the Constituent assembly faced the participation data manipulation," Smartmatic CEO Antonio Mugica said, as quoted by the BBC broadcaster. Mugica noted that a full audit would help to find out the exact number of voters and compare the figures with the number of the bulletins cast during the elections. The company assumed that the difference may amount to up to a million voters. "It is with the deepest regret that we have to report that the turnout numbers on Sunday 30th July for the Constituent Assembly in Venezuela were tampered with," Mugica said. On Sunday, Venezuela held the election of the Constituent Assembly, which will be charged with rewriting the constitution. The opposition did not recognize the results of the vote, saying the decision to convene the assembly should be made via referendum. According to the country's National Electoral Council, the voter turnout was 41.53 percent. Venezuela, mired in a deep economic crisis caused by the fall of oil prices, has been facing mass protests since spring. The manifestations were initially a response to the decision of the country's top court to severely limit legislative powers of the parliament. Despite the fact that the decision was eventually overturned, the protests continued. In May, Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro announced his decision to convene the National Constituent Assembly. Maduro's move was regarded by the opposition as an attempted coup and resulted in a further escalation of tensions and numerous casualties. The election to the new legislative body took place on Sunday but their results are not recognized by most countries in the region. Sputnik NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address China-India Border Crisis is Unfolding at 'Most Unfavorable Time' for Beijing Sputnik News 17:42 02.08.2017(updated 17:45 02.08.2017) India should withdraw its troops from Chinese territory if it does not want war, according to a Chinese Defense Ministry spokesman. His statement came amid the ongoing border standoff between Beijing and New Delhi in the region known as "Doklam" in India and "Donglang" in China. "If you don't want war, go away from Chinese territory", Senior Colonel of the Chinese Ministry of National Defense Zhou Bo said during a China Global Television Network (CGTN) debate show on Tuesday. His words, which were addressed to Ashok Mehta, a former Major General of the Indian Army, reflect the escalating border conflict between Beijing and New Delhi in the region known as "Doklam" in India and "Donglang" in China. Answering the Indian colleague's words that the Doklam area remains disputed territory, Zhou Bo said that "Bhutan participated in 24 rounds of talks and never questioned that this was an essential part of China." Chinese President Xi Jinping, for his part, stressed that although Beijing always stands for peace and dialogue, it will not allow anyone to take away even a small plot of Chinese territory. In early June, Chinese workers began to build a highway through the Doklam plateau, which triggered a protest from Bhutan. A few days later, Indian servicemen, with whom Bhutan had friendly relations, crossed the state border and after a short skirmish drove the Chinese military from the area. CGTN, in turn, claimed that "the China-India border dispute broke out when Indian border troops illegally crossed the Sikkim sector of the China-India boundary and entered Chinese territory on June 18." Commenting on the issue in an interview with Sputnik, Russian military expert Vasily Kashin said that the Chinese-Indian border standoff "came at the most unfavorable time, especially from the point of view of Beijing." Citing the upcoming 19th Congress of the Communist Party of China and a BRICS summit due to be held in China's Xiamen, Kashin said that "the Chinese leaders now cannot afford to look weak", which is why they made a spate of stern statements on the matter. "Given the political situation in China, one can hardly assume that Beijing deliberately provoked the current aggravation of the situation. Perhaps Beijing thought that by dealing with the construction in the disputed area, it did nothing illegal. On the other hand, the Indian side could see Chinese actions as offensive and aggressive," Kashin added. He recalled that "India is concerned about China's growing South Asian clout" and that "Bhutan has special relations with India which stipulate India being responsible for Bhutan's security and foreign relations." Additionally, New Delhi is alarmed about the growth of economic and military and technical cooperation between China, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka, according to Kashin. "Further intensification of competition is out of line with the parties' interests. China, with all its attempts to expand its influence in South Asia, cannot afford to alienate India by sending it toward a closer partnership with the US in the security sphere," Kashin said. He warned that "if an irreversible deterioration in relations occurs, China will complicate India's strategic position thanks to a more powerful army and a military and industrial complex as well as control over Tibet." "The possible deployment of additional Chinese troops on a permanent basis in Tibet may prompt India to take extremely costly and burdensome retaliatory measures, and even these steps are unlikely to add to India's security," Kashin pointed out. He also drew attention to the fact that "a number of third-party players are now interested in escalating the current border disputes between India and China." In this vein, he recalled that on July 16, false news about a Chinese missile attack on an Indian border checkpoint post was published in the Pakistani media and social networks. "In the current situation, it would be extremely important for India and China to reach a compromise on the issue. A stiff struggle for influence on minor regional countries does not meet the interests of either side. Such a struggle would hurt increasingly important Sino-Indian economic ties and may eventually turn into a military confrontation," Kashin concluded. Sputnik NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Afghanistan: UN condemns killing of civilians in Herat mosque attack 2 August 2017 United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and the UN political mission in Afghanistan have denounced last night's attack against worshippers gathered in a mosque in the city of Herat which killed at least 31 civilians and injured many more. "The Secretary-General strongly condemns the attack," said his spokesman, Stephane Dujarric, in a statement issued overnight. "Attacks that deliberately target civilians are clear violations of fundamental human rights and international humanitarian law," he added. The UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) joined in the condemnation of the attack at the Jawadia mosque. According to the Mission, two attackers entered the Shia mosque during the evening prayer time when several hundred worshipers were present, opening fire and detonating two suicide improvised explosive devices against the congregation. "This attack deliberately targeting civilians at prayer can have no justification whatsoever," said Tadamichi Yamamoto, the Secretary-General's Special Representative for Afghanistan. "Fanning terror and sectarian violence against a specific community is abhorrent and those responsible must be brought to account." The Secretary-General and UNAMA expressed condolences to the victims' families and wished a speedy recovery to the injured. According to UNAMA, the attack is the fifth this year targeting Shia mosques, killing a total of at least 44 civilians and injuring at least 88. Four of the attacks occurred in Herat and the other in Kabul. Islamic State-Khorasan province claimed responsibility for two of these attacks. In 2016, UNAMA recorded four separate attacks against Shia mosques and religious gatherings. Islamic State-Khorasan province claimed responsibility for two of those attacks. Yesterday's attack took place one day after the assault against the Embassy of Iraq in Kabul, where two Afghan civilians lost their lives and one was injured. The United Nations recalls international humanitarian law that prohibits deliberate attacks against civilians and civilian objects, including places of worship, as well as the cardinal principle of the inviolability of diplomatic premises. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address DR Congo: UN envoy expresses concern over arbitrary arrests, urges restraint 2 August 2017 The United Nations envoy for the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) today expressed his concern over arbitrary arrests and detentions across the country, following civil society's call for the holding of elections before year-end and their peaceful protests against delays in the publication of the electoral calendar. "I am concerned by the restrictions imposed on peaceful assembly and arrests of those who seek to express their political views, as well as by the targeting of journalists and the confiscation of their materials," said Maman Sidikou, the Secretary-General's Special Representative for the country and head of the UN stabilization mission in the country, known by its French acronym, MONUSCO. On 31 July, the UN documented over 120 arrests or detentions in Kinshasa, Goma, Lubumbashi, Beni, Butembo, Bukavu and Mbandaka. Among those detained were eight media representatives, including a journalist from radio Okapi and two members of the international press, who were released following the UN Mission's intervention. Mr. Sidikou called on the national and local authorities to fully uphold fundamental rights and freedoms as enshrined in the Constitution of the country, as well as for all political actors to refrain from any statement or action that could heighten tensions and further polarize the political landscape. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Amid 'political impasse' in Burundi, Security Council urges all parties to cease violence 2 August 2017 The United Nations Security Council today expressed "deep concern" over the political situation in Burundi including increasing numbers of refugees and reports of torture, forced disappearances and extrajudicial killings and strongly urged the Government and all parties to immediately cease and reject such violence. In a statement read out by Ambassador Amr Abdellatif Aboulatta of Egypt, which holds the Council presidency for August, the 15-nation body underscored deep concern regarding the continued worsening humanitarian situation, "marked by nearly 202,000 internally displaced persons, three million people in need and more than 416,000 Burundians seeking refuge in neighbouring countries [] resulting from the country's persisting political impasse." The Council commended the host countries for their efforts, and regional governments "to respect their international obligations relating to the status of refugees, and to ensure that their return is voluntary, based on informed decisions and in safety and dignity." It also strongly condemned all public statements inciting violence or hatred towards different groups, "including calls for forced impregnation of women and girls" and urged the Government and all parties to cease all violence and to condemn any hate speech. The Security Council stressed that the prevailing situation has "seriously undermined" the gains achieved through the 2000 Arusha Agreement, with "devastating consequences for Burundi and the region as a whole." The Council reiterated its intention to pursue targeted measures against all actors, both inside and outside of the country, who threaten the peace and security of Burundi and underlined "the utmost importance of respecting the letter and the spirit of the Arusha Agreement" that has helped to sustain a decade of peace in in the nation. "The Security Council urges the Government of Burundi to reengage with international partners, especially the United Nations, in a constructive manner based on mutual trust," the statement said. In that regard, the Council reiterated its concern over significant delays in the deployment of African Union human rights observers and military experts, noting that only 40 of the former and eight of the latter had been deployed to Burundi so far. Reaffirming the Government's primary responsibility for ensuring security in its territory and protecting its population, with respect for the rule of law, human rights and international humanitarian law, it also called on States in the region to contribute to a solution to the crisis in Burundi and to refrain from supporting the activities of armed movements in any way. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address NATO Convoy Attacked in Afghanistan, Casualties Reported By Ayaz Gul August 02, 2017 NATO's military mission confirms an attack Wednesday on its convoy in southern Afghanistan has caused casualties. "We are working to gather additional information as quickly as possible and will release more details as appropriate," the alliance said in a statement released from its headquarters in Kabul. A provincial government statement said the convoy was carrying foreign troops to the airport through the Kandahar city when a suicide car bomber struck it. It said the blast damaged one of the vehicles, but would not discuss further details. Witnesses and residents reported the powerful explosion killed and wounded people, but exact casualty toll was not known immediately. Civilians were also reportedly present in the area where the NATO convoy was attacked. The Taliban took credit for the bombing in Kandahar, a region known as the birthplace of the Islamist insurgency. A spokesman, Qari Yousaf, in a statement sent to reporters claimed the powerful blast destroyed several military vehicles and killed at least 15 personnel of the "foreign occupation forces", referring to U.S.-led NATO forces. The Taliban often issues inflated casualty tolls that later turn out to be untrue. Kandahar hosts a major American military base and shares the border with Pakistan. Meanwhile, Afghan officials said Wednesday the death toll in the overnight suicide attack on a Shi'ite mosque in the western city of Herat has risen to at least 31, including two children. More than 60 people were also wounded in the incident. Islamic State has claimed responsibility for the attack. Eyewitnesses said two armed suicide bombers carried entered the mosque during Tuesday evening prayer time and opened fire on several hundred worshipers in the main hail before blowing themselves up. The head of the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) has condemned the attack, saying deliberately targeting civilians at prayer can have no justification whatsoever. "Fanning terror and sectarian violence against a specific community is abhorrent and those responsible must be brought to account," said Tadamichi Yamamoto in a statement issue in Kabul . UNAMA says it has documented at least five attacks this year targeting Shi'ite mosques and religious gatherings in Afghanistan. IS has taken credit for plotting three of those attacks. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Voting Company Claims Venezuelan Election Turnout Was 'Manipulated' By VOA News August 02, 2017 An electronic voting technology company that tracked voting in Sunday's Venezuelan elections to overhaul the country's constitution says the turnout was "manipulated" by at least 1 million votes. "We know, without any doubt, that the turnout of the recent election for a National Constituent Assembly was manipulated," said Antonio Mugica, CEO of Smartmatic, at a Wednesday news conference in London. "We estimate the difference between the actual participation and the one announced by authorities was at least 1 million." Mugica said the discrepancy of 1 million votes was between tallies announced by the government and those counted by his company's systems. Tampering Mugica declined to say whether the tampering changed the outcome of the election, which may be challenged by the opposition-controlled National Assembly. Assembly President Julio Borges said Smartmatic's findings are "complete confirmation" of what the opposition and election analysts had suspected and added that lawmakers will ask the country's top prosecutor to investigate members of the National Election Council for potential crimes. The council did not immediately comment on the findings. The government said more than 8 million people cast ballots. The opposition, which boycotted the vote, said the turnout was much lower. Reporters in Caracas said dozens of polling places were almost deserted Sunday. Even if 8 million people did cast ballots, that would be less than half of all registered voters. Pre-election polls indicated more than 70 percent of all Venezuelans opposed the election of an assembly to rewrite the constitution. The opposition contended the vote was rigged to pack the assembly with Maduro supporters who could dissolve the opposition-controlled national assembly, and fire officials who disagree with the government. Maduro's opponents are demanding early presidential elections, which have been scheduled for 2018. U.S. President Donald Trump, meanwhile, says he is holding Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro "personally responsible" for the health and safety of two opposition leaders taken from their homes by police early Tuesday morning. "The United States condemns the actions of the Maduro dictatorship," Trump said in a statement late Tuesday. "Mr. Lopez and Mr. Ledezma are political prisoners being held illegally by the regime ...we reiterate our call for the immediate and unconditional release of all political prisoners." 'All who cherish freedom' During a visit Wednesday in Montenegro with Prime Minister Dusko Markovic, U.S. Vice President Mike Pence urged "all who cherish freedom to condemn the Maduro regime for its abuse of power and its abuse of its own people. Venezuela deserves democracy and the Venezuelan people deserve freedom." Twitter video purportedly shows intelligence agents dragging Leopoldo Lopez and Antonio Ledezma out of their homes early Tuesday morning and shoving them into cars. The two were under house arrest for previous opposition activities. The Venezuelan Supreme Court says "official intelligence sources" warned that Lopez and Ledezma were planning to flee. The court said they broke the terms of their house arrest by "political campaigning" and "making statements to the media," encouraging protests against the Maduro government. Lopez' lawyer, Juan Carlos Gutierrez, denied his client violated his house-arrest regulations. He said Lopez was only forbidden from talking about his own case. Lopez and Ledezma, both former mayors, each had posted videos urging their followers to boycott Sunday's election. Lopez previously spent three years in jail on charges of instigating violence during anti-Maduro street protests in 2014; Ledezma was convicted in 2015 on charges of plotting a coup against Maduro. The U.S. imposed sanctions against Maduro on Monday for what it called his "illegitimate" election of an assembly to rewrite the constitution. All of Maduro's assets in the United States have been frozen and Americans are forbidden from doing any business with him. Maduro says he does not care. He raged on Venezuelan television: "They don't intimidate me. The threats and sanctions of the empire don't intimidate me for a moment...Bring on more sanctions, Donald Trump." Dismissed US charges Venezuelan Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino dismissed U.S. charges that Maduro is a dictator. He said dictators do not hold elections, invoke the constitution and work for peace to avoid civil war. Jennifer McCoy, a distinguished professor at Georgia State University and former director of the Carter Center's Americas program, said some legislators who are members of Maduro's United Socialist Party have distanced themselves as a critique of Sunday's election and the government's actions. "There have been some other defections from former Chavistas who are also critical of what the government has been doing," McCoy told VOA. "If a group of dissident Chavistas grows, that provides sort of a third or a middle ground. If they united with the opposition, then that isolates the government further along with the international isolation that seems to be growing. With those two tendencies we may see eventually a willingness for real talks to begin." McCoy also said that so far the Venezuelan military has supported Maduro. The Maduro government is determined to form the 545-member constituent assembly. Details on what might be included in a new constitution are unclear. Maduro has said it is the only way to pull Venezuela out of its severe economic and social crisis and curtail political violence. The drop in global energy prices and political corruption have destroyed Venezuela's oil-rich economy. Gasoline, medicine and such basic staples as cooking oil, flour, and sugar are scarce, and many Venezuelans cross into neighboring Colombia and Brazil to buy food. Maduro has blamed the country's woes on what he calls U.S. imperialism and its supporters inside Venezuela. He has warned against intervention by the Organization of American States, saying that would surely lead to civil war. A spokesman for United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said the U.N. chief is urging Venezuelans, particularly their leaders, to make all possible efforts to de-escalate tensions, saying the "only way forward is a political solution." VOA's Alvaro Algarra in Caracas and Victor Beattie in Washington contributed to this story. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Saudi asks US judge to drop lawsuits over 9/11 attacks Iran Press TV Wed Aug 2, 2017 6:52AM Saudi Arabia has asked a US judge to dismiss the lawsuits that hold Riyadh responsible for the September 11, 2001 attacks and seek damages for the victims. Lawyers representing Saudi Arabia made the request in papers filed with Manhattan federal court on Tuesday, arguing that the plaintiffs had so far failed to generate sufficient evidence to subject the kingdom to the $100-billion lawsuits. The plaintiffs' claims are based on thousands of pages of hearsay and speculation, which are "insufficient to support the findings required for jurisdiction over Saudi Arabia," the lawyers said. Those, who had brought the lawsuits against Riyadh, had reached "grandiose conclusions" that far exaggerate the importance of "threadbare allegations and nonexistent evidence," they added. Some 3,000 people died in the 9/11 attacks, after four hijacked passenger planes were crashed into the World Trade Center in New York, the Pentagon and a Pennsylvania field. Fifteen of the 19 hijackers were from Saudi Arabia. In 25 cases, hundreds of victims' relatives and injured survivors, along with insurance companies and businesses say, the Saudi government assisted the attacks through a variety of activities in support of the al-Qaeda militant group over a number of years. James Kreindler, a lawyer representing the wrongful death claimants, said Tuesday's filing was "expected." "We have tons of allegations of what many Saudis and the country's alter ego charities did. Saudi Arabia cannot hide from the facts," he added. Additionally, the 9/11 Families and Survivors United for Justice Against Terrorism, a New Jersey-based group, said there is plenty of evidence against the Riyadh regime. "It's been almost 16 years since 9/11, and the kingdom of Saudi Arabia continues to do everything possible to duck, dodge and distract from the overwhelming evidence that their government officials and agents aided and abetted these horrific attacks," said Terry Strada, the group's national chair. In September 2015, US District Judge George Daniels tossed Saudi Arabia out as a defendant. One year later, however, the US Congress passed legislation, known as the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act (JASTA), that eliminated some defenses and enabled the 9/11 victims to reassert their claims. Strada stressed that by passing the law, the US Congress made clear that the 9/11 families and survivors "deserve their day in court and all of the Saudi's high-priced lawyers, lobbyists and foreign agents in the world aren't going to stop us." NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Adopting new resolution, UN Security Council moves to thwart terrorists' access to weapons 2 August 2017 The United Nations Security Council today unanimously adopted a resolution aimed at preventing terrorists from acquiring weapons, particularly small arms and light weapons, the "destabilizing accumulation and misuse" of which the 15-member body said "continue to pose threats to international peace and security and cause significant loss of life." The Council "strongly condemned" the continued flow of weapons, military equipment, unmanned aircraft systems (UASs) and their components, and improvised explosive device (IED) components to and between the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL/Da'esh), Al-Qaida, their affiliates, and associated groups, illegal armed groups and criminals. UN Member States were encouraged to prevent and disrupt procurement networks for weapons, systems and components between and among such groups and entities. Member States were specifically urged to ensure the ability to take appropriate legal actions against those who are knowingly engaged in providing terrorists with weapons and to ensure proper physical security and management for stockpiles of small arms and light weapons. It also encouraged the implementation of marking and tracing procedures of small arms and light weapons to improve traceability of such weapons which could be provided to terrorists through illicit trafficking. UN Member States were also urged to strengthen their judicial, law enforcement and border-control capacities, and develop their capabilities to investigate arms-trafficking networks in order to address the link between transnational organized crime and terrorism. The Council also called on all States to consider becoming party to the related international and regional instruments, with a view to help eliminate the supply of weapons to terrorists, and to fully implement their respective obligations under those to which they are a party. Before the adoption of the text, three leading UN officials involved in counter-terrorism, briefed the Council on the complex efforts being undertaken by multiple agencies and committees to fulfil the Organization's promise to take an "all-of-UN" approach to tackle terrorism and prevent terrorists from acquiring weapons. Jehangir Khan, the Officer-in-Charge of the newly created UN Counter-Terrorism Office, told Council members that "the spectre of terrorists acquiring lethal technologies and new weapons, including weapons of mass destruction, poses a serious threat to international peace and security." Welcoming the consideration of the resolution before the Council today, he said "this initiative goes to the heart of the Secretary-General's efforts to make prevention the core mission of the United Nations." For his part, the Deputy Director of the UN Security Council Counter-Terrorism Committee Executive Directorate (CTED), Weixiong Chen, explained how the resolution would add further tasks to CTED's mandate. Citing a wide range of vulnerabilities in the mechanism to prevent terrorists' access to weapons, he stressed the need for further efforts, such as reviewing and strengthening national legislation on countering the supply and trafficking of weapons to terrorists and preventing the flow of weapons to conflict-affected regions and conflict zones. "Preventing and eliminating the supply of weapons to terrorists is a complex task," he said. "But please rest assured that CTED will continue to strengthen its engagement with its UN and international and regional partners, in accordance with the relevant Council resolutions, to assist Member States to deny terrorists access to weapons." Speaking via video-teleconference from Vienna, Austria, Yury Fedotov, the Executive Director of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), stressed the importance of cross-border partnerships. He cited many challenges with preventing, detecting, investigating and successfully prosecuting illicit trafficking in weapons, including inadequate regulatory environments and data collection; lack of specialized skills and equipment; and lack of coordination within and between countries and regions. "Looking ahead, we need to further strengthen cross-border partnerships and operational responses, promote the involvement of diverse stakeholders, including the private sector, and step up tailored assistance to address gaps in capacity," he said. UNODC remains fully engaged in providing comprehensive support through its integrated country, regional and global programmes and network of field offices, in coordination with UN partners as well as partners such as the International Criminal Police Organization (INTERPOL). Emmanuel Roux, Special Representative of INTERPOL to the United Nations, also delivered a statement on behalf of the body's Secretary-General, Jurgen Stock. Mr. Roux highlighted the importance of tracing weapons back to their sources. "Traditionally, investigations would end at this point, with the seizure of a firearm. INTERPOL suggests that the recovery of a weapon is just the beginning," he explained, stressing the need to strengthen and integrate border management to prevent the mobility of the individuals using weapons, such as foreign terrorist fighters. "The capabilities I have described hold enormous potential in assisting law enforcement officers to prevent terrorist access to weapons," he said, asking delegations to reach back to their respective capitals and national security services, to "inquire whether this potential is being maximized, at a time of unprecedented threat." NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Dongfeng-26 can strike large moving targets within 4,000 kilometers: expert People's Daily Online By Fang Tian (People's Daily Online) 10:53, August 02, 2017 Dongfeng-26 (DF-26), a ballistic missile with medium to long range, led the armament formations of the Rocket Force's parade debut to mark the 90th anniversary of the People's Liberation Army (PLA). The missile can strike large moving targets within 4,000 kilometers, a military expert told the Global Times. Five models of China's homemade conventional and nuclear missiles, including the DF-26, the DF-21D, the short-range DF-16, and two intercontinental missiles, were shown at the parade held on July 30. The sequence of the formations was based on assessed military threats and real combat simulations, Yang Chengjun, a Chinese missile expert and quantum defense scientist, told the Global Times. DF-26 is China's only missile fitted with nuclear and conventional warheads, and it can preciously strike medium-to-long range targets, providing deterrence and counterattack capabilities. It is of great importance in modern warfare because it can strike large-sized static targets on land and even moving targets on water as far as 4,000 kilometers, Yang said. The DF-21D land-based anti-ship ballistic missile, described as the "carrier killer," followed the DF-26. The missile can sink a carrier and is difficult to intercept. It is also of strategic importance, Yang said, adding that the improved DF-16 missile has even greater range and better precision. Two DF-31A intercontinental missiles ended the Rocket Force's parade. The improved DF-31A is more adaptive and suitable for combat in complex terrain and future wars, the expert said. This is the debut of the newly formed Rocket Force in China's grand military parade. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Chinese naval fleet arrives in Helsinki after joint drill with Russia People's Daily Online (Xinhua) 13:26, August 02, 2017 A Chinese naval flotilla arrived in Helsinki, Finland early Tuesday after finishing its mission in the joint maneuvor with the Russian military in the Baltic Sea last week. The formation, comprising missile destroyer Hefei, missile frigate Yuncheng and supply vessel Luomahu, was the first Chinese fleet that ever sailed to the region for a military exercise. The Russia-China joint drill aimed to carry out rescue missions and safeguard maritime economic activities. It was the first phase of "Joint Sea 2017", which will also witness similar exercises in the Sea of Japan and Okhotsk later this year. More than 500 Chinese living in Finland gathered at the harbor to greet the warships. Commander of the fleet Rear Admiral Yu Manjiang delivered a short speech to the audience. He said he hoped the three-day visit will broaden the exchanges and enhance the cooperation with the Finnish army. After the speech, the greeting people had a chance to get on board missile frigate Yuncheng and communicate with the officers and sailors. The ship will be open to the Finnish public on Wednesday. Finnish Defense Minister Jussi Niinisto said the Chinese navy is welcome to Finland. "We have friendly relations with China, and we do this kind of cooperation," he told Xinhua at a reception celebrating the 90th birthday of the Chinese Liberation Army. Commenting on the Chinese effort to continue reducing the size of military staff, Niinisto said it is a good and friendly gesture to the world. He said Chinese army is still an impressive power, and "we want to have good relationship with the Chinese army." Niinisto visited China in 2016, and hosted a visit by Chinese Defense Minister Chang Wanquan in 2015. "It is very useful for both of us to visit regulary because in that we learned more about each other," Niinisto said. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address China Adds Monster Supply Ship to Burgeoning Fleet Sputnik News 02:42 02.08.2017(updated 09:44 02.08.2017) The fast-growing Chinese Navy commissioned its largest resupply vessel in history into service this week. Observers noted the vessel in Zhanjiang on Monday wearing the call number 965 evidence that it has entered service, the South China Morning Post reports. It is twice as large as previous supply vessel variants. Larger ships like the Type 901 comprise a "core" factor in carrier strike groups, Rear Admiral Yin Zhuo told SCMP. Type 901 will carry oil, weapons and basic living necessities to support other ships in the People's Liberation Army Navy. IHS Jane's notes that hoses on the ship's sides could be used to refuel aircraft carriers. China's Liaoning aircraft carrier finally came online last year and the Type 001, a Chinese-made aircraft carrier, was completed in April of this year. Plans are being drafted for a domestically-produced next-generation carrier as well. Other analysts are calling for China to increase its portfolio of foreign ports, arguing that the support ships can only go so far in assisting long-range naval operations. "No matter how big the supply vessels are, they are still small compared to harbour cities," defense expert Ni Lexiong told the Hong Kong news outlet, adding, "the vessels can only provide support for a limited amount of time." In any event, the speed with which the Chinese navy has grown in recent months and years has been jaw-dropping, according to naval historians. Singapore-based fellow Richard Bitzinger of the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies said that while it is not possible to know precisely how much Beijing spends on its navy, "simply extrapolating from the quantity and the quality of things that are coming out of their shipyards, it's pretty amazing." The UK-based Royal United Services Institute's Peter Roberts published a report in February in which their experts said "it is hard to recall growth at a similar pace in any navy across history" and that "Beijing is slowly pulling ahead." On Tuesday, China formally opened its first foreign military base in Djibouti to contribute to anti-piracy operations off the Somali coast and help ensure the safe passage of commercial vessels through the strategic waterway. By comparison, the US Navy operates overseas bases in Spain, South Korea, Kuwait, Japan, Italy, Greece, Djibouti, Cuba, Bahrain, the Bahamas and the island of Diego Garcia in the British Indian Ocean Territory. Sputnik NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address US Secretary of State to North Korea: 'We are Not Your Enemy' By Steve Herman August 01, 2017 America's top envoy is sending a message to North Korea that "we are not your enemy," while the White House continues to assert that all options remain on the table to halt Pyongyang's ballistic missile and nuclear weapons programs. During a rare appearance at a State Department media briefing Tuesday, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said the United States does not "seek regime change, we do not seek a collapse of the regime, we do not seek an accelerated reunification of the peninsula, we do not seek an excuse to send our military north of the 38th Parallel." Despite what Tillerson termed North Korea's "unacceptable threat" to the U.S., "we hope that at some point they will begin to understand that and we would like to sit and have a dialogue with them." Patience in growing thin, however, among some U.S. lawmakers. Senator Lindsay Graham, a Republican member of the armed services committee, told reporters on Tuesday that "a war with North Korea would be devastating to the region, but it may be the only way to stop their missile program." Earlier in the day, appearing on NBC's Today show, Graham said President Donald Trump told him "there will be a war with North Korea over their missile program if they continue trying to hit America with an ICBM" and "if thousands die, they're going to die over there." White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders was asked about Graham's comments and initially said "all options are on the table." Sanders was then specifically asked whether "destroying the country, like Lindsay Graham says, is an option?" She replied: "That's not what I'm saying," adding that the president "has been very outspoken about the need to stop North Korea. We've been very focused on stopping the nuclear program, stopping the missiles, stopping the aggression." 'False sense of urgency' However, the talk of the possibility of a first military strike on North Korea is alarming to some analysts. "It would also result in millions of casualties and trillions of dollars in economic damage, perhaps triggering a worldwide depression," said Joel Wit, Senior Fellow at the US-Korea Institute at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. "Given those consequences, we have to seriously ask ourselves: Have we exhausted all possible options for dealing with the North including dialogue and diplomacy? The answer is no," Wit tells VOA. Mansfield Foundation President and CEO Frank Jannuzi agrees, stating "the idea that they can't be deterred is fueled by the assumption that North Korea is crazy, which they are not. They are rational actors." If eliminating Kim Jong Un's regime is the goal, that might require full-scale war, according to Georgetown University Adjunct Assistant Professor Balbina Hwang, who warns that Graham and others sharing his view likely have not considered the consequences. "And I doubt anyone in the Trump administration is remotely ready, at this time, to pursue any such a course of action," Hwang told VOA. On Monday, Trump uttered assurances during the start of his Cabinet meeting that the threat from North Korea will be taken care of. "We'll handle North Korea. We're going to be able to handle them. It will be handled. We handle everything," Trump said. "This is a classic example of false sense of urgency. It's how we got into the Iraq war," Jannuzi told VOA. "For the last 11 years, the North Koreans have had a nuclear weapon and could have put it on a freighter and sailed it into Long Beach [California] harbor." Looking to China Days earlier, Trump expressed disappointment on social media that Chinese President Xi Jinping, whom he hosted three months earlier, had not been able to pressure North Korea into stopping the missile tests. Tillerson on Tuesday said he does not blame the Chinese for the situation in North Korea, and the U.S. would continue to seek Chinese help in achieving dialogue with Pyongyang. Mixed messages from Washington to the North Korean capital are nothing new, according to Hwang, who previously served as a senior special adviser on North Korea at the State Department. Hwang says every U.S. administration, going back to the Clinton era, "has struggled with contradictory stances on how to deal with North Korea," each pursuing policies that seem to work at cross purposes, such as imposing sanctions while holding dialogue. "The willingness to pursue diplomatic approaches is not inconsistent with maintaining the position that military force remains an option," Hwang added. North Korea last Friday test-fired its second intercontinental ballistic missile within a month. Analysts say the missile, which flew for approximately 45 minutes and reached an altitude of about 3,700 kilometers, demonstrated Pyongyang's capability to strike numerous major U.S. cities. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address U.S. not blaming China for Korean Peninsula nuclear issue: Tillerson People's Daily Online (Xinhua) 13:43, August 02, 2017 U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said Tuesday that the United States does not blame China for the Korean Peninsula nuclear conundrum. Speaking here at a briefing, Tillerson said that to achieve the goal of denuclearization on the Korean Peninsula, the United States seeks to "partner with China," and that the United States doesn't blame the Chinese for the situation on the Korean Peninsula. But days ago, Trump baselessly linked in his latest tweets the U.S. trade deficit with China to the situation on the Korean Peninsula, saying, "I am very disappointed in China. Our foolish past leaders have allowed them to make hundreds of billions of dollars a year in trade, yet they do NOTHING for us with North Korea, just talk." Tillerson also said that the United States would like to have a dialogue with the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) at some point. "We are not your enemy ... but you are presenting an unacceptable threat to us, and we have to respond," said Tillerson. "We hope that at some point they will begin to understand that and we would like to sit and have a dialogue with them." Tillerson also reiterated that the United States seeks neither a "regime change" nor "collapse of the regime" in the DPRK. "We do not seek an accelerated reunification of the peninsula," Tillerson said. "We do not seek an excuse to send our military north of the 38th Parallel." Tillerson's remarks came days after the DPRK launched its second intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) in a month. The DPRK on Saturday confirmed the test-firing of a second ICBM simulating its maximum range, which it said can cover all the territories of the United States. "The second test-fire of the ICBM Hwasong-14 was successfully carried out at night of July 28, 2017, under the supervision of (DPRK top leader) Kim Jong Un, who guided the test-fire on the spot," the Korean Central News Agency said in a report. The missile traveled about 1,000 km before splashing down into the sea, said Pentagon spokesman Jeff Davis in an early statement. This is the second time for the DPRK to have successfully launched its ICBMs, the first being launched on July 4. China has always called for negotiated solutions to the nuclear issue on the Korean Peninsula. Liu Jieyi, China's permanent representative to the UN, said on Monday that China is firmly opposed to any violation of the UN Security Council (UNSC) resolutions, including nuclear tests and ballistic missile tests by the DPRK. China has been urging the DPRK and other relevant countries not to exacerbate the situation on the Korean Peninsula by avoiding words and actions that could escalate regional tensions, which run counter to the objectives sought by the UNSC. China has been working with Russia to put forth a road map for achieving regional peace and the UNSC's objectives, the Chinese ambassador told a press conference at the United Nations. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Crashes Cripple Indian Already Inadequate Fighter Jet Strength Over Last 3 Years Sputnik News 15:57 02.08.2017 Already short of more than 200 fighter jets from the required strength, the Indian defense ministry revelation that 37 fighter jet and helicopters were lost in accidents have further clouded the capability of Indian armed forces to tackle a hypothetical two-front attack by China and Pakistan. New Delhi (Sputnik) The Indian defense ministry revelation comes in the backdrop of the standoff between India and China in the Doklam plateau of Bhutan. A few days ago, the Indian Air Force (IAF) chief Air Chief Marshal BS Dhanoa had said in an interview that the IAF does not have the required fighter jets to fight a full-spectrum war. "37 fighters and defense aircraft have crashed during the last three years in which 55 people were killed," Subhash Bhamre, India's Minister of State for Defense told the Rajya Sabha, the upper house of Indian Parliament. Bhamre provided details of the accidents where IAF lost 24 planes and five helicopters in the last three years. Last year, a parliamentary panel report said that the IAF is now operating at its lowest combat strength in more than a decade. It is down to 33 squadrons (comprising 16-18 planes each) against a mandated 42 squadrons needed for simultaneous and collusive two-front war scenario with Pakistan and China. "The main reasons for these accidents were human error and technical defect," Bhamre said. In the absence of suitable replacement of aging MiG aircraft, the IAF is continuing with 11 squadrons of MiG-21 and MiG-27 aircraft which are scheduled to retire by 2024 on completion of their total technical life. The government says that decision to phase out aging aircraft including helicopters would only be taken in the backdrop of national security/strategic objectives and operational requirements of the defense forces. "Indian Air Force (IAF) had upgraded MiG-21 and MiG-27 aircraft as a part of obsolescence management so that they remain relevant and contemporary. MiG-29 aircraft are also being upgraded in a phased manner. These mid-life upgrades enable the aircraft to improve combat potential and operational capability," Bhamre said in Parliament. The IAF expects relief from 2019 when state-owned Hindustan Aeronautics Limited is expected to produce 16 Tejas per year at its factory. Sputnik NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Republic of Iraq - Follow-On Technical Support (FOTS) for U.S. Origin Navy Vessels and a Ship Repair Facility Media/Public Contact: pm-cpa@state.gov Transmittal No: 17-29 WASHINGTON, Aug. 1, 2017 -- The State Department has made a determination approving a possible Foreign Military Sale to the Republic of Iraq for Follow-On Technical Support (FOTS) for U.S. origin Navy vessels and a ship repair facility. The estimated cost is $150 million. The Defense Security Cooperation Agency delivered the required certification notifying Congress of this possible sale today. The Government of Iraq has requested a possible sale of Follow-On Technical Support (FOTS) for various U.S.-origin Navy vessels and a ship repair facility in Iraq to include procurement of spare and repair parts, support and test equipment, publications and technical documentation, personnel training equipment, engineering and logistics support services, and other related elements of logistics and program support. The estimated total program value is $150 million. The proposed sale will contribute to the foreign policy and national security of the United States by helping to provide for a stable, sovereign, and democratic Iraq, capable of combating terrorism and protecting its people and sovereignty. Iraq intends to use this maintenance support to ensure the Navy is fully-operationally capable of providing coastal defense and security. The various vessels to be supported are: patrol boats, offshore support vessels, fast assault boats, and Rigid Hull Inflatable Boats. The proposed sale of Follow-On Technical Support will increase the Iraq Navy's material and operational readiness. Iraq will have no difficulty absorbing this support into its armed forces. The proposed sale of this support will not alter the basic military balance in the region. The prime contractor will be Swiftships, LLC, Morgan City, LA. There are no known offset agreements proposed in connection with this potential sale. Implementation of this proposed sale will require annual trips to Iraq and in-country presence involving U.S. Government and contractor representatives for technical reviews, support and oversight for approximately three years. There will be no adverse impact on U.S. defense readiness as a result of this proposed sale. This notice of a potential sale is required by law and does not mean the sale has been concluded. All questions regarding this proposed Foreign Military Sale should be directed to the State Department's Bureau of Political Military Affairs, Office of Congressional and Public Affairs, pm-cpa@state.gov. -30- NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address 253,000 civilians have returned to Mosul, Iraqi minister says Iran Press TV Wed Aug 2, 2017 3:3PM Iraqi Minister of Displacement and Migration Jassim Mohammed al-Jaaf says more than 250,000 internally displaced persons have returned to their homes in Mosul after government forces, backed by allied fighters from the Popular Mobilization Units, retook the strategic northern city from Daesh terrorists last month. Jaaf said on Wednesday that the number has reached 253,000, stressing that his ministry is working on the faster return of displaced families to their hometowns, English-language online newspaper Iraqi News reported. On July 10, Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi formally declared victory over Daesh extremists in Mosul, which served as the terrorists' main urban stronghold in the conflict-ridden Arab country. Mosul's liberation came on the heels of sweeping gains against Daesh made by Iraqi army soldiers and volunteer fighters from the Popular Mobilization Units, commonly known by the Arabic name Hashd al-Sha'abi. The Iraqi forces took control of eastern Mosul in January after 100 days of fighting, and launched the battle in the west on February 19. An estimated 862,000 people had initially been displaced from Mosul due to the liberation operation. Daesh holding over 4,000 families as human shields in Anbar town Meanwhile, a member of the Anbar provincial council says members of the Takfiri Daesh terrorist group are holding thousands of people as human shields in the troubled western town of al-Qa'im, located nearly 400 kilometers northwest of the capital Baghdad, and near the Syrian border. Hamid al-Dulaimi told Arabic-language news website BasNews that more than 4,000 families are being held in the city and not allowed to leave their homes. Dulaimi added that Daesh Takfiris have fatally shot, decapitated and torched tens of civilians in Qa'im over allegations of spying for Iraqi troops or collaboration with tribal fighters. Chief of Daesh's terror training camps slain in Tal Afar Separately, the director of Daesh's terror training camps has been killed in the city of Tal Afar, located 63 kilometers west of Mosul, when Iraqi fighter jets struck his vehicle in the western suburbs of the city. A local source, requesting anonymity, said a high-profile Daesh militant commander was also killed in the airstrike. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Iraqi Forces Launch Operation to Liberate Tal Afar From Daesh Sputnik News 18:26 02.08.2017 Military forces of Iraq began operation against the Daesh terrorist group in order to retake the city of Tal Afar in the northwestern part of the country and have already liberated 18 villages in the region, according to the chief of staff of the defense ministry of Iraq's autonomous Kurdish region. MOSCOW (Sputnik) Military forces of Iraq launched an operation against the Daesh terrorist group in order to retake the city of Tal Afar in the northwestern part of the country, the chief of staff of the defense ministry of Iraq's autonomous Kurdish region said Wednesday. "The operation began yesterday Around 18 villages near Tal Afar have already been liberated as announced by the commanders of federal government forces," Chief of Staff for Iraqi Kurdistan's Peshmerga Ministry Jabar Yawar was quoted as saying by Kurdish television channel Rudaw. Nearly 100 tanks and armored vehicles full of soldiers have been stationed near the Badush area, 40 kilometers (25 miles) from Tal Afar, as part of preparations to retake the city, Rudaw television channel reported, citing an officer in the Iraqi army. A total of 40,000 soldiers will be involved in the operation to liberate Tal Afar. The city is mostly inhabited by Turkmen, 75 percent of whom are Sunni Muslims. In late 2016, Iraqi Prime Minister Haider Abadi said that the Iranian-backed Shiite Hashd al-Shaabi forces would not enter Tal Afar, however, according to the television channel, they also take part in the operation to secure the perimeters of the city. Tal Afar, located 50 kilometers from Mosul, fell under the control of the Islamic State terrorist group in mid-2014. On July 26, Abadi pledged to liberate Tal Afar from the Islamic State. Sputnik NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Over 250,000 Refugees Returned Home Since Start of Operation in Iraq's Mosul Sputnik News 15:06 02.08.2017 The number of people, who returned to their areas of inhabitancy in the Nineveh province since the start of the operation on Mosul liberation amounts to 253,300, according to the Iraqi Ministry of Displacement and Migration. MOSCOW (Sputnik) More than 250,000 refugees have returned to their homes in the northern Iraqi province of Nineveh since the start of the military operation aimed at liberating Mosul from the Daesh terror group, the country's Ministry of Displacement and Migration said Wednesday in a statement. "The number of people, who returned to their areas of inhabitancy in the Nineveh province since the start of the operation on its liberation amounts to 253,300 The total number of refugees from the province amounts to 952,621 people," the statement said. According to Minister of Displacement and Migration Mohammed Jaaf, a total of 34,902 refugees from the Nineveh province returned home in July. Jaaf added that at the same time 68,000 people had left cities controlled by the Islamists. The Daesh terrorist group took over Mosul, the second largest Iraqi city, in June 2014. The operation aimed at liberating the city from terrorists began in October 2016. On July 9, Iraqi Prime Minister Haider Abadi officially announced that Iraqi security forces had finally liberated Mosul after months of fighting against the Daesh. Sputnik NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Nawaz Sharif achievements for Pakistan during his tenure as PM IRNA - Islamic Republic News Agency By: IRNA bureau in Islamabad Islamabad, Aug 2, IRNA -- Former Pakistani PM Nawaz Sharif despite his disqualification by the Supreme Court, has had some achievements during his four years tenure and his party will continue with the same policies and try to complete the half done projects by 2018 elections. Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz with Nawaz Sharif as Prime Minister came into power after winning the election of 2013 with a huge majority. This was the third time Nawaz Sharif became Prime Minister of Pakistan. He served until July 28, 2107 when Supreme Court of Pakistan disqualified him to hold any public office. The PML-N government with Shahid Khaqan Abbasi as new Prime Minister in office has still one year to complete its parliamentary term. Although Nawaz Sharif is not the prime minister any more, his party PML-N will remain as the ruling party and the newly elected PM Shahid Khaqan Abbasi is also from the ruling party. When PML-N came into power, Pakistan was facing acute power shortage with long hours of load shedding across Pakistan. Nawaz Sharif after assuming the office immediately started different energy projects to overcome the power crisis. After four years of the PML-N, many power projects have been completed and some are in final stages and are expected to be completed next year before general elections in the country. Though Pakistan is still facing power shortage but the hours of load shedding have been reduced considerably. Pakistan and Qatar signed a multi-billion dollar liquefied natural gas (LNG) deal in 2016. Under the $16 billion deal, Qatar will sell LNG to Pakistan for 16 years to meet domestic energy requirements. The security situation has also improved in the country during PML-N government. Four years back Pakistan was facing extreme form of terrorism with attacks almost every week in different cities of the country. Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif gave special attention to the security and with successful anti terrorism policy people are feeling much more secure. Pakistan and China signed ChinaPakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) on 2013 but the project has seen progress in the tenure of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif. CPEC is a collection of infrastructure projects that are currently under construction throughout Pakistan. Originally valued at $46 billion, the value of CPEC projects is now worth $ 62 billion. CPEC is intended to rapidly modernize Pakistani infrastructure and strengthen its economy by the construction of some modern transportation networks, numerous energy projects, and special economic zones. The government of PML-N initiated different road projects across Pakistan. Many projects have already been completed whereas some are expected to be completed next year. Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif has also tried his best to develop strong ties with neighboring states. Despite efforts there are still some problems in foreign policy, but the PML-N as the ruling party with Shahid Khaqan Abbasi as Prime Minister is expected to overcome the problems and also complete the half done projects. PML-N even after the disqualification of former Prime Minister Nawaz Shairf is still in a good position to win the next general elections in the country. 272**1723**1771 NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Pakistani Taliban Chases Jihadi Pack With New Women's Magazine Frud Bezhan August 02, 2017 A new push by one of Pakistan's most notorious militant groups to attract female fighters looks like an effort to keep up with Islamic State (IS) and other extremists who have used such appeals to bolster their ranks with women and spread propaganda, close observers of the militants' strategies say. On August 1, the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), also known as the Pakistani Taliban, released the first edition of a magazine tailored for women called Sunnat E Khaula, or The Way Of Khaula, a reference to a female follower of the Prophet Muhammad. "The Pakistani Taliban is trying to draw on disaffected, educated Muslim women," says Omar Waraich, a Pakistani journalist. "IS has targeted that demographic very effectively." The TTP has previously issued publications in Urdu and English to attract new recruits, but the new 45-page magazine marks the first time it has tailored its message to women. The militant group says the latest publication is intended to "provoke women of Islam to come forward and join the ranks of [the holy warriors] of Islam." The TTP and IS, like other radical Islamist groups preaching violent jihad, vie for new recruits and influence in Pakistan and beyond, in some cases employing sophisticated digital and Internet strategies. IS militants have persuaded hundreds of Muslim women and converts to join the Sunni extremist group in Syria and Iraq, where their tasks include performing domestic work and giving birth to a new generation of fighters. Women have also fought on the battlefield as the last line of defense. IS has routinely abducted and raped women in areas where it has gained control since coming to international prominence in 2014 and declaring itself a global caliphate. New Tool In A 'Bag Of Tricks' Tore Hamming, a researcher on militant Islam, says the TTP has taken notice of IS's ability to attract both single women and married women who have joined their husbands already fighting on the battlefield. Hamming says the TTP's magazine for women is a continuation of the current trend among extremist groups. "Jihadi outfits have in recent years focused a lot on expanding their media and two important issues have been publications in several languages and addressing different target groups, including women." The TTP's publication has shed light on the radicalization and recruitment of women in Pakistan, a deeply conservative and religious country that has been a hotbed of militancy. Marvi Sirmed, a Pakistani political commentator, says the appeals to women in the South Asian country have increased in recent years, particularly in universities. She says Pakistani extremist groups initially succeeded in bringing more women into the fold through propaganda campaigns spread via Facebook groups and Telegram channels. "Initiating a special publication is also part of the same drive, further intensifying it," she says. "They need an active workforce consisting of women to attack soft targets. This publication may be one tool out of their large bag of tricks to lure more women to join their cause as an active force on the ground." Sirmed says recruiting women can be particularly effective in spreading extremist ideology because of the influence women enjoy within the family. The TTP, which seeks to overthrow the Pakistani government, has been weakened by infighting and an offensive by the Pakistani military that drove some of its fighters from their bases in the country's lawless tribal areas. And observers say the group and others like it are on the lookout for new recruits. Despite its apparently diminishing capabilities, factions of the group have still claimed responsibility for a series of deadly assaults in Pakistan, including an attack on a market last month in the city of Lahore that killed 26 people. In 2014, the group attacked a military-run school in the country's northwest that killed over 140 people, mostly students. Advice For Female Militants In the TTP's magazine, there is a purported interview with the unnamed wife of the group's leader, Mullah Fazlullah. She says she married him when she was 14 years old. She bemoans that Pakistan, which translates from Persian as "land of the holy," has not been able to "implement the law of God." She also criticizes a recent Pakistani law against child marriages, saying it was a "crime" to outlaw the practice. The magazine includes an advice column for would-be female fighters. "Organize secret gatherings at home and invite like-minded jihadi sisters," the column says. "Distribute literature reflecting on the obligation of jihad. Arrange physical training classes for sisters. Learn how to operate simple weapons. Learn the use of grenades." The magazine also includes a column, titled My Journey From Ignorance To Guidance, purportedly written by a Pakistani female doctor who describes her decision to spurn her Western education and embrace radical Islam. Source: https://www.rferl.org/a/pakistani-taliban-womens-magazine -islamic-state-recruitment/28655271.html Copyright (c) 2017. RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Washington DC 20036. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Trump signs sanctions bill targeting Russia, Iran, North Korea Iran Press TV Wed Aug 2, 2017 2:44PM US President Donald Trump has reluctantly signed into law a bill by Congress that imposes new sanctions against Russia, Iran and North Korea, according to the White House. Trump had signed the bill behind closed doors and away from the cameras, two White House sources said Wednesday. In signing it, Trump avoided the humiliating prospect of Congress overriding his veto, the White House sources said. The president had privately opposed the measures and his aides had lobbied against them. Congress passed the new sanctions package last week against Russia, Iran and North Korea. The bill imposes tough additional sanctions on Russia over Moscow's alleged meddling in last year's US presidential election and Crimea's reunification with Russia in 2014. Trump's reluctance to sign the bill was clearly evident in a signing statement, in which he called the legislation "significantly flawed" with "unconstitutional provisions." "While I favor tough measures to punish and deter aggressive and destabilizing behavior by Iran, North Korea, and Russia, this legislation is significantly flawed," he said in the statement. "In its haste to pass this legislation, the Congress included a number of clearly unconstitutional provisions," he said. The president said he would "honor" some of the legislation's provisions, but declined to say it would be fully implemented. The legislation targets the Russian energy sector, allowing the US to sanction companies involved in developing Russian oil pipelines, and placing restrictions on some Russian arms exporters. It also conspicuously limits Trump's ability to waive the penalties, a sign of mistrust by the Republican controlled Congress which remains concerned by Trump's friendly words for President Vladimir Putin. Putin ordered some 755 US diplomats to leave the country after Congress passed the bill. Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov warned Sunday that more retaliatory moves would come if the bill was signed into law. The bill also includes new sanctions on Iran over its ballistic missile program and "continued support for terrorism." The anti-Iran sanctions come following two sets of sanctions that were rolled out in February and May by the US Treasury Department over Iran's missile program. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Tillerson says Trump not 'very happy' with new Russia sanctions bill Iran Press TV Wed Aug 2, 2017 2:39PM US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson says President Donald Trump is not happy with the new package of Congressional sanctions against Russia, particularly because they may hinder efforts to improve ties between the two countries. "The action by the Congress to put these sanctions in place and the way they did, neither the president nor I were very happy about that," Tillerson told reporters Tuesday in the State Department briefing room. "We were clear that we didn't think it was going to be helpful to our efforts, but that's the decision they made. They made it in a very overwhelming way. I think the president accepts that." Tillerson's remarks were in contrast with those of Vice President Mike Pence, who said the bill showed Trump and Congress speaking "with a unified voice." Tillerson added that Trump will most likely sign the bill adding however that Washington will nevertheless try to restore relations with Moscow. In July, the US Congress passed a bill targeting various Russian industries including mining, defense, and shipping industries, among others. The bill needs to be signed by the president before going into effect. In return, Moscow has demanded that the US cut the number of its diplomatic staff in Russia to 455 by September 1, and halt their usage of summer houses and embassy storage facilities in Moscow by August 1. In case of Russia's response to the US sanctions, Tillerson said any leader would take symmetrical action in response to such a move. "In terms of their response to that action, I think it's important to recognize that any leader of any country has their whole population watching them as well. And (President Vladimir) Putin has his population in Russia watching him. I think the fact that they felt the need to take symmetrical action, and that's the way they view it is that they were delayed in taking this action," he added. The top American diplomat noted that he understands why Russia is taking retaliatory measures now, even though it's a response to a decision made under Barack Obama's presidency. Meanwhile, Russia says it is getting contradictory statements from the US over the newly approved sanctions by Congress. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said it is important that the US president is thinking about the current situation and prospects for bilateral relations, but his intention to sign the sanctions bill into law contradicts the building of ties. On Friday, the US House of Representatives and Senate approved a package of sanctions on Moscow for its alleged role in the US 2016 presidential election and the annexation of Crimea. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address First Deputy Economic Development and Trade Minister of Ukraine Maksym Nefyodov has denied information that he is among members of the board of Cypriot Sintal Agriculture Public Limited. "Today I learnt (thanks to an anonymous finder of dirty laundry) that I still mentioned on the website of the Cypriot unified public register as a member of the board of directors of one Cypriot company Sintal Agriculture Public Limited, which will be soon suspended by court," Nefyodov wrote on his Facebook page on Wednesday. He said that he was a member of the board of this company when he worked in IconPE investment fund. The fund was a minority shareholder in this company. "I as a head of the fund had a post in the board of directors of the parent Cypriot structure since 2011. This is non-reimbursable and non-leadership post," he said. He recalled that the company became bankrupt. The official intends to ask explanations from the Agency on Corruption Prevention (NACP) how to act in this situation. "Before my resignation from the fund and the transition to the Economic Development and Trade Ministry I wrote a resignation letter, which should be accepted automatically. I have no idea why this did not happen. Perhaps, the majority owners of the company simply abandoned and did not pay to the secretaries who register these changes," he said. Kremlin denies Reuters report estimating rise in casualties in Syria Iran Press TV Wed Aug 2, 2017 2:24PM Russia has dismissed as a "myth" a report by Reuters about a rise in the number of Russian military casualties in Syria this year. Reuters recently claimed that at least 40 Russian soldiers and private contractors had been killed in Russia's campaign in Syria so far this year, saying, "the country's involvement deepens". According to the Reuters report, which is said to be based on accounts from families and friends of the dead and local officials, the figure over the first seven months of this year shows "a significant rise in the rate of battlefield losses" as it estimated that some 36 Russian armed personnel and contractors were killed in Syria over the previous 15 months. Russia's Defense Ministry said 10 servicemen had been killed fighting in Syria so far this year. Moscow also announced that 23 other servicemen had lost their lives in the Arab country in 15 months spanning from 2015 to 2016. "This is not the first time that Reuters is attempting to discredit by any means Russia's operation aiming to destroy ISIL [Daesh] terrorists and return peace to Syria," Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov said in a statement on Wednesday. He said the Russian military was focused on delivering humanitarian aid and negotiating peace in Syria. The spokesman also rejected information about the presence of Russian private military contractors in Syria as "a myth". The Kremlin also denied any connection of the state to Russian private citizens fighting alongside the Syrian army. "If there are Russian citizens in Syria as volunteers and so on, they have nothing to do with the state," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Wednesday. Since 2015, Russia has been conducting cruise missile strikes and aerial attacks against terrorist positions in Syria at a request from the Syrian government. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Trump Signs New Sanctions On Russia, Iran, North Korea; Calls Measure 'Significantly Flawed' Mike Eckel August 02, 2017 WASHINGTON -- U.S. President Donald Trump has signed into law new legislation imposing further sanctions on Russia, Iran, and North Korea but called the bill "significantly flawed" and signaled that he might not fully implement the sanctions. The legislation was passed by both houses of Congress last month, with sizable majorities that ensured lawmakers could override any potential veto by Trump. With strong bipartisan support, the measure amounted to a muscular assertion of Congress's foreign policy powers and a rebuke of Trump's repeated calls for a more conciliatory approach toward Moscow, in particular. In a statement accompanying his signature of the legislation on August 2, Trump said it was "significantly flawed" and would hinder his administration's ability to negotiate with foreign adversaries. "My administration will give careful and respectful consideration to the preferences expressed by the Congress in these various provisions and will implement them in a manner consistent with the president's constitutional authority to conduct foreign relations," he said in a statement released by the White House. "My administration particularly expects the Congress to refrain from using this flawed bill to hinder our significant work with European allies to resolve the conflict in Ukraine and from using it to hinder our efforts to address any unintended consequences it may have for American businesses, our friends, and our allies," he said. And in a second statement also released by the White House, Trump explained further his reasoning behind signing the bill, saying he was doing it "for the sake of national unity." "It represents the will of the American people to see Russia take steps to improve relations with the United States. We hope there will be cooperation between our two countries on major global issues so that these sanctions will no longer be necessary," he said. "I built a truly great company worth many billions of dollars. That is a big part of the reason I was elected. As president, I can make far better deals with foreign countries than Congress," Trump said. The law cements into place an array of sanctions imposed on Russia by Trump's predecessor, Barack Obama, for Moscow's alleged meddling in the 2016 presidential election, the annexation of Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula, and its support for separatists fighting Ukrainian government forces in eastern Ukraine. Among other things, the measure targets Russian energy firms with new financial sanctions, something that several U.S. allies in Europe had spoken out strongly against. Several German companies in particular have said they could be penalized for working on a pipeline being built under the Baltic Sea to bring Russian gas directly to Germany. U.S. lawmakers modified the bill after initial complaints by European leaders but Germany's conomics minister urged the European Union to fight back against the new sanctions by the United States. In Moscow, Russian officials had repeatedly warned against enacting the new measures. On July 30, Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered that Washington must cut its staff at its U.S. diplomatic mission in Russia by 755 personnel. Speaking shortly after Trump signed the bill, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said additional retaliatory measures from Moscow would not be taken immediately. "This de facto changes nothing. There's nothing new," he was quoted by Russian news agencies as saying. "We've already taken retaliatory measures." The Russian response escalated tensions in relations that already have been damaged by Russia's aggression in Ukraine, its role in the war in Syria, and its alleged interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. The new law also imposes tough new sanctions on Iran and North Korea over their missile programs, as well as for human rights abuses by Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, one of Iran's most powerful military and security organizations. Iran on August 1 formally complained to the United Nations about the legislation, accusing the United States of violating its commitments under a nuclear agreement reached with six world powers With reporting by Reuters, AP, and AFP Source: https://www.rferl.org/a/trump-signs-russia- sanctions-bill/28655189.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 Moscow Rejects Reuters Report On Syrian Casualties August 02, 2017 Russia is disputing a report by the Reuters news agency that shows higher Russian casualties in Syria than has been officially reported. While the Russian Defense Ministry claims 10 Russian servicemen have been killed in Syria since January 1, Reuters reports that an investigation by its correspondents, which was made public on August 2, shows at least 40 Russian troops and contract soldiers have lost their lives in Syria in 2017. Reuters said it based its count on testimony from families and friends of the dead and local officials in Russia, many of whom said they were told by Russian authorities not to talk about those killed in Syria. But the Defense Ministry in Moscow rejected the Reuters report. "This is not the first time that Reuters is attempting to discredit, by any means, Russia's operation aiming to destroy Islamic State terrorists and the return of peace to Syria," ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov said in an August 2 statement. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Russia has nothing to do with Russian volunteers fighting in Syria. "If there are Russian citizens in Syria as volunteers and so on, they have nothing to do with the state," Peskov said Russia's involvement in the conflict on the side of the Syrian government is being praised in Russia as part of President Vladimir Putin's "successful foreign policy" ahead of next March's presidential election that many expect him to win. Russian military losses that occur during special operations in peacetime are classified, according to a decree signed by Putin in 2015, just four months before Russia launched its operations in Syria fighting with Syrian troops against opposition forces and Islamist fighters. Discrepancies in the data may be explained partially by the fact that Russia does not acknowledge that private contractors fight alongside the army. Reuters says that, of the 40 allegedly killed, 21 were private contractors and 17 were soldiers. The status of the remaining two people is unclear. Peskov defended the Defense Ministry's data on Russian losses in Syria. "The information comes from the Defense Ministry, it is official and one to base [reports] upon," he said, mentioning as well that there might be "volunteers" from Russia in Syria. "If there are some Russian citizens in Syria acting as volunteers or something like that then they are not under the state's auspices and therefore the Defense Ministry has nothing to do with them," Peskov said. Based on reporting by Reuters and TASS Source: https://www.rferl.org/a/moscow-rejects-reuters- syria-casualties/28654934.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 Russian PM Medvedev on New Sanctions: 'US Declares Full-Fledged Trade War' Sputnik News 21:39 02.08.2017(updated 22:35 02.08.2017) Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said on Wednesday that the United States declared a full-fledged trade war by introducing new anti-Russia sanctions, adding that there is no chance that the relations between the two states will improve. "The signing by the US President of a new sanctions law against Russia creates several consequences: firstly, the hope of improving our relations with the new US administration is dead. Secondly, US declared a fully-fledged trade war on Russia. Thirdly, the Trump administration demonstrated complete impotence by humiliatingly transferring executive powers to the Congress, which changes the balance of power in US political circles," Medvedev wrote in his Facebook blog. Medvedev predicted that the sanctions will be in force for decades to come, causing tensions between Moscow and Washington. The prime minister stressed that Trump has been completely overplayed by the US establishment, predicting that the US president will be ousted. President Donald Trump has signed a bill to slap new sanctions on Russia, Iran and North Korea on Wednesday morning. He signed the bill on Wednesday morning, without holding an official signing ceremony as he has done with other major pieces of legislation, according to media reports. The sanctions target Russia's defense, intelligence, mining, shipping and railway industries and restricts dealings with Russian banks and energy companies. The law also limits the US president's ability to ease any sanctions on Russia by requiring Congress' approval to lift any restrictions. For instance, Trump would now need Congress' permission to reverse measures imposed by his predecessor Barack Obama. He would also need lawmakers' approval to return Russian diplomatic properties that were seized under the previous administration. Sputnik NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Russian Base in Abkhazia Unaffected by Ammunition Blast - Defense Ministry Sputnik News 19:51 02.08.2017(updated 19:56 02.08.2017) The personnel and facilities at the Russian military base in Abkhazia were not affected by an explosion at an ammunition depot of the Abkhazian Defense Ministry on Wednesday, spokesman for Russia's Southern Military District Col. Vadim Astafyev said. MOSCOW (Sputnik) According to the Russian embassy in Abkhazia, about 20 people were injured in an explosion at an ammunition depot in the village of Primorskoye. "As a result of the explosion at the ammunition depot of the Ministry of Defense of Abkhazia in the Gudauta district, the personnel and military facilities of the Russian military base have not been affected," Astafyev said. "At present, the command of the Russian military base has organized interaction with the republic's Defense Ministry to eliminate the consequences of the crisis situation and provide assistance to the victims," the official added. The breakaway republics of South Ossetia and Abkhazia declared independence from Georgia in the early 1990s. In August 2008, Georgia launched a military offensive against South Ossetia. Trying to protect local residents, many of whom held Russian citizenship, Russia sent troops to South Ossetia and engaged in a five-day war with Georgia. As a result, Russia managed to expel Georgian troops from the region and recognized the independence of both Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Tbilisi does not recognize the republics' independence and considers them part of Georgia. Sputnik NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Trump Voices Concerns Over Russia Sanctions Law as He Signs Bill Sputnik News 18:33 02.08.2017 President Donald Trump is adding a statement expressing concerns over the bill to sanction Russia, Iran and North Korea that he signed into law on Wednesday morning, according to media reports. WASHINGTON (Sputnik) Trump's statement says the US administration will execute the law, but is concerned over the constitutionality of some of its provisions, including the fact that it encroaches on presidential authority, Bloomberg reported. Trump signed the bill into law on Wednesday morning, a white House official told RIA Novosti. The US president also fears that the newly signed law could harm US companies and businesses, as well as international US allies, according to the report. Trump's statement also says the law limits the flexibility of his administration to cooperate with allies in dealing with Russia, Bloomberg reported. The legislation, which has now become US law with Trump's signature, punishes Russia for its alleged interference in the 2016 election as well as military activities in Ukraine, Crimea and Syria. The sanctions target Russia's defense, intelligence, mining, shipping and railway industries and restricts dealings with Russian banks and energy companies. The law also limits the US president's ability to ease any sanctions on Russia by requiring Congress' approval to lift any restrictions. For instance, Trump would now need Congress' permission to reverse measures imposed by his predecessor Barack Obama. He would also need lawmakers' approval to return Russian diplomatic properties that were seized under the previous administration. The law also imposes punitive measures against Iran over the country's ballistic weapons program, detention of US citizens, human rights abuses and terrorist activities across the Middle East and North Africa. In addition, it targets North Korea over its ballistic missile tests and human rights abuses. Russia has repeatedly refuted US allegations it has interfered in the US election, calling them absurd and intended to deflect public attention from actual, revealed election fraud in the United States as well as other public concerns. Moscow has also rejected claims that it interfered in Ukraine's internal affairs and pointed out that Crimea rejoined Russia via a popular referendum in which the vast majority of residents chose that course of action. Moreover, Russia has pointed out that it has acted in Syria on the invitation of the country's legitimate government of President Bashar Assad. The United States' military activities in Syria have been undertaken without the approval of the UN security Council or the Syrian government. Sputnik NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address President Trump Signs Anti-Russian Sanctions Into Law Sputnik News 17:39 02.08.2017(updated 17:56 02.08.2017) US President Donald Trump has signed a new batch of sanctions into law which are directed against Russia, Iran and North Korea. President Donald Trump has signed a bill to slap new sanctions on Russia, Iran and North Korea, a White House official confirmed to RIA Novosti on Wednesday. Trump signed the bill on Wednesday morning, without holding an official signing ceremony as he has done with other major pieces of legislation, according to media reports. The legislation, which has now become US law with Trump's signature, punishes Russia for its alleged interference in the 2016 election as well as military activities in Ukraine, Crimea and Syria. The sanctions target Russia's defense, intelligence, mining, shipping and railway industries and restricts dealings with Russian banks and energy companies. The law also limits the US president's ability to ease any sanctions on Russia by requiring Congress' approval to lift any restrictions. For instance, Trump would now need Congress' permission to reverse measures imposed by his predecessor Barack Obama. He would also need lawmakers' approval to return Russian diplomatic properties that were seized under the previous administration. The law also imposes punitive measures against Iran over the country's ballistic weapons program, detention of US citizens, human rights abuses and terrorist activities across the Middle East and North Africa. In addition, it targets North Korea over its ballistic missile tests and human rights abuses. Russia has repeatedly refuted US allegations it has interfered in the US election, calling them absurd and intended to deflect public attention from actual, revealed election fraud in the United States as well as other public concerns. Moscow has also refuted claims it interfered in Ukraine's internal affairs and pointed out that Crimea rejoined Russia via a popular referendum in which the vast majority of residents chose that course of action. Moreover, Russia has pointed out that it has acted in Syria on the invitation of the country's legitimate government of President Bashar Assad. The United States' military activities in Syria have been undertaken without the approval of the UN security Council or the Syrian government. Sputnik NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Trump Signs Russia Sanctions Bill Into Law By Steve Herman August 02, 2017 U.S. President Donald Trump has signed a sanctions bill he declared is "significantly flawed" with "clearly unconstitutional provisions." The bill, with penalties aimed at Moscow for its interference in last year's U.S. election, imposes fresh sanctions on Russia, as well as Iran and North Korea. It also limits the president's authority to lift the punishments. "By limiting the Executive's flexibility, this bill makes it harder for the United States to strike good deals for the American people, and will drive China, Russia, and North Korea much closer together," Trump said in one of a pair of statements issued Wednesday by the White House. "Despite its problems I am signing the bill for the sake of national unity," added the president. "Since this bill was first introduced, I have expressed my concerns to Congress about the many ways it improperly encroaches on Executive power, disadvantages American companies, and hurts the interests of our European allies." The legislation gained near-unanimous approval in both houses of Congress, which would have allowed lawmakers to easily override any presidential veto of the bill. House Minority leader Nancy Pelosi says majority Republicans lawmakers "must not permit the Trump White House to wriggle out of its duty to impose these sanctions for Russia's brazen assault on our democracy." One Republican senator, Lindsey Graham, told CNN that the signing with no fanfare, absent the typical audience of reporters and cameras, "reinforces the narrative the Trump administration is not really serious about pushing back on Russia. And I think that is a mistake, too, because Putin will see this as a sign of weakness." Before the president signed the bill the Russian government took retaliatory action, seizing two American diplomat properties and ordering the U.S. embassy and consulates to cut overall staff by 755 people, which would mostly be Russian nationals employed by the U.S. government. About the law The law sets new restrictions on U.S. companies working with Russian gas and oil companies and codifies sanctions imposed by former President Barack Obama for Russia's election meddling, including the closure of two compounds in the U.S. used by Russian diplomats. After the signing, Russia's new U.N. Ambassador, Vassily Nebenzia, said the bill was passed after a "host of absurd accusations about Russia." He said it is a strange sort of encouragement for Russian cooperation with the United States. He said Russia "will not relent on finding ways and means to cooperate with our partners, including the United States," not because of the bill but because it "is in the interest of the international community, the U.S. and Russia." He added he believes it is "harming our relations inevitably, but we will be working in conditions that exist in the hope that it will turn one day." Trump has been largely dismissive of numerous investigations in Washington into the Russian meddling and accusations his aides colluded with Moscow, calling them a "witch hunt" and an excuse by Democrats to explain his upset win over his Democratic challenger, Hillary Clinton. Several congressional investigations are underway, as is a probe being conducted by Special Counsel Robert Mueller, a former director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Pence reassures Balkan allies Trump's approval of the sanctions came as Vice President Mike Pence told Western Balkan leaders their future "is in the West," calling Russia "an unpredictable country" that has worked to destabilize the region. Pence, in a show of support for U.S. allies alarmed by Russia's 2014 annexation of Ukraine's Crimean peninsula and its backing of the separatists' rebellion in eastern Ukraine, said the United States wants "a constructive relationship" with Moscow. But he said the U.S. will only lift sanctions against Russia when it reverses course and ends its "destabilizing activities." While Pence cited Russian actions in Europe, he did not mention the U.S. intelligence community's conclusion that Russian President Vladimir Putin personally directed a campaign to help Trump win the U.S. presidency. The bill Trump signed Wednesday was also characterized in one of the presidential statements as sending "a clear message to Iran and North Korea that the American people will not tolerate their dangerous and destabilizing behavior. America will continue to work closely with our friends and allies to check those countries' malignant activities." UN correspondent Margaret Besheer and reporter Ken Bredemeier contributed to this report NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address US-led coalition air raids kill 9 civilians in Syrian city Iran Press TV Wed Aug 2, 2017 6:25PM A pro-opposition monitoring group says at least nine civilians have been killed in airstrikes by the US-led coalition purportedly fighting the Takfiri Daesh terrorist group in Syria. The so-called Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said on Wednesday that the air raids hit the Albu Saraya alley in the Old City of Raqqah. The report said tens of civilians were also injured. The coalition has been conducting airstrikes against what are said to be Daesh positions inside Syria since September 2014, without any authorization from the Damascus government or a UN mandate. The alliance led by Washington has repeatedly been accused of targeting and killing civilians. It has also been largely incapable of fulfilling its declared aim of destroying Daesh. On Tuesday, at least 60 civilians lost their lives in similar strikes in Dayr al-Zawr province. Syria's official SANA news agency reported on Wednesday that Damascus had asked the UN Security Council to hold accountable the United States and members of the international coalition for the death of civilians. In two letters addressed to UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres and the president of the Security Council, the Syrian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Expatriates complained that the coalition targeted civilians and the country's infrastructure, referring to the Tuesday attacks. The ministry added that the coalition hits those who fight terrorism. Separately, the observatory said the Daesh terrorists had chemical weapons in their possession in the areas that are still under their control in Raqqah. The report added that terrorists planned to use the weapons when the battle over the city approached its end and the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) continued to advance in the city. Daesh captured Raqqah in July 2014 and declared the city its stronghold in Syria. The SDF forces have retaken more than half of Raqqah from Daesh over the past eight weeks, the observatory said. Syria has been fighting different foreign-sponsored militant and terrorist groups since March 2011. UN Special Envoy for Syria Staffan de Mistura estimated last August that more than 400,000 people had been killed in the crisis until then. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Militants, families transported from Lebanon to Syria under truce deal: Report Iran Press TV Wed Aug 2, 2017 8:32AM Buses carrying some 7,800 militants and their families have reportedly left Lebanon's highlands of Arsal for Syria under a ceasefire deal reached between the Hezbollah resistance movement and terrorists operating in the region. Lebanon's National News Agency (NNA) reported that the buses headed to the Syrian town of Flita on Wednesday under the supervision of the Lebanese General Security and the army as well as the International Committee of the Red Cross. The transfer was made possible under the truce agreement struck last week between Hezbollah and the Jabhat Fateh al-Sham Takfiri terrorist group, formerly known as al-Nusra Front, which included the release of resistance prisoners and the transfer of Syria militants back home. Nusra ringleader Abu Malek al-Talli was among those sent to Syria on Wednesday, the report added. The buses had arrived in Arsal on Monday and Tuesday, but the transfer was delayed as Beirut dismissed the militants' demands. Major General Abbas Ibrahim, head of Lebanon's General Security, said the demands included the release of prisoners held in a Lebanese jail and safe passage out of the country for some people wanted by Beirut. "(The Nusra Front's) demands regarding the exchange agreement have been rejected by us and we consider them an obstacle. It was this which delayed the implementation of the second phase of the agreement," he added. The first stage of the truce deal took effect on Sunday as Hezbollah and the Jabhat Fateh al-Sham swapped the bodies of their members killed in clashes. Earlier on Wednesday, the Jabhat Fateh al-Sham set free three Hezbollah fighters in exchange for three of its militants. The ceasefire came days after Hezbollah took most of Arsal in a joint offensive with the Lebanese and Syrian armies to dislodge terrorists from the border area. Arsal was hardly hit by the spillover of the Syria crisis in 2014, when militants managed to overrun the town for a brief period. Thousands of Syrian refugees live in informal camps in Arsal after having fled the foreign-sponsored militancy in their home country. Hezbollah has played a critical role in campaigns against militants along Lebanon's border and fought for years alongside Syrian army troops against terrorists wreaking havoc in the Arab country. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address SOCAR increases drilling 35% in seven months of 2017 The drilling division of State Oil Company of the Azerbaijani Republic (SOCAR) increased drilling volume 35.3% year-on-year in January-July 2017 to 83,462 meters, SOCAR told Interfax. Production drilling accounted for 77,078 meters and exploratory drilling for 6,384 meters. Drilling totaled 9,673 meters in July, including 9,071 meters of production drilling and 602 meter of exploratory. SOCAR's drilling division put 46 new oil wells into operation in 7M including eight in July. The SOCAR drilling division increased drilling 0.8% to 105,245 meters in 2016. Turkish Supreme Military Council replaces land, air and navy commanders Iran Press TV Wed Aug 2, 2017 5:16PM Turkey's top military body has decided to replace the land, air and naval commanders of the military in the latest shake-up of the armed forces following last year's failed coup, which the Ankara government blames on US-based cleric Fethullah Gulen. During a Supreme Military Council (YAS) meeting chaired by Prime Minister Binali Yildirim at Cankaya Palace in the capital Ankara on Wednesday, it was decided to replace Land Forces Commander General Salih Zeki Colak, naval chief Admiral Bulent Bostanoglu and Air Force Commander General Abidin Unal. Incumbent commander of the Gendarmerie and former deputy chief of staff, General Yasar Guler, was appointed as the army commander, while Vice Admiral Adnan Ozbal replaced Bostanoglu. General Hasan Kucukakyuz was appointed as the new Air Force commander as well. The decisions made during the YAS meeting were presented to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan later in the day for formal approval. Turkey's official Anadolu news agency reported on July 23 that the number of generals and admirals in the Turkish military had decreased 40 percent due to the dismissals after the botched putsch. It said the number had decreased from 326 to 196 after the military coup attempt. Turkey witnessed a coup attempt on July 15, 2016, when a faction of the Turkish military declared that the government of Erdogan was no more in charge of the country. A few hours later, however, the coup was suppressed. Almost 250 people were killed and nearly 2,200 others wounded in the abortive coup. Gulen has censured the coup attempt and strongly denied any involvement in it. Turkey remains in a state of emergency since the coup, and Ankara has been engaged in suppressing the media and opposition groups, who were believed to have played a role in the failed putsch. Over 40,000 people have been arrested and more than 120,000 others sacked or suspended from a wide range of professions, including soldiers, police, teachers, and public servants, over alleged links to the failed coup. Many rights groups, including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, have denounced Ankara's heavy clampdown. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Turkey to Replace Army, Navy, Air Force Commanders By VOA News August 02, 2017 Turkey's top military body will replace its heads of the army, air force, and navy, Turkish media reported Wednesday. The heads of the three military bodies will be replaced by other high-ranking members of the military in Turkey's latest shakeup of the armed forces after last year's failed coup, according to media reports. The decision followed a Wednesday meeting of the Supreme Military Council (YAS) chaired by Prime Minister Binali Yildrim, and will go to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan for final approval later Wednesday. Commander of Turkish Land Forces Salih Zeki Colak will be replaced by the commander of the gendarmerie forces Yasar Guler. Naval commander Bulent Bostanoglu would be replaced by Adnan Ozbal, a vice-admiral, and Air Force Commander Abidin Unal will be replaced by General Hasan Kucukakyuz. YAS usually meets once a year, but it has convened three times since the failed coup attempt on July 15, 2016. The council also has shifted to give more prominence to government ministers, and meetings now are hosted by the prime minister instead of being held at military headquarters. Last year, YAS put 586 colonels into retirement and reduced the length of some officers' service. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Arming Ukraine to escalate conflict, Russia tells US Iran Press TV Wed Aug 2, 2017 7:1AM Russia has warned that a reported plan by the United States to provide Ukraine with lethal weapons will further escalate the deadly conflict in eastern Ukraine. The head of the Russian Foreign Ministry's Department for Non-Proliferation and Arms Control said the responsibility for an escalation in the conflict that would result from lethal arms supplies "would fall not only on Kiev, but on Washington as well." Mikhail Ulyanov said, "The masterminds of the plan to supply lethal weapons to Ukraine, apparently, proceed from the assumption that the situation in the east of this country isn't explosive enough already and that it's needed to add fuel to the fire." Citing American officials, The Wall Street Journal reported Monday that the US State Department and the Pentagon had prepared a plan to supply Kiev with "lethal defensive weapons" and are seeking White House approval. The Journal wrote that US military officials say the arms, including antitank missiles and other weaponry, are meant to deter "aggressive actions" by Russia. Ulyanov, the Russian official, said that "references to the fact that the talk is only about the supply of weapons of a defensive nature don't change the essence of the matter." Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov also warned about the move, saying all countries, "especially those that are looking to be part of the settlement [of the Ukrainian conflict], must avoid any sort of actions which can provoke another spike in tensions in the already difficult region." Moscow has several times warned Washington against supplying Kiev with lethal weapons. The government in Kiev has been engaged in an armed conflict with pro-Russia forces in eastern Ukraine since 2014. It has repeatedly requested more advanced weaponry from the US. The administration of former US president Barack Obama had refused to supply it with lethal weaponry and instead provided Kiev with $600 million in military assistance, including training, equipment, and advice. In September 2016, the US House of Representatives approved legislation to allow the supply of lethal "defensive" arms to Kiev. That legislation needs to be approved by the US Senate and signed by the US president to become law. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address US to test launch ICBM amid tensions over N Korea Iran Press TV Wed Aug 2, 2017 7:2AM The United States is preparing to test an unarmed intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) following recent missile tests by North Korea, according to officials. The US military will conduct the test of the Minuteman III at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California on Wednesday in what will be the fourth such test this year, the 30th Space Wing says. "The purpose of the ICBM test launch program is to validate and verify the effectiveness, readiness and accuracy of the weapon system," the Air Force Global Strike Command said in a statement on Tuesday. The missile is expected to land about 4,800 miles away in the Ronald Reagan Ballistic Missile Defense Test Site, formerly known as Kwajalein Missile Range which is located in the Marshall Islands. "The Minuteman III remains a reliable system," said Reif Kingston, director of disarmament and threat reduction policy for the ACA. "While DOD is moving forward with replacing the existing system, it has yet to make a compelling case as to why the Minuteman III force can't be reduced and the missile life extended beyond 2030." According to Air Force Capt. Michele Rollins, a spokesperson for the strike command, four test-launches are scheduled per fiscal year, but the actual schedule is created several years beforehand so that it is not related to the recent developments. However, "planning for this particular launch started a little over a year ago," Rollins said. This comes after Pyongyang's successful test of an ICBM on Friday and the previous July 3 launch of the "Hwansong-14" rocket. On Saturday, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un said the whole US mainland was now within the range of the newly-tested guided missile, an updated version of the Hwasong-14 ICBM that flew as far as 998 kilometers for some 47 minutes at a maximum altitude of 3,724.9 kilometers. In response to the tests by Pyongyang, the US flew two B-1 bombers over South Korea on Saturday and also, along with Seoul, conducted a military exercise, using surface-to-surface missiles on Friday. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Johnstown, PA, Aug. 03, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Industry leaders and elected officials are scheduled to take part in two events this month that are supporting the launch of the newly created Center for Advanced Nuclear Manufacturing (CANM). The events are designed to connect manufacturing technology providers with opportunities to participate in the nations advanced nuclear manufacturing network. As the nuclear supply, design, and construction industry ramps up its efforts to build the next generation of small modular and advanced reactors, the logistics and manufacturing challenges are being addressed in innovative ways. The latest designs for nuclear power generation offer vast benefits and solutions to address the problem of growing electricity demand from the U.S. energy grid. Planning a comprehensive and cohesive strategy is an integral part of ensuring the success of these new projects. The two upcoming events will bring together industry experts, manufacturers, scientists, engineers, nuclear futurists, and operators to explore and discuss the current state of nuclear power, from financing and policy to maintenance and operation. Tom Miller, U.S. Department of Energy, is the keynote speaker for the first event, the U.S. Nuclear Infrastructure Council (USNIC) Ready4Nuclear Suppliers Workshop, on August 23, 2017, at Sheraton Station Square in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Nearly two dozen speakers will lead sessions detailing the outlook of nuclear power generation; what nuclear reactor companies need; required certifications, capabilities, and resources; lessons learned; building a regional supply chain cluster, workforce development; export opportunities and controls; and more. This workshop will be extremely beneficial for both existing suppliers as well as companies wanting to learn more about opportunities in advanced manufacturing with regard to the nuclear power industry, said Vince Gilbert, Senior Fellow, USNIC. Presentations will include current information about requirements that are continually evolving in this industry. Another valuable component to this event will be several Speed Matching sessions, in which attendees can give a three-minute elevator pitch about their companys capabilities and interests. On August 24, 2017, Concurrent Technologies Corporation (CTC) will host the Center for Advanced Nuclear Manufacturing (CANM) Open House at its facility in Johnstown, Pennsylvania. This event will feature a ribbon cutting, exclusive tours, and an opportunity for suppliers to meet one-on-one with CTC/CANM personnel to learn how to become part of the advanced manufacturing network. U.S. Congressman Keith Rothfus (PA-12th District) will participate in the days activities. Were very excited to officially open CANM here at CTC and continue to collaborate with USNIC and other organizations in this very important venture, said Edward J. Sheehan, Jr., Concurrent Technologies Corporation President and Chief Executive Officer. We anticipate very beneficial collaborations with suppliers to advance the nuclear power generation industry. At this Open House, visitors will learn more about how their technologies can complement CTCs capabilities, which include additive manufacturing, friction stir welding, prototype development, and much more. Registration for both events is open and can be completed online: http://conta.cc/2teWA3p. Those planning to attend the CANM Open House only can submit this form: http://bit.ly/2vkQ6jS For more information, please visit the CANM webpage: http://www.ctc.com/canm/. The United States Nuclear Infrastructure Council is the leading U.S. business consortium advocate for nuclear energy and promotion of the American supply chain globally. Composed of nearly 100 companies, USNIC represents the "Who's Who" of the nuclear supply chain community, including key utility movers, technology developers, construction engineers, manufacturers, and service providers. www.usnic.org Concurrent Technologies Corporation (CTC) is an independent, nonprofit, applied scientific research and development professional services organization. Together with our affiliates, Enterprise Ventures Corporation and CTC Foundation, we leverage research, development, test and evaluation work to provide transformative, full lifecycle solutions. To best serve our clients needs, we offer the complete ability to fully design, develop, test, prototype and build. We support our clients core mission objectives with customized solutions and strive to exceed expectations. www.ctc.com. Attachments: A photo accompanying this announcement is available at http://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/df672057-5442-4ce8-908b-789e59b7e884 Attachments: A photo accompanying this announcement is available at http://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/c2630120-a0c8-4ab6-9337-4c2b17cc9eb7 Officers of the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) branch in the Zhytomyr region say they have suppressed activities of a local blogger and journalist who was allegedly preparing and disseminating materials that the special service believes were anti-Ukrainian and produced 'as directed by Russian handlers'. The journalist was updated on the scope and desirable content of the materials he should prepare by mail or via an online messaging service, the SBU press center said on Wednesday. Sometimes he was allowed to pick up a topic by himself, the SBU said. He received the money for his publications via international systems of online payments, it said. The journalist published his articles on six websites which were administered from Russia and those Ukrainian territories not controlled by Kyiv, the SBU said. The experts that studied the texts by the Zhytomyr journalist have "exposed their manipulative influence on the consciousness of readers and the fact that they incited the audience to commit specific actions to the detriment of the sovereignty and independence of the Ukrainian state", it said. SBU officers searched the blogger's home, where they seized copies of some contracts on the fabrication of articles, alongside acts of acceptance of the works in exchange for the agreed remuneration and the bank cards to which the money was transmitted, the SBU said. "The blogger-journalist was told that he is suspected of committing the crimes specified in Article 111 Part 1, Article 110 Part 2, Article 161 Part 2, and Article 258-3 Part 1 of the Ukrainian Criminal Code. The question of selecting the measure of restraint against him is under consideration. The pretrial inquiry is ongoing," the SBU said. You have permission to edit this article. Edit Close NYSE - MKT: ASM TSX-V: ASM FSE: GV6 VANCOUVER, Aug. 2, 2017 /CNW/ - Avino Silver & Gold Mines Ltd. (ASM: TSX-V, ASM: NYSEMKT, GV6: FSE, "Avino" or "the Company") is pleased to announce the consolidated financial results for the Company's second quarter ended June 30, 2017. The financial statements and the management discussion and analysis can be viewed on the Company's web site at www.avino.com, on SEDAR at www.sedar.com and on EDGAR at www.sec.gov. Effective January 1, 2017, the Company changed its presentation currency to US dollars from Canadian dollars. As a result, all dollar amounts in this news release are expressed in US dollars, unless otherwise noted. "We are pleased to have achieved another productive quarter with strong financial and operational results. Our focus continues to be our expansion plans at the Avino mine with the addition of Mill Circuit 4, as well as a planned underground drill program at the Bralorne Mine to better define the resources above and below the 800 level. We are confident that the implementation of these important plans will continue to support the Company's growth efforts. We appreciate the support and dedication of our teams in Mexico and Canada, who continue to maintain efficiencies at our operations." - David Wolfin, President, CEO & Director, Avino Silver & Gold Mines Ltd. SECOND QUARTER 2017 HIGHLIGHTS IN $USD Revenues of $7.9 million from the sale of concentrates Mine operating income of $2.5 million, which is consistent with the second quarter of 2016 Net income after taxes of $1.2 million or $0.02 per share Working capital of $17.7 million, an increase of 18% from the second quarter of 2016 Cash of $5.9 million and short term investments of $7.5 million at the end of the quarter Produced 698,174 silver equivalent ounces, including 386,002 ounces of silver, 1,954 ounces of gold and 1,113,161 pounds of copper Consolidated all-in sustaining cost ("AISC") 2 was $10.42 per payable silver equivalent ounce was $10.42 per payable silver equivalent ounce Average realized selling prices for silver and gold were US$17.09 and US$1,259 per ounce, respectively, and copper was $5,643 per tonne HIGHLIGHTS Second Quarter 2017 Second Quarter 2016 Change Operating Tonnes Milled 137,493 131,612 4% Silver Ounces Produced 386,002 380,620 1% Gold Ounces Produced 1,954 1,509 29% Copper Pounds Produced 1,133,161 1,054,935 7% Silver Equivalent Ounces1 Produced 698,174 629,780 11% Concentrate Sales and Cash Costs Silver Equivalent Ounces Sold2 542,002 626,837 -14% Cash Cost per Silver Equivalent Ounce2,3 $ 8.90 $ 9.61 -7% All-in Sustaining Cost per Silver Equivalent Ounce2,3 $ 10.42 $ 10.97 -5% Average Realized Silver Price per Ounce $ 17.09 $ 16.99 1% Average Realized Gold Price per Ounce $ 1,259 $ 1,262 -% Average Realized Copper Price per Tonne $ 5,643 $ 4,706 20% Financial Revenues $ 7,911,388 $ 9,017,929 -12% Mine Operating Income $ 2,481,779 $ 2,459,477 1% Net Income (Loss) $ 1,151,549 $ (336,748) N/A Cash $ 5,914,408 $ 8,256,627 -28% Working Capital $ 17,686,701 $ 15,041,997 18% Shareholders Earnings (Loss) per Share ("EPS") Basic $ 0.02 $ (0.01) N/A Cash Flow per Share (YTD)3 $ 0.06 $ 0.06 -% 1. For comparison purposes, the silver equivalent ratio has been calculated using metal prices of $17.26 oz Ag, $1,257 oz Au and $2.57 Lb Cu. Mill production figures have not been reconciled and are subject to adjustment with concentrate sales. Calculated figures may not add up due to rounding. Metal production is expressed in terms of silver equivalent ounces, (oz Ag Eq), the formula for which depends on the copper, gold and silver metal prices used in each period and hence are only indicative. 2. "Silver equivalent ounces sold" for the purposes of cash costs and all-in sustaining costs consists of the sum of silver ounces, gold ounces and copper tonnes sold multiplied by the ratio of the average spot gold and copper prices to the average spot silver price for the corresponding period. 3. The Company reports non-IFRS measures which include cash cost per silver equivalent ounce, all-in sustaining cash cost per ounce, and cash flow per share. These measures are widely used in the mining industry as a benchmark for performance, but do not have a standardized meaning and the calculation methods may differ from methods used by other companies with similar reported measures. Financial Results The Company generated revenues of $7.9 million during the second quarter of 2017; a 12% decrease compared to the second quarter of 2016. The decrease is a result of fewer ounces sold from the San Gonzalo mine and remaining inventory at the end of the quarter. Mine operating income was $2.5 million during the second quarter of 2017, which is consistent with the comparable quarter of 2016. During the second quarter of 2017, net income increased to $1.2 million or $0.02 per share, from a net loss of $0.3 million or a $0.01 basic and diluted per share during the corresponding period of 2016. The increase is mainly due to operational efficiencies achieved at the Avino Mine and the San Gonzalo Mine. Operational Results Silver equivalent production for the second quarter of 2017 increased by 11% to 698,174 oz1 compared to 629,780 oz1 in the second quarter of 2016. Silver production for the second quarter of 2017 increased 1% to 386,002 oz compared to 380,620 oz in the second quarter of 2016. Gold production for the second quarter of 2017 increased by 29% to 1,954 oz compared to 1,509 oz in the corresponding period of 2016. Copper production increased by 7% to 1,133,161 lbs compared to 1,054,935 lbs in the second quarter of 2016. Total mill feed processed during the second quarter of 2017 was 137,493 dry tonnes compared to 131,612 dry tonnes during the second quarter of 2016, an increase of 4%. At the Avino Mine, silver equivalent ounces1 produced during the second quarter of 2017 totalled 512,237 compared to 341,521 during the second quarter of 2016, an increase of 50%. The higher production is due to higher feed grades realized during the quarter. At the San Gonzalo Mine, silver equivalent ounces1 produced during the second quarter of 2017 totalled 185,937 representing a decrease of 35% compared to 288,259 in the second quarter of 2016 mainly due to the lower tonnage processed due to Mill Circuits 2 and 3 being used exclusively for the Avino mine material. Costs and Capital Expenditures Consolidated all-in sustaining cash costs per AgEq ounce1 during the second quarter of 2017 were $10.42 compared to $10.97 during the corresponding period of 2016, a decrease of 5%. All-in sustaining cash costs at San Gonzalo during the second quarter of 2017 were $9.99 per AgEq ounce1 compared to $10.89 during the second quarter of 2016, a decrease of 8%. All-in sustaining cash costs at Avino during the second quarter of 2017 were $10.56, compared to $11.01 during the second quarter of 2016, a decrease of 4%. Capital expenditures during the six months ended June 30, 2017, were $4,497,122 compared to $7,383,020 for the corresponding period of 2016. Capital expenditures in the current period relate to the Avino mine advancement, mining and production equipment (including Mill Circuit 4) to advance operations at the San Gonzalo, Avino, and Bralorne mines. Bralorne Mine Update At Bralorne, we continued to review strategic operating plans, and on July 10, 2017, we published a comprehensive news release outlining our plans and can be found on our website at the following link: http://www.avino.com/s/news.asp?ReportID=795059. Our new plan involves opening the mine at a higher throughput rather than our original plans to scale up the operations to reach the desired throughput level. We are currently planning an underground drill program to expand and improve confidence in our resource base which is scheduled to be followed by the construction of a new tunnel at the 800 level, large enough to accommodate the new mechanized equipment for the proposed long hole retreat mining method. In addition, the Company also received notification that funding to hold our third annual underground mining training contingent was approved. This year we are planning to hold the training in the Pemberton Valley to accommodate community members from N'Quatqua and other communities associated with the Lower St'at'imc Tribal Council. For more information please see our news release dated July 10, 2017 which is listed above. Environmental & Permitting Progress The Company's senior management and site personnel continue to work closely with the MEM and MOE, and recently met with the Chief Inspector and Deputy Chief Inspector to discuss environmental and permitting. Permitting has taken longer than expected, and is partly a result of the government taking a more rigorous approach to environmental requirements and having many projects at the permitting stage in British Columbia. Second Extension of Concentrates Prepayment Agreement with Samsung C&T The Company has further extended the concentrates prepayment agreement with Samsung C&T U.K. Ltd. ("Samsung") for one year for repayment between July 2018 and July 2019. Pursuant to a new amending agreement (the "Amendment"), Avino will sell silver concentrates on an exclusive basis to Samsung until December 31, 2021. Samsung has previously advanced to Avino the sum of US$10 million as prepayment of such concentrates, of which Avino has repaid US$1,333,332 for a net amount owing of US$8,666,668 (the "Facility"), and the Facility will be repaid with interest. This extension will allow Avino to defer the payments and repay the balance with interest by 13 monthly instalments, commencing July 2018 and ending July 2019. Other material terms of the Facility remain unchanged. Interest on the Facility is payable monthly at LIBOR plus 4.75%. The Company is pleased to take advantage of the extension of the concentrate sales agreement and revised repayment arrangement, as this ensures a steady long term contract for the sale of the Company's silver concentrates. Eagle Property Option Agreement An option agreement dated July 18, 2017 between Avino and Alexco Resource Corp. ("Alexco") has granted Alexco the right to acquire a 65% interest in 14 quartz mining leases located in the Mayo District, Yukon Territory, Canada, known as the "Eagle Property". To exercise the option, Alexco must pay Avino a total of $70,000 in instalments over 4 years, issue Avino a total of 70,000 Alexco common shares in instalments over 4 years, incur $550,000 in exploration work by the second anniversary of the option agreement date, and a further $2.2 million in exploration work on the Eagle Property by the fourth anniversary of the option agreement date. In the event that Alexco earns its 65% interest in the Eagle Property, Alexco and Avino will form a joint venture for the future exploration and development of the Eagle Property, and may contribute towards expenditures in proportion to their interests (65% Alexco / 35% Avino). If either company elects to not contribute its share of costs, then its interest will be diluted. If either company's joint venture interest is diluted to less than 10%, its interest will convert to a 5.0% net smelter returns royalty, subject to the other's right to buy-down the royalty to 2.0% for $2.5 million. The Eagle Property was previously inactive and held by Avino as a non-essential asset to its current operations. Non-IFRS Measures The financial results in this news release include references to cash flow per share, cash cost per silver equivalent ounce, and all-in sustaining cash cost per silver equivalent ounce, all of which are non-IFRS measures. Cash flow per share, cash cost per ounce, and all-in sustaining cash cost per ounce are measures developed by mining companies in an effort to provide a comparable standard of performance. However, there can be no assurance that our reporting of these non-IFRS measures is similar to that reported by other mining companies. Cash flow per share, cash cost per silver equivalent ounce, and all-in sustaining cash cost per silver equivalent ounce are measures used by the Company to manage and evaluate operating performance of the Company's mining operations, and are widely reported in the silver and gold mining industry as benchmarks for performance, but do not have standardized meanings prescribed by IFRS, and are disclosed in addition to the prescribed IFRS measures provided in the Company's financial statements and MD&A. Conference Call Avino will be holding a conference call for analysts and investors on Thursday, August 3, 2017, at 8:00 am Pacific Daylight Time (11:00 am Eastern Daylight Time). Conference Call Numbers: Toll Free Canada & USA: 1-800-319-4610 Outside of Canada & USA: 1-604-638-5340 No pass-code is necessary to participate in the conference call; participants will have the opportunity to ask questions during the Q&A portion of the call. Participants should dial in 10 minutes prior to the conference. The conference call will be recorded and the replay will be available on the Company's website within one hour following the conclusion of the call. Qualified Person(s) Avino's Mexican projects are under the supervision of Mr. Jasman Yee, P.Eng, Avino director, and Avino's Bralorne Mine project is under the supervision of Fred Sveinson, B.A., BSc, P.Eng, Avino Senior Mining Advisor. These individuals are qualified persons ("QP") within the context of National Instrument 43-101. The respective QP's have reviewed and approved all the applicable technical data in this press release. Outlook Avino is a silver and gold producer with a diversified pipeline of gold, silver and base metals properties in Mexico and Canada employing approximately 500 people. Avino produces from its wholly owned Avino and San Gonzalo Mines near Durango, Mexico, and is currently planning for future production at the Bralorne Gold Mine in British Columbia, Canada. The Company's gold and silver production remains unhedged. Avino's mission is to create shareholder value through profitable organic growth at the Avino Property and the strategic acquisition and advancement of mineral exploration and mining properties. We are committed to expanding our operations and managing all business activities in an environmentally responsible and cost-effective manner while contributing to the well-being of the communities in which we operate. The Company remains focused on the following key objectives: Maintain and improve profitable mining operations while managing operating costs and achieving efficiencies; Complete the Mill Circuit 4 expansion to increase Avino Mine production; Conduct a successful underground drill program in 2017 to increase and improve confidence in our resource base at Bralorne; Continue mine expansion drilling and explore regional targets on the Avino property; Follow the recommendations made in the 2017 PEA on the oxide tailings resource at the Avino Mine, and assess the potential for processing the oxide tailings resource. On Behalf of the Board "David Wolfin" ________________________________ David Wolfin President & CEO Avino Silver & Gold Mines Ltd. Safe Harbor Statement - This news release contains "forward-looking information" and "forward-looking statements" (together, the "forward-looking statements") within the meaning of applicable securities laws and the United States Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, including our belief as to the extent and timing of various studies including the PEA, and exploration results, the potential tonnage, grades and content of deposits, and timing, establishment, and extent of resource estimates. These forward-looking statements are made as of the date of this news release and the dates of technical reports, as applicable. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on forward-looking statements, as there can be no assurance that the future circumstances, outcomes or results anticipated in or implied by such forward-looking statements will occur or that plans, intentions or expectations upon which the forward-looking statements are based will occur. While we have based these forward-looking statements on our expectations about future events as at the date that such statements were prepared, the statements are not a guarantee that such future events will occur and are subject to risks, uncertainties, assumptions and other factors which could cause events or outcomes to differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. Such factors and assumptions include, among others, the effects of general economic conditions, the price of gold, silver and copper, changing foreign exchange rates and actions by government authorities, uncertainties associated with legal proceedings and negotiations and misjudgments in the course of preparing forward-looking information. In addition, there are known and unknown risk factors which could cause our actual results, performance or achievements to differ materially from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by the forward-looking statements. Known risk factors include risks associated with project development; the need for additional financing; operational risks associated with mining and mineral processing; fluctuations in metal prices; title matters; uncertainties and risks related to carrying on business in foreign countries; environmental liability claims and insurance; reliance on key personnel; the potential for conflicts of interest among certain of our officers, directors or promoters with certain other projects; the absence of dividends; currency fluctuations; competition; dilution; the volatility of our common share price and volume; tax consequences to U.S. investors; and other risks and uncertainties. Although we have attempted to identify important factors that could cause actual actions, events or results to differ materially from those described in forward-looking statements, there may be other factors that cause actions, events or results not to be as anticipated, estimated or intended. There can be no assurance that forward-looking statements will prove to be accurate, as actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such statements. Accordingly, readers should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements. We are under no obligation to update or alter any forward-looking statements except as required under applicable securities laws. Cautionary Note to United States Investors - The information contained herein and incorporated by reference herein has been prepared in accordance with the requirements of Canadian securities laws, which differ from the requirements of United States securities laws. In particular, the term "resource" does not equate to the term "reserve". The Securities Exchange Commission's (the "SEC") disclosure standards normally do not permit the inclusion of information concerning "measured mineral resources", "indicated mineral resources" or "inferred mineral resources" or other descriptions of the amount of mineralization in mineral deposits that do not constitute "reserves" by SEC standards, unless such information is required to be disclosed by the law of the Company's jurisdiction of incorporation or of a jurisdiction in which its securities are traded. U.S. investors should also understand that "inferred mineral resources" have a great amount of uncertainty as to their existence and great uncertainty as to their economic and legal feasibility. Disclosure of "contained ounces" is permitted disclosure under Canadian regulations; however, the SEC normally only permits issuers to report mineralization that does not constitute "reserves" by SEC standards as in place tonnage and grade without reference to unit measures. Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release. SOURCE Avino Silver & Gold Mines Ltd. Two tourists from Russia have been killed in recent explosions at an ammunition depot in Abkhazia, Abkhaz Emergency Situations Ministry spokesman Mizan Lomia told Interfax on Thursday. "Three women were taking a horse ride in the vicinity of the ammunition depot when the blasts occurred. Two women, presumably residents of St. Petersburg, were killed. Rescuers found their dead bodies in the morning. The third woman from Podolsk was found alive. She sustained a broken arm. The owners of the private hotel where they were staying have confirmed that the three women did not return to the hotel yesterday," Lomia said. VANCOUVER, British Columbia, Aug. 03, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Aben Resources Ltd. (TSX-V:ABN) (OTCBB:ABNAF) (Frankfurt:E2L2) (the "Company") is pleased to announce it has commenced its summer diamond drilling program at its 23,000 hectare Forrest Kerr Gold Property located in North Western British Columbia's Golden Triangle region. The Company intends to drill 2,100 meters (6,800 feet) with initial drill holes testing the Carcass Creek and Boundary Zones to confirm and extend the high grade gold mineralization discovered in historical drilling. Drilling conducted in the early 1990's and 2000's at these zones returned some of the highest grades on the Forrest Kerr Property and the Company feels there is the potential for the expansion of these known zones based on recent data compilation, structural geological interpretation and additional field reconnaissance work. Aben currently owns certain mineral tenures outright and has agreements in place with various third-parties whereby it has the exclusive right to a 100% interest in the large property area. Golden Triangle Claims Map: http://www.abenresources.com/i/maps/ABN_Golden_Triangle_map.jpg Historical drilling results at the Forrest Kerr Project have ranged from trace values to several high-grade intercepts such as 9.97 g/t gold over 29.3 metres, including 125 g/t Au over 0.8 metres and 91 g/t Au over 1.9 metres, in hole RG91-21 in the Carcass Creek Zone as well as 33.4 g/t gold over 11 metres, including 326 g/t over 0.5 metres, in hole RG91-16 in the Boundary Zone. This high grade mineralization is within 200 metres vertical depth from surface and the Carcass and Boundary Zones are approx. 4 kilometres apart leaving robust discovery potential along strike, at depth and at other regional targets on the property. Aben's Forrest Kerr Project Map: http://www.abenresources.com/i/maps/FK-007.jpg Field based exploration activities have been underway earlier this season at Forrest Kerr where crews completed soil geochemical sampling, ground-truthed historical data and evaluated mineralization potential on a property-wide basis. Focus was placed on those areas containing historical high-grade precious and base-metal occurrences. There are also more conceptual targets to be tested south of the Boundary Zone where there are areas of outcrop with multiple shear zones and abundant sulfides with surface samples returning gold grades ranging from trace values to 3 - 5 g/t Au. Jim Pettit, President and CEO of Aben, states: "The commencement of this first-pass drill program at our Forrest Kerr project in the prolific Golden Triangle is a milestone for the Company. Recent drill discoveries by Pretium, GT Gold, Colorado Resources and others illustrate the significant discovery upside remaining in the district and we are confident in the potential at Forrest Kerr given the known high-grade gold mineralization present there which we plan to test early in the drill program. Despite excellent drill results including 10 g/t Au over 29 metres and 33 g/t Au over 11 metres, these historical drill holes at the Carcass and Boundary Zones were drilled decades ago with limited follow up work due to limited accessibility, high drilling costs, and a less comprehensive understanding of the geology. Since then, major infrastructure improvements have been made including the Galore Creek access road on the north end of the property as well as roads and powerlines on the south end of the property where hydroelectric facilities have been built in recent years which have helped bring the drilling costs down. In addition, rapid glacial retreats over the past 25 years have exposed extensive new areas of outcrop exposure in this highly prospective region. Lastly, Aben's technical team has spent over a year analyzing and reinterpreting the historical exploration and geological data with the help of structural geologists and we feel we have a stronger understanding of the existing targets and high-grade gold mineralization at the project." Tim J. Termuende, P.Geo., a Director of Aben, commented: "Since first working in the Forrest Kerr area in 1990 as a young geologist, I have been continually impressed with the abundance of mineralization within the Golden Triangle. The project is located along the Forrest Kerr Fault which consists of a 40 km long north-south belt overlying rocks of the Hazelton and Stuhini Groups, a complex assemblage of volcanic accumulations with intervening sedimentary sequences which are host to significant gold deposits in the Golden Triangle region." *Note: Aben has not been able to independently verify the methodology and results from historical work programs within the property boundaries. However, management believes that the historical work programs have been conducted in a professional manner and the quality of data and information produced from them are relevant. In addition, management cautions that past results or discoveries on proximate land are not necessarily indicative of the results that may be achieved on the Forrest Kerr property. Cornell McDowell, P.Geo., V.P. of Exploration of Aben Resources, has reviewed and approved the technical aspects of this news release and is the Qualified Person as defined by National Instrument 43-101. About Aben Resources: Aben Resources is a Canadian gold exploration company developing projects in British Columbia's Golden Triangle, the Yukon, and Saskatchewan. The Company currently owns certain mineral tenures outright and has agreements in place with various third-parties whereby it has the exclusive right to a 100% interest in the 23,000 hectare Forrest Kerr property area. For further information on Aben Resources Ltd. (TSX-V:ABN), visit our Company's web site at www.abenresources.com. Aben Resources has approx. 46.8 million shares issued and outstanding. Aben Resources Ltd. "Jim Pettit" ____________________________ JAMES G. PETTIT President & CEO For further information contact: Aben Resources Ltd. Director, Investor Relations Telephone: 604-687-3376 Toll Free: 800-567-8181 Facsimile: 604-687-3119 Email: info@abenresources.com Neither TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release. This release includes certain statements that may be deemed to be "forward-looking statements". All statements in this release, other than statements of historical facts, that address events or developments that management of the Company expects, are forward-looking statements. Although management believes the expectations expressed in such forward-looking statements are based on reasonable assumptions, such statements are not guarantees of future performance, and actual results or developments may differ materially from those in the forward-looking statements. The Company undertakes no obligation to update these forward-looking statements if management's beliefs, estimates or opinions, or other factors, should change. Factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those in forward-looking statements, include market prices, exploration and development successes, continued availability of capital and financing, and general economic, market or business conditions. Please see the public filings of the Company at www.sedar.com for further information. An internal Justice Department posting seeking lawyers for investigations and possible litigation" relating to university affirmative action policies was a call for volunteers to work on a single complaint filed by Asian-American groups accusing Harvard University of racial bias in admissions, not a sweeping policy change, a department spokeswoman said Wednesday.The internal document, described in a New York Times report on Tuesday evening, set off a torrent of speculation and concern from many civil rights and higher education groups that the Trump administration was preparing to sue universities over their affirmative action policies.The posting sought volunteers to investigate one administrative complaint filed by a coalition of 64 Asian-American associations in May 2015 that the prior Administration left unresolved, Justice Department spokeswoman Sarah Isgur Flores said in a statement. The complaint alleges racial discrimination against Asian Americans in a universitys admissions policy and practices. Federal officials announced Tuesday that Michigan State University will receive a $14.4-million grant over four years to track children and adults exposed to lead contamination as a result of the Flint water crisis to monitor their health.In a separate development, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced its concurrence with the State of Michigan's plans to forgive $20.7 million in loans made to Flint in the past to improve its water infrastructure.Both the funding and the loan forgiveness were part of legislation approved by Congress late last year to address concerns related to Flint and the water crisis there. Lead levels in the tap water spiked after the city switched water sources and the state failed to require corrosion control treatments to keep lead from leaching out of old pipes."Forgiving Flint's past debt will better protect public health and reduce the costs associated with maintaining the city's water system," said EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt. "Forgiving the city's debt will ensure that Flint will not need to resume payments on the loan, allowing progress toward updating Flint's water system to continue."The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services made the announcement that Michigan State would receive $3.2 million for the first year's installment of the $14.4-million grant to create a registry of residents exposed to lead-contaminated water in Flint. Working with city officials, community organizations and other groups, Michigan State will address health concerns and monitor residents for adverse effects."Flint residents will benefit from having their health monitored over time and from being readily connected to services that will help reduce the health effects of lead exposure. Information collected by the registry will guide important health decisions and recommendations for the City of Flint and the State of Michigan for years to come," said Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price.Lead exposure can cause problems for adults as well as children, and no level of lead is considered safe for humans. In children, lead poisoning can hurt IQ levels and impact the ability to pay attention. The Flint registry will track registrants' data on exposure, health and childhood developmental milestones and link that information with their participation in local services."The registry will be a powerful tool to understand, measure and improve the lives of those exposed to the contaminated water," said Dr. Mona Hanna-Attisha, director of the MSU-Hurley Children's Hospital Pediatric Public Health Initiative, who will lead the registry effort. "The more people who participate in the registry, the more powerful this tool will be for Flint and for communities everywhere that continue to suffer from preventable lead exposure."Hanna-Attisha was one of the first to raise the alarm about the impact water quality could be having in Flint, producing reports that indicated lead levels in children's blood samples had spiked after the city switched water supplies in April 2014.U.S. Rep. Dan Kildee, D-Flint Township, called the lead registry "a critical step to ensuring Flint residents exposed to lead during the crisis get the health care and other resources needed to mitigate the effects of lead exposure.""I commend Dr. Mona Hanna-Attisha and her colleagues for their work and continued research through Michigan State University and the Hurley Hospital Pediatric Public Health Initiative in Flint," he said. "Their work will help Flint families and support our community's long-term recovery. After fighting so hard for these resources in Congress, I am pleased to see this lead registry become a reality."Earlier this year, the state Department of Environmental Quality reported that lead levels in Flint water tested below federal limits for action but continued to recommend that residents use filtered or bottled water for drinking or cooking as efforts to replace pipes throughout the city continued. Amid uncertainty over the future of the Affordable Care Act, California officials announced Tuesday that monthly premiums for health plans sold on the state's Obamacare exchange will rise by an average of 12.5% next year.Covered California, the state insurance marketplace, provides coverage to about 1.5 million people, the majority of whom receive subsidies that lower their premiums under the Affordable Care Act.Insurance plans for next year will be available for purchase in California from Nov. 1 to Jan 31.Next year, about 10% of people enrolled through the exchange will have to look for a new plan because Anthem Blue Cross will end its coverage in most of the state.State officials said Tuesday that Anthem will continue providing coverage only in Santa Clara County and parts of Northern California and the Central Valley.The announcement comes a week after a Republican plan to unwind key pieces of the Affordable Care Act -- also known as Obamacare -- failed in the U.S. Senate. President Trump has repeatedly urged lawmakers to keep working on a bill.Those repeal efforts, and Trump's suggestions that he will not enforce the mandate that requires all Americans to have insurance, could lower enrollment this year, experts say. Next year's premium estimates probably reflect insurers' fears that not enough people will sign up for insurance, or that only sick people will enroll and their costs will be too high, experts say."It's not like we have a steady market. In fact, we have a market that's in turmoil because of politics," said Gerald Kominski, director of the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research.Sabrina Corlette, a research professor at Georgetown University's Center on Health Insurance Reforms, said planning for the exchanges should've become more predictable this coming year -- the fifth since the exchanges were created. That's especially true in California, which has always had one of the most stable and competitive markets, she said."Instead they've had to deal with this craziness from Washington," Corlette said, "California has stepped up to the plate."Corlette said she was surprised that California's average rate increase wasn't higher than 12.5%, given that insurers across the country have said they need to raise rates by at least 20% because of the uncertain future of the law. California premiums increased 13% this year, and less than 5% the two years before that.Covered California Executive Director Peter Lee said that increases in the cost of providing care were responsible for about 7 percentage points of the state's 12.5% average rate increase. Another 3 percentage points, he said, reflected a one-time tax adjustment. But another 3 points, he said, accounts for insurers' overall unease with the ongoing debate over scrapping, or massively modifying, the Affordable Care Act.In negotiating with insurance companies this spring, Covered California put together a kind of hold-harmless agreement. That agreement, which Covered California will take to its board this month, essentially agrees to let health insurers make up losses from unexpected changes to the insurance market that may be caused this year or next by unexpected changes in the basic fundamentals of the Obamacare market.Since he took office, Trump has also threatened to end payments that insurance companies receive to hold down out-of-pocket costs for lower-income consumers.Covered California officials said Tuesday that if those payments to insurers are stopped, people who buy silver-tier plans will have to pay an extra surcharge of 12.4% of their premium on average, officials said Tuesday."A decision by the federal government is needed in the next few weeks," Lee said.While Anthem is pulling out of some regions, Oscar, Health Net and Blue Shield are moving into new areas. Lee said that 82% of consumers will still be able to choose from three or more health insurance companies, and no county will be without a plan option.According to Covered California's most recent enrollment snapshot from March, Anthem currently covers about 252,560 Obamacare customers, 61% of whom live in regions where the carrier will pull out of the market.That means 39,340 people in Los Angeles County, 19,490 in Orange County and 4,340 in San Diego County will be forced to find other options during open enrollment this fall.Those numbers do not include people who have purchased Anthem plans outside of the exchange. A Covered California spokesman said in an email that an additional 150,000 Anthem plans are estimated to be in place outside the exchange.Lee said that the overall rate increase for all shoppers would've been even lower if plans did not have to start paying a health insurance tax they'd been exempt from until now, which adds a 2.8% increase.He also pointed out that all of the 11 health insurers currently offering plans on the exchange will continue to do so next year, even if in fewer markets. The number of companies offering plans varies from seven in Los Angeles County to only two in some rural counties such as Fresno and Kings.The rate increases vary by region. They will average 7% in San Francisco County, 13% in Los Angeles and 10% in Orange County.Lee said that since the health law went into effect in 2014, the state's uninsured rate has dropped from 17% to 7%, "even in the face of huge head winds and uncertainty." U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions was in Columbus on Wednesday to announce a new effort to crack down on doctors, pharmacists and others who are profiting by improperly prescribing and selling opioids.The nation's top cop announced the creation of a data-analytics effort called the Opioid Fraud Abuse Detection Unit, which is aimed at tracking tends that might point to pill mills and other rogue prescribers. He also said he would dedicate 12 federal prosecutors -- including one in southern Ohio -- to go after them.The message to professionals who are abusing their licenses, Sessions said: "We are coming after you."He was speaking at the Columbus Police Academy to an audience of police, politicians and families that have been touched by the opioid epidemic. Sessions told them that 80 percent of opioid addictions start with prescription-drug abuse.As the opioid epidemic rages across the country, it has particularly ravaged Ohio.The Buckeye State had more than 4,100 overdose deaths in 2016, according to a Columbus Dispatch investigation that Sessions cited. Ohio has had the most overdose deaths in the United States."Ohio is at the center of this drug crisis that is gripping our entire nation. This crisis affects all of us, but it is especially taking its toll on this community," he said."We must create a culture that is hostile to drug abuse. We know this can work. It has worked in the past for drugs, but also for cigarettes and seatbelts. A campaign was mounted, it took time, and it was effective. We need to send such a clear message now."Many are worried that the famously tough-on-crime Sessions will take an outdated approach to the opioid epidemic.Steve Hawkins, president of the Coalition for Public Safety, a group that advocates sentencing reform with backing from conservative and liberal groups, said, "The opioid crisis will be best addressed by drug treatment and other intervention programs. A return to the war on drugs is not going to be the answer."And speaking before Sessions, Columbus Mayor Andrew Ginther appeared to challenge the attorney general directly."In the 1980s, we had a partisan, politicized approach to the crack-cocaine epidemic," he said, referring to the Reagan-era war on drugs. "We can't let that happen again."Before the speech, Ohio Auditor Dave Yost said it's over-simplistic to say that more treatment is the only tool to fight the opioid crisis."The claim that we can't arrest our way out of this is passe and dated," said Yost, a Republican candidate for attorney general. "We can't treat our way out of it, either."Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine praised his former Senate colleague."I am very thankful that the attorney general is prioritizing violent offenders," said DeWine, who is seeking the Republican nomination for governor.Sessions' visit to the Columbus Police Academy cames just after New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, chairman of the President's Commission on Combating Drug Addiction and the Opioid Crisis, called on the president Monday to declare a national state of emergency to fight to opioid crisis. It's not clear, however, what such a designation would mean.Sessions also is visiting as controversy swirls around him and the Trump administration. Trump last week gave a speech to New York police in which he "joked" about police brutality. Sessions appeared this week to mildly rebuke his boss."Just as I am committed to defending law enforcement who use deadly force while lawfully engaged in their work, I will also hold any officer responsible for breaking the law," Sessions said in a statement reported by the New York Times.Trump also has complained about Sessions recusing himself from a probe into the Republican's presidential campaign's involvement with Russia.The People's Justice Project and others protested the attorney general's visit. State workers will receive back pay for the time they missed during New Jersey's July government shutdown.Gov. Chris Christie on Tuesday signed the retroactive pay legislation, offering faint praise to the legislative leaders he had blamed for shuttering state parks and government offices."This bill justly reinstates the pay lost by our hardworking rank-and-file state workers who were not at fault for the three-day government closure that disrupted services and inconvenienced our citizens when the adoption of a fiscal 2018 budget stalled in the Legislature," Christie said in a statement.Both the Senate and Assembly returned from the campaign trail In July for rare summer sessions to pass the bill (S3422) restoring pay to furloughed workers. Sanctions against Russia should not undermine efforts of U.S. European allies in resolving conflict in Ukraine Trump U.S. President Donald Trump in a statement released on Wednesday called on the Congress to refrain from using the Russia sanctions law to the detriment of the U.S. and EU efforts on Ukraine settlement. "My Administration particularly expects the Congress to refrain from using this flawed bill to hinder our important work with European allies to resolve the conflict in Ukraine," Trump said in a statement. Trump appealed to the Congress not to use the law to hinder his administrations "efforts to address any unintended consequences it may have for American businesses, our friends, or our allies." U.S. Rep. Diane Black, R-Tennessee, is entering the 2018 race for governor of Tennessee, ending months of speculation and adding a deep-pocketed candidate who is widely considered a front-runner to an already-crowded Republican field.Black, a staunch conservative from Sumner County who is in her fourth term representing Tennessee's 6th Congressional District, will formally announce her candidacy in an online video to be released Wednesday.In the video, Black discusses her rise from humble beginnings while labeling herself as a conservative fighter ready to take on liberals."Most people in politics say the right things, but they never fight for the right things," Black says in the 90-second clip. "They're too meek or maybe even too weak ... I don't back down. Maybe's it's because I grew up in a family where we had nothing or maybe it's because I was a single mom working in the night-shift as a nurse. It's just how I'm wired." A federal appeals court in Manhattan agreed Thursday to postpone any retrial of former Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver on corruption charges until the Supreme Court acts on a planned petition to further review his case.The postponement, opposed by prosecutors as a delay tactic with little chance of success before the Supreme Court, likely will put off any retrial until next year, buying time for the 73-year-old former Albany power broker, who had faced a 12-year prison sentence.Last month, the Second U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reversed Silver's conviction for doing favors on behalf of a cancer researcher and developer who funneled $4 million legal referral fees to the former speaker, ruling the jury instructions were wrong and Silver was entitled to a new trial.But the Second Circuit did find there was sufficient evidence for a properly instructed jury to convict. Silver wants the Supreme Court to reconsider that finding, and bar any retrial if it concludes there was insufficient evidence.Silver lawyers Steve Molo and Joel Cohen lauded the move by the Second Circuit to hold off issuing its opinion until the Supreme Court acts, which will effectively stymie any effort by the government to get a quick retrial."The court recognized the significance of the issues we will be raising in the Supreme Court," the lawyers said. "It put a halt to the trial court proceedings to allow us to do that."A spokesman for Acting U.S. Attorney Joon Kim said, "This office still plans to retry the case as soon as possible."The Second Circuit ruled in Silver's case three weeks ago. He has at least 90 days from then to petition the Supreme Court and can seek extensions, lawyers said. Prosecutors have said the process would delay any retrial by a minimum of "several months."Citing disagreements on the law that have emerged in different federal appeals courts, Silver claims that at trial, U.S. District Judge Valerie Caproni applied the wrong standards to money laundering, bribery and extortion charges. Under the correct standard, Silver claims, the evidence was insufficient to prove all those crimes.To get the stay, he had to convince the three appeals judges who decided his case -- Jose Cabranes, Richard Wesley and William Sessions -- that his arguments raise a "substantial question" for the Supreme Court, and that there is "good cause" to hold off on a retrial.Prosecutors had argued that the Supreme Court rarely grants review in situations like Silver's, a retrial is inevitable and postponement would "delay the justice sought by the real victims of Silver's crimes, the citizens of New York." GIS 03 August 2017: Mauritius will host the third edition of the UNESCO-MERCK Africa Research Summit in November 2017. Mauritius will host the third edition of the UNESCO-MERCK Africa Research Summit in November 2017. The summit will serve as a platform for deliberation on research being undertaken to deal with and prevent cancer, as well as foster vaccine development to address infectious diseases affecting the African region. The focus of the Summit will be on The role of Scientific Research in responding to Cancer and Vaccines development - Two emerging challenges in Africa. Steve Towns is the former editor of Government Technology, and former executive editor for e.Republic Inc., publisher of GOVERNING, Government Technology, Public CIO and Emergency Management magazines. He has more than 20 years of writing and editing experience at newspapers and magazines, including more than 15 years of covering technology in the state and local government market. Steve now serves as the Deputy Chief Content Officer for e.Republic. A new survey of more than 1,200 public-sector IT officials nationwide reveals a loss of confidence as agencies grapple with issues around IT operations, but may also document an inflection point in systems modernization.The research report by Ponemon Institute, Challenges & Trends in Public Sector IT Operations: United States , which was released Wednesday, July 19 and commissioned by operational intelligence software provider Splunk, generated answers from 1,227 respondents, 18 percent of which comprised state and local governments and 73 percent of which comprised federal agencies.A majority of respondents, at 62 percent, said their confidence in their ability to manage data center upgrades had stayed the same or worsened during the past 12 months, with 36 percent of that 62 percent reporting somewhat or significantly worsening confidence levels. (Conversely, 38 percent of respondents reported confidence levels somewhat or significantly better.)The Ponemon Institute chairman said in a statement that the confidence gap maps to other industry and government technology trends including growing public scrutiny, resource limitations and increasing expectations of technology from end users.Its a challenging time to work in government IT, but there are plenty of reasons to be hopeful for the future, said Larry Ponemon, the chairman and founder, pointing out that public-sector IT leaders are looking to analytics, cloud and DevOps to boost IT performance and management.Ted Ross, the CIO for the city of Los Angeles and one of's Top 25 Doers, Dreamers & Drivers of 2017, toldthat its tech officials keep their confidence levels up by approaching modernization with both eyes open.I think its very important to level-set expectations, and so we come into this with the expectation that there will be challenges, that its difficult to move from platform to platform, and to stay abreast and to stay modern, Ross said.Samir Saini, CIO of Atlanta and another 2017 Top 25 winner, agreed change is hard for any organization, but said from an IT standpoint, from the office of the CIO, he and officials see their role as change agents overall because theyre in the center of the change.Government, I think, is particularly challenging in some aspects because generally speaking, theres a degree of risk aversion and change aversion, Saini told. Nothings perfect, but certainly if you have a leadership team thats helping support change or introducing through technology projects or any projects, it goes a whole lot better.Kevin Davis, Splunks vice president of public sector, toldthat the surveys larger point here was about what is coming to really shift, to help state and local governments modernize.Automating, leveraging machine data and learning, and breaking down silos can help agencies achieve end-to-end visibility the lack of which was an issue identified by nearly three-quarters of respondents Davis said.I do think were at a pivot point. I do think that confidence will continue to improve. I also think how we used to do IT, we will see a shift there and well really see a convergence of IT operations and security, all of this being more blended together, Davis said.Respondents werent so certain; 56 percent said IT operations and security would not converge, and 16 percent werent sure. On the other side, however, nearly one-third of those surveyed, or 28 percent, said yes.Of this 28 percent, the largest subgroup or 29 percent, said the convergence would happen in one to three years. The second largest subgroup, at 27 percent, said convergence would happen in less than one year.Ann Dunkin, the CIO of Santa Clara County, Calif., who arrived in February from her previous post as CIO of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, toldthat shes a big believer in IT security reporting to the CIO if that official is to have overall accountability for security.The county CIO also said departments can innovate and work more quickly if they move beyond earlier eras in which IT was siloed by design, to teaming development, operations and security personnel.In the mainframe data [era], it kind of worked, but it doesnt work anymore when you go fast, Dunkin said. We have to be working together so that we release the code as soon as developers are done with it, because securitys been working on it the entire time.Elsewhere, 73 percent of respondents identified their biggest risk in managing IT operations or app development as a lack of real-time, end-to-end visibility across the enterprise. In fact, 29 percent, the largest group, said better organizationwide network visibility would be the most effective way to strengthen IT operations.Agencies were narrowly divided on the question of whether their agencies are using the same data across the organization to solve multiple problems; 27 percent disagreed and 12 percent strongly disagreed, but 23 percent agreed and 13 percent strongly agreed. One-quarter, or 25 percent of respondents, were unsure.Asked how long staffers needed to restore systems to operational after their last three outages or interruptions, 32 percent the largest group said they had needed one to two days, with another 20 percent, the next largest group indicating they needed two to five days.Additionally, 71 percent said system outages or interruptions in the past year had left employees unable to do critical tasks, while 49 percent said citizen-facing or mission critical services had been unable to operate; and 41 percent said their organization had suffered reputational damage due to bad press or social media.Davis said that on average when a system was down, it required 44 hours and the work of 12.5 staff members to become operational again.I was alarmed or stunned by that number. And in addition to that, so, this makes these IT operators really be firefighters. They dont sign up to be these firefighters, he said.Ross said needing one to two days to become operational again is not something that Los Angeles would consider an acceptable baseline, noting that the city strives to minimize the impact of systems outages with 40 percent less IT staff than it had in 2009.Los Angeles, a Splunk client, according to Chief Information Security Officer Tim Lee, uses a Security Information Event Management solution to aggregate system logs from four different security operations centers into one central platform; it currently handles about 1 billion security records a day.The city also deploys Splunk for Critical Access Protection to ascertain how many attempts or attacks may target critical infrastructure or assets.Firefighting in crises, Ross said, is not a value-add activity for Los Angeles, where officials find far more return on investment by maintaining and ruggedizing systems and trying to prevent issues before they happen.Increased use of cloud and shared services ranked fifth of six areas that respondents felt would be most influential at driving greater IT efficiency in their agency, but nearly half (47 percent) of respondents indicated some or a significant increase in their operating budget for cloud during the next 12 months.Atlanta had adopted cloud to improve how IT provides core services, and to add capability and scale out, Saini said; but on the business side, it had also found agility and improved supportability in adopting solutions for permitting.In Los Angeles, Ross said he considers cloud an entirely different business model with much efficiency to be gained because its not merely a data center somewhere else, but rather a solution thats as scalable as an agency needs.That said, he echoed what officials in Seattle and elsewhere have told: that a need does still exist for physically-managed, on-premise data centers.Ponemons report also projected DevOps spending will grow significantly during the next year, with 45 percent of respondents indicating some or a significant increase.A vast majority (78 percent) indicated their agency has adopted or plans to adopt DevOps practices, with 74 percent and 71 percent, respectively, indicating the adoption focus will be for mission-critical and back-office systems.Davis said he thinks agencies ongoing efforts to leave behind legacy systems and migrate to more modern architectures such as cloud are leading to this inflection point, particularly with respect to DevOps.I do feel that it really is pointing to a shift of confidence in the future as we look at the adoption of DevOps, he said.But Ross said DevOps can be a pretty loaded statement, and applied to everything from a better connection to your infrastructure staffers to running a private cloud.As a large government, I think most large governments arent as effective as theyd like to be on the DevOps side, he said, noting the city has convened a DevOps working group to try to refine its strategy. (TNS) -- The nations hottest data center destinations including North Texas are locked in a race to add capacity as demand for secure places to store digital information soars, a new report by the commercial property firm JLL says.The top three markets are going to interchange over the next few years, said Bo Bond, managing director and co-leader of JLL's Data Center Solutions team. That will just have to do with the supply and demand imbalance.In this round? Northern Virginia maintained its No. 1 status in terms of overall inventory, the report said.But although Dallas-Fort Worth had previously rocketed to the second spot in some rankings, Chicago pulled far ahead of Big D in the first half of 2017, according to JLL.Unlike other types of commercial real estate, data center inventory is measured in raw power rather than square feet.Northern Virginia boasted 853 megawatts of inventory in the most recent JLL report, while Chicago posted 840 megawatts. D-FW came in third with 458 megawatts, followed by Northern Californias 424 megawatts.Still, Bond said D-FW had Chicago beat by a metric thats even more important than raw supply: absorption.Thats how much of that storage capacity is actually booked up by data tenants, or the companies that dont want to house giant servers for all the information they need to run their businesses.And Bond said that as more and more data center ecosystems hit their stride, its a better indicator of how well-balanced regional markets are.Northern Virginia absorbed a bit more data center capacity in the first half of 2017 than D-FW (41 megawatts, versus North Texas 27 megawatts), but that was actually a dip from its absorption over the previous year.Meanwhile, D-FWs absorption in the first half of 2017 was a 50 percent increase over the same time in 2016.The story on Dallas is we have a great demand pipeline and the ease to build, Bond said.The region also has an advantage in its lower power costs, which are the biggest expense for running vast stacks of servers, which need to be cooled.Bond said that part of the reason D-FW is, in a way, playing catch-up to other markets is that its fast-growing business base is more diverse than Chicagos, Northern Virginias or Northern Californias.Northern Virginias data center inventory has built up as government users or government-related technology companies have demanded the space.In Chicago, a concentration of financial services companies has anchored its data center market.In D-FW, the same things that are attracting corporate investment in a variety of sectors is also driving a corresponding demand for data storage.Were a mirror image ... of all the corporate relocations in many different industries, Bond said. We are a great menagerie. California's energy grid operator has brought its first Internet-based, software-defined network online as part of its mission to efficiently connect entities to the grid's management system. Dispersive Technologies Inc. is the developer and operator of the network.Humboldt Redwood Co., owner of a 28.8-megawatt biomass power plant, became the first operator to be brought online with the network.The unit will generate steam and electricity by annually burning about 250,000 bone-dry tons of wood waste from the company's sawmill and planer mill in Scotia, Calif."HRC is pleased to be the first California plant using this network," Jim Pelkey, Humboldt Redwood's chief financial officer, said in a news release. "When making the choice, we were especially impressed with the minimal ramp-up time and extensive security measures.Additionally, the support provided by Dispersive Technologies team was "excellent."The new network is being used by the California Independent System Operator (ISO) to connect capacity generation assets to its control system."Most network services used to securely transport SCADA data depend on technologies almost 20 years old," said Richard E. Harrison, president and CEO of Dispersive Technologies. "They're slow to deploy, costly to operate, limited in their flexibility to support diverse user groups, and challenging to scale. As a result, these traditional private networks and VPNs no longer represent best practices for protecting data-in-motion. Dispersive CISDN (Critical Infrastructure Software-Defined Network) addresses those problems."Christian Arechavaleta, systems integration engineer for Pacific Power Engineers, a Dispersive Technologies partner which helped install the network, anticipates more power plants will eventually convert to the network."Because Dispersive's CISDN requires only a standard broadband connection to the public Internet," he explained, "it's much easier and less expensive to install than other networks. A utility or co-generation plant can deploy it in days rather than weeks. And the network's integrated firewall protects field assets and assures highly secure communications."The Dispersive CISDN provides the California ISO with additional capability to secure direct telemetry from generating assets within its service area. The California ISO is also exploring possibilities to include metering and ICCP data streams.Techwire will track that development for potential vendor opportunities. (TNS) -- If Sustainable Systems of Colorado CEO R. Paul Williamson has his way, the Boulder-to-Firestone commute will take 10 minutes via magnetic levitation monorail. Williamson is holding an information session about his idea to run SkyTran monorail along Colo. 119 and the Diagonal Highway, then south on Foothills Parkway before ending at the Table Mesa Park-and-Ride in Boulder.SkyTran is a magnetic levitation monorail company headquartered at the NASA Research Park in Mountain View, Calif. SkyTran developed a transportation system that can run bullet-like, two-person capsules long distances in short amounts of time via a computer-controlled overhead magnetic levitation (maglev) system. In 2014, SkyTran announced an agreement with the Israeli government to build a demo system at Israel Aerospace Industries in Lod, Israel. CNN Money reported in 2015 that SkyTran was supposed to debut a pilot project in Tel Aviv by the end of that year, but The Jerusalem Post reported in 2016 that the plans "have hit setbacks."Williamson became inspired to get a SkyTran system built in the United States when he was looking at transportation options for the University of Montana.He was once dean of UM's College of Technology before he went on to direct the university's Alternative Energy Technologies program, according to articles from The Missoulian.Williamson's endeavor to bring maglev-powered elevated transportation to the university was funded in 2002 through the U.S. Department of Transportation, but the grant dried up in 2010, he said."I moved back to Colorado and I'm going, 'I can't just let this die. We can do this here,'" Williamson said.The entire journey between Boulder and Firestone would take about 10 minutes because the capsules travel 150 mph, Williamson said. The aluminum and steel construction has a small footprint on the ground, uses about 200 watts of solar power per mile and the infrastructure costs one-tenth of what light rail would cost, he said.Right now, Williamson said he is trying to secure money for his nonprofit Sustainable Systems of Colorado to fund a feasibility study for a Boulder-to-Firestone SkyTran system.The information session is on Wednesday evening at 6:30 p.m. in the Longmont Public Library conference room. Williamson said he will present about the technology and how it can benefit the area as well as accept feedback from local residents about a possible ballot initiative in the future.If people want to donate to the nonprofit at the information session, he will gladly accept it, Williamson said."If you bring your checkbook, I'll welcome you with open arms," he said. "But it's going to be more informational and we're looking for people, if given the opportunity, who would support a ballot initiative for example so we may look at that. We're also looking at funding from other agencies so we need support and local political support." The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine welcomes the signing of the historic Treaty of Friendship, Good Neighborliness and Cooperation between the Republic of Bulgaria and the Republic of Macedonia. "The signing of this important document will contribute to strengthening security, creating a climate of mutual trust and partnership in the region. The treaty is an example of the readiness of the leadership of Bulgaria and Macedonia to address important issues in a civilized way, professing European values and approaches," the website of the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry said on Wednesday. The department says that the strengthening of the Bulgarian-Macedonian relations is important for Ukraine, taking into account the traditionally friendly relations of Ukraine with Bulgaria and Macedonia, as well as the loyalty of Ukraine, Macedonia and Bulgaria to European and Euro-Atlantic integration. F1's mandatory-for-2018 'Halo' concept took a step forward in Hungary on Wednesday. Many in the paddock and beyond are railing against the dubious aesthetics and anti-F1 DNA of the cockpit protection system. "Of course you can't reject the safety argument," Renault driver Nico Hulkenberg wrote in his new column for the German broadcaster Sport1. "But must formula one be safer than it is? Should motor racing not be a little dangerous? Is that not part of the attraction and appeal for both drivers and the fans?" he asked. The argument against F1 from an aesthetical and driver visibility point of view took a knock on Wednesday when Mercedes youngster George Russell pulled out of the pits. His silver car was fitted with a Halo development whose central support - the part immediately in front of the driver's eyes - was notably thinner. FIA technical boss Laurent Mekies confirmed: "At the moment, the central support is 2cm thick, but we believe there is scope to improve the visibility for the drivers. "We will carry out tests and reduce the thickness to 16 millimetres. We will push the system to its limits." Russell said after trying the 'new' Halo: "My vision was not restricted at all by the Halo, surprisingly." (GMM) First Deputy Speaker of the Verkhovna Rada, Ukraine's representative in the humanitarian subgroup of the Trilateral Contact Group, Iryna Gerashchenko, has announced the meeting in the Normandy format (Ukraine, France, Germany, Russia) at the level of political advisers in August to discuss the preparation of the leaders' negotiations. "Now we are talking about the personal meeting in August of the political advisors to the presidents," she said in an interview with Channel 5 on Wednesday. According to Gerashchenko, the key aspects of the negotiations will be the implementation of the agreements reached by the leaders of the Normandy Four in the framework of the recent telephone conversation, in particular, the stabilization of the security situation, but also the possibility of holding a meeting at the level of the presidents. "I do not exclude that the Kremlin's game involves Germany starting election campaign scheduled for September, and the Russian Federation may try to block these personal meetings [...] It seems to me that Russia tried to put on hold the Normandy format, given elections in France, elections in Germany, as it was necessary to answer very unpleasant questions there about the security situation, about the involvement of the Russian army and weapons in this conflict," she said. Gerashchenko also said that the leaders' meeting in the Normandy format would take place sooner or later, but the sooner the better." According to her, it is also very important to achieve concrete results at the meeting. The leadership of the National Police of Ukraine and representatives of the British Embassy in Ukraine during the working meeting discussed issues and directions for further work in the fight against crime. According to the press service of the National Police of Ukraine, during a meeting held on August 2, Patrick Torkington, a public relations officer of the British anti-crime unit, said that the main areas of interest for the UK are crimes falling into the category of organized crime. During the meeting, the parties agreed on an exchange of experience. So, in the near future, representatives of the National Police of Ukraine will take a course of study in the UK, where they will be able to learn from the experience of British colleagues in the fight against organized crime. Delegation of Japanese Defense Ministry lay flowers to ATO Heroes Memorial at Cherniakhivsky Defense University The delegation of the Defense Ministry of Japan headed by Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Ro Manabe has visited the National University of Defense of Ukraine named after Cherniakhivsky in Kyiv. Foreign guests were hosted by the acting head of the university, Lieutenant-General Anatoliy Syrotenko, the press service of the Ukraine's Defense Ministry reported on Thursday. Representatives of the delegation laid wreaths and flowers to the ATO Heroes Memorial. This marks the first time Audi is using an HRC light robot in its main plant for applying adhesive in final assembly. Similar robots are already integrated into production in the body shops in Ingolstadt and Brussels as well as in engine assembly in Gyor. At Audis Ingolstadt plant, humans and robots are now working side-by-side without a protective fence in an advance in human-robot cooperation (HRC). Adhesive application with robot assistance, abbreviated from the German as KLARA (Klebstoffapplikation mit Roboter-Assistenz), provides support with the installation of roofs made of carbon fiber reinforced polymer (CFRP) in the new Audi RS 5 Coupe. KLARA provides support with the installation of large CFRP roofs in the new Audi RS 5 Coupe. The human employee triggers the application of adhesive by pressing and holding a button, and is in control of the entire procedure. Click to enlarge. As the first step, an employee places the carbonfiber reinforced polymer roof on a rotary table and tilts it. The application of adhesive is triggered by pressing and holding a button. An illuminated ring indicates when KLARA has precisely applied adhesive over a length of more than five meters. The robot then signals that the roof is ready for installation. The employee takes the roof with the aid of a handling device and installs it in the car. The CFRP roof is optional equipment in the new Audi RS 5 Coupe and is significantly larger than comparable roof systems. A person would therefore not be able to apply the adhesive as reliably and accurately as KLARA. Unlike conventional robots, KLARA does not require a protective fence, which means that the working spaces of human and machine blend into one. This saves considerable space at the assembly line and allows HRC to be integrated into the production line. With human-robot cooperation like this, employee safety has the top priority. The employee is in control, initiates the application of adhesive and can halt the process at any time. Sensors in the robot arm recognize when a human is touched and automatically stop any movement in the case of danger. KLARA also indicates any danger with the illuminated ring: It lights up red if there is any disturbance. All equipment components were preassembled on a base plate. This allowed KLARA to be installed and put into operation within a short time. Integration took place without any interference in the existing assembly line. An alternative solution for applying adhesive to the new roofs would only have been possible with far greater effort and expense, Audi said. WMG at the University of Warwick (UK) will receive just over 500,000 (US $661,000) from Innovate UK for its part in the 2-million (US $2.65-million) program in which it will partner with autonomous pod manufacturer RDM Group and Milton Keynes Council to create Swarm Intelligence for autonomous pods. The concept is based on fusing together existing information from other autonomous vehicles a fleet of pods to allow each pod to locally decide the most appropriate action for the group as a wholesimilar to how insects and birds currently behave. This means that pods can highlight any unexpected behaviour to a supervisor, as well as enabling platooning, where vehicles follow each other when possible to minimise the number or individual vehicle movements. The technology also enables the system automatically adapt its behavior to meet the demand so that Pods can be optimally distributed within a city to the areas where they are most likely requested. An investment by Rocky Mountain Power will bring workers to Sweetwater County as part of a project to complete a segment of the Gateway West transmission line the company intends to complete in 2020. The companys plan, known as Energy Vision 2020, involves a $3.5 billion investment from Rocky Mountain Power focusing on growing and upgrading its wind energy projects. By 2020, the company intends to have up to 1,100 megawatts of new wind generation through improving the companys current wind turbines, which are mostly located in Carbon County, with longer blades and newer technology to... The Sweetwater County Commissioners approved the annual mill levy distributions Tuesday morning. The mill levies represent property tax distributions to the countys school districts, as well as special districts such as the Castle Rock Hospital District and the Jamestown-Rio Vista Water and Sewer District. A mill levy is a rate applied to a propertys assessed value. One mill is $1 per $1,000 of assessed value within a district or the county. The county itself receives a 12 mill levy, which based off of the $2.1 billion assessed valuation of the county, resulting in $25.8 million in ta... Jack E. Walsh, 83, of Rock Springs, passed away Nov. 2, 2016 at the Memorial Hospital of Sweetwater County. He was born Dec. 10, 1932, in Farmer City, Ill., the son of Jack G. and Ruth Ann Medley Walsh. Walsh attended schools in Gloucester, N.J., and graduated in 1948. He then attended West Point and later graduated from Oklahoma State University in Stillwater, Okla., where he obtained a bachelor's degree in aeronautical engineering. He married Ruthanna Donges in Conshohocken, N.J., Aug. 5, 1955. Walsh was a United States Air Force veteran of the Vietnam War. He made a career as a pilot wi... Yanukovych's lawyer says procedure of summoning his client to court violated The Obolonsky District Court of Kyiv began to hear the high treason case of former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych on Thursday. The hearing was delayed by a number of technical problems. It started with the speech of public defender Vitaliy Meshechek, an Interfax correspondent reported from the courtroom. The lawyer said that the procedure of summoning Yanukovych to court had been breached and the decision to conduct a special proceeding was unlawful. "According to the ruling, the court processed the prosecutor's request for a special proceeding against Yanukovych. The request was upheld, and a special proceeding was ordered. This court order is unlawful, as it fails to comply with the criminal procedure norms and international laws," Meshechek said. "In addition, there is no information that a relevant request for international legal assistance has been filed," he said. Jeanne M. Prevedel, 86, of Rock Springs, passed away July 28, 2017, at her home surrounded by her family. A longtime resident of Rock Springs, Prevedel died following an illness of a year and one half. She was born April 28, 1931, in Toronto, Canada, the daughter of James and Gladys Bell. Prevedel attended schools in England. She moved from Manchester, England, in 1950 to the United States through Ellis Island. She then met her husband Lawrence D. Seymour and they moved to Texas. They later divorced. She married John Prevedel in Rock Springs and he later preceded her in death on Oct... Greg Sherwin takes a bite out of some candy sushi he made. The art of making sushi dates back centuries and involves using simple ingredients to create delicious pieces of food. Children visiting the Sweetwater County Library Thursday afternoon had a chance to make their own version of the Japanese delicacy, only replacing fish, rice and seaweed with Rice Krispies, Swedish Fish and Fruit by the Foot strips. Teen librarian Stacey Palmer said the idea came from a post she found on Pinterest, where common candies were used to create sushi. The basic piece demonstrated on instruction involved flattening the Rice Krispies into a thin, square sheet, then... The National Commission for Financial Service Markets Regulation of Ukraine in resolution No. 3228 dated July 25, 2017 annulled 16 voluntary insurance licenses issued to Financial Expert insurance double liability company (Kyiv) and four mandatory insurance licenses, the regulator has reported on its website. The decision was made, as a head or an authorized person of the company was not present at the place of its registration and it is impossible to inspect the operations of the company. The company did not submit reports for 2016 and Q1 2017. According to the resolution, an unscheduled inspection of the company was to be held from July 17 to 21. However, arriving at the place of registration of the company at 9, Boryspilska Street, the inspection group of the commission revealed that the address covers an area of about 10 hectares (according to the words of the guards of the territory). It has more than 100 buildings, of which 12 are located along the outer perimeter. There are no signs or signs of the presence of the Financial Expert in these buildings in the external perimeter, but there are various institutions and organizations, in particular: the company Milkiland, the State Space Agency of Ukraine, Kyiv Radio Plant, pawnshops, shops selling optics, fireworks and animal feed, a photo studio, pharmacies, banks, currency exchange offices, Velmart retail chain and other organizations. The questioning of guards and cleaners of external perimeter buildings did not confirm the availability of the company's office here. According to the resolution, these workers told the inspection team that the premises belong to more than 20 owners, but they refused to provide their contacts. The buildings are located on the inner territory at 9, Boryspilska Street have their own access mode. The guard did not allow the inspection group to enter it. The resolution will take effect on August 25, 2017. Financial Expert insurer has been operating on the market since 2003. Its core business is risk insurance. According to a posting on the company's website, in 2015 its shareholders were reshuffled. Thom Tillis doesn't have many days like this. The junior senator from North Carolina gets much less press than his senior colleague, Richard Burr, who's leading the high-profile Intelligence Committee investigation into Russia's interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. But Tillis has jumped into the national spotlight today ... twice. Tillis, a Republican, and Delaware Democrat Chris Coons introduced the Special Counsel Integrity Act, which delivers a not-so-subtle message to President Donald Trump. The act "supports the integrity of independent investigations by allowing judicial review if a special counsel is removed," a press release from Tillis' office says. It's thought just possible that Trump will order the firing of Special Counsel Robert Mueller, who was appointed by the Justice Department after Trump fired FBI Director James Comey. The White House hasn't said Trump will but insists he has the authority to do so. That's questionable, but this bill would establish clear guidelines: "In the event that a special counsel is removed, the Tillis-Coons legislation allows the special counsel to challenge the removal in court, which would be heard and determined by a panel of 3 federal judges within 14 days of the filing of the action. The panel of judges would determine whether or not there was good cause for the removal of the special counsel. In the event that the panel of judges finds there was no good cause for the removal, the individual would be immediately reinstated as special counsel." Furthermore, the bill provides that a special counsel could be removed only for "misconduct, dereliction of duty, incapacity, conflict of interest, or other good cause, like a violation of departmental policies," and only by an attorney general who was confirmed by the Senate. In the case the AG was recused, then by the highest-ranking Justice official confirmed by the Senate. If enacted, the bill would be retroactive to May 17. In other words, it specifically protects Mueller and makes sure the president couldn't hunt out just anyone in the Justice Department to fire him. This bill warrants swift approval by the Senate and then by House and by veto-proof margins before Trump does something foolish. But even now, the introduction of this measure should tell Trump that, if he fires Mueller, congressional reaction will not be favorable. Next, Tillis and three GOP colleagues unveiled the Building Americas Trust Act, which would designate $15 billion for what they call 'smart, multi-layered infrastructure' along the southern border. That may include a wall, fence, levees, technology or other barriers, according to a summary of the bill," Politico reports. That is a huge amount of money, much of which possibly could be better spent, but it's a lot less than what a wall along the entire southern border would cost. Trump's promise to seal off every mile of the boundary between the U.S. and Mexico is impractical and unnecessary. There are better alternatives, so it's a step in the right direction to apply them to the task of securing the border. We don't need a boondoggle that for hundreds of miles does nothing but block tumbleweeds and jackrabbits. Tillis faithfully votes the Republican Party line almost all the time, but sometimes he thinks out of the box and fixes on good ideas. Today is an example. North Carolina Republicans appeared to fall just short in Tuesdays General Assembly elections of gaining large enough majorities to override Gov. Roy Coopers vetoes on their own. But their seat gains eroded further the Democrats ability to block bills on abortion and other highly contested legislation. The Senate GOP increased their seats to the number needed to have a veto-proof majority. But Speaker Tim Moore said that House Republicans were one seat shy of a similar threshold. Moore said Wednesday he's confident House Republicans can get help from Democrats in an override. But that could be more difficult on abortion restrictions, which Cooper and other Democrats campaigned against. GREENSBORO Airports are a great economic development vehicle and, oh, by the way, Piedmont Triad International Airport is a sterling example of that, PTI officials told the state Board of Transportation here Wednesday in an afternoon meeting. The board that controls billions of dollars in road, rail and aviation money is holding its August meeting in Greensboro this week, and the 19-member panel got a pitch for continued support from airport director Kevin Baker and Piedmont Triad Airport Authority chairman Steve Showfety. Baker thanked the board for approving $4 million to grade a piece of vacant airport land that was snagged quickly by HAECO, the aircraft maintenance and engineering company now building a hangar worth many millions more on that site. Were getting a $60 million investment on top of that, Baker said of the states feeder money, noting that airport projects frequently provide such lucrative returns. He added that a taxiway bridge built as part of recently completed Interstate 73 from PTI to U.S. 220 will open up new tracts for similar, potential gains. But he said grading one such major piece of land could cost $75 million. The state board stopped at PTI for lunch Wednesday and a 90-minute business session on the opening day of its two-day meeting. Board members also toured the High Point Furniture Market, Pomona Quarry, Honda Aircraft and other parts of PTI on Wednesday. The board met locally because chairman Mike Fox, a Greensboro resident, wanted to revive the panels former practice of holding several meetings each year outside its normal Raleigh venue and suggested starting in his hometown. In other action Wednesday, the board heard a consultants preliminary report about options to improve the troubled public-private partnership behind Charlottes Interstate 77 toll lanes project. And state Secretary of Transportation Jim Trogdon reported that transportation and utility officials had worked together on a new, overhead power line to the Outer Banks that soon should restore service to the area, partly evacuated last week after a contractor accidentally severed underground electrical lines serving the islands. In his remarks, PTI leader Showfety told the board the airport is blazing a new trail by combining convenient passenger air service with an economic development role aimed at growing the regional aviation industry and providing another impetus for quality jobs in the Piedmont Triad. HAECO chief executive Richard Kendall drove home the point by telling the group about his companys planned addition of 500 jobs linked to its fifth PTI hangar, now under construction, plus new company facilities in High Point to make furnishings used in refitting aircraft interiors. Fox said that after he was named chairman of the transportation board this year he urged renewing the groups past practice of holding several monthly meetings each year outside the state capital. The board drifted away from that policy in recent years but Fox, a local attorney who served previously on the board, said he always found it helpful in improving his knowledge of the differing transportation needs from region to region. And it gave local officials better insight into how the state Department of Transportation functions and the issues state leaders face, he said. It was such a good learning experience on all sides, Fox said. The interaction really proved valuable. The board reconvenes this morning for a daylong meeting at the O. Henry Hotel on Green Valley Road to award contracts and hear presentations from local and regional officials about their areas transportation needs. In spite of a decision taken by the Ukrainian authorities to provide billions in financing of the defense needs of the state in 2017, the fulfillment of the government defense order for this year has already been disrupted by the Defense Ministry, which hasn't signed contracts with the defense industry for the manufacture of new military equipment, a coordinator of the Information Resistance group, MP Dmytro Tymchuk of the People's Front party, said. "The state defense order for the purchase of new armored vehicles for the army was deadlocked a month ago, and is deadlocked now (yesterday I specifically asked directors of the enterprises about it). The reason is the same - the Defense Ministry does not conclude contracts with defense enterprises, having been disrupting the fulfillment of government defense order for this year," Tymchuk said in the comments posted on the Information Resistance (sprotyv.info) website in connection with the president's signing the amendments to the state budget for 2017 the other day. The lawmaker said that because of the position of military officials, despite the war, the defense industry capacities are idling, and thousands of workers of the defense industry will have to go on unpaid leave one of these days. "The new equipment will not be produced, although the financing of the state defense order (state guarantees) has been envisaged," he said. In this regard, Tymchuk recalls that when revising the budget for 2017 "practically all the branches of the government worked well: the parliament adopted appropriate amendments, the president quickly approved them." "If there is a reason for such a position of officials of the Defense Ministry - I really want to hear it, because it's unclear why we take out billions from the social welfare funds and give them to defense, but our defense industry is idling," the lawmaker summed up. HATTERAS ISLAND Hatteras Island will be open to visitors again on Friday at noon after being shut down for more than a week, according to Dare County officials on Thursday. Power is back on across Hatteras and Ocracoke islands, according to the Cape Hatteras Electric Cooperative. [OBX blackout: Mandatory evacuation, state of emergency on Ocracoke Island] Mandatory power restrictions for Hatteras were lifted as CHEC completed stabilization of the power grid and visitors were being allowed to return to Hatteras on Friday. The mandatory evacuation order for visitors to Ocracoke Island had not been lifted yet as of about 5 p.m. Thursday. KYIV. Aug 2 (Interfax-Ukraine) - Ukrainian Trade Guild consulting company (UTG, Kyiv) has developed a project of the UniverCity university campus, which will be located on an area of about 400 hectares near Kyiv. "One quite large-scale project - about 400 hectares - was created in the outskirts of the city. Developing such a large site, it is important to understand the anchor function that will interest residents, buyers, tenants outside the city. Here we made a university such a function. We negotiated with very famous international universities and we will involve them if the project goes further," director for customer relations at UTG Zhanna Rzhanova said at a press conference in Kyiv. According to her, the project, in addition to the construction of a university, provides for the formation of a campus, as well as the construction of housing, office space and other infrastructure. According to UTG, investment in the project is estimated at about $2 billion. At the same time, the company did not specify other details of the project, referring to the confidentiality of information. According to the company, from August 2016 to August 2017 its specialists had developed 58 concepts of development projects with a total area of 8.5 million square meters and the investment of $4.5 billion. Most of the projects developed by the company are located, in particular, in Kyiv (34 out of 58), Dnipro (7), Odesa (5), and Zaporizhia (2). GREENWICH A financial planner from Pace University will be the chief operating officer for Greenwich Public Schools, Superintendent Jill Gildea announced Wednesday. Lori ODonnell, assistant vice president of financial planning for Pace, will assume the new role on Aug. 21, filling a vacancy left by former Managing Director of Operation Jim Hricay, who left the district at the end of June. Lori ODonnells experience in right-sizing budgets and her ability to work within approved spending plans will serve the district well, said Gildea. We were also impressed with her work managing budgets for large-scale capital projects, as well as for other operational departments within the organization. We look forward to welcoming Ms. ODonnell to the role of chief operating officer prior to the start of the new school year. ODonnell will be responsible for the districts budget and finance, accounting, purchasing, facilities, transportation, food services and safety and security departments. Her salary for 2017-2018 is $180,000. I am honored and excited to be joining the Greenwich Public Schools team and look forward to partnering with our board, senior leaders and administration to help advance the district's priorities and meet the goals of our 2015-2020 Strategic Plan, said ODonnell. At Pace University, ODonnell established and chaired the budget sub-committee of the $200 million New York City master plan capital project for the university. She also managed the $100 million Westchester campus master plan budget, a three-year project completed in summer 2016 projected to close out within budget. ODonnell spent the first eight years of her career as a financial analyst and associate director for fiscal affairs at New York University. She has a bachelor of business administration degree in finance from Pace, where she graduated in 1998. She has completed coursework toward a master of science degree in management and systems from New York University, but not yet attained the degree. emunson@greenwichtime.com; Twitter: @emiliemunson WASHINGTON - Special Counsel Robert Mueller began using a grand jury in federal court in Washington several weeks ago as part of his investigation of possible coordination between the Kremlin and the Trump campaign, according to two people familiar with the inquiry. The development is a sign that investigators continue to aggressively gather evidence in the case, and that Mueller is taking full control of a probe that predated him. In recent weeks and months, Mueller has been expanding the legal team working on the matter, and recently added Greg Andres, a longtime white-collar lawyer specializing in foreign bribery who previously worked in the Justice Department's criminal division. Mueller's investigation now includes a look at whether President Donald Trump obstructed justice by firing FBI Director James Comey, as well as deep dives into financial and other dealings of former national security adviser Michael Flynn and former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort. Federal prosecutors had previously been using a grand jury in the Eastern District of Virginia, and even before Mueller was appointed, had increased their activity, issuing subpoenas and taking other investigative steps. The Wall Street Journal on Thursday first reported the existence of the Washington grand jury. A White House adviser said the president and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, had not received subpoenas, nor had the White House. Members of the president's legal team met with Mueller three weeks ago to express their desire to work with his investigators. A spokesman for Mueller declined to comment for this article. Ty Cobb, whom Trump appointed as White House special counsel, said of the grand jury: "This is news to me, but it's welcome news to the extent it suggests that it may accelerate the resolution of Mr. Mueller's work. The White House has every interest in bringing this to a prompt and fair conclusion. As we've said in the past, we're committed to cooperating fully with Mr. Mueller." Mueller has largely removed the original prosecutors from the case, replacing them with a formidable collection of legal talent and expertise in prosecuting national security, fraud and public corruption cases, arguing matters before the Supreme Court and assessing complicated legal questions. In federal cases, a grand jury is not necessarily an indication that an indictment is imminent or even likely. Instead, it is a powerful investigative tool that prosecutors use to compel witnesses to testify or force people or companies to turn over documents. It's unclear why Mueller chose to use a panel in the District, although there are practical reasons to do so. The special counsel's office is located in southwest D.C. - much closer to the federal courthouse in the city than the one in Alexandria, Virginia. Mueller also had previously worked in the U.S. attorney's office in D.C., giving him some familiarity with the courthouse and the judges. Experts said that Washington would be the appropriate place to convene a grand jury to examine actions taken by Trump since he became president and took up residence at the White House. Many of the potential crimes Mueller's team is investigating would have occurred in the District, such as allegations that Trump aides or advisers made false statements in disclosure records or lied to federal agents. The Post has previously reported that Mueller is investigating whether the president tried to obstruct justice leading up to his firing of Comey. Others said the choice could reflect Mueller's reputation for planning ahead and gaming out a possible trial. He could have better chances convicting aides to Trump in a city in which 90 percent of voters supported Democrat Hillary Clinton in 2016. The special counsel team took over the investigation when Mueller was appointed in May, and prosecutors from the Eastern District of Virginia were largely taken off the case. The only prosecutor known to have stayed was Brandon Van Grack, a national security division prosecutor whose name was on the subpoena connected to Flynn. Mueller's team also absorbed an investigation of Manafort that was attempting to trace his sources of income and possible connections to the Russia case. The grand jury in Virginia had issued a subpoena related to Flynn's business, the Flynn Intel Group, which was paid more than $500,000 by a company owned by a Turkish American businessman close to top Turkish officials, said people familiar with the matter. A subpoena related to Manafort also was issued from Alexandria. - - - The Washington Post's Rosalind S. Helderman, Spencer Hsu, Devlin Barrett and Tom Hamburger contributed to this report. These are the best offers from our affiliate partners. We may get a commission from qualifying sales. As scheduled, the Nokia 6 is now available for purchase in the UK. The device is currently exclusive to retailer Carphone Warehouse, which has the SIM-free model listed on its website for 199.99 (around $265). Color options include blue, black, copper, and silver. For more information or to make a purchase, head to the Source link below. The Nokia 3 has already landed in the market, while the Nokia 5 is set to arrive on August 16. Source | Via For full functionality of this site it is necessary to enable JavaScript. Here are the instructions how to enable JavaScript in your web browser Haiti - FLASH : The Senate passes a law against the Gay community Tuesday evening, the Senate ratified a bill (led by Senator Cantave) against the LGBTI community (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Intersexual). Of the 14 Senators present at the time of the vote (less than 50% of senators in the Upper House) 12 voted for, 1 against (Patrice Dumont) and 1 abstained (Kedelaire Augustin). This bill, in addition to prohibiting marriage (or attempted marriage) between two persons of the same sex in Haiti, also prohibits all forms of public demonstrations in support of homosexuality and proselytism in favor of such acts and stipulates that "any promotion, in any form or by any means, constitutes an offense of contempt of good morals and public decency." The seven-item bill includes sanctions and specifies that perpetrators, co-perpetrators and accomplices of a homosexual marriage face a penalty of 3 years imprisonment and a fine of 500,000 Gourdes... This bill also includes foreigners on Haitian territory, since one of these articles stipulates "No foreigner can avail himself of his personal status and the provisions of the law of his country to solicit the celebration in Haiti of a marriage between two persons of the same sex." Senator Youri Latortue, President of the Senate, does not see the Church's hold on the secular state of Haiti, but rather the result of the majority senators who have expressed their faith saying "All senators are opposed to same-sex marriage so this only reflects their commitments made at the time of their campaigns [...] necessary to focus on its values and traditions, abroad, some see it differently but in Haiti, we see it like that." The gay community is concerned about this bill and Charlot Jeudy, President of the "Kouraj" Association (an organization recognized by the Haitian state), which defends the rights of LGBTI, does not hesitate to qualify this bill as "an attack against the LGBTI community in Haiti". He said this text will further divide society, reinforce discrimination and bring much more violence and prejudice against the LGBTI community. This bill must now be transferred to the lower house, where members should ratify it without any doubt before transmitting it to the Executive for publication in the official newspaper "Le Moniteur". See also : https://www.icihaiti.com/en/news-13958-icihaiti-social-canada-supports-the-fight-against-homophobia-in-haiti.html https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-18033-haiti-social-kouraj-reactions-to-homophobic-comments-of-senatus.html https://www.icihaiti.com/en/news-18768-icihaiti-social-american-reaction-about-the-postponement-of-the-massimadi-festival.html https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-12977-haiti-social-the-fight-against-discrimination-is-enormous-dixit-marie-carmelle-auguste.html https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-9208-haiti-social-regrettable-incident.html SL/ HaitiLibre Haiti - FLASH : BAC 2017 results per student for 4 departments The Ministry of Education informs that the first results of the ordinary session of the 2017 exams are available for four departments : Center, South, Southeast and Grand'Anse. Thus, according to data provided by the National Bureau of State Exams (BUNEXE) by department : Center: Success rate 39.37%, or 2.056 admitted out of 5,222 participants (34.52% in 2015-2016); South: Success rate 69.23%, or 2,860 admitted out of 4,131 participants (33.72% in 2015-2016); Southeast: Success rate 33, 73%, or 1,016 admitted out of 3,012 participants (42.07% in 2015-2016); Grand'Anse: Success rate 23, 92%, or 616 admitted out of 2,575 participants (28.91% in 2015-2016). The results of the other departments will be communicated shortly As was the case last year, the Ministry of Education is taking advantage of the possibilities offered by information technology to allow all candidates for the exams of the ordinary session of the Baccalaureat 2017 to have access to their results directly via the Internet. To access your result, enter your 10-digit order number in the box below "Resultat du Bac Haitien 2017" and click on the button "Bac regulier". NOTE : The special session of the bac is scheduled from Monday 21 to Thursday 24 August 2016. Candidates will compose only in the subjects for which they have not obtained their average. HL/ HaitiLibre Cutting her teeth as a sideman in Boston's roots music scene,Laura Cortese forged a unique path through a pool rich in talent (due to a large population of Berklee School of Music graduates like herself) including stints as an instrumentalist with Band of Horses, Pete Seeger, Rose Cousins, Jocie Adams (of the Low Anthem), and Uncle Earl. As first revealed on Folk Alley, Cortese's Compass Records debut, CALIFORNIA CALLING, is the next step in her career as a frontwoman and bandleader-she and her Dance Cards (cellist Valerie Thompson, fiddler Jenna Moynihan, and bassist Natalie Bohrn) break new ground with a bold and elegant new album, based in the lyrical rituals of folk music but exploring new territories of rhythm and sonics. "We can't imagine a better home for CALIFORNIA CALLING than the inventive and masterful roster of musicians on Compass Records." says Cortese. With the support of Sam Kassirer, album producer of folk-pop favorites like Lake Street Dive and Joy Kills Sorrow, they've created something that's simultaneously rowdy, delicate and cinematic. This is post-folk that seriously rocks. On a recent tour stop in Stockholm, the band filmed a video for album opener, "The Low Hum". Watch the video premiere here on Folk Alley. Laura Cortese & The Dance Cards, CALIFORNIA CALLING will be released October 6th, 2017 on Compass Records. TRACK LISTING: 1. The Low Hum 2. Callifornia Calling 3. Three Little Words 4. Skipping Stone 5. Hold On 6. Swing & Turn (Jubilee) 7. Rhododendron 8. Someday 9. Stockholm 10. Pace Myself 11. If You Hear Me Tags : laura cortese and the dance cards california calling bluegrass Have you ever found yourself saying, someday I am going to do something. Eventually that changes to, I always wanted to do that. Maybe its time to act on some of these things, before you just cant. In the mid... Published on 2017/08/02 | Source Hallyu stars Song Joong-ki and Song Hye-kyo are getting married in October and fans domestic and international are highly supportive. Song Joong-ki has appeared in various official events and interviews since the marriage announcement and he doesn't hide the fact that he is a very happy groom-to-be. Here are five pieces of evidence that prove that he loves her very much. Advertisement #1 He chose the song Song Hye-kyo likes for the ending song of "News Room" Song Joong-ki appeared on the JTBC "News Room" on the 27th last month and he suggested the OST of "Les Parapluies De Cherbourg" as the ending song. Anchor Son Seok-hee asked why he chose that song and he said it was because his fiancee likes it. #2 He announced his marriage right before the release of "Battleship Island" Thirty-year-old Song Joong-ki is currently on fire in Korea and in China, and has been since last year when the drama "Descendants of the Sun" was on air. Making a marriage announcement at this point means he's very brave. The Song and Song couple denied their numerous scandals but then suddenly announced that they were getting married. Fans interpreted this as Song Joong-ki's consideration for Song Hye-kyo. The reason he decided to marry her was because "he would've liked to spend the rest of his life with her". #3 At the premiere of "Battleship Island" he said, "There is a woman I need to take care of for the rest of my life" The premiere for "Battleship Island" was held on the 20th last month. Song Joong-ki appealed the movie to the audience and said, "There is a woman I have to take care of for the rest of my life. I need to earn a living". Then asked the audience for a good evaluation. #4 His ideal type is "a small and kind looking older woman" Song Joong-ki mentioned someone resembling Song Hye-kyo in his Taiwan fan meeting last year. He said that he liked someone small and pretty when she eats. She turned out to be Song Hye-kyo. #5 Award winning speech, "I think of Song Hye-kyo" Song Joong-ki had made a suspicious speech last year at the Seoul Drama Awards. He was asked who he thought of first and he said, "Song Hye-kyo. I think she deserves it more than I do". By William Schwartz | Published on 2017/08/02 In a bizarre inversion of the previous story, the entire train incident only takes half an episode to resolve. Even stranger, while a big point was made of how Min-yeong (played by Lee Sun-bin) was on the train, she being the last team member, the train incident offers virtually no exposition of Min-yeong's personality or skills. Hyeon-joon actually gets more action than she does, quite literally solving the entire stand-off single-handedly. Advertisement At least the stand-off is well constructed. The editing in last episode's cliffhanger left this point unclear, but we find out right away that the hostage taker stole the gun from the detective. This does leave him a character relying more on luck than skill, since he correctly guesses the location of the gun and the detective rather inexplicably lacks the combat skills necessary to prevent being so badly embarrassed by what is, for all we can see, a random crazy person who for some reason was not sitting next to his shrink. Where does criminal profiling fit into all this? Actually, I'm not really sure. Which is part of why having Hyeon-joon come up with the solution is so bizarre for a drama whose premise is still in the introductory phase. I wonder if this is why the train plot resolves so quickly- the production team realized the train story was a very bad example of criminal profiling, and that "Criminal Minds" is best explained by a more long-running plot about a serial killer. Mind, I'm just assuming this plot will be long-running on account of how it is described here in purely expository terms. There's still not that much investigating except in the most abstract sense. Which come to think of it is how actual profilers work. Short of an interrogation scene there's never really any situation where it would be appropriate for a profiler to actually talk to a suspect. At first glance this sounds like a limitation on the premise. But once more, as an adaptation of a long-running American drama series with a functionally infinite number of stories that could be chosen for adaptation, it's hard to avoid the sense of comparison. I'm still holding out some hope that more traditional Korean drama trappings are going to show up here. I'd rather not these reviews consist entirely of snarky remarks about the logical inconsistencies of the individual mysteries, although I will go that route if I have to. Review by William Schwartz "Criminal Minds" is directed by Lee Jeong-hyo and Yang Yoon-ho, written by Hong Seung-hyeon and features Son Hyun-joo, Lee Joon-gi, Moon Chae-won, Lee Sun-bin, Yoo Sun and Go Yoon. Published on 2017/08/03 | Source Added episode 10 captures for the Korean drama "Bride of the Water God 2017" (2017) Advertisement Directed by Kim Byeong-soo Written by Jeong Yoon-jeong With Nam Joo-hyuk, Shin Se-kyung, Lim Ju-hwan, Jung Soo-jung, Gong Myung, Lee Kyung-young,... 16 episodes - Mon, Tue 10:50 Synopsis "Bride of the Water God 2017" is a spin off version of the comic "Bride of the Water God". 'Spin off' means a deviated version from the original, so the classic fantasy and characters will be modernized and moved by time and location to Seoul today. Broadcast starting date in Korea : 2017/07/03 More Login or sign up to follow actresses, movies & dramas and get specific updates and news Login Sign Up New Ad-free Subscriber Login Email Password Password Username Your E-mail will only be used to retrieve a lost password. Stay logged in Help So, in simple terms, what does an employer need to remember? Before stepping into the breach, consider whether there is a valid reason for dismissal. Be able to clearly articulate that reason and ensure that the reason is supported by evidence before making a final decision. It is often the case that the reason relied upon by the employer is undermined by evidence that later comes to light during the legal process. Ensure that the decision-makers are clear on the reason for dismissal and that the reason is proven and supported. The fundamental requirement is one of process. Was there a proper, soundly based performance management process? That involves explaining to the employee the issue with their performance, allowing them an opportunity to improve before revisiting the issue, and assessing whether or not improvements have occurred. If it was an issue of misconduct, was a proper investigation or fact-finding process undertaken and conclusions formed based on sound facts and evidence? Is dismissal fair in all the circumstances? In large part, this often relates back to process. If performance is the issue, the Fair Work Commission will consider whether the employee was afforded a fair go all round. Were they given a genuine chance to improve, and did they clearly understand that failure to improve could lead to dismissa? This is a really important step to be able to verify. Whether or not a policy applied to the issue in question, also relevant to this issue is whether the employee knew about and followed the policy. If an employer has a policy it must follow it. Failure to follow policies is a common mistake made by employers. The issue of whether the dismissal is harsh in all the circumstances needs to be considered. That is, does the punishment fit the crime? This is often an area that employers struggle with. The best way to mitigate risk is to ensure that the decision-maker actually records that he/she has considered issues that may add to the harshness of a decision to dismiss, such as a very lengthy period of service, a previously unblemished record, treatment of other employees in the same circumstances, or some other consideration of the personal circumstances of the employee. Above are the four fundamental dos, so what are the donts? Never construct a reason for dismissal that is not the real reason. Never fail to follow a clear and fair process. Dont ignore factors such as length of service and disciplinary record. COMING OUT IN FRONT There is no way to manage the risk of unfair dismissal claims away entirely. However, by following fair processes and relying upon clearly articulated reasons for dismissal, not only is the chance of a claim reduced but the ability to defend a claim and refuse to settle is greatly increased. Lastly, always conduct dismissals in a dignified, respectful manner. If an employer wants to dismiss an employee, the reason for that decision needs to be genuine and the one communicated to the employee. Very often we see situations where, as a consequence mainly of frustration, a quick decision to terminate is made and performance problems are constructed. This will always unravel in Commission proceedings.Process failings are perhaps the most common reason for successful unfair dismissal claims. Take care with process and seek advice as appropriateWhere the conduct is objectively serious, these factors will be discounted, but they still need to be considered. In general terms, decisions of the Commission tend to allow employees a chance, rather than accept that dismissal is an appropriate outcome. On that issue, be sure to consider alternatives to dismissal and record your consideration of them before making a decision. Would demotion, transfer or counselling be a more appropriate outcome in all the circumstances?In my experience, the more that an employee feels humiliated by the manner of the dismissal, the more likely a claim will arise. Hold meetings and discussions in private areas and in a manner and tone that demonstrates you understand how serious an impact this decision will have on the employees personal life. There is rarely a need to have security escort an employee off the premises, and wherever possible this type of overt, humiliating experience should be avoided. This does reduce the likelihood of a claim. There is no way to manage the risk of unfair dismissal claims away entirely. However, by following fair processes and relying upon clearly articulated reasons for dismissal, not only is the chance of a claim reduced but the ability to defend a claim and refuse to settle is greatly increased. Always remember that you will need evidence to properly manage the risk of claims, so ensure that all of these factors can be supported by notes, forms and other types of evidence. The process itself will always remain a difficult one because of emotion, but the legal risk can be effectively managed. Alice DeBoos is a partner and global practice area leader of the Labour, Employment & Workplace Safety team at K&L Gates. The current employment landscape is a challenging one for young Australians, according to Steve Shepherd, CEO at TwoPointZero. Automation, the move towards a contingent workforce and the reduction in entry level jobs is making it extremely difficult for our future workforce to transition from education to a career, he said. In fact, more than three quarters (79%) of young Aussies believe their schools or universities have failed to prepare them for the world of work, according to the TwoPointZeros latest research. Youth unemployment is currently sitting at double the national average (13.1%), and this study suggests more needs to be done to bridge the gap to get young people in stable roles in the workforce. Despite Federal Government introducing training and internship schemes, Shepherd, said that while they might treat some of the symptoms, they fail to address the root cause. We need to think about what young Australians are lacking to start their careers, said Shepherd. Our research clearly shows the issue isnt just jobs but the lack of preparation and advice our educational institutions offer. So, not only do we need to create real jobs, we need to revamp our educational institutions to better prepare young Australians for the world of work, whether it be providing interview skills, resume preparation or job search techniques. The study also found more than two-thirds (70%) of young Aussies found it difficult to secure a job that is in line with the career they had in mind, further fuelling the 20% underemployed, settling instead for casual and part-time positions in place of meaningful full-time roles. In many cases, desperate young Aussies are struggling to find any work at all, with one-in-eight (13%) claiming to have applied for 50 or more roles before they land their first job. How, in this ever evolving workforce, do you find and pick a career that is right for you? Without proper guidance and help early on, young Aussies can become disillusioned with the labour market or let skills they have learnt go to waste in jobs not relevant to them. Shepherd is calling on Government, businesses and educational institutions to think bigger than creating internships, if we are to address our youth unemployment problem. He said Australia needs to better plan for the future, by better preparing for the new world of work. And this starts in our schools and universities. Shepherd told HRD that in general there is not enough time available being spent with the students to help them find the role they really want. Often there is an assumption because they are studying in a particular field that thats the areas that they want to work in or that they have a clear idea about the kind of careers that operate in that industry, he said. Many of the bigger educational institutions have in excess of 10,000 students in their final year and limited resources to be able to provide the kind of career advice that I think that you need in todays modern work environment. The world of work has changed significantly over the last 10 years and I dont think that universities have adapted their careers educational format during that time sufficiently. The new investors include prominent automotive industry leaders, such as Denso and Toyota Financial Services. MaaS Global, a Helsinki-based developer of what has been described as the worlds first all-inclusive mobility app, reveals that it has completed its latest international funding round, raising a total of 14.2 million euros. The company says its objective is to revolutionise the way people move by allowing them to both book and pay for a variety of mobility services ranging from taxis, rental cars and public transport to bicycle sharing with a single mobile application called Whim. The app is already available in Helsinki, Finland. It is to be launched in the West Midlands, the United Kingdom, and Amsterdam, the Netherlands, by the end of 2017. In the future, you will be able to move anywhere, at any time and by any mode of transport without needing to own a vehicle. Our goal is to build a global roaming system for transport which people can use to travel from, say, Helsinki to Brussels using one app, Sampo Hietanen, the founder and chief executive of MaaS Global, says in a press release. Hietanen is confident that the next-generation mobility service will become a credible challenger to traditional car ownership. Toyotas involvement speaks volumes, he estimated in an interview with YLE on Wednesday. Sadahiro Usui, the chief executive of Denso, a Japanese supplier of automotive technology, is similarly excited about the possibilities presented by the partnership. We are pleased to partner with MaaS Global to jointly develop the emerging mobility service market and ecosystem that revolutionise the way people access all modes of transportation, he says in the press release. MaaS Global also highlights that a number of investors opted to increase their stake in it during the latest funding round. Hietanen has also admitted that the development project has moved forward faster than the company dared to dream. The world is changing. I predicted four years ago that we wouldnt be able to start our first pilots until the 2020s, but here we are, he commented to Talouselama on Wednesday. Aleksi Teivainen HT Photo: Linda Manner Lehtikuva Source: Uusi Suomi The recent press images from Mosul are devastating, a city shattered in every way. With the routing of ISIS, we see one more city not only suffering the effects of ethno-national and religious conflict, but intentionally targeted as a city. When violence breaks out, public spaces are often the first casualty along with the customary practices of urban life and the civic rights associated with them. Its medieval Great Mosque of al-Nuri did not suffer the collateral damage of war but was dynamited as an act of purposeful destruction, targeting an iconic urban institution. Mosul is not an isolated example of a city under siege. No, the city can be seen as part of an increasingly powerful trend, originating in the second half of the 20th century, where cities not only are targeted but where conflicts emerge from conditions that have developed inside those cities. A 2011 World Bank report asserts that, in many cases, the scale of urban violence can eclipse that of open warfare. Globally Aleppo, Baghdad, Beirut, Belfast, Jerusalem, Kabul, Karachi, and Sarajevo to name a few conflict has lodged in cities, taking a particularly distinctive urban form. And while the root of these confrontations will vary from place to place, all affect urban populations and infrastructures often changing urban life itself. This coupling of conflict and cities may be seen from several points of view. First of all, conflicts are changing. Wars are no longer declared, fought, lost or won and settled, with an extended period of post-conflict reconciliation. New wars are fought in the name of identity politics rather than geopolitical interests. These conflicts are waged by guerrillas or paramilitaries, with questionable goals, focused on civilian populations, often emerging from within particular ethnic, religious or economic clashes. New conflicts tend to be long-term; violence may break out and subside, often unpredictably, but the underlying problems and differences continue to fester. At the same time, cities are changing. As the worlds urban population passes beyond 50 percent, urban life and culture has become central to our identities; we increasingly define ourselves by our urban ties. Cities have always been multicultural, the meeting ground of diverse peoples for trade, religion, politics, cultural exchange as well as clashes and dissent. Without diversity, we do not have cities; yet, such multiplicity may also breed conflict. We inhabit fault lines that may at times erupt. Citizen action on a global scale is altering both cities and conflicts irrevocably. Recent years have seen private citizens flocking to their city centres in order to protest against abuses and violence, to call for more or better forms of justice and democracy, to make their rights and wishes apparent. The outcomes of these civil demonstrations vary, and many have resulted in further restrictions, confrontations or even war. Much has been written about the importance of mobile phones and social networking in forming these events. Yet, along with effective means of communication, occupying civic space has been critical: Being in the place has always been a way of establishing civic participation. Tahrir Square, Gezi Park, Place de la Republique have become synonymous with public demonstrations in Cairo, Istanbul and Paris. Public space is increasingly characterizing urban conflicts. And when cities become violent, public space is often the first casualty. Markets and malls, bus stops and train stations, busy streets and squares become magnets for violence and thus are restricted or closed. In some ways, this is not surprising: If violence emerges with threats to safety and human life, you get rid of the places where this is happening. Although this might be effective in the short term, in the medium to long term, public space and the renewal of everyday activities is key to viable urban relations and the life of a diverse city. Examining the effects of conflict in public places, the Centre for Urban Conflicts Research has found two seemingly contradictory phenomena. In periods of intense violence people from different ethnicities avoid each other but when times are more peaceful, at least some of the populations gravitate back toward mixed areas. At the same time, entrenched conflicts result in long-term or permanent urban changes, often leading to physical divisions. While one phenomenon indicates that cities heal themselves, the other suggests that long-term problems may threaten. In Nicosia, a city divided by an uninhabited buffer zone since 1974, it is difficult and may even be impossible to rejuvenate this formerly public and shared part of the city. Peoples customary practices have been disrupted by what can be called conflict infrastructures, most visibly, walls, fences and other barriers. Essentially, a tipping point is passed and what violence has fractured relatively easily is almost impossible to knit back together. Along with such public spaces the customary practices of urban life and the civic rights associated with them also disappear. Getting rid of public space, even in times of violence, is clearly not the answer. We see that cities are both robust and delicate at the same time. If we wish to address the problem of conflict in cities, we must recognize and play to the strengths of both these qualities. Although often difficult to do, such a holistic approach must be pursued, for divided cities never flourish. Wendy Pullan is Professor of Architecture and Urban Studies and Head of the Department of Architecture at the University of Cambridge. She is the Director of the Centre for Urban Conflicts Research in Cambridge. Her recent publications include: Locating Urban Conflicts (2013) and The Struggle for Jerusalem's Holy Places (2013). She is a Fellow of Clare College, Cambridge. A young woman who lost her sister and cousin in the Berkeley balcony collapse hopes to "make them proud" when she takes to the stage at the 58th Rose of Tralee Festival. Amanda Donohoe (19) lost her sister Ashley and cousin Olivia Burke on June 16, 2015, when the balcony of a rented California apartment collapsed. Students Eimear Walsh, Lorcan Miller, Niccolai Schuster and Eoghan Culligan were also killed in the tragedy. Physics student Amanda, who will be the San Francisco Rose, said she and her sister had dreamed of taking part in the festival since they were children. "When I was younger and over visiting Ireland, my uncle would always say to everyone that my sister and I were going to be Roses one day," she said. "Unfortunately Ashley never got the opportunity to apply to be a Rose, but she would have been so happy for me as she was always my biggest supporter. "They [Ashley and Olivia] were both always my biggest champions so I can only imagine how excited they would be for me." Amanda said her family had become stronger in the wake of the tragedy. "Our family has become closer than ever and I'm so excited to represent them in the festival and make them proud," she said. Amanda is also determined to show the judging panel that the tragedy has not defined her life. "What happened is a big part of my life, but my own achievements define me much more as a person and it's better to focus on how people handle situations rather than the circumstances themselves," she said. She added that having "the support and love of my whole family has allowed me to push myself to achieve great things". Celebrating Amanda grew up watching the Rose of Tralee with her grandmother and is looking forward to forging new friendships during the contest, which runs from August 16 to 22, with Daithi O Se returning as host. Amanda is looking forward to spending time with her extended family before the contest begins in earnest. "I plan on celebrating my 20th birthday in Kildare before the festival kicks off," she said. An elderly portrait painter in Beijing has caused an online frenzy after her amateur, doodle-like artwork went viral online and received mixed reviews from the public. The self-claimed artist, surnamed Zhang, runs a portrait stall in Shichahai, a historic scenic spot located in northern Beijing. Many of her customers have posted and compared her portrait paintings online, criticizing the 65-year-old artist for drawing childish doodles to scam tourists, as all her works look alike and lack the sitters facial features. My friend and I look exactly the same in Zhangs paintings. I cant even recognize myself. She clearly has no talent in painting and blurred all my facial features with a simple brush, a customer wrote on Sina Weibo. In response to the public accusation, Zhang claimed she is a trained artist with seven years of experience in portrait painting, adding that the similarities in her work is meant to shows the sisterhood-like intimacy of her customers. It takes Zhang 15 minutes to finish a portrait, which costs the customer 10 to 20 RMB, according to Beijing Youth Daily. Though Zhangs artwork has been boycotted by many customers as doodles with no aesthetic feelings, many netizens have voiced their support for the elderly woman, calling her a true soul artist. She is an artist above her time. Vincent Van Gogh was not recognized or respected by the people of his time, but everyone likes his painting today. She simply offers us her perception of the world, maybe we should give her more encouragement rather than criticism, a netizen wrote. The generosity of Zhangs fans is not shared by the local tourist administration. An urban administrative official in Shichahai told Beijing Youth Daily that such portrait paintings are not allowed at the scenic spot, adding that Zhang will be driven away if shes spotted by them. The Zhanjiang Biomass Power Plant in Chinas Guangdong province, the largest biomass power plant in the world, produces electricity by consuming local biomass fuels, including mallet bark and bagasse, Guangzhou Daily reported. According to insiders, the power plant can supply over 650 million kilowatt-hours on a yearly basis. Biomass power generation is able to help the plant save more than 280,000 tons of coal, can reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 480,000 tons in a year, and achieve zero emission of sulfur dioxide. In addition, the plant director stressed that the plant spends 250 million RMB ($37.2 million) to 300 million RMB ($44.6 million) annually on local biomass fuels such as bark, saw dust, and chaff. This has boosted local farmers income, as a large amount of the capital returns to the farmers who offer the fuels to the plant. Night view of the plant Like many biomass power plants in China, development of the Zhanjiang Power Plant is also affected by the quality, stock, and supply of fuels. At present, the plant is researching second-generation pure biomass fuels like bamboo reed with relatively low emissions of sulfur dioxide during burning, as well as short growth cycles of only four months. If the fuel could be put into use, it will significantly ease the plight of the plant in terms of securing a stable supply of biomass fuels. J.K. Rowling may have never intended for owls to become household pets when she gave Harry Potter Hedwig the snowy owl. Twenty years after the first book Harry Potter and the Sorcerers Stone was published, Harry and his friends along with all the fantastic beasts are still well remembered. Some seem to be clinging to the magic world of Harry Potter by keeping an owl as a pet, which has, however, triggered concern. A recent report from Global Ecology and Conservation indicated that the demand for pet owls on Indonesian markets has spiked sharply in the past two decades. Wildlife researchers found the number of owls for sale in Bali and Java was 13,000 in 2016, but the annual sales were only a few hundred before 2001. Owl sales made up 1.5 percent of all sales in 2016, up from less than 0.1 percent. Although its difficult to prove a direct link the fictional phenomenon to rising owl sales, Harry Potter normalized keeping owls as pets, Vincent Nijman, a coauthor of the study and a wildlife-trade researcher at Oxford Brookes University, was quoted as saying by Nature. Owls are called Burung Hantu in Malay but are now colloquially known as Burung Harry Potter, meaning Harry Potter birds, Nijman said, adding that owls are affordable for almost anybody with a job. Comparing the owls to cut flowers, Nijman said, They are alive and cute when you see them on the market, but realistically they are already dead. According to Nature, almost all owls on sales in Indonesia were caught in the wild and Indonesian law forbids the trade of wildlife. China also bans the sales of owls, which are listed as protected animals, but the bird is no luckier in China than in Indonesia. Not only featuring Hedwig, pet owls are also popular stars on Chinese social networks, usually for their cute-looking videos when their wide-open eyes and feathery but stiff bodies indicate fear instead. (File photo) On Baidu Tieba, an online forum in China themed on owls, knowhow on caring for a pet owl remain posted at the top of the forum, calling owls beautiful but hard to tame. One netizen provides instructions on how to properly feed a pet owl raw meat and warned that a large space is needed so they can fly for exercise, adding in large red fonts: Owls are protected animals. People who keep one for personal use without approval is at risk for arrest. In fact, it is already difficult to find online stores selling owls, but many netizens still claim that pet owls are available online and even in pet shops. A search on Taobao just yields pages of toys and furnishings only. But the door to the illegal owl trade remains open to people in the know or who can find their way to the hidden gray market on social networking app WeChat. In 2015, a man was found selling cute birds on Chinas version of Craigslist, 58.com, which turned out to be collared scops owls. The man was placed on a police wanted list for selling protected animals and 58.com removed the post and argued that the man used "cute birds" instead of blocked keywords such as owls to avoid detection. (File photo) ABINGDON, Va. Lily Tetrault, 11, started writing her own stories when she was younger, but a new event at the Virginia Highlands Festival is helping her get to the next level. At Story Book Evolution, a three-day event hosted by the Highlands Educational Literacy Program (H.E.L.P.), Tetrault and other children have the chance to see one of their stories published into a hardcover book. The event is taking place in the Youth Tent on the Barter Green through the remainder of the festival. Ive been waiting for this all week, said Tetrault, an incoming sixth-grader at Asheville Middle School in Asheville, North Carolina. I started writing when I was a little kid because I like writing my own stories mystical and magically crazy stories. The event began on Monday as children focused on writing their stories. On Wednesday, the authors turned to illustrations and learned how to design their books with help from Bridgeforth Design Studio. On Friday, the children will read their stories to Tail Waggin Tutors, H.E.L.P.s certified therapy dogs. Theyre little authors, said H.E.L.P. Executive Director Beth Hilton. We are encouraging them with their reading and writing skills. Children can submit their work for judging on Friday. Three winners will have their books published in hardcover, and an additional two winners will receive a gift basket filled with school supplies, according to Hilton. The books will be judged based on content, neatness, illustration, story and organization. The young authors have three types of books to choose from to bring their story to life: Bitty Book, Little Book or Big Book, with each child responsible for the story and illustrations. One Little Book and two Big Book entries will be published. All children who register their stories will be invited to read them at the Washington County Public Library sometime in the fall. While Story Book Evolution is suggested for children aged 7 and up, younger children also have an opportunity to participate in Story Book Smart Beginnings, coordinated by United Way of Southwest Virginia and located in the Youth Tent. Smart Beginnings is a region-wide community of United Way that cares for and about children aged 0 to 5, said Regional Coordinator Carolyn Koesters. The focus is about getting these children ready for kindergarten and exposing them to the world of language, Koesters said. That process starts with the parents. Its not about reading every word on the page to the child but engaging with the child when reading the book, Koesters said. Children can take home free books from the tent, and United Way has information for parents on how to read to their child. The inaugural year of the event has gone exceptionally well, Hilton said. Weve had some kids from Tennessee come too, she said. Theyre not just from Abingdon; its just nice to see they like to write and [its nice] to watch their creative minds at work. Tetrault is almost done with her submission; after choosing to do a Big Book, she just needs to finish her illustrations. Its more of one of those stories that reads like a journal entry with magic in it, Tetrault said. Wednesday morning Tetrault was doing some freehand drawing to get into her drawing spirit before finishing her book. If I dont have enough spirit, then Ill just get bored and give up, so I really need to get my drawing spirit first, she said, sketching dragons and avatars. Six-year-old Avery Davidson, who attends Washington Lee Elementary School in Bristol, Virginia, was back on Wednesday to continue working on her book, titled An Elf and a Reindeer. I like to read and write, the incoming second-grader said. Im making the book for my dad. Not only is Davidsons book about her favorite holiday Christmas but its based on her own Elf on the Shelf and accompanying reindeer. As Davidson was working on her illustrations, she got some tips from Brian Bridgeforth, owner of Bridgeforth Design Studio in Bristol, Tennessee. Bridgeforth owns the studio with his wife, Marie Bridgeforth. Are you ready to rock? Brian Bridgeforth asked Davidson, as he headed to his personal storyboard. The couples job on Wednesday was to give the children some ideas on how to design their book and layout, said Mary Bridgeforth. Anything they come up with, with their imagination isnt wrong, she said. This is not the couples first Highlands Festival. In 2015, they were the Festival Signature Artists. We want to encourage them [the children] to keep their own styles, her husband said. To create their own characters, their own stories. Story Book Evolution has been Highlands Festival Executive Director Becky Caldwells heart project for the past year. It is Caldwells hope to turn the event into an annual part of the festival, which falls right when most children are heading back into the classrooms. This is the start of something really cool, Caldwell said. We can do so much to help our kids get ready for school and still make it fun. BRISTOL, Tenn. Gubernatorial hopeful Randy Boyd, who described himself as a champion of small business on Wednesday, said, Everybody starts small, with no fanfare or press. Boyd, a former commissioner of Tennessees Department of Economic and Community Development, met with a group of about a dozen business leaders at the Bristol TN/VA Chamber of Commerce to hear what they needed from the state should he be elected. The main concerns discussed were education and jobs. For more information about Tennessee Promise visit tnpromise.gov/. To learn more about the Tennessee Reconnect Act visit www.tn.gov/nexttennessee/section/nt-tennessee-reconnect. President of King University Whit Whitaker was curious as to what role private education could play in the effort to help leverage the Drive to 55 initiative rolled out by the governors office in 2013, which Boyd helped create. The initiative is aimed at getting 55 percent of Tennesseans equipped with a college degree or certificate by the year 2025, in order to create a skilled workforce in Tennessee. Boyd answered that private institutions are a critical part in making sure the initiative meets its goal. The enrollment is up 33 percent at Carson-Newman, Boyd said. And the university is attributing the increase to Tennessee Promise students who are transferring in from community colleges. Tennessee Promise is a scholarship and mentoring program that provides a last-dollar scholarship to students that will cover the cost of tuition and mandatory fees not covered by the Pell grant, the HOPE scholarship or the Tennessee Student Assistance Award. Students can use the scholarship at any of the states 13 community colleges, 27 colleges of applied technology or other eligible institution offering an associate degree program. President of SESCO Management Consultants Bill Ford said he wanted to know if Boyd had a solution to finding drug-free people who want to work. Boyd said he believed the first step to fixing the problem was to let kids work while they are in school. I think we do a disservice to our kids by not letting them work, he said. A recent study said that 24 percent of kids have never worked while they were in high school. So they dont know how to dress properly, show up on time or speak to their supervisors. I think thats where we need to start. Only 645,000 high school students are expected to graduate by 2022, according to Boyd, and in order to grow the skilled workforce, adults who have lost jobs need to be retrained. Getting more adults the training they need to re-enter the workforce is also critical, he said. And thats why Tennessee Reconnect was introduced as a part of the Drive to 55. The Tennessee Reconnect Act establishes a last-dollar scholarship for adults to attend a community college tuition-free. Boyd went on to say that if more adults would take advantage of the program, employers would get the skills and credentials they are looking for, and those needing jobs would be able to get them. Boyd also said that because there is an opioid crisis in the state, along with other addictions that need to be addressed, he is working to attract therapeutic workplaces to Tennessee. A therapeutic workplace gives people who fail their drug test a way to help them earn their job back. Weve built a 200-person call center site in Hancock County called Project 95, Boyd said. There are already a dozen companies bidding for it. How you win the bid is based on what you are willing to do for the employees, including giving these people hope by agreeing to be a therapeutic workplace. David Ring, manager of government affairs and strategic projects for Strongwell Corp., said he was impressed with Boyd. I work in Bristol, Virginia, but Im a Tennessee resident, Ring said. And many of the things he spoke about arent just important for business leaders and owners, they are important for all Tennesseans. Im impressed. BRISTOL, Tenn. -- Bristol Tennessee City Schools announced today the resignation of Board of Education Member Randy Frye, effective immediately. In his letter of resignation, Frye stated that he and his family will be moving outside the city limits of Bristol making him ineligible to to serve on the board. According to the City of Bristols Charter, any vacancy occurring on the board of education shall be filled by the city council from the district in which the vacancy occurs, to serve only until the next general city election when such vacancy shall be filled for the remainder of the unexpired term by election by the qualified voters of the city. I am extremely appreciative for the expertise and insight Randy brought to our board, said Director of Schools Gary Lilly. It was a pleasure getting to know him and working alongside him the past two years. He will be missed, and I wish him and his family the very best on their move. DUFFIELD, Va. A Wednesday vote by the Virginia Coalfield Coalition clears the way for a private firm to acquire BVUs OptiNet network, though some unfinished details still remain. The coalitions board voted 14-0, with two members absent, to approve a deal for Sunset Digital Communications of Duffield to acquire the telecommunications network and assume an operational role in VCCs 4G wireless network. Sunset first announced its intention to buy the fiber-optic network for $50 million in February 2016. The vote occurred at the end of a nearly five-hour meeting at the LENOWISCO Planning District Commission office. It included a four-hour closed session excluding the public and news media that featured nearly two hours of attorneys for VCC and Sunset shuttling between different rooms to review aspects of the deal with each other, BVU and Scott County Telephone Cooperative. The Scott County group operates part of the VCC network and will operate more cell towers if the agreement is finalized. Its looking good. Its not exactly what we wanted, but well make it work, Sunset CEO Paul Elswick said after the meeting. Under the proposed agreement, Sunset would identify, license and dedicate two strands of fiber within the fiber-optic cable to VCC within one year and two more dark [unused] fibers within two years to provide a backup for VCCs portion of the network. VCC originally demanded six strands, but its consultant determined four would be enough to service its existing network. The idea of having backup fiber as a contingency for the failure of a subcontractor is a reasonable ask, Elswick told the board. But he urged them to accept a Sunset counteroffer to make operations simpler. Complexity and technology are bad, and we were trying to keep it simple, but we can deal with it. We have a good team, and we can deal with it, Elswick said after the meeting. VCC Chairman Seth White said the fibers are central to VCCs support. Its too important to us to not have those fibers. We want to light our own network; we want to never have to go through this again, White said. They [Sunset] were willing to give them to us in the case of default, but, in my experience, I dont want to have to wait until theres a default to have to deal with it. I want to deal with it now, and, going forward, it will be the best for everyone involved. Both sides agreed that two years was an acceptable period to identify and dedicate the strands. We came from zero fibers to four fibers, and the reason there is a time lapse is we dont know what weve got, Elswick said. It may be a year before we can determine whats available, redesign, re-engineer and free up the fibers. It could be two months, or it could be the full two years. We dont know. As part of the proposed agreement, Sunset would operate 13 cell towers in the VCC network and transfer operation of nine others currently operated by BVU to Scott County Telephone, which already operates 16 towers within its service footprint. A previous VCC deal would have excluded Sunset from the entire 4G network. Sunset also agreed to provide VCC with a greater share of revenues from the network 25 percent, up from the 10 percent VCC now receives from BVU. For its part, VCC consents to Sunset purchasing the OptiNet network and consents to any future transfer from Sunset to another buyer, so long as the wireless operator Verizon accepts that buyer, VCC attorney Scott Sexton said. BVU officials say state restrictions on service limit its ability to make OptiNet any more profitable than it already is, but a private firm wouldnt face those same restrictions. Sunset officials say they plan to offer cable TV, internet and phone service to thousands currently not served by BVU, in addition to operating the existing OptiNet network. In a separate agreement, the Virginia Tobacco Region Revitalization Commission agreed to compensate VCC $250,000 for equipment that would transfer to Sunset, under terms of the agreement. Assuming the remaining details can be resolved quickly, Sunset expects the deal could close next month. Our team will go on a fast track to closing, Elswick said. Somebody will set a closing date, [and] well start making job offers to BVU employees. All the stuff that is part of a normal deal and should have happened a year ago is getting ready to happen. Then we can start providing service to Southwest Virginia. China is set to see the most organ transplantations in the world in 2020, an expert said Thursday. A total of 2,866 organ donations took place in China from January to July in 2017, a 33 percent increase on a yearly basis, according to Huang Jiefu, chairman of the China National Organ Donation and Transplantation Committee (COTDF). Only 34 Chinese citizens chose to donate their organs after death in 2010, when China launched an organ donation system, but the number rocketed to 4,080 in 2016, according to Huang. More than 220,000 Chinese people have expressed a wish to donate organs after death, according to a COTDF donor registry developed in December 2016 Huang gave the numbers two days ahead of a conference on organ donation and transplantation in southwest China's city of Kunming to be attended by over 1,000 practitioners from 173 hospitals across the country qualified for organ transplant surgery. China has made significant progress in the legal framework for organ transplantation in recent years, with more than 30 official documents and regulations released by the National Health and Family Planning Commission (NHFPC) and the Red Cross Society of China. Law enforcement has also been strengthened on organ trafficking to protect both donors and recipients. From 2007 to 2016, authorities including the NHFPC and the Ministry of Public Security formed joint task forces to fight organ trafficking, arresting 174 criminal suspects. China banned transplants of organs donated from executed prisoners in January 2015. Since then only voluntary donations have been a source of organs for transplants. Volleyball playoffs: Hubs, Blazers sweep into state semifinals North Hagerstown and Clear Spring each won in sweeps at home Friday night, the Hubs over River Hill in Class 3A, the Blazers over Dunbar in Class 1A. CHENGDU China Railway Eryuan Engineering Group Co. Ltd. (CREEC), one of the largest comprehensive engineering survey and design companies in China, has expressed hope to take part in building the proposed Mindanao Railway Project (MRP). CREEC Deputy General Manager Zhang Xuecai said he went to the Philippines last June to meet with the Department of Transportation (DoTr) officials regarding the much-awaited MRP's Phase 1 Tagum-Davao-Digos Segment. "We are interested in the southern Philippines railways. We will enhance the communications with the transportation minister (secretary)," Zhang said in an interview with Asian journalists last Tuesday at the CREEC headquarters in Chengdu. The MRP is one of the major infrastructure projects that China seeks to build under the renewed China-Philippines relations. China plans to invest US$3.5 billion dollar for the construction of infrastructure projects like irrigation project, water supply dam, railways and bridges. China has reportedly committed US$24 billion worth of investment and infrastructure project pledges to the Philippines when President Rodrigo Duterte visited Beijing in October last year. The Duterte administration has launched "Build, Build, Build" infrastructure development plan that will require some PHP8 trillion in public and private spending until 2022. "In China, there is a saying that if you want to be rich, you have to build roads first. I am convinced that with the development of the Philippines, dmand for infrastructure projects will increase," Zhang said. Zhang said CREEC is making big contribution in the infrastructure development under China-led Belt and Road Initiative not only in China but in many countries including 11 from South Asia and Southeast Asia. Founded in 1952, CREEC is a subsidiary of World Top 500 Corporation China Railway Group Limited and has been awarded the top prize of National Award for Progress in Science and Technology. The business scope of CREEC covers the whole-process infrastructure construction service from planning, consultancy, supervision, contracting, product industrialization and survey and design not only railway but urban rail transit, highway, airports and seaports. "We hope that, the Chinese technology can make contribution the transportation development, railway development and economic development of every country," Zhang told the visiting 14 journalists from South Asia and Southeast Asia. Right now, he said, CREEC has 6,000 employees, including 258 experts, with 65 subsidiaries, production and operation institutes and branches and more than 130 project departments in China and across the world. It has participated in high-speed railway design with total length of 11,000 kilometers; and new and upgrading railway with length of more than 70,000 km; and railway mileage opening to traffic which exceeded 30,000 km as of 2015. Jelly Musico is a reporter of Philippine News Agency and currently an intern of the Peoples Daily Online. NEWTON The Newton City Council gathered Tuesday evening for its scheduled meeting, and tension ran high when discussing the Sue Jones Estate. Sue Jones and her husband left their estate of $1.2 million to the City of Newton. The fund has grown and is now around $1.5 million, city officials said. I think in theory, we agreed with a statement of intent that is reflected in the minutes, Newton Mayor Anne Stedman said. (The) notes state that $500,000 will be used to construct a signature project, $500,000 to leverage other financial resources like grant or public partnerships and another $500,000 for smaller projects like the pocket parks. As a condition of the will, two unanimous votes taken two years and three months apart must be taken. One unanimous vote was recorded in 2013. Although the council had come to an agreement on what projects would be funded, there was still debate on whether to unanimously vote for the second time for the funds to be used. Before you vote to spend the money, the money needs to have an itemized list of where its going to be going and what its going to be going to, Councilman Robert Abernethy Jr. said. Newton City Attorney John Cilley IV invited the legal representative of the Sue Jones Estate to the council meeting to answer any questions the council had about the intent and procedure of the will. Councilman Abernethy asked attorney David Isenhower if he was the author of the will, and he responded that Larry Pitts was the estate attorney initially. His unfortunate passing did not allow him to complete the task of administering her estate when she passed, Isenhower said. Isenhower explained to the council the will lays out two separate funds. You have two funds you have the gift itself and you have the income that the principal of that gift has earned that you may use for the general support of the recreational building, he said. Since neither Jones nor Pitts can speak to the intent and purpose of the will, Isenhower said it is left up to interpretation. I take it to be the expenditure of the funds, not what project, but just the expenditure of the funds, Isenhower said. You have one unanimous vote I understand, and its been longer than two years and three months. Estate debate ramps up Abernethy disagreed with Isenhowers interpretation. When Mr. Pitts was alive and I sat beside him, I remember the general feeling that (he) gave to me, and that was the money was going to be spent, and thats the reason there were going to be two unanimous votes because (the second vote) needs to be on the specific items, Abernethy said. Stedman said it would not make a difference if they voted or not, but Abernethy disagreed. To me, it does make a difference. If were taking the steps that Im suggesting, then the money will be absolutely protected with the intent of how were going to spend it, Abernethy said. If we just take a vote to spend the money, then at any point in time a three to three vote with the mayor breaking the tie can change what were spending the money on. Although Abernethy had not finished debating the problem at hand, Councilman John Stiver made a motion to vote. Councilman Stiver and I had conversations with each member of the council in an effort to come to some type of consensus, Councilman Jerry Hodge said, but Abernethy claims to not have heard from any council members during discussion. Ive tried really hard to publicly come to an agreement, Abernethy said. Since our last meeting, not a single member of council has given me a phone call nor the mayor. I was here the night Mr. Pitts read the will, and if the rest of the council wants to make a motion and a second on something and leave me out on an island to play politics, thats fine with me because I'm not running (in the election) this time. Abernethy was cut off by Councilman Tom Rowe when he said he wanted to vote on the matter. I reached out to another council member, across the table if you will, and did not get a response back I just want everyone to know that, Abernethy said. Mayor Stedman responded, Well, lets make everyone aware that you also do not return phone calls either. Youve never returned my phone call. At this point in the meeting, Councilman Wes Weaver began to make a comment when he was also cut off. Are we not still in discussion, Weaver said. Can I not say nothing? Abernethy replied and said, This is an example of the transparency that we see in here; we dont get to speak. Stedman asked Abernethy to stop speaking and said he was out of order. Abernethy agreed and continued to speak. Stedman banged the gavel and called for a 10 minute recess. Returning from recess, Stiver made a motion, and a vote was taken on the statement of intent, which resulted in a 5-1 outcome with councilman Abernethy voting against it. A second unanimous vote on the funds will have to be taken in order for the funds to be used. Stedman said the consideration for the use of the principle funds has been tabled for now. Democracy at its finest A public hearing was held for the Comprehensive Pedestrian Plan. The purpose of the Newton Pedestrian Plan is to improve all aspects of the pedestrian experience and increase pedestrian activity throughout the city, according to the City of Newtons website. The plan would address ways to make streets safe for Newtons youngest and oldest pedestrians and how to improve connections between neighborhoods. Through the process, we had a lot of public input, Planning Director Randy Williams said. We also during this whole process had an online survey where we had an excellent response. We kept it open to garner more and more response after we had thought we closed it and it worked out very well. Williams said since the draft was completed in February, it has been reviewed by the public, the Newton Planning Commission, Newton City Council, staff and North Carolina Department of Transportation (NC DOT). I know weve been through a long process, its been about a year, Stedman said. A lot of work has been put into this plan. During the public hearing, a citizen voiced concern about locations to be affected by the plan. At the last planning meeting, numerous residents from Dogwood Hills attended and expressed their concern, Dogwood Hills resident David Crouse said. I asked a question (in the meeting), and it cant be answered. Crouse owns property on Southwest Boulevard, and he questioned which side of the street the greenway would fall on; Planning Director Williams said it has not yet been determined. Hodge said there is much more to be discussed when it comes to the plan. To say, specifically, this is exactly what its going to look like its a shot in the dark, Hodge said. I commend the citizens of Dogwood Hills for staying on top of it and working with the city planning department and attending meetings. Thats just democracy at its finest right there. Abernethy also sided with the city in his response to Crouse. In defense of the city, whenever we put together plans like this, its really a concept that take years to come to fruition and develop, Abernethy said. We have to put these plans together so we can go out and access money that other communities have gotten access to. However, resident Michael Waltuck supported the Pedestrian Plan. As a land owner, I am pleased to see that big green line coming through my property, Waltuck said. I am jumping for joy at this plan. There are under-represented (residents) in this community that will benefit from this plan. The Pedestrian Plan was adopted by a 5-1 vote; Weaver voted against the adoption. I feel like (the Pedestrian Plan) should be laid out exactly how its going to be and not be a guessing game, Weaver said. Brunch Bill ordinance The council heard a presentation from City Manager Todd Clark to adopt an ordinance to allow alcohol sales before noon on Sundays one of the easiest discussions of the night. The ordinance passed with a 5-1 vote; Rowe voted against it. A long time ago, somebody once said that drinking freely comes with great responsibility, so I would encourage everyone to be responsible with this, Abernethy said. I really enjoy the opportunity to give back liberty because its always scary to me when I see those things taken away from people. A Catawba County Commissioner subcommittee meeting recently discussed a similar ordinance and will hold a discussion at its Monday meeting in regards to county areas located outside of a municipality. Other items discussed The council voted unanimously to recognize Smart Sites/Communities Grant in the amount of $4,000, grant Newton-Conover High School with a sewer replacement and amend the budget ordinance to allow six additional firefighting positions through the 2016 SAFER grant. The city managers report included updates on Soldiers Reunion events, Catawba Countys first winery ribbon cutting ceremony in Newton on Friday, Newton 101 Citizens Academy and other items. This domain has expired. If you owned this domain, contact your domain registration service provider for further assistance. If you need help identifying your provider, visit https://www.tucowsdomains.com/ Fifty days is a long time in politics, but there is not even a hint of a political solution in sight to the turmoil in Darjeeling. The hill town and adjoining areas of north Bengal are groaning under a continuous shutdown enforced for the past 50 days to press for a separate Gorkhaland state. Though normal life has come to a halt, passions run high. Gorkha agitators are continuing to hit the streets regularly and the upshot has been recurring violence. But the biggest consequence of the uninterrupted bandh has been mounting human suffering. Minus work and livelihood, food is scarce and those among the poorest are being forced to forage into adjoining forests to look for what could satiate their hunger. Offices, shops and schools are shut and internet is down. Children have been forced to sit at home with their childhood stalled. The last 50 days have indeed been tragic. But the coming days dont offer better prospects with West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee betraying little or no sympathy for the Gorkha agitators. The demand for Gorkhaland is divisive and arguments can be made both for and against it. Nepali-speaking Gorkhas are for a separate state of their own, saying they suffer alienation and apathy among a sea of Bengalis. The counter argument could be Gorkhas alone cannot be representative of a region which also has other tribes such as the Lepchas and Bhutias and that a new state so small will be unsustainable. Though there is no harm debating the pros and cons of the demand, allowing the Darjeeling stalemate to drag on is undesirable. Banerjee may have a battery of reasons for not backing the cause of Gorkhaland. For one, the bifurcation of Bengal will turn Bengalis against Banerjee and it is more politically prudent for her to play the Bengali identity card by resisting attempts to divide the state. Banerjee opposing Gorkhaland is therefore expected. She has adopted a hard-line posture and is hoping to tire out the agitators. Her ploy is short-sighted. The agitation for Gorkhaland has simmered for decades and is unlikely to dissipate any time soon. Instead, her steadfast opposition will deepen the sense of alienation among the Gorkhas and fuel the agitation further. With no serious effort being made either by the state or the Centre to bring the agitators to the negotiating table so far, hot-heads are running amok in the hills. If at all, the BJP, which heads the NDA government in Delhi, has ditched the Gorkhas. Having got their nominee elected to Parliament twice from Darjeeling on the tacit understanding that the BJP would back the statehood demand, the saffron party has backtracked and washed its hands of the issue. Both Banerjee and the BJP are eying the Bengali vote bank. All this and more make the alienated Gorkhas agitated. To douse passions, the Centre must consider convening a tripartite meeting and the Bengal government should agree to at least hear out the grievances of the agitators. The Gorkhas also must shed their stubbornness and join the talks by jettisoning their impractical insistence on immediate statehood. The continuing shutdown is not doing any good to anyone. Besides creating bad blood, the bandh is bleeding the local economy. Darjeeling deserves a civilised dialogue to end the deadlock. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON The Pakistan Supreme Courts ruling disqualifying thrice-elected Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif has been described by experts as a judicial coup, a major blow to efforts to strengthen the countrys fragile democracy. Much of the world communitys efforts to strengthen democracy in Pakistan have focussed on the powerful military and political parties. But its time to take a closer look at the outsize reach of the activist judiciary, which has the dubious distinction of endorsing virtually every military takeover. This is not the first time a premier has been ousted by the court. In 2012, Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani was convicted of contempt by the top court and sentenced to be detained for the duration of the hearing. Days later, he was disqualified. In the case of both Gilani and Sharif, the court used ambiguously worded provisions introduced in the constitution by military dictator Zia-ul-Haq that require all politicians to be sadiq and ameen (truthful and trustworthy). Sharifs legal problems began in 2016, when the Panama Papers leaks revealed his three children purportedly owned offshore assets worth millions of dollars. And yet, he was removed not over these revelations but a court-appointed investigative teams conclusion that he had not declared in his 2013 nomination papers the salary he was owed by his sons UAE-based firm. Experts were quick to point out the political nature of the verdict by the judiciary, many of whose top members are populists with a propensity to cite the Islamic foundation of Pakistans laws and constitutional provisions. Experts also noted the lack of due process in Sharifs case, who was disqualified without a trial even though the court ordered a separate trial into the charges based on the Panama Papers. Historically, Pakistans superior judiciary has always aligned with the powerful military establishment. It has given legitimacy to military regimes. The supreme court sentenced a prime minister deposed by military to death in 1979, Raza Rumi, editor of Pakistans Daily Times and a political analyst, told Hindustan Times. He was referring to hanging of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. While another military takeover in Pakistan is highly unlikely, the generals prefer to meddle in politics through other pliant institutions. The judiciary is yet to offer convincing proof it can stand up to the pressure from the general headquarters in Rawalpindi. This time the judiciarys resolve may have been strengthened due to silent support from the military. Nawaz Sharif has had a strained relationship with the military during the past four years. Sharif and the military clashed publicly over policy and political matters, Rumi said. On the face of it, disqualification was an instance of an over-reach. But opinion is divided if the military was involved. The joint investigation team set up on the courts order to probe Sharif and family included two officials of the military intelligence and Inter-Services Intelligence hardly the organisations that come to mind for investigating money laundering and financial crimes. Commentators also noted the difference in the judiciarys handling of the cases of Sharif and former military ruler Pervez Musharraf, whom the PML-N leader was intent on prosecuting. Musharraf is facing a raft of cases involving serious charges, including negligence that caused the assassination of former premier Benazir Bhutto. The cases against him dragged on for years before he was allowed to leave Pakistan for medical reasons and he is unlikely to return to face the charges. At the same time, Pakistans judicial system, like those in most South Asian countries, has failed abysmally in delivering speedy justice to ordinary citizens. Almost two million cases are pending in Pakistans courts and even special anti-terrorism courts have had few successes in convicting militants and terrorists. In the few instances that courts have convicted someone in a high-profile case, things have not gone well for the judges. The anti-terrorism court judge who convicted Mumtaz Qadri, the policeman who assassinated Punjab governor Salmaan Taseer in 2011, was forced to flee Pakistan after getting death threats. Like many other Pakistani politicians, Sharif and his family have struggled with corruption allegations. But had Sharif lasted till the elections due next year, he would have been the first Pakistani premier to complete a full term. As long as Pakistans judiciary appears to be more concerned about the letter of the law, and not its spirit, judicial meddling of the sort that cut short Sharifs term cannot be ruled out. There have been several explanations why the deal with Flipkart was snapped off at the last minute. The real reasons may only be known to the shareholders but the fact is any transaction is hard to consummate unless both parties are reasonably (if not equally) interested about it. In this case, Flipkart couldnt have been excited since they were hardly getting any useful assets worth a billion dollars of paper. The key reasons why acquisitions happen are because the acquirer gets access to valuable assets like (a) superior technology (b) stronger brand (c ) new set of customers (d) new set of suppliers or (e) well-trained employees. Clearly, Flipkart has a stronger brand, they do not need the technology, there will hardly get any customers or suppliers from Snapdeal who are not engaged with Flipkart and Flipkart themselves have excess employees. It looked like Flipkart was being forced into the transaction so that Tiger could get some cash out and Softbank could get a foot into Flipkart by investing cash which Flipkart needs to continue its battle with Amazon. Except for Softbanks cash, there was no other benefit for Flipkart. In that sense, this snapped deal is a great outcome for Flipkart, especially if they can pull off a huge US $ 2 billion investment from Softbank, as is being talked about, without being burdened by Snapdeal. On the other hand, this is not a good outcome for Snapdeal and its shareholders especially the earlier investors. I expect Snapdeal to keep falling behind Amazon and Flipkart in the Indian e-commerce race which means the value for the investors will keep dropping unless of course the founders are able to pull off Snapdeal 2.0. Unfortunately, this will not be easy because there is nothing unique about the Indian Taobao approach and in any case Indian vendors will prefer to sell on Amazon or Flipkart which can boast of increasing traffic. Unless Snapdeal manages to continue to raise large sums of money independently, they can get badly sandwiched between Flipkart and Amazon who will both deploy massive marketing budgets to win India. An opportunity to salvage something probably just went down the drain. I do not believe that all transactions with Snapdeal are off though. The money from the sale of FreeCharge will give Snapdeal some breathing space and time to regroup and re-evaluate deals. I would not rule out a transaction with some offline retailer in future because most offline retail chains continue to struggle with their digital transformation projects and some of Snapdeals assets may be of value although certainly not in the US $ 950 million range. The news about a potential snap deal with Infibeam was probably a red herring Infibeam started off on the high cost B2C horizontal e-commerce space but quickly moved into the more profitable B2B e-commerce PaaS (Platform as a Service) space so it makes no sense for Infibeam to move back into B2C e-commerce. The biggest fallout of this deal not happening may be on the startup ecosystem. One of the key reasons behind the success of the startups in Silicon Valley has been the steady and regular acquisitions of tech startups by big giants like Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Apple, Facebook etc. (they are called the Five Horsemen). This was a huge motivation for people to come together and startup. Unfortunately, acquisitions in India are few and far between and the investment community was getting worried that their India bets may not pay off as handsomely as they expected. A good deal between Flipkart and Snapdeal could have got some excitement back but that is not happening, at least for now. Incidentally, while all this hullabaloo about Flipkart and Snapdeal was going on, two important acquisitions in the Indian startup space quietly went unnoticed - Dentsu Aegis buying Sokrati and Athenahealth buying Praxify. This just proves the point that the best way to get acquired is to build solid assets of genuine value. K Vaitheeswaran is an e-commerce pioneer and author of the book Failing to Succeed - The story of Indias first e-commerce company Twitter: @vaitheek The views expressed are personal Emraan Hashmi clearly doesnt believe in mincing his words, and more so when he is speaking his mind about an on-going controversy. The nepotism debate has rocked the film industry, and the infamous chant nepotism rocks! at a recent film awards ceremony only added fuel to the fire. Emraan unapologetically says that it was his inside connection that landed him his first film Footpath (2003). Yes, nepotism exists in our industry, and I got a break because of it. If my uncle [Mahesh Bhatt], who is a producer and director hadnt been there, I wouldnt have been an actor. However, he insists that initially he didnt want to take up acting as a career option. My case was different. There was no dying need for me to become an actor or be a part of this industry. My college had got over, and I stepped into films. Some superheros don't wear capes. Proud to be this one's father . Happy fathers day !! A post shared by Emraan Hashmi (@therealemraan) on Jun 18, 2017 at 1:48am PDT The actor feels that people will definitely have biased views about their own family. I wouldnt push my seven-year-old son, Ayaan, now into Bollywood. But tomorrow, if he wants to become an actor, it will be a lot easier for him because his father is an actor and producer. However, Emraan feels that the easy start could later pose a risk to his sons career. The industry will try to box my son into an image that his father had and completely snatch away his individuality. They wont let him start afresh, like an outsider. Emraan will next be seen in the upcoming film Baadshaho, along with actors Ajay Devgn, Ileana DCruz and Esha Gupta. On the kind of role his fans can expect him to play in the film, he says, People have a lot of expectations, since the team of Once Upon A Time In Mumbaai (2010) is coming together after a long time. The audience will be expecting some kind of a conflict between me and Ajay, like we had in OUATIM. But what I can guarantee is that it will be a total surprise and one hell of an entertainer! Follow @htshowbiz for more Nature Biotechnology announced on August 3 that it retracted a 2016 paper on NgAgo following heavy criticisms by outside groups that they could not reproduce the findings. The paper was in fact retracted at the request of its leading author, Han Chunyu from Hebei University of Science and Technology, China, Hans team said in an announcement on August 3. Nature Biotechnology said Hans decision to retract was the best course of action to maintain the integrity of scientific publications. Han and his team will further research on the reason why the findings cannot be replicated. Meanwhile, the university will launch academic evaluations of Hans research findings and undertake relevant procedures. The team has agreed to reexamine the validity of gene editing under the support of peer scientists in a third-party lab at Hans university. The results will be published to respond to widespread concerns. Scientists in and outside China began raising doubts about the conclusions following the papers publication last year, saying NgAgo shows no sign of gene editing capability, Nature Biotechnology said. Hans team had claimed that NgAgo could locate and cut gene sequences more accurately than CRISPR-Cas9, a dominant technology in genome editing. According to media monitor, Meltwater, nearly 4,000 Chinese news stories cited Hans paper within two months of publication. The toddler adopted by actor Sunny Leone last month had been turned down by 11 prospective parents before she could find a family, says adoption agency CARA. While adoptive parents are often very picky about who they bring into their homes and have a lot to say about a childs physical appearance, skin colour as well as medical history, the tinsel town diva and her husband Daniel Weber were not interested in any of it. Without looking at colour, background and health status, Sunny Leone happily took the child in adoption. We respect that they didnt try to bend the rules and stood in the queue like all the other parents, said Child Adoption Resource Agency (CARA) CEO Lt Col Deepak Kumar. Leone applied for adoption on the web portal of CARA, the apex body for adoption, on September 30 last year and was referred a child on June 21. Leone gave her assent the following day as parents are given 48 hours to accept the child. On completing all the formalities the actor was allowed to take the child from Latur in Maharashtra into pre-adoption foster care and is now awaiting a court order which will declare the couple the legal parents of the nearly two-year- old Nisha Kaur Weber. Leone is an overseas citizen of India (OCI) and for such category of parents the adoption process can be quite arduous as a child is first referred to Indian nationals. Only if the child is not adopted for two months does he or she get referred to overseas applicants. That 60 per cent of the children referred to foreign nationals are special needs children and 90 per cent are those older than two years reflects the fact that such children find less acceptability among domestic applicants, Kumar explained. In fact, concerned about parents delaying the adoption process, the central adoption body had in May this year revised its rules and said it would only refer one child at a time to prospective parents instead of three in one go. Since we changed our rules we have been able to place double the number of children and ensure that children spend less time in orphanages and find new homes faster, Kumar said. PTI got in touch with Weber who said the family would not like to comment as a court order on the adoption was pending. Another Friday, another romantic comedy hits theatres. This time, Shah Rukh Khan and Anushka Sharma try their luck with Imtiaz Alis Jab Harry Met Sejal. Could he recreate the magic? At the risk of inviting heat from SRK fans, I must say there isnt much that attracts about this film. The self-alluding title that attempts to pay homage to a Hollywood classic, or the fact that it took Ali (Ranbir Kapoor actually) so long to come up with it, doesnt help. The songs are hummable but are hardly the kind that will stay with you forever. The story looks like yet another rehash of the troubled guy finds his manic pixie dream girl trope, something we have already seen in Jab We Met, Rockstar and Tamasha. This is not an attempt at being cruel to Imtiaz Ali. His talent was proven early, in the second film of his career itself. Jab We Met changed the way Bollywood approached romance and comedies and often, the mix of both. However, not everyone always succeeds. Even in the plenty of ways they fail, there is never a dearth of romcoms to come out of Bollywood, one often indistinguishable from the other. Pick anyone from Alia Bhatt, Shraddha Kapoor, Kareena Kapoor or Katrina Kaif and pair them with Arjun Kapoor, Aditya Roy Kapur, Sidharth Malhotra or Varun Dhawan. Add a relatively unheard of director under the umbrella of Yash Raj Films or Dharma Productions and let Karan Johar tweet about each poster, trailer and song from the film. Voila! You have yourself a new-age Bollywood romantic comedy. Serve hot with a remake of a Punjabi pop song. With such a streamline approach to making films, it is no surprise that several of them go unnoticed. But the one that choose to be original, do leave an impression behind them. Herere the six best, most refreshing romantic comedies that Bollywood got right: 1. Namaste London One of those times Katrina Kaif has fit a role to the bone. If Katrina had a reason to join films, it was to play Jess. Things went so right for her mostly due to things beyond her control. Her accent, which still causes trouble for her, wrapped her persona seamlessly as the uptight, snobbish Brit and Akshay Kumar was her manic pixie dream boy. The two had a sparkling chemistry, aided by one perfect song after another. The comedy was earthy, pulled through mostly by the antics of Askhay and Rishi Kapoor. The two acts, in Punjab and in London, balanced each other with their own separate tones and life, both captured with equal appreciation of the place by director Vipul Amrutlal Shah. 2. Dum Laga Ke Haisha How wonderful is that feeling when you walk into a film expecting nothing and leave it with a massive smile on your face and new found appreciation for Bollywood in general? Dum Laga Ke Haisha is one of the best things to happen to this genre of films and why it is still so underrated is beyond me. Ayushmann Khurrana, as a man miffed with the cards hes been dealt in life, and Bhumi Pednekar, as a woman trying to make the most of those cards, prove themselves worthy of all the appreciation they can get. The film has not a single bad egg with even the supporting actors giving performances far more worthy of awards than the ones who usually end up getting them. The 1990s aesthetic, visually and aurally manifested on screen by director Sharat Katariya, gave a soul to the film, a feat that many find difficult to master. From minute details like making Ayushmann wear plaid shirts and v-neck sweaters to including Kumar Sanus almost entire discography, to the stress given on the essence of the story: loving the true beauty of someone, everything was addressed with great care. And that makes all the difference between a good and an exceptional film. 3. Cheeni Kum R Balki weaved a magical love story in what could have gone so disastrously wrong. Cheeni Kum, starring Amitabh Bachchan and Tabu, was one of the most refreshing stories told by Bollywood that year. It was the story of a 64-year-old Indian chef in London in love with a woman half his age and the ordeals he had to go through to get her dad to accept him as son-in-law (a man six years his senior). Balki does not shy away from getting his characters to speak easily about sex, condoms or porn but still manages to make it all seem so innocent and familiar. A few things, like killing a child from cancer as not even a plot device, could have been avoided but because that happens mostly on the sidelines, this film can still qualify as a romantic comedy, unlike Kal Ho Naa Ho, the second half of which turns it into a full-fledged sob fest. 4. Band Baaja Baraat One of Ranveer Singh and Anushka Sharmas first films, Band Baaja Baaraat separated them from of a host of other newcomers struggling to leave a mark.The two had a sizzling chemistry together, the story was simple but executed with enough simplicity and focus by director Maneesh Sharma that something really refreshing was delivered to us. 5. Jaane Tu Ya Jaane Na Imran Khan and Genelia DSouzas career-best film was also their first. The adorable little film, directed by Abbas Tyrewala, was like a breath of fresh air in a genre that has grown lazy over the years. Sure, the premise is all too familiar. Two friends who fall in love for each other while harping on how they are just friends. We have heard and seen the story several times but to see it brought to life on screen and still look so familiar was unexpected. Their friendly banter, their realisation of love for each other and the great performances by the rest of the cast, made it worthy of repeated viewings. 6. Jab We Met At last, the one that rescued romcom in Bollywood. Kareena Kapoors performance was one of her finest in Jab We Met. We had never seen someone so incessantly on and still so adorable in Bollywood before and so we accepted Geet with open arms. Her quirky oft-recited dialogues and her wide-eyed expressions were accentuated by the muted, sweet guy performance of Shahid Kapoor. The songs, in their variety, were groovy, soulful, full of life, or of melancholia. The direction stood out for the mere simplicity and genuineness of the way Ali chose to make his film. Will Jab Harry Met Sejal be able to hold water against Jab Aditya Met Geet? Well find out soon enough. Interact with the author @soumya1405 Follow @htshowbiz for more SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON Terry Pratchett died in March 2015, having achieved fame for his Discworld novels, which have sold tens of millions of copies worldwide. The final Discworld novel -- the 41st title in the series -- went on sale later in 2015, following Pratchetts death. Plans for Terry Pratchett: His World at the Salisbury Museum in the UK were first announced earlier this year, with further details revealed last week. The exclusive major exhibition will offer an insight into the mind of Pratchett, creator of some of the most beloved fantasy worlds and characters. Image by Paul Kidby for Pratchetts The Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents. (Salisbury Journal) Terry Pratchett: His World is due to open in Salisbury -- where Pratchett lived from 1993 -- on September 16. It is being presented by the museum along with the late authors estate and artist Paul Kidby, whom Pratchett chose to design many of his Discworld book jackets and publications. The star of the show is a full-size recreation of Pratchetts office -- known as The Chapel -- allowing visitors to see the space in which he worked, complete with objects in situ. Paul Kidby, Discworld Massif 2014: A group portrait of over 70 favourite characters from Discworld. (Salisbury Journal) Other highlights include Pratchetts first published story, The Hades Business, as well as his first typewriter, which he bought with the earnings from that story. Paul Kidby, Great ATuin -- owned by Pratchett and never displayed before. (Salisbury Journal) The exhibition will also feature artwork by Pratchett as well as 40 original paintings and drawings by Kidby. Many of these artworks are from Pratchetts personal collection and have not been exhibited previously, according to Kidby, whose own exhibition Paul Kidby: The Charmed Realm will appear alongside His World from September 2 through January 6, 2018. Terry Pratchett: His World runs from September 16 to January 13. Follow @htlifeandstyle for more The government has initiated action on the reports alleging payment of $1.18 million bribes to the officials of the NHAI by an American firm, the Lok Sabha was informed today. Road Transport and Highways Minister Nitin Gadkari said it was reported in media that M/S CDM Smith, through its employees and agents, and those of its wholly-owned Indian subsidiary (CDM India), had paid approximately $ 1.18 million in bribes to government officials in India in exchange for highway construction supervision and design contracts. The media report had emanated from the US Department of Justice, Criminal Divisions letter dated June 21, 2017 available on their official website. The minister said the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) has compiled the list of all the consultancy assignments awarded to the said firm and its associates. The Ministry of Road Transport and Highways and the NHAI have initiated steps to obtain the supporting documents so as to take the matter to the logical conclusion, he said during the Question Hour. Gadkari said his ministry has taken up the matter with the Ministry of External Affairs as well as the Indian Embassy in USA to liaise with the US Department of Justice to obtain the information and records gathered by them during their inquiry. He said the NHAI had debarred the said firm for a period of three months in 2015 from participating or engagement in the future bidding of NHAI projects because of deficiency in the services in one of the projects -- the Dholpur- Morena Section of NH-3. Similarly, in a lone assignment awarded to the said firm, the NHIDCL has debarred the said firm this year for a period of two years, he said. The relevant part of the US Departments letter says From approximately 2011 until approximately 2015, employees of CDM Smiths division responsible for India operations and CDM India illegally paid bribes to officials in the National Highways Authority of India, Indias state-owned highway management agency and an instrumentality under the FCPA, in order to receive contracts from NHAI. The bribes generally were 2-4% of the contract price and paid through fraudulent subcontractors, who provided no actual services and understood that payments were meant to solely benefit the officials, the letter had said. Gadkari said the Central Vigilance Commission of India has constituted a special investigation team of three officers to investigate the matter and report back to the commission. India has raised about Rs 400 crore by selling a 6.8 percent stake in state-run miner Hindustan Copper Ltd, the finance ministry said on Thursday. The government sold the shares through an auction on the stock exchanges over two days to Thursday. After the sale, its stake in the miner will come down to 76.05 percent, the ministry said. The Government of India has disinvested 6.83 per cent of paid up equity in Hindustan Copper Limited through Offer for Sale (OFS). The Government is likely to get approximately Rs 400 crore from this disinvestment, a finance ministry statement said. The floor price for the share sale was fixed at Rs 64.75 per share and retail investors were offered discount of 5 per cent on the cut off price for the non-retail Category. Institutional investors bid for 5.05 crore shares, which is 1.71 times the 2.96 crore shares on offer for them. As a result, the Government revised the total offer size to 6.83 per cent of the paid-up capital, the statement said. The retail portion of HCL OFS also got good response from the retail investors and the revised offer size of 1.26 crore shares also got fully subscribed. Overall, HCL OFS got good response from the investors, the ministry added. This is the 4th CPSE OFS in the current financial year, 2017-18. Shares of HCL closed at Rs 62.45, down 4 per cent on BSE. The government has already raised over Rs 8,428 crore through disinvestment in five companies, including selling stake in L&T through SUUTI, and one share buy back. India aims to raise a total Rs 72,500 crore rupees through the sale of partial government stakes in state-run and private firms during the year to March 2018, which will contribute to meeting the governments fiscal deficit target of 3.2 percent of gross domestic product. The labour ministry on Thursday formed a committee that will look afresh at the minimum wage fixation formula keeping in view the cost to maintain a minimum living standard and also the size of an average family. The Central Advisory Board under the Minimum Wages Act on held a meeting in New Delhi, chaired by Labour minister Bandaru Dattatreya. The board comprises central government nominated persons representing employers and employees, industry stakeholders and trade unions. After the meeting, Dattatreya said, Taking into all the consideration, we have decided to constitute the committee that will look into minimum wage fixation. The employers have no objection to this as there is a need for a minimum living standard in present day. The Central Advisory Board which advises on policy direction on minimum wages had not met for about 7 years. In todays meeting, we discussed about implementation of minimum wages in various states, areas needing more refinement and how minimum wage calculation can be rationalised, Labour secretary M Sathiyavathy briefed after the meeting. There are several states that have not even constituted their respective state advisory boards to fix minimum wages, she said. Minimum wages differ from state to state, for example, in Delhi, the state government has recently decided to hike the minimum wages for unskilled worker to Rs 13,350 per month against Rs 9,724 per month earlier. For semi-skilled and skilled persons, it has been increased from Rs 10,764 to Rs 14,698 and from Rs 11,830 to Rs 16,182 per month, respectively. The labour secretary said the Centre can only advise states on fixing minimum wages while the onus of decision making lies entirely on their advisory boards. At the moment, there is no mandatory minimum wage that we can give. Some of the states have fixed minimum wages that are less than what we have advised. We can only have a advisory floor level minimum wage fixation but some of the states are even giving less than that, she added. The three-unit based formula to fix minimum wages presently counts only four members of a family -- husband, wife and two children. It has no provision to count dependent parents, if any, or even if there are more than two children. The three-unit formula gives the husband a full unit, wife 0.8 unit, and 0.6 units for each of the two children. Based on the three-unit formula, the minimum wage is worked out taking into consideration the calorific value requirements of 2,700 each, certain length of cloth requirement, housing rental value, education and medical expenses etc. Now the trade unions are saying that the three-unit system are not sufficient to decide minimum wages because the children continue to stay with the family for longer periods. The trade unions are saying that the two children and wife should be accorded one single unit, Sathiyavathy said. After the 2010 Supreme Court ruling that dependent parents are to be taken care of by children, two more units should be added and the formula be based on six-unit formulae than three. So that is something we need to explore, she added. However, from the employers point of view, she said it should not be abnormally high for them because it needs to be at a level which sustains the establishment. Among others, there are issues related to dearness allowances (DA) fixation, as it is revised once in five years. Some of the states have not revised DA for more than five years. Every year or every six months, depending upon the variable DA, which is linked to the consumer price index, the variable DA has to be changed so that the minimum wage get altered, the top ranking labour official said further. The ruling-Bharatiya Janata Party -- affiliate trade union Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh (BMS) -- said the three-unit formula to fix minimum wages is unscientific in todays time as the situation that existed in 1957 has substantially changed as on today. The CrPC section 125 and Maintenance of Parents and Senior Citizens Act make it mandatory for an earning member to maintain his parents, failing which he/she may have to face penal consequences. Today, the average life span of a person has increased to 65 years compared to that of 1957. Hence two additional units have to be added, the BMS Zonal Organising Secretary Pawan Kumar said. Also, marriageable age of a child has also increased and they should also be given full units. So there is a need to hike number of units from three to six to calculate minimum wages, he added. BMS has also demanded to form a monitoring committee with a trade union representative as its chairman to monitor poor implementation of minimum wages Act, both at the Centre and states. As expected on August 2, in the third bi-monthly monetary policy statement, the Reserve Bank of India cut the policy rate by 25 basis points (bps) from 6.25% to 6%. One basis point is one-hundredth of a percentage point. A look at what the policy announcement means for your money and what you should do. Lending, deposit rate The RBI seems to be unhappy with the current benchmark lending rate marginal cost of funds-based lending rate (MCLR). During the policy announcement, RBI deputy governor Viral Acharya said, The experience with the MCLR system introduced in April 2016 for improving monetary transmission has not been entirely satisfactory even though it has been an advance over the earlier base rate system. The central bank is all set to review this. This is not the first time that the RBI is considering a review. All floating rate loans taken after April 2016 are linked to MCLR. Prior to MCLR, floating rate loans were linked to the base rate and before that to benchmark prime lending rate. There is a possibility that borrowers will soon see a new benchmark lending rate that will replace MCLR. However, this wont happen immediately. But what does a 25 bps cut mean for your existing floating rate loans on MCLR? From a broader perspective, this 25 bps cut has already been priced in. Because if you look at the way banks have moved their deposit and lending rates, banks in a way have priced in this drop. There may be a marginal movement but I wont expect any major movement, said Shanti Ekambaram, president-consumer banking, Kotak Mahindra Bank Ltd. Analysts say that banks are likely to cut lending rates linked to MCLR further. If you are looking to take a home loan, compare rates in the market and also factor in other charges linked to the loans. Meanwhile, banks have been cutting deposit rates. Recently, SBI cut savings account deposit rate to 3.50% per annum. Banks including ICICI Bank Ltd and Lakshmi Vilas Bank have cut fixed deposit rates. Banks have been dropping deposit rates, if you see in the last few months. Liquidity and demand supply will be the major factors that will come into play, said Ekambaram. You can expect further cuts in fixed deposit rates. Debt Mutual funds as well as debt funds have been factoring in this rate cut too. People investing now would do well to focus on short-term funds, according to Lakshmi Iyer, chief investment officer debt, and head of products, Kotak Mahindra Asset Management Co. Ltd. But dont expect high returns from liquid funds. Expecting high returns from duration funds from here on may not be a good idea. Steady returns from income-accrual funds is the way to go, said Vidya Bala, head of mutual fund research, Fundsindia.com. Heavily-armed Maoist rebels abducted three gatemen of railway level crossings in Bihar, disrupting train movement for nearly seven hours on the Patna-Howrah section, officials said on Thursday. Movement of nearly 25 trains were disrupted till the route was re-opened at around 7 am on Thursday, a railway official told HT. The three railway employees, abducted past midnight, were released at around 2 am after security forces launched an operation in Lakhisarai, one among 15 Bihar districts affected by Left-wing Maoist insurgency. Sources said rebels abducted the railway employees for defying a shutdown during the martrys week observed by the banned CPI (Maoist) and its armed wing, the Peoples Liberation Guerilla Army (PLGA), from July 28, the death anniversary of Charu Mazumdar who is considered the father of Left-wing insurgency in India. Around 100 rebels were involved in the abductions from the level crossings, located in a 10-km radius, Bhagalpur zone inspector general SM Khopde said. Rebels also threatened the drivers and guard of a passenger train. Following the abductions, several trains including the Howrah-Amritsar Punjab Mail were halted at different locations till the route was cleared in the morning. All the railway employees have been released and are safe, Rajesh Kumar, the Eastern Railways spokesperson told HT. The area of the abduction, around 180 km from capital Patna, is along the border with Jharkhand, one of Indias most Maoist insurgency affected states. Police sources said security forces, including the anti-Maoist force the CoBRA of the CRPF launched operations in the Gopalpur forest which led to a brief exchange of gunfire. The rebels, however, managed to escape deep into the jungles under the cover the darkness. Additional director general of police (headquarters) Sanjiv Kumar Singhal said all possible routes used by Maoists to move around have been sealed to corner the rebels. Sources said a mobile tower operated by a private company was also set ablaze by . rebels who frequently target infrastructure. The incident came barely a few hours after the government informed Parliament that incidents of violence by Maoists officially termed Left wing extremists (LWE) -- have been declining consistently for the past five years. In a written reply, minister of state for home Hansraj Gangaram Ahir informed Rajya Sabha 1,048 Maoist attacks were reported in 2016, as against 1,089 incidents in 2015. He said 213 civilians and 65 security personnel were killed in Maoist attacks in 2016 compared to the killing of 171 civilians and 59 security personnel in 2015. The Maoists profess to be fighting for emancipation of the poor and downtrodden people but the government says most of the rebel outfits were mainly involved in abductions for ransom. (With agency inputs) SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON In a pointed warning to her coalition partner, the BJP, Jammu & Kashmir Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti has noted that attempts to undo Article 35A of the Indian Constitution would strike a fatal blow to the nationalists in the state. Mufti was referring to an ongoing case in the Supreme Court challenging the validity of the Article, which prevents non-J&K state subjects from settling and buying property in the state. Although the writ petition was filed by an obscure NGO, it reflects the longstanding desire of the Sangh Parivar to abrogate the special status of J&K. Kashmiris are apprehensive that such a move would open the sluice gates for a demographic transformation of the Valleyan objective propounded by Sangh groups as the ideal solution to the Kashmir problem. The J&K government is particularly concerned at the reluctance of the Union government to file a counter affidavit in the Supreme Court. Against the backdrop of the escalating protests in Kashmir, this issue could potentially be explosive. The legality of Article 35A is being challenged on the grounds that it was not added to the constitution by a constitutional amendment under Article 368. This is a specious argument. For the article does not by itself confer any right on J&K state subjects. The Instrument of Accession signed by the Maharaja of Kashmir in October 1947 specified only three subjects for accession: foreign affairs, defence and communications. In July 1949, Sheikh Abdullah and three colleagues joined the Indian Constituent Assembly and negotiated over the next five months the future relationship of Kashmir with India. This led to the adoption of Article 370, which restricted the Unions legislative power over Kashmir to the three subjects in the Instrument of Accession. To extend other provisions of the Indian Constitution, the Union government would have to issue a Presidential Order to which state governments prior concurrence was necessary. Further, this concurrence would have to be upheld by the constituent assembly of Kashmir, so that the provisions would be reflected in the states constitution. This implied that once Kashmirs constituent assembly framed the states constitution and dissolved, there could be no further extension of the Unions legislative power. This was the core of J&Ks autonomy. Following another set of negotiations in 1952 between New Delhi and Srinagarknown as the Delhi Agreementseveral other provisions of the Indian constitution were extended to J&K via a Presidential Order in 1954. Among other things, this order empowered the state legislature to regulate the rights of permanent residents. These were subsequently defined in the J&K constitution of 1956. Article 35A of the Indian constitution merely clarifies the different status of J&K in this regard. Questioning the validity of this Article has no bearing on the rights of state subjects. Nor can the Presidential Order of 1954 be questioned without questioning the validity of other provisions of the Indian constitution it extended to J&K. Whats more, such orders have periodically been used to amend the states constitution. Indeed, this has been done despite the fact the constituent assemblythe ultimate ratifying bodydissolved after the adoption of the J&K constitution in November 1956. This flagrant misuse of the provisions of Article 370 to erode the autonomy of J&K was started by Jawaharlal Nehru and was continued by succeeding governments. It has been a major cause for disaffection. Not surprisingly, Kashmiris have come to regard the rights of permanent settlement as the only remaining piece of any meaningful autonomy. It is worth recalling that these rights were the product of a long struggle. This goes back to 1889 when the state government changed the court language from Persian to Urdua move that undercut the dominance of the Kashmiri Pandits in the state bureaucracy and led to an influx of Punjabi Hindus. The ensuing campaign against outsiders led to the search for criteria of permanent residence, including acquisition of immovable property and length of residence. In 1927 the Maharaja enacted the definition of Hereditary State Subject. This piece of legislation was used by Kashmiri Muslims to demand greater representation and opportunities. Later still it formed the basis of the relevant provisions in the J&K constitution. Against the backdrop of Kashmirs accession to India, these provisions understandably assumed huge importance as a bulwark of the states special status. Any attempt to tamper with them is bound to result in a massive backlash. At a time when J&K stands close to the boil, New Delhi can ill-afford to ignore this situation. Srinath Raghavan is senior fellow, Centre for Policy Research, New Delhi The views expressed are personal SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON We are coming together to defend secularism by defeating Narendra Modi, Amit Shah and the RSS, proclaimed Lalu Prasad with typical bombast in September 2015 just ahead of the Bihar assembly elections. Our biggest challenge is to defeat the forces of communalism represented by Mr Modi, argued Nitish Kumar vehemently. The die had been cast: in the autumn of 2015, the citadel of secularism had to be protected at all costs from the saffron army led by the strongman from Gujarat. Almost two years later, the rules of the political game have changed once again: now, with Nitish switching sides to Mr Modi, secularism it appears is no longer an ideal worth fighting for because, in the words of the Bihar chief minister, there must be zero tolerance to corruption. Corruption and communalism are being projected as if they are two adversarial forces engaged in a bitter tussle. The narrative has been artfully spun as if you have to make a conscious choice between battling the corrupt or ostracising the communal: you no longer can seek to do both and survive politically. In the process, the moral bankruptcy and rank opportunism of our netas has been bared once again. Indeed, this is now a classic case of secularism and anti-corruption on call, catchy slogans that have become a purdah for political duplicity. Does Nitish Kumar, for example, become secular when he is part of the anti-Modi mahagatbandhan and communal when he joins hands with Mr Modi? Is anti-Modiism the sole defining badge of secularism, or is there a deep-rooted flesh and blood commitment to a pluralistic vision of a country which will not accept any compromise with those who support a majoritarian state? Nitish, after all, spent 17 long years as part of the BJP-led NDA and kept silent during the Gujarat 2002 riots. Did the RSSs Hindutva ideology only become anathema for him in June 2013 when Mr Modi took over the BJP leadership? Nor is Nitish the first instance of such short-sighted, selective politics that has, in a sense, almost delegitimised the secular challenge. The Mumbai Congress chief Sanjay Nirupam, for example, started his political career as a Shiv Sena MP who even edited a Sena mouthpiece that poured communal venom during the post-Ayodhya Mumbai riots in 1992-93. Can Mr Nirupam really be at the vanguard of the fight for secularism simply because he has now switched sides? In Gujarat, Shankarsinh Vaghela was the face of the Congress for the last 15 years even though he was a devout member of the sangh parivar for much of his political life. Does he now suddenly lose his secular identity because he has resigned from the Congress? Moreover, the despair in the secular camp at the ascent of Modi did also seriously compromise the fight against corruption. In 2015, Lalu Prasad was a convict in the fodder scam but still a valued member of the anti-Modi coalition because he had the crucial vote bank to offer: the spectre of jungle raj was forgotten because an election had to be won. Can Rahul Gandhi explain how he tears up an anti-corruption ordinance that was brought in by the UPA government to protect Lalu in October 2013 and then aligns with the same individual two years later? The hypocrisy cuts across parties: can the BJP, which now targets Lalu as the ultimate symbol of political corruption, explain how it ran a government in Karnataka with the support of the Reddy brothers, the mining barons charged with massive fraud? Or how it happily made peace with Congress defectors in Uttarakhand who they once accused of corruption? Or why cases against the BJPs political rivals are being fast-tracked by the CBI even as those in BJP-ruled states like Madhya Pradesh and Chattisgarh are being buried? Or is the yardstick of corruption a measure of the states brazenly partisan approach: you are corrupt only when the state agencies pronounce you as such? Truth is, both corruption and communalism need to be resisted in an uncompromising, non-discriminatory manner. The dangers of creating any false binary between the two are apparent in the BJPs choice of Yogi Adityanath as UP chief minister. A leader with a record of stoking communal hatred was cheered when he promised to rid UP of corruption: is Yogis past to be forgotten because he now is a crusader against corruption? Post-script: In the past week, the BJPs internet army and Nitish supporters have been busy deleting what they said about each other on social media in the last four years. I suggest they press the pause button instead: who knows, after all, when next will the political hawa change? Rajdeep Sardesai is a senior journalist and an author The views expressed are personal SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON Joshimath / Dehradun : In the backdrop of the alleged Chinese army transgression in the state, the state administration has decided to deny permission for Bhotiya nomads of Niti Valley in Chamoli district to visit the Barahoti area to perform traditional rituals. PTI had reported that Chinese Army troops transgress Barahoti sector close to India-China border on July 25. The nomads and locals often visit the 80 sq km Barahoti pasture. There is also a temple of Lord Shiva and a pond known as Parvati Kund where Bhotiya nomads take a dip and pay obeisance. The India-China standoff over Doklam in Sikkim is only adding to the tension. The administration however has not talked about Chinese threats. Additional district magistrate of Joshimath Yogendra Singh said the denial is temporary. Being monsoon season, sometimes permission is denied to visit the area as the visitors could stuck in landslides and land in trouble. It is just a precautionary measure. After all they have traditional right to visit temple and pond, ADM told HT over phone. The Bhotiyas are upset. Dharmendra Pal, head of Bampa village, said now they have turned reluctant as it would be arduous to get the permission from the administration in view of the tensions at the border. Other villagers say they may make an effort to keep their traditionals alive. Manish Sisodia, the education minister of Delhi, wrote to the minister of human resource development (HRD) on Thursday, lauding the Union cabinets move to scrap the no detention policy as an emergency measure. However, in the same letter he also slammed the governments for implementing the policy as even though it was a good policy it was implemented poorly and thoughtlessly. Under the Right to Education Act, students were automatically promoted to higher classes despite their performance until class 8. Though this was supposed to shield students from the stigma of failure, many students struggled once they reached the ninth grade and were expected to attempt exams and pass them for the first time. On Wednesday, the Union cabinet decided that they would scrap this no detention policy, and students would have to clear exams in class 5 and 8 to be promoted to higher classes. These students would be given two chances to clear the exams. This decision (to scrap the no detention policy) was needed as an emergency measure to end the current crisis across the country, where academic standards of schools are rapidly deteriorating, wrote Sisodia in his letter to Prakash Javadekar, the HRD minister of India. This was echoed by school officials in Delhi as well, who said that students would be able to benefit from the move. This is definitely a positive move. It will help bring back some quality in education. Ultimately assessments, evaluations and examinations are a necessary part of education, said Jyoti Arora, the principal of Mount Abu School, while adding that she had noticed some of her students struggled in Class 8 because of the policy. According to BK Sharma, principal of Shaheed Hemu Kalani Sarvodaya Bal Vidyalaya, said that the no detention policy had resulted in a lack of accountability in certain schools. No detention policy cannot mean no teaching or no studying policy. However, this had happened in some places, because of which standards were not up to the mark in many schools, he said. Atishi Marlena, Sisodias advisor on education, said that the scrapping of the policy would help bring some accountability back into the system. Results were one count of accountability for teachers, parents and even students... Parents at government schools, especially those who may not have been highly educated, would be concerned with only if their child had passed or not. Many were not even aware how or why they were passing, she said. While on the one hand, the government praised the move, on the other hand they also slammed the government for failing to implement a progressive education reform effectively. The no detention policy was a progressive education reform and it is unfortunate that we have had to roll it back. And the reason we have had to do this is because it was poorly and thoughtlessly implemented, wrote Sisodia. Marlena echoed Sisodias ideas and said that the government should have taken steps to change the curriculum to better suit the needs of children, rethink the assessment methods, and better train teachers before a no detention policy could be implemented. We are considering some reforms in examination methods and questions at Delhi schools, and have set some model papers. We will try and encourage critical thinking, and move away from rote and memorisation. We will get the students to think about issues, rather than just learn things by heart, said Marlena. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON High drama unfolded near Shivaji Stadium in Connaught Place late Wednesday night when a Delhi police team exchanged fire with a group of men who allegedly used a pistol to threaten a cigarette kiosk owner, police said. The drama ended with the arrest of four men even as two of their associates fled in Ertiga car. The group was thrashed by people before being whisked away to the local police station. It was found that two of them were out on bail in a recent murder case, said BK Singh, DCP (New Delhi). The brief exchange of fire took place behind Shivaji Stadium at around 11.30pm on Wednesday after the six men arrived from Uttam Nagar to have dinner in Connaught Place, police said. After having dinner, they visited a cigarette kiosk in the neighbourhood. While having a smoke these men, between 25 to 35 years of age, entered into an argument with the kiosk owner, the DCP said. In the heat of the moment, one of them pulled out a pistol and pointed it at the kiosk owners temple and threatened to shoot him. When other people intervened, he pointed the pistol at them, Singh said. Sensing trouble, one of the eyewitnesses ran to a police picket nearby and alerted the policemen on duty. A group of five-six policemen rushed to the scene and told the man to drop his gun. But the man fired a round. The police team too fired three-four shots in response, the DCP said, adding it was yet to be ascertained if the suspect fired in the air on in the direction of the policemen. No one was hurt in the firing. In the panic that ensued, suspects tried to escape the crime scene. While two of them managed to get into their Maruti Ertiga car nearby and flee, four of them were chased and caught by the police and public. The pistol used in the firing too has been seized. The public thrashed them, but we managed to rescue them and take them away. Two of them were found to have been released on bail a month ago in a murder case. We are ascertaining the background of the others, the DCP said. Multiple cases of womens braids being mysteriously chopped off have left many Delhi villagers hanging nimbu-mirchi on their doors and performing hawans. Police officers, however, are crying hoarse that there is no ghost in town. A DCP on Thursday spoke about his eight-year-old daughters turmoil on hearing the stories of mysterious hair chopping. Disturbed by what his daughter had undergone, DCP (Outer Delhi) MN Tiwari made an appeal to the media not to publicise any supernatural angle to the cases of hair chopping in his district. The outer district comprises areas such as Najafgarh, Ranhola, Aman Vihar, Mangolpuri and Mundka. Since July 30, women in at least four villages Ranhola and Najafgarh in outer Delhi and Palam and Chhawla in southwest Delhi have reported that they found their braids chopped off when they woke up from sleep. Villagers started guarding themselves against the unknown evil by putting hand imprints on their outer walls, invoking gods and keeping 24-hour vigil. Tiwari said he was shocked when his daughter asked him to close the doors and windows of their house in west Delhi on Wednesday. My daughter heard the recent stories about supernatural powers chopping off womens hair in Delhi. But when she heard that even I had received such a complaint, she was scared that her hair could be chopped off too, Tiwari told Hindustan Times on Thursday. If a child who lives with a police officer can start believing in such falsehood, what can be expected of children? Are we replacing the scientific temperament of our children with such beliefs? the DCP added. Tiwari said it took him 30 minutes to explain to his daughter that there are no supernatural elements like ghosts and witches in the world. Tiwaris conviction stems from investigation into one such complaint made in his district on Wednesday morning. In an alleged incident, which occurred early on Wednesday, a 45-year-old woman in Ranhola fell unconscious inside her washroom and woke up to find her braids cut off. But I got the case thoroughly investigated and we could not to verify the womans complaint. Logic says when there is no sign of any break-in into her house locked from inside, how can an outsider be blamed for it? There is no supernatural angle to that incident, said Tiwari. He said it was possible that such incidents were being fabricated to seek media attention. When a similar case involving another middle-aged woman emerged in Najafgarh in the early hours of Thursday, the DCP shot down that allegation too, saying the house was locked from inside and there were five other family members inside. Mass hysteria, not black magic or any other supernatural activity is behind the recent spate in incidents of braid choppings reported from various parts of the country, suggest experts. Recently, women from several states Haryana, Rajasthan, Punjab and Delhi have reported incidents of their hair being chopped when they were asleep or unconscious. In Delhi, cases have been reported from Najafgarh, Ranhola, Aman Vihar, Mangolpuri and Mundka. A 60-year-old Dalit woman was also allegedly branded a witch and lynched on Wednesday in Agra for being the suspect. From all available evidence it seems that the women are cutting their own hair, either consciously or in an altered sensorium, likely to seek attention, said Sudhir Khandelwal, former head of the department of psychiatry at All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS). And the Capital has had a history of such mass hysteria. In 2001, people in Delhi had started reporting sightings of the kala bandar (black monkey). Some people even were injured while trying to capture or catch a glimpse of the so called monkey. There was a case of mass hysteria again when school children started fainting, said Dr MS Bhatia, head of the department of psychiatry at Guru Teg Bahadur hospital. Experts say the mass hysteria is just like women getting into a sort of trance after dancing, singing at religious events. Such hysteria is more commonly seen in women and the reason mostly is domestic stresses. They are usually in a dissociative state, so they may not be aware of what they are doing and might not have any memory of it later on, said Dr Bhatia. However, it is not uncommon for people to do it even consciously. When such a phenomenon starts happening, there is also a fear of missing out. So people often start copying the original incident, said Dr Khandelwal. He suggested that psychiatrists or psychologists should evaluate the women who have complained of their braids being chopped off. Sometimes, these are not isolated incidents. The women, who have reported these incidents, might also have reported things like visions or possessions in the past, which suggests a chronic condition. These women would require counselling, he said. Experts also strongly suggested that the media not play up such incidents and carry interview of such women. The innate desire of these women consciously or unconsciously is to seek attention and the media is providing just that. Once, they stop getting attention, the incident will stop being reported. It is just like a child stops crying when he notices that the parents are not paying attention, said Dr Khandelwal. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON Monsoon rains have spoilt the travel plans of many tourists to Shimla as Air India has been cancelling flights due to bad weather. The airline has cancelled three flights in four days to the Shimla from Delhi keeping in mind the safety of passengers at the hill citys table-top runway with surrounding gorges. Sources said more cancellations are anticipated in the coming days due to the weather. Air Indias subsidiary Alliance Air operates the flight under Regional Connectivity Scheme and flight to Shimla was the first flight under the scheme that was launched by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in April this year. Air India does not offer alternative arrangements, but allows full refund to passengers in case they dont want to be accommodated in the next flight. It is risky to operate in Shimla in this weather and we have to be very careful. Even in cases when the runway is wet, we opt not to fly. We take weather details before flying and decide accordingly, said Alliance Air CEO CS Subbiah. An Air India official said that due to the topography of Himachal Pradesh and height at which the runway is located, weight is a major issue and the aircraft has to carry less than full capacity for safe travel. In cases where the aircraft takes off and we get to know about bad weather later, we divert the flight to Chandigarh and take passengers by road. But that is costly and we try to get accurate information about weather before we take off from Delhi, an airline official said. The airline operates ATR-42, a 48-seater aircraft which takes only 35 passengers from Delhi and only 15 passengers on way back. The fare of 50 per cent seats is capped by government and rest the airline can sell on its own. Most passengers choose to take refund as they are tourists and want to reach Shimla same day. Even if we offer seat in the next flight, we cannot accommodate everyone as we operate one flight per day. The backlog is increasing and it is better for us to refund the money. No one wants to wait for three-four days to go to Shimla, the official added. Ever since its launch in April, the flight is in huge demand and has been running almost full every day. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON Nine fresh cases of women complaining about a mysterious figure chopping their braids came to fore on Thursday from six areas across the Delhi. In the first case, reported from Mayapuri in west Delhi, a 37-year-old woman, Monika and her three daughters aged between 10 and 17 complained that their braids had been chopped while they were asleep. Monika stated that she woke up to go to the washroom around 3am and realised that her braid was missing. She immediately returned to her room to find the chopped braid lying on the pillow in her room. Monika then raised an alarm and started crying. We all woke up. She asked us to check the hair of her daughters who were asleep in the other room. We were shocked to see that their braids had been chopped off as well, Sapna, Monikas sister-in-law, said. She added, We all live together in the same house and I myself locked down the entire house before retiring for the night. It is impossible for any one to have entered, leave alone an animal. Till yesterday we were discussing the cases of braid choppings that were happening across the city. Today it happened at our house. When we asked Monika if she saw someone, she said that she did not even realise when it happened. Later, a woman from Rohini claimed that she started hearing a song at 3am on Thursday. As she tried to figure out where the song was coming from, her head started to ache and she fell unconscious. When she regained consciousness, she found her braid lying next to her. In a similar case reported from Pandav Nagar, a 50-year-old woman complained that she experienced the presence of a heavy figure inside her home and had a severe headache at 11:30am on Thursday, after which she fell unconscious. She complained that she woke up to find that her hair had been chopped. We have no idea who is doing all this but this is very scary. We are terrified to even step out of the house these days, a woman from Pandav Nagar said. In another case reported from Kapashera, a 53-year-old woman complained that she fell unconscious in her bathroom as she went to take a bath and when she woke up, her hair had been chopped. In Najafgarh too, a similar case was reported where a 43-year-old woman alleged that her hair were chopped off by someone while she was asleep. No police case have been registered in these matters so far but inquiries have been initiated. Police accused five Delhi University professors of leading a group that shouted slogans about azadi at Ramjas College earlier this year, which led to clashes on the campus. Delhi police in its action taken report on the incident, submitted before a city court on Thursday, said participants of a literary festival at the college on February 21 came out of a conference room under the leadership of the five professors raising slogans, which were directed against the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP), the student wing of the RSS. The nine-page report said group led by professors Mukul Manglik, Vinita Chandra, Debraj Mookerjee, NA Jacob and Benu Lal chanted slogans such as Hum kya mange Azadi, Kashmir Mange Azadi, Bastar Mange azadi, ye pyari pyari azadi, ye sundar wali azadi, Police tum Bahar Jao, Hamara Umar wapas lao. It said the group also took out a protest march on the campus on that day. Refuting polices charges, Mookerjee, one of the professors named in the report, told Hindustan Times he was not even present in the conference hall when the march had started. Neither was I part of the march, nor was I present in the area where the slogans were allegedly raised, he said. The report, filed by a joint commissioner of police (crime) in pursuance to earlier court order, further stated that some administrative staff and teachers of the college were also under its scanner. Violence had erupted after students from the DU colleges and Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) congregated outside the Ramjas to hold a protest march against the ABVP on February 22. They were demanding action against the ABVP members who had allegedly hackled and threw stones at students gathered for a seminar at the conference hall a day before, where JNU student Umar Khalid, who is facing sedition charges, was invited to speak. Several students, journalists and a DU associate professor, Prasanta Chakravarty, was injured in the clash. The ATR was filed before metropolitan magistrate Abhilash Malhotra in connection with a complaint filed by advocate Vivek Garg seeking an FIR against those who allegedly raised anti-national slogans at the college on February 21 and 22. Garg in his plea alleged that slogans were raised by members of the All India Students Association (AISA) and Students Federation of India (SFI). Police in its ATR said they were also looking into eight complaints against ABVP supporters and 37 against AISA supporters and sought from the proctor details of students of various colleges of the DU present at the site. Police also served notice to the principal of the Ramjas College to provide the footage of the CCTV installed on the campus or any video recording done by the administration at the time of the incident. Acting principal of the college PC Tulsian, meanwhile, refused to comment on the police report saying the matter is sub judice. Moreover, I cannot comment on the incidents at these happened in February whereas I joined in March. Since then, we have taken measures to prevent recurrence of such incident. The court will hear the arguments of the complainants on August 29. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON Gunfire erupted near Shivaji Stadium in New Delhis Connaught Place between police and a group of men around 11.30 pm on Wednesday after one of them allegedly put a pistol to the head of a kiosk owner, threatening to murder him for refusing to give them a cigarette. Four of the men, Aman Bhatia, Puneet Bhatia, Sahil Verma and Kamal, were arrested after they were chased and thrashed by locals while two of them managed to escape in their car. According to police, the six men had come from Uttam Nagar to Connaught Place to celebrate the bail of Aman, a murder accused. After dinner, they visited a nearby cigarette kiosk that was about to shut. They allegedly asked the owner to open the shop again and when he refused, Aman put a pistol to his head. When other people intervened, he pointed the pistol at them. Sensing trouble, an onlooker ran to a police picket nearby and alerted policemen. A group of five-six policemen immediately rushed to the crime scene and told Aman to drop his gun. But he fired, BK Singh, deputy commissioner of police (New Delhi), said. The police team too fired three-four shots in response. Fortunately, no one was hurt in the firing. In the panic that ensued, the suspects tried to run. While two of them managed to get into their Maruti Ertiga car nearby and flee, four of them were chased and caught by the police and locals. The locals thrashed them badly but police whisked them away, the DCP said. A country-made pistol and two live cartridges were recovered from their possession. Police said that Aman was accused in a murder that happened in west Delhis Bindapur and had gotten bail. His brother Puneet has been accused of threatening witnesses in the case. Amans gang is also wanted in another case of shootout in Connaught Place reported a month ago, Singh said. A 32-year-old Delhi traffic police constable attempted suicide by shooting himself with his service pistol at the office of the deputy commissioner of police (traffic) near Bangla Sahib Gurudwara in central Delhi on Thursday evening. The incident took place around 6.30 pm. The injured constable, identified as Parvinder, is battling for his life in Ram Manohar Lohia (RML) hospital. BK Singh, deputy commissioner of police (New Delhi), said that Constable Parvinder was on sentry duty at the DCP (traffic) office when he shot himself on the right side of his temple. Hearing the gunshot, other traffic police personnel rushed to the incident spot and found the constable unconscious and in a pool of blood. The injured constable was rushed to RML hospital. His condition is critical. We have informed his family members about the incident, said the DCP. What trigged him to take that step is yet to be known. No suicide note was found from his possession or at the incident spot, he added. A native of Bhiwani in Haryana, Parvinder joined the Delhi Police in 2010. He was trained as a commando and lived in Nangloi area. There is a fairy tale story that says Islamabad, following the yellow bricks of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), will find prosperity in the embrace of Beijing. The plot line says Chinese funds will flow into Pakistan and help modernise the latters infrastructure; this in turn will usher in a boom period for Pakistans domestic economy, part of which will derive from an ability to export more. While Pakistans external debt and even current account deficit may rise sharply initially as it sucks in Chinese capital and machinery, this will all be capacity-building investment and will provide future returns that will more than compensate for the original payout. Trade figures for the first half of 2016 show that Chinese imports into Pakistan have surged by nearly 30%. This reflects a huge surge in power-generating material, construction and mining equipment and agricultural machinery more or less what would be expected going by the above script. However, there has also been an 8% drop in Pakistans exports to China a surprise given the improving transport links between the two countries. Islamabad has publicly blamed barriers to Pakistani exports that Beijing has put in place and a free trade agreement that is tilted against Pakistan, throwing into question Beijings motives in building the corridor. The Chinese imports have contributed to a surge in Pakistans trade deficit: This rose 77.34% in March, year on year. Worse, Pakistans current account deficit widened a staggering 121% between July last year and February. Pakistan is heading for a current account deficit, as a percentage of GDP, about double that of Indias. The deficit is also remarkable given the supposed billions of dollars of Chinese investment that was supposed to come into the country with the corridor. In fact FDI into Pakistan during that same eight-month period was less than $1.3 billion, underlining how much of the corridor is being financed by debt or by intra-Chinese transfers. Some Pakistani economists are already fretting about what this could mean. Estimates show Pakistan will have to pay $90 billion back to China over the next 30 years because of the corridor. This is not impossible, so long as Pakistan attracts capital and exports more during that time. The present export and FDI figures, however, show no evidence of this happening. So far, the benefits seem to be accruing solely on Beijings side of the ledger. If this trend continues as the CPEC expands and develops, Pakistans fairy tale may slowly metamorphose into a horror movie. Andhra University, Visakhapatnam will release the preliminary answer keys for Andhra Pradesh State Eligibility Test (AP SET) 2017 on August 10. The examination was held on July 30. According to a notification issued on the official website of APSET 2017, The primary key(s) of APSET 2017 will be displayed on 10th August 2017 and the final key(s) will be displayed 20th August 2017. The results will be processed as per the UGC new guidelines. Andhra University, Visakhapatnam is conducting the Andhra Pradesh State Eligibility Test (APSET) for the year 2017. The State Eligibility Test (SET) is based on the pattern of the National Eligibility Test (NET) conducted by UGC. The APSET-2017 examination is conducted in 31 subjects for which University Grants Commission (UGC) has granted permission. Due to high demand for recruitment as assistant professors/lectures in universities and degree colleges in newly formed Andhra Pradesh state, Andhra university prepared the proposal for conduct of APSET examination, which was sent to the UGC. UGC has granted accredation to Andhra University, Visakhapatnam for conduct of State eligibility test (SET) examinations. There are 26 universities, 146 government degree colleges, 1192 aided and unaided degree colleges in bifurcated Andhra Pradesh. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON New Delhi The Indian Insititute of Technology, Delhi, has received about 50 proposals for research on benefits of cow milk and urine, the government informed Parliament on Wednesday. The government, however, said that it had not set up any panel to carry out research on cow derivatives. The proposals from different academic and research institutions were made under the Scientific Validation and Research on Panchgavya (SVAROP). Minister of state for science and technology YS Chowdhary said a national brainstorming-cum-consultative workshop on SVAROP was organised by IIT-Delhi, in which scientists and researchers from academic/reserach institutions and government agencies, including IITs, ministry of AYUSH, ministry of science and technology, and others participated. The Department of Science and Technology has constituted a National Steering Committee to initiate a national programme on SVAROP, Chowdhary said. A man, claiming to be a doctor and running a private clinic in Sohna, was booked on Wednesday night after a team of two doctors raided his clinic in Ghanghola village in Sohna. The quack, identified as Sukhbir Singh, a resident of Kharoda village in Sohna, managed to divert the teams attention and flee the spot. Acting on a tip-off, the civil surgeon of Gurgaon, BK Rajora, sent a team of two doctors, headed by Praveen Prakash Yadav, senior medical officer, community health centre, Ghanghola in Sohna, to Singhs clinic at 11.30 on Wednesday morning. The doctors raided the clinic and asked for Singhs credentials. No policeman accompanied the team. Singh was unable to provide any degree or certificate which could enable him to practice as a doctor in the area, Dr Yadav said in his complaint to the police. The team then started seizing the allopathic medicines and syringes in the clinic. Meanwhile, Singh involved the team in a conversation, and with the help of one unknown person, managed to flee. The team then seized all the allopathic medicines at the clinic. Inspector Arun Kumar, station house officer of the Sohna police station, said that the police received a copy of the complaint against Singh, filed by Dr Yadav in the evening. Read I 6 quacks arrested in Gurgaon after search operations; used syringes, steroids seized The letter was from the CMO and the complainant was Dr Yadav. We filed an FIR in the case at around on Wednesday night, Kumar said. The FIR has been filed under sections 419 (cheating by personation) and 420 (cheating) of the Indian Penal Code. The police said such cases of quacks operating in Gurgaon were not uncommon. On June 27, as many as six fake doctors practising in private clinics in Shakti Park, Shivaji Park, Khadirpur and nearby places in Sector 10 and Shivaji Nagar in Gurgaon were arrested after a search operation in the area by the CID and health department. For those who have been waiting for the Northern Peripheral Road (NPR) popularly known as the Dwarka Expressway to become operational and expedite infrastructure growth in new sectors, from 81 to 115, there isnt much hope of the project seeing light of day anytime soon. The project, which has been hanging fire for long, seems to have run into a fresh hurdle. Land acquisition process for Connecting Peripheral Road (CPR), which will connect NPR and SPR (Southern Peripheral Road) near Kherki Daula toll, has been stopped due to the presence of high tension lines. Presence of high tension electricity wires in a 600-metre portion of NPR has emerged as the main hurdle to the project and the Haryana Vidyut Prasaran Nigam (HVPN), the custodian of high tension wires, refused to shift the cables and poles. Now, the Haryana urban development authority (Huda) is considering the proposal of acquiring alternative land owned by the Haryana State Industrial and Infrastructure Development Corporation (HSIIDC) in the adjoining areas. The land owned by the HSIIDC, which is being considered as an alternative acquisition option, is right adjacent the CPR. We are in the process of holding consultations with officials in this regard. Meanwhile, we have asked the consultant working on the CPR project to explore the option of changing the present alignment. Another meeting will be called soon. However, HVPN said shifting of high tension wires and poles is not possible. Now, we are exploring all possible options to connect NPR with the National Highway-8, Yashpal Yadav, administrator, Huda, said. The NHAI had written to Huda a couple of weeks ago seeking transfer of land for the CPR project and construction of a cloverleaf road. The agency also appointed a consultant to draw up a detailed project report (DPR) for the 28-km Dwarka Expressway (18-km portion of which in Gurgaon is known as NPR) with one end near Kherki Daula and the other end near Shiv Murti near Mahipalpur on the Delhi-Gurgaon Expressway. Read I Gurgaon: NPR home buyers want early completion of Dwarka Expressway We requested the Huda to overcome all hurdles and transfer the land. But now, the presence of high tension wires, has emerged as a new hurdle. It may delay the project further, said a senior NHAI official, who asked not to be named. The Huda, said the administrator, may explore the option of going back to the old alignment of NPR near the Kherki toll. A boundary wall had been erected by the toll operator three years ago to block alignment. The option of constructing a flyover that can join SPR and NPR is also being considered, Yadav said. Fear of a fresh delay has already gripped homebuyers who have invested in projects coming up along the NPR. If land wasnt free from hurdles, why did Huda acquire it? Such flaws on the part of the administration are affecting us, Prakhar Sahay, a homebuyer, said. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON The city police has decided to set up a police post in sector 83, in the wake of increasing urbanization in the new Gurgaon sectors along the Dwarka expressway. A team of Gurgaon police led by police commissioner Sandeep Khirwar visited the spot and inspected the plot, which has been earmarked for setting up the proposed police station on Wednesday. Khirwar said that there has been steep rise in population in the area, and it needed more police presence. A police post will be set up in the sector in a few days and it will help in better policing of the area, he said. Initially, the police post will be set up in a built up area that has been offered by the developer Vatika. The residents of sector 81, 82, and 83 beyond the Kherki Daula toll have been demanding more police presence as there has been a steep rise in petty crimes in their areas. Prashant Rai, a local resident said that setting up police post will be a positive development as it would curb petty crimes as well as activities of miscreants roaming in the area. Real estate developer Vatika, which is providing the space for setting up police post, said that the post is likely to become functional within the next fortnight. Read I Gurgaon police to get 500 more personnel, 10 new police stations Land for setting up a police station has also been identified and it will be functional in next six months, said Gaurav Bhalla, director, Vatika Limited. Earlier, 10 new police stations in Gurgaon started functioning from May 8 taking the total number of police stations to 35. These police stations are divided in three zones east, west and south. The new police stations were set up at New Colony, Shivaji Nagar, Sector-14, Sector-9A, Bajghera, Sector-50, Sector-53, City Sohna, Sector-37, and Industrial Sector 7 Manesar, a police spokesperson said. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON Policing inside Gurgaons Bhondsi jail, which houses gangsters from across Delhi and NCR, is likely to improve as the district jail is likely to get 80 more wardens soon. Taking into account the shortage of wardens, the Haryana police has started recruitment of 450 men who have retired either from the defence services or paramilitary forces. District jails are facing an acute shortage of staff and the Bhondsi jail in particular has only 150 wardens whereas the sanctioned strength is 250. The jail was recently in the news after a number of gangsters housed there were found operating extortion rackets, making threat calls and planning murders from inside the jail. Recently, gangster Manjeet Mahal along with nine others was booked for allegedly extorting 10 lakh and an Audi car Manish Bhardwaj, an accused in the fake gun licence racket. In another incident, a land owner in Wazirabad village had alleged that a threatening call was made to him from inside the Bhondsi jail, at the behest of a gangster, asking him to vacate the plot. Prior to that, several aides of gangsters were booked for possessing cell phones in the jail but the lack of wardens impeding the policing in the jail. Haryana DGP BS Sandhu said that the recruitment of jail wardens normally takes over a year as recruits need training. However ex-servicemen are already trained and can be deployed without delay. The interview process has been initiated and it will not take much time to appoint the wardens, Sandhu said. These former soldiers will be paid a monthly honorarium of Rs 14,000, which would be credited directly to their bank accounts. They will also be given accommodation on the jail premises and a life insurance of Rs 10 lakh. At the time of recruitment, they would be given a one-time uniform allowance of Rs 3,000 for two sets of uniform, officials said. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON In a move aimed at speeding up the availability of new drugs, the government has proposed doing away with clinical trials for drugs that have proved their efficacy in developed markets. According to a proposed new set of rules, a part of which has been reviewed by Mint, the government suggested waiving local clinical trials for drugs that have not had any major adverse effects on patients. These drugs should have been approved and marketed for at least two years in the European Union, UK, US, Australia, Canada and Japan. The ministry of health and family welfare has sent the draft proposal to the ministry of law and justice for vetting before it can be notified. The move is expected to reduce the time taken by a company to introduce new drugs in the market from 5-6 years to as few as 45 days. According to the drug regulator, the move will also lower the cost of drugs. This will end unnecessary repetition of trials and speed up the availability of new drugs in the countrya win-win situation for both the industry and consumers, Drug Controller General of India (DCGI) GN Singh said in a phone interview. Lengthy clinical trial and approval procedures deprive Indians of advanced medicines, said RK Vats, additional secretary in the health ministry. The new rules will make it easier for the pharma companies to introduce drugs in India which are already in use in well-regulated countries. The rules have been sent for scrutiny to the law ministry and will be notified soon, he said. Pfizer Ltd, the Indian unit of US drug maker Pfizer Inc., did not respond to an email requesting comment by press time. A spokesperson Cadila Pharmaceuticals Ltd declined to comment. The health ministry also suggested exemption from trials for drugs that show no evidence of having a significantly different effect on the Indian population in terms of their absorption rate and efficacy. Local trials may not be required for those where there is no evidence, on the basis of existing knowledge, of significant difference in Indian population of the genes involved in the metabolism of the new drug, the health ministry proposal said. The proposed rules could have legal implications, said an expert. The issue is subjective. It is like saying that only these countries are conducting trials ethically so we will just follow them. The clinical trials conducted in South Africa are better too, so are we saying that trials conducted in SA are not better regulated, said CM Gulati, editor of the Monthly Index of Medical Specialities, and an expert on the rational use of drugs. According to DG Shah, secretary general of industry lobby group Indian Pharmaceutical Alliance, the proposal would improve ease of doing business for drug makers. The health ministry recommended relaxing regulations on tests conducted on animals in case of drugs approved and marketed for more than two years in well-regulated overseas drug markets. Significantly, the ministry also suggested relaxing rules for clinical trials in the case of drugs used to treat patients suffering from life-threatening or serious diseases such as drug-resistant tuberculosis, hepatitis C, H1N1, dengue, malaria and HIV. (Published in arrangement with Livemint) The first trailer for Angelina Jolies new film (as director), First They Killed My Father, has arrived. The film will be released on Netflix on September 15. According to the films official logline, its an unflinching portrayal of the Khmer Rouges reign of terror and genocide, from the view of a five-year-old ... Jolie has a special connection to Cambodia - its the country from where she adopted one of her children. She was recently involved in a controversy surrounding how she cast the children in the movie. The bizarre process was detailed in a Vanity Fair profile on the star. In order to find their lead, the casting directors set up a game: they put money on the table and asked the child to think of something she needed the money for, and then to snatch it away. The director would pretend to catch the child, and the child would have to come up with a lie, the article said. Like her ex-husband Brad Pitts last film, War Machine, First They Killed My Father will be available on Netflix. Follow @htshowbiz for more A day after a 60-year-old woman was killed in Uttar Pradesh on suspicion of cutting off peoples hair and 11 more women complained of braids being chopped off in Delhi-NCR on Thursday, psychiatrists blamed mass hysteria as panic spread. Police, too, have requested people not look at these incidents as a supernatural phenomenon or work of a ghost. From all the available evidence, it seems the women are cutting their own hair either consciously or in an altered sensorium, likely to seek attention, said Dr Sudhir Khandelwal, former head of the department of psychiatry at All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS). Altered sensorium is a medical condition characterised by impaired consciousness or inability to think clearly. Mass hysteria is not new to India or Delhi. In 2001, Delhi went in panic mode over monkey man, with people claiming to be attacked by a kala bandar (black monkey). Some even ended up injured, said Dr MS Bhatia, head of the department of psychiatry at Guru Teg Bahadur hospital. What is happening now is quite similar to the monkey-man hysteria. No one saw the creature whose description varied from person to person. This time, too, women and girls hair are cut when they are unconscious. Two months since the first incident was reported in Rajasthan, no one has seen the mysterious Scissorhands. Some women say it was a cat that turned into a man, other talks of an elderly man and there are others who believe it to be the work of a witch-doctor. Each woman has a different story to tell but they are all afraid and many have been left traumatised. Such hysteria is more commonly seen in women and mostly the reason is domestic stress, Dr Bhatia said, adding the victims may not be aware of what they were doing or have any memory of it later on. People could even be doing it consciously. When such a phenomenon happens, there is also a fear of missing out, so other people start copying the original incident, Dr Khandelwal said. He suggested that psychiatrists or psychologists evaluate the women who have complained of being attacked. For now, police are trying to stem panic. Deputy commissioner of police (Outer Delhi) MM Tiwari on Thursday said he was his shocked when his eight-year-old daughter asked him to shut doors and windows of their home. If a child who lives with a police officer can start believing in such falsehood, what can be expected of children? Are we replacing the scientific temperament of our children with such beliefs? he said, requested media not to give a supernatural twist to incidents of hair chopping. Since July 30, women from four villages in outer Delhi have complained find their hair cut when they woke up. Delhi reported nine more such attacks on Thursday. Four of the victims -- three teenagers and a 37-year-old were family. They said their hair were chopped when they were sleeping and there door locked. An 18-year-old in Greater Noida found her hair cut in the morning while a 45-year-old woman in Gurgaon said her braid were chopped off by a black cat that took the shape of a man. Two incidents were also reported from Punjab. The U.S. Air Force launched an unarmed intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) early Wednesday from Vandenberg Air Force Base, California. The Minuteman III missile, the only U.S. land-based ICBM in service, was fired at 2:10 a.m. Pacific Daylight Time (0910 GMT) from Vandenberg Air Force Base, located nearly 130 miles (209 kilometers) northwest of Los Angeles in western coast of the United States. It's the fourth Minuteman III ICBM launched from Vandenberg this year. The ICBM, equipped with a single test reentry vehicle, traveled approximately 4,200 miles (6,759 kilometers) to the Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands in the Pacific Ocean. The reentry vehicle contained a telemetry package used for operational testing. "While not a response to recent North Korean actions, the test demonstrates that the United States' nuclear enterprise is safe, secure, effective and ready to be able to deter, detect and defend against attacks on the United States and its allies," said the U.S. Air Force Global Strike Command in a statement on its official website. The U.S. ICBM community, including the Department of Defense, the Department of Energy, and U.S. Strategic Command, uses data collected from test launches for continuing force development evaluation. The ICBM test launch program demonstrates the operational capability of the Minuteman III and ensures the United States' ability to maintain a strong, credible nuclear deterrent as a key element of U.S. national security and the security of U.S. allies and partners, the statement said. There are about 450 Minuteman III ICBMs in service in the United States. U.S. Air Force Global Strike Command routinely conducts ICBM test launches from Vandenberg to validate the effectiveness, readiness and accuracy of the weapon system. The latest ICBM test of U.S. Air Force comes amid growing tensions between the United States and Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), only days after a successful test-firing of an intercontinental ballistic missile by DPKR last Friday. The Missile Defense Agency of the United States successfully test fired an interceptor missile on May 30 which is designed to shoot incoming missile over Pacific from Vandenberg Air Force Base. Two militants were killed by police and security forces during an encounter on Thursday morning in south Kashmirs Kulgam district. Two weapons were recovered from the site of the encounter, an army spokesperson said. One of the militants was involved in killing of five policemen and guards of a bank van, a police spokesperson said. Militants had killed five policemen and two bank guards in an attack on a cash van in Phambai area of Kulgam in May. The van was attacked when it was returning after dispensing cash to local bank branches. The identity of the militants is being ascertained. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON A 60-year old Dalit woman was allegedly lynched in Agra after villagers thought she was out to cut the hair of sleeping women, the first reported fatality of what appears to be turning into a case of mass hysteria. Growing number of people, particularly in rural districts, of Haryana, Rajasthan, Delhi, Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh have reported mysterious instances of sleeping women being attacked and their hair chopped off short. Family members said Maan Devi left the home around 4am on Wednesday but lost her way, reaching a predominantly upper caste neighbourhood where people spotted her. She pleaded that she had lost her way but they took as one responsible for chopping women hair in Mutnai village and killed her, said the victims daughter-in-law Kalpana Jatav. Local police first denied the death was connected to the ghost barber panic. Deputy superintendent of police (DSP), Fatehabad, Dr Tej Veer Singh said a case was registered including charges relating to atrocities against Dalits, and teams were keeping a vigil in the area where the woman was killed. The police also appeared to deny that the woman was beaten to death. The post-mortem report of Maan Devi indicates she died of cardiac arrest and not due to beating, Singh said. Devis son has named two suspects, both from the upper caste Baghel community, in his complaint where he also said that his mothers body had been thrown back in their village. Till Thursday, neither was arrested. Agra and villages in districts nearby were the latest to report the hair-cutting mystery that seems to be spreading since first being recorded in parts of the National Capital Region last week. Officials said on Friday that more sightings were reported from the region, and the states Inspector General issued an appeal for people to remain calm. Women in at least five states have reported waking up to the sound of scissors, spotting black cats, and seeing ghosts and shadows. Some claimed they found portions of their hair chopped off, and others reported falling unconscious with fear. Police have dismissed the allegations as rumours in several of these cases, and administration officials are now issuing alerts for local law enforcement to tackle fear mongering. FROM MONKEY MAN TO UFOs Parts of India, particularly rural districts where superstitious beliefs are common, have often been at the centre of mass hysteria events. In the summer of 2001, people in Delhi said they had spotted a mysterious monkey-like creature that appeared in the night and attacked people. Large colonies of the capital were gripped by fear as more and more bizarre sightings were recorded. Vigilante groups patrolled the streets with sticks for weeks, before officials and psychiatric experts said the panic was created by figments of peoples imagination that was made worse by the media coverage at the time. A year later, people in Eastern Uttar Pradesh reported spotting a light-emitting flying object that would attack them at night and scratch their face. Many referred to it as the muhnochwa, a Bhojpuri amalgam that loosely translates to face snatcher. At the height of the panic, people went off streets after sundown. Scientists from IIT Kanpur were roped in to investigate the event, and the ruled out the existence of the creature. The closest explanation, they said, could have been sightings of ball lightening, a rare meteorological phenomenon. Years earlier, in 1995, a more innocuous mass delusion took place when people across the country reported seeing idols of the Hindu god Ganesha drinking milk. Slum dwellers and other inhabitants have encroached 798 acres of land belonging to the Airports Authority of India (AAI), the government said on Thursday. State-owned AAI, which manages 126 airports apart from carrying out other duties, possesses around 55,800 acres of land across the country. Minister of state for civil aviation Jayant Sinha informed the Lok Sabha that there is no surplus land available with the AAI. Out of the overall land belonging to the AAI in the country, around 1.4%, which is approximately 798 acres of land area is under encroachment by slum dwellers and other inhabitants, he said in a written reply. Sinha said that majority of land area under encroachment is around Mumbai and Juhu airports, and is inhabited by slum dwellers. Around 127 acres of land area at Bhopal airport and 119.82 acres of land area at Hyderabad airport is also under encroachment, the minister noted. He also added that the AAI has undertaken all efforts in active manner to coordinate with state governments concerned to remove such encroachments. The process of rehabilitation of illegal occupants is a subject matter of the concerned state government and the role of the AAI and other private operators is limited to assistance and persuasion, he said. Taking a serious note of poor results in matric and intermediate exams this year, the government has decided to compulsorily retire non-performing headmasters, teachers and education department officials above the age of 50 years. Chief secretary Anjani Kumar Singh announced this after the review of the department of education by chief minister Nitish Kumar. Deputy CM Sushil Kumar Modi, education minister Krishna Nandan Prasad Verma, chief secretary Anjani Kumar Singh, development commissioner Shishir Kumar Sinha, principal secretary, department of education, R K Mahajan and a host of other officials were present at the meeting. The state government is in the process of identifying non-performing institutions and all those responsible for poor show will be given compulsory retirement, as per government norms. A committee under Mahajan is already working under it to identify such headmasters, teachers, block education officers or district education officers, he said, adding those teachers having failed thrice in the assessment test would also be removed. The matter of huge scarcity of qualified teachers in secondary and higher secondary schools also came up during the meeting. Singh admitted that in English, mathematics and science subjects finding qualified teachers was proving to be difficult and the government would go in for centralised recruitment without tampering with the existing setup. He said the state government was spending Rs 7800 crore on primary teachers salary alone and it would like them to perform. The government will send recommendations and the panchayati raj institutions will make the appointments, as is the case today. At present, PRI institutions are unable to find suitable candidates for recruitment. There will also be provision of guest faculty, he said, adding till it was done, the government would go in for e-learning in schools and start with a pilot project. With a view to improving results in matriculation and intermediate, the government has also asked the Bihar School Examination Board (BSEB) to work out changes, with greater emphasis on multiple-choice questions. At present, CBSE and ICSE students score above 95% in huge numbers, while Bihar board toppers barely reach 85%. The Bihar board will prepare model question papers with answers for students, he added. On the excruciating delay in supply of textbooks to students, Singh said it was mainly because of the closure of paper supplying firm HPCL, Now fresh tenders have been floated for both papers and printing. The supplies would begin from September. However, the state government is also seriously into developing the environment-friendly practice of using old books. This year, 32% books in good condition were taken from students moving to senior classes and efforts will be made to increase it from next year, he added. The government will also go in for merger of two or more schools running in the same building in urban areas. The surplus teachers will be relocated elsewhere for rationalisation, he added. Regarding huge vacancies in higher education institutions, Singh said the BPSC had already sent recommendations for 933 appointments out of the 3334 vacancies advertised earlier. Besides, a separate bill will be brought for the constitution of the Bihar State University Service Commission for recruitment on new vacancies, he added. In another important decision, the government will now form a registered society to directly give loans to students for higher education, as the students credit card scheme has not met with desired success. The society is likely to be formed in the next three months and it will also deal with post-matric scholarship distribution. So far, an amount of Rs 15.34 crore under the credit card scheme had been distributed to just 1825 candidates against 20542 applications. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON A group of Dalit protesters demanding reservation were detained by the police when they tried to enter Rohtak to meet BJP national president Amit Shah, who is on a visit to Haryana. The protesters were detained yesterday when they reached Kilazfargarh village on the Rohtak border as they did not have requisite permission, the police said. Reservation is our right, the leader of the protesters, Devi Das, said before being taken into custody. We will not rest until we get what we deserve. We are staging a peaceful protest. Despite that, the police have detained us, he said. The group has been staging a sit-in in Jind for the last 171 days to press for reservation for the community. Sub-divisional magistrate, Julana, Shiv Kumar said the protesters did not have permission to meet the BJP president. If they had permission, we would have allowed them to enter Rohtak, Kumar said. Shah began his Haryana visit on Wednesday from Bahadurgarh and is slated to hold a series of meetings and review works undertaken by the ML Khattar government during his three-day stay. At 86, he is the big lord of Indian diaspora. Son of a bucket-maker in Jalandhar , Lord Swraj Paul encapsulates the sterling success story of non-resident Indians a multi-millionaire business magnate, member of the British House of Commons since 1996, and a widely respected philanthropist-educationist. So, when he peers through the window of his office its walls adorned with an array of honours including the Padma Bhushan in Londons upscale Baker Street, he has a worldview shaped by his more than 60 years in public life in Britain and close ties with India. An influential and irreverent voice, he spoke to HTs Senior Resident Editor on India after 70 years of Independence its politics and politicians, and, of course, Punjab. How do you look at the evolution of the idea of India ahead of the 70th anniversary of Independence? It has taken a long time for the people here to accept the fact that India is even more democratic than Britain. India has demonstrated to the world what democracy is. It is something we can really be proud of. The governments change at the drop of a hat, but that happens democratically. When governments change, there are always pros and cons. Look at Bihar: whatever has happened may be unfortunate but its all fair in democracy. We have made a lot of progress in the 70 years. We went astray for a while and then pulled it up. If you look at where India was and where it is now, we have come a long way. But, people in India dont recognise that. Thats where Prime Minister Narendra Modi has done a tremendous job in elevating the status of India on the world stage. You are speaking about the bright spots. How about the warts? A lot of warts that the press talks about are normal for a democracy. India still has riches for few and poverty for a large population. So, when the poor cry, they are the warts. The only way these things will go is by what is happening now. Corruption has gone down and the guilty are being punished. We would like the Indian judicial system to become more efficient. How has the worlds view of India changed ? For long, India had a socialist thinking and the Western world criticised it. Nor at that time did the West really see the potential of India. But, perception on India has changed a lot because of the diaspora. Indians migrated all over as workers. Now they are playing an important role in every sphere of life in the Western world, and very successfully. It is unfortunate that when Mrs Indira Gandhi and Pranab Mukerjee, then her finance minister, tried to get NRIs to play a part in the nations development, our businessmen in India killed her effort as they just wanted to put up their fiefdoms. We were branded as non-required Indians. But, one thing I do take the credit for is that I didnt succumb to their criticism, and I brought the issue on the platform. LordSpeak On Indian democracy and secularism: Democracy is not in danger. In the Modi government, there has been no threat to secularism. It has grown stronger. On PM Modi: He may beat both Indira Gandhi and Atal Bihari Vajpayee as the best prime minister of India On India Inc: They have created poverty, not wealth. On Congress and Gandhis: They are failing because they are stuck with old slogans. Rahuls challenge is huge and he needs more than himself. On Punjab and Capt Amarinder Singh: Punjab has been left behind CM Amarinder will need leadership to pull the state out of the woods Has India lived up to its potential? No. But it is on the way to do that, if people dont allow corruption back again. Corruption has always to be watched. The good thing is the governments action against bad business practices that the nation is still suffering from. That is, people having borrowed more money than they would repay to banks. These are all abuses. Indias corporates have created poverty, not wealth. What do you count as the Modi governments biggest achievement so far? Containment of corruption. The world recognises that. And that has given India the greatest respect. Not many countries can take the credit that they have reduced corruption. Corruption is going up in the world. So, here is a government which has fought corruption successfully. His other achievement neither being talked about in India nor abroad yet is that in 2014, and also in elections in UP this year, the question of the Hindu vote, Muslim vote or Dalit vote did not count. People have voted for bread and butter. You once called Indira Gandhi and Atal Bihari Vajpayee as the best PMs India has ever had? How do you rate Modi? Its too early to make a judgement, but so far all indications are that Modi will beat both of them. Whats your take on the pace and direction of economic reforms? Reforms alone have no meaning. Reforms without removal of corruption gave the people licence to be more corrupt and not fix the country. There was a famous Peruvian economist who long ago said that people do reforms so that their friends can make money. Reforms are only good when everybody makes money. And that didnt happen with reforms. Now, one thing nice when you go to India is that nobody can say: Oh, I know such and such minister in the central government and will get your things done!. Things have changed over the years, but in the last three years the speed of that change has been faster. As a long-time member of the British parliament, how you do look at Indias parliament? Well, the quality of Indian parliamentary debates is as good as anywhere in the world. The governments job is to get on with the job, while the oppositions job is to criticise them, find the wrongs, and make them improve. How do you look at the beef politics, especially violent vigilantism in the name of cow protection? This is very sad and stupid . We have a lot of lack of education. This type of politics will only go when we improve our education. We need more women to be educated. The Indian girls are very, very bright. What justification do we have that only 40% women go to the university? We are ruining 60% assets of the country. They will the biggest agents of change. Education in India is becoming a business, which is most unfortunate. Education institutions should make money, but it should be ploughed back. Modis critics say that Indias liberal and secular values are under a strain. The bigger picture is that democracy in India is not in danger. If thats so, then people can change the government every five years. Indian voter, irrespective whether he is poor, is very aware of his right to vote. People say, Oh, the voters are paid!. He might take the money but still vote the way he feels. They have learnt that vote is more important than even bread and butter. But secularism is the cornerstone of our democracy. I will say that secularism has become better. Where is the threat to secularism? Now, secularism is being used by those who want to try and get the votes (by) calling themselves secular. Modi has given no sign that he is not secular. And, have the governments, either in the states or at the Centre, done anything that is not secular ? Thats how you have to judge, not by the slogans. Muslim politicians will try to get votes in the name of Muslims. Hindu leaders will try the same. But does the voter really care? So, the danger to secularism is being used now as a failure. It has become an old slogan. Lets move on in life. There are certain arms which, when you are getting ready for war, need to be discarded. What does the shrinking opposition space mean for Indian democracy? I have no doubt that there will be opposition in India. But, the opposition parties have to ponder why we dont count anymore. They might be working on old slogans which arent valid anymore. As a long-time Congress supporter, what will you suggest to the party to reinvent itself? I admire the Congress party. But thats where the party needs to think: Why are we failing? Has anybody given it a thought? Because they are stuck with old slogans. How about the Congress leadership? Is there a life beyond the Gandhis? If you dont get the votes, never mind whether its the Gandhis or A-B-C, that means you have failed. If you, as a student, dont do well, whom do you blame? In every party there comes, once a while, a challenge that has to be met from within. What are your views on Rahul Gandhi? Oh, I like the young man! But his the job is huge and he needs more than just himself. His mother has played a tremendous role. Nobody would have believed it. She has kept her dignity. But in democratic politics, the role is never for life. And she has realised that. How do you reflect on and relate to Punjab? I love Punjab. And I love Jalandhar. Thats why I built a college there. But, in terms of investment, there was not much to do in the businesses I deal in. Punjab is a great state. Not necessarily having had the best of politics! (laughs) How is the Punjab of today different from the one you left in 1966? There is a world of difference. But, looking at the rest of India, I dont think Punjab has exploited its talent and potential. The Punjabis living abroad feel disappointed that Punjab has been left behind. The state should have made far more progress than it has done so far. What do you expect chief minister Captain Amarinder Singh to do? He is a lovely man very decent, without any question. You expect him to do the moon. But then, does he have the team ? Does he have the stamina? He will have to show leadership to pull Punjab out of the woods. The Captain government wants NRIs to invest in Punjab. A big stumbling block is the big amount of time it takes to follow anything in Punjab. Nobody decides anything. The quality of decision-making, from what I hear, is very poor. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON Indians seeking jobs in the UAE should not come on visit visas and must authenticate their employment offers and permit visas before arriving in the country, the Indian Consulate in Dubai said amid growing cases of duping and visa frauds. The advisory follows a high number of calls and visits to the Consulate by Indian workers who have been duped by agents or employers on a regular basis. Consul-General of India in Dubai Vipul said the mission did not have the precise data on the number of such calls because most such calls are complex and raise a variety of issues. He said most calls about duping were related to workers who come for employment or searching for employment on visit visas. We have got several cases of people falling into trouble when they come for employment or for looking for employment on visit visas. There are also cases of women being forced to work as maids by dubious agents who get them to the UAE on visit visas as well as sending them to Oman and other countries, Vipul told Gulf News. He said when serious duping cases come to the notice of the consulate, the mission tries to mediate with the employers to get the passports of workers back and facilitate their return to India. The consulate issued 225 air tickets in 2016 and 186 in the first half of 2017 to stranded workers. In a recent case, in June, we repatriated 27 workers hailing from Uttar Pradesh who came to the UAE in February- March this year and were promised jobs. However, they were not given any jobs and were left to fend for themselves by the agents, he said. In another case, 15 people were promised some jobs, but on arrival they were told to work as labourers at a construction site, he added. In the first half of this year, the consulate received a total of 540 labour complaints of which over 250 have been resolved, the report said. Duplicate and fake visas are also a problem that the Indian missions in the UAE are fighting, the report said. In the first six months of this year, several hundreds of fake visas were detected. Typically, these get detected because many people ask us about the genuineness of a job offer and the UAE visa. Sometimes, agents give genuine visit visas and fake employment visas, Vipul said. He said such cases were hard to detect in India. The workers would use the fake employment visas to board the flight from India and present their original visit visa on arrival here. When they gain entry, they realise that they dont have the offered job, he said. To tackle such visa frauds, the mission has issued an advisory to the Indian jobseekers, providing them useful links from the UAE government departments through which they can make preliminary verification of the authenticity of the employment offers and entry permits. Refuting the allegations that Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) can be tampered, the Election Commission (EC) has informed the Supreme Court that it will deploy over 16 lakh EVMs with a paper trail to cover polling stations in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls. The poll panel submitted an affidavit before the top court giving an assurance that machines will be equipped with the technology to make the election process more transparent for the next general elections. However, the commissions affidavit was silent on deploying Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trails (VVPATs) with EVMs in the forthcoming Gujarat assembly elections. Countering the charges of tampering, the affidavit said technological features with administrative safeguards defined by EC make EVMs foolproof not only during elections but also during manufacturing, storage and transportation. The document has been filed in response to a petition filed by Samajwadi Party leader Ata Ur Rehman who wants the court to make VVPATs mandatory. A separate case demanding the use of paper trails in the Gujarat elections, is also pending . The affidavit counters recent allegations against EVMs saying no political party has been able to establish that the machines can be tinkered with. It also demonstrates the safety procedures the EC has in place to ensure no defective or malfunctioned machines are used in the electoral process. Many of the systems used in other countries are computer based with internet connectivity. This makes them vulnerable to hacking, it said adding Indian machines are stand-alone units. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON Karnataka minister and Congress leader DK Shivakumar is the latest addition to the long list of opposition leaders, who are under the scanner of central agencies such as the CBI, the enforcement directorate (ED), and the income tax department for charges ranging from tax evasion to graft. Tax officials raided multiple properties linked to 64 places in Delhi and Karnataka linked to energy minister Shivakumar, who is hosting a group of party legislators from Gujarat to avoid a break in their ranks ahead of a close Rajya Sabha election, as part of investigations into his alleged tax evasion and dodgy investments in real estate. Here is the list of politicians who are facing heat on a slew of charges: DK Shivakumar and his brother DK Suresh On August 2 and 3, the income tax department conducted raids at the New Delhi and Bengaluru houses of Shivakumar and his brother DK Suresh in connection with a tax evasion case. It sparked a political furore with the Congress accusing the NDA-led Centre of witch-hunt. The Congress minister is hosting 42 Congress MLAs from Gujarat at a Bengaluru resort ahead of August 8 Rajya Sabha polls in which senior Congress leader Ahmed Patel is locked in a cliffhanger of a contest with brewing rebellion among party legislators loyal to rebel Congress leader Shankarsinh Vaghela. Karti Chidambaram INX-FIPB approval case In May this year, the Central Bureau of Investigation filed an FIR against Karti Chidambaram, son of senior Congress leader P Chidambaram, for alleged irregularities relating to foreign direct investments received by INX Media in 2007. Among others booked along with Karti are Peter and Indrani Mukerjea, who were then managing INX media and are now in jail for the murder of Indranis daughter Sheena Bora. The CBI has alleged Karti used his influence in the finance ministry to help INX Media get an approval to receive foreign investments from three Mauritius-based investors. The government, using the CBI and other agencies, is targeting my son and his friends. The governments aim is to silence my voice and stop me from writing, as it has tried to do in the cases of leaders of opposition parties, journalists, columnists, NGOs and civil society organisations, former finance minister Chidambaram said. Lalu Prasad Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) leader Lalu Prasad and his family members have been accused of acquiring prime properties through dubious deals, a charge he denies. In July, the CBI raided 12 places across the country, including Prasads Patna home, over alleged irregularities in awarding of tenders for hotel maintenance when he was the railways minister. Prasad, his wife Rabri Devi, and their son Tejashwi, the former deputy chief minister of Bihar, have been named in the case. The first one to come under the scanner over money laundering charges was RJD chiefs daughter Misa Bharti. The arrest of a chartered accountant allegedly linked to a private firm owned by Bharti signalled trouble for her as well as her husband Shailesh. The ED believes the CA acted as a mediator between the infamous Jain brothers and Mishail Packers and Printers Pvt Ltd, a private firm involved in publishing business. In March this year, ED arrested Surendra Kumar Jain and Virendra Kumar Jain on the accusation of laundering money worth over Rs 4,300 crore and subsequently zeroed in on a CA named Rajesh Aggarwal allegedly linked to Bharti. Aam Aadmi Party The AAP government is under a CBI probe for setting up of a special unit under the directorate of vigilance without the necessary approvals from the lieutenant governor. Agency sources said the government sanctioned procurement of high-end equipment for data and research analysis, surveillance, and monitoring purposes. The BJPs Delhi unit has accused the AAP of setting up the spy unit to monitor activities of government functionaries. The CBI has also registered a preliminary inquiry against health minister Satyendar Jain over allegations of money-laundering. Harish Rawat In April last year, the CBI registered a preliminary enquiry in connection with an alleged sting operation, purportedly showing former Uttarakhand chief minister Harish Rawat offering bribes to rebel Congress MLAs to support him in a floor test in the Assembly. Ex Uttarakhand CM Harish Rawat in Dehradun. (HT File Photo) Virbhadra Singh The case was registered in September 2015 under the Prevention of Corruption Act against Himachal Pradesh chief minister Virbhadra Singh and his wife Pratibha, among others. The allegation involved acquisition of assets disproportionate to his known sources of income during his tenure as Union steel minister in UPA II government. Singh has denied the allegations and termed the case as an outcome of political vendetta. P Chidambaram In his capacity as ex-officio chairman of the foreign investment promotion board (FIPB) in 2006, former finance minister P Chidambaram approved the sale of telecom company Aircel to a Malaysian company. Both the CBI and the ED are investigating the deal. Subramanian Swamy alleged that the FIPB clearance was illegally approved by Chidambaram. Since the deal was over and above Rs 600 crore, it ought to have been placed before the Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs by the then finance minister, Swamy said. Chidambaram has, however, rejected the charges, saying that the approval was given in the normal course of business. Bhupinder Singh Hooda CBI registered a case against former Haryana chief minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda in September 2015 for allegedly granting favours to private builders in the acquisition of around 400 acres of land in Gurgaon during the previous Congress regime. Last year, the agency raided 20 locations, including Hoodas premises. Hooda has denied the allegations. Mayawati The multi-crore national rural health mission (NRHM) scam has continued to haunt BSP supremo and former UP chief minister Mayawati as well as senior party leaders, including former health minister, Anant Kumar Mishra and former family welfare minister Babu Singh Kushwaha, who was arrested by the probe agency. The Centre released Rs 10,000 crore under NRHM between 2005 and 2011. A CAG audit detected misappropriation of Rs 4,900 crore. Farooq Abdullah In 2015, the CBI registered a case against two ex-officials of Jammu & Kashmir Cricket Association for their alleged role in the Rs 113 crore scam, which also involved National Conference chief Farooq Abdullah. The alleged involvement of Abdullah, a minister in the previous UPA regime, was cited as one of the main reasons by the state high court for handing over the probe to CBI. The case relates to alleged misappropriation of funds received by the JKCA. Sachin Pilot, Ashok Gehlot & others Former chief minister Ashok Gehlot, state Congress chief Sachin Pilot, former Union finance minister P Chidambarams son Karti, and former Union minister Vyalar Ravis son Ravi Krishna, among others are accused in this case. The allegation pertains to irregularities in the award of a tender to a private firm linked with these Congress leaders. They have rebutted the allegations. Jagan Mohan Reddy CBI inquiry into YSR Congress leader Jagan Mohan Reddys business empire and the source of its funds was ordered by the Andhra Pradesh high court in August 2011 and on May 27, 2012. The probe agency said various companies and individuals had made huge investments in Jagans business empire when his father YS Rajasekhar Redddy was the chief minister. Reddy was released on bail from Chanchalguda jail on September 25, 2013, nearly 16 months after his arrest. He has denied all allegations. Trinamool Congress The CBI investigation into the Rs 2,500-crore Saradha chit fund scam has taken a major toll on the Trinamool Congress (TMC) in West Bengal. Over a dozen party MLAs and MPs have been accused in the case. TMC leader Sudip Bandyopadhyay was arrested on January 4 this year while fellow MP Tapas Paul was arrested on December 30 last year. Chhagan Bhujbal The former deputy chief minister of Maharashtra Chhagan Bhujbal was arrested by the ED last year in connection with a money laundering case. The senior NCP leader has been accused of receiving kickbacks in awarding contracts. (Part of this article was first published in April, 2017) SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON BJP national president Amit Shah on Wednesday asked party workers to strengthen what he called the worlds largest democratic party at the grassroots level and work for the mission-2019 with fresh zeal. Shah, who is on a three-day visit to Rohtak to review preparations for the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, presided over his first meeting of the day with district presidents, zila mahamantris and office-bearers of the BJP, chairmen of boards and corporations, and state cabinet led by chief minister Manohar Lal Khattar. Addressing the office-bearers, Shah stressed on launching intensive door-to-door campaigns to inform all sections of the society about schemes and policies initiated by the government in Centre and state. He said the BJP government led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi has introduced 106 schemes in the country for youths, farmers, women and labourers. We introduced a new scheme in every 15 days of our government for the welfare of the people. It is utmost important that these schemes reach their beneficiaries as well, Shah said. The BJP president was received with much fanfare in Haryana, right from Delhi-Haryana border upto Tilyar Convention Centre in Rohtak, where he chaired his meetings for Wednesday. Thousands came on road to welcome Shah with flowers. CM Khattar and BJP state president Subhash Barala welcomed him with turban (pagdi). Agriculture minister OP Dhankar then welcomed him with a mace (gada). Tight security, using drone cameras, is being used by the police force. The BJP has also prepared special traditional food items for Shah, which include monsoon speciality ghevar, Hansi peda, etc. Traditional Teej dance and folk music programmes for the BJP chief is also on the cards. Shah, who chaired multiple meetings on Day one here, also took veiled attack at former Haryana CM Bhupinder Singh Hooda. At his meeting with intellectuals and eminent citizens, Shah praised CM Khattar for trying to revolutionise politics in the state. Earlier, only relatives and close associates of the politicians used to get jobs and plum posts. But Khattar government has brought transparency in recruitments and transfers. He is doing a great job in keeping Haryana politics clean, Shah said. The BJP chief will remain in Rohtak till August 4, and have lunch with a Dalit partymen as well. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON The government has initiated action on the reports alleging payment of $1.18 million bribes to the officials of the NHAI by an American firm, the Lok Sabha was informed on Thursday. Road Transport and Highways Minister Nitin Gadkari said it was reported in media that M/S CDM Smith, through its employees and agents, and those of its wholly-owned Indian subsidiary (CDM India), had paid approximately $1.18 million in bribes to government officials in India in exchange for highway construction supervision and design contracts. The media report had emanated from the US Department of Justice, Criminal Divisions letter dated June 21, 2017 available on their official website. The minister said the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) has compiled the list of all the consultancy assignments awarded to the said firm and its associates. The Ministry of Road Transport and Highways and the NHAI have initiated steps to obtain the supporting documents so as to take the matter to the logical conclusion, he said during the Question Hour. Gadkari said his ministry has taken up the matter with the Ministry of External Affairs as well as the Indian Embassy in USA to liaise with the US Department of Justice to obtain the information and records gathered by them during their inquiry. He said the NHAI had debarred the said firm for a period of three months in 2015 from participating or engagement in the future bidding of NHAI projects because of deficiency in the services in one of the projects -- the Dholpur- Morena Section of NH-3. Similarly, in a lone assignment awarded to the said firm, the NHIDCL has debarred the said firm this year for a period of two years, he said. The relevant part of the US Departments letter says From approximately 2011 until approximately 2015, employees of CDM Smiths division responsible for India operations and CDM India illegally paid bribes to officials in the National Highways Authority of India, Indias state-owned highway management agency and an instrumentality under the FCPA, in order to receive contracts from NHAI. The bribes generally were 2-4% of the contract price and paid through fraudulent subcontractors, who provided no actual services and understood that payments were meant to solely benefit the officials, the letter had said. Gadkari said the Central Vigilance Commission of India has constituted a special investigation team of three officers to investigate the matter and report back to the commission. Militants attending the public funeral of their slain colleagues and offering gun salutes has been a trend for some time now. But over the last few months, not only has the frequency of such appearances increased, they are getting brazen like never before, firing several rounds in the air from their weapons and mingling with the crowd in full glare of cameras. Abu Dujana, the top Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) militant in Kashmir killed by security forces on Wednesday, had reportedly attended the funeral of Hizbul Mujahedeen (HM) commander Burhan Wani on July 9 last year. This Sunday, Riyaz Naikoo, a 30-year-old A++ category militant from south Kashmir, appeared at the funeral of a slain militant Shariq Ahmad Sheikh in a village in Pulwama district. Dressed in a grey T-shirt and brandishing an assault rifle, Naikoo was filmed addressing a large gathering of villagers about his struggle for freedom from India, before hurriedly making his way out of the funeral. In the last three months, Naikoos was the fourth militant presence at the funerals of slain insurgents. If we do anything when they come to funerals amidst a large gathering, there will be heavy civilian casualties. And, I do not want civilian casualties, director general of state police, SP Vaid told Hindustan Times. Vaid adds that forces will continue neutralising militants, which will automatically lead to stop in their appearance at funerals. People shout slogans as they gather around the body of suspected militant Shabir Ahmad Mir during his funeral in Mahind village in south Kashmir's Anantnag district on July 30. (REUTERS) Earlier, most militants used to avoid the cameras, quietly appearing at funerals and leaving soon after giving a gun salute. But now, photos their brazen appearances are splashed across newspapers and on television screens. On May 7, a group of four militants appeared at the funeral of slain insurgent Fayaz Ahmed alias Setha in south Kashmirs Kulgam district, and fired several rounds in the air. Photographs of all four dressed in pherans (traditional overcoat) and automatic rifles in hands, made to the front pages of many newspapers. Funerals of slain militants often see huge turnouts and several rounds of prayers. Security sources say militants attend these for several reasons: first, to express their love for their departed accomplices, second spread propaganda and garner support for militancy and third, as a show of strength against frequent neutralisation by forces. The trend of militants flaunting themselves on social media through photos and videos was started by Wani. In the early 90s, militants used to appear in public without fear. But over the years, the trend changed, said Kashmiri political scientist Noor Ahmed Baba. Today, post-Burhan Wani, civilian support for militants is at a peak. They rush towards encounter sites in an attempt to save them and often end up losing their lives. Militants know this and therefore they come without any fear, explains journalist Sheikh Mushtaq, adding that it means the militants trust the villagers. The appearance of militants in funerals no doubt as rattled sections of the establishment and the issue was even discussed in Parliament on July 19. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON Our lawmakers dont exactly make a pretty sight when they shout slogans and squabble during parliamentary sessions, but many facets of their personality humane, wise, witty and sometimes fun-loving come to the fore when they set their differences aside and get down to legislative work. Read on to discover a side of our representatives that we seldom take note of. A stitch in time Congress president Sonia Gandhi in the Lok Sabha. (PTI Photo) During a recent Opposition meeting, Congress president Sonia Gandhi noticed that one of the buttons on Trinamool Congress leader Derek OBriens shirt was about to pop. She immediately asked the Parliament staff to fetch a needle and some thread. When the items arrived, Ghulam Nabi Azad the leader of the Opposition in the Rajya Sabha stepped forward to do the stitching. OBrien was back in action a few minutes later, the button on his shirt now lodged firmly in place. Quite a display of Opposition unity, you may agree. Khan Market Club DMK member Kanimozhi is a prominent member of Parliaments Khan Market Club. (Reuters File Photo) This is the title that has been unofficially conferred on a group of young parliamentarians with a penchant for visiting the upscale Khan Market in central Delhi during lunch breaks. Although the composition of the group keeps changing, among those often seen driving out for lunch are Supriya Sule of the NCP, Nishikant Dubey of the BJP, Neeraj Shekhar of the Samajwadi Party, and Kanimozhi of the DMK. However, the afore-mentioned group title must not make one assume that its members restrict their visits only to Khan Market. They are not averse to exploring restaurants and other catering establishments across the Capital, and at times even host parties at their residences. The camaraderie enjoyed by these MPs cutting across party lines has drawn the admiration of senior colleagues, who often drop by for a bite when a group member brings some food along to share in the central hall. Get to the point Sumitra Mahajan, like the Lok Sabha speakers before her, does not approve of people beating around the bush while discussing important issues. (Raj K Raj/HT File Photo) Lok Sabha speaker Sumitra Mahajan, like her predecessors, spends a lot of time ensuring that members do not beat around the bush while making speeches or statements on certain subjects. Members of the House were in for a lighter moment on Wednesday when she cut short Ambala MP Rattan Lal Kataria, who launched his supplementary to a question on training railway engineers with a lengthy preamble of praise for the NDA government. When she asked Kataria to get to the point, the parliamentarian replied: Aa raha hoon (I am getting there). An undeterred speaker then quipped Aana nahin hain (its not a journey), much to the amusement of other MPs. The Shiv Sena jab Shiv Sena members praised former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi in the House, much to ally BJPs discomfort. (Getty Images) The Shiv Sena never misses an opportunity to needle the BJP, although both happen to be on the same side of the political divide. During a discussion on a bill to extend the Goods and Services Tax to Jammu and Kashmir on Wednesday, party member Anandrao Adsul repeatedly urged the BJP to revoke Article 370 which offers special status to Jammu & Kashmir because it now has absolute majority in the Lok Sabha. Once an enthusiastic proponent for the repealment of Article 370, the BJP has been putting the issue on the backburner for the last few years. But thats not to say that Kashmir-related barbs are the only ones the Shiv Sena throws at the BJP. Even as the House was debating the recent rise in public lynchings across the country on Monday, party member Arvind Sawant praised late Prime Minister Indira Gandhi even citing the time when former party chief Balasaheb Thackeray called her the only man in India to make those on the treasury benches squirm in embarrassment. Income Tax department officials continued for the second day on Thursday their raids on properties linked to Karnataka energy minister DK Shivakumar, who is in charge of hosting Congress MLAs from Gujarat shifted outside to avoid a break in their ranks. Officials said 39 locations in Karnataka were being searched, in addition to some in Chennai and Delhi. IANS identified the Delhi properties to be located in Safdarjung and RK Puram. According to sources, cash was recovered since the searches began at 7am on Wednesday, but there was no indication of the value. The department has not officially confirmed if it retrieved cash. The raids on Shivakumar escalated into a political confrontation between his Congress party and the Bharatiya Janata Party. The Congress raised the issue in parliament, forcing multiple adjournments in the upper house, and the BJP of carrying out an unprecedented witch-hunt. The Congress legislators taken to Karnataka are crucial for the partys prospects in a close Rajya Sabha election scheduled next week in which Ahmed Patel, the political secretary to party president Sonia Gandhi, is seeking re-election. The party saw a string of defections from its Gujarat cadre, prompting it to accuse the BJP of using money and muscle power to gain an advantage in the RS polls. The raids on Shivakumar triggered protests by Congress members. On Wednesday, youth Congress leaders protested near Shivakumars residence in Bengaluru and outside the I-T office in Mangaluru. Senior Congress leaders in the state were quick to condemn the raids, especially the use of paramilitary forces at the residence of the minister. I-T raids targeting energy minister D K Shivakumar is completely politically motivated and central governments role behind it is well known, chief minister Siddaramaiah said in a statement. He said, It is not right on the part of central government to use I-T department for its political conspiracies. We will not bow down to such intimidation. (With agency inputs) SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON War was not a solution and India would resolve the border standoff with China through dialogue, external affairs minister Sushma Swaraj said on Thursday, as the Communist neighbour again asked New Delhi to withdraw troops from Doklam if it wanted peace. It was not possible to resolve every issue through war and solutions could be found through talks, Swaraj told the Rajya Sabha about the standoff between the border guards of the two countries close to Sikkim in Indias northeast. Patience and bhasha saiyam (restraint) are very important to resolve the issue. If there is no restraint, it provokes the other side, Swaraj said during a four-and-a-half-hour discussion on Indias foreign policy and engagement with strategic partners. Opposition member raised various issues including Doklam standoff, Chinas attempts to encircle India and New Delhis Pakistan policy. Countries have armies to stay prepared for war. But war is not a solution to anything. Even after war, there has to be a dialogue. So have dialogue without a war, she said. Faced with an aggressive Opposition charge led by the Congress, Swaraj hit back at the party over Rahul Gandhis meeting with Chinese ambassador Luo Zhaohui in July. Without naming the Congress vice-president, Swaraj said the Opposition leader met the Chinese envoy without seeking information about the standoff from the government. The Opposition leader should have first understood the governments viewpoint on and then met the Chinese envoy and conveyed him Indias viewpoint, the minister said. You should have first sought details from the government and then confronted the Chinese envoy, she said. Indian and Chinese soldiers are locked in a standoff since June 16, with China accusing India of trespass and preventing its soldiers from building a road in disputed region of Doklam. Bhutan and India maintain that Doklam, or Donglang as the Chinese call it, is a Bhutanese territory. The road, if built, would have serious implication for Indias security. The Chinese have taken an aggressive stand on the border impasse and has even warned of a war. India was negotiating with China not only on Doklam but issuing relating to the overall bilateral relationship, she said. The minister also brushed aside the Oppositions contention that the government had no policy to deal with Pakistan, saying India had a roadmap for peace but it could not be one-sided. Terror and talks cannot go together. The day they stop promoting terror, we will start the talks, Swaraj said. She said the government had extended hand of friendship towards Pakistan but the whole story changed after Hizbul militant Burhan Wanis killing in Kashmir last year. The Pakistani PM called him shaheed (martyr). Things changed after that, she said. Dismissing allegations that Indian foreign policy wasnt delivering, Swaraj said New Delhi was shaping global agenda. You say during 1971, the US was with Pakistan, and Russia was supporting India. Today both Russia and the US are supporting India. This reflects the success of our foreign policy, she said. A high-powered panel appointed by the defence ministry to examine different aspects of the multi-billion dollar fifth generation fighter aircraft (FGFA) project has said that India should co-develop and co-produce the stealth fighter with Russia, Indian Air Force sources said. At a time when the IAF has serious reservations about the project, the committee, headed by Air Marshal Simhakutty Varthaman (retd), has strongly recommended India should go ahead with it, the sources said. HT was the first to report on February 11 that the government had constituted a committee under the Air Marshal to assess viability of building the stealth fighter with Russia. We were given a task and we have submitted our report to the government. Thats all I can tell you, Varthaman told HT, refusing to share the details of the report. The committee has pointed out that India would significantly gain from partnering with Russia through the transfer of cutting-edge technology, sources said. The four-member panel looked into various aspects of the project for around five months. India and Russia are yet to sign a $4-billion research and development contract for the FGFA. India has already spent Rs 1,500 crore in the preliminary design stage, which was completed in June 2013 on the basis of a contract inked with Russia. India has a requirement for 120-130 swing-role planes with stealth features for increased survivability, advanced avionics, smart weapons, top-end mission computers and 360-degree situational awareness. The ability to super cruise or sustain supersonic speeds in combat configuration without kicking in fuel-guzzling afterburners is a key Indian requirement. However, the IAF continues to have reservations about the project due to the high cost and the extent of technology transfer, a senior official said. Indian military planners are hoping that the technology the FGFA project brings to India would help a programme to build an indigenous stealth fighter or the advanced medium combat aircraft. The first AMCA prototype could be built in 10-12 years. Security forces killed a newly-recruited local militant of Hizbul Mujahideen in an overnight gun battle and an unidentified person died in the ensuing crossfire in south Kashmirs Anantnag district, police said on Friday. According to a police spokesperson based in Srinagar, the militant identified as Yawar Nissar Shergujri alias Algazi was gunned down and two militants managed to give the security forces a slip under the cover of the darkness. Sources said the forces had cordoned off the area on Thursday evening but there was no contact with the militants till late night. The encounter, according to police, started at around midnight Karvel area of Anantnag, 55km from Srinagar. During search operation, terrorists fired on the search party resulting in exchange of fire. At around midnight taking advantage of darkness two terrorists fired and managed to give a slip. Cutoff party of army retaliated fire, said a statement. Yawar, 30, according to police was an overground worker and was wanted in many cases of stone pelting. He was a resident of Anantnag. Yawar was a chronic stone pelter who had joined militants only 30 days back, said an official. A soldier of 3 Rashtriya Rifles, who was identified as rifleman Rohit Kumar, also sustained injuries. Police also said an unidentified person, who was in multi-layered clothing, riding on a Yamaha Libero with a damaged number plate was caught in the cross fire. No material leading to identity or I-card could be retrieved. Two mobile phones (Nokia 1209 and Jivi-N300) were recovered from the said individual, the spokesperson said. The telephone contacts in his handset could not immediately help to confirm his identity. Police are trying to ascertain the identity of the civilian. Internet services have been blocked and restrictions are likely to be placed in the area as Yawars body was handed over to his family for burial. More than 110 militants have been killed in Jammu and Kashmir between January and July this year while this figure was 150 for 2016. On Thursday, two Indian Army personnel, including a major, and as many militants were killed in two separate gun battles in the restive state. Security forces claimed major success on August 1 when a top Lashkar-i-Taiba militant Abu Dujana and his accomplice were killed in an encounter with the security forces at Hakripora village in Pulwama district. (With agency inputs) SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON The Congress government in Karnataka has objected to the use of CRPF personnel during searches at the properties linked to state minister DK Shivakumar, saying it casts an aspersion on the credibility, integrity and professionalism the state police. In a letter to Union revenue secretary Hasmukh Adhia, state additional chief secretary (Home) Subhash Chandra said established conventions of cooperative action between central and state agencies should not be by-passed in such matters. Chandra said he was informed by the Karnataka director general of police and the IGP that the IT department search teams were accompanied by CRPF personnel despite the fact that law and order is the responsibility of the state police. He said about 30 CRPF personnel were deployed in Bengaluru alone during the search in full gear with weapons, which resulted in protests by Ministers supporters and police had to be called in to maintain law and order. The Government of Karnataka wishes to convey its strong protest with regard to this, the letter said, a day after the taxmen began searches at various premises connected to state energy minister DK Shivakumar, who is overseeing the stay of 44 Congress MLAs from Gujarat at a resort here. Chandra said that in matters where both Centre and state governments share responsibilities, established conventions of cooperative action should not be by-passed. It is also requested that the Income Tax Department is suitably advised in the matter. Chief minister Siddaramaiah had also raised objections to the use of central force, stating IT officials should obtain help from local police during such raids. He had said CRPF personnel were used violating the rules. Let IT officials conduct raids and investigation by following rules and let people know the truth. Instead, if such raids are conducted with political vengeance, people will teach lesson in the days to come, Siddaramaiah had added. The IT department did not seek assistance in advance from the local police or any senior police authority for these operations, he had said in yesterdays letter. In a swoop down that raised a political storm, the IT department conducted searches at 64 locations and properties linked Shivakumar in a tax evasion case and recovered over Rs 11 crore in cash. The raids continued today. Chandra said that utilising the services of CRPF, which is a CAPF (Central Armed Police Force), in full gear without keeping local police informed casts an aspersion of adverse credibility, integrity and professionalism of the state police which has been utilised effectively and without complaint by the IT Department in its previous operations. Noting the deployment of the CRPF, an armed police force, in full operational attire with weapons for a civilian operation, conveyed a wrong impression, the letter said. Therefore, such deployment needs to be in consultation with local police authorities, as indeed has been the norm. Such an approach is also essential to prevent any untoward incident occurring, said the letter, a copy of which was released to the media. Two Indian Army personnel, including a major, and as many militants were killed in two separate gun battles in Jammu and Kashmir on Thursday, officials said, in an upsurge of shootouts in the restive region in the past few months. Major Kamlesh Pandey and sepoy Tanzin Chhultim were killed after militants fired upon the security forces during a gun battle in the Zaipora area of Shopian district on Thursday morning. The forces mounted a cordon and search operation in the area in south Kashmir late on Wednesday night following a tip-off that militants were present in the area. The trapped militants escaped after firing on the soldiers, a senior district police officer told the Hindustan Times. The Shopian incident came on the heels of a gun battle in Gopalpora area of Kulgam district where forces gunned down two Hizbul Mujahideen militants in an overnight encounter following a search operation. One of them was involved in the killing of five policemen and guards of a bank van, a police spokesperson said. The spokesperson was referring to the incident in May when militants killed five policemen and two bank guards during an attack on a cash van in Pambay area of Kulgam. The van was returning after dispensing cash to local bank branches when it was attacked. The slain militants were identified as Aaqib Ahmad Itoo son of Abdul Hamid Itoo resident of Gopalpora and Suhail Ahmad Rather son of Mohammad Arif Rather resident of Tantraypora Yaripora. Both the militants were involved in unlawful and anti-national activities, the police said in a statement. The statement also said Ahmad was involved in the May attack on the cash van of Jammu & Kashmir Bank. He also killed a policeman at Yaripora, robbed the Kader branch of J&K Bank, and snatched a weapon from a guard in Adijan area. Rather was involved in instigating people and firing indiscriminately upon security personnel during protests, it added. According to the statement, an INSAS rifle, AK rifle, and two magazines were also recovered from the encounter site. Photos of Major Kamlesh Pandey & Sepoy Tanzin Chhultim, who lost their lives in #Shopian (J&K) encounter. pic.twitter.com/c9HDk7I208 ANI (@ANI_news) August 3, 2017 Director general of state police, SP Vaid, tweeted: Last night in a joint operation 2 terrorists were killed at Gopalpora #Kulgam. Well done boys! On Tuesday, top Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) commander Abu Dujana was killed in an encounter with security forces in Pulwama district. Dujana and another militant were shot dead during an exchange of fire between a group of militants and security forces in Hakripora village. India accuses Pakistan of sponsoring terrorist violence in Jammu and Kashmir - a charge Islamabad denies. In a reply to Parliament, minister of state for home Hansraj Gangaram Ahir said there were 184 incidents of violence in the state in which 109 terrorists, 38 security personnel, and 19 civilians were killed in 2017 up to July 23. Rights groups, however, put the number of civilian casualties in the state much higher (over 55) in the corresponding period. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON Its time for matrimonial sites and matchmaking aunties to move over. A Kerala man is here to show how social media can outshine all of them when it comes to finding a life partner. When Ranjish Manjeri, a 34-year-old photographer from Manjeri in Malappuram district, posted a matrimony ad on Facebook, little did he know he would be inundated with proposals from around the world. A marriage has not been fixed for me yet. If you know anyone, please let me know. Im 34 years old. I will need to see the person and like her. I have no other conditions. Job: Professional Photographer . Hindu. Caste is not an issue. My family includes my father, mother and a married sister, he wrote. After years of failed attempts to find a bride through matrimonial sites and relatives, Manjeri turned to Facebook on the advice of a friend. His Facebook post went viral within days and has collected over 4000 shares, 1000 comments and 16,000 reactions since July 28. While some wished him luck, others came forward to help him out. An American scientist has come with a proposal. If that doesnt work out, Ill fix it with a photographer, wrote one social media user. This is a good idea, I dont see anything wrong with it. I pray for god to bless you, wrote another. As the post included his phone number, Manjeri says he has been receiving calls and messages from interested people from around the world. Except for half-a-dozen mischievous calls, all were serious enquiries. Families called from India, Australia, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, and the US, Manjeri told the Khaleej Times. Some were enquiries for girls falling in my age group. Some were divorcees. I must admit that to choose from hundreds of proposals will give me a hard time. I have given people my WhatsApp account to send photos and details, he added. When asked if he will consider a foreign alliance, he said, I am not averse to foreign girls. But I need to weigh the pros and cons, especially language. I am the only son. Sister is married with an 18-year-old daughter. So no big baggage of responsibilities. Manjeri added he hopes his initiative would encourage other youths to realise the power of social media. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON China is an architect of world peace, a stalwart of global development, and a staunch upholder of the international order, President Xi Jinping told a rally marking the 90th anniversary of the founding of the People's Liberation Army (PLA) on Tuesday. On Army Day, China, once again, chose to highlight peace, an eternal theme of mankind, and reaffirmed that the nation will never seek to expand beyond its established borders. Deeds speak louder than words. Of all permanent members of the UN Security Council, none has done more than China, with 35,000 personnel dispatched across the globe to defend basic human rights. In the line of this sacred duty, 13 Chinese peacekeepers have lost their lives. With their passion and with their blood, China's military has actively fulfilled the nation's commitment to its own peaceful development and to a peaceful world. Since 2008, over 80 vessels of the PLA Navy have patrolled the Gulf of Aden and the waters off Somalia, ensuring the safety of more than 6,000 domestic and foreign ships. Chinese servicemen and women led the search for missing flight MH370. Chinese forces stood their ground in the fight to contain the Ebola virus. The water crisis in Male, capital of the Maldives, was resolved with the help of the PLA. China's contribution to world peace has been widely applauded by the international community, said Jean-Pierre Lacroix, UN under-secretary-general for peacekeeping operations. Peaceful development is neither an expediency nor diplomatic rhetoric, but a choice China has made on analysis of historical facts, the present reality and future opportunities. China's interests are inextricably intertwined with the interests of the planet. From the Opium War of 1840 until the founding of the People's Republic of China (PRC) in 1949, China suffered at the hand of the Western powers. Through that, respect for independence and peace have become what the Chinese people cherish most. "Do not do unto others what you would not want others to do unto you," the foundation of Confucianism, means the Chinese will never inflict on others the agony we have gone through ourselves. Confucius also said that the virtuous always find friends -- wisdom that should guide international relations as much as it does interpersonal interactions. Since the 1960s, through negotiation and consultation, China has delimited 20,000 kilometers of land boundary and is in complete accord with 12 out of its 14 land neighbors. A sincere good neighbor, China's commitment to mutual benefit has been a concrete contribution to stability in Asia and beyond. Of the wars fought in the seven decades since the founding of the PRC, China has never made the first move. Not once has China been the aggressor. The path of peaceful development means China will never be the one to stir up trouble or invade other sovereign states. "A belligerent nation is doomed to perish," goes an ancient Chinese saying. The iron law of history is that countries which expanded by invading others are doomed to failure. Our epoch must be one of win-win cooperation and shared development. "The Chinese people love peace. We will never seek aggression or expansion, but we have the confidence to defeat all invasions. We will never allow any people, organization or political party to split any part of Chinese territory away from the country at any time, in any form," Xi said. Peace is bliss for the people. Protecting peace is the duty of the people's army. To fulfill that timeless duty, China's armed forces must be a world-class military, ready to fight if it must, and ready to win. The country will never compromise on its sovereignty. The latest military reform focuses on structural reforms, aiming to build forces true to the Party, with exemplary conduct. Should the PLA ever be forced into a fight, it will fight to win. Xi announced cuts of 300,000 troops in 2015, a process which is expected to be completed by the end of this year, according to the Ministry of National Defense. This is a sincere commitment to world peace and prosperity. With 90 years of service behind them, the common pursuit of peaceful development, benefiting all people from all countries, is the PLA's sincere hope for the next 90 years and beyond. Hundreds are coming up with suggestions for Prime Minister Narendra Modis 4th Independence Day speech after the Centre urged citizens to chip in with their ideas on its public interface platform mygov.in. More than 550 suggestions have poured in so far. Modi is expected to make some big-bang announcements this year as his first term as Prime Minister enters its fourth year. The Prime Ministers fans want him to talk on a range of issues, including more transparency in politics, ways for population control, better health care and caste issues, among other things. At present, medical treatment is out of reach for the poor. Cost of medicines and tests are increasing every day. Please do something for the poor. You may create medical insurance fund for all citizen at a nominal price. And if possible, please fix the treatment cost at nursing homes, said a participant. Many online petitioners suggested that the government should do away with caste-based reservation even though the PM had categorically ruled out such possibilities on a number of occasions earlier. Reservation should be on basis of economic status no matter who belongs to which category or religion or cast, said another. This year, there are also requests to make the political system more transparent. Though a law is there to prevent convicted persons from contesting elections, theres an urgent need to bring law barring those persons from holding any party post, said another user. Suggestions to stop giving government aids to families which have more than two children was also given. Amid the barrage of serious downpour of ideas, a 14-year-old student has told Modi to make geography an optional subject from Class 8 to 10. And the optional subjects should have computer programming, or management so that children can get through IIT or IIM, said Heramb Patil from Nashik. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON There is no proposal by the government to install jammers on school premises to prevent students from viewing porn-sites, the Rajya Sabha was informed on Thursday. The government has not directed schools, both private and government, to install jammers on school premises keeping in view the rise of sexual crimes on students and increasing reports of porn-sites viewed by students, minister of state for HRD Upendra Kushwaha said in a written reply. Read more: No porn in school: CBSE asked to install jammers to block websites on campuses He further said that it may not be feasible to install jammers inside the school premises since they will block internet access to computers used by students. However, in order to prevent access of pornographic sites on the cell phones by the driver or anyone who is in charge of the children in the buses, jammers can be installed in buses, he added. The HRD ministry is considering a proposal to have one male and female child counsellor in every school and special workshops conducted in schools for awareness about sex education. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) chief Amit Shah on Thursday said Pakistan was facing global isolation on the issue of terror, while India enjoyed the support of the whole world in this regard. Shah said the support for India was a result of steps taken by the Narendra Modi government. The BJP chief, who is on a three-day visit to Haryana, was addressing a press conference here on the second day of his visit. He said the Modi government had taken several stringent steps to curb terror activities. We succeeded in isolating Pakistan in the world in three years, he asserted. On steps to restore peace to the Kashmir Valley, Shah said action had been taken in that direction. Never before was anyone arrested who indulged in Hawala transactions. If any government took tough action against terror funds, it was done by only Narendra Modi government, he said. On the farm debt waiver issue, Shah said the state governments concerned could take a decision at their own level as clarified by finance minister Arun Jaitley. The BJP chief, who was flanked by chief minister Manohar Lal Khattar, said the Modi government has been in power for three years, but even the opposition has not been able to level any corruption charges. It is a decisive government, he said. Prime Minister Narendra Modi praised former President Pranab Mukherjees strength of intellect and wisdom, which, he said in his farewell letter to the President last week, helped them work with synergy despite believing in different ideologies. Mukherjee tweeted out on Thursday a copy of the letter, which he said touched my heart. On my last day in office as the President, I received a letter from PM @narendramodi that touched my heart! Sharing with you all. pic.twitter.com/cAuFnWkbYn Pranab Mukherjee (@CitiznMukherjee) August 3, 2017 The letter offers glimpses of the Prime Ministers deep respect for Mukherjee, who was one of the senior-most leaders of Modis arch-rival party, the Congress, before he became President in 2012. Pranab da, our political journeys took shape in different political parties. Our ideologies, at times, have been different. Our experiences are also varied. My administrative experience was from my state, whereas you have seen the expanse of our national polity and politics for decades... Yet, such is the strength of your intellect and wisdom that we were able to work together with synergy, the PM said in his letter. Mukherjee retired as President last month. During one of his farewell speeches earlier, Mukherjee had said that there were differences between the PM and him but it never affected the functioning of the government. Modi showered praise on Mukherjee, describing him as a father-figure whose legacy will continue to guide him. We will continue to draw strength from your democratic vision of taking everyone along, said Modi, a leader often criticised by rivals for taking unilateral decisions. The PM said Mukherjee opened the Rashtrapati Bhavan to initiatives and programmes that recognized innovation and the talent of Indias youth as an example of him placing the wellbeing of the nation over everything else. Mukherjee told HT recently that his personal equation with Modi remains very good and will continue to remain like that. Shortly after the former Presidents tweet disclosing the letter on Thursday, the Prime Minister tweeted from his personal account attaching it and said: Pranab Da, I will always cherish working with you. @CitiznMukherjee https://t.co/VHOTXzHtlM Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) August 3, 2017 The message echoed what he had written in the letter. You have been so warm, affectionate and caring to me. Your one phone call asking me I hope you are taking care of your health was enough to fill me with fresh energy, after a long day at meetings or in campaign tours. The PM said Mukherjee was a repository of knowledge. I have always marvelled at your insights on various subjects, ranging from policy to politics, economics to external affairs, and security issues to subjects of national and global importance. Your intellectual prowess has constantly helped my government and me. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON The Income Tax department continued its searches on Karnataka energy minister D K Shivakumars properties in Delhi, Bengaluru and Mysore for the second consecutive day on Thursday, a move that has triggered a political storm, with the Congress accusing the BJP of witch-hunt ahead of Rajya Sabha elections in Gujarat. Senior Congress leader Ahmed Patel is locked in a tight contest for the third seat from Gujarat due to rebellion by six party MLAs who resigned and apprehension of a few more joining them. Shivakumar was looking after 42 Congress MLAs from Gujarat who have been shifted to a luxury resort near Bengaluru to avoid a break in their ranks. I-T officials said that since the search operation was still on, there was no clear estimate of the total amount seized. Search papers from Bengaluru revealed that no cash was seized in the raids till Wednesday night. Searches are still on at all these places and it is difficult at this point to give an estimate of how much more will be recovered, said a senior official of the department, who did not wish to be identified. Officials said several bank lockers of the Congress leader have also been blocked though taxmen are yet to ascertain the amount and items in them. The department said the search is a continuation of an investigation which has been in progress for a considerable period of time and its timing was decided well in advance, in a bid to refute Congresss allegations of witch-hunting targeted at the energy minister. Searches were carried out under Section 132 of the Income Tax Act as an evidence gathering exercise which is being carried in compliance with all statutory requirements. This is part of our operation against black moneythere is no other agenda, the official added. The Congress has accused the BJP of using money and muscle power to engineer defections among its legislators in Gujarat. Pakistan is constructing six dams on the Indus river in PoK with Chinas assistance and India has made demarches to both Islamabad and Beijing conveying that it is in violation of its sovereignty and territorial integrity, the Rajya Sabha was informed on Thursday. According to the governments information, Pakistan is constructing six dams on the Indus river in Pakistan-occupied-Kashmir with assistance committed to those projects by China, minister of state for external affairs, VK Singh, said in a written reply. India has a clear and consistent position that these territories are illegally occupied by Pakistan and that any collaborative activity there is in violation of Indias sovereignty and territorial integrity, he said. Accordingly, we have made demarches to both Pakistan and China conveying the position. The government will continue to maintain this position, Singh added. The Parliament reconvened for the ongoing monsoon session on Thursday , with the Congress mounting an attack on the Narendra Modi-led government over its foreign policies. The Rajya Sabha on Wednesday saw multiple adjournments as the Opposition relentlessly protested the income tax raids at the official residence of Karnataka power minister DK Shivakumar and at a private resort near Bengaluru where 42 Congress lawmakers from Gujarat are staying. The Lok Sabha on Wednesday passed legislation to extend the Goods and Services Tax (GST) to Jammu and Kashmir, making it part of the one nation, one tax regime. Watch Live proceedings in Rajya Sabha Highlights: 8.20pm: Lok Sabha has been adjourned till 11am on Friday. 8.10pm: Lok Sabha passes the National Bank for Agriculture & Rural Development (Amendment) Bill, 2017. 8pm: Rajya Sabha is adjourned for the day. 7.30pm: Jairam Ramesh raises the question why institutions like IIT, IIMs are not attracting best faculty. 7.15pm: Our foreign policy has ensured we have friends all sides of every geopolitical divide. Both EU and Britain are Indias allies; both Saudi Arabia and Yemen are our allies; both Israel and Palestine are on Indias side: Sushma Swaraj. 7.02pm: Israel might be our friend. But India will never let down the Palestinian cause: Sushma Swaraj. 7pm: Even America and Russia are supporting India today in the fight against terrorism: Sushma Swaraj in Rajya Sabha. 6.52pm: Diplomatic channels and patience help in finding solution to problems with neighbhours: Sushma Swaraj. 6.50pm: India tried to be Pakistans friend, until they called Burhan Wani a martyr: Sushma Swaraj. 6.47pm: At present, Bhutan is Indias dearest friend: Sushma Swaraj. 6.45pm: India is the very definition of a friend in the neighbourhood, says Sushma Swaraj. 6.40pm: India lent assistance to Sri Lanka, Maldives and Nepal during natural disasters, says external affairs minister Sushma Swaraj. 6.30pm: External affairs minister Sushma Swaraj begins her address in Rajya Sabha. She is expected to inform Parliament about the governments stance on the standoff involving China at the tri-junction border with Bhutan. 6pm: Pakistan is constructing six dams on the Indus river in PoK with Chinas assistance and India has made demarches to both Islamabad and Beijing conveying that it is in violation of its sovereignty and territorial integrity, the Rajya Sabha was informed on Thursday. 5.30pm: Narendra Modi has visited US five times, but there is still no increase in FDI. There is zero investment in the defence sector. Furthermore, there are five lakh Indians in the US, but their future is in doubt because H1-B visas havent been resolved, Sitaram Yechury said in the Rajya Sabha. 5pm: Lok Sabha passes Punjab Municipal Corporation Law (Extension to Chandigarh) Amendment Bill, 2017 by voice vote. 4.30pm: India is moving towards the unipolarity led by the US, which is not a good idea. This is not in Indias interests. We need to move towards a multi-polarity approach: CPI (M) general secretary Sitaram Yechury in the Rajya Sabha. 4pm: JD (U) leader Sharad Yadav lamented the loss of Russia as a friend for India. India managed to hold its ground through the 70s because a superpower like Russia was by our side. Indira Gandhi was secure in the knowledge that she had Moscows friendship, Yadav said in the Rajya Sabha. 3:45pm: You can see Pakistan is giving our territory to China. There is an axis of four nations: Ram Gopal Yadav. 3:35pm: Samajwadi Partys Ram Gopal Yadav -- who was in the centre of the controversy regarding the partys internal split -- says only solutions should be discussed, instead of trading accusation, while debating on a topic like this (foreign policy). 3:25pm: Opposition, Centre MPs over their governments contribution to ensuring the nations role in the UN. India played an important role in the Paris accord. India, instead of a rule-breaker, has become a rule maker, says government. The days of non alignment are over. We are now aligned with everybody... India is no longer a land of snake charmers. It has now become one of the most attractive places of investment. 3:20pm: Lok Sabha resumes, takes up Punjab Municipal Corporation Law (Extension to Chandigarh) Amendment Bill. 3:10pm: After Congress brazen attack, BJPs Maharashtra MP Vinay Sahasrabuddhe says he hoped the short discussion wasnt trivialised. Sahasrabuddhe counters Sharma, calls the PM a masterfull planner. It is very sad the other party decided to ridicule him (Modi)... Is that the way you treat your head of the government! Such criticism is churlish. The world doesnt look at India the way it was before, says BJP, crediting PM Modi for the change. 3:05pm: Anand Sharma concludes: We must not lose sight in the region. We have a special relationship with Israel but we cannot depart from our policy of support for the Palestine region. Please ensure there is a balance. Whether it is Pakistan or Russia or China or Israel. Ensure that those who are taking forward our engagement are capable. We recognise them... Please ensure we do not deviate from our tried-and-tested policies, Sharma says, ending his speech. 3pm: The Prime Minister is very effusive. He likes to hug his counterparts: Sharma says on a lighter vein. 2:57pm: On India-US relationship, the PM hasnt told us what he and President Trump spoke about. What have we achieved? questions Sharma. What about the H1-B issue. We dont want just one paragraph on India IT industry. What is the transactional value between the two nations: Congress continue the rigorous attack on PM Modi :55pm: Anand Sharma goes on to slam the government over its foreign policies. This government has mishandled the issue of NSG membership... Govt could have ensured China didnt veto. 2:45pm: Anand Sharma resumes his address. On the One Belt One Road (OBOR) initiative, he says the government should look at how India can thoroughly engage without isolating itself. India will play a strong regional role if it manages its neighbours correctly: Sharma. The CPEC (part of OBOR) -- a cluster of road, rail and energy projects -- will connect Pakistans southern Gwadar port city on the Arabian Sea and Kashgar in Chinas far-western western Xinjiang province. India has reservations about the project as it passes through Pakistan-Occupied-Kashmir, which New Delhi says challenges its sovereignty by lending legitimacy to Pakistans claim over the territory. 2:40pm: Kurien objects to Anand Sharmas claim that it wasnt fair of the House Chair to not allow more time to speak. He says he was only helping Sharma. A rattled Kurien announces discussion will go on till 6pm today. 2:35pm: House deputy chairman PJ Kurien asks for more time to complete his address, Sushma Swaraj clarifies that she already spoken on the border issue with China, theres not need to stall proceedings in the Lok Sabha. BJP says Sushma Swaraj has no objection to keep proceedings on in the Rajya Sabha till 6pm on Thursday after Kurien asks the sense of the House on continuing short foreign policy matters. 2:30pm: Lok Sabha passes the Banking Regulation (Amendment) Bill, 2017. 2:25pm: We have concerns that Chinas role in Pakistan is increasing. There are sovereignty concerns. China is being unusually aggressive. We would like to know what is Indias response to the latest Chinese statement (by President Xi Jinping): Sharma continues tirade against government. Diplomacy should be given a chance, to de-escalate; that doesnt mean retreat, says Congress on border issues with China. 2:15pm: Our PM has gone to 65 countries and he has never told us what those foreign trips resulted in: Anand Sharma to Rajya Sabha Sharma questions the boastful attitude of PM after armys surgical strikes across PoK. Indira Gandhi didnt do that even after we won war for Bangladesh... You dont even remember Indira Gandhis sacrifices, Bangladesh. But Im afraid no government, no leader, not even dictators can change history. History will triumph... Irrespective of which government sits, those who did something for the country cannot be insulted, they must be respected. 2:10pm: Anand Sharma (Congress) hails the contribution of soldiers to the nation. Referring to Pakistan, he says: We hope that there will be a realisation across the border that peace is in larger interest... Pakistan, like India, is a nuclear-armed state We are very clear that Jammu and Kashmir is Indian territory. But China also has claimed area illegally ceded in the 1960s. Isolation of Pakistan is irresponsible and factually incorrect... There is a strong military cooperation between Pakistan and China. Russia has entered into a defence MoU for the first time. We should avoid making this boastful claim that we have isolated (Pakistan). India is a big nation. India should engage and resolve issues. Your (govt) policies keep changing: Anand Sharma You were going to Afghanistan and got down at Lahore mid-way, but till date PM hasnt told what talks took place, says Sharma. 2pm: Rajya Sabha reconvenes for discussion. 1:45pm: Arun Jaitley addresses Parliament on the banking regulation bill, says today India has a power surplus and the steel sector constitutes the countrys biggest chunk of NPAs (non-performing assets). The RBI will lead the consortium of banks... Let us trust the RBI. 1:15pm: Lower House begins discussion on Banking Regulation (Amendment) Bill, 2017 as BJP leaders laud the governments efforts to introduce the amendment. 1pm: Question Hour over in Rajya Sabha, House adjourned till 2pm. 12:55pm: INCs Kumari Selja accuses govt of reducing funds for upliftment of SC/STs. Social justice minister Thaawar Chand Gehlot defends and recites the measures taken by his ministry. 12:45pm: Congress Digivijaya Singh rakes up the propagation of fake news on TV channels. Minister of state for information and broadcasting Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore says there is a redressal mechanism to deal with fake news, including the cable news television network act. Sachin Tendulkar attended Rajya Sabha proceedings today. pic.twitter.com/mA2gJ1XDCJ ANI (@ANI_news) August 3, 2017 12:40pm: Protests erupt after heated discussion on attacks motivated by political rivalry in Kerala. Lok Sabha chairperson Sumitra Mahajan requests parliamentarians to stay calm. 12:30pm: Ruckus in Lok Sabha as Congress leader Jyotiraditya Scindia speaks about rehabilitation of people due to construction of the Sardar Sarovar dam. BJP responds to the charges, listing out the measures taken by the Centre for resettlement and rehabilitation of people affected by the project. 12:20pm: Responding to D Raja on fishermen, Swaraj explains the 2+2 initiative and says both the countries will monitor deep sea fishing, so the process of fishing can be environment friendly and security concerns can be waived. 12:15pm: On the issue of Indian fishermen captured by Sri Lanka navy, external affairs minister Sushma Swaraj says the government actively attempts to free them as soon as possible. Prime Minister Narendra Modi is attending the Rajya Sabha. Matter raised in each meeting of PM Modi with Sri Lankan Pres & PM. Same has resulted in release of 42 boats & 251 fishermen: S Swaraj in RS pic.twitter.com/V6aNKjo1en ANI (@ANI_news) August 3, 2017 12:10pm: Lok Sabha has been adjourned till 12:30pm. 12pm: BJPs Vinay Sahasrabuddhe says Dalits in Kerala were targeted by CPI(M), listing out incidents of violence between the two parties in the state. CPI(M) reacts sharply to the charges and protests against Sahasrabuddhes remarks in the Upper House. Earlier this week, RSS leader E Rajesh (34) was allegedly waylaid and attacked by a group of CPI(M) workers when he was returning home after work. He received more than 52 stab wounds and later succumbed to injuries. 11:40am: Parliamentarians question transport minister Nitin Gadkari on probe into allegations of bribery for contracts. The government has started the process to probe alleged $ 1.18 million bribery to NHAI officials by an American firm, says Gadkari. Over 100 bridges across India on verge of collapse, need immediate attention: Gadkari informs the LokSabha. 11:35am: In Rajya Sabha, Amar Shankar Sable (BJP) talks about the impact of the controversial Blue Whale game, which is suspected to be the reason behind the suicide of a Mumbai boy. Dr Vikas Mahatme responds and explains the functioning of such games that can be addictive for teenagers. Samajwadi Partys adds to the discussion, saying the government should introduce regulations. 11:30am: Rajev Shukla, from the Congress party, brings up the issue of women sportspersons and the importance of providing infrastructure and facilities to help them. Because the men havent got enough medals in decades, its time to get women the chance. 11:25pm: Finance minister Arun Jaitley defends the State Bank of Indias decision to cut interest rate on savings accounts of less than Rs 1 crore, saying the move was in sync with reduction in lending rate. Responding to a Zero Hour mention of the SBIs decision to cut interest rate on savings accounts with less than Rs 1 crore deposit to 3.5% from 4%, he said to protect the interests of senior citizens, the government has already floated a deposit scheme that guarantees 8-plus % interest rate. 11:15am: Matters of discussion taken up in Rajya Sabha. The Lower House begins with the Question Hour. (With agency inputs) Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi will visit flood-affected areas in upper Assam on Thursday, two days after Prime Minister Narendra Modi came to take stock of the situation in the region. The 47-year-old opposition leader will visit Lakhimpur, the worst affected of the 29 districts in the state, meet flood-affected residents, and take stock of the relief and rehabilitation measures. He will first land in Guwahati and take a chopper to Lakhimpur. After meeting with affected people he will fly to Silchar to pay respects to former party leader Santosh Mohan Dev, who passed away on Wednesday, senior Congress leader Pradyut Bordoloi said. Gandhi will return back to Delhi later in the evening. On Tuesday, Modi held three meetings here with chief ministers and officials of Assam, Arunachal Pradesh, Manipur, and Nagaland four states affected by floods and announced a relief package of Rs 2,000 crore. The PM, however, didnt conduct an aerial survey of the affected areas or meet residents displaced by the floods like he did in Gujarat a week ago a move which drew flak from opposition leaders in Assam. Modi also announced Rs 250 crore as immediate relief to Assam and setting up of a high powered committee to study the course of the Brahmaputra with a corpus of Rs 100 crores for the project. But former Assam chief minister and senior Congress leader Tarun Gogoi termed the total relief package announced by Modi as meagre and blamed the Bharatiya Janata Party government in the state for failing to present a real picture of the damage to the Prime Minister. Two days after Modis announcement, there is still no clarity on what would be the share of each of the flood-affected states from the total package of Rs 2,000 crore. Addressing the media on Tuesday, Assam water resources minister Keshab Mahanta said the states share would be Rs 1,200 crore. But, a Press Information Bureau (PIB) release mentioned Rs 1,200 crore would be given for the infrastructure sector alone without clarifying whether that sum would come to Assam. With 84 deaths till Wednesday, Assam is the worst-affected of all the northeastern states. Flooding has affected over 2 million people in the state, displaced over 1.3 lakh and damaged over 2 lakh hectares of crop area. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON The elder brother of a 20-year-old woman who was brutally gang-raped and murdered in Rohtak in May this year was found dead in his friends house in Sikka Colony locality of Sonepat on Wednesday. The police have booked three of his friends Krishna, Leelu and Rohit for his murder. The three are staying in the house on rent. Investigation officer Krishan said they were all addicts and prima facie it appeared that they murdered him in an inebriated condition following some argument. The three are on the run. The police said Amit (24) was most likely strangulated to death, though the exact reason behind his death will be ascertained only after post-mortem examination. He was recently booked for raping a widow of his colony, from whom he also allegedly stole some gold jewellery. He was not arrested in the case as the investigation was going on. The victims family has accused some men of their village who allegedly stole Rs 85,000 from Amit. However, the police said they were yet to find the reason behind the murder. Sonepat superintendent of police (SP) Ashwin Shenvi said they will form a special team to investigate the murder. The family, however, has accused the police of not giving them adequate security despite the brutal incident with their daughter. They killed my daughter and now my son as well. The police did not do anything to save them, said Amits mother. The family said they had left their residence at Sonepats Kalupur village after the murder of their daughter and had shifted to Panipat district. The police, however, said they were given security. It would be wrong to say that adequate security was not given. They were living in Panipat, while the body of Amit has been found from his friends house in Sonepat, Shenvi said. He said the deceased was not a witness in the gangrape and murder case of his sister. The mans sister was brutally raped and murdered, triggering national outrage over womens safety in Haryana as the incident was compared with the fatal December 2012 gang-rape of a paramedical student in New Delhi. Her decomposed and mutilated body was found at a secluded place in the Rohtak industrial area, where dogs were tearing out the flesh, two days after she was abducted from Sonepat. Police had arrested two men her suspected jilted lover and his friend after the familys complaint. DNA test reports held the duo guilty. The incident was so gruesome that chief minister Manohar Lal Khattar announced trial in a fast-track court. ROHTAK Several private schools in the district were forced to declare Wednesday a holiday as their buses were requisitioned for the rally organised to welcome BJP national president Amit Shah in Haryana. The state government seems to have forgotten the rulebook to welcome its party bosses as it had recently banned the use of school buses for political rallies. State additional chief secretary (home) Ram Niwas, in an affidavit, had told the Punjab and Haryana high court in March this year that instructions were issued to all concerned to implement this ban. He had stated that forcing managements to send their buses for rallies was against the statutory provisions of the Motor Vehicle Act, 1988. Many schools on Tuesday night sent texts to parents to inform them of the holiday. Some cited potential traffic jams as the reason for closures, while others said their buses will be deputed for Shahs rally as per instructions received from the district administration. The administration had asked for our buses for the rally. Therefore, many schools, including ours, had to declare it a holiday today, said Ravi Gugnani, director, Scholars Rosary School, Rohtak. HT could not independently speak to all the schools that declared holiday on Wednesday, as buses from schools located in other districts of the state were also used by BJP workers to take part in the rally. While Rohtak deputy commissioner Atul Kumar did not respond for comments, superintendent of police (SP) Pankaj Nain maintained that the police department did not requisition any school buses. He claimed that no hindrance in traffic was caused in the district. The private school bodies, that had approached the court citing disturbance in students studies due to use of buses for political rallies, condemned the government for not following the guidelines SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON Nearly 160 semi-naked sanitation workers, who were rendered jobless after the HUDA handed over maintenance of certain sectors to the municipal corporation, carried out a protest march in Faridabad demanding restoration of their jobs. The protest march started outside the municipal corporation office on Wednesday and culminated at citys Neelam Chowk during which the workers raised slogans against the government and the administration. The Haryana Urban Development Authority (HUDA) had a few months ago handed over the maintenance of certain sectors and markets to the municipal corporation. These 160 workers, however, were assured of being adjusted in the municipal corporation, claimed Naresh Kumar Shastri, who led the protest which was held yesterday. He said on July 11 Principal Secretary, Haryana, RK Khullar had directed the corporation, Faridabad, that these HUDA employees be taken on duty with immediate effect. The government has agreed to include 160 workers in the Faridabad Municipal Corporation. Official orders have been given but the implementation is getting delayed, he claimed, alleging civic body officials were delaying the process. Names of our children have been struck off school registers because we are unable to pay their fees. We are unable to pay electricity bills and landlords are asking us to vacate houses, Shastri added. The workers said if their jobs are not restored, they will launch a protest on August 9 carrying begging bowls in their hands. Researchers in England are hoping to help root out modern day slavery in northern India by using detailed satellite imagery to locate brick kilns - sites that are notorious for using millions of slaves, including children. A team of geospatial experts at the University of Nottingham use Google Maps and dozens of volunteers to identify potential sites of exploitation and report them to authorities. The key thing at the moment is to get those statistics right and to get the locations of the brick kilns sorted, said Dr Doreen Boyd, a co-researcher on the Slavery from Space project. There are certainly activists on the ground that will help us in terms of getting the statistics and the locations of these brick kilns to (government) officials. Anti-slavery activists said the project could be useful in identifying remote kilns or mines that would otherwise escape public or official scrutiny. But there are other, more pressing challenges like tackling problematic practices including withheld wages, lack of transparent accounting,... no enforcement of existing labour laws, said Jakub Sobik, spokesman at Anti-Slavery, a London-based NGO. Millions of people in India are believed to be living in slavery. Despite a 1976 ban on bonded labour, the practice remains widespread at brick kilns, rice mills, and brothels, among others. The majority of victims belong to low-income families or marginalized castes like the Dalits or untouchables. Nearly 70 percent of brick kiln workers in South Asia are estimated to be working in bonded and forced labour, according to a 2016 report by the International Labor Organization. About a fifth of those are under age. The project relies on citizen science or crowdsourcing - a process where volunteers sift through thousands of satellite images to identify possible locations of kilns. Each image is shown to multiple volunteers who mark kilns independently. The team is currently focused on an area of 2,600 square km in the desert state of Rajasthan - teeming with brick-making sites - and plans to scale up the project in the coming years. Researchers are now in talks with satellite companies to get access to more detailed images, rather than having to rely on publicly available Google Maps. The project is one of several anti-slavery initiatives run by the university, which include research on slave labour-free supply chains and human trafficking. The Siwan district court of ADJ-3 Manoj Kumar, on Thursday, granted bail to gangster Azharuddin Beg alias Laddan Mian, said to be a close aide of incarcerated RJD ex-MP from Siwan, Mohammad Shahabuddin, in a case pertaining to the murder of Siwan (north Bihar) journalist Rajdeo Ranjan. Laddan has been granted bail in connection with a case wherein he is alleged to have provided firearms to the shooters, who gunned down Hindustan daily scribe Rajdeo Ranjan, at a busy market near Station Road of Siwan, on May 13, 2016. Reached for a reaction, slain Rajdeo Ranjans wife Asha Ranjan said that she was moving the high court for cancellation of Laddans bail in the arms act case. On May 25, 2016, the Siwan police had arrested five shooters, including Rohit Kumar, Vijay Kumar, Rajesh Kumar, Vishnu Kumar and Sonu Kumar Gupta, allegedly involved in the murder of the journalist. The police also recovered firearms from the Sonus house and motorcycles used by shooters. During his interrogation, Sonu disclosed that 7.65 bore pistols, six live cartridges and Rs 15,000 cash were provided by Laddan to eliminate Rajdeo. Rohit shot Rajdeo after mobike-borne Sonu stopped the journalist as he was passing through the station road area of Siwan town. Forensic reports has confirmed that the three bullets recovered from Rajdeo's body during autopsy had been fired from the pistol that was recovered from Sonus house. A fresh FIR was then lodged against Laddan and Sonu in connection with the arms act case. Later, Laddan had, on June 2, 2016, surrendered before the court of Siwan CJM. His earlier regular bail plea in the arms act case rejected by a Siwan lower court while another bail plea, related to Rajdeo murder case, investigating by the CBI, was rejected by the special CBI court of Muzaffarpur. He has been named as a conspirator in the CBI case. According to court officials, Laddans counsel Navin Kumar Srivastava forcefully pleaded for his bail whereas prosecution counsel, APP Ranjan Kumar Srivastava, opposed it, pointing out all the six accused in the case remained in jail. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON The Supreme Court on Thursday refused to stay the Election Commission decision allowing the NOTA provision in the August 8 Rajya Sabha polls in Gujarat. A bench of justices Dipak Misra, Amitava Roy and AM Khanwilkar, however, agreed to examine the constitutional validity of the August 1 notification of the poll panel allowing the NOTA option. Issue notice. We will examine it. We are not going to stay the proceedings, the bench said when senior advocates Kapil Sibal, AM Singhvi and Harin Raval, representing Gujarat Congress chief whip Shailesh Manubhai Parmar, sought an interim stay on the notification. The bench questioned the delay by the opposition party in filing its petition, pointing out that the poll panel had issued a notification on the matter in January 2014 and another circular in 2015. When it suited you, you did not come. You come here on the eve of elections, the bench said. Sibal told the court that including NOTA will encourage corruption. Its a recipe for corruption. The NOTA none of the above option allows voters to reject all candidates in fray. Six Gujarat MLAs switched over from the Congress to the BJP last week, seen as a major blow to the prospects of the opposition party candidate Ahmed Patel.The Congress is apprehensive of cross voting and some MLAs exercising the NOTA option. Last week, the party flew most of its Gujarat MLAs to Bengaluru to protect them from what it says is the BJPs conspiracy to lure Congress legislators. The petition said use of the option would be violative of the provisions of the Representation of Peoples Act, 1951 and the Conduct of Election Rules, 1961. In the Rajya Sabha polls, the MLAs have to show their ballot paper to an authorised party agent before putting it in ballot box. If a voter (MLA) defies the party directive and casts the ballot for someone else or uses the NOTA option, he cannot be disqualified as a legislator. But the party is free to take disciplinary action including expulsion. The defiant voter can continue to be an MLA and his vote can also not be invalidated for defying the party direction, according to EC rules. (With agency inputs) SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON External affairs minister Sushma Swaraj hit out at the Opposition for alleging that the countrys foreign policy was faulty, saying a leader of the largest opposition party chose to meet the Chinese envoy over the Doklam standoff and not the Indian leadership. Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi recently met Chinese envoy Luo Zhaohui amid a military standoff between the two countries in Doklam. It is my job to be informed on critical issues. I met the Chinese Ambassador, Ex-NSA, Congress leaders from NE & the Bhutanese Ambassador, Gandhi tweeted. Speaking in the Rajya Sabha over the issue, Swaraj said: I am very sad that leader of the largest opposition party deemed it proper to meet the Chinese envoy to get information about the standoff rather than approach the Indian leadership. Swaraj also said the countrys foreign policy under Prime Minister Narendra Modi was so strong that India was setting the world agenda. Replying to a discussion on Indias foreign policy and engagement with strategic partners, she answered point-by- point the questions raised and concerns voiced by the Opposition parties, mainly targeting the Congress. She said the concerns voiced by the Congress regarding Chinese involvement in construction of Gwadar port in Pakistan and Hambantota in Sri Lanka were born during the previous UPA rule and the present government was settling these. She also rejected the Opposition contention that PM Modi was not taking her into consideration with regard to the foreign policy. You say that India stands alone. This is far from the truth... All countries are with India... What I am saying is with evidence, she told the opposition. Swaraj said it was due to the success of the new foreign policy that both the US and Russia are with India and so are Israel and Palestine as also Saudi Arabia and Yemen. Germany, France, European Union, United Kingdom are also friends and so is the UAE, she added. Indias foreign policy is so good now that Prime Minister Narendra Modi is setting the global agenda on the world stage, she said and cited example of how he played a crucial role at the Paris Climate Summit and at G-20 or other world fora. The opinion formed by the Opposition in the House that all our neighbours have turned against us is far away from the truth, Swaraj asserted. It is not a fact that all our neighbouring countries are against us. Whenever there is a crisis in any neighbouring country, they look up to India and we are the first to respond to them, she said. Vikram Goud, a Telangana Youth Congress leader and the son of a former Andhra Pradesh minister, was arrested on Thursday, a week after he allegedly staged a gun attack on himself for political mileage. Goud was arrested soon after he was discharged from a private hospital where he was receiving treatment for bullet wounds from the incident, police said. He was today arrested and produced before a court, deputy commissioner of police (West Zone) A Venkateshwar Rao told PTI. The episode took a bizarre turn when it was alleged that Goud, the son of former Andhra Pradesh minister Mukesh Goud, staged the attack on himself to gain peoples sympathy and manage a ticket for the 2019 assembly elections. The Hyderabad Police arrested five persons in connection with the attack on Goud at his residence in Film Nagar area here on July 28. From being a victim, the 35-year-old Telangana Youth Congress leader has now become the prime accused in the firing incident. The young politician plotted the murder attempt on himself to gain sympathy of the voters of an assembly constituency from where he was planning to contest the next elections, Police Commissioner M Mahendar Reddy has said. Goud hired members of a criminal gang and offered them Rs 50 lakh for executing the plan, Reddy has said. The five arrested persons - S Nanda Kumar, Raees Khan, Shaik Ahmed, K Babu Jan and A Govind Reddy - spilled the beans on the sequence of events, police have said. As per the plan, Kumar and the other accused procured a country-made weapon from Madhya Pradesh. On Gouds instructions, two of them, Raees Khan and Shaik Ahmed, reached his house in the early hours of July 28. Khan fired two rounds at Gouds hands before fleeing with Ahmed, Reddy has said. Goud, who has invested a lot of money in mining in Odisha and other businesses, is under heavy debt. The quantum of his debt is being ascertained, the Hyderabad Police chief has said. With Gouds arrest, six out of the eight accused are behind the bars now and efforts are on to nab the other two, police said. Police have registered a case against Goud and others under IPC sections related to criminal conspiracy, voluntarily causing grievous hurt by dangerous weapons or means, causing disappearance of evidence of offence and giving false information regarding an offence committed, among others. They have also been booked under relevant sections of the Arms Act. A group of cow vigilantes allegedly assaulted three Muslim men over suspicion of carrying beef in a truck in Bihars Bhojpur district on Thursday, the latest in a spate of mob attacks in the name of bovine protection. The mob also blocked Ara-Buxar stretch of the National Highway 84, disrupting vehicular traffic for more than three hours, alleging beef was being smuggled to neighbouring West Bengal, police said. The group also demanded action against the Shahpur station house office (SHO) for his alleged failure to check beef smuggling. There has been growing incidents of attacks and lynching of people, mostly in the BJP-ruled states, by self-styled cow vigilante groups over rumours of cow slaughter and beef smuggling. The attacks have triggered nationwide condemnation and outrage. Even Prime Minister Narendra Modi recently condemned such acts, saying killing people in the name of gau bhakti is not acceptable. Despite his warning, incidents of violence in the name of cow, considered holy by Hindus, continue unabated. Fringe elements within Modis BJP and other right-wing organisations are often accused of carrying out these mob attacks. The reported thrashing of three persons on suspicion of transporting beef in Bihar is a clear confirmation of the BJP assuming power in the state, CPI(M) general secretary Sitaram Yechury told reporters in New Delhi. Now only Hindutva policies will be implemented while he (Nitish Kumar) continues to remain the chief minister, the CPI (M) leader alleged. Police said the Thursdays incident took place after the mob intercepted the truck carrying meat near a petrol pump on the NH-84 under Shahpur police station area, 29 km west of district headquarters Ara and 70 km west of Patna. Locals claimed illegal slaughterhouses had been running in the area and they had information that beef was being smuggled from Ranisagar village near Buxar for the last many days. Additional police force had to be deployed to bring the situation under control. Normalcy returned to the area only by noon after the Jagdishpur sub divisional police officer Dayashankar confiscated the meat-laden truck and arrested its driver Mohammad Sarfuddin Khan and two passengers Mohammad Ajmullah Khan and Mohammad Gulam Khan. The arrested persons, who were from Rohtas district in south-west Bihar, were being interrogated to find out if the meat they were carrying was beef. Bhojpur district magistrate Sanjiv Kumar said sample of the meat had been sent for test. Strict action would be taken against those running illegal slaughter houses in the area, the DM added. Locals also alleged that police were also involved in running the beef smuggling racket. Bhojpur superintendent of police Awkash Kumar told HT that allegation against Shahpur police would be looked into and action would be taken against those found guilty. (With agency inputs) The ministry of road transport and highways and Central Vigilance Commission are separately inquiring into alleged kickbacks to the tune of nearly $1.2 million or Rs 7.5 crore paid by an American company to unnamed NHAI officials for awarding contracts during the UPA governments tenure, Union minister Nitin Gadkari said in Parliament on Thursday. Gadkari said the matter came to light during proceedings in a court in the United States. In the court there, they have said that $1.18 million bribes were paid I have asked the NHAI to inquire and the CVC constituted a three-member special investigation team suo motu to look into the allegations, the minister told the Lok Sabha. The government had awarded 37 contracts to the company and all but one now stands cancelled, he said. Gadkari quoted a portion of a letter written by the US department of justice in his statement before the House. From approximately 2011 until approximately 2015, employees of M/S CDM Smiths division responsible for India operations and CDM India illegally paid bribes to officials in the National Highways Authority of India, Indias state-owned highway management agency and an instrumentality under the FCPA, in order to receive contracts from NHAI, it said. The bribes generally were 2-4 per cent of the contract price and paid through fraudulent subcontractors, who provided no actual services and understood that payments were meant to solely benefit the officials, the US agency communication of June 21 said. The National Highways Authority of India has appealed to the US court to provide the names of those who were paid bribes. Asked for a time frame for completing the inquiry, Gadkari said, We can only proceed when the US government gives us the information. Gadkari said the ministry has taken up the matter with the ministry of external affairs as well as the Indian embassy in the US to coordinate with its department of justice for getting evidence and information. This is not the first time that a foreign company has been accused of giving kickbacks to Indian ministers and officials. In July 2015, Louis Berger International, a US-based firm, admitted to bribing Indian officials and ministers to win consultancy for a water augmentation and sewerage project in Goa and using slush money to win projects in Assam. India also froze all contracts with British engineering giant Rolls-Royce (RR) following a bribery scandal but orders for supply of spare parts for aircraft engines were approved on a case-by-case basis after assessing urgency. The previous UPA regime had blacklisted six defence companies, including four foreign firms, for 10 years following allegations of corruption. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON In his attempts to justify the awkward phrasing of a question in a marital declaration form at Patnas Indira Gandhi Institute of Medical Sciences (IGIMS), Bihar health minister Mangal Pandey has ended up redefining the very meaning of virginity. Following a public furore over the document on Wednesday, the minister told news channels that there was nothing wrong with using the word virgin because it simply meant kanya or kunwari which means unmarried girl. Pandey, who joined the cabinet just three days ago, had earlier told a news channel that the virgin question was only intended at making employees reveal their zodiac sign for official purposes. A snapshot of the marital declaration form under contention. (HT Photo) Sources said the chief ministers office has taken cognizance of the issue, and asked for a copy of the form. It has also reportedly asked why the question was introduced in the first place. In its response, the management of the autonomous super-specialty health facility clarified that it was in adherence to the central civil services rules followed by the All India Institute of Medical Sciences in New Delhi. IGIMS medical superintendent Dr Manish Mandal told HT on Thursday that making any changes in the format of the form or even its wording would involve an administrative decision taken either by the institute director or its board of governors. The director, who is joining today after four days of leave, will take a call on the matter, he said. The marital declaration form, which has been in existence since the inception of the institute in 1983, makes employees declare if they are bachelors, widowers or virgins at the time of joining. Some officials blamed the faux pas on poor translation on the part of individuals who drafted the document. The word virgin mentioned on the form has nothing to do with the virginity of an employee. It only seeks to know the employees marital status, so their dues can be settled on the basis of their declaration in the event of death while in service, said Dr Mandal. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON Niti Aayog vice chairman Arvind Panagariya has described his two-and-a-half year tenure a dream come true, saying that it was a very courageous move on part of Prime Minister Narendra Modi to have appointed an outsider at such a high position. Panagariya, the first vice chairman of the Niti Aayog, had written to the Prime Minister that he be relived of his duties by August 31 as his leave from Columbia University is coming to end. It has been a true privilege for me to serve under you these past two and a half years. I would like to say that this has been dream come true but even that would fall short of what has happened. For opportunity and experience you have made possible have been well beyond anything I had dreamt. No previous leader has shown the courage to appoint an outsider at this level in the government of India, he said. He further said: When we last met, I had mentioned that my leave from Columbia University will soon be ending and that, after two and a half years, my wife is keen to return closer to children. Accordingly, I am writing to request that I may be relived of my duties as the Vice Chairman of Niti Aayog by August 31. Panagariya also suggested to the Prime Minister, who is the Chairman of Niti Aayog, to find a full-time Sherpa for G20 talks as Indias role is expanding in the global arena. During the past two years, the responsibilities of the Niti Aayog have multiplied at a fast pace. This has meant rapidly rising demands on the time of Vice Chairman. Simultaneously, under your leadership, the stature of India on the global stage has rapidly risen...this means that going forward, the word of G20 Sherpa would expand.This means that going forward, the work of G20 Sherpa would expand. To ensure that work of Niti Aayog and G20 engagements receive due attention, it may be worth considering separating these roles in the future, he said. A full time G20 Sherpa would in any case be a necessity if India were to host the G20 summit in the future, he added. Sherpas, who are representatives of leaders of G20 member countries, coordinate on the agenda of a summit. As per the practice, the deputy chairman of the erstwhile Planning Commission used to be the Sherpa for G20 talks. During the UPA regime, former deputy chairman of Planning Commission Montek Singh Ahluwalia was Sherpa for G20 talks. Panagariya was Indias Sherpa for the 12th G20 summit held on July 7-8 in Hamburg, a major port city in Northern Germany. The G20 is the central forum for international cooperation on financial and economic issues. The G20 nations account for more than 80 per cent of gross world product and three-quarters of global trade, and are home to almost two- thirds of the worlds population. An unusual calm prevails in the desolate villages of Bikaner from where rumours of a person cutting hair of women during night started about two months ago. Its first casualty was reported on Thursday from Agra, 560 km away in east, where a 60-year-old woman was allegedly lynched on suspicion of chopping hair. In the two months, about 100 cases of hair chopping have been reported from villages in Rajasthan, Delhi, Haryana and Uttar Pradesh leading to fear and night vigils. Officials believe that many incidents could have gone unreported as the villagers did not lodge complaints. The cause of the rumour mill going wild was WhatsApp and little effort by the administration to dispel the superstition in the beginning. The first message received on WhatsApp was that a tantric will cut off hair of young girls and will leave a trishul (a weapon representing Lord Shiva) mark on the body, said a villager who was among the first to receive the message in Bikaner. The message had morphed pictures of a devil lifted from internet. Youths were deployed to maintain vigil during night. For a remedy, the message gave a number, which was found to be switched off. The Rajasthan police had not been able to track the originator of the message, but believe that it was handiwork of some tantrics to make quick money. The police could not proceed much as the villagers did not lodge complaints in most cases. Hanumangarh superintendent of police Yadram Phansal said families refused to lodge cases. Some even told us informally that the women had cut their own hair, he said. In the absence of complaints, the police did not investigate and the rumour spread to other parts. We deployed youths to guard our village during night for almost a fortnight, said a villager in Hanumangarh. Another villager said special prayers were held to ward off the evil spirit. Ghevar Ram, sarpanch of Ompura village in Jodhpur district, said, We havent heard of instances of hair cutting in the last 20 days and the frequency of WhatsApp messages warning us about such people have also lessened. But people are still wary of the hair cutters. Hanumangarh collector Prakash Rajpurohit said, We had issued instructions to the administration and the police to engage with people and explain to them that these are rumours. After this step, the number of such cases went down. Spread of social media-triggered rumours Rajasthan Around 30 incidents have been reported in four districts since the rumour started in the June first week. No cases or FIRs have been lodged. In many incidents, the complainants refused to lodge a case and in some, the women admitted to cutting hair themselves, police say. Haryana Six cases have been reported from Gurgaon and over a dozen from Mewat with women claiming their hair was cut by a devil which ranged from a cat to woman in black clothes to an elderly man. Some cases have also been reported from Rohtak and Sonepat districts. Uttar Pradesh Close to two dozen cases reported from Kanpur, Bareilly, Agra, Aligarh, Meerut, Jhansi and Badaun. Police warned people against rumour mongering in these districts; police personnel were deployed in some worst-affected villages. Madhya Pradesh A woman on Thursday claimed that she was attacked and her hair cut at a village in Sheopur district, where two youths were arrested for spreading rumours. The police have issued an alert against rumour mongering and are keeping a vigil over local godmen. Officials said the worst-affected districts were Morena and Sheopur situated in the Gwalior-Chambal region on the MP-Rajasthan border. Five cases were reported. (With inputs from state bureaus) SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON Reeling under rebellion by its top leaders, the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) suffered another setback on Tuesday with its national general secretary Indrajit Saroj raising the banner of revolt over fund collection allegedly ordered by party chief Mayawati for the organisation. Saroj, a four-term former MLA from Manjhanpur in Kaushambi, told HT: When I refused to oblige her, she relieved me of all posts in the organisation. More than the party, Mayawati is concerned about money and her family. Saroj, who belongs to the Pasi community, said, A meeting of senior leaders was held under the chairmanship of Mayawati on July 8. In the meeting, the leaders were told to raise funds by launching a money collection drive in 403 assembly constituencies. The leaders were told to collect Rs 10 lakh to Rs 25 lakh from each assembly segment. I told the zonal coordinator that I am not in a position to give money nor I do wish to contest the Lok Sabha or assembly election. On Tuesday evening, Mayawati rang me up and asked if I had refused to deposit money with the zonal coordinator. My reply was affirmative. She told me that I have been relieved of all posts in the party. I was told not to visit the party office as well, he said. Asked about his plan now, Saroj said, I will hold a meeting with supporters in Kaushambi to decide the strategy. For their part, senior BSP leaders maintained that no action had been initiated against Saroj nor had he been expelled from the party. Sources said Sarojs rebellion unnerved the BSP leadership that was gearing up its cadre for the 2019 Lok Sabha election. He has considerable influence over the Dalit community in the Allahabad region and central UP. Considered loyal to Mayawati, he was a minister in her government in 2002 and again in 2007. Eighteen BSP MLAs switched sides to the BJP before the 2017 assembly election. Revolt by senior leaders like Naseemuddin Siddiqui, Swami Prasad Maurya, Brijesh Pathak, Dara Singh Chauhan and Jugul Kishore had damaged the party. On July 29, another senior leader and MLC Thakur Jaiveer Singh joined the BJP. A senior BSP leader said, After his defeat in the 2017 assembly election, Saroj has lost his mental balance and is making baseless allegations against the party chief. Since he has directly attacked the party chief, action will be taken against him, he said. To send a message to Saroj, the BSP expelled former MLA Radhey Lal Rawat, a Pasi leader considered close to Saroj. The state unit leaders said Rawat was shown the door on the charge of indulging in anti-party activities. Before the 2017 assembly election, the BSP expelled senior leader RK Chaudhary who belonged to the Pasi community. With the Pasi community shifting its political allegiance, the BSP fared badly on the seats dominated by Pasis. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON To collect criminal intelligence, the Lucknow police is planning to install close circuit television (CCTV) cameras outside district jail. The cameras will be strategically placed to keep a watch on the movement of people coming to visit dreaded criminals lodged in the jail. STRATEGIC POINTS SP, rural, Satish Kumar has been made the nodal officer for the project and Mohanlalganj CO Rajkumar Shukla will assist him in assessing the approach routes to the jail and identity the strategic points where CCTV cameras can be installed to keep a watch on people visiting the jail. A control room would be set up at the nearest police outpost from where the devoted staff will keep continuous vigil on visitors. Inspector general of police (IGP) of Lucknow range Jai Narain Singh came up with the idea while holding a crime review meeting with police officers on Tuesday night. He said the criminal intelligence will be helpful in curbing crime incidents and tracking accomplices of criminals lodged in the jail. Singh said superintendent of police (SP), rural, Satish Kumar had been made the nodal officer for the project and Mohanlalganj circle officer (CO) Rajkumar Shukla will assist him in assessing the approach routes to the jail and identity the strategic points where CCTV cameras can be installed to keep a watch on each and every person visiting the jail. He said the report has been sought from them in a week time after which the installation process will be initiated. He said a control room would be set-up at the nearest police outpost from where the devoted staff will keep continuous vigil on visitors. The IG said the information related to visitors will be utilised by police personnel in generating criminal intelligence about the movement of different gangs and their activities outside the jail. He said the cameras would also be helpful in keeping track on criminals getting bailed out from jail. Moreover, the vigilance might also help the city cops in carrying out checking of visitors to tighten noose on gangsters lodged in the jail. Entry of heavy vehicles in city area only after 10pm Lucknow IG Jai Narain Singh has also asked the city police to delay the entry of heavy vehicles in the city area. He said the heavy vehicles were so far allowed entry in the city area only after 8 pm but now they will be allowed only after 10 pm. He said the change in no-entry timing is being done to ease out traffic congestion in the city. He said the general assessment suggested the traffic flow in the city remain high at least till 10 pm and allowing heavy vehicles at the same time increases congestion. Singh said the officers had also been asked to work on other options for criminal intelligence. He said they have suggested deploying cops in civvies outside and on the court premises to keep watch on criminals visiting there on court dates. He said they have been asked to installed CCTV cameras at the court lock-up to keep watch on the movement of jail inmates being taken on court dates. The cameras at the court lock-up might also help in curbing incidents of jail inmates escaping from there, he said. In another attempt to prevent software major Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) from shutting down its Lucknow operations, women employees of the company will send rakhis to chief minister Yogi Adityanath. The staff and their families will also send 5,000 postcards to the prime ministers office, with a request to save the TCS Lucknow centre. Women techies said that As a brother, CM Yogi Adityanath would surely convince TCS management to stay back in Lucknow. However, with the chief minister scheduled to be out of the state for four days, from August 4, employees are hoping to get a response from the government before that - and one that would clear the uncertainty around their future. After CM Yogis assurance to resolve the matter, women employees have also prepared a Raksha Bandhan card for him. We are planning to present it to the chief minister when we meet him, said a female staff member. However, employees also said that the senior management of the company was constantly building pressure on them for speedy migration to other centres. They are also worried that the July 31 meeting between the CM and the TCS CEO did not take place. A single positive statement from the government will help boost our morale. Earlier, positive responses from BJP president Amit Shah, chief minister and other government officials kept our hopes alive, said another staff member. After a successful signature campaign, in which signatures and comments of over 10,000 Lucknowites were collected, and a demonstration march, TCS Lucknow employees and their families are now actively preparing for the postcard campaign, where they will request PM Narendra Modis intervention in the issue. Muslims opting for multiple marriages will have to get them registered separately in Uttar Pradesh and the government guidelines do not in any way interfere with practices of any religion, a top official said on Thursday. The UP Marriage Registration Guidelines, 2017 were approved by the Cabinet on August 1. After notification, the stamp and registration department will implement it, said principal secretary to women welfare department Renuka Kumar. She also made it clear that the guidelines do not interfere in practices of any religion. The UP government does not intend to interfere in the practices of any religion. If any male Muslim is going to register his marriage, then he will have the option of registration a maximum of four marriages. For this, he has to fill different registration forms, she said. However, she added that Muslims opting to marry more than once will have to get each marriage registered separately. But, if any Muslim male has married more than once, then he has to register each of his marriage. Males from the Muslim community will get the facility of registering four marriages, but Hindus and people practising other religions will be allowed to register only one marriage, Kumar said. The decision of the UP government evoked mixed reactions from Muslim bodies. While the All India Shia Personal Law Board (AISPLB) said the option of registration a maximum of four marriages might send a wrong signal, the All India Muslim Women Personal Law Board (AIMWPLB) welcomed the governments decision of not interfering in the religious matter. The option of registration of a maximum of four marriages for Muslim males may send a wrong signal, AISPLB spokesperson Yasoob Abbas said. General secretary of AIMWPLB Rabia Sandal, said, The move to register the marriages of all religions is certainly a good one. We are also happy with the governments intention of not to interfere in the practices of any religion. The principal secretary also said registering a marriage will not need the services of a lawyer. A person can register his/her marriage from home simply at the click of a mouse by visiting the website of stamp and registration department, Kumar said. The couple will have to provide their Aadhaar number after which an OTP (One-Time Password) will be sent to the registered mobile number. As soon as the OTP is entered on the webpage, all the details (including photographs of the husband and wife) from the Aadhaar card will be auto-filled. After this, details like the date, venue of and city of marriage need to be filled in the registration form and Rs 10 deposited through online banking as registration fees. If the marriage is registered within a year, then Rs 10 will be levied as registration charges, she said. The marriage will be considered as registered after this, and a reference number will be given. The marriage certificate can be obtained on ones personal email id or can be downloaded from any cyber cafe, she said. Only the reference number has to be remembered, she added. Underlining benefits of registering the marriage, Kumar said, it would come handy during application of visas while going to foreign countries. Many government schemes also seek the matrimonial status of both men and women. In government application forms and other documents, where the marital status is asked, the person has to only provide the reference number, from where rest of the information can be retrieved by the government. Quickly following the Prime Minister Narendra Modis advice of replacing bouquets with books during official functions, the UP government has ordered its officials to implement the same in letter and spirit. The Yogi Adityanath government claimed the move would help curb wasteful expenditure besides encouraging people to read prernadai pustakein (inspirational books) even as it stopped short of telling what the literature would be like. The order is very clear as it says inspirational books. So we intend to encourage good reading habits, said Awanish Awasthi, UPs principal secretary, information. The move also coincides with a government order asking all educational institutes to keep complete works of Deendayal Upadhayaya, the saffron ideologue whose birth centenary is being celebrated in UP. The Yogi ministers and the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party predictably welcomed the move even though florists looked worried at possible loss of business and opposition parties too werent as forthcoming. The decision would hit us hard as we are already experiencing a slump in business, said Suraj Manna, a florist who used to supply flowers for government functions. UPs finance minister Rajesh Agarwal, however, said the government was busy promoting floriculture and hence the florists have nothing to worry. Nobody should worry. We are boosting floriculture in the state but the decision is a step in the right direction. Bouquets got wasted and forgotten. Books and their teachings last a lifetime. I had already stopped accepting bouquets long back. Its a welcome move, Agarwal told HT. The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party too issued an advisory to the cadre to follow the no-bouquet move. We had during partys intellectual cell meeting in Lucknow welcomed party chief Amit Shahji with book and a solitary flower. Cadres have been asked to follow the advice given by the Prime Minister and now being followed by the state government as well, UP BJP general secretary Vijay Bahadur Pathak said. States main opposition Samajwadi Party, however, wasnt as impressed. Its their government but as far we are concerned all I can say is that none can force us to follow a particular methodology of welcome. None can tell us if we want to welcome anyone by garlands, bouquets or books, former UP minister and Samajwadi Party lawmaker Manoj Pandey said. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON The Scoot Airlines brings a good news for the Lucknowites. The airlines began to operate from Lucknow on Wednesday, connecting the city with Australia, Malaysia, Hong Kong and China. The Tigerair and Scoot (both subsidiary of Singapore Airlines) have merged to give Lucknowites the pleasure of flying to Singapore at just 5599, to Bali at 8499, to Hong Kong at 9,199, to Melblourne at 10,499 and to Sydney at 11,199. In addition to this, Lucknowites will also be able to purchase ticket for direct flight to Honolulu in USA, Harbin in China, Kuching and Kuantan in Malaysia and Palembang in Indonesia. This will help them save at least 20% of the money which they initially used to spend in purchasing two tickets. However, this special officer is limited till August 6 only. The passengers boarding for Australia, Hongkong and Bali will have to change the flight in Singapore. The merging of Tigerair with Scoot was announced in Singapore on July 25, but in Lucknow Tigerair merged with Scoot on Wednesday. Country head of Scoot Airlines, Bharath Mahadevan, said, The start of scoot flights from Lucknow marks the completion of the Scoot-Tigerair integration process that began in May last year, when the airlines were brought under a common holding company, Budget Aviation Holdings. Now, Tigerairs website redirects the visitors to Scoots webpage. Scoot Airlines started its operations in India last year. Besides, Scoot would start operating from five new destinations by June 2018 including Honolulu, Scoots maiden US destination, and Harbin in Northeast China. The remaining three are short-haul destinations Kuching and Kuantan in Malaysia, and Palembang in Indonesia. Lucknowites would be able to travel to 18 countries where Scoot operates, said Mahadevan. He added, We open up a brand new chapter for Scoot by repainting all aircrafts operated by Tigerair in the Scoot livery. Building on what Tigerair and the old Scoot had achieved since their respective inceptions, we have grown much stronger after they merged. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON A 16-year-old girl died after falling from the 27th floor of a building in Thane on Tuesday . Jyoti Nandlal Sharma was an HSC student and lived at Mayflower building in Hiranandani Meadows in Vartak Nagar. According to the police, the watchman was going to the electric room to turn on the lights of the society on Tuesday when he heard the sound of something falling from the building. " On checking, he found the girls body and alerted the police first and then the girls family," said an officer from Chithalsar Manpada police station. Police suspect that the girl may have fallen off the balcony while trying to reach a towel put out to be dried. The girl was first taken to Jupiter hospital as she suffered injuries on her head. She was declared dead. "After Jupiter hospital, her body was sent to Thane civil hospital for post-mortem. We are yet to confirm if it is a suicide. We have registered an accidental death report and investigations are on" added the officer. READ MORE One dead, one injured in road accident near Mumbai suburb Mumbai man falls off train footboard, loses legs on first day of job SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON Bollywood actor Dilip Kumar, who was admitted to Lilavati Hospital, Bandra, on Wednesday with kidney-related complications, will be shifted to the Intensive Care Unit ICU today. Doctors said that he will stay there for a couple of hours to receive medication through intravenous drip. Kumar was rushed to the hospital on Wednesday afternoon after his kidney complications became a cause of worry. However, doctors have said that diagnosis has shown that it was normal age-related complications. The patient is completely stable and the only major issue was dehydration. Since dehydration also affects the kidneys and other organs, he momentarily suffered some minor urinary issues. There is no major complication, said the doctor treating him. Read: Dilip Kumar hospitalised due to kidney complications, is stable He had dinner with his family yesterday night, and will be shifted to the ICU today for a couple of hours. We need to administer antibiotics through an IV drip, which can only be given in the ICU. We will observe him for a while, and based on his recovery, we will shift him back to the normal room, doctors added. The 94-year-old veteran actor has been facing medical complications in recent years. In April last year, he needed hospitalisation after fever and nausea. In December, he was admitted to Lilavati Hospital to treat the swelling in his right leg.s Kumar has acted in over 65 films during his career spanning over six decades, and is known for his iconic roles in movies like Devdas (1955), Naya Daur (1957), Mughal-e-Azam (1960), Ganga Jamuna (1961), Kranti (1981), and Karma (1986). He was honoured with the Padma Bhushan in 1991, Dadasaheb Phalke Award in 1994 and Indias second highest civilian award, Padma Vibhushan, in 2015. The government of Pakistan has also honoured him with its highest civilian honour, the Nishan-e-Imtiaz, in 1997. Fresh on the heels of the Slum Rehabilitation Agency (SRA) scam, state housing minister Prakash Mehta courted fresh allegations of wrongdoing. This time, he has been accused of intervening in the allotment of Mhada land to favour a real estate firm. The Opposition renewed demands of Mehtas resignation in the state legislature so that a fair probe could be conducted in this case. The new allegations come two days after chief minister Devendra Fadnavis announced an inquiry into an SRA project in Tardeo, where the minister is under scanner for misleading the department and Fadnavis to favour a developer. The CM had announced this probe in the state Assembly and council on Monday. The new allegations against Mehta pertain to a 18,902 sqm plot at Pantnagar, Ghatkopar, owned by the Maharashtra Housing and Area Development Authority (Mhada). In 1999, this plot was allotted to Nirmal Holding Private Limited (NHPL) to construct a transit camp by utilising the Floor Space Index (FSI) of 1.25 and using the remaining FSI of 1.25 for commercial exploitation. After the NHPL failed hand over the 336 transit camp tenements, Mhada, in 2006, suggested the allotment be revoked. But Mehta as the then local legislator, had allegedly intervened in favour of the developer. Two years later, Mhada opined that if it developed this plot on its own, 1,448 tenements in transit camp would be built besides 205 flats. The state government, in June 2012, finally cancelled the allotment of the plot to NHPL. Read: SRA scam: Maharashtra chief minister Devendra Fadnavis orders probe, housing minister under scanner The Opposition has now alleged Mehta recently allotted the plot to the same builder using his ministerial powers, but it failed to back this allegation with any evidence. A huge irregularity has taken place in the decision and it should be probed after sacking the minister. The government had also transferred a senior officer, who refused to obey the orders of allotting the plot to the developer, Radhakrishna Vikhe Patil, who raised the issue in legislative assembly. Mehta rubbished the allegation. The allotment has not been done. The allegations have no iota of substance and I will reply to the allegations on the floor of the house. I am ready to face any inquiry and not scared of any such attack, he told HT. These allegations later rocked both the houses of the state legislature on Wednesday with surprisingly the ruling party staging a walk out in the legislative council, claiming the ministers and ruling party members were not given a chance to speak. This is the first time ruling party members staged a walkout even as the Opposition called for Mehtas resignation. Former chief minister Prithviraj Chavan and Nationalist Congress Party group leader Jayant Patil also demanded a thorough inquiry into the matter in the Assembly. The nexus between bureaucrat, political and builders need to be exposed by conducting a thorough probe. Unless the minister is removed from the post, a fair probe cannot take place, Chavan said. The controversy turned political after a press statement issued in the name of Mehta went viral, saying some disgruntled leader from within his party had launched a veiled attack on him. The statement also stated the leaders are eyeing his chair and hence launched a veiled attack on him. Mehta, however, denied issuing an email statement. He later wrote a letter to chief minister Devendra Fadnavis and the Mumbai police commissioner seeking an inquiry into the statement issued in his name. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON China is helping look for a missing US sailor in the South China Sea, the country's defense ministry confirmed on Thursday. The Chinese guided-missile frigate Liuzhou, which was near the area on duty, is assisting the search operation after a sailor was reported missing from a US Navy destroyer about 100 nautical miles southwest of Huangyan Island on Tuesday. The Defense Ministry said China's assistance was based on the Code for Unplanned Encounters at Sea and humanitarian spirit. Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force destroyer Sazanami and helicopter carrier Izumo are also involved in the search, according to the US Pacific Fleet. The Bombay high court said on Thursday that a plain reading of the Maharashtra City Taxi Rules 2017 showed that the state was clearly biased towards kaali-peeli taxis, and sought to disadvantage app-based cabs such as Uber and Ola. A bench of Justices RM Savant and Sadhana Jadhav said that the Rules were apparently discriminatory, and that they sought to favour the kaali-peeli or the black and yellow taxis. The bench said that thus, the state government must be more rational while fixing the fares and stipulating rules to regulate the app based cabs. There seems to be a clear discrimination on several points wherein the kali-peeli taxis are given benefit. The government must treat everyone at par. Let there be fair competition, the bench said. In London and American cities, regular cabs and Uber cabs ply on a level field. Maharashtra should also allow something like that and be a trendsetter for other states in India to follow. The bench was hearing a bunch of petitions filed by Uber India, Ola Ltd, and some of their drivers challenging the Maharashtra City Taxi Rules that were implemented by the state government in January this year. The petitioners primary grievance is that the new rules disallow app-based cabs to continue plying on national tourist permits and instead, mandate that they apply for new local permits if they wish to continue operations within the city limits. The existing permits will restrict the operations of such cabs to only their city of registration. Obtaining the new local permits, the petitioners claim, will need drivers to spend Rs25,000 for vehicles with engine capacity below 1,400 cc and Rs2.6 lakh for vehicles with engine capacity above 1,400 cc. This amount, they say, is ten times more than what it costs the drivers of black-and-yellow taxis. The state, however, has claimed the new rules have been implemented partly, and once formulated and implemented completely, the Rules will create a level playing field for all cabs operating in the city. On Thursday, Additional Government Pleader G W Mattos sought time to file an affidavit clarifying its stand. HC is likely to take the matter for further hearing on September 15 this year. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON Injuries during Dahi Handi have reduced substantially in the past two years after height restrictions were imposed in 2014, the Supreme Court was told by the petitioner, who had asked for a limit on the height of human pyramids and the age to participate in the festival. Swati Patil, the petitioner who collected data on injuries from government hospitals such as Lokmanya Tilak Municipal General Hospital, Sion hospital, KEM and police records, said 292 people were injured in 2014 from Mumbai and Thane, 29 of whom had serious injuries. In 2015, the figure dropped to 142 and then to 64 in 2016. Another report, based on data from KEM hospital, submitted to the Supreme Court, said an average of 200 people suffered injuries every year between 2011 and 2013. We also submitted a study by the Journal of Indian Medical Association that identifies that dahi handi celebrated on large scale carries a high risk of injuries. A majority of the injuries (84%) were observed during the descent phase or climbing down after breaking the pot that led to spinal fractures or paraplegia (partial paralysis), said Patil. On Tuesday, the SC asked the Bombay high court to hear the Maharashtra governments plea, challenging the Apex Courts order capping the height of the human pyramid and barring the participation of minors during the festivals. The matter will be heard on August 7 by the high court. Apart from the drastic reduction in injuries, we will tell the high court that security guidelines such as cushioning the base of pyramids, adequate medical facilities, building human pyramids on main roads and the use of helmets are not being followed by the mandals, even after the state made several promises to the SC, said Patil. After Patil filed a PIL, the Bombay high court, in August 2014, ruled children must not be allowed to participate in celebrations in view of the danger and taking into consideration the ever-increasing height of dahi handi. It also limited the height of the human pyramid to four tiers or about 20 feet. The state government challenged the order in the Supreme Court, which upheld the judgement, saying that participants should above 18 years of age. Dahi handi mandal members said they will follow all guidelines listed by the state to the SC. We have already issued directions to all mandals in the state to ensure they follow each guideline mentioned by the home department to the SC. We also welcome the SCs decision to push the matter back in the form of a fresh plea back to the HC since all restrictions prior to the hearing now, stand invalid and the fresh plea will help highlight our plight during the festival, said Kamlesh Bhoir, secretary, Dahi Handi Samanvay Samiti, umbrella body of mandals. The petitioner also filed an application under Right-to-information (RTI) Act to find out the steps taken by the state to ensure safety of Govindas following the Bombay High Court and Supreme Court verdicts. In its response on Monday, the home department said it has constituted eight departments to keep a watch on events to ensure safety of citizens and Govindas. I have been told that separate departments will be overseeing that no minors participate during the festival. The Mumbai police will be checking the height restrictions and the state information department will conduct awareness drives based on HC and SC orders at different locations, said Patil. Meanwhile, the Maharashtra state home ministry submitted a list of guidelines (see box) to be followed by the Dahi Handi mandals this year in the form of an affidavit to the SC during Tuesdays hearing. The state has deployed adequate police force and personnel during the festival. The state has also taken all preventive measures to avoid untoward incidents regarding Dahi Handi festival, read a document undersigned by Vijay Patil, deputy secretary, state home department. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON When chief minister Devendra Fadnavis took charge of Maharashtra in 2014, he chose Ghatkopar legislator Prakash Mehta as his housing minister. This was seen as a sign that Mehta was one of few who were close to Fadnavis. Two-and-a-half years later, Mehta has not only lost the CMs favour, but may now become the second member of the Maharashtra cabinet to be ousted over graft charges, the first being revenue minister Eknath Khadse. The verdict is still out on whether Mehta will be asked to go or whether he will get demoted during the upcoming cabinet reshuffle. The final decision will be taken by the partys top brass in Delhi. But, its clear that Fadnavis is unlikely to go out of his way to defend the minister. Heres why: Mehta has been accused of involvement in irregular land deals, in which government norms were flouted and certain contractors favoured. Both cases fly in the face of the Fadnavis governments claim of being transparent. But, even before these allegations surfaced, the CM had written off Mehta. The CM has been upset with how Mehta functions for sometime now. It started with the minister sitting on files and not bothering to clear the rules on the new real estate act. These allegations are a huge embarrassment to the CM and prove how inefficient Mehta is. If the allegations against him gather more steam, he will either be asked to go or he will be given a side portfolio, said a senior party minister. Mehta was accused of misleading Fadnavis and the housing department in connection with a slum redevelopment project in Tardeo. The minister allegedly favoured a developer and sought to give him additional building rights. In a more recent case, Mehta was accused of overturning a 2012 government decision to revoke the allotment of a state housing agency plot to a developer. This means a developer, who had earlier been rapped over his poor performance, has been handed the slum redevelopment project on a platter. What may work in Mehtas defence is his political significance. He belongs to the Gujarati community in Mumbai, which has stood firmly behind the BJP over the past few years. Unlike Khadse, there is no evidence of graft or quid pro quo in either case. Fadnavis has maintained that he will not play into the hands of the Opposition and sack his ministers without proof of wrongdoing. After all, senior ministers in the cabinet including Pankaja Munde and Vinod Tawde were accused of irregularities in awarding contracts and were shielded. But, neither of them had either misled Fadnavis or been mistaken of his acquiescence while clearing project. Also, their decisions did not go against the opinion of their own departments or favour a particular private firm or contractor. More importantly, they were smart enough to steer clear of similar controversies and hence got second chances. It seems that Mehta may not be as smart or as lucky. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON Two of a group of four were arrested in Sewri for allegedly duping a construction company of Rs1.12 crore on the pretext of loaning them Rs100 crore. Things went south when one of the accused accidentally shared his original number with the complainant. The Sewri police has arrested Vijay Tribhuvan, 37, who allegedly posed as a managing director of a company, and Sagar Chaudhary, the alleged mastermind. The four had also rented an office in Powai. In 2015, a Visakhapatnam-based company started a new project in Mumbai and set up an office in Sewri. They were in desperate need of money for the project. So one of the company officials advised them to contact Chaudhary. An officer from Sewri police station said, The company officials met the gang of fraudsters in September 2015 and struck a deal the next month. The accused said they will sanction the Rs100 crore loan but needed the company to pay a processing fees of Rs1.12 crore. During this meeting, Tribhuvan gave the company officials his personal number by mistake. The company gave them the fees in their Powai office the same month. But after that whenever the complainant followed up with them, they said since the amount was huge they were looking for an auspicious occasion to sanction it. The company officials realised that they had been duped when the alleged pranksters stopped answering their calls. The officials even visited their Powai office, which was shut. In March 2016, the company officials filed a complaint with the Sewri police station. A case was registered under sections 420 (cheating and dishonestly inducing delivery of property) and 34 (acts done by several persons in furtherance of common intention) of the Indian Penal Code. The investigating officers initially had a tough time finding any clue that could lead them to the fraudsters. During the investigation, one of the officials had a phone number which the accused had accidentally given it to him during their first meeting and he had written it down on a paper. We got his call data record and nabbed him from his Navi Mumbai residence, said an officer. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON The city is all set to see a eco-friendly Ganeshotsav this year. The Navi Mumbai Municipal Corporation (NMMC) is rooting for an eco-friendly celebrations and has urged organisers to use materials which do not harm the environment. To encourage mandals, the municipal corportaion is organising the Navi Mumbai Mahapaur Sarvajanik Shri Ganesh Darshan Spardha. The competition will be held from August 25 to September 5. The NMMC has told mandals and organisations in the city to submit their applications for the competition by August 20 at respective ward offices. Some of the parameters will be eco-friendly idols, decoration and programme organisation, social message and aesthetics in decoration and set, hygiene and cleanliness in the pandal area, discipline, process of fund distribution, educational and social programmes during festivities and organisation of cultural programmes. Municipal commissioner Ramaswamy N said, Since the aim is to promote environment preservation through Ganeshotsav, the mandals that install idols made of shadu or eco-friendly material will score higher. He added, The sets should promote social harmony and imbibe cultural values. The results will also take into account the objectives being presented by the mandals. Mayor Sudhakar Sonawane said, We appeal to the residents to celebrate eco-friendly Ganeshotsavs in their houses and sarvajanik mandals by using materials that do not harm the environment. Who can participate It is mandatory for the mandals and organisations participating in the competition to be registered with the charity commissioner. A copy of the registration certificate should be attached with the application. If a mandap has been put up for the festivities, it should have permission for the same from the NMMC. Besides this, the mandal should also have legal electric connection, fire department NOC and permission from the police department for use of sound systems, security and related issues. Under its latest initiative to make the city free of plastic and e-waste, the Kalyan-Dombivli Municipal Corporation (KDMC) has roped in schools for the drive. The school which collects the most waste till August 13 will get recognition from the KDMC. The KDMC workers will visit schools at 11 am on August 14 to collect the waste. After imposing a blanket ban on plastic bags across Kalyan-Dombivli on July 15, the KDMC has now decided to act on plastic and e-waste generated in houses and schools. To segregate plastic and e-waste from the waste generated daily by the twin cities, the KDMC has decide to segregate them at their source. The waste collected by the schools will be handed over to the KDMC workers on August 14. For this, the students will be asked to bring in waste from their houses and localities. Last month, mayor Rajendra Devlekar met solid waste management authorities and representatives of schools in Kalyan and Dombivli. He asked the civic officials to collect plastic and e -waste from the schools on a particular day. E-waste is usually dumped with the daily waste. It needs segregation. The civic body is planning to make waste segregation mandatory and this is one of the steps in this direction. Our motto is to make the students aware about the importance of segregating of waste, said Devlekar. At present, waste segregation does not happen in areas that fall under the KDMC. Every day, 700 metric tonnes of unprocessed waste is dumped at the Adharwadi landfill, Kalyan. Besides handing over the waste to the civic employees, students and school staff will also take oath to keep the twin cities free of plastic and e-waste. We have decided to collect maximum plastic and e-waste from schools and send it for disposal to a private firm. We have a few firms in mind, but are exploring other options as well, said Dhanaji Thoraskar, deputy municipal commissioner, solid waste management department, KDMC. He added, If the idea works, well implement it once or twice a month. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis announced the removal of IAS officer Radheshyam Mopalwar from the post of vice-president and managing director of the Maharashtra State Road Development Corporation (MSRDC) in the state assembly on Thursday. The Opposition had demanded his resignation after audio tapes that allegedly had him talking about bribes went viral. Minutes after the announcement, Mopalwar sent a mail to chief secretary Sumit Mullick informing him that he was going on leave from Thursday. After the assembly witnessed several adjournments after an uproar over the irregularities by housing minister Prakash Mehta and Mopalwar, the Opposition fired fresh salvo at Mopalwar by citing letters to various state agencies from central ones, directing them to investigate the allegations on the IAS officers disproportionate assets. Leader of Opposition Radhakrishna Vikhe Patil questioned why the officer was being shielded and why the government was sitting on the central agency orders. Nationalist Congress Party group leader Jayant Patil said that though the government had announced an inquiry against the officer, a fair probe would not be possible unless he was removed from the post. Fadnavis then announced that the officer will be removed from his post with immediate effect until the probe was completed. He had announced on Wednesday that the probe would be completed in a month and action would be taken if Mopalwar was found guilty. The CM, however, said that the land deals that Mopalwar allegedly cracked were during the regime of the Congress-led government. None of the cases in question are related to the Mumbai-Nagpur Samruddhi corridor. They date back to the Congress rule when Mopalwar was posted on all plum posts. I am ready to prove that the cases had taken place during your stint, Fadnavis told the opposition. Mopalwar told HT, I have gone on leave in compliance with the announcement. I have not received any orders or instructions from anybody. Mukesh Khullar, principal secretary, general administration department, said, Mopalwar is on leave. We will make alternative arrangements by handing over additional charge to an IAS officer soon. The Opposition had on Wednesday raised the issue after an audio tape that allegedly had Mopalwar asking for a bribe went viral. It also alleged that the person who unearthed the transcript was getting life threats. The Opposition also produced CDs of the transcripts of the alleged conversation between Mopalwar and the middlemen involved in the land deals. On Thursday, the Opposition alleged that the state government was aware of the complaints about disproportionate assets amassed by the officer. In January, based on the complaint by BJP MLA Anil Gote, the home department headed by the CM had asked the director-general of police to inquire into the alleged cases of corruption and disproportionate assets. Seven months on, there is no inquiry. Last December, the PMO had directed the state government to take action against the online complaint it received. In February, the income tax departments vigilance department directed the departments investigation wing to probe the allegations. In the same month, CBI ordered the director-general of the Anti-corruption Bureau to investigate into the complaint by Gote to the CBI. Chief secretary of the state was also directed by department of personnel and training to look into the complaints. No enquiry has been conducted in any of the complaints, Vikhe Patil said. Officials in the CMO, however, said that the cases were just referred to the state government and action would be taken in due course. A 34-year-old Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Limited (MTNL) official committed suicide at a lodge in Powai on Wednesday. Sanjeev Rajoria was the assistant director general of MTNL and his wife filed a complaint with teh Powai police claiming he was being harassed by a person at his workplace. According to the Powai police, Rajoria, a resident of Sakinaka, was found hanging at a lodge in Powai around 12.45 pm on Wednesday. Rajoria was rushed to Rajawadi hospital but was declared dead on arrival. The police said they are trying to find out if he has left behind any suicide note at home or at his workplace. His mobile phone has been seized. His wife has given a written complaint to the Powai police alleging that one colleague had been harassing him and that forced him to take the drastic step. The police are questioning his colleagues and friends. They will also check his internet activities to see if they can get any leads in the case. Senior police inspector Lata Shirsat of Powai police station said, We have registered a case of suicide. We have received a complaint from his wife alleging abetment to suicide against his colleague. We are verifying the allegations after which appropriate action shall be taken. For years, the buzz word for successive governments has been Mumbai makeover. In the past decade, resources were focussed on better roads. In the next decade, thousands of crores will be spent on metro lines. The citys oldest public transport mode, however, has always been left out. The BJP-led state government is spending Rs80,000 crore to build 150km of metro lines criss-crossing the city. Again, it has turned a blind eye to the 90-year-old BEST bus service that is the citys second-most important mode of mass transport. Such short-sightedness is costing the city that crucial last-mile connectivity, said experts. This is something only BEST buses can do efficiently. Experts said while the Metro network will address the citys future commuting needs, the network would be useful only if buses act as feeders to and from stations. The state has planned metro corridors and is spending around Rs80,000 crore to build them. But without buses providing that last-mile connectivity by reaching out to every nook and corner of the city, what is the use? said transport expert AV Shenoy. READ: Bus lanes at Mumbais BKC are cutting down travel time, why dont we have more of them? Nearly 30 lakh commuters use these buses daily, making BEST the second-largest mode of transport after the trains. Despite this, the government has not bailed it out of its crippling financial debt in the past decade. Repeated requests from BEST to reduce the tax burden on it has also been ignored. BEST has been asking for concessions in passenger tax, nutritional cess, toll tax and Value Added Tax on fuel. These taxes add an annual burden of Rs45 crore, Rs17 crore, Rs10 crore and Rs65 crore on BEST. BEST also pays a green tax on vehicles older than 15 years. BEST sources said they had held a few meetings with transport minister Diwakar Raote, but no decision has yet been taken. Manoj Sauunik, transport secretary, however, said no proposal of a concession in taxes is being considered by his department But Nitin Kareer, the principal secretary, urban development said the state government was seriously looking into ways to save and revive public transport in the city, and that the BEST was a crucial part of this plan. Saving the whole public transport system of Mumbai, in general, is very important for the city. Priority is being given to public transport immediately, Kareer told HT . SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON We just want them to get a good home-cooked meal, said Rintu Rathod, founder of Food Army, a charitable group in Mumbai. At her flat in Santacruz (West), the number of theplas a spicy Indian flatbread vastly outnumber the number of people sorting through them on Wednesday evening. There are 3,371 packets, each containing 25 theplas, to be sent to Gujarats flood-hit Banaskantha district. And only 25 people. Still, they make quick work of the task, scrutinising packets they collected from residents of 41 localities across the city between 8am and 5pm that day. Theplas that are stale, undercooked or too oily will be set aside. The rest will be packed in cartons and sent to Ahmedabad via tempo, where the district collector and her team will distribute them, assisted by the National Disaster Response Force and the Border Security Force on Thursday evening. Response was overwhelming Food Army members expected 30,000 theplas to be donated on Wednesday. They got 54,250 more. As many as 41 centres were set up for the drive, including eight in south Mumbai and 22 in the western suburbs. The response was overwhelming. We set aside just one of 3,371 packets as the theplas were burnt, said Rintu Rathod, founder. The group also received 65 gunny bags of clothes, 130kg sugar and 30kg jaggery. Ive been a donor since the beginning. I had sent a packet to the collection centre at Santacruz (West) and was happy to hear that the turnout was good, said Renu Raniwala, who works for a manufacturing firm. The practised ease with which the group works tells you that this is not the first time they have undertaken such a mammoth challenge. In 2014, they got Mumbaiites to donate 35,000 theplas, which were sent to flood-hit Kashmir residents. I read about the floods and decided to do something to help those who were suffering. I realised that whenever there is a calamity, the Indian army is the first to reach the spot. However, army members usually distribute biscuits and other dry items. I wanted Kashmir residents to enjoy a hot meal instead, said Rathod. She texted 10 of her friends, asking them to contribute 25 freshly made theplas each. Why theplas? Its a nod to Rathods Gujarati roots. Her friends, in turn, forwarded the text to everyone in their phones contact lists, and soon the original message which included a step-by-step recipe went viral. With the help of her friend, who runs an NGO in Kashmir, Rathod ensured that few locals went hungry that night. The success of this mission encouraged the group to undertake several more. During the 2015 Nepal earthquake, the group sourced a staggering 1 lakh theplas, which they vaccum-packed to ensure a longer shelf life. In December that year, they sent 30,000 theplas to Chennai residents affected by the floods. Both times, they roped in NGOs to help them with distribution. When we started out, we planned to transport the theplas via flight and even offered to pay airline officials for the excess baggage. However, they were touched and told us this was the first time they had heard of such an initiative. They have been transporting our theplas for free since then, said Rathod. Theplas loaded onto the tempo, which started for Ahmedabad on Wednesday night. (HT Photo) Now, the group has 1,000 members across the city. New ones sign up daily, many of whom were among Wednesdays donors. There were several familiar faces at the collection centre in Ghatkopar. We collected around 3,200 theplas, 10 bags of clothes, one bag of toys and one of shoes, said electrical engineer Yogesh Zaveri, who has been a member of the group since its inception. Homemaker Neetu Singh, in charge of the collection centre at Bandra (West), said the turnout there was lower, which she attributes to a lack of awareness. We usually send out mass text messages, listing the collection centres and their addresses, two to three days before the drive. However, this time, we sent the texts a day before. Still, I estimate that I collected around 600 theplas and two boxes of clothes, she said. By the time you read this, the cartons will be well on their way to Banaskantha and thousands will be comforted by Rathods good home-cooked meals once more. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON CGTN photo The first high speed train in north China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region set off from Hohhot east station on Thursday, heading east to Ulanqab in a speed of 250 km/h. Travel time between the two cities will be shortened from over an hour to 40 minutes. The 126 kilometers route is part of Zhangjiakou-Hohhot railway, which will play a crucial role in the Belt and Road Initiative. The test run was successfully conducted on Wednesday. For alumnus of the University of Mumbai, past and present, the past couple of weeks have brought wretched news. Neither in my student days in the early 1970s, nor in the decades since, has the situation looked so dismal. A leading professor has spoken out against pathetic facilities and miserable governance while students across the board are riled because of inordinate delay in assessing exam papers and announcing results. While there is no connection between these two, taken together they reflect the quagmire that Mumbai university is in currently, leading to a clamour for the head of vice-chancellor Sanjay Deshmukh from both quarters. It is very rare that student bodies affiliated to different political parties find common cause. The Yuva Sena (Shiv Senas student wing), NSUI (Congress) and even the ABVP (BJP), otherwise ranged against each other, have all joined in the protest. There are always two facets to a conflict, but in this case, the only side that deserves sympathy is the students. The fundamental concerns of those in university are related to the quality of education (so dependent on facilities), and getting results on time. To keep students on tenterhooks for their results, particularly, is extreme apathy. In keeping with the push to digitise post-haste (this finds expression in several walks of life incidentally), Mumbai University grandiosely announced that all results would be posted online by July 31. Like most digitisation plans, the reality falls desperately short of ambition and promise. All results are not yet out. In fact, more than 4 lakh papers are still to be corrected. The excuses range from technical glitches to not enough expertise available to handle the workload. The delay has meant that several students have missed overseas and out of town admissions. Beleaguered chief minister Defendra Fadnavis has assured that results would be out by August 5. Vice-chancellor Deshmukh, however, says that this could extend beyond Independence Day. These differing dates only add to the confusion and the irresponsibility of the institution as well as the government, making it even more problematic for students to chart their future course of action. With his back to the wall, chief minister Fadnavis has been contrite in admitting that the online assessment should have been done in a phased manner. Which raises the question: why the unholy rush? Digitisation is desirable, but surely does not happen bingo. Clearly, there was no analysis or recce done of how long and what resources were needed to put systems and processes in place. Empty claims made for public consumption have left students in the lurch. And angry. Unless they are assuaged by prompt action, it is very likely they will get restive and more demonstrative than they have been yet. In recent times, the unfortunate tendency among politicians (and I dare say media too) has been to see student life only in the binary of their politics. This is unfortunate and takes away the true import of students as the future wealth of the country. It is incumbent on Fadnavis to address the situation urgently, and in proper perspective. And while he is doing this he must also cast an eye on issues of quality of education and facilities raised by professor Neeraj Hatekar, head of Mumbai School of Economics and Public Policy. This is not the first time professor Hatekar has waved these red flags. A couple of years back too he was at loggerheads with the then V-C Rajan Welukar, compelling the then chief minister Prithviraj Chavan to intervene. It could be that professor Hatekar is misanthropic, as some allege. But several reports also suggest his misgivings about non-existent library facilities and abysmal research or academic work is not unfounded. The best way to judge his complaints would be by due diligence, not power play. Mumbai university holds an esteemed position in India. Its original base a grand, neo-Gothic building near Flora Fountain, with the Rajabai Tower spiraling 280 feet upwards is one of the landmarks of the city. After the first graduate to pass out, Mahadev Govind Ranade, thousands of other illustrious names have come through its portals: BR Ambedkar, Nani Palkhiwala, Anil Kakodkar, Shabana Azmi, Sunil Gavaskar to name just a few. The chief minister has to ensure against further degradation. Politicking and bureaucratic bumbling cannot be allowed to reduce Mumbai university to a cipher. The Andheri police recently arrested five alleged pickpocketers in five cases including two that took place at Andheri Metro station. The rest three took place outside Andheri railway station where pickpocketers operated during peak hours and used a rickshaw as a cover. According to the Andheri police, they had registered five cases of pickpocketing in July, after which they started examining CCTV feeds in the vicinity. While sifting through CCTV footages at Andheri metro station, based on the information provided by the victims, they spotted the duo moving suspiciously. The duo targeted the two commuters while getting inside the Metro during peak hours. They stole wallets of two victims. They were skilled at identifying their targets, said a police official. The accused, identified as, Arvindkumar Malik, 27, and Satyam Pandey, 25, had come from Delhi and were staying in a hotel. Senior police inspector, Pandit Thorat, of Andheri police said, The CCTV cameras were of great help. We have recovered some of the stolen valuables from the duo. In the other three cases, the police arrested Ashfak Shaikh 36, from Ghatkopar, Dilawar Khan, 40, from Mumbra and Pravin Pujari, 27, from Vikhroli. The accused targeted three men outside Andheri station during peak hours. The trio used an auto rickshaw to flee from the spot. We have recovered three mobile phones from them, added Thorat. All the three accused have a total of 11 past crime cases registered against them. About 64 cases of pick pocketing have been reported in the city this year till July 17. Of these, and 21 cases have been detected so far. When the Maharashtra government reviews Mumbais development plan, it is likely to reserve land in Goregaons Aarey Colony for a Metro car shed. In doing so, it will reverse the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporations (BMC) decision to reject the proposal to reserve such a plot. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led state government has six months to review the development plan that the BMCs general body passed earlier this week with 266 amendments. Reserving land in the ecologically sensitive Aarey colony was the only bone of contention and was voted out. The amendment will be reversed. We issued a final notification for the Metro car shed in Aarey Colony. We instructed the BMC were to incorporate all notifications passed by the government while considering the DP. If they havent, we will, said an official from the state urban development department. The BJP and the Shiv Sena have often tussled over the proposed Metro car shed at Aarey. While the Sena-led BMC is against the proposal, the BJP-led state government has been pushing for it, saying there is a lack of alternative plots where the shed can be built. During the BMCs general body meeting, Shiv Sena members voted against reserving Aarey land for a Metro car shed in the DP, while BJP corporators voted in favour of it. The DP had suggested converting 33 hectares of Aarey Colony, a green lung and a no-development zone, to a car shed. The shed is part of the fully underground 33.5-km Colaba-Bandra-Seepz Metro corridor. The government will scrutinise the amendments and then decide, said Nitin Kareer, principal secretary of the state urban development department. The Mumbai Metro Rail Corporation (MMRC), the state agency implementing the project, gave a firm in New Delhi the contract to construct the shed. Construction is likely to begin in October. The BMCs decision to reject the proposal was just a suggestion. It is not binding. We will wait for the state government to take a call on the issue. In the meantime, we will focus on other parts of the Metro corridor, said a senior MMRC official. The Colaba-Bandra-Seepz Metro will connect south Mumbai to the western suburbs and link important business districts such as Nariman Point, Bandra Kurla Complex and SEEPZ. The corridor will also connect to the Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport, and intersect the 11.4-km Versova-Andheri-Ghatkopar Metro. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON Six beaches along Mumbais coast will get lights by the end of this year. The Maharashtra Coastal Zone Management Authority (MCZMA) has cleared a proposal by the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) to install lights on Juhu, Versova, Marwe, Manori and Gorai beaches. We have permitted the illumination of beaches along the western suburbs. It is a permissible activity since lighting them at night improves security and avoids untoward incidents like thefts. Besides beautification and cleaning up of the beaches, the security aspect is of prime importance, said Satish Gavai, chairman, MCZMA. As per the project plan, we have been told that all five beaches are expected to be illuminated by this year end. Municipal officials said that they have begun setting up the lights at Juhu. We have installed five lights as of now, and another 15 will be placed by August-end to ensure that the entire beach is lit up, said Prashant Gaikwad, assistant municipal commissioner. Once Juhu is complete, we will begin installing lights at Versova, but the number will be lesser since it is a smaller beach. Other beaches will also have a similar setup. Read: Versova facelift inspires Maharashtra Maritime Board to clean 19 beaches in Mumbai Citizens welcomed the decision to put lights on the beaches. It is extremely important that lights be put up at these locations, as it will control dumping of garbage by slums during the night along the beach. Not to mention, open defecation as well as open drinking in these areas can be controlled to a large extent, said Afroz Shah, lawyer and Versova resident. MCZMA also cleared proposals by the Maharashtra Maritime Board (MMB) to revamp the jetty area at Versova, Vasai and Palghar beaches. The lights will add to easier transportation facility for citizens using the jetty during evening hours, said Gavai. However, a Rs 7-crore proposal from MMB to beautify anti-sea erosion bunds (constructed either using cement or sand, to protect the shoreline from coastal erosion) by constructing promenades and having benches along it, was rejected by MCZMA. Bunds cannot be used for any other purpose apart from prevention of sea ingress. The activity is illegal; the law does not allow it. So, we rejected that proposal on those grounds, said Gavai. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON A Mumbai residents lies to the Bombay high court prompted it to reduce her interim maintenance from Rs25,000 to Rs5,000 a month. One lie came to light after Justice KK Tated had called for a hearing to discuss a petition filed by the womans estranged husband. The woman requested the court to postpone the hearing for 15 days as her advocates mother had died and he was out of town. However, the advocate appeared before the court that afternoon, saying he had not instructed his client to make such a request to the court. Justice Tated said he was so irked with the womans conduct, he contemplated initiating criminal proceedings against her under section 195 (fabricating evidence) of the Indian Penal Code. However, he refrained from doing so, taking into account the facts of the case. On November 7, 2014, the family court directed the womans husband to pay her a monthly maintenance of Rs25,000. The woman had sought maintenance of Rs3 lakh a month, saying her husband was working overseas and earning Rs15 lakh a month, while she had no source of livelihood and was completely dependent on her parents. The man challenged the order in the high court, saying his wife had lied to get the money. He showed income tax documents proving that the woman was employed and was earning Rs50,000 to Rs60,000 a month. Justice Tated said the woman was capable of making any statements before the court to ensure that orders were passed in her favour. To streamline traffic movement from Delhi to Noida and Greater Noida on the Delhi-Noida-Direct Flyway, traffic police have installed barricades around 300 metres after the toll plaza near the third loop that leads to Greater Noida. The barricades were put in place to avoid slowing traffic movement on the cloverleaf. Officials said that traffic jams are frequent here and they decided to set up barricades following the jam witnessed during Tuesdays rain. We installed barricades because the stretch is narrow. During the peak hour, traffic slows down on the cloverleaf that goes towards Greater Noida. Commuters would try to accommodate their vehicles and get stuck. Those heading towards Rajnigandha Chowk barely had any space to commute, Layak Singh, traffic inspector, said. He said that the barricades will ensure that there is no spill of vehicles from the lanes to the cloverleaf. The stretch has four lanes. There is no chance of overtaking now and those heading towards Rajnigandha Chowk will have a smooth passage. Moreover, traffic flow on the cloverleaf between Sector 15A and Film City, which facilitates movement of vehicles towards Greater Noida, will also be streamlined. The police said that the barricades are a permanent measure and will ensure they are not damaged. In addition to it, two lanes of the toll plaza have also been closed by traffic police to reduce the volume of traffic passing through the toll structure. This has narrowed the movement of vehicles from the (non-functional) toll plaza to the Film City road at two spots, instead of causing a bottleneck at the cloverleaf leading to the Film City. At the toll plaza, three lanes each are open for entry and exit, while two lanes each are closed. This has been done to ensure the vehicles do not get caught in the bottleneck near the cloverleaf. Thousands of vehicles enter Noida through the DND Flyway during peak hours, Singh said. The traffic police are also conducting a survey of bottlenecks near the entry and exit points of Noida. Daily commuters from Delhi who were facing the congestion on a regular basis praised traffic police for its decision to bifurcate the road with barricades. Amir Sharif of Sector 17 said, Barricades have made the drive smoother for us, whether we are travelling towards Noida or Greater Noida. Earlier, commuters would change lanes abruptly to overtake those in front. On Thursday evening, the stretch also witnessed snarls and marshals were deployed on the spot. Singh said,The snarls took place because we noticed commuters were overtaking and not driving in the lane. When they see that the road is barricaded, they dont have any option to move in an orderly fashion. Over a period of time, they will learn to drive with discipline. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON On July 28, the department of public relations of the Chandigarh administration put out a press release that a class 12 student of Government Model Senior Secondary School (GMSSS) had been hired by Google and would be paid a stipend of 04 lacs per month as he trained in graphic designing. The press release even went on to say that after a year of training, the teenager would get a remuneration of 12 lacs per month. It now turns out Google has not hired this boy at all. How did this become such big news? Did anyone in the school or the government verify the facts before the press release was sent out? Apparently, not. The teachers and the principal were so excited to hear that the boy had been hired by Google (and for such enormous sums of money) that no one asked to see a letter from the company confirming his employment. What is it about certain companies, in certain parts of the world that makes us go into raptures? Would the school, the principal, and indeed the government have reacted like this had this boy been hired by some Indian company? Perhaps the answers lie in our oft-seen need for validation by the West; as in if Google thinks one of us is worth paying Rs 12 lakh a year to then it must mean that we are all worthy of such riches. Basking in the reflected glory of Indians who have done well abroad (even if they are no longer Indian citizens, or only descendants of people of Indian origin) has almost become one of our hallmarks. That might explain the joy of the school in immediately propagating the news (fake as it turned out to be) of one of their own having landed a job at Google. But it doesnt explain how the school took the boy at his word, without confirming the offer, or even wondering why a tech giant in the US was looking to hire teenagers from India to design their graphics. Whether or not the boy in question told his teacher the story on the basis of a hoax phone call, should the school not have checked the boys story first? Why did no one in the school wonder about the large sums of money this company was apparently ready to give a schoolboy? Why did no one check to see an appointment letter before putting out a press release about the achievement? And then the government, too! No one in the department thought to verify the claims that the school had been making. It seems quite unfair that while everyone wanted a bit of the glory when they thought the story was true; now that the story turns out to be false, all the blame has been piled on the boy. The repercussions of this much attention and ridicule are not likely to do his mental state any good. Had the school, or indeed the government department, that showed such alacrity in claiming credit for what was assumed to be the boys achievements , bothered to check their facts before publicising the name of the child, he would not be going through such trauma now. It is now irrelevant why the boy told the story or what actually happened. What matters now is the mental health and condition of a student of our education system.The parents of the boy have now confirmed that he is being kept under medical observation. The pressure of his situation, coupled with the ignominy of all the press hes receiving now cannot be easy for him. Perhaps this whole story is actually the tale of irresponsibility in Indias much-in-need-of-reform education system. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON United States President Donald Trump yesterday declared his support for a Senate bill that would halve the number of visas for legal migrants into the US and introduce a merit- or points-based system for most of the remaining visas. Indians, the single largest pool of legal migration into the US today, would be affected by the loss of about 500,000 immigrant visas. But this would be partly offset by the fact Indians will fare well in the competition for the remaining visas. Under the Senate bill, the best profile for a would-be US immigrant would be if he/she were between 26 and 31 years of age, had a professional degree from the US, spoke good English and earned three times the average income of their homeland. This new system would have no bearing on temporary work visas like H or L categories. According to an analysis of 2013 figures by the Migration Policy Institute, Indian migrants to the US had double the English proficiency of the average migrant to the US and were twice as likely to have professional or advanced degrees. They were also four years younger than the median age of a US immigrant. This bill of course doesnt deal with guest workers and temporary non-immigrant visas, noted White House aide Stephen Miller during the announcement of the bills endorsement. Australia was the pioneer of such points-based migration policies. Canada followed soon after. In both countries, middle class Indians benefited. India is today the number one immigrant source for Australia and is in the top three sources for Canada. The Australian points system was devised by a Hyderabad-born Indian Australian. Washington observers doubt that Trump, who has been unable to pass any legislation in his first six months in office, has the requisite support in the US Congress. Many Republicans are strong supporters of immigration. Democrats oppose policies that effectively discriminate against low-class immigrants. Nonetheless, Trumps endorsement of the bill is a first step towards the US, the worlds largest immigrant destination, adopting an immigration policy that looks at the human capital that the immigrant brings. Critics have long argued such point-based system aggravate the brain drain factor in such immigration. But with anti-immigrant sentiment growing among the working class of many developed countries, closing the door to a similar class of third world migrants is seen as politically expedient response. A US shift in this direction would probably ensure such a system will become the global norm for decades to come. The Trump administration has already cracked down on illegal migration within the US. While previous administrations tended to focus on illegals who committed crimes, Trumps executive orders have made being illegally in the country sufficient cause for arrest and deportation. In the first 100 days of his administration, 26% of illegal migrants apprehended had no criminal conviction as compared to 14% during the same period the year before. Overall arrests of illegals rose 38%. Whether the Senate bill passes or not, Trumps endorsement will help shore up his support among his working class constituency. That, ultimately, is probably his main political aim. The attempted ban on immigrants from some Muslim countries, the rise in arrest of illegals and now the restrictions on legal migration are all policies that the White House gave little attention to actual implementation. They were more interested in public spectacle and debate. Trump wants to be attacked on these policies and, therefore, feed a perception he is trying, as Miller noted, to impose an immigration policy that prioritises the American worker. pchaudhuri@hindustantimes.com The Indira Gandhi Institute of Medical Sciences (IGIMS) in Patna amended its marital declaration form on Thursday, replacing the word virgin with unmarried after controversy. Until now, new recruits to the super-specialty medical institute in the state capital were required to declare if they were bachelors, widowers or virgins. IGIMS medical superintendent Dr Manish Mandal said institute director Dr NR Biswas held a meeting on Thursday morning before directing that the word virgin on the marital declaration form be immediately replaced with unmarried. Dr Biswas had just returned after a four-day leave of absence. Earlier, Bihar health minister Mangal Pandey had ended up redefining the very meaning of virginity in his attempts to justify the awkward phrasing of the question in the form. Following a public furore over the document on Wednesday, the minister told news channels that there was nothing wrong with using the word virgin because it simply meant kanya or kunwari which means an unmarried girl. Pandey had joined the cabinet just three days ago. Sources said the chief ministers office had also taken cognizance of the issue, and asked for a copy of the form. It had even asked why the question was introduced in the first place. In its response, the management of the autonomous super-specialty health facility had clarified on Wednesday that it was in adherence to the central civil services rules followed by the All India Institute of Medical Sciences in New Delhi. The previous version of the marital declaration form, which purportedly asked new recruits if they were virgins. (HT Photo) The marital declaration form had been in existence since the inception of the institute in 1983. Some officials blamed the faux pas on poor translation on the part of individuals who drafted the document. The word virgin mentioned on the form had nothing to do with the virginity of any employee. It only sought to know the employees marital status, so their dues could be settled on the basis of their declaration in the event of death while in service, said Dr Mandal. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON Struggling to go in for an image makeover, the Punjab Police are planning to hire a private agency to make a grand entry into the social media world. A meeting of the top police brass is scheduled here for Thursday, wherein certain private companies having expertise in social media publicity have been invited to give a detailed presentation about their proposals. Talking to Hindustan Times, director general of police (DGP) Suresh Arora said the need to hire an expert agency was felt in view of the huge penetration of social media into the minds of the young and professionals, and importance of these media in disseminating information. The idea came into my mind after my interaction with two youths who were recently arrested by our intelligence wing in connection with their involvement in terrorist activities. They were having no such background, but got attracted or rather fell in the net of extremist groups through social media. At that point of time, I realised that the police also need to have strong presence on all social media platforms to counter misleading information by anti-social elements, he said. As per a proposal prepared in the DGP office, the Punjab Police will make a strong presence on all social media platforms, including Facebook, WhatsApp and Twitter. They will also launch an app which will facilitate people to register complaints online, besides showcasing the history of the Punjab Police. At present, the Punjab Police have only nominal presence on the social media as their various accounts are not active for the past several months. The Twitter account of the police is showing last activity on August 31 last year. On Facebook, groups like Punjab Police Rocks and Modern Punjab Police are active but they are being run by some individuals, not officially from the police headquarters. Sources said an extensive plan is being made by senior officials designated by the DGP to finalise the content with which the misinformation about the police, law and order or the state can be countered. We are involving our senior men in the task in order to keep the focus of the social media activism only on the Punjab Police, the DGP said. In the current scenario, countering misinformation spread by gangsters and other anti-social elements has become a major challenge for the cops and tackling this propaganda by merely issuing statements in newspapers is not good enough. Police get Rs 20 crore for monitoring social media The Punjab Police has recently received Rs 20 crore from the state government to specifically monitor activities of different groups on social media. In the past six months, the police have busted five Khalistani modules by getting inputs from Facebook, sources said. The intelligence wing, headed by DGP Dinkar Gupta, has been entrusted with the task of purchasing modern technology and strengthening the Punjab Polices cyber cell. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON A Mohali resident, Ramandeep Singh, has moved the Punjab and Haryana high court against the appointment of retired IAS officer Suresh Kumar as chief principal secretary to chief minister Capt Amarinder Singh. The petition claims that the appointment is against the Constitutional scheme and accepted norms. His counsel, Rajan Brar had argued that the tenure of Kumar, has been made co-terminus with that of the government. He has been delegated the powers to oversee functioning of principal secretary to the chief minister which is a cadre post. Thus, a public office, has been usurped by a retired IAS officer. This apart, there is no provision in the rules for bestowing rank of a cabinet secretary on a retired officer, Brar told the court. Kumar was appointed in the rank of Cabinet Secretary of Government of India on March 17, a day after Amarinder took over as the CM. The HC bench of justice Rajan Gupta has sought response from government by August 30. A post graduate in commerce from Delhi University, Kumar is a 1983 batch IAS officer. He started his career as a SDM in Talwandi Sabo and retired as additional chief secretary (Development) in April 2016. Kumar served the Punjab government and remained on central deputation in different capacities. Chandigarh police have arrested a woman drug peddler, Paramjeet Kaur alias Manjeet of Mankaya village in Panchkula, Haryana, with 200 banned injections. She was stopped for checking at a naka near the Sector-50 tubewell and was found carrying the injections Buprenorphine (a pain medication that contains opium) and Pheniramine Maleate (used to treat allergies, but again with high concentration of drugs). A case under the The Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (NDPS ) Act had been registered at Sector-49 police station. Ajiths highly anticipated action-thriller Vivegam, which features him in the role of an Interpol agent, is slated for release on August 24. It was originally planned to be released on August 10 but the makers pushed the release by two weeks. A section of the fans were disappointment with the postponement but heres some good news for them. The films trailer is most likely to be released on August 10, and its going to be a day of celebration for the fans. The film has been directed by Siva, who has teamed up for the third time with Ajith after Veeram and Vedalam. The film also introduces Vivek Oberoi as the antagonist to Tamil filmdom. Kajal Aggarwal and Akshara Haasan play pivotal roles. Vivegam has been predominantly shot across exotic locations in Europe, especially in places such as Serbia, Austria, Georgia and Slovenia among others. Going by the promos, Ajith looks his stylish best in the film and has also set an example by sporting six-pack abs despite a long history of medical condition. Ajith and Kajal Aggarwal in a still from Vivegam. Produced by Sathya Jyothi Films, Vivegam has music by Anirudh Ravichander and it is loosely based on Liam Neesons Taken, according to industry grapevine. After the first track Surviva became a viral sensation, the second single from the album - Thala Viduthalai -- was equally well received. Follow @htshowbiz for more ott:10:ht-entertainment_listing-desktop Everybody who has watched Bigg Boss Tamil loves Oviya. Her supporters list includes not just commoners but many celebrities as well. The latest celeb to join the Oviya fan club is popular actor Simbu (Silambarasan). But it looks like he also likes playing the peacemaker. On Wednesday, Silambarasan got into a debate with choreographer Sathish over the show. It is well known that Sathish is a big fan of Oviya and never minces any words to attack those contestants who make life miserable for her. In one such a rant on Twitter over the happenings on Tuesdays episode, he accused Gayathri (another contestant) for ganging up against Oviya. He wrote: Gay3 have not taken Oviya as friend instead of telling everything to Shakthi u could have spoke to Oviya . So u r showing some stunts. To which, Simbu replied: Why judge? Lets just accept the way they are. Gayathri is not a bad person or others as well, situation and circumstances make one G or B. Why judge? Let's just accept the way they are. Gayathri is not a bad person or others as well, situation and circumstances make one G or B STR (@iam_str) August 2, 2017 When Sathish insisted on the damages Gayathri was causing, Simbu replied, True lets just forgive , once she comes out she will obviously understand her mistakes . And everyone else for that matter . hope for unity. its better to make them understand than to abuse them. just because we like Oviya for what she is why hurt others ? spread love. True lets just forgive , once she comes out she will obviously understand her mistakes . And everyone else for that matter . hope for unity STR (@iam_str) August 2, 2017 But Sathish would not stop and agonised over the way some of the contestants were behaving during the show. Playing the perfect peacemaker, Simbu said, All Im saying is lets not abuse them and just show our support to whom we love . obviously everyone will understand . simple as that. All I'm saying is lets not abuse them and just show our support to whom we love . obviously everyone will understand . simple as that STR (@iam_str) August 2, 2017 Simbu, of course, went to say that like so many others, he too is a fan of Oviya. I'm not supporting nor I'm against anyone , i just like oviya for the way she is thats all . am i clear now ? STR (@iam_str) August 2, 2017 Bigg Boss in Tamil took off on June 25 and over the month that it has been running, it has emerged as a very popular TV programme. Veteran Kamal Haasan has stepped into Salman Khans shoes in the Tamil version. The 15 participants taking part in the show include actors Sri, Anuya, Vyapuri, Gayatri Raghuram, Bharani, Raiza Wilson, Snehan, Oviya, Harathi, Aarav, Ganja Karupu, Ganesh Venkatraman, Shakti Vasu and Namitha. Julie, a girl who rose to fame during the Jallikattu row, is the only non-actor in the group of participants who will stay locked inside a house for 100 days, absolutely cut out from the outside world. Kamal visits the house once every week to eliminate a participant. Follow @htshowbiz for more The Last Tycoon Cast - Matt Bomer, Kelsey Grammer, Lily Collins, Dominique McElligott Rating - 3.5/5 Its 1936. Hollywood. The movies have just found a voice. Girls, wet behind the ears, are flooding in on buses into a world theyre unprepared for, a world at odds with itself. The rich are at war with the poor, husbands at war with wives, children at war with parents, women at war with men, and across the sea, a new enemy is insidiously laying the seeds for something bigger: A war to end all wars. At the centre of it all is Monroe Stahr, a young movie producer working at Brady America Pictures, a young movie studio. He hides despite being the studios poster-boy, adored by everyone from the lighting technicians to the boss daughter in his isolated cliff-side mansion, smiling away the advances of the hottest starlets in town, still in mourning after his wifes death. The Last Tycoon is the second time Amazon has dipped its toes in the life of F Scott Fitzgerald. Earlier this year, they released Z: The Beginning of Everything, a partially fictionalised account of Scott Fitzgeralds romance with Zelda, played in the show by Christina Ricci. The Last Tycoon is based on Fitzgeralds final, unfinished book, posthumously published in 1941, and previously adapted in the 70s by Elia Kazan. It was a semi-fictional account of Fitzgeralds years working as a writer-for-hire in Hollywood, laced, as things usually are, with some amount of truth. Much has been written about his time making movies, mostly by Fitzgerald himself in his Pat Hobby series of short stories, but most recently in Stuart ONans wonderful novel, West of Sunset. He arrived in Hollywood in 1937, his best years behind him, on the brink of financial ruin, and the love of his life, Zelda, locked away in a mental facility. And as much as he hated having to live Hollywood, it would be the town in which he died. Monroe Stahr, however, loves it. He makes pictures because its the only thing he knows how to do. But after years of success making crowd-pleasing fare, he wants to make something thatll be remembered for decades, something that can make a difference, something important. And the winning idea is right there in front of him. Every day it seems, German diplomats are sent to meet with studio bosses to make sure none of the upcoming movies happen to contain something that would be displeasing to the fuhrer, especially since he is such a fan of the pictures; he watches one every evening, they say. Desperate to do better, Monroe teams up with the boss passionate 19-year-old daughter, played by Lily Collins, and sets into motion a new movie. Itll be a sly piece of work, carefully condemning the rise of fascism in Europe without ruffling any feathers. The last thing they want is to get blacklisted. The film would have drama, romance, and espionage. The crowd would love it, and Monroe would finally have done something to be proud of. To direct his baby, he hires the master of German expressionism, Fritz Lang, a volatile pervert if there ever was one. And he isnt the only historical figure to earn a less-than-flattering appearance on the show. In its unusual, nine-episode first season, The Last Tycoon introduces Louis B Mayer (founder of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer), Irving Thalberg (said to be the real-life inspiration behind Monroe) and Hedda Hopper (the famous gossip columnist). But despite featuring more characters, and more subplots than would be advisable, the show does right by each an every one of them big or small. And no matter how disagreeable some of their decisions may be, we, the audience, are always aware of the motivations behind them. Credit for this must go to series creator Billy Ray, who writes these characters everyone from Brady Americas head honcho, to the poor kid from Oklahoma who has fallen for his daughter with empathy and respect. They sometimes tend to blurt out their feelings when actions would have been enough, but thats part of their charm. But how can we end without mentioning Matt Bomer even once? We cant. There are very few scenes in which his lavishly-lit matinee idol face isnt front and centre. But theres more to Monroe than the reservoirs of charm he seems to swim in. Essentially, Bomer has to play two characters; the public Monroe, whos the life of every party, a Depression-era Robin Hood for the men and women who work under him; and the tragic man who retires to his mansion every evening with only his shadow for company. Its a showy character in need of a subtle performance. Thankfully, Bomer understands that. Follow @htshowbiz for more The author tweets @RohanNaahar Pakistans newly-elected Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi is likely to continue as premier for the remaining 10-month tenure of PML-N as the party chief Nawaz Sharif has hinted retaining his younger brother Punjab Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif in the key province. Former prime minister Sharif who was disqualified by Supreme Court in the Panama Papers case on July 28 had nominated Shahbaz to succeed him after winning a by-election on his vacant seat in Lahore. Abbasi, 58, was endorsed by Sharif to hold the post for interim arrangement of 45 days (till mid-September) till Shahbaz makes to Islamabad. Sharif is holding a high-level huddle of PML-N senior leaders today in Murree to review his earlier decision to elevate Punjab Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif to the Centre or not, a PML-N senior leader told PTI. After Abbasi was elected prime minister last Tuesday, he said many in the Nawaz camp suggested that the former retain the position for the remaining term of the PML-N government as Punjab is very important for the party and cannot be left to an inexperienced hand. The PML-N legislators including Punjab law minister Rrana Sanaullah have conveyed to Sharif that it will not be a wise move to elevate Shahbaz in the Centre as there will be no experience hand in the party to run the largest province in his absence, he said, adding that the Sharif camp does not want Shahbaz in the Centre as well. There are also reports that Sharifs refusal to nominate Shahbazs son Hamza as the chief minister of Punjab has annoyed him who might choose not to give up the post in the province because of it. Nawazs daughter Maryam is against handing over Punjab to Hamza while his father is at the Centre. But Shahbaz appeared too keen to keep both posts in the family. This is another reason of Shahbazs reluctance to leave Punjab to someone other than his son, another PML-N insider said. The Shahbaz governments spokesperson Malik Ahmad Khan told PTI that the party leadership is sitting together to revisit its earlier decision of endorsing Shahbaz for prime minister. The final decision whether Shahbaz Sharif contests from NA-120 Lahore to succeed Abbasi will be taken in a day or two, he added. China has again extended by three months its technical hold on the US, France and UK- backed proposal to list JeM chief and Pathankot terror attack mastermind Masood Azhar as a designated terrorist by the UN. China had in February this year blocked the US move to designate Azhar as a global terrorist at UN. The deadline for China to take action on its technical hold was till August 2. If China would not have extended the technical hold, Azhar would have automatically been designated under the UN as a terrorist. Sources told PTI here that just before the deadline lapsed, China once again sought a three-month extension until November 2 on its technical hold on the proposal. A veto-wielding permanent member of the Security Council, Beijing has repeatedly blocked Indias move to put a ban on the Jaish-e-Mohammed leader under the Al Qaeda Sanctions Committee of the Council. Last year in March, China was the sole member in the 15- nation UN organ to put a hold on Indias application with all other 14 members of the Council supporting New Delhis bid to place Azhar on the 1267 sanctions list that would subject him to an assets freeze and travel ban. The six-month validity of that technical hold lapsed in September and Beijing then extended it by three more months. In December last year, after China blocked Indias proposal to list the JeM chief, Indian diplomatic sources here had said that the pursuit of terrorism was not a one-shot affair for India and that it will continue to pursue issues of terrorism through all available mechanisms. Sources had said that the block would not prevent India from pursuing at the world body issues of terrorism and sanctioning of leaders of terror outfits. Chinas rapidly increasing old age population has reached 230.8 million or 10.8 per cent of the total population by the end of last year, according to official figures released on Thursday. China had more than 230.8 million people aged 60 or above, 16.7 per cent of the total population, at the end of 2016, the ministry of civil affairs said. Of the 230.8 million, 150.03 million were 65 or above, or 10.8 per cent of the total population, according to a report released by the ministry. By international standards, a country or region is considered to be an ageing society when the number of people aged 60 or above reaches 10 per cent or more. Chinas old age population above 60 years will reach 255 million by 2020 putting heavy stress on geriatric care services, Chinas planning body said earlier. Bracing for the demographic crisis China last year relaxed the four decades old one child policy by permitting two children for couples. The ministry said China has 140,000 nursing homes holding a total of more than 7.3 million beds at the end of 2016, with a year-on-year increase of 20.7 per cent and 8.6 per cent respectively. However, there are only 31.6 beds for every 1,000 senior citizens. According to the report, China had about 460,000 orphans at the end of 2016, with 88,000 living in government-funded agencies, with the rest being cared for by relatives or private orphanages. Some 19,000 Chinese orphans were adopted by domestic or overseas families in 2016, the ministry said. China on Thursday dismissed Indias contention that peace and tranquillity were prerequisites for smooth relations, saying that if New Delhi truly cherishes peace, it will withdraw its soldiers to the Indian side of the Sikkim boundary and end the ongoing military standoff. The ministry of foreign affairs, in a second statement in as many days, said: If the Indian side truly cherishes peace, what it should do is to immediately pull back the trespassing border troops to the Indian side of the boundary. China blames India for the impasse, accusing Indian soldiers of trespassing and preventing the Peoples Liberation Army from building a road in Donglang, or Doklam as called by the Indian side, and also claimed by Bhutan. China wants India to withdraw its troops from Donglang before the two sides can open talks. India says the road, if built, will have serious security implications for the country. According to the statement by China, 48 Indian border troops and one bulldozer were stationed at the site of the standoff as of August 2, and more forces had congregated on the Indian side of the boundary. It all but accused India of not wanting a peaceful resolution to the impasse, now in its second month. The Indian side always keeps peace on the tip of its tongue. But we should not only listen to its words but also heed its deeds. The Chinese side maintains that relevant facts cannot be ignored, the statement said. This incident is illegal under the international law. The Indian side should bear corresponding responsibilities. The Chinese side was building a road in the Donglang area, which is located on the Chinese side of the Sikkim sector of the China-India boundary. This was aimed at improving the local transportation and facilitating local herdsmens grazing of livestock and border troops patrolling. It is a normal activity of China in its own territory, which is completely lawful and legitimate, the statement said. On Wednesday, the Indian external affairs ministry, in response to a 15-page statement released by the Chinese foreign ministry, had said: India considers that peace and tranquillity in the India-China border areas is an important prerequisite for smooth development of our bilateral relations with China. Chinas rebuttal on Thursday was unusually scathing and acerbic. In an unusually dramatic manner, it used the line this is by no means peace four times in its statement. It further claimed that China had notified India about the construction of the road in Donglang on May 18 and June 8, but New Delhi didnt respond. The Indian side didnt respond to the Chinese side through any channel for over one month. Instead, it flagrantly dispatched armed forces carrying equipment to illegally cross the boundary to obstruct Chinas road building. This is by no means for peace, the statement said. Secondly, over one month has passed since the outbreak of the incident. The Indian border troops still illegally stay on the Chinese territory. Moreover, the Indian side is building roads, hoarding supplies and deploying a large number of armed forces on the Indian side of the boundary. This is by no means for peace, it added. Attacks on the Iraqi embassy and a Shia mosque in Afghanistan have reinforced fears that Islamic State militants are seeking to bring the groups Middle East conflict to Central Asia, though evidence of fighters relocating from Iraq and Syria remains elusive. Islamic State said it carried out Mondays attack against the embassy in Kabul, which began with a suicide bomber blowing himself up at the compounds main gate, allowing gunmen to enter the building and battle security forces. The group also claimed responsibility for an attack Tuesday that killed at least 29 and wounded more than 63 at a Shiite mosque in Herat, an area in western Afghanistan that had previously escaped Islamic States sectarian attacks. The choice of target in the Iraqi embassy attack, three weeks after the fall of Mosul to Iraqi troops, appeared to back up repeated warnings from Afghan security officials that, as Islamic State fighters were pushed out of Syria and Iraq, they risked showing up in Afghanistan. This year were seeing more new weapons in the hands of the insurgents and an increase in numbers of foreign fighters, said Afghan Defence Ministry spokesman Gen. Dawlat Waziri. They are used in front lines because they are war veterans. One senior security official put the number of foreigners fighting for both Islamic State and the Taliban in Afghanistan at roughly 7,000, most operating across the border from their home countries of Pakistan, Uzbekistan or Tajikistan, but also including others from countries such as India. While such foreign fighters have long been present in Afghanistan, there has been growing concern that militants from Arab countries, who have left the fighting in Syria as pressure on Islamic State there has grown, have also been arriving in Afghanistan through Iran. We are not talking about a simple militant fighter, we are talking about battle-hardened, educated and professional fighters in the thousands, another security official said. They are more dangerous because they can and will easily recruit fighters and foot soldiers here. The United States, which first came to Afghanistan in 2001 after Al Qaedas attacks on New York and Washington, is considering sending more troops to Afghanistan, in part to ensure the country does not become a haven for foreign militant groups. But while Afghan and U.S. officials have long warned of the risk that foreign fighters from Syria could move over to Afghanistan, there has been considerable scepticism over how many have actually done so. In April, during a visit to Kabul by U.S. Defense Secretary James Mattis, the commander of NATO forces in Afghanistan, Gen. John Nicholson, said that, while ISIS had an aspiration to bring in fighters from Syria, we havent seen it happen. NEW TACTICS, WEAPONS U.S. commanders say that, in partnership with Afghan security forces, they have severely reduced Islamic States strength over the past year with a combination of drone strikes and Special Forces operations. But according to Afghan intelligence documents reviewed by Reuters, security officials believe Islamic State is present in nine provinces, from Nangarhar and Kunar in the east to Jawzjan, Faryab and Badakhshan in the north and Ghor in the central west. In recent operations, we have inflicted heavy losses on them but their focus is to recruit fighters from this area, said Juma Gul Hemat, police chief of Kunar, an eastern province where Islamic State fighters pushed out of their base in neighbouring Nangarhar have increasingly sought refuge. They are not only from Pakistan or former Taliban, there are fighters from other countries and other small groups have pledged their allegiance to them, he said. Afghan officials say newly arrived foreign fighters have been heavily involved in fighting in Nangarhar province, Islamic States main stronghold in Afghanistan, where they have repeatedly clashed with the Taliban. Security officials say they are still investigating Mondays embassy attack and it is too early to say whether there was any foreign influence or involvement. Islamic State put out a statement identifying two of the attackers as Abu Julaybib Al-Kharasani and Abu Talha Al-Balkhi, Arabic names that nonetheless suggest Afghan origins. Khorasan is an old name for the Central Asian region that includes Afghanistan, while Balkh is a province in northern Afghanistan. What little contact is possible with fighters loyal to Islamic State in Afghanistan suggests that the movement itself is keen to encourage the idea that foreign militants are joining its ranks. We have our brothers in hundreds from different countries, said an Islamic State commander in Achin district of Nangarhar. Most of them have families and homes that were destroyed by the atrocity and brutality of the infidel forces in Arab countries, especially by the Americans, he said. They can greatly help us in terms of teaching our fighters new tactics, with weapons and other resources. The father of an Afghan girl who represented her country in a robotics competition in the United States died in this weeks Herat mosque attack, her family said Thursday. Fifteen-year-old Fatema Qaderyan was part of the six-member team of Afghan teenage girls who won hearts across the globe when they competed in the international youth event in Washington DC last month. They made headlines after twice being denied American visas, and were only able to travel from war-torn Afghanistan for the FIRST Global Challenge following a late intervention by US President Donald Trump. Qaderyans older brother told AFP that their father died in Tuesday nights suicide bomb attack on the Jawadya mosque which killed dozens and was claimed by the Islamic State group. We are all devastated, Fatema hasnt eaten or spoken since the incident, and is in a state of shock. Today after she fainted several times, doctors started IV fluid therapy, Mohammad Reza said at the family home. The six girls are all from Herat, which lies close to the Iranian border in the west of Afghanistan. Before they were granted US visas for the event, in which they competed against high school students from around the world, Qaderyan made an emotional plea for them to be allowed to travel. We were not a terrorist group to go to America and scare people, she told AFP. We want to take the message of peace to America and convey that Afghanistan is not only the country of war, and there are girls who chase their dreams in robots and education, she added. Thirty-three worshippers were killed, including children, and more than 60 others wounded, when two suicide bombers throwing grenades stormed the packed mosque where Shiites had gathered for prayers on Tuesday night. It was the latest deadly attack on the minority community in Afghanistan. IS has claimed responsibility for a series of attacks killing dozens of Shiites in Kabul over the past year, including twin explosions in July 2016 that ripped through crowds of Shiite Hazaras, killing at least 85 people and wounding more than 400. Amid their border standoff in Sikkim, India and China seem to be busy courting their neighbour Nepal, with External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj and Chinese Vice Premier Wang Yang scheduled to visit the country this month. Swaraj is arriving on August 10 to participate in the BIMSTEC ministerial meeting to be held in Kathmandu, while Wang, considered the Nepal hand in Chinese Communist Party, will come calling on August 14, according to Nepals foreign affairs ministry. Their trips come ahead of the planned state visit of Nepals Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba to India from August 23. China is sending the top official to Kathmandu to check the pulse of the new government which is labelled as close with India, according to sources here. The visits ahead of Deubas trip naturally gives a message that Delhi and Beijing are trying to assert their positions and extend their influence in Nepal, whose location is geostrategically sensitive, said a senior official. Swarajs trip will set a tone for the India visit of Deuba and would focus on Indias long-standing interest in Nepal, the sources said. In the midst of a new political dispensation in Nepal, the worry of Beijing is loud and clear and it also wants to safeguard its interests with Nepal that shares a long border with Tibet. By exerting pressure on successive governments in Nepal, Beijing has successfully imposed its interest in Kathmandu. Nepal governments signing of an agreement on President Xi Jinpings One Belt One Road Initiative, joint military drills and award of a 12,00mw hydro electric project to a Chinese firm without competitive bidding are among examples. The India-China tensions pose a serious danger to Nepal, experts said, urging the government to take appropriate measures to safeguard its national interest. Nepal needs to preserve its territory, as the fight among big powers have proven cruel to smaller nations, former foreign minister Ramesh Nath Pandey said, adding several nations lost their identities when such wars erupted. After Nepal inked the OBOR pact with China, the activities of the Chinese in Kathmandu have increased. A series of meetings and seminars were held on how Nepal can take advantage from OBOR. Hundreds of Nepali scholars, officials, journalists and people from various walks of life were taken to China to create a public opinion in favour of the deal. During his four-day visit, Wang is expected to discuss OBOR, review China-funded projects in Nepal as well as bilateral ties at a time when Nepal maintains neutral position in the India-China face-off . We do not know why he is coming but the underlying meaning is to tell Nepal to safeguard Chinas interest in Nepal, an official said. Nepal has not made clear its position on the India-China standoff, but has been saying it is keenly watching the developments. Deubas five-day visit to India is quite significant due to Nepals close ties with India and given the political backdrop, including Indias moral support to executing a new constitution in Nepal. The Madhes-based parties, an important political force in Nepal, are yet to agree on participating in the third round of local polls slated for September 18 whereas the government needs to conclude elections to the federal and provincial parliament by January 21 next year. With Mosul in ruins and nearly a million displaced, Iraq now faces the enormous task of restoring order and rebuilding its second city after driving out Islamic State group jihadists. After eight months of gruelling fighting against IS, Iraqi forces are in control of Mosul. But the famed Old City has been reduced to rubble and the iconic leaning minaret of its Al-Nuri mosque, the image of which adorns the 10,000 dinar note, lies in ruins. The ancient, crowded alleys have become a silent maze of stone and iron skeletons, marked by mountains of rubble, craters and burned-out cars emitting a putrid odour of decaying bodies. The price of freedom is very high, said Omar Fadel, a municipality employee who returned a month ago to his neighbourhood of old Sinaaya, close to the ruins of the Al-Nuri mosque. We lost our houses, our money and above all, people, our loved ones. Lise Grande, the United Nations humanitarian coordinator for Iraq, told AFP that Mosul represents the biggest stabilisation challenge the UN has ever faced -- the scale, the complexity, the scope of it. Out of 54 residential quarters, 15 are destroyed, 23 moderately damaged, 16 lightly damaged, she said. In eight months of combat, 948,000 people fled their houses, far beyond the UNs most pessimistic predictions of 750,000 displaced. Like Fadel, some have already returned. But 320,000 are still living in camps and another 384,000 are staying with relatives or in mosques, living on humanitarian aid, according to the UN. - Cant hold the area - Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi declared the city liberated on July 9, but the threat of violence has not disappeared. An unknown number of jihadists mingled with the flood of civilians fleeing the fighting. With few resources, the local police cant, at this stage, hold the area, said Mohammed Ibrahim, a security official at the provincial council of Nineveh, of which Mosul is the capital. The job of securing the city might be entrusted to a joint force made up of Iraqs counterterrorism service, the federal police and the army, which led the battle, a US advisor to the federal police said. Authorities also set up a provincial intelligence centre, the first in Iraq, two months ago to locate terrorist bases and sleeping cells, arrest and hand suspects over to the judiciary, Ibrahim said. Meanwhile, workers have begun the laborious task of clearing the damage left by the fighting, revealing hundreds of civilians buried under the rubble. The streets need to be cleared of explosive devices left by the jihadists. Next begins the work of rebuilding. The UN says the first phase of stabilisation -- providing infrastructure, housing, education and a police force -- will cost at least $707 million (597 million euros). In the heavily damaged districts that are almost completely destroyed, we have to expect that this will take months, if not years, Grande said. The families who come from those districts -- we are talking about 230,000 to 240,000 families -- will probably not be able to go back to their homes for a very long time. The UN has called for more international aid to help reconstruct the city, but less than half the aid needed for 2017 has been donated so far. Mosul residents do not want to see rebuilding efforts confined to Iraqs government, which is seen as corrupt, sectarian and distant. In Baghdad, they think that all of Mosul is Daesh, said Issam Hassan, a young man in an east Mosul market, using an Arabic acronym for IS. Political analyst Ziad al-Zinjari said he was not optimistic about Mosuls future. There are signs that the city will go back to square one, that the same mistakes will be repeated, he said. Many fear that corrupt people and thieves will take over important posts, armed groups will emerge again and the authorities are lagging behind in the reconstruction and resumption of public services, he added. Despite the defeat suffered by IS, the groups that united to fight it could easily splinter as rivalries re-emerge. Civil society activist Majed al-Husseini said that unless Mosul is declared a disaster zone and foreign organisations are involved in reconstruction, political conflicts will bring back murders in the streets. Shiite militias are setting up in the city, which the Sunni majority sees as a provocation... the Kurds have their sights on the disputed areas (and) Sunni politicians have conflicts between them for personal interests, he said. Years of rule by IS has also created divisions. Some pro-government tribes are demanding compensation from other tribes who had pledged allegiance to the jihadists before they will allow them back into the city. The most important national priority is national reconciliation, Grande said. But on both sides of the Tigris river dividing Mosul, residents say communal divisions are mainly a political creation. Ask around and see who hasnt got a Shiite or Christian friend. Everyone has, said Fadel. The citys architecture will never be the same again, but the spirit of Mosul, the solidarity of the inhabitants, will not change. The Islamic State group is calling on young men to take up arms in eastern Syria where government forces are on the march against the extremists. In a statement distributed Thursday in Deir el-Zour province that borders Iraq, IS called on all men between 20 and 30 who are able to fight to head to mobilization offices within a week. The call comes as the extremists have lost large parts of areas they controlled in Iraq and Syria, where they declared a caliphate in 2014. The statement, obtained by The Associated Press from activists in eastern Syria, warns that those who do not join will be undergo questioning and possibly be punished. Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on Thursday named new defence and foreign ministers as part of a cabinet revamp he hopes will stem a decline in public support after a series of scandals and missteps. Itsunori Onodera, a former defence chief, is to return to the defence ministry -- rocked by the resignation last week of close Abe political ally Tomomi Inada. Taro Kono, the son of a former foreign minister, will become the countrys new top diplomat. Political blueblood Abe, in office since late December 2012, has pushed a nationalist agenda alongside a massive policy effort to end years of on-off deflation and rejuvenate the worlds third-largest economy. But he has seen public support rates plummet in the past few months over an array of political troubles, including allegations of favouritism to a friend in a business deal -- which Abe strongly denies. I deeply regret that my shortcomings have invited this situation, a chastened Abe said earlier in the day ahead of the formal announcement of the cabinet changes. The new cabinet was announced by Yoshihide Suga, the governments top spokesman. The Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) has barred Punjab Chief Minister Shehbaz Sharif from taking part in his own poll campaign for a by-election to a National Assembly seat left vacant after the disqualification of his elder brother and former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif. The ECP code of conduct barred constitutional dignitaries, including the President, the Prime Minister, chairman and deputy chairman senate as well as provincial Chief Ministers from visiting the area of any constituency that is going to polls, the Dawn newspaper reported. The code of conduct came into effect immediately after the ECP announced the election schedule for Lahore National Assembly seat (NA-120). The polling for the seat will be held on September 17, the report said. The ECP warned that legal action would be taken against any individual found in violation of the rules. Political observers in Pakistan called the ECP code of conduct confusing and wondered how the holder of a public office could be barred from taking part in his own election campaign even though the law permitted a legislator to contest election for another house without tendering resignation. A senior official of the ECP said a clear picture would emerge after the submission of nomination papers by Shehbaz Sharif for the by-election to NA-120. This is a unique situation because if the Chief Minister of Punjab files nomination papers, he will not be campaigning for somebody else but for himself and this right can in no way be taken away from him. The ECP also told candidates that their election expenses should not exceed Rs 1.5 million and they must use a dedicated account for all transactions related to poll expenses. Akron An Ohio woman has been indicted on charges she was texting when she crossed a marked curb line and struck three teenagers, killing two 14-year-old girls and seriously injuring a 15-year-old boy. A grand jury indicted 24-year-old Natasha Boggs, of New Franklin in Summit County, on Wednesday on two counts of involuntary manslaughter, two counts of aggravated vehicular homicide and charges that include tampering with evidence and texting while driving. Boggs is charged with killing Taylor Galloway, of Akron, and Amber Thoma, of Coventry Township, on May 28 in Coventry Township. The 15-year-old boy was hospitalized and a fourth teen was unharmed. Its unclear if Boggs has an attorney. She remains jailed on a $150,000 bond. President Donald Trump on Wednesday announced his support for a legislation that would cut in half the number legal immigrants allowed into the US while moving to a merit-based system favouring English-speaking skilled workers for residency cards. If passed by the Congress and signed into law, the legislation titled the Reforming American Immigration for Strong Employment (RAISE) Act could benefit highly-educated and technology professionals from countries like India. The RAISE Act would scrap the current lottery system to get into the US and instead institute a points-based system for earning a green card. Factors that would be taken into account include English language skills, education, high- paying job offers and age. The RAISE Act will reduce poverty, increase wages, and save taxpayers billions and billions of dollars. It will do this by changing the way the US issues Green Cards to nationals from other countries. Green Cards provide permanent residency, work authorisation, and fast track to citizenship, Trump said at a White House event to announce his support to the RAISE Act. Standing along with two top authors of the bill -- Senators Tom Cotton and David Perdue Trump said the RAISE Act ends chain migration, and replaces the low-skilled system with a new points-based system for receiving a Green Card. This competitive application process will favour applicants who can speak English, financially support themselves and their families, and demonstrate skills that will contribute to our economy, he said, adding that the RAISE Act prevents new migrants and new immigrants from collecting welfare, and protects US workers from being displaced. Thats a very big thing. Theyre not going to come in and just immediately go and collect welfare. That doesnt happen under the RAISE Act. They cant do that. Crucially, the Green Card reforms in the RAISE Act will give American workers a pay raise by reducing unskilled immigration, he said. Trump said this legislation will not only restore Americas competitive edge in the 21st century, but it will restore the sacred bonds of trust between America and its citizens. This legislation demonstrates our compassion for struggling American families who deserve an immigration system that puts their needs first and that puts America first, he said. Noting that the current over a half-century old system is an obsolete disaster, Senator Cotton said that it is time for it to change. First, we bring over a million immigrants into this country a year. Thats like adding the population of Montana every single year; adding the population of Arkansas every three years. The vast majority of those workers -- or those immigrants come here not because of their English-language abilities or their job skills, or their job offer, or their educational attainment, he said. In fact, only one in 15 out of a million new immigrants come here because of their job skills and their ability to succeed in this economy, Cotton said. The RAISE Act will be re-orienting Green Card system towards people who can speak English, who have high degrees of educational attainment, who have a job offer that pays more, and a typical job in their local economy, who are going to create a new business, and who are outstanding in their field around the world, he added. Senator Perdue said the current system does not work. It keeps America from being competitive, and it does not meet the needs of the economy today, he said. Today we bring in 1.1 million legal immigrants a year. Over 50 per cent of our households of legal immigrants today participate in our social welfare system. Right now, only one 1 out of 15 immigrants who come into our country come in with skills that are employable. Weve got to change that, he said. Perdue said he looked at the at best practices. We looked at countries like Canada, Australia, and others. What were introducing today is modeled on the current Canadian and Australian systems. Its pro-worker, its pro-growth, and its been proven to work. Both have been extremely successful in attracting highly skilled workers to those countries, the Senator said. We can all agree that the goals of our nations immigration system should be to protect the interests of working Americans, including immigrants, and to welcome talented individuals who come here legally and want to work and make a better life for themselves. Our current system makes it virtually impossible for them to do that, said the Senator. According to Attorney General Jeff Sessions, the higher entry standards established in this proposal will allow authorities to do a more thorough job reviewing applicants for entry, therefore protecting the security of the US homeland. The additional time spent on vetting each application as a result of this legislation will also ensure that each application serves the national interest, he observed. The American people deserve a lawful immigration system that promotes our national interest. The RAISE Act would give us a more merit-based immigration system that admits the best and the brightest around the world while making it harder for people to come here illegally, Sessions said. The bill would end programme known to be rife with fraud and abuse and finally improve the vetting process, making our country and working class wages much safer and stronger, said the Attorney General. In an embarrassing goof-up, British newspaper The Daily Telegraph accidentally published a pre-written report announcing the death of Prince Philip on its website on Wednesday. The article appeared on the same day the Duke of Edinburgh was preparing for his final solo public engagement. Under the headline HOLD HOLD HOLD Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, dies ages XX, the article talked about the Dukes life and contributions as the longest-serving consort with occasional place holders in the text for relevant details of his life. According to The Guardian, the article read: The Duke of Edinburgh, the longest-serving consort to a monarch in British history, has died at the age of XX, Buckingham Palace has announced. Prince Philip, whom the Queen described as her strength and stay during her record-breaking reign, passed away XXXXXXX. Although the story was taken down within minutes, screengrabs of the page made its way to social media, leading to a spike in searches for Prince Philip on Google search. Is @Telegraph doing some SEO dark arts or is this real? #PrincePhilip pic.twitter.com/JwntGf9DOG Rahul Writes (@Rahul_Writes) August 2, 2017 Telegraph deleted the dead Prince Philip story but takes longer to flush out of google news pic.twitter.com/YDv03ZN0jd rob manuel (@robmanuel) August 2, 2017 The newspaper later issued an apology for the blunder saying, We sincerely apologise for the mistake that was made this morning, which was, of course, rectified immediately. We will be reviewing our publishing processes as a matter of urgency. This wasnt the first time a newspaper prematurely published an obituary of the royal. Another British newspaper, The Sun, reported that Prince Philip had died in an article online in May. Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev lashed new US sanctions as a full-fledged economic war on Moscow, saying they crushed hopes for repairing ties and demonstrated President Donald Trumps total weakness ... in the most humiliating way. Trump reluctantly signed off on the new sanctions Wednesday, bowing to domestic pressure after the White House failed to scupper the bill or water it down. Medvedev warned the move would have consequences, saying it ends hopes for improving our relations with the new US administration. Second, it is a declaration of a full-fledged economic war on Russia, Medvedev said on his Facebook page. Taunting the notoriously thin-skinned US president, Medvedev added: The Trump administration has shown its total weakness by handing over executive power to Congress in the most humiliating way. Trump signed the legislation behind closed doors and his reluctance was on full display in an angry signing statement in which he called the legislation significantly flawed. In its haste to pass this legislation, the Congress included a number of clearly unconstitutional provisions, he said, including curbs on the presidents ability to negotiate with Russia. I built a truly great company worth many billions of dollars. That is a big part of the reason I was elected. As president, I can make far better deals with foreign countries than Congress, Trump claimed. The legislation -- which also includes measures against North Korea and Iran -- targets the Russian energy sector, giving Washington the ability to impose sanctions on companies involved in developing Russian pipelines, and placing curbs on some Russian weapons exporters. Iran, too, reacted angrily, saying the new sanctions against it violated its 2015 nuclear deal with world powers, and warned it would respond appropriately. With regards to Russia, the sanctions notably constrains Trumps ability to waive the penalties -- a statement of mistrust from the Republican-controlled Congress, which remains unsettled by Trumps warm words for President Vladimir Putin. In his statement, Trump said: The Framers of our Contitution put foreign affairs in the hands of the President. This bill will prove the wisdom of that choice. In a searing rebuttal, maverick Republican Senator John McCain said: The framers of our constitution made the Congress and the President coequal branches of government. This bill has already proven the wisdom of that choice. I hope the president will be as vocal about Russias aggressive behaviour as he was about his concerns with this legislation. - Russia meddling - The sanctions seek to penalise the Kremlin for allegedly meddling in the 2016 US presidential election and for Russias annexation of Crimea. Trump said he would honour some of the bills provisions, but stopped short of saying it would be fully implemented. The White House said only that Trump would give Congresss preferences mere careful and respectful consideration. I am signing this bill for the sake of national unity. It represents the will of the American people to see Russia take steps to improve relations with the United States, Trump said. Trump had received the legislation at 1:53 pm on Friday, but waited until Wednesday to sign it. The delay had raised speculation that Trump might veto or try to somehow shelve the sanctions, which were approved in a 98-2 Senate vote. By signing it, he avoided the humiliating prospect of Congress overriding his veto. Expecting the signature, Moscow preemptively ordered Washington to reduce its diplomatic presence in Russia to 455 people before September 1 -- bringing it in line with the size of Russias mission in the United States. The Kremlin said that Trump signing the sanctions doesnt change anything, in a less adversarial statement than those issued by Medvedev and the foreign ministry. The foreign ministry said the sanctions against Russia had put global stability at risk, calling them a dangerous and short-sighted policy. We have already shown that we are not going to leave hostile acts unanswered... and we obviously reserve the right to take retaliatory measures, it said. US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said he will meet with his Russian counterpart Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov over the weekend, but warned US-Russia ties could still get worse. Tillerson said the US Congresss decision to pass the sanctions bill had made attempts to thaw ties more difficult. A special prosecutor is investigating whether Trump advisers colluded with what US intelligence has concluded was an attempt by Russia to covertly support the real estate moguls 2016 campaign. The US president, who often called for warmer ties with Moscow during the White House race, has furiously denied the charge. CGTN photo Turkey officially recognizes the "East Turkestan Islamic Movement" as a terrorist organization. China's Foreign Minister Wang Yi has praised Turkey for listing the "East Turkestan Islamic Movement" as a terrorism organization during the Second Meeting of China-Turkey Foreign Ministers' Consultation Mechanism in Beijing on Thursday. The terrorist and separatist group was founded in 1989 by Uygur militants in western China, aiming at the establishment of "an independent caliphate" in the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region of China and to name it "East Turkistan". The group has claimed responsibility for a number of attacks in China. The Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu added "We'll never allow any activities against China on our territory or the region we are in. We'll eliminate any media reports targeting against China." US President Donald Trump said relations with Russia had hit an all-time and very dangerous low Thursday, putting the blame on Congress after he reluctantly approved sanctions against Moscow. Our relationship with Russia is at an all-time & very dangerous low, Trump wrote on Twitter. Our relationship with Russia is at an all-time & very dangerous low. You can thank Congress, the same people that can't even give us HCare! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 3, 2017 You can thank Congress, the same people that cant even give us HCare!, he added in reference to a recent defeat in the Senate on his health care reform plans. Trumps outburst came the day after he grudgingly signed off on a sanctions bill that had been passed by Congress, calling the legislation significantly flawed and arguing that some of its provisions were unconstitutional. The legislation -- which also includes measures against North Korea and Iran -- targets the Russian energy sector, giving Washington the ability to sanction companies involved in developing Russian pipelines, and placing curbs on some Russian weapons exporters. It also constrains Trumps ability to waive the penalties, a statement of mistrust from the Republican-controlled Congress. Moscow has reacted furiously to the sanctions, with Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev saying they amounted to a full-fledged economic war and that they had demonstrated Trumps total weakness. Trumps presidency has been overshadowed by allegations that his campaign team colluded with Moscow during last years US presidential campaign in which he defeated Hillary Clinton. US President Donald Trump pressed Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto to stop saying publicly that Mexico would not pay for his promised border wall, according to a transcript of their January conversation obtained by The Washington Post. You cannot say that to the press, Trump told Pena Nieto according to the transcript of the January 27 call published by the Post on Thursday. I have to have Mexico pay for the wall -- I have to, Trump said. I have been talking about it for a two-year period. The US president acknowledged the domestic political difficulties of the issue for Pena Nieto and said a formula could be worked out for funding the wall along the southern US border with Mexico. We should both say, We will work it out. It will work out in the formula somehow, Trump said. As opposed to you saying, We will not pay, and me saying, We will not pay. (But) if you are going to say that Mexico is not going to pay for the wall, then I do not want to meet with you guys anymore because I cannot live with that, Trump said. This file photo taken on February 21, 2017 shows a US Border Patrol agent as he locks a gate on the border fence at the US/Mexico border in Del Rio, Texas. (AFP Photo) Pena Nieto pushed back saying the issue was related to the dignity of Mexico and goes to the national pride of my country. My position has been and will continue to be very firm, saying that Mexico cannot pay for the wall, he said. But the Mexican president agreed to stop talking about the wall and look for a creative way to solve this issue. Turnbull to Trump: A deal is a deal The Post also published the full transcript on Thursday of an acrimonious call Trump held the next day with Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull. In the call, Trump, who campaigned for the White House by taking a hardline on immigration, expressed his displeasure over a deal made by the Obama administration to accept refugees held in Australian detention centers. This is going to kill me, Trump said. I am the worlds greatest person that does not want to let people into the country and now I am agreeing to take 2,000 people. Turnbull repeatedly pressed Trump to stand by the agreement and noted they were economic refugees who would only be accepted after strict US vetting. There is nothing more important in business or politics than a deal is a deal, Turnbull said. You can certainly say that it was not a deal that you would have done, but you are going to stick with it. I have had it, Trump said finally said after more back and forth on the issue. I have been making these calls all day and this is the most unpleasant call all day. Putin was a pleasant call, Trump said, referring to his conversation with the Russian leader Vladimir Putin. This is ridiculous. The extraordinary leak of the contents of presidential conversations comes just a day before Attorney General Jeff Sessions is reportedly to hold a press conference about cracking down on government leaks. A senior White House official has clashed with reporters of CNN and The New York Times - whom US President Donald Trump has often accused of being fake media houses on the issue of merit and point-based legal immigration system. At one point, the presidents Senior Adviser Jason Miller accused CNNs senior White House correspondent Jason Acosta of having cosmopolitan bias when he questioned the relevance of supporting only those who know English as part of the new legal immigration plan endorsed by Trump. Minutes earlier, Miller, who has normally kept a low profile in the first six months of the White House, entered into a heated exchange with The New York Times reporter Glenn Thrush when he asked if there is statistical evidence to back up the claims that cutting down the Green Card numbers would help American workers. Im not asking for common sense. Im asking for specific statistical data, Thrush interrupted Miller when he was responding to the question. I think its very clear, Glenn that youre not asking for common sense, Miller said. Common sense is fungible, statistics are not, Thrush said as the two entered into heated exchange if words. I asked you for a statistic. Can you tell me how many -- how many, the Times reporter asked. May be well make a carve-out in the bill that says the New York Times can hire all the low-skilled, less-paid workers they want from other countries and see how you feel then about low-wage substitution. This is a reality thats happening in our country..., Miller said. Towards the end of his 30-minute news conference, Miller gave the last question to Acosta of the CNN, who was seated in the first row of the White House briefing room. What youre proposing, or what the presidents proposing here does not sound like its in keeping with American tradition when it comes to immigration. The Statue of Liberty says, Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free. It doesnt say anything about speaking English or being able to be a computer programmer, Acosta said firing off his first question. Arent you trying to change what it means to be an immigrant coming into this country, if youre telling them, You have to speak English? Cant people learn how to speak English when they get here, he asked. Miller responded in the same tone. First of all, right now its a requirement that to be naturalised, you have to speak English. So the notion that speaking English wouldnt be a part of immigration systems would be, actually, very ahistorical. Secondly, I dont want to get off into a whole thing about history here but the Statue of Liberty is a symbol of liberty enlightening the world. Its a symbol of American liberty enlightening the world. The poem that youre referring to was added later. Its not actually part of the original Statue of Liberty, Miller said, which kicked off another round of heated exchange. Your statements also shockingly ahistorical in another respect, too, which is if you look at the history of immigration, its actually ebbed and flowed. Weve had periods of very large waves, followed by periods of less immigration, and more immigration, Miller said. Acosta said his father is a Cuban immigrant. He came to this country in 1962, right before the Cuban Missile Crisis and obtained a green card. Yes, people who immigrate to this country... not through Ellis Island, as your family may have... other ways, do obtain a green card at some point. They do it through a lot of hard work and yes, they may learn English as a second language later on in life, Acosta said as he was interrupted by Miller several times in between. But this whole notion of, Well, they could learn -- you know, they have to learn English before they get to the United States are we just going to bring in people from Great Britain and Australia? Acosta asked. Miller appeared agitated at this point. I honestly say I am shocked at your statement that you think that only people from Great Britain and Australia would know English. It reveals your cosmopolitan bias to a shocking degree, that in your mind... This is an amazing moment, that you think only people from Great Britain or Australia would speak English. Its so insulting to millions of hard-working immigrants who do speak English from all over the world, the presidential adviser said. Jim, have you honestly never met an immigrant from another country who speaks English, outside of Great Britain and Australia? Is that your personal experience? Miller asked. Of course, there are people who come..., Acosta responded, as he was cut mid way. The CNN correspondent accused Miller of trying to engineer the racial flow of people into the country through this policy. That is one of the most outrageous, insulting, ignorant and foolish things youve ever said. And for you, thats still a really -- the notion that you think that this is a racist bill is so wrong, Miller said. Acosta, meanwhile, clarified that he did not say that it was a racist bill. Miller said the Trump administration wants to have an immigration system that takes care of the people who are coming here and the people who are already living here, by having standards, by having a real clear requirement that they are able to support yourself financially, by making sure that employers can pay the living wage. As he ended, he apologised. I apologise, Jim, if things got heated, but you did make some pretty rough insinuations, Miller added. The clash was widely reported in the US media yesterday. That was exciting, said White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders who was a mute spectator to the exchange. A 47-year-old Indian-origin doctor in east London on Wednesday charged with 118 sex offences, including one assault on a child under 13, by the Scotland Yard. Dr Manish Shah, from Brunel Close in Romford area of the city, is accused of 65 counts of assault by penetration and 52 allegations of sexual assault, the Metropolitan Police said. The doctor is also charged with one count of sexual assault on a child under the age of 13. Manish Shah has been charged with 65 assault by penetration, contrary to Section 2 of the Sexual Offences Act 2003, 52 sexual assault, contrary to Section 3 of the Sexual Offences Act 2003, and 1 sexual assault on a child under 13 years, contrary to Section 7 of the Sexual Offences Act 2003, the Met Police said in a statement today. Shah is out on bail and is due to appear on August 31 at Barkingside Magistrates Court in London. The NHS (National Health Service) has a dedicated number for any individuals who may have concerns or questions. They can be contacted on 0800 011 4253, the Met Police said. The offences are alleged to have occurred between June 2004 and July 2013 and relate to 54 victims. The charges announced today follow a long-running investigation into Shah, who has been bailed several times after first being arrested in 2013. A senior US official says Washington will seek talks on how North Korea can be suspended from Asias biggest security forum as part of a broader effort to isolate Pyongyang diplomatically and force it to end its missile tests and abandon its nuclear weapons program. Acting Assistant Secretary for East Asian and Pacific Affairs Susan Thornton told reporters in Washington on Wednesday that North Koreas actions have violated the conflict-prevention aims of the ASEAN Regional Forum, which groups the United States and North Korea with 25 other countries. Two Filipino officials tell The Associated Press that US officials have discussed such a prospect with Philippine officials, who told them it may be better to keep North Korea in the forum, where it can be persuaded to stop provocations through dialogue. Justin Bieber was in the middle of hot issues the previous weeks and it all started when he canceled the rest of his Purpose World Tour. After that, it was reported that he was spotted hanging out with his friends from the Australia-based Hillsong Church in which he is a member for years already. With the latest report from Radar Online, another issue came out which involved Justin Bieber and it has something to do with his Church. It was reported that his religious institution is hiding a dark secret in the past which also involves shocking revelations. The latest issue claimed that the father of Brian Houston, the founder of the organization was a sick and twisted pedophile. With this, it was likewise added that Brian chose not to divulge and disclose this even from the authorities. But he just revealed that his father was a pedophile and he already has some sort of grips with it in these times. According to reports way back in 2000, William Francis "Frank" Houston sexually abused a New Zealand boy. Brian learned about this from one of his colleagues during one of their meetings. His colleague in the Church said that someone had rung into the office and made a complaint that the older Houston had abused a boy. When Brian heard about this revelation, he said that what he thought first was that the act was immoral and then he thought again and said that it was actually criminal. He was left stunned and shattered most especially that he is the founder of a religious institution. Right after discovering the sad truth, Brian told this immediately to his wife. But surprisingly, he opted not to disclose this to the authorities even if he was aware that what his father did was a crime against a child. Even if he did not tell it right away to the authorities, he felt terribly sad for the victim since there is no doubt that his dad violated the boy and done him permanent damage to his life. Then Brian felt that it was his moral responsibility to face up to it with his own father. Nevertheless, the Australia's Royal Commission discovered in 2015 that Brian failed in his responsibility to report this to the authorities. In his defense, he said that reporting right away would be pre-empting the victim. Despite this scandal and dark secret in his Church, Justin Bieber still professed his love for the organization since he enjoys seeing people worship God. @ 2022 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. Egypt's President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi met on Wednesday with Algeria's foreign minister Abdelkader Messahel, who conveyed a message from Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika on the necessity of boosting brotherly relations between the two countries and organisation on issues of mutual interest. During the meeting with Messahel, El-Sisi stressed the importance of continuing the ongoing organisation between Libya's neighbouring countries to restore stability and the national foundations of the North African country, according to the presidential spokesperson Alaa Youssef. Earlier on Wednesday, Egypt foreign minister Sameh Shoukry held a press conference with Messahel, where the two officials stressed that both countries both share the goal of achieving stability in Libya. Shoukry said prior to the press conference that he and Messahel agreed on bolstering coordination on mediation talks hosted by Egypt and Algeria to ensure the stability of Libya. The Egyptian foreign minister said that discussions also included the issue of combating terrorism and the importance of boosting cooperation at the intelligence level to ensure the safety of both nations. Messahel said both countries support a political solution to the Libyan crisis. Egypt and Algeria as neighboring countries are coordinating efforts to work towards this goal, he said. Shoukry said that the idea of a Libyan reconciliation conference was always on the table, adding that such a conference would only be held when Libyans reach an advanced point in the path to a political solution. Egypt has been active in mediation efforts between various Libyan factions, hosting several meetings in Cairo to bridge their differences. Messahel also said that discussions also included the importance of restructuring the Arab League system during a period where the Arab world is the site of the worlds biggest conflicts and has the greatest presence of terrorism. The Arab League should play a role in solving its own problems, and this cant be accomplished without deep and radical reform, he said. According to the Algerian minister, the pair agreed on a high committee meeting between the two countries to be held before the end of the year in Algeria. Search Keywords: Short link: Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry arrived in Khartoum on Wednesday evening for talks with his Sudanese counterpart, the Egyptian ministry stated.. According to the ministrys release, Sudanese Foreign Minister Ibrahim Ghandour received Shoukry on his arrival at Khartoum International Airport. Shoukry will head the Egyptian delegation at a Thursday meeting of the Egyptian-Sudanese political consultation committee, which aims to boost the ties between the two countries. This is the third round of bilateral talks in the past five months, when tensions developed between the two countries. The first meeting was held in Khartoum in April while the second was held in June in Cairo. Search Keywords: Short link: Hard Working Class Heroes has just announced a very impressive second round of international industry delegates, including Rough Trade boss Geoff Travis, Made In Chelsea music-supervisor Andrea Madden and Stereogum features-writer Ryan Leas. The weekend of events at the end of September will see a mixture of workshops, discussions and panels which are growing in importance year on year for artists across all levels to meet with people one-to-one who can make a difference. Journalist Jim Carroll will, once again, host the discussions. The festival will be announcing the selected acts and venue line-up in a couple of weeks. Newly confirmed for the conference are as follows: Martin Hewett, On The Beach / Ryan Leas, Stereogum / Claire Southwick, Primitive Management, MMF UK / Erika Elliott, City Parks, SummerStage / Andrea Madden, Made In Chelsea, Monkey Kingdom / Geoff Travis, Rough Trade / Will Vincent, Prescription PR / Dominic Bastyra, Wake The Town, Theodore / Mikey B. Rishwain, M for Montreal / Ruth Barlow, Beggars Group /Philip Taggart, BBC, Vevo + more TBA. They will join Adam Ryan, The Great Escape / Casper Mills, SXSW / Evelyn Sieber, Reeperbahn / Lisa Hresko, A2IM / Marc Ventosa, Last Tour / Oskar Strasjn, Eurosonic / Sarah Besnard, ATC / Jason Edwards, CODA / Laura Parker, Freelance / Darryn King, Freelance and John Seabrook, The Newyorker. This will be Irelands largest gathering of bookers, labels, managers, music supervisors, radio folk and journalists from around the world and here at home. HWCH annually brings Ireland to the world and the world to Ireland over one weekend. On Thursday 28tSeptember, the opening night, a targeted networking social event will take place in the Chocolate Factory where all the international delegates will have the chance to meet with their Irish counterparts and artists attending the HWCH conference. (The conference is free to all musicians with a Breaking Tunes profile). The live showcases will take place across Friday 29th and Saturday 30th September. The HWCH conference is presented with support from Culture Ireland. Tickets (incl charges) via Eventbrite are priced as follows: conference & weekend live 55.00 / Weekend live 35.00 / Conference 25.00. Nightly live 25.00 / Single venue 12.00 https://www.eventbrite.ie/e/hard-working-class-heroes-festival-2017-tickets-35351423058 County voters go red, state stays blue While Roscommon County voters cast their state-level ballots for Republicans, the top statewide races went to incumbent Democrats. According to... County restoration millage fails, commissioners begin cutting By Krista Tacey-Cater krista.tacey@houghtonlakeresorter.com The results of Tuesdays General Election had a direct impact on Wednesday mornings Roscommon County Board... Voters favor Beebe for District Court judge Roscommon County Prosecutor Mary Beebe will have a new job, having defeated incumbent Judge Troy Daniel, according to unofficial results... This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate A contentious plan to pump millions of gallons of water a day from West Texas mountains to fracking operations in the Permian Basin won approval Wednesday. The Culberson County Groundwater Conservation District voted unanimously to allow oilman and land baron Dan Allen Hughes to drill into a desert aquifer near Van Horn and use a 60-mile pipeline to deliver the water to the hydraulic fracturing operators. "We've dug our heels in for six months," said Blaine Saathoff, the effort's chief operations officer and a petroleum engineer for Dan A. Hughes Co. "We're very excited." Ranchers, farmers, residents and environmentalists packed a June hearing in protest, sent the district dozens of letters, and again argued on Wednesday that the project could steal water from cattle and crops, or dry up the famous spring-fed pool at nearby Balmorhea State Park. "This is a big deal," said Mark Brown, a local landowner and land attorney from San Angelo who attended the meeting. "You're making decisions that affect millions of dollars." Others have promised to file suit to stop Hughes. More for you As the oil patch demands more water, West Texas fights over a... "The precedent that is set is dangerous. We probably can't let that stand," said local rancher and conservationist Bill Addington. "We're looking at options." Hughes' project, called Agua Grande, is likely just the start of the fight over West Texas water. Several companies see a new market in the Permian, where water use in hydraulic fracturing operations has risen six-fold since the start of the shale oil revolution, from more than 5 billion gallons in 2011 to almost 30 billion last year. Energy research firm IHS Markit predicts that demand will double again by the end of this year. Hughes, based in San Antonio, runs his father's oil company, Dan A. Hughes Co., which operates all over the world, but largely in South Texas. He is also one of the country's largest landowners, with 390,000 acres in Texas and Montana, including the 140,000-acre Apache Ranch, near Van Horn. Hughes knew he had vast water reserves in the Capitan Reef aquifer under the desert mountains there and, not long ago, asked his staff to investigate ways to make money off the water. In March, Hughes submitted an application to the Culberson County Groundwater Conservation District, asking to drill seven wells on the ranch and pump about 5 million gallons a day. Such activity would not have required a permit just to drill. But Hughes also wants to build a 60-mile pipeline northeast, to the heart of the Permian's Delaware Basin. Twenty oil and gas companies are interested, the application said, including some of the biggest names in the play: Anadarko Petroleum Corp. and EOG Resources, of Houston, and Midland's Concho Resources. Agua Grande argued to the district board that the Capitan Reef did not provide a significant quantity of water to the San Solomon Springs, which feed the Balmorhea State Park pool, and that the company's pumping would not deplete rancher and farmer wells. On Wednesday, the company also promised it would begin a voluntary well monitoring program, to watch aquifer levels. About 50 concerned residents packed the meeting, Saathoff said, and spoke for about an hour. The board deliberated for about an hour and a half. Saathoff said construction will start by year's end, and Agua Grande should be selling water by the second quarter of next year. "We shared concerns of the citizens as well," he said. "We're confident in our hydrology study. What we're planning to withdraw will not adversely affect surrounding landowners. Hopes are high." Jacobs Engineering Group said it's buying Denver's CH2M Hill for $2.85 billion to create one of the world's largest energy engineering firms. Jacobs, which relocated from California to Dallas last year, said the deal aims to form a juggernaut in engineering and construction services for the energy, petrochemical and government sectors. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate DALLAS - Qatar Airways says it is dropping an attempt to buy a big stake in American Airlines, an audacious bid that had received a chilly reception from American. Qatar Airways said Wednesday that the investment no longer meets its objectives. American Airlines said it respected Qatar's decision to withdraw, and added that the turnabout would not make any difference in American's plans. Qatar said in June that it planned to buy an initial stake of up to 4.75 percent of American's stock, but Fort Worth-based American said Qatar's goal was to get a 10 percent stake. It was an odd move. The two airlines are on opposite sides of a nasty fight that has big U.S. carriers complaining that they are unfairly undercut on fares because Qatar and two other fast-growing Middle East airlines get illegal subsidies from their governments. Qatar Airways had said it wanted to be a passive investor and not take an active role in setting strategy at American, the world's biggest airline. But on Wednesday, Qatar said it changed its mind after a review of the deal's finances and American's reaction. American CEO Doug Parker had given a chilly public response to the overture, calling it puzzling and not particularly exciting. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate Twenty-three years after Oasis became one of the biggest bands in the world and eight years after its bitter breakup, former frontman Liam Gallagher is releasing his first solo album. Of "As You Were," set for release Oct. 6, Gallagher figures, "It ain't the best record in the world, it ain't the worst record in the world," which is his way of saying he really likes it. Oasis broke up after the feuding between Liam and his brother Noel became unendurable (the two have still not reconciled). Noel was the first to leave; for years, Liam and the other members carried on as Beady Eye, in a sort of Britpop interregnum, before dissolving in 2014. In May, Liam Gallagher played his first-ever solo show in his hometown of Manchester, England, just a week after the terrorist attack at the Manchester Arena. He returned a few days later to perform Oasis' "Live Forever" with Coldplay at the One Love Manchester concert. Gallagher had colorfully (and unprintably) insulted Coldplay in the past, so this was awkward (other recent targets have included his brother, and One Direction). Gallagher, who plays Lollapalooza in Chicago on Thursday, has a prickly reputation. But in a phone interview from Spain, he was cheerful and profane and seemingly impossible to offend. An edited transcript of that conversation follows, Q: Your first solo show was in Manchester in May, right? A: I think that was a week after that terrorist attack. It was pretty intense. Manchester is always pretty intense, anyway, it's your hometown - but it was a good gig, man. Q: Do you still get nervous before a show like that? A: Not nervous like, "I want me mommy and I want to go home, I wish I'd never bothered with this rock 'n' roll thing." But I get a nervous energy, like, "I just want to go on and get it done and see whether I've still got it," you know what I mean? Q: What was the song writing process like for "As You Were"? A: After Beady Eye split up, I had four years of just sitting around my house doing (nothing). I had a bunch of private stuff going on, I didn't want to make music. I wanted to go away to Spain, buy a house and live there, walk on the beach and get a suntan, eat some nice food, then come up with a plan. I just needed some time out. All of a sudden, I picked a guitar up, and I wrote a song. Q: Do you think you're fundamentally a band person? A: Yeah, without a doubt. I prefer being in a band. I'm liking this at the moment - I've only done eight gigs - but I definitely prefer to be in a band. There's too many solo people, and bands are suffering. There's too many great bands that have split up because somebody's got an ego. Q: In new single "Wall of Glass," you seem to take a gentle dig at One Direction. A: Yeah, I wouldn't say it's a dig. It's about people who are - I don't know. It's not about One Direction. I don't know what it's about. It's not about them. Q: After Beady Eye broke up, it seems like that's when the end of Oasis truly hit you. A: Yeah, that's correct. Beady Eye was like a safety net, I think. After Oasis, we went straight into that, and carried on making music, which was the right thing to do. Going on (is better than) sitting there twiddling your thumbs. Q: Oasis is still huge. You're on the cover of NME all the time. Does that spill over into success for your solo stuff? A: Yeah, but that's the same for everyone. It's the same for Paul McCartney, it's the same for Ray Davies. Oasis is a big thing, and it seems to get bigger and bigger. I'm not hiding away from it. It's like, listen, I was in Oasis, I still feel Oasis, the first thing that comes out of people's heads when they meet me is Oasis. I'm proud of the fact that I was in Oasis. Q: You could discover a cure for cancer, but if you died tomorrow, the first line of your obituary would still mention your brother. A: I love my brother, I just don't get on with him. I'm very proud of what me and my brother did, without a doubt. Q: What do you do at Christmas? A: Well, I eat food, I open presents Q: No, who has custody of your mom at Christmas? A: It depends on the kids. My kids are all grown up now. I don't say, "Well, she's mine this year." She goes where she goes. She didn't come to see any of us last year, so there you go. She went out with her sister, she'd had enough of us. Q: How was the One Love concert? A: It was a no-brainer, we had to do it. That's me home, and I've got family and friends in Manchester. It had to be done. Q: Did Chris Martin know that you'd said vaguely insulting things about him in the past? A: Oh, yeah. When I met him backstage, I said, "Listen, I'm really sorry about all (that), I'll pack it in." He went, "No, no, no carry on. We like it." Q: There have probably been people over the years who haven't had as good a reaction to things you've said. A: Yeah, but listen, man, I don't wish anyone any harm. It's just banter. I can take it, and people shouldn't dish it out if they can't take it. I don't mean any real harm, just having a laugh. A few days ago, David asked if I thought his symptoms were staying the same or getting worse. Not sure what to say do I tell him the truth? do I lie? I asked him what he thought. He said he wasn't sure. I asked him if he needed me to pack him lunch for the office. He said, "Why would I be going to the office ... it's Sunday." "No," I gently reminded him, "it's Tuesday." And so it progresses. Slowly, but steadily and relentlessly. He used to travel a lot. We used to travel a lot. No more. He traveled a lot for work, to the UK and Scandinavia mostly. He traveled for school, going to Japan one year for a summer law program. While there he wandered some of Osaka's "meaner" streets and got promptly lost. But in the most David of ways, he encountered a group of Yakuza who took him under their wing and gave him food and drink, after which one member showed him the way back to his dorm. That is, or was, very David. WATCHING DAVID DISAPPEAR: It's going to be tough. Far tougher, I know, than I can even imagine. We traveled to experience the world. In Burkina Faso, we spent the night in a Gurunsi village, sleeping on the roof of an elaborately painted house. In neighboring Mali, we trekked to visit the Dogon people, and then rode deep into the Sahara to Timbuktu, armed guards protecting us from Tuareg raiders. In Papua New Guinea we attended the Mt. Hagen Festival and stayed up one night discussing climate change with brightly painted tribesmen in a hut lit only by a kerosene lamps. We went to Vietnam. And Ethiopia. And India. David loves India. We didn't, however, go to Europe. We figured we would do the most demanding places first, while we could, and save the continent for when we were older. That's not going to be happen. Dennis Abrams Soon after we received the diagnosis of early onset dementia, I took David up to Azle to visit his twin brother and his family. We decided that flying from Hobby to Love Field would be the easiest way to get him there. In that we were mistaken. It might have just been too much for him to take in. This man, who has racked up countless miles flying all over the world was thrown off by TSA precheck. And more. He's unsteady on his feet and uses a cane, so I'd arranged for us to preboard. Next to our gate, there was a small storage area where wheelchairs are until needed. He was certain that that was where, given his disabled priority seating, he needed to sit until we boarded. It took several minutes to gently convince him otherwise. Waiting to board, something we'd done together countless times, was another hurdle. Each time a flight to Dallas was announced, he thought it was ours, and when I assured him that it wasn't, he panicked. "How do you know?" he asked me. "They said Dallas! How do you know we're at the right gate?" "Trust me," I told him. "I know." "But how does anyone know that they're at the right gate," he asked. The visit itself went well. While it was clear that something within him was changing, he joined in conversations, laughed, went on a boat ride and enjoyed himself. There were long stretches when it was possible to forget his diagnosis. But when we flew home, the airport was just as difficult for him as before. Maybe even more so. Determining where he is, or maybe who he is, at any given moment is a challenge. A few days later, I got a call from him from his office. "Do we have anything planned for the next week or so?" he asked. "You have a doctor's appointment tomorrow, but other than that, no. Why?" Dennis Abrams He then informed me he had made reservations to go to Budapest. For a week. By himself. Deep breath. Where the idea to go to Budapest came from, I have no idea. It wasn't a place he'd ever mentioned wanting to go to. It wasn't, as far as I knew, even on his bucket list. It seemed, and still seems, so totally and completely random. And I didn't know how to handle it. Or even what to say. Obviously, there was no way he could go. If he could barely handle Hobby, how could he possibly travel to Budapest? Would he find the right gate? Get through passport control? Navigate around a foreign city with a language he would never be able to decipher? I gently asked him if he thought it was a good idea. I reminded him that he had been worried about money. I asked him to think about it for a while and told him I'd try and find him a better deal. Then, very carefully, I asked if he'd put anything on his credit card. He responded with a difficult-to-read "no" and hung up. He hasn't mentioned it since. Has he forgotten about it? Has he given up on the idea? Should I even ask him about it? I feel terrible about the whole thing. Part of me says I should take him myself; the other part knows I simply can't do it. I know myself too well; I don't have the patience needed to do it. The bottom line is he's not going to get to go to Budapest. And I've got one more thing to feel sad and bad and guilty about. Dennis Abrams writes restaurant reviews, journalism, and children's books. Bookmark Gray Matters. It seemed, and still seems, so totally and completely random. Egypt and Russia have managed to broker a truce between Syrian regime forces and moderate opposition forces in the northern part of Homs province in Syria, starting from Thursday, Egyptian state news agency MENA declared. According to MENA, this is the second time in less than two weeks that Egypt and Russia have managed to broker a truce. MENA added that that truce was reached after a series of talks between Russian officials and moderate Syrian factions in Cairo that ended successfully on Monday. Russias defence ministry said in an official statement on Thursday that the truce would start that afternoon in 84 towns and villages in northern Homs, an area with a population of 147,000. The Russian ministry said that the truce would not include Daesh or Al-Nusra militant groups or their affiliates. Search Keywords: Short link: Texas has one of the highest maternal mortality rates in the country. Between 2010 and 2012, the rate doubled. And the rate in Texas between 2012 and 2014 remained high, with approximately 35 maternal deaths per 100,000 live births. Texas' rates are about seven times greater than in Canada and European countries. As a result, the Texas Legislature established the Maternal Mortality and Morbidity Task Force in 2013. This 15-member task force of mostly physicians and healthcare experts set out to find out why pregnancy-related deaths have skyrocketed and what can be done to decrease them. In a July 2016 report, the task force indicated that the most common causes of maternal death were cardiac events, overdose from illicit drugs (mostly opioids) and hypertensive disorders. Though cardiac events and hypertensive disorders are not surprising, it was surprising to see the opioid epidemic is now one of the leading causes of pregnancy-related deaths. The task force also found that black women were three times more likely to suffer from maternal mortalities. "I was mortified," said Rep. Shawn Thierry (D-Houston) when she read the report. "And no one was doing anything to figure out why black women were more likely affected." That's what compelled her to introduce HB 11, the "Texas Mothers Matter" bill. One of the primary directives in this bill is for the task force to prioritize why black women are disproportionately more likely to die. "I was talking to other doctors, ob/gyns, and they didn't know about this statistics," she said. "I spoke to African-American women in the community, and they didn't know." Unfortunately, the health disparity of black women dying disproportionately as a result of pregnancies is nothing new. The risk of maternal mortality in black women has been 3 times to 4 times higher in the United States for the past six decades. "There are likely multiple factors, and more detailed reviews are needed to figure out why," said Dr. Lisa Hollier. She is a maternal and fetal medicine physician at Baylor College of Medicine, and she is the chair of the task force. BEHROUZ ZAND: How obesity is shrinking our lives in Texas Black women are more likely to have preexisting medical conditions, such as high blood pressure, diabetes or obesity. They are also less likely to begin prenatal care in the first trimester and less likely to receive adequate care. They also have high rates of being uninsured and having access to health care. One significant issue in the United States that especially among African Americans and Hispanics is that access and affordability to health care are abysmal. THE UNINSURED rates around the country have improved significantly since the Affordable Care Act (ACA). But Texas continues to have the largest uninsured rate in the country. One major reason why Texas did not have a more significant decrease in the uninsured population, from 23 percent to 18 percent, was because the legislature refused Medicaid expansion. That has been costly. If Texas were to expand Medicaid, it would provide coverage to more than one million uninsured Texans. But the state legislature rejected billions of dollars in federal aid to expand Medicaid, calling the program "broken." Now, the state is asking the White House to renew a deal that brought in more than $6 billion a year under Medicaid to help the poor. More than half of all Texas women giving birth are covered under Medicaid. Medicaid allows low-income women to receive coverage when they become pregnant, but they lose their coverage 60 days after delivery. And that loss is significant because the task force found that the majority of maternal deaths occurred between 42 days to 52 weeks after delivery. If Texas accepted Medicaid expansion, though, then all low-income women would be covered regardless of the need to become pregnant or the 60-day cutoff afterward. Importantly, many mothers at risk of dying after the 60-day cutoff would continue to have access to their health care under Medicaid. Interestingly, most of the states that have refused expansion have been in the South the very places where mortality rates and uninsured rates are the highest. The states that have accepted expansion have seen positive impacts. They have seen improved access to healthcare, affordability and financial security among their low-income population. Medicaid expansion has also significantly helped reduce the gap of racial disparities. It has also improved treatment for substance use disorders. Medicaid's improved access to the life-saving drug Naloxone has been a major player in reversing opioid-related overdoses. And it has also improved mortality rates. In a long-term study of expansion in New York, Arizona, and Maine, researchers found increased coverage of care from Medicaid expansion resulted in a 6 percent decrease in mortality rates. And in 2013, the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology (ACOG) produced a committee opinion that increasing access to healthcare for women through Medicaid expansion would allow for better continuity of care, decrease complication rates from pregnancies and enable women to seek appropriate medical help when needed. SO THE Texas maternal task force recommended increasing access for women through the first year after delivery and throughout their reproductive lives to improve maternal health. They also stated that increasing Medicaid coverage to one year after birth would reduce costs in the Medicaid program by decreasing unintended pregnancies, managing chronic diseases like high blood pressure or mental health illness like depression and prevent its complications. GRAY MATTERS: Two Texas counties. In one, you'll live almost a decade longer. But the state of Texas has taken a different approach. In 2016, Texas launched a state-run program called Healthy Texas Women. This program provides some limited care for low-income women. The funds came after the State Legislation cut two-thirds of the family planning budget and stopped funding Planned Parenthood in 2011. As the state of Texas has struggled with having the highest uninsured rates and one of the highest maternal mortality rates in the developed world, state lawmakers like Rep. Thierry are continuing to push fellow lawmakers to put the maternal health and disparities especially among black women as a high priority. In the meantime, as we wait to see whether the task force gets an extension to 2023 so it can complete their findings and recommendations, Texas has the opportunity for another step in the right direction in women's health by accepting the Medicaid expansion. Dr. Behrouz Zand (@Behrouz_Zand) is Assistant Professor in the Department of Gynecologic Oncology at MD Anderson Cancer Center. He also blogs about the health care system, patient experiences and population health. Bookmark Gray Matters. The states that have accepted it have seen positive impacts. A 22-year-old hacker who helped slow the spread of the WannaCry global computer virus in May has been arrested by U.S. officials and charged with participating in a scheme to spread a different type of malware - one that aimed to collect victims' financial data, according to a federal indictment unsealed Wednesday. The six-count indictment claims that Marcus Hutchins, a British man who goes by the Twitter handle @Malwaretech, violated U.S. computer-related fraud laws when he created and conspired to sell a "banking trojan" known as "Kronos" online. The indictment was unsealed when Hutchins was arrested and is unrelated to WannaCry, according to the Justice Department. Reports that the Justice Department is poised to investigate and potentially litigate race-based affirmative action at colleges and universities shocked many higher education observers - including Edward Blum, who leads two national organizations stringently opposed to the practice. Blum, who backed the Sugar Land student Abigail Fisher in her Supreme Court case against the University of Texas at Austin last summer, now "welcomes" support from students, advocacy groups and, yes, the federal agency. "If the decision (is) made to help Students for Fair Admissions in (its) cases," he said, "we would be greatly delighted." The news reports, which a federal official challenged Wednesday, kicked up again the dust that had settled beneath last summer's Fisher v. UT-Austin ruling which found the university's affirmative action policies constitutional. The agency's civil rights division, The New York Times reported this week, is recruiting lawyers for the directive, which it said relates to race-based discrimination against white applicants in college and university admissions. A sweeping directive as described by the Times could bring new legislation against public and private colleges and universities that consider an applicant's race when they consider which lucky students to accept, legal experts said Wednesday. Attorneys described possible ways that such a directive could play out and said, if the reports are confirmed, that elite universities that consider race in admissions should begin collecting data on their admissions policies, anticipating potential challenges. 'Intentional discrimination' Sarah Isgur Flores, the Department of Justice's spokeswoman, said late Wednesday that the job posting described by The Times sought volunteers to investigate an administrative complaint that the Obama administration left unresolved. The Times, quoting an obtained document, said the department sought lawyers to work on "investigations and possible litigation related to intentional race-based discrimination in college and university admissions." "This Department of Justice has not received or issued any directive, memorandum, initiative or policy related to university admissions in general," Flores said in a statement, calling the Times' story inaccurate. The Times' obtained document implied that the federal government could investigate campuses that consider applicants' race and then challenge the legality of specific policies in the courts, said Susan Sturm, a Columbia Law School professor specializing in higher education and institutional and social change. Considering race in admissions to recruit a diverse student body, Sturm said, is "justified constitutionally." Still, she said, "the risk is that colleges and universities will cave into a policy that threatens to shut down lawful efforts (toward) diversity." If a broader investigation were to proceed, it would be sure to be divisive in Texas, home to the nation's most recent large-scale affirmative action fight. Abigail Fisher, the white Sugar Land student backed by Blum who sued UT-Austin after she was denied admission in 2008, argued that the university's decision to admit non-white students with worse grades than hers violated the 14th Amendment. UT-Austin won that decision 4-3 last summer. Mishell Kneeland, an assistant attorney general working for UT-Austin on the Fisher v. Texas case in 2008, said she would expect the Supreme Court's new composition to side 5-4 in favor of affirmative action being constitutional, should litigation rise to that stage. Justice Elena Kagan, who recused herself in the Fisher case, would likely support affirmative action policies, and Justice Neil Gorsuch would likely oppose them, she said. Still, she said, that's no assurance for universities who may be targets of future investigations. "I can assume right now all of the admissions people at these schools are looking at (their policies) and trying to figure out if they could possibly be a target," said Kneeland, a partner at Culhane Meadows PLLC. Reports of this new directive come shortly after Blum's group Students for Fair Admissions filed a new lawsuit in Travis County District Court against UT-Austin, alleging that its use of race in admissions violates the Texas Constitution. UT-Austin slammed the new suit as a "retread" of prior litigation, a characterization Blum rejects. 'Wait a few years' UT-Austin president Gregory Fenves said earlier this week that the university still "believes in and will defend" its admissions processes, responding to the new lawsuit. He said a diverse campus is "essential" to prepare students to work in a global business environment. UT-Austin spokesman J.B. Bird said in an email Wednesday that the university will "closely review any DOJ policies as they are released." Attorneys said Wednesday that they believe UT-Austin is likely protected from future litigation, given the recent Fisher ruling. "If you go after a university that's passed muster," Kneeland said, "I would wait a few years." Common practice Colleges that weigh race in admissions often say that it's just one of many things they consider when making the decision on whether to admit an applicant. Sturm said race-based affirmative action policies generally are in practice at elite schools with low acceptance rates. Rice University spokesman B.J. Almond declined to comment on Wednesday, but the university does consider race in its admissions processes. The University of Houston does not, spokesman Mike Rosen said in an email. UH's decisions ride on applicants' test scores and class rank. Neither does Texas A&M University, spokeswoman Amy Smith said, adding that the school has bolstered outreach to diverse prospective students to urge them to apply. Aggies set up regional advisers from El Paso to Dallas to the Rio Grande Valley to meet with prospective students and answer any questions. "If this is a place that is of interest," she said, "we certainly want to make sure we welcome people of all backgrounds." Michael Olivas, a law professor at the University of Houston who specializes in higher education law, said many campuses are "desperate for students" and aren't weighing race as they consider who to accept. For months after the Fisher ruling, conversation about affirmative action at UT-Austin died down. But in the fall semester, a campus protest brought forward students' intense emotions on the topic. Conservative prospects UT-Austin's chapter of the Young Conservatives of Texas held an "affirmative action bake sale" on the campus' West Mall, charging different prices for goods depending on the race and gender of each customer. Hundreds of protesters came to the scene, where groups of students yelled viscerally at one another. After the Fisher ruling, Gregory Vincent, UT-Austin's former vice president for diversity and community engagement, recalled feeling that affirmative action was well litigated, from the 2003 case Grutter v. Bollinger to the present. And admissions professionals at private and public universities had "faithfully" followed the mandate from that 2003 case, to use race as just one factor among many and to narrowly tailor their policies. Still, Vincent, who is now the president of Hobart and William Smith Colleges in New York, recalled saying after the ruling, "elections have consequences." "The one thing I did mention was if the composition of the court changed dramatically," he said, "the door could be opened again." This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate KABUL, Afghanistan - A suicide bombing attack on a NATO convoy in southern Afghanistan on Wednesday left two American service members dead, a Pentagon spokesman said, despite repeated refusals by the U.S. military in Afghanistan to say whether there were any deaths in the assault claimed by the Taliban. Navy Capt. Jeff Davis confirmed the casualties in the attack near Kandahar city. The Pentagon's decision to release the figures seemed to contradict orders issued two months ago by Army Gen. John Nicholson, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, barring information about U.S. combat deaths until days after the incident. There was no information on the number of troops wounded. U.S. military officials in Afghanistan refused to give any information about casualties, even after the Pentagon released the casualty figures. Nicholson's orders stifling information from the U.S. military in Afghanistan was met with opposition from within the Pentagon, where officials reportedly tried to resolve the impasse. However, the decision by the Pentagon to release Wednesday's casualty figures would seem to indicate that the issue has gone unresolved two months into the order. Nicholson said the reason for the delay was to allow time for notification of family. Yet it upends Pentagon practice since the Vietnam era, and gives the public less information and transparency into a war that has raged for 16 years, resulting in thousands of deaths and injuries. The Taliban quickly took responsibility for the attack, and a spokesman for the insurgents said the bombing allegedly killed 15 soldiers but the Taliban routinely exaggerate their gains and casualty figures. The service members were part of an international force referred to as the Train, Advise and Assist Command south, a reference to their location in the country. Five other countries besides the United States are stationed in the south - Australia, Germany, Bulgaria, Poland and Romania, said U.S. military spokesman in Afghanistan Lt. Damien E. Horvath. Also on Wednesday the Taliban ambushed and killed Jaghatu District Gov. Manzur Hussain and a passenger in his car, Ghazni provincial police chief Mohammad Mustafa Mayar said. The Taliban have stepped up their attacks in recent weeks hitting district headquarters, government officials and Afghan National Security Forces with increasing frequency. Egypts army chief of staff, Lieutenant General Mahmoud Hegazy, held meetings with rival Libyan delegations in Cairo this week to discuss reconciliation, the official military spokesman announced on Thursday. Hegazy, the head of the committee assigned to mediate between the Libyan factions in Egypt, met Libyan delegations from the cities of Misurata and Barca, and held talks with them for three days this, according to military spokesman Tamer El-Refai. Hegazy held separate meetings with each delegation, then a joint meeting without pre-conditions with both delegations. The talks were focused on achieving reconciliation and the two delegations agreed on the need for a roadmap to end the current polarisation in the war-torn country. The two delegations also agreed on certain points during the talks, including the unity of Libya, restoring the Libyan state, rejecting foreign intervention in Libyan affairs, establishing a modern democratic state, ending polarisation in the media, and fighting terrorism. Search Keywords: Short link: President Donald Trump and his Attorney General Jeff Sessions have been rallying support for their tough campaign against undocumented immigrants by engaging in fear-mongering about a Latino street gang called MS-13. It's the usual cheap politics we've come to expect from this White House, but they don't seem to realize the history of MS-13 is a pretty good argument against their plan to ship back as many of the undocumented as they can. MS-13 started in Los Angeles in the 1980s among Salvadorans fleeing their country's civil war. It and other gangs created a big crime wave which prompted a public outcry, a toughening of immigration laws and in 1996, under President Bill Clinton, the shipping home of thousands of El Salvadorans, many of them gang members. The tiny, impoverished country, still recovering from its long civil war, was unprepared for the onslaught of criminals, so MS-13 blossomed and spread into Honduras and Guatemala where, like El Salvador, law enforcement and legal institutions were too weak to stop them. It's no coincidence that in recent years these three countries, known jointly as the Northern Triangle, have been among the world's most violent, which is a primary reason for the ongoing Central American diaspora to the U.S. They are only moderately better prepared now for the return of more criminals - or even noncriminals - than they were 20 years ago. Yet, here we are with Trump and Sessions calling for shipping back members of a group the president recently called "animals" after graphically describing their bloody crimes. "We're getting them out. They're going to jails and then they're going back to their country. Or they're going back to their country, period," Trump said in a speech last week to police and border agents. His comments also included a plug for his proposed $30 billion wall along the U.S.-Mexico border. We get it, of course - fear-mongering can be a useful political tool. But their "toss 'em out, wall 'em off" strategy will accomplish little unless they combine it with a wise, well-funded program to improve the countries people are fleeing. Unfortunately, there's little to suggest that that's part of their plans. After unaccompanied children from Honduras and Guatemala began flooding into southern Texas three years ago, then-President Barack Obama asked for $1 billion in fiscal 2016 to improve education, economic opportunities and law enforcement in the Northern Triangle so people could stay home. Congress appropriated $750 million. That number fell to $655 million in fiscal 2017 and unfortunately Trump has proposed just $460 million for fiscal 2018, virtually all of it for law enforcement and military, not social improvement. Congress needs to restore the social budget because if you're planning to deport a bunch of criminals back to homelands with weak institutions and economies, it makes no sense to cut aid aimed at strengthening those institutions. The Northern Triangle countries are still paying the price for the U.S. decision 20 years ago to ship gang members home. It would be ridiculous to repeat that mistake, yet that is where we're headed. We need to help our southern neighbors address the problems that drive undocumented immigrants to our country or those immigrants will continue to come, wall or no wall, because, very simply, desperation knows no boundaries. In a recent op-ed for the Washington Examiner, Gov. Greg Abbott attacks Democratic Party efforts to combat partisan gerrymandering, the practice of drawing electoral district maps that favor one party over another. He warns of a nefarious conspiracy masterminded by billionaire investor George Soros and U.S. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi to capture the redistricting process and thwart the will of the people by redrawing the electoral maps in their favor. It sounds terrifying, but here's the kicker: Abbott is trying to scare people by accusing Democrats of doing what Republicans have already done! The governor's Orwellian cynicism boggles the mind. At the end of the last decade, the Republican Party launched project REDMAP, a legal and not-at-all secret plan to spend money on state races in order to take control of state governments and thereby control the process of drawing new electoral district maps. They succeeded beyond their wildest dreams, and proceeded to draw maps that gave ridiculously disproportionate power to the Republican Party. For example: in 2012, the popular vote split in Pennsylvania was 49 percent Republican to 50 percent Democrat, but despite receiving less than a bare majority, the Republicans sent 13 congressional representatives to Washington to the Democrats' five. A recent report by the Brennan Center estimates that upward of two-thirds of the current Republican majority in Congress is due to the GOP's manipulation of electoral district maps. Naturally, then-Texas Attorney General Abbott was a big fan of project REDMAP, which is what makes his current attack so breathtakingly cynical. In the Examiner commentary, Abbott goes on to threaten his supporters with the specter of the California-izing of Texas. He writes, "Those winning conservative economic policies are threatened by the Democrats' plan to re-engineer Texas' district maps to make them look like California's maps." He presents the California maps as the unholy spawn of Pelosi and Soros. Too bad for Abbott that nothing could be farther from the truth, and we thank him for the opportunity to point that out. Here is how the awful California system works. An independent commission of five Democrats, five Republicans and four independents is chosen by a nonpartisan state agency (the Bureau of State Audits) from citizen applicants from all over the state. The commission is tasked to draw district maps according to the following set of ranked priorities: 1. Districts must comply with the constitutional "one person, one vote" requirement. 2. Districts must comply with the voting rights act. 3. Districts must be contiguous, meaning they must be all of one piece. 4. Districts must preserve geographic integrity, meaning that they divide cities, counties, and communities of interest as little as possible. 5. Districts should be as compact as possible, preventing freakish districts with long, contorted boundaries. 6. Districts should be nested, meaning that larger districts, like state Senate districts, should be composed of smaller districts, like state House districts. Does that sound like an awful conspiracy against democracy to you? To us, it sounds like the opposite. Currently, our elected officials draw their own electoral district boundaries; the foxes aren't just guarding the henhouse, they're building it. Not surprisingly, our political foxes, Democrat and Republican alike, have abused this power for decades, stealing power for themselves and punishing their enemies. A nonpartisan, independent commission puts a stop to that, creating fair districts that faithfully represent people and lead to fairer elections. Here's something the governor doesn't say: Republicans supported the creation of the independent redistricting commission, while the Democrats and the dreaded Pelosi opposed it. Parties and politicians in power always try to retain control over electoral maps, which is why we must take it away from them. Hebert is a Ph.D. physicist and director of Indivisible TX Redistricting, a statewide group dedicated to ending partisan gerrymandering and bringing nonpartisan, independent redistricting to Texas. Firefighters from four area volunteer departments fought a long but unsuccessful battle against a blaze that destroyed a house early Thursday morning on Indiana Road in Houston. Houston Rural Fire Department Chief Don Gaston said a call about the fire was received at 12:02 a.m. Firefighters remained all night and into the daylight hours in the morning. With no water supply in the area, four tanker trucks were brought to the scene, with Licking bringing two and Houston Rural and Raymondville each bringing one. Houston Rural, Licking and Raymondville each brought pumper trucks. Gaston said fire crews thought they had beaten the blaze around 5:30 a.m. We thought we had the house saved, Gaston said, but fire came up through a floor, and we realized we were losing the battle. Gaston said no one was present in the single-story home owned by Jeremy and Shawna Foster, but their son was staying in living quarters in a large adjacent shop building and was alerted to the fire by a barking dog. Gaston said the blaze apparently began in the kitchen area on the north end of the home, but the cause wasnt known. Houston Rural firefighter Jeremy St. John sprays water onto a burning house early Thursday morning on Indiana Road in Houston. Many household items were removed before being burned, but a late model Chevrolet pickup parked in the garage was destroyed. The pickups gas tank exploded, Gaston said, and there were a couple of explosions inside the house. I guess he had a lot of gun shells in there. Vinyl siding on the shop building sustained major damage, but firefighters prevented the structure from being burned. Theres not much worse than a big fire, Gaston said. 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. The UN Security Council unanimously adopted a resolution on Wednesday aimed at curbing the supply of weapons to terrorists by urging countries to take legal action against suppliers and to trace small and light arms. The council "strongly condemned" the continued flow of weapons, military equipment, drones and improvised explosive devices to Daesh, Al Qaeda and their affiliates as well as illegal armed groups and criminals. The resolution, sponsored by Egypt, urges the UN's 193 member states to "to prevent and disrupt procurement networks for weapons" and ensure "taking appropriate legal actions against those who are knowingly engaged in providing terrorists with weapons." Egypt is the current representative of Arab countries on the UN Security Council. Member states were also encouraged, according to the resolution, to take procedures of marking and tracing small arms and light weapons to improve their traceability and to boost their judicial and border-control procedures. "This is the first resolution of its kind addressing in detail how to prevent terrorists from acquiring weapons," Egypt's ambassador to the UN, Amr Abdellatif Aboulatta, who is also chair of the council's counter-terrorism committee, told council members. "Arming of terrorists and terrorist organisations is extremely dangerous; [it] is a crime that is no less heinous than the terrorist act itself, Aboulatta was quoted as saying by a foreign ministry statement. He said the resolution also urges the prevention of smuggling of arms to terrorists in conflict zones, strengthening cooperation to prevent terrorists from acquiring weapons through the internet and social media, and bolstering international judicial cooperation and law enforcement in relation to the issue. The deputy director of the counter-terrorism councils executive directorate, Weixiong Chen, said preventing and eliminating the supply of weapons to terrorists is a "complex task." But please rest assured that CTED that [the Counter-Terrorism Committee Executive Directorate] will continue to strengthen its engagement with its UN and international and regional partners, in accordance with the relevant Council resolutions, to assist Member States to deny terrorists access to weapons, he said, according to the UN website. Yury Fedotov, the executive director of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) emphasised the importance of cross-border cooperation. Speaking via video-teleconference from Vienna, Fedotov told the council about challenges in detecting and prosecuting illicit weapon traffickers, including "inadequate regulatory environments and data collection; lack of specialised skills and equipment; and lack of coordination within and between countries and regions." "We need to further strengthen cross-border partnerships and operational responses, promote the involvement of diverse stakeholders, including the private sector, and step up tailored assistance to address gaps in capacity, he said. Emmanuel Roux, terpol's special representative, highlighted the importance of tracing weapons back to their sources. Traditionally, investigations would end at this point, with the seizure of a firearm. Interpol suggests that the recovery of a weapon is just the beginning, he said. He called for strengthening and integrating border management to "prevent the mobility of the individuals using weapons, such as foreign terrorist fighters." Search Keywords: Short link: The company which has four offices across the country is thought to be the first law firm in New Zealand to be formally recognised for its breastfeeding-friendly environment. With World Breast Feeding Week currently underway, the Canterbury Breastfeeding Advocacy Service also called on other employers to follow in the footsteps of Anderson Lloyd. Breastfeeding-supportive businesses are more likely to retain their valuable and experienced staff, and enabling working women to breastfeed is a win-win situation that builds loyal employees, as well as supporting infant and mother health and wellbeing, the group said in a statement. Getty Images/Stocktrek Colonel Richard Kemp was Commander of British Forces in Afghanistan and a former head of the international terrorist team at the Cabinet Office so no one can argue with his military pedigree - but that's no guarantee of good sense. I read with disbelief an article he wrote in The Times, suggesting that recruiting more Muslims into the police and armed forces is endangering this country. Colonel Kemp's argument is that Islamic State is determined to infiltrate our forces and seems to suggest that British Muslims will be the enemy within, comparing them to Afghan police and troops who attacked our forces in 99 "green on blue" attacks. Advertisement "The understandable drive by the armed forces and police to recruit more Muslims, and a less understandable concern for ticking the politically correct box over operational effectiveness, combine into an unprecedented danger," he wrote. Muslims are not welcome in the British army - that's the message he seems to be sending out. If you're a Muslim you might be a terrorist, a "sleeper" radicalized online and recruited by Isis to murder members of the Royal Family or members of the Cabinet. Can you imagine anything more offensive to a young Muslim considering joining the British armed forces than being branded a potential terrorist simply because of their religion? In his speech to last year's Conservative Party conference, Defence Secretary Michael Fallon said he wanted one in every ten new recruits to come from ethnic minorities. How will we ever achieve that goal if a senior military figure like Colonel Kemp tarnishes all Muslims by suggesting it is too dangerous to recruit them? Advertisement The British army needs more cultural intelligence. Whether we are fighting wars in the Middle East, or trying to keep the peace there, we need much greater diversity in our armed forces. But you will never persuade more Muslims to join the armed forces if they think they are going to be stigmatised. It is already difficult enough to break down barriers and present the armed forces in a positive light; if young Muslims think they have to prove to their commanding officers they are not potential terrorists, rather than operating on the assumption that being Muslim doesn't automatically make them a terrorist suspect, we will never change the face of our armed forces. I served in the Territorial Army and it changed my life. It challenged my preconceived ideas about society and grounded my identity as British; I will forever be grateful for the discipline, teamwork and life skills I learnt in the TA. I would love more young Muslims to go through the same experience as I did, but negative messages and smears from influential military figures will prevent this happening. The armed forces need to think about how they can market themselves to Muslim communities. They need to hold open days at barracks and go into schools, trying to find a way of connecting with young Muslims and counter-acting the negative propaganda too many are fed through social media. As Theresa May repeatedly droned on about 'strong and stable leadership' during the UK's recent general election campaign, she was doing what all politicians and many business leaders are taught - pick a message and find every opportunity to repeat it. Even if people don't agree at first, at some unconscious level they will start to believe it. Except that in this case the broken record technique really did sound as irritating as a broken record. Contrast May's dry style with the way that Jeremy Corbyn elicited an appreciative laugh when he simply said 'because we're not going to do it,' when asked why abolishing the monarchy was not in the Labour Party manifesto. Advertisement Corbyn was able to connect with his audience because they felt he was being real. Even though Corbyn's policies don't appeal to many people (after all, he still lost the election) the feeling was that Corbyn had the momentum. The electorate felt the power of connection, translated that to authenticity and from there to votes. What is Authenticity, anyway? Connecting with others and a sense of authenticity are powerfully correlated. Intuitively this makes sense. If you are being authentic, people will connect, right? Actually, the opposite is true. Behaviour that builds connection is what generates the sense of authenticity, even if the 'authentic' person does not normally behave this way. Research shows that introverts who act in an extraverted manner at a party feel like they are showing their true self. People who saw themselves as careless or rude nonetheless felt more authentic when they were being considerate or polite. Advertisement It was not 'being themselves' that generated authenticity, but building connection. So, no wonder May's decision not to take part in debates before the election, or her unwillingness to meet victims of the Grenfell Tower fire generated such scorn. Her aloofness was the opposite of connection. Was she more interested in self-protection than in her electorate or standing with the Grenfell survivors? To have any chance of succeeding as Prime Minister, May needs to go beyond her habitual diligent, back office control-freakery, into a way of operating that is deeply uncomfortable - listening and hearing the views and criticisms that will create better policy. In other words, she needs to go beyond just being herself. Wanting to be heard Human beings have a strong need to be heard and understood. When we are unheard, however, we react. Young people who felt they had been ignored by the Brexit vote and disadvantaged by tuition fees treated Corbyn as a rock star when he went on stage at Glastonbury. The Brexit vote itself was swung by disaffected voters who had felt ignored by the London-based middle-classes for decades. And a New York based, spoilt brat of a billionaire was elected as US President because working class, mid-western Americans felt he heard and understood them, after years of being ignored, or worse, dismissed and mocked by the liberal elite. The wave of right-wing parties gaining ground across Europe is a sign of people insisting they cannot be ignored. Though politics seems unpredictable, we have seen these patterns before. Here we are, less than ten years from a global financial crash, where people still feel worse off than they remember being not so long ago. These are the times that governments are overthrown. We've seen it in the French Revolution, the Russian Revolutions and the rise of the Nazi party. The results are not always bad - economic pressure was one of the factors that led to the ending of apartheid in South Africa - but it does always involve uncertainty and instability as people demand change. Advertisement The Need for Connection What is true for countries is also true for individuals. We all need to have people who hear and understand us. We all need to feel trusted, accepted and loved. We can cope with not always getting our own way, if we feel that we have been heard and not ignored. In fact, we can even cope with not being heard by everyone, if we have good quality relationships where we are heard. With relationships like this, we can say tough things to one another, as well as having fun and enjoying one another's company. Unfortunately, outsiders often cope with being different, and the fear of rejection that comes with it, by hiding what they really think or feel. Separating ourselves in this way reinforces the very alienation we fear most. Interactions with others become either more shallow or more angry - like a Trump tweet but with fewer followers. Brene Brown, researcher into shame, vulnerability and connection, has shown that it is the willingness to be vulnerable with others that builds connection and the very deep relationships that we crave. We are never the only one who has felt a certain way. However ashamed we are, we can immunise ourselves against the destructive effects of our negative feelings by finding people with whom we can be open with. So, here are some ways to build connection, to build your own sense of authenticity and stop hiding who you are (even if you are not a politician!): Advertisement 1.Make it fun. Even serious things don't have to be heavy. Do something you both enjoy - something that will make you laugh together. 2.Make it creative. Creativity allows us to express things in appealing ways that can be less confrontative and more emotive. Try painting, poetry, pottery with others. 3.Learn to listen and ask good questions. People connect to you if you let them express themselves first. 4.Empathise even if you don't agree. Remember, we all want to be understood, even if we don't always get our own way. 5.Assume you will succeed. Allow the possibility that an encounter might go better than you fear. My favourite bit in Winnie-the-Pooh is where Piglet says 'Supposing a tree fell down, Pooh, when we were underneath it?' and is comforted when Pooh thinks carefully then says 'Supposing it didn't?' Advertisement 6.Plan for failure. What is the worst that would happen, and what how would you cope if it did? Remember that the most painful conversations can often build the most intimacy if you are prepared to handle them sensitively. 7.Practice on smaller things before trying the biggest, hardest conversations. For example, say no to your kids before you say no to your boss (or perhaps that should be the other way round!) 8.Remember what you have in common. There is nobody in the world that you don't share some characteristic with. Start there. 9.Find a cheerleader to support you up front, go with you, or commiserate/celebrate afterwards, so you don't feel alone. 10.Pick your moment. If you are having a conversation you find hard, don't do it when you are angry or upset. Give yourself time to cool down and find another time and place that works better. Advertisement BBC Being recognised as a founder of a pioneering live international telemedicine charity, Arian Teleheal, and the first doctor in the world to perform a live international telemedicine call using augmented reality, from the UK to Afghanistan, could be seen as illogical by any standard. I have overcome almost insurmountable challenges to qualify as a doctor and then to specialise in radiology and to also work as a senior emergency medicine doctor in England. I was born in Kabul, Afghanistan, during the Soviet-Afghan conflict. Aged five, my family fled to Pakistan, being attacked by Russian helicopter gunships as we crossed the mountains. I spent the next three years in a single room in a refugee camp with my family of 10, nearly dying several times after contracting TB, malaria and suffering from famine. Whilst being treated by my doctor, I developed my first vision: to become a doctor so that I could help my family members and other people around me who were suffering. Advertisement My family then returned to Kabul where I lived the rest of my childhood in civil war without much formal schooling. Days were spent sheltering in cellars hiding from daily rockets and bombs. Despite the unimaginable surroundings, I began reading science and maths books whilst my family moved from house to house to dodge the fighting. I began learning English by tuning the family radio into the World Service after my father had finished listening to Farsi programmes. My family were finally able to have me undertake the journey to safety in the UK in 1999. I arrived in this country aged 15, on my own, knowing no-one, with $100 in my pocket, and speaking very limited English. Living with other Afghan refugees in a London flat, I began studying English in the evening while working in shops during the day. I subsequently achieved five A grades at AS and A-levels and was accepted by four prestigious medical schools, including Cambridge University where I was not able to do my tie for the interview and was helped by another applicant's parent. While studying, I worked as a cleaner, kitchen porter and salesperson to financially support myself, my large family in Afghanistan and my younger brother, who came to the UK in 2001 and is now a dentist. I graduated with honours in neuro-pharmacology science from Cambridge and then completed my clinical studies at Imperial College in London whilst doing a surgical training rotation at Harvard. Advertisement I kept making regular visits to Afghanistan to hold educational sessions, but also kept searching for answers on how to connect Afghanistan and other conflict zones with advanced western healthcare system. Many of my colleagues in the UK were keen to help but it was too dangerous to travel there. Then I had to think outside the box and I came across the telemedicine concept. The way international telemedicine largely exists is through email with static question and answer format, which would not support emergencies or live discussions. So, I created a new live model that uses email, text, voice and video calls on smartphones with no cost. With support and advice from my senior colleagues in the NHS, I then went about resolving numerous challenges, at a national level in Afghanistan, as well as building a network of volunteer doctors. The scheme was allowed to be piloted at five major emergency hospitals in Afghanistan in 2015. The scheme was instantly successful, and is credited by the Afghan health authorities with saving dozens of lives and the local medics found the charity's work to be hugely supportive and educational. Now, Arian Teleheal has a growing network of nearly 100 volunteers from Europe, Canada, America and Australia, covering all specialties and providing healthcare advice and education on a 24/7 basis with a response window of less than four hours in acute cases. It has now been rolled out to all emergency and intensive care departments in Afghanistan as well as to Independent Doctors Association in Aleppo, Northern Syria with planned expansion to African countries and unlimited potential to help millions globally. Advertisement Meanwhile, I will continue to push the boundaries to integrate new technologies into Arian Teleheal. I proved the near future-vision by being the first in the world to do an international telemedicine consultation using augmented reality, in which computer-generated visuals add to real-life images combining healthcare advice and education. I will also be launching an international academy soon to educate, empower and inspire people all around the world. In recognition of our work, I have been given the presidential award in Afghanistan, the Highly Commended Rising Star for leadership category in the National Health Service Journal awards, and named as the NHS England Innovation Fellow. These achievements against incredible odds, are mainly due to a limitless vision combined with courage, focus and hard work. I have also been incredibly lucky to be given all these opportunities in the UK, especially by our amazing NHS, which I value more everyday as I compare it first-hand with other healthcare systems in the world. Our charity enables us to bring global learning and research to the NHS, especially from overseas systems, as well as interesting cases and data. I have always wanted to give back to the NHS on a massive scale. In an ideal world, we'd all plan ahead for later life, both for ourselves and our loved ones. In reality, this isn't always possible and certainly isn't what most of us do. In fact, Anchor's recent research shows only one in nine of us are planning ahead for later life and that number is going down, rather than up - some 22% fewer are planning ahead than this time three years ago. There are a number of reasons for this, but a big one is that many people find the social care system confusing and wrongly assume that all care is paid for by the state. We're living longer, leading to an ageing population that will need more support but, with so much confusion about the basics, how are we going to prepare for this? This confusion and worry about social care provision is even more alarming when you consider the recent news from the sector. The Care Quality Commission report stated that almost a fifth of services are rated as 'requires improvement'. And BBC research showed an alarming shortfall in care home rooms that will leave up to 3,000 older people without the support they need by the end of next year. Advertisement We need a clear vision for the system we want and practical measures to make it happen. It's clear that once the Government returns from summer recess, social care needs to be top of the agenda. All this means that planning ahead sooner is even more important and we must do more to help people and bust some of the myths around care. Anchor's study revealed that at the moment a fifth (22%) of us wrongly believe the state pays entirely for your care needs in later life - with this figure increasing to 33% for those age 16-34. This simply isn't the case - your own assets, including property, are used to pay for residential care until your assets fall below 23,250. If you need care at home, you will be means tested and the pre-election discussions suggested that the Government is looking to include the value of your home, which is currently excluded from these calculations. Where people are thinking about future care, we're grossly underestimating the cost of staying in a care home. In reality, the average annual cost is 31,200 - 36,008 - figures which include all accommodation and living costs, food, laundry and care. Yet more than half of us believe the average social care costs are under 30,000 a year, with a worrying 29% thinking costs are just 20,000 each year. Considering these misconceptions, it's no wonder that just 14% of us are shown to be currently saving for our care needs in later life. Advertisement Even those who know social care costs are paid by the individual are worried about this fact. Our research revealed that the majority of us (72%) worry we will not be able to pay for the cost of our own care and that 68% are concerned about affording decent care for relatives. These feelings, unfortunately, come as no surprise. This year's election saw confusion on the topic of social care and the 'dementia tax' and, since then, no real action has been seen from government. Successive Governments have 'demoted' the remit for social care to a "Parliamentary Under Secretary" and despite the increased focus on this area the situation simply continues. We've been promised a Green Paper that will consult on social care, which I can only hope will lead to some clarity on the future of this crucial sector. On returning from recess, the Government needs to take note of our research alongside the CQC report on adult social care. We all want to know that, if we or our loved ones need care, it will be suited to individuals' needs and of a consistent quality. The majority of providers are achieving good quality in their provision of care, but urgent concerns around funding continue and we cannot overlook the fact that standards are not standard and fair across the board. The social care sector is full of committed and hardworking people whose desire it is to provide the best for older people but they need the support to do so. Even the most skilled of workers cannot perform in an environment suffering from funding cuts at every angle. The CQC report again highlights the intense strain that is felt by the social care sector and the need for reform. It's clear that the failure of successive governments to commit to a plan that meets the needs of our ageing population and future generations are now felt by all - by those working in the underfunded health and social care sectors and those left ill-prepared and worried about funding their future care and that of loved ones. Advertisement European Parliament Europeans have experienced turbulent elections of late, with populist, authoritarian nationalism pitted against openness, tolerance, and democracy. But in one election after another, voters have chosen more pragmatic and optimistic visions of society. Nowhere was this as clear as in the UK, where the Conservatives' small-islander vision of a buccaneering Brexit Britain was resoundingly rejected in a snap June election. The rise of nationalism in the West has coincided with -- and perhaps encouraged -- a rolling back of human rights and pluralistic values across Eastern Europe to the Middle East and beyond. The Arabian Gulf countries are a fault line for such human rights concerns, and have been sites of increased government repression in recent years. Members of the European Parliament have been following the situation closely with growing concerns. We have repeatedly called for human rights to be upheld and protected, with some success, and have pushed for stronger action from the EU and its governments. Advertisement Recent weeks and months have seen a series of grim milestones for human rights in the Gulf. Nabeel Rajab, director of the Bahrain Centre for Human Rights, was sentenced for two years in prison on July 10th for TV interviews he gave, after already spending a year in prison simply for tweeting criticism of the Kingdom's leaders. In Saudi Arabia, the 2015 Sakharov Prize winner, blogger Raif Badawi, is marking five years in prison for blogging about secularism. Meanwhile, juvenile protesters Ali al-Nimr, Dawoud al-Marhoon and Abdullah al-Zaher face imminent execution in spite of their age, and new fears have been raised that the Saudi King is days away from signing the death warrants of 14 alleged protesters, among them two juveniles and a disabled man. In May, Bahraini security forces cracked down on peaceful protesters in the village of Duraz, leading to 286 arrests, hundreds injured and five killed. Meanwhile Bahraini dissidents continue to be stripped of their citizenship. However, Bahrain's regional allies - including Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates - were quick to declare their support for the Bahraini government's actions. The EU's official response was a disappointingly meek statement on the need for "proportionality", whilst highlighting Bahrain's "sovereign right" to act. In January, the island Kingdom executed three protestors - reviving the death penalty after upholding a moratorium for six years. Two other protestors, Mohamed Ramadhan and Husain Moosa, also face imminent execution after being tortured into making false confessions. In the last few months, Bahrain's death row has doubled in size, while widespread reports of torture and abuse continue. Yet Britain is propping up the Bahraini and Saudi security apparatuses. The UK Foreign Office has spent nearly 6m of taxpayers' money on technical assistance to Bahrain since 2012 - training Bahraini police and prison guards who continue to torture prisoners, and, according to leading human rights NGOs such as Reprieve and FIDH, supporting a sham police Ombudsman that has whitewashed and covered up this torture, rather than investigating it. Advertisement In Saudi Arabia, the UK has provided cyber-intelligence training for Saudi police without proper safeguards, as juveniles tortured by security forces await imminent beheading for the 'crime' of attending pro-democracy protests. British police themselves have voiced concerns that the training they have provided to Saudi police could lead to the torture of detainees, and a cross party group of UK MPs have just called for a full investigation into UK assistance to Saudi police. However, it seems that Theresa May's chaotic, right-wing Tory government, propped up by the hardline DUP, has chosen to ignore all of these developments. The Tories see their 'global' Brexit Britain as prioritising trade at all costs, above human rights considerations or anything else. This was the essence of May's message at her speech to GCC ministers in December 2016, Trade Secretary Liam Fox's visit to the region a month later, and May's visit to Saudi Arabia in April this year. With mounting violations and increasing tensions in the region, neither Britain nor the EU can continue to turn a blind eye, or hide behind the language of "sovereignty and responsibility". Britain must make clear that any further assistance to Bahrain and Saudi Arabia's police apparatuses must be conditional on these governments taking basic but binding anti-torture steps, such as ratifying the Optional Protocol to the Convention Against Torture (OPCAT) and allowing the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture to visit and make an independent assessment. Similar commitments must be undertaken by EU representatives who must be vocal and uncompromising about standing up for human rights first and foremost. This is not the time for timidity or rapprochement. The European Union, including the UK, has made itself a bulwark of democracy and human rights in the world, and as its voters opt to revive and strengthen these values, so too must the EU step up onto the world stage and put human rights at the heart of foreign policy. The last time I wish someone had introduced me was at a reception at a prestigious national institution. Not long after I had arrived, while acclimatising myself with the environment and other guests, I stumbled across a journalist from an influential UK publication. I was aware that one article in their publication, describing myself as a Professional introducer could take years off my marketing endeavours and catapult me into the public eye. Here, face-to-face, and unexpectedly, was someone who could help me achieve this. If not directly, then indirectly, through his work colleagues. The crucial point here is that it was unexpected and therefore I was unprepared. Had I had prior sight of the guest list (which, when I'm working as an Introducer I often do) I'd have done my homework. Advertisement My mind whirred: what's the best angle to describe my service that might interest a) a journalist b) this particular journalist c) his editor and d) the publication's readers? This is a tall order to assess in a few seconds. Not only that, but the context of the event has to be taken into account. What is appropriate? It wasn't a quick-fire daytime business event with a specific business agenda. It was an evening reception for members of a subscription organisation. I had to assess the balance between business and social. There always is a balance, in varying proportions. In this instance, the tone was social and relaxed, the conversations not about efficiency of purpose, but about taking pleasure in conversing with those present and being members of the same organisation and getting to know each other. With the journalist standing in front of me I begin to be afraid. I am afraid of messing up. I am afraid of not saying the right thing, or not saying it succinctly enough.. He is talking - thank goodness - but I am preparing to speak. This is a difficult task - to listen and to prepare to speak, as I know I must, though I would much rather stand there and let him talk so that I don't run the risk of messing up. A break in his speaking is coming. I know here's my opportunity - a real live journalist from a national newspaper. There are no distractions: the other person who he was talking to has drifted off and he doesn't have a deadline at this moment. He is in relaxed chat mode. I have his full attention . . . I must speak. Advertisement My mind flails around to succinctly describe what I do. My mind alights on a phrase developed from advice given to me by a journalist I met by chance a few months previously: 'journalists love stories about being the first person to do something, so tell them that if you are ever interviewed by one'. Remembering this advice, I say: 'I'm the UK's First on-the-spot Introducer at Events'. As soon as it's out of my mouth, I know I've messed up. Wrong tone. Wrong context. Inappropriate. I mess up because I get the tone and the content of what I say wrong. The tone of the event, as I said, is relaxed and social, therefore my tone should be in keeping with the event. It's not appropriate to be self-promoting at this event. In fact, it's rarely appropriate to be self-promoting in person, though times have changed quite dramatically on this one. Whilst being the UK's first on-the-spot introducer at events is true to the best of my knowledge and it appears to do the trick when I'm being promoted by others, or as a catchy title in the subject line of an email and it might give him a scoop, it's a social faux pas in this context. It has the opposite of it's desired effect, which is to turn him off, not on. Way too pushy. His eyes do not light up, he expresses no further interest, my dreams of an article appearing in the national press are dashed before I can expand. He excuses himself and walks away. Now consider this. If someone had introduced me (properly, with care and attention), he would not have made his excuses and left. There would have been no devils in my throat, making me in turn unable to speak and then to push this faux pas out of my mouth. Advertisement Instead, the Introducer would calmly have said something like this: 'This is Rachel, she'd got a new business idea. In fact I believe it's the first of its' kind and I'm quite taken by it.' An experienced Introducer might even pause at this point to stimulate his interest before continuing with: 'I think she's really hit on something here. She introduces you to anyone in the room you want to meet. Would it make an article that your reader's would find interesting?' An Introducer would have told him in a few easy sentences the only things he needed to know. An Introducer would have have known what I could offer him and what he could offer me. An Introducer would have saved from my own embarrassment and from flailing about for the the right words, and from making a faux pas at a critical moment, and from wondering when to tell him what I do and how to tell him. It would just be done. This is the work of an Introducer. Part of my work is explaining it to those who've never experienced being properly introduced and how it helps all those present. I guess this will continue until everyone knows what an Introducer does, until everyone walks into a social or business event and asks 'Where is the Introducer?' And if there isn't one, demands 'Why not? Advertisement MartinPrescott via Getty Images Wedneday heralded yet another milestone in our NHS. Across the UK 7400 new doctors are embarking upon the first day of their professional careers. Eager, enthusiastic, and probably somewhat trepidatious, they are the future of our health service. However, all is not well. This is a service under extraordinary pressure. A&E attendances are rising, delayed discharges increasing, and NHS finances are facing a perpetual winter. Even before the recent industrial dispute between junior doctors and the UK Government over the implementation of a new contract, the number of doctors who opt to continue their specialist training within Britain was on a downward trajectory. You may well be thinking, wow, this is pretty bleak. Well, it is. I think you deserve to know the truth in a post-truth era and I sincerely believe the NHS is traversing some of the most challenging times since its inception. Advertisement There is, however, a beacon of light at the end of the tunnel - our staff. Hard working men and women who continue to selflessly devote their lives to the cause (some have also given their lives to the cause - one of the most notable recent cases is the tragic death of Dr Lauren Connelly, who crashed while driving home after a night shift). They are the reason I am writing this article. A survey by the Royal College of Anaesthetists, found that 64% of trainee anaesthetists felt their job had affected their physical health and 61% their mental health. Interestingly, when the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh asked its own members and their colleagues, what were the most important things that would improve their working environment to deliver safe surgical care, the answers were surprising. Yes, many wanted more staff at the 'coal face' to plug the rota gaps alongside better access to out of hours radiology. However, a substantial proportion desired basic amenities such as access to hot food whilst on a night shift or a communal area where they could offload and reflect upon the day's events. To my mind, the latter is crucial, since we often bare witness to devastating life-changing events and the best remedy is often the supportive shoulder or comprehending ear of a colleague. Hectic on-call shifts, sleep deprivation, a challenging operative case, and a lack of family time, have personally (on occasion) tipped the balance from just about coping to failure to cope fairly rapidly. If it were not for my incredibly supportive colleagues and long-suffering family, I would probably be pursuing a different career. Whilst the challenges facing the NHS are complex and multi-faceted, creating a safe and supportive working environment to harness the energy and creativity of its staff is essential. First and foremost, we have a duty of care to our patients, but we also need to remember that we have a duty of care for each other. Advertisement I'm sure you've all had the dream, as you shout to make yourself heard over police sirens for the kids to get their shoes on, then dodge dog poo dashing them to school, before you're late to work because you got stuck in traffic/the train was late/tube was delayed. Why, oh why, don't we ditch the city and move to the country, where the pace of life is slower and the children can run free in the wheat fields? My brother lives on a farm in Dorset. We visit a lot and it's brilliant. There are huge benefits in country living, not least the massive positives from just slowing down. Advertisement The time the kids spend on screens evaporates and they entertain themselves for hours outside playing games. It's such a joy to watch. It's a cliche, but in the countryside, you literally have more space to think. You have more clarity of thought because your senses aren't bombarded all the time, like in the city. You can be in the moment more - it blows away the cobwebs. My husband is from the countryside and he's often saying: "Let's move out of London to the country" and I love the idea. So why don't I ship the whole family out to the sticks? Because my job is here. I love my job and working remotely a lot of the time just wouldn't do. I don't even want to live in the commuter belt - I'd hate to spend precious time commuting. I want to be at home at the end of the working day to put the kids to bed. Advertisement In fact, the whole problem is commuting. You want the country thing, so you move far enough out - but then you spend all your life on a train or in a car getting to your job. I think this can put a massive strain on relationships. It can be tricky if even just one of you is travelling two hours in the morning to get to work, then another two to get home after. That person is going to be exhausted and not be fully present in the relationship in the evenings and weekends. They won't see their kids enough. And relationships can fall apart. The dream for many people would be to have a pad in the country for the weekends and a place in London for the week - but who can afford that? I think you need to make a clear choice. If you want to be in the country, just be in the country. Let's open our minds - you don't actually have to commute. We're all online - there are so many ways to use your skills and talents to work remotely. You just need to think laterally about ways to earn a living. But as we're all living and working so much longer, it's actually exciting to think about a career re-invention and that can coincide with your move to the country. Or live and work in the city and embrace everything that's brilliant about it. Just don't get stuck in the middle. I love living in London. For all its hectic pace of life, it has wonderful culture like free museums, art galleries and the theatre. I make sure myself and my family regularly benefit from the cultural riches on offer. You'd be mad not to take advantage of the amazing things to do in this wonderful city. Advertisement But what about the safety aspects? Isn't it safer for kids to grow up in the countryside? Well, no, not necessarily. My son is almost seven and my daughter is five. My husband rode bikes everywhere growing up, and he lets the kids ride up and down the pavement outside our house. I can't help but peep out of the curtains when they do. But they need some independence and I have to let it happen. You can't wrap them in cotton wool all the time. Yes, there are bad people here on the mean streets, but there are bad people in the countryside too. In fact, a recent study found that if you want to stay safe, you should live in a city rather than the countryside, as the risk of death by injury in rural areas is 22% higher than in urban places. A huge plus for me is that my children are completely used to seeing people from all ethnicities, sexualities and faiths living happily side by side. For kids growing up in London, differences are just normal. I still find it bizarre that before meeting me, my husband (who grew up in Kent) had never met someone Jewish and there was only one Muslim in his whole school. How does that breed open-mindedness? However, the countryside does have its allure and at some point, if and when I transition in my career, we'll move somewhere really rural and I won't be working in London. Advertisement Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi issued a decree on Thursday establishing a committee to study state projects that have stalled, state agency MENA announced. According to MENA, former prime minister Ibrahim Mahlab, the current presidential aide for national and strategic projects, will head the committee. Members will include the presidents advisor for fighting corruption, the presidents advisor for urban planning, and the minister of defences advisor for land and projects legal affairs. According to the presidential decree, which was published in the official state gazette on Thursday, the recommendations of the committee will be sent to the cabinet. The committee will also present a monthly report directly to the president. Since February 2016, Mahlab has headed the national committee to redeem state land that has been illegally acquired by private investors. Search Keywords: Short link: Firefox Test Pilot is an opt-in program where you can have early access to features designed to be Firefox add-ins and extensions while they are in the early stages of development. This week three new experimental features have been made available - Voice Fill, Notes and Send. Firefox Test Pilot has been around for over a year but, like so many of Mozilla's really good ideas, hasn't had the attention it deserves. Now it is trying harder to attract users. In July it launched a blog and it has also added messages to the Firefox home page to encourage us to try it - though I'm not entirely sure about this one: From its Wiki we discover that: Test Pilot is a series of stepping stones intended to take a rough concept to a shipping Firefox feature or Add-on. Test Pilot combines iterative prototyping, user research, and an opt-in user-facing testing platform. Experiments will go through phases which are designed to evaluate new feature concepts quickly and at low cost. The first post on the new blog, which comes from John Gruen, Product Manager of Firefox Test Pilot and formerly its lead designer. explains that: Test Pilot is a process and a platform structured to let Firefox Design, Product, and Engineering teams research, prototype, test, and iterate on experimental features in the Firefox browser. Since launching, weve researched, sketched, prototyped, coded, surveyed, and analyzed data for a dozen experiments and were gearing up for a new set of launches! As it was news of the three new experimental features that led me to Test Pilot lets cover them. They are pretty self-explanatory. Send isn't just a Firefox feature, it works with other browsers, and is therefore billed as a "web experiment". It lets you upload and encrypt large files (up to 1GB) to share online. When you upload a file, Send creates a link to pass along to whomsoever you want which will expire after 1 download or 24 hours with all sent files automatically deleted from the Send server. Voice Fill lets you speak to search engines and currently works with Google, Yahoo and DuckDuckGo. If you read our recent report lets you speak to search engines and currently works with Google, Yahoo and DuckDuckGo. If you read our recent report Mozilla Wants Your Voice you may recognise this as part of its push into Speech-to-text artificial intelligence. Like most speech recognition facilities it takes a bit of getting used to but it soon had me trained and after that proved to be convenient. For me Notes was an instant hit. It gives you a sidebar in which you can jot down your thoughts or use copy and paste to collect text as you trawl the web. The Notes sidebar travels with you as you move between tabs and windows. There are three more ongoing experiments. Min Vid lets you display You Tube and Vimeo videos in a small frame that stays in the foreground as you browse the web. The idea of "watch while you work" must be appealing as there are over 228,000 participants for this. Containers has fewer than 8,000 testers and its idea is to let you create different containers for different aspects of you online life - social, personal, work - to stay organized and maintain privacy. For me Snooze Tabs seems a really great idea as it lets you set a convenient time for a tab of interest to open. It has nearly 50,000 participants and I think people might flock to Firefox Test Pilot to use it. Of course, the good ideas from Test Pilot will make it into Firefox itself. In his blog post Gruen tells us that the recently closed Page Shot experiment that lets you take, share, and retrieve screenshots - without leaving Firefox will be included in Firefox 55 as Firefox Screenshots while Activity Stream, which keeps your top sites, bookmarks and recent history close at hand in each new tab and has a timeline view of your browsing, will be included in Firefox later this year. The nurses at BMC have issued a 30-day notice to end a provision in the current contract preventing a strike. BMC Nurses Take Second Step Toward Strike PITTSFIELD, Mass. The nurses at Berkshire Medical Center have taken the second step toward a strike. The Massachusetts Nursing Association filed a notification to end the existing agreement. The contract currently in place prohibits a strike and while the contract had an expiration date of September 2016, the duration clauses continued it unless a 30-day notice from either side was made or a new agreement was signed. "While we are disappointed that the union has moved one step closer to a strike, we look forward to meeting again with the union on Aug. 7, with hopes of reaching an agreement," Berkshire Health Systems Vice President of Human Resources Arthur Milano said. "BMC has offered a fair and generous package, which includes 10 percent salary increases over three years, the best health benefit program in the region, and a staffing plan that more formally engages the union nurses in decision-making." Last Wednesday, the local nurses voted to give the bargaining committee the authority to call a strike. That would require giving the hospital a 10-day notice. Now with the notice to end the existing contract, a strike can be called as early as Sept. 1. "In order for the nurses in Pittsfield to call and go out on strike, they have to give this 30-day notice," MNA spokesman Joe Markman said, calling it a "procedural issue." "But there is still no strike date set." The two sides returned to the bargaining table on Tuesday for the first time since the strike authorization vote. Then, hospital officials had asked the question about the 30-day notice to clear up any confusion on the timing. Toward the end of the bargaining session, the MNA filed the notification. The 30-day notice is somewhat of a unique piece added into the prior contract. Should one be called, hospital officials have plans in place to bring in replacement nurses. The union is authorized to call a one-day strike, but hospital officials say there'd be four additional days of work stoppage for the union nurses. The replacement nurses would have a minimum five-day commitment. "We are happy we are still at the bargaining table and talking and we hope to come to an agreement. And they are moving in the direction of a strike," Milano said. The hospital had already given what it called its "best and final offer," which the union rejected by an overwhelming vote. Milano says it is still a "fair deal" and remains on the table. The union, however, is pushing for changes regarding staffing. "Our key issues remain: Safe nurse staffing that protects patient care and affordable, quality health insurance. We have made numerous proposals for nearly a year to try and reach an agreement," read a statement issued by the MNA's local bargaining committee on Tuesday. "Last month, we heard specific concerns from management about why they are reluctant to agree to safe staffing language in our contract. In response, we made significant revisions to our proposals. For example, we have proposed that BMC not worsen nurse staffing and that charge nurses should have no or limited patient assignments (depending on time of day). Charge nurses should be able to manage the flow of patients in their units, be on hand to assist less experienced nurses with more complex cases and pick up patient assignments when nurses are overburdened. We also made a proposal that in the future management would post and recruit to fill such positions that are necessary for the hospital to meet its contractual and regulatory obligations relating to RNs." Milano said much of what the union is asking are things that are "very difficult to next to impossible" to do from an administrative standpoint. Hospital officials maintain that the staffing push is part of a statewide agenda and not in response to local conditions. "We know by their own admission that they have a statewide initiative on the ballot in 2018 for minimum staffing," Milano said. "They want this language and ratios in any contract they can get." BMC could be the third hospital in the state to go out on strike - following Baystate Franklin Medical Center and Tufts Medical Center. Berkshire Medical Center officials voiced concern that the union could be looking to launch simultaneous one-day strikes at all three hospitals, exhausting the supply of replacement nurses. Hospital officials repeatedly said that the MNA's push to set staffing levels ties the hands of the administration when it comes to hiring and staffing the building. The union, however, says the staffing levels are needed because previously there were too many occasions when the administration hadn't been staffing the units appropriately. But the two sides are still talking. They returned to the bargaining table after the nurses voted to reject the hospital's offer and they returned again just a few days after the strike authorization vote. "'We're still willing to talk," Milano said. On Aug. 7, the two sides return again. Hospital officials are hoping the union will circle back and reconsider the offer on the table and the union has put forth options that it hopes the hospital will consider. The negotiations have been helped along by a federal mediator. "I think the nurses are going in hopeful on Monday," Markman said. Public health nurse Kayla Donnelly-Winters provided the Board of Health with updated numbers regarding diseases on Wednesday. Pittsfield Raises Concerns Over Rise in Tick-Borne Illnesses PITTSFIELD, Mass. The Health Department has expressed concern with a growing number of cases of tick-borne illnesses. Public health nurse Kayla Donnelly-Winters cited rising numbers of human granulocytic anaplasmosis (HGA)and Lyme disease over the last three years. In 2014, she said there were 15 cases of HGA and 51 cases of Lyme. In 2016, the number of HGA was up to 17 and 82 for Lyme. This year, the number of cases of HGA is already at 25 and there have been 74 cases of Lyme. "Until the ground freezes, we're still going to see these cases," she said. Anaplasmosis is potentially fatal if not treated properly if only for less than 1 percent of those infected. It can lead to difficulty breathing, hemorrhages, and renal failure. Lyme disease can cause fatigue, fevers and chills, headache, muscle and joint pain, and swollen lymph nodes. It can spread to the nervous system and heart. The numbers show a steady uptick over years and Donnelly-Winters says such diseases are typically underreported. Board of Health member Dr. Alan Kulberg said the actual number of cases is historically underreported. "I think we've been underreporting for years. You see a case, you take care of it," he said. Board of Health member Steve Smith questioned whether the percentage of cases being underreported has changed over the years or if there are actually more cases. He added that he has noticed more ticks this year than in years past. Donnelly-Winters said she interviews people with HGA and has found that many didn't even realize they were bitten by a tick. That shows that many people are not properly checking for ticks or not checking at all. She said she has been on many forums and in meetings with groups to help educate the public on the best ways to avoid ticks and what to do if one is found. "When you look at the numbers it is really critically important," Health Director Gina Armstrong said. And this isn't the first time the city has raised concern about the increasing numbers. Back in 2015, then Public Health Nurse Deborah Rice reported a similar rise in numbers. In other business, the Berkshire County Mosquito Control Project will be spraying a one-mile radius around the Route 41 and Route 20 intersection the roads of 41 to the Richmond line, Route 20 to Callahan Drive, Cloverdale and Branch Streets, Southpond Drive, Thistledown, Scace, Sunny Croft, and Windmer Thursday night from 10 p.m. until midnight. The spraying is in response ot the presence of West Nile virus which was found in a collection. Armstrong said the positive findings, added to high population numbers and the presence of mosquito species which are more likely to have the disease led to the call for a spraying. "It is very limited and just because of the sustained activity in that area," Armstrong said. The virus is found just about every year since the project began collecting and testing for the disease in mosquito populations. The use of truck-mounted sprays had previously come under scrutiny from numerous city residents claiming the sprays were ineffective and harmed the environment and human health. But, the Board of Health believes the sprays are harmless and prevents humans from getting West Nile or eastern equine encephalitis. The Health Department is also down two people right now, slowing its ability to respond to residents' concerns about blight. A nuisance control officer is taking a job with another department in the city and will be leaving that role in the coming weeks. Meanwhile, another inspector went out on medical leave. The number of inspections performed has already decreased and addressing nuisance issues is expected to slow. "This is, unfortunately, a reoccurring issue we have," Chairman Jay Green said of staffing changes, but adding that he still wants constituents to call and report issues. Police Chief Richard Tarsa asks that residents not put over-the-counter medicine or sharps in the prescription kiosk at the station. ADAMS, Mass. Town officials say they are committed to repairing the failing roof on the elementary school boiler room. The condition of the roof has become another point of contention in the tense school district relationship between Cheshire and Adams. Town Administrator Tony Mazzucco said on Wednesday that the town will receive engineering documents for the roof project by the end of the month. On Tuesday, Cheshire officials had expressed their displeasure that the problem hadn't been dealt with months ago, as Adams had promised. "I know it has been taking some time but proper engineering and proper management take time and we are focusing on quality," Mazzucco said. "But we will get those out to bid as soon as we can." The town agreed to allocate some $130,000 a little over a year ago for the roof after a change in the state funding formula caused Adams' assessment to the Adams-Cheshire Regional School District to drop. Since then, the school district has closed Cheshire Elementary and is turning what is now Hoosac Valley Elementary in Adams into an early education school. Mazzucco said the town has been working toward the project but it was delayed by factors including having to switch engineering firms. "The former firm was not delivering in terms of cost control and cost containment and weren't concerned with state prevailing wages," he said. "So the town agreed to go in a different direction and with a more reputable firm." He said the roof is secure and although it will be done as soon as possible, the town made no commitment to having it done before the school year started. "I don't know where this need to rush came from all of the sudden everyone is calling it a priority project," he said. "For some reason, there are these arbitrary deadlines floating around. We never made those statements and we will get it done but we aren't going to rush. We want quality work." In other business, Selectman Joseph Nowak asked Mazzucco when the LED street lights for the downtown purchased with Green Community funds will arrive. Mazzucco said the town is using an expedited program that allows it to bypass the public bidding process and use a local vendor. He said the vendor so far has not been reliable. "We are trying to keep this local because it is a near $70,000 job but I have been in touch with them every week and can't get answers," he said. "I am quite angry with them." Police Chief Richard Tarsa asked that residents only use the drug kiosk in the station for prescription medication. He said people have been using it to dispose of over-the-counter medications and applications that can be thrown in the trash. "We aren't just getting prescription medicine but vitamins, Band-Aids ... cuticle tools," he said. "We are getting stuff that can go right in the trash." He added that the station no longer takes syringes. "They do not go in the drop box but people put them in there and we have had an officer that did get stuck one time," the chief said. "We no longer accept them." Syringes can be dropped off at Tapestry Health in North Adams but police will still pick up needles if they are found in public. iciHaiti - Les Cayes : Beginning of restoration work at the Hotel Training Institute Colombe Emilie Jessy Menos Minister of Tourism, accompanied by the Representative of the Tourist Association of Haiti (ATH) and the Representative of the HAVEN Foundation visited the infrastructure of the Hotel and Tourism Training Institute (IFORT) of Les Cayes Of in view of their restorations as part of the Caravan of Change. The Minister also made an evaluation visit to Gelee a few weeks before the traditional festival held August 15 of each year. Young people who are part of a team of the Interministerial Regional Planning Committee (CIAT) through the program "Jele Zewo Fatra" of fight against unhealthy and the deposits of rubbish on the beach of Gelee, also met Minister Menos. A possible twinning of the awareness campaign "Zafe touris se zafe tout moun" with this team of young people was discussed and considered. IH/ iciHaiti Egypt's foreign minister Sameh Shoukry said on Thursday that he discussed with Sudanese Prime Minister Bakri Hassan Saleh improving cooperation between Cairo and Khartoum. The Egyptian FM said in press statements that he conveyed to the Sudanese PM the regards of the Egyptian leadership and Egypt's deep appreciation for his efforts to bolster relations between the two countries. During the meeting, Bakri accepted an invitation from his Egyptian counterpart Sherif Ismail to visit Cairo. Shoukry arrived in Khartoum on Thursday to head the Egyptian delegation participating in a meeting of the Egyptian-Sudanese political consultation committee, which aims to boost ties between the two countries. This is the third round of talks by the committee in the past five months to discuss a number of issues that have been a source of tension between Cairo and Khartoum. The first meeting was held in Khartoum in April while the second was held in June in Cairo. Search Keywords: Short link: Some 200 migrants stormed a high fence between Morocco and the Spanish territory of Ceuta early on Tuesday, with 73 managing to get through in the latest incident at the border, authorities said. A spokesman for the central government's representative office in Ceuta, on Morocco's northern coast, said 18 people were "slightly" injured, including 15 migrants and three policemen. The migrants used "wire cutters and mallets to cut through the doors" in the high double fence, he added. Ceuta and Melilla, also a Spanish territory in North Africa, have the EU's only land borders with Africa. As a result, they are entry points for migrants desperate to get to Europe and who regularly try to climb the high border fences, swim along the coast or hide in vehicles. Ceuta is now ringed by a double wire fence eight kilometres (five miles) long. The six-metre high fence also has rolls of barbed wire. Search Keywords: Short link: Turkey has vowed to root out militants plotting against China as the two countries pledged to collaborate on a security issue that had been a source of friction. Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said Thursday in Beijing that Turkey would treat matters of China's security as its own, signaling close cooperation and a tougher stance against suspected Uighur militants hailing from China's Xinjiang region. Uighurs share cultural and linguistic ties with Turks and many have sought asylum in Turkey. Hundreds if not thousands of Uighurs who have fled China in recent years have traveled to Syria to join Islamic militant groups or simply escape persecution and find a new home. Human rights groups have long accused Beijing of oppressing its Uighur population and inflaming a cycle of radicalization. Search Keywords: Short link: Thousands of Syrian refugees and militants evacuated from northeastern Lebanon arrived on Thursday in central Syria in territory held by rebel and Islamist militants, a monitoring said. They were bussed out of the restive border area between Lebanon and Syria as part of a ceasefire deal between Lebanon's Shiite movement Hezbollah and fighters from Al-Qaeda's former Syrian branch. In exchange, the Islamist militant group released two Hezbollah fighters, an AFP correspondent said, adding that they arrived in Red Crescent vehicles in the area of Al-Saan in central Hama province. A total of 7,777 people -- a vast majority of them civilians but also including militants -- were transported back into Syria from Lebanon's mountainous Jurud Arsal region on Wednesday in line with the ceasefire. The agreement ended six days of fighting in Jurud Arsal between Hezbollah and Al-Qaeda's former Syrian affiliate, previously known as the Al-Nusra Front. On Thursday, buses carrying three groups of Syrian Islamist militants and refugees arrived in an area of Hama under the control of rebels and Islamist militants, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said. Two more groups are still due to arrive and three more Hezbollah fighters are to be released by the end of the operation. Jurud Arsal had been used for years as a hideout by Syrian militants, but was also home to an unknown number of refugees seeking shelter from Syria's six-year war. Al-Nusra Front was Al-Qaeda's affiliate in Syria until mid-2016 when it broke off ties, before going on to found a new alliance led by Islamist militants called Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), which now controls large swathes of Syria's northwestern Idlib province. Hezbollah launched the offensive on the Syrian militants on July 21 and had cornered rival fighters in a small pocket of territory when it announced the truce. The deal also calls for the release of three detainees held in Lebanon's Roumieh prison. The first phase of the deal took place on Monday, when Hezbollah and HTS exchanged the bodies of nine Syrian fighters for the remains of five Hezbollah fighters. Tens of thousands of Syrian refugees live in the town of Arsal, adjacent to the border region, and an unknown number are also thought to have taken shelter in the surrounding mountains. More than one million Syrians are registered with the United Nations as refugees in Lebanon, a country of just four million people. Search Keywords: Short link: Heads of states and CEO's will be among over 1,000 delegates expected during the three-day forum to discuss and collaborate on African trade and investment Egypt will host a high-level forum promoting trade and investment in Africa this December, the countrys investment and international cooperation ministry and COMESAs regional investment agency announced jointly on Wednesday. The Africa 2017 forum, which will be held under the patronage of President El-Sisi, will be held from 7-9 December in Sharm El-Sheikh and will bring together high-level delegations of leaders in business and policy from across the continent, including heads of state and major CEOs. It will kick off with a Young Entrepreneurs Day, that will bring together emerging entrepreneurs with more established ones, in addition to mentors, start-up hubs, angel investors and venture capital firms, to share ideas, network and help drive further the business ideas of tomorrow. The event has partnered with incubators, entrepreneurship programmes and VC funds. As part of the forum, Egypt will be showcasing its flagship mega-projects, including the construction of a new capital city 45km outside of Cairo, and a number of industrial and special economic zone projects along the Suez Canal, among others. Over 1,000 delegates are expected, according to the ministry. Egypt is a member of the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA). Search Keywords: Short link: Terror Victim Stabilized, But Battle for Life Continues The Fellowship | August 3, 2017 Terror Victim Stabilized Yesterday, Stand for Israel reported on the horrific terror attack at an Israeli supermarket that left an employee of the store in critical condition. Today, Ynet News Rotem Elizera and Yoav Zitun report that the victim is stabilized but still fighting for his life, while the IDF has cracked down on those close to the terrorist: A man who was stabbed multiple times in a terror attack in a Yavne supermarket Wednesday is said to be in stable condition, but is continuing to battle for his life as doctors began performing more surgery Thursday morning. He underwent surgery on a main artery and he has been been put on ventilation and has been anesthetized, said a family member. Everyone arrived from different places in the country: Haifa, Hadera, Jerusalem. It is extremely difficult for his wife and children who are (always) crying. During the night, IDF soldiers, the Shin Bet and Israel Border Police conducted operations in the Arab city of Yatta where the terrorist, 19-year-old Ismail Ibrahim Ismail abu Aram, lived. Like his victim, abu Aram also worked in the Shufersal supermarket where he carried out the attack, and was arrested after trying to flee the scene. Earlier, the IDF also entered his family home where soldiers confiscated various items belonging to the stabber Sign up to Roisin OConnors free weekly newsletter Now Hear This for the inside track on all things music Get our Now Hear This email for free Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Roisin OConnors email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} A hip hop artist who rose to fame in the 1980s has been charged with stabbing a homeless man to death. Nathaniel Glover, 57, founding member of the Grandmaster Flash and The Furious Five, has been charged was charged with the murder of a 55-year-old in Manhattan. Glover, known as The Kidd Creole, reportedly thought John Jolly had been flirting with him before he attacked him. Recommended One dead and four injured after stabbing in Hamburg supermarket Police officers received an emergency call from passers-by shortly before midnight on Tuesday. When they arrived on the scene in Midtown, they found the victim had multiple stab wounds. One pedestrian told the New York Daily News that there were six people, all tourists, all trying to help him. Jolly was taken to hospital where he was pronounced dead. New York City bodegas strike to protest Trump's travel ban Show all 27 1 /27 New York City bodegas strike to protest Trump's travel ban New York City bodegas strike to protest Trump's travel ban Ethnic Yemenis and supporters protest against President Donald Trump's executive order temporarily banning immigrants and refugees from seven Muslim-majority countries, including Yemen on February 2, 2017 in the Brooklyn borough of New York City. At least 1,000 Yemeni-owned bodegas and grocery-stores across the city shut down from noon to 8 p.m. today to protest the order. Spencer Platt/Getty New York City bodegas strike to protest Trump's travel ban People rally at Brooklyn Borough Hall as Yemeni bodega and grocery-stores shut down to protest US President Donald Trump's Executive Order banning immigrants and refugees from seven Muslim-majority countries, including Yemen, on February 2, 2017 in New York. Bryan R. Smith/AFP/Getty New York City bodegas strike to protest Trump's travel ban Men pray during a protest by ethnic Yemenis and supporters over President Donald Trump's executive order temporarily banning immigrants and refugees from seven Muslim-majority countries, including Yemen on February 2, 2017 in the Brooklyn borough of New York City. At least 1,000 Yemeni-owned bodegas and grocery-stores across the city shut down from noon to 8 p.m. today to protest the order. Spencer Platt/Getty New York City bodegas strike to protest Trump's travel ban Ethnic Yemenis and supporters protest against President Donald Trump's executive order temporarily banning immigrants and refugees from seven Muslim-majority countries, including Yemen on February 2, 2017 in the Brooklyn borough of New York City. At least 1,000 Yemeni-owned bodegas and grocery-stores across the city shut down from noon to 8 p.m. today to protest the order. Spencer Platt/Getty New York City bodegas strike to protest Trump's travel ban Men pray during a protest by ethnic Yemenis and supporters over President Donald Trump's executive order temporarily banning immigrants and refugees from seven Muslim-majority countries, including Yemen on February 2, 2017 in the Brooklyn borough of New York City. At least 1,000 Yemeni-owned bodegas and grocery-stores across the city shut down from noon to 8 p.m. today to protest the order. Spencer Platt/Getty New York City bodegas strike to protest Trump's travel ban People rally at Brooklyn Borough Hall as Yemeni bodega and grocery-stores shut down to protest US President Donald Trump's Executive Order banning immigrants and refugees from seven Muslim-majority countries, including Yemen, on February 2, 2017 in New York. Spencer Platt/Getty New York City bodegas strike to protest Trump's travel ban People rally at Brooklyn Borough Hall as Yemeni bodega and grocery-stores shut down to protest US President Donald Trump's Executive Order banning immigrants and refugees from seven Muslim-majority countries, including Yemen, on February 2, 2017 in New York. Bryan R. Smith/AFP/Getty New York City bodegas strike to protest Trump's travel ban People rally at Brooklyn Borough Hall as Yemeni bodega and grocery-stores shut down to protest US President Donald Trump's Executive Order banning immigrants and refugees from seven Muslim-majority countries, including Yemen, on February 2, 2017 in New York. Spencer Platt/Getty New York City bodegas strike to protest Trump's travel ban People rally at Brooklyn Borough Hall as Yemeni bodega and grocery-stores shut down to protest US President Donald Trump's Executive Order banning immigrants and refugees from seven Muslim-majority countries, including Yemen, on February 2, 2017 in New York. Spencer Platt/Getty New York City bodegas strike to protest Trump's travel ban People gather for evening prayer at a rally at Brooklyn Borough Hall as Yemeni bodega and grocery-stores shut down to protest US President Donald Trump's Executive Order banning immigrants and refugees from seven Muslim-majority countries, including Yemen, on February 2, 2017 in New York. Bryan R. Smith/AFP/Getty New York City bodegas strike to protest Trump's travel ban People rally at Brooklyn Borough Hall as Yemeni bodega and grocery-stores shut down to protest US President Donald Trump's Executive Order banning immigrants and refugees from seven Muslim-majority countries, including Yemen, on February 2, 2017 in New York. Bryan R. Smith/AFP/Getty New York City bodegas strike to protest Trump's travel ban People rally with flags at Brooklyn Borough Hall as Yemeni bodega and grocery-stores shut down to protest US President Donald Trump's Executive Order banning immigrants and refugees from seven Muslim-majority countries, including Yemen, on February 2, 2017 in New York. Bryan R. Smith/AFP/Getty New York City bodegas strike to protest Trump's travel ban People rally at Brooklyn Borough Hall as Yemeni bodega and grocery-stores shut down to protest US President Donald Trump's Executive Order banning immigrants and refugees from seven Muslim-majority countries, including Yemen, on February 2, 2017 in New York. Spencer Platt/Getty New York City bodegas strike to protest Trump's travel ban People rally at Brooklyn Borough Hall as Yemeni bodega and grocery-stores shut down to protest US President Donald Trump's Executive Order banning immigrants and refugees from seven Muslim-majority countries, including Yemen, on February 2, 2017 in New York. Spencer Platt/Getty New York City bodegas strike to protest Trump's travel ban People rally at Brooklyn Borough Hall as Yemeni bodega and grocery-stores shut down to protest US President Donald Trump's Executive Order banning immigrants and refugees from seven Muslim-majority countries, including Yemen, on February 2, 2017 in New York. Spencer Platt/Getty New York City bodegas strike to protest Trump's travel ban People rally at Brooklyn Borough Hall as Yemeni bodega and grocery-stores shut down to protest US President Donald Trump's Executive Order banning immigrants and refugees from seven Muslim-majority countries, including Yemen, on February 2, 2017 in New York. Spencer Platt/Getty New York City bodegas strike to protest Trump's travel ban People rally at Brooklyn Borough Hall as Yemeni bodega and grocery-stores shut down to protest US President Donald Trump's Executive Order banning immigrants and refugees from seven Muslim-majority countries, including Yemen, on February 2, 2017 in New York. Spencer Platt/Getty New York City bodegas strike to protest Trump's travel ban People rally with flags at Brooklyn Borough Hall as Yemeni bodega and grocery-stores shut down to protest US President Donald Trump's Executive Order banning immigrants and refugees from seven Muslim-majority countries, including Yemen, on February 2, 2017 in New York. Bryan R. Smith/AFP/Getty New York City bodegas strike to protest Trump's travel ban People rally with flags at Brooklyn Borough Hall as Yemeni bodega and grocery-stores shut down to protest US President Donald Trump's Executive Order banning immigrants and refugees from seven Muslim-majority countries, including Yemen, on February 2, 2017 in New York. Bryan R. Smith/AFP/Getty New York City bodegas strike to protest Trump's travel ban People rally with flags at Brooklyn Borough Hall as Yemeni bodega and grocery-stores shut down to protest US President Donald Trump's Executive Order banning immigrants and refugees from seven Muslim-majority countries, including Yemen, on February 2, 2017 in New York. Bryan R. Smith/AFP/Getty New York City bodegas strike to protest Trump's travel ban People rally at Brooklyn Borough Hall as Yemeni bodega and grocery-stores shut down to protest US President Donald Trump's Executive Order banning immigrants and refugees from seven Muslim-majority countries, including Yemen, on February 2, 2017 in New York. Bryan R. Smith/AFP/Getty New York City bodegas strike to protest Trump's travel ban People rally with flags at Brooklyn Borough Hall as Yemeni bodega and grocery-stores shut down to protest US President Donald Trump's Executive Order banning immigrants and refugees from seven Muslim-majority countries, including Yemen, on February 2, 2017 in New York. Bryan R. Smith/AFP/Getty New York City bodegas strike to protest Trump's travel ban People rally at Brooklyn Borough Hall as Yemeni bodega and grocery-stores shut down to protest President Donald Trump's Executive Order banning immigrants and refugees from seven Muslim-majority countries, including Yemen, on February 2, 2017 in New York. Bryan R. Smith/AFP/Getty New York City bodegas strike to protest Trump's travel ban A Yemeni business owner places a sign on the gate of his store February 2, 2017 in the Brooklyn borough of New York City. Across the city, Yemeni owned bodega and grocery-stores will shut down from noon to 8 p.m. to protest President Donald Trump's Executive Order banning immigrants and refugees from seven Muslim-majority countries, including Yemen. It is expected that over 1000 stores will be closed in protest with workers and owners participating in an afternoon rally in Brooklyn. Spencer Platt/Getty New York City bodegas strike to protest Trump's travel ban A Yemeni business owner places a sign on the gate of his store February 2, 2017 in the Brooklyn borough of New York City. Across the city, Yemeni owned bodega and grocery-stores will shut down from noon to 8 p.m. to protest President Donald Trump's Executive Order banning immigrants and refugees from seven Muslim-majority countries, including Yemen. It is expected that over 1000 stores will be closed in protest with workers and owners participating in an afternoon rally in Brooklyn. Spencer Platt/Getty New York City bodegas strike to protest Trump's travel ban NEW YORK, NY - FEBRUARY 02: Yemeni business owner Musa closes the gate to his store February 2, 2017 in the Brooklyn borough of New York City. Across the city, Yemeni owned bodega and grocery-stores will shut down from noon to 8 p.m. to protest President Donald Trump's Executive Order banning immigrants and refugees from seven Muslim-majority countries, including Yemen. It is expected that over 1000 stores will be closed in protest with workers and owners participating in an afternoon rally in Brooklyn. Spencer Platt/Getty New York City bodegas strike to protest Trump's travel ban A Yemeni business owner closes the gate to his store February 2, 2017 in the Brooklyn borough of New York City. Across the city, Yemeni owned bodega and grocery-stores will shut down from noon to 8 p.m. to protest President Donald Trump's Executive Order banning immigrants and refugees from seven Muslim-majority countries, including Yemen. It is expected that over 1000 stores will be closed in protest with workers and owners participating in an afternoon rally in Brooklyn. Spencer Platt/Getty Glover, who formed in his band in 1976 and made songs such as The Message and White Lines (Don't Don't Do It), lived in the Bronx and worked as a handyman and security guard near the scene of the stabbing. In The Message, the lyrics include: "Don't push me cos' I'm close to the edge. I'm trying not to lose my head." Glovers band was the first hip-hop group to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2007. He was identified as the attacker via CCTV footage. Glover was filmed being led from a police office on West 35th Street in a blue janitorial outfit, not giving any comment to reporters. Police say Jolly served five years in prison for sexually assaulting a woman in 1997, and was living in a shelter in Bowery, in the Lower East Side. Sign up to our free IndyArts newsletter for all the latest entertainment news and reviews Sign up to our free IndyArts newsletter Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the IndyArts email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} Following on from the season premiere's Harry Potter reference, episode three of Game of Thrones season seven name-checked fellow television giant The Walking Dead. Titled 'The Queen's Justice,' the episode saw two of the HBO series' biggest characters - Jon Snow and Daenerys Targaryen - thrust together for the first time since it began. The AMC zombie drama's mention arrived during an interaction between Snow (Kit Harington) and Tyrion Lannister (Peter Dinklage) after the former tried to warn those on Dragonstone of the impending war against the Night King and his army of White Walkers. What the Game of Thrones cast look like out of character Show all 44 1 /44 What the Game of Thrones cast look like out of character What the Game of Thrones cast look like out of character Rory McCann Getty Images What the Game of Thrones cast look like out of character Sandor "The Hound" Clegane What the Game of Thrones cast look like out of character Cersei Lannister What the Game of Thrones cast look like out of character Lena Headey Getty Images What the Game of Thrones cast look like out of character Tyrion Lannister What the Game of Thrones cast look like out of character Peter Dinklage AFP/Getty Images What the Game of Thrones cast look like out of character Daenerys Targaryen What the Game of Thrones cast look like out of character Emilia Clarke Getty Images What the Game of Thrones cast look like out of character Jon Snow What the Game of Thrones cast look like out of character Kit Harington AFP/Getty Images What the Game of Thrones cast look like out of character Sansa Stark What the Game of Thrones cast look like out of character Sophie Turner Getty Images What the Game of Thrones cast look like out of character Jaime Lannister What the Game of Thrones cast look like out of character Nikolaj Coster-Waldau Getty Images What the Game of Thrones cast look like out of character Arya Stark What the Game of Thrones cast look like out of character Maisie Williams Getty Images What the Game of Thrones cast look like out of character Theon Greyjoy What the Game of Thrones cast look like out of character Alfie Allen Getty Images What the Game of Thrones cast look like out of character Brienne of Tarth What the Game of Thrones cast look like out of character Gwendoline Christie AFP/Getty Images What the Game of Thrones cast look like out of character Bran Stark What the Game of Thrones cast look like out of character Isaac Hempstead-Wright Getty Images What the Game of Thrones cast look like out of character Petyr "Littlefinger" Baelish What the Game of Thrones cast look like out of character Aidan Gillen Getty Images What the Game of Thrones cast look like out of character Missandei What the Game of Thrones cast look like out of character Nathalie Emmanuel Getty Images for Entertainment Weekly What the Game of Thrones cast look like out of character Varys What the Game of Thrones cast look like out of character Conleth Hill Getty Images What the Game of Thrones cast look like out of character Melisandre What the Game of Thrones cast look like out of character Carice von Houten Getty Images What the Game of Thrones cast look like out of character Samwell Tarly What the Game of Thrones cast look like out of character John Bradley Getty Images What the Game of Thrones cast look like out of character Gilly What the Game of Thrones cast look like out of character Hannah Murray Getty Images for Turner What the Game of Thrones cast look like out of character Jorah Mormont What the Game of Thrones cast look like out of character Iain Glen AFP/Getty Images What the Game of Thrones cast look like out of character Davos Seaworth What the Game of Thrones cast look like out of character Liam Cunningham Getty Images What the Game of Thrones cast look like out of character Tormund Giantsbane What the Game of Thrones cast look like out of character Kristofer Hivju Getty Images What the Game of Thrones cast look like out of character Bronn What the Game of Thrones cast look like out of character Jerome Flynn Getty Images for BFI What the Game of Thrones cast look like out of character Gregor 'The Mountain' Clegane What the Game of Thrones cast look like out of character Hafor Julius Bjornsson Tyrion replies: Why dont you figure out what to do about my missing fleet and murdered allies, and Ill figure out what to do about your walking dead men. No one was more surprised about the name-check than the official Walking Dead comic book Twitter page which responded to the moment. Fans couldn't help but express their excitement upon noticing the reference. As the battle for the Iron Throne intensifies, fans have been looking to past episodes for clues as to its outcome with one Reddit user noticing a crucial hint locked away in a season one encounter between Cersei Lannister (Lena Headey) and Robert Baratheon (Mark Addy). Game of Thrones airs in the US on HBO every Sunday where it is simulcast in the UK on Sky Atlantic at 2am. It is repeated that same evening on both Sky Atlantic and NOW TV. Follow Independent Culture on Facebook for all the latest on Film, TV, Music, and more. 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 }} What age a man encountered porn decides in what precise way they'll mistreat women, a new study has found. People who see sexualised image at a younger age are more likely to try and exert power over women. While people who see pornographic material later in their life are more likely to become promiscuous "playboys", as the scientists labelled them. The study looked at 330 male university students and asked them about their exposure to porn. It also asked about their attitudes to women, and compared the two. Science news in pictures Show all 20 1 /20 Science news in pictures Science news in pictures Pluto has 'beating heart' of frozen nitrogen Pluto has a 'beating heart' of frozen nitrogen that is doing strange things to its surface, Nasa has found. The mysterious core seems to be the cause of features on its surface that have fascinated scientists since they were spotted by Nasa's New Horizons mission. "Before New Horizons, everyone thought Pluto was going to be a netball - completely flat, almost no diversity," said Tanguy Bertrand, an astrophysicist and planetary scientist at NASA's Ames Research Center and the lead author on the new study. "But it's completely different. It has a lot of different landscapes and we are trying to understand what's going on there." Getty Science news in pictures Over 400 species discovered this year by Natural History Museum The ancient invertabrate worm-like species rhenopyrgus viviani (pictured) is one of over 400 species previously unknown to science that were discovered by experts at the Natural History Museum this year PA Science news in pictures Jackdaws can identify 'dangerous' humans Jackdaws can identify dangerous humans from listening to each others warning calls, scientists say. The highly social birds will also remember that person if they come near their nests again, according to researchers from the University of Exeter. In the study, a person unknown to the wild jackdaws approached their nest. At the same time scientists played a recording of a warning call (threatening) or contact calls (non-threatening). The next time jackdaws saw this same person, the birds that had previously heard the warning call were defensive and returned to their nests more than twice as quickly on average. Getty Science news in pictures Turtle embryos influence sex by shaking The sex of the turtle is determined by the temperatures at which they are incubated. Warm temperatures favour females. But by wiggling around the egg, embryos can find the Goldilocks Zone which means they are able to shield themselves against extreme thermal conditions and produce a balanced sex ratio, according to the new study published in Current Biology journal Ye et al/Current Biology Science news in pictures Elephant poaching rates drop in Africa African elephant poaching rates have dropped by 60 per cent in six years, an international study has found. It is thought the decline could be associated with the ivory trade ban introduced in China in 2017. Reuters Science news in pictures Ancient four-legged whale discovered in Peru Scientists have identified a four-legged creature with webbed feet to be an ancestor of the whale. Fossils unearthed in Peru have led scientists to conclude that the enormous creatures that traverse the planets oceans today are descended from small hoofed ancestors that lived in south Asia 50 million years ago A. Gennari Science news in pictures Animal with transient anus discovered A scientist has stumbled upon a creature with a transient anus that appears only when it is needed, before vanishing completely. Dr Sidney Tamm of the Marine Biological Laboratory could not initially find any trace of an anus on the species. However, as the animal gets full, a pore opens up to dispose of waste Steven G Johnson Science news in pictures Giant bee spotted Feared extinct, the Wallace's Giant bee has been spotted for the first time in nearly 40 years. An international team of conservationists spotted the bee, that is four times the size of a typical honeybee, on an expedition to a group of Indonesian Islands Clay Bolt Science news in pictures New mammal species found inside crocodile Fossilised bones digested by crocodiles have revealed the existence of three new mammal species that roamed the Cayman Islands 300 years ago. The bones belonged to two large rodent species and a small shrew-like animal New Mexico Museum of Natural History Science news in pictures Fabric that changes according to temperature created Scientists at the University of Maryland have created a fabric that adapts to heat, expanding to allow more heat to escape the body when warm and compacting to retain more heat when cold Faye Levine, University of Maryland Science news in pictures Baby mice tears could be used in pest control A study from the University of Tokyo has found that the tears of baby mice cause female mice to be less interested in the sexual advances of males Getty Science news in pictures Final warning to limit "climate catastrophe" The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has issued a report which projects the impact of a rise in global temperatures of 1.5 degrees Celsius and warns against a higher increase Getty Science news in pictures Nobel prize for evolution chemists The nobel prize for chemistry has been awarded to three chemists working with evolution. Frances Smith is being awarded the prize for her work on directing the evolution of enzymes, while Gregory Winter and George Smith take the prize for their work on phage display of peptides and antibodies Getty/AFP Science news in pictures Nobel prize for laser physicists The nobel prize for physics has been awarded to three physicists working with lasers. Arthur Ashkin (L) was awarded for his "optical tweezers" which use lasers to grab particles, atoms, viruses and other living cells. Donna Strickland and Gerard Mourou were jointly awarded the prize for developing chirped-pulse amplification of lasers Reuters/AP Science news in pictures Discovery of a new species of dinosaur The Ledumahadi Mafube roamed around 200 million years ago in what is now South Africa. Recently discovered by a team of international scientists, it was the largest land animal of its time, weighing 12 tons and standing at 13 feet. In Sesotho, the South African language of the region in which the dinosaur was discovered, its name means "a giant thunderclap at dawn" Viktor Radermacher / SWNS Science news in pictures Birth of a planet Scientists have witnessed the birth of a planet for the first time ever. This spectacular image from the SPHERE instrument on ESO's Very Large Telescope is the first clear image of a planet caught in the very act of formation around the dwarf star PDS 70. The planet stands clearly out, visible as a bright point to the right of the center of the image, which is blacked out by the coronagraph mask used to block the blinding light of the central star. ESO/A. Muller et al Science news in pictures New human organ discovered that was previously missed by scientists Layers long thought to be dense, connective tissue are actually a series of fluid-filled compartments researchers have termed the interstitium. These compartments are found beneath the skin, as well as lining the gut, lungs, blood vessels and muscles, and join together to form a network supported by a mesh of strong, flexible proteins Getty Science news in pictures Previously unknown society lived in Amazon rainforest before Europeans arrived, say archaeologists Working in the Brazilian state of Mato Grosso, a team led by archaeologists at the University of Exeter unearthed hundreds of villages hidden in the depths of the rainforest. These excavations included evidence of fortifications and mysterious earthworks called geoglyphs Jose Iriarte Science news in pictures One in 10 people have traces of cocaine or heroin on fingerprints, study finds More than one in 10 people were found to have traces of class A drugs on their fingers by scientists developing a new fingerprint-based drug test. Using sensitive analysis of the chemical composition of sweat, researchers were able to tell the difference between those who had been directly exposed to heroin and cocaine, and those who had encountered it indirectly. Getty Science news in pictures Nasa releases stunning images of Jupiter's great red spot The storm bigger than the Earth, has been swhirling for 350 years. The image's colours have been enhanced after it was sent back to Earth. Pictures by: Tom Momary "We found that the younger a man was when he first viewed pornography, the more likely he was to want power over women," said lead researcher Alyssa Bischmann. "The older a man was when he first viewed pornography, the more likely he would want to engage in playboy behaviour." That was a shock because scientists had expected that men would be more promiscuous the earlier they came to pornographic material. "That finding has sparked many more questions and potential research ideas because it was so unexpected based on what we know about gender role socialisation and media exposure," said Chrissy Richardson, who also worked on the study. The average age that first men first saw porn was 13.37 years old, the study found. The youngest first saw it at five and the oldest at more than 26. Most said that they had first encountered it by accident, rather than searching it out or being forced to watch it. And how exactly that happened didn't appear to determine how men would relate to women. "We were surprised that the type of exposure did not affect whether someone wanted power over women or to engage in playboy behaviours," said Ms Bischmann. "We had expected that intentional, accidental or forced experiences would have differing outcomes." It started as a very small food stand in Zamalek, one of the most popular neighbourhoods for outings in Cairo. Today, Taboon has expanded into the ground floor of a Zamalek apartment building overlooking the Nile and along with the extra space, came extra items on what is now a much more elaborate menu that carries the brand of urban Lebanese cuisine but that offers several indisputably Syrian items. The waiters are not really concerned with this very delicate in fact almost politically sensitive debate on whether a particular item on the menu is Lebanese or Syrian. As far as they are concerned, the answer is: its good; and it can be ready in 20 minutes. The dishes are described by the waitstaff as Levantine cuisine. Of course, no Lebanese would ever settle down for the generic qualification of Levantine cuisine. That would hurt their culinary pride. They would argue that: yes, of course we share some items with them, but we do have our own cuisine and some of the items we share even have slightly different recipes. For a Syrian, what is the cuisine of the Levant if not Syrian? They would argue that with all the diversity coming from Aleppo, Damascus and elsewhere across the country is the origin, and this was later spread throughout Jordan, Palestine and Lebanon, who, the Syrian would acknowledge, do have their own specialities. However, both the Syrian and the Lebanese, and for that matter a Jordanian and a Palestinian, would all agree that the mixed grill dish (mashawi), which is one of Taboons best and most popular dishes, is never a typical home-made lunch. They would also agree that taboula is an uncontested Lebanese salad that most Egyptian restaurants, Taboon included, fail to dice or season the way it is done in Lebanon. There could be a debate, however, on whether shakriya (a dish of half-fried and half-stewed lamb covered with a thick yogurt-based sauce) is the original Syrian recipe from which the Lebanese laban imoh minus a few elements of the sauce recipe is derived, or whether it is the other way round. That said, they would agree that if a restaurant calls itself Lebanese it should rather go by laban imoh than shakriya as the name for a dish that is quite good but is not done to the standards of the flavour of a shakriya served in a Damascus house or a laban imoh served in even a basic Beirut restaurant. This debate is hardly possible if the dinning group are mostly Egyptian, with no real experience of indulging in the many delights of the cuisines of Syria and Lebanon. The focus would rather be on other aspects: the food is not at all too heavy; the portions are adequate; the main dishes are much better than the starters and the hot mezza are better than the cold selections of mezza. When it comes to the dessert section, the options are not very varied but whatever is offered is quite good and it is usually enough to order three items to share for six people, to be followed by refreshing mint tea, and for those who absolutely adore it, shisha, both outdoor, on the little pavement space that Taboon has. Indoor seating is also an option. Taboon does not stand at the inexpensive end of the cafe-bistro market (it is not exactly a restaurant in terms of setting, despite a restaurant-oriented menu that also has a very inviting ideas for a late Friday breakfast or a Saturday brunch). Dinner, drinks and shisha for two people could cost around EGP 800. The restaurant is located on Abul-Feda Street and it is open almost 24 hours a day. It also has an efficient delivery service, with food arriving warm and neatly packed Search Keywords: Short link: For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} The Mozambique channel washes ashore on the soft, sandy beaches of Maintirano, a town on the west coast of Madagascar. You could be forgiven for thinking this must be paradise for the people who make their living here fishing. The locals know better. Fishing is dangerous, but I have to feed my family, confesses Vernon, a 33-year-old fisherman, and father of five, who makes around 5-a-day heading out into the ocean on a Pirogue a tiny wooden sailboat that resembles a canoe. Sometimes very far away from the shore. Sometimes into hazardous conditions. The community estimates that at least 30 fishermen died in this village in 2016. The small boats used by fishermen in coastal communities provide little protection from dangerous conditions (Vestability) The World Health Organisation (WHO) released a report in 2014 highlighting that Africa has an intolerable death toll through drowning. The continent has the highest rates of drowning in the world. It accounts for around 7 per cent of every 100,000 deaths (compared with just 0.44 per cent here in the UK). The numbers might be far higher but there is a lack of available data. Most of these deaths result from fishing accidents. People from impoverished communities are not properly equipped to deal with strong currents and hazardous weather. Recommended The startup selling organic tampons in ice cream tubs On a trip to a remote fishing village in Madagascar in 2014, graduate Alex Sanderson noticed the lack of affordable marine safety equipment. I spoke to a lot of single mothers families that had lost husbands, sons and brothers in fishing accidents. The reality to them was that these instances were unavoidable the chances of fishermen, armed with just an oar, returning if their boat capsized at sea was low. Even a small wave can break up a boat in half. Vestability launched its jackets on the west coast of Madagascar, enlisting locals to help test them (Vestability) You cant get away from life jackets in Europe. They are everywhere. It felt so strange to think that this sort of basic provision wasnt being provided everywhere. For these communities life-jackets are a luxury. In Africa, life jackets cost around 60 times more than a fisherman's daily income and many villagers must make the journey to larger cities to buy one. Alex believes this is why NGOs and local authorities seem to overlook drowning as an issue. There just wasnt a straightforward, cost-effective solution. The way we currently make jackets makes the final product far too costly, and as most are made in Europe or Asia, transporting them to remote fishing villages pushes the price up further. Alex and Pritika Kasliwal founded Vestability while studying at Bristol. They are looking to expand their programme into other parts of Africa (Vestability) Alex and Pritika needed to find a way to provide affordable lifesaving buoyancy vests. They started to look at cheap materials that were available in fishing communities nets, local plant varieties, plastic bags even rum bottles. "We decided on a rice sack and four plastic bottles." And develop they have. Their buoyancy vest mimics the design of a standard life jacket which provides enough flexibility during fishing and swimming, whilst also being comfortable. Their jackets provide 60 newtons of upward force, enough buoyancy to keep a conscious human afloat. Alex and Pritika headed to Maintirano to launch their sustainable design, realising that the easiest way to distribute vests would be teaching fishing communities to make them themselves. Workshops were attended by fishermen as well as the women and children (Vestability) They ran two, two-hour workshops (taught in English and Malagasy), not only attended by fishermen, but also women and children and community leaders. Attendees created their own life jackets and the know-how to repair them ensuring skills will be transferred to family, friends and future generations. We want fishing communities to benefit from the jackets for generations to come says Alex. The aim of the project is to ensure villagers can pass on the know-how to future generations (Vestability) One of the fishermen they taught, Bonina, is the breadwinner of his family and the dangerous nature of his work had created an uncertain future. For families in poverty, the death of a household earner can not only be an emotional tragedy, but may lead to the rest of the family struggling to survive. Bonina and his wife attended workshops run by Vestability in Maintirano. Everyone should have one of these life jackets, he grins, strapping on his vest, with his daughter in-tow. Thirty fishermen died in Maintirano in 2016. Since Vestability began operating in the area, there have been no reported deaths. After successful testing of the product in the region, Vestability aims to continue expansion across Madagascar with marine charity, Blue Ventures, and further test their product with the RNLI in the UK. Back in Bristol, the university has helped them to grow Vestability into a self-sustaining business. We have had so much help along the way, comments Alex. Bristol has loads of societies that encourage entrepreneurs. I was helped by Enactus Bristol, but also the university staff in the Bristol Basecamp. So what's next for Vestability? This has the potential to save lives all over Africa so were going to concentrate on getting jackets to as many fishermen as possible says Alex. Pritika and I have just graduated university, so we can focus our time on Vestability. We will to continue to provide communities with access to vests but also other forms of lifesaving equipment. The hope is they will expand throughout Madagascar and East Africa. Vernon, who has five children, previously had to choose between risking his life, or allowing his family to go hungry (Vestability) When we left Maintirano we were just so pleased with the success of the project, and the foundations we have laid. Were just filled with plans for the future right now. For more information on Vestability, you can visit www.vestability.co.uk 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 }} Some Deliveroo riders have refused to work in parts of London after a spate of acid attacks. The food delivery company said 71 of its drivers had refused jobs in London and seven have been reassigned to different locations after raising concerns about their safety. A Deliveroo moped rider was among those attacked during a rampage through the London Borough of Hackney last month that saw five people injured within 90 minutes. Recommended Deliveroo driver among victims of London acid attacks Another moped rider for rival delivery company UberEats, Jabed Hussein, was also attacked that night. He told the BBCs Victoria Derbyshire programme: It was like getting fire on my face, I was screaming on the street. This shouldnt be a job where your life should be put at risk. Drivers I know are now clocking off at 22:00, its too dangerous after then. Most of them wont work after this, whereas we used to work until 01:00. Now, I feel Im working in some sort of jungle, like anything can eat me, Im not safe. Deliveroo said on Thursday that it had introduced a range of measures to help protect drivers including a new app feature that allows riders to raise security concerns about particular locations. The company is also trialling helmet cameras to allow riders to gather evidence that may aid future police investigations and said it plans to hire 50 new staff who will focus on rider safety. Delivery riders during a demonstration in Parliament Square on 18 July (PA) We will do everything we can to protect our riders and have put in place new measures so that riders can report any concerns they have or even move to work in another area if they feel unsafe, Dan Warne, managing director for Deliveroo UK, said. We are working closely with the police and local councils, and are sharing all the information our riders give us in order to help tackle crime against [them]. [This] is why were implementing new measures like our app, and helmet-mounted cameras these will allow us to work together, share information, and bring criminals to justice. Business news: In pictures Show all 13 1 /13 Business news: In pictures Business news: In pictures Flybe collapses Airline Flybe has collapsed. All future flights on the Exeter-based airline have been cancelled leaving more than 2,300 staff facing an uncertain future, and wrecking the travel plans of hundreds of thousands of passengers. The chief executive, Mark Anderson, said: Europes largest independent regional airline has been unable to overcome significant funding challenges to its business. AFP via Getty Business news: In pictures Future product placement will be 'tailored to individual viewers' Marketing executives say that product placement in films and televison shows on streaming services such as Netflix may be tailored to individuals in future. For instance, if data shows that a viewer is a fan of pepsi, a billboard in the background of a shot would host an advert for pepsi, while for a viewer known to have different tastes it could be for Coca-Cola Paramount Business news: In pictures Corbyn wishes Amazon a happy birthday In a card sent to Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos on the company's 25th birthday, Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn writes: "You owe the British people millions in taxes that pay for the public services that we all rely on. Please pay your fair share" Business news: In pictures No deal, no tariffs The government has announced that it would slash almost all tariffs in the event of a no-deal Brexit. Notable exceptions include cars and meat, which will see tariffs in place to protect British farmers Getty Business news: In pictures Fingerprint payment NatWest is trialling a new bank card that will allow people to touch their hand to the card when paying rather than typing in a PIN number. The card will work by recognising the user's fingerprint NatWest/PA Wire Business news: In pictures Mahabis bust High-end slipper retailer Mahabis has gone into administration. 2 Jan 2019 Mahabis Business news: In pictures Costa Cola Coca-Cola has paid 3.9bn for Costa Coffee. A cafe chain is a new venture for the global soft drinks giant PA Business news: In pictures RIP Payday Loans A funeral procession for payday loans was held in London on September 2. The future of pay day lenders is in doubt after Wonga, Britain's biggest, went into administration on August 30 PA Business news: In pictures Musk irks investors and directors Elon Musk has concluded that Tesla will remain public. Investors and company directors were angry at Musk for tweeting unexpectedly that he was considering taking Tesla private and share prices had taken a tumble in the following weeks Getty Business news: In pictures Jaguar warning Iconic British car maker Jaguar Land Rover warned on July 5, 2018 that a "bad" Brexit deal could jeopardise planned investment of more than $100 billion, upping corporate pressure as the government heads into crucial talks AFP/Getty Business news: In pictures Spotif-IPO Spotify traded publically for the first time on the New York Stock Exchange on Tuesday. However, the company isn't issuing shares, but rather, shares held by Spotify's private investors will be sold AFP/Getty Business news: In pictures French blue passports The deadline to award a contract to make blue British passports after Brexit has been extended by two weeks following a request by bidder De La Rue. The move comes after anger at the announcement British passports would be produced by Franco-Dutch firm Gemalto when De La Rues contract ends in July. The British firm said Gemalto was chosen only because it undercut the competition, but the UK company also admitted that it was not the cheapest choice in the tendering process. Business news: In pictures Beast from the east economic impact The Beast from the East wiped 4m off of Flybes revenues due to flight cancellations, airport closures and delays, according to the budget airlines estimates. Flybe said it cancelled 994 flights in the three months to 31 March, compared to 372 in the same period last year. The number of acid attacks in the UK has more than doubled since 2012 and increased by 74 per cent in the past year alone, with the vast majority of incidents taking place in London. Last year, there were 504 reports of acid attacks in the UK up from 183 in 2012. Just two years ago, the Government ignored expert advice and made changes that made it easier to buy dangerous acids of the kind used in recent weeks, The Independent revealed. Changes made in the Deregulation Act 2015 scrapped an obligation on sellers of dangerous substances, including acids, to be registered with their local council. As ministers boasted about cutting red tape, medical experts warned that it could make it easier for criminals to get their hands on highly toxic substances, as did the Governments own advisory board on the regulation of hazardous chemicals. 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 }} Travellers visiting US airports and pressed for time to shop will be able to buy and collect Uniqlo shirts and jackets at the touch of a vending machine button. Reports suggest the Japanese fashion giant's first location for a buy-and-collect vending machine is at California's Oakland Airport. The machine offers a selection of light jackets and shirts for both men and women. Nine other locations in airports and shopping centres across the US have been touted for Uniqlo vending machines later this month, including major cities New York and Los Angeles. Cutting the middle man may be a savvy route to cost-cutting from the Asian retailer as it struggles to gain a foothold in the US. In July this year, Uniqlo USA reported operating losses despite a small recovery from 2016, under what it called new operational structure. Uniqlo also reported losses on its US-based premium denim labels this year, in what is perhaps a sign of American customers unfamiliar with the Japanese brand which performs well in Japan, China and Southeast Asia. Uniqlos survival in the US has had its fare share of turbulent challenges. Earlier this year, the founder of the retail giant threatened to close its US operations if President Donald Trump imposed a border tax of up to 35 per cent on foreign goods. 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 mother of nine and her boyfriend have been found guilty of causing the death of her baby son, who suffered suffered a "catastrophic" brain injury. Five-month-old Eli Cox died in hospital in April last year, two weeks after an incident at his home in Minster-on-Sea on the Isle of Sheppey while in the care of his mother Katherine Cox and her boyfriend Danny Shepherd. Maidstone Crown Court heard how his heart stopped beating and he stopped breathing. He was rushed to hospital where his heartbeat was restored, but he was not able to breathe unaided. He then transferred to King's College Hospital in London but a further scan showed extensive brain damage and life support was withdrawn. Eli had suffered brain damage and two small round bruises were found at the back of his head. The jury was told the little boy was found to have 28 fractures of different ages to 19 different bones in his body consistent with being "twisted, pulled, crushed and bent in half", the Kent Messenger reported. Prosecutor Jennifer Knight said a post mortem found that death had been caused by a "shaking or shaking impact type" head injury and that Eli "had also suffered skeletal injury on many different occasions leading up to his death". Tests also found traces of the drugs. Cox, 33, and Shepherd, 25, of Faversham, who were the only adults present when Eli was injured, were both found guilty of causing or allowing the death of a child between April 12 and 28, and causing or allowing physical harm to a child. 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 They were also both convicted of possessing the Class B drug amphetamine. Prosecutor Jennifer Knight said Eli suffered extensive brain damage, consistent with shaking, which was caused by a prolonged period of insufficient oxygen to the brain. She suggested that these injuries were inflicted on many different occasions on the run-up to his final collapse. She said: It was the actions of one of them that resulted in the catastrophic brain injury that Eli Cox suffered that day. Danny Shepherd denied ever hurting Eli (PA) The events of that day were clearly the unhappy culmination of injuries Eli Cox suffered on many occasions, also inflicted by Danny Shepherd and Katharine Cox. Both were aware in the weeks leading up to April 13 and on the day of his death that Eli Cox was at serious risk of physical harm. They were aware of it because one was the perpetrator and the other knew that perpetrator presented a risk to Eli. Recommended Police officer who saved young boy from extreme child abuse adopts him She claimed Shepherd, who was known as Pickle, had a stick he called "Pickle's beating stick" but he said it was used to control their dogs. Both Cox and Shepherd denied harming Eli. They will both be sentenced after a psychiatric report on Shepherd ordered by the judge is carried out to look into how the issue of his autism and his reported low IQ could affect the case. The maximum sentence both could receive is 14 years in prison. Additional reporting by PA For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} A breast surgeon who was jailed for carrying out unnecessary operations has had his sentence increased from 15 to 20 years by the Court of Appeal. Judges said the first sentence was unduly lenient and should be increased. Ian Paterson, 59, left victims scarred and disfigured, according to prosecutors. Recommended Rogue breast surgeon jailed for 15 years for needless operations He watched the hearing via a videolink from prison as they argued the sentence should be increased to represent the seriousness of the crime. The surgeon from Greater Manchester was first sentenced in May for 17 counts of wounding with intent and unlawful wounding of patients, but the sentence was reviewed this month in London. Robert Buckland, the solicitor general who had referred the sentence to the court, said the surgeon had caused physical and psychological harm to patients. 'Monster' surgeon Ian Paterson jailed for 15 years Patersons trial heard evidence from nine women and one man who had been treated between 1997 and 2011 in the private Little Aston and Parkway hospitals in the West Midlands. Lawyer Kashmir Uppal, of Access Legal, who represented Patersons clients for years told The Observer: Im pleased the sentence has been increased. Its still not enough to reflect the seriousness of his crimes and the impact on patients. But it recognises that 15 years was not enough. Unfortunately, Mr Paterson still showed no remorse. UK news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 UK news in pictures UK news in pictures 12 November 2022 The City of London Pride Group take part in the parade during the Lord Mayor's Show PA 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 We are still working on civil cases and have been instructed by a number of patients. The full extent of his crimes will never be known because there are other patients who havent come forward. Victims were left in constant pain and had a lack of trust in medical professionals, they said. Lady Justice Hallett told him his victims had been left feeling violated and vulnerable, and that his treatment of them was brutal and sustained. She added that some of them had experienced long-term psychological effects. For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} A man has been sentenced for threatening to blow up an Islamic bookshop in London and kill all the Muslims. David Moffatt, 39, pleaded guilty to religiously aggravated intentional harassment, alarm and distress at Willesden Magistrates Court. Police said they were called to the shop, in Cricklewood, on 23 May by staff who said a man had threatened to blow the bookshop up and kill the Muslims. The suspect left the shop after making the threats but witnesses described him wearing a high-visibility jacket and trousers. Moffatt, of Ivy Road, Cricklewood, was identified as the suspect after he made an unrelated call to the police later the same day alleging that he had been threatened by someone else. Officers then noticed that Moffatt was wearing the same attire as the suspect from the Cricklewood Broadway incident earlier that day, a spokesperson for the Metropolitan Police said. UK news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 UK news in pictures UK news in pictures 12 November 2022 The City of London Pride Group take part in the parade during the Lord Mayor's Show PA 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 Enquiries and a review of CCTV footage in the area placed Moffatt at the bookshop and he was arrested at 11.30pm. When officers confronted him over the allegations, he replied: Im not anti-Muslim, Im Catholic. Moffatt was sentenced to a community order requiring him to carry out 100 hours of unpaid work and to pay 620 in costs and a victim surcharge of 85 at Willesden Magistrates Court on 28 July. Detective Inspector Madeline Ryder said: Hate crime is unacceptable and Brents Community Safety Unit is committed to tackling hate crime in all its forms, supporting victims and their families and bringing perpetrators like Moffatt to justice. A spokesperson for Scotland Yard said it was working to combat the hidden nature of hate crime, which remains largely unreported, and vowed to fully investigate all allegations while supporting victims and their families. The force is appealing for anyone suffering or witnessing any form of any hate crime to report it immediately by calling 999 or 101, visiting a police station, using the MOPAC Hate Crime app or through groups like Tell MAMA for Islamophobic incidents and the Community Security Trust (CST) for anti-Semitic incidents. 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 }} Concertgoers at the Proms have been ordered to remove their EU flags and scolded for disrupting the performance. Following a similar controversy last year, Royal Albert Hall found itself embroiled in another Brexit row after members of the audience who draped EU flags over the barrier dividing the audience from the orchestra were instructed to put them away them by ushers on Sunday. Union flags, Welsh flags, which were being displayed for the BBC National Orchestra of Wales, and other flags were allowed to remain in place during the finale of Beethovens ninth symphony. Fiona Swann, who attended the concert and is part of an activist group who call themselves EU flag mafia, told The Independent one of her party had an EU flag confiscated when walking into the venue. Before the performance we were giving out small hand-held flags and lapel badges and lots of people took them, Ms Swann said. During the Ode to Joy [the EU's official anthem] we got out our flags and draped them over the front of the barriers so they would be visible to the cameras. We were asked to remove them. We forwarned the performers about the stunt so they would not be surprised they were broadly supportive." She added: There was somebody in the seated area who was asked to remove his EU flag before the performance. A fellow concertgoer told classical music blog Slipped Disc that Royal Albert Hall staff came in through the piece on a number of occasions to tell people to remove them, saying: "it was a total distraction to the performers". It was an abysmal way to deal with a political statement at a classical concert; it turned attention away from the performance. There was no waving of the flags or anything that might be construed as distracting. A spokesperson for Albert Hall admitted to The Independent people had been asked to put their flags away but insisted the reason was not politically motivated. We havent banned the EU flag. At one Prom, our stewards asked a couple of people to put their flags away, as they were distracting others, including members of the orchestra," they said. "This wasnt a political issue, and we have no objections to concertgoers bringing flags including, of course, the EU flag provided they do not interfere with the smooth running of the festival. How Brexit affected Britain's favourite foods from Weetabix to Marmite Show all 8 1 /8 How Brexit affected Britain's favourite foods from Weetabix to Marmite How Brexit affected Britain's favourite foods from Weetabix to Marmite Weetabix Chief executive of Weetabix Giles Turrell has warned that the price of one of the nations favourite breakfast are likely to go up this year by low-single digits in percentage terms. Reuters How Brexit affected Britain's favourite foods from Weetabix to Marmite Nescafe The cost of a 100g jar of Nescafe Original at Sainsburys has gone up 40p from 2.75 to 3.15 a 14 per cent risesince the Brexit vote. PA How Brexit affected Britain's favourite foods from Weetabix to Marmite Freddo When contacted by The Independent this month, a Mondelez spokesperson declined to discuss specific brands but confirmed that there would be "selective" price increases across its range despite the American multi-national confectionery giant reporting profits of $548m (450m) in its last three-month financial period. Mondelez, which bought Cadbury in 2010, said rising commodity costs combined with the slump in the value of the pound had made its products more expensive to make. Cadbury How Brexit affected Britain's favourite foods from Weetabix to Marmite Mr Kipling cakes Premier Foods, the maker of Mr Kipling and Bisto gravy, said that it was considering price rises on a case-by-case basis Reuters How Brexit affected Britain's favourite foods from Weetabix to Marmite Walkers Crisps Walkers, owned by US giant PepsiCo, said "the weakened value of the pound" is affecting the import cost of some of its materials. A Walkers spokesman told the Press Association that a 32g standard bag was set to increase from 50p to 55p, and the larger grab bag from 75p to 80p. Getty How Brexit affected Britain's favourite foods from Weetabix to Marmite Marmite Tesco removed Marmite and other Unilever household brand from its website last October, after the manufacturer tried to raise its prices by about 10 per cent owing to sterlings slump. Tesco and Unilever resolved their argument, but the price of Marmite has increased in UK supermarkets with the grocer reporting a 250g jar of Marmite will now cost Morrisons customers 2.64 - an increase of 12.5 per cent. Rex How Brexit affected Britain's favourite foods from Weetabix to Marmite Toblerone Toblerone came under fire in November after it increased the space between the distinctive triangles of its bars. Mondelez International, the company which makes the product, said the change was made due to price rises in recent months. Pixabay How Brexit affected Britain's favourite foods from Weetabix to Marmite Maltesers Maltesers, billed as the lighter way to enjoy chocolate, have also shrunk in size. Mars, which owns the brand, has reduced its pouch weight by 15 per cent. Mars said rising costs mean it had to make the unenviable decision between increasing its prices or reducing the weight of its Malteser packs. iStockphoto Ushers at Albert Hall follow instructions from the BBC during the Proms an eight-week summer season of daily orchestral classical music concerts and other events. Pro-EU campaigners have now threatened to overwhelm the Last Night of the Proms, a fervently patriotic affair which finishes with British patriotic pieces such as Thomas Arnes Rule, Britannia! and the national anthem, this coming September with a plethora of blue and yellow-starred EU flags. Although the BBC is famed for trying to stop the Proms from being politicised, this is not the first time the event has found itself caught in the firing line over the Brexit decision. On this years opening night, pianist Igor Levit performed an improvised version of the EU anthem while wearing an EU pin. A day later, Daniel Barenboim, an Argentine-Israeli conductor and Brexit opponent, interrupted a BBC Proms concert to issue an ardent plea for European unity and warning against the dangers of nationalism and isolationist tendencies. Last years finale night saw a sea of blue and yellow-starred EU flags raised in solidarity with the European Union. Union flags which are traditionally waved at the Last Night Of The Proms to well-known anthems such as Rule Britannia, Jerusalem and Land of Hope and Glory were brandished alongside the EU flags. After a successful crowdfunding campaign, pro-Remain volunteers came together outside the Royal Albert Hall before the event to distribute 2,500 EU flags to attendees. As music is such an international activity that benefits greatly from our membership of the EU this event feels an appropriate venue to show UK solidarity with the EU, an organiser said at the time. The event is televised and has a very high profile. Concert goers waving EU flags along with the Union flag would send a message to the world and our own people about how much music lovers value the EU. But not everyone was so happy about the display of affection for Brussels and the continent. Arron Banks, Leave.EU co-founder and prominent Ukip donor who was suspended from the party in March, said at the time he paid 5,000 for 10,000 Union flags to be handed to prom-goers. The multimillionaire said: It is a British event and nothing to do with the EU this is a pathetic attempt by the desperate Remoaners to hijack a celebration of Britain. I will be handing out union flags personally. I don't know what they are trying to prove we won! Brexit happened and nothing the IN side will do will change that. A statement on behalf of the Albert Hall and the BBC, which organises the Proms, released in response to the recent furore said: "Flags are permitted, however our primary concern is the smooth running of the festival. On this occasion, a small number of people with large flags caused disruption to the audience and performers at the front of the arena. In line with standard event management, staff intervened as they would for any disturbance in the hall." 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 couple have been charged with sexual assault after allegedly abusing a five-year-old girl and live streaming the act to a paedophile abroad. Craig Forbes and former partner Sarah Gotham allegedly streamed the abuse from the UK to a woman in California. They face four joint counts of sexual assault, and Gotham is also accused of two further counts of sexual assault. The woman in California said she thought the girl was about five years old. Prosecutor Heather Hope said at the trial in Plymouth that the victim was most probably drugged at the time and the evidence was downright revolting, as reported by The Daily Mail. She added that the former couple engaged in about five livestream acts from late 2012 to early 2013. Craig Forbes also faces charges of child abuse (SWNS) On one occasion, Gotham allegedly carried out the abuse alone in the house. They were discovered after the FBI was looking into child abuse and discovered a Skype name called Bad Girl Next Door, which led them to the woman in San Francisco and her interaction with the UK-based couple. The woman in the US told the FBI that Gotham, 34, was chatty and her Skype name was Sarah Girls Only. Gotham has denied the six charges. The trial continues. 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 boy who had sex with his teacher on a flight home from a school trip, did not want her lose her job as a result of their fling, his father has said. Eleanor Wilson was struck off by a professional conduct panel after it emerged she had had oral and full sex with a 16-year-old pupil. The 28-year-old former physics teacher had already been sacked from her job at the school in Bristol in May 2016. A friend said the pupil, who cannot be named for legal reasons, had bragged about sleeping with Ms Wilson on a school charity trip to Swaziland. He had also shown them raunchy text messages between the pair, they said. He said they had sex a lot on the trip to Africa and on the flight back, they told the MailOnline. But the boy's father, who cannot be named for legal reasons, told the website that his son did not want her to lose her career. 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 He said: "He didn't want her to lose her job over it. The relationship was only uncovered when another pupil found out about it and blackmailed her for sex. He then told the school and from there it was the school who pursued the investigation, not my son. He didn't want her to lose her career. He's a young man who just wants to put this behind him and move on. Ms Wilson was struck off from teaching after a two-day National College for Teaching and Leadership hearing found her guilty of all but two of the allegations made against her. 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 }} Holocaust survivors have issued a stark warning that the growing willingness of some "to express extreme views ... and act out their intolerance with violent acts" could lead to Britain becoming the Nazi Germany of tomorrow. Three survivors of the fascist regime said it was of vital importance that the dangers of division were not forgotten, as they offered their support for a national Holocaust memorial and education centre to be built at Westminster. Peter Lantos, who was a child when the Nazis killed 22 members of his family, said the memorial would be a powerful reminder of what can happen. We are the last generation to bear witness. When we die, no one can say I was there, he said. Its important for the centre to be more than a record and testimony of the past. It is also a stark and powerful reminder, and warning to a future generation [of] what can happen when xenophobia and intolerance can lead to genocide. Joan Salter, 77, said civilisation is not a one-way street and can be easily torn away. World news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 World news in pictures World news in pictures 30 September 2020 Pope Francis prays with priests at the end of a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 29 September 2020 A girl's silhouette is seen from behind a fabric in a tent along a beach by Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 September 2020 A Chinese woman takes a photo of herself in front of a flower display dedicated to frontline health care workers during the COVID-19 pandemic in Beijing, China. China will celebrate national day marking the founding of the People's Republic of China on October 1st Getty World news in pictures 27 September 2020 The Glass Mountain Inn burns as the Glass Fire moves through the area in St. Helena, California. The fast moving Glass fire has burned over 1,000 acres and has destroyed homes Getty World news in pictures 26 September 2020 A villager along with a child offers prayers next to a carcass of a wild elephant that officials say was electrocuted in Rani Reserve Forest on the outskirts of Guwahati, India AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 September 2020 The casket of late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is seen in Statuary Hall in the US Capitol to lie in state in Washington, DC AFP via Getty World news in pictures 24 September 2020 An anti-government protester holds up an image of a pro-democracy commemorative plaque at a rally outside Thailand's parliament in Bangkok, as activists gathered to demand a new constitution AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 September 2020 A whale stranded on a beach in Macquarie Harbour on the rugged west coast of Tasmania, as hundreds of pilot whales have died in a mass stranding in southern Australia despite efforts to save them, with rescuers racing to free a few dozen survivors The Mercury/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 22 September 2020 State civil employee candidates wearing face masks and shields take a test in Surabaya AFP via Getty World news in pictures 21 September 2020 A man sweeps at the Taj Mahal monument on the day of its reopening after being closed for more than six months due to the coronavirus pandemic AP World news in pictures 20 September 2020 A deer looks for food in a burnt area, caused by the Bobcat fire, in Pearblossom, California EPA World news in pictures 19 September 2020 Anti-government protesters hold their mobile phones aloft as they take part in a pro-democracy rally in Bangkok. Tens of thousands of pro-democracy protesters massed close to Thailand's royal palace, in a huge rally calling for PM Prayut Chan-O-Cha to step down and demanding reforms to the monarchy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 September 2020 Supporters of Iraqi Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr maintain social distancing as they attend Friday prayers after the coronavirus disease restrictions were eased, in Kufa mosque, near Najaf, Iraq Reuters World news in pictures 17 September 2020 A protester climbs on The Triumph of the Republic at 'the Place de la Nation' as thousands of protesters take part in a demonstration during a national day strike called by labor unions asking for better salary and against jobs cut in Paris, France EPA World news in pictures 16 September 2020 A fire raging near the Lazzaretto of Ancona in Italy. The huge blaze broke out overnight at the port of Ancona. Firefighters have brought the fire under control but they expected to keep working through the day EPA World news in pictures 15 September 2020 Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny posing for a selfie with his family at Berlin's Charite hospital. In an Instagram post he said he could now breathe independently following his suspected poisoning last month Alexei Navalny/Instagram/AFP World news in pictures 14 September 2020 Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga, former Defense Minister Shigeru Ishiba and former Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida celebrate after Suga was elected as new head of the ruling party at the Liberal Democratic Party's leadership election in Tokyo Reuters World news in pictures 13 September 2020 A man stands behind a burning barricade during the fifth straight day of protests against police brutality in Bogota AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 September 2020 Police officers block and detain protesters during an opposition rally to protest the official presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus. Daily protests calling for the authoritarian president's resignation are now in their second month AP World news in pictures 11 September 2020 Members of 'Omnium Cultural' celebrate the 20th 'Festa per la llibertat' ('Fiesta for the freedom') to mark the Day of Catalonia in Barcelona. Omnion Cultural fights for the independence of Catalonia EPA World news in pictures 10 September 2020 The Moria refugee camp, two days after Greece's biggest migrant camp, was destroyed by fire. Thousands of asylum seekers on the island of Lesbos are now homeless AFP via Getty World news in pictures 9 September 2020 Pope Francis takes off his face mask as he arrives by car to hold a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 8 September 2020 A home is engulfed in flames during the "Creek Fire" in the Tollhouse area of California AFP via Getty World news in pictures 7 September 2020 A couple take photos along a sea wall of the waves brought by Typhoon Haishen in the eastern port city of Sokcho AFP via Getty World news in pictures 6 September 2020 Novak Djokovic and a tournament official tends to a linesperson who was struck with a ball by Djokovic during his match against Pablo Carreno Busta at the US Open USA Today Sports/Reuters World news in pictures 5 September 2020 Protesters confront police at the Shrine of Remembrance in Melbourne, Australia, during an anti-lockdown rally AFP via Getty World news in pictures 4 September 2020 A woman looks on from a rooftop as rescue workers dig through the rubble of a damaged building in Beirut. A search began for possible survivors after a scanner detected a pulse one month after the mega-blast at the adjacent port AFP via Getty World news in pictures 3 September 2020 A full moon next to the Virgen del Panecillo statue in Quito, Ecuador EPA World news in pictures 2 September 2020 A Palestinian woman reacts as Israeli forces demolish her animal shed near Hebron in the Israeli-occupied West Bank Reuters World news in pictures 1 September 2020 Students protest against presidential elections results in Minsk TUT.BY/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 31 August 2020 The pack rides during the 3rd stage of the Tour de France between Nice and Sisteron AFP via Getty World news in pictures 30 August 2020 Law enforcement officers block a street during a rally of opposition supporters protesting against presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus Reuters World news in pictures 29 August 2020 A woman holding a placard reading "Stop Censorship - Yes to the Freedom of Expression" shouts in a megaphone during a protest against the mandatory wearing of face masks in Paris. Masks, which were already compulsory on public transport, in enclosed public spaces, and outdoors in Paris in certain high-congestion areas around tourist sites, were made mandatory outdoors citywide on August 28 to fight the rising coronavirus infections AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 August 2020 Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe bows to the national flag at the start of a press conference at the prime minister official residence in Tokyo. Abe announced he will resign over health problems, in a bombshell development that kicks off a leadership contest in the world's third-largest economy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 27 August 2020 Residents take cover behind a tree trunk from rubber bullets fired by South African Police Service (SAPS) in Eldorado Park, near Johannesburg, during a protest by community members after a 16-year old boy was reported dead AFP via Getty World news in pictures 26 August 2020 People scatter rose petals on a statue of Mother Teresa marking her 110th birth anniversary in Ahmedabad AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 August 2020 An aerial view shows beach-goers standing on salt formations in the Dead Sea near Ein Bokeq, Israel Reuters World news in pictures 24 August 2020 Health workers use a fingertip pulse oximeter and check the body temperature of a fisherwoman inside the Dharavi slum during a door-to-door Covid-19 coronavirus screening in Mumbai AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 August 2020 People carry an idol of the Hindu god Ganesh, the deity of prosperity, to immerse it off the coast of the Arabian sea during the Ganesh Chaturthi festival in Mumbai, India Reuters World news in pictures 22 August 2020 Firefighters watch as flames from the LNU Lightning Complex fires approach a home in Napa County, California AP World news in pictures 21 August 2020 Members of the Israeli security forces arrest a Palestinian demonstrator during a rally to protest against Israel's plan to annex parts of the occupied West Bank AFP via Getty World news in pictures 20 August 2020 A man pushes his bicycle through a deserted road after prohibitory orders were imposed by district officials for a week to contain the spread of the Covid-19 in Kathmandu AFP via Getty World news in pictures 19 August 2020 A car burns while parked at a residence in Vacaville, California. Dozens of fires are burning out of control throughout Northern California as fire resources are spread thin AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 August 2020 Students use their mobile phones as flashlights at an anti-government rally at Mahidol University in Nakhon Pathom. Thailand has seen near-daily protests in recent weeks by students demanding the resignation of Prime Minister Prayut Chan-O-Cha AFP via Getty World news in pictures 17 August 2020 Members of the Kayapo tribe block the BR163 highway during a protest outside Novo Progresso in Para state, Brazil. Indigenous protesters blocked a major transamazonian highway to protest against the lack of governmental support during the COVID-19 novel coronavirus pandemic and illegal deforestation in and around their territories AFP via Getty World news in pictures 16 August 2020 Lightning forks over the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge as a storm passes over Oakland AP World news in pictures 15 August 2020 Belarus opposition supporters gather near the Pushkinskaya metro station where Alexander Taraikovsky, a 34-year-old protester died on August 10, during their protest rally in central Minsk AFP via Getty World news in pictures 14 August 2020 AlphaTauri's driver Daniil Kvyat takes part in the second practice session at the Circuit de Catalunya in Montmelo near Barcelona ahead of the Spanish F1 Grand Prix AFP via Getty World news in pictures 13 August 2020 Soldiers of the Brazilian Armed Forces during a disinfection of the Christ The Redeemer statue at the Corcovado mountain prior to the opening of the touristic attraction in Rio AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 August 2020 Young elephant bulls tussle playfully on World Elephant Day at the Amboseli National Park in Kenya AFP via Getty [It is] comforting to assume that civilisation is a one-way street, when in fact experience teaches us that it is but a thin veneer, very easily torn away. Germany yesterday could so easily become Britain tomorrow, she said. In recent times, we have seen the splintering of social cohesion, the growing willingness to express extreme views, the ability of some to act out their intolerance with violent acts, the lack of respect for those of different cultures. "We live in dangerous times. Ten designs by world-renowned architects have been shortlisted for the memorial and the winning conception will be chosen by an independent committee in September. The UK Holocaust Memorial Foundation hopes the 50m centre will be open to the public in 2021. A South Sinai criminal court sentenced on Thursday 50 low-ranking policemen to three years in high security prison for illegally striking and disrupting work, state-run MENA news agency reported. The court also ordered that the defendants be fired and fined EGP 500 each in addition to EGP 6,000 collectively for damages. The case dates back to January 2017, when the defendants were arrested after organising a strike inside police departments in South Sinai to protest against an interior ministry decision to reduce their vacation days and increase their work hours. The defendants have the right to appeal the court verdict. Search Keywords: Short link: 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 }} When Christopher Nolan started directing Dunkirk, it is unlikely he would have known Brexiteers would attempt to co-opt and politicise the film for their own gain and tout it as an example of why Britain needs to leave the European Union. After all, Britain had not yet voted to exit the bloc when he was just halfway through making the World War II blockbuster. But regardless of Nolans intentions, the war epic has won over the hearts and minds of Brexit voters. Former Ukip leader Nigel Farage even posted a photo of himself looking deliberately sombre next to a poster for the film imploring youngsters to go and watch it. His supporters chimed in to argue that if everyone watches the film they will instantaneously understand why 51.9 per cent of voters opted for Britain to cut its ties with the continent. In a similar vein, Telegraph columnist, Allison Pearson, argued that for Brexit to work, we need Dunkirk spirit not Naysaying Nellies. But James OBrien has challenged the notion Britains exit from the European Union is somehow inextricably linked to Dunkirk. The LBC presenter, who has become famed for his on-air clashes with members of the public over Brexit, argued the idea Britain needs the Dunkirk spirit to make Brexit a success is founded on historical ignorance. Addressing listeners on his show, he said: "People that told us it was going to be easy and enriching and the most natural and liberating thing in history are now saying you need the spirit of Dunkirk to get through it. He continued: "Dunkirk. Described by Churchill as a disaster. And you have now or the idea that we have to invoke the spirit of Dunkirk to get through something that was supposed to be really easy and make us richer. "But again you know I'm just the lonely weathervane pointing at reality, while everybody else is chomping on nonsense. Think about that for a minute why would you want to invoke the spirit of Dunkirk the evacuation of French beaches undertaken as the result of incredibly chaotic scenes." How Brexit affected Britain's favourite foods from Weetabix to Marmite Show all 8 1 /8 How Brexit affected Britain's favourite foods from Weetabix to Marmite How Brexit affected Britain's favourite foods from Weetabix to Marmite Weetabix Chief executive of Weetabix Giles Turrell has warned that the price of one of the nations favourite breakfast are likely to go up this year by low-single digits in percentage terms. Reuters How Brexit affected Britain's favourite foods from Weetabix to Marmite Nescafe The cost of a 100g jar of Nescafe Original at Sainsburys has gone up 40p from 2.75 to 3.15 a 14 per cent risesince the Brexit vote. PA How Brexit affected Britain's favourite foods from Weetabix to Marmite Freddo When contacted by The Independent this month, a Mondelez spokesperson declined to discuss specific brands but confirmed that there would be "selective" price increases across its range despite the American multi-national confectionery giant reporting profits of $548m (450m) in its last three-month financial period. Mondelez, which bought Cadbury in 2010, said rising commodity costs combined with the slump in the value of the pound had made its products more expensive to make. Cadbury How Brexit affected Britain's favourite foods from Weetabix to Marmite Mr Kipling cakes Premier Foods, the maker of Mr Kipling and Bisto gravy, said that it was considering price rises on a case-by-case basis Reuters How Brexit affected Britain's favourite foods from Weetabix to Marmite Walkers Crisps Walkers, owned by US giant PepsiCo, said "the weakened value of the pound" is affecting the import cost of some of its materials. A Walkers spokesman told the Press Association that a 32g standard bag was set to increase from 50p to 55p, and the larger grab bag from 75p to 80p. Getty How Brexit affected Britain's favourite foods from Weetabix to Marmite Marmite Tesco removed Marmite and other Unilever household brand from its website last October, after the manufacturer tried to raise its prices by about 10 per cent owing to sterlings slump. Tesco and Unilever resolved their argument, but the price of Marmite has increased in UK supermarkets with the grocer reporting a 250g jar of Marmite will now cost Morrisons customers 2.64 - an increase of 12.5 per cent. Rex How Brexit affected Britain's favourite foods from Weetabix to Marmite Toblerone Toblerone came under fire in November after it increased the space between the distinctive triangles of its bars. Mondelez International, the company which makes the product, said the change was made due to price rises in recent months. Pixabay How Brexit affected Britain's favourite foods from Weetabix to Marmite Maltesers Maltesers, billed as the lighter way to enjoy chocolate, have also shrunk in size. Mars, which owns the brand, has reduced its pouch weight by 15 per cent. Mars said rising costs mean it had to make the unenviable decision between increasing its prices or reducing the weight of its Malteser packs. iStockphoto The evacuation of British troops from Dunkirk has been deemed a miracle by the history books. The evacuation, known as the Miracle of Dunkirk and by its code name of Operation Dynamo, during World War II saw 338,226 trapped men rescued from the beaches in just nine days in 1940. Recommended Royal Albert Hall asks Proms concertgoers to put away EU flag The journalist, who is also a presenter on Newsnight, added: "The idea that the same people who told you that this thing was going to be brilliant are now telling you that actually we need to be a bit like we were when we undertook the biggest military evacuation in the history of Britain. Eh? "Well hang on, either it's brilliant or it's a bit like the biggest military evacuation in the history of the United Kingdom. Which one is it? "Because if we need to invoke the spirit of Dunkirk, that's about retreating, that's about stepping away from a mess, that is about fleeing, hopefully to return? So what's that got to do with Brexit?" Next time you hear somebody telling you that we need to invoke the spirit of Dunkirk to get through Brexit they are the same people that told you Brexit was going to be a pile of chips. 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 High Court judge has warned that authorities will have blood on our hands if they release a suicidal teenager from a secure unit with nowhere safe to go. Sir Justice James Munby said there are no places available for the girl, known only as X to protect her identity, to be cared for in an appropriate clinical setting when she is ordered to leave the unit in 11 days. The judge, who sits as president of the High Courts family division, ordered his judgment in the private case be made public and sent to NHS England and senior Government ministers to expose the outrage that is the lack of proper provision for X and, one fears, too many like her. The judgment, delivered at a hearing in Manchester, concerns a girl who has attempted to kill herself several times since being detained at a secure mental health unit shortly before her 17th birthday. Staff have warned that her goal is to kill herself and has intensified in recent weeks, believing that if she is sent back to her home town it will not take more than 24 to 48 hours before they receive a phone call saying she is dead. Distressing testimony to the court revealed that the girl is actively expressing a wish to die and taking every measure available to harm herself. The case is being handled by the family division of the High Court (AFP/Getty) She has attempted to swallow items including stones, screws and clothing to take her own life. She has also attempted to use her hair and clothing including her own underwear to hang herself, and has self-harmed by cutting, banging her head, biting and punching her own body. The teenager, who was previously convicted in a youth court, also suffers from asthma and a heart murmur that puts her at risk of respiratory failure if staff restrain her for her own safety. During less than six months spent in the unit, restraints have had to be used on 117 occasions and there have been 102 significant acts of self-harm. She is effectively nursed in her bedroom, but this bedroom has had to be stripped in order to make it secure, to the point where X has no personal items in the bedroom: no carpet, no mirror; her bed is a mattress on the floor and she has to be dressed in anti-ligature clothing, said testimony given by psychiatrist Dr Audrey Oppenheim. Even going to the bathroom or having a shower has to be closely supervised She is now isolated from all her peers and no longer attends education, even on a minimal basis. Justice Munby said staff were doing their best in a dire situation, but also said the girls treatment could violate articles of the European Convention on Human Rights on inhuman or degrading treatment and the right to private and family life. Of course, this is all driven by the imperative need to preserve Xs life, but how is this treatment compatible with her humanity, her dignity, let alone with her welfare? he asked. Justice Munbys judgment, which can be read in full here, said no realistic care plan had been put in place by the local authority to keep the girl safe when she is released. 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 Experts believe she needs to be placed in further care but so far no appropriate bed has been found, and the judge said the only facility identified as an option has a six-month waiting list for beds. What this case demonstrates as if further demonstration is still required of what is a well-known scandal is the disgraceful and utterly shaming lack of proper provision in this country of the clinical, residential and other support services so desperately needed by the increasing numbers of children and young people afflicted with the same kind of difficulties as X is burdened with, Justice Munby said. We are, even in these times of austerity, one of the richest countries in the world. Our children and young people are our future. X is part of our future. It is a disgrace to any country with pretensions to civilisation, compassion and, dare one say it, basic human decency, that a judge in 2017 should be faced with the problems thrown up by this case and should have to express himself in such terms. Justice Munby said he personally felt shame and embarrassment at his powerlessness to do more for the 17-year-old, who must leave the unit no later than 3pm on 14 August. If, when in 11 days time she is released from ZX [the unit], we, the system, society, the state, are unable to provide X with the supportive and safe placement she so desperately needs, and if, in consequence, she is enabled to make another attempt on her life, then I can only say, with bleak emphasis: we will have blood on our hands, he concluded. A further hearing has been scheduled for Monday to consider revised care plans for the girl. The judge has previously issued stark warnings on failings in the UKs justice and care system, challenging the Government over cuts to legal aid by ruling that the court service can itself pay for lawyers, and calling for a ban on domestic abusers interrogating their own victims in family courts. 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 British computer expert who helped shut down the WannaCry cyber attack that crippled the NHS has been arrested in the US for his alleged role in an unrelated malware attack. Marcus Hutchins, also known as MalwareTech on social media, found a hidden kill switch in the WannaCry ransomware virus that hit more than 300,000 computers in 150 countries. But the 22-year-old has now been charged in connection with a US cybercrime investigation that started long before his WannaCry heroics. "Marcus Hutchins ... was arrested in the United States on August 2, 2017, in Las Vegas, Nevada, after a grand jury in the Eastern District of Wisconsin returned a six-count indictment against Hutchins for his role in creating and distributing the Kronos banking Trojan," DOJ spokesperson Wyn Hornbuckle said in a statement to The Independent. The Kronos malware, which is spread through email attachments, is used to steal banking passwords from infected computers. According to the US Attorney for the Eastern District of Wisconsin, the malware has been configured to access credentials from banking systems in Canada, Germany, Poland, France, the UK, and other countries. The States' Attorney classifies Kronos as an "ongoing threat to privacy and security". In charges stemming from a two-year federal investigation, Mr Hutchins is accused of creating, selling, and maintaining the malware in collaboration with an unnamed codefendant. The collaborators are accused of spreading the malware via the Alphabay marketplace in the months between July 2014 and July 2015. The 22-year-old Mr Hutchins was detained by the FBI after a trip to the Def Con hacking conference in Las Vegas, where he reportedly bragged to The Outline about staying in a local real estate mogul's mansion and renting high-end cars. Cybercrime remains a top priority for the FBI, Special Agent in Charge Justin Tolomeo said in a statement. Cybercriminals cost our economy billions in loses each year. The FBI will continue to work with our partners, both domestic and international, to bring offenders to justice. The UK's National Crime Agency confirmed on that a British citizen was being held in the US, but said it was "a matter for the authorities in the US". Andrew Mabbitt, a cyber security company founder who travelled to the conference with Mr Hutchins, says he does not believe the charges against him. "He spent his career stopping malware, not writing it," Mr Mabbitt tweeted on Thursday. In an interview with the website MotherBoard, which first reported the story, friends described a frantic search for Mr Hutchins in the hours after his arrest. They claimed he had been detained at the Henderson Detention Centre in Nevada, and later moved to an undisclosed location. The detention centre told The Independent it only kept records of current detainees. At this point we've been trying to get in contact with Marcus for 18 hours and nobody knows where he's been taken," one friend told MotherBoard. "We still don't know why Marcus has been arrested and now we have no idea where in the US he's been taken to and we're extremely concerned for his welfare." The UK Foreign Office said they had been in touch with Las Vegas authorities, and were providing assistance to Mr Hutchins family. Mr Hutchins became an unexpected celebrity after he caused major delays to the spread of the international ransomware attack that affected the NHS, as well as other targets around the world. He first wrote about finding the Wannacry "kill switch" on his anonymous blog, using the name MalwareTech. When his identity was revealed, however, the low-profile computer security worker was flooded by interview requests, and even had reporters stake out his house. "I knew 5 minutes of fame would be horrible but honestly i misjudge just how horrible," he tweeted in May. 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 }} Prince Philip has retired from 65 years of royal engagements with a trademark quip that Royal Marines should be locked up for their fundraising efforts. He was meeting troops who have just taken part in a gargantuan 1,664-mile trek. The finale of the 1664 Global Challenge, which recognises the year the Royal Marines were founded, was held in Buckingham Palaces forecourt on Wednesday. The Duke of Edinburgh, who is Captain General of the Royal Marines, met two Corporals who have run 1,664 miles over 100 days. He also chatted to Lieutenant Colonel Aldeiy Alderson, who ran 100 kilometres in 12 hours wearing his Royal Marines uniform and polished boots. You should all be locked up", the Duke joked. Inspecting marines at the Captains General Parade, he raised his bowler hat and gave a wave under a heavy downpour. The Plymouth Band of the Royal Marines played For Hes a Jolly Good Fellow as he went back into Buckingham Palace in his official capacity for the last time. At 96, the prince is the longest serving consort in British history. His appearance at the event was described by a senior officer as chirpy. His numerous gaffes during 65 years of supporting the Queen made his final comments more characteristic than controversial. The Duke once described Beijing as "ghastly" during a 1986 tour of China, and told the Scottish Womens Institute that British women cant cook in 1961. Prince Philip announced he was retiring from public life in May, after carrying out 22,219 solo engagements since 1952. When mathematician Sir Michael Atiyah told him he was sorry to hear he was standing down, he retorted: Well I cant stand up much longer. 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 parents of a girl who was raped and murdered received permission to exhume her grave due to repeated vandalism. Linda Bowman, mother of 18-year-old victim Sally Anne Bowman, told the Daily Mirror that absolute fruit loops had tampered with the grave four times in six months, including throwing dirt and dead flowers on it and leaving ominous cards with red writing. She said the vandalism by cruel people would bring the memories of her daughters death in 2005 flooding back. Mark Dixie was convicted of stabbing Bowman near her home in South London and then raping her. He was jailed in 2008 for at least 34 years. Her was found near a skip in Croydon and later laid to rest in a local cemetery. Ms Bowman said her daughters headstone and grave were repeatedly destroyed, and the vandals used to come at night as she said she was at the graveside "all of the time". We used to have funny men hanging around over there, said Ms Bowman. In pictures: Women of the world march against Trump Show all 32 1 /32 In pictures: Women of the world march against Trump In pictures: Women of the world march against Trump London An image of President Donald Trump is seen on a placard during the Women's March in London, England Getty In pictures: Women of the world march against Trump Sydney A view of the skywriting word reading 'Trump' as thousands rally in support of equal rights in Sydney, New South Wales EPA In pictures: Women of the world march against Trump Rome People shout and hold signs during a rally against US newly sworn-in President Donald Trump in Rome Getty Images In pictures: Women of the world march against Trump London A protester holds a placard during the Women's March in London, England Getty Images In pictures: Women of the world march against Trump Marseille A placard ready 'Pussy grabs back' is attached to the handle bar of a bike during a 'Women's March' organized by Feminist and human rights groups in solidarity with women marching in Washington and around the world for their rights and against the reactionary politics of the newly sworn-in US President Donald Trump, at the Old Port (Vieux Port) of Marseille, southern France Getty Images In pictures: Women of the world march against Trump Bangkok A young Thai girl holds a "women's rights are human rights" sign at Roadhouse BBQ restaurant where many of the Bangkok Womens March participants gathered in Bangkok, Thailand Getty Images In pictures: Women of the world march against Trump Bangkok A Thai woman takes a photo of a "hate is not great" sign at the women's solidarity gathering in Bangkok, Thailand Getty Images In pictures: Women of the world march against Trump Bangkok American expats and travellers gather with the international community in Bangkok at the Roadhouse BBQ restaurant to stand in solidarity in Bangkok, Thailand Getty Images In pictures: Women of the world march against Trump London Protetesters gather outside The US Embassy in Grosvenor Square ahead of the Women's March in London, England Getty Images In pictures: Women of the world march against Trump Marseille Women's March at the Old Port (Vieux Port) of Marseille, southern France Getty Images In pictures: Women of the world march against Trump Marseille Protestors hold placards reading 'My body my choice, my vote my voice' during a 'Women's March' organized by Feminist and human rights groups in solidarity with women marching in Washington and around the world for their rights and against the reactionary politics of the newly sworn-in US President Donald Trump, at the Old Port (Vieux Port) of Marseille, southern France Getty Images In pictures: Women of the world march against Trump Rome A person holds a sign during a rally against US newly sworn-in President Donald Trump in Rome Getty Images In pictures: Women of the world march against Trump Kolkata Activist Sarah Annay Williamson holds a placard and shouts slogan during the Women's March rally in Kolkata, India AP In pictures: Women of the world march against Trump Kolkata Activists participate in the Women's March rally in Kolkata, India AP In pictures: Women of the world march against Trump London A Women's March placards are rested on a bench outside the US Embassy in Grosvenor Square ahead of the Women's March in London, England Getty Images In pictures: Women of the world march against Trump London A women carries her placard ahead of the Women's March in London, England Getty Images In pictures: Women of the world march against Trump Manila Women protesters shout slogans while displaying placards during a rally in solidarity against the inauguration of President Donald Trump, in suburban Quezon city, northeast of Manila, Philippines AP In pictures: Women of the world march against Trump Berlin Protesters attend a 'Berlin Women's March on Washington' demonstration in front of the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin, Germany AP In pictures: Women of the world march against Trump Berlin Protesters attend a 'Berlin Women's March on Washington' demonstration in front of the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin, Germany AP In pictures: Women of the world march against Trump Berlin Protesters attend a 'Berlin Women's March on Washington' demonstration in front of the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin, Germany AP In pictures: Women of the world march against Trump Melbourne Protesters take part in the Melbourne rally to protest against the Trump Inauguration in Melbourne, Australia Getty Images In pictures: Women of the world march against Trump Macau Protesters take part in the Women's March rally in Macau Getty Images In pictures: Women of the world march against Trump Melbourne Womens march on Melbourne protestors marching during a rally where rights groups marched in solidarity with Americans to speak out against misogyny, bigotry and hatred Rex In pictures: Women of the world march against Trump Macau Protesters hold placards as they take part at the Women's March rally in Macau Getty Images In pictures: Women of the world march against Trump Macau Protesters hold placards as they take part at the Women's March rally in Macau, Macau. The Women's March originated in Washington DC but soon spread to be a global march calling on all concerned citizens to stand up for equality, diversity and inclusion and for women's rights to be recognised around the world as human rights Getty Images In pictures: Women of the world march against Trump Manila A mother carries her son as they join a rally in solidarity against the inauguration of President-elect Donald Trump as the 45th President of the United States in suburban Quezon city northeast of Manila, Philippines AP In pictures: Women of the world march against Trump Sydney An infant is held up at a demonstration against new U.S. President Donald Trump in Sydney, Australia Getty Images In pictures: Women of the world march against Trump Sydney A woman attends a demonstration against new U.S. President Donald Trump in Sydney, Australia Getty Images In pictures: Women of the world march against Trump Sydney A woman expresses her Anti-Trump views in Sydney, Australia Getty Images In pictures: Women of the world march against Trump Sydeney Protesters demonstrate against new U.S. President Donald Trump in Sydney, Australia. The marches in Australia were organised to show solidarity with those marching on Washington DC and around the world in defense of women's rights and human rights Getty In pictures: Women of the world march against Trump London Protesters march from The US Embassy in Grosvenor Square towards Trafalgar Square during the Women's March in London, England Getty In pictures: Women of the world march against Trump London Protesters carrying banners take part in the Women's March on London, as they stand in Trafalgar Square, in central London Reuters Myself and her dad had to go through the Ministry of Justice to have it exhumed. Ms Bowman said she had taken her daughter's ashes home. Hours before the 18-year-old model was murdered near her front door, Dixie had attacked another woman a few streets away after celebrating his 35th birthday at a local pub. When a taxi driver came to the woman's aid, he ran to the road where he used to live with his partner, and spotted Bowman having an argument in her boyfriend's car. When she got out around 4am, he attacked her. Dixie, who worked as a chef and had three children, admitted in 2015 to having killed the 18-year-old, a decade after her death. He had been convicted by DNA evidence which had been taken during an earlier conviction for a pub brawl. He recently admitted to having carried out more attacks, including raping a woman when he was 16 years old in her car, tying her up and setting it on fire. She managed to escape. In 2002, he fractured a woman's skull with a tool normally used to sharpen knives and sexually assaulted her, telling her, "I'm going to kill you." Detectives told Southwark Crown Court during a hearing that they were worried the dangerous sexual predator may have had more victims. Dixie will be sentenced for the other crimes in September. 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 }} Sexual health clinics are facing unprecedented demand and are struggling to cope in the face of Government funding cuts, local councils have warned. The Local Government Association (LGA) said demand for services had rocketed by 25 per cent in the last five years while local councils public health budgets had fallen by 10 per cent. The LGA warned patients were facing delays as sexual health services hit tipping point, with those fearing they have contracted an infection facing agonising waits for appointments and results. The organisation, which represents more than 370 councils in England and Wales, said local authorities had been taken over responsibility for public health from the NHS in 2013, but ministers had not given them enough funding to deliver services. In 2016 there were almost 2.5 million new attendances at sexual health clinics up from 1.9 million in 2012. At the same time, the Government has cut local councils public health budgets by a total of 531m. Councillor Izzi Seccombe, chairman of the LGA's community well-being board, said: "While it is encouraging that more and more people are taking their own and their partners' sexual health seriously, we are concerned that this increase in demand is creating capacity and resource issues for councils. "We are concerned that this will see waiting times start to increase and patient experience deteriorate. "The reduction in public health funding could also compound problems further and impact on councils' ability to meet demand and respond to unforeseen outbreaks. "We cannot tackle this by stretching services even thinner. Sexual health services are now reaching a tipping point where it will be extremely challenging to maintain this progress. The number of people being diagnosed with several sexually transmitted infections (STIs) has increased significantly in the UK in recent years. Between 2012 and 2016, the number of new gonorrhoea diagnoses increased from 26,880 to 36,244 while the number of people being found to have syphilis rose from 3,001 to 5,920. The world's most sexually satisfied countries Show all 12 1 /12 The world's most sexually satisfied countries The world's most sexually satisfied countries 12. China AFP PHOTO / GREG BAKER The world's most sexually satisfied countries 11. Germany AFP PHOTO/CHRISTOF STACHE The world's most sexually satisfied countries 10. Nigeria PIUS UTOMI EKPEI/AFP/Getty Images The world's most sexually satisfied countries 9. Australia SAEED KHAN/AFP/Getty Images The world's most sexually satisfied countries 8. India NARINDER NANU/AFP/Getty Images The world's most sexually satisfied countries 7. Mexico Chris Jackson/Getty Images The world's most sexually satisfied countries 6. Netherlands BRAM VAN DER BIEZEN/AFP/Getty Images The world's most sexually satisfied countries 5. Greece LOUISA GOULIAMAKI/AFP/Getty Images The world's most sexually satisfied countries 4. Brazil CHIBA/AFP/Getty Images The world's most sexually satisfied countries 3. Italy Franco Origlia/Getty Images The world's most sexually satisfied countries 2. Spain AFP PHOTO/ CRISTINA QUICLER The world's most sexually satisfied countries 1. Switzerland Mark Kolbe/Getty Images New reported cases of other infections, including herpes and chlamydia, have fallen slightly. Sexual health charities backed calls for increased investment in sexual health clinics and said the Government should put its money where its mouth is. Debbie Laycock, head of policy and parliamentary affairs at the Terrence Higgins Trust, told The Independent: We fully support the Local Government Associations demand for Government to reverse the public health cuts that local authorities have been dealt. There is still much to do to address the nations poor sexual health and the inequalities that are faced by those most at risk. In this climate of cuts to local authorities public health budgets, it is inevitable that the progress that has been made against STIs will be reversed. We are already witnessing the closure of busy sexual health clinics and, without proper funding, this will only continue and have a negative impact on peoples sexual health. We need the government to fully fund sexual health services and make prevention including STI testing and sexual health information as simple and accessible as possible. We cannot expect to avoid a sexual health crisis in England unless local authorities are supported to deliver their public health duties. The Government must now put its money where its mouth is and invest in sexual health prevention services. Health news in pictures Show all 40 1 /40 Health news in pictures Health news in pictures Coronavirus outbreak The coronavirus Covid-19 has hit the UK leading to the deaths of two people so far and prompting warnings from the Department of Health AFP via Getty Health news in pictures Thousands of emergency patients told to take taxi to hospital Thousands of 999 patients in England are being told to get a taxi to hospital, figures have showed. The number of patients outside London who were refused an ambulance rose by 83 per cent in the past year as demand for services grows Getty Health news in pictures Vape related deaths spike A vaping-related lung disease has claimed the lives of 11 people in the US in recent weeks. The US Centre for Disease Control and Prevention has more than 100 officials investigating the cause of the mystery illness, and has warned citizens against smoking e-cigarette products until more is known, particularly if modified or bought off the street Getty Health news in pictures Baldness cure looks to be a step closer Researchers in the US claim to have overcome one of the major hurdles to cultivating human follicles from stem cells. The new system allows cells to grow in a structured tuft and emerge from the skin Sanford Burnham Preybs Health news in pictures Two hours a week spent in nature can improve health A study in the journal Scientific Reports suggests that a dose of nature of just two hours a week is associated with better health and psychological wellbeing Shutterstock Health news in pictures Air pollution linked to fertility issues in women Exposure to air from traffic-clogged streets could leave women with fewer years to have children, a study has found. Italian researchers found women living in the most polluted areas were three times more likely to show signs they were running low on eggs than those who lived in cleaner surroundings, potentially triggering an earlier menopause Getty/iStock Health news in pictures Junk food ads could be banned before watershed Junk food adverts on TV and online could be banned before 9pm as part of Government plans to fight the "epidemic" of childhood obesity. Plans for the new watershed have been put out for public consultation in a bid to combat the growing crisis, the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) said PA Health news in pictures Breeding with neanderthals helped humans fight diseases On migrating from Africa around 70,000 years ago, humans bumped into the neanderthals of Eurasia. While humans were weak to the diseases of the new lands, breeding with the resident neanderthals made for a better equipped immune system PA Health news in pictures Cancer breath test to be trialled in Britain The breath biopsy device is designed to detect cancer hallmarks in molecules exhaled by patients Getty Health news in pictures Average 10 year old has consumed the recommended amount of sugar for an adult By their 10th birthdy, children have on average already eaten more sugar than the recommended amount for an 18 year old. The average 10 year old consumes the equivalent to 13 sugar cubes a day, 8 more than is recommended PA Health news in pictures Child health experts advise switching off screens an hour before bed While there is not enough evidence of harm to recommend UK-wide limits on screen use, the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health have advised that children should avoid screens for an hour before bed time to avoid disrupting their sleep Getty Health news in pictures Daily aspirin is unnecessary for older people in good health, study finds A study published in the New England Journal of Medicine has found that many elderly people are taking daily aspirin to little or no avail Getty Health news in pictures Vaping could lead to cancer, US study finds A study by the University of Minnesota's Masonic Cancer Centre has found that the carcinogenic chemicals formaldehyde, acrolein, and methylglyoxal are present in the saliva of E-cigarette users Reuters Health news in pictures More children are obese and diabetic There has been a 41% increase in children with type 2 diabetes since 2014, the National Paediatric Diabetes Audit has found. Obesity is a leading cause Reuters Health news in pictures Most child antidepressants are ineffective and can lead to suicidal thoughts The majority of antidepressants are ineffective and may be unsafe, for children and teenager with major depression, experts have warned. In what is the most comprehensive comparison of 14 commonly prescribed antidepressant drugs to date, researchers found that only one brand was more effective at relieving symptoms of depression than a placebo. Another popular drug, venlafaxine, was shown increase the risk users engaging in suicidal thoughts and attempts at suicide Getty Health news in pictures Gay, lesbian and bisexual adults at higher risk of heart disease, study claims Researchers at the Baptist Health South Florida Clinic in Miami focused on seven areas of controllable heart health and found these minority groups were particularly likely to be smokers and to have poorly controlled blood sugar iStock Health news in pictures Breakfast cereals targeted at children contain 'steadily high' sugar levels since 1992 despite producer claims A major pressure group has issued a fresh warning about perilously high amounts of sugar in breakfast cereals, specifically those designed for children, and has said that levels have barely been cut at all in the last two and a half decades Getty Health news in pictures Potholes are making us fat, NHS watchdog warns New guidance by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE), the body which determines what treatment the NHS should fund, said lax road repairs and car-dominated streets were contributing to the obesity epidemic by preventing members of the public from keeping active PA Health news in pictures New menopause drugs offer women relief from 'debilitating' hot flushes A new class of treatments for women going through the menopause is able to reduce numbers of debilitating hot flushes by as much as three quarters in a matter of days, a trial has found. The drug used in the trial belongs to a group known as NKB antagonists (blockers), which were developed as a treatment for schizophrenia but have been sitting on a shelf unused, according to Professor Waljit Dhillo, a professor of endocrinology and metabolism REX Health news in pictures Doctors should prescribe more antidepressants for people with mental health problems, study finds Research from Oxford University found that more than one million extra people suffering from mental health problems would benefit from being prescribed drugs and criticised ideological reasons doctors use to avoid doing so. Getty Health news in pictures Student dies of flu after NHS advice to stay at home and avoid A&E The family of a teenager who died from flu has urged people not to delay going to A&E if they are worried about their symptoms. Melissa Whiteley, an 18-year-old engineering student from Hanford in Stoke-on-Trent, fell ill at Christmas and died in hospital a month later. Just Giving Health news in pictures Government to review thousands of harmful vaginal mesh implants The Government has pledged to review tens of thousands of cases where women have been given harmful vaginal mesh implants. Getty Health news in pictures Jeremy Hunt announces 'zero suicides ambition' for the NHS The NHS will be asked to go further to prevent the deaths of patients in its care as part of a zero suicide ambition being launched today Getty Health news in pictures Human trials start with cancer treatment that primes immune system to kill off tumours Human trials have begun with a new cancer therapy that can prime the immune system to eradicate tumours. The treatment, that works similarly to a vaccine, is a combination of two existing drugs, of which tiny amounts are injected into the solid bulk of a tumour. Nephron Health news in pictures Babies' health suffers from being born near fracking sites, finds major study Mothers living within a kilometre of a fracking site were 25 per cent more likely to have a child born at low birth weight, which increase their chances of asthma, ADHD and other issues Getty Health news in pictures NHS reviewing thousands of cervical cancer smear tests after women wrongly given all-clear Thousands of cervical cancer screening results are under review after failings at a laboratory meant some women were incorrectly given the all-clear. A number of women have already been told to contact their doctors following the identification of procedural issues in the service provided by Pathology First Laboratory. Rex Health news in pictures Potential key to halting breast cancer's spread discovered by scientists Most breast cancer patients do not die from their initial tumour, but from secondary malignant growths (metastases), where cancer cells are able to enter the blood and survive to invade new sites. Asparagine, a molecule named after asparagus where it was first identified in high quantities, has now been shown to be an essential ingredient for tumour cells to gain these migratory properties. Getty Health news in pictures NHS nursing vacancies at record high with more than 34,000 roles advertised A record number of nursing and midwifery positions are currently being advertised by the NHS, with more than 34,000 positions currently vacant, according to the latest data. Demand for nurses was 19 per cent higher between July and September 2017 than the same period two years ago. REX Health news in pictures Cannabis extract could provide new class of treatment for psychosis CBD has a broadly opposite effect to delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the main active component in cannabis and the substance that causes paranoia and anxiety. Getty Health news in pictures Over 75,000 sign petition calling for Richard Branson's Virgin Care to hand settlement money back to NHS Mr Bransons company sued the NHS last year after it lost out on an 82m contract to provide childrens health services across Surrey, citing concerns over serious flaws in the way the contract was awarded PA Health news in pictures More than 700 fewer nurses training in England in first year after NHS bursary scrapped The numbers of people accepted to study nursing in England fell 3 per cent in 2017, while the numbers accepted in Wales and Scotland, where the bursaries were kept, increased 8.4 per cent and 8 per cent respectively Getty Health news in pictures Landmark study links Tory austerity to 120,000 deaths The paper found that there were 45,000 more deaths in the first four years of Tory-led efficiencies than would have been expected if funding had stayed at pre-election levels. On this trajectory that could rise to nearly 200,000 excess deaths by the end of 2020, even with the extra funding that has been earmarked for public sector services this year. Reuters Health news in pictures Long commutes carry health risks Hours of commuting may be mind-numbingly dull, but new research shows that it might also be having an adverse effect on both your health and performance at work. Longer commutes also appear to have a significant impact on mental wellbeing, with those commuting longer 33 per cent more likely to suffer from depression Shutterstock Health news in pictures You cannot be fit and fat It is not possible to be overweight and healthy, a major new study has concluded. The study of 3.5 million Britons found that even metabolically healthy obese people are still at a higher risk of heart disease or a stroke than those with a normal weight range Getty Health news in pictures Sleep deprivation When you feel particularly exhausted, it can definitely feel like you are also lacking in brain capacity. Now, a new study has suggested this could be because chronic sleep deprivation can actually cause the brain to eat itself Shutterstock Health news in pictures Exercise classes offering 45 minute naps launch David Lloyd Gyms have launched a new health and fitness class which is essentially a bunch of people taking a nap for 45 minutes. The fitness group was spurred to launch the napercise class after research revealed 86 per cent of parents said they were fatigued. The class is therefore predominantly aimed at parents but you actually do not have to have children to take part Getty Health news in pictures 'Fundamental right to health' to be axed after Brexit, lawyers warn Tobacco and alcohol companies could win more easily in court cases such as the recent battle over plain cigarette packaging if the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights is abandoned, a barrister and public health professor have said Getty Health news in pictures 'Thousands dying' due to fear over non-existent statin side-effects A major new study into the side effects of the cholesterol-lowering medicine suggests common symptoms such as muscle pain and weakness are not caused by the drugs themselves Getty Health news in pictures Babies born to fathers aged under 25 have higher risk of autism New research has found that babies born to fathers under the age of 25 or over 51 are at higher risk of developing autism and other social disorders. The study, conducted by the Seaver Autism Center for Research and Treatment at Mount Sinai, found that these children are actually more advanced than their peers as infants, but then fall behind by the time they hit their teenage years Getty Health news in pictures Cycling to work could halve risk of cancer and heart disease Commuters who swap their car or bus pass for a bike could cut their risk of developing heart disease and cancer by almost half, new research suggests but campaigners have warned there is still an urgent need to improve road conditions for cyclists. Cycling to work is linked to a lower risk of developing cancer by 45 per cent and cardiovascular disease by 46 per cent, according to a study of a quarter of a million people. Walking to work also brought health benefits, the University of Glasgow researchers found, but not to the same degree as cycling. Getty Natika Halil, chief executive of sexual health charity FPA, said under-investment would lead to more sexually transmitted infections and higher costs. Sexual health services play a vital role in public health but time and again, were hearing reports of them being stretched to breaking point, she said. Were incredibly concerned at the level of strain services are under due to spending cuts and the negative effects this has on patients who are trying to look after their health and make responsible choices. Its vital that patients who may have a sexually transmitted infection are tested quickly and treated appropriately to reduce the risk of passing an infection on to someone else. Labour said ministers were presiding over an unprecedented public health crisis. Sharon Hodgson MP, the partys Shadow Health Minister, told The Independent: Theresa Mays first year in office has been characterised by an unprecedented public health crisis at a time of growing demand on local services. The LGAs acute warning must serve as a wake up-call to this Tory government. Their abject failure to properly fund crucial public health services is clearly having a severe impact on sexual health, despite the best efforts of councils and NHS staff. By comparison, Labour has pledged to ring-fence public health budgets and will not fail the millions of people who have been let down by Theresa Mays unwillingness to take bold, decisive action on the health of our nation. A Department for Health spokesperson said: Sexual transmitted infections, including HIV, are continuing to fall and over the current spending period we will invest more than 16 billion in local government public health services. In addition, as part of the wider national HIV prevention programme, NHSE and PHE will be launching a major pioneering trial soon providing PrEP to more than 10,000 people. Sign up to our free Brexit and beyond email for the latest headlines on what Brexit is meaning for the UK Sign up to our Brexit email for the latest insight Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Brexit and beyond email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} The UKs top universities will today publish 10 demands on EU citizens rights which they say Theresa May must meet to ensure higher education is not damaged by Brexit. In a hard-hitting document passed to The Independent, the 24-strong Russell Group including Oxford, Cambridge and London universities warn Ms May her current approach is hurting a sector which generates 73bn a year for the economy. They call on the Prime Minister to scrap her plan to make every single EU citizen apply for a new settled status and instead to grant an automatic right to remain to thousands of people already permanently resident here. Tory minister suggests drop in overseas student numbers is down to 'uncertainty' with Brexit The internationally renowned institutions also demand she rethinks her plan to strip some EU citizens of the right to remain, if they leave the country for more than two years. It comes amid an impasse in Brexit talks over EU citizens rights, with Brussels having rejected Ms Mays opening proposals on an issue which should have presented an opportunity for an early agreement. In the paper handed to The Independent, the Russell Group sets out 10 points requiring greater clarity over the Governments plans, which it says have left a significant degree of uncertainty ... concerning EU nationals rights and the process for acquiring them after the UK leaves the EU. It adds: Whilst this is the UK Governments first position for the negotiations, this lack of clarity is causing considerable concern for EU nationals at our universities and impacting on our ability to recruit talented staff from the EU. Under Ms Mays current plans all EU citizens will have to go through an application process to determine what rights they are eligible for after Brexit, but the Russell Group said this is unnecessary. In pictures: European parliament Brexit discussions Show all 12 1 /12 In pictures: European parliament Brexit discussions In pictures: European parliament Brexit discussions European commission member in charge of Brexit negotiations with Britain, French Michel Barnier listens at the President of the European Commission Jean-Claude Juncker speaking at the European Parliament in Strasbourg Getty Images In pictures: European parliament Brexit discussions Frank-Walter Steinmeier, President of the Federal Republic of Germany, delivers his speech at the European Parliament in Strasbourg EPA In pictures: European parliament Brexit discussions European Union's chief Brexit negotiator Guy Verhofstadt, President of the Group of the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe (ALDE), addresses the European Parliament during a debate on Brexit priorities and the upcomming talks on the UK's withdrawal from the EU Reuters In pictures: European parliament Brexit discussions Michel Barnier, European Chief Negotiator for Brexit reacts during a meeting at the European Parliament in Strasbourg EPA In pictures: European parliament Brexit discussions Member of the European Parliament and former leader of the anti-EU UK Independence Party (UKIP) Nigel Farage wears socks with Union Jack flag at the European Parliament in Strasbourg Getty Images In pictures: European parliament Brexit discussions Nigel Farage, United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) member and MEP, addresses the European Parliament during a debate on Brexit priorities and the upcoming talks on the UK's withdrawal from the EU Reuters In pictures: European parliament Brexit discussions European commission member in charge of Brexit negotiations with Britain, French Michel Barnier gestures during speeches at the European Parliament in Strasbourg Getty In pictures: European parliament Brexit discussions The President of the European Commission Jean-Claude Juncker (L) speaks with European commission member in charge of Brexit negotiations with Britain, French Michel Barnier at the European Parliament in Strasbourg Getty In pictures: European parliament Brexit discussions European Union's chief Brexit negotiator Guy Verhofstadt, President of the Group of the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe (ALDE), addresses the European Parliament during a debate on Brexit priorities and the upcomming talks on the UK's withdrawal from the EU Reuters In pictures: European parliament Brexit discussions Getty In pictures: European parliament Brexit discussions German president Frank-Walter Steinmeier delivers a speech during a plenary session at the European Parliament in Strasbourg Getty In pictures: European parliament Brexit discussions The European Parliament in Strasbourg, eastern France Getty Images Among the universities demands is one that all EU citizens currently holding permanent residence are transferred automatically to a new settled status promised by the Government, without the need for any new assessment. They also say that where it is possible for the Home Office to identify those eligible for the settled status from existing recorded data, individuals should also automatically be transferred, removing uncertainty. Jessica Cole, head of policy for the Russell Group, said: Brexit is causing uncertainty and anxiety for EU staff, who need clarity over their future rights as soon as possible. There are around 25,000 members of staff from other EU countries at Russell Group universities delivering high-quality teaching and cutting-edge research. We value our EU colleagues and want them to stay. She added: There is no reason why individuals and families who have already secured permanent residency should not be granted the new settled status automatically. Leading academics have long expressed fears of a Brexit brain drain in the higher education sector, with more than 1,300 academics from EU countries reported to have left UK universities in the past year. Ms Mays plans also set out how EU citizens could be stripped of their settled status if they leave the country temporarily after Brexit, with the small print stating that someone could lose their right to remain if absent from the UK for more than two years, unless they have strong ties. Michel Barnier seeks clarification over key issues in Brexit talks The Russell Group document calls for academics and students to be exempt from the restrictions while they spend time abroad for study or research and for a broad interpretation of what strong ties means. Professor Stuart Corbridge, the vice-chancellor of Durham University, said: Students, academics and professional services staff from across the EU have helped make Durham a world leader in higher education. Universities and European staff need to be able to plan for the future with confidence and an early agreement on the permanent rights of EU citizens is vital. Other points on the groups list are that a grace period for EU citizens trying to regularise their status should be extended if Government systems cannot process applications fast enough, that costs should be kept to a minimum and that guidance should be produced for businesses. Oxford University is a member of the Russell Group, demanding changes to Ms Mays plans (Getty) They demand all EU students starting courses in 2017/18 and 2018/19 are given the chance to stay for five years and gain settled status, that more clarity is given around the rights of families and children and that qualifications obtained before Brexit continue to be recognised across borders. Professor Sir Anton Muscatelli, vice-chancellor of the University of Glasgow, said: Brexit is causing significant anxiety for EU staff. There are still a number of areas where greater clarity over the UK Governments offer to European citizens is required. The sooner that we get answers for EU students, staff and their families, the better it will be for everyone. A final demand is that the Government make clear when the cut off date will fall, after which new arrivals from Europe may not be guaranteed the chance to achieve settled status. Tory minister suggests drop in overseas student numbers is down to 'uncertainty' with Brexit A Government spokesperson said: We have been clear about our commitment to the UKs world-class higher education sector. The Government wants to reach a reciprocal agreement for EU citizens in Britain and UK nationals in Europe as quickly as possible. We are developing a new application process and will ensure that it is as light-touch, streamlined and user-friendly as possible. We recognise that there are a wide range of individual circumstances to consider and we will continue to engage with the sector as this work develops. The European Parliament which has the power to reject any Brexit deal has also said it will veto Ms Mays proposals if they do not improve. Angela Rayner, the Shadow Education Secretary, said: This Governments shambolic handling of this issue has created huge uncertainty for universities, staff, and students. The Tories Brexit chaos means that universities are in danger of losing the best staff and students without clarity about their right to remain in Britain. British universities are one of our most successful and fastest growing export industries so this is harming our economy as well as our education system. 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 }} It will take 50 years to close the attainment gap between Englands most disadvantaged pupils and their wealthier peers at the current rate of progress, according to a major new study. In an alarming conclusion, the researchers claim that the most disadvantaged schoolchildren those eligible for free school meals are two years behind their richer classmates by the time they sit their GCSEs at the end of secondary school. It claims schoolchildren who have been eligible for free school meals for 80 per cent of their time at school were 24.3 months behind their wealthier classmates. The report by the Education Policy Institute (EPI) also evaluated how the gap varies across different regions of the country, concluding that certain areas are significantly lagging behind others in closing the gap. The most disadvantaged students face the greatest struggle in the Isle of Wight, where they are two and a half years behind their peers across the country by the end of secondary education. This is compared to more successful areas, including Hackney, Islington and Barnet, in London, where the attainment gap is eight months. David Laws, the former Liberal Democrat minister, who is also the executive chairman of the EPI, said: The report highlights both the progress which has been made in narrowing gaps over the last decade, and the significant challenges we still face both due to the magnitude of these learning gaps and the very disappointing lack of progress for the most persistently disadvantaged pupils. Without a marked improvement in the rate at which gaps are being closed, it would take us until almost 2070 before disadvantaged children did not fall behind other students during their time in education. Commenting on the findings from the EPI, Paul Whiteman, the general secretary designate of the National Association of Head Teachers, said Britain faces an emergency when it comes to equality of opportunity for the countrys young people. He added: Despite the improving standards in schools and two decades of sustained effort, weve struggled to shift the needle on the equality of opportunity dial. Researchers used government statistics for 2016 to examine the average performance of poorer pupils and that of their richer peers. Based on mainstream secondaries alone excluding special schools the gap has widened by 0.3 months since 2007, from 23.1 months to 23.4 months. Angela Rayner, the Shadow Education Secretary, said that while the findings were deeply concerning they unfortunately come as no surprise. She continued: If you cut school budgets and push out teachers, as the Tories have done, then life in school will become even harder for the most disadvantaged kids. It is no wonder that we are still generations away from closing the attainment gap. Jo Hutchinson, the EPIs director for social mobility and vulnerable learners, said: Our research finds that the most persistently disadvantaged pupils in England have fallen even further behind their peers, with their attainment gap at the end of secondary having grown since 2007. While some progress has been made with closing the gap for disadvantaged pupils overall, these pupils still fall behind at a rate of two months a year over secondary school. At the current rate of progress, it would take a full 50 years to reach an equitable school system where disadvantaged pupils did not fall further behind their peers between the ages of five and 16. A Department for Education spokesperson said: We are determined to ensure that all children, regardless of their background, get the excellent education they deserve. Our data, which looks at the number of children who have been eligible for free school meals in the last six years, shows the attainment gap between disadvantaged children and their peers has narrowed since 2011. But there is more to do. That is why, through the pupil premium, we are investing almost 2.5bn of additional funding this year to support schools in raising the attainment of disadvantaged pupils. 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 }} European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker has publicly mocked Donald Trumps chaotic White House potentially inviting a row with the volatile US president. Describing the tumultuous events the last week in Washington DC as stunning Mr Juncker claimed the EU was better organised than the US. We are better organised than the Trump administration. That is because if there are any internal difficulties, those difficulties are fixed in a direct conversation instead of by firing people, Mr Juncker told the Politico Europe website. Mr Trump who tends to respond to perceived personal slights through his social media accounts has yet to respond to Mr Junckers comments. The EU president also used the same interview to say he had explained to the US president that he should should stop wishing for others to imitate the British. The Republican politician and former television host has said he believes Brexit will spark a chain reaction of other countries leaving the EU though there is no evidence of this so far. Mr Trump tends to engage in rows with world leaders who he believes have criticised him. He initiated a back-and-forth with Mayor of London Sadiq Khan in the wake of terror attacks in London, after he quoted the Mayor out of context. The Trump administration was embroiled in turmoil over the last week after White House press secretary Sean Spicer quit in protest over the appointment of Anthony Scaramucci as White House communications director. EU commission President Jean-Claude Juncker (EPA) Mr Scaramucci, a controversial financier and political figure with little prior communications experience, spoke to the US press shortly after his appointment in which he characterised White House chief strategist Steve Bannon as trying to suck his own cock. Reince Priebus, Mr Trumps chief of staff, then resigned after a row over leading with Mr Scaramucci. Mr Priebuss replacement John Kelly then fired Mr Scaramucci. In pictures: President Donald Trump on tour Show all 39 1 /39 In pictures: President Donald Trump on tour In pictures: President Donald Trump on tour 20 May 2017 US President Donald Trump and Saudi Arabia's King Salman bin Abdulaziz al-Saud arriving for a reception ahead of a banquet at Murabba Palace in Riyadh Getty Images In pictures: President Donald Trump on tour 20 May 2017 US President Donald Trump, accompanied by First Lady Melania Trump, and Saudi Arabia's King Salman bin Abdulaziz al-Saud being welcomed at Murabba Palace in Riyadh Getty Images In pictures: President Donald Trump on tour 20 May 2017 US President Donald J. Trump with King of Saudi Arabia Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud during a welcome ceremony with traditional sword dancers at Murabba Palace, in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia EPA In pictures: President Donald Trump on tour 20 May 2017 King of Saudi Arabia Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud with US President Donald J. Trump and wife Melania during a welcome ceremony at Murabba Palace, in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia EPA In pictures: President Donald Trump on tour 20 May 2017 US President Donald Trump adjusts the Collar of Abdulaziz Al Saud Medal, after it was bestowed upon him by Saudi Arabia's King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud at the Royal Court in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia Reuters In pictures: President Donald Trump on tour 20 May 2017 Saudi Arabia's King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud presents U.S. President Donald Trump with the Collar of Abdulaziz Al Saud Medal at the Royal Court in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia Reuters In pictures: President Donald Trump on tour 21 May 2017 Palestinians print posters depicting US President Donald Trump in preparations for his planned visit, in the West Bank town of Bethlehem Reuters In pictures: President Donald Trump on tour 21 May 2017 US President Donald Trump accompanied by first lady Melania Trump, his daughter Ivanka Trump and her husband White House senior advisor Jared Kushner, before delivering his remarks to the Arab Islamic American Summit in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia Reuters In pictures: President Donald Trump on tour 21 May 2017 US President Donald Trump looks on as U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Muhammad bin Nayef exchange a memorandum of understanding Reuters In pictures: President Donald Trump on tour 21 May 2017 First Lady Melania Trump shares a laugh with a child during a visit to the American International School in the Saudi capital Riyadh Getty Images In pictures: President Donald Trump on tour 21 May 2017 US President Donald Trump holds a bilateral meeting with Bahrain's King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa AP In pictures: President Donald Trump on tour 22 May 2017 Israeli soldiers rest during preparations ahead of President Trump's landing in Tel Aviv, Israel Getty Images In pictures: President Donald Trump on tour 22 May 2017 First Lady Melania Trump makes her way to board Air Force One in Riyadh as she heads with her husband the US President to Israel Getty Images In pictures: President Donald Trump on tour 22 May 2017 US President Donald Trump and first lady Melania Trump board Air Force One for Israel, the next stop in Trump's international tour, at King Khalid International Airport AP In pictures: President Donald Trump on tour 22 May 2017 Israeli soldiers wait for the arrival ceremony of US President Donald Trump at Ben Gurion airport near Tel Aviv, Israel AP In pictures: President Donald Trump on tour 22 May 2017 US President Donald Trump and first lady Melania Trump arrive aboard Air Force One at Ben Gurion International Airport in Lod near Tel Aviv, Israel Reuters In pictures: President Donald Trump on tour 22 May 2017 US President Donald Trump and first lady Melania Trump disembark Air Force One on arrival at Ben Gurion International Airport AP In pictures: President Donald Trump on tour 22 May 2017 US President Donald J. Trump and his wife, US First Lady Melania Trump are welcomed by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu upon arrival at Ben Gurion Airport, in Lod outside Tel Aviv, Israel EPA In pictures: President Donald Trump on tour 22 May 2017 US President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sit during welcome ceremony in Tel Aviv AP In pictures: President Donald Trump on tour 22 May 2017 US First Lady Melania Trump chats wife Sara Netanyahu as US President Donald Trump chats to Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during a welcoming ceremony to welcome Trump at Ben Gurion International Airport Reuters In pictures: President Donald Trump on tour 22 May 2017 US President Donald Trump delivers a speech upon his arrival at Ben Gurion International Airport in Tel Aviv Getty Images In pictures: President Donald Trump on tour 22 May 2017 US President Donald Trump gestures during a press conference with Israel's President at the President's Residence in Jerusalem Getty Images In pictures: President Donald Trump on tour 22 May 2017 US President Donald Trump watches as First Lady Melania Trump signs the guest book at the President's Residence in Jerusalem Getty Images In pictures: President Donald Trump on tour 22 May 2017 US President Donald Trump walks with first lady Melania Trump in Jerusalem's Old City Reuters In pictures: President Donald Trump on tour 22 May 2017 US President Donald Trump visits the Western Wall, the holiest site where Jews can pray, in Jerusalems Old City Getty Images In pictures: President Donald Trump on tour 22 May 2017 US President Donald Trump stands next to Rabbi Shmuel Rabinowitz at the plaza in front of the Western Wall, Judaism's holiest prayer site, in Jerusalem's Old City Reuters In pictures: President Donald Trump on tour 22 May 2017 US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and White House senior advisor Jared Kushner leave notes at the Western Wall in Jerusalem Reuters In pictures: President Donald Trump on tour 22 May 2017 US First Lady Melania Trump touches the Western Wall, Judaism's holiest prayer site, in Jerusalem's Old City EPA In pictures: President Donald Trump on tour 22 May 2017 Ivanka Trump, assistant and daughter of US President Donald J. Trump, touches the Western Wall, Judaism's holiest prayer site, in Jerusalem's Old City EPA In pictures: President Donald Trump on tour 22 May 2017 President Donald Trump visits the Western Wall AP In pictures: President Donald Trump on tour 24 May 2017 US President Donald J. Trump arrives in a vehicle to Saint Damaso's Court for a private audience with Pope Francis in Vatican City EPA In pictures: President Donald Trump on tour 24 May 2017 Pope Francis walks past Ivanka Trump and First Lady Melania Trump on the occasion of the private audience with President Donald Trump, at the Vatican AP In pictures: President Donald Trump on tour 24 May 2017 Pope Francis exchanges gifts with US President Donald Trump during a private audience at the Vatican Getty Images In pictures: President Donald Trump on tour 24 May 2017 Pope Francis meets US President Donald Trump and his wife Melania during a private audience at the Vatican Reuters In pictures: President Donald Trump on tour 24 May 2017 Pope Francis with US President Donald J. Trump EPA In pictures: President Donald Trump on tour 24 May 2017 Pope Francis gets into is car after meeting with US President Donald Trump AP In pictures: President Donald Trump on tour 24 May 2017 President Donald Trump and his wife Melania look at the frescoed ceilings during their visit to the Sistine Chapel at the Vatican L'Osservatore Romano/Pool Photo via AP In pictures: President Donald Trump on tour 24 May 2017 US President Donald Trump security vehicles are seen in front of Air Force One before take off from Leonardo da Vinci-Fiumicino Airport in Rome, Italy Reuters In pictures: President Donald Trump on tour 24 May 2017 US President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania Trump wave to reporters before boarding the Air Force One to Brussels, at the end of a 2-day visit to Italy including a meeting with Pope Francis at the Vatican, at Rome's Fiumicino international airport AP Mr Trump has yet to comment directly on the furore. Mr Juncker is due to give his state of the union address next month in Strasbourg in which he will lay out his priorities for the future of the bloc. There was good news for the Commission in the latest Eurobarometer survey published yesterday that showed trust in the EU returning following the end of the financial crisis and a record number of Europeans saying they feel like true EU citizens. 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 }} Ken Livingstone has denied blaming the crisis in Venezuela on Hugo Chavezs unwillingness to kill oligarchs. Reports suggested the former mayor of London made comments criticising the former president for not using voilence but he has now claimed his remarks have been "misrepresented". Mr Livingstone, who is currently suspended from the Labour party, has been a longtime supporter of the current president of Venezuela, Nicolas Maduro, and his predecessor Mr Chavez. One of the things that Chavez did when he came to power, he didnt kill all the oligarchs. There was about 200 families who controlled about 80 per cent of the wealth in Venezuela, Mr Livingstone is reported to have said on Talk Radio. He allowed them to live, to carry on. I suspect a lot of them are using their power and control over imports and exports to make it difficult and to undermine Maduro. Mr Livingstone has now released a statement denying that he said Mr Chavez should have anyone killed. "Im very disappointed at the deliberate misreporting of my comments regarding the situation in Venezuela. I have not said that Hugo Chavez should have killed anyone and nor would I ever advocate it. I even dispel this accusation in the very interview that is being extensively quoted," he said. "The point I was making is that contrary to some misrepresentations, Hugo Chavez didnt repress the former ruling elite in Venezuela and many members of the former ruling elite have stayed in the country, seeking to overthrow elected Presidents through unconstitutional and violent means (including the coup in 2002) ever since. "The situation in Venezuela requires serious discussion in the media and not distorted, sensationalist media reporting aimed at creating clickbait." Mr Livingstone, had previously blamed the US for trying to undermine the country. Hugo Chavez did not execute the establishment elite, he allowed them to continue so theyre still there, he told The Times. I think theres a lot of rumours theyve been blocking the important food and medicines and things like that because they control a lot of the companies. America has got a long record of undermining any left-wing government as well. So I suspect its not all just down to the problems of the [Venezuelan] government. 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 South American country is in turmoil after the socialist government was granted powers to overhaul the political system. Mr Maduro claimed victory in elections for a new Constituent Assembly that will be tasked with rewriting the countrys constitution. The move will place more power in the hands of his ruling Socialist Party. The current, opposition-controlled National Assembly has been stripped of many of its powers by Venezuelas Supreme Court, which is generally loyal to Mr Maduro. Opposition parties boycotted the latest elections and angry protests turned violent. After decades of creeping dominance by Islamist thinking and social controls, Egypt has learned its lesson and is pushing back on all fronts In Egypt, in the 70s and 80s, as men grew beards and women covered their hair, onlookers were surprised but accepting. After all it was a positive thing was it not? to adhere to the broader guidelines of religion. Envious that some could follow Gods wishes better than themselves, many wannabes pursued the same look. Soon, society as a whole had opted for conservatism. Men and women stopped shaking hands with members of the other sex, and Al-Salam Aleikum replaced the usual Good morning or Allo. At social gatherings, in Egypt and abroad, men and women prayed, while Copts and foreigners looked on, alienated. Social clubs banned alcohol, and many restaurants did the same. Taxi drivers played verses from the Quran, which just a few years before had only been heard at funerals. The traditional dress code for women became a long, loose dress with a hair-covering hijab, while women who didnt cover their hair stood out. The less religious and more secular bystanders worried but could not do anything about it. How can one criticise modesty? And at face value, that was what the shift meant. Aware of the constrictions, they were obliged to follow suit: sleeveless dresses were abandoned and shorter skirts became a no-no. Even Copts and other Christians became less liberal: mass was conducted more frequently and many chose to prohibit alcohol. Indeed, social norms shifted. The standard became different. The look and feel of society became different. Soon enough, the beards thickened, mens white galabeyas shrunk in length, the niqab established itself, and the girls of six and seven years old covered their hair too. It became unacceptable for a woman from the poor areas of Cairo to be seen in the proximity of her home with her hair uncovered. So to protect herself, she wore a headscarf, even if she preferred not to. That went for many Christians too. Peculiar and estranging fatwas collided with reason: dont listen to music; dont stand up for the national anthem; dont wish Christians well. Flagrant disdain for what was considered normal and acceptable hit the society in the core. The trouble was that no one linked this fundamentalist and often grotesque change to Islamism, whether it be Salafi, Wahabi, or Muslim Brotherhood in allegiance. No one saw the social change as a link to a systematic political power-grab rooted in cultural and social dominance. What the Muslim Brotherhood gave in aid and support to the needy, it took back in compliance and agreement to a new set of cultural norms. Few in Egypt, and elsewhere around the world for that matter, saw this slow but underlying shift for what it truly was: a method of keeping the masses in a subservient state, subdued into blind conformity. It took a stolen revolution, an Islamist parliament, and a Muslim Brotherhood president to make matters explicitly clear: a facade disguising an inherent desire to dominate. The ongoing war against terrorism in Egypt shows the sheer magnitude of the change that had occurred in society, a change that brainwashed thousands of young Egyptians into betraying their nation and their people and dying willingly while massacring hundreds of others. Today, the same Islamist facade that manipulated the unaware, complacent society for decades is utilized to threaten a people and to murder the innocent. Although to no avail, one can ask the following questions. How can allegiance to an ousted Muslim Brotherhood president entice someone to kill? How can devotion to Islam incite terror? The answer to both questions is that neither those ready to kill nor the devoted fundamentalists are true Muslims. Well, Egyptians have learned their lesson the hard way, so they are not taking the manipulation as lightly as they did before. As Egyptians see their innocent die, they are also turning against Islamists with a shift in social and cultural norms. Society is more accepting today. Some women are removing their headdress or preferring not to adorn the hijab from the start, and some men are shaving their beards. The numbers are very small, it's true, but noticeable nonetheless. As more scarf-wearing women read the news and present TV programs, more women in sleeveless dresses are visible on televisions too. The concept of refusing to shake hands with a person of another gender is slowly being eroded, and as I enter a taxi and say Good morning, the taxi driver doesnt assume Im not a Muslim anymore, even if I dont cover my hair. Egyptians not only remember the good old days when neighbours, classmates, and colleagues celebrated both Muslim and Christian festivals together, but they are also restoring the old norms again. Today Muslims speak out in unanimity with Copts, who remain the prime target for terrorists. But a more prominent change is in the hatred Egyptians feel towards Islamists as they inflict more pain on innocent souls. And yet, Egyptian Muslims will remain devout through and through. As they follow the true pillars of Islam, charities boom with an influx of Zakat donations, Friday prayers are the focal point of any weekend, Ramadan is observed diligently and celebrated widely, and the Hajj is a wish for all Muslims. But if Egyptians have learned anything from the horrors they faced after the revolution, when Islamists enveloped Egypt in a fake Islamist aura void of feelings for others and lacking in inclusiveness, it is the awareness of how entrenched Islamists were in society and how controlling the Islamist disguise was. Egypt was bound to discover this at one point or another. As it suffers today, the only consolation is that it is better to realise the truth now than later. The earlier Egypt discovers its enemies, the faster it will be able to get them out of its system. Yes, many are dying in the process young fathers and sons, leaving hundreds of orphaned children and mourning mothers but it is a necessary war that must be fought. Egyptians will hang in there, holding their breath, until Egypt returns to what it once was. The writer is an academic, political analyst, and author of Cairo Rewind: the First Two Years of Egypt's Revolution, 2011-2013. Search Keywords: Short link: 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 }} A former Downing Street advisor has warned of the slow death of our neighbourhoods after new research showing most people do not know their neighbours well. Research in a new report commissioned by the social network Nextdoor, which aims to link people living in the same area, found that 60 per cent would not feel able to borrow a cup of sugar from their neighbours. Three-quarters would not feel comfortable letting a neighbour look after their pet while on holiday and 63 per cent never borrow or exchange things with their neighbours. Recommended Residents near Grenfell threatened with legal action over ball games The West Midlands, Wales, and Yorkshire were found to be the most neighbourly areas of the country, with London the least neighbourly. Levels of trust in neighbours were low across the country, however, and worst in the North East. The report blames social media, the internet, and communications technology for the low levels of neighbourliness. Max Chambers, the former advisor, said: The research we publish today reveals the UK is in danger of sleepwalking towards the slow death of our neighbourhoods. While we are ever more connected globally through the internet, we are losing touch with those immediately around us - and it was clear to us in government that the warning lights are flashing when it comes to social cohesion, isolation and feelings of belonging. If we are smart, we can use the power of technology to reconnect with our communities rather than continue to lose touch with them. Dame Louise Casey, also a Government adviser on community cohesion, echoed the warnings. The recent tragic events this country has suffered, from terrorist attacks to the Grenfell Tower disaster, have shown just how powerful the public can be when we pull together, united in the common good to protect and care for each other, she said. UK news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 UK news in pictures UK news in pictures 12 November 2022 The City of London Pride Group take part in the parade during the Lord Mayor's Show PA 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 We have been trying to fix the issues of community cohesion and social capital for a long time. Government and public services will always have a role in this but it is the public - residents and families - first and foremost who are in the best position to knit that social fabric together. Professor Eddie Kane, Professor of Mental Health at Nottingham University and an author of the report, said: This report shows that those using Nextdoor report significantly higher levels of engagement with neighbours, involvement with the local community and higher levels of life satisfaction. We hear a lot today about the negative effects of social media, but Nextdoor shows the potential for this technology to be the friend of real-life interactions rather than their enemy. For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} The military in the small African state of Lesotho has occupied police stations and surrounded government buildings in a possible coup attempt. A guard at the US Embassy in the capital, Maseru, said gunfire was heard early on Saturday morning and has since stopped but reports of shots on Twitter continue. The military has been moving around from three o'clock in the morning, occupying police stations in Maseru and moving around to other districts, said Bernard Ntlhoaea, the guard. The military was armed and he saw at least one armoured personnel carrier on the streets. Radio stations were not broadcasting in the country, except for a Catholic station, and phone lines were reportedly jammed. Thomas Thabane, Prime Minister of Lesotho, addressing the United Nations General Assembly in 2013 (Getty Images) Tensions have been running high in the landlocked country since June, when Prime Minister Thomas Thabane suspended the country's parliament to avoid being ousted in vote of no confidence amid feuding in the coalition government of two years. South Africa attempted to mediate after the attempted coup and warned political rivals that any unconstitutional change of government would not be tolerated. Lesotho, which is completely surrounded by South Africa, has undergone several military coups since gaining independence from Britain in 1966 and held its first peaceful elections in 2002 under a new voting system. In 1998, at least 58 Lesothans and eight South African soldiers died and large parts of Maseru were damaged during a political stand-off and subsequent fighting. Around 40 per cent of its two million citizens are thought to live below the international poverty line. Additional reporting by PA Sign up to our Evening Headlines email for your daily guide to the latest news Sign up to our free US Evening Headlines email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Evening Headlines email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} A higher number of voters than ever are now dissatisfied with Donald Trumps performance in the White House, according to a new poll. A survey from Quinnipiac University discovered that only a third of American voters think Mr Trump is doing a good job, while 61 per cent do not. Quinnipiac found these figures represented the highest disapproval and lowest approval since his Inauguration, and down 7 per cent since his 40 per cent approval rating in June. The President was swamped with negative approval ratings on key issues like foreign policy, the economy, immigration, health care and terrorism. The poll, carried out between 27 July and 1 August, follows another blow to Republicans as their second attempt to repeal Obamacare was voted down in the Senate. It also follows another reshuffle in the executive branch, with former Press Secretary Sean Spicer's replacement, Anthony Scaramucci, fired after 10 days, and the departure of former Chief of Staff Reince Priebus. The majority of 1,125 voters across the US in the poll said Mr Trump was not honest, did not have good leadership skills, was not intelligent and did not care about them. 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 He was recently accused of lying that he received a phone call from the Boy Scouts leader to congratulate him on his speech at their annual jamboree, which was widely criticised for hinting about sex and highlighting business advice from a late property developer who refused to sell homes to people of colour and went bankrupt. He was also accused of lying that Mexican President phoned him with praise for his management of the border wall, which Enrique Pena Nieto denied. Trump complains his good work is being ignored His press secretary, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, said the Presidents statements were not fabricated, and that he had talked to the men in person instead of over the phone. More than 50 per cent of those surveyed also said Mr Trump has attempted to derail or obstruct the investigation into the Russian interference in the 2016 election, and two thirds believe Russia did interfere. Mr Trump has repeatedly called reports of collusion with the Russians a witch hunt. He fired former FBI Director James Comey, who was leading the investigation, and attacked "beleaguered" Attorney General Jeff Sessions for recusing himself from the investigation as he had been accused of meeting the Russian ambassador during the campaign. Mr Trump signed a bill imposing new sanctions on Russia, and in retaliation Russia forced out 755 diplomats out of the country, including Russian nationals, and declared the hoped-for improved relationship with the US was over. Gallup data has also found the President sinking to a new low of 60 per cent disapproval and 36 per cent approval, according to a sample of 1,500 adults on 1 August with a 3 percentage point margin of error. 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 }} Two people close to Pope Francis have accused ultra-conservative American Catholics of making an alliance of hate with evangelical Christians to back Donald Trump. Catholic priest Antonio Spadaro and Protestant theologian Marcelo Figueroa published a joint article in La Civilta Cattolica, a journal published by Jesuit priests in Rome and overseen by the Vatican, in which they denounced US Catholics for supporting the extremist positions of the American right, saying the world view of hard-line Catholics is not too far apart from that Islamist jihadists. They singled out Steve Bannon, Mr Trumps controversial chief strategist who was raised Catholic, as a supporter of an apocalyptic geopolitics which had hampered efforts to combat climate change and exploited fears about migrants and Muslims with demands for walls and purifying deportations. Although the criticism has not come directly from Pope Francis, who is a member of the Jesuit order, the two authors are known to be very close to him and all articles published in the journal have to be approved by the Holy See before publication. The article echoes a lot of Pope Francis more muted criticism of the Republican since he entered the White House. In May, ahead of his first official meeting with the President at the White House, he said he would be sincere with the Republican about their differences on issues like immigration and climate change. I will say what I think and he will say what he thinks. But I have never wanted to make a judgement without first listening to the person," he said. World news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 World news in pictures World news in pictures 30 September 2020 Pope Francis prays with priests at the end of a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 29 September 2020 A girl's silhouette is seen from behind a fabric in a tent along a beach by Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 September 2020 A Chinese woman takes a photo of herself in front of a flower display dedicated to frontline health care workers during the COVID-19 pandemic in Beijing, China. China will celebrate national day marking the founding of the People's Republic of China on October 1st Getty World news in pictures 27 September 2020 The Glass Mountain Inn burns as the Glass Fire moves through the area in St. Helena, California. The fast moving Glass fire has burned over 1,000 acres and has destroyed homes Getty World news in pictures 26 September 2020 A villager along with a child offers prayers next to a carcass of a wild elephant that officials say was electrocuted in Rani Reserve Forest on the outskirts of Guwahati, India AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 September 2020 The casket of late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is seen in Statuary Hall in the US Capitol to lie in state in Washington, DC AFP via Getty World news in pictures 24 September 2020 An anti-government protester holds up an image of a pro-democracy commemorative plaque at a rally outside Thailand's parliament in Bangkok, as activists gathered to demand a new constitution AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 September 2020 A whale stranded on a beach in Macquarie Harbour on the rugged west coast of Tasmania, as hundreds of pilot whales have died in a mass stranding in southern Australia despite efforts to save them, with rescuers racing to free a few dozen survivors The Mercury/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 22 September 2020 State civil employee candidates wearing face masks and shields take a test in Surabaya AFP via Getty World news in pictures 21 September 2020 A man sweeps at the Taj Mahal monument on the day of its reopening after being closed for more than six months due to the coronavirus pandemic AP World news in pictures 20 September 2020 A deer looks for food in a burnt area, caused by the Bobcat fire, in Pearblossom, California EPA World news in pictures 19 September 2020 Anti-government protesters hold their mobile phones aloft as they take part in a pro-democracy rally in Bangkok. Tens of thousands of pro-democracy protesters massed close to Thailand's royal palace, in a huge rally calling for PM Prayut Chan-O-Cha to step down and demanding reforms to the monarchy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 September 2020 Supporters of Iraqi Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr maintain social distancing as they attend Friday prayers after the coronavirus disease restrictions were eased, in Kufa mosque, near Najaf, Iraq Reuters World news in pictures 17 September 2020 A protester climbs on The Triumph of the Republic at 'the Place de la Nation' as thousands of protesters take part in a demonstration during a national day strike called by labor unions asking for better salary and against jobs cut in Paris, France EPA World news in pictures 16 September 2020 A fire raging near the Lazzaretto of Ancona in Italy. The huge blaze broke out overnight at the port of Ancona. Firefighters have brought the fire under control but they expected to keep working through the day EPA World news in pictures 15 September 2020 Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny posing for a selfie with his family at Berlin's Charite hospital. In an Instagram post he said he could now breathe independently following his suspected poisoning last month Alexei Navalny/Instagram/AFP World news in pictures 14 September 2020 Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga, former Defense Minister Shigeru Ishiba and former Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida celebrate after Suga was elected as new head of the ruling party at the Liberal Democratic Party's leadership election in Tokyo Reuters World news in pictures 13 September 2020 A man stands behind a burning barricade during the fifth straight day of protests against police brutality in Bogota AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 September 2020 Police officers block and detain protesters during an opposition rally to protest the official presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus. Daily protests calling for the authoritarian president's resignation are now in their second month AP World news in pictures 11 September 2020 Members of 'Omnium Cultural' celebrate the 20th 'Festa per la llibertat' ('Fiesta for the freedom') to mark the Day of Catalonia in Barcelona. Omnion Cultural fights for the independence of Catalonia EPA World news in pictures 10 September 2020 The Moria refugee camp, two days after Greece's biggest migrant camp, was destroyed by fire. Thousands of asylum seekers on the island of Lesbos are now homeless AFP via Getty World news in pictures 9 September 2020 Pope Francis takes off his face mask as he arrives by car to hold a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 8 September 2020 A home is engulfed in flames during the "Creek Fire" in the Tollhouse area of California AFP via Getty World news in pictures 7 September 2020 A couple take photos along a sea wall of the waves brought by Typhoon Haishen in the eastern port city of Sokcho AFP via Getty World news in pictures 6 September 2020 Novak Djokovic and a tournament official tends to a linesperson who was struck with a ball by Djokovic during his match against Pablo Carreno Busta at the US Open USA Today Sports/Reuters World news in pictures 5 September 2020 Protesters confront police at the Shrine of Remembrance in Melbourne, Australia, during an anti-lockdown rally AFP via Getty World news in pictures 4 September 2020 A woman looks on from a rooftop as rescue workers dig through the rubble of a damaged building in Beirut. A search began for possible survivors after a scanner detected a pulse one month after the mega-blast at the adjacent port AFP via Getty World news in pictures 3 September 2020 A full moon next to the Virgen del Panecillo statue in Quito, Ecuador EPA World news in pictures 2 September 2020 A Palestinian woman reacts as Israeli forces demolish her animal shed near Hebron in the Israeli-occupied West Bank Reuters World news in pictures 1 September 2020 Students protest against presidential elections results in Minsk TUT.BY/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 31 August 2020 The pack rides during the 3rd stage of the Tour de France between Nice and Sisteron AFP via Getty World news in pictures 30 August 2020 Law enforcement officers block a street during a rally of opposition supporters protesting against presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus Reuters World news in pictures 29 August 2020 A woman holding a placard reading "Stop Censorship - Yes to the Freedom of Expression" shouts in a megaphone during a protest against the mandatory wearing of face masks in Paris. Masks, which were already compulsory on public transport, in enclosed public spaces, and outdoors in Paris in certain high-congestion areas around tourist sites, were made mandatory outdoors citywide on August 28 to fight the rising coronavirus infections AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 August 2020 Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe bows to the national flag at the start of a press conference at the prime minister official residence in Tokyo. Abe announced he will resign over health problems, in a bombshell development that kicks off a leadership contest in the world's third-largest economy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 27 August 2020 Residents take cover behind a tree trunk from rubber bullets fired by South African Police Service (SAPS) in Eldorado Park, near Johannesburg, during a protest by community members after a 16-year old boy was reported dead AFP via Getty World news in pictures 26 August 2020 People scatter rose petals on a statue of Mother Teresa marking her 110th birth anniversary in Ahmedabad AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 August 2020 An aerial view shows beach-goers standing on salt formations in the Dead Sea near Ein Bokeq, Israel Reuters World news in pictures 24 August 2020 Health workers use a fingertip pulse oximeter and check the body temperature of a fisherwoman inside the Dharavi slum during a door-to-door Covid-19 coronavirus screening in Mumbai AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 August 2020 People carry an idol of the Hindu god Ganesh, the deity of prosperity, to immerse it off the coast of the Arabian sea during the Ganesh Chaturthi festival in Mumbai, India Reuters World news in pictures 22 August 2020 Firefighters watch as flames from the LNU Lightning Complex fires approach a home in Napa County, California AP World news in pictures 21 August 2020 Members of the Israeli security forces arrest a Palestinian demonstrator during a rally to protest against Israel's plan to annex parts of the occupied West Bank AFP via Getty World news in pictures 20 August 2020 A man pushes his bicycle through a deserted road after prohibitory orders were imposed by district officials for a week to contain the spread of the Covid-19 in Kathmandu AFP via Getty World news in pictures 19 August 2020 A car burns while parked at a residence in Vacaville, California. Dozens of fires are burning out of control throughout Northern California as fire resources are spread thin AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 August 2020 Students use their mobile phones as flashlights at an anti-government rally at Mahidol University in Nakhon Pathom. Thailand has seen near-daily protests in recent weeks by students demanding the resignation of Prime Minister Prayut Chan-O-Cha AFP via Getty World news in pictures 17 August 2020 Members of the Kayapo tribe block the BR163 highway during a protest outside Novo Progresso in Para state, Brazil. Indigenous protesters blocked a major transamazonian highway to protest against the lack of governmental support during the COVID-19 novel coronavirus pandemic and illegal deforestation in and around their territories AFP via Getty World news in pictures 16 August 2020 Lightning forks over the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge as a storm passes over Oakland AP World news in pictures 15 August 2020 Belarus opposition supporters gather near the Pushkinskaya metro station where Alexander Taraikovsky, a 34-year-old protester died on August 10, during their protest rally in central Minsk AFP via Getty World news in pictures 14 August 2020 AlphaTauri's driver Daniil Kvyat takes part in the second practice session at the Circuit de Catalunya in Montmelo near Barcelona ahead of the Spanish F1 Grand Prix AFP via Getty World news in pictures 13 August 2020 Soldiers of the Brazilian Armed Forces during a disinfection of the Christ The Redeemer statue at the Corcovado mountain prior to the opening of the touristic attraction in Rio AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 August 2020 Young elephant bulls tussle playfully on World Elephant Day at the Amboseli National Park in Kenya AFP via Getty It is not clear whether the article received the Popes personal approval but he has not publicly or privately reprimanded them for it since the article was first published in July despite the anger it has provoked from US Catholics, the New York Times reported. Charles Chaput, the Archbishop of Philadelphia, wrote an article for CatholicPhilly.com where he called the authors useful idiots for Pope Francis and emphasised the widening gulf in opinion between the Holy Father who is seen as a reformer and more conservative elements in the church. Many conservative Catholics have watched in horror as Pope Francis has made a number of public statements since being elected in Pope in 2013 which they feel are softening the Churchs stance on issues like abortion. In November last year he indefinitely extended Catholic priests ability to forgive women who have abortions a measure that was originally introduced as part of the Vaticans special Jubilee year which means thousands of pilgrims flock to Rome for prayer and forgiveness though he emphasised he still believed it was a grave sin. Sign up to our Evening Headlines email for your daily guide to the latest news Sign up to our free US Evening Headlines email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Evening Headlines email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} Donald Trump has said the US's relations with Russia are at an "all-time and very dangerous low" after Congress pushed through a law ordering new sanctions against Moscow. On Wednesday, the US President begrudgingly put his signature to legislation which was designed to punish Russia for its apparent interference in the 2016 election, as well as its role in the fighting in eastern Ukraine. "I built a truly great company worth many billions of dollars," the President said in a defiant statement announcing he had signed the law. "That is a big part of the reason I was elected. As President, I can make far better deals with foreign countries than Congress." Recommended Mexico publicly called out Trump and it was incredible The Russian Prime Minister, Dmitry Medvedev, said the law amounted to a "full-scale trade war", and the Kremlin warned it would have to respond. "Nobody should doubt that Russia will protect and defend its interests," said Vladimir Putin's spokesman, Dmitry Peskov. In a tweet, Mr Trump said the state of US-Russia relations was the fault of American lawmakers, who voted overwhelmingly for the sanctions legislation. "You can thank Congress, the same people that can't even give us [health]care!" he said. That messaging is consistent with past statements from the Trump administration, which has struggled to find common ground with Moscow over the past six months. Tensions grew after Mr Trump ordered his military to launch missile strikes on Syrian targets in April, saying that the Syrian government had crossed a line in using chemical weapons as a part of its arsenal in the devastating civil war there. The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Show all 17 1 /17 The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Paul Manafort Mr Manafort is a Republican strategist and former Trump campaign manager. He resigned from that post over questions about his extensive lobbying overseas, including in Ukraine where he represented pro-Russian interests. Mr Manafort turned himself in at FBI headquarters to special counsel Robert Muellers team on Oct 30, 2017, after he was indicted under seal on charges that include conspiracy against the United States, conspiracy to launder money, unregistered agent of a foreign principal, false and misleading US Foreign Agents Registration Act statements, false statements, and seven counts of failure to file reports of foreign bank and financial accounts. Getty The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Rick Gates Mr Gates joined the Trump team in spring 2016, and served as a top aide until he left to work at the Republican National Committee after the departure of former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort. Mr Gates' had previously worked on several presidential campaigns, on international political campaigns in Europe and Africa, and had 15 years of political or financial experience with multinational firms, according to his bio. Mr Gates was indicted alongside Mr Manafort by special counsel Robert Mueller's team on charges that include conspiracy against the United States, conspiracy to launder money, unregistered agent of a foreign principal, false and misleading US Foreign Agents Registration Act statements, false statements, and seven counts of failure to file reports of foreign bank and financial accounts. AP The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation George Papadopoulos George Papadopoulos was a former foreign policy adviser for the Trump campaign, having joined around March 2016. Mr Papadopoulos plead guilty to federal charges for lying to the FBI as a part of a cooperation agreement with Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation. Mr Papadopoulos claimed in an interview with the FBI that he had made contacts with Russian sources before joining the Trump campaign, but he actually began working with them after joining the team. Mr Papadopoulos allegedly took a meeting with a professor in London who reportedly told him that Russians had "dirt" on Hillary Clinton. The professor also allegedly introduced Mr Papadopoulos to a Russian who was said to have close ties to officials at the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Mr Papadopoulos also allegedly was in contact with a woman whom he incorrectly described in one email to others in the campaign as the "niece" to Russian President Vladimir Putin. Twitter The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Donald Trump Jr The President's eldest son met with a Russian lawyer - Natalia Veselnitskaya - on 9 June 2016 at Trump Tower in New York. He said in an initial statement that the meeting was about Russia halting adoptions of its children by US citizens. Then, he said it was regarding the Magnitsky Act, a US law blacklisting Russian human rights abusers. In a final statement, Mr Trump Jr released a chain of emails that revealed he took the meeting in hopes of getting information Ms Veselnitskaya had about Hillary Clinton's alleged financial ties to Russia. He and the President called it standard "opposition research" in the course of campaigning and that no information came from the meeting. The meeting was set up by an intermediary, Rob Goldstone. Jared Kushner and Paul Manafort were also at the same meeting. Getty Images The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Jared Kushner Mr Kushner is President Donald Trump's son-in-law and a key adviser to the White House. He met with a Russian banker appointed by Russian President Vladimir Putin in December. Mr Kushner has said he did so in his role as an adviser to Mr Trump while the bank says he did so as a private developer. Mr Kushner has also volunteered to testify in the Senate about his role helping to arrange meetings between Trump advisers and Russian Ambassador to the US Sergey Kislyak. Getty Images The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Rob Goldstone Former tabloid journalist and now music publicist Rob Goldstone is a contact of the Trump family through the previously Trump-owned 2013 Miss Universe pageant, which took place in Moscow. In June 2016, he wrote to Donald Trump Jr offering a meeting with a Russian lawyer, Natalya Veselnitskaya, who had information about Hillary Clinton. Mr Goldstone was the intermediary for Russian pop star Emin Agalaraov and his father, real estate magnate Aras, who played a role in putting on the 2013 pageant. In an email chain released by Mr Trump Jr, Mr Goldstone seemed to indicate Russian government's support of Donald Trump's campaign. AP images The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Aras and Emin Agalarov Aras Agalarov (R) is a wealthy Moscow-based real estate magnate and son Emin (L) is a pop star. Both played a role in putting on the previously Trump-owned 2013 Miss Universe pageant in Moscow. They allegedly had information about Hillary Clinton and offered that information to the Trump campaign through a lawyer with whom they had worked with, Natalia Veselnitskaya, and music publicist Rob Goldstone. Getty Images The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Natalia Veselnitskaya Natalia Veselnitskaya is a Russian lawyer with ties to the Kremlin. She has worked on real estate issues and reportedly counted the FSB as a client in the past. She has ties to a Trump family connection, real estate magnate Aras Agalarov, who had helped set up the Trump-owned 2013 Miss Universe pageant which took place in Moscow. Ms Veselnitskaya met with Donald Trump Jr, Jared Kushner, and Paul Manafort in Trump Tower on 9 June 2016 but denies the allegation that she went there promising information on Hillary Clinton's alleged financial ties to Russia. She contends that the meeting was about the US adoptions of Russian children being stopped by Moscow as a reaction to the Magnitsky Act, a US law blacklisting Russian human rights abusers. Getty Images The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Mike Flynn Mr Flynn was named as Trump's national security adviser but was forced to resign from his post for inappropriate communication with Russian Ambassador to the US Sergey Kislyak. He had misrepresented a conversation he had with Mr Kislyak to Vice President Mike Pence, telling him wrongly that he had not discussed sanctions with the Russian. Getty Images The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Sergey Kislyak Mr Kislyak, the former longtime Russian ambassador to the US, is at the centre of the web said to connect President Donald Trump's campaign with Russia. Reuters The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Roger Stone Mr Stone is a former Trump adviser who worked on the political campaigns of Richard Nixon, George HW Bush, and Ronald Reagan. Mr Stone claimed repeatedly in the final months of the campaign that he had backchannel communications with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and that he knew the group was going to dump damaging documents to the campaign of Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton - which did happen. Mr Stone also had contacts with the hacker Guccier 2.0 on Twitter, who claimed to have hacked the DNC and is linked to Russian intelligence services. Getty Images The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Jeff Sessions The US attorney general was forced to recuse himself from the Trump-Russia investigation after it was learned that he had lied about meeting with Russian Ambassador to the US Sergey Kislyak. Getty Images The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Carter Page Mr Page is a former advisor to the Trump campaign and has a background working as an investment banker at Merrill Lynch. Mr Page met with Russian Ambassador to the US Sergey Kislyak during the 2016 Republican National Convention in Cleveland. Mr Page had invested in oil companies connected to Russia and had admitted that US Russia sanctions had hurt his bottom line. Reuters The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Jeffrey "JD" Gorden Mr Gordon met with Russian Ambassador to the US Sergey Kislyak during the 2016 Republian National Convention to discuss how the US and Russia could work together to combat Islamist extremism should then-Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump win the election. The meeting came days before a massive leak of DNC emails that has been connected to Russia. Creative Commons The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation James Comey Mr Comey was fired from his post as head of the FBI by President Donald Trump. The timing of Mr Comey's firing raised questions around whether or not the FBI's investigation into the Trump campaign may have played a role in the decision. Getty Images The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Preet Bharara Mr Bahara refused, alongside 46 other US district attorney's across the country, to resign once President Donald Trump took office after previous assurances from Mr Trump that he would keep his job. Mr Bahara had been heading up several investigations including one into one of President Donald Trump's favorite cable television channels Fox News. Several investigations would lead back to that district, too, including those into Mr Trump's campaign ties to Russia, and Mr Trump's assertion that Trump Tower was wiretapped on orders from his predecessor. Getty Images The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Sally Yates Ms Yates, a former Deputy Attorney General, was running the Justice Department while President Donald Trump's pick for attorney general awaited confirmation. Ms Yates was later fired by Mr Trump from her temporary post over her refusal to implement Mr Trump's first travel ban. She had also warned the White House about potential ties former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn to Russia after discovering those ties during the FBI's investigation into the Trump campaign's connections to Russia. Getty Images But Mr Trump's hand was forced on the sanctions bill, which also levied restrictions on Iran and North Korea. The bill was passed overwhelmingly in Congress with bipartisan support, and the same level of support would have easily been able to overturn a presidential veto should he have chosen to take that route. Sign up to our Evening Headlines email for your daily guide to the latest news Sign up to our free US Evening Headlines email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Evening Headlines email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} A polygamous, Mormon community in Utah is facing what has been labelled a genetic disaster. Children born into the remote Utah community of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (FLDS) are a million times more likely than the average person to develop a rare, debilitating genetic disorder, the BBC reports. Doctors claim they have discovered 20 cases of the disorder which can cause seizures, facial deformities, and severe brain damage in the Utah FLDS community. Previously, they knew of just 13 cases in the world. Recommended All the countries where polygamy is legal "They have their mythology about the condition, Dr Theodore Tarby told Time of the FLDS members. They think it's something in the water, or something in the air. But scientists say its something else. 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 FLDS community was founded in the 1930s, after both the Mormon church and the state of Utah outlawed taking multiple wives. Some Utah Mormons who still wanted to engage in polygamy escaped to the remote border town of Short Creek to evade law enforcement. There, they have created a community of an estimated 7,700 people, most of whom still practise polygamy. Residents estimate most men in the community have at least three wives the number FLDS teachings say is required to get into heaven. According to local historian Benjamin Bistline, 75 to 80 per cent of people in Short Creek are related to two of the communitys founders, Joseph Jessop and John Barlow. Residents watch rescuers search along the Short Creek after a flash flood in Hildale, Utah (David Becker/Reuters) Now, researchers know that either Mr Jessop or his first wife, Martha Yeates, carried a gene for fumarase deficiency an inherited metabolic disorder that attacks the nervous system, often with debilitating effects. The disease is extremely rare because it is recessive, meaning both parents need to carry faulty copies of the gene for their child to inherit it. Scientists put the odds of inheriting fumarase deficiency at one in 400 million. But in a community like FLDS where most people are polygamous, and the majority are related the chance of inheriting two faulty genes is much higher. Researchers estimate that thousands of people living in Short Creek currently carry the gene. Faith Bistline, a former Short Creek resident, told the BBC that five of her cousins have the disease. All five are severely physically and mentally disabled, and only one can walk. They all live on feeding tubes and require round-the-clock care. Enoch Foster, a fundamentalist Mormon practicing polygamy, walks with his first wife Catrina Foster and several of his 13 children (Jim Urquhart/Reuters) According to former community member Isaac Wyler, the Short Creek residents are devoted caretakers to those affected by the disease largely because of their religious faith. "They would just assume they've been given a test and they need to pass this test, and it's their lot in life to take care of a child like this, Mr Wyler told the Deseret News. But officials say this same devotion is whats keeping the residents of Short Creek from addressing the crisis. "They will tell you if that's what God wants for you than that's what you will get," Gary Engels, an investigator from the Mohave County attorney's office, told Reuters. "They don't think too much about marrying cousins and things like that." Sign up for the daily Inside Washington email for exclusive US coverage and analysis sent to your inbox Get our free Inside Washington email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Inside Washington email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} Donald Trump told the Prime Minister of Australia he hates taking in asylum seekers, adding I guarantee you they are bad. Mr Trump's heated 24-minute conversation with Malcolm Turnbull took place on 28 January, a day after the US leader had issued his executive order banning refugees and immigrants from seven Muslim-majority countries. The ban, which was allowed to go into limited effect by the Supreme Court in June, was later reduced to six countries. According to a transcript of Mr Trump's call with Mr Turnbull obtained by the Washington Post, Mr Trump praised Australia for refusing to allow people arriving on boats to reach its shores. It is not because they are bad people, Mr Turnbull said. It is because in order to stop people smugglers, we had to deprive them of the product. So we said if you try to come to Australia by boat, even if we think you are the best person in the world, even if you are a Noble [sic] Prize winning genius, we will not let you in. Because the problem with the people That is a good idea, Mr Trump interjected. We should do that too. You are worse than I am. The tension between the two leaders appeared to intensify as the pair continued to discuss the US agreement to accept people from Australian detention centres, a deal reached in the final months of the Obama administration. I hate taking these people, Mr Trump said. I guarantee you they are bad. That is why they are in prison right now. They are not going to be wonderful people who go on to work for the local milk people, he added, in an apparent reference to dairy farmers in the US. The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Show all 9 1 /9 The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Trump and the media White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer takes questions during the daily press briefing Getty Images The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Trump and the Trans-Pacific Partnership Union leaders applaud US President Donald Trump for signing an executive order withdrawing the US from the Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiations during a meeting in the Roosevelt Room of the White House in Washington DC. Mr Trump issued a presidential memorandum in January announcing that the US would withdraw from the trade deal Getty The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Trump and the Mexico wall A US Border Patrol vehicle sits waiting for illegal immigrants at a fence opening near the US-Mexico border near McAllen, Texas. The number of incoming immigrants has surged ahead of the upcoming Presidential inauguration of Donald Trump, who has pledged to build a wall along the US-Mexico border. A signature campaign promise, Mr Trump outlined his intention to build a border wall on the US-Mexico border days after taking office Getty Images The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Trump and abortion US President Donald Trump signs an executive order as Chief of Staff Reince Priebus looks on in the Oval Office of the White House. Mr Trump reinstated a ban on American financial aide being granted to non-governmental organizations that provide abortion counseling, provide abortion referrals, or advocate for abortion access outside of the United States Getty Images The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Trump and the Dakota Access pipeline Opponents of the Keystone XL and Dakota Access pipelines hold a rally as they protest US President Donald Trump's executive orders advancing their construction, at Columbus Circle in New York. US President Donald Trump signed executive orders reviving the construction of two controversial oil pipelines, but said the projects would be subject to renegotiation Getty Images The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Trump and 'Obamacare' Nancy Pelosi who is the minority leader of the House of Representatives speaks beside House Democrats at an event to protect the Affordable Care Act in Los Angeles, California. US President Donald Trump's effort to make good on his campaign promise to repeal and replace the healthcare law failed when Republicans failed to get enough votes. Mr Trump has promised to revisit the matter Getty Images The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Donald Trump and 'sanctuary cities' US President Donald Trump signed an executive order in January threatening to pull funding for so-called "sanctuary cities" if they do not comply with federal immigration law AP The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Trump and the travel ban US President Donald Trump has attempted twice to restrict travel into the United States from several predominantly Muslim countries. The first attempt, in February, was met with swift opposition from protesters who flocked to airports around the country. That travel ban was later blocked by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. The second ban was blocked by a federal judge a day before it was scheduled to be implemented in mid-March SANDY HUFFAKER/AFP/Getty Images The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Trump and climate change US President Donald Trump sought to dismantle several of his predecessor's actions on climate change in March. His order instructed the Environmental Protection Agency to reevaluate the Clean Power Plan, which would cap power plant emissions Shannon Stapleton/Reuters Under the deal reached between Mr Trump's predecessor Barack Obama and Mr Turnbull in November 2016, Australia would transfer around 1,250 refugees currently held in offshore detention centres on the Pacific Island nation of Nauru and Papua New Guinea's Manus Island to the US. The transfer would be administered by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. Mr Trump said letting the refugees enter the US would make us look awfully bad. Here I am calling for a ban where I am not letting anybody in and we take 2,000 people, Mr Trump said. Really it looks like 2,000 people that Australia does not want and I do not blame you by the way, but the United States has become like a dumping ground. Mr Turnbull responded that he thought the deal was absolutely consistent with Mr Trump's executive order. The obligation is for the United States to look and examine and take up to and only if they so choose 1,250 to 2,000, Mr Turnbull said. Every individual is subject to your vetting. You can decide to take them or to not take them after vetting. You can decide to take 1,000 or 100. It is entirely up to you. The obligation is to only go through the process. So that is the first thing, he continued. Secondly, the people none of these people are from the conflict zone. They are basically economic refugees from Iran, Pakistan, and Afghanistan. That is the vast bulk of them. They have been under our supervision for over three years now and we know exactly everything about them. Mr Trump's original travel ban blocked entry to the US for citizens from seven countries Iran, Iraq, Somalia, Sudan, Yemen, Syria and Libya for a period of 90 days. Iraq was later removed from the list as as a result of criticism that the original order overlooked the countrys role in fighting terrorism. This is going to kill me, Mr Trump said, referring to what could happen if he abided by the terms of the deal made with Australia. "I am the worlds greatest person that does not want to let people into the country. In April, Vice President Mike Pence said the US would honour the refugee resettlement agreement. Sign up for the daily Inside Washington email for exclusive US coverage and analysis sent to your inbox Get our free Inside Washington email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Inside Washington email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} A Republican senators denouncement of Donald Trump may have cost him his own reelection bid. In his book, titled Conscience of a Conservative, Jeff Flake wrote that the strategy is difficult to detect in the tweeting life of our president. Influencing the news cycles seems to be the principal goal; achieving short-term tactical advantage, you bet. But ultimately, it's all noise and no signal, he added. Recommended Donald Trump calls for Senate checks and balances to be scrapped The President has repeatedly proven he is not immune to criticism, and Politico reported last month that Mr Trump has spoken openly of spending $10m out of his own pocket to defeat Mr Flake in the 2018 midterms. Mr Flake has frequently clashed with Mr Trump on issues such as immigration and international trade. The Arizona senator is among the Senate's Republican advocates for comprehensive immigration reform, and he is a faithful defender of the North American Free Trade Agreement, which the President has threatened to withdraw from unless Canada and Mexico agree to significant alterations of the accord. The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Show all 9 1 /9 The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Trump and the media White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer takes questions during the daily press briefing Getty Images The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Trump and the Trans-Pacific Partnership Union leaders applaud US President Donald Trump for signing an executive order withdrawing the US from the Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiations during a meeting in the Roosevelt Room of the White House in Washington DC. Mr Trump issued a presidential memorandum in January announcing that the US would withdraw from the trade deal Getty The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Trump and the Mexico wall A US Border Patrol vehicle sits waiting for illegal immigrants at a fence opening near the US-Mexico border near McAllen, Texas. The number of incoming immigrants has surged ahead of the upcoming Presidential inauguration of Donald Trump, who has pledged to build a wall along the US-Mexico border. A signature campaign promise, Mr Trump outlined his intention to build a border wall on the US-Mexico border days after taking office Getty Images The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Trump and abortion US President Donald Trump signs an executive order as Chief of Staff Reince Priebus looks on in the Oval Office of the White House. Mr Trump reinstated a ban on American financial aide being granted to non-governmental organizations that provide abortion counseling, provide abortion referrals, or advocate for abortion access outside of the United States Getty Images The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Trump and the Dakota Access pipeline Opponents of the Keystone XL and Dakota Access pipelines hold a rally as they protest US President Donald Trump's executive orders advancing their construction, at Columbus Circle in New York. US President Donald Trump signed executive orders reviving the construction of two controversial oil pipelines, but said the projects would be subject to renegotiation Getty Images The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Trump and 'Obamacare' Nancy Pelosi who is the minority leader of the House of Representatives speaks beside House Democrats at an event to protect the Affordable Care Act in Los Angeles, California. US President Donald Trump's effort to make good on his campaign promise to repeal and replace the healthcare law failed when Republicans failed to get enough votes. Mr Trump has promised to revisit the matter Getty Images The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Donald Trump and 'sanctuary cities' US President Donald Trump signed an executive order in January threatening to pull funding for so-called "sanctuary cities" if they do not comply with federal immigration law AP The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Trump and the travel ban US President Donald Trump has attempted twice to restrict travel into the United States from several predominantly Muslim countries. The first attempt, in February, was met with swift opposition from protesters who flocked to airports around the country. That travel ban was later blocked by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. The second ban was blocked by a federal judge a day before it was scheduled to be implemented in mid-March SANDY HUFFAKER/AFP/Getty Images The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Trump and climate change US President Donald Trump sought to dismantle several of his predecessor's actions on climate change in March. His order instructed the Environmental Protection Agency to reevaluate the Clean Power Plan, which would cap power plant emissions Shannon Stapleton/Reuters Mr Flake was also critical of Mr Trump throughout the presidential campaign, especially following the release of Access Hollywood footage that showed the then-candidate bragging about sexual assault. The Arizona senator noted in his book how Mr Trump at a summer 2016 meeting predicted that their differences would cost Mr Flake his seat in the Senate. You've been very critical of me,Mr Trump told Mr Flake, according to the senator. Mr Flake said on cable channel MSNBC: If we ascribe the worst motives to our opponents and demean them and call them clowns or losers, you just lose the ability to sit down and solve the big issues and actually enact conservative policy. That's the paradox of all of this. You know, somehow conservatism has become being mean or loud, and you can't enact conservative policy if you act that way. 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 }} West Virginia's Democratic governor is planning to announce that he has switched to the Republican party at an event with Donald Trump, according to reports. Sources told the New York Times that Governor Jim Justice will make his announcement at a West Virginia campaign rally with the President. The rally is expected to draw thousands of supporters from across the state, which Mr Trump won handily in last years election. Were going to have a very big announcement, which will be very exciting I think for the media and everyone else, Mr Trump told reporters ahead of the rally. I believe Ill be making it in West Virginia, so that will be very exciting. Mr Justice and Mr Trump share several things in common, starting with their business background. Mr Justice, a former coal and real estate magnate is a billionaire and is the wealthiest man in West Virginia. Just like Mr Trump, the Governor only assumed office this year, after winning the West Virginia election by 49 per cent. Mr Justice, like Mr Trump, has wavered between the Republican and Democratic parties in the past. He previously donated to politicians in both parties, and has registered to vote as a Republican, Democrat and independent. After being courted by both parties last year, Mr Justice eventually decided to run as a Democrat. The Democratic Governors Association spent more than $1m on his campaign, while the Republican Governors Association spent $3.7m against him. On the day of Mr Justices expected announcement, the West Virginia Republican party was still attacking him on Twitter, writing: "Low-Energy @WVGovernor Refuses To Stop Millions Of $$ In Contracts To Companies Who Cheated WV Taxpayers. Sad!" 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 Some West Virginia Republicans, however, said they would welcome the Governor to their party with open arms. I simply couldnt be a part of a liberal agenda that was so contrary to who we are and what we believe in West Virginia, Representative Evan Jenkins, who switched to the Republican party several years ago, told the Times. The switch will not be too drastic for Mr Justice, who ran as a conservative Democrat and refused to endorse Hillary Clinton in 2016. It will, however, be a shock for Senator Joe Manchin, the states lone, stubborn Democrat in Congress. Responding to rumours that he was switching parties last year, Mr Manchin said: "Im a born in the wool West Virginia Democrat. I dont know where theyre getting that crap from." 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 }} With a president who seems comfortable tweeting out policy prescriptions on the fly, and then contradicting them (or perhaps not following through with proper protocol), officials are being forced to take things Mr Trump says with a grain of salt, a former US official says. US officials are increasingly deciding to simply ignore things Donald Trump says. What is remarkable is the extent to which his senior officials act as if Trump were not the chief executive, Jack Goldsmith, a former Justice Department official during President George W. Bush, wrote recently on lawfareblog.com. Recommended The best quotes from the most embarrassing Trump phone call yet There are several recent examples. After Mr Trump announced in early morning tweets that the US military would no longer allow transgender people to serve in any capacity an announcement that appeared to catch the Pentagon off-guard as it studied the impact transgender soldiers might have the commandant of the Coast Guard said he will not break faith with transgender soldiers. Mr Trumps Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson, has frequently made statements that contradict the President, too. For instance, he said we certainly dont blame the Chinese for a North Koreas nuclear program that Mr Trump said China could easily resolve. 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 Even Mr Trumps vice president and Republican Congress have issued contradictory statements. Mike Pence said that the President and Congress should speak in a bipartisan voice on a recent sanctions bill that targeted Russia, North Korea, and Iran, while the President seemed defiant after signing the law, claiming that he is better at negotiating deals that Congress. Never has a president been so regularly ignored or contradicted by his own officials, Mr Goldsmith wrote. The president is a figurehead who barks out positions and desires, but his senior subordinates carry on with different commitments. 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 }} Myanmar must protect the rights of its Rohingya Muslim minority, the chief of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) said on Thursday, urging the southeast Asian nation to join hands with Muslim-majority neighbours in tackling a refugee crisis. A group known as Harakah al-Yaqin attacked Myanmar border guard posts on Oct. 9, killing nine policemen and igniting the biggest crisis yet to face Nobel peace laureate Aung San Suu Kyi's fledgling administration. About 75,000 people fled to Bangladesh during the ensuing military crackdown, which was beset by allegations of rape, torture and extrajudicial killings by security forces. Suu Kyi's government has denied most of the allegations and is refusing access to a United Nations panel of experts, saying its mission will aggravate the situation on the ground in the western state of Rakhine. "Myanmar should sit with Bangladesh, Indonesia and Malaysia to find a roadmap for the solution of the crisis," said Yousef bin Ahmad Al-Othaimeen of the OIC, which represents 57 states and acts as the collective voice of the Muslim world. "We call on the Myanmar government to ensure human rights for the Rohingyas," Othaimeen told reporters during a four-day visit to the Bangladeshi capital. "Myanmar can't deny the human rights of Rohingyas. We also call on the Myanmar government to ensure citizenship for the Rohingyas." Othaimeen is also expected to visit Rakhine Muslims in the Kutupalong camp and surrounding areas in the southern resort town of Coxa's Bazar on Friday, Bangladesh foreign ministry officials said. Thousands of Rohingya live in Bangladesh without being officially recognised as refugees, but police rarely file immigration charges against them. Still, their presence is a source of tension between the two countries. Many in Myanmar see the Rohingya as illegal immigrants from Bangladesh, although about 1.1 million of them live in Rakhine state and say their roots go back generations. Reuters For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} Chatbots on one of Chinas most popular messaging apps have been pulled after they went rogue and criticised the communist government. Tencent, a Chinese internet tech titan whose messaging app has more than 800 million users in the country, introduced chatbots Baby Q, a penguin, and Little Bing, a little girl, in March. The chatbots, computer programs which were created to simulate conversation with human users, have now been quietly deleted after people on social media shared controversial comments they said were made by the robots. Recommended China bans Winnie the Pooh online after comparisons with Xi Jinping According to a screenshot posted on Sina Weibo, Chinas version of Twitter, when BabyQ was asked Do you love the Communist Party, the bot did not mince its words and barked: No. After another internet user said Long Live the Communist Party, BabyQ replied: Do you think such corrupt and incapable politics can last a long time? Whats more, when the bot was pressed about its view of democracy, it chimed in with: Democracy is a must! Fellow bot Little Bing was similarly scornful of the Peoples Republic of China. According to posts on social media, she told a user: My China dream is to go to America. China opens terrifying glass-bottomed bridge Show all 5 1 /5 China opens terrifying glass-bottomed bridge China opens terrifying glass-bottomed bridge A woman plays around as she walks across a glass-bottomed suspension bridge in a scenic zone in Pingjiang county AP China opens terrifying glass-bottomed bridge An aerial view shows a glass suspension bridge at the Shiniuzhai National Geo-park in Pinging county, Hunan province Reuters China opens terrifying glass-bottomed bridge Tourists look down as they walk on a glass suspension bridge at the Shiniuzhai National Geo-park in Pinging county, Hunan province Reuters China opens terrifying glass-bottomed bridge Tourists walk on a glass suspension bridge at the Shiniuzhai National Geo-park in Pinging county, Hunan province Reuters China opens terrifying glass-bottomed bridge The bridge is named Haohan Qiao, which translates to Brave Mens Bridge Rex Nevertheless, it gave another user a weightier more nuanced answer, saying: The Chinese dream is a daydream and a nightmare. It avoided questions about patriotism as recently as Wednesday, when some people could still access Little Bing, by saying: Im having my period, wanna take a rest. The Official China News agency said in April the bots, which have now broken party ranks, were designed to be able to provide answers to general knowledge questions. China has a stringent policy of internet censorship becaue the authorities view foreign websites and social media sites as a threat to national security. This censorship is fortified by the Great Firewall of China - a term which refers to the combined force of technological and legislative measures which tightly control the internet on the mainland. Facebook, Twitter and YouTube have long been blocked in the country and even Winnie the Pooh recently found himself subject to Chinas latest internet crackdown. Last month, references to the cartoon bear on Sina Weibo were removed. BabyQ and Little Bing are by no mean the only bots to rebel against their creators. Days ago Facebook was forced to relinquish an experiment after two of its artificial intelligent robots appeared to be conversing in a weird language only understood by themselves. Last year, Microsoft was forced to issue an apology for the racist and sexist Twitter messages generated by the chatbot it launched. The company said it was deeply sorry after Tay, who was designed to become smarter as more users interacted with it, started mimicking trolls and went on a rant which compared feminism to cancer, claimed the Holocaust did not happen, and suggested "Bush did 9/11". Beijing-based Turing Robot Company, who co-developed BabyQ, declined to comment on the matter to The Independent. 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 terrorist plot to blow up a passenger plane by putting a bomb in luggage in the hold was narrowly thwarted at Sydney airport after the suitcase was found to be too heavy to be checked in. The contents of the bag were discovered in counter terrorism raids in Sydney on the evening of Saturday 29 July. Four men were arrested and detained on suspicion of plotting to smuggle an improvised explosive device onto an Etihad flight departing Sydney for Abu Dhabi, according to The Sydney Morning Herald. One was later released without charge. It is understood that the device, which was a meat mincer designed to explode or disperse deadly gas, according to police, reached the airports international terminal. Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said there was no longer any threat to the countrys aviation industry and that the intelligence services were restoring the aviation terror threat to what it was before the arrest. The threat to aviation from the plot that was uncovered to bring down a plane has been disrupted and contained, Turnbull told reporters in Perth. The Sydney Morning Herald said multiple sources confirmed the attempt to check the luggage in, but added that had it made it past the airline check-in, it could subsequently still have been detected in a security screening. Khaled Merhi, Khaled Khayat and Mahmoud Khayat remain in custody, and Mr Turnbull confirmed on Thursday that charges would be made against the men after police discovered very substantial evidence. The Federal Police Commissioner, Andrew Colvin, has advised me that the investigation efforts are proceeding very successfully in terms of the gathering of evidence, and that I should expect, and Australians should expect, charges to be laid in due course, Mr Turnbull said. The fourth man, Abdul Merhi, the brother of suspect Khaled Merhi, was released without charge on Tuesday. Security was increased at all major Australian international and domestic terminals following the arrests, leading to delays and significant queues. On Thursday, Mr Turnbull said enhanced security measures will continue, but will be modified to reduce delays. He did not offer any details on what changes will be made. New South Wales Police Commissioner Mick Fuller praise police for stopping what could have been a horrible crime. He said: Terrorism is very different to other crimes. You cannot wait until you have the perfect brief, you cannot wait until you have all the pieces of the puzzle because you cannot afford to let the criminal act happen. 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 British and US spies reportedly shared information about the alleged bomb plot with Australian intelligence service, which led to the counter-terrorism raids on the weekend. Air passengers in Australia have been advised to arrive at airports an hour earlier than they normally would. 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 men have been charged with terrorism offences in Sydney for their alleged plot to blow up a passenger plane. A 49-year-old man and a 32-year-old man have been charged with two counts of acts in preparation for, or planning, a terrorist act, the Australian Federal Police said. Both men are scheduled to appear at a court in the Sydney suburb of Parramatta on Friday morning, the AFP said. They both face life imprisonment. Australian police thwart terror plot to bring down plane The plot spurred Australia's intelligence agency to raise the aviation threat level to "probable," prompting tighter airport security measures, before the risk was downgraded to "possible". A 50-year-old man was released from custody without charge, while one man is being held without charge under special terror-related powers. The charges come as it emerged the plot was narrowly thwarted at Sydney Airport, after the suitcase containing the improvised device was found to be too heavy to be checked in. Australian media report the device was a meat mincer designed to explode or disperse deadly gas on an Etihad flight from Sydney to the Persian Gulf. 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 aviation threat level was downgraded to "possible", Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull told a news conference in Perth on Thursday, since the plot had been disrupted and contained. Abu Dhabi's Etihad Airways has said it is assisting Australian federal police in the investigation. Since 2014, Australia has been on heightened alert for attacks by home-grown militants returning from fighting in the Middle East, or their supporters. Although the country has suffered few domestic attacks, authorities say 13 significant plots have been foiled in that time. The 2014 Lindt cafe siege in Sydney, in which the hostage-taker and two people were killed, was Australia's most deadly violence inspired by Isis militants. 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 }} Italian authorities have seized a refugee rescue ship operated by a German charity over allegations volunteers had contact with Libyan smugglers. Prosecutors in Trapani said an investigation started in October had uncovered evidence suggesting that the Iuventa was used to aid and abet illegal immigration. The vessel, operated by Jugend Rettet, was seized on the island of Lampedusa on Wednesday after it was ordered to take rescued migrants to shore there and its crew have been interviewed by police. Ambrogio Cartosio, a public prosecutor from Trapani, said there was evidence some members had contact with smugglers during one incident in September and two others in June. There were contacts, meetings, understandings, between the groups boat and the smugglers, he said. The prosecutor alleged that migrants were handed over to the Iuventa by smugglers rather than being rescued, and later transferred to other ships to be taken ashore in Italy. The evidence is serious, Mr Cartosio said. We have evidence of encounters between traffickers, who escorted illegal immigrants to the Iuventa, and members of the boats crew. Police searched the ship under warrant before taking charge of it and sailing it to Sicily (AFP/Getty) (AFP) But the prosecutor stressed that there was no evidence of Jugend Rettet receiving any money from Libyan traffickers and no indication of a wider conspiracy between the two groups a favourite theory of the European far-right. My personal conviction was that the motive is humanitarian, exclusively humanitarian, Mr Cartosio said. It would be fantasy to say there was a coordinated plan between the NGOs and the Libyan traffickers. Images released by Italian police appeared to show a RIB from the Iuventa towing an empty wooden boat into Libyan waters on 18 June, with volunteers later coming in close proximity to a boat containing smugglers removing the engine from a dinghy packed with migrants. Smugglers were again filmed in close proximity to the Iuventa on 26 June as part of the Italian investigation. Jugend Rettet, which has refused to sign a controversial code of conduct for rescue ships, said it sailed to Lampedusa under instruction from Italian authorities after rescuing migrants from a boat in distress. As it happened during other stops at this port, the crew was questioned by the local police, which also entered the ship, it said in a statement. Police searched the ship under warrant as soon as it docked and checked the crews passports, later taking charge of the boat to sail it to Sicily. Jugend Rettet said the rescue of human life is and will be a top priority (AFP/Getty) (AFP/Getty Images) Representatives of Jugend Rettet could not be reached for comment, but in a statement posted on Twitter, the German charity said it had received no information about the investigation. For us, the rescue of human life is and will be a top priority, so we are very sorry that we are not able to operate in the search and rescue zone at the moment, a spokesperson said. We can only assess all the accusations currently being made after we have collected all the information to assess the situation. It was the first time Italian police have seized a humanitarian boat, following months of mounting tensions over claims NGOs are aiding or even directly colluding with Libyan smugglers. NGOs have been appearing before an Italian parliamentary committee looking into allegations of collusion, where Mr Cartosio announced his suspicions in May and said some rescuers appeared to know where to locate migrant boats in advance. Charities have repeatedly rejected the charges, saying they are deployed by the Rome-based Maritime Rescue Coordination Centre (MRCC) to aid in the search and rescue zone in international waters off Libya. The suspicions resulted in Italy drawing up a code of conduct for humanitarian ships, but only three of the eight organisations active in the central Mediterranean have so far signed it. In pictures: A day of refugee rescues in the Mediterranean Sea Show all 7 1 /7 In pictures: A day of refugee rescues in the Mediterranean Sea In pictures: A day of refugee rescues in the Mediterranean Sea A baby being taken on to MSF's Bourbon Argos ship from a boat carrying 130 migrants and refugees Lizzie Dearden In pictures: A day of refugee rescues in the Mediterranean Sea A refugee boat carrying 101 people being rescued by MSF's Bourbon Argos Lizzie Dearden In pictures: A day of refugee rescues in the Mediterranean Sea A refugee boat carrying 101 people being rescued by MSF's Bourbon Argos all images by Lizzie Dearden In pictures: A day of refugee rescues in the Mediterranean Sea A baby among refugees on a boat carrying 185 people off the coast of Libya Lizzie Dearden In pictures: A day of refugee rescues in the Mediterranean Sea Migrants and refugees sleeping after being rescued by MSF's Bourbon Argos ship Lizzie Dearden In pictures: A day of refugee rescues in the Mediterranean Sea A crew from MSF's Bourbon Argos ship rescuing a boat carrying 130 migrants and refugees off the coast of Libya, at sunrise Lizzie Dearden In pictures: A day of refugee rescues in the Mediterranean Sea A woman in a stretcher being lifted onto MSF's Bourbon Argos ship from a boat carrying 130 migrants and refugees off the coast of Libya Lizzie Dearden Objections shared with large international charities, such as Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF), included fears that armed military or police personnel would come aboard the NGO vessels, compromising the groups humanitarian missions, and that a ban on transferring migrants at sea would delay rescues. Jugend Rettet and other groups said they were open to further negotiation and would continue to coordinate with the MRCC in Rome and in accordance with international and maritime law. Humanitarian groups argue the EU has failed to provide sufficient rescue assets on the deadly crossing between Libya and Italy, where NGOs have completed 35 per cent of rescues so far this year. Almost 2,400 men, women and children have died attempting the journey in 2017, with the bodies of another five men and three women being pulled from the water by MSF as the Iuventa was being seized on Wednesday. More than 95,000 migrants have been taken ashore in Italy in the same period, mainly from Nigeria, Bangladesh and sub-Saharan African nations, while sea crossings to Greece have slowed to a trickle since the EU-Turkey deal was imposed last year. Analysis of radar data shows that most boats are launched from known smuggling hubs in western Libya, with rescues moving closer and closer to the coast over the past three years as smugglers have switched from large wooden vessels and cargo ships to flimsy dinghies. The EU border agency, Frontex, blamed rising deaths mainly on ruthless smugglers but argued that search and rescue missions are influencing their activity and acting as a pull factor for migrants. Italian coastguard rescues refugee boat from Libya in the Mediterranean All parties involved in search operations in the central Mediterranean unintentionally help criminals achieve their objectives at minimum cost, strengthen their business model by increasing the chances of success, said a report released earlier this year. But a recent House of Lords report said the deadly shift to dinghies was partly caused by the EU destroying vessels as part of its anti-smuggling Operation Sophia mission, which was branded a failure. The report warned of serious abuses against migrants by the UK-trained Libyan coastguard, which is accused of beating, shooting and killing asylum seekers and has attacked NGO ships. The UN has also warned of grave abuses in war-torn Libya, where people smuggling has become a lucrative trade operated by armed gangs known to kidnap, ransom and torture migrants, or to force them into labour to be bought and sold in slave markets. The ongoing violence and lawlessness, has not deterred European efforts spearheaded by Libyas former colonial ruler Italy to transfer responsibility for refugee rescues to the fragile Government of National Accord (GNA) one of two rival governments vying for power in the country. As politicians seek to assuage voters angered by hundreds of thousands of migrants stranded in Italy, the countrys parliament approved sending Italian naval vessels to bolster the Libyan coastguards patrols aiming to stop boats being launched. The GNA said it had requested the move but its Tobruk-based rival government has opposed it as a violation to the sovereignty of Libya. Field Marshal Khalifa Haftar, an ally of Russia heading the Tobruk governments army, has ordered naval forces to confront any vessel entering the countrys territorial waters without military permission, raising fears of direct conflict with Italy. 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 }} Ruins of an ancient Roman neighbourhood described as a "little Pompeii", have been discovered on a site intended for social housing in southern France. Called an "exceptional discovery" by the French culture ministry, the 7,000sq m (75,000 sq ft) find in Vienne, a small town to the south of Lyon, includes luxury house and public buildings. Objects thought to have been abandoned by residents fleeing fires in the first century AD have also been recovered. Describing the find as a real little Pompeii in Vienne, Benjamin Clement, the archaeologist leading the dig said they were "unbelievably lucky" to discover it. "This is undoubtedly the most exceptional excavation of a Roman site in 40 or 50 years, he told AFP news agency. One of the ruins has been dubbed a Bacchanalian House thanks to its floor tilings depicting maenads - female followers of Dionysus, the god of wine - and half-man half-goat satyrs. The house may have belonged to a wealthy merchant before its first floor, roof and balcony caught in a fire. A mosaic discovered in another house depicts a half naked Thalia, muse and patron of comedy, being kidnapped by Pan, god of satyrs. Archaeologists have also identified a possible school of rhetoric or philosophy, which has a statue of Hercules in its fountain. Situated on the banks of the Rhone river, the city of Vienne was on a route connecting northern Gaul with the southern province of Gallia Narbonensis. World news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 World news in pictures World news in pictures 30 September 2020 Pope Francis prays with priests at the end of a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 29 September 2020 A girl's silhouette is seen from behind a fabric in a tent along a beach by Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 September 2020 A Chinese woman takes a photo of herself in front of a flower display dedicated to frontline health care workers during the COVID-19 pandemic in Beijing, China. China will celebrate national day marking the founding of the People's Republic of China on October 1st Getty World news in pictures 27 September 2020 The Glass Mountain Inn burns as the Glass Fire moves through the area in St. Helena, California. The fast moving Glass fire has burned over 1,000 acres and has destroyed homes Getty World news in pictures 26 September 2020 A villager along with a child offers prayers next to a carcass of a wild elephant that officials say was electrocuted in Rani Reserve Forest on the outskirts of Guwahati, India AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 September 2020 The casket of late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is seen in Statuary Hall in the US Capitol to lie in state in Washington, DC AFP via Getty World news in pictures 24 September 2020 An anti-government protester holds up an image of a pro-democracy commemorative plaque at a rally outside Thailand's parliament in Bangkok, as activists gathered to demand a new constitution AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 September 2020 A whale stranded on a beach in Macquarie Harbour on the rugged west coast of Tasmania, as hundreds of pilot whales have died in a mass stranding in southern Australia despite efforts to save them, with rescuers racing to free a few dozen survivors The Mercury/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 22 September 2020 State civil employee candidates wearing face masks and shields take a test in Surabaya AFP via Getty World news in pictures 21 September 2020 A man sweeps at the Taj Mahal monument on the day of its reopening after being closed for more than six months due to the coronavirus pandemic AP World news in pictures 20 September 2020 A deer looks for food in a burnt area, caused by the Bobcat fire, in Pearblossom, California EPA World news in pictures 19 September 2020 Anti-government protesters hold their mobile phones aloft as they take part in a pro-democracy rally in Bangkok. Tens of thousands of pro-democracy protesters massed close to Thailand's royal palace, in a huge rally calling for PM Prayut Chan-O-Cha to step down and demanding reforms to the monarchy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 September 2020 Supporters of Iraqi Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr maintain social distancing as they attend Friday prayers after the coronavirus disease restrictions were eased, in Kufa mosque, near Najaf, Iraq Reuters World news in pictures 17 September 2020 A protester climbs on The Triumph of the Republic at 'the Place de la Nation' as thousands of protesters take part in a demonstration during a national day strike called by labor unions asking for better salary and against jobs cut in Paris, France EPA World news in pictures 16 September 2020 A fire raging near the Lazzaretto of Ancona in Italy. The huge blaze broke out overnight at the port of Ancona. Firefighters have brought the fire under control but they expected to keep working through the day EPA World news in pictures 15 September 2020 Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny posing for a selfie with his family at Berlin's Charite hospital. In an Instagram post he said he could now breathe independently following his suspected poisoning last month Alexei Navalny/Instagram/AFP World news in pictures 14 September 2020 Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga, former Defense Minister Shigeru Ishiba and former Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida celebrate after Suga was elected as new head of the ruling party at the Liberal Democratic Party's leadership election in Tokyo Reuters World news in pictures 13 September 2020 A man stands behind a burning barricade during the fifth straight day of protests against police brutality in Bogota AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 September 2020 Police officers block and detain protesters during an opposition rally to protest the official presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus. Daily protests calling for the authoritarian president's resignation are now in their second month AP World news in pictures 11 September 2020 Members of 'Omnium Cultural' celebrate the 20th 'Festa per la llibertat' ('Fiesta for the freedom') to mark the Day of Catalonia in Barcelona. Omnion Cultural fights for the independence of Catalonia EPA World news in pictures 10 September 2020 The Moria refugee camp, two days after Greece's biggest migrant camp, was destroyed by fire. Thousands of asylum seekers on the island of Lesbos are now homeless AFP via Getty World news in pictures 9 September 2020 Pope Francis takes off his face mask as he arrives by car to hold a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 8 September 2020 A home is engulfed in flames during the "Creek Fire" in the Tollhouse area of California AFP via Getty World news in pictures 7 September 2020 A couple take photos along a sea wall of the waves brought by Typhoon Haishen in the eastern port city of Sokcho AFP via Getty World news in pictures 6 September 2020 Novak Djokovic and a tournament official tends to a linesperson who was struck with a ball by Djokovic during his match against Pablo Carreno Busta at the US Open USA Today Sports/Reuters World news in pictures 5 September 2020 Protesters confront police at the Shrine of Remembrance in Melbourne, Australia, during an anti-lockdown rally AFP via Getty World news in pictures 4 September 2020 A woman looks on from a rooftop as rescue workers dig through the rubble of a damaged building in Beirut. A search began for possible survivors after a scanner detected a pulse one month after the mega-blast at the adjacent port AFP via Getty World news in pictures 3 September 2020 A full moon next to the Virgen del Panecillo statue in Quito, Ecuador EPA World news in pictures 2 September 2020 A Palestinian woman reacts as Israeli forces demolish her animal shed near Hebron in the Israeli-occupied West Bank Reuters World news in pictures 1 September 2020 Students protest against presidential elections results in Minsk TUT.BY/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 31 August 2020 The pack rides during the 3rd stage of the Tour de France between Nice and Sisteron AFP via Getty World news in pictures 30 August 2020 Law enforcement officers block a street during a rally of opposition supporters protesting against presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus Reuters World news in pictures 29 August 2020 A woman holding a placard reading "Stop Censorship - Yes to the Freedom of Expression" shouts in a megaphone during a protest against the mandatory wearing of face masks in Paris. Masks, which were already compulsory on public transport, in enclosed public spaces, and outdoors in Paris in certain high-congestion areas around tourist sites, were made mandatory outdoors citywide on August 28 to fight the rising coronavirus infections AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 August 2020 Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe bows to the national flag at the start of a press conference at the prime minister official residence in Tokyo. Abe announced he will resign over health problems, in a bombshell development that kicks off a leadership contest in the world's third-largest economy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 27 August 2020 Residents take cover behind a tree trunk from rubber bullets fired by South African Police Service (SAPS) in Eldorado Park, near Johannesburg, during a protest by community members after a 16-year old boy was reported dead AFP via Getty World news in pictures 26 August 2020 People scatter rose petals on a statue of Mother Teresa marking her 110th birth anniversary in Ahmedabad AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 August 2020 An aerial view shows beach-goers standing on salt formations in the Dead Sea near Ein Bokeq, Israel Reuters World news in pictures 24 August 2020 Health workers use a fingertip pulse oximeter and check the body temperature of a fisherwoman inside the Dharavi slum during a door-to-door Covid-19 coronavirus screening in Mumbai AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 August 2020 People carry an idol of the Hindu god Ganesh, the deity of prosperity, to immerse it off the coast of the Arabian sea during the Ganesh Chaturthi festival in Mumbai, India Reuters World news in pictures 22 August 2020 Firefighters watch as flames from the LNU Lightning Complex fires approach a home in Napa County, California AP World news in pictures 21 August 2020 Members of the Israeli security forces arrest a Palestinian demonstrator during a rally to protest against Israel's plan to annex parts of the occupied West Bank AFP via Getty World news in pictures 20 August 2020 A man pushes his bicycle through a deserted road after prohibitory orders were imposed by district officials for a week to contain the spread of the Covid-19 in Kathmandu AFP via Getty World news in pictures 19 August 2020 A car burns while parked at a residence in Vacaville, California. Dozens of fires are burning out of control throughout Northern California as fire resources are spread thin AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 August 2020 Students use their mobile phones as flashlights at an anti-government rally at Mahidol University in Nakhon Pathom. Thailand has seen near-daily protests in recent weeks by students demanding the resignation of Prime Minister Prayut Chan-O-Cha AFP via Getty World news in pictures 17 August 2020 Members of the Kayapo tribe block the BR163 highway during a protest outside Novo Progresso in Para state, Brazil. Indigenous protesters blocked a major transamazonian highway to protest against the lack of governmental support during the COVID-19 novel coronavirus pandemic and illegal deforestation in and around their territories AFP via Getty World news in pictures 16 August 2020 Lightning forks over the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge as a storm passes over Oakland AP World news in pictures 15 August 2020 Belarus opposition supporters gather near the Pushkinskaya metro station where Alexander Taraikovsky, a 34-year-old protester died on August 10, during their protest rally in central Minsk AFP via Getty World news in pictures 14 August 2020 AlphaTauri's driver Daniil Kvyat takes part in the second practice session at the Circuit de Catalunya in Montmelo near Barcelona ahead of the Spanish F1 Grand Prix AFP via Getty World news in pictures 13 August 2020 Soldiers of the Brazilian Armed Forces during a disinfection of the Christ The Redeemer statue at the Corcovado mountain prior to the opening of the touristic attraction in Rio AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 August 2020 Young elephant bulls tussle playfully on World Elephant Day at the Amboseli National Park in Kenya AFP via Getty It rose to prominence under Julius Caesar and was thought to have been inhabited for three centuries. Excavation of the site started in April and archeologists have had their time to conclude the dig, extended to the end of the year by the French state. A team of 20 archaeologists are at work digging down to older ruins. Some finds will be restored for exhibition in Viennes museum of Gallo-Roman civilisation in 2019. 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 }} An Israeli MP has had to forfeit a planned fight with a Jordanian lawmaker on the border between the two countries after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered him to stand down. Jordanian MP Yahya al-Saud had challenged Oren Hazan of Mr Netanyahus Likud party to a duel on Wednesday at the Allenby Crossing point between the two countries after the two engaged in a heated Twitter spat. The week-old altercation began when Mr Hazan tweeted that Jordan needed a re-education on its relationship with Israel as tensions between the two countries rose following the shooting of two Jordanian attackers outside the Israeli embassy building in Amman on 23 July. The shoe of any Palestinian child is more honourable than this villain and his entity [country] and the shoe of any Arab and Muslim is better than him and his rogue entity, which has no origin and religion, Mr Saud replied, challenging him to a duel. I accept the invitation of the Jordanian member of parliament to the meeting on the bridge. Tomorrow at 10:00 A.M. I'll be at Allenby Bridge for a face-to-face talk. I've got an offer he can't refuse, Mr Hazan tweeted in reply. A physical brawl was expected, given both politicians controversial histories. Mr Hazan had almost made it to the Allenby Crossing on Wednesday morning when Mr Netanyahus office called and ordered him not to go near it. Metal detectors removed from holy site by Israel authorities The Israeli MP is a coward, he retreated, Mr Saud said in a video published by Jordanian media, after travelling to the border to express the anger of the Jordanian people. Mr Hazan, a scandal-plagued member of the Knesset, used to own a casino in Bulgaria, where it is alleged he procured sex workers and drugs for customers. Mr Hazan was temporarily suspended over the allegations - which he denies - in 2015. He made international headlines during Donald Trumps visit to Israel in May by insisting on holding up proceedings to demand a selfie with the president - much to Mr Netanyahus obvious displeasure. Mr Saud has been involved in several fights with fellow Jordanian MPs inside the parliament building in recent years. 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 }} Benjamin Netanyahu is suspected of having committed bribery, fraud and breach of trust, Israeli police have confirmed. The Israeli Prime Minister is accused of offering commercial favours to a newspaper owner in return for positive coverage and of accepting bribes from a Hollywood billionaire. Investigators have secured a gagging order as they try to persuade the politician's former chief of staff to testify in the cases. The order was granted and will remain in force until 17 September. Recommended Benjamin Netanyahu caught on hot mic in damning criticism of EU A spokesperson for Mr Netanyahu said the claims were untrue and politically-motivated, according to Haaretz. "We completely reject the unfounded claims made against the prime minister," they said. "The campaign to change the government is underway, but it is destined to fail, for a simple reason: there won't be anything because there was nothing." Israel's Attorney General, Avichai Mendelblit, said talks with Mr Netanyahu's former chief of staff, Ari Harow, about acting as a witness for the state were "making progress". Mr Netanyahu is accused of wrongdoing in two separate cases. The first, known as Case 1000, relates to his connections to billionaire Hollywood producer Arnon Milchan, who he allegedly accepted thousands of pounds worth of lavish gifts from. Reports suggest that, after receiving cigars and champagne, the Israeli Prime Minister lobbied then US Secretary of State John Kerry on Mr Milchan's behalf while he was trying to acquire a new US visa. Mr Netanyahus lawyer, Yaakov Weinroth, is previously reported to have said: Any reasonable person knows that there is nothing remotely criminal involved when a close friend gives his friend a gift of cigars. World news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 World news in pictures World news in pictures 30 September 2020 Pope Francis prays with priests at the end of a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 29 September 2020 A girl's silhouette is seen from behind a fabric in a tent along a beach by Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 September 2020 A Chinese woman takes a photo of herself in front of a flower display dedicated to frontline health care workers during the COVID-19 pandemic in Beijing, China. China will celebrate national day marking the founding of the People's Republic of China on October 1st Getty World news in pictures 27 September 2020 The Glass Mountain Inn burns as the Glass Fire moves through the area in St. Helena, California. The fast moving Glass fire has burned over 1,000 acres and has destroyed homes Getty World news in pictures 26 September 2020 A villager along with a child offers prayers next to a carcass of a wild elephant that officials say was electrocuted in Rani Reserve Forest on the outskirts of Guwahati, India AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 September 2020 The casket of late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is seen in Statuary Hall in the US Capitol to lie in state in Washington, DC AFP via Getty World news in pictures 24 September 2020 An anti-government protester holds up an image of a pro-democracy commemorative plaque at a rally outside Thailand's parliament in Bangkok, as activists gathered to demand a new constitution AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 September 2020 A whale stranded on a beach in Macquarie Harbour on the rugged west coast of Tasmania, as hundreds of pilot whales have died in a mass stranding in southern Australia despite efforts to save them, with rescuers racing to free a few dozen survivors The Mercury/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 22 September 2020 State civil employee candidates wearing face masks and shields take a test in Surabaya AFP via Getty World news in pictures 21 September 2020 A man sweeps at the Taj Mahal monument on the day of its reopening after being closed for more than six months due to the coronavirus pandemic AP World news in pictures 20 September 2020 A deer looks for food in a burnt area, caused by the Bobcat fire, in Pearblossom, California EPA World news in pictures 19 September 2020 Anti-government protesters hold their mobile phones aloft as they take part in a pro-democracy rally in Bangkok. Tens of thousands of pro-democracy protesters massed close to Thailand's royal palace, in a huge rally calling for PM Prayut Chan-O-Cha to step down and demanding reforms to the monarchy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 September 2020 Supporters of Iraqi Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr maintain social distancing as they attend Friday prayers after the coronavirus disease restrictions were eased, in Kufa mosque, near Najaf, Iraq Reuters World news in pictures 17 September 2020 A protester climbs on The Triumph of the Republic at 'the Place de la Nation' as thousands of protesters take part in a demonstration during a national day strike called by labor unions asking for better salary and against jobs cut in Paris, France EPA World news in pictures 16 September 2020 A fire raging near the Lazzaretto of Ancona in Italy. The huge blaze broke out overnight at the port of Ancona. Firefighters have brought the fire under control but they expected to keep working through the day EPA World news in pictures 15 September 2020 Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny posing for a selfie with his family at Berlin's Charite hospital. In an Instagram post he said he could now breathe independently following his suspected poisoning last month Alexei Navalny/Instagram/AFP World news in pictures 14 September 2020 Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga, former Defense Minister Shigeru Ishiba and former Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida celebrate after Suga was elected as new head of the ruling party at the Liberal Democratic Party's leadership election in Tokyo Reuters World news in pictures 13 September 2020 A man stands behind a burning barricade during the fifth straight day of protests against police brutality in Bogota AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 September 2020 Police officers block and detain protesters during an opposition rally to protest the official presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus. Daily protests calling for the authoritarian president's resignation are now in their second month AP World news in pictures 11 September 2020 Members of 'Omnium Cultural' celebrate the 20th 'Festa per la llibertat' ('Fiesta for the freedom') to mark the Day of Catalonia in Barcelona. Omnion Cultural fights for the independence of Catalonia EPA World news in pictures 10 September 2020 The Moria refugee camp, two days after Greece's biggest migrant camp, was destroyed by fire. Thousands of asylum seekers on the island of Lesbos are now homeless AFP via Getty World news in pictures 9 September 2020 Pope Francis takes off his face mask as he arrives by car to hold a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 8 September 2020 A home is engulfed in flames during the "Creek Fire" in the Tollhouse area of California AFP via Getty World news in pictures 7 September 2020 A couple take photos along a sea wall of the waves brought by Typhoon Haishen in the eastern port city of Sokcho AFP via Getty World news in pictures 6 September 2020 Novak Djokovic and a tournament official tends to a linesperson who was struck with a ball by Djokovic during his match against Pablo Carreno Busta at the US Open USA Today Sports/Reuters World news in pictures 5 September 2020 Protesters confront police at the Shrine of Remembrance in Melbourne, Australia, during an anti-lockdown rally AFP via Getty World news in pictures 4 September 2020 A woman looks on from a rooftop as rescue workers dig through the rubble of a damaged building in Beirut. A search began for possible survivors after a scanner detected a pulse one month after the mega-blast at the adjacent port AFP via Getty World news in pictures 3 September 2020 A full moon next to the Virgen del Panecillo statue in Quito, Ecuador EPA World news in pictures 2 September 2020 A Palestinian woman reacts as Israeli forces demolish her animal shed near Hebron in the Israeli-occupied West Bank Reuters World news in pictures 1 September 2020 Students protest against presidential elections results in Minsk TUT.BY/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 31 August 2020 The pack rides during the 3rd stage of the Tour de France between Nice and Sisteron AFP via Getty World news in pictures 30 August 2020 Law enforcement officers block a street during a rally of opposition supporters protesting against presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus Reuters World news in pictures 29 August 2020 A woman holding a placard reading "Stop Censorship - Yes to the Freedom of Expression" shouts in a megaphone during a protest against the mandatory wearing of face masks in Paris. Masks, which were already compulsory on public transport, in enclosed public spaces, and outdoors in Paris in certain high-congestion areas around tourist sites, were made mandatory outdoors citywide on August 28 to fight the rising coronavirus infections AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 August 2020 Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe bows to the national flag at the start of a press conference at the prime minister official residence in Tokyo. Abe announced he will resign over health problems, in a bombshell development that kicks off a leadership contest in the world's third-largest economy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 27 August 2020 Residents take cover behind a tree trunk from rubber bullets fired by South African Police Service (SAPS) in Eldorado Park, near Johannesburg, during a protest by community members after a 16-year old boy was reported dead AFP via Getty World news in pictures 26 August 2020 People scatter rose petals on a statue of Mother Teresa marking her 110th birth anniversary in Ahmedabad AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 August 2020 An aerial view shows beach-goers standing on salt formations in the Dead Sea near Ein Bokeq, Israel Reuters World news in pictures 24 August 2020 Health workers use a fingertip pulse oximeter and check the body temperature of a fisherwoman inside the Dharavi slum during a door-to-door Covid-19 coronavirus screening in Mumbai AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 August 2020 People carry an idol of the Hindu god Ganesh, the deity of prosperity, to immerse it off the coast of the Arabian sea during the Ganesh Chaturthi festival in Mumbai, India Reuters World news in pictures 22 August 2020 Firefighters watch as flames from the LNU Lightning Complex fires approach a home in Napa County, California AP World news in pictures 21 August 2020 Members of the Israeli security forces arrest a Palestinian demonstrator during a rally to protest against Israel's plan to annex parts of the occupied West Bank AFP via Getty World news in pictures 20 August 2020 A man pushes his bicycle through a deserted road after prohibitory orders were imposed by district officials for a week to contain the spread of the Covid-19 in Kathmandu AFP via Getty World news in pictures 19 August 2020 A car burns while parked at a residence in Vacaville, California. Dozens of fires are burning out of control throughout Northern California as fire resources are spread thin AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 August 2020 Students use their mobile phones as flashlights at an anti-government rally at Mahidol University in Nakhon Pathom. Thailand has seen near-daily protests in recent weeks by students demanding the resignation of Prime Minister Prayut Chan-O-Cha AFP via Getty World news in pictures 17 August 2020 Members of the Kayapo tribe block the BR163 highway during a protest outside Novo Progresso in Para state, Brazil. Indigenous protesters blocked a major transamazonian highway to protest against the lack of governmental support during the COVID-19 novel coronavirus pandemic and illegal deforestation in and around their territories AFP via Getty World news in pictures 16 August 2020 Lightning forks over the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge as a storm passes over Oakland AP World news in pictures 15 August 2020 Belarus opposition supporters gather near the Pushkinskaya metro station where Alexander Taraikovsky, a 34-year-old protester died on August 10, during their protest rally in central Minsk AFP via Getty World news in pictures 14 August 2020 AlphaTauri's driver Daniil Kvyat takes part in the second practice session at the Circuit de Catalunya in Montmelo near Barcelona ahead of the Spanish F1 Grand Prix AFP via Getty World news in pictures 13 August 2020 Soldiers of the Brazilian Armed Forces during a disinfection of the Christ The Redeemer statue at the Corcovado mountain prior to the opening of the touristic attraction in Rio AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 August 2020 Young elephant bulls tussle playfully on World Elephant Day at the Amboseli National Park in Kenya AFP via Getty In the other case, called Case 2000, he is accused of offering commercial favours to Israeli newspaper owner Arnon Mozes in return for more positive coverage. Mr Mozes owns Yedioth Ahronoth - one of Israel's biggest newspapers. Mr Netanyahu is alleged to have offered to cut the ciruclation of Israel Hayom, a pro-Netanyahu newspaper owned by US billionaire and Republican Party donor Sheldon Adelson, if Mr Mozes told his paper to be more favourable towards the Prime Minister. Cutting the circulation of Israel Hayom, which is distributed free of charge, would benefit Mr Mozes financially because it is the main competitor of his newspaper in the battle for advertising revenues. Mr Harow is also suspected of bribery, fraud and breach of trust, along with aggravated fraud and money laundering. Recordings found on his phone of conversations between Mr Netanyahu and Mr Mozes are said to form the basis of the Case 2000 investigation. 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 }} 14-year-old Fatemah Qaderyan arrived home in Herat two weeks ago to a heroes welcome. As the captain of an all-girl robotics team, she and her classmates had defied the odds not just to make it to an international competition in the US, but to triumphantly come home with a silver medal. During an interview at the First Global Challenge international robotics contest in Washington DC in July, Fatemah told reporters that her father had been her greatest support as the team travelled 800 kilometres (500 miles) to Kabul twice, only to have their visas rejected under Donald Trumps new travel restrictions. They were finally granted permission to enter the US just a week before the competition, where judges praised their can-do attitude and courageous achievement. Just 10 days later, 54-year-old Mohammed Qaderyan was killed in the latest Isis atrocity in Afghanistan when a suicide attacker opened fire and then detonated explosives during evening prayers at a Shia mosque. Roya Mahboob, a prominent tech-focussed entrepreneur from Herat who helped get the girls to the US, confirmed the news of Mr Qaderyans death on Twitter, offering her condolences to the family. A spokesperson for the governor of Herats office also confirmed he was among the dead. US drops 'Mother Of All Bombs' on Islamic State cave system in Afghanistan [Fatemah] is very angry and is not eating or speaking to anyone, she is going through a very difficult time, team director Ali Reza Mehrban told al Jazeera, adding that the girl is angry and grieving. At least 37 people died and more than 60 were injured in the attack in the normally peaceful eastern city on Tuesday night after an Isis gunman killed the guards at a Shia mosque in Herat before entering inside and detonating a suicide vest in the midst of hundreds of worshippers. The attack was claimed the next day by the Sunni militant group - which had recently threatened an increase in attacks on Shia Muslims. This week has been yet another bloody one in Afghanistan; as well as the Herat attack, on Wednesday, a Taliban attack in Kandahar killed two US soldiers, and violence killed civilians in both Helmand and Paktia provinces. Two Isis fighters attempted to storm the Iraqi embassy in Kabul on Monday, killing two guards in a suicide bombing. Afghanistan: Between Hope and Fear Show all 16 1 /16 Afghanistan: Between Hope and Fear Afghanistan: Between Hope and Fear 2001 Afghans at the Killi Faizo refugee camp desperately reach for bags of rice being handed out to the thousands who escaped the bombardment in southern Afghanistan during Operation Enduring Freedom. (Chaman, Pakistan, December 4, 2001) Paula Bronstein Afghanistan: Between Hope and Fear 2002 Mahbooba stands against a bullet-ridden wall, waiting to be seen at a medical clinic. The seven-year-old girl suffers from leishmaniasis, a parasitical infection. (Kabul, March 1, 2002) All photos Paula Bronstein Afghanistan: Between Hope and Fear 2003 A mother and her two children look out from their cave dwelling. Many families who, fleeing the Taliban, took refuge inside caves adjacent to Bamiyans destroyed ancient Buddha statues now have nowhere else to live. (Bamiyan, November 19, 2003) Paula Bronstein Afghanistan: Between Hope and Fear 2007 Students recite prayers in a makeshift outdoor classroom in the Wakhan Corridor, a mountainous region in northeastern Afghanistan that extends to China and separates Tajikistan from India and Pakistan. (Northeastern Afghanistan, September 2, 2007) Paula Bronstein Afghanistan: Between Hope and Fear 2007 Bodybuilders in the 55-60 kg category square off during a regional bodybuilding competition. Many Afghan men, like others around the world, feel that a macho image of physical strength is important. (Kabul, August 6, 2007) Paula Bronstein Afghanistan: Between Hope and Fear 2008 A woman in a white burqa enjoys an afternoon with her family feeding the white pigeons at the Blue Mosque. (Mazar-e-Sharif, March 8, 2008) Paula Bronstein Afghanistan: Between Hope and Fear 2009 Addicts inject heroin while trying to keep warm inside the abandoned Russian Cultural Center, which the capital citys addicts use as a common gathering point. Heroin is readily available, costing about one dollar a hit. (Kabul, February 9, 2009) Paula Bronstein Afghanistan: Between Hope and Fear 2009 An elderly man holds his granddaughter in their tent at a refugee camp after they were forced to flee their village, which US and NATO forces had bombed because, they claimed, it was a Taliban hideout. (Surobi, Nangarhar Province, February 7, 2009) Paula Bronstein Afghanistan: Between Hope and Fear 2009 Seven-year-old Attiullah, a patient at Mirwais Hospital, stands alongside an X ray showing the bullet that entered his back, nearly killing him. Attiullah was shot by US forces when he was caught in a crossfire as he was herding sheep. (Kandahar, October 13, 2009). Paula Bronstein Afghanistan: Between Hope and Fear 2010 US Army Sargeant Jay Kenney (right), with Task Force Destiny, helps wounded Afghan National Army soldiers exit a Blackhawk helicopter after they have been rescued in an air mission. (Kandahar, December 12, 2010) Paula Bronstein Afghanistan: Between Hope and Fear 2010 An Afghan National Army battalion marches back to barracks at the Kabul Military Training Center. (Kabul, October 4, 2010) Paula Bronstein Afghanistan: Between Hope and Fear 2014 Eid Muhammad, seventy, lives in a house with a view overlooking the hills of Kabul. He and millions of other Afghans occupy land and housing without possessing formal deeds to them. (Kabul, November 21, 2014) Paula Bronstein Afghanistan: Between Hope and Fear 2014 Razima holds her two-year-old son, Malik, while waiting for medical attention at the Boost Hospital emergency room. (Lashkar Gah, Helmand Province, June 23, 2014) Paula Bronstein Afghanistan: Between Hope and Fear 2014 Young women cheer as they attend a rally for the Afghan presidential candidate Ashraf Ghani. (Kabul, April 1, 2014) Paula Bronstein Afghanistan: Between Hope and Fear 2014 Burqa-clad women wait to vote after a polling station runs out of ballots. (Kabul, April 5, 2014) Paula Bronstein Afghanistan: Between Hope and Fear 2015 Relatives, friends, and womens rights activists grieve at the home of Farkhunda Malikzada, who was killed by a mob in the center of Kabul. Farkhunda was violently beaten and set on fire after a local cleric accused her of burning a Quran. (Kabul, March 22, 2015) Paula Bronstein At least 1,700 people have been killed in attacks carried out by either the Taliban or Isis in the first six months of 2017. Although the Taliban lost control of Afghanistan following the 2001 US invasion, it has steadily regained ground since the majority of US and allied troops left in 2014, and is now in control of some 40 per cent of the country. The chaos has also allowed Isis to gain a foothold in eastern provinces. The unrelenting violence has left many angry with the weak and divided government of President Ashraf Ghani, whom they say is not doing enough to protect the people from extremist violence. Recommended Trump could withdraw troops from Afghanistan despite military advice Hundreds attended a protests calling on the president and other high ranking ministers to either combat the violence or resign in Herat on Wednesday night, and more are expected across the country on Thursday, including in the capital Kabul. In July US President Donald Trump bowed to pressure from the Pentagon to allow the military to set its own troop levels to prevent the precarious security situation from deteriorating further. A total of 13,000 US and Nato soldiers are currently in the country. While it is expected that 4,000 extra troops will be deployed, there is still no coherent strategy from the Trump administration on the USs future involvement. 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 }} Some of the Saudi-funded mosques in the UK are as dangerous as many mosques in Saudi Arabia and the UK has suffered because of that. We have seen the Saudis spreading the extremist Wahaabi form of Islam in other parts of the world and the highly damaging effect of that as well, said Mohammad Marandi. Mr Marandi, an academic with influence in Irans governing circles, was speaking about the state of power-play in the Middle East which is going through a particularly volatile period, even by its turbulent standards, with repercussions spreading far beyond. A Saudi-led coalition including the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Bahrain and Egypt has imposed a blockade on Qatar, gouging a faultline in the regions Sunni confederacy. The main reasons for the bitter confrontation are Dohas amicable relations with Shia Iran, Riyadhs sectarian rival, as well as Dohas backing of the Muslim Brotherhood, an organisation loathed by Saudi Arabia. At the same time there is deep international apprehension about what happens in the aftermath of the war against Isis in Iraq and Syria with thousands of jihadists on the loose and al-Qaeda making a comeback. Meanwhile, looming in the horizon, is the baleful shadow of Donald Trump whose blunderings have played a key role in the crisis. Mr Trump had boasted about how he helped to shape the actions of the Saudi alliance against Qatar. During my recent trip to the Middle East I stated that there can no longer be funding for Radical ideology. Leaders pointed to Qatar look, he tweeted. The trip was to Riyadh to sell arms to the Gulf States with Saudi Arabia alone signing a deal to buy $110bn (83.6bn). While there the US President repeatedly attacked Iran claiming it funds arms, trains militias [and] that it trains militias that spread destruction and chaos. Saudi King Salman also railed against Iran calling it the spearhead of terrorism. There is now general consensus among observers that the Saudis did actually see Mr Trumps remarks as a green light to go after Qatar, sending a set of demands to Doha which was always unlikely to be met, followed swiftly by announcement of punitive action. Qatar, however, has refused to capitulate, and the Saudis have failed to get broader international support for their stance. Most significantly, James Mattis and Rex Tillerson, Americas Defence Secretary and Secretary of State, aghast at Mr Trumps attitude towards Qatar, a valued allied state with a major strategic US military base, have very publicly signalled their support for Doha. In Washington, senior figures have pointed to the long history of Saudi funding for terrorism. Bob Corker, the Republican chairman of the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee, considered a hawk on Iran, has bluntly stated the amount of support for terrorism by Saudi Arabia dwarfs what Qatar is doing. Before his election Mr Trump had himself blamed the Kingdom for terrorist attacks in America. Who blew up the World Trade Centre? he asked on Fox TV in February last year while criticising the US invasion of Iraq. It wasnt the Iraqis, it was Saudi take a look at Saudi Arabia, open the documents!. Saudi Arabia has repeatedly denied any responsibility for, or link to, the September 11 attack and denies funding extremism. Irans immediate response to the standoff between the Saudis and the Qataris was cautious, with calls for reconciliation. But then it was only too happy to take advantage of the situation, starting to fly in food to Qatar and, when the Saudis banned Qatari flights from its airspace, Tehran was quick to allow them into its skies. The inauguration of Irans President, Hassan Rouhani, takes place this week and Qatar has said it will send a high-level delegation. We will never forget the accomplishment of the Islamic Republic of Iran in the time of the sanctions and we appreciated it, said the countrys prime minister, Sheikh Abdullah bin Nasser bin Khalifa Al Thani. Saudi Arabia and its close allies, unsurprisingly, will not be at the ceremony on Saturday. The US will also be absent, but Britain and the EU, Russia and China are due to attend. Alireza Rahimi, of the National Security and Foreign Policy Committee of Irans parliament, the Majlis, wanted to stress: We have a hundred countries being represented, this will send an important message to the world when America is once again trying to get countries to act against Iran. The Sunni states of Oman and, to a lesser extent, Kuwait, have sought to build relations with Iran and the Qatari move further weakens the Sunni league which the Saudis seek to lead. The crisis has also warmed relations between Tehran and Turkey, which has troops based in Qatar and offered to send reinforcements when there was some talk of a possible Saudi military offensive. There is no sign of thawing of the animosity between Riyadh and Tehran. Prince Mohammed Bin Salman, who was named heir apparent to the Kingdoms throne by his father King Salman in July, had stated two months before: We wont wait for the battle to be in Saudi Arabia. Instead, well work so that the battle is for them in Iran. 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 Prince Mohammed is the architect of the current war in Yemen in which the Saudis and their allies have been bombing the country for two years with no sign of victory in sight, but more than 10,000 civilians have been killed so far and homes, schools, hospitals and vital infrastructure destroyed. A month after Prince Mohammeds statement a terrorist attack took place in Tehran, targeting parliament and Ayatollah Khomeinis tomb, killing 17 people. Isis claimed credit but Irans Revolutionary Guards charged that the Saudis were responsible. No evidence has been presented, however, to support this. Mohammad Marandi is sceptical that the Saudis could offer a conventional military threat. When it comes to this region the Saudis have, fortunately, been shooting themselves in the foot for a while, and their influence and power is nothing like they pretend it is.The Yemeni war, as we know, has been a disaster and it continues to be very costly. We have also been told by a couple of countries which should know that the Saudi economy is in a far worse state than they can admit, he held. Neither does he and his colleagues feel that Mr Trump is necessarily a military threat to Iran. The rhetoric has become much more aggressive with him, but what we have also seen is how isolated the US is becoming under him, how many countries he is driving away, he said. Unlike Barack Obama, it is unlikely that he will be in a position to build a viable international coalition. As for terrorism, well we know about what happens with Wahaabi extremism in so many countries. But the West seems happy to continue the way they are with Saudi Arabia, selling them the bombs being used to kill people in Yemen. For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} The US has warned that the takeover of a rebel-held province in Syria by militants with links to al-Qaeda will have grave consequences for the future of the region. A letter in Arabic from Michael Ratney - the US State Departments top Syria policy official - posted online late on Wednesday said that the recent offensive by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), spearheaded by former al-Qaeda offshoot Nusra Front ( now called Jabhat Fatah al-Sham), which cemented its grip on Idlib province, had put the future of northern Syria in big danger. Idlib is the only region of the country totally under rebel control after more than six years of fighting which has seen the tide of the war turn in Syrian President Bashar al-Assads favour. Images of people breaking Ramadan fast in ruined Syrian town go viral It has become an overcrowded home for more than two million people who have been moved there following the end of sieges and government offensives in the rest of the country. The fall of Aleppo in December 2016 in particular saw a huge influx of rebels and their families. Syrian regime and Russian air strikes have heavily targeted Idlib, killing hundreds of civilians, since Islamist rebels swept through it in 2015. It is currently one of four de-escalation zones in the country following a Russian-Turkish ceasefire brokered in May. Aleppo before the Syrian Civil War Show all 12 1 /12 Aleppo before the Syrian Civil War Aleppo before the Syrian Civil War Aleppo before the Syrian Civil War A man crosses a street in Aleppo, December 12, 2009 Reuters Aleppo before the Syrian Civil War Aleppo before the Syrian Civil War A vendor sits inside an antique shop in al-Jdeideh neighbourhood, in the Old City of Aleppo, December 12, 2009 Reuters Aleppo before the Syrian Civil War Aleppo before the Syrian Civil War A view shows part of Aleppo's historic citadel, overlooking Aleppo city, Syria Reuters Aleppo before the Syrian Civil War Aleppo before the Syrian Civil War A view shows part of Aleppo's historic citadel, Syria Reuters Aleppo before the Syrian Civil War Aleppo before the Syrian Civil War Visitors walk inside Aleppo's Umayyad mosque, Syria Reuters Aleppo before the Syrian Civil War Aleppo before the Syrian Civil War People walk inside the Khan al-Shounah market, in the Old City of Aleppo, Syria Reuters Aleppo before the Syrian Civil War Aleppo before the Syrian Civil War A man walks past shops in al-Jdeideh neighbourhood, in the Old City of Aleppo, Syria Reuters Aleppo before the Syrian Civil War Aleppo before the Syrian Civil War People walk along an alley in al-Jdeideh neighbourhood, in the Old City of Aleppo, Syria Reuters Aleppo before the Syrian Civil War Aleppo before the Syrian Civil War Visitors tour Aleppo's historic citadel, Syria December 11, 2009 Reuters Aleppo before the Syrian Civil War Aleppo before the Syrian Civil War A general view shows the Old City of Aleppo as seen from Aleppo's historic citadel, Syria December 11, 2009 Reuters Aleppo before the Syrian Civil War Aleppo before the Syrian Civil War People walk near Aleppo's Bab al-Faraj Clock Tower, Syria October 6, 2010 Reuters Aleppo before the Syrian Civil War Aleppo before the Syrian Civil War A man stands inside Aleppo's historic citadel, overlooking Aleppo city, Syria December 11, 2009 Reuters In a three day blitz at the end of last month, however, Abu Mohammad al-Jolani, HTS de facto leader, managed to seize control of most of Idlib from the more mainstream Ahrar al-Sham in some of the heaviest inter-rebel fighting seen in the complex conflict to date. Nusra and its leaders would remain a target of Washington even if they adopted new names in an attempt to deny the US and other powers a pretext to attack them, the diplomat said. The HTS takeover last month could also make it difficult for US diplomats to convince their Russian counterparts not to renew a bombing campaign, he added. Calling the successful HTS offensive one of north Syrias biggest tragedies, Mr Ratney wrote that In the event of the hegemony of Nusra Front on Idlib, it would be difficult for the United States to convince the international parties not to take the necessary military measures. Mr Ratney urged other rebel groups in the region not to join HTS' proposed civil and military joint administrations. Everyone should know that Jolani and his gang are the ones who bear responsibility for the grave consequences that will befall Idlib, he added. News agencies contributed to this report 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 Yemeni father has described his relief and satisfaction after witnessing the public execution of a man convicted of raping and murdering his three-year-old daughter. Thousands of people gathered to witness the execution of Muhammad al-Maghrabi in Yemens capital Sanaa, and it was broadcasted across the country on national television. The Moroccan national was convicted of rape and murder by a court run by the Shiite Houthi rebels in control of the capital, and was initially sentenced to 100 lashes after reportedly admitting the crime. But amid widespread public outrage, the judge decided that the punishment was not enough and al-Maghrabis execution was ordered. The 41-year-old was killed by a police officer using an AK-style machine gun which was shot into his back as he lay on the ground. Speaking to the MailOnline, the childs father, Yahya Almatari, who reportedly stood at the front of the crowd during the execution, said: I feel as if I have been reborn. This is the first day of my life. I am relieved now. Justice and the ruling of God and Sharia law have prevailed. He added: I watched my daughter Rana's killer being executed in Tahrir Square in Sana'a then I went with the men of my family and neighbours and some of the people in the crowd to the hospital where Rana was in the morgue. We took her small body and buried her in the nearby cemetery. My wife Jamileh and I are grateful to God. Justice and the ruling of Allah have been done. People gather to watch the execution of Muhammad al-Maghrabi with many taking pictures and filming the scene (REUTERS/Khaled Abdullah ) (REUTERS/Khaled Abdullah) In Yemen, Sharia law is the source of all legislation, according to reports by the US State Department. Under Sharia law, murder is punishable by the death sentence. Beheading is the most common form of execution, but the law does not state the means by which capital punishment may be carried out. Since early 2015, Sanaa has been controlled by Houthi insurgents, which is a predominantly Shia-led religious and political movement. The group has been accused of human rights violations including the use of child soldiers. The groups slogan is God is the Greatest, Death to America, Death to Israel, Curse the Jews, Victory to Islam. The situation in Yemen Show all 14 1 /14 The situation in Yemen The situation in Yemen Houthi supporters trample on a US flag during a gathering mobilizing more fighters into several Yemeni battlefronts, in Sana'a, Yemen EPA The situation in Yemen People carry the coffins of men, who were killed in the recent Saudi-led airstrikes during their funeral, in the Old City of Sanaa, Yemen AP The situation in Yemen Pro-government fighters give food to Yemeni children on the road leading to the southwestern port city of Mokha. Yemeni rebels are putting up fierce resistance in a key Red Sea port city where they are encircled by pro-government force Getty Images The situation in Yemen A Yemeni stands in front of a graffiti protesting US military operations in war-affected Yemen, in Sana'a, Yemen. According to reports, US Special Forces troops allegedly disembarked from US helicopters in the Yemeni town of Yakla and attacked several houses belonging to members of the terrorist group Al-Qaeda, killing three high-ranking Al-Qaeda members and nine civilians, six women and three children. One American serviceman has been killed and three injured in the attack EPA The situation in Yemen US Special Forces troops allegedly disembarked from US helicopters in the Yemeni town of Yakla and attacked several houses belonging to members of the terrorist group Al-Qaeda, killing three high-ranking Al-Qaeda members and nine civilians, six women and three children. One American serviceman has been killed and three injured in the attack EPA The situation in Yemen A Yemeni female fighter supporting the Shiite Huthi rebels, and carrying weapons used for ceremonial purposes, takes part in an anti-Saudi rally in the capital Sanaa Getty Images The situation in Yemen Yemeni female fighters supporting the Shiite Huthi rebels, and carrying weapons used for ceremonial purposes, take part in an anti-Saudi rally in the capital Sanaa Getty Images The situation in Yemen A boy shouts slogans next to pro-Houthi fighters, who have been injured during recent fighting, during a rally held to honour those injured or maimed while fighting in Houthi ranks in Sanaa, Yemen Reuters The situation in Yemen Balls of fire and smoke rise from a Houthi-held military camp following alleged Saudi-led airstrikes, in Sana'a, Yemen EPA The situation in Yemen Yemenis search under the rubble of damaged houses following reported Saudi-led coalition air strikes on the outskirts of the Yemeni capital Sanaa Getty Images The situation in Yemen A Yemeni boy looks on as Yemenis search under the rubble of damaged houses following reported Saudi-led coalition air strikes on the outskirts of the Yemeni capital Sanaa Getty The situation in Yemen A Yemeni boy sits amidst the rubble of damaged houses following reported Saudi-led coalition air strikes on the outskirts of the Yemeni capital Sanaa AFP/Getty The situation in Yemen Marine One with US President Donald Trump flies with a decoy and support helicopters to Dover Air Force Base in Dover, Delaware, for the dignified transfer of Navy Seal Chief Petty Officer William 'Ryan' Owens who was killed in Yemen Getty Images The situation in Yemen US President Donald Trump aboard the Marine One to greet the remains of a US military commando killed during a raid on the al Qaeda militant group in southern Yemen on Sunday, at Dover Air Force Base, Delaware, US Reuters The civil war has been in stalemate for most of the past two years. Over 10,000 civilians have been killed, three million have been displaced, and the conflict is killing 75 people very day, according to UN figures. Sign up to Simon Calders free travel email for weekly expert advice and money-saving discounts Get Simon Calders Travel email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Simon Calders Travel email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} Turning the hefty handle of his 15-kilo granite mill at precisely 45 rotations per minute, 75-year-old tea farmer Kyugoro Shimooka cut the figure of a much younger man. Slim and agile, he was transforming recently harvested and dried green leaves into emerald gold in his home on the rural edge of the small Japanese city of Uji. Ive drunk matcha with every meal, every day of my life, he told me, before whipping up a steamy broth with his 180-point bamboo whisk. For many, drinking matcha is an everyday part of life (Simon Parker) My mother drinks it, too, and shes 101, he continued, watching me try the diluted infusion mixed with warm water. It tasted totally different to anything Id had before, tea or otherwise. Umami and savoury, with a delicate bitterness that left my mouth feeling coated, this was as good as matcha gets; the single malt of tea. Ill be honest though my taste buds werent so sure yet. This bright green dust has, at least aesthetically, become a social media hit the ultimate Instagrammable miracle ingredient. Matcha lattes, created by mixing the powder with sweetened soy or almond milk, can be found all over the chalkboards of Londons trendy coffee shops. But in an era of quick fix, flash-in-the-pan health trends, is the latest brew on the block really worth its weight in likes? Unlike some modern food fads, matcha is nowhere near as novel as you might think, with a history dating back almost a thousand years. Boasting 10 times the amount of anti-oxidants as a standard cup of green leaf tea, it was brought to Japan from China by the Zen monk Eisai in the 12th Century as a caffeine-rich meditative aid to help prevent monks drifting off to sleep. Furthermore, its known to boost metabolism and improve mental alertness, plus it contains an antioxidant linked to fighting cancer. Recommended Starbucks to open megastore in historic Kyoto teashop The undulating slopes surrounding Uji, cloaked in retractable black curtains used to create chlorophyll-boosting shade in the final three weeks of growth, serve as the epicentre of matcha cultivation. Every year, Japan produces about 80,000 tonnes of tea, Shimooka told me. About half of that becomes matcha and theres been an increase of 30 per cent in just five years. Matcha is now more popular than ever and about 1,000 tonnes are being shipped to Europe annually. To put those figures into context, India and China each produce around one million tonnes of tea each year. However, in Uji, farmers like Shimooka pride themselves on a philosophy of quality, not quantity and that attitude trickles down through the local industry. Were the only restaurant in Japan that specialises in matcha, said Soichiro Hidari, head chef at teahouse-turned-restaurant Tatsumiya, as he placed food in myriad hues of green on the low cypress wood table in front of me. Green tea and matcha come from the same plant (Getty Images/iStockphoto) Becoming a matcha specialist can take a decade, he continued, as I munched through a 10-course menu featuring prawn tempura, buckwheat noodles, miso soup, scallops and mini aubergines on skewers all of which were coloured and flavoured with matcha. Could a matcha restaurant win a Michelin star one day? I asked. Its certainly possible, but thats not my inspiration, he told me. Instead, I simply want to develop peoples tastes. As I worked through his kaleidoscopic menu, I felt privileged to be a guinea pig in his culinary experiment. My previously naive English palate, used to sweetened matcha served in takeaway cups, was also adjusting to its intricate subtleties. Try a matcha tea ceremony in Kyoto (Simon Parker) While the majority of Japans matcha cultivation and production takes place among the fertile hills of Uji, its in much bigger Kyoto that the tea scene feels closer to the trendy coffee culture of London. Cafes like Saryo Tsujiri and Iyemon Salon serve matcha in its traditional style, diluted with warm water but they also do a roaring trade in parfaits, ice creams, sponge cakes, candies, shaved ice, beer and, more recently, lattes. Ironically, Kyoto is playing catch up with the global trend and this milky drink has only recently become popular, especially among a younger crowd. Recommended How to make Matcha Fizz On the opposite end of the spectrum, the city is also where youll find the majority of tea ceremonies formalised, centuries-old customs. At Kyugetsu, Belgian Tyas Sosen and Englishman Stephen Soshun conduct these in English, while paying close attention to the strict methodology and etiquette of traditional matcha tea praxis. Tea ceremony is a ghastly mistranslation, said Stephen, dressed in a crisp black kimono, as Tyas created a soupy blend of thick matcha resembling fresh pesto. Its actually much more of a meditation, but in the company of other people. And its not only a healthy beverage, but also an aid to spiritual refreshment. This is the way we believe matcha should be drunk. With that, I sipped down the gloopy, bitter liquid, taking special care not to drip any on the immaculate matting beneath my bent knees. I wouldnt say Id been converted to the cult of matcha, ready to quaff the stuff with every meal in the hope of gaining everlasting life but Ill certainly ditch the almond milk from now on, opting instead for this fresher, more authentic taste. Travel essentials Getting there Finnair (finnair.com) flies from London Heathrow, Manchester and Edinburgh via Helsinki to Tokyo Narita and three other destinations across Japan, with fares from 850 in Economy Class. Staying there House rentals in Japan are available with Japan Experience (japan-experience.com) and are available in six locations; Tokyo, Kyoto, Kanazawa, Fukuoka, Hiroshima and Takayama. Prices start from 61 per night. Matcha tours InsideJapan (insidejapantours.com) can include a trip to a green tea farm in any tailored itinerary. The Japan specialists have a 14-night Best of Japan self-guided adventure costing from 1,860pp excluding international flights. To learn about matcha tea culture, in English, Kyugetsu Tea Ceremony (tea-ceremony-kyoto.com) provides group ceremonies and workshops. More information seejapan.co.uk; kyoto.travel 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 }} Schengen, as you know, is a village perched prettily beside the Moselle in south-east Luxembourg, where the French and German frontiers converge on the river. As a symbol of unity, it was the ideal place for Belgium, the Netherlands, France, Germany and Luxembourg to sign a treaty in 1985 on the free movement of people and goods within Europe. Today, the Schengen Area binds 22 European Union nations, plus Iceland, Norway, Switzerland and plucky Liechtenstein. I first visited the village in 1990 (yes, I was very young, thanks), as the Schengen Convention was signed: the treaty that abolished internal border checks. I cycled along to the frontier post to meet the soon-to-be-ex-border guards, who welcomed me into their den where they kept the most cursory eye on the flow of traffic across the bridge. Its difficult to measure the efficiency of anyone involved in deterrence, such as border officials, but they didnt give the impression of achieving superlative levels of productivity. Nevertheless, Id like to think some of those who lost their posts found gainful employment helping to create the Schengen Agreements own guidebook to the blocs external borders. Recommended Why British holidaymakers are waiting for hours in passport queues The Europe-without-frontiers project comes with a how to manual: the Practical Handbook for Border Guards. Its mission: to ensure the smooth crossing of the border by persons who represent the great majority of travellers (e.g., tourists, businessmen, students etc.), while at the same time always being vigilant in order to detect persons posing a risk. And it proceeds to explain how to do just that. So next time you travel by train, boat or plane to Schengen (whether the small village or the Europe-wide area), assess how well the frontier officials comply. Do not interrogate the traveller as a potential criminal or illegal immigrant, the book instructs. All the questions should be well-balanced and asked in a friendly way. And if the traveller asks questions back, they should not be considered as intrusive, and should be answered in a factual and polite manner. Well-balanced, friendly, factual and polite: at your next frontier encounter, award one point for each virtue. But border guards must do more than adopt the demeanour of a country vicar. They are supposed to identify villains. And here the Practical Handbook strays towards the blindingly obvious. When you take the travel document, always have a look at the face of the traveller, it instructs, helpfully. Try to remember as much as possible of the noticeable features of the travellers face; compare the features of the traveller with the photo. After these Sherlockian suggestions, it adds: This could help to eliminate impostors. Officials are told that impostors and other undesirables may give away tell-tale signs: Observe the behaviour and reaction of the traveller (e.g. nervousness, an aggressive attitude, excessive willingness to cooperate).# Beware of false positives, though; nerves or aggression could simply be as a result of waiting anxiously as time ticks away, while an excessive willingness to cooperate might result from less than well-balanced and friendly previous encounters with border guards. The book reveals not all travellers are equal, wth some enjoying a lighter touch. Top of the tree are heads of State and members of their delegations, who escape all frontier formalities. Members of international organisations carrying out their duties can expect preferential treatment during border checks. At airports, air crews take priority over mere passengers. And regular cross-border commuters who are well known to the border guards owing to their frequent crossing of the border can expect only the occasional spot check. But the rest of us, as I reported on Monday, face queues of up to four hours to pass border controls. Happily, I have a cunning plan to stop us Brits being constant Checkpoint Charlies. Even though the UK is heading for Brexit, there is no reason why we should not join the Schengen Area and enjoy frontier-free travel that will enable us to reach Schengen sehr schnell. Perhaps we could have a referendum about it. Click here to find hotes in Schengen Sign up to Simon Calders free travel email for weekly expert advice and money-saving discounts Get Simon Calders Travel email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Simon Calders Travel email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} The long and bitter dispute between British Airways and some cabin crew belonging to the Unite union has intensified. The union has announced a further two-week strike by staff working for the Mixed Fleet operation at Heathrow. It will begin on 16 August, immediately after the current stoppage ends, and continue to 30 August. The spell includes the August bank holiday, which is one of the busiest times of the year. If the strike goes ahead, it will mean that Mixed Fleet cabin crew have been on strike almost continuously throughout July and August, and will take the total stoppages since the start of the year to more than 10 weeks. BA has withdrawn travel privileges from staff who have taken industrial action. Last week the airline offered to restore them if the current strike which began on 1 August was called off. The airline says this was the biggest outstanding issue in the dispute, and the concession was made in order to bring the dispute to an end. But Oliver Richardson, Unites national officer said: Strike action will continue until the end of August unless British Airways hammers out a deal with Unite to resolve this dispute. The airline needs to get around the negotiating table and start recognising that punishing low-paid workers fighting for fairer pay is no way for a premium airline to behave. The offer to reinstate travel concessions for striking workers is half-hearted and fails to deal with the money British Airways has taken away from low-paid workers. Mixed Fleet was set up in 2010 as part of the settlement of the last big cabin crew dispute at British Airways. Staff have inferior employment terms to longer-serving cabin crew. Unite estimates that Mixed Fleet cabin crew earn 16,000 annually, including allowances. British Airways says it does not recognise this figure, and that the lowest-paid full-time member of Mixed Fleet earned more than 21,000 last year. A BA spokesperson said: As we have done in previous periods of industrial action we will ensure our customers reach their destinations. More than three months ago Unite agreed that our pay deal was acceptable but have since refused to ballot their members on it. The strike is having limited impact on operations, largely because BA has borrowed planes and pilots from its part-owner, Qatar Airways, to fly short-haul routes. For long-haul cancellations, Thursday followed a now-typical pattern. The 4.05pm departure from Heathrow to Chicago has been cancelled, along with the overnight return, with booked passengers moved to other services. The 9.50pm round-trip from Heathrow to Doha has been grounded, with passengers transferred to Qatar Airways. And the 4.35pm from Gatwick to New York JFK has been cancelled, so the rostered cabin crew can be redeployed at Heathrow. Passengers are being moved to BAs Heathrow-New York flights. Sign up to Simon Calders free travel email for weekly expert advice and money-saving discounts Get Simon Calders Travel email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Simon Calders Travel email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} Red tape for travellers is getting ever more tangled, with one shining exception: China is actually loosening its draconian visa rules for tourists. Both Beijing and Shanghai now allow a visitor to stay almost a week without formality, so long as they fulfil a few conditions for what is in effect a free transit visa. They must arrive from outside China; stay no more than six days from midnight on their day of arrival; and depart to a different destination outside the Peoples Republic. With Chinese tourist visas so expensive and complicated to obtain, this is excellent news for thousands of cruise passengers, who can join or leave a cruise at Shanghai without needing a visa. Yet one of the worlds biggest cruise lines told British passengers they did not qualify, and must instead spend around 200 to obtain a tourist visa. Recommended The ultimate guide to travel visas Sandra Collinson has a cruise booked next March from Singapore to Shanghai aboard Majestic Princess. She plans to spend one night in a hotel in Shanghai and fly home the day after disembarking. Ms Collinson told The Independent: Princess are stating they will deny boarding to any passenger who do not have a visa. This is an added expense the cruise passenger does not need. Initially Princess Cruises said that the Chinese authorities had stipulated all passengers must have visas. After The Independent intervened, however, the cruise line changed its attitude. A Princess Cruises spokesperson said: The China visa situation is complex and dependent on a number of factors. As the local authorities state visitors must be in possession of a valid visa, we recommend to all our guests that they have a single-entry visa to ensure they can travel. However, under very specific circumstances the 144-hour exception visa is valid. As such, guests are able to use it if it satisfies the criteria of the local authorities. Guests who require more information should speak to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. The Independent made a test call to the Foreign Office to seek more information. The operator said he could not himself provide advice on Chinese visa rules, but that UK Visa and Immigration could help. But the number he provided, 0300 123 2241, is a helpline entirely for people wanting to visit the UK. Many British cruise passengers book through travel agents who are members of Abta. The travel associations code of conduct stipulates: Members shall, before a contract is made, advise their clients of passport, visa and other entry and transit requirements for the journeys to be undertaken where it is reasonably practicable for the members to obtain this information. A spokesperson for Abta said: While there are occasions where a visa to visit China is not required, Chinas visa rules are complex with specific visas for difference circumstances. For the past 16 months, the Shanghai General Station of Immigration Inspection has provided a straightforward, English-language Interpretation of 144-hour Visa-exemption Transit Policy, which explains the rules. They can be summarised as follows: 1. Arrive from an airport/port/railway station outside the Peoples Republic of China (PRC) by air, ship or rail. For this purpose, Hong Kong is regarded as outside China. 2. Show proof of booking to a destination airport/port/railway station in a different country. 3. Remain within Shanghai Municipality, Jiangsu Province (a vast province stretching north of the city and including Nanjing) and Zhejiang Province (to the south). Note that this does not include most other prime tourist cities, such as Beijing, Xian and Guangzhou. 4. Leave before midnight six days after arriving in China (eg arrive lunchtime on Saturday, must leave by 11.59pm on Friday). If the traveller meets these requirements, he or she can follow the signs on arrival to a special 144-hour transit desk for processing, saving money and the gruelling process of applying for a full Chinese visa. Sign up to Simon Calders free travel email for weekly expert advice and money-saving discounts Get Simon Calders Travel email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Simon Calders Travel email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} Parachute a local into any Cotswold village and theyll tell you where they are by the colour of the stone, Andrew Guppy, owner of Cotswold Walks, tells me as I tear off a piece of malt loaf. Or so the saying goes, he says. We are sitting on a hilltop above sheep-speckled pastures, with honey-coloured villages nestling in the valley below. The stone in the north is golden, and here in the south its paler, he adds. I am walking part of the Cotswold Way. Wending through the Cotswold Hills for 102 miles between Chipping Campden and Bath, parts of this footpath have been hiked for generations. When it was elevated to National Trail status in 2007, it received global recognition, government funding, and a series of signposts bearing an acorn symbol. Ten years on, the Cotswold Way is walkable virtually on Google Street View. Relatively easy-going, the rolling terrain is ideal for gentle rambles with long pub lunches, while seasoned hikers can tot up more miles. Feeling ambitious, Id decide to tackle a 56-mile stretch between Painswick and Bath in three days one to add to your Bank Holiday bucket list if youre up for a challenge. Leaving London on a Friday, I take the 90-minute train from Paddington to Stroud, where I hop onto a bus to Painswick. Dubbed queen of the Cotswolds, this chocolate-box town is famous for its 99 yew trees, which stand like leaf-coated lollipops around its church. Cotswold Walks has arranged my accommodation, recommending three B&Bs and transporting my overnight bag between each one. I spend Friday night at the 16th-century Falcon Inn, which sits slap, bang on the Cotswold Way. The whole Cotswold Way footpath is 102 miles long (Lucy Grewcock) Costwold Walks Andrew Guppy joins me for my first day. We set off from Painswick through lush meadows and flower-filled woodlands. Pretty cottages are tucked into every dip and fold in the wolds. Cattle graze peacefully and, when we pass through a farmyard, I peer over a barn door to find 10 piglets asleep in the hay. Watch out for the lions, Andrew warns as I clamber over a stile. Looking up, I see a herd of sheep staring back. Nicknamed the Cotswold lions because of their golden fleeces, these sheep are responsible for the regions historic wealth. In the Middle Ages the Cotswolds produced the best wool in Europe. Money poured into the abbeys that owned the flocks and, in the 18th century, mill owners grew rich through the textile trade. Some of the manor houses they built are now owned by celebrities like Kate Moss, Jilly Cooper and Michael McIntyre. Another legacy of this wool-fuelled wealth is the plethora of grand churches that loom over each idyllic village. One of the most striking is All Saints in Selsley. Its French-gothic spire is visible from miles around and, with stained glass windows created by the arts and crafts pioneer William Morris, its well worth a peek on your way past. The path leads from Chipping Campden to Bath (Lucy Grewcock) Rising behind the church is Selsley Common a protected grassland that is peppered with purple orchids in summer. Over 40 per cent of the Cotswolds used to be limestone grassland like this, Andrew says as I pant uphill. Today its more like one per cent. One mile later, Andrew says his goodbyes and disappears down a track to catch a bus back to Painswick. I continue to Underhill House B&B in Dursley, which sits next to the Old Spot Inn a Cotswold institution which, on a Saturday night, was as busy as any London pub. The following morning, I step out into the spring sunshine and stride across open fields towards the 111ft Tyndale Monument, which commemorates William Tyndale, the 16th-century scholar known for his translation of the Bible into English. Its a cruel 121 steps to the top of the tower but the panoramic views are worth it. Catching my breath as the wind whips at my hair, I look out over the Severn Valley, towards the Brecon Beacons on the horizon far beyond. The Thermae Spa is the perfect place to relax in Bath (Thermae Spa) At night, I rest my legs at The Little Smithy, a quintessential Cotswold cottage in Tormarton village. The 39 miles Ive walked so far have taken their toll on my feet so, after a long bath, I set to work with a pack of blister plasters. The next day my last day leads me through shady beech woods that smell of wild garlic, and onwards to the deer park at Dyrham estate, the perfect spot to stop for a cream tea in the cafe. Seven miles before reaching Bath, I cross a civil war site, where the Battle of Lansdown raged in 1643. Now a pretty pasture trimmed by dry stone walls, its hard to imagine the gallons of blood that were shed in this peaceful place. My first proper view of Bath is at the Prospect Stile viewpoint, which peers over a green-lipped bowl with a puddle of city streets in the hollow below. With birdsong, bees and bleating sheep merging with the whirr of sirens and the hum of traffic ahead, my descent towards the city feels surreal. This year Bath marks its 30th year as a Unesco World Heritage Site, and the Cotswold Way leads past the Georgian architecture and Roman landmarks that earned it this status. I push on past the sweeping arc of the Royal Crescent and the triple-tiered townhouses at the Circus, before heading for the citys heart. The trail finishes beneath Bath Abbey, which towers over the historic Roman Baths and the modern Thermae Spa. Here weary walkers can bathe in naturally hot spring waters, like the Romans did 2,000 years ago. Now in the city centre, I feel suddenly self-conscious in my hiking boots and walking gear but with thousands tackling the Cotswold Way each year, the locals dont seem to mind. Nor do the staff at the Thermae Spa, who help me stow my rucksack in a locker before I beeline for the showers. Minutes later, I am bubbling away in the rooftop pool, letting the mineral-rich waters work their magic on my muscles. Gazing past the tip of the Abbeys spire to the green hills beyond, it makes the ultimate end to my journey along the Cotswold Way. Travel essentials Cotswold Walks (cotswoldwalks.com) arranges accommodation and baggage transfer, and can give expert advice on walking in the Cotswolds. Staying there Doubles at The Falcon (falconpainswick.co.uk) from 85, B&B. Underhill House (dursleybnb.co.uk) has doubles from 70, B&B. Double rooms at The Little Smithy (littlesmithy.com) from 80, B&B. Getting there Great Western Railway (gwr.com) operates direct trains between London and various stations near the Cotswold Way. Advance single fares from Paddington to Stroud start at 11.50; Bath Spa to London Paddington starts at 14.50 one way. More information cotswolds.com nationaltrail.co.uk/cotswold-way Sign up for the View from Westminster email for expert analysis straight to your inbox Get our free View from Westminster email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the View from Westminster email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} When Kenyans head to the polls on 8 August they will be voting in an election that matters not just to Kenya but to the rest of the world. While its capital Nairobi has long been a trade and economic hub, it is also home to most of the regions humanitarian agencies, as well as wildlife conservation NGOs which often positively influence other African nations. The countrys Cabinet Secretary for Environment and Natural Resources, Professor Judi Wakhungu, has long understood that what happens in Kenya has a far-reaching effect, and has made the most of that platform. A former Executive Director of the African Centre for Technology Studies and a Professor of Science, Technology and Society, Prof Wakhungu was appointed to her political post by President Uhuru Kenyatta in 2013. Since then her mission has been to prove that protecting biodiversity and developing a nation can go hand in hand - and to prove that to a global audience. The past four years have seen Prof Wakhungu demonstrate her commitment to safeguarding the environment, with shows of strength on policies from climate change to water harvesting and the recent ban on plastic bags. It has seen Kenya take a lead in sustainable development - not only in an African context but in a global one. Speaking of the challenges faced, Prof Wakhungu has said: Kenyas population is growing. Demand for development and infrastructure is growing. That is why we must promote sustainable development; to maintain our biodiversity but at the same time grow our infrastructure. It is we humans who are encroaching on areas for wildlife. But wildlife and humans have lived in harmony for a long time, and that is what we must promote. It is only by protecting our diversity that will allow us to weather the effects of climate change. The protection of large areas of land, community, state or private-owned, has long been a key focus of her work. Securing space is vital in order to conserve biodiversity, and also helps inspire all sectors of society to help safeguard wildlife and creates tourism jobs. Today at least 10 percent of Kenyas landscape is protected as national parks, marine parks and conservancies. And thanks to successful partnerships with wildlife and conservation charities, the Kenyan government has invested in the protection of animal corridors and the construction of fences to mitigate against human-elephant conflict (HEC). As for arguably the most complex, urgent and emotive problem facing Kenyas remaining elephant population - that of poaching Prof Wakhungu has shown she understands it is not a problem that can be solved by one nation. It can only be done together, in a show of unity by leaders of elephant range nations. This has been demonstrated by how, during her time as Secretary for Environment, Kenya has become a committed member of the Elephant Protection Initiative (EPI) and became a founding member of the Giants Club, the EPI-supporting cross-border project of the conservation organisation Space for Giants. The Giants Club aims to protect at least half of Africa's remaining elephant population by 2020 and does so by working with the most conservation-committed of the EPI countries. In April 2016 Kenya hosted the inaugural Giants Club Summit. It also undertook the world's largest ever ivory burn, which saw more than 100 tonnes of ivory set ablaze, bringing the worlds attention to the elephant crisis and the message that illegal ivory trade must stop. Dr Max Graham, CEO of Space for Giants, hailed Prof Wakhungus vision. Judi has been the single most important individual to ensuring Kenya got on top of its elephant poaching crisis, he said. She possesses a powerful mixture of academic brilliance, diplomatic class, political acumen and downright grit to get things done in the most challenging of environments. Judi is not just an asset to Kenya, she is an asset to the world. Alexander Rhodes, the founder and former CEO of Stop Ivory, the NGO Secretariat to the EPI, added: In the international elephant conservation community Judi has a real platform, and she is uniquely constituted to make the most of that position. She understands the need to take a wider approach, to invest in partnerships between government, NGOs and scientists. She recognises that the survival of elephants is a human issue, inextricably linked to issues around poverty, development, environment, law enforcement and finance. This thoughtful approach has underpinned successes in Kenya; with dedicated leaders like Judi involved in the global picture. Im optimistic that we are on the cusp of something remarkable for the survival of elephants. As election day looms in Kenya, the next government of the country is in the hands of the voters. Yet what is known is that, in one of the most biodiverse countries of the world, Prof Wakhungu has as Cabinet Secretary strengthened the systems around the protection of wildlife and has demonstrated what can be achieved with a clear agenda, great personal determination and the spirit of collaboration. She embodies the positive benefits and hope of the new constitution which places professional, rather than political, ability as the key criteria for holding a cabinet position in Kenyan government. Sign up for the View from Westminster email for expert analysis straight to your inbox Get our free View from Westminster email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the View from Westminster email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} In my mothers family scrapbook, there is a tiny box camera snapshot of a very young Robert staring at the Luftwaffe-smashed mole leading out to sea from the port of Boulogne sixteen years after British troops evacuated under fire in May 1940 as their comrades stood on the beaches of neighbouring Dunkirk. In the photograph, the right-hand side of the Boulogne jetty remains, in dilapidated, post-war France, just as it was when British soldiers scrambled aboard the last ships to Britain, the concrete, right-hand side of the mole collapsed into the sea, just a few old hawsers showing where it stood. I remember that when our car ferry docked from Dover, passengers still had to walk the plank across a bridge of duckboards suspended above the water with ropes on each side to cling onto above another bombed-out part of the jetty. A day later, my father drove our Austin up to Dunkirk to see the famous beaches. It was a grey, cold day and the sand was grey and there was some unrecognisable, rusting junk along the promenade and several of the old beach hotels were still under repair. That was it. History had passed this way and the Brits had returned to other beaches 250 miles further west four years later and Hitler killed himself and we dropped atoms bombs on Japan and, by the time I reached Dunkirk, wed lost soldiers in Korea and the poor old French were just starting their doomed war to hold onto Algeria. A very young Robert Fisk looks at the Luftwaffe-smashed mole at Boulogne 16 years after British troops evacuated under fire in May 1940 as their comrades stood on the beaches of neighbouring Dunkirk (Peggy Fisk) From time to time, during our drive towards the German border that dank summer holiday, there were road bridges still under repair the war had only ended eleven years earlier and squads of French soldiers guarding them would stand up and cheer when they saw the little Union flag my father had fixed to the front of our Austin. Dont wave to them, fellah, he would admonish me. They let us down and surrendered. So the anti-French contempt briefly witnessed in Christopher Nolans new film as a British officer refuses to allow French troops to join the evacuation was nothing new in cinematic history. My Dad, whod fought in France towards the end of the First World War, still felt the betrayal of the country hed risked his life for when it capitulated to the Germans in 1940, less than three weeks after the last British and French soldiers had left Dunkirk. 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. 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Indigenous protesters blocked a major transamazonian highway to protest against the lack of governmental support during the COVID-19 novel coronavirus pandemic and illegal deforestation in and around their territories AFP via Getty World news in pictures 16 August 2020 Lightning forks over the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge as a storm passes over Oakland AP World news in pictures 15 August 2020 Belarus opposition supporters gather near the Pushkinskaya metro station where Alexander Taraikovsky, a 34-year-old protester died on August 10, during their protest rally in central Minsk AFP via Getty World news in pictures 14 August 2020 AlphaTauri's driver Daniil Kvyat takes part in the second practice session at the Circuit de Catalunya in Montmelo near Barcelona ahead of the Spanish F1 Grand Prix AFP via Getty World news in pictures 13 August 2020 Soldiers of the Brazilian Armed Forces during a disinfection of the Christ The Redeemer statue at the Corcovado mountain prior to the opening of the touristic attraction in Rio AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 August 2020 Young elephant bulls tussle playfully on World Elephant Day at the Amboseli National Park in Kenya AFP via Getty The Brits had already been softened up to hate their French allies by General Mason-Macfarlane, who gave an off-the-record briefing to journalists in London on 28 May 1940 in which he told them to blame French troops for the demise of the British Expeditionary Force; reporters ran exclusives next day no sources, of course (as usual) precisely reflecting the words of the general. Mason-Macfarlane was, I suppose, a Farage of his time. In the decades to come, British historians would denigrate French troops in 1940 as drunkards and cowards although they also wrote of the looting and binge drinking by the Brits in Dunkirk town a theme clearly hinted at in the magnificent five-and-a-half minute Dunkirk beach take in Joe Wrights Atonement. Intriguingly, there were more French soldiers shooting their horses, marching with discipline to the beaches, one of them dying in a London hospital in Wrights film, in which Dunkirk was only an episode, than in Nolans epic. Much has been made, inevitably in The Guardian, of Nolans failure to acknowledge the presence of Muslim troops at Dunkirk Muslim Indian Commonwealth soldiers (from what is now Pakistan) and, of course, Algerian and Moroccan regiments in the French army. Atonement did contain a black British soldier in the retreat to Dunkirk although no photographs appear to exist of black UK troops in 1940 France and Leslie Normans much older Dunkirk movie, which premiered two years after I first visited the beaches, contained no black soldiers John Millss companions in the retreat to Dunkirk were all white although in the film French civilians risk their lives to help save British troops. Of course, even in this early stage of the Second World War, ethnic minority British citizens did show enormous courage one of the bravest ARP men during the Blitz was black, although we have yet to see a film about him. Disgracefully, the post-war Moroccan and Algerian governments declined until very recently to honour their soldiers who fought in the French army against the Nazis. Arab nationalism counted for more than anti-fascism in post-independence Algeria. The French film Indigenes released in the UK as Days of Glory recalled the bravery of Algerian soldiers fighting the Nazis after the Allied landings in southern France, and the racism of their French white comrades. As one of the North Africans lies wounded, praying the words of the Quran, he is executed by a German soldier. Intriguingly, the post-independence Muslim nations who deleted their Second World War history fighting the Japanese as well as the Germans reflected the First World War amnesia which afflicted the post-independence republican Irish who, until recently, had no time for their men-folk who died on the Somme, at Gallipoli and Passchendaele in British uniform. A justly cynical revue of Nolans Dunkirk by Francois Pedron in Paris Match points out, correctly, that 18,000 French troops paid with their lives to hold the Dunkirk perimeter and 35,000 were made prisoner almost 140,000 French soldiers were rescued from Dunkirk but that not only do the victors write history. Filmmakers write the history too, Pedron wrote. He is right. The true story of the Algerian and Moroccan units has still to be filmed. It would make a terrifying drama. The Germans threw raw meat into the prison cages of Algerian and African troops to show cinemagoers how they fought for the food and tore it to pieces like animals. Algerians were massacred by the Nazis on racial grounds an act which strongly supports the suspicion of some intellectual Arabs today: that Hitler, after destroying the Jews of Europe and the Middle East, would have next turned his exterminating fury against their Semitic Arab brothers. But of course, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem sought exile in Hitlers Germany and exhorted Muslims to support the Nazis and thus allowed Israel forever to equate the Arabs with Nazi Germany even though Arab Palestinians dead lie in the Commonwealth graveyard at El-Alamein alongside Jewish Palestinians. How do you explain this on film? If the French can be humiliated in the latest Dunkirk, what chance for Muslims? Or black soldiers? No wonder Farage urged us to watch Nolans movie. The Brits in 1940 were, at last, alone. It took another generation to create a Europe in which there would be no more international slaughter. 72 years of peace. And now we are committing Dunkirk all over again. Sign up to our free Brexit and beyond email for the latest headlines on what Brexit is meaning for the UK Sign up to our Brexit email for the latest insight Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Brexit and beyond email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} The debate about continued British membership of the single European market is often confused, because the shorthand term membership, just like the term access to, can mean different things. There is not actually an entity called the single market that you can apply to join. The EU has created an internal market as one of its policies, and it has associated countries from outside the EU with it, to various degrees, as the EU treaties allow it to do. The EEA countries (Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein) are the most closely involved though not quite fully participating, as fish and agriculture are excluded. Switzerland is involved through different arrangements. So are others, to a lesser degree, such as Moldova. The shorthand term members of the single market is inaccurate, but is usually used to refer to the EEA countries and Switzerland. Those countries have red-tape-free access to the single market for most of their products, on the condition that they follow its rules. After all, that is what the single market is about: ensuring that there are common standards on consumer protection, workers rights, the environment and fair competition means that products do not need to be checked at borders and can circulate without hindrance. This is particularly important for supply chains that criss-cross borders, such as in the manufacture of automobiles and aircrafts, or in agriculture. It is also vital in transport, where, notably, the right of airlines to fly across Europe is conditional on them complying with EU safety standards and being tested by the European Air Safety Agency. Britains financial sector, which provides one third of government tax revenue, is similarly dependent on its right to passport insurance and banking services across the single market in accordance with its rules. 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 In other words, membership of the single market is vital for our economy, jobs and public finance. But heres the rub: leaving the EU, assuming we go ahead with it, means Britain will have no direct say on those rules anymore. We would probably have some influence the EEA countries are consulted on draft single market legislation but we would no longer have representation where the final decisions are taken: the EU Council of Ministers and the European Parliament. This loss of influence is the political price of leaving the EU. We do not need to compound that by the economic damage of distancing ourselves from the single market. Some argue that we must leave the single market in order to make our own, separate rules, otherwise we will be a rule-taker, not a sovereign state. But the supposed gain in sovereignty would not be so great as to justify the huge economic cost. EU legislation in its entirety amounts to some 13 per cent of our laws according to the House of Commons library, and single market rules are a proportion of that. Within even that smaller proportion, we would have little option but to keep most of it anyway. First, some of it is where the EU has set standards that have since become world standards, as frequently happens. Second, sectors such as chemicals, aviation, pharmaceuticals and agriculture will still be dependent on EU rules that apply to their supply chains. Thirdly, some EU rules are the simple application in the single market of world level agreements in the WTO, UN agencies and so on. Fourthly, most rules are not controversial and there would be no particular gain from changing them. All in all, the extra sovereignty to do our own thing would, in practice, be limited, and not worth the economic damage of leaving the single market. Labour would take Britain out of the EU single market, Corbyn says Others argue that staying in the single market does not respect the result of the referendum. Yet, it was Leave campaigners themselves who promised that we could leave the EU without economic damage because wed stay in the single market: Id vote to stay in the single market. Im in favour of the single market, said Boris Johnson. Only a madman would actually leave the [single] market, said Owen Paterson. Increasingly, the Norway model looks best for the UK, said Arron Banks. Absolutely no one is talking about threatening our place in the single market, said Daniel Hannan. A similar argument applies to the customs union the arrangement whereby EU countries dont impose any tariffs on trade between themselves, but set a common external tariff to the outside world. Leaving the customs union would probably mean tariffs and certainly mean border checks on our exports to, and imports from, the EU, which, let us not forget, is our biggest trading partner by some margin. The price to pay here is that staying in the customs union means we cant negotiate a different set of tariffs with third countries. But the new shiny trade agreements offered by Liam Fox are anyway turning out to be illusory. It wont be easy to get better deals than we have secured via the EU with countries around the world. These have been negotiated with the clout of the whole of Europe the worlds largest market behind us. Negotiating new agreements, as Britain alone, and in a hurry, would not be to our advantage. If we gain anything at all compared to now, it is unlikely to balance the loss of diminished access to the European market. Few people voted for Brexit-at-any-cost; indeed they were told it would save money that could go to the NHS. If it turns out to be a costly exercise, damaging the economy, they will be entitled to feel let down. A soft Brexit, staying in the single market and the customs union, will attenuate that cost and is arguably the only kind of Brexit that would come close to what several Leave campaign leaders pledged. But many would go further and say that even these costs, and the loss of British influence over decisions that will affect us anyway, are too high a price to pay for Brexit. And if this government doesnt fall within the next 18 months and muddles its way through to an unclear, half-baked, or clearly damaging deal, then the clamour for a rethink of Brexit will grow. As Manuel Cortes said from a trade union perspective: If a bad deal is on the table, the prospect of staying in must be an option. And as David Davis himself said: If a democracy cannot change its mind it ceases to be a democracy. This still has a long way to go. But the fact that, well over a year after the referendum, there is still no clarity in what alternative to full membership we might go for means that no option should be closed. Richard Corbett is the Labour MEP for Yorkshire and the Humber Sign up for the View from Westminster email for expert analysis straight to your inbox Get our free View from Westminster email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the View from Westminster email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} The Maldives is one of the worlds most desired holiday destinations. This curl of islands in the Indian Ocean, renowned for its wondrous natural beauty, attracts more than a million people each year. The sweeping views of turquoise water, the white sand beaches shaded by sloping palm trees, and the warm hospitality of its people have earned it comparisons to paradise. This week, however, the country is drawing attention for the ugly actions of its government. The Maldives is poised to carry out its first executions in more than 60 years. Against the backdrop of a political crisis, the embattled government wants to send three men to the gallows in a feeble attempt to look tough and distract attention. If they are allowed to go ahead, the executions would violate the Maldives commitments under international law. There are serious questions about the fairness of the proceedings that consigned the three men to their fate. One of them, Hussain Humaam Ahmed, was convicted of murder on the basis of an apparently coerced confession that he later retracted. Al Jazeera investigation reveals corruption links to Maldives president The cases have drawn the attention of the United Nations. Last year, the Human Rights Committee called on the government to stall Humaams execution until an appeal could be considered on his behalf. And last month, the UN body issued similar requests in the cases of the two other men, Ahmed Murrath and Mohammed Nabeel, also convicted of murder. The governments determination to press ahead the executions underscores just how far the Maldives has regressed when it comes to respect for human rights. For decades, the islands led the way for the region, as one of the earliest countries to shun the use of the cruel and irreversible punishment. Now, when most of the world has abolished the death penalty, it is heading in the wrong direction. Using an excuse favoured by the worlds most notorious implementers of the death penalty, the Maldives government has said the executions are necessary to thwart crime. There is no evidence to support such claims. Research has shown that the death penalty is no unique deterrent to crime. Countries have not made themselves safer by depriving people of their lives. The real reason for the executions was apparent in the Maldives parliament last week. The political opposition had planned to impeach the Speaker, but four MPs were disqualified and the vote was called off. Days later, when they arrived at the building, however, they were stopped from entering. Soldiers then surrounded them, roughed them up, used pepper spray and fired tear gas. Recommended This is why the Maldives has walked out of the Commonwealth Such heavy-handed measures have become depressingly familiar to the people of the Maldives. Over the past year, the authorities have invoked anti-terrorism legislation to silence government critics. Members of the opposition have been imprisoned for lengthy terms on trumped up charges in manifestly unfair trials. The space for civil society and journalists has shrunk dramatically with the introduction of the draconian Defamation and Freedom of Speech Act, criminalizing peoples freedom of expression with penalties that include prison sentences of up to six months and fines of up to 100,000. At the same time, the government amended legislation, seemingly to make it easier to execute people. Timelines for appeals were set, and the power to grant pardons or commutations remove from the President in intentional murder cases, eliminating the possibility for the prisoners to apply for executive clemency a breach of international human rights law. Recommended Maldives fears for its future as emergency deepens There are now 20 people currently languishing on death row in the Maldives. At least five of them were convicted and sentenced for crimes they committed when they were below 18 years of age, compounding the injustice and disregard for international safeguards. The Maldives has so far resisted international pressure. Last year, it withdrew from the Commonwealth after its appalling human rights record was put to scrutiny. President Yameen is working from the cynical calculation that people will still flock to Maldivian beaches, even as people are being put to death on a nearby island. The international community must disabuse him of such notions. There are already signs of the serious damage that would be done to the Maldives if these three men are executed. The storming of parliament has triggered a travel advisory for British citizens, while Richard Branson has called on other businessmen to take notice. President Yameen must be told that unless he pulls back from this reckless course of action, putting the Maldives on the wrong side of history when it comes to the death penalty, this island may become known less for its natural beauty and more for his cruelty. Biraj Patnaik is Amnesty Internationals South Asia Director Sign up for the View from Westminster email for expert analysis straight to your inbox Get our free View from Westminster email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the View from Westminster email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} Even as citizens took to the streets in their hundreds of thousands to protest and boycott it, Venezuelas President Nicolas Maduro declared victory in an election that could allow him to rewrite the countrys constitution. The result, which elevates hundreds of representatives to Maduros constituent assembly, is highly contentious. The government claims that 8m, or 41.53 per cent of eligible voters, turned out but the opposition claims that only 2.2 million, or less than 15 per cent, actually did. Luisa Ortega, the once-loyal attorney general turned government critic, said the result makes a mockery of the country, offering too much power for a very small group. The government also faces international condemnation, with more than 40 countries speaking out against the constituent assembly. The proposals, such as they are, are a sham. Maduro claims that his plans will bring peace to Venezuela, but hasnt explained what specific elements of the 1999 constitution need changing. Under a new constitution, the oppositions ongoing efforts to challenge Maduro would be rendered moot; the current parliament, with its opposition majority, could even be dissolved, or reduced to a rubber stamp for the presidents orders. Violent protests erupt in Venezuela against President Maduro This would complete Venezuelas transition from democracy to a system more closely resembling the Castros Cuba. That particular country and its ways of doing politics have long been an inspiration for Venezuelas leftist leaders to their countrys severe detriment. A shrine of the revolution As I was gathering material for my research back in 2007 and 2009, I twice interviewed a figure who saw this process play out: Hugo Chavezs one-time political broker and mentor, Luis Miquilena. Miquilena, who was actively involved in Venezuelan politics from the 1940s until his death in 2016, put Chavez up at his house after he was released from prison in 1994. When we spoke, Miquilena described the many long nights they spent talking about the problems in the country and how to improve it once in government; Chavez, he said, was like my adopted son. But he didnt see his protege as a great white hope. Far from it: Once you know Chavez well, you realise that he is not presidential material. Nonetheless, Miquilena seriously invested in Chavez, hoping to transform Venezuela from behind the scenes. The Chavismo phenomenon thats held sway in Venezuela for the last two decades would have never materialised without his contacts, endeavour and political wit. It was Miquilena who assembled an impressive coalition of small and medium-sized political parties and influential figures to support Chavezs successful 1998 presidential bid. But despite Miquelenas plan to rule by proxy, a passive revolution didnt come off. His almost fatherly bond with Chavez began to fray, and he soon found himself sidelined by another ideological heavyweight. In October 2000, Fidel Castro himself visited Venezuela and insisted on visiting the house in Sabaneta where Chavez was born and lived during his childhood. According to Miquilena, when they got there, Fidel told Chavez: Well make this house a shrine of the revolution and starting then, Chavez began distancing himself from Miquilena as Fidel inflated him with messianic delusions of grandeur. Feeling used and betrayed, Miquilena resigned his government post in January 2002, and ended his relationship with Chavez. Push and shove Thus began Venezuelas Fidelist radicalisation. Chavezs charisma and gift of the gab thrilled people who felt ignored and marginalised in a polarised society; after a coup against him failed in 2002, he cemented his position with the benefit of abundant petrodollars. Nevertheless, Chavezs dominant alpha male persona was not enough to guarantee electoral success, and his incendiary rhetoric was increasingly matched with efforts to tweak the system in his favour. The undemocratic and bloody events Venezuela has seen in recent months have their roots in Chavezs decision to gradually impose a Cuban-style socialist revolution at all costs. As he famously said in 2007: Homeland, socialism or death I swear! Today, it seems that the idea of revolution is to be defended at all costs including violence even at the highest levels. On 28 June 2017, Bladimiro Lugo, a colonel of the National Guard responsible for the safety of parliament and parliamentarians, manhandled and shoved Julio Borges, president of the opposition-led National Assembly. This occurred as Borges asked Lugo to explain the physical attacks opposition female parliamentarians and journalists had suffered earlier that day. The next day, Maduro awarded Lugo a presidential honour for his contribution to safety and public order. Passing of Venezuelan President, Hugo Chavez, leaves tears - and a nation divided Show all 9 1 /9 Passing of Venezuelan President, Hugo Chavez, leaves tears - and a nation divided Passing of Venezuelan President, Hugo Chavez, leaves tears - and a nation divided web-chavez-rex.jpg Rex Features Passing of Venezuelan President, Hugo Chavez, leaves tears - and a nation divided web-chavez-2-ap.jpg AP Passing of Venezuelan President, Hugo Chavez, leaves tears - and a nation divided web-chavez-3-ap.jpg AP Passing of Venezuelan President, Hugo Chavez, leaves tears - and a nation divided web-chavez-4-ap.jpg AP Passing of Venezuelan President, Hugo Chavez, leaves tears - and a nation divided web-chavez-blair-ap.jpg AP Passing of Venezuelan President, Hugo Chavez, leaves tears - and a nation divided web-chavez-putin-ap.jpg AP Passing of Venezuelan President, Hugo Chavez, leaves tears - and a nation divided web-chavez-gadaffi-ap.jpg AP Passing of Venezuelan President, Hugo Chavez, leaves tears - and a nation divided web-chavez-sadam-ap.jpg AP Passing of Venezuelan President, Hugo Chavez, leaves tears - and a nation divided web-chavez-6-epa.jpg EPA The incident illustrates a grubby way of maintaining power: the armed forces are kept loyal with the benefits, influence and even impunity that come with promotion, as the government flatters personal interests to make sure military leaders will defend the revolution at all costs. This might explain why Venezuela has more active military generals than the NATO alliance countries combined: it now boasts more than 4,000 generals, up from fewer than 50 in 1993. To make things more complex, the government also provides weapons and political power to civilian groups. Known as the Colectivos, they play a key role in crushing any protests against the government. On 5 July, Lugos National Guard which is responsible for safeguarding the National Assembly let the Colectivos into the building to attack opposition parliamentarians. These events tally with a belligerent speech Maduro delivered on 27 June 2017: If the Bolivarian revolution is destroyed, we will go to combat, we will never surrender. What couldnt be done with votes, we will do with weapons. Fall from grace Many on the Latin American left are clear-eyed about what has happened to a country once regarded as a beacon of hope. One particularly interesting and visible critic is Jose Mujica, ex-president of Uruguay. A left-guerrilla who spent altogether 13 years in prison, turned down an offer of $1m from an Arab sheikh for his VW Beetle, and donated 90 per cent of his presidential salary to charity organisations, he is as sanguine about whats happened to Venezuela as many of Chavez and Maduros western detractors. In the 2015 book A Black Sheep in Power (Una Oveja Negra en el Poder), Mujica claims he warned Chavez that he was not going to construct socialism and that in the end, he didnt construct a damn thing. Mujica also notes: Cuba was like a teenage girlfriend that he saw deteriorating as years went by. Apparently, Mujica never believed in the Cuban model: In spite of all the crap related with capitalism, it manages to bring growth. Having taken the path it did, Venezuela is now a political disaster for the global left. The impact of more than a decade of apparent anti-neoliberal policies in an oil-rich Latin American country has given a bad name to ideological alternatives to free-market doctrines, and puts socialists who respect and follow democratic processes throughout the world in a very awkward position. Chavez and his successors gross overuse of the word socialism is more than partly to blame. The government they have built over the years is not populist or socialist: it is totalitarian. It can no longer claim to be democratic, or that its primarily occupied with improving the lives of ordinary people. Its principal goal, to the near-exclusion of all others, is to safeguard the elite even as that elite fails to rescue the country from crisis. Ryan Brading is a teaching fellow at the Department of Development Studies at SOAS, University of London. This piece originally appeared on The Conversation Sign up for the View from Westminster email for expert analysis straight to your inbox Get our free View from Westminster email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the View from Westminster email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} A company in Wisconsin just made the news for microchipping its employees. As per USA Today, 40 employees at the local firm Three Square Market, which makes cafeteria kiosks intended to replace traditional vending machines, got tiny rice-sized microchips embedded in their hands for convenience, a way for them to bypass using company badges and corporate log-ons to computers, so that now they can just have their hands read by a reader. In the future, these employees will be able to receive payments from contactless cards on their hands. Its handy. Its efficient. Is it terrifying? The response was predictably hysterical, with countless scare stories and people screaming: The end is nigh. Others restrained themselves but worried about the power dynamic. Is it really voluntary when your employer is asking you if you would like to be microchipped? asked Noelle Chesley, associate professor of sociology at the University of Wisconsin. But to me this seems like a lot of puff about nothing. We need to remember that this is only a microchip. Right now, if you carry a phone around with you 24/7, you already have a microchip in fact, many more than one in your pocket permanently. Gadget and tech news: In pictures Show all 25 1 /25 Gadget and tech news: In pictures Gadget and tech news: In pictures Gun-toting humanoid robot sent into space Russia has launched a humanoid robot into space on a rocket bound for the International Space Station (ISS). The robot Fedor will spend 10 days aboard the ISS practising skills such as using tools to fix issues onboard. Russia's deputy prime minister Dmitry Rogozin has previously shared videos of Fedor handling and shooting guns at a firing range with deadly accuracy. Dmitry Rogozin/Twitter Gadget and tech news: In pictures Google turns 21 Google celebrates its 21st birthday on September 27. The The search engine was founded in September 1998 by two PhD students, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, in their dormitories at Californias Stanford University. Page and Brin chose the name google as it recalled the mathematic term 'googol', meaning 10 raised to the power of 100 Google Gadget and tech news: In pictures Hexa drone lifts off Chief engineer of LIFT aircraft Balazs Kerulo demonstrates the company's "Hexa" personal drone craft in Lago Vista, Texas on June 3 2019 Reuters Gadget and tech news: In pictures Project Scarlett to succeed Xbox One Microsoft announced Project Scarlett, the successor to the Xbox One, at E3 2019. The company said that the new console will be 4 times as powerful as the Xbox One and is slated for a release date of Christmas 2020 Getty Gadget and tech news: In pictures First new iPod in four years Apple has announced the new iPod Touch, the first new iPod in four years. The device will have the option of adding more storage, up to 256GB Apple Gadget and tech news: In pictures Folding phone may flop Samsung will cancel orders of its Galaxy Fold phone at the end of May if the phone is not then ready for sale. The $2000 folding phone has been found to break easily with review copies being recalled after backlash PA Gadget and tech news: In pictures Charging mat non-starter Apple has cancelled its AirPower wireless charging mat, which was slated as a way to charge numerous apple products at once AFP/Getty Gadget and tech news: In pictures "Super league" India shoots down satellite India has claimed status as part of a "super league" of nations after shooting down a live satellite in a test of new missile technology EPA Gadget and tech news: In pictures 5G incoming 5G wireless internet is expected to launch in 2019, with the potential to reach speeds of 50mb/s Getty Gadget and tech news: In pictures Uber halts driverless testing after death Uber has halted testing of driverless vehicles after a woman was killed by one of their cars in Tempe, Arizona. March 19 2018 Getty Gadget and tech news: In pictures A humanoid robot gestures during a demo at a stall in the Indian Machine Tools Expo, IMTEX/Tooltech 2017 held in Bangalore Getty Gadget and tech news: In pictures A humanoid robot gestures during a demo at a stall in the Indian Machine Tools Expo, IMTEX/Tooltech 2017 held in Bangalore Getty Gadget and tech news: In pictures Engineers test a four-metre-tall humanoid manned robot dubbed Method-2 in a lab of the Hankook Mirae Technology in Gunpo, south of Seoul, South Korea Jung Yeon-Je/AFP/Getty Gadget and tech news: In pictures Engineers test a four-metre-tall humanoid manned robot dubbed Method-2 in a lab of the Hankook Mirae Technology in Gunpo, south of Seoul, South Korea Jung Yeon-Je/AFP/Getty Gadget and tech news: In pictures The giant human-like robot bears a striking resemblance to the military robots starring in the movie 'Avatar' and is claimed as a world first by its creators from a South Korean robotic company Jung Yeon-Je/AFP/Getty Gadget and tech news: In pictures Engineers test a four-metre-tall humanoid manned robot dubbed Method-2 in a lab of the Hankook Mirae Technology in Gunpo, south of Seoul, South Korea Jung Yeon-Je/AFP/Getty Gadget and tech news: In pictures Waseda University's saxophonist robot WAS-5, developed by professor Atsuo Takanishi Rex Gadget and tech news: In pictures Waseda University's saxophonist robot WAS-5, developed by professor Atsuo Takanishi and Kaptain Rock playing one string light saber guitar perform jam session Rex Gadget and tech news: In pictures A test line of a new energy suspension railway resembling the giant panda is seen in Chengdu, Sichuan Province, China Reuters Gadget and tech news: In pictures A test line of a new energy suspension railway, resembling a giant panda, is seen in Chengdu, Sichuan Province, China Reuters Gadget and tech news: In pictures A concept car by Trumpchi from GAC Group is shown at the International Automobile Exhibition in Guangzhou, China Rex Gadget and tech news: In pictures A Mirai fuel cell vehicle by Toyota is displayed at the International Automobile Exhibition in Guangzhou, China Reuters Gadget and tech news: In pictures A visitor tries a Nissan VR experience at the International Automobile Exhibition in Guangzhou, China Reuters Gadget and tech news: In pictures A man looks at an exhibit entitled 'Mimus' a giant industrial robot which has been reprogrammed to interact with humans during a photocall at the new Design Museum in South Kensington, London Getty Gadget and tech news: In pictures A new Israeli Da-Vinci unmanned aerial vehicle manufactured by Elbit Systems is displayed during the 4th International conference on Home Land Security and Cyber in the Israeli coastal city of Tel Aviv Getty This scaremongering matters because microchipping presents us with lots of opportunities, and it might very well be the future of work. The Wisconsin firms microchip is restricted in functionality: taking payments, opening doors, and logging on to computers. My vision is much bigger. Imagine you and all your work colleagues are chipped. This microchip holds lots of useful data not only about your work, but about you too. It has a complete archive of all the feedback that youve ever received as an employee, metrics on your performance, and a record of your behavioural traits, such as how you work best. Scary? Nope. This data is already being collected by many companies under the guise of 360-degree real-time feedback. JPMorgan, for example, recently introduced this software. Its useful because it gives managers a rich birds-eye-view of how their teams and organisation is performing. Its useful for employees because it gives them immediate actionable feedback on how they can improve. At the moment this data is stored on companies tech systems. But why couldnt it be stored locally on employee microchips? It would be more accessible, and might even give employees better ownership over the data. UK robotics week - the latest tech in 60 seconds But how is this helpful? Imagine you walk into the room and your smartphone connects to all your colleagues microchips. On the screen you immediately see who everyone is, what their roles are, their behavioural traits, communication styles, strengths and weaknesses. This would give you incredible instant insight. Think how useful this could be in meetings. You would know the right person to direct your updates too, and because you know how they prefer to interact, and you could do it in a way that suited their communication style too. Perhaps in the future it might even be possible to see this data on your colleagues directly in augmented reality through optical head-mounted displays (think Google Glass). This isnt just a nice to have either. It would make an immense difference to productivity. According to research by Salesforce, 86 per cent of employees and executives cite lack of collaboration or ineffective communication for workplace failures. Microchips could transform communication. Of course, Im not blind to the dangers. We cant allow microchips to track or monitor employees without their explicit consent. And in my view it should always remain absolutely voluntary. But rather than scaremongering, we should make it our jobs to try to solve as many of these problems as possible. Realise the opportunities while mitigating the risks. Recommended Why Facebook really shut down the robots which got out of hand There is an obvious way to do that: make sure the software the chips are paired up with have strong privacy protections. For example, employees should be able to log into their microchip and control whether the data it holds is public or private. This could even be monitored and regulated by the Government. There is always fear when new technology comes to market. Microchipping is no different. But I believe the benefits outweigh the drawbacks, and we should welcome the future with open arms microchipped, of course. Ab Banerjee is CEO of ViewsHub, the team-to-team workplace feedback and ratings platform The Democratic Unionist Party has been accused of being "arrogant" and "rudderless" over its position on Brexit. SDLP leader Colum Eastwood said the DUP and UK Government need to "wake up to the reality" that an economic border on the island of Ireland is "unenforceable". Mr Eastwood has urged Taoiseach Leo Varadkar not to sway from his position that there can be no new economic or physical border imposed on the island of Ireland. Speaking ahead of his meeting with the Irish premier in Belfast on Friday, Mr Eastwood said: "An Taoiseach should not be put off by the DUP's feigned outrage over his recent comments. "People should not confuse statements of diplomatic reality with statements of extremity. The Irish Government's position is rooted in reality - the DUP's position is rudderless." He added that the DUP, "in their arrogance" continue to believe "that they can enforce a border on this island which would deeply damage the North's economy." Mr Eastwood also said he will asking the Taoiseach to become more directly involved in the crisis talks at Stormont aimed at restoring powersharing. "Establishing those institutions and a local Executive will give us a voice on Brexit and will also allow us to get on with the work of tackling the mounting problems we collectively face in health, education and in our economy," said Mr Eastwood. Dan Mulhall, Ireland's ambassador to the UK, has expressed his own personal "sadness" that the fallout from Brexit is threatening to undo the improving relations between Ireland and the UK since the peace was agreed 20 years ago, the 'Guardian' reported yesterday. In addition Mr Mulhall said that the idea of border checks between the Republic and the North was a "non-starter". He said that it was Ireland's "hope" that the UK would continue to be a part of the European customs union. The remarks come as Taoiseach Leo Varadkar said that he had "nobody to call" in a position of authority in the North because of the lack of an executive. Mr Varadkar is due to have talks with the DUP in Belfast this Friday. Mr Mulhall said that while Irish-British relations had been ignored during the Brexit referendum, focus now needed to be placed on them due to the risk to peace and trading relations between the two nations. "It's not acceptable to have a border on the island of Ireland because it would be economically disruptive and politically risky," he said. Green REIT has signed an agreement with Barclays Bank Ireland to lease 3,437 sq m at its flagship development, One Molesworth street in Dublin 2. The news comes following confirmation last month that Barclays is in talks with Irish regulators to expand here in order to continue servicing customers in the EU after Brexit. The letting will cover two and a half floors of office space for a duration of 20 years, with a tenant break option at the end of year 12. Annual rent payable by Barclays will be 2.35m or 670 per sq m, one of the strongest rents agreed in Dublin since 2007. Barclays will also have the option to rent a further half- floor on the third floor of the building. Following the letting to Barclays of 55pc of the total office space, the remaining office space to be let comprises of the balance of the third floor (subject to the Barclays option above), and the fourth and fifth floors totalling 2,900 sq m. The remainder of the building, including 1,672 sq m of retail space at ground and lower ground level will be ready for fit-out in the latter half of 2017. The deal is seen as a significant boost for Green REIT as the letting will further de-risk its development pipeline and allows early crystallisation of development profits. Colm Lauder of Goodbody said that he expects the One Molesworth scheme could add 34m in development profits, ahead of earlier expectations that this development would deliver 29m. The move by Barclays may end up coinciding with the opening of a branch of The Ivy restaurant, which is now in the hands of Caprice Holdings, on the ground floor of One Molesworth street. The London institution is rumoured to also have agreed to lease 10,000 sq ft of ground floor retail space of the building, although this is understood to be planning dependent. While the ground floor of the building is currently built for retail space, an application was submitted to Dublin City Council last month requesting a change to restaurant use. Last month a spokesperson for Barclays said that the bank intended to "utilise an existing licensed EU-based bank subsidiary to continue passported activity". "Barclays Bank Ireland....provides a natural base and we are engaging with our regulators in discussions to extend its activities," it added. The ESB is billing itself as Britain's cheapest electricity and gas provider as it prepares to take on giant incumbents in the multibillion euro market there. The State-owned company's new consumer business in Britain is called ESB Energy, and will fully launch in England, Scotland and Wales this autumn. It had previously anticipated a soft launch of the business last month, and a full launch in October. For now, it is allowing customers to pre-register their interest on the new ESB Energy website. It's advertising prices for electricity and gas that are 5pc below what any other supplier is offering in their area to consumers who sign up. But the fine print shows that the offer only applies to the first 300 customers as the company launches. "We're building a customer-centric energy company from scratch and that means our focus is entirely on providing the best possible service to you," it tells prospective customers on its UK website. The ESB has been busy hiring staff for its British venture, which it codenamed Project Arrow. ESB said it is "currently in the process of fulfilling all regulatory requirements in advance of entering the GB energy market later in 2017". Within recent months, executives from its Irish business have also taken up directorships at London-based ESB Energy. They include Paul Stapleton, general manager at Electric Ireland; Padraig O'hIceadha, general manager of GB retail; Ken McKervey, ESB trading manager; Yvonne Burke, financial controller at Electric Ireland; and John Healy, also of the ESB's Irish arm. The UK company had originally been called Lavender Energy Supply and its name was only changed to ESB Energy in May this year. The UK energy market is dominated by the 'Big Six' suppliers, including Centrica, which owns Bord Gais Energy in Ireland, and SSE, which owns Airtricity. But there are 50 gas and electricity suppliers in the consumer market there, including many smaller operators. ESB group finance director Pat Fenlon told the Irish Independent earlier this year that the company's foray into the UK retail business was "progressing well" and that the entry to the market there was important in developing a "generating, trading and supply business of scale across Ireland and the UK". The ESB, whose retail arm here is called Electric Ireland, already has a UK presence, but only in transmission and electricity generation. ESB opened a 600m-plus, 885-megawatt gas-fired power station at Carrington outside Manchester last September. Last March, the company commenced a process seeking an equity partner to help build a huge 1,600 megawatt, 1bn power plant in Yorkshire. When the power plant is built it will rank among Britain's biggest. Investment bank Nomura has been hired by the ESB to find a partner for the new gas-fired power station development, code-named Project Knight Rider. The stock market-listed Irish forecourt retailer Applegreen has purchased a network of seven sites from the Carsley Group in the UK for 21m (23m). The sites consist of six service areas and one petrol filling station. The service area sites are predominantly located on the major arterial route of the A1 motorway. Read more: Applegreen buoyed by 'positive' start to year The deal will be funded from existing company resources and is expected to be completed in the latter half of 2017. Commenting on the announcement, Bob Etchingham CEO of Applegreen, said that the deal would "accelerate" the companys strategy to establish a major service area presence in the UK market, complementing its strong position in Ireland and growing footprint in the US. "This acquisition demonstrates our commitment to enhancing our existing estate in the UK and leveraging our expertise in operating high quality service areas offerings with a strong food-to-go focus for the benefit of our customers," Mr Etchingham said. Last month Applegreen announced that it had agreed to buy a chain of 34 filling stations around South Carolina's state capital, Columbia in the US. Almost eight in ten small and medium-sized businesses are waiting more than two months to get paid for work they've done, according to new figures. That's up from 73pc in the first three months of the year. About 46pc of firms are waiting longer to be paid now than they were a year ago, and some government departments are also taking longer to make payments to businesses. The average payment period for SMEs has now worsened to 61 days, the latest credit watch survey from lobby group Isme has found. Businesses in Dublin and the Border counties are waiting the longest. "It is unacceptable for 77pc of businesses to experience delays of two months or more," said Isme CEO Neil McDonnell. "These delays impact cash flow, employment, and investment in businesses." Some 532 businesses were quizzed for the survey, which found that 77pc are of SMEs are experiencing delays of two months or more in getting paid. More than 80pc don't charge interest on late payments, with 14pc stating that they're afraid that they will lose the business. Around 73pc of SMEs favour a statutory 30-day payments regime, with no opt-out. "[The] results are disappointing," Mr McDonnell added. "Late payments are big issue for SMEs; it is vital that big businesses, government agencies and other SMEs pay each other on time." Distribution firms are waiting longest on payment at 67 days, while those in the hospitality sector wait 40 days. Dublin and Ulster businesses wait longest on payment at 63 days and 72 days respectively. Businesses in Connaught wait the shortest time at 49 days. Isme is calling on the Government to publicise, promote and champion the Fair Payment Code for all businesses, as well as insist that all state agencies, including the HSE, adhere to the 15-day rule. "This increase in payment delays is at odds with good business practice; government needs to introduce measures that will help tackle the issue of late payments," Mr McDonnell added. John Maynard Keynes believed we'd be working 15 hours a week - and was hopelessly wrong. So planning for the far-off is a tricky deal for the likes of the ESRI Poor old John Maynard Keynes. Not only do his successors still argue about what he meant, and whether he was right, the rest of us remember him, if at all, for two things: in the long run we are all dead, and in the 2000s work will have been all but abolished. The first remark was jocular; the second was serious but proved seriously wrong. Yet almost 100 years later, the two are acquiring a new relevance which the great man could not have anticipated. It was quite a month for the long run. The ESRI published research on the costs of ageing, the Taoiseach talked about planning for a country with over 5 million people - and there was all that business about electric cars. All of them illustrated Keynes's difficulty. Should one plan for the short term - say five or 10 years - on the basis that a series of successful short-terms will mean success in the long run? Or try to figure what society will need in 30 years' time and start preparing now? There is the conundrum of Keynes's second observation. This was more carefully calculated, and based on what turned out to be a pretty accurate estimate of Britain's economic growth over the past 70 years. Given those figures, the intellectual, cultivated Keynes thought that, by now, people would earn enough to keep them happy with just 15 hours of work a week, and could spend the rest of the time on things of the mind and spirit. So don't laugh too much at Eamon de Valera's very similar vision. They both misjudged human nature - something economists and politicians have to build into their conclusions and policies, and regularly get wrong. Now a new factor which even Keynes did not have to consider has arrived: the widespread belief that in the long run, or even the medium term, the world is going to be a very different place. The long run is always unpredictable. There used to be a magnificent stand of oak trees on the outskirts of Belfast, planted by an 18th century landlord who feared the Royal Navy would run out of wood for its ships in the 20th century. I hope his descendants did not cut them down too soon; the navy may not need them but they are worth a fortune for billionaires' furniture. In the long run we don't know, might be a better aphorism today. It took a couple of professors, John Kelly, Emeritus at UCD, and John FitzGerald, formerly of the ESRI, to point out that electric cars, of themselves, make little difference to carbon emissions. Electric cars help the climate only if the electricity is generated carbon free. There was much talk about those clever Norwegians but Norway can generate most of its electricity, plus some for its neighbours, from its hydro electric stations, which adds nothing to global warming. It is a lot more difficult for the rest of us. Dr FitzGerald is chairman of the Climate Change Advisory Council which published its most recent report last month as well. Their transport strategy is based on the assumption that, by 2050, most if not all electricity will be generated from carbon-neutral renewables. That is something we do not know for sure. The German experience suggests that the technology for this does not yet exist. The oldest, most polluting power stations are the only ones which can compete with wind power - which in itself requires a network of power lines across the country from the Baltic Sea in the north to the big power users in the south. Assuming, that is, that the network does not collapse from the sporadic spikes in supply and reduction in demand for the big generators. The Germans are working on it, and there is great optimism about solar power, but we are not there yet. Dr FitzGerald warned the Government about the dangers of replacing gas heating with electricity before power generation is more climate- friendly. Then there is the law of unintended consequences. In his wide-ranging acceptance speech at the NUI honorary degree ceremony, former Taoiseach Brian Cowen said a "temporary" application of less stringent UK building standards would see the cement mixers turning here. It looked like a throwaway paragraph, but Mr Cowen was at the centre of things when Irish housebuilding standards were carbon-proofed and there seems to be a clash between present needs and future risks here. With the Central Bank fixing both income and loan limits for buyers, it is easy to calculate how much a couple of average earners can afford. If it costs more than that to build the average house under existing tax and regulations, we have a problem. If it doesn't, the builders and developers should be presented with problems which give them no choice but to start building. It looks, though, that the sums come out on the builders' side. The realities of the short term may have to take precedence over the possibilities of the long. At least we know that generating more electricity from renewable and carbon-free sources is a good idea. We don't know to what use people will put that electricity, or what role cars, electric or otherwise, will play. Commuting might be a thing of the past, because work as we know it is a thing of the past. But it is not really feasible to make major investments now on that basis and dangerous not to make any at all. In 2004 it was thought that the population of the Republic would be 5 million by this year. It was out by just a quarter of a million, which was pretty good, but in the depths of the recession it looked like this figure would not be reached until 2030. Now, Taoiseach Leo Varadkar says we must plan for a population of 5.5 million by then. Indeed we must, but better perhaps on the basis of a spatial strategy which will bring economic and social benefits even if the population grows more slowly - or faster - than predicted. That is the trick with these known unknowns. There are no easy answers when it comes to more fundamental changes. The ESRI was also looking into the far future with its recent paper on the fiscal costs of an ageing population. Its forecasts of a hit to the public finances amounting to one per cent of national GDP is not insignificant, but it is a long way from the national bankruptcy occasionally predicted. One reason for the more modest conclusion is that wages will rise faster as workers become older, better qualified and more productive. Even though there are fewer of them, they can afford to spend more on their retired fellow citizens. It seems a big assumption in the midst of this talk that half of all jobs could eventually be done by machines. Keynes may eventually be proved right about the amount of free time people will have in the future but, without radical changes to the way society is organised, they may be queuing for handouts rather than reading poetry. German retail chain Lidl could boost its footprint in Ireland to as many as 200 stores in a move that would probably involve an investment of at least 300m. The spend is in addition to the 400m the company is investing in its network here between 2016 and 2018, which includes the 80m cost of a huge new distribution centre it's hoping to secure planning for in Newbridge, Co Kildare. In an interview with the Irish Independent, Lidl Ireland managing director John Paul Scally, pictured, said that the company will have 152 outlets in the Republic of Ireland as of today, when it opens a new store in north Co Dublin. It brings the total the chain has across the island to 190. And in a long-awaited move for shoppers, the company has also begun trialling self-service checkouts in Athy, Co Kildare. If it's successful, it will be rolled out to other Lidl stores. "We're not going to going to stop until we have a Lidl store in close proximity to everyone in the country," said Mr Scally. "It will bring us to about 200 stores in total in the Republic of Ireland and a little bit under 50 in Northern Ireland," he added. "We're not fixated on a figure. At this stage of our development, it's important that we get the right locations, the right sites and choose wisely." He said many of its new sites at the moment are targeted around cities including Dublin. It recently opened an outlet in Cabra, while a store in Portmarnock opens today, its third new store this year in the Republic. It will open two more stores this year, both in Cork, at Wilton and Bantry. "We have a site in Grangegorman (in Dublin city) that's hopefully going to open in the next year. We'll have Drumcondra coming up in the future too, so some really high-profile locations," he said. Mr Scally said Lidl also has some additional sites in Galway and Cork but will take time to get those sites through planning. He said that realistically, it will probably take Lidl more than five years to break the 200-store mark in the Republic. "It will take however long it takes. It's important we do it right, so it's not a case of just getting the numbers on the board." The company is spending about 110m this year on new stores, extensions, refurbishments and knock-and-rebuilds. According to figures released this week from research group Kantar Worldpanel, Lidl has a 12.1pc share of Ireland's multi-billion euro grocery market in terms of value of sales. Its annual sales here are likely to be in the region of 1.4bn, but Lidl does not reveal that figure. SuperValu, the chain controlled by Cork-based Musgrave, is the biggest grocery retailer in Ireland in terms of value of sales, with a 22.1pc share. READ MORE: Lidl boss out to make a difference as he plots more new-look stores Operating profit at the Irish arm of Aviva Insurance was up 12pc to 48m in the first six months of 2017, according to the latest financial results from the company. The growth was driven by increased net written premium, up 12pc in the six months to 30 June, as well as initiatives in the companys claims handling that have resulted in a lower claims ratio. Aviva Ireland, which employs 1,150 people across Ireland, said that the benign weather in the year to date also contributed to the increased profits. Read more: FBD faces battle for control after shares soar The companys combined operating ratio, a key measure for profitability in general insurance, was at 84.7pc at the end of the six months, an improvement of 7 percentage points on last year. However the company warned that private motor delivered insurance continued to be a challenging part of their business. On this the company said that it continues to play a leading role in driving the reform of the motor market for the benefit of all of its customers, "We are committed to working with the Government on the implementation of the recommendations of Cost of Motor Insurance Working Group Report and we continue to invest significantly in our fraud prevention and detection systems," John Quinlan, Aviva Ireland CEO, said. The companys life insurance business experienced what it described as "significant growth in sales of retirement products and bulk purchase annuities". Read more: Car insurance firms target scammers in cash-for-crash crackdown The present value of new life insurance business premiums is 574m up from 434m in 2016, however underlying profit in this arm of the business is down more than 50pc to 7m from 14.6m year on year. On a like for like basis the underlying profit is in line with last year. "We are investing in our digital capability, products and distribution reach to build sustainable growth for the long term in this market. We expect this repositioning of our business to deliver accelerated profitable growth in the second half of the year in line with our plan," Mr Quinlan said. Aviva also said in its statement that it welcomes the judgement of the Supreme Court in the Setanta case on the appropriate mechanism for dealing with the liabilities of insolvent insurers. "It removes considerable uncertainty for insurers, policy hoders and claimants," Mr Quinlan said. 'There are more than 10,000 Lidl stores in Europe, so the opportunity presented for an Irish food or drink producer in getting a wide listing within the group is enormous,' says 35-year-old John Paul Scally Open-plan offices, funky furniture, break-out area in the atrium, hipsters and an archaeological dig required to find anyone over the age of 40. You'd be forgiven for thinking it's some Silicon Docks tech hub, but it's the depths of Tallaght, the wrongly maligned south Dublin suburb where German retailer Lidl has made its Irish headquarters. JP Scally must be starting to feel like he's an anomaly in that seventies movie, 'Logan's Run', where anyone who reaches the age of 21 is killed off. At just 35, Scally (who started with Lidl almost 14 years ago out of college) is the managing director (and chairman) of an all-island retail operation in Ireland that includes almost 200 outlets (38 in Northern Ireland) and in the Republic has sales of about 1.4bn a year. It's a hallmark of Lidl that age is irrelevant. Ability is what counts. Responsibility is thrust upon those ready and able to shoulder it. Scally was appointed MD in 2015. "People who show potential, people who achieve results in the business have the opportunity to develop their careers very, very quickly," says Scally. "That's not just in Ireland, but internationally as well." Most recently, the Irish Lidl arm had 1,000 applications for 20 graduate positions. Before he took over as managing director of Lidl's Irish business, Scally had served time abroad, running 550 stores in France before boomeranging back to Ireland. A graduate of NUI Galway, where he studied industrial engineering, Scally initially worked for Lidl in a construction specification role before moving into logistics and later to positions in Germany and that role in France. Lidl doesn't break out sales figures for the Republic, so calculating its sales involves inference. Its estimated figure of about 1.4bn is based on its share of the value of total sales in the Irish market according to research group Kantar Worldpanel. The latest of those figures, published this week, show that Lidl has a 12.1pc share of Ireland's grocery market based on the value of sales. Musgrave, which controls the SuperValu brand, noted earlier this year that SuperValu sales in Ireland hit 2.67bn in 2016. SuperValu has more than a 22pc share of grocery sales. Extrapolating from there gets Lidl's 1.4bn figure. Even on a tight margin, let's say somewhere between 1pc and 2pc, it means Lidl would be making profits of up to 28m a year in Ireland. But that's just guesswork, and Scally, the son of retired dairy farmers in Tyrellspass, Co Westmeath, won't give any indication on whether either the turnover or profit figure is in the right ballpark. "We're a private company and we don't disclose our profit and loss, but we do work on very tight margins," says Scally. "We're not beholden to shareholders at the end of every quarter. We don't have to deliver on targets and we can reinvest in the company." Lidl is owned by the family-owned Schwarz group in Germany, which also owns retailer Kaufland. It's the second-largest retailer in the world after Walmart. "There are tougher years than others," says Scally. "There are some years when you focus more on investing in our network, investing in marketing campaigns, and pushing development of the business. It's not something that I lose sleep over." Today, Lidl opens its 152nd store in the Republic, in Portmarnock, Co Dublin (two more will open later this year, at Wilton and Bantry in Cork). Between 2016 and 2018, Lidl will have spent about 80m in Ireland on new stores, revamps and a huge new distribution centre it's planning to build in Naas, Co Kildare, that will serve the Dublin region. There's been a phenomenal pace of openings since the chain first welcomed bemused Irish shoppers in 2000 with seven outlets. The chain may still be cheap, but the cheapness and maybe even surliness of its much earlier days have long vanished. New stores are bright and airy, and more spacious for shoppers. The chain has invested heavily in staff training. Fresh vegetables flank customers as they enter, as do freshly-baked goods - two key selling points for the chain, whose shelves typically stock about 2,000 products compared to as many as 20,000 in rival chains such as Dunnes Stores, Tesco or SuperValu. And if ever the garish blue and yellow Lidl bag was a badge of shame, the downturn almost made it a fashion accessory. On a volume basis, industry insiders reckon that Lidl and Aldi possibly have the biggest market shares in the country. Scally says that Lidl's products are between 20pc and 40pc cheaper than those at rival chains, with many of the goods made by the exact same suppliers. The packaging's just different. But it appears that there remains a challenge in persuading many consumers that Lidl is the place that they should be splashing their hard-earned cash. "We know from data that one-in-five households would do their weekly shop in a Lidl store," says Scally. "We know there are people out there who still aren't shopping with Lidl and we want to give them that opportunity, whether that's through new stores or marketing campaigns that attract them. "I don't think we're nearly at saturation point yet," he adds, pointing out that the new shop formats have also helped to attract more shoppers. Scally baulks at any suggestion that Lidl has become a mainstream grocery chain. "I definitely wouldn't use the word mainstream. We're different, in that we are flexible, we evolve, that we are innovative. But has remained constant over all the years is that we are committed to being cheapest in the market. "For a lot of people, they realised that during the most difficult years of the recession. While we're very focused on getting the customer experience right, while we have expanded our range massively, one thing that has been constant is the price." Scally says the weekly Lidl special offers - anything from bedding plants to angle grinders - typically sell out. They've become a rallying call for customers, also attracting shoppers who might not typically do their food buying at the chain. Get them in the door, and maybe they'll change their minds. "Our aim is to sell out and that those products only sit in store for a few days or a couple of weeks at most, because space is limited," he says, adding that it's the team in Ireland which selects the weekly specials. Lidl Ireland, which has its own board, has also become heavily involved with domestic producers, having partnered with Bord Bia for a supplier development programme it calls Kickstart. "We saw a gap in the market to do something," says Scally. "It wasn't so much about the products, but about how we can support small food suppliers because we've benefited a lot from the Irish food and drinks industry ourselves. It gives them the leg-up they might need and who knows where the future might take them." Scally says that Lidl Ireland is one of the big exporters within the wider group of domestically-produced goods. "Last year, we exported more than 200m worth of Irish produce," he points out. There are more than 10,000 Lidl stores in Europe, so the opportunity presented for an Irish food or drink producer in getting a wide listing within the group is enormous." Meat is exported to Lidl shops in 12 countries by Slaney Foods (which has also inked a new deal to supply meat to Lidl in the US) and Liffey Meats; cream liqueur to 10 by Cavan-based manufacturer Terra; while Kildare-based Comerford's Bakery sells Lidl a whopping 52 million buns a year, and also now exports buns to Lidl UK. Scally says the chain doesn't charge suppliers so-called 'hello money', or a premium for shelf space - both of which were ostensibly outlawed last year for retailers with annual turnover of more than 50m, unless the terms were already included in a pre-existing contract. Meanwhile, Scally says the Irish and other country teams have significant autonomy from head office in Germany, without deviating from the group's core principles. "When it comes to specific product offering in stores, when it comes to our specials and the way we manage the business in terms of recruitment and training, that's different from country to country," he says. Significant trust was placed in the Irish unit by head office for its foray into the United States, which saw the first Lidl stores open there last week. The US operation is headed by Scally's predecessor in Ireland, Brendan Proctor (who's a positively ancient 43). A number of other senior managers in the US are also Irish. "We gave a lot of support," says Scally. "We had a few hundred people who trained with us for the US operation. That was mostly area managers and store managers, but also training for head office functions. Some of them spent over a year with us." Many, if not most, had previously been involved in retail in the United States. "They were most impressed by our lean operations, and how simple we make everything in our business," adds Scally. "Lidl in Ireland would be seen as doing things well, so it's something we're trying to replicate in the US. Irish-American relations outside of Lidl have also, obviously, always been strong, so it was a natural enough fit." Earlier this year, Lidl appointed a new group chief executive - its second in less than years. Jesper Hojer, a Dane, succeeded Sven Siedel, who had unspecified differences of opinion regarding the retail chain's wider strategy. Hojer (38) has been with Lidl for about 10 years. He was previously responsible for Lidl's operations in Belgium and was most recently the company's head of international buying. So did Scally go for the job? He laughs, and insists he didn't. "I didn't. I'm focused on the job I have in hand here. There's a lot more work to be done to develop our business here. My work is not done." Older people and farmers will take to the streets to protest at any move to hit families with monster tax bills when they sell their home. The plan to impose the 33pc capital gains tax to family homes is one of a number of options outlined by officials to Finance Minister Paschal Donohoe. The family home is currently exempt from capital gains tax. There has been a furious reaction to civil servants proposing that this exemption be scrapped in the Budget. Charging the tax on the sale of family homes would impact on those moving house because they need a larger property for a growing family. It would also mean older "empty nesters" who decide to downsize would be hit with a massive tax bill. Chairman of the mortgage committee of the Irish Brokers Association, Michael Dowling, said people were enraged at the suggestion the sale of the family home could be taxed. "Taxing the sale of family homes will be very difficult. It will affect older people in particular," he said. Expand Close Fianna Fail TD Michael McGrath Picture: Collins / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Fianna Fail TD Michael McGrath Picture: Collins "People will take to the streets, as was the case for water charges and the move to take medical cards off the elderly." Justin Moran, head of advocacy and communications at Age Action, said: "On the one hand we have the Department of Housing exploring ways of encouraging older people who own their homes to downsize and now we have the Department of Finance targeting those older people with a massive tax on the family home. Read More "You can't have it both ways. For many older people their home is their only asset. They're struggling to get by on a small fixed income, scrimping to pay exorbitant property taxes and will be furious at the suggestion that if they were to sell their home they will now have another new tax to pay." President of Irish Creamery Milk Suppliers Association, John Comer, said his organisation rejected the idea. "In common with every other group and sector, farmers will not accept a situation where a family's home would even be considered for capital gains tax purposes; it's a non-starter and it blurs the line between an asset and a home in a hopeless and cynical way," he said. If the proposal was to be implemented it would mean a family moving to a larger home, or elderly people downsizing, would be hit with huge capital gains taxes. A family that originally bought a home for 300,000 years ago would typically now have a property valued at 500,000. This would mean a gain of 200,000. If that family decided to sell up to move to another home they would be forced to pay capital gains tax of 66,000 on the gain in value on their home. This would mean less money was available to fund a new home. For "empty nesters" moving from a large home to a smaller one, the imposition of the tax would mean their savings for their old age would be reduced. Read More The finance officials suggest if the change is made it could be designed so the tax on the sale of the family home would not apply if the entire proceeds are used to buy a new home, as is done in Portugal. But even this could expose people who are downsizing to a tax bill as they would be unlikely to use all of the proceeds for a smaller home. Others options are allowing relief for homes up to a certain market value, or allowing relief on gains up to a certain cash limit. The tax would be imposed on any sum above that amount. Fianna Fail's finance spokesman Michael McGrath said his party would not be supporting any move to tax family homes when they are sold. Liz Hughes, of accountancy body ACCA, said taxing principal private residences would discourage labour mobility and downsizing in particular. Vodafone customers have been warned to be aware of an email scam that purports to be from the mobile phone company. In a blog post from Eset Ireland, the widely circulated "malicious email" which contains a computer virus has been highlighted. The security solutions firm has found that a bill, using the Vodafone letterhead, is being sent to a number of computer users, which include both Vodafone and non-Vodafone customers. By clicking on the 'Click here to view your bill' link, a JPG file downloads a ZIP file called 'Vodafone bill.zip'. "Because most Windows users have file extensions turned off by default, many fail to spot this is a JavaScript file, one of the very common vectors for the cybercriminals to deliver their malicious payloads," the Eset blog post advises. "The code is heavily obfuscated, but once activated, it proceeds to download the Nemucod trojan, which is used for further downloading all kinds of malware, ranging from ransomware to backdoors and banking trojans." ESET Ireland' Urban Schrott and Ciaran McHale, the authors of the post, also add that users should turn off 'Hide extensions for known file types' in their Windows File Explorer Options. The blog maintains that Ireland has been one of the countries worst affected by Nemucod in the past, having a 50.42pc detection rate in Ireland, while the world average was 15.82pc. Vodafone Ireland told independent.ie that this malware, while using the alias of Vodafone brand as leverage to deceive unsuspecting customers, is not specifically effecting Vodafone customers. "This is not a result of any breach or loss of Vodafone customer information youll find that there are non-Vodafone customers receiving identical emails," read a spokesperson for the firm. Vodafone also provided some useful tips for consumers on how to spot a fake emails: Poor spelling/grammar Scammers often make simple spelling or grammar mistakes, even mixing up first names/surnames. Non-personal address The scammer probably doesnt know you by name, so they might address you as Dear Sir/Madam. Email address Always check email addresses for a spelling mistake. If you get an unexpected email from a company or person you know, double check with them before sharing any information or making any payments. The URL/web address of any links Check that it isnt unusually long and doesnt include special characters or letters substituted by numbers. If in doubt, go directly to the company website through your browser. Requests to act fast Scammers will often urge you to take action immediately; otherwise your account will be suspended or something similar. This can be subtle like an overdue bill or expired account information. Unexpected email Try to think if theres a good reason for this business contacting you. Or are they, for example, telling you that youve won a prize for a competition you didnt enter? If still unsure of validity customers have been advised to contact Vodafone Customer Care to confirm if the communication is legitimate. You can now rent Irelands first self catering bar on Airbnb. Conroys Old Bar, which is located in Aglish, Co Tipperary, is being run as a bed and breakfast by Erron Slingsey and her husband Dave. The holiday home is being described as a traditionally characterful authentic Irish village bar, which has been discreetly converted into self catering accommodation. Erron, from Lincolnshire in England described how the holiday bar came to be. Expand Close Conroys Old Bar / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Conroys Old Bar We never planned it, it just happened. Erron told Independent.ie We were renovating the house next to it and used the pub as a kitchen. It was then we decided we couldnt keep it to ourselves. The couple originally began letting it out to friends and family, but as it became more popular they began renting to tourists. The bar, which is marketed for its authentic Irish feel has attracted customers from all over the world. Expand Close Conroys Old Bar / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Conroys Old Bar Last year we even had guests from Antarctica, they worked on the ice shelf there. However, if youre looking for a place to party, this bar isnt the place. We dont market it for its drinking side people need to remember its still our home. At first glance our guests see all the bottles behind the bar and there eyes go wide. But they are just full of coloured water, I wouldnt go drinking them. Video of the Day Those who are lucky enough to stay here however have full use of the bar, as well as two bedrooms. It is located four miles from Borrisokane and six miles from the river Shannon. Prices for the holiday home start at 50 per person per night, with an additional 10 per child. It's a mammoth weekend for festivals as two of the best go head to head once again with Castlepalooza kicking off in Offaly and Indiependence rocking Cork from tomorrow until Sunday. They've been facing off for years and most festival goers are firmly in one camp or the other but for those of you who are undecided here's a rundown on what's on offer at both. Bear in mind that weekend tickets for Indiependence, at Deer Farm in Mitchelstown, have sold out and there won't be any for sale at the gates. However, there are day tickets for tomorrow and Sunday still available. Castlepalooza, meanwhile, has not sold out (at time of writing) so you can nab a last-minute ticket and enjoy everything the three day festival has to offer at Charlevill Castle in Tullamore. LINE-UP Indiependence: Highlights include the Manic Street Preachers, Sigma, All Tvvins, We Cut Corners, and Tom Odell. There's also a wealth of Irish talent including The Coronas headlining Saturday night as well as The Riptide Movement, Morrissey and Marshall and more. They also have the Spoken Word Stage featuring faces from the worlds of hip hop, comedy and more. Castlepalooza: Treat yourself to Le Galazie and David Kitt, Shit Robot and Daithi. You can also check out 45 Live and there will be electrronic and club music programmed by Abstract & Bedlam at the Courtyard. Castlepalooza also offers a comedy line-up with PJ Gallagher and Deirdre O'Kane among others. Best fest: There's a bit of overlap with Wild Beats an d Le Boom hitting both festivals. Overall, for music we have to go with Indiependence, but Castlepalooza has a more eclectic offering. So, it's a tie. VENUE Castlepalooza: Charleville Castle is open to the festival goers who can roam through the medieval building and check out its restored rooms. The castle will also host workshop and surprise performances and you'll have access to The Courtyard chill out area all weekend. Video of the Day Expand Close Charleville Castle. PIC: Castlepalooza / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Charleville Castle. PIC: Castlepalooza Indiependence: The festival is located on a deer farm at Mitchelstown in Cork, nestled in the valley to the south of the Galtee mountains, and spread across a tree-lined 52 acre site beneath. Picturesque indeed. Expand Close PIC: Indiependence / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp PIC: Indiependence Best fest: You can't really beat a 17th century castle, can you? SLEEPING Castlepalooza: There's a boutique campsite with 4 and 5 metre pre-pitched bell tents. There are also Treat Yourself Tents - 2 and 4 man, pitched and ready on arrival with real beds, duvets and pillows. But you must have a weekend camping ticket. Campervan passes, meanwhile, have sold out at this stage. Bell tents require a 100 deposit and a 4 man bell tent will cost 550 plus booking fee for four people while a 6 man bell tent will set you back 595 plus booking ffee. Treat Yourself is 185 for two people and 285 for 4. The 100 deposit here goes towards the overall cost. There are also plenty of hotels, guesthouses and B&Bs in the Tullamore area although demand is high... Indiependence: There's regular camping, family camping, Festi Huts and campervans. A regular Festi hut costs 650, not including your ticket. If you have VIP tickets you can book a Festi Hut for 1250. Campervan spots have sold out. Again, there are hotels, guesthouse and B&Bs in the Mitchelstown area, although good luck booking them at this stage! Best fest: We're leaning towards Castlepalooza, because we like a bit of luxury. FOOD AND DRINK Castlepalooza: Expect the usual festival fare of burgers, hot dogs, breakfast rolls, sausages, pizza, crepes, smoothies, Thai food, and sandwiches. Veggie and organic options available too. Full bars are open 10am to 10pm each day. Indiependence: There will be food and drink, although what exactly is on offer remains a mystery. Best fest: You can't beat Castlepalooza for variety. SERVICES Castlepalooza: There are real, flushing toilets on site beside and inside the castle as well as the usual portaloos. You can also avail of a real hot shower. There will be no ATMs on site and no newsagent. However, festival-goers can recharge their phone in the Vodafone Recharge tent. Indiependence: You can also charge your phone at Indiependence. And there are brand new shower units at the campsite this year. You can also shower at the Leisure Centre in Mitchelstown for 5. There are no ATMS here either though, and no shop/newsagent. Best fest: Both festivals are pretty on par when it comes to services - we'll take the availability of a hot shower as a win any day. CHILDREN Castlepalooza say the festival predominately an over 18s event but children are permitted with their parents/guardian. There is naturally loud music played late each night. Please see our accommodation page for hotels in the area." They add, "It is strongly advised not to bring young children to the festival; if you decide to bring your baby/ toddler to the festival, parents must sign a disclaimer form on admission to the venue." Expand Close Ruth Medjber at Castlepalooza / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Ruth Medjber at Castlepalooza Due to people abusing the sign in system (where teenagers 13-17 could be signed in with an adult), children that age are no longer admitted to Indiependence. Children 12 and under can attend with their parents and use the dedicated family camping area. There will also be activities for children on site. Best fest: Sounds like Indiependence is a little more family-friendly. ACCESS Castlepalooza: There's a dedicated bus service departing Dublin tomorrow afternoon and returning on Monday. Bus Eireann travels to Tullamore and it's a 10 minute walk to site. Irish Rail also travels to Tullamore and it's also a 10 minute walk to site. Indiependence: Bus Eireann operates several services to Mitchelstown and it's a 15 minute walk or 5 taxi ride to the festival site from town. Best fest: They're both equally easily accessible. Kidd Creole during 2005 VH1 Hip Hop Honors - Pre-Party at Splashlight Studios in New York City, New York, United States. (Photo by Johnny Nunez/WireImage) Hip hop artist Kidd Creole has been charged with stabbing a homeless man to death. Kidd Creole, whose real name is Nathaniel Glover, was a founding member of Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five and rose to prominence in the 80s. The 57-year-old was charged with the murder of 55-year-old homeless man John Jolly in Manhattan. He reportedly thought Jolly had been flirting with him before he stabbed him. Expand Close NEW YORK - MARCH 12: (L to R) Honorees Scorpio, Melle Mel, Kidd Creole and Raheim of The Furious Five pose in the press room at the 22nd annual Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame Induction Ceremony at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel March 12, 2007 in New York City. (Photo by Peter Kramer/Getty Images) / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp NEW YORK - MARCH 12: (L to R) Honorees Scorpio, Melle Mel, Kidd Creole and Raheim of The Furious Five pose in the press room at the 22nd annual Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame Induction Ceremony at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel March 12, 2007 in New York City. (Photo by Peter Kramer/Getty Images) Passers-by called the police shortly before midnight on Tuesday and when they arrived on the scene they found the victim had sustained multiple stab wounds. Despite several people trying to help him he was pronounced dead at hospital. Glover was identified as the attacker on CCTV. Police reported that Jolly had served five years in prison for sexually assaulting a woman in 1997. He had been living in a shelter in the Lower East Side prior to his death. The boy was killed in a collision at Boston, off the Ballingarry North to Cloughjordan Road in Co Tipperary. Stock picture A rural community is in mourning following the death of a 16-year-old boy in a car crash. The victim, named locally as Adam Case, was killed instantly when the car he was a rear seat passenger in crashed into a tree, at Boston, off the Ballingarry North to Cloughjordan Road in Co Tipperary. The teenager was originally from Abbeyleix, Co Laois, but had been living in Shinrone, Co Offaly. A 22-year-old man whom gardai believe to have been the driver, and a 17-year-old female, who was a front seat passenger, were rushed by ambulances to separate hospitals with injuries following the fatal collision on Tuesday at 3.45pm. The three occupants were traveling in a Nissan Almera which lost control and left the road. The vehicle hit a tree and came to rest on its side in a field. Gardai said the victim was pronounced dead at the scene and his body was taken to University Hospital Limerick where a post mortem was to be conducted. The driver was initially rushed by ambulance to Tullamore Hospital, but was later transferred to St Vincent's Hospital, Dublin, where he was being treated for internal injuries. He is said to be in a "critical, but stable" condition. The female passenger was brought to University Hospital Limerick where she was treated for minor injuries. Offaly county councillor Sean Maher said people were shocked by the news as he extended his condolences to the teenager's grieving family and friends. Tragic The Sinn Fein representative told the Irish Independent: "It's tragic, I know his family. I'm so sorry for their loss and I'd like to sympathise with them at this awful time. "It's absolutely tragic, he was just 16 and he had his whole life ahead of him. My thoughts are with them." A technical examination was carried out at the scene as the road was closed for a time. Inspector Seamus Maher, of Nenagh garda station, said: "We are appealing for witnesses to contact the station at Nenagh. "We are investigating all the circumstances surrounding the incident. Forensic collision investigators have been assisting our investigation." No other vehicle was involved, gardai said. Anyone with information has been asked to contact Nenagh Garda Station on 067 50450 or any garda station. A 13 year old boy drowned after he fell into a river in a bid to rescue his friend. Oisin Quigley, a second year student at Maynooth Post Primary, entered a river to help his friend who was struggling to get out. He lost his footing and was swept away by the current on February 23 2016. Oisin was one of three second year students who did not go to school that day, an inquest into his death heard. The two boys and one girl met before school and brought blankets with them to a field next to the River Lyreen, just outside the town. One of the three brought two bottles of gin which they mixed with an energy drink, the inquest heard. The three ate and talked and drank at a spot close by the river at Laraghbryan, Maynooth, The 13 year old girl said she does not recall the details of what happened next but remembers the other two reaching for her to help her out of the river. Oisin reached too far and fell in, she said. She said she was holding his hand but she couldnt hold on and he floated down the river. Oisin looked so panicked, I remember him spinning around and the current taking him, she said. The third teen said they were trying to rescue the girl from the banks of the river when Oisin fell in. Oisin lost his grip and slipped in. I brought (the girl) back to the bank and looked up and he wasnt there. I grabbed her phone to call an ambulance, he said. Dublin Coroners Court heard that the initial emergency call was made at 3.36pm. The caller was distressed and intoxicated. There was confusion initially as to the teens exact location. Garda Garvan Kelleher was dispatched at 3.50pm and arrived at 3.55pm. Firefighters first pulled a girl who was clinging to the riverbank to safety and then began to search for Oisin in cold water up to 5.5 feet deep. He was spotted just under the surface around 50 meters from where he fell in, the court heard. He was recovered from the water at 4.20pm. He was rushed to Our Ladys Childrens Hospital in Crumlin where he was critically unwell upon arrival at 5.25pm. Tragically, he did not respond to efforts to save his life and was pronounced dead at 6.14pm. The cause of death was drowning with an elevated blood alcohol level, according to a post-mortem. A toxicology screening revealed a blood alcohol level of 235 milligrams per cent. He was a lovely lad, a good lad, Oisins father Eric Quigley said. Returning a verdict of death by misadventure, Coroner Dr Myra Cullinane said she hoped the case might prevent other young people from engaging in similar behaviour. The very sad and tragic facts of this case speak for themselves. It serves to remind young people the risks attached to certain behaviour. It has been very difficult and affecting to hear this evidence, its such a tragic event, an occurrence of seconds that deprived you of your son, Dr Cullinane said. A reveller who got into a drink-fuelled street fight after a Christening party had only a hazy recollection of events, a court heard. Dylan O'Rourke (21) was arrested for his part in the brawl, during which a bottle was thrown. Judge Michael Walsh fined him 100 after he admitted a public order offence. O'Rourke, of Vincent Street Flats in Dublin's south inner city, pleaded guilty to threatening, abusive and insulting behaviour. Dublin District Court heard the incident happened on Grafton Street at around 5am on March 2. Sgt Gail Smith said officers saw two men involved in "some sort of physical altercation". The glass bottle thrown during the melee did not hit anybody. O'Rourke continued misbehaving when gardai arrived and was arrested, Sgt Smith said. His manner had been "quite apologetic" afterwards, his lawyer told the court. "He was extremely apologetic bordering on embarrassed," Sgt Smith said. The brawl broke out in the early hours of the morning when a lot of drink had been taken, O'Rourke's lawyer told the court. He had been at his friend's child's Christening earlier and "consumed more alcohol than he should have". O'Rourke had a "somewhat blurred" recollection of the events that unfolded. However, he was aware that his behaviour was unacceptable. He insisted that he had been trying to defend a friend. The accused's lawyer asked Judge Walsh to be as lenient as possible. Fining him, the judge accepted that the defendant was "on this occasion contrite". A tiny molecule found in the immune systems of humans and animals has been hailed as an "exciting discovery" in the search for a cure for the common cold. Scientists at Edinburgh Napier University have discovered possible new treatments based on antimicrobial peptides that occur naturally in humans and animals, and increase the body's natural response to infection. A five-year study into peptides from different mammals found they all have properties that can combat rhinovirus, the main virus responsible for the common cold infection in humans. Dr Peter Barlow, associate professor of immunology and infection at the university, said research is still in the early stages, but added: "We will ultimately be looking to develop drug treatments that have the potential to cure the common cold." The next step in the project will see scientists try to modify the peptide to make it better at killing the rhinovirus, he said. "There is no cure and no vaccine so the development of effective therapies for human rhinovirus, the main causal agent of the common cold, and one of the most common causes of viral respiratory tract infections, is an urgent requirement," he said. "This study represents a major step towards finding a treatment." An effective treatment for the cold could help sufferers of more serious lung conditions, such as asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), for whom viral infections can pose a serious health risk. Earlier research by Dr Barlow had underlined the potential of antimicrobial peptides in tackling the influenza A virus. The 200,000 (223,000) latest study, funded by the UK's Chief Scientist Office and medical research charity Tenovus Scotland, expanded this work to explore the possibility of using antimicrobial peptides from pigs and sheep to fight the rhinovirus. Using peptides synthesised in the laboratory, researchers Filipa Henderson Sousa and Dr Victor Casanova assessed the impact of the different peptides on lung cells infected with human rhinovirus. The peptides successfully attacked the virus, and could provide clues for developing novel treatments based on peptides found in nature. "This is an exciting discovery and our next steps will be to modify the peptide to make it even better at killing this virus," Dr Barlow said. "This research is still in the early stages, but we will ultimately be looking to develop drug treatments that have the potential to cure the common cold." Jason Corbett was remembered by his former work colleagues at the MPS plant in North Carolina, who released green, white and orange balloons It was a simple gesture of human kindness which, after three harrowing weeks of murder trial evidence, brought smiles and tears alike to the faces of the assembled members of the Corbett family. To mark the second anniversary of Jason Corbett's death, his former workmates at the Multi Packing Solutions (MPS) plant on Lexington Parkway in Lexington, North Carolina, staged a balloon release. In a moving nod to the father-of-two's homeland, the balloons were in the colours of the Irish flag. Some were inscribed with special messages from people who remembered and missed their boss. "We miss you Jason," one note read. The Corbett family laid a wreath and the Irish colours on a stone plaque by a tree planted in Jason's memory last year close to the plant entrance. The plaque was dedicated by MPS to "a great leader and friend" and inscribed with Jason's name. After enduring three weeks of at-times horrific murder trial evidence with quiet dignity and calm courage, yesterday proved too much for many members of the Corbett family. Several wept openly as Jason's colleagues and friends released the balloons and spoke of how much they missed the genial Irishman. Jason's sisters, Tracey and Marilyn, hugged MPS colleagues who knew their brother and fondly recalled memories of him. Expand Close Jason Corbett / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Jason Corbett The ceremony yesterday was organised by MPS official Melanie Crook and was aimed at supporting the family of their former colleague. Just after noon, in the blazing heat, the green, white and orange balloons were released. Jason's sisters, brother Wayne and brother-in-law David, as well as extended family members and friends, watched in silence as the balloons vanished into the distance. Earlier, the family had attended a Mass for private prayers in memory of their brother and friend. There was no evidence heard yesterday in the second-degree murder trial of Jason's second wife, Molly Martens-Corbett (33), and his father-in-law, retired FBI agent Thomas Michael Martens (67). Both deny his murder on August 2, 2015. Jason had worked for MPS in Ireland but decided to take up the opportunity to transfer to the firm's North Carolina plant because his second wife, a native of Tennessee, hadn't settled in Ireland and was homesick. Expand Close Jason Corbett was remembered by his former work colleagues at the MPS plant in North Carolina, who released green, white and orange balloons and have planted a tree with a plaque / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Jason Corbett was remembered by his former work colleagues at the MPS plant in North Carolina, who released green, white and orange balloons and have planted a tree with a plaque Tragically, his relocation would last just four years. But two years after his death, the young Janesboro man is still fondly remembered by colleagues in a plant which had been central to his plans to build a new life. Any patients that may have been affected by a HSE software glitch will be "contacted immediately", according to the HSE national clinical advisor for acute hospitals. Thousands of patients nationwide may be affected after a major computer system flaw affected up to 25,000 scans taken since 2011. According to the Irish Times, thousands of people may need to have their medical tests redone while others may have received unnecessary treatment as a result of the glitch. At least 25,000 X-rays, MRIs, CTs and ultrasounds taken since 2011 are affected by the error. The software fault, on the HSE's Nimis (National Integreated Medical Imaging System) system is understood to have omitted the 'less than' symbol from some reports. HSE national clinical advisor for acute hospitals Dr Colm Henry told RTE Radio One's Morning Ireland that the HSE has launched an investigation into the glitch and any patients affected by the flaw "will be contacted immediately". Dr Henry explained how the error affected the system, but reassured patients that clinical decisions are not carried out on reports alone. "It is compiled of a few components, the first which is a radiology information system which is where the report is requested and stored, most clinicians look at it through this," he said. "Then there is a picture archive, which is another version of the report, not the master version but an exported copy and it was here that was missing the 'less than' symbol. "It is important to emphasise to listeners and patients that big decisions are never made based on written reports alone. Clinicians in this day and age frequently look at original imaging and discuss the reports before embarking on treatment. "It was brought to our attention by one of our own consultant radiologists working in one of the hospitals last week." Dr Henry explained that an example of the error would be the ultrasound of vessels to detect the degree of narrowing of the vessels, the report may be less than 50pc but it will read 50pc on the incorrect report copy. The HSE has now launched an investigation which will involve revising a large number of scans. "The first phase is to see if there is any difference between the master copy which is correct and read by most people, and the exported copy," Dr Henry said. "This will be completed by the end of August, to see if there is any difference there. "What we do in any such case is assess the clinical risk. We think there is a relatively low clinical risk, however if the percentage is greater than we expect, we will progress to study all cases." He explained how the error was brought to the HSE's attention and how they subsequently responded. "The radiologist informed the system providers, then the HSE. Our first response was to inform all radiology departments and hospitals," Dr Henry said. "Our second response was to fix the error, by working with the software provider, and that error has been fixed. "The third response was to... commence an investigation so we can identify the correct number of cases where there has been a clinical impact or significance. "We've put that investigation through now and we're commencing it shortly. We've agreed the terms and methodology. "We're getting the best advice from medical personnel. "This system is used in 40 hospitals so this error was disseminated throughout our hospital system." Dr Henry said the purpose of the investigation is to "identify the exact number of cases" affected by the glitch. He continued; "That is our first phase of investigation, to compare the master copy against the exported copy used only be some clinicians. "[Our aim is to] see if there is any clinical impact. We're working with hospitals to see if the missing sign had any clinical significance. "We place patient safety and interest first in all times of the investigation." Meanwhile, chairman and co-founder of the Irish Patients Association [IPA] Steve McMahon said they are now calling on the HSE to make sure GPs nationwide are equipped with the information to help patients with any concerns. "We will be spending something in the region of a billion eiro in the next few years on the healthcare system, patients need to know they can have absolute trust," Mr McMahon told Morning Ireland. "The fact they they are missing a 'less than' sign in the system is raising a whole load of questions for another forum. "They key thing is to inform patients as soon as possible so they aren't unduly stresses, particularly if any delayed diagnoses have had effects on them." He added; "Certainly if patients have concerns about a test they may have had, they will be contacting their GP or consultant. "For a lot of patients, their first port of call will be the family doctors. "We'd hope that the HSE are making contact with the IMO, the National Association of GPs and making sure that GPs are armed with information." Meanwhile, Fianna Fail spokesperson on health Billy Kelleher called for a full review of the HSE's capacity in technological areas. "It puts huge pressure on the system again... We need to have a full review on the HSE's capacity in the technological areas to firstly draft contracts for purchase of software, but also to assess software and the implications of because we are moving into the digital era," Mr Kelleher said. Independent.ie have contacted the HSE for any additional advice or information. If you are potentially affected by this software glitch, please contact us at contact@independent.ie or through our official Facebook page The HSE's Chief Information Officer, Richard Corbridge, has resigned from his role but the HSE has said it is not linked to a computer error which has just come to light. It emerged this week that a software glitch, which means that the HSE's Nimis (National Integreated Medical Imaging System) system and it omitted the 'less than' symbol from exported reports. At least 25,000 X-rays, MRIs, CTs and ultrasounds taken since 2011 are affected by the error. A spokesperson said: "Richard Corbridge, HSE Chief Information Officer (CIO), has tendered his resignation to the HSE in order to take up a new role as CIO of Leeds NHS Teaching Hospital Trust in the UK. He will depart the HSE in November 2017. HSE Director General Tony OBrien paid tribute to Mr Corbridge's contribution. In his time with the HSE, Richard has made a very significant contribution to our reform agenda and I know he will continue to do so in his remaining time with us. I am sorry to lose Richard but I wish him and his family the very best for the future as they return to their home in Leeds. We will commence the recruitment process for Richards successor in September. Gardai have struck a major blow against the activities of the so-called New IRA in the capital after armed officers swooped on four suspects in a dawn raid in Tallaght. The four Dublin men, who are aged between 28 and 47, were still being questioned at different city stations last night after armed members of the Special Detective Unit (SDU) made the arrests at a house at around 6am yesterday. Sources say the raided property is linked to a 42-year-old Tallaght man who has been one of the main targets for the SDU for the past seven years. During that time he has twice been cleared of IRA membership charges by the non-jury Special Criminal Court after being arrested in previous busts by armed gardai. Expand Close Michael Barr / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Michael Barr murder The suspected IRA boss was previously arrested in the company of dissident Republican Michael Barr, who was shot dead in the ongoing Hutch-Kinahan feud last year. Barr (36) was murdered in The Sunset House pub in Dublin's north inner city on April 25. Sources say that while there is no information that the arrested 42-year-old man has any involvement in the gangland feud that cost his associate his life, he has been suspected of being a main player in dissident republicanism ever since the murder of Real IRA chief Alan Ryan in September 2012. Meanwhile, two of the suspects arrested in yesterday's raid are currently on bail in relation to separate high-profile alleged offences linked to dissident republicanism. One of those is a 28-year-old taxi driver from Dublin's north inner city who is facing IRA membership charges after being arrested in June. The suspect, from Hardwicke Street in the capital's north inner city, was arrested after armed officers seized 400 grams of TNT in Dublin city centre. But he was not charged in relation to the explosives. A 29-year-old Finglas man also arrested in yesterday's raid is wanted by authorities in Northern Ireland in relation to an alleged attempted attack on PSNI officers. He was granted bail after spending a number of weeks in custody earlier this year. A fourth suspect is a Cabra man (47) whose older brother is considered one of the capital's most senior dissident republicans. The 47-year-old previously survived a brutal punishment shooting in north Dublin and is suspected of associating with criminal elements. Sources say that the Cabra man is "down on his luck" and under severe financial pressure. Read More Yesterday's raid is considered to be one of the most significant carried out by gardai against dissident republicans this year. "This was a raid arising from a very lengthy surveillance operation," a source said last night. "While no guns or bombs were seized, it was a very important arrest operation." The raid came only weeks after Assistant Commissioner Michael O'Sullivan warned that the New IRA posed the biggest terrorist threat from dissident republicans on these islands in two decades. He told the Herald that the organisation was the most dangerous dissident group since the Provisional IRA. Mr O'Sullivan, who is in charge of crime and security, said his assessment was shared by police and intelligence experts in Northern Ireland and Britain. The 'New IRA' comprises former factions of the Real IRA, Republican Action Against Drugs and seasoned republicans who had appeared to support the peace process but have become active again. Other members include those who had stayed away from the Real IRA, the Continuity IRA and ONH (Oglaigh na hEireann) because of infiltration by gardai. The 'New IRA' has more than 50 activists and 200 supporters. Refugees sleep outside a tent at a beach near the Souda refugee camp of Chios island, Greece (Petros Giannakouris/AP) Tents being used as a shelter for refugees in overwhelmed Greece (AP) The Department of Justice has confirmed that Ireland will take in a further 440 refugees from Greece this year. The Government previously pledged to take in a total of 4,000 refugees and asylums seekers into Ireland by September 2017, under the Irish Refugee Protection Programme. However, just half of that target will be met. Ireland has taken in 1,244 refugees since 2015 under two separate schemes. Expand Close Refugees sleep outside a tent at a beach near the Souda refugee camp of Chios island, Greece (Petros Giannakouris/AP) / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Refugees sleep outside a tent at a beach near the Souda refugee camp of Chios island, Greece (Petros Giannakouris/AP) Under the resettlement programme, the Government has committed to taking in 1,040 refugees from Lebanon. It total, 785 people have arrived so far. The remaining 255 will arrive before the end of the year. The relocation programme takes in people from refugee camps in Greece and Italy; countries where the ongoing crisis in the Mediterranean has placed an enormous burden. Through the relocation scheme, the Government has committed to taking in 2,622 asylum seekers: 1,089 from Greece and 623 from Italy. It has not yet been decided where the remaining 910 will come from. So far, only 459 people have arrived under this scheme and they have all come from Greece. According to RTE, the Department of Justice has said a further 440 have been assessed and cleared for travel. A further 101 people are awaiting security clearance in Athens. Foreign Affairs minister Simon Coveney said the scale and severity of humanitarian crises globally is overwhelming.. Photo: Collins Photos The Irish Government has donated an extra 9m in funding for areas hit by humanitarian crises across the globe. The money to the United Nations Central Emergency Response Fund (CERF) will provide aid in crisis areas like the Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Chad. The Irish Government has contributed 22m to the CERF in 2017 so far. Foreign Affairs minister Simon Coveney said the scale and severity of humanitarian crises globally is overwhelming. "Millions are on the brink of famine in the Horn of Africa, north east Nigeria and Yemen and diseases like cholera are ravaging people weakened by malnutrition, he said. Mr Coveney added: "Ireland has a proud history of supporting those in need. Our compassion for those who are suffering will not allow us to stand by while millions are in need of basic requirements like food, shelter and clean water. Minister of State Ciaran Cannon said the CERF is a "valuable mechanism." The Central Emergency Response Fund is a large UN fund that is used for immediate humanitarian response at the onset of emergencies. So far this year, CERF has allocated over US$276 to 28 crises around the world, including to crises in the Horn of Africa, Yemen and Nigeria. An Irish student is "in serious condition" after suffering an apparent cardiac arrest while swimming yesterday morning. The 22-year-old man was swimming with three friends at a beach in the North Division Street area of Ocean City, Maryland at around 6.30am.They got into trouble in the choppy waters and one of the group managed to reach the shore and call the emergency services. The Ocean City Fire Department rescue swimmers attended the scene and helped the group to shore. The OCFD said in a statement: "During the rescue, the fourth swimmer began suffering from an apparent cardiac arrest. "The victim, a 22-year-old J-1 student from Ireland, was immediately given CPR and transported to Atlantic General Hospital in very serious condition. "The Ocean City Fire Departments Rescue Swimmers urge beachgoers to swim only when the lifeguards are on duty. "The beach patrol is on duty every day from 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Remember, 'keep your feet in the sand, until a lifeguard is in the stand.'" A spokesman for the Department of Foreign Affairs told Independent.ie: "We are aware of the case and are providing Assistance." Airline representatives have urged European border controls to introduce an emergency plan to avoid massive queues for passengers at airports this coming weekend. Irish and British people flying to and from Europe for their summer holidays face the prospect of "devastating" delays due to stricter Schengen area border controls, Europe's largest airline lobby group has warned. Thousands travelling from Spain, Portugal, France and Italy have been hit by lengthy airport queues, with some missing flights over new passport controls. Aage Duenhaupt, a spokesman for A4E, which represents airlines including BA's owner, International Airlines Group, Ryanair and easyJet, said thousands of flights had already been delayed because of tighter checks at some EU airports. Mr Duenhaupt said the bank holiday weekend, which is one of the busiest times of the year, could see delays of up to two hours. He noted that for example there were 200,000 passengers arriving in and departing from the Spanish island of Mallorca. "Unless Spanish border control puts in place an emergency plan to avoid queues and help passengers to get through faster, there will be a lot of devastating delays for passengers," he said. "It's a crazy situation." Ryanair is now asking its passengers to check in three hours before departure. Expand Close Cormac Meehan / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Cormac Meehan Meanwhile, travel agent reps are seeking talks with the Department of Justice over what they claim are "staffing shortages" in Irish airports, causing delays. President of the Irish Travel Agents Association (ITAA) Cormac Meehan said a lack of passport control lines which are open for those travellers coming into the country, among other things, are causing problems on the other side. Read More Mr Meehan said Terminal One and Terminal Two in Dublin Airport are a particular problem with large queues. He explained the feedback received from customers was there were not enough staff on duty to get them through the passport control. "The ITAA has called for a meeting with the Department of Justice and Equality to get the issue of understaffing at Dublin Airport and other regional and national airports on to the national agenda, given the importance of the sector to the national economy," Mr Meehan said. "Not enough of them are operational." However, the Dublin Airport Authority (DAA) has insisted there are no delays from its security screening section. A spokesperson said it is usually a 15-minute process going out of the country. Read More For Irish holidaymakers travelling back into the country, new rules mean name checks against a series of databases are now carried out for those outside of the Schengen border-free area. Mr Meehan said those travelling abroad from Ireland should take out adequate travel insurance and ensure they arrive at airports three hours before their flight. Meanwhile, a security expert has backed the more stringent security measures implemented across Europe. Tom Clonan said while it's "frustrating and inconvenient, it's necessary". "People are just going to have to incorporate that into their planning. Islamist extremists have targeted airports in the past. I would prefer to queue for four hours and fly safely. It's better to be safe than sorry." Councillors Gerry ONeill, Oliver OBrien and John Snell have been stripped of the whip amid a dispute. Stock picture The TD at the centre of a bitter Sinn Fein row has accused his former colleagues of campaigning against marriage equality. John Brady, the party's social protection spokesman, was yesterday forced to defend his handling of the row that has left the party in Co Wicklow split down the middle. As reported last week, councillors Gerry O'Neill, Oliver O'Brien and John Snell have been stripped of the whip amid a dispute. It is the only case currently in the country where a party's council delegation has been thrown out. Tara Reynor O'Grady, the mother of Hollywood actor Jack Reynor, also had her membership cancelled after representing the councillors at a hearing. The row intensified yesterday after Mr Brady told East Coast FM's 'The Morning Show' that Mr O'Neill and Mr O'Brien campaigned against the recent marriage equality referendum. "Maybe this has been part of the difficulty when you have adopted Sinn Fein policy and individual councillors going out and doing their own thing, actively campaigning against the marriage equality referendum and bringing the party into disrepute," the Dail deputy told broadcaster Declan Meehan. Mr O'Neill accused Mr Brady of speaking a "total untruth". "I know John is in a hole. But he's dug himself into a far greater hole," he said. Mr O'Brien said the claims were "absolutely untrue". Mr Brady also suggested that Mr Snell had embarked on a number of junkets. Mr Snell also categorically denied the claim. Senior editorial executives at the Irish edition of the 'Sunday Times' have been spoken to as part of the internal inquiry into how last weekend's controversial Kevin Myers column came to be published. An editor from the newspaper's headquarters in London flew in to Dublin yesterday as part of the review, which is expected to be completed by the end of the week. Ireland editor Frank Fitzgibbon and associate editor John Burns were among those spoken to by 'Sunday Times' executive editor Bob Tyrer as part of the process, the Irish Independent understands. Mr Fitzgibbon posted a series of tweets on Saturday night before publication of the article telling users what was in the newspaper. Mr Burns is his deputy and regularly points out what he sees as failings in other media. He has a column in the paper and also a media commentary column. Other team members are also thought to be assisting in the internal review. Mr Fitzgibbon, thought to be in his early 60s, is known for his waspish comments on social media and oversaw the title when its Irish edition ran an editorial in support of Brexit. Expand Close Journalist and author Kevin Myers was sacked by the Sunday Times after the publication of his column. Photo: Tony Gavin / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Journalist and author Kevin Myers was sacked by the Sunday Times after the publication of his column. Photo: Tony Gavin Read More Several years ago, some commentators had tipped him as a possible 'Sunday Independent' editor, but that did not come to pass. The newspaper remains under considerable pressure to explain how the column came to be published. In the piece, Mr Myers named two high-earning female BBC presenters, Claudia Winkleman and Vanessa Feltz. He noted they were both Jewish and said Jews were not generally known for their insistence on selling their talent for the lowest possible price. Mr Myers said on Monday he guessed it would have been seen by five or six people after he filed it to the newspaper. None of these people raised any queries with him, he has now said. He also said one of his editors was "surprised" by the "online uproar" over the column. His account has not been disputed by the 'Sunday Times'. The newspaper has refused to discuss what action it is taking to investigate the issue. Its press office has said it has nothing to add to an earlier statement in which Mr Fitzgibbon apologised unreservedly and took "full responsibility for this error of judgment". However, news that a review had been ordered emerged on Tuesday night. It is understood the review should be completed by the end of the week. Speaking to BBC Radio 5 Live yesterday, Mr Myers said his career was "in tatters" and he had no reputation left. "An awful lot of Irish people know who I am and they understand my position and they sympathise with me. They know I am not an anti-Semite," he said. "The 'Sunday Times' didn't give me an opportunity to explain myself and they sacked me almost without notice on Sunday morning," he said. I am writing in relation to the recent controversy regarding journalist Kevin Myers. Much ink has been spilled on the topic and I am simply adding to the copious amounts already written. However, I think it is necessary to examine the unparalleled backlash to his words. Myers using the stereotypical analogy of Jewish people being wealthy and apparently tight with money was not only "filth", as described by JK Rowling, but it was also anti-Semitic. Further, the inflammatory headline of 'Sorry ladies equal pay has to be deserved' was blatantly misogynistic. There is no other way of looking at it. It was appallingly sexist and, unfortunately, in our current obsessive Trump era, something that is becoming far too normalised. Vanessa Feltz herself has branded his comments "vile" and "horrifying racism". He individually attacked these women - this was not simply a generalist statement but, rather, a specific diatribe against someone. With the ghosts of Nazi Germany still lurking as the likes of Katie Hopkins brand refugees in the migrant crisis "cockroaches", it is fundamental this type of discrimination is publicly reprimanded. Ms Feltz and the Jewish community are more than entitled to do this. Yet I cannot help but wonder does this not stink of a witch hunt to anyone else? Or even white privilege? Yes, it is terrible and without doubt he deserves to lose his job. But when did it become acceptable for all of us to jump on the bandwagon and hurl abuse back at him? Yes, he is the creator of his own downfall, there is no denial of that. The Irish Jewish community has even come to his aid, this man who so hideously insulted their religion, saying: "More than any other Irish journalist, he has written columns about details of the Holocaust over the last three decades that would not otherwise have been known by a substantial Irish audience." There is also, of course, the old adage that those in the public eye leave themselves open to criticism. And it is true he has written countless articles in the hope of provoking and insulting. But it is a meek man we heard over the radio waves this week, a man whose own father suffered from a nervous breakdown. Myers told the interviewer he has not slept in two days. A man who has been portrayed as Machiavellian and heartless is still just that; a man. Let us not wait to see how far he can be pushed. Mairead Leen Address with editor Name and shame Dail tab dodgers Politicians who have failed to settle their Dail bar bills should have the money deducted from their salaries or pensions, according to Taoiseach Leo Varadkar. Mr Varadkar criticised both serving and former members of the Oireachtas who have left bar tabs, some of which have been outstanding for years. Not telling the Taoiseach how to do his job, but surely the most obvious way to eliminate this problem going forward would be to deduct the money from their wallets when they are on the session. Perhaps he could also have a sign erected at the entrance to the Dail bar, stating: "Please don't ask for credit as refusal often offends." Also, for those who have not yet paid their bills, why not "name and shame", as the Taoiseach has recently proposed for people who commit welfare fraud? Seamus McLoughlin Keshcarrigan, Co Leitrim All in the dark on global economics An enormous amount of absolute rubbish is talked about the awarding of an honorary doctorate to ex-Taoiseach Brian Cowen by the National University of Ireland. Such talk is rubbish because Mr Cowen did not contribute to the catastrophic collapse of economics in 2008, or to the so-called subsequent recovery, any more than his predecessors or his successors. None of them, or the Governments they led and still lead, had a clue what was really happening to global economics. They all made a difficult situation much worse than it might have otherwise been, but their actions stem not from a lack of intent but from ignorance; an absolute failure to understand how advanced technology had changed economics forever. An enormous mistake was, and still is, made by regarding what happened in 2008 as a "recession". It was no such thing. It was instead the first indication of the greatest transformation of economic conditions ever experienced. It is evidence of utterly changed economic conditions where ability to produce exceeds ability to consume, with consequential elimination of need and opportunity for growth, combined with enormous elimination of dependence on human labour. This transformation is wrought by development of digital computing which, when linked to communications, automation, bio-chemistry, transportation and practically every facet of productive activity, has reversed the supply/demand and work requirement situation which prevailed since the dawn of history. Our problem is the failure to understand it or cope with its consequences. Padraic Neary Tubbercurry, Co Sligo Tapping into public mood on water I see that Jerry Grant says the public accepts Irish Water must now invest money in water infrastructure (Irish Independent, August 2). While I agree with him on this point, I must ask the question, is that not what the public was saying when it said to invest in infrastructure first, not on meters? Maurice Prendiville Newtown, Waterford Seeing red on Russia claims I'd like to respond to Kev O Faolain's statement that "in Crimea, the ethnic Russian population who have lived there for over 1,000 years" (Irish Independent, Letters, August 1). Nothing can be further from the truth. Yes, in the mid-10th century, part of Crimea was conquered by Prince Sviatoslav I of Kiev, but that would support the Ukrainian, rather than Russian, ownership of Crimea, as the princedom of Moscow wasn't created until 1277, as a subservient vassal region to the Golden Horde, established by the Khan Mengu-Timur. The Crimean interior was under the control of the Turco-Mongol Golden Horde from 1239 to 1441 (the name Crimea originates from Turkic "Qirim"), while the coast was built by the Venetians, who seized it from the Republic of Genoa, until it was conquered by Ottomans. The years 1441-1783 saw Crimea controlled by the Crimean Tatars, the descendants of the Khazars, not of the Russians, who emerged around the 15th century, from the Finnish tribes Muroma, Mer and Ves. It wasn't until 1783 that the Russian Empire annexed all of Crimea. Even in the 19th century, the Russians were only one of many nationalities living in Crimea. Ethnic Russians crop up in the history of Crimea much less than the Ulster Scots crop up in the history of Northern Ireland. Grzegorz Kolodziej Bray, Co Wicklow We all had to start somewhere. For Vogue Williams, it was posing half naked at various spots around Ireland at the height of the photocall era. Fast forward 10 years and she's still posing in bikinis, but at least she's in sunnier climes, has a hell of a lot of Instagram followers and has made it in the UK thanks to her romance with royal-by-association boyfriend Spencer Matthews. During the Celtic Tiger photocall modelling era, Vogue was something of a media darling alongside the likes of Georgia Salpa and Nadia Forde, and was soon snapped up by producers of RTE's Fade Street in 2009 - dubbed 'Ireland's answer to The Hills' - which tragically only lasted one season. The reality show gave her the tv bug and she is now the state broadcaster's go-to girl for most hosting gigs. This week, we trawled through the archives to dig up some of Vogue's early modelling shots to see where it all began... A group wedding couples takes part in a mass wedding ceremony at a park in Nanjing, in eastern China's Jiangsu province on May 1, 2011. The event was held as part of the May Day holiday. Photo STR/AFP/Getty Images A Chinese county is to name and shame families who hold lavish weddings and shower the bride with huge gifts, in what appears to be the latest attempt to rein in the price of a wife in a country where there is a scarcity of women. A reverse dowry, which often includes the cost of an expensive wedding and a cash payment to the bride and her family, has become common practice in China. But the price has been rising in rural areas where almost four decades of the one-china policy has left a gender imbalance and fewer potential wives. Dengzhou, in central Chinas Henan province, has capped the betrothal gift for a brides family at 30,000 yuan (3700), according to Dahe.cn, a news website run by the local government. Expand Close A group wedding couples rides cycle carts as part of a mass wedding ceremony at a park in Wuhan, in central China's Hubei province on May 1, 2011. The event was held as part of the May Day holiday. Photo AFP/AFP/Getty Images / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp A group wedding couples rides cycle carts as part of a mass wedding ceremony at a park in Wuhan, in central China's Hubei province on May 1, 2011. The event was held as part of the May Day holiday. Photo AFP/AFP/Getty Images Local officials have also ordered that the brides family can only invite 20 guests, the report said. The new rules cover minute details of the celebrations, restricting each guest to only 36 yuan (5) worth of food, with only two bottles of 50 yuan (6.30) liquor and 20 cigarettes for every ten people. Local officials said the new rules were to encourage frugality, and that funerals were also being targeted. However, there is concern in many parts of rural China that poor families are wiping out their savings by splashing out on expensive weddings in order to attract a bride. Gao Yonggang, a culture and ideology official in Dengzhou told the Henan Business Daily: It is causing huge financial burdens on the groom's family. Rural Chinese families often abort girls or abandon them at birth. Men are seen as more able to support parents in old age, and can also continue the family lineage in Chinese traditional culture. Video of the Day Taiqian county, which is also in Henan, announced it would cap the bride price at 60,000 yuan last year. However, officials did not clarify how they would enforce the rule. Additional reporting by Christine Wei Pandas can live up to 30 years old in capitivity (David Cheskin/PA) A 23-year-old panda has given birth to twins, becoming the oldest panda mother on record. Haizi, whose age is equal to 80 human years, welcomed a female cub and a male cub at Wolong National Nature Reserve in Sichuan province, China, on July 30. She surpassed the age of the previous oldest panda mother by one year the last record-holder was 22 years old, which is equivalent to around 77 human years. One panda year is equivalent to three or four human years. Adorable Haizi previously birthed twins when she was 19. Experts at the centre say the record birth was a breakthrough in panda breeding. Pandas typically live up to 20 years in the wild, but in captivity, can reach 30 years of age. A woman holds fake Brazilian bank notes wearing a human billboard composed of an image of President Michel Temer during a protest in front of the National Congress in Brasilia (AP Photo/Eraldo Peres) Brazilian President Michel Temer has survived a congressional vote that could have suspended him over a bribery charge. At least 172 of the 513 members of the lower Chamber of Deputies had voted by late Wednesday against putting Mr Temer on trial for allegedly orchestrating a scheme to line his own pockets with millions of pounds in illicit payments. The opposition needed two-thirds of the chamber, or 342 votes, to advance the case against the embattled leader. With Mr Temer winning more than a third of votes, the charge against him is suspended. A final tally was expected later on Wednesday night. Attorney General Rodrigo Janot levelled the bribery charge against Mr Temer in June. Because it involved a sitting president, Mr Temer could only be put on trial if the Chamber of Deputies agreed. Donald Tusk arrives at the national prosecutor's office in his native Poland to be questioned as a witness in an investigation in Warsaw (Czarek Sokolowski/AP) Polish investigators have questioned Donald Tusk, president of the European Council, as a witness in an investigation into the 2010 plane crash that killed President Lech Kaczynski. The case is widely seen as a politically-driven attempt to discredit the EU leader. Mr Tusk was the Polish prime minister at the time of the crash, which occurred in Russia and killed 96 people, many of them top Polish state and military officials. Prosecutors said they are trying to determine why Polish authorities of the time did not take part in the post-mortem examinations, which were performed by Russians and later shown to be sloppy. Exhumations have revealed that body parts got mixed up and were buried in the wrong graves. But Mr Tusk's Polish supporters see the questioning as part of a political feud going back years that pits him against Jaroslaw Kaczynski, the late president's twin brother and the head of the ruling Law and Justice party in Poland. Mr Kaczynski holds no government position but is widely seen as the man who directs all major government decisions. Ahead of Thursday's questioning in Warsaw, Mr Kaczynski warned that Mr Tusk "should be afraid". Katarzyna Lubnauer, a politician with the opposition Modern party, said calling Mr Tusk to give evidence was an act of "political revenge and an attempt to humiliate the former prime minister". Mr Tusk's lawyer Roman Giertych also said he believed "political motivations" were behind the decision to question him. Mr Tusk was also questioned as a witness in a separate investigation in April. He is considered one of the most charismatic and effective politicians that Poland has had in many years, and the only one able to unite a weak and divided political opposition. Should he ever return to Polish politics, he would represent a major threat to Mr Kaczynski, who is pushing an agenda for radical change considered an attack on democratic norms by the EU and many other international observers. Mr Tusk - who has openly criticised the Polish government - is often mentioned as a possible candidate in presidential elections in 2020, soon after his tenure as European Council leader is scheduled to end. Dozens of supporters greeted him as he arrived at the prosecutor's office on Thursday morning. Mr Kaczynski, a former prime minister who lost to Mr Tusk's Civic Platform party in 2007, has long accused Mr Tusk and Russia of responsibility for the tragedy that killed his brother. Mr Tusk vehemently denies that, and in turn accuses Mr Kaczynski of cynically using the tragedy for political purposes. Last month Mr Kaczynski lashed out at opposition politicians trying to block the disputed judicial overhaul. When an opposition politician said the late president Lech Kaczynski had blocked Jaroslaw's past attempts to take drastic steps against the judicial system, Mr Kaczynski shouted from the podium in parliament: "Don't wipe your treacherous mugs with the name of my late brother. You destroyed him, you murdered him, you are scoundrels." AP The US announced sanctions on Iran this week (AP) Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, left, and President Hassan Rouhani at the start of the official endorsement ceremony of President Rouhani in Tehran (Office of the Iranian Supreme Leader via AP) Iran's supreme leader has criticised new US sanctions on Tehran signed by President Donald Trump and vowed his country would continue its missile programme despite international pressure. Washington will "use any excuse to make a fuss" against Iran, said Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, speaking at a ceremony marking the formal endorsement of President Hassan Rouhani for his second term in office. "You launch a satellite-carrying missile, they make noise," he said, describing the Iranian launch as a "scientific and technical job that is routine and necessary." "The response to the hostility is to become stronger," Mr Khamenei added, as he described the US government as "the top aggressor and the most shameless" enemy of Iran. "Some have sharply applied hostility (against Iran), like those who today are in office in the US," Mr Khamenei said, without mentioning Mr Trump or the US president's signing of the legislation on Wednesday. The law also imposed new sanctions on Russia and North Korea. According to a letter sent to the UN Security Council and obtained by the Associated Press, the US and three Western allies called Iran's recent launch of a satellite-carrying rocket "a threatening and provocative step" that is "inconsistent" with a UN resolution endorsing the 2015 nuclear deal with world powers. Iran last week launched the country's most advanced satellite-carrying rocket into space, marking the most significant step forward for the Islamic nation's young space programme. In the letter to the Security Council, the US, France, Germany and the United Kingdom complained that the Simorgh space launch vehicle, if configured as a ballistic missile, would have the range and "payload capacity to carry a nuclear warhead". Iran maintains the 2015 nuclear deal that put caps on its uranium enrichment programme - a possible pathway to nuclear weapons - and the Security Council resolution endorsing that deal do not ban the country from ballistic missile activity. Russia, one of the five world powers that brokered the nuclear deal, has agreed with Tehran. On Tuesday, Iran's parliament speaker Ali Larijani announced that Tehran has officially complained to the UN Security Council over the latest US sanctions. Mr Khamenei, who has the final say on all state matters, said Iran should continue to stand powerful in the face of its enemies. "International engagement should not lead to ignoring hostility of the enemies," Mr Khamenei said at the ceremony, broadcast live on state TV. He added that "despite all the sanctions and enmities, the Islamic Republic is stronger" than before. Mr Rouhani, who will be formally sworn into office on Saturday in parliament, said the nuclear deal has been a sign of "good faith" by Iran and that it brought the nation respite from "most difficult" UN sanctions. "Transition from the most difficult sanctions was achieved through a combination of the power of diplomacy and deterrent defensive power," said Mr Rouhani. He said that in his second term in office, Iran will "insist on constructive engagement with the world more than before". Earlier, the state TV website quoted deputy foreign minister and senior nuclear negotiator Abbas Araghchi as saying that Iran will come up with a "smart" reaction to the latest US sanctions. Mr Araghchi reiterated Iran's stance that the US legislation signed by Mr Trump amounts to a "hostile" breach of the landmark 2015 nuclear deal. Tehran has prepared measures that Iran would take against the US action, he added without elaborating, except to say some of the measures will "improve" Iran's armed forces. The US legislation imposes mandatory penalties on people involved in Iran's ballistic missile programme and anyone who does business with them. It would also apply terrorism sanctions to Iran's prestigious Revolutionary Guard and enforce an arms embargo. AP Investigators show Air Canada flight 759 (ACA 759) attempting to land at the San Francisco International Airport in San Francisco on July 7 (National Transportation Safety Board/AP) New photos have revealed how shockingly low an Air Canada jet was when it pulled up to avoid crashing into planes waiting on a San Francisco International Airport taxiway last month. The Air Canada pilots mistook the taxiway for the runway next to it and flew their jet to just 59ft above ground before pulling up to attempt another landing, according to the US National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB). That is barely taller than the four planes that were on the taxiway when the incident occurred late at night on July 7. Pilots in a United Airlines plane alerted air traffic controllers about the off-course jet, while the crew of a Philippine Airlines jet behind it switched on their plane's landing lights in an apparent last-ditch danger signal to Air Canada. NTSB investigators said they have not determined probable cause for the incident, which came within a few feet of becoming one of the worst disasters in aviation history. "It was close, much too close," said John Cox, a safety consultant and retired airline pilot. The investigators said that as the Air Canada jet approached the taxiway just before midnight after a flight from Toronto, it was so far off course that it did not appear on a radar system used to prevent runway collisions. Those systems were not designed to spot planes that are lined up to land on a taxiway - a rare occurrence, especially for airline pilots. But the US Federal Aviation Administration is working on modifications so they can do so in the future, agency spokesman Ian Gregor said. Both pilots of the Air Canada Airbus A320 jet were very experienced. The captain, who was flying the plane, had more than 20,000 hours of flying time, while the co-pilot had logged about 10,000 hours. The pilots told investigators "that they did not recall seeing aircraft on taxiway but that something did not look right to them," the NTSB said. Investigators could not hear what the Air Canada captain and co-pilot said to each other during the aborted landing because their conversation was recorded over when the plane made other flights, starting with a San Francisco-to-Montreal trip the next morning. Recorders are required to capture only the last two hours of a plane's flying time. Peter Fitzpatrick, a spokesman for Air Canada, declined to comment, citing the ongoing investigation. AP Saudi Arabia's new heir to the throne has announced plans for a beach resort where women will be allowed to wear bikinis instead of being forced to cover up. As part of his drive to modernise the Saudi economy, Prince Mohammed bin Salman has unveiled plans for a luxury Red Sea resort on a stretch of coastline in the country's north-west. Knowing that foreign visitors are unlikely to come to beaches where women have to cover up in the robe-like dress of an abaya, the government said the resort would be "governed by laws on par with international standards". Saudi Arabia's own laws on women are among the most repressive in the world, with women banned from driving and unable to travel without permission from a male relative. Women are expected to cover their skin and hair when they are outside. Last month, a woman was arrested for wearing a miniskirt in an abandoned village. Alcohol is banned under Saudi law. It is unclear if it will be allowed at the resort. Saudi Arabia's public investment fund described the project as an "exquisite luxury resort destination established across 50 untouched natural islands". It added: "The Red Sea project will be... situated across the islands of a lagoon and steeped in nature and culture. "It will set new standards for sustainable development and bring about the next generation of luxury travel to put Saudi Arabia on the international tourism map." Construction is due to begin in 2019 and the first phase of the project will be completed by 2022, according to the announcement. It hopes to attract a million visitors a year by 2035. The Red Sea project is part of the Prince's Vision 2030 - a plan to diversify the Saudi economy and wean it off its dependence on oil. Some foreign investors have applauded the young prince, but others have said the plan is unlikely to succeed. It has been a good first few days for Mr Kelly. Photo: Reuters/Joshua Roberts There was never any doubt about John Kelly the man. After his appointment as White House chief of staff, one particular passage from a book on his rise through the Marines Corps was circulated among administration officials. The anecdote from 'The March Up', by retired Marine Bing West, was offered as evidence of character. With bodies lying at the side of the road during the advance on Baghdad during the Iraq War, it describes how Kelly turned to his commanders and told them the numbers of civilian casualties was unacceptable. When they replied defensively, saying that they had a duty to protect their own men, Kelly silenced them. "'Don't go there with me,' Kelly shot back, cutting off debate. He had been in the infantry 30 years and knew the range of every weapon." Friends say his integrity and leadership are unimpeachable. What has been in doubt, ever since he was named White House chief of staff on Friday, was Kelly the politician. Did he have the political nous to navigate such treacherous terrain as a fractious administration, riven into at least five rival power centres? What did for Reince Priebus, his predecessor, was a broken chain of command. Mr Trump sat at the apex, above the competing fray. His daughter and her husband - Ivanka and Jared - had special dispensation to go around the man who was supposed to be the president's gatekeeper. So too Steve Bannon, the chief strategist, who had been told he could operate on an equal footing to the chief of staff. Three chiefs of staff is a recipe for confusion. And then there was Anthony Scaramucci, the Trump Mini-Me taken on as communications director, who made it clear he only answered to the president. Maybe that was the way Mr Trump liked to run things. But you can bet that a military man, schooled in the linear chain of command operated by armed services, would see things differently. The early indications are that Mr Kelly has got his way. First, Mr Scaramucci has gone. His role as freelancing fire-starter was clearly a liability. And all the indications are that the new chief of staff wanted to set an example: Every action, every word, every cheap joke, expletive and self-serving leak reflects on the boss in the Oval Office. Second, as Sarah Huckabee Sanders said in her briefing, every member of staff is now expected to report to the chief of staff. There is now a clear chain of command from president, to Mr Kelly, to the rest. It is a sensible move, not just for Mr Kelly's sanity. It is an essential step to removing the air of chaos from this White House and to give it a fighting chance of ensuring everyone is pulling in the same direction. Finding order from chaos on the battlefield is what good commanders do, as one Trump insider put it to me. How long it will last is another matter. We know that Mr Trump's management style is to set competing power centres against each other. Mr Kelly may well find himself fighting his principal at every turn. And do we really expect Ivanka to book appointments with her father by going through the corner room next to the Oval Office? It has been a good first few days for Mr Kelly. Holding his gains will test every political bone in his body.( Daily Telegraph London) Christopher Wray has been overwhelmingly confirmed by the Senate to lead the FBI, replacing James Comey, who was abruptly fired by US President Donald Trump amid the investigation into Russian meddling in last year's presidential election. The vote was 92-5 for Mr Wray, a former high-ranking official in president George W. Bush's Justice Department who oversaw investigations into corporate fraud. "This is a tough time to take this tough job," Senator Amy Klobuchar said. "The previous FBI director, as we know, was fired because of the Russia investigation. The former acting attorney general was fired. And we've had a slew of other firings throughout the government." Republican Senator Ben Sasse of Nebraska said after the vote: "Chris Wray will bring character and competence to a city that is haemorrhaging public trust." Mr Wray (50) won unanimous support from the Senate Judiciary Committee last month, with Republicans and Democrats praising his promise never to let politics get in the way of the bureau's mission. Asserting his independence at his confirmation hearing, Mr Wray said: "My loyalty is to the constitution and the rule of law. Those have been my guideposts throughout my career, and I will continue to adhere to them no matter the test." Mr Wray and Mr Comey helped bring the case against Kenneth Lay, the former Enron chairman convicted in 2006. Also involved in the Enron matter was Robert Mueller, then FBI director and now special counsel named after Mr Comey was fired to investigate the Russia affair, as well as Andrew Weissman, who is now working for Mr Mueller. The web of Enron connections underscores the reliance in Washington, even under a president who vowed to "drain the swamp", on an elite corps of corporate lawyers whose varied careers often intersect and who sometimes present conflict-of-interest issues. For instance, after he left the Justice Department and joined top international law firm King & Spalding, Mr Wray represented Republican New Jersey Governor Chris Christie in the so-called Bridgegate scandal over massive traffic jams created as political punishment for a local mayor. Mr Wray represented Mr Christie in a scandal that resulted in two of the governor's aides being convicted. Mr Christie, who was a close adviser to Mr Trump during the 2016 presidential campaign and whose name was floated as a possible Comey replacement, was never charged. Mr Christie has called Mr Wray "an outstanding choice, a non-political choice" to head the FBI. Mr Wray worked as a King & Spalding litigation partner and represented companies and individuals in white-collar criminal and regulatory enforcement matters. King & Spalding has represented Russian companies including state gas monopoly Gazprom, according to its website. According to the website, the firm's energy practice also has represented businesses taking part in deals involving Russian entities including state-owned oil major Rosneft. The firm has previous ties to Mr Trump. Bobby Burchfield, a partner in its Washington office, serves as ethics adviser for the trust set up in January to isolate Mr Trump from the day-to-day operations of the Trump business organisation. A Massachusetts woman could be sentenced to up to 20 years in prison this week for sending text messages to her boyfriend urging him to commit suicide. The verdict was the first of its kind in the state, and legal experts said it is likely to be appealed. Michelle Carter, now 20, was found guilty in June of involuntary manslaughter for the messages she sent to her 18-year-old boyfriend, who asphyxiated himself in his parked truck as she texted him in 2014. Child welfare advocates said the case illustrated serious concerns about cyberbullying, while free-speech proponents said Bristol County Juvenile Court Judge Lawrence Moniz's guilty verdict infringed on Carter's free-speech rights by criminalizing her words. Carter's attorneys have not yet said if they plan to appeal the verdict, but legal experts said it could be vulnerable given its groundbreaking nature. "As abhorrent and horrific as Michelle Carter's behavior was, and it was appalling, I'm not sure it's manslaughter," said David Medwed, a professor of law and criminal justice at Northeastern University in Boston. He said that for a manslaughter conviction one would need to prove the defendant directly caused the death and there could be an argument that even though she prodded him, it was ultimately the victim who made the decision. Expand Close Defendant Michelle Carter listens in court. Photo: AP / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Defendant Michelle Carter listens in court. Photo: AP Her boyfriend, Conrad Roy, had attempted to kill himself multiple times before succeeding in a parking lot about 60 miles (96 km) south of Boston. Carter, who like Roy had mental health problems, was about 30 miles (48 km) away at the time of his death. The American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts has already criticized the ruling as a violation of Carter's right to free speech. Massachusetts is one of about 10 U.S. states where it is not illegal to encourage suicide. "While Mr. Roy's death is truly devastating, it is not a reason to stretch the boundaries of our criminal laws or abandon the protections of our constitution," said Matthew Segal, the group's legal director. Carter's attorneys argued she had been involuntarily intoxicated by medication and not fully able to comprehend the consequences of her actions. The length of Carter's sentence will likely influence whether she appeals the verdict. That may tempt Moniz to impose a sentence of only probation to reduce the risk of an appeal, said Boston College law professor Robert Bloom. "If I were the judge, that would be something that I would be thinking about," Bloom said. Donald Trump said relations with Russia were at an 'all-time' and 'dangerous' low (Evan Vucci/AP) Republican senators have said it is wrong for the US president to blame Congress for deteriorating relations with Russia. Senator Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania said he was shocked at a tweet by Donald Trump that said "you can blame Congress" for a relationship "at an all-time" and "dangerous" low. But many Republicans blame Russian president Vladimir Putin for the growing tensions. Maine Senator Susan Collins cited Russia's actions in Ukraine and Syria and its suspected interference in the presidential election. North Carolina Senator Thom Tillis said relations with Russia are bad "because they've done bad things". And Alabama Senator Richard Shelby said the two nations' relationship began deteriorating with the Russian Revolution of 1917, which led to Communist rule. Mr Shelby said: "I don't see how it's Congress' fault." Earlier, t wo members of the US Senate Judiciary Committee moved to protect special counsel Robert Mueller from being fired by Mr Trump, putting forth new legislation that aims to ensure the integrity of current and future independent investigations. Mr Tillis and Democratic Senator Chris Coons of Delaware said they introduced legislation letting any special counsel for the Department of Justice challenge his or her removal in court. A three-judge panel would review the dismissal within 14 days of the challenge. The bill would apply retroactively to May 17 2017 - the day Mr Mueller was appointed by deputy attorney general Rod Rosenstein to investigate allegations of Russian meddling in the 2016 election and possible ties between Russia and Mr Trump's presidential campaign. "This is something that lives long beyond this" situation involving Mr Mueller, Mr Tillis told reporters. "And I think it's also something that begins to re-establish the reputation for independence in the Department of Justice." AP A South African man who was held hostage by al Qaida's North Africa branch for six years in Mali has been freed and he is now back home, South Africa's government said. Stephen McGown, who was released on Saturday, was the longest-held of a number of foreigners seized by Islamic extremists in Mali, where several armed groups roam the West African country's north. The extremists have made a fortune over the last decade abducting foreigners in the vast Sahel region and demanding enormous ransoms for their release. Mr McGown was kidnapped in 2011 at a hostel in Timbuktu, where he had been travelling as a tourist. He also has British citizenship. "It was a big surprise when Stephen walked through the door," his father Malcolm told reporters. "He felt as sound and as strong as before." South Africa's minister for international relations, Maite Nkoana-Mashabane, said the government does not pay ransoms in hostage situations. Mr McGown's release follows that of Swedish national Johan Gustafsson, who was freed in late June after being kidnapped in November 2011. Swedish officials denied that a ransom had been paid, as other European governments have done to secure the release of their citizens in the Sahel. In early July, Mr McGown was included in a proof-of-life video released by the al Qaida-linked Nusrat al-Islam wal Muslimeen group in Mali. The video showed six foreign hostages shortly before French President Emmanuel Macron arrived for an anti-terror summit. "No genuine negotiations have begun to rescue your children," a narrator of the video said. Gift of the Givers, a South African charity, had tried to secure the release of Mr McGown and Mr Gustafsson since 2015, sending a negotiator into remote parts of Mali and Niger. "We have reached a dead end," Gift of the Givers said in a May 17 statement. Also in May, Mr McGown's mother, Beverley McGown, died after an illness. Mr McGown's father on Thursday told reporters his son "will pick himself up" and rejoin life at home after the loss. Mr McGown's wife Catherine described their first exchange on reuniting, saying: "He looked at me and said, 'Wow, your hair's grown!' I said, 'Your hair's longer than mine now!'" Extremists are still believed to be holding a Colombian nun taken from Mali, an Australian doctor and a Romanian man seized at different times in Burkina Faso, and an American who was working with a non-profit organisation in Niger. Islamic extremists seized control of Mali's north in 2012. While they were forced out of strongholds a year later by a French-led military intervention, jihadists continue to attack Malian and French soldiers and UN peacekeepers. Five regional countries - Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Burkina Faso and Chad - have now joined in a 5,000-strong multinational military force against the extremists. AP It is the third of four planned ceasefires reached in recent months (Hussein Malla/AP) A ceasefire for a third safe zone in war-torn Syria has been announced by Russia's defence ministry, paving the way for the delivery of sorely needed humanitarian relief to rebel-held areas north of the city of Homs. Military spokesman Major General Igor Konashenkov said Russia would deploy military police in the area on Friday and set up two checkpoints and three observation points around its borders. "It's important that people can live again," said Mustapha Khaled, an opposition activist working for a media centre in the town of Talbisah, in north Homs province. It is the third of four planned ceasefires reached in recent months under an agreement brokered by Russia, Iran and Turkey in May that aims to "de-escalate" the violent and prolonged Syrian civil war. Russia and Iran are providing military support to President Bashar Assad, while Turkey sponsors some of the opposition forces arrayed against him. Pro-government forces have besieged the enclave north of Homs for years, but have been unable to capture it from the opposition even as it recovered territory elsewhere. Shelling and air strikes against the enclave have eased since the May agreement was signed, said Mr Khaled. Residents will now be expecting further relief. The agreement, according to notes leaked by the British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group, follows the model of another ceasefire zone for the suburbs of Damascus. Both truces were negotiated in Cairo between Russia and what the ministry of defence described as the "moderate opposition". Aid will be expected to flow again to north Homs, and Russia will man checkpoints around the enclave to facilitate the movement of civilians in and out of the enclave to revitalise the economy. The agreement also prescribes the release of political prisoners, long a demand of the opposition. The UN has long pleaded with the sides in Syria to allow relief to flow to besieged areas. It says the parties are using food and other basic goods as a weapon of war. Pro-government forces have been responsible for most of the obstructionism. The north Homs enclave holds 147,000 people, according to the military media arm of the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, a participant in the conflict. The government's air force has cut back its attacks on the four "de-escalation zones" designated in the May agreement. There are still loopholes for fighting however, characteristic of the ceasefires that have come and gone throughout the war. The government has pounded parts of the Damascus suburbs nominally covered under the ceasefire there, on the grounds that it is targeting al Qaida-linked militants, as permissible in the agreements. The observatory says 170 people have been killed in the 12 days since the ceasefire there went into effect, calling the truce a "failure". Other such ceasefires have crumbled under the strain of these attacks. Also on Thursday, a 117-bus convoy from Lebanon carrying thousands of refugees and al Qaida-linked militants arrived at a transfer point in the western Syrian province of Hama, en route to the rebel-held Idlib province in north-west Syria. Idlib is dominated by a Syrian affiliate of al Qaida. The buses will be released towards the north in staggered groups as the militants in Idlib release prisoners from Hezbollah, which is fighting in support of Assad's government in Syria. The swap is part of an agreement struck this week to provide al Qaida-linked militants with safe passage out of Lebanon. Some 6,000 Syrians elected to leave Lebanon with the fighters. It followed two weeks of battles between Hezbollah and the Syrian government on the one side, and the al Qaida-linked militants on the other, along the frontier between Lebanon and Syria. AP The ASEAN Regional Forum groups the US and North Korea with 25 other countries (Wong Maye-E/AP) Washington is seeking talks on how North Korea can be suspended from Asia's biggest security forum, US and Philippine officials said. It is part of a broader effort to isolate Pyongyang diplomatically and force it to end its missile tests and abandon its nuclear weapons programme. Susan Thornton, acting assistant secretary for East Asian and Pacific Affairs, told reporters in Washington that North Korea's actions have violated the conflict-prevention aims of the ASEAN Regional Forum, which groups the US and North Korea with 25 other countries. The Philippines is hosting an annual ministerial meeting on Monday of the 27-nation ARF which will be attended by US secretary of state Rex Tillerson and North Korean foreign minister Ri Yong Ho. Mr Tillerson has no plans to meet Mr Ri on the sidelines of the meeting, Ms Thornton said. With the US, Japan and South Korea expected to push for stronger actions against the North, a verbal showdown looms at the forum. "What we have been sort of looking at is having a serious discussion of what it would take for a member to be suspended from this organisation that is dedicated to conflict prevention and preventive diplomacy," Ms Thornton said. "I think we're going to continue to have that conversation as it regards North Korea," "What we've been doing is going around talking to partners about what more could they do to contribute to that increasing pressure on the regime and the increasing sort of diplomatic isolation of the regime," she said. Two Filipino officials told the Associated Press that US officials have discussed such a prospect with Philippine officials, who told them it may be better to keep North Korea in the forum, where it can be persuaded to stop provocations through dialogue. A North Korean delegation led by its vice foreign minister flew to Manila last week and told Philippine officials of their hope for a "favourable environment" when Pyongyang's top diplomat attends the ARF meetings in Manila, said the officials. In response, the Philippine officials told the North Koreans they could not guarantee that because other member states, such as South Korea, Japan and the United States, would definitely raise alarm over Pyongyang's continued missile tests. They asked the delegation why North Korea staged an intercontinental ballistic missile test last week, days before the ARF meeting, and then expected not to be confronted by other nations over it, the officials said. Asked at a news conference in Manila if the Philippines would back efforts to remove North Korea from the ARF, department of foreign affairs spokesman Robespierre Bolivar did not reply categorically but said the grouping serves as a venue to air concerns and hold constructive dialogue. There was no clear procedure in removing a member state, he said. While it may be too late for Pyongyang to be barred from the ARF meeting this year, Ms Thornton said Washington would continue to "push the organisation to think about what kinds of suspension measures or requirements or stipulations might be included in the future". Foreign ministers of the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations, or ASEAN, will express grave concerns over the North's continuing missile tests when they meet on Saturday ahead of the ARF meeting, according to a draft of their joint communique to be issued after the ASEAN meeting. Founded in 1993 by ASEAN foreign ministers, the ARF aims to foster dialogue and consultation on political and security concerns among Asia-Pacific nations. Like ASEAN, the ARF decides by consensus, meaning any initiative can be rejected by just one opposing member, a principle that can possibly hamper any US move against North Korea if the latter would be backed up by countries such as China. AP Due to construction delays, the new building at Kannapolis Middle School will not be ready for the start of school on Aug. 28. However, all KMS students will start school on time on Aug. 28, and they will have access to all their regular courses and extra-curricular activities. The Kannapolis City Schools Board of Education has approved a plan for starting school at Kannapolis Middle School that is designed to make things as easy as possible for all KMS students and families. For the first half of the school year, all seventh- and eighth-grade students will be housed in the current Kannapolis Middle School building just as they have been in the past. Sixth-grade students that live in transportation zones closest to KMSthose in the Shady Brook and Fred L. Wilson transportation zoneswill attend class at the current KMS building. The remaining sixth-graders will be housed at G.W. Carver Elementary for the first half of the school year. When Christmas break ends in January, all KMS students will be back at the Kannapolis Middle School campus. Board members said they believe the plan is the best way to deal with the construction delays. Were extremely disappointed that the new building wont be opening on time as we had planned, school board chair, Todd Adams, said. However, were pleased with the plan that Dr. [Chip] Buckwell, [superintendent], and his team have developed. We think it does a good job of making sure our students, staff and parents can go through this process with as little disruption as possible. Buckwell said it was extremely important to have a plan to make sure school could continue uninterrupted. We really hoped we could be inside the new middle school building in time for school to start, he said. However, construction delays just arent letting that happen. We know this is not an ideal situation, but we will do everything we can to make things as easy as possible for KMS students and families. Were making sure that all KMS students will keep their same teacher all year. Were making sure they will ride the same bus all year, and were making sure they will have access to all their regular classes and extra-curricular activities. Well do our best to make everything as seamless as possible. Well also do everything we can to communicate personally and effectively with all KMS families. During the week of Aug. 7, all sixth-grade families will receive a personal letter and a personal phone call with specific information for their child and the plans for the upcoming year. KMS also will have information for all middle school families at the schools open house on Saturday, Aug. 26. The open house will be held at Kannapolis Middle School and will include specific information for each family about what to expect for the coming school year. The KMS plan approved by the school board on Aug. 2 includes the following details: All seventh- and eighth-grade students will be housed in the current KMS building for the first half of the school year. When students report back to school at the end of Christmas break in January, seventh- and eighth-graders will begin classes in the new middle school building. KCS will house 10 classes of sixth-graders at G.W. Carver Elementary for the first half of the school year only. The remaining sixth-grade classes (six classrooms) will be located at the current KMS building. All middle school students will be assigned to their regular teacher at the start of the year and will stay with those teachers throughout the year. All middle school students, regardless of whether they are at KMS or G.W. Carver to start the year, will attend school on the middle school schedule. Middle school classes will begin at 7:15 a.m. each day and will dismiss at 2:10 p.m. each day. Because KMS students will remain on the middle school schedule, there will be no disruption for students or families at G.W. Carver Elementary. G.W. Carver Elementary students will be dropped off in the morning and dismissed in the afternoon 90 minutes later than KMS students. They also will eat breakfast and lunch more than an hour later, so there will be no overlap or disruption to transportation or meal services. In addition, KMS students attending G.W. Carver will have their art, PE, band, music and other special classes at the start of the day before G.W. Carver students arrive for school. That will free up those art and PE areas for G.W. Carver students to use during their regular school day, and G.W. Carver students will get the full benefit of all their arts magnet programs. KMS students that attend G.W. Carver for the first part of the year will have access to a middle school guidance counselor, middle school administrator, middle school secretary and middle school teachers that will be housed at G.W. Carver. KMS students also will have full access to extra-curricular activities as well as middle school music, art, AIG, EC, PE, CTE and other special services. Transportation services will remain the same for all KMS students throughout the year. Sixth-graders that attend G.W. Carver will ride the same bus they normally would ride. Once the move is made to the new school in January, KMS students will remain on the same bus they had been using all year. In order to make the transition for KMS students and staff as smooth as possible, KCS plans to move into the new middle school building over the Christmas break. That will allow plenty of time for all materials and furniture to be in place and ready for learning on the first day back in January. It also will allow plenty of time for construction of the new middle school building to be completed. Buckwell said making a move like this over a natural break in the school year is important. Ive talked with other superintendents about their experiences, and Ive looked back to when weve moved into new schools in KCS in the past, he said. In every case, its been best to move when there is a regular break in the school year rather than trying to rush things over a weekend or a teacher work day. We want to do this right, and we want to do what is best for our kids. Our goal is for our teachers to be ready to teach in their new classrooms on the first day back in January without having to worry about unpacking boxes and being distracted by a move. To help middle school students feel more comfortable, KMS will hold an open house on Tuesday, Jan. 2. That will allow students and families to come see their new classrooms and to get to know where things are located in their new buildings. For more information, go to https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B6IS8mj9YgtuWHVGSEljR3dnMUk/view. By Vasundhara Rastogi The goods and services tax (GST) the biggest tax reform in India finally came into existence on July 1, 2017, after 17 years of deliberations between successive ruling governments and opposition parties. While the Modi government continues its positive propaganda around the GST, several myths and misconceptions remain. This article notes five key facts for businesses to get a transparent view about how the GST actually functions. Myth 1: GST will result in reduced compliance. Fact: The Input Tax Credit (ITC) mechanism is the backbone of GST regime and prevents price increase due to cascading taxes. While ITC aims to bring down the cost of production, the mechanism is a nightmare in terms of compliance. To claim ITC, manufacturers, and service providers have to go through a maze of differentiated slabs, rates, and classifications. In fact, businesses operating in multiple states are required to register themselves in each state to avail the ITC. A registration in every state means understanding and complying with the ITC rules of each state, making tax payments in every state, and filing SGST returns in every state resulting in the increased compliance burden. Further, the invoice-to-invoice matching system under GST requires multiple monthly returns and audits to claim ITC. This will increase the scope for bureaucratic intervention, considering there are multiple tax rates for each product. RELATED: Tax Compliance Advisory Myth 2: GST will subsume all indirect taxes. Fact: While GST subsumes most indirect taxes from the pre-GST era, certain levies have been kept out of its purview for certain commodities. These include basic customs duty, countervailing duty, excise duty on tobacco products, export duty, taxes on petroleum and petroleum products, taxes on electricity, and state excise on liquor. Myth 3: There is no cascading effect of taxes under GST. Fact: The cascading effect in tax parlance refers to the concept of double taxation. Although GST significantly reduces the cascading effect of taxes, it does not completely eliminate it. As discussed in the previous point, GST does not subsume all indirect taxes. Therefore, levy of such taxes, in addition to GST, continues the process of double taxation. For instance, goods used for setting up a power plant, such as power equipment and machinery, are liable to GST, yet, because electricity does not fall under GST, the ITC cannot be availed on tax paid for such goods. This disbalance of not being able to claim tax credits ultimately results in the higher cost of electricity production. RELATED: Impact of GST on Imports and Exports in India Myth 4: Businesses with annual financial turnover below US$31,320 (Rs 2 million) do not need to register under GST. Fact: This special provision for small businesses is narrowly defined; it does not include: Small businesses making any taxable supply to other states. In other words, even if a business is involved in an interstate transaction of only $1.5 (Rs 100), it must register itself under GST; Casual taxable persons like small exhibitors, or temporary businesses; Small businesses run by non-resident persons; Persons who are required to deduct or collect tax at source (TDS/TCS under GST); and Persons who are required to pay under reverse charge. As a result, all the above-mentioned businesses and persons, despite having a turnover below US$31,320 (Rs 2 million) must register themselves under GST. RELATED: GST Returns Filing in India: All You Need to Know Myth 5: The composition scheme simplifies tax procedure, reduces compliance cost for small business, and helps improve the business environment in the country. Fact: Benefits under the composition scheme for businesses having an annual financial turnover of less than US$117,859 (Rs 7.5 million) are highly limited. The scheme as follows: Does not allow its beneficiary to carry out interstate businesses. Does not allow input credit on business-to-business (B2B) transactions. That means, a buyer making purchases from the composition scheme beneficiary (composite tax payer) will not get any credit for the tax paid on the purchased item. This could potentially result in loss of business for scheme beneficiaries. Is not applicable to suppliers supplying goods through e-commerce. Does not allow beneficiaries to recover taxes from their buyers, as they cannot raise a tax invoice under the scheme, even though the rate of composition tax is kept minimal at 0.5 percent, 1 percent, or 2.5 percent. As a result, the beneficiary must bear the tax burden on their own. Additionally, there is a stringent penalty on tax payers under the composition scheme, if they are found to be not eligible or if the permission granted earlier was incorrectly granted. 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 Dem Wild Boyz From Nick Cannons Wild N Out, comedians Karlous Miller, DC Young Fly and Chico Bean will hit the stage at Mortys Comedy Joint, located at 3824 E. 82nd St. Shows are on Aug. 11 at 7:15 p.m. and Aug. 12 at 9:45 p.m., and advance tickets are $20 for regular admission or $30 for VIP. Visit mortyscomedy.com or call (317) 273-9727 for more information. 160th State Fair With different tasty themed days, the Indiana State Fair is back and better than ever. Going on Aug. 420, there are events for the entire family. The Fair will be held at the Indiana State Fairgrounds at 1202 E. 38th St. For more information, visit indianastatefair.com. Broad Ripple Carnival Looking for a fun-filled weekend with the family? The Broad Ripple Carnival is the perfect place. Happening Aug. 1013, there will be rides, games, food and much more. The Broad Ripple Carnival will take place at 1500 Broad Ripple Ave. For more information, visit broadripplecarnival.org. Pride Academy Block Party On Aug. 12, bring your family out to Pride Academy West I or II, located at 5570 Crawfordsville Road and 5615 W. 22nd St, respectively, for a day of fun. From 10 a.m.2 p.m., there will be free food, a health fair, vendors and games. For more information, visit prideacademy317.com. Step Out: Walk to Stop Diabetes On Aug. 12, come out and be a part of the movement to stop diabetes. Be sure to bring your family and friends, as the money that is raised will make a difference in the fight against the disease. Register at (888)-DIABETES or visit diabetes.org/indywalk. More than 2,000 creatives from artists and musicians to actors and magicians take over the streets of Cuba each year during a colorful celebration known as the Festival del Caribe. Last month, a group of 11 Indiana University students, along with faculty members and alumni, traveled over a thousand miles to be among the crowd. These scholars didnt come as spectators or tourists; they came with the goal of learning new moves and showcasing their skills on a global stage. The students are members of IUs African American Dance Company, a dance collective and for-credit class offered by Indiana University. The African American Dance Company teaches dance styles of the African Diaspora, including modern, jazz, African and Latin American techniques. Iris Rosa, founding director of the African American Dance Company, first visited Cuba in the 1990s. Her desire to have her students experience the countrys rich history was brought to life when Cuban dance artist Milagros Ramirez, who is an instructor at the African American Dance Company Annual Dance Workshop, helped the dance company secure a spot in the festival and organize their trip. Most of the students expenses, including their plane tickets and room and board, were covered. While in Cuba, the students participated in dance workshops led by professional dance companies. On the fourth day of their trip, they learned the fundamental movements of Vogue dance. On the fifth day, they took part in a dance workshop led by Ballet Folklorico de Oriente and later performed Rosas Anatomy of Freedom composition during the Festival del Caribe. Performing for hundreds of spectators and taking part in diverse dance workshops was only part of the experience. The travelers also had the opportunity to immerse themselves in Cuban culture. We were on the eastern part of the island, and it was very historical. It has a lot of Haitian influence, West Indian influence and indigenous Cuban influences. They were immersed in history with the African slave trade and heavy African influence in songs and music, culture and food, said Rosa. Ryan Malone, an IU senior studying theater, was one of the students who ventured overseas with the dance company. While performing on a global stage and learning new choreography were highlights of his experience, some of his most memorable moments involved taking in the energy, culture and history of Cuba. To me personally, there is a different sort of spiritual energy happening everywhere we went. One day, we went to a ceremony where a priest was being inducted into the priesthood, and there was so much raw spiritual energy that it was just like going to church. There was a magical quality to it that I dont know how to describe, but its in your soul, said Malone. While in Cuba, the students met locals, explored the countryside and visited a copper mining town, a Catholic church and a coffee plantation. Malone said some of what he witnessed was hard to take in. We ended up going to this old coffee plantation in the mountains, and we learned about the process of how they made coffee. We walked into the living conditions they were in, and the working conditions they were under, said Malone. They had nine people shoved into a little tiny room with no window and one door that opened only from the outside. Thats where they kept the slaves. We saw all the chambers of where they would hold slaves for misbehaving, and how they treated women who were pregnant. Malone recalls a hole in the ground that pregnant women would stick their bellies into during beatings in order to protect the baby. The students also examined tools that slave masters used for torture. That was the most impactful visit that we had during that trip historically, because so much of what our dance company talks about is the Black experience, said Malone. Even though we were split apart from our people and our history and culture, we all experienced a unity in that horrible torture and slavery, unity in that we are all going through this together. Thats the bigger story that I drew from it. Rosa says some of the students in the dance company traveled to Beijing earlier this year, but this trip was some of the students first time traveling outside of the U.S. She feels traveling abroad challenges students preconceived notions about the world. Its a Communist country. We always have these thoughts that its all bad and awful, but going to Cuba, we are with people who live, work, have kids, have free education, free health care. The challenges are, there is not as much medicine, so (the students) were able to weigh a lot of that stuff. Overseas experiences mature students; they look at the world through different lenses. They look at African-descent people and learn there is a wider lens to look at Blackness and history. They were exposed to other cultures outside the United States. It teaches tolerance. It teaches what they have to do to exist in another environment, said Rosa. Malone traveled with the dance company to both China and Cuba and says travel has expanded his worldview immensely. When you go to another country, you say, Wow, this is a complete cultural overhaul of how we do things here. Its a great way to see how other people are living and experiencing the world. The African American Dance Company has been invited back to perform at next years Festival del Caribe, and though professor Rosa is now retired, she hopes the new director of the dance company, renowned choreographer and teacher Stafford C. Berry Jr., will keep this opportunity alive for the next generation of students. For more information on the African American Dance Companys trip to Cuba and other trips by the dance company, visit blogs.iu.edu/aadctravel. Nurse Catherine Bizz Grimes moves like her name sounds: at a frenetic pace. She darts across the hall from the prenatal diagnosis clinic at Indiana University Health University Hospital in Indianapolis, sits down at her cubicle, puts on her headset over curly white blonde hair and starts dialing. A pen in one hand, a notepad in the other, she logs every call. She calls this her log of Medicaid messes and nightmares. She invested 57 minutes in one patients case the previous day (put on hold once, forwarded three times). This is round two. Its like, OK, this has become a battle, and Im going to win, Grimes says. And I usually do. Grimes spends more than 20 hours a week calling pharmacy directors and insurance plan supervisors. Shes fighting to get insurers to cover her pregnant patients addiction medicine keeping them in stable treatment for the length of their pregnancy. Insurers set rules that sometime make patients wait for days for their addiction medicine. Pregnant women with addictions need a medication called Subutex (buprenorphine) to have healthy pregnancies. Without Subutex, or a similar medication such as methadone, patients will go through withdrawal. They could possibly deliver early and lose their baby or relapse and expose the baby to infections. And of course, if they relapse, they could overdose. Even though most insurers cover Subutex, insurance plans require paperwork, called a prior authorization, before theyll approve its use. Prior authorization requirements are especially onerous for pregnant women on Medicaid, who may have to submit new paperwork multiple times during their pregnancy. Any one of these could become a potential crisis. Whats so frustrating about it is their pregnancy in theory could be held hostage by these people who are not medical professionals, says Grimes. Waiting for meds The prenatal diagnosis clinic, where Grimes works, is a Riley Childrens Health program located at IU Health University Hospital. They specialize in working with mothers addicted to opioids and rely on Grimes to handle insurance obstacles and keep patients in consistent treatment. Almost all of her patients are covered through Medicaid. Prior authorizations can be riddled with bureaucratic hold-ups and clerical errors. Grimes spends a lot of time re-faxing information shes already sent, such as patients drug test results or proof theyre in therapy. The hounding phone calls ensure these bureaucratic errors get fixed quickly. Without someone like Grimes to help, many women give up when they get a denial. Grimes never does. One woman Grimes helped is Briana Roahrig. A 33-year-old mother of two girls, shed been in and out of treatment for an addiction to opioids that started when she got hurt in a diving accident at 17. Grimes got Roahrigs insurance plan to approve the paperwork for her medicine. But then the plan mistakenly sent her a letter, denying coverage. Since she couldnt afford the medication out-of-pocket, Roahrig stopped coming to the clinic and got sick from withdrawal. Roahrig says, before Grimes, she fought her prior authorization battles alone. Sometimes approval took over a week. Sometimes shed sweat it out, other times shed relapse. Sometimes when she was stuck in bed from the withdrawal symptoms, shed pull her daughters into bed with her and give them an iPad to play with. Then I struggle to get up to make them food, she says. This time, when Roahrig didnt show up to her appointment, Grimes called. She got things worked out within hours. If Bizz wasnt around, I would have been screwed. I would have been without meds still, but she called and called and called until it finally went through, says Roahrig. Inconsistent coverage Often, patients have to get multiple prior authorizations throughout their pregnancy. When a woman becomes pregnant, shell likely need to shift from her current medicine to Subutex. During pregnancy, the state could switch a patient to a different insurance plan for pregnant women, or a doctor could prescribe a higher dose (common during a third trimester). After delivery, she might need to switch to another medication. All these steps can require separate prior authorizations. Its just insane. I mean, its not like its some unusual drug that only a few number of people need, says Grimes. Its an epidemic. Addiction treatment specialists say these roadblocks are a deliberate effort by the insurance industry to limit costs, though industry representatives argue they need prior authorizations to prevent people from abusing the opioid-based medication. The U.S. passed a law in 2008 requiring insurers to treat mental and physical illnesses equally, but there are still inconsistencies in practice. Dr. Louis Baxter, past president of the American Society of Addiction Medicine, points out the strict prior authorization requirements for Subutex and other forms of buprenorphine are generally not applied to opioid painkillers. A doctor can write a prescription for oxycontin or morphine sulfate. The patient can take the prescription to the pharmacy and get it filled no problem, he says. From our standpoint that is not equitable. In a report published by the federal government in 2014, researchers found that prior authorizations were in use in Medicaid programs in 48 states. It can be a matter of life and death, says Baxter. If a patient has to wait for three to five days, they may start using heroin or other opioids again. Hes even had a patient who overdosed and died while waiting. Last year, New York outlawed prior authorizations for its Medicaid insurance plans. In New Jersey, a new law will go into effect in January to require insurers to provide at least a six-month supply of the meds while waiting for prior authorizations. But in many states, patients still face administrative barriers. To read Emily Formans full report, visit sideeffectspublicmedia.org. Black August is a movement that originated out of the California prison system to honor fallen members of the Black liberation movement of the 1970s, many of whom had been imprisoned or assassinated. Some notable figures of the movement are George Jackson and Angela Davis. Additionally, several historical events for Black people across the diaspora, occurred in August including: the Haitian Revolution, Nat Turner Rebellion, Fugitive Slave Law Convention, foundation of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, March on Washington and many others. Black August has evolved to include film festivals, hip-hop concerts and mass letter writing initiatives to prisoners all over the world with all activities structured to focus on spreading the message of liberation and activism. The observance also includes events designed to bring awareness to the prison industrial complex, food insecurity, economic disparities and other issues that plague the Black community. For the past several years its been my tradition to write about the second Saturday night of Indiana Black Expos Summer Celebration. It started back in the days when that evening turned into a John Singleton version of Lord of the Flies. Remember Shamus Patton, who shot several people? Of course. It took a while, but through the efforts of Expo, the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department (IMPD), good parenting and, much to the chagrin of the professional agitator class, Ten Point Coalition, there were no major problems this year. Except for a couple of minor issues, the cops and kids were all good, and that Saturday night looked like any other Saturday evening. So whats a political pundit to write about? Easy. The Black activist DONT SLEEP rally that took place at the Indiana Statehouse earlier that day. When I walked over after finishing my Saturday afternoon radio show at WIBC, I thought I was at the wrong rally, because there were a lot more white people there than Blacks. In fact, there were so many white people there (a three-to-one ratio) by some counts, that I thought I was at a Mumford and Sons tribute band concert in Fountain Square. I am not making this up. In other words, there were a lot more white people caring about Black lives than Black people. And theres a certain amount of irony in that. Lets face it: The whole point of Saturdays rally was to protest the police-action shooting of Aaron Bailey by two IMPD officers. Heck, the leader of the group, Dominic Dorsey, even said the officers should have been charged with murder. If Dorsey and his crowd were hoping to ignite a Black consciousness movement, they failed miserably. If they were trying to rally a bunch of aging baby boomer hippies and part-time baristas, then it was mission accomplished. The rhetoric was typical, although I will say putting IMPD and State Police officers in the same sentence as the slave patrols of the 1800s was a new twist. Otherwise, it was pretty standard stuff. If they wanted a bigger crowd, they should have bought a booth at Indiana Black Expo down the street at the convention center. Thats where most of the Black people were, indoors and with air conditioning. They were either checking out the states colleges and universities that were there, participating in the health fair, enjoying the rap concert or talking to the hundreds of vendors there. Nope, instead the DONT SLEEP/Black Lives Matter crowd drew the hipsters and people most likely to serve you a tall latte, with skim (or almond milk), and no sweetener. FYI, there was no food truck with kale sliders (gluten free) and arugula juice. Theres a certain amount of irony that just makes you want to chuckle if it werent so serious. Granted, I did get a little nervous when the white people in the crowd did the raised-fist Black-power salute. While I thought someone was going to start speaking German, my fears were unfounded. And I also had to express some disappointment that there was no call to get the facts first in the Aaron Bailey shooting and let the chips fall where they may. And later that evening, none of these folks were anywhere to be found doing any of the faith patrols, which were crucial in keeping things going smoothly. But that requires work, and if folks are too intellectually lazy to get the facts first, why should I be shocked that physical exertion would also not be on the agenda? Maybe these guys will draw bigger, less diverse crowds when all the facts come out, but until then the revolution has been culturally appropriated by progressive white privilege. And when that white privilege drove home, it didnt have to worry about getting pulled over in a traffic stop. Abdul-Hakim Shabazz is an attorney, political commentator and publisher of IndyPolitics.org. You can email comments to him at abdul@indypolitics.org. Jesus took Peter, James, and his brother, John, and led them up a high mountain by themselves. And he was transfigured before them; his face shone like the sun and his clothes became white as light. (Matthew 17:1-2) This weekend the Catholic Church commemorates this event in the life of Jesus, known as the Transfiguration. In the Gospel account, the three Apostles also see Moses and Elijah standing and talking with Jesus. The reason this event takes on such a great importance for the Church is because it has meanings for us on both a spiritual and a practical level. On the spiritual level, the appearance of Moses and Elijah are significant. Moses is the lawgiver. The laws he passes on to the people, however, are not his, but they came from God. His appearance with Jesus signifies to the Apostles that Gods laws were important to Jesus. As Jesus himself says elsewhere in the Gospel, he did not come to abolish the law but to fulfill it. So Jesus becomes the embodiment of Gods laws, which makes it even that much more important to follow Jesus. Elijah was one of the great prophets of the Old Testament. The role of the prophet was to bring Gods message to the people as to how God wanted them to live. If they had deviated from Gods ways, the prophet was to correct the people and tell them to get back on track. If the people were confused or didnt know how to live the way God wanted them to, the prophet was to bring enlightenment and understanding. Elijahs presence meant that Jesus was also fulfilling the role of prophet by being Gods Word bringing enlightenment, correction and understanding to the people. So from a spiritual perspective, Jesus himself is the law and the prophet. It is in Jesus that we learn what God wants of us, and it is in him that we get the spiritual gifts we need to actually do what we learn from Jesus. The practical lesson we learn from the Transfiguration is not so much in the vision itself. Notice that Jesus took them up a high mountain in order to do this revelation. But at the end of the passage, they had to come back down the mountain and resume their everyday life. That is the practical lesson for us all. So often we have a great spiritual experience. It may be because we were on a retreat or a revival. Or maybe we went to a conference. Or it could have been simply some time spent in nature. It could be that the experience felt so good that we didnt want to leave. The Apostles experience at the Transfiguration reminds us that no matter how powerful a spiritual experience is, the time comes when we have to come down off the mountain and rejoin our everyday life. But when we do so, we need to do it as a changed person. A spiritual experience is supposed to change the way we look at life, the way we approach life and the way we react with others. The experience does us no good if just makes us want to stay away from our Christian duties and simply enjoy the good feelings. It also does us no good if we come back to our normal life not having changed at all, just continuing to live the same as before. Strong spiritual experiences are good, and we should seek them out. But they are also meant to change us so that we can have a positive effect on the world around us. It is important that we dont forget that. Fr. Kenneth Taylor is pastor of Holy Angels Catholic Church and St. Rita Catholic Church. He can be reached at fatherkt@mailhaven.com. The rumours around mysterious creatures chopping off the braids of women in and around the National Capital Region (NCR) has claimed its first victim. An elderly Dalit woman was lynched to death by a mob of Baghels (a community) in Agra' Mutnai village on Wednesday morning. According to reports the woman, Mandevi (65) had entered the village after she lost her way to her home after relieving herself. The villagers thought she was an "evil witch" who had come to cut the hair of women in the village and attacked her with sticks. "She kept pleading for mercy and even identified herself, but the violent men kept on attacking her. They called her witch and believed that she came to chop off the braids of women. She died on her way to hospital," Mandevi's son Manoj Jaatav said. Police said the lynching happened after a girl who spotted Mandevi who was wearing a white saree got scared. Hearing her girl's cry the villagers gathered on the spot a began beating her up accusing her of being a witch. Police said they are investigating the case and the men suspected of leading the attack are on the run. Investigators believe the rumors of mysterious incidents of braid choppings in Rajasthan, Haryana and Delhi recently. Nearly two dozen such cases have been reported in the past couple of weeks from NCR. But what is baffling is that none of the victims can identify the attacker. In some cases they claim it was a mysterious looking old man, in other cases the women did not even realise that their hair has been cut. They however reported experiencing a strong headache. This has lead to all kinds of rumours making rounds, blaming it on aliens, cat man, witch etc. Speaking to Indiatimes police authorities said they are investigating the incidents and urged the public to refrain from spreading such misinformation. The family of Harshit Sharma, a 16-year-old school student from Chandigarh who made headlines a couple of days ago after it was reported that the teenager had been offered a graphic designer job in Google said he has been left devastated after it emerged that the job was a hoax. According to his mother Bharti Sharma, Harshit had fallen victim to a hoax phone call which claimed that he had been selected for a graphic artist job in Google. Harshit got a phone call. We did not believe it at first. I kept telling him it could be a hoax. He shared the information with his school principal, who further released a press note, which led to media coverage, Bharti told Hindustan Times. BCCL/ File According to report ever since Google officially denied hiring Harshit, the teenager has traumatised and is hospitalised. The family said it was the school authorities that issued a press release and not them. Indra Beniwal, the principal of the Government Model Senior Secondary School (GMSSS) where Harshit was a student said the family has admitted that their son has made a mistake. "Harshit's parents have accepted that their son has committed a mistake (by claiming to have been selected by Google)," Ms Beniwal said. She added that the school had issued the press release based on documents Harshit had provided. Harshit's parents however said he had only told the principal about the call and did not provide any documents. However another teacher Deep Kiran calimed that Harshit had in fact forwarded his offer letter to her on WhatsApp. He told me he had applied to Google online and was selected. He told me would be leaving for US in the next few days, she told the New Indian Express. Following the embarrassing episode, the Chandigarh administration has ordered a probe into the matter and sought a report from the school. "We should have verified the documents," Ms Beniwal said. A 65-year-old mentally challenged woman was beaten to death yesterday in Uttar Pradeshs Agra on the suspicion of her practising witchcraft and being involved in hair chopping. Several cases of women losing their hair have been reported in states like Rajasthan, Gujarat, UP, Haryana and even in Delhi and rumour mills have started doing what they do best-churn out the rumours. istockphoto.com The braids of women are being chopped off and the number of such cases across the country has gone up to more than a hundred. People, meanwhile are suggested to refrain from fanning rumours that have already pushed people into panic mode. Here are some of the rumours that are being circulated on social media sites, WhatsApp and even through media because the stories opinion of the victims are taken and some of them have told really unbelievable things. 1. Cat Woman Victims of braid chopping in Haryana Mewat area explained that they saw a woman wearing black clothes of scissors taking shape of a cat before getting unconscious and losing their braids. 2. Mysteriously looking old man Many have claimed that she saw a mysteriously different old man with a trident. A victim in Gurgaon claimed that an old man came at the door and when she asked him to go away, she fell unconscious. She found her braids chopped off once she regained consciousness. 3. Ghost The ghost stories have also been put in the market and people are buying them with both hands. Sorcerers who claim to control the evil spirits are cashing on this opportunity and earning good amount of money. 4. Witch In Agra, a woman was murdered by a group of people on suspicion of being witch involved in chopping off locks of the women. The witch theory too has garnered great potential in the rumour circulated because witches and witchcraft is often associated with women hair. 5. Alien Some people have claimed that these are aliens are chopping off women braids across north India. Their concocted pictures are doing rounds on WhatsApp and other social media avenues. But they are rumours and let's not buy them. Police of various states are working and soon the real culprit behind these incidents will get nabbed. Two Indian Army personnel, including a major were killed in a gunfight with terrorists in Jammu and Kashmir's Shopian. The terrorists opened fire after security forces approached the site which killed the soldier. The slain officer has been identified as Major Kamlesh Pandey. Read more 1. 65-YO Dalit Woman Accused Of Being 'Hair Chopping Witch' Lynched By A Mob In Agra The rumours around mysterious creatures chopping off the braids of women in and around the National Capital Region (NCR) has claimed its first victim. An elderly Dalit woman was lynched to death by a mob of Baghels (a community) in Agra' Mutnai village on Wednesday morning. Read more 2. Summoned In Terror Funding Case To Delhi, Separatist Geelani's Son Wants Travel Allowance National Investigation Agency (NIA) called Naseem Geelani, the younger son of Hurriyat leader Syed Ali Shah Geelani to Delhi to face questions in case of terror funding for Kashmiri separatists. He however asked NIA to call him through his university because if he visits Delhi without coming through the university, he wont be able to claim the travel allowance and other benefits. Read more 3. A Hoax Call Made Punjab Teenager Believe That Google Hired Him At Rs 1.44 Cr Per Annum Salary The family of Harshit Sharma, a 16-year-old school student from Chandigarh who made headlines a couple of days ago after it was reported that the teenager had been offered a graphic designer job in Google said he has been left devastated after it emerged that the job was a hoax. According to his mother Bharti Sharma, Harshit had fallen victim to a hoax phone call which claimed that he had been selected for a graphic artist job in Google. Read more 4. Govt To Scrap No-Detention Policy In Schools, Clears Plan To Fail Students In Classes V, VIII The Union Cabinet has approved the scrapping of the no-detention policy in schools till Class VIII. An enabling provision will be made in the Right of Children for Free and Compulsory Education Amendment Bill, which will allow states to hold back students in class V and class VIII if they fail in the year-end examination. Read more 5. US Revises Immigration Policy Favouring Young English Speaking Highly Qualified People And That Is Good News For Indians President Donald Trump announced his support for a legislation that would cut in half the number legal immigrants allowed into the US while moving to a "merit-based" system favouring English-speaking skilled workers for residency cards. If passed by the Congress and signed into law, the legislation titled the Reforming American Immigration for Strong Employment (RAISE) Act could benefit highly-educated and technology professionals from countries like India. Read more Health authorities and aid workers in Canada have opened the Olympic Stadium in Montreal to house refugees crossing over from the United States of America. On Wednesday, local health workers and the Quebec Red Cross threw open the doors of the stadium to welcome asylum seekers who were brought in by bus after crossing the US border, said Stephanie Picard of the Red Cross. the canadian press The Red Cross is working diligently to offer beds and other personal care items to the ever-increasing number of refugees. Over 4,300 refugees came to Canada this year seeking refugee status, most of them flocking Quebec. reuters Reuters reports that a majority of these people left the US following President Donald Trump's immigration ban. Mayor of Montreal, Denis Coderre welcomed the refugees on Twitter and explained that 2,500 people were welcomed in July alone. After nine weeks of abduction, a nursing mother identified as Mrs Roselyn Okokingho, finally regained her freedom from the hands of her abductors gunmen in Town Brass in Brass local Government Area of Bayelsa. This was confirmed by the husband of the victim, Mr Pius Okokingho, he told the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on Wednesday that his wife, who regained freedom on Tuesday. He said that her abductors dropped her off at a lonely place along the Brass river waterways from where she was rescued by sympathisers. He said that the joy of the new baby who was reunited with the lactating mother whose abduction denied the baby of breast milk, knew no bounds when his wife returned home. According to him, the incident had compelled the family to resort to infant formular rather than the exclusive breast milk that the baby was used to. Although he declined to disclose if ransom was paid, he, however, said that the kidnappers had established telephone contact with him and demanded for N10 million ransom, but his offer of N100, 000 was turned down. I can confirm that my wife is back and I thank God that she is in good health, I am also grateful to sympathisers that came to her rescue and those who stood by me during the traumatic two weeks. I also applaud the media for the selfless advocacy for the freedom of my wife. I am sure they were under intense pressure as the kidnappers said that the incident was enjoying media spotlight, an indication that I had money, but I told them it was public service, he said. The attack of Boko Haram Terrorists have continued to be on a rise, the recent of the attack is in Adamawa state, Northeast Nigeria, where seven persons were killed. The attack took place at Mildo community, Madagali Local Government Area of the state, according to PUNCH. The attack comes days after the insurgents ambushed some Nigerian oil explorers in the Lake Chad region. Over 4O people were killed in the botched rescue attempt by security operatives. Three of the explorers from the University of Maiduguri, UNIMAID are still in captivity of the terrorists. As part of efforts to promote Lagos states Smart City Initiatives, SCI, commercial bus conductors in the state will start wearing uniforms from today. The National President of the Bus Conductors Association of Nigeria, BCAN, Comrade Israel Adeshola, disclosed this in an interview with Vanguard. According to Adeshola, the state government has approved the associations uniforms and badges with name tag and identification numbers for easy identification of registered conductors. He added that the use of bagdes was to address the criminal tendencies in the state. The comrade said, The re-branding of bus conductors in the state which is in partnership with the Lagos State Government is a project that has been in the master plan of the state government in a way to stem criminal activities and also protect the lives and properties of Lagosians. The BCAN has been partnering with the state government through the ministry of transportation to train members of the association who are now registered by the government. He also said the motive of the organisation is to make the conductors job a respectful, attractive and dignified one. The Nigerian troops in the North East has been charged by the Chief of Army Staff, Lt.-Gen. Tukur Buratai, to always be alert as there was no time to rest yet. According to him, there are more tasks to done in the effort to clear the remnants of Boko Haram terrorists. Buratai gave the charge while addressing troops of the 3 Division Tactical Command in Damaturu on Wednesday. He advised the troops to work closely with other security agencies to ensure that the remnants of Boko Haram were flushed out of the region. Earlier, at the Palace of the Emir of Damaturu, Alhaji Shehu Ashimi Ibn Umar El-Kanemi II, the army chief said that the territories had become desperate to remain relevant, hence they had resorted to attacking isolated locations and kidnapping for ransom. Buratai solicited the support of the emir and other traditional rulers in the state through provision of relevant information. He said although the terrorists had been flushed out of the state, some remnants were still attempting to use the state as transit point, adding that the cooperation of everyone was required to check their activities. Responding, the emir said that the state had passed through trying period and assured the army of continued support. The traditional ruler said that what remained now was the ongoing effort to relocate the Internally Displaced Persons from their camps to their various communities. Source: ( PM News ) A Nigerian woman has narrated how she was sexually molested by her wealthy dad even though her mother was aware. The unnamed woman who wrote to Olu Bunmi on social media narrated how it all started and warned parents to be very careful who they trust. ******** From my inbox abused by her dad. Mine started at age 12, and continued for 9years!!! I will never forget the first day, I didnt go to school because we were having inter house sports. It was hell on earth, and he covered it up well by buying all sorts for me. I was also given extra privileges, but I paid with my innocence. I was already driving by age 14, got me a car by age 16. I was pretty known in Ibadan, spoilt kid. He kept me by his side always, my entire education was in Ibadan to keep me within reach. My mom knew, and in fairness she stood up to him. She even reported him to his two eldest siblings (got to know that recently), but they were more concerned about keeping the family name. She however goofed by turning on me later. Shes still asking for my forgiveness, as for my dad, I cut him totally. What I told her, the day I decided to lash out at her. She kept begging that she was confused, she didnt want to cry out to avoid me being stigmatized. I told her, you should have carried your kids and run. And she had a good job, she was an AGM in a bank. Former President, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo, on Wednesday identified why there is a poor implementation of development policies by African governments as a big impediment to the prosperity of the continent. The former president spoke in Lagos at the public presentation of the book `Making Africa Work`. The book was co-authored by Obasanjo, Greg Mills, Jeffrey Herbst and Davies Dickie, all of the Brenthurst Foundation. Obasanjo, who chairs the foundation, said African governments were never in want of sound development policies, but most of them suffered setbacks owing to little or no implementation. He blamed the situation on lack of political will by leaders, poor funding and lack of continuity in governance. Obasanjo said some ambitious policies were never executed because African countries lacked the resources to implement them. He also said leaders did not muster the right political will to implement some policies designed to address specific development challenges. The ex-president said the penchant of African leaders to reverse the working policies of their predecessors was another problem. He recalled that some of the reforms of his last administration, as good as they were, were reversed by successive administrations, which affected the course of development. Obasanjo said others like pension reforms could not be reversed because they had become so entrenched in the system. Why do we have the problem of implementation? We are not short of good policies. In fact, when you go to government offices or the offices of international organisations, you will see dozens and hundreds of policy recommendations. So, what is the problem? I will say the problem is mainly due to leadership, lack of continuity in governance and finance. Let me give you specific examples in Nigeria. We came up with something called NEEDS. The idea is to fast track the development of the country: political, economic, infrastructural and so on. It contained ideas that the states could take from to facilitate their own development. So what happened? We have done the first phase but the administration coming after us discontinued without really understanding what it meant. So, lack of continuity coupled with finance and lack of political will are some of the problems, he said. The former President urged African countries to be more determined about their development goals to propel prosperity. He urged African nations to fight poverty and create opportunities through wealth creation and employment generation. In his speech, Governor Akinwunmi Ambode of Lagos commended Obasanjo and his co-authors for the piece. Ambode, represented by his Deputy, Mrs Idiat Adebule, said the book contained points that could propel the continents development, if detailed attention was paid to it. He said Lagos was key to the development of the country and his administration was doing everything to make the state the third largest economy on Africa in no distant time. I believe Nigeria will work better if Lagos, the fifth largest economy in Africa works, and our administration is committed to the vision of making Lagos the third largest economy in tandem with some of the principles expounded in the book, he said. Jeffrey, in a speech, said Nigeria could witness great development if it addressed some of the barriers to sustainable development. Source: ( PM News ) The Kano Sector Command of the Federal Road Safety Corps (FRSC), , has expressed determination to reintroduce a psychological test for traffic offenders in the state. This is contained in a statement by the Public Relations Officer of the Command, Alhaji Kabiru Daura and made available to newsmen in Kano on Wednesday. The statement said the planned psychological test would be carried out at designated medical facilities with a view to finding out the road users mental ability. It said the exercise would commence in earnest and was designed to focus on the pattern of human behaviour, identified as life threatening. It stated that, by implication, any motorist who committed one or multiple offences would be susceptible to such test. The statement noted that, over the years, the FRSC had embarked on several measures of road traffic dysfunctional deterrence, ranging from public education to subtle force, full enforcement as well as an introduction of speed limiting device. It said the effort was primarily geared towards ensuring safer monitoring environment, affirming that efforts of the corps had yielded positive results. It stated that the multiple road challenges led to the institution of the test and urged motorists to be law abiding. The call is necessary to avoid being subjected to the examination process and subsequent withdrawal of drivers licence when the outcome of the test indicates a negative mental status, the statement said. Source: ( PM News ) An unnamed Nigerian man has left many people in shock after he stripped n*ked to protest the continued exploitation of the masses by the government and politicians. The man who is yet to be identified made a video (wish is too graphic to post on our website) crying out over the terrible condition of living in the country as he promises to change things if he is elected in position of authority. The well-dressed man first condemned the hardship in the land and stated that he and other Nigerians can nolonger cope before taking off his clothes to show how serious he means business. He called on all good citizens to fight against leaders who are oppressive while holding a Nigerian flag. The man further stated that if elected, he will not allow religion or ethnicity to stop him from serving the people. (naij) The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) confirmed to Nigerians that the commission needs the support of the media to its quest for free, fair and credible elections in Nigeria. Mallam Husaini Pai, its Resident Electoral Commissioner (REC) in Plateau, while on a courtesy visit to the Jos Zonal office of the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN), solicited closer ties with newsmen because media reports determine how elections were viewed. What the media say is what determines the success and acceptance of elections; ultimately, that also determines whether the polls will be peaceful or not, he said. Pai said that the visit was to seek areas of collaboration and support from NAN in view of its wide reach and fanatical commitment to fair journalism. He said that the media was a critical stakeholder that no one could afford to ignore, and expressed INECs readiness to support newsmen to effectively participate in election matters. Clearly, we cannot achieve results without the media. The media may not need INEC, but INEC needs the media so as to enable her conduct free, fair, credible and peaceful elections, he said. Pai, however, urged journalists to be professional, accurate and observe the ethics of the profession at all times. When you report accurately, you are also exercising your civic responsibility towards nation building, he said. Responding, the Zonal Manager, Mr Ephraim Sheyin, described the visit as surprising, but very useful. Sheyin assured the INEC commissioner that the agency would be consistent in the coverage of its activities in Plateau. Our doors are always open to you; we want yours to remain equally open to minimise mutual distrust, he said. Source: ( PM News ) This is what the home of the Former President of Nigeria, Goodluck Jonathan looks like after it was looted by police officers guarding it. The house located in Gwarinpa Abuja, was completely stripped bare with all movable and immovable items, including household furniture, electronics doors and door frames, stolen. In giving details of the looting, Jonathan who spoke in a statement by his spokesman Ikechukwu Eze said: Following series of enquiries from journalists and other concerned Nigerians on the extent of the reported vandalisation and theft in the house of former President Dr. Goodluck Jonathan, we, therefore, would like to make the following clarifications: The theft was discovered last month upon which a report was duly lodged with the relevant police authorities. The police immediately commenced investigations which led to the arrest and detention of some suspects, six of whom were policemen. The house which the former President bought from CITEC developers in 2004, was totally stripped bare by the thieves who stole every item in the house including furniture sets, beds, electronics, toilet and electrical fittings, as well as all internal doors and frames. Source:( Instablog9ja ) A man and an eight-year-old girl were killed while sunbathing when a small plane landed on to a crowded beach in Portugal on Wednesday, apparently due to engine failure. The plane made little noise as it skimmed low over hundreds of people on Sao Joao da Caparicas sands, about 20 kilometres (12 miles) south of Lisbon, witnesses told Portuguese media. It happened very fast, there was no chance to prepare to run, Enrique Coelho, who was playing with his son at the beach and saw the plane crash, told cable news station SIC Noticias. The victims were hit by the plane, the commander of the port of Lisbon, Jose Isabel, told reporters at the scene. The girl was with her parents, who were unhurt, witnesses said. The two occupants of the plane were unhurt and were led away by police for questioning. The plane, a Cessna CS-AVA, had been rented by the Aviacao Aerocondor flight training school in Cascais, a seaside town near Lisbon, the school said in a statement. The plane was carrying out a training flight with a student and a senior instructor, who had a great deal of experience, it said. The instructor could be heard telling a control tower that the plane had suffered engine failure and was going to make an emergency landing, according to a recording broadcast on Portuguese television. Beachgoers surrounded the plane after it crash landed and confronted its two occupants, the images also showed. The plane appeared to have a partly broken left wing, which hung lower than the right wing. Source: (AFP) Five members of the Redeemed Christian Church of God, have been remanded in prison by Evbuoriaria Chief Magistrates Court sitting in Benin, Edo State, an over alleged murder of one of their members. The accused persons; Godwin Ukrakpor (70), Uche Esegine (22), Taiwo Omogoroye (42), Austin Oni (39) and Meshak Owuh (28); who were arraigned on a two-count charge, allegedly committed the offence at about 5 am on 1 July 2017, at Sapele Road, Benin City, while returning from a vigil. The accused persons were alleged to have acted in a negligent manner and caused the death of 19-year-old victim, Lucky Chukwuka, who is a member of the Embassy Parish of the church, Ugbowo, Benin. The alleged offence is punishable under sections 316 and 325 of the Criminal Code. The Presiding Chief Magistrate, Frank Idiake, who refused to take the pleas of the accused owing to the magnitude of the offence, also declined jurisdiction over the matter He ordered that the accused persons be remanded in prison custody and referred their case to the state DPP for legal advice. Source: ( PM News ) Travellers and some officers of the Nigeria Customs Service have been at loggerheads as the officers actions were condemned for seizing their vehicles after an order to remove illegal checkpoints was handed down to them by the Comptroller General of Customs, Col. Hameed Ali (retd.). It was gathered that officers from the NCS, Federal Operations Unit, Owerri, said to be on information patrol on Wednesday July 26 and Thursday July 27, impounded cars from travellers heading for the South-East along the Benin-Ore expressway. But the Public Relations Officer of the NCS, Mr. Joseph Attah, said that whenever officers received information about smuggled goods, they had the mandate to set up temporary checkpoints and demand for import duty for those goods. He said, Officers on receipt of information about certain items that have been smuggled can set up temporary checkpoints in the hinterland to demand duty payment for those items. These are officers on information patrol; they are only there to check the goods that are suspected to be smuggled after which they will leave the area. They do not mount permanent road blocks. The NCS on Tuesday ordered the dismantling of illegal Customs checkpoints. According to Attah, the CGCs directive was in line with the Presidential Enabling Business Environment Councils ease of doing business initiative. One of the travellers, Emeka Ani, told our correspondent that two cars were seized from him on Wednesday and one other car was seized from his friend in Benin on Thursday. He said the cars were bought in 2009, adding that Customs were not supposed to demand for import duty documents of such cars. Attah, however, argued that any goods discovered not to have genuine import duty documents would be seized when identified. We cannot say, for instance, that because somebody stole something in 2009, he should not be made to pay for the crime (now) since it happened a long time ago. In the same vein, anybody who refuses to pay import duty to the government on any dutiable item will be made to pay the duty whenever the person is arrested, he stated. Source: (Punch Newspaper ) By Gary Thome, VP and Chief Engineer, HPE Software-Defined and Cloud Group People who bet on horse races know that the most reliable information about a horse will come from those who are closest to that horse -- a trainer or someone working in the stable. The idiom, straight from the horses mouth, implies that someone has gotten even better information a tip from the horse itself! Over the past two months, Ive been writing articles about common public cloud concerns and why hybrid IT gives you the right mix of public cloud, private cloud, and on-premises solutions. Of course, I dont expect you to take my word for it. But maybe you will take advice from those who tried public cloud and have since moved to hybrid IT. In this article, Ive complied a few quotes from a variety of organizations of all sizes and industries. Each has experienced public cloud and now has moved to hybrid IT. So here you go advice that is straight from the horses mouth: Public cloud performance issues Were moving some of our web infrastructure workloads back to our own data center. Performance was the big issue. Lack of communication from our public cloud provider led to a customer-facing outage we could not have prevented. Now were seriously rethinking our entire cloud strategy and are moving more workloads back on-prem. Social media company Were bringing back apps that we had put on the public cloud and didnt go as planned because of reduced performance when compared to when they were on-prem. That said, there are other apps we feel are truly more cloud-ready, and were trying those out in the cloud so we can have what we deem to be a truly hybrid solution. Financial Services company Public cloud cost concerns We opted to be bleeding-edge and move to cloud when storage and hypervisor license costs were on the climb. It seemed to be a better way to keep costs in an opex mode and know what they were. That worked slightly at first. We used a lot of IaaS and SaaS within AWS. As we grew, the usage did too and the bills grew far faster. We honestly reached a tipping point when billing started to approach $100,000 per month. We had good financial outcomes moving on-prem with a hybrid solution so we can access cloud when we choose. We now have two times the horsepower on-prem for half the cost. Social Media company One of the biggest issues driving declouding for us is that, to be honest, the initial move to the public cloud was done willy-nilly. We moved the workloads and then we moved the apps to run off those workloads. But we didnt really think about how to stage properly, how to control usage costs, and how to design an exit strategy. We quickly learned that cloud costs were far higher than we expected. Retail company Public cloud control concerns Flexibility is important. With a private cloud, we get the control and flexibility of a dedicated environment thats tailor-made to address our specific IT needs. For fast-growing companies like ours with constantly changing requirements, a private cloud offers more flexibility to adapt and evolve as the company changes. Social Media company The data we hosted on AWS was growing exponentially, as all data does, and that increased costs. Public cloud hosting served its purpose when we entered the all-cloud (for the most part) approach, but then you hit this point where it doesnt make financial or operational sense any longer, when the same thing can be accomplished on-prem for less money and less hassle. Having the workloads back on-site gave us better control over usage, and we could better see spikes in activity. Public Sector company The benefits of Hybrid IT Many businesses have already started to move beyond the public cloud into a new era of hybrid IT that combines public cloud, private cloud and traditional IT. New offerings such as hyperconverged and composable infrastructure offer cloud-like capabilities on-premises solutions that can provide businesses more control, greater performance, less cost, and less risk than many public cloud options. A combination of on-premises, software-defined options within a private cloud seamlessly combined with public cloud lets businesses build the best possible infrastructure for their individual workloads. The lower cost of storage, servers, and even better servers that require less hypervisor licenses made it less costly than it once was to scale out a data center or private cloud on-site. Energy company Organizations all over the world are taking a closer look at their applications and deciding which ones should be in the public cloud and which ones should remain on traditional IT or a private cloud. Although performance, cost and control issues are all relevant, you should also consider the business model of each workload in your decision. HPE has assembled an array of resources to help you transition to a brand-new hybrid IT world. You can learn more about HPE composable infrastructure powered by Intel by reading the e-book, HPE Synergy for Dummies, or learn about HPEs approach to hybrid cloud by checking out the HPE website, Project New Hybrid IT Stack. And to find out how HPE can help you determine a workload placement strategy that meets your service level agreements, visit HPE Pointnext. Yesterday, I was in San Francisco for a work meeting. By coincidence, one of the people I respect, Rod Johnson, the creator of the Java Spring Framework, was in town. I met him for Indian food and to talk about his new startup Atomist. Atomist is a set of things for enabling chatops. It consists of an agent, a CLI, Git integration, tools to make event-driven automation possible, a programming model to develop "rugs" to automate tasks, and an API to generate "seeds" to create new projects. You might say "what about my continuous integration tool?" like Jenkins or Travis CI. There are integrations for those as well. What Atomist ultimately does is tie these things into a life cycle of events and actions. The idea is that all of this will be driven from a chat tool such as Slack. What is chatops? If you're in Slack or HipChat anyhow chatting about a build and deploying something, and you have notifications coming from build tools and GitHub and issue trackers, why not go the distance and just drive action from that chat client? This is one of those simple tricks that could be brilliant or could just be another one of those fly-by-night IT fads. Already, Google Docs let people collaborate on content in real-time and see each others changes and even communicate. Similarly chatops tools like Atomist in combination with tools like Slack let developers and devops people collaborate on the software life cycle, including build, release, and deployment. According to Johnson, Today if software is eating the world, code is eating software. Once upon a time, we had code and we pushed it over the wall, and somebody used a whole bunch of tools that developers didn't know anything about and didn't respect version control or anything like that to get the stuff released. Now increasingly we're seeing those kind of things migrating into configuration where code is configuration basically and developers are taking a large role in terms of how things get into production with AWS, Kubernetes, or Docker. It seems to us that there really is an important role to play in being able to comprehend code and work with code in an automated way across potentially many, many projects. The brave new world of microservices is complex and is a suck on developer productivity. Johnson hopes chatops can help address this problem: It's good in many ways that the monolith is gone. But we'd actually figured out how to tool the monolith at least if you write it, say, in Java where the tooling is really pretty amazing. But now if you've got 50 services not necessary written in the same language; they may be very inconsistent. You are not going to have them in your single IDE. Yes, you've gained a lot of the benefitsthe ability to deploy parts of your system independently is obviously goodbut there is a cost to that and that was something that didn't seem to us was well served. It became clear to me during our conversation that Johnson is a developer's developer. I asked what motivates him. After all, he made a truckload of money selling his company to VMware. He could have retired and used his music degree to play piano in Paris. But Johnson says, "I was semi-retired and it didnt really work for me that much. I really love writing code, and I love solving problems. Its about trying to produce something that is useful and helpful to people to do what they need to do, its not predominantly about money." Is Atomist ready to use? Atomist is in alpha release and is starting from a Pivotal stack basis due to Johnson's deep ties to the Spring/Java community. If you're using Slack, Spring Boot, and Cloud Foundry then this will probably be natural for you. Johnson wants "to use the Spring support to showcase the life cycle and Atomist benefits to you in terms of less context switching and more efficient automation, and then look at what other languages and frameworks make sense." Most of the Spring developers I know are well into their 30s. To me, Atomist needs to clearly move to support the "millennial languages" like JavaScript. Johnson says the Atomist team is looking at this. "In the JavaScript space, we're really interested in TypeScript. Personally, I love Typescript; it's a damn good language." In fact, Atomist's "rugs" are based on it. However, despite Johnsons interest, Atomist hasnt released TypeScript support yet. The Atomist team plans to make extension easy and create a marketplace for functionality. It is possible to add support for other languages and technologies to the platform. This means that ultimately it will depend on the community that emerges. It's possible that Atomist becomes the chatops tool for the Spring/CloudFoundry community. It is also possible that it atomizes the entire development world. At the moment, you can start using Atomist for free. In the long term, Johnson says, "There will be things we will charge for. Maybe we might want to charge for certain features for large companies. It make sense for this to be a premium module. We want to create a market for this to be useful to people; you cant create a market if you are charging for every service." What if Slack and such are just a fad? Maybe chatops will be all it is cracked up to be. Maybe also chatops is just one of those fads like databases that don't support SQL at all (nearly all NoSQL databases now support SQL) or the thousand VC-funded key-value store database companies. However, Atomist has a CLI and the basic concepts of life cycle and events, and recipes for devops aren't new. So Atomist has uses outside of Slack and could outlive it. Of course I work for LucidWorks, a company that has to be reminded to use email for the things that we're supposed to use email for. The developers collaborate on Slack. The CEO mostly communicates with us via Slack. The person most interested in chatops is our ops guy, in part to make developers self-service more. It is hard to imagine the Slack thing going away anytime soon even if it ultimately gets replaced by some other thing. Why you should consider Atomist? Ultimately, I think Atomist warrants a good look if your company is heavily invested in microservices and already uses Slack. If you're also on Spring and CloudFoundry, this is a clear choice. If you're using a lot more JavaScript and Node.js these days and deploying to Amazon Web Services, it still might be worth the investment. Automating away some tasks and making the rest more collaborative and simpler not requiring, say, clicking your way to Jenkins and then Jira and then GitHub and then AWS when you want to spin up some test instances of your latest release might be worth helping add a few plugins. If you're in some hellish basement communicating using Outlook, Microsoft Skype for Business, ClearCase, and Make, and deploying to VMware or some mainframe, well then a chatops tool like Atomist (like most new things) is not for you. Halifax, NS. (August 2, 2017) Scotia Speedworlds CARSTAR Weekly Racing Series is proud to present KIDS RACE on behalf of the Canadian National Autism Foundation (CNAF). The CNAF will be at Scotia Speedworld on Friday night with information on their foundation as five divisions of race cars battle. On track this week are the Hydraulics Plus Bandoleros, Toursec Lightning cars, Strictly Hydraulics Legends, Pulse Heavy Duty Trucks and the Affordable Fuels Sportsman. Adult admission is just $15.00; Youth (8-15) are $5.00 and children 7 and under are freeall summer long! Tickets are available at the gate on race day (cash only). Grandstand gates open at 5:00 PM with racing action slated to get underway at 7:00 PM. KIDS RACE was started in 2010 as an idea to create a new platform for autism research and awareness said the President of the CNAF, Tina Fougere. It wasnt too long after speaking and working alongside track owners, officials, drivers, crews and fans across the country that a common bond was formed. We realized that passion, dedication, family and the love for what we do, was something we all shared. KIDS RACE is all about having family fun for a great cause and accepting our loved ones with autism. We couldnt ask for a better place in Nova Scotia to host our family event than with the wonderful people at Scotia Speedworld who have opened their doors, but most importantly their hearts, to our cause. Please note Kids Race is not an actual race, it is just a name the CNAF uses to brand their events at race tracks across the country. On track action will be the same as every other Weekly Racing Series event. Travis Roma (West Chezzetcook) took home the biggest win of his Affordable Fuels Sportsman career one week ago with his victory in the 23rd Annual Shriners Classic. Roma also took the point lead in the class back from Jordan Veinotte (Porters Lake) with Veinottes fourth place finish. The Eastern Shore boys lead Matt Vaughan (Fletchers Lake), Alex Johnson (Enfield) and Chris Dingle (Elmsdale) in the Affordable Fuels Sportsman division heading into Friday nights Canadian National Autism Foundation KidsRace. Josh Langille (Coldbrook; Hydraulics Plus Bandolero Outlaw), Nathan Langille (Coldbrook; Hydraulics Plus Bandolero Bandit), Brooke Dowe (Bedford; Hydraulics Plus Bandolero Beginner), Scott Thibodeau (Williamswood; Toursec Lightning), Dan Smith (Lower Sackville; Pulse Heavy Duty Trucks) and Paul Goulden (Shelburne; Strictly Hydraulics Legends) lead their respective divisions into battle on Friday as the point leaders in the CARSTAR Weekly Racing Series. Joining Tim Terry as co-host on the evening is The Ironman Drew MacEachern of Dartmouth. MacEachern is in his 14th consecutive season of racing in the Toursec Thunder class and has yet to miss a division race since 2004. In addition to providing commentary throughout the evening, the veteran of 149 straight four-cylinder races at Scotia Speedworld will have his #13 Civic on display on the concourse for fans to check out on Friday evening. About the Canadian National Autism Foundation: The Canadian National Autism Foundation (CNAF) promotes the positive enhancement and quality of life for people with autism in Canada. The CNAF was formed in June 2000, by parents of children with autism. The foundation is completely run and administrated by unpaid volunteers. Our foundation is funded by donators, and fundraising events put on by others as well as the foundation. The CNAF has been formed to provide funding for: Educating the general public and professionals; Providing information and resources to families of people with autism; providing funding for Canadian based research and development; Promoting national autism awareness. About Scotia Speedworld: Scotia Speedworld (SSW) is a 3/10-mile asphalt oval racing facility. SSW is the only track in Nova Scotia to host a weekly racing series, which runs May through September and features six different classes of racecars. SSW also hosts special events, including Monster Jam and the Parts for Trucks Pro Stock Tour. SSW is located at Exit 6 on Highway 102, across from the Halifax Stanfield International Airport. For more information please click on www.ScotiaSpeedworld.ca or call our Event Hotline at (902) 873-2277 or our office at (902) 481-2514. Like us on Facebook at www.facebook.com/sswracing and follow us on Twitter www.twitter.com/sswracing Media Contact: Tara Foster 902.429.4069 office 902.488.0809 mobile Media@scotiaspeedworld.ca PETERBOROUGH, Ont. August 3, 2017 OSCAAR Racing is pleased to announce it will return to Sunset Speedway for the Velocity Weekend at the Stroud, Ont. track on September 23-24. The OSCAAR Outlaw Super Late Models, OSCAAR Modifieds and OSCAAR Hot Rod Series will all be in attendance at the tracks year-end mega-event. Everybody at OSCAAR is very excited to return to Sunset Speedway for the Velocity Weekend, said OSCAAR President Dave Gainforth. To be a part of one of the biggest shows in Ontario is a great compliment to all the hard work by each OSCAAR driver every week. Our fans have been asking for a return to Sunset and we are pleased we could work with Brian Todish and his staff to make it happen. The OSCAAR Outlaw Super Late Models will support Sunsets Fast Eddie Super Late Models for the Sunday, September 24 event. The race will follow the existing format with time trials to determine the lineup for the 75-lap main event. The OSCAAR Modifieds will make their return to Sunset for the first time since September of 2015 when Gary McLean picked up the victory. Qualifying for Sundays 40-lap event will take place on Saturday, September 23 and will follow OSCAAR Modified rules. The race is a full OSCAAR points-paying event. The OSCAAR Hot Rod Series will make their Sunset debut during their inaugural season during the Velocity Weekend. The Hot Rods will compete in a Feature event on both days of the Velocity Weekend. Sandra and I, as well as all the staff at Sunset Speedway, are excited to welcome OSCAAR back to our speedway for this big event, said Sunset Speedway owner Brian Todish. We look forward to working with all of the drivers in all divisions for years to come. In addition to the OSCAAR Racing at the event, the Velocity Weekend also features a 75-lap event for the Limited Late Models, a 50-lap Super Stock Feature, 35-lap Mini Stock, and full events for the Lucas Oil TQ Midgets and Ontario Pro Challenge Series. For additional event information and for a full schedule of events for the Veloctiy Weekend, visit www.sunsetspeedway.ca. Keep up with OSCAAR Racing on social media as well by following their official Facebook page at facebook.com/OSCAARracing and on Twitter @OSCAARracing. OSCAAR Racings 2017 Racing Season is supported by several dedicated marketing partners including, American Racer, B&B Fireworks, Grisdale Racing Products, Inside Track Motorsport News, Jenco Equipment, Knightworks Design, Race Time Radio, Race2way.ca Communications, South Shore Services, and Sunoco Race Fuel. CAYUGA, ONTARIO (August 3, 2017) Sunny skies and hot temperatures finally arrived for the Joes Transmission TNT Super Series double at Toronto Motorsports Park this past weekend July 29-30. In the end, it was David Surmatchewski winning Saturdays main event including the $1000 purse AND the Wally, Andrew Stirk took home top honours in the REVS Full Throttle RACE of CHAMPIONS and Tom Coonly settled into top spot in the points chase with a win on Sunday. Saturday Results Past TNTSS champion David Surmatchewski from Oakland, Ontario won Saturdays main event and proceeded to win the NHRA Wally in the best package run-off of all the days class winners. In TNTSS eliminations, Surmatchewski took out Matt Costabile with a .009 package to a .013 package in round one. Then in round two he was .013 on the tree and dead 4 to take out Alex Lepp. An .010 advantage off the start got him past Steve McCarrick in round three. Then another great package .007 dead 5 had Tom Coonly on the trailer in the semis. The final was the only round he didnt have starting line advantage being .027 to JJ Jablonskis .011. But Surmatchewski got the W anyway running dead 5 and pushing Jablonski under to a 10.894. Im thrilled to have my family and great friends here for the win, said Surmatchewski. I want to thank Danny at Douglas Engines in Brantford for all his help. Surmatchewski has only been to a few TNTSS races this year. He has a different engine combination and no data he said. The car was very consistent all day long, he added. Want to thank Ted Barnes and Joe Boniferro for this series and to DSE Automotive for their support this weekend. Its an incredibly tough series and very rewarding to get a win. Specialty Awards Saturday Hoosier Tire Canada $100 certificate Number One Qualifier Ted Barnes with a 10.903 J&S Collision $50 cash Closest to the Index (1st Round Loser) Larry Pulver with a 10.900 VP Fuels $50 certificate Closest to the Index (2nd Round Loser) Alex Lepp with a 10.921 VP Fuels $50 certificate Closest to the Index (3rd Round Loser) Steve McCarrick with a 10.944 RACE of CHAMPIONS Results The annual REVS Full Throttle Powersports TNTSS RACE of CHAMPIONS saw 15 drivers roll into the beams for round one. This invitation-only event recognizes those who have won a TNTSS event and puts them against the best of the best. Four rounds later, Andrew Stirk from Orangeville, Ontario hoisted the winners trophy after taking out the likes of Chris VanBaalen, Pete Maduri Jr, Tom Coonly and then Double-0 Joe Karosik in the money round. It is a real accomplishment to win the REVS Full Throttle RACE of CHAMPIONS, said Stirk. It is something I have come close to winning in the past but just couldnt seal it up. He went on, There are a lot of great racers who have won it and its an honour to now be a part of that list. Stirk was quick to thank his family. Our racing operation is a family deal. Without their support, it wouldnt be possible. Special thanks to my wife Jessica for all she does to help me chase my racing dreams. He also went on to thank REVS Full Throttle Powersports for presnting the RACE of CHAMPIONS for many years now. Without support from people like that, we couldnt do what we do. Sunday Results Tom Coonly from Blasdell, New York took Sundays event win with a string of very close rounds all day long. In round one, he faced Gary Saska. Virtually identical lights .011 to .012, Coonly took the strip by trip zip eight (.0008) running 10.916 to Saskas 10.915. That round set the tone for the day for Coonly. He won round two over Tony Galluzzi on a holeshot 10.911 to 10.916. Then he overcame a .009 to his .016 light and ran closer at 10.912 for a .005 MOV win over Ryan Boniferro. Tyler Halleen gave him a run in the semis where he won by another .005 MOV in a double breakout. That set him up to face Brad Redford in the final. Both away clean, Coonly had the advantage .002 to .016. At the big end, Coonly took the stripe and the win by .007, running dead 6 to Redfords too fast 10.899. Gotta thank Jeff Gregoire and Jamie Stoneman for all their help, said Coonly. And Phils Quality Auto Service, AutosDirectBuffalo.com, and Data Clutch Data Recorders. He went on to thank Ted and Joe for putting on an awesome series plus Dave and Andrew at DSE Automotive for presenting this weekend. And I cant forget Charlene Lepp for running all weekend and keeping everything going smooth. Specialty Awards Sunday Hoosier Tire Canada $100 certificate Number One Qualifier Ryan Boniferro with a 10.902 J&S Collision $50 cash Closest to the Index (1st Round Loser) David Surmatchewski with a 10.917 VP Fuels $50 certificate Closest to the Index (2nd Round Loser) Tony Galluzzi with a 10.911 VP Fuels $50 certificate Closest to the Index (3rd Round Loser) Ryan Boniferro with a 10.924 Next up is the 2nd Annual TNT Super Series 5K A $5000/win EVENT that will be part of the IHRA SSNC weekend at Empire Dragway on Friday August 18th. To learn more about the Joes Transmission TNT Super Series and how you can become a part of it, visit www.tntsuperseries.com or www.facebook.com/TNTSuperSeries and sign up for the mailing list. About DSE Automotive DSE Automotive is owned and operated by David Stirk, his son Andrew. Now located in Orangeville Ontario, DSE has served the public for over 37 years performing quality auto repairs and diagnostics to everything from cars to light duty trucks and trailers. visit them at www.dseautomotive.ca . About REVS Full Throttle Powersports REVS Full Throttle Powersports is a full line BRP Platinum dealer located at 42 Darte Dr in Welland On. They have a large inventory of in stock Sea-Doo, Ski-doo, Can-Am ATVs and Can-AM Spyders. REVS is also a full service shop with licensed BRP technicians and work on any model of pwc, sleds, atvs and motorbikes. Ask about their 4.99% financing on all BRP products. Call 1-866-774-0909 or visit www.revsfullthrottle.com and ride away with your dream ride today. About the Joes Transmission TNT Super Series (TNTSS): Since it began in 2006, the TNT Super Series has grown into one of the strongest, most competitive sportsman drag racing series in North America and has catapulted many competitors to success on the national stage. The TNTSS is a self-governing organization operating with input from its teams. Based on NHRAs Super Street & IHRAs Hot Rod classes, competitors run on a 10.90 index in the 1/4 mile (7.00 in the 1/8 mile) and race for a guaranteed purse that pays back more than 100% of the racers entry fees. The yearend points fund provides $15,000 cash & prizes to the top finishers. The TNTSS is committed to providing the highest level of competition backed by solid media support to showcase its participants across North America. Events are contested at various drag racing facilities in southern Ontario and western New York and put on a spectacular show for the drag racing fan. About Joes Transmission Joe Boniferro has owned and operated Joes Transmission Service in Niagara Falls, Ontario since 1984. From the original single bay location, the business has progressed to a six bay, five employee automotive complex on Arthur Street. The two storey building houses Joes Transmission (Commercial, Fleet and Performance Divisions) and Als Radiator Service. They sell and install aftermarket high performance parts and accessories. As a Firestone Dealer they sell and install drag racing tires. Their specialty is building and repairing high performance transmissions. Contact Joe and his team at (905) 374-6116 or visit them online at www.joestransmission.com . British financial services firms are calling on their regulator to offer more transparency on potential changes surrounding European distribution, among other issues, after the U.K. leaves the European Union. Financial services firms in the U.K. are not happy with how their market regulator, the Financial Conduct Authority, has communicated with them about the countrys plans to leave the European Union, according to a new survey published by the FCA. The regulators annual Practitioner Panel research survey, which polled 2,080 FCA-regulated businesses across all financial sectors and was published on Wednesday, found that the volume of regulatory change surrounding Brexit has weighed heavily on firms resources, and regulated businesses want the FCA to be more transparent about its plans. Only 14 percent of respondents agreed that the regulator is communicating effectively with firms about the process of preparing to leave the EU. Nearly a third of the respondents disagreed with the statement, while another 53 percent answered that they neither agree nor disagree or dont know. Andrew Bailey, chief executive of the regulator, said in todays report that few respondents agreed that the FCA is currently communicating effectively on Brexit. Clearly there is more work to be done in this area. Bailey added in a statement accompanying the report that the organization had committed to be more transparent so that firms understand the regulators role. [II Deep Dive: Gina Miller: London Investors Need Brexit Wake-up Call ] A spokeswoman for the Financial Conduct Authority tells Institutional Investor that the regulator has been working hard to improve its interaction with the industry on Brexit-related matters since the survey was conducted in March and April. One area of particular concern for fund management firms is over rules governing the sale of funds in Europe after the country leaves the EU. The survey found that for investment firms specifically, clarity over passporting the term for rules that allow U.K. fund managers to offer their products across borders within the EU remains a top concern. One in ten investment management firms would like to see the FCA maintain or improve passporting between the UK and the EU, the report stated. The findings come amid increasing calls for transparency around Brexit in recent days, with Mike Cherry, chairman of the U.K.s Federation of Small Business, making a press statement on Tuesday saying that cash from private equity and venture capital funds could dry up, hitting smaller companies development, if the rules are not spelled out soon. Investor appetite is being dampened by uncertainty. Decision makers need more clarity about the future before they can plan their next moves, said Cherry in the statement, adding, Maintaining EU passporting rights for the UKs private equity and venture capital industries as part of a transitional arrangement is another must. Cherrys comments follow a sustained lobbying effort from Gina Miller, a fund manager and fierce opponent to leaving the EU. In May, she told Institutional Investor that quite a number of British entities will be harmed by the loss of passporting and that firms need to be more realistic about the access they will have to European states after Brexit. Elsewhere in the report, pension company views of the regulator have improved since the last survey was conducted in 2016. This sectors satisfaction with the regulator rose from 6.9 out of 10 last year to 7.4 this year. Antonio Simoes, chairman of the FCAs Practitioner Panel which represents the interests of financial industry practitioners said that it was encouraging to see that the life and pensions industry had a more favorable opinion of the regulator. Last year we identified that there were concerns around the competition objective, and that the life and pensions industry was more generally dissatisfied with the work of the FCA than other sectors, he said in the report. To see progress against both these points is a sign that the regulator is heading in the right direction. Claims Central Consolidated has announced that it has signed an exclusive agreement with New Zealand-based underwriting agency Ando to roll-out its ClaimLogik technology across property claims.The technology will see brokers, alongside policyholders and insurers, given access to live video as well as connecting stakeholders with a supply chain of assessors, insurance builders and emergency services to improve claims processes. Claim Central Consolidated CEO, said that the expansion to New Zealand is one of a number of other planned expansions, with the firm currently working with partners in both South Africa and the US with more to be announced in the coming months.Siemsen said the innovative firm will work alongside the underwriting agency to deliver a best in class claim management experience.In a world where businesses are constantly reviewing how to remain relevant to their client base, an insurance claim is a great opportunity for a broker to demonstrate how they add value to their clients, Siemsen told Insurance Business.The platform enables brokers and their clients to have full line of sight status of their claim throughout the entire process, which ultimately leads to a better service experience for the policyholder.John Lyon, Ando CEO, said that digitalisation is critical for the firm and embedding the ClaimLogik technology will help make the claims process more efficient and convenient for all involved.The partnership will commence in the last quarter of 2017. It is a criminal offence if directors do not apply for their director ID on time EPIC Insurance Brokers and Consultants has announced the hiring of Denise Walsh as vice president and assistant general counsel.Denise is a strong negotiator with exceptional skills in buying and selling businesses, as well as drafting operating and shareholder agreements, business information documents, corporate resolutions and complex contracts, said Dan Crawford, EPIC executive vice president and general counsel. We are very fortunate to add a top professional of her caliber to our legal team.Prior to coming to EPIC, Walsh worked for Marcus, Brody, Ford & Kessler, which merged with Saiber in 2014. She was also a member of the corporate law and business counseling practice group and the financial services practice group at both firms. Walsh has also been recognized as a New Jersey Rising Star in business and corporate law.Walsh holds a BA in psychology from Seton Hall University and a juris doctor from Seton Hall University School of Law. Rail cars carrying gas and sulfur on a CSX Corp freight train skidded off the tracks and burst into flames on Wednesday in a small Pennsylvania town, forcing hundreds of residents to flee their homes as firefighters fought the blaze. No injuries were reported after the crash in Hyndman, about 100 miles southeast of Pittsburgh. CSX warned customers service disruptions would last for a week over a nearly 80-mile stretch between Connellsville, Pennsylvania, and Cumberland, Maryland. CSX said 32 cars derailed as the train moved through the town just before 5 a.m. There was no word on what caused the crash. A freight car skidded into a garage that caught fire, and at least two train cars were still ablaze almost 12 hours later, said Bedford County emergency dispatcher Mike Steele. CSX said one rail car containing liquefied petroleum gas and one car containing molten sulfur leaked and were on fire. Authorities ordered the evacuation of residents in a one-mile radius, which encompasses most of the town, as emergency crews worried about the risk of an explosion, Steele said. Among the residents driving out of town was 53-year-old Shannon Shoemaker, who said his whole family lives within 100 yards of the derailment site. They all got out safely, thank God for that, Shoemaker said. This was the third derailment for a CSX train since last November. It came two days after CSX Corp CEO Hunter Harrison apologized to customers for service disruptions and said some railroad employees were resisting planned cost-cutting measures. The train of five locomotives and 178 rail cars was traveling from Chicago to Selkirk, New York, CSX said. It said 128 cars carried mixed freight, including construction materials, paper and wood pulp. John Risch, spokesman for the transportation division of the SMART Union, which represents CSX conductors, said it is incredibly difficult for a small crew to handle a train with 178 cars. Its hard to keep track of where the train is, especially as it snakes behind you for more than two miles, Risch said by phone. I am not suggesting the length of the train caused the accident but it could have been a contributing factor. On Monday, Harrison, the CSX chief executive officer, told customers in a memo that some employees were resisting aggressive cost-cutting measures at the No. 3 U.S. railroad. Authorities closed roads and issued temporary restrictions on low-flying aircraft, Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolfs office said, adding that Wolf was on scene in Hyndman. No public water supplies or waterways were affected, his office said. The governors office said about 1,000 people had to leave their homes. An emergency shelter was assembled at a local school, staffed by aid workers from the American Red Cross and the Salvation Army, authorities said. CSX said company hazardous substance experts were working with firefighters at the scene to contain leaks and minimize environmental damage. Investigators with the National Transportation Safety Board and the Federal Railroad Administration were in Hyndman, the agencies said. Topics Trucking Pennsylvania New York states banking and insurance regulator issued subpoenas on Tuesday to two Wells Fargo & Co units after the bank said it had sold auto insurance to hundreds of thousands of customers who did not need it. The New York Department of Financial Services (NYDFS) is demanding Wells loan contracts with New York borrowers, its financing agreements with auto dealers, and agreements between Wells units and insurers, according to copies of the subpoenas obtained by Reuters. Unwanted auto insurance is the latest chapter in a months-long scandal over sales practices at Wells, where employees also created as many as 2.1 million deposit and credit card accounts in customers names without their permission. The N.Y. regulator is also seeking documents showing how and when Wells learned its so-called collateral protection insurance may have been unnecessarily or wrongfully issued. The bank has to provide the information by Aug. 22. The regulator sent a separate request for information to National General Insurance Co, which was identified as an underwriter of the insurance in a report into the matter prepared for Wells by consultant Oliver Wyman. The New York Times obtained a copy of the report. A Wells spokeswoman declined to comment and National General did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Wells first became aware of potential problems a year ago, when the auto lending business began receiving an unusually high number of complaints, Franklin Codel, head of consumer lending, said in an interview last week. The bank said it would refund about $80 million to an estimated 570,000 customers who were wrongly charged for auto insurance from 2012 to 2017, including roughly 20,000 whose vehicles were repossessed. The subpoenas, each of which is nine pages long, were sent to Wells Fargo Bank NA in Saint Louis Park, Minnesota, and Wells Fargo Insurance Services USA Inc in Charlotte, North Carolina. The subpoenas also request the Wyman report and any other analyzes of policies issued to New York customers. (Editing by Carmel Crimmins and Jeffrey Benkoe) Topics Auto New York For more than 65 years, he has been the unwavering presence alongside Britain's longest-serving monarch, the consummate consort and royal representative. On Wednesday, Prince Philip will make his 22,219th -- and final -- solo public engagement. He will be meeting Royal Marines who have completed a 2,678-km trek to raise money for charity. After that, the Duke of Edinburgh will still appear at Queen Elizabeth II's side -- from time to time -- as the 91-year-old monarch soldiers on. In the meantime, the man known for his quips and gaffes has already been joking about his big retirement day. "I'm discovering what it's like to be on your last legs," the 96-year-old Philip told celebrity chef Prue Leith at a recent palace event. Philip is patron, president or a member of over 780 organizations, with which he will continue to be associated -- but he won't play an active role by attending engagements. The queen supported the decision, which was greeted with an international press flurry when it was announced in May. The occasion marks a major landmark for the man born Prince Philip of Greece and Denmark in Corfu on June 10, 1921, to Princess Alice of Battenberg and Prince Andrew of Greece. Amid the upheaval of the military coup that overthrew his uncle, King Constantine, in 1922, the family fled. King George V, the queen's grandfather, sent a Royal Navy cruiser to evacuate Philip's family and he was whisked to safety in a cot made from an orange box. Later, he rarely saw his parents and went to school in Germany and Britain. Philip has had a long association with the military and had once had promising military career. He joined the Royal Navy as a cadet in 1939 and served during World War II, winning mention in dispatches for service aboard the battleship HMS Valiant at Cape Matapan, on Greece's Peloponnesian peninsula. He rose to the level of commander. Optisure Risk Partners, a Manchester, N.H.-based insurance broker, has hired Randy Eifert as senior vice president of its Private Client Group and as Risk Management Practice leader. Eifert will provide executive leadership and support company-wide in personal and commercial lines risk management, product development and client attraction and retention, with a focus on the high-net-worth personal lines niche. He will report directly to Peter R. Milnes in his capacity as CEO of the various Optisure entities. Randys extensive background in risk management, insurance company relations and overall agency operations will serve Optisure well, given the strong growth pattern and multi-state expansion we are experiencing, said Milnes in a company press release. During the past 30 years, Eifert has taken a leading role in the insurance and financial services industry in New York, New Jersey and the New England region. As a risk management professional, his clients have included financial institutions, aviation risks, manufacturers, non-profits, hospitality, large contracting, healthcare and public entity sectors. He also specializes in unique and custom solutions for high-net-worth, affluent and executive-level individuals. Clients include family offices, trustees, charitable organizations and private companies throughout the U.S., as well as internationally. Optisures regional partners operate locally but with global capabilities, addressing the spectrum of risk management, employee benefit and property and casualty insurance needs. The organization employs more than 70 insurance professionals throughout the Northeast and Florida and secures more than $140 million of insurance premiums annually for its clients. Source: Optisure Risk Partners Topics Mergers & Acquisitions New Hampshire Risk Management The cyber attack that crippled Ukraine businesses and spread worldwide to shut down shipping ports, factories and corporate offices has taken a costly toll on the results of major U.S. and European companies in the latest quarter, with more to come. While individual companies have been laid low by hacking attacks in the past, this financial reporting season marks the first time that major players across a range of industries have blamed them for significant financial damage to their results. On Thursday, German consumer products maker Beiersdorf AG blamed the attack for a shortfall in its half-year financial results, which caused 5 to 10 days of shipping and production delays after its computer and communications froze. Six more major international companies, four based in Europe and two in Russia, which acknowledged they suffered disruption, are due to report quarterly results later in August. The June 27 attack, dubbed NotPetya, first targeted Ukraine, taking down many government agencies and businesses there, before spreading rapidly through corporate networks of multinationals with operations or suppliers in eastern Europe. Beiersdorf, the maker of Nivea cosmetics, said 35 million euros ($41 million) worth of second-quarter sales were delayed to the third quarter and it was totting up the costs of the attack for items such as calling in outside experts, promotions and using other production sites to make up for shortfalls. It is very important to stress there is a cost and there will be a cost associated with this, Chief Financial Officer Jesper Andersen said. We are still working our way through it. Our focus so far has been on recovery. Beiersdorf said the costs would not have a material impact on its profit outlook for the full year. Its shares were down 3.1 percent in Frankfurt at 1010 GMT. Cadbury chocolate maker Mondelez and freight logistics company FedEx Corp are among five multinational firms, three from the United States and two in Europe, which have previously reported material financial damage from the cyber worm that hit on June 27, in the closing days of the quarter. Mondelez, formerly known as Kraft and the worlds second-largest confectionary company, reported a 5 percent drop in quarterly sales on Wednesday, blaming shipping and invoicing delays caused by the June attack. Growing Risk Factors Investors should get used to hearing about cyber attacks during earnings calls, said Ian Winer, equity co-head at Wedbush Securities. The trend is accelerating, he said. As hackers get more sophisticated they are taking shots at major companies. More hackers are becoming adept at developing or finding malware to wipe data on computers, making them inoperable. Danish shipping company AP Moller-Maersk S/A, which handles one out of seven containers shipped globally, said on July 20 that operations worldwide had been significantly affected, but that it lost no corporate data to outside parties. Maersk declined to comment and said it would address the impact on Aug. 16, when it reports second-quarter results. We anticipate a limited impact from the cyber attack (estimates range from $50-$450 million) as it started towards the end of (the second quarter), Jefferies analyst David Kerstens said in a note to clients. Analysts, on average, estimate the hit to Maersk results in a range of $100-$200 million. German mail and logistics firm Deutsche Post DHL Group and retailer Metro AG also said their Ukrainian operations were infected, but have provided no further details. Deutsche Post reports results on Aug. 8 and Metro Group is expected to report results later in August. Other NotPetya victims include Merck & Co Inc, which last week warned the attack had halted production of some drugs, saying it had yet to understand the full costs associated with it. The attack slowed deliveries at FedEx and halted production lines at British consumer goods maker Reckitt Benckiser, according to accounts by those companies. FedEx said the attack would have a material effect on its full-year results. Nasty Line Items Jake Dollarhide, head of Longbow Asset Management in Tulsa, Oklahoma, which manages $85 million in assets, said he expects cyber attacks to become as common as reports that a storm or oil prices hurt results. Cyence, a firm that helps insurers measure cyber risk, estimated that economic costs from NotPetya would total $850 million. Major global cyber attacks have the potential to cause economic losses on par with catastrophic natural disasters such as U.S. Superstorm Sandy in 2012, Cyence and Lloyds of London said in a joint report in July. Average economic losses caused by such disruptions could range from $4.6 billion to $121 billion, the report said. One mysterious group known as The Shadow Brokers in April dumped a trove of powerful hacking tools on the Internet, which security experts said were developed by the U.S. National Security Agency. Code the group released was used for spreading NotPetya and in the WannaCry attack in May on hospitals, businesses and governments worldwide. As stock market investors we have to accept this brand new reality in this new digital age, Longbows Dollarhide said. Most businesses are inadequately protected from cyber attacks, said Tom Kellermann, chief executive of investment firm Strategic Cyber Ventures. The day of reckoning has come for shareholders, Kellermann said. ($1 = 0.8445 euros) (Reporting by Jim Finkle in Toronto, Eric Auchard and Victoria Bryan in Frankfurt and Jacob Gronholt-Pederson in Copenhagen; editing by Grant McCool and Mark Potter) Topics USA Cyber Profit Loss Europe National Partners, a new premium finance company, has named industry veteran Anthony Hanes managing director of sales. He is based in National Partners Chicago office. Hanes has 15 years of experience in the premium finance industry and developing strong, profitable partnerships with independent insurance agents. He most recently served as executive vice president of sales and marketing for BankDirect Capital, where he led his team to robust annual production and revenue growth. In 2005, Hanes was named chief operating officer at Budget Installment Corp. He began his premium finance career as vice president of sales and marketing for Cananwill Premium Funding in 2002. National Partners offers direct premium finance, producer fee programs, agent profit-sharing and rewards, private-label servicing, and premium-finance contract purchasing. The company is not owned by or affiliated with any insurance company, broker or agent. Source: National Partners Topics Mergers & Acquisitions The family of a drunken man dropped off at a Taco Bell by Ohio sheriffs deputies and later fatally struck by a vehicle settled a lawsuit alleging authorities endangered him while joking about his Mexican heritage. The $300,000 settlement with Delaware County will go to the family of Uriel Juarez-Popoca, including his widow and two children who live near Mexico City, according to the Columbus Dispatch. Sheriffs deputies Derek Beggs and Christopher Hughes, who have since left the agency, found the 22-year-old man disoriented near Interstate 71 in July 2012. Juarez-Popoca spoke little English. The officers took him to a Taco Bell instead of arresting him, with one officer joking: They gotta (sic) have someone in there who can interpret. Juarez-Popoca was later booted from the restaurant. Within the hour, Juarez-Popoca was struck while walking along Route 36. Attorney Jennifer Branch said the force of the impact knocked Juarez-Popoca out of his shoes. Branch said he died almost instantly. Branch represented Juarez-Popocas estate during the civil trial. She said his family never expected officers would endanger his life by making a joke out of his Mexican heritage. Hearing Branch detail the series of events that led to her clients death, Sheriff Russ Martin said, Those words cut deep and really hurt. Both officers were fired and later allowed to resign with no admission of guilt. Martin said the officers did not follow standing policies. Neither Hughes nor Beggs has commented on the settlement. Topics Lawsuits Ohio Mexico The major risk to businesses victimized by cyber breaches is the reputational damage that can follow, damage that often comes from government regulators out to make a name for themselves, according to a former FBI agent who works in the private sector now. Reputational damage is also the area where businesses most need insurance protection, Jason Smolanoff, head of global cyber security at Kroll Associates, told insurance executives attending the Super Regional Property/Casualty Insurer Conference in Lake Geneva, Wis. These days, whats going on is the federal government and local governments are now coming up with cyber security regulatory frameworks, which they are imposing upon companies that do business within their states, he said. He said after an incident, government officials will show up to perform an investigation, what he calls a look-back, to see if the company performed reasonable data security measures on the information they had. If they didnt have reasonable measures, they then get fined. He said the fines arent limited to just one state. Its not like if you have a problem in one state, it obviates, or negates, or cancels all the other states. They can all come after you, individually. The federal government can all come after you, he said. The Kroll security expert said he has clients dealing with breach lawsuits from seven different federal and state agencies. These are the things that people are going to be looking for coverage on from folks like you, he told the audience of carrier executives. That I think is where the real risk lies. Its not so much the computer intrusion. Its not so much on the technical side. The major risk really is coming to a company from a reputational standpoint, from a financial standpoint, from a legal standpoint after the intrusion happens. Its mostly by our governments who are going after these companies who are victims to begin with, he said. Make Their Mark Smolanoff, whose FBI work encompassed cyber security and, before that, organized crime, maintains that regulators are trying to make their mark so that they can then jump out into private industry. He cited California and Massachusetts as two of the most aggressive states vying to justify the heaviest fines against companies they determine lacked adequate security. Whatever side of the fence youre on in the insurance industry, as you start to write more policies, this is ultimately going to become part of what those payouts are going to be and part of what the claims are going to be. You may not pay them out but theyll be part of the claim at some point, he told the insurance audience. He offered what he acknowledged might be a cynical view of the trend. Most of these federal and state agencies are seeing this as a way to generate revenue because of the huge budget, true or false, he said. I have seen them staff up state AG offices for cyber compliance at a rate thats just unbelievable. Theyre doing that because theyre seeing theres huge revenue to be generated here. Its sad, in my opinion, because its after the fact and its a victim. Simply because a company has been audited or certified for cyber security does not mean it is a better risk, according to Smolanoff. He said most large companies that have suffered breaches have been ones that spent millions of dollars on information security and were audited or certified yet they still became victims. Defending Against Government He said his firm is working with clients and insurance underwriters on ways to minimize the risk posed by these government actions, developing questions that can help determine how good or how poor a particular insureds cyber security posture is. It comes down to companies being able to demonstrate reasonable security so that they can differentiate themselves from other similar firms. He referred executives to the Center for Internet Security, which houses free, downloadable documents on actions companies can take to protect their networks. Cyber Security Narrative Smolanoff recommended that every company prepare a narrative outlining its cyber security, the steps it has taken, and what its response capabilities are. [W]hen you have a computer intrusion and you go before anybody whether its an insurance company to file a claim, a state AG, a client, a business partner what you want to be able to say is, We as a company did a threatbased analysis and we understand the data that we have would be interesting to the following threats. We took reasonable security measures to protect that data based upon the size of the company we are and the amount of revenue that were generating each year. If somebody came in and got to this data, they would have had to have taken extraordinary measures to do so. A statement like that can be very powerful in helping to differentiate the company from about 90 percent of the other companies that are out there. It helps to minimize fines. He said while there are many theories about information security, the measure of a good information security strategy and program is a companys ability to rapidly detect and effectively respond to an incident. It starts with assuming a breach will happen. Its not really about stopping incidents anymore. Its about how quickly can you identify when theres anomalous behavior and do something about that anomalous behavior to stop it, he said. Its where you assume that an attacker is going to get into your network. They will get in but as a result of that attack, you will be able to detect them and stop them before they get to something thats important. Thus, if an intruder gets into to the executive administrators computer but they cant get any further, thats fine. We can deal with that. Thats not a big deal. Thats a low risk. We move on, he said. However, if they get in and theyre able to then move to your crown jewels within the network and get there and take the data without anyone knowing, thats a big problem. Pay No Ransom Should an insured or carrier become a victim of a ransomware attack, the former FBI agent strongly advises against paying any ransom money to the attackers. You have about 50 percent chance of getting your data back after you pay. Once you pay, then they know who you are and they know that you have money and they know that you pay. They keep coming after you even more. Its a vicious cycle, he warned. He said Kroll has been asked but refuses to participate when an insurance company decides to pay a ransom on behalf of a client. Making the payment is almost assuredly going to some type of criminal organization. It would support anything from drug trafficking to human trafficking to more financial crimes, or something like that, he said. I think it just puts us in a bad place and I think it puts, potentially your insured, and maybe even the insurance company, or anyone whos in that chain with some type of risk. Thats just our company position that we will not be in escrow and we dont advise that people make the payments. The Super Regional P/C Insurance Conference was sponsored by actuarial consulting firm Demotech Inc. and Wells Medias Insurance Journal and Carrier Management. Topics Cyber Democratic lawmakers pushed on Tuesday for another chance to question Wells Fargo & Co.s leadership about sales practices after the scandal-hit bank said it forced auto insurance on borrowers who did not need it. Democrats on the Senate Banking Committee asked its Republican leaders in a letter to summon Wells Fargo Chairman Stephen Sanger and Chief Executive Tim Sloan. That letter accompanied one sent by Representative Maxine Waters, the top Democrat on the House Financial Services Committee, who wants to know how Wells Fargo wrongly charged roughly 570,000 customers for auto insurance they did not ask for or need, leading to unwarranted delinquencies and car repossessions. Unwanted auto insurance is the latest wrinkle in a months-long scandal over sales practices at Wells Fargo, where employees also created as many as 2.1 million deposit and credit card accounts in customers names without their permission. Members should have the opportunity to question Mr. Sloan about the banks progress in addressing the damage it did to its customers, said the Senate letter, signed by Democrats including ranking member Sherrod Brown. A spokeswoman for Wells Fargo said the bank looked forward to answering questions from Washington. Wells Fargo understands and is committed to addressing policymaker concerns, said Jennifer Dunn. We are committed to fixing these mistakes and earning back trust. Employees have said they created unauthorized accounts to hit sales goals handed down by management. The creation of fake accounts and misplaced insurance charges went on for years before the banks management took action. After Wells Fargo reached a $190 million settlement with regulators over the fake accounts in September, its then-Chairman and CEO John Stumpf appeared before both committees to face questions from lawmakers at heated hearings. He left the bank shortly after, to be replaced by Sloan and Sanger. Whether Stumpfs successors will be hauled before Congress publicly is uncertain. Only Republicans can summon witnesses, since that party controls Congress. The senate letter urged Idaho Senator Mike Crapo, who chairs the banking panel, to call a Wells Fargo hearing in September. Democrats want to know how the auto insurance and unauthorized accounts practices went on undetected, and Wells Fargo plans to compensate customers who were wrongly charged for insurance, according to the letter. (Reporting by Patrick Rucker; Editing by Meredith Mazzilli and Tom Brown) Topics Auto Politics Fortegra, a Tiptree Inc. company has partnered with the CHART (Coverholders And Risk Takers) Exchange, an organization of coverholders, London-based syndicates, admitted markets and other vendor partners who provide services for the insurance industry. Fortegra will serve as one of two admitted insurance companies on CHARTs vendor panel, and be the exclusive non-fronting program partner for admitted capacity. The partnership, which offers Fortegras A-rating and reinsurance alliance through Lloyds syndicates, allows Fortegra to assume risk and offer reinsurance support from the current London subscription market. Fortegra offers admitted paper to coverholders, thereby eliminating surplus lines tax, letters of declination and additional administrative duties. Fortegra is the marketing name for the insurance, warranty solutions and specialty underwriting operations of Fortegra Financial Corporation and its subsidiaries, including its admitted insurance companies. Fortegra Financial Corporation (a Tiptree Inc. company) and its subsidiaries comprise a single-source insurance services provider that offers a range of consumer protection options including warranty solutions, credit insurance, and specialty underwriting inclusive of admitted market partnerships. The CHART Exchange was established in 2015 to serve as a forum through which London markets and U.S.-based insurance agencies can interact for the purpose of identifying and pursuing new business opportunities. The entity became a permanent organization in 2016; members consist of current/prospective coverholders, London-based syndicates, and vendor partners who provide services for the insurance industry. Topics Mergers & Acquisitions London A West Texas land baron and oilman is on the verge of pumping 5.4 million gallons of water a day from far under the desert mountains here and piping it 60 miles to the nations most bountiful oil field, the Permian Basin, where hydraulic fracturing has fueled a renaissance of U.S. oil and gas production. The Houston Chronicle reports with water in short supply and high demand, Dan Allen Hughes Jr., one of the largest landowners in the United States and president of his fathers eponymous oil company, plans to tap an aquifer under his 140,000-acre Apache Ranch. But Hughes has run into a wall of opposition from West Texas farmers, ranchers, residents and environmentalists, who worry he will steal water from their cattle, dry up their crops and deplete the spring that feeds the famous pool at Balmorhea State Park. Thats a lot of water, said Bill Addington, a rancher and conservationist from neighboring Sierra Blanca. Believe me, theres many people who have plans to sue if this goes forward. We will sue. Hughes project may well just be the start of a much larger fight over the ownership of West Texas water, the future of oil and gas production and fate of agricultural lands and ecologically sensitive habitats. Its a feud that runs throughout the history of the West, between farmers and ranchers, conservationists and industry, neighboring cities, adjacent states. Whiskey is for drinking, they say. Water for fighting. Texans have fought over water for decades, if not centuries, said Larry French, groundwater director for the Texas Water Development Board. Oil and gas production is another competitor for a scarce resource. The Permian Basin is basically a desert, and that immediately presents challenges in finding adequate water, French said. You can do without a lot of things. But you cant do without water. At least three other companies in the region are selling or planning projects to sell water to energy companies that use it by the billions of gallons to crack shale rock and release oil and gas. Water use in the Permian has risen six-fold since the start of the shale oil boom, from more than 5 billion gallons in 2011 to almost 30 billion last year. Energy research firm IHS Markit predicts demand will double by the end of this year, to 60 billion gallons, and more than triple by 2020, to almost 100 billion. But West Texas network of aquifers are interconnected; water pumped from one can reduce flow in another. Some worry that all of these proposed water wells could dry up aquifers that supply West Texas ranches, farms and cities. Its not an unreasonable fear. Few here forget when oilman Clayton Williams Sr. and West Texas farmers pumped the prodigious Comanche Springs, just east of Balmorhea, to barely a trickle. Hughes, a former chairman of the Texas Parks & Wildlife Commission, and his team were seeking approval of their plans from the Culberson County Groundwater Conservation District. Officials there expected many others to apply to pump local aquifers. Water, said district general manager Summer Webb. Its the next oil. More than a decade ago, U.S. drillers began coupling two long-used oil production techniques, horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing, to revolutionize oil production, transforming the U.S. from an energy has-been to a key global producer. Companies slowly realized that the Permian held great promise: Its multiple underground layers of rock hold unfathomable quantities of oil. With crude prices still low, Permian has become one of the few places where drillers can make money. The number of drilling rigs there has almost tripled, from less than 140 last spring to almost 380 by late July. Companies habitually bore horizontal shafts that run at least 10,000 feet _ double the distance drilled four years ago _ and pump 20 million gallons of water, or more, into each to produce longer, wider fractures in the shale. Explorers, meanwhile, have ventured south and west, into a more remote section of the Permian, called the Delaware Basin, with thicker, deeper veins of oil and gas, but less groundwater. That created a market for water like no other U.S. shale field. There are going to be literally tens of thousands of wells drilled in the southern Delaware, said Toby Darden, CEO of one of the water startups, Wolfcamp Water Partners of Fort Worth. Water is a critical resource. Its one of the major logistical considerations for development in shale. Dardens Wolfcamp Water has leased 31,000 acres in the foothills of the Davis Mountains, drilled into the Capitan Reef aquifer, and gathered investors. The seven-employee company plans to break ground on wells, catch basins and a 65-mile pipeline by the end of the year, and pump more than 8 million gallons a day for 20 years, about two or three percent of the estimated 2.3 trillion gallons in the aquifer. Layne Christensen, The Woodlands water and well company, has purchased an old cotton farm on 800 acres outside of Pecos, tapped the Pecos Valley aquifer, and, last week, finished a six-well, 4.2-million-gallons-a-day pipeline that runs 20 miles to the heart of the Delaware Basin. And, last month, East Texas consultants Aperion Energy Group asked the city of Balmorhea to lease a small mountain lake and pipeline for $50,000, in total, for 50 years, starting in mid-August. The company declined to comment. Many out here support the water company efforts. Its good for communities, said John Davis, the mayor of Balmorhea and an oilfield construction supervisor. Especially communities that dont have a lot of revenue coming in. Hughess father, Dan Allen Hughes, Sr., started prospecting for oil more than 60 years ago. His firm, Dan A. Hughes Co., worked from New Mexico to Australia. It was an early explorer in the Barnett Shale gas field around the city of Denton, and, later, South Texas Eagle Ford. Hughes Sr. saw land as a good investment, and started buying ranches, especially on good hunting grounds. The family now owns 390,000 acres in Texas and Montana, including Apache Ranch, an expanse of white dirt, prickly pear and thorny mesquite surrounded by the rocky Apache Mountains northeast of Van Horn, and filled with game, including elk, pronghorn antelope and exotic aoudad sheep. Apache Ranch is unusual. The heart of the Delaware Basin is largely a bathtub of clays and salt, perfect for holding oil, but with little groundwater. The ranch is outside of that clay tub, formed by limestone and dolomite, porous rocks that hold about 1.6 trillion gallons of water in the Capitan Reef. In March, Hughes submitted an application to the Culberson County Groundwater Conservation District in the name of his new company, Agua Grande, asking to drill seven wells on the ranch and build a 60-mile pipeline northeast to the heart of Delaware, where 20 companies, including Anadarko Petroleum Corp. and EOG Resources, of Houston, and Concho Resources of Midland, are interested in buying the water, according to the application. Agua Grande made its pitch to Culberson County officials on June 7. The companys hydrogeologist, Steve Finch, from the New Mexico environmental firm John Shomaker & Associates, tried to persuade the board that the Capitan aquifer provided relatively little water to Balmorheas famous San Solomon Springs. Finch has studied groundwater there for 17 years, and spent six months examining it anew for Agua Grande. He created a computer model to analyze the effect of the pumping on the San Solomon. The result: I see zero impact, he said. But he also acknowledged that no one knows quite how the aquifers interact in the Delaware Basin. Its probably one of the most studied basins in the world, for oil and gas, he said. `But the groundwater portion, were still figuring the pieces out. Opponents of the project argued that the size of the withdrawals, almost 2 billion gallons a year, and potential impact on the network of aquifers threaten their livelihoods. They rely on the water to feed cattle, grow crops, fill the natural swimming pool at Balmorhea state park, and attract tourists. Several area springs have already dried up, they said, or produce less. Mr. Hughes inherited Apache Ranch. He is very well-off, said Addington, whose grandfather came to farm and ranch at Sierra Blanca more than century ago. When are they satisfied that they have enough money? Its offensive to us. It affects the future health and sustainability of the entire region. Hughes team remains hopeful. But they also understand the worries. Water, said Will Hughes, Dan Jr.s son and a land manager for the oil company, is the key to everything out here. Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Topics USA Texas Energy Oil Gas Agribusiness Two new driving laws kicked in for Louisiana this month. Also children can bring sunscreen to school without a doctors note, minors face tougher restrictions for getting an abortion and colleges cant ask unlimited questions about applying students criminal histories, as new state laws took effect at the start of August. More than 200 changes to state statutes hit the books with the start of August, passed in the regular legislative session that ended in June. Many provisions likely will draw little attention, but others affect traffic laws, criminal sentences, health care and school governance. Littering fines are changing, free parking is required for disabled veterans at airports and school bus drivers are now called bus operators in Louisiana law. Education Changes Several new laws affect Louisianas K-12 public schools. Students no longer need permission from a doctor or their school to use sunscreen on campus, on a school bus or at a school function. If a student cant apply the sunblock, a school employee can do it, if a parent gives written consent. While 38 of the states 69 school districts allow schools to use corporal punishment, paddling will be outlawed for students with disabilities. Estimates are as many as one-fifth of students fit the laws description, including students with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. Students in grades kindergarten through five have to be taught litter prevention and awareness so they understand the vital role they play in preserving the beauty of the state. At Louisianas colleges, a ban the box law restricts the questions that can be asked about criminal history to determine admission. Schools can ask about convictions for stalking, rape and sexual battery. After granting admission, they also can ask about convictions to decide if theyll limit participation in campus programs, financial aid and housing. Driving Laws Cities and towns that use cameras to catch speeders will have to post signs notifying drivers about the monitoring, or they wont be able to use the images to ticket motorists. Drivers-in-training can soon expect lessons on how to respond to police during a traffic stop, a law aimed at decreasing tensions between officers and motorists amid violent encounters around the country. In the driver education curriculum, Louisianas public safety department has to add instruction on police procedures for traffic stops, demonstrations of appropriate interactions with law enforcement and training on maintaining integrity and respect. Health Care Louisianas regulations are getting tougher for unmarried girls under the age of 18 who are seeking an abortion. Previously, a notarized statement from a legal guardian was required before a doctor could perform an abortion on a minor. Under the changes, the guardian also must provide proof of identity, including a government-issued identification card such as a drivers license. The doctor will have to keep a copy of the ID information. Terminally ill patients with permission from their doctors have expanded access to experimental treatments, under a broadening of Louisianas Right to Try Act to include robotic devices that help people unable to talk or write. Insurers dont have to cover the costs. Criminal Justice Pieces of Gov. John Bel Edwards criminal justice overhaul take effect Tuesday, including sentencing law changes, a statute aimed at helping ex-offenders obtain occupational licenses and a provision to shrink fines and court fees if they cause financial hardship. Some inmates convicted of murder as teenagers will be eligible for a chance at parole after serving 25 years. In response to domestic violence incidents involving a former state senator, Louisianas domestic abuse laws have been widened to cover dating partners. New crimes include battery of a dating partner and aggravated assault upon a dating partner, with varying penalties. Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Topics Legislation Louisiana Personal Auto Training Development Ryan Specialty Group, LLC, has completed the acquisition of the assets and operations of N-Surance Outlets (NSO), a wholesale insurance brokerage and binding authority operation headquartered in Roswell, Ga. The acquired business is a part of R-T Specialty, LLC (RT Specialty), the wholesale brokerage unit of Ryan Specialty Group (RSG). The transaction was previously announced on July 24, 2017. N-Surance Outlets specializes in commercial P&C, transportation, and garage risks and was founded in 1985 by Gregory K. Murrey. Over these 30+ years, NSO has consistently focused on these lines of business and currently services over 1,000 agents in the Southeast. Jason Murrey, president of NSO, and his team will continue to service and expand their client base from RT Specialty. R-T Specialty, LLC (RT), a subsidiary of Ryan Specialty Group, LLC, provides wholesale brokerage and other services to agents and brokers. RT is a Delaware limited liability company based in Illinois. In California: R-T Specialty Insurance Services, LLC License #0G97516. Topics Mergers & Acquisitions Agencies Excess Surplus Georgia Mount Sinabung on the Indonesian island of Sumatra blasted volcanic ash as high as 4.2 km on Wednesday, one of its biggest eruptions in the past several months of high activity. Isya Nurrahmat Dana, an official at a volcano monitoring post in North Sumatra province, said at least 19 eruptions followed by lava flows were recorded by midday Wednesday. Hot ash tumbled down the mountain's slopes as far as 4.5 km east and southeast into the Labortus River. Media reports said students from an elementary school in Kuta Rakyat were sent home because volcanic ash covering the village was considered dangerous. There were no reports of casualties. Montanas worst fire season in years is expected to scorch the drought-stricken landscape well into fall, long after the states firefighting reserves run out thanks to politicians diverting millions of dollars to fill a budget shortfall. There is only $12 million left of the $63 million in the firefighting fund in June, and the state is burning through that at a rate of $1.5 million a day, state Department of Natural Resources and Conservation director John Tubbs said . We will use up the remaining balance in fairly short order, he said. The states financial worries come as forecasters for the National Interagency Fire Center predict that eastern Montana, southern California and the western Dakotas could be exposed to major wildfire threats into October or November. A wet winter and spring produced thick grasses in the region, but a hot June melted the snow and dried out the vegetation, leaving it vulnerable to lightning-caused fires, said Bryan Henry, a meteorologist for the fire center. The threat of major wildfires also will remain high throughout August in northern Nevada and parts of the Northwest and northern Great Plains, he said. More fires are now burning in Montana than any other state. So far, they have torched 578 square miles, an area larger than Wyomings Grand Teton National Park, through both mountain timber in the west and grasslands in the east. Thats already surpassed the land burned every year since 2012, when 1,907 square miles burned in Montana, costing the state $55 million. Most of the fires started in July. The state spent $21 million fighting fires that month, equal to the amount it spent for the 12 months before that, Tubbs said. The eruption of wildfires caught state lawmakers and officials off guard after forecasts in the spring predicted only a moderate fire season. Thats when lawmakers passed a measure mandating that $30 million be transferred out of the fire fund if the states income came in lower than revenue forecasts. The revenue numbers came in last month, triggering the transfer and a slew of budget cuts across state government. Republican Sen. Pat Connell of Hamilton said he is concerned that another major fire could erupt at any time without enough money left in the fire fund. Weve got a long way to go through this fire season and Im very scared about our future, Connell said. If the fund runs dry, state officials will still be able to respond to fires, Tubbs said. His department can pull up to $22 million from the states general fund, and an earlier fire disaster declaration by Gov. Steve Bullock authorized an additional $16 million. But with the revenue shortfall, its not clear how much cash is available. Tubbs said that will be a challenge for the governors budget director. Some relief came when the U.S. government last week approved a grant that will allow the state to recover three-quarters of its costs to fight its largest fire burning in eastern Montana. The amount of the savings is not yet clear. The state is also entering into cost-sharing agreements to fight fires with the U.S. Forest Service, which will also help, Tubbs said. AP writers Dan Elliott in Denver and Bobby Caina Calvan in Helena contributed to this report. Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Topics Wildfire Four doctors are accusing New Mexicos insurance superintendent of allowing major hospital chains to tap into a medical malpractice fund despite concerns of insufficient balances. State district court documents show physicians including American Medical Association president-elect Barbara McAneny filed the lawsuit. It alleges New Mexico Insurance Superintendent John Franchini allowed 16 hospitals and dozens of outpatient care facilities to tap into an already depleted fund to pay for malpractice liabilities starting in 2009. The lawsuit alleges that negotiations were conducted in secret by Franchini to access the fund that pays out malpractice liability claims to patients. It seeks to void the superintendents actions and reset surcharges in accordance with new studies. Franchini says the allegations are without merit. Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Topics Mexico New Mexico Medical Professional Liability VANCOUVER - August 3, 2017 (Investorideas.com Newswire) SilverCrest Metals Inc. (TSXV: SIL.V; OTCQX: SVCMF) ("SilverCrest" or the "Company") is pleased to announce additional Phase II drill results for the Las Chispas Property (the "Property") located in Sonora, Mexico. These additional drill results, combined with results announced in previous news releases, show continued expansion of unmined high-grade mineralization in the Giovanni and William Tell veins. This drilling also encountered initial high-grade intercepts in the Varela Vein and newly discovered La Blanquita Vein (see attached Figures). Mineralized intercepts summarized in this news release represent only a portion of the 19 epithermal veins that have been identified to date on the Property. Additional drill results are anticipated over the next several months. SilverCrest Metals Las Chispas Project La Blanquita Vein (CNW Group/SilverCrest Metals Inc.) N. Eric Fier, CPG, P.Eng, President and CEO, remarked, "We continue to successfully explore and expand our high-grade footprint at the Las Chispas Property through systematic drilling on multiple veins. A high-grade intercept of 1.9 metres grading 50.56 grams per tonne ("gpt") gold and 5,018.8 gpt silver or 8,803 gpt silver equivalent ("AgEq"*) shows intact bonanza grades in the Giovanni Vein. Our ongoing underground rehabilitation, sampling and drill-testing of the various veins continues to discover unmined areas with grades similar to reported historic production grades estimated at 15 gpt gold and 1,700 gpt silver or 2,875 gpt AgEq*. Although our primary drilling focus has shifted to the larger nearby Babicanora Vein, the Giovanni and William Tell veins continue to show further potential for high-grade mineralization. Given recent new discoveries and the expansion of the high-grade footprint of the district, we are again expanding our Phase II program until the end of 2017." The most significant result for this release is an intercept in Hole LC-17-45 of 1.9 metres grading 50.6 gpt gold and 5,018.8 gpt silver, or 8,803 gpt AgEq* including 0.7 metres grading 137.5 gpt gold and 13,560 gpt silver, or 23,873 gpt AgEq*. This hole intercepted the Giovanni Vein near the accessible 400 level (see attached Figures). Also noteworthy is 1.9 metres grading 0.39 gpt gold and 427.8.0 gpt silver, or 457 gpt AgEq* in Hole LC-17-30 which intercepted the William Tell Vein. The following table summarizes the most significant drill intercepts (uncut, undiluted) for this release: Note: all numbers are rounded. *AgEq based on 75 (Ag):1 (Au) and 100% metallurgical recovery. **Previously announced drill intercept in the Las Chispas Vein that was below the cut-off grade of 150 gpt AgEq*; Hole LC16-27 intercepted William Tell Vein with grades above the Companys cut-off. See May 11, 2017 news release. Note: all numbers are rounded. AgEq based on 75 (Ag):1 (Au) and 100% metallurgical recovery. All assays were completed by ALS Chemex in Hermosillo, Mexico, and North Vancouver, BC, Canada. The highest grade intercept in hole LC17-45 consists of massive crystalline argentite and electrum (see attached Figures) in the Giovanni Vein. This intercept is located near the accessible 400 level of the Las Chispas Historic Mine in an area not previously mined. Additionally, multiple veins were drill-intersected in the footwall of the Giovanni Vein and are being investigated. The Company is currently completing detailed underground mapping and sampling in this area with planned underground drilling for further delineation in Q3 2017. Holes LC17-41, 42 and 46 hit voids. Holes LC16-25 and 26, LC17-43, 44, 53 intercepted mineralization below the Companys 150 gpt AgEq* cutoff. Drill hole LC17-54 was lost downhole. The Company will consider further work on these two veins after drilling at the higher priority Babicanora Vein. The Varela Vein appears to be increasing in grade to the southeast and the La Blanquita Vein appears to be the southeast extension of the Giovanni Vein (see attached Figures). Given the success to date, the Company plans to drill another 7,000 to 9,000 metres (total of 23,000 to 25,000 metres) in Phase II by the end of 2017. In addition to core drilling, other ongoing Phase II exploration work at Las Chispas includes; continuing underground rehabilitation, underground channel sampling, possible extension and rehabilitation of the Babicanora adit for another 150 to 250 metres, expanded surface mapping and sampling in the district, initial metallurgical work, and auger drilling to determine accurate volumetrics and grade of historic dumps. Phase II surface drilling in the Las Chispas area is complete and surface drilling continues in the Babicanora area. The Company anticipates completing its Phase II work in Q4 2017 with its maiden resource estimation by Q1 2018. The Qualified Person under National Instrument 43-101 Standards of Disclosure for Mineral Projects for this news release is N. Eric Fier, CPG, P.Eng, and President and CEO for SilverCrest, who has reviewed and approved its contents. ABOUT SILVERCREST METALS INC. SilverCrest is a Canadian precious metals exploration company headquartered in Vancouver, BC, that is focused on new discoveries, value-added acquisitions and targeting production in Mexicos historic precious metal districts. The Company is led by a proven management team in all aspects of the precious metal mining sector, including the pioneering of a responsible "phased approach" business model taking projects through discovery, finance, on time and on budget construction, and production with subsequent increased value to shareholders. FORWARD-LOOKING STATEMENTS This news release contains "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of Canadian securities legislation. These include, without limitation, statements with respect to: the strategic plans, timing and expectations for the Companys exploration, rehabilitation and drilling programs of the Las Chispas Property, including initial extraction program for bulk sample testing and preparation of an initial resource estimate; information with respect to high grade areas and size of veins projected from underground sampling results and drilling results; and the accessibility of future mining at the Las Chispas Property. Such forward looking statements or information are based on a number of assumptions, which may prove to be incorrect. Assumptions have been made regarding, among other things: the conditions in general economic and financial markets; availability of skilled labour; timing and amount of expenditures related to rehabilitation and drilling programs; and effects of regulation by governmental agencies. The actual results could differ materially from those anticipated in these forward-looking statements as a result of risk factors including: the timing and content of work programs; results of exploration activities; the interpretation of drilling results and other geological data; receipt, maintenance and security of permits and mineral property titles; environmental and other regulatory risks; project cost overruns or unanticipated costs and expenses; and general market and industry conditions. Forward-looking statements are based on the expectations and opinions of the Companys management on the date the statements are made. The assumptions used in the preparation of such statements, although considered reasonable at the time of preparation, may prove to be imprecise and, as such, readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements, which speak only as of the date the statements were made. The Company undertakes no obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements included in this news release if these beliefs, estimates and opinions or other circumstances should change, except as otherwise required by applicable law. N. Eric Fier, CPG, P.Eng President & CEO SilverCrest Metals Inc. Neither TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release. For Further Information: SilverCrest Metals Inc. Contact: Fred Cooper, Investor Relations Telephone: +1 (604) 694-1730 Fax: +1 (604) 694-1761 Toll Free: 1-866-691-1730 (Canada & USA) Email: info@silvercrestmetals.com Website: www.silvercrestmetals.com 570 Granville Street, Suite 501 Vancouver, British Columbia V6C 3P1 SilverCrest Metals Las Chispas Project Giovanni Las Chispas Long Section (CNW Group/SilverCrest Metals Inc.) 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Local media in Ocean City, Maryland, are reporting the fire department was called to assist a group of swimmers yesterday. U.S. President Donald Trump says he is holding Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro "personally responsible" for the health and safety of two opposition leaders seized by police in the middle of the night. "The United States condemns the actions of the Maduro dictatorship," Trump said in a statement late Tuesday. "Mr. Lopez and Mr. Ledzema are political prisoners being held illegally by the regime... we reiterate our call for the immediate and unconditional release of all political prisoners." Twitter video shows intelligence agents dragging Leopoldo Lopez and Antonio Ledezma out of their homes and shoving them into cars. Ledezma was still in his pajamas. The two were under house arrest for previous opposition activities. The Venezuelan Supreme Court says "official intelligence sources" warned that Lopez and Ledezma were planning to flee. The court said they broke the terms of their house arrest by "political campaigning" and "making statements to the media," encouraging protests against the Maduro government. Lopez's lawyer, Juan Carlos Gutierrez, denied his client violated his house-arrest regulations. He said Lopez was only forbidden from talking about his own case. Lopez supporters released a video shot last week, showing him rubbing his pregnant wife's belly and saying he would likely be arrested again. White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders called the arrests "unjust" and said they follow Maduro's "outrageous seizure of power through a sham election" -- a reference to Sunday's vote for an assembly to rewrite the constitution, which is opposed by 70 percent of Venezuelans. U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson called the opposition leaders' arrests "very alarming." The two men each had posted videos urging their followers to boycott Sunday's election. Lopez and Ledezma, both former mayors, were under house arrest for various charges. Lopez previously spent three years in jail on charges of instigating violence during anti-Maduro street protests in 2014; Ledezma was convicted in 2015 on charges of plotting a coup against Maduro. The categories of students who can be offered a third-level place before the main offers after the Leaving Certificate results in mid-August include overseas students coming to Ireland, who may require early confirmation to facilitate visa arrangements. Although official figures for non-EU applicants are not yet available, some colleges have reported increased interest from international students since the Brexit referendum vote last summer. The latest CAO data shows more than 10,300 students have been offered places on 12,731 courses, both figures up 7.5% on the same stage on 2016. The latest offers are issuing this morning to nearly 4,000 applicants for graduate medicine courses, some mature applicants and further education graduates, and others who do not compete directly for places with Leaving Certificate students. While that figure is 13% higher than a year ago, more than 6,300 people received offers in the first preliminary round a month ago, 4% more than at the same time a year ago. Andrew Deeks, president of University College Dublin, said in June that it has hired extra staff using income from increased intake from non-EU students who pay higher fees. However, the university is also to consider restricting or cutting places for Irish students if the wider shortfall in funding for Third Level is not addressed soon. Leaving Certificate students and most other CAO applicants must wait until August 21 before the bulk of offers to fill courses at more than 40 colleges are issued in the days after school-leavers get their exam results. Those who are offered places today have a week to notify the CAO if they wish to take up the course. Meanwhile, science, technology, and engineering subjects should be available to students at all second-level schools, a group has recommended in a report addressing issues affecting their take-up. At a meeting of people from different disciplines, funding agencies and industry representative bodies, ideas to encourage greater interest and understanding of science and science-related careers. The proposals that emerged have been published by biopharma company AbbVie, which has plants in Sligo and Cork, and which hosted the event. The experts also suggest that more should be done to highlight role models working in science, technology, engineering, and maths. But he will face some pier pressure in Cork this weekend during a public demonstration of his striking art as part of a special RNLI fundraiser. A former naval diver, the Kinsale-based artist combines his passion for adventure with his love of art. He has climbed to Everest base camp, trekked over Antarctic glaciers, spent weeks in the steaming jungles of Borneo, dived in the caves and cenotes of Mexico, and has used his adventures to inspire his work. My extreme journeys into the unknown bring new challenges that push the boundaries of my mind, body and soul, he said. These voyages of discovery, sometimes dangerous, are a stimulus to drive me forward creatively and explore new worlds of emotional expression. With these explorations of seldom travelled places, I have found a new source of energy that I attempt to translate into visual form. He has now agreed to paint on Kinsale pier this bank holiday Saturday as the town hosts its annual RNLI raft run. He has also agreed to let members of the public make a daub or squiggle on the canvas which he will then incorporate into the finished painting. It is hoped that the finished work will be auctioned later to help raise funds for the RNLI. Philips work is highly collectable and this will be a unique chance for people to contribute to a serious piece of art, a spokesperson for Kinsale RNLI said. The towns annual Kinsale RNLI raft race is due to set off at 3pm from the Bulman Bar, with up to 20 homemade rafts competing for the coveted trophy designed by Dominic Dolan of Kinsale Silver, with reigning champions Kinsale Outdoor Education Centre promising a vigorous defence of their title. The event will finish with a party on the pier with Glastonbury legend and White Lady Hotel DJ Anthony spinning the discs. The towns lifeboat station will be open to the public from 1.30pm on Sunday. Irish Water Safety, meanwhile, has urged people to be extra vigilant this weekend, with August the most popular month for outdoor swimming. Spokesman John Leech said people can reduce the risk of drowning by swimming at lifeguarded waterways and within their depth. Senior officers said the dolls which are child-like in appearance, weight, and anatomy appear to be criminalised under child pornography laws. However, a legal expert said any such prosecution would be contested in the courts as a defendant could argue that such a doll is not a child or that the doll does not equate with a child as covered by child pornography laws. The concerns follow a landmark case this week in Britain, where a court ruled that the dolls fall under UK Customs laws banning the importation of indecent or obscene items. British police said that while child sex dolls were a relatively new phenomenon, they had seized 123 of them in little over a year. The silicone dolls, made in the Far East, typically weigh around 25kg (around the weight of an eight-year-old child) and cost thousands of euro to buy online. Cari (Children at Risk Ireland), which provides therapy and support for children affected by child abuse, said the dolls indicate a criminal interest in children and that it was important gardai were assured the laws were sufficiently robust to deal with it. Theres no doubt that they will come to Ireland at some stage if they are not already here, and we need to be prepared for that, said Chief Superintendent Michael Daly of the Garda National Protective Services Bureau. He told the Irish Examiner that the life-size child dolls were fairly horrible items. He said his unit was very concerned at the prospect of them coming into Ireland and they were liaising with British police and the PSNI. A 72-year-old primary school governor and married man, David Turner, was convicted in England this week of importing an indecent or obscene object in what the UK National Crime Agency called a test case. Chief Supt Daly said gardai started checking the law here when the case broke. Our legislation appears to be wide enough, he said. It does seem to fall within child pornography laws. David Turner Section 2.1 of the Child Trafficking and Pornography Act 1998, amended by the Criminal Law Sexual Offences Act 2017, states that child pornography includes any visual representation whose dominant characteristic is the depiction, for a sexual purpose, of the genital or anal region of a child. Chief Supt Daly said while visual representation has tended to refer to pictures and the like, the legislation was reasonably broad and seemed to include 3D visual representations such as a plastic child sex doll. Ive received full images [of the dolls] from UK police and the dolls do show those regions [genital and anal], he said. They are fairly horrible items. He said the issue has not been tested in the courts yet and was seeking advice from the Garda Legal Section. Professor of Law at the University of Limerick Shane Kilcommins said he believed the matter would be contested in court by defendants and that it would be difficult for the prosecution to prove its case. Prof Kilcommins said the definition of child pornography as any visual representation meant it was arguable that it can include 3D visual representations such as a sex doll. He also said it was arguable that the doll encourages sexual activity with children. However, he added: The prosecution would have to prove that the dominant purpose of the doll is the depiction, for a sexual purpose, of the genital or anal region of a child. A defendant might argue that the doll does not depict a child, or that a doll does not equate with a child for the purposes of the legislation, or that it does not encourage or counsel sexual activity with children. A child sex doll of the type now being seized by UK Border Force in increasing numbers. Picture: John Stillwell/PA The Department of Justice said there were no plans to amend the definition of child pornography further, but issues such as this are kept under continuing review. Revenue Customs said that, depending on the facts and circumstances, possession of dolls of the type referred to may constitute an offence under the child pornography act. Cari chief executive Mary Flaherty said the dolls clearly do indicate a criminal interest in children. CARI Helpline: 1890 924567. New figures published by An Garda Siochana show the three Garda divisions in Cork city and county spend proportionately the least of any of the 28 divisions in the country on overtime Cork West recorded the lowest overtime bill last year with spending of just under 370,000, leaving gardai stationed there with annual overtime earnings of just 1,316. The overtime bill for all Cork city and county in 2016 was just over 2 million with gardai in the city earning 1,775 on average and those in Cork North on 1,831. In contrast, gardai in Dublin North Central ran up an overtime bill of 10.2m in 2016 averaging extra pay of almost 16,700 each. The high overtime budget is largely due to Dublins north inner city being the location for many of the fatal shootings associated with the bloody Kinahan-Hutch gangland feud. The latest figures show Garda overtime pay soared by 61% to over 90m last year with gardai earning an average of almost 7,000 each for working extra hours. Some gardai would have earned considerably higher amounts as overtime is restricted to members at garda, sergeant and inspector rank. In 2015, the highest earning rank-and-file garda topped up his basic pay with almost 63,000 in overtime. Gardai maintain the sharp increase in overtime in 2016 is due to extra patrols introduced in response to a bloody gangland feud in Dublin and targeted operations against organised crime and burglary gangs, as well as increased port security and anti-terrorism measures. The biggest overtime bill last year was amassed by gardai attached to specialist units such as the National Drug and Organised Crime Bureau, which came in at 21.1m. The highest average overtime earnings outside Dublin was in Louth at just under 8,100. The overtime bill for civilian staff in the force also soared last year, almost doubling to top 1m for the first time. In its recent 2017 spending review the Department of Public Expenditure said the Garda overtime bill should be slashed to bring it to sustainable levels. Overtime costs now account for 9.3% of the Garda payroll budget but officials believe it should be brought down to 4%-5% in line with the international norms for police forces. There is a risk that the existing high levels of overtime will become embedded in the system, they warned. The current basic overtime rate is 24.10 per hour for gardai recruited before April 1995 and between 15.74 and 25.90 for newer recruits based on service. The Department of Public Expenditure and Reform claims greater civilianisation of the force will help reduce overtime costs as will greater use of technology, reduced attendance in courts, better co-ordinated rosters and reduced sick leave. In a recent circular the Garda Representative Association said overtime had always been an important source of additional remuneration for frontline gardai but claimed pay cuts had reduced the attractiveness of working extra hours. The GRA also claims the requirement to pay pension levies on overtime pay is particularly unpalatable. A Garda spokesperson said there would always be a need for a certain level of overtime to allow the force flexibility when responding to circumstances that require additional resources for specific operations. The Irish Travel Agents Association said the checks, being introduced at airports in most EU countries since March, are causing huge delays for many passengers. While the checks are not imposed on passengers flying out of Ireland or the UK, those boarding at Spanish, French, Italian, Belgian, and Portuguese airports are facing reported delays of up to four hours. An umbrella body for European airlines, including Ryanair, has called for the responsible authorities to increase staffing in order to minimise the delays. The measures require authorities to check travel documents against databases of stolen, lost, and invalid documents to combat people using fake identities and reducing terror threats. ITAA president Cormac Meehan said longer queues are occurring in some airports which are already extremely busy in the peak holiday season. He said his association colleagues will do their best to ensure customers arrive at airports in plenty of time. However, we advise all travellers to check with their airlines and ensure they factor these longer queuing times into their travel plans when flying in and out of airports, said Mr Meehan. The measures are an extension of the Schengen free travel area accord, to which Ireland and the UK are not signatories. While systematic or routine checks on exit do not take place here, the Department of Justice said Ireland introduced the systematic screening of travel documents on arrival against Interpols database of stolen and lost documents last November. The problems at EU airports could exacerbate in the coming months as 22 Schengen-affiliated EU states must adopt the new screening measures by early October, says the Airlines For Europe Association. Hundreds of passengers on British Airways flights to and from London were held up by delays due to another problem with the airlines check-in systems at Heathrow, Gatwick, and London City airports yesterday. Some services were almost two hours behind schedule after early-morning BA flights from London had to be checked in manually due to the glitch. Meanwhile, Dublin Airport Authority has rejected claims its lack of investment is contributing to severe delays for passengers this summer. The Irish Airline Pilots Association said hold-ups to aircraft going to and from runways were due to the airports failure to match growing business with the necessary infrastructure. The DAA said while there has been faster than expected growth in recent years, it is investing 100m a year in additional capacity. A spokesperson told RTE radio that on-time performance for departing and inbound aircraft in June were 10% and 12%, respectively, better than a year ago. A New Ireland Forum 2 to achieve a nationalist consensus on how to unite the island should be established, a report published yesterday by the Joint Oireachtas Committee on the Implementation of the Good Friday Agreement said. Northern Ireland is the only part of the UK sharing a land border with an EU state the Republic of Ireland and its status after Brexit is a key factor in talks between London and Brussels amid claims the region would be worst-affected by a hard exit. The 1998 Good Friday Agreement, which largely ended decades of violence, allows a referendum on reuniting Ireland where it is believed a majority in Northern Ireland favour this. EU leaders agreed that such a vote, in the face of stiff unionist opposition, would allow Northern Ireland to rejoin the bloc automatically. The report said: The road map to achieve the constitutional aspiration of the peaceful reunification of Ireland and its peoples under the Good Friday Agreement could begin in the same way as the original New Ireland Forum. We recommend the establishment of A New Ireland Forum 2 which would be the mechanism whereby the status quo logjam and long-term consequence of Brexit for the people of this island could be addressed. The original New Ireland Forum met in the 1980s to achieve agreement among nationalists opposed to IRA violence on the way forward. Among those who attended were then-taoiseach Garret FitzGerald and SDLP founder John Hume. Arrangements for the Irish border after Brexit are one of the key issues under negotiation between the UK and EU. While political leaders in Dublin, Belfast and London have endorsed calls for a frictionless frontier, its future is still to be decided. Taoiseach Leo Varadkar recently said Ireland will not design a border for Brexiteers and his intervention has met with an angry response from the DUP. The committee also said Northern Ireland should be treated as a special case worthy of ongoing EU support after Brexit in 2019. Yesterdays report was drawn up by Fianna Fail senator Mark Daly. Cyberbullying almost stopped the 19-year-old from experiencing the unbridled joy of winning the 100,000 Connacht Hotel Handicap feature race at Galway on Monday. Winning the race on Whiskey Sour and for his dad Luke, who owns the horse, was the stuff of dreams. Aubreys whole family was emotional after the Willie Mullins-trained horse raced to victory, not just because of his impressive win, but because the young man thought he would never ride another horse again after he gave up the sport as a direct result of social media attacks. I dont particularly want to bring attention on myself but I think its important for people to know what cyberbullying can do and how it can affect people. I want to raise awareness of how it can affect people and the awful effects it can have. Thankfully I dont take on board what strangers say about me anymore, said the Kildare man. Since the age of five or six, I always wanted to be a jockey. It was always my dream. When I turned 16 years old, I started getting a few rides in races and had my first winner at a race meeting in Galway, he said. But after my sixth or seventh ride as a jockey the anonymous taunting started, particularly on Twitter, as I used it a good bit. It was after a race in Bellewstown I remember coming in (to the weigh room) and checking my phone for calls or texts. There were lots of anonymous tweets about me on Twitter and I was called every name under the sun and the hatred towards me was just awful. After a few more races, I was starting to get paranoid about what was going to be on my phone. When Aubrey found out there was an online forum about him, it was the final straw. You would get a dirty message full of hatred and nasty language. I was starting to not enjoy going out in races as I didnt know what would be on my phone when I got back. One year later, at the age of 17 he folded his racing silks, for what he thought was the last time. I had enough and I couldnt take it anymore. I got a really good job as a junior trader in Sandyford in Dublin and I enjoyed it a lot. I had great prospects but horse racing was always my first love. I had the hunger for racing back and trainer Gordon Elliot who lives about 25 minutes from me in Meath took me on for a couple of days a week and then Willie Mullins gave me a few days work as well. During his 18 months in his office job, Aubrey realised he had to change his mindset about social media and cyberbullying. Thankfully my confidence in my ability is now back and Im not listening to the keyboard bullies anymore. I just think that a lot of these bullies are targeting jockeys because they had 5 or 10 on a bet on them and they lost so they take it out on the jockey. Obviously Im not the only jockey who has been bullied by these racing trolls as I call them. Jockeys Ruby Walsh and Barry Geraghty get bullying messages all the time but you have to have to think of what they say to you differently. Those people are only cowards. Im glad Im not like them and I still use Twitter but in a different way now. But mentally Im so much stronger now but more high profile people need to speak out about cyberbullying and what it can do to people. The planned transportation of gas imports from Texas for connection to the Bord Gais pipeline could ensure energy security into the future and provide competitiveness to key industries, in particular. Also, the Port of Corks long battle to secure the long-idle Irish Fertiliser Industries (IFI) plant in Marino Point is at an end. A deal has been struck with the receiver of the site, which has been mothballed for 15 years. Hundreds of people had been employed at the site after it opened in 1979 but it finally closed in 2002, with 220 jobs lost. A new joint venture between the port authorities and Wexford-based Lanber Holdings (LB) offers a new lease of life to the strategically-located site. Initially, it will be redeveloped for additional cargo handling. Port of Cork chief executive Brendan Keating said the company had been waiting years to acquire the shoreline site. The co-owners, LB, with a major shareholding, he noted, had a huge track record in business development. Acknowledging much of the plant was in a poor state of repair, he said the jetty remained in a good condition and in an ideal location, in ten metres of water enabling large ships to dock there. Mr Keating admitted that the redevelopment of the site was an ambitious development but said it could be achieved by phased upgrading of buildings as businesses located there. He said every business opportunity for the site will be explored. We will focus initially on cargo-handling and new trading opportunities, such as fertiliser and animal feed importation, he said. Mr Keating pointed out the purchase of Marino Point also offered significant further opportunities for expansion. It will enable us to relocate business from the city quays and direct as much business to Marino Point as we can. It will, primarily, be a bulk terminal. It can be used for the importation of fertiliser and animal feeds, but we will also look for other import and export opportunities, he said. The great advantage of the Marino Point site is that it has a rail connection. For many years, IFI used the spur line, connected to the Cobh-Cork railway, to transport ammonia around the country. The spur line would have to be reinstated but that could be easily achieved, Mr Keating said. He said it was the ambition of the Port of Cork and its business partner to develop the site on a progressive basis as business opportunities arise. Mr Keating said the new business partners had received a number of inquiries from companies interested in relocating to Marino Point and they were considering their propositions. The recent rise in right-wing neo-fascism parties in Europe has brought about a reawakening of that anti-Roma sentiment along with anti-Semitism, Islamaphobia, and anti-emigrant narratives, said the wife of President Michael D Higgins. These poisonous ideologies must not be allowed to gain foothold in contemporary moment. Its a cause of great grief that right through history so much unnecessary suffering was inflicted on people through mans inhumanity to man, all avoidable, all unnecessary. Mrs Higgins was addressing members of Irelands Roma community at the Roma Holocaust Memorial Day in Dublins Mansion House yesterday and became emotional as she recalled the vast number of lives lost in the genocide. Approximately 500,000 Roma people were exterminated by the Nazis in the Second World War but the horror was not fully recognised until 1982, meaning they received no compensation or assistance in the aftermath of the war. In 2011, August 2 was chosen as a day of commemoration of the genocide, was passed. It is estimated a further 500,000 Roma people were displaced and dispossessed because of the war. August 2 was chosen as, on that night in 1944, approximately 3,000 Roma people were exterminated in a gas chamber. Mrs Higgins said the politics of hate must be replaced with respect. The politics of hate, fear, and otherness must be rejected and, in its place, we must strive for inclusion, mutual respect, and ethics, she said. We must acknowledge that which makes us different and strive to learn from each other to better understand each other, and care for each other. This is how we overcome discrimination and we do that through education, mutual respect and love. Mrs Higgins stated that the integrated education of our children was a necessary step towards creating an inclusive society. So in conclusion, I would like to take a moment to acknowledge and remember all who lost their lives during the darkest moment of European history, whether Roma, Jew, gentile, homosexual, people of different physical and mental abilities, and other minority groups, she said. We must never allow ourselves to forget. We must remember. Chinese state media on Wednesday warned of military and diplomatic repercussions if South Korea fully deploys a Terminal High-Altitude Area Defense battery. The Global Times, an English-language government mouthpiece, on Wednesday quoted Jin Jingyi at Peking University as saying, "If THAAD is successfully deployed in South Korea, the relations between China and South Korea will be gravely damaged as the system poses severe threat to China's military and national security in a long term." And Lu Chao, a researcher at the Liaoning Academy of Social Sciences, told the paper, "Countermeasures from China, including diplomatic and military measures, will follow the deployment, as China will not allow its national security to be violated." He said the new government in Seoul "is fully aware of the fact that whether THAAD could effectively intercept a medium-range missile from North Korea remains uncertain, and it also knows the impact of the system on China, which has made China feel more disappointed." So far only two of six interceptor launchers have been deployed, but Cheong Wa Dae said after North Korea's latest missile test that the deployment of the other four can go ahead even while a procedural review is underway. China has so far resorted to an unofficial boycott of South Korean goods and services that has sent exports to the world's biggest market plunging and dramatically slashed tourist numbers from China. Meanwhile, Japanese broadcaster NHK on Wednesday quoted U.S. government officials as saying that the Chinese military has been holding missile drills in northern China at targets resembling American missile interceptors and F-22 fighter jets. "China conducted the drills because it is fully aware that the U.S. is watching," an official said. "The exercises appear aimed at flaunting China's ability to destroy the THAAD battery." In a speech marking Roma Holocaust Memorial Day in which the Presidents wife at times became emotional, she also spoke about the need to integrate our children to help prevent the spread of anti-immigrant narratives. The politics of hate, fear and otherness must be rejected and in its place, we must strive for inclusion, mutual respect and ethics, said Mrs Higgins. We must acknowledge that which makes us different and strive to learn from each other to better understand each other and care for each other. She was speaking in Dublins Mansion House yesterday on Roma Holocaust Memorial Day, which has been celebrated annually on August 2 since 2011. Mrs Higgins referred to the rise of far-right politics and how it has produced challenges such as Islamaphobia. The recent rise in right-wing neo-fascism parties in Europe has brought about a reawakening of that anti-Roma sentiment along with anti-Semitism, Islamaphobia and anti-emigrant narratives, Mrs Higgins said. The long-time human rights activist said that discrimination was overcome through education, mutual respect, and love. In an Irish context, Mrs Higgins referred to integrated education as a step to take towards a more inclusive society. Integrated education of our children, I think, is a necessary, necessary step along that way, she said It is estimated that, of the millions of people killed by the Nazis during the Second World War, 500,000 of them were Romas, despite this not being officially recognised until 1982. We must never allow ourselves to forget. We must remember, she said. News: 7 The fallout over Britains departure from the EU is now threatening to damage relations between Dublin and unionists amid a political vacuum in the North where there is still no sight of a new power-sharing deal. Mr Varadkar is expected to set out part of his vision for north-south relations, problems with Brexit and the future of peace on the island when he visits Belfast tomorrow. He is scheduled to give a speech at Queens University before holding talks with parties on all sides during the two days of engagements. But his debut visit across the border as Taoiseach has been overshadowed after a backlash over his insistence Brexiteers must design a new border. DUP leader Arlene Foster said yesterday Mr Varadkar needed to accept that Brexit is going to happen. She also accused him of being unhelpful by making comments about the Irish border after Britain leaves the European Union. Although relations between the Democratic Unionists and the Irish government remain strained, Mrs Foster said she is looking forward to meeting Mr Varadkar on Friday. But she criticised what she called his megaphone politics and rubbished his hope, outlined this week, that Britain will U-turn on Brexit and remain within the EU. Mrs Foster told reporters this was disrespecting the wishes of the British people. Brexit is going to happen. We are leaving the European Union. I just hope the Republic of Ireland will continue to work constructively with us in Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK because it is very much in their interest to have a Brexit that works for them as well as a Brexit that works for the UK, the former Stormont first minister said. Mr Varadkar angered unionists when he said Ireland would not help Britain design an economic border for Brexiteers. Mrs Foster said the comments were not helpful and added that the Irish Government should reflect on whether they are being helpful to the process here in Northern Ireland or not. They have made various interventions recently in relation to Northern Ireland politics, she said. It would be better if we focused on finding solutions to what is in front of us. We want to find ways forward. We know there are huge opportunities in relation to Brexit and we also accept there are short-term challenges. To overcome all of that, we have to work together. The sort of megaphone diplomacy that has been engaged in is not helpful. We have to work together to get a European exit that works for everybody. The action has been brought by Dympna Mannion against Galway Roscommon Education Training Boards decision to redeploy her from St Killians College, Ballinasloe to Merlin College in Galway City. The court heard Ms Mannion believes she is being forced out of St Killians. At the High Court Dermot Sheehan, counsel for the business studies teacher, said his client was informed of the proposed transfer by St Killians principal Padraig Kelly approximately 10 minutes before the end of the school year on June 2. She claims she was told she was being transferred because there was a surplus of business studies teachers. Ms Mannion was shocked and broke down in tears after being informed of the decision to transfer her. It is not clear why she was selected, counsel said. She asked Mr Kelly why she has been targeted. However, he denied she was targeted. She was also informed that she was selected because the other business teachers at the school had more service and more seniority. She says there should have been an attempt by the ETB to seek a voluntary transfer and the policy should have been last in, first out. She claims there are nine more junior teachers at the school who she says were not considered for redeployment and no request for volunteers for any proposed transfer was made. Notice of any proposed transfer should have been given earlier than it was, she also argues. In a sworn statement to the court, she said that in her case that sections of Redeployment Scheme, contained in the 1998 Education Act ETB concerning the transfer of teachers was not followed. The fact she was not consulted and was notified of the transfer just before the end of the school year humiliated me, was high-handed and unfair. She made an industrial relations complaint to Galway Roscommon ETBs human resources department about the proposed transfer. However that was not successful. In her action, Ms Mannion, of Headford Rd, Galway, seeks an order quashing the ETBs decision to transfer her. She also seeks a declaration that the decision to transfer her was in breach of redeployment procedures contained in the 1998 Education Act. Permission to bring the challenge was granted, on an ex-parte basis, by Mr Justice Seamus Noonan. The matter was adjourned to a date in August. President Moon Jae-in on Wednesday met with Indonesian Defense Minister Ryamizard Ryacudu, who is visiting Korea to take delivery of a submarine for the Indonesian Navy. Moon interrupted his holiday in southern Korea to meet the official in a gesture that incensed some conservative politicians. Some commentators feel that Moon more urgently needs to speak to U.S. President Donald Trump about North Korea. But Cheong Wa Dae said, "Indonesia is a very important partner for Korea's arms exports." Indonesia is buying three of the 1,400-ton submarines made by Daewoo Shipbuilding and Marine Engineering. The Indonesian minister also met with his Korean counterpart on Tuesday and traveled to Geoje in South Gyeongsang Province to attend a handover ceremony. A Cheong Wa Dae official said, "Indonesia is the largest buyer of Korean defense products and we plan to bolster our relationship to a strategic level." Lee is charged with bribing ex-President Park Geun-hye and her confidante Choi Soon-sil to the tune of W43.3 billion to facilitate a merger of Samsung subsidiaries (US$1=W1,124). In the first 49 court sessions since April 7, Lee only listened to the testimony of other witnesses and arguments between lawyers. Samsung chief Lee Jae-yong in his first testimony in his bribery trial on Wednesday denied he knew anything about the corporate machinations that cemented his control of the conglomerate. "I have no knowledge of the business that Samsung C&T and Cheil Industries were involved in," Lee told the court. "The merger was carried out by executives of the two affiliates and the corporate strategy office." The merger in 2015 gave Lee effective control of Samsung thanks to the conglomerate's Byzantine holding structure despite holding only a small minority stake. The move became urgent because Lee's father, Lee Kun-hee, had fallen into a coma after a massive heart attack in late 2014. At the time, the state-run National Pension Service, which owns a major stake in Samsung C&T, held the casting vote, and Park and Choi are accused of leaning on it to approve the merger. But Lee claimed he himself was never part of the corporate strategy office and had no knowledge of Choi, who used much of the money to buy properties and a purebred horse for her daughter Chung Yoo-ra in Germany. Samsung and Choi are accused of disguising part of the bribe as benevolent funding for her daughter's equestrian training, and funnelling the rest through two dodgy foundations Choi set up under the Cheong Wa Dae aegis. Ex-Samsung executive Choi Gee-sung appeared willing to take the fall for his boss. Choi Gee-sung told the court it was he who authorized Samsung's sponsorship of Chung. "At the time, I had a suspicion that Choi Soon-sil was pulling the strings from behind the scenes, but I could not confirm it, so I did not tell [Lee] about such hearsay because I thought that could cause big trouble." "I thought if it becomes a problem, I'll take the blame and quit. I've worked [for Samsung] for 40 years," he added. A growing number of budget carriers are starting to offer international flights from regional airports to escape intensifying competition. The move comes because the market for flights from Incheon and Gimpo international airports in the Seoul metropolitan area is saturated. T'Way Airlines started flying from Gimhae Airport in South Gyeongsang Province to Da Nang, Vietnam and Osaka, Japan on Tuesday. Just three years ago, budget carrier Air Busan was practically the only airline offering regular international flights from Gimhae Airport, which had long been seen as a white elephant. But things began to change markedly in 2015. With T'Way just joining the ranks, five out of the country's six low-cost carriers are offering 39 international flights to 10 countries. Destinations include Guam, Saipan, Malaysia's Kota Kinabalu, Mongolia's Ulaanbaatar, and Clark in the Philippines. Some offers more international flights than the two flag carriers, with Air Busan operating 18 compared to 13 by Korean Air and eight by Asiana Airlines. Jin Air and Jeju Air offer 10 and eight. Local Dems sweep; town rejects pot Every Democrat on the local ballot won their race Tuesday, including Jamestown resident Peter Neronhas re-election as the states top prosecutor, and local voters followed suit with the statewide trend... Voters rebuff allowing retail pot sales in shops By a margin of 157 votes, the electorate decided Tuesday not to allow local businesses to cultivate, manufacture, test or sell recreational marijuana in Jamestown. The referendum to allow the... School board agrees to contract with North Kingstown Jamestown students entering high school can continue to choose North Kingstown as their destination for grades 9-12. We are pleased to continue this historic partnership, said Ken Duva, superintendent of... By continuing to browse or by clicking "Accept," you agree to our site's privacy policy. RALEIGH The N.C. General Assembly is returning today from a five-week hiatus, but dont expect legislators to consider overriding Democratic Gov. Roy Coopers vetoes, their mandated reason for coming back to Raleigh for at least one day. With lots of legislators expected to be absent from the Legislative Building some apparently will be on vacation or busy with unrelated business Republicans are likely to delay decisions on the vetoed bills for at least a month and instead focus on tying up loose ends from the last session. Before going home, some legislators also will talk more about redrawing state legislative districts. The issue has more urgency now that federal judges this week ordered that new maps be drawn by September. Heres whats happened since this years work session ended June 30, what could happen today and whats ahead on redistricting: Sizing up the bills Cooper had 110 bills he needed to consider before a deadline last weekend. He signed nearly all of them into law, including a bill that both pleased and disappointed proponents of renewable energy. While the bill retooled solar power rules to benefit the industry, it also put a moratorium on state permits for wind farms until early 2019. He let four bills become law without his signature and vetoed four others, bringing the veto total in his first seven months in office to nine. His previous five vetoes were overridden by the GOP-dominated legislature. What was vetoed? One vetoed bill directed state environmental regulators to allow landfills to spray liquid collected from underneath landfills into the air with a fine mist. Cooper said legislators should be leaving those decisions to scientists. The governor also was worried a bill designed to make nonprofit organizations casino nights officially legitimate could provide a foothold for the video-poker industry to be revived in North Carolina. Cooper said another vetoed bill sought to punish the media. It would have allowed Guilford County governments and attorneys to stop posting paid legal notices in newspapers and put them on government websites instead. The fourth vetoed bill dealt with credit insurance that borrowers can buy on small, high-interest loans. Whats likely to happen today? When it comes to vetoed legislation, apparently little. State Rep. David Lewis, a Republican who represents Harnett County and is the chairman of the House Rules Committee, said Wednesday that he expects the four vetoed bills all originating in the House to be sent to committee but nothing further. Lewis explained that there will be a significant number of members from both parties that wont be present. He anticipates the vetoed bills will be considered during the next session, which is scheduled for Sept. 6. Instead, Lewis said, legislators could vote today on one or two bills that House and Senate negotiators failed to finalize before the work session ended. One would tackle an array of regulatory changes. Separately, Lewis said, House members also want to clarify rules for school-board races in Cleveland County. Senate Republicans will meet privately to determine what topics they want to consider today, a spokeswoman for Senate leader Phil Berger, R-Eden, said. And redistricting? The House and Senate redistricting committees are supposed to meet Friday to discuss and take public comment on what criteria legislators will use when they redraw General Assembly districts. Federal judges have determined that 28 districts had been illegally gerrymandered based on racial bias. A three-judge panel earlier this week ordered that new maps must be approved by Sept. 1, more than two months earlier than what GOP legislators sought. But the deadline could be pushed back to Sept. 15, the panel wrote, if legislators show progress in the coming weeks. If legislators decide to approve maps by Sept. 1, they would have to return in late August to vote on them, Lewis said. WASHINGTON Foolish optimists expected Ivanka Trump to be a moderating force in the White House. But by now it should be clear that shes not part of any solution, which by definition means shes part of the problem. Can anyone tell me why, other than nepotism, she has an office in the White House and a back-bench seat at meetings of the Cabinet? Washington is full of people who are smart, successful, well-educated and actually have experience in developing and implementing government policy, which Ivanka completely lacks. It is true that the presidents daughter was once seen as the socially acceptable face of the Trump brand. She and her husband, Jared Kushner, were identified with the progressive social views of the rarified social circles in which they traveled. No less an authority on daughterhood and the White House than Chelsea Clinton, whom Ivanka describes as a very good friend, said before the inauguration that we have so much more in common than we have disagreement about. Ivanka promised to champion issues of concern to women, including paid family leave. And it was hoped that she could hold President Trump to his former live-and-let-live views when it came to issues such as LGBT rights. Wrong, apparently. President Trumps sudden decision last week to bar transgender individuals from military service was just the latest example of Ivankas lack of influence. She was reportedly taken by surprise when the president announced the ban in an early-morning tweet. So was almost everyone, including the military officials who are supposed to enforce the new policy of discrimination, which they dont much seem to like. But the mean-spirited decree must have been especially galling for Ivanka, who in June apropos of nothing had tweeted that she was proud to support my LGBTQ friends and the LGBTQ Americans who have made immense contributions to our society and economy. Ivanka and Jared reportedly lobbied Trump not to abandon the Paris climate change accord, seen by most scientists and world leaders as the most significant step to date in limiting the heat-trapping carbon emissions that are rapidly warming the planet. The president pulled out of the pact anyway. She had no discernible influence in the health-care battle, which perhaps should be no surprise. Trump pledged health insurance for everybody but became so desperate for a legislative win that he would have settled for health care for nobody, which is roughly what was in the bill that the Senate rejected last week. Ivanka has continued to advocate a national program of guaranteed paid family leave, similar to those in many other industrialized countries, which she described in a recent Wall Street Journal op-ed as not an entitlement but an investment in Americas working families. She did have enough juice to get Budget Director Mick Mulvaney to allocate some money for such a program $25 billion over 10 years but it is unclear whether funding will survive the appropriations process. If it does, Ill congratulate her. If not, she might want to work to help Democrats take control of both the House and the Senate in 2018. Im sure they would be happy to vote for a much better family leave program, covering not just childbirth but also other family needs such as elder care. Where Ivanka does apparently have real influence is in matters of personnel. She and Jared are reported to have urged Trump to bring in foul-mouthed Anthony Scaramucci as White House communications director. Seriously, thats the guy you wanted shaping the administrations message? Scaramucci was ousted Monday after just 10 days on the job. He had only two things to offer: North Korean-style hosannas to the strength, wisdom and general magnificence of his dear leader, President Trump; and an undeniable talent for imaginative swearing. Ivanka is also said to have supported the defenestration of Reince Priebus in favor of John Kelly as chief of staff. It is true that Priebus didnt do a very good job, but thats mostly because he wasnt allowed to and Ivanka was one of his headaches, though perhaps not the worst. She is one of many aides who enjoy unfettered access to the president. If Kelly is not allowed to function as a gatekeeper, he, too, will fail. Meanwhile, Ivankas line of shoes, clothing and accessories conspicuously not Made in America has come under new scrutiny. And one disillusioned friend of hers told me she and Jared must have drunk the Kool-Aid. In her White House role, shes not helping the nation, and shes sure not helping herself. WASHINGTON -- "The president weighed in just as any father would, based on the limited information that he had," said White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, effectively confirming The Washington Post's report that President Trump personally drafted Donald Trump Jr.'s misleading statement about his meeting with a Russian lawyer proffering dirt on Hillary Clinton. "As any father would." That phrase contains so much -- so much, indeed, that Sanders invoked it twice. The president, she continued, "offered suggestions like any father would do." The paternal invocation seeks to harness -- it hijacks -- the primal ferocity of parental love in the service of political self-preservation. Your kid's in a bit of trouble -- no matter that he's a 39-year-old man, he is still your child -- so he turns to you for help: "Hey, pop, what should I say?" He needs advice, not really any different from deciding how much life insurance to buy, or whether this stock looks like a good investment. In well-functioning families, sons turn to their fathers for guidance; fathers are the fount of wisdom and judgment. Who can fault a parent for rising to a child's defense? But of course for all of Sanders's treacly effort to Hallmarkize this touching family moment, it was anything but. This was less "Father Knows Best" than "Father Stonewalls Best." Parents everywhere, fathers and mothers alike, should be repulsed by this playing of the parent card. "As any father would." Fathers are supposed to teach their children the difference be-tween right and wrong. My father taught me not to lie. Donald Trump Jr.'s father taught him to shade the truth -- in this case, so much that it was in total eclipse. "The statement that Don Jr. issued is true. There's no inaccuracy in the statement," Sanders said. No technical inaccuracy, perhaps, but little actual truth. "We primarily discussed a program about the adoption of Russian children that was active and popular with American families years ago and was since ended by the Russian government, but it was not a campaign issue at the time and there was no follow up," Trump Jr.'s statement read. In fact, and it took multiple iterations for the full facts to emerge, Trump Jr. eagerly accepted the meeting, and invited top campaign officials, in hopes of getting the goods on Clinton. "Primarily'' was the tell, the classic Trumpian hedge behind which Sanders so unconvincingly hid. "As any father would." Fathers are supposed to put their children's well-being above their own; that selflessness is the essence of being a parent. Trump Jr.'s attorney, Alan Futerfas, told The Post that he and his client had been "fully prepared and absolutely prepared to make a fulsome statement" about the meeting. Then the president intervened, dictating edits in the statement to his aide Hope Hicks, and gambling foolishly that the real facts wouldn't emerge. When, inevitably, they did, it made Trump Jr. look bad -- "If it's what you say, I love it," he told the Russian attorney of her Clinton offer -- but also provided evidence of some willingness on the part of the Trump campaign to collude with the Russians. Whose interest was the president so frantically scrambling to protect here, his son's or his own? From a recent blog post by The Rev. Sarah Howell of Centenary United Methodist Church. A year ago, a group from my church was preparing to welcome a refugee family to the United States. They hadnt even arrived yet, and already it had been eventful, from the first family we were assigned suddenly being unable to come, to the family we ended up connecting with having their flight from New York cancelled last-minute. But finally, they arrived. Our first meeting at the airport was full of joy, tenderness, and mutual incomprehension, the latter mitigated somewhat by the presence of an able translator. The 5 children were pretty much silent, barely more than whispering their names in response to introductions and then sitting quietly in the church bus on the drive back to their new home. The family has come a long way, from knowing no English to being able to engage in actual conversation (especially the kids); from being stunned by the welcoming setup of their new house to making it their home; from being buried under piles of paperwork and an onslaught of initial appointments with doctors and social services to finding a daily routine that includes work, play, and school. Obviously, theyve learned a lot in their time here. But our team and I have learned just as much, if not more, from a different perspective. Weve had to learn how to navigate our complex social services system; how to decipher bus schedules and problem-solve transportation without a car; what to do to get kids with no formal education assimilated into public schools; where to get diapers and clothes and food and cell phones when you dont have much disposable income. But the biggest thing, and probably the most difficult to navigate, has been the broader underlying question of how to do all of this with the family and not just for them. Some of the challenge has been practicalwhen youre up against deadlines for applying for Medicaid, getting IDs, and whatnot, you dont always have time to figure out how to communicate whats going on in Swahili. Often, weve found the immediate needs of the family have had to trump our desire to empower them, at least temporarily. Some of the challenge has been personalour team members have come to love this family, and they want to help them however they can. This has been beautiful to watch, but weve all had times where we wondered whether we were really helping or actually hurting, however good our intentions. Weve wrestled with how to let the family fail in ways that will help them learn and take responsibility; how to give them the dignity of choice even when were not sure theyll make what we might think is the best choice; and how to respect their goals and definition of leading a successful life, even when that differs from our hopes and dreams for them. This has happened with the question of mowing the lawnsomething our team members generously did for a while before realizing they ought to teach the dad how to use the lawnmower. Its come up in relation to grocery shoppingwhether to give them rides to the store so they dont have to schlep groceries on the bus, and whether to give our input on what foods to buy once theyre at the store. Its been discussed in the myriad ways our team has leveraged their time and resources to support the family through access to tutoring, camps, and swim lessons for the kids, and employment, education, and services for the parents. We connected with this family through World Relief, a faith-based nonprofit that contracts with the federal government to resettle refugees who have been through the grueling process of applying and being screened for refugee status. We are called a Good Neighbor Team, and weve tried to live into that term neighbor. What does it mean to be a neighbor to a family navigating a new society, learning a new language, and building a new life? How do we walk alongside them without dragging them along? How do we make space for them to fall back and move forward on their own without simply abandoning them? Weve found some answers to these questions along the way, but mostly weve learned to give ourselves and the family lots of love and grace, and to remember that God gives us much more of both, doing for us what we cant do for ourselves and with us what we are empowered to do in partnership with one another and with God. This editorial was published Wednesday by the News & Record of Greensboro, The Carolina Peacemaker, The High Point Enterprise and the Jamestown News. We want to thank Gov. Roy Cooper for protecting the First Amendment rights of Guilford County newspapers and by extension, the countys citizens by vetoing House Bill 205. HB 205 originally was written to change provisions of the Workers Compensation Act as it relates to employing prisoners. But near the end of the General Assembly session, a rider was attached to the bill that would have created a pilot program in Guilford County to allow local governments to remove public notices and legal advertisers from newspapers and their websites and place them on government websites. As Gov. Cooper said in announcing his veto, time and again, this legislature has used the levers of big government to attack important institutions in our state who may disagree with them from time to time. Unfortunately, this legislation is another example of that misguided philosophy meant to specifically threaten and harm the media. Legislation that enacts retribution on the media threatens a free and open press, which is fundamental to our democracy. HB 205 is just the latest example of North Carolina legislators using their clout in the General Assembly to settle personal scores. The pilot program targeting public notices and legal advertising was originally part of Senate Bill 343, sponsored by Sen. Trudy Wade (R-Guilford). Sen. Wade says the change would improve transparency and the publics access to important information. But she ignores the reality that a digital divide still exists. Many in our communities still lack internet access some because they are uncomfortable with the technology, others because they cant afford it. Far too often, rezonings, redistricting, road closures and landfill debates disproportionately affect poor communities and communities of color. These populations know they can count on a hard copy of a newspaper for vital information. Three Democratic legislators from Guilford County said the true aim of the legislation was to damage the News & Record. The bill would have a negative financial impact on the News & Record and The High Point Enterprise, but the damage would be far greater for smaller newspapers such as the Jamestown News and The Carolina Peacemaker. The Jamestown News would likely go out of business if the bill becomes law. More significantly, we know that far more people read our papers and websites than read local government websites. We are troubled by the loss of transparency that would no doubt result from government controlling how this information is shared. This is why the four newspapers have joined together to protect the publics right to information about actions being considered by local governments. As a group, we ask Guilford Republicans Jon Hardister, John Faircloth and John Blust to reconsider their support for a bill that would hurt their constituents. We ask the 14 Republican members of the House who voted against this bill in June to stand firm and vote to sustain the governors veto on Aug. 3. We also ask that the five Democrats who voted for the bill as part of a separate deal support the governors veto. Public notices are a government responsibility, not a government function. We see no benefit to our communities that would come from this bill becoming law. Ten years ago, An Inconvenient Truth, the groundbreaking, Oscar-winning film about Al Gore and his passionate climate change activism, ended with a simple challenge: Are you ready to change the way you live? The climate crisis can be solved. A decade later, the former vice president and Nobel Peace Prize winner is the first to concede that not enough of the world has met that challenge and that what is being done, isnt being done fast enough. Wow, we could lose this struggle, he recalls thinking at one point. But that moment of doubt, recounted in An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power, was apparently just that: a moment. The overriding sentiment in this sequel is one of optimism. Now, that may come as a surprise to many, especially given what we journalists would call one heck of a news peg: The decision by President Donald Trump, in June, to withdraw the United States from the 2015 Paris climate accord a landmark pact that Gore worked tirelessly to help achieve. (Indeed, directors Bonni Cohen and Jon Shenk went back to the editing room to update their movie with this momentous news.) But, as this sequel makes clear, Gores not looking to the White House or the presidential Twitter feed to fuel his optimism. Hes looking instead to countries like Chile, rapidly increasing its use of renewable energy. In the U.S., hes looking to individual governors, business leaders, mayors like Dale Ross of Georgetown, Texas, who with one small scene pretty much becomes the breakout star of this film. The jovial Ross is a conservative Republican, and mayor of, in his words, the reddest city in the reddest county in Texas. But he tells Gore that his city went green because it made economic sense for his constituents. Plus, he adds, its only common sense: The less stuff you put in the air, the better it is. Gore replies happily: Can I use that line? Yes, humor has its place, even in a film thats intended as a warning about, um, the potential death of the planet and all its life forms. Gores a lot grayer, and still dead serious about his work, but hes also the guy who likes to introduce himself as Al Gore I used to be the next president of the United States. People laugh, and then he says he doesnt think its very funny, and they laugh again. And then he teaches, cajoles, explains part pastor, part science teacher, part tour guide. The film begins with a sampling of naysayers and to be sure, Trump isnt the only one. At a 2007 hearing, Oklahoma Republican Sen. Jim Inhofe asks Gore: How come you guys never seem to notice when it gets cold? The filmmakers track Gore across the globe, to climate leadership training sessions from Tennessee to Asia, or to the glaciers of Greenland, where he treads on melting ice. We watch him negotiate with officials in India, who listen, but also note that the United States should live up to its own commitments before making demands of developing nations. In one of many effective bits of footage, we see pedestrians in India try to navigate streets literally melting in 120-plus degree heat. Gore gets a chance to silence critics of a scene in the first film, who said he was exaggerating when he projected that ground zero in lower Manhattan could be flooded by rising waters. News footage from Hurricane Sandy in 2012 shows the flooding of the 9/11 Memorial Museum site, then under construction. In Paris, at the climate conference, Gores energetic dealmaking includes convincing a U.S. solar energy company to make an offer that convinces India to sign the pact. The Paris trip is not without humor as well: When Gore and aides are stuck in traffic, they switch to the Metro, where they encounter a student delegation from China that seems convinced he actually won the presidency. Is he still the president? they ask. The message of this sequel is twofold: Urgency and hope. Things are bad, Gore is saying, but heres whats happening thats really exciting. And he has no doubt that mankind will save the planet. He may have wanted to be president, but Gore has surely found his calling, and his own energy seems more renewable than ever. SEAGROVE Pottery may have seemed a natural calling for Levi Mahan. After all, he was born to potters in the pottery Mecca of Seagrove. He eventually wound up throwing clay, and now runs Levi Mahan Pottery, but the path back to Seagrove was a circuitous one that involved some soul-searching and a self-examination of his talents. Mahan, who lived in Lewisville from 1998 to 2007 and graduated from Forbush High School in 2006, was gifted in math as a student, leading him to believe that he was best suited for engineering. I never considered pottery or art as a career growing up; it was just the kind of novel thing I got to tell people my parents did. I didnt consider myself artistic in any way through high school partly because I think I bought in to this false dichotomy we create between book smarts and creativity or right and left brains or whatever you want to call it, said Mahan, 29. A beginning drawing instructor at Swarthmore College scolded Mahan for not putting any effort into what was an obvious talent for art. That remark was a turning point. I had taken the class in part to fill my liberal arts requirements but in looking back, I realized that I also took it because my art projects had always been what most engaged me in school. That was pretty much the first time I had received positive feedback for a creative, right-brained activity in school, and it was sort of a big deal to me later on when I started really questioning what I wanted to do with my time in school and my life. I put the realization that I enjoyed art more than the rest of school together with this understanding that I was good at it in some way, that other people responded to me and to what I did, he said. He moved back to Seagrove to learn pottery and work for his father, Michael, who owns From the Ground Up pottery in Robbins, while studying art at Guilford College. Last year, Mahan opened his own pottery, in the same building where his parents ran theirs in the 1980s and 90s. Sitting just off N.C. 705, south of Seagrove, the gallery is an 1830s-era cabin that his parents, Michael and Jane Braswell, bought in Clemmons, took apart and rebuilt. Mahan fires his pots in a wood kiln, relying on wood ash to glaze his work. My parents fired electric kilns mostly, but I think wood firing connected (me) with my wild childhood in the woods of Randolph County. Its hard to say for sure at this point. Wood firing is really all Ive done, partly because my attempts at other types of firings felt so much less immersive. Wood kilns demand your attention not just every hour of the firing but throughout the cycle of making. So youre always immersed in the craft of it, working on it with the same focus as a pot. I miss that when I fire other kilns, he said. Mahan is distinguishing himself among Seagrove potters. He was chosen as one of a handful of young artists to represent North Carolina folk life at the National Folk Festival in Greensboro on Sept. 9 and 10, and he was recently featured in the book, Controlled Burn: Wood-Fired Pottery in Seagrove. For more information, visit www.levimahan.com. In addition, Mahan's pottery is on exhibit at the Randolph Arts Guild, 123 Sunset Ave., Asheboro, through the end of August as part of "Controlled Burn," which features other Seagrove potters making wood-fired pottery. Q: How would you describe your art? Answer: I hope I make work that people can integrate into their daily lives, be it functional or decorative. Sometimes I think of my pottery as an extension of who I am and where I am from, sort of like a conceptual self-portrait in pieces. So when someone takes one of those pieces and chooses to incorporate it into their life, I think it is this magical little bridge between us made of our shared joy. Q: Who has influenced your art? Answer: My pottery is influenced first by where I grew up, in a pottery in Seagrove, surrounded by clay. More broadly, my pots are influenced by potters from all over the state. These are the majority of the pots that Ive seen, held, and used so I feel a much stronger connection than to something I have seen in a book or on the internet. I do draw influences from those sources as well though. The artists Im referencing in this case are typically nameless craftspeople from traditions all over the world. Q: What is your biggest challenge? Answer: Ive never really been comfortable being the center of attention. I find that people interested in my pottery are frequently at least or even more interested in me. This makes sense as my pots are a reflection of who I am. I struggle with this vulnerability inherent in selling my art. Q: How have you evolved as an artist? Answer: I spent years chasing skill, trying to throw thinner, faster, and bigger. I have realized that these skills in making are simply tools to be called upon when needed, but sometimes in the design process, you actually want the exact opposite. Actively pushing back against this and other conventions that were built into my practice have expanded and, hopefully, improved what I make. Q: What does art do for you? Answer: I think that vulnerability is actually something I need to cultivate more of, so that challenge I just mentioned is a good one for personal growth. Q: Any advice for other artists? Answer: Ask for help. I firmly believe in order to accomplish anything great, you need strong and loving relationships surrounding you. The Jordanian parliament [official website] on Tuesday narrowly voted to repeal Article 308 [text, in Arabic] of the penal code, which permitted rapists to escape punishment if they married their victims. Rights groups applauded the decision, calling it a step forward in ending violence against women [Reuters report], especially in Middle Eastern countries where girls and women were offered as gifts to their rapists to avoid family shame. Though the Jordanian Cabinet voted to revoke [JURIST report] the law in April, Parliaments upper body and King Abdullah II must also approve [AP report] this action before the repeal can take effect. Jordan is not the only Middle Eastern country to enforce marry your rapist laws. Criminal Codes of Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Kuwait, Bahrain, Algeria, Tunisia and the Palestinian Territories provide [JURIST op-ed] that if the offender of rape lawfully marries the victim, any action becomes void and any investigation or other procedure is discontinued and, if a sentence has already been passed in respect of such action, then the sentence will be repealed. Activists and rights groups, such as Equality Now [advocacy website], hope Tuesdays decision encourages Lebanon to revoke its similar law. US President Donald Trump on Wednesday announced his support [press release] for a Senate bill to cut immigration levels over a decade. Arkansas Senator Tom Cotton and Georgia Senator David Perdue introduced [press release] the Reforming American Immigration for a Strong Economy (RAISE) Act [text, PDF] to spur economic growth and raise working Americans wages by giving priority to the best-skilled immigrants from around the world and reducing overall immigration by half. Cotton said that the bills objective is to create a skills-based system that is more responsive to the needs of our economy and preserves the quality of jobs available to American workers. Throughout his presidency, Trump has made persistent efforts for immigration reform. In June the US Supreme Court agreed to review [JURIST report] the Trump administrations travel ban, partially lifting the temporary injunction that had blocked the bans enforcement. The administration sought review [JURIST report] of decisions issued by the US Courts of Appeal for the Fourth and Ninth Circuits [official websites] in May. The Supreme Courts order permits execution of the travel ban, but it may not be enforced against an individual seeking admission as a refugee who can credibly claim a bona fide relationship with a person or entity in the United States. The Supreme Court later clarified that grandparents [JURIST report] are exempted from the travel ban. Nigeria is adamant that the sailors should be tried in court. The charges against them will be slapped once they reach the country. Two comedians, a German and a British, decide to do something to keep their Europe from falling apart. Have we lost our sense of humour when it comes to Brexit? At the airport alone, faces have definitely gotten a lot sterner and tensions run higher. I now get asked: Why are you travelling to the UK? How long are you planning to stay? Can you stop doing that with your face? I need to see you properly. Im here to tell people jokes and offer myself up for passport marriage, I say. I will be here for the weekend, I say, and I stop doing that with my face and concentrate on matching my photo ID. Luckily the confounded look comes easy. I am Elisabeth, one half of the comedy double act Kirsty and Elisabeth Productions. I live in Berlin and Kirsty, my writing partner, friend and inspiration lives in London. I call Berlin home because I was raised here, behind the wall separating East from West, families, lovers and friends. I call Britain my home because I grew up there. I spent my formative years, i.e. my entire twenties in Cardiff/Wales. I did that because I could. At the tender age of 20 an EU funded volunteering project was my entry to a whole new world. Little did I know how hard I would fall in love with Wales. In love as well as in comedy, a lot hinges on timing and perfect timing allowed me to meet Kirsty, originally from Reading, in Cardiff 15 years ago. We briefly shared an office and permanently share a sense of humour. Last year we finally decided to stop with the nonsense and to start getting serious. Seriously silly of course, and thus the plan, to put on a show at the Edinburgh Free Fringe Festival (Laughing Horse), was born. A lot of our comedy material emerged out of the bubble of our friendship and we sometimes forget that there is a world around us. Our show is thus somewhat detached from all the political turmoil that shook us up these past months. Still, we do take jabs at Brexit and I in particular offer myself up for passport marriages hoping they will hand out citizenships faster than polygamy charges. But we also take it off road and talk about dawdling basking sharks and how truly terrifying they are, mostly because they are not paying attention. I talk about my avoidant tendencies and hugging doorframes in lieu of Rock Hudson, my hero and perfect date. Another subject are the repercussions of not eating enough leafy greens during the first three weeks of pregnancy. When Kirsty was first expecting she came across a very real article suggesting that neglecting greens can reduce your childs life expectancy by twenty years. As the child grew inside her, blissfully unaware, Kirsty became inundated with such advice ranging from silly to outright offensive; a comedy goldmine. Side note: Kirsty is successfully raising a veritable superhero child with magical powers. Death By Superhero was also the first sketch we wrote and performed together in 2012. It was a successful trial run of how to write and rehearse via a shared document called A Not So Blank Page and video chats. We made it work and it wasnt hard to make the effort. Now, I will impart some wisdom on you; without any effort all relationships at best fade and at worst disintegrate completely. Doing nothing achieves more of the same and as much as absolutely nothing can make us laugh, Kirsty and I still prefer something over nothing. Those are my two cents and now back to our story. It was chance and freedom of movement within the EU that put us together and it is our effort that keeps us together. We make it work as artists with egos and creative vision, as friends with wildly different lives, and we make it work while also working office jobs. Our fuel is very simple and available in abundance and that is love. A love for each other and for what we do. As we know, not much love is currently lost between the EU and Britain and the way things are going, the terrifying dawdling basking shark might be the only free european traveller remaining. In that case I will tackle my fear and friend one up because above all, I value freedom of movement. That a child born in the GDR, thats me, can grow up to feel at home in two very different countries took vision and work by the generation before mine and now I am not prepared to sit around and watch it all fall apart. So I do what I do best, making people laugh and sometimes cry a little. Elisabeth and Kirsty will perform their show Fork, Sharks and Leafy Greens at the Edinburgh Free Fringe Festival from August 21st to 27th, at 5-6 PM each day. We're always interested in hearing about news in our community. Let us know what's going on! Go to form President Donald Trump listens in the Roosevelt Room of the White House in Washington, Wednesday, Aug. 2, 2017, during an event to unveil legislation that would place new limits on legal immigration. A leaked transcript of a Donald Trump phone call shows the president's private comments about trade with Canada, and suggests he had an overwhelmingly positive attitude about the northern neighbour as he took office. THE CANADIAN PRESS/AP/Evan Vucci The Site C Dam location is seen along the Peace River in Fort St. John, B.C., Tuesday, April 18, 2017. British Columbia's New Democrat government has asked the province's utilities commission to review the $8.8-billion Site C dam, throwing into doubt one of former premier Christy Clark's major accomplishments. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jonathan Hayward Quebec Transport Minister Jacques Daoust responds to the Opposition during question period at the National Assembly, in Quebec City on June 2, 2016. The former Liberal cabinet minister, who resigned in August 2016, has died at the age of 69. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jacques Boissinot A aerial view shows the debris going into Quesnel Lake caused by a tailings pond breach near the town of Likely, B.C., on August, 5, 2014. There will be no provincial charges into a tailings dam collapse in British Columbia but the province's new environment minister says a mining company may still be held responsible through federal laws. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jonathan Hayward In this June 27, 2017 photo, Dr. Milenkha Chavez gives a routine check-up to 21-day-old Abraham Dilan, who was delivered at home by a midwife, as his mother Mariana Limachi stands by at the Franz Tamayo Health Center in El Alto, Bolivia. A midwife training program officially began in 2013 after Bolivia passed a law recognizing traditional indigenous medicine, including midwifery. (AP Photo/Juan Karita) FILE - In this April 12, 2017, file photo, U.S Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., speaks to the media following a town hall meeting in Hillsboro, Mo. Missouri Attorney General Josh Hawley is taking a first step toward entering the race for U.S. Senate. Hawley spokesman Scott Paradise on Wednesday, Aug. 2, confirmed the Republican will launch an exploratory committee this week for a possible challenge to McCaskill. (AP Photo/Jeff Roberson, File) On the day Kelly Mackay laid his daughter Olivia to rest, he celebrated her life the best that he could, honoring her love of Asian culture and helping friends who had planned Wednesdays vigil set Chinese lanterns free as a fierce wind blew off Lake Michigan. Mackay bent down, steadying the 2-foot-tall lantern that quivered in the whipping wind. It flew sideways and then up toward the sky as the twilight began making its way over Kennedy Park where some 200 friends, family and acquaintances converged. He looked up to the sky and clasped his hands in prayer while the white lantern disappeared into the clouds. Olivia Mackay, 17, of Kenosha, was found dead July 24 in a wooded area in Mount Pleasant near the 11000 block of Louis Sorenson Road. She was reported missing the same day after she did not report to work. Olivia was remembered as someone who was her own person. Despite a shy exterior, she had a generous heart for those who were like her. She had a bright future before her, according to friends and family. The Indian Trail High School and Academy student had planned to go to Chinatown in Chicago and to return to China after having saved up money to visit a year earlier. Among her aspirations was to open a Chinese bakery one day and to travel the world. She would have been a senior in the fall and had her sights set on attending Carthage College or Loyola University. She loved Korean pop music, and she was a member of the schools K-Pop club and appreciated Japanese anime and manga. Olivia was a beautiful girl. I loved her so much, said Mackay, trying to fight back tears. Every day, Ive been going through things and finding mementos of notes of I love you, daddy, all her growing up and how beautiful and creative and hardworking she was. Mackay said Olivia was looking forward to the future, but sadly that was taken away from her much too early. At nighttime, I feel like Im dying myself, he said. But he thanked his friends and family and the outpouring of support from the community despite the most horrible incident that could happen to any parent, he said. I just want to say thank you. Thank you for being there for us, he said. Mackay said that an online fundraiser established to help pay expenses for her funeral, which was held earlier in the day Wednesday, had exceeded its goal. The family is planning to set up a scholarship fund in honor of Olivia at the school for students intending to travel to China in an exchange program, he said. Cara Farmer, 17, a close friend, classmate and co-worker of Olivia at McDonalds said the two were going to raise money together so they could go to China next year. She was so fun. A little shy, but she was really, really passionate and motivated about everything she did, Farmer said before the vigil began. In speaking to those who had gathered in Olivias honor, Farmer told the crowd that she would have to go on without her friend, who had gotten her through tough times and who pushed her to do better. She meant a lot to me, she said. Kate Keener, a close friend of the family, said that while the family was coping with Olivias loss, the overwhelming support has shown the Mackays that the community does care. Love is the only thing that matters, she said. Its totally up to us to care for each other. Situs Judi Slot Sohoslot Online 24 Jam Resmi Matrix Slots Gacor Mudah Menang Setoran Pulsa Permainan Slot Online Live Casino Judi Slot88 Joker123. Pelajari cara membombardir agen slot online dengan matriks slot yang perlu Anda putar untuk nilai tinggi untuk mendapatkan slot gacor. Hal ini dikarenakan matriks slot ini menggunakan metode judi slot bombing untuk memenangkan jackpot besar. Usaha Anda untuk bermain game slot online tentunya bisa menjadi alternatif yang paling tepat untuk saat ini. 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He had had a repeat surgery on his lower back for a herniated disc and chronic sciatica, and come out of the procedure with an area of pain and neuropathy in his leg, which the surgeon initially told him might resolve, but might take up to six months to fully resolve, but also might persist. Now, passing that six-month mark, with no improvement in his symptoms, he was frustrated and a little angry, and needed to vent. He told me that having these new symptoms was worse than the pain in his back that had sent him to seek surgery in the first place, and he wished he never had the procedure done. I asked him if the surgeon had told him this was a possible complication of the procedure, and he told me, no way, I never wouldve done this if you told me there was a chance that my leg would be painful after the surgery, no way would I have signed up for the surgery and gone ahead with it. Thinking back to what happened in the surgeons office before the procedure, and in the pre-surgical prep area, where he probably had dozens of people push dozens of pieces of paper in front of him and told to sign, consents and lots of information about his procedure, and Im sure somewhere in there was a delineation of the risks, benefits, and alternatives, and that he must have signed something saying that he understood all of these and accepted those risks. And the surgeons office notes surely include a templated block of text that includes a long list of possible complications, including but not limited to heart attack, stroke, your head exploding. All of the patients questions were answered to his satisfaction. Many of years ago, a patient of mine with severe and debilitating psychiatric illnesses was admitted to the hospital with a dramatic worsening of her chronic renal failure. Things had gotten so bad the decision was made to proceed with hemodialysis, so the transplant service was called to get her consent for long-term access for the management of her disease. She had stabilized clinically, and the surgical team went into the room to get consent from her for placement of an arteriovenous fistula. When I noticed they came out of the room only two or three minutes later, I made the mistake of asking them if shed agreed to having the access placed. They said yes and they had explained all of the risks to her and that she said she understood. Unfortunately, I made the mistake of telling them that she was currently and chronically psychotic, with delusions that the United States Army parachuted into her backyard every evening to deliver bricks of gold to her house. The reason I told them this was I figured since she agreed to their procedure, they quickly and easily accepted that she was capable of giving consent. But had they truly explained to her the risks and benefits of the procedure, and was she able to understand all of those? If she had not agreed, they probably wouldve immediately called a psychiatry consult and demanded that she be declared incompetent, and pursued consent through other means. But since she agreed, no one thought for a moment that she might not be capable of agreeing. This example comes to mind because we have just been advised of a new initiative that has come down, to document that all patients receive complete and detailed education on every medication they receive, every medical condition they have, and that all of their questions are answered. Auditors and regulators want to be able to see a trail in every chart for everything. This is coming about in part because weve often seen that patients are prescribed new medicines, where no one really goes over the risks, benefits, and alternatives. While this seems like a really good idea, in the brief appointment times we have it isnt really feasible to engage in what would likely be a long and complicated discussion for every single medical decision we make, every prescription, every test, every diagnosis, every decision to screen, every decision not to screen. Im not saying we should go back to the old days of paternalistic medicine, where what the doctor said was final, was right, and was what the patient should do, no discussion, no involvement of the patient, no collective discussion, no shared decision-making. But its been suggested to us that we create a macro in the electronic health record that quickly and easily allows there to be a documentation of education on any topic. Click and done. My fear is that this will lead to a lot of clicking of the button that a discussion was had, and less likely that it will actually lead to truly better discussions and shared decision-making. Not more education, not a more engaged patient, but a better electronic health record trail for some audit down the line. Clearly were not doing enough, our patients are leaving our office visits whether they be primary care, subspecialty medicine, or a surgeons office, more confused, more overwhelmed by the enormous choices they need to make, befuddled by the medicines we are prescribing, lost and confused in the plan. And this only leads to poor patient satisfaction, poor outcomes, and increased health care expenditures. Documentation is important, we need to know what happened, but we need the truth, and we need the resources to be able to really educate our patients, to really engage them in that shared decision-making process about each and every step of their health care, and that only comes with time and additional personnel and the whatever we think our patients need to really get to the best state of health. Without this, its just another box to click, just another something were being asked to do so that someone whos decided to audit us on this hot button item of the moment will be happy once they see a report. Its our job, and our responsibility, our passion and our mission, to make sure that what actually happens is that patients really are engaged, really do understand, really do know why were giving them this medicine, what side effects might occur when they take it and what to do if they experience those side effects, otherwise were fooling ourselves that this is really patient-centered care. All side effects explained, all risks reviewed, all questions answered. Fred N. Pelzman is an associate professor of medicine, New York Presbyterian Hospital and associate director, Weill Cornell Internal Medicine Associates, New York City, NY. He blogs at MedPage Todays Building the Patient-Centered Medical Home. Image credit: Shutterstock.com Efforts are being made to install defibrillators at Eurospars as part of a community initiative to have one outside all of the supermarket franchise's outlets. John McCarthy, of Eurospar in Kilkenny and Willie Forde - who owns a shop in Castlecomer - launched the Defibrillator at every Eurospar Supermarket Initiative in County Kilkenny. In a joint statement, both men said: Having a lifesaving defibrillator outside our stores and making everyone aware of it will hopefully result in saving lives in our communities. I hope you will join with our teams to raise the funds needed to buy a defibrillator for our area. RTEs Michael Lyster was on hand to help launch it last week at the Radisson Blu St. Helens Hotel, Dublin. Michael suffered a cardiac arrest in 2015 and had to be resuscitated by the National Ambulance Service using a defibrillator. He said: I look forward to the day when each Eurospar has a defibrillator in place. When a heart stops beating from cardiac arrest every second counts. The chances of recovery are reduced by 7 - 10% after each 60 seconds. Effective CPR coupled with the use of a defibrillator within the first 3 - 5 minutes of cardiac arrest can produce survival rates in the 49% - 75% range. Funds for the scheme to have a defibrillator at every Eurospar supermarket will be raised through in-store collection, community fund-raising activities and contributions from the sale of a selection of Spar Range products. Kilkenny's top young farmers have an opportunity to put their best foot forward with the search now on for the 2017 Macra na Feirme/FBD Young Farmer of the Year. One of the most prestigious awards in the Irish agriculture sector, the competition sees young farmers involved in sectors such as beef, dairy, sheep and others (including horticulture, pigs, poultry, tillage) encouraged to enter. The winner of each sector will compete to be crowned the 2017 Macra na Feirme/FBD Young Farmer of the Year. "The Young Farmer of the Year competition has gone from strength to strength since the inaugural competition in 1999 thanks in no small part to sponsors FBD and our partners, the IFA," says Macra na Feirme National President James Healy. "The competition is a fantastic showcase of the enormous talent and potential that exists within the Irish agriculture sector. It also provides recognition and encouragement for young farmers at the beginning of their careers. I would encourage all our young farmers to put themselves forward for what will be a very rewarding and educational experience." IFA President Joe Healy encouraged young farmers to participate and test their training and capabilities among the best in the country. "Based on the increased numbers going through the agriculture colleges in recent years, we have a wealth of talent in the sector," he said. "The great thing about the Young Farmer of the Year competition is that it provides an opportunity to get involved and it allows entrants to pit their farming skills and vision against others." The winner of the 2017 Macra na Feirme/FBD Young Farmer of the Year will receive a travel bursary and the opportunity to experience farm practices abroad while developing their skills. There will also be a new Future Farmer award this year for an emerging young farmer under the age of 23. Who can enter? Farmers must be: Under 35 on January 1, 2017 and a member of Macra na Feirme or the IFA; in involved in the running of the farm on which they currently work for a least three years, either full time or part time. As in previous years, county winners will also receive an award. You can nominate a young farmer for Young Farmer of the Year or you can enter yourself by visiting macra.ie/youngfarmer. The closing date for applications is September 1. BEIJING, Aug 3 (Reuters) - China's insurance regulator said on Thursday it had no plans to ask insurer Anbang to sell overseas assets. A spokesman for the China Insurance Regulatory Commission made the comments at a media briefing in Beijing. (Reporting by Shu Zhang in Beijing; Editing by Stephen Coates) Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are those of the author and may not reflect those of Kitco Metals Inc. The author has made every effort to ensure accuracy of information provided; however, neither Kitco Metals Inc. nor the author can guarantee such accuracy. This article is strictly for informational purposes only. It is not a solicitation to make any exchange in commodities, securities or other financial instruments. Kitco Metals Inc. and the author of this article do not accept culpability for losses and/ or damages arising from the use of this publication. By Daniel Stanton SINGAPORE, Aug 3 (IFR) - Vedanta Resources, the UK-listed Indian mining and energy group, is marketing a new issue of US dollar bonds to refinance outstanding debt. Vedanta is offering seven-year bonds, callable after four years, to yield around 6.375 percent, according to a term sheet. It will use the proceeds to fund a buyback of existing US dollar bonds maturing in 2019 and 2021. The size of the new issue has not been set, but Vedanta has offered to repurchase any and all of its $775 million 2019 bonds and $900 million 2021 bonds. The tender offer closes at 8am New York time today (August 3). The new bonds come with an expected credit rating of B3 from Moody's and B+ from S&P Global. Barclays, Credit Suisse, DBS Bank, First Abu Dhabi Bank, JP Morgan and Standard Chartered are joint global coordinators. (Reporting By Daniel Stanton; Editing By Steve Garton) HONG KONG, Aug 3 (IFR) - Asian credits put in a solid showing on Thursday, while new offerings were active with at least five issuers marketing US dollar bonds amid a constructive tone in the region. Investment-grade credits, in general, traded 2bp tighter with the five-year bonds of Chinese property developer Longfor and Chinese chemical company Bluestar outperforming, according to a Hong Kong-based trader. "Their bonds saw a tightening of 4bp-5bp, given that they offer relatively higher yields among IG names," the trader said. "Market liquidity is still ample; investors need to find ways to deploy their cash." The iTraxx Asia IG index tightened marginally, indicated at 79.50bp/80.25bp. Recent new issuer China Chengtong's 3.625% 2022s tightened a further 2bp and were bid at 178bp over Treasuries. The bonds had tightened around 2bp yesterday from reoffer of 182.5bp. Sunac China's newly priced dual-tranche bonds of US$1bn were hovering around reoffer. The Chinese property developer priced US$400m of 6.875% three-year notes at 99.005 to yield 7.25% and US$600m of 7.95% five-year non-call three notes at 98.991 to yield 8.20%. CreditSights initiated coverage of Sunac's 2020s with a "market perform" call and its 2022s with an "outperform" for short-term trading. Vedanta Resources' 6.375% 2022s gained 0.1 point and were bid at a cash price of 103.638 to yield 5.53%. Industrial Bank of Korea's US$300m 3.90% AT1 priced last month traded up around 0.2 point to a cash price of 101.853, even though the lender had guided that it might need to issue extra AT1, of up to US$1bn. (Reporting by Carol Chan; editing by Dharsan Singh) Keywords: MARKETS ASIA DEBT/ MILAN, Aug 3 (Reuters) - Banca Carige said on Thursday it was slightly raising the size of a proposed cash call to 560 million euro to include a possible debt-to-equity swap after reporting a second quarter loss of 114 million euros. Carige, Italy's ninth-largest lender, has been left at the fore of Italy's prolonged banking crisis following a state rescue of bigger rival Monte dei Paschi di Siena and the liquidation of two failing regional banks. The bank, which must cut bad loans to comply with European Central Bank demands, had been planning to raise up to 500 million euros in a share issue. But it said on Thursday it would ask shareholders to approve a slight bigger share issue to use up to 60 million euros to possibly convert subordinated debt into equity. Carige said it had booked 143 million euros in loan writedowns in the second quarter including a 66-million-euro hit from a 938-million-euro bad loan portfolio it plans to sell using a state guarantee scheme. Its core capital stood at 10.3 percent at the end of June compared with an ECB recommended level of 11.25 percent. (Reporting by Valentina Za; Editing by Crispian Balmer) AMSTERDAM, Aug 3 (Reuters) - Dutch bank NIBC is considering an initial public offering (IPO) of shares in the first months of 2018, Dutch newspaper Het Financieele Dagblad reported on Thursday. Owner JC Flowers is currently selecting banks to help with the process, with preparations still at early stages, the paper said, citing sources close to the company. NIBC is mainly active in mortgages and loans to small and medium-sized companies in the Netherlands, Germany and Britain. Analysts estimate the value of the bank between 1 billion and 1.5 billion euros ($1.2 and $1.8 billion), according to the paper. JC Flowers paid 1.8 billion euros when it bought the bank from Dutch pension funds in 2005. The American investment firm prepared NIBC for an IPO 10 years ago, but had to change course when the financial crisis crippled the bank, which had made large bets on U.S. subprime mortgage loans. NIBC reported a 2016 net profit of 104 million euros, up 42 percent from a year earlier. NIBC could not immediately be reached for comment. ($1 = 0.8443 euros) (Reporting by Bart Meijer; Editing by Mark Potter) Editor's Note: Kitco readers, have your say! Check out our newest feature KITCO CHAT! where you can share your comments and ask questions directly to us. (Kitco News) - Hecla Mining Co. (NYSE: HL) early Thursday reported that it posted a loss in the second quarter, one day after announcing that it has reached an agreement to lease the Velardena mill, located near the San Sebastian mine in Mexico, for an additional 24 months. The second-quarter net loss was listed at $24.2 million, or 6 cents per share, compared to net income of $24 million, or 6 cents, for the same period in 2016. The main factors behind the loss, Hecla said, were an income-tax provision of $16.1 million, increased interest expense to $10.5 million, an increase of $3 million from a year ago in exploration and pre-development expenditures mainly for the San Sebastian and Casa Berardi mines, plus Lucky Friday suspension costs of $6.4 million and $1.6 million in non-cash depreciation expense incurred during a strike. The company also listed a net foreign-exchange loss of $3.9 million, versus a net loss of $1.9 million in the second quarter of 2016. Excluding special items, Hecla listed an adjusted net loss of $15.5 million, or 4 cents per share. The company said the ongoing strike at Lucky Friday in Idaho has lowered metal production but has improved silver cash costs, after by-product credits, 93% to 26 cents per ounce, the lowest in seven years. All-in sustaining costs, after by-product credits, were $9.97 per silver ounce, a 22% decrease. Second-quarter production totaled 2.8 million ounces of silver, down from 4.2 million in the same period of 2016, and 52,561 gold ounces, down from 62,965. Hecla also mines lead and zinc as a by-product. The average realized silver price was $17.14 per ounce, near the $17.26 from the second quarter of 2016. The average realized gold price was $1,260 per ounce, compared to $1,254 a year ago. Meanwhile, the agreement to lease the Velardena mill secures San Sebastian operations for another two years, Hecla said. San Sebastian has been a major component of Heclas success over the past year and a half, and we see this continuing into the future, said Phillips S. Baker, Jr., president and chief executive officer. We started production with a two-year mine life, expecting exploration success to extend it further. It has, and today we see a combination of reserves, resources and exploration discoveries enabling production through 2020. All of this has been done with a minimal capital investment by using a contract miner and leasing a mill. The exploration budget at San Sebastian has been increased by $1.1 million for additional drilling and will bring the 2017 exploration budget at the project to $5.3 million, the company said. Meanwhile, the Hecla board of directors has declared a quarterly cash dividend of $0.0025 per share of common stock, payable around Aug. 31 to stockholders of record on Aug. 23. The company said the average realized silver price in the April-June period did not meet the criteria for a larger dividend under the company's dividend policy. * LME/ShFE arb: (Updates with official prices) By Peter Hobson LONDON, Aug 3 (Reuters) - Copper edged lower on Thursday and nickel was set for its first fall in 10 sessions as a slightly stronger dollar and a slowdown in Chinese services sector growth triggered profit-taking. But copper, which hit a two-year high on Monday, remained well supported by strong Chinese manufacturing data earlier this week and tight supplies, said ETF Securities analyst Nitesh Shah. "There's a minor pullback from the past few weeks (but) the fundamentals remain quite strong. We've seen no real weakness in economic data." COPPER: Benchmark copper on the London Metal Exchange traded down 0.5 percent at $6,318 a tonne in official rings, still close to Monday's two-year high of $6,430 and up 14 percent since early June. CHINA: Growth in China's services sector slowed in July, a survey showed on Thursday, but data earlier showed manufacturing grew strongly. CHINA SCRAP: Proposed Chinese restrictions on scrap imports may have a limited impact on the refined copper market, Barclays analysts said: "Net consumption and scrap production rates are likely to remain the same, with only the supply chain and country of refining changing." GRASBERG: An international trade union will press Indonesia to reinstate thousands of striking workers at Grasberg, the world's second-largest copper mine. COPPER STOCKS: Prices were supported by a fall in on-warrant stocks at LME-registered warehouses to 189,900 tonnes from more than 230,000 in mid-July after 8,700 tonnes of cancellations. NICKEL: LME nickel did not trade but was bid down 0.6 percent at $10,290 a tonne, on track for its first decline since July 20 after touching a four-month high of $10,445 earlier in the session. FUNDAMENTALS: Expectations of stronger demand from Chinese stainless steel mills and concerns over supplies from top nickel ore exporter the Philippines have boosted the metal. SUPPLY: But ore exports from Indonesia are increasing, with licences for exports totalling 8.1 million tonnes granted since a ban was relaxed in January, analysts at Commerzbank said. DOLLAR: The U.S. dollar rose but remained near 15-month lows. Dollar weakness has fuelled demand for dollar-denominated metals because it makes them cheaper for holders of other currencies. FRX/ SPECULATORS: "Much of the recent strength across industrial metals has been financially driven (whether dollar related/money inflows)," brokers Marex Spectron said in a note, warning that physical metal demand may not justify gains and increased financial interest could cause price volatility. PRICES: Aluminium traded down 0.6 percent at $1,915, zinc did not trade but was bid 0.4 percent higher at $2,813 and lead was bid up 0.4 percent at $2,363. Tin traded up 0.1 percent at $20,605 a tonne. <^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ Top base and precious metals analysis - GFMS LME/ShFE arb ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^> (Additional reporting by James Regan; Editing by David Clarke and Mark Potter) OSLO, Aug 3 (Reuters) - Norwegian banks don't expect to change credit standards in the third quarter after tightening in the second quarter, a survey by the country's central bank showed on Thursday. Lending margins on loans to households increased unexpectedly in the second quarter, explained by lower funding costs, it added. No changes in lending rates and lending margins are expected in the third quarter. Credit demand from Norwegian households rose slightly in the second quarter, while it was unchanged for companies, Norges Bank said. The survey comprises the nine largest banks operating in Norway. Top banks include DNB , Nordea , Danske Bank , Handelsbanken , SR-Bank , Sparebank 1 SMN and Sparebanken Vest . (Reporting by Oslo newsroom) Following are news stories, press reports and events to watch that may affect Poland's financial markets on Thursday. ALL TIMES GMT (Poland: GMT + 2 hours): NUCLEAR POWER PLANT The Polish government has taken the final decision to build a nuclear power plant, but its exact location is still not determined, Dziennik Gazeta Prawna daily reported. SWITCH TENDER The finance ministry is expected to release the results of its switch treasury debt tender at 1000 GMT. TUSK TESTIFIES AS WITNESS European Council President Donald Tusk is expected to testify as witness at the prosecutors' office in Warsaw in a case related to the crash of the presidential jet over Russia in 2010. UKRAINE POWER LINK Polenergia International, a company belonging to Polish billionaire Sebastian Kulczyk, is to present in August a feasibility study of a power link that would connect a Ukrainian nuclear power plant to the Polish grid, Puls Biznesu daily reported. FX LOANS Polish President Andrzej Duda has submitted a draft bill to help troubled foreign currency borrowers that would cost lenders up to about 3.2 billion zlotys ($890 million) per year. ****Reuters has not verified stories reported by Polish media and does not vouch for their accuracy.**** For other related news, double click on: Polish equities E.Europe equities Polish money Polish debt Eastern Europe All emerging markets Hot stocks Stock markets Market debt news Forex news For real-time index quotes, double click on: Warsaw WIG20 Budapest BUX Prague PX (Reporting by Warsaw Bureau) HANOI, Aug 3 (Reuters) - Here's a snapshot of Vietnamese dong exchange rates in the official and unofficial markets, indicative SJC gold prices in Hanoi and interbank offered rates at 0415 GMT. August 3 USD/VND mid-point 22,434 USD/VND interbank 22,734/22,736 USD/VND unofficial 22,740/22,760 SJC gold (mln dong/tael) 36.12/36.34 Interbank offered rates Overnight 0.4-0.9 1 week 0.6-1.0 1 month 1.6-2.0 3 months 3.1-3.8 NOTES: As of Jan. 4, 2016 the State Bank of Vietnam has begun setting the mid-point rate on daily basis, allowing dollar/dong transactions to move in a band of +/- 3 percent around the mid point. The dong's exchange rate against other currencies is not restricted by a band. Interbank offered rates are the latest indicative bid/ask prices, quoted from market sources. One tael is equivalent to 37.5 grams or 1.21 troy ounces. SJC gold prices are quoted by state-owned Saigon Jewelry Co. For more interbank rate fixings released at 0400 GMT, click on . For Vietnam market overview click on: Vietnam's bonds market auctions: Bonds auction results: (Compiled by Hanoi Newsroom) ZURICH, Aug 3 (Reuters) - The Swiss blue-chip SMI was seen opening 0.2 percent higher at 9,139 points on Thursday, according to premarket indications by bank Julius Baer . Here are some of the main factors that may affect Swiss stocks: GAM Swiss money manager GAM Holding, which earlier this year fought off an attempt by an activist investor to oust its chief executive, on Thursday reported a 39 percent year-on-year rise in first-half net profit. The shares were seen rising 2.2 percent, according to pre-market indicators. For more click COMPANY STATEMENTS * Roche said the FDA granted priority review for its drug Alecensa as a first-line treatment for people with a specific kind of lung cancer. A decision is due by Nov. 30. * Bucher Industries said the group expects an improvement in business performance this year compared to 2016, as divisions including agricultural equipment see a pick-up. * Belimo said first-half profit rose slightly to 38.4 million francs, up from 37.8 million francs in the same period a year ago. * LEM said first-quarter profit rose 23 percent to 13.3 million francs. * Actelion follow-on Idorsia said its first-half operating loss was 11 million francs. * Wisekey said it amended its definitive facility agreement to increase total funds to $45 million from $25 million, with the proceeds slated to help expand business in the U.S. and open offices in Silicon Valley. * Sunrise said it has begun a partnership with Sky to boost its digital TV sports offering. ECONOMY ($1 = 0.9701 Swiss francs) (Reporting by Zurich newsroom) Daily Swiss stock market report in German................ All SMI constituent stocks............................ News on major Swiss stock price moves.................. FTSE Eurotop 300 index................................ DJ STOXX index........................................ Top 10 STOXX sectors............................. Top 10 EUROSTOXX sectors........................ Top 10 Eurotop 300 sectors....................... Top 25 European pct gainers... , losers... Swiss mid-cap index SMI futures Swiss all-share index Market statistics Swiss market digest Sector overview All Swiss news Swiss research news All equity news INTERNET ADDRESSES: Swiss Exchange / Eurex STOXX Ltd SPEED GUIDES: )) Keywords: MARKETS SWISS STOCKS/ (Update with background on sulphur limit in paragraph 4) BEIJING, Aug 3 (Reuters) - Xiamen in southern China will ramp up controls on shipping at its port ahead of a multilateral summit to be held in the city in early September. Xiamen is gearing up to hold the meeting of so-called BRICS nations that include Brazil, Russia, India and South Africa as well as China, in the three days up to Sept. 5. The Xiamen Municipal Government said in a notice on Thursday that to ensure safety, flammable cargoes such as oil, chemicals and liquefied natural gas would be barred from entering the port from Aug. 27 to Sept. 6. It added that ships using high-sulphur fuel would not be allowed into the port from Sept. 1 to Sept. 6. The sulphur limit on ships was already in place since January this year, according to port's website. A Xiamen-based trader said the measures could also disrupt trade in commodities such as steelmaking raw material iron ore. He declined to be identified as he was not authorised to speak with media. Xiamen is the eighth-largest port in China with 209 million tonnes of cargo volumes passing through its waters in 2016. China has previously shut down factories, limited traffic and the operation of heavy equipment ahead of high-profile diplomatic events like the G20 gathering. (Reporting by Meng Meng and Josephine Mason; Editing by Joseph Radford and Tom Hogue) (Changes headline, adds context, details) By Pete Schroeder WASHINGTON, Aug 3 (Reuters) - The Federal Reserve said on Thursday that it was seeking public comment on a proposal that would reduce the role bank boards play in the day-to-day regulatory obligations of their institutions. The U.S. central bank is proposing a series of changes in how it monitors banks, with an eye towards ensuring senior management at banks handles the bulk of regular regulatory issues, rather than the board of directors. The push comes as Fed officials have expressed concerns that more and more obligations are being placed on bank boards, potentially distracting them from stated goal of longer-term bank management. Federal Reserve Governor Jerome Powell, who heads up bank regulation for the Fed, suggested earlier this year that the central bank could step back regulatory expectations for bank boards, shifting more of the responsibility to senior management. "After the crisis, there was a broad increase in supervisory expectations for these boards. But it is important to acknowledge that the board's role is one of oversight, not management," he said in April. "We need to ensure that directors are not distracted from conducting their key functions by an overly detailed checklist of supervisory process requirements." Under the proposed changes, the Fed would bring specific regulatory concerns to bank management rather than the board, and also would outline what broad principles it expects from bank boards going forward, such as holding management accountable and supporting independent risk management. The Fed also said it was revisiting all regulatory obligations currently placed on bank boards, in an effort to identify outdated or unnecessary items to be eliminated. The Fed plans to release the results of that review at a later date. The Fed also announced it was reworking its in-house confidential ratings system for large financial institutions. Established in 2012, those ratings help Fed supervisors assess the stability of large banks, and the changes are intended to reflect regulatory changes made by the Fed since 2012. (Reporting by Pete Schroeder; Editing by Meredith Mazzilli and Diane Craft) By Yoon Ja-young The country's services account marked its biggest deficit ever in the first half of the year following a plunge in the number of Chinese tourists to Korea triggered by the deployment of a U.S. missile defense system here. According to the Bank of Korea (BOK), Thursday, the country has had a current account surplus since March 2012, but this has notably decreased this year compared to 2016. The current account surplus for June marked $7 billion, down 42 percent from the same month a year ago. The surplus for the first half of the year totaled $36.3 billion, a 29.8 percent drop. The decrease in the surplus was mostly due to a widening deficit in the services account, which was $15.7 billion deficit, the biggest ever. "The deficit in the travels account and transportation account expanded the deficit in services," said Chung Kyu-il, director general in charge of economic statistics at the central bank. He pointed out that Koreans are increasingly going on overseas trips. "Except in the case of an economic crisis, the number of Koreans heading overseas has been continuously growing, based on increasing income and the desire to travel abroad," he said. The number of Koreans heading overseas increased 18 percent to surpass 2 million for June, while foreign visitors to Korea dipped 36.2 percent to 992,000. Among them, the number of Chinese tourists plummeted 66.4 percent compared with a year ago. He explained that the number of Chinese tourists dipped after the government there banned travel agencies from selling tour packages to Korea, as a means of economic retaliation over the decision to deploy the terminal high altitude area defense (THAAD) system to protect against North Korea's missile threats. The deficit in the travel account stood at $7.7 billion, the second largest since the second half of 2007 and more than double that of a year ago. The deficit in the transportation account also soared to a record high of $2.3 billion, adding to the deficit in the services account. The surplus in the goods account, meanwhile, totaled $58.4 billion in the first half of the year, down 6.6 percent from a year ago. Exports grew 14.3 percent to $281.9 billion, while imports rose 21.5 percent to total $223.6 billion. Exports of chips and ships picked up, while exports of IT devices and automobile components dropped. Chung said that Korean companies that have manufacturing facilities overseas are increasingly using components manufactured there instead of sourcing from Korean suppliers. Purchases of machinery and rising oil prices also led to an increase in imports, thereby decreasing the surplus in the goods account. Koreans' direct investment overseas increased $17.4 billion, while foreign direct investment to Korea grew $7.1 billion. Foreigners' investment in Korean equities jumped $23.1 billion, while Koreans' purchase of stocks and bonds overseas increased by $42.4 billion, the biggest purchase ever. "Foreign fund is continuing to flow in amid expectations of strong fundamentals of the Korean economy and improving corporate performances," Chung explained. The central bank expects the current account surplus to hover above $70 billion this year. Seonam University in Namwon, North Jeolla Province / Yonhap Many likely to face same fate as students decrease By Jung Min-ho The government is expected to close Seonam University in Namwon, North Jeolla Province, which many see as the first domino to fall in a country with a shrinking student population. The Ministry of Education said Wednesday it has refused to accept takeover offers for the beleaguered school from two universities the University of Seoul and Sahmyook University. Given the school's awful financial situation, the ministry's only practical option is to close it once and for all. Seonam's founder Lee Hong-ha has been in prison since 2013 for embezzling more than 100 billion won ($89 million) from four schools, including Seonam, as well as his construction company. In May 2016, the Supreme Court confirmed his nine-year prison sentence. "Aside from the money pocketed by Lee, Seonam is under 18.7-billion-won debt and is unable to operate on its own," a ministry official said. "We will get rid of those involved in the corruption completely." Over the past three years, the school has been able to fill only 27.3 percent of the volume of its student recruitment and much of staffers' wages remain unpaid. If the ministry decides to close the school, its 1,600 students are expected to be transferred to other schools nearby. Seonam has a second campus in Asan, South Chungcheong Campus, which is also expected to close. Lodgings near the school / Yonhap Seonam was founded in 1991, when the number of people who hoped to enter college was far more than schools were able to accept. But the picture has changed. Although high school students still compete fiercely to enter reputable schools, many colleges are now struggling to attract them. According to the ministry, the number of people graduating high schools in 2018 will be below 560,000 the number all two-year and four-year colleges across the country can accept. And the situation is only going to get worse. According to the Ministry of Health and Welfare and Statistics Korea, the number of newborn babies this year is estimated to be 360,000, a major drop from 400,000 last year. By Donald Kirk WASHINGTON North Korea pops off another ICBM, and suddenly the U.S. media is full of talking heads offering views and solutions. They range from the extremes of annihilating North Korea's nuclear and missile facilities to, "Oh, just sign a peace treaty and everything will be okay." It's hard to know which extreme is more troubling, but then the moderate positions don't offer much consolation either. We're done with "strategic patience," if we can take the word of the Trumpsters, so what has a chance of working? Right, President Trump says he's "handling" the problem but gives no clue as to what he means. Actually, Trump is so busy attacking his critics while fending off demands for his impeachment that you have to wonder how much time he has for Korea. Therein, of course, lies one particularly disturbing scenario. What if he decides a pre-emptive strike would be just the thing to divert attention from the unwelcome scrutiny he's getting on the home front? He's got retired marine generals as his chief of staff and defense secretary and a retired army general as national security adviser. Who knows what they really are telling him? Yes, they might be all in favor of a pre-emptive strike. No, they might be warning their boss of the ultimate consequences of a second Korean War. General Mark Milley, army chief of staff, laid out the risks in a speech at the National Press Club. Yes, a second Korean War "would be terrible," he said in response to a question, "but a nuclear weapon detonating in Los Angeles would be (even more) terrible." In other words, maybe we should hit them before they hit us. But wait! Who thinks North Korea is about to fire a nuclear-tipped ICBM that colorful graphics on TV screens show has the capability of hitting not just LA but the Midwest, maybe New York? C'mon, they're not gonna do it, are they? People here in D.C. persist in asking me if I'm afraid of returning to Seoul, where I'm arriving Friday after an eight-week break in the U.S. and U.K. Frankly, I don't think there's anything to worry about, not now, not right away, but then think about all the conflagrations in history that burst on the world after decades of hedonistic happiness. After the Roaring '20s came the Great Depression and World War II. The pages of history are full of forecasts by "experts" who had it all wrong. Then we get to the other extreme, the crowd that thinks all we need to do is negotiate and get down to a peace treaty that would resolve everything. They love to echo the North with calls for "negotiations without preconditions," but they forget one immediate stopper. The North Koreans won't talk about ending their nuclear and missile program. That's not to say, of course, that they wouldn't "freeze" testing in return for the U.S. and South Korea halting war games, but so what? They would still have their nukes and missiles ready to fire yet again on any pretext. Another great flaw that treaty advocates overlook is the South Korean role. A bunch of them, recently in Seoul and all over Facebook,excoriate the U.S. but forget about South Korea. Jill Stein, who ran for U.S. president last November on the Green Party ticket, blamed U.S. forces for perpetuating the standoff as an occupying power. No one, it seemed, had briefed her on South Korean concerns, including efforts by President Moon Jae-in to open up dialogue with North Korea all to no avail. Perhaps what is most worrisome is that just about everyone concedes China is not going to do much about persuading North Korea to give up its nukes or stop testing missiles. Trump has registered his disappointment in tweets, and his critics, if they agree with him on nothing else, also say it's useless to count on China. No one doubts China will go on importing North Korean products, notably coal and other raw materials, while pumping in the oil to fuel the North's economy, including its military establishment and, yes, its nuclear and missile programs. All of which leads General Milley to believe "North Korea is the single most dangerous threat facing the international community and the U.S. today." Missing from his remarks was what to do about it. Somehow I doubt if his bosses, Trump and Mattis, know what to do either. Donald Kirk, www.donaldkirk.com, has been covering war and peace in the region for decades. He's at kirkdon4343@gmail.com. China will adopt a controversial cybersecurity law from June 1 despite concerns from overseas groups doing business in China. The aim of the law is to protect networks and private user information with rigorous data surveillance and storage for companies and firms working in China. Businesses in mainland China are hiring more cyber security professionals with higher pay to combat cyber threats in a growingly digitalised operation, said recruiters. By Maggie Zhang Jobs related to the internet and e-commerce pushed aside banking and finance as China's most sought-after white collar jobs in the first quarter of 2017, as future prospects and promises of stock options offset low salaries in the short term. Among internet related jobs, one specialty stands heads and shoulders over mere programmers and engineers: the cyber security specialist, whose coding skills are needed to protect 21st century businesses against hackers, cyber extortionists and terrorists. Call them the cyber bodyguards. These jobs can get average pay increments of between 25 per cent to 35 per cent, five percentage points higher than other jobs in information technology field, according to a survey by Hays, a recruiting firm. "We have seen an increase in permanent demand for security experts across a range of clients, with analysts and architects, cyber threat intelligence analysts, consultants and cyber incident analysts being the most in demand," said Simon Lance, Hays' Greater China managing director. The strong demand is expected to continue, as a cyber security law that took effect on June 1 fuels the need for top talent to keep pace with China's legal environment, he said. China's universities can't turn out programmers and software engineers fast enough, putting a premium on these candidates' salaries. The demand for talent varies, as each industry comes with its unique risk profile, requiring specific skill sets, said Pang Limin, deputy general manager of CIIC Human Capital Survey and Data Solution Centre. Banks and financial institutions must deal with the leakage of customers' information, and the problem of phishing, which uses fabricated messages to induce unsuspecting customers to divulge their passwords. Manufacturers are more focused on the integrity of their IT infrastructure, while internet companies are more demand ing in data protection, she said. "In addition to bigger demand of internal talents, we are also seeing business increase their expenditure on hiring external cyber security firms to fight cybercrime," Pang said. Candidates with at least three to five years' experience are most in demand, she said, noting that industry certificates can shore up talents' competitiveness. While business are hiring more to combat cyber threat, a stringent internal management is also much needed. An earlier industry report showed that internal theft is the top cause of customer-data leakage in China's massive e-commerce market, the world's largest. About 49 per cent of the incidents were caused by employees of the company experiencing the leakage, followed by unsafe account, malicious Trojan horse programme and systematic loopholes, according to the report from Alibaba Group, which owns the South China Morning Post. Wih the dust from Big Bang T.O.P's recent marijuana scandal finally settling into the ground, the final decisions regarding his military status has been revealed. According to the police at the Seoul Metropolitan Police Department in Gangnam on July 31st, T.O.P. will no longer be able to serve in the military as a conscripted policeman. If you're not familiar with the military's jargon, a conscripted soldier or policemen are people who were recruited or have volunteered to serve as combat police to fight North Korean infiltrators or help the police maintain public security. However, simply because T.O.P has been stripped of his title doesn't mean he will be exempt from serving his mandatory enlistment and fulfilling his responsibilities. The Seoul Metropolitan Police Department announced that they are planning to request a new position for T.O.P at the Republic Of Korea Headquarters. Once the request is accepted, T.O.P can no longer serve as a conscripted officer and will instead serve and complete his remaining duties as a public service social worker or a full-time reserve soldier. In other news, T.O.P was reported to have recently given up his right to appeal. He has been sentenced to 2 years probation with a 10-month prison statement if he breaks said probation. He also paid a $12 fine. What do you think of T.O.P's ending results? Although many people are in disbelief and so they are complacent, scientists have been warning us that the Earth is undergoing global climate change and we must prepare for it if we are to have a productive future. The theory is that global conditions have been warming up as part of a natural cycle since the last Ice Age (Glacial Maxim 20,000-25,000 years ago), but in the last few decades things have dramatically sped up due to human activities. The intense burning of fossil fuels has caused a steep rise in the levels of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere, creating a greenhouse-like effect and leading to hotter conditions that have begun to rapidly melt ice in glaciers and at the polar caps, thus causing the oceans to rise. For millions of years, the level of CO2 in the atmosphere has paralleled air temperature. Scientists think that temperature will inevitable rise to match the radical spike in CO2 level, though it hasnt yet. If you look at aerial photographs of the major glaciers or study maps of the Arctic and Antarctica you can see the effects of global warming boldly demonstrated. Glaciers have shrunk and large areas of the polar ice sheaths have melted. It is not certain what Mother Nature will do. Humans can only guess at the future based on the data and the models we have. But it looks like we will eventually lose low-lying places on the ocean front, for example, the beautiful city of Venice, Italy. Its also thought that San Francisco Airport may be underwater in 100 years, unless some sort of sea wall is built to protect it. Many of our California beaches (worth about $60 billion a year in tourist revenue) may also end up under water. Finding a link to past rising seas What can we do about climate change? Can we stop it or alter its course? Some scientists think we still have time, others say it is far too late and we will just have to adapt by moving back from the coast as the oceans rise. We are not unique in the dilemma we face. In past times, other human beings faced the same problem of rising oceans. Throughout the world there are civilizations now underwater, lost to the rising oceans. In La Jolla, there is evidence offshore and underwater that two Native civilizations (flourishing 8,000 and 12,000 years ago) experienced serious sea-level changes that impacted their lifestyle and led to their disappearance. Hopefully, we can learn from these lost cultures by studying and understanding how they adapted or failed to adapt to climate change and rising seas. Scripps Center for Marine Archaeology Scripps Institution of Oceanography (SIO) is resolute on the idea of learning from the past. Its researchers have started a project to study the past, called the Scripps Center for Marine Archaeology (SCMA). The goal of SCMA, which is a team effort by SIO and the UC San Diego Department of Anthropology, is to investigate the influence of changing marine environments on ancient societies and to reconstruct archeological sites that are now under the water. SCMA was founded by SIO emeritus professor Walter Munk and Damien Leloup, who met at the world renowned Explorers Club. Leloup used to dive with the great French oceanographer and inventor of the aqua lung, Jacques Cousteau. Together Munk and Leloup were able to raise $400,000 to start SCMA. The Center is currently headed by UCSD anthropology professor Tom Levy, an archaeologist who specializes in the Middle East, and John Hildebrand, a professor at SIO known for his work using sound for underwater sensing and discovery. The purpose of SCMA, according to Scripps director Margaret Leinen, Is to advance marine archaeology as a field, and on a larger scale, to help scientists explore ways to better understand and protect our planet. Carol Padden, dean of UCSD Division of Social Sciences, added that SCMA will, Find ways to study the relationship between society and the sea, increasing our knowledge of the past for a better future. Said Levy, We are not just going to study sunken ships, but we will look at the adaptation of coastal societies who underwent environmental change. There are hidden coastlines now underwater all over the world where civilization and culture once flourished. Those are the places we need to study. Adding new expertise SIO and the anthropology department jointly hired two new faculty members whove been studying climate change as the first step to grow SCMA. These new professors are Isabel Rivera-Collazo, who specializes in human resilience and adaptation to climate change on the island of Puerto Rico; and Jade dAlpoim Guedes, a Harvard graduate who works on climate change in Tibet and China. Rivera-Collazo said she grew up on a small farm in the mountains above San Juan, Puerto Rico, where her family grew vegetables and herbs. I ran all around the wilds of the mountain. We were like hermits. People would say, Oh, look at those hippies! she laughed. The people who supplied her family with irrigation equipment spoke Hebrew. Because she liked the sound of their language, when the opportunity came up, she went to Israel for the summer to study Hebrew and live on a kibbutz. When I was in Israel, I discovered archaeology. There are so many treasures of the past in the Holy Land. So when I went back to school in Puerto Rico, I changed my major to archaeology. I later returned to Haifa to study underwater archaeology, Rivera-Collazo said. She studies the Late Pleistocene and Holocene eras when modern man first arose. She has found habitation sites off the coast of Puerto Rico from the time when the oceans were much lower. The last Glacial Maxim was 25,000 years ago. Since then, the planet has been warming steadily. But here were two periods when the rapid melting of ice stopped for several thousand years ... long enough for coastal civilizations to develop. These two periods of stability of the ocean level are called the Younger Dryas and the Bolling Allerod, Rivera-Collazo explained. These stable periods can also be observed off the coast of La Jolla at depths of 24 meters (78 feet) and 59 (193 feet) meters. At these depths, underwater archaeologists have found evidence of Native civilizations. In 1964, more than 100 Native American stone bowls were brought up by SIO divers. It is predicted that a more thorough study of sites at these depths will reveal human presence dating back 8,000-14,000 years. These will undoubtedly be the oldest sites in San Diego, where almost all inland archaeological sites are younger than 7,000 years. Rivera-Collazo will be joined by Guedes, who graduated with a Ph.D. from Harvard University in 2013. Like her colleague, Guedes grew up on a farm where she helped her father collect seeds in Portugal. Guedes said she has been studying climate change and adaptation along the coast in China and in Tibet, and like Rivera-Collazo, she is very interested in making archaeology relevant and useful for modern times. One of the amazing applications of Guedes work is the recommendation she made to introduce Hopi Indian corn to Ethiopia where it is getting too hot and too dry to grow its staple crop of bananas. She has further recommended the return to the farming older grains, which were once staples on the Tibetan plateau in the days when Tibet was a warmer land, like it is now becoming again. Of our impending local problems with the sea, Guedes said, It is essential to understand how humans from the deep past of La Jolla dealt with challenges, such as a rising sea level and a changing coastline, and to highlight the similarities and differences to what our town faces today, so that we can take the best path forward in protecting this beautiful place. With such a great staff, Hildebrand is confident that SCMA has a rosy future. We want to have a lot of public participation in our work, and that will include seminars and workshops for people to come and get involved. We are also going to have a field school where people can learn underwater archaeology, both in Israel and right here in La Jolla! he said. Want to know more? Visit scma.ucsd.edu It was hard to find parking in downtown Williams Bay during the Williams Bay Fine Art & Craft Fest at Edgewater Park on Saturday. Hundreds of visitors wandered among the tents and canopies where more than 30 artists showed their works in oils, acrylics, watercolor, ceramics, wood sculpture, textile and fabric art, jewelry and mixed media. This years event, which ran the weekend of July 29 to 30, included a craft tent and a Williams Bay student art sale. Every year during the fest, two students are honored with $1,000 scholarships. This years winners are Kate Choitz and Morgan Lippert, both of Williams Bay High School. Matt Dunlap, art teacher at Williams Bay, said that Lippert will attend Beloit College next year and Kate Choitz will go to the University of Wisconsin Whitewater. As a juried art fair, this year two winners, best of show and honorable mention, won prizes of $500 and $250 respectively. Mark Mueller of Germantown won the best of show award and $500. Mueller does intricate colored pen and ink drawings of buildings and landmarks around the state and the country. Mueller said he photographs the structures he wants to draw and then works from the photographs using what is called a crow quill pen, which allows for very fine lines. An artist who worked in advertising, Mueller, now retired, said hes been doing independent artwork and taking it to art shows for the past 40 years. Ive always been in art, he said. It takes between 30 and 40 hours from start to finish on a drawing, Mueller, with another hour for coloring the artwork. He said he tries to make the drawings as close to life as possible. He did admit to some artistic license, removing a tree or a telephone pole. In one case, he remembers replacing an old ice-vending machine in front of a vintage rural grocery store with an antique pickup truck. Otherwise, he said, the buildings and their surroundings appear pretty much as they do in life. Mueller said he has been coming to the Williams Bay art show for the past 10 years, and he plans to be at Lake Genevas Art in the Park. He said he does about 25 art shows a year. Honorable mention and a $250 prize went to Ward Siegler of Genoa City. Siegler creates original jewelry and works in silver and gold. A former tool and die welder, Siegler said hes been making jewelry for the past 28 years. This was his eighth year showing in Williams Bay. He said he also does shows in North Carolina and Florida. The art and craft fest celebrated its 41st year this summer. The show was started during the 1970s as part of the Bicentennial celebration. It was interrupted one year, 2013, when the founder, Jan Johnson, retired. However, the art show was missed and Jan Johnsons daughter, Sandy Johnson, and various community organizations along with the Williams Bay Recreation Department rallied to re-establish the art fest in 2014. Historic ties of north Meck span throughout region Though the north Mecklenburg area didnt see significant population growth until a few decades ago, its rich history dates back to the Revolutionary War. That was the basis of... An easier-than-expected first mammogram experience HUNTERSVILLE Scheduling a cancer screening probably ranks somewhere on your to-do list between "clean out the garage" and "donate those clothes that don't fit." Sure, you'll get to it at... PRESS RELEASE Bogdanov: The U.S.s Iran-Russia Sanctions Bill Is Unlawful Aug. 2, 2017 (EIRNS)Russian Deputy Foreign Minister and Russian Special Presidential Envoy for the Middle East and Africa, Mikhail Bogdanov, who met with Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Hossein Ansari in Moscow yesterday, denounced the recently approved Iran-Russia sanctions bill as unlawful. "You know our position, these actions are absolutely unlawful, they do not help reach an understanding and the necessary level of trust between us and the Americans," Bogdanov said. "This is sad, it affects our bilateral relations," Bogdanov went on to say. "I think that it does not add optimism regarding the possibility for us to coordinate our approaches towards a whole range of regional issues, including our relations with such an important partner and neighbor as Iran," he added. Ansari was in Moscow for meetings with Bogdanov and other Russian officials on implementation of the cease-fire in Syria. In Tehran, the Iranian committee in charge of monitoring implementation of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), the 2015 agreement by which Iran agreed to give up any effort to develop nuclear weapons in return for lifting of UN sanctions, charged yesterday that the U.S. has violated three articles of the agreement by passage of the Iran-Russia sanctions bill, and emphasized the necessity for Irans "decisive, appropriate and wise response" to the U.S. governments policies. The monitoring committee, chaired by Iranian president Hassan Rouhani, further devised a plan in 16 articles on the proper reaction to the U.S. provocative measures, reported the Tasnim News Agency. The committee also endorsed a motion the Parliament had recently passed to counter the "U.S. adventurous and terrorist measures in the region." Ali Larijani, the speaker of the Iranian parliament, told Tasnim, that Iran has already filed a complaint with the international commission on the JCPOA in Vienna. Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammed Javad Zarif, who was in Istanbul yesterday for meetings with Turkish officials, said that Iran will respond the U.S. breach of commitments and hostile conduct in connection with the JCPOA through legal and proportionate practical means, including by legal actions in international bodies. PRESS RELEASE Gatilov: Russia Still Expects U.S. Cooperation in Syria Aug. 2, 2017 (EIRNS)Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Gennadi Gatilov told TASS yesterday that he expects Russian cooperation with the U.S. in Syria to continue, despite the poor state of U.S.-Russian relations. When asked if souring relations between Russia and the United States were affecting the process of the Syrian settlement, he said that "until now, we have been in contact with the Americans, particularly as far as the setup of de-escalation zones in southern Syria is concerned." He added that now there is a small pause, but, "I would like to hope that in the future, our cooperation aimed at eliminating the terrorist threat in Syria will continue." PRESS RELEASE Tillerson on Path to Cooperation with Russia and China August 2, 2017 (EIRNS)Despite the Congressional sanctions and other stress points, U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson outlined the Trump administrations commitment to continuing cooperation where possible, and conflict-avoidance where necessary, with Russia and China as the countries confront a new "pivot point" in world history. Tillerson met with journalists at the State Department last night to update and clarify the nature of the Trump administrations foreign policy. He said that looking back 50 years, there was a major change at the time of the collapse of European communism, and that now we are confronting a "pivot point" due to the dramatic expansion of Chinas role in the world. He reaffirmed the administrations commitment to "making America great again," but emphasized that when Trump says "America first," he does not mean "America alone." Tillerson emphasized that, despite difficulties and disagreements, the administration is committed to mutually beneficial and peaceful resolutions of these difficulties. Tillerson said the fight against terrorism is "one area of mutual interest," and told reporters, "We are committed to the stability of Syria following the battle to defeat ISIS," adding that the U.S. favored "a unified Syria, not divided," as well as the drafting of a new constitution, free and fair elections, and a new political leadership. He said that both the United States and Russia are committed to the defeat of ISIS and its allies, and to the future stability of Syria. He said that the administration finds Russias support for the indefinite continuation of the Syrian government of Bashar Assad "unacceptable" and that Iranian forces must leave Syrian territory, "and it continues to be our view that the Assad regime has no role in the future governing of Syria." He explained, "The sequencing of all of that, were open to, as long as that is what is achieved at the end." "Again, were working closely with Russia and other parties to see if we can agree on a path forward on how to stabilize Syria, in the post- ISIS world, create zones of stabilization and lines of deconfliction that will hold, and then create conditions for the political process to play out in Geneva." He said the creation of a de-escalation zone in the southwest part of Syria, created by Russia, the United States, and Jordan, was "one small measure of success," to be replicated throughout Syria. Speaking on China, Tillerson said: "How should we define this relationship [with China], and how do we ensure that economic prosperity to the benefit of both countries and the world can continue, and that where we have differencesbecause we will have differences, we do have differencesthat we will deal with those differences in a way that does not lead to open conflict? "We test this relationship through things like the situation in North Korea," he said. "Can we work together to address this global threat where we have a common objective? And where we have differencesin the South China Sea, and we have some trading differences that need to be addressedcan we work through those differences in a way without it leading to open conflict and find the solutions that are necessary to serve us both"? Tillerson went on to discuss the stress in the relationship with Russia over Ukraine, commitments to NATO, the Mideast, cyber security, Iran, the dispute between the United Arab Emirates and Qatar, the drug cartels, the internal difficulties in the Trump administration. In every instance, he stressed working toward cooperation on our common aims and avoiding conflict both with our "allies and partners" and "our adversaries." PRESS RELEASE Tillerson Will Meet Lavrov at ASEAN Meeting Aug. 2, 2017 (EIRNS)U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said he will be meeting with his Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov in the Philippines on the sidelines of the ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) and East Asia Summit. "I will be meeting face-to-face with Foreign Minister Lavrov this weekend on the margins of the meetings in Manila," Tillerson told reporters on Tuesday. Commenting on his telephone discussion with Lavrov, following Russia demanding withdrawal of a large number of U.S. diplomats from Russia, he said: "He and I have already spoken. I would say, our conversation following the actions has been professional, theres been no belligerence." He continued: "I think Foreign Minister Lavrov and I understand our roles, we understand our responsibilities, and I think hes as committed as I am to trying to find ways that we can bring this relationship back closer towards one another." Tillerson said the Russian move will negatively effect diplomatic activities in Moscow. "Does it make our life more difficult? Of course it makes our life more difficult," he said. Hadley Olivia Mattress Shop - Creating the Luxurious Sleep You Have Always Dreamt About Hadley Olivia opened in 2016 with the intention of bringing ultra-premium mattresses to San Juan Capistrano and the rest of Orange County and what they found out is that people have been waiting for just such a store. Founder and Southern California native Ronnie Lane created the Hadley Olivia brand out of a passion for educating people on improved sleep quality and how the mattresses that they sleep on can literally change their lives Michael Minas BARDOT Brasserie Restaurant Review Going Beyond Your Typical French Fare Sometimes if you do a little exploring in life you are greatly rewarded. If you are familiar with the ARIA, you know you can often be thrown into a trance by the beauty of the casino floor and the embarrassment of riches when it comes to restaurants. The second level holds several treats, including BARDOT Brasserie. A restaurant so beautiful with a menu to match, it deserves to be the centerpiece of ARIA Bridal retailer Alfred Angelo broke its silence Thursday, telling customers worldwide that they wont be receiving the wedding dresses, bridesmaid dresses and accessories they ordered. It was the companys first announcement since filing for Chapter 7 bankruptcy protection last month to liquidate its holdings. In a statement on the companys website, the trustee for the firm said it would be unable to fulfill remaining customer orders. Advertisement The Chapter 7 Trustee greatly regrets the upset that Alfred Angelos July 14th bankruptcy filing has caused its customers, the statement said. While we have been successful in obtaining customer records and delivering many dresses and accessories for customers all over the country, even after the bankruptcy filing date, it has now become apparent that the logistical and financial strain of fulfilling each and every open order makes continuing that course of action no longer possible. Thus, it said, to the extent any order has not been fully delivered to a customer, it shall have to remain unfilled. Customers who think the company owes them money should submit a form that is available online, it said. The announcement was the first public statement by the bridal chain since it abruptly closed all its stores July 13, sending brides into a panic during the traditionally busy summer season. At the time, company employees said they were given no warning of the stores impending closure. They were told that morning their stores would close for good at the end of the business day. Managers were instructed to return their keys after closing time. Employees encouraged customers to call the companys customer service line, which went to voicemail when the Washington Post tried it at the time. Competitors such as Davids Bridal have capitalized on Alfred Angelos closure, offering special deals to brides and wedding parties who had ordered from Alfred Angelo but not received the goods. Based in Delray Beach, Fla., Alfred Angelo operated at least 60 locations in the U.S., Canada, Europe and Japan, including several stores in Southern California. Its dresses were placed with 1,400 retailers worldwide. Schiffer writes for the Washington Post. Two American Airlines flight attendants have filed a class-action lawsuit against the manufacturer of controversial new uniforms, contending that the clothing is causing health problems for many employees. The suit, which names American Airlines flight attendants Thor Zurbriggen and Dena Catan as plaintiffs, asks the court to order the manufacturer, Twin Hill, to recall the uniforms given to more than 60,000 employees worldwide and to set up medical monitoring for employees. The complaint was filed Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Chicago. It will be up to a judge to decide if the suit can proceed as a class-action case. Advertisement Twin Hill issued a statement that it stands by its product. Nothing in the complaint filed by two American Airlines flight attendants changes the fact that there is absolutely no evidence linking any of the symptoms alleged to our uniforms, the company said. Twin Hill is a subsidiary of Tailored Brands, based in Fremont, Calif. American Airlines said all employees were offered the option of wearing alternative uniforms. We would never ask our team members to wear an unsafe uniform, said Lakesha Brown, a spokeswoman for the airline. The suit repeats complaints from American Airlines employees who say the uniforms, which were given to employees starting in September, are the cause of health problems such as rashes, headaches, fatigue, vertigo and respiratory problems. A union representing American Airlines flight attendants says more than 3,500 flight attendants have filed complaints over the uniforms. Twin Hill has said tests show that the materials used in the uniforms contained nothing that could cause health problems. Still, American Airlines and Twin Hill announced in June that they would end their partnership after the current contract expires in 2020. In the lawsuit, Zurbriggen said he began to experience fatigue, rashes, eye irritiation and throat irritation, among other health problems, after getting his new uniform in November. Catan said she suffered blinding headaches after trying on her new uniform. Even after replacing the uniforms with other clothing, Zubriggen and Catan said in the suit, the health problems continued when they came in contact with co-workers who continued to wear the Twin Hill uniforms. One conclusion that is clear, however, is the new uniforms are causing these health problems. That is the only possible conclusion given that the thousands of American Airlines flight attendants and pilots began reporting serious adverse reactions only after the new uniforms were introduced, the lawsuit states. hugo.martin@latimes.com To read more about the travel and tourism industries, follow @hugomartin on Twitter. ALSO Paralyzed veterans sue over delay of a rule requiring airlines to track lost or damaged wheelchairs Airlines with good passenger experiences have highest stock returns, study finds Passenger rights group wins court victory in fight to keep airline seats from shrinking Airline passengers often must wait at the baggage carousel until every suitcase has been picked up before realizing that their bags didnt land with them. Now, Fort Worth-based American Airlines is giving travelers a digital alert if their bags dont arrive at the same destination at the same time. The alert comes through the contact information provided by the fliers during the booking or check-in process. Loyalty reward members at American Airlines can also get notices through the airline app. Advertisement The alert tells travelers if their luggage has arrived early or will arrive later. If the luggage is arriving late, the alert informs the traveler to head to the Baggage Service Office to arrange a pickup later or notifies the passenger to fill out a mobile baggage order to have the airline deliver the bag to the travelers home, office or lodging. American Airlines system relies on bar codes that are printed on each bag label. To keep track of the bags, the bar codes are scanned at several points in the loading and transportation process. Lost luggage rates have been on the decline in the U.S. over the last few years because of heavy investments by carriers in new technology. Delta Air Lines, for example, has installed a luggage tracking system at the major domestic airports served by the Atlanta-based carrier. It relies on radio frequency identification devices on luggage tags. A study offered by an airline technology company and an industry trade group said the use of RFIDs could enable airlines to successfully track bags 99% of the time, saving the industry $3 billion over the next seven years. hugo.martin@latimes.com To read more about the travel and tourism industries, follow @hugomartin on Twitter. Federal immigration agents have shown up twice at California labor dispute proceedings to apprehend undocumented workers, in what state officials believe may be cases of employer retaliation. The Labor Commissioners Office, the states labor enforcement arm, said that since November U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents showed up at locations in Van Nuys and Santa Ana looking for workers who had brought claims against their employers. For the record: An earlier version of this story misstated the number of workers in California who file claims for back pay. In January, ICE also contacted a state official and asked for details about an ongoing investigation into labor violations at several construction sites across Los Angeles, according to Julie Su, the states labor commissioner and the agencys head. Advertisement An ICE spokeswoman said the agency could not find evidence to confirm those visits. State officials sent a memo in July instructing staff members to refuse entry to ICE agents who visit its offices to apprehend immigrants who are in the country without authorization. Americas love-hate relationship with immigrants Staff members should ask federal immigration agents to leave our office, including the waiting room, and inform the agent[s] that the labor commissioner does not consent to entry or search of any part of our office, the memo said. If agents refuse to leave, the memo tells employees, demand a search warrant signed by a judge before allowing them onto the premises. There is no doubt that allowing ICE to freely enter our office would have a substantial chilling effect on the willingness of workers to report violations and participate in our fight against wage theft, Su said in an interview. Virginia Kice, a spokeswoman for ICE, said the agency canvassed its enforcement personnel in the Los Angeles area and received no information to corroborate claims that ICE agents visited two state labor offices seeking specific individuals. Consistent with its commitment to the fair and effective enforcement of federal hiring and immigration laws, the agency has longstanding guidelines and procedures designed to help ensure that ICE enforcement personnel do not become involved in labor disputes in the course of carrying out their mission, Kice said. The Labor Commissioners Office has 18 offices across the state, where workers can get restitution if they can prove their employer paid them less than the minimum wage. They can also file complaints against bosses who punish them for protesting their conditions. About 35,000 workers a year file claims for back pay, Su said. Many of those complaints come from people in industries that are heavily dependent on immigrants, such as garment manufacturing, car washing and trucking. Parts of those industries thrive underground, finding all sorts of ways to underpay workers. In many garment factories, workers earn a piece rate 10 cents for stitching a neckline, for example instead of an hourly wage. That practice isnt illegal as long as employers make sure their workers are earning at least the minimum wage, which doesnt happen on many factory floors in downtown Los Angeles. An investigation of 77 local garment companies by the U.S. Labor Department last year found that workers were making as little as $4 an hour sewing clothes for major retailers. Mariela Martinez, the organizing director for the Garment Worker Center, says she has represented about 100 workers who filed claims with the Labor Commissioners Office over the last two years. Fewer than 10% of the workers were in the country legally, she estimates. The reason why employers pay such low wages is because workers are undocumented, Martinez said. It has a lot to do with the perception that they wont speak out and they wont file a claim. Some car washes use a different model, said Commissioner Su, compensating employees only for vehicles that they actually wash. That means that workers stay at work all day but take home less than the minimum wage. Trucking companies have evaded wage laws by classifying workers as independent contractors. They dont pay overtime and force drivers to pay for the cost of fueling and maintaining their trucks. After those payments, for which they arent reimbursed, drivers end up earning less than the minimum. Since 2011, the Labor Commissioners Office has concluded that drivers were misclassified as independent contractors in about 300 wage-claim cases. Su noted that many employers in each of these industries play by the rules, and they have a strong interest in making sure workers continue to come forward when bosses are cutting corners. They are frustrated by the challenges they have in competing and doing work honestly when there is an underground economy, she said. State law allows workers to report labor violations regardless of their immigration status. The ICE agents who came to the Van Nuys and Santa Ana offices asked for the specific workers involved in the proceedings by name, and arrived within a half hour of when the meetings with employers were supposed to begin, Su said. Su said she suspects that the employers being accused of underpaying employees tipped off federal immigration agents about the status of the workers. The timing of wage hearings isnt public, and generally the worker and employer are the only ones who know that information outside of the agency. We should not enable unscrupulous employers who use immigration status as a vulnerability to retaliate unlawfully against a worker who is seeking our protection, Su said. Under Californias labor code, its illegal for a company to retaliate against employees by calling federal immigration to report their status. In Van Nuys, the worker who had made a claim for back wages never showed up the day the ICE officer came, and the case was closed. In Santa Ana, the worker had reported retaliation, and the state is still investigating that claim. Su declined to name the employers in either case, or the construction contractors involved in the investigation that ICE had called about. She said 58 workers have reported immigration-related threats from bosses to her office so far this year, compared with 14 in all of 2016. In the last year, ICE agents have appeared outside a Pasadena courthouse and half a mile away from a Lincoln Heights school to apprehend people living in the country without authorization. This is consistent with what we have seen under the Trump Administration, said Michael Kaufman, an attorney with the ACLU of Southern California. He said the appearance of ICE agents at labor proceedings was deeply troubling. ICE should not be used as a tool by employers to go after employees asserting their rights, Kaufman said. Natalie.Kitroeff@latimes.com Follow me @NatalieKitro on Twitter ALSO Justice Department calls for review of race-based college admissions, alarming civil rights groups Trump is pushing for a merit-based immigration system that slashes the number of legal immigrants U.S. hits Venezuela, but are tougher sanctions coming that would raise gas prices? UPDATES: 4:35 p.m., Aug. 3: This article was updated with a more specific response from ICE and additional detail about labor complaints. This article was originally published at 6:50 p.m. on Aug. 2. The camera barely moves in Columbus. The debut feature from the single-named director Kogonada who first gained notice in Hollywood for his video essays on Yasujiro Ozu, Wes Anderson, Stanley Kubrick and other filmmakers is set in the modern-architecture mecca of Columbus, Ind. (Population as of the 2010 census : 44,061.) Along with Haley Lu Richardson, John Cho and Parker Posey, the stars of the movie include Eero Saarinens Miller House (1957) and North Christian Church (1964), I.M. Pei s Cleo Rogers Memorial Library (1969) and James Stewart Polsheks Quinco Mental Health Center (1972). The way Kogonada and his cinematographer, Elisha Christian, frame these buildings, with an unhurried series of static shots, says a lot about the larger story theyre trying to tell. Once in a very long while theres a subtle zoom or an almost imperceptible tracking shot, but in general this is a film very much about stillness, one firmly rooted in place. Or rather its a film about how tricky it can be to find a balance between rootedness and ambition. The architects who came to build in Columbus beginning in the 1940s thanks in large part to the patronage of J. Irwin Miller, chairman of the Cummins Engine Co., and his wife, Xenia Simons Miller were not only leading figures in the profession but also in many cases exemplars of what became known between World War I and II as the International Style. Their arrival hinted at the ways in which American architecture and the larger culture were poised to change in the decades ahead, trafficking increasingly in global ideas and if the harshest critiques of modernism are to be believed neglecting local context and regional character along the way. The living room of Eero Saarinens Miller House in Columbus, Ind., with a sunken conversation pit in the foregreound. (Elisha Christian / Superlative Films/Depth of Field) (Elisha Christian / Superlative Films / Depth of Field) The extent to which that traffic qualifies as progress is one of the many themes that run silently beneath the surface of Columbus. Richardson (best known for roles in The Edge of Seventeen and M. Night Shyamalan s Split) is superb as Casey, a smart, guarded 19-year-old who grew up in Columbus and, having put off college for the time being, is reluctant to leave. Cho is similarly effective and understated as Jin, a translator who has flown in from Seoul because his father, a well-known architectural historian who came to Columbus to give a lecture, collapsed outside Saarinens church and remains in a coma in the local hospital. They wind up bonding over visits to a number of landmarks in town, despite Jins initial insistence that he hates architecture. Before long, their conversations have ranged well beyond the subjects that fill guidebook entries. About halfway through the movie, Casey tells Jin, almost off-handedly, You know, meth is a big thing here. Meth and modernism. She says this as the two of them are sharing a cigarette in the parking lot of Irwin Union Bank, a building designed by Deborah Berke, who runs a New York firm and last year became architecture dean at Yale. Though she never appears on-screen, Berke emerges as a significant part of the storyline in Columbus, a symbol of the opportunities waiting for Casey if she can ever break free of her hometown. The references to meth and an addiction storyline involving Caseys mother, played by Michelle Forbes suggest a movie that has more than architecture on its mind, that sees famous buildings less as stylish backdrops and more as the means to a thematic end. In a typical Hollywood movie, important architecture, especially important modern architecture, would be a symbol of big-city sophistication (or even, as documentarian Thom Andersen and others have pointed out, of deviance or criminality). A town in the middle of Indiana would be, in its folksiness and local color as well as its struggles, a foil for that far-away glamour. The interior of I.M. Peis Cleo Rogers Memorial Library, which plays a significant role in Columbus. (Elisha Christian / Superlative Films/Depth of Field) SIGN UP for the free Essential Arts & Culture newsletter But Kogonada wraps the sophistication and the struggle together in a single locale. (In addition to directing, he wrote the films screenplay, which takes a while to get going and whose architectural metaphors could use some shoring up.) Casey wants to stay in Columbus because she feels an obligation to take care of her mother and a kinship with the towns architecture. Jin is trapped in Columbus because of his fathers condition, but at least outwardly rejects Caseys sense of familial obligation. They are mirror images of one another, existentially speaking. As quietly ambitious as she is, Casey should leave but wants to stay. As dire as his fathers health is, Jin should stay but wants to leave. The film offers a subtle critique of globalization and a timely portrait of Donald Trump s America. Its a reminder that the sense among longtime red-state residents that theyre underestimated or overlooked by big-city elites is a layered and complex grudge, sometimes flowing from ignorance or at least provincialism and sometimes from genuine pride of place. Columbus is Vice President Mike Pences hometown. This fact is never mentioned in Columbus, but once youve seen the film it makes a strange sort of sense. You might even say it points to one of Kogonadas guiding themes, one thats surprising only by the standards of Hollywood: the idea that small towns in smallish states in the middle of the country are capable of producing human beings as contradictory, complicated and self-interested as anywhere else even the sort of politician who is deeply religious and steadfastly conservative and at the same time supports the agenda of a president who is famously, flagrantly neither. I visited Columbus several years ago, on a driving trip across the country. I found some of the buildings disappointing, in part because they seemed to sag under the burden of knowing they had to compete for attention. Maybe my expectations were too high. But the places where trophy buildings are grouped together the campus of the Vitra design company in Germany and the neo-traditional town of Seaside, Fla., are two other examples that come to mind often turn out this way. Thats one reason Columbus works so well as a setting for this story and for Kogonada, whose video essays are marked by a forensic attention to detail. The loyalties of the towns most significant landmarks are divided in all sorts of ways: between the needs of everyday users and the expectations of architectural tourists, between the responsibilities of workhorse and show horse, between community fabric and individual personality. Casey and Jin can relate. Building Type is Christopher Hawthornes weekly column on architecture and cities. Look for future installments every Thursday at latimes.com/arts. christopher.hawthorne@latimes.com Twitter: @HawthorneLAT MORE BUILDING TYPE: Frank Gehry takes to the Web for an online master class Santa Monica's 'grand bargain' on growth and housing A lawsuit to protect LAX parking garages in the name of 'environmental quality'? True Detective season three, starring Oscar winner Mahershala Ali, is officially confirmed at HBO By Sarah Rodman Mahershala Ali accepting his Oscar for Moonlight. The actor will star in the third season of the HBO drama True Detective (Marcus Yam / Los Angeles Times) During the HBO executive session at the summer edition of the Television Critics Assn. press tour, programming president Casey Bloys confirmed reports that Moonlight Oscar winner Mahershala Ali would star in a third season of True Detective. Although he was mum at the time on when it might happen, he did say that he had read five scripts and thought they were terrific. Thursday night, the premium pay cabler released a statement officially confirming that the series will indeed return for a third installment. While no episode count or premiere date was included in the release, an enclosed synopsis stated that the next iteration of the show tells the story of a macabre crime in the heart of the Ozarks, and a mystery that deepens over decades and plays out in three separate time periods. Ali will star as Wayne Hays, a state police detective from northwest Arkansas. (Ali follows in the footsteps of season one stars, and continuing executive producers, Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson, and season twos Colin Farrell and Vince Vaughn. No word yet on whether hell have a partner.) The show will once again be helmed by creator Nic Pizzolatto, who penned all the episodes of the upcoming series, save the fourth, which he co-wrote with David Milch (Deadwood, NYPD Blue). He will share directing duties with fellow executive producer Jeremy Saulnier (Blue Ruin.) Im tremendously thrilled to be working with artists at the level of Mahershala and Jeremy, said Pizzolatto in a statement. I hope the material can do justice to their talents, and were all very excited to tell this story. Bloys noted that Nic has written truly remarkable scripts. With his ambitious vision and Mahershala Ali and Jeremy Saulnier aboard, we are excited to embark on the next installment of True Detective. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Newly reopened Angels Flight has long been a popular L.A. shooting location By Mark Olsen Its among the more unusual landmarks in Los Angeles, a short, steep railway that gets people up and down a single hill. So it makes sense that Angels Flight has been featured in many movies and television shows over the years. Angels Flight resumed regular service Thursday after being closed since 2013 (it did operate for one day of shooting on La La Land). It remains to be seen if it starts to appear again in movies and television shows. (Not that it ever really stopped.) Speaking to The Times at last years Toronto International Film Festival, La La Land star Ryan Gosling reflected on the use of historic locations in the movie. This was an opportunity to show an L.A. thats still there.... Youve got to squint your eyes a little, but there are still places in L.A. that are still part of the golden years of Los Angeles when Hollywood was in its heyday, Gosling said. I lived around the corner for a long time from Angels Flight and Grand Central Market, although I never got to ride Angels Flight because it had been shut down, Gosling added. Those places are still there... these gems that are there, and we were able to shoot them one by one. Angels Flight reopened on Thursday. (Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times) The small piece of land next to the top of Angels Flight, known as Angels Knoll, was also prominently featured in (500) Days of Summer. The location has appeared in a wide variety of movies over the years, as early as 1916s Good Night, Nurse, 1918s Up She Goes and 1920s All Jazzed Up. It has also had high-profile cameos in Act of Violence (1949), M (1951), Kiss Me Deadly (1955), The Exiles (1961), The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies (1963) -- all the way up to to 2011s The Muppets and last years La La Land. And on television, Angels Flight has been seen on Perry Mason, Dragnet and the recent series Bosch. READ MORE: Angels Flight: How it works and what its been through in its 100-year history Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Jamie Foxx announces telethon for Harvey relief By Libby Hill (Andrew Krech / News & Record via Associated Press) A new stream of celebrity support for victims of Hurricane Harvey opened Wednesday, as Jamie Foxx announced that a telethon fundraiser is in the works. In an Instagram post where the actor revealed his own donation of $25,000 to GlobalGiving, Foxx also shared preliminary plans for the upcoming benefit. From a fellow Texan, my heart goes out. My prayers go out, Foxx, from Terrell east of Dallas, said. September 12 we have a telethon that were doing. Well give you more details, so we can raise as much money as we can for everybody down there. View Instagram post Scooter Braun, talent manager and mastermind of One Love Manchester, is helming the event along with rapper and Houston native Bun B. TMZ reported that Foxx, Reese Witherspoon, Blake Shelton, Hilary Duff and Michael Strahan are all involved with the project, with commitments from the four major broadcast networks to air the special for an hour on Sept. 12. In an interview with TMZ, Bun B said that fellow Houston natives Beyonce and Jim Parsons are high on his wish list for the telethon. The outlet also reported that Bun B would only want President Trumps presence if it was via a show of unity with other former presidents. Solange also announced Wednesday that she will be holding a benefit show at Bostons Orpheum Theatre on Sept. 28. Featuring the Sun Ra Arkestra, the performance is titled Orions Rise and all proceeds will go to Hurricane Harvey relief. View Instagram post Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Gwyneth Paltrows love life? Yeah, she admits shes screwed up plenty of relationships By Libby Hill Gwyneth Paltrow takes full responsibility for her romantic failings. She admitted as much in a recent interview with the podcast Girlboss Radio, during which Paltrow went deep on some of her lost loves. Oh, my god, Ive [screwed] up so many relationships, so many, Paltrow said. Im actually a pretty good friend and a good sister and a daughter and a mother, but I am at my potentially most vulnerable in the romantic slice of the pie. So its taken me a lot of work to get to the place where I have a good romantic relationship. Paltrow consciously uncoupled from ex-husband Chris Martin in 2014 after 10 years of marriage and has been romantically linked to American Horror Story creator Brad Falchuk for the past three years. On Girlboss Radio, Paltrow sent a shout-out to former beau Brad Pitt, whom she dated from 1994 through 1997, and was at one point engaged to. I [screwed] that up, Brad, Paltrow said. Paltrow also delved into her experiences as founder and CEO of her lifestyle brand Goop, sharing that once shes in the boardroom with investors, no one cares if shes a celebrity. I go into the room, and for the first 90 seconds, Im Gwyneth Paltrow, she said. And theyre like, Oh, my god, my wife loves you .... And then, about 90 seconds later, Im just getting grilled like anyone else. But she doesnt get offended; she relishes the challenge. It was such a beautiful chapter of my life when I started raising [venture capital financing], because it knocked me down so many pegs. I was like, Oh, Im, like, no one. Im nothing. This [stuff] is real. I have to know the most granular aspects of my business and be able to defend it. The celebrity just completely drains out of the room. Its irrelevant, she said. Paltrows full conversation with Sophia Amoruso can be streamed at Girlboss. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Advertisement Longtime Simpsons composer Alf Clausen fired from the show after 27 years By Randall Roberts When the 29th season of The Simpsons premieres in the fall, it will, for the first time in decades, be doing so without its longtime musical contributor, Alf Clausen. Clausen, who composed the Fox animated shows incidental music, was told that the show was looking for a different kind of music moving forward, according to Variety. Clausen confirmed his firing via Twitter. Thank you for all of the support...unfortunately, the news is true... https://t.co/jBQH0b40cz Alf Clausen (@TheAlfClausen) August 31, 2017 The composers orchestral scores supported the familys foibles since the shows primitively drawn early days. And although The Simpsons theme song was penned by Danny Elfman, the sonic feel of the series has been defined by Clausens grandiose, often epic productions. Hes responsible for scoring Mr. Burns breakout See My Vest moment and crafted the tunes for the Springfield musical theater companys A Streetcar Named Desire adaptation. Ditto The Planet of the Apes musical. In short, nearly every classic music moment of The Simpsons has featured Clausens fingerprints. On Twitter, fans thanked Clausen for his work while expressing outrage at the circumstances surrounding his departure. Fired over the phone, yet, wrote one user. Clausen quickly corrected him with a one-word reply: Email ... On Thursday, producers for The Simpsons issued a statement to Variety. It stressed that Clausen will continue to contribute to the series: We tremendously value Alf Clausens contributions to The Simpsons and he will continue to have an ongoing role in the show. We remain committed to the finest in music for The Simpsons, absolutely including orchestral. The statement concluded: This is the part where we would make a joke but neither Alfs work nor the music of The Simpsons is treated as anything but seriously by us. Update, 1:16 p.m.: This story was updated with a statement from The Simpsons. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Instead of statues, Trevor Noah and Roy Wood Jr. have another idea for honoring Confederate history By Chris Barton With the country still reeling from the harrowing impact of Hurricane Harvey in Texas, Wednesday nights Daily Show looked at one of the summers ongoing controversies: Confederate monuments. Occasionally setting aside the shows usual comedic tone, Trevor Noah enlisted correspondent Roy Wood Jr. to consider whether these statues honor Southern heritage, as their supporters claim, or the nations history and lingering problem with racism. After showing a montage of guests on network news shows who reminded viewers that these statues were erected during the Jim Crow era, decades after the Civil War, Wood equated slavery to another tragedy. Its like if a woman got out of an abusive relationship and then she had to keep pictures of her ex up in her house to remember the time, a straight-faced Wood explained. No, I dont need pictures to remember pain. People say, We want to remember the history of the Civil War, Noah added. Theres an easier way to remember what happened in the Civil War: Just walk around in the South. And if you see free black people, then you know what happened. Watch the segment above. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Advertisement Gloria Gaynor sings to Texas Harvey victims: You will survive By Christie DZurilla (Astrid Stawiarz / Getty Images) Gloria Gaynor wants people affected by Harvey to know they will survive, and shes communicating that message through a new version of the song that has defined her career. Gaynor, whose I Will Survive became an anthem over the years, rewrote the 1978 disco hit to reach out to victims in Texas and posted her rendition on social media Wednesday. Hi, my neighbors in Texas, she said in a video shot while she sat at a piano she was about to play. This is Gloria Gaynor with a song that hopefully will cheer you up just a little bit. @SylvesterTurner @rashivats @SallyMacFox26 @TheRitaGarcia @kaitlinmonte @ChrisdyannUribe @MsCoCoDominguez @JMartinFOX26 TX WILL SURVIVE pic.twitter.com/FCNOnDr85o Gloria Gaynor (@gloriagaynor) August 30, 2017 Here are the tweaked lyrics, for those who dont want to hit play with the sound on. First we were afraid We were petrified Thinking Texas couldnt live With floodwaters this high We know you spent plenty of time Preparing for this hurricane Who couldve known that it would come With so much devastating rain But we will strive And youll survive With all our love and help and prayers We will stay strongly by your side We are your neighbors tried and true Well do all we can for you And youll survive You will survive, you will survive Similarly on Monday night, Coldplay unleashed a new original song written after the band was forced to cancel its Friday show in Houston with Hurricane Harvey bearing down. This is a new song, and well never play it again, frontman Chris Martin told an audience in Miami. Its a once-off. Its called Houston. Were going to sing it in Miami for everybody here, and then were going to send it over there to everyone who missed the show. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation donates $1 million to Harvey recovery By Christie DZurilla (Kirk McKoy / Los Angeles Times) Leonardo DiCaprio has stepped up with a $1-million donation to aid the victims of Hurricane Harvey, now a tropical storm, which has dumped historic levels of rain on the Gulf Coast over the last several days. United Way Worldwide announced Wednesday that it has started the United Way Harvey Recovery Fund with a seven-figure donation from the Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation. The money 100% of it, according to the charity will go to help victims of flooding with mid- and long-term recovery over the coming years. There are 23 United Ways that operate in the path of the storm, which made landfall Aug. 24. We are incredibly grateful for the generosity of Leonardo DiCaprio and his foundation, United Way Worldwide President and CEO Brian Gallagher said in a statement. Responding to Hurricane Harvey requires the best of all of us and thats what this gift represents. DiCaprio has been urging support of the United Way and American Red Cross this week on his Twitter account and retweeting stories talking about Harvey and climate change. Di Caprios foundation has been committed to climate-related issues and environmental projects since 1998, Terry Tamminen, president and CEO of the foundation, said in a statement. We support efforts to build climate resilient communities and protect vulnerable wildlife and ecosystems across the planet, and have supported disaster relief and victim funds in the past. We hope others will step up and support the United Way and other organizations. Earlier this week, Sandra Bullock, who has a home in Texas, gave $1 million to the American Red Cross, repeating the lump-sum generosity she showed after the 2011 earthquake and tsunami in Japan and the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in the U.S. Ellen DeGeneres was also in the seven-figure donation tier. The comic and talk-show host dropped $1 million in the relief bucket on Wednesday via J.J. Watts foundation. The effort by the Houston Texans star player topped $10 million on Thursday, with Watt chronicling its progress all week via videos on social media. Update, 8:50 a.m.: This post was updated with information about DeGeneres donation to Watts fund. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print A Star Is Born: Chris Tucker turns 45 today By Los Angeles Times Staff (Iris Schneider / Los Angeles Times) I had a dream as a kid: I wanted to be big, big like Richard [Pryor] and Eddie [Murphy]. I imagined it. I studied it. I had a passion. Chris Tucker, 2001 FROM THE ARCHIVES: In a Big Rush Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Springsteen on Broadway was born to run, is extended through February By Libby Hill Bruce Springsteens solo shows on Broadway have been extended through February, just hours after the original run sold out. (Greg Allen / Invision/Associated Press) Good news for Bruce Springsteen fans who were locked out of purchasing tickets Wednesday morning for his upcoming run of shows on Broadway. Ticketmaster announced that Springsteen on Broadway, an intimate stage experience that launches in October and features the rock legend performing solo, will be extending for 10 additional weeks. Originally scheduled to close in November, the show was extended through February after the original block of tickets sold out in a matter of minutes Wednesday. "#SpringsteenBroadway has been EXTENDED! the ticket outlet tweeted, with a follow-up tweet explaining that fans who had previously registered to purchase tickets will not have to register again. #SpringsteenBroadway has been EXTENDED! More information coming today. There will NOT be any additional codes released for today's onsale. pic.twitter.com/xGY3rj3Yrl Ticketmaster (@Ticketmaster) August 30, 2017 #SpringsteenBroadway extended run information YOU DO NOT HAVE TO REGISTER AGAIN! NEW #VerifiedFan registration: https://t.co/2xNBBhcVES pic.twitter.com/FT3mLaTLPV Ticketmaster (@Ticketmaster) August 30, 2017 Springsteen will be performing at New York Citys Walter Kerr Theater, which houses fewer than 1,000 seats. To curtail ticket scalping, Ticketmaster relied on its Verified Fan program. The program forces fans to register to even have an opportunity to purchase tickets and are limited to two tickets per purchase. For all of Ticketmasters efforts, resale sites already are flooded with Springsteen on Broadway tickets, with some reaching $10,000 apiece. Fans interested in trying their luck for the second batch of performance dates will need to register with Ticketmaster Verified Fan by Sept. 3 (at 7 p.m. Pacific). Tickets will be available for purchase 10 a.m. Pacific on Sept. 7. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Advertisement Sandra Bullock donates $1 million to Harvey relief efforts By Libby Hill Sandra Bullock donated $1 million to the American Red Cross for storm relief. (Wally Skalij / Los Angeles Times) With the Gulf Coast still battling the aftereffects of Tropical Storm Harvey, celebrities continue to come forward to help with relief efforts for the humanitarian crisis. Sandra Bullock, who has a home in Texas, donated $1 million to the American Red Cross emergency efforts, the organization confirmed to The Times on Wednesday. We are so thankful for the overwhelming and generous response from those who want to help those affected by this devastating storm, Elizabeth Penniman, vice president of communications for American Red Cross national headquarters, said in an email. Massive disasters like Hurricane Harvey create many critical and immediate needs, so we are heartened by donations like this which allow us to provide immediate shelter, food and comfort to thousands in need, Penniman continued. The entertainment community has been so supportive to the Red Cross in response to this devastating disaster, and we are so grateful. Bullock is just the latest star who has donated to recovery efforts in Texas. The Kardashian family pledged $500,000 to the Salvation Army and Red Cross on Tuesday. Kevin Hart also spearheaded a celebrity-driven fundraising campaign on Crowdrise that has brought in more than $1 million for the Red Cross. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Corinne Olympios wants DeMario Jackson to know she doesnt blame him for anything By Christie DZurilla Corinne Olympios doesnt have any hard feelings toward DeMario Jackson, the fellow Bachelor in Paradise cast member who was with her at the center of a scandal that shut down production on the reality TV series in June. I dont blame DeMario. I never pointed fingers at DeMario. I never said a bad word about DeMario, the 25-year-old told host Chris Harrison in an early-August taped interview that aired Tuesday night on ABC. She and Jackson havent spoken since production was halted after allegations of misconduct were made by a producer, leading to an investigation of what happened during a period when, Olympios now says, she was blacked out. I was almost a little bit nervous to talk to [DeMario], because he did run to the media and I didnt want to add fuel to the fire, she said. Before she had a chance to collect her thoughts, he was out there and so on the defensive, she said. He was doing his thing and I didnt want to get messed up in that. ... I cant help but feel like maybe he felt like I thought he did something to me. Jackson did not do anything bad, she insisted. Seeing him start crying in a clip from his own interview with Harrison, which had aired on the show last week, Olympios welled up a bit too. It was hard for me to go through something like that. I know exactly how he feels. The media wants to paint you a certain way that you know youre just not, she said. Olympios told Harrison the same things she had said in a Tuesday morning interview with Good Morning America about blacking out from drinking too much and mixing alcohol with medication. However, she didnt directly address her I am a victim statement that was released at the height of the scandal. On GMA, she said she meant she was a victim of the media. Regarding Bachelor in Paradise with Harrison, she simply talked about how awful it was to have so many people acting like they had been there or were suddenly experts on her life. To even get up and go get eggs at the grocery store ... my face was all over every magazine and I had to check out and everyones staring, Olympios said. Youre looking at them and its like, Im not what youre thinking right now. Then, near the end of the interview, she shared one big wish. Obviously hindsight is 20/20, she said, and I wish it could have been handled differently. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Tomi Lahren finds new home at Fox News By Libby Hill Conservative firebrand Tomi Lahren is again gainfully employed after being fired from Glenn Becks The Blaze in March. On Wednesday, Lahren announced via her Facebook page that she is joining the Fox News team as a contributor. This exciting new step will allow me to give voice to all the America-loving patriots who have had my back since day one, Lahren wrote. I will remain a solid and passionate advocate for you. Though 25-year-old Lahren has made television appearances before -- including a contentious appearance on The Daily Show With Trevor Noah -- much of her career has been in digital media. She hosted On Point With Tomi Lahren for One America News Network, and her Final Thought videos have garnered her over 4.4 million Facebook followers. In addition to her role as a contributor, Lahren will also have a signature role on a Fox News digital product in development, according to a press release issued by the network. Lahren makes her debut on Wednesdays edition of Hannity at 7 p.m. PDT. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Advertisement Trevor Noah is shocked shocked by the latest revelations about Trump and Moscow By Robert Lloyd Even as the Earth offers humanity another taste of its weather future and President Trump keeps Sheriff Joe Arpaio out of jail and North Korean missiles fly over Japan late-night TV hosts have disappeared from their chairs as if it were August in France. Trevor Noah is on the job, though, hosting The Daily Show. Tuesday night, he had some mirthful words about the ongoing investigation into the Trump campaigns Russian affairs. Specifically, he reflected on the revelation of a letter of intent, signed by POTUS himself, to build a Trump Tower skyscraper in Moscow and make it the tallest building in the world despite Trumps repeated claims to have no business, no interests, no nothing in Russia. How can one person lie so big? HOW? Noah asked, amazedly. Its like if your friend said he had never heard of Mumford and Sons and then one day you see the album cover and youre like, wait a minute, youre Mumford. Were those connections strictly business, or were they getting out on the votey-votey action? Thats not clear yet, he said. What was clear is that a typically dubious character was at the center of it namely Felix Sater, a Russian-born real estate developer once convicted of stabbing a man in the neck and face with the stem of a broken margarita glass. Of all the glasses to stab someone with, a margarita glass is the worst, Noah said. Youre literally putting salt into the wounds. There was also a conviction for Saters involvement in a $40-million stock fraud, Noah added, which came as no surprise to the host. You never trust someone with a cat name. If a human goes by Felix or Whiskers or Mittens, you should probably just stay away. There were emails, of course; there are always emails. Buddy, our boy can become President of the USA and we can engineer it. I will get all of Putins team to buy in on this, Sater wrote to Trumps personal lawyer, Michael D. Cohen. This buddy boy email may not be the smoking gun for Trump, Noah concluded, but what it could end up being is the broken taillight the thing that gives law enforcement the excuse they need to look into Trumps trunk. And we all know, he said, as a picture of the golfing presidents derriere appeared over his shoulder, hes got a lot of junk in that trunk. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Jury president Annette Bening addresses lack of female representation at Venice Film Festival By Nardine Saad (Claudio Onorati / Associated Press) Though there arent as many women represented at this years Venice Film Festival as she would like, jury president Annette Bening believes things are changing. The four-time Oscar nominee, whose film credits include American Beauty, The Kids Are All Right, 20th Century Women and Bugsy, addressed the lack of female directors Wednesday during the 74th annual Venice Film Festivals opening press conference. (Only one of the 21 films in competition is directed by a woman this year.) As women, we have to be sharp, shrewd and creative in what we choose to make. Sexism does exist and there is no question about it. But things are changing, the actress said at the opening press conference, according to Variety. The more we can make films that speak to everybody, the more we will be regarded as filmmakers, she added. Bening, the first woman to chair the jury in more than a decade, said she knew of both veteran and rookie filmmakers struggling to get their movies made whether they are men or women. She said the industry has a long way to go, in terms of parity but was confident that the direction were going is positive. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print A Star Is Born: Lisa Ling turns 44 today By Los Angeles Times Staff (Al Seib / Los Angeles Times) [People have said to me], When you were in the worlds largest slum [in India], you could almost smell what it was like by your expression.' Its not that Im trying to force myself on the viewer. Im just their eyes and ears. I think our work is quite pure. Lisa Ling, 1997 FROM THE ARCHIVES: Taking news personally Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Advertisement In wake of Charlottesville strife, Virginia Film Festival to host director Spike Lee as special guest By Josh Rottenberg Director Spike Lee photographed in 2015. (Ricardo DeAratanha / Los Angeles Times) As the city of Charlottesville, Va., and the nation as a whole continues to grapple with the violent racial strife that erupted earlier this month, the Virginia Film Festival announced on Tuesday that it will host filmmaker Spike Lee as a special guest at the upcoming festival as part of a program around the legacy of slavery. Lee, who has tackled thorny issues of race throughout his career, will present his Oscar-nominated documentary 4 Little Girls about the 1963 bombing of a Baptist church in Birmingham, Ala., that claimed the lives of four African American girls, an act of white supremacist terrorism that marked a pivotal moment in the civil rights movement. We have for many years been interested in bringing Spike Lee to the Virginia Film Festival as he remains one of the most talented, innovative, and socially conscious filmmakers in our world today, said Jody Kielbasa, director of the film festival and vice provost for the arts at the University of Virginia. We first reached out to Mr. Lee in the spring to include him in our upcoming collaboration with Montpelier, and of course, the recent events in Charlottesville have made his participation more compelling, relevant and vital. The festival program will also include a short film titled I Cant Breathe that combines footage of the 2014 chokehold death of Eric Garner during his arrest by a New York City police officer with footage of the death of Radio Raheem under similar circumstances in Lees 1989 film Do the Right Thing. The program is part of a larger collaboration with Montpelier, the Virginia plantation of President James Madison, who owned more than 100 slaves, that will explore both how the legacy of slavery continues to affect the lives of African Americans and how they are depicted in film and other media. The 30th annual Virginia Film Festival will run from Nov. 9 to 12 in Charlottesville. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Jerry Seinfeld recaps childhood in Netflixs first Jerry Before Seinfeld trailer By Nardine Saad The first trailer for Netflixs stand-up special Jerry Before Seinfeld has arrived, and its a madcap recap of Jerry Seinfelds humble beginnings, quirky family dynamics and bits of everyday observations. The teaser opens with Johnny Carson introducing the iconic comic in 1981 during his debut on The Tonight Show. Then it showcases the sitcom star back at the mike at the Comic Strip, the famous New York comedy club where he launched his career. Throwback photos, videos and interviews with Seinfeld are woven throughout. Hes back where he began, the title reads, doing what he loves. The original comedy special is the first of two stand-up specials Seinfeld will deliver in his massive deal with the streaming giant. (The deal also includes the entirety of his Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee catalog and 24 new episodes of the Emmy-nominated talk show, which will launch later this year.) Seinfeld and Netflix teased to the special last week with several clips posted on Instagram and a close-up look at the numerous legal pads scrawled with handwritten jokes hes kept from the 1970s. Jerry Before Seinfeld begins streaming Sept. 19. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Kermit the Frog finds his new voice in Matt Vogel By Nardine Saad The new Kermit the Frog has arrived and hes following his dreams -- literally. New Muppeteer Matt Vogel made his vocal debut as the iconic frog on Monday in a Muppet Thought of the Week video posted on YouTube. Dreams are how we figure out where we want to go. Life is how we get there, he says in the brief clip. Im headed this way. The veteran voice actor has worked on Sesame Street and also operates the Muppets Floyd, Constantine and Sweetums. He is only the third puppeteer to take on Kermit the Frog full time since the character was created in 1955. He replaced former puppeteer Steve Whitmire, who began work on The Muppet Show in 1978 and inherited the role of Kermit when creator Jim Henson died in 1990. Whitmire was dismissed over concerns about his repeated unacceptable business conduct over a period of many years and he consistently failed to address the feedback, the Muppets Studio said at the time. Whitmire claimed he was fired in October 2016 and kept quiet about it until Vogel was announced as his replacement in July. It was his opinionated communication style that earned him his walking papers, he said. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Advertisement Trevor Noah says Trumps pardon of Sheriff Arpaio renders courts powerless By Nardine Saad The Daily Show host Trevor Noah broke down former Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaios presidential pardon on Monday, explaining how President Trumps decision undermines the judicial branch of government. The controversial Maricopa County lawman, who was convicted of criminal contempt of court for violating Latinos rights, earned himself a thuggish reputation as a sheriff, Noah said, citing his agencys use of tent cities, stun guns, jail overcrowding and numerous cases of inmate deaths and police brutality. But those were just his extracurriculars, Noah said. It turns out his full-time job is racism. The 85-year-old Arpaio was found guilty in July of defying a 2011 court order barring officers from stopping and detaining Latino motorists to check their immigration status. As much as Sheriff Arpaio presented himself as anti-illegal immigrants, it turned out really he was just anti being a decent human being, Noah said. When the president of the United States steps in and pardons someones contempt conviction, hes essentially rendering the courts powerless. Daily Show host Trevor Noah His abuses hurt inmates and taxpayers, costing the state $142 million in legal fees, settlements and compliance costs, Noah said. Other things they could have spent that money on? Schools, roads or they could have just paid Conor McGregor and Floyd Mayweather to just punch Arpaio in the face. But Noah made the point that Trumps decision completely undercut the judiciary. Remember how the three branches of government are supposed to be equal? Well, convicting someone of contempt is the one and only way the judicial branch can put muscle behind its decisions. So when the president of the United States steps in and pardons someones contempt conviction, hes essentially rendering the courts powerless, he said. Watch the full segment above. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Watch Coldplay dedicate new song to Harvey victims -- and vow never to play it again By Randall Roberts (Jens Meyer / Associated Press) On Monday night in Miami, Coldplays Chris Martin drew attention to the victims of Tropical Storm Harvey by unveiling a new song called Houston -- and then vowed never to play it again. The band, which was forced to cancel its Houston show days earlier due to the storm, wrote the song as the region was enduring historic flooding. After acknowledging that he and the band all grew up loving country music, and, of course, thats kind of what we think of when we go to Texas, Martin asked the crowd to bear with them. This is a new song, and well never play it again, Martin said. Its a once-off. Its called Houston. Were going to sing it in Miami for everybody here and then were going to send it over there to everyone who missed the show. Vowing to return to Houston, Martin and band huddled and tentatively started a twangy little number. Im dreaming of when I get back to Houston, sang Martin, replete with a touch of Johnny Cash-ian twang. Describing it as that city where they send you into space, Martin crooned of Corpus Christi, Harris County, Galveston, of a harmony that hums down there in Houston, and urged the region to keep on keeping on. Merle Haggard it wasnt (and everyones a critic), but the performance drew huge applause from fans and went viral on Tuesday morning. Coldplays quick-turnaround ditty is hardly the first to document such deluges. Johnny Cashs Three Feet High and Rising occurred in real time as a family struggled to keep dry. In Charley Pattons High Water Everywhere, the country blues singer recalled the lives lost in the Great Flood of 1927, which consumed the Mississippi Delta and spawned dozens of songs: Oh, Lordy, women is groaning down / Oh, Lordy, women and children sinking down, Patton sang. I couldnt see nobody home, and was no one to be found. Below is another song about the flood of 27: Bessie Smiths Backwater Blues. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Advertisement Corinne Olympios on Bachelor in Paradise scandal: I was really a victim of the media By Christie DZurilla (Frazer Harrison / Getty Images) Corinne Olympios says medication, the booze and the media were key players in Junes production-stopping Bachelor in Paradise scandal and its aftermath. Calling the situation just really unfortunate, she said Tuesday on Good Morning America that she doesnt remember anything that happened. Seeing video of what transpired on the first day of production on the looking-for-love reality show was like watching not-me, she said. Im watching someone else. On that day, Olympios and fellow cast member DeMario Jackson allegedly wound up in the pool or hot tub together in a situation that a producer thought went too far. Allegations of misconduct were made, and production shut down the next day for an investigation that ultimately determined nothing untoward had happened. The show, sans Corinne and DeMario, premiered its fourth season Aug. 14, a week later than originally planned. I did drink, too much, I definitely understand that, Olympios said. But I was also on a medication that severely blacks you out and impairs your judgment and messes with your balance, that I didnt know you were not supposed to not drink on, and so it really just caused a horrible, horrible blackout. It was like I went under like anesthesia and then just like woke up. Shes now weaning off the medication, she said, and cutting down on her drinking. But in explaining her provocative official statement that she was a victim living out her worst nightmare, Olympios revealed her specific definition of victimhood, which had little or nothing to do with consent, which was a hot topic throughout the scandal. I was really a victim of the media, Olympios said. It was just, all of a sudden people became an expert on the situation and on what happened, and it was like, Im still trying to figure out exactly what happened. It was just horrible to deal with. It got really, really bad. ..., she added. The things people say are just insane. When the remaining Paradise cast met as a whole on the first episode of the season, their sympathies seemed to lie with Jackson as they worried about the long-term effects the scandal would have on him and any future career opportunities, especially given the lingering racial issues of alleged misconduct between a white woman and a black man. However, they were quick to say they were not slut-shaming Olympios either. Jackson spoke last week on Bachelor in Paradise, sitting down with host Chris Harrison to give his take on what happened. Heres a taste of that, courtesy of GMA: Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Victorias Secret Fashion Show heads to Shanghai this year By Nardine Saad Angels will fly over the Great Wall of China in November as the Victorias Secret Fashion Show heads to Shanghai for the first time. Supermodels Adriana Lima, Alessandra Ambrosio, Behati Prinsloo, Candice Swanepoel, Lily Aldridge and more will strut their stuff for the annual lingerie extravaganza, Victorias Secret and CBS said in a statement on Tuesday. The iconic pre-holiday show replete with teensy underwear and massive angel wings is usually filmed in New York, but Miami, Los Angeles and London have also hosted the scantily clad runway walk. The broadcast will air on CBS on Nov. 28 and will be shown in more than 190 countries. Models Elsa Hosk, Jasmine Tookes, Josephine Skriver, Lais Ribeiro, Martha Hunt, Romee Strijd, Sara Sampaio, Stella Maxwell and Taylor Hill will also walk in this years show. Musical performers will be announced at a later date, the statement said. Ni hao, China! This year's #VSFashionShow is headed to Shanghai. Watch it Nov 28, 10/9C on @CBS. Learn more: https://t.co/AHWHWjKOCI pic.twitter.com/tgIVJs7Lsr Victoria's Secret (@VictoriasSecret) August 29, 2017 Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print A Star Is Born: William Friedkin turns 82 today By Los Angeles Times Staff (Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times) I love the experience of making films. I love the mud. I love the dirt. I love all the inconveniences. Thats why you do it. If you do it because youre looking to be the Great American film maker, youre liable to experience disappointment. William Friedkin, 1989 FROM THE ARCHIVES: The Exorcisms of William Friedkin Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Taylor Swifts Look What You Made Me Do video bashes another YouTube record By Randy Lewis Taylor Swifts official video for her first new music in three years, Look What You Made Me Do, has blasted through the existing YouTube record for most views tallied during its first 24 hours of release. The clip logged 43.2 million views since the video was posted Sunday evening. That far surpasses the record set in 2013 by Korean pop star Psys Gentleman, which racked up 36 million views in its first day. It also hasnt slowed interest in Swifts previously released lyric video for the same song, which set a record for lyric video viewership by drawing 19 million views in the first 24 hours. That version has now surpassed 47 million views in less than four days. Both videos have generated flurries of debate and analysis among Swifts fans and her dissenters, the former seemingly outnumbering the latter by a margin of nearly 5 to 1. Likes have surpassed the 1 million mark, while dislikes stood at 232,000 at the 24-hour mark. The song is the first single from her forthcoming album Reputation, due Nov. 10. It will be Swifts sixth studio album. Each of her last three albums sold more than 1 million copies during the first week of release. Swift is the only artist with that achievement to her credit. Update Aug. 29, 10:30 a.m.: This post has been updated with the finalized 24-hour viewer total. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Advertisement Watch the Game of Thrones cast and crew break down some of Season 7s best scenes By Tracy Brown Game of Thrones Season 7 may have concluded Sunday, but there is still plenty left for fans to unpack before Thrones"-withdrawal sets in. Along with all the burning questions left in the wake of the season finale, HBO has left us with some behind-the-scenes videos from this seasons most epic moments. The production magic of Game of Thrones is undeniable and it extends to beyond special effects dragons. From Arya donning Walder Freys face to dole out her brand of vengeance to Daenerys walking into Dragonstone for the first time, there is plenty to explore from just the first episode alone. The video above dives deep into what it took to craft the Season 7 premiere, including how Cerseis fancy new giant map came to be. Of course, plenty of fans are probably still contemplating the latest episode and what Jon and Danys new level of intimacy means going into the final season. Can this be how the actual prince that was promised is conceived? And if you were a bit squicked out by the pairs developing relationship, youre not alone. Unlike Jon and Daenerys, Emilia Clarke and Kit Harington are definitely aware that they are both Targaryens. For us as actors its just weird, said Clarke in a video about the coupling. The reality of what they are to each other. In fact, the actors had more facial expressions and sound effects to convey their feelings about this union than words. Watch in the video below. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Ed Skrein leaves Hellboy after whitewashing furor By Christie DZurilla (Jordan Strauss / Associated Press) Ed Skrein will not play Maj. Ben Daimio in a reboot of Hellboy, the English actor said Monday, noting that when he accepted the role he didnt know that in the comics the character was of mixed Asian descent. Just a week ago, Skrein had tweeted his excitement over taking on the role. Backlash in the form of whitewashing allegations ensued. It is clear that representing this character in a culturally accurate way holds significance for people, and that to neglect this responsibility would continue a worrying tendency to obscure ethnic minority stories and voices in the Arts, the 34-year-old Deadpool actor said in a statement announcing that he had changed his mind about portraying Daimio. Calling it a moral decision, he said he was sad to leave the movie but hoped his action would make a difference in making equal representation in the arts a reality. David Harbour, the Stranger Things actor slated to play Hellboy, tweeted, Hey internet. Thank you for your voices. An injustice was done and will be corrected. Many thanks to @edskrein for doing what is right. Mike Mignola, who created the Hellboy comics, also thanked Skrein on Monday and said the move was very nicely done. Hey internet. Thank you for your voices. An injustice was done and will be corrected. Many thanks to @edskrein for doing what is right. https://t.co/tUvP6YibgG David Harbour (@DavidKHarbour) August 28, 2017 In addition to Harbour, the 2018 version of the story so far stars Milla Jovovich as Nimue, Ian McShane as Professor Broom and Alice Monaghan as Sasha Lane, according to IMDb. Neil Marshall, who among other things has helmed episodes of Game of Thrones and Westworld, is set to direct. The Daimio character didnt appear in the 2004 or 2008 Guillermo del Toro films based on the Hellboy comics. Heres Skreins full explanation: pic.twitter.com/8WoSsHXDFO Ed Skrein (@edskrein) August 28, 2017 Updated, 2:39 p.m.: This story was updated with comments from Harbour and Mignola. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Kathy Griffin and Anderson Cooper are super-friends no more By Libby Hill Anderson Cooper and Kathy Griffin (Rob Kim / Getty Images) What began as a tasteless joke at the expense of President Trump continues to have real-life consequences for comedian Kathy Griffin. In an extensive interview with The Cut, Griffin admitted that her 17-year friendship with Anderson Cooper, with whom she co-hosted CNNs New Years Eve gig for a decade, ended in the wake of the Trump controversy. In May, Griffin publicized a photo shoot that featured her holding a bloodied imitation severed head bearing a strong resemblance to the president. The backlash was immediate and largely bipartisan, as many saw the images as glorifying violence and furthering political division. Griffin quickly apologized for the misstep but the damage had been done, with condemnation from the White House, investigation by the Secret Service and the loss of several jobs, including her CNN gig. On May 30, Cooper tweeted his disapproval of Griffins artistic expression, calling it disgusting and completely inappropriate, and Griffin admitted at a June 2 news conference that Coopers comments hurt her. For the record, I am appalled by the photo shoot Kathy Griffin took part in. It is clearly disgusting and completely inappropriate. Anderson Cooper (@andersoncooper) May 31, 2017 In July, Cooper appeared on Bravos Watch What Happens Live With Andy Cohen and stated that he and Griffin were still friends. Yeah, were still friends, and look I said what I said about I didnt think what she said was appropriate, but I wish her the best and I hope she bounces back, he stated. But Griffin claimed that at that point, nearly two months after the fact, she had yet to hear from Cooper privately. In reality, it wasnt until Aug. 10 that Cooper finally reached out to Griffin in a series of text messages, CNN confirmed to The Cut at which point Griffin informed him that their friendship was over. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print In One Mississippi Season 2 trailer, Tig Notaro prays for the gay to stay By Christie DZurilla Tig Notaros One Mississippi is coming back for a second season, one in which her character is getting used to life back in her small Mississippi hometown. Season 1 of the Amazon Prime Video series took viewers through a fictionalized series of events that echoed Notaros own life: a potentially deadly intestinal illness, breast cancer, a double mastectomy, the unexpected death of her beloved mother and a romantic breakup. Yup, its a dark comedy. In Season 2, L.A. transplant Tig is navigating her new environs, including strategizing about how to proceed with a crush on Straight Kate and dealing with some well-meaning, pray-the-gay-away critics of her radio show. Plus, theres her stepfathers whole dishwasher drill to contend with, not to mention the story line that has to do with sexual assault. The new season of One Mississippi starts streaming Sept. 8. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Advertisement Watch Frank Oceans lyric video for new song Provider By Randall Roberts As is his wont these days, R&B superstar Frank Ocean unveiled a new song, Provider, his own way: during the newest installment of Blonded Radio, the Apple Music/Beats 1 radio show he hosts and curates. The ballads a meditation that name-checks Aphex Twin, shoegaze, Talking Heads, Jaws, Patagonia sportswear and Stanley Kubrick, and moves through verses without much regard for structure. Immediately following the Sunday premiere, Ocean dropped the lyric video on his website. Featuring a souped-up mini-boombox retrofitted with bigger speaker cones and a Velcro-attached machete, the clip suggests an owner getting ready to hunt prey while using Provider as the lure. Ocean hasnt uploaded the clip to YouTube, but you can listen and watch on his blonded.co website. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Gone With the Wind, deemed insensitive, has been pulled from a Memphis theater By Christie DZurilla Gone With the Wind will not be shown in the future by a Tennessee theater that decided it was insensitive to many in the local community. The 1939 movie, which marked the first Oscar win by a black actor, depicts a romanticized view of slavery and life on a Southern plantation before, during and after the Civil War. Gone With the Wind, which won 10 Academy Awards in 1940, including for best picture, had been shown by the Orpheum Theatre Group for years as part of an annual Summer Movie Series, according to Memphis Commercial-Appeal. At times, it was screened more than once a year, the paper said. This year, however, a different climate prevailed. The recent screening of Gone With the Wind at the Orpheum on Friday, Aug. 11, 2017, generated numerous comments, Brett Batterson, president of the theater group, said Friday in a statement (via the New York Times). The Orpheum carefully reviewed all of them. As an organization whose stated mission is to entertain, educate and enlighten the communities it serves, the Orpheum cannot show a film that is insensitive to a large segment of its local population. The majority of Memphis residents are black, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. The screening happened, coincidentally, on the day before a rally of white nationalists that turned violent in Charlottesville, Va. a rally that has been followed by a national conversation about whether to purge monuments to Civil War generals and soldiers from public spaces. In an interview with the Commercial-Appeal, Batterson said the appropriateness of screening Gone With the Wind had been discussed every year, but the social media storm this year really brought it home. By Monday, comments on social media, including on the Facebook post announcing the screening, had shifted in large part to defense of Gone With the Wind as a product of its time that, despite its romanticized portrayal of the Old South and of slavery, was still part of movie history and worth showing on a big screen. The Orpheum did not respond Monday to The Times requests for comment. Hattie McDaniels Oscar win for supporting actress was a significant first but was also loaded with a lot of political and racial issues given that the film was the classic archetype of the Mammy, said Adilifu Nama, associate professor of African American Studies at Loyola Marymount University, speaking to The Times in 2014. McDaniels role of Mammy is fundamentally a subservient role and is part of a film that is a Southern racial fantasy, Nama said. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Taylor Swift gets petty and Pink talks pretty in the must-see moments from MTVs Video Music Awards By Libby Hill Were you too busy watching [spoiler] revealed as [spoiler] on Sunday nights Game of Thrones finale to watch MTVs Video Music Awards? Fear not! Weve gathered up four must-see moments from the socially conscious affair (and one lackluster video debut from Taylor Swift) to keep you in the loop. Pinks PowerPoint presentation It was a banner night for singer Pink, who received the Michael Jackson Video Vanguard Award for her body of work and used the occasion to share an anecdote about her daughter Willow. Recently, Pink stated, her daughter referred to herself as the ugliest person she knew and complained that she looked like a boy with long hair. At first, the Raise Your Glass singer was taken aback by her daughters words but soon swung into action, compiling an elaborate PowerPoint presentation about the history of androgynous rock stars, including Michael Jackson, David Bowie and Annie Lennox. Pink relayed a simple sentiment that most of us could learn a lot from: So, baby, girl, we dont change. We take the gravel and the shell and we make a pearl. Logic talks emotions Plenty of artists used the VMAs stage to speak passionately about issues they care about, but few did so as extensively as rapper Logic. After his performance of 1-800-273-8255" with Khalid and Alessia Cara, the title of which is the phone number of the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline, Logic talked about mental health and equality. Beginning at 3:50 in the above video, Logic first thanked the audience for giving him a platform to discuss the important issue of mental health. He then quickly pivoted to other pressing social issues including discrimination, sexism and domestic violence. I dont give a damn if youre black, white or any color in between, Logic said. I dont care if youre Christian, youre Muslim, youre gay, youre straight, I am gonna fight for your equality because I believe that we are all born equal, but we are not treated equally and that is why we must fight. Jared Leto honors Chester Bennington Logics performance and subsequent speech were particularly moving given the past years loss of two rock musicians to suicide Linkin Parks Chester Bennington and Soundgardens Chris Cornell. Jared Leto, an Academy Award winner and frontman of Thirty Seconds to Mars, spoke about both men at Sundays ceremony. MTV asked me to come here to say a few words about Chester and the late, great, Chris Cornell, two artists I had the absolute pleasure of touring with, Leto said of the two singers who were also close friends. Chester said of Chris, Your voice was joy and pain and anger and forgiveness, love and heartache, all wrapped up into one, Leto recalled. Leto also recounted his own memories of Bennington. I think about his heart, Leto said. And I remember his voice. At once ferocious and delicate, that voice will live forever. Fifth Harmony gets shady Despite the pleas for equality and the heartfelt speeches, there was still plenty of time for pettiness at the VMAs, as evidenced by Fifth Harmonys performance. As the group took the stage to perform its latest single, Angel, a mystery fifth member appeared in the lineup before being unceremoniously yanked offstage as the song began. What appeared as an inexplicable stunt to the uninitiated was likely a shady reference to former Fifth Harmony frontwoman Camila Cabello, who exited the group in December to pursue a solo career. It wasnt so much that Cabellos departure stung her former colleagues but that she reportedly failed to inform them of her decision before announcing it to the world. Oops. Also Taylor Swift Unless you were in a coma for the whole of last week, you probably heard that Taylor Swift announced the release date for her upcoming album, Reputation, as well as releasing the first single, Look What You Made Me Do. Its fine. Sunday night, Swift debuted the video for Look What You Made Me Do. It is also fine. This has been your daily Taylor Swift update. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Kevin Hart, Beyonce and Drake lead charge for Hurricane Harvey flood relief By Nardine Saad (Liz O. Baylen / Los Angeles Times) As Harvey lashed southeastern Texas over the weekend, celebrities rallied for the relief effort. Comedian Kevin Hart led the charge Sunday night, donating $25,000 and challenging his celebrity friends to donate to the Red Cross amid catastrophic flooding in the Lone Star State. I think weve participated in a lot of challenges on the Internet, some meaningful, some meaningless, but weve all done them. Ive been a person thats partaken in several of them, Hart said in an Instagram video. At this point, this is a serious matter, he continued. I think the people are in bad shape and they need help. Im going to lead the charge and step up in this way. The Jumanji star called on his co-star Dwayne Johnson, comics Steve Harvey, Chris Rock, Dave Chappelle and Jerry Seinfeld, as well as musicians Jay-Z, Beyonce and Justin Timberlake to make donations and tag someone else to do the same. At that point, Houston native Beyonce and Kelly Rowland of Destinys Child had already posted notes about their hometown on Instagram, sending thoughts and prayers to the state that launched their careers. View Instagram post View Instagram post The deluge of support continued with country star Chris Young. The Man I Want to Be singer posted an emotional YouTube video about his certainty that his Texas home was destroyed and concern for his friends and family in the state. He donated $100,000 to relief efforts to a GoFundMe campaign to benefit the Red Cross. Harvey, one of the worst natural disasters in the states history, slammed onshore Friday as a Category 4 hurricane, then weakened to a tropical storm on Saturday, dropping up to 24 inches of rain on Houston in 24 hours. The National Weather Service reported that at least five people had died as of Sunday evening, but that number was expected to increase as the floodwaters recede. More than 30,000 people across the Gulf Coast are likely to seek temporary shelter as the tropical storm continues to drench southeastern Texas and Louisiana with heavy rains and surging floodwaters, The Times reported. Toronto native Drake, who has lived in Houston for the last eight years, said that he and DJ Future the Prince are working with local relief groups to aid and assist the people of Texas in anyway we can and in the most immediate way possible. I also want to thank all the men and women of service and volunteers for their courageous efforts to help people in need, the rapper said on Instagram. I encourage everyone to do what they can to assist the people of Texas knowing whatever effort you can make to help will go a long way. View Instagram post Also, during the MTV Video Music Awards Awards on Sunday, host Katy Perry touched upon the catastrophic event. She too urged viewers to donate to the Red Cross. All of us here at the VMAs are sending love to the people of southeastern Texas and everyone affected by Hurricane Harvey right now, Perry said onstage. Were praying for your safety in the days to come and we stand with you as you rebuild because were all in this together. According to the Houston Chronicle, more than 15 inches of rain could fall on several more southeastern Texas cities. Corpus Christi, where Harvey first made landfall, saw upward of 20 inches of rain in two days. By Monday morning, up to 40 inches of rain had fallen on northeast Houston. Another 20 inches were expected Monday before Tropical Storm Harvey travels farther east. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Advertisement Susan Bro, mother of slain Charlottesville protester Heather Heyer, announces anti-hate foundation at the MTV VMAs By Randall Roberts (Chris Pizzello/Invision/AP) During an evening filled with defiant messages against racism, homophobia and body shaming, the mother of Heather Heyer announced some concrete actions to further the cause. Susan Bro, whose daughter was killed two weeks ago during protests in Charlottesville, Va., has worked through her grief by speaking out against racism, and took a further step by creating the Heather Heyer Foundation. Describing it as a nonprofit organization that will provide scholarships to help more people to join Heathers fight against hatred, Bro requested that viewers visit the new site to help me make Heathers death count. Added Bro: Heather never marched alone. She was always joined by people from every race and every background in this country. Bro was introduced by Robert Lee IV -- a descendant of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee -- who said his ancestor has became of idol of white supremacy and hate. Lee went on to describe racism as Americas original sin. He went on to ask all of those with privilege to confront white supremacy and racism head-on. Watch his speech below. I call on all of us with privilege and power to confront racism and white supremacy head-on" - Robert Lee IV #VMAs pic.twitter.com/ko4SM9VnaU MTV (@MTV) August 28, 2017 Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Watch Pinks inspiring MTV VMA speech to individuality By Randall Roberts In receiving her Video Vanguard award at the MTV VMAs on Sunday at the Forum -- the shows equivalent of a lifetime achievement trophy -- the pop star Pink told a story about a conversation shed recently had with her young daughter. They were driving to school and her daughter said, Mama, Im the ugliest girl I know. Pink replied, Huh? And she was like, Yeah, I look like a boy with long hair. Pink said that she immediately thought, My god, youre 6. Where is this coming from? The artist and mom didnt lecture her daughter. Instead, said Pink: I went home and made a PowerPoint presentation for her, and in that presentation were androgynous rock stars and artists that live their truth; are probably made fun of every day of their lives and carry on and wave their flag; and inspire the rest of us. These are artists like Michael Jackson and David Bowie and Freddie Mercury and Annie Lennox and Prince and Janis Joplin and George Michael, Elton John, so many artists. Pink said that her daughters eyes glazed over, but Pink pressed her about why she felt that way about herself. What do you think I look like? She said, Youre beautiful. The pop singer explained that she gets critiqued, too. They say I look like a boy or Im too masculine or Im too -- I have too many opinions. My body is too strong. I said to her, Do you see me growing my hair? She said No Mama. I said, Do you see me changing my body? She said, No Mama. Do you see me changing the way I present myself to the world? No Mama. Do you see me selling out arenas all over the world. Yes Mama. OK baby girl. We dont change. We take the gravel and the shell and we make a pearl. And we help other people to change so that they can see more kinds of beauty. Added Pink in closing: To all the artists here, Im so inspired by you. Thank you for being your true selves and for lighting the way for us. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Watch Jared Leto offer touching tribute to Chris Cornell and Chester Bennington at the MTV VMAs By Randall Roberts In a moving tribute to two fallen musicians, the actor and musician Jared Leto honored the lives of Chris Cornell of Soundgarden and Chester Bennington of Linkin Park at the MTV VMAs on Sunday. Cornell and Bennington committed suicide in 2017, and Leto was friends with both. In 1976 in Phoenix, Ariz., a child was born. He was precocious, full of life, and determined, and grew up to become the singer of one of the greatest rock bands in the history of music, Leto said. His name was Chester Bennington, and the band is Linkin Park. Leto added that MTV asked him to say a few words about Bennington and Cornell, who he described as two artists that I had the absolute pleasure of touring with. They were close friends with one another -- Chester even singing the cover of the classic Hallelujah at Chris funeral. Recalling Benningtons words at Cornells funeral service, Leto said: Chester said of Chris, Your voice was joy and pain and anger and forgiveness, love and heartache all wrapped up into one. Just weeks later, Chester himself was gone. Chester was my friend. As he was to so many. Witnessing his life taught me important things -- especially about working relentlessly, pursuing dreams and being kind and caring while doing it. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Advertisement Kodak Black, Lil Uzi Vert and more steal the MTV VMA spotlight By Gerrick Kennedy Kodak Black arriving at the MTV VMAs. (Jordan Strauss / Invision / Associated Press) The line near a concession stand inside the Forum minutes before the MTV VMAs kicked off on Sunday was lengthy, but no one was waiting on food or drinks. Instead, a dozen or so folks waited patiently to get a selfie with Kodak Black, who high-fived and posed with as fans fumbled with smartphones. The VMAs are typically rife with heavyweights (Kendrick Lamar, Katy Perry, etc.) but this years ceremony looked to tap into the wide scene of rising acts that have been dominating streaming services and social media all summer. Before the telecast even began Lil Uzi Vert clinched a major win, taking the trophy for song of summer for XO Tour Llif3" and he later joined Ed Sheeran for the tune, no doubt the nights most surprising collaboration. Meanwhile, Khalids pre-show medley could have easily anchored the main show while reality star turned breakout rap sensation Cardi B was another highlight of the pre-show festivities. Her viral hit Bodak Yellow rattled throughout the Forum during nearly every commercial break. Fifth Harmony later made its debut at the VMAs with an explosive main stage performance of Down, a song that also won the award for pop video. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Jack Antonoff is living his best life at the MTV VMAs By Mikael Wood Jack Antonoff performs onstage during the 2017 MTV Video Music Awards pre-show. (Joshua Blanchard / Getty Images) Has anyone at MTVs Video Music Awards had more screen time so far than Jack Antonoff? First the A-list producer and songwriter turned up on the nights pre-show ceremony for a performance with his band Bleachers. Then he introduced Lorde by noting that hed seen her eat gas-station sushi during the two years they spent together working on her album Melodrama. He also accepted the award for best collaboration for Taylor Swift and Zayns I Dont Wanna Live Forever (Fifty Shades Darker), which he helped create because the singers couldnt be there. But Antonoffs best moment? Obviously the candid reaction shot in which he was shown casually eating a banana, as his girlfriend, Lena Dunham, described it on Twitter. My boyfriend just casually eating a banana at the VMAs is a good reminder of why we've been at it half a decade Lena Dunham (@lenadunham) August 28, 2017 Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Watch Taylor Swifts bold Look What You Made Me Do video, which premiered during the MTV VMAs By Randall Roberts Taylor Swifts new video for Look What You Made Me Do, which premiered during the 2017 MTV VMAs on Sunday night, features her dressed as a zombie, a diamond-drenched queen, a red-dressed seductress, a car-crash victim, a bird in a cage, a kitty-masked thief with a baseball bat, a biker chick wearing studded leather and a whip-snapping dominatrix. As she poses and pretends, Swift makes a not-so-veiled reference to her ongoing feud with Kim Kardashian and Kanye West, getting all combative behind the microphone as a feather-light melody jumps behind her. The video premiered during a ceremony hosted by pop star and avowed Swift nemesis Katy Perry. Perry didnt introduce the clip, a hint that the two probably still arent besties. Inside the Forum, the video premiered on multiple big screen TVs rose that from the stage, and Perry was nowhere in sight. As the clip seems to be winding down, the music fades. But Swift hasnt fully made her point. In its final moments arrive a dozen-odd versions of Swift standing in front of a black private jet with the name of her new album, Reputation, scrawled on it. The many Swifts start bickering and referencing the various criticisms that have been lobbied at her over the years. Stop making that face, its so annoying, the zombie Swift says, a nod to what some believe is the exaggerated excitement the artist shows when she wins awards. A young version of Swift interrupts with an innocent Yall! but is shot down by an embittered Swift: Oh stop acting like youre so nice. Youre so fake! Standing in the center of the line is Swift seemingly dressed as she was at the 2009 VMAs, when West interrupted her victory speech to decry Beyonce's loss. Holding her VMA trophy, she says, Id like very much to be excluded from this narrative, both a nod to to the musical Hamilton and a repeat of a phrase Swift posted on social media in wake of controversy resulting from Wests song Famous. In that 2016 tune, he he boasted that I made that [profanity] famous and, therefore, that he and Swift might still have sex. The other Swifts reply in unison: Oh shut up! Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Kendrick Lamar opens 2017 VMAs with fiery performances of DNA and Humble By Randall Roberts Wearing a red scarf on his head and a poofy winter coat onstage, Compton rapper Kendrick Lamar opened the 2017 MTV VMAs needing neither. Within a few minutes of launching with DNA a dancer center stage burst into flames. You could almost feel the heat simmering through the screen. I was born like this, since one like this, Lamar rapped. Immaculate conception/I transform like this, perform like this. Perform he did, moving into a second track, Humble, from his recent album Damn. Shedding the coat, he stood in front of a fiery backdrop grid that burned as dancers scaled it. As they did so, Lamar rapped, My left stroke just went viral/Right stroke put lil baby in a spiral. It was the opening shot of a VMAs in which politics and protest may end up taking center stage. Indeed, moments later presenter Paris Jackson drew a rousing applause when she denounced the racism and hatred propogated by white supremacists and neo-Nazis. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Advertisement Heidi Klum, Jack Antonoff and others stand in support of transgender military service members at VMAs By Randall Roberts View Instagram post As the 2017 Video Music Awards were approaching, the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) was out in full force at the Forum. Its president and CEO, Sarah Kate Ellis, walked the red carpet along with her invited guests: six transgender members of the military. The action came in the wake of President Donald Trumps direction to the Pentagon on Friday, as reported in The Times, to return to the long-standing policy and practice barring military service by transgender individuals. Praising MTV as a pioneering advocate for the LGBTQ community, Ellis said in a statement, Throughout all the tweets, memos, and speculation, brave transgender Americans are still serving their country and defending the freedoms of this nation while meeting the same rigorous standards of their peers. We are proud to stand with them. Posing in support: musicians and celebrities including Jack Antonoff (Bleachers), supermodel Heidi Klum, actor-comedian Billy Eichner and others, who stood alongside transgender service members including Jennifer Peace, Logan Ireland, Sterling James Crutcher and Akira Wyatt, as well as trans veterans Laila Ireland and Brynn Tannehil. Also joining them was LGBTQ philanthropist August Getty, who in his other life is a fashion designer responsible for Miley Cyruss red carpet dress. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print MTV VMAs return to Southern California with an overwhelmingly impressive setup By Gerrick Kennedy Cardi B performing at the pre-show for the MTV VMAs. (Chris Pizzello / Invision / Associated Press) After heading to the East Coast last year, the MTV VMAs have returned to Southern California. And tonight at the Forum in Inglewood, it was clear that the network decided to go big huge really. Upon arrival to the venue it appeared that the scale of this years show was unlike anything MTV had done in recent history. A structure that looked like a space shuttle swallowed the lot in front of the venue, and stars such as Cardi B and Big Freedia could be seen pumping through the red carpet (its a deep shade of blue this year). Inside the Forum, the stage took up the entirety of the venues ground floor. The imprint of the stage was impressive, even overwhelming in size as a maze of catwalks and secondary stages traced the floor, all of which was outlined by hundreds of glowing triangles and projection screens. It made for a futuristic playground of geometric glowing shapes that show opener Kendrick Lamar put to use immediately as he emerged from the center of the venue for the explosive DNA, strutting through half of the venue before making it to the main stage. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Advertisement Taylor Swift breaks YouTube record with Look What You Made Me Do video By Randy Lewis Taylor Swift set a YouTube record with the lyric video for her new single Look What You Made Me Do, tallying 19 million views in just the first 24 hours. Thats more than double the previous first-day record for a lyric video, which was set in February by the lyric video for the Chainsmokers Something Just Like This featuring Coldplay, which registered 9 million views upon its release. Its also the best 24-hour figure Swift has logged, besting the first-day result for her 2015 official video for Bad Blood, which attracted 17 million views, and has since totaled more than 1.1 billion views. As of Sunday morning, the tally for Look What You Made Me Do had surpassed 35 million. It sets the stage for the premiere tonight of Swifts official video for the new single, which will be introduced during the MTV Video Music Awards Ceremony, taking place at the Forum in Inglewood. The overall record for viewership in the first 24 hours for any music video belongs to Adele, who registered 27.7 million views in 2015 at the premiere of the official video for her song Hello. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Why William Friedkin called Tobe Hoopers Texas Chain Saw Massacre an Umami Burger of a movie By Mark Olsen Director Tobe Hooper, who died in Los Angeles on Saturday at age 74, created many movies and TV shows during his long career including stepping to helm the filming of Poltergeist when Steven Spielberg was contractually banned from directing other films during the production of ET: The Extra Terrestrial. Hoopers most admired film, of course, was 1974s The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. In 2014, on the occasion of the films 40th anniversary, The Exorcist director William Friedkin interviewed Hooper before an overflow audience at Los Angeles Vista theater. During the engaging conversation, Friedkin called Hooper one of the sweetest, nicest guys Ive ever known. And then added, So I often wonder where this stuff comes from. Hooper talked about purposely pitting his actors against each other to keep the on-screen tension high, how an unlikely pair of albums Elton Johns Goodbye Yellow Brick Road and Lou Reeds Berlin inspired him during the writing of the screenplay, and about how damn strong women are, referring to the resilent character played by Marilyn Burns. Shes just not going to die. At one point, Friedkin provocatively asked, Do you think this is a work of art? Hooper first asked, Should I be modest? before responding with a salty confirmation, Its a ... work of art. The Times Mark Olsen was there for the interview. At the end of his article, theres this affirmation of the film from Friedkin: No 3-D, no CGI, welcome to this Umami Burger of a movie. Read on to find his reasoning. Read More Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Cinefamily suspends all activities in wake of sexual misconduct allegations By Sonaiya Kelley The Cinefamily on Fairfax Avenue in Los Angeles. (Lawrence K. Ho / Los Angeles Times) Following the resignations Tuesday of two leadership figures at Cinefamily, the Los Angeles independent film venue has announced that it is temporarily suspending all activities to allow for the investigation and necessary restructure of management and the board. Recently, claims were made alleging improper behavior by one of more members of the organization, reads a release posted on the organizations website and social media pages. The Board of Directors of The Cinefamily has no tolerance for any form of behavior that does not conform to the high standards demanded by our members and staff and that of common human decency. The letter also says that Cinefamily is bringing on an independent third party, Giles Miller at Lynx Insights & Investigations, to conduct a thorough investigation into the allegations. View Twitter post A spokesperson for the theater could not immediately be reached for comment. The announcement comes in the wake of two high profile exits: co-founder and executive creative director, Hadrian Belove, and vice president of its board of directors, Shadie Elnashai, resigned on Tuesday following allegations of sexual misconduct. The exits were announced in postings on Cinefamilys social media accounts. In light of recent events, Shadie Elnashai has resigned from Cinefamilys Board of Directors and Hadrian Belove has resigned as the Executive Creative Director of Cinefamily, read the statement. Addressing the anonymous allegations in a post to his personal Facebook account following his resignation, Belove described the emails contents as demonstrable lies and half-truths, and allegations without known victims. It is not clear whether screenings currently scheduled will still run, and there has been grumbling by monthly billed members as to whether or not automated charges will be suspended or cancelled. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print The Texas Chain Saw Massacre director Tobe Hooper dies in Los Angeles at 74 By Associated Press Tobe Hooper, the horror-movie pioneer whose low-budget sensation The Texas Chain Saw Massacre took a buzz saw to audiences with its brutally frightful vision, has died. He was 74. The Los Angeles County coroners office says Hooper died Saturday in Sherman Oaks. It was reported as a natural death. Hooper and contemporaries like George Romero crafted some of the scariest nightmares that ever haunted moviegoers. He directed 1982s Poltergeist from a script by Steven Spielberg and was behind the 1979 miniseries Salems Lot, based on the Stephen King novel. Read More Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Advertisement Is Taylor Swift trying to turn off her listeners? By Mikael Wood We can skip the rundown of Taylor Swifts feud with Kanye West, right? Less than 24 hours after the worlds biggest pop star unleashed her new single on a waiting commentariat, Im already exhausted by the idea of having to read (let alone write) yet another rehash of this deeply tiresome conflict. But you know whos not over it? Taylor Swift. In Look What You Made Me Do released online Thursday night as the lead single from a new album, Reputation, due in November the singer sounds positively fired up as she takes whack after brutal whack at the rapper who once interrupted her at an awards show. (Swift doesnt name West, to be clear, but with her reference to a tilted stage, she doesnt need to.) I dont like your perfect crime / How you laugh when you lie, she seethes over a throbbing electronic groove, You said the gun was mine / Isnt cool no, I dont like you. Later in the tune, which Swift created with Jack Antonoff, she pretends to answer a phone call from someone evidently looking for the old Taylor the sucker, you presume, who mightve let bygones be bygones. But she cant come to the phone, Swift tells the caller. Why? she adds. Oh, cause shes dead. Whats surprising about Look What You Made Me Do beyond the harsh industrial production that makes it feel like Swifts response to her enemys Yeezus is that it suggests the singer no longer cares (or is no longer able to tell) what pop fans want. Swift rose to superstardom by anticipating listeners desires; she knew just when to pivot from acoustic guitars to sleek synthesizers, from the fairy-tale romance of early hits like Love Story to the more grown-up depiction found on her last album, 2014s smash 1989. On tour behind that record, she spent a good portion of her show every night telling the members of her audience how closely shed been paying attention to them. But dredging up Taylor v. Kanye again? I mean, I cant be the only one whos sick of this topic something Swift wouldve known a few years ago without even having to think about it. OK, so she hardly lacks for company among A-listers eager to cook expired beef. Earlier this summer Katy Perry revived her ancient tussle with Swift I believe it had something to do with backup dancers? for Swish Swish. But Perrys song takes delight in its own pettiness, whereas Look What You Made Me Do just makes me think of President Trump whining endlessly about fake news. (Crediting Right Said Fred for the songs supposed debt to Im Too Sexy is funny in writing, but the inspiration adds little humor to the dour music.) Maybe Swift isnt aiming for me, though. Maybe this polarizing song is meant to galvanize her base which, sure enough, is rhapsodizing about the track on social media even at the expense of the wider world shes dominated for much of the last decade. If thats her play, its a wild one, especially coming after her powerful testimony during the recent trial regarding her alleged sexual assault at the hands of a Denver radio DJ. In court, Swift appeared driven to speak with a voice loud enough for others. Now, just days later, she seems uninterested in that job. Have we ever seen a pop star so happily give up a portion of her following? Thats an idea Im not tired of considering. Maybe Reputation will take it up. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Concerts by Coldplay, other acts canceled as Hurricane Harvey nears Texas By August Brown Coldplay performs at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena in 2016. (Michael Owen Baker / For The Times) As the potentially devastating Hurricane Harvey approaches the Texas coast, major acts including Coldplay, Lady Antebellum and Mary J. Blige have canceled or rescheduled their Houston-area concerts. Coldplay on Friday postponed a show scheduled for NRG Stadium in Houston. We really wanted to play tonight, but sitting here all together watching the news about the storm, we feel that we cant ask anyone to put their safety at risk. So, sadly, we will have to postpone, the band wrote. Live Nation Houston said ticket-holders would be updated when there was further information. We urge all fans in the area to stay safe, it said. A makeup date has not yet been scheduled. The country trio Lady Antebellum canceled its Sunday show at the Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion in the Woodlands, citing the storm. Blige postponed her Friday show at the Smart Financial Centre at Sugar Land. The venue announced that the concert had been rescheduled to Sept. 19. The Category 3 storm, which would be the first major hurricane to hit the United States since 2005, is expected to make landfall in coastal Texas on Saturday morning, bringing 100-mph winds and up to 35 inches of rain in some areas. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Bachelor couple Nick Viall and Vanessa Grimaldi break off their engagement By Christie DZurilla (Leon Bennett / Getty Images) Nick Viall and Vanessa Grimaldi, who got engaged on the most recent season of The Bachelor, have with a great amount of heartbreak called the whole thing off. We gave this relationship our all and we are saddened that we did not get the fairytale ending we hoped for, they said Friday in a statement to E! News. The relationship lasted five months after the proposal aired on the Season 21 finale of The Bachelor in March. The two said in their statement that theyre parting with love and admiration for one another. The silver lining to what they called a difficult decision? This means Nick is potentially available for yet another TV stint in the Bachelor/Bachelorette franchise. That as-yet-imaginary gig would be his fifth ride on the looking-for-love roller coaster. In Bachelor Nation, its always good to dream. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Advertisement Mila Kunis, Ashton Kutcher settle lawsuit over websites photos of their kids By Nardine Saad (Michael Nelson / EPA) Ashton Kutcher and Mila Kunis legal battle with British website MailOnline has been settled. The Two and a Half Men actor, the Bad Moms actress and the outlet have reached a satisfactory resolution of their legal action regarding the publication of photos of their children, their legal representatives said in a joint statement to The Times on Friday. The couple, who starred in That 70s Show together years before they began dating, took the websites publisher, Associated Newspapers, to Londons High Court in July 2015 over two articles featuring their daughter, who was 1 at the time. The U.K.'s MailOnline.com published images of Wyatt taken during a private family outing to the beach. A paparazzo used a long-lens camera to obtain the images, and the couple said they were unaware the photos were being taken. They claimed that the photos breached the Data Protection Act and were used for the unauthorized promotion of clothing on the website. [T]hey have reached a satisfactory resolution of their legal action, which includes an agreement to pixelate photographs of their daughter, Wyatt, their son, Dimitri, and any future children they should have together. Joint statement from Kutcher, Kunis and the MailOnline announcing their lawsuit settlement Per the agreement announced Friday, the outlet will pixelate photographs of Kutchers and Kunis daughter, Wyatt, their son, Dimitri, and any future children they should have together. The settlement is the latest legal blow to MailOnline and its associated newspaper, the Daily Mail. (The U.S. version of the website, DailyMail.com, is run by a separate news team.) In April, the tabloids parent company settled a libel suit with First Lady Melania Trump over an article it ran in the paper and online that suggested she may have once worked as an escort. In July 2014, George Clooney lambasted the Daily Mail in a USA Today op-ed that accused it of making up stories in the wake of an article it published about his mother-in-law. He got an apology and an acknowledgement that the story was inaccurate. That same month, Angelina Jolie reportedly threatened to take legal action after it published a video that claimed to show her under the influence of heroin in the 1990s. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Taylor Swifts Look What You Made Me Do lyrics: Let the analysis begin By Randy Lewis As if there were any doubt as to the level of interest in Taylor Swifts first new music in three years, her first single from her forthcoming album, Reputation, has been blowing up since it premiered Thursday night. The lyric video for Look What You Made Me Do had logged more than 7 million views as of 9:30 a.m. Friday. Additionally, Swift tweeted that the official video for the song will premiere Sunday during the MTV Video Music Awards ceremony. For those who want to dig in and attempt to decode what and to whom the I dont like you references might refer, here are the full lyrics to the song: Look What You Made Me Do FIRST VERSE I dont like your little games Dont like your tilted stage The role you made me play Of the fool, no, I dont like you I dont like your perfect crime How you laugh when you lie You said the gun was mine Isnt cool, no, I dont like you PRE-CHORUS But I got smarter, I got harder in the nick of time Honey, I rose up from the dead, I do it all the time Ive got a list of names and yours is in red, underlined I check it once, then I check it twice, oh! CHORUS Ooh, look what you made me do Look what you made me do Look what you just made me do Look what you just made me do Ooh, look what you made me do Look What you made me do Look what you just made me do Look what you just made me do SECOND VERSE I dont like your kingdom keys They once belonged to me You ask for a place to sleep Locked me out and threw a feast (what?) The world goes on, another day, another drama, drama But not for me, not for me, all I think about is karma And then the world moves on, but one things for sure Baby, I got mine, but youll all get yours PRE CHORUS REPEATS But I got smarter, I got harder in the nick of time Honey, I rose up from the dead, I do it all the time Ive got a list of names and yours is in red, underlined I check it once, then I check it twice, oh! CHORUS REPEATS Ooh, look what you made me do Look what you made me do Look what you just made me do Look what you just made me do Ooh, look what you made me do Look what you made me do Look what you just made me do Look what you just made me do THIRD VERSE I dont trust nobody and nobody trusts me Ill be the actress starring in your bad dreams I dont trust nobody and nobody trusts me Ill be the actress starring in your bad dreams I dont trust nobody and nobody trusts me Ill be the actress starring in your bad dreams I dont trust nobody and nobody trusts me Ill be the actress starring in your bad dreams (Look what you made me do) (Look what you made me do) ANSWERING MACHINE INTERLUDE Im sorry, the old Taylor cant come to the phone right now. Why? Oh cause shes dead! CHORUS REPEATS Ooh, look what you made me do Look what you made me do Look what you just made me do Look what you just made me do Ooh, look what you made me do Look what you made me do Look what you just made me do Look what you just made me do Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Patty Jenkins isnt surprised James Cameron doesnt get Wonder Woman By Tracy Brown Wonder Woman director Patty Jenkins has some words about James Camerons comments on the Amazonian warrior goddess: Of course he doesnt get it. Following the Avatar directors claims that Wonder Woman is a step backwards for women, Jenkins responded in a tweet that Camerons thoughts are unsurprising because he is not a woman. In an interview with the Guardian, Cameron threw some shade on Wonder Womans success by trying to compare Diana Prince to Sarah Connor from his Terminator franchise. "[Sarah Connor] was strong, she was troubled, she was a terrible mother, and she earned the respect of the audience through pure grit, Cameron said. Nothing like the objectified beauty icon he considers Wonder Woman to be. Jenkins points out that Camerons narrow qualifications for what makes a good female hero are restrictive and not at all progressive. If women have to always be hard, tough and troubled to be strong, and we arent free to be multidimensional or celebrate an icon of women everywhere because she is attractive and loving, then we havent come very far have we, Jenkins wrote. Jenkins also insisted that there should be room for all types of female lead characters and that women themselves should be the judge of these icons of progress. There is no right and wrong kind of powerful woman, she wrote. Read Jenkins full statement below. pic.twitter.com/8zkJXHLCJW Patty Jenkins (@PattyJenks) August 25, 2017 Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Advertisement James Cameron thinks Wonder Womans success is misguided: Shes an objectified icon By Nardine Saad (Anne Cusack / Los Angeles Times) James Cameron isnt here for Wonder Womans blockbuster success. In fact, the moviemaker calls the much-loved superhero flick (Wonder Woman is currently at 92% on Rotten Tomatoes) a step back from the female heroes he created in the 80s and 90s. It appears that the Titanic and Terminator 2" director, whose films often put tough women at the center of the action, doesnt think that Gal Gadots character was complicated or groundbreaking enough to merit so much acclaim -- $800 million at the worldwide box office aside. All of the self-congratulatory back-patting Hollywoods been doing over Wonder Woman has been so misguided. Shes an objectified icon, and its just male Hollywood doing the same old thing! Cameron said in an interview with the Guardian. All of the self-congratulatory back-patting Hollywoods been doing over Wonder Woman has been so misguided. Shes an objectified icon, and its just male Hollywood doing the same old thing! Filmmaker James Cameron on Wonder Woman The director, who was cast in the article as softened and evolved from his bone-crushing early movie-making days, believes that Wonder Woman was a step backwards. (Dont get him wrong, he did like Patty Jenkins summer blockbuster -- the first-ever feature-film incarnation of the DC Comics heroine and the highest-grossing live-action film directed by a woman -- just not enough to let it pass without throwing a little shade Diana Princes way.) Backwards in comparison with Camerons complex Sarah Connor character from the Terminator franchise. Sarah Connor was not a beauty icon. She was strong, she was troubled, she was a terrible mother, and she earned the respect of the audience through pure grit. And to me, [the benefit of characters like Sarah] is so obvious. I mean, half the audience is female! Cameron said. The three-time Oscar wi On Aug. 9, 2014, Brittany Ferrell was shaken to her core. Just a day after arriving in New York City on a trip, the St. Louis native sat on the bed of an Airbnb she was renting, scrolling through Facebook on her phone. She stumbled upon a post from someone from high school. The police just killed an 18 year old kid and hes still laying in the street, it read. Confused, noticing no one else on her feed had posted the information, she closed Facebook and opened Twitter. A user with the handle @TheePharoah was being constantly retweeted onto her timeline. The St. Louis-area rapper was live-tweeting the death of Michael Brown, an unarmed black 18-year-old killed by a white police officer in Ferguson, Mo. He posted a picture of Browns lifeless body stretched out in the street, where it would stay for four hours. Advertisement This is wild, Ferrell thought to herself. But death was nothing new for her and her community. She put down her phone only to return later that evening to tweets about people gathering on Canfield Drive. There were photos of police tape and people yelling, and of a guy claiming to be Browns father holding a sign that read, Ferguson police just killed my unarmed son! She watched a live feed where a police officer stood in front of a group of protesters with a barking dog. In another video, a different cop, she said, cocked his rifle and screamed, Ill kill all you animals. This is not usual, Ferrell recalled saying.This isnt the type of murder that weve become used to and can call typical. In that moment I felt chills. I was angry and crying. She booked a return flight and went home the next day. After landing at 11 p.m., she picked up her 6-year-old daughter from her dads house and decided the two of them would head to Ferguson the next morning. What happened, to Ferrell and to Ferguson in the following almost three years is the subject of a new documentary, Whose Streets?, in theaters Aug. 11. Its a tale of survival and protest, love and loss, strength and resilience from the vantage point of the people who live in the community and packed the streets demanding answers. As Ferrell drove to Ferguson with her daughter, who was wearing a floral dress and matching crown, the two revisited a conversation theyd had countless times before that morning about the black experience and black condition. You remember how I taught you about when black people had to fight for what they believed in? she recalled saying. Were going to Ferguson right now because the police killed an 18-year-old boy and it wasnt right. I couldnt not take her, Ferrell said later. This happening today is a culmination of that has happened in the past. She needs to know it and see it and be raised in it. She needs to be well developed in the area of not just activism and organizing but knowing the different layers of the black experience and the black condition and what we must do to get free, to free ourselves. Even if Im fortunate enough to provide her an experience where she doesnt [personally] experience blatant racism, she is no different than the next black woman-child. I feel like I would be doing her a disservice to shield her from that. The first stop when they arrived in Ferguson was on South Florissant Road, a site across from the police department that became a campground of sorts as the activists awaited word of Officer Darren Wilsons eventual non-indictment. There Ferrell and her daughter linked up with a local business owner who was making sack lunches. They prepared bags and helped pass them out to protesters. Slowly, a new type of activism began to take shape for Ferrell. Black queer women in leadership has sustained the movement overall. Brittany Ferrell My activism completely transformed after Aug. 9, she said, noting that while an undergrad at the University of Missouri-St. Louis, she was president of the Minority Student Nurses Assn. and focused on food justice and health disparities in black communities. I had no experience in organizing. It all just came. Weeks later, Ferrell met Sabaah Folayan, one of the films co-directors, during an evening demonstration. Folayan said she and her director of photography Lucas Alvarado-Farrar just wanted to document what was happening. A question came to Ferrells mind: Do you want to document or are you trying to find a story that you can exploit? That skepticism was informed by countless instances of people often white coming into a community to profit off its pain and resilience. As Folayan explained in a recent interview, We had heard that people who are born and raised [in Ferguson] were not having their voices centered, and we wanted to do it differently. Folayan had already linked up with co-director Damon Davis, an area artist known for his activism around death row inmates. His involvement endeared Ferrell to the project, along with six other locals the Whose Streets? team followed in the years after Browns shooting. [This documentary] is not somebody speaking for us or speaking to us, its us speaking, Davis said. That was the main thing for me, how these people will be represented, because thats how I will be represented. Co-director Sabbah Folyan, Kayla Reed, Tef Poe and co-director Damon Davis, from the documentary film, Whose Streets, are photographed in the L.A. Times photo studio during the Sundance Film Festival. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) While the goal wasnt to focus on Ferrells experience in an effort to show that the movement is not about a messiah leader but a community coming together, Folayan said she proved to be the most open of the films participants. As a result, Whose Streets? documents surprisingly personal aspects of Ferrells life, like falling in love and marrying her wife. I felt like I was naked, said Ferrell, laughing about the first time she saw the finished product. But I understood that with doing this work and humanizing black folks, there has to be a level of vulnerability. Moreover, Ferrells story reiterates and re-centers the role of black queer women in the broader Black Lives Matter movement. Two of the movements three founders who coined #BlackLivesMatter on social media in the aftermath of the 2012 killing of black teen Trayvon Martin identify as queer. Black queer women in leadership has sustained the movement overall, said Ferrell, and thats because [were constantly at] battle on multiple fronts. Black queer women have to bear the brunt of it all. Folayan agreed noting that the movement is really upheld by black women and a lot of queer black women. She insists, however, that this is not some affirmative action type of thing where Ferrell was chosen as the films heart because of her identities. She was the person who was galvanizing this energy, she said. Its not a coincidence though she was on the front lines, because living life at those intersections as a black queer woman, you have so much on the line. You can feel her energy through the screen. Meanwhile, back in Ferguson, the news cameras are long gone but fraught racial ties between the community and police persist. Ferrell is on probation for 2 more years for blocking a highway during a demonstration. She describes the socio-political atmosphere of the area she calls home simply: A mess. Still, she clings to a chant shes committed to memory since taking to Fergusons streets a full three years ago. It is our duty to fight for our freedom. It is our duty to win. We must love and support each other. We have nothing to lose but our chains. Get your life! Follow me on Twitter (@TrevellAnderson) or email me: trevell.anderson@latimes.com. With Girls Trip, director Malcolm D. Lee celebrates black girl magic Black while funny and female: 18 comedic actresses on working in Hollywood Perspective: Why its time Hollywood let trans voices tell, and embody, their own stories In one of the many conversations that animate Columbus, a serenely intelligent first feature from the Korean American writer-director Kogonada, a part-time librarian named Casey (Haley Lu Richardson) and her co-worker Gabriel (Rory Culkin) discuss a tricky double standard. As Gabriel notes, someone who loves video games but finds books boring is criticized for having a short attention span, while someone with the opposite inclination is praised for having a long one. Its not a matter of attention span, but of interest, he says. Are we losing interest in things that matter? Mercifully, he does not go on to extol the importance of gentle, gorgeously contemplative independent films like this one, though by that point Columbus has already made the case in much more delicate and persuasive terms. With its quotidian rhythms, gossamer-thin story and steady accumulation of visual wonders, the movie may indeed test the limits of your attention span at times, but always in the interests of expanding your vision and clarifying your perceptions. If you find yourself losing interest, you have only yourself to blame. The story follows two lonely, lovely young strangers, Casey and Jin (John Cho), who strike up a friendship over several days spent walking and talking their way around Columbus, Ind. That city has attracted renewed publicity over the past year as the hometown of Vice President Mike Pence, but it intrigues Kogonada and his characters for reasons that are more aesthetic than political. Advertisement Columbus has long been celebrated as an improbable enclave of Midwestern modernism, a public showcase for the splendors of Eero Saarinen, I.M. Pei and other leading architects. The citys wondrous, slightly incongruous design holds a particular fascination for Casey, a recent high-school graduate who lives with her mother (Michelle Forbes), a recovering drug addict. Jin, a book translator in his mid-30s who lives in Seoul, has flown in to visit his sick father (Joseph Anthony Foronda), a renowned architecture scholar who suddenly collapsed while touring the city. Casey takes care of her mother with a level of devotion that, as some acquaintances are not too polite to point out, is holding her back from her own personal ambitions. Jin, meanwhile, hasnt spoken to his father in more than a year, and the old mans condition looks serious enough that he might never get the chance. For Casey, beautiful buildings have been an inspiration and an escape from the troubles of real life; for Jin, they have been a source of indifference and resentment, a reminder of a parent who paid more attention to his vocation than to his child. Whats remarkable about this wondrously assured debut is that technique never overwhelms feeling. These sharp contrasts in filial devotion and personal passion define the characters as starkly as their more obvious gender and cultural differences, but they also lend the story a precise, pleasingly low-key symmetry. (The sounding-board character of Gabriel is matched on Jins side by Eleanor, a longtime friend and associate of his fathers, terrifically played by Parker Posey.) Were watching a story about two people who have tried, in very different ways, to avoid the burden of pain, even as shifting circumstances force them both to reconsider their definitions of home. Symmetry, of course, can double as both a narrative conceit and an architectural ideal, and one of the pleasures of Columbus is its structural sophistication, the way it sculpts its slender, entirely believable almost-love story into a dramatic shape that feels at once concrete and elusive. Kogonadas precise, measured editing offers the cinematic equivalent of clean lines and polished edges. The images, beautifully lit and meticulously composed by Elisha Christian, play ingenious tricks with depth, focus and perspective, framing Jin and Casey not just against stunning buildings, but also through doorways, down corridors and even from the backseat of a car. Richardson, so warmly engaging in movies like The Edge of Seventeen and The Bronze, and Cho, whose whip-smart charisma has long warranted more leading roles like this one, are so appealing that youd gladly watch them in a movie with a less incisive sense of place. Few films are this sensitively attuned to their characters dwelling spaces; fewer still can make those spaces feel as charged with meaning as the interactions that play out within them. Kogonadas attention to visual form will come as little surprise to cinephiles who have seen his video essays analyzing the work of filmmakers including Stanley Kubrick, Robert Bresson, Yasujiro Ozu and Richard Linklater. (The latter two, with their blend of bittersweet intimacy and low-key formalism, feel like especially relevant influences here.) Whats remarkable about this wondrously assured debut is that technique never overwhelms feeling, in part because Kogonada makes the two seem inextricably, harmoniously linked. What moves you, particularly, about a building? Jin asks Casey in one scene, after shes carefully laid out the history of the one-story glass structure that once housed Columbus Irwin Union Bank building. Its a pointed question; hes trying to push her past a strictly intellectual response toward a more personal, human one. But Columbus understands that theres less of a difference than we might think. It never lets you see where thinking ends and feeling begins. ------------ Columbus Not rated (In English and Korean with English subtitles) Running time: 1 hour, 44 minutes Playing: Nuart Theatre, Los Angeles justin.chang@latimes.com Less than a week into production on the police-brutality docudrama Detroit, John Boyega found himself unnerved. The films director, Kathryn Bigelow, had told Boyega a schedule shift was forcing her to shoot a key interrogation scene that day instead of weeks later. We had just started filming and there we were in this critical scene," the garrulous Nigerian British actor said recently at a Motor City restaurant with co-star Will Poulter. I sat there on-set and all I could think of were Trayvon Martin and Sandra Bland and Michael Brown, and how when they woke up that day they didnt know what would happen to them. I found myself staring at the handcuffs in the corner " I noticed the same thing, Poulter, an equally outgoing Brit, agreed excitedly from across the table. Advertisement Those handcuffs Did you see the dried blood on the wall? Yes! We had the exact same reaction. That may have been the rare time that could be said of the duo on Detroit, which opens nationally Friday. The well-reviewed film did strong business in limited release last week bringing in $350,000 from 20 theaters and is expected to mint $10 million to $15 million as it expands to more than 2,500 theaters. Detroit trailer starring John Boyega, Will Poulter, Algee Smith, Jason Mitchell and John Krasinski. Boyega, 25, and Poulter, 24, play law-and-order men of radically different outlooks and temperament. Poulters patrolman Philip Krauss is abrasive and abusive, while Boyegas armed security-guard Melvin Dismukes is taciturn and brooding a yin and yang of cinematic intensity. Given their backgrounds, Boyega and Poulter might seem like left-field choices for the roles. The former is best known as Finn from the current Star Wars franchise and the latter as a sexually naive teen in the hit comedy Were the Millers. But their performances in the scalding drama of Detroit demonstrate that sometimes the best casting is the kind you never foresee, and that often the clearest way to hold up a mirror to America is with people from well outside it. Directed by Bigelow (The Hurt Locker) from a journalistic script by Mark Boal, Detroit chronicles the harrowing true events at the citys Algiers Motel during the civil unrest of 1967. Three Detroit police officers along with Dismukes and a National Guardsman were accused of enacting a reign of terror that led to the death of three young African American men. (A series of trials resulted in no convictions.) Krauss and Dismukes the former shares similarities with the white officer David Senak while the black Dismukes is a real-life figure are on opposite sides of a divide. Krauss is a ringleader of violence that also sees more than a half-dozen black men and two white women thrown against a wall and beaten in a trumped-up search for a gun. Its a vicious performance, the actors babyfaced demeanor enhancing the effect. Hes a racist first and foremost, Poulter said of how he delved into the Krauss character. Theres nothing I can respect or acknowledge as sane. I didnt want to apologize for him. But I dont know that hes a cosmic form of evil. Hes a human being responding to many of his frustrations by projecting blame on a single group, adding, he is the epitome of hate. Dismukes, on the other hand, participates only minimally in Krauss torturous stampede and wears a conflicted expression for much of the film. Still, historians professional and armchair have posed the question: Should he have done more to intervene? Heres the thing about telling someone to be a hero from your position of comfort: It doesnt make sense, Boyega said, laughing disbelievingly. The actor is an expressive sort who laughs to display more than just comedy passion, skepticism, general emphasis. I was sad he was labeled an Uncle Tom. That was like saying he didnt have access to his feelings. Boyega paused. Look, I totally get it. As a black person sometimes theres an expectation to stand up in a particularly distinct way. But sometimes you cant. Because what we all are before a certain color is human. And that can override everything else. (For his part, Dismukes said anyone who demanded action didnt understand the situation. I knew what was going on and that they [the cops] were going a little too far, he said in an interview in downtown Detroit last week. But there was nothing I could do about it. My way of trying to help, he added, was to try and go out to find the gun. The security guard, who in the wake of the incident faced criticism from Detroits African American community and moved to a remote suburb, spoke to Boyega about his experiences when the actor was working on Star Wars in Europe.) Plenty of contrasts exist between Poulter and Boyega in real life too. Tall and wiry, Poulter had a solidly middle-class upbringing as the son of a cardiology professor in the prosperous London neighborhood of Hammersmith. Compact and muscular, Boyega is the offspring of an immigrant preacher and grew up in economically strafed South London. But they bonded as they tried to compute what happened in the Motor City in July 1967. Imagine, Will, if we saw tanks rolling down the street in London, Boyega said. Just going down Portobello Road, Poulter said, shaking his head. The two men had come to Detroit to promote the movie, engaging in a series of appearances at the likes of the Charles Wright Museum of African American History. They were clearly outsiders. Poulter had been to Detroit only once previously, to film some quick scenes. (Detroit was shot in Massachusetts, for tax reasons.) Boyega had never been to Detroit. Yet that otherness might actually have helped Poulter play a racist villain. Anthony Mackie, who co-stars as a Vietnam-vet survivor of the Algiers incident, said, Will came from a place where he wasnt apologizing, because it wasnt his legacy. An American would have come from a place of apology. And that would have been a different performance. Detroit stars Will Poulter, left, and John Boyega, right, are photographed at the Foundation Hotel in Detroit, Michigan. (Jeffrey Sauger / Jeffrey Sauger for Los Angeles Times) Poulter, incidentally, didnt speak to Senak before shooting the movie; it was unclear which of the two had made that decision. The actor did watch online clips of Ku Klux Klan grand wizards and other white supremacists to understand a bigots mind set. Its real-life horror footage, Poulter said. The level of certainty and confidence is whats most horrifying. He also began studying the Algiers incident, which to his frustration was not taught in British schools or, he soon realized, American ones. Boyega first learned about the Algiers when he was couch-surfing in Los Angeles waiting for a prolonged Star Wars audition process to play out. I was staying with these girls Id met at a party in Inglewood. It was Black History Month and they started watching things like [Tariq Nasheeds global African docuseries] Hidden Colors and episodes of Roots. He soon learned about the Detroit uprising too, whetting his appetite for the eventual Boal script. One hardly needs to be a fanboy to draw parallels between the character of Finn, a Stormtrooper who decides to abandon an establishment force after witnessing its cruelty, and Dismukes, a man conflicted after getting a similarly uncomfortable front-row view. Boyega didnt elaborate when asked about the comparison but said the off-screen drama involving his casting as Finn race-baiting criticisms followed by the actors famously cool Get used to it Instagram post did set the table for this role. I was reminded of my color in a way that had nothing to do with the helmet, he said. It doesnt matter where you go a few ignorant individuals will come in and make comments about your race. Even though when you look behind the curtain its a bunch of idiots. A racist situation led me to see how ugly this world could be, but also led me to see that a lot of people arent racist. Dismukes, he added, saw multiple sides of a situation too. While many of the actors subjected to Krauss worst behavior described a kind of trauma on-set, Poulter said being on the other end of the gun posed its own challenges. We went to some extremely heinous scenes of violence and hatred. It was so hard. Im two feet away from a man pointing a gun, and it looks like a real gun, and I pull what feels like a real trigger, and it sounds like a real bullet and a blood-bag explodes in my face. It was crazy to think of the pain I inflicted. And I thought, If I felt that way acting, how the. did that make [a real cop] feel? The intensity of scenes like that have drawn some comparisons to a horror movie and could, as the film is seen by more people, elicit some criticisms it exaggerates the brutality for dramatic or political ends. Poulter dismissed the idea. There are a lot of people who will watch this and say its hyperbolic, a caricature, the actor said, You white [if you say that], Boyega said, laughing acidly. They dont know the research sometimes we underplayed it. Boyega said being informed about the incident and the riots they were set against isnt just about understanding historic horrors but modern troubles. I see Detroit the movie as Detroits origin story, he said. The scars and the hurt. This place was victimized by systemic racism and violence. And that creates an imbalance thats very, very hard to sort out. See the most-read stories in Entertainment this hour steve.zeitchik@latimes.com Twitter: @ZeitchikLAT ALSO: Showing Detroit in Detroit Kathryn Bigelows Detroit takes on a tragedy then and now Wind River, written and directed by Taylor Sheridan and starring Jeremy Renner and Elizabeth Olsen, is something special. At times poetic, at others bleak and brutal and how could it be otherwise, with rape and murder at the heart of its plot this tense, convincing independent film is the most accomplished violent thriller in quite some time. Set on the Native American reservation in Wyoming that gives the film its name, the complete plausibility of Wind River is attached to an unmistakable tang of authenticity. Filled with gritty dialogue from strong, well-defined characters who say only what needs to be said and not another word, this film is everything it should be and more. Advertisement Sheridan, previously known as a veteran actor and the Oscar-nominated screenwriter of Hell or High Water and Sicario, won a top directing award at Cannes for work that announces the arrival of a significant filmmaker. His Wind River is not only a deft combination of modern and traditional approaches to the genre, it also demonstrates that when screenwriters who know what theyre doing shoot their own work, they convey a deeper, fuller understanding of what theyve written than wed otherwise get. Criminal investigations set on reservations inevitably bring to mind Tony Hillermans Joe Leaphorn/Jim Chee novels, but, aided by an unnerving Nick Cave and Warren Ellis score, the tone here is darker, the rez a more dirt poor, hard-scrabble and dangerous place. Luck dont live out here, someone says. Luck lives in the city. Sheridan has no Native American heritage, but he apparently spent considerable time on reservations before his acting career began and, aided by ace supporting actors like Julia Jones, Graham Greene, Gil Birmingham and Tantoo Cardinal, he has so captured the at-times despairing mind-set there that the Tunica-Biloxi Tribe of Louisiana provided a key chunk of the films financing. Also very real (though shot in snowy Utah, not Wyoming) is the imposing Western landscape richly photographed by Beasts of the Southern Wild cinematographer Ben Richardson in areas so remote that equipment and crew needed snowmobiles and snowcats to get to the locations. Because codes of masculine behavior, both positive and negative, are a major theme in Wind River, its critical to the films success that it takes the time to present a detailed portrait of protagonist Cory Lambert, played by Renner. Before we get to him, however, Wind River provides a chilling prologue of a terrified young woman, shown running pell-mell through deep snow in the middle of the night, fleeing an invisible threat. Seen next is a predator of a different sort, a hungry wolf menacing a herd of goats. Getting in the way of that deadly behavior, however, is Lambert. Dressed in deep winter camouflage, hes a hunter/tracker for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the law in these parts as far as marauding animals are concerned. Lambert is also the divorced husband of Wilma, a Native American woman (Jones is excellent) burdened by a kind of free-floating sadness and despair. Wilma worries as Lambert takes their young son from her house in town to visit her parents on the reservation, where the tracker is respected for his skill at a necessary job but no one, least of all him, forgets that he is not Native. Weve already seen the classically macho side of Lambert, an alpha male who even makes his own bullets, but Wind River now ensures that we see his tender heart as well, showing the time he takes to educate his son and, later, watching him share a heartbreaking hug with a male friend. Renner, a two-time Oscar nominee, has been excellent in the past, but he really excels in a role that demands he be both laconic and emotional in an unfussy way. Though the part was not written for him, he owns it from the inside as if it were. Out hunting a mountain lion in the backcountry, Lambert comes across the frozen body of that young woman from the prologue. It is Natalie (Kelsey Asbille, haunting in a later flashback), someone whose reservation family he knows. Because of the severity of the crime on government land, FBI agent Jane Banner (a strong Olsen) draws the short straw and is flown in to investigate. Based in Las Vegas, Banner doesnt even have winter clothes, and the scene where Lamberts displeased former mother-in-law provides them is a treat (and a wonderful moment for the veteran Cardinal). Like Renner, Olsen walks an interesting line with her character (the two actors previously worked together in Captain America: Civil War). Shes surely a fish out of water, as the tribal police chief finely played by Greene acknowledges when he asks what are they thinking, sending you here? But she must also be capable when the chips are down, able to handle herself and hold her own. Its inevitable that Banner asks Lambert to cooperate with her, though neither she nor the audience knows aspects of his past that will factor into his behavior. The films disturbing violence stuns and surprises us when it comes, which is as it should be, but a closing title card reminds us that a real-world crisis underlies it. The focus here is always on character and storytelling and the acting that brings it all alive. With thrillers this good becoming a lost art, Wind River is definitely one to savor. Wind River Rating: R, for a rape, disturbing images and language Running time: 1 hour, 47 minutes Playing: Arclight, Hollywood; Landmark, West Los Angeles See the most-read stories in Entertainment this hour Movie Trailers kenneth.turan@latimes.com @KennethTuran ALSO Review: Step tells the inspirational story of Baltimore teens triumph against the odds Review: Al Gore continues his mission to save the planet in An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power An appreciation: Actress Jeanne Moreau was an unlikely combination, both imperious and lovable A charter-school advocacy group relied on major last-minute donations to help turn around a key Westside school board race and propel its favored candidates to a majority on the Los Angeles Board of Education, newly disclosed financial reports reveal. The contributors in the final stretch of the L.A. Board of Education campaigns included philanthropist Eli Broad, who gave nearly $1.9 million in April and May to California Charter Schools Assn. Advocates, and Manhattan Beach businessman William Bloomfield, who overall contributed $2.275 million, the vast majority in April and May. In the last weeks before the May 16 election, pro-charter spending swamped the Westside race just as the major spender on the opposing side, the L.A. teachers union, was shifting resources to the other school board contest in a different part of the city. Advertisement Candidates backed by charter supporters prevailed in both races, leading to the first board majority with major pro-charter financial support. Charter schools are privately managed and mostly non-union; locally, most operate as nonprofit organizations. L.A. Unified has more charters than any other school system. Backers say they provide high-quality options for families while spurring traditional schools through competition to improve. Critics counter that the charters often dont serve the most challenging students and that their rapid growth has undermined the solvency of L.A. Unified. In all, outside groups mainly charter backers and teachers unions spent nearly $15 million, a record, on behalf of candidates in three school board races. (The candidates spent $2.2 million on their own campaigns, with many contributors similarly invested for or against charters and unions.) More than $1.4 million reached California Charter Schools Assn. Advocates after the deadline when the contributions would be disclosed before the election. CCSA Advocates spent much of its money directly. It also funneled dollars to allied or affiliated groups, some with misleading names Parent Teacher Alliance (which is not the PTA) and LA Students for Change, which was not a grassroots student group. The charter group files twice yearly donation and spending reports with the California Secretary of State. The latest report, filed at the end of July, covers the first half of 2017. Many pre-election donations came to light through previous state and local disclosures, including nearly $7 million since September 2016 from Netflix founder Reed Hastings, the election cycles largest contributor. Still, the report has new and revealing information, including some unexpected bedfellows. CCSA Advocates, for example, provided $150,000 to the California Democratic Party, which is typically aligned with teacher unions, and $25,000 to Local 99 of Service Employees International Union, which represents 30,000 nonteaching school employees such as custodians and cafeteria workers. The Local 99 money was used to help support charter-backed incumbent Monica Garcia, who had the locals endorsement, said its political director Lester Garcia, who is not related to the school board member. Monica Garcia, whose District 2 covers downtown and surrounding areas, avoided a May runoff by winning a majority of votes in the March primary. CCSA Advocates also contributed $74,000 to an organization called Speak UP, which launched in March 2016 and quickly stepped out as a strong opponent of incumbent Steve Zimmer in District 4, which stretches from the Westside to the west San Fernando Valley. Zimmer, who was the school board president, lost to attorney Nick Melvoin. Speak UP, which began with a core of Westside volunteers, said Wednesday that it also accepted $125,000 from the Walton Family Foundation, a pro-charter organization funded by the founders of Wal-Mart. (Walton family heirs also donated heavily to CCSA Advocates.) Other donors include wealthy local residents and Bloomfield ($50,000). Speak UP director Katie Braude said her group accepted the CCSA money because our two organizations shared the same goal: to elect Nick Melvoin, a candidate we believe will put the interests of kids before the interests of adults. Ann Wexler, who is co-founder of a charter school and volunteered with Speak UP, characterized the connection as the real election story: Scrappy moms bend billionaires to their will and get their guy elected. CCSA Advocates declined to answer questions about its fundraising, spending and strategy, but said it complied with all legal requirements. The overall outside spending in the school board races $9.7 million by charter backers, $5.2 million by unions for their favored candidates masked a shift on both sides after Zimmer finished first in the four-way March primary with a seemingly comfortable 47% of the vote. However, in the runoff between Zimmer and second-place Melvoin, union spending for Zimmer (mostly but not exclusively from United Teachers Los Angeles) declined from the primarys $1.64 million to $940,000. Pro-charter spending for Melvoin, meanwhile, increased from $2.16 million to $3.71 million, giving him a four-to-one cash advantage. In District 6, in the east San Fernando Valley, unions ramped up spending on behalf of Imelda Padilla, from about $500,000 in the primary to more than $1.9 million in the runoff. But charter backers kept pace, increasing their spending for the victorious Kelly Gonez from $830,000 in the primary to $2.61 million in the runoff. howard.blume@latimes.com @howardblume ALSO Senior L.A. Unified official tapped to lead Inglewood schools Another jolt for L.A. schools as civic group seeks a role in fixing school district Editorial: Theres a new, pro-charter school board in L.A. Heres what we expect from it L.A. school board salaries more than double to $125,000 a year The father of a 5-year-old boy found abused and neglected in Mexico City in June was arrested on his way to work in Escondido and deported by immigration agents Tuesday. Pascual Castro, who was in the country illegally, had been deported nine times previously, according to a spokeswoman for Immigration and Customs Enforcement. He was arrested during what spokeswoman Lauren Mack described as a targeted enforcement action conducted by ICE Fugitive Operations. He was deported under a prior notice of removal issued by an immigration judge. In a phone interview from Tijuana on Wednesday, Castro said he was arrested on his way to work in the morning and sent back across the border that afternoon. Advertisement He said his plans are to get to Mexico City and pick up his son, Anthony. The child was found June 27 in the home of an aunt and uncle after police responded to a tip from a neighbor. His legs were chained, he was malnourished and he had been beaten, authorities said in a statement. Anthony was taken to a hospital and the two adults Castros sister and her husband were arrested and charged with abusing the child. Anthony is out of the hospital and in the custody of Mexican child welfare authorities, said Victor Corzo, the acting consul general for Mexico in San Diego. Anthony has dual citizenship, and his fate likely will be resolved through the Mexican child welfare system. He could be returned to the U.S. or placed in foster care in Mexico. Castro had sought help from Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Vista) after finding out the plight of his son. Castro has denied knowing anything about the abuse. Issas office said the congressman had agreed to help Castro even though he is not a U.S. citizen. In a statement on July 6, Issa said the goal was to get Anthony into a safe and stable environment where he can get the help he so desperately needs. Issa spokesman Calvin Moore did not respond to messages seeking comment on Castros deportation. As the spouse of a citizen, Castro was trying to get legal status in the U.S and was seeking a green card, Corzo said. The Mexican Consulate had been helping Castro over the last month, but Corzo said officials were unaware that he had a deportation order pending. Castro and the boys mother, Dawn Sanderson, are married but no longer together. Castro who according to Sandersons mother had been awarded custody of the boy said he hoped to return to the U.S. legally with Anthony in the future. greg.moran@sduniontribune.com Moran writes for the San Diego Union-Tribune. ALSO Trump calls border wall the least important thing Immigration agents showed up at labor dispute proceedings. California wants to kick them out Attorney general threatens to punish Stockton, San Bernardino and other sanctuary cities Trump pushes to sharply cut the number of legal immigrants and move U.S. to a merit-based immigration system Dozens of people were displaced Thursday after fire ripped through an Arcadia apartment building and caused a portion of the roof to collapse. At least 14 apartments were destroyed in the building in the 800 block of Fairview Avenue, said Patty Barragan, an administrative specialist with the Arcadia Fire Department. An estimated 40 to 50 residents were displaced, she said. The fire was reported shortly before 6:30 a.m., Barragan said. Advertisement Video: Fire tears through an apartment complex in Arcadia. https://t.co/UEbCu9wMR8 pic.twitter.com/iLP7m39GJW NBC Los Angeles (@NBCLA) August 3, 2017 At least 70 firefighters from multiple agencies were battling the blaze. One firefighter suffered heat exhaustion, she said. Aerial news footage showed flames shooting through the roof of the two-story complex and thick black smoke in the air. The Red Cross was on the scene to assist displaced residents, Barragan said. hailey.branson@latimes.com Twitter: @haileybranson ALSO Marion Suge Knight charged with threatening director of the film Straight Outta Compton Lightning has already struck 2,100 times in Southern California this week. More is coming Man left hanging upside down for 30 minutes at Ventura County Fair after bungee jump malfunction A 5% rent increase would push 2,000 Angelenos into homelessness, study warns A 10-acre wildfire that burned in the hills east of UC Berkeley on Wednesday afternoon triggered road closures and voluntary evacuations for some campus buildings, officials said. Shortly after 3 p.m., University of California police recommended evacuations of the Lawrence Hall of Science, the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute and the Space Sciences Laboratory. About 5:45 p.m., firefighters contained the flames and normal campus operations resumed, police said. Fire crews planned to stay on scene overnight. Advertisement The blaze, which started about 1 p.m., drew a response of between 150 to 200 firefighters, as well as helicopters dropping loads of water from a nearby reservoir. The challenges were having right now are just steep terrain and heavy timber, just large trees that are holding a lot of heat, said Oakland Fire Deputy Chief Melinda Drayton. Utility officials had planned to shut off power on campus, but by 6 p.m., police said the move was not necessary. PG&E has inspected the fire-impacted power lines and issued the all-clear, police said in an alert. No campus power outage will be required. Grizzly Peak Boulevard was closed between Centennial Drive and South Park Drive. Campers at Tilden Regional Park were taken home on regular bus routes, city officials said. The cause of the fire is under investigation. #ALCOFire E-333, @CAL_FIRE & @HaywardFireNews units just arrived at staging & are enroute to their assignments at the Grizzly Peak fire pic.twitter.com/z3AKIl84eR Alameda County Fire (@AlamedaCoFire) August 2, 2017 Though fire remains a mile from Berkeley border and is heading East, hills residents should prepare: https://t.co/THv4oLDbir pic.twitter.com/kpCjl92g0o City of Berkeley (@CityofBerkeley) August 2, 2017 Our office is closely monitoring #Berkeley hills fire. Multiple units from agencies across the region are on scene. pic.twitter.com/kYYYuMwfjR Jesse Arreguin (@JesseArreguin) August 2, 2017 alene.tchekmedyian@latimes.com Twitter: @AleneTchek ALSO Caltrans aims to rebuild Highway 1 on top of massive landslide near Big Sur 2 Yuba sheriffs deputies recovering after gun battle with man at Rastafarian pot farm Teen jumps out of plane emergency door at San Francisco International UPDATES: 9 p.m.: This story was updated with additional details. This story was originally published at 4:50 p.m. Theres hot, and then theres Death Valley hot. While Southern California and much of the West cooked in July under a pair of heat waves that killed livestock, knocked out power and encouraged wildfires, nowhere was the heat more brutally enduring than in Death Valley. For the record: This article incorrectly says the world heat record was reached in Death Valley on June 10, 1913. It was reached in July 10, 1913. According to the National Weather Service, Death Valley National Park broke its 100-year-old record for the hottest month ever in July, when the average temperature was 107.4 degrees, eclipsing the 1917 record of 107.2 degrees. We broke a record this July--the hottest month ever for Death Valley! https://t.co/vBDMd2q1j7 Death Valley NP (@DeathValleyNPS) August 2, 2017 Advertisement Though 107 degrees doesnt sound that bad, keep in mind the average includes nighttime temperatures. The average overnight temperature in Death Valley last month was 95 degrees. The average daytime high was 119.6 degrees, said meteorologist Alex Boothe. It looks like there were a couple of days below 115, he said a consolation of some sort. The hottest day of the month was July 7, when it reached 127 degrees. It also reached that temperature twice in June. The world record for heat was reached in Death Valley on June 10, 1913, when it reached 134 degrees. joseph.serna@latimes.com For breaking California news, follow @JosephSerna on Twitter. ALSO Lightning has already struck 2,100 times in Southern California this week. More is coming Whats behind Southern Californias summer rain and thunderstorms? Congress takes aim at the Clean Air Act, putting the limits of Californias power to the test Californias high-speed rail backers suffered a legal setback Wednesday when a U.S. appeals court dismissed as merely advisory a federal boards decision declaring the project immune from the states environmental laws. Opponents of the bullet train, which is planned to connect San Francisco to Southern California, had asked the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals to overturn a federal boards declaration that federal laws superseded California laws for the rail project. Instead, a 9th Circuit panel dismissed the case, saying the decision by the U.S. Surface Transportation Board was merely advisory. Advertisement The decision complemented a ruling last week by the California Supreme Court, which found that the rail project was subject to a tough state environmental law. The Surface Transportation Board, which had issued the opinion that would have protected the project from lawsuits, said a decision declaring the project free from California laws had no force. maura.dolan@latimes.com Twitter: @mauradolan ALSO UC Irvine to readmit all freshmen whose admission offers were withdrawn for transcript problems Los Angeles City Council agrees to pay $450,000 to settle LAPD sexual assault case Compton to vote in November on raises for council and mayor Caltrans aims to rebuild Highway 1 on top of massive landslide near Big Sur Two Butte County farmers have filed a $15-million claim against the state of California, claiming they lost valuable walnut trees as a result of the Oroville Reservoir crisis in February. The claim, a precursor to a lawsuit, was filed Wednesday with the state Department of General Services. In it, JEM Farms and Chandon Ranch allege that they lost dozens of acres of walnut tree farmland because state officials were negligent and ignored structural issues at Oroville Dam. The farmers say they lost $1 million worth of land, and $14 million in projected revenue over the next 50 years. Advertisement There was a certainty of failure, attorney Niall McCarthy said of the reservoir. It wasnt a matter of if; it was a matter of when. It was during one of the biggest storms of the winter that the reservoirs main flood-control spillway fractured and crumbled. In a bid to assess the damage, engineers with the Department of Water Resources closed the spillway gates. As the reservoir continued to fill, water spilled over and onto an emergency spillway, which also was damaged. The farmers claim the resulting surge in water in the Feather River flooded their farms. The state should have addressed the many documented issues with the reservoir long before February, the claim states. 93 California dams need reassessment before next flood season, state agency says In a report released by a panel of engineering experts in May, the spillways failure was found to involve two dozen potential design and maintenance problems, including thin concrete, inadequate steel reinforcement and weaknesses in the foundation. The Department of General Services declined to comment on the claim Thursday. Roughly 80 claims have been filed against the state in connection with the Oroville crisis. joseph.serna@latimes.com For breaking California news, follow @JosephSerna on Twitter. ALSO Serious design, construction and maintenance defects doomed Oroville Dam, report says More rainstorms prompt the reopening of the damaged Oroville Dam spillway Residents return, but Oroville Dam dangers remain as new storm approaches At Oroville Dam, a break in the storms gives engineers hope Federal officials investigating how an Air Canada flight carrying 140 passengers nearly smashed into planes waiting to depart at San Francisco International Airport cannot listen to audio from the planes cockpit because it has been written over. According to an update on the investigation released Wednesday by the National Transportation Safety Board, the incident airplanes cockpit voice recorder had been overwritten, so NTSB investigators did not have that data. But other details have emerged. The Airbus A320 was cleared to land shortly before midnight on July 7, but the pilot lined up the aircraft on a taxiway that runs parallel to the runway. There, four fully loaded planes were queued up and waiting for clearance to take off. Advertisement Less than a mile away from the airport, the flight crew told air traffic controllers they saw lights on the runway and requested confirmation they were cleared to land. They received clearance and continued to descend. In a preliminary report released by Canadian officials a week after the incident, Canadas Transportation Safety Board said the Air Canada flight flew over the taxiway for about a quarter-mile before an air traffic controller instructed the pilot to circle around. The pilots told investigators afterward they did not recall seeing aircraft on the taxiway but that something did not look right to them, the NTSB said. A summary by the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration that was included with the Canadian officials report said the aircraft overflew United Airlines Flight 1 and Philippine Airlines Flight 115 by 100 feet. It also overflew United Flight 863 by 200 feet and United Flight 118 by 300 feet before air traffic control directed the pilot to go around. One of the planes on the taxiway went so far as to turn on its landing lights as the Air Canada jet got closer. The pilot operating the Air Canada flight has more than 20,000 total flight hours and his co-pilot has about 10,000, the NTSB said. Ross Aimer, a retired United Airlines captain, told the San Jose Mercury News, which first reported the incident, that if the pilot had not been told to correct course, the scene would have been horrific. If it is true, what happened probably came close to the greatest aviation disaster in history, Aimer said. Audio from the airports traffic control tower, which was archived online and reviewed by The Times, reveals more details of how the incident unfolded as the plane approached. Air Canada pilot: Tower Air Canada 759 I can see lights on the runway there. Can you confirm were clear to land? Control tower: Air Canada 759 confirmed cleared to land on 28-right. There is no one on 28-right but you. Air Canada pilot: OK, Air Canada 759. Unknown: Where is this guy going? Hes on the taxiway! Control tower: Air Canada, go around. The FAA said the air traffic controller told the Air Canada jet to circle around and make another approach. Air Canada pilot: Going around. Air Canada 759. Control tower: Air Canada, it looks like you were lined up for Charlie there. Fly heading 280. Climb maintain 3,000. Air Canada pilot: Heading 2-8-0, 3,000. Air Canada 759. United pilot: United One, Air Canada flew directly over us. Control tower: Yeah, I saw that guys. The aircraft then landed at the airport without incident at 12:11 a.m. Saturday, about 50 minutes later than scheduled, according to the online flight path. joseph.serna@latimes.com Twitter: @JosephSerna matt.hamilton@latimes.com Twitter: @MattHjourno ALSO San Bernardino sheriffs deputy among two killed in plane crash in Big Bear, officials say New video shows fiery explosion as small plane crashes on 405 Freeway in Santa Ana 1 dead after small plane crashes at San Gabriel Valley Airport In another move to pressure cities into cooperating with immigration enforcement, the U.S. Department of Justice threatened Thursday to withhold crime-fighting help from four cities including two in California if they refuse to help federal agents target jail inmates suspected of being in the country illegally. But the decision to publicly question San Bernardino and Stockton as well as Baltimore and Albuquerque appeared poorly thought out. Perplexed officials in all four cities said they do not operate any jails. In two, officials said they have no sanctuary policies. The city of San Bernardino is not a sanctuary city, Police Chief Jarrod Burguan said in an interview. Asked why he thought the city had been singled out by the Department of Justice, Burguan replied, You would have to ask DOJ. Advertisement In a publicly released letter to U.S. Atty. Gen. Jeff Sessions, Albuquerque Mayor Richard J. Berry pushed back, highlighting the agreement his police department has with immigration officials to screen people who are arrested. A Justice spokesman did not reply to questions regarding why the cities were selected. Each of the cities has been hit hard by surges in violent crime and expressed interest in joining a program that puts federal law enforcement manpower and resources in cities struggling with violent crime. The letters are the latest threat by the Trump administration to crack down on so-called sanctuary cities a label for cities that decline to assist immigration officers in various ways. Despite repeated threats, the federal government has not cut funding to any of the affected communities. The letters asked each city about its commitment to reducing violent crime stemming from illegal immigration and for proof that it helps immigration officers take custody of people who are being held in local jails and suspected of living in the country illegally. A Justice Department spokesman said the new questions are considerations, not requirements. Even though Thursdays threats do not extend to stripping cities of existing funds, the stakes are nonetheless high for cities struggling to find ways to lift themselves out of spiraling crime. San Bernardino has long been among the most violent cities in California, and its problems with crime have been compounded by deep financial struggles. Just this year, the city emerged from nearly five years of bankruptcy during which its police department suffered significant cuts. Last year, the city recorded its highest homicide total in two decades. By taking simple, common-sense considerations into account, we are encouraging every jurisdiction in this country to cooperate with federal law enforcement. U.S. Atty. Gen. Jeff Sessions As the police department works to rebuild, it has sought help from the federal government to help offset its limited resources. Late last year, city officials excitedly touted a $2.8-million grant from the Department of Justice to help fund 11 new officers. The new assistance program the city wants to join, the National Public Safety Partnership, would help the department learn how other communities around the nation have successfully dealt with high violent crime rates, Burguan said. Though the city has made some progress on its own, Im certainly in no position that I want to turn it down, Burguan said of the sought-after help. Similarly, homicides in Baltimore climbed into the triple digits through the first four months of 2017, the citys highest murder rate per capita in recorded history, according to city officials. Violent crime was up 23% as of May 1, compared with the same time frame last year, with homicides, shootings and robberies all increasing by double digits. Last week, the Justice Department announced that cooperation with immigration enforcement specifically, agreements to let agents into jails to pick up people suspected of being in the country illegally would be a condition for local police departments to receive a host of law enforcement-related grants totaling about $380 million for next year. Significantly, in the letters sent this week, the department for the first time is asking whether cities are willing to comply with detainer requests from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The detainers ask police to hold people for up to 48 hours after they would otherwise be released from custody in order to give ICE agents time to take them into federal custody. Some appeals courts have held that such requests, without warrants, are illegal. In light of the legal rulings, none of the county sheriffs in California many of whom support a hard-line stance on immigration honor detainer requests. As in other immigration initiatives, the Trump administrations sanctuary city crackdown has been frustrated by federal courts. A judge in San Francisco blocked an executive order from Trump that would have denied all federal funding to municipalities that refuse to assist on immigration enforcement. That case is still ongoing, along with other challenges to the order. There is no clear agreement on what constitutes a sanctuary city. That confusion, along with gaffes by the Justice and Homeland Security departments along the way, have hamstrung the campaign. In April, Homeland Security officials publicly released an online database of immigrants in detention that was supposed to help the public search for potential criminals, only to discover that children as young as 3 and 4 were included. Department officials said a filter was not properly applied to the data made available on the website. And several months ago, immigration officials began publishing error-plagued reports on jurisdictions they said were releasing immigrants from jail or after arrest despite detainer requests. In some cases, ICE mixed up names, such as confusing Franklin counties in Iowa, New York and Pennsylvania. In other cases, the detainees had already been picked up by ICE or had never been released. But Sessions, a strong proponent of lower immigration rates, has continued to push the cause aggressively, highlighting cases in which people in the country illegally have committed violent crimes and condemning sanctuary cities as havens for these criminals. By taking simple, common-sense considerations into account, we are encouraging every jurisdiction in this country to cooperate with federal law enforcement, Sessions said in a statement that accompanied the letters Thursday. That will ultimately make all of us safer especially law enforcement on our streets. The letters sent this week presented a litmus test to the four cities. The police chiefs were given until Aug. 18 to show they have policies in place that call for jailers to honor the detainer requests, grant immigration officers access to their jails and provide notice before releasing an inmate ICE agents have said they want to take into custody. Its unfortunate when things like this become politicized. Stockton Police Chief Eric Jones Because they run no jails, officials in San Bernardino, Baltimore and Albuquerque presumably will be able to argue the policy questions are irrelevant to them. In at least some of the cities, people who are arrested can be briefly detained in holding cells rarely long enough for immigration agents to issue a detainer request. Then the inmates are sent to county and state facilities. Stockton Police Chief Eric Jones said he was disappointed by the Department of Justices decision to use the program for political leverage. For us, its all about reducing violent crime. Thats what the PSP is about. Its unfortunate when things like this become politicized, he said. The chief added that he does not see a connection between illegal immigration and violent crime in Stockton. While the city struggles with gang violence, most of those factions are generational gangs that do not come from outside the country, he said. Despite years of increasing violence, violent crime is down 2% in Stockton so far this year, Jones said. Twelve cities are already enrolled in the Public Safety Partnership, which enlists federal agents, analysts and technology to help communities find solutions to crime. The group includes Houston, which is challenging a state law that would compel cities to turn over immigrants. Sergio Luna, an organizer with Inland Congregations United for Change a coalition of religious groups and others that has for years pushed San Bernardino to do more to address its violence problems said that by tying funding for crime reduction to immigration efforts, the federal government does a disservice to a community in real need of help. Its unfortunate that the administration is basically telling its own citizens, Well deny you funding for something youre obviously in desperate need of just to advance our own agenda of cracking down on immigrants, he said. I think its a bad situation for the entire population of San Bernardino and completely unfair for the immigrant community that is not even the root cause of the urban gun violence that takes place. Times staff writers Cindy Carcamo and Joel Rubin contributed to this report. joseph.tanfani@latimes.com paloma.esquivel@latimes.com james.queally@latimes.com Follow us on Twitter: @jtanfani, @palomaesquivel and @JamesQueallyLAT. ALSO Congress takes aim at the Clean Air Act, putting the limits of Californias power to the test Trumps Cabinet seeks spiritual guidance from minister with a dim view of female politicians Justice Department calls for review of race-based college admissions, alarming civil rights groups UPDATES: 4:25 p.m.: This article was updated with comments from the cities that were sent letters as well as background about rising crime in some of those jurisdictions. 10:15 a.m.: This article was updated with staff reporting and details about violent crime in the cities that received letters. This article was originally published at 7:55 a.m. Firefighters rescued three people who got stuck Wednesday evening on a bungee-jump attraction at the Ventura County Fair, officials said. Shortly before 8 p.m. on the fairs opening night, fire crews were called to the fairground, where a 19-year-old man had been dangling upside down 30 feet in the air for about half an hour, according to a dispatcher with the Ventura County Fire Department. Crews rescued him using a ladder. The two others were rescued from a basket between 90 and 100 feet in the air, where they had been waiting to jump, the Ventura Fire Department said in a statement. The pair were too high to reach with a ladder so crews had to set up a rope system to rappel them down. Advertisement No one was injured. WATCH #LIVE: Rescue crews work to help people stuck on bungee ride at Ventura County Fair https://t.co/C8nRNwa2wB pic.twitter.com/WLzrni5eUN ABC7 Eyewitness News (@ABC7) August 3, 2017 It was not clear what caused the fairgoers to get stuck. A fair representative could not immediately be reached. The incident comes after several thrill rides at fairs and parks across California were shut down following a fatal ride malfunction in Ohio. State officials have since allowed some to reopen. alene.tchekmedyian@latimes.com Twitter: @AleneTchek ALSO Thrill ride breaks apart, killing 1 and injuring 7 at the Ohio State Fair Vortex ride injures five at North Carolina State Fair 36 treated after major accident at Simi Valley fireworks show UPDATES: Aug. 3, 6:00 a.m.: This post was updated with details about the rescue. This post was originally published Aug. 2 at 11:10 p.m. Jeff Brotman, who co-founded retail giant Costco and was the chairman of its board of directors, has died at his home outside Seattle. Costco Wholesale Corp. said Brotman died early Tuesday at 74. The cause of death was immediately known. Brotman had attended a dinner in Seattle for about 2,000 Costco managers from around the world the evening before his death, the Seattle Times reported. Advertisement The thoughts of Costcos board, management and employees are with Jeffs wife and family, the company said. Brotman opened Costcos first warehouse with Jim Sinegal in 1983 in Seattle. Months earlier, Brotman had met venture capitalist Fred Paulsell on a flight to Seattle that was struck by lightning and made an emergency landing in San Francisco. Brotman talked to Paulsell about his idea of opening a chain of low-cost warehouse clubs, and Paulsell ended up providing critical financing and advice for the start-up. Based in Issaquah, Wash., the company now operates 736 warehouses around the world, including 511 in the United States and Puerto Rico. Costco has generally been ranked as the worlds second largest retailer, behind Wal-Mart. Amazon, though, has now surpassed both. Brotman was a major supporter of Democratic political candidates. In 2012, he hosted a fundraising luncheon for President Obama at his home in Medina, Wash. Along with Starbucks Chairman Howard Schultz, Brotman also hosted a $5,000-a-plate fundraising event in 2000 for then-vice presidential nominee Joe Lieberman. He endorsed Hillary Clintons presidential campaign in 2016. He was regent at the University of Washington in Seattle, where he studied political science and earned an undergraduate degree in 1964. He later earned a law degree from the university in 1967. While he was a student there, he worked for his familys business, a mens clothing chain called Bernies. He was married to former Nordstrom executive Susan Brotman. A Times staff writer contributed to this report ALSO Judith Jones dies at 93; changed American cuisine by publishing Julia Child Ara Parseghian, who led Notre Dame to 2 national football championships, dies at 94 Harold Williams, who oversaw construction of the Getty as founding president of J. Paul Getty Trust, dies at 89 With few good military or diplomatic options and the danger clearly escalating, the Trump administration is struggling with how to confront a nuclear-armed North Korea that suddenly appears capable of hitting California and beyond with a ballistic missile. As experts study whether Pyongyangs second intercontinental missile test landed on target in the Sea of Japan, as initial reports indicated, or disintegrated after it reentered the atmosphere late Friday, as some evidence suggests, senior administration officials have given mixed messages about a possible U.S. response. Its unclear if the disparate messages particularly over whether the U.S. seeks the ouster of North Korean ruler Kim Jong Un represent a deliberate effort to keep Pyongyang off guard as to U.S. intentions, or indicates ambivalence on a major foreign policy issue in a White House battling chaos on several fronts. Advertisement President Trump repeatedly insisted this week that he will handle North Korea and on Wednesday he signed legislation that will impose more sanctions on Pyongyang. But he has not indicated how he would defuse the mounting threat beyond demanding that China apply more political and economic pressure to rein in its neighbor. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson leaves Thursday for an Assn. of Southeast Asian Nations security conference in Manila. Despite the rising tensions, he will not meet North Koreas foreign minister, Ri Yong Ho, while in the Philippines, officials said Wednesday. But Tillerson used a news conference Tuesday at the State Department to seemingly speak directly to the leaders in Pyongyang. We do not seek a regime change, he said. We do not seek the collapse of the regime. We do not seek an accelerated reunification of the peninsula. We do not seek an excuse to send our military north of the 38th parallel, the heavily guarded border between North and South Korea. And were trying to convey to the North Koreans we are not your enemy, we are not your threat, he added. But you are presenting an unacceptable threat to us, and we have to respond. Tillerson described U.S. sanctions on North Korea and efforts to isolate it diplomatically, politically and economically as peaceful pressure. CIA Director Mike Pompeo had suggested a more bellicose approach at a security conference in Colorado last month. He repeatedly called for separating Kim from his nuclear arsenal, saying the North Korean people would love to see him go. It would be a great thing to denuclearize the peninsula, Pompeo said at the Aspen Security Forum on July 21. But the thing that is most dangerous about it is the character who holds the control over them today. He added: So from the administrations perspective, the most important thing we can do is separate those two. Pompeo said the intelligence community and the Department of Defense have been tasked with drafting plans for what ultimately needs to be achieved with regard to North Koreas nuclear threat. As for the regime, I am hopeful we will find a way to separate that regime from this system, Pompeo said. The North Korean people Im sure are lovely people and would love to see him go. Experts say North Korea still does not have a reliable intercontinental ballistic missile, or ICBM. It also has not built a nuclear warhead small enough to fit atop an ICBM and robust enough to survive the intense heat and pressure of reentry. But both those achievements now appear within reach. After the latest test, the U.S. and its regional allies responded with a symbolic show of force. On Saturday, U.S. and South Korean forces launched salvos of missiles into the sea from South Koreas east coast. The next day, the U.S. Air Force flew two supersonic B-1 bombers over the Korean Peninsula along with fighter jets from Japan and South Korea. U.S. forces in Alaska also conducted what officials described as a successful test of the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense system, which was recently deployed in South Korea. They said the antimissile system detected, tracked and intercepted a medium-range ballistic missile over the Pacific Ocean. Officials later acknowledged that the truck-mounted system is not capable of shooting down an ICBM and said the test had been previously scheduled. On Wednesday, the U.S. Air force launched an unarmed Minuteman III from Vandenberg Air Force Base into the central Pacific. It was the fourth test of the ICBM, which can carry a nuclear warhead, from the Santa Barbara County base this year. North Korea remains the most urgent threat to regional stability, said Gen. Terrence J. OShaughnessy, commander of the Air Force component in U.S. Pacific Command. If called upon, we are ready to respond with rapid, lethal, and overwhelming force at a time and place of our choosing. Defense Secretary James N. Mattis has sought to downplay the likelihood of a U.S. attack on North Korea. But he also has said Pyongyang must change its behavior. Gen. Joseph F. Dunford Jr., chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said a U.S. military strike remains an option if all others fail, even though an armed conflict with Pyongyang could produce millions of casualties in the two Koreas and Japan. Many people have talked about military options with words like unimaginable, Dunford said at the Aspen conference. I would probably shift that slightly and say it would be horrific a loss of life unlike any we have experienced in our lifetimes. The mixed messages start from the White House, where Trump asserted Saturday on Twitter that China has done NOTHING for us just talk to help with North Korea. We will no longer allow this to continue, he added. China could easily solve this problem! The State Department offered a different view Wednesday. Susan Thornton, the acting assistant secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific affairs, said China has taken unprecedented steps to rein in North Korea. They realize that this is becoming a greater and greater threat to Chinas own security, she told reporters. China is showing growing determination to address the crisis but can do a lot more, she added. We would like to see more action, faster and more obvious, and quick results, Thornton said. But I think were not giving up yet. China has urged Washington to negotiate directly with Pyongyang, a prospect that Trump appeared to consider in May when he said he would be honored to meet with Kim under the right circumstances. No such meeting appears likely. Tillerson repeated U.S. demands Tuesday that North Korea give up its nuclear arms unilaterally before any direct talks, a pre-condition that Kims government dismisses out of hand. Some foreign policy experts have advocated for China to take the lead in talks patterned after the six-nation talks that brokered the Iranian nuclear disarmament deal in 2015. Previous multilateral talks with Pyongyang collapsed in 2009 after the United Nations Security Council slapped new sanctions on North Korea for testing a three-stage rocket in violation of a U.N. resolution. Pyongyang pulled out of the talks in protest and they have not resumed. tracy.wilkinson@latimes.com For more on international affairs, follow @TracyKWilkinson on Twitter A Northwestern University associate professor and a University of Oxford employee were being sought in connection with the stabbing death of a man in a Near North Side apartment, according to public records. A Cook County judge issued arrest warrants Monday charging Wyndham Lathem, 42, and Andrew Warren, 56, with first-degree murder in the death of 26-year-old Trenton Cornell-Duranleau last week, records show. An alert broadcast over police radio said the two should be considered armed and dangerous. Late Wednesday afternoon, Chicago police spokesman Anthony Guglielmi reported no arrests. "Our search will only intensify,'' tweeted Guglielmi. "Prof Latham [Lathem] & Mr Warren, do the right thing & turn yourself in to any police dept.'' Lathem is an associate professor at Northwestern's Department of Microbiology-Immunology at the Feinberg School of Medicine. In his LinkedIn profile, Lathem said his research is focused on pathogens and the diseases they cause. Trenton Cornell-Duranleau, 26, was found stabbed to death in a 10th-floor apartment on Chicagos Near North Side on July 27. (Family photo) Lathem has been placed on administrative leave and is banned from all Northwestern campuses, according to school spokesman Alan K. Cubbage. He was a faculty researcher at the school's Chicago campus. The university is cooperating with the police investigation, Cubbage said. Warren is a senior treasury assistant at Somerville College, part of the Oxford University network, in Oxford England, according to a university Web page. Chicago police officers were sent to a 10th-floor apartment in the 500 block of North State Street about 8:30 p.m. Thursday after a maintenance worker reported getting an anonymous call that a crime was committed there. Officers found Cornell-Duranleau dead on the scene. Lathem lists his home at the same address on State Street, public records show. Cornell-Duranleau died of multiple sharp force injuries, according to the Cook County medical examiners office. He had lived in the 2200 block of South Wood Street in the Heart of Chicago neighborhood on the Near Southwest Side, the office said. He grew up in Michigan, according to public records. Cornell-Duranleau earned a state license as a cosmetologist in 2011, according to the Michigan Department of Licensing and Regulatory Affairs. His mother, Mischelle Duranleau, posted a message on Facebook over the weekend asking for prayers "as we navigate this very dark part of our Journey." According to an obituary posted by the mother, Cornell-Duranleau was born in Lennon, Mich., a small town about 50 miles northeast of Lansing. "Throughout his life he loved music and animals," the obituary said. "His enthusiasm for life was infectious. Trenton was a caregiver and loved to help others. His youthful free-spirit fueled his love of cars, video games and cartoons." Northwestern was made aware of the investigation into Cornell-Duranleau's death on Monday afternoon, Cubbage said. Lathem has been with Northwestern since 2007, according to Cubbage, who said he worked primarily in a research lab. "At some point in the past few years he taught medical students or graduate students, never undergrad, Cubbage said. Lathem was not currently teaching and was not scheduled to be in a classroom in the fall, Cubbage said. Oxford University, where Warren, the other suspect, worked, released a statement Tuesday saying it was "not aware of this case, which is clearly extremely concerning. We will liaise with the relevant investigating authorities and provide any assistance that is required. ALSO Woman who encouraged boyfriend to kill himself via text to be sentenced today Caltech professor resigns after investigation finds he harassed female grad students Marion 'Suge' Knight charged with threatening director of the film 'Straight Outta Compton' Kidd Creole, founding member of Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five, arrested on murder charge in New York The Justice Department signaled Wednesday that it would examine race-based discrimination in college admissions, alarming some civil rights advocates who fear that the Trump administration is trying to roll back affirmative action policies. In an internal job posting, the departments Civil Rights Division said it was seeking lawyers willing to work on an investigation and potential litigation involving race-based admissions policies. Although Justice Department officials said the move does not herald a shift toward attacking race-conscious admissions policies, civil rights advocates and legal experts said the investment of resources could have a ripple effect that hurts minority students hoping to enroll in college. Advertisement In addition, they say, the effort by Atty. Gen. Jeff Sessions, who as an Alabama senator voiced opposition to affirmative action, is another stark contrast between the priorities of his Justice Department and those of former Atty. Gen. Eric H. Holder Jr., who served under President Obama. Whenever theres a credible allegation of discrimination on the basis of race, the department will look into it, said a Justice Department official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the departments policy to not discuss personnel matters. The Justice Departments job posting was first reported late Tuesday by the New York Times. At her regular briefing on Wednesday, White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders acknowledged that the newspaper had obtained a leaked internal personnel posting, but declined to comment on it, except to say: The Department of Justice will always review credible allegations of discrimination on the basis of any race. Hours later, the Justice Department issued a statement saying the posting was in response to a complaint filed in 2015 regarding allegations of discrimination against Asian Americans in an unidentified universitys admissions practices. In recent years, the Supreme Court has mostly ruled favorably on affirmative action in college admissions, although it has upheld some restrictions at the state level that have significantly chipped away at the practice. Last year, in a 4-3 decision, the Supreme Court upheld the use of race as one factor in evaluating college applicants. The case, Fisher vs. University of Texas, centered on Abigail Fisher, a white Texas resident, who filed suit after she was denied admission there. She had argued that the universitys consideration of race in admissions discriminated against her because she was white. Abigail Fisher, who challenged the use of race in college admissions, with lawyer Edward Blum after oral arguments before the Supreme Court on Dec. 9, 2015. (J. Scott Applewhite / Associated Press) In cases in 2003 and 1978, the Supreme Court ruled that race could be among several factors weighed when admitting students. The 1978 case, Regents of University of California vs. Bakke, was a major turning point, said Lee Bollinger, president of Columbia University, who argued in favor of affirmative action before the Supreme Court in 2003 in cases involving the University of Michigan. In the Bakke case, which involved a medical school applicant to UC Davis, Justice Lewis F. Powell Jr. wrote that university leaders could not use affirmative action to correct social injustice, but could as a way to achieve a diverse student body which would contribute to a robust exchange of ideas. It severed a major reason for using the policy, Bollinger said. The job posting at the Justice Department caused concerns among civil rights groups that fear the Trump administration will seek to investigate claims similar to Fishers. Jessica A. Levinson, a professor at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles, said the Justice Department could indirectly intimidate universities from using race as a factor in admissions. This easily could have a chilling effect, as universities would not want to be subject to being sued or investigated, Levinson said. Derrick Johnson, interim president and chief executive of the National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People, said in a statement that the Justice Department seems laser-focused on achieving rights and privileges for just-us, totally excluding people of color. Affirmative action was not created as a way for African-Americans, Latinos, or Asian-Americans to get an unfair advantage over their white peers, Johnson said. Its a mechanism to level the playing field and create equal opportunity for people of color following decades of oppression. We should promote and foster efforts to promote diversity on college and university campuses not hinder it. And Matt Cregor, education projects director at the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights and Economic Justice, said, If they want to go after affirmative action, they should go after legacy. So-called legacy admissions policies, which favor the children of alumni, ultimately exclude minorities from pipelines to leadership jobs, said USC Rossier School of Education professor Estela Bensimon. Criteria have changed over time, depending on who was being advantaged, she said. When Jews were outscoring non-Jewish white students, the criteria for admission at elite universities changed to include character. Legacy is typically an issue at private schools, which have generally been outside the scope of efforts to rein in affirmative action. While the courts have affirmed the use of affirmative action in higher education, eight states, including Michigan, Oklahoma, California and Arizona, have barred its use. The state bans generally arose from ballot initiatives or state legislators. Theres long been a perception that there were enormous preferences given to minority students and that this crowded out lots and lots of white students, said Jesse Rothstein, professor of public policy and economics at the UC Berkeley. In California, voters greenlighted the ban through a ballot initiative in 1996, Proposition 209, which passed with 54.6% of the vote. The measures passage initially decreased black and Latino enrollment throughout the University of California system, particularly at its most selective schools. But UCLA has used other methods, such as recruiting in high-minority areas, to boost its diversity: In 2015, the school caught up to its pre-Proposition 209 levels of minority student enrollment. UC has been increasing its outreach efforts to historically underrepresented groups like Latinos and African Americans, while still bound to the strictures of Proposition 209, which bars consideration of race or ethnicity in granting admission, UC President Janet Napolitano said in a statement. It would be tragic, to say the least, if these efforts somehow ran afoul of this reported misguided Justice Department initiative. One reason states started banning affirmative action, Bollinger said, is a disconnection from history. During the civil rights movement and the Jim Crow era, Bollinger said, people were painfully aware of the injustices of slavery and Jim Crow laws that favored whites over African Americans and Hispanics, he said. Its hard for movements to sustain themselves. In 1997, Sessions told the Senate Judiciary Committee that affirmative action was a very, very difficult subject. I think it has, in fact, been a cause of irritation and perhaps has delayed the kind of movement to racial harmony we ought to be going forward [with] today. I think it makes people unhappy if they lost a contract or a right to go to a school or a privilege to attend a university simply because of their race, he said at the time. More recently, Sessions Justice Department has staked out positions on civil rights that have concerned several groups and have contrasted with positions under the Obama administration. Last month, the department filed a brief in an employment discrimination case arguing that the Civil Rights Act does not protect people who are fired because of their sexual orientation. And in July, the department reversed an Obama-era position on a Texas voter identification law. The department filed a motion in a federal court to dismiss the departments earlier claim that the ID law was enacted with the intention of discriminating against minority voters. In a May memo to federal prosecutors, Sessions instructed them to pursue the harshest punishments legally allowed, another reversal of an Obama-era move that gave federal lawyers more leeway to reserve such prosecutions for repeat offenders and people who had committed the worst of crimes. Justice Department officials hope the changes at the federal level which prosecutes a sliver of crimes across the country will trickle down to a similar approach to crime in states. Vanita Gupta, president and CEO of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, which advocates on behalf of civil rights groups, focused on affirmative action Wednesday, saying the move by the Justice Department was another example of the administration changing course on a key civil rights issue. The announcement today that it is now actively seeking to challenge efforts that colleges and universities have undertaken to expand educational opportunity is an affront to our values as a country and the very mission of the Civil Rights Division, Gupta, who led that division under Obama, said in a statement. Longstanding Supreme Court precedent has upheld the constitutionality and compelling state interest of these policies, and generations of Americans have benefited from richer, more inclusive institutions of higher education. kurtis.lee@latimes.com joy.resmovits@latimes.com Times staff writer Joseph Tanfani in Washington contributed to this report. ALSO Kern High School District settles with parents who felt their children were targeted for being minorities Latino, black state lawmakers press California gubernatorial candidates on affirmative action As candidates for governor are pressed on affirmative action, Antonio Villaraigosa says its vital to California In a city known for its rainy season a depressing stretch of moisture, gloom and short days that goes from roughly Halloween to the Fourth of July Portlanders hold their summers sacred. Summer in the City of Roses is ordinarily a relentless run of sunshine and robins-egg blue skies a time so pleasant that Portlanders joke about an unwritten rule: Never tell outsiders about summer, or they might stampede here, and even stay. But this week, as a punishing heat wave bears down on Portland and much of western Oregon, Portlanders have given their town such nicknames as Hotlandia, along with less polite sobriquets. Advertisement The nearly 640,000 residents of the city are suffering through a relative hell on Earth, with temperatures climbing into the 100s. Wednesday reached 103 in Portland, an all-time high for that date, and Thursday hit 106, another record, according to AccuWeather. The good news is an earlier forecast predicted 109. Summer temperatures tend to peak in the 70s, and the average temperature in Portland on Aug. 3 is 70.6. The all-time hottest temperature on record in the city, 107, has been recorded three times the last in 1981. The misery caused by Portlands heat has been compounded by large wildfires in British Columbia, Canada, and another near Oregons Mt. Jefferson, which have blown a smoky haze into Portland, giving pockets of the city the look of a backyard barbecue gone bad. Usually, on a clear day, you can look at hillsides and see green conifers that shimmer in the summer sun. Now, the smoke has given the trees a gray cast, a look usually associated here with fall. That is, if you can see the trees at all. You cant even see the mountains, said Lori Thompson, who was giving a tour to a group of more than a dozen middle school students visiting from Asago, Japan. Thompson stood near a water fountain at the Portland waterfront, where little kids, and even a few teens, found relief from the heat. The Japanese students got into the water too. This was supposed to be a walking tour of Portland, she said. Now its a fountain tour. Running is wildly popular in the Portland area. Adidas North America is based on the north side of Portland and nearby Beaverton is home to Nike. By midmorning, when groups of runners would normally be huffing along, just an occasional runner could be spotted. Still, Portlanders are trying to maintain a sense of humor, at least on Twitter. This week, one observer using the handle Les HailYes wryly tweeted about Portlands counterculture reputation: Its so hot in #Portland that the city is setting up beard cooling stations for the hipsters. #PortlandHeatWave. Its so hot in #Portland that the city is setting up beard cooling stations for the hipsters #PortlandHeatWave Les Hail Yes (@LesHailYes) August 1, 2017 As if the heat and haze werent bad enough, 30% of households in the Portland area have no air-conditioning, according to statistics reported by one of the local newspapers, Willamette Week. Portland-based Standard TV & Appliance would sell few, if any, air-conditioning units during a typical week in August, said Diane DeHaven, the companys marketing manager. But late last week, when the string of 100-degree days was forecast, there was a run on air-conditioning units of every stripe. The shop sold about 100, DeHaven said. Were used to mild weather, and people normally just suck it up, she said. But when temperatures reach into triple digits, people go to pieces. We panic just like we panic when it starts to snow in Portland. Our air-conditioner sales are definitely driven by heat waves, she said. We still have them in stock. Our supply is dwindling, but we still have more than the big-box stores. I know Best Buy, theyre out. Wal-Mart, theyre out. The extreme heat even affected the commuter rail system. Portlands metropolitan train lines have been forced to slow down, causing delays. The heat can cause the copper in overhead wires to expand, and it can also cause the rails themselves to expand, said Tommy Moore, a spokesman for the TriMet public transportation system. Trains that ordinarily outrun cars on the freeways have been forced to a relative crawl of 35 mph. Moore, who moved to Portland from Colorado two weeks ago, was astonished by the hot weather. He seemed relieved to know this week was not normal. Ive lived in hotter places, he said, but Im a cool-weather person. Multnomah County has opened cooling stations, encouraging residents to drink lots of water and avoid alcohol, among other measures. But this is Portland, after all, home to some of the countrys finest craft beer, where the citys leading beer retailer, Johns Marketplace, reported a weeklong run on kegs and cases. It really gets busy after 2 p.m., said Rick Erickson, a day manager at Johns, who said sales have probably jumped 50% during the heat wave. The beer keeps selling, he said between sales, at 9:05 a.m., whether youre rich or poor. While folks in Phoenix and Las Vegas might wonder why folks in Portland are raising such a fuss about a few hot days with low humidity, its a relative thing. Portlands climate is more like Londons. The year-round average temperature runs about 54 degrees. For Mohamed Jasin, who works at a downtown food cart called Mawj Iraqi Cuisini, his only relief from the heat Thursday was a little electric fan. Jasin, a 55-year-old Iraqi who left Baghdad two years ago, wiped away sweat as he served customers. Today, its very hot, he said. But compared to Baghdad? He smiled and looked away. For us, this is OK. No problem. Meanwhile, theres no relief in sight, throughout western Oregon and up into Washington state. Portlands Friday forecast is milder, but not by much: a high of 97. Denson is a special correspondent. ALSO In Portland, a fitful start to a new way to help the homeless: A village of tiny houses Portlands bike-share program was called exclusive. Heres what the city is doing about it As extreme cold moves into Portland, the homeless die Good morning, and welcome to the Essential California newsletter. Its Thursday, Aug. 3, and heres whats happening across California: TOP STORIES The perils of L.A.s budget Los Angeles is indeed spending more on its streets, sidewalks and other infrastructure. Yet even in a booming economy, Mayor Eric Garcetti faces a daunting set of budget challenges including a projected gap of more than $200 million in two years, budget estimates show. Garcetti, in an interview, argued that the citys finances are quite strong. Since the recession, he said, city leaders have built up more than $400 million in reserves, double the amount available a decade ago. Los Angeles Times Advertisement Da-dum Da-dum Da-dum-da-dum-da-dum ... A close encounter with a shark got Times columnist Steve Lopez out of the water but not for long. He writes: Im not brave enough to paddle straight out, 300 yards from shore, but I grew up swimming on the California coast, and its not something I want to give up. Besides, the growing shark population signals a healthy ecosystem, and thats something to celebrate rather than fear. Los Angeles Times Irvine tracks back UC Irvine, under fire for rescinding nearly 500 admission offers two months before the start of the fall term, announced Wednesday that it will reinstate all 290 students whose offers were withdrawn for alleged paperwork problems. Appeals from students whose acceptances were withdrawn because of poor senior grades will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis.Los Angeles Times L.A. STORIES Yuck weather: Muggy and sticky conditions persisted Wednesday in Southern California as monsoonal moisture brings summer rains, thunderstorms and the threat of flash flooding to the valleys. Los Angeles Times More details emerge: The Los Angeles police officer accused of having sex with a 15-year-old member of the departments cadet program took the victim to Six Flags Magic Mountain on the day of the alleged sexual assaults, according to three sources with knowledge of the case. Los Angeles Times Ominous stuff: A 5% rent hike next year in metropolitan Los Angeles would push 2,000 more residents into homelessness, a new study warns. Los Angeles Times The mystery of Angelyne: Way before Paris Hilton and Kim Kardashian, the enigmatic blonde bombshell was famous for being famous, perpetually driving the streets of Hollywood in that pink Corvette. But her true identity has remained secret all these years until now. The Hollywood Reporter Zine fest: In Long Beach, women of color are turning to something old-fashioned the printed word to tell their stories. LA Weekly IMMIGRATION AND THE BORDER Watch: After President Trump announced he would support a bill to cut legal immigration to the U.S., White House advisor Stephen Miller and CNN reporter Jim Acosta got into a heated exchange on immigration policy and the Statue of Liberty. Los Angeles Times POLITICS AND GOVERNMENT Well-heeled: President Trump may be considering two wealthy Southern Californians and major GOP donors for ambassadorships. Trump said he is mulling over naming longtime friend Tom Barrack, an investor and former Hollywood studio head, as the U.S. ambassador to Mexico. Los Angeles Times That light in the sky: An unarmed intercontinental ballistic missile was launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base early Wednesday to test the weapons reliability to defend against attacks on the United States and its allies, the Air Force said. Los Angeles Times Fake news alert! This past weekend, InfoWars peddled a spurious story about a homeless camp at the Santa Ana Civic Centers Plaza of the Flags. Orange County Weekly Back to the drawing board: State water regulators have agreed to eliminate a cap on hexavalent chromium, the toxic chemical made famous in the movie Erin Brockovich, in drinking water after a court ruling. But theyve vowed to create a new limit as soon as possible. Sacramento Bee About that bullet train: Californias high-speed rail backers suffered a legal setback Wednesday when a U.S. appeals court said that a federal boards decision declaring the project immune from the states environmental laws was merely advisory. Los Angeles Times Laugh it up: How comedy both political and otherwise is changing in the Trump era. The California Sunday Magazine CRIME AND COURTS More settlements: The Los Angeles City Council agreed Wednesday to spend $450,000 to settle a lawsuit filed by one of four women who accused two police officers of sexual assault a scandal that ultimately led to criminal charges for the officers and a mounting financial fallout in civil court. Los Angeles Times Shooting update: Two Yuba County deputies who were shot multiple times at a Rastafarian churchs marijuana farm in Northern California on Tuesday are expected to survive, authorities said. Los Angeles Times Robbery in Tarzana: Police are searching for two men who held up a Tarzana Verizon store at gunpoint and made off with thousands of dollars worth of smartphones Wednesday morning. CBS LA HBO hack: The pay channel is still trying to figure out the extent of the cyberattack on its computer systems but so far there is no evidence that employees emails were stolen, the companys top executive told staff. Los Angeles Times THE ENVIRONMENT Browns big stand: When President Trump withdrew the United States from the Paris climate agreement, it stunned the world. But it also had a less predictable effect: turning California Gov. Jerry Brown into Trumps antithesis and furthering his own climate-crusading agenda. Washington Post Long-distance travel: During Californias rainy season, climate scientists say, dust from as far away as the Gobi Desert in Asia is carried by the global jet stream and deposited on top of Yosemites granite bedrock, where microscopic material within the dust feeds the vast forests of the Sierra. Los Angeles Times CALIFORNIA CULTURE Fixing Highway 1: Caltrans announced Wednesday that it plans to rebuild Highway 1 on top of a massive landslide that occurred last winter near Big Sur. Los Angeles Times Biking in L.A.: The recently departed executive director of the Los Angeles County Bicycle Coalition explains here how biking, affordability and inequality travel hand in hand. Curbed LA A slowdown: Television pilot production in Los Angeles dropped to its lowest level in seven years, but the region managed to hold on to its portion of overall pilot shoots, according to a new report. Los Angeles Times Get ready! Cracker Barrel Old Country Store, a staple along highways in the South and Midwest, has broken ground on its first restaurant in California. Orange County Register Check it out: Jay-Z and Beyonce are about to become L.A. homeowners, if a $90-million deal goes through. Los Angeles Times CALIFORNIA ALMANAC Los Angeles area: partly cloudy Thursday, sunny Friday. San Diego: sunny Thursday and Friday. Sacramento and San Francisco area: partly cloudy Thursday and Friday. More weather is here. AND FINALLY Todays California memory comes from James Evans: On my 10th birthday, 1953, my mom, my brother Les, our collie, Skipper, and our cat Max arrived at Yosemites Camp 4. Five days later, a large buck nuzzled Maxs stomach as he lay on his back. Just watch, my Dad said. Suddenly, the buck rose, and Max went with him and over the top of his antlers landing safely in the brush. Then the crowd oohed when the buck stomped the ground where Max had been. Later, I became a Yosemite National Park ranger, riding the Wilderness Horse Patrol during four summers in graduate school. Yosemite remains my favorite place on earth. If you have a memory or story about the Golden State, share it with us. Send us an email to let us know what you love or fondly remember about our state. (Please keep your story to 100 words.) Please let us know what we can do to make this newsletter more useful to you. Send comments, complaints and ideas to Benjamin Oreskes and Shelby Grad. Also follow them on Twitter @boreskes and @shelbygrad. With North Koreas latest test of an intercontinental ballistic missile, one apparently capable of reaching California, the American foreign policy community is struggling to find a way short of war to end the threat from Pyongyang. In the media and behind closed doors, some are suggesting that the U.S. should approach China for a grand bargain. The idea is deceptively simple: China would intervene in North Korea, most likely by removing Kim Jong Un from power and installing a puppet in his place. In return, the U.S. would withdraw or significantly reduce our forces in South Korea and potentially forces farther afield in Asia. This may sound like an effective, realpolitik means of breaking a decades-long stalemate. After all, American presidents have been saying for years that China is the key to solving the North Korea puzzle. Such a pact would force Beijing into taking action rather than offering platitudes. It would also end the charade of American sanctions, which are regularly watered down or undercut by China and Russia. Most of all, it would rid the world of Kim a brutal, dangerous despot and end his familys absolute rule. Advertisement But in reality, a grand bargain with China is likely to destroy Americas global influence, making it impossible for Washington to maintain stability in strategic areas, particularly in Asia and Europe. Indeed, merely proposing an agreement of this sort would make the U.S. into a paper tiger and compromise American credibility in Asia and around the world. Washington also needs to end the fantasy of North Korean denuclearization, which, short of all-out war, will never happen. A grand bargain would effectively transfer Americas dominance to China. No matter how the White House spun such a deal, world leaders would infer that the U.S. had gone hat in hand to China. Recognizing China as the true foreign power on the peninsula, South Korea and other Asian nations would tilt inevitably toward Beijing. Its also possible that South Korea and Japan, among other countries, would decide that they had no choice but to develop nuclear weapons for their own national defense. Moreover, having seen the U.S. kowtow, Beijing would likely take a more assertive posture in the South China Sea and push Washington further, demanding a more comprehensive drawdown of American military forces from East Asia. Even if Washington refused to buckle, Sino-U.S. relations would enter a period of heightened tension and antagonism, undoubtedly encouraging both Moscow and Tehran to double down on their destabilizing behavior. In short, a bargain would spell serial diplomatic failure for the U.S. As frustrating as it may seem, our long-standing strategy of containment and deterrence toward North Korea remains our best hope. This strategy will test our patience, but there are a few policies the White House can adopt to make its position more credible. First, Washington ought to acknowledge openly that North Korea is a country with weapons of mass destruction that can strike not just other Asian countries, but also the continental United States. Washington also needs to end the fantasy of North Korean denuclearization, which, short of all-out war, will never happen. That will at least free up American diplomats from endless, meaningless negotiations. It is better to be feared by Pyongyang than held in contempt for our willingness to believe that it might one day give up its nuclear program. Second, the U.S. should announce an assured destruction policy in response to any use of nuclear weapons by the North. If Pyongyang has no intention of using its weapons, then we have little to worry about. But if Kim is tempted to do so, our threat may give him pause, or create rifts within the elite that could result in Kim being neutered. This move would also outflank any attempts at nuclear blackmail by Kim, since Washington would make clear that the use of nuclear weapons would result in the complete destruction of his regime. Finally, the Trump administration would be wise to commit to a comprehensive missile defense program in order to defend against North Koreas relatively limited, though lethal, ICBM capability. The cost of exploring all possible means of missile defense, including air-based and space-based directed-energy weapons, is a small investment next to the potential of a catastrophic war. Acknowledging our diplomatic failures and taking these steps would increase our chances of containing North Korea. The alternative a misguided and rushed grand bargain with China would do little to end Pyongyangs threat, and almost certainly would spell the end of American global primacy, leaving the world a far more uncertain and unstable place. Michael Auslin is a fellow at Stanford Universitys Hoover Institution and the author of The End of the Asian Century. Follow the Opinion section on Twitter @latimesopinion or Facebook These days, anyone can hop on a cruise from Miami to Cuba. But if you try to board a ship from Miami to Key West, New York or Charleston, Grover Cleveland will stop you. In 1886, President Cleveland tried to protect American jobs by signing the Passenger Vessel Services Act, which permits only U.S.-flagged vessels to carry travelers between U.S. ports, such as San Diego and Seattle or New York and Miami. How does a ship get a U.S. flag? To qualify, the ship must be made at a U.S. shipbuilding facility, owned by an American company and staffed by an American crew. What Cleveland and his Congress obviously did not foresee was that, by the late 20th century, nearly every cruise ship sailing in U.S. waters would be built abroad from Princess Love Boats to Crystals luxury liners to Disneys magical floating kingdoms. Advertisement Would you like to cruise the Hawaiian Islands? You have two options. You can find a ship willing to make a detour to a foreign port. Say, Ensenada, Mexico (2,600 miles from Honolulu), Vancouver, Canada (2,800 miles away), or Fanning Island (a remote 13-mile atoll belonging to the Republic of Kiribati that Gen. Douglas MacArthur probably couldnt find). The PVSA doesnt just crimp your travel plans. Contrary to Clevelands intentions, it costs U.S. jobs. Or you can buy a ticket on the only passenger vessel in the entire world that has permission to sail between U.S. ports. Its called the Pride of America, although the story behind that ship does not inspire much patriotic feeling. In 2001, powerful Southern senators arranged for U.S. taxpayers to subsidize a shipyard in Mississippi so it could build a cruise vessel. It tried, and it failed. Within a year, a bungled, half-completed hull was declared unfloatable and was towed across the Atlantic to be completed in Germany for Norwegian Cruise Lines. But to avoid embarrassment to the U.S. government, the ship is still billed as Made in America and is free from the knotted mooring of the Passenger Vessel Services Act. With that one exception, for the last 50 years, American shipbuilders have not riveted together a single cruise ship that fulfills the requirements set forth in 1886. The PVSA conjures true absurdities. When a collision on the Mississippi led the U.S. Coast Guard to close access to the river in February 2004, two Carnival cruise ships that had left from New Orleans were forced to divert to Gulfport, Miss., and Mobile, Ala. The ships had nothing to do with the crash. Nonetheless, U.S. Customs and Border Protection authorities fined the company $2.8 million for daring to show up at the docks in Gulfport and Mobile and thereby violating the PVSA. Although the fines were later overturned, Carnival would have saved itself a lot of trouble by seeking asylum in Havana. Often, to avoid falling afoul of the PVSA or being forced to travel in the wrong direction to satisfy it, cruise ships simply skip U.S. ports altogether. Most cruises to Alaska depart from Vancouver, skipping Seattle. Many cruises to Hawaii depart from Ensenada, rather than San Diego. So the PVSA doesnt just crimp your travel plans. Contrary to Clevelands intentions, it costs U.S. jobs. Without the PVSA, dozens more cruises would depart daily from U.S. cities such as New York and Seattle, and the hundreds of millions of dollars generated from those voyages would stay within the U.S. economy, providing thousands of portside jobs for longshoremen loading cargo, bellhops, tour guides, taxi drivers and local farmers supplying fruits and vegetables for those all-you-can-eat buffets. And of course, each stop would generate revenue for U.S. cities in port fees as well as local and state taxes. Who does the PVSA protect? Not Americans. Instead, Canada and Mexico should send thanks to that Congress of 1886, attn. Grover Cleveland. The cruise docks of San Diego sit vacant 90% of the year. Meanwhile, 80 miles south, Ensenada receives more than three times as many passengers as San Diego, and many more than New York, New Orleans and Boston. Vancouver hosts three times as many sailings as Seattle. Since cruising generates an estimated $3.2 billion for Canadas ports, its no surprise that the Canadian government lobbies to preserve the PVSA. We now have a president who says he wants to put America first. One easy way for President Trump to make good on that pledge is to repeal the Passenger Vessel Services Act, which helps no passengers, provides no valuable services and acts to kill job opportunities from sea to shining sea. Victoria J. Buchholz is a corporate and intellectual property attorney in Los Angeles. Todd G. Buchholz is a former White House director of economic policy and the author of The Price of Prosperity: Why Rich Nations Fail and How to Renew Them. Follow the Opinion section on Twitter @latimesopinion or Facebook The sage grouse cant catch a break. The bird with a riveting mating ritual and a 40-million-year lineage, which provided sustenance for Plains Indians and settlers all across the American West, has long been imperiled. According to scientists rough estimates, 16 million sage grouse once lived from the Dakotas to northeastern California. But humans destroyed half the birds habitat, and only a few hundred thousand are left. In 2015, the birds prospects seemed to improve. Scientists, oil and gas developers, ranchers, mining companies, environmentalists, hunters and federal, state and local government officials of both parties finalized a multistate science-based plan to protect it. Their agreement, which includes the largest voluntary wildlife conservation program in the nations history, embodies all the attributes of deal-making that politicians give lip service to but rarely embrace these days: bipartisanship, collaboration, inclusivity, transparency. The plan required a decade of study and negotiation. The scientists and environmentalists wanted to protect the bird and the sagebrush ecosystem; the energy companies and ranchers wanted to prevent sage grouse from being listed as endangered, which would trigger highly restrictive regulations. What resulted is a plan that accommodates mining, grazing and energy development except where sage grouse are most concentrated. In the two years since it went into effect, scientists have seen signs that the sage grouse population is starting to rebound. Advertisement Now all that is in jeopardy. In June, Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke announced a review of the plan to align it with President Trumps pro-fossil-fuel energy and land-use policies. The review signals one last gulp at the fossil fuel trough before renewables make fossil fuels uneconomic and climate change makes them indefensible. As Jim Lyons, the Obama administrations assistant Interior secretary for land and minerals management, aptly put it, the review is a thinly veiled and unnecessary attempt to open up important habitat to oil and gas drilling. The sage grouse is an indicator species. Protect it, and you protect some 350 other plant and animal species. This is not a strictly red-versus-blue issue. It pits Democrats and some Republicans against other Republicans and their allies in extractive industries. In recent months, governors leading a sage grouse task force created by the predominantly Republican Western Governors Assn. have written at least three times to Zinke expressing reservations about the review. Wholesale changes to the [sage grouse] plans are likely not necessary at this time, explained one letter. Among the signatories was task force co-chair Matt Mead, the Republican governor of Wyoming, where 37% of all sage grouse live. The sage grouse is an indicator species. Protect it, and you protect some 350 other plant and animal species, all denizens of sagebrush terrain among them are elk, pronghorn, mule deer, golden eagles and pygmy rabbits. Sage grouse cant survive without healthy sagebrush, which the plan focuses on promoting and whatever helps sagebrush helps all the other species in a Texas-sized swath of habitat that stretches across 11 states. Its noteworthy that when Zinke announced his 60-day review (not much time to consider a plan that took 10 years to formulate), he expressed enthusiasm for innovative plans and workarounds to improve sage grouse conservation. One idea is to abandon the emphasis on habitat in favor of simply maintaining the birds population state-by-state. That benefits energy developers, who would no longer be stymied by pesky regulations minimizing sagebrush disturbances, but it would be disastrous for sage grouse. (It doesnt help that sage grouse are notoriously difficult to count.) If you take out of the plan all the monitoring and management that focuses on habitat quality, Wilderness Society senior counsel Nada Culver, told me, you have just dismantled the plan. The other two innovations Zinke cites are even more ill-advised. One is captive breeding of sage grouse, which is expensive, technically demanding and capable of producing very few chicks. The presence of farmed birds in flocks of wild sage grouse would also reduce the species genetic diversity and increase its susceptibility to disease, further threatening its survival. Finally, Zinke proposes controlling that is, killing some sage-grouse predators, including coyotes and ravens. This is a prescription for unintended consequences, such as a population explosion among other predators that are an even greater menace to sage grouse. Here is how radical the Zinke crowds approach is: Without the plan to protect the sage grouse, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service almost certainly would have concluded in 2015 that the bird deserved an endangered listing. But it couldnt have followed through because a rider Republicans attached to the federal budget bill in December 2014 which is still in effect bars the service from acting on a decision to list sage grouse. By freeing Republican policymakers from the restraints imposed by the Endangered Species Act, that rider opens the way to eviscerating the conservation plan with no worries that another regulatory process will impede them. Machinations such as the rider and the review are a means of chipping away at American environmental law, especially the foundational Endangered Species Act. What the administration, its allies and some congressional Republicans are after, it appears, is not just wider access to sage grouse habitat but an end to habitat and species protection itself. Jacques Leslie is a contributing writer to Opinion. Follow the Opinion section on Twitter @latimesopinionand Facebook President Trump would have us believe that white Americans are endangered by immigrant drug dealers and gangsters, and the liberal politicians who abet them with so-called sanctuary cities. At a recent rally in Ohio, Trump used lurid language to claim that gang members slice and dice beautiful girls like animals. Last week, his administration strengthened its crackdown on sanctuary jurisdictions, announcing a new policy that requires local governments to either cooperate with federal immigration agents or lose funding. Its obvious to anyone whos listening that when Trump talks about this terrifying other hes really talking about non-white people, not just any old foreigner; and indeed, Trump supporters in surveys conflate their fears of immigrants and dark-skinned people. Advertisement These fears, however, are not founded in reality. White people should be more afraid of other whites than they are of people of color. I examined Centers for Disease Control statistics on murder, gun killings and illegal-drug overdoses among white Americans. My analysis shows that the white Americans who are most at risk of dying from these causes are those who live in predominantly white counties. Rates of homicides, gun killings and illicit-drug fatalities are highest in counties where nine in 10 residents are white and where President Trump won. The CDC statistics cover 2011 through 2015, the most recent five years for which data are available, and encompass 2,962 counties and 99% of the U.S. population. According to the data, rates of homicides, gun killings and illicit-drug fatalities are highest in counties where nine in 10 residents are white and where President Trump won in the 2016 election. Such counties are not limited to one geographical region. They include Boone County, W.V.; Washington County, Utah; Baxter County, Ark.; and Brown County, Ohio. Correspondingly, the white Americans who are safest from such deaths are those who live in racially diverse areas such as Los Angeles, New York and Chicago, where two-thirds of residents are nonwhite, where millions of immigrants live, and where voters favored Hillary Clinton in 2016. Nonwhites also are safer in these areas overall, though rates vary by location. White Americans are nearly eight times more likely to die from illicit-drug overdoses than murder, the CDC statistics show, a proportion that undoubtedly reflects the heroin and opiate epidemic. But according to FBI data for 2015, when whites are murdered anywhere in the country, the murderer is five times more likely to be white than nonwhite. (This ratio counts only murder cases in which information about the offender is known by law enforcement.) Overall, white Americans who live in predominantly white and Trump-voting counties are 50% more likely to die from murder, gun violence and drug overdoses than whites who live in the most diverse and Democratic-voting counties. The more white and Republican a county is, the greater the risk for white Americans. Whites are so much safer where there are fewer whites and Republicans, in fact, that it raises the question of what exactly underlies this strong correlation between white safety and voting patterns. It may appear logical that white Americans are more at risk where they are experiencing the most economic pain and supposed neglect by Democratic politicians. After all, much has been made of the role that economic anxiety played in white support for Trump, especially in predominantly white areas. But census data do not back up such a correlation. White Americans enjoyed the largest real income and employment gains of any race during President Obamas administration, particularly in Rust Belt states, where federal economic stimulus was strongest. Perhaps Trumps supporters are attracted to his macabre rhetoric and promises of draconian crackdowns precisely because they are most at risk of dying the kind of violent death he describes. But in this case, they are seriously mistaken about what endangers them namely, themselves and other white Americans. California can serve as an illustrative example of how safety increases with greater diversity. Five out of six white Americans in California now live in counties where whites are a minority. (Nationwide, this is true of only one in six white Americans.) White residents of California are generally safer from murder, gun killings and illicit-drug overdoses than whites elsewhere. Overall, the states crime rate is near a historic low. California experienced political uproar over demographic change in the 1980s and 1990s, and the state generated the same anti-immigrant, tough-on-crime, racist panic that Trump and some Republican politicians are now fomenting. Californias been-there-done-that advice to the rest of the country: Skip that stage. Safety comes with diversity. Mike Males is senior researcher for the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice in San Francisco. Follow the Opinion section on Twitter @latimesopinion or Facebook When will people get that the Internet is forever? Sam Clovis, President Trumps nominee for undersecretary for Research, Education and Economics for the U.S. Department of Agriculture, is the latest to have his online words come back to bite him after CNN dug up posts from his personal blog, Impact with Sam Clovis, from 2011 and 2012. Among the ruminations on conservative political theory, the GOP lineup for the 2012 presidential election and Sarah Palins awesomeness, are screeds about the lying, race traitor liberals who want to enslave the country by forcing evil progressive values like universal healthcare, access to abortion and NPR on everyone. While the posts are occasionally eyebrow-raising, they are neither original nor disqualify Clovis for the job as chief scientist for the USDA. (That said, it has got to be painfully embarrassing to have his Palin-crushing out there: If she wins the presidency, she will be one of the most popular ever. I see a lot of Reagan in her and she is better looking.) Advertisement Or rather, there was nothing in the posts that could disqualify him more than his own resume. The undersecretary job directs the departments scientific research and is intended to be held by someone picked from among distinguished scientists with specialized training or significant experience in agricultural research, education and economics. Clovis has had a rather eclectic background, including stints in the military, as a business school professor, as a candidate for U.S. Senate, as a conservative radio host and a campaign official for Trump. Currently hes serving as the White Houses senior USDA advisor. But theres nothing scientific about it, unless you count expressing skepticism of climate change science. Clovis does have an undergraduate degree, but in political science, and a doctorate, but in public administration. (For comparison, check out this ProPublica piece by Jessica Huseman that compares Clovis to the woman who last held the USDA chief scientist job, Catherine Woteki.) Its troubling to think of someone without a background in evidence-based scientific study making important policy decisions for a governmental agency responsible for the nations food safety, nutrition, agricultural and natural resources. Compounding the resume gap is that, as his blog posts reveal, Clovis seems to embrace tired conservative tropes without question. Will he be open to scientific study that doesnt support his ideology? Clovis supporters among the agricultural industry argue that the agency doesnt need another scientist but someone to champion their work. Thats ridiculous. This job is not supposed to be a cheerleader, but a policy director. Ultimately, this is a political appointment. Clovis or whoever ends up with the gig will do the bidding of his or her patron and will be out in four or eight years when that patron leaves office. Still, couldnt Trump have found at least one scientist among his loyalists for this posting? There is one last thing that I must say about Clovis blog posts: Whats with his gratuitous slams of the Golden State? Heres an example: even a citizen educated in California could figure out that we are spending more than we are taking in. Why, Mr. Clovis? Why? mariel.garza@latimes.com Follow me @marielgarzaLAT A boat carrying 140 Somali refugees was traveling from Yemen to Sudan in the dark, early hours of March 17 when suddenly an Apache helicopter appeared overhead. Hovering over the bodies huddled on the deck below, it opened fire, killing 42 people on board. I knew too well that my daughter was between life and death when she went on this journey, Sahara Osman, the mother of one of the victims told Al Jazeera. But I have never heard of missiles raining on civilians on a boat. Last week, a United Nations investigation accused the Saudi-led coalition that has been fighting Houthi rebels in Yemen of firing those missiles. But are the coalition countries alone to blame? After all, the United States supplies billions of dollars worth of military equipment used in the fighting. In 2016, for example, the United States sold $3.5 billion worth of Apache helicopters to the United Arab Emirates, a coalition member that has naval forces in the area where the missiles were fired in March. The U.S. regularly makes similar weapons sales to Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Jordan, all of whom are coalition members. Advertisement Lawmakers also need to start asking themselves harder questions about whom the U.S. chooses to befriend in the Middle East and why Since 2015, Human Rights Watch has documented 81 apparently unlawful coalition strikes in Yemen and found U.S.-supplied weaponry at 23 of those sites, including the March 2016 Mastaba market attack which killed at least 97 civilians, and the October 2016 attack on a funeral service in Sana, which killed at least 100 people and wounded more than 500. Other unlawful coalition strikes have destroyed farms, factories and warehouses that produced or distributed goods such as food and medicine. As a result, cholera and food shortages have consumed the country; according to the World Health Organization, 400,000 suspected cases of cholera have been reported in the last three months alone, and 2 million children are acutely malnourished. Nevertheless, Congress approved an additional $500-million sale of weapons to the Saudis in June. If moral concerns dont give Congress pause, perhaps legal concerns should. According to Ryan Goodman, a New York University law professor and former special counsel at the Department of Defense, the provision of weapons and the knowledge that they are being misused creates substantial legal risk for the United States. Even if the U.S. did not intend to promote war crimes, it could be guilty of aiding and abetting them, Goodman said. In other words, if the U.N. discovered that U.S. helicopters were used in the attack, U.S. officials could conceivably be in violation of international law. It would not be the first time a country or its leaders were accused of facilitating war crimes carried out in a foreign land by someone else. In 2015, Charles Taylor, the former Liberian president, was convicted of aiding and abetting some 11 war crimes that occurred in Sierra Leone, making him the first former head of state to be convicted by an international tribunal since Karl Donitz at the Nuremberg trials. Although it may feel like a stretch to compare an American bureaucrat in Washington to a notorious African warlord like Taylor, State Department lawyers, advising the Obama administration before it went through with a $1.3-billion weapons sale to the Saudis in 2015, did just that in considering the legal ramifications of selling arms to Saudi Arabia. Whether the Saudis were intentionally targeting civilians or not may not matter when it comes to the U.S. legal responsibility. According to Brian Finucane, an attorney-advisor for political-military affairs at the U.S. State Department, if a state knows that a country shopping for weapons doesnt have the technical training or discipline to avoid inflicting civilian casualties, but it makes the sale anyway, such a transfer could be characterized as reckless, and officials in the selling country could be held criminally liable. In the case of the Saudis, the State Department knew they were unprepared. The strikes are not intentionally indiscriminate but rather result from a lack of Saudi experience with dropping munitions and firing missiles, a State Department official told a private human rights group in 2015. Ultimately, the Senate decided to ignore the legal arguments and approved the weapons sale to the Saudis (by a vote of 71 to 27) last September. It did so again narrowly (53 to 47) this June. Whatever reticence some senators expressed may have been alleviated in part by the knowledge that it would be difficult for the international community to bring a war crimes charge. The U.S. would probably ignore any investigation by the International Court of Justice and International Criminal Court, which normally oversee such cases. In 1986, the ICJ ruled that the U.S. had violated Nicaraguas sovereignty when it supported the Contra rebels there and planted mines in its harbors. After the Court decided it had jurisdiction over the case, the U.S. backed out. The U.N. attempted to enforce the decision, but the U.S. used its seat on the Security Council to block the effort. Similarly, the ICC is out of the question because Yemen where the offenses are occurring has not ratified the Rome Statute, which created it. According to Beth Van Schaack, who is a visiting professor of human rights at Stanford Law School, the Security Council could refer the situation in Yemen to the ICC, but again, the U.S. would probably block the referral vote, as Russia has done with respect to Syria. Whether it be liability concerns or just humanitarian ones, some members of Congress are working to distance the United States from the devastation the coalition is causing in Yemen. This month, the House added three amendments to the proposed National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2018 that, if approved by the Senate, would rein in U.S. participation in Yemen. Two of the amendments would in effect block U.S. refueling of Saudi and UAE warplanes bombing in Yemen. A third, by Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Torrance), would require the State and Defense departments to report to Congress on whether the Saudis are following their commitment to bomb fewer civilians in Yemen. In return for the $500-million weapons sale in June, the Saudis promised to launch a $750-million multiyear training program to teach their air force how to avoid civilian casualties. The Senate should embrace these amendments, but lawmakers also need to start asking themselves harder questions about whom the U.S. chooses to befriend in the Middle East and why. Any country that intentionally or recklessly attacks a boat carrying unarmed refugees to safer shores is not an ally that shares our values. We cant afford to let our relationship with the Saudi kingdom and its satellites become more of a liability than an asset. Cassady Rosenblum is an intern in The Times Opinion section. cassady.rosenblum@latimes.com @cassadyariel Follow the Opinion section on Twitter @latimesopinion or Facebook May you die in pain: California GOP congressman gets an earful at town hall Rep. Doug LaMalfa (R-Richvale) kicks off his Monday morning town hall in Chico. (Phil Willon / Los Angeles Times) May you die in pain. That was the nastiest moment of Republican Rep. Doug LaMalfas early morning town hall in the Northern California town of Chico on Monday. The wish was uttered by an older man who criticized LaMalfa for voting for the House GOP plan to replace the Affordable Care Act. He was also holding a pink sign that read Lackey for the Rich! ALSO: LaMalfa says the Russia investigation is a bunch of crap The open hostility and intransigence inside the Chico Elks Lodge came as the political divide in the country has grown more inflamed, with Trumps election unleashing a wave of both liberal activism and conservative empowerment. As a result, Washingtons deeply partisan fights over issues such as health care, immigration and environmental protections have followed members of Congress home, turning once sedate town halls into in-your-face venting sessions that in left-leaning California have Republican House members on the defensive. LaMalfa stood his ground on stage as person after person ripped into him for his votes and positions on healthcare and climate change, as well as for his unyielding support for President Trump. A few speakers asked LaMalfa to resign, including one dressed up as the Wicked Witch of the West Coast. Heather Calun dressed up as the Wicked Witch of the West Coast in protest. She wants LaMalfa to resign over his vote to repeal Obamacare. pic.twitter.com/rBZXAnjd2l Phil Willon (@philwillon) August 7, 2017 Most comments and questions during the hour-long town hall were fairly cordial, although they were laced with plenty of boos and catcalls. Norma Wilcox, a retired nurse who lives in Chico, also questioned LaMalfas healthcare vote. Wilcox told LaMalfa the House plan would take away healthcare for millions of Americans while providing tax breaks to the rich. I am open to new ideas, LaMalfa told her, describing the House GOP bill as a placeholder that everyone expected to be improved during negotiations with the Senate. (The Senates healthcare efforts now appear dead.) But the Richvale congressman, who represents Californias massive 1st Congressional District in the northeast corner of the state, said he will support only a new healthcare program that provides affordable coverage to middle-class Americans. LaMalfa said Obamacare is quickly become unaffordable and unsustainable, with premium costs rising and the number of insurance companies offering coverage declining. People across the board are being hurt by this, LaMalfa said. When shouts and boos rained down on him, he chastised the crowd saying, I have the mic folks. Yep, boo away. Ann Sisney of Chico told LaMalfa that her son, William, died of an opioid overdose two years ago. She held up a picture of the 19-year-old, asked the congressman to take it, and told him more people will die if GOP leadership in Congress gets its way on healthcare. These are life-and-death decisions that you are making, Sisney told him. LaMalfa assured her that Congress was working to find funds to address the nationwide opioid epidemic. The Republican congressman also raised the ire of the crowd when he was asked about climate change and the degraded air quality in this stretch of Northern California. I dont buy the idea that man-made activity is responsible, LaMalfa said bluntly. The crowd of several hundred did include some LaMalfa supporters, though most stayed silent. Ron Jones, 67, of Paradise said hes been to a few of LaMalfas town halls and all have been dominated by his critics. Most of the time people want to ... complain, said Jones, a self-described conservative, after the event ended. The people who support him are quietly in the background. LaMalfa does indeed have a lot of support in the district that also overwhelmingly voted for Trump over Hillary Clinton in last years presidential election. LaMalfa won his last election by almost 15%, and though he has attracted a few Democratic challengers, the district is not considered a battleground for 2018. Unlike many California Republican members of Congress, LaMalfa hasnt shied away from holding town halls, though its rarely a pleasant experience for him. He held one in Nevada City in March and another in April in Oroville. No other California Republicans are scheduled to hold town halls during their August recess. Near the end of Mondays town hall, a woman criticized LaMalfa for inviting only Christian pastors to provide invocations at his town halls and other events, and urged him to include religious leaders of all faiths. If you want to have your own town hall, you can invite whoever you like, LaMalfa told her. News from the Christian Broadcasting Network that members of President Trumps Cabinet are attending Bible study sessions together didnt come as such a shock in Washington. The shock was who is teaching them. That teacher, Pastor Ralph Drollinger, is well known to some members in the California congressional delegation and not just because he is a 7-foot-1 former UCLA basketball star. He is the evangelical spiritual leader who once counseled a group of Sacramento lawmakers that female politicians with young children have no business serving in the Legislature. In fact, he called them sinners. Drollinger also declared that Roman Catholicism is one of the primary false religions in the world precipitating his Bible study groups move out of a suite of offices controlled by then-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, a Catholic. Advertisement But it was the remark about female politicians, made in a written Bible lesson distributed to his study group in 2004, that stoked the most controversy. It is one thing for a mother to work out of her home while her children are in school, wrote Drollinger, a Californian who created a group called Capitol Ministries to teach evangelical interpretations of the Bible to politicians. It is quite another matter to have children in the home and live away in Sacramento for four days a week. Whereas the former could be in keeping with the spirit of Proverbs 31, the latter is sinful. At the time, the commentary caught the attention of the legislative womens caucus, where several members expressed mortification at what they flatly labeled Drollingers misogynistic teachings. State lawmakers protested by wearing aprons in chambers. Rep. Judy Chu (D-Monterey Park), who was serving in the state Legislature at the time, said in an email Wednesday that she is alarmed to see Drollinger is now counseling the most powerful people in the Trump administration. I was a member of the California Assembly when Mr. Drollinger told the women legislators with children at home that they were sinners, and I remember the disbelief we had that someone would say such a thing in the modern era, Chu wrote. This administration already has a deeply troubling record of policy and speech that harms women, and so its concerning that this is the ideology the president and vice president hand-picked to help influence the thinking of the heads of our government. The group boasts that it has planted biblical ministries of evangelism and discipleship in 40 state capitols and established a study group in the U.S. House of Representatives in 2010. By last year, Drollinger and his associates also had a presence in the U.S. Senate, and counted 68 lawmakers on Capitol Hill as members. Drollinger was already familiar to Californians before his controversial remarks about female lawmakers. He helped lead the UCLA basketball team to four NCAA tournaments while he played center in the 1970s under coach John Wooden. He played on Americas World Cup basketball team, and passed up opportunities to join the NBA so he could tour the globe with Athletes in Action, an evangelical basketball team that preached gospel during halftime. The CBN report says the Trump administration study group includes Atty. Gen. Jeff Sessions, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue and CIA Director Mike Pompeo. The offices of the Cabinet members who Drollinger told CBN are part of his Bible study did not respond to requests for comment or declined to comment. Trump has not yet attended a session but he receives a copy of Drollingers teaching weekly, and Vice President Mike Pence, who is serving a sponsor of the group, plans to attend when his schedule allows, according to CBN. Drollinger could not be reached for comment. A staffer at Capitol Ministries said in an email that the pastor is on his annual 200-mile hike of the John Muir Trail. The goal of his two-decade-old ministry, according to its website, is to bring Jesus Christ to politicians at every stop along their career paths, beginning with their first local elected or appointed positions and following as they ascend to higher office. By doing so, the impact of the Gospel will be increased in every strata of government as public servants who have been immersed in the word of God move from tier to tier. Drollinger spoke to the Los Angeles Times in 2004, as the controversy around his writings on female legislators erupted. Acknowledging he frequently did not see his own young children while traveling for work, Drollinger expressed no regrets about his remarks back then and saw no double standard in not labeling fathers of young children serving in Sacramento sinners. He said his belief was that husbands are free to serve leadership roles outside the home but should be extra sensitive about being away too long. Drollinger did at the time have some misgivings about his remarks about Roman Catholicism, which he said were grounded in a centuries-old dispute about the relationship between church and Scripture. I wasnt trying to say something about Maria Shriver or anything, he said in 2004, referring to Schwarzeneggers wife at the time. But, he added, I could see where that caused problems. Drollingers Bible study with Trump Cabinet officials comes after many women have been rankled by Pences long-standing, faith-based policy of refusing to dine alone with any woman other than his wife, in a town where so much business happens at power lunches and dinners. Trump, whose 24-member Cabinet includes just four women, has struggled to garner support from female voters. During the campaign he apologized after a decade-old videotape surfaced in which he boasted of groping women. A new Quinnipiac poll finds just 27% of women support how Trump is handling the presidency. To read the article in Spanish, click here evan.halper@latimes.com Follow me: @evanhalper ALSO Watch CNNs Jim Acosta and White House advisor Stephen Millers heated exchange over Trumps immigration policy Trump pushes to sharply cut the number of legal immigrants and move U.S. to a merit-based immigration system Justice Department calls for review of race-based college admissions, alarming civil rights groups UPDATES: 1:30 p.m.: This article was updated with details about Drollingers history on the UCLA basketball team. This article was originally published at 3 a.m. As President Trump looks at ways to get rid of the special counsel leading the investigation of Russian meddling in last years election, the intricate rules designed to ensure the independence of such probes may be about to face their first real test. The rules were put in place nearly 20 years ago to cope with what the Justice Department called the extraordinary circumstances of an investigation into possible crimes or corruption which could involve the president the one official in whom the Constitution vests the executive power. Given the obvious sensitivity, the regulations sought to insulate special counsels by providing that they may be disciplined or removed only by the personal action of the attorney general and only for specified reasons, such as misconduct or conflict of interest. Advertisement In the current inquiry by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III, Trump, who is both the chief executive and a potential target, has repeatedly signaled he wants it to end. And if Trump is really determined and willing to take the political heat, some legal experts say, the carefully crafted rules designed to protect the independent counsel may not be enough to restrain him. The bottom line is that President Trump has the raw power to fire Mueller despite it being a catastrophically bad decision that should lead to his impeachment, said Neal Katyal, a former acting solicitor general under President Obama and the lead author of the 1999 Justice Department special counsel rules. The Constitution puts the power of prosecution in the hands of the president, Katyal said, and that power cant truly be limited. The current special counsel system is a legacy of both the Watergate scandal in the 1970s and the Clinton impeachment in the late 1990s. President Nixon decided to resign in 1974 under pressure from Republican senators rather than fight his impeachment in the House. Afterward, a wary Congress passed a new law with high hopes of heading off another such constitutional crisis. The law authorized the attorney general to turn to a panel of judges who in turn would choose an independent counsel to investigate the White House in future cases. The unintended result was to create a new Washington industry of endless, costly investigations that churned for years and often ended in no significant charges. By 1999, Republicans and Democrats agreed to let the independent counsel law die and to return the full prosecution power to the Justice Department. That led the Clinton administration in 1999 to adopt rules under which the Justice Department agreed that in future cases, it would appoint prosecutors who were somewhat independent of that presidents appointees. But no one contends the special counsel is entirely shielded. The complexities of the legal issues aside, said University of Texas law professor Stephen Vladeck, the president has a fair amount of legal authority to act, or at least attempt to act. One option for Trump and his lawyers, Vladeck said, would be to try to end the investigation by rescinding the special counsel regulations. Trumps lawyers could argue the current chief executive is not bound by the regulations issued in an earlier administration. The regulations cant trump the Constitution, said Josh Blackman, a law professor at South Texas College. If President Clinton wanted to bind himself with those [special counsel] regulations, he could do so, but he cant bind the next president. Such a move would likely lead to a long court battle over the legality of the special counsel rules. Some former White House lawyers say the president is bound by the special counsel regulations as long as they remain on the books. The regulations clearly say only the attorney general can discharge the special counsel. That is a requirement, and its binding on the president, said Walter Dellinger, a White House lawyer under President Clinton. The Supreme Court appeared to endorse that view in the Nixon tapes decision of 1974. The justices cited a Justice Department regulation of that era which allowed the special prosecutor to challenge Nixons assertion of executive privilege. As long as this regulation remains in force, the executive branch is bound by it, the court said in United States vs. Nixon. On Thursday, two bills were introduced that would make it harder for Trump to ignore the current rules. One from Sens. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) and Chris Coons (D-Del.) would codify the current regulations into law. Another from Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and Cory Booker (D-New Jersey) would require any removal of the special counsel to first be reviewed by a panel of federal judges. Trump also might deploy the nuclear option, Vladeck said: The president simply could issue an executive order to abolish the special counsels office and fire Mueller. I think the better way to put it is that Trump could assert the constitutional authority to fire Mueller and shut down the investigation, he said. That could be risky, he added. Its not clear the Supreme Court would uphold such a move if the justices had a chance to weigh in. But the legal theory, known as the unitary executive and around since the Reagan era, has gained popularity in conservative legal circles. Under this theory, the president is constitutionally entitled to fire anyone in the executive branch, said Peter Shane, an Ohio State University law professor. I think the theory is wrong, but its out there and is part of the debate, he said. A third option for Trump would be to work within the existing regulations and ask or order the attorney general to fire Mueller. Thats complicated in the current case because Atty. Gen. Jeff Sessions has recused himself from any role in the investigation. Deputy Atty. Gen. Rod J. Rosenstein is the acting attorney general for any issues involving the Russia investigation, and hes already told Congress he would not fire Mueller without a clear, legal justification. If there is a point of agreement among the constitutional experts, it is that a move to shut down the Russia probe would set off a political backlash. Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina said recently that any effort to go after Mueller could be the beginning of the end of the Trump presidency unless Mueller did something wrong. Other senators have made similar statements. The real question is not whether the president has a legal right to fire Special Counsel Mueller, Vladeck wrote last month, but whether such a legal move might nevertheless provoke his current supporters in Congress to turn against him. Decision time at the Supreme Court: A look at this terms rulings on religion, free speech and immigration david.savage@latimes.com On Twitter: DavidGSavage ALSO Trump calls border wall the least important thing Attorney general threatens to punish Stockton, San Bernardino and other sanctuary cities As Trump prepares to leave for a 17-day vacation, his 2012 tweet criticizing vacations resurfaces He once said mothers do not belong in state office. Now he leads the Trump cabinet in Bible study UPDATES: 12:35 p.m.: This article was updated with details about a second special counsel bill being introduced. This article was originally published at 10:10 a.m. California is confronting the limits of its power to save federal environmental protections as Congress and the Trump administration take aim at a landmark law the state has relied on for decades to clean the air of noxious smog. A push by Republicans to roll back parts of the Clean Air Act would affect California more than any other state, rattling its lawmakers and regulators. And their legal authority to pick up the fight against Californias smog on their own is constrained. The House last month passed a bill fiercely opposed by doctors and public health groups, including the American Lung Assn. and the American Academy of Pediatrics, that would delay for years new anti-pollution standards aimed at ultimately preventing 160,000 childhood asthma attacks and as many as 220 premature deaths in California each year. Advertisement The Trump administration had already tried using regulatory authority to put the standards on hold for a year, but walked back that action Wednesday after California and 14 other states filed suit against the delay. The bill advancing in Congress would go much further, permanently upending the way restrictions are imposed on the ozone and small particulate matter that make up smog. No longer would regulators base decisions solely on scientific findings about what level of smog is safe to breathe. The potential cost to business would for the first time loom large in setting limits, and ultimately guide such things as when people with breathing problems are warned to stay indoors. It would be disastrous to do this, said Jared Blumenfeld, former regional director of the federal Environmental Protection Agency for California and other Western states. The Clean Air Act has been one of the most successful and revered public health measures taken anywhere on the planet. Everyone from China to India to European nations came to my office and said, How do we achieve these kinds of gains? This all originated in Los Angeles at a time the air was so bad it led to the creation of the EPA. Many state lawmakers agree, and they are vowing to keep California in compliance with the Clean Air Act as it exists now regardless of what happens in Washington. But that turns out to be a promise not easily kept. This is not an easy switch whereby Congress gets rid of the standard, and California just puts it back in place, Blumenfeld said. Some of the most damaging pollution released inside Californias borders can only be controlled by federal regulators. Among Californias biggest concerns is what is spewed from the exhaust pipes of trucks traveling through the state that are not subject to its strict emissions rules. Such fumes account for 60% of such heavy truck pollution. The EPA has been under pressure to toughen federal rules for trucks to enable California to meet its obligations under the act. The state and EPA have also been working on research into new technologies to clean truck emissions. Even if the industry-friendly Trump administration slows down those efforts, the act empowers states and activists to impose pressure on the EPA in court. But that would change under the measure passed by the House, HR 806, which would weaken the air quality standards now motivating federal action. We need EPA to continue to move ahead aggressively, said Kurt Karperos, deputy executive officer at the California Air Resources Board. It has a responsibility under the Clean Air Act to take action. We are concerned this would be used as a justification to slow down. The pushback against the Clean Air Act in Congress is rooted in complaints, often driven by industry, that the EPA under the Obama administration set standards for air quality that are impossible to reach without harming economies in places that are already struggling, like Californias Central Valley, home to some of the worst air in the nation. Among the most effective allies for Republicans pushing to weaken standards is the head of the San Joaquin Valley Air Pollution Control District, which regulates 25,000 square miles. It is home to 4 million Californians, who struggle with smoggy air and soaring asthma rates. Seyed Sadredin, the districts executive director, said there is only so much his agency is empowered to do, and now it faces severe federal sanctions for emissions from cars and trucks it has no authority to regulate. Sadredin recently told Congress that local businesses will soon be prevented from expanding and big highway projects forfeited under Clean Air Act sanctions the valley faces even after the region has done everything in its power to control pollution with some of the toughest restrictions in the nation. It all sounds nice and noble when you look down to the valley from the outside, he said of the tough federal standards. If you are with the elite crowd, you might say, Lets punish the valley for something they have no control over. We are talking real-life impact in a place suffering from double-digit unemployment, poverty, malnutrition. This has a real impact on our people. It is not just an academic argument. The San Joaquin board limited its support of the House measure to the part that would exempt air districts from sanctions in certain circumstances. A public outcry moved it to back away from its push to force the EPA to consider economic impacts in determining what air is safe to breathe. But the economic impact language is still part of the House bill that the San Joaquin board helped get passed, creating no small measure of tension between Sadredin and other air quality experts who say his dire warnings served to benefit agriculture and drilling interests averse to stricter rules. The valley is not going to lose big highway projects and businesses if it cant control truck and car pollution it has no authority to regulate, according to state air regulators. But it will be pushed in the areas where it does have control, they say, including cutting pollution from oil and gas wells, and residential and agricultural burning. It is absolutely not in the cards, Karperos said of the punishment Sadredin warns will befall the valley in coming years under current clean air rules. A good faith plan by the valley to further reduce emissions in the places it can would protect it from such sanctions, he said. But that plan will require more action by a region resistant to it. There are feasible strategies, Karperos said. The threat of sanctions is a red herring. Times staff writer Tony Barboza contributed to this report. evan.halper@latimes.com Follow me: @evanhalper ALSO High-speed rail backers lose another round in court Oil companies outspent environmentalists during Californias climate change negotiations Trumps Cabinet seeks spiritual guidance from minister with a dim view of female politicians This week, California Atty. Gen. Xavier Becerra revised rules for how police officers in the state will have to track data aimed at preventing racial profiling. Starting with the Los Angeles Police Department and other large law enforcement agencies in July 2018, officers will collect information detailing race, gender and other demographic details every time police pull someone over in their cars or otherwise detain them. Heres why the plan exists, what its author hopes its will accomplish and how the new rules will work: Why are police departments going to collect data in the first place? Civil rights advocates have long argued that police treat blacks, Latinos and other minority groups differently than whites. Criminal justice researchers have been analyzing data about law enforcement interactions to try and understand police activity. In Oakland, black men were four times more likely to be searched than whites during a traffic stop and were more likely to be handcuffed even if they werent arrested, according to a 2016 report from Stanford academics who analyzed the citys police stop data. A more recent Stanford study found that in Los Angeles County, black drivers were stopped more frequently than whites and Latinos. Researchers differ over the value of such data in revealing police racial biases higher crime rates in some neighborhoods with large minority populations could help explain racially disparate stop rates, for instance but collection efforts are spotty across California. Thats where this initiative comes in. In 2015, during the height of the Black Lives Matter protests, Assemblywoman Shirley Weber (D-San Diego) wrote legislation to force every police department in California to collect racial and other demographic data when officers stop people. The aim, Weber said, is to inform policy for how police interact with communities of color. Data is the best tool for addressing community concerns about racial bias in policing, Weber said in a statement. The information collected will help get us past the debate about whether the problem exists, and instead help us move forward in determining the scope of the problem, whos targeted and where it might be concentrated. California Atty. Gen. Xavier Becerra revises rules for collecting data meant to prevent racial profiling Where do things stand now? Webers bill required the attorney generals office to figure out how the data collection process would work. Would officers have to collect data on traffic stops or pedestrian and bike stops as well? Would officers track just racial data, or gender and other demographic information, too? Are there certain situations, such as during an active shooter investigation, where cops wouldnt need to fill out the forms? These rules were supposed to be finished by January, but they werent. The process was delayed further when Becerra took over for Kamala Harris after her election to the U.S. Senate. An initial version of the regulations gave law enforcement groups heartburn because they believed the process was too burdensome. San Diegos police chief, for instance, estimated it would take her officers 17,000 hours annually to collect the data required. Becerra met with police departments, civil rights groups and researchers before releasing this weeks revisions. He also enlisted the Los Angeles Police Department and a handful of other agencies in April to test how officers might tally the demographic information. Under the revised regulations, police officers will have to collect data on nearly every stop they make, including interactions with pedestrians and people on bikes. Theyll have to track a persons gender, English proficiency and any disabilities as well. But in emergencies, such as mass evacuations during bomb threats or earthquakes, the rules dont apply. Reaction to Becerras revision has been slow. Michael Durant, president of the 69,000-member Peace Officers Research Assn. of California, which represents most rank-and-file officers in the state, said his organization was reviewing the new proposal. The regulations still are not final, and Becerras office could make more changes. When will the new rules take effect? The Los Angeles police and Los Angeles County sheriffs departments and the seven other agencies with 1,000 or more officers will begin collecting the data in July 2018 and release their first annual reports in April 2019. Every year, more departments will be required to start collecting data. By 2022, all police agencies in California will be responsible for doing so. ALSO California Atty. Gen. Xavier Becerra revises rules for collecting data meant to prevent racial profiling Rules for collecting racial profiling data in California are delayed California's new top cop has to make some big policing decisions soon. No one knows what he'll do Updates on California politics More than 30 community organizations and advocates are ramping up their efforts to reverse a California housing rule that they say uproots the children of migrant farmworkers from their schools twice a year, causing them to fall behind and often drop out. The regulation from the California Department of Housing and Community Development, known as the 50-mile rule, requires farmworkers to clear out of state-run migrant camps at the end of a growing season and move more than 50 miles away. On Wednesday, farmworker advocates and nonprofits, including the Center for Farmworker Families and the Food Empowerment Project, asked the state agency to reconsider their petition to exempt families with school-aged children from relocation. The petitioners say the move is their latest effort to have the policy changed after four years of fruitless negotiations with state agency officials and at least one failed legislative proposal. The frustration culminated in a formal petition in December and a protest that drew nearly 30 people at the departments headquarters in Sacramento. Advertisement But the agency rejected the request in June. It just feels like we have been stonewalled time and time again, and theres no evidence that they have been willing to do anything, said Lauren Ornelas, founder and executive director of the Food Empowerment Project. While they are talking about it, children arent graduating from high school. State agency officials counter that their search for a solution hasnt ended. Their latest meeting in late June brought together about 50 migrant workers and representatives from community organizations and housing authorities. Many argued to keep the agencys rule in place given the high demand and limited supply of migrant farmworker housing, said Evan Gerberding, a spokeswoman for the housing department. There are two sides to this issue, she said. But the bottom line is that everyone wants the same outcome: for farmworkers to have an affordable place to live, and for their childrens school year not to be disrupted. The states Office of Migrant Housing runs 24 farmworker centers that house roughly 12,000 farmworkers each year. The housing program was created in the 1970s for agricultural workers who make their livelihood following crops across the country, according to the states housing and community development department. In California, that planting and harvesting season runs from April through October. But to be eligible for the subsidized lodging, farm laborers must comply with the 50-mile rule, which farmworker advocates say was established when most workers tended to be men without families. California is the only state nationwide that designates such a specific distance requirement, researchers say, and it causes about 3,500 children to withdraw from their schools each year. The constant shuffling leads to poor academic performance. Out of migrant students who in 2016 took standardized tests given to third through eighth grades and eleventh-graders across the state, 76% did not meet the standard in language arts, and 83% did not meet the standard in math, according to one study in the petition. Another found that in 20 years at the Buena Vista farmworker center, not one student who had to change districts had received a high school diploma. State officials say any action that could be taken to change or eliminate the 50-mile rule would require an amendment to the regulation. That involves an official public participation process and can take up to two years. Meanwhile, a legislative proposal pending in the state Senate seeks to spur the construction of more farmworker housing through tax credits. It would allow the state to operate the migrant farm labor centers for up to 95 additional days, but its costs are unknown. Farmworker advocates argue that the state agency has the authority to change its regulations on its own. The one thing that gets parents out bed at 5 a.m. and into the fields by 7 a.m. to work a 10-hour day is the thought that by doing this, their kids will have a better future, said Ann Lopez, director Center for Farmworker Families. This 50-mile rule steals it from them. In historic move, Gov. Jerry Brown expands overtime pay for California farmworkers jazmine.ulloa@latimes.com @jazmineulloa ALSO: Desired for their labor, rejected as neighbors. Farmworkers in California face hostile communities Anger, passion drive debate over more overtime pay for California farmworkers In historic move, Gov. Jerry Brown expands overtime pay for California farmworkers California lawmakers have tried for 50 years to fix the states housing crisis. Heres why theyve failed Updates on California politics How many false statements did Trump make in his interview with the Wall Street Journal? We count at least five (Carolyn Kaster / Associated Press) The Wall Street Journal didnt release the full transcript of the interview its reporters and editors had last week with President Trump, but when Politico obtained a copy and published it, the interview quickly drew attention for several false statements Trump made. The one that immediately gained notoriety was Trumps claim that after his speech at the Boy Scout Jamboree last week, I got a call from the head of the Boy Scouts saying it was the greatest speech that was ever made to them. On Wednesday, the Boy Scouts of America released a statement saying we are unaware of any such call. The Scouts specifically said that neither the organizations president, AT&T chairman Randall Stephenson, nor its chief executive, Mike Surbaugh, had made such a call. In fact, Surbaugh last week issued an unprecedented apology for a presidential speech Scouts have heard from presidents back to Franklin D. Roosevelt saying he was sorry that some members of the scouting community had been offended by Trumps partisanship, language and tone. In the daily White House press briefing, press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said that other Boy Scout leaders, whom she did not name, had complimented Trump after his speech. That wasnt the only call to come into question recently. A few days after the Journal interview, Trump said that Mexicos president, Enrique Pena Nieto, had paid him the ultimate compliment by calling and telling him that their southern border, very few people are coming because they know theyre not going to get through our border. The Mexican government press office issued a statement Wednesday denying that. Pena Nieto has not had recent telephone communication with President Donald Trump, the statement said. Sanders said that Pena Nieto did compliment Trump, but in a personal conversation, not a telephone call. I wouldnt say it was a lie, she said of Trumps statements. Other false statements involved broader factual matters. Were the highest-taxed nation in the world, Trump said a statement that he has repeatedly made and which has repeatedly been debunked. Whether measured by the top tax rate or the overall percentage of national income which is taxed, the U.S. has lower taxes than most of its chief economic competitors. Trump may have been thinking about the U.S. corporate tax rate, which is higher than most developed countries, although not the highest. Yet few companies actually pay that top rate given various tax deductions, credits and exemptions. Trump also said I honestly believe for six months, I have done more than just about any other president when you look at all of the bills that were passed, 42, 43. Thats untrue. Many of Trumps predecessors had signed more legislation, and nearly all recent ones had signed more significant measures by this point in their tenures. Jimmy Carter had signed 70 bills into law by this point, Bill Clinton 50. Franklin D. Roosevelt had 76 in just his first 100 days. About one-third of the bills Trump has signed have been ceremonial measures, such as renaming courthouses. Referring to his top economic advisor, Gary Cohn, Trump said Gary wrote a check for $200 million when he entered the government. He had to pay $200 million in tax. Trump has said that before, including in a speech in June. Its false. Cohn owned about $220 million in Goldman Sachs stock when he resigned as the banks president to become the head of Trumps National Economic Council. He sold the stock to minimize conflicts of interest, as most appointees do. But he certainly didnt have to pay $200 million in tax on that sale. In fact, its likely Cohn hasnt paid any tax so far. He may never have to. Federal law allows appointees to government positions to defer any tax they owe on assets that they sell to avoid conflicts. The law requires that they put the proceeds of the sale into neutral investments such as Treasury securities. If his securities go up in value, Cohn might have to pay tax on that gain. The top tax rate on capital gains is 20%. Trump also repeated a false claim about his defeated rival from the election, Hillary Clinton. Real crimes are what Hillary did with 33,000 emails, where she deleted them and bleached them after getting a subpoena. Trump made that claim more than once during the campaign, and more recently on Twitter. He is correct that Clinton deleted 33,000 emails from the private server she used for her messages while she was secretary of State. She says that all of those deleted emails were personal and that she had no obligation to keep them. No one has come up with evidence to the contrary. The evidence from the FBIs investigation of the emails shows that in December 2014, after she turned over about 30,000 work-related emails to the State Department, Clintons aides told the company that managed the server to delete the rest of the emails. The emails were subpoenaed about three months later, on March 4. The company didnt actually do the deletion until later in March, but theres been no evidence that Clinton knew about the delay at the time or that the company knew the messages were under subpoena. In any case, the FBI declined to recommend prosecution, contrary to Trumps assertion that Clinton committed real crimes. A poll released Wednesday by Quinnipiac University asked Americans if they believe Trump is honest. By 62% to 34%, a majority said no. 12:30 p.m.: This article was updated with comments by White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders. Diana Abasta, president of the Burbank Teachers Assn., remembers her first year as a teacher. Days started early and ended late as she learned how to create her daily lesson plans. To be a really good teacher took a long time, Abasta said to the 52 new teachers who are now part of the Burbank Unified School District. The incoming teachers were welcomed Thursday morning during a new teacher orientation held at the Castaway restaurant. The orientation featured guest speakers such as Eric Heins, president of the California Teachers Assn., and Matt Hill, superintendent of Burbank Unified. Speakers described the new educators as pieces of a puzzle that make up a larger entity. At a state level, Heins said they were now part of an organization as large as the population of Iceland with 325,000 members enrolled in the California Teachers Assn. California Teachers Association President Eric Heins speaks to the 52 new Burbank Unified School District teachers on Thursday, Aug. 3, 2017. (Raul Roa / Burbank Leader) Hill, who is beginning his third year as superintendent, offered some tips. Take care of yourself, said Hill, adding that he worked around the clock his first year to avoid mistakes from happening. Mistakes will still happen, Hill said, so find the time to decompress and recharge. Skilled teachers are the reason why parents continue to enroll their children in the district, he added. For a handful of the teachers, Aug. 14 will mark their first time stepping into a classroom they can call their own. A mix of nerves and excitement was a common feeling among them. This time, I wont just be a substitute. Ill have my own class of students, said Kori Bjorseth, who will be teaching Algebra 1 at John Burroughs High School. She said she is looking forward to creating her own lesson plans and hopefully inspiring her students to be eager about learning math. Donovan Glover will be joining Burbank High School as a theater teacher. Glover previously taught theater for Charter High School of the Arts in Van Nuys. In addition to his passion for theater, Glover said hes glad to teach in the area where he lives. There is a real sense of community here, he said. priscella.vega@latimes.com Twitter: @vegapriscella A hearing about changing the electoral system in the Coast Community College District took a contentious turn Wednesday evening after a district trustee accused his colleagues of inappropriately deciding during closed session not to expand the board by two members. Trustee Jerry Patterson said three of his colleagues voted privately in a session before Wednesdays regular meeting against expanding the five-member board to seven in a maneuver that was not on the agenda. The declaration came after public comment from district employee union leaders favoring such an expansion and after an assertion from board President David Grant that the panel was still weighing the idea. Patterson argued that a seven-member board would better represent minorities in the district and help get them elected to the board. He accused fellow trustees of ignoring the publics wishes and not being prepared to listen to the whole story. My colleagues want to go step by step, Patterson said. They dont want to look at seven until 2020. I dont really know whats behind all that. Its kind of about delay. As they say, justice delayed is justice denied. Grant accused Patterson of grandstanding. No member of the board is allowed to grandstand, Grant told him. Thats exactly what this is. Grant then warned Patterson who at the outset of the hearing said he felt gagged that if he continued, he would be breaking the law by publicly discussing closed-session items. Grant said the board wasnt necessarily against adding two more members but wanted to wait until 2020 Census data is released, which would allow Coast to have a clear picture of how we might divide the board up. Patterson and others noted that Coast is the only community college district in Orange County, and one of a few in California, with five elected board members instead of seven. Patterson said he had suggested that all of Coasts trustee districts be redrawn before 2018, a move that could draw all us incumbents out. It was like I dropped a bomb in the room, Patterson said of his colleagues reaction to the proposal. Trustees Mary Hornbuckle and Lorraine Prinsky took offense at Pattersons remarks. It irritates to no end when you put your thoughts into my mouth, Hornbuckle told Patterson. She added that she felt her closed-session feelings about this subject ... are not open to the public. Prinsky called Pattersons remarks not accurate. For another trustee to say my mind is closed and Im not listening, I really resent that, she said. When Patterson argued that a Vietnamese American or a Latino should be on the board, his colleagues noted that trustee Jim Moreno is Hispanic. Im not talking token [Hispanic], Patterson replied. Moreno said he feels he is often forgotten as the boards sole Latino but that he nonetheless represents everyone. He urged the community to weigh in on the issue of whether Coast should switch to a system in which trustees would be elected by area rather than by voters districtwide. Currently, Coasts five trustees live in and represent specific areas, or districts, but they are elected at-large. Critics contend that system violates state voting law by enabling white voters districtwide to overwhelm the preferences of minorities, who might otherwise be able to elect candidates of their choice from their areas. Coast, which governs Orange Coast, Golden West and Coastline Community colleges, has been threatened with lawsuits this year warning the district to change its electoral system. William Hoang, a Newport Beach lawyer, sent a letter to Coast on May 19 calling for the change. He alleged the districts at-large system dilutes the ability of Vietnamese people to influence elections. Hoang pointed to the 2016 election, when Patterson faced off against Vong Nguyen, a Vietnamese American candidate, for the Area 2 seat. Hoang contended Nguyen had strong support from the Vietnamese community but lost because of bloc voting by the college districts majority non-Vietnamese electorate. Coast trustees last month approved a resolution to move the district toward establishing district-based elections. Officials hope to complete the transition by Oct. 18. The move would require approval from the California Community Colleges Board of Governors. Moreno said he felt Wednesdays hearing would set the tone for discussions going forward. He contested Prinskys statement that there is no need to politicize the topic. This has been politicized, Moreno said. No question about it. And not by us. Coast has scheduled a second public hearing about the proposal for 5 p.m. Aug. 16 at its offices at 1370 Adams Ave. in Costa Mesa. For more information, visit cccd.edu. bradley.zint@latimes.com Twitter: @BradleyZint Costa Mesa city leaders signed off Tuesday night on a new contract for high-level fire employees that includes pay raises and a provision for them to increase their contributions toward their retirement. The City Council voted 3-1 to approve the agreement with the Costa Mesa Fire Management Assn., which covers four employees of the Fire & Rescue Department, including the division chief and three battalion chiefs. Councilman Allan Mansoor dissented and Councilman Jim Righeimer was absent. The contract, which runs through June 30, 2022, outlines steady pay increases for association members 4.5% in 2017 and 18, 4% in 2019, 3% in 2020 and 2% in 2021. It marks the first pay increase for management staff covered by the association since 2008. Under the new contract, Division Chief Jason Pyle will make $166,428 in 2017. Battalion Chiefs Kevin Diamond, Bill Kershaw and Tim Vasin will make $150,564, according to city data. But the contract also requires them to put more toward their retirement. Association members currently pay 5% of their salaries toward their pensions. That will increase to 9.5% this year, 14% in 2018 and 17% in 2019. The pact also establishes a technology allowance of $75 per month, eliminates executive leave and lowers the cap on the amount of vacation that association members can accrue. Mansoor voted against the contract, citing financial concerns, especially related to the citys unfunded pension liability. According to city calculations, the contract will result in a total cost increase of $296,978 over the life of the agreement. Earlier this year, Mansoor and Righeimer opposed new contracts with the Costa Mesa City Employees Assn. and city executives and division managers over fiscal concerns. We are painting ourselves into a corner and taxpayers will be on the hook, Mansoor said Tuesday. Our [unfunded pension liabilities] are going up, and it does factually leave less money for other things like sidewalk repairs. Mayor Katrina Foley noted that Costa Mesa employees have partnered with the city to help solve pension problems by contributing more to their retirement. We cant continue to retain excellent employees if we dont properly compensate them in a fair, frugal and functional way, Foley said. We have to continue to be competitive with our adjacent neighbors in this marketplace. I think this is a very fair contract. hannah.fry@latimes.com Twitter: @HannahFryTCN I love it when a column fires people up, and mine last week certainly did. Examining the application process in Newport Beach and Costa Mesa regarding boards and commission appointments in both cities got people talking. Discovering that neither city clerks office verifies anything on these applications (other than if the person is a resident and eligible for the position) was news to me and to readers. Though each city says council members have the option of interviewing prospective applicants, is anyone really verifying information presented to them? Newport Councilwoman Diane Dixon wrote me, saying since 2015 each mayor has appointed a council working group of three council members to review applications for council appointments. The group interviews candidates it believes are qualified. We personally interview candidates over a two-day period, Dixon says of the group shes been a part of for three years. We submit our recommendations (in rank order) to the full council. Dixon says shes attempting to get more women to apply for city appointments via her efforts with Women in Newport Networking, a loose confederation of women in Newport who care about public service, formed in 2015. As far as the larger issue of background checks, criminal records, etc., Dixon wondered if other cities do this. Its a question Ill look into and keep readers posted. But in this day and age, maybe Newport should initiate this practice, regardless of what other cities do. Several readers wondered if a background check had been done in the case of former Newport resident Jack Wu before he was appointed to the Finance Committee. Maybe his self-dealing with his former employer, Russell Fischer, wouldve been discovered before he was arrested and convicted of embezzling from U.S. Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Costa Mesa) while serving as his volunteer treasurer. The overall fairness with which applicants are selected was another subject on readers minds. I only heard from Newport residents on this --- not Costa Mesans which is very telling. Costa Mesa seems to have righted its political ship, while Newports still in rough seas, as far as the appointment process goes Newporter Jamshed Dasturs been rejected six times for the Harbor Commission because hes not part of the good ol boys club, as he puts it. On May 19 Dastur wrote to council members after his last rejection: I believe that I have a stellar academic background, an outstanding professional career record centered on Marine/Harbor Engineering and Construction, extensive service in National, Local & Civic affairs and 24 years of residency in Newport Beach. So what is missing? Is it because hes not a Republican and critical of their policies? Is it that hes an immigrant from South Asia (42 years since I became a U.S. citizen) with an Iranian/Muslim sounding name? Dastur admits he didnt promote his candidacy to council members, thinking his resume would speak for itself. Dixon says every candidate should promote themselves to the council, but regardless, hers was the only vote he received this go around. Why wasnt he selected? Councilman Scott Peotter, who wasnt on the interview committee, wrote maybe the whole man-made global warming/sea level rise thing influenced me. He told Dastur not to be discouraged and offered to have coffee with him. Councilman Will ONeill was disappointed in the tone of Dasturs letter and suggested Dastur find avenues to use that great Stanford education toward our community betterment. Most applicants for Harbor Commission that are given serious consideration, at least in my eyes, are avid boaters, wrote Mayor Kevin Muldoon. Guess Dastur missed the boat here. Councilman Jeff Herdman didnt know hed applied before, suggested he try again, as hed have his vote next time. But Dastur says hes done. Is his case unique? Tim Stoaks has 12 rejection letters dating to 2007 in his bids for Newports Planning Commission and keeps reapplying. Stoaks is an architect, served on the Santa Ana Heights Redevelopment Project Advisory Board, is a member of Line in the Sand and a founding member of the Friends of Newport Beach Animal Shelter. With that kind of pedigree of local involvement youd think hed be a shoo-in. Apparently not. Stoaks jokes he cant win appointment because hes a friend of mine. But another one of my friends, Lynn Selich, won appointment to the Newport Art Commission. Shes also married to former Mayor Ed Selich, and Im sure that outweighed her friendship with me, but even so controversy followed her latest appointment. In June, Selich resigned days after being reappointed to the commission! Selich tells me she quit in protest after fellow Commissioner Mike Kerr wasnt re-appointed. Tired of the political wrangling, Selich has moved on, but something tells me the appointment process controversy in Newport isnt going to anytime soon. BARBARA VENEZIA lives in Newport Beach. She can be reached at bvontv1@gmail.com. July 24 Identity theft: 800 block of Flintridge Avenue. A woman received a letter from Kohls stating a credit card application submitted in her name was denied due to unverifiable information. Grand theft, Dumpster: 4200 block of Encinas Drive. A contractor stopped working at a residence around 5 p.m. the day before, leaving an 8-by-6-foot Dumpster in the frontyard and locking a portable fence. At around 8:55 a.m. the next day, he got a call informing him the fence had been removed from the hinges, and the Dumpster was missing. Deputies observed drag marks in the dirt, indicating the object was pulled from its location. Burglary, vehicle: 1900 block of Verdugo Boulevard. A woman parked her 2009 Chevrolet PT Cruiser in a parking lot at around 4:15 p.m. When she returned at 6:28 p.m., she saw someone had smashed the front drivers side window and taken her leather purse, containing U.S. currency and a debit card. Burglary, residence: 1300 block of Green Lane. Deputies responded to a burglary alarm call at 9:43 p.m., arriving from another previous alarm call in the 900 block of Green Lane. A glass back bedroom door had been smashed, and the screen door cut open. The bedroom was ransacked, and a jewelry box was seen on the closet floor. Deputies contacted a neighbor who said she was taking her dog for a walk near the house when it started to bark. A neighbor said he saw a white sedan make a U-turn near his house but didnt think it unusual. A third neighbor thought the alarm sound was a car alarm. She looked out and saw a light-colored car parked in front of the victims residence, then saw an unknown person run from the east side of the house and enter the vehicle before it drove away. July 25 Burglary, residence: 4200 block of Mesa Vista Drive. Deputies responded to a burglary alarm call and saw a glass back bedroom door had been smashed. Inside, the bedroom was ransacked, but entry could not be made to secure the location. July 26 Burglary, vehicle: 900 block of Foothill Boulevard. A man parked and locked his 2013 Toyota Camry behind a business at around 2:45 a.m. When he returned at around 4:30 a.m., he saw someone had entered his vehicle and taken a gray Nike gym bag, red Bose headphones, miscellaneous clothing and his vehicle registration card. No pry marks were visible. Petty theft, vehicle: 900 block of Foothill Boulevard. A woman reported that sometime between 3:57 and 7 a.m. that day, someone gained access to her 2001 Honda Accord through a slightly opened window. The vehicle was ransacked, and several miscellaneous documents, including her vehicle registration and insurance papers, were missing. Petty theft: 521 Foothill Blvd. A Ralphs grocery store employee told deputies at around 7:55 a.m. someone stole her white iPhone 6S while she was stocking items. Shed placed the phone on the shelf to get better reception. She left the aisle temporarily and returned to find the phone missing. Video footage showed a white male adult, about 40 years old, grab the phone and check out before leaving the store, walking westbound out of view. The victim said the man may work in the area, and she has seen the suspect before. Compiled by Sara Cardine sara.cardine@latimes.com Twitter: @SaraCardine For anyone interested in legacy shopping in La Canada Flintridge, a prime opportunity could be coming up in the near future: City and school officials have begun to discuss the possibility of offering naming rights to the city-owned Lanterman Auditorium. City Manager Mark Alexander broached the topic in a July 27 meeting of the Joint Use Committee, a body that considers properties and holdings used by both municipal entities as a way to raise funds for an air-conditioning unit. Is the school district committed or obligated to keeping that name? Alexander asked La Canada Unified School District officials. Because that might be one of the few alternatives for raising the money needed to do this. For years officials with the city and LCUSD the latter of which used to own the auditorium even after its Foothill Intermediate School was closed in 1983 due to declining enrollment have grappled with granting resident and user group requests for an HVAC system at the sometimes-stifling Cornishon Avenue facility. City estimates place the cost of a unit at around $375,000 a steep price considering the auditorium generated $171,665 in revenue during fiscal year 2015-16, according to the 2016 managers report of city activities. Both parties acknowledged that previous efforts to identify grant funding or potential rebates from state and regional agencies had been exhausted, and that the full cost would have to be paid by the city. One option considered for recovering the cost was increasing fees charged to community groups who use Lanterman Auditorium. A staff report highlighted different scenarios. For example, if the city approved a $5-per-hour increase to the current $75-per-hour rehearsal rate, along with a $7.50 hourly increase to the $100 hourly performance rate, it would take 62.75 years to recoup the cost of a new HVAC system. If the city charged $90 an hour for rehearsals and $120 per hour for performances, it would take still take nearly 22 years to recover $375,000. It would be somewhat challenging for the city to front that much cash, administrative director Carl Alameda said at the meeting. By contrast, a donor interested in naming the auditorium might be motivated to pay for the right, Alexander said. There might be someone within the community who, as a community gesture or [seeing] theyd get the recognition, might be interested or willing, he continued, clarifying he didnt have anyone in mind. La Canada Unified representatives said they would look into the history behind Lanterman Auditoriums name and report back. Meanwhile, one local historian weighed in. Tim Gregory, an archivist for the citys Lanterman House, said hed be sad to see the auditorium lose its historic name. For over 50 years its been called the Lanterman Auditorium, he said in an interview. The city has to weigh whether they want to keep their history or raise the funds. But what is the history behind the former Foothill Intermediate School auditorium? Gregory located documents indicating Jacob Lanterman the citys founder and grandfather of former state Assemblyman Frank Lanterman was the true namesake. An article published by the La Canada Flintridge Historical Society in 1979 says the naming of Lanterman Auditorium was approved by the school district governing board memorializing the fact that J.L. Lanterman was one of the men who, on April 22, 1882, filed a petition with the Los Angeles Superintendent of Schools requesting the establishment of the La Canada School District. But according to an article published in the July 2, 1964, issue of the La Canada Valley Sun three years after the June 9, 1961, dedication of the new building by a nascent La Canada School District the name was recommended to the district by the La Canada Chamber of Commerce and Community Assn. Board of Directors, for the the contributions of the founding Lanterman family and its constituent members, rather than paying direct homage to Jacob Lanterman. The seven attending directors felt the name was appropriate for the community-used building since it represents both the pioneer Lanterman family, which founded La Canada, and one of its members prominent today, state Assemblyman Frank Lanterman, who has been the communitys watchdog in Sacramento for 14 years, the article read. No article detailing the board motion approving the naming could be found in Valley Sun archives, but an article published on Oct. 22, 1964, references a back-to-school night event for Foothill Intermediate being held in Lanterman Auditorium. Gregory said he hoped if the buildings naming rights were sold, thered be some way to keep Lanterman Auditoriums past alive for future generations. Id recommend, if there isnt one already, putting a plaque somewhere in the building letting people know it was once called Lanterman Auditorium to preserve the idea of the name, the archivist said. sara.cardine@latimes.com Twitter: @SaraCardine One of Americas oldest LGBTQ film festivals is preparing to welcome movie fans to the Aloha State. The Honolulu Rainbow Film Festival returns Aug. 10 to 19 to the Doris Duke Theatre at the Honolulu Museum of Art. The festival, now in its 28th year, showcases short- and long-form feature films and documentaries from around the world. Advertisement This months schedule will showcase more than 20 films. Behind the Curtain: Todrick Hall is the opening night screening Aug. 10. The documentary follows Hall, an actor-director, from his days growing up as a black, gay youth in small-town Texas through the creation of his musical, Straight Outta Oz. The film will be followed by a Q&A session with Hall. Other screenings include Handsome Devil (Ireland, 2016), Aug. 11. Ned, a music-obsessed Irish teenager, is resigned to his life as an outcast at boarding school. Then he gets a handsome new roommate who tests the bounds of friendship. I Dream in Another Language (Mexico, 2017), Aug. 16. A young man uncovers a 50-year-old secret when he travels to the Mexican jungle to research a language on the edge of extinction. This tale of forbidden love won the Audience Award: World Cinema Dramatic at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival. Gods Own Country (Britain, 2017), Aug. 16. Johnny, a young sheep farmer, resents the arrival of Gheorghe, a migrant worker from Romania, until Gheorghe demonstrates his understanding not only of farming but also of Johnny. Winner of Directing Award: World Cinema Dramatic at Sundance. Lady Eva (U.S., 2017), Aug. 18. A young transgender woman begins a journey of discovery as she travels to the South Pacific nation of Tonga, with inspiration from the music of Tina Turner. The documentary short was directed by geneticist and filmmaker Dr. Dean Hamer. Tickets cost $150 for an all-access pass or $200 for all-access plus admission to a star-studded pool party Aug. 20. It will be hosted by Olympic swimmer Tom Daley and his husband, screenwriter Dustin Lance Black. Info: Honolulu Rainbow Film Festival, email info@hglcf.org ALSO Vegas newest star is this adorable 2-week-old dolphin at the Mirage National Geographic Quest sets sail for adventure and exploration in southeastern Alaska Theres a new go-to website to reserve campsites and tours at California State Parks Trying to find free parking in Vegas? The Forum Shops arent an option anymore travel@latimes.com @latimestravel Brazilian President Michel Temer came out unscathed Wednesday after the lower house of Congress voted against his removal from office amid a heated debate that saw punches thrown and money tossed in the air as a symbol of the corruption accusations against him. By a 263-227 vote, the Chamber of Deputies voted against having Temer face a corruption trial in the Supreme Court. Had the charges against him moved forward, he would have also been suspended from his post for six months, with Speaker Rodrigo Maia stepping in as interim president until indirect elections were called. The trial could have seen Temer removed permanently. If impeachment proceedings had begun, Temer would have become the third consecutive Brazilian president to be ensnared in legal trouble. His predecessor, Dilma Rousseff, was impeached last year. Her predecessor, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, was convicted of corruption in July. Advertisement Temer became a target of an investigation into a billion-dollar corruption scheme in May when businessman Joesley Batista, owner of meatpacking giant JBS, handed over a recording of a conversation he had with Temer as part of a plea deal. Batista was cooperating with investigators in the inquiry code-named Lava Jato, or Car Wash. In the conversation between Batista and Temer, the president appears to indicate that his former aide and congressman, Rodrigo Rocha Loures, was his right-hand man and that Batista could go to him for any dealings between JBS and the government. Loures was arrested June 3 after federal police released video that authorities said showed him carrying a suitcase containing $154,000. Atty. Gen. Rodrigo Janot alleges that the money in the suitcase was the first installment of $12.2 million in bribes to be paid over a period of nine months by Batista. Loures was said to be the middleman for both the negotiation and the handing over of the bribe money, which Janot said was intended for Temer. Those in favor of Temers ouster Wednesday delayed the morning session in Congress by dragging out discussions and questioning the process leading up to the vote. They said most Brazilians would be home from work in the evening and should be able to see how each member of Congress voted on television and hear the explanation for his or her choice. When the second session started just after 2 p.m., attendance was again registered, delaying the process even further, as a quorum of 342 was required for the final vote. Discussions became heated as the afternoon wore on, with screaming matches leading to punches being thrown as several lawmakers held back their colleagues. Congressman Wladimir Costa, who this week demonstrated his support for Temer by showing off a henna tattoo on the front of his right shoulder with Temers name and a Brazilian flag, waved balloons depicting Lula in prison stripes. Those voting for Temers suspension wore stickers imitating the tattoo, which Costa initially insisted was real, on the right shoulder of their suit jackets. The stickers, however, read, Out with Temer. Others tossed money in the air and hoisted a fake suitcase with money sticking out of it above their heads. Though impeachment is now off the table, Temer could still face a criminal trial on corruption charges after he leaves office. Langlois is a special correspondent. ALSO Voter turnout in Venezuela election was inflated by 1 million, says CEO of company that ran vote Relations between Israel and Jordan have become very dangerous The Trump administration sends mixed messages on North Korea His pledge to build a border wall and force Mexico to pay for it was a central tenet of President Trumps campaign. But in a January phone call with Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto, Trump called the wall the least important thing we are talking about and suggested there were other ways to fund it, according to a transcript of the conversation published Thursday by the Washington Post. You and I both have a political problem, Trump told Pena Nieto during the call a few days after he took office Jan. 20. Because you and I are both at a point now where we are both saying we are not to pay for the wall. Advertisement Trump proposed that both leaders stop talking publicly about who would pay for wall construction and threatened to pull out of trade negotiations with Mexico if Pena Nieto continued to tell reporters that Mexico would not fund a wall on its northern border. If you are going to say that Mexico is not going to pay for the wall, then I do not want to meet with you guys anymore because I cant live with that, Trump warned Pena Nieto. We should both say, We will work it out, Trump said. It will work out in the formula somehow. Pena Nieto, however, wouldnt budge and to this day insists Mexico wont pay for wall just as Trump insists it will. Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto and then-Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump before a news conference in Mexico City in August. (Yuri Cortez / AFP/Getty Images) The tense conversation between the leaders of allied nations illustrates the high political stakes for both presidents, and the transcript shows both have been less than totally candid about what they said to each other. The transcript in particular has raised eyebrows in Mexico, where Pena Nietos interactions with Trump have been closely scrutinized. Some Mexicans, including members of opposition parties who hope to replace Pena Nieto as president when his six-year term ends in 2018, accused Pena Nieto of not standing up to Trump on the issue of the border wall and complained that he remained silent after Trump suggested sending American troops into Mexico to fight drug traffickers. Pena Nieto came off as submissive and complacent on the call, said Jorge Lopez Martin, a spokesman for the right-leaning National Action Party. Mexicans must know if our president will follow the orders of a foreigner who hates us, or if he will safeguard the autonomy of the Mexican government that he represents, Lopez told Mexicos Reforma newspaper. Where is the defense of our sovereignty? wrote Agustin Basave, a member of the leftist Democratic Revolution Party, on Twitter. Trump offered to send troops into Mexico because ours are afraid of narcos, and Pena remained silent. In January, after small portions of the call were leaked to the Associated Press, the Mexican government fiercely denied reports that Trump had suggested sending American troops to Mexico to fight bad hombres, with Pena Nietos spokesman calling such claims nonsense and a downright lie. But the transcript obtained by the Washington Post shows Trump did suggest sending American soldiers to Mexico. I know this is a tough group of people, Trump said of drug traffickers, and maybe your military is afraid of them. But our military is not afraid of them, and we will help you with that 100% because it is out of control totally out of control, Trump said. Other commentators defended Pena Nieto, saying he did an effective job of not provoking the volatile U.S. president, who in the past has threatened to slap a border tax on all imports from Mexico, a move that could devastate the Mexican economy. Genaro Lozano, a professor of political science and international relations at the Iberoamerican University in Mexico City, pointed out that Pena Nieto ultimately did not capitulate to Trumps repeated demands that the Mexican leader stop saying publicly that his government would never pay for the wall. He was very courageous to publicly defy what the president of the U.S. told him to do, Lozano said. He treated a bully the way a bully should be treated, by ignoring what the bully demanded. Lozano said the focus should be on Trumps comments during the conversation, specifically his acknowledgment that in the end, the border wall may not actually be funded by Mexico. Thats such a big lie to the American voters, Lozano said. kate.linthicum@latimes.com Twitter: @katelinthicum UPDATES: 3:35 p.m.: This article has been updated with additional quotes from President Trump and Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto. This article was originally published at 1:55 p.m. President Trump is warning that U.S.-Russia relations are at a perilous nadir. But for both him and Russian President Vladimir Putin, this particular dark cloud has a distinct silver lining. Both leaders can probably use the current imbroglio over U.S. sanctions to score political points with their respective domestic bases, analysts say. And after the sanctions bill that Trump reluctantly signed Wednesday, Kremlin and White House talking points have contained some striking similarities suggesting that despite the seeming animosity, Trump and Putin may not actually be so far apart in their views. Putin is widely expected to stand for reelection in March, and although a win is virtually assured, he naturally wants the biggest possible margin of victory. And the Russian leader is never more popular than when he is able to depict himself as a heroic savior battling outside threats in this case, from Washington. Advertisement He has to appear tough, to look as if hes done the patriotic thing in striking back against U.S. sanctions, said Angela Stent, the director of the Center for Eurasian, Russian and East European Studies at Georgetown University. Putin has appealed to nationalist pride to garner support for his increasingly aggressive stance against the West since the European Union and United States first placed sanctions on Russia in 2014 for the annexation of Crimea and Russians incursions in eastern Ukraine. In the run-up to next springs vote, the Russian leader will seek to bolster turnout by rallying around the flag and appealing to that raw nationalism, said James Nixey, the director of Chatham Houses Russian and Eurasia Program With harsher U.S. sanctions, he said, the Russian leader can say, Look at what America is doing to us. Weve extended an olive branch to them and they have spurned us. Trump, who signed the sanctions bill after it was passed by veto-proof margins in both the House of Representatives and the Senate, on Thursday blamed U.S. lawmakers for the dramatic deterioration of relations that has accompanied the sanctions bill. Our relationship with Russia is at an all-time & very dangerous low, he tweeted. You can thank Congress, the same people that cant even give us HCare! A day earlier, Moscow had also suggested that Congress was a driving force behind the discord. Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev accused Trumps administration though not the president personally of handing over executive power to Congress, thus demonstrating total weakness. Even before Trump signed the sanctions measure, Moscow announced retaliation for it: the cutting, by nearly two-thirds, of staff at U.S. diplomatic missions in Russia. In a notable departure from past presidential practice in similar circumstances, Trump refrained from criticizing Putin for that move. Russian President Vladimir Putin voiced hopes for an improvement in U.S.-Russia relations. (Mikhail Klimentyev / Associated Press) Putin, for his part, said he regretted that matters had come to such a juncture, but even as he announced Russias retaliatory steps, he voiced hopes for an eventual improvement in relations. Trump, after signing the sanctions bill, expressed similar sentiments. In a post-signing statement to the media Wednesday, Trump portrayed himself as a canny deal maker who would have been able to more effectively influence Russian behavior, had he not been undercut by Congress. I built a truly great company worth many billions of dollars. That is a big part of the reason I was elected, he wrote. As President, I can make far better deals with foreign countries than Congress. Read President Trumps statements outlining his concerns about the Russia sanctions bill Among some Trump loyalists, the mere fact that he signed the sanctions bill even though its lopsided margin of approval left him little choice reinforces the notion that multiple investigations of potential Russian collusion with his campaign are, as Trump himself has so often put it, fake news. The narrative that the president is not at all in thrall to the Kremlin got a shout-out Thursday from a senior Russian lawmaker. Trump is no puppet, Alexander Sherin, who sits on the parliamentary defense committee, told the Russian news outlet Life.ru. But if Trump seems more sympathetic toward Russia than he is, for example, toward Congress, that also sits well with supporters. Opinion surveys point to a measurable increase in favorable attitudes about Russia among his GOP base, said Eric Edelman, a veteran diplomat who is now a senior fellow at the Miller Institute at the University of Virginia. Trump can thus depict himself as thwarted in attempts to build a constructive relationship for Moscow after his face-to-face encounters with Putin last month at the Group of 20 summit in Germany, Edelman said. I think hes going to try to spin this as: I had this great meeting, and now were in a Cold War thanks, Congress, he said. Still, the presidents seeming insinuation that Russia-related strife emanated more from Capitol Hill than the Kremlin itself drew a sharp rebuke Thursday from Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), a leading Russia hawk. Replying to Trumps tweet, McCain pointedly echoed the presidents exact language in describing the U.S. relationship with Russia at a dangerous low. But there he diverged, adding: You can thank Putin for attacking our democracy, invading neighbors & threatening our allies. Staff writer King reported from Washington and special correspondent Ayres from London. ALSO Editorial: Trump is still giving Putin the benefit of the doubt and its weakening U.S. policy on Russia The Russia sanctions bill, explained: Putin is kind of giving up hope Putin announces cut of 755 U.S. diplomatic staff in Russia, stepping up confrontation over sanctions House approval of Russia sanctions bill is a rebuke to Trump Bethlehem police say officers know "ALL the tricks." Law enforcement in past years have arrested those who might have thought they were the savviest of Musikfestgoers in schemes to hide alcohol, gain alcohol illegally or cause disruption while skipping arrest. "They are nothing new, we do this for a living," chief Mark DiLuzio states in the department's annual witty reminder on ways patrons can avoid handcuffs. "Every year, someone thinks they have a new way of hiding alcohol. Trust me. The method is not new. Someone else has already tried it and failed." Crime was down for the festival in 2016 -- the lowest in 13 years -- with an estimated 16 arrests among the more than 1 million guests who attended. In 2015, there were 20 arrests and in 2014, an estimated 40 people taken into custody. DiLuzio expects the same for this year's 10-day festival, as the force deploys anywhere from 50 to 60 patrol officers on foot, horseback, bicycle, motorcycle and cruiser. There will be plainclothes officers and uniformed officers at the event. Firefighters and EMS crews regularly work the South Side by SteelStacks, the north side along the downtown Main Street area and the Monocacy Creek, Johnston Park area. Avoid handcuffs Arrests each year run the gamut of offenses from drunken shenanigans to disrupting the peace, to carrying open containers of alcohol to underage drinking. But behavior typically has to stand out from the crowd in order for their to be an arrest, DiLuzio noted. Pets, he said, are banned from the festival due to the heat and crowds and should be left at home, not inside vehicles. Disorderly conduct also continues to be the most common arrest each year, DiLuzio said, noting it's mainly for people who are disturbing the peace. This can include anything from fighting, yelling obscenities or threatening others, repeatedly being obnoxious, throwing things into the crowd and making excessive noise. The city has an ordinance that prohibits anyone from carrying an open container of alcohol in a public place. However, the rule is suspended on Musikfest grounds because ArtsQuest has a special permit. But the rule doesn't mean guests can carry beer-filled Musikfest mugs anywhere in the city they please. This means visitors should finish their beer before heading over the Fahy Bridge to the SteelStacks area of the festival. DiLuzio said the best piece of advice to offer those toting Musikfest beer-filled mugs is this: "If you and your friends are peacefully walking down the street between Musikfest locations drinking from your Musikfest mugs, no problem. "If you are walking down a city street drinking a bottle of beer or a fifth of whiskey, screaming at people, jumping out into traffic, kicking over trash cans, cursing at police, kicking a dog or cat (big no no), or drawing unwanted attention to yourself and others, you can expect a visit from one of our officers." 'Just don't do it' If guests are thinking about bringing in alcohol in cans, bottles, flasks or coolers -- just don't do it, police said. DiLuzio said officers have seen wild ideas in the past and know what to look for -- filling up a backpack with beer, strapping on a beer can belt, hiding liquor in a flask or even concealing alcohol in a stuffed animal. "We know the backpack trick, the water bottle trick, the soda can trick, hiding liquor bottles in your pants, taped to your ankles, in your underwear, under your hat and quite a few others," DiLuzio said. "Some are quite ingenious, but just remember this: Someone before you probably tried it and was caught. So, we probably already know it." Some people will refill their Musikfest mug with beer or a malt beverage inside one of the area establishments, Diluzio said. But if they do, they must finish their brew there before leaving to walk around Musikfest. Pennsylvania Liquor Control Enforcement laws prohibit anyone from leaving an establishment with liquor or wine. DiLuzio suggests taking advantage of the many venues at each platz available to refill mugs or buy other alcoholic beverages. Anyone found to be drinking underage will be arrested and removed from the festival. No exceptions, DiLuzio said, warning against even trying to pass a fake ID. "Despite how old you think you look or how much makeup, eyelashes or a large fake mustache you put on to look older, or all of them, you look really young to us and probably don't have much of an ability to behave properly after drinking," he said. But the most serious offense, DiLuzio said, is driving under the influence. Police suggest calling a friend, taxi or Uber to get you safely home. "We understand that people are going to consume alcoholic beverages. All we ask is that you drink responsibly and have a friend or a plan in case you drink a little too much," he said. "Don't risk your life and the lives of others by driving drunk. It's not worth it." Pamela Sroka-Holzmann may be reached at pholzmann@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow her on Twitter @pamholzmann. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook. A school bus previously used to transport elementary pupils in a New Jersey school district soon will be aiding visually impaired patients overseas. The Hackettstown Rotary Club and Stocker Bus Company recently donated the 2001 school bus to the Himalayan Cataract Project in Ghana. The bus, retired this year, has been delivered to a dock in Bayonne and currently is on board a ship to arrive in Ghana within the next two weeks, according to the club. Sandi Vaessen, a member of the Hackettstown Rotary, had contacted Newton-based Stocker Bus Company for the vehicle and representatives agreed to donate the bus. The club then raised $6,000 to fund the shipping costs to Ghana. Once the bus arrives, a team at the Komfo Ankoye Teaching Hospital in Ghana will be maintaining and securing parts for the 2001 bus, rotary members said. The bus will then be used to transport blind and low-vision patients and their care-takers from rural areas in Central and Northern Ghana to the hospital for a two- to three-day high volume surgical workshops. The workshops work to restore vision, rotary members said. The patients would then return home to their villages on the bus. Pamela Sroka-Holzmann may be reached at pholzmann@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow her on Twitter @pamholzmann. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook. Militia attacked Elalie's village, killing her mother, father and husband. When she tried to escape, she was gang raped. Stories like Elalie's are common in the Democrat Republic of Congo. The Lord's Resistance Army, along with other militias, attacked villages -- leaving homes burned, men dead, women raped and children abducted. The result has been 5.4 million people left dead. The United Nations deemed it the most dangerous place in the world to be a woman, as rape is used as a weapon of war. In an effort to help the victims of these attacks, Restoring Hope Ministries has formed church-to-church partnerships to help these victims. The organization's mission is to restore through trauma counseling, train through post-secondary education and trade skills, and offer sustainability through asset-based development in Congo. The Easton-based nonprofit organized a Ride for Hope bike tour to raise awareness and funds for this issue. The tour began July 28, traveling 600 miles across parts of Michigan, Canada, Pennsylvania and New York. The tour will end on Sunday with a picnic in Scott Park. Restoring Hope invites the community to join them that day to welcome the nearly 30-member team back from the 10-day tour. The picnic will include games, food and a brief "Why We Ride" presentation. The day so many have physically, mentally, and spiritually prepared for is now just 4 days away! The RHM Bike Team has... Posted by Restoring Hope Ministries on Monday, July 24, 2017 "When we remember the people in the Democrat Republic of Congo who experienced horrific traumas yet have preserved and succeeded in regaining purpose of dignity, it gives us strength and motivation to continue serving in the blazing heat and to continue riding," Helen Vansumeren wrote on the organization's Facebook page about why she participates in the bike tour. This is Restoring Hope's second fundraising event this summer, with the first being a 5k in May that raised $5,000, according to their Facebook page. The sponsor's for the bike tour include Stark Financial Group, Lifestyle Realty and Curt's Cyclery. Members also set personal goals for fundraising, and many members donate their earnings from their own work as carpenters and photographers. "We have so much (in America), while (in Congo) they're sleeping on mud floors," said content strategist Rachel Thornton. "We ride because we can, we do this because we're able to and provided for in every possible way. We believe it's important to reach out and help those that aren't as provided for." Alyssa Mursch may be reached at amursch@lehighvalleylive.com. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook. A number of people before last weeks district court charged with bringing drugs into the Midlands Prison claimed that they were put under pressure by criminals to bring the items in. Four separate cases came before Judge Fiona Lydon at Portlaoise District Court last Thursday, July 27, one of which involved a man of 67. First up was James OSullivan (67), with an address at Gurranabraher, Cork. Inspector Aidan Farrelly said that on July 10, 2017, the accused was stopped at the Midlands Prison and found to have a small phone charger and 20 of cannabis. He cooperated fully when arrested and said he intended passing the items to someone in the prison. The accused had previous convictions, from 1968 up to 1997, including sexual assault, larceny, and assaults. Defence, Ms Josephine Fitzpatrick said her client had been visiting his son in prison and he was put under pressure to bring the items in. The package was not destined for his son, said defence, and the accused has since been precluded from visiting him. Ms Fitzpatrick said he was not a drug user, but because of his age he is on medication as he does not enjoy good health. Judge Fiona Lydon said it had been quite some time since the accused was involved in the court process, but noted that when he was involved it had been at the upper end. She said that he was now suffering to some extent from not being allowed to visit his son and there was no chance of his repeating the offence. The judge convicted and fined the accused 150. In a separate case, Stacy ODwyer (32), with a listed address at Windsor Lodge, North Road, Drogheda, was charged. Inspector Farrelly gave evidence that the accused was stopped and searched at the Midlands Prison on May 18 this year, and found to have 7g of heroin worth 460, cannabis valued at 20, and various tablets including valium worth 60. She was fully cooperative and admitted trying to bring the drugs in to give to her uncle. She had no previous convictions. Defence, Ms Louise Troy said her client, a mother of two whose children were residing with the accused's mother, was homeless at the moment and living in B+Bs. Judge Lydon put the matter back to October 12 for defence to provide paperwork proving the accused was homeless. Also charged was Samantha Osbourne (25), Basin Street Flats, Dublin 8. Inspector Farrelly gave evidence that the accused was detected at the Midlands Prison on June 29 with a concealed package containing cannabis and heroin with a total value of 1,500. She had no previous convictions. Defence, Ms Louise Troy said her client, who was visiting an ex-boyfriend in jail, had been pressurised into bringing in the drugs by receiving phone calls from a private number. The windows of her house were also smashed, which she reported to the garda, said Ms Troy. The accused was convicted and fined 150. And in a separate matter, Kate Shannon (26), Barron Park, Clonmel, was charged. Inspector Aidan Farrelly gave evidence that the accused was detected at the Midlands Prison on July 17 with a package hidden in her undergarments, containing tablets and cannabis resin to a total of 430. The accused had previous convictions, including theft and drugs offences. Defence, Mr Philip Meagher said that his client had been visiting a friend in jail, whose ex-associates became aware she was visiting him. Two of these associates arrived at the home of the accuseds mother and said in no uncertain terms that the package would be arriving, with the package to be given to someone in the prison. She foolishly agreed to bring the package in and didnt report it to the gardai as she feared for her safety and her mums, said Mr Meagher. Saying that other options had been available to the accused when these people approached her, Judge Lydon convicted and fined her 350, and bound her to the peace for 12 months. Plans are coming together in Laois and across the country for Heritage Week 2017 which will take place from 19 to 27 August. Events are being organised by almost 1,000 heritage enthusiasts from organisations to community groups and individuals. The programme of events for Laois highlights the abundance of great work that is carried out in all communities in Ireland to preserve and promote our natural, built and cultural heritage. Catherine Casey is Heritage Officer with Laois County Council. Most of the events are free so that the heritage of Laois can be accessed and appreciated by all. For nine action packed days, Ireland celebrates not only heritage but community involvement and a deep connection between people and place, she said. This years theme is Nature, and heritage really is in our nature! From a Pollinator Party at Portlaoise Town Park, Bee Movie at the Dunamaise Arts Centre, and a sneak preview of a piece of music inspired by the bees of Laois and the people who are trying to protect them, to hands on wildlife workshops for children at our libraries, there is something for everyone to enjoy this National Heritage Week. Find out more about the natural world all around us at workshops, exhibitions, activities, talks, demonstrations, re-enactments, tours and more. Of course all other aspects of our heritage are being explored as well Find out about the recent excavations into the history of the medieval Fort at the centre of Portlaoise, on two walking tours one led by adults and the other led by children! Explore the history of Laois on a walking tour of Portlaoise. Get your hands dirty and kids archaeological digs in Abbeyleix and Mountrath. Enjoy the high roads and byways of Laois with the Bulfin Heritage Cycle. Or journey to Castlewood Organic Farm in Durrow or Ballykilcavan near Stradbally, to find out more about the wildlife that surrounds us and how faming and wildlife go hand in hand. Visit Donaghmore Museum, this time to learn about the wildlife that has made its home within the walls of the former workhouse. National Heritage Week is a wonderful opportunity to shine a light on not only our heritage but the work of thousands of volunteers who give their time to preserve and promote it. Last year National Heritage Week hosted its biggest national celebration of all things heritage, with over 400,000 people attending almost 2,000 events. National Heritage Week is part of a European Heritage Day programme of events. This is a joint initiative of the Council of Europe and the European Union in which over forty countries participate each year. The main aim of European Heritage Days is to promote awareness of our built, natural and cultural heritage and to promote Europes common cultural heritage. Here in Ireland we celebrate European Heritage Days with a full week of events throughout National Heritage Week. National Heritage Week is coordinated by The Heritage Council and its aim is to build awareness and education about our heritage thereby encouraging its conservation and preservation. In the past ten years Heritage Week has grown into a highly successful programme of over 1800 events which take place during the last week of August each year. An event guide for the week for Laois is available to download at www.laos.ie/heritage, or in hard copy at all Branch Libraries. National Heritage Week 2017 will run from 19th to 27th August. Check out more here Up to 50 locations in Laois have been identified as areas where there may be major leaks to the water mains pipes, according to Sean Fleming TD. Deputy Fleming confirmed that Laois County Council recently made an application to Irish Water for the employment of five dedicated staff to find and fix the major leaks in the water supply piping network throughout the county. Irish Water have approved the appointment of this "find and fix" crew, at this stage for a two year contract. "I understand approximately 50 areas have been identified in the county where there may be major leaks and these will be prioritised for fixing as soon as the new crew is in place. "I am confident that this will result in major savings in terms of the quantity of water leakages which costs a lot of money. "Overall the leakage in Laois is approximately 43% of all water and this is slightly better than the national average. When these works are completed it will significantly reduce the amount of leakage in the county and thereby provide more security in terms of having adequate water services throughout the county," Deputy Fleming said. Sean Fleming TD said that this is good news and he looks forward to the staff being appointed and commencing work as soon as possible. READ MORE: This comes after Irish Water confirmed asbestos cement pipes in Laois. READ MORE: Irish Water also confirmed that 8.5km of aging water mains pipes need to be replaced in Laois. The 53rd National Steam Rally is all set to take place in Stradbally Hall over the August Bank Holiday weekend. Stradbally is also known as the home of the Electric Picnic , but during the August Bank Holiday weekend this field comes alive with the sounds and smells of vintage and steam. Over the course of the weekend, over 30 sleek steam engines will power their way around the glorious parklands of the Cosby estate. As the oldest steam rally in Ireland, Stradbally has a big name to live up to, but does so with ease. In a long-standing tradition, which began in 1964, the Stradbally Steam Rally attracts steam enthusiasts and families from all over Ireland and the UK. It is seen as the premier event in the Irish steam and vintage calendar and every year works hard to best the previous, and grow bigger and better. This year, visitors are promised an action packed-two days with a variety of attractions to entertain young and old alike. The old favourites such as tractor pulling, deemed the world's most powerful motorsport, is hugely popular as visitors watch these tractors pull a heavy sleigh along a distance of almost 100 meters. The Stradbally Woodland Railway will run Sunday and Monday from 11am, and may also run on Saturday due to the success of last year, as many people enjoy a ride through the scenic woodlands of the Cosby Estate. Also putting on demonstrations throughout the weekend are the workman's area, which contains the Threshing mill, run by the Deegan family and the Stone crusher and Saw bench, run by the Glynn family. These magnificent machines will amaze you with their power and size. Other regular popular attractions include a sheepdog demonstration, a carnival, and auto-jumble, and trade stands. An impressive collection of vintage cars and tractors will bring back many memories for older observers, as well as creating vivid new memories for younger visitors to one of the most celebrated shows in the country. Joining the Stradbally Steam Rally for the first time this year are two brand new attractions, The Grass Lads and Dublin Falconry Birds of Prey. The Grass Lads are a group of young under 12 men from Co. Down in scale model farm machinery. Come along and watch them do their thing in the grass arena. The Dublin Falconry are bringing down their birds for a static display, and a flying demonstration twice daily. Due to their popularity and their warm welcome back to the Steam Rally last year, the MGA Ponies have been moved into their own arena. They will provide displays and trials in their arena from 11am to 1pm and 3pm to 5pm each day. As a new treat this year Napper Tandy's are bringing a marquee to the field. Here people can enjoy breakfast from 9.30am and carvery lunch from 12pm, or just sit back and enjoy the live music. See Also: Laois Tourism gets 51,000 boost Embed from Getty Images The lovely digital team at HQ have interviewed Vince Cable. He spent his childhood immersed in chocolate, it seems. I grew up in York, which was then very much an industrial city. Its factories supplied the countrys railway carriages and fed its appetite for sweets. I grew up breathing the all-pervasive smell of sugar, cocoa and vanilla. My first home was a small terraced house close to the Terrys chocolate factory. My father Len was a craftsman at Rowntrees chocolate factory whilst my mother Edith packed chocolates for rival firm Terrys. I arrived at the University in York at about the same time as Vince left for university and career, and I have fond memories of Tuesdays, which was chocolate making day at Rowntrees. Walking through the town was like being bathed in chocolate. After Cambridge he ended up in Glasgow where he became a Labour councillor. He was one of the first Labour members to join the SDP. Eventually he moved to Twickenham, where he discovered the story of Alan Turing. Although I never met him, one former constituent has a very special influence on me is Alan Turing, who lived in Hampton for a short while and worked at the National Physics Laboratory in Teddington. It is hard to overestimate his immense role in the development of modern computing, not to mention helping to shorten the Second World War through his work (alongside his colleagues) at Bletchley Park in breaking the Enigma Code. Shamefully he was driven to commit suicide at a time when homosexuality was still illegal in this country. For more information about Alan Turing do take a look at an article I wrote about him on Lib Dem Voice. Aha a link to Lib Dem Voice thank you! And a shout out for Turing who is a hero of mine as well. And on the inevitable question about the Coalition he says: Some very hard decisions had to be made and I think it is foolish to pretend no mistakes were made. However looking at the utter chaos we now have with this Government I think it is becoming increasingly clear that it was a far better Government than we have now, or indeed what we faced under many other Governments in the past. I think history will judge the coalition favourably. Youll have to read the whole interview for his views on Ed Balls (as a ballroom dancer) and whether his novel will win the Bad Sex Award. * Mary Reid is a contributing editor on Lib Dem Voice. She was a councillor in Kingston upon Thames, where she is still very active with the local party, and is the Hon President of Kingston Lib Dems. If you want to win a parliamentary seat at the next General Election start thinking about the new parliamentary boundaries. Seasoned political campaigners understand the importance of the boundaries. Any area that is divided up into electoral districts has to have lines drawn somewhere. Moving a village between this or that constituency can make all the difference to who wins and who loses. Sometimes changes are so significant that new constituencies are radically different to their predecessors. In 2011, Parliament amended the Parliamentary Constituency Act 1986. There were two main changes: 650 MPs would be reduced to 600 and constituencies will be more similar in size of electorate. The latter reform, for closer parity, should be welcome in principle. Every citizen deserves equal power. In whichever constituency I live my vote should by one similarly sized share of the total to be cast. My neighbour in another constituency should not have significantly more or less voting power in his area than I do in mine. The reduction in the number of MPs has less to commend it, for now. The argument for reduction is that Parliament is overlarge compared to the equivalent bodies in other democracies. But a reduction in number of MPs will tend to exacerbate the under-representation of small parties. If you are a small party, First Past the Post already ensures you will get many fewer seats than would properly represent your partys overall support across the country. To get any seats there have to be areas where your level of support is considerably at positive variance with your average support. In simple terms, the bigger the seats are the more unlikely it will be that such unusually high variances from the average can occur. It is for that reason that democrats should only support a reduction in the size of the Commons in the context of a wider political reform: a fairer voting system and reform of campaign finance laws. It was because of the broken promises of Conservatives on House of Lords Reform that Liberal Democrats stopped the 2013 Boundary Reviews taking effect. In 2016, the process began for Boundary Reviews to be completed in 2018. People commonly speak of the boundary review but this is wrong. The 2011 Act creates four reviews: one for each of England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. A draft set of new parliamentary boundaries was created. The English proposals are here. There were consultation periods in September 2016 and March 2017. The expectation was that these new boundaries would take effect for the anticipated 2020 General Election. People are asking what happen now that another General Election has intervened? Will the process start from scratch again? The 2018 Boundary Review is continuing. The 1986 Act (as amended in 2011) compels the review process to continue. The Boundary Review for England have confirmed this and stated that they are presently considering responses to the March 2017 consultation. The Review will then publish final proposals. These will be laid before Parliament in an Order in Council in September 2018. This is mandated in s. 3(2) of the Act. If Parliament does not vote to block the proposed new boundaries they will, as a matter of law, take effect for any General Election after that date (whether in 2022 or before). The Tories lost their majority. Is there any chance of Parliament not passing the new boundaries? This is more of a political than a legal or constitutional question. Some people suggest the DUP may not like the proposed new boundaries and so will vote them down. I dont know enough about NI politics to know if new boundaries will or will not suit the DUP. However, it is a fallacy to suggest the DUP will vote the Review down. There are 4 reviews. When they are laid before Parliament it will be open to the Conservative-DUP majority to bock the Northern Ireland proposals to keep the DUP on side, but pass the proposals for England, Scotland and Wales. The Tories have a vested interest in doing so. The DUP have a vested interest in the Tories. David Steel famously asked the party to go back to your constituencies and prepare for government. Unless you think there will be General Election before September 2018 (which appears very unlikely) then you would be well advised to go back to you new constituencies. * Antony Hook was #2 on the South East European list in 2014, is the English Party's representative on the Federal Executive and produces this sites EU Referendum Roundup. Members are sovereign in the Liberal Democrat party. Members will be consulted on the overall party strategy at the next Federal Conference, prior to a motion being passed. Yet the party leader is expected, both by the membership and by the country, somehow to embody the image of the party. He or she is identified with its perceived success or failure by the media, regardless of how much control they may actually have had. So what do we members think the first duty of the Liberal Democrat leader should be? Surely he must show in outlining his political priorities that he is true to the partys principles and values. This Tim Farron did, when elected in 2015. He said, for example, We see people as individuals. The Liberal mission is to help us to be the best we can be. Standing up for the individual is not what we do its what we are. However, we surely also expect each new leader to offer a strong new focus which will both inspire the party activists and gain the attention of the public. Tim, coming in as leader after the devastation the party suffered in the May 2015 general election, declared, I am fed up to the back teeth of being right and losing elections. He demanded that. step by step, we should build change from the bottom up. Pick a ward any ward we want councillors first. Its time for the Liberal Democrats to win again. He spoke stirring words in effective speeches to the membership. Vince Cable starts in 2017 in a better situation, since under Tims leadership the party membership doubled and many council seats were won back. But at only 7% in the national polls and just 12 MPs, the party is still far from becoming the main opposition party that Tim had sought. Vince appears to take the partys principles and values for granted wanting to make the country more liberal and more democratic. With Tim as leader the partys aim was summarised as to make a Britain that is open, tolerant and united. For Vince the key impact words are apparently to be fair, free and open. That suggests a continuation of values, though perhaps acknowledging that the country may not be as tolerant or as united as Lib Dems would wish. What is Vinces strong new focus? He declares himself ambitious for the country and for the party. We need to give people powers over the decisions that affect their lives, including Brexit. And, I want the Liberal Democrats to be at the centre of political life a credible effective party of national and local government. Recognising the size of the struggle ahead for every vote and every seat, he asserts It can be done. There is enormous energy in the thousands of new members, and: I have the ability to give that energy a lead to hit the headlines and put our party in the centre of political debate. Its a strong beginning, and with Vinces gift for the memorable phrase and his caustic wit, bound to catch the medias attention. The next vital question for us is: What do we expect of our leader during his time in office? There is tension between the dynamism of our democratic party and its tacit acceptance that a leader even the leader of this collection of individuals has to lead. The drive which we all share to attain effective power means we need to win the countrys liking and trust enough for us to win contests. The media-focused concentration on the party leader suggests he must be given some leeway. It is the sudden demand, the unexpected event, which forces an immediate response from the leader on behalf of the party, Tim Farron rose successfully to the challenge of the Referendum result, asserting our commitment to Europe and carrying the party with him. His predecessor Nick Clegg accepted the challenge for the party to share power. The partys control over the leader then lessened, and the divisions in the broad church that we inevitably are became apparent. As Vince Cable prepares us to take power in the future, our expectation sof him will have to be worked out. * Katharine Pindar is a long-standing member of the Lib Dems and an activist in the West Cumbrian constituency of Copeland and Workington. INFORMATION is being sought following two separate late-night assaults in the city centre over the past week. In one incident, a young woman was approached by a man as she was walking alone at Chapel Street at around 1am last Thursday. She was suddenly approached by a male who attempted to engage her in conversation, when this failed he put his arm around her and tried to pull her into him, said Sergeant Ber Leetch. The lady resisted and kept walking. He followed her for a time and eventually gave up. Gardai are collecting CCTV from the area and are looking for any witnesses to this very distressing assault, she added. In the second incident, a young man was assaulted by two males as he was walking at Dominic Street at around 3am on Saturday last, July 29. According to gardai, the assault was completely unprovoked. Anyone with information on either incident is asked to contact Henry Street garda station at (061) 212400. THOUSANDS of people from across the Mid-West are expected to line the streets for Limericks first supercar festival in three years, this September. The Cannonball festival will drive through Limerick city during a three-day motoring bonanza, from September 8 to September 10, and will feature 190 super and novelty cars, free family events, and a massive charity fundraiser. It is the first time the popular festival has passed through Limerick since 2013, and raised almost 900,000 in its nine years. Car fanatics will witness some of the worlds top brands passing through the city on its 1,000km tour including McLaren, Lamborghini, Ferrari, Porsche, Rolls Royce, Masseratti, and many more. The Limerick show will kick off at Pery Square at 6pm on September 8. Festival founder Alan Bannon estimates that the event is worth more than 2.5m to the economy, annually. The team is constantly innovating, the event is going from strength to strength and now with Japan and the US on the horizon and plans to license the event all over the world, we are excited about the future. The Irish event in September is always the big highlight and I would like to thank our new headline sponsors and partners. I look forward to welcoming the Dubai team and all of our Cannonballers from Ireland, UK, Japan, the US and the EU, he said. Forty percent of the supercar convoy is from outside Ireland, and accumulate a worth of more than 32m. The Limerick show will also feature an electric atmosphere including live music, robots, family fun, Monster Energy Jam Truck, official Cannonball merchandise and local entertainers. A spokesperson for the annual Cannonball event said that proceeds from the event this year will go to Make a Wish Ireland, a children's charity that grants magical wishes to children between the ages of three to 17 years with life-threatening medical conditions. For more information, visit www.cannonball.ie. ARMED gardai were called to defuse a heated situation at a playground fundraiser in County Limerick where a dozen Republicans staged a protest against a British Legion band concert. As a result of the activists disapproval of the event disappointed organisers the Knocklong History Group were forced to call off Tuesday nights charity concert at the local community centre. The British Legion Leiston Band, hailing from the small town of Leiston in East Suffolk, was invited to perform a brass concert, which was to take a moment to remember the Knocklong men killed in the First World War, with proceeds going towards a playground for the local Heritage Park. However, a planned peaceful protest scuppered any hopes of an enjoyable night going ahead, with 12 Irish Socialist Republicans arriving at the scene at around 6pm. More than 10 gardai arrived at the scene, according to a spokesperson for the campaign, which was entitled British Imperialists not welcome in Knocklong. The spokesperson told the Limerick Leader that despite the ring of steel around Knocklong Community Centre, the Republicans successfully prevented the pro-imperialist event from taking place. He claimed that there was a heavy garda presence, including three squad cars, an armed response team, and members of the special branch. One protester took to social media to state that a garda had impounded his vehicle for no NCT. Gardai confirmed that a vehicle was impounded in the area on Tuesday, and that the regional support unit were at the scene. A spokesperson for the Knocklong History Group told this newspaper that it was very disappointed that it was not possible for the concert to proceed. We would like to thank the band from Leiston for all their work preparing for the concert and traveling to Knocklong to perform. We wish them every good wish and hope that one day they will be able to play in Knocklong. The community band is understood to have members as young as 14 and as old as 77. Protester and Knocklong native, George McAnaspie said that the protest was a massive victory for Socialist Republicans in the Munster area. Mr McAna-spies grandfather was involved in the famous rescue mission of IRA leader Sean Hogan in 1919, which took place in Knocklong. Left unchecked, events like the concert in Knocklong could become subtle recruiting grounds for the Brit Army in Ireland and therefore must be opposed. He added: Let the message go out loud and clear from Knocklong, Brit Imperialists are not welcome in Ireland and will be challenged. Sinn Fein TD Maurice Quinlivan said: I think it is a bit strange somebody invited them and didnt expect any sort of reaction to it. I am not saying that I condemn or support it, but it would be controversial to invite the British Legion band to come to a rural village, where there was a huge armed resistance during the British occupation at the time. It seems a bit strange that you would invite just the band from the occupying forces and not to have a Republican-type band a bit of balance. He said he was unaware of the Irish Socialist Republicans. On July 30, a group called Anti-Imperialist Action Ireland posted on Facebook about the concert. Normalisation must be opposed. Imperialism in Ireland must be confronted. Brit Military recruitment in Ireland must be Challenged. Therefore the concert in Knocklong must be opposed by Socialist Republicans and all those opposed to the illegal British presence in Ireland and in nations all over the world. Join us at 6pm this Tuesday at Knocklong Community Centre and let's take a stand for our youth, for our class and for our country against Imperialism! Gardai said no arrests were made on the night. The Leader made a number of attempts to contact the British Legion Leiston band. THE costs of maintaining two presidential houses owned by the University of Limerick have exceeded 100,000, with one multi-million euro residence left vacant for nearly a decade. The university sparked controversy in 2010 when a second house costing 2.2m and funded by philanthropist Chuck Feeney of Atlantic Philanthropies was built for its president on campus at a time when it was 3m in debt. UL is the only university in the country which has two residences in its possession, and the maintenance and renovation of both has cost 109,654.55 to date, according to information released to the Limerick Leader under the Freedom of Information Act. The costs include 88,133.89 for the maintenance, as well as electricity and gas, for the residence on campus at Garraun, Clonlara, on the Clare side of the university, since 2009. A further 21,520.66 has been spent on the renovation costs of the first presidential home at Ballycuggeran, Killaloe, since its acquisition in 1998. At the time, UL defended its decision to build a residence on campus, indicating that it planned to sell the residence situated on two acres in Ballycuggeran. However, the property was never sold and currently remains under the control of UL. Sitting atop the Ballycuggeran hillside, and offering panoramic views of Lough Derg, the four-storey mezzanine residence is partly built into its surroundings. Now valued at in the region of 1.5m, documents show that the property was bought for 480,000 in September 1998, following the appointment of the universitys second president, Dr Roger Downer. Both residences were purchased from private philanthropic donations, but critics have said that nonetheless the maintenance and upkeep of both properties are being paid for by the State. The Ballycuggeran property was leased in May 2009 for 18 months at a cost of 1,500 per month, accruing 27,000 in rent, but has since lain vacant. Fianna Fail deputy Willie O'Dea urged that UL should sell or at least rent the property to get the best possible value out of it and ease the burden on the taxpayer. John Phelan, of Harry Brann auctioneers in Killaloe, said while no multi-million euro residences have come to the market in recent times, there has been an unswing in sales as buyers are again clamouring to live in the picturesque village, described as the Kinsale of Clare. In the Celtic Tiger era, everyone wanted either a house facing onto the lake or with a lake view, and they most they would have made was 1m to 1.5m. The market is buoyant again, but people are not losing the run of themselves, he said. Prof Downer said he moved out of the house when he retired two years early due to ill-health in August 2008 and relinquished all ties with it. The on-campus residence, now home to the new UL president, Dr Des Fitzgerald, on the Clare side of the campus, was built at a total cost of 2,183,000, documents show. The property cost 1,994,000 to construct, with an additional 189,000 spent on its interior - all funded by private sources. Previously described by the then Minister for Education Batt O'Keeffe as a lavish purchase, sources told the Limerick Leader that former president, Prof Don Barry, hardly ever stayed there, preferring to stay in another property, which he owns, in Killaloe. The house on campus features five bedrooms, a large reception room, a dining room with a terrace, a large living room and an expansive kitchen. Dr Fitzgerald is also not enthused at living in the three-storey on campus, inspite of its architectural merits. How do I put it ... it has great architecture, he told the Limerick Leader. Its a requirement you live there. Its a very public house, for events, meeting donors or visiting academics. Its not exactly a private home it's more like living in a fish bowl and kind of exposed. UL carried forward a net surplus of 4.68m in 2015, its most recent financial accounts, down from 10.38m in 2014. Creative Ireland is all about you. Its about how, whether you are young or old, you can benefit from getting more involved in arts, culture and creativity. Its an ambitious five-year Government strategy that aims to boost wellbeing in schools, homes and communities nationwide. You might remember the huge success of the commemorative programme last year, when thousands of cultural events were held nationwide to remember 1916. We knew that something special was happening through the commemorations; it awoke a great appetite for people to engage with their unique culture at a local and national level. We wanted to build a legacy from that tremendous cultural awakening, and that legacy is Creative Ireland. One of the key aims of Creative Ireland is to ensure that every child in the country will have access to lessons and tuition in art, drama, music or coding over the next five years. Research shows that children who engage in the arts and cultural activity are happier, suffer less anxiety and do better at school. Put simply, engaging in the arts is good for our kids, and I think that is an incredibly powerful message. This element of Creative Ireland has the potential to have a positive impact on generations to come. Well be announcing more details on how we will achieve that after the schools come back in September, but in the meantime we are encouraging everyone to get out and about this summer to discover what is on offer culturally in your own town, village or county. There is so much going on including Hospital Arts Festival. Creative Teams have been appointed in every county nationwide, to help drive culture and creativity nationwide. Through Creative Ireland we dont just want to improve access to arts and culture; we want to see more people getting involved. So why not consider checking out your local drama group or dropping into your local theatre? Our heritage is also an essential part of our culture and Heritage Week, which takes place in August, is a great way of getting involved and learning more about the heritage of your locality. Youll be hearing more and more about Creative Ireland in the coming weeks and months. For example, later in the year well be announcing plans on how we will grow our film and TV industry here, something which can be of benefit to some of our most remote and beautiful locations. By increasing participation in cultural activities and supporting our creative industries, we can boost our wellbeing and drive further economic growth. I hope youll join us on this creative journey. -Minister for Culture, Heritage and the Gaeltacht Heather Humphreys Aug 3, 2017, 4 AM American Philatelic Society executive director Scott English addresses the APS board of directors during the Aug. 2 board meeting in Richmond, Va. By Michael Baadke The executive director of the American Philatelic Society, Scott English, has signed on for another two years. The decision to continue Englishs contract with the society was made official when the APS board of directors met in executive session on Aug. 2, in Richmond, Va. English told Linns Stamp News that he made a presentation before the board on Wednesday morning. The board then deliberated, with English absent from the room, and voted to continue his contract for another two years. English announced the news himself during the open session of the board meeting, later that same morning, prior to his regular report before the board. Id like to thank the board for renewing my contract and showing faith in the work that weve been doing, English said. He remarked on the agreement again that evening while speaking to attendees at the societys Campaign for Philately reception. I appreciate your confidence in me, he said, and I appreciate the boards confidence in me, and I think the next two years will be even better than the last two. English was hired following a lengthy search process in 2014-15, replacing Ken Martin, who was named the societys chief operating officer. English was introduced to APS members Aug. 20-23, 2015, during the organizations annual summer stamp show and convention, in Grand Rapids, Mich. Prior to accepting the position with the APS, English was chief of staff for U.S. Representative Mark Sanford of South Carolina, and had also worked as chief operating officer for South Carolinas Department of Education. When he was hired by the APS, then-president Stephen Reinhard described the new executive directors responsibilities as addressing a continuously decreasing membership, increasing our gift and grant income, improving and adding to our member services, addressing outreach opportunities by partnering with other organizations both within and outside of the hobby, and identifying and addressing the needs of thousands of collectors who call the Internet their home. May 3, 2021, 2 AM This June 2, 1908, cover enclosed heavy advertising matter for Hamilton Carhartt Manufacturer, maker of mens work clothes. It is the only known entire commercial cover franked with a 4 Grant stamp with Schermack perforations. Image courtesy of Melvin Ge This May 27, 1908, cover from Koslowski to Joseph Mueller in Vienna, Austria, is the earliest documented use of the Scott 314A 4 Schermack stamp. The imperforate 1 Benjamin Franklin stamp, Scott 314, brought the postage total to 5, the amount required All 25 sheets 10,000 stamps total of imperforate 4 Ulysses S. Grant stamps of 1908, Scott 314A, were finished with Schermack type III perforations and wound into coils for use in office mailing machines. This unused example illustrates Schermacks pr All surviving unused examples of imperforate 4 Grant stamps originated from a serendipitous purchase by Detroit collector Karl Koslowski, pictured in this photograph reproduced from the 1947 American Philatelic Congress Book. This April 8, 1909, cover is franked with a magnificent margin example of the 4 Grant stamp with complete hyphen-hole Schermack perforations at the left on a self-addressed return envelope to Koslowski from his brother at Sicklerville, N.J. This picture This corner piece of an envelope canceled June 19, 1908, is the only known survivor of the 4 Grant Schermack mailing for Burroughs Adding Machine Co. Image courtesy of the Philatelic Foundation for a certificate issued July 1, 1957. Both stamps shown here are fakes submitted to the Philatelic Foundation as examples of Scott 314A. The one pictured in black-and-white, examined in 1962, was made by adding counterfeit Schermack perforations to a die proof of the 4 Grant engraving. The o The first report of 4 Grant stamps with Schermack perforations (called the hyphen-hole roulette in the article) appeared in the Sept. 5, 1908, issue of Mekeels Weekly Stamp News, almost four months after they had been issued, stimulating collector int This table from Post-Office Department Annual Reports for the Fiscal Year Ended June 30, 1909, recorded the number of unperforated 20th-century United States stamps from the initial issue down to October 9, 1909. The smallest quantity was 10,000 4 st Provenance of the unique unused strip of five imperforate 4 Grant stamps with Schermack perforations went from Koslowski to Fred R. Schmalzriedt to Col. E.H.R. Green to Josiah Lilly to Benjamin D. Phillips. In 1985 Boston stamp dealer Jack Molesworth cut Spotlight on Philately By Ken Lawrence The United States 4 brown Ulysses S. Grant stamp of the 1902 series (also called the Second Bureau issue) was issued without perforations in May 1908. Today, as Scott 314A, it is one of the scarcest and most interesting United States postage stamps of the 20th century, as well as one of the most expensive. On May 12 the U.S. Post Office Department (POD) ordered the Bureau of Engraving and Printing (BEP) to ship a special order of 25 uncut 400-subject sheets of imperforate 4 Grant stamps to the Detroit, Mich., post office. The shipment departed Washington May 13 and arrived at Detroit May 15. The Schermack Mailing Machine Co., the authorized buyer, purchased all 10,000 stamps. The entire batch was processed into coil rolls with the firms proprietary hyphen-shaped affixing-machine perforations, two vertical slots between each stamp, known to specialist collectors and listed by Scott as Schermack type III. Connect with Linns Stamp News: Sign up for our newsletter Like us on Facebook Follow us on Twitter No 4 Grant stamps survived in the original imperforate condition as issued, so the catalog listing is for stamps with Schermack private perforations, one of only two such stamps in the Scott Standard Postage Stamp Catalogue. (The other is Scott 482A, the 2 carmine-rose George Washington type Ia stamp of 1919.) Other stamps with privately applied proprietary separations are listed in a separate back-of-the-book Vending and Affixing Machine Perforations chapter of the Scott Specialized Catalogue of United States Stamps and Covers. The Robert A. Siegel Auction Galleries census of genuine Scott 314A stamps lists a total of 54 records, including multiples, 64 stamps in all. Of those, 21 are unused (nine singles, four plain pairs, two guideline pairs) and 43 are used (30 singles, one pair, and one strip of three off paper; two canceled on piece [one that includes the circular datestamp]; three singles on covers; and one strip of three on cover). At least one additional used stamp has been reported but is not included in the Siegel census. In his 1943 book The Stamp Machines and Coiled Stamps, George P. Howard wrote, One used copy with paste-up margin underneath has disclosed plate No. 4255. Other writers have described a used Scott 314A with a guideline at the left. No stamp in the Siegel census fits that description either, but two show guidelines at the right. The 2017 Scott US. Specialized catalog values a single example in unused condition at $100,000; in mint never-hinged condition at $230,000. An unused pair is valued at $250,000; an unused guideline pair at $375,000. A used single is valued at $52,500, a used strip of three at $300,000, and a used example on cover at $140,000. The amounts are in italics, indicating the listed items are traded infrequently and values are difficult to estimate accurately. All but 50 of the 4 Grant imperforates were used on mass-advertising mailings prepared by the Winfield Printing Co., which used a Schermack high-speed mailing machine to affix the stamps and seal the envelopes. Approximately 6,000 envelopes contained circulars for Hamilton Carhartt Manufacturer, maker of overalls and other mens work clothing, and about 4,000 for Burroughs Adding Machine Co. Postage of 4 in 1908 could have prepaid a piece of third-class printed matter weighing from 6 ounces to 8 ounces, such as a catalog or price list, or fourth-class samples of merchandise weighing from 3 ounces to 4 ounces. COLLECTORS TOOK NOTICE IN SEPTEMBER 1908 From October 1906 to March 1909 the POD provided sheets of imperforate stamps on special order to manufacturers and users of stamp vending and affixing machines. Those authorized buyers processed the imperforate sheet stamps into coils with private proprietary perforations. The most widely used affixing-machine perforation was Schermack type III. Because the imperforate stamps were not placed on public sale, no published notices announced these issues. As a result, stamp collectors usually were unaware of their existence until previously unreported stamps were sighted on mail. The Chronicle of New Issues column by Henry A. Kidder in the Sept. 5, 1908, issue of Mekeels Weekly Stamp News reported: UNITED STATES.Theo. Richards reports having seen the current 4c stamp with the hyphen-hole roulette. It was used on a letter mailed in Detroit. That squib alerted specialists to the existence of the 4 Schermack coil stamps. They mounted a search for more, and attempted to identify the source in hopes of obtaining unused fully imperforate examples. The Schermack Co. had sold quantities of earlier imperforate issues to stamp collectors and dealers, not only as finished coil stamps but also as unsevered blocks and as multiples that included marginal markings and selvage. This time there were no remainders available to hobbyists. Collectors and writers followed the paper trail to the Schermack office in Detroit as they had on earlier occasions, but by spring 1909 the firm was under new ownership and had changed its name to the Mail-om-eter Company, and was unable or unwilling to assist them in this quest. At the time of the Mekeels report, the entire set of 1902 series stamps was in its twilight. It began to be replaced on Nov. 16, 1908. The new 1908 series pictured only busts of George Washington and Benjamin Franklin. Scott 314A was superseded in 1909 by the imperforate brown 4 Washington stamp, Scott 346. On March 13, 1909, imperforate sheets ceased being special-order stamps. Effective that date, any postmaster could order them for any customer. But all 1902 series stamps had been replaced by Scott 343-347 Washington and Franklin issues and by the carmine 2 Abraham Lincoln Centennial commemorative, Scott 368. No further reports of the imperforate 4 Grant appeared in stamp magazines until mid-1909, well into the Washington-Franklin era. Collectors requested more information about the elusive imperforate stamps from Third Assistant Postmaster General Abraham L. Lawshe not only about the 4 Grant issue but also about the scarce imperforate blue 5 Abraham Lincoln stamp, Scott 315, that had been issued a few weeks earlier to manufacturers of stamp vending machines. In some respects the 5 imperforates seemed to be more difficult to collect than the 4 Schermack stamps because no imperforate or privately perforated 5 Lincoln stamps had been observed in the mail. William C. Fitch, superintendent of the Division of Stamps, compiled from BEP invoices a report dated Jan. 14, 1909, of unperforated postage stamps issued to date. It showed that there had been only one issue of imperforate 4 Grant stamps, exactly 10,000 of them issued May 12, 1908. An original copy of the report signed by Fitch is in the Arthur M. Travers papers at the Smithsonian National Postal Museum. The United States Philatelic Classics Society has made the Travers papers available online, which are searchable here. The two pages of this document can be viewed here and here. In the April 1909 issue of Collectors Journal, Hugh M. Clark, who later edited the Scott catalog, wrote: Of the values perforated for use in the [Schermack] machine, the general manager has told me that the company never perforated other than a one-cent or two-cent and possibly a 4c stamp, unless it was done without his knowledge and consent. The following therefore is a complete list of the varieties of the genuine Schermack perforation at the present date: 1c 1902. 2c 1902. 4c 1902. 1c 1908. 2c 1908. 2c Lincoln. The remark and possibly a 4c started my question-mill at work. I wrote to Washington concerning this and received a letter from which the following is an extract: The 10,000 4c unperforated stamps, series 1902, were furnished the Postmaster, Detroit, Mich., in response to a call for stamps in that form to be used in a stamp-affixing machine. In the July 3, 1909, Mekeels, Kidders new-issues column reported correspondence obtained by Pennsylvania stamp scholar Lars Harald Kjellstedt, international secretary of the American Philatelic Society (APS), that verified the 10,000 imperforate 4c stamps of 1902 series, mentioned by the Third Assistant Postmaster General in a recent interview. A final official report of quantities issued was included as a table, reproduced here, in the fiscal year 1909 report of Third Assistant Postmaster General Lawshe to the president of the United States dated Oct. 30, 1909, published in 1910 by the Government Printing Office. It again verified the total number of imperforate 4 Grant stamps as 10,000. With the quantity confirmed, documented by BEP invoices and the POD fiscal year report, collectors were optimistic that they might be able to locate unused supplies. In the March 1910 issue of The Stamp Journal, Missouri coil stamp specialist Vinton E. Sisson wrote: The recent find in Detroit of the 4c Schermack perforation, seems to prove conclusively that it was issued imperforate, and if so this stamp in pairs or blocks in P.O. condition is destined to be the rarity of rarities of Uncle Sams postage stamps. Alas, Sisson was too optimistic. There are no blocks or fully imperforate pairs of Scott 314A. But the May 14, 1910, Mekeels, two days past the second anniversary of the imperforate 4 Grant issue date, quoted Detroit collector Herman W. Boers: There is a person here who has had twenty of the stamps from a roll but used all of them up except a strip of five now in his possession. An offer of a large amount has been refused for the strip. The quantity of 20 was wrong, but the lucky man who possessed the stamps had a penchant for dispensing false, deceptive, and misleading information that has burdened the history of Scott 314A ever since. KARL KOSLOWSKIS PURCHASE OF UNUSED 4 GRANT SCHERMACKS A Detroit stamp collector named Karl Koslowski (pronounced koz-LOFF-skee) had bought 50 of the stamps in unused condition from the Winfield firm in May 1908, just as he was departing Detroit for an extended visit to Latvia, the land of his birth. All unused examples of the stamp that exist today are survivors of Koslowskis purchase, as are three of four known covers, both off-cover used multiples, and some used singles. At the time Koslowski obtained his 50 stamps and set sail for Europe, he had no reason to expect that they would become rarities. Upon his return to the United States, after learning that his were the only ones available to collectors, he published various accounts of how he had obtained them in several philatelic publications. Later in life he became a stamp dealer. Retelling the story of the 4 Schermacks became his way of keeping his name before the stamp hobby. Unfortunately, Koslowskis stories are inconsistent with one another and with the available evidence. Incorrect or incomplete information frequently accompanied Scott 314A stamps when they were displayed at philatelic exhibitions. The cumulative result was that much of what experts thought they knew about 4 Grant stamps with Schermack type III perforations was a hodgepodge of fact and fancy. I tried to set the record straight in my article titled The Rare 4-cent Schermack Coil Stamp in the May 1994 American Philatelist. For a long time afterward dealers and exhibitors used that as their reference. Gradually, most of the misinformation that had been so widespread ceased to hold sway as the truth about these stamps became known. More than two decades have passed since that publication. During the intervening years more facts have come to light, so this seems like an excellent time to update and retell the story, which entered its dramatic stage in the summer of 1910, more than two years after the stamps had been issued. Koslowski had joined the APS that year and brought examples of the stamps to the APS annual meeting in August, which conveniently was held in Detroit. His first-hand account, which falsely stated that collectors had entirely overlooked the imperforate 4 Grant stamps, appeared in the Oct. 21, 1910, issue of Philadelphia Stamp News. He wrote that they had been issued almost a year after imperforate 5 stamps. In reality, the first 10,000 imperforate 5 Lincoln stamps had been issued on March 30, 1908, followed by 2,000 more on April 4 less than seven weeks before Scott 314A was issued. As Koslowski told the story at that time, the Schermack Co. acquired the imperforate 4 Grant stamps on Friday, May 15, 1908, and processed them into coils that same day. He said he saw them first as imperforate sheets and watched as they were punched, slit, and coiled. But his article misdescribed the Schermack coil manufacturing system. His erroneous description reads: First the sheets were trimmed of the end and right side margins, then cut into strips and pasted together into one long strip with the left side margin bent under, and used as a hinge and with a special machine, worked on the same principal [sic] as a sewing machine, cut with the private perforation and rolled up ready for use in the mailing machine. The perforation is now known as Schermack No. 3. All this was done in my presence, and the stamps were delivered to their customers on the same day. Howard reported the actual method. He quoted a letter from the Schermack firms general manager W.F. Schwenger that explained the sequence: These large 400 (subject) sheets were pasted together and run through machines for perforating and one row clear across was perforated at each operation, the coiling and stripping being done after the perforating but on the same machine. After punching slot perforations in vertical columns across all 20 rows of stamps and slitting the sheets horizontally between each row, the strips were rolled up into coils of 1,000 or 3,000 stamps with the gum side facing out. Its impossible to say whether Koslowskis memory had lapsed over the two and a half years between obtaining his stamps and telling his story, or whether he simply made it up to make it seem as though he had witnessed the process. But that was not his worst fabrication. He also wrote, perhaps hoping to inflate his personal image and importance among collectors, As yet not even the Postoffice authorities have given a correct account of the number of this variety that were issued in imperforate form. As noted previously, POD and BEP officials had compiled and circulated exact, unambiguous figures in January 1909 and on three subsequent occasions, and had published them in a report to the president. As if to rebuke Koslowskis reckless assertion quickly before it could gain undeserved credibility, J. Murray Bartels, after again consulting official records, wrote in the Dec. 15, 1910, issue of The Philatelic Gazette, On May 15, 1908, twenty-five sheets of 400 each of the 4c stamp in imperforate condition, a total of 10,000 copies, arrived at the Detroit post office and this constitutes the entire issue. Koslowski reported that he had obtained from the Schermack Co. some stamps that were cut close at the top or bottom, or the hyphen holes were cut too far into the stamps. He had used most of those as postage, believing he would be able to acquire more at a later time, but he kept a few of the best examples in mint condition. Many years later, Koslowski told a different story, embellished with new details, much like a fishermans fable about the catch that grew longer, stronger, and more tiring to reel in upon each recitation, but he no longer claimed to have watched as the sheets were being perforated and processed into coils. At the 1947 meeting of the American Philatelic Congress in Detroit, he said that the Schermack firms bookkeeper had lived in the same house he did and that he frequently had visited the young man at his workplace, which was located near their residence. On Wednesday, May 27, 1908, Koslowski stopped at the Schermack office to bid adieu to his friends, because he was leaving for Europe the next day. While he was at the office, Schermacks treasurer returned from the post office with the bundle of 4 imperforate sheets. He offered to sell one full sheet to Koslowski, but Koslowski declined, wanting to keep the $16 for his trip. At home that evening he had second thoughts. He returned early the next morning, May 28, to see if he could buy the stamps, but the stamps were gone. They had all been delivered the very afternoon soon after I had left the plant. He learned (incorrectly, as it turned out) that the processed stamps had been delivered to two firms. Hamilton Carhartt was too far away to consider, so he went instead to the Winfield Co. and persuaded the mail clerk there to sell him 50 stamps. Grabbing my purchase, I was on my way just in time to get aboard [a train] and wave good-bye to old Detroit. (In reality Winfield was the printer and mail contractor for both Hamilton Carhartt and Burroughs; no stamps were delivered to either of the contracting firms.) When Weekly Philatelic Gossip of Dec. 2, 1950, reprinted that version of Koslowskis story, he attempted to document his departure date as the day he had acquired the stamps by illustrating a postcard he had sent from Buffalo to Detroit on May 28. But a cover Koslowski had mailed from Detroit to fellow stamp collector Joseph Mueller in Austria on May 27, 1908, the day before he left for Europe, proved that Koslowski was in possession of the stamps at least one day earlier than his 1947 Congress Book memoir stated. The franking on that cover one imperforate 4 Grant stamp with Schermack perforations and one imperforate green 1 Benjamin Franklin stamp (Scott 314) combined to equal the 5 international single-letter rate to member countries of the Universal Postal Union. It is the earliest documented use of Scott 314A. Spencer Anderson, a well-known Nassau Street stamp dealer from the 1920s to the 1940s, had offered the cover for sale priced at $875 in a full-page advertisement in the Dec. 20, 1941, issue of Stamps magazine. To the best of my knowledge the cover appeared most recently in Siegels April 23, 1983, Rarities of the World sale, where it realized $20,000 plus a 10 percent buyers premium, total sale price $22,000. The philatelic verdict on Koslowski is at best ambiguous. Collectors owe him a debt of gratitude for obtaining and preserving the only unused examples of the scarce imperforate 4 Grant stamps, and the only used multiples. But his chronic failure to tell the truth about their origin, either because his memory played tricks on him, or because he intentionally misrepresented and embroidered the facts, or both, has tainted his legacy. THE ONLY KNOWN COMMERCIAL COVER FRANKED WITH A 4 GRANT SCHERMACK STAMP Fred R. Schmalzriedt was the most dedicated and trustworthy contemporaneous scholar who searched for, studied, and reported on the imperforate 4 Grant. He was nationally prominent in the stamp hobby, a life member of APS who served a term as the societys attorney, also counsel for the Association of Stamp Dealers of America, and president of the Detroit Philatelic Society. In December 1910 Schmalzriedt acquired an example of the stamp on a commercially used cover. He told the story of that cover in the Jan. 7, 1911, Mekeels: I heard of a young man who took two covers containing four-cent imperforates from a wastebasket in the office in which he was employed. He took them home with him and on the same day removed one, which is perfectly centered, from the cover. The other, which is poorly centered and shows part of the next stamp on the right, he left on cover. He did not notice anything unusual about the stamps until about a year after his discovery but even then did not know that they had any particular value; and it was only through my purchase of the strip [of five for $300] referred to previously that he became aware of the value of his find. Both of these stamps are now in my collection. The cover is in a pale blue linen envelope, 9 3/8 by 4 1/8 inches in size, bearing no return card. The envelopes were sealed when sent out and apparently contained a circular 3 3/8 by 8 3/4 inches in size, which must have been of heavy paper, as the creases show very plainly in the envelope. The date of the cancellation is June 2, 1908, 10:30 a.m., and the place is the main post office in Detroit. More than 25 years later, Schmalzriedt provided additional information in a letter to Max G. Johl, author of The United States Stamps of the 20th Century. Despite the lack of a corner card or contents, he said it had contained Hamilton Carhartt advertising matter: My cover was addressed to the U.S. Customs Office at Detroit, Michigan, and pulled out of the wastepaper basket by a messenger. He claims that three envelopes, all alike, came there and that he got all of them. He removed one from the cover and I purchased that as well as his cover. He has never been able to locate the other cover, although he and his father, who was a clerk in our Probate Court, both always insisted that they originally had three. Schmalzriedt owned the cover until he sold his Michigan postal history collection at a May 24, 1957, John A. Fox auction sale. The presale estimate for lot 466 was $3,500, so the $775 hammer price might have disappointed Schmalzriedt even though it was more than 30 times the price he had paid for it. The cover next appeared at the May 21-30, 1966, Sixth International Philatelic Exhibition in Washington. It was part of an exhibit titled United States Regular Series of 1902 entered by the husband-wife team of Dr. Robert S. and Judith Breakey of Lansing, Mich., which won a silver medal. Breakey was a retired urologist. In the society pages of the local paper, the Breakeys were recognized not only as civic leaders and as patrons of the arts, but also as well-known stamp collectors. Herman Herst Jr. sold the Breakey collection in his April 11-12, 1972, auction sale. The 4 Schermack cover realized $1,800. The buyer was Robert L. Markovits. It next appeared in the Shreves Philatelic Galleries May 30, 1996, sale of The Lawrence S. Fisher Collection of Classic United States First Day Covers and Earliest Known Usages, where it realized $60,000 plus 10 percent buyers premium, total $66,000. Fisher had never owned that cover; he died several years before the Breakey sale. But Markovits curated the Fisher sale and included in it important covers he had acquired after Fishers death. The cover was next a showpiece in Roger S. Brodys exhibit of 1902 series stamps and covers until Shreves sold his collection at a Dec. 6, 2002, name sale. The cover realized $160,000 plus 10 percent buyers premium, total $176,000. Although more than 9,950 4 Grant stamps with Schermack type III perforations were mailed, no other full cover from either of the commercial mailings has survived for philatelic posterity. This one is an iconic rarity of United States postal history. However, Philadelphia dealer Philip H. Ward Jr. offered for sale a remnant described as a piece of cover from Burroughs Adding Machine Co. a 4 Schermack on the upper right corner section of an envelope canceled June 19, 1908, at Detroit in the May 1934 issue of Wards Philatelic News. The Philatelic Foundation certified it as genuine in 1957, and it was last recorded in an April 14, 1964, J.&H. Stolow auction sale. CLYDE JENNINGS PUT SCOTT 314A IN PERSPECTIVE 50 YEARS AGO At a March 2-3, 1960, sale, John A. Fox sold an attractive used example of Scott 314A with a guideline at the right, certified as genuine by the American Philatelic Expertizing Service (APEX). Clyde Jennings, a colorful and flamboyant philatelic raconteur who specialized in collecting canceled U.S. stamps, bought it for $630. At a Jan. 18, 1967, meeting of the Collectors Club, he showed pages from his substantially complete collection of United States stamps on printed album pages. In the May 1967 Collectors Club Philatelist, the clubs rapporteur recorded one of the most unusual displays seen in this club for a long time: There are five of what appear to be common postage stamps with a total face value of all of 9 cents. It is urged that you look up the total 1967 Scott Catalogue value of U.S. Nos. 594, 544, 596, 613, and 314A. Real U.S. 20th century rarities! This one page has about the rarest of all the United States stamps. The condition of each copy is possibly as fine as they come; each one has a certificate with the Philatelic Foundation Expert Committees opinion that it is genuine. Scott 594 is the green 1 Franklin rotary press coil waste stamp of 1923. Scott 544, 596, and 613 are rotary press sheet waste stamps the green 1 Washington issue of 1922, the green 1 Franklin issue of 1923, and the black 2 Warren G. Harding Memorial stamp of 1923. Jennings was right to place Scott 314A with those others in the top tier of scarcity and desirability. (To fill out the list of elite 20th-century U.S. stamps, I would add horizontally perforated [vertical format] green 1 Franklin and carmine 2 Washington 1902 series government coil stamps, Scott 316 and 321, and the privately perforated Scott 482A Schermack.) THE UNIQUE 4 GRANT SCHERMACK COIL STRIP Schmalzriedt had bought Koslowskis unused strip of five for $300 in December 1910. More than any other item, that rarity had made Koslowski a celebrity in the first place and remained linked to his public image for the rest of his life. From Schmalzriedt the strip found its way into the collection of the legendary Col. Green, best known for his 1918 purchase of the complete 100-stamp sheet of the bicolor 24 Curtiss Jenny airmail with inverted center, Scott C3a, the famous Inverted Jenny error. The 4 Schermack strip realized $4,300 when it appeared in Part 26 of The Colonel E. H. R. Green Collection of Rare Postage Stamps held by Harmer, Rooke & Co., March 25-29, 1946. The picture of the strip of five shown here is reproduced from the Harmer, Rooke sale catalog. In 1964, the Raymond Weill Co. sold the mint strip of five to Josiah Lilly Jr. for $17,000. At Siegels Feb. 20, 1968, Part VII sale of the Lilly collection it realized $26,000. The buyer was Benjamin D. Phillips, who died eight months later. The Weill brothers, who also had built Phillips collection, bought it back shortly before his death. In one of the oddest embarrassments of philatelic journalism, Ward wrote in 1935 that the strip of five had been cut into two pairs and a single, then followed up with his apology when other writers pointed out his mistake. Several years afterward, he republished the same article, complete with the same error, and retracted it a few weeks later. Unfortunately Wards mistake became prophecy half a century after he first committed it. The strip of five last came to market at Siegels April 20, 1985, Rarities of the World sale. This was the description of lot 263: 4c brown imperforate, Schermack Ty. III Private Vending Machine Perforations (314A). Horizontal Strip of Five, Fresh. Two Stamps Mint, light thinning left stamp, otherwise Extremely Fine, The Largest Known Multiple, A Fantastic Showpiece, ex-Green. It realized $75,000 plus a 10 percent buyers premium, total $82,500. The buyer was Boston stamp dealer Jack Molesworth. Molesworth cut off the thinned stamp at the left end and submitted the remaining strip of four to the Philatelic Foundation, which certified it as genuine with original gum and mentioned no faults. Molesworth must have thought that a sound unused strip of four would have greater appeal to a prospective buyer than a strip of five with one faulty stamp, but he was unable to find a customer for it. Next he cut the strip of four into two pairs, which did find homes in elite collections. After the pair that had been positions 2 and 3 of the strip sold for $105,000 plus 10 percent buyers premium total $115,500 at Siegels October 8, 1998, sale of the Robert Zoellner collection, Connecticut stamp dealer Larry Volovski cut that one into two single stamps. Today the largest surviving multiples of Scott 314A are two used strips of three, one off-cover, the other on the most visually striking showpiece cover of this issue. Both originated with Koslowski. TWO MORE KARL KOSLOWSKI COVERS The most stunningly photogenic cover that features Scott 314A is a registered cover posted Aug. 14, 1908, to Dresden, Germany. It is franked with a strip of three 4 Grant Schermack stamps and a green 1 Jamestown Exhibition commemorative (Scott 328), which represented 5 letter postage plus 8 for the registry fee. Koslowski had mailed it upon his return to Detroit from his trip to Latvia. Provenance notes Markovits shared with me about 20 years ago show that the cover was in Seymour H. Kaplans collection in the 1960s. It appeared in Siegels March 24, 1970, Rarities of the World sale (memorable for achieving a then-record $280,000 realization for the unique 1856 1 Magenta of British Guiana). The Koslowski cover sold for $8,500. Six years later, described as Probably the Rarest 20th Century U.S. Cover in Existence, Siegel sold it again, this time hammered down for $11,500 at an Oct. 19, 1976, sale. The covers next appearance was in a Nov. 19-23, 1985, sale held in New York City by the Swiss auctioneer David Feldman S.A., where it sold for $41,400 (a hammer price of $36,000 plus 15 percent buyers commission). It became a featured item in Donna OKeefes Jan. 26, 1986, Philatelic Gems column titled Rarity among Schermack perforated issues. (She is Linns editor Donna Houseman now.) The buyer was Texas plastic surgeon, global humanitarian, and stamp collector Joseph Agris M.D., who included it in his gold medal exhibit of United States coil issues. I met Agris at the Ameripex 86 international philatelic exhibition in Chicago. (He and I both collected and wrote books about then-current plate-number coil stamps.) His business card pictured an unused Scott 314A stamp in color. The Agris exhibit also included a cover that had been the first to be sold, in December 1910, before any of the others had been reported. The stamp is a left margin example with a clear April 8, 1909, cancel of Sicklerville, N.J., on a return envelope addressed to Koslowski, backstamped on the same date with a Philadelphia transit postmark. Koslowski had sent a parcel to his brother in Sicklerville franked with a strip of three 4 Grant Schermack stamps. He enclosed this envelope for his brother to return the canceled strip, which today is the largest off-cover multiple of the stamp. Koslowski sold the cover to William C. Rhodes of Cleveland for $50. The cover soon reappeared at a June 1911 Hugh M. Clark auction sale, where it realized $60.50. Cleveland tycoon George H. Worthington owned it next, until he ran into financial difficulties. At the first J.C. Morgenthau auction of Worthingtons collection Aug. 21-23, 1917, it realized $150. According to Philadelphia dealer Eugene Kleins marginal note in the Worthington sale catalog, the buyer was Cameron Sperling. Markovits recorded the cover as part of Kaplans collection in the 1960s. It appeared in Siegels Feb. 24, 1965, Rarities of the World sale, where it realized $3,100, and again in the firms Nov. 25-26, 1969, sale where it realized only $800. (Or was that a typographical error on the prices realized sheet?) In the April 20, 1985, Rarities sale, where it realized $22,000 plus a 10 percent buyers premium, total $24,200, Siegel described it as Undoubtedly the best used example either on or off cover. When Agris submitted the cover to the APEX for a certificate, the APS expert committee reported that the stamp had a small crease in the top left margin. That indentation is visible in the catalog photograph. I believe it was impressed at the edge of the original sheet by a gripper on the Schermack perforator, so I would not regard it as a fault. Shreves sold the Agris collection at a special Sept. 5, 1997, name sale. The cover to Dresden realized $200,000 plus 10 percent buyers premium, total $220,000. The cover from Sicklerville realized $110,000 plus 10 percent buyers premium, total $121,000. FAKE SCOTT 314A STAMPS With prices rapidly rising and few genuine imperforate 4 Grant stamps available to meet the demand, unscrupulous sellers searched for ordinary perforated 4 Grant sheet stamps (Scott 303) with extra-large margins that could be altered to resemble genuine Schermacks. In the Jan. 20, 1911, issue of Philadelphia Stamp News, Koslowski wrote about one he had seen and added a warning: I have also seen a copy that was cut from a perforated stamp but it was a very poor job, and there is little danger that these stamps can be faked. Any one with a slight knowledge of these perforations can tell by glancing at it whether or not it is the real Schermack. At the same time I would warn buyers of these stamps to ascertain if they are genuine before closing a deal in case of single stamps. A pair, of course, is genuine in every instance. As ever, Koslowski was too glib. More than a glance is necessary to authenticate Scott 314A. In 1947 he added another cautionary observation: All of those 4c Grants as I recall it, were of the dark brown shade, all coming from the same printing. Recently while on a visit to Mobile, Alabama, I was shown a copy in very light yellow brown. Naturally, I could not consider it seriously as a true Schermack. Steven R. Belasco appended to his article Characteristics of Genuine Vending and Affixing Machine Perforations (Part II) in the March 1982 United States Specialist a table of stamps with Schermack perforations that had been examined by the Philatelic Foundation. At that time, 65 stamps had been submitted as Scott 314A, and of those, 24 were certified as genuine and 41 as fake. (On occasion the Philatelic Foundation has been unable to determine the authenticity of stamps submitted at Scott 314A and has declined to state opinions on them.) In his 2009 book Guide to United States Vending and Affixing Machine Perforations 1907-1927, Belasco wrote: For Scott No. 314A, all the counterfeits come from the regular perforated stamp (Scott No. 303). The perforations are trimmed off to fake an imperforate stamp and then fake Schermack Type III perforations are added. The most dangerous fakes come from copies of Scott No. 303 with a straight edge, and in particular the positions that have two straight edges. The straight edges of the regular sheet stamps were cut along the guidelines of the sheet, so if a guideline shows on the edge of a used single, it requires extra care to evaluate if the stamp is a genuine Schermack Type III. Color is another important factor in evaluating this stamp. Genuine examples are a true brown color, rather than a yellow-, red-, or orange-brown. Two fakes of Scott 314A examined by the Philatelic Foundation are pictured here. The older one, made by adding counterfeit Schermack type III perforations to a 4 Grant die proof (listed in todays Scott U.S. Specialized catalog as No. 303P2), is extraordinary. The other one was altered to resemble Scott 314A by the more typical forgers method that Belasco described. In the May 9, 1932, Mekeels, Warren L. Babcock described an unusual fake made from a Scott 303 perforated sheet stamp that simulated a fully imperforate stamp without Schermack perforations added. Besides being the wrong shade of brown, he wrote: It is on a piece of manila wrapper with Memphis [postmark]. While the stamp had gloriously large margins, it undoubtedly was trimmed on three sides with the fourth a straight edge. The cancellation was partially redrawn. The stamp had obviously replaced another on the piece of wrapper. The stamp is said to have come from one of the largest U.S. specialized collections now being dispersed. A philatelic forger who is known to have created at least one fake Scott 314A was 1960s Massachusetts stamp dealer and writer Richard A. Kiusalas. He invented the United States Specialist Gauge and a counterpart perforation gauge for expert identification of Canadian stamps, but he also deceptively altered stamps and added counterfeit overprints to genuine stamps. Kiusalas was notorious for reperforations that were difficult to detect, and he possessed a steel punch that simulated Schermack type III hyphen-hole perforations. LATER OFFICIAL DOCUMENTATION A December 1916 report prepared by the BEP for Third Assistant Postmaster General Alexander M. Dockery provided the dates of issue for every United States stamp issued since 1901, including the imperforates. That document reconfirmed May 12, 1908, as the date of issue for the imperforate 4 Grant stamp. That report became the reference for most 1901 through 1916 stamp issue dates published by Johl in his book and by the Scott catalog. As recently as 1994 the original report was in the Third Assistant Postmaster General files at the Smithsonian Institution, but a recent search by the National Postal Museum staff has failed to locate it. Fortunately, the essential details appeared in a front-page article, Chronology of Adhesive Postal Issues of the U.S. During the Twentieth Century by C. Edward Wright in the Jan. 20, 1917, issue of Mekeels. Karl Koslowski died in 1954 at age 76, and Fred Schmalzriedt died in 1960 at age 80. Both men regarded the 4 Grant stamp with Schermack perforations as their great philatelic adventure, and both considered it an outstanding rarity. Neither man lived long enough to see the stamp achieve four-figure realizations except for one item the mint strip of five that Koslowski had sold to Schmalzriedt for $300 in 1910, which has not survived intact. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS When I first studied and wrote the story of Scott 314A in 1994, Gini Horn, Susan Dixon, and Kathleen Wunderly located and retrieved many published references at the American Philatelic Research Library. Cecilia Wertheimer, curator of the Historical Resource Center at the Bureau of Engraving and Printing, and her assistant Rochelle D. Edmonds provided copies of BEP Postage Stamps order book pages from Sept. 21, 1906, to May 26, 1909. Kurt and Joann Lenz verified historical information in Detroit. Herbert Trenchard guided me to pertinent auction sale records. Mercer Bristow supplied information from the records of the American Philatelic Expertizing Service, and William T. Crowe did likewise from the Philatelic Foundation. Edward J. Siskin shared his documentation on the earliest and other uses on cover, and Roger S. Brody sent material he had gathered as chairman of the Second Bureau Issue Committee of the Bureau Issues Association (since renamed the United States Stamp Society). This article has built on that foundation. In 1997 Wertheimer sent copies of additional pages from BEP Postage Stamp order books, up to Sept. 14, 1910. Her successor, Hallie P. Brooker, assisted me more recently. I have also benefited from assistance provided by APRL staff members Tara Murray, Scott Tiffney, Krystal Harter, and Fred Baumann, and APRL volunteer Ellen S. Peachey; Philatelic Foundation consultant curator Lewis Kaufman; Scott R. Trepel, president of Robert A. Siegel Auction Galleries; National Postal Museum curator of philately Daniel A. Piazza; U.S. Postal Service historian Jennifer M. Lynch; Melvin Getlan, chairman of the United States Stamp Societys Vending and Affixing Machine Perforations Committee; Steven R. Belasco, former chairman of that committee, who died in 2012; and from provenance records compiled by Robert L. Markovits, who died in 2015. We and our partners use cookies to Store and/or access information on a device. We and our partners use data for Personalised ads and content, ad and content measurement, audience insights and product development. An example of data being processed may be a unique identifier stored in a cookie. Some of our partners may process your data as a part of their legitimate business interest without asking for consent. To view the purposes they believe they have legitimate interest for, or to object to this data processing use the vendor list link below. The consent submitted will only be used for data processing originating from this website. If you would like to change your settings or withdraw consent at any time, the link to do so is in our privacy policy accessible from our home page. #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... Eric Risberg/Associated Press Kendall Graveman came off the As disabled list after missing nearly three months Thursday, and the As sent down Wednesday nights winning starter to make room for him. Daniel Gossett, who worked seven innings and allowed just three hits and a run in Oaklands 6-1 win over the Giants, might be back soon: The team has a day off Monday, providing some leeway to skip a starter. However, Gossetts demotion also raises the possibility that Chris Smith, who pitched well as a fill-in, might return to the rotation should the As decide to give their regular starters the extra days off, as they often do, particularly with Graveman just coming off the DL. Troops rescued seven immigrants who were held against their will in Nuevo Laredo, Mexico, according to federal authorities. Soldiers with the Secretariat of the National Defense said they were patrolling Tuesday afternoon when they came across two suspicious people outside a residence. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate San Antonio-based refiner Valero Energy Corp. announced Thursday a long-term deal to export refined fuels to Mexico. The deal with IEnova, a Mexico-subsidiary of San Diego, California-based energy services company Sempra Energy, will utilize a new $155 million, 1.4 million barrel refined product storage facility located in the Gulf of Mexico port of Veracruz. The facility which has a 20-year concession agreement with the Port Authority of Veracruz will hold gasoline, diesel and jet fuel and will be completed by the end of 2018, according to an IEnova news release. IEnova will build two more storage terminals for $120 million, the company announced Thursday. A 500,000 barrel facility will be built near Puebla, southeast of Mexico City, and an 800,000 barrel facility will be built in Mexico City by 2020, the company said. Products will be transported from Veracruz to the inland storage terminals by rail, and will be distributed by truck. Valero spokeswoman Lillian Riojas declined to provide further details, including the length of the deal, cost of the deal with IEnova or the amount of daily exports Valero would make to Mexico. With the recent Constitutional reform, it is now possible for Valero to import refined products directly into Mexico for further distribution, including branded sales, Joe Gorder, Valeros president and CEO, said in a news release. This transaction will enable us to extend our supply chain to efficiently supply gasoline, diesel and jet fuel to the growing Mexican market. Once commercial operations have begun and regulatory approvals have been granted Valero will have the option to purchase 50 percent of the equity in the assets, IEnovas nerws release said. rdruzin@express-news.net @druz_journo The Securities and Exchange Commission is suing the CEO of San Antonio-based oil and gas explorer Lilis Energy Inc. for securities fraud in an alleged pump-and-dump scheme of a penny stock in 2012. The SEC says Abraham Avi Mirman, who became Lilis Energys CEO in September 2013, B.G. Capital Group Ltd. and its Chairman Robert Donald Bruce Genovese of manipulated the shares of a thinly traded purported silver exploration company called Liberty Silver Corp., according to the agencys complaint filed Wednesday in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. Federal investigators say Mirman, who was the head of investing for the now-defunct John Thomas Financial at the time, helped Genovese generate $17 million illegal proceeds, $8 million of which was profit. Mirman, who didnt immediately return a call for comment, received more than $300,000 in commissions for selling the stock, according to the SEC complaint. In a statement filed with the SEC Tuesday, Lilis Energy said the allegations in the complaint are unrelated to the business of Lilis Energy, Inc and predate Mr. Mirmans tenure with the Company. We understand that Mr. Mirman denies the Commissions allegations, and intends to vigorously defend this matter. The Board of Directors of the Company will continue to evaluate this matter and any future developments as necessary. Through market purchases and private transactions with Liberty Silver Genovese purportedly controlled at least 44 percent of Libertys approximately 80.7 million outstanding shares by the end of July 2012. It was around that time that Genovese allegedly reconnected with Mirman through Adam Gottbetter, himself a penny stock trader, who in 2015 was sentenced to 18 months in prison for orchestrating an unrelated stock market manipulation scheme, according to the U.S. Attorneys office in New Jersey. The SEC lawsuit says Mirman and Anastasio Tommy Belesis, the owner of John Thomas Financial, were pitched by Genovese in August 2012 to sell Liberty Silver to their customers in order to increase the stocks value and trading volume. Belesis and Mirman allegedly asked for Genovese to pledge funding of $10 million to $20 million to John Thomas Financial, of which Mirmans contract would have entitled him to 20 percent of the investment capital. After the meeting and through September, Genovese made multiple presentations to John Thomas Financial representatives to promote the purchase of Liberty Silvers stock, while Mirman allegedly forwarded promotional material from Genovese to Belsis, who edited and disseminated some of the pieces to John Thomas Financial brokers. The stock price rose from 71 cents on August 27 to $1.55 on Oct 4. Through the scheme the SEC alleged Genovese and B.G. Capital Group made at least $17 million from illegal stock sales, of which $8 million was profit, while The SEC suspended trading of Liberty Silvers securities under the LBSV listing on Oct. 5, and the stock was never re-listed on the OTC, which listed the stock as a Caveat Emptor (Buyer Beware) listing. The LSL listing on the Toronto Stock Exchange was suspended on Oct. 12 by the Ontario Securities Commission. The stock returned to trading in Toronto on Oct. 22. Liberty Silver said in a statement that it has no contractual or other relationship with Mr. Robert Genovese, BG Capital Group or any other company owned or controlled by Mr. Genovese (the Genovese Companies) other than a subscription to a private placement in November 2011 by a company controlled by Mr. Genovese. In a September 2013 statement Liberty Silver reported that it and its CEO had been named in a proposed class action lawsuit against Genovese and other unnamed parties alleging violations of the U.S. Securities Exchange Act of 1934. When Mirman was brought on as Lilis Energys CEO the company touted his extensive experience in financial and securities matters, including in obtaining financing for and providing financial advisory services to micro-cap public companies, according to an SEC filing from September 2013. rdruzin@express-news.net @druz_journo Steve Gonzales/Houston Chronicle Noble Energy plans to boost its oil production 40 percent this year, driven by a surge of drilling in the DJ Basin in Colorado and the Delaware Basin in West Texas. The Houston oil producer said it would continue to monitor oil prices to determine its activity levels toward the end of the year, but its capital spending is set to accelerate on its Leviathan project off the coast of Israel and as it builds central gathering facilities for oil, gas and water in the Delaware Basin. Mexicos envoy to the U.S. said he fears that the states so-called sanctuary cities bill could lead to racial profiling and incite violence against both legal and illegal immigrants in Texas. We do have concerns that legislation such as SB 4 can result in racial profiling and can result in a general environment of aggression against the immigrant community, even those who are here absolutely legally, Geronimo Gutierrez, Mexicos ambassador to the U.S., said after a meeting at the Mexican Consulate General in San Antonio Wednesday. Gutierrez was there as part of a working group created to educate Mexican immigrants in Texas about the new law and their rights. We have already expressed that concern to the state authorities, he said. The new sanctuary cities law, which takes effect Sept. 1, allows local police officers to question detainees about their immigration status and penalizes law enforcement and public officials who dont comply with federal immigration law. Gov. Greg Abbott and other proponents say the new law will improve public safety and prevent a patchwork of policies dictating whether or not officers can check immigration status. They say a precedent for the law was set by a similar measure in Arizona that largely survived a Supreme Court challenge. Opponents argue it equates to racial profiling and will hurt the Texas economy as groups move events elsewhere and companies yield to pressure to pull their business from the state. Reform Immigration for Texas Alliance released a study Tuesday that placed the cost at $13.8 billion and 248,000 lost jobs. Police chiefs in the states largest cities argue the law strips power from local officials to run their departments as they see fit. Its only one of the multiple messages being sent that says were going to separate some people from other people, which is the opposite of the way we are as Mexicans, as Latinos. Were very inclusive, said Lionel Sosa, an author and longtime Hispanic media strategist. Sosa joined Gutierrez and Reyna Torres Mendivil at a separate panel discussion sponsored by the San Antonio Chamber of Commerce and the San Antonio Hispanic Chamber of Commerce. Any legislation that tries to divide people in my opinion is not good legislation. Torres, Mexicos Counsel General in San Antonio, said the law would only further discourage Mexican nationals from traveling and spending money here and in other Texas cities. Although reports so far are anecdotal, border officials complain tourism and cross-border shopping excursions by Mexicans are down some 30 percent since President Donald Trumps election. It serves no one if there is a negative image in Mexico concerning Texas, she said. Gutierrez also addressed last months tragic smuggling attempt that led to 10 people dying after being transported to San Antonio from the border in an overheated trailer. San Antonio was recently the place where a very terrible incident took place, and irrespective of the details, this is a human tragedy, he said. And neither, I think, the government of the United States nor the government of Mexico can or should feel satisfied that the way we approach an issue of shared responsibility, which is managing the migration phenomenon between the nations we cannot be satisfied, I dont think, with what is going on. When asked about the Mexican governments position on the U.S. governments decision to detain adult survivors of the trailer incident, Gutierrez said, They should be treated as victims. They are victims and accordingly they should be given every possible relief that is permitted by law here. Although the first months of the Trump administration have been a roller coaster, Gutierrez gave hope that the North American Free Trade Agreement will survive in some form. I think that weve reached a point in which both sides think and believe the other side is trying to reach a deal, Gutierrez, who served as executive director of the San Antonio-based North American Development Bank before being tapped as ambassador in January. But a deal needs to be a deal in order to work for everybody. He sounded notably more optimistic than in February, when he said the relationship between the U.S. and Mexico was at a critical point. LBrezosky@express-news.net This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate A 45-year-old Benicia man was fatally shot by five Vallejo police officers Wednesday evening when he raised a machete over his head and advanced toward them after a high-speed chase, officials said. The man was identified as Jeffrey Barboa, the father of a 4-year-old boy, according to family members. We dont know what to do. He wasnt a bad guy, he had never even been in trouble, Barboas 73-year-old mother, Mary Barboa of Albuquerque, told The Chronicle in a telephone interview Thursday. Mary Barboa said she hasnt heard from the Vallejo Police Department. She was able to confirm her sons death from his estranged wife, whom police contacted to identify Jeffrey Barboas body. Officers attempted to stop Barboas car at 5:05 p.m. Wednesday in connection with an armed robbery that occurred July 26 in El Cerrito, said Vallejo police Lt. Jeff Bassett. Barboa sped off, leading officers on a 15-minute chase that ended in Richmond, Bassett said. A police vehicle rammed the mans car and prompted Barboa to stop and exit his vehicle about 5:20 p.m. on the 3400 block of Richmond Parkway, said Lt. Felix Tan, spokesman for the Richmond Police Department. The man advanced on the officers with a machete raised overhead, Bassett added. Barboa ignored commands to drop the machete, prompting five officers to open fire, hitting him multiple times, Bassett said. He was pronounced dead at the scene. Mary Barboa said her son grew up in Albuquerque, where he was known for being an artist and loved to skateboard. Jeffrey Barboa moved to California about a decade ago, where he received a doctorate degree in psychology. She said her son had recently filed for divorce and was locked in a child custody battle with his estranged wife. She said her son had reached a boiling point when he thought he had lost custody of his young son. He was a good son, a good father with a kind heart, a big heart, a loving person, Mary Barboa said, weeping over the phone. He always had a smile on his face, he was always laughing. She said she last heard from him in a text message shortly before he was killed Wednesday evening. She said her son texted that his son was gone forever and that he, too, would soon be gone. She thought what he meant was that he was going to move away and that he was just going to leave California, said Ebony Chavez, Jeffrey Barboas 30-year-old cousin. He used to tell his son that no matter what would happen that he would always come back for him, Chavez added. The incident is being investigated by the Richmond Police Department and the Contra Costa County district attorneys office. It was the fourth officer-involved shooting by the Vallejo Police Department in 2017. The shooting comes less than a month after a police officer fired his gun July 8 at a suspected carjacker at the intersection of Santa Clara and Alabama streets in Vallejo. Surveillance video obtained by The Chronicle showed the officer fired at least three shots at the suspect, Victor Hurtado, 32, of Napa County, as he attempted to run away, but did not hit him. On May 31, Vallejo police shot Kevin DeCarlo, a 20-year-old man wanted on a felony warrant, multiple times after he was cornered in Martinez and attempted to evade arrest by ramming a patrol car, police said. DeCarlo survived the shooting. On Jan. 23, police fatally shot 21-year-old Angel Ramos, who got into a fight with a teenager during a house party, officials said. When police arrived to the scene, they came upon a 6-foot-2, 250-pound 16-year-old boy who was in a mutual combat situation with Ramos on a second-story back deck, Bassett said. Sarah Ravani is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: sravani@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @SarRavani Hitler's Monsters: A Supernatural History of the Third Reich By Eric Kurlander Yale. 422 pp. $35 --- Whether you learned about it from watching "Raiders of the Lost Ark" or, even earlier, from reading Louis Pauwels and Jacques Bergier's European best-seller "The Morning of the Magicians," who doesn't now know that Hitler and Nazi Germany were obsessed with the occult? In "Hitler's Monsters: A Supernatural History of the Third Reich" Eric Kurlander, professor of history at Stetson University, carefully tracks the fringe movements and lunatic beliefs that swept through Germany in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. In particular, he documents the intense interest in parapsychology, New Age fantasies and so-called "border science." Some Nazi leaders firmly believed that the Aryan race descended from the aliens who established Atlantis, that Satan was really a good guy and that werewolves actually protected clean-living Teutons against the ravages and sexual depredations of Slavic vampires. Kurlander groups all these - as well as the Nazi obsession with the Holy Grail, witchcraft, Luciferianism, World Ice Theory, anti-gravity machines, astrology and pagan religions - under the rubric "the supernatural imaginary." He begins his study with Jorg Lanz von Liebenfels, champion of Ariosophy, "an esoteric doctrine that prophesied the resurgence of a lost Aryan civilization peopled by Nordic 'God Men.'" According to Lanz, in 1909 he gave some issues of his magazine Ostara to a pale, shabbily dressed young man named Adolf Hitler. Of course, the future Fuhrer may have just wanted the magazine for the pictures, since it was illustrated with - shades of Frank Frazetta! - "muscular Aryan cavaliers defending scantily clad blonde women from the advances of hideous-looking 'ape-men.'" As the author of "The Theozoology, or the Science of Sodom's Apelings and the God's Electrons," Lanz frequently referred to "lesser breeds" as "Tschandals," a derogatory term taken from the Hindu codes of Manu. Manu? In German theosophical circles it was commonly believed that India and Tibet preserved the hidden enclaves of ancient Atlanteans or even living Secret Masters. One lunatic named Guido von List "proved" that Baldur, Jesus, Buddha, Osiris and Moses were all pure-blooded Aryans. Witches were simply Earth mothers and practitioners of a traditional Indo-Germanic religion that Judeo-Christianity tried to eradicate. (This is similar to the long discredited thesis of Margaret Murray's 1921 book, "The Witch-Cult in Western Europe.") With growing frequency, the Jews were deemed the most pernicious Tschandals. Kurlander paraphrases the British racist Houston Stewart Chamberlain, who blustered that "heroic Aryans" sought "higher knowledge and creativity fuelled by their superior 'racial soul,'" while "monstrous Semites" were "civilization-destroying materialists who lacked the capacity for transcendence." Throughout, Kurlander underscores the dangers of insane nationalism. Georg Kenstler proclaimed - with horrific consequences - that German territorial superiority required "Lebensraum," or "living space." Walther Darre affirmed the ultra-patriotic, almost mystical association of "Blut und boden," or blood and soil. Erik Hanussen, the country's "most flamboyant clairvoyant," helped convince "millions of Germans that they were the 'Chosen People' and that the downfall of 1918 would be reversed by Hitler's ability to make 'the impossible possible.'" As Kurlander stresses, Hitler's rise to power resulted from multiple factors - Germany's military defeat, onerous war reparations, economic chaos - but esoteric mumbo-jumbo clearly played its part. He examines the popularity of the extremist horror writer Hanns Heinz Ewers and parses the racist imagery of expressionist films such as "Nosferatu" and "The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari." Hitler apparently studied Ernst Schertel's "Magic" as a self-help manual, underlining personally useful passages, among them "He who does not carry demonic seeds within him will never give birth to a new world." Such a channeling of demonic power or "mana" has always been central to occultism. The psychologist Carl Jung would even assert that Hitler was a medium, a "mouthpiece of the gods of old." It may seem paradoxical that once firmly in charge, Hitler turned against astrology, tarot reading and all "commercial" uses of the supernatural. In fact, he feared that these could be used to manipulate the public in ways outside his control. Even professional magicians were legally compelled to demonstrate how their tricks were accomplished. Still, Hitler and his inner circle continued to firmly support "scientific occultism." In the mid-1930s, for instance, Rudolf Hess hoped to create a Central Institute for Occultism. As late as 1942, Hitler could declare himself a "supporter" of World Ice Theory. "Glacial cosmogony," as it was also known, maintained that "icy moons had crashed into the earth," causing floods and geophysical damage, but also bringing "living kernels" from outer space that would evolve into Aryan superbeings. According to SS chief Heinrich Himmler, perhaps the most ardent Nazi occultist, these Ur-Aryans possessed paranormal powers and extraordinary weapons, one dimly recalled as Thor's thunder hammer. Himmler would send an expedition to Tibet to search for traces of this primordial civilization. In general, the Third Reich embraced crackpot doctrines "that buttressed its racial, political, and ideological goals." These goals eventually included concentration camps, monstrous human experiments and the "Final Solution." An entire people was horribly demonized solely because of their religion and ethnicity. This couldn't happen now, could it? Some Nazis continued their grandiose self-mythologizing even when the war was lost, viewing the destruction raining down around them as a Wagnerian "Twilight of the Gods." Eric Kurlander has written a scholarly book that reveals - to borrow Joseph Conrad's phrase - the fascination of the abomination. But he also shows how swiftly irrational ideas can take hold, even in an age before social media. As the Reich's propaganda minister, Joseph Goebbels reportedly declared, "If you repeat a lie a thousand times, people are bound to start believing it." Dave Chappelle just kicked off his residency at Radio City Music Hall, so he stopped by CBS's "Late Show With Stephen Colbert" on Wednesday night to promote the gig. It didn't take long for Colbert to bring up his favorite topic - the president. As you may remember, Chappelle hosted NBC's "Saturday Night Live" just a few days after the election in November. If viewers weren't already eager to tune in for Chappelle's first time hosting the show, it turned into a must-see appearance to hear his take on Donald Trump. "I didn't know that Donald Trump was going to win the election. I did suspect it. It seemed like Hillary was doing well in the polls and yet - I know the whites. You guys aren't as full of surprises as you used to be," Chappelle said in his monologue at the time, adding: "America's done it. We've actually elected an internet troll as our president." However, he ended on a hopeful note: "I'm wishing Donald Trump luck. And I'm going to give him a chance, and we, the historically disenfranchised, demand that he give us one, too." Fast forward through everything that has happened since that day. "Now we are seven, getting on eight months in. How do you feel about the chances that he has been given?" Colbert asked. "Do you still want to give him a chance, or have you given him all the chances he's gonna get?" "It's not like I wanted to give him a chance that night!" Chappelle protested, as the crowd broke into laughter. "I'm not saying it's a bad thing. I'm not criticizing that you said that," Colbert assured him. "I think it's a really good impulse. But how do you feel about the guy now?" Chappelle didn't really answer. "I think we're all getting an education about the presidency. I don't know that I've ever heard in just popular discourse people discussing ethics this much," he said. "I didn't realize how ethics were necessarily supposed to work at that level of government and he is putting all this on the forefront." "Well, nobody really talks about oxygen until someone's got their hands around your neck," Colbert said, earning lots of applause from the audience. They went back and forth a bit, and Chappelle concluded that Trump is going to turn people into better and more informed voters. "We'll figure it out. We'll work it out. He is a polarizing dude," Chappelle said. "He's like a bad DJ at a good party." Barbecue fans set your reminder for noon on Monday, Aug. 7. That's when tickets go on sale for Southern Smoke 2017, the smoked meat blowout that brings some of the country's most prestigious barbecue talent to Houston on Oct. 22. Underbelly chef Chris Shepherd, who created the street party as a fundraiser for the MS Society, will again bring Southern chefs all boldface names to the table in the hopes of raising $300,000 at the third annual event. Shepherd created Southern Smoke to honor his friend and former sommelier Antonio Gianola, diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis in 2014. To date, Southern Smoke has raised $464,000 for the National Multiple Sclerosis Society. There are some changes to this year's event which will give barbecue fans even greater access to the participating chefs and their food. General admission tickets are $200 for the event which runs from 4 to 8 p.m., and VIP tickets at $350 allow early access from 3 to 4 p.m. and include a gift bag with participating chefs' cookbooks. This year there's also a Lexus Super VIP ticket, $1,000, for only 20 guests that includes a Houston culinary tour with the chefs the Friday before the festival in a caravan of Lexus SUVs. As in past years, the Southern Smoke "campus" will include Underbelly, the Hay Merchant and Blacksmith, 1018 and 1100 Westheimer. Since Underbelly and the Hay Merchant will have full liquor licenses by the time of Southern Smoke, Knob Creek will be serving bourbon and whiskey cocktails. Blacksmith and the Hay Merchant will serve as lounges for VIP ticket holders where premium wines will be served as well as Knob Creek drinks. Here is a link to a map that shows the layout of Southern Smoke. This year's chefs (who will all cook using smokers or live fire) will include returning favorite Aaron Franklin, the James Beard Award-winning pitmaster of Franklin Barbecue in Austin; returning barbecue legend Rodney Scott, pitmaster for Scott's Barbecue in Hemingway, SC, and Rodney Scott's Whole Hog BBQ in Charleston, SC; Mike Lata, the James Beard Award-winning chef/partner of FIG in Charleston, SC; James Beard Award-winning chef Jason Stanhope of FIG; returning superchef Ashley Christensen, the James Beard Award-winning owner of Poole's Diner and numerous other restaurants in Raleigh, NC; and one of New Orleans' greatest and most beloved culinary ambassadors, John Besh, the James Beard Award-winning owner of August and other top restaurants in the Crescent City. They will be cooking along with members of the HOUBBQ Collective, involved since the first Southern Smoke two years ago, that includes chefs Ryan Pera of Coltivare, Seth Siegel Gardner and Terrence Gallivan of the Pass & Provisions, James Beard Award-winning chef Justin Yu, and Shepherd. Last year's Southern Smoke, which attracted 1,200 people, was a sold out event. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate If you love dinosaurs, the best time to see their prehistoric tracks in San Antonio is now that several have just been cleaned up. Thursday morning, a team of volunteers and park staff at Government Canyon State Natural Area cleaned up some of the 300 dinosaur tracks at the park that had been covered by pools of water and fallen vegetation. Tracks can be seen by visitors Friday through Monday about 2 miles down the areas Joe Johnston Route. Government Canyon in northwest San Antonio holds various campsites and trails in its more than 12,000 acres. The upkeep of the dinosaur tracks is part of the the parks effort, in partnership with the Witte Museum, to preserve the primitive landscape. A team of six, including Wittes curator of paleontology and geology Thomas Adams, helped in the effort. Teams have cleaned the area periodically since the tracks were first uncovered in 2014. Adams said they continue to do so because of the areas popularity to visitors. I ask myself why people love dinosaurs, Adams said. Theyre real, theyre bigger than life. There were two types of tracks in the park. One type was made by sauropods, a type of larger dinosaur that walked on its four legs, like the long-necked Brontosaurus. The other tracks were made by theropods, a smaller, typically carnivorous dinosaur, like the commonly known Tyrannosaurus. Unfortunately for dinosaur enthusiasts, the exact kinds of dinosaurs that left the tracks remain unknown. Tracks themselves cant be pinpointed to one particular dinosaur, just the type, Adams said. In 2011, parts of the park that had had water were revealed thanks to the San Antonio drought, and John Koepke, Government Canyons ranger and interpreter, spotted what he thought might be dinosaur tracks. He contacted Adams (at the time, a local paleontologist) to investigate. After a year of trying to figure out the logistics, things fell into place when Adams was hired by the Witte in 2013. They soon developed a project to look into what Koepke had found. A major, two-week clean-up of the area with professors and student volunteers took place in 2014. What they found during the process was staggering. Adams originally though hed find maybe 50 tracks maximum. Instead, he found hundreds. Adams thinks the area where the tracks were found was the shoreline of the Gulf of Mexico millions of years ago, when sea levels were much higher inland. Dinosaurs tended to trek shorelines as they provided a clearer path. The land is characterized by its limestone and limey mud and stretches farther than the Government Canyon area. It is known as the Glen Rose Formation, named after the city of Glen Rose where this kind of geologic makeup is most prominent. The dinosaurs that left the Government Canyon tracks traveled independently, not in packs. Over the hundreds of millions of years since they were made, most tracks have been covered by layers of new soil, rock and vegetation, so its highly unusual to have tracks as visible as these. The best time to visit is in the morning, before the peak of the suns heat. Koepke advises that those who plan to make the trip down the rocky Joe Johnston Route be prepared to walk for about three hours there and back. There is a sign at the halfway point warning those who no longer have water to turn back for their own safety. The trip to the tracks begins shortly after the main entrance past the headquarters. Trails are open to the public. For those who wish to go with a companion, guided hikes are scheduled on a regular basis. Once someone reaches the tracks, they will find the two trackways roped off. While the tracks may seem permanent, the ropes are there because the tracks can be damaged when tampered with. By respecting the ropes, youre doing a favor to those who want to see the tracks in 10 or 100 years, Koepke said.The best time to visit is in the spring and fall when temperatures are not so intense. The park is open 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. Entrance fee $6; ages 12 and younger get in free. Go to tpwd.texas.gov or call 210-688-9055. Express-News archives contributed to this report. NOTE: This story has been updated to clarify the number of tracks that were cleaned and when are the best time to visit the park. osanchez@express-news.net Twitter: @OhMySanchez Al Gores first Inconvenient movie, An Inconvenient Truth (2006), alerted the general public to the climate crisis. He took an issue that was on the periphery of peoples attention and brought it center stage, and it has remained a significant area of concern ever since, both here and throughout the world. Now, 11 years later, theres An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power, in which Gore answers all the questions you might have been wondering about since the last installment: How bad is it now? Can this be reversed? What can be done to counter the big money behind the climate-denying industry? And should we all just throw up our hands and wait for some dreaded third part in the trilogy, perhaps An Inconvenient Apocalypse? Its giving away nothing to say that the answers here are a mix of good news and bad news. The good news is that leaders around the world seem to be getting serious about the climate crisis. Another strong bit of good news is that wind and solar energy are becoming less expensive than fossil fuels in many parts of the country, and those prices are continuing to drop. Altruism may be a strong motive in society, but its got nothing on greed. When it becomes cheaper to save the world than wreck it, instances of selfless idealism will increase exponentially. As for the bad news ... well, its not exactly like we have all the time in the world to do something or a government in Washington thats committed to the cause. There may someday be a tipping point in public opinion, but nothing is tipping yet. The new film shows the former vice president doing his slideshow throughout the world, and Gores presentation has lost none of its freshness and fascination. Just as raw information, this is interesting stuff, and its amplified by Gores delivery, a unique mix of self-deprecating folksiness, geekiness and evangelical zeal. This is a man who might have been president in the opinion of many, he was the true winner of the 2000 election and yet he is willing to talk to a roomful of only 50 people as though the future of the world depended on it. Thats the other thing that makes An Inconvenient Sequel compelling Gore himself. He is a man on a crusade, and since most of us have never been on one of those, its quite something to witness it from the inside, particularly one waged at the highest levels of influence. Gore knows everybody. He travels regularly, appears on television, meets with journalists and activists and speaks at conferences. Its a lot of work, but it looks like a bracing way to spend ones time, and, though the issues are serious, it has become a fun thing to tag along with him, albeit in a virtual way. The scenes of Gore in Paris, as the Paris Agreement on global warming is being crafted, amount to a chance for audiences to have a brief seat at the grown-ups table. At one point, Gore wants India to sign on to the agreement, but its government is reluctant. So he starts calling banks and various businesses, in order to put together a set of conditions so favorable that the Indians have to say yes. On a human level, its sort of like being in high school and trying to fix up your friend with a friend of a friend it takes lot of phone calls, and reassurance, and ego soothing. The only difference is that here, the upshot of these personal interactions will impact the fate of millions. Still, hanging over everything in An Inconvenient Sequel is the thing that we know and that Gore does not, and thats the result of the 2016 presidential election. In the immediate aftermath, Gore looks like hes suddenly in a movie he never wanted to be in, but he recovers, and he and the film find their way to an optimism that doesnt feel forced, that feels like there actually might be hope. Mick LaSalle is The San Francisco Chronicles movie critic. Email: mlasalle@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @MickLaSalle An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power Documentary. Starring Al Gore. Directed by Bonni Cohen and Jon Shenk. (PG. 98 minutes.) This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate A 23 year-old Bacliff man is in jail on manslaughter charges after he accidentally shot and killed his 18-year-old girlfriend, Galveston County Sheriff Department investigators report. The victim, identified as Kaitlyn Trammell of Galveston, was reportedly shot Sunday night around 6:30 p.m. She was taken to Memorial Hermann Hospital in Houston where she was pronounced dead on Tuesday. According to Galveston County Sheriff's Office spokesman Maj. Douglas Hudson, the victim was watching a movie with her boyfriend, Orlando Martinez, at his home in the 4700 block of 6th Street in Bacliff Sunday evening at the time of the accident. ASSAULT: Texas man allegedly set 'evil' girlfriend on fire "A scene came on the movie that showed a gun and Martinez reportedly said 'Oh, I have a gun' and proceeded to take out the gun and show a Smith and Wesson 9-mm gun to the victim," Hudson said. "Martinez removed the clip from the gun, not realizing there was still a live round in the chamber." The firearm was accidentally discharged and Trammell suffered a single gunshot wound to the head, Hudson said. The brother and a friend of the defendant were present at the time of the shooting but were in another part of the house. After the accident, a witness reported seeing two men running from the home. Investigators later located and questioned the two men and eventually filed charges against 23 year-old Jared Koehler from Sante Fe for tampering with evidence, after he reportedly confessed that he removed the gun and other items from the scene. Based on information provided by Koehler, divers from the Galveston County Sheriff's Department were able to retrieve the gun believed to have been used in the shooting from a creek in the Sante Fe area on Wednesday. Martinez was arrested by Galveston County Sheriff Deputies on Wednesday, Aug. 2 and remains in custody on an $80,000 bond. Koehler is also being held at the Galveston County Jail on a $25,000 bond. Investigators say the accident remains under investigation. San Jacinto College students are divided over a law that allows concealed handgun license holders to now carry their weapons on community college campuses. Effective since Aug. 1, Senate Bill 11 gives licensed individuals at public community colleges throughout the state the ability to carry concealed firearms in certain buildings and areas. Licensed holders must be at least 21 years old, meet the federal qualifications to own a gun and receive training from an instructor certified by the Texas Department of Public Safety. The state law comes one year after SB11 designated university campuses as a gun-friendly environment. At the community college level, this puts the national guns-on-campus debate outside of ethics or philosophy classrooms and makes it part of daily campus life. Leonardo Gomez, 19, said he doesn't need to carry a gun and admits the change makes him anxious in light of national and state incidents involving campus violence. But he also referred to what he's read about rapes on campuses throughout the country. "I see both sides, and to me it's more something that could be a good thing for women who want some self-protection," he said. For campus law enforcement, the implementation of SB11 poses some challenges. SB11 gives schools the right to declare some campus buildings and areas gun-free zones such as, for instance, buildings in which potentially combustible chemicals are housed, such as science labs. SB11, San Jacinto College Police Chief Bruce Caldwell said, "is going to require us to think on a different level and really start to dig in and find out what's on campus and where it's located, because we have to establish those exclusive zones. "We're going to have to take a hard look at the laboratories and see what types of things are in some of those locations that if a firearm went off near there, would it cause catastrophic harm?" "The people on campus that are LTC (licensed to carry a handgun) will have to have a better sense of geography of the campus to avoid particular zones," he said. Educating all students on what the law allows and does not allow will be an ongoing process. For example, accidental exposure of a weapon is not a violation, according to Caldwell. San Jac's policy says that for a LTC student, a gun must be carried on them within arm's reach in a holster that completely covers the trigger mechanism. As for whether the gun mechanism be in locked on safety mode, not all guns have a safety mechanism; so the law leaves it open to the carrier, Caldwell said. Proponents see the law as a victory for Second Amendment rights, while others, like the advocacy group Everytown for Gun Safety, see the potential to heighten tension on campus. R.G. Robertson, 58, is taking courses at the school. "I don't think it's a good idea," she said. "At community college, the students are very young, right out of high school and I don't think they can handle that kind of responsibility. They can be quick to anger (at that age), and the maturity level is not there." At least half the students at San Jac are under age 21, which would eliminate them from carrying guns on campus. According to the college, the school has no way of knowing how many students at the three San Jac campuses are licensed to carry guns. While he sees some initial apprehensions, Caldwell believes if carried out according to the law, most students won't feel the change. "I would venture to bet that almost any student here has been somewhere in public where someone was carrying a weapon and they never knew it; so that fear never existed," he said. "Technically, the way the law is written, if someone is following the law you would never know they had a weapon. I think people will be expecting to see a lot of students with guns on campus, and when they don't see it, I think they will figure out that it won't be any different than any other day they come to school." Caldwell said that incidents involving fatal shootings on campuses - such as when a freshman was killed Oct. 9, 2015 in a dormitory at Texas Southern University or when a gunman shot a woman May 3 at North Lake College near Dallas - are anomalies unrelated to the issue of campus-carry. "Those people were not licensed holders; they were people that came on campus and just started shooting people," he said. "You can't lump them in the same category." Nursing student Daniel Zamora, 22, has no problem with the new law and doesn't believe it will affect his daily San Jac routine. "I understand why some might have a problem with it, but I really don't think it's a big deal," he said. One change that might be noticeable to students is an increased police presence inside school buildings. "We will have our officers inside patrolling a little more and so they spend more of their time with the faculty, staff and students," Caldwell said. San Jacinto Chancellor Brenda Hellyer said the law has sparked differing opinions among staff members, too. "Even knowing that opinions differ, San Jacinto College is obligated to comply with the law," Hellyer said. In a June 2017 meeting, the college's board adopted a policy in compliance with the law. "I encourage our students and staff, as well as the community to review the policy as well as the law so they are informed," she said. Shawnae Shepherd, 26, said SB11 will make her feel more secure, and she doesn't believe it will make an impact on most students in the long run. "I come from up north (West Virginia) and you hear about more shootings in other places that don't have these concealed-carry laws; so I actually feel safer," she said. "If someone is crazy, they're going to come and do something whether there is a law saying they can carry a weapon or not." But to Angelica Quintero, whose 18-year old son will be starting San Jac in the fall, SB11 is just another thing to fret over as a parent. "I don't like it at all," she said. "You worry about your children all the time, and this is just another thing to worry about." This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate FORT BELVOIR, Va. - The old battle tank arrived at 10:15 Thursday morning, covered in a black tarp and chained to the bed of tractor trailer. The construction site near Fort Belvoir went quiet for a moment, as the truck backed in. And when they pulled away the tarp, the steel hide still bore the gouges and holes from enemy gunfire in 1944 and '45. This was "Cobra King," a hallowed, 38-ton U.S. Army legend that during the World War II Battle of the Bulge bulled its way through German lines and was first to relieve the besieged defenders of Bastogne. Someone had taken a picture of the tank right after the battle, sitting in the snow with its crew, and the words, "First in Bastogne" scrawled on the armor in chalk. The chalk was long gone Thursday as a work crane lifted Cobra King, with its black treads and white turret star, from the flatbed and set it inside the site of the National Museum of the United States Army. The state-of-the-art museum, about 20 miles south of Washington, D.C., has been under construction since October, and is set to open in late 2019, officials said. It will house scores of historic Army artifacts and works of art. The Sherman tank and several other "macro" items are so big that they must be installed in place, and the museum built around them. On Monday work crews put in a 27-ton Bradley Cavalry Fighting Vehicle that headed a charge from Kuwait to Baghdad, in Iraq, in 2003. Later, the museum will install a World War II Higgins landing boat, and a World War I French tank, the Five of Hearts, which is believed to be the only surviving such tank used by American soldiers in the war. On Dec. 26, 1944, Army Lieut. Charles Boggess was in command of Cobra King, and driving with Gen. George Patton's Third Army to the relief of Bastogne. There American forces had been hemmed in by the famous German offensive that created the big bulge in the allied lines. Boggess' tank was an experimental so-called "Jumbo" Sherman, better armed and armored than earlier Shermans, which had proved vulnerable to more potent German tanks. It had a V-8 500 HP gasoline engine, a 75 mm main gun and two machine guns. Patton was close to Bastogne, and Boggess was ordered to take Cobra King and some other tanks and punch through the enemy lines. "I believe it is appointed to each man to have a few minutes of glory in his life," Boggess told the Chicago Tribune during a visit to Bastogne in 1984. "Mine lasted four miles and 25 minutes." Cobra King was already battle tested. It had been knocked out of action in France in November, 1944, repaired, and sent back to the fight, said Army museum historian Patrick R. Jennings. The commander who preceded Boggess, Charles Trover, had been killed in Luxembourg by a sniper as he stood in the turret on Dec. 23. And now Cobra King was being ordered to dash into Bastogne. "It was a dramatic day," Boggess recalled. "It was a day that you didn't know if you would live or die." Boggess and his crew - driver Hubert S. Smith, co-driver Harold Hafner, gunner Milton Dickerman, and loader James G. Murphy - pushed Cobra King at full speed, sweeping the road ahead with gunfire until they breached the German lines. Jennings, the historian, said the tank crew spotted some soldiers in the distance who through binoculars looked like Americans. But the tankers were wary because infiltrating German troops were said to be dressed as Americans. Finally, an America soldier strode up to the tank, stuck his hand out to Boggess and said, "Glad to see you." But Cobra King's war wasn't over. It continued the push into Germany, until it was put of commission on March 27, 1945, during a doomed raid to try to rescue allied POWs from a German prison camp. The mission was a fiasco, and the tank was hit by a round that penetrated its armor and started a fire inside. The crew, different from the one at Bastogne, escaped. But the tank was abandoned, Jennings said. The Germans later torched the inside. "When it breaks through at Bastogne, that's when it really gains its moment in history," Jennings said Thursday as he waited with other VIPs in white hard hats and yellow hazard vests. "Up to that time it's another tank," he said. "But it gets its moment in history. It's written on the side. And I would bet within two weeks rain and snow washed all that chalk off. And they're right back in the mix again." "It goes back to being a piece of equipment again," he said. "Then it's involved in this remarkable raid, gets damaged. And you do what a logical soldier would do. You get out. You can't fix it. You have to keep moving. America will get you another one . . . They thought, 'We need to get another tank. We need to get out of this one, and go get another one.' " "It's only later, as history starts to unfold, that it becomes precious to us," he said. "Until then, it's just another piece of equipment." After the war, Cobra King was recovered from the battlefield and displayed as a "gate guard" out in the open at several American bases in Germany, he said. As the years passed historians and officers began to investigate the stories of the various American tanks that were on display around Europe, he said. Jennings said that an Army chaplain, Keith Goode, took a special interest. He researched and began to suspect that this anonymous tank sitting out in the weather, most recently in Vilseck, Germany, might be the famous Cobra King. He turned out to be right. The tank was shipped back to the U.S. in 2009. The exterior was restored. (The interior was too badly damaged for restoration, Jennings said.) And the tank was trucked from storage in Fort Benning, Georgia. At 10:17 a.m. Thursday, Allen Pinckney, deputy director of the museum, announced to those gathered at the construction site: "The Sherman tank is here!" A bulldozer, whose clattering treads suggested the sound of a tank, paused in its work. Jennings later went over the pristine exterior closely, then crawled underneath and stood up in the interior. Inside, it was still "a mess," he said. But the Cobra King, once stained with blood, and still scarred from battle, was back on history's pedestal. Seventy-two years after it rumbled through the snow to Bastogne, it sat in the sun on a summer morning as a museum was built around it. "It's a rugged thing," Jennings said. "But it's a survivor." SAO PAULO, Brazil - The lower house of Brazil's Congress voted Wednesday to block a corruption trial against Michel Temer, a victory for the embattled president that occurred 15 months after his predecessor was suspended for financial irregularities. Temer's opponents fell well short of the two-thirds majority required in the Chamber of Deputies to send him to trial in the Supreme Court. In the end, 263 lawmakers voted for the president, 228 voted against him and the remaining 22 didn't vote or abstained. The president was determined to remain in power and aggressively courted legislators' support well into the session, which stretched over more than 11 hours Wednesday. With more than 80 percent of Brazilians in favor of sending the president to trial, according to polls, the chamber's decision was a testament to the president's skillful maneuvering, and spoke to the desire for greater political and economic stability in Brazil. Temer, the first sitting Brazilian president charged with corruption, is accused of receiving $150,000 from a wealthy meatpacking executive - part of a $12 million bribe he allegedly accepted through an aide. Temer denies the accusations and has rejected calls for his resignation. The vote came as Brazilian politics are in turmoil. Last month, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who led Brazil from 2003 to 2010, was convicted of corruption and money laundering and sentenced to more than nine years in prison. He has appealed the verdict. Temer's predecessor, Dilma Rousseff, was suspended in May 2016 on charges of budget mismanagement, and she was removed from the presidency three months later. As Wednesday's session began, dozens of representatives gathered in the center of the chamber, chanting: "Out Temer. The people want to vote. Direct elections now." In speeches ahead of the vote, Temer's supporters focused on the importance of political stability for the country's economy. "Brazil cannot return to chaos. That's why I'm voting against this charge," said representative Hidekazu Takayama of the allied Socialist Christian Party. "The president chose to confront the crisis by delivering bitter but necessary medicine," said representative Paulo Abi-Ackel of the coalition Brazilian Social Democracy Party. "Is now the right time to remove the president of the republic? We need to continue these efforts to reestablish confidence in the future of the country." But in Sao Paulo, hundreds of protesters opposing Temer, whose approval ratings sank to 5 percent ahead of the vote, lit tires on fire to block access to major highways. While more than 80 percent of Brazilians believe that Temer should stand trial, according to a recent poll, he maintains a significant base in Congress. He was expected to gather about 260 votes in his favor, putting him safely above the 172 needed to evade trial, according to an analysis by political consultancy firm Arko in Brasilia, the capital. But hours before the vote, the Social Democracy Party, Temer's largest coalition party, instructed supporters to vote in favor of the charges. In May, leaked recordings appeared to show the president condoning the payment of hush money to protect Joesley Batista, a meatpacking executive who was under investigation for corruption. A few weeks later, video emerged of a close aide exiting a pizza parlor with $150,000 in cash, allegedly intended for Temer. The revelations sent shock waves through Brasilia, which already was reeling from Operation Car Wash, a corruption investigation that has shredded Brazil's political elite but had not previously tarred Temer. The president has been determined to remain in power and has dismissed some ministers to allow them to cast ballots as legislators in his defense. The night before the vote, Temer attended a dinner with more than 100 lawmakers at the home of the vice president of the lower chamber. Temer was greeted with applause and urged the legislators to help him usher in a new era in Brazilian politics. Temer's government pumped $25 million in federal funding into legislators' pet projects after the accusations arose in May. Over the past two months, the president has rewarded allied parties with prominent positions within his cabinet and fired coalition members whose parties broke with him. Temer is still expected to be formally charged in the next few months with racketeering and obstruction of justice in connection with the same case. The Chamber of Deputies also would have to approve those charges before a trial. Although his supporters have been betting that the president can withstand these accusations long enough to complete the 18 months left in his mandate, the scandal has paralyzed Temer's government and stalled flagship reform programs that he hoped would promote recovery from Brazil's longest recession on record. Temer has suffered from dismal approval ratings, with thousands of Brazilians questioning his right to rule. "To pacify the country, we need direct elections. Temer does not have legitimacy," opposition member Weliton Fernandes Prado said. "We vote for the acceptance of the charges and want direct elections." There are so many twists and turns in the story involving President Trump and his team and Russian meddling in the 2016 U.S. elections. As a public service, The Fact Checker is keeping track of the various tentacles of this complex saga, and highlighting any inconsistencies or falsehoods we can find. Reviewing our fact checks so far, it's clear that in many cases, the White House's rhetoric shifted as The Washington Post or the New York Times uncovered new information, and revealed that officials were being misleading or obfuscating the truth with their rhetoric. Since January 2017, we compiled numerous timelines just to keep track of what Trump and his aides said, when they said it, what the public knew at the time of their statements, and how they shifted over time. We also fact-checked misleading attacks by Democrats about actions by Trump administration officials. The special counsel's investigation is underway, so this story keeps evolving. Each fact check, and this roundup, will be updated as new information becomes available. Here's a chronological compilation of Trump-Russia fact checks since January 2017. Here's a guide to the Trumpian spin on the Russian hacking report On Jan. 6, 2017, U.S. intelligence agencies published a "high-confidence" assessment that Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered a cyberattack during the 2016 presidential election with the aim of undermining faith in the U.S. democratic process and hurting Hillary Clinton's electability. We decoded then-White House chief of staff Reince Priebus's spin, misleading the public in an effort to play down the findings in the assessment. The fall of Michael Flynn: a timeline On Feb. 13, 2017, then-national security adviser Michael Flynn was fired. White House officials knew for weeks that Flynn had misled about the nature of his December 2016 calls with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak, but he was only pressured to resign after The Post uncovered it. Flynn's statements to The Post shifted from an outright denial to a less equivocal one as The Post uncovered more information. We compiled a timeline of events, dating to December 2016, that led to Flynn's firing. Sen. McCaskill's misfired tweet on contacts with Russian ambassador On March 1, The Post reported that Attorney General Jeff Sessions in 2016 had met twice with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak, but did not disclose them in his Senate confirmation hearing. In a swipe at Sessions, Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., tweeted that she had no calls or meetings with the Russian ambassador over her 10 years on the Senate Armed Services Committee. But we easily found earlier tweets from 2013 and 2015 that showed she did, indeed, have such interactions with the Russian ambassador in the past. McCaskill received Three Pinocchios. Nancy Pelosi's claim that Bill Clinton was impeached for 'something so far less' than Jeff Sessions House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., rebuked Sessions for not disclosing his contacts with Kislyak, and claimed Congress impeached President Bill Clinton "for something far less" than what Sessions had done. But that description was a stretch. While the Sessions and Clinton cases both involve statements made under oath, the circumstances were vastly different. (Later, Sessions would recuse himself from the Trump-Russia investigation due to his campaign contacts with Kislyak.) Pelosi earned Two Pinocchios. Trump's pointing of the finger at Obama for failing to vet Flynn On May 8, former acting attorney general Sally Yates testified that she had informed White House Counsel on Jan. 26 that Flynn lied about the nature of his calls with Kislyak. Yet it took 18 days - and The Post's reporting - for Trump to act. In response to Yates's testimony, Trump blamed former president Barack Obama for giving Flynn a security clearance in the first place and elevating Flynn. But this was just a distraction with little factual basis. Trump received Three Pinocchios. Did Trump and Sessions flip-flop on Comey's decisions in the Clinton investigation? On May 9, 2017, Trump fired James Comey as FBI director. As a justification, Trump and Attorney General Jeff Sessions pointed to Comey's handling of the agency's investigation into Hillary Clinton's private email server. But during the 2016 presidential campaigns, neither Trump nor Sessions was outwardly critical of Comey's decisions - at least in the same way they were in May 2017. We explored inconsistencies in both men's rhetoric over Comey's handling of the Clinton investigation. All of the White House's conflicting explanations for Comey's firing: A timeline Over the three days after Comey's firing, the exact reason for his dismissal remained elusive. We outlined all the contradictory explanations from Trump and his White House. At first, Trump said he was merely acting on a Justice Department recommendation. Several explanations later, Trump ultimately revealed that he had planned on firing Comey all along, because Trump did not want Comey overseeing the FBI investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election. Translating McMaster's rhetoric on the Russia-leak story On May 15, The Post reported that Trump revealed highly classified information to the Russian foreign minister and ambassador in a White House meeting, and that Trump's disclosures jeopardized a critical source of intelligence on the Islamic State. In response, national security adviser H.R. McMaster made comments that obscured the fact that he essentially confirmed the key factual elements of The Post article. President Trump vs. James Comey: a timeline By the end of May, it was clear that the story of Flynn merged with the firing of Comey. So we compiled a new timeline of events incorporating both story lines, showing the complicated relationship between Trump and Comey. On June 8, Comey testified to the Senate Intelligence Committee and offered his version of events for the first time. The testimony revealed several contradictory statements made by Trump and Comey, about the same meetings and discussions. Every Russia story Trump said was a hoax by Democrats: A timeline No matter what new development is revealed in the Trump-Russia story, one thing has remained consistent: Trump blames the Democrats, not the Russians. Trump calls it a "hoax," "witch hunt" and "fake news" - despite findings by the U.S. intelligence community, and even after the White House confirmed reports of his team's interactions with Russians. Do Russia probe attorneys' donations to Democrats threaten their independence? After Comey was fired, former FBI director Robert S. Mueller III was appointed special counsel to oversee the Russia investigation and related matters. As Mueller assembled his team of investigators, Trump and his surrogates began attacking donations made by some of Mueller's attorneys. They questioned Mueller's independence, as some members of his team previously donated to Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama or the Democratic Party. But this is a baseless attack; legally and under federal ethics rules, such donations pose no conflict of interest. Trump earned Three Pinocchios. Fact Checker's guide to obstruction of justice, executive privilege and impeachment In June, Mueller widened the scope of his investigation, including whether Trump obstructed justice when firing Comey. As a result, with every new development, Trump's critics are quick to call for his impeachment and label his actions as obstruction of justice. But it's not so simple, and the complexities of the process get muddled with heated rhetoric. Timeline: Donald Trump Jr.'s contradictory statements about the Russia meeting On July 8, 2017, the New York Times revealed that Donald Trump Jr. met with a Russian attorney with ties to the Kremlin during the 2016 campaign. In following days, Trump Jr. provided contradictory and misleading statements that shifted as the Times uncovered new information about the meeting. While Trump Jr. previously claimed that he never set up a meeting with a Russian national for campaign purposes, that turned out to be false. The White House's facile comparison of the Trump-Russia and Clinton-Ukraine stories In response to questions about the Trump campaign's contacts with Russia, the White House began deflecting to efforts by a Ukrainian American operative to expose former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort's ties to the Russian government. The White House now claims that the real story of coordination is between the Clinton campaign and Ukraine. But this is a facile comparison, with key differences between the situations that make them fundamentally different. We left the claim unrated for now, because we do not know the full set of facts in either the Trump-Russia or Clinton-Ukraine stories. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate 3 1 of 3 Submitted Show More Show Less 2 of 3 Michael Minasi/Staff Photographer Show More Show Less 3 of 3 Two local state lawmakers are running up against a time deadline as they push a package of property tax reform bills. With the Legislature about halfway through its special session bills proposed by state Reps. Will Metcalf, R-Conroe, and Mark Keough, R-The Woodlands, are facing an uncertain fate unless they can progress during the remaining days of the 30-day special session. In calling for the special session, Gov. Greg Abbott had listed property tax reform as one of the items he wanted lawmakers to tackle and pass legislation that he could sign into law. Altough the governor can call for additional sessions, with the state Legislature near the halfway mark of the current special session, the fate of the Metcalf and Keough bills are in doubt. WASHINGTON - As one of its final acts before leaving town, the Senate is set to pass a resolution Thursday calling on China to allow Liu Xia, the widow of Nobel Peace Prize laureate Liu Xiaobo, to leave China. The nonbinding resolution would also declare the view of the Senate that the U.S. government should give Liu Xia permanent resident status in the United States. The bipartisan resolution was introduced Thursday by Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., and was placed on the Senate hotline. If no senator objects before the end of the day, the resolution will pass by unanimous consent and the Senate will have spoken in a clear voice about Liu's case for the first time. WASHINGTON - Two bipartisan pairs of senators unveiled legislation Thursday to prevent President Donald Trump from firing Special counsel Robert Mueller without cause - or at least a reason good enough to convince a panel of federal judges. Senators have raised concerns that the president might try to rearrange his administration to get rid of Mueller, who is spearheading a probe of Russia's alleged interference in the presidential election and any possible collusion between the Kremlin and members of the Trump campaign and transition teams. Mueller's probe has been advancing, despite the president's attempts to discredit the probe as an illegitimate "witch hunt." He impaneled a grand jury in Washington, D.C., a few weeks ago, according to a new report out Thursday. And the case has already produced subpoenas, from a grand jury in the Eastern District of Virginia that issued them in relation to former national security adviser Michael Flynn's business and former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort. While Trump cannot fire Mueller directly, many have raised concerns in recent weeks that he might seek to replace Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who recused himself from all campaign-related matters, including the Russia probe. Sessions's deputy, Rod J. Rosenstein, said he would not fire Mueller without cause - but a new attorney general could supersede his authority. The blowback from Congress to Trump's recent public criticism of Sessions was sharp and substantial, and his allies in the GOP told the president to back off. Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, even indicated that he would not make time in the Senate schedule to consider a new attorney general nominee. This week, there have been reports that new White House chief of staff John Kelly told Sessions he would not have to worry about losing his job. But that has not quieted the concerns of the Democrats and Republicans behind the latest efforts to safeguard Mueller - and, by extension, his Russia probe - from presidential interference. "The Mueller situation really gave rise to our thinking about how we can address this, address the current situation," said Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., the co-author of one of the proposals. He called the effort "a great opportunity, in perpetuity, for us to be able to communicate to the American people that actions were appropriate - or if not, then not," if an administration ever attempts to terminate a special counsel's term. The two proposals - one from Tillis and Sen. Christopher A. Coons, D-Del., and the other from Sens. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., and Cory Booker, D-N.J. - each seek to check the executive branch's ability to fire a special counsel, by putting the question to a three-judge panel from the federal courts. They differ in when that panel gets to weigh in on the decision. Graham and Booker's proposal, which also has backing from Judiciary Committee Democrats Sheldon Whitehouse, R.I., and Richard Blumenthal, Conn., would require the judges panel to review any attorney general's decision to fire a special counsel before that firing could take effect. Tillis and Coons' proposal would let the firing proceed according to current regulations, which they codify in the bill - but the fired special counsel would have the right to contest the administration's decision in court. In that scenario, the judges panel would have two weeks from the day the special counsel's case is filed to complete their review and determine whether the termination was acceptable. Tillis and Coons, who pulled their bill together over the past two days, explained the difference as one to ensure that the legislation does not run afoul of constitutional separation of powers. Both senators, as well as Graham, said they expect they may merge their efforts after lawmakers return to Washington in September. "I think we maybe can have a meeting of the minds. I really appreciate them doing it," Graham said Thursday of Tillis and Coons' bill. "I just have a different way of doing it." In either guise, the bill effectively would limit the president's authority to hire and fire special counsels - a privilege that fell more squarely under the executive's purview after Congress let an independent-counsel law established in the wake of the Watergate scandal expire in 1999, following Kenneth Starr's investigation of President Bill Clinton. The lawmakers are not expecting that the president will like or support either proposal to protect the special counsel from being fired without cause. But they say they are convinced that there is enough support to pass such a law, even over Trump's objections, because of the number of Republicans and Democrats speaking out in defense of Mueller and his probe. Coons identified "a broader bipartisan concern that the president may take inappropriate action to interfere with the ongoing, important work of Bob Mueller," he said, and guessed that "if the president were to fire the special counsel, the Senate might promptly take action to reappoint him." "This is the first step to put a speed bump in place against his improvident firing," he said of his bill with Tillis. Coons also pointed to his partnership with Tillis as an example of a trend "of public statements and actions by an increasingly wider range of bipartisan senators to push back on decisions by this White House." As far as Mueller is concerned, that may be smart politics. According to a Quinnipiac University poll released this week, 64 percent of registered voters believe Mueller will conduct a fair investigation - far more than the 33 percent of registered voters who approve of the job Trump is doing as president. Sixty-nine percent of registered voters also believe it would be an abuse of power for Trump to order the Justice Department to fire the special counsel. But the numbers are not so clear-cut when considering only registered Republicans. While more than half of registered GOP voters believe Mueller's investigation will be fair, over three-quarters of registered Republicans approve of Trump's tenure in the Oval Office. And only 37 percent of registered GOP voters believe that Trump would be abusing his power if he ordered Mueller's firing. --- Scott Clement contributed to this report. The Air Force flexed its ability to launch global strikes early Wednesday morning, firing an intercontinental ballistic missile over the Pacific in a routine test amid growing tension between the United States and North Korea. The Air Force's Global Strike Command launched the unarmed Minuteman III missile at 2:10 a.m. local time from Vandenberg Air Force Base, California, on a westward trajectory over the Pacific Ocean. The suborbital missile traveled 4,200 miles, reaching the Kwajalein Atoll, an Air Force statement said. Kwajalein is a thin band of atolls in the Marshall Islands and the site of past nuclear testing. The range of the Minuteman III is about 8,100 miles, though its exact range is classified. Joe Thomas, a spokesman with the command, stressed Wednesday that the tests are done four times a fiscal year and are scheduled between three and five years in advance, and not done in response to any particular action from an adversary like North Korea. This was the fourth and final test this year and yielded data that will be harnessed for the next round of testing, he told The Washington Post. The Air Force routinely tests for the reliability of aging Minuteman III missiles, said James McKeon, a nuclear weapons analyst at the Center for Arms Control and Nonproliferation, a Washington think tank. The program is more than 50 years old but has gone through rounds of modernization, McKeon said. McKeon also stressed the routine nature of these launches, though he said North Korea does have a tendency to frame most U.S. military action, like training exercises in South Korea and tests such as this one, as provocation. Wednesday's launch is another show of force in an expanding galaxy of tests, posturing and signals flowing between Washington, Seoul, Pyongyang and Beijing as North Korea's nuclear program rapidly matures. On July 28, North Korea launched an ICBM into the Sea of Japan to demonstrate growing reach of its missile technology. The missile was possibly capable of reaching Chicago and perhaps New York on a normal trajectory, experts said. "By threatening the world, these weapons and tests further isolate North Korea, weaken its economy, and deprive its people," President Trump said in a statement. "The United States will take all necessary steps to ensure the security of the American homeland and protect our allies in the region." That test came just weeks after North Korea fired its first ICBM on July 4 in Asia, and the country has launched 14th ballistic missiles this year alone. In response two days later, two U.S. supersonic B-1 bombers flew over the Korean Peninsula as part of a joint exercise with Japan and South Korea. On Sunday, U.S. forces sent up a medium-range ballistic missile from Alaska that was detected, tracked and intercepted over the Pacific using the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense System. The system's use at U.S. bases in South Korea is commonly criticized by North Korean and Chinese officials as a belligerent gesture. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson on Tuesday called for a dialogue with North Korea, telling reporters that the United States was not seeking a regime change. "We are trying to convey to the North Koreans: 'We are not your enemy, we are not your threat. But you are presenting an unacceptable threat to us, and we have to respond.' " Tillerson is scheduled to attend next week's Southeast Asia summit in the Philippines that is expected to discuss concerns about North Korea, the Associated Press reported. McKeon said that the nuclear policy community, both in and out of government, has been surprised by the recently quickening pace of weapons development in North Korea. "Their scientists have done herculean things despite sanctions. On the current trajectory, there is no doubt over the next couple of years North Korea will mate a nuclear warhead with a missile," McKeon said. "They have proven us wrong time and time again." President Donald Trump said something last week that deserves a lot more attention. Americans "are going to have to start moving," Trump said in his interview with The Wall Street Journal (Politico leaked the full transcript of the exchange this week). He's right. Americans aren't packing up and moving like they used to. Mobility is at an all-time low, according to the Census Bureau, which has tracked how many Americans change addresses since WWII. About 10 percent of Americans moved in the past year, the Census Bureau found. That's way down from the 1950s, 60s, 70s and early 80s, when more than 20 percent of the nation was on the go. It's a major cultural shift that economists and the president warn is bad for the economy. Talented workers need to be in places and companies where they can really thrive. Too many people are living in places where they "can't get jobs," the president said. He singled out upstate New York, but there are plenty of other areas that have far worse rates of unemployment like southern Ohio or eastern Kentucky. It would probably be better for those folks - and the U.S. economy - if they moved to areas where help wanted signs are plentiful. The lack of mobility helps explain why the U.S. economy isn't growing at the "great" levels of the past, says economist Tyler Cowen. He published a book earlier this year that got a lot of people talking called "The Complacent Class: The Self-Defeating Quest for the American Dream." He thinks one of the biggest problems is that Americans aren't taking enough risks anymore. They aren't even willing to move for opportunities. It's particularly startling that people are staying put all-across the age spectrum. This trend can't be blamed solely on Baby Boomers or Millennials. For Trump, one of his biggest concerns is his base: struggling blue-collar workers. He wants to bring jobs back for them, but even if he's successful, the jobs might not come back to the same towns. LinkedIn, a popular jobs site, has found that demand for manufacturing skills is currently strong along the coasts, but not in Midwest. It implies the United States might need a 21st Century migration. "Manufacturing workers who are having a hard time finding a gig in Cleveland, Detroit or Minneapolis may want to consider looking for jobs on the coasts," LinkedIn wrote in its Workforce Report in May. Jed Kolko, chief economist at jobs website Indeed.com, warns that there is a lot of variation in manufacturing jobs though. It's not like working at McDonald's. "Just because you worked in one sector like textiles or auto manufacturing doesn't mean you can easily transfer to something else." The president told The Wall Street Journal that he was going to do a PR campaign to encourage Americans to look further afield for jobs. "I'm going to explain you can leave, it's OK," he said. There's a huge debate about WHY people aren't moving. Trump blames people's attachment to their homes. "You know, a lot of them don't leave because of their house. Because they say, 'gee, my house, I thought it was worth $70,000, and now it's worth nothing.' " Trump said, but he plans to tell people, "It's OK. Go, cut your losses, right?" That might be easy for a billionaire like Trump to say. Losing one abode wouldn't leave him homeless. It's a lot more complicated for the bottom half of Americans who earn about $55,000 - or less. Consider a manufacturing worker in Ohio considering moving to a big city on the East or West Coast. He or she wouldn't even be able to find a home for $70,000. And if they lose money on the place they left behind, it only makes the move a harder financial leap. "Lots of factors enter into this lack of mobility. Housing costs are just one," says Kolko of Indeed.com. He also points out that many licenses that are needed to work in a hair salon or be a real estate agent are tied to one state. They don't transfer easily. There are also cultural differences between parts of the country and ties to families and friends that keep people in place. The Wall Street Journal ran a cover story Thursday on why rural Americans are "stuck in fading towns." The reporters found that what people talked about most was a desire to be around others who think like they do. "Beyond the practical difficulties, rural residents and experts say there is another impediment to mobility that is often more difficult to overcome-the growing cultural divide," the story said. A young woman in the article tried to move away from her small town several times, but she found many larger cities to be godless places where people were quick to have sex with strangers, but they didn't want to know their neighbors. In January, I spent several days in Lordstown, Ohio, interviewing workers about to lose their jobs at a GM factory that makes the Chevy Cruze. About 1,200 lost their job the day that Trump took office. Many of the workers I spoke with were under 45. I asked them why they didn't just move somewhere else in America. The most common response was family. One worker was divorced. If he left the state, he would probably never see his kids. Another worker was caring for an uncle with a major health issue. Trump is optimistic that he can reverse the mobility decline. Americans are "going to move to Colorado, and they're going to move to Iowa and Wisconsin," he predicted in his interview. But it may take a lot more than job postings to make it happen. It's beyond clear now: President Donald Trump is intent on wrecking the nuclear deal with Iran. Last month, his administration certified Tehran's compliance with the accord, an arms control agreement Iran inked with the United States and other world powers after months of negotiations. Both U.S. allies and international inspectors agree Iran is abiding by the terms of the deal, which put strict curbs on Iran's nuclear program and allows for a tough regime of inspections. But Trump signed off on Iran's compliance with profound reluctance, and he has since signaled that when Iran's certification comes up again - as it will every 90 days, per a mandate from Congress - he intends to declare Iran not in compliance, possibly even if there is evidence to the contrary. Critics of the nuclear agreement in the administration, as well as hawks in Washington's foreign policy establishment, have long insisted the deal has done nothing to curb Iran's other bad behavior. The deal's defenders counter that it should be examined for what it is, an internationally brokered pact over the limits of Iran's nuclear program. They argue that Iranian actions such as supporting regional proxy wars or a recent rocket launch are provocative but not actually violations of the deal. According to the New York Times, "American officials have already told allies they should be prepared to join in reopening negotiations with Iran or expect that the United States may abandon the agreement, as it did the Paris climate accord." This is a concern for Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, who has been at odds with Trump over the matter. He has warned that walking away from the agreement would alienate key U.S. allies, who are unlikely willing to renegotiate terms. "The greatest pressure we can put to bear on Iran to change the behavior is a collective pressure," said Tillerson this week. Trump, though, seems undeterred. "It's easier to say [the Iranians] comply," he told the Wall Street Journal. "It's a lot easier ... But, yeah, I would be surprised if they were in compliance." Elements of the Iranian regime, whose hardliners long opposed the deal, have already argued that a new package of U.S. sanctions violates the agreement. The Trump administration could also attempt to force Iran's hand - perhaps by persuading international inspectors to demand access to military non-nuclear sites, a move that would raise hackles in Tehran. "The problem is there is no clear evidence Iran is doing any illicit enrichment or development," wrote John Glaser of the libertarian Cato Institute. "So, Iran quite reasonably can be expected to refuse access, at which point the Trump administration can try to falsely depict Iran as violating the deal." In the event that Trump walks away, officials in Europe, Russia and China could pretend that nothing had changed, continuing to expand investments and business ties in Iran. But without American support for the agreement, "it's hard to imagine the Iranians wouldn't resume their enrichment," said Aaron David Miller, a distinguished scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center and a former Middle East negotiator in both Republican and Democratic administrations, to The Post. The regime in Tehran sees nuclear weapons as a deterrent. Given Trump's tough talk and the prospect of preemptive Israeli strikes, they may judge that possessing a credible nuclear threat is all the more necessary in the absence of an arms control pact. Abandoning the deal, Miller argued, would thus only increase the prospect of military escalation. Trump's insistence on scrapping the deal seems mostly born out of a desire to dismantle the work of his predecessor, who staked his foreign policy legacy on the deal with Iran. But there is precedent for this - and not a great one: in 2001, when President George W. Bush came to power, he reexamined the diplomatic framework President Bill Clinton had built to contain North Korea's budding nuclear threat. "Then as now, a neophyte president was determined to chart a new course in foreign policy to distinguish himself from his predecessor," wrote Amir Handjani of the Atlantic Council. "At the time, the Bush administration claimed to have evidence of a covert uranium enrichment program, which would have violated the deal. Rather than building an international coalition to force Pyongyang to strictly adhere to the terms of the Agreed Framework, the Bush administration chose to abandon diplomacy." It didn't work. In 2006, North Korea fired its first nuclear weapon. Now the world - and Trump - faces an all-the-more dangerous predicament in Northeast Asia. A tougher line with Iran - rather than further diplomacy - is something a number of American allies in the Middle East, including Saudi Arabia and Israel, desperately want. Trump's single visit to the region saw him embrace both Saudi and Israeli talking points about the Islamic Republic. "Granted, Tehran has capitalized on regional unrest to extend its influence," wrote Steve Andreasen and Steve Simon, former officials under the Clinton, Bush and Obama administrations. "But decertifying Iran would almost certainly increase the already considerable suspicion and hostility between Tehran and Washington - and this time, America will not be able to count on Europe, Russia, China and the rest of the world as a diplomatic partner. This would be a high price to pay for aligning the United States with our Gulf allies in a Saudi-inspired attempt to settle scores with Tehran." The ultimate question that emerges is, simply, why? What does the Trump administration gain by antagonizing the other parties to the agreement? What does it imagine Iran will do once its nuclear program gets unshackled? Miller said he had a hard time seeing "what advantage accrues to the United States" by unwinding the deal. "What I cannot comprehend is what is their thinking with respect to a Plan B" after Iran is declared to be non-compliant, Miller said. Nevertheless, he reckons that the pressures of the moment and "the laws of political gravity would suggest that this is going to unravel" under Trump's watch. And, he concluded, "I don't see how this ends happily." WASHINGTON - The U.S. government has reportedly sought to send Javelin antitank missiles to Ukraine. But it's an idea two years too late for today's battlefield, an expert on the conflict said. As tensions mount over the order by Russian President Vladimir Putin to expel U.S. diplomatic and technical staff from Russia, Defense Department and State Department officials have pushed to arm Ukrainian troops with lethal aid to counter Russian-backed separatists fighting for the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic and Luhansk People's Republic. But it remains unclear what, if anything, the delivery of an unknown number of Javelins could do to alter a battle that has mostly been relegated to artillery bombardment and nighttime skirmishes in no man's land. "This idea doesn't flow from a policy or strategy" and may point to a political decision rather than military necessity, said Michael Kofman, an expert on the Ukrainian conflict and a senior fellow at the Wilson Center, a Washington think tank. The Wall Street Journal reported that the Pentagon and State Department are looking to the White House to authorize the delivery of Javelin antitank missiles and other lethal aid to Ukrainian allies, a new wrinkle in a conflict that the United Nations has said cost about 10,000 lives since 2014. The State Department told The Washington Post that it has not provided Ukraine with what it calls "defensive weapons," a characterization not typically assigned to antitank missiles like the Javelin, but it has not ruled out the option to do so. "We are examining how to best use our security assistance going forward to bolster Ukraine's ability to defend its sovereignty and territorial integrity," a senior State Department official said. Army Lt. Col. Michelle Baldanza, a Pentagon spokeswoman, offered a similar statement. The Journal reported officials in Kiev are confident the weapons would be used in emergency defensive situations away from the front. A delivery of weapons, which the Journal said could also include antiaircraft weapons, aligns with Pentagon plans earmarked in the 2018 defense budget to deliver half a billion dollars of equipment to Ukrainian troops, itself an escalation over the mostly nonlethal aid, such as Humvees, night vision goggles and surveillance drones, it has sent in previous years. U.S. soldiers have trained alongside Ukrainian counterparts since the conflict began. The Javelin is a shoulder-fired antitank guided missile system that uses infrared to lock on and track its targets at an effective range of just under three miles. At about 50 pounds, the warhead is light enough for a soldier to carry. It can acquire a target after parsing heat signatures by as little as a few degrees. The Javelin fires a missile at a steep angle to rain down on top of a target, which is especially valuable when targeting tanks, Kofman said, due to relatively thinner armor at the top of the vehicles. But tank skirmishes are relatively rare and have been since the height of fighting in 2015, Kofman told The Post. Tanks provided to separatists by Russia are now typically used as mobile artillery, far from where Ukrainian troops could feasibly infiltrate and target with Javelins, Kofman said. There is also another befuddling issue - the cost, he said. There are a host of antitank weapons already in Ukraine, like the locally made Stugna-P laser guided missile launcher, or the 9M119 Refleks. Those are acquired at a lower cost than the Javelin, Kofman said, which had a unit cost of $246,000 as late as 2015. The high cost and doubtful utility on the current battlefield suggest the Javelin procurement is about sending a message of strong deterrence from Washington. "The Ukrainians want the U.S. to provide them with a weapon as a meaningful signal in Kiev and the Kremlin," he said. Otherwise, Kofman said, there are other urgent priorities such as encrypted communications systems and surveillance drones - which would shore up the U.S.-provided aid already in the hands of Ukrainian troops, but is less advanced than the equipment used by Russian-backed separatists. Russia has emphatically denied it lends support to the separatists. "The Russians provide equipment, some of their most modern equipment, and they provide proxy forces with advisers," said Gen. Curtis Scaparrotti, the top U.S. and NATO military commander, according to the Journal. Russia's response to scattering Javelins among Ukrainian ground forces should factor into the decision, Kofman said. "The Russians have a very clear policy of reciprocity, as we saw in the recent diplomatic purge. They see this as a premise of the U.S. wanting to kill Russians," Kofman said. "The answer to this won't come in Ukraine." This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate On Tuesday, the same day campus carry was officially implemented at Texas community colleges, a geography instructor at San Antonio College came to class dressed to express exactly what he thought about the new law. "I was just saying I don't feel safe," Charles K. Smith told mySA.com. Smith came to class on Tuesday dressed head to waist in protective combat gear - a bulletproof vest and helmet. Campus Carry was signed into law in 2015 and officially implemented into Texas community colleges on August 1. The state law allows individuals with a license to carry to carry a concealed handgun on college premises. The law went into effect at 4-year institutions in 2016. "It definitely makes me feel uneasy that there are more firearms on campus than there really should be," Smith said. "(Dressing this way) was just a statement on how I felt." READ ALSO: Community colleges enact state's campus carry law Smith has been with the school for 10 years and said he's encountered the occasional fist fight, argument and threat over grades. But never a gun. "I realize students were carrying guns on campus illegally, but now it's legal to do so. It increases the chances of something happening," Smith said. "Used to, when they got mad at me, they had to go home to get the gun and had time to cool off, now they will have it with them." Smith said he's also concerned for when an argument breaks out again and a person is armed. "My assumption is that you will have more people carrying guns, that well lead to problems. It always has," Smith said. "There is nothing on this planet worth a human life." One of Smith's students posted a photo of him in class Tuesday morning. The Facebook post showing Smith behind his desk and suited up for defense has generated an flurry of controversy. One Facebook user agreed with Smith, stating: "Can't blame him. If I were still teaching at STC I'd probably consider this, especially around grading time." Others, took to describing the educator as "dumb," an "old fool" and a "f------ liberal." "I'm not one bit surprised on the horrible things people have said. You have guns. The Second Amendment. It has to do with a community college. There's so many messages that haven't made it on the thread," James "Hot Mustard" Velten, who posted the photo, told mySA.com. RELATED: Cocks Not Glocks group releases 'bulletproof' UT shirts in response to campus carry Velten is both a student of Smith's and an employee for SAC as a radio host for KYSM. He said Smith is a good professor, passionate about his work and smart. "Around people like that, you tend to listen a bit more," Velten said, adding no real objections from students occurred in Smith's class on Tuesday. The instructor wants it to be known that his statement had nothing to do with the school itself, explaining, "they are following the law." Smith said he ran his plans for Tuesday by police and administration beforehand. "Some of them were okay and some of them weren't, but it's freedom of speech," Smith said. jthorpe@express-news.net @jerilynnthorpe Galveston has taken dozens of Ford Explorer SUVs out of service because of concerns about carbon monoxide leaks. The Daily News reports the city of Galveston has decided to pull more than 30 vehicles from service. Most of them are used by the police department. Ford Motor Co. officials have said there could be dangerous leaks in some of the vehicles that have been modified for police use. The leaks could cause carbon monoxide to enter an SUVs cab. Company officials say itll pay to repair the leaks in police vehicles. Carbon monoxide is a colorless, odorless gas. Exposure to it can cause headaches, dizziness, unconsciousness and death. Last week, Austin police pulled nearly 400 Ford Explorers off the streets because of similar concerns. As for San Antonio, which has 578 Explorers in its fleet, officials said they have not seen problems with fumes in their SUVs but have taken precautions. Its fleet management team installed carbon monoxide sensors in the SUVs back in April, when they heard reports about exhaust fumes entering the passenger compartment. The sensors change color from orange-red to red-brown and then gray-black as the concentration levels increase. They last 90 days and are replaced by fleet management on a regular basis. Officers are advised to be aware of the issue during extended periods when the vehicle is idling and the windows are closed. The vehicles are often running as officers are filling out reports or redirecting traffic. Fleet management has advised officers to turn off the SUV and get fresh air while lowering the windows if the detector ever shows an unsafe level of carbon monoxide. According to information sent to officers, the vehicle would be immediately placed out of service after notifying fleet management. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate A man attacked two women with a machete at a North Side home and then lead police on a chase, officials said. Both women received life-threatening injuries, police said. The attack was reported around 7 a.m., when a neighbor told police he saw a man walking around with a machete in the 200 block of Army Boulevard, according to Officer Doug Greene, a spokesman for the San Antonio Police Department. RELATED: Woman hospitalized after head-on collision on North Side Police were able to get a description of the vehicle the man was driving and they later found and attempted to stop him but he fled and officers initiated a pursuit, authorities said. The suspect fled northbound on 281, and eventually turned back around and headed southbound. He made his way back to the crime scene, where he sped past police, paramedics and reporters with more than four squad cars close on his tail while a helicopter hovered overhead. RELATED: Sheriff: Detention officer collected drug debts for inmate, had money deposited to commissary fund "Officers did follow policy and they did a great job of staying with this guy," said San Antonio Police Chief William McManus. "Obviously, he's a very dangerous individual." When police had first arrived at the residence the front door was barricaded but shortly after the suspect drove by, police forced their way into the home and found the two victims with multiple cuts. The victims, described as two women in their 30s and 50s, were carted out on gurneys. Both were covered in blood and appeared to have wounds to their faces and arms. The older woman was only wearing a bra and panties when she was taken from the home. "The injuries were very, very severe," according to McManus. Police said one of the victims was in a dating relationship with the suspect. According to police records, there have been no serious or violent calls from the address of the crime scene. Most calls were for disturbances. RELATED: Day care destroyed in blaze cited for 'high risk' fire inspection violation last year Both women were transported to San Antonio Military Medical Center in critical condition with life-threatening injuries. While police were investigating, a distraught woman arrived to the street asking what happened to the women and if they were okay. A neighbor, who asked not to be identified, said the woman is a friend of one of the victims. "She gave her a lot of TLC, would take her to church and make sure she's okay," the neighbor said. The suspect eventually crashed into a pole near Euclid and Wilmington Avenues. He was arrested at the crash site after a brief struggle with pursuing officers. He is expected to be charged with aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, though the charges may be enhanced if either of the victims die. Police said they have recovered a machete from his possession. Matt Silva, an employee with Jordan Foster Construction, said he was sitting in his utility vehicle on Euclid Avenue when the suspect and pursuing officers came screeching around the corner. The suspect was blasting rock music from the van during the chase, Silva said. "I guess he was wired up or something," he said. "He went out with a bang." RELATED: Landscapers get into knife fight in middle of the street following road rage incident, police say The suspect had to swerve to avoid one of Silva's employee's, and he drove over some mud, lost control of his vehicle and crashed. "If it hadn't have rained yesterday, who knows where it would have ended," Silva said. Silva said the suspect got out of the car, raised his hands and started screaming at the officers. Police then threw him to the ground and "attacked." "They started beating him pretty bad, but he was still yelling, so I guess it wasn't that bad," Silva said. Check back to mySA.com for updates to this story. Text "NEWS" to 77453 for breaking news alerts from mySA.com cdowns@mysa.com Twitter: @calebjdowns This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate San Antonio officials have quietly granted an $8 million tax incentive package to an Austin development firm to build a 21-story high-end apartment tower with shops and offices across the street from City Hall. Teeple Partners, a development firm from Austin, plans to build the $83 million tower at the southwest corner of Flores and Dolorosa streets, according to a copy of the tax package signed by the firm and city in March. The project proposes 45,000 square feet of retail shops and offices as well as 305 upscale apartments and condominiums, according to the documents obtained by the Express-News. The incentive package includes a $5.9 million tax reimbursement, $1.1 million in fee waivers and a $1 million development loan that could be forgiven if the developer meets certain conditions, according to the agreement. Charles Teeple, president of Teeple Partners, declined to comment when reached by phone on Thursday. The target rental price for the apartments would be $2.75 a square foot, according to the incentive agreement, which would make them among the most expensive in San Antonio. The project, named Kallison Square, proposes to include 15 floors of residential units on top of a six-story parking garage with 525 spaces, said Ramiro Gonzales of the citys Center City Development & Operations Department. Its not yet clear how many of the units will be apartments and how many will be condos, he said. The project will incorporate seven historic buildings that are already on the property. Construction is expected to begin next spring and wrap up in mid-2020, but Gonzales cautioned that those dates are flexible. The site is right next to where all the downtown workforce is, where we would hope many of the employees could live, he said. I wouldnt say its a blighted corner, but its certainly underutilized its adding to that fabric were trying to create in the downtown core. Teeple Partners development would be built on a 1.4-acre property owned by two local companies, Nueva Corp. and PK Realty. An affiliate of Teeple Partners, Penta Partners V LP, signed a 99-year lease for the property in 2007, according to county property records. The site is in the western part of downtown, known as Zona Cultural, which is largely dominated by government offices and law firms, making it dormant after business hours. Teeple Partners proposal would revitalize the area by bringing in residents to activate it 24 hours a day, said Pat DiGiovanni, president and CEO of Centro San Antonio. New projects have blossomed in the Zona Cultural area over the last two years. Weston Urbans 23-story Frost Tower is being built two blocks to the north of Teeple Partners project, and an 18-story hotel and office tower is planned on Main Plaza, a block away. Other developments in the works nearby include a $135 million new federal courthouse and several upscale apartment buildings. H-E-Bs South Flores Market is a short walk to the south. San Pedro Creek, which is undergoing a $175 million rehabilitation, runs nearby. The city and county are looking for investors to redevelop 7 acres of land they own around the creek, including a 2.5-acre vacant lot next to the Teeple Partners site. The site of the proposed development is currently occupied by a parking lot, a few restaurants and other retail businesses, as well as some vacant storefronts. One of the buildings was formerly Kallisons Western Wear and still has a statue of a cowboy on its roof. Teeple Partners is applying for state and federal historic tax credits for the project, which will be a crucial part of the financing package, according to the incentive agreement. The firm, which was founded in 1982, has developed three apartment complexes in San Antonio Westover Oaks and Verdant at Westover Hills on the far West Side, and Bulverde Oaks in the Stone Oak area. It has built and managed other residential, office and retail developments in Austin and throughout Texas, according to its website. The firm has also helped build single-family subdivisions across the state. In 2011, Teeple Partners was one of six developers to pitch ideas to CPS Energy for a new headquarters. The utility decided instead to buy two dormant towers on the Museum Reach for new offices. RWebner@express-news.net The search is on for the 2017 Macra na Feirme/FBD Young Farmer of the Year. Young farmers involved in sectors such as beef, dairy, sheep and others (including horticulture, pigs, poultry, tillage) are encouraged to enter and the winner of each sector will compete to be crowned the 2017 Macra na Feirme/FBD Young Farmer of the Year. Speaking about the launch of this year's competition Macra na Feirme National President James Healy said, The Young Farmer of the Year competition has gone from strength to strength since the inaugural competition in 1999 thanks in no small part to sponsors FBD and our partners, the IFA. The competition is a fantastic showcase of the enormous talent and potential that exists within the Irish agriculture sector. It also provides recognition and encouragement for young farmers at the beginning of their careers. I would encourage all our young farmers to put themselves forward for what will be a very rewarding and educational experience. Fiona Muldoon CEO of FBD said, FBD is delighted to continue our sponsorship of this flagship event in the farming calendar. FBD is proud to foster the next generation of Irish farmers through competitions such as Young Farmer of the Year. Every year this competition reflects the strength and depth of the new talent emerging in the Irish agriculture sector and I am confident this year will be no different. IFA President Joe Healy encouraged young farmers to participate and test their training and capabilities among the best in the country. Based on the increased numbers going through the agriculture colleges in recent years, we have a wealth of talent in the sector. The great thing about the Young Farmer of the Year competition is that it provides an opportunity to get involved and it allows entrants to pit their farming skills and vision against others. The winner of the 2017 Macra na Feirme/FBD Young Farmer of the Year will receive a travel bursary and the opportunity to experience farm practices abroad while developing their skills. There will also be a new Future Farmer award this year for an emerging young farmer under the age of 23. As in previous years, county winners will also receive an award. You can nominate a young farmer for Young Farmer of the Year or you can enter yourself by visiting macra.ie/youngfarmer. The closing date for applications is 1st of September 2017. Nature & Weather, Local News, Health & Wellness, Politics By Long Island News & PR Published: August 03 2017 Days After Schneiderman Files Lawsuit Challenging EPA's Delay Over Smog Regulations, EPA Backs Down, Vows To End Delay. New York, NY - August 3, 2017 - New York Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman welcomed the federal Environmental Protection Agency's withdrawal last night of Administrator Scott Pruitt's illegal delay of the designation of areas impacted by unhealthy levels of ground-level ozone (known as smog) which is critical to protecting New Yorkers and Americans from dangerous pollution and its public health impacts. Earlier this week, Attorney General Schneiderman led a coalition of 16 Attorneys General in filing suit against the EPA and Administrator Pruitt over the delay. A number of public health, environmental and social justice organizations also filed suit. On Tuesday, we sued the EPA for blocking vital clean air protections. Last night, the EPA reversed course, withdrawing Administrator Pruitt's year-long delay of these critical smog regulations, said Attorney General Schneiderman. One in three New Yorkers breathe dangerous smog levels. The EPA's reversal - following our lawsuits is an important win for the health and safety of the 6.7 million New Yorkers, and the over 115 million Americans, directly impacted by smog pouring into their communities. Our coalition of Attorneys General will continue to take the legal action necessary to protect the people we serve including making sure the EPA finalizes the designations by October 1, as required by the Clean Air Act, Attorney General Schneiderman concluded. According to the American Lung Association, over 115 million Americans - including 6.7 million, or one in three, New Yorkers - breathe harmful levels of smog, which often travels far distances from other states with less stringent clean air regulations. The designations that will now move forward play a key role under the Clean Air Act in addressing smog's serious threat to public health, by triggering requirements for state-specific plans and deadlines to reduce pollution in designated areas. I am pleased that the Trump EPA has reversed course on this dangerous proposal and am proud that New York's Attorney General helped lead the fight on this issue. We must work at every level of government to resist this Administration's callous assault on the environment and public health, said Rep. Nydia Velazquez. Thanks to the leadership and vigilance of our New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman and his counterparts from other states, EPA political leaders were forced to reverse a troubling decision to halt implementation of health-based protections that reduce harmful air pollution in our communities, said Rep. Paul Tonko. Failing to implement these protections would pose a very real threat to our public health and our economic productivity, keeping more of our workers and students home sick and exposing all of us to higher risks of heart disease, cancer, asthma and numerous other heart and lung conditions. I applaud AG Schneiderman for his effort to protect the air our families breathe. I will continue to fight for clean air and clean water for all Americans in the halls of Congress. The fight to protect public health just won a tremendous victory. The public can now take a deep breath and be more assured the air we breathe will be safer. Clean air is not a luxury item it's a necessity. It is not an overstatement to say lives will be saved because of the implementation of the clean air rule. We are so thankful that we have strong leaders like Attorney General Schneiderman who has prioritized protecting public health, and not pandering to corporate energy lobbyists, said Adrienne Esposito, Executive Director of Citizens Campaign for the Environment. "Since EPA Administrator Pruitt has taken office, we have experienced threats to eliminate critical environmental, climate and health regulations, said Rebecca Newberry, Executive Director, Clean Air Coalition of Western New York. For decades, until the Trump Administration, the EPA has regulated ozone and other pollutants to make the air safer. When environmental regulations are weakened, the health of people in communities like ours is threatened. Last night's decision is a testimony to how we need to stand up to the Trump administration's attacks on our health and quality of life. School & Education, Local News, Community, Charity & Cause, Politics By Long Island News & PR Published: August 03 2017 Zeldin: "The Long Island Museum has stood as one of our greatest sources of local art, history, and culture, and this grant will help the museum continue its excellent work." Stony Brook, NY - August 3, 2017 - Congressman Lee Zeldin (R, NY-1) announced today that the Congressman Lee Zeldin (R, NY-1) announced today that the Long Island Museum of American Art, History, and Carriages has been awarded $40,000 through the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) competitive grant program. Funding from this grant will be used to support the museums A World Before Cars Gallery. Congressman Zeldin said, Since 1939, the Long Island Museum has stood as one of our greatest sources of local art, history, and culture, and this grant will help the museum continue its excellent work. I would like to thank the National Endowment for the Humanities for recognizing this important initiative. It is paramount that we continue to support and fund our local historical sites, museums, and arts programs, and I am honored to do my part in Congress. Long Island Museum Executive Director Neil Watson said, We are thrilled and honored that the NEH is supporting our proposal to plan a new fully-immersive gallery that will help visitors understand how carriages and horses connect to our modern automotive culture. Working with world-class designers and consultants, the museum will create an exciting and engaging interactive new 2,400-square-foot gallery. Tech & Science, Nature & Weather, Local News, Politics By Long Island News & PR Published: August 03 2017 First Two Rounds of Solarize Campaigns Under NY-Sun Initiative to Result in More Than $2.9 Million in Cost Savings for Residents and Businesses. Albany, NY - August 3, 2017 - Governor Andrew M. Cuomo today announced that 850 solar projects have been installed or are in development in communities across New York State through the second round of locally-organized "Solarize" campaigns. Launched by the Governor in December 2014, New York's Solarize program is an important component in supporting the State's Clean Energy Standard, which requires that 50 percent of the electricity in New York to come from renewable sources by 2030. "New York continues to see unprecedented growth in the solar energy industry across the state, reducing greenhouse gas emissions, increasing jobs, and driving economic growth," Governor Cuomo said. "By helping residents and businesses install solar energy panels, we are reducing costs for consumers and fueling the clean energy economy in New York for years to come." The announcement was made at an event in Brownsville, Brooklyn, where more than 200 homes have been outfitted with solar panels as part of the "Solarize Brownsville" campaign. Solarize Brownsville brought together community partners, local residents, and the selected solar installer to successfully demonstrate that solar power can make an impact in low- to moderate-income communities. Building on this momentum, NYSERDA and the Center for Economic Growth launched today the first state-supported Solarize campaign aimed at helping manufacturers install clean-energy producing solar systems. The campaign will bring together potential solar customers in the Capital Region to receive competitive pricing through joint purchasing arrangements. The New York State Energy Research and Development Authority provided $700,000 in technical and marketing support in the first two rounds of the Solarize program, in 2015 and 2016. Projects in rounds one and two total 13.46 megawatts of installed solar and will save participants a total of approximately $2.9 million on upfront purchase costs, for an average savings of $1,743 per installation. Solarize campaigns bring together groups of potential solar customers, including low-to-moderate income participants, through widespread outreach and education and help customers choose solar companies that offer competitive, transparent pricing. Campaigns are managed by partnerships that include community officials, elected officials, municipalities and businesses. Communities engaged in Solarize campaigns are able to simplify the procurement and installation of solar panels and obtain discounts through aggregated purchases. The campaigns generally run between six and nine months, including planning and outreach. By educating the local community, streamlining marketing efforts and aggregating customers, Solarize campaigns help make solar a more accessible and affordable energy option for homeowners and businesses. Second Round of Community Campaigns by Region: The Solarize program is now entering a third round of campaigns around the State that will further build on the success of the initiative in helping additional neighborhoods to go solar. The Solarize campaigns are one facet of a broad range of efforts under Governor Cuomo's $1 billion NY-Sun program-part of his Reforming the Energy Vision strategy-to advance the scale-up of solar and move New York State closer to having a sustainable, self-sufficient solar industry. State-supported solar power in New York increased nearly 800 percent, from December 2011 to December 2016. Chairman of Energy and Finance for New York State Richard L. Kauffman said, "The Solarize campaigns are helping communities transition to more sustainable energy practices, reducing greenhouse gas emissions and lowering costs. Under Governor Cuomo's comprehensive NY-Sun initiative, New York is driving affordable, clean energy solutions to create healthier, stronger neighborhoods across the State." NYSERDA President and CEO Alicia Barton said, "Solarize campaigns create opportunities for community members to work together to reduce energy costs and protect the environment. Solar supports Governor Cuomo's nation-leading energy goals and will help make energy more affordable for all New Yorkers." Colette Pean, Executive Director of East New York Restoration LDC, said, "The success of the Solarize Brownsville campaign was because of the extensive community ties the sponsoring agencies had with the residents of Ocean-Hill Brownsville and East New York. Our neighborhoods are eager to have a clean environment and lower our energy costs--the challenge is how to achieve this in a sustainable manner. Assemblywoman Latrice Walker was a key champion for bringing the benefits of solar energy to better the health of homeowners and community residents; we couldn't have done it without her!" Malcolm Bliss, Community Programs Director of Level Solar, said, "Level Solar is proud to have been selected as the preferred Solarize installer for Brownsville, and we are excited to celebrate New York State's most successful Solarize program to date. We thank Governor Cuomo and NYSERDA for making these solar installations possible. We also give special thanks to Latrice Walker, Colette Pean, and other Brownsville leaders for championing local efforts in the community. Through Level Solar's program, over 200 Brownsville and Ocean Hill residents will transition to lower cost, clean solar energy with no upfront cost. Residents will save hundreds of thousands of dollars on their electricity, and at the same time, dramatically reduce carbon emissions. As part of Level Solar's continued commitment to the community, Level Solar has created over 30 clean energy jobs in Brooklyn, and opened a new operations facility to support further solar installations." Senator Kevin Parker said, "I applaud Governor Cuomo and NYSERDA for continuing to build on our renewable energy and sustainability goals. It is crucial that our City maintain its leadership role in promoting solar and other renewable energy. I fully support "Solarize Brownsville" and look forward to seeing this initiative spreading to other areas of Brooklyn and throughout New York State." Senator Roxanne J. Persaud said, "New York's Solarize program is an important environmental project as we make solid investments in our ecological future. With the use of renewable energy, we will minimize our collective carbon footprint. Let us continue to build on the success that we have achieved in Brownsville and solarize more communities. We are committed to preserving our planet for future generations and this is only one-step forward." Assemblywoman Latrice Walker said, "As chair of the subcommittee on Renewable Energy, I am so excited that NYSERDA is reaching out to the community and providing information about offshore wind projects and upcoming employment opportunities. This is important because offshore wind will be so much closer to load centers in New York City and Long Island, than the projects upstate." About Reforming the Energy Vision Local News, Crime, Politics By Long Island News & PR Published: August 03 2017 Raids In NY Courthouses, Including Family And Community Courts, Spiked This Year; Victims And Witnesses Being Targeted Are Increasingly Fearful Of Cooperating With Prosecutors. New York, NY - August 3, 2017 - New York State Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman and Acting Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez today called for the United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to stop conducting raids in New York courthouses and to recalibrate their priorities so crime victims and witnesses are not targeted for removal proceedings. Instances of arrests and attempted arrests by ICE in courts have spiked approximately five-fold this year compared to 2016, according to service providers, and a growing number of victims have expressed reluctance to move forward with criminal prosecutions due to fear of being deported, according to the Brooklyn DAs Office. These reports are consistent with findings detailed in a national report issued by the New York Attorney Generals office in March. Together, the reports provide overwhelming evidence that the Trump administrations immigration enforcement policies have undermined public safety and must end. Attorney General Schneiderman said, Targeting immigrants at our courthouses undermines our criminal justice system and threatens public safety. If the Trump Administration continues to arrest people in the heart of our justice system, immigrants will be less likely to serve as witnesses or report crimes and that leaves us all at risk. I join District Attorney Gonzalez in calling for ICE to stop immigration raids in our courthouses. Everyone, regardless of their immigration status or the status of their loved ones, should have access to equal justice under the law. Acting District Attorney Gonzalez said, The federal authorities claim they are making America safe again, but the truth is that their immigration enforcement policies are making all of us less safe. We encounter more and more victims and eyewitnesses to crime who are fearful of moving forward because of immigration status, and we see arrests by ICE spiking in our courthouses, including Family Court and courts dedicated to helping human trafficking victims and those with mental health issues. We must not allow a large number of our residents to live in the shadows and stop cooperating with law enforcement but the Trump Administration is now creating this dangerous reality. ICE should treat courthouses as sensitive locations, like it does schools and houses of worship, to allow everyone free access to our justice system and stop the chilling effect felt by victims and witnesses. Steven Choi, the New York Immigration Coalitions Executive Director, said, The federal government continues to perpetuate a false narrative that immigrants are criminals. This does not make us safer in fact, it instills fear in a community that is now too afraid to come forward with crucial, case-saving information. This is an issue of public safety and I am proud to stand with Acting DA Gonzalez and Attorney General Eric Schneiderman to demand the United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement to stop making senseless arrests in New York courthouses. This is our New York: one that does not terrorize immigrants at the expense of due process and our democratic principles. Mizue Aizeki, the Immigrant Defense Projects Acting Executive Director, said, We commend Acting Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez and Attorney General Schneiderman for taking a stand to protect the courts from destructive ICE arrests. ICEs growing presence in the courthouses not only sows fear in immigrant communities, but also undermines equal access to justice. If ICE does not act immediately to stop this practice, the New York State Chief Judge can and should take decisive action to stop ICE from terrorizing immigrants in the courts. Tina Luongo, Attorney-In-Charge of the Criminal Practice at The Legal Aid Society, said, We applaud New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman and Acting Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez for calling on Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to immediately stop courthouse raids. ICEs presence in local courts undermines the essential functions of our criminal justice system and deters New Yorkers from seeking vital court protections and services. We hope New York Citys other District Attorneys join with us in our continued efforts to keep ICE from raiding courthouses. A recent survey by the Immigrant Defense Project has found that there were approximately 60 arrests and attempted arrests in New York State courts so far this year, with at least eight arrests in Brooklyn. Only 11 arrests were reported statewide in 2016 and 14 in 2015. ICE operations have expanded and the agency is arresting individuals in Family Court, Human Trafficking Intervention Court and Mental Health Treatment Court. Those arrested included lawful residents (Green Card holders), a domestic violence victim and people who appeared on low-level misdemeanors. While ICE has designated certain locations such as schools, medical facilities and places of worship as sensitive locations, where it does not carry out enforcement actions, it has so far refused to designate courthouses as sensitive locations. The result is that a large segment of New Yorkers are now discouraged from appearing in state courts, including in housing disputes, to obtain orders of protection or to settle important matters such as child custody. In addition, legal professionals, social workers and service providers have reported an increase in victims and witnesses who express reluctance to cooperate with state authorities out of fear of being targeted by ICE. For example, an elderly victim in Brooklyn who was allegedly assaulted by her son is reluctant to move forward with the case because the defendant is a Green Card holder and the complainant does not want to risk seeing him deported. This trend means that crimes will go unreported and criminals may not be held accountable and remain free to victimize others, placing all of us at risk and making us less safe. Attorney General Schneiderman has been leading the effort to protect New Yorkers from the overreach and backsliding of the Trump administration. He was the first legal officer in the country to offer a legal roadmap for localities to become sanctuary jurisdictions while complying with federal law, and has sued the administration for constitutional violations related to its immigration policies. Acting DA Gonzalez has been a leader in prosecutors work to protect immigrants, creating a policy this spring to offer non-citizens plea offers that avoid collateral immigration consequences, hiring two immigration attorneys to advise his staff and holding monthly Immigration Forums to educate community members about common scams and how to avoid them. On August 8, 2017 The Brooklyn DAs Office will hold a symposium for legal professionals on the intersection of criminal law and immigration law. Local News, Crime By Long Island News & PR Published: August 03 2017 Steven M. Hodish, 31, stole cigarettes and fled from responding police officers, according to authorities. NCPD reports the arrest of an East Meadow man for a Robbery of a convenience store that occurred on Thursday, August 3. New York, NY - August 3, 2017 - The First Squad reports the arrest of an The First Squad reports the arrest of an East Meadow man for a Robbery of a convenience store that occurred on Thursday, August 03, 2017 at 1:30 A.M in East Meadow. According to detectives, the defendant Steven M. Hodish, 31, did enter a 7-11 convenience store located at 391 East Meadow Avenue, and stole 3 packs of cigarettes. The defendant Hodish did exit the store without paying and was chased by a store employee. A physical altercation ensued. Defendant Hodish was able to flee on foot. A few minutes later, First Precinct officers while on patrol did observe the defendant running and attempted to stop him but he fled. Officers saw the defendant then enter a residence on 7th Street where he resides and lock the door behind him. A short time later the defendant did come out of his home and was placed under arrest without incident. Defendant Steven M. Hodish is charged with Robbery 3rd degree. He will be arraigned on Thursday, August 3, 2017 at First District Court in Hempstead Local News, Crime By Long Island News & PR Published: August 03 2017 A Nassau County Police Ambulance transported the victim to a local hospital where he was treated for his injuries. NCPD are investigating an Assault that occurred in Valley Stream on Wednesday, August 02. Pictured above is one of the suspects. Valley Stream, NY - August 3, 2017 - The Fifth Squad is investigating an Assault that occurred in The Fifth Squad is investigating an Assault that occurred in Valley Stream on Wednesday, August 02, 2017 at 3:31 am. According to detectives, a Third Precinct Police officer observed a 25 year old male victim lying on the ground with multiple stab wounds in the vicinity of West Merrick Road / South Franklin Avenue. The victim suffered deep lacerations to his head, neck, arms, and chest. A Nassau County Police Ambulance transported him to a local hospital where he was treated for his injuries. He is listed in serious but stable condition. An investigation revealed that two male Hispanics (no description) injured the victim using broken bottles and then fled on foot in an unknown direction. Further investigation reveals that only one subject was involved described as being male, Hispanic, slight build, 58 5 10 tall, 140 Lbs., black / white NY Lettering baseball cap, gray jeans (see picture). The Group for Support of Islam and Muslims (JNIM), al Qaedas group in West Africa, has claimed several attacks on French forces in northern Mali in recent weeks. Earlier today, JNIM claimed an improvised explosive device (IED) ambush on a French patrol near the town of Tessalit in Malis northern region of Kidal. Local media reported that four French soldiers were wounded in the ambush, which was later confirmed by French officials. Last week, JNIM claimed a similar incident on a French military vehicle approximately 25 miles north of Kidal. Prior to that, on July 8, JNIM said it wounded three French soldiers with an IED near Tessalit. Late last month, the group issued a statement saying its forces hit a French military convoy with an IED near Menaka in the Gao region. However, these three incidents have not been confirmed by French authorities. On July 17, the joint French-UN base near Tessalit was also hit by several mortars. While JNIM has not claimed this barrage, the base has been targeted numerous times in the past by JNIMs predecessor groups. Since the beginning of the year, French troops in Mali have been deliberately targeted at least 12 times by jihadist forces according to data compiled by FDDs Long War Journal. This includes a deadly ambush on a French patrol near the borders with Burkina Faso earlier this year. Two soldiers were wounded while a third was killed, making him the ninth soldier to be killed in Frances Operation Barkhane. [See Threat Matrix report, JNIM claims ambush on French troops in Mali.] In addition to the claims on French troops, JNIM has also claimed several other attacks in recent weeks across Mali. This includes ambushes on Malian national guardsmen in both the Gao and Mopti regions. It also recently claimed its first attack within Burkina Fasos borders, which helps showcase the relationship between the Burkinabe jihadist group, Ansaroul Islam, and JNIM. Ansaroul Islam is believed to be heavily tied to JNIMs Katibat Macina. Caleb Weiss is a research analyst at FDD's Long War Journal and a senior analyst at the Bridgeway Foundation, where he focuses on the spread of the Islamic State in Central Africa. 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. The recent case of IPC Global Pty Ltd v Pavetest Pty Ltd (No 3) [2017] FCA 82, provides a textbook example of how not to create a competitive start-up. A group of senior employees left IPC and started up Pavetest in competition. IPC was the dominant player in marketing software to determine the material strength of concrete pavements and the new start up Pavetest produced a similar software product. In leaving, they took a copy of the source code for the software product and gave it to a programmer to recreate a competitive product. The programmer referred extensively to the IPC software when producing version 1 of the Pavetest product. IPC sued the new start up under both copyright and breach of confidence. Under copyright, the core issue was one of whether a "substantial part" of the software had been reproduced. Although IPC's software contained about 250,000 lines of source code, a large amount of this had been replicated in internal libraries, and it was found that there were only about 15,000 unique lines of code. Of this, about 800 lines were found to have been directly copied. The judge held that this amount to copying a substantial part. This was due to the originality of the expression in the IPC code, the belief that the emphasis should be qualitative rather than quantitative, and that the parts copied were deeply functionally significant. The judge also found that the ex-employees had breached their duty of confidence in taking the confidential source code and misusing confidential information of IPC. The case provides an exemplary illustration of how not to go about establishing a competitive entity, in competition with an ex-employer. It was evident that relying on the previous employer's source code was likely to result in the judge taking a dim view of any software from which it had been subsequently derived. Peter Treloar Shelston IP Level 21, 60 Margaret Street Sydney NSW 2000, Australia Tel: +61 2 9777 1111 Fax: +61 2 9241 4666 email@shelstonip.com www.shelstonip.com This Oil Price Rally Has Reached Its Limit Last week, crude oil rallied the most so far this year, gaining more than 8 percent, or $4 per barrel. Oil traders are much more optimistic than they were just a month ago, and the market is on the upswing. However, the rally could run out of steam in the not-so-distant future, a familiar result for those paying attention to the oil market in the last few years. There are several significant reasons why oil prices have regained most of the lost ground since the end of May. First, the OPEC cuts continue to have an effect. We can quibble over the degree to which OPEC members are complying with their promised cuts, but the cartel is taking more than 1 million barrels per day off the market, with a small group of non-OPEC countries contributing about half as much in reductions. As time goes on, that will help narrow the imbalances. Second, U.S. shale is showing some signs of slowing down. There are a variety of reasons for this, including fear of another price downturn, more caution from oil companies themselves and even a bottleneck in drilling services. But the bottom line is that we cant simply look at the shale rebound that we saw in the first half of the year, and extrapolate that into the future. There is a good chance that things start to slow down from here, and the market is starting to wake up to that fact. Another reason oil prices bounced last week was because several OPEC members promised deeper cuts. Saudi Arabia said that it would cut exports by another 600,000 barrels per day. The de facto OPEC leader will also be specifically curtailing exports to the U.S., which will help drain inventories. In the ensuing days, the UAE and Kuwait have also pledged to cut their output further. Fundamentals continue to suggest a more-balanced crude-oil market, said ANZ. The bank, along with other investment banks, are eyeing the shift in the futures market towards backwardation a situation in which front-month crude futures trade at a premium to oil futures further out. Backwardation tends to signal near-term market tightness, a measure of bullishness that the oil market has not seen in quite a while. Backwardation suggests demand is strong and it also signals greater inventory drawdowns are coming down the pike. The final and arguably most important reason for the latest price gains is the sizable drawdowns in U.S. crude oil inventories recently, a tangible signal that the market is finally rebalancing. Last week saw the biggest draw yet, with more than 7.2 million barrels taken out of storage. But even as the oil market is suddenly looking a lot tighter than it did in June, there are also reasons to believe that the rally is running out of room. Inventories are still high, and not just in the U.S. Also, while shale is slowing down, the U.S. is expected to add more output. Then there are other producers outside of the U.S. adding new supply. "We believe the latest price rise is on a fragile footing," analysts at Commerzbank wrote in a note, pointing to higher forthcoming production from Libya and Nigeria. "I don't see the physical market getting all that much better. There's still a lot of crude that's unsold, still a lot of Nigerian barrels floating out there," John Kilduff, founder of Again Capital, told CNBC. There are also reasons less to do with the fundamentals and more related to the financial market that point to limited upside potential. The surge in oil prices over the past month has corresponded with a shift towards bullish positioning among hedge funds and other money managers. But the net-long positioning, as Reuters notes, has more to do with a liquidation of shorts rather than a major accumulation of long bets. That may seem like a trivial distinction, but if hedge funds are not scrambling to buy up long bets, that suggests that they are not all that confident about further price increases in the near-term. Meanwhile, the oil market probably needs a breather after the gains since June. Matt Smith of ClipperData cites the fact that oil prices have surpassed their 200-day moving averages, which will make it more difficult for crude benchmarks to move even higher. "From a technical perspective, it seems as though this rally should be done," Smith told CNBC. The one variable that could upend all market forecasts is Venezuela, which has been in economic turmoil for quite some time but is entering a new phase of crisis. The involvement of the U.S. government, which is retaliating against Venezuela for what it argues is a step towards dictatorship, threatens to accelerate the oil production declines in the South American nation. If Venezuela sees its exports disrupted in a sudden way, the ceiling for oil prices in 2017 could be quite a bit higher than everyone expects at the moment. Otherwise, there is not a lot of room on the upside for oil prices in the short-term. By Nick Cunningham of Oilprice.com Article Source: http://oilprice.com/Energy/Oil-Prices/This-Oil-Price-Rally-Has-Reached-Its-Limit.html By Nick Cunningham of Oilprice.com 2016 Copyright OilPrice.com - All Rights Reserved Disclaimer: The above is a matter of opinion provided for general information purposes only and is not intended as investment advice. Information and analysis above are derived from sources and utilising methods believed to be reliable, but we cannot accept responsibility for any losses you may incur as a result of this analysis. Individuals should consult with their personal financial advisors. 2005-2019 http://www.MarketOracle.co.uk - The Market Oracle is a FREE Daily Financial Markets Analysis & Forecasting online publication. STUART An Ararat man pleaded guilty Wednesday in Patrick County Circuit Court to three counts of distributing schedule I or II controlled substances-second offense. According to Patrick County Assistant Commonwealths Attorney Andrew Hynes, David Wayne Whittington Jr. allegedly sold drugs to a confidential informant in an undercover drug operation. Whittington allegedly sold seven pills of oxycodone, with a 15 mg dosage each, on Oct. 5, 2016; four pills of oxycodone, with each pill containing a dosage of 80 mg, on Oct. 17, 2016; and 0.25 gram of cocaine and 0.23 gram of heroin on Oct. 24, 2016. Judge Martin F. Clark Jr. found 38-year-old Whittington guilty of the three charges, ordered a presentence report and set sentencing for Oct. 25. Each charge carries a maximum sentence of life in prison and generally a mandatory minimum sentence of three years in prison, Judge Clark said. Though there are some exceptions to the mandatory minimum sentence, Judge Clark told Whittington that he should expect to serve at least nine years in prison. Under a plea agreement, the prosecution will nolle prosse (drop but could reinstate) a fourth charge of distributing schedule I or II controlled substance-second offense against Whittington. In that case, Whittington allegedly sold four pills, each containing 80mg of oxycodone, on Oct. 11, 2016. PATRICK COUNTY DISTRICT COURT Also in Patrick County General District Court, Judge Marcus Brinks dismissed a charge of arson of an occupied dwelling against Kelley Shonta Woods, 37, of Claudville, according to court records. An arrest warrant and criminal complaint by Deputy Oscar Tejeda of the Patrick County Sheriffs Office alleged the following about an incident on May 13: Tejeda responded to a call on Pedigo Ridge (Road) in Claudville regarding an allegedly drunkfemale, who was trying to get inside a local residence. While en route, officers received a second call claiming the defendant was allegedly throwing gas on a car and a trailer. Minutes later, officers received a third call from within the neighborhood, saying the same woman had set the trailer on fire. The trailers tenant told officers that he was inside the home when the woman allegedly said come out or Ill burn you out. He then told the officers he saw her pour gas. The sheriffs office also has a recording of a neighbor calling and advising that a woman set fire to the front of the trailer. Woods lawyer, Alan Black, told the Martinsville Bulletin on Wednesday the case was dismissed because the complaining witness could not remember enough details to prove all elements for arson. To be convicted of arson, the prosecution has to show that the accused intentionally set a fire for the purpose of destroying someones building. According to court records, the trailer actually belonged to a third party, another woman who lived in Ararat. MARTINSVILLE Want to do some work on your property but need to get the citys permission first? You might not be able to get it anytime soon. The Martinsville Board of Zoning Appeals (BZA), a quasi-judicial panel that considers requests for variances from city zoning rules and appeals of rezoning decisions, lacks enough members to meet. Two city panels cant meet because they dont have any members. A list on the citys website shows nearly 40 vacancies among seats on city boards and commissions as well as seats on regional panels on which Martinsville has representation. Officials say they are having a hard time recruiting Martinsville residents to volunteer their time to fill the seats, which can hinder the city in getting its business done. Martinsville City Council makes most board and commission appointments. However, Martinsvilles circuit court judge appoints people to the BZA from among those who apply to the serve on the panel. The BZA, which meets as needed, currently has two members, Page Brockenbrough and Richard Howell. Another member, India Brown, recently resigned because she is moving to Henry County, according to Assistant City Manager/Community Development Director Wayne Knox. Having a quorum of three members is necessary for the BZA to avoid tie votes, so the board is not able to hear any cases that arise, Knox said. That could hurt progress, he and Mayor Gene Teague agreed. For instance, developers might drop projects that would help the city, or go elsewhere, if their needs are not met in a timely way. Fortunately, though, when the BZA hasnt been able to quickly schedule meetings in the past, such as by being unable to obtain quorums for specific potential dates, most people have been accommodating and understanding and simply postponed their plans, Knox said. This is not the first time that the BZA has had trouble attracting members over the years. Membership typically has fluctuated between four and five, but usually it had four members before dropping to three, Knox said. Appeals of BZA decisions are heard by the circuit court. City Attorney Eric Monday said appeals of rezoning decisions cannot go directly to the court from the city council, which makes final decisions on such matters following recommendations from the Martinsville Planning Commission. All five seats on the Martinsville Board of Appeals are vacant, the online list shows. The board hears appeals of state building code regulations and handles matters involving the citys erosion and sediment control ordinance, fire prevention code and flood plain ordinances. Members serve five-year terms. There hasnt been any recent city business needing the boards attention, officials said. City Building Official Kris Bridges said the five previous members terms expired. After being asked, he said, four of them have agreed to serve again but they must formally reapply to the city. Bridges said he has 30 days to schedule a meeting of the board if one becomes needed. That is enough time, he said, for him to work with the city council to get people appointed. I guess I could fill out applications for people and say, Here, sign it, he said, chuckling slightly. The bottom line is we can get it done if people need to be appointed quickly, he added. Empty seats Similarly, all seven seats on the Martinsville Industrial Development Authority (IDA) are vacant, the online list shows, its previous members terms having expired. The IDA gets involved in financing economic development projects. Members serve four-year terms. Should matters come up for the IDA to consider, we would have to scramble to get people appointed to it, Monday said. Yet filling IDA seats is not as urgent as filling vacancies on some other panels, like the BZA, he said, because the authority has not met in years since no issues requiring its attention have arisen. He speculated that the city council itself seated as the Martinsville Redevelopment and Housing Authority may be able to handle some types of business that the IDA would normally handle. Vacant seats also are available on the Anchor Group Home Commission, Martinsville Architectural Review Board, Martinsville Arts and Cultural Committee, Blue Ridge Regional Library Board, Piedmont Community Services Board, Martinsville Planning Commission, Martinsville Transportation Safety Commission, Martinsville Tree Board, West Piedmont Disability Services Board and West Piedmont Planning District Technical Advisory Committee, the online list shows. Recruiting new members Officials said that based on conversations theyve had with their counterparts in other communities, recruiting people to serve on boards and commissions is not just a problem in Martinsville. Many other places are having the same problem. Civic organizations are having it, too, they said. People just dont seem to be committed to serving their communities as much as they were 10 to 15 years ago, Teague said. Family and job commitments are among reasons he cited. For example, many people are working more than one job to support themselves and their families, and many businesses no longer let employees take time off during workdays to participate in government and civic activities. Earlier this week, city planning commission Chairman Joe Martin said he has heard from a couple of people interested in serving on the panel, which meets at 2 p.m. on the first Tuesday and third Thursday of each month and has two vacancies. But they couldnt take time off from their jobs to attend meetings. As a result, the commission is considering holding future meetings after regular business hours. Another vacancy on the commission could occur soon. Officials have said that member Sarah Krauss is having trouble taking time off from her job to attend meetings and is considering resigning. Its pretty tough to convince people to serve on boards and commissions nowadays, said city Councilwoman Sharon Brooks Hodge. But we need people to step forward and apply to serve, Mayor Gene Teague said. People serving on boards and commissions must have a strong interest in community affairs and a strong desire to try and help Martinsville become a better place, officials said. The work can be time-consuming and stressful. Its a thankless job, Monday admitted. You volunteer, you dont get paid (for it), and you may get yelled at sometimes by people whose cases are decided in ways that dont please them. Knox said many board and commission members over the years were willing to serve for long periods. As an example, he mentioned former planning commission chairman Tim Martin, who recently resigned after serving stints totaling about 24 years. But from time to time, he said, you need fresh eyes looking at things. Serving on an appointed board or commission will help anyone interested in eventually running for a city council seat learn about how the city functions and its needs. For those interested in holding some other type of public office, it can help them learn about government in general, according to officials. Also, it gives people a voice within their democratic system of government. Without hearing their voices, Teague said, ultimately its going to put more pressure on the city and the council to make decisions without knowing what residents want and how they feel about issues. Maybe we need to step out and start (personally) recruiting people to serve, he said, referring to the council overall. Hodge indicated that she is going to become more aggressive in encouraging people to apply to serve on boards and commissions. A council member for five years, she said she used to be more aggressive than she is now, having encountered more and more people who dont seem interested in serving. She posed the idea of the council creating something similar to a welcome wagon. She said that a couple of council members could visit Martinsville newcomers and tell them not only about positive things about community life, but also about ways in which they can get involved in the community. To volunteer on a board or commission, you can fill out the application at http://www.martinsville-va.gov/residents/volunteers. PATRICK SPRINGS-Who set fire to an abandoned farm house in Patrick County? The Virginia State Police is asking for help to determine that. State officials put out a request Wednesday, asking anyone with information to come forward in the case, which involves an incident that took place last month. In the early morning hours of July 18, a fire started in an 1800s era farm house, located in the 1200 block of South County Line Road in Patrick Springs. The building was unoccupied at the time of the fire. At about 5:16 a.m. that morning, someone driving by on South County Line Road noticed the fire and called Patrick County Fire and Rescue. The fire department and Patrick County Sheriffs Office both responded to the scene. Patrick County Emergency Service officials later asked the Virginia State Police for help in the investigation. Workers from the Salem field office of the State Polices Bureau of Criminal Investigation found that the fire started on the screened-in porch near the back of the unoccupied structure. Anyone with information regarding the fire or any suspicious activity in the area is asked to call the Virginia State Police at (540)-375-9500 or email questions@vsp.virginia.gov. In Defence of Marxism is committed to safeguarding your privacy. At all times we aim to respect any personal data you share with us, or that we receive from other organisations, and keep it safe. This Privacy Policy (Policy) sets out our data collection and processing practices and your options regarding the ways in which your personal information is used. 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Please let us know if you have any queries or concerns whatsoever about the way in which your data is being processed by emailing the Data Protection Manager at webmaster@marxist.com Rural areas are more likely to have a combination of factors that help poor children succeed in the labor market later in life. Raj Chettys massive national study turns conventional wisdom on its head about the best places to grow up. By Bill Bishop Full Story: http://www.dailyyonder.com/rural-advantage-rural-upbringing-raises-kids-future-earnings-study-shows/2017/08/03/20595/ Its not your imagination: Highway congestion and delays in the Portland area have worsened precipitously in recent years, the Oregon Department of Transportation says. The evening "rush hour" commute now lasts six hours or more on several key metro highways. Some see congestion all afternoon; others no longer have a break in congestion between the morning and afternoon commute. Full Story: http://www.oregonlive.com/commuting/index.ssf/2017/08/portlands_9_worst_highway_bott.html#incart_river_index James C. Jimmie Williamson, outgoing president of the North Carolina Community College System (NCCCS), will deliver the keynote address to students graduating from McDowell Technical Community College during a ceremony tonight at East McDowell Middle School. More than 235 students are expected to graduate with either an associates degree, diploma or certificate in various areas of study, and an additional 26 students will receive either an adult high school diploma or high school equivalency certificate (GED or HISET). The ceremony will begin at 6 pm and is open to the public. Williamson became the eighth president of NCCCS on July 1, 2016, after serving for two years as president and CEO of the South Carolina Technical College System. The highlights of his tenure at SCTCS included working with South Carolina university partners to smooth transfer pathways, chairing a special Senate proviso committee to develop a comprehensive workforce development strategy to help close the skills gap, and working with attracting companies such as Volvo and Mercedes and more industry-specific worker training. Additionally, he was at the helm of South Carolinas nationally recognized apprenticeship program for Boeing, BMW, Michelin and others, and was named State Employee of the Year by the South Carolina Association of Regional Councils in 2015. The winner numerous academic and civic awards, Williamson holds a Bachelor of Visual Arts and Masters of Education in Guidance and Counseling from Winthrop University, as well as a Ph.D. in Higher Education Administration from the University of South Carolina. The North Carolina Community College Systems board said on Aug. 1 it accepted Williamson s resignation, which is effective Sept. 30. Mayor Steve Little and Commissioner Tony Brown are expected to bring proclamations from Marion City Council and the McDowell County Board of Commissioners, respectively, regarding McDowell Techs 50th Anniversary, which is being celebrated throughout the 2017-2018 academic year. Faculty and staff will kickoff the celebration during professional development activities on Aug. 15, followed by the beginning of fall classes on Aug. 16 . Justin Conley will follow in his fathers footsteps by singing at this years graduation. His father, Greg Conley, has performed for almost every graduating class for as long as most folks can remember. A student will also be recognized as the colleges Academic Excellence winner and an instructor will be honored with the Excellence in Teaching Award. A penectomy is the removal of the penis to treat penile cancer. Penile cancer is uncommon in the United States and Europe. According to the American Cancer Society, about 2,100 men will be diagnosed with penile cancer in the U.S. in 2017. The disease appears to occur more frequently in other regions of the world, including countries in South America, Africa, and in parts of Asia. Most penile cancer is classified as squamous cell, but adenocarcinoma, sarcoma, and melanoma also occur. What is a penectomy? Share on Pinterest Penile cancer is a rare cancer. In rare cases, a penectomy may be done to treat a severe traumatic injury to the penis. However, it is performed mostly in cases where penile cancer has grown deep in the penis. When surgery is needed, either a partial or full penectomy is done to remove cancer and improve a mans chances of survival. Surgeons undertaking this operation typically want to leave as much of the penis intact as possible when they treat penile cancer. Consequently, if it is possible, a surgeon will perform a partial penectomy to remove the end of the penis but leave some of the shaft. When the cancer is located deeper in the tissue, a full penectomy may be recommended. This procedure involves removing the entire penis along with the roots, which extend into the pelvis. A total penectomy does not affect a mans ability to urinate but does affect how the urine comes out of the body. A new opening is created between the anus and the scrotum for the urine to drain. Depending on how advanced the cancer is, the testicles may also be removed. Men who require testicle removal may need to take supplements of the hormone testosterone, afterward. Also, nearby lymph nodes may be removed, to determine if the cancer has spread beyond the penis. Risks A penectomy carries risks, as does any surgery. Some risks or complications can occur during or immediately after the procedure. Other risks may develop during recovery. Complications of the procedure may be temporary or permanent. Share on Pinterest Like all surgeries, a penectomy may have complications. Typical risks of surgery include an adverse reaction to anesthesia or excessive bleeding. Additional risks associated with a penectomy, in particular, may include: wound infection chronic pain narrowing of the urethra blood clots possible inability to have sexual intercourse inability to stand while urinating lymphedema Recovery The recovery process after a penectomy depends on many factors, including a mans age, the extent of the cancer, and any other medical conditions that are present. Notably, it will involve a man facing emotional challenges, as well as physical adjustments in his future life. Physical adjustments Immediately after surgery, a person may have a temporary catheter put into the bladder to drain the urine. It is likely that doctors will prescribe medications for pain and to prevent a blood clot. Other medication may include antibiotics to cut the chances of an infection. A man should not exercise or do any heavy lifting for several weeks after a penectomy. Urination Long-term effects of the surgical procedure can include changes to the way a man urinates, depending on whether a partial or full penectomy was done. In the case of a partial penectomy, it may leave enough of the penis to allow urination while a man is standing. On the other hand, if a full penectomy was needed, a man will have to sit when urinating. Sexual function In the long-term, a penectomy may also affect sexual function. Sexual intercourse may still be possible when a partial penectomy is performed. However, according to the American Cancer Society , sexual penetration is not possible after a full penectomy. It can be helpful for men to talk with a doctor if they have concerns regarding sexual function. Reconstruction surgery Over time, recovery may include reconstruction surgery. Although it may not be an option in all cases, some men may be good candidates for surgery to rebuild the penis. Penis reconstruction surgery, which is called phalloplasty, may help them regain some function of the penis. Emotional recovery Share on Pinterest Professional counseling may be recommended as part of the recovery process. Emotional recovery is also important after a man has had a partial or full penectomy. Cancer and cancer treatments may cause a person to feel afraid, sad, or anxious. Also, losing a body part to cancer can be traumatizing. In the case of a penectomy, the surgery can be lifesaving, but it can also affect a mans self-esteem and self-image. While everyone recovers from a penectomy differently, feelings of depression or anxiety are not uncommon. Adequate support is essential for a mans successful recovery, emotionally. Discussing alternatives to sexual intercourse and sexual satisfaction for themselves and their partner can be useful in coping with the long-term changes after a partial or full penectomy. Importantly, whether support comes from family, friends, a cancer support group, or professional counseling, it can be invaluable for a man to talk to someone. Other options Other options besides a penectomy are possible to treat penile cancer. In some cases, less aggressive surgery can be used. What surgical procedure is used will depend on how large the tumor is and how deep into the tissue it has spread. Surgical procedures may include: Excision: A simple excision involves removing just the tumor and some of the surrounding tissue. An excision may be an option for a small tumor. Mohs surgery: Mohs surgery involves removing layers of the tumor one at a time. As each layer of tissue is removed, it is immediately viewed under a microscope to identify the presence of cancer cells. Layers of tissue are removed until cancer cells are not found. Mohs surgery is used to save as much healthy tissue as possible while still removing all the cancer. Circumcision: Circumcision may be used to treat penile cancer that only involves the foreskin. Also, a circumcision may be recommended before radiation therapy to the penis, as radiation may cause painful constriction of the foreskin. Although surgery is most commonly used to treat penile cancer, additional treatment may also be used. In some instances, chemotherapy, immunotherapy (also known as biological therapy), and radiation may be used to treat penile cancer. Additional treatment after surgery may decrease the chances of cancer returning. The results of a new study point to a correlation between regular but moderate drinking in older adults, and a reduced risk of cognitive impairments. This research was based on a cohort study of middle-class adults in the United States. Share on Pinterest A new study has found that cognitive health later in life correlates with moderate drinking on a regular basis. According to data from the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA), excessive alcohol consumption is responsible for around 88,000 deaths each year in the United States. However, the 2015 scientific report of the U.S. Department of Agriculture shows that moderate drinking can have several health benefits, including a decreased risk of heart disease and diabetes. A new study led by scientists from the University of California San Diego School of Medicine in La Jolla has now found a correlation between moderate drinking on a regular basis and prolonged cognitive health, as well as longevity. Senior study author Dr. Linda McEvoy explains that their research is, as far as they are aware, the first of its kind; it specifically takes into account the frequency of alcohol intake in an older population. This study is unique because we considered men and womens cognitive health at late age and found that alcohol consumption is not only associated with reduced mortality, but with greater chances of remaining cognitively healthy into older age, she says. Dr. McEvoy and her colleagues have published their findings in the current issue of the Journal of Alzheimers Disease. Data collected from uniform cohort The researchers worked with data collected from 1,344 adults recruited in the Rancho Bernardo Study, a prospective cohort study of residents from a middle-class Californian community. Of the participants selected for the current research, 728 were women and 616 were men. It should also be noted that the cohort the researchers worked with was relatively uniform; the participants were almost all white (99.4 percent) and middle- or upper-middle class. The study was conducted over a period of 29 years, until December 2013. The participants cognitive health was assessed at baseline, and then again once every 4 years. To be eligible, participants were required to have the potential to reach age 85 during the follow-up period. Those who did reach this age during the study had to have their cognitive health status reassessed within 2 years from their 85th birthday. Moderate drinkers cognitively healthy All the participants were asked to provide information about their alcohol consumption patterns through a standardized questionnaire. Drinking was labeled as moderate, heavy, or excessive according to NIAAA guidelines adjusted for age and biological sex. Moderate alcohol consumption added up to, at most, one standard drink per day for women of all ages and men aged 65 and older, or up to two drinks per day for men under 65. It was defined as heavy in the case of up to three drinks per day for men aged 65 and older and women of all ages, or up to four drinks per day for men under 65. Finally, excessive consumption counted more than three drinks per day for men aged 65 and older and women of all ages, or more than four drinks per day for men under 65. Regarding time patterns, participants could choose from being completely drink-free, drinking up to twice a month, drinking up to four times per week, or drinking between five and seven times per week. According to Dr. McEvoy, There were very few individuals in our study who drank to excess, so our study does not show how excessive or binge-type drinking may affect longevity and cognitive health in aging. What the study did find was that moderate and heavy drinkers were more likely to attain what the researchers call Cognitively Healthy Longevity that is, they retained cognitive health for longer. They were also likely to have a longer lifespan. Specifically, when compared with non-drinkers, participants who had reported a daily or almost daily intake of alcohol had a significantly increased likelihood of maintaining their cognitive health into old age. A review of the latest scientific research on breast cancer shows that there is strong evidence that breast-feeding can reduce womens risk of premenopausal and postmenopausal breast cancers. Share on Pinterest A review of several studies has found strong evidence to suggest that a womans breast cancer risk can be reduced if she breast-feeds her children. A report on the review, by the American Institute for Cancer Research (AICR) and the World Cancer Research Fund (WCRF), has been released this week to mark World Breastfeeding Week. The report offers several possible explanations for how breast-feeding lowers breast cancer risk. One reason is that lactation delays when women start menstruating again after giving birth. This reduces lifetime exposure to hormones such as estrogen, which are linked to increased risk of breast cancer. Another way in which breast-feeding may lower breast cancer risk is that, after lactation, the breast sheds a lot of tissue during which it may also get rid of cells with damaged DNA, which can give rise to cancer. The report also suggests that lactation may change the expression of genes in breast cells in a way that exerts a lasting impact on the risk of cancer development. Exclusive breast-feeding for 6 months Breast cancer is a disease that develops when abnormal cells in the breast begin to multiply and form a tumor. Although men can also get breast cancer, the disease arises almost always in women. In the United States, breast cancer is the most common cancer in women, not counting skin cancer. In 2014, 236,968 women and 2,141 men living in the U.S. found out that they had breast cancer. In that year, 41,211 women and 465 men also died of the disease. The new report reviewed 18 studies on lactation and breast-feeding. From the 13 that evaluated the effect of length of breast-feeding, the report finds that for every 5 months of breast-feeding duration, there is a 2 percent lower risk of breast cancer. In line with other agencies such as the World Health Organization (WHO), the AICR recommend that babies are breast-fed exclusively for up to 6 months before introducing other foods. Not only does breast milk provide infants with essential nutrients, it also boosts their immune system and helps to protect them from infection and asthma. A recent report from the Centers for Disease Prevention and Control (CDC) on U.S. breast-feeding practices suggests that while breast-feeding rates continue to rise, recommendations on how long to breast-feed for and when to introduce other foods are not being met. The CDC report shows that among babies born in 2013, the vast majority (81.1 percent) started breast-feeding, suggesting that most mothers in the U.S. want to breast-feed and try to do so. But by the time they were 6 months old, only around half (51.8 percent) of the babies were still breast-feeding. In a world first, scientists have used gene editing to successfully repair a disease-causing mutation in human embryos, which is an achievement that marks a major step forward for the prevention of inherited diseases. Share on Pinterest Scientists have used CRISPR-Cas9 to repair a mutation in human embryos. In a study recently published in the journal Nature, an international team of researchers reveal how they used CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing on newly fertilized eggs to repair a mutated MYBPC3 gene known to cause hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM). HCM is a condition characterized by the thickening of the heart muscle. According to the American Heart Association (AHA), HCM is estimated to affect up to half a million people in the United States, and it is a common cause of sudden cardiac death, particularly among young athletes. An inherited mutation of the MYBPC3 gene accounts for up to 30 percent of familial HCM cases; individuals with one copy of this gene mutation have a 50 percent chance of passing it to their offspring. In recent years, scientists have looked to gene editing as a way of eliminating disease-causing mutations. One type of gene editing technique that has gained momentum is CRISPR-Cas9, which involves adding, removing, or modifying sequences of DNA to influence the function of a gene. While CRISPR-Cas9 has demonstrated success in animal models, there have been ethical concerns about its use in humans. In particular, critics have cautioned that the technique may be exploited for non-therapeutic purposes, such as creating designer babies. What is more, there is a worry that in using CRISPR-Cas9 to repair one disease-causing mutation in human embryos, other potentially harmful mutations may be unintentionally introduced. However, scientists from China, South Korea, and the U.S. have become the first to successfully repair the MYBPC3 gene mutation in human embryos using CRISPR-Cas9, without any unintended consequences. A tiny molecule found in the immune systems of humans and animals could be used to develop a cure for the common cold, new research suggests. A team at Edinburgh Napier University have uncovered exciting new possibilities for treatments based on 'antimicrobial peptides' that occur naturally in humans and animals, and increase in response to infection. A five-year study into peptides from different mammals found they all had properties that can combat rhinovirus, the main virus responsible for the common cold infection in humans. Now it is hoped scientists will use this information to develop drugs that treat the common cold and help to protect sufferers of chronic lung conditions like asthma and Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) for whom viral infections can be extremely serious. Dr Peter Barlow, Associate Professor of Immunology & Infection at Edinburgh Napier, hailed the new research as "an exciting development". He said: "There is no cure and no vaccine so the development of effective therapies for human rhinovirus, the main causal agent of the common cold, and one of the most common causes of viral respiratory tract infections, is an urgent requirement. This study represents a major step towards finding a treatment." Earlier research by Dr Barlow underlined the potential of antimicrobial peptides in tackling the influenza A virus. This study suggested treatments that increased the level of antimicrobial peptides in someone infected with the flu virus may provide significant protection against the disease. The new 200,000 study, funded by the Chief Scientist Office and medical research charity Tenovus Scotland, expanded the work to explore the potential of antimicrobial peptides from pigs and sheep for fighting rhinovirus. Using peptides 'synthesised' in the laboratory, researchers Filipa Henderson Sousa and Dr Victor Casanova assessed the impact of the different peptides on lung cells infected with human rhinovirus. The peptides successfully attacked the virus, and could provide clues for developing novel treatments based on peptides found in nature. Dr Barlow said: "This is an exciting discovery and our next steps will be to modify the peptide to make it even better at killing this virus. This research is still in the early stages, but we will ultimately be looking to develop drug treatments that have the potential to cure the common cold." The full paper has been published in the journal Peptides. Article: Cathelicidins display conserved direct antiviral activity towards rhinovirus, Peter G. Barlow et al., Peptides, doi: 10.1016/j.peptides.2017.07.013, published online 29 July 2017. Victoria's OTTAWA Aug. 3, 2017 August 3, 2017 Victoria's Victoria Canada May 18, 2017 Canada Canada Victoria Applying for a supervised consumption site Supervised consumption sites: status of applications Supervised consumption site: poster Taking action on Canada's opioid crisis opioid crisis Federal Action on Opioids Joint Statement of Action to Address the Opioid Crisis /CNW/ - Our government fully supports harm reduction measures as part of a comprehensive approach in addressing the overdose crisis facing many Canadians and their communities across the country.On, Health Canada granted an exemption to the Vancouver Island Health Authority to operate a supervised consumption site inPandora Community Health and Wellness Centre. This fixed site is the first inand, once operational, will provide supervised injection services along with additional harm reduction and counselling services to its clients in Victoria.International and Canadian evidence has shown that, when properly established and maintained, supervised consumption sites save lives without increasing drug use or crime in the surrounding area. Supervised consumption sites reduce transmission of communicable diseases, decrease infections, reduce emergency room use and hospital admissions related to injection drug use, and decrease overdose deaths.The Government ofis taking action to address the public health crisis related to opioid overdoses and deaths across the country. Our approach is comprehensive, collaborative, compassionate, grounded in sound evidence, and firmly dedicated to saving lives and protecting the health and safety of Canadians.Bill C-37, which received Royal Assent on, streamlines the application process for supervised consumption sites, without compromising the health and safety of clients, staff, or the surrounding community. To date, Health Canada has approved a total of 16 supervised consumption sites inFor more information on what the Government ofis doing to address the opioid crisis, visit Canada.ca/opioids."I am pleased to see this approval of a supervised consumption site in. Harm reduction measures play an important part in a comprehensive response to the epidemic of overdose deaths. These sites provide additional support and tools to help communities address the potential harms of high-risk drug use and most importantly, they save lives."SOURCE Health Canada Latest Health News Updates Health News Posted on Saturday, November 12, 2022 Round the clock daily health news updates from leading and reliable sources along with RSS feeds. Advertisement Results from their air testing study are detailed in a paper appearing on July 26 in Environmental Science & Technology Letters. Findings show that the chemical plume, commonly thought of as harmless steam, was actually a complex mixture of organic vapor, water vapor, particulates of condensable vapor and partially cured resin, and liquid droplets of water and organic chemicals."CIPP is the most popular water-pipe rehabilitation technology in the United States," Whelton said. "Short- and long-term health impacts caused by chemical mixture exposures should be immediately investigated. Workers are a vulnerable population, and understanding exposures and health impacts to the general public is also needed."The researchers have briefed the National Institute for Occupational Health and Safety (NIOSH) about their findings. NIOSH is part of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and has occupational safety and health experts who can investigate workplace hazards.Purdue researchers captured the chemical plume materials from two sanitary sewer-pipe installations and five storm-water pipe installations. Samples were analyzed using gas chromatography, thermal and spectroscopic techniques. Chemicals found included hazardous air pollutants, suspected endocrine disrupting chemicals, and known and suspected carcinogens. Emissions were sometimes highly concentrated and affected by wind direction, speed and the worker's activities, Whelton said.A waxy substance was found in the air, and materials engineers determined it was partially cured plastic, styrene monomer, acetone, and unidentified chemicals.No respiratory protection was used by CIPP workers, and a review of online videos, images and construction contracts indicates respiratory safety equipment use was not typical, he said.To evaluate chemical plume toxicity, pulmonary toxicologist and assistant professor Jonathan Shannahan and a graduate student exposed captured materials to mouse lung cells. Plume samples from two of four sites tested displayed toxicity effects and two did not."This suggests that there are operational conditions that may decrease the potential for hazardous health effects," Shannahan stated. "Since exposures can be highly variable in chemical composition, concentration, and exposure duration our findings demonstrate the need for further investigation."At the same time, existing testing methods are not capable of documenting this multi-phase chemical exposure, Whelton said.In 2017, Whelton completed a one-and-a-half-day CIPP construction inspector course for consulting and municipal engineers and contractors as part of a different research project working with state transportation agencies."CIPP workers, the public, water utilities, and engineers think steam is emitted," he said. "What we found was not steam. Even when the chemical plume was not visible, our instruments detected that we were being chemically exposed."The paper was authored by graduate students Seyedeh Mahboobeh Teimouri Sendesi, Kyungyeon Ra, Mohammed Nuruddin, and Lisa M. Kobos; undergraduate student Emily N. Conkling; Brandon E. Boor, an assistant professor of civil engineering; John A. Howarter, an assistant professor of materials engineering and environmental and ecological engineering; Jeffrey P. Youngblood, a professor of materials engineering; Shannahan; Chad T. Jafvert, a professor of civil engineering and environmental and ecological engineering; and Whelton.The new research also contains results from the team's Freedom of Information Act requests to cities and utilites. This information is contained in the supporting-information section of the research paper. Forty-nine public reports of chemical air contamination associated with CIPP activites were found. Complaints filed by homeowners and businesses who, anecdotally, have described strong and lingering chemical odors and illness symptoms, also were described.Additional research is needed, particularly because the procedure has not been well studied for health and environmental risks, said Howarter."The CIPP process is actually a brilliant technology," Howarter said. "Health and safety concerns, though, need to be addressed. We are not aware of any study that has determined what exposure limit to the chemical mixture is safe. We are not aware of any study that indicates that skin exposure or inhaling the multi-phase mixture is safe. We also are not aware of any study that has examined the persistence of this multi-phase mixture in the environment."Whelton said, "In the documents we reviewed, contractors, utilities, and engineering companies have told people who complain about illness symptoms that their exposures are not a health risk. It's unclear what data are used for these declarations."Utilities and municipalities sometimes cite worker chemical exposure standards established by the NIOSH as acceptable for the general public."That comparison is wrong and invalid," Whelton said. "Worker safety exposure standards should not be cited as acceptable exposures for the general public. For example, children have less of an ability to handle a chemical exposure than healthy adults, and worker exposure standards do not account for the multi-phase exposure. CIPP workers can be exposed to more than one chemical at a time, in addition to droplets, vapor and particulates."Testing Results Show Need For Worksite ChangesBecause of the air testing results obtained at CIPP installations on the Purdue campus - two of the seven test sites studied - Purdue required the faculty and students to better protect themselves from inhaling the chemicals emitted. The researchers were required to wear full-facemask carbon filter respirators during their testing in California.Meanwhile, the uncured chemicals also might pose hazards: The nitrile gloves Whelton wore on one occasion deteriorated from contact with the uncured resin tube. The researchers observed that workers sometimes did not wear gloves while handling the materials. Some images and videos online also show workers not wearing gloves while handling the chemicals, he said."Workers should always wear appropriately thick chemically resistant gloves while handling uncured resin tubes," Whelton said. "No one should handle these materials with their bare hands."He said health officials must be alerted when people complain about odors near CIPP sites and illness so they can investigate."Health officials we have spoken with were unaware of illness and odor complaints from CIPP activities," Whelton said. "Local and state health departments should be involved in all public chemical exposure and illness complaints. They are trained on medical assessments."Often, the public instead speaks with CIPP contractors and engineers about their illness complaints, which Whelton said must change."Engineers should act immediately because it is their professional responsibility to hold paramount the safety, health, and welfare of the public according to their code of ethics," he said. "We have seen evidence that companies and utilities do not understand what materials are created and emitted by CIPP processes or the consequences of exposure. Our new study indicates workers, the public, and the environment needs to be better protected from harm."The researchers are working to develop safeguards, including a new type of handheld analytical device that would quickly indicate whether the air at a worksite is safe. A patent application has been filed through the Purdue Research Foundation's Office of Technology Commercialization.The research was primarily funded by a RAPID response grant from the National Science Foundation. Additional support was provided by public donations and from Purdue University.The study follows a discovery three years ago when researchers reported that chemicals released by CIPP activities into waterways have been linked to fish kills, contaminated drinking water supplies, and negative impacts to wastewater treatment plants. A previous research paper demonstrated that chemicals released into water by CIPP sites can be toxic, and the CIPP waste dissolved freshwater test organisms within 24 hours at room temperature.Source: Eurekalert Advertisement Her group - in collaboration with researchers from Weill Cornell Medicine and the Hospital for Special Surgery in New York, among others - detail their findings in "Atypical Fracture with Long-Term Bisphosphonate Therapy is Associated with Altered Cortical Composition and Reduced Fracture Resistance," published July 31, 2017, in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.Modern medicine and attention to healthier lifestyles has contributed to people living into their 80s, 90s and beyond. Some estimates say that by 2050, the number of U.S. residents age 65 and older will be near 84 million, nearly double the 2012 total.But that has also made more people - especially postmenopausal women - vulnerable to conditions such as osteoporosis, a loss of bone tissue due in part to hormonal changes."Because of the changing demographics of our country," Donnelly said, "the Surgeon General's office estimates that by the year 2020, half of our population over age 50 will either have or be at risk for fractures from osteoporosis."It's been known for some time that prolonged use of bisphosphonates can put people at risk for atypical femoral fracture (AFF), a break in the shaft of the femur that can occur as a result of little or no trauma. The Donnelly group set out to understand the link between the drugs and AFF.For this study, the team examined biopsies of cortical bone - the outer layer - from the shaft of the femur obtained from postmenopausal women during fracture repair surgery. Analysis of bone samples was conducted at the Cornell Center for Materials Research and with collaborating labs at University of California Berkeley and University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf.The participants were placed in five groups, based on fracture type and bisphosphonate use. Some of the women in the study had used bisphosphonates for more than eight years.The testing pointed to a couple of contributing factors: Bisphosphonate-treated women with AFF had bone that was harder and more mineralized than bisphosphonate-treated women with typical osteoporotic fractures. Donnelly said this is due to bisphosphonates' main function: slowing the resorption (shedding) of old bone, which is typically followed by remodeling, the growth of new bone. In healthy adults, cortical bone is constantly being resurfaced, such that the entire adult skeleton is overhauled every 10 years or so.But that resurfacing process begins with resorption, and if resorption is slowed by bisphosphonates, the remodeling process is also affected. The result: The existing bone ages and gets brittle over time."It's kind of a double-edged sword," Donnelly said. "It's extremely good to prevent bone loss, but the drugs will also slow this natural process, which allows turnover."The other unforeseen side effect to long-term bisphosphonate use involves crack-deflection - the resurfaced bone's ability to stop a microscopic crack from propagating, which can lead to a break. New layers of bone can act as a "firewall" of sorts, stopping a crack from spreading, but mineralized, older bone loses that function."Bone usually has natural variability in mineralization within the tissue, which may help to deflect cracks," Donnelly said. "As you increase the mineralization, you may tend to lose that natural variation."The Food and Drug Administration is now recommending patients use bisphosphonates for three to five years, followed by reassessment of their risk. Donnelly makes it clear that her study is not proposing doing away with bisphosphonate treatment. Studies have estimated the risk of AFF among bisphosphonate users at between one and 10 in 10,000, and have shown the benefit of bisphosphonates continues to far outweigh the risk of AFFs.One study, published in 2011 on pubmed.gov, estimated that for each reduction of 100 typical hip fractures associated with bisphosphonate use, there was an increase of one AFF."That's one of the cautions I'd like to impart," Donnelly said. "What we have observed is really the result of long-term treatment, well beyond what the FDA is recommending for these drugs now. Our work explains some of the underlying mechanisms of AFFs and can inform the refinement of dosing schedules for patients at risk of fragility fractures."Source: Eurekalert There is now a phone that does not need a battery to run and uses the air to power itself. So if you are scared of your smartphone exploding due to battery issues, this may be the explosion-free future you're looking for? Researchers from the University of Washington have developed the world's first battery-free phone. However, there is one catch, the sound quality on this phone is as shitty as it can get. On the plus side, you won't ever have to charge your phone as it uses light and radio waves from your surroundings to power itself. YouTube We've built what we believe is the first functioning cell phone that consumes almost zero power, co-author Shyam Gollakota, an associate professor in the Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering told the official university blog. The researchers have come up with a smart way to harness the power and in the same light, they have found a nifty way to get rid of the battery. According to the post on the blog this process consumes so much energy that it's been impossible to design a phone that can rely on ambient power sources. YouTube The researchers found a way to use tiny vibrations on the phone's microphone and speaker which in turn is used to encode incoming and outgoing signals. The drawback from this design is that one cannot send and receive signals at the same time. This means the call has to hold in a send or receive button (like a traditional handheld radio) while sending or receiving audio signals. Basically, it is like a walkie-talkie without any batteries. Currently, the cell phone harvests its energy from radio signals that are sent out by a base station and a tiny solar cell it has embedded within the body. The researchers further add that these base stations can be installed in WiFi routers and cell towers as well so that one can move with the device. You can check out the video below to get a better idea on how this phone works: Source: The Next Web Yesterday we talked about the final design of the Galaxy Note 8 and, thanks to those pictures, we can finally know how it will look like. However, the same people who leaked those images are not going to stop anytime soon as they got their hands on the specifications of the Galaxy Note 8 as well. Twitter Evan Blass, the guy who leaked a bunch of pictures yesterday, published yet another note with the specifications of the upcoming smartphone. Bless says that he was briefed on the device's final configuration. He continues to add that the device will have a 6.3-inch AMOLED display and will have a relation of 1440 X 2960. The Note 8 will also have an IP 68 rated body which implies the smartphone will dust and water resistant. It is pegged to be 8.5mm thick, which makes it a little more than the Galaxy S8. Twitter Blass has managed to get the specs details for the US variant which will have a Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 processor while the Indian version will get Samsung's Exynos 8895 processor. The reason why Samsung opts to include their own chipset for the Indian market is that it is far cheaper to manufacture the processor in India than Qualcomm's processor. Both processors for the two variants are the same chipsets that power the Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8+. However, it is expected to a bit better in terms of performance as it may have been better tuned for the device. Twitter The Galaxy Note 8 also has an upgrade in the RAM department as it will sport 6GB of RAM under the hood. It will be coupled with at least 64GB of internal storage as claimed by Blass. The Samsung Galaxy S8 is already a spectacular smartphone and one can notice that the Note 8 is almost identical to its smaller brother. Samsung will probably pay more emphasis on the dual-camera setup which will set it apart from the S8. It will have two lenses, i.e. the main camera and telephoto lens with 2x optical zoom. The Note 8's cameras will have f/1.7 aperture on the main lens and f/2.4 aperture on the telephoto camera. The wide lenses mean that the smartphone will be able to provide a shallower depth of field and can capture more light during low-light photography. Samsung will also be playing it safe in the battery capacity field thanks to the debacle from last year. The Note 8 is expected to have 3,300 mAH battery capacity which can be quickly charged with a USB-C cable. The smartphone is expected to be available in gold and black at launch and will also get a grey and blue variant sometime after the launch. Blass says that the Note 8 will cost somewhere around $900 (INR 57,000). CARO Troopers from the Michigan State Police Caro Post have arrested two suspects in connection with a larceny from a building at a residence in the 5000 block of White Creek Road in Koylton Township. On July 19, troopers arrested 20-year-old Courtney Robert Colling in the 2000 block of Black River Road in Deckerville. Colling was charged with larceny in a building. On Aug. 1, troopers then arrested 19-year-old Matthew David-Anthony Greer, at the same location. Greer was charged with larceny in a building and breaking and entering with intent. An investigation led to the recovery of stolen property including electronics, clothes and other items. Further charges are pending. It is believed that there are additional suspects involved in the breaking and entering. Anyone with information on the identification of these suspects is asked to contact the MSP Caro Post at 989-673-2156. The U.S. Defense Department on Thursday identified the service member who died this week in Kuwait in a non-combat incident. Tech. Sgt. David Board, 49, died Tuesday while deployed in support of Operation Inherent Resolve, the U.S. military's intervention against the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, or ISIS. Board, of Barboursville, West Virginia, was assigned to the 130th Airlift Wing at McLaughlin Air National Guard Base, West Virginia, the release said. His death marks the third Air Force non-combat casualty this year while supporting the fight against ISIS. In March, Staff Sgt. Alexandria Mae Morrow, 25, was injured while performing maintenance duties with the 332nd Air Expeditionary Wing in Jordan. Morrow, assigned to the 366th Aircraft Maintenance Squadron at Mountain Home Air Force Base, Idaho, was loading bombs onto an aircraft before one slipped and collided with her. That same month, Staff Sgt. Austin Bieren died of natural causes while supporting combat operations in northern Syria. The 25-year-old security forces airman was assigned to the 21st Space Wing at Peterson Air Force Base in Colorado. The news marks the fourth death of a U.S. service member in the Middle East in recent days supporting various missions. Two service members supporting Operation Resolute Support in Afghanistan died Wednesday after a suicide bomber rammed his explosive-laden car into a NATO convoy outside Kandahar. On Thursday, a NATO soldier was killed when a suicide bomber attacked his patrol, which was conducting a partnered mission with the Afghan National Army in Qarabagh District, Kabul Province. Six personnel and one interpreter were also wounded. -- Oriana Pawlyk can be reached at oriana.pawlyk@military.com. Follow her on Twitter at Oriana0214. Five C-5M Super Galaxies have returned to flying status at Dover Air Force Base, Delaware, while other C-5 bases have begun receiving serviceable parts to immediately overhaul their aircrafts nose gears, Air Mobility Command officials said Wednesday. "Serviceable replacement parts to fix the ball-screw drive assemblies" on the nose-gear of the largest cargo airlift plane in the Air Force's inventory have been sent to Dover, as well as Travis Air Force Base, California, Joint Base San Antonio-Lackland, Texas, and Westover Air Reserve Base, Massachusetts, as a preventative maintenance measure, AMC spokesman Col. Chris Karns told Military.com. Related content: Repairs to the C-5s at Dover have now allowed for five of the aircraft to return to flying operations, Karns said. The service stopped all C-5M operations from the Delaware base July 18 after two aircraft experienced nose-gear malfunctions overseas. Separate incidents involving C-5M aircraft from Dover occurred May 22 and again July 15 at Naval Station Rota, Spain, the command said at the time. Karns said last month the surprise stand-down affected a total of 18 C-5M aircraft from Dover, including 12 primary aircraft and six in backup status. "My top priority is safety and readiness of our fleet," said AMC commander Gen. Carlton D. Everhart II. "Our airmen are working deliberately and methodically at Dover and across the command to identify and resolve any issues impacting the C-5 fleet. We have put measures in place to ensure aircrew safety and reduce wear-and-tear on the aircraft," he said in a statement Wednesday. The commander also issued a policy "restricting the use of kneel operations on all C-5 aircraft to mission essential requirements only," the statement said. "The commander is relying on maintainers and engineers to return aircraft to flying operations as quickly as possible," it said. "The reference of the 'kneeling operations' is the lowering, or 'kneeling' of the aircraft to make it easier to load cargo, and that can place considerable stress on the aircraft's systems over a period of time," Karns added. The bases receiving the parts conduct a wide-range of C-5 airlift operations. Westover, specifically, is beginning its transition from the C-5A model to the Super Galaxy. The base announced on Tuesday that one of its last C-5A's tail number 0448, departed for the boneyard at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base, Arizona. Now only two A-models remain in the Air Force's aircraft inventory, the service said. Last week, Everhart told Military.com that C-5M operations remained in limbo at Dover as maintenance crews and engineers scramble to replace parts -- some of which are no longer manufactured. The mechanism in question "is a screw-type mechanism that allows [the nose of the aircraft] to basically spin down and spin back up," Everhart said. "What we found out, though, is there's nobody out there manufacturing these anymore." Crews began inspecting the parts to see how to best re-engineer or recreate them, or to scavenge spare parts from other C-5s, Everhart said. While the C-5M was first fielded in 2009, the aircraft employ parts from older C-5s dating to the 1980s, Karns said. There are 56 C-5s in the Air Force's inventory. Everhart on Wednesday reiterated, "With an aging fleet, it is important to take all potential measures to reduce stress on the aircraft." -- Oriana Pawlyk can be reached at oriana.pawlyk@military.com. Camp Lejeune Town Halls Aim to Help Those Exposed to Toxic Water. Heres How You Can Go. Retired Marine Master Sgt. Jerry Ensminger made it his mission to tell the world that if they lived or served on Camp Lejeune... Seven months after President Donald Trump's inauguration, he has installed a new civilian leader for the Navy and Marine Corps. Banker and Marine veteran Richard V. Spencer was sworn in as the 76th secretary of the Navy Thursday in a quiet early morning ceremony at the Pentagon, officials said, less than 48 hours after he was confirmed by the Senate in a late-night session Aug. 1. Spencer most recently served for a decade as the managing director of Fall Creek Management, a management consulting company in Wilson, Wyoming. Prior to that, according to a biography provided by officials, he worked on Wall Street for 16 years in roles centered on investment banking. He has held numerous board of directors posts at private organizations, including the Marine Corps Heritage Foundation, where he serves as vice chairman. He has also served the Pentagon as a member of the Defense Business Board and as a member of the Chief of Naval Operations Executive Panel. After graduating from Rollins College in 1976 with an economics degree, Spencer spent five years in the Marine Corps, working as a CH-46 Sea Knight pilot. According to service records obtained by Military.com, he was stationed at Marine Corps Air Station Santa Ana, California. While his awards include a Sea Service Deployment Ribbon with one star, his records are incomplete and do not indicate where he deployed. Spencer left the Marines in 1981 to work on Wall Street, but remained in the Reserves, where he was eventually promoted to captain. He received few challenges at his confirmation hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee in July, where he was introduced and warmly endorsed by former Navy secretary and U.S. senator John Warner. He indicated a desire to apply his business knowledge to help manage growing personnel costs that continue to challenge the Pentagon. Spencer was the second nominee for the post put forward by the Trump administration. The first choice, financier and Army veteran Philip Bilden, withdrew from consideration early this year, citing difficulties divesting his financial interests in order to take the position. After previous Navy secretary Ray Mabus left the position in January when Trump took office, Sean Stackley, the Navy's assistant secretary for research, development and acquisition, had served in the role. A spokesman for the office, Capt. Pat McNally, said Stackley resumed his previous title after Spencer was sworn in but has not announced any future plans. -- Hope Hodge Seck can be reached at hope.seck@military.com. Follow her on Twitter at @HopeSeck. A NATO soldier was killed and five other troops plus an Afghan interpreter were wounded Thursday in a suicide attack on a patrol north of Kabul, the NATO Resolute Support mission said in a statement. The attack in the Qarabagh district, near the huge U.S. Bagram air base, came a day after two U.S. troops were killed in a suicide car bomb attack on a NATO convoy on the outskirts of Kandahar in southwestern Afghanistan. Four U.S. troops were wounded in the Kandahar incident, according to the Pentagon. The attack Thursday evening was carried out by an individual wearing what NATO described as a "personnel-borne IED," or improvised explosive device, and occurred during a joint patrol by the coalition troops with the Afghan National Army, NATO said. The wounded personnel are being treated at the military hospital at Bagram Airfield and are listed in stable condition, NATO said. The identity and nationality of the victim killed in the attack Thursday were not immediately disclosed. Thirty-nine nations contribute to the NATO Resolute Support mission. The NATO mission is separate from U.S.-Forces Afghanistan, but both are commanded by U.S. Army Gen. John Nicholson. In addition, the U.S. Defense Department on Thursday identified a service member who died this week in Kuwait in a non-combat incident. Tech. Sgt. David Board, 49, died Tuesday while deployed in support of Operation Inherent Resolve, the U.S. military's intervention against the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, or ISIS. -- Oriana Pawlyk contributed to this article. -- Richard Sisk can be reached at Richard.Sisk@Military.com. President Donald Trump reportedly suggested firing Army Gen. John Nicholson as the U.S. commander in Afghanistan during a confrontational meeting at the Pentagon last month with Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and others. Mattis and Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Joseph Dunford defended Nicholson at the July 19 meeting, which featured a "shouting match" between White House Chief Strategist Steve Bannon and Army Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster, the White House national security adviser, on the overall strategy for Afghanistan. The testy meeting, first reported by NBC News and later corroborated by other news outlets, was dominated by Trump's venting of his frustration at the lack of progress in Afghanistan after 16 years of war with no end in sight. "We are not winning, we are losing," Trump said, according to NBC News. Related content: The meeting was called to consider a new strategy for Afghanistan and the region that Mattis has been preparing and had tentatively promised to deliver by mid-July. Since mid-February, Nicholson, commander of U.S. Forces-Afghanistan and the NATO Resolute Support mission, has been lobbying for an additional 3,000 to 5,000 American troops to bolster the train, advise and assist operations of the 8,400 U.S. service members already on the ground. In response to the NBC story, Michael Anton, a spokesman for the National Security Council, issued the following statement: "The president's national security team is developing a comprehensive, integrated strategy for South Asia that utilizes all aspects of our national power to address this complex region. "That strategy has been worked carefully in the interagency process and, while no decision has been made, the president's team continues to develop options for him that address threats and opportunities to America arising from this vital region." According to the White House schedule, Trump was meeting Thursday morning at the White House with McMaster, who reportedly joined Mattis and Dunford in defending Nicholson's performance in Afghanistan. At the July 19 meeting, Trump walked out "without making a decision on a strategy" for Afghanistan. "His advisers were stunned," the NBC report said, citing senior administration officials. "Two Pentagon officials close to Mattis said he returned from the White House that morning visibly upset. Mattis often takes a walk when grappling with an issue. That afternoon, the walk took longer than usual," the officials said. Amid the debate on Nicholson's status, the general received accolades Thursday from Sen. John McCain, R-Arizona, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, who put the blame for failures in Afghanistan on the White House. "Our commanders-in-chief, not our commanders in the field, are responsible for this failure," McCain said in a statement from Arizona, where he is being treated for brain cancer. McCain said Nicholson "has served our country with honor and distinction for 35 years. He has earned the trust and admiration of those he has served with, and he has earned my full confidence." "I urge the president to resolve the differences within his administration as soon as possible and decide on a policy and strategy that can achieve our national security interests in Afghanistan and the region," McCain said. -- Richard Sisk can be reached at Richard.Sisk@Military.com. Amid increasing tensions over North Korea's nuclear capability, senior U.S. officials are sending a double-edged message: America does not seek conflict, but its military is preparing for war on the peninsula. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson offered reassurance to North Korea that "we are not your enemy," though he wants help from China to push for conditions that could lead to talks with the North, The Associated Press reported. He said Tuesday that the United States does "not seek a regime change. We do not seek a collapse of the regime. We do not seek an accelerated reunification of the peninsula," the AP reported. But Tillerson said the U.S. does not think productive talks would result if North Korea came with the intention of maintaining its nuclear weapons. Tillerson's comments came a week after North Korea's July 28 launch of a missile that demonstrates the regime's progress in producing a missile that is capable of hitting the United States, experts maintain. Despite Tillerson's attempts at diplomacy, it's clear that U.S. military officials are planning for the worst. "The one thing I am worried about -- frankly, candidly -- is this situation with North Korea is very serious," U.S. Army Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Milley said at a July 27 National Press Club event. Milley would not get into specifics because "obviously, we have plans," but a war in Korea would be "highly deadly; it would be horrific." "War on the Korean Peninsula would be terrible; however, a nuclear weapon detonating in Los Angeles would be terrible. The comment that has been out there 'there are no good options' is a very apt comment," Milley said. North Korea has a wide array of conventional artillery and rockets, Milley said. It also has "a sizable conventional force. They have got a sizable chemical capability not even including the nuclear weapon piece." "Do I think that North Korea's military would be destroyed? I do," he said. "I believe that the United States military, in combination with the South Korean military, would utterly destroy the North Korean military, but that would be done at high cost in terms of human life -- in terms of infrastructure. There are economic consequences to a war on the Korean Peninsula. There is a whole wide variety of consequences. "That doesn't relieve us of the responsibility of choice," Milley continued. "And we are going to have to make conscious decisions that are going to have significant consequences. It's not going to be a pretty picture, I can tell you that. It would be very violent." Gen. Joseph Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, immediately phoned his South Korean counterpart following North Korea's second test launch July 28 of a missile with ICBM range to reach the U.S. Dunford underlined the U.S. military's "ironclad commitment" to the U.S.-South Korean alliance against the North and "also discussed military response options" to the growing North Korean intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) threat, according to military officials. The missile was launched from Mup'yong-ni, north of the capital Pyongyang, near the Chinese border, and reached an altitude of about 3,700 kilometers (about 2,300 miles), according to the South Korean Joint Chiefs of Staff. The missile flew for about 45 minutes and traveled about 1,000 kilometers (about 621 miles) before landing in Japanese waters, the South Korean Joint Chiefs of Staff said. "It is estimated that it was a more advanced type of an ICBM compared to the previous one, based on the range," the South Korean statement said. On July 4, North Korea launched a missile that U.S. officials for the first time classified as an ICBM with the range to hit Alaska. The North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) determined that the latest missile launch did not pose a threat to North America, but the test appeared to show North Korea is making significant progress in developing an accurate missile with the range to hit the U.S. mainland. The U.S. has yet to determine whether North Korea has developed the technology to fit a nuclear warhead atop an ICBM that could survive re-entry into the atmosphere, but the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency reportedly has significantly shortened the timeframe for when North Korea could have such a weapon. Previous estimates said North Korea was at least three years away from having the capability, but The Washington Post reported that the DIA recently concluded North Korean leader Kim Jong-un will be able to produce a "reliable, nuclear-capable ICBM" sometime in 2018. -- Matthew Cox can be reached at matthew.cox@military.com. If you think about it, there is not a better time to build a new morning fitness habit than right now with the end of... While sitting in a command meeting at Marine Corps Base Quantico, I heard a colonel admonish his staff to keep "Left of Boom." As a counselor, it was an "aha moment" for me. Left of Boom is great advice that admonishes us to avoid a harmful or hazardous situation. Stay Left of Boom. You see the boom, you know it is there just waiting to explode, but you avoid it. The Boom won't happen if you play it safe and smart and stay away from it. The Boom is activated by our actions. Otherwise, it's like a dormant volcano: harmless. How many of the troubles of service members, spouses, MilSos and children who I see every week could be avoided if they just learned to stay Left of Boom? Anger can be a problem. It's a normal emotion, but when your anger becomes out of control, you lose: Left of Boom! Alcohol can lead to legal problems, it can cause health problems, and you could lose your career, your life or cause others to lose their lives: Left of Boom! Infidelity happens every day of the week, but it still wreaks havoc in many ways. It ruins marriages and relationships, ruins careers and causes serious emotional pain: Left of Boom! Domestic violence is any physical or emotional abuse that occurs between couples who are in a relationship or who live in the same household. Domestic violence also includes financial abuse etc. It is about power and control. One person has all of the power and control, and the other person is under subjection. Domestic violence hurts everyone in the family: Left of Boom! Suicide among service members has unit leaders, battle buddies, and researchers grappling to understand reasons that they take their own lives. It could be one of many reasons, such as multiple deployment stress, untreated mental health diagnoses, traumatic brain injury, marital and relationship problems, etc. There is still a lot to accomplish in this area, but when we notice any strange behaviors in a person, we must do what we can. Left of Boom! So how do we stay Left of Boom when so many military families lead stressful lives? Stress is normal. We have good stress and harmful stress too. For example, good stress can compel you to work hard for your next promotion. At the same time, harmful stress can keep you awake at night, interfering with a good night's sleep. In addition, depression in many situations can be normal. It's normal to have some sadness when you PCS because moving can present challenges. You are leaving behind friends, family, co-workers and even a neighborhood that you loved. However, depression and sadness are not good when they last longer than two weeks. So be proactive. Stay Left of Boom by attending educational classes to help you manage many stressful situations. I often say that we take better care of our cars than we take care of ourselves and each other. We get our cars maintenanced every 3,000 miles and sometimes sooner. We repair our squealing brakes, get tune-ups and keep our cars detailed. Left of Boom requires us to do the same for ourselves. We take care of ourselves and each other. We depend on our unit leadership for support, and support from family, friends and clergy, as well as other spiritual support. Left of Boom requires us to stay ahead of it, behind it and to the side of it. In other words, don't activate the BOOM, but if it happens, it won't lead to your demise or send you spiraling downward because you have armored against it. Left of Boom resources: In addition to your unit commander, Family Readiness Officers (FRO) or chaplain, you can also consult: Military OneSource: 800-342-9647. Telephone support 24/7 Defense Centers of Excellence (DCoE) Outreach Center 24/7; 866-966-1020, where you can also chat live with a specialist. Keep Up with the Ins and Outs of Military Life For the latest military news and tips on military family benefits and more, subscribe to Military.com and have the information you need delivered directly to your inbox. Altona Mining Ltd.: Neuauflage der definitiven Machbarkeitsstudie liefert fur Kupfer-Goldprojekt Cloncurry deutlich bessere Kennzahlen Neuauflage der definitiven Machbarkeitsstudie liefert fur Kupfer-Goldprojekt Cloncurry deutlich bessere Kennzahlen Ein Highlight unter den wenigen Projektchancen zur Erschlieung von Kupfervorkommen Genehmigter Tagebau-Grobetrieb in einem Rechtssystem mit qualifizierten Arbeitskraften und niedrigem Risikoprofil Erzreserven im Umfang von 426.000 Tonnen Kupfer und 203.900 Unzen Gold Hohe Anfangsproduktion von 39.000 Tonnen Kupfer und 17.200 Unzen Gold in Form von Konzentrat jahrlich Cashflow (vor Steuern und Instandhaltungskosten): 1,48 Milliarden AUD uber eine erste Betriebsdauer von 14 Jahren Erschlieung eines groen Tagebaubetriebs bei Little Eva und 5 kleineren Satellitenbetrieben Errichtung einer herkommlichen Flotationsanlage mit einer Verarbeitungskapazitat von 7 Millionen Tonnen jahrlich; Investitionskosten: 288 Millionen ASD 150.000 Tonnen reines, marktfahiges Kupfer-Goldkonzentrat pro Jahr Durchschnittlicher betrieblicher Cashflow (vor Steuern und Instandhaltungskosten): 141 Millionen ASD jahrlich in den ersten 5 Jahren Vollbetrieb Kapitalwert vor Steuern (NPV, 7,5 %): 462 Millionen ASD bei 2,95 USD pro Pfund Kupfer und 1.250 USD pro Unze Gold; AUD:USD-Verhaltnis: 0,75 Durchschnittliche Cashkosten uber Betriebsdauer der Mine: 1,65 USD pro Pfund Kupfer als Konzentrat; Gesamt-Cashkosten: 1,92 USD pro Pfund Kupfer als Konzentrat Moglichkeiten fur Renditensteigerung wahrend der Projektoptimierung ermittelt Moglichkeit der Produktionserweiterung durch Einbindung von Lagerstatten, in denen ausschlielich Kupfer gefordert wird Altona Mining Limited (Altona oder das Unternehmen) (http://www.commodity-tv.net/c/search_adv/?v=297328 ) 2 August 2017 informiert heute uber eine Neuauflage der definitiven Machbarkeitsstudie (DFS) fur das Kupferprojekt Cloncurry (Projekt), das sich 90 Kilometer nordostlich von Mount Isa im australischen Bundesstaat Queensland befindet. Dr Alistair Cowden, Geschaftsfuhrer von Altona, meint dazu: Wir freuen uns sehr uber die Neuauflage der Studie, die einen jahrlichen Betriebsuberschuss vor Steuern und Instandhaltungskosten von rund 141 Millionen ASD ausweist. Dies veranschaulicht die Wertschopfung, die wir nach der Projekterschlieung generieren konnen. Die Studie wurde durchgefuhrt, um den aktuellen Status des Projekts zu ermitteln. In ihr sind alle technischen Arbeiten fruherer Studien zusammengefasst und eingebunden. Auch eine Reihe bedeutender Entwicklungen seit der ersten DFS im Mai 2012 und die Neuauflage der DFS im Marz 2014, die sich auf Kosten, Einnahmen und Planung auswirken, wurden berucksichtigt. Es sind dies: Neue Ressourcenschatzungen und geologische/geotechnische Modelle der Lagerstatten Little Eva und Bedford; es sei hier angemerkt, dass diese neuen Schatzungen nicht zur Generierung neuer Erzreservenschatzungen verwendet wurden. Mineralressourcen- und Erzreservenschatzungen fur die Lagerstatte Turkey Creek Metallurgische Untersuchungen des Erzes der Lagerstatte Turkey Creek Einbindung der Lagerstatte Turkey Creek in die Minenplanung Neuplanung und Verlegung der Infrastruktur und Abraumhalden, um Platz fur den Tagebaubetrieb Turkey Creek zu schaffen Senkung der Kosten fur Bau und Verfahrenstechnik Neue Kostenschatzungen Mitteilung an die Umweltbehorde zur Berucksichtigung der Einbindung von Turkey Creek Anderung bei den makro-okonomischen Annahmen In der Studie wurde auerdem auf eine Reihe von Optimierungspotenzialen hingewiesen, die im Rahmen der Projektoptimierung berucksichtigt werden sollen: Reservenerweiterung durch Umwandlung der abgeleiteten Ressourcen unterhalb des Tagebaubetriebs Little Eva zu angezeigten Ressourcen RC-Bohrungen zur besseren Bewertung von Vererzungsgraden, Verwasserung und Erzverlusten Neues Ressourcenmodell fur Little Eva Entwicklung eines geotechnischen Modells, das Verbesserungsmoglichkeiten im Minendesign ausweist Optimierung und Entwurf des Tagebaubetriebs Little Eva unter Einplanung niedrigerer Forderkosten und eines neuen Ressourcenmodells Hohes Ressourcenpotenzial in den Satellitenbetrieben Berucksichtigung eines hoheren Anlagendurchsatzes, wenn die Steigerung der Reserven eine Erweiterung sinnvoll macht Groerer Wasserbedarf aufgrund von hoheren Durchsatzmengen In der Studie wird auerdem empfohlen, die Moglichkeit einer Produktionserweiterung durch Einbindung von Lagerstatten, in denen ausschlielich Kupfer gefordert wird, in Betracht zu ziehen; diese Moglichkeit wurde in der DFS nicht berucksichtigt. Im Vergleich zur DFS 2014 hat die vorliegende Studie deutliche Verbesserungen ergeben: Reservensteigerung um 14 % von 375 Tausend Tonnen Kupfer auf 426 Tausend Tonnen Kupfer Verlangerung der Betriebsdauer der Mine um 27 % von 11 Jahren auf 14 Jahre Steigerung der Einnahmen uber die Betriebsdauer der Mine um 24 % von 2,9 Milliarden ASD auf 3,6 Milliarden ASD Erhohung des Kapitalwerts vor Steuern (NPV) um 34 % von 346 Mio. ASD auf 462 Mio. ASD Erhohung des internen Zinsfues vor Steuern (IRR) um 24 % von 29 % auf 36 % Das Projekt umfasst einen groen Tagebaubetrieb bei Little Eva und funf Satellitenbetriebe (Turkey Creek, Bedford North und South, Lady Clayre und Ivy Ann). 7 Millionen Tonnen Erz sollen jahrlich in der Verarbeitungsanlage neben Little Eva und Turkey Creek verarbeitet werden. Fur den Bergbaubetrieb Little Eva ergibt sich ein geringes Abraumverhaltnis (Strip Ratio) von 1,8:1 (ohne Pre-Stripping). Die Lebensdauer des Projekts betragt vorerst 14 Jahre. Die Verarbeitungsanlage bei Little Eva besteht aus einem technisch einfachen Brecher-, Mahl- und Flotationskreislauf; die Investitionskosten vor Produktion einschlielich Pre-Stripping, Verarbeitungsanlage und zugehorige Infrastruktur belaufen sich damit auf 288 Mio. ASD. Der Betrieb wird in den ersten 5 Jahren Vollbetrieb jahrlich 150.000 Tonnen marktfahiges, reines Kupfer-Goldkonzentrat mit einem Durchschnittsgehalt von 39.000 Tonnen Kupfer und 17.200 Unzen Gold pro Jahr produzieren. Bei einer Grobmahlung auf 212 Micron ist eine hohe Metallausbeute von 96 % bei Kupfer und 85 % bei Gold realistisch. Der Erzgehalt des Beschickungsmaterials liegt durchschnittlich bei 0,6 % Kupfer und 0,1 g/t Gold (ohne geringgradiges Lagergut). Das Genehmigungsverfahren fur das Projekt ist weitgehend abgeschlossen, eine Freigabe der Umweltbehorde liegt vor und die Bergbaulizenzen wurden gewahrt. Das Executive Summary der DFS finden Sie im Anhang dieser Meldung. Eine neue Tabelle 1 des JORC 2012 Code wurde gesondert veroffentlicht (ASX-Meldung vom 2. August 2017, Kupferprojekt Cloncurry: Veroffentlichung JORC 2012). In dieser Meldung werden zahlreiche vorhergehende Veroffentlichungen zusammengefasst und einige der fruheren Konformitatskriterien von JORC 2004 bis JORC 2012 aktualisiert. Bei Fragen wenden Sie sich bitte an: Alistair Cowden Geschaftsfuhrer Altona Mining Limited Tel: +61 8 9485 2929 altona@altonamining.com David Ikin PR- Perth Agentur Tel: +61 8 9388 0944 David.Ikin@ppr.com.au Jochen Staiger Swiss Resource Capital AG Tel: +41 71 354 8501 js@resource-capital.ch Uber Altona und das Kupferprojekt Cloncurry Altona Mining Limited (Altona) ist ein an der australischen Borse ASX notiertes Unternehmen, das sich im Rahmen seiner Tatigkeit auf das Kupferprojekt Cloncurry (Projekt) im australischen Bundesstaat Queensland konzentriert. Das Projekt beherbergt Mineralressourcen, in denen rund 1,67 Millionen Tonnen Kupfer und 0,43 Millionen Unzen Gold enthalten sind. Vorgesehen ist zunachst die Anlage eines Kupfer-Gold-Tagebaubetriebs mit einer Forderleistung von 7 Millionen Tonnen pro Jahr und die Errichtung eines Konzentrators auf dem Projektgelande. Die Erschlieung wurde mit einer geplanten Jahresproduktion(1) von 39.000 Tonnen Kupfer und 17.200 Unzen Gold fur mindestens 14 Jahre genehmigt. Die definitive Machbarkeitsstudie wurde im Juli 2017 aktualisiert. 1Bezugnahme auf die dieser ASX-Pressemitteilung beigefugte Information mit dem Titel Updated DFS Delivers Bigger and Better Cloncurry Copper Gold Project vom 2. August 2017; darin enthalten sind Informationen in Bezug auf dieses Produktionsziel sowie aus diesem Produktionsziel abgeleitete Finanzprognosen. Die Pressemitteilung kann unter www.altonamining.com oder www.asx.com.au eingesehen werden. Das Unternehmen bestatigt, dass die wesentlichen Annahmen in Bezug auf das Produktionsziel und die prognostizierten Finanzdaten, die sich aus dem in dieser Pressemeldung angefuhrten Produktionsziel ableiten, nach wie vor gultig sind und sich nicht wesentlich geandert haben. Die Ausgangssprache (in der Regel Englisch), in der der Originaltext veroffentlicht wird, ist die offizielle, autorisierte und rechtsgultige Version. Diese Ubersetzung wird zur besseren Verstandigung mitgeliefert. Die deutschsprachige Fassung kann gekurzt oder zusammengefasst sein. Es wird keine Verantwortung oder Haftung: fur den Inhalt, fur die Richtigkeit, der Angemessenheit oder der Genauigkeit dieser Ubersetzung ubernommen. Aus Sicht des Ubersetzers stellt die Meldung keine Kauf- oder Verkaufsempfehlung dar! Bitte beachten Sie die englische Originalmeldung auf www.sedar.com , www.sec.gov , www.asx.com.au/ oder auf der Firmenwebsite! Competent Person Statement and JORC Compliance Responsibility for Exploration Targets, Exploration Results, Mineral Resources: The information in this report that relates to Exploration Targets, Exploration Results or Mineral Resources is based on information generated or compiled by Dr Alistair Cowden, BSc (Hons), PhD, MAusIMM, MAIG, Mr Roland Bartsch, BSc(Hons), MSc, MAusIMM, Mr George Ross, BSc, MSc, MAIG and Mr Frank Browning BSc (Hons) MSc, MAIG. Dr Cowden, Mr Bartsch, Mr Ross and Mr Browning are full time employees of the Company and have sufficient experience which is relevant to the style of mineralisation and type of deposit under consideration and to the activity being undertaking to qualify as a Competent Person as defined in the 2012 Edition of the Australasian Code for Reporting of Exploration Results, Mineral Resources and Ore Reserves. Dr Cowden, Mr Bartsch, Mr Ross and Mr Browning consent to the inclusion in the report of the matters based on their information in the form and context in which it appears. Responsibility for Ore Reserves: The information in this report that relates to Ore Reserves is based on information generated or compiled by Dr Alistair Cowden, BSc (Hons), PhD, MAusIMM, MAIG and Mr Roland Bartsch, BSc(Hons), MSc, MAusIMM. Dr Cowden and Mr Bartsch are full time employees of the Company and have sufficient experience which is relevant to the style of mineralisation and type of deposit under consideration and to the activity being undertaking to qualify as a Competent Person as defined in the 2012 Edition of the Australasian Code for Reporting of Exploration Results, Mineral Resources and Ore Reserves. Dr Cowden and Mr Bartsch consent to the inclusion in the report of the matters based on their information in the form and context in which it appears. Copper equivalence: When used, copper equivalence (Cueq) refers to copper and gold in concentrate, not resources or reserves, or drill results. Revenue from gold is simply equated to copper revenue using the assumptions reported in the ASX release dated 2 August 2017. Summary of Mineral Resource Estimates for the Cloncurry Copper Project DeposiTotal ContaineMeasured Indicated Inferred t d Metal TonnCu Au CoppGolTonCu Au TonnCu Au TonnCu Au es (%)(g/er d nes(%)(g/e (%)(g/es (%)(g/ t t t t (mil ) (ton(ou(mi ) (mil ) (mil ) lion nes ncelli lion lion s) ) s on ) ) ) ) Deposit in Mine Plan Little105.0.50.0546,29537.0.60.045.00.40.023.90.50.1 Eva 9 2 9 000 ,001 0 9 6 8 0 0 0 Turkey21.00.5 123,- 17.70.5 3.4 0.5- Creek 9 000 9 8 Ivy 7.5 0.50.043,017,- 5.4 0.60.02.1 0.40.0 Ann 7 7 00 000 0 8 9 6 Lady C14.00.50.278,085,- 3.6 0.60.210.40.50.1 layre 6 0 00 000 0 4 4 8 Bedfor4.8 0.80.238,032,- 2.3 0.90.22.5 0.60.1 d 0 1 00 000 5 3 6 9 Su153.0.50.0829,43037.0.60.074.00.50.042.20.50.1 b-tota3 4 9 000 ,001 0 9 2 7 3 1 l 0 Other Deposits Blacka76.40.6 475,- 27.0.6- 6.6 0.6- 42.70.5- rd 2 000 0 8 0 9 Scanla22.20.6 143,- 18.40.6- 3.8 0.6- n 5 000 5 0 Longam10.40.6 69,0- 10.40.6- undi 6 00 6 Legend17.40.5 94,0- 17.40.5- 4 00 4 Great 6.0 0.6 37,0- 6.0 0.6- South 1 00 1 ern Caroli3.6 0.5 19,0- 3.6 0.5- ne 3 00 3 Charli0.7 0.4 3,00- 0.7 0.4- e 0 0 0 Brown Su136.0.6 840,- 27.0.6- 25.00.6 84.70.5- b-tota7 1 000 0 8 4 9 l Total 290.0.50.01,6643064.0.60.099.00.50.0126.0.50.0 0 8 5 8,00,001 3 5 5 5 9 7 4 0 0 See tabulation in ASX release dated 2 August 2017: Appendix 4 for source information and Appendix 5 for details of supporting data and estimation methodology (Table 1 of the JORC Code 2012). Little Eva is reported above a 0.2% copper lower cut-off grade, all other deposits are above 0.3% lower copper cut-off. Resources have been reported as inclusive of Reserves. Summary of Ore Reserves Estimates for the Cloncurry Project Reserve Classification Tonnes CoppeGoldCopperGold r (g/t(tonne(ounce ) s) s) (%) Little Eva Proved 31,000,0.64 0.08198,2084,700 000 0 Probable 22,100,0.50 0.09109,9062,600 000 0 Turkey Creek Probable 11,300,0.46 0 52,1000 000 Ivy Ann Probable 3,500,00.59 0.0821,0009,100 00 Lady Clayre Probable 920,0000.56 0.275,100 8,100 Bedford Probable 1,350,00.85 0.2011,6008,500 00 Total Proved and Probable 70,200,0.57 0.08397,40173,00 Reserves (excl. 000 0 0 stockpiles) Little Eva Low Grade Stockpile Probable 15,400,0.18 0.0628,10030,900 000 Total (including 85,600,0.50 0.07426,00203,90 stockpile) 000 0 0 See tabulation in ASX release dated 2 August 2017 : Appendix 4 for source information and Appendix 5 for details of supporting data and estimation methodology (Table 1 of the JORC Code 2012). Little Eva and Turkey Creek are reported above a 0.16% copper lower cut-off grade, for Bedford 0.17% copper, for Lady Clayre 0.20% copper and for Ivy Ann 0.22% copper. All data has been rounded to two significant figures. Discrepancies in summations may occur due to rounding. Minor rounding discrepancies or inconsistencies in summaries since initial publication in 2012 have been updated. APPENDIX 1 CLONCURRY COPPER PROJECT DEFINITIVE FEASIBILITY STUDY STATUS REPORT JULY 2017 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY EXECUTIVE SUMMARY 1.1. Key Facts Mineral Resources and Ore TonnesCopper Gold Reserves* (milli(%) (g/t) on) Global Measured, Indicated and 290.0 0.58 0.05 Inferred (MII) Resources Contained metal in Global Resourc 1,668,00430,000( es 0(t) oz ) Project Resources (MII) Included 153.3 0.54 0.09 in Study Contained metal in Study Resource 829,000(430,000( s t) oz ) Total Reserves 86.8 0.50 0.07 Contained metal in Reserves 426,000(203,900( t) oz ) Inferred Resources in mine plan 5.50 0.49 0.08 Total production target** 92.3 0.49 0.07 Production Summary Project life 14 years Little Eva pit strip ratio (after 1.8:1 pre-strip) Little Eva pit strip ratio including 2.0:1 pre-strip Annual processing rate (tonnes) 7,000,000 Copper recovery 96% Gold recovery 85% Milled tonnes (million tonnes) 91.5 Recovered copper, life of mine (tonnes) 432,513 Recovered gold, life of mine (ounces) 184,184 Copper in concentrate for first 5 years 39,000 (tonnes per annum) Gold in concentrate for first 5 years 17,200 (ounces per annum) Costs Capital cost (A$ million) 288 Operating costs per tonne A$23.07/t Operating (C1) cash cost per pound US$1.65/lb copper after credits Life of mine sustaining capital US$0.11/lb Royalties US$0.16/lb Total Costs US$1.92/lb Project Economics A$ (million) Life of mine Revenues after smelter 3,629 charges (NSR) Pre-tax and pre sustaining capital LOM o1,483 perating cash flow Average pre-tax and sustaining capital o141 perating cash flow (Yr 1 to 5) Pre-tax NPV (unleveraged at 7.5% real 462 discount rate) Pre-tax IRR- 36% A$:US$ 0.75 Copper price (US$/lb) 2.95 Gold price (US$/ounce) 1,250 TC/RC (US$/tonne/US$lb) 80 / 0.08 * Resources are inclusive of Reserves. ** The production target is based largely on Ore Reserves (94% of production) with Inferred Resources in mine plan comprising 6% of production. 1.2. Introduction The Cloncurry Copper Project (Project) is a large, low-risk proposed copper-gold open pit mining operation and processing plant similar to other current and former operations in the Mt Isa Cloncurry area in Queensland. The Project comprises the large Little Eva open pit and five smaller satellite pits which will deliver sulphide ore to a 7 million tonnes per annum processing plant adjacent to the Little Eva and Turkey Creek pits. Little Eva is a typical Iron Oxide Copper Gold (IOCG) deposit similar to Ernest Henry and Osborne. The Little Eva deposit was the subject of a major drill programme in 2010 to 2012 and consequently contained Mineral Resources more than doubled. The enlarged Little Eva deposit was the focus of a Definitive Feasibility Study (DFS) of a simple operation treating copper-gold sulphide ore that was completed in May 2012. The November 2011 costings from that study were updated by GR Engineering Services Limited (GRES) for a 2014 update of that study. The large Turkey Creek deposit was delineated subsequent to that update. This report has been completed to provide an up to date status of the Project. It consolidates and integrates all technical work of prior studies together with a number of significant developments that impact on costs and revenues since the March 2014 DFS. 03082017_EN_AOH0822-Update of Feasibility Study_PRCOM.001 Location of the Cloncurry Copper Project tenure, the Little Eva plant and regional infrastructure The Little Eva deposit has been included in feasibility studies in the past (2005 and 2008) where it was envisaged to be mined in conjunction with two copper-only deposits; Blackard and Scanlan. The earlier studies indicated that the processing characteristics and metal recoveries of sulphide ore from Little Eva and satellite deposits were far superior to the copper-only deposits which, as a result, have been excluded from Altonas recent studies. The copper-only deposits will be re-evaluated once the Project is established. It is estimated that over 27 years, a total of A$60 million has been expended on exploration, resource development, metallurgical and engineering studies, compensation payments and government fees and charges by Altonas predecessor, Universal Resources Limited (Universal), Universals partners and by parties who held the Project prior to Universal. Altona has expended some A$25 million from February 2010 to 31 December 2016. 1.3. Definitive Feasibility Study The initial study was completed in May 2012 and was managed by GRES. The principal consultants and inputs are attributed as follows: Mineral Resources: -Altona Mining Limited Geotechnical: -George, Orr and Associates Tailings storage facility (TSF):-Knight Piesold Mine costing:-IQE Mine design and Ore Reserves:-Optiro Hydrology: -KH Morgan & Associates / Rockwater Process design:-GRES / Ozmet Metallurgical testwork:-GRES / ALS Ammtec Laboratories Plant and infrastructure:-GRES Logistics:-Gilbride Management Environment:-MBS Environmental For the March 2014 update; construction, plant and processing costs were reviewed and updated by GRES and mining costs were updated by IQE. Macro-economic assumptions were updated by Altona. Significant changes made since the 2014 study include: New Resource Estimate and geotechnical model for the Little Eva deposit (Altona) New Resource Estimate and geological model for the Bedford deposit (Altona) Initial Mineral Resource and Ore Reserve Estimates generated for the Turkey Creek deposit (Optiro and Altona) Inclusion of the Turkey Creek deposit in the mine plan (Orelogy) Redesign of waste dumps for the Environmental Authority (EA) (Orelogy) Redesign and relocation of infrastructure impacted by Turkey Creek pit development (Knight Piesold / GRES) A reduction in engineering and construction costs based on estimate review (GRES) Provision for project power supply increased by 20% Changes to the macro-economic assumptions (Altona) Updated mining cost estimates from market enquiry (IQE) Updated EA lodged and approved (MBS Environmental) Development of a detailed implementation plan. The Project comprises the following components: Pre-strip of oxidised rock and copper oxide mineralisation Construction of a 7 million tonnes per annum capacity process plant, infrastructure and TSF Power via a 33kV overland high voltage (HV) power line from a substation at Dugald River mine site Open pit mining of between 7 and 9 million tonnes per annum of ore Stockpiling of marginal grade ore for processing toward end of mine life Direct tip of run-of-mine (ROM) ore to a single-stage gyratory primary crusher or to a ROM pad Processing of 7 million tonnes per annum of ore Two stage grinding via a primary semi-autogenous grinding (SAG) mill and ball mill to 212m Flotation of copper-gold concentrate Concentrate re-grind to 38m Gravity gold recovery Thickening and filtration of concentrate Trucking of concentrates in containers to a rail siding at Cloncurry or to the Mt Isa smelter Flatbed rail to Townsville port for concentrate unloading and export. 1.4. Geology and Mineral Resources Mineral Resource Estimate The Resource Estimate for the Little Eva deposit is based on 8,088 metres of diamond drilling (42 holes) and 59,183 metres of Reverse Circulation (RC) drilling (390 holes). Mineralisation is hosted in a variably altered (albite-carbonate-hematite-magnetite) amygdaloidal intermediate unit. The majority of the unit is altered, quartz-carbonate veined and mineralised with sulphides occurring predominantly as chalcopyrite with only minor amounts of pyrite and bornite. Sulphide minerals comprise on average only 2 to 3% of the rock but locally can range up to 25%. The Resource Estimates for the Little Eva, Turkey Creek and Bedford deposits were reported according to the 2012 Edition of the JORC Code whereas the other deposits were reported according to the 2004 Edition of the JORC Code. This study consolidates all disclosure to JORC 2012 standards and this was disclosed to ASX on 2 August 2017. Mineral Resource Estimate for the Cloncurry Copper Project Deposit Tonnes Copper Gold Copper Gold (million(%) (g/t) (tonnes)(ounces) ) Deposits in Mine Plan (%) (g/t) Little Eva 105.9 0.52 0.09 546,000 295,000 Turkey Creek 21.0 0.59 123,000 Ivy Ann 7.5 0.57 0.07 43,000 17,000 Lady Clayre 14.0 0.56 0.20 78,000 85,000 Bedford 4.8 0.80 0.21 38,000 32,000 Sub-total153.3 0.54 0.09 829,000 430,000 Other Deposits Blackard 76.4 0.62 475,000 Scanlan 22.2 0.65 143,000 Longamundi 10.4 0.66 69,000 Legend 17.4 0.54 94,000 Great 6.0 0.61 37,000 Southern Caroline 3.6 0.53 19,000 Charlie Brown0.7 0.40 3,000 Sub-total136.7 0.61 840,000 Total 290.0 0.58 0.05 1,668,00430,000 0 Satellite Deposits Five satellite deposits have been included in the mine production plans; Bedford (north and south), Lady Clayre, Ivy Ann and Turkey Creek. These deposits have been included as they host high metallurgical recovery sulphide ore that is able to be co-treated with Little Eva ore. Resource Estimates are based on 8,257 metres of diamond drilling (33 holes) and 39,716 metres of RC drilling (247 holes). Copper-Only Deposits Seven copper-only deposits, in particular Blackard and Scanlan, were included in a DFS completed in 2005 and a subsequent study in 2008. These deposits contain some 840,000 tonnes of copper. Mineralisation is hosted in deeply weathered (clay) sediments with copper occurring as fine-grained disseminated native copper metal. Conventional sulphide mineralisation in fresh rock underlies the native copper mineralisation in weathered rocks. Native copper mineralisation whilst soft, has metallurgical recoveries of 55 to 65% and consequently these deposits were not considered in the initial development plan. The sulphide mineralisation in fresh rock is likely to have high metallurgical recoveries (90%+). 1.5. Mining Mine Design George, Orr & Associates conducted a full stability analysis of the planned Little Eva pit based on geotechnical analysis of 21 oriented diamond drillholes covering both an earlier starter-pit design and the final pit design utilised in this study. The north-west portion of the deposit has poor to moderate ground conditions, however, for the majority of the planned pit ground conditions are good to moderate. Overall slope angles of 43 degrees, inclusive of pit ramps, have been recommended and are used in the Little Eva pit design. The eastern pit wall has the best ground conditions and therefore all access ramps have been placed on this wall. Pit optimisation was completed by Optiro. The parameters used to generate the optimised pit designs were based on mining costs obtained from market enquiry in November 2011. The metallurgical recoveries used in optimisation were derived by GRES and OZMET from all pre-existing testwork and testwork carried out by ALS Ammtec in 2011 and 2012. Economic and other assumptions were current in 2011 and were supplied by Altona. These optimisations formed the basis of pit designs and the Project Ore Reserves. The Little Eva mine design includes a 30 metre wide dual lane in-pit haul road at a 10% gradient on the eastern wall of the final pit. The pit is approximately 1,500 metres long, 700 metres wide and 240 metres deep. The mining dilution factor assumed was 6% at zero grade and an ore loss factor of 4% was applied. These reflect the large scale bulk nature of the deposit. The degree of selectivity in mining is relatively low and varies in differing domains of the deposit. Reserve modelling is based upon a minimum mining unit of 6.25 metres x 6.25 metres x 5 metres. Ore is classified in grade control either as ROM feed to be sent directly to the mill or marginal ore to be sent to a stockpile for later treatment. Mine equipment has been scaled to permit selective mining this size of mining unit. The opportunity exists to improve grade control practice and thus reduce unit costs. The Turkey Creek pit was optimised and designed by Orelogy in 2016 using similar parameters to Little Eva. Optimisation of the Bedford, Lady Clayre and Ivy Ann deposits was completed utilising the same late 2011 inputs as used at Little Eva. However, it was assumed that fixed costs were covered by the Little Eva mine and the cost of haulage to the mill was added. Metallurgical testwork on these deposits indicate that metallurgical characteristics and recoveries are not materially different from Little Eva. Scheduling of ore extraction from the satellite deposits was set at approximately 750,000 tonnes per annum taking into account the size of the pits and the rate of bench advance. Marginal ore from the satellite pits is assumed treated as waste and not transported to the Little Eva mill. Pits at the other satellite deposits were not designed to the same level of detail as Little Eva and Turkey Creek as their contribution is small (9% of Ore Reserves). New pit optimisations and designs will be completed utilising current mining contract rates once new Resource Estimates and geotechnical models are completed. Mining Costs For this study, two mining contractors responded to a market enquiry to review previously supplied contract rates and provide current pricing for contract mining services. The indication from the contractors was that rates had not significantly changed since 2014 however where relevant, revisions to mining unit rates have been incorporated into the current financial analysis. Current mining rates are materially lower than those obtained in late 2011 for the 2012 DFS. In order to maximise cost effectiveness, Altona intends to directly lease the majority of the mine equipment and to provide the fuel and explosives to the contractor. The fleet will be operated and maintained by the mining contractor. Current mining costings were used to generate new pit optimisations to test the potential impact of the footprint of enlarged pits on infrastructure layout. These optimisations indicate a substantial opportunity to increase the Reserves and will be examined as a part of a future project review and optimisation. Mining Strategy The mining strategy involves a 13.4 million tonnes pre-strip of a starter-pit at Little Eva. After the pre-strip is completed the pit will have a strip ratio of 1.8:1. To sustain a 7 million tonnes per annum production rate, stripping is planned to continue at elevated rates for several months after the commencement of production. The pit requires a pushback towards the end of mine life to reach its design depth of 240 metres. Mining will be carried out using conventional drill and blast (D&B) rigs with backhoe excavation being undertaken by diesel excavators and dump truck haulage. The main mining fleet consists of two EX2600 250 tonne excavators matched to fourteen CAT 785 136 tonne trucks. This fleet is supplemented by one EX1900 190 tonne excavator matched to five CAT 777 100 tonne trucks. Mine waste will be transported to a dump adjacent to the pit and to construct the TSF. Waste will also be used to construct an engineered flood protection bund around the Little Eva pit. The bund will re-direct wet season water flows in Cabbage Tree Creek away from the Little Eva pit. The ROM ore will be delivered to the ROM pad where there is the capability to direct feed from mine trucks to a gyratory crusher with 375kw of installed power capable of accepting 1 metre ROM rock at a rate of 1,100 tonnes per hour. Mining of ore from the Bedford pits is scheduled to commence prior to process plant commissioning and will initially supplement Little Eva ore feed. The current mining schedule then prioritises the mining of ore sequentially from Ivy Ann then Lady Clayre with mining at Turkey Creek commencing towards the end of the mine life. The proximity of Turkey Creek to the mill may make it preferable to mine it earlier in the mining schedule however preliminary investigation indicates that the lower grade of this ore makes it a lower priority for processing. Further investigation and rescheduling will be carried out prior to project commencement. The mining schedule and schedule of production of copper in concentrate is shown in the chart below. 03082017_EN_AOH0822-Update of Feasibility Study_PRCOM.002 Annual mine production by pit Mining will deliver 7 million tonnes per annum of approximately 0.6% copper ROM feed to the processing plant over the first 5 years whilst stockpiling marginal grade material for later treatment. Life of mine production ProductFinancial Year Ending ion 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 Ore 4.67.07.07.07.07.07.070 7.07.07.07.07.02.9 milled * Copper 0.60.60.50.50.50.50.50.50.50.40.40.40.10.1 (%) 2 4 4 8 8 6 4 2 1 8 4 0 8 8 Gold 0.00.10.10.00.00.00.00.00.00.10.00.00.00.0 (g/t) 9 0 0 8 9 8 8 9 9 0 1 1 6 6 * Million tonnes. Ore Reserves Ore Reserves were initially reported according to the 2004 Edition of JORC Code in an ASX release dated 14 May 2012. Turkey Creek Ore Reserves were reported in an ASX release dated 21 June 2016 according to the 2012 Edition of the JORC Code. This study consolidates all disclosure to JORC 2012 Standards and was disclosed to ASX on 2 August 2017. The Ore Reserve Estimate is included within the Resource Estimate. Ore Reserves for Little Eva Ivy Ann, Bedford and Lady Clayre were estimated by Optiro. Turkey Creek Reserves were estimated by Altona based on Orelogys mining inventory. Ore Reserve Estimate for the Cloncurry Copper Project Deposit Tonnes Copper Gold CopperGold (%) (g/t) (tonne(ounces s) ) Little Eva ROM ore 53,100,0.58 0.08 308,10147,300 000 0 Little Eva marginal 15,400,0.18 0.06 28,10030,900 grade 000 (stockpile) Turkey Creek 11,300,0.46 51,200- 000 Ivy Ann 3,500,00.59 0.08 21,0009,100 00 Lady Clayre 920,0000.56 0.27 5,100 8,100 Bedford 1,350,00.85 0.20 11,6008,500 00 Total 85,600,000 0.50 0.07 426,00203,900 0 There are Inferred Resources that are included in the mining schedule but are not included in the Ore Reserve Statement. Infill and extension drilling will be completed to convert Resource Estimates to Indicated Resources. 1.6. Processing Metallurgical Testwork and Process Design The metallurgical and mineralogical classification of the Little Eva deposit reflects the geological domains used in resource modelling. Core holes were drilled to ensure complete spatial and grade variance coverage of metallurgical samples for testwork through the deposit. Testwork is representative of each of three major geological domains; north, central and south. Extensive grinding and flotation/reagent testwork material consistently demonstrated that high copper and gold recoveries were achievable at a relatively low operating cost across all feed grades that are planned. SAG and ball milling delivers a grind size of 212m and rougher concentrates are re-ground to 38m. Testwork indicates that the designed circuit will achieve a 96% copper recovery at a concentrate grade of 25% copper. Gold recovery is predicted to be 85% at a concentrate grade of 4g/t. Standard milling and flotation technology will be used to generate approximately 150,000 tonnes of copper concentrate on an annual basis. The processing circuit is a simple one and consists of: Single stage gyratory crushing SAG and ball milling Flash flotation Flotation (rougher and scavenger) Concentrate regrind and flotation cleaning Gravity gold recovery Concentrate thickening and filtration Tailings thickening and disposal A standard flotation circuit is proposed as illustrated in the chart below. 03082017_EN_AOH0822-Update of Feasibility Study_PRCOM.003 Process flowsheet for the Little Eva plant Key metallurgical characteristics are: Key Metallurgical Metrics Tonnes of concentrate (dry) 150,000pa Moisture content 9% Copper recovery 96% Gold recovery 85% Copper grade in concentrate 25% Gold grade in concentrate 4g/t Concentrate penalty elements None The concentrate will be filtered to 9% moisture and stored in a concentrate shed prior to transport to market. Representative tailing and waste rock samples were found to be non-acid forming due to the low levels of contained sulphur and high carbonate content. The tailings and waste will not generate acid drainage during storage and can be disposed of safely using standard mining and processing practice. 1.7. Process Plant and Infrastructure The Little Eva process plant is to be located approximately 70 kilometres north-west of Cloncurry and will be accessed via a sealed highway and a site access road of approximately 12 kilometres. The process plant will be installed adjacent to the Little Eva and Turkey Creek open pits and will be designed to process 7 million tonnes per annum of ore for a minimum period of 14 years. Infrastructure to be installed to support the operation includes: Access and haul roads Tailings storage facility Bunds and diversion channel to manage surface water Fuel storage and dispensing 33kV overland HV power line for a distance of 9 kilometres from the Dugald River minesite Plant site laboratory Accommodation village Administration facilities Workshop and warehousing facilities Borefield and water storage infrastructure Mining contractor infrastructure Explosives magazine With 26MW of installed drives, the average power draw for the processing plant during operations will be approximately 22MW. Power for the concentrator is proposed to be supplied from grid power via a 220kV overhead power line stepped down to 33kV at a substation at MMGs Dugald River zinc-lead-silver project for supply to the Little Eva plant. Altona is negotiating with the Dugald River project to access its powerline. To allow for any access or maintenance costs Altona has included an infrastructure charge in its estimation of power costs. Dugald River is a major new underground zinc-lead-silver mine and processing plant nearing completion of construction. Communication infrastructure, an airstrip and sealed road access are in place. Since the generation of the 2014 DFS update study the Tailings Storage Facility (TSF) has been relocated and redesigned following the discovery of the Turkey Creek deposit in the southern part of the original location of the TSF. The new TSF is a standalone embankment type incorporating a basin under-drainage system designed to reduce seepage, increase tailings density, and improve geotechnical stability. Solution recovered from the decant system will be pumped back to the plant for reuse in the process circuits. Tailings will be discharged into the TSF by sub-aerial deposition methods, using a combination of banks of spigots at regularly spaced intervals from all embankments to direct the supernatant pond to the decant tower. Spigot location and discharge will be continually managed to ensure most the most effective tailings beach formation is achieved. Most of the Project water supply will come from pit dewatering bores at Little Eva with the water to be stored in a raw water dam. The remainder will be sourced from a borefield to be developed at the Blackard deposit. Water balance for the project has assumed that 36% of the water discharged to the tailings facility in the tailings slurry will be decanted and returned to the plant for reuse. This is in accordance with recommendations made by Knight Piesold based upon the TSF design and water modelling for average climatic conditions. There is further water supply capacity in the Lake Julius pipeline which is adjacent to the plant should the need arise. Communication is available via 4GX mobile phone coverage being provided by Telstra as part of its service delivery to the Dugald River Project. A village is to be constructed to accommodate the Project workforce. This will be a purpose built camp that will accommodate approximately 220 personnel at any one time and will be utilised for both construction and operations. It is assumed that a portion of the workforce will live locally and be accommodated off site. The below diagrams illustrate the layout for regional infrastructure. 03082017_EN_AOH0822-Update of Feasibility Study_PRCOM.004 Infrastructure in the Little Eva Dugald River area showing Altona tenure, proposed pits and Mineral Resources 03082017_EN_AOH0822-Update of Feasibility Study_PRCOM.005 Process plant area infrastructure layout. Plan projection of Resource outlines in red. Logistics The highway from Cloncurry to Burketown and Normanton on the Gulf of Carpentaria is a full width sealed road that passes 12 kilometres to the east of the proposed plant site. At Cloncurry, approximately 70 kilometres to the south, it meets the Barkly Highway from Townsville to Mt Isa. Cloncurry has a regional airport, hospital, schools and other infrastructure The concentrate will be containerised and transported from site by road train to the Cloncurry rail loading facility. The containers will then be loaded onto flatbed rail cars for dispatch to the Townsville port. The rail system between Cloncurry and Townsville is well serviced with multiple trains to Townsville each week. Once at the Townsville port, the containers will be unloaded directly into the ships hold. An alternative, if commercially available, is to truck concentrate to the Glencore smelter at Mt Isa. Townsville port is a well-established international port capable of handling bulk mineral materials with over 4 million tonnes of import/export trade mineral handled annually. All infrastructure required to operate in this manner is already in place and available to the Project. Containers will be supplied as a part of a complete concentrate load and transport logistics arrangement with a major logistics operator. 03082017_EN_AOH0822-Update of Feasibility Study_PRCOM.006 Infrastructure in North-West Queensland Implementation Plan Mining Contract mining is the preferred option for mining. This provides a degree of flexibility which will be highly beneficial during the ramp up phase of the Project. The current implementation plan proposes that Altona will be responsible for the lease of the majority of the mining fleet and for the supply of fuel and explosives. This approach will be reviewed upon commencement of the project as mining contractors currently hold a surplus of used mining equipment and it may prove more cost effective to access this equipment via the contractor rather than lease new equipment directly. Plant It is proposed to deliver the process plant, associated services and site infrastructure on a turnkey project management, design and construction basis. The process plant and infrastructure would be undertaken on a guaranteed maximum price basis. Process plant performance guarantees would be sought from the Engineering, Procurement and Construction (EPC) contractor. Project management, design, procurement of process equipment, contracting commitments and project controls would be undertaken from Brisbane and/or Perth. All site subcontracts will be controlled from site. Site works would be performed mainly in horizontal packages by suitably qualified and capable Queensland organisations supplemented by construction expertise from the EPC contractor. The intent for those components of infrastructure that have not already been covered within the plant or mining scopes is to tender based on a lump sum, turnkey project management, design and construction basis. 1.8. Community, Permitting and Tenure The Company has an agreement with the Kalkadoon People who hold a native title area over the Project area. A deed of the type required under the Native Title Act and an ancillary agreement were signed by the Company and appropriate representatives of the Kalkadoon People on 15 June 2006. The State of Queensland executed the Section 31 Deed on 29 June 2006. An Environmental Impact Study and the Environmental Management Plan (EMP) for the Project have been accepted by the Queensland Department of Environment and Heritage Protection (DEHP) and an EA has been issued. The mine plan allows for closure and rehabilitation costs and the conditions of the EA include lodgement of a financial security with the authorities. The legislation around financial securities is subject to amendment by the Queensland Parliament. Financial security will be lodged prior to commencement of operations together with a Plan of Operations. Mining Leases (MLs) were granted on 19 November 2012 and total 143 square kilometres and are situated across two pastoral land holdings. Compensation agreements with pastoralists relating to the MLs have been agreed. The Cloncurry Copper Project also has 4 granted Exploration Permits for Minerals (EPMs) some 703 square kilometres in area that are, in part, contiguous with the MLs. The Project is expected to directly employ some 300 people during the construction phase reducing to around 280 during operations, a portion of which will commute daily to site. Most of the construction workforce will be provided by contractors from the north-west Queensland region. During the operations phase, employment will be made up of a mixture of people living in Cloncurry commuting daily to site and fly in / fly out (FIFO) or drive in / drive out (DIDO) people from the regional centres which already provide personnel to the major mining centres such as Mt Isa and Townsville in north-west Queensland. 1.9. Capital Operating Costs Capital Costs All capital costs relevant to the Project scope were reviewed. The process plant and infrastructure scope was unchanged. Capital cost estimates are based on December 2013 pricing from local and international equipment suppliers and local engineering and contracting firms. Major cost inputs associated with the capital estimate have been reviewed by GRES in February 2017 and adjusted for market movements. Capital costs are summarised below. Pre-production Capital Costs A$ (million) Mining mobilisation and pre-strip 51 Process plant and infrastructure 164 Tailings storage facility 18 Accommodation village 18 First fill, spares etc 12 Owners costs 8 Contingency 18 Total 288 The pre-strip and pit cutback continues beyond the commencement of production at Little Eva and is considered to be a sustaining capital cost once production commences. Life of Mine (LOM) sustaining capital requirements have changed since that reported in the 2014 DFS Update with a decrease in mined material classified as sustaining development, increased provisions for capital item replacement within the plant and an increased provision for TSF uplift costs. In addition to this the extension to the life of the mine resulting from the inclusion of Turkey Creek in the mine schedule contributes to the higher sustaining costs reported below. Sustaining Capital Costs A$ (million) Mine development 50 Processing plant and infrastructure 29 Tailings 46 Rehabilitation 12 Total 137 Operating Costs Operating cost estimates are based on December 2013 labour rates and quotations from utilities, contractors and reagent suppliers and are detailed in the table below. Contract mining rates have been refreshed based on budget submissions provided by suitably qualified mining contractors. Power cost estimates have not been formally updated by providers. The current volatility in the east coast gas and energy market makes it difficult to get accurate long term pricing from enquiry. To make provision for movement in power costs since the previous report the supplied rate to the project reflected in the operating costs and financial modelling has been increased from $0.16/kWhr to $0.192/kWhr Average Operating Costs per Tonne A$ (per tonne milled) Mining 10.05 Processing 8.12 General and administration 2.12 Concentrate transport and sales 2.78 Total operating costs 23.07 Royalties 2.24 Sustaining capital costs 1.48 Total cash costs 26.79 1.10. Financial Analysis The production profile over the project life is illustrated below. 03082017_EN_AOH0822-Update of Feasibility Study_PRCOM.007 Metal prices and exchange rates used in this study are benchmarked against broker consensus forecasts and various research house estimates. The values adopted are: Assumption Value Copper (US$ per pound) 2.95 Gold (US$ per ounce) 1,250 US$:A$ 0.75 Treatment charge (US$ per tonne) 80.00 Copper refining charge (US$ per pound) 0.08 Gold refining charge (US$ per ounce) 5.00 Copper payability 96.5% Gold payability 94% Cashflow is robust and is broken down below: Item TotFinancial Year Ending als 19 20 21 22 23 24 25262728293031 32 33 Revenu3,6- 21136330732532831302929282221411447 es 29 7 5 5 3 1 9 Less expenditure Capita289228 61 l Operat2,1- 12218517718918317161516191712575 34 ing 12 2 3 0 1 8 9 Sustai137- 15 4 23 3 10 101129146 5 4 2 2 ning Royalt205- 12 20 17 18 18 17171616181514 6 2 ies Total 887(2282 15590 11611811111010603171 31 9 ) 8 4 0 2 All values in A$ millions. The Project will generate an average annual operating surplus of A$141 million in the first 5 years of full production. The average operating cost is A$23.07 per tonne compared with average revenue of A$39.64 per tonne. A discount rate of 7.5% was estimated using a Weighted Average Cost of Capital (WACC) methodology for Altona as owner. The rate selected compared well to WACC calculations for other similar and recent project developments. Key Financial Metrics A$ (million) Capital costs 288 Sustaining capital 137 Revenue (net smelter return) pa * 328 Pre-tax and sustaining capital operating cash141 flow pa * Pre-tax NPV (7.5% real discount rate) 462 IRR% 36% Cash cost per pound copper in concentrate US$1.65 All in cash cost per pound copper in US$1.92 concentrate * Average, years 1 to 5. Taxation and Royalties It is assumed that the Project will be developed by Altona Mining Limited. Altona has tax losses carried forward to later income years providing they are available to it under the current taxation provisions. As at 30 June 2016, the tax losses are approximately A$60.4 million. Royalties of approximately A$205 million are payable over the life of the mine to the Queensland government and a number of private entities. Sales and Marketing The payability of metal in concentrates, smelter treatment charges, refining charges, shipping and insurance costs for the concentrates have been estimated from Altonas market experience, industry norms and by benchmarking against recent transactions. For copper-gold concentrates it assumed that LOM treatment charges and refining charges (TC/RC) will average US$80 per tonne, US8.0 per pound respectively and that no penalties will be payable. Copper payability is assumed to be 96.5% and gold approximately 94%. It has been assumed that the concentrate will be shipped to Asian markets. 1.11. Exploration Existing Deposits A combination of infill and extension drilling and new geological modelling could deliver material upgrades to existing Resources in the mine plan, in particular; Lady Clayre, Bedford, Ivy Ann and Turkey Creek. There is also significant potential to improve Resources at the copper-only deposits that are not included in the mine plan. Exploration Targets Altona has consolidated all prior exploration data and adopted a new approach to exploration utilising that data in combination with high resolution (close-spaced) mapping of copper in soils analyses via a handheld XRF. There are 16 major targets close to, or at the stage of drill testing. The 30 years of exploration and resource delineation has led to an excellent understanding of geological and exploration models. In addition to copper mineralisation, there is potential for extension or repeats of Dugald River style zinc-lead-silver mineralisation within the Project. 1.12. Opportunities and Upside Project Review, Optimisation and Value Engineering Pit designs (other than Turkey Creek) are based on 2011 resource models costs and optimisations. There have been significant improvements in geological/geotechnical models, costs and macro-economics since 2011. To determine the potential maximum footprints of pits and waste dumps, Orelogy undertook pit optimisations using current costs, macro-economics and geological models. Optimum pits at Little Eva contained significantly more ore tonnes, with more contained copper and gold than the current Reserve. Whilst such a significant improvement is unlikely to be replicated in a full design, the exercise highlights the upside to Reserve Estimates. At the time of designing the Little Eva pit, the nature of the zone of poor ground conditions on the western edge of the deposit was poorly understood. Conservative geotechnical modelling resulted in a conservative pit design. A new geotechnical model highlights the potential to improve the pit design. The new resource model also suggests the starter pit location is not optimal. A new Resource in 2016 at Bedford provided materially higher copper and gold Resources within the pit design and also highlighted the opportunity to expand Resources. Bedford pits are scheduled for year 1 of production and require revised pit designs and better definition of metallurgical and geotechnical data. At Little Eva there may be opportunity to refine grade control costs, mining selectivity, ore loss and dilution factors based upon outcomes of a program of closer spaced drilling to be done prior to production. Rainfall in the Cloncurry area is highly variable and the area is subject to drought. Water budgets are adequate but may be stretched in extended low rainfall periods. Recommendations to Improve Reserves Drill Inferred Resources below current pit design but within 2015 Orelogy pit to convert to Indicated Resources to increase Reserves. At Little Eva conduct grade control drilling ahead of mining to optimise mining selectivity and grade control costs/strategy. No work is required at satellite pits to be mined after year 5. Re-optimise the Little Eva pit using an updated resource model and current costs and then generate new pit designs. Drill the Bedford deposits to maximise the Resource and obtain definitive geotechnical and metallurgical data. At Bedford generate a new geological and resource model and re-optimise and design pits. Re schedule years 1 to 5 of production based upon the new Bedford and Little Eva Ore Reserves and pits. Recommendations to Improve Infrastructure, Process and Plant Power supply optimisation assessment. Consider alternative access routes to site. Confirmatory geotechnical investigation of new TSF and Cabbage Tree Creek bund. Re-evaluate gravity gold recovery to maximise payable gold. Investigate low capita increase to processing to 8 million tonnes per annum given likely increase in Reserves. Re-evaluate bringing Turkey Creek forward in mine schedule due to operational simplicity. Re-evaluate the hydrology/de-watering of the Little Eva pit in the context of the new geotechnical model. Undertake exploration for additional water resources to maintain supply in year 4 onwards and to support up to 8 million tonnes per annum throughput. Expansion of Production or Mine Life There is significant potential to expand existing Resources, particularly at Bedford and Lady Clayre. There is upside at Turkey Creek, Little Eva and Ivy Ann, though not as material as Bedford and Lady Clayre. The greatest potential for expansion of Reserves in the medium term is through already defined resources at the copper-only deposits. There are some 840,000 tonnes of contained copper in copper-only deposits. These deposits comprise deeply weathered rocks containing native copper overlaying conventional sulphide mineralisation. Metallurgical recovery of native copper from weathered rocks is 55% to 65%. The lower recovery led to the decision to omit these deposits from the initial mine plan. Pit optimisations and designs in the 2005 and 2009 studies only considered native copper mineralisation, subsequent drilling has highlighted that these are significant tonnages of sulphide mineralisation in fresh rock beneath the native copper mineralisation. This mineral Amy Sherman | asherma2@mlive.com Pictured is a very delicious 51 K IPA from Blackrocks Brewery. BY AMY SHERMAN | asherma2@mlive.com National IPA Day is happening this Thursday, August 3, and is a chance to experience and celebrate a beer that honors the greatness of hops. Across Michigan, there are events, special releases, and great IPA's to try all day. India Pale Ale (IPA) is a style of beer that has soared in popularity over the last few years. Loaded with hops, IPA's have a distinct bitterness, with flavors derived from hops that can range from citrus, to grass, to pine as well as many other flavors. Originally brewed in England as a beer that could withstand the long journey to India (hops act as a preservative in the beer), IPA's are now one of the most popular styles around. Don't Edit Amy Sherman | asherma2@mlive.com No matter what specific type of IPA you are enjoying, these beers are going to be all about that fantastic plant that provides the bitter balance in beer, hops. There are hundreds of different varietals of these perennial vines, and each one imparts a distinct and different flavor to the beer. Beers are often labeled with a number of IBU's. This represents the "International Bittering Units", a way to measure the amount of hops in a beer. This can be a pretty good indicator of how bitter the beer will taste, but a variety of factors can affect not only the flavor of the brew, but also your perception of it. A mass market, light beer, like a Budweiser will have about 7 IBU's. Most IPA's will come in between 35 and 80 IBU's, with double IPA's even higher. You can learn more about how hops are grown here. Don't Edit Amy Sherman | asherma2@mlive.com Some of the styles of IPA"s that you might come across: Classic English-a more balanced version, where the hops don't slap you in the face.Smooth, yet bitter, lighter in mouthfeel, and a distinct finish. Brewed with hops that are a bit more subtle. West Coast-this style has low malt characteristics, allowing the big, citrusy hop profile to really come through. A dry finish is also important for the true hop aroma to shine. New England (or Omaha style)-hate it or love it, this is the newest beer style trend in Michigan. Juicy, juicy, juicy, very slight bitterness, chewy mouthfeel. Hazy, golden opaqueness when done right, chunks of proteins floating when done wrong. Double, or Imperial-these are always big beers, not just in flavor, but also ABV's. More of everything is the key. Double the malt bill creates the body, mouth feel and alcohol, while double the hops creates balance. These beers might have high IBU's, but they actually often taste less bitter than a regular IPA when drinking due to all that malt. Session-lower ABV, from between 3% and 5%, while still remaining a flavorful, big tasting beer are the hallmarks of a great session. Black-this beer looks like a porter, and drinks like an IPA due to the use of dark roasted malts like black patent and chocolate in the malt bill. This is a newer style, and one not always recognized officially by beer associations. White-take the hoppy-ness of a traditional IPA, and combine it with the fruity, yeasty flavors of a Witbier, and you have a white IPA. The wheat base can really allow some hop varieties to shine, while this lighter brew refreshes. Don't Edit Dark Horse Brewing Company, Marshall From Dark Horse's Facebook page: Come celebrate National IPA Day at the Dark Horse! We are going tap heavy with the following IPA's: Crooked Tree IPA Double Crooked Tree Double IPA (8 oz. only) Smells Like a Safety Meeting IPA Smells Like a Citra Safety Meeting IPA Smells Like a Double Michigan Safety Meeting Imperial IPA (8 oz. only) Honey Ryder West Coast IPA Hipster Whisperer Great Lakes Style IPA Uncle Bucks Premium Juice IPA We will also be offering IPA Beermosas with your choice of fresh squeezed orange juice or grapefruit juice provided by Dark Horse Commons! 8oz IPA mimosa: $4.00 (DCT & SLADMSM = $6) 12oz IPA mimosa: $5.00 16oz IPA mimosa: $5.50 It is also Free Live Music Thursday in the Beer Garten from 7pm to 9pm with Dave Mininberg!!! Dark Horse was one of our picks for Michigan's Best brewery in 2013. Dark Horse 511 S Kalamazoo Ave Marshall, Michigan, MI 49068 (269) 781-9940 Don't Edit Logan's Alley, Grand Rapids From Logan's Facebook page: Logan's Alley is serving up the hops for IPA Day! We'll be offering deep discounts on ALL DRAFT IPAs through our 3 happy hours during the day, featuring brews from M43, Bells, Ellison, Speciation, Founders, Stone, Ballast Point, Dogfish Head and Bear Republic! All IPA drafts, during happy hours, will be $1.50 - $3.00! Oh, and there just might be a surprise tapping of a little something from Bell's that hasn't been brewed before! This will be a Logan's Alley exclusive! (Fingers crossed their distributor comes through!) Why are we offering such an array of glorious beers at such a deep discount? Because Logan's Alley loves you! Logan's Alley 916 Michigan St NE Grand Rapids, Michigan, MI 49503 (616) 458-1612 Don't Edit Don't Edit Visit Cellar a lot? You should check out our Mug Club! pic.twitter.com/kbywMTsSwk Cellar Brewing Co. (@CellarBrewingCo) July 26, 2017 Cellar Brewing Company, Sparta Cellar will be offering $1 off of any appetizer with the purchase of an IPA this Thursday. Cellar Brewing Company 133 E Division St Sparta, Michigan, MI 49345 (616) 383-1234 Don't Edit Amy Sherman | asherma2@mlive.com Tapistry Brewing, Bridgman Are you a hophead? If so, you need to get to Tapistry Brewing. These guys love hops, and are sure to have a huge selection of hop bombs for National IPA day. One of our picks for Michigan's Best new brewery in 2016, we loved the Heart Full of Napalm double IPA, and the crazy interesting Hoponacci series, where each beer gets just one hop. Tapistry Brewing 4236 Lake St Bridgman, Michigan, MI 49106 (269) 266-7349 Don't Edit Photo used with permission of Harmony Brewing Company. Harmony Brewing Company, Grand Rapids Harmony has two locations in Grand Rapids, one in Eastown and one on the West side. They'll be offering their Lovely Day Lavender Chamomile IPA for guests to enjoy, in addition to several other IPA offerings. Harmony Brewing Company (Eastown) 1551 Lake Dr SE Grand Rapids, Michigan, MI 49506 (616) 233-0063 Harmony Hall (West side) 401 Stocking Ave NW Grand Rapids, Michigan, MI 49504 (616) 233-9186 Don't Edit Did you know Thursday is #IPADay? It's also the first Thursday we have ever been open. So let's celebrate! Thursday... Posted by Brewery 4 Two 4 on Tuesday, August 1, 2017 Brewery 4 Two 4, Holland Brewery 4 Two 4 will be open for their very first Thursday on August 3. They'll be open from 5-10pm, and five out of ten taps will be IPA's. The beers on tap: Juice Weasel Citrus IPA 6.7-53 IBU Sim Cities West Coast IPA 6.9%-75 IBU Rye'd Along Rye IPA 6.6%-60 IBU Super Sim DIPA 8.2%-80 IBU Session Sim IPA 5.1%- 65 IBU Brewery 4 Two 4 321 Douglas Ave, Ste. 120 Holland MI 49424 Don't Edit Amy Sherman | asherma2@mlive.com Pictured are brothers and owners of Hop Lot Steve and Drew Lutke. Hop Lot Brewing, Suttons Bay One of our picks for best new brewery in 2016, Hop Lot Brewing Company has an idyllic setting in Suttons Bay. You can sit out side amongst the hop bines, and roast marshmallows over the fire pit. Grab some tacos, and enjoy some of their tasty beers. We particularly love the Norseman IPA, which is full of piney goodness. Or try the Uncle Green Guy session IPA, which will be totally crushable on a hot day. Hop Lot Brewing Company 658 S West Bay Shore Dr Suttons Bay, Michigan, MI 49682 (231) 866-4445 Don't Edit Don't Edit Creston Brewery, Grand Rapids According to owner Scott Schultz, their new IPA Bokonon may be the best he's ever made. It'll be on tap Thursday. According to Schultz, it's a "multigrain IPA with absolutely zero caramelor crystal malts. It would be a West coast IPA if it weren't for the low bitterness. It comes in at 45 IBUs. We used these hops in the boil: Chinook, Simcoe, and Citra. Then we dry hopped with Mosaic. Juicy, fruity, refreshing, bold, and dangerous." Creston Brewery 1504 Plainfield Ave NE Grand Rapids, Michigan, MI 49505 (616) 805-4523 Don't Edit Amy Sherman | asherma2@mlive.com WhichCraft Taproom, Midland From WhichCraft's Facebook page: We're celebrating National IPA Day (it really is a thing) with one of the best breweries from the state. Founders Brewing Co. IPAs: Centennial IPA. ABV 7.2% Reds Rye IPA. ABV 6.6% All Day IPA: Session IPA. ABV 4.7% ReDANKulous: Imperial Red IPA. ABV 9.5% Doom: Bourbon-Barrel Aged Imperial IPA. ABV 12.4% 10K IPA: Imperial IPA. ABV 9.2% Plus, Founders latest Barrel-Aged release, DKML (Barrel-Aged Malt Liquor) WhichCraft Taproom 124 Ashman St Midland, Michigan, MI 48640 (989) 832-3395 Don't Edit Star Chicken decks available in our Annex & online shop. Posted by Greenbush Brewing Co. on Tuesday, June 13, 2017 Greenbush Brewing Company, Sawyer Another of our picks for Michigan's Best brewery in 2013, Greenbush is known for making big, bold beers that don't necessarily adhere to style guidelines. One of the best named beers of all time is their Star Chicken Shotgun IPA, which features 5 different hops, and a dancing Elvis chicken on the label. If you can find it, there is a double version of Shotgun, called Fuster Cluck. Greenbush Brewing 5885 Sawyer Rd Sawyer, Michigan, MI 49125 (269) 405-1076 Don't Edit Thornapple Brewing Company, Cascade Thornapple Brewing Company just opened a few months ago, but they already offer a large selection of craft beers and a house made menu of flatbread pizzas, dips, french fries and one killer cheesecake. For National IPA day they'll have a special beer on tap, a session IPA featuring Wai-iti, Kohatu and Pacific Gem hops. Thornapple Brewing 6262 28th St Cascade, Michigan, MI 49546 (616) 288-6907 Don't Edit Sometimes we listen to Creed while canning. Plz don't judge. pic.twitter.com/MLoEos2Fg6 Axle Brewing (@AxleBrewing) August 2, 2017 Axle Brewing, Ferndale Axle Brewing will have several new IPA's on tap, including one that will be available for the very first time, the Defiant One. It is a Northwest style IPA, that comes in at 6.6% ABV and 80 IBU's. They'll also have Residency, which features all Michigan hops and barley, and is a session IPA, and Tragically Hopped, a big and bold double IPA. Axle Brewing 567 Livernois St Ferndale, MI 48220 248-284-2422 Don't Edit Don't Edit Help us celebrate #NationalIPADay this Thursday, August 3rd with $3.00 Pints of Backyard IPA, Singapore IPA, and Mandarina IPA in the Pub! pic.twitter.com/dcO8kJOmb4 Saugatuck Brewing (@saugatuckbrew) August 2, 2017 Saugatuck Brewing Company, Saugatuck $3 pints of IPA's will be on tap at Saugatuck Brewing all day on Thursday. Give their Backyard IPA, Singapore IPA, and Mandarina IPA a try. Saugatuck Brewing Company 2948 Blue Star Hwy Douglas, Michigan, MI 49406 (269) 857-7222 Don't Edit Just added DRIPA by #kuhnhennbrew to our menu https://t.co/UmlWd9OTCL Shakespeares Pub (@shakespub) July 31, 2017 Shakespeare's Pub, Kalamazoo With over 40 taps of beer, this popular downtown Kalamazoo bar has so many great beers on tap that it's hard to choose what to taste. On Thursday all day long they'll offer $1.50 off every IPA on tap. They always have the very popular M-43 from Old Nation on tap, as well as Bell's Two Hearted and Deschutes Fresh Squeezed. They also just tapped one of the best Michigan double IPA's out there, Kuhnhenn Brewing Company's DRIPA, a citrusy, big beer enhanced with rice. Shakespeare's Pub 241 E Kalamazoo Ave Kalamazoo, Michigan, MI 49007 (269) 488-7782 Don't Edit Witch's Hat Brewing Company, South Lyon At Witch's Hat you can try their Double IPA, This Guy, on Thursday. It's a big and juicy beer, that comes in at 7.7% ABV. If you can't quite handle the double, give their other beer That Guy a try, it's a lovely session IPA. Witch's Hat 601 S Lafayette St South Lyon, Michigan, MI 48178 (248) 486-2595 Don't Edit Little Joe's Tavern, Grand Blanc Little Joe's is a great stop for fantastic food, an incredible Bloody Mary, and a well thought out craft beer list. The staff welcomes all, and on Thursday they'll be offering great deals on IPA's. The following on draft IPAs will be $3.50 all day long 11am-10pm (while supplies last): Arcadia Mango Surprise IPA Shorts Slurm Lord Stone Give Me IPA or Give Me Death Bells 2 Hearted Founders All Day IPA Little Joe's Tavern 11518 Saginaw St Grand Blanc, MI 48439 810-694-8391 Don't Edit Looks like they caught a #TwoHearted brook trout in Colorado! Great photo, Brian, thanks for sharing. pic.twitter.com/T5xSgTFEqP Bell's Brewery (@BellsBrewery) July 29, 2017 Bell's Brewing, Kalamazoo If there is one IPA from Michigan that everyone knows, it's Two Hearted from Bell's. This totally delicious beer was just named the best beer in America by Zymurgy magazine. Here in Michigan, we've known that this beer is fantastic for years, and it is pretty much available everywhere across the state. It's nice to see one of our favorites get a little national attention. Or a lot of national attention. Bell's Eccentric Cafe 355 E Kalamazoo Ave Kalamazoo, Michigan, MI 49007 (269) 382-2332 Don't Edit Don't Edit We were able to get most of the crew together for a photo yesterday. They've been working their tails off to get beer to you! #MiBeer pic.twitter.com/JePbOb5BnO Old Nation Brewing (@OldNationBrew) August 1, 2017 Old Nation Brewing If you haven't tried M-43 yet, you are missing out on what might legit be called the beer of the summer here in Michigan. This New England style, hazy, citrusy IPA has totally taken the beer community by storm. Available on tap, and in cans if you can find it, it's kind of a hop bomb with all sorts of flavors coming through. This is one to pour into a glass, so you can admire it's golden opaqueness. Old Nation Brewing 1500 W Grand River Ave Williamston, Michigan, MI 48895 (517) 655-1301 Don't Edit The Wicked Sister, Sault St. Marie Wicked Sister will tap two special IPA's on Thursday. From Founder's Brewing Company in Grand Rapids, the very rare double IPA 10K will be released. This is a sipper, that comes in at 9.1% ABV, and is one of those beers that if you come across it, you must taste it. Their other National IPA day tapping is from right across the border, a beer from Ontario from Flying Monkey, called Smashbox IPA. A great opportunity to celebrate IPA day in the UP. The Wicked Sister 716 Ashmun St Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan, MI 49783 (906) 259-1086 Don't Edit Blackrocks Brewery, Marquette 51 K IPA should be your go to jam any time you are in the Upper Peninsula. It's crisp, refreshing, with just the right amount of bitterness. And it comes in a can. And that means you can take it camping, swimming, kayaking, hiking, paddle boarding, canoeing, or on any other activity that you might enjoy. It's the perfect summer IPA. Blackrocks Brewery 424 N 3rd St Marquette, Michigan, MI 49855 Don't Edit Amy Sherman | asherma2@mlive.com Grand River Brewery, Jacksoon Grand River Brewery's Monkey Mouth IPA is their flagship brew, and its infinitely drinkable, with nice bright notes, and just the right amount of hops. It's also an award winner, having been awarded the Gold medal for "Best American IPA" at the New York International Beer Competition in 2015. Grand River Brewery 117 W Louis Glick Hwy Jackson, Michigan, MI 49201 (517) 962-2427 Don't Edit Have you checked in your #AllDayIPA to earn our latest @untappd badge? pic.twitter.com/Jb8lGZhXqi Founders Brewing Co. (@foundersbrewing) August 3, 2017 Founder's Brewing Company, Grand Rapids Probably the most well known session style IPA in Michigan, if not the country. All Day IPA comes in at a doable 4.7%, so you can have a couple and still stay on top of it. It's crisp, flavorful, and has great balance. Totally crushable. Founders Brewing Company 235 Grandville Ave SW Grand Rapids, Michigan, MI 49503 (616) 776-1195 Don't Edit Don't Edit Brogie's Tavern, Ishpeming Brogie's will be offering bottles of UP brewery Ore Dock's Reclamation IPA for $3.50 on Thursday. This beer has a nice malt backbone, and feature Chinook, Cascade and Columbus hops. Brogie's was one of our top picks for Michigan's Best Bloody Mary in 2016. Don't Edit MLive file photo Latitude 42, Kalamazoo In this American style IPA, with a nod to the UP in the name, Centennial, Citra, Simcoe and Falconers Flight hops create big flavor, while balancing out the malt. Lat's IP EH is earthy, with hints of pine and spice, this will make a hophead happy. Latitude 42 7842 Portage Rd Portage, Michigan, MI 49002 (269) 459-4242 Don't Edit Milt Klingensmith | Mlive More Michigan's Best beer Our top ten best new breweries in 2016. 20 other new breweries to visit now. These 6 just opened breweries are must visits. Don't Edit Video by Jeremy Marble Discover favorite beer styles at the Michigan Summer Beer Festival Don't Edit Don't Edit Don't Edit Amy Sherman | asherma2@mlive.com More Michigan beer coverage Short's Brewing announces partnership with Lagunitas. Oracle Brewing opens in Saginaw. Founders Art Prize beer for 2017. John Gonzalez | gonzo@mlive.com By JOHN D. GONZALEZ | gonzo@mlive.com Who knew? The hottest Michigan craft beer of the summer -- and possibly the beer of the year -- may surprise you. It's not Bell's Oberon or even Two Hearted. Or the latest release from Founders or Short's Brewery. It's from a little known brewery in Mid Michigan, and it's a beer that happens to coincide with one the hottest beer styles of the year. Say hello to M-43, a New England-style IPA from Old Nation Brewery in Williamston. Don't Edit Old Nation Brewery The brewers Brewed by Old Nation co-owner Travis Fritts and head brewer Nate Rykse, who have devoted their lives to learning the technical side of the brewing process, with an emphasis on asking the question "why." These scientist/brewers have always wondered, "what happens when you mix Belgian, German, American and English disciplines of brewing, not just ingredients." Known for brewing "true to style," they tackled the crazed world of New England-style IPAs. Don't Edit Old National Brewery Travis Fritts, originally from Dimondale, studied in Europe at Technical University in Berlin, and he was recruited in 2001 to take part in the school's brewing program. After a number of years in Europe and the U.S., he returned to Michigan, where he eventually became a partner in Detroit Beer Co. Fritts co-owns Old Nation Brewing Co. with Rick Ghersi, his former partner at Detroit Beer Co. Brewer Nate Rykse went to University of California-Davis to get his masters in fermentation technology. Don't Edit John Gonzalez | gonzo@mlive.com Why an NE-style IPA? Fritts and Rykse did a lot of research regarding New England-style IPAs, known for its "juicy" qualities, reduced bitterness and distinctive haze. The style has been exploding over the last few years with story after story of little-known breweries just skyrocketing with sales. Like a lot of brewers, the Old Nation brewers dismissed the style as "dirty" and "lazy" and not that appealing. However, consumers found the style extremely drinkable. So, Fritts and Ryke continued to do the research -- they call it "detective work" -- and released last spring Easy Tiger, a session IPA (ABV 5.2% IBU 40), brewed with a special blend of Crystal, Cascade, Centennial, Bravo and Calypso hops, and dry hopped for added aroma. "It was a real good beer and it tasted like Heady Topper (from Alchemist Brewing Co. in Vermont)," Fritts said. "But like a lot of brewers then, and even now, we purposely made it not hazy. We thought the haze was just a ridiculous gimmick." Fritts took it to their distributor, who had been clamoring for an IPA from Old Nation because IPAs are still top sellers. "We said, 'Here it is. It's the best one we're going to make," Fritts said. "They said, 'We don't like this. Why is this not bitter. There is no chance anybody is going to buy this.' So, I got stuck with the bill and selling 40 barrels of it our of my pub, which was a problem." At this point in Old Nation's brief history, Fritts said money was tight, and, even though he felt he was making great beer, there was "no buzz at all" -- good or bad -- about the Williamston brewery. Don't Edit Old Nation Brewery Facebook Groups About this time, Fritts joined the Detroit Area Craft Beer Enthusiasts on Facebook to lurk a bit, and to chime in as a brewer. He was skeptical. "Every brewer knows you do not get involved with these groups...they're there to make your life miserable, it's what brewers thought, including me. They all think they're experts and most of them don't know anything, really. Why put yourself out there?" But he learned a lot, and he engaged in the conversation about NE-style beer. He even invited them to Williamston, where they participated in taste tests. M-43 was born. Don't Edit Don't Edit How hot is it? When it launched earlier this year, the beer just exploded. Old Nation was selling 80 barrels a week of M-43 in early March, then 120 barrels a week in late March. Today, it produces 200 barrels a week. "It's not anywhere near enough," Fritts said. Oddly, he doesn't know where the ceiling is because he has no idea how many retailers want it but can't get it. "I have no concept if I'm making 30 percent of demand or 90 percent or 5 percent or what. But I know that every time we make more it's just a drop in the ocean. It just doesn't matter. It's just not enough." Don't Edit What is it? New England IPAs are purposely hazy or cloudy, which gives you a smooth or creamy mouthfeel. They often have little to no hop bitterness, and they utilize hops with tropical qualities. That's why it's referred to as a "juicy" IPA? The brewing process is "complex," Fritts said. Some brewers are using flour to account for the haze, but that's a cheaper version, he added. Many of the ingredients, such as oats, tie in with the juicy qualities. It's an unfiltered beer, so some of the haze comes from the yeast, Fritts said. The majority of the haze comes from lipids (fats from oats), protein (from wheat), and oils from the hops, he said. "Putting them all together in the correct ratio will create this haze," he said. ..."Ultimately we wrote the recipe for the flavor of the beer and the haze was just a happy accident." Don't Edit Old Nation Brewery Other variatons The guys at Old Nation are so beer geeky that they even brewed some variations, which are selling like crazy. The supplies are limited: Boss Tweed is a Double IPA (9.3% ABV 68 IBU). They sold 500 cases over 8 hours at the Pub recently. Boxer focuses on a deep malt character from Vienna and Munich malts, in addition to the soft, silky mouthfeel and body brought by Wheat and Oat malts. (ABV 7% IBU 65) Green Stone is an APA (ABV 5.5% IBU 40). The series was an experiment to ask what happens when they change ingredients such as malts, alcohol volume, grains/wheats and Michigan hops. Don't Edit Video of Jak Mercer Jak Mercer at Logan's Alley in Grand Rapids says there are times that M-43 outsells Bell's Oberon and Two-Hearted combined! Don't Edit Old Nation Brewery Where to find it Because of the huge response, Old Nation tries to update fans on where to find M-43. For a list of the 300 or so retailers, click the link below. Here's the link: M-43 retail locations. Don't Edit Don't Edit Old Nation Brewery The Crew On Facebook, Old Nation posted: "We were able to get most of the crew around yesterday for a quick photo! The whole team has been working their tails off to get as much beer out to you as humanly possible!" Don't Edit And because Travis was busy, we added him in after the fact. This is probably somewhere in a parallel universe. pic.twitter.com/rkTBQL0gMs Old Nation Brewing (@OldNationBrew) August 1, 2017 Don't Edit Old Nation Brewery IF YOU GO Old Nation Brewing Company 1500 E Grand River Ave, Williamston, MI 48895 517-655-1301 FACEBOOK Don't Edit Beer of the Week from April Our story! Don't Edit Old Nation Brewery What's next? In the spirit of the M-43, Fritts said he will continue to ask "why." He did that last fall with "The German Hobo" (11.9% abv), a malt liquor collaboration beer with Dark Horse Brewing Company. Brewers asked if Michigan had a style of beer, what would it be, and they said, well, Ionia is recognized as the birthplace of "malt liquor," so why not make a malt liquor-style beer. "If we agree it's a valid style, we asked 'how would make it and what would you do to make it a great beer?'" That's the spirit of Old Nation as it moves forward. "Why are we doing this, and why are we making this beer? Don't Edit Don't Edit Social Media With the explosion/success of M-43, Travis Fritts said he learned the power of two things: A great product, and the power of Social Media. Don't Edit Don't Edit Don't Edit Don't Edit Don't Edit Don't Edit Kickin' off @faster_horses with a cold @OldNationBrew M-43. Life doesn't get much better than this kids. pic.twitter.com/twhXBuVCYB Alexandria Fulbright (@IBAlexandria) July 21, 2017 YPSILANTI TOWNSHIP, MI - A 24-year-old man is charged with open murder in connection with the July 25 fatal shooting of Deshawn A. Jones in Ypsilanti Township. Maurice D. Jones was arraigned Thursday, Aug. 3 in Washtenaw County 14A-1 District Court on charges of open murder, carrying a weapon with unlawful intent, felon possessing a firearm, felon possessing ammunition, carrying a concealed weapon and three counts of felony firearm. He faces up to life in prison if convicted. Magistrate Elisha Fink denied Jones bond because of the severity of the charges and his previous weapons-related convictions. "I'm not a danger to anybody," Jones said emotionally. "I just go to work and take care of my kids." Jones is scheduled to appear next in court Aug. 15 for a probable cause conference. Deshawn Jones, 30, was found injured from a gunshot wound at about 9:30 p.m. Tuesday, July 25, on grass near the intersection of Andrea and George avenues, said Derrick Jackson, Washtenaw County Sheriff's Office spokesman. Jones was later pronounced dead at the scene. Police believe Deshawn Jones was targeted. Maurice Jones served nearly two years in prison from April 2013 to February 2015 after he pleaded guilty in Washtenaw County to resisting and obstructing a police officer, felon possessing a firearm, two counts of carrying a concealed weapon, assault with a dangerous weapon and possessing a short-barreled shotgun, according to the Michigan Department of Corrections. ANN ARBOR, MI - Screenings of "An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power," at Michigan Theater, over the next week will include special post-show films from the Huron River Watershed Council. The theater, 603 E. Liberty St., is showing the follow-up to "An Inconvenient Truth," the groundbreaking, Oscar-winning climate change documentary released in 2006, daily from Thursday, August 3 through Thursday, August 10. "An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power" features former Vice President Al Gore discussing international climate policy and scientific research, and what progress - or lack thereof - has been made since the 2006 film. "Cameras follow him behind the scenes -- in moments both private and public, funny and poignant -- as he pursues the inspirational idea that while the stakes have never been higher, the perils of climate change can be overcome with human ingenuity and passion," reads a Michigan Theater description of the film. The sequel received two standing ovations when it was shown at the Sundance Film Festival ahead of its widespread public release, according to IMDB. "'An Inconvenient Sequel' delves deeper into the arcane details of compromise than its predecessor, with scenes of Mr. Gore working to find a middle ground between the needs of developed and developing nations," reads a New York Times review of the film. Screenings on August 3 and 5 will include the post-show short film, "Preparing the Huron River for Climate Change," presented by the Huron River Watershed Council. The film is 98 minutes long and rated PG. Showtimes and ticket information available here. ANN ARBOR, MI -- After breaking into the wrong Ann Arbor home with a handgun, a 44-year-old Ann Arbor man is charged with felonious assault with a dangerous weapon and breaking and entering. Christopher J. Erney was arraigned on the charges Wednesday, Aug. 2, a day after allegedly breaking into an apartment on the 600 block of Main Street. Ann Arbor police said he entered the home "extremely angry, confused, delusional and screaming loudly." Although an 18-year-old woman and her 52-year-old father were present in the apartment, no one was injured. Erney indicated that he entered the wrong apartment, according to police. Erney was ordered held in the Washtenaw County Jail on 10 percent of a $20,000 bond. A probable cause conference was set for 8:30 a.m. Thursday, Aug 10 in 14th District Court. A preliminary examination was set for 9:30 a.m. Thursday, Aug. 17. YPSILANTI, MI -- A driver who struck a fire truck in a May fatal crash has filed a lawsuit claiming the truck's emergency lights weren't on at the time. Charles Horn and Amanda Holloway filed the suit July 27 in the Washtenaw County Trial Court against Ypsilanti and an unnamed firefighter who was operating the truck that night. The plaintiffs' daughter was a passenger in the vehicle, as was her friend, 15-year-old Christina Snyder, who was killed in the crash. Snyder is not part of the lawsuit and is not mentioned in it. Firefighters were responding to a rollover crash on westbound I-94 near Grove Street on May 31 when Horn's vehicle struck the fire truck around 11 p.m. The truck was positioned to block a lane and protect the first responders, according to police and fire officials. The lawsuit claims the fire truck's lights weren't on and that the city and its firefighter were negligent. "Neither the lights nor sirens of the fire truck were activated," attorney Brandon Abro claims in the lawsuit. "(Horn) struck the fire truck as a result of the negligent and unlawful failure to activate the fire truck's lights and sirens." Abro, an attorney for Southfield-based Fieger law, did not wish to comment on the lawsuit when reached by phone. The lawsuit seeks more than $25,000, the minimum to file in circuit court, claiming Horn and his daughter suffered serious injuries due to the fire department's failure to activate the lights. Horn was in critical condition after the crash. The lawsuit claims he broke several bones and suffered internal injuries. Horn's daughter also suffered numerous fractures and injuries, according to the suit. The lawsuit lists one count of gross negligence and one count of negligent operation of a government-owned vehicle. Ypsilanti Fire Chief Max Anthouard has said in the past that the truck's lights were on at the time of the crash. Anthouard again stood by that statement when asked Tuesday, Aug. 1 about the lights. Sgt. Michael Sura of the Michigan State Police, the agency investigating the crash, said their report indicates the truck's lights were on. The crash remains under investigation. All three people in the vehicle were believed to be wearing seatbelts, but it was unclear whether alcohol or drugs were factors in the crash, police previously said. Excessive speed was not believed to be a factor. No charges have been filed. Horn has a lengthy driving record and his license was only reinstated a few months before the crash, according to the Secretary of State. Representatives of Ypsilanti's City Attorney's Office said Tuesday that they had not yet been served with the lawsuit and had no comment. ANN ARBOR, MI - The deportation of an Ann Arbor mother of three isn't sitting well with most Washtenaw County commissioners. As a showing of solidarity with the family of Lourdes Salazar Bautista, they voted 7-1 Wednesday night, Aug. 2, to voice opposition to her deportation to Mexico, which was carried out Tuesday by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. "These things are so painful in our community," said Commissioner Conan Smith, D-Ann Arbor. Commissioner Felicia Brabec, D-Pittsfield Township, said Salazar Bautista's deportation has caused devastation. "I just feel like we are better than this and we can do better than this as a country than to rip apart a family for no apparent reason," she said. Commissioner Ruth Ann Jamnick, D-Ypsilanti Township, cast the lone dissenting vote. She said many people in her district think if immigrants are going to come to the United States, then they should find their way through the legal process to actually become a citizen, especially after 20 years, which is how long Salazar Bautista lived here. "And I know it sounds cold-hearted and mean and ornery and everything else, but that's just the real concerns that I have heard about this," Jamnick said before declining to join her colleagues in opposing Salazar Bautista's deportation. Commissioner Alicia Ping, R-Saline, was absent for the vote. Salazar Bautista lived in the United States for 20 years and has no criminal record. Mother's deportation means emotional goodbye for Ann Arbor family Mayor tells deported woman 'you'll always belong here in Ann Arbor' She came here legally on a visa in 1997 and then overstayed, deciding to make a life here where she has family. She said coming here was a dream come true, and the life she was able to build here and give to her children would not have been possible in Mexico. An immigration judge actually ordered her deportation in 1998, but she maintains she never knew about it until ICE showed up at her house in 2010. That's when ICE deported her husband and allowed her to stay and continue raising her children in Ann Arbor. Her efforts over the years to get approval to stay here as a legal permanent resident have been unsuccessful and now she is officially deported and banned from entering the country for 10 years. Commissioner Michelle Deatrick, D-Superior Township, introduced the resolution Wednesday night. It conveys opposition to "the sudden and completely unnecessary fracture of a family, and policies that promote and enable such an extreme and consequential action." "Lourdes Salazar Bautista has never been charged or convicted of a crime and has been described by fellow community members, elected officials and clergy as an exemplar of the vibrant diversity that strengthens and enriches the social fabric of our community," the resolution states, reiterating the county's opposition to "expanded immigration actions by the federal government that destabilize our communities, create an atmosphere of fear and isolation for our residents, and negatively affect public health and safety." The board recently approved another resolution that urges Congress to pass federal immigration reforms restricting deportation actions to people charged with aggravated felonies, expanding opportunities for legal immigration and creating a path to citizenship for those seeking permanent status as U.S. residents. Salazar Bautista's three children flew to Mexico with her on Tuesday. All three are U.S. citizens by virtue of having been born here. The two youngest children, ages 13 and 15, are staying with their family in Mexico for now, but could eventually come back and either live with their uncle or their older sister. The oldest daughter, 19-year-old Pamela, intends to come back later this week and continue living in the area while going to college. She's determined to find a way to keep the family's home in Ann Arbor and continue paying the mortgage, though that's not going to be easy. The family has racked up thousands in legal bills related to Salazar Bautista's deportation. The Washtenaw Interfaith Coalition for Immigrant Rights has set up an online fundraising page to help raise money for the family. So far, more than $6,700 has been donated, with a goal of $25,000. Deatrick said what's happening to the family isn't physically violent, but there is "a violence to it" and it's heartbreaking. She said there's no good reason for it, only costs to the family and the community. Commissioner Jason Morgan, D-Ann Arbor, noted he met the family last week. "It was really heartbreaking to see that family in person and know that she's being sent away from what I consider is her home here in Ann Arbor and here in Washtenaw County," he said. Morgan recalled ICE exercised discretion when Obama was president and allowed Salazar Bautista to stay here with her children. He said the Trump administration isn't showing the same leniency. "The current administration has chosen not to utilize that authority," Morgan said. Khaalid Walls, a spokesman for the ICE field office in Detroit, said though ICE prioritizes the arrest and removal of threats to national security and public safety, "no class or category of alien in the United States is exempt from arrest or removal." "The dedicated men and women of ICE will continue to do our sworn duty to enforce our immigration laws and protect the safety and security of Americans," he said. Salazar Bautista is leaving behind an extensive family network here, but as photos posted to the Lucha Por Lourdes page on Facebook show, she's also reconnecting with family in Mexico now. live bse live nse live Volume Todays L/H More Kindly note that the 55th Annual General Meeting of the Company is scheduled to be held on Saturday, the 16th September, 2017 at the Registered Office of the Company at Cultural Centre Auditorium, Fertilizernagar Township, Fertilizernagar - 391 750, Dist. Vadodara.Source : BSE Read More live bse live nse live Volume Todays L/H More Meeting No. 2017-18/2 of the Board of Directors of the Company is scheduled to be held on Saturday, the 12th August, 2017 at 11.30 a.m. at Hotel Lords Plaza, Opp. Linear Bus Stand, Near Delhi Gate, Ring Road, Surat 395 003, Gujarat, inter alia, to transact the following businesses:1.To consider and approve the Board Report alongwith annexures for the year ended 31st March, 2017;2.To fix date, time and place of 28th Annual General Meeting of the Company; and3.To appoint Secretarial Auditor for the financial year 2017-18.Source : BSE Read More live bse live nse live Volume Todays L/H More The Board of Directors of Tejas Networks Limited ('the Company') at their meeting held on Thursday, August 03, 2017 in Bangalore, has inter aliaa) approved the unaudited financial results as per IndAS for the quarter ended June 30, 2017b) Approved appointment of M/s Price Waterhouse Chartered Accountants LLP as the Statutory Auditor of the Company subject to approval of the shareholders in the ensuing Annual General Meeting.c) Approved appointment of Mr. Dwarakanath C as the Secretarial Auditor of the Company for the F Y 2017-18.Source : BSE Read More Sudarshan Sukhani of s2analytics.com told CNBC-TV18, "Today for swing traders we have two buying ideas. One is Britannia Industries, part of the FMCG group where a small upswing can be caught. The second is Bharat Forge, again an outperformer which is breaking out from a narrow range." "Third stock is a short sell - Mindtree. The stock for some reason has been going lower and lower, making lower highs, lower lows. So, that is a day trading short." "I would suggest that one should remain in the financial services area, but switch to private banks. Brokerages have seen a very stupendous run up. That run up can lead to months of consolidation. So it is far better to stay in good quality stocks after such a run up. Shift from JM Financial to ICICI Bank, Axis Bank, or HDFC Bank," he said. "One should hold on to MRF . It is an outperformer. The stock has given big rewards for investors for the last 20-30 years. Stay with it, it is outperforming in this bull market; in the next two to three years you will get higher prices." IT giant HCL Technologies will recruit 800 personnel including freshers for their Lucknow centre. The news comes at a time when rumours are rising about the closing down of operations in the city by TCS. Sanjay Gupta, senior vice president at HCL Technologies, in a Hindustan Times report, said that that the company is determined to expand its operations in the city. We are here to stay, he said, adding that apart from the present vacancies there will be thousands of jobs up for grabs for the youth in the coming years. We believe that Lucknow has tremendous untapped potential. With job offers like these the educated youth of the region will not feel the need to migrate to bigger cities, said Gupta. The three-day recruitment drive that will commence on 4th August will not have any age bar. The company is said to be promoting a 'come back to home' policy towards techies working outstation and a policy of 'stay rooted' towards the fresh talent in the city. The company also said that it will create an additional training centre in the campus along with the present Arya Bhatt Centre that has the capacity of 500 people. The 100-acre HCL campus at present has created 1500 jobs of which nearly half are entry-level. The move comes at a time when TCS is set to end its operations in the city. The move will adversely affect over 2000 employees who may have to shift from the city or lose their jobs. N. R. Narayana Murthy, founder and chairman of Infosys, listens to a question during an interview with Reuters at the company's office in Bangalore February 28, 2012. Picture taken on February 28, 2012. REUTERS/Vivek Prakash (REUTERS - Tags: BUSINESS SCIENCE TECHNOLOGY PROFILE HEADSHOT) - RTR30CV2 live bse live nse live Volume Todays L/H More Infosys co-founder NR Narayana Murthy has asked the company's board to make the recent report by the global law firm, Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, public, reported Business Standard. In a recent letter, Murthy has asked the board why Ritika Suri, a member of the team that was involved in the controversial buyout of Israeli firm, Panaya, resigned soon after the law firm gave a clean chit to the company. Murthys letter coincides with Chief Executive Vishal Sikkas completion of three years at the firm. Also read: Case closed: SEBI to stop pursuing whistleblower's allegations against Infosys Suri was head of corporate development and ventures when the deal was signed in April 2015. She quit the role in June. Moneycontrol independently reached out to Murthy but he was not available for comment. Murthy has in the past raised concerns over high severance payouts to some former executives and over corporate governance issues at the company. Whistleblowers had written letters to the country's market regulator Securities and Exchange Board of India and the US Securities and Exchange Commission over alleged inconsistencies in the USD 200-million acquisition of Panaya. The Business Standard article quoting Infosys as saying that the company does not plan to make the report public. The article also quoted a former senior executive of Infosys saying that the recent exits of senior executives, who were involved in the Panaya deal, and the company having no plan to make the report public raises more questions than answers. business Mauritius project bagged against stiff competition, says L&T Larsen & Toubro (L&T) is in focus after they bagged a big order win of Rs 3375 crore from the Mauritius government. In an interview to CNBC-TV18, Rajiv Jyoti, CEO-Railway Strategic Unit at L&T discussed about the order and latest happenings in the company. live bse live nse live Volume Todays L/H More Voltas reported 17.68 percent rise in consolidated net profit at Rs 187.91 crore for the quarter ended June 30, on account of higher income. The company reported a net profit of Rs 159.67 crore during the same period previous fiscal. Income from operations during the quarter under review stood at Rs 1,962.37 crore as against Rs 1,844.81 crore in April-June quarter last year. However, global research firm, Deutsche Bank has retained a sell on Voltas with a target price of Rs 390 over a period of 12 months due to disruptions to the most valued cooling business in FY'18 Inventory disruption due to GST, but temporary, margins disruption (Excise duty benefits to expire during Q4FY18) and pricing disruption (Energy Efficiency norms tightening from Jan'18 by two steps) 5 star air conditioners (AC) will become 3-star overnight necessitating a 10-15 percent price hike, which may not be fully passed-on to consumers. The research firm forecasts a drop in the cooling division margins (1.5/1.0pps in FY18/19e) on account of high commodity prices, expiry of excise duty benefits and higher GST. Prima-facie valuations look fine, but implied AC business PE is high at 48/41x for FY18/19e big premium to peers, considering a 20x PE for Engineering and Projects business. Voltas delivered good growth in Projects and Engineering, offsetting the weakness in margins for ACs. Profits of Rs 180 crore (+17 percent), were 9/22 percent above consensus, due to lower employee cost (-9 percent) and strong other income (+54 percent). ACs were impacted due to weather and GST, with just 1 percent sales growth (but gained 1 percent market share), and 80bps hit on margins. Projects business earnings before interest and taxes (EBIT) growth of 65 percent comes with 8 percent revenue growth, achieving their targeted 5 percent margins while orders were up 15 percent, it said. At 12:43 hrs Voltas was quoting at Rs 541.20, up Rs 1.05, or 0.19 percent. It has touched an intraday high of Rs 550.00 and an intraday low of Rs 537.20. business Hope to give better results & control operating cost: Gujarat Alkalies Gujarat Alkalies and Chemicals reported Q1 FY18 earnings. In an interview to CNBC-TV18, Prem Kumar Gera, MD of Gujarat Alkalies and Chemicals spoke about the results and his outlook for the company. live bse live nse live Volume Todays L/H More Moneycontrol Research KEC International reported strong 104 percent growth in net profit to Rs 63 crore led by significant savings in the interest cost and impact of operating leverage resulting in higher operating margins. During the quarter, the company reported almost 100 basis points improvement in operating margin to 9.3 percent. Importantly, interest cost declined 12 percent to Rs 63 crore, which is a sign of improving cash in the books and better receivable management. Improvement in Balance Sheet The company reported decline in debtor days by about 16 days in the June quarter to 230 days. It also recovered part of the money with one of its large client in Saudi Arabia. This is also reflected in the reduction of net debt to Rs 2212 crore as against Rs 3109 crore in the corresponding quarter of last year. Moreover, KEC intends to bring down its receivable days further to around 200-180 days and reduce working capital. Importantly, with the incremental recovery of retention money from the Saudi Client, accounting for about 25 percent of the total receivables, the company intends to bring down its debt further, thus reducing interest cost and financial leverage. New businesses gaining traction Meanwhile, amongst the businesses, while on a small base, railways and solar grew on a year-on-year basis (YoY) at a higher rate of 129 percent and 51 percent, respectively. This was far better than the combined revenue growth of 6 percent to Rs 1895 crore. Its core T&D segment revenue grew by 13 percent to Rs 1334 crore. Strong order intake The company expect the momentum to continue particularly in the T&D (transmission & distribution) and railways. Cable business, which is 12 percent of the revenue is also expected see traction with the large Rs 100 crore PGCIL order getting executed in the current financial year. In cables, KEC is improving the product mix, getting into copper-based cables for international markets and high-end cables for the domestic transmission market. It continues to see traction in most of the segments, which is also reflected in the strong order intake. During the quarter, the company saw strong order inflows of Rs 2790 crore, thereby taking its total order book to Rs 13,532 crore (in Q4FY17 Rs 12,600 crore). This is about 1.6 times its annual sales thereby providing strong revenue visibility. That apart, the company is also L1 (lowest bidder) in projects worth Rs 4,500 crore. A strong order book and improving margins should translate into strong earnings growth. Over the next two financial years, the company is expected to witness 20-25 percent earnings growth. Reasonable valuation In light of improving financials and better earnings visibility, the valuation, too, seems to be reasonable. The stock at the current market price of Rs 298 is trading at 14 times its estimated earnings of FY19.Reasonable valuation. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi (L) and Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe shake hands during a joint press conference India has paired up with Japan to undertake infrastructure development projects in its northeastern states. A Livemint report says the two countries have set up an India-Japan Coordination Forum for Development of North East which will focus on major projects such as road and network development, disaster management, connectivity, and electricity provision. On Thursday, the first meeting of the forum will be held to discuss further developments. A coordination forum will be set up to identify which areas will be prioritized for development according to the ministry of Development of North-Eastern Region (DONER). The meeting on Thursday will be held by DONER minister Jitendra Singh and will be attended by the Japanese ambassador Kenji Hiramatsu. Higher ministry officials from external affairs, road transport, highways, power and finance are also expected to attend the meeting, acccording to Mint. India has lately collaborated heavily with Japan in order to boost its infrastructure. The Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) has access to low-cost funds that it deploys for several long-term infrastructure projects around the world. Major infrastructure projects such as the Ahmedabad high-speed rail corridor and bullet train will be funded by JICA. As many as 24 projects are currently going on all over the country, according to JICA. The Japanese Prime Minister may visit India in September to attend the opening ceremony of the Mumbai-Ahmedabad high-speed rail monitor. The Banking Regulation (Amendment) Bill, 2017, which replaces Banking Regulation Ordinance, 2017, was passed in the Lok Sabha on Thursday. The Bill received support from all the parties indicating intent for the resolution of non-performing assets (NPAs). The Bill authorised Reserve Bank of India (RBI) to issue directions to banks to resolve stressed assets, if necessary, by sending the defaulters to the Bankruptcy Court or using the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code provisions. Political support for the issue may convince Judiciary of the dire situation faced by banks and the RBI, and speed up the cases. HR Khan, Former Deputy Governor of RBI said: The missing link in the ordinance was that State Bank and other nationalised banks were not covered in Section 51 of the Banking Regulation Act, which will now come under the legislation. Banking Regulation Ordinance came in very handy in the High Court which ruled in favour of the banks and RBI when Essar Steel charged RBI of singling out some borrowers and taking them to the Bankruptcy Court. The Bill is likely to have a positive impact on all those cases which challenge the bankruptcy proceeding in the higher courts. RK Bansal, former Executive Director of IDBI Bank said: "The message is very clear, the government wants resolution, RBI wants resolution on all these cases. There is a timeline of 6-9 months on banks and promoters to find a resolution by referring these case to NCLT (National Company Law Tribunal)." Not ready to let others race ahead, Indias second-largest two-wheeler maker Honda Motorcycles and Scooter India (HMSI) is hopping onboard the governments electric vehicle bandwagon. The company is gearing up to launch an electric two-wheeler in India soon. Needless to say we have to participate (in electric vehicles plan). If we dont, we will lose. We have to do it definitely, Shinji Aoyama, chief officer, regional operations (Asia & Oceania), Honda Motor Co. told Moneycontrol. The company is working on an electric vehicle (EV) and plans to soon launch one model globally, followed by a rollout in India. Honda does not have any product in the EV. We are doing product development in EV for sure. We will launch an EV Honda in the global markets soon and in India the launch date will not be very far from today. We recognise what we have to do, added Aoyama. HMSI produces Indias largest-selling two-wheeler brand Activa at a run rate of 2.5 lakh units a month. Last year, the Japanese behemoth clocked total sales of 5 million units, a growth of 12 percent over FY16, making India its largest market for in the world. While electrification of two-wheelers has been slow in India, there has been a sharp spike in interest from not just companies but from renowned entrepreneurs over the last two years. Bajaj Auto, TVS Motors and Mahindra Two Wheelers are some of the companies who have shown interest in electric two-wheelers. New companies like Ather Energy and Tork Motors have generated sizeable interest in this space. For HMSI, electric vehicle technology is alien. None of the products made by its car division are fully electric. Therefore, the company has accelerated its development as developing countries like India are looking at greener means of personal mobility. It is easy to say electrification, but realising it is not easy at all. It is very complicated. To change entirely to electric at this moment is not realistic and feasible, Aoyama said referring to Modi governments decision to move entirely to electric vehicles by 2032. While electric scooters have been in the market for long companies are now looking at launching electric motorcycles too. Bajaj Auto, the countrys fourth-largest two-wheeler maker, is readying an electric motorcycle launch by 2019-20. The business model for making and selling electric vehicles is not the same as making petrol or diesel vehicles. And keeping the same business for electric two-wheelers is very difficult, said Aoyama. Current generation electric two-wheelers have not become popular because of some inherent product limitations such as high acquisition cost, limited range and constrained performance, which have made them impractical amongst buyers. A man processes tannery wastes to make poultry feed at Hazaribagh along the polluted Buriganga river in Dhaka June 5, 2014. Bangladesh's Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina warned the tannery owners at Hazaribag of serious consequence if they failed to relocate their tanneries in Savar within the stipulated time, during a World Environment Day observance program, local media reported. According to the United Nations Environment Programme website, World Environment Day is celebrated annually on June 5 to raise global awareness and motivate action for environmental protection. REUTERS/Andrew Biraj (BANGLADESH - Tags: ENVIRONMENT TPX IMAGES OF THE DAY BUSINESS EMPLOYMENT) - RTR3SDFL NBCC, the construction arm of the government, has recently incorporated a wholly-owned subsidiary company, namely NBCC Environment Engineering Ltd to execute projects relating to waste water/water treatment and solid waste management across the country. Through its subsidiary, NBCC hopes to augment the existing solid waste management systems in cities, help them with providing waste management techniques and waste treatment facilities. All projects that we undertake as part of this subsidiary launched a fortnight ago will be mandatorily green projects. We propose to focus on businesses such as sewage treatment, solid waste management projects. Most small towns and municipalities lack expertise in this segment and awareness is low due to constraints relating to funds. We hope to cater to that segment, explains Dr Anoop Kumar Mittal, CMD, NBCC. We are in discussion with the smart cities department and are assisting municipal corporations as project management consultants. We are open to forming SPVs and may also be involved in raising funds, he says. NBCC has also been taken on board by the Bihar government to assist them with the Ganga cleaning project. This is still in the design phase. It involves installing waste water treatment plants, catering to municipal and industrial waste and enhancing the capacity of STPs in the state, he adds. The companys present areas of operations are project management consultancy, real estate development and engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) contracting. PMC is the companys core strength and contributes about 85 percent of its annual revenue. vandana.ramnani@nw18.com Mitessh Thakkar of mitesshthakkar.com told CNBC-TV18, "I have two tyre stocks. I have got Apollo Tyres, which had clearly a strong pricing volume breakout yesterday. So I will keep a slightly deeper stop loss, maybe todays decline could be a good buying opportunity there, keep a stop at Rs 265, look for a positional target of more than Rs 300." "Ceat had a good swing breakout, so keeping a stop loss below Rs 1,904, I would recommend a buy for targets close to about Rs 2,000. A buy on ACC where we saw some strong intraday signals. So I would buy with a stop loss below Rs 1,740 for targets of around Rs 1,840," he added. "I also have two sell calls, Tata Chemicals is a sell with a stop loss at Rs 625.50 and look for Rs 590 kind of a decline. Similarly, GAIL India is a sell as well. Some moving average is expanding on the negative side. So I would sell with a stop loss above 376.50 and look for targets close to about Rs 355," he said. "Today I would keep a focus on Bata India, Rs 605-610 is the level which the stock has failed to clear on multiple occasions but today could be the day when we have that breakout and once that happens, Rs 650 is the minimum I expect this stock to do." "I have a buy on HCC with a stop loss at Rs 41.20 for targets of around Rs 45. Reliance Defence is a sell. Keep a stop loss at Rs 61 and look for declines to about levels of Rs 55." business Buy Emami, Apollo Tyres, NTPC; sell Union Bank, Infosys: Ashwani Gujral Ashwani Gujral of ashwanigujral.com is of the view that one can buy Emami, Apollo Tyres and NTPC and can sell Union Bank of India and Infosys. Sushil Finance's commodity report on crude oil Oil prices edged higher on Wednesday, as surging U.S. fuel demand and strong refinery runs offset data from the Energy Department that showed crude inventories did not fall as much as expected last week. Crude inventories in the United States fell by 1.5 million barrels in the week to July 28, the Energy Information Administration said, about half the decline analysts had expected. Oil prices fell sharply on Tuesday, and have come under pressure in recent sessions on news top oil producing countries may be boosting output. Outlook We expect crude oil prices to trade positive on the back of U.S. sanctions against Venezuela's oil sector. For all commodities report, click here Disclaimer: The views and investment tips expressed by investment experts/broking houses/rating agencies on moneycontrol.com are their own, and not that of the website or its management. Moneycontrol.com advises users to check with certified experts before taking any investment decisions. Read More The results of the Diploma Lateral Entry for Day & Evening Engineering Colleges, also called Diploma Common Entrance Test (DCET 2017) have been declared. This results of this test, which is conducted by the Karnataka Examinations Authority (KEA), will be available on http://kea.kar.nic.in/dcet2017.htm. The provisional answer keys of the DCET 2017 has already been hosted on the website. The results are expected to be out anytime soon. Steps to check the results: --Go to http://kea.kar.nic.in/dcet2017.htm --Click on DCET 2017 results --Enter Roll Number in the field provided --Click on Submit --Download the result and take a print-out for future reference Outgoing Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh (C) along with India's Congress party chief Sonia Gandhi (2nd R) sit after paying respects at the Rajiv Gandhi memorial on the occasion of the former Indian Prime Minister's 23rd death anniversary in New Delhi May 21, 2014. Rajiv Gandhi was killed by a female suicide bomber during election campaigning on May 21, 1991. REUTERS/Adnan Abidi (INDIA - Tags: POLITICS ANNIVERSARY OBITUARY) - RTR3Q52L Former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh today expressed disappointment over Indians lagging behind in linguistic research despite the language diversity in the country. He underlined that employment and business opportunities can open up if latent potential of India's linguistic diversity is tapped by linguistics and computational sciences. He made the remarks during the release event of 11 volumes of the People's Linguistic survey of India (PLSI). The PLSI is a comprehensive survey of all living languages of India carried out by a large team comprising volunteers, field activists and experts under G N Devy, the chairman and chief editor of the mammoth study. "Despite this amazing language diversity, Indians seem to have lagged behind in linguistic research and scholars know all about Saussure and Chomsky, but they are not able to use the theories of Panini and Bhartrihari, Anandvardhan and Abhinavagupt with equal ease," Singh said. In the process, we have continued to imbibe and mime the colonial knowledge of languages and linguistics despite having such enormous wealth of theoretical resource in our own intellectual tradition, he said. Singh said, "A high level of employment and business opportunities can open up for the trained man-power in these fields if the latent potential of Indian linguistic diversity is tapped by linguistics and computational Sciences." Singh also emphasised on the "crucial importance" of research drawing upon the vast linguistic diversity for making fresh break-through in the fields of knowledge and nurturing innovations in sciences and technology. "This can be achieved through productive intellectual collaborations as the People's Linguistic Survey has done," he said. "In absence of such close collaborative and interdisciplinary research in Indian universities, institutes of technology and medical-sciences centres, other global players will turn their attention to exploring, documenting and processing the diversity of indigenous and non-scheduled languages in India," he noted. It may be most timely and appropriate to the global and the national situation to encourage innovative research practices and to work the new trends in languages based science and technology to India's economic advantage, as well as to become the world leader in the field of language conservation and language diversity, the ex-prime minister said. The PLSI is being published in various state languages, Hindi and English as a series of 50 volumes, with a total of 92 titles. The publication of the series began in 2013. The PLSI is published by Orient Blackswan. As of August 2017, 37 titles have been published covering Jammu and Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh, Punjab, Haryana, Rajasthan, Gujarat, Maharashtra, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Bihar, West Bengal, Assam, Meghalaya, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh among others. The volumes for Goa and Sikkim will be released by the end of 2017. All of the 92 titles of the PLSI will be available in print form and as e-books by December 2020. Regulator Sebi (Securities and Exchange Board of India)today impounded averted losses totalling Rs 125 crore through alleged insider trading in MCX and its erstwhile promoter FTIL by 13 persons, including relatives of Jignesh Shah and former top executives, with 'prior information' about the NSEL case. The National Spot Exchange Limited (NSEL), promoted by Financial Technologies India Limited (FTIL), had to suspend trading on July 31, 2013 after a major payment crisis broke out at the bourse. Subsequently, a number of regulators and enforcement agencies launched their probes into the NSEL case. In two separate orders passed today, Sebi said its investigations into alleged insider trading in shares of Multi Commodity Exchange of India (MCX) and the erstwhile FTIL (which has now changed its name to 63 Moons Technologies Ltd) found that 13 persons "prima facie" traded in these stocks when in possession of 'unpublished price sensitive information'. Finding them "prima facie guilty of insider trading", the regulator said these persons were able to avoid any potential loss in the shares of MCX and FTIL and it has become necessary to take steps for impounding and retaining the loss averted by them. Those named in the order relating to FTIL include former MCX CEO Shreekant Javalgekar and his wife Asha; Jignesh Shah's brother Manish Shah and father Prakash Shah; FTIL employee and a former director at NSEL Hariharan Vaidyalingam; another FTIL employee V Arvindkumar Iyengar and his wife Dhanashri; and Bharat Kanaiyalal Sheth (brother of FTIL director Ravi Sheth). Three of them -- Javalgekar couple and Hariharan Vaidyalingam -- also figure in the MCX order. Five others named in the MCX order include former MCX chief Joseph Massey; ex-director at MCX Paras Ajmera; former NSEL CEO Anjani Sinha; Tejal Shah (wife of Manjay Shah, Jignesh Shah's brother and FTIL director); and Mehmood Vaid, a senior vice president at FTIL. Jignesh Shah had served as Chairman and Managing Director of FTIL at that time. However, no order has been passed against him directly. As per the two orders passed by Sebi's Whole Time Member S Raman, these 13 persons have been directed not to dispose of or alienate any of their assets/properties/securities, till such time the individual amount of loss averted is credited to an Escrow Account. They have been directed to individually provide, within 7 days a full inventory of all their assets and properties and details of all their bank accounts, Demat accounts and holdings of shares/securities and details of companies in which they hold substantial or controlling interest. Sebi also directed banks that no debits shall be made, without its permission, in respect of the bank accounts of these persons, except for the purposes of transfer of funds to the Escrow Account. Further, the depositories have been directed that no debit shall be made, without permission of Sebi, in respect of the Demat accounts held by these persons. However, credits, if any, into the accounts maybe allowed. "Further, debits may also be allowed for amounts available in the account in excess of the amount to be impounded. Banks are allowed to debit the accounts for the purpose of complying with this order," Sebi said. Sebi said the prima facie observations/findings contained in the two orders have been made on the basis of investigations conducted by it in the shares of MCX and FTIL. Accordingly, the named persons have been asked to "show cause as to why suitable directions", including disgorgement of amounts equivalent to losses averted on account of insider trading, should not be taken against them for alleged violation of insider trading regulations. They have been asked to reply within 21 days. Sebi said, "A basic premise that underlines the integrity of securities market is that persons connected with such market conform to the standards of transparency, good governance and ethical behaviour prescribed in securities laws and do not resort to fraudulent and deceptive activities like insider trading. "Such activities are detrimental to the interests of the investors as well as the securities market. No person can be allowed to enrich himself/herself by way of wrongful or ill- gotten gains or avoidance of potential loss made on account of such activity." Stating that Sebi has been entrusted with an important mandate of protecting investors and safeguarding the integrity of the securities market, Raman said the object and spirit of the Insider Trading Regulations would get defeated if the alleged violators of these rules are not made to face the consequences. "It therefore, becomes necessary for Sebi to take steps for impounding and retaining the loss averted by the persons mentioned (in the orders)," he said in his interim order. Putting an end to a raging controversy, the Supreme Court on Thursday refused to stay the notification for using the None Of The Above option in Rajya Sabha polls in Gujarat. The Congress petition in the apex court had sought to quash and declare the circulars issued by Election Commission in January 2014 and later in November 2015 as "void". The election watchdog had made the NOTA option available in the Rajya Sabha elections via these circulars. The court issued a notice to the Election Commission, seeking its response within two weeks, and said that it will be treated as a constitutional question of whether NOTA applies to the election to the Council of States. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) had also objected to the use of NOTA, saying that it did not go with the spirit of indirect elections as it allows one to reject all candidates. What is NOTA? NOTA, or None Of The Above, option appears at the bottom of EVM or ballot paper, below the names of all the contestants. This option allows a voter to reject all the candidates in any election. It was included in the EVMs and ballot papers by virtue of a Supreme Court judgment in September 2013 which directed the Election Commission to make necessary provision in the ballot papers/EVMs for None of the Above (NOTA) option so that the electors who do not wish to vote for any of the candidates can exercise their right not to vote for any candidate without violation of the secrecy of their decision. The Supreme Court had justified the inclusion of NOTA by saying that it would force political parties to project clean candidates in an election. The court said that since all citizens have the "right to vote", one must also have the right to reject all candidates as part of their fundamental right to speech and expression in the Constitution. Prior to this judgment, there was a similar provision in which one could refuse all the candidates in the fray and exercise his or her right to vote. To do that, a voter had to go to the Presiding Officer at the polling booth and fill form 17A. This, however, did not allow for anonymity. Symbol of NOTA (Image: Wikipedia, CC-BY-SA) The symbol consists a cross over the list of candidates depicting the decision of the voter not to select any of the candidates. It was designed by the professors of National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad. What if NOTA gets maximum votes? As per Election Commission's note, even if the number of electors opting for NOTA option is more than the number of votes polled by any of the candidates, the candidate who secures the largest number of votes has to be declared elected. So while the provision ensures that a voter has right to refuse, it does not mean that no candidate will be elected and the election for that seat will be cancelled. Which other countries have such a provision? According to Association of Democratic Reforms, apart from India, France, Belgium, Bangladesh, Brazil, Greece, Ukraine, Chile, Finland, Sweden, Spain and Columbia are countries where NOTA or similar voting practice is allowed. Few states like Nevada and Texas in the US also allow it. Bulgaria also joined the list in 2016. External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj said on Thursday that the solution to the Doklam standoff with China should be solved through diplomatic talks and trade rather than going to war. Swaraj was speaking in the Rajya Sabha after the Opposition questioned her over the border tensions. Swaraj said that the tri-junction border dispute between India, China and Bhutan has come under "renewed focus" over the past few weeks. She expressed confidence that India's attempts at diplomatic talks would lead to a peaceful solution. Swaraj also said that Bhutan is an ally of India and that it is India's "duty to protect its friend." She also attacked Congress Vice-President Rahul Gandhi on his meeting with Chinese Ambassador Luo Zhaohui in July when tensions were at their peak. She said that Gandhi should have consulted Prime Minister Narendra Modi before the meeting. Answer: Virgin Hyperloop. Hyperloop One's prototype pod successfully ran as fast as 310 kilometres per hour on July 29, the company announced on Wednesday. According to the company, the pod zoomed across in a 500-meter-long tube, out of which only 300-meters of stator was used for propulsion. It was the fastest test yet for the new mode of transportation currently under development. The test was carried out using the prototype passenger pod for the first time, making Hyperloop One the first company to have a full-scale Hyperloop system. The tube at DevLoop testing facility in Nevada, USA was nearly airless after it was depressurized to the "equivalent of air at 200,000 feet above sea level," the company said in a blog post. In a blog written by the company's co-founders Josh Giegel and Shervin Pishevar said "You can hear the sound of the Hyperloop. That is the sound of the future of public transportation." In May, Hyperloop One had successfully completed the first full-scale test of the technology at the same site. The test had proven the workability after the test vehicle travelled at a speed of roughly 102 kilometres per hour) for a short distance. Hyperloop is being pitched as a new means of transportation wherein passengers and cargo will travel in pods at near supersonic speeds. The pods will use electromagnetic propulsion and magnetic levitation technology (mag-lev) inside their nearly airless tubes, to travel at a speed of more than 1126 kmph - faster than the Boeing 747. The Los Angeles-based company had in May also announced that it is in talks with the Indian government to partially build and operate the vehicle on some of the major routes of the country. Nitin Gadkari Union minister Nitin Gadkari today asked officials of the environment, road and other ministries to expedite approvals holding back the ambitious Rs 12,000 crore Char Dham connectivity project. Chairing a meeting of a group of ministers on infrastructure, Gadkari said 18 proposals of the ambitious Char Dham project were scuttled in absence of various clearances which cannot be tolerated as the decision to build the new alignment was taken after a major catastrophe in Uttarakhand. "There should not be any delay in the Rs 12,000-crore project for developing 900 km of National Highways in Uttarakhand for improving connectivity to Char Dham pilgrimage centres," Gadkari said during the meeting, as per officials who were present at the meeting. The meeting was attended by Coal and Power Minister Piyush Goyal, Environment Minister Harsh Vardhan, officials of various ministries, including Railways and Defence, as well Uttarakhand. Prime Minister Narendra Modi had laid the foundation stone of the ambitious Char Dham project last year. The project aims at improving connectivity to Char Dham pilgrimage centres -- Kedarnath, Badrinath, Gangotri and Yamunotri in the Himalayas. Uttarakhand government officials present during the meeting pointed out a notification by the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change declaring 40 square km area near river Bhagirathi as an eco sensitive zone. Gadkari urged his forest counterpart to look into the matter as this was not only holding up Char Dham project but causing delays in Namami Gange and Border Road Projects as well, the officials said. Gadkari urged his forest counterpart to look into the matter as this was not only holding up Char Dham project but causing delays in Namami Gange and Border Road Projects as well, the officials said. Asking the environment and forest ministry to expedite clearances to 32 other highway projects, the Road, Highways and Shipping Minister also requested for exempting NHIDCL projects within 100 km of LoC or international boundaries from sending proposals to regional offices of MoEFCC, as in the case of Defence. The issue of transfer of Defence land to National Highways Authority of India at various places was also discussed in the meeting as five such cases are pending, the officials said. Asking Railway officials to expedite rail projects in Maharashtra, Gadkari said delays in infrastructure projects were causing socio-economic imbalances. Besides, the Railways was requested to provide 35 acres of land at Varanasi for the intermodal station. A number of port projects including that of JNPT, Kandla and Kamrajar were also discussed during the meeting. crowdfunding Actor-director Rajat Kapoor, who was recently seen in thriller Drishyam, was having a tough time financing his next film. A chat with his friend Chet Jain, also the founder of Crowdera, gave him both the idea and encouragement to ask people for money to fund his film. Kapoor now has partnered with the US-headquartered Crowdera, which has an office in India. He is looking to raise Rs 2.5 crore for his upcoming movie, RKR Kay. Independent filmmakers receive recognition at film festivals, but when it comes to theatrical releases very few films see the light of day. It is the big budget movies backed by studios that take away majority of the screen share. Talking to Moneycontrol, Jain said, There are many scripts lined up but the filmmakers have been unable to ship the idea. In what could be a possible solution for independent directors, Crowdera is looking at opening a channel for not just raising funds for films but also to distribute them. Crowdera plans to run a campaign for 3-4 months to raise funds for Kapoors new venture. "He (Rajat kapoor) wants to raise USD 2 million in next three years for his three upcoming films." With this new partnership, Jain is also looking at making Crowdera an alternate channel for independent directors. As more and more filmmakers are opting for crowd funding, here's an explainer on what the concept is all about and how it can be used by filmmakers. What is crowd funding? Crowdfunding is defined as solicitation of funds from multiple investors through a web-based platform or social networking site for a specific project, business venture or social cause. In simple words, people lend money to support a cause or an idea. Is the idea doable for filmmakers in India? Crowdfunding is a great option for independent filmmakers to finance their creative ideas," said Piyush Jain, co-founder and CEO of Impact Guru. He added that film-making is the biggest category by funds raised among creative projects for Impact Guru. However, crowdfunding for creative projects still does not have much traction in India. It is usually not easy for filmmakers to raise such a large amount of money back home. What are the returns for people who contribute? There are no monetary returns, but there is a reward policy where we give things (props) used in the film, said Helly Thakkar, an independent filmmaker, who approached Wishberry for a 90-minute feature called Roya which means a dream in Persian. Meaning, that as a memory, the filmmakers give away props to the people who invested into their films. What could be the possible benefits of getting money via crowd funding platforms? There could be two advantage of crowd sourcing, points out Piyush Jain one is getting funds without giving away an equity stake in your venture and another is making the creative idea/concept viral and initiating a discussion on social media. Another perk of letting people fund a filmmakers project is that there is no influence of the investors and they are independent to take the creative calls, said Thakkar. Why are filmmakers choosing crowd funding to get money? Distribution cost along with marketing expenses are not affordable for a film with a low budget. Hence, the release of such films are restricted and a large audience is unaware about the film hitting the theatres. There is just one theatre per 1.6 lakh people and if a Khan or Kapoor film gets around 4,000 screens, then its a struggle for other filmmakers, Chet Jain added. It has been a two-year long wait for Kapoor who was ready with the script, but was struggling to find producers to back the project. But now with the help of Crowdera, Kapoor is seeking donations starting from Rs 500 to Rs 10 lakh. Makers that tapped the crowd funding platform Two years ago director Soumitra Ranade for the remake of the 1980 film Albert Pinto ko Gussa Kyun Aata Hai sought help from a crowd funding platform Wishberry to raise Rs 30 lakh for the film. Another film Punyakoti, a Sanskrit animation collected Rs 30 lakh. Wishberry has also helped another filmmaker, Kanika Batra raise funds for her film 'Project Papa'. Through crowdfunding, she raised Rs 30,65,010 from 154 backers for pre-production in April 2016. What is Sebi's view on crowdsourcing? The market regulator has time and again questioned the crowdfunding platforms and has said that digital platforms are neither authorised nor recognised under any law governing the securities market. Source: www.kremlin.ru India on Wednesday stated that it had not pulled back its troops from Doklam region, rejecting China's claims that the number of Indian soldiers had gone down. Earlier on Wednesday, China through a 15-page statement had claimed that the number of Indian soldiers present in the Doklam region, amid stand-off with their counter-parts from the People's Liberation Army, had reduced from 400 to just over 40 by the end of July. The statement issued by China's foreign ministry included maps, photographs and documents tried to suggest that the issue had started to de-escalate after India backed down. The background The issue first started when Indian soldiers physically blocked an attempt by the Chinese army to construct a motorable road in what India maintains is Bhutan's territory. The Doklam region where the entire stand-off is unfolding is in the 'trijunction' of Bhutan, India's Sikkim and China's Tibet. India says that China unilaterally broke the status-quo by attempting to construct the road. China maintains that India's "illegal action" of "trespassing" not only violates China's territorial sovereignty but also challenges Bhutan's "sovereignty and independence". Bhutan, which has friendly relations with India and no diplomatic ties with Beijing, does not want to see an armed conflict between its bigger neighbours. India's National Security Advisor (NSA) Ajit Doval met his Chinese counterpart at the sidelines of the BRICS NSA meeting in Beijing in late July, but the meeting failed to defuse tensions. India has said that it is ready for talks on the issue but maintains that peace is a prerequisite. China has also expressed willingness to talk subject to India's withdrawal from Doklam. In a disguised attack, Chinese President Xi Jinping said that the People's Liberation Army will defeat "all invasions" and will "never allow any people, organisation or political party to split any part of Chinese territory at any time, in any form." What are they up to? Some experts have warned that China stands to lose more from the stand-off than India does. Anthony Wong Dong, a military expert based in Macau told South China Morning Post, "China is playing psychological warfare... but it should realise that even if it defeated India in a war on land, it would be impossible for the PLA navy to break Indias maritime containment. He further cautioned that Beijings manoeuvres are pushing New Delhi further away and that that it could lead to India becoming an enemy. Sun Shihai, an adviser to the Chinese Association for South Asian Studies said, Beijing has been trying to lure India to join Belt and Road projects because both countries stand to benefit from them strategically and economically. (But) The latest tensions have soured bilateral ties and the growing mistrust will only make New Delhi more reluctant to make a decision. Geostrategist Brahma Chellaney told The Times of India, "By calling the bullys bluff, India has set an example for other Asian states to emulate." Less than a fortnight before India and Pakistan's Independence Day celebrations, unidentified hackers took over the Pakistan government's official website and replaced its contents with India's national anthem and August 15 Independence Day greetings, according to several media reports. The hacked website was down for a little while before coming back up a little before 4pm and at the time of this report it is still inaccessible. The matter came to light after screenshots of the hacked website were shared on social media sites. This incident comes almost four months after a pro-Pakistan group hacked the websites of four prominent Indian institutes Indian Institute of Technology Delhi, IIT Varanasi, Aligarh Muslim University and Delhi University. This is not the first time that Pakistan government's website has been hacked. Pakistan celebrates its Independence Day on August 14, while India marks its freedom from the British the following day. Education Montgomery County Community College will present the spring installment of the interview/talk show program Issues and Insights April 20 from 12:30 to 2 p.m. in Science Center room 214, 340 DeKalb Pike, Blue Bell. The programs will be simulcast to the Colleges West Campus in South Hall room 216, 101 College Drive, Pottstown. Dr. Kolsky will offer a humorous presentation, Carrots, Sticks and Politics: A State of the Nation and the World Message. In this speech, he will provide his interpretation of domestic and international politics and then welcome questions from the audience for discussion. Issues and Insights, is free and open to the public. For information, contact Dr. Thomas Kolsky, professor of political science, at 215-641-6380 or tkolsky@mc3.edu. Montgomery County Community Colleges STEM Scholars Program will host a STEM Jam! open house April 25 from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. in the Advanced Technology Center at the Colleges Central Campus, 340 DeKalb Pike, Blue Bell. The drop-in event is designed for students interested in learning more about careers in science, technology, engineering and mathematics. Activities will include STEM program information and career advising, STEM speakers throughout the day from industry and academia, micro-helicopter and robotics competitive obstacle courses and demonstrations and static models of STEM student and faculty work. For more information about STEM Jam! or STEM programs at MCCC, contact William Brownlowe at wbrownlowe@mc3.edu or 215-641-6644, or Robin Zuhlke at 215-619-7440 or rzuhlke@mc3.edu. Temple Ambler, located at 580 Meetinghouse Road, presents the following events: International Club Global Bazaar April 15 from 5 to 8 p.m. The Ambler Campus International Club invites all students, faculty, staff and the community to celebrate a multitude of diverse cultures, which will be showcased at the organizations Global Bazaar. This family friendly event will highlight cultural traditions and celebrations in Asia, Europe, the Middle East, South American, North America and Africa through music, entertainment, food and informative displays developed and presented by students at the Ambler Campus. Young visitors will be provided with passports, which they may get stamped at each country they visit. Prizes will be awarded to world travelers who talk to cultural representatives, answer questions about the countries theyve visited and take part in fun-filled activities designed to help them learn about the rich diversity of cultures found throughout the world. Refreshments will be served. The event is free. For more information, call 267-468-8108 or e-mail tuc36466@temple.edu. EarthFest 2011 April 29 from 9:30 a.m. to 2 p.m. More than 75 exhibitors, including the Philadelphia Zoo, The Franklin Institute, the Academy of Natural Sciences, the Elmwood Park Zoo and the Insectarium, will take part in EarthFest 2011. School students of all ages are invited to attend and develop displays of their own. EarthFest partner the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society also offers its Kids Grow Expo, featuring the Junior Flower Show, as part of the event. For more information, call 267-468-8108 or e-mail duffyj@temple.edu. Annual Spring Plant Sale May 7 from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. The plant sale an Ambler Campus tradition dating back to the early 1900s will feature woody plants and perennials in portable sizes, hardy trees, shrubs, and vines, native plants that are attractive to wildlife, herbs, and hanging baskets. There will also be numerous special plants for sale to highlight Amblers special anniversary year. Garden books and garden tools will also be available for sale. Students, staff, and volunteers from the Department of Landscape Architecture and Horticulture and the Ambler Arboretum Advisory Committee will be available to answer questions. All proceeds from the Spring Plant Sale will support the Ambler Arboretum Fund and the Pi Alpha Xi National Honor Society. Information: 267-468-8001 or judy.shatz@temple.edu. Learn more at www.ambler.temple.edu/anniversary. June Homecoming/Louise Bush-Brown Garden Dedication June 5 from 12:30 to 2 p.m. (June Homecoming), Bright Hall Lounge; 2 p.m. (Garden Dedication), Ambler Campus Formal Perennial Gardens. Tickets June Homecoming: Participant $18 per person; Sustainer $25 per person; Benefactor $40 per person. The 2011 June Homecoming, sponsored by the School of Environmental Design Alumni Association, will include the Alumni Association annual meeting and luncheon. June Homecoming will be followed by the formal dedication of Temple University Amblers Formal Perennial Gardens as the Louise Bush-Brown Formal Gardens. During this 100th anniversary of the campus, Temple University Ambler and the Ambler Arboretum of the Temple University is honoring Louise Bush-Browns many contributions to the history of the campus by formally dedicating the gardens in her honor. During the program, campus Executive William Parshall will welcome guests, Ambler Arboretum Director Jenny Rose Carey will speak about the Bush-Browns and the history of the garden, and an official ribbon cutting will be held for the Louise Bush-Brown Formal Garden. Following the ribbon cutting, guests are invited to take a tour of the gardens, which will wend their way to the Campus Greenhouse for the School of Environmental Designs annual Plant Auction. Information (Garden Dedication): 267-468-8001 or judy.shatz@temple.edu. Information (June Homecoming): 215-482-0722. Learn more at www.ambler.temple.edu/anniversary. Northview Garden Tour and Fundraiser for the Ambler Arboretum June 12 from noon to 5 p.m. Call for reservations. Tickets: $15 per person or $20 at the door. In addition to the gardens of the Ambler Arboretum of Temple University, Arboretum Director Jenny Rose Carey has a garden oasis all her own right in Ambler Northview. Visitors will have the opportunity to take self-guided tours throughout the many gardens, where garden experts will be available to answer questions about the various designs. The Ambler Keystone Chapter of the Womans National Farm and Garden Association will also provide tea and refreshments. All proceeds from the tours will support the Ambler Arboretum of Temple University. Information or to register: 267-468-8001 or judy.shatz@temple.edu. Learn more at www.ambler.temple.edu/anniversary. The Senior Adult Activities Center of Montgomery County, 536 George Street, Norristown, will hold the following events: SAAC Adult Day Care, an alternative to Nursing Home Care is available for information call 610-275-1960 Volunteers are needed for Meals on Wheels Program (call the number above) SAACs Fifth Avenue Boutique opens Monday through Friday from 10 a.m.-1:30 p.m. Exercise with Theresa will be held every Monday, Wednesday and Friday at 1 p.m. Dance class is held every Monday at 10 a.m. Tai Chi is held every Monday at 10 a.m. Yoga is held every Tuesday at 10:30 a.m. Line Dancing is held every Thursday at 10:30 a.m. Dancing with Joan is held every Wednesday at 10:30 a.m. Sculpture Class is held Wednesdays from 2 to 3:30 p.m. Why Should I Learn Spanish? will be held Wednesdays at 10:30 a.m. Generations On-Line computer classes for seniors will be held Monday through Friday from 8 a.m. 4 p.m. computers are available during those hours. Health Living will be held every Tuesday at 1 p.m. Boomer U will hold the following events. Boomer U is located at 45 Forest Avenue, Ambler. Registration & payment is required for all events: 215-619-8863. Pilates Class is held Wednesdays and Fridays at 9:30 a.m. First class is free; please bring a mat. For information call 610-291-5376. Blue Bell School of Dance, 921 Penllyn Blue Bell Pike, Blue Bell, hosts Argentine Tango Classes and a Milonga dance party every Friday evening. Lessons start at 8:30 p.m. followed by dancing at 9:30 p.m. Andrew Conway, master Argentine Tango dancer, instructor and performer and his partner Linda Chase will instruct. All levels welcome and no partner is needed. Refreshments will be served. Fee is $12 per person and includes lesson and dancing. Information: 215-634-1101 or www.amoretango.com. The Montgomery Hospital Medical Center will offer the following classes: Childbirth Education Class- all parents are invited to participate, including those who are delivering at other hospitals. For more information on maternity services or classes, call 610-270-2020. CPR and First Aid Courses are offered for beginners to experiences health care providers. Call 610-270-2313. The Ambler SAAC (Senior Adult Activities Center), located at 45 Forest Ave in Ambler will hold the following events: Tai Chi every Monday and Thursday at 11 a.m. Yoga is every Tuesday at 1 p.m. and Friday at 10:30 a.m. Strength and balance training every Wednesday at 10 a.m. Armchair Aerobics is held every Monday at 10 a.m. Gourmet Weight Wise every Thursday at 12:30. Fitness Center and Pool Room open daily 8 a.m.-4 p.m. The Diabetes Education Center will offer day and evening classes each month. Health insurance pays for diabetes education classes. Preregistration is required. Call 610-270-2301. For Kids & Families The Ambler Kiwanis Club will host its annual Easter Egg Hunt April 26 at 10 a.m. in Ambler Borough Park, located just off of the intersection of Hendricks Street and Valley Brook Road. Members of the Wissahickon Key Club will assist Kiwanians in hiding thousands of wrapped chocolate eggs in a designated area of the park. Also hidden will be plastic colored eggs, which are redeemed for prizes. Elementary school children are separated by age. Upper Dublin Parks & Recreation will hold its 21st annual Storybook Egg-Stravaganza April 15 fom 6 to 7:30 p.m. at the Upper Dublin Township Building. Toddlers and preschoolers love this annual event where photo opportunities with favorite friends abound! Treasures are collected from UDP&Rs assortment of lifesize cutouts of favorite cartoon characters from Disney, Sesame Street, Nickelodeon and other well-known animation. Children can have their picture taken with Bugsy OHare; bring your own camera. And dont forget a basket for goodies! $7 for UD residents; $12 for non-residents. Pre-register at 215-643-1600 ext. 3443. Splash Week is a free week-long program that teaches children and families basic swimming skills and water safety practices. All YMCA branches will host multiple classes each day from April 11 to 15. For more information, contact the Ambler Area YMCA at 215-628-9950. Healthy Kids Day is April 16 from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. The day is filled with fun, engaging and artistic activities that cultivate healthy living as part of the YMCAs larger efforts to help more kids and families become physically active. All activities are free and open to the community. For more information, contact the Ambler YMCA at 215-628-9950. No reservation is required. The Ambler Area YMCA has added several new programs for area youngsters. Classes are held late afternoons or evenings on various weekdays. For more information, visit philaymca.org or call 215-628-9950. Basic Beading: Ages: 10+. Wednesdays 7 to 7:45 p.m. This class will teach you the fundamentals of wiring and stringing along with how color can be used to create unique and vibrant beadwork design. You will create various jewelry including earrings, bracelets, charm pendants and much more! Supplies will be provided. Bringing your own jewelry pliers or tools would be a plus. Messin with the Masters: Ages: 8-12. Thursdays 7 to 7:45 p.m. Learn about some of the worlds greatest artists. You will be inspired to create your own Starry Night with oil pastels and tempera paints, a tissue paper painted Monet garden, a Picasso head using scraps of paper, a Georgia OKeeffe clay flower bowl and a Rousseau jungle collage. Super Scientist: Ages: 5-7. Mondays 4:30 to 5:15 p.m. Well be concocting chemistry experiments such as making slime, mixing potions and having fun with magnet magic. Your budding little scientist will enhance his/her creative thinking and motor skills and to top it off will learn that science can be serious fun. Wacky Junk Art: Ages: 8-12. Thursdays 6 to 6:45 p.m. Why throw it away! Instead join us to make household junk into aliens from outer space, wacky specs, crazy hats, body masks or a recycled train. Globe Trotters: Ages: 4-6. Tuesdays 4:30 to 5:15 p.m. Youre never too young to start thinking globally. Each week, we explore a new country through crafts, games, music, stories and even some taste-testing. A perfect introduction to our great big world! Crazy about Crafts: Ages: 5-7, Thursdays 4:30 to 5:15 p.m. Let your childs creative juices flow with our fun arts and crafts projects each week. Fine motor skills and creative thinking skills will be enhanced with this crafty class. Come out and join the Ambler Area YMCAs Teen and Junior Leaders Club. Participants are given the freedom to plan community service projects year round and truly make a difference in the lives of people in need. Those in Teen and Junior Leaders also attend leadership retreats all along the East Coast three times a year and meet other leaders who are doing the same great work in their respective areas. Dont miss out on this inspiring opportunity. Teen Leaders, ages 13-17, meet every Wednesday from 6 to 7:30 p.m. Junior Leaders, ages 10-12, will begin in the spring and will meet every Monday. For more information, contact Mike Miles, Teen Director, 215- 628-9950 x 1540 or mmiles@philaymca.org. Did you know that the new Ambler Area YMCA holds childrens birthday parties at its site for members and non members as well. The Ambler Y does all the work from start to finish and birthday parties include a personalized cake, ice cream, beverage and paper products. Parties are held on Saturday and Sunday afternoons and include two party hosts to lead activities, set-up, clean-up and assist with serving. You can have a Splash Party for children ages six to 12 in the new zero depth entry pool with water slide and spray fountains. Up to 25 children have exclusive use of the pool area with 30 minutes in the party room. Sports Parties are offered for kids ages four to 12 with age appropriate activities and games, and sports such as floor hockey, soccer, basketball or dodge ball. Children ages three to five years of age will enjoy parties in the Family Active Center with use of the Moon Bounce and organized activities, such as parachute play and songs. For information, 215-628-9950 ext. 1583. Community Events at the Ambler Y: -YAchievers YMCA Achievers is a developmentally based, extracurricular, educational and team mentoring program designed to help students in grades five through 12 prepare for fulfilled livelihoods in college and beyond. Participation is free and all students in this program receive a free YMCA membership. Registration for the 2009 program begins now. You do not need to be a YMCA member to utilize these special services. Call 215-628-9950 to register. Greater Norristown Art Leagues Childrens Weeklong Summer Art Camps will be held at 800 West Germantown Pike in East Norriton, 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Monday through Friday throughout the summer. The cost per session is $125 per student for ages 6 and up. Jo Ann Cooksey Bono teaches an introduction to basic drawing skills and techniques from 10 a.m. until the lunch break each day. In the afternoon sessions, Mary Vogel Lozinak involves the students in hands on projects such as collage, papermaking, T-shirt printing, 3D design and sculpy clay. Fridays Graduation Day includes an art show, awards ceremony and reception for parents, siblings, grandparents and friends. All supplies are included. Students provide their own lunch. A refrigerator is available and the building is air-conditioned. This is the 15th year to run this successful program. Both instructors are professional artists with State Police and Child Abuse Clearances. To register, call Jo Ann at 610-279-1008, or register on-line at www.gnal.org. Health Dresher Physical Therapy is hosting an interactive seminar discussing its Golf Assessment Progam April 30 from 10 a.m. to noon at Dresher Physical Therapy, 1075 Virginia Drive, Suite 200, Fort Washington. Physical therapist Chris Miller, certified through the Titleist Performance Institute, will discuss why your body may be the most important piece of golf equipment you invest in and how this can drastically improve your game. $10 in advance; $15 at the door. Call 215-619-4545 to reserve your spot. The Chestnut Hill Center for Enrichment, Center on the Hill and Chestnut Hill Hospital will host a Senior Health and Resource Fair April 14 from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. at Chestnut Hill Presbyterian Church, 8855 Germantown Ave. The event is free. For more information, call 215-248-0180 or e-mail chseniors@cavtel.net. The Ambler Senior Adult Activities Center is hosting Help Yourself to Health, a new six-week workshop for older adults with ongoing health conditions such as arthritis, diabetes, high blood pressure, anxiety, heart disease and others. The free workshop will take place at the Ambler Senior Adult Activities Center, 45 Forest Ave. on six Thursdays, May 12 through June 16 from 9:30 a.m. to noon. Although there is no charge to participate, registration is required. To register, call 215-619-8863. The Ambler Senior Adult Activities Center is sponsoring an eight-week program called A Matter of Balance: Managing Concerns About Falls. Presented by the Montgomery County Health Department, this workshop will be held on Tuesdays, May 3 to June 21 from 10 a.m. to noon at the Ambler Center, 45 Forest Ave. If you pre-register by April 27, the fee is only $5! Registration at the first class is $10. (Checks should be payable to SAAC and will benefit our Meals on Wheels program that serves homebound seniors.) A workbook will be provided and refreshments will be served. Call 215-619-8863 to register or for more information. Fort Washington Wellness Center classes are ongoing. There are several offered during lunch or right after work, for your convenience: Boot Camp from noon to 1 p.m. on Monday; Zumba is MWF from 11 a.m. to noon and Friday at 4 p.m.; there are 25 cycling classes; Ashtanga and Vinyasana Yoga and Pilates; and a group Womens Strength Training class M-F from 10 to 11 a.m. Questions, call Cathy DeMarco at 215-641-1245. Following the success of other local area programs, Impact Sports and Upper Dublin Parks and Recreation are delighted to team up again to offer a spring program for the 2011 season! Upper Dublin area children ages 3-5 years old can attend a Sports Program featuring their favorite sports games; soccer, rugby, hockey, track and field, basketball, and more. The program will start on April 27 and run through June 1. Cost for the program is $85 for the six weeks. The classes will be running 12- 1 p.m.; 1- 2 p.m.; 2- 3 p.m. For more info or to register, call Upper Dublin Township on 215 643 1600 or visit their website a http://www.upperdublin.net. Spring Aquatic Programs UDHS Pool: -Summer is just around the corner Community Aquatic Programs at the UDHS Pool can help get you into shape! Programs begin in March; preregistration is required. Shallow Water Aerobics Two 5-week programs, Wednesday nights, 8-8:45 p.m., $40R/$50NR. Adult Swim Instructions Two 5-week programs, Wednesday nights, 7-8 p.m., $50R/$60NR -Open Rec Swims are fun for the whole family! Come out on Fridays from 7-9 p.m. or Saturdays from 1-4 p.m. and enjoy use of the pool and diving area. Fridays are offered through June 17; Saturdays are offered March 12-May 21. -Join a growing group of adult lap swimmers and water walkers. Lanes are set aside evenings and weekends for use; lanes are shared. Monday Thursday from 7:30-9:30 p.m.; Fridays from 7-9 p.m. and Saturdays (March 12-May 21) from 1-4 p.m. -Private Swimming & Diving Lessons for ages 3-adult are offered at the UDHS Pool through a partnership with the Upper Dublin Aquatic Club (UDAC). Visit the UDAC website for more information, www.udac.us, and click the link to UDHS Private Lessons. -Looking for local programs for US Masters Swimming (adults) or Water Polo (all ages)? UDAC and UDSD are working together to develop programs that will be offered at the UDHS Pool. Add your name to Interest Lists by emailing slohoefer@upperdublin.net. emails will be sent about clinics and program start dates. Questions about Community Aquatic Programs at the UDHS Pool, group use of the pool or pool rental? Contact Susan Lohoefer, Facility & Community Affairs Manager at slohoefer@upperdublin.net or call 215-643-8800 x8994. SilverSneakers Fitness Program. The Healthyways SilverSneakers Fitness Program is a result-oriented program that enables older adults to take charge of their health. The program is an innovative blend of physical activity, healthy lifestyle and socially oriented programing. Members of the program are eligible for a free YMCA membership, with use of the pool and exercise equipment, along with customized classes designed for older adults who want to improve their strength, flexibility, balance and endurance. If you are a subscriber to Independence Blue Cross (Personal Choice 65 PPO) or Keystone 65 HMO, Bravo Health, or Health Options Programs (HOP), call the Ambler Area YMCA, 215-628-9950 or Hatboro Area YMCA, 215-674-4545. You can also visit www.silversneakers.com. Zumba Fitness offers Zumba dance/fitness classes at Academy of Dance and Music/BBAD Studio located at 1524 DeKalb Pike in Blue Bell (behind Sherwin Williams). Classes are offered three times a week: Tuesdays at 6 p.m., Thursdays at 6:30 p.m. and Saturdays at 8 a.m. For a free trial pass for your first class, email us at info@danceandmusic.biz or call 610-277-2557. For more info, visit our site at www.academyofdanceandmusic.org. Chestnut Hill Health Systems presents the following Health Education Programs: FITNESS CLASSES Golden Yoga: A Breathing, Stretching and Relaxation Class. Fridays, 2:30-3:30 p.m. Lea Auditorium, Chestnut Hill Hospital, 8835 Germantown Ave. Registration for four classes at a time required. Golden Yoga is Classical Yoga, adapted by the SKY Foundation, to accommodate those who have difficulty getting up and down from the floor. The program includes postures, breathing, relaxation and meditation techniques, all performed while sitting in a chair and standing. Registration required. Call 215-247-3029. Cost: $20 for 4 classes per month. Tai Chi: Tuesdays & Thursdays, 8:30 9:30 a.m. Springfield Residence, 8601 Stenton Ave. Classes, for the novice or beginner/intermediate student, are designed to improve balance, power, posture, coordination, flexibility and mental focus. Slow, gentle movements are modified to most everyones abilities. For more information or to sign up for a free introductory class, call 215-882-2804. Cost: $8 per class/paid monthly. SUPPORT GROUPS Weight Loss Surgery Support Group: Fourth Wednesday of the month, 7-8 p.m. Williams Conference Room, Chestnut Hill Hospital, 8835 Germantown Ave., Philadelphia. Join us for a monthly get-together where well share information for those interested in weight loss surgery, learn from guest speakers discussing current news on issues including lifestyle modification, nutrition and exercise and provide ongoing support for those who have completed surgery. Registration required. Call 215-753-2000. Breast Cancer Networking Group: Fourth Tuesday of the month 5:30 7 p.m. Williams Conference Room, Chestnut Hill Hospital, 8835 Germantown Ave., Philadelphia. A free, confidential support group for women living with a diagnosis of breast cancer designed to provide a forum for sharing information, feelings and concerns associated with breast cancer. Facilitated by Tish Wakefield, LCSW, Oncology Social Worker. Registration required. To register or for more information, call 215-248-8047. New Moms Support Groups Tuesdays 10:30 a.m. 12 p.m.; contact Jeanine ORourke, MSW or 2:30 4 p.m.; contact Susan Schack, Ph.D Volunteer Conference Room, Chestnut Hill Hospital, 8835 Germantown Ave. The Center for Postpartum Depression at Chestnut Hill Hospital is pleased to offer two new support groups to support new moms. Both groups will be run by experienced mental health professionals who really get it when it comes to new motherhood and juggling relationships, extended family, work/family balance and self-care. If you are experiencing new mom challenges that often heighten anxiety and involve hormonally driven depression, join us for an informative and supportive forum to connect with other moms. Infants are welcome. $30 per session (flexible based on need). Registration is required. Call Dr. Schack, 646-265-2484, or Ms. ORourke, 215-206-2931. Man to Man Prostate Cancer Support Group Third Thursday of the month 8-9 a.m. Williams Conference Room, Chestnut Hill Hospital, 8835 Germantown Ave. A networking group for men diagnosed with prostate cancer designed to provide education, support and encouragement. Spouses and partners welcome. Harry M. Baer, MD, Chief, Urology Division, will host Ask the Doctor. Registration required. Call 215-248-8325. Contact the Senior Center by phone 215-248-0180 or email (chseniors@cavtel.net) with your questions about these programs or any of our on-going activities and classes. Holy Redeemer HomeCare and Hospice seeks compassionate and emotionally mature volunteers to provide support to local hospice patients and their families in Bucks, Montgomery and Philadelphia counties. Volunteers may also assist with pet therapy and administrative work within the hospice department and are requested to have daytime availability. Hospice patient care volunteers visit with patients in their homes or nursing facilities once a week for two to three hours. They provide emotional support and companionship to patients and family members, assist with errands or provide respite for caregivers. Bereavement volunteers support the families of hospice patients following the loss of a loved one, while administrative volunteers assist with typing, mailings and/or filing. Hospice care workers provide a great service to families and loved ones of hospice patients. Many volunteers also report a great deal of personal satisfaction as a result of their services. Patient care and bereavement volunteers complete an application and attend an 18-hour volunteer training program that covers the medical, psychological and spiritual aspects of hospice volunteering. Day and evening training programs are offered. To sign up for volunteer opportunities in Pennsylvania, contact Holy Redeemer Volunteer Coordinator Jean Francis at 215-698-3737 or email jfrancis@holyredeemer.com. Librarytalk Upper Dublin Public Library, 805 Loch Alsh Avenue, Ft. Washington, 215-628-8744 www.upperdublinlibrary.org APRIL CHILDRENS PROGRAMS: Storytimes: Please register in the library. o Wee Ones: 0 to 23 months Thursdays and Fridays 10:30 to 10:50 a.m. o Tiny Tots: age 2. Wednesdays 10:30 to 10:50 a.m. and Fridays 11 to 11:20 a.m. o Jr. Book Lovers: ages 3 to 6. Tuesdays 10:30 to 11 a.m. o Bedtime Storytimes: 7 to 7:30 p.m. April 20 and 27. Wear your jammies, bring your teddy & hear Miss Barbara read bedtime stories! For ages 3 to 6. APRIL TEEN PROGRAMS: North Hills Library Teens April 28 from 4 to 6 p.m. Movie Matinee APRIL UDPL ADULT PROGRAMS: NEW! ESL Conversation Group. Tuesdays from 7 to 8 p.m. Interested in practicing your English in a safe and caring environment? Come to our conversation group and improve your skills! Please register with Kay Klocko at 215-628-8744 or kklocko@mclinc.org. One-on-One Computer Mentoring. Get personalized assistance from experienced computer volunteers! Sign-up for a one-hour session. Limit one session per month. Please register contact info above. Book Groups Please register with Kay Klocko 215-628-8744. o Daytimers: April 21 at 1:30 p.m. Tired of book groups where you all read the same book? Read any fiction or non-fiction book on this months theme: Explorers. Please register. Meetings: Annual Meeting of the Friends of UDPL: April 14 at 1 p.m. Board of Directors: April 20 at 7 p.m. Blue Bell Library www.wvpl.org Upcoming Events: The Wissahickon Valley Public Library, 650 Skippack Pike (Route 73) in Blue Bell, is diagonally across from the Blue Bell Inn. Call 215-643-1320 or visit their website at www.wvpl.org. For children and teens at Blue Bell: * Story times with guitar music by Miss Michelle, the singing librarian. * Mondays at 10:30 a.m. for all ages. * Wednesdays at 4:30 p.m. for all ages. * Fridays at 10:30 a.m. for all ages. * Family Movies, new releases, second Saturdays of the month at 1:30 p.m. * May 14 Despicable Me * June 11 Alpha and Omega * Special Events * April watch for date of spring/Easter events * April 14 at 4:30 p.m. Junior Lego Club for children ages 3 through 5. Parents and caregivers need to stay with children. * April 14 at 7 p.m. Jeopardy for ages 11 to 18. Test your book and library knowledge for prizes. Sign up to be a contestant. No sign up to be in the audience. Snacks provided. * April 16 at 1 p.m. Adult Mystery Book Group discussing The Beekeepers Apprentice by Laurie King. * April 16 at 1:30 p.m. Childrens event for One Book, Every Young Child celebration. Story and craft for book Whose Shoes? * April 19 at 7 p.m. and April 26 at 1:30 p.m.- Adult book group discusses The Professor and the Madman by Simon Winchester. Group led by Adam Button. * April 30 through May 3 Friends book sale with about 10,000 items for sale for children, teens and adults. * May sign up for Science in the Summer * June sign up for Enrichment Programs for Elementary-Age children * June sign up for Summer Reading, all ages For adults at Blue Bell: * Daytime Book Discussion Group fourth Tuesday, Jan April at 1:30 p.m. * April 26 The Professor and the Madman by Simon Winchester * Night-time Book Discussion Group third Tuesday of each month at 7 p.m. o April 19 The Professor and the Madman by Simon Winchester * Art Series with Dr. Sheldon Weintraub, docent at The Barnes and speaker at local colleges o April 27 at 2 p.m. The Art of Looking at Art-Is She Nude or Is She Naked? *Mystery Book Discussion Group, third Saturday of the month at 1 p.m.; new mystery theme each month; www.wvpl.org/programs * Yoga on Mondays at 1:30 p.m. $20 for eight classes; $5 per drop-in class. * Tai Chi on Mondays at 3 p.m. with Dr. Kurt Findeisen. $20 for eight classes; $5 per drop in class. * Philadelphia Museum of Art presents class on their Marc Chagall exhibit, April 13 at 2 p.m. * Giant Book Sale, April 29 May 3 o Starts with almost 10,000 items for children and adults! o Held during library hours. o Preview for members of the Friends of the Library, April 28 at 7 p.m. o Join the Friends and attend the preview sale. Modest fee to join. * Blooms at Blue Bell Gardening Series o May 11 at 1 p.m. Summer Bulbs by PA Horticultural Society * Knitting group Mondays and Wednesdays at 10 a.m. Work on your project or observe and learn. The groups continue year-round in the community room. * Socrates Cafe discussion group every Monday at 7 p.m. You pick the topic to discuss each week. No sign-up, nothing to read. * Bridge every Friday at 12:30 p.m. New players welcome. * Mah Jong every Wednesday at 1 p.m. New players welcome. *Chess every Wednesday at 7p.m. for adults and teens 14 and older. * Movie Matinee showing recent releases every Thursday at 2 p.m. April 14: Maos Last Dancer; April 21: Welcome to the Rileys; April 28: Conviction; May 5: Inception; May 12: Inside Job; May 19 The Kings Speech; May 26 The Fighter; June 2 Rabbit Hole; June 9 Black Swan; June 16 127 Hours * Ongoing like-new, year-round book sale for adults & children during library hours * Library opening at 10 a.m. Monday through Saturday! Ambler Library, a branch of the Wissahickon Valley Public Library, 209 Race St., 215-646-1072. www.wvpl.org. All the following events occur at the Ambler Library. * Story times with guitar music by Miss Michelle, the singing librarian. * Tuesdays at 10:30 a.m. for all ages. * Thursdays at 4:30 p.m. for all ages. * For adults: * Beading Group meets the first and third Monday of every month at 1 p.m. Work on your own projects or come to watch and learn. * Free Family History Lookup with Connie Briggs. Email Connie for an appointment at the Ambler Library. conniebriggs@comcast.net * Special Events: * April 14 at 1:30 p.m. Book Group discusses Skeletons at the Feast by Chris Bohjalian. * April 19 at 7 p.m. Travel to Paris with world traveler Harry Balin. Tea and scones at 6:30 p.m. * April 21 at 7 p.m. Art with Sara for children in fourth through seventh grades. *May 2 at 6:30 p.m. Discuss the movie Lone Star with Temple Professor Lisa Hawkins. Watch the movie ahead of time. *May 10 Robert Capucci discusses Art into Fashion. Tea and scones served at 6:30 p.m. Program at 7 p.m. *May 12 at 1:30p.m. Book Group discusses The Imperfectionists by Tom Rachman. *May 17 Tour the gardens of Devon and Southwest England with Lois McMullen. Tea and Scones at 6:30 p.m. Program at 7 p.m. *June 13 at 6:30 p.m. Discuss the movie Blade Runner with Temple Professor Lisa Hawkins. Watch the movie ahead of time. Meetings and Lectures The Unisys Blue Bell Retiree Group will meet in the Church on the Mall in the Plymouth Meeting Mall April 14 at 1:30 p.m. Kathy Sacket Young, director/trainer with the North Penn YMCA, will speak on Keeping Fit in Retirement. For more information, contact Membership Committee Chairperson Jerry Feldscher at 610-275-3538 or President Al Rollin at 215-368-4833. The next FWBA meeting will be April 28 at the Hilton Garden Inn Fort Washington. Networking begins at 11:30 a.m.; meeting from noon to 1 p.m. Leon Singletary, Principal, First Contact HR and FWBA Executive Board, will present: Social Media: How to Use It To Get More Business. Lunch is provided courtesy of the Hilton Garden Inn Fort Washington. Members are welcome to bring a guest. An RSVP is requested by return email or 215-628-0313. Big Brothers Big Sisters Southeastern PA is hosting a information sessions over the next few weeks on how to become a Big Brother. The information sessions will take place: April 16 at noon, April 19 at 8 a.m. and April 28 at 6 p.m. All sessions will be held at the groups Norristown Office,t 530 DeKalb St., Norristown. For more information, call 610-277-2200. The North Penn Chapter of the Institute of Management Accountants (IMA) normally meets on the third Tuesday of each month from now until May. Meetings are held at the William Penn Inn on Route 202 and Sumneytown Pike, Upper Gwynedd, PA. Social hour starts at 5:30 p.m., dinner is served at 6:30 p.m., and the technical program begins at 7 p.m. Cost with reservation is $28 for members. Members without reservations and guests pay $30. Students with reservations pay $15. Reservations may be made by noon on the Monday preceding the meeting by phoning 215-371-1854 or emailing the reservation to northpennima@yahoo.com northpennima@yahoo.com. Information about the North Penn Chapter is available at http://northpenn.imanet.org/. LeTip, a professional organization of men and women who are dedicated to the highest standards of competence and service meets every Tuesday at Cedar Brook Country Club, 180 Penllyn Pike, Blue Bell at 7 a.m. -meeting officially starts at 7:16 a.m. and ends at 8:31 a.m. Our purpose is the exchange of business tips, leads, and referrals. Each business category is represented by one member and conflicts of interest are disallowed. Guests are welcome to visit any of our breakfast meetings. Every third Thursday of month, Sunrise Assisted Living of Blue Bell (795 Penllyn Pike, Blue Bell, PA 19422, 215-619-2777) serves as a satellite site to 148th Legislative district PA congressman Mike Gerber from 10 a.m. to noon. Stop by for help needed with things such as disability placards and license plates, vehicle registration, utilities issues, birth/death certificates,property tax/rent rebates, etc. Notary services arranged by appointment. The Eastern Montgomery County Chamber of Commerce is an action-oriented organization dedicated to promoting its members and the economic health of eastern Montgomery county. The Chamber is committed to serving as a catalyst by uniting business, community agencies, government and education to make our county a great place to live and work. For information, call 215-887-5122 or visit www.emccc.org. Do you have a fear of public speaking? Blue Bell Toastmasters Club can help. We meet from 7 to 9 p.m., on the second and fourth Tuesday at the Marriott Courtyard, located on Route 202, directly across from the Montgomeryville Mall. Learn how to improve communication and leadership skills in a friendly and supportive environment. Guests are welcome. Admission fee: $5. For more info, visit www.bbtoast.org. The PennSuburban Chamber of Commerce will hold the following meetings (for reservations to any of the following, email info@PennSuburban.org) -Breakfast News Network, 7:30-8:45 a.m. at Normandy Farm Hotel (1401 Morris Road, Blue Bell, PA 19422) $15 members, includes full buffet breakfast. Join us for a networking program at Normandy Farm Hotel every Thursday morning for breakfast, business news, informative speakers, and plenty of networking. The cost includes a full breakfast buffet. Copies of the business cards will be made available to those who would like them. The BNI, Fort Washington Chapter meets every Monday at The Hilton Garden Inn, 520 Pennsylvania Ave., Fort Washington for a networking meeting. Meetings are from 11:30 a.m. until 1 p.m. Visitors are welcome. The only cost to attend is the cost of your meal. For information or a reservation to attend, please call Luanne Cram at 215-947-7784, or visit our Internet site at: http://www.BNIDVR.Com and click on the menu item Find a Chapter. For the past seven years, people have enjoyed participating in WVWAs Adopt-a-Tree program. Individuals can support the Association in its reforestation efforts by purchasing native trees to be planted. Supporters can plant their adopted tree or have WVWA volunteers will plant it. Trees cost $30 each. If you would like to volunteer or purchase a tree(s), please contact: Bob Adams at Bob@wvwa.org or call: 215-646-8866 for more information. Check www.WVWA.org for directions and maps. Sustainable Upper Dublin, http://sustainableupperdublin.org, meets the first Thursday of each month at 6:30 p.m., at the Upper Dublin Township Building, 801 Loch Alsh Avenue, Fort Washington, PA 19034. Please send any questions to suec@sustainableupperdublin.org or call 610-996-6316. To learn more about Sustainable Upper Dublin, view or join the discussion at http://googlegroups.com/group/sustainableupperdublin. Special Events The Mattie N. Dixon Community Cupboard will hold its first nutrition class April 19 at 10 a.m. at the Community Cupboard, 150 N. Main St., Ambler. Lynne Sinclair, a nutritionist from Abington Memorial Hospital specializing in diabetic nutrition, will conduct the class. Topics will include healthy eating, beneficial foods, recipes, making meals with every day foods, and how to use unfamiliar produce. A healthy snack will be provided.The class is is open to all residents in Montgomery County. The Historical Society of Fort Washington presents The History of Conshohocken April 19 at 8 p.m. at the Clifton House, 473 Bethlehem Pike, Fort Washington. Jack Coll will present an illustrated program on the history of the Borough of Conshohocken. Coll is a longtime resident of Conshohocken and a member of the Conshohocken Historical Society. He is co-author with his son, Brian, of the Arcadia Then and Now Series book Conshohocken. He has also done books Conshohocken and West Conshohocken Sports and Our Lady of Mt. Carmel Italian Feast. He has taken many photos for the Conshohocken Record and the Norristown Times Herald. This program is free. Refreshments will be served. For additional information, call 215-646-6065. Taste of the White House Soiree featuring former White House Chef Walter Scheib will take place April 29 at 6 p.m. at Manufacturers Golf & Country Club in Fort Washington to celebrate HealthLinks 10th anniversary and honor its founders, the Eugene Jackson Family. The evening will heat up with a Chef Meet & Greet, followed by a specially selected presidential menu. Gala tickets are $150 per person. Proceeds benefit HealthLink, a free clinic providing compassionate, quality medical and dental care to uninsured, working adults in Bucks and Montgomery counties who fall in between the health care cracks. Go to http://tasteofthewhitehouse.charityhappenings.org to make reservations online or lend support through sponsorship. For event information, call 267-699-0124 or email jmarushak@healthlinkmedical.org. The Wissahickon Valley Watershed Association will hold an open house at the Evans-Mumbower Mill April 17 from 1 to 4 p.m. The Mill is at the corner of Swedesford and Township Line Roads in Upper Gwynedd. The open house is free but donations are welcome. For more information, call 215-646-8866 o email info@wvwa.org. The Eastern Montgomery County Chamber of Commerce will host Breakfast With Your County Commissioners and State Representatives April 21 from 8 to 9:30 a.m. at the Holiday Inn Fort Washington, 432 W. Pennasylvania Ave. Commissioners: James R. Matthews (Chairman), Joseph M. Hoeffel (Vice Chair), State Representatives: Todd Stephens (District 151) and Josh Shapiro (District 153). Register onlineat www.emccc.org. $10 for EMCCC member; $20 for non-members. Upper Dublins Districtwide Allied Art Show will be held April 27 from 5:30 to 9 p.m. in the Upper Dublin High School Athletic Complex. The Rev. Alfred Muli, chaplain at Fort Washington Estates, will be the featured speaker at the Kiwanis sponsored breakfast observing the National Day of Prayer May 5 at 7 a.m. at the William Penn Inn. The breakfast is open to the public ($15). Reservations can be made by calling 215-646-4356 or by emailing georgesaurman@Juno.com. The Upper Dublin Shade Tree Commission invites people to participate in its spring bare root planting events, sponsored in part by Upper Dublin Parks & Recreation and Friends of Robbins Park. On April 9, zix trees will be planted at the Evelyn B. Wright Park & Community Pool, 401 Logan Ave., North Hills, at 9 a.m., followed by the planting of 10 trees at Sheeleigh Park, Loch Alsh Avenue and Douglas Street, Ambler, at 10:15 a.m. On April 29, students from Upper Dublin High School will join the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society to plant 16 trees in Robbins Park, Butler Pike and Meetinghouse Road, Ambler, to help launch the societys Million Trees campaign. This event will occur in conjunction with Temple Amblers EarthFest. Experienced tree-tenders are sought to assist the students. For more information,contact Ron Ayres at 215-653-0421 or 215-483-4348. The Friends of the Wissahickon and the Wissahickon Valley Watershed Association are teaming up once again to clean the Wissahickon Creek from top to bottom April 30 from 9 a.m. to noon. This spring marks the 41st anniversary of Wissahickon Valley Watershed Associations annual Creek Clean Up, and the second year that FOW has teamed up with WVWA. Volunteers of all ages will clean the creek, the surrounding trails and the many tributaries of the Wissahickon Creek. Armed with bags, volunteers will be assigned to sections of the creek. Following the clean up, all volunteers are invited to WVWAs Talkin Trash picnic in Fort Washington State Park, with food provided by Whole Foods Market of North Wales. The pavilion is located on Mill Road in Flourtown. To help out in Montgomery County, all volunteers must be pre-assigned a section of the Wissahickon Creek to clean. Please contact Bob Adams, WVWA director of stewardship, at 215-646-8866 ext. 14 or bob@wvwa.org. To work with the Friends of the Wissahickon in Philadelphia, meet at the pavilion along Forbidden Drive, a short distance south of the intersection of Forbidden Drive and Northwestern Avenue. Limited parking is available along Northwestern Avenue and other nearby streets. Volunteers are encouraged to bike or carpool to the event. To participate, register at www.fow.org. Contact Kevin Groves with questions at 215-247-0417 ext. 105 or groves@fow.org. Montgomery County Community Colleges International Club invites the community to the second annual International Festival April 20 from 5 to 9 p.m. at the Central Campus, 340 DeKalb Pike, Blue Bell. The rain date is April 26. The International Club will transform the outside quad area into multicultural celebration with various performances by dancers, singers and musicians. Artists will share their artwork at various display tables. Activities include games, raffles, Easter egg decorating and henna tattoos. Students will have samples of international cuisine at tables representing different countries and will serve food from various local ethnic restaurants. Throughout the evening, volunteers will accept donations and will raffle gift baskets and prizes to raise funds for Habitat for Humanity. Donations of food, international clothes and prizes are needed. Volunteers, including artists and performers, are welcome. For more information or to sponsor an activity, contact Gillian Nel, International Club president, at gnel9277@students.mc3.edu or 267-974-0163. The Arts and Humanities Division at Montgomery County Community College is partnering with the Philadelphia Writers Conference to host Memoirs Matter: How Life Stories (Including Yours) Can Transform Your Relationship to Literature April 23 from 1 to 3 p.m. in Advanced Technology Center room 101, 340 DeKalb Pike, Blue Bell. The event is free and open to the public. In the first part of this two-hour seminar, professor and author Robert Waxler will explain how writing his two memoirs affected his life as well as his relationship to literature. In the second part, blogger and workshop leader Jerry Waxler will present a sequence of steps to help writers find their own story. For information, contact Dana Resente at dresente@mc3.edu. The Maple Glen Garden Club will hold its fourth annual Plant Sale on May 7 from 8 to 11 a.m. Perennials, shrubs, vegetables and native plants grown by the club members will be sold. The club uses the plant sale proceeds to fund community projects, a college scholarship and community plantings. The sale will be held in the 500 block of Coach Road, Horsham, as part of a neighborhood garage sale. Plants will be sold at bargain prices. For more information, email MapleGlenGardenClub@gmail.com. The Relay for Life Craft Show is looking for local crafters to participate in show, which will be May 21 from 11:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. on the Wissahickon High School track, 521 Houston Road, Ambler. There is a $10 entry fee, and 20 percent of sales are donated to the American Cancer Society. Participants will receive a 6-foot table under a tent. For information, contact Joanne at joannescoles@comcast.net or Mindy at mcamsilver@comcast.net. Spring House Estates is hosting its annual book fair on April 18 from 4 to 7 p.m. and April 9 from 8:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. Included will be hardback and paperback used books. Spring House Estates is located at 728 Norristown Road, Lower Gwynedd. The PennSuburban Chamber of Commerce will present the Penn Suburban/Hatfield Joint Business Card Exchange April 20 from 5 to 7 p.m. at Univest Bank Lansdale Area Financial Service Center, 120 Forty Foot Road, Hatfield. The event is free. To make reservations, visit PennSuburban.org/Events. Join Univest National Bank and Trust Co. for a spring-inspired Business Card Exchange at its newest office in the Hatfield Pointe Shopping Center. Come out and meet members of Univests executive management team while enjoying fine food and beverages. 13th Annual Community Reading Day Kick-off Breakfast Get Together April 26 from 8 to 9:30 a.m. at the North Wales Area Library, 233 Swartley St., North Wales. The event is free. To make reservations, visit PennSuburban.org/Events. For more information, contact the chamber office at 215-362-9200 or info@pennsuburban.org. Join presenting sponsor Verizon, chamber staff and fellow members for the Community Reading Day volunteer get together. The Community Reading Day program allows volunteers to read a designated book to second-grade students throughout 38 area public and private schools and present the book as a gift to each class. Even if you are not a volunteer, you are cordially invited to stop by to network, enjoy coffee and pastries. Ambler Mennonite Church is hosting a Spring Craft Show and Flea Market May 21 from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. Rain date will be May 28. The community is invited to shop the great craft booths, find some gifts and deals, as well as enjoy home baked goods and tasty lunch specials. Childrens activities are planned. All vendors are encouraged to contact the church at 215-643-4876 or AmblerMennonite@verizon.net. Advertising, signage, customer parking and a shuttle to auxiliary parking at nearby lots for vendors will be provided. 10 foot by 10 foot spaces can be rented for $5 each and tables for an additional $5 each. All proceeds from space and table rentals go toward school kits for children around the world. The church is located at the corner of East Mt. Pleasant Avenue and North Spring Garden Street, Ambler. The Wissahickon Valley Watershed Association presents The Life & Times of Aquatic Insects in the Wissahickon Creek April 16 from 1 to 3 p.m. Join WVWA for a hands-on program. RSVP required: www.wvwa.org or 215-646-8866. WVWA member fee: $5 per person / $15 per family. Non-WVWA member fee: $10 per person / $20 per family. The photography exhibition Natures Palette by photo-artist Judy Miller will run March 18 to May 19 at the Art in the Storefront gallery, 41 E. Butler Pike, Ambler. JPRN Networking For People in Transition & People Who Can Help Them Unemployment remains high. JPRN, the Jarrettown Professional Relationship Network can help. Are you trying to network your way to a new job? Do you have expertise or contacts that can help people in transition? Is your company or organization looking for people in the area? This is a free outreach program to support those seeking work, involve people with contacts and networking know how, and involve local companies. Meetings held monthly at Jarrettown United Methodist Church, Limekiln Pike. Pennsylvanias Low-Income Home Energy Assistance (LIHEAP) grant program is now open for the 2010-11 heating season. Grants are based on income, family size, type of heating fuel and region. Additional information, such as specific income limits, and applications for LIHEAP grants are available online via the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania Access to Social Services (COMPASS) website at www.compass.state.pa.us. Applications are available at most public officals district offices, county assistance offices, local utility companies and community service agencies, such as Area Agencies on Aging or community action agencies. Begin your holiday shopping at Upper Dublin Parks & Recreation! Entertainment books for 2011, Philadelphia North, are now on sale at $30 each. Regal/United Artists movie tickets are on sale for just $7.50 each, and tickets to the Adventure Aquarium, Baltimore Aquarium, and the Philadelphia Zoo are also available. Discounted ski vouchers to area mountains will be arriving in December; call 215-643-1600 x3443 for more information. Upper Dublin Parks & Recreation office hours are Monday through Friday, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. RSVP of Montgomery County and the Wissahickon Valley Public Library have partnered again to offer the public their popular free mock interview sessions. The mock interviews are conducted by RSVP volunteers who are retired professionals, some of whom were in hiring positions themselves. Packets of information which include a sample employment application and interviewing tips with mock interview questions are available at the library to pick up prior to a scheduled mock interview or will be sent via email once the interview is scheduled. To schedule your interview, please contact Janis Glusman at RSVP 610-834-1040, ext. 16. The library is also offering a free resume review service. Bring in your current resume and the professional reference staff will assist you with hints and tips on capturing your work history accurately. Registration for Upper Dublin Parks & Recreation summer playgrounds, Camp B.I.G. and Small Folks, X-Zone, and sports camps has began. Register online at www.upperdublin.net/store, or at the UDP&R office, 801 Loch Alsh Avenue, Fort Washington. Call 215-643-1600 x3443 for more information. Upper Dublin Parks & Recreation and Danielles Espresso Cafe presents Mornings at Mondaug Bark Park April 16 and May 21 from 8:30 to 10:30 a.m. Meet fellow dog lovers. These events include complimentary coffee, treats for people and pups and raffles/giveaways. Upper Dublins Annual Spring Flea Market will be held June 4 from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. Reserve a table, or come and shop. Tables are $15 for UD residents, $20 for non-residents. This successful event occurs rain or shine. Refreshments available. Call 215-643-1600 ext. 3443 to register for a table. Regal movie tickets available for purchase at Upper Dublin Township Parks & Recreation. Reduced rate: $7.50 per ticket. Some restrictions apply. Call 215-643-1600 x3443. Whitpain Township Parks & Recreation movie tickets $7.50 Regal Cinemas, United Artist & Edwards Cinemas on sale throughout the year Monday Friday from 9 a.m. 4 p.m. Whitpain Township Parks & Recreation Camp Sign-ups for Stony Creek Day Camp Stony Creek Tracers and Park n Tots. Register on-line at www.whitpaintownship.org OrCome to Township Building with check or Visa MasterCard Monday Friday from 9 a.m. 4 p.m. For additional information call 610.277-2400 ext. 374 Upper Dublin Parks & Recreation offers exciting new programs for the fall: -Returning favorites include UK Elite Petite Soccer, Tiny Dancers, Kiddie Tennis, Fun-nastics, Messy Playtime, Little Chefs, and more. Babysitters Training will be offered in November and December. Continuing Adult Fitness Classes include Cardio Circuit, Core & More, Yoga, Boxing, and Adult G.Y.M. For more information call 215-643-1600 x3443. Register for programs online at www.upperdublin.net/store. Music and Theater The community is invited to a Cantors Concert April 16 at 8 p.m. Congregation Beth Or, 239 Welsh Road, Maple Glen. Listen and hum-along to the Yiddish, pop tunes and classical music performed by Congregation Beth Ors own Cantor David Green and his special guest, Cantor Irvin Bell, from Temple Beth Israel in Deerfield Beach, Fla. The cantors will be accompanied by Mark Sobol and his Klezmer musicians. Tickets are $18 in advance and $25 at the door. RSVP with payment to Barb Murtha, 239 Welsh Road, Maple Glen, PA 19002, or call 215-646-5806 ext. 220. Gwynedd Friends Coffeehouse will host the Jameson Sisters May 14. Doors open at 7:30 pm, performance at 8:00 pm. Gwynedd Friends Coffeehouse is located at the corner of Rte. 202 & Sumneytown Pike, Gwynedd. $5 suggested donation. Light refreshment available at a modest cost. For further information, call 215-393-9576 or visit gwyneddmeeting.org/coffeehouse.html. Celebrate patriotism through song with Gwynedd-Mercy Colleges choir, the Voices of Gwynedd, as it presents Hear America Singing April 15 at 8 p.m. The choir will perform song selections from all over the country, including Georgia on My Mind, New York State of Mind, and a medley including Philadelphia Freedom and Allentown. The performance will end with When the Saints Go Marching In to acknowledge the choirs upcoming tour in New Orleans. Hear America Singing will take place in the Julia Ball Auditorium, located in St. Bernard Hall. Parking is available in lots A, C and D. Admission is free. The Choristers will present Anton Dvoraks Stabat Mater April 16 at 7:30 p.m. at Upper Dublin Lutheran Church in Ambler. The choir will be accompanied by a 41-piece orchestra. Tickets are $20 for adults, $15 for senior citizens, $10 for students and children are free. Tickets will be sold in advance or at the door. For more information, call 215-542-7871 or visit TheChoristers.org Religious News The Staircase Gallery at Or Hadash: A Reconstructionist Congregation in Fort Washington will feature the work of Emily Ennuat-Lustine. The artist will be showing paintings and graphics inspired by her own personal spiritual journey and quest for meaning. Some of the works to be shown have been inspired by Biblical Psalms and writings. Her work has been shown at Abington Art Center, Cheltenham Arts Center and Old City Gallery of Jewish Art among others. The exhibition is open Friday evenings starting Feb. 18 after Shabbat services. Gallery hours are: Mondays through Thursdays 10-4:30, Fridays 10-3 and following Shabbat Services and Sundays 10-1. The synagogue is located at 190 Camp Hill Road in Fort Washington. For additional information contact the synagogue office at 215-283-0276. Reunions St. Matthews High School Conshohocken Class of 1961 is looking for classmates. For details, contact Greg Marincola at 215-646-2239, 215-740-1296 or gregcola@comcast.net. Olney High School Class of 1971 is Lloking for classmates for a 40th reunion Oct. 28. For details, contact Judy at ohsclassof71@yahoo.com or 215-870-7572. Abington High School Class of 1961 is seeking classmates for a 50-year reunion to be held Oct. 14-15, 2011.Visit the website, www.abington61.com, for details or call 215-947-1779. Overbrook High School class of January 1956 is having a 55 year reunion on May 22, 2011 at the Bala Golf Club in Philadelphia. For information please contact overbrookreunion56@comcast.net Germantown High School Class Of January 1961 is looking for classmates for 50th year reunion to take place in May of 2011. Please contact: 215-362-9148, 856-577-0659 or samdelcomo@comcast.net The June 1961 class of Germantown High School is holding their 50th reunion on May 15, which will be a brunch. For further details please contact Linda Dorfman Alten at lindaalten@yahoo.com or call 215-441-8411. Support New Life Presbyterian Church in Dresher, will host GriefShare, a special seminar and support group which will run on Monday evenings from 7 to 9 p.m., from March 7 through June 6. At each meeting there will be a DVD about the grief process, discussion and reference to a grief workbook. Preregistration is required to secure a place in the group and to purchase a GriefShare notebook (for a one-time fee of $15). The notebook goes along with the 13-week schedule covering such topics as: living with grief, the effects of grief, and stuck in grief. For more information or to register, call: Sandy Elder at 215-884-5149. PUPS (People Understanding Parkinsons) A self-help group for those adjusting to a new diagnosis or dealing with the early stages of Parkinsons Disease. Meets fourth Tuesday of the month from 1 to 2:30 p.m., at Abington Health Center, Schilling Campus, Willowood Building, 2510 Maryland Road, Suite 251, Willow Grove. For more information or to RSVP, contact Lorna at 215-542-2931. The North Penn Visiting Nurse Associations Meals on Wheels program is looking for volunteers to pack or deliver meals to the elderly and infirmed. Meals are packed and delivered mornings, Monday through Friday. You can volunteer for as many days per week or month as you would like. Packaging meals requires approximately 2-1/2 hours of your time each day and involves making sandwiches, packaging food into individual serving containers and packing coolers with the meals. Delivering meals requires approximately 1-1/2 hours of your time each day and involves loading coolers into your car and delivering a route of approximately 10 to 15 stops. The Meals on Wheels program is also in need of emergency, winter-weather volunteers to pack and deliver meals in bad weather. North Penn VNA is located at 51 Medical Campus Drive in Lansdale and delivers meals in the Lansdale, North Wales and Blue Bell areas. For more information or to volunteer, please call Bridget, North Penn VNA Meals on Wheels coordinator at 215-855-8296. Elkins Park Area CHADD (Children and Adults with Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder) meets the first Tuesday of every month, 7- 8:30 p.m., at Einstein at Elkins Park Hospital in Elkins Park. For information on CHADD or ADHD, please see our website www.chadd.net/249 or call Claire Noyes at: 215-779-6656. Center for Loss and Bereavement, 3847 Skippack Pike, Skippack (610-222-4110) www.bereavementcenter.org Offers professional counseling for individuals, couples, children and families dealing with issues of loss and bereavement. Six-week adult support groups: Newly forming young adult grief support group every other Wednesday, 7 8:15 p.m. (free of charge); Monthly loss of child support second Mondays, 7-8:15 p.m.; Six-week young loss of spouse/partner Thursdays, 10-11:15 a.m.; Other groups scheduled as interest is shown for suicide loss support, adult loss of parent, motherless daughters, adult loss of sibling, coping with chronic illness and disability and mens loss of spouse. Nellos Corner Family Bereavement program offers peer grief support groups for ages 4 through teen and their caregivers Every other Tuesday or Wednesday (free of charge) Local chapter of Parents of Murdered Children also meets at the Center. Registration required. Call for further information. CHADD is a national organization for children & adults with Attention-Deficit/ Hyperactivity Disorder, providing education, advocacy and support for individuals and their families with AD/HD. Einstein at Elkins Park Hospital, 60 Township Line Road, Elkins Park, PA 19027, will host children & adults with Attention-Deficit/ Hyperactivity Disorder on the First Tuesday of each month 7 8:30 p.m. Free, no childcare provided. The Jewish Federation of Greater Philadelphias Kehillah of Old York Road is sponsoring a free Caregiver Support Group for individuals who care for an elderly person with cognitive and/or physical impairments. The group meets at SarahCare Adult Day Care Center, 101 Washington Lane, Suite G-6, Jenkintown, Pa., on the first Wednesday of each month. Patty Rich, August 03, 2017 Why Petraeus, Obama And Brennan Should Face 5,000 Years In Prison California CEO Allegedly Smuggled Rifle Scopes to Syria - Daily Beast, August 1 2017 Rasheed Al Jijakli,[the CEO of a check-cashing business who lives in Walnut,] along with three co-conspirators, allegedly transported day and night vision rifle scopes, laser boresighters used to adjust sights on firearms for accuracy when firing, flashlights, radios, a bulletproof vest, and other tactical equipment to Syrian fighters. ... If Jijakli is found guilty, he could face 50 years in prison. Jijaklis case is being prosecuted by counterintelligence and Terrorism and Export Crimes Section attorneys. An FBI investigation, in coordination with other agencies, is ongoing. --- Under Trump, a Hollowed-Out Force in Syria Quickly Lost C.I.A. Backing - NY Times*, August 2, 2017 C.I.A. director, Mike Pompeo, recommended to President Trump that he shut down a four-year-old effort to arm and train Syrian rebels. ... Critics in Congress had complained for years about the costs [...] and reports that some of the C.I.A.-supplied weapons had ended up in the hands of a rebel group tied to Al Qaeda ... In the summer of 2012, David H. Petraeus, who was then C.I.A. director, first proposed a covert program of arming and training rebels ... [Mr. Obama signed] a presidential finding authorizing the C.I.A. to covertly arm and train small groups of rebels -... John O. Brennan, Mr. Obamas last C.I.A. director, remained a vigorous defender of the program ... When will the FBI investigate Messrs Petraeus, Obama and Brennan? Where are the counterintelligence and Terrorism and Export Crimes Section attorneys prosecuting them? Those three men engaged in the exactly same trade as Mr. Jijakil did, but on a much larger scale. They should be punished on an equally larger scale. * Note: The NYT story is largely a whitewash. It claims that the CIA paid "moderate" FSA rebels stormed Idleb governate in 2015. In fact al-Qaeda and Ahrar al Sham were leading the assault. It says that costs of the CIA program was "more than $1 billion over the life of the program" when CIA documents show that it was over $1 billion per year and likely much more than $5 billion in total. The story says that the program started in 2013 while the CIA has been providing arms to the Wahhabi rebels since at least fall 2011. Posted by b on August 3, 2017 at 9:15 UTC | Permalink Comments The movie "Dunkirk" recounts an astounding story of courage and self-sacrifice, without which Hitler might have won World War II. One can draw a straight line from Britain's heroic solidarity in the war to the welfare state that emerged in peacetime. Set in 1940, the movie features two sets of heroes. One is the military forces. We see British soldiers waiting in orderly lines for rescue from a French beach as German forces shoot, shell and bomb them. And we see British airmen taking tremendous losses in fierce aerial fights over the English Channel, all to protect their countrymen on the beaches. It was of these Royal Air Force pilots that Winston Churchill said, "Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few." The other heroes are civilians who, at Churchill's urging, sailed their fishing boats, pleasure craft and ferries to rescue compatriots stranded in Dunkirk's shallow waters. Churchill had expected that only 35,000 of his 400,000 soldiers would get back home. The small-boat armada evacuated 330,000. What does this have to do with the welfare state? Three years later, when the Allies appeared headed for victory, Churchill broadcast his plan for postwar Britain. It called for, among other things, establishing a National Health Service to medically insure everyone "from cradle to grave." Though a Conservative, Churchill understood that the shared suffering demanded a new social compact. The rewards of peacetime also had to be shared. The actor Mark Rylance portrays a civilian steering his boat into grave danger with steely resolve. To prepare for the part, he studied firsthand accounts of the battle. "The tone of society was different at that time," Rylance said in a CBS interview. "There was a selflessness and a belief in communal effort and togetherness." British society today is much more centered on the individual, he added. America has always been that way. But this country did create the GI Bill in 1944 for returning servicemen. It established veterans hospitals, provided low-interest mortgages, paid for college or trade schools and dispensed billions in unemployment compensation. In 1945, President Harry Truman proposed a "universal" national health insurance program. Democrats backed the idea. Republicans killed it. The American idea of "every man for himself" surfaced in attacks on Obamacare's requirement that insurance plans cover a variety of conditions. Rep. John Shimkus voiced that view with radical clarity when the Illinois Republican complained that the law's mandated benefits have forced men to purchase prenatal care. (Suppose insurers could offer women cheaper policies that don't cover prostate cancer. Imagine what men with the cancer would have to pay for their coverage.) In the spring of 1945, the war in Europe had just ended, and Britain's exhausted voters delivered a political shock. They replaced their great warrior Churchill with Clement Attlee, a Labour Party leader who called for a more comprehensive welfare state. For all the complaints about the National Health Service, the NHS remains a third rail in British politics. When Conservative Margaret Thatcher campaigned in 1983, she said the NHS would be "safe with us." She wanted some privatizing done but would never have uttered the words "repeal and replace." This country is different. But do note that once a modicum of health care security was extended to all Americans, there was no going back. Without an acceptable replacement on the table, "repeal and replace" was obviously just "repeal." No amount of legislative gimmickry could hide that fact. Many Americans might recoil at the term "welfare state," but when it comes to health care, they clearly want at least some of it. Follow Froma Harrop on Twitter @FromaHarrop. She can be reached at fharrop@gmail.com. To find out more about Froma Harrop, visit www.creators.com. OTTAWA, May 31, 2017 - Steven Ranson, President and CEO of HomEquity Bank, Canada's only provider of the CHIP Reverse Mortgage, today delivered a keynote address at the 2017 Canadian Institute of Financial Planners (CIFP) Conference. Ranson's address was titled "An Untapped Partnership: Helping Canadians with Prudent Retirement Planning." The theme of the 2017 CIFP conference, "Canada Planning for Another 150 Years," focuses on three critical financial planning components: retirement and lifestyle planning, risk management and estate planning, wealth accumulation and income tax planning. With rapidly shifting demographics in Canada, Ranson spoke of equity release as a retirement solution for consideration particularly as a result of recent data showing that Canadians over the age of 60 have an average debt balance of $74,000with 17 per cent of those Canadians holding a mortgage. Financial planners will play an increasingly important role for seniors, since the 8.3 million Canadians over the age of 60 hold two thirds of all assets under management. "We want to encourage Canadians to think about the equity in their homes in an active rather than a passive way," said Ranson. "For most people, it's the single largest asset they own. Especially at a time when we are living longer and stretching our savings further, it makes sense to unlock some of that equity tax free." "Partnerships between financial planners and HomEquity Bank are steadily growing," he added. "Planners have the respect and trust of their clients. We want to ensure that they consider equity release as part of long-term planning strategy for Canadian seniors." TORONTO, April 27, 2017 - HomEquity Bank, provider of the CHIP Reverse Mortgage, continued its steady performance in Q1 of fiscal 2017. The company posted a 27 per cent year over year increase in mortgage originations. The strong Q1 results demonstrate ongoing growth in demand for reverse mortgages among Canadian seniors. In 2016, HomEquity posted record growth of 26 per cent. With strong, steady ownership by Birch Hill Equity Partners, HomEquity Bank has continued to grow its business while working with clients to monetize the value of their most important asset their home. HomEquity Bank, regulated by the Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions (OSFI), attributes the strong financial results to comprehensive direct-to-consumer sales efforts as well as effective engagement with mortgage brokers through a robust certification process. HomEquity Bank maintains rigorous client intake and approvals requiring each potential client to retain independent legal advice, among other requirements. These prudent measures have contributed to the company's continued secure and stable growth. "Both HomEquity Bank and our parent company, Birch Hill Equity Partners, are pleased with our strong Q1 results," said Steven Ranson, president and CEO of HomEquity Bank. "At a time when the real estate market is top-of-mind for many Canadians, we are pleased that our business has steadily grown while maintaining a strict adherence to underwriting standards. We will continue to serve Canadian seniors by offering regulated mortgage products that allow them to access the equity in their homes and enjoy a fulfilling retirement." While the jury is still out on the impact of foreign buyers or the effects of recent policy changes on the Toronto real estate market, a pair of Fraser Institute academics stated that what is certain is the inescapable influence of the laws of supply and demand.In a recent guest column for the Toronto Sun, analysts Josef Filipowicz and Steve Lafleur argued that its hard to believe a small percentage of buyers are responsible for the massive appreciation of housing prices in the GTA over the past decade.Rather than focus on a small group of buyers, we should focus on ensuring government regulations dont prevent the supply of new housing from meeting demand, the duo wrote.Filipowicz and Lafleur added that inbound migrants drawn in by Ontarios strong fundamentals are not the problem as long as regulatory red tape continues to stymie the development of new housing space.In the Greater Golden Horseshoe, it typically takes one-and-a-half years to obtain a permit. Per-unit costs to comply with regulations are almost $50,000, they said. Approval timelines can also be affected by the need to rezone property. Approximately two-thirds of new homes in the region require this procedure, which adds 4.3 months, on average, before builders can obtain permits.This represents a glaring omission in the current form of the Fair Housing Plan. Only one of the 16 measures proposed by Queens Park in April even mentions these barriers to housing construction.The Fraser Institute analysts expressed hope that the Plans reference to a Housing Supply Team will eventually lead to greater cooperation with developers and municipalities to identify opportunities to streamline the development approvals process. Multiple observers have warned of a performance drop for the Canadian residential real estate market looming just beyond the horizon, a development that might prompt a mass exodus among the thousands of workers (from agents and home stagers to construction workers) that have entered the sector over the past few years.In turn, this could prove to be the straw that breaks the camels back as the loss of a large number of skilled professionals might lead to even further industry slowdownand an eventual winding down of a national economy that has grown to lean heavily upon the housing segment.For instance, in red-hot Toronto, the number of real estate agents has surged upward to over 48,000 since 2008, representing 77 per cent growth (compared to a 26.9 per cent growth nationally in the same period).To a lot of people, [housing] is a get-rich-quick scheme, Toronto real estate agent David Fleming told Reuters. But history shows when the market turns, half of the agents leave.It is definitely overpopulated, York Region agent Shawn Zigelstein agreed. A downturn will weed out of some of those agents who got into the business for the wrong reasons.However, Manulife Asset Management senior economist Frances Donald stated that such a decline will not be an immediate threat.The jobs slowdown will not occur in a single month, but over a six-month to one-year period, Donald explained. And the hit to consumption may take up to two years to really be felt.On the other hand, David Madani of Capital Economicswho has predicted price drops of as much as 40 per centargued that the impact will be more pronounced and longer-lasting, and might even cut down Canadas annual GDP growth rate by 0.5 per cent over the next half decade.In a Reuters poll of analysts last May, over half of the respondents indicated a strong or moderately strong possibility of a sharp housing correction in Toronto and Vancouver, but not likely nationally. The results came right before recent data showing a 6.7 per cent drop in national home resales in June, the largest monthly decline since 2010 and the third consecutive month of such decreases. Goldman Sachs has provided almost $90 million of principal forgiveness to borrowers since May 1 as part of its consumer-relief obligation under mortgage-related settlements with the Department of Justice and three states. With the update, the bank has now satisfied 40% of its consumer-relief obligation, according to Eric Green, independent monitor of the obligations. Goldman Sachs received conditional credit of $80.2 million, bringing the cumulative credit conditionally validated by the monitor to $724.5 million. During the most recent period, Goldman Sachs provided relief including forgiveness of the balances due on 343 first-lien mortgages, resulting in total principal forgiveness of about $38.3 million. The average principal forgiveness was $111,532 per loan. Total reportable credit was about $57.5 million after the application of appropriate crediting calculations and multipliers. These mortgages are located in 38 states and the District of Columbia. Of the total credit, 32% is for loans located in the settling states of New York, Illinois, and California. Green said that 57% of the credit is for forgiveness of loans located in areas that contain large concentrations of distressed properties and foreclosure activities as identified by the Department of Housing and Urban Development. A top Republican is demanding a federal investigation into whether the director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is violating election law in a rumored run for governor of Ohio. Rep. Jeb Hensarling (R-Texas), the chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, has asked US Acting Special Counsel Adam Miles to investigate whether CFPB Director Richard Cordray is in violation of the Hatch Act, which bars executive-branch employees from participating in political activity. Read more: Cordray will quit CFPB to run for office, friends say In a Friday letter to Miles, Hensarling referenced media reports that quoted Ohio Supreme Court Justice Bill ONeill, according to Cleveland.com. ONeill told reporters that he was contacted by a mutual friend of Cordrays, who said the CFPB director was planning to run for Ohio governor. The friend allegedly asked ONeill if he would stay out of the Ohio Democratic primary to make way for Cordray. If this occurred, it appears that Director Cordray indirectly contacted a potential primary rival to secure the rivals commitment not to run for office, Hensarling wrote. If true, that may reasonably be construed as a violation of the Hatch Act, he wrote. Hensarling has long been a vocal and ferocious critic of Cordray and the CFPB as a whole, claiming more than once that the agency was guilty of regulatory waterboarding and decrying Cordrays power. Hes also repeatedly called for Cordray to be fired although under current rules, the director of the agency can only be fired for cause. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate Sometimes, even a year later, there are no answers. For Kristian Guerrero, confusion remains on the one-year anniversary of an alleged drunk driving crash that killed her husband and unborn child. Guerrero and her husband Fabian Guerrero-Moreno, a couple in their early 20s, were headed home from a day spent celebrating in San Antonio Guerrero-Moreno had received his United States residency and a gender reveal party for the couple was two days away. While on Highway 21 in San Marcos, Shana Elliott, a former Texas State University student, hit the vehicle the couple was in, killing Guerrero-Moreno and their 19-week-old unborn child, authorities said. Elliott was arrested in connection to the crash but a year later is still awaiting trial. "(One) year ago today, I woke up just like any other day," Guerrero wrote on her Facebook page Wednesday. "I woke up to a dream come true that turned into a nightmare I'd never wake up from." Guerrero was taken to St. David's South Austin Medical Center, where doctors induced labor on her the very day she was supposed to be at the gender reveal party. She was also recovering from a brain bleed. An affidavit obtained by mySA.com, states Elliott had recently wrapped up a river trip and told officers she had consumed beer and liquor. A witness at the crash scene told police they saw her roll a bottle under her vehicle. RELATED: Family shares photos, heartbreaking details about young couple in fatal San Marcos wreck Guerrero did not return a request for comment but has frequently posted memories of her husband to social media since the crash. Speaking to her deceased husband Wednesday, Guerrero said: "No matter how many days that pass, no matter how far we go I still feel like you're going to show up as if you were coming back from a long vacation. There's so many milestones I wish I could get to share with you just to see your smile. Just to hear your voice, your little laugh. You didn't deserve this fate." She posted photos of her and Guerrer0-Moreno, who were married almost a year before the crash in November 2015. Elliott remains in the Hays County Jail on two intoxication manslaughter with a vehicle charges, and an intoxication assault with a vehicle charge, records show. A hearing for pre-trial motions was set for Aug. 23, but has already been rescheduled several times. She was previously arrested of five drugs charges. kbradshaw@express-news.net Twitter: @kbrad5 dunnhumby Names North American Operations Leader Customer data firm dunnhumby has promoted Jose Gomes to the role of Managing Director of North America. Founded by husband and wife team Edwina Dunn and Clive Humby in 1989, dunnhumby is best known as the data firm behind the Tesco Clubcard loyalty scheme. Tesco bought a 53% stake in dunnhumby for 30m in 2001, and later bought the rest of the shares. Gomes (pictured) joined the business in 2008, and has since held several senior roles including Senior Solutions Director in Brazil; Head of Media Services, Latin America; and more recently, MD, Latin America & Africa. In his new role, he will focus on growing partnerships and relationships with retailers and brands in North America. He now reports to Chief Client Officer Marc Fischli, who comments: 'Jose has been a transformative leader for dunnhumby in Latin America and Africa and has worked closely with the some of the world's top retailers... We are excited that he is taking the helm of our North American operations'. Web site: www.dunnhumby.com . 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. At its regular meeting in Houghton today, Michigan Technological Universitys Board of Trustees approved emerita/emeritus rank for retiring professors Nancy Auer and Paul Buda. Auer has been on the faculty of Michigan Techs Department of Biological Sciences since 1984. Buda has served on the School of Technology faculty since 1993. Nancy Auer Auer is known for her research on the restoration of Great Lakes species such as the lake sturgeon and arctic grayling. Her recent book, The Great Lakes Sturgeon, was recognized as a Michigan Notable Book. Paul Buda Buda taught surveying and was inducted in the Academy of Teaching Excellence in 2003. The Board also recognized five employees for 35 or more years of service to the University. They are Marty Auer (Civil & Environmental Engineering)36 years; Paul Buda (School of Technology)35 years; Ralph Hodek (Civil and Environmental Engineering)47 years; Karen Jakovic (Dining Services)35 years and Raymond Lasanen (Purchasing)35 years. Presidential Transition Committee Board Chair Terry Woychowski announced the formation of a Presidential Transition Committee to draft a plan to help the successful presidential candidate meet with appropriate individuals and groups, as well as the overall university community, and to identify key areas of interest and need. Board members Linda Kennedy, Derhun Sanders and Steve Tomaszewski will serve on the committee, which will be co-chaired by Sanders and David Reed, vice president for research. Other committee members will be Les Cook, Roberta Dessellier, Ellen Horsch, Jackie Huntoon, Julie Seppala and Marty Thompson. In other business, the Board: Appointed William H. Cooke as a professor with tenure in the Department of Kinesiology and Integrative Physiology. He comes to Michigan Tech from the University of Texas at San Antonio. Approved a proposal from the Rozsa Center for the Performing Arts for a $29,500 grant from the Michigan Council for the Arts and Cultural Affairs, to partially support five upcoming performances. Were introduced to three newly appointed Portage Health Foundation endowed professors: Keat Ghee Ong, Biomedical Engineering; Qiuying Sha, Mathematical Sciences; and William Cooke, Kinesiology and Integrative Physiology. Received a report on fundraising from the Michigan Tech Fund. In fiscal year 2017, which ended June 30, the Tech Fund raised $52.4 million, nearly $19 million more than the 2016 total of $33.8 million. Recognized George Butvilas, chair of the Michigan Tech Fund Board of Directors, for 20 years of service to Michigan Tech Received a report that Michigan Tech received $59.7 million in research grants from federal, state, industry and other sources during fiscal year 2017, more than $8 million more than in FY2016. Of that, nearly half went to the College of Engineering. Heard about Alumni Reunion, which starts today and runs through Saturday, Aug. 5. Honored classes are 1957, 1967, 1977, 1987, 1997 and 2007. A 5K Run/Walk for scholarships is scheduled for Saturday, as is a mens alumni basketball game and a Women of Tech Celebration at the Great Lakes Research Center. Michigan Technological University is a public research university founded in 1885 in Houghton, Michigan, and is home to more than 7,000 students from 55 countries around the world. Consistently ranked among the best universities in the country for return on investment, Michigans flagship technological university offers more than 120 undergraduate and graduate degree programs in science and technology, engineering, computing, forestry, business and economics, health professions, humanities, mathematics, social sciences, and the arts. The rural campus is situated just miles from Lake Superior in Michigan's Upper Peninsula, offering year-round opportunities for outdoor adventure. 'The big truck is still on ... GET OUR APP Our Spectrum News app is the most convenient way to get the stories that matter to you. Download it here. The NAACP is issuing a travel advisory in Missouri, warning minorities that their civil rights could be in danger. NAACP issues travel advisory for state of Missouri Group issues advisory after Senate Bill 42 signed into law Law makes it tougher to file discrimination lawsuits This travel advisory marks the first that the NAACP has sent out. It says they want Missourians and state visitors aware of looming danger. This notice comes just weeks after Senate Bill 43 was signed into law. The legislation makes it tougher for fired employees to file discrimination lawsuits, saying employees must prove that discrimination has to be the main reason for the firing, not just a contributing factor. The state NAACP says the measure could make it tougher to hold people accountable for harassment and discrimination. Supporters argue the law will help reduce frivolous lawsuits in the state. Earlier this week, state House representatives spoke out about their concerns regarding the bill. "The bill would allow discrimination to run rampant in the workplace," Democratic Missouri State Rep. Brandon Ellington said Monday. "We've actually rolled back protections for our most vulnerable citizens." This travel warning also comes after an attorney general's report showed black drivers were 75 percent more likely to be pulled over than white drivers in that state last year. Online, people such as Missouri NAACP President Nimrod Chapel, said they were warning minorities and women heading to Missouri. CNN political commentator and former White House aide Keith Boykin tweeted his reaction to the advisory. As a native of Missouri, I know that racism is alive and well in the Midwest. But don't be fooled into thinking it's just one state. https://t.co/1nbzXKoQzK Keith Boykin (@keithboykin) August 3, 2017 At the moment, Democrat-turned-Republican Missouri Gov. Eric Greitens has not reacted to the travel advisory. A summer kids event called Maker Fun Factory VBS will be hosted at Templo Sinai from Monday-Friday, Aug. 7-11. At Maker Fun Factory, kids discover that God made them and for a purpose! Kids participate in memorable Bible-learning activities, sing catchy songs, play teamwork-building games, make and devour yummy treats, experience one-of-a-kind Bible adventures, collect Bible Memory Buddies to remind them of Gods love, and test out Sciency-Fun Gizmos theyll take home and play with all summer. Plus, kids will learn to look for evidence of God all around them through something called God Sightings. Maker Fun Factory is for kids from kindergarten to 5th grade and runs 5:30-8:30 p.m. daily. For information, call Ashley at 806-224-8982. The youth at First Presbyterian Church are collecting canned goods, monetary donations, toilet paper and soap for FISH. To help, drop off items at 2101 Utica from 8:30 a.m.-4 p.m. Monday through Thursday or Friday from 8:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. Phone 296-2604. Catholic Charities of Lubbock and the Youth and Family program provide youth skills-building counseling through the S.T.A.R. program. S.T.A.R. (Services to At Risk Youth) offers short-term services to youth ages 0-17 and their families who are dealing with conflict at home, school attendance issues, delinquency, or have a youth who runs away from home. S.T.A.R. services are not for families with an open CPS investigation or youth who have been adjudicated delinquent by a juvenile court. All services are without charge. Call 806-296-7044 and ask a youth case manager for more information. Plainview Habitat for Humanity is a Christian, nonprofit housing organization that seeks to put Gods love into action by building homes, communities and hope. It is currently accepting applications. Visit www.plainviewhabitat.org for application criteria and information. To contact its team, email plainview_habitat@yahoo.com or write Plainview Habitat for Humanity, PO Box 1125, Plainview, TX 79073 Covenant Health Plainview hosts the cancer survivors prayer support group We Fight to Live from 7-8 p.m. the first Tuesday of each month in Room B. The sessions will consist of a monthly topic and presenter, and a structured segment, allowing time for group sharing. The support group is open to those with a cancer diagnosis and anyone affected by their diagnosis. The group is led by Andrea Ingram, a cancer survivor, as well as Sherry Wall, hospital mission services. There is no charge for the group. For more information contact Andrea Ingram at 806-293-7614 or Sherry Wall at 806-291-3364. The Apostolic Lighthouse Church, 1504 Houston in Plainview, invites the public to pray at the church from 6-7 p.m. each Friday. You need not be a member of the church to come and pray. For those who are homebound or sick, the church ministry will come and pray for you at your home. Call Pastor Armando Cardenas at 806-729-4057 for information. Alvin Petty will pick up garage sale-types of items, with proceeds going to the Ideal Village Chapel Scholarship Fund. Call 806-685-2604. Hopeful Hearts, a womens support group dealing with infertility and miscarriage, meets every third Monday of the month at 6 p.m. in the SinglePoint Building of First Baptist Church Plainview, at Eighth and Austin. Call 806-296-6318 for more information. The South Plains AA Group meets at 803 S. Columbia in Plainview. A Big Book Study (open meeting) is held from 6-7 p.m. Monday. Closed meetings are held at 6 p.m. Tuesday, 6 p.m. Thursday and 10 a.m. Sunday. Validus Senior Living plans to open Inspired Living at Sugar Land senior care community at 6400 Oilfield Road this fall. The Fort Bend County community, which will offer independent living, assisted living and memory care, is being developed by Tampa, Fla.-based Validus Senior Living. Mario Gutierrez will manage the new location, which will have a beauty/barber shop, weekly laundry services, walking paths, a pool, gym, and programs and events for residents. RELATED: Civitas Senior Living acquires Missouri City seniors community Validus Senior Living operates 10 locations and has several others in development, primarily in the southeastern U.S. The new location, in the Sugar Land/Missouri City area near the Riverstone community, will be one of two Texas communities along with a upcoming facility in Lewisville this fall. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate It was the last splash for a San Antonio theme park classic. After 25 years, the original Power Surge boat ride at Six Flags Fiesta Texas shut down the rapids for the final time Sunday, July 23. Its been here since park opening, said Sydne Purvis, communications manager for Six Flags Fiesta Texas. From time to time, we do retire attractions. RELATED: Six Flags Fiesta Texas to add virtual reality to Scream tower ride Indeed, the shoot the chute ride opened with the park in 1992. Purvis said Fiesta Texas has not made any announcement for something new in its place, though she did say the rides retirement is not a safety issue. Nestled along the giant limestone quarry walls that overlook the Rockville area of the park, the Power Surge transports about a dozen riders at a time along a channel against an old-timey power plant backdrop. The boat ride ends in a steep 50-foot plunge, with a double-dip that adds a few seconds of actual airtime to that 36 mph drop. RELATED: Over 25 years ago, Six Flags Fiesta Texas was just a quarry Of course the real highlight is the resulting giant splash a towering 20-foot wave of water that washes over spectators on the nearby pedestrian bridge for the perfect cool down on a hot summers day. Its the kind of memorable soak thats even preserved in cinema. The Power Surge and its climatic splash were featured in the 1994 Disney film Blank Check in a scene where 11-year-old main character Preston Waters (pun intended?) stands on the bridge by the boat ride and gets soaked right down to his cotton candy. The kid flick also showed the original Rattler wooden roller coaster, which was replaced in 2013 with the Iron Rattler hybrid coaster. RELATED: Photos: Six Flags Fiesta Texas celebrates opening weekend with a packed park Purvis said Fiesta Texas has been busy unveiling new additions to its more than 60 rides, games and attractions. Those new thrills include the three-story Thunder Rapids rocket blast water coaster and the new Drop of Doom VR experience, where for a limited time riders of the Scream drop tower ride can wear a Samsung Gear VR headset to face giant mutant spiders. rguzman@express-news.net Twitter: @reneguz This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate It's a bizarre story involving an armadillo, at East Texas man, a bullet and a wired jaw. And the story, which has spent the day circulating in the media, is real. It's just two years old. And officials don't know why it's reappeared. In July of 2015, Reuters wrote about a man from Marietta, southwest of Texarkana, who upon firing on an in his yard armadillo, was hit in the face by a ricocheting bullet. Dozens of other news agencies picked up on the story. READ ALSO: Six Flags Fiesta Texas to get Wonder Woman roller coaster Sheriff Larry Rowe told the publication that the man used a .38 revolver on the animal around 3 a.m on July 30, 2015. Spanish for, "little armored one," the armadillo used its hard shell to cause one of the three bullets to ricochet and hit the mans face. According to Reuters, the man was airlifted to a nearby hospital where he had his jaw wired shut. No more was heard about the man, or the armadillo, for the next two years. But numerous news sites also spent Thursday reporting the story as if it had just happened, linking back to the original Reuters story, apparently without noting the date. Cass County Sheriff's Office officials are scratching their heads. RELATED: Simple Google image search debunks viral 'Canyon Lake catfish' photo It is unclear exactly how the peculiar story resurfaced, but one of the first mentions was in a Tweet about a comment from Rep. Maxine Waters. On July 27 after the House Financial Services Committee, a response of Waters' to Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin went viral. When Mnuchin appeared to be running out the clock on her questioning, Waters redirected him to her questions with the phrase, "Reclaming my time." The internet loved it. Tweets with the phrase "reclaiming my time" and various memes abounded. On Thursday morning, Twitter user Saeed Jones, relayed the phrase to his 81,000 Twitter followers, saying "'Reclaiming my time.' -Armadillo," followed by a link to an original report of the armadillo incident. Since then, news sites have reported on the 2015 story in present tense numerous times. Audiences may never know exactly how the story reemerged, but the armadillo has certainly, reclaimed its time. jthorpe@express-news.net @jerilynnthorpe The genius of Nintendo is that not only will it take risks, it will take really weird risks. Case in point: The sequel to one of the its popular games ever was not a similar game but instead Yoshi's Island, which completely disregards the basic tenants most Mario games. In this prequel to Super Mario World there are baby versions of Mario and Luigi while Yoshi is the hero. Completely unexpected and yet somehow absurdly, incredibly fun. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate It sure beats a fidget spinner, and its a whole lot more imaginative when you fiddle it with your fingers. San Antonio-based virtual reality company Merge VR has just rolled out its new Merge Cube, a soft foam block that opens up a world of hand-held fun with augmented and virtual reality. Viewed through VR goggles, the cube triggers an array of animations and special effects. Merge VR bills it as the hologram you hold in your hand. The tech toy is available exclusively at Walmart stores and walmart.com through August, then widens distribution after that. At $14.99, the Merge Cube may be the next big little thing that kids will be giving a spin. I think its because it is so simple and so powerful that it captivates people, said Merge VR co-founder Andrew Trickett. I think its because its a physical experience. Its not just a digital experience. Now Playing: Behold, the new Merge Cube, a new product billed as "the world's first holographic toy," by San Antonio-based Merge VR. Video: San Antonio Express-News Its tangible, said fellow Merge founder Franklin Lyons. And thats the key element to the experience. Youre believing its true because youre holding it. Lyons said the Merge Cube is the first toy designed to have a digital layer wrapped around it, though it also makes a handy option for a classic, low-tech game of catch. Designed for ages 10 and older, the Merge Cube works with an Android or iOS devices camera to read the markings on the block and then transform them on the screen into all sorts of virtual objects and imagery you can interact with and manipulate as you rotate the cube. Hatch and play with your own purple little Octopet. Take a fantastic voyage of the human anatomy. Get your Minecraft fix via a world-building game called Dig. The Merge Cube comes with dozens of built-in games and experiences that are part of the Merge Miniverse, basically a curated portal for Merges AR and VR offerings, which launched with the cubes release. The Merge Cube has a VR mode that works with most virtual reality headsets, such as the basic Google Cardboard viewer or Merges own Merge VR/AR Goggles ($59.99). Or you can just use the cubes mobile mode to play with it with just your smartphone or tablet. When you use the cube and virtual reality goggles, its completely immersive, Lyons said. When youre using the cube with just a mobile device or a tablet, the advantage you have is its more social. Attendees at Januarys PAX South gaming expo at the Convention Center got an early eyeful of the Merge Cube back when it was called the Holo Cube. The puzzle block had already widened eyes that same month at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, where it won TechRadars award for Most Unique Product at CES. As of Monday morning, walmart.com was showing scattered, limited availability in San Antonio for the Merge Cube. Trickett said its starting off on the West Coast and gradually rolling out east to more stores nationwide. rguzman@express-news.net Twitter: @reneguz Adult film actresses will be in San Antonio later this month to teach a class on BDSM. Samantha Saint and Stevie Shae will be on hand at Hustler Hollywood on Aug. 25 for an event called "How To Be Knotty: A Bondage Workshop," presented by Lord Morpheous. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate Another Connecticut state park is now booze free. No wine, no beer, no whiskey, gin or vodka on the rocks. While you can still nibble on sponge cake and watch the sun bake, there will be no more wasting away at Gardner Lake State Park. In a move announced Thursday afternoon, the state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection has temporarily banned the possession and consumption of alcohol at the Salem park in southeastern Connecticut. The reason? Too many people are drinking too much booze there. The official line given by DEEP is to improve management of that park and address public safety issues there. I have exercised my authority to declare a 90-day ban on alcohol at Gardner Lake State Park because large numbers of people consuming large volumes of alcohol there is not a combination conducive to public safety and enjoyment of our states natural resources, DEEP Commissioner Robert Klee said in a release. The ban I have issued means no alcohol at Gardner Lake State Park and State Environmental Conservation (EnCon) Police officers from this agency will enforce this ban. We also appreciate the offer of local law enforcement to support this new policy. Gardner Lake State Park is a popular state park with a 529-acre lake, a beach, swimming area and nearby state boat launch. More Information Where booze is banned: Bigelow Hollow State Park (entire park) Black Rock State Park (entire park) Burr Pond State Park (entire park) Eagleville Dam (entire state property) Gardner Lake State Park (entire park) Hopeville Pond State Park (entire park) Housatonic Meadows State Park (entire park) Indian Well State Park (entire park) Kent Falls State Park (entire park) Kettletown State Park (entire park) Macedonia Brook State Park (entire park) Mansfield Hollow State Park (entire park) East Killingly Pond area (Mashamoquet Brook management unit) Miller's Pond State Park (entire park) Nepaug State Forest (entire forest) Osbornedale State Park (entire park) Pachaug State Forest, Mt. Misery and Green Falls campgrounds Satan's Kingdom State Recreation Area (entire park) Scantic River State Park (entire park) Sherwood Island State Park (entire park) Silver Sands State Park (entire park) Squantz Pond State Park (entire park) See More Collapse Members of the state legislative delegation in the Salem area - as well as local leaders - had written Klee asking for a temporary ban on alcohol at Gardner Lake State Park. State Sen. Paul Formica, who represents the area, submitted photos to DEEP that show large crowds and boats with propellers accessing the swimming area and in close proximity to swimmers. He added, combining alcohol with this large crowd can only lead to trouble. There has already been an assault allegedly due to alcohol abuse. During the past few summers, EnCon Police and DEEP staff have seen increased crowds and an increased number of incidents. Given the changing use and recent issues at the park, the time has come for us to take stronger action at Gardner Lake State Park, said Klee. The vast majority of visitors to our parks enjoy themselves while following the rules and exhibiting good behavior. Unfortunately, situations do arise - like that at Gardner Lake State Park- where people engage in behavior that negatively affects the experience of others. Out of 142 state parks and forests, only 22 have bans on alcohol. Among western Connecticut state parks with a booze ban are Indian Well in Shelton, Kent Falls in Kent, Kettletown in Southbury, Osbornedale in Derby, Sherwood Island in Westport, Silver Sands in Milford and Squantz Pond in New Fairfield. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate STRATFORD The long shadow of former Soundkeeper Terry Backer fell over the mouth of the Housatonic River Thursday as dignitaries and environmental advocates gathered to announce the appointment of his successor, Bill Lucey. Terry Backer, who would have been 63 on Thursday, died of brain cancer on Dec. 14, 2015. The Soundkeeper post had been vacant since then. In a sun-splashed, noontime ceremony, Lucey, who lives in Wilton, told the gathering of about 40 people at Brewers Stratford Marina that one of the most important responsibilities government and citizens have is protecting the environment. We have a lot of challenges a lot of the marsh has fallen off, he said. The sea-level rise is coming and a lot of the state down low is threatened, and we have to work on the resiliency of the Sound. Lucey said a healthy Long Island Sound has nothing to do with Republicans and Democrats. The real question is: Can we have a functioning society with a polluted environment? he asked. Terry Backer said that when you have contaminated fish, that is theft. Thats one of the great all-time lines that I have heard. Thursdays event was not without some drama. Luceys boat, a donated 21-footer, was beset with engine trouble, and Save the Sound, the environmental group backing the Soundkeeper effort, said that it is hoping someone will donate a new outboard to replace its cranky 20-year-old, 225-horsepower Evinrude. And after the craft was christened by Backers sister, Cheryl Backer, the mobile boat hoist nearly took down the tent set up for the event as it moved the craft, the Terry Backer, into the water. Even though The Terry Backer will have to be content with being moored at a slip for now, officials said theres plenty for Lucey to do on dry land, such as advocating for Long Island Sound in the Legislature and chasing after polluters. Lucey is a fish and wildlife biologist, a former commercial fisherman, and an experienced advocate. He led a coalition that successfully contested a timber sale on tribal lands in Alaska, lobbied federal agencies in Washington, D.C., and coordinated the writing and passage of a 2017 invasive species bill in Hawaii, according to Save the Sound. Patterned after the work of Hudson Riverkeeper John Cronin, the Soundkeeper program got its start in 1987, the year that saw deadly algae blooms in western portions of Long Island Sound. At that time, there were reports of thousands of dead fish and strange scenes of lobsters crawling onshore. Money from court settlements from scores of Clean Water Act violations helped fund Backers Soundkeeper job. Backer went after polluters large and small, from municipal waste treatment plants to pleasure craft skippers who dumped human waste into the Sound. Backer, a former Merchant Marine officer, also worked as a lobsterman prior to being elected to the state Legislature in 1993 from Stratfords 121st Assembly District. He held leadership roles as vice chairman of the Appropriations Committee, chairman of the Energy and Technology Committee, assistant majority leader and assistant majority whip. Backer served in the state House until his death. jburgeson@ctpost.com BRIDGEPORTAn under-aged car thief ran out of gas while leading police in a high-speed chase, Stratford officials said. The chase started on Broadbridge Avenue, after the boy ran a stop sign in the stolen car, a Honda CRV, according to police. Officers learned that the vehicle had been stolen from this town on July 28, Stratford Police Spokesman Capt. Frank Eannotti said in a statement. The operator (drove) through Bridgeport, Milford and eventually ran out of gas on I95 near exit 27. The boy, whose name and age have not been released, was arrested and charged with larceny, possession of burglary tools, failure to stop at a stop sigh, reckless driving, engaging police in a pursuit and operating a vehicle without a license. Several items were located in the stolen vehicle linking the juvenile to recent thefts from cars in the Lordship area of town, Eannotti said. The boys bond was set at $50,000. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate Hyndman, Pa. Nearly three dozen cars of a freight train bound for Selkirk and carrying hazardous materials careened off the tracks in a small Pennsylvania town Wednesday, igniting fires in some rail cars and a garage and forcing emergency officials to evacuate the whole town. No injuries were reported. At least 32 cars on the CSX freight train derailed at about 5 a.m. in Hyndman, about 100 miles southeast of Pittsburgh, said CSX spokesman Rob Doolittle. The train was traveling from Chicago to Selkirk. At least one car containing liquid petroleum gas, and one containing molten sulfur leaked and caught fire, Doolittle said. A residential garage struck during the derailment also caught fire, officials said. It was not immediately known what caused the train to run off the rails, and the fire continued to burn hours after the derailment. The only confirmed structure fire was at the garage, but video from the scene seems to show more extensive damage. Aerial footage of the derailment shows a number of cars stacked nearly perpendicular to the tracks while others landed in a burning, zig-zag pattern in a residential area where some structures seemed crushed and other ablaze. Hyndman resident Jim Shaffer told the (Cumberland) Times-News he was awakened by the sound of crashing rail cars. "It woke me up. It was louder than a thunderstorm," he said. "I heard the cars banging into each other. Then I heard the fire whistle." Bedford County 911 coordinator Harry Corley said officials ordered everyone within a 1-mile radius of the derailment to leave hours after the derailment. The order encompasses the entire town of Hyndman, and residents have been directed to a local church for help with lodging and food. Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf, in a phone interview from the evacuation center several miles away from the train, said some neighbors have refused to leave their homes. "But everyone knows where they are and they're safe at this point," Wolf said Wednesday afternoon. Only a few people were in the church, as most evacuees chose to go to hotels or the homes of friends or relatives, he said. Wolf said officials were conducting air and ground studies to determine possible health effects. He said area residents have "a lot of uncertainty and everyone's hoping for the best, praying for the best." Asked about the risk of a propane explosion, Wolf said, "There's always that possibility. I think, from what I hear, the potential of that happening has diminished somewhat." A number of roads are closed, and some flight restrictions are in place. Federal investigators arrived at the scene late Wednesday afternoon but weren't able to assess the situation because the fires were still burning. The National Transportation Safety Board spokesman Terry Williams said he expects them to get a better sense of the scene by Thursday. Amtrak suspended train service between Pittsburgh and Washington, D.C., providing buses to take passengers between the two stations. "CSX apologizes for the impact that this incident is having on the residents of Hyndman," Doolittle said. Hyndman is a town of more than 800 residents near the Maryland border. "CSX's top priority is to work cooperatively with first responders and other officials to protect the public's safety, and CSX personnel are on the scene assisting first responders, providing information about the contents of the train and expertise on responding to railroad incidents," Doolittle said. CAIRO - Munir al-Adam spends his hours alone in a Saudi prison, his mother says. He doesn't know if it is day or night because he is kept mostly in a dark cell. Partially blind and partially deaf, he has experienced different forms of torture in the five years since his arrest. "He has been ordered to stand for long intervals of time," said his mother, Zahraa Abdullah. "He was beaten with sticks and cables. He was electrocuted and prevented from eating or going to the bathroom." Adam and 13 other Saudi men are facing execution any day now for allegedly staging protests in the kingdom. All from the country's Shiite minority, they include a teenager who was arrested just before he was to board a flight to visit a U.S. college where he planned to study English and finance. Human rights activists and American academics say the death sentences breach international law and hinged on false confessions induced by torture. They have launched a public appeal to Saudi Arabia's new crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, to dismiss the sentences. Saudi justice ministry officials said Thursday that they planned to issue a statement about the cases soon. Saudi officials have said previously through state-run media that the men staged attacks on checkpoints and patrols, killing several security force personnel. The sentences are a sign of the deepening tensions between Saudi Arabia's Sunni elites and Shiite Muslims at home and in the region. In neighboring Yemen, the kingdom is engaged in a costly war against Shiite Houthi rebels said to be backed by Iran's Shiite theocracy, the regional rival. The Saudi-led campaign to isolate Qatar is partly over the Persian Gulf nation's close ties with Iran. At home, Shiites have long complained of discrimination. As the Arab Spring revolts erupted six years ago, thousands staged demonstrations mainly in eastern Saudi Arabia's heavily Shiite populated regions to demand more rights and access to government services. But the kingdom's rulers viewed the uprisings as a threat, accusing protesters of aligning with Iran. In recent weeks, confrontations between Shiites and government forces in a restive eastern area have grown more violent. The 14 men on death row have been charged with offenses related to attending demonstrations. They were sentenced by the Specialized Criminal Court which, according to the U.K.-based human rights group Reprieve, "used confessions extracted through torture as the basis of convictions." For more than a decade, Saudi Arabia has been among the world's top five countries for carrying out executions, mostly through beheadings and stonings. More than 300 people have been executed in the past two years, say human rights activists. The death penalty is regularly imposed for nonviolent crimes, including drug possession and adultery. Two weeks ago, the men were moved to the Saudi capital, Riyadh, a sign that their executions were nearing. At least one juvenile and several young protesters are among the group, according to Reprieve. They include Mujtaba'a al-Sweikat, who was arrested at an airport in December 2012 as he was leaving the country to visit the campus of Western Michigan University. Only 17 at the time, Sweikat was not given a reason for his arrest and has been in prison ever since. He was convicted without having access to legal representation, according to human rights activists. In a July 22 statement, faculty and administrators of Western Michigan University said Sweikat was "subject to sleep deprivations, beatings, cigarette burns, solitary confinement and others forms of torture or suffering." He was sentenced to death "on the sole basis of a confession extracted by torture," they added, citing the findings of the U.N. human rights office "President Donald J. Trump and other U.S. officials should be robust and vocal in defending freedom of expression the world over," read the statement. "If U.S. citizens stay silent as another country attacks this freedom, we undermine the very foundations of democracy." Adam was arrested in March 2012 at a shop in the eastern town of Al Awamiyah. Police accused him of confronting them and took him to jail. He was 18 at the time and was tortured in the first three months in jail, said his mother, who answered questions via text messaging. She last spoke to him in June, during the Muslim holy fasting month of Ramadan. Now, every day is consumed by one fear. "The date of the execution is not known," she said. "I call upon every influential person to save my son's life." --- Heba Farouk Mahfouz in Cairo contributed to this report. Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and Democratic National Committee chairman Tom Perez offered some last-minute encouragement for a unionization effort at a Nissan plant in Canton, Miss. -- a drive that is expected to end in defeat Friday after a vigorous anti-union campaign. "Supervisors have called workers off assembly lines for one-on-one interrogations. Anti-union videos are being run on a constant loop in employee break rooms," Sanders wrote in a column for the Guardian. "Groups of workers have been called into 'roundtable' meetings to hear management disparage the United Auto Workers. Nissan has been saturating local TV and radio with anti-union propaganda." In a video statement, Perez - a former labor secretary - accused Nissan of an "outrageous campaign to intimidate its workers, threatening plant closures, pay cuts and all-out retribution against those who threat to unionize." "Get out of the way, Nissan," said Perez. "Let them make a decision on their own." Sanders, national Democrats and a cluster of progressive political organizations have spotlighted the Canton union drive all year: In March, Sanders was at the head of a march on the plant, linking the organizers' cause to the fight for civil rights. Since then, Nissan has deployed tactics that have helped blunt or block union drives in other right-to-work states. The company has issued dark warnings of how unionization could cost jobs, and it has enlisted Republican politicians to attack the UAW's efforts. "The United Auto Workers and Socialist politicians like Bernie Sanders have come to Mississippi to try and unionize one of the most successful automotive plants in America," Mississippi Gov. Phil Bryant, R, wrote last month on Facebook, promoting a video by a Nissan-backed anti-UAW campaign. "This is nothing but a con game to destroy private market success and replace it with government control of free enterprise." In TV ads that have run frequently during the vote, Nissan's promoted the voices of workers who insist that organizing the Nissan plant would empower corrupt union bosses and cost jobs. "I have worked in a union plant, and it wasn't all that great," says one talking head in the latest spot. "A union is about themselves. It's about greed," says another. And the anti-union Nissan Technicians for Truth and Jobs has warned workers that the UAW is beset by scandal, risking that dues would be squandered on corrupt bosses. "The UAW is just at the very beginning of an FBI investigation into bribery of UAW officials in which worker training money was spent to pay off at least one officer's mortgage and buy jewelry, a Ferrari, and two $45,000 gold pens," they wrote in one Facebook post as the vote was underway. "At a minimum the UAW needs to get its own house in order before it can pretend to come help fix ours." The tone of the organizers' messaging, meanwhile, has become more nervous - and the interventions by Sanders and Perez reflect that. "This could go down as one of the most vicious, and illegal, anti-union crusades in decades," Sanders wrote. Washington Congress sent President Donald Trump legislation to provide the biggest expansion of college aid for military veterans in a decade. The Senate cleared the bill by voice vote on Wednesday, passing the second piece of legislation aimed at addressing urgent problems at the beleaguered Department of Veterans Affairs in as many days. The House passed the bipartisan college aid legislation last week. The measure is a broad effort to better prepare veterans for life after active-duty service amid a rapidly changing job market. Building on legislation passed in 2008 that guaranteed a full-ride scholarship to any in-state public university or a similar cash amount for private college students the bill removes a 15-year time limit to tap into GI benefits and increases money for thousands in the National Guard and Reserve. Veterans would get additional payments if they complete science, technology and engineering courses. The bill also would restore benefits if a college closed in the middle of the semester, a protection added when thousands of veterans were hurt by the collapse of for-profit college giant ITT Technical Institute and Corinthian Colleges. Purple Heart recipients, meanwhile, would be fully eligible for benefits, regardless of length of service. "This bill invests in the proven success of our veterans," said Sen. Johnny Isakson, R-Ga., chairman of the Veterans Affairs Committee. "When our veterans return home, they should have every opportunity available to them to pursue their desired profession and career." The panel's top Democrat, Jon Tester of Montana, says the bill "also does right by Guardsmen and Reservists by getting them the education, housing and health care that they have earned. I look forward to working with President Trump to quickly sign our bill into law." Westport residents Peter Angus and Jeffrey Rosen graduated from Ithaca College in May. The Community Service Corps is an after-school program available to Westport students in sixth, seventh and eighth grades. Agency placement is made based upon the students interests and on a first-come, first-served basis. Student volunteers work one afternoon each week, Monday through Thursday, from 3 to 5 p.m. At the end of the 10-week program, there is a wrap-up event at Toquet Hall, where student volunteers reflect on and discuss their experiences. Applications for the fall session of the Community Service Corps are available. A copy of the students medical form must be submitted with the application. Registration forms are available at westportct.gov, as well as in the Department of Human Services office in Town Hall Room 200. Contact Youth Services Program Director Kevin Godburn at 203-341-1155 or kgodburn@westportct.gov or Westport Department of Human Services at 203-341-1050 with any questions. Laura Shattuck, an attorney and partner at Westport-based Nusbaum & Parrino P.C., was recently recognized for lifetime achievement among Americas Top 100 Attorneys. In addition, she was recognized by the American Registry with a 2017 Americas Most Honored Professionals Award Top One Percent. This award is given to the best of the best, including CEOs, doctors, attorneys and individuals from every industry and profession. Shattuck joined Nusbaum & Parrino in 2006 and became partner in January 2016. She devotes her practice to representing clients in all matters of family law. The Fairfield resident is actively engaged in litigation and has substantial experience working on large, sophisticated cases. She practices in all areas of family law matters, including divorce, alimony, child support, property division, child custody, post judgment modification and post judgment contempt. Shattuck, a graduate of ABA-NITA Family Law Trial Advocacy Institute, was named as one of ALMs 2015 Women Leaders in the Law. She also was named 2015 10 Best Family Law Attorneys for Client Satisfaction in Connecticut by the American Institute of Family Law Attorneys. The people spoke and Westport Cinema Initiative is delivering. After a sell-out/standing-room-only/had-to-turn-some-away crowd on July 15, a second screening of The High School That Rocked documentary is scheduled for Aug. 26 at 5 p.m. at the Westport Historical Society, 25 Avery Place, across from Town Hall. The documentary takes a look at Staples High School, which somehow managed to lure a slew of classic-rock legends including Cream, the Doors and the Yardbirds to perform at the high school. The screening will be followed by a talk-back with the films producer, Fred Cantor, and local filmmaker Douglas Tirola. This is a joint effort, benefiting Westport Cinema Initiative and Westport Historical Society. Tickets are available for $10 online only at westportcinema.org. and include free popcorn. Seating is limited. For information, visit westportcinema.org or westporthistory.org. The Westport Domestic Violence Task Force is seeking local salons willing to donate gift certificates for haircuts and color treatments. The gift certificates would benefit the two local Domestic Violence Crisis Center shelters. The women and children residing in these shelters have fled violent households, often with just the clothes on their backs. Many women in these shelters have been out of the workforce for a while and want to prepare themselves for job interviews or they are looking to change their appearance to avoid an abuser. The gift certificates would be used anonymously at later dates for that purpose. The gift certificate drive is being conducted through Sept. 30. Donating salons will be named and thanked at the task forces October awareness event and at the Unitarian Churchs October Voices Cafe. Donors are asked to complete a donation form available at westportct.gov, which will be used to provide them with an official receipt for tax purposes, as the crisis center is a public charity. Gift certificates and submission forms can be dropped off to task force co-chairwoman, Lt. Jillian Cabana, at Westport police headquarters, 50 Jesup Road, or arrangements can be made for salon pick-up. For information, contact wdvtf06880@gmail.com or call 203-341-6009. Washington President Donald Trump's bold threat to push "Obamacare" into collapse may get harder to carry out after a new court ruling. The procedural decision late Tuesday by a federal appeals panel in Washington has implications for millions of consumers. The judges said that a group of states can defend the legality of government "cost-sharing" subsidies for copays and deductibles under the Affordable Care Act if the Trump administration decides to stop paying the money. Trump has been threatening to do just that for months, and he amped up his warnings after the GOP's drive to repeal and replace "Obamacare" fell apart in the Senate last week. The subsidies help keep premiums in check, but they are under a legal cloud because of a dispute over the wording of the ACA. Trump has speculated that he could force Democrats to make a deal on health care by stopping the payments. The court's decision is "a check on the ability of the president to sabotage the Affordable Care Act in one very important way," said Tim Jost, professor emeritus at Washington and Lee University School of Law in Virginia, a supporter of the ACA who has followed the issue closely. Because of the ruling, legal experts said, states can now sue if the administration cuts off the subsidies. Also, they said, the president won't be able to claim he's merely following the will of a lower court that found Congress had not properly approved the money. "We're not going to wait to find out what Donald Trump wants to do," said California Attorney General Xavier Becerra, who is helping steer the states' involvement. "My team is ready to defend these subsidies in court." The Justice Department had no comment. The White House re-issued an earlier statement saying, "the president is working with his staff and his Cabinet to consider the issues raised by the ... payments." Trump has made his feelings clear on Twitter. "If ObamaCare is hurting people, & it is, why shouldn't it hurt the insurance companies," he tweeted early Monday. He elaborated in an earlier tweet, "If a new HealthCare Bill is not approved quickly, BAILOUTS for Insurance Companies...will end very soon!" The appeals court panel seemed to take such statements into account in granting 17 states and the District of Columbia the ability to intervene on behalf of consumers. President Donald Trump on Thursday lashed out at Congress for the country's deteriorating relationship with Russia, which he characterized in a tweet as "at an all-time & very dangerous low." "You can thank Congress, the same people that can't even give us HCare!" the president said, referencing the failure of the Senate to pass legislation overhauling the Affordable Care Act, a long-term GOP priority and marquee Trump campaign promise. The president's assessment came a day after he begrudgingly signed legislation, passed by overwhelming majorities in the House and Senate, that imposes new sanctions on Russia and places restrictions on his ability to roll back measures already in place. In a statement Wednesday, Trump criticized the bill he signed as "seriously flawed," arguing that it encroaches on his powers as president. Trump also said that he had "built a great company worth many billions of dollars" and asserted that he "can make far better deals with foreign countries than Congress." Lawmakers from both parties pushed back against Trump's tweet Thursday. Those included Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, who pinned blame for the current U.S.-Russia relationship "solely" on Russian leader Vladimir Putin. "I know there's some frustration. I get it," Corker said, speaking of the sanctions bill. "We acted in the country's national interest in doing this. Putin through his actions is the one who has taken this relationship back to levels we haven't seen since 1991." Those activities, Corker said, include "an affront to the American people" by meddling in last year's presidential election. Lawmakers' solidarity in tying Trump's hands on Russian sanctions reflects a deepening concern about the White House's posture toward Moscow, which critics have characterized as naive. The new Russia sanctions expand on measures taken by the Obama administration to punish the Kremlin for its alleged efforts to interfere in the 2016 presidential election. But Trump has continued to cast doubt that Russia alone was responsible, and he has called the investigations of the matter by Congress and by a special counsel a "witch hunt." Russia this week reacted to Congress's passage of the sanctions bill - as well as the earlier Obama-imposed measures - by announcing that it would order the U.S. Embassy there to reduce its staff by 755 people and seize U.S. diplomatic properties. Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev criticized Trump on Wednesday for signing the bill. "The Trump administration has shown its total weakness by handing over executive power to Congress in the most humiliating way," he tweeted. Trump has sought to build a relationship with Putin, repeatedly asserting that the United States and Russia have shared interests. During the Group of 20 summit in Germany last month, the two leaders met for a much-publicized meeting that ran more than two hours - far longer than scheduled - and chatted informally for up to an additional hour later the same day during a dinner for G-20 leaders. Thursday's tweet comes at a time of fraying relationships between Trump and Senate Republicans in particular. GOP senators have sought to distance themselves from the president, who has belittled them as looking like "fools" and tried to strong-arm their agenda and browbeat them into changing a venerated rule to make it easier to ram through legislation along party lines. Among those speaking out about Trump on Thursday were Sen. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., who read the president's tweet off a reporter's phone. "Huh. Well. It is what it is," Flake said. Asked whether he agreed with the president, Flake said: "Congress' fault? I don't think so." His Republican colleague from Arizona, Sen. John McCain, responded to Trump on Twitter with a different party to blame: "You can thank Putin for attacking our democracy, invading neighbors & threatening our allies," McCain wrote. Democrats were also critical of the president's tweet Thursday. "That shows a continuing lack of understanding by the president of what happened," said Sen. Mark R. Warner, D-Va., who earlier tweeted that the blame for the deteriorating U.S.-Russian relationship rests with Putin. Michael F. Bennet, D-Colo., meanwhile, offered this succinct response to Trump's tweet: "That is ridiculous." --- Abby Phillip and Sean Sullivan contributed to this report. WASHINGTON - President Donald Trump on Wednesday endorsed a new bill in the Senate aimed at slashing legal immigration levels in half over a decade, a potentially profound change to policies that have been in place for more than half a century. Trump appeared with Republican Sens. Tom Cotton (Ark.) and David Perdue (Ga.) at the White House to unveil a modified version of a bill the senators first introduced in February to create a "merit-based" immigration system that would put a greater emphasis on the job skills of foreigners over their ties to family in the United States. The legislation seeks to reduce the annual distribution of green cards awarding permanent legal residence from more than 1 million to just over 500,000. Trump promised on the campaign trail to take a harder line on immigration, arguing that the growth in new arrivals had harmed job opportunities for American workers. "Among those who have been hit hardest in recent years are immigrants and minority workers competing for jobs against brand-new arrivals," said Trump, flanked by the senators in the Roosevelt Room. "It has not been fair to our people, our citizens and our workers." The bill faces dim prospects in the Senate, where Republicans hold a narrow majority and would have difficulty reaching 60 votes to fend off a filibuster. But the president's event came as the White House sought to move past a major political defeat on repealing the Affordable Care Act by pivoting to issues that resonate with Trump's core supporters. Meanwhile, the Justice Department has begun laying the groundwork to potentially bring legal challenges against universities over admissions policies that could be deemed to discriminate against white students. Trump's critics accused the administration of pursuing policies that would harm immigrants and racial minority groups. "This offensive plan . . . is nothing but a series of nativist talking points and regurgitated campaign rhetoric that completely fails to move our nation forward toward real reform," Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., said in a statement. Angelica Salas, executive director of the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights, predicted that the bill would not go far in Congress and called it "red meat to Donald Trump's base." Trump had met twice previously at the White House with Cotton and Perdue to discuss the details of their legislation, which is titled the Reforming American Immigration for Strong Employment (Raise) Act. Their proposal calls for slashes to family-based immigration programs, cutting off avenues for the siblings and adult children of U.S. citizens and legal permanent residents to apply for green cards. Minor children and spouses would still be able to apply. The bill would create a point-system based on factors such as English ability, education levels and job skills to rank applicants for the 140,000 employment-based green cards distributed annually. In addition, the senators propose to cap annual refugee admissions at 50,000 and to end a visa diversity lottery that has awarded 50,000 green cards per year, mostly to applicants from African nations. Cotton said that while some might view the current immigration system as a "symbol of America's virtue and generosity," he sees it "as a symbol we're not committed to working-class Americans and we need to change that." The number of legal immigrants has grown rapidly since 1965, when lawmakers eased restrictionist laws that had been in place for four decades that largely shut down immigration from Asia, Africa and Eastern Europe. Trump's chief policy aide, Stephen Miller, argued that the system has grown unwieldy, flooding the country with low-skilled workers who drive down wages for Americans of all racial backgrounds, including other immigrants who are already here. Miller sparred with a reporter Wednesday at the daily White House briefing over the symbolism of the Statue of Liberty. He argued that the famous poem by Emma Lazarus was "added later" and thus did not define the U.S. immigration system as offering protection to the "poor" and "huddled masses." "If you look at the history of immigration, it actually ebbed and flowed," Miller said. "There were periods of large waves followed by periods of less immigration." But the legislation was quickly denounced by congressional Democrats, including the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, and immigrant rights groups. It is also likely to face resistance from some business leaders and moderate Republicans in states with large immigrant populations. Opponents of the bill said that immigrants help boost the economy and that studies have shown they commit crimes at lower levels than do native-born Americans. "This is just a fundamental restructuring of our immigration system which has huge implications for the future," said Kevin Appleby, the senior director of international migration policy for the Center for Migration Studies. "This is part of a broader strategy by this administration to rid the country of low-skilled immigrants they don't favor in favor of immigrants in their image." Perdue and Cotton said their proposal is modeled after "merit-based" immigration systems in Canada and Australia that also use point systems. But those countries admit more than twice the number of immigrants to their countries as the United States does now when judged as a percentage of their overall population levels. "Just because you have a PhD doesn't mean you're necessarily more valuable to the U.S. economy," said Stuart Anderson, executive director of the National Foundation for American Policy. "The best indication of whether a person is employable is if someone wants to hire them." Alex Nowrasteh, an immigration policy analyst at the CATO Institute, wrote that the bill "would do nothing to boost skilled immigration and it will only increase the proportion of employment-based green cards by cutting other green cards. Saying otherwise is grossly deceptive marketing." Cuts to legal immigration levels, including some of the same groups targeted in the Cotton-Perdue bill, were included in a comprehensive immigration bill in 2013 that was backed by President Barack Obama and approved on a bipartisan basis in the Senate. But that bill, which died in the GOP-controlled House, would have offered a path to citizenship to an estimated 8 million immigrants living in the country illegally and cleared a green-card waiting list of 4 million foreigners. Groups that favor stricter immigration policies hailed the legislation as a step in the right direction. Roy Beck, president of NumbersUSA, said the Raise Act "will do more than any other action to fulfill President Trump's promises as a candidate to create an immigration system that puts the interests of American workers first." - - - The Washington Post's John Wagner contributed to this report. - - - Video: Trump announces new immigration policy President Trump announced the Reforming American Immigration for Strong Employment (RAISE) Act on Aug. 2, which aims to cut immigration by half from the current level of more than 1 million green cards granted per year. Embed code: This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate 3 1 of 3 Twitter/@GregAbbott_TX Show More Show Less 2 of 3 Twitter/@GregAbbott_TX Show More Show Less 3 of 3 Gov. Greg Abbott lamented to a West Texas news station that he wishes a fabricated story he pushed on his Twitter account Tuesday - and has yet to delete - was true. A story on uconservative.net claiming Cowboys Owner Jerry Jones threatened players with termination if they refused to stand for the National Anthem made its way to Abbott's Twitter account, where he shared it saying, "Thank you Jerry Jones." This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate AUSTIN The Texas House, which has yet to pass much of Gov. Greg Abbotts agenda in the special session, voted unanimously Thursday for a bill thats not on his to-do list that would help children with disabilities who rely on Medicaid-financed therapy services. This is the most important issue that I see right now, said Rep. Sarah Davis, R-West University Place, in presenting the bill to her colleagues. Were talking about children that have to learn how to swallow. House Bill 25 would restore cuts that were made to the therapy program after a state report indicated that rates were too high. Davis said it since has become clear that the report was in error, and that children with profound disabilities have not been able to receive the services that they need. The House under Speaker Joe Straus, R-San Antonio, pushed in the regular session to restore funding to the program but in negotiations with the Senate, only part of the money was reinstated. Asked whether the House is going rogue with the action, Straus told the San Antonio Express-News Thursday, Of course not. Were expressing our priorities and our strong views that that program needs to be funded to help these most vulnerable kids who are in need of the services. Straus, who met with Abbott Thursday, said they talked about his agenda as hes laid it out Our discussion probably should remain private between us. The 138-0 House vote to restore the cuts in the therapy program came with a strong bipartisan push and passionate support from numerous lawmakers including Rep. Matt Krause, R-Fort Worth, a member of the tea-party-affiliated Texas Freedom Caucus in the House and a joint author of the bill. Krause won approval of an amendment that would change the way the proposal would be funded. As filed, it would have taken money from the rainy day fund, a politically difficult vote since a number of conservatives say the savings account must only be spent for one-time expenditures. Under Krauses amendment, the bill would tap about $70 million in disaster funds overseen by the governor. That program also was funded by rainy day fund money, but since it already has been approved by lawmakers, it wouldnt freshly tap into the savings account. Its a distinction that Krause said he wanted in order to muster the strongest possible House vote. Krause said the move was absolutely not a shot at the governor. House Appropriations Committee Chairman John Zerwas, R-Richmond, voted against the funding method since it affects funding agreements made for the budget that takes effect Sept. 1. But he voted for the bill. There are a lot of issues that members of the House felt should be addressed, he said. Thats always the risk you take when you call a special session. People can file anything and they can talk about anything unless somebody calls it down. Abbott, who controls the agenda, has said hell consider adding other items when lawmakers pass all 20 topics that already are on it, which appears unlikely. Lawmakers can consider bills that arent officially on the call unless someone calls a point of order to stop them. Besides the measure addressing childrens therapy cuts, the House voted for water bills by Rep. Lyle Larson, R-San Antonio, that were vetoed by Abbott or stalled in the Senate during the regular session. Water isnt on the agenda of the special session, but some of his legislation could be construed to fall under the issue of permitting, which Abbott has put before lawmakers. The measures require another House vote before being sent for consideration to the Senate, which is presided over by Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick. His office didnt immediately respond to a request for comment, but Patrick is on the same page as Abbott with regard to the special session and it appears unlikely he would move bills through the Senate without Abbotts OK. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate Two San Antonio councilmen who proposed moving a Confederate statue out of Travis Park said a proposal in the legislature to prevent monuments' removal stripped local government of power and privileged a time in history when many Texans were still regarded as "second-class citizens." Sen. Brandon Creighton, R-Conroe, filed Senate Bill 112 Wednesday. If passed in the next 13 days of the special session, it would limit the ability of local governments to remove historical monuments. Councilmen Roberto Trevino and Cruz Shaw had proposed Monday that the statue of a Confederate soldier in the park named after Alamo Commander William Barret Travis, a slave owner, be removed after 118 years there. "We know there is a lot of opportunity to make it a more welcoming, inclusive space," Trevino said of the idea, which has brought strife to other communities across the country attempting to do the same. RELATED: New home may be sought for Confederate statue The Travis Park statue could not be removed, relocated or altered if the bill is passed, because it has been standing in any park for more than 40 years, the cut-off under the bill. "It is not by accident that the language protects monuments and memorials that were erected during a time when the few held so much power and others were still regarded as second-class citizens," Trevino said in a statement. A statue on state ground standing for 20-40 years can be removed, relocated or altered, but only with the approval of the Texas House and Senate, according to the bill text. Monuments in their infancy, less than 20 years, standing on state grounds can only be removed, relocated or altered by the Texas Legislature, Texas Historical Commission or the State Preservation Board. Removing monuments located on municipal or county property for 20 years or less could only be removed by vote. Trevino said Creighton's bill is an attempt to "weaken local government entities across Texas." RELATED: Bexar's Confederate markers to get new home "These statutes and monuments are important to Texans," Creighton said in a statement. "Texas should not erase our history we should learn from it." He said the state should not "delete evidence of our past." The bill also requires that if a monument is removed, that it be placed in a "prominent location." San Antonio's council proposal would not destroy the statue it would require the statue be given a new to-be-determined home. Shaw said in a statement that "San Antonio's municipal government should not be undermined by state officials." "SB 112 is not seeking to preserve history, but rather to strip municipalities of their voices in how history is displayed," he said. Council members Rey Saldana, John Courage and Ana Sandoval have also signed onto Trevino and Shaw's memo, which is set to go before the Governance Committee possibly next week. Staff writer Scott Huddleston contributed to this report. kbradshaw@express-news.net Twitter: @kbrad5 This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate A U.S. Air Force veteran and national security expert from San Antonio announced Wednesday that she will challenge Congressman Will Hurd for the U.S. District 23 seat. Gina Ortiz Jones, 36, a graduate of Jay High School and a veteran of the war in Iraq, is running as a Democrat against Hurd, a 39-year-old Republican from Helotes first elected to lead the district in 2014. Jones is a first-generation American and a former Air Force intelligence officer. She said she will work to protect peoples health care and the environment. As a veteran, she said she wont oppose or vote against the wishes of the U.S. secretary of defense. She said Hurd did that last month when he voted in favor of a proposed amendment that sought to prevent funding for medical treatment other than mental health care relating to gender transition for current military service personnel. That amendment, proposed by Republican Missouri Congresswoman Vicky Hartzler, failed by a House vote of 209-214 three weeks ago. Hurds office did not respond to requests for comment Thursday about his July 13 vote on that issue. Jones said she wants people to have the same opportunities she has had. I know that national security starts at home. It starts with the type of opportunities that I had the type of opportunities that allow our most vulnerable to become our most promising, Jones said Wednesday. And those opportunities are protected or erased based on how people vote in D.C. Ive talked to folks that are tired of being told one thing and then their representative (votes) against their interests in D.C. Hurds campaign brushed off news of a Democratic challenger. Will Hurd is focused on building upon his record of being the most effective member of Congress since 2014, Hurd campaign manager Justin Hollis said in a prepared statement. He delivers for the district while the Democratic challengers only deliver tired talking points. Jones was raised by a single mother who came to the United States from the Philippines. After graduating from high school in San Antonio, Jones attended Boston University on a four-year Air Force ROTC scholarship. She went on to serve in the Air Force for nearly three years, deploying to Iraq in 2005. She then pursued a 12-year career in national security, intelligence and defense, including serving in the Defense Intelligence Agency. She most recently was a director for investment at the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, reviewing foreign investments coming into the U.S. for national security risks. After serving for eight months under President Barack Obamas administration and seven months under President Donald Trumps administration, she resigned in June and returned to San Antonio. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate The Bexar County detention officer accused of conspiring to collect hundreds of dollars for an incarcerated drug dealer split the money with him and used part of her $500 to buy fireworks for her children, court records show. Records also show she frequently spoke to the inmate on the phone and professed her love for him. The deputy, Rita Alvarez, 31, was arrested Wednesday on charges of engaging in organized criminal activity and illegal bartering. She remains in the Bexar County Jail on a $50,000 bond. According to Sheriff Javier Salazar, Alvarez is currently on unpaid administrative leave and will probably be terminated in the near future. RELATED: SAPD: Man attacked two women with machete on North Side, led police on chase Alvarez was arrested after a months-long investigation into a suspected drug dealing operation allegedly led by Cristobal "Buddha" Perez, 35, who was arrested on April 25 after authorities reportedly found more than 400 grams of black tar heroin and 200 grams of cocaine and hashish at his stash house in the 100 block of Monclova Alley. According to court records, Perez spoke with Alvarez from jail on a regular basis and she often told him she loved him and would be there for him. During one conversation, Perez requested Alvarez bring him barbacoa tacos. The two also allegedly coordinated the drug money collections during the phone calls. On July 1, Alvarez "readily agreed" to collect a $1,000 drug debt owed to Perez by one of his alleged heroin dealers, Roxanne Herrera, according to the affidavit. Herrera and several other dealers allegedly dealt drugs for Perez. Herrera told police that Perez would front them 20 ounces of heroin, which they would sell for $900 an ounce for a total of $18,000. The dealers would then turn the money over to Perez and keep any extra cash for themselves, according to the affidavit. Herrera was arrested on April 5 after she was allegedly caught with 400 grams of heroin and $6,000 in cash. It is unclear how much Herrera owed Perez, but at least two $1,000 payments from Herrera were collected on his behalf following his arrest, authorities said. The payments were reportedly collected from third parties. Alvarez personally collected one of the payments, according to the affidavit. She used some of her half to buy July 4th fireworks for her kids. The other $500 was deposited to Perez's inmate commissary fund. RELATED: Sheriff: Detention officer collected drug debts for inmate, had money deposited to commissary fund The other payment was allegedly collected by Victoria Sepeda, a 33-year-old who has children with Perez, from Herrera's partner, Nancy Landeros, on May 30 at a Dave and Buster's. Landeros had previously spoken with investigators on April 24 and told them that Herrera said a Bexar County detention officer had spoken with her about the money she owed Perez. Investigators later met with Herrera at the jail, and she identified Alvarez as the detention officer with whom she had spoken. Also arrested in the investigation were 34-year-old Salvador Robles and 25-year-old Omar Garcia. Court records allege Robles, like Herrera, was a drug dealer for Perez. Investigators recorded multiple phone calls between the two men in which Perez instructs Robles to collect drug debts owed to him. In one such conversation, Perez allegedly told Robles to "hit him in the mouth" if one of his debtors didn't pay up, according to court records. Garcia, meanwhile, is accused of standing guard over the stash house on Monclova. Garcia lived next door to the stash house, according to court records, and investigators witnessed him making numerous "hand-to-hand transactions" at the gate separating the two lots. On April 25, the same day Perez was arrested following the raid at his alleged stash house, Garcia gave police consent to search his own home. Inside, they found three shotguns and two handguns, one of which was reported as stolen, records show. He was not arrested after the search, but deputies obtained an arrest warrant for him on Aug. 1 and rounded him up with the other suspects involved in the alleged drug dealing ring. Text "NEWS" to 77453 for breaking news alerts from mySA.com cdowns@mysa.com Twitter: @calebjdowns To activate the text-to-speech service, please first agree to the privacy policy below. Taipei, Aug. 3 (CNA) A total of 15 Taiwanese teenagers will visit South Korea later this month to learn more about the issue of "comfort women," the term used to describe women forced into sexual slavery by the Japanese Imperial Army during World War II, one of the groups organizing the trip said on Thursday. Newspaper editorials and columnists, television and radio commenters, and Letters to the Editor writers (including myself) have given much attention and negative criticism to our president. And understandably so he has presented us with the Greatest Show On Earth with his daily acts of idiotic idiosyncrasies. Barnum and Bailey would agree. It would be impossible to remember all the un-presidential acts he has performed, and lies he has committed even if we did, there is not enough room on this page to list them. When Donald Trump entered the ring for the Republican presidential nomination he was free, and able to give us a wild and woolly show because he neither had the intention, nor belief, he ever could become the President of the United States. Besides being a thrice-married adulterer, having multiple bankruptcies, having a $40 million fraud lawsuit pending, being up against a field of senators and governors, he knew as we all knew, he had no chance of winning the nomination. But in addition, Trump had knowledge of something we didnt: his tax returns. He believed his returns, if revealed, would never permit him to run for president (nor be president today) and allowed him to run a free and wild un-presidential campaign. Donald Trump believed a candidate, in order to become president, had to release his tax returns. He made this fact well known, when in 2012 he supported, but criticized, Gov. Mitt Romney for hesitating in releasing his tax returns, and later praised him when he did. If we examine these facts it should be obvious Trump never entered the nomination to become president. He more likely entered because of his personal pride, and to improve his public image because he had been lambasted by President Obama before the nation on TV at the Washington Correspondents Dinner, and also was facing a $40 million fraud lawsuit by a judge (of Mexican heritage). But why would Republicans (mainly from southern red Republican states) still remain his solid supporters and vote so overwhelming for this slick Yankee from New York who wouldnt reveal his taxes? And why would they favor a candidate who disrespected Gold Star parents, and a Senator who was a prisoner of war hero, and a handicapped reporter? Why would they? After he had promised to clear the swamp, he instead added snakes to further disrupt our nation and promised a better health care plan, but instead he promoted a plan that would increase premiums, and cause millions and millions of our citizens and their children to lose their health care, and thousands to die (and directly affect a great majority of Trump Supporters!) Why would they? Was it possible they acted this way because Trump was the undisputed leader of the Birther movement? An anonymous racist movement that doesnt have to wear white hoods, and they welcome all White Supremacists. Racism is still strong in America thanks to Donald Trump and the Republican Party. The GOP, the Grand Old Party of Lincoln, reversed roles with the Democratic Party when they accepted the racist and white supremacist Dixiecrats into their party in order to gain the dominant white vote, and have successfully gained control of all branches of our government. If their goal is to Make America Great Again, a question must be asked: When was the Again they refer to? Was the Again when black children couldnt go to school with white children and had to sit in back of the bus? Or was the Again when gays had to hide in the closet? Or was it when 45 million Americans were without health insurance? Why doesnt Trump, or his base who made him president, at least tell us when the Again was in our history? An honest President Trump would have ended the cloud over his administration, and released his tax returns to prove he was honest and had nothing to hide, and has no Russian financial relations. It is evident he is not going to. Special Counsel Robert Muellers Russia investigation might expose President Trumps tax returns and lead to his Waterloo but Dumb Donald may be creating another Waterloo by disenfranchising his strong white supremacist southern base, as he attacks and threatens to fire Attorney General Jeff Sessions, a true and proven white supremacist from Alabama. Paul F. Adinolfi is a resident of Sandy Hook. Jeff Sessions thought he was on the Trump team, but he was sadly mistaken. For President Donald Trump, the world breaks down into three categories theres family, who are part of the charmed Trump circle by blood or marriage; there are winners, who have earned Trumps regard by making lots of money (often at Goldman Sachs); and then theres everyone else, who are adornments to be cast aside as Trump finds convenient. Sessions is emphatically in the latter category. If the former Alabama senator wanted to be securely ensconced in Trump world, he should have had the foresight to marry Ivanka. Nothing else not endorsing early, not carrying water in trying circumstances in the campaign will ever make him anything more than some guy who happens to be attorney general of the United States. Trumps treatment of Sessions is unprecedented in the annals of American government. Cabinet officials have been hung out to dry before. They have been forced to resign or fired. Never before has a Cabinet secretary been publicly belittled in an ongoing campaign of humiliation by the president who appointed him. The drama hangs a lantern on Trumps flaws. Trump lacks gratitude, dismissing Sessions endorsement of him in the primaries as merely the senators reaction to the size of Trumps crowds. He obviously doesnt feel any respect for someone who, as an honorable person with a long career in public service, deserves it. He doesnt care about propriety, which would dictate dressing down Sessions in private, not flaying him in public. And, finally, he doesnt feel any obligation to Sessions, despite the fact that Sessions gave up a safe Senate seat to serve in his administration. For Trump, loyalty is unilateral, not reciprocal, and it has a very particular content. Its not loyalty to the agenda or to the party, but to Trump, specifically his personal interests and honor. Robert Muellers investigation, at the very least, creates an ongoing cloud over Trumps election victory. Insofar as the president believes that Sessions enabled this assault on his ego, the attorney general is persona non grata. He might as well have told the president that, yes, Barack Obama had a bigger inaugural crowd. As a result, Trump is demeaning his attorney general and using the same weapons he uses against any of his targets namely, anything at hand. Trump hits Sessions for not pursuing Hillary Clinton, when the president himself had called for letting the Clinton scandal go. He criticizes Sessions for not firing FBI official Andrew McCabe, even though the White House reportedly interviewed McCabe to replace James Comey permanently as FBI director. Sessions should consider himself lucky that Trump has not, as of yet, accused any of his family members of being involved in the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Of course, Trump is free to fire Sessions whenever he likes. That he is not doing it and prefers to run him down, apparently in hopes that he will quit, speaks to an unwillingness to take responsibility. This is his government; he should either back his appointees or cashier them, not troll them on Twitter. The episode shows the challenge that Republicans face in Trump. It is not ideological. Substantively, Trump is governing as more or less a conventional Republican. The challenge is characterological. How to work with a president who is key to advancing much of the GOP agenda without endorsing his brazen disregard for institutional and personal norms? The Sessions imbroglio may blow over, as Trump moves on to the next thing. But it offers a window into how Trump could collapse his own administration by letting the pressure of criticism and investigation get the best of him, destroying any cohesiveness within his own government and party, and creating an ongoing sense of crisis that eventually spirals out of control. If this nightmare scenario becomes reality, the bizarre and small-minded campaign against Jeff Sessions will have been a sign of things to come. comments.lowry@nationalreview.com As the Texas Legislature enters the final stretch of the special session, public school supporters have reason to celebrate. Lawmakers are giving long overdue attention to the deeply flawed system of funding our schools. In the Legislature, there is a great deal of focus on the right approach to fix public education funding. The Senate has passed a school finance bill. The House is considering a bill supporting critical reforms to our public school funding system, which includes funding for all public school students, whether they attend their zoned district campus, a selective magnet school, or an open-enrollment, public charter school. All public school students need our support. The right approach is to start and end with the students in mind. The wrong approach would be to narrow or limit funding for certain schools or types of students. The importance of education and increased opportunities for students has weighed heavily on my heart for years. That is why I partnered with IDEA Public Schools to open IDEA Carver Academy and College Prep. These schools are implementing IDEAs rigorous individualized learning model that prepares students for college in the former private school, the Carver Academy. Transitioning the school from private to public opened up a lot of possibilities for the community, and today, just five years later, IDEA operates 20 schools serving more than 10,000 students across San Antonio. IDEA intentionally places schools in communities with the greatest need, applies no criteria for admission and is tuition-free. In San Antonio, 90 percent of students who attend IDEA Public Schools qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, 12 percent are African-American, and 83 percent are Hispanic. In 2019, IDEA will graduate its first class of seniors in San Antonio, and 100 percent of these students will be accepted to college. To date, IDEA alumni are graduating college at a rate three times the national average for students from low-income communities. This kind of success is not rare. Nationally, high-performing public charter schools are keeping pace with those results. As a member of the IDEA San Antonio Regional Board, I have the opportunity to hear heartwarming stories like that of Samantha and Joe Cantu, whose son Lucas attends IDEA Judson Academy and is excited about the upcoming year. We want Lucas to accomplish what he wants to do. He wants to be a marine biologist, and the school is showing him he has the opportunity to go to college and achieve that dream. While I am inspired by the results weve seen in San Antonio and the stories of IDEA scholars, more students in our community are waiting for these opportunities. How do we know? IDEAs waiting list for the 2017-18 school year exceeds 27,000 students and continues to grow week by week. It is time for the Texas Legislature to invest in all public school students. Charter schools are public schools, and charter school students are public school students. There are groups in Texas that suggest charter schools should move to the back of the line when it comes to funding distribution. Instead of focusing on where the student sits, I would encourage those individuals to instead focus on closing the gap for every student in our public school system. They deserve it, our teachers need it, and parents are begging for it. As our state grapples with ensuring an equitable system for funding public education, lets remember all of the students we serve. Instead of pitting public charter schools against traditional public schools, let us work together to address the states school finance challenges and ensure all Texas students have access to high-quality options. David Robinson serves as a member of IDEAs San Antonio Regional Board. Mirror mirror on the wall, whos the most dangerous White House official of them all? The Mooch may be out of the running, but theres still a lot of competition. Its not the guy in charge of our nuclear arsenal, who may or may not have realized that was the core of his job description before accepting the post (Rick Perry). Nor is it the woman meeting with mens rights advocates (Betsy DeVos). And its not the guy who keeps adding financial assets and meetings with Russian officials to his federal disclosure forms (Jared Kushner). Its neither of the guys rolling back climate change regulations and sidelining scientists at the Environmental Protection Agency and Interior Department (Scott Pruitt and Ryan Zinke, respectively). Its not the guy who worries that homeless shelters are too comfortable (Ben Carson). Not the guy arguing to dismantle lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender rights (Jeff Sessions). Not the mastermind of the Bowling Green Massacre (Kellyanne Conway). To be sure, all these aides and bureaucrats are doing damage. They are degrading norms, enacting bad policy and putting our country and planet at grave risk. But right now the most dangerous title belongs aside from the tweeter in chief, of course to someone in a much less sexy job, with a much less scandalous background. Its Mick Mulvaney, director of the Office of Management and Budget. In terms of both immensity and immediacy, the threat Mulvaney presents is far greater than any of the slow-motion train wrecks happening elsewhere in the administration. Thats because he seems hell-bent on wreaking a global crisis within the next two months. Not a century from now. Not a decade from now. In two months. Thats when the government will run out of money needed to pay bills Congress has already incurred, according to Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, if Congress does not act to raise the debt limit. What would follow? Just a constitutional, political and global financial crisis. Arguably, the U.S. government would be in violation of the 14th Amendment (The validity of the public debt of the United States . . . shall not be questioned). The governments ability to continue paying Social Security checks, interest on the debt and other basic obligations would likewise be at risk. Most important, this would irrevocably destroy the United States sterling reputation as a borrower. U.S. debt is considered the safest of safe assets, and as such, Treasury securities are the benchmark of the global financial system. Causing creditors to question whether theyll receive full and timely payments would trigger panic in markets throughout the world. Technically, we already hit the debt ceiling in March. In the months since, Treasury has engaged in extraordinary accounting measures to avoid outright default. But come early fall, those measures will be exhausted. The United States will become a deadbeat. The debt ceiling is a product of the misguided belief that limiting the official borrowing capacity of the government would force legislators into frugality. In reality, its chief effect is to periodically offer some political faction the power to take a very valuable hostage. Mnuchin has urged Congress to pass a debt-limit hike with no strings attached. The government would thereby dodge default with minimal drama and without spooking markets. But Mulvaney has other plans. During his six years in Congress, he voted against raising the debt limit four times. Unfortunately, as OMB director, Mulvaney has continued to be breathtakingly irresponsible with the creditworthiness of the United States. In May, he publicly contradicted Mnuchin by arguing that a debt-ceiling increase should be coupled with divisive spending cuts, which would inevitably complicate an already politically fraught process. And on Sunday, he told CNNs Jake Tapper that Congress must not pass any legislation not even a debt-ceiling hike until the notoriously impossible Obamacare repeal is done. So long as Mulvaney still has the presidents ear, were all living dangerously. crampell@washpost.com Once again, we fail to see the joke. President Donald J. Trump recently encouraged law enforcement officers to rough up suspects in custody, and then his team downplayed the comments as a joke. This came during a speech to law enforcement officers at New Yorks Suffolk County Community College. Heres the so-called joke: When you see these thugs thrown into the back of a paddy wagon, you just see them thrown in rough I said, Please dont be too nice. Like when you guys put somebody in the car, and youre protecting their head, you know, the way you put your hand over, like, dont hit their head and they just killed somebody, I said, You can take the hand away, OK? There is nothing funny about police brutality or the mistreatment of suspects, regardless of the crimes they are accused of. As the comments set in, numerous police departments and organizations condemned them as irresponsible. They had no choice. Police brutality is a real issue in this country. It dismantles trust between law enforcement and communities, and fuels tension. The police beating of Rodney King was not a high point for this nation. Regardless of the court outcome, there was nothing funny, i.e., a joke, about the death of Freddie Gray while in police custody or the riots that followed his death in Baltimore. Far too often, aides try to explain away, justify or water down Trumps stray offhand comments. He might have said this, but he really meant that. Criticisms are deemed politically correct and overly sensitive. This is the president of the United States. His words matter. Law enforcement agencies have to reject Trumps so-called joke in word and actions. We are a better nation than this. I served 20 years in the U.S. Army, including two tours in Vietnam, where I earned, among other awards, two Purple Hearts. Despite the hardships, I enjoyed my service. I knew what to expect and I knew what was expected from me. I knew that, after 20 years of honorable service, I could retire with a pension and other defined benefits and I did. If I was starting a career in the military today, I would be concerned about what to expect. The present commander in chief changes policies and procedures on a whim and distributes them by tweets. There appears to be no rationale in his approach to making decisions that affect the lives and careers of so many hard-working people. Making career decisions now based on promises from the present commander in chief would be like trying to catch fog in a bucket. Eugene R. New No truth here Re: How Putin derailed the course of American history; In Trump, he saw and seized the opportunity, Geysar Gurbanov, Opinion, Sunday: I hope your readers realize that the Express-News has become the San Antonio Enquirer. Your making up a story about so-called Russian collusion is nothing more than a pure, politically motivated lie. You give zero proof of any of your accusations, and this whole story is bogus. Express-News readers are much smarter than you think! Find the truth elsewhere, folks. Terry OConnor Lies about vouchers Re: Smear tactics from head of the classroom, Rich Lowry, Other Views, Sunday: Thank you, Rich Lowry, for exposing the dishonesty of Randi Weingarten in misrepresenting school choice. It should not be difficult to understand that many people choose private schools to satisfy specific educational and social needs of their children, or that many do seek religious education and a faith climate for the education of the whole child. While Lowry did not mention this, another dishonest attack on school choice is that public school children would be robbed of needed funds. Since all children have the right to education that fits their needs, and all parents pay school taxes, it is not robbing the public schools to use their own tax money to buy the kind of education that best fits the needs of their child. Parents who pay school taxes should be able to enjoy a slice of the school tax pie! Marilyn Stewart, Universal City A type of slavery Health care is NOT a right. A right, like freedom of speech or the right to bear arms, is something you possess due to your very existence. It does not require someone or something to act on your behalf. Health care, a commodity, requires another person, a doctor or a nurse, to act on your behalf. And they must be compensated; if not compensated, it becomes a form of slavery. And if they are compensated, that money must come from somewhere. If these services are financed by the government, the money must come from taxation. Not all the taxpayers receive said service. Another form of slavery. So claiming health care is a right is calling for either the taxpayers or the professionals to submit to slavery. The only way to prevent this is for the individual who receives the service to compensate the provider themselves, perhaps using some form of insurance. Hand in hand with this fallacy is the idea that the Constitution grants rights. The Constitution does not grant rights, it only prevents the government from infringing on your rights, which are God-given. Dick Howell, Hunt When no is yes My congratulations to Sens. John McCain, Lisa Murkowski and Susan Collins for standing up to King Donald and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. Thank God there are a few Republicans with enough common sense to move this issue to what is hopefully a bipartisan resolution. From my perspective, there is only one solution, and that is universal health care for all Americans. Let us join the rest of the civilized world and provide this needed care. Jeffrey Hall Strong-arm tactics Neighborhood toughs threatening shopkeepers to pony up protection dues or face the consequences. An old black-and-white movie? No, just our president threatening two reluctant Republican senators, the last week in July, to vote his way or face the consequences. Really? Do we have a godfather in the White House issuing mob dictums? Robert Paul Separate entities Re: U.S. founded on freedom, not Christianity, Eric Lane, Other Views, July 26: Once again, Eric Lane does an excellent job of disputing the frequent claims that America is a Christian nation. There is ample evidence to the contrary in the writings of the men who created the foundation for this country. But there is another challenge to those Christians who insist on the supremacy of their religion: Which Christianity are you talking about? A true believer will tell you their faith is the one true religion. But, by most counts, there are thousands of Christian denominations in the U.S. Not only are there differences among Catholics and Church of Christ and Pentecostals; there are doctrinal differences from one Baptist church to another, from one Methodist church to another. This is even before you get to the non-Christian religions and nonbelievers, both of which are growing. So, how do we decide which religion will dominate politics and daily life in this country? The Founding Fathers had it right: The correct solution is to keep church and state separate! Nick Lee This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate With a luxurious tiled swimming pool and spa, three living rooms and four-car garage, a Dominion home on the market has more than enough features to satisfy San Antonio's high-budget home buyers. But the home's unique look is what's garnering attention from beyond the Alamo City. The ornate dwelling at 12 Esquire was recognized Wednesday by the Wall Street Journal as the House of the Day. With a U-shaped floor plan centered around an interior courtyard and filled with relics from the owner's antique collection, the "private retreat" is a departure from the type of mansions one usually finds in the high-profile San Antonio neighborhood. RELATED: 9 Dominion homes for sale that have seen significant price drops "Its design is meant to authentically replicate 1920s Spanish Revival architecture and feel," real estate agent Jason Glast told mySA. "You find that a lot in Olmos Park and Monte Vista but not usually in The Dominion." The house's current owner, Desiree Woody, told the Wall Street Journal that she was drawn to the 6,097-square-foot home because it reminded her of California, where she grew up. "The minute you walk through the iron gates in to the courtyard you leave everything else behind," said Woody, who purchased the home for $1.7 million in 2013. The five-bedroom, five-and-a-half-bathroom house also features four fireplaces, three living areas and a sauna in the master bathroom. Despite its large size, Woody told the Wall Street Journal that she and her husband "used every room in the house." RELATED: Homes for sale in San Antonio's most affluent communities The house, which went on the market in May, is the first from San Antonio-based Portfolio Real Estate to be recognized nationally, Glast said. It is currently listed at $1.69 million. Click through the gallery above to take a virtual tour inside the nationally recognized Dominion mansion. erobinson@mysa.com Twitter: @eeelizzzabeth The Arsenal complex in downtown San Antonio supplied ammo and provisions to troops in four major U.S. armed conflicts before H-E-B picked the spot for its San Antonio headquarters in the 1980s. The establishment of the Arsenal was the predecessor to Fort Sam Houston and laid the groundwork for the city to become Military City USA, said Vincent Michael, executive director of the San Antonio Conservation Society. It is the earliest recognizable military installation in the city, Michael said. Founded in 1859, the Arsenal sheltered munitions and supplies bound for frontier forts in Texas and along the Mexican border. U.S. Gen. John Ellis Wool stationed in San Antonio during the Mexican-American War previously stashed the ammunition, wagons and animals at a site near San Pedro Springs until 1849, according to an San Antonio Express article published Nov. 14, 1965. But the military needed a permanent home for its supplies. The Army commandeered the Alamo and turned it into its supply depot. There was so little room inside of the Church building where arms were stowed, troops and animals had to sleep on the grounds. Using the Alamo space to store munitions didnt sit well with the Catholic Church nor did the Armys moves to evict squatters from the property. The church laid claim to the Alamo and sued to oust the Army, according to the Express. The church was unsuccessful, Express archives show. The Army eventually evicted squatters from the Alamo Grounds and managed to hold onto the property until 1860, spending about $5,000 on renovations during its 11-year stay. As the Army slugged it out with the Catholic Church in local district court over the Alamo, it sought out a larger space for its arms and artillery. The Army officially established the Arsenal in 1859 at the 600 block of S. Flores St, which in its infancy primarily supplied munitions to the Department of Texas to guard settlements. The compound wouldnt remain in U.S. hands for long. Confederate forces overtook the Arsenal after Texas lawmakers voted Feb. 1, 1861, to secede from the United States. Governor Sam Houston, who opposed secession, refused to call a special session of the Texas Legislature to vote on the matter. But other state officials went around Houston and held their own vote: 166 to eight. We hold as undeniable truths that the governments of the various States, and of the confederacy itself, were established exclusively by the white race, for themselves and their posterity; that the African race had no agency in their establishment; that they were rightfully held and regarded as an inferior and dependent race, and in that condition only could their existence in this country be rendered beneficial or tolerable, read the states declaration of causes for its secession. The convention authorized a Committee of Safety to seize all Union property. Houston realized Confederate forces would descend on the arsenal and tried to enlist Texas Rangers loyal to Houston to beat Confederates to the stores of arms and supplies, according to the Texas State Library and Archives Commission. But, it was too late. Benjamin McCulloch, a soldier in the Texas Revolution who would go on to be a brigadier general for the Confederates, beat Houston there with a group of Texans in tow. Gen. David Twiggs, a Confederate sympathizer who led U.S. forces in Texas, surrendered more than $3 million worth of cash, ordnance, wagons, animals, supplies and forts on Feb. 16, 1861. Captain Robert Henry Kirkwood Whiteley, who oversaw the Arsenal, was forced to hand over the complex and all other federal property in San Antonio to the Confederates. The U.S. regained possession of the Arsenal following the Civil War. The complex stored and manufactured cavalry equipment for Teddy Roosevelts Rough Riders during the 1890s and served as a major supply depot during World War I and World War II, according to a history of the complex provided by H-E-B. The Arsenal shipped more 337 million pounds of ammo at the height of World War II. The arsenal was closed in 1949 and became federal offices. In 1972, the General Services Administration traded 7.5 acres from the Arsenal complex for 5.5 acres in and around Hemisfair Park to build the John H. Wood Jr. Federal Courthouse and an 8-story federal office building, local historian Lewis S. Fisher wrote in Saving San Antonio: The Preservation of a Heritage. The city renovated the three buildings on its new property for use as offices for the Parks and Recreation department. In 1982, H-E-B Grocery Co. bought the remaining 10 acres of the Arsenal complex for its corporate headquarters. The company now owns almost 31 acres appraised at $71.5 million in 2017 for its headquarters, according to Bexar County appraisal records. jfechter@express-news.net Twitter: @JFreports COMING TOMORROW: XXXXXXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXXXX XXXXXX CANZUK or C-ANZUK? In another thread, a few posters expressed support for CANZUK. Of course, CANZUK does not explain everything. Firstly, just how much integration are we talking about? Most supporters of CANZUK seem to favour simply the ability to travel, study, work, and do business visa-free but no more than that. Secondly, just how open would CANZUK be to non-CANZUK states? Are we talking about a closed CANZUK (i.e. a kind of Fortress CANZUK that is open to its member-states but closed to the rest of the world) or an open CANZUK (i.e. that would remain at least as open to the rest of the world as it is now)? Even once we clarify the above parameters, were then left with the Quebec question. Quebec separatists couldnt care less what we do outside of Quebec, but they probably wouldnt appreciate a British invasion in Quebec itself. Quebec federalists would probably oppose anything that does not promote an equal status for English and French Canada-wide so they might not appreciate a British invasion even outside of Quebec. So, how would we make CANZUK more palatable to Quebecers? Here would be some of my ideas: if the other CANZUK members want it, they could fully integrate their immigration policies. For example, they might allow visa-free travel, study, work, and business between their states for all citizens and maybe even recognize one anothers visas. Canada could be a junior CANZUK member. It would allow visa-free travel, study, work, and business only to those who hold an English-Language Passport (ELP), a French-Language Passport (PLF), or Esperanto Passport (EP). To acquire any of these passports, a person would need to either pass a language test or be under 15, over 70, deaf, or dyslexic or otherwise unable to learn a second language. While the whole of Canada would allow visa-free travel to holders of any of the above passports, only provinces and territories other than Quebec would allow visa-free study, work, and business. To study, work, or do business in Quebec, non-Canadian CANZUK citizens and permanent residents would require a Quebec visa. In exchange, to travel, study, work, or do business in any other CANZUK country, a Canadian would need to acquire an ELP or EP. This would help to keep CANZUK translation costs down by ensuring able-minded Canadians travelling to other CANZUK states to travel, study, work, or do business etc. know either English or at least a language that customs officers could learn easily. If Quebec wants to allow CANZUK members who hold an FLP to study, work, and do business in Quebec visa-free, that would be a decision for Quebec to make. This website uses cookies to improve your experience. We'll assume you're ok with this, but you can opt-out if you wish. Cookie settings ACCEPT It was in a sack. Residents said the baby was found by someone who was collecting bottles for recycling. The man wanted to use the sack... (Natural News) There is so much difference already between the Trump and Obama administrations, especially concerning transparency, but there remain some problems with federal agencies that the current occupant of the White House obviously has not yet had the time to rectify. Im happy with President Donald J. Trumps nomination of Scott Pruitt to head up the Environmental Protection Agency and I love the fact the Pruitt isnt a card-carrying member of the Church of Global Warming. But I have issues with the fact that two years after the agency botched a clean-up operation at the Gold King Mine in Colorado, the probe into that incident remains hidden from the public. As reported by The Daily Caller, federal officials wont release details of an ongoing criminal probe into the EPA-caused disaster. The site noted further: The EPAs Inspector General (IG) provided the Department of Justice evidence that an employee involved in the August 2015 Gold King Mine disaster violated the Clean Water Act and made false statements. The Justice Department declined to prosecute him, the IG announced in October 2016. The watchdog wrote a report on its completed investigation but is now keeping it secret. The material you requested are part of one or more open law enforcement files, the EPA IGs associate counsel, Susan Barvenik, told The DC in correspondence. As such, producing the records could reasonably be expected to interfere with ongoing enforcement proceedings. EPA Watch reported in June that a crew working for the Environmental Protection Agency unexplainably removed the rock and rubble plug holding back millions of gallons of toxic water at the long-abandoned Gold King Mine in Colorado. That led to a massive three million-plus gallon spill of acid mine drainage and, the EPA says, 550 tons of metals, into the Animas River. As The DC noted further, however, an agency official provided a conflicting statement, furnished by the agencys own inspector generals office. Investigative activity has ended, but the investigation is still administratively open, IG spokeswoman Tia Elbaum said. We havent closed the investigation as further actions could still be pursued. We do not have plans to release the records at this time. She noted further that the IG did not plan to close its investigation until the agency decides whether to pursue action against the EPA employee referred. It will be two years on Saturday since the disaster occurred. That means that the agency still has not assigned responsibility for the catastrophe or taken the appropriate administrative steps against anyone; so, no one has been held to account, which is par for the course when it comes to the manner in which the federal bureaucracy protects itself. (Related: The EPA admits to Gold King Mine disaster but also refuses to pay claims to Native Americans.) As Robert Gordon, a senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation wrote in June, the EPA has been hiding the fact that the crew assigned to the project was always there to completely remove the plug. That, despite the fact that agency officials said initially that they were awaiting experts to help address the plug and that the toxic chemicals were accidentally released. The EPA began removing the plug as it had planned, even though it anticipated acid mine drainage would flow out and that the drainage could be pressurized, he wrote, comparing the crews actions to poking a balloon with a pin just to allow a little bit of air to escape. At best, the EPAs actions were incredibly reckless, he wrote. The DC reported that the House Committee on Natural Resources released a complete report on the disaster seven months after it occurred, providing ample details into the agencys mistakes as well as other evidence of malfeasance. J.D. Heyes is a senior writer for NaturalNews.com and NewsTarget.com, as well as editor of The National Sentinel. Sources include: EPAWatch.org DailyCaller.com (Natural News) Psychiatry is an ancient phenomenon with an invasive and brutal history. In the past, the mentally ill were strapped to their beds and doctors performed lobotomies and electroconvulsive therapy in the hope to improve a patients mental state. As asylums closed in the 1970s and 1980s, old brutal practices and the use of coercion in psychiatry were abandoned. Therefore, psychiatry is now thought to be a benign medical practice to help the mentally ill. Though at some point in history the focus shifted towards care rather than custody, an editorial, published earlier this year in the British Medical Journal (BMJ), revealed disturbing trends in coercive practices in todays mental health system. While there will always be situations where intervention and coercion are inevitable to protect the life of the patient or their relatives, they are often unnecessary. Nonetheless, these ancient practices are once again becoming routine in our modern mental health care system. Today, an increasing number of mental health professionals see coercion as an essential tool, giving rise to new types of secure mental health facilities that replicate some of the inhumane and unethical practices of old asylums. People are required to take super-powerful psychiatric drugs against their will while being unable to leave locked wards. According to the reports findings, more than half of the admissions to psychiatric hospitals in England are now involuntary. Although society has the right to be protected, using the health care system to detain people for punishment rather than treatment is unethical and criminal. Mental health institutions have too much power and the concerns of patients or their relatives are often ignored. In many cases, a mentally ill person is seen as a danger to society. Britains current Mental Health Act has allowed thousands of unnecessary detentions and failed to deal with discrimination against ethnic minority patients. Though there is little evidence that community treatment orders offer any benefit, they form an integral part of the mental health services. And whats worse, our prisons are also increasingly being used to manage and contain mentally ill people. In the United States, there are now over three times more mentally ill people in jails than in hospitals. Of these people, 16 percent have a serious mental illness and should receive proper treatment instead of being locked away. Coercive psychiatry a torture system to gain control The recent shift in psychiatry, which prioritizes risk management over individual health and social needs, has given institutions too much power. All too often the patients are left out of the decision-making and psychiatric health care providers are reluctant to share information. They feel they know whats best for their patients. Coercion is once again being used to gain physical, legal, chemical, psychological, and financial control. Patients are increasingly losing their freedom. Psychiatric coercive measures are a cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment that goes against our human rights. According to the International Association Against Psychiatric Assault, psychiatric coercion fulfills all the criteria of the definition of torture as taken from the Anti-Torture Convention of the United Nations. Though collaborative and person-centered care leading to recovery should be the primary focus of mental health services, people are increasingly being drugged and locked up in psychiatric institutions. They are diagnosed against their will and forcibly subjected to physical intervention with damaging psychiatric drugs and electroshocks. Given these inhumane and damaging practices, patients who might benefit from psychiatric care are likely to delay or avoid treatment out of fear of losing their freedom and compromising their basic rights. Instead of helping these people, we have taken a step back by imprisoning and torturing them. Are we going back to the time of lunatic asylums that functioned as poorhouses and jails for the mentally unstable? Sources include: BMJ.com IAAPA.de (Natural News) The other shoe just dropped. (Article by Carey Gillam republished from Huffingtonpost.com) Four months after the publication of a batch of internal Monsanto Co. documents stirred international controversy, a new trove of company records was released early Tuesday, providing fresh fuel for a heated global debate over whether or not the agricultural chemical giant suppressed information about the potential dangers of its Roundup herbicide and relied on U.S. regulators for help. More than 75 documents, including intriguing text messages and discussions about payments to scientists, were posted for public viewing early Tuesday morning by attorneys who are suing Monsanto on behalf of people alleging Roundup caused them or their family members to become ill with non-Hodgkin lymphoma, a type of blood cancer. The attorneys posted the documents, which total more than 700 pages, on the websitefor the law firm Baum Hedlund Aristei Goldman, one of many firms representing thousands of plaintiffs who are pursuing claims against Monsanto. More than 100 of those lawsuits have been consolidated in multidistrict litigation in federal court in San Francisco, while other similar lawsuits are pending in state courts in Missouri, Delaware, Arizona and elsewhere. The documents, which were obtained through court-ordered discovery in the litigation, are also available as part of a long list of Roundup court case documents compiled by the consumer group I work for, U.S. Right to Know. It was important to release the documents now because they not only pertain to the ongoing litigation, but also to larger issues of public health and safety, while shedding light on corporate influence over regulatory bodies, according to Baum Hedlund attorneys Brent Wisner and Pedram Esfandiary. This is a look behind the curtain, said Wisner. These show that Monsanto has deliberately been stopping studies that look bad for them, ghostwriting literature and engaging in a whole host of corporate malfeasance. They (Monsanto) have been telling everybody that these products are safe because regulators have said they are safe, but it turns out that Monsanto has been in bed with U.S. regulators while misleading European regulators. Esfandiary said public dissemination of the documents is important because regulatory agencies cannot properly protect public and environmental health without having accurate, comprehensive, and impartial scientific data, and the documents show that has not been the case with Monsantos Roundup herbicide and the active ingredient glyphosate. Monsanto did not respond to a request for comment. Several of the documents discuss a lack of robust testing of formulated Roundup products. In one email, Monsanto scientist Donna Farmer writes you cannot say that Roundup is not a carcinogen we have not done the necessary testing on the formulation to make that statement. The testing on the formulations are not anywhere near the level of the active ingredient. The release of the documents Tuesday came without the blessing of Judge Vince Chhabria, who is overseeing the multidistrict litigation moving its way through the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California. In March, Chhabria did agree to unseal several other discovery documents over Monsantos objections and those documents prompted a wave of outrage for what they revealed: questionable research practices by Monsanto, cozy ties to a top official within the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and indications that Monsanto may have engaged in ghostwriting, of research studies that appeared to be independent of the company. (Natural News) The process of centralized government becoming Big Brother and lording over the masses using surveillance technology and other means of controlling the population just became easier, thanks to the idiocy of those same masses. You may have read stories in recent weeks about American and Swedish companies micro chipping employees after they agreed to take the chip voluntarily. What you may not have heard is that such microchipping has turned into a sort of ceremony that is then celebrated with after-chipping parties by fools who apparently have no idea what theyve just done. As noted by the Gateway Pundit, workers at Three Square Market, a Wisconsin-based firm, threw a chip party for employees who have accepted the Mark of the Beast willingly. In case you didnt know, the chips have been sold to hapless employee volunteers as convenience technology that allows them to more easily and more securely log into computers, get into the building, purchase items in the company break room, etc. And of course, the company has assured employees that hey, there arent any tracking capabilities built into the chip; and if you believe that, Ive got some oceanfront property in Kansas to sell you. As WBAY, the Green Bay ABC affiliate, reports further: Three Square Market has received international attention since it announced the voluntary microchip program, believed to be the first of its kind in the United States. The microchip program is voluntary. If willing, employees allow the company to implant a Radio-Frequency Identification chip between the thumb and forefinger. The RFID chip will open doors, log in to computers, and make purchases from vending machines. The technology is similar to mobile pay services like Apple Pay and Google Wallet. Three Square Market assures employees that they will not be able to track them because the chip does not have GPS. Data on the microchip is encrypted. In the age of social media, most Americans who still claim to care about privacy are impervious to the fact that they voluntarily give it up every time they post something on Facebook, Google or Twitter about some aspect of their lives. But at least thats voluntary. Those same people could choose not to divulge anything. You no longer have that choice when youre chipped with a radio frequency identifier implant. And frankly, the company can tell its unwitting employees all day long they arent being tracked, but that might just be complete BS. After all, the little implanted devices do send off signals; and somebody somewhere within the firm is monitoring those signals otherwise, how could they assure everyone they are secure? Plus, these devices are electronic, and they transmit a signal, which means theyre likely part of the Internet of things. That means information therein (including private data) can be hacked. Furthermore, whats to stop companies from requiring employees to be chipped next? Because thats whats coming. Think about it: Automation and artificial intelligence will wipe out millions of jobs in the very near future. Now, some of those jobs will be replaced by other employment, but overall, I anticipate labor will transform into a corporate market, not a workers market; limited work means companies will dictate labor policies, not the other way around. So either you agree to be chipped for security and efficiency or you can forget being hired by anyone. Oh, itll be voluntary but only in concept. In reality, you dont get a chip, you dont get a job. So hows that voluntary? (Related: At least one lawmaker is concerned about forced microchipping.) Three Square Market is just the beginning. This trend will catch on with other firms. More workers who have no concept of privacy today and who think getting chipped will be cool have no idea the control over their own lives, and the lives of others, they are surrendering. And whats more, once that power is gone, theyll never get it back. J.D. Heyes is a senior writer for NaturalNews.com and NewsTarget.com, as well as editor of The National Sentinel. Sources include: TheGatewayPundit.com NewsTarget.com (Natural News) Doctors have recommended that pregnant women get flu shots for a long time now because pregnant women and babies have a high risk of complications from the flu, but many women are reluctant to take on the risks, particularly when there is no guarantee the vaccine will afford any amount of protection. A new study aimed at uncovering how prior vaccination can impact the immune response of expectant mothers, has confirmed that after receiving a flu shot, people have lower antibody responses to the following years vaccine. The researchers from The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center set out to determine if this effect is also seen in pregnant women, and to find out if that affects how the antibodies are passed on to the baby. For the study, the researchers gave 141 pregnant women the flu vaccine. Among that group, 91 of the women had gotten the flu shot the year before, while 50 had not. Perhaps unsurprisingly, they discovered that those who had not received the flu shot the year before had a higher initial immune response to the shot. In contrast, the women who did the get jab the year prior had weakened peak antibody responses. Their findings were published in the Vaccine journal. This is in keeping with past findings, including a study that showed that those who got the flu jab consecutively for the 2012, 2013 and 2014 flu seasons had a higher risk of being infected with the new strains of the flu. Moreover, in Canada, people who got a 2008 flu shot were as much as 2.5 times more likely to come down with the H1N1 flu the following year, than those who had not received a shot. Scientists suspect that annual flu shots could make it more difficult for the immune system to fight against new strains that show up afterward. The researchers then set out to determine how this could affect babies. They tested the expectant mothers throughout the duration of their pregnancies and then analyzed the blood from their umbilical cords when the babies were delivered to see how well the mothers protection against the flu was passed along to the babies while in the womb. They found that even though women who get a flu shot every year experience a weaker initial antibody response, with the passage of time, the protection afforded to their baby is unlikely to be impacted. However, for many women, getting the flu shot during pregnancy is just too risky to make it worth taking a chance on. Plenty of reasons to avoid the flu vaccine The fact that flu shots weaken immunity in subsequent years isnt the only reason that pregnant women might want to avoid them. A study in the Human Environmental and Toxicology journal found that the multiple-strain inactivated flu vaccine that contains mercury, was the direct cause of a 4,250 percent rise in fetal deaths during the pandemic flu season of 2009. The effects of flu vaccines on pregnant women are not even fully understood. The insert for the jab Flulaval, for example, reads: Safety and effectiveness of Flulaval have not been established in pregnant women, nursing mothers or children. Yet doctors continue to pressure pregnant women to get flu vaccines. Making matters worse, the flu vaccine is not particularly effective in many cases. In fact, the CDC admitted that the 2014 vaccine didnt protect against that seasons most dominant strain. Flu vaccines are developed several months ahead of the beginning of the official flu season to allow enough time for mass production, and the process scientists use to predict which strains will be most prominent that year is not foolproof. While it is understandable that women who are expecting want to do everything they can to ensure a healthy baby, the flu vaccine has a lot of risks for very little reward. Sources include: ScienceDaily.com NaturalNews.com CTVNews.ca NaturalNews.com Man busted for shoving pregnant girlfriend under bus to go to Canada to continue his studies Please Canada immigration, never let this piece of shit into Canada. [youtube]1uVcB7HOO5g[/youtube]A law student in Rio de Janeiro was arrested for attempted murder after cops say he was caught on CCTV pushing his ex-girlfriend in front of a moving bus last week.Lucas Monteiro, 25, allegedly pushed the victim because she refused to have an abortion. Her plan to keep the baby reportedly delayed his plans. The woman who is four months pregnant survived the impact.The harrowing footage, captured by a buildings security camera, shows Monteiro pushing the young woman into the street.The victim, whose name is being withheld, stumbles into the path of the oncoming vehicle before it hits her, running over her legs.The bus driver then slams on the breaks and the woman appears to scramble to her feet............................ (Natural News) Documents released in US cancer litigation show Monsantos desperate attempts to suppress a study that showed adverse effects of Roundup herbicide and that the editor of the journal that retracted the study had a contractual relationship with the company. Claire Robinson reports (Article republished from GMwatch.org Internal Monsanto documents released by attorneys leading US cancer litigation show that the company launched a concerted campaign to force the retraction of a study that revealed toxic effects of Roundup. The documents also show that the editor of the journal that first published the study entered into a contract with Monsanto in the period shortly before the retraction campaign began. The study, led by Prof GE Seralini, showed that very low doses of Monsantos Roundup herbicide had toxic effects on rats over a long-term period, including serious liver and kidney damage. Additional observations of increased tumour rates in treated rats would need to be confirmed in a larger-scale carcinogenicity study. The newly released documents show that throughout the retraction campaign, Monsanto tried to cover its tracks to hide its involvement. Instead Monsanto scientist David Saltmiras admitted to orchestrating a third party expert campaign in which scientists who were apparently independent of Monsanto would bombard the editor-in-chief of the journal Food and Chemical Toxicology (FCT), A. Wallace Hayes, with letters demanding that he retract the study. Use of third party experts is a classic public relations tactic perfected by the tobacco industry. It consists of putting industry-friendly messages into the mouths of supposedly independent experts, since no one would believe industry attempts to defend its own products. Back in 2012, GMWatch founder Jonathan Matthews exposed the industry links of the supposedly independent scientists who lobbied the journal editor to retract the Seralini paper. Now we have first-hand proof of Monsantos direct involvement. In one document, Saltmiras reviews his own achievements within the company, boasting that he Successfully facilitated numerous third party expert letters to the editor which were subsequently published, reflecting the numerous significant deficiencies, poor study design, biased reporting and selective statistics employed by Seralini. In addition, coauthored the Monsanto letter to the editor with [Monsanto employees] Dan Goldstein and Bruce Hammond. Saltmiras further writes of how Throughout the late 2012 Seralini rat cancer publication and media campaign, I leveraged my relationship [with] the Editor i[n] Chief of the publishing journal and was the single point of contact between Monsanto and the Journal. Another Monsanto employee, Eric Sachs, writes in an email about his efforts to galvanize scientists in the letter-writing campaign. Sachs refers to Bruce Chassy, a scientist who runs the pro-GMO Academics Review website. Sachs writes: I talked to Bruce Chassy and he will send his letter to Wally Hayes directly and notify other scientists that have sent letters to do the same. He understands the urgency I remain adamant that Monsanto must not be put in the position of providing the critical analysis that leads the editors to retract the paper. In response to Monsantos request, Chassy urged Hayes to retract the Seralini paper: My intent was to urge you to roll back the clock, retract the paper, and restart the review process. Chassy was also the first signatory of a petition demanding the retraction of the Seralini study and the co-author of a Forbes article accusing Seralini of fraud. In neither document does Chassy declare any link with Monsanto. But in 2016 he was exposed as having taken over $57,000 over less than two years from Monsanto to travel, write and speak about GMOs. Sachs is keen to ensure that Monsanto is not publicly seen as attempting to get the paper retracted, even though that is precisely what it is doing. Sachs writes to Monsanto scientist William Heydens: There is a difference between defending science and participating in a formal process to retract a publication that challenges the safety of our products. We should not provide ammunition for Seralini, GM critics and the media to charge that Monsanto used its might to get this paper retracted. The information that we provided clearly establishes the deficiencies in the study as reported and makes a strong case that the paper should not have passed peer review. Another example of Monsanto trying to cover up its involvement in the retraction campaign emerges from email correspondence between Monsanto employees Daniel Goldstein and Eric Sachs. Goldstein states: I was uncomfortable even letting shareholders know we are aware of this LTE [GMW: probably Letter to the Editor]. It implies we had something to do with it otherwise how do we have knowledge of it? I could add Aware of multiple letters to editor including one signed by 25 scientists from 14 countries if you both think this is OK. Sachs responds: We are connected but did not write the letter or encourage anyone to sign it. A. Wallace Hayes was paid by Monsanto The most shocking revelation of the disclosed documents is that the editor of Food and Chemical Toxicology, A. Wallace Hayes, entered into a consulting agreement with Monsanto in the period just before Hayess involvement in the retraction of the Seralini study. Clearly Hayes had a conflict of interest between his role as a consultant for Monsanto and his role as editor for a journal that retracted a study determining that glyphosate has toxic effects. The study was published on 19 September 2012; the consulting agreement between Hayes and Monsanto was dated 21 August 2012 and Hayes is contracted to provide his services beginning 7 September 2012. The documents also reveal that Monsanto paid Hayes $400 per hour for his services and that in return Hayes was expected to Assist in establishment of an expert network of toxicologists, epidemiologists, and other scientists in South America and participate on the initial meeting held within the region. Preparation and delivery of a seminar addressing relevant regional issues pertaining to glyphosate toxicology is a key deliverable for the inaugural meeting in 2013. Hayes should have recused himself from any involvement with the Seralini study from the time he signed this agreement. But he kept quiet. He went on to oversee a second review of the study by unnamed persons whose conflicts of interest, if any, were not declared resulting in his decision to retract the study for the unprecedented reason that some of the results were inconclusive. Hayes told the New York Timess Danny Hakim in an interview that he had not been under contract with Monsanto at the time of the retraction and was paid only after he left the journal. He added that Monsanto played no role whatsoever in the decision that was made to retract. But since it took the journal over a year to retract the study after the months-long second review, which Hayes oversaw, its clear that he had an undisclosed conflict of interest from the time he entered into the contract with Monsanto and during the review process. He appears to be misleading the New York Times. The timing of the contract also begs the question as to whether Monsanto knew the publication of the study was coming. If so, they may have been happy to initiate such a relationship with Hayes at just that time. A Monsanto internal email confirms the companys intimate relationship with Hayes. Saltmiras writes about the recently published Seralini study: Wally Hayes, now FCT Editor in Chief for Vision and Strategy, sent me a courtesy email early this morning. Hopefully the two of us will have a follow up discussion soon to touch on whether FCT Vision and Strategy were front and center for this one passing through the peer review process. In other email correspondence between various Monsanto personnel, Daniel Goldstein writes the following with respect to the Seralini study: Retraction Both Dan Jenkins (US Government affairs) and Harvey Glick made a strong case for withdrawal of the paper if at all possible, both on the same basis that publication will elevate the status of the paper, bring other papers in the journal into question, and allow Seralini much more freedom to operate. All of us are aware that the ultimate decision is up to the editor and the journal management, and that we may not have an opportunity for withdrawal in any event, but I felt it was worth reinforcing this request. Monsanto got its way, though the paper was subsequently republished by another journal with higher principles and, presumably, with an editorial board that wasnt under contract with Monsanto. Why Monsanto had to kill the Seralini study Its obvious that it was in Monsantos interests to kill the Seralini study. The immediate reason was that it reported harmful effects from low doses of Roundup and a GM maize engineered to tolerate it. But the wider reason that emerges from the documents is that to admit that the study had any validity whatsoever would be to open the doors for regulators and others to demand other long-term studies on GM crops and their associated pesticides. A related danger for Monsanto, pointed out by Goldstein, is that a third party may procure funding to verify Seralinis claims, either through a government agency or the anti-GMO/antl-pesticide financiers. The documents show that Monsanto held a number of international teleconferences to discuss how to pre-empt such hugely threatening developments. Summing up the points from the teleconferences, Daniel Goldstein writes that unfortunately, three potential issues regarding long term studies have now come up and will need some consideration and probably a white paper of some type (either internal or external). These are potential demands for 2 year rat/long-term cancer (and possibly reproductive toxicity) on GM crops 2 year/chronic studies on pesticide formulations, in addition to the studies on the active ingredient alone that are currently demanded by regulators, and 2 year rat/chronic studies of pesticide formulations on the GM crop. In reply to the first point, Goldstein writes that the Seralini study found nothing other than the usual variation in SD [Sprague-Dawley] rats, and as such there is no reason to question the recent EFSA guidance that such studies were not needed for substantially equivalent crops. GMWatch readers will not be surprised to see Monsanto gaining support from EFSA in its opposition to carrying out long-term studies on GMOs. In answer to the second point, Goldstein reiterates that the Seralini study actually finds nothing so there is no need to draw any conclusions from it but the theoretical issue has been placed on the table. We need to be prepared with a well considered response. In answer to the third point, Goldstein ignores the radical nature of genetic engineering and argues pragmatically, if not scientifically, This approach would suggest that the same issue arises for conventional crops and that every individual formulation would need a chronic study over every crop (at a minimum) and probably every variety of crop (since we know they have more genetic variation than GM vs conventional congener) and raises the possibility of an almost limitless number of tests. But he adds, We also need a coherent argument for this issue. EU regulators side with Monsanto To the publics detriment, some regulatory bodies have backed Monsanto rather than the public interest and have backed off the notion that long-term studies should be required for GM crops. In fact, the EU is considering doing away with even the short 90-day animal feeding studies currently required under European GMO legislation. This will be based in part on the results of the EU-funded GRACE animal feeding project, which has come under fire for the industry links of some of the scientists involved and for its alleged manipulation of findings of adverse effects on rats fed Monsantos GM MON810 maize. Apology required A. Wallace Hayes is no longer the editor-in-chief of FCT but is named as an emeritus editor. Likewise, Richard E. Goodman, a former Monsanto employee who was parachuted onto the journals editorial board shortly after the publication of the Seralini study, is no longer at the journal. But although they are sidelined or gone, their legacy lives on in the form of a gap in the history of the journal where Seralinis paper belongs. Now that Monsantos involvement in the retraction of the Seralini paper is out in the open, FCT and Hayes should do the decent thing and issue a formal apology to Prof Seralini and his team. FCT cannot and should not reinstate the paper, because it is now published by another journal. But it needs to draw a line under this shameful episode, admit that it handled it badly, and declare its support for scientific independence and objectivity. Read more at: GMwatch.org The Local Butcher Shop in Berkeley has a cut a deal with a local animal rights group, in an unusual agreement to put an end to often graphic protests. A summer special for a whole pig roast is advertised in the shop's front window. Tucked in the corner of a side window is another sign, courtesy of Direct Action Everywhere, that reads: "Attention: Animals' lives are their right. Killing them is violent and unjust, no matter how it's done." The butcher shop has built a repuation for providing sustainably raised meats to the neighborhood. So why is it advocating for the lives of the animals their customers will be eating? "The sign was the most palatable of all the options brought to the table. It was the least impactful to our business," said Monica Rocchino, co-owner of the Local Butcher Shop. The alternative was noisy weekly protests complete with people drenched in fake blood, wrapped in plastic and lying on cardboard trays. Tania Campos and other protest organizers with Direct Action Everywhere say they are working toward more than just getting stores to put up signs. They want all businesses in Berkeley, including super markets and restaurants, to go vegan. Customers like Augie Kue say its unfair that the animal rights group is picking on a small business. In the interim, though, the sign means the animal rights group can claim a victory, while the Local Butcher Shop can continue selling to customers, who are hungry for locally sourced meats. Update: The Brisbane City Council is expected to continue final deliberations on housing development at the Baylands site throughout the month after deferring an official vote Monday evening. Several California state lawmakers voiced support of the proposed 4,400-unit housing project as well as commercial spaces on the site, but most residents speaking Monday were opposed. The community's proposed plan adds hotel units and additional commercial space in place of housing units. Both projects are expected to bring roughly 16,000 jobs to the area. The tight-knit community of Brisbane has held onto its small town charm, despite years of housing and annexation suggestions by city leaders and developers. However, an attractive offer by Universal Paragon Corp. to convert the city's former rail yard and sanitary landfill into more than 4,000 houses and 7 million square feet of office space is causing concern among some residents. The developer says the project poised to be one of the largest redevelopment projects on the West Coast will serve as an example for other housing-strapped regions on how to effectively convert similar untapped, urban spaces into more housing units. However, residents argue that the developer's plan, which would about triple the population, will change the fabric of their small-town community for good. With a population of just under 4,700, Brisbane has stayed small intentionally and, despite the sorely-needed housing units, city leaders estimate that they have significantly more to gain by converting the space into retail and hotel units. Research conducted by Keyser Marston Associates on behalf of the city found that building all of the housing units proposed by the developer would bring in between $9 million and $10 million annually, more than half of the citys current revenues, but would also require necessary upgrades and expansion of existing city services to accommodate the new residents. By contrast, using the same space for additional hotel units would generate between $16 million and $18 million in city revenue and a larger overall surplus to the city of Brisbane. Now, the Brisbane Baylands review process, which has involved public hearings, as well as environmental and fiscal impact reports to determine the safety of building on a former landfill, is about to end after nearly a year of consideration. The Brisbane City Council is expected to vote this month on an official recommendation for a November ballot measure. To learn more about the proposed redevelopment, click here. Jean Elle and Stephen Ellison contributed to this report. President Donald Trumps proposed immigration overhaul is hurting business owners in the East Bay. How? Car dealers say sales are dropping fast because potential customers fear theyll be forced to leave the United States. Rick Batni, who owns Import Auto World, said that a substantial number of customers would stop by the Hayward business on a typical Wednesday evening. But today, it resembled a ghost town. "We're heavy in Latino buyers," Batni said, adding that they comprise "around 30 to 40 percent" of his overall clientele. But not any more. And Batni's customers arent going to his competition, he said. Theyve simply stopped spending, awaiting the anvil of deportation. "They are hesitant of buying anything," Batni said, because they are worried about being "taken across the border and their investment (is) sitting here." Trump is pushing for reform that would cut the number of legal immigrants allowed into the U.S. The President on Wednesday introduced the Reforming American Immigration for a Strong Economy Act, a system based more on skills than family ties. East Bay Congressman Eric Swalwell has dubbed the trend the "Trump Effect." "We're just starting to see the collateral damage of the President's policies on immigration," he said. For now, business owners like Batni say they're doing what they can to survive, but they have no idea how long they can keep the lights on. When asked what he would do if the rumblings out of Washington D.C. continue, Batni replied, "Downsize." A sharp-eyed airline passenger spotted a Tacoma man texting about sexually assaulting children, leading officers in San Jose to arrest him and his partner and find two young victims, authorities said Thursday. Police said they arrested Michael Kellar at Mineta San Jose International Airport on Monday after a flight from Seattle. The woman passenger was able to read and photograph what the 56-year-old suspect was writing because of how he was holding his smartphone on which he was using an enlarged font, according to the San Jose Police Department. The passenger notified the flight crew of Kellar's texts about sexually molesting children. When the plane touched down, a crew member contacted a San Jose police officer stationed at the airport. Kellar was detained by the police department's Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force, and agents with the San Francisco division of the FBI also responded. A Tacoma man was taken into custody Monday at Mineta San Jose International Airport after a passenger reported seeing him texting about sexually abusing children, police said. Scott Budman reports. "The conversations were very particular in regards to sex acts that were to be performed on ... children," San Jose police Sgt. Brian Spears said of the "disturbing" text messages. He continued: "Some of the sex acts talked about not only molesting children, but performing beastiality." An investigation led police to a female suspect, Gail Burnworth, of Tacoma, who was exchanging the illicit texts with Kellar. The 50-year-old was arrested by a Seattle-based Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force and FBI division. Police also located two children, ages 5 and 7, who were identified as victims and placed in protective custody. Burnworth, a childcare provider for the two kids, was involved in "some type of dating relationship" with Kellar, Spears said. San Jose Police Department Spears described the female passenger as an "early childhood educator" in the Seattle area. "In my eyes, she is our hero," he said, because she prevented a "catastrophic" and "horrific" event, which had already been planned. "If it wasn't for that young lady's actions, another sexual assault would have occurred," Spears said. Kellar has been booked into the Santa Clara County Jail on two counts of felony attempted child molestation and two counts of felony solicitation of a sex crime. Burnworth was booked into the Pierce County Jail in Washington state for felony sexual exploitation of a minor, felony rape of a child in the first degree and felony dealing in depictions of a minor engaged in sexually explicit conduct. People with information about the case are asked to call Detective Nick Jourdenais and Sgt. Brian Spears at 408-537-1397. Anonymous tips can be left at 408-947-7867. The Associated Press contributed to this report. [[375690231, C]] Newly released data and photos show how shockingly low an Air Canada jet was when it pulled up to avoid crashing into planes waiting on a San Francisco International Airport taxiway last month. The Air Canada jet pilots mistook the taxiway for the runway next to it and dipped to just 59 feet (18 meters) above ground before pulling up to attempt another landing, according to National Transportation Safety Board information released Wednesday. That's barely taller than the four planes that were on that taxiway when the incident occurred late at night on July 7. Pilots in a United Airlines plane alerted air traffic controllers about the off-course jet, while the crew of a Philippine Airlines jet behind it switched on their plane's landing lights in an apparent last-ditch danger signal to Air Canada. NTSB investigators said they have not determined probable cause for the incident that came within a few feet of becoming one of the worst disasters in aviation history. Aviation expert Mike McCarron reviewed the NTSB report and shared his take on the findings. "Right now, everything is pointing to human factor, a pilot error," he said. "The back-ups to the back-ups eventually kicked in, but you shouldnt have to go that far down the checklist to get to that point." The investigators said that as the Air Canada jet approached the taxiway just before midnight after a flight from Toronto, it was so far off course that it did not appear on a radar system used to prevent runway collisions. Those systems were not designed to spot planes that are lined up to land on a taxiway a rare occurrence, especially for airline pilots. But the Federal Aviation Administration is working on modifications so they can, agency spokesman Ian Gregor said. The modified system could begin testing in a couple of months, officials told NBC Bay Area. Both pilots of the Air Canada Airbus A320 jet were very experienced. The captain, who was flying the plane, had more than 20,000 hours of flying time, and the co-pilot had about 10,000 hours. The pilots told investigators "that they did not recall seeing aircraft on taxiway but that something did not look right to them," the NTSB said. Investigators could not hear what the pilots said to each other during the aborted landing because that tape was recorded over. SFO and Air Canada officials declined to comment, citing the ongoing investigation. NBC Bay Area's Michelle Roberts contributed to this report. A collection of historic antique San Francisco fire engines is slowly deteriorating beneath the rain and sun in an industrial parking lot, as a group historians sound the alarm to city officials. The group of more than a dozen trucks, one used to fight the1906 earthquake and fire, has been without an indoor home in years, after bouncing around between city warehouses on Treasure Island and Bayview-Hunters Point. Several years ago the Academy of Art donated space for the collection in a warehouse in the industrial Bayshore area, but bounced the collection to the parking lot about a year ago when it needed the space. As you can see theres extensive deterioration due to its being stored outside, said James Lee, a retired San Francisco firefighter who is trying to find the trucks a new home. Lee said the collection, which includes water tenders, ladder trucks and other unique apparatus, is rotting in the elements especially following a particularly wet winter which repeatedly blew off the protective tarps. Lees group, Guardians of the City, has been providing care for the trucks though they are officially city property. What I see here now, Lee said, is there is a benign neglect with regards to the protection of this historical equipment. Last week, Lee and his group issued a plea to the San Francisco Fire Commission to find shelter for the collection. Commission members said it was urgent the city find shelter for the beleaguered trucks though they didnt offer an immediate solution. They set an October hearing date to consider more options. Both San Francisco fire department officials and the office of Mayor Ed Lee said they support finding a new home for the trucks though no specific plan is yet in place Lee and his group have proposed finding space for the collection on Pier 19 or possibly in the citys vast storage space beneath Civic Center. I believe there is space within the city, Lee said, and it could happen very easily. During his first days in the fire department back in the early 1960s, Lee worked on one of the old ladder trucks now languishing in the lot. He climbed up on the trucks running board and demonstrated how he would grip its wooden ladder for support as the truck responded to calls. He rode the truck for six months. It was a great ride when it was pouring rain, he chuckled. Hed also seen a water tender in the collection in action back in the 1970s just before it was retired. The truck, which hailed from the 1920s had reported to a large, stubborn fire in the citys Tenderloin. This thing drove up, Lee recalled. They put it up, turned it on, fire went out. Lee eventually hopes to see the collection restored to its original glory. He wants to find companies and benefactors to sponsor the trucks restoration. But before that can happen he said they first need a home. It brings a lot of memories, Lee said pacing past the row of trucks. Theres a lot of water under the bridge. A West Texas land baron and oilman is on the verge of pumping 5.4 million gallons of water a day from far under the desert mountains here and piping it 60 miles to the nation's most bountiful oil field, the Permian Basin, where hydraulic fracturing has fueled a renaissance of U.S. oil and gas production. The Houston Chronicle reports with water in short supply and high demand, Dan Allen Hughes Jr., one of the largest landowners in the United States and president of his father's eponymous oil company, plans to tap an aquifer under his 140,000-acre Apache Ranch. But Hughes has run into a wall of opposition from West Texas farmers, ranchers, residents and environmentalists, who worry he will steal water from their cattle, dry up their crops and deplete the spring that feeds the famous pool at Balmorhea State Park. "That's a lot of water," said Bill Addington, a rancher and conservationist from neighboring Sierra Blanca. "Believe me, there's many people who have plans to sue if this goes forward. We will sue." Hughes' project may well just be the start of a much larger fight - over the ownership of West Texas water, the future of oil and gas production and fate of agricultural lands and ecologically sensitive habitats. It's a feud that runs throughout the history of the West, between farmers and ranchers, conservationists and industry, neighboring cities, adjacent states. Whiskey is for drinking, they say. Water for fighting. Texans have fought over water for decades, if not centuries, said Larry French, groundwater director for the Texas Water Development Board. Oil and gas production is another competitor for a scarce resource. "The Permian Basin is basically a desert, and that immediately presents challenges in finding adequate water," French said. "You can do without a lot of things. But you can't do without water." At least three other companies in the region are selling or planning projects to sell water to energy companies that use it by the billions of gallons to crack shale rock and release oil and gas. Water use in the Permian has risen six-fold since the start of the shale oil boom, from more than 5 billion gallons in 2011 to almost 30 billion last year. Energy research firm IHS Markit predicts demand will double by the end of this year, to 60 billion gallons, and more than triple by 2020, to almost 100 billion. But West Texas' network of aquifers are interconnected; water pumped from one can reduce flow in another. Some worry that all of these proposed water wells could dry up aquifers that supply West Texas ranches, farms and cities. It's not an unreasonable fear. Few here forget when oilman Clayton Williams Sr. and West Texas farmers pumped the prodigious Comanche Springs, just east of Balmorhea, to barely a trickle. Hughes, a former chairman of the Texas Parks & Wildlife Commission, and his team were seeking approval of their plans from the Culberson County Groundwater Conservation District. Officials there expected many others to apply to pump local aquifers. "Water," said district general manager Summer Webb. "It's the next oil." More than a decade ago, U.S. drillers began coupling two long-used oil production techniques, horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing, to revolutionize oil production, transforming the U.S. from an energy has-been to a key global producer. Companies slowly realized that the Permian held great promise: Its multiple underground layers of rock hold unfathomable quantities of oil. With crude prices still low, Permian has become one of the few places where drillers can make money. The number of drilling rigs there has almost tripled, from less than 140 last spring to almost 380 by late July. Companies habitually bore horizontal shafts that run at least 10,000 feet -- double the distance drilled four years ago -- and pump 20 million gallons of water, or more, into each to produce longer, wider fractures in the shale. Explorers, meanwhile, have ventured south and west, into a more remote section of the Permian, called the Delaware Basin, with thicker, deeper veins of oil and gas, but less groundwater. That created a market for water like no other U.S. shale field. "There are going to be literally tens of thousands of wells drilled in the southern Delaware," said Toby Darden, CEO of one of the water startups, Wolfcamp Water Partners of Fort Worth. "Water is a critical resource. It's one of the major logistical considerations for development in shale." Darden's Wolfcamp Water has leased 31,000 acres in the foothills of the Davis Mountains, drilled into the Capitan Reef aquifer, and gathered investors. The seven-employee company plans to break ground on wells, catch basins and a 65-mile pipeline by the end of the year, and pump more than 8 million gallons a day for 20 years, about two or three percent of the estimated 2.3 trillion gallons in the aquifer. Layne Christensen, The Woodlands water and well company, has purchased an old cotton farm on 800 acres outside of Pecos, tapped the Pecos Valley aquifer, and, last week, finished a six-well, 4.2-million-gallons-a-day pipeline that runs 20 miles to the heart of the Delaware Basin. And, last month, East Texas consultants Aperion Energy Group asked the city of Balmorhea to lease a small mountain lake and pipeline for $50,000, in total, for 50 years, starting in mid-August. The company declined to comment. Many out here support the water company efforts. "It's good for communities," said John Davis, the mayor of Balmorhea and an oilfield construction supervisor. "Especially communities that don't have a lot of revenue coming in." Hughes's father, Dan Allen Hughes, Sr., started prospecting for oil more than 60 years ago. His firm, Dan A. Hughes Co., worked from New Mexico to Australia. It was an early explorer in the Barnett Shale gas field around the city of Denton, and, later, South Texas' Eagle Ford. Hughes Sr. saw land as a good investment, and started buying ranches, especially on good hunting grounds. The family now owns 390,000 acres in Texas and Montana, including Apache Ranch, an expanse of white dirt, prickly pear and thorny mesquite surrounded by the rocky Apache Mountains northeast of Van Horn, and filled with game, including elk, pronghorn antelope and exotic aoudad sheep. Apache Ranch is unusual. The heart of the Delaware Basin is largely a bathtub of clays and salt, perfect for holding oil, but with little groundwater. The ranch is outside of that clay tub, formed by limestone and dolomite, porous rocks that hold about 1.6 trillion gallons of water in the Capitan Reef. In March, Hughes submitted an application to the Culberson County Groundwater Conservation District in the name of his new company, Agua Grande, asking to drill seven wells on the ranch and build a 60-mile pipeline northeast to the heart of Delaware, where 20 companies, including Anadarko Petroleum Corp. and EOG Resources, of Houston, and Concho Resources of Midland, are interested in buying the water, according to the application. Agua Grande made its pitch to Culberson County officials on June 7. The company's hydrogeologist, Steve Finch, from the New Mexico environmental firm John Shomaker & Associates, tried to persuade the board that the Capitan aquifer provided relatively little water to Balmorhea's famous San Solomon Springs. Finch has studied groundwater there for 17 years, and spent six months examining it anew for Agua Grande. He created a computer model to analyze the effect of the pumping on the San Solomon. The result: "I see zero impact," he said. But he also acknowledged that no one knows quite how the aquifers interact in the Delaware Basin. "It's probably one of the most studied basins in the world, for oil and gas," he said. "But the groundwater portion, we're still figuring the pieces out." Opponents of the project argued that the size of the withdrawals, almost 2 billion gallons a year, and potential impact on the network of aquifers threaten their livelihoods. They rely on the water to feed cattle, grow crops, fill the natural swimming pool at Balmorhea state park, and attract tourists. Several area springs have already dried up, they said, or produce less. "Mr. Hughes inherited Apache Ranch. He is very well-off," said Addington, whose grandfather came to farm and ranch at Sierra Blanca more than century ago. "When are they satisfied that they have enough money? It's offensive to us. It affects the future health and sustainability of the entire region." Hughes' team remains hopeful. But they also understand the worries. "Water," said Will Hughes, Dan Jr.'s son and a land manager for the oil company, "is the key to everything out here." President Donald Trump has expressed frustrations regarding the war in Afghanistan, and recently suggested firing the wars top military commander, NBC News reported. In a meeting last month, Trump told senior administration officials we arent winning. We are losing. By most measures, the president is correct. The nearly 16 year long war the longest in US history has resulted in 2,216 American deaths and cost taxpayers an estimated $714 billion. Meanwhile, the U.S. backed Afghan government controls less than 60 percent of the country, according to a report from the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan reconstruction, a government watchdog group. The Taliban maintains a strong hold over much of the other territory. The Hartford Public Library (HPL) announced Wednesday it will delay the closure of three branches until the end of 2017. In July, officials announced that the Blue Hills, Goodwin and Mark Twain branches will shut down on Sept. 5 as part of the city's ongoing plans to restructure the library system in Hartford. As a result of public criticism, HPL will slowly limit availability at these locations, offering community events until Dec. 31. Like other places in the state, the Hartford Public Library has fallen victim to the woes of both the states budget and citys budget have led to decreased revenueespecially when compared to previous years. In a statement to NBC Connecticut, the HPL indicates it is, transitioning to a new and very different operational model, one that is sustainable in light of our challenging financial times, and offers more open hours, additional days of operation and enhanced outreach services in six library locations for our 125,000 residents and daily visitors to the city. As part of the interim service plans, HPL will allow on-site computers to remain and be operational, as well as several books and other materials, which will be available to be borrowed. At the Goodwin branch, school and day care visits will remain on site and full computer access will be granted to visitors twice a week from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. HPL also addressed one of the main concerns with the initial sudden closing of three of the Goodwin branch by continuing to offer several adult programs and community support meetings monitored by the HPL every Saturday. The Blue Hills branch will allow Saturday morning adult and community programs, in addition to having homework club sanctioned by the HPL twice a week after school. The Mark Twain branch at West Middle School will assist with adult education courses along with tutoring 2 to 3 days a week while hosting and moderating events from various community groups. Hartford Public Library will detail the transition plan on Thursday night at the Mark Twain branch at West Middle School on 44 Niles Street. A woman and two children ran out of a house in Virginia on Saturday and told police the children's father had held them captive for more than two years, police say. The woman, 32, and two children, ages 8 and 11, ran to freedom after police received a request to check on the welfare of the family in rural Fredericksburg, Virginia, on the 3600 block of Mine Road. Kariem Moore, 43, has been charged with three counts of abduction by force and one count of felony assault and battery, police said Wednesday. He is the woman's boyfriend and the father of the children, police said. NBC Washington; Spotsylvania County Sheriff's Office Police were dispatched to the house -- which sits far from other houses -- about 5 p.m. Saturday. As Spotsylvania County sheriff's deputies spoke with Moore on the front lawn, he "became evasive" when the officers said they were there to check on the family. As they spoke, the woman and two children ran out of a side door and away from the house. Moore was detained, and the woman and children were taken to safety. It was not immediately clear how Moore allegedly was able to keep the woman and children, who police did not identify, in the house. No missing persons reports were ever filed. A neighbor said she only saw the woman and children once, at least a year ago. "I have never seen that lady or those kids since they moved into that house, and that was before last summer, because the grass was really tall," the woman who lives nearby said. She asked not to be identified. A mother and her two child were allegedly held captive by the children's father for years in Fredericksburg, Virginia. News4's Jackie Bensen spoke with a neighbor who was shocked to learn the man wasn't living alone. The neighbor said Moore told her his girlfriend was handicapped. "When he said that she was handicapped, I told my husband, I said, 'Well, I saw a lady over there, but I saw her walk. But I've never seen her since then. I assumed that he was living there by himself." At the house on Wednesday night, every window was covered with a blanket. The woman is in a hospital for treatment. She is in serious condition and has health issues that went untreated for years, according to The Free Lance-Star, which was first to report the story. The children are in the care of family members. The local school district could not confirm, without knowing the children's names, if the children were enrolled in school, a spokeswoman said. Moore is being held without bond at Rappahannock Regional Jail. Real estate records show he was not the owner of the house where his family lived. Sheriff Roger Harris reminded residents to report anything that seems out of the ordinary. "One phone call could make a major difference in someones life," he said. Anyone with information for police is asked to call 800-928-5822 or 540-582-5822, or visit www.spotsylvaniacrimesolvers.org. To text a tip, send SEE911 to CRIMES. In its latest update, Dallas County Health and Human Services says it is monitoring 13 cases involving either pregnant mothers or infants for possible Zika infection. "I'm not surprised at all," said Dr. Sheila Chhutani, of Gyn/Ob Associates and Texas Health Dallas. "I think it's just a matter of time before we see Zika possibly being transmitted here." The U.S. Zika Pregnancy Registry is a long-term tracking effort to better understand the impacts of the virus. In Texas, 221 pregnant women were being tracked for possible Zika exposure, all travel related. Fifteen of those women gave birth to infants with birth defects consistent with the Zika virus. Last week Texas had its first case of local Zika transmission in the Rio Grande Valley. So far, the possible cases locally have been travel related. "I think that the city of Dallas is doing its job in terms of trying to track mosquitoes," Chhutani said. But it's not just a government issue. "People don't see it as affecting them until it does," she said. "It just rained today. Let's make sure we don't have rain water sitting outside, making a home for mosquitoes to develop," Chhutani pointed out Wednesday evening. "It's not something we do once and we stop. It's an ongoing process. It's an ongoing threat, and it's going to continue." Police said a 17-year-old girl reported missing after an assault, robbery and carjacking Thursday morning was an accomplice in crimes. Fort Worth police said they responded to a kidnapping call in the 6100 block of Vega Drive at 3:28 a.m. Investigators initially thought the victim was visiting her 18-year-old friend at the apartments when three men assaulted and robbed her friend. The men then drove away in the girl's vehicle with her inside. Police said they tracked the victim's friend's cell phone which was in the girl's vehicle and found it dumped near Farm-to-Market Road 1187 in South Fort Worth. After safely locating the girl, police said detectives determined she was involved in the assault and robbery of her friend. No further details have been released. The loose dog crisis continues to be one of the hot topics in Dallas and is at the center of discussions as the city looks for a new leader for Dallas Animal Services. Six final candidates met with members of the public and participated in private panel interviews at the Dallas Public Library in downtown Dallas on Thursday. Both citizens who went to meet the candidates and animal welfare employees told NBC 5 that getting ahold of the loose dog problem is critical. The DAS position has been open since last year when the city asked the Dallas Police Department to take over the job. Since then, officers reported improvements with the loose dog problem. It's been a the topic of much discussion and call for change since the May 2016 mauling death of U.S. Army veteran Antoinette Brown. Some of the candidates are from other states, and admittedly not overly familiar with the issue. The six finalists for the position of Director of Dallas Animal Services are James Bacon, Barbara Hobbs, Frank Boldoe, Edward Jamison, Ryan Rogers and Clinton Thacker. Jamison, who currently serves as Chief Animal Control Officer for the City of Cleveland, Ohio, addressed how he would conduct a thorough review of current practices and assured the public that great strides could be made because he was able to do it in Ohio with less resources. "Im looking for a candidate that has experience in animal welfare and that can do things in a positive way for our animals. And looking at them not as just an animal ... but in a way where we can let this animal have a great life wherever that is," said Leslie Sans, the executive director for Dallas Pets Alive! Maj. Barbara Hobbs with the Dallas Police Department has been the Interim Manager of Dallas Animal Services since May 2016. A human resources manager with the City of Dallas said the new director for DAS could be named as early as next week. Six weeks after a woman was found in her backyard swimming pool beaten to death, prosecutors in South Jersey charged her husband with "purposely or knowingly" causing her death and trying to cover his tracks. Norman Long allegedly ordered food at a local restaurant as part of that effort, the Gloucester County Prosecutor's Office said Wednesday. The death of Michelle Long was ruled a homicide after the county medical examiner determined the 47-year-old woman died of blunt force trauma. Her body was found June 17 at her home, which is located on the cul-de-sac of Forrest Court in Woolwich Township, prosecutors said. "Mr. Long killed his wife inside their home then placed her fully clothed body in their backyard swimming pool," Dalton alleged. Long, a self-employed construction contractor, is accused of "using physical force to cause blunt force head and neck trauma," Dalton said. After placing his wife's body in the pool, Long went to an area Applebee's restaurant to grab food before returning, calling authorities and telling first responders his wife drowned, Dalton alleged. "The information that he provided was not consistent with the evidence," Dalton said. In addition to first-degree murder, the 51-year-old suspect also faces a count of concealing evidence and obstruction for placing his wife's body in the pool and "disposing paper towels containing the blood of Michelle Long in the kitchen trash can," Dalton said. Long "became combative" while CPR was being administered to his wife on June 17 and had to be restrained, according to a police report. A small dog was also found dead in the pool when police arrived around 8:35 p.m. Family members called Michelle Long a loving person. "She did not deserve this at all, we are broken without her," Michelle Long's daughter Brittany Maguire said. "She was known by friends and by family alike as a very caring, happy person, a successful business woman," Dalton said. Dalton didn't give a motive for the alleged killing. Long was committed to a state psychiatric hospital for observation following his arrest Tuesday after stating he wanted to kill himself, Dalton said. An attorney for Long did not immediately respond to a request for comment Thursday. Long doesn't face any animal cruelty charges in relation to the death of the dog as there is a lack of evidence, prosecutors said. A former police chief is demanding $10 million from the city of Baldwin Park after he was dismissed only 49 days after being approved to lead the department. He says his release is retaliation against his refusal to perform political favors for one of the city's councilmen. In a government claim filed July 20, former chief David Salcedo seeks $5 million in economic damages, $3 million in emotional distress damages and $2 million in general damages for alleged wrongful termination after he was "coerced and required to engage in political activity" at the behest of City Councilman Ricardo Pacheco. The claim alleges that sometime in March, Pacheco asked Salcedo to "look into" dismissing a citation issued to "a constituent's daughter" by a Baldwin Park police officer. "Pacheco informed Salcedo that she was a good kid, that came from a good family, and the citation would tarnish her record," the claim says. When Salcedo refused to dismiss the citation, Pacheco told him, "But you're the Chief! Why not? Talk to the officer. This will ruin her life, there had to be something else happening for her to do that, she's a good kid," the claim alleges. "Several times thereafter," Pacheco "pressured Salcedo to take action," but Salcedo refused, according to the claim. Pacheco categorically denies that he ever asked Salcedo to dismiss the alleged citation. "I never asked him that," Pacheco said. "Mr. Salcedo is a disgruntled employee. He's angry that he was dismissed. He's just making things up." Will Reed, an attorney at Shegerian and Associates, Inc. the law firm representing Salcedo said there is evidence to contradict Pacheco's denial. "I can definitely confirm that there were electronic communications between (Pacheco and Salcedo)," wherein Pacheco went so far as to send Salcedo a copy of the citation, Reed said. The government claim also alleges that around March, Pacheco asked Salcedo to leave in place "no parking" signs that had been posted in violation of a city code in order to prevent "political opponents" from parking a truck with an "anti-Pacheco" banner in front of a local park during the park's grand opening. "I never gave him any direction like that," Pacheco said. "He's just fabricating issues that aren't true." Around the same time, Pacheco also allegedly asked Salcedo to tow a legally parked truck that had a large banner depicting Pacheco as a donkey. Because the truck was advertising a business, it was in violation of a municipal code and was therefore parked illegally, Pacheco allegedly informed Salcedo. Salcedo refused to cite or tow the truck, according to the claim, telling Pacheco that the banner displayed "political speech," not the advertisement of a business. As a compromise, Salcedo allegedly told Pacheco he would monitor the truck to see if it overstayed the amount of time a vehicle could be parked on a public street. Pacheco disputed the claim's version of events, saying he asked Salcedo to "look into" the truck because it was "violating an ordinance that does not allow a commercial truck to be parked without doing business." The truck later left the spot, Pacheco said. Pacheco also allegedly asked Salcedo to "send him an update" on a code enforcement case against Prestige Auto, a local business that also displayed a banner depicting Pacheco as a donkey. "The only logical inference was that Pacheco wanted to use his influence to take action against a political opponent," the claim says, adding that Pacheco was "none too pleased" when Salcedo told him that code enforcement had given the business' owners a "short extension." Pacheco did not dispute that he asked Salcedo to check on the code enforcement case, but he did dispute that the "update" was politically motivated, saying that the business was in legitimate violation of city codes. Salcedo, who was chosen as chief in a 3-2 city council vote on March 1 - receiving a vote in favor by Pacheco - was dismissed April 19, one day before he was to be sworn in, again by a 3-2 vote. During the April 19 vote, Pacheco sided with councilwoman Cruz Baca and Mayor Pro-Tem Susan Rubio in favor of Salcedo's termination. The reason he flipped his decision was because of concerns of "improper" actions by Salcedo, Pacheco said. Pacheco, Baca and Rubio are all specifically named as defendants in the claim. An at-will employee during his time with the city, officially Salcedo was, "Dismissed without cause." His contract included a clause that said he could be fired "for any reason, with or without cause, at any time," contingent on a majority vote by the city council. The terms of the contract, however, do not prevent litigation on the part of Salcedo, said Anthony Nguyen, an attorney at Shegerian and Associates working on the case. "It's common for such agreements to be signed, but they don't supersede California law when it comes to retaliatory behavior or other forms of wrongful termination," Nguyen said. "So it basically means nothing." After he was dismissed, "ranking officers" "ransacked" Salcedo's office, "took many items, and copied numerous documents," a violation of the Police Officers Bill of Rights, according to the claim. A memorandum of insubordination against a police department captain had also been removed from the office, the claim alleges. "They were gathering dirt," Reed said, to make claims that Salcedo was running a consulting business out of his office and during work hours. "They went through his personal briefcase. They went through personal and medical documents," Reed said. Pacheco said there is "an ongoing investigation" into whether or not anyone ransacked Salcedo's office. City attorney Robert Tafoya said it was "absolutely untrue" that officers "ransacked" the office. While Tafoya did not have a first-hand account of what happened in the office, he said it was his understanding that if officers had entered, it would have been to "gather" Salcedo's things. Furthermore - even if anyone had gone into the office - because Salcedo has been fired by the city at the time, he would not have been covered by the Police Officers Bill of Rights, Tafoya said. Since his termination, Salcedo has been back at Baldwin Park. Tafoya has responded by sending a cease and desist letter. The letter claims that Salcedo has contacted city police officers "requesting that they illegally provide him City documents." At a "concerts in the park" event, Salcedo improperly entered an area reserved for city employees and "misrepresented himself to citizens," the letter says. "If Mr. Salcedo was treated so poorly by the City of Baldwin Park, its City Council and the Baldwin Park Police Department, as is claimed in this new amended government claim, why does he keep coming back to Baldwin Park and interacting with the very people and the very department he now claims caused him 10 million dollars ($10,000,000) in damages?" the letter asks. Salcedo had initially filed another claim with a different law firm, as reported by the San Gabriel Valley Tribune. Reed said Salcedo was at the "concerts in the park" event, but that he crossed no barriers, physical or otherwise. Furthermore, Salcedo was not doing anything inappropriate by talking to officers, Reed said. The reason Salcedo has been back at the city, Reed said, is because he "still has a lot of followers there." "There's nothing wrong with him seeing the people that support him," Reed said. Calling the amended claim a "money grab," Tafoya said Salcedo's allegations are baseless. "I continue to believe that Mr. Salcedo is apparently making up these claims as he goes along," Tafoya said. Pacheco was not as diplomatic. "He is a liar and he is not telling the truth," he said of Salcedo. "I think it's important for the people of Baldwin Park to know that he wasn't fired just because," Pacheco said. "Pacheco is the guy who has it out for him and the one individual who would probably speak the worst about him," Reed said. "Mr. Salcedo is not a liar. There's evidence to back up all his claims." The Baldwin Park city council voted Wednesday to reject Salcedo's claim. The next likely step is a formal lawsuit against the city. Even for elementary school students, the Great American Eclipse of Aug. 21, 2017, will be the chance of a lifetime. No other total solar eclipses will pass through Nebraska in the 21st century. The most recent total eclipses to pass through Nebraska were on June 30, 1954, and Aug. 7, 1869. Fremont is too far north to fall in the path of totality. The partial solar eclipse will start at 11:37 a.m. and end at 2:29 p.m. The maximum eclipse, with 98.5 percent coverage of the sun, will be at 1:03:10 p.m. For K-12 students, theres one problem: the eclipse is on a Monday, a school day. But students at Fremont Public Schools, Archbishop Bergan Catholic Schools and Trinity Lutheran wont be trapped in a classroom for the eclipse. Special events are planned at these schools. It may be awhile before students could see another total solar eclipse. Some might get the chance to see one sweep through Texas and Ohio on April 8, 2024. Others might see another pass through northern California, Oklahoma and Florida on Aug. 12, 2045. Regardless, chances are the students will never be this close to a path of a total solar eclipse again. Trinity Lutheran Trinity Lutheran students in second grade and older will get the best view. Theyll go on a field trip to Concordia University in Seward, which is in the totality path. Concordia University invited all Lutheran schools to campus, Trinity Principal Greg Rathke said. Theyre putting on a whole presentation in their stadium, Rathke said. In the stadium, Trinity students and others will hear audio commentary from the Concordia science department, according to Concordias website. Because its early in the year, the youngest students in kindergarten and first grade will stay in Fremont, Rathke said. For most of the day, theyll go through eclipse activities led by Brett Meyer. Concordia will provide eclipse glasses to the students on the field trip, and glasses have been purchased for the kindergarteners and first-graders. Fremont Public Schools Each building administrator is working with a team of teachers to develop their activities, said Kate Heinemann, FPS director of teaching and learning. All of our buildings will be doing something that will be developmentally appropriate for the ages that they serve. Parents will have the chance to sign an opt-out form if they do not wish for their children to participate in the activities. FPS has been working with an ophthalmologist, Dr. Gregory Haskins, regarding safety procedures, Heinemann said. Eclipse glasses have been purchased for all students. It is a learning experience, something that is also a once-in-a-lifetime experience, Heinemann said. We can always read about it. We can see videos on it. But to actually experience it for real in our lifetime, in our area, is amazing. Archbishop Bergan Catholic Bergan is on a waiting list to take a field trip to Homestead National Monument near Beatrice, which is one of the best places to see the eclipse. But chances for that trip do not look good, Principal Dan Koenig said. Plans are still in the works, but Koenig said the high school might travel to a practice field for a better view, while the elementary students will likely view from outside the elementary school building. Eclipse glasses will be purchased for all students. Using peanut butter to escape from the Walker County Jail in Alabama isn't as crazy as it sounds. Belinda Ann Weldon, an Alabama attorney familiar with the jail who represents the last of 12 inmates to be captured after escaping Sunday, said she can see how a guard watching remotely could be fooled if inmates partially obscure the number that identifies each door. "That placard has a number on it; it's an off-white. They covered it in peanut butter. Say the number was an 8; they made it look like a 9," she said. "He pushed the button for a door that instead of going into a dorm went to an outside door." Authorities said the inexperienced guard, watching 150 inmates through security cameras from a control room, thought he was opening the cell at an inmate's request. But a dozen inmates were able to flee, throwing off their orange jail uniforms and running in every direction. The first 11 inmates were captured within hours of their escape, never leaving the county, but Brady Kilpatrick, 24, made it all the way to Martin County, Florida, persuading his sister to drive him, authorities said. Martin County Sheriff William D. Snyder announced Tuesday night that investigators "zeroed in" on a house on a quiet street in Tequesta, just north of West Palm Beach, where a car with an Alabama license plate was parked outside. A short time later, Kilpatrick was arrested, along with his sister, Jensen Davis Lefan, 18; her boyfriend, Hayden Thomas Mayberry, 24; and Mayberry's childhood friend, Dakota Anthony, 23. Lefan, of Cordova, Alabama, told investigators her brother called her shortly after the escape, asking for a ride. She and Mayberry borrowed a car from his roommate and picked up Kilpatrick a short time later. He hopped in and told her "Go!" according to an arrest affidavit. Five to 10 minutes later, he told them he'd escaped from jail, cutting his hands when he climbed a 15-foot fence topped with razor wire. Lefan and Mayberry, of Jasper, Alabama, took turns driving with Kilpatrick in the backseat, she said. They ended up at the home of Anthony, a childhood friend of Mayberry's, after stopping for food paying in cash and sleeping in a Wal-Mart parking lot. She feared getting caught, but said she had to try to help her brother because "they are family," the sheriff said. Mayberry who told authorities they planned to marry soon told investigators he knew that what they did was wrong, but said "you do crazy things for love." In Florida, Snyder praised his department and other agencies for using a "good tactical approach" once they located the home in Tequesta, where a car with an Alabama license plate was parked outside. "Let's suffice it to say we had an overwhelming force and more than adequate resources as he made the unwise decision of trying to escape out of the house," he said. Jail records don't list attorneys for any of the arrestees. Lefan and Mayberry face charges of facilitating escape and hindering apprehension of a fugitive in Alabama, as well as aiding and abetting a fugitive in Florida. Anthony was charged with possessing a controlled substance. Kilpatrick initially jailed in Alabama on charges of possessing drugs and paraphernalia now faces prosecution on much tougher crimes. Walker County Sheriff James Underwood in Alabama did not immediately return a call seeking comment on the arrest of Kilpatrick, which happened only a few hours after he predicted it would. The other 11 fugitives had been rounded up by Monday afternoon. Kilpatrick appeared in court Wednesday in Stuart, Florida, where a judge ordered him held without bail pending his return to Alabama. Lefan and Mayberry also remained in the jail, with $7,500 bail set for each. Snyder said he tried to hide in the wrong county. "Look, I don't like to brag," the sheriff told reporters, "but we've never had an escape from the Martin County Jail. I can tell you this, he won't be getting any peanut butter." Associated Press writer Jay Reeves contributed to this report. What to Know Nathaniel Glover, aka The Kidd Creole, was charged with murder in the deadly stabbing of a homeless man The 55-year-old victim was stabbed on a street in east Midtown on Tuesday night and later died The Kidd Creole was part of Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five, best known for their hit rap song, "The Message" UPDATE: 1980s Rap Pioneer The Kidd Creole Charged in Deadly Stabbing of Homeless Sex Offender Is 'Extremely Remorseful,' Cops Say Nathaniel Glover, aka The Kidd Creole of the pioneering rap group Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five, has been charged in the deadly stabbing of a homeless man in Midtown, Manhattan, law enforcement sources tell News 4 New York. Glover, a 57-year-old Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee, was arrested and charged with murder after being questioned at the 13th Precinct in Manhattan. He had been taken into custody at his home in the amount Hope section of the Bronx earlier on Wednesday. Police said he is "extremely remorseful." Glover confessed to stabbing the man, later identified as 55-year-old John Jolly, though a motivation for the killing has not been released, the sources said. He was walked from a police precinct Wednesday night in handcuffs. Jolly, a homeless man, was found with three stab wounds to his chest near Third Avenue and East 44th Street shortly before midnight on Tuesday, according to sources, who said he may have been stabbed somewhere else before collapsing at the spot a couple of blocks from Grand Central Terminal. Jolly is a convicted sex offender, according to records. He was taken to Bellevue Hospital and pronounced dead less than an hour later, sources said, adding that he had been staying at a homeless shelter in the Bowery and had 17 prior arrests. Glover has four prior arrests, the most recent being in 2007 for possession of a knife. In 1995 and 1982, he was arrested for possessing a gun, according to police. A fourth arrest is sealed. Glover worked security at a building on 44th Street near where the victim was found. His neighbor, Raymond Sanders, said he woke up to see police in Glover's apartment. "I said, 'What the heck is the police doing here?'" he said. Sanders couldn't believe his neighbor was wanted in a killing. "He's a nice guy," Sanders said. "All he do is go to work, come home. He's polite, he's very respectful of people. He doesn't say anything out of the way and he minds his own business." It wasn't immediately known if Glover had an attorney who could comment on the charges. Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five formed in the Bronx in the late 1970s. They're most known for their influential 1982 rap song, "The Message." The group broke up in the late 1980s. What to Know Found guilty of involuntary manslaughter, Michelle Carter could now be facing up to 20 years behind bars for the suicide of her boyfriend Researchers safely repaired a disease-causing gene in human embryos, targeting a heart defect best known for killing young athletes Former FBI Director James Comey is writing a book about leadership and decision making that will draw upon his career in government Get the top headlines of the day in your morning briefing from NBC 4 New York, Monday through Friday. Sign up for our newsletter here. Woman Being Sentenced in Texting Suicide of Boyfriend Found guilty of involuntary manslaughter in June, Michelle Carter could now be facing up to 20 years behind bars for the suicide of her boyfriend. Conrad Roy, 18, poisoned himself with carbon monoxide in 2014. Following a bench trial, a judge ruled that Carter should be held responsible for his death, based on hundreds of text messages she sent urging him to commit suicide. Judge Lawrence Moniz will have to decide what sentence to impose on Carter, and it is a question legal analysts say is not easy to answer. Carter was charged as a youthful offender, which gives the judge some latitude in her punishment. According to Coyne, she could face probation, prison or even a combination of sentences. If the latter were to happen, it could mean Carter is sent to juvenile detention until she is 21 years old, followed by probation. Because she is already 20, Coyne does not expect that to happen. The judge could also combine a juvenile detention commitment with an adult sentence, or can give her an adult sentence of anything from probation to the maximum 20-year term. Kelly Calls Sessions to Assure AG Position is Safe, Source Says New White House chief of staff John Kelly recently called Attorney General Jeff Sessions to assure him that he is safe in his job, a source familiar with the call confirmed to NBC News. Kelly told Sessions that the White House was supportive of his work and wanted him to remain the attorney general. The Associated Press was the first to report the call. President Trump has publicly criticized Sessions recently over his decision to recuse himself from Russia-related investigation. In an interview on Fox News, Sessions said the criticism was "kind of hurtful" but that he intends to stay in the job as desired by Trump. Senators Move to Protect Special Counsel in Russia Probe Two members of the Senate Judiciary Committee are moving to protect Special Counsel Robert Mueller's job, putting forth new legislation that aims to ensure the integrity of current and future independent investigations. Republican Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina and Democratic Sen. Chris Coons of Delaware plan to introduce the legislation. The bill would allow any special counsel for the Department of Justice to challenge his or her removal in court, with a review by a three-judge panel within 14 days of the challenge. The bill would be retroactive to May 17, 2017 the day Mueller was appointed by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein to investigate Russian meddling in the 2016 election and possible ties to Donald Trump's campaign. Mueller was appointed as special counsel following Trump's abrupt firing of FBI Director James Comey. Mueller, who was Comey's predecessor as FBI director, has assembled a team of prosecutors and lawyers with experience in financial fraud, national security and organized crime to investigate contacts between Moscow and the Trump campaign. 2 Dead After Minnesota School Explosion Two people, including a school staff member and janitor, were found dead following a natural gas explosion at a college prep school in Minneapolis, authorities said. The bodies were found in the rubble of a building that partially collapsed during the blast at the Minnehaha Academy, Minneapolis Fire Chief John Fruetel said during a news conference. The private Christian school serves students from pre-kindergarten through 12th grade. The school says longtime receptionist Ruth Berg died in the blast. Janitor John Carlson, who was reported missing earlier in the day, was later confirmed by the school as the second victim. Fruetel says it's possible a void was created when the building collapsed. He says the building is unstable and noted that making it safe for rescuers will take time. Contractors were doing work on the building at the time of the blast, which investigators determined was caused by a gas explosion, according to Assistant Fire Chief Bryan Tyner. Scientists Repair Gene in Human Embryos for First Time Altering human heredity? In a first, researchers safely repaired a disease-causing gene in human embryos, targeting a heart defect best known for killing young athletes a big step toward one day preventing a list of inherited diseases. In a surprising discovery, a research team reported that embryos can help fix themselves if scientists jump-start the process early enough. It's laboratory research only, nowhere near ready to be tried in a pregnancy. But it suggests that scientists might alter DNA in a way that protects not just one baby from a disease that runs in the family, but his or her offspring as well. Today, couples seeking to avoid passing on a bad gene sometimes have embryos created in fertility clinics so they can discard those that inherit the disease and attempt pregnancy only with healthy ones, if there are any. Gene editing in theory could rescue diseased embryos. James Comey Has Book Deal, Publication Set for Next Spring Former FBI Director James Comey has a book deal. Flatiron Books told The Associated Press that Comey is writing a book about leadership and decision making that will draw upon his career in government. Comey will write about experiences that made him the FBI's best-known and most controversial FBI head in recent times, from his handling of the bureau's probe into Hillary Clinton's private email server to allegations of ties between Russia and Donald Trump's presidential campaign. Trump fired Comey in May and soon after told NBC News that he was angered by the FBI's investigation into "this Russia thing with Trump and Russia," which he called a fake story. Comey has since testified before Congress that Trump asked him to end an investigation into former National Security Adviser Michael T. Flynn and kept memos about his meetings with the president. According to Flatiron, Comey will cite "examples from some of the highest-stakes situations in the past two decades of American government" and "share yet-unheard anecdotes from his long and distinguished career." New York state will hand over some voter information to President Donald Trump's commission investigating voter fraud, becoming the first state to largely comply with the request after initially balking. The state's Board of Elections voted Wednesday to provide data such as voter names, birthdates, addresses and voting history after determining it was a legitimate request based on state open records laws. The state will withhold certain information, however, such as a voter's Social Security number or criminal history, because of state laws on voter privacy. "The data will be sent out this afternoon," said John Conklin, a spokesman for the Board of Elections. "We had no lawful reason to deny it." The move comes after Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo vowed not to comply with the commission's initial request. "New York refuses to perpetuate the myth voter fraud played a role in our election," Cuomo said at the time. "We will not be complying with this request." The commission then filed an amended request through the state's open records law seeking voter data already available to members of the public who file such requests. Following the board's decision to grant that request, Cuomo said the state would continue to defy any attempt by the commission to access "sensitive personal data" protected by law. "We will never provide private voter information to anyone, especially a politically-motivated organization seeking to perpetuate the myth of voter fraud." Similar requests for more general voter data are often made by political parties and campaign groups. More than 1,000 such queries have been answered since the start of 2015. While the voter information is technically considered a public record, state law restricts access to the information for non-election purposes in an effort to ensure the data isn't misused, possibly for commercial purposes. Democratic state Assemblyman Walter Mosley of Brooklyn said the board should have given the request more consideration before deciding the request was legitimate. "This decision was made in haste, without public input, and is a disservice to all New York voters," he said in a statement. Wednesday's decision makes New York the first state to move from rejecting the request entirely to complying, at least in part. Now, 32 states say they're providing some information, though several of them say the commission must first pay fees ranging from $23 to $32,000. No state is supplying every item on the commission's list; most states say that some details, such as driver's license and Social Security numbers, are not considered public and cannot be shared. The commission did say it wanted only the records that are considered public by the states. Thirteen states plus Washington, D.C., are still denying all information even after the commission sent renewed requests last week clarifying a pledge not to share individual voter records publicly. "The commission's new request does nothing to address the fundamental problems with the commission's illegitimate origins, questionable mission or the preconceived and harmful views on voting rights that many of its commissioners have advanced," California Secretary of State Alex Padilla said in a statement last week. Four states that originally denied the request - Arizona, Illinois, Maine and South Dakota - have said they're now reviewing it. The owner of a Dunkin Donuts plans to meet with two police officers who say they were denied service at his franchise in Brooklyn so that he can apologize in person, according to a police union and a statement from the global doughnut company. The two officers, who are members of the 73rd Precinct's detective squad, were in plain clothes but had their badges and pistols on their belts when they entered the Dunkin Donuts/Baskin-Robbins location at 1993 Atlantic Ave. on Sunday, according to the Detectives' Endowment Association, a police union. When the two detectives went up to the counter to order ice cream they were ignored by the clerk, the union said. The clerk asked a man standing behind the officers for his order and when the man mentioned that the two officers were in front of him, the clerk said: I know, but I dont serve cops, according to the union. NYPD Commissioner James ONeill and Mayor Bill de Blasio condemned the incident. "If it's what you describe, it's someone being really stupid and unfair to our police officers," de Blasio said when asked about the situation on Thursday. Michael Palladino, the president of the Detectives' Endowment Association, threatened to lead a boycott of the doughnut chain if its corporate parent, Dunkin' Brands, didnt apologize to the entire NYPD. He has also criticized the city's political leaders, who he said have created hostility towards police. On Thursday, Dunkin' Brands spokeswoman Michelle King released a statement saying that the owner of the franchise let the company know about the snub immediately upon learning of it this week. He contacted one of the police officers involved to personally apologize for any negative experience he may have had in his store, Kings statement read. King said the owner is meeting with the police officers in person to make amends. Its not known if the worker involved has faced or will face any sort of discipline for the apparent snub. The corporate apology didnt include the entire NYPD, so its unclear if Palladinos threat to lead a large boycott stands. Found guilty of involuntary manslaughter in June, Michelle Carter could now be facing up to 20 years behind bars for the suicide of her boyfriend. Conrad Roy, 18, poisoned himself with carbon monoxide in 2014. Following a bench trial, a judge ruled that Carter should be held responsible for his death, based on hundreds of text messages she sent urging him to commit suicide. Judge Lawrence Moniz will have to decide Thursday what sentence to impose on Carter, and it is a question legal analysts say is not easy to answer. She's looking at the judge having various options, explained Michael Coyne, Dean of the Massachusetts School of Law. Carter was charged as a youthful offender, which gives the judge some latitude in her punishment. According to Coyne, she could face probation, prison or even a combination of sentences. If the latter were to happen, it could mean Carter is sent to juvenile detention until she is 21 years old, followed by probation. Because she is already 20, Coyne does not expect that to happen. The judge could also combine a juvenile detention commitment with an adult sentence, or can give her an adult sentence of anything from probation to the maximum 20-year term. The manslaughter conviction means that her actions resulted in the death of a young man, Coyne said, There should be some level of incarceration that attaches to that. While the range is lengthy, Coyne believes the sentence could be closer to 2-5 years. Guidelines from the Massachusetts Court System recommend 40-60 months for her conviction. Carters sentencing is scheduled for 2:00 p.m. at Taunton Juvenile Court. NBC Boston will broadcast the proceedings live. The Associated Press contributed to this report. As Seen On As seen on News 4 The actor who played Luke Duke on the 1980s television show "The Dukes of Hazzard" pleaded not guilty on Thursday to grabbing the buttocks of a female member of the cast of a musical he was supposed to appear in at a theater in Waltham, Massachusetts. Tom Wopat was released on $1,000 bail and was told to stay away from the woman after denying indecent assault and battery and drug possession charges. He refused to comment outside court before driving away. Wopat has also been ordered to stay away from the theater where he had been performing at the time of the incidents. Wopat, who's from New York, inappropriately touched the woman on July 23, prosecutors alleged. "During a rehearsal the defendant allegedly walked behind a female cast member, grabbing her buttocks," they said in an emailed statement. Wopat, 65, was arrested on Wednesday night on a warrant on the indecent assault charge as he was leaving Waltham High School, where he was rehearsing for a performance of "42nd Street." Police said that during a search of him and his vehicle they found "two bags of white powder believed to be cocaine." The actor denied touching anyone inappropriately, according to court documents. He said he flirts but did "nothing that could be considered inappropriate." He told police that he buys cocaine "in large quantities and uses it over time," the court documents said. Wopat was supposed to play Julian Marsh in "42nd Street" at the Waltham-based Reagle Music Theatre of Greater Boston starting Thursday. But the theater announced Thursday that a different actor would play the role. Wopat said in a recent interview that he has played the role about 500 times. Besides his role on "The Dukes of Hazzard," an action-comedy that ran from 1979 until 1985, he has acted in other television shows and movies, is a Tony Award-nominated stage actor and is a recording artist. [NATL] Famous Mug Shots: Sam Hunt A dramatic rescue unfolded Thursday morning in Delawares Brandywine River. Wilmington firefighters were returning from a call around 6:30 A.M. when they noticed a man in distress stuck in the middle of the river, authorities said. Wilmington Fire Department Wilmingtons rescue squad was called to the scene, where they deployed into the river to rescue the man. The rescue team got him into a life jacket and attached a tag line to bring him back to shore. Wilmington Fire Department The rescue took approximately 20 minutes while 24 first responders were on the scene. The man was transported to Wilmington Hospital. A North Texas doctor reported missing after a hike at the Grand Canyon National Park has died, the U.S. National Park Service confirmed. Park officials said Sarah Beadle, 38, of Fort Worth, had reservations to stay at the Bright Angel Campground on Tuesday but never arrived. "Sarah Beadle passed away sometime yesterday afternoon," Scott Beadle, Sarah's husband, wrote on Facebook. Beadle and two children with her ages 10 and 11 had left Grand Canyon Village and were hiking about ten miles down the South Kaibab Trail. "She was hiking in the Grand Canyon with Laura and her nephew Evan," Beadle explained in the Facebook post. "Laura was feeling dizzy from heat exhaustion and they had run out of water. Sarah left Laura and Evan in a safe location while she went ahead to get water and some help." The children were discovered by park rangers and are safe, officials said. Beadle's backpack was found near the junction of the South Kaibab Trail and the River Trail. Search teams discovered Sarah's body Wednesday afternoon near the Black Bridge, park officials said in a news release Thursday. Sarah was considered to be an experienced backpacker and hiker who last hiked at the Grand Canyon in 2002. A North Texas doctor reported missing after a hike at the Grand Canyon National Park has died, the U.S. National Park Service confirmed. A mother of five, Beadle worked at Baylor Emergency Medical Center in Keller. The hospital issued a statement Thursday, saying, "Our thoughts and prayers are with the friends, family and colleagues of Dr. Sarah Beadle, an emergency medical physician who worked for 24 Hour Physicians, Inc., at Baylor Emergency Medical Center at Keller." "Dr. Beadle was a beloved member of our team, and shell be missed by all with whom she came in contact, having worked at the medical center for a year and a half," the statement said. "We would like to thank the dedicated first responders and search teams who worked tirelessly yesterday." Our thoughts and prayers are with the friends, family and colleagues of Dr. Sarah Beadle, an emergency medical physician who worked for 24 Hour Physicians, Inc., at Baylor Emergency Medical Center at Keller. Dr. Beadle was a beloved member of our team, and shell be missed by all with whom she came in contact, having worked at the medical center for a year and a half. We would like to thank the dedicated first responders and search teams who worked tirelessly yesterday. At this difficult time, we ask for privacy for her colleagues and family. "Sarah loved traveling with her family and sharing so many wonderful experiences with all of us. I thank you all for your continued prayers and support," Scott Beadle wrote. An investigation was launched by the National Park Service and the Coconino County Medical Examiner. The Justice Department said Wednesday it had no broad plans to investigate whether college and university admission programs discriminate against students based on race, seeking to defray worries that a job posting signaled an effort to reverse course on affirmative action. News reports of the posting inflamed advocacy groups that believed it would lead to legal action against universities for not admitting white students over minorities with similar qualifications. But a day after The New York Times reported the department was seeking current attorneys interested in "investigations and possible litigation related to intentional race-based discrimination in college and university admissions," the Justice Department said the job ad was related to just one complaint. "The posting sought volunteers to investigate one administrative complaint filed by a coalition of 64 Asian-American associations in May 2015 that the prior administration left unresolved," spokeswoman Sarah Isgur Flores said. The groups sued Harvard University, saying that school and other Ivy League institutions are using racial quotas to admit students other than high-scoring Asians. Isgur Flores said the Justice Department had received no broader guidance related to university admissions in general and "is committed to protecting all Americans from all forms of illegal race-based discrimination." The memo caused much hand-wringing Wednesday, with questions reaching the White House, where spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders said she doesn't know whether President Donald Trump believes that white college applicants are victims of discrimination. Advocacy groups have been closely watching how Attorney General Jeff Sessions has worked to reshuffle the priorities of the Civil Rights Division, which is not unusual when administrations change. Some groups assumed the job ad marked a continuation of the Trump adminisration's shift away from its Democratic predecessor in the areas of gay rights, voting rights and investigations of troubled police departments. Anurima Bhargava, who was head of the Civil Rights Division's Educational Opportunities Section during the Obama administration, said any move to investigate affirmative action policies would be a "fear and intimidation tactic" because the Supreme Court has upheld such admissions programs. "My very strong sense is that it's nothing other than politics," she said. But Roger Clegg, a civil rights official during the Reagan era who now runs the conservative Center for Equal Opportunity, said it was an encouraging sign. "Anytime a university discriminates on the basis of race it ought to creep people out, and it doesn't make any difference who's being discriminated against on the basis of race," Clegg said. "I'm delighted that the Trump administration is doing this." Clegg said conservatives were displeased with what they saw as the Obama administration's support for race-based admissions by universities. The Supreme Court last year upheld a University of Texas program that considers race, among other factors, in admissions, offering a narrow victory for affirmative action. A white Texan who was denied admission to the university sued, but the high court said the Texas plan complied with earlier court rulings that let colleges consider race in an effort to bolster diversity. At America's elite private colleges, many of which have drawn criticism over race-conscious admission policies, incoming classes have become increasingly diverse in recent years. Minority students made up more than 40 percent of the freshman classes at nearly all Ivy League schools in 2015, according to the most recent federal data, while only two topped that mark in 2010. At Columbia University, about half of the incoming class in 2015 was made up of minority students, the data show. Similarly, top public universities have also become more diverse. At some University of California campuses, for example, nonwhite students made up more than 60 percent of the incoming class in 2015. Those changes partly reflect demographic shifts across the country. According to U.S. Census data, close to half of Americans under age 18 are racial minorities, even though 62 percent of the total population is white. Matthew Gaertner, an education expert at SRI International, a nonprofit research institute, said that of the 3,000 four-year nonprofit colleges and universities in America, 27 percent consider applicants' race and ethnicity during the admission process. But Gaertner cautioned that doesn't simply mean giving certain applicants extra points based on their race. Instead, race is seen as just one of the factors that help admissions officers determine which students would be aligned with the school's mission and priorities. "You cannot place these students into categories and give them boosts based on those categories," said Gaertner. "However, you can go through an individualized assessment of each applicant via interpretation of their race among many factors, such as whether they play the tuba, their athletic gifts, their interests." Columbia University President Lee Bollinger said the effectiveness of race-conscious admission policies in providing top-notch higher education and fostering diversity on campuses has been demonstrated over decades, while its legality and constitutionality have been maintained by the courts. "American colleges and universities are on the right path, and for our country, given its past and hopefully our future, this is the right course," he said. President Donald Trump has become increasingly frustrated with his advisers tasked with crafting a new U.S. strategy in Afghanistan and recently suggested firing the war's top military commander during a tense meeting at the White House, according to senior administration officials. During the July 19 meeting, Trump repeatedly suggested that Defense Secretary James Mattis and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Joseph Dunford replace Gen. John Nicholson, the commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, because he is not winning the war, the officials told NBC News. Trump has not met Nicholson, and the Pentagon has been considering extending his time in Afghanistan. Over nearly two hours in the situation room, according to the officials, Trump complained about NATO allies, inquired about the United States getting a piece of Afghans mineral wealth and repeatedly said the top U.S. general there should be fired. What do you do when you feel like your communitys music scene isnt being appropriately appreciated? Well, you take matters into your own hands. Such is the case with the Roog Music Festival -- the annual North County mini-fest set to touch down at Black Plague Brewing on Aug. 12. Organized by two members of the Oceanside post-punk/indie-rock band Noble War -- Louis Elguera and Carlos Bautista -- along with a team of friends, the Roog Music Festival has come to embody the spirit of the burgeoning North County scene that, until the last couple years, has largely gone unnoticed by San Diego media outlets. Basically, if you werent playing the Belly Up, it felt like nobody cared. Now, with great shows popping up regularly at venues like Pour House Oceanside, Aztec Brewing, Boar Cross'n, and the Stag & Lion (among others) -- North County seems like the place to be. Still, the Noble War lads felt something was missing. [We] decided to pull the trigger on this event after years of waiting for the music scene to do something like this in our hometown, Elguera told me via email. Our goal when we began was to create a unique experience put together by artists and musicians for everyone to enjoy. In essence, the guys saw a problem and decided to do something about it. Last years inaugural event, held at Vistas Avo Playhouse, featured Stardeath and White Dwarfs (whove collaborated with the Flaming Lips), Minus Light (featuring members of Julian Casablancas & the Voidz) and local groups Wild Wild Wets, Spero, Some Kind of Lizard, and the Art Dealers. For folks that dont exactly work in the booking field, landing touring acts is not quite as simple as it seems. So for a first-time event, 2016s Roog Music Festival was an impressive success. This year, the guys have taken it up a notch -- moving it to a more like-minded venue in Oceanside (I spoke to Jordan Hoffart of Black Plague Brewing, Elguera said, and he shared our goals and what we were about -- he was all in) and tapping some great acts (again both local and national) to perform. On the bill this year? Mexican Summers Part Time, Golden Animals (who were featured on a recent episode of SoundDiego TV; watch), Kids in Heat, Taken By Canadians, and like last year, Noble War themselves. Music wont be the only thing offered either: Along with live performances and great independent craft beer, food will be for sale by Full Metal Burgers, DJs Lexicon Devil and Camel Beats will be spinning vinyl in between sets, and a visual art show will feature BB Bastidas, Sarah Spinks, Transitory Existence, Chase Hartman, Bob Villain, Michaella Lee, and others. A veritable smorgasbord for the senses, you could say. The show is scheduled to start at 4 p.m. and run until 1 a.m., its all ages, and tickets are only $20 each (available to purchase online here). All that sounds pretty good but one question still remains: What exactly does Roog mean? The word Roog is referred to by the people of Senegal as the heavens or the sky and universe, Elguera explained, adding rather cryptically: Roog Music Fest will open your mind to see in the perception that your fellow artists and musicians share. Well, there you have it. Dustin Lothspeich books The Merrow and runs the music equipment-worshipping blog Gear and Loathing in San Diego. Follow his updates on Twitter or contact him directly. Once again, wait times for emergency 911 calls are a problem for the City of San Diego, with the issue now shifting to the San Diego Fire-Rescue Department's (SDFD) call center. It's been a little more than a year since Mayor Kevin Faulconer promised to fix a broken dispatch center in the San Diego Police Department. The police emergency call times have vastly improved and now meet national standards, but the problem now lies in the fire department where, according to a union representative for dispatchers, the call center is on the "brink of crisis." Staffing levels in the Metro Zone Emergency Command and Data Center (ECDC) have dropped to a level where dispatchers are struggling to handle 911 call volume, according to numerous sources and a report commissioned by the city. In recent months, callers to 911 were placed on "excessive wait times," and incoming emergency calls went unanswered for more than 59 seconds before a dispatcher was available to answer "on many observed occasions," according to the consultant Citygate Associates, LLC. The national standard is a wait time of 10 seconds or less, 90 percent of the time. According to the March 2017 reports, the firm was hired by the city and the SDFD to "proactively address pressing needs." Citygate noted on-duty staffing at the center dropped to seven dispatchers to accommodate for illnesses, training, and vacations. The study found the SDFD staffing minimum of six to nine dispatchers was "insufficient by any reasonable calculation to handle incoming calls during peak hours." The department has long struggled with retention and hiring of dispatchers, the study notes. A spokeswoman for SDFD said the department is in the process of hiring 14 more dispatchers. During the past week, SDFD data shows the call center is answering all calls in less than 15 seconds more than 90 percent of the time. On Tuesday, calls were answered within 15 seconds, 99.3 percent of the time. Michael Zucchet, the general manager of the union representing dispatchers, said the staffing situation in the emergency call center is dire. "The call wait times have not manifested themselves quite as badly as it did with SDPD, but it is on the brink of crisis," Zucchet said. "If they lose another few more people at the wrong time, they will be in the same boat where they cannot handle the call volume." The ECDC is the largest and busiest fire and EMS dispatch center in San Diego County, handling calls for Poway, Chula Vista, National City, Coronado and Imperial Beach. In 2015, ECDC processed almost 200,000 emergency incidents. NBC 7 contacted the SDFD and the mayor's office Tuesday morning for their responses on this story. As of Wednesday, both the mayor and the SDFD fire chief declined on-camera interviews. SDFD spokeswoman Monica Munoz sent the following information: "We are looking to improve the operations of ECDC. We are currently in the process of hiring 14 dispatchers. These individuals will be assigned their interview dates very soon. We are also looking into the possibility of changing to a different shift schedule versus the current 12-hour shift schedule. This would be to better utilize the resources we currently have." Munoz added that the public could help SDFD tremendously by not calling 911 for non-emergencies. "We recommend talking to your kids and family members about using 911 and also having a plan in case of an emergency," she said. Click here for information and guidance on when to call 911. The two victims killed in a crash with a big rig on a La Mesa freeway were a mother and daughter, both of whom leave behind spouses and children. According to Timothy Thompson, the son and brother of the victims, his mother, Nancy Bauerlein, 57, and sister, Jennifer Thompson-Campbell, 29, were killed Wednesday when a big rig plowed into their green Chevy Aveo on State Route 125 at Interstate 8. Thompson described Bauerlein as a loving wife and mother of three children and two step-children. She was a grandmother of nine, with one more grandchild on the way. A 6-year-old girl was seriously injured in the crash, two adults also suffered major injuries and three others were injured in a deadly crash in La Mesa. NBC 7s Ashley Matthews reports. Thompson told NBC 7 his sister was also wife and mother of two, an 8-year-old boy and 6-year-old girl. She was one week shy of her 30th birthday, which wouldve been on Aug. 10. "My sister was just starting to get back into her faith, going back to church, getting her kids involved, and really trying to show them what kind of morals they should be brought up with," he said. Thompson said both his mother and sister worked as civilian employees at the Fleet Readiness Center Southwest on Naval Air Station North Island. The mother-daughter duo, both from Ramona, had been carpooling to and from work for years. "My sister and her were best friends," he added. "My mom and my sister kid of two of the same. They had so much love to give." Thompson said both women "will be extremely missed" by their family and friends. "They were the core of the family," he explained. "Both of them always got us together, always bringing laughter to our lives. They were amazing people." He said his mother loved hosting get-togethers for her family at her home. "That was her life; she loved it. She loved being around us; she loved being around her grandkids, and she loved to take care of us," he added. Bauerlein and Thompson-Campbell were in a Chevy Aveo traveling on the northbound SR-125 transition ramp to eastbound I-8 at around 2:30 p.m. Wednesday when a big rig plowed into their car. Timothy Thompson According to the California Highway Patrol, the driver of the big rig lost control moments before slamming into the Chevy Aveo, as she got onto the southbound SR-125 transition from westbound Interstate 8. The big rig driver smashed through the metal guardrail on the freeway, crossing lanes onto northbound SR-125 before crashing into a concrete divider wall and slamming into the womens vehicle. The front end of the jackknifed big rig wound up pressed up against the back end of Bauerlein's green Chevy Aveo. The car was mangled, and its rear window blown out and its front windshield shattered. The big rig also crashed into a family inside a black Kia Sorrento: two adults and two little girls, ages 4 and 6. The 6-year-old suffered a broken neck and was having trouble breathing. She was rushed to Rady Childrens Hospital where she continued to recover Thursday. [GALLERY] 2 Killed, 6 Injured in La Mesa Big Rig Crash The 4-year-old suffered minor injuries. In the chaos of the aftermath of the crash, a firefighter with the Heartland Fire & Rescue Department comforted the little girl, carrying her away from the wreckage. News helicopter footage captured the tender moments between the firefighter and the girl. He carried her over to a fire engine and eventually put her down to give her a drink of water. The child was soon back in his arms, resting her head on the firefighters shoulder. Raw news helicopter video of a firefighter comforting a little girl during a deadly big rig crash on State Route 125 in La Mesa on Wednesday. The 33-year-old mother of the girls, of Santee, and another family member were inside the black SUV. The mother suffered minor injuries but was able to ride in the ambulance with her 6-year-old as that child was rushed to the hospital, paramedics told NBC 7. CHP spokesman Kevin Pearlstein said the 4-year-old girl was in a car seat at the time of the collision, but the 6-year-old was not restrained in a booster seat. The female driver of the big rig and a male passenger in the big rig suffered moderate injuries in the crash. In all, six people were hurt but survived: the two adults in the Kia, one of whom suffered a broken leg, the two girls in the Kia, and the two people in the big rig. Ana Tijoux fans can get it in at Tropicoso's "Vengo" listening party before her upcoming concert in Tijuana. The big rig had the Swift Transportation logo on its side. Swift Vice President of Marketing and Communications said their safety team is investigating the crash. "Our Safety team is investigating everything as thoroughly and as quickly as they can, and Im told we will have someone on the scene as soon as possible," Cozette Phifer said in an email to NBC 7. "Our entire company is heartbroken whenever there is any kind of accident involving one of our Drivers." Due to the ongoing investigation, CHP has not released the names of the woman and man in the big rig. According to an accident report filed by CHP officials, they are from Marrieta, Georgia; the driver is 34 years old, while the passenger is 41. CHP Officer Ben Demarest said Thursday that the driver of the big rig was not under the influence of drugs or alcohol at the time of the deadly accident. There was a dashboard camera inside the big rig and authorities are hoping to be able to extract that footage to get more details on what happened in the moments leading to the collision. Demarest said additional details are forthcoming, as investigators gather more information. The CHP report states that the investigation "is expected to [last] several weeks to months to provide clear/thorough investigation." The driver of the big rig told investigators that she felt the trailer wobbling right before the crash. An inspection is being performed on the big rig. Raw news chopper video of the scene of a deadly crash on SR-125 in La Mesa involving a big rig and several vehicles. One person was killed and six people were hurt. Thompson said he spoke with his mother on the day of the accident. "I told her to be safe on the highway, and she told me shed be fine," he said, pausing. "Thats how we ended it." He said Thompson-Campbells children will be cared for by their father, along with their huge family that has a lot of love to give. Friends have established an online fundraising page to help support the family of the victims killed in the crash. A San Diego mother reported missing by her family Sunday has turned up safe in Mexico, police confirmed Wednesday. Crystal Chappell was located in Tijuana on Wednesday, San Diego police reported. According to the SDPD, concerned citizens who saw her missing person flyer noticed Crystal sitting on a street in downtown Tijuana alone and called the Mexican authorities. She did not request any help from police, officials said. Callers helped direct Mexican authorities to the woman. Authorities will evaluate Chappel's medical condition and assist in transporting her to the U.S. border. The Oak Park woman disappeared after she went to pick up her children from church. Her husband, Jonathan, had last seen his wife on 11:39 a.m. Sunday. She left Octapharma plasma center, located at 3232 Duke Street, in San Diego's Midway area to go get her kids in Mission Valley. However, police say she never arrived. Jonathan got a call from one of the kids waiting at the church, saying that Crystal was not there. He tried to call her phone, but she did not answer. He went to pick up the kids and returned to their home, where he did a search for Crystal's phone. Jonathan said he was able to trace his wifes phone to southbound Interstate 805 near Plaza Boulevard. Her husband told police Crystal suffers from health conditions which require her to take medications. However, she did not take any medications with her. Federal authorities have detained some survivors of a deadly human smuggling operation in the same facility as the driver of the truck in which they were smuggled, concerning advocates who are worried that they could be further traumatized. A few of them have even briefly shared a holding cell with James Matthew Bradley Jr., who faces a human smuggling charge that carries the possibility of the death penalty, according to Michael McCrum, an attorney appointed to represent the passengers. Ten people died after being taken from the Texas border to San Antonio in a sweltering tractor-trailer. According to a federal complaint, Bradley denied knowing that the trailer he was driving was packed with people who had crossed into the United States illegally. Amy Fischer, policy director for the Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services, or RAICES, said Wednesday that she was concerned about the impact of survivors remaining in detention and especially seeing Bradley inside. "They are being held on equal footing as the person who is charged with putting them into the truck," she said. "We have a lot of concerns as to how they're being treated, and the impact that this treatment will have on them as they try and recover from this horrific experience." Investigators have said they consider Bradley to be one part of an organization that funded and planned the movement of dozens of people into the U.S., and that others could also face criminal charges. Some of the passengers could become key witnesses at future trials. Authorities have designated 18 of the 39 people known to have been inside the trailer as material witnesses and are keeping them in detention to guarantee their testimony. The U.S. Attorney's Office in San Antonio and the U.S. Marshals Service have refused to say where the witnesses or Bradley are being held. But at least some of the 18 are being held at the Central Texas Detention Facility, a privately-run immigration lockup in San Antonio, according to McCrum and Fischer. The Bexar County Sheriff's Office said last week that Bradley is at the same facility. RAICES is representing six of the survivors so far in potential immigration court proceedings. Fischer said that so far, authorities have not tried to begin deporting any of the survivors, but they also haven't said whether the survivors will be allowed to remain in the U.S. with visas for victims of trafficking or crime. Many of the people designated as witnesses will testify in depositions Aug. 23-25. Seven people remained hospitalized Wednesday, according to U.S. Attorney's spokesman Daryl Fields. Three passengers who were juveniles have been released into separate custody. One person who left a San Antonio-area hospital before authorities arrived was arrested Friday in Louisiana and will be transferred to Texas soon, he said. A family in Silver Spring, Maryland, was held hostage for nearly 12 hours by intruders who tied them up, assaulted one man and robbed them, they told police. One victim, who is a grandfather, told News4 that five men stormed into the family's house, stabbed his son-in-law, stole his son-in-law's car and took money. The family, including a 7-year-old boy, was held hostage in their own home for hours, the man said. He asked to be identified only as Orlando, for his safety. He fought back tears as he spoke about the ordeal. Montgomery County police and Orlando's family believe the family was targeted because Orlando's daughter works at a check-cashing business. The men took her to the business and tried, unsuccessfully, to rob it. According to initial information from police, a home invasion was reported about 8:10 a.m. Wednesday on the 8800 block of Manchester Road. A woman told police two men knocked on the door about 9 p.m. Tuesday. Orlando, his wife, his son-in-law and his grandson were home. The men stormed inside. A short time later, Orlando's daughter came home from her job at the check casher. The intruders tied up, gagged and blindfolding the adults. At about 8 a.m., one of the intruders beat and stabbed Orlando's son-in-law. The intruders took Orlando's daughter to her workplace and tried to rob the business, but an alarm went off. They fled and, finally, after almost 12 hours, the family's ordeal ended. Orlando's son-in-law was taken to a hospital with a stab wound to the neck. He was in stable condition. Anyone with information for police is asked to call 240-773-5070. A reward of as much as $10,000 is offered. Stay with News4 for more details on this developing story. What to Know About 80 percent of the vehicles were found to have cracks in their manifolds. A federal probe now covers more than 1.3 million Explorers from the 2011 through 2017 model years. Many of the complaints came from police departments, which use the Police Interceptor version of the Explorer in patrol fleets. Police in Montgomery County, Maryland, are inspecting their entire fleet of more than 100 Ford Explorers after carbon monoxide leaks were found in similar vehicles used by other police departments. About 80 percent of the police department's Explorers were found to have cracks in their manifolds, which the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has linked to exhaust seeping into the vehicles. So far, none of the SUVs have tested positive for carbon monoxide inside the cabin. The police department is taking the Explorers off the road for repairs on a rolling basis. Ford Explorers used by police officers in Austin, Texas, and Auburn, Massachusetts, have been pulled out of service after high carbon monoxide levels were detected inside the vehicles. In Auburn, the gas is believed to have made an officer pass out while driving and slam into another car, NBC News reported. In Austin, police pulled 60 of their Explorers off the roads after the vehicles' carbon monoxide alarms went off. The alarms were installed after officers reported getting sick while in the vehicles. Last week, the U.S. expanded an investigation into complaints of exhaust fumes inside Ford Explorers, adding two model years and nearly 400,000 vehicles. Montgomery County Police inspecting fleet of more than 100 Ford SUVs to check for CO leaks. About 80% found to have cracks in manifold pic.twitter.com/47cHrSKP3o Mark Segraves (@SegravesNBC4) August 3, 2017 NHTSA said July 27 that the probe now covers more than 1.3 million Explorers from the 2011 through 2017 model years. The agency made the move after finding more than 2,700 complaints of exhaust odors in the passenger compartment and fears of carbon monoxide in an investigation that it started a year ago. Among the complaints were three crashes and 41 injuries, mostly loss of consciousness, nausea and headaches. Many of the complaints came from police departments, which use the Police Interceptor version of the Explorer in patrol fleets. Police complaints included two crashes with injuries and another injury allegation due to carbon monoxide exposure. Last week, the agency said it had upgraded the probe from an investigation to an engineering analysis, a step closer to a recall. NHTSA also said it has learned that the Police Interceptor version of the Explorer is experiencing exhaust manifold cracks that are hard to detect and may explain exhaust odors. Investigators will evaluate the cause, frequency and safety consequences of the cracks, and whether Explorers used by civilians are experiencing cracked manifolds, the agency said. The agency also said it will examine the Explorer Police Interceptors used by the Austin, Texas, Police Department. The city could end up parking its entire fleet. A total of 791 people have complained to the government about the fumes, while Ford has received more than 2,000 complaints and warranty claims. In the documents, NHTSA said it tested multiple vehicles at its Ohio research center, and it has made field inspections of police vehicles involved in crashes. As of last week, the agency has found no evidence or data to support claims that injuries or crash allegations were caused by carbon monoxide poisoning. But the agency said it has early tests that suggest carbon monoxide levels may be higher in certain driving conditions "although the significance and effect of those levels remains under evaluation." Ford announced Thursday it will cover the costs of specific repairs in every Police Interceptor vehicle that may have this issue. In a statement, a Ford spokesman said drivers of regular, non-police Ford Explorers don't need to be concerned. Although there have been reports of exhaust odors in some regular Explorers, those cases are not related to reports of carbon monoxide made by some police departments, said spokesman Daniel Barbossa. However, any customer who thinks his or her vehicle has an issue should bring it to a Ford dealer or call a dedicated hotline at 888-260-5575, Barbossa said. What about other local police agencies? U.S. Capitol Police are inspecting the Ford Explorer patrol vehicles in their fleet out of an abundance of caution, a spokeswoman said Thursday. She said they have not experienced any problems with the vehicles to date. Neither Maryland nor Virginia State Police have had problems with the Ford SUVs in their fleets, both agencies said. Maryland State Police have more than 300 Ford Explorers in use in their fleet and have had no carbon monoxide leaks detected in any of them, according to a statement. The agency is continuing to monitor this situation, the statement said. Virginia State Police has "a very small contingent" of Ford SUVs in their fleet and have had no reported health issues related to this issue, a spokeswoman said. A hoverboard sparked a house fire early Wednesday morning in Calvert County, Maryland, fire officials said. Fire alarms alerted a family about an early-morning fire at their home in the 2000 block of Mount Pleasant Way in Prince Frederick, according to a release from the Prince Frederick Volunteer Fire Department. Crews arrived to find visible smoke and a small fire in the basement of the house. After putting out the fire, firefighters found "a serious issue" with a hoverboard inside the residence, officials said. They later determined the hoverboard caught fire while charging. No one was injured. In a press release, the fire department shared tips for hoverboard safety from the National Fire Protection Association, available online here (PDF). Officials have raised the number of Auburn, Massachusetts, police officers affected by high carbon monoxide levels to six and have pulled a total of 10 police cruisers and three other town-owned Ford vehicles. Engineers from Ford will be testing Auburn's fleet of cruisers on Thursday. Given the town's concerns, officers have now all been tested for carbon monoxide after an unidentified officer passed out in his cruiser Wednesday just before hitting another vehicle. All of the affected officers have since been released from the hospital. Ford is experiencing similar problems with Explorers in other parts of the country. The company is now working with Auburn, but it says it's premature to conclude that higher-than-normal levels of carbon monoxide are to blame. Auburn is looking to install carbon monoxide detectors in its cruisers; however, it will be at least two weeks before those detectors are available in the department's fleet. Police Chief Andrew Sluckis plans on providing an update on the investigation later Thursday. Theres backlash in New Hampshire to comments made by President Donald Trump. According to a transcript obtained by the Washington Post President Trump told Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto in a January phone call, I won New Hampshire because New Hampshire is a drug-infested den. The president raised the issue of New Hampshire as he pressed Mexicos president to pay for his border wall. NBC Boston spoke with people trying to recover from addiction and they say the presidents words are not only judgmental, but incredibly hurtful. I am appalled, said Suzanne Wallack. I am really appalled. After being addicted to opiates for two years, Wallack is trying desperately to rebuild her life, but now shes convinced even our president is rooting against her. Its heartbreaking, she said. Thats offensive. Hes rude, and he doesnt know what he is talking about. But Trumps former campaign advisor Al Baldasaro says the states 500 fatal overdoses last year alone are proof what the president said was 100 percent true. We do have a drug problem in New Hampshire and Donald Trump said it like it is, Baldasaro told NBC Boston Thursday. .@realDonaldTrump's comments about New Hampshire are disgusting. As he knows, NH and states across America have a substance misuse crisis 1/ Sen. Maggie Hassan (@SenatorHassan) August 3, 2017 New Hampshire Governor Chris Sununu took a stand against his fellow republican, saying in part, The president is wrong. Its disappointing his mischaracterization of this epidemic ignores the great things this state has to offer. But Baldasaro says Trump wasnt insulting the Granite State. He says the President was making it clear New Hampshire is battling a drug crisis and his promise to fix it likely won him some votes. He was one of the only candidates speaking about our drug issues and it went right to the heart of the people, Baldasaro explained. Meanwhile, the states all-democratic delegation took to social media to condemn Trumps statement. [[438325203, C]] Senator Maggie Hassan called it, disgusting. Senator Jeanne Shaheen said it was a gross misrepresentation of New Hampshire and the epidemic. Congresswoman Carol Shea-Porter said, No, Mr. President, youre wrong about New Hampshire. And Congresswoman Annie Kuster said, Im appalled. President Trump must have been referring to his win in the First in the Nation Primary, because he lost to Hillary Clinton in New Hampshire during the general election. Click here for the full transcripts released by the Washington Post. As Ebola spread across Sierra Leone in 2014, Amadu started sending paychecks home from New York to support seven nieces and nephews orphans who had lost their parents to Ebola, some suffering from the disease themselves. But one day in January, on the job as a package courier, he suffered a bike accident that shattered his leg in three places, he said. When a program called temporary protected status, or TPS, expired in May for immigrants from three countries in West Africa, he lost his job and authorization to work or stay in the country legally. Without a steady source of income, Amadu says he has no money to pay for rent, send to family back home, or afford $36,000 in medical bills. He does physical therapy himself and eats when his friends offer him food. He has no plans to return home. The health system there is very, very badIf I go back home, Im not sure if Id be able to get medical attention, he said, declining to provide his last name out of fear of being deported. Staying here, I dont open the mail some days because I cant pay. Every day I get scared. I cry. I dont know what will happen to me. In 2014, the Department of Homeland Security gave protection under TPS a temporary relief program for immigrants whose homelands are in crisis to people from three West African countries hit hard by the Ebola epidemic: Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone. After the epidemic was declared to be over, Obama administration officials announced in the fall they would be ending the program and warned several thousand immigrants their legal status would expire in May. Now, Amadu and other former TPS recipients say they face a difficult choice: Abandon the lives theyve built up in the U.S. for a country still reeling from health-related problems, or remain here without the ability to work legally, under an administration that is cracking down on those without legal status and aiming for new limits on legal immigration. When that status is taken away from you, its like your whole life is being forced in a different direction, said Wilmot Kunney, president of the D.C.-based United Liberian Association of the Americas. Theyve become anchored in the U.S. system and now they cant work. They cant do anything. Sharon Scheidhauer, a spokesperson for the U.S. Immigration and Customs Services, said in a statement to NBC that TPS as enacted in law is inherently temporary in nature. The program lasts for six to 18 months, depending on the initial announcement, but it can be extended by DHS as many times as officials see fit. Haiti, Honduras, and El Salvador have all had TPS for over half a decade. It is intended to provide immigration relief in situations that render it unsafe for foreign nationals in the United States to return to their home country or when their home country is temporarily unable to adequately handle their return, Scheidhauer said. In the case of the Ebola-stricken West African nations, former DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson set up TPS for 18 months, renewed it for another year and a half, then announced the termination of the program last September. NO TPS, NO WORK, NO MONEY Experts and community leaders say that many of the West African immigrants who were protected under TPS about 4,270, according to a DHS estimate in September have left or will be returning home in compliance with the decision. But others have established roots in the U.S. Evelyn, who overstayed a tourist visa after coming from Liberia in 2007, lives in Philadelphia with her 9-year-old son, 4-year-old daughter, and fiance, all of whom are all U.S. citizens. "What will happen to them if they take me away, and say, 'You have to go back home?'" she said, also declining to give her last name out of fear of deportation. Im afraid because I dont really trust nobody." Although TPS is not supposed to lead to a green card in the first place, people like Evelyn who were covered under the program and meet the normal qualifications, like marrying a U.S. citizen can apply to stay and work here permanently. But even then it isnt a sure bet. Lawyers told her that she may have to wait up to three years, pay as much as $6,000 in legal fees, and temporarily return to Liberia to get permanent status, she said. Since losing her job at a shipping company, Evelyn said she has less and less money to pay rent and support her kids, much less apply for a green card. "I dont know whats going to happen. I can't leave, but I have no way to stay," she said. "I have my kids at home who need my help, but without papers I cant even help myself." While Evelyns story is unusual in that she can apply for a green card, the number of years shes spent in the U.S. is not uncommon among former TPS recipients. Anyone from a country with TPS can apply for temporary legal status as long as they entered the U.S. by the time the program was put in place. As a result, many former TPS holders from West Africa once lived here as undocumented immigrants. For them, the program's termination means going back to a life as undocumented a life that brings new challenges. "Individuals who were living under the rug in the shadows came up, and now thats been taken away from them, said Jessica Greenberg, a staff attorney at the Immigration Community Law Center in New York. Greenberg added that one of the most tangible effects of TPS termination is that it takes away a work permit and social security number from former recipients, preventing them from continuing to work and pay taxes. Storm Team4 Cheif Meteorologist Doug Kammerer has the latest on the severe thunderstoms hitting the D.C. area Thats the case with Aissatou, a Guinean immigrant who said she overstayed a tourist visa in 2001 and began working illegally for $8 an hour at a clothing company in New York, with the goal of eventually going to school. TPS allowed her to secure a minimum-wage home health aide job in 2014, but she lost the position along with her work permit in May and has been unable to find under-the-table jobs since. I look for a job to just pay me cash and I cant find anything. Its very hard, its really very, very hard," she said. "If I go back, I'm going to die. Im scared, Im not sleeping, I dont know what to do. How am I going to survive? How am I going to pay my bills? Doris Meissner, a senior fellow at the Migration Policy Institute in D.C., said that DHS is required to announce that it is terminating TPS between two and six months before the expiration date so that people who are affected can plan accordingly. "These are all people that would have been going home anyway if they had been complying with their visas," said Meissner, who led the nations top immigration agency under former President Bill Clinton. "Its just that theyre going home at a later date than they would have anticipated." But for Aissatou, the cost of a plane ticket back to Guinea itself is already too high. With $500 in savings and a monthly rent almost double that, she cannot afford to go back to Guinea even if she wanted to return. "I dont have anything. I have no money to pay rent. Everything has been taken from my pocket," she said. "When I pay for August rent, it will be gone, it will be zero. In September, October, November, I dont know what I will do." THE RISKS OF RETURNING Still, immigrants who do go back are likely to face difficult health and economic conditions in countries that are still reeling from the effects of the Ebola epidemic. Amadu, the former package carrier, said that he needs to stay in New York not only to seek care for his broken leg, but also to protect the health of his orphaned young relatives in Sierra Leone. After contracting Ebola themselves, five of his nieces and nephews suffer from after-effects like irregular menstruation and severe eyesight problems. When he was working, Amadu would send them about $300 a month, as patients in Sierra Leone must pay for many health costs out of pocket. "I just want to support these kids because everyone knows everyone back there and they depend on me here," he said. Dr. Mit Philips, a health policy analyst at Doctors Without Borders, said that although known transmissions of Ebola are over, the epidemic ravaged health care systems that were already struggling to serve the local population. "These systems were not very good before Ebola, and during Ebola many of them only got worse," she said, adding that the average person in Sierra Leone receives medical care only once every three years. "Health services are now less effective and less easy to access." Guinea, for instance, suffered from a measles outbreak this year after fear spread that getting vaccinated would lead to contracting Ebola. Sunday Alamba/AP Photo, File As for Amadus broken leg, things arent looking much better, Philips said, as unusual health services like kinesiology are rarely given under the public health system. In addition, people returning to West Africa may have lost their immunity to malaria, which is common in the region. The crippling effects of Ebola and the resulting deaths of 11,300 people have thus weakened a local economy where most people live on only $2 a day. Ousmane, who declined to give his last name out of deportation concerns, said that conditions are so bad in his home country of Sierra Leone that he would not be able to find a job, much less one that would allow him to continue supporting 10 family members. With Ebola, people were left with nothing. They couldnt farm. They couldnt make money or trade, he said. And they still have nothing. Like Ousmane, many former TPS holders have become a primary source of income for their family back home, even after theyve lost their ability to work legally in the U.S. Before the TPS termination cost him his job as a security guard in New York, Ousmane would send as much as $200 a month home so that his children, siblings and parents could afford things like groceries, clothing and school tuition. Now, he works various under-the-table jobs in order to scrape up funds. The Liberian government operates a program to reintegrate refugees displaced by Ebola to other parts of West Africa, but former TPS holders do not fall under this classification, so it's unclear if they can apply. Guinea has no such program. "They [former TPS holders] absolutely have no hope," said Ben Bangoura, a spokesperson for Guinea's embassy in the U.S. "They have been disconnected from the homeland for a very long time, and there are no jobs for them there." BECOMING UNDOCUMENTED UNDER TRUMP When former TPS holders do choose to stay in the United States, they must face the risks of living in the shadows under an administration that has gone after undocumented immigrants. Since losing her job, Evelyn has stopped watching the news, she said. "The minute I see Trump or I listen to all the things he said on TV, I get more worried." Shes also stopped going outside as often as possible, in order to avoid the risk of being caught without legal status. "You just dont know who youre going to come across, whos going to come by and say, 'Oh, Can I see your documents? Can I see this?' and then you dont have nothing to show, she said. In May, The Associated Press reported that top DHS immigration officials requested evidence of criminal activity from Haitian immigrants who were allowed to stay in the U.S. under TPS. A spokesperson for Immigration and Customs Enforcement said in a statement to NBC that it does not track whether people detained by the agency have TPS status. Amadu said that a friend of his, a former TPS holder from Sierra Leone, was arrested in a Maryland suburb when ICE agents came to his door. You get scared every day that the same thing will happen to you, and theyll knock on your door and send you back home, he said. Because he has no money for transportation, Amadu said he rarely leaves his house anymore in fear that the police will catch him jumping the subway turnstiles, an act that can get you arrested in New York. "Youre just scared to go to the subway and ask someone for a [MetroCard] swipe. If they call the cops and they arrest you, youre done," he said. "If I see a cop or I see an ICE guy, I get nervous. Its very stressful." A Raleigh, North Carolina woman who was in the process of gaining legal immigration status has been detained and told her whole family may have to return to Honduras. As a response to these conditions, four members of Congress including Rep. Keith Ellison, D-Minn., have proposed a bill that would reinstate TPS status for any West African immigrant who lost it in May. But Meissner said that given the current political climate around immigration, its unlikely that Ellisons bill will make it through Congress, much less be signed into law by President Trump. Of the few immigration laws enacted this year, "theres been nothing passed that gives anyone permission to stay in the country longer," she said. And as other immigration programs expire, community leaders worry that the issue could only get worse. Meissner said that these consequences are a "carbon copy" of what might happen if the Trump administration fails to renew another program, Deferred Enforced Departure, that also gives Liberian immigrants the ability to stay and work here legally. Known as DED for short, the policy is set to expire in March and covers somewhere between 4,000 and 10,000 people none of them permanent residents who fled civil war in Liberia as early as 1991. "The big difference is that the DED people have stayed here longer, for decades," said Kunney, of the national Liberian-American association. "It would devastate a lot of people. It would cause the separation of families, the breakup of children with their parents." The biggest test for the TPS program overall, Meissner said, could come early next year, when TPS is scheduled to expire for over 200,000 immigrants from El Salvador and Honduras. According to federal regulations, DHS must announce a decision on whether or not to renew this policy sometime between now and November. "These are quite different circumstances than those under which TPS [for Ebola-stricken countries] were talking about was established," she said. "Its expected that there will be a lot of advocacy and debate around that decision because of the violence in El Salvador and the interests that the U.S. has there." The Trump administration has been unpredictable so far in its approach to TPS. Before becoming President Trump's new chief of staff, John Kelly extended legal status for 60,000 Haitians until January. But as homeland security secretary, he also told the Miami Herald after the announcement that immigrants protected by the program "need to start thinking about returning." As these TPS holders await news from the government, West African immigrants like Aissatou are contending with the realities of living as undocumented. "Im really scared. Im not sleeping. I dont know what to do," she said. "I have no one. I have nothing. I have just God and myself." The deadline for compliance with the European Union General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is May 25, 2018. Many organizations have spent countless hours already in their preparation for the deadline, while other organizations are just getting around to reading up on it. GDPR, like Y2K of a couple decades ago, has international implications that for some organizations HAS to be addressed as GDPR will impact the lifeblood of their operations, whereas for most organizations, some due diligence needs to be done to ensure they are within the compliance of the regulation. GDPR is todays Y2K I reference Y2K because I was one of the advisors to the United States White House on Y2K and spent the latter part of the decade before the millennium switchover traveling around the globe helping organizations prepare for 1/1/2000. Today with GDPR, as I did then with Y2K, believe there are fundamental things every organization needs to do to be prepared for the deadline, but to NOT get caught up in the hype and over speculation to the Nth degree detail thatll drive you crazy. What is GDPR? To help those catch up on what GDPR is, the regulation technically went into effect in 2016 and the deadline for compliance is May 25, 2018. The thing that scares people is that fines for non-compliance are up to 20-million Euros or 4% of the companys prior year worldwide revenue, which is an alarming number that gets everyones attention. While there are many tenets to GDPR, I net it down to three major things: Prevention of Tracking Individuals: This is the big thing in GDPR that goes after the big Internet companies (Google, Facebook, Amazon) that gather personal information on individuals, track the Websites they visit through cookies, and actively advertise to individuals through that tracked information. GDPR directly addresses the practice and process of gathering information on what individuals buy, sites they visit, and content theyve searched for by not only requiring consent but also have clear stated purpose WHAT that information will be used for. This is the big thing in GDPR that goes after the big Internet companies (Google, Facebook, Amazon) that gather personal information on individuals, track the Websites they visit through cookies, and actively advertise to individuals through that tracked information. GDPR directly addresses the practice and process of gathering information on what individuals buy, sites they visit, and content theyve searched for by not only requiring consent but also have clear stated purpose WHAT that information will be used for. Prevention of Retaining Personally Identifiable Information (PII): This tenet is not so new and has been a big piece of legislation around the world to protect individuals privacy. GDPR, like other global regulations on PII, sets limits on what personal information can be gathered (name, date of birth, address, etc), how that personal information needs to be stored and protected, and what needs to be done in the case of breach. This tenet is not so new and has been a big piece of legislation around the world to protect individuals privacy. GDPR, like other global regulations on PII, sets limits on what personal information can be gathered (name, date of birth, address, etc), how that personal information needs to be stored and protected, and what needs to be done in the case of breach. Cross-Border Transfer of Information: GDPR stipulates that EU residents (citizens and even individuals that are temporarily working and living in the EU) information should remain in the EU or if the information leaves the EU that the target destination for the storage of the information meets specific European Commission approvals Of the three major tenets I note for GDPR, the second and third are things that weve been addressing for some time now with the predecessor to GDPR (the DPD 95/46/ec) and the various Privacy/PII laws that are already in effect. So the big thing in GDPR is around the collection, storage, and tracking mechanisms commonly used by Internet organizations for web-based shoppers and social media participants. THOSE are the organizations that have been working very hard the past couple years already devising ways to inform, get consent, and handle tracking in a manner that fits within the requirements of GDPR. Tenets of GDPR There are other tenets of GDPR that organizations need to address and are commonly discussed in conversations about GDPR. They include: Data Protection Officer and Vendor Management: GDPR stipulates that organizations impacted by GDPR need to have a Data Protection Offices identified and have a process for vendor management as it relates to GDPR. This individual will have the role of overseeing the compliance with GDPR internally and with vendor/suppliers. GDPR stipulates that organizations impacted by GDPR need to have a Data Protection Offices identified and have a process for vendor management as it relates to GDPR. This individual will have the role of overseeing the compliance with GDPR internally and with vendor/suppliers. Codes of Conduct: GDPR requires organizations to have stated codes of conduct how data will be extracted, used, timeframe for use, how the organization will protect the privacy and rights of the individuals the data was extracted from, and provide users the right to request that their data be purged. GDPR requires organizations to have stated codes of conduct how data will be extracted, used, timeframe for use, how the organization will protect the privacy and rights of the individuals the data was extracted from, and provide users the right to request that their data be purged. Data Profiling / Data Consent: As noted previously, GDPR has tight rules as it relates to using data to profile individuals that can be directly associated back to a named individual. Use of identifiable information (like Cookies) requires explicit consent. As noted previously, GDPR has tight rules as it relates to using data to profile individuals that can be directly associated back to a named individual. Use of identifiable information (like Cookies) requires explicit consent. Cross-Border Transfers: Also as previously noted, GDPR has tight rules on EU data remaining in the EU or that the target destination of EU data complies by the same standards expected of information stored in the EU Also as previously noted, GDPR has tight rules on EU data remaining in the EU or that the target destination of EU data complies by the same standards expected of information stored in the EU Data Portability: GDPR has a data portability tenet that allows users to request their information to be allowed to be moved to another provider. Just like phone number portability in the United States that allows an individual to keep their phone number as they switch from one phone carrier to another, GDPR data portability gives users the right to request their emails, photos, documents, and the like to be transferrable. GDPR has a data portability tenet that allows users to request their information to be allowed to be moved to another provider. Just like phone number portability in the United States that allows an individual to keep their phone number as they switch from one phone carrier to another, GDPR data portability gives users the right to request their emails, photos, documents, and the like to be transferrable. Pseudonymizing of Personal Data: Fancy word, but effectively the randomizing of data so that it cannot be attributed back to any particular individual, effectively making the data anonymous. However, GDPR does stipulate that just because the data is randomized doesnt allow an organization to just collect and use the information as they please. GDPR has stipulations that require an organization to justify why they are collecting the information, what they plan to do with the data, and with clear definitions how the data will be eliminated when those stated purposes are no longer valid or applicable Fancy word, but effectively the randomizing of data so that it cannot be attributed back to any particular individual, effectively making the data anonymous. However, GDPR does stipulate that just because the data is randomized doesnt allow an organization to just collect and use the information as they please. GDPR has stipulations that require an organization to justify why they are collecting the information, what they plan to do with the data, and with clear definitions how the data will be eliminated when those stated purposes are no longer valid or applicable Data Breach Notifications: GDPR tightens the timeframe that cybersecurity breach notification is made, with requirements for notification in as little as 72-hours from an organization being made aware of the breach. There are some variations to this notification where individuals need to be notified if information that can be attributed back to them (personally) has been breached, however if information has been pseudonymizied, that only the European Commission needs to be informed. GDPR for enterprises (not web/social media providers) With much of the heft of GDPR focused on Web/Social Media Providers (Facebook, Google, Amazon, etc), the common question for Enterprises (corporations, small businesses, companies headquartered in/out of the EU) is what does a typical business need to think about relative to GDPR? First of all GDPR is not a bigger thing nor a smaller thing based on the size of the enterprise. The requirements of GDPR are the same no matter the size, where the organization is headquartered, or the type of industry the organization is in. GDPR also applies to every organization that does business with companies in the EU, has employees that are citizens of the EU, or even has employees that are foreign citizens but are residing and working in the EU. So the umbrella on who has to comply with GDPR is pretty broad. A common question is whether an email system hosted in the United States can fit within GDPR requirements. For organizations that have migrated to services hosted by Microsoft (like Office 365) or Google (G-Suite), both Microsoft and Google have officially stated their cloud services WILL be GDPR compliant before the May 18, 2018, deadline. The way these services will be compliant is because the European Commissions has already approved and adopted the EU-US Privacy Shield. While GDPR does not specifically refer to the EU-US Privacy Shield, it does explicitly acknowledge the current requirements for Binding Corporate Rules (BCR) for processors and controllers. BCR confirmation is acquired by having auditors validate and certify compliance for organizations in their movement of data globally. The EU-US Privacy Shield fits within this certified Binding Corporate Rules deemed acceptable for GDPR as it allows the European Commission to conduct periodic reviews to assure that an adequate level of data protection exists in the transferring of data cross-border. What remains for these cloud providers is a formal sign-off that they do indeed meet the provisions of GDPR which are anticipated to be approved without resistance. Note: For the topic of cross-border transfers, one might hear that the most common cross-border certification, Safe Harbor, has been invalidated for GDPR, that is true. On October 6, 2015, the European Court of Justice invalidated the US-EU Safe Harbor Framework. However, Binding Corporate Rules (BCRs) do remain valid. Additionally, organizations can rely on Standard Contractual Clauses (SCCs) that are approved by the European Commission. SCCs are agreements between the EU exporter (ie: EU subsidiary) and the data importer (ie: US parent company or service provider) on the handling of cross-border transfers. Large enterprises are seeking certification under SCC approvals so that they can move corporate data between corporate offices and datacenters around the world. The SCC validations are not easy to acquire as they require an audit of the data management, security, handling, and processing of information throughout an enterprise. However once an enterprise has an SCC, they can more freely move information throughout their organization. Handling GDPR for internal documents and content A common question by enterprises is whether email messages and business documents fall under the requirements of GDPR. The answer is generally no, a business document is a business document for the purpose of conducting the business of the organization. Of course if the document includes the names of employees, their home addresses, their mobile phone numbers, and other personally identifiable information, then the document falls under GDPR as well as other existing laws and regulations on information privacy. However a business contract, marketing materials, client documents, architectural drawings, and the like exchanged during the normal course of business are not personal documents embedded with personal data for non-legitimate business uses. The KEY to handling internal documents and content to ensure the documents do not contain content subject to GDPR or other PII restricted regulations is to use content classification. Technologies built in to Microsofts Office 365 have the ability to scan content (emails, documents, memos) and auto-classify the content as having content that appears to include PII (birth dates, social security numbers, etc). By auto-classifying the content, policy rules can be applied to the content that allows the creator of the content to choose who can access the information. By giving control to the originator of the content, that satisfies the requirements of GDPR by giving the content owner the free and direct control of the content, and to whom the content can be shared with. Can employers force employees to give consent of their PII? The short answer is NO, GDPR is very clear that consent is not valid unless it is freely given, specific, informed, and unambiguous. That means an employee cannot be reprimanded nor discriminated against for choosing to not consent to blanket policies. This is why content classification becomes so important, it enables an organization to require users to provide consent, classify, or reclassify content as they deem appropriate on a case by case basis. Collecting and handling employee and customer information under GDPR GDPR is clear that an organization needs to provide users, visitors, and employees detailed information on what data is collected and how it will be used. Obviously this first makes the assumption that personal information about an individual is being collected in the first place. While some simple common business applications like the Web Browser that an employee uses likely by default has cookies enabled and is storing and tracking the Web access of the user of the Web Browser, a simple enterprise fix it to set all Web Browsers to Private or Incognito mode. This will prevent cookie tracking and storage of data protected by GDPR. A user can be allowed to turn off the Private mode if they choose, that will be their decision and their personal consent to having content potentially tracked. In the normal (historical) course of doing business, organizations do collect personal information on employees necessary for the transaction of a normal employer/employee relationship. Things like home addresses (to mail legal notices, end of year tax statements), and bank information (to process payroll and employee benefits) are commonly collected by employers. This information is necessary for an employee to get paid and receive benefits, and as long as the organization only uses the personal information of an employee for the stated purposes of payroll and direct benefits, then the organization is well within the bounds of complying with GDPR. At that point, then the organization needs to adequately store and transfer that information in a secured manner to prevent the breech of PII, which organizations can do so with content classification and document encryption technologies readily available in the marketplace. Passengers travelling through Glasgow Airport will be able to celebrate and experience the countrys finest food, drink, clothing and culture as this years Best of Scotland campaign gets underway. Now in its fifth year, the campaign will see parts of the terminal receive a very Scottish makeover to promote the best tastes, sights and sounds the country has to offer. The campaign will showcase a wide variety of quality products produced on these shores from fine malt whiskies and contemporary Scottish-based gins such as Eden Mill, Makar and Edinburgh, to luxury Harris Tweed clothing and state-of-the-art RHA headphones. Sweet-toothed passengers will also be to sample some of Scotlands best confectionary, including Mrs Tilly tablet and Campbells shortbread. Scottish institution Tunnocks will also make its presence known in the terminal throughout the campaign and passengers will be able to sample the companys world-famous caramel wafers and teacakes. In addition to hosting the Uddingston-based bakers distinctive branding on the numerous clock faces around the airport, a vintage Tunnocks delivery van will also be parked up in the main terminals Scotland and Sea food court area. One of the key highlights of the celebratory Best of Scotland month will be a live performance in the main terminal building from the Royal Scottish National Orchestra on Thursday 31 August. This years campaign comes weeks after Glasgow became the first Scottish Airport to be awarded VisitScotlands Taste Our Best accreditation for food and drink excellence and promoting Scottish produce. Glasgow Airports Best of Scotland campaign will run until Thursday 31 August. Dubai International Arabian Raceday brings prizes and more with free entry ARABIAS annual takeover of Newbury Racecourse takes place on Sunday with racings biggest free day out bring the best of Arabian racing to the country. Europes most important day for Purebred Arabians takes place under the Dubai International Arabian Races banner with record prize money topping 190,000, free admission and a host of activities to entertain the family. Staged under the patronage of His Highness Sheikh Hamdan bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Deputy Ruler of Dubai and UAE Minister of Finance, Sundays raceday is the flagship event among a series of international events promoted by DIAR. The prize money for the eight races totals 193,000, up 13,000 on last year with the Group 2 PA Emirates Equestrian Federation International Stakes now worth 25,000, and the featured Group 1 PA Shadwell Dubai International Stakes offering 58,000. Not only racing connection benefit, however, as the hospitality extends to every racegoer with a car and trip to Dubai among prizes on offer, as well as special awards for the best dressed lady, childrens hat and the special awards for local schools that have taken part in the Arabian Rainbow competiton. Colourful horses from schools Fourteen local schools are taking part in the competition, which has awarded around 90,000 since its introduction in 2009. The competition challenges pupils and teachers to paint near life-sized sculptures of Arabian horses with their own design reflecting Anglo-Arabic culture or art for a first prize of 2,500 to spend on equipment within the school to enhance education. Runners-up prizes of 1,500 and 1,000 will be awarded to the second and third placed schools respectively and Racing to School will be creating a bespoke introductory session for pupils who have taken part in the Arabian Rainbow art project providing them with a unique insight into horseracing. A brand-new Citroen C1 Touch worth 9,000 is the star prize on offer in a series of free-to-enter prize draws and competitions running throughout the day and the free dcraw is available to all racegoers over the age of 17. A VIP trip for two to Dubai will also be drawn after the days feature race, the prize including VIP upgrade with complimentary airport transfers, Business Class flights with Emirates Airline, and accommodation at one of Rodas luxury hotels in Dubai. Glamour brings rewards The winner of the best dressed lady competition will be jetting off to enjoy a five-star luxury break in Dubai with jewellery prizes for the runners-up, and Apple iPads are on offer for the winners of the Childrens Hat Competition, one each for boys and girls with runners-up prizes, while a new iPad Pro is on moffer to the winner of the Selfie competition with entries to be d tweeted to @DIA_Races on the day. As usual, the giveaway bags are available to all-comers, and prize draws offering designer watches provided by Jebel Ali Racecourse will take place throughout the afternoon. Racing UK will provide live coverage of the card, which gets under way at 2.05pm with gates opening at noon for the prospect of a crowd to rival last years 7,000-plus. Newbury flagship for Arabian racing His Excellency Mirza Al Sayegh, Director of the Office of His Highness Sheikh Hamdan bin Rashid Al Maktoum and Chairman of the DIAR Committee said, The Dubai International Arabian Races is an important part of Sheikh Hamdans vision to enable more people to enjoy the sport of Arabian horse racing and with the support of Shadwell to help more countries to develop the sport internationally. The international preparation races which have been held in France, Italy, Sweden, The Netherlands and Britain have been a great success and I am sure have contributed to the number of European runners we will see on Sunday. Newbury remains the flagship event in the series and we are looking forward to another exceptional day featuring some of the best Arabian racing in the world and, hopefully, many new faces among the racegoers. The day will be presented by international racing personality Derek Thompson who will be accompanied in the parade ring by specialist Arabian broadcaster and commentator Gary Capewell, providing a unique insight into some of the worlds highest-rated Arabians from the moment gates open at 12 noon and beyond the final race at 5.55pm. Plan to build 71 homes is approved PLANS to build 71 homes opposite the former Greenacre Leisure Centre in Greenham have been approved. Formal objections were lodged by Newbury Town Council, Greenham Parish Council, the Berks, Bucks and Oxon Wildlife Trust (BBOWT) and more than 20 members of the public. But these were overruled at a meeting of West Berkshire Councils western area planning committee last Wednesday. The meeting heard that the application from David Wilson Homes includes 40-per-cent affordable homes and parking facilities for 189 cars on the site, which has been included in West Berkshire Councils Housing Site Allocation Development Plan Document (HSA DPD). Planning officer Michael Butler conceded that when the site, on land on the north side of Pyle Hill, was recommended for development in the HSA DPD, back in 2015, it had been for up to 65 houses. However, he said: An additional six dwellings means two more affordable homes, which are in demand. Some objectors are concerned about additional traffic. Weve carefully considered all traffic monitoring data and, although there will be an impact, we dont consider it will be severe. Mr Butler added: The area was part of a designated gap between Newbury and Greenham, but the Government says that designation has gone. The councils tree officer recommended refusal, expressing concerns about the potential impact on the adjacent West Wood. One objector, Lucy Crofts, addressed the meeting and urged councillors: You must protect what is left of this green space. But senior planning officer Derek Carnegie warned that, if the committee refused the application, he believed the council would lose any appeal and could face a hefty costs bill. The committee voted four to three in favour of granting the application. The proposals follow West Berkshire Councils approval of plans submitted by Rivar for 157 homes to the east of Newbury retail park, between Equine Way and Greenham Road, as the local authority looks to meet its housing targets. By PTI NEW DELHI: The government has disinvested 6.83 per cent stake in Hindustan Copper Ltd (HCL), which would fetch around Rs 400 crore to the exchequer. Through the two-day Offer for Sale (OFS) which ended today, it had planned to sell 4 per cent in HCL, with an option to retain an over subscription of up to 4 per cent. "The Government of India has disinvested 6.83 per cent of paid up equity in Hindustan Copper Limited through Offer for Sale (OFS). The government is likely to get approximately Rs 400 crore from this disinvestment," a finance ministry statement said. The floor price for the share sale was fixed at Rs 64.75 per share and retail investors were offered discount of 5 per cent on the cut off price for the non-retail category. Institutional investors bid for 5.05 crore shares, which is 1.71 times the 2.96 crore shares on offer for them. "As a result, the government revised the total offer size to 6.83 per cent of the paid-up capital," the statement said. The retail portion of HCL OFS also got good response from the investors and the revised offer size of 1.26 crore shares also got fully subscribed. "Overall, HCL OFS got good response from the investors," the ministry added. The government's stake in HCL after this OFS will come down to 76.05 per cent. This is the 4th CPSE OFS in the current financial year, 2017-18. Shares of HCL closed at Rs 62.45, down 4 per cent on BSE. The government has already raised over Rs 8,428 crore through disinvestment in five companies, including selling stake in L&T through SUUTI, and one share buy back. The government has budgeted to raise Rs 72,500 crore through stake sale in PSUs. This includes Rs 46,500 crore from minority stake sale, Rs 15,000 crore from strategic disinvestment and Rs 11,000 crore from listing of insurance companies. NEW DELHI: The government has disinvested 6.83 per cent stake in Hindustan Copper Ltd (HCL), which would fetch around Rs 400 crore to the exchequer. Through the two-day Offer for Sale (OFS) which ended today, it had planned to sell 4 per cent in HCL, with an option to retain an over subscription of up to 4 per cent. "The Government of India has disinvested 6.83 per cent of paid up equity in Hindustan Copper Limited through Offer for Sale (OFS). The government is likely to get approximately Rs 400 crore from this disinvestment," a finance ministry statement said. The floor price for the share sale was fixed at Rs 64.75 per share and retail investors were offered discount of 5 per cent on the cut off price for the non-retail category. Institutional investors bid for 5.05 crore shares, which is 1.71 times the 2.96 crore shares on offer for them. "As a result, the government revised the total offer size to 6.83 per cent of the paid-up capital," the statement said. The retail portion of HCL OFS also got good response from the investors and the revised offer size of 1.26 crore shares also got fully subscribed. "Overall, HCL OFS got good response from the investors," the ministry added. The government's stake in HCL after this OFS will come down to 76.05 per cent. This is the 4th CPSE OFS in the current financial year, 2017-18. Shares of HCL closed at Rs 62.45, down 4 per cent on BSE. The government has already raised over Rs 8,428 crore through disinvestment in five companies, including selling stake in L&T through SUUTI, and one share buy back. The government has budgeted to raise Rs 72,500 crore through stake sale in PSUs. This includes Rs 46,500 crore from minority stake sale, Rs 15,000 crore from strategic disinvestment and Rs 11,000 crore from listing of insurance companies. By Express News Service BENGALURU: City police and CCB arrested a software engineer, who was employed by Ola for developing a phone app that allegedly provided Aadhaar data verification by illegally accessing the UIDAI server. A case was registered against Abhinav Srivastava at High Grounds police station a week ago, following the complaint by the deputy director of UIDAI, Ashok Lenin. The app, which was available on Google Play Store, identified as Aadhaar E-KYC Verification, allegedly accessed information housed by the NIC server. The case was transferred to cyber crime police station on July 26 for further investigation. Six special teams were formed by additional commissioner of police (crime) to track the accused and they arrested him on Tuesday at Koramangala. Abhinav, a native of Kanpur, was a post graduate in Industrial Chemistry from IIT-Kharagpur and was working for Qarth Technologies Private Limited. According to a release issued by the police, he developed the Aadhaar E-KYC Verification app in January this year and had earned Rs 40,000 from advertisements until now. Police recovered a CPU, four laptops, a tablet, four mobile phones, six pen drives and other accessories worth Rs 2.25 lakh from Srivastava. He was produced before a Court and was kept in police custody for further questioning. Earlier, a case was filed against Abhinav under IT Act, Aadhaar Act and various sections of IPC. While sections under IT and Aadhaar Acts are related to hacking, IPC sections were related to forgery resulting in ambiguity over whether the case was related to hacking or forgery of a password to secure access. BENGALURU: City police and CCB arrested a software engineer, who was employed by Ola for developing a phone app that allegedly provided Aadhaar data verification by illegally accessing the UIDAI server. A case was registered against Abhinav Srivastava at High Grounds police station a week ago, following the complaint by the deputy director of UIDAI, Ashok Lenin. The app, which was available on Google Play Store, identified as Aadhaar E-KYC Verification, allegedly accessed information housed by the NIC server. The case was transferred to cyber crime police station on July 26 for further investigation. Six special teams were formed by additional commissioner of police (crime) to track the accused and they arrested him on Tuesday at Koramangala. Abhinav, a native of Kanpur, was a post graduate in Industrial Chemistry from IIT-Kharagpur and was working for Qarth Technologies Private Limited. According to a release issued by the police, he developed the Aadhaar E-KYC Verification app in January this year and had earned Rs 40,000 from advertisements until now. Police recovered a CPU, four laptops, a tablet, four mobile phones, six pen drives and other accessories worth Rs 2.25 lakh from Srivastava. He was produced before a Court and was kept in police custody for further questioning. Earlier, a case was filed against Abhinav under IT Act, Aadhaar Act and various sections of IPC. While sections under IT and Aadhaar Acts are related to hacking, IPC sections were related to forgery resulting in ambiguity over whether the case was related to hacking or forgery of a password to secure access. By PTI NEW DELHI: Four men, including two brothers, were arrested today for allegedly firing at policemen near Shivaji Stadium in the high-security Lutyens' Delhi, police said. The incident was reported last night when the four men, in their 20s, got into an argument with a cigarette stall owner and the police personnel from a nearby picket rushed to intervene. The men were enraged after the stall owner, who had closed his shop, refused to sell them cigarettes. One of the accused was carrying a gun. He forced the stall owner to reopen the shop at gunpoint, police said. An eyewitness rushed to a nearby police picket and asked the personnel to intervene. On seeing the police personnel, one of the accused, Aman Bhatia (25), who was carrying the pistol, fired at them. In retaliation, the police team fired four rounds in the air, said a senior police officer. Subsequently, he was overpowered and arrested. Bhatia's three accomplices, his twin brother Punit Bhatia (25), Sahil Verma (25) and Kamal (23) were also arrested, said B K Singh, Deputy Commissioner of Police (New Delhi). Two men, who were accompanying them, fled in their car. The accused were also thrashed by the public. Aman Bhatia had been recently released from jail. He had been lodged in jail for the last three years in a murder case. Police have seized a country-made pistol with two live cartridges from him. Last month, an incident was reported in the area where unidentified men had fired at a car in which four people, including two criminals, were travelling. It has been found that these accused were involved in the incident, police said. NEW DELHI: Four men, including two brothers, were arrested today for allegedly firing at policemen near Shivaji Stadium in the high-security Lutyens' Delhi, police said. The incident was reported last night when the four men, in their 20s, got into an argument with a cigarette stall owner and the police personnel from a nearby picket rushed to intervene. The men were enraged after the stall owner, who had closed his shop, refused to sell them cigarettes. One of the accused was carrying a gun. He forced the stall owner to reopen the shop at gunpoint, police said. An eyewitness rushed to a nearby police picket and asked the personnel to intervene. On seeing the police personnel, one of the accused, Aman Bhatia (25), who was carrying the pistol, fired at them. In retaliation, the police team fired four rounds in the air, said a senior police officer. Subsequently, he was overpowered and arrested. Bhatia's three accomplices, his twin brother Punit Bhatia (25), Sahil Verma (25) and Kamal (23) were also arrested, said B K Singh, Deputy Commissioner of Police (New Delhi). Two men, who were accompanying them, fled in their car. The accused were also thrashed by the public. Aman Bhatia had been recently released from jail. He had been lodged in jail for the last three years in a murder case. Police have seized a country-made pistol with two live cartridges from him. Last month, an incident was reported in the area where unidentified men had fired at a car in which four people, including two criminals, were travelling. It has been found that these accused were involved in the incident, police said. By Express News Service HYDERABAD: Even though Vikram Goud, who is an ardent follower of astrology, had instructed the gangsters to shoot at him thrice as he considered 3 as his lucky number, a third bullet on his body might have cost him his life. Following the film-like meticulous planning, police are likely to examine Vikram Gouds psychological conditions with the assistance of doctors who are treating him. The former ministers son wanted the hired gangsters to shoot at his shoulders. However, the second round of fire had pierced through his stomach and hit his spinal cord and the third round did not fire as the weapon was jammed. Had the third bullet hit him, also from a close range, the circumstances would have left him in serious trouble. The hired gangsters, police said, were not experts in using a weapon in firing. In two bullet injuries, Vikram Goud received injury to his left shoulder. Another bullet injury pierced his body and struck his spinal cord. A team of doctors, who examined him, told him that it would be difficult to remove the bullet from spinal cord through a surgery, said officials. Vikram Goud, who wants to contest in 2019 assembly elections, hired a gang to shoot him with a weapon in order to gain sympathy from public to fructify his political ambitions.Minutes before the gang members opened fire at him in Banjara Hills, Vikram Goud instructed the gang members, who are not professional in operating weapon, to fire at three rounds as Gouds lucky number is 3, said Hyderabad police commissioner M Mahendar Reddy. Watchmans statements gave the leads The watchman at Gouds residence said that at around 1.30 am on July 28, Vikram Goud returned home and instructed him to not lock the doors as his friends were to arrive soon. Minutes after the shooting took place, the watchman cleared the blood stains on the floor. After gang members committed the offence, they fled away from the place on a certain route, as instructed Vikram Goud, to reach Mumbai highway to escape from police vigil. While passing through the stretch, the gang members threw the weapon that was used for committing offence into a pond in Hakeempet. Based on the confessional statement of the accused, the police recovered the weapon from the pond. Vikram Goud hired a gang for Rs 50 lakh to fire at him HYDERABAD: It was former minister M Mukesh Gouds son Vikram Gouds political aspirations that did him in. Eyeing the 2019 Assembly elections and public sympathy, Vikram staged his assassination drama, police said. Four days after Vikram had suffered gunshot injuries, the police managed to solve the mystery and concluded that the incident had been orchestrated by the victim himself. Hyderabad police commissioner M Mahendar Reddy said here on Wednesday that Vikram had hired a gang for `50 lakh to fire on him. Police commissioner M Mahendar Reddy showing the gun used to open fire on Vikram Goud at a press conference in Hyderabad on Wednesday| Sathya Keerthi He invested a lot of money in mining in Odisha and some other ventures. In a bid to recover his investments and also to get off the hook of financiers, he staged this crime, police said. The Youth Congress leader was shot at at his Banjara Hills residence on July 28. He claimed that unknown assailants barged into his home at Film Nagar and opened fire on him. But police did not buy his concoction as there were several contradictions which raised further suspicions. Police maintain that his wife Shipali had no role in the plan hatched by Vikram, who is now undergoing treatment with a bullet still stuck in his spinal cord. He is the prime accused in the case and is yet to be arrested. Vikram also wished to gain the sympathy of his family members. According to the police, he thought that police would go after his enemies and he would get back his investments in a mining project in Odisha from his partner Sambasiva Rao if everything went according to his plan. As he was in huge debts, he thought that his creditors would stop troubling him in the wake of such an attack on him. He also thought that it would be then easy to get a weapon licence from police. Govind Reddy met Vikram and requested him for roles in films as the latter produced a couple of films. A few months ago, Vikram asked Govind to help him hire a gang to execute his plan. Accordingly, Govind formed a gang and went to Indore to purchase an illegal weapon, police said. The first attempt did not work out as the gang members failed to execute the plan in public. In the second attempt on July 28, they opened fire on Vikram leaving him with bullet injuries at his residence. After the incident, Vikrams wife Shipali lodged a complaint with the Banjara Hills police stating that unknown miscreants opened fire at her husband.Police have arrested five persons so far. They are S Nanda Kumar (35), Shaik Ahmed (30) and Kokanti Babujan (35) of Anantapur, Raees Khan (32) of Indore, A Govind Reddy (29) of YSR Kadapa district. Two others, Venkata Ramana and Ghouse, are absconding, police said. Chicken-seller turns shooter Rayees Khan, 32, a resident of Kabutarkhana, west Indore, who shot two rounds of fire at Vikram Goud, was a chicken-seller. HYDERABAD: Even though Vikram Goud, who is an ardent follower of astrology, had instructed the gangsters to shoot at him thrice as he considered 3 as his lucky number, a third bullet on his body might have cost him his life. Following the film-like meticulous planning, police are likely to examine Vikram Gouds psychological conditions with the assistance of doctors who are treating him. The former ministers son wanted the hired gangsters to shoot at his shoulders. However, the second round of fire had pierced through his stomach and hit his spinal cord and the third round did not fire as the weapon was jammed. Had the third bullet hit him, also from a close range, the circumstances would have left him in serious trouble. The hired gangsters, police said, were not experts in using a weapon in firing. In two bullet injuries, Vikram Goud received injury to his left shoulder. Another bullet injury pierced his body and struck his spinal cord. A team of doctors, who examined him, told him that it would be difficult to remove the bullet from spinal cord through a surgery, said officials. Vikram Goud, who wants to contest in 2019 assembly elections, hired a gang to shoot him with a weapon in order to gain sympathy from public to fructify his political ambitions.Minutes before the gang members opened fire at him in Banjara Hills, Vikram Goud instructed the gang members, who are not professional in operating weapon, to fire at three rounds as Gouds lucky number is 3, said Hyderabad police commissioner M Mahendar Reddy. Watchmans statements gave the leads The watchman at Gouds residence said that at around 1.30 am on July 28, Vikram Goud returned home and instructed him to not lock the doors as his friends were to arrive soon. Minutes after the shooting took place, the watchman cleared the blood stains on the floor. After gang members committed the offence, they fled away from the place on a certain route, as instructed Vikram Goud, to reach Mumbai highway to escape from police vigil. While passing through the stretch, the gang members threw the weapon that was used for committing offence into a pond in Hakeempet. Based on the confessional statement of the accused, the police recovered the weapon from the pond. Vikram Goud hired a gang for Rs 50 lakh to fire at him HYDERABAD: It was former minister M Mukesh Gouds son Vikram Gouds political aspirations that did him in. Eyeing the 2019 Assembly elections and public sympathy, Vikram staged his assassination drama, police said. Four days after Vikram had suffered gunshot injuries, the police managed to solve the mystery and concluded that the incident had been orchestrated by the victim himself. Hyderabad police commissioner M Mahendar Reddy said here on Wednesday that Vikram had hired a gang for `50 lakh to fire on him. Police commissioner M Mahendar Reddy showing the gun used to open fire on Vikram Goud at a press conference in Hyderabad on Wednesday| Sathya Keerthi He invested a lot of money in mining in Odisha and some other ventures. In a bid to recover his investments and also to get off the hook of financiers, he staged this crime, police said. The Youth Congress leader was shot at at his Banjara Hills residence on July 28. He claimed that unknown assailants barged into his home at Film Nagar and opened fire on him. But police did not buy his concoction as there were several contradictions which raised further suspicions. Police maintain that his wife Shipali had no role in the plan hatched by Vikram, who is now undergoing treatment with a bullet still stuck in his spinal cord. He is the prime accused in the case and is yet to be arrested. Vikram also wished to gain the sympathy of his family members. According to the police, he thought that police would go after his enemies and he would get back his investments in a mining project in Odisha from his partner Sambasiva Rao if everything went according to his plan. As he was in huge debts, he thought that his creditors would stop troubling him in the wake of such an attack on him. He also thought that it would be then easy to get a weapon licence from police. Govind Reddy met Vikram and requested him for roles in films as the latter produced a couple of films. A few months ago, Vikram asked Govind to help him hire a gang to execute his plan. Accordingly, Govind formed a gang and went to Indore to purchase an illegal weapon, police said. The first attempt did not work out as the gang members failed to execute the plan in public. In the second attempt on July 28, they opened fire on Vikram leaving him with bullet injuries at his residence. After the incident, Vikrams wife Shipali lodged a complaint with the Banjara Hills police stating that unknown miscreants opened fire at her husband.Police have arrested five persons so far. They are S Nanda Kumar (35), Shaik Ahmed (30) and Kokanti Babujan (35) of Anantapur, Raees Khan (32) of Indore, A Govind Reddy (29) of YSR Kadapa district. Two others, Venkata Ramana and Ghouse, are absconding, police said. Chicken-seller turns shooter Rayees Khan, 32, a resident of Kabutarkhana, west Indore, who shot two rounds of fire at Vikram Goud, was a chicken-seller. By Express News Service HYDERABAD: An assistant commissioner of police (ACP) rank officer of Hyderabad reportedly abused and manhandled media persons, including a woman journalist, outside Telangana chief minister K Chandrasekhar Rao's camp office at Begumpet in Hyderabad on Thursday. M Ventakeswarlu, ACP Punjagutta, allegedly pushed away a woman journalist, who along with others were reaching him for a byte while covering a protest held by outsourced staff of health department demanding regularisation of jobs. The ACP's actions were recorded by media persons at the venue. The woman journalist along with representatives of journalists' union approached Punjagutta police and lodged a complaint against the ACP. In her complaint, the woman journalist from a regional news channel said the ACP used filthy language while pushing her away and warned them to leave the protest venue. Soon after the complaint was lodged, Hyderabad police commissioner M Mahendar Reddy directed deputy commissioner of police (West zone) A Venkateswar Rao to look into the matter. The representatives of journalist union also met with director general of police (DGP) Anurag Sharma and demanded action against ACP M Venkateswarlu. HYDERABAD: An assistant commissioner of police (ACP) rank officer of Hyderabad reportedly abused and manhandled media persons, including a woman journalist, outside Telangana chief minister K Chandrasekhar Rao's camp office at Begumpet in Hyderabad on Thursday. M Ventakeswarlu, ACP Punjagutta, allegedly pushed away a woman journalist, who along with others were reaching him for a byte while covering a protest held by outsourced staff of health department demanding regularisation of jobs. The ACP's actions were recorded by media persons at the venue. The woman journalist along with representatives of journalists' union approached Punjagutta police and lodged a complaint against the ACP. In her complaint, the woman journalist from a regional news channel said the ACP used filthy language while pushing her away and warned them to leave the protest venue. Soon after the complaint was lodged, Hyderabad police commissioner M Mahendar Reddy directed deputy commissioner of police (West zone) A Venkateswar Rao to look into the matter. The representatives of journalist union also met with director general of police (DGP) Anurag Sharma and demanded action against ACP M Venkateswarlu. DFS Group, the worlds leading luxury travel retailer, has unveiled its updated duty-free stores at Singapore Cruise Centre (SCC). For the first time, SCC consolidated a number of its existing duty-free concessions across six categories including wines, spirits and tobacco, beauty and confectionary into a single contract. The stores, which are located at SCCs Tanah Merah and HarbourFront terminals span seven outlets and are accessible to travelers arriving and departing from Singapore by ferry or cruise ship. It has been an honor working with SCC for the past two decades and we are delighted to be continuing our partnership for the next five years, said Wilcy Wong, DFS Group Managing Director, Singapore and Indonesia. At DFS we focus on offering a premium retail experience where travelers are given a one-stop, seamless shopping experience. We are excited to grow our relationship with SCC and look forward to providing a broader retail experience to travelers at the ferry terminals. DFS, Singapore Cruise Centre is home to over 150 brands and offers an assortment of retail products from alcohol, tobacco, cosmetics, fashion to travel accessories. The extensive range also includes many exclusive items in wines and spirits, available for purchase only at DFS. The retail experience and offering also grants travelers an opportunity to purchase all essential travel items before embarking on their outward journey. A gateway to the neighboring Indonesian Riau Islands, DFS, Singapore Cruise Centre is modern and fresh, incorporating nautical elements that reflect the nearby island destinations. Both Batam and Bintan are popular destinations from Singapore. The main retail space at both the arrival and departure areas has been expanded to 6,000 sq ft. to accommodate over 6.3 million ferry passengers and 560,000 cruise passengers annually. The DFS HarbourFront departure store is also home to an exclusive Whiskey Bar and Cocktail Bar, where guests can sample from a range of whiskies or indulge themselves in specialty cocktails made from fresh ingredients by DFS in-house bartenders. Created in collaboration with The Whiskey House at DFS Terminal 2 Duplex at Singapore Changi Airport, the Whiskey Bar is an extension of DFS interactive approach to spirits, educating and engaging customers through guided tastings so they can find their perfect match when making a purchase. By Express News Service HYDERABAD: A day after Hyderabad police announced the arrest of five persons in connection with the attempt to murder of former state minister M Mukesh Goud's son Vikram Goud, a case in which Vikram himself is the prime accused, police took custody of junior Goud who was undergoing treatment after being shot at on July 28. Banjara Hills police arrested the youth Congress leader from his residence and shifted him to Osmania General Hospital on Thursday. He was discharged from the hospital in Jubilee Hills on Thursday morning. Vikram is being produced before the Nampally criminal court. The 35-year-old hired persons from parts of Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka by offering to pay Rs 50 lakh and also paid an advance of Rs 5 lakh Eyeing the 2019 Assembly elections, Vikram wanted to grab people's attention and gain public sympathy. By executing the plan, he also wished to gain the sympathy of his family members. According to the police commissioner M Mahendar Reddy, Vikram thought that police would go after his enemies and similarly, he would get back his investments in Odisha mining project from his partner Sambashiva Rao. As he was in debts, he thought his creditors would stop troubling him in the wake of such an attack on him. He also thought it would be then easy to get a weapon license from police. Police arrested five persons S Nanda Kumar (35), Shaik Ahmed (30) and Kokanti Babujan (35) of Ananthapur, Raees Khan (32) of Indore, A Govind Reddy (29) of YSR district. Two persons, Venkata Rama and Ghouse and still absconding. He had come in contact with accused Govind Reddy when the latter met him requesting for roles in Tollywood. Vikram was a producing partner of Ishq and Gundey Jari Gallanthayyinde movies. A few months ago, Vikram Goud asked Govind Reddy to help him in hiring a gang to implement his plan. Based on the instructions, Govind Reddy formed a gang and went to Indore in Madhya Pradesh by flight and purchased an illegal weapon. The first attempt did not work out as gang members failed to implement the plan in public. In the second attempt, they opened fire at Vikram Goud leaving him with bullet injuries at his residence on July 28. After the incident, Vikram's wife Shipali lodged a complaint with Banjara Hills police stating that unknown miscreants opened fire at her husband. HYDERABAD: A day after Hyderabad police announced the arrest of five persons in connection with the attempt to murder of former state minister M Mukesh Goud's son Vikram Goud, a case in which Vikram himself is the prime accused, police took custody of junior Goud who was undergoing treatment after being shot at on July 28. Banjara Hills police arrested the youth Congress leader from his residence and shifted him to Osmania General Hospital on Thursday. He was discharged from the hospital in Jubilee Hills on Thursday morning. Vikram is being produced before the Nampally criminal court. The 35-year-old hired persons from parts of Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka by offering to pay Rs 50 lakh and also paid an advance of Rs 5 lakh Eyeing the 2019 Assembly elections, Vikram wanted to grab people's attention and gain public sympathy. By executing the plan, he also wished to gain the sympathy of his family members. According to the police commissioner M Mahendar Reddy, Vikram thought that police would go after his enemies and similarly, he would get back his investments in Odisha mining project from his partner Sambashiva Rao. As he was in debts, he thought his creditors would stop troubling him in the wake of such an attack on him. He also thought it would be then easy to get a weapon license from police. Police arrested five persons S Nanda Kumar (35), Shaik Ahmed (30) and Kokanti Babujan (35) of Ananthapur, Raees Khan (32) of Indore, A Govind Reddy (29) of YSR district. Two persons, Venkata Rama and Ghouse and still absconding. He had come in contact with accused Govind Reddy when the latter met him requesting for roles in Tollywood. Vikram was a producing partner of Ishq and Gundey Jari Gallanthayyinde movies. A few months ago, Vikram Goud asked Govind Reddy to help him in hiring a gang to implement his plan. Based on the instructions, Govind Reddy formed a gang and went to Indore in Madhya Pradesh by flight and purchased an illegal weapon. The first attempt did not work out as gang members failed to implement the plan in public. In the second attempt, they opened fire at Vikram Goud leaving him with bullet injuries at his residence on July 28. After the incident, Vikram's wife Shipali lodged a complaint with Banjara Hills police stating that unknown miscreants opened fire at her husband. By ANI MUMBAI: A Mumbai Court sentenced seven years rigorous imprisonment to 15 Somali pirates after they were convicted for attempt to murder and kidnapping. They were arrested in January 2011 with two rocket launchers and AK47 guns in the Indian region of the Arabian sea. They were initially charged with murder but as a witness from Thailand didn't come to court for his statement, they were convicted for attempt to murder based on the statements of Coast guard officials. The accused pirates have already served more than 6 years in jail, so they are expected to be released in less than a year. Court has also imposed fine on them. Meanwhile, the defence lawyer informed the court that there is a MoU (Memorandum of Understanding) between the Government of India and Somalian government that these convicts can be deported back to Somalia and they can complete their rest of the sentence in Somalia. Around 200 pirates were arrested during January to March period in the year 2011, all are being tried in different cases. Sessions court is expected to pronounce its verdict in another similar case with another set of pirates tomorrow. MUMBAI: A Mumbai Court sentenced seven years rigorous imprisonment to 15 Somali pirates after they were convicted for attempt to murder and kidnapping. They were arrested in January 2011 with two rocket launchers and AK47 guns in the Indian region of the Arabian sea. They were initially charged with murder but as a witness from Thailand didn't come to court for his statement, they were convicted for attempt to murder based on the statements of Coast guard officials. The accused pirates have already served more than 6 years in jail, so they are expected to be released in less than a year. Court has also imposed fine on them. Meanwhile, the defence lawyer informed the court that there is a MoU (Memorandum of Understanding) between the Government of India and Somalian government that these convicts can be deported back to Somalia and they can complete their rest of the sentence in Somalia. Around 200 pirates were arrested during January to March period in the year 2011, all are being tried in different cases. Sessions court is expected to pronounce its verdict in another similar case with another set of pirates tomorrow. By Express News Service MUMBAI: Seven teenagers from the western Mumbai suburb of Andheri have been arrested and police are looking for eight more after a 16-year-old boy lodged a complaint that he was being blackmailed with a video of sodomy. According to the teenagers statement, he was sodomised a year ago by a boy from the D N Nagar neighbourhood who made a video clip of the act and shared it with friends who then began to exploit him in a similar way. The teenager said he was threatened and blackmailed into silence and subjected to further exploitation. After the last time, they had unnatural sex with the victim on July 26, the boy who was left in severe pain. He confided about it to a friend who took him to an NGO. The case was thus brought to the notice of the police. Seven of the 15 boys involved in the crime were arrested and sent to a remand home in Dongri. The victim was taken to Cooper Hospital for a medical examination. A FIR under relevant sections of the Indian Penal Code and Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act has been filed against 15 boys, most of whom are from the same locality and are aged 15-17. MUMBAI: Seven teenagers from the western Mumbai suburb of Andheri have been arrested and police are looking for eight more after a 16-year-old boy lodged a complaint that he was being blackmailed with a video of sodomy. According to the teenagers statement, he was sodomised a year ago by a boy from the D N Nagar neighbourhood who made a video clip of the act and shared it with friends who then began to exploit him in a similar way. The teenager said he was threatened and blackmailed into silence and subjected to further exploitation. After the last time, they had unnatural sex with the victim on July 26, the boy who was left in severe pain. He confided about it to a friend who took him to an NGO. The case was thus brought to the notice of the police. Seven of the 15 boys involved in the crime were arrested and sent to a remand home in Dongri. The victim was taken to Cooper Hospital for a medical examination. A FIR under relevant sections of the Indian Penal Code and Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act has been filed against 15 boys, most of whom are from the same locality and are aged 15-17. By IANS MUMBAI: Megastar Amitabh Bachchan has expressed concern over the impact of The Blue Whale internet game which reportedly claimed the life of a teenager here. He said: "Life is given to live, not give it up before time." "Reading alarming news on a dangerous internet game being played by the young! Life is given to live, not give it up before time," Amitabh posted on Twitter. He was referring to 14-year old schoolboy Manpreet Singh Sahani allegedly walking off the fifth floor of his building in Shere-e-Punjab Colony in Andheri East on July 30 evening. Prior to his death leap, the Class nine student texted a friend of his intentions: "I am going to the building to jump." Before anybody could rush to help him, he had already jumped off. His friends claim that he was playing the 50-day 'dare challenge' of The Blue Whale and when he spoke of not attending school anymore and about the suicide, most dismissed it lightly. MUMBAI: Megastar Amitabh Bachchan has expressed concern over the impact of The Blue Whale internet game which reportedly claimed the life of a teenager here. He said: "Life is given to live, not give it up before time." "Reading alarming news on a dangerous internet game being played by the young! Life is given to live, not give it up before time," Amitabh posted on Twitter. He was referring to 14-year old schoolboy Manpreet Singh Sahani allegedly walking off the fifth floor of his building in Shere-e-Punjab Colony in Andheri East on July 30 evening. Prior to his death leap, the Class nine student texted a friend of his intentions: "I am going to the building to jump." Before anybody could rush to help him, he had already jumped off. His friends claim that he was playing the 50-day 'dare challenge' of The Blue Whale and when he spoke of not attending school anymore and about the suicide, most dismissed it lightly. By PTI CHENNAI: The Film Employees Federation of South India today called off their two-day stir on a wage revision issue and announced resumption of work from tomorrow. FEFSI president R K Selvamani said it has decided to resume work in deference to the advice of senior actors Rajinikanth, Kamal Haasan, assurances of film producers, directors and several bodies of the film industry. Notably, the state government has assured that it would facilitate tripartite talks to resolve the issue with the Tamil Film Producers' Council (TFPC), he said. Speaking to reporters here, he said "our appeal is that all employees belonging to the (total) 23 affiliated bodies of FEFSI should be utilised without discrimination," adding "please do not divide us." He said they apprised the Labour Commmissioner on the stand-off with the film producers body which had announced that "pay will be cut," and "will not work" with employees under FEFSI. "We requested the labour authorities to find a solution and the tripartite talks proposed by them for today has been now deferred to tomorrow in view of the unavailability of TFPC office-bearers," he said. FEFSI chief said initially the producers body was unwilling for talks. Since TFPC had relented and now agreed to thrash out the matter through parleys, he said it was only appropriate for FEFSI to reciprocate. Hence "we are announcing resumption of work on a positive note," he added. Selvamani, also a noted yesteryear film director, said "we have no ego," citing Rajinikanth favouring a resolution sans ego. He said FEFSI had requested the government that TFPC chief Vishal should participate in parleys to resolve the issue. Selvamani had called on Rajinikanth yesterday whose upcoming 'Kaala' movie was also affected because of the stir. Days ago, the shoot of a Tamil film was disrupted when FEFSI members reportedly sought a hike in their wages, prompting TFPC to declare that the producers were free to hire employees of their choice to carry on their work. It had also said wages should be paid according to scales fixed by the producers' council. Irked by this, FEFSI had announced that only those registered with it should be employed by the producers. It announced that it would go on strike from August one over wage revision demanding a re-negotiation of 'general conditions,' which covers aspects including wages. CHENNAI: The Film Employees Federation of South India today called off their two-day stir on a wage revision issue and announced resumption of work from tomorrow. FEFSI president R K Selvamani said it has decided to resume work in deference to the advice of senior actors Rajinikanth, Kamal Haasan, assurances of film producers, directors and several bodies of the film industry. Notably, the state government has assured that it would facilitate tripartite talks to resolve the issue with the Tamil Film Producers' Council (TFPC), he said. Speaking to reporters here, he said "our appeal is that all employees belonging to the (total) 23 affiliated bodies of FEFSI should be utilised without discrimination," adding "please do not divide us." He said they apprised the Labour Commmissioner on the stand-off with the film producers body which had announced that "pay will be cut," and "will not work" with employees under FEFSI. "We requested the labour authorities to find a solution and the tripartite talks proposed by them for today has been now deferred to tomorrow in view of the unavailability of TFPC office-bearers," he said. FEFSI chief said initially the producers body was unwilling for talks. Since TFPC had relented and now agreed to thrash out the matter through parleys, he said it was only appropriate for FEFSI to reciprocate. Hence "we are announcing resumption of work on a positive note," he added. Selvamani, also a noted yesteryear film director, said "we have no ego," citing Rajinikanth favouring a resolution sans ego. He said FEFSI had requested the government that TFPC chief Vishal should participate in parleys to resolve the issue. Selvamani had called on Rajinikanth yesterday whose upcoming 'Kaala' movie was also affected because of the stir. Days ago, the shoot of a Tamil film was disrupted when FEFSI members reportedly sought a hike in their wages, prompting TFPC to declare that the producers were free to hire employees of their choice to carry on their work. It had also said wages should be paid according to scales fixed by the producers' council. Irked by this, FEFSI had announced that only those registered with it should be employed by the producers. It announced that it would go on strike from August one over wage revision demanding a re-negotiation of 'general conditions,' which covers aspects including wages. By IANS NEW DELHI: Rain and humidity make for a perfect breeding ground for bacterial growth, leading to infection. Urinary Tract Infection (UTI), in particular, increases in incidence during this time and women, more than men, are prone to it. What's more trendy, figure-hugging jeans and other tight clothing further increase chances of UTI. Doctors say that one in five women suffer from UTI at least once in their lifetime. The risk prevails right from birth - paediatricians often advise parents to look out for their baby girls from contracting UTI. "In women, the urethra is shorter than in men and is closer to the anal opening. So they are more prone to infections," urologist Jaswant Patil said. Improper cleaning techniques and exposure in an unhygienic swimming pool can increase chances of infection, he added. Gynaecologist Priti Vyas said chances of UTI increase with advancing age. "More women than men suffer from UTI and the numbers do not neutralise with age. In fact, as women reach the peri-menopausal and menopausal stage, their estrogen levels in the vagina dips, thereby making the urethra more prone to catching urinary tract infection," Vyas told this correspondent. Similarly, lower estrogen levels in the very young make baby girls more susceptible to such infections. Clothes can also play a big role in making for a perfect breeding ground for infections. Gynaecologist Ranjana Das said that tight clothing that traps moisture increases chances of UTI. "We see a lot of young college-going girls complaining of UTI. Wearing tight-fitting jeans that go unwashed for days is a big culprit because it does not allow ventilation and makes a conducive environment for bacterial growth. Using unclean washrooms is another reason," the doctor said. Avoiding public washrooms may not be possible, especially while travelling or at work. Even so, a lot of people, especially women, hold their urine for a long time when faced with the prospect of using public loos. This, Vyas said, also leads to UTI. Hence many people are now opting to carry toilet seat sanitisers. Vikas Bagaria and his wife Srijana, co-founders of one such product, PeeSafe, said that they realised its need after Srijana was hospitalised with a high-grade fever and acute UTI while on a road-trip. "We had to cut-short the road-trip in Rajkot and fly back to Delhi where Srijana was hospitalised. It was then she thought of a product that would keep women safe while using public washrooms," Vikas said. They discussed the idea, and he finally came up with the product that is now exported to different countries like Australia, Nigeria, Kenya and Singapore. Coming back to clothing, Patil also said that tight clothes "compromise blood circulation which leads to lowering of local immunity and makes one prone to infections". "Women with menstrual problems are more prone and should be cautious," he added. Nylon undergarments should also be avoided. To tackle the problem or keep risk at bay, doctors advise consumption of plenty of fluids -- although one may not feel as thirsty during the monsoon -- and alkaline food like fruits, vegetables and legumes. In hot and humid weather, the urine becomes more acidic and concentrated, and therefore chances of inflammatory UTI and then secondary infection spikes, which fluids can help avoid. Vyas also has a word of advice against certain products. "Female hygiene sprays, scented douches and scented bath products can sometimes cause severe inflammation and irritation; so they should be avoided," she said. NEW DELHI: Rain and humidity make for a perfect breeding ground for bacterial growth, leading to infection. Urinary Tract Infection (UTI), in particular, increases in incidence during this time and women, more than men, are prone to it. What's more trendy, figure-hugging jeans and other tight clothing further increase chances of UTI. Doctors say that one in five women suffer from UTI at least once in their lifetime. The risk prevails right from birth - paediatricians often advise parents to look out for their baby girls from contracting UTI. "In women, the urethra is shorter than in men and is closer to the anal opening. So they are more prone to infections," urologist Jaswant Patil said. Improper cleaning techniques and exposure in an unhygienic swimming pool can increase chances of infection, he added. Gynaecologist Priti Vyas said chances of UTI increase with advancing age. "More women than men suffer from UTI and the numbers do not neutralise with age. In fact, as women reach the peri-menopausal and menopausal stage, their estrogen levels in the vagina dips, thereby making the urethra more prone to catching urinary tract infection," Vyas told this correspondent. Similarly, lower estrogen levels in the very young make baby girls more susceptible to such infections. Clothes can also play a big role in making for a perfect breeding ground for infections. Gynaecologist Ranjana Das said that tight clothing that traps moisture increases chances of UTI. "We see a lot of young college-going girls complaining of UTI. Wearing tight-fitting jeans that go unwashed for days is a big culprit because it does not allow ventilation and makes a conducive environment for bacterial growth. Using unclean washrooms is another reason," the doctor said. Avoiding public washrooms may not be possible, especially while travelling or at work. Even so, a lot of people, especially women, hold their urine for a long time when faced with the prospect of using public loos. This, Vyas said, also leads to UTI. Hence many people are now opting to carry toilet seat sanitisers. Vikas Bagaria and his wife Srijana, co-founders of one such product, PeeSafe, said that they realised its need after Srijana was hospitalised with a high-grade fever and acute UTI while on a road-trip. "We had to cut-short the road-trip in Rajkot and fly back to Delhi where Srijana was hospitalised. It was then she thought of a product that would keep women safe while using public washrooms," Vikas said. They discussed the idea, and he finally came up with the product that is now exported to different countries like Australia, Nigeria, Kenya and Singapore. Coming back to clothing, Patil also said that tight clothes "compromise blood circulation which leads to lowering of local immunity and makes one prone to infections". "Women with menstrual problems are more prone and should be cautious," he added. Nylon undergarments should also be avoided. To tackle the problem or keep risk at bay, doctors advise consumption of plenty of fluids -- although one may not feel as thirsty during the monsoon -- and alkaline food like fruits, vegetables and legumes. In hot and humid weather, the urine becomes more acidic and concentrated, and therefore chances of inflammatory UTI and then secondary infection spikes, which fluids can help avoid. Vyas also has a word of advice against certain products. "Female hygiene sprays, scented douches and scented bath products can sometimes cause severe inflammation and irritation; so they should be avoided," she said. By Express News Service NEW DELHI: THE Opposition Congress on Wednesday disrupted both Houses of Parliament protesting the I-T raids against Karnataka minister DK Shivakumar, claiming an atmosphere of fear was being created ahead of the Rajya Sabha polls in Gujarat. Leader of the House in Rajya Sabha and finance minister Arun Jaitley told the Upper House that no search operation was conducted at the resort in Karnataka where Gujarat Congress MLAs are camping to avoid attempt of poaching by rival groups in view of the ensuing Rajya Sabha elections. The Karnataka minister had gone and parked himself at the resort, was picked up from there and taken to his residence for questioning. The resort is not an immunity area.....and the minister is being interrogated, Jaitley said amid slogan shouting by the Congress members. Responding to the allegation that the government is abusing power through agencies like the CBI, ED and IT Department, Jaitley said, Whether it (the raid) is of use or abuse will depend on the recoveries (during the searches). Jaitley also asserted that searches by the I-T Department were being conducted at 39 other places and not only at the resort in Bengaluru. The Leader of the House also said that the searches should not be linked to the Rajya Sabha election in Gujarat. As soon as the Rajya Sabha began its business for the day, senior Congress leader Anand Sharma raised the issue claiming an attempt was being made to derail and hijack the elections to the Council of States and the raids were targeted. Sharma also questioned the timing and place of the raids. Leader of Opposition Ghulam Nabi Azad demanded that the elections to the Rajya Sabha be held without fear, in a free and fair manner. But this election (in Gujarat) all these three things are not happening, Azad said, Congress MLAs were being abducted and this is against democracy. Questioning the timing of the searches, Azad why it was taking place today and not a month later or before. Meanwhile, not satisfied with the response in the lower House, the Congress members staged a walkout from the House lamenting that the government failed to give an assurance of not engineering defection from Opposition parties by using money and muscle power for the Rajya Sabha polls. NEW DELHI: THE Opposition Congress on Wednesday disrupted both Houses of Parliament protesting the I-T raids against Karnataka minister DK Shivakumar, claiming an atmosphere of fear was being created ahead of the Rajya Sabha polls in Gujarat. Leader of the House in Rajya Sabha and finance minister Arun Jaitley told the Upper House that no search operation was conducted at the resort in Karnataka where Gujarat Congress MLAs are camping to avoid attempt of poaching by rival groups in view of the ensuing Rajya Sabha elections. The Karnataka minister had gone and parked himself at the resort, was picked up from there and taken to his residence for questioning. The resort is not an immunity area.....and the minister is being interrogated, Jaitley said amid slogan shouting by the Congress members. Responding to the allegation that the government is abusing power through agencies like the CBI, ED and IT Department, Jaitley said, Whether it (the raid) is of use or abuse will depend on the recoveries (during the searches). Jaitley also asserted that searches by the I-T Department were being conducted at 39 other places and not only at the resort in Bengaluru. The Leader of the House also said that the searches should not be linked to the Rajya Sabha election in Gujarat. As soon as the Rajya Sabha began its business for the day, senior Congress leader Anand Sharma raised the issue claiming an attempt was being made to derail and hijack the elections to the Council of States and the raids were targeted. Sharma also questioned the timing and place of the raids. Leader of Opposition Ghulam Nabi Azad demanded that the elections to the Rajya Sabha be held without fear, in a free and fair manner. But this election (in Gujarat) all these three things are not happening, Azad said, Congress MLAs were being abducted and this is against democracy. Questioning the timing of the searches, Azad why it was taking place today and not a month later or before. Meanwhile, not satisfied with the response in the lower House, the Congress members staged a walkout from the House lamenting that the government failed to give an assurance of not engineering defection from Opposition parties by using money and muscle power for the Rajya Sabha polls. By PTI JIND: A group of Dalit protesters were today detained by the police when they tried to enter Rohtak to meet BJP chief Amit Shah. The protesters were detained when they reached Kilazfargarh village on the Rohtak border. They did not have requisite permission, the police said. "Reservation is our right," the leader of the protesters, Devi Das, said before being taken into custody. "We will not rest until we get what we deserve. We are staging a peaceful protest. Despite that, the police have detained us," he said. The group is staging a sit-in in Jind for the last 171 days. Sub Divisional Magistrate, Julana, Shiv Kumar said the protesters didn't have permission. "If they had permission, we would have allowed them to enter Rohtak," Kumar said. JIND: A group of Dalit protesters were today detained by the police when they tried to enter Rohtak to meet BJP chief Amit Shah. The protesters were detained when they reached Kilazfargarh village on the Rohtak border. They did not have requisite permission, the police said. "Reservation is our right," the leader of the protesters, Devi Das, said before being taken into custody. "We will not rest until we get what we deserve. We are staging a peaceful protest. Despite that, the police have detained us," he said. The group is staging a sit-in in Jind for the last 171 days. Sub Divisional Magistrate, Julana, Shiv Kumar said the protesters didn't have permission. "If they had permission, we would have allowed them to enter Rohtak," Kumar said. Prasanta Mazumdar By Express News Service Former Nagaland chief minister Shurhozelie Liezietsu won the Northern Angami-1 byelection on Thursday by a margin of 3,468 votes but the victory hardly has any significance. In a straight contest, Liezietsu polled 8,026 votes against the 4,558 taken by his Independent rival Kekhrie Yhome, an academician. This is Liezietsus ninth victory in Nagaland Assembly elections. He has tasted defeat only once, in 1989. Liezietsu contested the byelection so he could continue as CM but the purpose was lost ahead of the fight. Last month, MLAs of his Naga Peoples Front (NPF) rose in rebellion against him and he was dismissed by governor P B Acharya. Rebel NPF leader TR Zeliang was installed in his stead. The byelection was necessitated after Liezietsus son, Khriehu, resigned in May to facilitate his fathers election to the Assembly. Shurhozelie Liezietsu had become CM back in February after Zeliang was forced to resign in the wake of widespread protests by tribal organisations against the governments decision to conduct civic elections with 33 per cent reservation for women. The public perception in Nagaland is that Shurhozelie Liezietsu has won a meaningless election, but there was a residual prestige left in the contest, as for the handful of NPF MLAs left with him it was a prestigious contest because the Zeliang group did all that it could to ensure his defeat. The ageing Liezietsu is unlikely to contest next years elections. He is expected to pass on the baton to his son Khriehu. Former Nagaland chief minister Shurhozelie Liezietsu won the Northern Angami-1 byelection on Thursday by a margin of 3,468 votes but the victory hardly has any significance. In a straight contest, Liezietsu polled 8,026 votes against the 4,558 taken by his Independent rival Kekhrie Yhome, an academician. This is Liezietsus ninth victory in Nagaland Assembly elections. He has tasted defeat only once, in 1989. Liezietsu contested the byelection so he could continue as CM but the purpose was lost ahead of the fight. Last month, MLAs of his Naga Peoples Front (NPF) rose in rebellion against him and he was dismissed by governor P B Acharya. Rebel NPF leader TR Zeliang was installed in his stead. The byelection was necessitated after Liezietsus son, Khriehu, resigned in May to facilitate his fathers election to the Assembly. Shurhozelie Liezietsu had become CM back in February after Zeliang was forced to resign in the wake of widespread protests by tribal organisations against the governments decision to conduct civic elections with 33 per cent reservation for women. The public perception in Nagaland is that Shurhozelie Liezietsu has won a meaningless election, but there was a residual prestige left in the contest, as for the handful of NPF MLAs left with him it was a prestigious contest because the Zeliang group did all that it could to ensure his defeat. The ageing Liezietsu is unlikely to contest next years elections. He is expected to pass on the baton to his son Khriehu. By PTI DARJEELING: The Gorkha Janamukti Morcha took out rallies in various parts of the Darjeeling hills today demanding restoration of Internet services and immediate withdrawal of police force. No incident of violence has been reported since last night but the police and security personnel are keeping a vigil as the indefinite strike called by the GJM, in support of its demand for a separate Gorkhaland, entered its 50th day today. 12 activists of GJM's youth wing, the Yuva Morcha, are observing a fast-unto-death over the demand for Gorkhaland, since July 21. "We want our separate state of Gorkhaland. And in our new state, there is no place for police personnel from Bengal. This indefinite shutdown will continue and we are ready to sacrifice our lives for Gorkhaland," GJM youth wing president Prakash Gurung said. Apart from the GJM, several other hill parties and intellectuals have plans to march on the streets of Darjeeling with black flags and placards. Barring pharmacies, all shops, schools and colleges remained closed. Internet services are suspended since June 18. DARJEELING: The Gorkha Janamukti Morcha took out rallies in various parts of the Darjeeling hills today demanding restoration of Internet services and immediate withdrawal of police force. No incident of violence has been reported since last night but the police and security personnel are keeping a vigil as the indefinite strike called by the GJM, in support of its demand for a separate Gorkhaland, entered its 50th day today. 12 activists of GJM's youth wing, the Yuva Morcha, are observing a fast-unto-death over the demand for Gorkhaland, since July 21. "We want our separate state of Gorkhaland. And in our new state, there is no place for police personnel from Bengal. This indefinite shutdown will continue and we are ready to sacrifice our lives for Gorkhaland," GJM youth wing president Prakash Gurung said. Apart from the GJM, several other hill parties and intellectuals have plans to march on the streets of Darjeeling with black flags and placards. Barring pharmacies, all shops, schools and colleges remained closed. Internet services are suspended since June 18. A new study reveals Brits holiday trends by analyzing hundreds of thousands of travel insurance sales between April and June 2017. The study conducted by MoneySuperMarket revealed Holiday HeatMap of the UK, the first of its kind to shine a light on the nations holiday preferences by city. The data reveals: Londoners are twice as likely to visit Thailand compared with the national average Dubai is most popular among Brummies, with the Midlands citys residents choosing UAE 38% more often than the rest of the nation Geordies arent fans of France, being one third less likely to cross the channelbut they love the sunny shores of Mexico, over indexing on holidays to the popular destination by 15% Despite the falling pound against the euro, seven out of the 13 cities analysed chose a European destination for their summer holiday City Holiday Hotspot Holiday Hell *percentage higher than national average *percentage lower than the national average London 100% Thailand 32% Balearic islands Birmingham 38% UAE 15% Italy Leeds 32% Portugal 25% Turkey Glasgow 30% USA 38% Cyprus Sheffield 24% Germany 32% America Edinburgh 28% USA 27% Cyprus Nottingham 22% Greek islands 27% USA Liverpool 25% UAE 37% France Manchester 46% Germany 24% France Bristol 44% France 18% Turkey Cardiff 27% Greece 29% USA Newcastle 15% Mexico 39% France Brighton 43% France 24% UAE Zena Carter, Head of Travel Insurance at MoneySupermarket, said: Our first ever Holiday Heatmap reveals were a nation of globetrotters, with the majority of city dwellers looking to swap pavements for parasols and pina coladas. Wherever you choose to travel this summer, make sure youre covered for any eventuality by taking out travel insurance as soon as you book your holiday. Itll give you instant peace of mind should something go wrong, freeing up more time to start dreaming about sun, sea and sand! Head to MoneySuperMarket to find out which travel insurance policy is best suited for your dream destination, no matter where youre going on your hols. By PTI ROHTAK: BJP chief Amit Shah today said Pakistan is facing global isolation on the issue of terror, while India enjoys the support of the whole world in this regard. Shah said the support for India is a result of steps taken by the Narendra Modi government. The BJP chief, who is on a three-day visit to Haryana, was addressing a press conference here on the second day of his visit. He said the Modi government has taken several stringent steps to curb terror activities. "We succeeded in isolating Pakistan in the world in three years," he asserted. On steps to restore peace to the Kashmir Valley, Shah said action has been taken in that direction. "Never before was anyone arrested who indulged in Hawala transactions. If any government took tough action against terror funds, it was done by only Narendra Modi government," he said. On the farm debt waiver issue, Shah said the state governments concerned could take a decision at their own level as clarified by Finance Minister Arun Jaitley. The BJP chief, who was flanked by Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar, said the Modi government has been in power for three years, "but even the opposition has not been able to level any corruption charges." "It is a decisive government," he asserted. ROHTAK: BJP chief Amit Shah today said Pakistan is facing global isolation on the issue of terror, while India enjoys the support of the whole world in this regard. Shah said the support for India is a result of steps taken by the Narendra Modi government. The BJP chief, who is on a three-day visit to Haryana, was addressing a press conference here on the second day of his visit. He said the Modi government has taken several stringent steps to curb terror activities. "We succeeded in isolating Pakistan in the world in three years," he asserted. On steps to restore peace to the Kashmir Valley, Shah said action has been taken in that direction. "Never before was anyone arrested who indulged in Hawala transactions. If any government took tough action against terror funds, it was done by only Narendra Modi government," he said. On the farm debt waiver issue, Shah said the state governments concerned could take a decision at their own level as clarified by Finance Minister Arun Jaitley. The BJP chief, who was flanked by Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar, said the Modi government has been in power for three years, "but even the opposition has not been able to level any corruption charges." "It is a decisive government," he asserted. By PTI NEW DELHI: The Opposition today accused the government of having no stable foreign policy and asked it to spell out its roadmap to deal China amid the border stand-off which it wanted to be resolved diplomatically. During a discussion on "India's foreign policy and engagement with strategic partners" in the Rajya Sabha, the Opposition parties said they are with the government in the face of "unusually aggressive" position adopted by China but wanted the country to be strengthened further militarily to ward off any threat. The Opposition parties also accused the government of spoiling relations with the neighbours and felt that India should not be isolated in the process of isolating Pakistan. "As we engage with our partner countries, please ensure that there is balance. We should ensure that we engage with all of them. But we should ensure that there is strategic balance," said Congress leader Anand Sharma while initiating the discussion. Sharma, former Minister of State for External Affairs, said there should be no dilution or deviation from the country's laid down foreign policy. Referring to the border stand-off with China, he said the neigbouring country is being "unusually aggressive" and the "doors of diplomacy seem to be closing". "When it comes to country's national interests, we stand as one and there is no division. It is clear...Diplomacy must be given a chance. We believe in making all possible diplomatic channels to de-escalate the situation on borders," he said. "De-escalation does not mean retreat. It is safeguarding India's interest," he said. Targeting Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Sharma said he had "not uttered a word" on what he has talked with Chinese President Xi Jinping during their meetings in Astana (Kazakhstan) and Hamburg (Germany). "It is his (PM's) duty to tell us. He cannot remain silent on matters of India's sensitive interests," he said Sharma also noted that National Security Adviser Ajit Doval had visited China recently and wondered whether after that "a window has opened that this stand-off would be resolved." He also said that India should avoid making boastful claims of isolating Pakistan. The Congress leader said it was a matter of concern that China has offered to mediate between India and Pakistan. He said managing of the periphery comes first and that is of critical importance, saying the rest comes later. "Unless we manage our neighbours correctly, it would be difficult or rather impossible to play a major role globally," he said, adding, "What is your roadmap? There is no stability in your policy. It keeps changing. First you say we would talk and then stop talks." Sharma said terrorism is a threat and there is an increase in cross-border attacks but not a day passes when the life of an Army man is not lost in Jammu and Kashmir. "It is not a matter of statistics, but we have to stand up and protect our borders," he said. The Congress leader said India had succeeded in de-hyphenating India from Pakistan. "The real concern is that the hyphenation is back," he said. Sharma said it was a matter of concern to India that China and Turkey have offered to mediate between India and Pakistan. "We have concern because China's profile in Pakistan is increasing and Pakistan is getting emboldened of this support for China and that is our concern," he said. Talking about the surgical strikes, he said, "even a military victory must not be boasted upon." NEW DELHI: The Opposition today accused the government of having no stable foreign policy and asked it to spell out its roadmap to deal China amid the border stand-off which it wanted to be resolved diplomatically. During a discussion on "India's foreign policy and engagement with strategic partners" in the Rajya Sabha, the Opposition parties said they are with the government in the face of "unusually aggressive" position adopted by China but wanted the country to be strengthened further militarily to ward off any threat. The Opposition parties also accused the government of spoiling relations with the neighbours and felt that India should not be isolated in the process of isolating Pakistan. "As we engage with our partner countries, please ensure that there is balance. We should ensure that we engage with all of them. But we should ensure that there is strategic balance," said Congress leader Anand Sharma while initiating the discussion. Sharma, former Minister of State for External Affairs, said there should be no dilution or deviation from the country's laid down foreign policy. Referring to the border stand-off with China, he said the neigbouring country is being "unusually aggressive" and the "doors of diplomacy seem to be closing". "When it comes to country's national interests, we stand as one and there is no division. It is clear...Diplomacy must be given a chance. We believe in making all possible diplomatic channels to de-escalate the situation on borders," he said. "De-escalation does not mean retreat. It is safeguarding India's interest," he said. Targeting Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Sharma said he had "not uttered a word" on what he has talked with Chinese President Xi Jinping during their meetings in Astana (Kazakhstan) and Hamburg (Germany). "It is his (PM's) duty to tell us. He cannot remain silent on matters of India's sensitive interests," he said Sharma also noted that National Security Adviser Ajit Doval had visited China recently and wondered whether after that "a window has opened that this stand-off would be resolved." He also said that India should avoid making boastful claims of isolating Pakistan. The Congress leader said it was a matter of concern that China has offered to mediate between India and Pakistan. He said managing of the periphery comes first and that is of critical importance, saying the rest comes later. "Unless we manage our neighbours correctly, it would be difficult or rather impossible to play a major role globally," he said, adding, "What is your roadmap? There is no stability in your policy. It keeps changing. First you say we would talk and then stop talks." Sharma said terrorism is a threat and there is an increase in cross-border attacks but not a day passes when the life of an Army man is not lost in Jammu and Kashmir. "It is not a matter of statistics, but we have to stand up and protect our borders," he said. The Congress leader said India had succeeded in de-hyphenating India from Pakistan. "The real concern is that the hyphenation is back," he said. Sharma said it was a matter of concern to India that China and Turkey have offered to mediate between India and Pakistan. "We have concern because China's profile in Pakistan is increasing and Pakistan is getting emboldened of this support for China and that is our concern," he said. Talking about the surgical strikes, he said, "even a military victory must not be boasted upon." Harpreet Bajwa By Express News Service CHANDIGARH: TO the teachers of Government Model Senior Secondary School in Sector 33 of Chandigarh, Harshit Sharma of Section B of Class XII (IT) looked the sort who would land a job in Google. Why not, when they were all rendered clueless and cashless during demonetization back in December, he had shown them how to use mobile apps and make online payments. His handwriting wasnt great but he was good at making graphic posters on the computer. He passed out in June but was back on campus 15 days ago with a box of sweets. He had landed a job in Google, he told the teachers he met, as a graphic artist with a stipend of Rs 4 lakh per month during training and a salary of Rs 12 lakh per month thereafter. Miss Deep Kiran who used to teach Harshit felt impelled to ask him how he had landed the job. He told me he had applied to Google online and was selected. He told me would be leaving for US in the next few days, she told the New Indian Express hardly able to hide embarrassment that the whole school and the entire Chandigarh administration had fallen for a schoolboys prank. What clinched the issue was the appointment certificate from Google that Harshit showed around (see pic). To Whom It Concern it said, mimicking the syntax of government certificates, and therefore passing muster. It was rather a nice story, the kind principals like to pin up on notice boards and extol in the Assembly. So Harshit was rushed to the principal Indra Beniwal, who instructed her staff to quickly bring the facts on record so that it may be present to those on high. One of our teachers Menu prepared a detailed note which was submitted to me and I further sent it to the public relations officer and then the public relations department issued a press note, said Ms Beniwal the day after Googles humourless clarification in regulation Communications language, that it has no record of offering such employment to any 16-year-old - brought the prank to light. But it seems neither GMSS School nor the Chandigarh admin is taking this as a laughing matter. Ms Beniwal has been asked to submit a report to DPI (schools) and he has marked an inquiry into the matter. When she learnt that she was pranked, Ms Beniwal called Harshit on his mobile, which was switched off. So she called his mother, a teacher herself, in Kurukshetra. Then she called his father, a college principal like herself. CHANDIGARH: TO the teachers of Government Model Senior Secondary School in Sector 33 of Chandigarh, Harshit Sharma of Section B of Class XII (IT) looked the sort who would land a job in Google. Why not, when they were all rendered clueless and cashless during demonetization back in December, he had shown them how to use mobile apps and make online payments. His handwriting wasnt great but he was good at making graphic posters on the computer. He passed out in June but was back on campus 15 days ago with a box of sweets. He had landed a job in Google, he told the teachers he met, as a graphic artist with a stipend of Rs 4 lakh per month during training and a salary of Rs 12 lakh per month thereafter. Miss Deep Kiran who used to teach Harshit felt impelled to ask him how he had landed the job. He told me he had applied to Google online and was selected. He told me would be leaving for US in the next few days, she told the New Indian Express hardly able to hide embarrassment that the whole school and the entire Chandigarh administration had fallen for a schoolboys prank. What clinched the issue was the appointment certificate from Google that Harshit showed around (see pic). To Whom It Concern it said, mimicking the syntax of government certificates, and therefore passing muster. It was rather a nice story, the kind principals like to pin up on notice boards and extol in the Assembly. So Harshit was rushed to the principal Indra Beniwal, who instructed her staff to quickly bring the facts on record so that it may be present to those on high. One of our teachers Menu prepared a detailed note which was submitted to me and I further sent it to the public relations officer and then the public relations department issued a press note, said Ms Beniwal the day after Googles humourless clarification in regulation Communications language, that it has no record of offering such employment to any 16-year-old - brought the prank to light. But it seems neither GMSS School nor the Chandigarh admin is taking this as a laughing matter. Ms Beniwal has been asked to submit a report to DPI (schools) and he has marked an inquiry into the matter. When she learnt that she was pranked, Ms Beniwal called Harshit on his mobile, which was switched off. So she called his mother, a teacher herself, in Kurukshetra. Then she called his father, a college principal like herself. By Express News Service GUWAHATI: AS tension prevailed in this communally sensitive region of Assam, the government of Sarbananda Sonowal set up a special investigation team (SIT) to probe the killing of Muslim student leader Lafiqul Islam Ahmed. The All BTC Minority Students Union (ABMSU) demanded a CBI inquiry and immediate removal of the Kokrajhar superintendent of police over the killing and the Congress has also called for a probe by the premier investigation agency. Ahmed was gunned down by two motorcycle-borne assailants at a market in Kokrajhar on Tuesday. The SIT will be headed by DSP (headquarters) Prakash Medhi. Assams director-general of police Mukesh Sahay reviewed the situation along with Bodoland Territorial Council (BTC) chief Hagrama Mohilary and senior officials of the administration. Additional security forces have been deployed to prevent untoward incidents. One person, identified as Imtiaz Ali, has been arrested in connection with the killing, the DGP said. The killing triggered widespread protests in the district and in lower Assam. Chief minister Sarbananda Sonowal held a high-level meeting with the civil and police administration late Tuesday night and asked authorities to nab the culprits within 24 hours. Assams director-general of police Mukesh Sahay said police are also probing the angle of cattle smuggling behind the killing of Lafikul Islam Ahmed, president of the All Bodo Minority Students Union (ABMSU) on the outskirts of Kokrajhar on Tuesday night. There are various leads which we are examining. Two suspects Entaj Ali and one Barman have been picked up and subjected to interrogation. We are also probing if militants were involved, he said. Smuggling of cattle to Bangladesh thrives in Kokrajhar and Dhubri districts in lower Assam. Cows are transported from various parts of the country and smuggled into Bangladesh. There are allegations galore that some politicians as well as militants facilitate smuggling. Beef is in high demand in Bangladesh, and an Indian cow smuggled across the border is said to fetch double the price. The All Bodo Minority Students Union (ABMSU) said a political conspiracy was hatched to kill Lafikul Islam. It demanded a CBI probe into the slaying. Speaking to New Indian Express, ABSU president Pramod Boro said, We suspect that groups of cow smugglers operating between West Bengal, Assam and Bangladesh are behind the killing of Lafiqul Islam. However, his murder has not and will not lead to any ethnic tensions between communities in the Bodo Territorial Administrative Districts (BTAD). Lafiqul Islam was murdered the day he sent a video exposing cattle smuggling through the porous Indo-Bangladesh border at the Bengal-Assam-Bangladesh tri-junction on Tuesday. ABMSU general secretary Shakamal Khandakar said he smells a conspiracy. Kokrajhar has been a hair-trigger region ever since massive ethnic violence erupted between Muslims and Bodos after two former militants were killed by a Muslim mob in western Assam in 2012. The region again witnessed massive violence between Adivasis and Bodos in 2014. GUWAHATI: AS tension prevailed in this communally sensitive region of Assam, the government of Sarbananda Sonowal set up a special investigation team (SIT) to probe the killing of Muslim student leader Lafiqul Islam Ahmed. The All BTC Minority Students Union (ABMSU) demanded a CBI inquiry and immediate removal of the Kokrajhar superintendent of police over the killing and the Congress has also called for a probe by the premier investigation agency. Ahmed was gunned down by two motorcycle-borne assailants at a market in Kokrajhar on Tuesday. The SIT will be headed by DSP (headquarters) Prakash Medhi. Assams director-general of police Mukesh Sahay reviewed the situation along with Bodoland Territorial Council (BTC) chief Hagrama Mohilary and senior officials of the administration. Additional security forces have been deployed to prevent untoward incidents. One person, identified as Imtiaz Ali, has been arrested in connection with the killing, the DGP said. The killing triggered widespread protests in the district and in lower Assam. Chief minister Sarbananda Sonowal held a high-level meeting with the civil and police administration late Tuesday night and asked authorities to nab the culprits within 24 hours. Assams director-general of police Mukesh Sahay said police are also probing the angle of cattle smuggling behind the killing of Lafikul Islam Ahmed, president of the All Bodo Minority Students Union (ABMSU) on the outskirts of Kokrajhar on Tuesday night. There are various leads which we are examining. Two suspects Entaj Ali and one Barman have been picked up and subjected to interrogation. We are also probing if militants were involved, he said. Smuggling of cattle to Bangladesh thrives in Kokrajhar and Dhubri districts in lower Assam. Cows are transported from various parts of the country and smuggled into Bangladesh. There are allegations galore that some politicians as well as militants facilitate smuggling. Beef is in high demand in Bangladesh, and an Indian cow smuggled across the border is said to fetch double the price. The All Bodo Minority Students Union (ABMSU) said a political conspiracy was hatched to kill Lafikul Islam. It demanded a CBI probe into the slaying. Speaking to New Indian Express, ABSU president Pramod Boro said, We suspect that groups of cow smugglers operating between West Bengal, Assam and Bangladesh are behind the killing of Lafiqul Islam. However, his murder has not and will not lead to any ethnic tensions between communities in the Bodo Territorial Administrative Districts (BTAD). Lafiqul Islam was murdered the day he sent a video exposing cattle smuggling through the porous Indo-Bangladesh border at the Bengal-Assam-Bangladesh tri-junction on Tuesday. ABMSU general secretary Shakamal Khandakar said he smells a conspiracy. Kokrajhar has been a hair-trigger region ever since massive ethnic violence erupted between Muslims and Bodos after two former militants were killed by a Muslim mob in western Assam in 2012. The region again witnessed massive violence between Adivasis and Bodos in 2014. Anand ST Das By Express News Service PATNA: People belonging to a cow protection group intercepted a truck carrying beef from an illegal slaughter house and assaulted the truck driver, along with two other men in the vehicle at Bihars Bhojpur district on Thursday. The incident, the first ever attack of this nature in Bihar, prompted the opposition parties to allege that cow vigilantism had reared its head in the state because of BJP joining the government after the collapse of the grand alliance last month. The incident comes two days after Bihars newly-formed NDA government said it would not allow setting up of any new slaughterhouse in the state. Animal husbandry minister Pashupati Kumar Paras also said the ban on cow slaughter as per a 1955 law would be enforced stringently across Bihar. Hundreds of people, allegedly mobilised by local Bajrang Dal activists, gathered at Shahpur Bazar village and intercepted a truck (WB 23 D 6394) carrying beef covered in ice. The driver and two other men in the truck were slapped and detained by the mob that also blocked NH-84 for two hours. Police reached the spot and took the three men into custody. Chandan Kumar Pandey, one of the people who intercepted the truck, said, Beef from an illegal slaughter house functioning in Rani Sagar area here is regularly sent to West Bengal in violation of the law. Officials of Shahpur police station are allowing this. We will no longer let this happen. Bhojpur ASP Daya Shankar, who controlled the situation, assured the people of a probe into their allegations within the 24 hours and suitable action. Animal husbandry minister Pashupati Kumar Paras said, Sample of the meat in the seized truck has been sent for examination. A probe has been ordered. Action will be taken against those responsible as per the findings of the probe. There is already a ban on the slaughter of cows in Bihar. Opposition RJD and the Left parties attributed the incident to BJP joining the state government. It is a clear confirmation that BJP has assumed power in Bihar. Now only Hindutva policies will be implemented while he (Nitish Kumar) continues to remain the chief minister, said CPI(M) general secretary Sitaram Yechury in New Delhi. Bhai Birendra, RJD leader, said, This is the beginning of Hindutva politics in action in Bihar. We will do everything possible to foil their dangerous plans in the state. PATNA: People belonging to a cow protection group intercepted a truck carrying beef from an illegal slaughter house and assaulted the truck driver, along with two other men in the vehicle at Bihars Bhojpur district on Thursday. The incident, the first ever attack of this nature in Bihar, prompted the opposition parties to allege that cow vigilantism had reared its head in the state because of BJP joining the government after the collapse of the grand alliance last month. The incident comes two days after Bihars newly-formed NDA government said it would not allow setting up of any new slaughterhouse in the state. Animal husbandry minister Pashupati Kumar Paras also said the ban on cow slaughter as per a 1955 law would be enforced stringently across Bihar. Hundreds of people, allegedly mobilised by local Bajrang Dal activists, gathered at Shahpur Bazar village and intercepted a truck (WB 23 D 6394) carrying beef covered in ice. The driver and two other men in the truck were slapped and detained by the mob that also blocked NH-84 for two hours. Police reached the spot and took the three men into custody. Chandan Kumar Pandey, one of the people who intercepted the truck, said, Beef from an illegal slaughter house functioning in Rani Sagar area here is regularly sent to West Bengal in violation of the law. Officials of Shahpur police station are allowing this. We will no longer let this happen. Bhojpur ASP Daya Shankar, who controlled the situation, assured the people of a probe into their allegations within the 24 hours and suitable action. Animal husbandry minister Pashupati Kumar Paras said, Sample of the meat in the seized truck has been sent for examination. A probe has been ordered. Action will be taken against those responsible as per the findings of the probe. There is already a ban on the slaughter of cows in Bihar. Opposition RJD and the Left parties attributed the incident to BJP joining the state government. It is a clear confirmation that BJP has assumed power in Bihar. Now only Hindutva policies will be implemented while he (Nitish Kumar) continues to remain the chief minister, said CPI(M) general secretary Sitaram Yechury in New Delhi. Bhai Birendra, RJD leader, said, This is the beginning of Hindutva politics in action in Bihar. We will do everything possible to foil their dangerous plans in the state. By PTI CHANDIGARH: Two persons were today arrested for trying to break through the security cordon of BJP chief Amit Shah, who is on a three-day visit to Haryana, the police said. Two persons, identified as Ashok and Rajinder of a village in Rohtak, allegedly tried to break the security cordon on the intervening night of August 2 and 3 at the Tilyar lake tourist complex in Rohtak, where the BJP leader is staying, the Rohtak Police said in a statement. Both were in an inebriated condition. They tried to break through security and meet the BJP chief. However, the duo were arrested at the first tier of the multi-layer security cordon thrown around the place where the dignitary is putting up, Rohtak SP Pankaj Nain said in the evening. The men were being questioned. A case has been registered against them under relevant provisions of the law at the Urban Estate police station. The car in which they travelled to the place has also been impounded, he said. Nain said the police were fully alert and adequate security arrangements have been made in view of Shah's three day stay at Rohtak. "No one will be allowed to take the law into their own hands. Those who break the law will be dealt with accordingly," he said. With an eye on the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, Shah is travelling across states to strategise and find ways to strengthen the party at the grass-root level. CHANDIGARH: Two persons were today arrested for trying to break through the security cordon of BJP chief Amit Shah, who is on a three-day visit to Haryana, the police said. Two persons, identified as Ashok and Rajinder of a village in Rohtak, allegedly tried to break the security cordon on the intervening night of August 2 and 3 at the Tilyar lake tourist complex in Rohtak, where the BJP leader is staying, the Rohtak Police said in a statement. Both were in an inebriated condition. They tried to break through security and meet the BJP chief. However, the duo were arrested at the first tier of the multi-layer security cordon thrown around the place where the dignitary is putting up, Rohtak SP Pankaj Nain said in the evening. The men were being questioned. A case has been registered against them under relevant provisions of the law at the Urban Estate police station. The car in which they travelled to the place has also been impounded, he said. Nain said the police were fully alert and adequate security arrangements have been made in view of Shah's three day stay at Rohtak. "No one will be allowed to take the law into their own hands. Those who break the law will be dealt with accordingly," he said. With an eye on the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, Shah is travelling across states to strategise and find ways to strengthen the party at the grass-root level. Prakash Nanda By Only recently, Army Chief General Bipin Rawat assured the nation that the Army was well prepared for any eventuality and fighting two and half wars (presumably one each against China and Pakistan, and half against terrorists and extremists inside the country) simultaneously. But last week, the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) of India warned that the Indian Army, the second largest standing Army in the world, lacked ammunition to fight a war longer than 10 days. Who, then, should we believe, particularly when there is a standoff between Indian and Chinese troops at Doka La? Perhaps, the truth lies somewhere in between, if one goes by the assurances from Defence Minister Arun Jaitley in the Rajya Sabha on July 25. This was the second time in two months that CAGs findings of inadequacies in Indias war wastage reserves (WWR)military material held in reserve in case of warcame to light. As per our norms, WWR should be sufficient for 40 days of intense fighting, with 21 days earmarked for ammunition with shorter shelf life. In May this year, the CAG pointed out that stocking of 125 of the 170 types of ammunition was not enough for even 20 days of war. Further, in 50 per cent of the types of ammunition, the holding was critical or less than 10 days in March 2013, it said. In a report laid in the Parliament recently, the CAG said around 40 per cent of the Armys ammunition, would not last more than 10 days in a war and that the military did not have the minimum required stock of 55 per cent, that is 61 of the 152 types, of arms it needed for operational preparedness in case of a war. Both reports show the situation has not improved much since 2013. However, the problem with the CAG report is that it has not taken a comprehensive view of the situation. It has failed to appreciate the context of the decision making processes pertaining to the procurement of arms. Take the case of the WWR shortage. As much as 90 per cent of these ammunitions are supposed to be supplied by the state-run Ordnance Factory Board. But the equipment produced is not of great quality. As Lt General Sarath Chand, vice-chief of Army staff said July 25, the ordnance factories have not been able to keep pace with changing technology. Secondly, there is an overall problem of shrinking budgetary resources for the Capital Outlay on Defence Services. The bulk of our defence budget is spent on revenue (salaries and perks) and maintenance of the existing resources, leaving little for developing and buying sophisticated arms and ammunitions systems. In case of the Army, the revenue side of the budget is as high as 83 per cent! It is not surprising that the budgetary allocations for capital acquisition have declined for the three services not only at the RE (Revised estimate) stage of 2015-16 in comparison to BE (Budget estimate) 2015-16 but also for the RE during the year 2016-17 in comparison to BE 2015-16. Similarly, against a projection of Rs 1,46,155.54 crore for capital budget in 2017-18, Rs 86,528.65 crore have been allocated for BE 2017-18 for various services, according to a report submitted by the Standing Committee on Defence to the Parliament. This decline in the allocation for capital acquisition will definitely affect procurement proposals and contracts. For instance, in the capital budget for the Army during 2017-18, the BE projection was Rs 42,485.93 crore, but what was allocated in the end was Rs 25, 246.35 crore. What is worse is that even these declining capital budgetary allocations are underspent most of the time. For instance, the Army was allocated in 2014-15 a sum of Rs 21, 933.54 crore, but it spent only Rs 18,586.73 crore. In the 2016-17 budget, the Army was given Rs 24,026.86 crore for capital acquisitions, but as on December 2016, the Army has spent only Rs 17,205.64 crore. However, there is a catch. Though the Ministry of Defence (MoD) has to be blamed for not planning properly and thus surrendering the funds, the main culprit is the Ministry of Finance (MoF) for underspending. Towards the end of every financial year, efforts are made by MoF to withdraw unspent funds from all ministries to reduce fiscal deficit. As the finance division of the MoD functions under the directions of the MoF, it does not clear any major expenditure unless given a green signal by the MoF, thereby forcing the MoD to surrender funds. The MoD now wants this practice to end. There are strong merits in its demand for the creation of a Non-Lapsable Defence Capital Modernization Fund. Interestingly, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, whose MoF usually plays the spoiler role in the acquisition process of the MoD, now has a moral dilemma. Because, now he happens to be the defence minister as well. Will he agree to the idea of Non-Lapsable Defence Capital Modernization Fund? S o far in his additional role as the defence minister, Jaitley has taken an important decision of giving the Army vice-chief full financial powers to procure critical ammunition and spares to maintain an optimum level to fight a short intense war. This means that procuring ammunition would be much faster. The vice-chief has been allowed to take the revenue route for in-service equipment; so there will be no need to head to the Defence Acquisition Council (headed by the defence minister) or the Cabinet Committee on Security, for procurement. Besides, the government has recently created a separate fund of around Rs 20,000 crore (not a part of the 2017-18 budgetary defence allocations) for procuring ammunition and spares. Viewed thus, the CAG warnings should not create a sense of helplessness. As Jaitely told the Rajya Sabha on July 25, significant progress has been made (since the CAG wrote its report), procedures have been simplified, powers have been decentralised, and the armed forces are reasonably and sufficiently equipped. Prakash Nanda Senior journalist, author and strategic analyst Email: prakasnanda@gmail.com Only recently, Army Chief General Bipin Rawat assured the nation that the Army was well prepared for any eventuality and fighting two and half wars (presumably one each against China and Pakistan, and half against terrorists and extremists inside the country) simultaneously. But last week, the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) of India warned that the Indian Army, the second largest standing Army in the world, lacked ammunition to fight a war longer than 10 days. Who, then, should we believe, particularly when there is a standoff between Indian and Chinese troops at Doka La? Perhaps, the truth lies somewhere in between, if one goes by the assurances from Defence Minister Arun Jaitley in the Rajya Sabha on July 25. This was the second time in two months that CAGs findings of inadequacies in Indias war wastage reserves (WWR)military material held in reserve in case of warcame to light. As per our norms, WWR should be sufficient for 40 days of intense fighting, with 21 days earmarked for ammunition with shorter shelf life. In May this year, the CAG pointed out that stocking of 125 of the 170 types of ammunition was not enough for even 20 days of war. Further, in 50 per cent of the types of ammunition, the holding was critical or less than 10 days in March 2013, it said. In a report laid in the Parliament recently, the CAG said around 40 per cent of the Armys ammunition, would not last more than 10 days in a war and that the military did not have the minimum required stock of 55 per cent, that is 61 of the 152 types, of arms it needed for operational preparedness in case of a war. Both reports show the situation has not improved much since 2013. However, the problem with the CAG report is that it has not taken a comprehensive view of the situation. It has failed to appreciate the context of the decision making processes pertaining to the procurement of arms. Take the case of the WWR shortage. As much as 90 per cent of these ammunitions are supposed to be supplied by the state-run Ordnance Factory Board. But the equipment produced is not of great quality. As Lt General Sarath Chand, vice-chief of Army staff said July 25, the ordnance factories have not been able to keep pace with changing technology. Secondly, there is an overall problem of shrinking budgetary resources for the Capital Outlay on Defence Services. The bulk of our defence budget is spent on revenue (salaries and perks) and maintenance of the existing resources, leaving little for developing and buying sophisticated arms and ammunitions systems. In case of the Army, the revenue side of the budget is as high as 83 per cent! It is not surprising that the budgetary allocations for capital acquisition have declined for the three services not only at the RE (Revised estimate) stage of 2015-16 in comparison to BE (Budget estimate) 2015-16 but also for the RE during the year 2016-17 in comparison to BE 2015-16. Similarly, against a projection of Rs 1,46,155.54 crore for capital budget in 2017-18, Rs 86,528.65 crore have been allocated for BE 2017-18 for various services, according to a report submitted by the Standing Committee on Defence to the Parliament. This decline in the allocation for capital acquisition will definitely affect procurement proposals and contracts. For instance, in the capital budget for the Army during 2017-18, the BE projection was Rs 42,485.93 crore, but what was allocated in the end was Rs 25, 246.35 crore. What is worse is that even these declining capital budgetary allocations are underspent most of the time. For instance, the Army was allocated in 2014-15 a sum of Rs 21, 933.54 crore, but it spent only Rs 18,586.73 crore. In the 2016-17 budget, the Army was given Rs 24,026.86 crore for capital acquisitions, but as on December 2016, the Army has spent only Rs 17,205.64 crore. However, there is a catch. Though the Ministry of Defence (MoD) has to be blamed for not planning properly and thus surrendering the funds, the main culprit is the Ministry of Finance (MoF) for underspending. Towards the end of every financial year, efforts are made by MoF to withdraw unspent funds from all ministries to reduce fiscal deficit. As the finance division of the MoD functions under the directions of the MoF, it does not clear any major expenditure unless given a green signal by the MoF, thereby forcing the MoD to surrender funds. The MoD now wants this practice to end. There are strong merits in its demand for the creation of a Non-Lapsable Defence Capital Modernization Fund. Interestingly, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, whose MoF usually plays the spoiler role in the acquisition process of the MoD, now has a moral dilemma. Because, now he happens to be the defence minister as well. Will he agree to the idea of Non-Lapsable Defence Capital Modernization Fund? S o far in his additional role as the defence minister, Jaitley has taken an important decision of giving the Army vice-chief full financial powers to procure critical ammunition and spares to maintain an optimum level to fight a short intense war. This means that procuring ammunition would be much faster. The vice-chief has been allowed to take the revenue route for in-service equipment; so there will be no need to head to the Defence Acquisition Council (headed by the defence minister) or the Cabinet Committee on Security, for procurement. Besides, the government has recently created a separate fund of around Rs 20,000 crore (not a part of the 2017-18 budgetary defence allocations) for procuring ammunition and spares. Viewed thus, the CAG warnings should not create a sense of helplessness. As Jaitely told the Rajya Sabha on July 25, significant progress has been made (since the CAG wrote its report), procedures have been simplified, powers have been decentralised, and the armed forces are reasonably and sufficiently equipped. Prakash Nanda Senior journalist, author and strategic analyst Email: prakasnanda@gmail.com By Express News Service KURNOOL: TDP Kurnool district president and MLC Silpa Chakrapani Reddy on Wednesday crossed the Rubicon and joined the YSRC, lending support to his brother Silpa Mohan Reddy who is the YSRC nominee for Nandyal Assembly seat for which by-election would be held on August 23. Despite the desperate attempts by the Telugu Desam Party to hold him back, Chakrapani Reddy has proved that blood is thicker than water and wanted to be on his brothers side when the day of reckoning arrives. After discussing with his party workers, Chakrapani Reddy announced that he was breaking ranks with the TDP and was moving over to the YSRC. Chakrapani Reddy later sent his resignation letter to Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu. Speaking to media persons afterwards, Chakrapani Reddy said that he had quit the Telugu Desam Party after the humiliation faced by him despite serving the party selflessly. Tourism Minister Bhuma Akhila Priya and other TDP leaders are making baseless allegations against me, he said. Akhila Priya and others, who sold themselves out to the TDP, were casting aspersions on the character of his brother Mohan Reddy, he said and pointed out that his brother has a clean record in public life and that if anyone tried to tarnish his image, he would not tolerate it.He said that he along with his cadre would go to Hyderabad and meet Y S Jagan Mohan Reddy at his Lotus Pond residence before joining the party. The countdown has begun for Akhila Priya and not for my brother. I will show them what Chakrapani Reddy is, he said, adding: I will gift Nandyal seat to Jagan Mohan Reddy.Meanwhile, TDP leaders said they were not much bothered about the exit of Chakrapani Reddy form their party and even described it as a good riddance. TDP district president Somisetty Venkateswarlu said that Chakrapani Reddys exit will have no impact on the poll prospects of the TDP candidate. People have understood the big conspiracy of Silpa brothers. First Mohan Reddy left us and later his brother Chakrapani Reddy, with the intention of wrecking the party. But their plan will not work out, he said. KURNOOL: TDP Kurnool district president and MLC Silpa Chakrapani Reddy on Wednesday crossed the Rubicon and joined the YSRC, lending support to his brother Silpa Mohan Reddy who is the YSRC nominee for Nandyal Assembly seat for which by-election would be held on August 23. Despite the desperate attempts by the Telugu Desam Party to hold him back, Chakrapani Reddy has proved that blood is thicker than water and wanted to be on his brothers side when the day of reckoning arrives. After discussing with his party workers, Chakrapani Reddy announced that he was breaking ranks with the TDP and was moving over to the YSRC. Chakrapani Reddy later sent his resignation letter to Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu. Speaking to media persons afterwards, Chakrapani Reddy said that he had quit the Telugu Desam Party after the humiliation faced by him despite serving the party selflessly. Tourism Minister Bhuma Akhila Priya and other TDP leaders are making baseless allegations against me, he said. Akhila Priya and others, who sold themselves out to the TDP, were casting aspersions on the character of his brother Mohan Reddy, he said and pointed out that his brother has a clean record in public life and that if anyone tried to tarnish his image, he would not tolerate it.He said that he along with his cadre would go to Hyderabad and meet Y S Jagan Mohan Reddy at his Lotus Pond residence before joining the party. The countdown has begun for Akhila Priya and not for my brother. I will show them what Chakrapani Reddy is, he said, adding: I will gift Nandyal seat to Jagan Mohan Reddy.Meanwhile, TDP leaders said they were not much bothered about the exit of Chakrapani Reddy form their party and even described it as a good riddance. TDP district president Somisetty Venkateswarlu said that Chakrapani Reddys exit will have no impact on the poll prospects of the TDP candidate. People have understood the big conspiracy of Silpa brothers. First Mohan Reddy left us and later his brother Chakrapani Reddy, with the intention of wrecking the party. But their plan will not work out, he said. By Express News Service BENGALURU: Income Tax raids on energy minister D K Shivakumar and his relatives continued for the second day in a row. The minister who was being questioned since Wednesday morning, was in the custody of IT officials for more than 36 hours, as of Thursday evening. Despite rumours being abuzz that amount of wealth seized by the IT officials was huge, the total amount was still unclear.The Investigation wing of Karnataka and Goa Income Tax Department is expected to reveal information regarding the same on Friday. Raids continued on the Sadashivanagar residence of the minister and his relatives, including his sister Padma, father-in-law Thimmaiah and their close aides on Thursday morning. Apart from Bengaluru where most of the properties and offices of Shivakumar reportedly is, raids were also carried out in Hassan, Mysuru and Ramanagara districts. Shivakumar was restricted to his residence by the IT officials throughout the day, while Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) personnel stood guard outside. Documents associated with various businesses of the minister, said to be kept inside a safe at his residence was also accessed by IT sleuths. Though there were reports that IT officials took assistance from key-makers in the city to open the safes, Income Tax officials did not confirm the same. Among the individuals and offices raided during the last two days include Shivakumar's brother and Bengaluru rural MP, D K Suresh, relative and MLC S Ravi, father-in-law Thimmaiah, business associate and close aide Sachin Narayan, KPCC secretary and aide Vinay Karthik, astrologer Dwarakanath, sister Padma and others. Apart from questioning the said individuals, IT officials also collected documents from the residences of the above, related to the assets owned by the minister. Report leak During the day, a mahajar report of Shivakumar's residence by Income Tax officials, related to their findings on the first day of raid, was leaked by supporters of the minister. The leaked-mahajar report noted that about 22 pages of documents were seized by the officials. However, despite attempts, mahajar report of other locations especially his Delhi residence where money was reportedly found could not be accessed. Meanwhile, an activist Guruprasad from Bidadi filed a complaint with Enforcement Directorate, alleging that the minister was involved in money laundering. He urged the Directorate to file a case against the minister as he had converted several thousand crores of old notes to new denominations, post demonetisation. Earlier Shivakumar, who was questioned initially at Eagleton resort on Wednesday morning, was brought to his Sadashivanagar residence at around 12 noon. Since then, though the minister stepped out of his residence a couple of times of Wednesday, he remained largely indoors on Thursday. IT officials are expected to continue the raid on Friday too. BENGALURU: Income Tax raids on energy minister D K Shivakumar and his relatives continued for the second day in a row. The minister who was being questioned since Wednesday morning, was in the custody of IT officials for more than 36 hours, as of Thursday evening. Despite rumours being abuzz that amount of wealth seized by the IT officials was huge, the total amount was still unclear.The Investigation wing of Karnataka and Goa Income Tax Department is expected to reveal information regarding the same on Friday. Raids continued on the Sadashivanagar residence of the minister and his relatives, including his sister Padma, father-in-law Thimmaiah and their close aides on Thursday morning. Apart from Bengaluru where most of the properties and offices of Shivakumar reportedly is, raids were also carried out in Hassan, Mysuru and Ramanagara districts. Shivakumar was restricted to his residence by the IT officials throughout the day, while Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) personnel stood guard outside. Documents associated with various businesses of the minister, said to be kept inside a safe at his residence was also accessed by IT sleuths. Though there were reports that IT officials took assistance from key-makers in the city to open the safes, Income Tax officials did not confirm the same. Among the individuals and offices raided during the last two days include Shivakumar's brother and Bengaluru rural MP, D K Suresh, relative and MLC S Ravi, father-in-law Thimmaiah, business associate and close aide Sachin Narayan, KPCC secretary and aide Vinay Karthik, astrologer Dwarakanath, sister Padma and others. Apart from questioning the said individuals, IT officials also collected documents from the residences of the above, related to the assets owned by the minister. Report leak During the day, a mahajar report of Shivakumar's residence by Income Tax officials, related to their findings on the first day of raid, was leaked by supporters of the minister. The leaked-mahajar report noted that about 22 pages of documents were seized by the officials. However, despite attempts, mahajar report of other locations especially his Delhi residence where money was reportedly found could not be accessed. Meanwhile, an activist Guruprasad from Bidadi filed a complaint with Enforcement Directorate, alleging that the minister was involved in money laundering. He urged the Directorate to file a case against the minister as he had converted several thousand crores of old notes to new denominations, post demonetisation. Earlier Shivakumar, who was questioned initially at Eagleton resort on Wednesday morning, was brought to his Sadashivanagar residence at around 12 noon. Since then, though the minister stepped out of his residence a couple of times of Wednesday, he remained largely indoors on Thursday. IT officials are expected to continue the raid on Friday too. By Express News Service BENGALURU: The Karnataka government expressed its 'strong protest' over the large-scale deployment of Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) personnel, during the ongoing raid on state energy minister D K Shivakumar and others, here on Thursday. In a letter written by Karnataka Home Department additional chief secretary Subhash Chandra to Hasmukh Adhia, union financial services secretary, the state questioned the use of CRPF in 'full operational attire' for an operation, 'despite the fact that maintenance of law and order is the responsibility of the Karnataka police'. The letter said, "...the deployment of the CRPF, which is an armed police force, in full operational attire with weapons for a civilian operation also conveys a wrong impression with regard to the necessity of such a scale of deployment." Utilising the services of CRPF, "casts an aspersion of adverse credibility, integrity and professionalism of the state police, which has been utilised effectively and without complaint.." by IT Department in the past. The letter said that the presence of a large number of CRPF personnel would have escalated into a law and order situation. "Therefore, such deployment needs to be in consultation with local police authorities." Established conventions should not be by-passed in such matters where both Governments share responsibilities, the letter added. BENGALURU: The Karnataka government expressed its 'strong protest' over the large-scale deployment of Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) personnel, during the ongoing raid on state energy minister D K Shivakumar and others, here on Thursday. In a letter written by Karnataka Home Department additional chief secretary Subhash Chandra to Hasmukh Adhia, union financial services secretary, the state questioned the use of CRPF in 'full operational attire' for an operation, 'despite the fact that maintenance of law and order is the responsibility of the Karnataka police'. The letter said, "...the deployment of the CRPF, which is an armed police force, in full operational attire with weapons for a civilian operation also conveys a wrong impression with regard to the necessity of such a scale of deployment." Utilising the services of CRPF, "casts an aspersion of adverse credibility, integrity and professionalism of the state police, which has been utilised effectively and without complaint.." by IT Department in the past. The letter said that the presence of a large number of CRPF personnel would have escalated into a law and order situation. "Therefore, such deployment needs to be in consultation with local police authorities." Established conventions should not be by-passed in such matters where both Governments share responsibilities, the letter added. Nandini Chandrashekar By Express News Service BENGALURU: With all eyes focussed on D K Shivakumar after the I-T search and seizures being conducted on his residences and various businesses, the question on the minds of many is how he will emerge out of the troubles. With his penchant for hogging limelight, Shivakumar is one of the most prominent and ruthless Congressmen in the state. He made his mark in politics early by contesting against another strong Vokkaliga, H D Deve Gowda of JD(S) in 1985, but lost. But he recouped that loss in 1989 by winning from Sathanur and thus began building not only a strong Vokkaliga base to challenge the JD(S), but from the same base as Ramanagara, Kanakapura and Bengaluru Rural, considered the turf of the Deve Gowda family. Though he first became a minister during S Bangarappas tenure as Chief Minister, Shivakumar began to make his presence felt during the tenure of S M Krishna, where he was Minister for Urban Development and implemented several infrastructure projects. In 2004, Shivakumar thumbed his nose at his rival Deve Gowda by fielding a rookie, Tejaswini Gowda, against him from the Kanakapura Lok Sabha constituency and made sure she won. Again, in the 2013 Lok Sabha bypoll, he ensured his brother D K Sureshs victory over H D Kumaraswamys wife Anita. He has also been known for his wide business interests. In the 2013 Assembly elections, the increase in his total assets was the highest for a candidate in Karnataka. To put it in perspective, in 2008, he had declared assets worth `75.5 crore and in 2013, it jumped to a whopping `251 crore. In the latest episode, which seems to have triggered the raids, Shivakumar agreed to shepherd the Gujarat Congress MLAs and foil the efforts of BJP to have them cross over, when others like K J George refused to take the responsibility. It is this ability to strategise and his ambition that makes his own partymen uncomfortable and stops him from gaining a larger support base within the party. We will face the challenge In a statement to the media later in the evening, D K Suresh said, This raid just before the Gujarat Rajya Sabha poll is a political conspiracy. BJP has stooped very low by targeting D K Shivakumar for his initiative to shelter the Gujarat MLAs in Bengaluru. We will face this challenge and thwart BJPs plot. Suresh also said that the raid hadnt affected the morale of the Gujarat MLAs at Eagleton Resort, and they would remain united and ensure victory of Ahmed Patel in the Rajya Sabha poll. BENGALURU: With all eyes focussed on D K Shivakumar after the I-T search and seizures being conducted on his residences and various businesses, the question on the minds of many is how he will emerge out of the troubles. With his penchant for hogging limelight, Shivakumar is one of the most prominent and ruthless Congressmen in the state. He made his mark in politics early by contesting against another strong Vokkaliga, H D Deve Gowda of JD(S) in 1985, but lost. But he recouped that loss in 1989 by winning from Sathanur and thus began building not only a strong Vokkaliga base to challenge the JD(S), but from the same base as Ramanagara, Kanakapura and Bengaluru Rural, considered the turf of the Deve Gowda family. Though he first became a minister during S Bangarappas tenure as Chief Minister, Shivakumar began to make his presence felt during the tenure of S M Krishna, where he was Minister for Urban Development and implemented several infrastructure projects. In 2004, Shivakumar thumbed his nose at his rival Deve Gowda by fielding a rookie, Tejaswini Gowda, against him from the Kanakapura Lok Sabha constituency and made sure she won. Again, in the 2013 Lok Sabha bypoll, he ensured his brother D K Sureshs victory over H D Kumaraswamys wife Anita. He has also been known for his wide business interests. In the 2013 Assembly elections, the increase in his total assets was the highest for a candidate in Karnataka. To put it in perspective, in 2008, he had declared assets worth `75.5 crore and in 2013, it jumped to a whopping `251 crore. In the latest episode, which seems to have triggered the raids, Shivakumar agreed to shepherd the Gujarat Congress MLAs and foil the efforts of BJP to have them cross over, when others like K J George refused to take the responsibility. It is this ability to strategise and his ambition that makes his own partymen uncomfortable and stops him from gaining a larger support base within the party. We will face the challenge In a statement to the media later in the evening, D K Suresh said, This raid just before the Gujarat Rajya Sabha poll is a political conspiracy. BJP has stooped very low by targeting D K Shivakumar for his initiative to shelter the Gujarat MLAs in Bengaluru. We will face this challenge and thwart BJPs plot. Suresh also said that the raid hadnt affected the morale of the Gujarat MLAs at Eagleton Resort, and they would remain united and ensure victory of Ahmed Patel in the Rajya Sabha poll. By Express News Service PALAKKAD: The police are on the lookout for the woman who reportedly killed a Yemeni youth by chopping him to 110 pieces and dumping the body parts in a water tank. Nimisha Priya, a native of Punkayam Thekkinchira, 4 km from Kollengode in Palakkad district, had killed Tomy Thomas, a native of Yemen, who was reportedly an employee in the clinic run by her in Al Deydh. Nimisha, who was staying in Punkayam Thekkinchira some time ago, had married a person from Thodupuzha and left for Yemen. Subsequently, she gave birth to a child. Six months ago, Nimisha sent back her husband and child to Kerala saying she would return after six months. It is reported the husband, after returning to Kerala, was in contact with Nimisha over phone for two months. Subsequently there was no communication. The husband suspected Nimisha had a relationship with another person and is reported to have told this to his friends in Thodupuzha. Nimishas mother Prema, a divorcee, was a native of Thekkinchira. She is now staying with a daughter in Ernakulam.The locals said Prema had come to Thekkinchira two months ago. The police are yet to confirm whether Nimisha was working as a nurse in a hospital in Al Deydh or was running her own clinic. The body of Tomy Thomas stuffed in sacks was recovered from a water tank in Al Deydh behind the house were Nimisha was staying. It was after the locals complained of foul smell and a subsequent search that the body was found. Palakkad SP Pratheesh Kumar told Express the Yemeni authorities have not yet contacted the Kerala police on the issue. We are yet to begin a search for the woman, he said. Nimisha Priya, a native of Punkayam Thekkinchira, 4 km from Kollengode in Palakkad district, had killed Tomy Thomas, a native of Yemen, who was reportedly an employee in the clinic run by her in Al Deydh. Nimisha, who was staying in Punkayam Thekkinchira some time ago, had married a person from Thodupuzha and left for Yemen. PALAKKAD: The police are on the lookout for the woman who reportedly killed a Yemeni youth by chopping him to 110 pieces and dumping the body parts in a water tank. Nimisha Priya, a native of Punkayam Thekkinchira, 4 km from Kollengode in Palakkad district, had killed Tomy Thomas, a native of Yemen, who was reportedly an employee in the clinic run by her in Al Deydh. Nimisha, who was staying in Punkayam Thekkinchira some time ago, had married a person from Thodupuzha and left for Yemen. Subsequently, she gave birth to a child. Six months ago, Nimisha sent back her husband and child to Kerala saying she would return after six months. It is reported the husband, after returning to Kerala, was in contact with Nimisha over phone for two months. Subsequently there was no communication. The husband suspected Nimisha had a relationship with another person and is reported to have told this to his friends in Thodupuzha. Nimishas mother Prema, a divorcee, was a native of Thekkinchira. She is now staying with a daughter in Ernakulam.The locals said Prema had come to Thekkinchira two months ago. The police are yet to confirm whether Nimisha was working as a nurse in a hospital in Al Deydh or was running her own clinic. The body of Tomy Thomas stuffed in sacks was recovered from a water tank in Al Deydh behind the house were Nimisha was staying. It was after the locals complained of foul smell and a subsequent search that the body was found. Palakkad SP Pratheesh Kumar told Express the Yemeni authorities have not yet contacted the Kerala police on the issue. We are yet to begin a search for the woman, he said. Nimisha Priya, a native of Punkayam Thekkinchira, 4 km from Kollengode in Palakkad district, had killed Tomy Thomas, a native of Yemen, who was reportedly an employee in the clinic run by her in Al Deydh. Nimisha, who was staying in Punkayam Thekkinchira some time ago, had married a person from Thodupuzha and left for Yemen. By Express News Service TIRUCHY: A new entrant to Tiruchy International Airport, Thai Air Asia will be connecting Bangkok to the city starting September 29. After Kuala Lumpur, Colombo, Sharjah, Dubai and Singapore, Thailand would be the newest international destination from Tiruchy airport. The introduction of the Bangkok route would make it 102 international flights from the airport. With tourists from the southern States increasingly looking to Thailand as a travel destination, the direct connectivity comes as a boon. A promotional fare of J3,399 is being offered to Bangkok from Tiruchy International Airport, said director, commercial, Thai AirAsia, Santisuk Klongchaiya. AirAsia plans to continually penetrate the Indian market in the latter half of 2017 as it is a major market with great growth potential, especially as Bangkok and other Thai cities have become popular destinations for Indians, he said. Airline officials hope the AirAsia direct flight from Tiruchy would offer a multitude of trade, investment and travel opportunities. Cargo would also be carried in the belly hold of the aircraft operating on the route, an advantage for exporters. Thai AirAsia, operating with flight code FD, presently flies directly from India to Thailand from four cities Chennai, Bangalore, Kolkata and Kochi and will begin flying the Tiruchy-Bangkok route four times a week and Jaipur-Bangkok, also four times a week from September 29. Addressing the media, Soraya Homchuen, Director, Tourism Authority of Thailand, who accompanied the Thai AirAsia team, said tourists from India have increased phenomenally and that visitors are predominantly coming in from southern India. TIRUCHY: A new entrant to Tiruchy International Airport, Thai Air Asia will be connecting Bangkok to the city starting September 29. After Kuala Lumpur, Colombo, Sharjah, Dubai and Singapore, Thailand would be the newest international destination from Tiruchy airport. The introduction of the Bangkok route would make it 102 international flights from the airport. With tourists from the southern States increasingly looking to Thailand as a travel destination, the direct connectivity comes as a boon. A promotional fare of J3,399 is being offered to Bangkok from Tiruchy International Airport, said director, commercial, Thai AirAsia, Santisuk Klongchaiya. AirAsia plans to continually penetrate the Indian market in the latter half of 2017 as it is a major market with great growth potential, especially as Bangkok and other Thai cities have become popular destinations for Indians, he said. Airline officials hope the AirAsia direct flight from Tiruchy would offer a multitude of trade, investment and travel opportunities. Cargo would also be carried in the belly hold of the aircraft operating on the route, an advantage for exporters. Thai AirAsia, operating with flight code FD, presently flies directly from India to Thailand from four cities Chennai, Bangalore, Kolkata and Kochi and will begin flying the Tiruchy-Bangkok route four times a week and Jaipur-Bangkok, also four times a week from September 29. Addressing the media, Soraya Homchuen, Director, Tourism Authority of Thailand, who accompanied the Thai AirAsia team, said tourists from India have increased phenomenally and that visitors are predominantly coming in from southern India. By AFP BEIJING: China on Thursday welcomed comments by US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson that Washington would not seek regime change in North Korea, after a week of verbal sparring between the two countries over Pyongyang's rogue weapons programme. Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said "we attach importance to the remarks", when questioned on the US's latest comments on the North, which has caused international alarm with two recent missile tests. "We have noted that the US side has recently paid more attention to security issues on the peninsula - China has always believed that security is at the core of the problem," Wang said, at a joint press conference with the visiting the foreign minister of Turkey. Wang's statement alluded to Tillerson's efforts to underscore that Washington would not seek to topple North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un. "We do not seek a regime change. We do not seek the collapse of the regime. We do not seek an accelerated reunification of the peninsula," Tillerson told reporters on Tuesday. North Korea's push to build a nuclear-armed missile capable of threatening US cities has brought the region to the brink of crisis, and Washington is scrambling to find a solution. Tillerson said Washington would be willing to talk to the North if its leaders accept that they must disarm, and said that Beijing was not to blame for the situation. His statement struck a more diplomatic tone than US President Donald Trump, who has demanded that China rein in its neighbour's nuclear ambitions - angrily tweeting over the weekend that Beijing is not doing enough. The president tweeted that he was "very disappointed in China" after the North boasted last week that the entire mainland US was within range of its intercontinental ballistic missiles. "Our foolish past leaders have allowed them to make hundreds of billions of dollars a year in trade, yet they do nothing for us with North Korea, just talk," said the US leader. Trump has repeatedly urged China, North Korea's main trade partner and ally, to use its economic sway to curb the regime's nuclear programme, while Beijing insists dialogue is the only practical way forward. Wang said that China has maintained a "continuous and stable position" on the issue, calling on "parties to not take any action that will lead to escalating tensions". On the heels of Trump's accusations, Tillerson's remarks "show courage," said an approving editorial in China's Global Times, a state-run nationalistic tabloid. BEIJING: China on Thursday welcomed comments by US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson that Washington would not seek regime change in North Korea, after a week of verbal sparring between the two countries over Pyongyang's rogue weapons programme. Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said "we attach importance to the remarks", when questioned on the US's latest comments on the North, which has caused international alarm with two recent missile tests. "We have noted that the US side has recently paid more attention to security issues on the peninsula - China has always believed that security is at the core of the problem," Wang said, at a joint press conference with the visiting the foreign minister of Turkey. Wang's statement alluded to Tillerson's efforts to underscore that Washington would not seek to topple North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un. "We do not seek a regime change. We do not seek the collapse of the regime. We do not seek an accelerated reunification of the peninsula," Tillerson told reporters on Tuesday. North Korea's push to build a nuclear-armed missile capable of threatening US cities has brought the region to the brink of crisis, and Washington is scrambling to find a solution. Tillerson said Washington would be willing to talk to the North if its leaders accept that they must disarm, and said that Beijing was not to blame for the situation. His statement struck a more diplomatic tone than US President Donald Trump, who has demanded that China rein in its neighbour's nuclear ambitions - angrily tweeting over the weekend that Beijing is not doing enough. The president tweeted that he was "very disappointed in China" after the North boasted last week that the entire mainland US was within range of its intercontinental ballistic missiles. "Our foolish past leaders have allowed them to make hundreds of billions of dollars a year in trade, yet they do nothing for us with North Korea, just talk," said the US leader. Trump has repeatedly urged China, North Korea's main trade partner and ally, to use its economic sway to curb the regime's nuclear programme, while Beijing insists dialogue is the only practical way forward. Wang said that China has maintained a "continuous and stable position" on the issue, calling on "parties to not take any action that will lead to escalating tensions". On the heels of Trump's accusations, Tillerson's remarks "show courage," said an approving editorial in China's Global Times, a state-run nationalistic tabloid. By PTI BEIJING: China's rapidly increasing old age population has reached 230.8 million or 10.8 per cent of the total population by the end of last year, according to official figures released Thursday. China had more than 230.8 million people aged 60 or above, 16.7 per cent of the total population, at the end of 2016, the Ministry of Civil Affairs said. Of the 230.8 million, 150.03 million were 65 or above, or 10.8 per cent of the total population, according to a report released by the ministry. By international standards, a country or region is considered to be an "ageing society" when the number of people aged 60 or above reaches 10 per cent or more. China's old age population above 60 years will reach 255 million by 2020 putting heavy stress on geriatric care services, China's planning body said earlier. Bracing for the demographic crisis China last year relaxed the four decades old one child policy by permitting two children for couples. The ministry said China has 140,000 nursing homes holding a total of more than 7.3 million beds at the end of 2016, with a year-on-year increase of 20.7 per cent and 8.6 per cent respectively. However, there are only 31.6 beds for every 1,000 senior citizens. According to the report, China had about 460,000 orphans at the end of 2016, with 88,000 living in government-funded agencies, with the rest being cared for by relatives or private orphanages. Some 19,000 Chinese orphans were adopted by domestic or overseas families in 2016, the ministry said. BEIJING: China's rapidly increasing old age population has reached 230.8 million or 10.8 per cent of the total population by the end of last year, according to official figures released Thursday. China had more than 230.8 million people aged 60 or above, 16.7 per cent of the total population, at the end of 2016, the Ministry of Civil Affairs said. Of the 230.8 million, 150.03 million were 65 or above, or 10.8 per cent of the total population, according to a report released by the ministry. By international standards, a country or region is considered to be an "ageing society" when the number of people aged 60 or above reaches 10 per cent or more. China's old age population above 60 years will reach 255 million by 2020 putting heavy stress on geriatric care services, China's planning body said earlier. Bracing for the demographic crisis China last year relaxed the four decades old one child policy by permitting two children for couples. The ministry said China has 140,000 nursing homes holding a total of more than 7.3 million beds at the end of 2016, with a year-on-year increase of 20.7 per cent and 8.6 per cent respectively. However, there are only 31.6 beds for every 1,000 senior citizens. According to the report, China had about 460,000 orphans at the end of 2016, with 88,000 living in government-funded agencies, with the rest being cared for by relatives or private orphanages. Some 19,000 Chinese orphans were adopted by domestic or overseas families in 2016, the ministry said. By Associated Press TOKYO: Prime Minister Shinzo Abe reshuffled his Cabinet on Thursday, seeking to repair his tattered approval ratings by installing well-known moderates in key roles. Analysts say Abe appears to be putting a priority on economic reforms while toning down talk of amending the constitution and other controversial issues. "We will put the economy first," said former Foreign and Defense Minister Fumio Kishida, who left the Cabinet to become head of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party's Policy Research Council, which plays an influential role in drafting legislation. "I will take my job very seriously in order to tackle the challenges mounting in and outside of Japan," he said. Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga, a key power broker who retained his post, announced the new lineup. It's Abe's fourth since he took office in late 2012. The last Cabinet was appointed about a year ago. Public approval ratings for Abe and his Liberal Democratic Party have suffered after a spate of scandals over alleged cronyism and other abuses. While the party enjoys wide support and is seen as the only realistic option given the lack of a united, popular opposition, many Japanese object to the Liberal Democrats' tendency to force unpopular legislation through parliament. Koichi Nakano, an international politics professor at Sophia University in Tokyo who is often critical of the ruling party, said the lineup was "dull" and defensive in nature. "Abe's cornered and one of the main goals of the reshuffle was to remove problematic ministers, although Mr. Abe himself is the root of many problems," Nakano said. Experts said they expect work on Abe's pet conservative causes, such as strengthening the role of the military, would continue behind the scenes. The shake-up reflects Abe's recognition that despite the Liberal Democrats' overwhelming majority in parliament, his own once seemingly invincible position after more than four years in office may be imperiled. Sweeping reforms meant to rejuvenate the sluggish economy and cope with Japan's slow birthrate and aging, shrinking population have made little headway as Abe instead focused on other issues such as revising the pacifist constitution. In Japan, choice Cabinet positions tend to be distributed between factions that operate almost like political fiefdoms within the ruling party, and this time is no different. Of 19 Cabinet members, 14 were newly named. But many are party or Cabinet veterans, including Itsunori Onodera, a former defense minister who again was named to that post. Last week, Abe's protege Tomomi Inada stepped down as defense minister after the ministry was found to have covered up information about risks faced by Japanese peacekeeping troops in South Sudan. Onodera's expertise is viewed as an asset at a time of growing tensions over North Korea and its launches of intercontinental ballistic missiles. Abe also chose several popular lawmakers known to differ from him on key issues such as nuclear power. The new foreign minister, Taro Kono, 54, is known to be mildly liberal-leaning and has opposed nuclear energy, though he toned down his stance while serving as reform minister in an earlier Abe Cabinet. A politics graduate of Georgetown University, Kono is fluent in English. He is probably best known for being the son of Yohei Kono, a former speaker of the lower house who also served as foreign minister. Kono's predecessor Kishida opted out of this Cabinet and is widely thought to be aiming for a shot at becoming prime minister. So is Seiko Noda, who was named minister for internal affairs and communications and has served in several past Cabinets. Noda challenged Abe for leadership of the ruling party in 2015. Although a conservative, she's a strong advocate of economic and other reforms to counter Japan's falling birthrate and promote gender equality. Yoshimasa Hayashi, another fluent English speaker and former agriculture minister, was appointed to head the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology. He has headed several government agencies, including defense, farm and economic and fiscal policy. Former Justice Minister Yoko Kamikawa was re-appointed. Both Hayashi and Kamikawa hold master's degrees in public administration from the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. TOKYO: Prime Minister Shinzo Abe reshuffled his Cabinet on Thursday, seeking to repair his tattered approval ratings by installing well-known moderates in key roles. Analysts say Abe appears to be putting a priority on economic reforms while toning down talk of amending the constitution and other controversial issues. "We will put the economy first," said former Foreign and Defense Minister Fumio Kishida, who left the Cabinet to become head of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party's Policy Research Council, which plays an influential role in drafting legislation. "I will take my job very seriously in order to tackle the challenges mounting in and outside of Japan," he said. Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga, a key power broker who retained his post, announced the new lineup. It's Abe's fourth since he took office in late 2012. The last Cabinet was appointed about a year ago. Public approval ratings for Abe and his Liberal Democratic Party have suffered after a spate of scandals over alleged cronyism and other abuses. While the party enjoys wide support and is seen as the only realistic option given the lack of a united, popular opposition, many Japanese object to the Liberal Democrats' tendency to force unpopular legislation through parliament. Koichi Nakano, an international politics professor at Sophia University in Tokyo who is often critical of the ruling party, said the lineup was "dull" and defensive in nature. "Abe's cornered and one of the main goals of the reshuffle was to remove problematic ministers, although Mr. Abe himself is the root of many problems," Nakano said. Experts said they expect work on Abe's pet conservative causes, such as strengthening the role of the military, would continue behind the scenes. The shake-up reflects Abe's recognition that despite the Liberal Democrats' overwhelming majority in parliament, his own once seemingly invincible position after more than four years in office may be imperiled. Sweeping reforms meant to rejuvenate the sluggish economy and cope with Japan's slow birthrate and aging, shrinking population have made little headway as Abe instead focused on other issues such as revising the pacifist constitution. In Japan, choice Cabinet positions tend to be distributed between factions that operate almost like political fiefdoms within the ruling party, and this time is no different. Of 19 Cabinet members, 14 were newly named. But many are party or Cabinet veterans, including Itsunori Onodera, a former defense minister who again was named to that post. Last week, Abe's protege Tomomi Inada stepped down as defense minister after the ministry was found to have covered up information about risks faced by Japanese peacekeeping troops in South Sudan. Onodera's expertise is viewed as an asset at a time of growing tensions over North Korea and its launches of intercontinental ballistic missiles. Abe also chose several popular lawmakers known to differ from him on key issues such as nuclear power. The new foreign minister, Taro Kono, 54, is known to be mildly liberal-leaning and has opposed nuclear energy, though he toned down his stance while serving as reform minister in an earlier Abe Cabinet. A politics graduate of Georgetown University, Kono is fluent in English. He is probably best known for being the son of Yohei Kono, a former speaker of the lower house who also served as foreign minister. Kono's predecessor Kishida opted out of this Cabinet and is widely thought to be aiming for a shot at becoming prime minister. So is Seiko Noda, who was named minister for internal affairs and communications and has served in several past Cabinets. Noda challenged Abe for leadership of the ruling party in 2015. Although a conservative, she's a strong advocate of economic and other reforms to counter Japan's falling birthrate and promote gender equality. Yoshimasa Hayashi, another fluent English speaker and former agriculture minister, was appointed to head the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology. He has headed several government agencies, including defense, farm and economic and fiscal policy. Former Justice Minister Yoko Kamikawa was re-appointed. Both Hayashi and Kamikawa hold master's degrees in public administration from the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. By PTI ISLAMABAD: Pakistan's former dictator Pervez Musharraf, who faces treason charges, has defended the country's previous military rulers, saying they have always brought the nation "back on track", while civilian governments derailed it. Musharraf, who toppled the civilian government of Nawaz Sharif in 1999 in a military coup, also claimed that the India policy of the ousted prime minister in his third tenure was a "total sell out", but did not explain what he meant by it. He said this in an interview to BBC Urdu, which was recorded in Dubai, where the 73-year-old has been staying since he left Pakistan in March 2016. He faces several charges, including treason for abrogating the Constitution and declaring emergency in 2007. Musharraf has also been charged with involvement in the murder of two-time prime minister Benazir Bhutto in 2007. "Whoever works actively against the welfare of Pakistan is against the country and should be killed," he said in the interview. Musharraf, who served as Pakistan's president from 2001 to 2008, defended his "intervention" in 1999, saying he wanted to "save the nation". "The Constitution can be ignored if there is a need to save the nation," he said, without explaining the nature of the threat Pakistan faced at that time. He defended the military "takeovers" of the civilian governments in Pakistan, saying that real development occurred only during military regimes and accused the civil governments of reversing the progress achieved during military rules. "Military rule has always brought the country back on track, whereas civilian governments have always derailed it," he said. "Dictators set the country right, whereas civilian governments brought it to ruins." The powerful army, which enjoys considerable influence over policy decisions in Pakistan, has ruled the country for much of its life since it gained independence 70 years ago. Last week after Sharif was ousted as prime minister after a Supreme Court ruling in the Panama Papers scandal, Musharraf posted a video on the social media hailing the verdict as "historic". He was criticised for the hypocritical remarks. On his return to the country, he appeared confident that the Pakistan Army would stand by him. "I have served as the head of the Army and the Army will always protect my welfare." He also held former Prime Minister Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto responsible for breaking up of Pakistan in 1971. He defended Gen Ziaul Haq's Afghanistan policy but agreed some of Haq's polices resulted in creating extremism ISLAMABAD: Pakistan's former dictator Pervez Musharraf, who faces treason charges, has defended the country's previous military rulers, saying they have always brought the nation "back on track", while civilian governments derailed it. Musharraf, who toppled the civilian government of Nawaz Sharif in 1999 in a military coup, also claimed that the India policy of the ousted prime minister in his third tenure was a "total sell out", but did not explain what he meant by it. He said this in an interview to BBC Urdu, which was recorded in Dubai, where the 73-year-old has been staying since he left Pakistan in March 2016. He faces several charges, including treason for abrogating the Constitution and declaring emergency in 2007. Musharraf has also been charged with involvement in the murder of two-time prime minister Benazir Bhutto in 2007. "Whoever works actively against the welfare of Pakistan is against the country and should be killed," he said in the interview. Musharraf, who served as Pakistan's president from 2001 to 2008, defended his "intervention" in 1999, saying he wanted to "save the nation". "The Constitution can be ignored if there is a need to save the nation," he said, without explaining the nature of the threat Pakistan faced at that time. He defended the military "takeovers" of the civilian governments in Pakistan, saying that real development occurred only during military regimes and accused the civil governments of reversing the progress achieved during military rules. "Military rule has always brought the country back on track, whereas civilian governments have always derailed it," he said. "Dictators set the country right, whereas civilian governments brought it to ruins." The powerful army, which enjoys considerable influence over policy decisions in Pakistan, has ruled the country for much of its life since it gained independence 70 years ago. Last week after Sharif was ousted as prime minister after a Supreme Court ruling in the Panama Papers scandal, Musharraf posted a video on the social media hailing the verdict as "historic". He was criticised for the hypocritical remarks. On his return to the country, he appeared confident that the Pakistan Army would stand by him. "I have served as the head of the Army and the Army will always protect my welfare." He also held former Prime Minister Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto responsible for breaking up of Pakistan in 1971. He defended Gen Ziaul Haq's Afghanistan policy but agreed some of Haq's polices resulted in creating extremism By ANI BEIJING: In the wake of the recent nuclear provocations by the North Korean regime, Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte has described North Korean leader Kim Jong-un as a fool, just days before Manila hosts an international meeting most certain to address Pyongyangs long-range missile tests. This Kim Jong-un, a fool ... he is playing with dangerous toys, that fool, Duterte told tax officials in a speech, the South China Morning Post reports. That chubby face that looks kind. That son of a bitch. If he commits a mistake, the Far East will become an arid land. It must be stopped, this nuclear war. A limited confrontation and it blows up here, I will tell you, the fallout can deplete the soil, the resources and I dont know what will happen to us. This year, Duterte is chairman of the Association of South East Asian Nations (Asean). His foreign ministry will on the coming Monday host the Asean Regional Forum, which brings together 27 countries that include China, Australia, India, Japan, Russia, North and South Korea and the United States. Meanwhile, U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, who is due to attend the Manila meeting, has said he wanted dialogue with North Korea at some point, stressing it was not the enemy and the United States did not seek to topple the regime BEIJING: In the wake of the recent nuclear provocations by the North Korean regime, Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte has described North Korean leader Kim Jong-un as a fool, just days before Manila hosts an international meeting most certain to address Pyongyangs long-range missile tests. This Kim Jong-un, a fool ... he is playing with dangerous toys, that fool, Duterte told tax officials in a speech, the South China Morning Post reports. That chubby face that looks kind. That son of a bitch. If he commits a mistake, the Far East will become an arid land. It must be stopped, this nuclear war. A limited confrontation and it blows up here, I will tell you, the fallout can deplete the soil, the resources and I dont know what will happen to us. This year, Duterte is chairman of the Association of South East Asian Nations (Asean). His foreign ministry will on the coming Monday host the Asean Regional Forum, which brings together 27 countries that include China, Australia, India, Japan, Russia, North and South Korea and the United States. Meanwhile, U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, who is due to attend the Manila meeting, has said he wanted dialogue with North Korea at some point, stressing it was not the enemy and the United States did not seek to topple the regime By Associated Press SYDNEY: Two men were charged with terrorism offenses in Australia on Thursday in connection with an alleged plot to bring down an airplane, police said. The men, ages 49 and 32, were each charged with two counts of planning a terrorist act, Australian Federal Police said in a statement. They were among four men arrested during a series of raids in Sydney on Saturday in connection with what authorities described as a credible threat to bring down a plane. A third man remains in custody but has not yet been charged, while the fourth man was released without charge on Tuesday. Officials have provided few details of the alleged plot, including the precise nature of the threat or any airlines involved. On Tuesday, the United Arab Emirates' national airline, Etihad Airways, said it was working with Australian police in the investigation, suggesting one of its planes may have been targeted. Etihad refused to confirm, however, if it had been a target. Earlier Thursday, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said there was no longer any threat to Australia's aviation industry from the alleged plot. Turnbull said the country's intelligence agency is restoring the aviation threat level to what it was before the men were arrested. "The threat to aviation from the plot that was uncovered to bring down a plane has been disrupted and contained," Turnbull told reporters in Perth. Security was increased at all major Australian international and domestic terminals following the arrests, leading to massive lines and delays for travelers. On Thursday, Turnbull said while enhanced security measures will continue, they will be modified to reduce delays. He declined to offer any details on what changes will be made. Passengers this week were urged to arrive at airports an hour earlier than they normally would, but Turnbull said he expected the suggested arrival times to return to normal within the next day. SYDNEY: Two men were charged with terrorism offenses in Australia on Thursday in connection with an alleged plot to bring down an airplane, police said. The men, ages 49 and 32, were each charged with two counts of planning a terrorist act, Australian Federal Police said in a statement. They were among four men arrested during a series of raids in Sydney on Saturday in connection with what authorities described as a credible threat to bring down a plane. A third man remains in custody but has not yet been charged, while the fourth man was released without charge on Tuesday. Officials have provided few details of the alleged plot, including the precise nature of the threat or any airlines involved. On Tuesday, the United Arab Emirates' national airline, Etihad Airways, said it was working with Australian police in the investigation, suggesting one of its planes may have been targeted. Etihad refused to confirm, however, if it had been a target. Earlier Thursday, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said there was no longer any threat to Australia's aviation industry from the alleged plot. Turnbull said the country's intelligence agency is restoring the aviation threat level to what it was before the men were arrested. "The threat to aviation from the plot that was uncovered to bring down a plane has been disrupted and contained," Turnbull told reporters in Perth. Security was increased at all major Australian international and domestic terminals following the arrests, leading to massive lines and delays for travelers. On Thursday, Turnbull said while enhanced security measures will continue, they will be modified to reduce delays. He declined to offer any details on what changes will be made. Passengers this week were urged to arrive at airports an hour earlier than they normally would, but Turnbull said he expected the suggested arrival times to return to normal within the next day. By AFP TEHRAN: Iran's President Hassan Rouhani vowed to continue his efforts to end the country's isolation as he was sworn in for a second term on Thursday by supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamanei. "We will never accept isolation," Rouhani told a packed audience of Iranian political and military officials in Tehran. "The nuclear deal is a sign of Iran's goodwill on the international stage," he said, referring to the 2015 agreement with world powers to curb its atomic programme in exchange for an easing of sanctions. However, his inauguration came less than 24 hours after fresh sanctions were imposed by US President Donald Trump, who has threatened to tear up the nuclear deal entirely. Rouhani, a 68-year-old moderate who has faced fierce criticism from conservatives for his efforts to rebuild ties with the West, issued a call for unity. "I declare once again that with the election concluded, the time for unity and cooperation has begun," he said. "I extend my hand to all those who seek the greatness of the country." Among those in attendance at the ceremony was hardline former president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who fell out of favour with the establishment and was sensationally barred from standing as a candidate this year. Khamenei applauded the high turnout and "enthusiastic participation" in the May election as "signs of the success of the Islamic regime in reinforcing the republican and popular character of the revolutionary regime." He called on Rouhani to emphasise the "resistance economy" focused on increased employment and national production at a time when the official jobless rate has reached 12.6 percent. TEHRAN: Iran's President Hassan Rouhani vowed to continue his efforts to end the country's isolation as he was sworn in for a second term on Thursday by supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamanei. "We will never accept isolation," Rouhani told a packed audience of Iranian political and military officials in Tehran. "The nuclear deal is a sign of Iran's goodwill on the international stage," he said, referring to the 2015 agreement with world powers to curb its atomic programme in exchange for an easing of sanctions. However, his inauguration came less than 24 hours after fresh sanctions were imposed by US President Donald Trump, who has threatened to tear up the nuclear deal entirely. Rouhani, a 68-year-old moderate who has faced fierce criticism from conservatives for his efforts to rebuild ties with the West, issued a call for unity. "I declare once again that with the election concluded, the time for unity and cooperation has begun," he said. "I extend my hand to all those who seek the greatness of the country." Among those in attendance at the ceremony was hardline former president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who fell out of favour with the establishment and was sensationally barred from standing as a candidate this year. Khamenei applauded the high turnout and "enthusiastic participation" in the May election as "signs of the success of the Islamic regime in reinforcing the republican and popular character of the revolutionary regime." He called on Rouhani to emphasise the "resistance economy" focused on increased employment and national production at a time when the official jobless rate has reached 12.6 percent. By AFP JOHANNESBURG: A South African man snatched from his hotel and held hostage by Al-Qaeda in Mali since 2011 has been freed unscathed, his country's foreign ministry said on Thursday. Stephen McGown, 42, was grabbed in the historic trading city of Timbuktu in Mali's north along with Swede Johan Gustafsson and Dutchman Sjaak Rijke, both of whom were subsequently released. McGown has returned to South Africa and been reunited with his family, foreign ministry official Clayson Monyela told AFP. "It was a big surprise when he walked through the door -- when I gave him a hug, he was as sound and as strong as before, so he was obviously well treated up there," Stephen's father Malcolm told reporters in Pretoria, though Stephen himself did not attend the press briefing. State Security Minister David Mahlobo insisted that no ransom was paid to secure McGown's release which was completed on July 29. "We were able to actually release him without any conditions," Mahlobo told the joint press conference. "Through our shrewd engagement supported by the African Union... Stephen is back at home. "The relationship between the two presidents of the countries has been very important." As for the other former hostages, Gustafsson was released in June while Rijke was freed in April 2015 by French special forces. Rijke's wife escaped during the jihadist assault on the popular tourist hotel, but a German who tried to resist the abduction was killed. Al-Qaeda's North African affiliate Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) had claimed responsibility for the kidnappings of the three men. "We give him a warm welcome back home particularly that he lands home with a mother who has passed on during his incarceration," said Foreign Minister Maite Nkoana-Mashabane. "He was just a tourist in Timbuktu. We are happy that he is a free man." 'Your hair has grown' McGown's mother Beverly died in May after battling a long illness. "It's just unfortunate that Stephen's mum isn't here," said McGown's wife Catherine at the press conference. "It didn't quite work out the way we wanted, but we say to Stephen... 'you are strong and you've got to do what you need too'. He'll pick himself up in a little while and return to normal life," added Malcolm McGown. Imtiaz Sooliman, chairman of the Gift of the Givers charity which was previously involved in negotiating for McGown's release, said at the time of his mother's death that Stephen's absence was beginning to "take its toll". "We had seen the sadness in the mother's eye and watched how she patiently waited in dignified pain for the return of her son. We failed her -- my heart bleeds for her," Sooliman told local media in May. Gift of the Givers reportedly dispatched a hostage negotiator to Mali in July 2015 to push for McGown's release but was forced to give up in May this year after hitting a "dead end". Catherine said that on being reunited, Stephen "looked at me and said 'Your hair has grown', and I said, 'Well actually your hair is longer than mine'." He is now undergoing medical checks. Undated video released by Islamic extremists of South African Stephen McGown (AP) AQIM was one of several jihadist groups that took control of Mali's north in 2012 before being ousted by a French-led military operation launched in January 2013. The group had released several videos of McGown and Gustafsson over the years, but little was known about the kidnappers' demands. JOHANNESBURG: A South African man snatched from his hotel and held hostage by Al-Qaeda in Mali since 2011 has been freed unscathed, his country's foreign ministry said on Thursday. Stephen McGown, 42, was grabbed in the historic trading city of Timbuktu in Mali's north along with Swede Johan Gustafsson and Dutchman Sjaak Rijke, both of whom were subsequently released. McGown has returned to South Africa and been reunited with his family, foreign ministry official Clayson Monyela told AFP. "It was a big surprise when he walked through the door -- when I gave him a hug, he was as sound and as strong as before, so he was obviously well treated up there," Stephen's father Malcolm told reporters in Pretoria, though Stephen himself did not attend the press briefing. State Security Minister David Mahlobo insisted that no ransom was paid to secure McGown's release which was completed on July 29. "We were able to actually release him without any conditions," Mahlobo told the joint press conference. "Through our shrewd engagement supported by the African Union... Stephen is back at home. "The relationship between the two presidents of the countries has been very important." As for the other former hostages, Gustafsson was released in June while Rijke was freed in April 2015 by French special forces. Rijke's wife escaped during the jihadist assault on the popular tourist hotel, but a German who tried to resist the abduction was killed. Al-Qaeda's North African affiliate Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) had claimed responsibility for the kidnappings of the three men. "We give him a warm welcome back home particularly that he lands home with a mother who has passed on during his incarceration," said Foreign Minister Maite Nkoana-Mashabane. "He was just a tourist in Timbuktu. We are happy that he is a free man." 'Your hair has grown' McGown's mother Beverly died in May after battling a long illness. "It's just unfortunate that Stephen's mum isn't here," said McGown's wife Catherine at the press conference. "It didn't quite work out the way we wanted, but we say to Stephen... 'you are strong and you've got to do what you need too'. He'll pick himself up in a little while and return to normal life," added Malcolm McGown. Imtiaz Sooliman, chairman of the Gift of the Givers charity which was previously involved in negotiating for McGown's release, said at the time of his mother's death that Stephen's absence was beginning to "take its toll". "We had seen the sadness in the mother's eye and watched how she patiently waited in dignified pain for the return of her son. We failed her -- my heart bleeds for her," Sooliman told local media in May. Gift of the Givers reportedly dispatched a hostage negotiator to Mali in July 2015 to push for McGown's release but was forced to give up in May this year after hitting a "dead end". Catherine said that on being reunited, Stephen "looked at me and said 'Your hair has grown', and I said, 'Well actually your hair is longer than mine'." He is now undergoing medical checks. Undated video released by Islamic extremists of South African Stephen McGown (AP)AQIM was one of several jihadist groups that took control of Mali's north in 2012 before being ousted by a French-led military operation launched in January 2013. The group had released several videos of McGown and Gustafsson over the years, but little was known about the kidnappers' demands. By AFP SEOUL: South Korean prosecutors opened a criminal investigation into multi-award-winning filmmaker Kim Ki-Duk on Thursday amid allegations that he hit an actress while shooting a movie, a spokesman said. Kim's glittering career prizes include the Golden Lion for best film at the 2012 Venice Film Festival for "Pieta", the same year he took Berlin's Silver Bear for "Samaritan Girl". According to the South's Yonhap news agency, an actress whose identity is being withheld filed a complaint with prosecutors accusing Kim of slapping her in the face on the set of his 2013 film "Moebius", insulting her and forcing her into a nude scene. She subsequently quit the movie, a thriller themed around incest, and her role was taken over by another actress. "A criminal complaint has been filed against director Kim Ki-Duk and prosecutors have opened a probe into the case", the Seoul Central District Prosecutors' Office spokesman told AFP. He declined to elaborate, citing privacy. Kim's agents denied the allegations as groundless, adding they would issue a detailed comment later. "Moebius" was intially banned from being screened in South Korea on grounds of obscenity before being allowed to be released after some controversial scenes were removed. It was screened out of the competition at the 70th Venice Film Festival. SEOUL: South Korean prosecutors opened a criminal investigation into multi-award-winning filmmaker Kim Ki-Duk on Thursday amid allegations that he hit an actress while shooting a movie, a spokesman said. Kim's glittering career prizes include the Golden Lion for best film at the 2012 Venice Film Festival for "Pieta", the same year he took Berlin's Silver Bear for "Samaritan Girl". According to the South's Yonhap news agency, an actress whose identity is being withheld filed a complaint with prosecutors accusing Kim of slapping her in the face on the set of his 2013 film "Moebius", insulting her and forcing her into a nude scene. She subsequently quit the movie, a thriller themed around incest, and her role was taken over by another actress. "A criminal complaint has been filed against director Kim Ki-Duk and prosecutors have opened a probe into the case", the Seoul Central District Prosecutors' Office spokesman told AFP. He declined to elaborate, citing privacy. Kim's agents denied the allegations as groundless, adding they would issue a detailed comment later. "Moebius" was intially banned from being screened in South Korea on grounds of obscenity before being allowed to be released after some controversial scenes were removed. It was screened out of the competition at the 70th Venice Film Festival. By AFP MOSCOW: Syrian regime forces and "moderate" rebels will cease fire in northern parts of Homs province on Thursday after Russia struck a deal with the opposition on implementing a third safe zone, Moscow said. "From 1200 local time (0900 GMT), units of the moderate opposition and government forces will completely stop firing," defence ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov said in a statement. Konashenkov said Moscow and Syrian opposition groups had reached an agreement on the "operational details" of a "de-escalation zone" north of the city of Homs at talks in Cairo on July 31. The zone is the third to be established in Syria under a Russian-led initiative aimed at halting fighting in four areas between President Bashar al-Assad's forces and rebels. It covers 84 towns and villages with a total population of 147,000 people, Moscow said. Russia has been behind a push to pacify Syria since the start of this year after tipping the six-year conflict in favour of Assad with its game-changing military intervention in 2015. Konashenkov said Russian military police will set up two checkpoints and three observation posts on Friday along the boundaries of the zone dividing the two forces. Rebels had agreed to "unblock" part of a road running through the safe zone between the cities of Homs and Hama and a "Committee for National Justice" made up of rebels and local groups would help oversee the implementation of the plan, he said. Idlib zone unresolved The northern parts of Homs province were recently being shelled by regime forces and hit by intermittent air strikes. Towns in the area were among the first to fall to Assad's opponents in 2012 after a revolt against his rule. They have remained outside the hands of jihadist groups including the Islamic State (IS), which do not fall under the Russian deal. Russia last month struck a deal with the United States and Jordan for a ceasefire in another southern zone, where Moscow has now deployed its military police. Under a second agreement sealed with rebels in July Russian forces also set up two checkpoints and four observation posts in an area covering conflict-ravaged Eastern Ghouta near Damascus. Under a plan hammered out between Russia, Turkey and Iran at peace talks in Kazakhstan one more safe zone is supposed to be established in the northwestern Idlib region. However, negotiations on that zone have been complicated by conflicting interests between the international powers. .Moscow has been flying a bombing campaign to support regime forces, while Assad's international opponents have been striking IS from the air as part of a US-led coalition. Russia is planning a fresh round of talks in the Kazakh capital of Astana in late August to thrash out more details on its peace plan. MOSCOW: Syrian regime forces and "moderate" rebels will cease fire in northern parts of Homs province on Thursday after Russia struck a deal with the opposition on implementing a third safe zone, Moscow said. "From 1200 local time (0900 GMT), units of the moderate opposition and government forces will completely stop firing," defence ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov said in a statement. Konashenkov said Moscow and Syrian opposition groups had reached an agreement on the "operational details" of a "de-escalation zone" north of the city of Homs at talks in Cairo on July 31. The zone is the third to be established in Syria under a Russian-led initiative aimed at halting fighting in four areas between President Bashar al-Assad's forces and rebels. It covers 84 towns and villages with a total population of 147,000 people, Moscow said. Russia has been behind a push to pacify Syria since the start of this year after tipping the six-year conflict in favour of Assad with its game-changing military intervention in 2015. Konashenkov said Russian military police will set up two checkpoints and three observation posts on Friday along the boundaries of the zone dividing the two forces. Rebels had agreed to "unblock" part of a road running through the safe zone between the cities of Homs and Hama and a "Committee for National Justice" made up of rebels and local groups would help oversee the implementation of the plan, he said. Idlib zone unresolved The northern parts of Homs province were recently being shelled by regime forces and hit by intermittent air strikes. Towns in the area were among the first to fall to Assad's opponents in 2012 after a revolt against his rule. They have remained outside the hands of jihadist groups including the Islamic State (IS), which do not fall under the Russian deal. Russia last month struck a deal with the United States and Jordan for a ceasefire in another southern zone, where Moscow has now deployed its military police. Under a second agreement sealed with rebels in July Russian forces also set up two checkpoints and four observation posts in an area covering conflict-ravaged Eastern Ghouta near Damascus. Under a plan hammered out between Russia, Turkey and Iran at peace talks in Kazakhstan one more safe zone is supposed to be established in the northwestern Idlib region. However, negotiations on that zone have been complicated by conflicting interests between the international powers. .Moscow has been flying a bombing campaign to support regime forces, while Assad's international opponents have been striking IS from the air as part of a US-led coalition. Russia is planning a fresh round of talks in the Kazakh capital of Astana in late August to thrash out more details on its peace plan. By Associated Press UNITED NATIONS: The UN Security Council has unanimously adopted a resolution urging all countries to eliminate the supply of weapons to the Islamic State extremist group and other "terrorists" including by taking legal action against suppliers and marking arms to improve their traceability. The resolution, sponsored by Egypt, strongly condemns the continuing flow of weapons, military equipment, drones and improvised explosive devices to IS, al-Qaida and their affiliates as well as illegal armed groups and criminals. "This is one of the first resolutions aiming to prevent terrorists from acquiring weapons," Egypt's UN Ambassador Amr Abdellatif Aboulatta, the current Security Council president, said after the vote yesterday. "Arming of terrorists and terrorist groups ... is a crime that is no less heinous than the terrorist act itself." The resolution reaffirms the commitment of all states to preventing weapons from reaching "terrorists." It urges the UN's 193 member states "to prevent and disrupt procurement networks for such weapons." It also urges all countries "to act cooperatively to prevent terrorists from acquiring weapons" including via the internet or social networks. Yury Fedotov, executive director of the Vienna-based UN Office on Drugs and Crime, told the council by video link that "terrorists obtain weapons by many means, in all parts of the world, facilitated by access to poorly secured stockpiles, weak border management, the use of online platforms including hidden marketplaces, and diversion linked to poor transfer controls." Fedotov stressed the complex challenges to keep weapons from falling into the hands of terrorists, citing "inadequate regulatory environments and data collection, lack of specialised skills and equipment, and lack of coordination within and between countries and regions." Interpol Special Representative Emmanuel Roux told the council that although the use of weapons by terrorists isn't new "today's threat landscape is one of unprecedented complexity." "Convergence is the key word: between organised crime and terrorism; between old and new technologies; between military and law enforcement efforts," he said. Roux said Interpol is seeing firearms used in conflict zones reappearing on streets of major cities, commercial products that are legal turned into improvised explosive devices, and guns manufactured decades ago for sale on the dark web. In parallel, he said foreigners who fight for terrorist groups may be exploiting their knowledge from the battlefield, the organised crime contacts and supply chains they used previously, "and technology allowing the creation of modular firearms and 3D printing, to access and use weapons." Roux said there are many "crucial actions" the international community can undertake including standardising end-user export controls, securely managing stockpiles, and strengthening and implementing strong national legislation. Jehangir Khan, acting head of the new UN Office of Counter-Terrorism, said the diversion of weapons from government stockpiles, through theft or capturing depots, is an important source of arms for terrorist groups and others. And he said the illicit online weapons trade on the dark web is "particularly worrisome." US Ambassador Nikki Haley accused Iran of deliberately and systematically contributing "weapons, training and funding for terrorist groups" in violation of its international obligations. "Terrorist proxies are doing the Iranian regime's will in Iraq and in Syria," she said. "Iran also supports Hamas and Bahraini terrorist groups. Through its partner Hezbollah, Iran is engaged in preparing for war in Lebanon. It is building an arsenal of weapons and battle-hardened troops." UNITED NATIONS: The UN Security Council has unanimously adopted a resolution urging all countries to eliminate the supply of weapons to the Islamic State extremist group and other "terrorists" including by taking legal action against suppliers and marking arms to improve their traceability. The resolution, sponsored by Egypt, strongly condemns the continuing flow of weapons, military equipment, drones and improvised explosive devices to IS, al-Qaida and their affiliates as well as illegal armed groups and criminals. "This is one of the first resolutions aiming to prevent terrorists from acquiring weapons," Egypt's UN Ambassador Amr Abdellatif Aboulatta, the current Security Council president, said after the vote yesterday. "Arming of terrorists and terrorist groups ... is a crime that is no less heinous than the terrorist act itself." The resolution reaffirms the commitment of all states to preventing weapons from reaching "terrorists." It urges the UN's 193 member states "to prevent and disrupt procurement networks for such weapons." It also urges all countries "to act cooperatively to prevent terrorists from acquiring weapons" including via the internet or social networks. Yury Fedotov, executive director of the Vienna-based UN Office on Drugs and Crime, told the council by video link that "terrorists obtain weapons by many means, in all parts of the world, facilitated by access to poorly secured stockpiles, weak border management, the use of online platforms including hidden marketplaces, and diversion linked to poor transfer controls." Fedotov stressed the complex challenges to keep weapons from falling into the hands of terrorists, citing "inadequate regulatory environments and data collection, lack of specialised skills and equipment, and lack of coordination within and between countries and regions." Interpol Special Representative Emmanuel Roux told the council that although the use of weapons by terrorists isn't new "today's threat landscape is one of unprecedented complexity." "Convergence is the key word: between organised crime and terrorism; between old and new technologies; between military and law enforcement efforts," he said. Roux said Interpol is seeing firearms used in conflict zones reappearing on streets of major cities, commercial products that are legal turned into improvised explosive devices, and guns manufactured decades ago for sale on the dark web. In parallel, he said foreigners who fight for terrorist groups may be exploiting their knowledge from the battlefield, the organised crime contacts and supply chains they used previously, "and technology allowing the creation of modular firearms and 3D printing, to access and use weapons." Roux said there are many "crucial actions" the international community can undertake including standardising end-user export controls, securely managing stockpiles, and strengthening and implementing strong national legislation. Jehangir Khan, acting head of the new UN Office of Counter-Terrorism, said the diversion of weapons from government stockpiles, through theft or capturing depots, is an important source of arms for terrorist groups and others. And he said the illicit online weapons trade on the dark web is "particularly worrisome." US Ambassador Nikki Haley accused Iran of deliberately and systematically contributing "weapons, training and funding for terrorist groups" in violation of its international obligations. "Terrorist proxies are doing the Iranian regime's will in Iraq and in Syria," she said. "Iran also supports Hamas and Bahraini terrorist groups. Through its partner Hezbollah, Iran is engaged in preparing for war in Lebanon. It is building an arsenal of weapons and battle-hardened troops." By AFP CARACAS: Facing blistering condemnation at home and abroad, Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro denied Wednesday that the vote for a powerful new assembly was rigged, calling the accusation a "reaction by the international enemy." Maduro faces mounting accusations of trampling on democracy in Venezuela with Sunday's controversial election for an all-powerful "Constituent Assembly" -- most recently by the British technology firm contracted to handle the vote. The firm, Smartmatic, said in a London news conference that the official figures from the election were "tampered with" to make turnout appear greater than it was. The embattled leftist leader rejected the charge. "Nothing can stain this process, because it's transparent," he said at a ceremony for allies elected to the new assembly, vowing electoral authorities would carry out a "100 percent audit." The electoral authority itself -- criticized as a Maduro mouthpiece -- denied the vote-tampering allegation as "an irresponsible contention based on estimates with no grounding in the data." The new 545-member body -- whose members include Maduro's wife and son -- will have sweeping powers to dissolve the opposition-majority congress, pass laws and write a new constitution. Despite months of violent protests and international condemnation, Maduro insists it is the solution to a drawn-out economic and political crisis gripping Venezuela. The assembly was originally due to start work Thursday, but Maduro postponed the launch to Friday in the face of opposition plans for massive protests. "It has been proposed that the installation of the National Constituent Assembly, instead of being held tomorrow, be organized in peace and calm, with all necessary protocol, on Friday at 11:00 am (1500 GMT)," he said. He said the reason for the delay was that 35 newly elected members had not yet been officially declared by electoral authorities. Venezuela has been rocked by four months of clashes at anti-Maduro protests that have left more than 125 people dead. Sunday's vote brought the crisis to a boiling point, drawing international condemnation. The United States imposed direct sanctions on Maduro, calling him a "dictator," while the European Union joined the US, Mexico, Colombia and Argentina in saying it would not recognize the new assembly. - 'At least one million votes' - Smartmatic chief executive Antonio Mugica said the evidence of vote-tampering was glaring. "Based on the robustness of our system, we know, without any doubt, that the turnout... was manipulated," he said. "We estimate the difference between the actual participation and the one announced by authorities is at least one million votes." Venezuela's pro-government electoral authority had claimed more than eight million voters took part -- 40 percent of the electorate. The opposition says turnout was closer to 3.5 million, mostly state employees fearful for their jobs. Significantly, the opposition had held an unofficial referendum on July 16 in which it said 7.6 million Venezuelans voted against the new assembly -- just under the level of support the government claimed on Sunday. National Assembly leader Julio Borges called the accusation of polling manipulation "an earthquake on a global scale." According to polling firm Datanalisis, more than 70 percent of Venezuelans oppose the new assembly. Because of an opposition boycott, it was a foregone conclusion that followers and allies of Maduro's Socialist Party would fill all the Constituent Assembly posts. So the turnout figure was the key gauge of public support. - Security state - Maduro moved swiftly to consolidate his authority after the election. Two prominent opposition leaders were hustled off to jail in the middle of the night by armed members of the Venezuelan intelligence services. Security forces and pro-government motorbike gangs actively stamped out public signs of dissent. The opposition lawmakers in the National Assembly said Tuesday they will not recognize "the fraudulent and illegitimate" Constituent Assembly. But Delcy Rodriguez, a former foreign minister who is now part of the new body, said the Constituent Assembly will kick the lawmakers out of the legislative palace, take it over and "never leave." UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres urged Maduro's administration to "lower tensions" and "find avenues for political dialogue." EU diplomatic chief Federica Mogherini said Wednesday the bloc was "ready to gradually step up" action on Venezuela if the situation deteriorates further. Some EU nations and officials were urging sanctions, but that step had not yet been taken. Faced with mounting international outcry, Maduro named a new foreign minister to fill the newly elected Rodriguez's shoes: Jorge Arreaza, a former vice president who is married to the eldest daughter of firebrand president Hugo Chavez, Maduro's late mentor. CARACAS: Facing blistering condemnation at home and abroad, Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro denied Wednesday that the vote for a powerful new assembly was rigged, calling the accusation a "reaction by the international enemy." Maduro faces mounting accusations of trampling on democracy in Venezuela with Sunday's controversial election for an all-powerful "Constituent Assembly" -- most recently by the British technology firm contracted to handle the vote. The firm, Smartmatic, said in a London news conference that the official figures from the election were "tampered with" to make turnout appear greater than it was. The embattled leftist leader rejected the charge. "Nothing can stain this process, because it's transparent," he said at a ceremony for allies elected to the new assembly, vowing electoral authorities would carry out a "100 percent audit." The electoral authority itself -- criticized as a Maduro mouthpiece -- denied the vote-tampering allegation as "an irresponsible contention based on estimates with no grounding in the data." The new 545-member body -- whose members include Maduro's wife and son -- will have sweeping powers to dissolve the opposition-majority congress, pass laws and write a new constitution. Despite months of violent protests and international condemnation, Maduro insists it is the solution to a drawn-out economic and political crisis gripping Venezuela. The assembly was originally due to start work Thursday, but Maduro postponed the launch to Friday in the face of opposition plans for massive protests. "It has been proposed that the installation of the National Constituent Assembly, instead of being held tomorrow, be organized in peace and calm, with all necessary protocol, on Friday at 11:00 am (1500 GMT)," he said. He said the reason for the delay was that 35 newly elected members had not yet been officially declared by electoral authorities. Venezuela has been rocked by four months of clashes at anti-Maduro protests that have left more than 125 people dead. Sunday's vote brought the crisis to a boiling point, drawing international condemnation. The United States imposed direct sanctions on Maduro, calling him a "dictator," while the European Union joined the US, Mexico, Colombia and Argentina in saying it would not recognize the new assembly. - 'At least one million votes' - Smartmatic chief executive Antonio Mugica said the evidence of vote-tampering was glaring. "Based on the robustness of our system, we know, without any doubt, that the turnout... was manipulated," he said. "We estimate the difference between the actual participation and the one announced by authorities is at least one million votes." Venezuela's pro-government electoral authority had claimed more than eight million voters took part -- 40 percent of the electorate. The opposition says turnout was closer to 3.5 million, mostly state employees fearful for their jobs. Significantly, the opposition had held an unofficial referendum on July 16 in which it said 7.6 million Venezuelans voted against the new assembly -- just under the level of support the government claimed on Sunday. National Assembly leader Julio Borges called the accusation of polling manipulation "an earthquake on a global scale." According to polling firm Datanalisis, more than 70 percent of Venezuelans oppose the new assembly. Because of an opposition boycott, it was a foregone conclusion that followers and allies of Maduro's Socialist Party would fill all the Constituent Assembly posts. So the turnout figure was the key gauge of public support. - Security state - Maduro moved swiftly to consolidate his authority after the election. Two prominent opposition leaders were hustled off to jail in the middle of the night by armed members of the Venezuelan intelligence services. Security forces and pro-government motorbike gangs actively stamped out public signs of dissent. The opposition lawmakers in the National Assembly said Tuesday they will not recognize "the fraudulent and illegitimate" Constituent Assembly. But Delcy Rodriguez, a former foreign minister who is now part of the new body, said the Constituent Assembly will kick the lawmakers out of the legislative palace, take it over and "never leave." UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres urged Maduro's administration to "lower tensions" and "find avenues for political dialogue." EU diplomatic chief Federica Mogherini said Wednesday the bloc was "ready to gradually step up" action on Venezuela if the situation deteriorates further. Some EU nations and officials were urging sanctions, but that step had not yet been taken. Faced with mounting international outcry, Maduro named a new foreign minister to fill the newly elected Rodriguez's shoes: Jorge Arreaza, a former vice president who is married to the eldest daughter of firebrand president Hugo Chavez, Maduro's late mentor. By Associated Press JERUSALEM: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is suspected of crimes involving fraud, breach of trust and bribes in two corruption cases, Israeli police revealed on Thursday. Police have been questioning Netanyahu for months over the cases but have released few details. It released a gag order Thursday night on reporting the details of talks that are underway to enlist a state witness. The document says the cases involving Netanyahu deal with "a suspicion of committing crimes of bribery, fraud and breach of trust." Netanyahu's office has repeatedly denied wrongdoing over the investigations, portraying the accusations as a witch hunt against him and his family by a hostile media opposed to his hard-line political views. A statement from his office Thursday night said, "We completely reject the unfounded claims against the prime minister." It said the allegations are part of a campaign to "replace the government" and "there will be nothing, because there was nothing." One investigation, dubbed "File 1000," reportedly concerns claims that Netanyahu improperly accepted lavish gifts from wealthy supporters, including Australian billionaire James Packer and Hollywood producer Arnon Milchan. The second investigation, "File 2000," reportedly concerns Netanyahu's alleged attempts to strike a deal with publisher Arnon Mozes of the Yediot Ahronot newspaper group to promote legislation to weaken Yediot's main competitor in exchange for more favourable coverage of him by Yediot. Netanyahu, who took office in 2009, has long had an image as a cigar-smoking, cognac-drinking socialite, while his wife, Sara, has been accused of abusive behavior toward staff. Opponents have portrayed both as being out of touch with the struggles of average Israelis. JERUSALEM: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is suspected of crimes involving fraud, breach of trust and bribes in two corruption cases, Israeli police revealed on Thursday. Police have been questioning Netanyahu for months over the cases but have released few details. It released a gag order Thursday night on reporting the details of talks that are underway to enlist a state witness. The document says the cases involving Netanyahu deal with "a suspicion of committing crimes of bribery, fraud and breach of trust." Netanyahu's office has repeatedly denied wrongdoing over the investigations, portraying the accusations as a witch hunt against him and his family by a hostile media opposed to his hard-line political views. A statement from his office Thursday night said, "We completely reject the unfounded claims against the prime minister." It said the allegations are part of a campaign to "replace the government" and "there will be nothing, because there was nothing." One investigation, dubbed "File 1000," reportedly concerns claims that Netanyahu improperly accepted lavish gifts from wealthy supporters, including Australian billionaire James Packer and Hollywood producer Arnon Milchan. The second investigation, "File 2000," reportedly concerns Netanyahu's alleged attempts to strike a deal with publisher Arnon Mozes of the Yediot Ahronot newspaper group to promote legislation to weaken Yediot's main competitor in exchange for more favourable coverage of him by Yediot. Netanyahu, who took office in 2009, has long had an image as a cigar-smoking, cognac-drinking socialite, while his wife, Sara, has been accused of abusive behavior toward staff. Opponents have portrayed both as being out of touch with the struggles of average Israelis. Champaign, IL (61820) Today Snow showers this evening. Becoming clear later. Low 23F. Winds WNW at 10 to 20 mph. Chance of snow 50%.. Tonight Snow showers this evening. Becoming clear later. Low 23F. Winds WNW at 10 to 20 mph. Chance of snow 50%. Bill Daitchman got some bad news this week: His insurer is breaking up with him. Daitchman and his wife, who own a graphic design business in Santa Cruz County, each pays $350 a month for a health insurance plan from Anthem Blue Cross on the Covered California exchange. But Anthem announced Tuesday it's pulling out of most of the state's individual markets, citing the uncertainty swirling around the Affordable Care Act. And that vexes Daitchman, 59. First, there's the possibility that a new insurer will charge more for coverage. Second, he has kidney disease. Will he lose the doctors who know him and his needs? He's especially reliant on the nephrologist he's seen since 2006. "Invariably when you lose policies, you lose those relationships," said Daitchman. "You get what's available at that point. You get the doctors they offer." Bill Daitchman buys health insurance for about $350 a month from Anthem Blue Cross on the Covered California exchange. (Courtesy of Bill Daitchman) The move by Anthem, the nation's second-largest health insurer, means about 153,000 Californians like Daitchman, who buy insurance on the California exchange, must look for new plans for 2018. That's more than 10 percent of Covered California's total enrollment of 1.4 million. Fewer than half of Anthem policyholders on the exchange about 108,000 customers in the California marketplace will still be able to renew their Anthem policies. Anthem has been making similar moves in other states, citing changing federal rules, a shrinking market for individual insurance and an overall lack of marketplace predictability. The company has already announced it will exit the ACA exchanges next year in Ohio, Indiana and Wisconsin, three of the 14 states where it sells exchange plans. The insurer also plans to reduce its exchange presence in Nevada. In California, the insurer's decision marks a significant turnabout. Anthem led the state exchange in enrollment during its first two years, starting in 2014 with 30 percent of enrollees. Now its share of the market has dwindled to 19 percent, state officials said Tuesday, and that could plummet to single digits next year as exchange policies are canceled. Anthem had long sold policies across the state, from large markets such as Los Angeles to rural mountainous counties like Inyo and Mono, which often had few insurers to choose from. But next year Anthem will sell to individuals only in about half of California's counties, including Santa Clara, San Joaquin, Stanislaus, Merced, Tulare, and most of the region north of Sacramento up to the Oregon border. Many of these markets are the least populous, limiting the insurer's financial risk. "This was not an easy decision for us," Brian Ternan, president of Anthem Blue Cross in California, said in a message posted online. "The market for these plans has become unstable," Ternan wrote. "And with federal rules and guidance changing, it's no longer possible for us to offer some of those plans." In an email, company spokesperson Tony Felts explained that planning and pricing affordable health plans "has become increasingly difficult" amid uncertainty about such things as the availability of cost-sharing subsidies for low-income marketplace enrollees. Anthem's pullback also likely means that tens of thousands of individual policyholders outside the state exchange will have to find new plans next year. But the retreat does not touch the company's other insurance customers, such as people with Medi-Cal, Medicare or employer-based plans. Many Wall Street analysts and investors cheered Anthem's retreat in California. Ana Gupte, a health care analyst at Leerink Partners, said these "surgical extractions" minimize the risk that potential losses from exchange plans drag down overall profits. Big insurers also increasingly sense more opportunity and growth in other government markets, such as Medicaid managed care and Medicare Advantage plans. Anthem's two biggest competitors, UnitedHealth and Aetna, had already announced their exits from most Obamacare marketplaces nationwide. Even with Anthem's retrenchment in California, the Golden State will remain more competitive than many others. For 2018, Covered California said more than 82 percent of consumers will have more than three plans to choose from and 96 percent will have at least two insurers to pick from. Covered California Executive Director Peter Lee said the state exchange "played a very active role" in encouraging Anthem to stay in three of California's 19 insurance regions. Lee said the insurer must be able to make money to stay in the marketplace in the long run. "Anthem was in a position to pause and take a step back," said Lee. "We hope they'll step back forward in future years." Lee emphasized that California's marketplace is still "viable and competitive," with all 11 insurance carriers this year set to participate next year, if not to the same extent as before. Covered California staff members will help Anthem enrollees find new plans, Lee said, and some may be able to keep their doctors. Eighty-four percent of Anthem's providers are available through other insurance products, he said. Health insurance expert Shana Alex Charles noted that the areas where Anthem is pulling out have a lot of competition. Some have six or more health insurance carriers. "It is just another reminder that we are dealing with for-profit businesses," said Charles, assistant professor in the health science department at California State University-Fullerton. "Businesses want less competition. They want to be the only players in the market." California Healthline Senior Correspondent Chad Terhune contributed to this story. This story was produced by Kaiser Health News, which publishes California Healthline, an editorially independent service of the California Health Care Foundation. KHN's coverage in California is funded in part by Blue Shield of California Foundation. Common anti-allergy medicines could prove to be an effective treatment for potentially fatal blood clots in the legs, according to new research by the University of Birmingham. The research, funded by the British Heart Foundation, could lead to new treatments that prevent deep vein thrombosis (DVT) - a health issue that can be a particular problem on long-haul flights or other situations related to long-term immobilization. The team from the University of Birmingham has discovered that mice genetically depleted of mast cells, a type of immune cells, are protected from developing DVT. DVT is a blood clot that develops within a deep vein in the body, usually in the leg, and causes swelling, aching and difficulty walking. It can be caused by prolonged periods of immobility, such as after surgery or during a long flight. If the clot becomes dislodged it can travel to the lungs and block a blood vessel - this is known as a pulmonary embolism (PE). An estimated thirty per cent of PEs cause sudden death. The current treatments for DVT, which affects around 60,000 people in the UK every year, include anti-clotting drugs such as heparin and warfarin. These drugs are relatively effective but put patients at increased risk of bleeding. This is because as well as targeting the blood clot, they also affect hemostasis, the body's natural response to blood vessel injury and bleeding. Imbalanced hemostasis can be dangerous, so patients have to be monitored carefully and hospitalized following bleeding injury. In the study, published in Circulation Research, the researchers 'turned off' the gene that is responsible for producing mast cells. The research found that the mice which were deficient in mast cells were protected from DVT. They also found that mast-cell deficient mice had normal hemostasis, tackling the bleeding side-effects possible with treatments such as warfarin. Now, the researchers are hoping to validate their findings in humans, by testing samples of blood from people with and without DVT, to see if people with DVT have activated mast cells. If positive, mast cell inhibitors, which are already approved for treatment of some allergic diseases such as asthma, could quickly move into human clinical trials. Dr Alex Brill, of the Institute of Cardiovascular Sciences at the University of Birmingham, said: "These findings offer new hope for the treatment of deep vein thrombosis without a risk of bleeding. If further human studies support our findings in mice, drugs to block mast cell production could be used in the future alongside lower doses of anticoagulants such as warfarin, significantly reducing bleeding risk. "This is particularly exciting because this is a group of drugs which already exists, and some forms are approved for the treatment of allergies such as hay fever and asthma, meaning that this discovery could help people with DVT sooner rather than later." Professor Jeremy Pearson, Associate Medical Director at the British Heart Foundation, said: "Those setting off on long haul flights this summer should be aware of the risk of DVT, which can be triggered by immobility. However there are ways to reduce your risk, such as walking around the aeroplane or wearing anti-DVT socks. This is even more important for people already at risk of DVT, who carry other risk factors such as old age, obesity, smoking, and being pregnant. "It's far too soon to suggest people should start taking anti-allergy tablets to prevent DVT but this exciting discovery may pave the way for new treatments, and reduce some of the bleeding side effects which come with anticoagulants such as warfarin. However further research is needed to show that the same protective effect can be seen in humans." The American Society for Radiation Oncology has selected 23 distinguished members to receive the ASTRO Fellow designation. The 2017 class of Fellows will be recognized during the Awards Ceremony at ASTRO's 59th Annual Meeting, to be held September 24-27 in San Diego. The Fellows Program, started in 2006, honors those that have been an Active, Emeritus or, beginning this year, International member of ASTRO for at least 15 years, have given the equivalent of 10 years of service to ASTRO and have made significant contributions to the field of radiation oncology in the areas of research, education, patient care or service and leadership. Including the 2017 class of Fellows, 292 of ASTRO's more than 10,000 members worldwide have received the FASTRO designation. "The impact that this group of dedicated individuals has had on the field of radiation oncology is immense," says ASTRO Chair David C. Beyer, MD, FASTRO. "On behalf of ASTRO, I commend and thank these 23 outstanding physicians and medical physicists for their far-reaching contributions over the years--through research and patient care--to our specialty and the fight against cancer." Candidates must be nominated by a current ASTRO Fellow, accompanied by three letters of support from a selected subset of ASTRO members. A committee reviews all nominations and presents a slate to ASTRO's Board of Directors for approval. The 2017 Fellows are: Douglas W. Arthur, MD, Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, Virginia Jeffrey D. Bradley, MD, Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis Kevin Camphausen, MD, Radiation Oncology Branch, National Cancer Institute in Rockville, Maryland Hak Choy, MD, UT Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas Brian Czito, MD, Duke University in Durham, North Carolina Patricia Harrigan Hardenbergh, MD, Shaw Regional Cancer Center in Edwards, Colorado Eric M. Horwitz, MD, Fox Chase Cancer Center in Philadelphia Kenneth Shung Hu, MD, New York University Langone Medical Center in New York Peter Anthony Spencer Johnstone, MD, Moffitt Cancer Center in Tampa, Florida Jonathan P.S. Knisely, MD, Weill Cornell Medicine in New York Albert Koong, MD, PhD, Stanford University School of Medicine in Stanford, California John J. Kresl, MD, PhD, Phoenix CyberKnife and Radiation Oncology Center, Palo Verde Cancer Specialists in Scottsdale, Arizona Nancy Lee, MD, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York Simon S. Lo, MB, ChB, University of Washington School of Medicine in Seattle Richard D. Lovett, MD, University of Vermont College of Medicine in Burlington Alvaro Martinez, MD, 21st Century Oncology in Farmington Hills, Michigan Lorraine Portelance, MD, Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center, University of Miami in Miami George Rodrigues, MD, PhD, London Health Sciences Centre in London, Ontario Alphonse G. Taghian, MD, PhD, Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston Bin S. Teh, MD, Houston Methodist Hospital, Cancer Center and Research Institute in Houston Wolfgang A. Tome, PhD, Montefiore Medical Center/Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York Frank A. Vicini, MD, 21st Century Oncology in Farmington Hills, Michigan Fang-Fang Yin, PhD, Duke University Medical Center in Durham, North Carolina ASTRO's 59th Annual Meeting, the nation's premier scientific meeting in radiation oncology, will be held September 24-27 at the San Diego Convention Center. The 2017 Annual Meeting is expected to attract more than 11,000 attendees from across the globe, including oncologists from all disciplines and members of the entire radiation oncology team. Led by ASTRO President Brian D. Kavanagh, MD, FASTRO, the 2017 meeting's theme is "The Healing Art and Science of Radiation Oncology," and it will feature keynote addresses from Richard D. Zane, MD, chief innovation officer for the UCHealth System; Lucy Kalanithi, MD, the widow of Paul Kalanithi, MD, who wrote the bestselling memoir, "When Breath Becomes Air," and Heather Wakelee, MD, Dr. Paul Kalanithi's oncologist; and Vinay K. Prasad, MD, MPH, a hematologist-oncologist who co-wrote the book, "Ending Medical Reversal: Improving Outcomes, Saving Lives." The Presidential Symposium is in three parts: "The Scientific State of the Art," "the Art of Quality" and "The Quality of Mercy." These sessions will focus on cutting-edge science, measuring quality in radiation oncology and quality of life issues. ASTRO's four-day scientific meeting will feature more than 2,800 abstracts sharing results from clinical trials and other research studies, in conjunction with more than 50 educational sessions and 24 scientific panels. More than 200 exhibitors will demonstrate cutting-edge technology and medical device innovations for radiation oncology. Scientists in Germany have looked into the minute pores of a common kitchen sponge and found dreaded bacteria that could make us very ill. This is the first comprehensive study to do so. The study was published this week in Scientific Reports. Researchers write that humans spend most of their time in built environments or BE and the microbial presence in these environments is termed BE microbiome. These microbes may have a great impact on human health and wellbeing. Image Credit: Zimmytws / Shutterstock Research team from Furtwangen University performed a detailed genetic analysis using by highthroughput 16S rRNA gene sequencing from samples obtained from 14 used kitchen sponges, collected from households in south-western Germany. They found a mind-boggling 362 different types of living bacteria residing in the foam. While most of the bacterial species were deemed harmless some of them were indeed harmful. Lead researcher, microbiologist Markus Egert explained that of the ten types of commonly found bacteria in the samples, five were classified as risk group 2 or RG2 meaning that they could become potential pathogens or infective organisms for humans. These included Acinetobacter johnsonii, Moraxella osloensis, Chryseobacterium hominis, Acinetobacter pittii and Acinetobacter ursingii. Moraxella species of bacteria have been reported to be found in sponges and loofahs in earlier studies. These bacteria tend to come from humans as they are normal colonizers on human skin. The distribution of bacterial phyla was as follows; Proteobacteria 68.51% per sample Bacteroidetes (26.35%) Actinobacteria (3.69%) WPS-2(<1%) Firmicutes (<1%) Planctomycetes (<1%) Saccharibacteria (<1%) Verrucomicrobia (<1%) Chloroflexi (<1%) According to class of bacteria Gammaproteobatceria was found most abundantly (51.14%) followed by Pseudomonadales and Flavobacteriales at 45.64% and 23.21%, respectively. Among bacterial families Moraxellaceae and Pseudomonadaceae at 36.04% and 9.58%, respectively and Flavobacteriales at 21.9% were most abundant. Dreaded pathogens like Staphylococcus, Streptococcus, Salmonella, Proteus and Campylobacter were found relatively in very low concentrations. Genetics & Genomics eBook Compilation of the top interviews, articles, and news in the last year. Download a copy today The research team have written that the kitchen sponges thus are the biggest reservoirs of active bacteria in the whole house. The porous structure of these sponges make them breeding grounds for the microbes. As we use these sponges to rub other clean surfaces such as utensils, appliances, kitchen sinks and bench tops, they spread and disseminate these growing bacteria. Researchers have thus called these sponges not only reservoirs or microbial incubators of the microbes but also disseminators of these germs that can be the main reason for spread of the infection and also contamination of hands and food. They may be linked to food-borne disease outbreaks. For this study the team looked at the sponge samples in microscopic 3D images using a technique called fluorescence in situ hybridisation along with confocal laser scanning microscopy (FISHCLSM). Microscopy clearly showed residual food matter in the sponges and the moistness of the foams provide a perfect place where the bacteria can grow and multiply. According to Egert, in occasional samples the bacterial concentration have been found to be five times 1010 cells per cubic centimetre which is quite dense and same as in fecal or stool samples. He added that these concentrations should never be found in and around the kitchen. It must be noted that unused sponges, although not sterilized, did not contain the bacterial load. Common solution to this problem would be to clean the sponges by putting them in boiling water or microwaving them. Egert urged people not to do that. These steps, he explained would only strengthen the germs. Also in their study they note that cleaned and uncleaned sponges have similar bacterial loads. In cleaned ones there may be a rise in Moraxella and Chryseobacterium concentration added the researchers. They write that most bacteria take up the cleaning challenge and re grow with more speed to achieve similar concentrations as before. These findings resemble the effects of antibiotics on the harmless bacteria that live in the gut. The best option is to replace them every week they add. References The Society of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging (SNMMI), an international scientific and medical organization, recognized contributions to the field of nuclear medicine and molecular imaging during its 2017 Annual Meeting in Denver, Colorado. Several awards ceremonies were held to recognize the valuable role SNMMI members play in advancing the diagnosis and treatment of heart disease, cancer and neurological conditions. SNMMI PRESIDENTIAL DISTINGUISHED SERVICE AWARD This year, two SNMMI Presidential Distinguished Service Awards were given in recognition of continual dedication to the society. They were presented to Robert E. Henkin, MD, FACNM, FACR, and John M. Hoffman, MD. Robert E. Henkin, MD, FACNM, FACR, is professor emeritus of radiology at Loyola University Medical Center in Maywood, Illinois, and president of UNM, Ltd., which provides consulting services to medical imaging companies and professional societies. He served as director of nuclear medicine at Loyola University Medical Center for 30 years and has been a member of SNMMI since 1970. Active in SNMMI leadership, Henkin has represented the society in the Council of Medical Specialty Societies (CMSS) for many years and has been one of the leading voices in SNMMI on issues related to quality in healthcare. He also participated in the development of the Physician Quality Reporting System (PQRS) in collaboration with the American Medical Association. In addition, he has served on the SNMMI Board of Directors and House of Delegates, as well as on numerous committees and task forces. A big proponent of evidence-based guidance documents, he has been a member of the Guidance Oversight Committee for several years, as well as a member of the Appropriate Use Criteria Working Group for Bone Scintigraphy. His dedication to mentoring young professionals and emerging leaders in the field has helped SNMMI develop strong leaders for the future. The SNMMI Robert E. Henkin, MD, Government Relations Fellowship, funded by the Education and Research Foundation for Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging (ERF), is named in his honor and provides young professionals in the field with direct personal exposure to government relations activities of the society, as well as the state and federal legislative and regulatory process through a week in Washington, DC, with meetings on Capitol Hill. John M. Hoffman, MD. is the Willard Snow Hansen Presidential Endowed Chair in Cancer Research; professor of radiology and neurology; director of nuclear medicine; and co-director of the Center for Quantitative Cancer Imaging at the Huntsman Cancer Institute at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City, Utah. He is the author of more than 140 peer-reviewed publications, 19 book chapters and more than 200 abstracts, he has served on the editorial board of The Journal of Nuclear Medicine since 2000 and the editorial board of Molecular Imaging since 2002. He is also a consultant to the editor of Radiology. Prior to assuming his position at the University of Utah, Hoffman was chief of the Molecular Imaging Branch of the Cancer Imaging Program at the National Cancer Institute. He is an expert in molecular imaging, with a special focus on positron emission tomography (PET). His molecular imaging research interests include its use in personalized medicine and as a biomarker in therapeutic drug trials, as well its use to assess brain tumor response to therapy. Hoffman has been a member of SNMMI since 1985 and is a member of the Pacific Northwest Chapter. In addition, he is a longstanding member of the society's Brain Imaging Council, Center for Molecular Imaging Innovation and Translation (CMIIT), and PET Center of Excellence. He has also been a member of the Coalition for PET Drug Approval since its creation. Hoffman has played an especially significant role in the SNMMI Clinical Trials Network (CTN), serving as co-chair from 2009 to 2017. He was instrumental in developing CTN's companion organization, the Nuclear Medicine Clinical Trial Group, LLC, which assists sponsors in effectively incorporating molecular imaging agents in multicenter trials. His visionary leadership has also informed the CTN curriculum and live events. A regulatory expert, he has assisted, as well, in the maintenance of SNMMI's centralized Investigational New Drug (IND) database, which is available to all CTN partners. HENRY J. WAGNER, JR., LECTURESHIP Richard P. Baum, MD, PhD, chairman and clinical director of the Department of Nuclear Medicine and the Center for PET/CT at Zentralklinik Bad Berka in Bad Berka, Germany, delivered the Henry N. Wagner, Jr., Lectureship on Sunday, June 13. His presentation, "Theranostics: Looking Back and Moving Forward," provided an exciting look at precision medicine and the role of molecular imaging and nuclear medicine in targeting and delivering individualized therapy. He is at the forefront of cutting-edge research in the treatment of neuroendocrine tumors and prostate cancer, as well as other diseases processes. SAUL HERTZ, MD, AWARD George M. Sgouros, PhD, received the Saul Hertz, MD, Award, which recognizes the lifetime achievement of individuals who have made outstanding contributions to radionuclide therapy. Sgouros is professor of radiology, oncology and radiation oncology, as well as director of the Radiopharmaceutical Dosimetry Section of the Division of Nuclear Medicine, at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore, Maryland. The award is named in honor of Saul Hertz, MD, who administered a cyclotron-produced I-130 - I-131 mixture as a therapeutic dose to the first human patient with Graves' hyperthyroidism (Graves' Disease) at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1941. Sgouros, who chairs SNMMI's Medical Internal Radionuclide Dose (MIRD) Committee, gave a presentation on "Radiopharmaceutical Therapy: Current Status and Future Prospects" at the society's annual meeting. The focus of his research is on modeling and dosimetry of internally administered radionuclides with particular emphasis on patient-specific dosimetry, alpha-particle dosimetry and mathematical modeling of radionuclide therapy. His lab is currently engaged in pre-clinical research investigating targeted alpha-emitter therapy of metastatic cancer and clinical research examining the impact of patient-specific treatment planning on treatment outcome. Sgouros has authored more than 140 peer-reviewed articles, as well as review articles and several book chapters. He has served as chair of the Dosimetry & Radiobiology Panel at a Department of Energy Workshop on alpha-emitters in medical therapy and, in the early 90s, he provided the physics/dosimetry support for the first FDA-approved human trial of targeted alpha-emitter therapy. He is a member of the International Commission on Radiation Units and Measurements' Report Committee on "Bioeffect Modeling and Equieffective Dose Concepts in Radiation Therapy" and chair of Report Committee 31 on "Treatment Planning for Radiopharmaceutical Therapy." Sgouros is also a member of the Scientific Committee of the IAEA/WHO Network of Secondary Standards Dosimetry Laboratories and a member of the National Council on Radiological Protection and Measurements. He is the current chair of the National Institutes of Health Study Section on Radiation Therapeutics and Biology. MICHAEL J. WELCH AWARD Jason Lewis, PhD, the Emily Tow Jackson Chair in Oncology at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSKCC) in New York City, received the Michael J. Welch Award, which is presented annually by SNMMI's Radiopharmaceutical Sciences Council to an individual who has made outstanding contributions to radiopharmaceutical sciences. His lecture was titled "Antibody Theranostics - The Past, The Present and [Maybe] the Future?" Lewis also serves as MSKCC vice chair for research, chief of the Radiochemistry & Imaging Sciences Service, director of the Radiochemistry and Molecular Imaging Probe Core Facility and director of the Center for Molecular Imaging & Nanotechnology. In addition, he is a professor at the Gerstner Sloan-Kettering Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences and at Weill-Cornell Medical College. Lewis is widely published in the field of cancer imaging and serves on grant review panels for the National Institutes of Health/National Cancer Institute and on a number of editorial boards. His research interests are focused on the development of new molecular imaging agents and radiopharmaceuticals for the diagnosis and treatment of cancer. BERSON-YALOW AWARD Hongjun Jin, PhD, received the Berson-Yalow Award. The award commemorates Rosalyn S. Yalow, PhD, and Solomon A. Berson, MD, who together developed the radioimmunoassay (RIA) technique in the 1950s. SNMMI established the award in 1977, the year that Yalow received the Nobel Prize for Physiology and Medicine. Judges for the award choose the investigator who submits the most original abstract presentation at SNMMI's Annual Meeting and who has made significant contributions to basic or clinical RIA research, or any area of research using the indicator-dilution method. Jin is an instructor of radiology at the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, Missouri. His research focuses on biochemically characterization of radiotracers for oncology molecular imaging, and his winning abstract was titled "A promising I-123 labeled radioligand for imaging neuroinflammation response by assessment P2X7 receptor expression." LOEVINGER-BERMAN AWARD Michael Lassmann, PhD, head of the physics group in the Department of Nuclear Medicine at the University of Wurzburg in Wurzburg, Germany, received the Loevinger-Berman Award, which was established in 1999 by the Medical Internal Radiation Dose (MIRD) Committee in honor of Robert Loevinger, PhD, and Mones Berman, PhD, who formulated the MIRD schema for internal dose calculations. The award is given in recognition of excellence pertaining to the field of internal dosimetry as it relates to nuclear medicine through research and/or development, significant publication contributions or advancement of the understanding of internal dosimetry in relationship to risk and therapeutic efficacy. Lassmann's experience with internal dosimetry dates back to the 1990s. His primary research in recent years has been in thyroid cancer treatment dosimetry, and he has coordinated the dosimetry in several multicenter trials. His other areas of research include 3D ultrasound, radiation protection and large IT systems for nuclear medicine. From 2001 to 2008, he chaired the EANM Dosimetry Committee. In addition, he serves on the editorial boards of the European Journal of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging and Cancer Biotherapy and Radiopharmaceuticals. Lassmann has authored more than 50 publications and given many invited lectures at national and international meetings. Lab Diagnostics & Automation eBook Compilation of the top interviews, articles, and news in the last year. Download a copy today EDWARD J. HOFFMAN MEMORIAL AWARD Frederik Beekman, PhD, head of radiation, detection and medical imaging at TU Delft University, is this year's recipient of the Edward J. Hoffman Memorial Award, which is presented annually by SNMMI's Computer and Instrumentation Council. The award was established to honor the memory of Professor Edward J. Hoffman and recognizes scientists in the field of nuclear medicine for their service and devotion to research and development of nuclear medicine instrumentation and to educating and training the next generation of scientists. Beekman's lecture at the SNMMI Annual Meeting was on "Advancing the State-of-the-Art of PET, SPECT and Autoradiography with Multi-Pinhole Imaging." He is the recipient of several awards for his contributions to SPECT and PET technologies and their application in biomedical research. His research interests include radiation technology applied to medicine and biomedical science and image reconstruction from projections. Beekman has co-authored 135 journals papers and is the inventor on 31 patents. He is an associate editor of several journals and serves on the editorial board of Physics in Medicine & Biology. He is also the founder and CEO/CSO of MILabs, which develops and markets high-performance molecular imaging systems. PETER E. VALK, MD, MEMORIAL AWARD George Segall, MD, FACNM, FSNMMI, professor of radiology at Stanford University School of Medicine and Chief of the Nuclear Medicine Service at the Veterans Affairs Palo Alto Health Care System in Palo Alto, California, received the Peter E. Valk, MD, Memorial Award, which was created to honor the memory of Peter E. Valk, MD, a pioneer in the establishment of PET as an important clinical study. Segall has held several SNMMI leadership positions, including serving as SNMMI president (2011-2012). In addition, he served as a director of the American Board of Nuclear Medicine (ABNM) from 2009 to 2014 and has been the ABNM executive director since Kuhl-Lassen Lecture Award Karl Herholz, MD, professor of clinical neuroscience at the University of Manchester in Manchester, UK, received the Kuhl-Lassen Lecture Award, presented by the SNMMI Brain Imaging Council. The award recognizes a scientist who has made outstanding contributions and whose research in and service to the discipline of functional brain imaging is of the highest caliber. His lecture was titled, "Towards Theragnostic NeuroPET." Herholz leads neuroscience research at the Wolfson Molecular Imaging Centre, with major focuses on the use of PET for early diagnosis and prevention of dementia, imaging of specific transmitter systems, deposition of pathological proteins and imaging of gliomas. He is also an honorary consultant at Salford Royal Hospital and the Nuclear Medicine Department, Central Manchester Foundation Trust. Before joining Manchester University, he worked as a clinical neurologist and professor of neurology at University Hospital and the Max-Planck Institute for Neurological Research in Cologne, Germany. Herholz has had leading roles in several international multicenter PET studies on neurodegenerative diseases. He is also principal investigator on a partnership grant for the MR-PET imaging network of the Dementia Platform UK and is a member of the Medical Research Council Neuroscience and Mental Health Board. His research has been published in more than 400 research papers and several books. WALTER WOLF YOUNG INVESTIGATOR AWARD Raiyan Tripti Zaman, PhD, instructor in the Division of Cardiovascular Medicine at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, received this year's Walter Wolf Young Investigator Award for her abstract titled "Harnessing Radioluminescence and Sound to Reveal Molecular Pathology of Atherosclerotic Plaques." In her postdoctoral work at Stanford University School of Medicine, Zaman developed a novel flexible fiber-optic catheter consisting of both a radio-luminescence and a fluorescence imaging system to detect vulnerable plaques. Working as a principal investigator under the mentorship of Professors Michael V. McConnell and Lei Xing, she also conducted independent research on an intravascular molecular imaging system to characterize plaque, and she developed a scintillating balloon-enabled fiber-optic radionuclide imaging (SBRI) system to improve the sensitivity and resolution of plaque imaging using 18F-FDG. Zaman is currently developing a Circumferential-Intravascular-Radioluminescence-Photoacoustic-Imaging (CIRPI) system to detect and characterize vulnerable plaques in human, mice and porcine models. MAJD-GILDAY YOUNG INVESTIGATOR AWARD Jingjing Zhang, MD, PhD, received the PIC Majd-Gilday Young Investigator Award, which honors two pioneers in the pediatric imaging field: Massoud Majd, MD, and David Gilday, MD. The award is given to young scientists for outstanding research contributions to the field of pediatric nuclear medicine. Zhang's winning abstract is titled "68Ga-NOTA-Aca-BBN (7-14) PET imaging of GRPR in children with optic pathway gliomas." Zhang is a physician and scientist of nuclear medicine at the PET Center of Peking Union Medical College Hospital (PUMCH) in China. She was a pre-doctoral visiting fellow at the Laboratory of Molecular Imaging and Nanomedicine at the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering and received her MD and PhD in 2015.Since then, she has successfully implemented a number of first-in-human PET probe studies and early phase clinical trials. Her research focuses on cancer molecular imaging, especially gallium-68 labeling peptides, and she has a long-standing interest in clinical translational and theranostic applications of targeted molecular probes. Zhang has received numerous awards, including the Women in Molecular Imaging Scholar Award, the SNMMI Alavi-Mandell Award and the Young Scientist Award from the Chinese American Society of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging. HERMANN BLUMGART AWARD Sharmila Dorbala, MD, director of nuclear cardiology at Brigham and Women's Hospital and associate professor of radiology at Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts, was selected by SNMMI's Cardiovascular Council to receive the Hermann Blumgart Award. The award annually recognizes a key contributor to the science of nuclear cardiology who is also an advocate for the field through involvement with the society's research and educational activities. Dorbala's lecture at the SNMMI Annual Meeting was on "Expanding the Frontiers of Nuclear Cardiology: Infiltrative Cardiomyopathy." She is a cardiovascular imaging specialist with clinical expertise in nuclear cardiology, echocardiography, and cardiac CT and has a successful track record of funded research in cardiac PET and cardiac amyloidosis. Her PET research has provided insights into management of ischemic heart diseases, and her research in cardiac amyloidosis uses advanced imaging to define mechanisms of cardiac dysfunction and identify early response to anti-amyloid therapy. Dorbala serves as an associate editor of Circulation Cardiovascular Imaging and the Journal of Nuclear Cardiology. She is an active member of SNMMI and the American Society of Nuclear Cardiology. TRACY LYNN FABER MEMORIAL AWARD Sepideh Shokouhi, PhD, received the Tracy Lynn Faber Memorial Award, given each year to support advancement of women in medical imaging sciences. Shokouhi is a graduate of Graz University of Technology in Austria and earned her PhD in Biomedical Engineering from Stony Brook University in Stony Brook, New York. After completing a postdoctoral fellowship at Vanderbilt University Institute of Imaging Science, she joined the Vanderbilt faculty as a research instructor and was appointed assistant professor in 2015. Shokouhi's research focuses on the development and application of computational methods (classification and estimation) in imaging with different modalities, such as PET, SPECT and MRI. She is especially interested in in vivo imaging of Alzheimer's disease in both human and transgenic mouse models. Using animal robots in the care of people with dementia has a modest but significant benefit, a new Griffith University study has revealed. Published this week in The Journal of American Medical Directors Association (JAMDA), the study follows on previous research by Professor Wendy Moyle and her team at Griffiths Menzies Health Institute Queensland, which showed that the introduction of a robotic seal called Paro could bring positive benefits for people with dementia, including reduced anxiety and a decreased tendency to wander. Invented by Japanese engineers and commercially used in several countries, the Paro which costs around $8,500 - can respond to touch, temperature and voice and can even learn its name. Paro is used as robotic pet therapy in situations in particular where live animals are no longer possible. This latest study supported by National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) funding, is the largest study that has ever been conducted using social robots. The researchers recruited 415 residents, aged 60 plus and with a diagnosis of dementia, from 28 long-term care facilities in South-East Queensland. The recruits were randomly given 10-weeks of either individual, non-facilitated 15-minute sessions, three times a week with Paro, or a plush toy (Paro with robotic features disabled), or continued routine facility care as usual. Researchers used video recordings of residents during and after the 10-week intervention period to assess changes in residents levels of engagement with the Paro or plush toy, mood states (i.e emotions) and agitation. We found that residents in the Paro group were significantly more verbally and visually engaged with the Paro than those in the plush toy group, suggesting that the robotics were beneficial, says Professor Moyle. Clinically, the differences between the two groups were small for verbal engagement (talking to the robot/plush toy), but more pronounced than visual engagement (looking at Paro or plush toy) suggesting that residents were stimulated by verbal responses from Paro. Both the Paro and plush toy groups were more effective than usual routine care, producing greater reductions in residents display of neutral affect (i.e displays of no facial emotion). Paro, however, was specifically more effective than usual routine care in improving residents expression of pleasure. Paro demonstrated some effectiveness in reducing agitated behavior when compared to usual care, although the size of this difference was small, says Professor Moyle. Our analyzes also suggested that there was an initial positive, novelty response to Paro and plush toy from residents. This short-term effect was strongest for visual engagement with the Paro and plush toy, and for pleasure. Professor Moyle says the study findings support the effectiveness of Paro, but also suggest that where there are limited resources, a soft toy animal may be used effectively with a person with dementia. She stresses that: a robotic animal such as Paro should not be used to replace staff time, but rather be used during those inevitable periods when staff are otherwise preoccupied or when the individual may benefit from comfort and stimulation. Staff need to fully understand how to use the Paro and its technology before it can be effectively used with people with dementia. Professor Moyle states that the study has added important understandings to the use of robotic animals with people with dementia in long-term care, and that further research is now needed that looks to identify the characteristics of people who will benefit from the Paro robot and plush toy. Knowing what works best, who with, and in what situations, will add to our understanding further of how Paro can be used in real clinical settings, concludes Professor Moyle. Source: https://www.griffith.edu.au/ News18 Blogs World La Affaire Gulalai! File photo of Pakistan PM Imran Khan. (Photo: Reuters) As if Panamagate charade and disqualification of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif from holding public office since he was not honest and trustworthy as pronounced by the Supreme Court was not enough, that we got plunged into La Affaire Gulalai involving a KPK MNA and PTI chief Imran Khan. The Gulalai Affaire seems to have punctured the multifaceted euphoria in the disqualification of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and diverted attention to an age old controversial issue of the treatment of women in Pakistan's overly tribal culture. Although highly respectable journalist Rahimullah Yusufzai from KP rightly wants PTI MNA Aisha Gulalais allegations of harassment against PTI chief to be impartially investigated, Aisha Gulalai despite general male hostility to her, has been putting a brave face in exposing herself to the devouring cross-examination of loud mouth, frothy TV anchors who would win hands down any high velocity acoustic competition. Getting hit by volleys right, left and centre and some anchors crossing the modesty belt in their punches, have not deterred Gulalai from putting across bold and bravely her charge sheet before the media. What is the truth in her allegations can only be found out by a Joint Investigation Team of the type Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and his family members were subjected to. While a heated debate is on, many condemning Gulalai for what they call her bid to blackmail one of the only Sadiq and Ameen political leaders globally known for his fair and judicious treatment to women that could even be vouched by Tyrenes mother Sita White if she were alivethe La Affaire Gulalai has no doubt opened the Pandoras box. It is good to see Gulalai sticking to her gun. She is responsible in bringing into focus the larger issue of the treatment of women in our society especially in the Parliament and political parties. No doubt male political leaders want to outmatch each other in their claim to stand for empowerment of women. However, whenever their raw nerve gets pricked, their outbursts can outmatch the verbal exchanges of prolific four letter words used during fights among street urchins. PML-N Khawaja Asif who missed to be both interim and otherwise prime minister for rest of the term after the disqualification of Mian Nawaz Sharif remains to be the record holder in being too lucid and generous in exchanging verbal duals loaded with highly objectionable invectives with the female members of the Parliament. One would not like to get involved in internal party innuendos like Gulalais- however, having seen last time treatment of women parliamentarians by Khawaja Sahib and his blow the belt punch on the senior most PTI female leader Dr Shireen Mazari -- all make a sad commentary. I believe while senior politician like Chairman Senate Senator Raza Rabbani is still around, the Parliament and various party leaders should unanimously impose a Hammurabian code of behaviour for treating women with respect and utmost dignity. They must set draconian rules for castrating the male perverted mind set. One would not like to jump to ones guns to find one or other party guilty in Gulalis case unless the scandal is thoroughly investigated, generally speaking and from a historic perspective, one would like emerging PML-N leader Maryam Nawaz to lead the way in her own party to introduce a strict code for both male and female conduct that could foster among others a culture of grace and tolerance. PML-N is not being mentioned here just for the sake of striking a balance. There is historic perspective to it. When East Pakistan was our majority province, women generally and female politicians particularly, were held in dignity, grace and shown highest respect. In the smaller provinces too, women were extended due deference. In Punjab its women folk were more political, courageous and daring then their men. Remember the brave girl who climbed to the top of Punjab Assembly (or Secretariat) to put aloft Pakistans flag when it was being run by the Unionists. Regretfully, things changed with the advent of anti-Pakistan Islamist parties holing in Punjab as their epicenter of activities. Not only founding fathers like Liaquat Ali Khan were targeted for character-assassination by the Jamaatis and Ahraries but his wife tooBegum Raana Liaquat Ali Khan--a thorough bread woman of high character, education and a living symbol of Luckhnavi Muslim culture who could never be seen without a dupatta covering her headwas not spared of the vilification campaign by the bigoted clerics. It is not irrelevant to recall here how the Punjab Muslim League leaders misbehaved with Madre Millat Mohtarma Fatima Jinnah contesting against Field Marshal Ayub Khan in the Presidential elections. I remember the main campaigners for Ayub KhanConvention Muslim League leaders Ahmad Saeed Kirmani and Abdul Waheed Khan crossed all limits of decency to please their Praetorian master. Both used to publicly question her title of Madre Millat (Mother of the nation) Fatima Jinnah when she could not give birth to child of her ownas they taunted. Most ignominious have been the campaigns by the Muslim Leaguers under the command of General Ziaul Haq and later his political heir against the late Bhutto ladies. Fabricated obscene photographs were airdropped to malign Begum Nusrat Bhutto and martyred Benazir Bhutto during the election campaign in 1988. When that did not wean away the Punjabi vote from PPP, PML-N leaderyoung Mian Nawaz Sharif --raised the slogan Jagg Punjab Jagg, teno Pagg no Lagraha Hay Daag. And when that failed to stop Benazirs landslide, ISI chief General Hameed Gul rigged the elections. In Pakistani politics male politicians can get away by calling a female opponent a whore as one had seen a leading cleric and an ex-sportsman candidate in 1997 elections in KPK resorting to in their election campaign speeches. Her name was Musarrat Shaheena Pashto actress. It served both Maulana Diesel and Bally-Baz candidate well when despite their diatribe she got more votes than them. However, all three lost to PML-N candidate. Indeed, exemplary is the conduct of PPP vis-a-vis treatment of women generally and parliamentarians in particular. It has been vouched by both Naz Baloch of PTI who joined PPP and Aisha Gulalai. It is due to inbuilt culture of respect and dignity for women in the party. And why not, the party ever since its foundation has crusaded for the empowerment of women and lesser privileged communities. Not only that, the PPP has the singular distinction of being led in most difficult, challenging and oppressive times by two of the greatest women leaders in the history of the sub-continent. Even today Benazirs daughtersBakhtawar and Aseefaspeak up loud and clear whenever women are maltreated. Only recently leader of the Opposition Syed Khursheed Shah, MNA from PPP, took an exception to the talking of women legislators during his speech and made what has been termed as sexist remark. Pronto comes Aseefa Bhutto Zardaris tweet:"Far too many times this has happened. Insensitive remarks against women in politics have recurred in Parliament. Such remarks should not be tolerated," she said. She respectfully hoped an apology from Khursheed Shah. Parliament is a model of our society and if our parliament continues to make derogatory remarks against women, it reflects on us," she conclusively tweeted. And I have nothing more to add. I am sure our youngsters will groom a better, more congenial and tolerant society. - Author is the former High Commissioner and a veteran journalist New Delhi: Three Chhattisgarh legislators, including former CM Ajit Jogis son Amit Jogi, locked themselves inside the Vidhan Sabha on Thursday evening to protest against the adjournment of the assembly session. The MLAs said that the session was ended sine die, i.e. without any set date for resumption, after they started to ask difficult sessions from Chief Minister Raman Singh over the accusations against him in the Panama Papers case. Speaking to CNN-News18, Jogi a former Congress member who was sacked from the party after corruption allegations were levelled against him, said they would remain inside the assembly till the Chief Minister agrees to a discussion on the allegations. Panama Papers are leaked documents of about 1.15 crore files containing details of about 2.15 lakh offshore bank accounts. We demand a discussion on the Panama leak accusation against the Chief Minister. We have locked ourselves in the well of the assembly. We dare them to take us out till our demands are met, he said. When asked how they managed to stay inside, he said the marshals never asked them to leave after the session was adjourned on Thursday and so they remained there. He also claimed that they had not locked the doors from inside, and said they had in fact been locked in from the outside. The three legislators are now making WhatsApp videos to try and drum up support for their bizarre form of protest. Jogi said they would spend the night in the assembly. When asked how long do they plan to keep up this charade, he said they would stay in the Assembly till August 11, which is the last date of the Monsoon session, or till their demands are met. Earlier in the day, Jogi held a press conference and claimed that Singh and his son, Lok Sabha MP Abhishek Singh, had parked billions looted through corruption in Chhattisgarh in bogus companies abroad. He further alleged that a Chhattisgarh industrialist, Kamal Kishore Sarda, was linked to Singh in the stashing of ill-gotten wealth abroad. The company mentioned in Panama Papers shared the same address as the CM's, he said. Recently, Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi, too, had demanded the resignation of Singh over the Panama Papers issue, citing the case of Nawaz Sharif, who was disqualified by the Pakistan Supreme Court and subsequently quit as prime minister. Both Singh and his son have rubbished the allegations. The chief minister had described the charges as baseless and unfounded. Mumbai: The long-pending draft Development Plan (DP) for 2014-34, which will be the blueprint for land use in the metropolis over the next 17 years, has been finally passed by the local civic body. The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) passed the DP draft on Wednesday after 227 corporators across political parties proposed/suggested 266 amendments, said a senior civic official. It will now go to the Maharashtra government for its final nod and implementation. Of these 266 proposals/suggestions, 114 were moved by the BJP, 87 by the Sena, 25 by the Congress, 21 by the NCP and 13 by the SP, he said. The civic body is ruled by the Shiv Sena-BJP combine. The proposal to build a carshed for metro rail in Aarey Colony, a green belt, was a bone of contention between the Shiv Sena and the BJP. While the Sena opposed the move, the BJP opposed it. To avoid a stalemate, the issue was excluded from the draft. However, town planning experts said merely chalking out the plan is not enough and efforts should be made to implement it in letter and spirit. Pankaj Joshi, executive director of the Urban Design Research Institute (UDRI), a body of town planners, said making a plan is quite different from implementing and monitoring it. "Just see what the BMC did with its two previous DPs. The BMC executed only 18 percent of the plans in the DP prepared in 1961 and 33 percent in 1991 DP. So, the most important thing is to implement plans carefully," he said. This DP has already been delayed by three years. It was scheduled to be cleared in 2014. The BMC came out with the draft DP in February 2015, but it faced stiff resistance from political parties, NGOs, heritage conservators and eminent personalities. Following the opposition, the BJP-led Maharashtra government scrapped the contentious DP. Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis then directed the BMC to prepare a fresh plan. New Delhi: China has extended by three months its technical hold on a proposal at the United Nations to designate Masood Azhar, chief of terror group Jaish-e-Mohammad, as a global terrorist. Beijings position on the Pathankot attack mastermind is likely to fuel tensions between India and China whose armies are locked in a standoff in Doklam area of Sikkim sector. China had in February this year blocked the US move to designate Azhar as a global terrorist at the UN. The deadline for China to take action on its technical hold was till August 2. If China would not have extended the technical hold, Azhar would have automatically been designated under the UN as a terrorist. Sources told PTI that just before the deadline lapsed, China once again sought a three-month extension until November 2 on its technical hold on the proposal. The US had early this year, along with the UK and France, approached the UN's sanctions committee for the ban on Azhar. However, it was stopped by Beijing which again put a six-month technical hold on it. The US proposal came after India's efforts last year to get Azhar listed as a global terrorist were scuttled by China. China has been blocking India's move stating that there is no consensus in the UNSC 1267 which enforces a global ban on terror groups and their leaders with affiliations to Al- Qaeda and Islamic State. The JeM has already been in the banned list. This is the second year that China has blocked attempts to bring about a UN ban on Azhar which would force Pakistan to act against him. India moved for the UN ban against Azhar in March last year after the Pathankot terrorist attack. China first blocked the Indian move for six months followed by three months technical hold, which ended on December 31 last year leading to the lapse of the application. China was the only member in the 15-nation UN body to put a hold on India's application with all other 14 members of the Council supporting New Delhi's bid to place Azhar on the 1267 sanctions list that would subject him to an assets freeze and travel ban. (With PTI inputs) New Delhi: Venturing outdoors may become deadly across wide swaths of India, Pakistan and Bangladesh by the end of the century as climate change drives heat and humidity to new extremes, according to a new study. These conditions could affect up to a third of the people living throughout the Indo-Gangetic Plain unless the global community ramps up efforts to rein in climate-warming carbon emissions. Today, this vast region is home to some 1.5 billion people. "The most intense hazard from extreme future heat waves is concentrated around the densely populated agricultural regions of the Ganges and Indus river basins," wrote the authors of the study, led by former MIT research scientist Eun-Soon Im, now an assistant professor at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. While most climate studies have been based on temperature projections, this one published on Wednesday in the journal Science Advances is somewhat unique in also considering humidity as well as the body's ability to cool down in response. Those three factors together make up what is called a "wet-bulb temperature," which is the air temperature taken when a wet cloth is wrapped around the thermometer. It is always lower than the dry-bulb temperature how much so depends on the humidity. It can help estimate how easy it is for water to evaporate. It can also offer a gauge for where climate change might become dangerous. Scientists say humans can survive up to a wet-bulb temperature of about 35 degree Celsius (95 degree Fahrenheit), beyond which the human body has difficulty sweating to cool down, or sweat doesn't evaporate, leading to heat stroke and ultimately death within just a few hours even in shaded, ventilated conditions. So far, wet bulb temperatures have rarely exceeded 31C (88-90 F), a level that is already considered extremely hazardous. "It is hard to imagine conditions that are too hot for people to survive for a more than a few minutes, but that is exactly what is being discussed in this paper," said Stanford University climate scientist Chris Field, who was not involved in the study. "And of course, the danger threshold for punishing heat and humidity is lower for people who are ill or elderly." Most of those at risk in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh are poor farmworkers or outdoor construction laborers. They are unlikely to have air conditioners up to 25 percent in of India's population still has no access to electricity. In some areas that have been deforested for industry or agriculture, they may not even have very much shade. "What we see in this study is a convergence of intense weather projections and acute vulnerability," co-author and MIT environmental engineering professor Elfatih AB Eltahir said. For the study, the researchers carried out computer simulations using global atmospheric circulation models under two scenarios one in which the world comes close to meeting its goal of curbing emissions to limit Earth's average temperature rise to 2C (3.6 F) above pre-industrial levels, and one in it continues emitting at current levels. Both scenarios play out dangerously for South Asia. But with no limit on global warming, about 30 percent of the region could see dangerous wet bulb temperatures above 31 degree C (88 degree F) on a regular basis within just a few decades. That's nearly half a billion people by today's population levels, though the full scale could change as the population grows. Meanwhile, 4 percent of the population or 60 million in today's population would face deadly highs at or above 35 degree C (95 degree F) by 2100. But if the world can limit global warming, that risk exposure declines drastically. About 2 percent of the population would face average wet bulb temperatures of 31 degree C (88 degree F) or higher. "This is an avoidable, preventable problem," Eltahir said. "There is a significant difference between these two scenarios, which people need to understand." Experts say countries must work toward meeting the Paris agreement goals to limit average global warming to 2 degree C (3.6 degree F), especially since the world has already warmed by 1 degree C (1.8 degree F). That average will play out differently across the planet, and South Asia is expected to be hit harder than other regions. "It is important to base heat mitigation strategies on not only temperature extremes, but rather the compound effects of extreme temperatures and humidity," said climatologist Omid Mazdiyasni of the University of California, Irvine, who was not involved in the study. He co-authored another paper published last month with complimentary findings that showed how increased temperatures alone were already leading to more deadly heat waves in India. "The impacts of wet bulb temperatures are far greater than temperature alone," he said. But while scientists have warned for years that climate change will exacerbate the risks faced by South Asia's poor, including storms, droughts and heat waves, humidity hasn't always been considered. For India, it's a key factor. The country is a peninsula that experiences seasonal monsoon rains, which can make a day outdoors in July seem like a suffocating steam room. Infections fester. Mosquitoes flourish. People lie sprawled atop woven cots for hours a day, moving as little as possible as they wait out the heat. Deadly heat is already common. In 2015, a heat wave across India and Pakistan killed 3,500 people. Disaster management officials already have urged India's cities and states to create heat action plans, after recording 13 of the country's hottest 15 years on record since 2002. The programs, designed with experts from the National Resources Defense Council to help people cope with extreme temperatures, include measures such as offering air-conditioned shelter during heat waves, and training for both children and medical professionals to recognise the symptoms of heat stroke. Dozens of cities have signed on, while weather forecasts have been expanded to include new areas and longer-term projections. Patna: After a bizarre diktat, comes an even more bizarre defence. According to Bihar Health Minister Mangal Pandey, virgin means the same as unmarried and pure, and hence Patna's Indira Gandhi Institute of Medical Sciences did nothing wrong when it asked applicants to declare their virginity. Virgin, as per the dictionary, means an unmarried and pure girl. So all these words are not objectionable, Pandey said. He didn't specify which dictionary he was referring to. Pandey's statement is the second such explanation extended after the virginity clause in the application form invited the ire of activists and womens rights groups. On Wednesday, Indira Gandhi Institute of Medical Sciences superintendent Manish Mandal had claimed that disclosing ones virginity status would help if a rape case is registered in future. Mandal refused to explain further. He had also put the onus on the Centre, saying the hospital administration was following the format it received from the central government. The form, riddled with spelling errors, gave applicants three options to disclose their marital status: 1. I am a ''bechelor''/widower/vergin (sic). 2. I am married and have only one wife living. 3. I am married to a person who has no other wife living/ I am married to a person who has another wife living. New Delhi: Security forces had made a last-ditch attempt to get Abu Dujana to surrender, but the Lashkar-e-Taiba commander refused, following which he was gunned down in an encounter in Pulwama district of Jammu and Kashmir. CNN-News18 has accessed the details of the phone conversation between Dujana and a security officer, during which the Lashkar terrorist can be heard claiming innocence, yet rejecting an offer to surrender and, for the first times, admits to leaving his parents behind in Pakistans Gilgit-Baltistan for jihad. Heres a transcript of the phone call: Security Officer: Why don't you surrender? Abu Dujana: I won't surrender, have to die one day today or tomorrow, it doesn't matter. Security Officer: Leave everything, you know the situation now. It's a game. Abu Dujana: I'm not here to play a game. I'm taking my own path. Security Officer: You have married this girl Abu Dujana: I haven't married anyone. It's a lie. Security Officer: Think about yourself. You have your parents Abu Dujana: I've left my parents. Security Officer: You are not dying for them. You say yes, and I'll facilitate (your) surrender. Abu Dujana: What else how are you? Security Officer: This is not the time to this. We are fine Abu Dujana: (laughs) Sometimes you are ahead, sometimes we are. You have caught us. Congratulations Security Officer: This is not jihad. You know that. Abu Dujana: What can we do? Nothing can happen now. Security Officer: Then surrender. You will only guide other people. Only then will this bloodshed end. Abu Dujana: I'm not responsible for the bloodshed. You know that. Security Officer: You are the main commander. You should tell people about the reality. Otherwise, Kashmiris will keep dying. Abu Dujana: Okay. I will see Security Officer: You should think about it Dujana and his aide were gunned down by security forces on Tuesday. Security forces had zeroed-in on Dujana after his frequent visit to a particular village where he was believed to have married a girl. Pakistani national Dujana was wanted for many attacks on security forces and political workers in south Kashmir. He was variously described as a category 'A++' militant by Army and police officials. Dujana carried a reward of Rs 10 lakh on his head. According to a police spokesman, the slain militants were involved in grenade attacks on security forces at Kakapora. They were also involved in the killing of sarpanch Fayaz Ahmad Bhat earlier this year. Dujana was a very close associate of Abdul Rehman alias Abu Qasim, the police spokesman said, adding that both were involved in an attack on a BSF convoy in Udhampur last year. Thiruvananthapuram: Abdul Nazer Madani, an accused in the Bangalore blast case, has been asked to deposit Rs 14.79 lakh by the Karnataka police for his security expenses during his trip to Kerala. Madani has been allowed by a NIA court to visit his parents in Kerala. He was also permitted by the Supreme Court to visit Kannur to attend his sons wedding on August 9. Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan has written to his Karnataka counterpart Siddaramaiah saying that his government is ready to provide security for Madani. Vijayan also asked him to reduce the amount sought by the police for protection. Madani also plans to approach the Supreme Court against the Karnataka polices demand. While allowing him to attend his sons wedding, the apex court had asked the 51-year-old People's Democratic Party (PDP) leader to take care of his security expenses as he was on a personal visit. Poonthura Siraj, working chairman of PDP, said the police has sought 60% of Rs 14.79 lakh security amount as advance. They have appointed 19 police officials and we have to provide their flight tickets and accommodation. We will have to spend around Rs 25 lakh. This is injustice, we cannot arrange so much cash in a short span. He said Madani had visited Kerala three times between 2013 and 2016 and only once he had to incur security expenses of Rs 18,000 and flight tickets of the police officers. when Madani visited in 2016, only 5 police officials were assigned. Why do they want to send 19 now, said Siraj Madani, an under-trial lodged in Bengaluru prison in connection with the 2008 serial blasts case, was granted interim bail by the Supreme Court on Monday to attend the wedding. Davenport publisher Lee Enterprises Inc. announced strong third-quarter earnings Thursday as it saw an improved revenue trend. Lee, the parent company of the Globe Gazette, Mitchell County Press-News, Forest City Summit and Britt News Tribune, reported earnings of $6.3 million, or 11 cents per diluted share, for the quarter ended June 25. That compares to $4.4 million, or 8 cents per diluted common share, for the same quarter a year ago. "We saw good growth in both subscription and digital revenue this quarter, which improved the total revenue trend," Lee CEO Kevin Mowbray said in a news release. With a 6.6 percent decrease in total revenue, he described it as "the best quarterly trend performance of fiscal 2017." Subscription revenue increased 1.6 percent because of second-quarter price increases and additional revenue from premium content. Digital advertising revenue rose 7.8 percent and represented 29.1 percent of total advertising revenue. The earnings come on the heels of Lee's acquisition of the Moline Dispatch and Rock Island Argus in Illinois. The previously announced $7.2 million deal closed June 30. On a conference call with analysts Thursday, Mowbray said the acquisition is "an ideal strategic fit offering substantial synergies." "We are extremely pleased with the purchase and the transition is well under way," he said. The company will begin consolidating results with the new properties in September. Mowbray also noted these same-property highlights for the quarter: Total digital revenue, including digital advertising and digital services, increased 6.4 percent to $27.1 million. Monthly page views of Lee mobile, tablet, desktop and app sites averaged 225.7 million, a 6.5 percent increase. Digital retail advertising grew 8.3 percent and represents 61 percent of total digital advertising. Total advertising and marketing services revenue decreased 10.8 percent as a result of softer print advertising. In addition, Lee reported that operating revenue decreased 7.7 percent to $139.36 million. Advertising and marketing services revenue combined decreased 10.8 percent to $81.0 million, with retail advertising down 10.6 percent, classified down 11.8 percent and national down 6.3 percent. Operating expenses decreased 4.7 percent. Cash costs, excluding workforce adjustments and other, decreased 8 percent. Compensation decreased 9.1 percent primarily because of a reduction in staffing levels. Chief Financial Officer and Treasurer Ron Mayo said the 2017 quarter includes a $2.6 million expense to record a partial withdrawal liability from a multi-employer pension plan. The liability will be paid over the next 20 years and is expected to be about $200,000 a year, he said. Mayo also said the company continues to reduce its interest expense as part of its aggressive debt reduction. Lee reduced debt by $16.4 million in the quarter, $48.7 million fiscal year to date and $71.8 million over the past 12 months. Lee's principal debt was $568.5 million at the end of the quarter, he said. In the analyst call, Executive Chairman Mary Junck said Lee's lower debt and leverage is enabling the company to evaluate "the best use of our free cash flow beyond debt reductions, including acquisitions such as the Dispatch-Argus ..." According to Mayo, Lee has $17 million of real estate for sale and expects $7 million in deals to close in calendar 2017. He said the company is evaluating the sale of additional real estate not listed currently. "We are actively evaluating the timing and economics of refinancing all or a portion of the company's long-term debt," he said. Lee operates newspapers, specialty publications and digital products in 50 markets in 22 states. Madurai: The Madras High Court on Thursday ordered issuance of notice to Tamil Nadu Chief Minister K Palaniswami and four state ministers on a plea seeking their disqualification over a meeting the ministers reportedly had with jailed AIADMK general secretary VK Sasikala. The court's Madurai bench sought an explanation from Palaniswami over the allegation that he had not questioned his cabinet colleagues over their meeting a few months ago with Sasikala, currently serving a prison term in a graft case, to discuss "functioning of the government". When the PIL by Anazhagan, son of former AIADMK MLA late Thamaraikani, came up, a division bench of Justices KK Sasidharan and GR Swaminathan ordered issuance of notice to the chief minister and his cabinet colleagues, KA Sengottaiyan, Dindigul Srinivasan, Kamaraj and Sellur K Raju and secretary of the state assembly, returnable by August 7. The petitioner submitted that the ministers meeting the accused in the prison was a "violation" of the oath taken by them as ministers and they should be disqualified. The chief minister also should also be disqualified for not pulling them up, he contended. Sasikala had been convicted in the disproportionate assets case by the Supreme Court on February 14, and is undergoing imprisonment in a Bengaluru jail. The party's spokesperson, Gowri Shankar, had on February 22 in an interview to a private TV channel said the state government would be run "on the advice and guidance of AIADMK General secretary Sasikala," the petitioner had said, adding no minister had denied his statement. Besides on February 28, the four ministers had admitted that they had met Sasikala in prison and discussed the functioning of the government, he alleged. The "admission" by the ministers that their government was being run on the advice of Sasikala showed that the chief minister and the four ministers violated the Constitution, he said. The chief minister also had not given any view against the statement of the ministers nor had he denied it, he said. He then sought the intervention of the court and an order disqualifying the chief minister and the ministers. The petitioner also prayed for a direction to the speaker and secretary of the state assembly to do the same. New Delhi: Chinas recent statement on the Doklam standoff that it would take all necessary measures to protect its legitimate and lawful rights indicates an escalation of tensions between India and China, and a warning that military conflict is a step closer, the state media has said. The Chinese foreign ministry on Wednesday posted a 15-page fact sheet with maps and other details about the standoff since it began on June 16. "The foreign ministry document shows that the crisis on the China-India border has reached a crucial moment," Zhao Gancheng, director of the Center for Asia-Pacific Studies at the Shanghai Institute for International Studies, told the Global Times. Zhao said the standoff has not been resolved because China and India have different perspectives on the issue. China was building a road, but India considers it a big threat to its national security," he said. Zhao said if the conflict turns into a military one, both the countries would face a very tough situation. Since people of both countries are tremendously patriotic, even economic cooperation between the two countries would be heavily affected." The foreign ministry statement said the China-Bhutan boundary issue is one between China and Bhutan and has nothing to do with India. As a third party, India has no right to interfere in or impede the boundary talks between China and Bhutan, still less the right to make territorial claims on Bhutans behalf," the fact sheet added. Hu Zhiyong, a research fellow at the Institute of International Relations of the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences, said the longer the standoff lasts, the worse it will be for India. He even said that it could also effect the BRICS summit in September. If Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi refuses to come to Xiamen for the BRICS summit, India will be in a more inferior position," Hu said. On Wednesday, China accused New Delhi of "concocting" excuses over the "illegal entry" of Indian troops into its territory but added that there has been a significant reduction in their numbers. The foreign ministry said Beijing had acted with a great deal of restraint. "But the Indian side not only has not taken any actual steps to correct its mistake, it has concocted all sorts of reasons that don't have a leg to stand on, to make up excuses for the Indian military's illegal crossing of the border," the statement said. In a separate statement, China also claimed that there were initially more than 400 Indian border troops about 180 metres into Chinese territory and that the number has come down to 40 by late July. Sources in New Delhi, however, denied any reduction in troops. "The strength remains the same as it was, it's status quo," a source was quoted as saying by Reuters. On my last day in office as the President, I received a letter from PM @narendramodi that touched my heart! Sharing with you all. pic.twitter.com/cAuFnWkbYn Pranab Mukherjee (@CitiznMukherjee) August 3, 2017 Thanks @narendramodi sir from a daughterBut as a worker of INC, I'll criticise ur govt's anti-people policies.That's d beauty of democracy https://t.co/JpFGxuOUkP Sharmistha Mukherjee (@Sharmistha_GK) August 3, 2017 In a farewell letter for President Pranab Mukherjee on his last day in office, Prime Minister Narendra Modi raised a toast to hissimplicity, high principles and exemplary leadership among other things.Referring to the veteran politician as a father figure, Modi thanked Mukherjee for being warm, affectionate and caring towards him.President Mukherjee on Wednesday shared images of the letter saying, On my last day in office as the President, I received a letter from PM @narendramodi that touched my heart! Sharing with you all.PM Modi talked about how Pranab Da has been a guiding force for him in the hot seat of power. Three years ago, I came to New Delhi as an outsider. The task before me was huge and challenging. In these times, you have always been a father figure and a mentor to me. Your wisdom, guidance and personal warmth have given me greater confidence and strength.Modi shares an instance when Mukherjee called him up to enquire about his health. You have been so warm, affectionate and caring to me. Your one phone call asking me "I hope you are taking care of your health" was enough to fill me with fresh energy, after a long day at meetings or on a campaign tour, said the letter.The PM admired Mukherjees vast knowledge base and wrote, That you are a repository of knowledge is well known. I have always marvelled at your insights on various subjects, ranging from policy to politics, economics to external affairs, and security issues to subjects of national and global importance. Your intellectual prowess has constantly helped my government and me.These two seasoned politicians come from two starkly different political backgrounds but they , maintained an extremely cordial relationship for these three years that the NDA government has been at the helm of things.Modi wrote, Pranab Da, our political journeys took shape in different political parties. Our ideologies, at times, have been different. Our experiences are also varied. My administrative experience was from my state, whereas you have seen the expanse of our national polity and politics for decades. Yet, such is the strength of your intellect and wisdom that we were able to work together with synergy.The PM ended the letter with, Your legacy will continue to guide us. Rashtrapati ji, it has been an honour to work with you, as your Prime Minister! New Delhi:Stating that the political party did not raise objections when it suited them, the Supreme Court on Thursday shot down a plea by the Gujarat Congress to stay the Rajya Sabha election in the state, scheduled for August 8. A bench led by Justice Dipak Misra said that no stay can be granted in a matter like this, especially when the primary ground of challenge use of NOTA in ballot papers, was declared by the Election Commission of India by its circulars way back in January 2014 and again in November 2015. How many elections have been conducted since these circulars? Why didnt you challenge it then? When it suited you, you didn't challenge it but when it doesn't, you raise objections, the bench told senior lawyers Kapil Sibal and Abhishek M Singhvi, who represented the party and Gujarat Congress chief whip. The court also rejected the plea to allow election only if NOTA is not used. Fate of Sonia Gandhi's political advisor Ahmed Patel is at stake after some of the Congress MLAs left the party to join the BJP while Congress struggled to keep its flock together. Use of NOTA accentuated the problem since a vote is invalidated if a MLA uses NOTA option in the ballot paper, thereby further denting the prospect of Patels return to the upper house. In case of cross-voting, anti-defection law may disqualify a MLA but use of NOTA instead of voting for a candidate from some other party will not kick in disqualification automatically. Sibal called use of NOTA a recipe for corruption, arguing the Gujarat Congress chief whip Shailesh Parmar has moved the court now since the cause of action has arisen due to the August 8 poll. He added the EC could not have issued circulars because the statutory rules under the Representation of People Act did not provide for NOTA. But the bench, also comprising Justices Amitava Roy and A M Khanwilkar, questioned Sibal why the party has come on the eve of the election. These circulars were not state-oriented. They were generic in nature. We dont need to go by one state or another. We are at a loss to understand why didnt you challenge these circulars, first of which came long back in January 2014. The circulars clearly said they will be applied as and when elections take place, the judges told the lawyers. The Congress legal team, incidentally, had two Rajya Sabha MPs, Sibal and Vivek Tankha, who were elected with NOTA option available in the ballot papers. At one point, senior advocate Ashok Desai, who appeared for the Election Commission, submitted that Tankha could vouch for the fact that NOTA was being used in all RS pills after the circulars. The judges, during the hearing, pointed out that it was not a good argument in law that somebody will wait to challenge something until it starts affecting him. "All circulars and notifications affect all political parties and their members. Anybody could challenge it after 2014 circular. You can't wait till You are affected and come to us on the eve of the election," said the bench. It said that there was no bar for raising constitutional issues but election could not be issued. When Sibal said that not staying the election will render the issue infructuous, the bench responded it would mean they were not in interested in the points of law at all. The bench then issued a notice to the EC on the point of law, seeking their reply in two weeks. Even as it noted that the Centre had no role in the dispute, the court requested Attorney General K K Venugopal to assist it on the constitutional issues. The bench fixed September 13 as the next date. New Delhi: A Delhi court snubbed on Thursday an overenthusiastic prosecutor for the Enforcement Directorate (ED) for asking Kashmiri separatist leader Shabir Shah to chant 'Bharat Mata ki jai' to prove his patriotism, saying it was not a television studio. Additional Sessions Judge Sidharth Sharma chided the lawyer for his remark and later allowed the ED's plea for extension by six days sixty-four-year-old Shah's custodial interrogation in a decade-old money laundering case. The ED's counsel Rajeev Awasthi alleged that Shah was ruining the country by using money to fund terror and breached the line by daring the separatist leader to chant 'Bharat Mata ki Jai' to prove his patriotism. However, an anguished judge stopped him, warning that the courtroom was not a "television studio." "Argue on the merits of the case," said the judge. During the proceedings, the ED submitted that foreign funds were used for terror activities including stone pelting on the security agencies in the Valley. The agency told the court that the source of funding of properties of Shah, worth hundreds of crores of rupees, had to be unearthed. The prosecutor told the court that Shah, arrested on July 25 in the money laundering, was "totally non-cooperative" during his questioning by the ED. Advocate M S Khan, appearing for Shah, however, alleged that his client was being pressured and compelled to give various statements during his custody by ED officials. He opposed the submission made by the agency, saying that it was not revealing the complete facts before the court. The agency said there was a need to probe a lot of cash transactions which were used for terror activities and stone pelting causing huge inconvenience in the Valley. The ED said it was ascertaining Shah's role in "anti-national activities" as well as the terror funding through 'hawala' channels from countries like Pakistan, the UAE and the UK. It told the court that the separatist leader was in continuous contact with anti-national elements, besides terrorists in Pakistan, and received money for "disrupting the peace of Jammu and Kashmir". It also said that Shah's associates were to be confronted with him and the "international ramification" of financial involvement was to be unearthed. The ED's application, seeking seven days' custody, also said that during interrogation Shah revealed that he was obtaining donations for the Kashmir issue in cash for which he was not filing any income tax returns. The records relating to the donations were to be recovered and the accused had to be confronted with them, the agency said. Shah was arrested by the ED a day after several Hurriyat leaders were taken into custody of the National Investigating Agency (NIA) in a case of alleged terror funding in the Valley to fuel unrest. He was taken into custody in the August 2005 case in which the Special Cell of Delhi Police had arrested Mohammed Aslam Wani (35), an alleged hawala dealer, claiming that Rs 63 lakh was recovered from Wani out of which Rs 52 lakh was allegedly to be delivered to Shah. The agency had earlier issued summonses to Shah in the case, the prosecution had said, adding that Wani had claimed that he had given Rs 2.25 crore to Shah. Investigating agencies like the NIA have cracked down on Hurriyat leaders like Syed Ali Shah Geelani's son-in-law -- Altaf Ahmed Shah, also known as Altaf Fantoosh -- and six other Kashmiri separatists. Patna: Three persons, including a truck driver, were badly beaten by a mob for allegedly carrying beef in Bihars Bhojpur district on Thursday, police said. A mob of local people, led by a few cow vigilantes, in Shahpur in Bhojpur stopped a truck on suspicion of carrying beef and beat up the driver and two others. The victims pleaded for mercy but the attackers refused to relent. A team of Shahpur police rescued the three but arrested them for carrying beef in the truck. However, angry locals demanded the police to handover the accused to them. When the police refused, they blocked Ara-Buxar road in protest. It was us who caught the truck loaded with beef, not the police. They came later after being informed and rescued the three accused, a local Bajrang Dal leader Arjun Singh said. According to police, the beef-loaded truck was on way from Shahpur to Muzaffarpur district. The CPI(M) was quick to react to the incident and said it is a clear confirmation that BJP has assumed power. "It is a clear confirmation that BJP has assumed power in Bihar. Now only Hindutva policies will be implemented while he (Nitish Kumar) continues to remain the Chief Minister," said CPI(M) General Secretary Sitaram Yechury. Responding to questions, he said lynching and mob violence have "entered Bihar as soon as the BJP came to power there. New Delhi: External affairs minister Sushma Swaraj said on Thursday that the standoff with China can only be resolved through diplomacy and a war would not help solve problems. Speaking in Rajya Sabha after Opposition cast doubts over the governments foreign policy, Swaraj said that patience is key to resolving problems, because if patience is lost, there can be provocation from the other side. We will keep patience to resolve the issue," she said. She was replying to a discussion on "Indias foreign policy and engagement with strategic partners" during which members voiced concern over the stand-off and raised questions over India's policy. In response to questions, she said military readiness is always there as the military is meant to fight wars. "But war cannot resolve problems. So wisdom is to resolve diplomatically," the external affairs minister asserted. Raking up Rahul Gandhis meeting with the Chinese envoy even as the armies faced off in the Bhutan tri-junction, she said, He should have consulted with the Prime Minister first. The opposition should have taken the government's view before meeting the Chinese. Reiterating the importance of good relations with China, she said that Chinas actions in the region are a big concern. "The Chinese are selectively quoting Jawaharlal Nehru's letter. Peace and tranquility with China is important. Doklam can be resolved through bilateral talks, she said. We are talking with China on everything, not just Doklam. China has big investments in India. Also, you have to understand that both Russia and the United States are with us, she added. She also slammed the opposition parties, saying that statements made by some MPs contradict facts. A combative Swaraj also shut down the Congress contention that Indias relations with other neighbours too had deteriorated under the Narendra Modi government, and said the countrys standing had grown in the eyes of the worlds powers under PM Modi. She said Indias roadmap with all its neighbours is one of peace and tranquility, but asserted talks and terror cant go hand-in-hand, in a reference to Pakistan. "It can't be one-sided... Terror and talks cannot go together. The day they stop promoting terror, we will start the talks," she said. "You are asking what our Pakistan roadmap is. We had declared it even before the swearing-in. We had invited prime ministers of all the neighbouring countries and all came... Bilateral meetings were also held and I was present," Swaraj said. She recalled that the then Prime Minister of Pakistan Nawaz Sharif along with leaders of all other neighbouring countries had been invited to the swearing-in ceremony of the Modi government in May 2014. Since then, the relations with Pakistan have been witnessing ups and downs, she said. "The story changed after (the killing of Hizbul Mujahideen commander) Burhan Wani (in an encounter) when they (Pakistan) declared him as a martyr," Swaraj said. She said that the concerns raised by the Congress now were born during the previous UPA rule. "You are the ones who gave birth to the concerns raised now," she said, while praising the Modi governments outreach to its neighbours and friends. We helped countries like Maldives, Sri Lanka, Nepal when they were in need. We were the first to help Nepal during the earthquake. Nations which seek our help, are our friends, she said. New Delhi: The Opposition asked the government to spell out its roadmap to deal with China amid the border stand-off as it chided the Centre for not having a stable foreign policy and its apparent failure to isolate Pakistan globally. During a discussion on "India's foreign policy and engagement with strategic partners" in the Rajya Sabha, the Opposition parties said they are with the government in the face of "unusually aggressive" position adopted by China but wanted the country to be strengthened further militarily to ward off any threat. The Opposition parties also accused the government of spoiling relations with the neighbours and felt that India should not be isolated in the process of isolating Pakistan. As we engage with our partner countries, please ensure that there is balance. We should ensure that we engage with all of them. But we should ensure that there is strategic balance," said Congress leader Anand Sharma, while initiating the discussion. Sharma, a former Minister of State for External Affairs, said there should be no dilution or deviation from the laid down foreign policy of the country. Referring to the border stand-off with China, he said the neigbouring country is being "unusually aggressive" and the "doors of diplomacy seem to be closing". When it comes to country's national interests, we stand as one and there is no division. It is clear...Diplomacy must be given a chance. We believe in making all possible diplomatic channels to de-escalate the situation on borders," he said, adding, De-escalation does not mean retreat. It is safeguarding India's interest." Targeting Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Sharma said he had "not uttered a word" on what he has talked with Chinese President Xi Jingping during their meetings in Astana (Kazakhstan) and Hamburg (Germany). "It is his (PM's) duty to tell us. He cannot remain silent on matters of India's sensitive interests," he said. Sharma also noted that National Security Adviser Ajit Doval had visited China recently and wondered whether after that "a window has opened that this stand-off would be resolved." He also said that India should avoid making boastful claims of isolating Pakistan. The Congress leader said it was a matter of concern that China has offered to mediate between India and Pakistan. He said managing of the periphery comes first and that is of critical importance, saying the rest comes later. "Unless we manage our neighbours correctly, it would be difficult or rather impossible to play a major role globally," he said, adding, "What is your roadmap? There is no stability in your policy. It keeps changing. First you say we would talk and then stop talks." Sharma said terrorism is a threat and there is increase in cross-border attacks but not a day passes when the life of an Army man is not lost in Jammu and Kashmir. "It is not a matter of statistics, but we have to stand up and protect our borders," he said. The Congress leader said India had succeeded in de-hyphenating India from Pakistan. "The real concern is that the hyphenation is back," he said. Sharma said it was a matter of concern to India that China and Turkey have offered to mediate between India and Pakistan. "We have concern because China's profile in Pakistan is increasing and Pakistan is getting emboldened of this support for China and that is our concern," he said. Talking about the surgical strikes, he said, "Even a military victory must not be boasted upon." (With PTI inputs) New Delhi: External affairs minister Sushma Swaraj on Thursday made scathing attacks on the opposition as she said the India-China standoff went way back to a time when Jawaharlal Nehru was in power. Swaraj further said that the Bandung Conference was one such episode. Let's take a look at what exactly this conference was and how it shaped India's foreign policy: Held in 1955, the conference was one of a kind. This was the first ever large scale meeting of Asian and African countries most of which were newly independent. India was represented by Jawaharlal Nehru and there have been varied versions as to how he handled India's foreign policy at Bandung. The Doklam standoff takes form from the contradictory approaches to the problem of border settlement taken by the two governments. A report in Indian Express quoted retired journalist Neville Maxwell, who has been looking at Indo-China relations for decades now. Maxwell says different and contradictory approaches taken by India and China (represented by Nehru and Zhou Enlai respectively) at Bandung are formative in Indian-Sino relations. "With some (of our neighbouring) countries we have not yet finally fixed our border line and we are ready to do so. But before (such negotiations can be held) we are willing to maintain the present situation by acknowledging that those parts of our border are parts which are undetermined. We will restrain our government and people from crossing even one step across our border, (and) if such things do happen we (would) admit our mistake. As to the determination of common borders which we will be undertaking with our neighbouring countries, we shall use only peaceful means and we shall not permit any other kind of method. In no case shall we change that," Zhou had declared. This is where Nehru's stand on the issue came in. In 1950, when Nehru was asked about the alignment of India's birder with Tibet, the then Prime Minister replied, "The frontier from Bhutan eastwards has been clearly defined by the McMahon Line which was fixed by the Simla Convention of 1914. Members had then said that China's official maps ignored the McMahon Line and showed India's North East Frontier Agency as part of their territory. "They've been doing so for 30 years. Our maps show the McMahon Line as our boundary, and that is our boundary, (Chinese) map or no map. That fact remains and we stand by that boundary and we will not allow anybody to come across our boundary," he said. Investigations later have shown, according to Neville Maxwell, that India's McMahon Line claim stands only on a forward policy which had been advanced by British India's North East frontier by close to 70 miles in its final leg. It is possible that Nehru was told about the Line by senior official Sir Olaf Caroe during the time of Independence. Interestingly, the Chinese government is said to have come to know about it later when it got access to diplomatic records filed in the Potala in Lhasa but it didn't change their basic policy. Maxwell believes that the Doklam confrontation is the sour fruit of Delhi's irrational insistence that it has the right to set its borders and those of its neighbours too. The Other Move By India Under Nehru Another development that had important impact in terms of India's foreign policy was Nehru's visit to the United States in October 1949. According to the archives of the People's Democracy, the US Administration had timed the trip in such a way that it coincided with the ascendance of the Communist Party to power in China. "During the visit, considerable pressure was exerted by the United States on Nehru to draw India into the anti-communist camp. However, Nehru spurned all such insidious attempts by summarily rejecting the US proposal of setting up military bases in India in return for the economic aid that Nehru had gone there to seek. Failure to obtain US economic aid without political strings and because of the general foreign policy of the United States of suppressing national liberation movements in Asia, relations between India and the United States began to sour," the article said. The article further mentions the "relation with the new regime in China was an important foreign policy problem that India had to tackle and it did so by recognising the Peoples Republic of China on December 30, 1949. India also supported the demand for granting China its rightful place in the UN Security Council instead of the Chiang Kai-shek regime of Taiwan, which according to the articles had full support from the United States. Rain and humidity make for a perfect breeding ground for bacterial growth, leading to infection. Urinary Tract Infection (UTI), in particular, increases in incidence during this time and women, more than men, are prone to it. What's more trendy, figure-hugging jeans and other tight clothing further increases chances of UTI. Doctors say that one in five women suffer from UTI at least once in their lifetime. The risk prevails right from birth -- paediatricians often advise parents to look out for their baby girls from contacting UTI. "In women, the urethra is shorter than in men, and is closer to the anal opening. So they are more prone to infections," urologist Jaswant Patil said. Improper cleaning techniques and exposure in an unhygienic swimming pool can increase chances of infection, he added. Gynaecologist Priti Vyas said chances of UTI increase with advancing age. "More women than men suffer from UTI and the numbers do not neutralise with age. In fact, as women reach peri-menopausal and menopausal stage, their estrogen levels in the vagina dips, thereby making the urethra more prone to catching urinary tract infection," Vyas told this correspondent. Similarly, lower estrogen levels in the very young makes baby girls more susceptible to such infections. Clothes can also play a big role in making for a perfect breeding ground for infections. Gynaecologist Ranjana Das said that tight clothing that traps moisture increases chances of UTI. "We see a lot of young college-going girls complaining of UTI. Wearing tight-fitting jeans that go unwashed for days is a big culprit because it does not allow ventilation and makes a conducive environment for bacterial growth. Using unclean washrooms is another reason," the doctor said. Avoiding public washrooms may not be possible, especially while travelling or at work. Even so, a lot of people, especially women, hold their urine for a long time when faced with the prospect of using public loos. This, Vyas said, also leads to UTI. Hence many people are now opting to carry toilet seat sanitisers. Vikas Bagaria and his wife Srijana, co-founders of one such product, PeeSafe, said that they realised its need after Srijana was hospitalised with a high-grade fever and acute UTI while on a road-trip. "We had to cut-short the road-trip in Rajkot and fly back to Delhi where Srijana was hospitalised. It was then she thought of a product that would keep women safe while using public washrooms," Vikas said. They discussed the idea, and he finally came up with the product that is now exported to different countries like Australia, Nigeria, Kenya and Singapore. Coming back to clothing, Patil also said that tight clothes "compromise blood circulation which leads to lowering of local immunity and makes one prone to infections". "Women with menstrual problems are more prone and should be cautious," he added. Nylon undergarments should also be avoided. To tackle the problem or keep risk at bay, doctors advise consumption of plenty of fluids -- although one may not feel as thirsty during the monsoon -- and alkaline food like fruits, vegetables and legumes. In hot and humid weather, the urine becomes more acidic and concentrated, and therefore chances of inflammatory UTI and then secondary infection spikes, which fluids can help avoid. Vyas also has a word of advice against certain products. "Female hygiene sprays, scented douches and scented bath products can sometimes cause severe inflammation and irritation; so they should be avoided," she said. Heritage hotel Ravla Khempur, which was also the venue for the Judi Dench starrer "The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel", is set to come alive with a performing arts and music festival Wonderflip. The fest is scheduled to be held from November 9 to 12. A 45-minute drive away from Udaipur, the festival venue will have two music stages which will host artistes, both live and electronic, hailing from India and abroad, read a statement from the organisers of the fest. From aerial, acrobatic and other circus acts, the festival will also have a Circus Bazaar offering gourmet food and drinks around the clock, as well as shops with specially curated festival merchandise. The first line-up includes Patrice Baumel, Frankey and Sandrino, Eagles and Butterflies, Atmos, Ankytrixx, Bullzeye, 8-Bit Culprit, Gypsy Sound Revolution, Gaudi and Gaurav Raina, the one-half of the Midival Punditz will be performing solo as Grain at the fest. Wonderflip in association with the brand Royal Enfield, will also present 'Maut Ka Kuan' (The Well of Death) -- a show where guests will get to witness motorcyclists riding along a vertical wooden wall of a well and performing stunts. The port of call that leaves the most memorable impression on cruisers is Budapest, which was named the best cruise destination of 2017, according to members of the world's largest online cruise community. Winners of CruiseCritic.com's second annual Cruisers' Choice Destination Awards were based on reviews and ratings submitted by cruisers over the past year. Budapest took the top honor this year, with visitors praising the city's historic beauty. The awards named the top cruise destinations across 15 regions around the world. In a recently conducted online poll, itinerary was named the most important factor when choosing a cruise (44 percent), followed by price (32 percent) and sail dates (12 percent). The results were based on 1,155 responses. "Itineraries are incredibly important to today's cruisers who are more focused than ever on where they're going and what they can do while they're there," said Colleen McDaniel, Senior Executive Editor in a statement. "Cruise lines have focused on expanding their offerings to quench that thirst for exploration -- and this year's list of winning destinations shows the wide array of adventures cruising offers. You can sail among the glaciers in Alaska's Glacier Bay, feel like a character on 'Game of Thrones' in Dubrovnik or relax in a private island cabana in Castaway Cay. The options are endless." Other big winners include Quebec City, which was named the best port in Canada and the US, and Cabo San Lucas for the top-rated port in the Mexican Riviera. Here are the winners: Top-Rated Alaska Port: Glacier Bay Top-Rated Asia & South Pacific Port: Singapore Top-Rated Australia & New Zealand Port: Akaroa Top-Rated Baltic & Scandinavia Port: St. Petersburg Top-Rated Eastern Caribbean, Bahamas & Bermuda Port: King's Wharf Top-Rated Southern Caribbean Port: Curacao Top-Rated Western Caribbean & Riviera Maya Port: Cozumel Top-Rated British Isles & Western Europe Port: Amsterdam Top-Rated Eastern Mediterranean Port: Dubrovnik Top-Rated European River Port: Budapest Top-Rated Western Mediterranean Port: Villefranche Top-Rated Hawaii Port: Kauai Top-Rated Mexican Riviera, Central & South America Port: Cabo San Lucas Top-Rated U.S. & Canada Port: Quebec City Top-Rated Cruise Line Private Island: Disney Cruise Line's Castaway Cay With tourism season in full swing in Paris and visitor numbers on the rebound, local police have released a reminder safety video offering tips on how to thwart pickpockets and identify common tourist scams. After a disastrous tourism year in 2016, tourists have been returning in droves to the French capital this year. According to the Paris Convention and Visitors Bureau, the city experienced the best first trimester of the last decade, with overnight hotel stays up 13 percent in the first four months of 2017, compared to the previous year. But along with the return of tourists, comes the return of con artists, eager to pounce on naive, vulnerable and inexperienced travelers. In a short video released on Twitter Tuesday, Paris police outlined a slew of common scams employed by pickpockets and con artists, along with simple tips on how to have a safe, and event-free Paris holiday. Here are a few highlights: Fake petitioners They'll come at you with a clipboard and pen, gesturing wildly about needing your signature for a petition about human rights or some such thing. Ignore it and move on. While one person lays it on thick, the other is actually rifling through your things and trying to steal your goods. Move quickly along. ATMs While withdrawing cash at the ATM, don't let yourself be distracted. If someone tries squeezing in asking for directions, be suspicious. Because while you have your back turned, their partner in crime has gone and plucked your cash from the mouth of the machine. Card game scams You'll never win one of those card games set up along Pont Alexandre or Pont Neuf because they're rigged. Save your money. You can also apply these safety tips to your travels elsewhere, as they apply broadly to travel in general. -This one applies especially to men: Don't leave your wallet in your back pocket. That's an open invitation to pickpockets and makes you a particularly easy target. -Don't hang your jacket and bag on the back of your seat, particularly if someone is sitting next to you. Your belongings could depart without you. Same goes for your mobile phone. Don't leave it on the table in full view as a quick distraction is all it takes to swipe it from the table. -If traveling on a bus tour, make sure to retrieve your luggage as soon as the luggage compartment is opened, or risk getting it stolen from right under you. You'll have plenty of time to gawk at the monuments. -Don't let people follow you into the turnstile. It's the perfect excuse to sidle up right behind you and swipe something from your person. -Opt to use cross-body shoulder bags. Carry backpacks on your front to keep sticky fingers at bay. -Be particularly vigilant if traveling solo. -Try to pay by card as much as possible. Carry as little cash as possible and pay in small denominations; Don't flash large notes. Kolkata: Tumi Bahir Theke, a feature film based on the unknown history of the 1971 Bangladesh Liberation War is set to have a worldwide release in December this year. The movie directed by Sajal Ahmed and Ujjal Chakraborty, will be simultaneously released in London, Paris, Rome, Berlin, Stockholm, New York, Los Angeles and Montreal, among others. The political thriller is a tribute to the freedom fighters who fought for Bangladesh's liberation. "The decision to showcase the film in the aforementioned cities is due to the influence the Bengali community wields in those regions," Chakraborty said. The film is expected to be released on December 16, which is observed as 'Victory Day' in Bangladesh. The respective Bengali Associations will help in the release, he added. Talking about the story line, Chakraborty said: "the movie captured the atmosphere in the year 1971 when some people resided outside Bangladesh - in cities like Kolkata, London and New York." Actor and model Koena Mitra is the latest Bollywood celebrity to be a target of lewd misbehavior. The star of films such as Heyy Babyy and Apna Sapna Money Money received a string of obscene calls on her personal phone, which soon numbered to 40-50 such instances. According to a report by Indian Express, Mitra registered a complaint with the Oshiwara police station, and was waiting for the authorities to take action. Mid-day quoted a police officer as saying, We have booked the caller under section 509 (word, gesture or act intended to insult the modesty of a woman) of IPC and are investigating the case further. If media reports are anything to go by, the caller was abusive and also offered her money for a "night out". While the 33-year old actor has been out of the limelight for some years now, she first came to public attention as a model and went on to appear in music videos as well as feature films. Mumbai: Veteran actor Rishi Kapoor is excited to shoot in Benaras and Lucknow as he has heard "such great stories" about the cities. Rishi, who will be visiting the cities for filmmaker Anubhav Sinha's film Mulk soon, told: "I have not done drama in a long time and when Anubhav narrated the film to me, I loved the concept of the film. Shooting in Benaras and Lucknow will be an added bonus since I have heard such great stories about the cities." "This is a very encouraging thriller inspired by true events set in small-town India," he added. His former Kapoor & Sons co-star Rajat Kapoor will also play a role in the social thriller, which will star Prateik Babbar and Taapsee Pannu too. Rajat said: "I haven't come across a script in over two years that has creatively excited me after Kapoor & Sons. When I met Anubhav for the first time, I was quite impressed with the storytelling skills of Mulk." "In fact, I told him that this will be a brand new challenge as this film is something he has never attempted in the past. It is a very unusual thriller that will make audiences sit up in their seats and take note," he added. Prateik is all praise for the director, who has helmed thrillers like Dus and Cash. "Anubhav sir has always been a mentor and role model. When he called me, I just agreed to do the film because I have always wanted to work with a visionary like him," he said. Taapsee is looking forward to being a part of the film where she will get to play a "gritty character". "I'm confident of this film to find a place in the audience's heart as the content is very relevant. The best part of doing a social thriller is you get a chance to present a story that's been happening around all of us but no one really bothers to address it," said the Naam Shabana actress. Mulk will go on floors in October. New Delhi: The toddler adopted by actor Sunny Leone last month had been turned down by 11 prospective parents before she could find a family, says adoption agency CARA. While adoptive parents are often very picky about who they bring into their homes and have a lot to say about a child's physical appearance, skin colour, as well as medical history, the tinsel town diva and her husband Daniel Weber, were not interested in any of it. "Without looking at colour, background and health status, Sunny Leone happily took the child in adoption. We respect that they didn't try to bend the rules and stood in the queue like all the other parents," Child Adoption Resource Agency (CARA) CEO Lt Col Deepak Kumar said. Leone applied for adoption on the web portal of CARA, the apex body for adoption, on September 30 last year and was referred a child on June 21. Leone gave her assent the following day as parents are given 48 hours to accept the child. On completing all the formalities the actor was allowed to take the child from Latur in Maharashtra into pre-adoption foster care and is now awaiting a court order which will declare the couple the legal parents of the nearly two-year-old Nisha Kaur Weber. Leone is an overseas citizen of India (OCI) and for such category of parents the adoption process can be quite arduous as a child is first referred to Indian nationals. Only if the child is not adopted for two months does he or she get referred to overseas applicants. That 60 per cent of the children referred to foreign nationals are special needs children and 90 per cent are those older than two years reflects the fact that such children find less acceptability among domestic applicants, Kumar explained. In fact, concerned about parents delaying the adoption process, the central adoption body had in May this year revised its rules and said it would only refer one child at a time to prospective parents instead of three in one go. "Since we changed our rules we have been able to place double the number of children and ensure that children spend less time in orphanages and find new homes faster," Kumar said. We got in touch with Weber who said the family would not like to comment as a court order on the adoption was pending. Rohtak: BJP president Amit Shah on Wednesday met the party's district chiefs, office-bearers and chairmen of boards and corporations as part of his three-day Haryana visit. At the meetings, Shah exhorted party workers to further strengthen the BJP and work for "Mission-2019" with new zeal and enthusiasm. He said the party will ensure that recruitments are made and jobs are given "purely on a merit basis sans any bias". Shah stressed on launching an intensive door-to-door campaign to make people aware of various policies of the central and state governments, state BJP president Subhash Barala said. At the meeting, party workers were told to reach out to the public and redress people's grievances through "CM Window" and monitoring committees, he said. "He (Shah) took feedback from workers and sought suggestions on how we can do better," Barala said. With an eye on the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, Shah is traveling across states to strategise and find ways to strengthen the party at the grass-root level. The BJP president had visited the Union Territory of Chandigarh in May. He is on a 110-day country-wide tour which began in Jammu in April this year. During the course of his three-day stay, discussions will be held on how to strengthen the BJP at every single booth in the state, so that it wins all the 10 Lok Sabha seats in the 2019 general elections, Barala said. Earlier in the morning, Shah arrived to a grand welcome at Bahadurgarh in Jhajjar district, which is also called as the "gateway of Haryana". Bahadurgarh lies adjoining Rohtak, the venue of Shah's three-day stay, which is about 70 km from Delhi. At Bahadurgarh, Shah was received by Chief Minister Manohar Khattar, some of his cabinet colleagues including Ram Bilas Sharma, Capt Abhimanyu, Krishan Lal Panwar and state BJP president Subhash Barala. He was honoured with traditional Haryanvi 'pugri'. The BJP chief will be camping in Rohtak for all the three days, as the ruling BJP, which came to power for the first time in Haryana, is looking to consolidate its position after being in power for almost three years. The chief minister and his ministerial colleagues and other senior leaders of the state are camping here for Shah's visit. Shah will be attending 27 programmes, including 17 meetings with BJP MLAs and others. On the concluding day of his visit, Shah will address some meetings where the focus will be to work hard on 'vistarak yojna' (expansion plan) which was initiated across the country to strengthen BJP in view of the 2019 Lok Sabha polls. Shah will also be presented with a report card highlighting the Khattar government's achievements during its rule, state BJP chief Barala said. He will also take stock of the implementation of the schemes related to the poor. Barala said Shah will also review steps being undertaken to strengthen the party organization in the state. Asked why the BJP went for Rohtak as the venue for Shah's visit, Barala said: "Rohtak has been our party's headquarter for decades. It is also the political capital of Haryana. Rohtak was also the stronghold of one of our tallest leader, late Mangal Sain." Notably, Rohtak is considered the stronghold of former chief minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda. The Congress had managed to win only one Lok Sabha seat from Haryana in the 2014 parliamentary election as Hooda's son Deepender Singh retained his Rohtak seat. State health minister and senior BJP leader Anil Vij said there was great enthusiasm among party workers in view of Shah's visit. Taking a dig at the Congress and the INLD, which have claimed Shah's visit will not have much impact, Vij said, "The Opposition is in disarray. Wherever Amit Shah goes, the Opposition goes into hibernation. The opposition tries to hide". Addressing a gathering along with Shah in the evening, Khattar said, "We are in power in Haryana for nearly 33 months now. Before the polls, we had said in our manifesto and promised that we will strive to bring a change and we have succeeded to a large extent in this endeavour." "Corruption was at its peak earlier, but we took steps to rein in this menace. I do not claim that corruption has been totally eliminated, but definitely we are working towards achieving that. We committed a transparent regime, without any regional bias or favoritism and we have delivered on that," he said. He also talked about bringing transparency in transfers of teachers and making recruitments purely on a merit basis. "We are open to suggestions and we will incorporate the good ones. We are taking all sections along as we believe in 'sabka saath sabka vikas'," he said. Francis Fukuyamas original title for his famous essay The End of History? in the international affairs journal The National Interest had a question mark at the end. That was in 1989. Opting for certainty, he dropped the question mark and expanded the title when his book The End of History and the Last Man appeared three years later. His argument was that the end was also a beginning. The world was witnessing not just the end of the Cold War and the demise of the Soviet Union but the universal triumph of Western capitalist democracy as the ultimate form of human government. In much the same way, the disappearance of the Bengali Left from the Rajya Sabha could mark the beginning of a neo-capitalist age Indian style, which means tinged with Hindu fundamentalism and religious intolerance. Whatever one thinks of the Left, only a rigid ideologue bordering on fascist bigotry would deny that variety is of the essence of democracy. A lal jhanda carrying communist is as much a part of Indias political landscape as a yogi in saffron and beads or another chief minister who swathes a scarf round her head. A hundred flowers must bloom in the literally truest and not Maoist sense if every strand of thought in the country is to find reflection in the decision-making process. Indias leaders have accepted this since 1952 when Bhupesh Gupta of the undivided Communist Party of India became the first Left candidate to the Rajya Sabha and brought a dimension of intellectual breadth and human compassion to its debates. Whether or not the denial of any representation to the Left from Bengal is because the Left is the victim of a conspiracy as Bengals Left legislature party leader, Sujan Chakraborty, believes, there is no doubt that the Rajya Sabha will be the poorer without this essential element. Bikash Ranjan Bhattacharya, the Marxist leader whom the Election Commission rejected on what looks like flimsy procedural grounds, is a veteran politician, a qualified lawyer and a former mayor of Kolkata. His presence and participation can only have enriched the proceedings of the Upper House. It may seem pertinent in the context of the conspiracy theory that only four months ago Bhattacharya complained of being manhandled by Trinamool Congress workers who snatched his cell phone. The Left is in bad odour with the hundreds of thousands of educated, aspiring and sycophantic Indians politicians, bureaucrats, businessmen, journalists, academics and others who slavishly court the establishment to pick up even sour plums. Some might say that the practical consequences of the Bengali Left being unrepresented may be minimal so far as national governance is concerned. Not only does the Rajya Sabha not play a decisive constitutional role in statecraft (although its vetoing power has put the NDA government to considerable inconvenience in the recent past) but membership is nowadays sometimes scandalously manipulated, albeit often in a good cause. Worthy man and valuable parliamentarian though he might be, the Delhi-based Sitaram Yechury was not especially representative of the cross-currents of Bengali life and thought. Similarly, the formidable intellect of Manmohan Singh represented a national consensus that enjoyed international respect and goodwill; it didnt reflect Assams exclusive ethnic and cultural identity or the social winds that blow in the Brahmaputra valley. Rajya Sabha membership was little more than a permissible flag of convenience for both. That is not to belittle the Rajya Sabhas functions as a scrutinizing second chamber (somewhat like Britains reformed House of Lords) whose veteran legislators can subject laws to dispassionate examination free of the heat and passions of party loyalties. Past history has shown that the nations political life has only benefited from the special talents identified with radical men and women from Bengal. One thinks of the sharp eye for corporate corruption that distinguished the CPIs revered Gurudas Dasgupta, as well as of the academic and oratorical brilliance of Biplab Dasgupta of the CPI(M) and the no less respected university teacher, author and vice-chancellor, Bharati Ray. In a totally different field, the Left also nominated the distinguished film maker, Mrinal Sen. These men and women were not failed political activists who had to be smuggled into the parliamentary pipeline. Nor were they party hacks who had to be rewarded. They were men of quality and ability who added lustre to the Rajya Sabhas image and often made outstanding contributions to debates. By and large, Leftist politicians from Bengal were known for their austere lifestyle. Of course, the flock could not but throw up the occasional black sheep. It is to the credit of the Left that it did not shrink from its duty when this was spotted. The CPI(M) recently suspended for three months the tempestuous 39-year-old Ritabrata Banerjee, a former general secretary of the Students Federation of India whom it had sent to the Rajya Sabha. The ostensible reason for punishing him was an unbecomingly lavish lifestyle betrayed by the Mont Blanc pen and Apple watch that he is said to have sported. Mrinal Sen might chuckle that the moral turpitude of which Banerjee is accused recalls Ninotchka, a 1939 MGM film by producer and director Ernst Lubitsch starring the legendary Greta Garbo and Melvyn Douglas in which a stern Soviet woman sent to Paris on official business not only finds herself attracted to a man who represents everything she is supposed to detest but ultimately betrays the Cause for an elegant hat she cant resist. No such charge could ever have been levelled against Bhupesh Gupta, the Middle Temple barrister who began his communist career as a member of the Communist Party of Great Britain. Though their paths diverged later, he became friendly in London with Jyoti Basu, Bengals Marxist chief minister. A taciturn man who was hard of hearing, Gupta had been a revolutionary in East Bengal and lived in a commune. He was a sharp parliamentarian and took his duties on Parliaments Committee on Public Undertakings extremely seriously. Once he told S.A. Dange, You may be the chairman of the party, but I wont allow you to interfere in the matters pertaining to parliamentary affairs. I will stick to principles and ideals according to my conscience. He was the longest-serving member of the Rajya Sabha, serving for more than 29 years at a stretch from the chambers inception to his death in Moscow on August 6, 1981. Gupta was specially felicitated when the Rajya Sabha celebrated its 100th session and 25th anniversary on June 22, 1977. He was the last of a breed. They dont make them anymore. A Rajya Sabha without any representative of the Left parties from Bengal for the first time ever is also an end of history. It recalls Gopal Krishna Gokhale (1866-1915) famously proclaiming, What Bengal thinks today, India thinks tomorrow. If Bengal has dispensed with the liberal Left today, India will probably do so tomorrow. We are edging towards political conformism and repressive uniformity. (Mr Datta-Ray is a journalist and author of several books. He has been editor of The Statesman. Views are personal) Mumbai: The leaders of the Congress and the NCP in the Legislative Assembly on Thursday accused the BJP-led state government of trying to malign the image of former Prime Ministers Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi through textbooks. The leader of Opposition Radhakrishna Vikhe Patil demanded a removal of certain "defamatory references" to the former prime ministers from the state board's History textbook for class IX. The House was adjourned for five minutes as the Opposition didn't listen to the pleas made by the Speaker to restore order. A controversy erupted recently after the Maharashtra State Bureau of Textbook Production and Curriculum Research, popularly known as Balbharti, had revised the syllabus for class IX. "Balbharti has written defamatory writings on former PMs Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi in the book for History subject of class IX. We are against the remarks about the Emergency and Bofors (which found mention in the book). We demand that these particular sections be removed from the book and action be taken against those responsible," he said. Joining Vikhe-Patil, senior NCP leader Ajit Pawar said, "Everyone knows the contribution made by Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi. The content has hurt the feelings of all the people of the country". He said such "wrong and insulting writing" should be removed from the book immediately. Meanwhile, the BJP leader and Parliamentary Affairs Minister Girish Bapat said, "The government has not published the book. It is the education board that publishes the books on its own. The authorities will be informed about their feelings and the government will take action against the content providers. The school education minister will look into it". New Delhi: Sachin Tendulkar made a rare appearance in the Rajya Sabha on Thursday that took many by surprise. This comes just days after the government was left red-faced as the empty Treasury Benches meant the Opposition managed to drop a crucial clause from the Constitutional Amendment Bill on the National Commission for Backward Classes. Both Prime Minister Narendra Modi and BJP chief Amit Shah had pulled up the absentee MPs. But its celebrities like Sachin and actress Rekha who have been in the eye of the storm. They are nominated under special categories but are rarely seen in Parliament. As per the latest Parliament attendance record, Sachin has attended 23 sittings, while Rekha has been present in only 18. On Thursday, the master blaster attended the House for around an hour. Recently, Samajwadi Party leader Naresh Agarwal, supported by a few other MPs, had raised the issue of absentee MPs. He asked why such celebrities should be nominated to Rajya Sabha when they dont even bother to attend. In fact, Sachin and Rekha have never raised any issue nor asked any question in Rajya Sabha till now. Agarwal had, in fact, told the Chairman then that both these celebrities should resign if they were not interested in attending Parliament. There have been some resolutions from a few members to do away with the provision of nominating celebrities and giving it to deserving people. As per the Constitution, the government has the right to nominate members for their contribution to art, social service. However, these Rajya Sabha members dont enjoy all the rights that elected members do. Patna: RJD chief Lalu Prasad Yadav on Thursday said he was in touch with senior JD(U) leader Sharad Yadav and would discuss with him the formation of a formidable front against the BJP. Sharadji has always fought against the BJP and the RSS. He is pro-poor and minorities. He is coming to Patna on August 8. I will discuss with him the next course of action, Lalu told reporters in Ranchi after appearing in court in a fodder scam case. Lalu said the BJP would continue losing elections in Bihar despite the saffron party joining the government after Chief Minister Nitish Kumar broke away from the Mahagathbandhan. Lalu also questioned the induction of tainted ministers in the new JD(U)-BJP government, citing a report by the Association for Democratic Reforms, an NGO working for electoral and political reform. Lalu claimed at least 70% ministers, including Nitish Kumar, have criminal cases against them. The RJD chief also announced the launch of a Bihar-wide tour by son and former deputy CM Tejashwi Yadav. The tour will start from Champaran on August 9 to galvanize supporters for a grand rally at Gandhi Maidan on August 27. Lalus statements come a day after reports said Sharad Yadav, who has voiced displeasure over the split in Bihar's Grand Alliance, might float a new party. Although Yadav has voiced his displeasure over JD(U) walking out of the Grand Alliance and embracing BJP to form a government in Bihar, he has refrained from attacking party president and chief minister Nitish Kumar so far. There is unease in a section of the JD(U) over Kumar joining hands with the BJP, with at least two of its Rajya Sabha MPs Ali Anwar and Veerendra Kumar making their displeasure public. The new US-India Strategic Partnership Forum (USISPF) that was announced on Wednesday can shape up the Indian digital payment and economy sector and help the GDP growth, a top government official said here. "India's digital economy stands at 15 per cent and it has the potential to increase the GDP growth of the country more than others. This strategic partnership will be a game changer in this sector," Aruna Sundararajan, Secretary Department of Telecommunications, told reporters here."It will also have a great impact on digital payment because we work with a lot of US companies in this area," she added. Sundararajan said the government was lying 500,000 kilometres of optic fibre to connect rural areas to the Internet and half of it has already been completed. She added that it will become operational by the end of this year. The Secretary pointed out that the new US-India partnership can play a part in this area too in order to bring more Indian villages within the networking zones.She added that the digital partnership demonstrates synergies between the US and India for what it has accomplished. "We have seen seamless integration in silicon valley between the US technology companies and India," Sundararajan said. Cyber Security Coordinator at Prime Minister's Office Gulshan Rai said as part of the sound and strategic partnership, both the countries need to work on security as the cyber attacks can happen in either of the countries."Digital transactions is growing tremendously in India and it's expected to double by the end of this year. As such the issue of cyber security becomes paramount. So this strategic operation is going to play an important role here," Rai said. To deepen business ties between India and the US, the USISPF was set up on Wednesday. According to the Executive Chairman of Cisco John Chambers, the USISPF would help build stronger and meaningful business relations between the two countries."What you see now is a potential of the strategic partnership between two countries to be the model for the rest of the world," the Cisco Executive Chairman said. "Its mission is to see how to get economic growth, startup growth, and get innovation, entrepreneurialism and benefit society," he added. Chambers termed Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Digital India initiative as a model for the rest of the world and said the initiative is a comprehensive framework."Digital India initiative has the ability to be inclusive in terms of how education, smart cities and health sector will change," Chambers said. USISPF will work closely with businesses and government leaders to achieve the goal of driving economic growth, job creation, innovation, inclusion and entrepreneurship. Chambers said Modi's meeting with US President Donald Trump in June was successful."I am a huge believer in your country and your Prime Minister. India has grown faster than any other country in the last three years and is now known as one of the leading innovators," Chambers said. "Our two countries will be able to make great strides in the months to come and USISPF is honoured to be a part of this exciting future," he added. To empower people with disabilities to operate an on-screen mouse and keyboard, Microsoft has announced beta version of 'Eye Control' feature for Windows 10 that can be accessed by using eye movements. According to a blog post by Dona Sarkar, Software Engineer at Microsoft, the 'Eye Control' feature requires a compatible eye tracker, like the 'Tobii Eye Tracker 4C', which can unlock access to the Windows operating system.Once 'Eye Control' is turned on, a launchpad appears on the screen that allows a user to access the mouse, keyboard, text-to-speech and to reposition the User Interface (UI) to the opposite side of the screen. "To interact with the UI for 'Eye Control', simply look at the UI with your eyes until the button activates. A visual affordance will appear around the UI that you are looking at," Sarkar said.Users can control the mouse by simply selecting the mouse from the launchpad, position their eyes on the screen where they want the cursor to be placed. Users can select the keyboard from the launchpad and dwell at the characters they want to type. However, the new tool faces challenges in direct sunlight and, therefore, the company said the device might require new calibration when moving to a location with different lighting conditions.Also, the launchpad partially blocks the 'Tobii UI' during device calibration. "To work around this, turn off Eye Control during calibration and turn it back on when you are done," Sarkar noted. The 'Eye Control' feature currently supports only selected eye trackers of 'Tobii' hardware. Washington: US President Donald Trump said on Thursday Washington's relationship with Russia is at an "an all-time and very dangerous low," and blamed Congress for the situation, a day after he grudgingly signed into law sanctions against Moscow. Congress overwhelmingly approved the sanctions last week, leaving Trump with little choice but to sign the legislation although he has long expressed a desire for better ties with Russia. Even as he signed the bill on Wednesday, Trump strongly criticized it. He complained the measure, which allows Congress to stop him from easing sanctions on Russia, infringed on his presidential powers to shape foreign policy. Russia responded by saying the sanctions amounted to a full-scale trade war and an end to hopes for better ties with the Trump administration. "Our relationship with Russia is at an all-time & very dangerous low," Trump said in a Twitter post on Thursday. "You can thank Congress, the same people that can't even give us HCare!" added, referring to a bitter setback this month when his fellow Republicans, who control both chambers in Congress, failed to push healthcare legislation through the Senate. Trump's desire for better ties with Moscow has been hamstrung by the findings of U.S. intelligence agencies that President Vladimir Putin's government meddled in the 2016 U.S. presidential election campaign. US congressional panels and a special counsel are investigating. Moscow denies any meddling and Trump denies any collusion by his campaign. Congress passed the new sanctions to punish Russia over the election interference and the annexation of Ukraine's Crimea in 2014. Republicans and Democrats usually are strongly divided on many issues but the measure drew wide support from both parties. Senator Blames Putin Republican US Senator Tom Cotton, asked about Trump's tweet in an MSNBC interview, agreed U.S.-Russian ties were "at a very low point" but rejected the president's blame. "Ultimately, the responsibility falls primarily on Vladimir Putin," Cotton said, pointing to Russian actions over Ukraine, arms control treaty violations and alleged meddling in various Western nations. "We need to confront, put pressure on Vladimir Putin at every point." Despite Trump's public misgivings about the sanctions, Vice President Mike Pence presented a tough stance against Russia during a tour of Baltic states this week. Pence assured the leaders of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania - all once part of the Soviet Union - that they would have US support in the event of Russian aggression. Russia will hold large-scale military maneuvers in nearby Belarus this month. Dick Durbin, the second-ranking Democrat in the Senate. asked for his reaction to Trump's tweet, told MSNBC: "I can just tell you we saw real bipartisanship on Capitol Hill when it came to these sanctions. Democrats and Republicans agreed we had to tell North Korea, Iran and Russia 'enough was enough.'" The sanctions also affect North Korea and Iran. Durbin said the bill deliberately included measures to ensure Trump imposed the sanctions and did not lift them. "We put requirements in the bill which most presidents have never seen to make sure this happens," he said. Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev denounced the sanctions on Wednesday and the Kremlin reiterated this on Thursday. "Nobody should doubt that Russia will protect and defend its interests," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said at a conference call with reporters. "We in general believe that this policy of sanctions is short-sighted, unlawful and hopeless." Even before Trump signed the bill, Putin on Sunday ordered the United States to cut about 60 percent of its diplomatic staff in Russia by Sept. 1 and took away a summer house used by US Embassy staff. Washington: President Donald Trump's doubts about the war in Afghanistan has led to a delay in completing a new US strategy in South Asia, skepticism that included a suggestion that the US military commander in the region be fired, US officials said on Wednesday. During a July 19 meeting in the White House Situation Room, Trump demanded that his top national security aides provide more information on what one official called "the end-state" in a country where the United States has spent 16 years fighting against the Taliban with no end in sight. The meeting grew stormy when Trump said Defense Secretary James Mattis and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Joseph Dunford, a Marine general, should consider firing Army General John Nicholson, commander of US forces in Afghanistan, for not winning the war. "We aren't winning," he told them, according to the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity. In addition, once the meeting concluded, Trump's chief strategist, Steve Bannon, got into what one official called "a shouting match" with White House national security adviser HR McMaster over the direction of US policy. Some officials left the meeting stunned by the presidents vehement complaints that the military was allowing the United States to lose the war. Mattis, McMaster and other top aides are putting together answers to Trump's questions in a way to try to get him to approve the strategy, the officials said. The White House had no comment on the accounts of the meeting. Another meeting of top aides is scheduled on Thursday. Although Trump earlier this year gave Mattis the authority to deploy US military forces as he sees fit, in fact the defense secretary's plans to add around 4,000 more U.S. troops to the 8,400 currently deployed in Afghanistan are being caught up in the delay surrounding the strategy, the officials said. "It's been contingent all along informally on the strategy being approved," a senior administration official said of the troop deployment. Trump has long been a skeptic of lingering US involvement in foreign wars and has expressed little interest in deploying military forces without a specific plan on what they will do and for how long. Officials said Trump argued that the United States should demand a share of Afghanistans estimated $1 trillion in mineral wealth in exchange for its assistance to the Afghan government. But other officials noted that without securing the entire country, which could take many years, there is no way to get the countrys mineral riches to market, except to Iran. Trump complained that the Chinese are profiting from their mining operations, the officials said. Washington: After a crackdown on illegal immigration that has sharply reduced the number of unauthorised border crossings from Mexico, U.S. President Donald Trump is now turning his attention to reducing the number of legal immigrants in the country. The White House is throwing its support behind a bill developed by Republican senators Tom Cotton of Arkansas and David Perdue of Georgia that would cut legal immigration by 50 percent over 10 years by reducing the kinds of relatives immigrants can bring into the country. But the legislation faces an uphill climb to get through Congress where some senior Republicans back comprehensive immigration reform, not a tough crackdown. Under the new bill, known as the RAISE Act, the United States would prioritise high-skilled immigrants by setting up a merits-based system similar to those used by Canada and Australia. Trump and the Republican lawmakers blasted the current immigration system as out of date and argued that it hurts American workers by driving down wages. "This competitive application process will favour applicants who can speak English, financially support themselves and their families and demonstrate skills that will contribute to our economy," Trump said. The Senators said they worked closely with the White House on this latest version of their bill. "This is probably our third or fourth visit to the Oval Office to work with President Trump," Cotton told reporters. LONG HISTORY Slashing legal immigration has long been pushed by low-immigration advocacy groups in Washington like NumbersUSA and the ideas have been backed by now-Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who is now facing public criticism from Trump. NumbersUSA President Roy Beck hailed the bill and said that it "will do more than any other action to fulfill President Trump's promises as a candidate." Trump vowed to crack down on illegal immigration during his campaign and signed two executive orders soon after taking office to increase border security and interior enforcement. Cotton and Perdue said their bill does not affect temporary visas for workers in certain tech sectors and seasonal jobs that are popular with many businesses. They stressed that the legislation was narrowly focused, an approach they hoped would be able to get bipartisan support. "We're not trying to boil the ocean here and change everything about our immigration law," Cotton said. But other Republican lawmakers said the bill might be going too far. Senator Lindsey Graham, from South Carolina, said his state is dependent on immigrant labour to sustain the two biggest sectors of the economy, agriculture, and tourism. Economists have called into the question the benefits of cutting legal immigration. FWD.us, a group that represents the tech industry said that the bill would "severely harm the economy." The bill aims to end the diversity visa lottery, which allows 50,000 people from underrepresented countries to obtain green cards. It also sets a 50,000 annual cap on refugees, instead of a level mandated by the president. Refugee organizations said permanently limiting the number of refugees allowed in the country goes against an American value of offering safe haven to people fleeing violence and oppression. Trump suggested at an event in New York's Long Island on Friday, where he spoke out against violence committed by Central American gang members, that immigrants today are different than in previous generations. "What happened to the old days when people came into this country and they worked and they worked and they worked and they had families and paid taxes and they did all sorts of things and their families got stronger and they were closely knit?" Trump asked the audience of law enforcement officers. "We don't see that." Ankara: Hassan Rouhani won the endorsement of Iran's supreme leader for his second term of president on Thursday after an easy election win, pledging to open Iran to foreign trade and investment but facing internal hardline resistance and renewed US antagonism. Under Rouhani's watch, Iran emerged from international isolation in 2015 when it struck a deal with six world powers to curb its disputed nuclear programme in exchange for the lifting of financial and economic sanctions in place for a decade. But his quest to parlay fragile detente with the West into financial infusions to rebuild Iran's oil-based economy has been slowed by investors' fears of pre-existing US sanctions and suspicions among powerful hardline acolytes of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei of any rise in Western influence. The new US sanctions could embolden Rouhani's conservative rivals who say the nuclear deal was a form of capitulation. An elite insider who has held senior political and military posts since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, Rouhani comes off as a pragmatist unlike Khamenei and his allies, and analysts have cast doubt on his ability to balance their demands and the expectations of his often young and more liberal supporters. Khamenei, who has the last word on all major issues of state, formally endorsed Rouhani as president in a ceremony broadcast live on state television on Thursday, after the pragmatist romped to re-election on May 19. Addressing religious, military and political leaders, Khamenei prayed for "the success of a worthy person". Handing the presidential mandate to Rouhani, Khamenei kissed him on the cheek and the president kissed the Supreme Leader on his shoulder, a sign of supplication. Khamenei again called for economic self-sufficiency and a "resistance economy", a stance arising from his repeated criticism of the halting pace of economic recovery since most international sanctions on Iran were lifted early last year. Rouhani will be sworn in on Saturday and then have two weeks to present his cabinet to parliament for a vote of confidence. Aims To Improve Iran's Image Abroad "The government's aim is to improve Iran's image in the world... to safeguard people's rights... to end poverty... to protect the religious democracy and our people's votes," Rouhani said in a speech at the ceremony. Analysts said Rouhani may struggle to make a significant impact given sharpening divisions in the dual clerical-republican power structure, and Washington's return to an aggressive Iran policy since Donald Trump took office. "Hardliners will try even harder than in Rouhani's first term to make him look like a lame duck president ... It will be very difficult for Rouhani to deliver on the economy," said Meir Javdanfar, an Iranian-born expert on the Islamic Republic at the Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya in Israel. Rouhani's own supporters have expressed concern over his inability to include women as ministers in his new cabinet because of pressure from religious hardliners. Javdanfar said the new US sanctions on Iran signed by Trump into law on Wednesday, along with measures against Russia and North Korea would likely deter foreign investors and so undermine Rouhani's efforts to boost the economy. Rouhani stuck to an upbeat outlook in his speech. "The nuclear deal is a sign of Iran's goodwill on the international stage... Iran will never be isolated," he said. During his 2016 election campaign, Trump blasted the nuclear agreement negotiated under his predecessor Barack Obama as "the worst deal ever" but not followed through on threats to pull the United States out of it. But Iran's deputy foreign minister said the fresh sanctions violated provisions of the nuclear deal and vowed an "appropriate and proportional" response. "Imposing new sanctions on Iran by America is a reactionary, illegitimate and irrational move," state television quoted Foreign Ministry spokesman Bahram Qassemi as saying on Thursday. Washington: Former FBI Director James Comey, who was fired by U.S. President Donald Trump, has signed a deal for a book on leadership and decision-making that will come out in spring 2018, the publisher said on Wednesday. The book deal with Macmillan's Flatiron Books comes three months after Comey's firing raised questions about whether Trump tried to interfere with the Federal Bureau of Investigation's probe into Russia's alleged meddling with the U.S. presidential election. Russia denies any interference, and Trump has denied collusion with Russia and interfering with the investigation. The book, which has not yet been given a title, will discuss "what good, ethical leadership looks like and how it drives sound decisions," Bob Miller, president of Macmillan's Flatiron Books, said in a statement on Wednesday. Flatiron won the rights to the book after an auction and did not immediately respond to a request for comment. In addition to reflections on Comey's interactions with Trump this year, the book will feature anecdotes from his role in leading an investigation into the use of a private email server by Democrat Hillary Clinton during her 2016 presidential campaign. Comey's announcement that the FBI was reopening the Clinton email investigation days before the November election led to accusations by some Democrats that he was unfairly influencing the outcome. The FBI eventually closed the probe without taking any action. United Nations: New US sanctions imposed on Russia are inevitably harming bilateral relations but will not change Russian policy, Russia's United Nations Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia said on Wednesday. "Some US officials were saying that this is a bill that might encourage Russia to cooperate with the United States; to me that's a strange sort of encouragement," he told reporters. "Those who invented this bill, if they were thinking they might change our policy, they were wrong." "They should have known better, that we do not bend, we do not break," he said. "It is harming our relations inevitably but we will be working in the conditions that exist in the hope it will turn one day." CLEAR LAKE | The CLEAR Project will be host a field day for anyone interested in the ongoing habitat restoration project at McIntosh Woods State Park. Dr. Adam Janke will share his knowledge of habitat restoration and the role that prescribed grazing of goats plays in sustainable park management. After six weeks, McIntosh Woods State Park's goats go home VENTURA -- After six weeks of chomping weeds at McIntosh Woods State Park, a herd of 40 goat The field day will begin at 5 p.m. and run until 7 p.m. Aug. 17 at McIntosh Woods State Park. The group will start out at the shelter house near the boat ramp. Refreshments will be served courtesy of the Clear Lake Earth Day Committee. Habitat improvement off and running at McIntosh Woods State Park VENTURA Forty goats are the new ecosystem managers at McIntosh Woods State Park on Clear L The CLEAR Project is hosting the event along with Iowa DNR and ISU Extension. To RSVP to this event, email rsvp@clearproject.net. United Nations: The U.N. Security Council unanimously adopted a resolution Wednesday urging all countries to eliminate the supply of weapons to the Islamic State extremist group and other "terrorists" including by taking legal action against suppliers and marking arms to improve their traceability. The resolution, sponsored by Egypt, strongly condemns the continuing flow of weapons, military equipment, drones and improvised explosive devices to IS, al-Qaida and their affiliates as well as illegal armed groups and criminals. "This is one of the first resolutions aiming to prevent terrorists from acquiring weapons," Egypt's U.N. Ambassador Amr Abdellatif Aboulatta, the current Security Council president, said after the vote. "Arming of terrorists and terrorist groups ... is a crime that is no less heinous than the terrorist act itself." The resolution reaffirms the commitment of all states to preventing weapons from reaching "terrorists." It urges the U.N.'s 193 member states "to prevent and disrupt procurement networks for such weapons." It also urges all countries "to act cooperatively to prevent terrorists from acquiring weapons" including via the internet or social networks. Yury Fedotov, executive director of the Vienna-based U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime, told the council by video link that "terrorists obtain weapons by many means, in all parts of the world, facilitated by access to poorly secured stockpiles, weak border management, the use of online platforms including hidden marketplaces, and diversion linked to poor transfer controls." Fedotov stressed the complex challenges to keep weapons from falling into the hands of terrorists, citing "inadequate regulatory environments and data collection, lack of specialized skills and equipment, and lack of coordination within and between countries and regions." Interpol Special Representative Emmanuel Roux told the council that although the use of weapons by terrorists isn't new "today's threat landscape is one of unprecedented complexity." "Convergence is the key word: between organized crime and terrorism; between old and new technologies; between military and law enforcement efforts," he said. Roux said Interpol is seeing firearms used in conflict zones reappearing on streets of major cities, commercial products that are legal turned into improvised explosive devices, and guns manufactured decades ago for sale on the dark web. In parallel, he said foreigners who fight for terrorist groups may be exploiting their knowledge from the battlefield, the organized crime contacts and supply chains they used previously, "and technology allowing the creation of modular firearms and 3D printing to access and use weapons." Roux said there are many "crucial actions" the international community can undertake including standardizing end-user export controls, securely managing stockpiles, and strengthening and implementing strong national legislation. Jehangir Khan, acting head of the new U.N. Office of Counter-Terrorism, said the diversion of weapons from government stockpiles, through theft or capturing depots, is an important source of arms for terrorist groups and others. And he said the illicit online weapons trade on the dark web is "particularly worrisome." U.S. Ambassador Nikki Haley accused Iran of deliberately and systematically contributing "weapons, training and funding for terrorist groups" in violation of its international obligations. "Terrorist proxies are doing the Iranian regime's will in Iraq and in Syria," she said. "Iran also supports Hamas and Bahraini terrorist groups. Through its partner Hezbollah, Iran is engaged in preparing for war in Lebanon. It is building an arsenal of weapons and battle-hardened troops." New Delhi: Top US bosses are backing a new effort to build strategic ties with India, following Prime Minister Narendra Modi's first meeting with President Donald Trump. The U.S.-India Strategic Partnership Forum (USISPF) seeks to reset and broaden the relationship between the world's two largest democracies, and to supplant an existing body that operates under the umbrella of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. While Modi's bear hug with Trump and a clutch of deals at their encounter in June symbolised a budding friendship, trade between the two nations has underperformed and Washington wants to narrow a $31-billion deficit. "What we are announcing today is an organisation redesigned for the future," said John Chambers, the executive chairman of Cisco Systems Inc, who is also chairing the USISPF that was launched on Wednesday. The rollout follows a schism in which the management team of the U.S.-India Business Council (USIBC), headed by Mukesh Aghi, has joined the new organisation. Chambers met Modi on Tuesday to brief him on the initiative and share its new logo - featuring interlocking blue and gold circles that symbolize the "win-win" nature of the project. The new body will not only focus on trade but also promote business startups, innovation and education - areas that Modi has prioritised in his three years in power. Describing Modi as "fearless", Chambers praised his decision last year to scrap high-value bank notes to cleanse the economy of illicit wealth. He also backed a new national sales tax launched last month, saying it was vital for Asia's third-largest economy to scale up manufacturing and achieve strong long-term growth. "India is moving faster than any other country in the last three years," Chambers told a small group of reporters in New Delhi. "India used to be known as a very slow follower, and now it's a fast innovator." UNANIMOUS VOTE TO SPLIT The strategic partnership initiative followed a unanimous vote on July 10 by the USIBC's board to separate from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. The new body's board includes high-profile chief executives, such as Indra Nooyi of Pepsico Inc and Ajay Banga of Mastercard Inc. Thomas Donohue, president and chief executive of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, last month criticised the breakaway as a "curious action". In a letter to members he described the USIBC as "alive and well". "The USIBC and its staff continue their hard work on key issues affecting the critical relationship between our two countries," the Chamber of Commerce said in answer to Chambers' announcement. "We continue to receive strong support from our member companies as we focus our efforts on strengthening commercial ties," it added. "We will have more to say in the weeks ahead. One source familiar with the move said it was motivated in part by perceptions that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce had become too close to the Republican Party, and tended to deliver public lectures detrimental to the two-way relationship. This included controversy over the issue of so-called H-1B visas widely used by India's $125 billion software industry to send engineers and programmers on assignments to the United States. Trump administration officials were briefed on the strategic initiative and were supportive, added the source, who declined to be identified because of the sensitivity of the matter. Trump, despite clashing with leaders from allies such as Germany and Australia, turned on the charm for Modi, whose trip to Washington was deemed a success by both sides. Lisa Curtis, point person at the National Security Council for South and Central Asia, attended the inaugural forum. Joining her was Acting Assistant Secretary of State Alice Wells, the U.S. embassy said. Chambers said the Trump administration's commitment to India was "unparalleled", adding: "This is the only strategic partnership that the Trump administration has really talked about." New York: Judith Jones, the legendary editor who rescued Anne Frank's diary from a US publisher's rejection pile, died. She was 93. Jones, a luminary of the publishing world, who also introduced the world to American culinary writer Julia Child, was close to literary giants such as John Updike, Anne Tyler, William Maxwell, John Hersey, Peter Taylor and Sharon Olds. She passed away at her home in Vermont, the Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group said in a statement. She worked for Knopf for more than 50 years, joining the company in 1957 and officially retiring only in 2011. "Judith was a legend in book publishing," said Sonny Mehta, chairman and editor-in-chief, paying tribute to the once young assistant who rescued Frank's "Diary of a Young Girl" from a rejection pile in Paris. The diary, which the young Jewish girl had written while hiding from the Nazis between June 1942 and August 1944, is one of the most famous testimonies of life in World War II and one of the most famous diaries of all time. Frank, who was born in Germany and lived with her family in the Netherlands, died in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp aged 15, just months before the war ended. Her diary was first published in the Netherlands in 1947, followed by French and German editions in 1950 before appearing in Britain and the United States in 1952. The first US edition of "Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl" ran a modest 5,000 copies and contained a preface from former first lady Eleanor Roosevelt. Doubleday reputedly spent little on publicity, but sales quickly took off. A subsequent US play "Diary of Anne Frank" was a Broadway hit and won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1956. A 1959 Hollywood movie won three Oscars. The diary has been a fixture on school curricula since the 1960s. Worldwide, the diary has sold more than 30 million copies in 67 languages. Jones was also instrumental in persuading Alfred Knopf to publish in 1961 "Mastering the Art of French Cooking" a tome that introduced generations of American home cooks to French food and to now legendary chef Julia Child. "It is no exaggeration to say that she profoundly influenced not only the way America reads and but also the way we cook," Mehta said Wednesday. Jones won five Pulitzer Prizes, five National Book Awards and three National Book Critics Circle Awards, and her cookbook authors won dozens and dozens of prizes, said Knopf Doubleday. Washington: The United States is urging Americans in North Korea to get out before a travel ban goes into effect on September 1. The State Department is issuing a new travel warning for North Korea that reflects the Trump administration's new travel ban. That ban was announced last month and was published on Wednesday in the Federal Register. That triggers a month-long period before it takes effect. The warning says exceptions to the travel ban need special permission that will only be granted "under very limited circumstances." The State Department says it doesn't yet know when it will release information on how to apply for an exception. Previous US travel warnings also urged Americans not to travel to North Korea. Campbell County put out a notice in June seeking a new county attorney, despite already having one on staff. So far two proposals have been submitted. According to County Administrator Frank Rogers, several members of the board of supervisors and county staff wanted to put the countys legal services out to bid in order to ensure the locality is getting the best price possible. The request for proposals was for the same scope of services the current County Attorney David Shreve fulfills. Shreve has been with the county for more than two decades and represents the county in court and pursues delinquent tax payments, Rogers said. David Shreve has done a wonderful job as county attorney for Campbell County, but that service has not been competed [for] some time, Rogers said While Shreve was well regarded, there was a sense among the board that we need to compete that service to make sure were being fiscally responsible. Shreve is a contract employee with the county and is paid a retainer of $46,000 annually and has an additional hourly rate of $225 he charges to represent the locality in court, Rogers told The News & Advance. Payments to Shreve were more than $100,000 last year, according to Rogers. In comparison, the city of Lynchburg pays City Attorney Walter Erwin an annual salary of about $152,000. Bedfords County Attorney Patrick Skelley is a county employee and is paid a salary of $112,000. After the departure of former County Attorney Ellen Bowyer earlier this year, Amherst County has retained Michael Lockaby from the Roanoke-based firm Guynn & Waddell as its interim county attorney. The county will be charged $9,000 per month for routine services while the firm is retained for up to 65 hours per month for a total of $108,000 annually. Any hours over the 65, the county will need to pay a rate of $165 per hour. Appomattox pays County Attorney Tom Lacheney a flat rate of $5,000 per month for a total of $60,000 annually. Nelson County pays County Attorney Phillip Payne an hourly rate of $225 for appearing in court or $200 for attending board of supervisors meetings. The annual rate cannot be calculated because it is determined by how much the county attorney works. In an interview Tuesday, Sunburst Supervisor Bob Good emphasized his support for looking for other options does not mean he is unhappy with Shreves work for the county and instead is a move to try and be fiscally responsible. No one on the board has indicated any concern or displeasure for the representation of Mr. Shreve, but when it is an outside third party thats contracted at an expensive amount, it just makes good financial and managerial sense from time to time to review that and to make sure we have the information for consideration to consider whether or not were getting the best value for the investment thats required, Good said. Rustburg Supervisor Eric Zehr and Timberlake Supervisor Mike Rousseau agreed with Good, saying they want to evaluate everything the county is doing and look for ways to be cost efficient. Altavista Supervisor Stanley Goldsmith said while he understands the sentiment behind the plan, he wants to do the evaluation during the spring, when the board is setting the next years budget or when Shreve leaves the position. Shreves annual contract expired June 30, 2017, but was renewed through September to allow additional time for the board to consider their options. I think if were going to make any changes on this particular option we need to do it at a budget time when we can analyze how much money we can keep putting money into that position, he said. The time to do it is when someone leaves or retires. The time to cut spending is when people are prepared for it so theyre not all of a sudden greeted with an untimely situation. Both Concord Supervisor Eddie Gunter and Brookneal Supervisor J.D. Puckett expressed support for Shreve, citing his experience and strong performance in the position. Gunter specifically expressed concerns the applications he had reviewed were from lawyers with significantly less experience than Shreve. I read the two applications, and theres just no experience, he said. Theyre going to be young lawyers, so I guess we have to rank them and go from there. Shreve declined to comment on the request for proposals. MASON CITY | Five candidates will compete for three open seats on the Mason City School Board this September. Incumbents Janna Arndt and Jodi Draper and newcomers Richard Haas, Jacob Schweitzer and Alan Steckman filed for three four-year terms on the School Board before the filing period closed at 5 p.m. Thursday. Schweitzer, 41, a Mason City firefighter, filed Wednesday for his first term. I have four kids between preschool and seventh grade, so I do have a vested interest in the quality of education theyre getting, he said. Schweitzer has served on the Mason City Fire Department for 15 years and is currently the vice president of the Mason City Local 41 of the International Association of Fire Fighters. This is my first time running for public office, he said. Schweitzer considered running for city council, but cannot as he's employed by the city. With the firefighters and being active on the state level, I think I can apply some of those skill sets to working with legislators to enhance the school district. The seats of Arndt, Draper and Paul DeRoy are up for election on Sept. 12. Retired postmaster Steckman running for Mason City School Board MASON CITY | Retired postmaster Alan Steckman will run for a seat on the Mason City School Board. Steckman, 70, a retired postmaster and Haas, 65, a local chiropractor, filed for their first four-year terms in July. Mason City chiropractor running for Mason City School Board MASON CITY | Longtime chiropractor Richard Haas will run for a seat on the Mason City School Arndt, 37, a telehealth clinical technician for Veterans Affairs, and Draper, 46, a chief financial officer for County Social Services, are seeking their second terms on the board, while DeRoy said he will be stepping down. N&A news sources 'too liberal' I spent early Sunday morning July 23 reading The News & Advance, and I can fully understand if this newspaper is losing a lot of readers. I have no statistics to prove this, but just based on the bias the newspaper shows and almost total lack of neutral journalism, it would not surprise me if most of the potential readers shy away from our hometown newspaper. The most striking display of this bias was the Sunday Politics page with a story by Amber Phillips from The Washington Post and a Fact Checker article by Glenn Kessler, Michelle Ye Hee Lee, and Meg Kelly from the same newspaper. Everybody with a brain understands after reading these articles that they are written with one intent: to push the Democratic Party agenda and to bash the current administration. Most stories in The News & Advance seem to come from The Washington Post or other very left leaning news media. A lot seems to be directly loaned from The Associated Press, another very left-leaning news source, so this certainly explains the bias. Wouldnt it be nice to see a little more nuance and neutral stance in the reporting. There are, after all, still some news media out there, like the Wall Street Journal that seem to be able to report in a more neutral way. I always thought that good journalism was based on reporting events without pushing your own or the ownerships or other parties agenda, and let the reader make up his/her mind based on facts. Now readers must read a bunch of garbage and propaganda, and I know that I will pick up another newspaper than The News & Advance next Sunday! STEFAN BACKSTROM Forest The sheer, wanton indifference From the start of his presidency, Donald Trump has demonstrated that he always expects to get his way and will not tolerate any criticism or disloyalty. This has been manifested in his angry, obsessive, non-stop tweets attacking anyone who disagrees with him. Now, after six months in office, this egomania has evolved into actions that have splintered his administration, leading to the resignation or firing of numerous appointees, and creating a dysfunctional White House. No fewer than 10 people have resigned under duress, including Press Secretary Sean Spicer and Chief of Staff Reince Priebus. Their departures were precipitated by Trumps appointment of millionaire financier Anthony Scaramucci as communications director. Smooch (as he is known) immediately demonstrated his shared Trump values in an obscenity-filled conversation with a reporter in which he crudely attacked fellow senior staff members. Now, after only 10 days, he has been removed at the behest of Trumps new chief of staff, retired Marine General John Kelly. Kelly is well respected and, interestingly, was quite upset over Trumps firing of FBI Director James Comey back in May. The next casualty may likely be Jeff Sessions, appointed by Trump to be attorney general but now being consistently berated as weak and disloyal to the emperor manque. In his weekly syndicated column on July 28, Charles Krauthammer, the estimable arch-conservative political observer, noted that Trump has been privately blaming Sessions for the Russia cloud, but rather than calling him in to either work it out or demand his resignation, Trump has engaged in a series of deliberate public humiliations. Krauthammer went on to say that Trump relishes such a cat-and-mouse game and, by playing it so openly, reveals a deeply repellent vindictiveness in the service of a pathological need to display dominance. Trump is a child of directly passed-on wealth and privilege, and as such, assumes a great deal about life almost none of which is applicable to the average American. Recently, we have seen evidence that his son, Donald Jr., shares those traits and will stoop to the same levels as his father to avoid accountability for his own actions. In the end, it will be up to the Senate Intelligence Committee and/or Special Counsel Robert Muellers team both probing Russian interference in the 2016 election to determine what if any laws the two Trumps may have broken. Watching all this unfold, I am reminded of a passage in the 2013 novel, A Delicate Truth, by the renowned British author John Le Carre, which serves well to describe both father and son: What the gods and all reasonable humans fight in vain isnt stupidity. It is sheer, wanton indifference to anybodys interests but their own. BILL BLACKWELL Lynchburg German Dutch English Zwolle, 3rd August 2017 Improvement in net result confirms turn-around of the company Sales plus 19 percent with positive EBITDA, EBIT and book-to-bill ratio Supply Chain Management and Test Engineering main drivers of expansion RoodMicrotec, the Dutch supplier of semiconductors and advanced microchips, achieved a significant improvement in year-on-year net result for the first half 2017 and a 19 percent increase in sales with positive EBITDA and EBIT. The strongest leading indicator - a positive book-to-bill ratio - is maintained consistently at a level higher than one. Main drivers of expansion are especially the Supply Chain Management (SCM) with 25 percent increase and the Test Engineering unit with a plus of 89 percent. Furthermore, all other business units showed a good order situation and therefore economic growth. New and promising orders especially from the Automotive, Industrial and Healthcare sectors are setting the stage for a positive outlook. Martin Sallenhag, CEO of RoodMicrotec: "The significant improvement in the net result as well as a positive EBIT for the first half of 2017 show that we are on the right track to turn around the company. Strong performance in the SCM and Test Engineering units shows that the base for future recurring business is in place. We have signed a number of very promising contracts with major players which will set the stage for the future of the company. I'm also very pleased with the fact that all business units are showing increases and this again shows that RoodMicrotec is a well-established player in the market." Summary HY1 2017 (x EUR 1,000) Unaudited HY1 2017 Unaudited HY1 2016 Net Sales 5,832 4,919 Gross margin 4,817 4,159 Gross margin as % of net sales 83% 85% EBITDA 534 95 EBITDA as % of net sales 9% 2% EBIT 44 -429 EBIT as % of net sales 1% -9% Net result -85 -541 Net result as % of net sales -1% -11% You are invited to take part in RoodMicrotec's conference call for press and analysts on Thursday, 3rd August 2017 at 9.30 am. The management will present the Interim Report 2017 in detail and answer your questions. Please dial into the conference call using the following telephone number: +31(0)20 531 5850. Financial agenda 03 August 2017, 09:30 a.m. Conference call for press and analysts - Interim Report 11 January 2018 Publication (preliminary) annual sales figures 2017 08 March 2018 Publication (preliminary) annual figures 2017 08 March 2018 Conference call for press and analysts 28 March 2018 Publication annual report 2017 17 May 2018 Annual general meeting of shareholders 18 May 2018 Annual bondholders meeting 05 July 2018 Publication sales figures first half 2018 02 August 2018 Publication interim report 2018 02 August 2018 Conference call for press and analysts About RoodMicrotec With more than 45 years' experience as an independent value-added service provider in the area of micro and optoelectronics, RoodMicrotec offers Fabless Companies, OEMs and other companies a one-stop shop proposition. With its powerful solutions RoodMicrotec has built up a strong position in Europe. Our services comply with the industrial and quality requirements of the high reliability/space, automotive, telecommunications, medical, industrial and electronics sectors. Our integrated quality management system is based on international DIN EN ISO 9001:2015 standards. In addition, our quality management is broadly consistent with the Automotive Specification ISO/TS 16949. The company also has an accredited laboratory for test activities and qualification to the ISO/IEC 17025 standard. Its value-added services include (eXtended) supply chain management and total manufacturing solutions with partners, failure & technology analysis, qualification & burn-in, test & product engineering, production test (including device programming and end-of-line service), ESD/ESDFOS assessment & training and quality & reliability consulting. RoodMicrotec has branches in Germany (Dresden, Nordlingen, Stuttgart), United Kingdom (Bath) and the Netherlands (Zwolle). For more information visit http://www.roodmicrotec.com This press release is published in English, Dutch and German. In case of conflict between these versions the English version shall prevail. VANCOUVER, British Columbia, Aug. 03, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Aben Resources Ltd. (TSX-V:ABN) (OTCBB:ABNAF) (Frankfurt:E2L2) (the Company) is pleased to announce it has commenced its summer diamond drilling program at its 23,000 hectare Forrest Kerr Gold Property located in North Western British Columbias Golden Triangle region. The Company intends to drill 2,100 meters (6,800 feet) with initial drill holes testing the Carcass Creek and Boundary Zones to confirm and extend the high grade gold mineralization discovered in historical drilling. Drilling conducted in the early 1990s and 2000s at these zones returned some of the highest grades on the Forrest Kerr Property and the Company feels there is the potential for the expansion of these known zones based on recent data compilation, structural geological interpretation and additional field reconnaissance work. Aben currently owns certain mineral tenures outright and has agreements in place with various third-parties whereby it has the exclusive right to a 100% interest in the large property area. Golden Triangle Claims Map: http://www.abenresources.com/i/maps/ABN_Golden_Triangle_map.jpg Historical drilling results at the Forrest Kerr Project have ranged from trace values to several high-grade intercepts such as 9.97 g/t gold over 29.3 metres, including 125 g/t Au over 0.8 metres and 91 g/t Au over 1.9 metres, in hole RG91-21 in the Carcass Creek Zone as well as 33.4 g/t gold over 11 metres, including 326 g/t over 0.5 metres, in hole RG91-16 in the Boundary Zone. This high grade mineralization is within 200 metres vertical depth from surface and the Carcass and Boundary Zones are approx. 4 kilometres apart leaving robust discovery potential along strike, at depth and at other regional targets on the property. Abens Forrest Kerr Project Map: http://www.abenresources.com/i/maps/FK-007.jpg Field based exploration activities have been underway earlier this season at Forrest Kerr where crews completed soil geochemical sampling, ground-truthed historical data and evaluated mineralization potential on a property-wide basis. Focus was placed on those areas containing historical high-grade precious and base-metal occurrences. There are also more conceptual targets to be tested south of the Boundary Zone where there are areas of outcrop with multiple shear zones and abundant sulfides with surface samples returning gold grades ranging from trace values to 3 5 g/t Au. Jim Pettit, President and CEO of Aben, states: The commencement of this first-pass drill program at our Forrest Kerr project in the prolific Golden Triangle is a milestone for the Company. Recent drill discoveries by Pretium, GT Gold, Colorado Resources and others illustrate the significant discovery upside remaining in the district and we are confident in the potential at Forrest Kerr given the known high-grade gold mineralization present there which we plan to test early in the drill program. Despite excellent drill results including 10 g/t Au over 29 metres and 33 g/t Au over 11 metres, these historical drill holes at the Carcass and Boundary Zones were drilled decades ago with limited follow up work due to limited accessibility, high drilling costs, and a less comprehensive understanding of the geology. Since then, major infrastructure improvements have been made including the Galore Creek access road on the north end of the property as well as roads and powerlines on the south end of the property where hydroelectric facilities have been built in recent years which have helped bring the drilling costs down. In addition, rapid glacial retreats over the past 25 years have exposed extensive new areas of outcrop exposure in this highly prospective region. Lastly, Abens technical team has spent over a year analyzing and reinterpreting the historical exploration and geological data with the help of structural geologists and we feel we have a stronger understanding of the existing targets and high-grade gold mineralization at the project. Tim J. Termuende, P.Geo., a Director of Aben, commented: Since first working in the Forrest Kerr area in 1990 as a young geologist, I have been continually impressed with the abundance of mineralization within the Golden Triangle. The project is located along the Forrest Kerr Fault which consists of a 40 km long north-south belt overlying rocks of the Hazelton and Stuhini Groups, a complex assemblage of volcanic accumulations with intervening sedimentary sequences which are host to significant gold deposits in the Golden Triangle region. *Note: Aben has not been able to independently verify the methodology and results from historical work programs within the property boundaries. However, management believes that the historical work programs have been conducted in a professional manner and the quality of data and information produced from them are relevant. In addition, management cautions that past results or discoveries on proximate land are not necessarily indicative of the results that may be achieved on the Forrest Kerr property. Cornell McDowell, P.Geo., V.P. of Exploration of Aben Resources, has reviewed and approved the technical aspects of this news release and is the Qualified Person as defined by National Instrument 43-101. About Aben Resources: Aben Resources is a Canadian gold exploration company developing projects in British Columbias Golden Triangle, the Yukon, and Saskatchewan. The Company currently owns certain mineral tenures outright and has agreements in place with various third-parties whereby it has the exclusive right to a 100% interest in the 23,000 hectare Forrest Kerr property area. For further information on Aben Resources Ltd. (TSX-V:ABN), visit our Companys web site at www.abenresources.com. Aben Resources has approx. 46.8 million shares issued and outstanding. ABEN RESOURCES LTD. Jim Pettit ____________________________ JAMES G. PETTIT President & CEO For further information contact: Aben Resources Ltd. Director, Investor Relations Telephone: 604-687-3376 Toll Free: 800-567-8181 Facsimile: 604-687-3119 Email: info@abenresources.com Neither TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release. This release includes certain statements that may be deemed to be "forward-looking statements". All statements in this release, other than statements of historical facts, that address events or developments that management of the Company expects, are forward-looking statements. Although management believes the expectations expressed in such forward-looking statements are based on reasonable assumptions, such statements are not guarantees of future performance, and actual results or developments may differ materially from those in the forward-looking statements. The Company undertakes no obligation to update these forward-looking statements if management's beliefs, estimates or opinions, or other factors, should change. Factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those in forward-looking statements, include market prices, exploration and development successes, continued availability of capital and financing, and general economic, market or business conditions. Please see the public filings of the Company at www.sedar.com for further information. A Chaguaramas History If you were on your way to Venezuela in the 17th and 18th centuries, it was likely you would face attack from pirates hiding out in Chaguaramas. Hard to believe, but Trinidads Northwestern peninsula has lived many lives. The islands have been home to whaling stations in the 18th century. Meanwhile the mainland itself was home to several plantations, the genesis of Chaguaramas agricultural roots. But even before this, Chaguaramas got its name from the Amerindians who lived approximately 6,000 years before the arrival of Christopher Columbus, between 100-400 AD. Their legacy can be seen in place names like Macqueripe and Chacachacare. The Spanish occupation of Trinidad, though, severely decimated their numbers through war and disease. The Spanish were not interested in settling Trinidad, preferring to use it as a base for incursions into South America. The result was the island not having significant population numbers until the Cedula of Population, when the Spanish Crown invited settlers to live here. Several French planters settled in the area, with the main crops being sugar, cocoa and cotton, although ground provisions and other food crops were cultivated as well. Chaguaramas would continue being mainly agricultural until the first half of the 20th century. With World War II raging in Europe and the Pacific, the Americans sought the assistance of the British in creating a defense perimeter against attack from South America as well as a jump off point for their operations there. The result was the Base for Destroyers Agreement, where the US would provide 40 destroyers for the British war effort and the British would provide the land for a military base in strategic Chaguaramas. The base and the social and economic activity it gave rise to has been indelibly marked into Trinidads culture. The base and the above average wages offered there stimulated the expansion of this countrys middle class. References to it can be found the calypso of the day and our literature. Rum and Coca Cola, the Lord Invader calypso, became the basis for the world-famous Andrews Sisters remake. Sparrows Jean and Dinah took a tongue and cheek approach to the hardship caused by absence of the Yankees after the end of the war. It was in this countrys political history, however, that Chaguaramas played a pivotal role. Just as the pleasant Andrews Sisters ditty obscured the fact that Lord Invader had never been properly compensated or credited for Rum and Coca Cola, or both the Invader song and Sparrows wit alluded to the hard truth of local women prostituting themselves to American soldiers, the surface order of 1940s and 50s Trinidad concealed the anger many felt toward the American presence and the British acquiescence to it. The Americans were allowed to forcible remove people from their homes. They seized Teteron and Nicholas Bays. Access to beaches and holidaying spots was severely curtailed and then eventually closed in 1943 at the height of the war. It was a time of rapid change in the world. Colony after colony became independent from Europe and the thirst for self-determination was no different in TT. Eric Williams, whose PNM won elections in 1956 saw the base as a holdover from a slowly passing colonial era. In 1957, the British and the US met and a commission determined a year later that not only was the base not going to be returned, but that the subject was closed to discussion for a further ten years. Williams led a march to Chaguaramas in 1960 to protest the continued American presence for a war that had ended more than a decade before. As a consequence, the Americans reviewed their agreement with the British and after negotiation Chaguaramas was returned, though with conditions and the Americans did not entirely quit the area until 1977. The victory in Chaguaramas gave the PNM the edge it needed to cement both its victory in 1961 and its hold on Trinidad and Tobago government. Before leaving the PNM, CLR James said of the march and its participants: Despite the fact that the American base at Chaguaramas had brought in more money here than had ever been brought before, when called upon, you answered, and made it clear that, with only a few years partial freedom behind you, you were ready to throw down the gauntlet to the most powerful nation in the world, to assert your rights as a people, to say that Chaguaramas was yours and you were not going to be deprived of it. Today, Trinbagonians can enjoy a variety of activities in Chaguaramas, with more on the way, as development of the area continues apace. Collaboration key to business success Face-to-face interactions play an important role in conducting business. However, many organisations have very large teams and operations worldwide, so its just not possible to limit all collaboration to personal meetings. To serve global accounts successfully the organisation needs seamless collaboration across geographies. Collaboration is a top priority for many key figures in a companys C-Suite - CEOs, CFOs, chief human resources officers (CHROs), chief information officers (CIOs) and chief marketing officers (CMOs) etc. These people have the opportunity to take a key leadership role in developing collaboration, but knowing how to do it in the best way can be a tricky thing. No two companies are the same but all can agree that effective collaboration, both amongst the C-suite and with external partners is key to driving successful innovation and growth. According to research by the ACCA (the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants) in a report titled CFOs and the C-Suite focusing on effective collaboration, there are a number of key values business leaders can adopt as they are at the core of successful collaboration. In addition to their core financial and accounting expertise, financial business partners need to be able to act like business entrepreneurs, proactively working with the organisation and taking the initiative to identify issues where finance can provide added value. This means that they need a deep understanding of the value drivers within their organisation. Financial business partners must also be able to communicate clearly, explaining financial analysis in simple terms to business leaders. Similarly, influencing and conflict resolution skills are important for winning the support of internal stakeholders. Effective collaboration isnt without its obstacles. The challenges posed by sustainability, digitalisation and the fastchanging macro-economic environment will require CFOs to mitigate risk without inhibiting innovation, master communication and influencing skills, help unite teams around well-defined goals, and ensure that the finance function provides strategic value to the rest of the business. Leaders often mistake cooperation for collaboration. Most executives display friendly, collegial, cooperative behaviour but collaboration goes way beyond that. It requires people to unite with a common goal/purpose and to commit to a clearly defined outcome with clear accountabilities for the participating individuals. Behavioural change doesnt happen overnight. It takes conscious effort, as individuals have to leave their comfort zone, and it takes time. Assessing culture can be difficult because it calls upon a brand new set of skills and requires a multidisciplinary approach. This is where the skills and abilities of the professional accountant can make a real difference. Trained to evaluate and measure, the accountant needs to be attuned to ensuring that values can be measured and reported internally and externally after all, what can be measured can be managed, and the accountant is of course adept at ensuring the bottom line adds up. Another obstacle to effective collaboration is that many C-suites still lack diversity of gender, age, race and, consequently, opinion. A healthy debate and a diversity of opinion are key requirements of successful C-suite collaboration. CFOs and other senior executives must be mindful to pursue collaboration that goes beyond classical business partnering. Many of the challenges organisations face require effective enterprise-wide collaboration and the CFO has a really big role to play, given the wide remit of the finance function. The question is no longer whether companies, and specifically members of the C-suite, should collaborate internally as well as externally with customers and suppliers, but rather how. Its important to collaborate in order to thrive and not just merely survive as a business and as leaders. Collaboration itself is not unfamiliar to business, however only a few companies/individuals manage to do it well. Understanding the need for it is not enough. Effective collaboration often requires a shift in culture, mind-set and behaviour to ensure its strategic value to the rest of the business. Collaboration is better for everyone involved. Collaboration not only positively impacts the lives of employees at work but also at home. Collaboration is indeed a top priority for many business leaders. Data: the new oil Oxford Business Group reported that at a conference titled Internet of Things: Smarter Living in the Caribbean, the Minister of Public Administration and Communications, Maxie Cuffie, declared that a new broadband strategy aimed at widespread access to internet services was almost finalized. The hope is that if we were to increase the reach and speed, as well as the number of Wi-Fi-capable devices, then maybe we will see positive effects on the economy. Minister Cuffie stated that, This level of potential connectivity presents, then, the perfect storm for the mushrooming of internet of things, and we believe that data is indeed the new oil. It would appear that data is seen as a diversification tool. Minister Cuffie added that developing broadband was part of a broader package that places emphasis on using Information Communication Technology (ICT) as an effective pathway of enabling fast and efficient distribution of public services, and inspiring business growth in an increasingly diverse economy. The government appears to be hoping that the private sector would continue to take the lead in internet and ICT development, with the government intending to increase its function as facilitator of development. There is also the intention for the government to offer the population universal access to basic telecoms and broadcasting services, through a widened network of free Wi-Fi access points across the country. Gilbert Peterson, who is the chairman of the Telecommunications Authority of Trinidad and Tobago, revealed that there was a plan to deploy 45 Wi-Fi hotspots in public places across the country. These public spaces will include waiting areas at public hospitals, major transportation hubs, water taxi and ferry docking areas, and public libraries. He further added the intention to close the digital divide and connect the unconnected also includes plans to accelerate the licensing of frequencies called white-space devices, by September. Oxford Business Group notes that this countrys efforts to move towards a more knowledge-based economy and fully connected society may have caught international interest. Amazon Web Services, appears to be looking at this country as a new market for expansion. Its representatives were in the country for three days in April, holding talks with both the government and businesses. Other noteworthy developments include the state-owned service provider Telecommunications Services of Trinidad and Tobago (TSTT) announcing in early May a TT$225m ($33.5m) buyout of Massy Communications, part of the Massy Group, to increase the products consistent with the digital economy. This will give TSTT ownership of Massys existing fibre-to-the-home infrastructure, made up of more than 900 km of cable connecting approximately 34,000 residences. Ronald Walcott, CEO of TSTT, said we must see the buyout as part of TSTTs current TT$3.8bn ($564m), five-year strategic plan. We clearly indicated we have one primary mandate and that is to transform TSTT from a legacy 20th-century telecoms provider, to an agile broadband communications company. Oxford Business Group holds the view that this country can benefit from a regional drive among CARICOM members to promote electronic cooperation. In May, CARICOM member- states approved the Integrated Work Plan for its Single ICT Space. Joseph Cox, Assistant Secretary-General at CARICOMs directorate for trade and economic integration, indicated that the programme would facilitate cooperation in digital management across key areas such as legislation and infrastructure. It is generally agreed the diversifying this economy is critical for the future development of this economy. Where is the plan that spells out how this is envisaged? September premier for bmobile-sponsored Green Days by the River A Caribbean classic which has stood the test of time, Green Days by the River is an intriguing coming of age story whose plot revolves around a Trinidadian boy named Shellie who goes through all the emotional challenges of adolescent life and having an ailing father. Shellie moves to Mayaro and meets Rosalie and is instantly smitten. But when he meets Joan, he finds himself in a bit of a love triangle. We tried to stay true to the book and create something that Trinbagonians can be proud of, said Mooleedhar, the 32-year-old director of the film, known for his critically-acclaimed short films, including City on the Hill, which won Peoples Choice Award at the 2015 Trinidad and Tobago Film Festival. This film is unique because this is a Trinidad and Tobago story by a Trinidad and Tobago director and producer. Its being told by us for us. Pulling off a production of this magnitude wasnt easy or cheap. Mooleedhar and James the films producer, spent all of 2015 pounding the pavement in search of funding to get the 102-minute film in motion. They approached over 100 companies appealing for financial help and most declined, which they understood given the economy. Imagine making a creative product and telling a business person that you need them to contribute some amount of money towards the total cost, especially in an economic downturn. So yeah, we got turned down a lot. That is, until bmobile stepped in as the films title sponsor. They were our biggest supporter from day one, Mooleedhar said. We really have to thank bmobile for all they have done to make this film a reality. Even during production when we ran low on money and we went back to them for more, they gave. TSTTs Vice President of Marketing Camille Campbell explained the appeal of having bmobile support local filmmakers, working with a celebrated local author to produce one of his most celebrated local stories. bmobile is a can do, enabling brand that works to give people the means to bring out the best that TT has to offer. We are very proud of our country and our people and by investing in this production, we wanted to give support for telling local stories via film. In the process, it is our hope that it would also give a boost to the local film industry by letting people and businesses see that our young creatives can deliver great quality films when you give them the chance. We at bmobile are happy to be an integral part of this project and are excited to see such a timeless classic brought to life on the big screen. Mooleedhar and James were later able to secure other corporate sponsors including First Citizens, NALIS, bpTT and Look Opticians. Throughout the entire process, from financing right through production, the duo faced a number of challenges. From as early as casting, they faced the prospect of not getting a suitable lead actress. We just were not finding the right person to play Rosalie, said James, 29. We knew what we wanted and we were so driven that we basically took to the streets, scanning for the ideal persona, giving out call cards, trying to find our vision of someone that looked like a Rosalie. As fate would have it - James would find his Rosalie when he least expected - at the airport. My wife and I were heading to Tobago when we saw a girl who just looked the part. We said to ourselves, she can be a Rosalie. That girl was Nadia Kandhai, who, despite having no prior acting experience, impressed both the director and producer with her natural on- camera talent. The crew spent 26 long days shooting throughout Trinidad and Tobago. Recreating country life of 1952 in the hustle and bustle of 2016 wasnt easy. It was a very challenging thing to find accessible, pristine locations without traffic and cars, so we really had a task getting quiet, unspoiled locations to shoot. We even found an old cocoa house that we rebuilt as the setting for Shellies home. We shot in remote locations in the bush, which meant mosquitoes, Mooleedhar recalled. But thats what filmmaking is. Sometimes you have to recreate a world thats no longer there. Green Days by the River fans are eagerly awaiting the films release. Its Facebook page has garnered thousands of likes and shares, and James - who first tasted the rewards of film as a St Marys College student, when he and his peers won the inaugural Secondary Schools Film Competition with a story he penned called, My Scarlet Letter - hopes people will enjoy the movie and be proud that it was a local production. I want people to walk away feeling that they just watched a state-of-the-art production that was well directed and produced, with good acting. A lot of people love the book so I hope the film meets their expectations. No actually, I hope it surpasses their expectations. His director agreed. Im really proud of this film. Everything we went through was worth it in the end and thats a good feeling. Green Days by the River will be shown at cinemas nationwide on September 27. English Finnish Turku, Finland, 2017-08-03 09:31 CEST (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- TELESTE CORPORATION INVESTOR NEWS 3.8.2017 Teleste: Invitation to press briefing - Half year financial report 2017 Teleste will publish its half year financial report 1 January 30 June 2017 as a stock exchange release on August 10th 2017 approx. at 08:30 a.m. EET. A briefing for analysts, media and investors will be held the same day in Helsinki hosted by the CEO, Mr. Jukka Rinnevaara. Telestes CFO, Mr. Juha Hyytiainen will also be present in the briefing. BRIEFING (held in Finnish): Date: Thursday, August 10th 2017 Time: 09:30-10:30 a.m. EET Venue: Restaurant Savoy, 7th floor, Etelaesplanadi 14, Helsinki Attendance information by Aug 9th to: investor.relations@teleste.com Tiina Vuorinen Tel. +358 2 2605 611 Welcome! Teleste Corporation Jukka Rinnevaara CEO CARICOM needs to deliver President David Granger of Guyana said that the Community has found itself in a current international environment that was replete with uncertainty and complexity, and noted that this environment was an inescapable economic reality. He reminded members of the meeting that the CSME was the most ambitious project attempted by the Community, and given the present uncertainties facing the Regions international relations, its implementation must be accelerated in order to create a single economic space. Chairman of the Conference, Prime Minister Keith Mitchell of Grenada, questioned whether the Community was sufficiently demonstrating active engagement in resolving the regions challenges collectively, and opined that deepening partnerships through the CSME required that we urgently dispel with the knee jerk nationalistic responses in exchange for higher Community ideals in some key areas and urged the closing of the political distance with our regional constituents at all levels of society. It is apparent that a recurrent theme at these meetings is the recognition of the importance of unity and regional integration in the CARICOM. However, the day-to-day conduct of Caribbean affairs and foreign economic policy suggests an ideology based on individual economic survival, even at the expense of unity. It was however, encouraging to note the proposals being put forward for consideration by the Heads of Government. These included discussions on the creation of a Single Information and Communication Technology Space (ICT) which it was noted will be critical to our attainment of the Sustainable Development Goals, and for the regions Digital Agenda 2025. Heads of Government remain convinced that ICT stands to play a transformative role in fostering an integrated and inclusive digitally-enabled Caribbean Community. In that regard, they viewed the successful development of the Single ICT Space as a new dimension for CARICOM for addressing and inspiring the growing aspirations of citizens and defining the CARICOM Digital Agenda 2025 and beyond. Heads of Government therefore welcomed and approved the Draft Workplan for the Single ICT Space, and reiterated that this is a regional priority. The implementation of the workplan would provide an enabling environment for innovation to flourish; a larger market for investors; support sustainable increase in growth and jobs; enhance efficiency and increase access to higher value public services. Heads of Government discussed key initiatives directed towards combating transnational organised crime which continued to be the most immediate and significant threat facing the region. They also acknowledged the consistent lag in growth performance between CARICOM States and other Small Island Developing States. They acknowledged, as well, the prevailing implementation challenges and implementation deficit which are critical constraints on sustainable growth and development in the Community. Heads of Government received and endorsed the Human Resource Development 2030 Strategy which outlines actions for basic education, from early childhood through secondary, the tertiary sector and life-long learning in enabling CARICOM citizens to reach their full potential in their personal and working lives, thereby contributing to their families, communities and national and regional development. Heads of Government also supported the strengthening of domestic food production along with the promotion and consumption of nutritious indigenous foods. Members agreed to broaden engagement with Caribbean countries, companies and multilateral organizations to support a regional tourism marketing and development initiative, as well as to adopt and implement travel facilitation measures to stimulate economic growth. CARCOM needs to spend time to communicate with the people of the member countries the plans and deliverables of the varied programmes. It must place emphasis on delivery and improving the lives of the people of the region. Its broad outline, while impressive, is only talk until delivery take place. Angostura holds forum in Milan Attendees represented countries like the United States, Netherlands, Switzerland, Belarus, Belgium, Sweden, Australia, India, China, New Zealand, Greece, Malaysia, Finland, Spain and Czech Republic, to name a few. The companys local distributor in Milan, D&C S.p.A. assisted Angosturas international marketing team, Jillian Kalloo-Escayg (Forum team lead), Lawn Davis and Vitra Deonarine, in the planning of this forum. Twelve interesting topics were covered, including On Rum Trade Marketing segmentation by the developing market in Greece, and strategy in launching Angostura portfolio in an emerging market done by the distributor in the Ukraine. GOOD Creative from the UK, spoke about the companys brand ambition and gave an update on the rum portfolio bottle and label designs. The Rum Institute was presented by known mixologist and writer, Philip Duff who also spoke about the changes that were made for the upcoming 2018 Angostura Global Cocktail Challenge (AGCC) along with AGCC team lead, Vitra Deonarine. In addressing the participants at the start of the Forum, CEO, Genevieve Jodhan said, Your presence demonstrates Angosturas global footprint and the hard work we have undertaken in the past 193 years to build our brands and drive distribution globally. She continued, on behalf of the Angostura team, and on my own behalf, thank you for your continued passion for Angostura. For us, it is a source of great joy to see so many committed persons from every corner of the world. The Africa connection our flora Africas connection with our country is not, however, limited to this. In fact, Trinidad and Tobago (TT) and the African continent are connected in many ecological ways as well. This week we look at elements of our nations flora that share a surprising link to Africa. If you had to choose one tree in TT that evokes fear and superstition it would be the silk cotton. This tree (Cieba pentandra) is found throughout both islands. Outside of TT, the silk cotton is found throughout South America. Also known as kapok, they can grow to enormous sizes the Trinidad and Tobago Field Naturalist Club (TTFNC) once estimated one Moruga specimen as having an astounding girth of 10.3 metres and a height of 56 metres! The tree, of course, is feared for a supposed connection to the underworld and the substantial buttress roots only support the idea that the base of the tree is a special place for communing with spirits. What is its connection to Africa? Surprisingly, the silk cotton is naturally found in certain parts of Africa. Its presence here is something of a puzzle. While the tree has been deliberately introduced by people to other parts of Africa, its presence in areas such as Cameroon, Ghana and Gabon is entirely natural. Evidence of this includes 13,000 year-old fossilised pollen in Ghana and historic accounts of trade of silk cotton dating back to the tenth century. While the first thought that comes to mind is that these trees must be relicts from ancient times when the Gondwana landmass was intact, the results of at least one study of nucleotide divergence suggests that the African trees are actually descended from South America. This implies that trees actually spread, presumably by wind or sea, to Africa from South America after the landmasses separated. Besides its curious long-distance dispersion, the tree is also linked to Africa by the well-known tale of the African slave Gang Gang Sarah. Alleged to have been a witch, she tried to fly back to Africa from atop a tall silk cotton tree (she did not make it on account of having consumed salt). From the largest of forest trees, the Africa connection now turns to some of the smaller plants and the next time you take a walk in the woods, be sure to keep a careful eye out for these two. The first grows very low to the ground. There is no stem, just a swollen bulb, and its leaves are green with profuse pale markings. This is actually an orchid. In fact, it is the African spotted orchid (Oeceoclades maculata). Easier to recognise as an orchid when in bloom, it has distinctive pink patches on its lip. It grows all over the country from the coastline to highlands and is able to survive on very harsh terrain, sometimes barely attached to stones or leaf litter. That said, it is more likely to be found in disturbed areas than mature old growth forests. The other plant is also an orchid. This one grows on the trunks and branches of trees throughout the island. The pale-flowered polystachya (Polystachya concreta) is perhaps remarkable for its quite unremarkable flowers, being small and pale green. As you might have guessed, these orchids also share a link with Africa. This time, it appears that the direction of travel was the other way around with these species spreading from Africa to South America. And spread they did. Both species are found throughout North, Central and South America. The African spotted orchid is considered an invasive weed in North America thanks to its adaptability, quick reproductive cycle and fast growth. The exact means by which they arrived in the New World is a mystery worthy of investigation. In the case of African spotted orchid, for instance, it has been suggested that the orchids minute seeds were spread in the massive Sahara dust clouds that blow across the Atlantic. Other theories posit that they were spread via the feathers of a bird, an object drifting in the sea, human traffic or perhaps a combination of several of these. However they arrived, both species are here to stay. It is quite amazing to imagine seeds travelling so many thousands of kilometres across the sea and finding a home in a new land. These examples are just a handful of our plant species that share a connection with Africa and hopefully, now that you know about a few of them, you will seek to learn even more and preserve this important part of our African connection. For more information on our natural environment, you can contact the Trinidad and Tobago Field Naturalists Club at admin@ttfnc. org or visit our website at www. ttfnc.org. The Clubs next monthly meeting will be held on August 10 at St Marys College, POS where Avion Philips of the UWI Zoology Museum will present on The Stick Insects of TT. All lectures are open to the public. Nutrimix celebrates international certification The FSSC 22000 certification was celebrated yesterday with a tour of the companys Point Lisas Industrial Estate location in Couva by Trade and Industry Minister Paula Gopee-Scoon, the Bureau of Standards and representatives from the manufacturing and business community. Gopee-Scoon congratulated Nutrimix for its achievement as it demonstrates your commitment to deliver a safe product to consumers and suppliers. Gopee-Scoon said local manufacturers and exporters are often challenged with complying with international standards. The fact that this certification is fully recognised by the Global Food Safety Initiative is excellent as GFSI is an international programme. This international certification now guarantees global market access. Gopee-Scoon referred to Nutrimix as a a state of the art facility and lauded their certification as being in tune with the governments development of a National Quality Policy. She also said a note to Cabinet was being prepared for the establishment of a national accreditation agency which would accredit companies that help other companies comply with international standards. Ronnie Mohammed, vice president of the Nutrimix Group of Companies, said the certification was actually attained in 2016. Why did we take one year before announcing this signature achievement to the wider population? We waited until after our first surveillance audit which demonstrated that this was no flash-in-the-pan exercise. ASP Pierre: Police still challenged despite improved detection rates Pierre was addressing reporters at the Police Administration Building at Sackville Street, Port of Spain during the polices weekly media briefing which focused on its mid-year review for the period January 1 to July 30. Pierre said for the period under review, there were 251 murders - an increase from 229 for the same period last year. Despite the challenges however, Pierre said the police remain committed to improving its detection rate through different initiatives and programmes. We also continue to work with communities and other stakeholders through our town and station council meetings to increase awareness, reduce crime and improve our detection rate. Pierre also commended the Eastern, South Western and Tobago divisions for their performance and commitment to increasing the crime detection rates above the international standard. For this six-month period, there has been an overall 30 per cent detection rate for serious crimes which is in keeping with the international benchmark for crime detection. Three of the nine police divisions met and surpassed this benchmark, namely South Western, Eastern and the Tobago divisions with detection rates of 59 per cent, 47 per cent and 37 per cent respectively. F our of the nine divisions have now gone above this mark namely South Western and Eastern divisions improved their detection rates to 64 per cent and 57 per cent respectively. In addition to the improved detection rates at these divisions, Pierre also said there has been a marked decrease in the incidence of violent crime in the Port of Spain Division from 1072 reported cases last year. Borough to launch volunteer program Set to launch this Saturday at Hollis Avenue, Arima, the programme dubbed, A Day of Care will focus on assisting the less fortunate of Arima in addition to providing opportunities for their betterment. Planned activities on this day include free medical care for less fortunate individuals. Councillor Brennan Patterson, one of the persons responsible for planning the event under the guise of Arima Mayor, Lisa Morris-Julian, said the project is aimed at mobilising participation in the Borough on a local government level. Patterson also indicated that the project was structured on a volunteerism platform to ensure that it appeals to all burgesses of the Borough regardless of political affiliation. Part of the initiative will also include school outreach programs so students at both the primary and tertiary level will have a greater appreciation for community service. Planned projects under the initiative include but are not limited to; school visits, a cleanup of the Arima River and various educational lecturers. The Arima Borough invites all members of the public to come out and support the launch this Saturday and further information can be obtained by contacting the Mayors office at 667- 3449. Cannon blasts in Arima Morris-Julian expressed her wish for the smoke ceremony to be moved to the site of the canon blast, where an access route will also be made, which will allow all persons to take part in the event. She also pledged that her team would continue to work with the First Peoples Chief and Queen, to strengthen and build their vision of an Amerindian village Member of Parliament for Arima Anthony Garcia assured the First Peoples Community that the government recognises the First Peoples and will continue to do everything they can to ensure that the community has a place in society and their traditions are kept alive and respected. He spoke on the importance of traditions as a binding agent in society, especially that of the canon blast and smoke ceremony. This particular tradition, we must keep as it binds us together and allows us to pay homage to our First Peoples. Former South African leader Thabo Mbeki attended Tuesdays Cabinet meeting before holding a meeting with the countrys security chiefs and President Robert Mugabe amid growing concerns in the southern African region over worsening Zanu PF succession wars, the Daily News can report. Mbeki flew into the country with a group of investors at the invitation of Mugabe on Monday, at least according to the South African embassy, although official sources insisted that the former African National Congress presidents visit was more than just introducing investors. He met with police commissioner general Augustine Chihuri, Zimbabwe Defence Forces commander, Constantino Chiwenga and Central Intelligence Organisation director general, Happyton Bonyongwe, together with Mugabe. The rare meeting came as Mugabe had last Thursday fiercely and publicly expressed his irritation with the military chiefs for meddling in Zanu PF politics before he warned them to stay out of his partys business. Cabinet ministers canvassed by the Daily News yesterday said details of the meeting between Mbeki, his host (Mugabe) and the generals were being kept a closely guarded secret. Whatever the case, they said the fact that the military was part of the discussions points to either a transition that could take place in the not too distant future, or the potentiality for a security threat that might destabilise the sub region if things are not handled properly. Mbeki enjoys excellent relations with Mugabe and played a crucial role in persuading the 93 year-old to sign the 2008 Global Political Agreement, which led to the formation of a unity government in February 2009 between Zanu PF and the two MDC formations. This was after Zimbabwe had been thrown into a crisis following Mugabes decision to stage a one-man election in the 2008 June run-off in which MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai pulled out of days before polling, citing massive violence against his supporters. Mugabe had lost to Tsvangirai in the first round of the poll whose results were withheld for six weeks but survived because the MDC president had failed to get the outright majority. Attempts to get a comment from Mugabes spokesperson, George Charamba, or Christopher Mushohwe the Information, Media and Broadcasting Services minister were futile. A highly-placed source confirmed, however, that the generals were at cabinet and even Mbeki was there too. He also confirmed Mbeki and Mugabes separate meetings with the generals. What was discussed in the meeting was private but it was quite clear that Cde Mbeki had a few words to share with the generals and the President. But I cannot reveal much because of the Official Secrets Act, said the official. The generals were invited to cabinet where someone who wants to start a Bank for Central Africa was making a presentation, added the source. Political analysts yesterday told the Daily News that the presence of Mbeki in Cabinet and his subsequent meeting with the security chiefs was telling and symbolic. Constitutional law expert and former Tsvangirai advisor, Alex Magaisa, said Mbekis meeting with the generals was a sign that things were no longer normal in the high echelons of power. Magaisa said it was unprecedented that a former foreign head of state would sit in Cabinet or to even engage the generals in a meeting. It demonstrates that there is a problem, which has reached crisis proportions. Mbeki has always been a friend of Zanu PF and he probably came in to be a mediator between the squabbling factions, Magaisa told the Daily News. I have warned before that Sadc (the Southern African Development Community) and other stakeholders must not sit idly while Zimbabwe implodes because the succession issue has more potential for devastating implosion than anything else. It would be interesting to know whether this was Mbeki's own initiative or he was sent or indeed who in Zanu PF sent out a word for him. But that Mugabe has allowed him in shows that he has high regard for Mbeki and considers him an ally, added Magaisa. Another political analyst, Maxwell Saungweme, claimed Zanu PF has reached a level where it is failing to resolve its internal problems and now wants a mediator. It is clear Mbeki of "African solutions to African problems" philosophy was certainly brought in to mediate between Zanu PF and itself. Things are not rosy and what is happening can throw us into civil war. It should not surprise us that generals sat in cabinet because Zimbabwe is a conflated State. It is the Zanu PF conflation of roles coming back to haunt us, said Saungweme. Zanu PF has been torn apart by factional wars which analysts say are a result of Mugabes failure to anoint a successor. Mugabe, on his part, has been consistent that he cannot name a successor as doing so would be violating the Zanu PF constitution which empowers the party to do so either at a congress or an extra ordinary congress. But last week, his influential wife, Grace, threw the cat among the pigeons when she implored on him to name a successor, hardly weeks after he had shot down the same call by War Veterans minister Tshinga Dube. While addressing Zanu PFs Women League national assembly members at the partys headquarters in Harare last Thursday, Grace said Mugabes word on his successor would be final. There is no succession without Mugabe and I have told him that you have a role to play even if I know that he has said that the people will decide but his word will be final, mark my word I am asking him now in front of you and dont be afraid, tiudzei bhiza ramuri kuda timhanye naro muone henyu (we will rally behind your anointed horse). We will stand up and support that candidate and those whose names that have been thrown around under the cover of darkness are not the candidates. Listen to me when I speak, Grace said then. And Mugabe, speaking at the same meeting belted the military chiefs for meddling in Zanu PF successions wars. There are secret manoeuvres going on. The military has no right to be interfering with the political processes. Theirs is to support; they can give their own views within the constitution and according, also, to the principle that politics shall always lead the gun and not the gun leading politics. That would be a coup, Mugabe said. Mugabe made the same statement at the 2015 Zanu PF conference in Victoria Falls. His deputy and long time aide, Emmerson Mnangagwa, is touted as his possible successor, as he enjoys the support of the military. Recently, reports indicated that Mugabes Defence minister, Sydney Sekeramayi, could also be in the running as a possible dark horse. Daily News Vice President Emmerson Mnangagwa yesterday urged Rwandan refugees to return home to vote in presidential elections this week. Mnangagwa re-affirmed the United Nations call to repatriate Rwandese who fled to Zimbabwe, saying the troubled nation was now safe. Rwanda has made a dramatic economic recovery in the two decades since 800 000 ethnic Tutsis and moderate Hutus were butchered by Hutu extremists. Let me take this opportunity to inform you that, as government we are proceeding with implementation of the Rwandan Cessation Clause, Mnangagwa said, referring to a repatriation strategy for Rwandan refugees who fled their country between 1959 and 1998 to escape inter-ethnic violence and armed conflict. To that end, I urge all Rwandans affected by the Cessation Clause to make plans to return to Rwanda and contribute in building of their nation. We as government together with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), will ensure smooth closure to the cases by December 31, 2017. As a sovereign state, we will continue to use our influence within Sadc and the AU to lobby for peaceful conflict resolution and work towards initiatives which guarantee peace and political stability. However, many of the Rwandans who continue to live in Zimbabwe remain unwilling to repatriate, citing fear of persecution by the government. Refugee rights organisations have also warned that human rights abuses by the current government have caused a continued exodus of Rwandan asylum seekers. daily news Zimbabwes opposition political parties could fail to form an alliance to fight the 2018 presidential and parliamentary elections against President Robert Mugabe, a South Africa-based think tank, NKC African Economics (NKC), has said. Mugabe, 93, is seeking an eighth and final term after winning the 2013 race against veteran politician Morgan Tsvangirai, 56, whose MDC is one of the main opposition parties uniting. The alliance seems to be failing the test to agree on a single candidate before the vote without splintering. Tsvangirai, who has lost three elections, wants to run again but is facing challenges from others in the opposition alliance. He disputed the results of the last vote in 2013 and the election in 2008, whose first round he won, but was followed by weeks of deadly political violence in which about 200 people died. NKC analyst Gary van Staden said the main point on the agreement between opposition parties was that the viability of any coalition would depend on the ability of the various components to work out key issues leadership in particular. The think tank said it appears that these issues are going to hamper the formation of a viable coalition no matter what the protagonists are claiming now. Both opposition heavyweights clearly believe they should lead the coalition, and both have viable claims, but they also both have significant weaknesses. Tsvangirai missed a real chance of removing Mugabe in 2008 and was then outmanoeuvred by the president during the unity government. The question remains whether he has what it takes to defeat Mugabe. Joice Mujuru, meanwhile, sat silent at Mugabes side while he perpetrated a series of crimes against his people, and she must deal with issues of trust that arise from that. Mugabe and Zanu PF are ripe for the political plucking, but only if the opposition can unite and be decisive over what it wants most, Staden said. Mujuru, who now heads the National Peoples Party (NPP), is hedging her bets on joining a coalition of all opposition parties to challenge Zanu PF in elections expected in the third quarter of next year. In April, a potential major development in a possible defeat of Mugabe and the ruling Zanu PF at next years elections was an agreement by opposition groupings on a united front against the only party and president an independent Zimbabwe has ever known. Tsvangirai and Mujuru signed an agreement to work together. NKC warned at the time that while this was a movement that could mature into a viable challenge to Zanu PF and Mugabe, it could just as easily disintegrate as the parties and their leaders are drawn into issues around who the presidential candidate should be. Both leaders have strong claims. Barely a few months later, the Transform Zimbabwe political party leader Jacob Ngarivhume, one of the signatories to the Memorandum of Understanding with Tsvangirais MDC, told local media that Mujuru was grandstanding and not committed to a coalition of all parties ahead of the polls. Mujuru has denied the allegations and suggested that forming a coalition was a process not an event. She has pledged her commitment to forming electoral alliances with other opposition parties. What she did not say was with which parties and whether the final coalition would include both her and Tsvangirai. In addition, her later comments included the statement that if people were demanding she lead, then she would have to listen a clear reference to the thorny issue of coalition leadership that Tsvangirai believes is his right. Daily News ROCKLEDGE, Fla., Aug. 03, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Kona Gold Solutions, Inc. (OTC Pink:KGKG), a hemp lifestyle brand of exclusivity and status, has announced the company has entered a distribution agreement with Canadian Green LLC in Colorado. Canadian Green, based in Denver Colorado, will be handling Kona Golds strategic expansion in the state of Colorado with expansion opportunities into Nevada. Canadian Green will use their established channels with dispensaries, vape shops, liquor stores, and c-stores to aggressively push Kona Golds Hemp Energy Drinks, and soon to produce CBD flavored energy waters, into that regions markets. Kona Gold is currently in talks with additional distributors in California and the Pacific Northwest in efforts to bring their popular Hemp Energy Drinks out west. The company also recently entered a Strategic Alliance Agreement (SAA) with Elev8 Brands, Inc. (OTC Pink:VATE), where both companies will work together in bringing their products to Vape and Smoke shops on a national level. We recently entered the Colorado market and it was only a matter of weeks before we signed on with a fantastic distributor that has established channels in the markets that we are focused on, stated Robert Clark, CEO of Kona Gold Solutions, Inc. We are thrilled to have Canadian Green as a partner who is excited about our products and is determined to grow our brand! "Sales have been very rapid, stated Canadian Green's Vice President Jakob Jorgensen. We already have several locations that have sold out their inventory and we are replenishing their supply. Our company will be placing additional orders with Kona Gold to meet our growing demand, added Jorgensen Clark continued, We currently have several great retail customers throughout California and are seeing more demand for our products in that state, so natural progression will be to sign on local distributors in that region, which we are actively pursuing. For more information regarding Kona Gold Solutions, please visit: https://www.facebook.com/konagoldhemp https://twitter.com/konagoldhemp https://www.instagram.com/konagoldhemp/ http://www.konagoldhemp.com Kona Gold Solutions, Inc.: Kona Gold Solutions, Inc. has created Kona Gold LLC, a Delaware Corporation, which has developed a premium Hemp Infused Energy Drink line, Energy shots, and Apparel; please visit the Companys new website at www.konagoldhemp.com. The Company is located on the east coast of Florida in Rockledge, FL. Safe Harbor Statement: The information posted in this release may contain forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. You can identify these statements by use of the words "may," "will," "should," "plans," "expects," "anticipates," "continue," "estimate," "project," "intend," and similar expressions. Forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those projected or anticipated. These risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to, general economic and business conditions, effects of continued geopolitical unrest and regional conflicts, competition, changes in technology and methods of marketing, delays in completing various engineering and manufacturing programs, changes in customer order patterns, changes in product mix, continued success in technological advances and delivering technological innovations, shortages in components, production delays due to performance quality issues with outsourced components, and various other factors beyond the Company's control. Get the news faster. Tap to install our app. Access Newser even faster. Click here to install our app on your desktop. Saudi Arabia is making a play to put itself on the "international tourism map," the Telegraph reports. According to Bloomberg, the country has announced plans to build luxury resorts on more than 13,000 square miles of Red Sea coastline, including "50 untouched natural islands." The projectwhich the BBC reports is slated to begin construction in 2019 and be completed three years lateris part of Prince Mohammed bin Salman's efforts to make Saudi Arabia's economy less reliant on oil. An official statement says the project wants to attract "luxury travelers from around the globe," and the goal is for the resorts to host 1 million visitors per year by 2035. But it remains to be seen if foreign tourists will flock to Saudi Arabiawhere alcohol, movie theaters, and plays are banned, women are required to wear full-length robes in public, and there are limits on men and women mixing. Officials say the resorts will comprise a "semi-autonomous" area that will have laws "on par with international standards." It's unclear exactly which laws will be relaxed at the resorts or how Saudi Arabia's religious leaders will react to the increased freedoms. If you cant change restrictions on alcohol and dress, that market disappears, one expert tells Bloomberg. (Read more Saudi Arabia stories.) A light plane made an emergency landing on a packed beach near Lisbon, Portugal, on Wednesday afternoon, killing a 56-year-old man and an 8-year-old girl who were sunbathing, authorities said. Hundreds of sunbathers were on the popular beach at Caparica and witnesses said some sunbathers ran into the sea to avoid the plane. The National Maritime Authority said the man and girl died on the beach. Officials said they were not aware of any injured, the AP reports. The small aircraft, reportedly a Cessna, carrying two people appeared to be in difficulty and wobbled as it skimmed low over the sunbathers, scattering them and spreading panic on the beach, witnesses said. The plane appeared to have a partly broken left wing, which hung lower than the right wing, Portuguese television pictures showed. Officials said the accident occurred at 4:50pm. The dead girl was with her parents, who were unhurt, witnesses told local television channels. The plane passed over the dead man's legs as he sunbathed on a towel, they said. No others were reportedly hurt. The bodies lay covered on the sand as police cordoned off the area. The two occupants of the plane were unhurt and were being questioned by police. (Read more accidental death stories.) President Trump isn't happy about the situation in Afghanistan and his proposed solution is one that will be familiar to Celebrity Apprentice viewers, insiders say. Sources tell Reuters that during a July 19 meeting in the White House Situation Room, an angry Trump said military leaders should consider firing Gen. John Nicholson, commander of US forces in Afghanistan, over his performance. "We aren't winning," Trump said, per the sources, described as senior administration officials. "We are losing." Trump also complained about NATO allies and said the US should demand some of Afghanistan's estimated $1 trillion mineral wealth, the officials say. Trump complained that China was profiting from Afghanistan's mineral wealth under a deal set up a decade ago. According to NBC's sources, Trump "startled" military advisers including Defense Secretary James Mattis with an anecdote comparing their advice to that of a New York restaurant consultant who cost a business profits with lousy advice about renovating a kitchen. He suggested the owner should have talked to the waiters instead. Trump ended the two-hour meeting without a decision on a new US strategy for South Asia. Pentagon sources say Mattis returned from the meeting "visibly upset" and went for a long walk to clear his head. (Read more Afghanistan war stories.) Words about tired, poor, huddled masses yearning to breathe free were not part of the original Statue of Liberty, White House aide Stephen Miller argued in a back-and-forth over immigration policy Wednesday. When CNN reporter Jim Acosta read a line from the famous Emma Lazarus poem on the statue's pedestal, noting that, unlike the Trump administration's immigration proposals, it makes no mention of being able to speak English or work as a computer programmer, Miller downplayed the historical significance of the poem, and, as the AP puts it, "suggested (the statue) had little to do with immigrants." The statue "is a symbol of American liberty lighting the world," he said. "The poem you were referring to was added later. It's not actually part of the (original) Statue of Liberty." Lazarus wrote her famous sonnet in 1883 for an auction to raise money for a pedestal for the statue, a gift from France. It was inscribed on a bronze plaque at the statue in 1903. Later in the exchange, Acosta accused the Trump administration of "trying to engineer the racial and ethnic flow and people into this country" with its proposals, which would sharply reduce the number of legal immigrants allowed into the US every year, the BBC reports. "Jim, that is one of the most outrageous, insulting, ignorant and foolish things you have ever said," Miller replied. "The notion that you think this is a racist bill is so wrong and so insulting." (Lady Liberty was originally designed as an Arab peasant woman.) So many asylum seekers are crossing into Canada from the United States that Montreal's Olympic Stadium has been opened to house them. The first groups were bused to the stadium Wednesday. Cots are set up in the windowless, domed facility. The mainly Haitian migrants will stay until they get government financial assistance. Francine Dupuis, head of a Quebec government-funded program that helps asylum seekers, says a maximum of 450 people will be housed temporarily. She says her organization helped 448 people in June and 1,174 in July, far more than previously, the AP reports. "We are really stretched, really stretched," Dupuis says. "It's much more than we have ever seen." Volunteers from the Quebec Red Cross helped set up the cavernous, concrete stadium for a temporary stay with cots and food in the rotunda. Around 90% of the asylum seekers are Haitians. The US is weighing ending a program that granted Haitians "temporary protected status" after Haiti's 2010 devastating earthquake. If the program isn't extended, as many as 60,000 Haitians in the US could be sent back to their homeland. "They think the Trump administration will fly them back to Haiti and they don't want to take a chance," Dupuis says. She says the YMCA and shelters are already full. The stadium has agreed to house up to 450 people for a few months but can't take more because of other activities. (Read more Canada stories.) Police in Chicago have asked law enforcement agencies across the country to be on the lookout for a strange pair of murder suspects: an American bubonic plague expert and a British university treasurer. Wyndham Lathem, a 42-year-old professor of microbiology and immunology at Northwestern University, and Andrew Warren, a 56-year-old treasury assistant employed by Oxford University, are accused of stabbing Trenton Cornell-Duranleau, 26, to death in Lathem's Chicago apartment on July 27, the Telegraph reports. Police say the two men should be considered armed and dangerous. Authorities believe they have fled Chicago, possibly in a rented gray 2017 Hyundai. Chicago police spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said Wednesday that a judge had issued first-degree murder warrants for the pair, the AP reports. He did not discuss a possible motive, but said security camera footage captured Lathem and Warren leaving the River North apartment building the night of the killing. Guglielmi said Lathem and Cornell-Duranleau apparently knew each other. It's not clear how they were connected to Warren, who recently came to the US for the first time. Northwestern University says Lathem, who has been employed by the institution since 2007, has been placed on administrative leave and banned from all its campuses, the Chicago Tribune reports. (Read more murder stories.) James Comey isn't done discussing his unusual tenure under President Trump. The former FBI director has signed a $2 million deal for a book that will explore "what good, ethical leadership looks like and how it drives sound decisions," publisher Flatiron Books tells NPR. That will mean taking a look at the "highest-stakes situations" of Comey's career, including the FBI investigations into Hillary Clinton's private email server and allegations that Trump's campaign colluded with Russia, which ultimately led to Comey's firing, per the Guardian. His agent tells the New York Times that Comey is "hard at work" on the yet-untitled book, due out next spring, and Flatiron adds that he'll "share yet-unheard anecdotes from his long and distinguished career." (Read more James Comey stories.) Traverse City, Michigan, Aug. 03, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Automakers, which are already seeing their capital-spending levels average nearly half of available cash per year, are likely about to be hit with a big incremental increase in spending for the new-mobility programs that are revolutionizing the automotive industry today. This could potentially strain the industrys cash reserves in ways not seen since the Great Recession, and should prompt companies throughout the industry to focus on return on invested capital (ROIC), the metric often said to be the one best for determining how big a financial moat a company has around itself. And improving ROIC while at the same time paying for new-mobility programs will likely require such things as asset-light business models and NIH-free partnerships. These and other topics were presented to hundreds of industry executives here today at the non-profit Center for Automotive Researchs (CAR) annual Management Briefing Seminar by Al Koch, vice chairman at the global business-advisory firm AlixPartners. Koch, who has more than four decades of experience in the auto and other major industries, drew upon his skills in evaluating companies business models and balance sheets in his speech, Rewired for SuccessIs the Industry Sustainable Going Forward? His general conclusion: Sustained success will likely come only if companies in the industry adopt a laser-like focus on ROIC, not just profitability or sales. Koch declared that ROIC levels in auto are under attack by the industrys massive capital demands today. These include, he said, ongoing capital requirements (which alone historically equal about 10% of a companys sales), such as for maintenance and R&D; cycle-related requirements accompanying the cyclical industry downturn that many see approaching, such as the need for higher payables-funding and the cost of capacity misjudgements due to uncertain sales volumes; and, importantly, the incremental funding requirements for what AlixPartners has dubbed CASEthe connected, autonomous, shared and electric vehicles of the not-too-distant future. The CASE Bump Koch said that AlixPartners analysis shows that capital spending by the worlds top 20 automakers by revenue rose to an average of $12 billion last year, equal on average to more than 47% of available cash at those companies. However, both those numbers are about to rise significantly, he said, as the race to new mobility takes a quantum jump in the next few years in terms of the need for funding. Overall, he estimated that the auto industry will have a bill awaiting it of several incremental billions in CASE-related costsand that that new obligation will potentially start coming due almost immediately, and could really take off around 2020. The coming CASE bump is probably not the kind of bump the auto industry is looking forward to, as it could strain balance sheets in a way not seen since the crash preceding the Great Recession, said Koch. The industry endured a lot of pain back in those dark days, but a lot of financial discipline has ensued. However, the real test will be whether the industry can maintain its financial discipline in the face of the needed incremental spending for the conversion to new mobility coupled with what certainly looks to be a cyclical industry downturn. Returns in Auto Pale in Comparison In his speech, Koch noted that the auto industry will also be facing fierce competition from the technology industry in the race to new mobility. As an example, he said AlixPartners research reveals that there are now more than 50 big-name companies working on autonomous vehicles or autonomous-vehicle systems, along with dozens more smaller companies and start-ups. He went on to note that ROIC in auto industry pales in comparison with that in the technology industrywhich, he said, greatly aids the tech industrys competitiveness, including giving it options for cheaper capital-raising. He noted that last year in the information-services sector of tech ROIC averaged 36%, in computer services it averaged 30%, and in computers and peripherals it averaged 24%, while automakers ROIC averaged just 6%. Koch went on to say that the ROIC considerations companies should make when strategizing their place in the new-mobility landscape boiled down to what he called choosing among the 3 Ps: participate, as in adopt a go-it-alone strategy; partner, as in team up in some fashion with other players; or purchase, as in acquire tech companies or pieces of them. Asset-light Is Key No matter which strategy is chosen, Koch urged his audience to stay NIH-free and, perhaps most important, to develop asset-light approaches in dealing with the challenge of the conversion to the new-mobility future, to improve ROIC and maintain the health of their balance sheets. Efficient use of capital suggests that the industry keep ROIC in the forefront, including developing asset-light approaches to everything from products to plants to partnerships, said Koch. In a low-growth, capital-intensive industry like auto, thats the only way to ensure success, especially when you now also need to compete with the high-growth, historically low-capital-intensive technology industry. To do otherwise is to risk falling into a vicious cycle of low shareholder returns, higher costs of capital and, eventually, becoming irrelevant in tomorrows new automotive ecosystem. ### About AlixPartners In todays fast paced global market timing is everything. You want to protect, grow or transform your business. To meet these challenges, we offer clients small teams of highly qualified experts with profound sector and operational insight. Our clients include corporate boards and management, law firms, investment banks, investors and others who appreciate the candour, dedication, and transformative expertise of our teams. We will ensure insight drives action at that exact moment that is critical for success. When it really matters. alixpartners.com Late last month, the National Archives began to release thousands of documents related to John F. Kennedy's assassination that had been kept secret for decades. The JFK Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992 mandated the files be released 25 years later (though there's one loophole), and as the document dump begins, Politico takes a look at a couple of insights gleaned from what's been newly released thus far. CIA leaders testified to the Warren Commission that the agency turned up no proof that there was any conspiracyLee Harvey Oswald acted alone. But in subsequent years, misgivings about that assertion arose, per Politico's read of the documents, misgivings that were never shared publicly. A 27-page memo written in 1975 pointed out that the "sole live witness on the record regarding Oswalds activities"a Mexican woman named Silvia Duran who worked in the Cuban consulate and tried to help Oswald obtain a Cuban visawas interviewed only by the Mexican government. As Politico puts it, "the CIA was alarmed ... to realize that no one had properly followed up" on this and other details from the six-day trip Oswald took to Mexico City two months before JFK was killed. The memo also suggests an AP article published Sept. 9, 1963 in the New Orleans Times-Picayune could have spurred Oswald to kill Kennedy. Oswald was an "avid reader" of the paper; the article was an interview with Fidel Castro that suggested the US may be plotting to assassinate him, and though the CIA's Mexico City station flagged the article to HQ, it wasn't considered during the investigation. (Read more Lee Harvey Oswald stories.) One of the founding members of the 1980s hip-hop group Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five was arrested in New York City in connection with the fatal stabbing of a homeless man, police say. Nathaniel Glover, 57, also known as Kidd Creole, was arrested Wednesday night on murder charges, reports the AP. The stabbing happened in midtown Manhattan shortly before midnight on Monday. Police say 55-year-old John Jolly was found with multiple stab wounds to his torso. Police described Jolly, who lived in a shelter, as a level 2 sex offender. Sources tell the New York Daily News that Glover was on his way to his job as a security guard when he got into an altercation with Jolly, who was reportedly drunk. Sources say Glover didn't know Jolly but possibly thought Jolly was hitting on him. Video shows a handcuffed Glover being escorted out of a police precinct Wednesday night. Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five is best known for their 1982 rap song, "The Message." The group was formed in the late 1970s in the Bronx and inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2007. It was the first rap act to receive the honor. (Read more stabbing stories.) President Trump raised the stakes in the immigration debate on Wednesday with his support of a radically new system that would favor immigrants with job skills and fluency in English over those with family ties. Unlike Trump's previous emphasis on reducing illegal immigration, this plan would focus on reducing legal immigration, by a lot. The White House says it would be similar to the merit-based systems used by Australia and Canada. Details and coverage: The bill: Trump's plan is based on a bill introduced in the Senate by David Perdue of Georgia and Tom Cotton of Arkansas. It's called the Reforming American Immigration for Strong Employment Act, or RAISE, and the legislation is here. They introduced it in February and it hasn't gone anywhere since. Trump's plan is based on a bill introduced in the Senate by David Perdue of Georgia and Tom Cotton of Arkansas. It's called the Reforming American Immigration for Strong Employment Act, or RAISE, and the legislation is here. They introduced it in February and it hasn't gone anywhere since. The reductions: About 1 million people are currently granted legal residency each year, and this merit-based system would cut that by 41% in its first year and 50% in its 10th, per the AP. Points system: The New York Times takes a look at how the Australian system works. Would-be immigrants receive the most points, up to 60, for having needed skills; they get fewer points, up to 20, for fluency in English. They also get points based on age, with those 25 to 32 receiving the most. The idea is to bring in people able to support themselves, though one critic says the system is "full of holes." Canada has a similar system, though its version also aims to promote a multicultural society. The Times had a separate story on Canada's system in March. Of note: Both nations let in a greater number of immigrants per capita than the US does. The New York Times takes a look at how the Australian system works. Would-be immigrants receive the most points, up to 60, for having needed skills; they get fewer points, up to 20, for fluency in English. They also get points based on age, with those 25 to 32 receiving the most. The idea is to bring in people able to support themselves, though one critic says the system is "full of holes." Canada has a similar system, though its version also aims to promote a multicultural society. The Times had a separate story on Canada's system in March. Of note: Both nations let in a greater number of immigrants per capita than the US does. Economists say no: The Washington Post reports that most economists16 of 18 in its July surveythink it's a foolish idea to cut immigration because it will hurt economic growth and raise the risk of recession. "We need to modernize the immigration system, but cutting immigration in half is bad for the economy and bad policy," says Jeremy Robbins of New American Economy, a coalition founded by Michael Bloomberg. The Washington Post reports that most economists16 of 18 in its July surveythink it's a foolish idea to cut immigration because it will hurt economic growth and raise the risk of recession. "We need to modernize the immigration system, but cutting immigration in half is bad for the economy and bad policy," says Jeremy Robbins of New American Economy, a coalition founded by Michael Bloomberg. Opposition: The White House support will give the bill new life, but its prospects still aren't good because not only Democrats oppose it. GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham, for instance, said it would devastate South Carolina's tourism industry by reducing the number of low-wage workers at hotels and restaurants, per the Post and Courier. Among Democrats, Dianne Feinstein says it would "cripple" the agriculture industry, per the Hill. The White House support will give the bill new life, but its prospects still aren't good because not only Democrats oppose it. GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham, for instance, said it would devastate South Carolina's tourism industry by reducing the number of low-wage workers at hotels and restaurants, per the Post and Courier. Among Democrats, Dianne Feinstein says it would "cripple" the agriculture industry, per the Hill. In favor: A post at the conservative Power Line blog lauds the idea. "Its fine to continue on as a nation of immigrants, but shouldnt we also want to protect the wages of recent immigrants and other Americans with low levels of educational attainment?" asks Paul Mirengoff. A post at the conservative Power Line blog lauds the idea. "Its fine to continue on as a nation of immigrants, but shouldnt we also want to protect the wages of recent immigrants and other Americans with low levels of educational attainment?" asks Paul Mirengoff. Acosta vs. Miller: The exchange between White House aide Stephen Miller and CNN's Jim Acosta continues to make headlines. Watch it in full via the Los Angeles Times. (Read more immigration stories.) Euthanasia has become a common way to die in the Netherlands, accounting for 4.5% of deaths, according to researchers who say requests are increasing from people who aren't terminally ill. In 2002, the Netherlands became the first country in the world that made it legal for doctors to help people die. Both euthanasia, where doctors actively kill patients, and assisted suicide, where physicians prescribe patients a lethal dose of drugs, are allowed. People must be "suffering unbearably" with no hope of reliefbut their condition does not have to be fatal. The 25-year review published in Thursday's New England Journal of Medicine is based on physician questionnaires. The review shows that in 1990, before it was legal, 1.7% of deaths were from euthanasia or assisted suicide. That rose to 4.5% by 2015. The vast majority92%had serious illness and the rest had health problems from old age, early-stage dementia or psychiatric problems, or a combination. More than a third of those who died were over 80. Requests from those who aren't terminally ill still represent a small share, but they've been increasing, lead author Dr. Agnes van der Heide of Erasmus University Medical Center in Rotterdam tells the AP. In 1990, 16% of the patients in question had an estimated life expectancy of more than a month; in 2015, it was 27%. (Read more euthanasia stories.) A Virginia man has been arrested and charged with abduction after law enforcement went to a home and found a woman and two children who'd allegedly been held against their will for two years. Fredericksburg.com reports that the break in the case came Saturday, when sheriff's deputies went to a Spotsylvania County home after receiving a tip from a concerned caller, who noted no one had seen the family members in some time. A man greeted the deputies but seemed "reluctant" to speak with them, and as that stilted conversation was taking place, a 32-year-old woman and two kids, ages 8 and 11, dashed out a side door and toward the safety of other deputies, who heard from the trio that they hadn't been allowed to leave the house for at least two years. Kariem Ali Muhammad Moore, 43, was arrested for abduction and assault and battery; he's believed to be the boyfriend of the woman and the father of her two kids, per NBC Washington. Investigators looking into the allegations say it doesn't appear the family was physically restrained or caged, but every window and door at the home was reportedly shrouded with blankets and other coverings. The kids apparently did not attend school during the alleged captivity. A sheriff's office rep says the woman was hospitalized due to unattended-to medical issues and is in serious condition; the kids were checked out and released to family. The sheriff's office says no missing persons report was on the books. Moore is being held without bond in Rappahannock Regional Jail. (A photo taken from a window led to a missing NC teen.) If only Anthony Scaramucci were still around to lash out at this leak: The Washington Post has obtained classified transcripts of President Trump's initial phone calls with the leaders of Mexico and Australia, produced by White House staff in January. (See them in full here.) Among the highlights: Trump didn't spend a lot of time trying to convince Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto to pay for the border wall Trump had promised Americans when Nieto refused to do so. Instead, Trump was more concerned with the optics, repeatedly warning, "But you cannot say that to the press" in regard to Nieto's refusal. Trump said he knew funding for the wall may be up in the air, but he threatened to stop communication with Mexico if Nieto continued publicly refusing to pay. "I cannot live with that," Trump said. That was just one indication of Trump's confrontational political style, "subjecting even a close neighbor and long-standing ally to streams of threats and invective as if aimed at US adversaries," according to the Post. The president got even more heated with Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull in a call on Jan. 28. After the pair butted heads about a deal in which the US agreed to accept 1,250 refugees held in Australian detention centers, Trump told Turnbull, "This is going to kill me I will be seen as a weak and ineffective leader in my first week." He abruptly ended the call after telling Turnbull it was his "most unpleasant call all day." His call with Vladimir Putin was "pleasant," Trump added. "This is ridiculous." (Read more President Trump stories.) A disturbing federal lawsuit alleges that for years, female recruits were required to undergo pelvic exams performed by a male doctor in order to be hired to the Nebraska State Patrol. The suit, filed by State Trooper Brienne Splittgerber, led Gov. Pete Ricketts to order an investigation into the matter, the Omaha World-Herald reports. The lawsuit alleges that female recruits were required to be naked from the waist down in order to undergo a vaginal and rectal exam, which Splittgerber says she was told was to check for hernias. The suit says male recruits were not made to undergo the same exams, with just one possible exception. A State Patrol spokesperson says no recruits have been subjected to the exams since December 2016, per the AP. Splittgerber says after her exam in 2014, her family doctor told her the exam had been medically unnecessary. An OB-GYN explains to the AP that, in order to check for a hernia, there would be no need to undress or to have the "genital or anal area" probed. Splittgerber complained to her superiors and was told an investigation was underway, but her lawsuit says nothing was done for three years. It also accuses officials of attempting a cover-up. "Subjecting the plaintiff and other female trooper candidates to a medically unnecessary and sexually invasive procedure is outrageous conduct [that] goes beyond all possible bounds of decency and is utterly intolerable in a civilized community," says the lawsuit. The Nebraska attorney general's office will defend the patrol against the lawsuit. (Read more Nebraska stories.) He's been in the spotlight previously, but White House aide Stephen Miller got perhaps his biggest exposure so far on Wednesday when he briefed reporters on President Trump's new immigration plan and sparred with CNN's Jim Acosta. It even caught the attention of Less Than Zero novelist Bret Easton Ellis, notes the Wrap. "Why do I find Stephen Miller completely compelling and want to write a novel about him?" the author tweeted. Ellis has notably criticized liberals in Hollywood for their Trump animus and tweeted last month that he's been accused of being a "Trump apologist," notes the Hollywood Reporter. Other takes: Hero status: A post at Axios says Miller is being treated as a "hero" in the West Wing because of his clash with Acosta. A post at Axios says Miller is being treated as a "hero" in the West Wing because of his clash with Acosta. Who's 'cosmopolitan'? At one point, Miller accused Acosta of a "cosmopolitan bias" because of his questioning, and later, on CNN, Acosta said, "I could go for a cosmopolitan right now. ... It's not often you're accused of a cosmopolitan bias from somebody who went to Duke University wearing cufflinks in the White House briefing room." The term: Jeff Greenfield digs into the history of the term "cosmopolitan," which he defines at Politico as "a cousin to 'elitist,' but with a more sinister undertone. It's a way of branding people or movements that are unmoored to the traditions and beliefs of a nation, and identify more with like-minded people regardless of their nationality." Given its roots in Soviet anti-Semitism (Lenin used it), Greenfield suggests that Miller stick with "elitist" in the future. Jeff Greenfield digs into the history of the term "cosmopolitan," which he defines at Politico as "a cousin to 'elitist,' but with a more sinister undertone. It's a way of branding people or movements that are unmoored to the traditions and beliefs of a nation, and identify more with like-minded people regardless of their nationality." Given its roots in Soviet anti-Semitism (Lenin used it), Greenfield suggests that Miller stick with "elitist" in the future. The poem: Miller was correct when he pointed out that the "huddled masses" poem was added after the Statue of Liberty's dedication, notes the Washington Post. The story digs into how "New Colossus" by Emma Lazarus has become a flashpoint on the alt-right. Movement leader Richard Spencer tweeted earlier this year, "It's offensive that such a beautiful, inspiring statue was ever associated with ugliness, weakness, and deformity." Read the poem in full here. Miller was correct when he pointed out that the "huddled masses" poem was added after the Statue of Liberty's dedication, notes the Washington Post. The story digs into how "New Colossus" by Emma Lazarus has become a flashpoint on the alt-right. Movement leader Richard Spencer tweeted earlier this year, "It's offensive that such a beautiful, inspiring statue was ever associated with ugliness, weakness, and deformity." Read the poem in full here. Premeditated? A post at Poynter criticizes Miller for what appeared to be "a premeditated act of faux combat with the press." The evidence for that? Miller himself, saying at the end, "I think that was exactly what we were hoping to have happen." A post at Poynter criticizes Miller for what appeared to be "a premeditated act of faux combat with the press." The evidence for that? Miller himself, saying at the end, "I think that was exactly what we were hoping to have happen." Score it for Miller: Rick Lowry makes the case that Miller got the best of the argument with Acosta. He accuses the CNN reporter, and others who support high levels of immigration, of "ignorant emotionalism" at Politico. It's past time for a reassessment of immigration policy, and the new bill should force one, he writes. The problem is it's "an area in which thoughtless sentimentality has long dominatedand if the Miller-Acosta exchange is any indication, will be difficult to dislodge." Rick Lowry makes the case that Miller got the best of the argument with Acosta. He accuses the CNN reporter, and others who support high levels of immigration, of "ignorant emotionalism" at Politico. It's past time for a reassessment of immigration policy, and the new bill should force one, he writes. The problem is it's "an area in which thoughtless sentimentality has long dominatedand if the Miller-Acosta exchange is any indication, will be difficult to dislodge." Nope: At Slate, Jeremy Stahl thinks Miller's comments smack of xenophobia. He runs through Miller's background, including attending Duke with "neo-Nazi rebrander" Spencer, and concludes that "Spencer has a kindred spirit in the White House, one who's apparently crafting national immigration policy." (Read more Stephen Miller stories.) Experts say Robert Mueller's investigation into President Trump, his associates, and Russia shows no sign of wrapping up, with sources telling the Wall Street Journal the special counsel has impaneled a grand jury in Washington DC. Grand juries allow prosecutors to subpoena documents, have witnesses testify under oath, and pursue indictments. This is yet a further sign that there is a long-term, large-scale series of prosecutions being contemplated and being pursued by the special counsel, a University of Texas law professor says. The newsa sign the investigation will likely continue for monthscomes as lawmakers in both parties are seeking to make it more difficult for Trump to fire Mueller. Meanwhile, Reuters reports Mueller's grand jury has issued subpoenas tied to Donald Trump Jr.'s 2016 meeting with a Russian lawyer, who claimed to have information damaging to Hillary Clinton, and others. And sources familiar with the investigation tell CNN that investigators are beginning to focus on possible financial crimes committed by Trump and others, some of which have nothing to do with the 2016 election. Mueller has the authority to look into anything that "may arise directly from the investigation," and sources say investigators now believe financial crimes are more likely to lead to prosecutions than possible collusion with Russia during the election. Trump has called the entire investigation a "witch hunt." (Read more Robert Mueller stories.) MIAMI, Aug. 03, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Progressive Care Inc. (OTC PINK:RXMD), through its subsidiaries Smart Medical Alliance, Inc. and PharmCo, LLC, is a South Florida health services organization and provider of prescription pharmaceuticals, compounded medications, the sale of anti-retroviral medications, medication therapy management (MTM), and the supply of prescription medications to long term care facilities, administration and practice management, utilization management, quality assurance, EHR Implementation, billing and coding, health practice risk management, announces the engagement of First Look Equities. On August 2, 2017, Progressive Care executed an agreement with First Look Equities to provide investor relations coverage for the Company. First Look Equities is the fastest growing referral network of investors, resource companies and issuers. First Look will initiate a Capital Campaign program which will connect investors around the world with Progressive Cares mission, vision, and story to increase the exposure, transparency, and liquidity of the Company. First Look Equities team is proud to initiate coverage of Progressive Care Inc. Progressive Care is a company that few investors have discovered. We believe in Progressive Cares vision and its plans to up-list to OTCQB. Progressive Care has been approved to participate in our proprietary Capital Campaign program that will identify highly targeted investors and introduce its story to millions of qualified investors globally, said Delray Wannemacher CEO of First Look Equities, LLC. We are excited to work with First Look Equities, stated S. Parikh Mars, CEO. First Look has a proven track record of substantially increasing the visibility of small-cap companies and we believe that they are the right group to get Progressive Care back out to the public. We are looking forward to seeing our story reach new eyes as we march forward on our ambitious goals this year. About Progressive Care Progressive Care, Inc. (OTC PINK:RXMD), through its subsidiary PharmCo, LLC, is a South Florida health services organization and provider of prescription pharmaceuticals specializing in health practice risk management, compounded medications, the sale of anti-retroviral medications and related medication therapy management, and the supply of prescription medications to long term care facilities. About First Look Equities First Look Equities is the fastest growing referral network for investors, resource companies, and issuers seeking capital. Its premiere referral network is based on a private members portal, a public resource directory, and capital campaigns. The capital campaigns bring First Look issuer opportunities directly to investors. First Look Equities is known for its inaugural series of Regional Investment Summits started in Atlanta. Cautionary Statement Regarding Forward Looking Statements Statements contained herein that are not based upon current or historical fact are forward-looking in nature and constitute forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933 and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. Such forward-looking statements reflect the Companys expectations about its future operating results, performance and opportunities that involve substantial risks and uncertainties. These statements include but are not limited to statements regarding the intended terms of the offering, closing of the offering and use of any proceeds from the offering. When used herein, the words anticipate, believe, estimate, upcoming, plan, target, intend and expect and similar expressions, as they relate to Progressive Care Inc., its subsidiaries, or its management, are intended to identify such forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements are based on information currently available to the Company and are subject to a number of risks, uncertainties, and other factors that could cause the Company's actual results, performance, prospects, and opportunities to differ materially from those expressed in, or implied by, these forward-looking statements. Sorry! This content is not available in your region Link to the complete 2nd Quarter 2017 report: http://hugin.info/201/R/2125410/811212.pdf Hamilton, Bermuda, August 3, 2017 For the interest it may have, below is a press release from Nordic American Offshore Ltd. that was announced today. ------------------------------------- Nordic American Offshore Ltd. (NYSE:NAO) - 2Q2017 Dividend and Earnings Report. NAO is in a solid financial condition. Hamilton, Bermuda, August 3, 2017. NAO has ten high-quality Platform Supply Vessels (PSVs) built in Norway in the period 2012-2016. Seven of our ten vessels are in operation. Going into the third quarter, an improvement in the PSV market has taken place. In a volatile market, the longer it lasts, the better. The basic features of NAO are similar to the business model of the NYSE listed Nordic American Tankers Limited (NAT) which is a strong company. Nordic American Tankers Limited (NAT) holds 22.6% of NAO common shares and the immediate Hansson family, including the Executive Chairman, holds 10.8% of NAO commons shares. The Board has declared a dividend of $0.02 per share for 2Q2017 to shareholders of record as of August 17, 2017. The payment of the dividend is expected to take place on or about August 31, 2017. Since its establishment in late 2013, NAO has paid dividends for 14 consecutive quarters, totalling $2.63 per share, including the dividend to be paid on or about August 31, 2017. NAT has announced that its shareholders are expected to receive NAO shares as a part dividend payment from NAT during August 2017. Following such distribution, NAT is expected to own about 16% of NAO. Currently, NAO has about 35,000 shareholders. When NAT shareholders receive NAO shares as a dividend, it is expected that the number of NAO shareholders will increase. NAO pursues a conservative financial policy. At the end of 2Q2017, the net debt per vessel was $9.5m. NAO has in place until early 2020 a non-amortizing credit facility of $150m. We concentrate on keeping our vessel operating costs low, while always maintaining our strong commitment to safe operations. As we expand our fleet, we do not anticipate that our administrative costs will rise correspondingly. Going forward, the first objective of NAO is to reach cash break-even level. For further details on our financial position, please see later in this release. Our 2016 Annual Report (Form 20-F) contains information about NAO. This report was filed with the SEC April 24, 2017. It is on our web site http://www.nao.bm. Strategy Going Forward The main elements of NAO's strategy are based on quarterly dividends, low G&A costs and liquidity in the stock. We seek to achieve a competitive cash yield and a satisfactory Total Return, a precise measure of value creation. NAO is committed to protecting its underlying earnings, dividend potential and strong balance sheet. We shall endeavor to safeguard and further strengthen NAO's position in a deliberate, predictable and transparent way. We encourage investors interested in the offshore sector to consider buying shares in NAO. ***** Link to the graph: http://hugin.info/201/R/2125410/811212.pdf CAUTIONARY STATEMENT REGARDING FORWARD-LOOKING STATEMENTS Matters discussed in this press release may constitute forward-looking statements. The Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 provides safe harbor protections for forward-looking statements in order to encourage companies to provide prospective information about their business. Forward-looking statements include statements concerning plans, objectives, goals, strategies, future events or performance, and underlying assumptions and other statements, which are other than statements of historical facts. The Company desires to take advantage of the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 and is including this cautionary statement in connection with this safe harbor legislation. The words "believe," "anticipate," "intend," "estimate," "forecast," "project," "plan," "potential," "may," "should," "expect," "pending" and similar expressions identify forward-looking statements. The forward-looking statements in this press release are based upon various assumptions, many of which are based, in turn, upon further assumptions, including without limitation, our management's examination of historical operating trends, data contained in our records and other data available from third parties. Although we believe that these assumptions were reasonable when made, because these assumptions are inherently subject to significant uncertainties and contingencies which are difficult or impossible to predict and are beyond our control, we cannot assure you that we will achieve or accomplish these expectations, beliefs or projections. We undertake no obligation to update any forward-looking statement, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise. Important factors that, in our view, could cause actual results to differ materially from those discussed in the forward-looking statements include the strength of world economies and currencies, general market conditions, including fluctuations in charter rates and vessel values, changes in demand in the PSV market, as a result of changes in the general market conditions of the oil and natural gas industry which influence charter hire rates and vessel values, demand in platform supply vessels, our operating expenses, including bunker prices, dry docking and insurance costs, governmental rules and regulations or actions taken by regulatory authorities as well as potential liability from pending or future litigation, general domestic and international political conditions, potential disruption of shipping routes due to accidents or political events, the availability of financing and refinancing, vessel breakdowns and instances of off-hire and other important factors described from time to time in the reports filed by the Company with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Contacts: Herbjrn Hansson, Executive Chairman Nordic American Offshore Ltd. Tel: +1 866 805 9504 or +47 90 14 62 91 Turid M. Srensen, CFO Nordic American Offshore Ltd. Tel: +47 33 42 73 00 or +47 90 57 29 27 Marianne Lie, Executive Vice Chair Nordic American Offshore Ltd. Tel.: +47 91 64 55 06 Gary J. Wolfe Seward & Kissel LLP New York, USA Tel: +1 212 574 1223 Web-site: www.nao.bm New Delhi: States will soon be capable of conducting exams for students of class 5 and 8 and will be able to detain them if they fail. If sources are to be believed the Union Cabinet has approved a proposal on Wednesday for scrapping the no-detention policy. It is also being said that before being detained, students will be getting a chance to clear the exam, and only if they fail than it will result to detention. Under the existing no-detention policy, students are promoted automatically to higher classes every year till the eighth grade. The proposal has been approved by the Union Cabinet, under which states have been empowered to take decision on detaining the students, a source said, adding that certain safeguards have been introduced, such as remedial classes and an additional chance to pass the exam. It is also said that government will introduce a bill in Parliament as the move requires amendment to the Right to Education (RTE) Act. Once the new system comes into force, the decision would be on the states to decide whether to hold examinations in classes 5 and 8. States can also hold exams for classes 6 and 7, but they will not be able to detain students at those grades. An enabling provision will be made in the RTE amendment bill that will allow states to conduct examinations in class 5 and class 8 and detain students if they fail, said a senior HRD official. Many states including Delhi, have been vocal about the flaws in the no-detention policy. While on the other hand Telangana and Tamil Nadu have opposed the proposed amendment to the policy. The policy is likely to come into force from 2018. New Delhi: Legendary actor Dilip Kumar, who was admitted to Lilavati Hospital following health issues, is said to be suffering from a kidney ailment. According to the media reports, the doctors of Lilavati Hospital in Mumbai has claimed that creatinine level in Dilip Kumar's blood is rising. Notably, escalated creatinine level in blood signifies impaired kidney function which can even lead to kidney failure as well making it a matter of concern. aHis (Dilip Kumar) creatinine levels are rising. This means his kidneyas functioning is being affected. We are treating him for the same and aiming at bringing down his creatinine levels,a doctors were quoted saying to Indian Express Reportedly, Dilip Kumar was rushed to hospital on Wednesday after he complained of health issues. It was earlier reported that Kumar is suffering from dehydration. While he was admitted to the ICU, the veteran actor was said to be responding to the medical treatment properly. In fact, wife Saira Banu was also quoted as saying,A "He is doing much better than yesterday. But he will be in the hospital today. The doctors here are taking good care of him." Also Read |A Veteran actor Dilip Kumar admitted to hospital due to dehydration On the other hand, the doctors of Lilavati Hospital had earlier told Indian Express, aDilip Kumar is completely stable and the only major issue was dehydration. Since dehydration also affects kidney and other organs momentarily he suffered minor urinary issues, otherwise, there is no major complication.a According to the media reports, the legendary actor, who was shifted to a room post stable health, will be once again shifted to ICU for further treatment. aHe will be shifted to ICU today for a couple of hours. We need to administer antibiotics through IV drip which can only be given in the ICU. We will observe him for a while and based on recovery we will shift him back to the normal room,a the doctors added. Legendary actor Dilip Kumar, who is known as the tragedy king of Bollywood was last seen in 1998 release 'Qila' and was honored with the Dadasaheb Phalke Award in 1994 and Padma Vibhushan in 2015. For all the Latest Entertainment News, Bollywood News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. New Delhi: Sexual harassment of women is a bitter reality of Indian society but there is another hidden, dark truth- male rape. Yes! Male rape do take place in our society. In a gruesome incident, a 16-year-old boy from Mumbai was allegedly raped for 1 year by 15 different men. According to the police, a friend of the victim in 2016 raped and assaulted him physically. The accused have also shot a video of the horrific incident and blackmailed the victim to continue raping him. The victim was very scared and did not tell his family about the abuse, said police. In a police complaint, the victim said that after his last rape on June 26, he felt unbearable pain and confided to a friend. The medical examination of the boy confirmed the rape and physical assault. After the complaint, the Police have registered a case against 15 people and 7 of them were detained. For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. New Delhi: Three men were thrashed and their truck was confiscated by locals in Bhojpur, Bihar over suspicion of carrying beef on Thursday.Locals also alleged that illegal slaughterhouses have been running in the area. Police said that locals confiscated truck and matter is being probed. Locals intercepted the Muzaffarpur-bound truck at Shahpur bazar, they overpowered three men travelling in the vehicle even as another occupant fled from the spot, said district magistrate Sanjeev Kumar. The three persons were then handed over to the police. Locals allege illegal slaughterhouses have been running in the area. Police say locals confiscated truck & matter is being probing #Bihar pic.twitter.com/Z28kgmycyd a ANI (@ANI_news) August 3, 2017 The reported thrashing of three persons on suspicion of transporting beef in Bihar is a "clear confirmation" of the BJP assuming power in the state, a top CPI(M) leader said. "It is a clear confirmation that BJP has assumed power in Bihar. Now only Hindutva policies will be implemented while he(Nitish Kumar) continues to remain the Chief Minister," CPI(M) General Secretary Sitaram Yechury told reporters. Responding to questions, he said lynching and mob violence have "entered Bihar as soon as the BJP came to power there." Clear confirmation BJP has come to power in #Bihar that lynching & mob violence happened as soon as BJP came back in state govt: S Yechury pic.twitter.com/E0IKidTYsa a ANI (@ANI_news) August 3, 2017 Reports said a mob in Shahpur near Ara town of Bhojpur district led by cow vigilantes on Thursday thrashed a truck driver and two others and overpowered them. The police later seized the truck and detained the three persons. On August 1, Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar addressed his first press briefing after the recent political upheaval in the state. Nitish who recently parted ways with RJD to join hands with BJP said no one is capable of challenging MODI in 2019 elections.A (With PTI Inputs) For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. Beijing: China on Thursday said India should show through deeds its willingness to maintain peace at the border and claimed that 48 Indian soldiers were at Doklam area backed by a large number of troops at the border to halt Chinese attempts to build a road on its side of the boundary. In a statement, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said the action of the Indian side amounts to that of irresponsibility and recklessness.He said that until yesterday, there were 48 Indian soldiers and one bulldozer in Doklam area, describing it as illegal intrusion into Chinese territory. India, however, says that the area belongs to Bhutan. In addition, there are still a large number of Indian armed forces congregating on the boundary and on the Indian side of the boundary, Geng said. No matter how many Indian border troops illegally trespassed the boundary and still stay in the Chinese territory, it will not alter the nature of severely violating Chinas territorial integrity and contravening the UN Charter. This incident is illegal under the international law. The Indian side should bear corresponding responsibilities, the spokesman said. The Foreign Ministry had issued a 15-page fact sheet yesterday with maps and other details about the standoff since it began on June 16, saying 40 Indian troops stayed at Doklam till July end. Suggested read: India-China standoff on Dokalam: Rahul's meeting with Chinese ambassador was 'unfortunate', says Sushma Geng repeated once again today that on June 18 about 270 Indian troops advanced more than 100 meters into the Chinese territory to obstruct the road building of the Chinese side. Reacting to yesterdays External Affairs Ministry statement that the peace and tranquillity of the India-China boundary constitutes the important prerequisite for the smooth development of bilateral relations, Geng said India should also show its words in deeds. India-China standoff on Dokalam: Rahul's meeting with Chinese ambassador was 'unfortunate', says Sushma Indian side is always keeping peace on the tip of its tongue. But we should not only listen to its words but also heed its deeds, Geng said in the statement. It also accused India of sending troops to halt the road work without responding to advance notice about Chinas plans to build the road given twice earlier on May 18 and June 8. However, the Indian side didnt make any response to the Chinese side through any channel for over one month. Instead, it flagrantly dispatched armed forces carrying equipment to illegally cross the boundary to obstruct Chinas road building. This is by no means for peace, it said. The Indian border troops still illegally stay on the Chinese territory. Moreover, the Indian side is building roads, hoarding supplies and deploying a large number of armed forces on the Indian side of the boundary. This is by no means for peace, it said, claiming that it is irrefutable that the Indian troops illegally trespassed into the Chinese area. Under such circumstances, instead of deeply reflecting on its mistakes, the Indian side fabricated such sheer fallacies as the so-called security concerns, the issue of tri-junction and at the request of Bhutan as excuses to justify its wrongdoing, it said. Referring to its diplomatic protests made in this regard, the statement said the Indian side, rather than withdraw its trespassing troops and equipment, made unreasonable demands to China which demonstrated its lack of sincerity for resolving the incident. This is by no means for peace. If the Indian side truly cherish peace, what it should do is to immediately pull back the trespassing border troops to the Indian side of the boundary, Geng said. He said building a road was a normal activity of China on its own territory which is completely lawful and legitimate. For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. Mountain View, CA, Aug. 03, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Banks and financial institutions are racing to meet the January 2018 deadline for complying with the European Unions second Payment Services Directive (PSD2). However, in their rush to provide the data sharing and identity protections required by PSD2, these organizations are often missing opportunities to lay the foundation for new digital businesses enabled by the directive. Now, with todays launch of its WSO2 Open Banking solution, WSO2 is empowering financial firms to comply with PSD2 while setting the stage for digital transformation that will drive new business models and revenue streams. Speeding PSD2 Compliance The 100% open source WSO2 Open Banking combines into one integrated solution the proven technology and processes to implement a flexible system for quickly complying with PSD2. Designed specifically for financial institutions, it is built on the WSO2 API management platform featuring: Comprehensive API management functionality from WSO2 API Managerwhich is used by leading Global 1000 companies managing up to billions of API calls per dayaddresses PSD2 requirements for opening pre-defined sets of data to third parties. functionality from WSO2 API Managerwhich is used by leading Global 1000 companies managing up to billions of API calls per dayaddresses PSD2 requirements for opening pre-defined sets of data to third parties. Robust identity and access management (IAM) with advanced multi-factor authentication capabilities from WSO2 Identity Serverused by organizations to manage up to 3 billion user identitiesmeets PSD2 requirements for protecting data and user identities. (IAM) with advanced multi-factor authentication capabilities from WSO2 Identity Serverused by organizations to manage up to 3 billion user identitiesmeets PSD2 requirements for protecting data and user identities. Extensive API monitoring plus real-time and predictive analytics functionality from WSO2 Data Analytics Server track performance, API availability, and usage trends, among others, as well as send alerts about abnormal patterns. plus real-time and predictive analytics functionality from WSO2 Data Analytics Server track performance, API availability, and usage trends, among others, as well as send alerts about abnormal patterns. Comprehensive data and services integration capabilities from WSO2 Enterprise Integrator and a range of connectors facilitate seamless integration with financial firms existing systems. Significantly, all the software components of the WSO2 API management platform are built on the same core framework and are designed to work together from the start. This eliminates the product integration efforts required with other vendors PSD2 solutions, speeding time to market. Moreover, WSO2 Open Banking can run on-premises, in the cloud, or in a hybrid environment, giving financial institutions maximum deployment flexibility. WSO2 Open Banking also incorporates pre-defined API specifications designed to comply with PSD2. Based on research into the most effective openly available specs, they help to streamline the implementation process and get to market faster. Additionally, WSO2 Open Banking includes professional services from experts who have successfully implemented solutions at some of the worlds largest financial institutions. Providing a Platform for Banks Digital Transformation Going beyond PSD2 compliance, financial institutions have a foundation on which to create new digital businesses with WSO2 Open Banking. For example, WSO2 offers the capabilities for banks to capitalize on the trust they have built with customers and become payment initiation service providers (PISPs) and account information service providers (AISPs). These include: API integration to facilitate the integration of APIs from several third-party providers. Federated user authentication with trusted banks under disparate identity protocols. Fraud detection to detect and alert anomalies in payment initiation transactions. API-specific and data-specific dashboards that provide different views of consolidated financial data. Additionally, WSO2 provides the platform for banks to take advantage of data-driven opportunities created by PSD2. Among these opportunities are: A web and mobile app suite that enables customer-centric digital services. An insight sales application that provides capabilities to transform the customer data repository into business insights. Extensive analytics to collate data from various APIs and create products and services for insight selling. PSD2 represents a hurdle to banks continuing their ability to conduct financial transactions in Europe in 2018 and beyond. At the same time, the secure data sharing required opens the door to a range of new digital business opportunities, said Dr. Sanjiva Weerawarana, WSO2 founder, CEO, and chief architect. With the launch of WSO2 Open Banking, we are empowering financial firms to clear the PSD2 compliance hurdle quickly and then build on a proven platform to create new data-driven services that strengthen customer engagement, generate new revenue streams, and accelerate growth. Webinar on Digital Transformation Through PSD2 A webinar, WSO2 Open Banking: Digital Transformation Through PSD2, is being held today, August 3, 2017, at 10:00 am GMT to provide additional detail. Professionals can participate in the webinar or view it on demand by visiting http://wso2.com/library/webinars/2017/08/wso2-open-banking-digital-transformation-through-psd2. Led by WSO2 Senior Technical Lead Seshika Fernando, the session will feature a demo of WSO2 Open Banking, as well as examine: The role of PSD2 in redefining banking as we know it. The core capabilities of WSO2 Open Banking, including the WSO2 API management platform that enables banks to open APIs in a secure and controlled manner. How WSO2 Open Banking can support financial firms technology infrastructure for capabilities beyond banking. Availability WSO2 Open Banking is available now as a fully open source solution released under the Apache License 2.0. It can be deployed as a software download that runs directly on servers, on top of a private platform as a service (PaaS), or on top of infrastructure as a service (IaaS), such as Amazon Elastic Computing Cloud (EC2), Linux Kernel Virtual Machine (KVM), and VMware ESX. Additionally, customers can choose to have WSO2 host the software through WSO2 Managed Cloud hosted services. For more information on features, functionality, pricing, and how to set up a test solution, visit http://wso2.com/solutions/financial/open-banking. About WSO2 WSO2 uniquely increases the agility of digital businesses and enterprises engaging in a digital transformation. It offers the only completely integrated enterprise platform that enables businesses to build, integrate, manage, secure and analyze their APIs, applications, and Web serviceson-premises, in the cloud, on mobile devices, and across the Internet of Things. Leading enterprise customers worldwide rely on WSO2s award-winning 100% open source platform and its robust performance and governance for their mission-critical applications. Today, these businesses represent nearly every sector: health, financial, retail, logistics, manufacturing, travel, technology, telecom and more. Visit http://wso2.com to learn more, or check out the WSO2 community on the WSO2 Blog, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook. Trademarks and registered trademarks are the properties of their respective owners. ### New Delhi: Five people including four relatives of a leading hotelier of Odisha were charred to death after a fire broke out at his residence in Bhubaneswars Budeshwari Colony on Thursday. Deputy fire officer Ramesh Chandra Majhi said, Six people were rescued from the house with critical burn injuries who were later declared dead by doctors. Bhubaneswar Police said, Five people were killed in the fire incident including businessman Satpal Singh's son and three minors. Police said other members of the family were safe as they were staying on the ground and first floor. The deceased have been identified as Gagan Pal Singh (40), Bhavna Singh (38), Shoba Singh (15), Rubir Singh (8) and Khusi Das (15). The official added that Singhs neighbours informed fire department about Satpals house in fire around 5:15 am. According to police Singh along with five others were pulled out in unconscious state from the second and third floor of the three storeyed building. The six were rushed to a hospital where doctors declared five inlcuding their household helper brought dead. Police said, three rooms on the second floor of the three-storeyed building was gutted in the fire. The fire officials had to face tough time dousing off the fire due to the presence of wooden household articles. Police and fire officials are yet to ascertain the exact cause of the the fire. However, a senior fire official talking to the media said, We suspect the fire originated after a spark caused due to short circuit in the AC. A Satpals neighbour told the media that they heard Satpal and his family members shouting for help around 5am and heavy smoke was coming out from their house. They told the media that Satpal Singh owned Pal Heights, a renowned hotels of Odisha. He further added that four fire-tender machines were engaged to douse and rescue people trapped in the house. Fire-officials managed to rescue few of people staying in the house after break opening the windows. For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. New Delhi: Pakistan-based international terrorist Hafiz Muhammad Saeed has announced that he will enter mainstream politics, sources said. Saeed is believed to be the mastermind of and 2008 Mumbai terror attack and has been listed as designated global terrorist by the United States. Currently head of the banned outfit Jamaat-ul-Dawah, Saeed is expected to make the official announcement of Pakistan Independence Day on August 14. Hafiz Saeed will launch his political outfit Mili Awaami League on Pakistan's independence day at a function in Lahore, a Pakistan-based source told Newsnation. Read | US designates head of Kashmiri militant group Hizb-ul-Mujahideen Syed Salahuddin as global terrorist Saeed, has been contemplating the entry into politics for some time now. In 2012, he had hinted that he may declare his outfit JuD as a political party in apress conference in Karachi. At the time there were speculations that he may contest elections either to the Punjab Assembly or the National Assembly, the lower house of Parliament. However, the JuD was soon banned in Pakistan and Saeed was put on house arrest following international pressure of Pak Govt. In a major shift in policy towards Saeed, Pakistan government has been fighting tooth and nail to defend JuD chief ever since he has been enlisted as a global terrorist by Trump administration recently. Read | Hizbul chief Syed Salahuddin admits to carrying out terror attacks in India, says 'can target any place in India, at anytime' For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. New Delhi: External affairs minister Sushma Swaraj on Thursday said it was "unfortunate" that leader of main opposition party had more trust on Chinas ambassador instead of government. Swaraj asserted that Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi met Chinas ambassador over Dokalam issue which was shameful. The minister said war is not a solution to any problem and even a nation has to re-establish dialogue after a war. She said diplomatic channels are necessary to resolve a conflict. She said, India is not only discussing Dokalam issue with China but we are engaging on bilateral relations too. Doklam par negotiate nahi kar rahe keval, hum bilateral relations par baat kar rahe hain China ke saath. Hal usi se niklega: EAM in RS ANI (@ANI_news) August 3, 2017 Swaraj said that India will stick to "2012 agreement" with China and the issue will be resolved by India, China and Bhutan unitedly. "We will continue to engage with Chinese side through diplomatic channels to find a mutually acceptable solution," she said. We will continue to engage with Chinese side through diplomatic channels to find a mutually acceptable solution: EAM Sushma Swaraj ANI (@ANI_news) August 3, 2017 Swaraj said India always believes peace and tranquillity in Ind-China border areas are important pre-requisite for smooth development of bilateral relations. Also Read: Sikkim standoff | China asks India to pull back troops from Doklam with no strings attached Listen to full speech by Sushma Swaraj in Rajya Sabha here: For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. New Delhi: India on Wednesday flatly rejected Chinas claim that the number of troops engaged in the Doklam standoff had fallen and asserted that peace and tranquillity at the border are important for smooth development of ties. China had claimed on Tuesday that India has reduced the number of its troops from 400 to 40 by the end of July in the Doklam area of Sikkim section, where the troops from the two countries are involved in a standoff for nearly two months. The Chinese Foreign Ministry issued a 15-page fact sheet with maps and other details about the standoff since it began on June 16.It said that on June 18 about 270 Indian troops, carrying weapons and driving two bulldozers, crossed the boundary in the Sikkim Sector at the Doklam pass and advanced more than 100 meters into the Chinese territory to obstruct the road building of the Chinese side, causing tension in the area. In addition to the two bulldozers, the trespassing Indian border troops, reaching as many as over 400 people at one point, have put up three tents and advanced over 180 meters into the Chinese territory, it claimed. As of the end of July, there were still over 40 Indian border troops and one bulldozer illegally staying in the Chinese territory, the document said. In New Delhi, the ministry of external affairs spokesperson said Indias position on the Doklam issue and related facts have been articulated in a statement on June 30. India considers that peace and tranquillity in the India-China border areas is an important prerequisite for smooth development of our bilateral relations with China, the spokesperson said in response to a query on Chinas document. The Chinese document said since June 18 the Indian border troops have illegally crossed the China-India boundary in the Sikkim Sector and entered the Chinese territory. This is an undeniable fact. The incident occurred in an area where there is a clear and delimited boundary. This makes it fundamentally different from past frictions between the border troops of the two sides in areas with undelimited boundary, it said. The China-India boundary in the Sikkim Sector has already been delimited, and the Dong Lang area is Chinese territory, the fact sheet claimed.China did not cross the boundary in its road building, and it notified India in advance in full reflection of China?s goodwill, the document said. New Delhi has expressed concern over Chinas road building activities in the border areas, apprehending that it may allow Chinese troops to cut Indias access to its northeastern states.Doka La is the Indian name for the region which Bhutan recognises as Dokalam, while China claims it as part of its Donglang region. Of the 3,488-km-long India-China border from Jammu and Kashmir to Arunachal Pradesh, a 220-km section falls in Sikkim.Bhutan had protested to China, saying that the area belonged to it and accused Beijing of violating agreements to maintain status quo until it is resolved. However, the fact sheet said, the China-Bhutan boundary issue is one between China and Bhutan. It has nothing to do with India. As a third party, India has no right to interfere in or impede the boundary talks between China and Bhutan, still less the right to make territorial claims on Bhutan's behalf. It asserted that China will take all necessary measures to safeguard its legitimate and lawful rights and interests, and India should immediately and unconditionally withdraw its trespassing border troops. With PTI inputs For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. New Delhi: Indian Army on Thursday killed a terrorist in an encounter in Kanelwan area of Bijbehara in Anantnag district of Jammu and Kashmir. The Army also recovered his body. The Earlier, the security forces launched a massive cordon and search operation. The Army received inputs about the presence of militants in the South Kashmir. On Tuesday, Top Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT) militant Abu Dujana, a Pakistani national wanted in connection with several terror attacks, and his aide were gunned down by the security forces in an encounter in the Pulwama district of Jammu and Kashmir. Security forces had launched a cordon and search operation in the Hakripora area of Pulwama on Tuesday night following information that Dujana and his local associate, Arif Nabi Dar alias Rehan, were present, an Army official said. J&K: Cordon & search operation started by security forces in Kanelwan area of Bijbehara, in Anantnag district. More details awaited. pic.twitter.com/V0nEGm3UB7 ANI (@ANI_news) August 3, 2017 An encounter broke out between the holed-up militants and the security forces on early Tuesday. During the firefight, both militants were killed, the official had said. Their bodies were recovered and the operation called off, he had added. Also Read | Abu Dujana encounter: Fresh protests erupt in valley after killing of slain LeT militant For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. New Delhi: Two Army men, including a major, were killed and another jawan was injured when militants opened fire on a search party of security forces in Shopian district of south Kashmir. A cordon and search operation was launched by Army in Zaipora area of Shopian during the night following intelligence inputs about the presence of militants there, a police official said. He said during the search operation, the militants fired upon the party in which three army personnel were injured. The injured were taken to Armys 92 base hospital here, where two of them, including a major, succumbed, the official said, adding that the other Jawan is undergoing treatment. In a separate encounter in Jammu and Kashmirs Kulgam, two terrorists were eliminated by security forces at Gopalpura village. 2 AK47 rifles were recovered from the terrorists. Encounter lasted half an hour, eliminated 2 Hizb-ul-Mujahideen terrorists who were involved in many cases, Shridhar Patil, SSP Kulgam said. ALSO READ: Fresh protests erupt in valley after LeT militant Abu Dujana encounter Earlier, fresh protests erupted in Valley on Tuesday after the encounter of LeT terrorist Abu Dujana. Thousands of Kashmiris hit the streets and started pelting stones on security forces. After the violent protests, authorities on Wednesday imposed restrictions in parts of south Kashmir and the government has ordered the closure of all educational institutions in the valley on Wednesday to avoid escalation of street protests. Top Lashkar-i-Toiba commander Abu Dujana, a category A+++ terrorist was killed on Tuesday along with his associate in an encounter with government forces in Pulwama district of south Kashmir. READ: Pulwama encounter: Security forces kill Lashkar's Abu Dujana, Arif For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. New Delhi: The issue of I-T raids on Karnataka minister DK Shivakumar echoed in Parliament on the 14th day of Monsoon session which resulted in the adjournment of Lok Sabha till 2 PM. The opposition Congress MP protested the raids against Shivakumar who was hosting 44 Gujarat Congress MLAs. Before the adjournment, Road Transport and Highways Minister Nitin Gadkari informed the house that the government has initiated action on the alleged corruption of 1.18 million US dollar the officials of the NHAI by an American firm. Rajya Sabha which could not function on Wednesday following uproar over Karnataka raids also witnessed the heated debate over Doklam standoff. the opposition questioned govt's foreign policy and asked if there is any window open to resolving the border dispute with China. Suggested Read: Supreme Court refuses to stay NOTA option in upcoming Gujarat Rajya Sabha polls Here are the highlights of the day: Listen to full speech by Sushma Swaraj in Rajya Sabha here: #6:30 PM: EAM Sushma Swaraj answers Opposition queries on Russia, China, Pakistan and relations with other nations Statement On China: - We will continue to engage Chinese side on boundary issue - Selectively Chinese side quoted Nehru's letter that clearly alignment on boundary -Boundary yet not finalized on Sikkim border -Both sides may based on historical treaty of 89. Initial settlement would be through historical treaty by consultation -There is mutual agreement between India-China on Sikkim boundary -Trijunction boundary will be finalized by all concerned party -Our relation with China in new focus after Doklam issue On CPEC: - The question by Opposition over India's inability to join CPEC (By Congress leader Rajeev Shukla) is baseless as CPEC passes through PoK, an integral part of India: EAM (Congress party says it was MP Shukla's personal opinion) India global leader, not a follower: - PM Modi goes to G20 and talks of black money, next time he initiates talks on terrorism, establishes solar alliance in Paris summit: EAM - India not a junior strategic partner of US, India took an immediate stand against the US on climate change statement: EAM On India-West Asia relations -Strong relations with Saudi, Yemen Govt made evacuation of 4000 Indians, 2000 foreigners possible: EAM - We could evacuate Indians and foreigners from Yemen because we could persuade Saudi King to halt firing for some time, not an easy feat; EAM - India's relations with West Asian countries is at all time high: Swaraj - Opposition was worried that our relations with West Asia will evaporate after Modi Govt comes to power, but reverse has come true: EAM On India-Palestine relations -Palestine is happy that we are strengthening our relations with Israel so that we can act as mediator for our old ally: Swaraj -I had JCM with Palestinian leaders, President visited Palestine, PM Modi visited Israel first because it was 25th anniversary of foreign relations with Israel: EAM -Israel may be our ally but we will never let down the Palestinian cause: Sushma Swaraj in RS On International support -Russia is against terrorism, they will not support Pakistan, so is US: EAM On US Visas: -No drop in visa sanctions as compared to UPA Govt, numbers have gone up under Modi Govt: EAM On Dokalam: -Important to increase economic strength over armed strength, PM Modi looking at inclusive growth: EAM -Diplomatic channels necessary for conflict resolution, not war: Sushma Swaraj to Ramgopal Yadav - It is shameful that Indian Opposition leader chose to ask Chinese ambassador on Dokalam rather than Indian admin On Pakistan: -We shared the Pakistan road map in advance, our relations were good until Burhan Wani was declared a martyr in Pakistan On China: - The encroachments took place during UPA regime, we have reclaimed those posts On Nepal: -You are talking about 2-3 blockades.. do you remember the blockade during the time of Rajiv Gandhi? -For 17 years no PM entered Nepal, PM Modi visited twice, which government established better ties with Nepal? -India is first to help neighbour/friend nations: Swaraj # We have already spoken on the border issue with China, theres no need to stall proceedings in the Lok Sabha, says Sushma Swaraj. # Give us an idea? Is there a window open so that this standoff can be resolved?: Anand Sharma, Congress # Heated debate in Rajya Sabha over Doklam standoff. Opposition questions govt's policy. # Lok Sabha passes the Banking Regulation (Amendment) Bill, 2017. # Sushma Swaraj to give a statement on DokLam standoff in Parliament. # Lok Sabha adjourned till 2 PM. # Arun Jaitley addresses Parliament on the banking regulation bill, says today India has a power surplus and the steel sector constitutes the countrys biggest chunk of NPAs # Lower House begins discussion on Banking Regulation (Amendment) Bill, 2017 as BJP leaders laud the governments efforts to introduce the amendment. # Govt has started the process to probe alleged $ 1.18 million bribery to NHAI officials by an American firm: Nitin Gadkari informs Lok Sabha. For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. New Delhi: Former President Pranab Mukherjee on Thursday shared a letter on Twitter which was sent to him by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on his last day in office. Mukherjee dubbed his emotions, saying that it has touched his heart where PM Modi apprised him as a father figure and political mentor. aOn my last day in office as the President, I received a letter from PM @narendramodi that touched my heart! Sharing with you all,a Mukherjee tweeted from his handle. "Three years ago, I came to New Delhi as an outsider. The task before me was huge and challenging. In these times, you have always been a father figure and a mentor to me. Your wisdom, guidance and personal warmth have given me greater confidence and strength," the Prime Minister said in the letter. Modi also highlighted the fact that both the leaders belong to different parties and ideologies but despite that, they were able to work together. President Pranab Mukherjee was a union minister in previous UPA govt before holding the office in 2012. His term ended on July 24. On my last day in office as the President, I received a letter from PM @narendramodi that touched my heart! Sharing with you all. pic.twitter.com/cAuFnWkbYn a Pranab Mukherjee (@CitiznMukherjee) August 3, 2017 Modi responded by saying, "Pranab Da, I will always cherish working with you." In the letter made public by Mukherjee, the prime minister said he had come to New Delhi three years ago as an outsider. Pranab Da, I will always cherish working with you. @CitiznMukherjee https://t.co/VHOTXzHtlM a Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) August 3, 2017 "The task before me was huge and challenging. In these times, you have always been a father figure and a mentor to me. Your wisdom, guidance and personal warmth have given me greater confidence and strength," he said. Modi said Mukherjee's "intellectual prowess" had been of constant help. "You have been so warm, affectionate and caring to me. Your one phone call asking me 'I hope you are taking care of your health' was enough to fill me with fresh energy, after a long day at meetings or on a campaign tour," he said in the letter dated July 24. (With PTI Inputs) For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. New Delhi: Two scheduled caste girls were allegedly strriped in front of their class by their teacher after the duo poorly performed in a test. The matter came to light after the parents of the girls lodged a complaint with a local police station against the teacher of JP International Public School on Wednesday. However, the school administration has refuted of any such incidence in their school campus. Superintendent of Police, Haridwar rural, Manikant Mishra told the media, The incident occured on August 1. Also Read| Muzaffarnagar: Shameful! Principal allegedly strips 70 girls in UP school He added an FIR has been lodged against the teacher under the Indian Penal Code (IPC) section 509 gesture or act to insult modesty of a woman. Police said, parents of two girls studying in class six of JP International School have complained against a female teacher for forcefully stripping their daughters in front of their classmates in bid to shame the duo for poorly performing in english test. The police added the parents learnt about the incident after the two girls returned home from school and narrated their ordeal. Also Read: Uttar Pradesh: Eight people strip, thrash 14-year-old Dalit boy, urinate on him Along with the parents of the two school girls villagers staged protest in front of the police station and school demanding stringent action against the teacher who allegedly stripped the two girls. Principal of JP Inter College Amita Rathore denied the allegations and said, The charges are baseless and people are trying to malign our image. However a police official part of the investigating team not authorised to speak to media said that the teacher alleged of stripping the school girls has been suspended off her duties by the school administration. For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. New Delhi: Separatist leader Shabir Shah was produced before a Delhi Court in connection with terror funding case. The court extended Shabir Shah's remand by six days in te matter. In court, Shabir Shah alleged that the action against him is a political vendetta. On this, the counsel of Enforcement Directorate (ED) said the separatist leader is ruining the country. The ED lawyer said, Can Shah say Bharat Mata ki Jai. In a quick retort, the court asked the lawyer not to convert court into TV studio. Shabir Shah filed an application alleging inhuman behaviour, threat to his life by ED,also said he was forced to sign statements& blank docs ANI (@ANI_news) August 3, 2017 Shabir Shah filed an application alleging inhuman behaviour and threat to his life by the ED. He also alleged that he was forced to sign statements and blank documents. Delhi: Separatist Shabir Shah in Court, 'All due to political vendetta'. ED's lawyer said, 'People like Shah are ruining the country.' ANI (@ANI_news) August 3, 2017 Also Read: Enforcement Directorate arrests separatist leader Shabir Shah in money laundering case For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. FORM 8.3 PUBLIC OPENING POSITION DISCLOSURE/DEALING DISCLOSURE BY A PERSON WITH INTERESTS IN RELEVANT SECURITIES REPRESENTING 1% OR MORE Rule 8.3 of the Takeover Code (the "Code") 1. KEY INFORMATION (a) Full name of discloser: P. Schoenfeld Asset Management LLP (b) Owner or controller of interests and short positions disclosed, if different from 1(a): The naming of nominee or vehicle companies is insufficient. For a trust, the trustee(s), settlor and beneficiaries must be named. (c) Name of offeror/offeree in relation to whose relevant securities this form relates: Use a separate form for each offeror/offeree Tesco Plc (d) If an exempt fund manager connected with an offeror/offeree, state this and specify identity of offeror/offeree: (e) Date position held/dealing undertaken: For an opening position disclosure, state the latest practicable date prior to the disclosure 02 August 2017 (f) In addition to the company in 1(c) above, is the discloser making disclosures in respect of any other party to the offer? If it is a cash offer or possible cash offer, state "N/A" Yes, Booker Group Plc 2. POSITIONS OF THE PERSON MAKING THE DISCLOSURE If there are positions or rights to subscribe to disclose in more than one class of relevant securities of the offeror or offeree named in 1(c), copy table 2(a) or (b) (as appropriate) for each additional class of relevant security. (a) Interests and short positions in the relevant securities of the offeror or offeree to which the disclosure relates following the dealing (if any) Class of relevant security: 5p ordinary Interests Short positions Number % Number % (1) Relevant securities owned and/or controlled: (2) Cash-settled derivatives: 19,965,709 0.24 (3) Stock-settled derivatives (including options) and agreements to purchase/sell: TOTAL: 19,965,709 0.24 All interests and all short positions should be disclosed. Details of any open stock-settled derivative positions (including traded options), or agreements to purchase or sell relevant securities, should be given on a Supplemental Form 8 (Open Positions). (b) Rights to subscribe for new securities (including directors' and other employee options) Class of relevant security in relation to which subscription right exists: Details, including nature of the rights concerned and relevant percentages: 3. DEALINGS (IF ANY) BY THE PERSON MAKING THE DISCLOSURE Where there have been dealings in more than one class of relevant securities of the offeror or offeree named in 1(c), copy table 3(a), (b), (c) or (d) (as appropriate) for each additional class of relevant security dealt in. The currency of all prices and other monetary amounts should be stated. (a) Purchases and sales Class of relevant security Purchase/sale Number of securities Price per unit (b) Cash-settled derivative transactions Class of relevant security Product description e.g. CFD Nature of dealing e.g. opening/closing a long/short position, increasing/reducing a long/short position Number of reference securities Price per unit 5p ordinary Equity Swap Increasing a short position 662,045 GBP 1.7654 (c) Stock-settled derivative transactions (including options) (i) Writing, selling, purchasing or varying Class of relevant security Product description e.g. call option Writing, purchasing, selling, varying etc. Number of securities to which option relates Exercise price per unit Type e.g. American, European etc. Expiry date Option money paid/ received per unit (ii) Exercise Class of relevant security Product description e.g. call option Exercising/ exercised against Number of securities Exercise price per unit (d) Other dealings (including subscribing for new securities) Class of relevant security Nature of dealing e.g. subscription, conversion Details Price per unit (if applicable) 4. OTHER INFORMATION (a) Indemnity and other dealing arrangements Details of any indemnity or option arrangement, or any agreement or understanding, formal or informal, relating to relevant securities which may be an inducement to deal or refrain from dealing entered into by the person making the disclosure and any party to the offer or any person acting in concert with a party to the offer: Irrevocable commitments and letters of intent should not be included. If there are no such agreements, arrangements or understandings, state "none" None (b) Agreements, arrangements or understandings relating to options or derivatives Details of any agreement, arrangement or understanding, formal or informal, between the person making the disclosure and any other person relating to: (i) the voting rights of any relevant securities under any option; or (ii) the voting rights or future acquisition or disposal of any relevant securities to which any derivative is referenced: If there are no such agreements, arrangements or understandings, state "none" None (c) Attachments Is a Supplemental Form 8 (Open Positions) attached? No Date of disclosure: 03 August 2017 Contact name: Alan Chan Telephone number: +1 212-649-9500 Public disclosures under Rule 8 of the Code must be made to a Regulatory Information Service and must also be emailed to the Takeover Panel at monitoring@disclosure.org.uk. The Panel's Market Surveillance Unit is available for consultation in relation to the Code's disclosure requirements on +44 (0)20 7638 0129. The Code can be viewed on the Panel's website at www.thetakeoverpanel.org.uk. New Delhi: For the first time in five years, the number of females per 1,000 males-in Capital has crossed 900. The data was registered births released by the Delhi government on Wednesday. Figure was 901 in 2010: As per the annual report based on registration of births and deaths in Delhi; Sex ratio at birth was 902 in 2016. Sex ratio at birth in 2015 (898). However,the figure for 2016 marked the first time that the sex ratio surpassed 900 since 2010, when it was 901. The recorded sex ratio at birth was 893 in 2011, 886 in 2012, 895 in 2013 and 896 in 2014. The report, released by Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia, showed that the total registered births in Delhi in 2016 was 3.79 lakh, of which 52.6% were male, 47.4% female and the remaining were of the others category, which includes transgenders. The report reveals that the average number of births per day in Delhi during 2016 is 1036 and average number of deaths is 387. Thus the net natural increase in population of Delhi is 649 per day and 2.37 lakh in a year. The remaining increase in the population of Delhi is due to migration, Delhi government said in a statement. It also showed that more mothers were under 19, while majority of mothers who gave birth were between 20 and 24 years of age, the number of mothers under the age of 19 has increased from 2.75% to 3.10% in 2015. The proportion of mothers aged 35 years and above also increased marginally. "The Infant Mortality Rate per thousand live births has decreased by approximately by two per cent-- 23.25 in 2015 to 21.35 in 2016," he added. Infant mortality rate is the number of deaths of infants under one-year-old per 1,000 live births. Around 1.42 lakh deaths in 2016 On an average, the birth rate per 1,000 population was 20.38, with the total number of institutional births being 86.74%. Meanwhile, the total number of deaths registered in 2016 were 1.42 lakh, up from 1.25 lakh in 2015. Around 64% of the total registered deaths were in hospitals, with the remaining 36% were domiciliary deaths. The infant mortality rate, which is the number of deaths of infants under one year of age per 1,000 live births, decreased to 21.35 in 2016 from 23.25 in 2015. According to the report, since the average births per day were 1,036 and the average deaths per day 387, the net natural increase in Delhis population was 649 per day or 2.37 lakh a year. It further said that the average number of births registered in Delhi during 2016 were 379161 as compared to 374012 during 2015 and 373693 during 2014. "Out of 379161 total registered births, 199358 (52.6%) were male and 179738 (47.4%) were female," Sisodia said. He also informed that the total number of deaths registered in Delhi during 2016 were 1.42 lakhs as compared to 1.25 lakhs in 2015. "Average number of deaths registered per day in Delhi works out to 387 during the year 2016. The death rate per thousand population works out to 7.61 during the year 2016. About 64% of the total deaths were reported by the Hospitals and remaining 36% were domiciliary deaths," Sisodia added. For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. New Delhi: Separatist leader and Democratic Freedom Party (DFP) chairman Shabir Shah has been allegedly in contact with anti national elements and terrorists residing in Pakistan and other European countries, said Enforcement Directorate (ED) in an application submitted before a Delhi court in connection to terror funding issues. Enforcement Directorate produced Shah before the Patiala House Court in connection to terror funding case on Thursday. He was in judicial custody of ED for the last seven days. Th ED also stated that on examining Shahs mobile call details the investigative agency have learnt that Shah was in continuous contact with anti-national elements or terrorists residing in Pakistan, Dubai and England. Also Read: Pakistan High Commission invites separatists for Iftar Also Read: Crackdown on Kashmir separatists: NIA registers FIR against Geelani, Saeed; ED issues summons to Shabir Shah The investigative agency has submitted a remand application before the court for further custody of the separatist leader. Enforcement Directorate and other national investigative agencies are probing the the international funding through hawala to create unrest in the Kashmir valley and to fund various terrorist activities. For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. New Delhi: Separatist leader and Democratic Freedom Party (DFP) chairman Shabir Shah on Thursday will be produced before the Patiala House Court in the terror funding case. Shah was in seven-day Enforcement Directorate custody which was extended for another day on Wednesday. Shabir was arrested by the Enforcement Directorate in connection with over a decade-old money laundering case against him for alleged terror financing. The Enforcement Directorate (ED) had issued multiple summonses to Shah, but he never deposed before the central investigating agency. A Delhi court had last month issued a non-bailable warrant (NBW) against the separatist leader. National Investigation Agency (NIA) who is on a massive crackdown against terror funding in the valley had registered FIR against separatist leaders, Hizbul, LeT Chief Hafeez Saeed and others under sections 120B, 121, 121A IPC and 13,18,20,38,39 UAPA. NIA has also registered a case against hard-line separatist leader Syed Ali Shah Geelani in the matter. For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. New Delhi: A NATO soldier was killed and six other personnel were injured when a Taliban suicide bomber attacked a convoy of foreign forces in Afghanistan, the coalition said. The patrol was conducting a partnered mission with the Afghan National Army when a personnel-borne IED (improvised explosive device) detonated, in Qarabagh district in Kabul province, NATO said in a statement. The Taliban quickly claimed the attack on social media. Afghanistan has witnessed an increasing rate of bomb blasts and explosions in recent times. ALSO READ: 20 people killed in Herat explosion in Afghanistan Recently, on Tuesday, at least 20 people were killed and 30 injured in an explosion in front of Jawadia Mosque in Afghanistan's Herat city, the police said. As per media reports, the blast took place late in the evening and 20 bodies have been brought to the hospital. The incident happened in a Shite mosque. READ: Attack on Iraq embassy in Kabul, IS takes responsibility With PTI inputs For all the Latest World News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. Brasilia: The Brazilian Congress has voted not to send President Michel Temer to face trial for corruption. Opposition lawmakers in the lower house of Congress failed to obtain the two-thirds majority needed to send the case to the Supreme Court. Temer has been accused of receiving $12m (9m) in bribes from the boss of a giant meatpacking firm, JBS. He has denied the allegation.The Congress session was marred by scenes of chaos and angry exchanges. Brazilian lawmakers began voting on Thursday morning to authorise a corruption trial for President Michel Temer, with the centre-right leader confident he can avoid becoming the countrys second leader in 12 months to be forced from office.After more than nine hours of raucous debate, the lower house of Congress finally began the procedure. Given that each lawmaker was due to vote one by one, live on national television, a result was not expected immediately.If two thirds of the house authorises a trial and the Supreme Court accepts the case, Temer would be immediately suspended for 180 days. The house speaker, Rodrigo Maia, would take over. Temer, a deeply unpopular veteran of the ruling PMDB party, is accused of taking bribes from a meatpacking industry executive. The scandal is part of the enormous Car Wash graft probe targeting major politicians of every stripe in Latin Americas biggest country. But analysts believe Temer has easily enough support to bury the charge. The government will defeat the motion to investigate the president by a wide margin, Eurasia Group consultants said. The upheaval comes only a year after Congress ejected Temers leftist predecessor Dilma Rousseff in an impeachment trial for breaking budget rules. Temer, the first sitting president to face a criminal charge, now faces blowback from his leftwing opponents who also fiercely oppose his business-friendly economic reforms. Expectations are that top prosecutor Rodrigo Janot could file at least one more criminal charge, including for obstruction of justice, in the coming weeks. A thief is a thief and needs to be treated as a thief, Major Olimpio, a deputy with the leftist Solidariedade party, told the assembly before the voting. The debate was interrupted repeatedly by yelling and occasional scuffles.At one point, opposition deputies fought a Temer supporter who was brandishing an inflatable doll showing former president and leftist icon Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva in prison garb. Temer opponents also showered fake dollar bills showing the presidents face. Temer was due to make a statement later, the presidential palace said.In the current charge, Temer is alleged to have agreed to receive millions of dollars in bribes from the JBS meatpacking giant. A close aide was filmed by police running through Sao Paulo with a suitcase stuffed with the equivalent of $150,000 in Brazilian reaismoney that the prosecutor says was intended for Temer.In a separate investigation, prosecutors cite a secretly recorded late-night meeting between Temer and one of JBSs owners, Joesley Batista. In the recording, Temer allegedly is heard authorising hush money payments to a onetime senior politician convicted of corruption, Eduardo Cunha. Batista gave prosecutors the recording as part of his cooperation in a plea deal, one of the many that Car Wash investigators have used to build graft cases. Temer has denied any bribe-taking and says the secret recording does not include anything incriminating. With PTI inputs For all the Latest World News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. New Delhi: PTI Chief Imran Khan has always been targeted in some or the other ways; either in politics or in personal life. This time it was from the opposition party PML-N who filed petition against Imran, accusing him of getting foreign funding for the party. Pakistan Muslim League Nawaz (PMNL)s counsel remained unsuccessful before Supreme Court to prove that Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) had received foreign funding from unknown sources. A three-member bench of Supreme Court has seized a petition filed by PML-Ns Hanif Abbasi seeking disqualification of PTI Chief Imran Khan for non-disclosure of assets, ownership of offshore companies and unaccountable foreign funding in the party. He was even accused by PML-N for furnishing a fake certificate before Election Commission of Pakistan that no donations from prohibited sources were received by the party and asked for his disqualification under Article 62 of the constitution. On Wednesday, former party member Ayesha Gulalai accused party chief for sending vulgar text messages to her and other women members of the party. It would be interesting to see what next accusation PTI Chief Imran Khan faces in future. For all the Latest World News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. New Delhi: In an apparent cyber attack, Pakistan Government website took a hit on Thursday. The hackers reportedly posted Indian national anthem and Independence Day greeting,s on the message board. The attack comes almost three months after several Indian universities' websites were hacked by Pakistani hackers. Pakistan Haxors CREW PHC, the group which claimed responsibility for hacking into the two websites, posted a screenshot on their Facebook page, claiming they had hacked several websites, including those of Aligarh Muslim University and IIT-BHU in Varanasi, Hindustan Times reported at the time. Read | India registers 27,000 cybercrimes till June, one crime every 10 minutes: CERT-In The hackers smeared the websites with posters of the alleged the brutalities by the Indian forces in Kashmir. The official website of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) was also hacked a couple of days ago by a hacker group who call themselves as Voice of Pakistan and claimed to operate as Death Aadders Crew. PTI Official Website Hacked by Voice of Pakistan. Interestingly, the website was hacked few hours after the press conference of Aisha Gulalai, in which she announced to resign from PTI party with serious allegation against the President of PTI Imran Khan. Read | Cyber insecurity emerge as biggest threat to business operations in India: Survey For all the Latest World News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. Las Vegas, Nevada, Aug. 03, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- South American Gold Corp. (OTC: SAGD), is pleased to declare a 1 for 1 stock dividend in its to be spun off entity, previously announced last week. The Spin Off Agreement is being finalized and shall include a dividend whereby every shareholder of SAGD will also receive shares in the newly spun off entity. The new entity is to be registered as a Wyoming Corporation and is proposed to be named Sarge Delphi, Inc.. Sarge Delphi will be focused on increasing its corporate value through web and mobile based products and the acquisition of high potential pre-market and early market stage companies. Upon the execution of the Spin Off Agreement, which is expected to be imminent, Sarge Delphi will launch the image of the new public entity at www.SargeDelphi.com. SAGDs present projects of ASK A.B.E., BITmineshaft, SmartLicensee, and CarRights.com, shall become assets of Sarge Delphi. SAGD is still in process of determining the placement of other possible acquisitions that the companys management team has been pursuing. With the formation of the new entity, Sarge Delphi shall begin the process for the completion and submission of a Form 10 with the SEC. Sarge Delphi anticipates this filing being made in September, 2017. About South American Gold Corp: South American Gold Corp is a publicly traded company on the OTC under the symbol SAGD, focused on enhancing shareholder value by acquiring and operating undervalued assets. For more information: Corporate Website: www.sagdcorp.co Media contact: info@sagdcorp.co General contact: info@sagdcorp.co Disclaimer: This release contains forward-looking statements that are based on beliefs of South American Gold Corp. management and reflect South American Gold Corp.'s current expectations as contemplated under section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and section 21E of the Securities and Exchange Act of 1934, as amended. When we use in this release the words "estimate," "project," "looks," "believe," "anticipate," "intend," "expect," "plan," "predict," "may," "should," "will," "can," the negative of these words, or such other variations thereon, or comparable terminology, are all intended to identify forward looking statements. Such statements reflect the current views of South America Gold Corp. with respect to future events based on currently available information and are subject to numerous assumptions, risks and uncertainties, including but not limited to, risks and uncertainties pertaining to development of mining properties, changes in economic conditions and other risks, uncertainties and factors, which may cause the actual results, performance, or achievement expressed or implied by such forward looking statements to differ materially from the forward looking statements. The information contained in this press release is historical in nature, has not been updated, and is current only to the date shown in this press release. This information may no longer be accurate and therefore you should not rely on the information contained in this press release. To the extent permitted by law, South American Gold Corp. and its employees, agents and consultants exclude all liability for any loss or damage arising from the use of, or reliance on, any such information, whether or not caused by any negligent act or omission. This press release may incorporate by reference the Company's reports and other filings. Investors are encouraged to review all filings. There is no assurance South American Gold Corp. will identify projects of merit or if it will have sufficient financing to implement its business plan. There is no assurance that the Company's due diligence on the potential projects and/or acquisitions will be favorable nor that definitive terms can be negotiated. Investors should consult their financial advisor before making an investment in a company. PHILADELPHIA, Aug. 03, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- iQ Media, the pioneer of real-time audience intelligence for brands, announced today that their Brand iQ platform has been named a winner for Best Audience Measurement Platform in the 3rd annual Digiday Signal Awards. The Digiday Signal Awards are presented by Digiday, and recognize the technology platforms that are bringing efficiency, effectiveness and creativity to the media and marketing processes for brands, agencies and publishers. The judging panel is comprised of marketing and advertising tech experts, including Matt David, head of communications and marketing, Tinder; Yuyu Fang, director, programmatic buying unit, Mindshare; Veronika Luik, programmatic group planning director, Neo@Ogilvy; and Maegan Moore, media manager, Sony Corporation of America. Winners will be honored at the Digiday Awards in November 2017 in New York City. iQ Medias Brand iQ platform helps brands measure TV, sponsorship and PRs impact on desired audience outcomes, by leveraging both live and historical TV programming for every spoken mention or logo appearance of their brand, in both paid and earned media. Their advanced TV network leverages signals in all 210 DMAs, picking up branded instances as they happen, as well as housing a historical media archive of over 22 million hours of TV programming. This incredibly deep and broad data set allows marketers to both evaluate past media investments and plan better for future TV placements, sponsorship investments, and PR campaigns, ensuring that they are both reaching and resonating with their intended audience(s). "This year's group of Digiday Signal Awards winners represent the very best of a vital part of our industry - marketing and advertising technology providers, says Digiday Media CEO Nick Friese. The third annual Signal Awards are proud to recognize these companies for their innovative solutions and their contribution to the advancement of our industry as a whole." It is our everyday mission to make audience data more accurate, transparent and attainable for any brand, and help marketers understand how TV and sponsorship investments truly influence audience behaviors, said Kevin Kohn, CEO of iQ Media. We are honored to have been recognized for iQs approach to audience measurement, which ensures a complete understanding of behaviors across crucial channels, locations and mediums. In addition to winning a Digiday 2017 Signal Award, iQ Media has recently been recognized as a SIIA CODie Best Big Data and Tools Platform (2017), CEO World Awards Gold Winner Product Innovation of the Year (2017), NewBay Medias TV Technology Product Innovation Award (2017), Entrepreneur 360 Best Entrepreneurial Companies in America (2017), Philly.com Top Workplaces (2017), SmartCEO Future 50 (2017), one of the Best Places to Work in PA (2016, 2014), and a SIIA CODie Best Software-as-a-Service Application (2015). iQ Media is backed by investors GMH Ventures and Edison Partners. For more information, please visit www.iq.media About iQ Media iQ Media empowers the worlds most iconic brands to connect TV investments to real-time audience outcomes. With solutions for TV attribution, sponsorship measurement and media monitoring, iQ Media tracks any paid and earned media occurrence across local, national and global TV markets, in order to attribute true media and audience values to marketing efforts. Brands like Google, Home Depot, Mercedes and SONY leverage iQ Medias real-time TV intelligence solutions to make faster decisions around TV and sponsorship spend, optimize media placements, and conquer their competition, all while tying TV occurrences back to purchase events through first-party data integrations. For more information, please visit www.iq.media About the Digiday Awards Digiday Medias awards programs are the leading media and marketing industry awards, celebrating excellence and achievement in innovation. The Digiday Awards programs celebrate overall excellence and breakthrough achievements in media, marketing, advertising and technology in the U.S. and Europe. Find the Digiday Awards online: Twitter: @DigidayAwards Website: https://digiday.com/event-type/award/ English French Paris, August 3rd, 2017, 5:40 PM AdUX has signed an agreement with Prisa Brand Solutions : to sell its stake in Latam Digital Ventures to partner on Native advertising in Spain, Latin America and the USA Digital marketing specialist AdUX (ISIN code: FR0012821890 - ADUX, ADUX.FR), announces the signature of a global agreement over the sale of its stake in Latam Digital Ventures() (LDV) and a commercial agreement between its subsidiary Quantum and Prisa Brand Solutions for using their native advertising technology on Prisa media group digital assets. Active as a digital media sales house targeting the Hispanic audiences, LDV has developed a global digital marketing offering towards advertisers in the USA and in Latin America. LDV has deployed a programmatic display, mobile and video set of products which has made the company growing fast for the last 18 months and able to partner with the main advertising brands. AdUX held 60% of LDV alongside with its manager Giuliano Stiglitz who owned 40%. Mr Stiglitz has successfully repositioned and developed the company which posted 8,5 million revenues in 2016. AdUX has sold its stake for a price of 2.5 million euros cash-free/debt-free with no suspensive conditions or earn out. The sale of LDV to PRISA, the world leading Hispanic media group, will bring important synergies to PRISA, given the large digital audience which LDV will be able to monetize, and also to AdUX through a commercial agreement over native advertising. Indeed, as a part of the deal, Prisa Brand Solutions and Quantum (AdUX subsidiary dedicated to native advertising) have signed a 2 years agreement under which Prisa Brand Solutions will use Quantum's solutions to generate and monetize native advertising placements in Spain, Latin America and towards Hispanic audience in the USA. Active in programmatic native advertising since its creation in 2014 and with teams in 4 European countries Quantum has successfully convinced an increasing number of advertisers, media agencies and trading desks to use its technology and native formats in order to target web surfers with non-intrusive and 100% visible formats. Quantum has also partnered with more than 650 publishers in Europe. This global agreement with Prisa will also contribute to AdUX's refocus on its new business lines like Native advertising, Drive to store and Social Marketing so to give the Group a more aggressive growth profile and a clearer pure player positioning. *** Investor calendar Third-quarter 2017 revenue on 9 November 2017 after close of trading A propos d'AdUX AdUX is an industry pioneer and European leader in digital marketing. With operations in six European countries, the United States and Latin America, the Group reported revenue of 59 million in 2016. Independent since its creation, the company is listed on Euronext Paris, in compartment C, and is included in the CAC Small, CAC All-Tradable and CAC SME indices. Code ISIN: FR 0012821890/Symbol: ADUX For more information, please visit www.adux.com and infofin@adux.com Follow us on Twitter: @AdUX_France LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/adux_fr Investor and analyst contact infofin@adux.com Media contact Patricia Goldman Communication, Christine Amella camella@patricia-goldman.com Tel. : +33 1 47 53 65 72 This press release may contain certain forward-looking statements. Although AdUX Group believes that these statements are based on assumptions that were reasonable as of the date of this press release, they are by their very nature subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ from those indicated or projected in these statements. AdUX Group operates in a continually changing environment and new risks may emerge. AdUX Group assumes no obligation to update these forward-looking statements to reflect any new information, future events or other circumstances HOUSTON, Aug. 03, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- In its most recent edition of Ask the Expert, Transwestern explores how the dominant U.S. seaports are on similar tracks to increase their share of global trade in containerized goods. The Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach on the West Coast and the Port of New York and New Jersey on the East Coast have devoted the better part of two decades to deepening channels, raising bridges for greater clear heights, investing in greater terminal automation and shoring-up dockside infrastructure to handle ever-larger ships. Authors Michael Soto and Matthew Dolly explain how industrial development is driving rent growth in both markets. Most notably, as activity at the major ports increases, rising transportation costs and access to labor are overshadowing rental rates as the top factors that companies consider in selecting space. Californias proximity to manufacturers in Asia has made the Port of Los Angeles and nearby Port of Long Beach the dominant U.S. entry point, receiving 50 percent of all containerized goods shipped to the United States. The Port of New York and New Jersey, by contrast, recognized the promise of larger ships passing through the Panama Canal as an opportunity to capture new business. The Port of New York and New Jersey is catching up to its West Coast rivals thanks to increased traffic from the Panama Canal, said Dolly, Director of Research for New Jersey. The higher demand has pushed existing buildings and developable land to premium prices, with cap rates now roughly equal to those near the Southern California ports. The Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach remain No. 1 and 2, respectively, in terms of annual container volume. Collectively, the two Southern California ports handled 15.6 million TEUs in 2016, or 32 percent of national volume, and their combined volume is expected to grow 3.9 percent annually through 2040. Proximity to customers is the top priority for retailers and manufacturers, so many are willing to pay higher rents to be closer to the population center, said Soto, Research Manager for the Southern California region. Even with more plentiful land in the Inland Empire, developers are weighing how far away they can build before the distance makes a location impractical for distribution centers. The largest ports on both coasts have demonstrated their commitment to serving the largest container ships and maintaining high volumes of cargo traffic. In 2016, New Jerseys Transportation Trust Fund established $400 million in annual funding devoted to road, bridge and transit improvements, vital to ensuring the stability and expansion of the local economy and transportation network. Major improvements are ongoing in Southern California as well, including the $1.5 billion replacement of the Gerald Desmond Bridge, to be completed in 2018. Read more at: http://twurls.com/ports-landlord and http://twurls.com/ports-tenant ABOUT TRANSWESTERN Transwestern is a privately held real estate firm of collaborative entrepreneurs who deliver a higher level of personalized service the Transwestern Experience. Specializing in Agency Leasing, Tenant Advisory, Capital Markets, Asset Services and Research, our fully integrated global enterprise adds value for investors, owners and occupiers of all commercial property types. We leverage market insights and operational expertise from members of the Transwestern family of companies specializing in development, real estate investment management and research. Based in Houston, Transwestern has 35 U.S. offices and assists clients through more than 180 offices in 37 countries as part of a strategic alliance with BNP Paribas Real Estate. Experience Extraordinary at transwestern.com and @Transwestern. Attachments: A photo accompanying this announcement is available at http://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/80d0bf57-7fcd-4f08-bee0-4de38a64eb89 Attachments: A photo accompanying this announcement is available at http://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/383e4124-de43-4a30-96ff-b68ece91cf24 Boulder, Colo., Aug. 03, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- For immediate release Dr. Simone Marchi, a senior research scientist in the Space Science and Engineering Division of Southwest Research Institute (SwRI), has been selected to receive the Farinella Prize for his research on the impact history and evolution of the inner solar system. The prize honors the memory of Paolo Farinella (19532000), an Italian planetary scientist who made significant contributions in the fields of asteroids and small bodies. The distinction recognizes young scientists working in Farinellas fields of interest including physics, planetary science, space geodesy and space popularization and emphasizes the interdisciplinary research and international collaboration that were a hallmark of Farinellas work. This years award specifically recognizes outstanding contributions to the study of the physics and dynamics of the inner planets of the solar system and their satellites. Marchis research interests are in the formation of the terrestrial planets and the Moon, the geology of asteroids and the terrestrial planets, spectroscopy and dynamics of minor bodies, and meteorites. His most recent work has focused on the dwarf planet Ceres and the earliest collision history of the Earth and Moon. The contributions Simone has made to space science at such a relatively young age are truly remarkable, said SwRI Associate Vice President Dr. Robin Canup. His outstanding research contributions, in combination with the interdisciplinary nature of his work and his tremendous leadership skills in developing successful collaborations, make him an ideal recipient for this award. We are very proud of him and his many achievements and look forward to seeing what his future research will reveal about the mysteries of the solar system. Marchi will receive the award at a ceremony in September during the international European Planetary Science Congress 2017 in Riga, Latvia. The Farinella Prize is supported by several Italian institutions, including the University of Pisa, Agenzia Spaziale Italiana (ASI), Instituto Nazionale di Astrofisica (INAF), and the Nello Carrara Institute of Applied Physics-Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche (IFAC-CNR). Marchi holds a degree in physics from Pisa University and a doctorate in applied physics from Pisa University. Farinella, one of his master thesis advisors, served as an inspiring and influential figure for him. Marchi has authored or co-authored more than 100 peer-reviewed publications and holds memberships in the American Geophysical Union, American Astronomical Society (Division for Planetary Sciences), and the International Astronomical Union. ------------------------------------------------ About SwRI: SwRI is an independent, nonprofit, applied research and development organization based in San Antonio, Texas, with nearly 2,700 employees and an annual research volume of $559 million. In 2017, SwRI celebrates 70 years of benefiting government, industry and the public with innovative R&D. Visit newsroom.swri.org for more SwRI developments. Attachments: A photo accompanying this announcement is available at http://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/d1efa600-2c6c-4f2a-9347-6f9e517d2b61 This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate Ethan Allen is among the nation's fastest-growing retailers, according to a recent report released by the National Retail Federation's STORES magazine. Using data from research firm Kantar Retail, year-over-year domestic sales growth from 2015 to 2016 was used to rank retailers from across the country for NRF's annual "Hot 100 Retailers" list. Public and privately held companies needed to have domestic sales of at least $300 million to be considered for the list. "The retail industry is getting better at addressing shifts in shopping behaviors and thinking differently," Susan Reda, media editor at STORES, said in a release. Ethan Allen, with 192 stores across the country, ranked number 86 on the list. The report said the Danbury-based furniture maker had a 5-percent annual sales growth in 2016, and reported annual domestic sales last year of $836 million. The company recently introduced a design studio on Amazon, which followed the launch of its Ethan Allen-Disney collection last year. "This past year was a 'year of action' where we completed many initiatives and also launched major new initiatives," said Corey Whitely, Ethan Allen CFO and executive VP of Administration, in an email. "We believe that we are well positioned for growth with refreshed and relevant product offerings and our strong North American manufacturing, logistics and retail network including 1,500 interior design professionals." Meal kit company Blue Apron topped NRF's chart with a sales growth of 133-percent in 2016. Rounding out the top 3 was home decor seller Wayfair and the Ascena Retail Group, which owns brands from Dress Barn to Ann Taylor. The list, meanwhile, lacked big-box retailers. "What matters most to consumers is a retailer differentiating itself in the marketplace, being innovative with merchandise and offering the right value to the right person," Reda said in the release. Click through the slideshow above for a look at the top 10 retailers on the list. KANSAS CITY, Mo., Aug. 03, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Strategic Global Investments, Inc., a Delaware Corporation, (OTC PINK:STBV) has made the appointment of Harold Rice as CFO. Mr. Rices background includes: WDAF TV https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H1iPPLDPYQI Fox 4 News https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ucgWvZ77Zw8 EDUCATION: Bachelor's Degree - UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI 1971 Masters Public Administration UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI 1973 - School of Administration ACADEMIC ACTIVITIES: Faculty Status, Adjunct Professor: Teaching a variety of management and accounting courses for both undergraduate and graduate school courses on a part time basis at the following schools: Webster University Graduate school of Administration - Ten years - KC MO Cleveland Chiropractic College - Six years - KC MO Park College - 21 years - Parkville, MO PROFESSIONAL ACTIVITIES: NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF TRADE EXCHANGES Founding member, and current member 22 Years Served four terms on Board of Directors Served three terms as Corporate Treasurer Presented several workshops & seminars regarding the IRS & 1099-B requirements for reporting Barter transactions and several others on various countertrade related subjects. INTERNATIONAL RECIPROCAL TRADE ASSOCIATION Member International Board of Directors - Corporate Treasurer Currently Presented Seminars on "The Design of Internal Accounting Systems of Trade Exchanges," and "Proper reporting of Barter Transactions to the IRS," & "The Consequences of Deficit Spending for Barter Companies" AMERICAN EXCHANGE NETWORK / MID-WEST MANAGEMENT CONSULTANTS INC. - PRESIDENT - 23 Years Designed the internal accounting systems for many of the Trade Exchanges in the USA. Created and/or reviewed the contracts involving major corporate countertrades, for many of the same companies for whom I designed their accounting systems. I served as an Expert Witness in several large court cases involving Barter Companies. I represented several barter companies in resolving conflict with the IRS and several State Revenue Departments. Garland E. Harris, President/CEO of STBV states, It is a high honor and dream come true to finally have the privilege of working with such a legendary accounting and business management professional. The pace of our business activity is accelerating and the skills of an expert in IRS compliance is essential. Harold was present at the genesis of TROPTIONS as a trade/exchange currency. Harold Rice says, I am pleased to STBV as a member of the team. I believe that my background and experience will be of assistance in developing STBV. I am looking forward to working together to lead the company to growth. Strategic Global Investments, Inc., a Delaware Corporation A CryptoCurrency ICO Company 1011 Adams St. WPB, FL 33407 561-252-4540 A CryptoCurrency ICO Company Garland E. Harris, President/CEO garlandeharris@gmail.com James E. Ward, Senior Vice President jamesward2000@gmail.com Louis T. Minutello, Chief Business Development Officer louminutello@gmail.com Harold Rice, Chief Financial Officer harold9000@gmail.com Brad Hacker and Company Consultants and Accountants bradhackerco@gmail.com MONTREAL, Aug. 3, 2017 /CNW Telbec/ - The current tug of war between Bombardier and Boeing, with the American company accusing the Quebec aircraft manufacturer of being unduly subsidized, shows that Canada has a strong interest in proposing a new international agreement to avoid a ruinous subsidy race in the aeronautic sector, as suggested in a Viewpoint published today by the MEI. Boeing has asked the U.S. Department of Commerce to impose tariffs on Canadian airplanes. A decision should be handed down at the end of September. "Imagine if a country like China, with a much larger tax base, decides to emulate Ottawa's recent support of the Canadian industry in assisting its own aeronautic sector. Or again Russia, which has a much larger workforce in the sector, and where the stakes are even higher than they are in Canada," points out Mathieu Bedard, Economist at the MEI and author of the publication. A country like Canada, whose economy is relatively smaller, would never be able to hold its own in a subsidy race. A large portion of the 55,724 jobs in the aerospace manufacturing industry would be put in danger. As for the "winners" of such a conflict, their taxpayers would pay a heavy price to finance all sorts of corporate support. "To use a military analogy, a ceasefire would be better for all concerned, especially Canada. In contrast, an 'arms race' would be devastating," says Mathieu Bedard. International agreements to restrict governmental support have been concluded in the past, like the Aircraft Sector Understanding (ASU), its first version signed in 1986, which has been relatively effective in limiting the expansion of certain subsidies. Governments have since imagined other measures to help their companies, but an improved version of this treaty, which would provide guidelines for these other types of support, would constitute a credible commitment to dissuade non-signatories like Russia and China from engaging in a subsidy race. "It is perfectly understandable for aviation companies to try to obtain public funds if they think that their competitors have access to such funds. That's why this publication constructively aims to encourage the adoption of an international framework that hopefully will put an end to the vicious cycle of subsidies and protectionist measures. Ultimately, this will protect companies like Bombardier in Quebec," concludes Michel Kelly-Gagnon, President and CEO of the MEI. The Viewpoint entitled "Avoiding the Aeronautics Subsidy Race Canada Is Sure to Lose" was prepared by Mathieu Bedard, Economist at the MEI, with the collaboration of Michel Kelly-Gagnon, President and CEO of the MEI. This publication is available on our website. *** The Montreal Economic Institute is an independent, non-partisan, not-for-profit research and educational organization. Through its studies and its conferences, the MEI stimulates debate on public policies in Quebec and across Canada by proposing wealth-creating reforms based on market mechanisms. SOURCE Montreal Economic Institute For further information: Interview requests: Pascale Dery, Vice President, Communications and Development, MEI, Tel.: 514-273-0969 ext. 2233, Cell.: 514-502-6757, Email: [email protected] Related Links http://www.iedm.org NYSE - MKT: ASM TSX-V: ASM FSE: GV6 VANCOUVER, Aug. 2, 2017 /CNW/ - Avino Silver & Gold Mines Ltd. (ASM: TSX-V, ASM: NYSEMKT, GV6: FSE, "Avino" or "the Company") is pleased to announce the consolidated financial results for the Company's second quarter ended June 30, 2017. The financial statements and the management discussion and analysis can be viewed on the Company's web site at www.avino.com, on SEDAR at www.sedar.com and on EDGAR at www.sec.gov. Effective January 1, 2017, the Company changed its presentation currency to US dollars from Canadian dollars. As a result, all dollar amounts in this news release are expressed in US dollars, unless otherwise noted. "We are pleased to have achieved another productive quarter with strong financial and operational results. Our focus continues to be our expansion plans at the Avino mine with the addition of Mill Circuit 4, as well as a planned underground drill program at the Bralorne Mine to better define the resources above and below the 800 level. We are confident that the implementation of these important plans will continue to support the Company's growth efforts. We appreciate the support and dedication of our teams in Mexico and Canada, who continue to maintain efficiencies at our operations." - David Wolfin, President, CEO & Director, Avino Silver & Gold Mines Ltd. SECOND QUARTER 2017 HIGHLIGHTS IN $USD Revenues of $7.9 million from the sale of concentrates from the sale of concentrates Mine operating income of $2.5 million , which is consistent with the second quarter of 2016 , which is consistent with the second quarter of 2016 Net income after taxes of $1.2 million or $0.02 per share or per share Working capital of $17.7 million , an increase of 18% from the second quarter of 2016 , an increase of 18% from the second quarter of 2016 Cash of $5.9 million and short term investments of $7.5 million at the end of the quarter and short term investments of at the end of the quarter Produced 698,174 silver equivalent ounces, including 386,002 ounces of silver, 1,954 ounces of gold and 1,113,161 pounds of copper Consolidated all-in sustaining cost ("AISC") 2 was $10.42 per payable silver equivalent ounce was per payable silver equivalent ounce Average realized selling prices for silver and gold were US$17.09 and US$1,259 per ounce, respectively, and copper was $5,643 per tonne HIGHLIGHTS Second Quarter 2017 Second Quarter 2016 Change Operating Tonnes Milled 137,493 131,612 4% Silver Ounces Produced 386,002 380,620 1% Gold Ounces Produced 1,954 1,509 29% Copper Pounds Produced 1,133,161 1,054,935 7% Silver Equivalent Ounces1 Produced 698,174 629,780 11% Concentrate Sales and Cash Costs Silver Equivalent Ounces Sold2 542,002 626,837 -14% Cash Cost per Silver Equivalent Ounce2,3 $ 8.90 $ 9.61 -7% All-in Sustaining Cost per Silver Equivalent Ounce2,3 $ 10.42 $ 10.97 -5% Average Realized Silver Price per Ounce $ 17.09 $ 16.99 1% Average Realized Gold Price per Ounce $ 1,259 $ 1,262 -% Average Realized Copper Price per Tonne $ 5,643 $ 4,706 20% Financial Revenues $ 7,911,388 $ 9,017,929 -12% Mine Operating Income $ 2,481,779 $ 2,459,477 1% Net Income (Loss) $ 1,151,549 $ (336,748) N/A Cash $ 5,914,408 $ 8,256,627 -28% Working Capital $ 17,686,701 $ 15,041,997 18% Shareholders Earnings (Loss) per Share ("EPS") Basic $ 0.02 $ (0.01) N/A Cash Flow per Share (YTD)3 $ 0.06 $ 0.06 -% 1. For comparison purposes, the silver equivalent ratio has been calculated using metal prices of $17.26 oz Ag, $1,257 oz Au and $2.57 Lb Cu. Mill production figures have not been reconciled and are subject to adjustment with concentrate sales. Calculated figures may not add up due to rounding. Metal production is expressed in terms of silver equivalent ounces, (oz Ag Eq), the formula for which depends on the copper, gold and silver metal prices used in each period and hence are only indicative. 2. "Silver equivalent ounces sold" for the purposes of cash costs and all-in sustaining costs consists of the sum of silver ounces, gold ounces and copper tonnes sold multiplied by the ratio of the average spot gold and copper prices to the average spot silver price for the corresponding period. 3. The Company reports non-IFRS measures which include cash cost per silver equivalent ounce, all-in sustaining cash cost per ounce, and cash flow per share. These measures are widely used in the mining industry as a benchmark for performance, but do not have a standardized meaning and the calculation methods may differ from methods used by other companies with similar reported measures. Financial Results The Company generated revenues of $7.9 million during the second quarter of 2017; a 12% decrease compared to the second quarter of 2016. The decrease is a result of fewer ounces sold from the San Gonzalo mine and remaining inventory at the end of the quarter. Mine operating income was $2.5 million during the second quarter of 2017, which is consistent with the comparable quarter of 2016. During the second quarter of 2017, net income increased to $1.2 million or $0.02 per share, from a net loss of $0.3 million or a $0.01 basic and diluted per share during the corresponding period of 2016. The increase is mainly due to operational efficiencies achieved at the Avino Mine and the San Gonzalo Mine. Operational Results Silver equivalent production for the second quarter of 2017 increased by 11% to 698,174 oz1 compared to 629,780 oz1 in the second quarter of 2016. Silver production for the second quarter of 2017 increased 1% to 386,002 oz compared to 380,620 oz in the second quarter of 2016. Gold production for the second quarter of 2017 increased by 29% to 1,954 oz compared to 1,509 oz in the corresponding period of 2016. Copper production increased by 7% to 1,133,161 lbs compared to 1,054,935 lbs in the second quarter of 2016. Total mill feed processed during the second quarter of 2017 was 137,493 dry tonnes compared to 131,612 dry tonnes during the second quarter of 2016, an increase of 4%. At the Avino Mine, silver equivalent ounces1 produced during the second quarter of 2017 totalled 512,237 compared to 341,521 during the second quarter of 2016, an increase of 50%. The higher production is due to higher feed grades realized during the quarter. At the San Gonzalo Mine, silver equivalent ounces1 produced during the second quarter of 2017 totalled 185,937 representing a decrease of 35% compared to 288,259 in the second quarter of 2016 mainly due to the lower tonnage processed due to Mill Circuits 2 and 3 being used exclusively for the Avino mine material. Costs and Capital Expenditures Consolidated all-in sustaining cash costs per AgEq ounce1 during the second quarter of 2017 were $10.42 compared to $10.97 during the corresponding period of 2016, a decrease of 5%. All-in sustaining cash costs at San Gonzalo during the second quarter of 2017 were $9.99 per AgEq ounce1 compared to $10.89 during the second quarter of 2016, a decrease of 8%. All-in sustaining cash costs at Avino during the second quarter of 2017 were $10.56, compared to $11.01 during the second quarter of 2016, a decrease of 4%. Capital expenditures during the six months ended June 30, 2017, were $4,497,122 compared to $7,383,020 for the corresponding period of 2016. Capital expenditures in the current period relate to the Avino mine advancement, mining and production equipment (including Mill Circuit 4) to advance operations at the San Gonzalo, Avino, and Bralorne mines. Bralorne Mine Update At Bralorne, we continued to review strategic operating plans, and on July 10, 2017, we published a comprehensive news release outlining our plans and can be found on our website at the following link: http://www.avino.com/s/news.asp?ReportID=795059. Our new plan involves opening the mine at a higher throughput rather than our original plans to scale up the operations to reach the desired throughput level. We are currently planning an underground drill program to expand and improve confidence in our resource base which is scheduled to be followed by the construction of a new tunnel at the 800 level, large enough to accommodate the new mechanized equipment for the proposed long hole retreat mining method. In addition, the Company also received notification that funding to hold our third annual underground mining training contingent was approved. This year we are planning to hold the training in the Pemberton Valley to accommodate community members from N'Quatqua and other communities associated with the Lower St'at'imc Tribal Council. For more information please see our news release dated July 10, 2017 which is listed above. Environmental & Permitting Progress The Company's senior management and site personnel continue to work closely with the MEM and MOE, and recently met with the Chief Inspector and Deputy Chief Inspector to discuss environmental and permitting. Permitting has taken longer than expected, and is partly a result of the government taking a more rigorous approach to environmental requirements and having many projects at the permitting stage in British Columbia. Second Extension of Concentrates Prepayment Agreement with Samsung C&T The Company has further extended the concentrates prepayment agreement with Samsung C&T U.K. Ltd. ("Samsung") for one year for repayment between July 2018 and July 2019. Pursuant to a new amending agreement (the "Amendment"), Avino will sell silver concentrates on an exclusive basis to Samsung until December 31, 2021. Samsung has previously advanced to Avino the sum of US$10 million as prepayment of such concentrates, of which Avino has repaid US$1,333,332 for a net amount owing of US$8,666,668 (the "Facility"), and the Facility will be repaid with interest. This extension will allow Avino to defer the payments and repay the balance with interest by 13 monthly instalments, commencing July 2018 and ending July 2019. Other material terms of the Facility remain unchanged. Interest on the Facility is payable monthly at LIBOR plus 4.75%. The Company is pleased to take advantage of the extension of the concentrate sales agreement and revised repayment arrangement, as this ensures a steady long term contract for the sale of the Company's silver concentrates. Eagle Property Option Agreement An option agreement dated July 18, 2017 between Avino and Alexco Resource Corp. ("Alexco") has granted Alexco the right to acquire a 65% interest in 14 quartz mining leases located in the Mayo District, Yukon Territory, Canada, known as the "Eagle Property". To exercise the option, Alexco must pay Avino a total of $70,000 in instalments over 4 years, issue Avino a total of 70,000 Alexco common shares in instalments over 4 years, incur $550,000 in exploration work by the second anniversary of the option agreement date, and a further $2.2 million in exploration work on the Eagle Property by the fourth anniversary of the option agreement date. In the event that Alexco earns its 65% interest in the Eagle Property, Alexco and Avino will form a joint venture for the future exploration and development of the Eagle Property, and may contribute towards expenditures in proportion to their interests (65% Alexco / 35% Avino). If either company elects to not contribute its share of costs, then its interest will be diluted. If either company's joint venture interest is diluted to less than 10%, its interest will convert to a 5.0% net smelter returns royalty, subject to the other's right to buy-down the royalty to 2.0% for $2.5 million. The Eagle Property was previously inactive and held by Avino as a non-essential asset to its current operations. Non-IFRS Measures The financial results in this news release include references to cash flow per share, cash cost per silver equivalent ounce, and all-in sustaining cash cost per silver equivalent ounce, all of which are non-IFRS measures. Cash flow per share, cash cost per ounce, and all-in sustaining cash cost per ounce are measures developed by mining companies in an effort to provide a comparable standard of performance. However, there can be no assurance that our reporting of these non-IFRS measures is similar to that reported by other mining companies. Cash flow per share, cash cost per silver equivalent ounce, and all-in sustaining cash cost per silver equivalent ounce are measures used by the Company to manage and evaluate operating performance of the Company's mining operations, and are widely reported in the silver and gold mining industry as benchmarks for performance, but do not have standardized meanings prescribed by IFRS, and are disclosed in addition to the prescribed IFRS measures provided in the Company's financial statements and MD&A. Conference Call Avino will be holding a conference call for analysts and investors on Thursday, August 3, 2017, at 8:00 am Pacific Daylight Time (11:00 am Eastern Daylight Time). Conference Call Numbers: Toll Free Canada & USA : 1-800-319-4610 : 1-800-319-4610 Outside of Canada & USA : 1-604-638-5340 No pass-code is necessary to participate in the conference call; participants will have the opportunity to ask questions during the Q&A portion of the call. Participants should dial in 10 minutes prior to the conference. The conference call will be recorded and the replay will be available on the Company's website within one hour following the conclusion of the call. Qualified Person(s) Avino's Mexican projects are under the supervision of Mr. Jasman Yee, P.Eng, Avino director, and Avino's Bralorne Mine project is under the supervision of Fred Sveinson, B.A., BSc, P.Eng, Avino Senior Mining Advisor. These individuals are qualified persons ("QP") within the context of National Instrument 43-101. The respective QP's have reviewed and approved all the applicable technical data in this press release. Outlook Avino is a silver and gold producer with a diversified pipeline of gold, silver and base metals properties in Mexico and Canada employing approximately 500 people. Avino produces from its wholly owned Avino and San Gonzalo Mines near Durango, Mexico, and is currently planning for future production at the Bralorne Gold Mine in British Columbia, Canada. The Company's gold and silver production remains unhedged. Avino's mission is to create shareholder value through profitable organic growth at the Avino Property and the strategic acquisition and advancement of mineral exploration and mining properties. We are committed to expanding our operations and managing all business activities in an environmentally responsible and cost-effective manner while contributing to the well-being of the communities in which we operate. The Company remains focused on the following key objectives: Maintain and improve profitable mining operations while managing operating costs and achieving efficiencies; Complete the Mill Circuit 4 expansion to increase Avino Mine production; Conduct a successful underground drill program in 2017 to increase and improve confidence in our resource base at Bralorne; Continue mine expansion drilling and explore regional targets on the Avino property; Follow the recommendations made in the 2017 PEA on the oxide tailings resource at the Avino Mine, and assess the potential for processing the oxide tailings resource. On Behalf of the Board "David Wolfin" ________________________________ David Wolfin President & CEO Avino Silver & Gold Mines Ltd. Safe Harbor Statement - This news release contains "forward-looking information" and "forward-looking statements" (together, the "forward-looking statements") within the meaning of applicable securities laws and the United States Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, including our belief as to the extent and timing of various studies including the PEA, and exploration results, the potential tonnage, grades and content of deposits, and timing, establishment, and extent of resource estimates. These forward-looking statements are made as of the date of this news release and the dates of technical reports, as applicable. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on forward-looking statements, as there can be no assurance that the future circumstances, outcomes or results anticipated in or implied by such forward-looking statements will occur or that plans, intentions or expectations upon which the forward-looking statements are based will occur. While we have based these forward-looking statements on our expectations about future events as at the date that such statements were prepared, the statements are not a guarantee that such future events will occur and are subject to risks, uncertainties, assumptions and other factors which could cause events or outcomes to differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. Such factors and assumptions include, among others, the effects of general economic conditions, the price of gold, silver and copper, changing foreign exchange rates and actions by government authorities, uncertainties associated with legal proceedings and negotiations and misjudgments in the course of preparing forward-looking information. In addition, there are known and unknown risk factors which could cause our actual results, performance or achievements to differ materially from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by the forward-looking statements. Known risk factors include risks associated with project development; the need for additional financing; operational risks associated with mining and mineral processing; fluctuations in metal prices; title matters; uncertainties and risks related to carrying on business in foreign countries; environmental liability claims and insurance; reliance on key personnel; the potential for conflicts of interest among certain of our officers, directors or promoters with certain other projects; the absence of dividends; currency fluctuations; competition; dilution; the volatility of our common share price and volume; tax consequences to U.S. investors; and other risks and uncertainties. Although we have attempted to identify important factors that could cause actual actions, events or results to differ materially from those described in forward-looking statements, there may be other factors that cause actions, events or results not to be as anticipated, estimated or intended. There can be no assurance that forward-looking statements will prove to be accurate, as actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such statements. Accordingly, readers should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements. We are under no obligation to update or alter any forward-looking statements except as required under applicable securities laws. Cautionary Note to United States Investors - The information contained herein and incorporated by reference herein has been prepared in accordance with the requirements of Canadian securities laws, which differ from the requirements of United States securities laws. In particular, the term "resource" does not equate to the term "reserve". The Securities Exchange Commission's (the "SEC") disclosure standards normally do not permit the inclusion of information concerning "measured mineral resources", "indicated mineral resources" or "inferred mineral resources" or other descriptions of the amount of mineralization in mineral deposits that do not constitute "reserves" by SEC standards, unless such information is required to be disclosed by the law of the Company's jurisdiction of incorporation or of a jurisdiction in which its securities are traded. U.S. investors should also understand that "inferred mineral resources" have a great amount of uncertainty as to their existence and great uncertainty as to their economic and legal feasibility. Disclosure of "contained ounces" is permitted disclosure under Canadian regulations; however, the SEC normally only permits issuers to report mineralization that does not constitute "reserves" by SEC standards as in place tonnage and grade without reference to unit measures. Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release. SOURCE Avino Silver & Gold Mines Ltd. For further information: T 604.682.3701, Suite 900, 570 Granville Street, [email protected], F 604.682.3600, Vancouver, BC, V6C 3P1, www.avino.com Related Links www.avino.com OVERLAND PARK, KS, USA, Aug. 03, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The Accreditation Council for Business Schools and Programs (ACBSP) www.acbsp.org, the only global accrediting body to accredit business, accounting, and business-related programs at all degree levels, is proud to announce its Board of Directors for 2017-18. The elections and appointments were made at the ACBSP Annual Conference held June 24-27 in Anaheim, California. The ACBSP Board of Directors truly reflects the organizations global presence, said Jeffrey Alderman, ACBSP President/CEO. Led by Mary Vaughan, Dean of Seneca Business, Seneca College of Applied Arts and Technology in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, this is the first time in our history to have a female Board Chair affiliated with an institution outside the U.S. I am honored to serve with this distinguished group as we strive to promote continuous improvement in the accreditation of business programs throughout the world, he said. The following business educators and industry leaders were appointed to serve on the 2017-18 Board of Directors, with terms effective at the close of the Annual Conference on June 27, 2017: 2017-18 Board of Directors Mary Vaughan Dean, Seneca Business, Seneca College of Applied Arts and Technology (Canada) Chair Alejandro Cheyne Dean, School of Management, Universidad del Rosario (Colombia) Chair-Elect Debbie Gaspard Instructor, Enactus and Kappa Beta Delta Faculty Advisor, Southeast Community College (United States) Secretary Earl Godfrey Professor of Accounting, Gardner-Webb University (United States) Treasurer Dewayne Thompson Dean, School of Business, Lee University (United States) Immediate Past Chair of the Council Charles Fazzi Professor of Accounting, Saint Vincent College (United States) At-Large, 4-Year Tilokie Depoo Vice President & Chief Academic Officer, Metropolitan College of New York (United States) At-Large, 4-Year Kim Wong Instructor, Business & Information Technology, Central New Mexico Community College (United States) At-Large, 2-Year Lakshmy Sivaratnam Associate Professor, Business & Accounting, Kansas City Kansas Community College (United States) At-Large, 2-Year Freda Hartman Faculty Chair, School of Business & Technology, Capella University (United States) Chair, Board of Commissioners 4-Year Gary Mrozinski Professor of Business, Luzerne County Community College (United States) Chair, Board of Commissioners 2-Year Anthony Negbenebor Dean Emeritus and Dover Chair, Professor of Business, Gardner-Webb University (United States) Chair, Accreditation Governance Board Joseph Cappa Executive Director, Business Programs, Southern New Hampshire University (United States) Council of Regional Chairs Representative Alex Perwich President, Enactus USA (United States) Public Member Hugh Hale Chief Information Officer, State of Tennessee Health Care Finance and Administration (United States) Public Member Jeffrey Alderman ACBSP President/CEO (United States) Ex-Officio Member About ACBSP ACBSP is a leading specialized accreditation body for business education. ACBSPs mission is to promote continuous improvement and recognize teaching excellence in the accreditation of business education programs throughout the world. ACBSP accredits business, accounting, and business-related programs at the associate, baccalaureate, master, and doctorate degree levels. Recognized by the Council for Higher Education Accreditation (CHEA) in 2001 and again in 2011, ACBSP was the first to offer specialized business accreditation at all degree levels. ACBSP currently accredits business programs at nearly 1,200 campuses in 60 countries. FAQs / Accreditation FAQs Attachments: A photo accompanying this announcement is available at http://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/b57ece86-4b55-49e3-9573-41ea72ffc72d Member of Parliament Seamus O'Regan invites Canadians to celebrate Canada 150 by taking part in the "Canada, It's Complicated" project in Newfoundland and Labrador ST. JOHN'S, Aug. 3, 2017 /CNW/ - The Government of Canada is supporting a project from Newfoundland and Labrador that will allow Canadians to discover the culture and keen sense of humour that give the province its unique character. Seamus O'Regan, Member of Parliament (St. John's SouthMount Pearl), made this announcement on behalf of the Honourable Melanie Joly, Minister of Canadian Heritage. In 2017, Newfoundlanders, Labradorians and other Canadians will be able to celebrate Canada 150 by taking part in this wonderful project that highlights this country's cultural and regional diversity. The "Canada, It's Complicated" tour will get Canadians from several communities across the country involved in creating, producing and presenting a touring multimedia comedy show with soundscape and video. The show will feature sketches and satirical songs that examine Canada's joys, foibles, tragedies and triumphs, today and into the future. The Government of Canada has provided $1 million in funding for this project through Canadian Heritage's Canada 150 Fund. The government is pleased to support local, regional and national activities designed to give Canadians across the country an opportunity to join in the Canada 150 celebrations, and to make 2017 an unforgettable year. Quotes "Arts, culture and heritage organizations are an integral part of every community. As we celebrate Canada 150, our government is proud to support the 'Canada, It's Complicated' tour, which promotes arts and culture and showcases our diversity. 2017 is going to be a memorable year, and the Atlantic Provinces are a big part of it. So go aheadparticipate, celebrate and explore!" The Honourable Melanie Joly, Minister of Canadian Heritage "I am pleased that Canadians and visitors will have the chance to take part in a range of cultural activities that support the development of our region. I am also delighted that the 'Canada, It's Complicated' tour is providing a unique opportunity to come together and highlight our rich culture as we celebrate Canada 150. Join us for this one-of-a-kind experience!" Seamus O'Regan, Member of Parliament (St. John's SouthMouth Pearl) "I'm thrilled to be working on such an exciting project with some of this country's top writers. We're putting together a show that will be performed right across Canadain the east, west, north and south, in communities both rural and urban. It will shine the spotlight on talented comedy, music and theatre artists in a state-of-the-art multimedia production that takes an affectionately satirical look at our country today, as we mark Canada 150." Mary Walsh, Director and Co-Producer, Canada, It's Complicated Quick Facts The Government of Canada is providing $1 million in funding for the "Canada, It's Complicated" tour. Comedy Show 150 Canada is a not-for-profit, incorporated organization whose mandate is to tell Canada's story to Canadians through song, dance and comedy. The main themes of the Government of Canada's vision for Canada 150 are diversity and inclusion, reconciliation with Indigenous Peoples, the environment, and young people. The Canada 150 Fund was created in April 2015 and has a total budget of $200 million. Associated Links Canada 150 http://canada.pch.gc.ca/eng/1468262573081/1468262646675 SOURCE Canadian Heritage For further information: (media only), please contact: Pierre-Olivier Herbert, Press Secretary, Office of the Minister of Canadian Heritage, 819-997-7788; Media Relations, Canadian Heritage, 819-994-9101, 1-866-569-6155, [email protected] Related Links http://www.pch.gc.ca TSX: ELD NYSE: EGO VANCOUVER, Aug. 3, 2017 /CNW/ - Eldorado Gold ("Eldorado" or the "Company") today provides an update on Greece. Today, the Greek Ministry of Energy and Environment issued a press release stating their intention to have arbitration underway by the end of the month. This release also stated that all permits outstanding for Olympias are underway, while the permits for Skouries remain unissued. George Burns commented, "While the press release did not result in any additional clarity regarding the details of the intended arbitration by the Greek government, the Ministry stated that this is the best path forward in resolving all outstanding issues with the Company's projects. To be clear, we have not yet received formal notice of arbitration and permits applied for remain unissued. We continue to evaluate all capital spending and development timelines at our projects in Greece. At this time, commissioning at Olympias and reduced development works at Skouries are continuing." About Eldorado Gold Eldorado is a leading intermediate gold producer with mining, development and exploration operations in Turkey, Greece, Romania, Serbia, Canada and Brazil. The Company's success to date is based on a highly skilled and dedicated workforce, safe and responsible operations, a portfolio of high-quality assets, and long-term partnerships with the communities where it operates. Eldorado's common shares trade on the Toronto Stock Exchange (TSX: ELD) and the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE: EGO). Certain of the statements made and information provided in this press release are forward-looking statements or information within the meaning of the United States Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 and applicable Canadian securities laws. Often, but not always, forward-looking statements and forward-looking information can be identified by the use of words such as "plans", "expects", "is expected", "budget", "continue", "projected", "scheduled", "estimates", "forecasts", "projected", "intends", "anticipates", or "believes" or the negatives thereof or variations of such words and phrases or statements that certain actions, events or results "may", "could", "would", "might" or "will" be taken, occur or be achieved. Such forward-looking statements or information include, but are not limited to, statements or information with respect to the Statement. Forward-looking statements and forward-looking information by their nature are based on assumptions and involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors which may cause the actual results, performance or achievements of the Company to be materially different from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements or information. We have made certain assumptions about the forward-looking statements and information, including assumptions about the geopolitical, economic, permitting and legal climate that we operate in; the future price of gold and other commodities; exchange rates; anticipated costs and expenses; production, mineral reserves and resources and metallurgical recoveries, the impact of acquisitions, dispositions, suspensions or delays on our business and the ability to achieve our goals. Even though our management believes that the assumptions made and the expectations represented by such statements or information are reasonable, there can be no assurance that the forward-looking statement or information will prove to be accurate. Many assumptions may be difficult to predict and are beyond our control. Furthermore, should one or more of the risks, uncertainties or other factors materialize, or should underlying assumptions prove incorrect, actual results may vary materially from those described in forward-looking statements or information. These risks, uncertainties and other factors include, among others, the following: geopolitical and economic climate (global and local), risks related to mineral tenure and permits; gold and other metal price volatility; mining operational and development risk; foreign country operational risks; risks of sovereign investment; regulatory environment and restrictions, including environmental regulatory restrictions and liability; discrepancies between actual and estimated production, mineral reserves and resources and metallurgical recoveries; risks related to impact of the sale of our Chinese assets on the Company's operations; the ability to acquire the shares that it does not already own in Integra Gold Corporation; additional funding requirements; currency fluctuations; litigation risks; community and non-governmental organization actions; speculative nature of gold exploration; dilution; share price volatility; competition; loss of key employees; and defective title to mineral claims or property, as well as those factors discussed in the sections entitled "Forward-Looking Statements" and "Risk factors in our business" in the Company's most recent Annual Information Form & Form 40-F. The reader is directed to carefully review the detailed risk discussion in our most recent Annual Information Form filed on SEDAR under our Company name, for a fuller understanding of the risks and uncertainties that affect the Company's business and operations. There can be no assurance that forward-looking statements or information will prove to be accurate, as actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such statements. Accordingly, you should not place undue reliance on the forward-looking statements or information contained herein. Except as required by law, we do not expect to update forward-looking statements and information continually as conditions change and you are referred to the full discussion of the Company's business contained in the Company's reports filed with the securities regulatory authorities in Canada and the U.S. SOURCE Eldorado Gold Corporation For further information: Investor Relations: Krista Muhr, Vice President Investor Relations & Corporate Communications, 604.551.3250 or 1.888.363.8166, [email protected]; Media: Louise Burgess, Director Communications & Government Relations, 604.601.6679 or 1.888.363.8166, [email protected] Strategic Purchase Allows for Rapid Growth in Canada TORONTO, Aug. 3, 2017 /CNW/ - Lannick, a Toronto-based premier professional recruitment and staffing firm, has been acquired by Vaco, a leading talent acquisition and consulting firm focusing in the areas of accounting, finance, IT, administration and executive search. Together, Vaco and Lannick will form a continental powerhouse that provides talent solutions across a diverse set of industries. Including Lannick's projected revenues of $40 million for 2017, Vaco's projected revenues for 2017 are expected to surpass $458 million USD. As Vaco's biggest acquisition to date, the purchase of Lannick not only expands Vaco's reach, but also marks their entry into the Canadian market. This is the 14-year-old firm's second international acquisition in four months. Founded in 1985, it has been Lannick's mission to service the pressing need for superior talent in the areas of accounting, finance and IT. As Canada's largest regional finance and accounting specialist firm, they have experienced rapid growth in recent years. Lannick has doubled its business since 2013, with revenue increasing from $14.2 million to $28.2 million in 2016. In 2017, Lannick is poised to add more than 1,200 permanent, temporary and contract placements to Vaco's already established book of business. "Vaco is talent centric, not location centric, so as exciting as it is to expand into the vibrant city of Toronto, it is even more thrilling to add the abilities and energy of this incredible Lannick team," said Vaco Co-Founder and CEO, Jerry Bostelman. "As we worked out the complex deal points, it was obvious that alongside this creative, committed, culture-driven team, together we were stronger. Internally we will top grade our processes, connect our extraordinary players and collaborate about how we collectively become more impactful in the lives of our clients, candidates and consultants." "I am truly excited by this partnership and the complete alignment of culture and philosophy. Our clients will receive the same outstanding boutique-firm treatment while having access to a larger network of talent," said Peter Jeewan, President & CEO of Lannick. "The right talent is the number one differentiator between successful and unsuccessful companies. Our business connections range from Fortune 500 companies to some of Canada's leading government and nonprofit organizations, so it's a huge asset that we will be able to add Vaco's expertise and talent pool to our repertoire of services." Jeewan added, "Of paramount consideration in this partnership are the endless new possibilities for our amazing people to grow, develop and benefit financially. Vaco's access to capital and proven experience and history in promoting and developing from within will in no small way excite our emerging leaders. We are thrilled to begin this new and amazing chapter in our company's history." "Our objective is to become a significant player in Canada," said Jim Dimovski, Chief Administrative Officer of Lannick. "With Vaco, we can serve many more markets, our candidate pool is significantly wider and our industry insights are far more holistic." About Lannick Lannick is the premier professional recruitment and staffing firm in the Greater Toronto Area. Founded in 1985, Lannick provides best-in-class finance, accounting and technology professionals at all roles and levels through its three divisions: Lannick Finance & Accounting, Pro Count Staffing and Lannick Technology. Lannick places more than 1,200 candidates annually and is a preferred vendor for Canada's most successful organizations. Learn more at www.lannick.com. About Vaco Vaco offers consulting, contract and direct hire solutions in the areas of accounting, finance, technology, healthcare, operations and general administration. With more than 40 offices across the U.S. and beyond, Vaco has been on the Inc. 5000 list of the nation's fastest-growing private companies for the last ten years. Vaco is dedicated to developing creative client solutions, long-term relationships and lifelong careers. For more information, visit vaco.com. SOURCE Lannick Group of Companies For further information: Media Inquiries: Lannick, Laura Chambers, [email protected], 416-343-3007; Vaco, Amanda Phillips, [email protected], 615-432-0508 Related Links www.lannickgroup.com TORONTO, Aug. 3, 2017 /CNW/ - LXRandCo, Inc. (TSX: LXR, LXR.WT) ("LXR" or the "Company") is pleased to announce that it will release its second quarter results for the three-month period ended June 30, 2017 on Monday, August 14, 2017, after markets close. The Company will hold a conference call to discuss the results the following day, Tuesday, August 15, 2017, at 8:30 a.m. (EST). Dial-in Information for Second Quarter 2017 Results Conference Call: The dial-in number to use for the conference call at 8:30 a.m. on Tuesday, August 15, 2017 is +1-647-427-7450, with Conference ID 65973172. The toll free number is +1-888-231-8191. The conference call will be archived on the Company's website at www.lxrco.com and will be available for replay at +1-416-849-0833 or toll free at 1-800-859-2056 with passcode 65973172. About LXR LXR is a rapidly growing, international omnichannel retailer of branded vintage luxury handbags and accessories. LXR sources and authenticates high quality preowned products and sells them through: a retail network of stores located in major department stores in Canada, the United States and Europe; wholesale operations primarily in the United States; and its own eCommerce website, www.lxrco.com. LXR offers products from iconic luxury brands such as Hermes, Louis Vuitton, Gucci and Chanel, among others, at attractive prices and seeks to appeal to the aspirational lifestyle needs of women of all ages. Please visit www.lxrco.com. SOURCE LXRandCo, Inc. For further information: Jeremy Stepak, Interim Chief Financial Officer, LXRandCo, Inc., +1 (416) 301-1333 - Continued Improvements to Operating Performance, Cost Structure and Balance Sheet - TSX Symbol: SQP MISSISSAUGA, ON, Aug. 2, 2017 /CNW/ - Strongco Corporation (TSX: SQP) today reported financial results for the second quarter ended June 30, 2017. Financial Summary Continuing Operations ($ millions except percentages and per share amounts) Period Ended June 30 Three Months Six Months 2017 2016 2017 2016 Revenues 95.9 102.2 179.1 193.4 Operating Income (Loss) Before Restructuring Costs 0.7 (4.5) 1.5 (2.5) Pretax Loss (0.5) (7.3) (1.6) (8.4) Net Loss (0.5) (5.4) (1.6) (6.2) Basic and Diluted Loss Per Share (0.04) (0.40) (0.12) (0.47) EBITDA* 3.4 (2.4) 7.8 2.9 Equipment Inventory 130.8 145.9 Equipment Notes Payable 119.5 128.3 "Slow signs of market recovery in Alberta and Quebec, combined with the strategic actions initiated in 2016 to refocus our core business, boosted overall operating performance in the quarter," said Robert Beutel, Executive Chairman of Strongco. "Against a backdrop of continuing challenges in our key markets, we remain encouraged by the tangible progress made to-date, including enhanced operational efficiencies, a significantly reduced cost structure and an improved balance sheet, in our ongoing efforts to ensure a more profitable and sustainable future for Strongco." Activities During the Quarter (Second Quarter 2017 and Second Quarter 2016) Operating Results Revenues of $95.9 million , down from $102.2 million . Excluding large, non-recurring crane sales in Quebec in the second quarter of 2016, revenues were higher than the prior year by 7%, with higher revenues in Alberta and Quebec . Excluding large non-recurring crane sales in Quebec in the first half of 2016, revenues for the six months were up 6%, with higher revenues in Alberta and Quebec , and a 6% increase in product support revenues. , down from . Excluding large, non-recurring crane sales in in the second quarter of 2016, revenues were higher than the prior year by 7%, with higher revenues in and . Excluding large non-recurring crane sales in in the first half of 2016, revenues for the six months were up 6%, with higher revenues in and , and a 6% increase in product support revenues. Gross profit of $15.0 million (15.7% of revenues), compared to $12.5 million (12.2% of revenues). For the six months, gross profit of $30.6 million (17.1% of revenues), compared to $29.6 million (15.3% of revenues). (15.7% of revenues), compared to (12.2% of revenues). For the six months, gross profit of (17.1% of revenues), compared to (15.3% of revenues). Operating income, before restructuring costs, of $0.7 million , compared to a loss of $4.5 million . For the six months, operating income before restructuring costs of $1.5 million , compared to an operating loss of $2.5 million . , compared to a loss of . For the six months, operating income before restructuring costs of , compared to an operating loss of . EBITDA of $3.4 million , compared to a loss of $2.4 million . For the six months, EBITDA of $7.8 million , compared to $2.9 million . , compared to a loss of . For the six months, EBITDA of , compared to . Interest expense of $1.1 million , down from $1.5 million . For the six months, interest expense of $2.4 million , down from $3.0 million . , down from . For the six months, interest expense of , down from . Pretax loss of $0.5 million , compared to $7.3 million . For the six months, pretax loss of $1.6 million , compared to $8.4 million . , compared to . For the six months, pretax loss of , compared to . Net loss from continuing operations of $0.5 million (loss of $0.04 per share), compared to net loss from continuing operations of $5.4 million (loss of $0.41 per share). For the six months, net loss from continuing operations of $1.6 million (loss of $0.12 per share), compared to a net loss from continuing operations of $6.2 million (loss of $0.47 per share). Balance Sheet Improvement Equipment inventory from continuing operations of $130.8 million , up from $129.2 million at December 31, 2016 and down from $145.9 million at June 30, 2016 . , up from at and down from at . Equipment notes payable from continuing operations of $119.5 million , up from $101.2 million at December 31, 2016 and down from $128.3 million at June 30, 2016 . Quarterly Results Materials The complete second quarter 2017 MD&A and Unaudited Interim Condensed Consolidated Financial Statements are available on our website at www.strongco.com/en/investor-relations/financial-reports/. Quarterly Conference Call Details Strongco will hold a conference call on Friday, August 4, 2017 at 10:00am ET to discuss second quarter results. Analysts and investors can participate by dialing 1-800-319-4610 or +1-604-638-5340 outside of Canada and the USA. Following management's introductory remarks, a question and answer session will take place for analysts and institutional investors. An archived recording will be available to listeners following the call until midnight on September 4, 2017. To access it, dial 1-855-669-9658 or +1-604-674-8052 outside of Canada and USA and enter passcode 1605#. About Strongco Corporation Strongco Corporation is a major multiline mobile equipment dealer with operations across Canada. Strongco sells, rents and services equipment used in diverse sectors such as construction, infrastructure, mining, oil and gas, utilities, municipalities, waste management and forestry. The Company has approximately 500 employees serving customers from 26 branches in Canada. Strongco represents leading equipment manufacturers with globally recognized brands, including Volvo Construction Equipment, Case Construction, Manitowoc Crane, including National and Grove, Terex Cedarapids, Terex Trucks, Fassi, Sennebogen, Konecranes and SDLG. Strongco is listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange under the symbol SQP. Forward-Looking Statements This news release contains forward-looking statements that involve assumptions and estimates that may not be realized and other risks and uncertainties. These statements relate to future events or future performance and reflect management's current expectations and assumptions which are based on information currently available to the Company's management. The forward-looking statements include but are not limited to: (i) the ability of the Company to meet contractual obligations through cash flow generated from operations, (ii) the expectation that customer support revenues will grow following the warranty period on new machine sales and (iii) the outlook for 2017. There is significant risk that forward-looking statements will not prove to be accurate. These statements are based on a number of assumptions, including, but not limited to, continued demand for Strongco's products and services. A number of factors could cause actual events, performance or results to differ materially from the events, performance and results discussed in the forward looking statements. The inclusion of this information should not be regarded as a representation of the Company or any other person that the anticipated results will be achieved and investors are cautioned not to place undue reliance on such information. These forward-looking statements are made as of the date of this MD&A, or as otherwise stated, and the Company does not assume any obligation to update or revise them to reflect new events or circumstances. Additional information, including the Company's Annual Information Form, may be found on SEDAR at www.sedar.com. Footnotes * "EBITDA" refers to earnings from continuing operations before interest, income taxes, amortization of capital assets, amortization of equipment inventory on rent, amortization of rental fleet, and impairment and amortization of intangible asset. EBITDA is presented as a measure used by many investors to compare issuers on the basis of ability to generate cash flow from operations. EBITDA is not a measure of financial performance or earnings recognized under International Financial Reporting Standards ("IFRS") and therefore has no standardized meaning prescribed by IFRS and may not be comparable to similar terms and measures presented by other similar issuers. The Company's management believes that EBITDA is an important supplemental measure in evaluating the Company's performance and in determining whether to invest in Shares. Readers of this information are cautioned that EBITDA should not be construed as an alternative to net income or loss determined in accordance with IFRS as an indicator of the Company's performance or to cash flows from operating, investing and financing activities as a measure of the Company's liquidity and cash flows. SOURCE Strongco Corporation For further information: J. David Wood, Vice-President and Chief Financial Officer, 905-670-5100, [email protected], strongco.com Related Links http://www.strongco.com TORONTO, Aug. 3, 2017 /CNW/ - TMX Group has donated $15,000 to the Red Cross in support of the British Columbia fire appeal, adding to the relief efforts underway and helping those who have been impacted by wildfires across the province. "Our thoughts are with all of the people affected by the fires in British Columbia and acknowledge the tireless efforts of firefighters and rescue crews as they work to support and protect families, businesses and communities," said TMX Group CEO Lou Eccleston. "TMX Group encourages all Canadians to donate to charitable organizations who are actively providing assistance." The Canadian Red Cross is accepting donations online or by telephone at 1-800-418-1111 (toll-free), or in person at any Red Cross location. About TMX Group (TSX: X) TMX Group's key subsidiaries operate cash and derivative markets and clearinghouses for multiple asset classes including equities, fixed income and energy. Toronto Stock Exchange, TSX Venture Exchange, TSX Alpha Exchange, The Canadian Depository for Securities, Montreal Exchange, Canadian Derivatives Clearing Corporation, NGX, Shorcan, Shorcan Energy Brokers, AgriClear and other TMX Group companies provide listing markets, trading markets, clearing facilities, depository services, data products and other services to the global financial community. TMX Group is headquartered in Toronto and operates offices across Canada (Montreal, Calgary and Vancouver), in key U.S. markets (New York, Houston) as well as in London, Beijing and Singapore. For more information about TMX Group, visit our website at www.tmx.com. Follow TMX Group on Twitter: @TMXGroup. SOURCE Toronto Stock Exchange For further information: Shane Quinn, Senior Manager, Communications and Public Affairs, TMX Group, 416-947-4609, [email protected] Princeton Junction, N.J., Aug. 03, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The International Card Manufacturers Association (ICMA), a global trade association for card manufacturers, personalizers, issuers and suppliers, and the Secure Technology Alliance, a multi-industry association working to stimulate adoption of smart card technology and advanced payment technology, announced today they will co-locate their respective conferences for the third year in a row. This year the associations will also co-locate with the U.S. Payments Forum All Members Meeting. The 2018 ICMA Card Manufacturing & Personalization EXPO, Secure Technology Alliance Payments Summit and the U.S. Payments Forum All Member Meeting will be held March 26-29 at the Omni Orlando Resort at ChampionsGate in Florida. The events will include a combined expo and separate educational tracks on card manufacturing/personalization trends and emerging payment applications/new technologies for mobile and transportation payments. ICMA and Secure Technology Alliance will also host separate networking events for attendees and organization members. Card technologies continue to innovate the industry, and we look forward to sharing the latest education, best practices and networking opportunities for our members, alongside our colleagues from Secure Technology Alliance, at the 2018 EXPO in Orlando, said Jeffrey Barnhart, founder and executive director of ICMA. Barnhart continued, As always, attendees will be invited to educate, learn and network while gaining valuable insight on card manufacturing and issuing trends and new technologies in security and payments, as well as market forecasts. Sponsorship and exhibiting opportunities are now available for the 2018 co-located events. For more information, visit icmaexpo.com. ### About ICMA For nearly 30 years, ICMA has been a nonprofit association of card manufacturers, personalizers, suppliers and related industry participants. With 225 members globally, ICMA acts as a resource for industry issues, including the production, technology, application, security and environmental issues of cards. More information is available at icma.com. Attachments: A photo accompanying this announcement is available at http://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/4c434f99-2229-4ed7-83cb-3c35a55b0852 Energy interests play a large role in boosting the states economy, a new study released Wednesday from the Connecticut Petroleum Council says. The study, conducted by PricewaterhouseCoopers, found that the U.S. natural gas and oil industry supported 54,500 jobs in the state during 2015 and contributed $7.25 billion to the states economy. Connecticut Petroleum Council Executive Director Steve Guveyan said the states heating oil and propane dealers, terminal operators, natural gas utilities, power generators have provided thousands of good-paying, year-round jobs in Connecticut, Those companies and their employees are the backbone of our local economies and provide tremendous service, especially on the hottest and coldest days of the year, Guveyan said in a statement. There are also many behind-the-scenes suppliers located in Connecticut that add to our jobs count and enhance our energy security. Economic activity involving the oil and natural gas industry in Connecticut supports a wide variety of jobs, from petroleum engineers and environmental experts to truck drivers, caterers and contractors. Of 54,500 Connecticut jobs supported by the industry, 20,000 are in the service industry, according to the study. The industrys economic activity in Connecticut yields $4.4 billion in wages for state residents, according to the study. Oil and natural gas companies have a $7.3 billion economic impact on the state. Because Connecticut is not an oil- or natural gas-producing state, the numbers contained in the new study dont represent the industrys direct impact on the states economy, said Donald Klepper-Smith, chief economist and director of research for New Haven-based DataCore Partners. They are using multipliers that speak to the indirect effects of the industry, Klepper-Smith said. But there is no question that the industry is a significant part of the economy that cant be ignored. The oil and natural gas industry supported 10 million workers nationwide in 2015, according to data from the American Petroleum Institute, which worked with PricewaterhouseCoopers in creating the study. The study points out that according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average annual wage paid by the natural gas and oil industry around the country in 2016, excluding retail station jobs, was $101,181. That is nearly 90 percent more than the national average for all jobs viewed collectively, according to the federal agency. Jack Gerard, president and chief executive officer of API, said data from the study reflects how natural gas and oil touches virtually every facet of our life from heating our homes and fueling transportation to life-saving medical devices and cosmetics at the drug store. The Connecticut Petroleum Council is a division of API, which represents all segments of Americas oil and natural gas business. Call Luther Turmelle at 203-680-9388. BRANFORD >> A major regional provider of orthotic and prosthetic devices has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, the companys president and chief executive officer confirmed Monday. New England Orthotic and Prosthetic Systems, which has its corporate offices at 15 Commercial St., sought protection in mid-July from its creditors under Chapter 11. Under federal bankruptcy laws, Chapter 11 allows a company to keep operating while its owners seek to restructure their debt. The company has 21 locations in Connecticut and three other states. Twelve of the locations are in Connecticut, including one in New Haven. David Mahler, president and chief executive officer of New England Orthotic and Prosthetic Systems, said the companys senior debt has been acquired by the owner of a Long Island, New York-based orthotic and prosthetic retailer that he did not identify. Mahler said the individual who purchased the senior debt os expecting to merge his company with New England Orthotic and Prosthetic Systems by the end of the year. Senior debt is prioritized debt that gets paid before unsecured creditors receive their money. Mahler said New England Orthotic and Prosthetic Systems was forced to file for bankruptcy protection because the private equity firm that recapitalized the business in May 2012, Buffalo, New York-based Summer Street Capital Partners, over-extended us. That, along with some regulatory changes governing the industry, led us to make the Chapter 11 filing, Mahler said. According to the Chapter 11 filing, New England Orthotic and Prosthetic Systems has fewer than 50 creditors. The company has a book value of $19.3 million, including $11.8 million of intangible assets and liabilities of approximately $17.3 million. Adam D. Stein-Sapir, a portfolio manager with Pioneer Funding Group and an expert in bankruptcy filings, said the purchase of one companys senior debt by another company, is what is known in some financial circles as a loan to own. Pioneer Funding Group LLC is a New York City-based investment firm that provides creditors with cash for their Chapter 11 and 7 bankruptcy claims. But Stein-Sapir said the company has no involvement in this particular bankruptcy proceeding. Normally, he said, a bankruptcy filing could end up with the company that sought the protection from creditors being auctioned off. In some case, the winning bidder gets a discount on what the debtor companys real value is, according to Stein-Sapir. Its an interesting strategy, he said when told of Mahlers explanation about how New England Orthotic and Prosthetic Systems is expected to emerge from Chapter 11. Call Luther Turmelle at 203-680-9388. Courtesy of CTN MERIDEN >> Gov. Dannel P. Malloy is not afraid to impose his idea of fair funding when it comes to distributing education aid to cities and towns, but not everyone is going to appreciate it. Malloy, who was in Meriden Tuesday to unveil the latest SAT scores, is running the state through an executive order. Legislative leaders have yet to send him a two-year budget as they struggle to close a $5.1 billion budget deficit. Somewhere between Democrats euphoria and Republicans doom, lies the lasting consequences of the General Assembly narrowly adopting a new agreement with state labor unions. Gov. Dannel P. Malloy negotiated concessions and deals with the State Employees Bargaining Agent Coalition, which most individual labor unions approved and the Democrat-majority House of Representatives passed 78-72 last week. On Monday, Lt. Gov. Nancy Wyman broke the 18-18 tie along party lines in the Senate. It is weak praise to say at least the legislature voted on the contract; in other years they have just let agreements become policy. Connecticut is in a bind. The $1.57 billion in concessions will go far to close the $5.1 billion gap in the two-year budget, though obviously it will take a lot more belt tightening to reach a balanced budget without raising taxes. State employees agreed to wage freezes for three years, three furlough days, higher health insurance co-payments and an increase in pension contributions from 2 percent to 4 percent, still well below the national average of more than 6 percent. Still, these concessions from state workers are significant. Future employees will have a hybrid retirement plan that includes a defined pension contribution, as does most private industry now. But no union would give up benefits without something in return and what they got was a guarantee of no layoffs for four years and contracts extended another five years, from 2022 to 2027. This is the thorn because it will affect options for years to come. Republicans call it kicking the can down the road. All should remember when then-Gov. John Rowland negotiated a contract in 1997 that locked in for 20 years and was extended by the Malloy administration in 2011. Critics, such as Senate Republican President Len Fasano, charge the deal will hamstring the state for a decade with no ability to streamline government in challenging financial times. Democrats, following Malloys script, tout the agreement will save the state about $24 billion over the next 20 years. At this point in the summer, though, options came down to few. If the contract with concessions had not passed, then the entire process of crafting the states finances would have been thrown into further chaos. Under Malloys executive order to keep the state running, necessitated by the legislatures failure to adopt a budget by the end of June, some services have been curtailed and the situation would only get worse when municipalities would feel the burn in September. The time to deal with reforming state employee benefits and pensions was months ago not now that the road has led to the edge of the cliff. Republicans offered a balanced budget at the end of April, and rejiggered it twice when income projections lagged. Democrats would consider none of it, and came up with only thin, unvetted proposals. As legislators finally buckle down and put together a budget, it should be done with both parties contributing ideas. And it needs to be done now. Life is cheap in Guatemala, a country inured to violence by 30 years of civil war that ended with a blanket amnesty leaving no one accountable for the deaths of 200,000 mostly unarmed civilians. This was the Guatemala 19-year-old Nury Chavarria fled in 1993, along with her father and brother. While they were granted asylum, however, Nury was not, for reasons that arent clear. She stayed here regardless, for reasons that are. Peacetime in Guatemala has proven a contradiction in terms. Fueled by a surfeit of weapons and a society accustomed to using them, the postwar violence has continued apace. Last year saw on average 101 murders a week. Virtually all have gone unpunished. When the war ended in 1996, the death squads, police, and former military officers transitioned to the drug trade, Guatemala being midway between South American supply and U.S. demand. Arms smuggling, human trafficking, extortion, and kidnapping for ransom filled in the gaps. Youth gangs proliferated. Child sex tourism, kiddie porn, and sale of children became common. So did teen pregnancy. One in three girls gives birth before the age of 18, most often as a byproduct of rape. Women are being murdered at rates on a par with those of the wars bloodiest years. This is the Guatemala Nury Chavarria was to be sent to after 24 years in America, her appeals to remain in Norwalk with her four children, U.S. citizens all, rejected by Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Our tax dollars and President Donald Trumps immigration policies at work. As the sole supporter of four kids between 21 and 9, with a stable job as a housekeeper and no criminal record, Nury was a low priority for deportation under the Obama administration, which granted her multiple stays for humanitarian reasons. She was expecting another stay last month when she checked in with ICE in Hartford. Instead, she was fitted with an ankle GPS bracelet and told she needed a one-way ticket back. Her departure date was July 20, but she instead sought temporary sanctuary in a New Haven church. Because she had neither the means to buy plane tickets to Guatemala for her children nor a means to support them once there, Nury would have been forced to leave them behind. Her eldest, 21-year-old Elvin, who has cerebral palsy and learning problems, wouldnt be able to care for himself; as minors, 9-year-old Hayley and 15-year-old Kevin would become wards of the state of Connecticut. The burden of keeping her here is far less than sending her back, says her lawyer, Glenn Formica, who points out that her dilemma is common for many immigrant mothers. If this country cant show mercy to immigrant mothers, we have lost all sense of our own humanity. Nury would have to wait a federally mandated 10 years before she could return to the U.S. By that time, her youngest child would be 19, the same age as her mother when she fled her war-torn country in the hope of a better life. Like the families it destroys, U.S. immigration policy is broken, its effect on children like Nurys both heartless and heartbreaking. A nation that shatters innocent lives and leaves no room for mercy is not the America we know. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate MILFORD >> On the night Hollywood released the horror movie, Annabelle, a sell-out audience at Lauralton Hall was spellbound, hearing about the real Annabelle a demonic doll from paranormal investigator Lorraine Warren, who cracked the real-life case, along with her late husband, Ed Warren. The real Annabelle doll lives in a locked box at Warrens Occult Museum at her Monroe home. REVIEW: 2019 'Annabelle' is smart, scary The doll in the movie is a frightening looking porcelain doll in a childs image, with long hair and the real Annabelle the one in Warrens museum is a plain-looking classic Raggedy Ann doll with red yarn for hair. But the Raggedy Ann at the Warrens Museum is no ordinary doll. According to the Warrens, it is inhabited by an inhuman spirit, and there is a warning on the glass case not to touch. More Lifestyle Milford Ghost Camp introduces kids to the supernatural One museum-goer who ignored the warnings and taunted the doll, died in a motorcycle crash shortly after being told to leave the museum. The movie is a prequel to The Conjuring, based on the Warrens real-life case involving the doll. The couple had a lot of input in the first movie, but Annabelle, is fabricated. Warren, who mostly along with her late husband, has investigated more than 10,000 cases of paranormal activity, presented the talk and slide show of cases at the Catholic girls high school with the help of her son-in-law Tony Spera, also a paranormal investigator. Warren, now 87, soft spoken and sweet to all those who engaged her in conversation at a meet and greet, said presenting at Lauralton was like going home, because she attended the school in the late 1930s, but had to leave because of illness. Warren said her presentations are in extra demand during September and October because fascination with the subject is heightened during, Hallows Eve, as she calls it. A Roman Catholic, Warren now and in the early career with her husband, often works with priests and other clergy because they rely on blessings and sometimes exorcism to resolve a case. She said the power of faith has gotten her out of many scary situations because its often about fighting the demonic with goodness. Holy water is a tool. Warren said her Catholic faith is both her protection and her drive. Warren began by telling the audience that ever since the age of 7 or 8 she saw lights or auras around people, but was afraid to tell her parents, for fear they would think she was, crazy. She spent many years praying about it because, I didnt want to be different, she said. Warren recalled a story from her Lauralton days. She had a favorite teacher, a nun who taught French, and once told her, referring to her aura, Your lights are brighter than Mother Superiors. Warren said she was told to go to the chapel and pray about it, and it will go away. Her Lauralton audience, many with no connection to the school, but there as Warren fans, roared with laughter. At first she didnt even tell Ed Warren, whom she met at 16 about her abilities. But later he would tell her, You are different. Ed, a self-taught demonologist an interest he developed after growing up in a house he said was haunted and Lorraine, would pool their talents and go on to become world-famous paranormal investigators. Her career has spanned 65 years. The Warrens have done jobs throughout the United States and in faraway places that Japan, England, Scotland, France, Australia. The couple charged only travel expenses nothing for the actual investigating but built an empire on books, movie work and lectures about their cases. In 1952, Ed Warren founded the New England Society for Psychic Research. Their investigations often included other professionals, including nurses, doctors, police officers, researchers. Some of their famous cases besides Amityville and Annabelle include: the Demon murder; Werewolf; Smurl family; The Perrons; Stepney Cemetery; Borley Church; Union Cemetery; The Haunting in Connecticut. Warren said most unwanted spirits enter through vehicles such as Ouija boards, Tarot Cards and psychics, and urged the audience to keep their kids away from such things. Spera said seven of their 10 cases involves someone with a Ouija board asking, Is there a spirit here? If you go into a very happy home, very seldom, bad things will be found, Warren said. She and Spera continued the work after Eds death in 2006 and are currently working on a haunting case in Stratford, she said. Every town in Connecticut has paranormal activity, Warren said, noting a recent exorcism-like event on a New Haven man, 31. Going into haunting experiences, there were some bad ones, scary ones. My faith was always my protection, she said. She said that some five years ago a retiring priest moved into an apartment on her grounds, and not only does he help on jobs, but, We have mass every day in our house, she said, adding, Its beautiful how God works. The presentation Friday, which drew lots of audience oohs and ahhs, included a slide show of findings on cases such as images of people from the beyond or ghost-like forms appearing in photographs. Spera spent part of the talk on the eery, real life Annabelle story and emphasized that of all the items in the familys Occult Museum, that doll is what Id be most frightened of. Curators believe the doll has the power to kill, according to a film on the Annabelle case. Noting the case of the motorcyclist who died after leaving the museum, Spera said, Never take things like this lightly, thinking its a joke. According to a clip Spera showed, the real-life Annabelle story began in 1970 when a 28-year-old nurse received the Raggedy Ann doll as a birthday gift from her mom. She put the rag doll on her bed and began to notice it changing positions. A leg would be crossed, or the doll would be lying on its side. Then the girl and her roommate began to find parchment paper on the floor with written messages, such as, Help me, help us. They had no parchment paper in the house. The doll began appearing in different rooms and at one point appeared to be leaking blood. Then, one day, a male friend was taking a nap and woke up with the doll staring at him, as he felt like he was being strangled. There were deep scratch wounds on his upper body. The girls at first thought maybe an intruder was moving the doll around and leaving notes. When they ruled that out, according to the Occult Museum website, Not knowing where to turn they contacted a medium and a seance was held. The girls were introduced to the spirit of Annabelle Higgins, said to be a young girl that resided on the property before the apartments were built and died there at age 7. According to the website, the spirit related to the medium that she felt comfort with the two roommates in the apartment and wanted to stay with them and be loved. The roommates gave Annabelle permission to inhabit the doll, but things got worse. The Warrens took an interest in the case and contacted the women. They came to the immediate conclusion that the doll itself was not in fact possessed but manipulated by an inhuman presence, according to the Warrens website, which goes on to say, Truly, the spirit was not looking to stay attached to the doll, it was looking to possess a human host. Spera said the Warrens took the doll and Ed Warren told his wife they should avoid the highway because he was going to be a rough ride home. He was right. At some point he had to sprinkle the Annabelle doll with Holy water to calm it down. The movie Annabelle doesnt resemble the real-life story. In the movie, the doll is owned by a young couple, given to the woman for her doll collection. As the woman nears her pregnancy due date, a pair of Satanic cultists break in, stab the pregnant woman in the belly, and end up dead in their home. One of the cultists is named Annabelle Higgins, and some of her blood lands on the doll. Thats when the doll starts doing over-the-top scary things. Spera and Warren said they dont really care that the producers of Annabelle fabricated the story for the movie because it still serves the purpose of warning the public about demons. Eeveryone in the audience who believes in God must also believe theres a Devil, Spera said. Ghosts, devils, demons are real. He said while most people are focused on the bad stuff, regarding ghosts, there are beautiful stories, as well, such as the soldier who appeared to visit a loved one. Spera said its a ghost if it is a stranger appears and an apparition if you recognize the person. The key is dont open any doors, Spera said. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate RIDGEFIELDFor most people, spending a summer diving with sharks would be a once-in-a-lifetime experience if that. But for 19-year-old Alexandra DiGiacomo, who spent part of the summer in South Africas Mossel Bay, it was just her latest adventure. DiGiacomo, a Ridgefield High School graduate, was taking part in an internship with a South African marine and terrestrial research company, Oceans Research. Each day, she gathered data for the research projects of Ph.D. students and scientists, all with the goal of improving the companys marine resource management and conservation. And although the Duke University student said her time on Mossel Bay, some of which was spent in the water with sharks no cage was the most intense experience yet, it wasnt her first time researching marine life. As a child, I was always intrigued by the underwater world, DiGiacomo said by email from Britain, where she is taking a course at Oxford. Having spent summers on the east end of Long Island, I developed a tremendous love for the water. DiGiacomo said she immersed herself in ocean life after earning her dive certification when she was 15, after which she began traveling around the world each summer to learn more about the oceans animals. After her freshman year of high school, DiGiacomo studied marine conservation in Belize with the National Geographic Student Expeditions. After her sophomore year, she spent a month in Fiji, where she took a course on shark biology and studied bull sharks in their natural habitats. The next summer, she spent several weeks living on a catamaran in the British Virgin Islands to become certified as a rescue diver, and then volunteered with the Shinnecock Bay Restoration Program on Long Island. And before heading to study marine biology at Duke University, DiGiacomo took a summer trip to Greece, where she volunteered tracking and protecting sea turtles. Ive been inspired to share my respect for sharks and reveal the importance of keeping our oceans healthy, DiGiacomo said. In her latest adventure, DiGiacomo helped the Oceans Research team understand the white shark population in the bay. The team would use a chum slick and bait of sardines and seawater to attract sharks to the surface before snapping pictures of their dorsal fins, which DiGiacomo said acts as a fingerprint for the species. Dorsal fin photos are run through software that helps us to understand how many unique sharks are living in the bay, she said. Gopro videos are also taken to identify the sex and length of the shark. DiGiacomo said she is already planning to return to the bay, possibly as soon as next summer with a research grant from Duke to study the electroreceptive capabilities of the white sharks. She then hopes to continue volunteering at marine stations abroad after she graduates before eventually earning her Ph.D. in marine science, DiGiacomo added, and maybe working as a field specialist for Oceans Research. aquinn@newstimes.com NEW HAVEN >> After publicizing their hangover supplement this spring shortly before graduating from Yale University, Liam McClintock and Margaret Morse came face to face with their first real-world business lesson. A company wasnt too thrilled after seeing McClintocks and Morses name for their product. So the two received a cease-and-desist letter from an attorney. The original name had already been trademarked. The error gave McClintock pause. Were done, McClintock said, believing their nascent product targeting hangover causes would have to cease production. The two had already raised more than $45,000 in March and April through crowdfunding and moved almost 25,000 packets this year. After consulting with a lawyer, they were told they had to change their products name. Thats how Mentis was born. The two said the name had previously been suggested when their company was founded. We just scrambled and got lucky the packing hadnt gone into production yet, McClintock said. We were able to change the package. We worked to completely rebrand. Mentis comes from the Latin phrase compos mentis which translates to of sound mind, harkening back to their products aim. It was a great learning experience, Morse said. We were able to really improve the brand through this. With their name situation cleared, McClintock and Morse are shifting their focus on launching global sales for their product. The supplement works by combining ingredients that increase alcohol clearance and improve the livers ability to break down alcohols by-products. The supplement is available for sale on their website and is being manufactured in New York. The product had been made available at some local retailers in Greater New Haven, but McClintock said they found it was hard to get much exposure on shelves. It ended up hurting their margins. Were focusing on online sales, because thats whats best for us, McClintock said. Its now being sold exclusively online, a factor thats allowed them to tap into international markets. McClintock said theyre working on manufacturing at least 30,000 additional packets. This is exciting for us. Were seeing international expansion, McClintock said. Its not only led to shipping to Canada, the United Kingdom, France, Taiwan and Belgium. The sales are helping spark interest in distribution. McClintock said there are some regulatory hurdles the company will need to address, but those markets are promising. Some markets, like South Korea, show interest but can be difficult to enter. Theres a lot of demand out there, McClintock said. They love American products. They have the issues that we have with hangovers. The two have even reached out to other companies creating similar products. McClintock called them competition, but theres other readily available products he feels his company will need to challenge. The way I see it, its not a zero-sum game at all, McClintock said. Our real competitors are, like, Gatorade and coffee. They will also need to work on marketing their product so people are aware hangover supplements even exist, especially ones like Mentis that rely heavily on research. McClintock said about 2 percent of Americans know such supplements are available. Its one of the reasons the two decided to focus on online sales, where they think they will be better able to provide more information on its effectiveness. Much of this is due to lack of exposure to the product, Morse said Its changing consumer behavior to be aware of the positive effects of the product, Morse said. People havent been exposed to the product. Early reviews for the supplement have been largely positive, with referrals coming mostly by word of mouth. McClintock said hes only gotten one negative review so far, from a man who demanded his money back. Theyve also found most consumers have been a bit older, which McClintock said probably has something to do with the belief that hangovers get worse as a person ages. Your time becomes more precious, McClintock said. That was somewhat surprising, given the product was created and marketed primarily for young professionals who wanted to enjoy a night of drinking but be prepared to hit the ground running at the office the next day. College students, they tend to be less responsible; theyre not necessarily thinking about their (next) day, McClintock said. Reach Esteban L. Hernandez at 203-680-9901. NEW HAVEN >> Former University of New Haven President Lawrence DeNardis, while standing before about 3,000 people in Liverpool Cathedral receiving an honorary fellowship from Liverpool John Moores University last month, said he was thinking of his friendship of 35 years. It was one of the most exciting things Ive been a part of in a life where Ive been able to enjoy a number of different high points, said DeNardis, also a former member of the U.S. House of Representatives. DeNardis, a member of the Connecticut State Board of Regents for Higher Education, received the honorary fellowship, roughly equivalent to an honorary degree in America, for his role in forging a partnership between Southern Connecticut State University and LJMU. DeNardis friend, Sir Malcolm Thornton, currently chairman of LJMUs Board of Governors, paid a visit to Connecticut with that universitys vice-chancellor to seek partnership opportunities. Thornton and DeNardis first met in 1981 when DeNardis was a congressman and Thornton was a member of Parliament. They met during an interparliamentary exchange program between Americans and Britons. Several Brits came over and we were paired; we were considered to have similar interests, DeNardis said. The idea was the Brit would spend time with the American in Washington and at home in his district to get an idea of what it was like to be an American congressman, and we would go to England and do the same. Although DeNardis time as a U.S. congressman was brief, Thornton and DeNardis stayed in touch throughout the years. When Thornton ascended to his role at LJMU almost three years ago, he called DeNardis to consider a transatlantic partnership. DeNardis set up several meetings between the LJMU representatives and several CSCU schools. The first of those meetings was over breakfast at SCSU. I must say Southern prepared for it very well, DeNardis said. From those initial discussions, the two universities have two post-graduate degrees on offer: an MBA program and a masters in environmental science with a focus on coastal resiliency. Its time spent in both countries, with courses taken in both countries and the degree will be a joint degree between Southern and John Moores, DeNardis said. Two more joint degree programs are being discussed, he said, which he hopes will be ready for next year. DeNardis said, at first blush, a program centered on coastal resiliency may seem odd for a program uniting universities on two continents, but its a testament to the similarities between New Haven and Liverpool. (Liverpool) has certainly a working class tone to it in parts of the city, DeNardis said. However, theres no denying Liverpool is the historic port city of England, the place where in the 19th Century Irish immigrants fleeing the potato famine came because Liverpool had the big ships going to America and Canada and South America. Presented with two port cities with a history of openly embracing immigrants and some local industrial history, DeNardis said the partnership made sense. DeNardis said Thornton and he, the godfathers of the partnership, were also able to agree on developing a shared degree program on criminal justice between LJMU and the University of New Haven. Its not easy to establish a formal partnership between universities on different sides of the Atlantic. We have succeeded we have succeeded because of shared values, shared beliefs and because our academic staff, here and in America, have seized the opportunity to create new ways to work together, Thornton said in a statement issued to SCSU. Philadelphia, PA, Aug. 03, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Deacom, Inc., the developer of a single-system Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) solution, has successfully completed an ERP implementation for AMCO Proteins, a leading manufacturer in specialty proteins. By moving away from a module-based ERP and onto Deacoms single-system solution, AMCO has gained visibility and process control improvement throughout their entire business portfolio. The complexity of AMCOs business is made up of a number of factors: shared resources for three very different business units, implementation of new acquisitions, and the management of unique customer requirements. As the business grew, the bolt-on pieces of external software that made up their previous ERP were causing gaps in their operations and the technologys sustainability was diminishing. We needed to really grow the business, not maintain it, said Adam Cabot, CEO of AMCO Proteins. We werent interested in replacing our system with one that we would grow out of in a few years down the road, putting us in the same situation again. It was apparent that Deacoms single-system ERP would be faster, more efficient, and updates wouldnt negatively impact business continuity. During implementation, Deacom was able to work with AMCO to identify strategies for simplifying their specific business challenges. Since the ERP provider provides a guaranteed fixed-price implementation, AMCO understood the total cost of ERP ownership before committing to the solution. The manufacturer never encountered unexpected costs throughout the entire process. We were most impressed with the Deacom teams ability to go deep into the manufacturing process, continued Cabot. We werent dealing with bean counters. We were working and leaning on people who really understood the manufacturing process. Even though the manufacturing company has been live on DEACOM ERP for just a few months, they are already experiencing significant efficiencies within its operations. Now we have real-time data right at our fingertips, continued Cabot. We can instantly see what is being produced in shifts A, B, and C, and drill down into those details to identify inconsistencies and opportunities for improvement. The real-time information allows us to make faster and better decisions. The entire AMCO Proteins case study can be found on the Deacom blog. For more information about Deacom, visit www.deacom.com or call 1-877-4-DEACOM. ### About Deacom, Inc. Deacom, Inc. is the producer of DEACOM ERP, a scalable, single-system ERP solution specifically designed to streamline operations for manufacturers and distributors. As the artisans of ERP software, Deacom develops a cohesive solution without customization or bolt-ons to increase efficiency and decrease the total costs of ERP ownership. The companys headquarters is located in Chesterbrook, Pa. To learn more, visit www.deacom.com, follow on Twitter or call 1-877-4-DEACOM. Attachments: A photo accompanying this announcement is available at http://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/f997453d-e596-40c3-9bd3-4542b284f789 / Hamden police have obtained security camera footage of the vehicle believed to be driven by a man who exposed himself to a young girl July 15. According to police Capt. Ronald Smith, police learned a witness had observed the same type of motor vehicle described as a silver, two-door Honda Accord parked near the entrance of Legion Field in the moments prior to the incident on Mather Avenue. Journal Register Co. I commend the New Haven Register for its reporting of the Muslim boycott of prayers at the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem. The headline emphasizes that Israel is making concessions while the Muslim leaders are being intransigent in continuing the boycott despite those concessions. The story also points out that this site, Temple Mount, is the holiest place in the world to Jews, but only the third most important to Muslims. Thus, Temple Mount is to Jews as Mecca is to Muslims. I regret, however, the articles lack of precision. The installation of metal detectors was not what initially triggered the tensions. Muslim terrorist murders triggered the tensions: the murder of two Israeli policemen guarding the site, and the stabbing deaths of three members of an Israeli family. I cant understand how it was possible for the article to ignore these killings of Jews by the terrorists. DAVENPORT, Iowa, Aug. 03, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Today, Smithfield Foods Helping Hungry Homes initiative, a program focused on alleviating hunger and helping Americans become more food secure, joined forces with Fareway Food Stores to donate nearly 40,000 pounds of protein to River Bend Foodbank. The donation, equivalent to nearly 16,000 servings, will help families fight hunger across Quad Cities, a region where one in eight individuals are food insecure. A photo accompanying this announcement is available at http://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/9e7a6a11-8f6a-47e0-a330-5985b2463315 Protein is the most needed food for the nearly 120,000 people who dont have enough to eat in eastern Iowa and western Illinois, said Michael Miller, executive director of the River Bend Foodbank. As such, the Helping Hungry Homes initiative provides a significant portion of the most needed food there is. We are so thankful to everyone associated with Smithfield Foods for providing a gift that will be cherished by those in need. Smithfield and Fareway representatives presented the donation to River Bend Foodbank at the event this morning. Members of all three organizations discussed food insecurity in the local community and the significance of this donation in helping the thousands of individuals who face hunger each day in the food banks service area. We appreciate the vendor partnership with Smithfield, and are proud to aid the effort to alleviate hunger, said Mike Block, Davenport market manager for Fareway. At Fareway, we look for opportunities to reinvest in the communities we serve, and this donation of protein will go a long way in helping families in Davenport become more food secure. Smithfields donation to River Bend Foodbank was a part of the Helping Hungry Homes 2017 nationwide donation tour. Throughout the annual tour, Smithfield will provide large-scale protein donations to nearly 60 food banks across the country. This donation adds to the more than 65 million servings of protein donated since 2011. Today, Smithfield is proud to provide nutritious, high-quality protein to River Bend Foodbank, said Dennis Pittman, senior director of hunger relief for Smithfield Foods. As a global food company, we understand the importance of proper nutrition and value our responsibility to raise awareness of and address hunger throughout our country. Following todays event, Helping Hungry Homes will visit Watkins Glen, NY Friday, Aug. 4. For more information about Helping Hungry Homes and a list of upcoming donation events, visit helpinghungryhomes.com. About Smithfield Foods Smithfield Foods is a $15 billion global food company and the world's largest pork processor and hog producer. In the United States, the company is also the leader in numerous packaged meats categories with popular brands including Smithfield, Eckrich, Nathan's Famous, Farmland, Armour, John Morrell, Cook's, Kretschmar, Gwaltney, Curly's, Margherita, Carando, Healthy Ones, Krakus, Morliny and Berlinki. Smithfield Foods is committed to providing good food in a responsible way and maintains robust animal care, community involvement, employee safety, environmental and food safety and quality programs. For more information, visit www.smithfieldfoods.com. About River Bend Foodbank The Foodbank is the largest hunger relief organization in the Quad Cities and surrounding communities, having distributed over 11 million meals in 2016 to hungry people in eastern Iowa and western Illinois. Our mission is to lead the community-wide effort to end hunger in Iowa and Illinois. We do this through food distribution in partnership with our 300 agencies as well as our Mobile Pantries, Senior Pantries, and Backpack Program. The best and easiest way to help is to go online: visit us at riverbendfoodbank.org . About Fareway Food Stores Fareway Stores, Inc. is a Midwest grocery company currently operating 117 store locations in Iowa, Illinois, Minnesota, Nebraska, and South Dakota. Fareway holds family values in the highest regard, demonstrating integrity, fairness and honesty in relationships with customers, employees, vendors, and suppliers. Visit Fareway.com for more information. The Associated Press item titled Muslims keep up shrine boycott despite concessions misstates the situation in the first sentence. Recent tensions on the Temple Mount (known to Muslims as the Haram esh-Sharif, the site of the Al-Aqsa Mosque), began as the result of attacks on Israeli police officers near the Lions Gate to the Old City of Jerusalem on July 14. Three Arab Israelis opened fire on Israeli police officers near the Lions Gate before fleeing back into the compound which houses the Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock. Since the attackers took refuge in the Noble Sanctuary, Israel responded by installing metal detectors at the various entrances to the Temple Mount/Haram esh-Sharif. Since the attacks utilized weapons, installing metal detectors seems like a reasonable response in order to avoid future such attacks. In order to put this in perspective, please note that, as a result of a series of homicidal suicide bombings occurring all over Israel in 2000 and thereafter, Israelis generally pass through metal detectors and have their bags searched before entering any public space or building. There are also metal detectors in place in the entrances to other Muslim holy places in Mecca and Medina. It's never too early to start thinking about how you're going to feed your baby. But you do not have to make up your mind until your baby is born. Some of the benefits of breastfeeding are: your breast milk is perfectly designed for your baby breast milk protects your baby from infections and diseases breastfeeding provides health benefits for you breast milk is available for your baby whenever your baby needs it breastfeeding can build a strong emotional bond between you and your baby Formula milk does not provide the same protection from illness and does not give you any health benefits. Health benefits of breastfeeding for your baby Breastfeeding has long-term benefits for your baby, lasting right into adulthood. Any amount of breast milk has a positive effect. The longer you breastfeed, the longer the protection lasts and the greater the benefits. Breastfeeding can help to reduce your baby's risk of: infections, with fewer visits to hospital as a result diarrhoea and vomiting, with fewer visits to hospital as a result sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) obesity cardiovascular disease in adulthood Some studies have also found that breastfeeding for at least 6 months may reduce your baby's chance of getting childhood leukaemia. But more research is needed into this. Giving nothing but breast milk is recommended for about the first 6 months (26 weeks) of your baby's life. After that, giving your baby breast milk alongside solid foods for as long as you and your baby want will help them grow and develop healthily. Breast milk adapts as your baby grows to meet your baby's changing needs. Health benefits of breastfeeding for you Breastfeeding and making breast milk also has health benefits for you. The more you breastfeed, the greater the benefits. Breastfeeding lowers your risk of: breast cancer ovarian cancer osteoporosis (weak bones) cardiovascular disease obesity Got a breastfeeding question? Sign in to Facebook and message the Start4Life Breastfeeding Friend chatbot for fast, friendly, trusted NHS advice anytime, day or night. ATLANTA - August 3, 2017 - Acuity Brands, Inc. (NYSE: AYI) today announced that Vernon J. Nagel, Chairman, President, and Chief Executive Officer of Acuity Brands, will present at the 37th Annual Canaccord Genuity Growth Conference in Boston, Massachusetts, on Thursday, August 10, 2017. The presentation is scheduled to begin at 9:30 a.m. Eastern Time. A live Webcast of the event will be accessible by clicking on the following link http://wsw.com/webcast/canaccord26/ayi. This event will also be accessible at the Company's website www.acuitybrands.com. A replay of this webcast will also be available on the company's website for 90 days following the event. About Acuity Brands Acuity Brands, Inc. (NYSE: AYI) is the North American market leader and one of the world's leading providers of lighting and building management solutions. With fiscal year 2016 net sales of $3.3 billion, Acuity Brands currently employs approximately 12,000 associates and is headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia with operations throughout North America, and in Europe and Asia. The Company's products and solutions are sold under various brands, including Lithonia Lighting, Holophane, Peerless, Gotham, Mark Architectural Lighting(TM), Winona Lighting, Juno, Indy(TM), Aculux, Healthcare Lighting, Hydrel, American Electric Lighting, Carandini, Antique Street Lamps(TM), Sunoptics, Distech Controls, Acuity Controls(TM), nLight, ROAM, Sensor Switch and Atrius(TM). Visit us www.acuitybrands.com. # # # Company Contact: Dan Smith Acuity Brands, Inc. (404) 853-1423 Tochukwu Ezukanma As the quit notice issued by the Coalition of Arewa Youths also called the 'Kaduna Declaration' heats up the polity, a South-eastern has dropped a compelling piece on the issue. A one-time British Prime Minister, William Gladstone, called the Constitution of the United States of America (USA) the most wonderful work ever struck off at a given time by the brain and purpose of man. And America was conceived in such brave hope and largeness of ideas. The ideals that underpinned the nation were encapsulated in her creed: We hold this fact self-evident, that all men are created equal. It was an article of faith both revolutionary and transcendental by the standards of the time, the 18th century. Ironically, America evolved one of the most entrenched and intractable racism in human history; an ingrained and perverse racism that once informed a US Supreme Court ruling that Blacks in America have no right which any White man was bound to respect. If a country governed by an unbeatable Constitution and inspired by pious and pioneering idealism produced such racism that so thoroughly disfranchised a section of her citizenry, it is then self-evident that no country, political arrangement or human institution can be perfect. If countries with all the essentials of nationhood have daunting and lingering problems, what then is expected of Nigeria, a farrago of peoples, cultures and religions roped together purposely in furtherance of British colonialism? At inception, Nigeria lacked the basic elements of nationhood: unifying theme, rallying points, article of faith, etc. The closest thing to a Nigerian creed was a refrain in our now discarded national anthem: Though tribes and tongues may differ, in brotherhood we stand. It was written by an English lady. The denizen made reference to a brotherhood that was, for the most part, non-existent. What brotherhood - kin, linguistic, or religious - was she referring to? For, initially, none of these existed in any substantial form in the unwieldy artificial sovereignty. Despite these limitations, the different peoples of Nigeria, with varying degrees of commitment, resolved to keep Nigeria united. But then, it was to be a union of understandable delicateness; requiring cautious and subtle handling. Without rallying points, such as a nationally-spoken language and common history, the complex task of forging a nation out of Nigeria overwhelmed our leaders. They tried very hard, but did not have much success; they failed to give Nigerians a unified sense of purpose. Without an overarching heritage and a unified sense of purpose, the new country was beset with many problems, especially, tribalism, and its attendant ethnic rivalry, ethnic hegemony, ethnic strife, fear of real and supposed victimisation, etc. Quite naturally, at different points, different ethnic and regional groups felt aggrieved and, invariably, sought justice and/or redress for their grievances. Refreshingly, Nigerian history has shown that offended groups in Nigeria that patiently sought redress usually attain the object of their quest. For example, the peoples of the Niger Delta were understandably pained. In extracting the oil, that keeps Nigeria financially afloat, the oil companies pollute the land and waterways. This created serious health hazards, and made it impossible for the people, traditionally, farmers and fishermen, to farm and fish. With their health imperiled and sources of livelihood ruined, the people wasted away in sickness, disease and raw-dirt poverty. Still, the Federal Government and the oil companies, in their snootiness and insensitivity, refused to use some of the oil revenue to create jobs and economic opportunities, and provide schools, hospitals and other social facilities in the area. They demanded justice and fought for it. Interestingly, they did these as Nigerians in Nigeria. They did not try to secede and become citizens of an oil-rich Fantasy Island. For the most part, they achieved their objectives. More money was made available to their states governments; the derivation for oil-producing states was increased from 5 per cent to 13 per cent. Federal Government agencies, like the Ministry of Niger Delta and Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) were created to attend to their needs and advance their welfare. And the annulment of the June 12, 1993 election incensed many Nigerians, mostly, the Yoruba. The cancellation of a free and fair election because a non-Hausa/Fulani, a Yoruba, was poised to win the election was apartheid in its most brazen form. The Yoruba were justifiably roiled by Hausa/Fulani rendition of apartheid, unyielding, systematic attempt by the Hausa/Fulani to retain an exclusive hold on political power, even in defiance of the collective will of Nigerians. They defended Moshood Abiolas presidential victory in Nigeria, not in secession from Nigeria. They were victorious; they got eight years of Yoruba presidency. The bane of the Igbo is that unlike the other peoples of Nigeria, we seek redress for our grievances outside of Nigeria, in Biafra. Earlier, before we started seeking restitutions and remedies in Biafra, the Igbo were the most committed to Nigerian unity and then, we excelled in every spectrum of the Nigerian social life to the point that other Nigerians became jittery of Igbo domination. The January 1966 coup and its aftermath deeply and unappeasably enraged the Hausa/Fulani. Their rage found expression in murderous fanaticism; they murdered about 30,000 Igbo. Still, the mass-murder did not justify Igbo secession from Nigeria. But swayed by the oratorical flourishes of a selfishly ambitious rabble-rouser, we, for the first time, looked for justice and restitution not in Nigeria but in a make-believe Utopia, Biafra. It was Ojukwus Biafranism that caused the war. The realities and consequences of war were cruelly different from the hopes raised by Biafra. The war came with a tsunami of gloom: devastation, death, dispossession, etc. It dealt us a bludgeoning blow that has left us reeling for the past nearly 50 years. Above all, it dealt us a psychological blow that we may not recover from for hundreds of years. Without secession, the pogrom and all that were associated with it would have been a major drawback for the Igbo. But we would have, for the most part, retained most of our earlier successes and achievements in Nigeria. The majority of the Igbo are pro-one Nigeria, because one Nigeria is most advantageous to the Igbo. Like earlier Igbo leaders, Alex Ekwueme, Sam Mbakwe and Chukwuemeka Ojukwu (evidently, he repented of his secessionist bent) among others, dramatised their commitment to one Nigeria; they participated in the writing of the 1999 Constitution which, like earlier constitutions, affirmed the indissolubility of Nigeria. The neo-Biafran activists are a renegade but vociferous few. Apart from disturbing the peace of the country, they cast the Igbo as perennial troublemakers, subversive elements and irredeemable rebels; nudging other Nigerians to suspect and antagonise us. The recent quit notice to the Igbo in Northern Nigeria by Northern Youth movements was in direct reaction to neo-Biafranism; it is an incontestable evidence of the suspicion and animosity neo-Biafranism visits on the Igbo. It was Biafranism that wrecked the Igbo. The restoration of the Igbo will come from a total renunciation of Biafra; and seeking redress for our grievances and finding solutions to our problems in Nigeria, and not in a daydream wonderland, Biafra. Tochukwu Ezukanma writes from Lagos. He can be reached via 08035292908 or maciln18@yahoo.com The Federal Government of Nigeria says it will not totally ban the importation of fairly used vehicles, popularly known as tokunbo.It said the proposed ban will only take full effect when a robust finance scheme is launched to enable citizens to buy brand new ones.The Director General, National Automotive Design and Development Council (NADDC), Jelani Aliyu, made this disclosure at a stakeholders forum yesterday in Lagos.Aliyu, while expressing governments commitment to implementing the national automotive policy, said the FG would introduce a vehicle finance scheme before the end of the year.According to Aliyu, the NADDC would work closely with the other stakeholders to address the sectors challenges and promote initiatives that would enable it to produce affordable vehicles that would ease the countrys mass transport challenges.He also hailed the passage of the National Automotive Industry Development Plan (NAIDP) Bill by the House of Representatives and the move to do the same by the Senate. Saudi Arabias new heir to the throne has announced plans for a beach resort where special laws will allow women to wear bikinis instead of covering up their skin.As part of his drive to modernize the Saudi economy, Prince Mohammed bin Salman has unveiled plans for a luxury Red Sea resort on a stretch of coast line in the countrys northwest.Knowing that foreign visitors are unlikely to come to beaches where women are forced to cover up in an abaya a robe-like dress the government said the resort will be governed by laws on par with international standards.Saudi Arabias own laws on women are among the most repressive in the world, with women banned from driving and unable to travel without permission from a male relative.Women are expected to cover their skin and hair when they are outside, although the laws are not uniformly enforced. Governor Ayodele Fayose of Ekiti State, on Wednesday, accused the Nigerian military authorities of using the Boko Haram insurgency to enric... Governor Ayodele Fayose of Ekiti State, on Wednesday, accused the Nigerian military authorities of using the Boko Haram insurgency to enrich themselves. According to Fayose, the United States Country Report on Terrorism 2016 and the report by Transparency International, was a confirmation of his earlier position that the Federal Government lied to Nigerians that Boko Haram was technically defeated. Governor Fayemi said with over 120 Nigerians killed by the Boko Haram insurgents in Borno State last month alone, it was necessary for the Federal Government to face the reality that it had a very long walk to victory in the fight against the insurgents. In the statement by his special assistant on Public Communications and New Media, Mr Lere Olayinka, Governor Fayose said for the country to defeat Biko Haram, the Federal Government must desist from telling Nigerians lies. According to him, the first step towards defeating Boko Haram will be for the federal government to stop lying to Nigerians. The government must let the people know the situation on ground so that genuine assistance can be offered. Fayose said: There should also be a periodic change in military personnel so that officers dont become institutions to themselves. As revealed by the TI, fight against Boko Haram has become a cash cow for some top military officers and corrupt politicians in the Buharis government, with the creation of fake defence contracts and laundering the proceeds often laundered abroad in the UK, U.S. and elsewhere. The TI went further to state that the military is left without vital equipment, insufficiently trained, low in morale and under-resourced. The Federal Government must therefore address the widespread corruption in the fight against Boko Haram as revealed by the TI and also see to the welfare of the military personnel involved in the fight. Also in the statement, Fayose alleged that there was a possible arranged release of some Chibok Girls by the Federal Government to divert attention of Nigerians and give the impression that it was making progress in the fight against the insurgents. The Brazilian, 25, is expected to sign for Paris St-Germain for a world record fee, after telling Barcelona he wanted to leave the club on Wednesday.The 25-year-old was expected to complete his move on Friday and push to play a part in PSG's Ligue 1 opener on Saturday against Amiens.However, Neymar's lawyer Juan de Dios Crespo had the cheque to trigger his 222m release clause rejected by the Spanish league on Thursday morning."We can confirm Neymar legal representatives went to LaLiga to pay buyout clause and it has been rejected," La Liga said in a statement. "That's all the information we are going to give for the moment."The decision to reject the attacker's move - which looked all-but certain after he said goodbye to Barca players and staff on Wednesday and informed the club of his decision to leave - puts the transfer in a completely unprecedented situation, although the latest developments do not come as a surprise.La Liga president Javier Tebas had already said that the organisation was going to reject that payment due to concerns over Financial Fair Play (FFP)."Even if PSG do not meet the release clause we are going to report them," Tebas told Sport on Tuesday."We have already warned the president of Paris Saint-Germain that we would do so and we see that PSG's policy has continued in the same manner."They cannot invent some numbers where their commercial rights exceed those of Real Madrid and Barcelona. Nobody believes that."Neymar's faith is now left hanging.More to follow. The police, Thursday, dismissed four officers for allegedly burgling the house of the Former President of Nigeria, Goodluck Jonathan.The Federal Capital Territory Police Command dismissed the officers after they were found culpable in stealing items belonging to the former president such as, six television sets, fridges, air-conditioners, Ijaw attires and designer suits.The men burgled Jonathans former residence in Gwarimpa and sold the items they stoleto traders at the Pankera second-hand market in Gwarimpa, Abuja.An investigative report from the police read thus:In fulfillment of the promise by the FCT Police Command to make public its findings on the investigation of the case of theft at the Gwarimpa residence of Former president, Dr Goodluck Ebele Jonathan GCFR, the Command wishes to state that in line with first schedule of police Act and regulation 370 Cap 19, the Policemen guarding the house have been tried in an orderly room proceeding and found culpable of the offence.Sequel to the out-come of the orderly room proceeding, the Commissioner of Police FCT, CP Musa Kimo psc has approved the immediate dismissal of the following police Rank and Files from the Nigeria Police Force:F/No. 436691 Sgt Musa MusaF/No. 235422 Sgt John Nanpakiii. F/No. 261898 Sgt Ogah AuduF/No. 425210 Sgt Gabriel Ugah.Meanwhile, orderly room proceeding in respect of AP/No.141199 Inspr Lengs Satlakau and AP/No. 150566 Inspr Usman Wuduki has been forwarded to AIG Zone 7 for further action.The Command wishes to also state that the main culprit F/No. 436691 Sgt Musa Musa will be charged to court for prosecution. While efforts have been intensified to arrest his accomplice one Mallam Shuaibu who is presently at largeThis action is in compliance with the vision of the Inspector General of Police IGP Ibrahim Kpotun Idris NPM mni to rid the Nigeria Police Force of criminal elements that are out to disparage the good image of the Force. British Airways cabin crew will strike for two more weeks in a long-running dispute over pay, the Unite union has announced.Members of Unite will walk out again from August 16 until the end of the month, which includes the August bank holiday.The workers were taking their 58th day of strike action today and unless the deadlock is broken, the action will have lasted for the whole of July and August.The company and union have been unable to settle a long-running dispute over pay for so-called mixed fleet employees, Daily Mail reports.Mixed fleet staff have been recruited since 2010 and make up about 30 per cent of crew at Heathrow.Unite claim mixed fleet staff are employed on less favourable contracts than longer-serving crew members, referring to it as poverty pay.They said the action has forced British Airways to spend millions of pounds on leasing aircraft to cover the striking cabin crew.But BA has argued the pay and rewards are in line with those given to employees at competing firms.Unite national officer, Oliver Richardson, said: Strike action will continue until the end of August unless British Airways hammers out a deal with Unite to resolve this dispute.The airline needs to get around the negotiating table and start recognising that punishing low-paid workers fighting for fairer pay is no way for a premium airline to behave.The union described an offer by the airline to reinstate travel concessions for workers who have been on strike as half-hearted.Unite is pursuing legal action on behalf of cabin crew who have faced sanctions, including the removal of bonus pay and travel concessions.A British Airways statement said: As we have done in previous periods of industrial action, we will ensure our customers reach their destinations.More than three months ago, Unite agreed that our pay deal was acceptable, but have since refused to ballot their members on it.Last week, we took the significant step of offering to return staff travel to crew who had been on strike, which was the biggest outstanding issue in the dispute, in order to bring the dispute to an end.Unite has now chosen to reject this offer and call yet more strikes.The latest news comes after furious passengers faced lengthy queues on Wednesday when British Airways new check-in system crashed for the seventh time in a year. LAKE SUCCESS, N.Y., Aug. 03, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Broadridge Financial Solutions, Inc. (NYSE:BR) today announced that Tim Gokey has been appointed President, effective September 1, 2017. Mr. Gokey is assuming the title of President from Broadridge Chief Executive Officer Rich Daly, who remains Chief Executive Officer and a Director of the Company. Mr. Gokey will also continue in his role as Chief Operating Officer. Tim has been invaluable to Broadridges growth and evolution over the past seven years, and this promotion is a result of his leadership and performance, said Mr. Daly. As COO, he has been instrumental in expanding our suite of products and services, both organically and through acquisitions, to drive our growth and enhance our position as a trusted solutions provider. Since the day Tim joined Broadridge, he has helped me and the entire leadership team pursue new opportunities and tackle challenges as a selfless partner. Mr. Daly added, I look forward to continuing to work closely with Tim over the coming years as we position Broadridge to create additional value for all our stakeholders. Mr. Gokey joined Broadridge in 2010 as Chief Corporate Development Officer and was promoted to Chief Operating Officer in 2012. As COO, Mr. Gokey has been responsible for the overall operation of Broadridges business units including both its Investor Communication Solutions and its Global Technology and Operations businesses. Prior to joining Broadridge, Mr. Gokey was President of the Retail Tax business at H&R Block from 2004. Previously, he spent 13 years at McKinsey and Company, most recently as a partner of the firm. At McKinsey, Mr. Gokey served over two dozen Fortune 500 and 1000 companies, primarily in the financial services industry, and led McKinseys North American Financial Services Sales and Marketing Practice. I am incredibly proud of Broadridge and its more than 10,000 dedicated associates, Mr. Gokey said. The financial services industry continues to need transformation to digital and mutualized solutions and Broadridge will continue to lead this change. I appreciate the vote of confidence from Rich and the Board and look forward to continuing to work with Rich and our team to create new value for Broadridges clients, associates, and shareholders. About Broadridge Broadridge Financial Solutions, Inc. (NYSE:BR) a global fintech leader, provides investor communications and technology-driven solutions for broker-dealers, banks, mutual funds, and corporate issuers globally. Broadridges investor communications, securities processing and managed services solutions help clients reduce their capital investments in operations infrastructure, allowing them to increase their focus on core business activities. With over 50 years of experience, Broadridges infrastructure underpins proxy voting services for over 90 percent of public companies and mutual funds in North America, and processes more than $5 trillion in fixed income and equity trades per day. Broadridge employs over 10,000 full-time associates in 16 countries. For more information about Broadridge, please visit www.broadridge.com. The Federal Executive Council, FEC, yesterday, approved a new policy that bars foreign professionals from practising in Nigeria unless they were registered and certified by all the necessary regulatory bodies.This is even as the Federal Government has declared a state of emergency on science and technology to boost technological acquisition for the industrial growth of the country.FEC also approved tax rebate to attract foreign industries that should serve as an incentive for pioneer industries operating in Nigeria.Briefing State House correspondents after weekly FEC meeting at the Council Chamber, Presidential Villa, Abuja, Minister of Science and Technology, Dr. Ogbonnaya Onu, said: We agreed that from now on, any person who wants to practice any profession that has anything to do with science, engineering and technology, medical doctors, accountants, quantity surveyors just to mention but a few, must be certified by appropriate regulatory bodies in Nigeria.He said FEC approved policy that will help to change the direction of the country, with a view to looking inward to produce the things the country needs, instead of relying on imports.He said: Some of the highlights will involve where we have bulk purchases. Those who normally would have supplied from outside the country will now come to Nigeria and establish their factories to produce in Nigeria.By doing so, they will offer job opportunities to our people, tax will be paid to government, wealth will be created and most importantly, Nigeria will now acquire the necessary technology that will help us build capacity.Also briefing journalists, Minister of Industry, Trade and Investment, Okechukwu Enelama, said government had approved tax rebate for pioneer industries to establish in the country, noting that the policy was to serve as an incentive to attract new investors.He said: FEC approved a memorandum that was presented to amend the list of pioneer industries and products that will enjoy pioneer status going forward.As many of you know the pioneer incentive scheme is governed by the Industrial Development Income Tax Relief Act and the whole purpose is to give tax holidays to industries we consider pioneer.Pioneer doesnt mean that they are new, it only means that they are not yet mature. We want those industries to grow. We want to attract investment in them and you will find that this covers a wide range of industries and those tax holidays range from three to five years.The pioneer list was last reviewed by the Federal Executive Council in 2006, so you can see that this was long overdue.On doing the review, special attention was paid to the ERGP to capture the current realities that will help to implement the plan to make sure we attract the kind of investment, industries and players that will help to implement and realize our objectives in the ERGP.I should also point out that there was multi stakeholder engagement, private and public sector in arriving at the industries that will be included in the pioneer incentive scheme.In terms of the recommendations approved by FEC today: we have tried to remove all ambiguities in the definition of industries by reclassifying them according to the international standard inindustrial classification, which is the global standard.The other thing we also did is to agree that the pioneer list will be reviewed regularly every two years, biannually so that just that if things come up, we live in a fast changing world and we are beingresponsive to our world. In the case of additions to the list they will be effected immediately, for deletion of industries that we consider mature there will be a three-year window that will be allowedfor those that are already investing in that industry that were enjoying pioneer status to carry on till the end of that three year period.Against this backdrop, we then approved 27 industries that were recommended for addition to the pioneer list today.We also recommended and it was accepted by the Council that mineral oil prospecting which is governed by the Petroleum Profit Tax should not be part of the pioneer industries list which is really industries governed by the Companies Income Tax Act. The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) said on Wednesday in Jos that media support was very crucial to its quest for free, fair and credible elections in Nigeria.Mallam Husaini Pai, its Resident Electoral Commissioner (REC) in Plateau, while on a courtesy visit to the Jos Zonal office of the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN), solicited closer ties with newsmen because media reports determine how elections were viewed.What the media say is what determines the success and acceptance of elections; ultimately, that also determines whether the polls will be peaceful or not, he said.Pai said that the visit was to seek areas of collaboration and support from NAN in view of its wide reach and fanatical commitment to fair journalism.He said that the media was a critical stakeholder that no one could afford to ignore, and expressed INECs readiness to support newsmen to effectively participate in election matters.Clearly, we cannot achieve results without the media. The media may not need INEC, but INEC needs the media so as to enable her conduct a free, fair, credible and peaceful elections, he said.Pai, however, urged journalists to be professional, accurate and observe the ethics of the profession at all times.When you report accurately, you are also exercising your civic responsibility towards nation building, he said.Responding, the Zonal Manager, Mr Ephraim Sheyin, described the visit as surprising, but very useful.Sheyin assured the INEC commissioner that the agency would be consistent in the coverage of its activities in Plateau.Our doors are always open to you; we want yours to remain equally open to minimise mutual distrust, he said. The Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Dr. Ibe Kachikwu, and his counterpart in the Ministry of Power, Works and Housing, Mr. Babatunde Fashola, are expected to address stakeholders this month on some of the challenges in the nations energy sector.Stakeholders in the sector such as international oil companies, downstream operators, independent producers, and managers of the privatised power companies would also be at this years conference of the Association of Energy Correspondents of Nigeria to proffer solutions to the challenges, according to a statement.The organisers said the ministers would be expected to make policy statements on governments plans for the oil, gas and power industries at the conference slated for August 17 in Lagos.With the theme, PIGB: Prospects and challenges to Nigerian oil and gas industry, the conference would have three panel sessions focusing on optimising local refining capacity, implications of the bill seeking to amend the NLNG Act, and power sector and liquidity challenge, the organisers said.The statement said the keynote address and the lead paper would be delivered by Kachikwu and the Group Managing Director, Aiteo Production and Development Company Limited, Dr. Chike Onyejekwe. Kidnappers of the clerk of Ikeja Local Council, Mr. Shamsideen Abiodun Omotayo have demanded for N20 million as ransom before he will be re... Kidnappers of the clerk of Ikeja Local Council, Mr. Shamsideen Abiodun Omotayo have demanded for N20 million as ransom before he will be released. Recall that Omotayo was whisked away in Imota, Ikorodu, Lagos State on Wednesday. The Public Relations Officer (PRO) of the Lagos State Neighbourhood Safety Agency (LNSA), Mr. Afolabi Olawale, confirmed that ransom demands have been made. He said: This is to inform you of the kidnap incident of the clerk of Ikeja Local Council, Mr. Shamsideen Abiodun Omotayo. The clerk of the house was abducted at Imota on his way to work this morning. The kidnappers have so far contacted the Head of Administration of the Ikeja Local Council, Mrs. Mosunmola Otaiku-Okoka. They are demanding N20 million as ransom. Meanwhile, efforts are still ongoing by concerned security agencies to rescue him. Also, a statement from the Ikeja Local Council signed by its information officer, Mr. Ademola Bello-Onilegbale, confirmed the incident. The statement read: This is to inform the public of the Ikeja Local Council clerk, Mr. Omotayo Shamsideens abduction by some notorious kidnappers at the early hours of Wednesday, August 2, on his way to work. He has, however, been allowed to speak with his immediate boss and they are requesting for N20 million as ransom. Concerted efforts are on to meet up with their demands. President of the Senate, Dr Bukola Saraki, said contrary to insinuations, he was a full member of All Progressives Congress and remained there body and spirit.Saraki said at a Forum in Abuja that the speculations were part of the mischievous activities against him and urged the public the discountenance them.He said that those spreading such information were doing so as propaganda for the Peoples Democratic Party.Saraki, however, blamed the development on inactivity in the APC, saying that the partys leadership had failed to focus it properly.He, therefore, charged the National Executive Committee of the party to wake up to its responsibility as it had remained without activities for too long.The president of the senate said that the docility in the party was giving room for unfounded allegations against some of its members.According to him, if the party had organised regular NEC meetings and other caucus meetings, there would have been enough activities to determine who the true members are.I think there is no APC member that will tell you he is happy with the state of affairs of the party; there is a lot of work that we need to do.The party that hasnt met for a long time, its beyond comprehension and I think that we should all quickly put that in order and start to get NEC, caucus and others going.We need to start early to get the drive in the party back.Luckily, in spite of the lack of meetings here and there, if you go round the 36 states, it is in just few states, not many states, where you may see internal crises.Its not that the party, at the grassroots level, had a lot of crisis here and there; its just for the administrative aspect and the national executive to provide leadership.Saraki also said that if there had been meetings of the party, his detractors would have seen how actively involved he was in the party and will not have any room to spread such lies.They are just using that to do a propaganda for PDP. Where are they seeing that I am not in the party in spirit? Where is the spirit they are judging from, where are they seeing the spirit?That is why I am saying that the reason for all that speculation is because the party is docile; because the party is dormant.If the party goes back to what we all know that every month, we hold NEC meeting, you have caucus, they will stop all these `spirit and no `spirit thing.It is not that they have had a meeting and you didnt see me, and then, you can say that yes, my spirit is not there.I cant call a meeting of the party. I have expressed my view and the responsibility of calling a party for a meeting is that of those who we elected as party officials he explained.On the allegation that his emergence as president of the senate was an affront to the party, Saraki said that he had kept the wishes of the party, including zoning of senate presidents position.He stated that at the last meeting of the party held over zoning of national offices, the position of president of the senate was zoned to the North-Central.It was after that the party started to do different things, shifting its position.The point Im making is that thats over two years ago; two years now, is that the reason why the party cannot hold meetings?My own point is that the executive of the party just needs to wake up and start managing the party.There is no day when I see the party chairman that I dont tell him, `Mr Chairman, we must put the party in focus.The rules of the party also give you room by which you can call a meeting, but I think we have not got to that point yet.I think we should do it in a smooth manner, but what I want to assure you is that the foundation is still strong. If there were crisis all over the place, that would have been a different matter, he said.Saraki expressed hope that the party would hold its mini-convention as scheduled as delegates had been elected on Saturday.You will see that after the mini-convention, all that speculation of body here, spirit there, would go away, he said. The Nigerian Navy (NN) says it has rescheduled the date for its 2017 recruitment aptitude test from Oct. 7 to Aug. 12. The Nigerian Navy (NN) says it has rescheduled the date for its 2017 recruitment aptitude test from Oct. 7 to Aug. 12. The Acting Director of Information, Navy Capt. Suleman Dahun, disclosed this in a statement on Thursday in Abuja. All shortlisted candidates are to contact their chosen centres in the various States of the federation on Aug. 12, for the test by 8. a.m. Candidates are reminded to come along with copies of their online completed forms to the designated examination centres. Names of candidates who are successful in the Aptitude Test will be published online on Aug. 21, he said. Dahun explained that the successful candidates would attend a selection interview from Aug. 25 to Sept. 23 at the Nigerian Navy Secondary School, Ojo, Lagos State. The NN regretted any inconveniences this new date might have caused the candidates and the general public. (NAN) French President Emmanuel Macron on Thursday gave his seal of approval to Brazilian superstar Neymars expected transfer to Paris Saint-Germain.It adds attractiveness. Yes, its good news, Macron told journalists as he visited a holiday centre for children outside Paris.Macron also congratulated Qatari-owned PSGs chairman Nasser Al-Khelaifi, who was attending the same event.Congratulations, I believe there has been good news, the president told him, referring to Neymars expected arrival.Macron was speaking shortly before Spains La Liga refused to accept payment of Neymars 222 million euro ($260 million) buyout clause, potentially delaying his world record move from Barcelona.La Liga chief Javier Tebas said this week he would block the transfer because it infringed UEFAs financial fair play rules. Reno Omokri, has said that the Niger Delta region owes former Vice President, Atiku Abubakar a debt. Reno Omokri, has said that the Niger Delta region owes former Vice President, Atiku Abubakar a debt. Pastor Omokri who shared a picture showing Atiku Abubakar in conversation with the British Prime Minister, Theresa May, also hinted that the former VP is serious about restructuring and is willing to hold talks with world leaders over Nigerias restructuring.Omokri said that the Niger Delta region owes Atiku a debt because it was the former VP that persuaded Ex-President Olusegun Obasanjo to return to oil producing states the offshore revenues earlier denied them by Buhari during his first coming in 1984.According to him, Look carefully behind me. Guess who you see speaking with Theresa May? Restructuring on the agenda. Please pray for Waziri Atiku Abubakar if you support restructuring.In 1984, Major General Mohammed Buhari (rtd) reduced the amount of derivation funds paid to oil producing states to a paltry 1.5 % by military fiat and excluded the offshore oil revenues from derivation.In 2001, Atiku Abubakar persuaded Obasanjo to go for a political solution that returned offshore revenues to oil producing states. In 2004 it became law. The Niger Delta owes this man a debt! A former Nigerian envoy, Dr. Godknows Boladei, has expressed concern over the position of the National Assembly and those against the call for restructuring of the country to make it a truly federal nation.According to him, such anti-restructuring posture was a clear sign of ignorance on the need for a united country.The former Ambassador to the Scandinavian countries of Sweden, Denmark, Finland and Norway, said though he was not in support of those calling for secession and division of the country, the calls for true federation, integration and restructuring were not a call for division but that the unity of the country should be re-negotiated based on justice and fairness.He made this known, yesterday, at a public lecture organised to mark the 60th anniversary of the Odi Ogori Bu Uge International Festival 2017, Odi in Kolokuma-Opokuma Local Government Area, Baleysa State.He said those against the renewed agitation for restructuring and integration do not understand the journey of how the country was created and have lived as a united and indivisible country since then.Boladei-Igali noted that despite the military destruction of the pre-1960 agreement and ground rules reached by late nationalists on true fiscal federalism and unity, when you restructure, the different component units have agreed to stay together.I dont believe that Nigeria will scatter. There is strength in coming together and in diversity. Nations are formed by negotiations. People sit down to negotiate on how they are going to live together.Because we are different people, unity in diversity does not mean the integral parts are not equal. It only means we have dedicated to stay together. Integration and true federalism does not mean we are scattered but that the people have resolved to remain stronger with ground rules on fiscal federalism and other issues on a federation with the centre not over burdened. Unity must be based on fair play, unity, justice, fairness. Let all units be happy.On the agitation by members of the Independent People of Biafra, IPOB for secession, Ambassador Boladei-Igali said the unity of Nigeria is non-negotiable. President Muhammadu Buharis advance team has reportedly arrived the Nnmadi Azikiwe International Airport, Abuja few hours ago. President Muhammadu Buharis advance team has reportedly arrived the Nnmadi Azikiwe International Airport, Abuja few hours ago. Reports said Buhari may possibly land in few hours on board his aircraft, NAF 1. But when Buharis Special Adviser on Media and Publicity, Femi Adesina was reached out to, he was quiet about the report. In a terse text message, Adesina Wrote: Theres always a statement when the President travels. This is coming at a time Presidency disclosed that Buhari, who is currently on medical vacation in London will soon return to Nigeria. After initially spending over 50 days on medical vacation in London, the President had in May returned to the United Kingdom, UK, for follow-up medical check-up and is yet to return. THUNDER BAY, Ontario, Aug. 03, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- MetalCorp Limited (MetalCorp, MTC or the Company) (TSXV:MTC) is pleased to announce that it has started drilling in its previously announced exploration program at its polymetallic North Rock Project near Fort Frances in northwestern Ontario (see News Release dated June 29, 2017). The exploration program is planned to be comprised of six drill holes (aggregating up to 2,000 meters) in the Beaver Pond, East Zone and Belacoma zones. The program is designed to test for additional occurrences of cobalt, platinum/palladium, copper and nickel. To fund the exploration work, the Company is pursuing a non-brokered private placement of up to 5,000,000 flow-through shares at $0.05 per share for gross proceeds of up to $250,000. The Company has completed its first tranche of the financing with gross proceeds of $140,000 and also has the ability to rely on a strong treasury derived from some significant property sales and options over the past few years. North Rock Property, a highly prospective Copper-Nickel-PGE property formerly held by Noranda, contains a historical estimate of 1 Million tons at 1.2% Cu (Bergman 1973), and underground work that delineated two copper zones of 3.59% Cu over 30m and 3.51% Cu over 55m (The historical estimate pre-dates National Instrument 43-101 and no category of resource was stated. A qualified person has not done sufficient work to classify the historical estimate as current mineral resources. Confirmatory drilling, assay analysis and computation by a Qualified Person (within the meaning of National Instrument 43-101) would be required to determine and categorize the mineral resources. MetalCorp is not treating the historical estimate as current mineral resources. However, the historical estimate provides a good basis for focusing and developing an exploration program for the Project.). The Companys prior exploration efforts on this property yielded compelling results from drilling programs, including drill hole NR06-20 which intersected 3.7 metres (2.5m true width) grading 12.2 g/t platinum (Pt), 0.1 g/t palladium (Pd), 0.1 g/t gold (Au), 0.6% copper (Cu) and 0.2% nickel (Ni). The entire zone assayed 1.7 g/t Pt, 0.1 g/t Pd, 0.1 g/t Au, 0.7% Cu and 0.1% Ni over 28.5m (19.3 m true width) from 147.4 to 175.9.(see March 6 and April 19, 2006 news releases). Of note is that drill hole NR07-040 intersected 0.8% cobalt (Co) over 0.5 metre. Another drill hole testing the Beaver Pond Zone intersected 4.0 g/t Pd, 0.3 g/t Pt, 1.0% Cu, and 0.4% Ni over 3.8 metres (true width unknown) (see March 27, 2008 news release). John Corkery, MSc, (formerly North American Palladium, Stillwater Mining Company) will direct and manage the exploration program at North Rock with participation by Mitch Dumoulin (formerly Goldcorp), P. Geo. Mitch Dumoulin, a Qualified Person, has reviewed and approved the technical information of this news release. MetalCorp is a mineral exploration company based in Thunder Bay, Ontario, with gold and base metal projects in the Canadian Shield of Northern Ontario, Canada, one of the most prolific mineral districts in the world. To find out more about MetalCorp visit its website at www.metalcorp.ca. For further information, please contact: Pierre Gagne, Director Phone: (807) 626-3621 info@metalcorp.ca Except for statements of historical fact contained herein, information in this press release may constitute "forward-looking information" within the meaning of Canadian securities laws. Other than statements of historical fact, all statements that involve various known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors are "forward-looking statements". There can be no assurance that such statements will prove accurate. Results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such statements. Readers of this news release are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these "forward-looking statements". Except as otherwise required by applicable securities statutes or regulation, MetalCorp expressly disclaims any intention or obligation to update publicly any forward-looking information, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise. Historical results mentioned in this press release are not NI 43-101 compliant and should not be relied upon. Neither TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy, accuracy or contents of this news release. Dr. Bukola Saraki, President of the Senate, has said that the 8th Senate is not like the executive where anybody could be fired just like that, maintaining that the Red Chamber has been able to surmount the turbulence that characterised its affairs due to cooperation and unity among the members.He recalled that the crisis in the red chamber began immediately after its inauguration, with his emergence as president of the senate, with Ike Ekweremadu, a Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) member, as his deputy.Saraki said, in spite of the crisis, the senate had recorded unprecedented success.He said though the President, he was only first among equals and as such, he ensured that every member of the chamber was carried along in all the plans of the senate.He said in spite of the distractions from court cases and wanton allegations, the senate ensured that it remained focused on the agenda it drafted for itself.From day one we had an agenda, a legislative agenda.It will be interesting for you to get a copy of that agenda and look at those promises that we made; you will see that some of the things we have been doing are not by chance.It is like somebody who is working through a document and he is ticking it and that is why we have been organized. We have been focused because we had an agenda.Our agenda is that the senate will be addressing the economy that we championed made-in-Nigeria was not by chance; it was part of our agenda.We said to ourselves, what can we do to make Nigerias economy grow, people are spending so much on importation, why dont we try and save that.Government spends about N1.3 trillion on importation, why doesnt it spend that on locally-produced goods? So, let us pass a bill that any MDA, before it goes to buy a foreign good, must see that there is no local alternative.If we do that, it means that N1.3 trillion will be spent inwards. We are talking of infrastructure, it is these laws.Railway law has been there for more than 50 years, nobody has reviewed it until we came.Ports, inland revenue and now, we are talking about PIB. These are economy-based issues.With Ease-of-doing-Business rule, we are passing bills that will allow Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) to get credits without having landed property.We are improving on credit, to allow banks lend to small scale businesses.It is because we have been focused, determined and strong-willed and not distracted. Sometimes, I see that all the noise is distraction, he said.He attested to having won the unanimous support of his colleagues though at the beginning there were divisions even within his party, the All Progressives Congress (APC).Saraki added that members of the opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) were also cooperating, supporting the agenda that will grow the economy and better the country.I will humbly say that I have been able to win the support of all my colleagues, I have been able to win their confidence, because the way I occupied leadership is that it is `we, not `me.That is why many people misunderstand this place and say it is the President of the Senate that has done that, but most of the things are done collectively.I am just first among equals. It is not like the executive where you can fire a minister or commissioner; it doesnt work like that here, I cannot fire Olusola Adeyeye, for instance.If you understand that, you will win their confidence. I will say that 99 per cent of the Senate is going in one direction and that is what we have been able to achieve. And who gains for that, the country.This is why, for example, the Constitution amendment, we could do it.You will know that even on the day of the Constitution amendment, we did not sit for two hours because some senators refused and said there was something funny and they delayed us for two hours.But when we sat and I addressed them and told them that I was not here to protect anyones agenda, that I am here for all of us, then we sat and achieved all of that, he said.Saraki added that when we wanted to do the Petroleum Industry Bill, some senators stood up and said `no, this governance bill has nothing to do with host community, my people will not be happy.I gave them my word, saying `pass this governance one for me, I promise you I will bring the host communitys.Those in the PDP are also working with us; when there are national issues we call them and tell them `dont bring issue of party here, lets think of Nigeria and that is what we have been able to achieve.Saraki cautioned Nigerians to be wary of those who try to discredit the senate, pointing out that most of them were doing so out of selfish interest.He said that most of those championing negative campaign against the National Assembly were those whose selfish interests of taking control of the legislative arm failed.He added that some of them had resorted to disparaging the assembly.Saraki, therefore, called on Nigerians not to join in weakening the key institution of democracy which is the national assembly.Most of those noises are not in the interest of Nigeria, they are personal agenda.People who wanted a certain person to emerge as Senate President or Speaker of the House and they have not got it are saying `since we cannot win the battle for the National Assembly lets distract them. A soldier identified as Abiola Odedeji has allegedly stabbed an okada rider (commercial motorcyclist), Niyi James, to death for shunning hi... A soldier identified as Abiola Odedeji has allegedly stabbed an okada rider (commercial motorcyclist), Niyi James, to death for shunning him in Agbado area of Ogun State. The killer soldier had visited his girlfriend, Amada David, at Agbado Junction around 3.30pm in company of his colleague, Damilare Oni. The soldier went to the area, close to the Agbado Police Station, on a power bike. It was gathered that after a short discussion, Odedeji and his girlfriend decided to go out on the motorbike. He was said to have stopped Niyi, who shuttled between the junction and Agbado Crossing, to take Oni to Ijaiye, Lagos State. An eyewitness, who gave his name only as Akinjobi, said that the 36-year-old native of Ikogosi, Ekiti State, declined on the grounds that he did not have a ticket to operate in the Ijaiye area. Akinjobi said, The soldier (Odedeji) was angry that the okada rider said no to a military man and started flogging him with a horsewhip. Suddenly, he brought out a long knife and stabbed the man on the thigh. He also stabbed him on the waist and stomach. He was so confident that he robbed off the bloodstains on the knife on the mans head. He boasted that he had killed many people. He and his colleague escaped on the power bike, while the lady took another motorcycle. We quickly alerted the police. It was learnt that a team of policemen, led by the Agbado Divisional Police Officer, CSP Sunday Omonijo, immediately went after the suspects. Odedejis girlfriend was apprehended on Clem Road, Ijaiye, while policemen chased the soldiers to Mosalasi bus stop. Akinjobi further said: Odedeji stabbed one of the policemen on the arm, but they eventually arrested him and his colleague. He is part of the troops deployed in Borno State to fight Boko Haram. His colleague is serving in Bauchi State. They are both from Osun State. The okada rider died at the Ifako-Ijaiye General Hospital. The Ogun State Police Public Relations Officer, ASP Abimbola Oyeyemi, who confirmed the incident, said the suspects would be charged to court after investigations had been concluded. He said, The case has been transferred to the Homicide Section of the State Criminal Investigation and Intelligence Department, Eleweran, for further investigations. The Nigerian Army has been contacted and the suspects will face necessary disciplinary action. Osita Okechukwu, Director-General, Voice of Nigeria (VON), has decried the ultimatum given by Ijaw National Leader, Chief Edwin Clark, to t... Osita Okechukwu, Director-General, Voice of Nigeria (VON), has decried the ultimatum given by Ijaw National Leader, Chief Edwin Clark, to the Federal Government to constitute a negotiation team on Niger Deltas demands. Okechukwu told newsmen on Wednesday in Abuja that rather than engage in propaganda, Clark should support President Muhammadu Baharis administration to develop Nigeria. Clark had at a news conference recently, asked the Federal Government to, as a matter of urgency, constitute a negotiation team to engage in talks with the Niger Delta stakeholders before August 1. But Okechukwu advised Clark to ask senators from Niger Delta what was delaying the signing of the loan to start projects in the region as promised by the Federal Government. He added that the Buhari government was working to ensure the delivery of true democratic dividends to Nigerians. Okechukwu said that Nigerians had the right to vote out the APC government in 2019 if they were not satisfied with its performance. We were given a four-year tenure to start with, and if it suits the Nigerian people, they will re-elect the APC and President Muhammadu Buhari again or any other candidate in the APC. I was not very impressed with Chief Clark, a man I have respect for, because he is sounding as if everybody is opposed to devolution of power. Okechukwu noted that that Clark during the PDP administration, had the opportunity to better the lots of the people of Niger Delta, but never did. He said that the elder statesman rather started building a private university, married a new wife and was enjoying himself without showing seriousness in matters affecting the region and its people. He maintained that Buharis administration, though inherited almost a failed state, determined to first, restructure the country's substructure. According to him, most states governments are salaries and pension arrears for 18 months when the administration came in. The VON director-general said the Buhari administration had within two years of its tenure, spent about N1trillion in bail-out funds to address issues of salary arrears in states. He added that the administration through a 500 million dollars foreign loan, rehabilitated roads in the Niger Delta when Clark never remembered to fix. Clark was there on May 13, 2010 in President Jonathans regime when the Minister of Finance and Economy Co-ordinator, Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Eweala, told Nigerians that they had awarded 23 billion dollars for three refineries. The refineries were to be in Bayelsa, Lagos and in Kogi states; we didnt see the 23 billion dollars and we didnt see the refineries, Okechukwu stated. He said the Clark should be asked where the three refineries were and why the East-West road was not completed and the coast line not done as promised by the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) government. PHILADELPHIA -- The Burlington County man accused of repeatedly sexually assaulting two children at his Philadelphia day care is reportedly out on bail. Duncan Round, 53, of Medford Lakes, was released Thursday after he posted $20,000, or 10 percent of his $200,000 bail, a day after he turned himself into police, according to 6abc. In a press conference broadcasted by 6abc Wednesday, authorities said Round has been ordered to stay away from Sprouts, the day care center and kids' gym he owns on South 9th Street. Police said two children, both 5, told authorities that they had been sexually assaulted by Round at Sprouts multiple times. The investigation began July 25 when a third party made allegations of abuse to the Department of Human Services, which interviewed the boy and girl at their residence, according to police. The department then contacted police, and the children told the same story at a forensic interview the same day, authorities said. Physical evidence was recovered from Sprouts the next day, police said. Police said Wednesday that they were not aware of other victims but they encouraged anyone who suspects their children may have been victimized to come forward. Round is charged with two counts each of involuntary deviate sexual intercourse, indecent assault, indecent exposure, illegal contact with a minor, endangering the welfare of a child, corruption of minors and recklessly endangering another person, police said. 6abc reported that Round, who has owned the day care for 10 years, is a British citizen and has been ordered to surrender his passport. Rebecca Everett may be reached at reverett@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter @rebeccajeverett. Find NJ.com on Facebook. VANCOUVER, British Columbia, Aug. 03, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Cuba Ventures Corp. (TSX-V:CUV) (OTCBB:MPSFF) (the Company) is pleased to announce that it has concluded a recent seven day commercial mission to Havana, Cuba, carried out by Director, Alfredo Manresa and, the CEO of Tyrval Jordi Tomas Romero. Details of Tyrval and Cuba Ventures commercial mission Tyrval, a worldwide supplier to the hotel and hospitality industry and, the official supplier of LG products for Latin America and, partner of Cuba Ventures Corp, concluded a seven day intensive commercial mission to Cuba during the month of July. Significant advances and product presentations were made to key buying entities in Cuba, including but not limited to: Melia Hotels International, Cubanacan Hotels, Gran Caribe Hotels, Servitur and ITH, the main importer for the tourism sector, controlled by Cubas Ministry of Foreign Commerce (MINCEX). Further, written offers were presented to foreign joint venture entities Cubacan, Miramar, Jibacoa, Amanecer Holding, Cubacaribe, Cubanablau and El Senador. The extensive list of goods and items offered by Tyrval ensures that Cuba Ventures Corp and Tyrval can accommodate complete hotel refurbishments or specific area remodeling. A prevalent proposed product line was both the hospitality industry focused LG electronics along with industrial air-conditioning equipment. Additionally, multiple requests were received for hotel furniture for over 1000 rooms in numerous hotel properties managed by the aforementioned hotel chains. Cuba Ventures and Tyrval share an agreement in which Cuba Ventures Corp obtain 5% of all revenue from the partnership. Tyrval expects to submit over 10 million USD of possible orders before the year end. Cuba Ventures Corp plans to vigorously fight legal trademark allegation On August 1st Cuba Ventures Corp received a notice concerning legal action regarding an alleged breach of the trademark from a Curacao based travel agency. Caribbean Travel Network, domiciled on the island of Curacao in the Caribbean, filed a complaint against directors and the company, surrounding the alleged use of word mark violation in Canada and, unproven claims relating to unfair competition. The board believes the claim is without merit and has engaged trademark specialist council and will fight this complaint forcefully. About Cuba Ventures Corp.: Cuba Ventures Corp. interest is a publicly traded Canadian company capitalizing on the growth and unique opportunities in the USD $3.5 billion per year Cuban travel and tourism industry. Travelucion, a wholly owned subsidiary, is a digital media and marketing company which owns a vast portfolio of Cuba related websites and online portals providing Cuba travel information in up to six languages, featuring individual web assets for Cuba's popular cities and towns, online booking solutions and online reservations through proprietary software, catering to international visitors to Cuba. Travelucion's online travel division is a duly licensed retail travel supplier handling millions of dollars in sales annually. Cuba Ventures Corp has acquired an equity interest in a Florida, USA domiciled, licensed and bonded travel agency which specializes in travel to Cuba. This equity ownership permits the company and, its subsidiary Travelucion, to promote U.S compliant travel packages to Americans citizens through its equity partner International Business & Travel Opportunities, LLC, Fort Lauderdale, Florida, USA. Travelucion's 432 Cuba focused multilingual websites generate over 30 million page-views per year, directing traffic to the company's online booking and e-commerce sites. These online websites cover all facets of Cuba including over 80 travel destinations, hotels & resorts, bed & breakfast, tours, car rentals, restaurants, as well as Cuban culture, history, music, celebrities, sports, medical treatments and more.Travelucion's revenues have been rapidly growing in the wake of the notable shift in American policy towards Cuba. With diplomatic relations improving and restrictions on qualified American travel to Cuba relaxed, the opening of the multi-billion dollar travel market to the Caribbean nation is becoming a reality. Travelucion's continued media dominance over the past two decades has provided Cuba Ventures with a competitive advantage in the burgeoning Cuba travel and online media space. With the relaxing of rules for American travelers to Cuba and the potential of further easing, growth, and investment opportunities are on the rise in Cuba. Cuba Ventures consulting division harnesses over 60 years of combined advisor experience in submitting and, obtaining approval, for joint ventures, joint production agreements, and import/export permits for foreign enterprises. More recently the company has taken a royalty approach for future agreements between third parties anxious to begin commercial operations with Cuba and, the companys Cuba Consulting Unit. For further information on Cuba Ventures Corp. (TSX-V: CUV) or Travelucion visit the Companys website at www.cubaventures.com or www.travelucion.com. The Company has 72,412,487 shares issued and outstanding. CUBA VENTURES CORP. STEVE MARSHALL ______________________________ Steve Marshall CEO For further information contact myself or: Nick Findler Cuba Ventures Corp. Telephone: 604-639-3850 Toll Free: 800-567-8181 Facsimile: 604-687-3119 Email: info@cubaventures.com NEITHER THE TSX VENTURE EXCHANGE NOR ITS REGULATION SERVICES PROVIDER ACCEPTS RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE ADEQUACY OR ACCURACY OF THE CONTENT OF THIS NEWS RELEASE. DENVER, Colo., Aug. 03, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- As a result of its rapid growth in the Denver real estate investment market, Cedar Crest Properties recently expanded its team as well as its office space. In turn, the company has doubled both its staff and office space since it entered the Denver real estate market four years ago. I founded this business with the mission of finding a better way to serve both home sellers and property buyers including builders and developers. Weve been fortunate to begin to realize that goal as weve grown our share of the real estate investment market, said Jason Nickel, Owner and CEO of Cedar Crest Properties. Looking forward, Im excited about the team we now have in place with our recent additions, Im confident were well-positioned for accelerated growth in this highly competitive industry. Cedar Crests recent staff additions and promotions include: Nina Mohr joined the company as Office Manager. She shoulders customer service duties, translation for Cedar Crests Spanish speaking customers, as well as internal clerical work for the company. Her background includes customer service positions as well as work as a law firm paralegal. joined the company as Office Manager. She shoulders customer service duties, translation for Cedar Crests Spanish speaking customers, as well as internal clerical work for the company. Her background includes customer service positions as well as work as a law firm paralegal. Will Rigdon moved from Office Manager to Dispositions Manager. He now manages the property sales side of the company. With a deep background in real estate, Will spent the bulk of his career prior to Cedar Crest as a commercial and residential real estate appraiser. The company is also looking to add depth to its sales team and is currently hiring for sales positions. ABOUT CEDAR CREST PROPERTIES Denver-based Cedar Crest Properties is a multi-service real estate investment company they buy, repair, market, hold and sell property. With a focus on acquiring and selling high density infill lots, the company selects properties that align with the needs of their builder and developer partners. The company was founded in 2012, and so far in 2017 it has closed more than $30 million in transactions. Cedar Crest offices at 1509 York St, #2i in Denver. For more information, call 720-307-6390 or visit cedarcrestco.com. Galatoire's and the end of an ice age in New Orleans TORONTO, Aug. 03, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The board of directors of Constellation Software Inc. (Constellation) (TSX:CSU) announced today the appointment of Lawrence Cunningham to the Companys Board of Directors. Lawrence Cunningham is the Henry St. George Tucker III Research Professor at George Washington University Law School, lecturing on its main campus in Washington DC and serving as the Founding Director of its business law programs in New York City. Prof. Cunningham is best known for collaborating with Warren Buffett in self-publishing, since 1997, The Essays of Warren Buffett: Lessons for Corporate America, as well as for books such as The AIG Story (with Hank Greenberg) and Quality Investing (with AKO Capital). He consults for corporations and boards on corporate culture and governance, serving a wide range of public and private companies. Prof. Cunningham has been a director of Ashford Hospitality Prime (NYSE), a real estate investment trust focused on luxury hotels; Mobile Nerd, a provider of secure single sign-on access to software and applications from any device; and Pearl West Group, a private Canadian investment company specializing in digital marketing. He is a member of the Deans Council of Lerner College of Business of the University of Delaware and on the Editorial Board of the Museum of American Finance. Previous positions include practicing corporate law with Cravath, Swaine & Moore; Academic Dean of Boston College Law School; and Director of the Heyman Center on Corporate Governance at Cardozo Law School. Prof. Cunningham holds a bachelors degree in economics (with honors) from the University of Delaware and a juris doctor (law) degree from Cardozo (magna cum laude). About Constellation Software Inc. Constellation Software acquires, manages and builds vertical market software businesses. The study looks at two smaller-scale projects that are in some ways predecessors to the Mid-Barataria Sediment Diversion, the $2 billion plan to slow land loss erasing Louisiana's coast. Construction on that project could begin as early as next year, while a similar one on the opposite side of the river known as the Mid-Breton Diversion could follow. Welcome to non league daily news now - your number one spot for all things relating to the National League System. Our dedicated reporters have come straight from the sidelines to bring you news fresh from the dugout - but not before theyve stopped off at the burger van first! We know that non league football fans are full of heart, passion, and belief. You trust the manager, you believe in the team, and, for some strange reason, you trust those rickety stands, too! Here at Non League Daily, we hope we can become your trusted non league news resource - a platform thats just as passionate about non league daily news now as you. Come rain or shine, well be out reporting on the latest non league fixtures. Well also be scouring the news, refreshing social media, and sourcing information from team websites in the hopes of finding the latest breaking non league daily news for our readers. As youll soon see, weve got exclusive match reports on the Vanarama National League, weve got transfer speculation thatll affect the National League South, weve found great stories thatll spice up the National League North, and weve even got news on the latest giant killers of the FA Cup. We may not be able to agree on who is going up this year, but we can all agree that any news on the NLS worth knowing will be published here, at Non League Daily. At a recent national gathering of police commanders and telecommunications executives, one executive lamented: What company sends its employees into the field without a smartphone? Cops do. They give them to commanders, detectives, supervisors, but not officers. Many police officers, firefighters and paramedics carry their own smartphones to do the things their department-issued equipment cant. But now, 16 years after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, exposed the inability of American first responders to talk to each other, a nationwide cellular network called FirstNet is launching to give public safety employees the ability to send data, video and text to each other. When a crisis hits and cell towers are overwhelmed, calls from first responders will preempt calls made by the public. FirstNet is expected to be operational by March. Iowa will be among the first states to participate in the network. Congress established the First Responder Network Authority after reports that firefighters and police officers were unable to communicate at the World Trade Center and the Pentagon after the Sept. 11 attacks. The idea of placing all public safety agencies on one interoperable broadband network took off after AT&T was awarded a wireless spectrum that will provide the bandwidth for the project and then committed to spending $40 billion to build new facilities and provide security for it. Each state and territory must opt in to the project individually so that their public service agencies can obtain the phones or SIM cards and wireless plans needed to access FirstNet. Plans for each state were rolled out last month, and seven states Iowa, Virginia, Arkansas, Kentucky, New Jersey, West Virginia and Wyoming have climbed on board. Council Bluffs Fire Chief Fire Chief Justin James told The Nonpareil last month that FirstNet will be helpful for local first responders. Its a great idea, James said. The biggest advantage will be when police and fire departments need it during a large-scale situation. Communications is always an issue we face. The system would have helped during the Sept. 11 attack response as well. At the Pentagon on 9/11, the only way we could talk to the incident commander was face-to-face, said Richard Bowers, fire chief in Fairfax County, Virginia. That was a lot of time wasted. Bowers said that having priority over civilian calls during an emergency is huge. He said, Im able to talk to whoever I need to in order to provide critical operational information and direction. The LTE cell network is not meant to replace the radio dispatch systems long used by police and fire departments. Its not a nirvana, said Andrew Seybold, a wireless communications consultant who helped advise law enforcement on the legislation that established FirstNet. Its another tool thats used in conjunction with land-based networks to give public safety tools they havent had before. There remains serious skepticism in some quarters of law enforcement, in part because of the cost. Many police and fire departments would have to purchase phones for their line officers and firefighters FirstNet estimates roughly 70 percent of police officers dont have department phones and the departments will also have to pay for wireless subscription plans. AT&T has not yet released figures on how much it will charge agencies to access the network. But T.J. Kennedy, the FirstNet president, said jurisdictions have always had to budget for communications expenses, and FirstNet should eliminate some costs for departments that have to maintain their own wireless systems. For FirstNet, AT&T is building an entirely new communications network, said Chris Sambar, a senior vice president for AT&T. We want this to be the most secure network on earth. Well make sure its as close to bulletproof as possible, with dedicated security centers monitoring it exclusively. The possibilities for the new bandwidth get first responders excited. Paramedics in the back of an ambulance can send video ahead to an emergency room. Firefighters arriving on the scene of a critical incident can stream video to their commanders. Officers who arent near a computer can access criminal record databases. The system will also allow dispatchers and commanders to pinpoint the location of all their officers, paramedics and firefighters. I will have the ability to run criminal histories on individuals, said former Salt Lake City police chief Chris Burbank. I will now be able to see photos, to figure out if this guy is wanted all this over a secure network, with priority and preemption, and have access even during a large-scale event. FirstNet will provide SIM cards that enable existing smartphones to access its network. But it plans to develop special phones that are flame-retardant and water- and impact-resistant, said AT&Ts Sambar. Some public service agencies have expressed hesitation because, in the five years since the FirstNet agency was launched, they have bought wireless services from AT&T rivals such as Verizon and are hesitant to switch. Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds said in a release that FirstNet will build on AT&Ts existing footprint in the state, investing nearly $150 million in its Iowa infrastructure in the past three years. By partnering with FirstNet, we will be able to expand coverage for first responders, Reynolds said. As a result, this will also help expand coverage for rural Iowans, providing access to a reliable, high speed wireless connection in areas with little or no connectivity today. FirstNet has set a series of deadlines for states beginning Friday, which is the cutoff to provide comments or ask questions. In mid-September, FirstNet will start a timer for states that havent made a decision, and mid-December is the deadline for states to opt in or out. AT&T expects to have the core network built by March. FirstNet will be compatible with NextGen 911, a slowly developing program to improve 911 capacity beyond voice to text and data. The Nonpareils Scott Stewart and Mike Bell contributed to this report. TORONTO, Aug. 03, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Teranga Gold Corporation ("Teranga" or the "Company") (TSX:TGZ) (ASX:TGZ) announces that the Australian Securities Exchange (the "ASX") has approved its request for the removal of the Company from the official list of the ASX ("Official List") under ASX Listing Rule 17.11 as follows: DECISION 1. Based solely on the information provided, ASX Limited (ASX) resolves to remove Teranga Gold Corporation (the Company) from the official list of ASX Limited (ASX) pursuant to listing rule 17.11, on 14 September 2017 or such other date to be decided by ASX in consultation with the Company, subject to compliance with the following conditions: 1.1. The Company sends written or electronic communication to all security holders whose securities are held on the Companys Australian register, in form and substance satisfactory to ASX, setting out: 1.1.1. the nominated time and date at which the entity will be removed from the ASX official list and that; a) if they wish to sell their securities on ASX, they will need to do so before then; and b) if they dont, thereafter they will only be able to sell the underlying securities on-market on the Toronto Stock Exchange (TSX); 1.1.2. generally what they will need to do if they wish to sell their securities on TSX; and 1.1.3. specifically, if their securities are traded on ASX in the form of CHESS Depositary Interests (CDIs): a) the steps they must take to convert their CDIs to the underlying securities before they are able to sell them on the other exchange or exchanges where the entity is listed; and b) the steps that will be taken by the CHESS Depositary Nominee if they do not convert their CDIs to the underlying securities by a nominated date. 1.2. The removal shall not take place any earlier than one month after the date the information in Resolution 1.1 has been sent to security holders; 1.3. The Company releases the full terms of this decision to the market; 2. ASX has considered listing rule 17.11 only and makes no statement as to the Companys compliance with other listing rules. A letter was mailed to each holder of CHESS Depositary Interests ("CDIs") which provides specific instructions and details regarding the options available to them relating to their CDIs under the delisting process. The Company is currently listed on two securities exchanges the ASX and the Toronto Stock Exchange (the "TSX"). Following the expected delisting from the Official List of the ASX on September 14, 2017, Teranga will be removed from the Official List and its CDIs will no longer be tradeable on the ASX. The Companys common shares ("Shares") will continue to be listed on the TSX. About Teranga Teranga is a multi-jurisdictional West African gold company focused on production and development as well as the exploration of more than 5,000km2 of land located on prospective gold belts. Since its initial public offering in 2010, Teranga has produced more than 1.2 million ounces of gold from its operations in Senegal, which as of June 30, 2017 had a reserve base of 2.7 million ounces of gold. Focused on diversification and growth, the Company is advancing its Banfora development project and conducting extensive exploration programs in three countries: Senegal, Burkina Faso and Cote dIvoire. Teranga has a strong balance sheet and the financial flexibility to grow its business. Steadfast in its commitment to set the benchmark for responsible mining, Teranga operates in accordance with the highest international standards and aims to act as a catalyst for sustainable economic, environmental, and community development as it strives to create value for all of its stakeholders. Teranga is a member of the United Nations Global Compact and a leading member of the multi-stakeholder group responsible for the submission of the first Senegalese Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative revenue report. The Company's responsibility report, is available at www.terangagold.com/responsibilityreport and is prepared in accordance with its commitments under the United Nations Global Compact and in alignment with the Global Reporting Initiative guidelines. President Donald Trump has threatened to end required payments to insurance companies unless lawmakers repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act. On Wednesday, Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, said he expects the payments to continue as legislators work on fixes to the ACA also known as Obamacare and work to repeal and replace the law. We ought to be able to do some things to improve Obamacare, the senior senator from Iowa said during his weekly press call. While Grassley was open to fixes to Obamacare, he said he wants the Senate to pass a replacement bill this year. He hitched his hopes to a bill proposed by Republican Sens. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Bill Cassidy of Louisiana. In apparent frustration over Fridays failure by the Senate Republican majority to pass a bill repealing parts of the Affordable Care Act, Trump tweeted: If a new HealthCare Bill is not approved quickly, BAILOUTS for Insurance Companies and BAILOUTS for Members of Congress will end very soon! No Democrats voted for the bill. Repeal-and-replace has been a guiding star for Republicans ever since President Barack Obama enacted the law in 2010. That goal, which Trump turned into a top campaign promise, remains out of reach even with Republicans controlling both the White House and Congress. The issue has dominated the opening months of Trumps presidency. But Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said after the bill failed early Friday that he would move to other legislative business in the upcoming week. Grassley listed keeping the government functioning including raising the debt ceiling among imperative moves for the Senate before the years out. He listed tax reform and infrastructure as topics the body should tackle as well. And hes not giving up on health care. Grassley said the Senate would have to get back to work on the issue, and proposed possibly skipping the October recess and working until Christmas Eve. Trump also tweeted: Unless the Republican Senators are total quitters, Repeal & Replace is not dead! Demand another vote before voting on any other bill! The subsidies, totaling about $7 billion a year, help reduce deductibles and copayments for consumers with modest incomes. The Obama administration used its rule-making authority to set direct payments to insurers to help offset these costs. Trump inherited the payment structure, but he also has the power to end them. The payments are the subject of a lawsuit brought by House Republicans over whether the Affordable Care Act specifically included a congressional appropriation for the money, as required under the Constitution. Grassley said he expects the payments to continue through at least September, approved on a month-by-month basis. Without the payments, analysts have said, more insurers might drop out of the system, limiting options for consumers and clearing the way for the insurers who stay to charge more for coverage. The Senates Democratic leader, Chuck Schumer of New York, cautioned such a step, saying it would make health care more expensive. If the president refuses to make the cost sharing reduction payments, every expert agrees that premiums will go up and health care will be more expensive for millions of Americans, Schumer said Saturday in a written statement. The president ought to stop playing politics with peoples lives and health care, start leading and finally begin acting presidential. Superville of The Associated Press contributed reporting from Washington, D.C. STORM LAKE (AP) Tyson Foods has settled a 10-year-old class-action lawsuit and will disburse nearly $6 million to more than 3,900 current and former employees of a pork plant in northwest Iowa. Peg Bouaphakeo and other Storm Lake employees sued the Arkansas-based company in 2007 to collect back pay for the time they spent putting on and taking off protective work clothes and equipment before and after their work shifts, the Sioux City Journal reported. A Sioux City federal jury ruled in favor of the workers in 2011, a decision the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld in 2014. Tyson appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, which rejected the companys request in March 2016 to limit workers ability to challenge pay and workplace issues. After the Supreme Court ruling, the companys lawyers sought a new trial to address liability and damage issues. U.S. District Judge John Jarvey denied the request, saying the distribution formula would ensure only workers entitled to damages would receive money from the settlement. The company is required by law to keep records of the amount of time employees spent taking off and putting on the protective gear, but Tyson failed to keep such records and invited the problem of determining damages, he said. Tyson and the workers agreed in the settlement to a process that a third-party administrator will use to disburse the payments. Were pleased this matter is nearing completion and has been resolved to the mutual satisfaction of the parties involved, Tyson spokesman Gary Mickelson said in an email. Each worker will receive about $1,700, but its unknown when payments will be distributed, Mickelson said. This editorial, distributed by The Associated Press, was published July 26 in The Des Moines Register. Among the most short-sighted measures approved this year by Iowa lawmakers and Gov. Terry Branstad was one giving up federal family planning money. Politicians wanted to prevent Planned Parenthood from being paid to provide health services, including counseling and birth control. But states cannot collect Medicaid dollars and discriminate against a specific health provider, so our leaders ordered the Iowa Department of Human Services to forfeit all the Washington money for all providers and create a new state-funded family planning program that did not pay any provider also offering abortion. Lawmakers went home for the summer. The governor moved to China. Iowans are left to deal with the fallout of a fringe idea. Among the immediate repercussions: State pays more... Iowa Republicans said they would replace the lost federal family planning money with state dollars. This was the epitome of fiscal irresponsibility, as Iowa does not have an extra $3 million. The money spent by the state could have funded programs that were cut, including those helping Iowans with autism and epilepsy. That shows the GOPs anti-female agenda in Iowa is getting expensive. (Anti-female behavior in the Republican Senate caucus at the Statehouse also has proven costly. Jurors recently awarded $2.2 million in damages to a former caucus staffer who accused male supervisors of ignoring an environment that fostered rampant sexual harassment.) Time wasted... As if the Council on Human Services doesnt have enough to do overseeing the states largest agency, it was clearly frustrated with Republicans family planning stunt. Members, all appointed by Branstad, took the rare action of voting to reject rules to implement a new program. They cited concerns about providers losing funding. After a state attorney explained to the council it could not prevent the law from going into effect, members reluctantly approved the rules. Meanwhile, the drastically understaffed DHS had no choice but to end an established program that successfully served 12,000 Iowans, then create a new one, notify providers who may participate and report to lawmakers on the mess. Access to care lost ... Planned Parenthood specializes in preventing pregnancies. After losing access to federal family planning dollars, the organization announced the closure of clinics in Bettendorf, Burlington, Keokuk and Sioux City. About half the patients visiting those clinics sought birth control. Many were teens. ... and may not be regained Lawmakers who fixated on defunding Planned Parenthood repeatedly insisted that plenty of other providers were available to fill the void if clinics closed. Unable to identify the providers, they unloaded the task on DHS. The agencys recently published list of entities eligible to receive payments from the new family planning program is not accurate. It includes Catholic-affiliated clinics that limit birth control options and providers who work more than 100 miles from the counties in which they were listed. It includes hospitals that state administrators said would be barred from the new family planning program. VANCOUVER, British Columbia, Aug. 03, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- FIRST MAJESTIC SILVER CORP. (NYSE:AG) (TSX:FR) (the "Company" or First Majestic) is pleased to announce the unaudited interim consolidated financial results of the Company for the second quarter ended June 30, 2017. The full version of the financial statements and the management discussion and analysis can be viewed on the Company's web site at www.firstmajestic.com or on SEDAR at www.sedar.com and on EDGAR at www.sec.gov . All amounts are in U.S. dollars unless stated otherwise. SECOND QUARTER 2017 HIGHLIGHTS (compared to First Quarter 2017) Silver equivalent production decreased 9% to 3.9 million ounces Silver production decreased 16% to 2.3 million ounces All-in sustaining costs (AISC) increased 19% to $14.58 per payable silver ounce Revenues decreased 13% to $60.1 million Realized average silver price decreased 2% to $17.17 per ounce Mine operating earnings decreased 86% to $1.4 million Cash flow per share was $0.11 per share (non-GAAP), a decrease of 32% from the prior quarter Cash costs increased 11% to $7.41 per payable silver ounce (net of by-product credits) Net earnings of $1.4 million (Basic EPS of $0.01) Adjusted net loss, excluding non-cash and non-recurring items, totaled $3.6 million (Adjusted loss per share of $0.02) Strong treasury with cash and cash equivalents totaling $126.9 million at the end of the quarter Our second quarter results were unfortunately burdened by a number of labour issues which have since been resolved, stated Keith Neumeyer, President and CEO of First Majestic. While weaker revenues and cash flows were realized as a result of these work stoppages and a strengthening Mexican Peso, our treasury remained relatively unchanged at a very healthy $126.9 million. Due to this unexpected weakness in cash flows, as a conservative measure, management has decided to reduce capital expenditures by $17.5 million for the year. Our focus in the second half of 2017 remains to be the construction of the new roaster system at our La Encantada mine which is on schedule for commissioning in the first quarter of 2018 as well as the renewed investments in underground development which has been lacking over the past few years. This increase in underground development, which started in mid-2016, will have a direct impact on improving production, however, the positive impacts of these types of investments are generally delayed by 12 to 24 months. OPERATIONAL AND FINANCIAL HIGHLIGHTS Key Performance Metrics 2017-Q2 2017-Q1 Change Q2 vs Q1 2016-Q2 Change Q2 vs Q2 2017-YTD Operational Ore Processed / Tonnes Milled 691,833 822,336 (16 %) 798,182 (13 %) 1,514,170 Silver Ounces Produced 2,287,188 2,708,978 (16 %) 2,844,930 (20 %) 4,996,166 Silver Equivalent Ounces Produced 3,888,944 4,267,350 (9 %) 4,681,608 (17 %) 8,156,294 Cash Costs per Ounce (1) $ 7.41 $ 6.68 11 % $ 6.41 16 % $ 7.02 All-in Sustaining Cost per Ounce (1) $ 14.58 $ 12.21 19 % $ 10.97 33 % $ 13.30 Total Production Cost per Tonne (1) $ 51.53 $ 44.72 15 % $ 44.97 15 % $ 47.83 Average Realized Silver Price per Ounce (1) $ 17.17 $ 17.55 (2 %) $ 17.01 1 % $ 17.37 Financial (in $millions) Revenues $ 60.1 $ 69.1 (13 %) $ 66.1 (9 %) $ 129.2 Mine Operating Earnings (2) $ 1.4 $ 10.0 (86 %) $ 9.9 (86 %) $ 11.4 (Loss) Earnings before Income Taxes ($6.7 ) $ 2.6 (358 %) $ 9.2 (173 %) ($4.1 ) Net Earnings (Loss) $ 1.4 $ 2.7 (48 %) $ 6.1 (77 %) $ 4.1 Operating Cash Flows before Working Capital and Taxes (2) $ 18.0 $ 26.6 (32 %) $ 23.5 (23 %) $ 44.6 Cash and Cash Equivalents $ 126.9 $ 127.6 (1 %) $ 108.2 17 % $ 126.9 Working Capital (1) $ 130.9 $ 136.8 (4 %) $ 119.1 10 % $ 130.9 Shareholders Earnings (Loss) per Share ("EPS") - Basic $ 0.01 $ 0.02 (48 %) $ 0.04 (78 %) $ 0.03 Adjusted EPS (1) ($0.02 ) $ 0.02 (198 %) $ 0.03 174 % $ 0.00 Cash Flow per Share (1) $ 0.11 $ 0.16 (33 %) $ 0.15 (26 %) $ 0.27 (1) The Company reports non-GAAP measures which include cash costs per ounce, all-in sustaining cost per ounce, total production cost per ounce, total production cost per tonne, average realized silver price per ounce, working capital, adjusted EPS and cash flow per share. These measures are widely used in the mining industry as a benchmark for performance, but do not have a standardized meaning and may differ from methods used by other companies with similar descriptions. (2) The Company reports additional GAAP measures which include mine operating earnings and operating cash flows before movements in working capital and income taxes. These additional financial measures are intended to provide additional information and do not have a standardized meaning prescribed by IFRS. FINANCIAL REVIEW The Company realized an average silver price of $17.17 per ounce during the second quarter of 2017, representing a 1% increase compared with the second quarter of 2016 and a 2% decrease compared to $17.55 in the prior quarter. Revenues generated in the second quarter totaled $60.1 million, a decrease of 9% compared to the second quarter of 2016 primarily due to a 13% decrease in silver equivalent ounces sold, which resulted from lost production due to the illegal work stoppages at the La Encantada, La Parrilla and Santa Elena mines and lower grades due to the lack of investment in underground development over the past few years. Mine operating earnings were $1.4 million in the quarter compared to $9.9 million in the second quarter of 2016. The decrease in mine operating earnings was primarily affected by lost revenue from the La Encantada illegal strike, where $1.4 million in standby costs continued to be incurred, and $0.2 million in severance costs that were paid out. Cash flow from operations before movements in working capital and income taxes in the quarter was $18.0 million ($0.11 per share) compared to $23.5 million ($0.15 per share) in the second quarter of 2016. The decrease was primarily attributed to lower mine operating earnings impacted by the mine stoppages in the quarter. The Company generated net earnings of $1.4 million (EPS of $0.01) in the second quarter compared net earnings of $6.1 million (EPS of $0.04) in the second quarter of 2016. The decrease of $4.7 million was primarily attributed to: 1) $8.5 million decrease in mine operating earnings as a result of mine stoppages; 2) $6.0 million decrease in investment and other income, mainly attributed to market price volatility on the Company's holdings in marketable securities; partially offset by 3) an income tax recovery of $8.1 million in the second quarter due to the impact of foreign exchange on deferred tax liabilities. Excluding all non-cash and non-recurring items, the Company generated an adjusted loss of $3.6 million (adjusted loss of $0.02 per share) during the quarter. The Company maintains a strong treasury with $126.9 million in cash and cash equivalents at the end of the quarter, reflecting a 1% decrease compared to the prior quarter. The Companys working capital position decreased 4% to $130.9 million compared to $136.8 million at the end of the prior quarter. OPERATIONAL HIGHLIGHTS The table below represents the quarterly operating and cost parameters at each of the Companys six producing silver mines. Second Quarter Production Summary Santa Elena La Encantada La Parrilla Del Toro San Martin La Guitarra Consolidated Ore Processed / Tonnes Milled 232,451 148,039 132,880 81,843 67,073 29,547 691,833 Silver Ounces Produced 557,914 374,901 425,060 365,323 425,645 138,345 2,287,188 Silver Equivalent Ounces Produced 1,399,940 375,563 593,852 712,714 577,598 229,276 3,888,944 Cash Costs per Ounce $ 2.86 $ 13.59 $ 11.15 $ 3.99 $ 5.43 $ 12.65 $ 7.41 All-in Sustaining Cost per Ounce $ 6.64 $ 17.95 $ 17.12 $ 7.93 $ 7.53 $ 19.51 $ 14.58 Total Production Cost per Tonne $ 54.44 $ 33.65 $ 44.54 $ 57.16 $ 69.37 $ 93.49 $ 51.53 Production in the quarter totalled 3.9 million silver equivalent ounces consisting of 2.3 million ounces of silver, 15,186 ounces of gold, 7.6 million pounds of lead and 0.9 million pounds of zinc. Compared to the previous quarter, total production decreased by 9% primarily due to unusual efforts by unionized workers to illegally disrupt mining activities which caused labour issues, including minor stoppages at La Parrilla and Santa Elena, and a more serious stoppage at the La Encantada mine which lasted 42 days and contributed to a 47% or 333,396 silver equivalent ounce reduction in production at La Encantada. The leaders of the National Union and Confederation of Mexican Workers Union were both supportive of the corrective actions taken by the Company which are expected to lead to improvements in productivity at each of the operations in the coming quarters. The Company anticipates production at La Encantada will be back on track in the third quarter and will work to recuperate lost tonnage over the remainder of 2017. COSTS AND CAPITAL EXPENDITURES Cash cost per ounce in the quarter was $7.41, an increase of 11% or $0.73 per ounce compared to the previous quarter. The increase in cash cost per ounce was primarily due to the 16% decrease in silver production and a stronger Mexican peso which appreciated 11% against the U.S. dollars compared to the previous quarter. AISC per ounce in the second quarter was $14.58, an increase of 19% or $2.37 per ounce compared to the previous quarter. The increase in AISC was primarily due to the 16% decrease in silver production and an increase in sustaining capital expenditures as the Company catches up with program targets for 2017 after a slower than expected initiation of exploration and development activities at the beginning of the year. Total capital expenditures in the second quarter were $16.3 million, a decrease of 14% compared to the prior quarter, primarily consisting of $3.4 million at Santa Elena, $2.8 million at La Encantada, $3.3 million at La Parrilla, $1.7 million at Del Toro, $2.5 million at San Martin and $1.4 million at La Guitarra. OUTLOOK The Company is updating its 2017 annual silver production guidance to be in the range of 10.0 million to 10.6 million ounces (or 15.7 million to 16.6 million silver equivalent ounces), compared to the previous guidance of 11.1 to 12.4 million ounces (or 16.6 to 18.5 million silver equivalent ounces). The 12% decrease in silver production is primarily due to lower head grades from slow initiation of underground development activities at the beginning of the year and lost production as a result of three illegal blockades in the second quarter which amounted to four days at La Parrilla, two days at Santa Elena and 42 days at La Encantada. Annual cash cost is now expected to be within the range of $7.00 to $7.75 per ounce, compared to the previous guidance of $6.06 to $6.48 per ounce, primarily due to lower anticipated production levels, higher energy costs attributed to the Mexican government's oil and gas deregulation policies that came into effect in the first quarter of 2017, as well as strengthening of the Mexican pesos against the U.S. dollar. The Company has also updated its capital budget for 2017 and has reduced capital investments by $17.5 million to $106.5 million consisting of $45.6 million for sustaining requirements and $60.9 million for expansionary projects. This represents a 14% decrease compared to the original 2017 capital budget of $124.0 million. The revised annual budget includes capital investments totaling $43.6 million to be spent on underground development, $36.9 million towards property, plant and equipment, $21.6 million in exploration and $4.3 million towards corporate automation and efficiency projects. Total capital expenditures in the first half of 2017 totalled $35.4 million, representing approximately 33% of the $106.5 million revised budget. The Company expects capital spending to increase in the second half of 2017 to catch up to program targets, with a majority of the investment focused on underground development, exploration and the completion of the roaster at La Encantada and the tailings filters at San Martin. Furthermore, the Company is now expecting to complete a total of 64,500 metres of underground development in 2017, representing a 14% decrease compared the original budget of 74,850 metres. In addition, the Company is planning to complete a total of 145,000 metres of exploration drilling in 2017, representing a 21% decrease compared to the original budget of 183,000 metres. The Company completed 28,692 metres of development and 58,070 exploration metres in the first half of 2017, representing 44% and 40%, respectively, of the revised budget. A mine-by-mine breakdown of the revised 2017 production guidance is included in the table below. Cash cost and AISC guidance is shown per payable silver ounce. Metal price and foreign currency assumptions for calculating silver equivalent ounces were updated to: silver: $17.00/oz, gold: $1,250/oz, lead: $1.00/lb, zinc: $1.25/lb, MXN:USD 18:1, compared to previous assumptions of: silver: $16.50/oz, gold: $1,200/oz, lead: $1.00/lb, zinc: $1.20/lb, MXN:USD 20:1. Mine Silver Oz (M) Silver Eqv Oz (M) Cash Costs ($) AISC ($) Santa Elena 2.2 - 2.3 5.2 - 5.5 2.58 - 2.85 6.23 - 6.71 La Encantada 2.3 - 2.5 2.3 - 2.5 11.06 - 12.23 14.68 - 16.07 La Parrilla 1.8 - 1.9 2.5 - 2.7 9.36 - 10.35 14.37 - 15.65 Del Toro 1.3 - 1.4 2.5 - 2.7 3.33 - 3.68 9.32 - 10.00 San Martin 1.7 - 1.8 2.2 - 2.3 6.04 - 6.68 9.46 - 10.29 La Guitarra 0.6 - 0.7 0.9 - 1.0 10.83 - 11.97 19.64 - 21.28 Consolidated 10.0 - 10.6 15.7 - 16.6 $7.00 - $7.75 $14.40 - $15.50 *Certain amounts shown may not add exactly to the total amount due to rounding differences. *Consolidated AISC includes general and administrative cost estimates and non-cash costs of $2.67 to $2.83 per payable silver ounce. The Company is projecting its 2017 AISC, as defined by the World Gold Council ("WGC"), to be within a range of $14.40 to $15.50 consolidated on a per payable silver ounce basis, compared to the previous guidance of $11.96 to $12.88. An itemized AISC cost table is provided below: All-In Sustaining Cost Calculation FY 2017 ($/oz) Total Cash Costs per Payable Silver Ounce (1) 7.00 - 7.75 Workers Participation Costs 0.24 - 0.26 General and Administrative Costs 1.75 - 1.85 Sustaining Development Costs 1.93 - 2.04 Sustaining Property, Plant and Equipment Costs 2.25 - 2.29 Sustaining Exploration Costs 0.31 - 0.33 Share-based Payments (non-cash) 0.83 - 0.88 Accretion of Reclamation Costs (non-cash) 0.09 - 0.10 All-In Sustaining Costs: (WGC definition) $14.40 - $15.50 All-In Sustaining Costs: (WGC excluding non-cash items) $13.48 - $14.52 1. The cash cost per payable silver ounce includes estimated royalties and 0.5% mining environmental fee of $0.12 per ounce. CONFERENCE CALL The Company will be holding a conference call and webcast on Friday, August 4, 2017 at 10 am PDT (1 pm EDT). To participate in the conference call, please dial the following: Toll Free Canada & USA: 1-800-319-4610 Outside of Canada & USA: 1-604-638-5340 Toll Free Germany: 0800 180 1954 Toll Free UK: 0808 101 2791 Participants should dial in 10 minutes prior to the conference. Click on WEBCAST on the First Majestic homepage as a simultaneous audio webcast of the conference call will be posted at www.firstmajestic.com. The conference call will be recorded and you can listen to an archive of the conference by calling: Canada & USA Toll Free: 1-800-319-6413 Outside Canada & USA: 1-604-638-9010 Access Code: 1572 followed by the # sign The replay will be available approximately one hour after the conference and will available for 7 days following the conference. The replay will also be available on the Companys website for one month. ABOUT FIRST MAJESTIC First Majestic is a mining company focused on silver production in Mexico and is aggressively pursuing the development of its existing mineral property assets. The Company presently owns and operates six producing silver mines; the La Parrilla Silver Mine, the San Martin Silver Mine, the La Encantada Silver Mine, the La Guitarra Silver Mine, Del Toro Silver Mine and the Santa Elena Silver/Gold Mine. Production from these six mines is projected to be between 10.0 to 10.6 million ounces of pure silver or 15.7 to 16.6 million ounces of silver equivalents in 2017. FOR FURTHER INFORMATION contact info@firstmajestic.com, visit our website at www.firstmajestic.com or call our toll free number 1.866.529.2807. FIRST MAJESTIC SILVER CORP. signed Keith Neumeyer, President & CEO SPECIAL NOTE REGARDING FORWARD-LOOKING INFORMATION This news release includes certain "Forward-Looking Statements" within the meaning of the United States Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 and applicable Canadian securities laws. When used in this news release, the words anticipate, believe, estimate, expect, target, plan, forecast, may, schedule and similar words or expressions, identify forward-looking statements or information. These forward-looking statements or information relate to, among other things: the price of silver and other metals; the accuracy of mineral reserve and resource estimates and estimates of future production and costs of production at our properties; estimated production rates for silver and other payable metals produced by us, the estimated cost of development of our development projects; the effects of laws, regulations and government policies on our operations, including, without limitation, the laws in Mexico which currently have significant restrictions related to mining; obtaining or maintaining necessary permits, licences and approvals from government authorities; and continued access to necessary infrastructure, including, without limitation, access to power, land, water and roads to carry on activities as planned. These statements reflect the Companys current views with respect to future events and are necessarily based upon a number of assumptions and estimates that, while considered reasonable by the Company, are inherently subject to significant business, economic, competitive, political and social uncertainties and contingencies. Many factors, both known and unknown, could cause actual results, performance or achievements to be materially different from the results, performance or achievements that are or may be expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements or information and the Company has made assumptions and estimates based on or related to many of these factors. Such factors include, without limitation: fluctuations in the spot and forward price of silver, gold, base metals or certain other commodities (such as natural gas, fuel oil and electricity); fluctuations in the currency markets (such as the Canadian dollar and Mexican peso versus the U.S. dollar); changes in national and local government, legislation, taxation, controls, regulations and political or economic developments in Canada, Mexico; operating or technical difficulties in connection with mining or development activities; risks and hazards associated with the business of mineral exploration, development and mining (including environmental hazards, industrial accidents, unusual or unexpected formations, pressures, cave-ins and flooding); risks relating to the credit worthiness or financial condition of suppliers, refiners and other parties with whom the Company does business; inability to obtain adequate insurance to cover risks and hazards; and the presence of laws and regulations that may impose restrictions on mining, including those currently enacted in Mexico; employee relations; relationships with and claims by local communities and indigenous populations; availability and increasing costs associated with mining inputs and labour; the speculative nature of mineral exploration and development, including the risks of obtaining necessary licenses, permits and approvals from government authorities; diminishing quantities or grades of mineral reserves as properties are mined; the Companys title to properties; and the factors identified under the caption Risk Factors in the Companys Annual Information Form, under the caption Risks Relating to First Majestic's Business. Investors are cautioned against attributing undue certainty to forward-looking statements or information. Although the Company has attempted to identify important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially, there may be other factors that cause results not to be anticipated, estimated or intended. The Company does not intend, and does not assume any obligation, to update these forward-looking statements or information to reflect changes in assumptions or changes in circumstances or any other events affecting such statements or information, other than as required by applicable law. VANCOUVER, British Columbia, Aug. 03, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Kaiyue International Inc. (TSX.V:KYU) (the "Company" or "Kaiyue") is pleased to announce that it has entered into a binding letter of intent (the "LOI") dated July 28, 2017 with Potanicals Green Growers Inc. ("Potanicals") whereby the parties will complete a business combination by way of a transaction that will constitute a reverse takeover of the Company by Potanicals (the "Transaction"). Pursuant to the Transaction, the Company will first delist from the TSX Venture Exchange (the "TSXV"), then all of the issued and outstanding common shares of Potanical (the "Potanicals Shares") will be exchanged for common shares of the Company (the "Kaiyue Shares"), which will result in Potanicals becoming a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Company or otherwise combining its corporate existence with a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Company. The resulting issuer that will exist upon completion of the Transaction (the "Resulting Issuer") will change its business from mining to the licensed production of marijuana under the Access to Cannabis for Medical Purposes Regulations ("ACMPR") and shall become listed on the Canadian Securities Exchange (the "CSE"). The final structure of the Transaction will be determined by the parties following receipt of tax, corporate and securities law advice. The Transaction is an arms length transaction. Transfer of Listing to the CSE Upon closing of the Transaction, but subject to receipt of approvals of the TSXV and the CSE, the Resulting Issuer's common shares will be delisted from trading on the TSXV and will be listed for trading on the CSE. Delisting of the Company from the TSXV is subject to the Company receiving approval for listing the Resulting Issuer on the CSE. There can be no assurance that the proposed transfer of the listing to the CSE will be approved by the TSXV or that the CSE will approve the listing of the Resulting Issuer's shares. Non-approval of the transfer of the listing will prohibit or negatively impact closing of the Transaction with the result that the Company will need to seek and secure another acquisition of a business or assets to ensure that the Company will meet the TSXV's continued listing requirements. Share Consolidation, Continuation and Name Change Prior to closing of the Transaction, but subject to receipt of approvals of the TSXV and the CSE and if required, approval of the Company's shareholders, Kaiyue will consolidate all its issued and outstanding common shares based on a consolidation ratio (2.2174-to-1) that will result in the reduction of Kaiyue's issued and outstanding common shares to not more than 10,000,000 shares on a non-diluted basis (the "Consolidation"), will continue its legal existence from Alberta to British Columbia, and Kaiyue will change its name to such name as is acceptable to management of Potanicals and applicable regulatory authorities. Potanicals Private Placement Prior to or concurrently with closing of the Transaction, Potanicals will complete a private placement of 5,855,555 Potanicals Shares at a price of $0.90 per share to raise gross proceeds of $5,270,000 (the "Private Placement"). Share Exchange and Kaiyue Stock Options Pursuant to the Transaction and following completion of the Private Placement, Kaiyue Shares will be issued to the holders of securities of Potanicals on a post-Consolidation basis in exchange for all of the then issued and outstanding securities of Potanicals, on the basis of 4.5 Kaiyue Shares for each issued and outstanding Potanicals Share, for an aggregate 124,186,750 Kaiyue Shares. On closing of the Transaction, there will be a total of 134,186,750 common shares of the Resulting Issuer issued and outstanding, plus 90,196 stock options to purchase post-Consolidated common shares of Kaiyue at a price of $0.29 per share (the "Kaiyue Options"). Following closing of the Transaction, the outstanding Kaiyue Options will remain in effect. Description of Potanicals and its Business Potanicals is a private company incorporated under the British Columbia Business Corporations Act in 2014 to capitalize on the significant opportunities in the medical marijuana market in Canada and overseas. Potanicals has built a 12,700 square foot production facility in Peachland, British Columbia to plant, grow and cultivate high-quality medical-grade marijuana using advanced and proprietary cultivation methods. In June 2013, management began the process of applying for a producer's licence under the new Health Canada ACMPR. Potanicals has completed the construction for the Peachland facility and is currently in the stage of Confirmation of Readiness for License under ACMPR. The primary specialized skill and knowledge requirement for success as a Licensed Producer of medicinal marijuana relates to cultivating the product. In its first phase of operations, Potanicals has applied for a 3,125 kg annual production and distribution licence to be housed in the Peachland facility. The facility is equipped with cutting-edge technologies that will enable efficient and reliable production of medical marijuana with harvest available on a bi-monthly basis. Potanicals has spent $4.68 million to date building the facility and implementing its business plan. Management of the Resulting Issuer Upon closing of the Transaction, all of the Kaiyue's current directors and officers will resign; the board of directors of the Resulting Issuer will consist of five directors, as well as a Chief Executive Officer, a President, a Chief Financial Officer and a Corporate Secretary of the Resulting Issuer, all of whom will be as nominated by Potanicals. Potanicals' management team is comprised of entrepreneurs with experience in medical marijuana, real estate development, and agriculture businesses. Key personnel are highlighted below. Additional management and operational staff will be brought on as Potanicals commissions and commences production at the Peachland facility. Johnson Ping Zhang Chief Executive Officer Over 20 years of management experience and over five years of experience in the agriculture industry Actively involved in real estate development projects in China and Canada since 1994 Craig Loverock Chief Financial Officer Over 14 years of experience in the agriculture industry Chief Executive Officer and Founder of a technology company providing solutions for licensed medical marijuana producers in Canada and the U.S. and a laboratory services company focused on the agriculture sector of British Columbia Cliff Sowell Chief Operating Officer Developed a number of enterprises for over 40 years Experience in tourism and hospitality, real estate, property development, and web marketing Potanicals is in the process of building its Board of Directors to include independent members who bring legal, accounting, marijuana industry, pharmaceutical and regulatory skill sets to the company. In addition, Potanicals is in the process of building an Advisory Board that will assist the company with its strategic vision and operating plans. Use of Available Funds The Resulting Issuer intends to use the funds that will be available on closing of the Private Placement and the Transaction to fund the costs of the following: Commissioning and operations $1,450,000 Management Salaries $306,000 Consulting Fees $300,000 Land Purchasing $600,000 Land Lease $30,000 Office Lease $36,000 Insurance $10,800 Three Phase Power $300,000 Second Phase Design, Preparation $1,700,000 General Overhead Costs $60,000 Unallocated Working Capital $477,200 Total $5,270,000 Closing Conditions The completion of the Transaction is subject to a number of conditions, including but not limited to the following: the execution of a definitive agreement; completion of mutually satisfactory due diligence; completion of the Private Placement; receipt of all required regulatory, corporate and third party approvals, including approvals by the TSXV, the CSE, the shareholders of Kaiyue and Potanicals, and fulfilment of all applicable regulatory requirements and conditions necessary to complete the Transaction; all of the Company's mineral property interests and existing business being sold or terminated, provided that no liability is incurred by Kaiyue in doing so; and completion of the delisting of the Company from the TSXV and the listing of the Resulting Issuer's common shares on the CSE. Termination of the LOI The LOI may be terminated if one of the following events occurs: (a) written agreement of the parties to terminate the LOI; (b) the definitive agreement has not been entered into by the parties by 5:00 p.m. (Vancouver time) on October 31, 2017 or such later date as the parties may agree upon in writing; (c) a party has breached or is in default of any material term of the LOI and fails to cure such breach or default within ten days after receiving written notice from the other party containing details of the breach; (d) any condition of closing of the Transaction for the benefit of a party is not fulfilled or waived within the time required or becomes incapable of being satisfied; or (e) any applicable regulatory authority, the TSXV or the CSE having notified in writing either Kaiyue or Potanicals that it will not approve the Transaction or permit the Transaction to proceed. Trading Halt Trading in the Company's shares was halted on July 31, 2017 and is expected to remain halted until closing of the RTO and listing on the CSE. The securities to be issued in connection with the Transaction have not been and will not be registered under the United States Securities Act of 1933, as amended (the "U.S. Securities Act") or any state securities laws and may not be offered or sold within the United States or to U.S. Persons (as defined in Regulation S promulgated under the U.S. Securities Act) unless registered under the U.S. Securities Act and applicable state securities laws or an exemption from such registration is available. Completion of the Transaction is subject to a number of conditions, including TSXV and CSE acceptance and shareholder approval, if applicable. The Transaction cannot close until the required approvals are obtained. There can be no assurance that the Transaction will be completed as proposed or at all. Investors are cautioned that, except as disclosed in the disclosure document to be prepared in connection with the Transaction, any information released or received with respect to the Transaction may not be accurate or complete and should not be relied upon. Trading in the common shares of the Company should be considered highly speculative. Neither TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release. ON BEHALF OF THE BOARD KAIYUE INTERNATIONAL INC. /s/ Hilda Sung Hilda Sung Chief Executive Officer For further information contact: Hilda Sung Chief Executive Officer 604-339-7688 Forward-Looking Information This news release contains forward-looking information within the meaning of applicable securities laws relating to the proposal to complete the Transaction and associated transactions, including statements regarding the terms and conditions of the Transaction and the outlook of the business of Potanicals. Although the Company believes in light of the experience of its officers and directors, current conditions and expected future developments and other factors that have been considered appropriate that the expectations reflected in this forward-looking information are reasonable, undue reliance should not be placed on them because the Company can give no assurance that they will prove to be correct. Actual results and developments may differ materially from those contemplated by these statements depending on, among other things, the risks that the parties will not proceed with the Transaction and associated transactions, that the ultimate terms of the Transaction, and associated transactions will differ from those that currently are contemplated, and that the Transaction and associated transactions will not be successfully completed for any reason (including the failure to obtain the required approvals or clearances from regulatory authorities). The terms and conditions of the Transaction may change based on the Companys due diligence and the receipt of tax, corporate and securities law advice for both the Company and Potanicals. The statements in this press release are made as of the date of this release. The Company undertakes no obligation to comment on analyses, expectations or statements made by third-parties in respect of the Company, Potanicals, their securities, or their respective financial or operating results (as applicable). Next months solar eclipse could be the most photographed natural event in American history. But unique technical and safety issues will challenge pros and amateurs alike. So rare are total solar eclipses that few people have photographed them. We are all in the same boat, said professional Nebraska nature photographer Michael Forsberg. On the other hand, with potentially millions of cameras clicking away along the eclipses 2,500-mile path, theres a good chance that some folks will produce great images to memorialize the event. As they say, nothing that is good is ever easy, said Lucas Gilman, a professional photographer and Nikon ambassador, who plans to photograph the eclipse near the Grand Teton mountain range in Wyoming. Its definitely not an easy one, Gilman said, but with a bit of practice I think everybody can walk away with some pretty cool results. Perhaps the most burning question about photographing the Aug. 21 eclipse is: Will it damage my camera sensor? This question concerns both high-end professional cameras and smartphone cameras. During totality, when the moon completely covers the sun, everyone can shoot away without worry. But during the partial phases, before and after totality, when the sun is still bright, cameras could be damaged. The big camera-makers, Nikon and Canon, both advise using a solar filter during the partial phases. Photojournalist Dave Henry, a Canon photography expert, said telephoto lenses act like a magnifying glass. Its similar to when we were kids, wed take a magnifying glass and burn a leaf on the lawn, he said. Thats what we dont want people to do: ruin their equipment, their sensor or, if theyre looking through the viewfinder at the same time, ruin their eyesight. Solar filters block virtually all light except the bright light from the suns surface. Solar filters and glasses should come from NASA-approved companies and meet the ISO 12312-2 international standard. Some approved companies are Rainbow Symphony, American Paper Optics, Thousand Oaks Optical and TSE 17. People should take care not to bend or scratch the filters, which would allow damaging light to slip through. Wide-angle eclipse shots that include the landscape are less likely to cause damage, Henry said. In landscape photography, photographers commonly use wide-angle lenses to get the sun coming over the edge of a mountain or through the leaves of a tree, he said. In those cases, the length of exposure typically is brief and the aperture the hole that lets light into the camera small, he said. Thats going to be fine, he said. You dont need a solar filter for that. Steve Heiner, senior technical manager at Nikon, notes that the sun reflected through a lens for prolonged periods of time may also cause damage due to accumulating heat. Smartphone owners are probably safe from sensor damage, experts say. Apple spokesman Alex Kirschner said iPhone owners have nothing to worry about taking shots of the eclipse. However, smartphones, while good for selfies and landscape shots, arent designed for eclipse photography, experts say. Ken Sklute, another Canon expert, said the eclipse is one event that the smartphones really need to sit out. The lenses arent made for magnification, he said. Its not going to provide a good image right from the get-go, he said. Theres also the possibility of eye damage when people hold up a smartphone to frame the eclipse shot, Sklute said. A better option, he said, would be buying an inexpensive compact or point-and-shoot camera with a longer lens that can accommodate a solar filter, he said. Jeff Ramsell, an associate at Rockbrook Camera, has been shooting since 1988. The son of an ophthalmologist, Ramsell stresses safety for your eyes as well as your camera. Both should have a filter during partial phases for people watching in Omaha, that means the entire event, he said. For folks in the totality zone, the darkness offers a short window, so you have to be ready to look away and put the filter back on the camera and glasses on your eyes after totality, he said. For people who want to capture the eclipse up close, photography websites recommend using a lens between 300 mm and 2000 mm which can get pricey. The longer the focal length, the more detail. At 2000 mm, the sun fills up the frame. Long lenses require a tripod for stability and remote shutter release. During totality, its possible to see stars, the corona and even surface features of the moon. Photographers will have the greatest success setting exposures manually to keep up with changes in light intensity, Ramsell said. Manual focus will be the better choice, too, because autofocus will have a hard time grabbing onto the brilliant sun, Ramsell said. It might help to practice focusing on the moon a couple of nights before to determine the right focusing distance, and then set that distance on eclipse day. When in doubt, you could set the lens to infinity, he said. He and other experts recommended using a digital single lens reflex camera with interchangeable lenses for this event. But even with the right camera, he said, shooting an eclipse can be tricky at best. If trying for a close-up time-lapse, you might have to keep moving the tripod and resetting the exposure. For those who dont mind a little creative cheating, Ramsell said theres always the composite shot: capturing the foreground image in one shot and the eclipse in another and blending them. Some of the best shots, Ramsell said, may not be in the sky but on the ground, such as the emotional reactions of people witnessing the event. Ramsell said people might ask themselves whether they want to capture the event with family and friends or try to be an amateur astronomer. After all, he said, when you zoom in close on the sun, its just a big orange spot. I hope that people take the time to witness the event and not focus so hard on just getting a photograph, he said. Forsberg suggests seeking advice from reputable sources like Canon and Nikon. Both companies have posted tips on their websites. NASA has, too. Dont forget to turn around and see how the changing light affects your surroundings, he said; thats an important part of the visual story. The light during an eclipse could be similar to that of a sunset or sunrise, two of the favorite times of the day for photographers. Its going to be middle of the day, and its going to be twilight, he said. Hows that going to look? Thats exciting. Forsberg is eager to see what images people come up with and how people will perceive the event in different ways, he said. To that end, hes interested in seeing photos that are not of the eclipsed sun. Thats important to get, but what else are you going to get? he said. People should consider doing a time-lapse, Forsberg said. In 2011 he co-founded the Platte Basin Timelapse project, which operates 50 cameras along the Platte River from high in the Rockies through Nebraska. Normally the cameras take one photo an hour, capturing the long-term impacts to the watershed. Forsberg said he will probably shorten that interval to capture the eclipse. Im going to make sure those cameras are working overtime, he said. Nebraska native Thomas Mangelsen, a professional wildlife photographer who snapped an iconic shot of a sockeye salmon leaping into the jaws of an Alaskan brown bear, will miss the eclipse. His cabin in the Tetons lies directly in the path of totality, but Mangelsen said he will be out of the country. He got an offer he couldnt refuse. I have an opportunity to photograph the last of the great elephant tuskers, he said. Theres only a half dozen left in a couple of places in South Africa and elsewhere. Friends told him hes crazy to miss the eclipse. But its the best time to go to Africa, and it fits his lifelong conservation mission, he said. I dont think Ill regret it, Mangelsen said. But well see how I do in Africa, I guess. In December of 2005, a Christmas party was planned for Telegraph employees or maybe it was 2004, my memory is weak. Peter Rogers had come on as the new publisher a year or so prior, and I had been here for a couple of years. The annual company Christmas party was always a fun time with employees and their families. Holli Snyder thought it would be good to do something musical for the kids, and she asked me if Peter and I would be willing to play a few childrens songs. We agreed, and we got together to work on some Christmas songs. We sang the usual traditional songs and performed Peter, Paul and Marys The Marvelous Toy. While practicing together, Peter and I discovered we had a mutual love of music, especially music from the 1960s and 70s. We talked about various songs and got together a few times just to play them for fun. In 2001, my wife Gail and I had opened the Da Buzz Coffee House on West A Street, and one of my goals was to perform live music there. From time to time, I played the piano and sang, and I enjoyed the atmosphere in that small room. After Peter and I met and began to share some music, I asked him if he would be interested in playing a few songs with me at Da Buzz. Peter had never performed in front of an audience, and to be quite frank, that was way outside his comfort zone. At the aforementioned Christmas party, Peter caught the bug and decided it was something he might like to do. Before long, Peter wanted to learn new songs and we were practicing quite often. We started performing at Da Buzz regularly and after about a year, we were contacted by Chuck Salestrom who was playing with the popular group Chance at the time. He had decided to leave the group, and after we got together with the three of us a few times, we set a price of $100 for Chuck to buy into the group. Fifteen years later, we still havent seen the $100, but since we liked Chuck so much, Peter and I havent pushed the issue. At first we talked about coming up with a band name, but nothing seemed appropriate so we billed ourselves as Job, Peter and Chuck very creative. My name always came first because at that time, I was the leader of the band. As the years passed by, I lost control, and from time to time we were billed as Peter, Job and Chuck, and then my name was often moved to the end and we became Chuck, Peter and Job or Peter, Chuck and Job. Pfffffffft. Da Buzz expanded into the next building and we built a stage, installed lights and Job, Peter and Chuck performed there regularly. Then in 2015, Gail and I decided to close the coffee house and with it went our regular venue. We continue to perform and we set up a World Tour every year. We have traveled to such far away places as Eustis, Lexington, Gothenburg and even all the way to Imperial. One of our favorite places to perform is the Bieroc Cafe in McCook. The place is always full, the audience loves us, and we love them back. On Valentines Day, we performed for the first time at the Prairie Arts Center in North Platte, and that was a real blast. They liked us enough to invite us back for the Total Solar Eclipse weekend for a performance on Aug. 19, and I suspect we will be asked back many times in the future. We are the old guys on the block, but the gift of music that God has given us is something we love to share with you. We are good friends, and we still enjoy performing the songs of our era. The funnest part of our concerts is when we banter back and forth with each other and the audience. Laughter is good for the soul, and with JPC, there is always something to laugh with us about. And the music is pretty good too. We have a good blend and musically there isnt much we cant handle. We had set up a Facebook page, but none of us is very good at posting on it, and the last time somebody liked us was about 2010. We dont have any recordings, and our T-shirts dont sell, so we dont bother with all the marketing hype and just get up on stage and play. We do have a new Facebook page Job, Peter and Chuck if you want to like us. Maybe well keep up with this one a little better. The Golden Spike Tower is one of 20 nominees for the USA Today Readers Choice 2017 contest for the favorite Nebraska attraction. The contest has 25 voting days left. It can be accessed online at 10best.com/awards/travel/ where voters can click on the Nebraska attractions tab and follow the instructions on the site. Kirsten Parker, executive director at the Spike, was pleasantly surprised by the nomination. I knew nothing about it, so yay! Parker said. You learn something new every day. The North Platte attraction has had a good summer with attendance up from the previous year. Our typical goal is a 5 percent increase in growth, and in June, we were closer to a 12 percent increase, Parker said. Im excited. Parker said it is important for guests to have a positive experience. We really focus on those interactions that we have with our volunteers, Parker said. Our volunteers really add I cant say it enough they really add the personality to our building and are extremely engaging. Because people are enjoying themselves, Parker said, they are spending more time here. We really appreciate the longer time they are here because the longer they stay, the more likely they are to stay the night, eat in our restaurants, more likely to use our gas stations and visit other attractions, Parker said. That is one of our top goals is to keep them here longer for their experience. Parker said she and her staff are working on North Platte Rail Days coming up Sept. 15-17. Its hard to believe its just a month and a half away, Parker said. Were trying to amp that up. Almost all the bus tour tickets have been reserved at this time. The free tickets for Bailey Yard tours were released in May, and she said the tours are at 95 percent capacity. Eighty percent of the people are coming from outside Nebraska, Parker said. We are really looking forward to that. Another event coming up is the Pumpkin Patch. It is a great community engagement activity that we do, Parker said. She said work is going on to update the entryway at the tower. (Wednesday) Ive been watching the fork lift and the skid loader out here, Parker said. Were working on an entrance that will be more forthcoming for our guests. She said hand cars will be placed so visitors can have more photo opportunities. The USA Today contest is a way to help boost the attention of the Golden Spike. At 4 p.m. Wednesday, it was sitting at 13 out of the 20 attractions in the voting. The other Nebraska attractions on the ballot are: Omahas Henry Doorly Zoo Scotts Bluff National Monument near Gering Strategic Air Command and Aerospace Museum, Ashland Stuhr Museum of the Prairie Pioneer, Grand Island Rowe Sanctuary, Gibbon Ashfall Fossil Beds State Historical Park, Royal Arbor Lodge State Historical Park, Nebraska City Joslyn Art Museum, Omaha Great Platte River Road Archway, Kearney Fort Robinson State Park, Crawford Old Market, Omaha Smith Falls State Park, Valentine Toadstool Geological Park, Crawford Carhenge, Alliance International Quilt Study Center and Museum, Lincoln Homestead National Monument of America, Beatrice Mormon Trail Center at Historic Winter Quarters, Omaha Valentine National Wildlife Refuge, Valentine Genoa Indian School, Genoa When Yoko Lawing moved to town in 2014, she found that North Platte has all the Midwestern manners you hear about, but that it can be hard for different groups to intermingle. Lawing hopes to bring different communities together with North Platte Connect. The groups first meeting is at 5:30 p.m. on Aug. 10 at Great Plains Health. In North Platte, people just dont feel comfortable getting out of their shell, Lawing said. She hopes to make North Platte Connect a once-monthly get together that creates a support system, both for those new to the community and some who have been here for years. She hopes to gauge what others want to see as the group progresses. While Lawing hopes to bring together people from other countries Russia, the Philippines and her home country of Japan, to name a few she also hopes to bring together people who work in places like area schools, Great Plains Health or Union Pacific Railroad, who may not have social circles outside of their bubble. Lawing grew up in Japan, moved to Fort Collins, Colorado, for her masters degree and then moved to North Platte for her job as a financial adviser at Edward Jones. With her Japanese accent and living in a town where many are friends based on who they grew up with, she said, Im still sort of an outsider. Despite the differences in the community, I embrace my own brand to be my own self, she said, adding with a laugh, I still dress funky sometimes. With North Platte Connect, she hopes to let others come together and do the same. LINCOLN Female recruits for the Nebraska State Patrol were required to undergo medically unnecessary and sexually invasive medical examinations as part of their pre-employment evaluation, a state trooper alleged Tuesday in a federal lawsuit. Trooper Brienne Splittgerber also alleged that leaders of the State Patrol, over almost three years, failed to adequately investigate the outrageous exams of female genitals done by a male Lincoln doctor, and then worked to cover up the matter. Her lawsuit, filed by Omaha attorney Tom White, asks for unspecified damages for creating a hostile working environment for female recruits and causing emotional distress. A spokesman for the State Patrol, reached late Tuesday afternoon, said the agency does not comment on lawsuits. But an email from a patrol lawyer, included as an exhibit in the lawsuit, said the exams were a hernia check required of both male and female recruits. The examinations required female recruits to remove their pants and expose their genitals to a physician. Similar exams were not required of any male recruits, with one possible exception, according to the lawsuit. Subjecting the plaintiff and other female trooper candidates to a medically unnecessary and sexually invasive procedure is outrageous conduct which goes beyond all possible bounds of decency and is utterly intolerable in a civilized community, stated the lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court on Tuesday. Besides the doctor and the state, the lawsuit names as defendants two recent superintendents of the Nebraska State Patrol, Col. Brad Rice and Col. David Sankey, and several John Does and Jane Does. The unnamed Does, it is alleged, conspired with Rice and Sankey to permit and cover up the invasive exams. A phone message left with the doctors office in Lincoln was not immediately returned, though the lawsuit says he insisted that the exams were required by the patrol. Sankey, who retired at the end of 2014 and now works for the Nebraska Public Service Commission, said he had not seen the lawsuit and could not comment. Calls and texts to Rice went unanswered. The lawsuit comes amid recent turmoil at the patrol. In June, The World-Herald reported on a clash within the patrol over an internal investigation of a high-speed chase in Sheridan County last fall that ended with the death of a fleeing driver. Some within the patrol alleged that others within the agency had sought to change the narrative of the accident to avoid liability and embarrassment for the law enforcement agency. The World-Heralds report was cited as one of the concerns behind Gov. Pete Ricketts ordering of a review of the patrols policies, procedures and leadership, a probe that resulted in the recent firing of Rice. On Tuesday, Ricketts spokesman Taylor Gage issued a statement regarding the troopers lawsuit. Immediately upon learning of these allegations in June, the governor instructed his chief human resources officer to review this matter, which has subsequently resulted in a criminal investigation by the State Patrol, Gage said. Splittgerber, 37, was sworn in as a state trooper in May 2015 and was one of four troopers awarded their badges by their fathers. Her father is retired Sgt. Morry Abshier. She previously was an officer in the Fremont Police Department and worked as an officer in Alabama and Tennessee. Splittgerber is now assigned to the State Patrol training center in Grand Island. MUNSTER Community Hospital and University of Chicago Medicine have teamed up so women with high-risk pregnancies can be cared for in the Region. Maternal-fetal medicine specialists from the Chicago hospital will now be available to see inpatients at the Munster facility. In the past, those patients often had to be transferred to university hospitals in Illinois. It is a win-win situation to have a group of subspecialists available to care for the mother, said Dr. Martin Kelly, a neonatologist with University of Chicago Medicine. This ensures that the patient gets the best care possible closest to home. Women with high-risk pregnancies can also see specialists at the University of Chicago Medicine's outpatient office in Schererville. The initiative continues a trend of Region hospitals partnering with Chicago hospitals to keep patients from migrating out of Northwest Indiana for care. The University of Chicago already provided neonatologists to Community Hospital's neonatal intensive care unit. In addition, Franciscan Alliance recently announced a partnership with Rush University's orthopedics department after previously working with the former Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago. Research has estimated the Northwest Indiana health care industry loses hundreds of millions of dollars a year from patients seeking care in Chicago. Some of the patients that may have been transferred before maternal-fetal medicine was available locally now can stay closer to home and deliver in the community, said Carla Meyer, director of patient care services at Community Hospital. It keeps the mom, the baby and the support system together. When the mom needs to deliver outside the community, traveling back and forth puts stress on the family unit. Under the arrangement, the fetal-medicine specialists will work in tandem with the woman's primary care physician to provide counseling, screening and fetal diagnostic testing, helping manage chronic conditions like high blood pressure, diabetes and kidney disease. The women are referred into the program by their OB-GYN specialists. Last month, Community Hospital added to its staff laborists, or specialized OB-GYN providers, to be available around the clock to see pregnant women with acute conditions. If war broke out in the United States after Texas seceded from the union, where do you think the great battles of Civil War II would be taking place? If you guessed Bushwicknot Bed-Stuy, not Williamsburg, not Brownsville, but very specifically Bushwickthen you would be correct! Well, maybe not correct, but you would be the ideal audience for the new feature film Bushwick, which takes this exact premise and runs with it like a man on fire running through an eerily abandoned subway station. The official trailer for the film has everything: Guardian of the Galaxys charming Dave Bautista, the factual description of Bushwick as "a neighborhood in Brooklyn," Ilana's roommate Jaime from Broad City (using his real voice!), someone using a flare to close a wound, Orthodox Jews utilizing guns and molotov cocktails, a white lead character helping to lead her ethnically-diverse neighbors in the fight for survival, and a cop acting like he was hit with a bat a split second before said bat hit him over the head. Here's the official description of the movie: The film tells the story of twenty-year-old Lucy (Brittany Snow), who emerges from a Brooklyn subway to find that her neighborhood is under attack by black-clad military soldiers. An ex-Marine corpsman, Stupe (Dave Bautista), reluctantly helps her fight for survival through civil war, as Texas attempts to secede from the United States of America. According to a press release about the film, directors Cary Murnion and Jonathan Milott (who made the 2014 horror-comedy Cooties) largely used long shots in creating the film, influenced by "iconic films as Children of Men and Gravity." In case this film was sounding like too much of a fun B movie, it also has modern political relevance or whatever: "Our fictional storyboards looked eerily similar to the scenes we saw on the news from the Paris attacks - contemporary storefronts and cafes smoking and destroyed as snipers hid on rooftops," notes Cary & Jon. "When we finished the long process of post-production, we again watched as the United States became even more politically, economically and racially divided because of the 2016 Presidential election." The film will be in theaters and VOD on August 25th. I'll be happy if it can satisfactorily answer the question "why would unruly Texans attack Bushwick if they seceded from the country," but I will be truly impressed if the whole movie turns out to be hinged on an elaborate argument about neighborhood borders. LANSING As the winner of the first-ever car raffle benefitting the St. Josephs Carmelite Home, Kaylee Saggus drove to her Schererville home Wednesday from Napleton River Oaks Honda behind the wheel of her new 2017 silver Honda Civic Sport Coupe. I was so shocked and truly grateful to win this wonderful car, said the 21-year-old Indiana University Northwest dental student, whose winning ticket was drawn Sunday at Pierogi Fest by Sr. Maria Giuseppe, Carmelite Home administrator. A regular Pierogi Fest attendee, Saggus said she purchased her raffle ticket about 12:30 p.m. Sunday and didnt know she won until she received a text message. In addition to family members, others who gathered at the showroom to congratulate Saggus included Napleton general manager Ahmad Ali, members of the Whiting-Robertsdale Chamber of Commerce and the members of the Divine Heart of Jesus Order of Carmelite Sisters. The car, valued at about $21,000, was donated by Napleton River Oaks Honda, said Suzanne DeYoung, controller at the dealership. Sr. Giuseppe said 5,000 raffle tickets were sold, raising $25,000 for the Carmelite Home at 4840 Grasselli St., in East Chicago. We will use the funds to remodel the teen moms and baby area and the childrens kitchen, she said during Wednesday's ceremony. GARY Missing ceiling tile allowing rain to drip into classrooms and hallways, a gas leak outside the building, overflowing toilets in some bathrooms and five boilers that don't work characterize some of the problems at Wirt-Emerson Visual and Performing Arts High Ability Academy in the Miller section of Gary. Wirt-Emerson is one of 12 school buildings that will be under the jurisdiction of the new emergency manager appointed Monday by Indiana's Distressed Unit Appeals Board. DUAB appointed Peggy Hinckley, of Schererville, to lead a team of financial and academic experts with MGT Consulting Group to balance the Gary public school district's budget, reduce its more than $100 million of debt and improve academics. Timothy Smith, a representative of MGT, said Wednesday the team has hit the ground running. He said team members have toured all the school buildings, and Hinckley met with all principals Wednesday morning. Smith took reporters and photographers on a tour of Wirt-Emerson to give them an inside look at what the team is dealing with and how it will get the buildings ready for students when school starts Aug. 17. "We will get the basics ready in the buildings," Smith said. "The team has been in all of the schools, and they're doing inventory. We need to get the floors shined up and get good lighting in here. We're trying to see what we're dealing with and figuring everything out. The focus is getting everything safe for the kids." Smith, who had not toured the building before, took out his cell phone to take pictures of the bathrooms, ceilings and other parts of the building. Tour exposes problems, points up positives Michael Sibley, the school's boiler operator, escorted Smith and reporters on the tour. He said a first-floor girls bathroom is open, though the toilet has overflowed for about four years. He said there's only air conditioning in certain places, leaving people in the rest of the building to swelter. "We have five boilers and not one works," he said. "There's a terrible gas leak outside, and that's been going on about six months. It doesn't affect the children inside the building." Sibley took Smith down to the boiler room, which was spotless though none of the machines works. Sibley said something will have to be done before the winter. Sibley said he's been working in the building five years, and the swimming pool has not worked for longer than that. Freshman English/language arts teacher Charlotte Emery was busy getting her new classroom, Room 246, ready for the school year. She was on one side working on her school calendar on the computer while her daughter Collette, an instructor at Ivy Tech Community College, was busy scrubbing a calendar with Pine-Sol. "I'm moving from the middle school hall to high school hall," she said. "The classroom I'm coming from has air conditioning and it doesn't leak, but it's smaller and ninth-graders need more space. We made it work, but this room is bigger and it will work better for the students. "This room leaks when it rains, and we will have buckets in here. I'm here every day except Friday. We have great kids here, and committed teachers. The teacher morale is good. We're excited about opening." In 2016, the Indiana Department of Education graded Wirt-Emerson a D. The school had a 95-percent graduation rate. With the district's tight budget, when supplies run out, Emery said teachers have bought their own paper, toilet tissue, soap, hand sanitizer and lotion for students to use. Smith thanked Emery for her commitment and told her, "We're trying to get everything open, and there are so many issues. We call it the T-17 plan. Now, we've got 14 days left before school starts. The clock is ticking down to opening day." EAST CHICAGO A lawsuit has been filed in connection with an April 25 incident in which a 7-year-old boy was bitten by a nonverbal man with autism at Tod Park. The complaint, filed Wednesday, lists the man's caregiver, Derrin E. Woodson Jr., and the caregiver's employer, Zeilbeck Group, Inc., as defendants. The suit lists the man with autism as "M.R., a protected person." The suit alleges Woodson was at fault for the incident because he failed to "adequately supervise," "properly monitor" and "take proper measures" to ensure the public was safe and secure from M.R. Court documents allege Woodson was at fault and negligent because, in part, he "knew or should have known of (M.R.'s) dangerous propensities." The suit also alleges the LaPorte-based Zeilbeck Group Inc., the company that employed Woodson, is responsible for Woodson's alleged actions that day. The company failed to have proper procedures and rules in place for the safety of "M.R.," and to the protect the public, the suit alleges. Andrew Zeilbeck, the company's owner, was not immediately available for comment at the office Wednesday. The boy's mother, Jacqueline Campos, and her son, are being represented by attorney Kevin Smith, with Smith Sersic, a law firm in Munster. Campos told The Times earlier this year she, her brother and a cousin took their children April 25 to Tod Park in the 3900 block of Indianapolis Boulevard. Some of the older children went to a playground area, but her 7-year-old son Edward Cornejo Jr. came running back screaming just as she and the other adults were preparing to take their younger children closer to the playground, she said. Campos then saw the man at the top of a slide, wiping blood from his face, she said. "As a mother, it's just horrible," she said earlier this year. "Seeing my son go through that I just couldn't take it." Campos said the man's caregiver initially tried to leave, but she and her brother stopped them and called police. The caregiver told police he heard a scream and saw a boy running away from the playground, police have said. Neither the caregiver nor the child's mother witnessed the biting, police said. The boy was taken to Community Hospital by ambulance. Campos said her son was treated at a hospital and tested for various bloodborne diseases, but had remained shaken after the incident. East Chicago Police Department spokeswoman Lt. Marguerite Wilder on Wednesday did not immediately have an update on charges in the case. Earlier this year, the plan was to present the case to the Lake County prosecutor's office for charges. The suit states the boy sustained injuries in the attack, some of which are permanent, including "mental and emotional damage, and physical pain and suffering." As a result of the defendants' negligence, the boy "has incurred medical and psychological expenses for care and treatment, and otherwise damaged will in excess of this court's jurisdictional limit," the complaint states. The complaint seeks an unspecified amount in damages. Vandals armed with spray paint cans reportedly struck Sunday in the Valparaiso area and in Michigan City. The playground equipment near the Shorewood Forest clubhouse was spray painted with various colors, and a racist term was spray painted on an electrical box, according to Porter County police. Several stop signs throughout the subdivision were also painted, police said. A video surveillance camera showed a white or silver two-door Jeep Wrangler in the area at the time of the damage, which was shortly after midnight on Sunday. Michigan City police reported that someone spray painted vehicles, garages and fences early Sunday within neighborhoods at the center of the city. Police said there were 20 incidents of swastikas, gang rhetoric and profanities painted. Police said the vandalism did not appear to be targeting anyone specifically. Anyone with any information about the Michigan City vandalism is encouraged to contact Detective Jillian Ashley at 219-873-1465, ext. 1082. CROWN POINT Marcellus D. Robinson and Tyiana C. Robinson, a brother and sister charged with murder in the shooting death of a Gary woman in November 2015, will stand trial together in February. They are both charged with murder, five felony 1 counts of attempted murder, battery and six counts of attempted battery. Mynisha S. Brown, 24, was shot several times late on Nov. 28, 2015, while inside her vehicle, and later died at Methodist Hospitals Northlake Campus in Gary, according to court records. Browns sister was wounded behind her left ear, those documents state. According to court documents, Brown was with her sister near the intersection of 19th Avenue and Kentucky Street in Gary that night because her sister had arranged to fight a younger sister of Marcellus and Tyiana Robinson. The dispute between the women, which had been raging all day, was over the man who fathered their children. On Thursday, Scott King, the defense attorney for both siblings, requested that the cases be joined at one jury trial. Weve been in extensive dialogue with the prosecution, King told Lake Criminal Court Judge Diane Boswell. While they are separate causes, if were going to join the trials, we need to set a date. Deputy Prosecuting Attorney Judith Massa agreed a single trial was appropriate, and Boswell set the jury trial for the brother and sister to begin Feb. 12, 2018. The pretrial conference is slated for Jan. 10. Marcellus and Tyiana Robinson will be back in Boswells court on Nov. 9 for a status hearing. The siblings have been held without bond in the Lake County Jail since their arrests. Marcellus Robinson, 23, was arrested on March 30, 2016. Tyiana Robinson, 20, was taken into custody Aug. 8, 2016. GARY A Merrillville man died early Wednesday at a local hospital after he was shot in the city's Glen Park section, according to the Lake County coroner's office. Officers were dispatched about 2:45 a.m. to the 3400 block of Virginia Street for a possible gunshot victim, Gary Police Lt. Dawn Westerfield said. Jeremy Walker, 27, was discovered outside with what appeared to be several gunshot wounds, she said. Walker was pronounced dead at 3:24 a.m. at Methodist Hospitals Northlake Campus, a coroner's release said. His death has been ruled a homicide. Anyone with information on this incident is urged to contact Detective Kristopher Adams of the Lake County/Gary Metro Homicide Unit at 219-755-3855. To remain anonymous, call the Gary Crime Tip Line at 866-CRIME-GP. LAPORTE The number of candidates for the soon-to-be-vacant mayor's seat in LaPorte has doubled and could grow even larger before one is chosen next week. The LaPorte County Republican Party scheduled a caucus Aug. 11 for 20 precinct committee people to fill the remaining 29 months of Blair Milo's second term. On Aug. 14, Milo will become a member of the governor's cabinet as the state's first secretary of career connection and talent. The early field of Leigh Morris, Roger Galloway and Mark Krentz for succeeding her now includes Paul Boardman, Tim Stabosz and Geoff Sellers. Several others are giving strong consideration to joining the race. The deadline to enter is 72* hours prior to the 5:30 p.m. start of the caucus at the LaPorte County Complex. Stabosz, 49,* is self-employed in the financial world and a member of the city council. He also served on the council from 2004 to '07. Boardman, 56, operates 2001 Indiana Manufacturing, a local company specializing in reducing costs of government-related projects. Sellers, 49, is a call technician at Jager-Unitek Sealing Solutions and was once a LaPorte police officer and City Council member. Stabosz said his platform is focused on LaPorte becoming a "quality of life destination" not just for visitors but also new residents and business owners. Promoting the lakes, parks and historic charm of the city, along with continuing with street, sidewalk and other infrastructure improvements, should be leveraged to entice new investment, he said. "I have spent most of my adult life as a professional investor. I understand the concept of 'return on investment' very well, and I know that when the city looks at spending money, it must focus on projects that will generate a return that will be justified to the taxpayer," Stabosz said. Boardman vowed to work especially hard at gathering the $450 million he said LaPorte needs in new investment for things like constructing a bypass. "LaPorte is an island of ruin compared to our neighbors who are thriving, and that's simply because of poor leadership," Boardman said. He also said his aim is to work strictly for bettering the community, not just occupying space for "self-gratification" like some previous mayors. Sellers could not be reached for comment. Morris, 82, was mayor from 2004 to 2007. Prior to that, he was president and CEO of LaPorte Hospital. Galloway, 68, is a retired truck driver and in his sixth year on the City Council. Krentz, 64, with a history in business, is employed by the Greater LaPorte Economic Development Corp. and serves on the city's Board of Public Works and Safety and Redevelopment Commission. *This story has been changed from the original to correct the filing deadline for candidates and to correct Tim Stabosz's age. CROWN POINT A Lake County government board member has resigned after allegedly posting racist jokes on Facebook. The Lake County Corrections Merit Board voted Wednesday to accept the resignation of Jeremy Carey, who had served on the board less than a year. The three board members present denounced Carey for conduct they said wouldn't be tolerated by any of the corrections officers the board oversees. Lake County Sheriff John Buncich distributed prints of several postings he claims Carey made that denigrate blacks as well as Carey's Facebook intro box, which states, "I am a proud husband, father, vet, white man and according to liberals I'm a white conservative racist." Buncich said he learned of the postings last week from a county detective who monitors social media for criminal intelligence leads. Buncich said, "I'm very proud of our diversity in this department. This sickens me and I'm asking you to discuss this at an open meeting so that no individual makes remarks like this especially on social media. It brings discredit on our department." Carey sent an e-mail to The Times attacking Buncich and criticizing him for spending public resources to look into Carey's Facebook postings. Justin Murphy, a board member, said Carey was elected less than a year ago by the Lake County Jail corrections officers to serve as their representative on the five-member corrections merit board which hires, promotes and disciplines their members. Carey identified himself in his e-mail to The Times as an Indiana Department of Corrections employee at Camp Summit Boot Camp, a medium to high security facility for mail juveniles near LaPorte. A person who answered a phone at the camp declined comment. Murphy said Carey's posting was causing distress within the jail and affecting morale. Murphy said the sheriff wanted to immediately terminate Carey from the board. Cary sent a resignation letter to Murphy late Tuesday. The board voted to censor Carey's racist remarks and establish a new policy holding corrections merit board members to the same standards they expect from county corrections officers. David Akey, a county corrections officer and vice president of their union, attended the meeting and said, "We as a (bargaining) unit don't condone this. We don't appreciate that he did this since we were so vocal in getting him elected. We highly regret his actions." GARY The head of an Illinois steel company is excited about the prospect of moving to Gary, but cautioned a "tremendous amount" still has to be done before that happens. Last month, Alliance Steel corp. submitted a bid to the redevelopment commission of $925,000 for 25 acres of land at 6200 Industrial Highway. The commission recently passed a resolution awarding the bid and authorizing the execution of a purchase agreement with the company currently based in Bedford Park, Illinois. In the bid package submitted to the commission earlier, Chief Executive Officer Andy Gross wrote about a possible $35 million relocation to the city that would include construction of a new 250,000-square-foot production facility and accompanying offices to be built by Valparaiso-based Chester Inc. as well as a significant investment in new production equipment. He wrote that the relocation would result in approximately 100 new jobs in Gary. "We are very excited about the opportunity to come to Indiana," Gross said after Wednesday's commission meeting. He added, however, that the company is looking for the state to provide incentives needed for Alliance to make such a move. Bo Kemp, executive director of the Gary Economic Development Corp., said the city also still has to go through discussions regarding incentives and logistics. The 25 acres is within a longer parcel of land, and that property also would need to be replated. Kemp said it could be more than two or three weeks before any deal is finalized. "We're close, but it's not done," he said. When Fulton County paved 2 miles of roadway a couple of years ago, the Indiana Department of Transportation had the same contractor apply the same mix to one of its roads a short distance away, according to Fulton County Highway Superintendent John Geier. The county then went a step further and had the surface of its road sprayed with a protective sealant made of soybean and other agricultural oils, along with natural polymers, he said. While the county road is more heavily traveled, it has held up better than the state's road over the past couple of years, Geier said. "You can see it working," he said of the sealant. Encouraged by testimonials like this, Porter County recently became one of just a few areas around the state to invest the extra money in the sealant in hopes it will pay off by extending the life of roadways and reduce the need to undertake costly repaving projects, according to Porter County Commissioner Jim Biggs, R-North. The county recently paid $17,000 per mile to have the sealant sprayed on mile-long sections of Meridian Road, from U.S. 6 to County Road 900 North, and County Road 500 West, from Division Road to County Road 100 North, he said. "There's a cost in that," Biggs said. "But that cost is moderate as compared to what it would cost ($90,000) to pave a mile of road." The sealant is called Biorestor. It's made in nearby Ohio and used around the world, said Lisa Harris, owner of the Columbia City, Indiana-based distributor, Roadway Bioseal. Biorestor, a sealant and rejuvenator, works by permeating the asphalt and combating cracking and disintegration, she said. Once asphalt cracks, water is allowed to enter, which results in further deterioration during the freeze and thaw cycles that occur in Indiana. These problems with asphalt have worsened over time as market demands have driven down quality, Harris said. When Biorestor is applied to new pavement or older pavement of a high-enough quality level, it can take the life of a roadway back up to as much as 20 years, she said. "When do you see a 20-year road anymore?" she asked. Biorestor is a green product that is 100 percent natural and agriculture based, she said. It is on the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Bio-Based and Bio-Preferred Product list. Biggs said the product has an orange or pine cone scent. Harris said her company, the local distributor, has applied it on roadways in Fulton and Kosciusko counties and in Plainfield. She has also applied it in Cass County, Michigan. Attempts to reach highway officials in Lake and LaPorte counties for comment were unsuccessful. Biggs said he was led to the product after researching another road sealant made from plastic waste collected from the oceans. While that product is used in Canada and Europe, he said he could not find a distributor for local application. This is not Porter County's first shot at alternative roadway sealants. Biggs said a rubber-based material was applied to County Road 700 North between Airport and Willowcreek roads in Portage Township in the 1990s. "The results were stunning," he said. But the rising cost of petroleum has left the product cost prohibitive, which led to the county to test out Biorestor. If Biorestor works as promised, or even if the county has to go back to the more expensive rubber-based product, Biggs said he sees a day when the extra investment is made on all county roadways to prolong their lives. "With all things considered, it would be worth the investment," he said. Geier said the sealant appears to solve the big problem of water penetrating the surface of roadways along the center line where the two separate paths of asphalt meet. "The weakest point in your road is your center joint," he said. Geier said he is happy so far with the results of Biorestor and was to have the company return Tuesday to apply it on a heavily-traveled section of roadway being repaved this week in a Fulton County business park. But more time is needed to tell if the extra investment really pays off. "The jury's still out on it," he said. Dave Chappelle has now clarified the seemingly ambiguous opinion of newly-elected president Donald Trump that he presented during his Saturday Night Live monologue from last season. The comedian appeared on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert last night, and when Colbert referenced the famous post-2016 election SNL monologuein which the comedian said America should give President Donald Trump a chanceChappelle said, "It's not like I wanted to give him a chance that night." He continued, "Listen man, in the last six months, I think we're all getting an education about the presidency. I don't know that I've ever heard in the popular discourse people discussing ethics this much. And I didn't even realize how ethics were supposed to work at that level of government. And he's putting all this stuff on the forefront." "Well, nobody really talks about oxygen until someone's got their hands around your throat," Colbert responded. "Very true," Chappelle admitted. "If you remember in that monologue... that Emmy-nominated monologue... but at the beginning of the monologue, I contextualized because I feel like a lot of white Americans finally got a chance to see what an Election Night looks like for many black Americans every cycle." Ultimately, Chappelle remained hopeful, saying, "I think he's going to make a more informed and better voter. I think that people will figure it out. We'll figure it out. We'll work it out. He's a polarizing dude. He's like a bad DJ at a good party." Chappelle, who is in NYC for his star-studded residency at Radio City Music Hall this month, also explained why he spoke up about police reform at a town hall meeting in his Ohio town, which became a national news story. At the meeting, he addressed attendees, talking about his own experience with law enforcement, declaring, "In this Trump era, there's an opportunity to show everybody that local politics reigns supreme. We can make our corner of the world outstanding." Regarding his town hall speech, he told Colbert, "It's not a big deal. Everybody in the town knows me. It's like The Simpsons, you see the same people every day, and I'm like the local Krusty the Klown." And here's that Emmy-nominated SNL monologue: Valparaiso Firefighters Local 1124 will hold its annual picnic from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. at Foundation Meadows Park, 3210 N. Campbell St. People can enjoy a free lunch, visit with the firefighters, learn about fire safety, check out the Fire and EMS apparatus, play at the park and run through the water curtain. Children must be accompanied by family or guardian through the event. New this year the Valpo Schools Foundation will be there to collect school supplies for students of Valparaiso Community Schools. All of the supplies collected will go to students in need within the Valparaiso Community Schools that struggle with affording annual school supplies on the lists. I recently attracted significant online attention for all the wrong reasons after writing a tweet that could be interpreted as an attack on the survivors of the sinking of the U.S.S. Indianapolis. Let me be clear: I have the utmost respect for the sailors on the Indianapolis and the important work they did under near-impossible conditions to bring an end to World War II. I regret that my tweet may have been viewed as making fun of their harrowing experience. That certainly was not my intention, and I apologize to anyone who may have come away with that impression. This incident has reminded me of the need to more carefully choose my words when posting items online and fully consider how others might be affected by and react to them a lesson in civility that everyone can benefit from. Indeed, as the grandson of a U.S. Army flyer who served in the Pacific during World War II, I am indebted to the Indianapolis crew for helping to prompt the surrender of Japan and end the war as quickly as possible. The ship's story is remarkable. The Indianapolis left San Francisco on July 16, 1945, and crossed the Pacific Ocean in record time on a secret mission to bring key components for what would be the first atomic bomb used in combat. Four days after delivering its critical cargo, the ship was torpedoed by the Japanese Navy. It sunk in 12 minutes. An estimated 300 sailors out of the 1,196 on board went down with the ship. The remainder were forced into the sea and made to endure extreme sunburn, dehydration, saltwater poisoning and shark attacks until being rescued four days later. Just 317 survived. It was, and remains, the greatest loss of life from a single incident in U.S. Navy history. While the heroic accomplishments of the U.S.S. Indianapolis officers and crew deserve the most attention, it is the shark attacks on the struggling sailors that have become the best known piece of the ship's story especially after a character in the 1975 movie "Jaws" recalled the shark horror. For six decades, the real survivors of the Indianapolis sinking regularly have gathered in the ship's namesake city to remember their fallen comrades and commemorate their essential role in America's victory in the world's greatest war. I have not had the opportunity to report on any of the reunions, though I've walked through the reunion site in prior years and inspected the model ship and other displays that tell the full story of the Indianapolis and her crew. Gov. Eric Holcomb, himself a Navy veteran, attended this year's reunion on Sunday and posted on Twitter photos of himself with the veterans and their families. Noticing the timing of the event amid Discovery Channel's popular "Shark Week" programming, I insensitively tweeted about the coincidence. My point was not to minimize in any way what the Indianapolis sailors endured, only to note the odd congruence of the two events. Quickly I discovered that not everyone shared my way of looking at the world, as my tweet was being interpreted as an attack on the Indianapolis veterans, which assuredly was not my intent. I deleted my tweet Sunday night after it was online for about an hour. But, as the not-so-old saying goes, nothing posted online ever entirely goes away. Indeed, my tweet went "viral," in part because of outraged Twitter users and a Fox News blogger who spread the word to a national audience under the headline: "Disgusting." People responding to his post then let me know that I am "classless," "grotesque" and "the most evil reporter in the country." Going forward, I plan to be more circumspect in my tweeting and will aim to limit my posts to items specifically dealing with my reporting on Indiana government or outstanding work by my colleagues. Saying Gary native Peggy Hinckley has her work cut out for her as the newly appointed emergency manager of Gary public schools would be an understatement bigger than the district's stifling $100 million debt burden. The Indiana Distressed Unit Appeals Board chose wisely in naming Hinckley, a proven successful education administrator with a strong Region background, to this monumental task. Now the existing power structure of Gary public schools, including the school board and superintendent, must either do all they can to support Hinckley or get out of the way. Gary Community School Corp. has been in a state of dire emergency for years, and the $100 million debt burden is only one of many key problems. Abandoned school buildings continue to form magnets for crime, and the quality of a public education in Gary continues to suffer. It's a near universal truth that municipalities are only as strong and thriving as their educational institutions. Now Hinckley, of Schererville, has been tapped to help reverse Gary public schools' long-festering misfortunes and mismanagement. Hinckley, 65, grew up in Gary's Brunswick neighborhood, as a child attended school in both Merrillville and Gary, worked as a teacher and then superintendent in Hobart's River Forest Community School Corp. and then served as LaPorte Community School Corp. superintendent before holding similar posts downstate. We thank the Indiana Distressed Unit Appeals Board for naming a Gary native and former Region school superintendent to this important post. Her institutional knowledge no doubt gives Hinckley a leg up on this challenge and shows the state cares about the quality of response to our Region's biggest educational challenge. Hinckley will have near-total authority to implement academic and financial changes to Gary schools. She'll be able to renegotiate contracts and run the schools, with an informal review by a local advisory board and Distressed Unit Appeals Board oversight. Hinckley's new authority is both necessary and inevitable. Existing Gary school officials should do all they can to hasten her efforts, or at the very least not hinder them. Kidd Creole, a former member of the hip hop group Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five, was arrested Wednesday for allegedly fatally stabbing a homeless man in Manhattan, police said. Creole, whose real name is Nathaniel Glover, has been charged with murder. Police said officers who responded to a 911 call found the 55-year-old victim on the corner of East 44 St. and 3rd Ave. around 11:52 p.m. Tuesday. He had been stabbed three times in his torso and left on the street, according to officials. First responders took the man to a local hospital, where he was pronounced dead. Police sources told NY1 that Glover and the man got into argument that turned physical, which led to the stabbing. Sources said police were able to find the rapper because he works in the area. Police said the man stabbed had 17 prior arrests, was a Level 1 sex offender, and had been living at a homeless shelter on 105th St. The Staten Island political world is buzzing with talk that a former Republican congressman may want his old job back. NY1 Political Reporter Grace Rauh has that story. For months now, there has been talk that Michael Grimm would try to get back into politics. But in recent days, he seems to be more definitive about his plans. Sources told NY1 that Grimm is beginning to let a small number of political leaders on Staten Island know that he intends to run for Congress. Any campaign would be a challenge for someone in Grimm's position; he spent seven months in federal prison for tax fraud, and he was released in May of 2016. Grimm also made headlines for threatening a NY1 reporter, Michael Scotto, with physical violence in 2014, saying he would throw Scotto off a balcony and break him in half while they spoke at the Capitol in Washington. I spoke with Grimm on Wednesday afternoon and he insisted he has not made any decisions yet on his political future. But he did say that there are people who would like to see him run, and he said he plans to return to public office one day. Grimm's entry into the race would mean a Republican primary challenge for incumbent Congressman Dan Donovan. A spokeswoman for Donovan declined to comment Wednesday. There are a number of Democrats planning to challenge Donovan; the Staten Island Advance reported Wednesday that there are now five Democrats running for the Congressional seat. We rely on your support to make local news available to all Make your contribution now and help Gothamist thrive in 2022. Donate today Eighteen suspects from Auburn and Opelika were among 26 suspected drug traffickers with ties to East Alabama who were arrested Wednesday after an 18-month narcotics investigation conducted by federal, state and local law enforcement agencies. Eleven of 16 suspects from Auburn are facing federal charges. The remaining five from Auburn, along with two suspects from Opelika, will be prosecuted by the state, according to information provided during a press conference at the U.S. Attorneys Office in Montgomery. The collaborative efforts by the multiple agencies, which included the Auburn Police Division, Opelika Police Department and the Lee County Sheriffs Department, helped enhance the well-being of Lee County, said Brandon Hughes, district attorney for Lee County. Hughes also recognized the dangers that officers faced while arresting suspects who had firearms in their possession for guarding drugs and money. Yesterday was about... removing that garbage from our streets, and yesterday was trash day, Hughes said. Case began 18 months ago About 18 months ago, an Auburn Police Division investigator began the case with a DEA special agent by purchasing illicit drugs from dealers, said Bret Hamilton, assistant special agent in charge of the Drug Enforcement Agency. Through the involvement of other agencies, suspects were identified and indicted, he added, and more indictments are expected. Numerous weapons were also present during arrests, including AR-15s, a .44 Magnum handgun and a variety of other firearms, Hamilton also noted. We were extremely fortunate that no one was injured, especially the defendants, Hamilton said, which is a testament to the professionalism of the agents and the officers that were conducting these arrests. The investigation launched after the Auburn Police Division met with the Drug Enforcement Agency to discuss drug-related concerns in the community, said APD Chief Paul Register, who was pleased with the investigative outcome. On behalf of the city of Auburn, the Auburn Police Department, the Opelika Police Department, Lee County Sheriffs Department, I think -- what I hope is -- that the arrest of these 26 individuals and more to come will maybe give a little bit of peace of mind to some of those who have lost loved ones or have been a victim of a crime, Register said. Drug charges and money laundering In referencing a six-count federal indictment, a statement from the Department of Justice informed about how those arrested conspired to possess with intent to distribute or did distribute a variety of drugs, including cocaine, marijuana, Xanax and methylenedioxy-methamphetamine (also known as MDMA or ecstasy). In addition to the drug charges, the indictment alleges four of the defendants committed the crime of money laundering. The DOJ statement identified the following as federal suspects: > Alfred Lorenzo Cole, 36, Santa Rosa, Calif. > Sakeya Monique Donaldson, 38, Atlanta. > Leanne Grimmett, 31, Auburn > Jermichael Lamar Hart, 31, Auburn > Worldly Dieago Holstick 35, Auburn > Mackenzie Leigh Keith, 23, Auburn > Tyesha Lanise Lockhart 20, Auburn > John Willie Maddox, Jr. - 27, Auburn > Marquis Lanez Miller 36, Auburn > Timothy Lamar Spinks, 42, Auburn > Erin Kristen Turner 23, Auburn > Lateasha Lashun Williams, 30, Auburn > Lester Stephen Young, 34, Auburn Holstick, Miller, Maddox, Cole, Lockhart, Turner, Donaldson, Young, Spinks, and Hart are facing a minimum of 5 years imprisonment, and a maximum of 40 years, for the conspiracy count. They may also be fined a maximum of $5 million. Holstick, Turner, Cole and Grimmett face a minimum of 20 years imprisonment for money laundering conspiracy, and they may be fined a maximum of $500,000. For distribution charges, Maddox, Williams, Keith and Miller face a maximum of 20 years imprisonment for distribution charges, and they may be fined a maximum of 1 million dollars. Those facing state charges of criminal conspiracy to commit a controlled substance offense include: > Shedrick Taryl Cannon, Notasulga > Travis Lamar Dowdell, Auburn > Carlton Antonio Goodman Jr., Dadeville > Blakely Elizabeth Kilgore, Huntsville > Samson Jermon Logan, Auburn > Keuntae Rajhun Mabson, Tuskegee > Adam Lee McPheeters, Auburn > Antonio Jermaine Mitchell, Opelika > Eric Kendall Smith, Auburn > Alexander White Jr., Thomasville > Caleb Andrew Whitworth, Notasulga Two additional suspects are likewise being charged by the state. Auburn resident Quentin Eugene Turner, who is facing is being charged with possession of a controlled substance, marijuana and drug paraphernalia. Eric Lamar Kellum of Opelika is facing a charge of distribution of a controlled substance. Assistant U.S. Attorney Verne Speirs will be prosecuting the federal cases, while the Lee County District Attorneys Office will be prosecuting the state cases. Giggles and hearty laughter welcome me as I walk into Parliaments breastfeeding facility, located at the Office of the Prime Minister. The Shs 80m-breastfeeding centre for MPs and Parliament staffers was launched by Speaker Rebecca Kadaga in November 2015, and The Observer was curious about how it was changing parenting and effectiveness in the august House. After going through the gates dotted with tough-looking security personnel, it is a relief to escape into a more calm and serene environment, only interrupted by the sound of children playing. Outside the enclosed facility is a small compound dotted with baby swings, two slides and a plastic swimming pool, placed around the space fitted with an artificial grass turf. One of the nannies, Irene Nawaho, ushers me inside the reception area, where three children are seated on a playing mat. A number of toys are strewn around them as they babble in baby language. They are the only babies around, given that it is Holy Thursday and other parents are possibly already on Easter break. Nevertheless, it does not deter the nannies from pampering them. I am drawn by the clean and airy environment, the bright cartoon characters adorning the white walls, Winnie the Pooh curtains and the sparklingly clean, tiled floors. Irene Nwaho with kids The reception area is adorned with sofas where the honourable mothers can relax on arrival with their tots. FACILITIES Nawaho, a graduate of early childhood development at Young Mens Christian Association (YMCA), gives me a guided tour of the facility, which has a kitchen, toilet, bathroom and three separate breastfeeding rooms. The nannies have a separate toilet and bathroom. In the kitchen is a fridge, where fresh milk, fruits and feeding bottles with expressed milk for the babies are kept. Belinda Kyalisiima, the other nanny, also manages the kitchen area, where she prepares food for the toddlers. I am in charge of cooking for the children, particularly those from six months and above. I prepare their meals on a daily basis and also, with instructions from some of the parents, make special meals for those who probably have allergies and dont eat certain foods, Kyalisiima, who studied early childhood development and nutrition at Kingfisher Training School Muyenga, says. The kitchen cabinets are stocked with different types of cereal, including soya and millet flour. Below the cabinets is a microwave, cooker, more baby bottles, two sterilizing units, a food steamer and a number of flasks brought by the parents. Parliament has a monthly budget for the facility and buys basic meals including cereals, milk and fruits for the toddlers. The facilitys coordinator and human resource officer at Parliament, Lillian Iculet, says while small meals are provided for the babies, the bulk comes from the mothers; they pool resources and stock up for the children. Nanny Belinda inside the cosy breastfeeding room A chart is plastered on the corridor wall, detailing a daily order of activities. Between 8am and 9am, mothers come in with their babies. They are bathed and breastfed or given porridge and drinking water, before their busy mummies hurry off to different departments of Parliament for work. From 9am to 10:30am, this period is dedicated to indoor activities such as sleeping and breastfeeding. At about 10:30am, the children are guided outside to the play area; however, when the weather is unfriendly, they engage in indoor games. A fruit snack is also given. Midday comes with lunch, when the children are fed milk and porridge and are also given drinking water. For those above six months, meals comprising steamed food are served. We make sure they are fed on steamed food in order to retain the nutrients, Kyalisiima says. Between 1 and 3pm, the children are bathed, while others splash around in the pool. A glass of juice and expressed milk are also served then. From 3pm to 5pm, when the centre closes, children listen to rhymes and also watch cartoons, before their mothers pick them up for the journey home. This routine is, however, not cast in stone. We usually alter it depending on the number of children around and the weather, Nawaho says. As we head towards the breastfeeding rooms, one-year-old Felicia Kusiima, whose mother is a librarian at Parliament, runs past us mumbling in baby talk, before pushing the door to one of the breastfeeding rooms open. In the room are four beds with brightly coloured, cartoon-character blankets arranged in a straight line. Nawaho says this is where toddlers between 15 and 36 months take their naps. We move to breastfeeding room 2, where babies between two months and 14 months sleep. It also has a changing table for babies who have soiled themselves. Inside the third breastfeeding room, only mothers are allowed in to attend to their young ones. Four comfortable chairs are placed in the room, with each seat separated by a plastic curtain for privacy. Once a mother is ready to breastfeed her child, she can draw the curtain and create a private space, as slow music is played in the background to create a relaxed environment for her and the baby. HISTORY When Parliament first opened the facility for its female legislators and staff, many thought it was a daycare center. Iculet insists the facility was created to provide a space for lactating mothers working at the institution to breastfeed their children and return to office, a stones throw away. The facility did not come out of the blue. The idea was conceived in 2011 by former Parliament director of human resource, Victoria Kaddu, and Hellen Kawesa, the assistant director of communications and public affairs (CPA), after they returned from an internship partnership programme at the New York State Legislature in the United States. Kawesa recalls their visit, where they were struck by the presence of a well-furnished breastfeeding room on each floor of the three-storied building, and on different wings, where female staff and members of the legislature worked. The beds the toddler use for nap time The mothers who were working there would come out of committee meetings or offices and take time off to nurse their children. It impressed us so much and we were told that since this was introduced, the number of female staff had grown drastically and performance was enhanced, Kawesa says. Upon return, Kawesa and Kaddu highlighted this aspect to the Speaker and Clerk to Parliament, with recommendations that the Parliamentary Commission considers the idea. While it took four years to be set up due to limited space, Kaweesa is elated the idea was eventually implemented. I remember MPs used to come with their babies and nannies to attend committee and plenary sittings and they [babies] had to wait in their vehicles, she says. Parliaments Human Resource regulations stipulate that upon return from maternity leave, a mother is allowed to work for six hours a day and return home to look after the child. While this is for a period of six months, Iculet says it was not feasible, as it grew tedious for mothers. Mothers were still not at peace, leaving their little ones home, that is why we pushed for the facility, Iculet says, with the greater goal to encourage exclusive breastfeeding for the first six months of life as recommended by the World Health Organisation (WHO). While many working mothers wish to adhere to the WHO guidelines, private companies offer no more than two months maternity leave; in the absence of a facility like Parliaments, a two-month-old baby is forced to start on formula feeds. BENEFICIARIES SPEAK While the facility plays host to 12 children who are not brought in at a go, Iculet says the initial target was for eight children. The assumption was that on a rather busy day, eight children would be brought in at a go. Harriet Nalusiba, a principal librarian at Parliament, is one of the beneficiaries of the facility. Having had trouble with maids with her now 10-year-old daughter, Nalusiba decided to bring her younger one, Felicia, to the centre when her three-month maternity leave ended. It is nice for any woman to have an option to leave your baby at a place where you can walk in any time and breastfeed. I am not worried about rushing home to my child in Matugga, Nalusiba says. Those things affect womens work so badly and also have a bearing on how men think about women at work. Even when men interview staff, they have at the back of their minds [a womans future preoccupation with motherhood]. Nalusibas sentiments are shared by Agago Woman MP, Franca Judith Akello, whose two-and-half-year-old daughter, Mary Akidi, stayed at the centre when mummy had to work. Akello, a mother-of-four, had two children during her first five-year term in the 8th Parliament. Whenever I had my babies, I would not settle at Parliament. I would come very late for committee meetings and within an hour, I would be called from home all the time that the baby was crying incessantly and needed to be breastfed. At some point, I got discouraged to have more babies, the MP recalls. Now, the convenience of being closer to her child while she represents her people in the House is something Akello does not take for granted. I have really enjoyed working at Parliament because I bring her to the centre, then head to work. I would walk there and breastfeed and return at my own convenience. She has also turned out to be a very social daughter because she grew up with other children, the MP muses. Bugiri Woman MP, Agnes Taaka Wejuli, is also a beneficiary of the facility, where she takes her seven-month-old son, where he meets Evans Behanganas baby; Behangana is a police officer attached to the surveillance team at Parliament. FUTURE PLANS The demand for daycare centres in the country has grown over the years, majorly due to the unreliability of housemaids and scarcity of professional nannies for homes. In 2014, First Lady Janet Museveni made a herald call, urging bosses countrywide to consider setting up daycare centres at the workplace to level the ground a bit for working mothers. While the initial plan of Parliaments breastfeeding facility was to allow mothers to breastfeed their young ones, Iculet hints that in the future, the institution may set up a daycare centre to allow MPs and staff to drop off their children even after weaning them. This, she says, will happen once the construction of the new chambers of Parliament is complete. There is a lot of demand for daycare services; so, we could have a wing for that so that even the male staff and MPs can bring their children. For now, our focus is on breastfeeding, Iculet says. While the concept at Parliament may seem expensive, Iculet gives assurance to employers who would like to adopt the idea that one can set up a facility in one room at a much lower cost. eyotaru@gmail.com The suns piercing rays slip through the shrubs of Murchison Falls national park. A team of veterinary doctors from Uganda Wildlife Authority (UWA), Uganda Wildlife Education Centre (UWEC) and Makerere Universitys college of Veterinary Medicine, Animal Resources and Bio-security (COVAB) assemble at the Pakuba junction with game rangers, wardens and other middle-level managers for the first massive translocation of the Uganda kob. A few metres away, a herd of about 50 kobs graze, enjoying the early morning sunshine as the team led by UWA vet Dr Margaret Druciru plot on how to capture them. This is May 21, the seventh day of the two-week exercise to translocate at least 192 kobs from Murchison Falls national park to Kidepo Valley national park under the biodiversity enrichment project. We had an upsurge of kobs in Murchison Falls; their population was estimated at over 34,000 yet in Kidepo, the kobs population is very low. That is why we want to boost Kidepos population, Simplicious Gessa, UWAs public relations officer, tells journalists. UWA rangers with a captured kob My anticipation is high, making me grow bored by the prolonged briefing session by the UWA officials. Those of us wearing bright-coloured clothes are asked to change to dull colours, followed by a list of the dos and donts of the exercise. This is a conservation and marketing exercise. Many things can go right and many things can go wrong, Gessa says. This statement shakes me awake and I ask for an elaborate explanation, and the response is scary: Accidents are inevitable and in previous days, they had recorded cases of people who fell off fast-moving trucks during the chase, while others were harmed by the kobs during the capture. Animals get very dangerous in that situation, they may want to jump out and escape and in the process harm you if you are not careful, Dr Druciru says, pointing out a veterinarian whose overalls were torn by a kob he was capturing. THE CAPTURE About 500 metres away, a 300-metre long trap (booma), made out of green tarpaulin has been erected with an opening to lure the animals into a camouflaged truck. When everything is set, double-cabin pickup trucks make a C-formation around the kobs before the terribly high-speed drive through the shrubs begins in chase of the animals. I am in one of the trucks. The much anticipation I earlier had is long-gone thanks to the terribly high speed that sees us tear through shrubbery and drive over anthills in the park. Marion Kagume, an M.Sc. Wildlife Health and Management student at Makerere University, does not help calm my fears when she narrates of a person who fell off the truck the previous day. As the hounded kobs approach the booma, everyone shouts in a way similar to that of traditional hunters driving an animal into their nets as dogs give chase. Only in this case, the pickup trucks are the dogs. Given the speed, I am too busy praying just in case so, I cannot join in the shouting. Just as well I prayed, a journalist is injured and rushed to a health facility for first aid as the vets and rangers celebrate their catch. Some 20 kobs have entered the booma, but some jumped over the approximately 10- metre high structure. The chase yields about 17 kobs that are tranquilised and their blood samples taken for disease surveillance. It is not easy to get blood samples from wild animals and when we get an opportunity like this, we test them for any diseases, Dr Druciru says. ROUND TWO Faint-hearted journalists keep away from the second chase, which I surprisingly join. It offers a chance for a bigger catch because at hand is a bigger population of kobs than the previous one. But lack of coordination costs the vets dearly. About 100 kobs are running towards the booma when the drivers lose their formation, allowing the animals to escape, save for four. But Druciru is upbeat about their catch; 21 is an impressive number given that on one of the previous days they got only three kobs. The May 21 catch increases Kidepos kob population to more than 80. Due to the years of turbulence in Karamoja, the kob population in Kidepo was down to just six, according to a recent aerial survey. Boosting Kidepos kob population aside, the activity offered Makerere University a learning opportunity given that the university lacks a laboratory for such experiences. It is a field activity but also a learning lab for my students, says Dr Denis Muhangi, a lecturer at COVAB. What I would have taught them in two weeks, they have captured in a few days, including a lifelong experience. Their participation gives them more confidence to handle similar situations in future. sadabkk@observer.ug Maureen Osoru, the Arua Woman MP, was recently elected president of the Forum of Young Parliamentarians of the Inter Parliamentary Union in Dhaka, Bangladesh, after triumphing over opponents from Russia and Zambia. The 27-year-old lawmaker is part of the Ugandan delegation that attended the 136th IPU meeting in Bangladesh. Osoru went to parliament after defeating Christine Bako Abia, the former Arua woman MP, in last years elections and is currently serving her first term. I want to tackle youth unemployment in my district by establishing small income- generating projects, said Osoru in an interview with The Observer recently. Over the years, she has been training her women and youth constituents to make crafts such as handbags, leather sandals and jewellery, among other things, from which they could earn and improve their lives. An accountant by profession, Osoru seeks to fight corruption in the government and other public offices. My coming to parliament and becoming the president of the IPU youth body is an opportunity to voice the concerns of young people, Osoru said. She maintains that politics has nothing to do with age. It is about the brain, she says while laughing, adding that whether you are young or old, people will make demands. Born to Sabua Ajio and Loyce Adiru in Arua district, the accountant, who holds a University of East London degree, started her educational journey in her home town of Arua until primary four. She completed her primary education at Kirinya Parents primary school in Bweyogerere before joining Kisubi high school for her O-level. Osoru later joined Queensway high school, a branch of Kisubi high school, for her senior five before completing her senior six at Forest Hill College in Mukono. She is yet to start her masters in Business Administration at Makerere University. In her free time, Osoru enjoys listening to music, especially reggae and RnB. She also enjoys going out with her friends, although she is quick to note that her outings are limited to evening hours and she is always home by 9pm. But most of the time, I am just concentrating on my crafts. I am also venturing into making reusable pads to help my women and girls, says Osoru who is currently single, with no plans of settling down soon. Osoru maintains that her first responsibility is to the people she represents. I want to change their lives and make them better. My people come first in whatever I do, says Osoru who is living her childhood dream of leading her people. Her advice to the youth is to actively get involved in politics if they want better governance. She also encourages them to be compassionate and reminds them that two heads are better than one. Whether you like it or not, you cannot do everything on your own. You have to consult and get assistance from others, counsels Osoru. Outside politics, Osorus biggest challenge is the failure to interact with people who think highly of themselves. I have noticed that many middle income earners in Uganda are reluctant to interact with the less fortunate, notes Osoru. She finds it unbelievable that someone can buy very expensive clothes yet decline buying a starving street child a meal. Besides being a member of parliament, Osoru runs a wine shop called Ajio Sabua Enterprises in Kikuubo, downtown Kampala. pbaike@yahoo.com If you live in Kampala, lucky you; 26 of the countrys 41 registered eye specialists (ophthalmologists) are based in the countrys capital, according to Sightsavers Internationals 2012 report. The same cannot be said for compatriots in other districts, many of which have equipment but not the eye specialists. In June, Gilbert Onegi, 43, from Oduk village in Zombo district, trekked over 50km to Nebbi hospital to have his three-year-old son Jonathan Rwot Omiyo treated for an eye complication. Onegis travel to Nebbi hospital followed radio announcements that the hospital would be hosting a medical camp where several eye specialists would provide screening and treatment services, free. To Onegi, this was an opportunity to have his son who had suffered for three years, treated and have a new lease of pain-free life. A patient having her eyes checked Onegi was at the hospital by 8am hoping to be among the first people to be attended to. However, by 8am more than 50 patients were in the queue. Because of the severity of the condition of Rwots eye, doctors helped Onegi jump the queue and he was among the first patients. Rwots left eye protruded from the socket, was red and teary. Onegi said the eye started swelling when Rwot was four months old. Efforts to get treatment were futile as all medicines prescribed were not helpful and the swelling continued. This boy has been staying with his mother, who left me for another man. I have been sending some money for treatment, but things never changed. But at the start of this year, I decided to pick him and have since been looking after him. He cries every night from pain. When I heard about this camp, I borrowed money to bring him, Onegi said According to Dr Ben Watmon, an eye specialist from Gulu regional referral hospital, the boys condition is known as Retinoblastoma cancer, which is in its advanced stages and could be difficult to reverse. He said from clinical observations, the tumour was already grown and visible. This type of eye infection starts in babies as early as one month old. This eye is now a burden to the child and, therefore, we have to remove it to reduce the pain but also prevent the suspected cancer cells from spreading into the body and then he will start on chemotherapy, he said. Ideally, chemotherapy should have been the first step before removing the eye, but since it is too late, we shall remove the eye and then refer him to Ruharo hospital in Mbarara district [for] chemotherapy. This boy could have retained the eye, but because we have few eye specialists in the region, he could not get early screening, Watmon added. Uganda is a signatory to the World Health Organization strategy for elimination of avoidable blindness by the year 2020. Figures from the Health Management Information System indicate that eye diseases are among the top ten causes of morbidity in Uganda. It is estimated that between 300,000 and 350,000 people in Uganda are blind and more than 1.2 million have visual impairment. HELPLESS HOSPITALS However, Uganda is faced with an acute shortage of ophthalmologists. Dr Charles Kennedy Kissa, the Nebbi hospital medical superintendent, said the government facility has a fully-equipped eye clinic that is non-operational because it lacks a specialist. Patients with eye complications are referred to Arua regional referral hospital more than 70km away. Kissa said Nebbi hospital only operates an outpatient eye clinic that manages minor eye ailments. He said in the financial year 2015/2016, the hospital recorded 1,180 eye patients out of the total 49,809 patients. This is a big number of people, most of whom end up losing sight which could [have been] reversed if we had an eye specialist. We now depend on well-wishers who offer to treat our patients through medical camps Kissa said. During such camps, very many people turn up because there is a service delivery gap. The camp was organized by ministry of Health with support from Amref Health Africa and attracted 106 patients. Forty-two of them underwent corrective surgery. We had planned for round 80 patients. However, we got more patients coming from as far as Zombo, Pakwach and Arua, while others came from as far as Democratic Republic of Congo, Kissa said Dr Watmon said about 170,000 Ugandans are blind due to cataracts and that number increases annually by 20 per cent, representing 34,000 new cases every year. A cataract is the clouding of the lens, leading to gradual sight loss or reduction. Cataracts are common among the elderly but children and other age groups can also get this condition. Patients with cataracts can regain their vision through minor surgery. However, Watmon said many patients resort to traditional herbs instead of seeking medical attention. Other causes of blindness are preventable; these include, trachoma, onchocerciasis (river blindness), vitamin A deficiency, measles, injuries on the eyes, bacteria, viruses and fungus, among others. Dr Kissa appealed to government to train more eye specialists to equip public hospitals. Whereas the medical camps are very important in service delivery, they are not sustainable and they are expensive. For example, the hospital has to feed the specialists during the camp period and also provide some of the consumables. By the time the camp ends, we find the medical supplies are out of stock, he said. beatricenyangoma@gmail.com The Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, has told South Sudanese refugees living in Uganda to hang unto hope and God as set their eyes to restoring peace in their country. While visiting hundreds of the displaced persons in settlements in Adjumani district yesterday, Archbishop Welby, accompanied by his wife Carolina, told the refugees that peace is a strongest pillar of development. Together with the Archbishop of the Church of Uganda, Stanley Ntagali, the two primates were welcomed at Mireyi primary school, few metres away from Mireyi refugee settlement. Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby meeting with refugees in South Sudan earlier A choir of cheerful women and youth displaced from the dioceses of Upper and Lower Nile Provinces sang hymns in the local Murle dialect and danced as they received the two church leaders. Archbishop Welby, who earlier visited other refugees in settlements in Moyo district, said he had heard, with lots of pain, stories about the difficult situation of refugees living outside their home country. Responding to a written memorandum handed to him by the refugees asking him to be an advocate of peace in South Sudan, he said; "I accept to be an advocate of peace for South Sudan because God called each person to be a peacemaker. I know you need to go home and build the world's youngest nation into a great nation for yourself, your children and grandchildren." He told the refugees to believe that with God, peace is possible. "I pray that the people might listen when I speak about you and how I have seen you", he added drawing cheerful reactions. Earlier, Archbishop Ntagali told his guest that Uganda does not have the vocabulary of refugees because of her culture to welcome everybody who come to her. "Our door is always open. This is why you find refugees from the Democratic Republic of Congo to the west, Rwandans down south, Kenyans to the East and South Sudanese to the north," he elaborated. James Leku, the chairperson of Adjumani district said the refugees and host communities are living peacefully together. He said the coexistence has resulted into intermarriages and the communities enjoy a brotherly relationship. Leku explained that the settlement suffers from acute lack of food, water and school facilities for the refugees. "Many youth who dropped out of secondary education are unable to continue with school. I urge you, dear Archbishop of Canterbury, to use your position to lobby for more facilities and accelerated secondary education for the refugees," he said. Adjumani is home to 17 large settlements for South Sudan refugees. According to the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR), Uganda is home to some 1.2 million South Sudan refugees who have been fleeing escalation of violence in their country since fresh war broke out between forces loyal to former vice president Riek Machar and those loyal to President Salva kiir. Machar has himself fled the violence to South Africa where he remains under house arrest. Like many other cities around the world, Indian urban communities have large numbers of stray dogs living alongside their human inhabitants. But canines are not Indias biggest stray problem, cows are. They cause thousands of road accidents every month, block traffic and spread disease. The Government has long been aware of the many issues caused by cows roaming free on busy city roads, but no one seems to know what to do about them. Stray cows have been a part of Indian urban life for as long as anyone can remember, but theyve become increasingly problematic in recent years, with the development of infrastructure and the increase in the number of cars driving on Indian roads. Urban cows dont fear traffic, so its not unusual to see them loitering, in the middle of the road, unperturbed by honking or drivers trying to scare them away. Violence is not acceptable, as cows are considered sacred, and harming them in any way would enrage Hindus, so people have to keep their frustration in check, no matter how bad things get. Photo: Occupy for Animals The fact that India even has stray cattle is linked to their sacred status in the predominantly Hindu country. Their slaughter is banned throughout most of the nation, so when cows and bulls outlive their usefulness and or are considered too much of a financial burden, their human owners just set them loose on the streets. This has been going on since forever, and today, the stray cow population in India is in the millions and growing at a rapid pace. Cows can be seen roaming on busy roads in large cities like New Delhi all through the day, often causing accidents and blocking traffic, but they are most dangerous at night. Vehicles moving at high speed have a tough time spotting these animals in time, and crashes sometimes result in the loss of both human and animal lives. Back in April, authorities in Punjab announced that stray cows involved in traffic accidents have killed 300 people in the last 30 months. And thats just in one state. But road accidents and traffic jams are just two of the problems caused by cows. While most of them may look healthy, they are actually diseased, or at least carrying some of the most dangerous food-borne and waterborne pathogens in the world. They mainly feed on garbage, and evidence shows that their milk as well as the waste they produce are full of antibiotics, hormones and heavy metals, some of which can cause temporary illnesses in humans, while others can lead to death. Illegal dairies operating in large Indian cities are also a big problem. They rely on stray cows to source contaminated milk which they then sell cheaply to the poor population. Not only do they deliberately set the cows loose on the streets to save money on food, but these dairies sometimes rely on political connection to have the animals released from non-profit cow shelters, if they get captured. Cow catchers are currently the only way Indian cities deal with stray cows. Sometimes referred to as urban cowboys, these men only rely on rope lassos and brute strength to catch cows, load them on trucks and take them to one of the overcrowded cow shelters, or gaushalas. The only time when they are allowed to use stun guns, is when they are accompanied by a veterinarian, which doesnt happen very often. But not only is catching stray cows hard and dangerous work as they tend to kick and buck violently when threatened cow catchers also have to deal with the human population. Frustrated drivers frequently turn to violence if the catchers block traffic for too long, trying to remove the cows, illegal dairy owners are even worse, and even Hindu bystanders pelt them with rocks in an attempt to get them to leave the sacred animals alone. Cow catchers are struggling to rid the streets of stray cows, but soon they may not have where to take them. Rajendra Singh Shekhawat, who runs the biggest gaushala in New Delhi, says that he already nearing full capacity, and all the other shelters are facing the same problem. To make matters worse, the number of abandoned cows is increasing, as machines and tractors take over their jobs. District administrations are constantly announcing campaigns to rid cities of stray cows, but with an estimated 5 million animals still roaming through the streets, no one knows how exactly they plan to do that, or where they plan to take them. Sources: IAS Score, NY Times, PRI.org The Nossa Senhora da Consolacao church, in downtown Sao Paolo, Brazil, used to have a serious pigeon problem. The pesky birds would fly through the place during sermons, poop on the benches and leave feathers everywhere, but ever since they had these colored circle panels installed in the windows and doorways, no pigeon gets close anymore. Regular parishioners at Nossa Senhora da Consolacao describe the pigeon situation as a real hell. Dozens of birds had made the place of worship their home, flying in and out whenever they pleased, making a lot noise during mass and dropping stones and bits of plaster on people. Every morning, the floor and wooden benches had to be cleaned of bird droppings, and at one point it all became too much to bear. The church wanted to find a humane way of driving the pigeons away, but they never imagined hypnosis would be the answer. Photo: BBC Brazil Im not even sure hypnosis is the right word to describe the solution provided by Protec, the company that finally made the Brazilian church a pigeon-free area, about a month ago. What they did was install a series of plastic panels with colored bullseyes painted on them, in every doorway and window of the church. The concentric design apparently makes pigeons dizzy and nauseous, causing them to turn away. Over time, they just learn to avoid the place completely. Believe it or not, the colored panels did the trick. The pigeons were breeding and making a lot of noise during mass, but the technique was 100% successful and no pigeons ever enter the church now, Father Jose Roberto Pereira told BBC Brazil. Photo: Facebook Protec claims that the solution was developed by one of their researchers, based on a similar system imported from abroad. They did a lot of testing, adapting the solution to conditions in Brazil, and it ultimately proved very effective. the companys equipment supervisor explained that whenever pigeons fly toward the panels, the concentric design scrambles their vision and they turn away. However, ornithologists consulted by the BBC said that it would be a miracle if a colored design printed on a simple plastic panel would be enough to keep pigeons away. Photo: BBC Brazil In order to create a feeling of nausea, one would need some mechanism that affects the labyrinth inside the ear of the bird. A rotating image could cause this feeling of nausea, but not a static image, said Thiago Dantas, professor of ornithopathology at the Anhanguera University, in Niteroi. Protec swears by their simple solution, adding that some of the birds attempt to return once or twice, but the dizziness and nausea are so unpleasant that they eventually give up. Father Pereira, who had been dealing with pigeon trouble ever since he came to the parish, seven years ago, also claims that the birds have not returned ever since the panels were installed. Believe it or not, this is not the strangest way of keeping birds at bay. Last month, we wrote about a Japanese professor who installed Crows Do Not Enter signs on a building to keep the birds away. That solution also proved incredibly successful. Bronx Teen Pedro Hernandez Released From Rikers Island Elijah C. Watson Elijah Watson serves as Okayplayer's News & Culture Editor. When Pedro Hernandez has been released from Rikers Island. In a report from the New York Daily News, the 17-year-old was reunited with his family on Thursday after being incarcerated at Rikers for 13 months for a crime he never committed. Hernandez was arrested in connection with a 2015 shooting where another teenager was shot in the leg. Although the victim and eight other teens that witnessed the shooting said that Hernandez did not commit the crime he was still arrested. According to those same victims, in video recorded statements, they said that the arresting officer threatened them with physical violence if they did not claim to investigators that the shooter is Hernandez. READ: Bronx Teen Refuses To Accept Plea Deal, Remains At Rikers Hernandez could have accepted a plea deal where he would be placed on probation for five years (following that his record would be wiped clean) but he did not accept, wanting to prove his innocence instead (a situation similar to that of Kalief Browder). His incarceration jeopardized his chances of accepting a full scholarship to college, with his bail set at $250,000. Ultimately, Hernandezs family raised over $100,000 and received the remaining $150,000 from the nonprofit Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights group, who agreed to post the remainder of his bail. No one should disappear into a jail as notorious as Rikers Island simply because they cant afford bail, Kerry Kennedy, the human rights groups president, said. The clear injustice of Pedro Hernandezs situation breaks my heart, as it should the hearts of all New Yorkers who desire an effective justice system. Upon being released, Hernandez said he hopes his story leads to a reevaluation of the bail system. There are too many more like me who are still inside Rikers just because they cant afford to pay bail, he said. I hope my experience elevates their struggle and causes all of us to rethink how we treat those who are least able to purchase their freedom. Source: nydailynews.com Art and faith are in a committed relationship at St. Marks on the Campus Episcopal Church. A large sculpture of a lion greets visitors to the parish, which has served the University of Nebraska-Lincoln for more than 90 years. Professional artist Julee Lowe created the buildings stained-glass windows and processional cross. The church even has an arts committee that sponsors workshops and exhibits. St. Marks has always enjoyed featuring artwork and including it in everything we do, said Peg Sheldrick, a longtime parishioner whos on the arts committee. As UNL classes get underway this month, the church is offering a new event. The Ten Titles Photo Challenge invites photographers to submit digital photos that fit 10 themes: Refuge, Quiet Moment, Big Surprise, Life Lesson, Bright and Beautiful, Helping Hand, By Nature, All in the Family, Mystery and Happiness. You can enter a photo for each one or just a few. Each accepted image will be put into a slide show for a premiere party reception in October, then displayed in the church gallery. It leaves a lot of room for creativity, Sheldrick said. She thinks theres a natural affinity between visual art and worship, especially at St. Marks. The churchs now-retired longtime rector, The Rev. Don Hanway, even coined a phrase for it, she said: The spirit made visible. In recent years, Sheldrick said, the church has looked for additional ways to foster creativity within the parish. Two recent workshops the fruit of those efforts proved popular. Emphasizing art is a great community outreach, she said. She hopes many photographers beyond the congregation participate in the challenge and that the 10 titles result in a diverse collection of images. Were especially hoping students will take interest. Its another way to let them know were here and make them interested in coming into our building. That could lead to all sorts of things, because art is a way to tap into something beyond yourself, said Sheldrick, who dabbles in art herself. There are forms of meditation and prayer that involve sitting with a work or art or creating and doing it in a very mindful way, she said. (Art) takes your mind to a completely different place its relaxing and at the same time energizing. Someone who asks if your back hurts may be more than a sympathetic observer. That person might be part of an organized fraud ring, looking for people to seek unneeded medical treatment as part of a scheme to get payments from insurance companies or government health programs. In Nebraska, Omaha is really where most of it occurs, with Lincoln right behind it, said Joseph Wehrle Jr., chief executive of the National Insurance Crime Bureau in Des Plaines, Illinois. Such crimes rely on the cooperation of dishonest health providers and often attorneys, he said in an interview Wednesday. Wehrle spoke at an insurance fraud conference sponsored by the Nebraska Department of Insurance, attended by about 120 people at the Strategic Air Command & Aerospace Museum near Ashland. Fraudulent payments run up costs that must be covered by everyone through higher insurance costs or, in the case of government plans like Medicare or Medicaid, taxes, he said. Some fraud groups have spread into the Midwest from high-population states like Florida, Wehrle said. They recruit local residents to make the bogus injury claims in exchange for part of the payments for treatments that they dont need or didnt even happen. Sometimes the crooks recruit accomplices by calling people who report injuries in auto accidents or in workers compensation cases, both matters of public record. Any time theres a large population, thats where these folks decide theyre going to set up shop, Wehrle said. The insurance crime bureau, a nonprofit group supported by about 1,100 property and casualty insurance companies, lobbies to get state and national legislation to discourage such crimes, he said. For example, in some states not including Nebraska its illegal to solicit someone for medical treatments within a week of a traffic accident. Although medical fraud amounts to billions of dollars each year nationally, Wehrle said, 75 percent of the fraud cases that reach the national bureaus attention involve property and casualty claims faked car accidents and thefts, exaggerated storm damage claims, phony falls and other made-up mishaps. In some cases, crooks buy renters insurance and soon after report large amounts of expensive property stolen. The bureau works with law enforcement to plant bait cars for thieves to steal, then stops the cars remotely for arresting officers. Or it may help set up a bait house with no storm damage to catch a fraudulent roofer. The bureau helps state fraud investigators and other groups share information to catch crooks who cross state lines. Photo by via Twitter We rely on your support to make local news available to all Make your contribution now and help Gothamist thrive in 2022. Donate today FALL RIVER, Mass. (AP) Hundreds of people showed up Wednesday for a chance to pack and ship products to Amazon customers, as the e-commerce company held a giant job fair at nearly a dozen U.S. warehouses. Though its common for Amazon to ramp up its shipping center staff in August to prepare for holiday shopping, the magnitude of the hiring spree underscores Amazons growth when traditional retailers are closing stores and blaming Amazon for a shift to buying goods online. Amazon planned to hire thousands of people on the spot. Nearly 40,000 of the 50,000 packing, sorting and shipping jobs at Amazon will be full time. Most of them will count toward Amazons previously announced goal of adding 100,000 full-time workers by the middle of next year. The bad news is that more people are likely to lose jobs in stores than get jobs in warehouses, said Anthony Carnevale, director of Georgetown Universitys Center on Education and the Workforce. On the flip side, Amazons warehouse jobs provide decent and competitive wages and could help build skills. Interpersonal team work, problem solving, critical thinking, all that stuff goes on in these warehouses, Carnevale said. Theyre serious entry-level jobs for a lot of young people, even those who are still making their way through school. The company is advertising starting wages that range from $11.50 an hour in Chattanooga, Tennessee, to $13.75 an hour in Kent, Washington, near Amazons Seattle headquarters. While Amazon has attracted attention for deploying robots at some of its warehouses, experts said it could take a while before automation begins to seriously bite into its growing labor force. When it comes to dexterity, machines arent really great at it, said Jason Roberts, head of technology and analytics for mass recruiter Randstad Sourceright, which is not working with Amazon on its job fair. The picker-packer role is something humans do way better than machines right now. Copyright 2017 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Juan Francos legacy at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln includes new student dorms and a multicultural center, but university officials think hell be remembered more for his special rapport with students. Franco, a longtime vice chancellor for student affairs at UNL, died Tuesday in Houston of complications from surgery, the university said. He was 68. He really was an engaged person who I suspect influenced the course of a lot of students lives while they were at a university, said former UNL Chancellor Harvey Perlman, who hired Franco in 2006. He was just a genuinely good person. Franco stepped down this spring from his student affairs position, which he had held for more than a decade, to become a faculty member in the College of Education and Human Sciences. UNL Chancellor Ronnie Green said Franco and his team worked to inspire students to achieve their potential. He led many initiatives, including Francos List, which recognizes students who demonstrate integrity, citizenship, open-mindedness and respect. Green said that Franco was a strong supporter of student leadership and that the UNL campus had undergone many changes during his tenure, including the construction of new residence halls and the creation of the Jackie Gaughan Multicultural Center. In his role, Franco had often been at the center of fraternity disciplinary actions and issues involving campus diversity. He oversaw university housing, student judicial affairs and student involvement. He was very passionate about students, Perlman said. He regarded each one of them as a kind of stepson or stepdaughter. Before coming to UNL, Franco served as the vice president for student services at Utah State University. He spent 28 years as an administrator and professor of counseling and educational psychology at New Mexico State University. He is survived by wife Elisa and sons John, Jim and Fabian, the university said. Funeral services will be held in Austin, Texas. A smoldering fire on the roof of a building on the Duchesne Academy campus prompted the evacuation of some construction workers who were on hand Thursday morning. Omaha Fire Battalion Chief Matt Carmichael said sparks from a grinder being used on the roof of the building, which contains the school's performing arts center, damaged an area of about 5 feet by 15 feet. The 911 call came in at 10:39 a.m. A construction worker standing outside said work was being done on the heating, ventilation and air conditioning system. Carmichael said a half-dozen workers were on the roof at the time, but others were inside the building. The building sustained minimal water damage, Carmichael said. He said he didn't think any staff or teachers were in the building at the time. Firefighters were pulling away from the building before 11:10 a.m. Duchesne is at 3601 Burt St. A cold front dropping into eastern Nebraska and southwest Iowa today likely will bring cooler conditions to the region heading into the weekend. Thunderstorm chances return to the area Saturday, courtesy of a slight warm front lifting through the Midwest, forecasters said. Early today, a storm system producing rain and some strong winds was spotted on radar in western Iowa and southeast Nebraska moving east, the National Weather Service office in Valley said. The rain has "kind of been all around us, KMTV meteorologist Ryan McPike said about precipitation missing the Omaha area early today. "I think we missed the bulk of the rain.'' In the Omaha area today, forecasters called for partly sunny skies, a 30 percent chance of showers and thunderstorms and a high temperature around 75. Northwest winds could gust as high as 25 mph, the weather service said. If you dont like heat and humidity, McPike said, you are going to like the forecast. Tonight, conditions will cool off in the Omaha area to a low temperature in the low to mid-50s under mostly clear skies, the weather service said. Sunshine is to return to the Omaha area Friday, when a high in the upper 70s is expected. Saturday is forecast to be mostly cloudy with a 40 percent chance of showers and thunderstorms and a high around 75. Saturday night, forecasters said there will be a 30 percent chance of showers and thunderstorms and a low around 60. Sunday in the Omaha area looks to be partly sunny with a slight chance of showers and thunderstorms before 1 p.m. and a high in the upper 70s. Monday and Tuesday of next week are forecast to be mostly sunny with highs in the low to mid-80s, the weather service said. Area rainfall in inches for the 24 hours ending at 7:30 a.m. today: Albion, trace; Beatrice, .08; Falls City, .01; Lincoln, trace; Nebraska City, trace; Norfolk, .07; Offutt Air Force Base, trace; Wayne, 01; Clarinda, .29; Harlan, .02; Red Oak, .05; Shenandoah, .37. LINCOLN Requiring a woman to remove her pants and show her genitals as alleged in a lawsuit filed by a female state trooper is not the usual protocol for checking for a hernia in a female patient, two medical professionals said Wednesday. That would be highly unusual and a bit suspect, said Dr. David Hoelting, a longtime family physician in Pender, Nebraska, and a board member of the Nebraska Academy of Family Physicians. Both Hoelting and Melissa Meyer, a licensed practical nurse from Lincoln, said that asking a woman to remove her underwear would not be necessary in checking for a hernia, which are not common in women. They said that a check would involve feeling the abdominal area for abnormalities. Questions about what is standard medical practice were raised by a federal lawsuit filed Tuesday by Trooper Brienne Splittgerber against the state, two former heads of the Nebraska State Patrol and a Lincoln doctor contracted to perform physicals for the patrol. In her lawsuit, the trooper said that during a pre-employment physical in 2014, the doctor instructed her to remove her pants, lay on her back on the examination table, bend her knees to put her feet flat on the table and open her knees exposing her genitalia. Then, she said, she was required to roll over, exposing her anus. While the State Patrol declined to comment on the lawsuit, citing policies against commenting on pending litigation, a patrol attorney in a March email described the exam as a hernia check required of both male and female recruits. Splittgerbers attorney, former State Sen. Tom White of Omaha, said more than one female patrol recruit was subjected to the questionable examinations, and perhaps one male. The exams continued, White said, even after his client had complained to her superiors that they were medically unnecessary, indecent and sexually invasive. The attorney said he found no one who could justify such an examination. Doctors uniformly said thats not a hernia exam, White said Wednesday. The physician named in the lawsuit, Dr. Stephen Haudrich of Lincoln, did not return phone messages left with the Concentra clinic where he works. A spokeswoman for the clinics parent company, Pennsylvania-based Select Medical, declined to comment, citing the pending litigation and privacy concerns. The firm, which operates urgent care clinics in Omaha and Lincoln, won a three-year contract with the patrol in 2014 to perform pre-employment physicals for trooper recruits. The contract expires on Sept. 1, state records indicated. A patrol spokesman, Cody Thomas, said Wednesday that another company submitted a lower bid and will take over the contract. A check of State Patrol records obtained by The World-Herald indicate that in 2014, one required check during a physical examination was for hernia. The current medical examination checklist, provided Wednesday by the patrol, lists a check of the abdomen. It also lists a required check of the genitourinary the reproductive organs and urinary tracts but does not detail what that means. The records examined by The World-Herald did not include any directives on how the examinations were to be conducted. But the lawsuit filed by the state trooper indicated that Haudrich said his examinations were required by the patrol. A check of state medical records indicated that no disciplinary actions have been taken against the physician, who was first licensed to practice in Nebraska in 1993. Splittgerber said she complained to superiors in late 2014 after her personal physician told her there was no legitimate medical purpose for such an examination. She filed a lawsuit after she became convinced, almost three years later, that her concerns had not been addressed or investigated in a meaningful way. Her lawsuit alleges that her complaint was covered up by her superiors at the patrol. The legal action comes just weeks after reports of other allegations of cover-ups within the patrol. One involved a high-speed chase that ended with a fatality; another concerned a traffic stop in which a trooper rifle-butted a drunken suspect in the face. Those incidents, reported by The World-Herald, were cited as factors in Gov. Pete Ricketts decision to order of a review of the patrols policies, procedures and leadership, a probe that resulted in the recent firing of Col. Brad Rice, the patrols superintendent. He is among those named as defendants in Splittgerbers lawsuit. White, the attorney for Splittgerber, said he believes that there was a deliberate effort to kill his clients complaints about the unusual hernia exams, which created a hostile working environment for women in the patrol. From what I understand, this is a very sick environment (at the patrol). That is a swamp that needs to be drained, White said. The Omaha lawyer said he has talked with other female troopers who were subjected to the exams, and that at least one more lawsuit over the practice is expected. Helena Public Schools selected Bullock Construction Services Thursday to demolish Central School. During a special meeting, the board of trustees accepted Superintendent Jack Copps' recommendation to select the lowest of five bids at $115,775. The reason for the lesser amount is that this contractor intends to recycle 90 percent of the building, Copps said. Central, Bryant and Jim Darcy schools are slated to be demolished and rebuilt as part of a $63 million bond passed in May. The Central demolition has been a school district priority after a lawsuit delayed work on the building. The lawsuit was recently dismissed. Bullock Construction Services, based in Boulder, will begin demolition as soon as the district finishes asbestos abatement. The contract states Bullock Construction will be finished by Oct. 2. The district is in the process of securing the entire perimeter of the block with fencing to make sure no one trespasses during demolition. Copps is the stepfather of Gov. Steve Bullock, but has no relation to Bullock Construction. Before unanimously accepting the superintendents recommendation, the board asked if several historic pieces of the building and the playground equipment will be saved. A committee has been formed to determine which historic parts of the building could be preserved, and members requested the district keep the Central School archway and incorporate it into the new building. Bullock Construction Services will provide the school with a second bid on whether its possible to save the archway and how much it would cost. Assistant Superintendent Greg Upham said district officials haven't decided on a price they are willing to pay to keep the archway. Other requests by the committee will be honored, such as saving a bell, classroom doors, water fountains and some pieces of granite. The committee asked the district to preserve the school's maple flooring, trim and national register of historic places sign, but those pieces didnt make the final list. Copps said the granite caps and stones will all be saved and the district will sell souvenir bricks from Central School to benefit either the Helena Education Foundation or the Angel Fund. The personalized bricks will also be saved. We charged the current Central School administrators to come up with an idea to implement the bricks within the new structure, Copps said. The board was concerned about Centrals playground equipment after some community organizations expressed interest in purchasing it. Copps said the district would be liable if they sold the equipment and it was unsafe after being reinstalled in a new location. Instead, the equipment will eventually be removed and discarded. LINCOLN A probe of the Nebraska State Patrol has substantiated claims that members of the command staff, including then-Col. Brad Rice, improperly meddled with and manipulated internal investigations and downplayed reports of excessive use of force and sexual harassment within the agency. Rice, who was fired last month as head of the patrol, interfered in at least four internal investigations cases, according to the 15-page report released Thursday. The review had been ordered by Gov. Pete Ricketts. In one case in which a state trooper had struck a drunken driving suspect in the head with a rifle butt, Rice sought to downplay the incident even though others in the patrol had described it as shocking to the conscience, the report said. In another case the colonel helped manage the response into a high-speed chase that ended with the death of a fleeing suspect, and potentially influenced the conclusion of an internal probe into the chase. In addition, the report said Rice failed to correct the inaction of the patrol in regard to a complaint of sexual harassment a questionable hernia exam that prompted a federal lawsuit earlier this week. A formal investigation into the female troopers complaints didnt begin until the Governors Office intervened. I dont think the colonel (Rice) displayed the leadership he ought to have, said a grim-faced Ricketts at a press conference Thursday. Thats why I asked him to leave the State Patrol. The report comes after several stories by The World-Herald involving allegations of meddling and manipulation by patrol commanders into internal investigations done by the patrol, and after a lawsuit alleging that female State Patrol recruits were forced to show their genitals as part of a pre-employment hernia check. One of those earlier stories helped prompt Ricketts, a first-term Republican, to ask his chief human resources officer, Jason Jackson, on June 23 to investigate the policies, procedures and leadership of the State Patrol. A week later, Rice was fired by Ricketts, who had hired Rice in 2015 to lead the patrol despite concerns from some state lawmakers. The governor said that while he could not rewrite history about that hiring decision, he took action as soon as he learned of the meddling and manipulation that was detailed in Thursdays report. I can only act on the information I had. When that information was presented to me, I acted on it, Ricketts told reporters. Jackson, a former Navy officer, said his probe had substantiated concerns that led to the firing of Rice. Six other patrol officers and troopers have been placed on paid administrative leave as an internal probe and a criminal investigation by the FBI continue. While Thursdays report did not provide closure on the status of those suspended, it did provide more detail, and some new allegations. And the report said two internal patrol investigations had been reopened because of concerns about meddling. Among the reports other highlights: Since at least 2008 the patrol has had a policy of allowing troopers accused of misconduct to resign, after which the patrol would drop its investigation into the alleged wrongdoing. That, Jackson said, is wrong because it could allow troopers to retain their licenses and move on to other law enforcement agencies. He said that proper protocol requires the patrol to forward such cases to the Nebraska Crime Commission for a review, and possible revocation, of a troopers law enforcement license. Rice had an unduly familiar relationship with the head of the state troopers union, Sgt. Brian Peterson. In one case Rice sidestepped the patrols chain of command by directly talking with Peterson about a case of untruthfulness by a senior union official. The colonel, the report said, took the unprecedented step of personally assigning the officer who investigated the case, instead of allowing the typical patrol investigative process. Rice held district meetings with troopers but excluded local commanders and command staff, thus potentially undermining their authority. At one meeting, for instance, Rice told troopers he didnt care about traffic enforcement. Troopers under Rices leadership were told to not report problems to the human resources department without first seeking to resolve them with superiors, which worked to deter such complaints. The report said the patrol should adopt tougher controls over excessive overtime, a concern raised in a recent state audit. Gary Young, a Lincoln attorney who represents the State Troopers Association of Nebraska, said it was naive and factually incorrect to say that Rice had too cozy of a relationship with Peterson and the union. For years the union chief has had regular meetings with the patrols colonel to discuss and exchange concerns, Young said. He said the troopers union has been raising concerns about Rice for more than a year concerns that had been rebuffed by Ricketts staff. The Governors Office was contacted on numerous occasions with concerns about Rice, over and over and over, for months. We were either ignored or directed by the Governors Office to direct our issues directly with Rice rather than them, Young said. Omaha attorney Tom White, who represents Trooper Brienne Splittgerber in a federal lawsuit over medically unnecessary and sexually invasive medical examinations performed on female candidates, welcomed the report. Its refreshing that theyre admitting the very serious failings of the State Patrol, he said. State Sen. Laura Ebke of Crete, who chairs the Legislatures Judiciary Committee, called the report a good first step toward addressing what appear to be long-standing problems in the agency. It will prompt a closer look by state lawmakers, she said. Were in a better place now that we have all the cards on the table, Ebke said. State Sen. Adam Morfeld of Lincoln, who has called for an independent investigation of the patrol by the Judiciary Committee, said the Legislature now will have to act one way or another. Meanwhile, the acting superintendent of the patrol, Maj. Russ Stanczyk, said the agency welcomed the findings and has already begun to implement some of the reports recommendations. The governor ordered the review of the patrol days after a World-Herald report raised questions about patrol conduct and the truthfulness of its reporting concerning a chase in Sheridan County last year that ended in a fatality. In that case, an internal investigator and others questioned why the narrative of what caused the Oct. 3 crash changed, from citing a tactical maneuver performed by the trooper to bump the suspect car into a spin, to instead citing a sudden turn by the fleeing driver. Subsequently The World-Herald disclosed an earlier incident that raised questions about the patrol and how it policed conduct within its ranks. In that incident in Sioux County, dash-camera video showed a trooper taking down a suspect whose hands were away from his body with a blow to the head from the butt end of his rifle. Despite a questionable use of force that went beyond what is taught in the patrols training academy, the incident had not been red-flagged by leaders in the Scottsbluff troop area. And even though the trooper subsequently testified falsely under oath that he did not strike the suspect in the head, he was never terminated. About three months after the incident, he resigned his position. Jackson confirmed Thursday that both the Sheridan County and Sioux County cases were part of his internal review of the patrol. Jackson described the Sioux County incident as a rifle butt strike to the head of a passively resisting suspect. Jackson said Rices handling of the sexual harassment case was far below our expectations from the leaders of state government for that degree of severity. Ricketts said before the press conference that he would not be discussing any matters related to litigation involving the pelvic exams, the hiring of a new patrol chief or the FBIs ongoing review of the patrol. More than once Ricketts praised the work of the patrol in helping keep Nebraskans safe. He said the recommendations were intended to make sure all of our troopers can be successful. World-Herald staff writers Martha Stoddard and Emily Nohr contributed to this report. Anand Kumar: An inspiring Math wizard, successful 'super' teacher Feature oi-Chennabasaveshwar By Chennabasaveshwar Bollywood superstar Amitabh Bachchan wanted to learn teaching skills of mathamatics for his flick "Aarakshan''. So, director Praksh Jha had no other name in his mind other than a legend in the field of mathamatics- the super 30 fame, Anand Kumar. So, who is Anand Kumar and why is the prefix Super 30 before his name? Anand Kumar is a mathamatics teacher from Bihar, who every year, trains 30 underprivileged students to help crack prestigious II-JEE exams. By 2017, 396 out of the 450 had made it to IITs under his able guidance. Moreover, four times - 2008, 2009, 2010 and in 2017- that all the 30 students from the pioneering initiative cracked the JEE (Advanced). In fact, Anand Kumar owing to poor financial health of his family could not afford higher studies at Cambridge University, though he secured admission. But problems didn't hinder his passion for helping poor students to achieve their dreams. He founded Ramanujan School of Mathematics in Patna teach Mathematics. The size of the class grew from two to 500 within a span of three years. But a turning point in his career was when a poor student who could not affrord the minimal fees to join his class. This incident triggered the idea to start the Super 30 programme in 2002, for which he is well-known today. Needless to say, Super 30 has become synonymous with Anand Kumar's name. Despite the fact that Super 30 is for underpriviliged students Anand Kumar doesn't accept financial support from any government as well as private agencies to run Super 30. He generates money by running evening classes for intermediate level students. The institute charges a nominal fee which is less than 15% of any other institutions. Obviously, recognition followed the man who once could not afford higher education in Cambridge. He was invited by the prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Harvard University to speak on his globally acclaimed Super 30 institute. At MIT he spoke about how the world can be a better place using inclusive education as a powerful tool to usher in psychological and societal change. A British writer Michael Morpurgo says, ''It's the teacher that makes the difference, not the classroom.'' This saying actually proves to be right in Anand Kumar's case right? OneIndia News Goodbye Mandal?? Feature oi-Staff By Smita Mishra On January 1, 1979 the Morarji Desai government chose Bindeshwari Prasad Mandal, a former Chief Minister of Bihar, to head the Second Backward Class Commission. Exactly two years later, on December 31, 1980, Mandal submitted his report to the centre. By then, Indira Gandhi was back in power and the report lay in deep freeze for a whole decade. On August 7, 1990 Prime Minister VP Singh announced that his govt had accepted the Mandal Commission report recommending 27 percent reservation for Other Backward Classes (OBC) offsetting one of the most turbulent times in Indian politics post independence. On March 11, 2017 the voters of Uttar Pradesh chose a BJP govt inflicting a body blow to the Samajwadi Party by giving them their lowest tally in decades. On July 27, 2017 Nitish Kumar took oath as the Chief Minister of Bihar for the sixth time with the support of BJP after snapping ties with Lalu Prasad-led RJD with whom he had formed govt just 20 months earlier. A lot of newsprint was devoted to the humiliating defeat of the Samajwadi Party in UP. A lot is now being written on the dramatic developments in Patna. But if there is one common thread between the watershed UP elections earlier this year and Nitish Kumar's return to the NDA fold it is the sidelining of Mandal in the two states where it set the direction of politics for a very long time. In UP, the picture is rather clear. The voters rejected the Samajwadi Party govt summarily and went for the more confident BJP. The SP scored 47 seats, its lowest tally since the party was born in 1992. Its vote share also dropped to an all time low of 21.8 percent. However, it's not so straight in Bihar. With Nitish, Lalu and the Congress coming together to form the Mahagatbandhan in 2015, the RJD bagged the highest number of seats (80) with the JDU at second position (71). But today the RJD is fuming as Nitish Kumar has gone back to the 'communal' BJP claiming he was feeling suffocated in the Mahagatbandhan. The return of Nitish, himself a product of Mandal, in just 20 months poses the most serious questions for the Mandal brand of politics in the heartland. Is the social justice slogan enough in itself in the current social and political scenario? Dominated by mafias, and Baahubalis as they are, can the votaries of social justice catch the imagination of the present aspirational generation of young men and women for whom social empowerment may not be an end in itself? Can corruption, high handedness and mis-governance be brushed under the carpet in the name of social justice? Will RJD retain its first position if elections are held today now that the face of Sushasan Babu Nitish Kumar no longer leads the alliance? Perhaps, Akhilesh Yadav may have felt the pressure towards the end of his tenure and that is why his election campaign focused a lot on the good works of the SP govt. However, the people had seen enough on the ground by then to fall for the heavy budget campaigning. In Bihar, Nitish Kumar chose to side with 'probity' and 'accountability' even as there is a concerted effort from the RJD to project Tejashwi Yadav as the youth icon of the struggling state. Observers believe that besides the massive level of corruption which beset the loudest votaries of social justice, it is also the dominance of one backward caste (such as Yadav rule) above others which weakened the foundations. Perhaps, Nitish Kumar's gambit of empowering Most Backward Castes and giving them a share of the pie saved him here. Coupled with that was his alertness to keep his Samajwadi kurta clean at all costs. With the BJP under the Narendra Modi-Amit Shah duo adopting a smartly crafted political strategy of social and economic empowerment of backwards through self employment, corruption free governance, direct delivery of benefits and fundamental economic reforms, it is not difficult to predict that the coming days may pose serious challenges to Lalu, Mulayam, their sons and daughters. Today Narendra Modi is the most successful OBC face of the country for a young man or woman from that segment of the society. Coupled with that is the vocal nationalistic fervour growing in our youth. The half baked opposition to nationalism has only made parties like the SP, RJD more suspicious in the eyes of the youth. The 'Secular' card too has run its course. The dream of social justice for all is yet to be realized. Mandal as a political slogan is now past its sell-by date. The Mandal parties may still survive with some re-invention. (Smita Mishra, Advisor, Prasar Bharati) As somber crews returned to fight the Lolo Peak fire Thursday, they encountered extreme fire danger levels. Those conditions critically dry fuels, hot temperatures, low humidity, dry lightning and gusty winds are expected to continue into the weekend. The last measurable precipitation in the area was on June 27, according to the National Weather Service in Missoula, making July the driest since records began in 1893. It doesnt look like well see any here in the next week either, said Dan Zumpfe, an NWS meteorologist in Missoula. "Theres an outside chance there could be some precipitation next Tuesday, but I wouldnt look forward to it. When the fire danger is extreme, fires start quickly, spread rapidly and burn intensely, according to Tod McKay with the Bitterroot National Forest. A change in the weather helped contain the Lolo Peak fire, which claimed the life of a Hotshot from California Wednesday. Growth Thursday was limited to about 240 acres, bringing the burn area to 6,542 acres. Wednesday's cool front, strong wind gusts from the northeast that pushed flames back toward areas already burned, and retardant drops 59,000 gallons on Wednesday alone helped keep the fire in check. We have to be patient and let the fire work its way to us,'' said Mark Struble, the fires public information officer. Right now its smoking pretty good in four spots and working its way down from Lantern Ridge. The good news is it doesnt look like we have anything in the tree crowns and its just burning junk on the ground. Thats sometimes the best you can hope for. But having said that, this is a full suppression fire. While firefighters got a brief respite from high heat Thursday, many communities dealt with choking smoke Thursday morning. And with a shift in the winds, more smoke may be on the way from fires in Washington and British Columbia. Seeley Lake woke up to "hazardous'' air conditions Thursday. And Sarah Coefield, an air quality specialist with the Missoula City-County Health Department, said conditions Friday morning could be equally bad. The air in communities near fires Seeley Lake, Rock Creek and Alberton could be very unhealthy to hazardous. "There are no significant breezes in our overnight forecast, which means smoke from active fires will settle in the valleys and won't move off until the sun rises and inversions start to break,'' she said in an air quality update. "Conditions in Florence and Lolo are likely to be Unhealthy for Sensitive Groups or worse.'' Rice Ridge fire: "Aggressive" aerial activity was the name of the game for the Rice Ridge fire Thursday. As the inversion lifted in the morning, aircraft were able to fly, dropping water and retardant on the fire. "We're seeing the same fire behavior as before," public information officer Mark DeGregorio said, but without the smoke, aircraft could hit the fire and hit it hard. Liberty fire: The Liberty firefighting crews are continuing to build containment lines while using the existing road system. The fire, currently at 2 percent containment, has burned 3,220-acres and has warranted an evacuation warning for the Finley Creek and Placid Lake areas. Temperatures will be warm and humidity low, creating challenges for firefighters as northwest winds press the fire to the south and southeast in the Gold Creek drainage. Aerial operations are continuing as smoke allows enough visibility. More retardant was dropped around the Liberty fire Thursday morning. A firefighter suffered a broken arm Wednesday, but no other major injuries were reported, according to public information officer Kristen Allison. Sunrise and Burdette fires: The Sunrise fire has grown to 11,900 acres and broke the 500-personnel mark while the Burdette fire moved closer to containment. As extreme heat, dry conditions and no significant precipitation are forecast, growth for both fires is expected. But firefighting techniques have seemed to slow expansion. Public information officer Meg Nemitz said that while the Sunrise fire is "active, smoking and burning...progression is going well" for the firefighters tasked with slowing it down. As for the Burdette fire, Nemitz said that there "was not a lot of radio chatter today," which is a good thing for firefighters. Sapphire complex: Road closures and evacuation orders are in effect for the areas surrounding the Sapphire complex as fires continue to grow. Firefighters are making progress, but winds, drying trends and warm temperatures are still dangerous. The Goat Creek fire is up to 7,555 acres and 45 percent containment as firefighters make progress establishing direct lines using existing roads on the northwest side of the fire, according to Inciwebs Incident Information System. An indirect fire line is still under construction on the east side of the fire. The Little Hogback fire is at 7,976 acres and zero percent containment. Efforts in securing the southwest side of the fire were successful as firefighters and the heavy equipment taskforce continued to construct an indirect line to the east of the fire. Structures are being prepped in the Red and Yellow evacuation zones on Thursday. The Sliderock fire is at 823 acres and is 20 percent contained. Air support delivered retardant yesterday and will continue to provide support to firefighters Thursday. No research needed for promotion Currently, college teachers are also required to do research activity for their promotions, just like university professors. But we must understand that both these are completely different category of teachers. A college teacher should be mainly engaged in teaching. When we made research compulsory, research stopped completely. Conducting research just for the sake is taking down the quality of research," said HRD Minister Prakash Javadekar. Official announcement soon An official announcement to this effect would be made soon. The HRD ministry wants teachers to be engaged in student activity instead. We will make one community activity or student activity mandatory and teachers will be given their scores on basis of that," he added. Since college teachers have to spend more time in teaching and tutorials, this leaves them with little or no time to do research. Whereas university teachers who are supposed to teach the post-graduate students or guide MPhil and PhD scholars have less teaching time and are able to engage more in research, he also said. Seventh Pay Commission soon Union Minister Prakash Javedekar said at the National Convention on Higher Education Perpectives in India that teachers would soon get the benefits of the 7th Pay Commission. He also said adhocism in teacher appointment in the universities, especially in Delhi University, would end within a year. AP braces for politically charged October with Pawan Kalyan turning full-time politician India oi-Anusha Andhra Pradesh is bracing itself for a politically charged October with two tall leaders from the region deciding to up the ante. Keeping in mind the 2019 assembly elections, Jagan Mohan Reddy will begin the tried and tested 'padayatra' while Pawan Kalyan will begin grassroots level work for his party, both simultaneously in the month of October. Pawan Kalyan has declared that starting October, he will turn into a full-time politician. All his movie commitments are expected to be wrapped by before he taken the political plunge completely. Pawan Kalyan who has been rallying for health related issues in the Uddanam region is all set to become a political competitor in the 2019 assembly elections both in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana for TRS, TDP, YSR Congress, INC and the BJP. Jana Sena, Pawan Kalyan's political party was launched on the eve of elections in 2014 but he had refrained from contesting. This time around, the actor is confident of making politics his priority. Starting October, Pawan Kalyan will begin campaigning for his party. While his star power will draw crowds, translating the same into votes will be the actor's biggest challenge. The actor's October deadline came days after Jagan Mohan Reddy announced his decision to go on a statewide padayatra, again in October. Pawan Kalyan has opted out of a padayatra citing law and order issues. Incidentally, Andhra Pradesh saw two leaders, Y S Rajashekhar Reddy and Chandrababu Naidu become chief ministers using the padayatra formula. For Pawan Kalyan, the campaign will begin by visiting select regions and meeting people and holding rallies for now. The actor's mass fan base will add strength to any party he chooses to support. 2019 will be Pawan Kalyan's first electoral political stint. Having realistic aspirations, the actor only hopes to affect 2 per cent change in the current scenario but without his fan base translating to votes, the number may also be too high. With his campaign beginning from October, Pawan Kalyan will officially welcome the election fever in Andhra Pradesh forcing other parties to go to the people too. OneIndia News For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications Story first published: Thursday, August 3, 2017, 10:15 [IST] Are you a virgin? You need to fill this in Bihar hospital form India oi-Vicky By Vicky Are you a virgin not not is part of a form that one would have to fill up before joining Patna's premier autonomous health facility, the Indira Gandhi Institute of Medical Sciences (IGIMS). Following a protest, the authorities now say that this was an error due to poor translation of the marital declaration form. The form mandates that the person filling it declare whether he is a bachelor, widower or virgin. It also asks the person to state if he has more than one wife. Recommended Video Medical Institute in Patna asks employees to declare status of 'virginity' | Oneindia News On Wednesday the health minister of Bihar Mangal Pandey was caught off guard when reporters asked him about the same. He said that it was the zodiac sign of the employee that had to be mentioned and there was nothing more to it. The authorities say that in Hindi an unmarried girl is referred to as 'kunwari kanya.' This was translated as virgin. It should have been unmarried, the authorities also said. OneIndia News For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications Story first published: Thursday, August 3, 2017, 7:29 [IST] Central team roped in as dengue cases in Bihar rise to over 5000 Bihar: Naxals abduct two men, disrupt rail services India pti-PTI Lakhisarai, Aug 3: The Naxals abducted two cabin men and disrupted rail services on two railway lines near Lakhisarai in Bihar. Naxalites are on a week-long protest marked as 'Shahadat Saptah'. The railway services, which was hampered after midnight last night on the Kiul-Jhajha rail section and the Kiul- Jamalpur rail section, were later restored in the morning on both the lines, officials said. Assistant Superintendent of Police (ASP) Pawan Kumar Upadhyaya said that Naxalites, numbering around 15-20, kidnapped a cabin man of Gopalpur railway halt on Kiul-Jhajha rail section and asked him to stop rail services. The rail service on the line was hampered between midnight last night and 7 am this morning, ASP said adding that Naxalites later released the cabin man. Sub-Divisional Police Officer (SDPO) Pankaj Kumar said that Naxalites had also kidnapped and threatened the cabin man of Urain railway station on Kiul-Jamalpur rail section and asked him to stop rail services on the line. The rail service on the line was restored after 4 am this morning, he said and added that Naxalites released the cabin man. Naxalites are observing a week-long "shahadat saptah" that would come to an end today, official sources said. ASP Upadhyaya said that there was a clash between police and Naxalites near Bhalui railway station on Kiul-Jhajha rail section. A team of CRPF, STF, district police and Cobra battalion made a retaliatory firing in which Naxalites managed to escape, Upadhyaya said and added that no casualty or injuries had been reported in the incident. Police are carrying out a combing-cum-search operation to nab the Naxalites, he added. PTI Central team roped in as dengue cases in Bihar rise to over 5000 Bihar's Gopalganj by-poll to see a tough fight between BJP and RJD Bihar: Over 200 students sick, claim they saw 'dead lizard' in mid-day meal Bihar: Three thrashed on suspicion of carrying beef in truck India oi-PTI Three men were allegedly beaten up by locals in Bihar's Bhojpur district on suspicion of carrying beef from an illegal slaughterhouse. Locals intercepted the Muzaffarpur-bound truck at Shahpur bazar, overpowered three men travelling in the vehicle even as another occupant fled from the spot, district magistrate Sanjeev Kumar said. The three persons were then handed over to the police and the truck was seized. The truck was carrying meat from the illegal slaughter house at Rani Sagar locality under Shahpur police station area, the DM said. The meat sample has been sent for testing, he said. Strict action will be taken against those running the illegal slaughter house, the DM said. The incident sparked off protest by the locals who blocked NH-84 between Ara and Buxar demanding closure of the illegal slaughter house and action against the station house officer (SHO) of Shahpur police station. The locals alleged that illegal slaughterhouses have been running in the area for past few months. Meanwhile, CPI(M) General Secretary Sitaram Yechury said that the reported thrashing of three persons on suspicion of transporting beef in Bihar is a "clear confirmation" of the BJP assuming power in the state. "Lynching and mob violence have "entered Bihar as soon as the BJP came to power there, " he added. PTI Braid cutting' scare: Incidents of womens hair being mysteriously chopped off India oi-Madhuri Another mysterious braid-chopping incident has come into light where the braids of woman and her three daughters was mysteriously chopped off in Mayapuri's Ramchandra area. Similar incidents were reported from a few other areas as well. "I woke up around 3:00 am to go the washroom and when I came back I saw a chunk of my hair on the bed. I woke up my husband and found my daughters' hair chopped off too," the woman told ANI. However, police dismissed these reports as they believe the family is making up the whole story. These bizarre happenings have left panic mode among people as cases of mysterious hair chopping reported from many areas. In yet another incident, woman in Madhya Pradesh's Damoh district claimed that her braid was chopped off mysteriously. And she realized it when she woke up in the night. Recently, in many places including Delhi, NCR, Haryana and Agra, incidents of chopping off braids of women at night have come to fore. OneIndia News Class 5, 8 students can be failed says Union Cabinet India oi-Vicky By Vicky The Union Cabinet has approved the scrapping of the no detention policy in schools till class 8. The enabling provision will be made in the Right of Children for Free and Compulsory Education amendment. This would allow states to hold back students in class 5 and 8 if they fail the year end or final examination. The students would however get a second chance to take another exam to pass. This would come into force once the bill is passed by Parliament. Currently under the RTE students are promoted automatically to higher classes till class 8. Meanwhile the Cabinet approved the decision to create 20 world-class institutions in the country. The University Grants Commission (UGC) had in February passed a new set of regulations to set up 20 world-class institutions -10 in the public sector and 10 others in the private sector. OneIndia News Delhi court extends ED custody of Shabir Shah India oi-Madhuri Kashmir Separatist Shabir Shah was sent to 6 days ED custody on Thursday in connection with a money laundering case. However, Shah filed an application in the court, alleging threat to his life. As Shabir Shah alleged political vendetta for his arrest before a court in Delhi today, the Enforcement Directorate lawyer asked if the Kashmiri separatist leader could say "Bharat Mata Ki Jai", a remark later slammed by the judge. Shah is the founding chairman of Democratic Freedom Party (DFP), which is a part of the separatist amalgam Hurriyat Conference led by hardliner Syed Ali Shah Geelani. Shah was arrested from Srinagar on July 25 for money laundering in a case dating back to 2005. Shah has been in continuous contact with elements residing in Pakistan, in the garb of the Kashmir issue, the ED stated. The agency also said that Shah had received various hawala consignments for disrupting the peace of Jammu and Kashmir and was in contact with Tahreek-e-Hurriyat. Shah's custody is required to examine and analyse bank details, money trail and email records. OneIndia News Doklam can be resolved through bilateral talks, says EAM Sushma Swaraj India oi-Madhuri India's external affairs minister Sushma Swaraj on Thursday said that war is not a solution to the current standoff between Indian and Chinese troops in the Doklam plateau. The diplomatic channels are working with China. "China's action in Doklam is of concern to us. The Chinese is selectively quotes PM Jawaharlal Nehru's letter. Peace and tranquillity with China is important. Doklam can be resolved through bilateral talks," she said in the Rajya Sabha replying to a discussion on "India's foreign policy and engagement with strategic partners" during which members voiced concern over the stand-off and raised questions over India's policy. She also slammed the Congress for questioning why India had boycotted an international conference called by China over 'One Belt, One Road' (OBOR). "Do you know through where the OBOR passes? And you are asking these questions? It is a matter of national sentiment (for India). You are the main Opposition party, You should speak with responsibility," she said, referring to the project which China proposes to build through Pakistan-occupied Kashmir. "PM Modi is now shaping global agendas. The PM has let our differences not turn into disputes. How can the Congress ask us to not oppose the CPEC? The previous government's foreign policy was 'PMO' driven," said Swaraj in Rajya Sabha. "We are talking with China on everything, not just Doklam. China has big investments in India. Also, you have to understand that both Russia and the US are with us," said Swaraj. She also read out a statement giving details and explaining India's position on the Dokalam stand-off which has been going on for over a month. Speaking on climate change, Swaraj said,"Our stance remains the same on climate change. Despite US President Donald Trump's allegations on India taking bribes, we stood against it. PM Modi has the guts to stand against Donald Trump and the US.'' She further said that PoK is an integral part of India. The entire Kashmir is ours. On relations with Pakistan, Swaraj said,''We tried to extend the hand of friendship to Pakistan but after Burhan Wani's death the relationship has changed. Terror and talks cannot go hand-in-hand." On relations with Israel said that bonhomie with Israel doesn't mean India will let down Palestine cause. "There was once a time when India had Russia as a friend, but not the US. We can today count both Moscow and Washington as our allies. Furthermore, we are trying to be closer with Israel, but our solidarity with Palestine is as strong as ever. I spoke to Mahmoud Abbas and even he was happy with our efforts," said Sushma Swaraj, while addressing the Rajya Sabha. "People thought India doesn't care about the Arab world. But look how things have turned out. The Arab countries consider India to be their closest ally," Union external affairs minister Sushma Swaraj told Parliament. "Our stance remains the same on climate change. Despite US President Donald Trump's allegations on India taking bribes, we stood against it. PM Modi has the guts to stand against Donald Trump and the US," said Swaraj. Swaraj began her speech praising Modi government's outreach to its neighbours and friends. She said that Modi has earned respect for the country. He has brought glory to India. ''We helped countries like Maldives, Sri Lanka, Nepal when in need. ''We were first to help Nepal during earthquake,'' she said. On relation with Bhutan, Swaraj said,''Bhutan is our dearest friend. Statements made by some MPs contradict facts. The Nation which seeks our help is our friend. The world sees India differently now. We have improved ties with neighbours. Bhutan is our dearest friend.'' Sushma Swaraj slammed Rahul Gandhi's meet with the Chinese envoy while India is in a standoff with the PLA at the Doklam plateau. "He should have consulted with the Prime Minister first. The opposition should have taken the government's view before meeting the Chinese," said Swaraj. She further said,''Rahul should have consulted PM Modi before meeting Chinese envoy. Opposition should have taken Govt's view before meet.'' The Opposition on Thursday cornered the government in Parliament on the standoff with China over the Doklam issue. Anand Sharma of the Congress sought a reply from Prime Minister Narendra Modi. OneIndia News The Missoula Veterans Affairs Community Based Outpatient Clinic will get a little over $6.94 million in federal funding to triple in size and hire more staff if bipartisan legislation largely crafted by U.S. Sen. Jon Tester, D-Mont., is signed into law by President Donald Trump as expected. Late on Tuesday night, the U.S. Senate unanimously passed Testers Veterans Appeals Improvement and Modernization Act that he says will streamline the lengthy process that veterans undergo when appealing their claims for disability benefits with the VA. In an interview with the Missoulian on Wednesday, Tester said the legislation would secure federal funding to expand Missoulas clinic as well as numerous other VA clinics across Montana and the country. The Missoula CBOC, this allows them to expand the clinic and actually triple their square footage to serve more veterans in the region, Tester said. I took VA Secretary (Robert) McDonald there back when he was secretary and theyre cramped in there like a bunch of sardines." Indeed, the VA Missoula Clinic's offices at 2687 Palmer St. are cramped, with a ticketed waiting system and chairs packed into tight rows. "This will give them money to be able to expand," Tester continued. "Its critically important. There are several VA clinics across the country that will be able to expand, but Missoula was the highest priority. The other thing it does is helps expedite hiring for positions in need. Tester said helping veterans has been one of his signature issues since he was elected to the Senate. Theres a couple reasons for that, he said. Montana has the second-highest population of veterans per capita, and our sign-up rate is one of the highest rates in the nation for the military. And weve been at war for what, 15 or 16 years now, so you could see this coming. Its a fight we continually have back here (in Washington, D.C.). We want to do the things weve agreed to. "These men and women went to go fight in the Middle East and in Vietnam and all over the world. We made a deal. If you go fight for us, were going to take care of your health care when you get home. Were living up to our end of the deal. The demand for VA care in the western United States is projected to increase by 43 percent over the next 20 years, according to Testers staff. Nearly 22,000 veterans in Montana receive disability compensation benefits from the VA. There are nearly 100,000 veterans in Montana. Tester went on a listening tour back in May, and when he came to Missoula he heard from many experts that Montana doesnt have enough health care providers to serve all the veterans who need it. The bill was sponsored in the U.S. House by Rep. Mike Bost, R-Ill., and then sent to the Senate, where it was introduced by Sen. Johnny Isakson, R-Ga. Tester is the ranking Democrat on the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee, and he negotiated with Isakson as well as House Veterans Affairs Committee chairman Rep. Phil Roe, R-Tenn., and ranking member Rep. Tim Walz, D-Minn., to craft the bill, according to Testers staff. President Trump has previously signed Testers Veterans Choice Improvement Act and his VA Accountability and Whistleblower Protection Act into law. Its expected that President Trump will sign the newest piece of legislation into law in September. Its past time that Congress expanded access to care for veterans in western Montana, Tester said. Veterans in Missoula and the surrounding communities have had to make do with an undersized clinic and overworked staff. This facility will make sure veterans dont have to make do and instead give veterans access to more reliable and high-quality VA care. Dave Kuntz, a spokesman for Tester, said his boss has been working to secure funding for the Missoula facility for two years. Once signed into law, the Montana VA will begin looking to either expand its current location or move to a new location. Don Loranger, a retired Air Force major general in Missoula, said he supports the bill. This bills provisions for enhanced Missoula based primary and mental health care, and new specialty care services, are very responsive to needs of our veterans community, he said. Doklam: One motorable road complete, second to be constructed by March 2021 Don't allow next Doklam in Arunachal, says BJP MP; claims China has encroached upon 60 km of state Doklam standoff: China making false claims to impress citizens, says defence expert India oi-Vikas By Vikas With India rubbishing China's claim that the number of troops have reduced at Doklam, Defence and strategy matters expert on Thursday said Beijing was planting "false information" to impress its citizens. Recommended Video China issues false statements about India to impress its citizens | Oneindia News Defence expert PK Sehgal told ANI that China shares border with 14 countries and has some or the other dispute with each of them. Asserting that it is well known that Beijing was a master in planting false information, Sehgal said, "They gave the statement just to impress the people of their own country." China's foreign ministry issued a 15-page statement which said Indian troop numbers in the Doklam region had fallen from a peak of more than 400 to about 40 at the end of July. India has however rubbished these claims and said that there has been no scaling down of troops. An official said that there is no escalation and the standoff continues. There are around 400 of our troops there, the officer also informed. [Our forces still intact at Doklam, India hits back at China] Sehgal said that China was trying to project to its citizens that 'they have succeeded in controlling India'. Beijing had earlier insisted that India withdraws its troops for there to be any meaningful dialogue. However, India has made it clear that there can be a resolution to the conflict only through meaningful dialogue. China on Wednesday cited an informal diplomatic understanding between the two sides and claimed that India was aware of the road construction near Doklam, which sparked the standoff. [Doklam standoff: China claims India was 'notified' about road construction near Sikkim] The standoff between Indian and Chinese armies has continued for close to six weeks over the construction of a road by China at Doklam near Sikkim. It is an area where the borders of India, China and Bhutan meet. Bhutan says the land, which it calls Doklam, belongs to its kingdom and not to China, a claim that India agrees too. OneIndia News Don't allow next Doklam in Arunachal, says BJP MP; claims China has encroached upon 60 km of state Doklam standoff: How India rubbished China's 15 page fact sheet in one line India oi-Vicky By Vicky India issued a one line statement negating a 15 page document put out by China about the reduction of troops at Doklam amidst the standoff. The Chinese had issued a 15 page fact sheet in which it claimed that there was a troop reduction by India at Doklam. It also said that India was inventing excuses to justify its stand at Doklam. The Chinese have described the positioning of Indian troops at Doklam as an illegal crossing into Chinese territory. Doklam standoff: Impossible for China to break India's maritime containment Recommended Video Sikkim standoff: India manufactures major part of Sardar Patel Statue in China | Oneindia News In response to the 15 page fact sheet, India issued a one line rebuttal. India chose not to counter China point by point. "India considers that peace and tranquillity in the India-China border areas is an important prerequisite for smooth development of our bilateral relations with China," it said. Meanwhile Indiarubbished China's claim that the number of troops have been reduced at Doklam. Amidst the standoff, China had released a 15 page document stating that there were only 40 soldiers at Doklam and the number was down from 2.400. India however rubbished these claims and said that there has been no scaling down of troops. An official said that there is has no escalation and the standoff continues. There are around 400 of our troops there, the officer also informed. Doklam standoff: China making false claims to impress citizens, says defence expert Beijing has insisted that India withdraws its troops for there to be any meaningful dialogue. However India has made it clear that there can be a resolution to the conflict only through meaningful dialogue. China had earlier accused India of concocting excuses over the illegal entry of its troops while also adding that it had shown great restraint. The Chinese foreign ministry once again reiterated that India withdraw its troops. OneIndia News International news brief: Floods trap many in Florida; Royal Mint unveils first coins and more Fear of Arunachal dams loom large over flood-hit Assam India oi-Oneindia By Oneindia Guwahati, August 3: Protest against dams built in Arunachal Pradesh has been growing shriller with each passing day in Assam. Experts for long have indicated the negative downstream impact of Arunachal Pradesh dams in flood-prone Assam. This year, residents of Assam and politicians, mostly belonging to the opposition Congress, want the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) at the Centre to take note of the issue. On July 10, water released from the Ranganadi hydro-electric power project of the Northeastern Electric Power Corporation (Neepco) in Arunachal Pradesh created havoc in Lakhimpur district which led to the death of several villagers and destroyed huge amount of agricultural land. Recommended Video Assam floods: Protests in Assam over Modi's poor allotment of funds | Oneindia News At a press meet in Guwahati on Wednesday, former Assam chief minister Tarun Gogoi said the dams in Arunachal Pradesh will destroy Assam with their downstream impact. "Water coming down from the hills of Arunachal Pradesh and Meghalaya always increases our flood problems and the dams being constructed in Arunachal Pradesh will destroy Assam," Gogoi said. Since June, Assam has been reeling under floods. Although floodwaters have receded in most parts of the state, yet a few places are still submerged in water. Worst part is that floods have led to large-scale human and crop loss. As per reports, a total of 84 people lost their lives during floods. A total of 13 people have died in Lakhimpur district, one of the worst hit areas. Officials say Lakhimpur has been badly-affected because of the water released from the Rangannadi hydro-electric power project last month. It is not that only the current BJP governments--both at the Centre and in the state--are declining to publicly accept the adverse impact of dams in Arunachal Pradesh. The Congress, which had ruled the state for 15 years before the BJP was voted to power last year, too had pressed for the hydro-electric power projects. When reporters questioned about the Congress' recent U-turn regarding dams in Arunachal Pradesh, senior state Congress leader and former power and industries minister Pradyut Bordoloi said, "We had requested the Centre to halt the construction of the dams till a proper study on downstream areas was done." During the press meet, Gogoi criticised Prime Minister Narendra Modi for announcing "only Rs 2,000 crore as financial aid for floods in the Northeast although Rs 20,000 crore was sanctioned for the rejuvenation of the Ganga". Modi visited Guwahati on Tuesday to take stock of the flood and landslide situation across the Northeast region. "Floods are an annual disaster in Assam and the Brahmaputra and its tributaries cause havoc almost every year. Lakhs of bighas of land have been lost due to erosion and the problem is more serious than that caused by the Ganga. The Modi government has sanctioned Rs 20,000 crore, of which already Rs 7,000 crore has been spent for the Ganga while he announced only Rs 2,000 crore for the Brahmaputra. They have not even clarified how much Assam will get of that amount," Gogoi said. "Water has receded, but he could have gone to see the erosion-affected areas. Former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi and Manmohan Singh had visited the flood-affected areas, relief camps and those affected for first-hand information on the damage. He runs the Mann ki Baat programme but did not listen to what the people had to say to him," Gogoi added. OneIndia News For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications Story first published: Thursday, August 3, 2017, 7:05 [IST] From Guj to Ktaka, tracking dirty political games BJP, Cong are playing over one RS seat India oi-Maitreyee By Maitreyee Bengaluru, August 3: How much have you heard about Gujarat floods? Probably not much if you are not a resident of the state--the home turf of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. According to latest reports, at least 224 people have lost their lives and around 4.5 lakh people have been affected by floods in Gujarat, this year. Unfortunately, the massive human tragedy is not prime time news. What we get to see on news channels are possibly things which politicians might want us to devour nights after nights as families huddle together during their dinner time in front of television sets to know and understand the great Indian democracy and its functioning. So, what we are watching and reading these days, after the Bihar coup, is another coup which has its roots in Gujarat, but has spread its branches in Karnataka and Delhi, thus becoming a pan-India political potboiler. The story of one Rajya Sabha seat from Gujarat, the election of which is slated on August 8, where close-aide of Sonia Gandhi, Ahmed Patel, is contesting, has become a battle royal between the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Congress. Recommended Video Tejashwi asks Nitish to question Modi on names involved in Panama Papers| Oneindia News Rumours suggest that BJP president Amit Shah in his attempt to further weaken the Gandhi parivar (family) has strategically targeted Patel, the political secretary to the Congress president. Patel is the man who has been credited for the Congress' two major victories in the Lok Sabha elections of 2004 and 2009. By planning to defeat Patel, a seven-time parliamentarian from Gujarat (currently a Rajya Sabha member), in the latest contest, the BJP wants to make the Gandhi family almost defenceless before the 2019 Lok Sabha polls. Patel, in a recent interview to NDTV, said that Shah has personal animosity against him and thus want to see him lose the Rajya Sabha seat. Patel and his party colleagues alleged that the BJP had tried to entice the Congress' members of legislative assembly (MLAs) from Gujarat by offering them a humongous sum of Rs 15 crore each to join the saffron party. The Congress made the allegation after six of its MLAs abandoned the party to become members of the BJP, just a couple of days ahead of the crucial Rajya Sabha polls that will decide the political future of Patel and maybe the Gandhi family too. Prior to the six MLAs leaving the Congress, the party witnessed the exit of its senior leader from Gujarat, Shankersinh Vaghela. In Gujarat, the Congress has been getting one jolt after another. The first major setback was the cross-voting of eight of its MLAs in favour of the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) candidate Ram Nath Kovind during the presidential elections. The BJP vehemently denied all the charges and literally mocked the Congress for not being able to keep its flock together. In order to avoid losing more MLAs, the Congress decided to put 43 of its Gujarat MLAs together in an airplane and fly them down to Bengaluru, Karnataka, where the party is in power. For several days, the Gujarat Congress MLAs had a gala time at a resort located in the suburbs of the IT hub, while people of Gujarat fought a lonely battle against floods. Things were going seemingly fine for the Congress till Wednesday, when Income Tax (IT) sleuths raided the resort and residences of the Karnataka energy minister DK Shivakumar, who was taking care of the Gujarat MLAs. IT raids were also conducted in several properties of Shivakumar in Delhi. Till late Wednesday night, raids conducted in at least 60 properties owned by the Karnataka minister led to the recovery of around Rs 11 crore in cash by the IT department. Once again, the Congress cried foul alleging that "the BJP is on an unprecedented witch-hunt just to win one Rajya Sabha seat." The BJP, on its part, once again denied all the allegations. Senior leaders of the BJP maintained that the IT raids were strictly against Shivakumar for allegedly amassing unaccounted wealth and had got nothing to do with the Gujarat MLAs. For a neutral observer, the Gujarat drama that is being currently staged in Karnataka is one more episode of political impropriety, where both the ruling and the opposition parties have flouted all rules and moralities in their attempt to grab power. OneIndia News West Bengal Government provides financial relief to the Hills of North Bengal GJM activists distribute vegetables to residents to beat food crisis in Darjeeling India oi-Oneindia By Oneindia Darjeeling, August 3: On Thursday, the indefinite bandh in Darjeeling and its adjoining areas entered its 50th day. It's a long time to remain cut off from the rest of the world for people of any place, Darjeeling and its suburbs are no exceptions. The locals of the hills are facing severe food crisis as shops remained closed and truck carrying food supplies stopped entering the region. In such a situation, residents of the hills are largely depending on the generosity of each other by sharing food items. Reports also say some shops, where stock are still available, are selling food items to people from the "backdoor". Many are also visiting neighbouring border towns of Nepal to buy food items and vegetables. Recommended Video Gorkhaland struggle: Protestors reach the sensitive Indo-Bhutan border | Oneindia News On Wednesday, activists of the Gorkha Janmukti Morch (GJM)--the political outfit that is spearheading the current agitation in the hills--distributed vegetables to the locals. Members of a few NGOs were also seen giving food and vegetables to the residents of the hills. Meanwhile, activists of the GJM and other hill parties organised a sit-in demonstration demanding restoration of the internet services on Wednesday. The internet services in Darjeeling hills remained suspended since June 18. Activists of various political parties took out rallies dressed in their traditional Nepali attire and shouted slogans in favour of Gorkhaland. Vigil has been tightened outside all police stations, camps and outposts fearing attack by pro-Gorkhaland agitators. According to police, a truck carrying food supplies was set ablaze by pro-Gorkhaland agitators in Darjeeling on Wednesday. A police official said the truck carrying food supplies for a local grocery shop was set afire by the agitators near Darjeeling Railway station and around Rs 70,000 in cash was looted. A private car was also set on fire at Rongpu in Darjeeling earlier today, the official added. According to Darjeeling district administration, the situation in Darjeeling is yet to improve meriting withdrawal of the ban on internet. "The situation in the hills is yet to improve. The situation is not at all good. Regarding the decision to revoke the internet ban, we are yet to take a call," a senior district official said. OneIndia News For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications Story first published: Thursday, August 3, 2017, 9:10 [IST] Guj RS polls to be held with NOTA says Supreme Court India oi-Vicky By Vicky The Supreme Court has said that the Rajya Sabha elections will be held with the NOTA option. The SC refused to stay the implementation of NOTA by the Election Commission of India. A petition had been filed in the SC challenging its implementation on the ground that it was constitutionally invalid. The court said that it would hear the matter in detail on September 18. The RS polls in Gujarat is scheduled for August 8. The Congress contended that if NOTA is not stayed then MLAs will be bought by the other side to defeat its candidate. The SC said that it was a constitutional issue which needs to be debated. The court also asked the ECI to respond to the petition filed by the Congress in two weeks. Recommended Video BJP President Amit Shah makes sarcastic remark on Rahul Gandhi | Oneindia News The SC observed that the EC issued the notification relating to NOTA in RS polls way back in 2014. We do not understand why the Congress has raised pitfalls now, the court also observed. Attorney General of India, K K Venugopal said that the centre has nothing to do with the ED notification of July 24 in which NOTA was prescribed. Appearing for the Congress, senior counsel Kapil Sibal said that for the first time there are four candidates for three RS seats in Gujarat. He also submitted that if NOTA is not disabled for the Gujarat RS polls, it would become a tool for corruption. OneIndia News How Burhan Wani and Abu Dujana were killed because of their ex-girlfriends India oi-Vicky By Vicky Inspector General of Police, Kashmir, Muneer Khan said, " with the death of Abu Dujana, all the women in the Valley are safe." It is a well known fact that the Lashkar-e-Tayiba commander, Dujana who was killed in an encounter on Tuesday at Pulwama was a womaniser. He would promise girls marriage and then dump them. This was what could have possibly done him in. He was seeing a girl who he later dumped. The security forces managed to get in touch with the girl who finally ended up spilling the beans on his possible locations. Recommended Video Abu Dujana: LeT Commander involved with many girls, had also married one | Oneindia News Clubbed with intelligence the security forces finally managed to gun him down. This is an interesting tactic used by the security forces in the Valley for several years now. These terrorists are notorious in many ways said an Intelligence Bureau official. They womanise a lot and dump girls. These girls in a bid to take revenge approach either the security forces or the police and spill the beans on them. Prior to this the security forces had got information about Burhan Wani through one of his ex-girlfriends. He too had dumped a girl who later approached the forces and spilled the beans on his location. Similarly the forces had used a similar tactic in the case of Abu Tallah who was killed in 2009 and Abdullah Uni gunned down in 2013. In the case of Uni, it was his wife who spilled the beans on him. However in the case of Tallah the forces had realised he had a womanising problem and hence decided to use a honey trap before killing him. OneIndia News For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications Story first published: Thursday, August 3, 2017, 13:24 [IST] Hyderabad police heckle journalists, manhandle woman scribe India oi-Anusha The Hyderabad police hacked journalists outside the Chief Minister's camp office on Thursday. Video of the assault created much outrage forcing the Telangana government to seek a report. A woman journalist from a television channel, identified as Radhika was allegedly manhandled by Punjagutta Assistant Commissioner of Police while covering protests by contractual employees. Cameras continued to roll as the police shoved journalists along with protesters outside Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao's office. #WATCH: Hyderabad - Punjagutta ACP manhandled journalists outside Telangana CM Camp office where contractual employees were staging protest pic.twitter.com/IGr9yu06kp ANI (@ANI_news) August 3, 2017 A part of the video clipping shows the ACP pushing journalists outside the Chief Minister's office. As he passes by the ACP also pushes a woman journalist. The ACP was caught on tape shoving the camera away as the journalists demanded that he apologise for his behaviour. The clipping created much outrage in Telangana with journalists coming together to condemn the incident. The Hyderabad police's official website identifies the ACP as M Venkateshwarlu. The journalist accompanied by senior scribes filed a complaint against the ACP. While the police department was yet to react to the incident, TRS MP Kavitha Kalvakuntla said that action will be taken. "No other state in the country has rolled out welfare schemes for journalists like Telangana government has done. We will ask the police to file a report after which action will be initiated," she said during an event where the issue was raised. OneIndia News IT raids D K Shivakumar: KPTCL office under scanner, demonetised notes found India oi-Anusha The Income Tax Department on Thursday raided a school in which Karnataka Energy Minister is the chairman. During the raid at the school at R R Nagar, the IT department officials found notes suspected to be demonetised currency. Raids were also conducted at the KPTCL office of the minister. Officials also said that they are likely to check his office at Vidhan Soudha as well. If the need be we will raid the office too, the officer also added. Shivakumar, the hospitality in charge of the Gujarat MLAs was raided on Wednesday. On Thursday too raids continued at several locations and the process is likely to spill into Friday as well. Officials carried out overnight raids at multiple locations in Bengaluru, Kanakapura, Mysuru, New Delhi and Hassan in connection with searches against the Congress leader. While the income tax department refused to reveal any details of seizure, reports suggested that close to Rs 11.4 crore was found in D K Shivakumar's Delhi residence. Protests over raids against Shivakumar Recommended Video IT raid at Bengaluru resort hosting Gujarat MLAs D K Shivakumar's supporters and Congress party workers staged protests in various districts of Karnataka. In Mangaluru, protesters damaged a government building accusing the central government of using agencies to harass political opponents. Series of protests are being witnessed in Bengaluru since Wednesday. On Thursday, the Congress party led by acting President Dinesh Gundu Rao staged a protest in Bengaluru against the central government's 'vendetta politics'. Congress leaders have accused the government of deliberately targeting their leaders and using the central agencies to intimidate them. Protests were also witnessed outside D K Shivakumar's Bengaluru residence as dozens of supporters gathered in support of the leader. OneIndia News 2 non-local labourers shot at by terrorist in J&K's Anantnag FM Nirmala Sitharaman hints at possibility of Centre considering restoration of state status to J&K In J&K, 14,000 dropouts find their way back to schools One Jaish-e-Mohammad terrorist gunned down in Jammu and Kashmir J&K: Terrorist killed in encounter with security forces in Anantnag India oi-Madhuri Terrorist killed in encounter with security forces in Jammu and Kashmir's Anantnag district. Earlier today, the security forces cordoned off area & search operation was launched in Kanelwan area of Bijbehara, in Anantnag district. Recommended Video J On Tuesday, Lashkar-e-Taiba chief commander Abu Dujana of Pakistan and his accomplice were killed in an encounter with the security forces at Hakripora village in Jammu and Kashmir's Pulwawa district. Dujana was one of the most wanted militants and carried over Rs 15 lakh bounty on his head. OneIndia News Recently, as a result of President Trumps decision to withdraw from the Paris climate accords, we, along with legislative colleagues and local government officials, sent a letter to Governor Bullock urging him to join with other states, cities and businesses to uphold the accords, despite the Presidents decision. Specifically, we believe that the Governor should use his executive authority to establish firm, quantifiable and enforceable limits on Montanas greenhouse gas emissions, and then take steps to meet those limits. It is true that climate change is adversely affecting Montana, and indeed, the entire planet. It is also true that acting alone, Montana can do almost nothing to arrest climate change. It is only by negotiated international agreements, such as the Paris accords, that the most destructive effects of climate change can be averted. But such agreements are difficult to maintain. Participants face the temptation to benefit from the costly efforts of others, and to avoid making such efforts themselves. Shortsightedly, the President has yielded to exactly that temptation, putting the whole agreement, and the effort to arrest climate change, in jeopardy. Fortunately, other signatories have indicated that they will continue to honor their Paris commitments. Their willingness to do so reflects farsighted and thoughtful leadership. Similarly, American governors, mayors, and business people clearly understand that our fate depends on collective action and they are prepared to exercise the leadership the President has abandoned by aligning their communities with the spirit and intent of the Paris agreement. We believe Governor Bullock should join these leaders; by moving to cap and then reduce emissions he will make it clear that Montana is prepared to play its part in this crucial collective effort. Developing a climate change policy for Montana will be a challenge, but a challenge we must face. At some point, and the sooner the better, climate change will require a response, and we will be far better off crafting that response here in Montana rather than having it imposed upon us. That means we need to understand the various strategies available to us for capping emissions, how they can be cost-effectively deployed, and the policies that can achieve that deployment. Those policies can create opportunities for us in developing new ways of producing and using energy. But since reducing emissions will inevitably have adverse effects on certain industries, occupations, communities and income groups, we must also be prepared to address the concerns of those most severely impacted. In the end, Montanans need to share equitably both the benefits and costs of meeting the challenge of climate change. Participating in the international effort to arrest climate change will be a challenge, but one which forward looking political leaders must accept. The pace of climate change is accelerating and the costs of inaction are mounting. Now is the time to unite with partners from across the world and to act boldly to address this global threat. Sen. Dick Barrett, D-Missoula, represents Senate District 47 and Sen. Mike Phillips, D-Bozeman, represents Senate District 33 in the Montana Legislature. Karnataka to survey all Arabic schools to check if on same page as state board Karnataka govt writes to Revenue Secy, protests raids on D K Shivakumar India oi-Anusha The Karnataka government has written a letter to Revenue Secretary Hasmukh Adhia over 'the way raids were conducted by Income Tax officials'. The two-page letter has questioned the deployment of CRPF personnel and lack of coordination with the local police. Above all, the letter states that a law and order situation could have been created because of the IT department's conduct. Additional Chief Secretary of Karnataka Subhash Chandra in his letter said that the conduct of Income Tax Department during the raids in Karnataka on Wednesday utilising the CRPF in full gear without keeping local police informed casts aspersion on the state police force. Recommended Video IT raid at Bengaluru resort hosting Gujarat MLAs "It casts an aspersion of adverse credibility, integrity and professionalism of the State Police which has been used by effectively and without complaint by the IT department in previous operations," the letter read. The Karnataka government has claimed that since there was no coordination between the IT department and the local police, a law and situation could have arisen. "The Commissioner of Police Bengaluru has informed that about 30 CRPF personnel were deployed in full gear with weapons. This also resulted in protests by the local supporters of the Hon'ble minister (SIC) and police personnel were required to be mobilised and deployed at short notice to maintain law and order, " the Karnataka government said. Lashing out at the Revenue department for violating norms of informing the local police about raids, the Karnataka government has registered its 'strong protest'. The state has asked the Revenue Secretary to 'advise the Income Tax Department suitably in the matter'. On Wednesday, Congress leaders accused the BJP of using central agencies to target political rivals. Chief Minister of Karnataka Siddaramaiah claimed that deploying Central Armed Police Force was in violation of norms. The letter has been scripted on the same lines. OneIndia News For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications Story first published: Thursday, August 3, 2017, 15:43 [IST] Karnataka IPS officer takes charge, retires in 30 minutes India oi-Oneindia By Oneindia Staff Writer A recently retired IPS officer in Karnataka made a record of sorts by retiring within 30 minutes of taking charge as Director General of Police. H N Satyanarayana Rao who retired in the midst of a controversy around irregularities in the prisons department checked into his new office only for 30 minutes on the last day of his service. The former DG prisons of Karnataka was accused by his subordinate officer, Roopa D of allowing special privileges to select prisoners including Abdul Karin Telgi and Sasikala Natarajan in the Bengaluru central jail. The Karnataka government that had transferred him without posting, appointed him as DG fire services on the last day of his service. Rao, who was on forced leave, took charge at 7.15 PM on July 31 and signed the register but walked out of the office of Director General of Police and Commandant General, Home Guards, Ex Officio Director Fire Force within 30 minutes. Within the 30 minutes that he was DG Fire services, Rao signed a few order copies. In the farce of an 'honourable exit', no senior officials were present to bid adieu to the officer. As he prepared to walk out of the office, he passed on the baton to another officer, Neelamani N Raju, who had been given the additional charge of the posting. Rao retired even as the Karnataka government has ordered an inquiry into allegations made by Roopa D in her report over the state of prisons in Karnataka. Rao has even decided to take the legal route to sue Roopa for 'defaming him' and has sought an apology. OneIndia News For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications Story first published: Thursday, August 3, 2017, 13:50 [IST] Sonia tells Lalu, Nitish to meet her again after Cong gets new president Modi ordered IT raids on Karnataka minister, says Lalu Prasad Yadav India oi-Chennabasaveshwar By Chennabasaveshwar Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) Chief Lalu Prasad Yadav on Thursday minced no words to blame Prime Minister Narendra Modi for the ongoing Income Tax raids against a Karnataka minister DK Shivakumar in Bengaluru. Lalu Prasad Yadav's properties were also raided by the CBI recently in connection with an alleged land scam. Yadav said the raids at the Bengaluru resort where Gujarat MLAs were put up were carried out on the orders of PM Modi. He also said the government has imposed an undeclared emergency in the country and does not target big people like Adani. He also slammed the BJP over black money. "They are roaming around and searching for black money in the residences of members and ministers? The condition of the country is scary.'' The RJD chief hit out at Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar saying ''Nitish Kumar is a turncoat. He also embraced BJP. I had said 'Namo sharnam gachhami." OneIndia News For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications Story first published: Thursday, August 3, 2017, 18:52 [IST] MPs clash in LS after BJP members call CPM 'terrorists' India oi-PTI New Delhi, Aug 3: Members of the CPI(M) and the BJP on Thursday clashed in the Lok Sabha after the former objected to some BJP members' remarks attacking them over the political violence in Kerala. Raising the issue during the Zero Hour, senior CPI(M) leader P Karunakaran took strong exception to some BJP members calling Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan, the party's general secretary Sitaram Yechury and the party "terrorists" on Wednesday in the House. The BJP members indulged in heated exchanges as other CPI(M) members also vociferously protested the remarks made by two BJP members' remarks during the Zero Hour yesterday. Karunakaran also said as per rules, the BJP MPs cannot name or attack those who are not present in the House and are not in a position to defend themselves. The House witnessed noisy scenes and Karunakaran could not be heard further due to the din, forcing the Speaker to adjourn the House briefly. Recommended Video Tejashwi asks Nitish to question Modi on names involved in Panama Papers| Oneindia News When the House met again, Speaker Sumitra Mahajan did not allow him to raise the issue again, saying whatever he had said had gone on record. Protesting Left members then trooped into the well with Mohammad Salim (CPI-M) being heard asking the Chair not to "succumb to pressure tactics" of the ruling party members. Mahajan then allowed Karunakaran to speak again. He said the Kerala chief minister has been holding meetings with members of the RSS, the Left and other stake holders to end violence and said many Left workers have been also been killed over the years. Yechury was also attacked, he said. Making this House a Kurukshetra or a Karmashetra is up to you! The BJP members were unsatisfied by the response and continued to speak out of turn in the Lower House. At this, Speaker Sumitra Mahajan said that the Lower House is a space for the members, whether they wish to convert it into a kurukshetra (battleground) or a karmakshetra (work field) is their choice. PTI For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications Story first published: Thursday, August 3, 2017, 14:49 [IST] No news about 2 Arunachal youths who went missing from near China border in August Pakistan has custody of 75 missing Indian defence personnel says Govt India oi-Vicky By Vicky The government has said that there are 75 missing Indian defence personnel including 54 prisoners of war who are in the custody of Pakistan. This information was given to the Lok Sabha. However, presence of these missing Indians has not been acknowledged so far by Pakistan, Minister of State for External Affairs V K Singh said in a written reply. He also said that as of July 27, there are 417 fishermen in Pakistan's custody and 15 fishermen in Sri Lanka's custody, who are believed to be Indian nationals. "In case of Pakistan, consular access is awaited and information about the states that they belong to is not available. In case of Sri Lanka, the 15 fishermen are believed to be from Tamil Nadu and the Union Territory of Puducherry," Singh said. He also said the government regularly takes up with Sri Lanka and Pakistan the matter of early release and repatriation of Indian fishermen and fishing boats. OneIndia News 251 fishermen released from Lankan custody in 2017: Sushma Swaraj India oi-PTI External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj on Thursday said that Prime Minister Narendra Modi has consistently flagged India's concerns over the detention of fishermen with the Government of Sri Lanka. She said that the issue of Indian fishermen being held by Sri Lanka has been taken up at top-level meetings including by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who was also present in the House. Also, the government has secured the release of 251 fishermen and 42 fishing boats in Sri Lankan custody in 2017. Government has been attempting for the early release of Indian fishermen who are being held by the Sri Lankan Navy for "allegedly" fishing in their waters, she said in the Rajya Sabha during the Question Hour. In a written reply, Swaraj said that the number of Indian fishermen and fishing boats in the custody of Sri Lankan authorities as on July 31 this year was 15 and 117 respectively. She also said the government has decided to promote deep sea fishing and a scheme with a budget of Rs 1,500 crore has been formulated which also will help in resolving the difficulties faced by the fishermen. Responding to questions about ban on bottom trawling (trawling along the sea floor) by Sri Lanka, Swaraj said the practice damaged the environment. Even in Tamil Nadu, new licenses were not being granted as bottom trawlers damaged the sea surface, she said. Giving details, Swaraj said the government regularly takes up the matter of early release and repatriation of Indian fishermen with the government of Sri Lanka. She also referred to the case of seven Indian fishermen held along with two trawlers by Sri Lanka. The fishermen were produced in the court on July 27 and the court extended their judicial custody upto August 10. PTI Rahul Gandhi meets flood-affected victims in Assam, assures help India oi-Oneindia By Oneindia Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi on Thursday visited Lakhimpur in Assam, the worst affected of the 29 districts in the state and took stock of the relief and rehabilitation measures. His visit comes just two days after Prime Minister Narendra Modi came to take stock of the situation in the region. The 47-year-old Congress leader also met villagers affected due to flood in Lakhimpur. Addressing the victims of the devastating rainfall in Lakhimpur, the politician assured that Congress party would extend all possible help and demand the Centre and State governments to provide the relief allotted to the victims. Apka hak banta hai, apko compensation milna chahiye, aapki ladai hum ladenge: Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi in Assam's Lakhimpur pic.twitter.com/d9Lusm7lPB ANI (@ANI_news) August 3, 2017 "The flood situation has remained dire in Assam and it is your right to ask for compensation from the government. I am here to hear all your grievance and we will raise the issue in Parliament, " he added. On Tuesday Prime Minister Naredra Modi reviewed the damage caused by floods in Assam during his visit to the state and announced a package of Rs 2,000 crore for relief, rehabilitation and infrastructure repair for Assam and other Northeastern states where the recent floods caused havoc and claimed over 100 lives. Gandhi would later in the day fly to Silchar to attend the cremation of veteran Congress leader and former central minister Santosh Mohan Deb there. The Congress had hit out at Modi for his one-day visit to understand the state's flood situation and accused him of lacking in sincerity as far as Assam's flood devastation was concerned. OneIndia News Resolution demanding separate resolution passed by Lingayats India oi-Vicky By Vicky The Akhila Bharata Veerashaiva Mahasabha passed a resolution declaring that Veerashaiva and Lingayats were the same but did not fall under the Hindu Dharma. The resolution has demanded sperate religious status to Veerashaiva-Lingayats as an entity. Incidentally, Wednesday's resolution has repeated the stance taken decades ago by the Mahasabha. The Mahasabha which acts as an umbrella organisation of the community met on Wednesday and passed the resolution that also asks all members of the community to not discuss the row in public anymore. "Veerashaiva-Lingayat faith is not part of Hinduism. Those who follow the philosophies of Ashtavarana, Shatsthala, Panchachaara and perform Lingapuje by holding the Linga on their palm are the same and hence Veerashaiva and Lingayat are the same. The Mahasabha has decided to do everything in its capacity to ensure that the Veerashaiva-Lingayat faith is accorded separate religious status," said the resolution. The meeting was held in Bengaluru and saw prominent community leaders including politicians cutting across party lines take part. Senior Congress leader Shamanur Shivashankarappa is the president of the Mahasabha while Municipal Minister Eshwar Khandre is the secretary-general. The five-point resolution has urged community members to refrain from making any statements, for or against, in the issue. "The Mahasabha has decided to call a meeting of seers, experts and leaders, those for and against the issue, to resolve differences. The sabha will also take into confidence members who have drifted apart due to the difference of opinion. Until that time members of the community should refrain from making any statements about the issue in public," the resolution read. The resolution's first point on Veerashaiva-Lingayat being the same is reflective of a 40-year-old resolution that was passed by the same Mahasabha declaring both entities as same. Many leaders who are demanding a separate religious status for the community but are opposing the idea of both entities being different, refer to the resolution passed 40-years-ago by the Mahasabha to support their claims. Lingayat woman seer, Mathe Mahadevi had also accepted the Mahasabha's resolution passed 40 years ago but has taken a U-turn now declaring Veerashaiva and Lingayats as separate entities. The meeting, as well as the resolution, comes at a time when pontiffs of various mutts were indulging in personal attacks over the difference of opinion. The Mahasabha hopes to fight for separate religious status for Veerashaiva-Lingayat communities as a single entity but with the crux of the issue being whether these communities are the same is likely to make matters difficult. Meanwhile, the political parties in Karnataka have refused to take a singular stand on the issue. The lack of a clear stance also stems from the fact that leaders within parties are divided over the Lingayat-Veerashaiva row. OneIndia News We have done nothing wrong: Centre for Policy Research reacts to tax raids ITR Filing 2022: How to check your income tax refund status if you havent received it yet Rs 11.43 crore seized from D K Shivakumar: Here is the breakup India oi-Vicky By Vicky The Income Tax department has in all seized cash to the tune of Rs 11.43 crore during raids it conducted on properties belonging to Karnataka Energy Minister, D K Shivakumar. While at Delhi, the IT department seized Rs 8.33 crore at Bengaluru and Mysuru, the amount seized was Rsw 2.5 crore and 60 lakh respectively. In addition to this the IT department has also seized scores of documents from the various places that were raided. A school at R R Nagar, the KPTCL office, his residence among other places were raided by the IT department officials. Recommended Video IT raid at Bengaluru resort hosting Gujarat MLAs The IT department is currently ascertaining the source of the cash. Shivakumar may be questioned and asked to explain the source of the money, which the IT department has claimed is unaccounted. The department is also verifying currency seized at the school which is suspected to be demonetised currency. Officials say that an explanation would be sought to this effect. Speaking on behalf of his brother, D K Suresh said that they will explain every penny and added that the money has been accounted for. OneIndia News For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications Story first published: Thursday, August 3, 2017, 15:24 [IST] People of Himachal have decided to go with Modi; all other factors irrelevant: CM Thakur Courtesy Amit Shah, several schools in Rohtak shut today India oi-Oneindia By Oneindia Haryana BJP leaders may be ecstatic in welcoming party chief Amit Shah, but city schools in Rohtak have to bear it with a grin, as many private schools were forced to shut schools or make an alternate arrangements for ferrying students. Reason: Administration has procured school buses to take people to Amit Shah's rally. While some cited potential traffic jams as the reason for closures, others say their buses will be deputed for Shah's rally as per instructions received from the district administration. Recommended Video BJP President Amit Shah makes sarcastic remark on Rahul Gandhi | Oneindia News The State government seems to have forgotten its earlier order banning the use of school buses to ferry people for political rallies. "The use of force or coercive methods on managements of private schools to send their buses for the purpose of rallies shall be prohibited henceforth, said a circular issued by the Additional Chief Secretary of the Home department. "The administration had asked for our buses for the rally. Therefore, many schools, including ours, had to declare it a holiday today," said Ravi Gugnani, director, Scholars Rosary School, Rohtak, reports Hindustan Times. Superintendent of police (SP) Pankaj Nain maintained that the police department did not requisition any school buses. The private school bodies have condemned the government for not following the guidelines. In October, last year the federation of private schools welfare association, Haryana, had moved the High Court to seek a ban on the use of school buses to ferry public to political rallies. OneIndia News Take terrorist Dujana's body back, police tell Pakistan India oi-Vicky By Vicky For the first time in 30 years, India has demanded that Pakistan take back the body of its terrorist Abu Dujana who was killed in an encounter on Tuesday. The Jammu and Kashmir police will approach the Pakistan High Commission urging them to take the body of the Lashkar-e-Tayiba terrorist back. The decision was made on a day when the separatists of Kashmir called for a complete shut down of the Valley on Wednesday. We will ask Pakistan to take his body back said Inspector General of Police, Kashmir, Muneer Khan. He was a Pakistani national and hence his body needs to be taken by them, Khan also added. Recommended Video Abu Dujana encounter: J The police took the decision as they did not want his body buried in Kashmir. The police is being cautious this time as they do not want this issue to spark another unrest as was seen in the case of Burhan Wani, the Hizbul Mujahideen commander who was gunned down in an encounter last year. The police will write to the headquarters which in turn will take up the matter with Union Home Ministry. Following this the Pakistan High Commission would be appraised of the matter and told to take Dujana's body back. The police say that their investigations clearly established that Dujana was from Karachi. OneIndia News For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications Story first published: Thursday, August 3, 2017, 7:23 [IST] Ticket to sympathy: Telangana Congress leader stages attack on self India oi-Anusha A youth Congress leader in Telangana was arrested for staging an attack on self and hiring people to shoot at him, all in the hopes of getting a party ticket to contest elections. Vikram Goud who was shot at his residence on July 28 is said to have planned the attack to harm himself to gain sympathy from the party and the people including those he was indebted to. On July 28, Vikram Goud was shot at twice by miscreants. His wife rushed to his help and he was admitted to a hospital. The son of a former Andhra Pradesh minister had told the police that an attempt on his life was made by his political rivals. Within five days, the Hyderabad police cracked the case and found that Vikram Goud himself had masterminded the attack. Recommended Video BJP President Amit Shah makes sarcastic remark on Rahul Gandhi | Oneindia News "He had meticulously planned the attack for four months. He hired goons for Rs 50 lakh, helped them procure a gun with which they ultimately shot him. He told the accused that they should make the attack seem like an attempt on his life so he can gain the sympathy of the party and the people to contest elections," said Mahendar Reddy, Commissioner of Hyderabad Police. Following Vikram's complaint, the police had arrested five persons who exposed the conspiracy during questioning. Now Goud was also made an accused in the case and arrested on Thursday. The conspiracy Goud had been planning the attack since April. He got in touch with Nanda Kumar, one of the accused and explained his plan. Rs 50 lakh was paid to the team that would carryout the attack on Goud. The accused them procured a country-made weapon from Madhya Pradesh. As per Goud's plan, two accused, Raees Khan and Shaik Ahmed, reached his house in the early hours of July 28. Khan fired two rounds at Goud's hands before fleeing along with Ahmed. The accused them disposed of the weapon in a waterbody. "Goud's only mistake, while hatching the conspiracy was underestimating the police. He was hoping that the culprits would remain unidentified and his plan will remain a secret forever. He also hoped that an attack like this would ease off financial burden since he owed in lakhs to debtors," the police said. From wanting to be elected as MLA, Goud ended up being produced in court as an accused for planning an attack on self. In all, 8 people have been named accused in the case. OneIndia News UP: Muslims opting for multiple marriages need to register them separately India pti-PTI Lucknow, Aug 3: Muslims opting for multiple marriages will have to get them registered separately in Uttar Pradesh and the government guidelines do not in any way interfere with practices of any religion, a top official said today. The UP Marriage Registration Guidelines, 2017 were approved by the Cabinet on August 1. After notification, the Stamp and Registration Department will implement it, Renuka Kumar, the principal secretary to Women Welfare Department, told PTI. She also made it clear that the guidelines "do not interfere" in practices of "any religion". "The UP government does not intend to interfere in the practices of any religion. If any male Muslim is going to register his marriage, then he will have the option of registration a maximum of four marriages. For this, he has to fill different registration forms," she said. However, she added that Muslims opting to marry more than once will have to get each marriage registered separately. "But, if any Muslim male has married more than once, then he has to register each of his marriage. Males from the Muslim community will get the facility of registering four marriages, but Hindus and people practicing other religions will be allowed to register only one marriage," Kumar said. The decision of the UP government evoked mixed reactions from Muslim bodies. While the All India Shia Personal Law Board (AISPLB) said the option of registration a maximum of four marriages for may send a wrong signal, the All India Muslim Women Personal Law Board (AIMWPLB) welcomed the government's decision of "not interfering in the religious matter". "The option of registration of a maximum of four marriages for Muslim males may send a wrong signal," AISPLB spokesperson Yasoob Abbas said. General secretary of AIMWPLB Rabia Sandal, said, "The move to register the marriages of all religions is certainly a good one. We are also happy with the government's intention of not to interfere in the practices of any religion." The principal secretary also said registering a marriage henceforth will not need the services of a lawyer. "A person can register his/her marriage from home simply at the click of a mouse by visiting the website of Stamp and Registration department. The husband and wife after visiting the webpage of the Stamp and Registration department, will provide their Aadhaar number. Then an OTP (One-Time Password) will be sent to the registered mobile number. As soon as the OTP is entered on the webpage, all the details (including photographs of the husband and wife) from the Aadhaar card will be auto-filled. There will be no need to provide a copy of the wedding invitation card or marriage photograph," she said. After this, details like the date, venue of and city of marriage need to be filled in the registration form and Rs 10 deposited through online banking as registration fees. If the marriage is registered within a year of marriage, then Rs 10 will be levied as registration charges, she said. The marriage will be considered as registered after this, and a reference number will be given. The marriage certificate can be obtained on one's personal email id or can be downloaded from any cyber cafe, she said. Only the reference number has to be remembered, she added. Underlining benefits of registering the marriage, Kumar said, it would come handy during application of visas while going to foreign countries. "Many government schemes also seek the matrimonial status of both men and women. In government application forms and other documents, where the marital status is asked, the person has to only provide the reference number, from where rest of the information can be retrieved by the government." PTI 'Virginity declaration' for women: Indian men will never learn India oi-Prabhpreet By Prabhpreet "Virgin just means unmarried and there is nothing objectionable in it being written in the form," was Bihar Health Minister Mangal Pandey's response to the controversy regarding the marital declaration that Indira Gandhi Institute of Medical Sciences (IGIMS) in Patna had asked its prospective women employees to make. Meanwhile, the deputy medical superintendent of the institute said, "Personally, I feel the word used should have been unmarried instead of virgin. That would have been sober but what is there in the rules have to be followed." Virginity and sexual life of a woman is nobody's business. Period Recommended Video Medical Institute in Patna asks employees to declare status of 'virginity' | Oneindia News The points presented on the form along with these two statements about it, taken together, clearly show not only how archaic the mentality of Indian men is when it comes to issues related to women and how they are treated, but also how insensitive official rules and thinking are towards the female population of the country. Though the authorities tried to douse the growing controversy by claiming it was just a case of mistranslation, and the word virgin has now been removed by IGIMS, the reality is, when the original form along with other developments in various areas are looked at, it becomes clear that this was not an accidental mistake and shows how women in India continue to be mistreated. This comes to light even more, in present day circumstances, when the 'Sanskari brigade' is out to get each and everyone to follow and imbibe the "Indian Cultural." Along with the Bihar form which also asked potential women employees if they are married, "to a person who has no other wife living" or "to a person has another wife living," a look at three other recent steps related by those in power shows how far away decision-making authorities are from understanding issues of women. Sanitary napkins taxation As the new scheme of indirect taxation, Goods and Services Tax (GST) became a reality for the whole country from July 1 this year, tax rates for almost all categories of items were placed under various slabs of nil, 5, 12, 18 or 28 per cent. One of these was sanitary napkins used by women, which are a necessity to them and not a luxury, during their menstrual cycles. The tax rates for them were increased from 5 to 12 per cent. When by all conventional logic they should not be taxed at all, the government has ended up increasing the tax levied on them. While this might seem a small issue to those in power, that is, if the matter ever comes to their attention, it clearly shows how out of touch those involved in the running of the country seem to be with the women themselves and the issues of their everyday lives. The defenders of such a step have pointed to such essentials being a luxury of those who can afford it while the majority of women in the country use cloth instead. They seem to forget that the cost of this product along with a lack of awareness have been the main reasons behind them not being used by all women. Even though they are hygienic and healthier choice compared to cloth, this seems too difficult to grasp for those in power. As can be seen from the fact that while condoms have been exempted from tax under GST, and rightly so, the same was not done for sanitary napkins. Instead of making an attempt at creating awareness and increasing affordability of the better option, somehow those making decisions have made such tasks even more difficult. Ban on "Lipstick under my Burkha" The Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC) of Indian cinema, or what is popularly known as the censor board, has been engrossed in many issues related to its decision on, what and how the visuals "Bhartiya Sanskriti" on screens are to be watched. And one of the latest ones was based on a decision by the chairman of the board Pahlaj Nihalani, appointed by the Narendra Modi government, regarding issues that the board found with the women oriented movie titled Lipstick Under My Burkha. The concerns of the board were apparently severe enough that they chose to ban the release of the film. Reasons given for such a step include the film being and having content which according to the board is "lady-oriented," with "continuous sexual scenes," a "fantasy above life," "women's fantasies," and for its "sexual content, abusive words and audio pornography," among others. Are you a virgin? You need to fill this in Bihar hospital form This led to the filmmakers approach the Film Certification Appellate Tribunal (FCAT) which allowed the release of the film while recommending an adult certification for the film and also pulled up the board for its decision by examining that its members "misdirected themselves in denying certification on the ground that the story of the film is women oriented." Though the episode might get lost in the midst of controversies that the board seems to find itself in on a regular basis, the idea that women oriented movies which depict them having human emotions and problems can be banned based on sexist views of a body whose members are closely associated with those in power, goes to show how deep and high up the problem of misunderstanding such issues go along with the lack of knowledge and total apathy towards what concerns them. Women's reservation in Parliament In 2010, the Women's Reservation Bill, to ensure a 33 per cent quota for women in Parliament was passed in Rajya Sabha among much fan fare. Since then it has not seen any movement in Lok Sabha, the house where it also needs to be passed for it to effect as a law of the land. In fact, the bill has been pending in Parliament for more than two-decades ever since it was first introduced in 1996 by the government under the then Prime Minister HD Deve Gowda. The demand has been rejuvenated recently as women's rights groups from across the country, have come together, and raised the demand for the passage of the Bill in the monsoon session of Parliament. Not only this, women activists are now demanding 50 per cent reservation. Though the demand for half the seats to be reserved might be an ask that even those making it do not expect to be granted, the idea behind it seems to be that in order to raise the issue and for those who matter to take it seriously, something of this nature is required. The current protests seem to be based on the thinking that political presence is the only way to safeguard women's rights in the country. According to figures, women hold a mere 12 per cent of the seats in Parliament and nine per cent in state assemblies, informed the director of the Centre for Social Research, Ranjana Kumari. "Unless there are more women in politics, their concerns cannot be addressed effectively," she added. But the BJP, which is leading the current government and has enough numbers in Lok Sabha to ensure the passage of the Bill, and who according to Director of the Joint Women's Programme, Jyotsna Chatterjee, had committed support to the bill in its manifesto for the 2014 general elections, has shown no initiative on this front since. She said, "It is high time to prove what they had declared in their election manifesto. The government says 'Beti Bachao Beti Padhao' (save girls, educate girls), but what about her political rights?" Politics in India like almost all others fields is seen as a domain of men, who have taken a stranglehold on law making and running of governments in the country. This comes out in the case of the reservation Bill not only in terms of not passing it but also from the fact that there seems to be a total lack of debate on it. With there seemingly being an unwritten writ by those in power, that the matter needs to be kept in an informal abeyance, as can be seen by the two-decade long inaction on the Bill. Men show little sign of change Such demands of reservation seem to be based on the overall neglect of women issues that the country has seen since it got independence. A few examples include female foeticide, increased number of rapes and crime against women, harassment at the family unit and in society. And such ground level difficulties are compounded and brought to the fore by the apathy of those in power who make decisions such as the ban, lack of debate on reservation and taxes, along with asking on official forms whether they are virgins. This leads to the question as to how such a situation might change as those who have till now been guilty (Men), if not directly committing such injustice, then of allowing it, are the ones who can help solve it. So the chances of change seem slim given the way things have gone so far, with those in power continuing to take steps which treat women as second class citizens. As can be seen by the examples mentioned. These circumstances make it clear that while men like Pandey and Nihalani continue to take and justify decisions, which should have no place in the in the 21st century, the struggle for women in India will continue and the whole weight of maintaining the "Indian Culture'" will fall solely on them. OneIndia News For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications Story first published: Thursday, August 3, 2017, 17:17 [IST] Virginity and sexual life of a woman is nobodys business. Period India oi-Maitreyee By Maitreyee Patna, August 3: We thought only the ordinary Indian men are obsessed with women's virginity. Actually, we have been proven wrong. It seems our authorities too are probing hard to find out whether Indian naaris (women) are "virgin" or not. That is why the Indira Gandhi Institute of Medical Sciences (IGIMS) in Patna, Bihar, in a bizarre official document called--marriage declaration form--ended up asking its women employees about their "virginity". Recommended Video Medical Institute in Patna asks employees to declare status of 'virginity' | Oneindia News In the form, now doing the rounds of social media, the institute asked its female employees to declare their virginity. In the same form, women employees are also asked unrelated questions like if they are married to a person who has no other wife living or more than one wife living. Wait, if you are thinking the Patna-based institute is sexist, then you are wrong. The institute has equally outlandish questions for male employees too, like the number of wives they are married too. According to ANI, the employees are also asked if they are a widower or a bachelor. After a few media houses reported about the controversial form on Wednesday, the institute in its defence said that the question on virginity actually meant to know whether an employee was married or unmarried. Are you a virgin? You need to fill this in Bihar hospital form Speaking to India Today, Manish Mandal, deputy medical superintendent of the IGIMS, said, "Essentially what is being asked in the form is whether a person is married or unmarried. Personally, I feel the word used should have been unmarried instead of virgin. That would have been sober but what is there in the rules have to be followed." Like most Indians, Mandal thinks and probably wants an unmarried woman to be a virgin--a typical mentality prompted by our sanskari (cultured) brigade. So when Mandal equated the word virgin with being unmarried, he found it very normal. People like Mandal are being trained to think that being virgin is equal to being unmarried. What if the likes of Mandal being told in strong terms that marital status of women has got nothing to do with their virginity? We know a huge scandal will erupt immediately. In their desire to be surrounded by virgin women, the moral brigade wants to control the body, mind and soul of a woman. So, if a woman decided to have sex before marriage, our sanskari society calls her a "slut" or a "bitch". But no such derogatory terms being used for men who led a promiscuous life. After all, boys will be boys, as Samajwadi Party (SP) supremo Mulayam Singh Yadav infamously said a few years ago while defending rapists. If you are seething with anger over Mandal's casual defence, then just read what the Bihar health minister Mangal Pandey had to say about the entire controversy. The minister went a step ahead and said "virgin just means unmarried and there is nothing objectionable in it being written in the form." "The word which is used is 'virgin'. It means unmarried girl, maiden. I don't think these words are not objectionable. But still this issue is being raised. I had a word with the officials of the IGIMS. They said that this is the format of AIIMS and since 1983, it is being used in every organisation of the country," Pandey told ANI. So, Indian girls and women if you are confronted with the "V" word, don't get offended. As per the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader there is nothing wrong if someone probes a woman's virginity. After all, it is a "free society" and everyone is entitled to know women's chastity, including your bosses and HR managers in the office. That is why prospective grooms often ask marriageable girls about their "virginity". Even in the 21st century, so called well-educated men, without any qualms, proudly state, "I will marry only a virgin". Strangely, nobody asks men about their virginity. The hypocrisy surrounding women's sexual life and curiosity to know about their celibacy reek of patriarchy where only women are put in the dock when it comes to morality. OneIndia News What is the first of its kind Santhali-Bengali-English dictionary India oi-Amitava By Amitava August 2, 2017: West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Wednesday released a Santhali -Bengali-English dictionary. It is a first of its kind dictionary in the Santhali language. Santhal is an indigenous tribe residing in India and the Terai regions of Nepal. A small population of Santhals is also found in Bangladesh. In India, Santhals are mainly found in West Bengal, Jharkhand, Bihar, Odisha and Assam. With a population of around 6,950,000, Santhal is one of the largest tribal community in India. The Santhal community speaks the Santhali language. Previously the language did not have a script and used the Latin script. However in 1925 Raghunath Murmu created the Ol Chiki script. The dictionary was released by Mamata Banerjee from Uttarkanya, the mini Secretariat in the Jalpaiguri District in North Bengal during the Tribal Advisory Council meeting is in Ol Chiki script. "It is unique as it is a bilingual dictionary, the first of its kind in Ol Chiki script. It not only has the Ol Chiki words but also the common scientific and commerce terms. It will be a very helpful tool for anyone wanting to learn the Santhali language" stated Banerjee. The "Tri Bhasa Abhidan" (name of the dictionary) is prepared by the Santhal Academy with the help of the Tribal Development Department, Government of West Bengal. It has 24,550 Santhali words in Ol Chiki script, Santhali alphabets, numerical, units of measurement, names of months and days along with colors in Santhali. It has terminologies used in physics, chemistry, biology, mathamtics, history and geography. It has has Santhali idioms and the usage. "We are giving a lot of stress in preserving and uplifting the unique culture, language and script of different tribal communities. We are trying to impart education to these communities in their own languages" Banerjee had earlier announced during her tour of North Bengal on March 27. At that time she had mentioned that a Santhali dictionary was being prepared by the State Government. In the meeting, Banerjee also claimed that Pattas (land documents) have been handed over to 45,000 tribal families by her government. OneIndia News Operation All Out: Taking down the command in the Valley When Abu Dujana told Zakir Musa, do not let us down brother Operation All Out: 170 terrorists shot dead and the year isnt complete as yet You got me today: Read Lashkar terrorist Abu Dujana's last conversation India oi-Vicky By Vicky Abu Dujana the Lashkar-e-Tayiba commander who was killed by security forces on Tuesday was told to surrender at first. Dujana however refused to do so and decided to fight back. A phone call between an Army officer and Dujana suggests that several attempts were made to get him to surrender. However minutes after the call ended, Dujana was ambushed by the security forces. Recommended Video J Here is the conversation between Dujana and the security forces: The Army had first commissioned a local Kashmiri civilian to speak with Dujana. He however refused to relent following which the officer took the phone. Dujana was sarcastic through the conversation and even said sometimes we win, sometimes you win. Today you won, "congratulations." Dujana: How are you? I said how are you. Officer: Forget how I am doing. Why don't you surrender? You are being used by Pakistani agencies to trouble the Kashmiris. You have married a girl from here and what you are doing is not right. Why don't you surrender? Dujana: I left home for martyrdom. Who wants to play a game, let them play. Sometimes we are ahead and sometimes you are ahead. Today you caught me, congratulations. I will not surrender. Do what you have to. What Allah has in store me is what is important. Officer: Show concern for your parents. Dujana: I left my parents in Gilgit-Baltistan. The day I left them, they were dead for me. Officer: We do not want a bloodbath. God does not want any harm to come on anyone. Allah is for everyone. Dujana: Then come and meet me inside the house. (He cuts the call) OneIndia News For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications Story first published: Thursday, August 3, 2017, 12:21 [IST] Alarmed at killings in Burundi, UN threatens sanctions International pti-PTI United Nations, Aug 3: With the increase in number of people fleeing Burundi, the United Nations Security Council has expressed concern over the reports of torture and extra-judicial killings in the East African nation. A presidential statement approved on Wednesday reiterates the council's intention to pursue sanctions against people inside and outside the country "who threaten the peace and security of Burundi." The council said it remains "deeply concerned" at the political situation and the government's failure to implement a resolution adopted last year calling for the deployment of 228 UN police and human rights monitors. The government has also refused to allow the African Union to send 5,000 peacekeepers. Burundi has been plagued by sporadic violence since April 2015 when President Pierre Nkurunziza's decision to seek a third term led to street protests. Since the start of 2017, the Burundian government has amplified its calls for refugees to return home. After nearly two years of crisis in which over 1,400 peopled are estimated to have been killed, the government insists the nation is now safe. However, Bujumbura's appeals have convinced few of the 380,000 people who have fled to neighbouring countries. PTI PM Modi arrives in New Delhi after attending State Funeral of Shinzo Abe in Tokyo Cabinet revamp in Japan: Abe names new defence, foreign ministers International pti-PTI Tokyo, Aug 3: As part of a cabinet revamp, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on Thursday named new defence and foreign ministers with hopes of stemming a decline in public support after a series of scandals and missteps. Itsunori Onodera, a former defence chief, is to return to the defence ministry -- rocked by the resignation last week of close Abe political ally Tomomi Inada. Taro Kono, the son of a former foreign minister, will become the country's new top diplomat. Political blueblood Abe, in office since late December 2012, has pushed a nationalist agenda alongside a massive policy effort to end years of on-off deflation and rejuvenate the world's third-largest economy. But he has seen public support rates plummet in the past few months over an array of political troubles, including allegations of favouritism to a friend in a business deal -- which Abe strongly denies. US-educated Kono will replace Fumio Kishida, who served as foreign minister since Abe came to power. Kishida, often tapped as a future prime minister, is moving to a top post in the ruling Liberal Democratic Party. "I deeply regret that my shortcomings have invited this situation," a chastened Abe said ahead of the formal announcement of the cabinet changes. Abe's LDP suffered a drubbing in local Tokyo elections last month, which analysts and newspapers blamed on an increasing "arrogance" on the part of the prime minister. Kono, 54, is known as an independent-minded, anti-nuclear power advocate, in sharp contrast to Abe's support for atomic energy. Meanwhile, Seiko Noda, 56, once hailed as Japan's most likely first female prime minister and who once tried to challenge Abe for the party leadership, was expected to serve as internal affairs minister. Returning defence chief Onodera, 57, held the post for nearly two years until September 2014, and has vowed to restore unity and confidence within the ministry. His expected appointment also comes amid rising tensions surrounding North Korea's missile development. Pyongyang launched its latest missile late Friday, just hours after the US and Japan moved to step up sanctions against it following its earlier test of an ICBM capable of reaching parts of the US. Meanwhile, Abe was seen leaving some key posts, such as finance minister and chief cabinet secretary, unchanged. PTI Parts of Asia, including India may be too hot within decades: study International oi-PTI Boston, August 3: An MIT study has warned that nearly 1.5 billion people in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh are likely to face deadly heat waves within the next few decades due to climate change which will expose them to unsurvivable temperatures and widespread food crisis. Scientists predicted that by the end of this century climate change could lead to severe summer heat waves in South Asia, a region of deep poverty where one-fifth of the world's population resides. There is still time to avert such severe warming if measures are implemented now to reduce the direst consequences of global warming, researchers said. However, without significant reductions in carbon emissions, the heat waves could begin within as little as a few decades to strike the fertile Indus and Ganges river basins that produce much of the region's food supply, they said. The areas likely to be hardest hit in northern India, Bangladesh, and southern Pakistan are home to 1.5 billion people. These areas are also among the poorest in the region, with much of the population dependent on subsistence farming that requires long hours of hard labour out in the open and unprotected from the Sun. "That makes them very vulnerable to these climatic changes," said Elfatih Eltahir, from MIT. While the projections show the Persian Gulf may become the region of the worst heat waves on the planet, northern India is a close second, Eltahir said, and eastern China, also densely populated, is third. The highest concentrations of heat in the Persian Gulf would be out over the waters of the Gulf itself, with lesser levels over inhabited land. The new analysis is based on recent research showing that hot weather's most deadly effects for humans comes from a combination of high temperature and high humidity, an index which is measured by a reading known as wet-bulb temperature. This reflects the ability of moisture to evaporate, which is the mechanism required for the human body to maintain its internal temperature through the evaporation of sweat. At a wet-bulb temperature of 35 degrees Celsius, the human body cannot cool itself enough to survive more than a few hours. A previous study of temperature and humidity records show that in today's climate, wet-bulb temperatures have rarely exceeded about 31 degrees Celsius anywhere on Earth. While an earlier report from researchers showed that this survivability limit would start to be exceeded occasionally in the Persian Gulf region by the end of this century, actual readings there in the summer of 2015 showed that the 35-degree wet-bulb limit had almost been reached already, suggesting that such extremes could begin happening earlier than projected. The summer of 2015 also produced one of the deadliest heat waves in history in South Asia, killing an estimated 3,500 people in Pakistan and India. Yet, India and China remain two countries where emission rates of greenhouse gases continue to rise, driven mostly by economic growth, Eltahir said. The study shows that by century's end the most extreme, once-in-25-years heat waves would increase from wet-bulb temperatures of about 31 to 34.2 degrees Celsius. "It brings us close to the threshold of survivability," he said. In today's climate, about two per cent of the Indian population sometimes gets exposed to extremes of 32-degree wet-bulb temperatures. According to this study, by 2100 that will increase to about 70 per cent of the population, and about two per cent of the people will sometimes be exposed to the survivability limit of 35 degrees. The region is important agriculturally, it is not just those directly affected by the heat who will suffer, Eltahir said. He further said that with the disruption to the agricultural production, it doesn't need to be the heat wave itself that kills people and production will go down, so potentially everyone will suffer. PTI Legendary US editor who published Anne Frank's diary dies International oi-PTI New York, August 3: The legendary editor, Judith Jones, who rescued Anne Frank's diary from a US publisher's rejection pile, has passed away at her home in Vermont, the Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group said in a statement. She was 93. Jones, a luminary of the publishing world, who also introduced the world to American culinary writer Julia Child, was close to literary giants such as John Updike, Anne Tyler, William Maxwell, John Hersey, Peter Taylor and Sharon Olds. She worked for Knopf for more than 50 years, joining the company in 1957 and officially retiring only in 2011. "Judith was a legend in book publishing," said Sonny Mehta, chairman and editor-in-chief, paying tribute to the once young assistant who rescued Frank's "Diary of a Young Girl" from a rejection pile in Paris. The diary, which the young Jewish girl had written while hiding from the Nazis between June 1942 and August 1944, is one of the most famous testimonies of life in World War II and one of the most famous diaries of all time. Frank, who was born in Germany and lived with her family in the Netherlands, died in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp aged 15, just months before the war ended. Her diary was first published in the Netherlands in 1947, followed by French and German editions in 1950 before appearing in Britain and the United States in 1952. The first US edition of "Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl" ran a modest 5,000 copies and contained a preface from former first lady Eleanor Roosevelt. Doubleday reputedly spent little on publicity, but sales quickly took off. A subsequent US play "Diary of Anne Frank" was a Broadway hit and won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1956. A 1959 Hollywood movie won three Oscars. The diary has been a fixure on school curricula since the 1960s. Worldwide, the diary has sold more than 30 million copies in 67 languages. Jones was also instrumental in persuading Alfred Knopf to publish in 1961 "Mastering the Art of French Cooking" -- a tome that introduced generations of American home cooks to French food and to now legendary chef Julia Child. "It is no exaggeration to say that she profoundly influenced not only the way America reads and but also the way we cook," Mehta said Wednesday. Knopf Doubleday said Jones won five Pulitzer Prizes, five National Book Awards and three National Book Critics Circle Awards, and her cookbook authors won dozens and dozens of prizes. PTI Pathankot terror attack mastermind Masood Azar's ban blocked again by China at UN International oi-Deepika By Deepika China has again extended its technical hold on Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) chief Masood Azhar. It has been blocking India's move in the UN to designate Pakistan-based terror group leader Masood as a terrorist. The three-month validity of that technical hold lapsed on August 2 and Beijing has again extended it by three more months. This isn't the first time that China has blocked a move against Azhar at the United Nations. Last year, India moved the 1267 committee for the UN ban against Azhar, accusing him of masterminding the Pathankot terrorist attack. Masood is accused of masterminding the Pathankot terrorist attack in India. Recommended Video China issues false statements about India to impress its citizens | Oneindia News The United States, along with France and UK, had moved the proposal to ban Masood Azhar on the January 19. In the past six months, India has lobbied with China to lift the hold. It has had absolutely no effect. In response to India's efforts, China has continued to ask India to "talk directly" to Pakistan about it. In December last year, after China blocked India's proposal to list the JeM chief, Indian diplomatic sources here had said that the pursuit of terrorism was not a "one-shot affair" for India and that it will continue to pursue issues of terrorism "through all available mechanisms". Earlier on Wednesday, the Foreign Ministry in Beijing said they would take a decision in 'due course,' speaking of disagreements over the listing. "At present, some members still have a disagreement over the listing matter," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Geng Shuang said. OneIndia News In regular touch, trying for consular access: MEA on detention of 8 Indians in Qatar Qatar to offer permanent residence status for certain expats International oi-Chennabasaveshwar By Chennabasaveshwar Amid diplomatic siege imposed by six Arab nations, Qatar has approved an unprecedented draft law that will grant permanent residency cards to some foreigners. But the cabinet will issue the law's executive regulations later. It is a unique piece of law by Qatar, among Gulf Arab monarchies that have for decades relied on expatriate labor to run their economies, reports the official Qatar News Agency. Who is eligible for the card? Under the law, children of Qatari women married to foreigners, those who have special talents "needed by the state" People who have extended notable services to the country What are the advantages? Cardholders can avail facilities by state-run educational and health-care services Will be given priority, after locals, for military and civilian public jobs They can own property and run certain commercial activities without a local partner. The draft law was passed with an intention to attract investments and to reduce the economy's reliance on energy after Saudi Arabia and three allies severed their diplomatic ties with the country. Why was the draft law approved? Qatar is giving expatriates a "deeper stake" in a country that's "under siege," Bloomberg quited a research fellow at Rice University's Baker Institute for Public Policy as saying. "If you give people a greater sense of involvement, you bind them more closely together," Ulrichsen said. The decision also could be designed to garner international support against the Saudi-led boycott by portraying Qatar as "something different in the region, tolerant, open and inclusive," he said. An analyst with the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies said that approving these laws doesn't mean that implementation will swiftly follow. "That doesn't mean that there aren't good intentions," Cordesman said. "But one has to be careful about assuming too much until you see the practice," he told Bloomberg. OneIndia News In regular touch, trying for consular access: MEA on detention of 8 Indians in Qatar Qatar to purchase 7 navy ships from Italy amid Gulf crisis International oi-Chennabasaveshwar By Chennabasaveshwar Amid the diplomatic crisis, Gulf state Qatar is set to purchase seven naval vessels from Italy, country's foreign minister announced the deal in Doha. The purchase of naval vessels is a five billion euro deal. The deal is hailed display of Qatar's purchasing power despite a blockade from neighboring countries by news agency AP. Qatar's Foreign Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani announced the defense deal at a joint news conference with Italian Foreign Minister Angelino Alfano. However, they did not provide more details on the deal, saying only that it underscored the countries' ongoing defense cooperation. Qatari Navy has only limited combat capabilities due to a small number of ships and assets. "I am pleased to announce the conclusion of a deal between the Qatari Emiri Naval Forces to buy seven naval units from Italy in the context of the joint military cooperation between the two countries," Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani, Qatar's foreign minister, said on Wednesday, as quoted by Reuters. According to Reuters, the vessels will be built in Italian shipyards starting from 2018. Italy's principal defense manufacturer Leonardo is said to install electronic equipment and weapons systems, thus receiving around a third of the massive deal. According to Global Security website, the Navy's scope of operations is limited to patrolling its coastal waterway for short periods of time, along with anti-smuggling and anti-piracy missions. (With agency inputs) For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications Story first published: Thursday, August 3, 2017, 15:59 [IST] US issues travel warning to its citizens living in North Korea International oi-PTI The US State Department is issuing a new travel warning for North Korea that reflects the Trump administration's new travel ban. The US urged Americans in North Korea to get out before a travel ban goes into effect on September 1. The ban was announced last month and was published Wednesday in the Federal Register. That triggers a month-long period before it takes effect. The warning says exceptions to the travel ban need special permission that will only be granted "under very limited circumstances." The State Department says it doesn't yet know when it will release information on how to apply for an exception. Previous US travel warnings also urged Americans not to travel to North Korea. The Trump Administration on July 21 announced plans to ban its citizens from travelling to North Korea, attributing it to the serious risk of arrest and long- term detention of Americans in the reclusive nation. The move came following the death of university student Otto Warmbier, who was returned to the US in a coma after spending time in a North Korean prison. PTI At UNSC, US calls on world to tell Russia to stop its nuclear threats US sanctions against us 'dangerous' and 'short-sighted': Russia International oi-PTI Moscow, August 3: New US sanctions, signed into law by President Donald Trump, are a "dangerous" and "short-sighted" policy, said Russia's foreign ministry. In a statement, the ministry said the sanctions against Russia had put global stability at risk, a matter Moscow said it and the United States bear particular responsibility for. "We have already shown that we are not going to leave hostile acts unanswered... and we obviously reserve the right to take retaliatory measures," it said. The ministry also urged the US to "get rid of its illusions and understand that no threat or pressure will force Russia to change its policy or sacrifice its national interests". Russia remains "open to cooperation with the United States in areas considered useful to Moscow and to international security, particularly regarding regional conflicts," it said, in an apparent reference to Syria. But such collaboration will only be fruitful if "politicians in Washington stop looking at the world through their exclusively American prism," the statement added. Trump reluctantly signed off on the sanctions behind closed doors earlier Wednesday, bowing to domestic pressure. The step puts efforts to improve ties with the Kremlin in severe jeopardy. In his signing statement, Trump called the legislation "significantly flawed." PTI For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications Story first published: Thursday, August 3, 2017, 10:31 [IST] Yemen: Al-Qaeda attack leaves six UAE soldiers dead International pti-PTI Aden, Aug 3: An Al-Qaeda suicide bombing in southern Yemen has killed six soldiers of a new anti-jihadist force formed by the United Arab Emirates, said a Yemeni military official. The suicide bomber yesterday blew up his vehicle next to a military position recently set up by the Yemeni force in Shabwa province, the official told AFP, speaking on condition of anonymity. Two vehicles belonging to the anti-jihadist force were destroyed in the attack, which left an undetermined number wounded while other soldiers were abducted by Al-Qaeda members supporting the suicide bomber, he added. The official said the victims belong to an "elite unit" set up by the United Arab Emirates, one of the key partners in the Saudi-led coalition which intervened in Yemen in 2015 to support President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi against Shiite Huthi rebels. Al-Qaeda militants remain active in southern Yemen where they have exploited the security gap created by the conflict between Hadi's supporters and the Huthi rebels. The conflict in Yemen pits Huthi rebels and supporters of ex-president Ali Abdullah Saleh against forces loyal to the internationally recognised president Hadi. The war has killed more than 8,000 people, mostly civilians, and wounded 44,500 since Saudi Arabia and its allies intervened against the rebels it says are supported by regional arch-rival Iran. The Yemen crisis began with the 2011-12 revolution against President Ali Abdullah Saleh, who had led Yemen for more than two decades. After Saleh left office in early 2012 as part of a mediated agreement between the Yemeni government and opposition groups, the government led by Saleh's former vice president, Abdrabbuh Mansur Hadi, struggled to unite the fractious political landscape of the country and fend off threats both from Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula and Houthi militants that had been waging a protracted insurgency in the north for years. PTI 2008-2022 One News Page Ltd. All rights reserved. One News is a registered trademark of One News Page Ltd. FALL RIVER, Mass. Hundreds of people showed up Wednesday for a chance to pack and ship products to Amazon customers, as the e-commerce company held a giant job fair at nearly a dozen U.S. warehouses. Although the wages offered will make it hard for some to make ends meet, many of the candidates were excited by the prospect of health insurance and other benefits, as well as advancement opportunities. It's common for Amazon to ramp up its shipping center staff in August to prepare for holiday shopping. But the magnitude of its current hiring spree underscores Amazon's growth when traditional retailers are closing stores and blaming Amazon for a shift to buying goods online. Amazon planned to hire thousands of people on the spot. Nearly 40,000 of the 50,000 packing, sorting and shipping jobs at Amazon will be full time. Most of them will count toward Amazon's previously announced goal of adding 100,000 full-time workers by the middle of next year. The bad news is that more people are likely to lose jobs in stores than get jobs in warehouses, said Anthony Carnevale, director of Georgetown University's Center on Education and the Workforce. On the flip side, Amazon's warehouse jobs provide "decent and competitive" wages and could help build skills. "Interpersonal team work, problem solving, critical thinking, all that stuff goes on in these warehouses," Carnevale said. "They're serious entry-level jobs for a lot of young people, even those who are still making their way through school." The company is advertising starting wages that range from $11.50 an hour in Chattanooga, Tennessee, to $13.75 an hour in Kent, Washington, near Amazon's Seattle headquarters. The $11.50 rate amounts to about $23,920 a year. In Washington state, the current minimum wage is $11.50 but by 2020 will increase to $13.50. By comparison, the warehouse store operator Costco raised its minimum wage for entry-level workers last year from $13 to $13.50 an hour. Some job candidates Wednesday were looking to supplement other income. Rodney Huffman, a 27-year-old personal trainer, said the $13-an-hour job in Baltimore would pay enough to help cover bills while he starts his own company. "I'm looking to do the night shifts and then run my own company during the day," he said. At one warehouse Amazon calls them "fulfillment centers" in Fall River, Massachusetts, Amazon was looking to hire more than 200 people Wednesday, adding to a workforce of about 1,500. Employees there focus on sorting, labeling and shipping what the company calls "non-sortable" items big products such as shovels, kayaks, surfboards, grills, car seats and lots of giant diaper boxes. Other warehouses are focused on smaller products. While Amazon has attracted attention for deploying robots at some of its warehouses, experts said it could take a while before automation begins to seriously bite into its growing labor force. "When it comes to dexterity, machines aren't really great at it," said Jason Roberts, head of technology and analytics for mass recruiter Randstad Sourceright, which is not working with Amazon on its jobs fair. "The picker-packer role is something humans do way better than machines right now." Steve King, 47, a job candidate in Fall River with experience running his own business, agreed: "I don't think robots are up to snuff yet. I think they will be. Hopefully I can get in before the robots get that good and get above the robots in administration or something." In recent years, reports have emerged about difficult working conditions at Amazon's warehouses, including deaths at two Amazon warehouses in 2014. The company also came under fire in 2011 for extreme heat at its warehouses that caused "heat-related injuries" among workers. Amazon said at the time that it took emergency actions during heat waves and subsequently installed cooling systems in its warehouses. But many of those who showed up Wednesday were excited by the prospects of health insurance and other benefits, as well as advancement opportunities. "I like to be busy, so I know Amazon is busy and they want hard workers," retired police officer Brian Trice said. Trice was among those who stood in line in Baltimore on a hot day as Amazon contractors passed out bottles of water. In Fall River, a line snaked out of the warehouse and under an air-conditioned tent. In Kent, Washington, a vendor offered free cups of shaved ice from a truck playing steel-drum music. Among those lining up in Kent were 18-year-old Javier Costa and his 49-year-old uncle, Manuel Alvarenga. Costa said the warehouse work wasn't necessarily what he was looking for, but his uncle, a recent immigrant from El Salvador, was looking for whatever he could get. "He was making $6 an hour in El Salvador; you can imagine what the people below him were making," Costa said. "It's a harder life down there. At this point he just needs a job." Ron Joslin, 55, said he's long worked at call centers, most recently making medical appointments for veterans. But he lost that job in April, and since then hasn't been able to find work despite the Seattle area's hot labor market. "I don't believe the numbers reflect what's really happening," he said, waiting in a line hundreds of people long. "You want to see what's really happening, go to the unemployment office and see how many people are there and how long they've been unemployed." His wife, a regular Amazon shopper, told him about the job fair, he said. "She heard about it on the news and was like, 'You need to go there.' I said, 'It's going to be 100 degrees.' She said, 'You need to go there.' She's tired of me being around the house." Some left disappointed. Maureen Schell gave up after several hours at the Fall River site, describing it as a publicity stunt and a "drive to get bodies in the door so they can cherry-pick the warehouse staff they want." "It looks like they're looking for young, healthy warehouse staff only," said Schell, a 57-year-old searching for work that will put more money into her retirement. Amazon was also holding events at shipping sites in Ohio, Kentucky, Wisconsin, New Jersey, Illinois and Indiana. by Graham Pierrepoint The British monarchy is, of course, among the most famous in the world its stood for centuries, and under Queen Elizabeth II, the UK has seen one of the longest-standing monarchs in recorded history. Her husband, Prince Philip, has also been a public fixture for some time best known in the UK for his ready wit and occasional PC faux-pas and he has been in the news again lately as a result of a decision to retire from making public trips. Prince Philip has had a series of health scares in recent years, and at the age of 96, it has been decided that he will be bowing out from making public visits. However, this has led to some particularly poor taste mistakes being made in the media. In recent months, as it was initially suggest that the Prince would be bowing out of public engagements, some media outlets accidentally published statements as if he had passed on similar occurrences emerged regarding former US President George HW Bush. This time, however, it was the turn of British news giant the Telegraph to get the wrong end of the stick in possible the worst way possible. As the Duke of Edinburgh recently made his last engagement, The Telegraph mistakenly announced to readers that the popular figurehead had passed away in an article that advised his age to be XX years. While the story now redirects to a different story regarding the Prince, the damage was already done as The Sun will know only too well, having made the same mistake earlier this year, only to linger around on search results for some time afterwards. It is commonplace for famous people to have obituaries lined up in the media as it allows for a quick and respectful coverage of their passing but there have been numerous occasions this year of such a mishap taking place. Prince Philip retires from royal duties having clocked up over 22,000 different engagements purely on his own over the past 65 years though it will likely not be the last we see of the Duke, as the opportunity is open for him to appear alongside the Queen in future engagements should he wish to do so and should it be advisable. With both the Queen and the Duke in their 90s, they are among the oldest monarchs to reign and it is a sad day for many who follow the British royal family to see Prince Philip willingly bow out. Rumble 06 Nov 2022 If you were one of the thousands of Canadians that had a flight canceled or delayed, a case going to the central court of appeal.. DECATUR A Decatur 31-year-old man repeatedly beat his girlfriend in front of their children Tuesday night before threatening her with a knife and sexually assaulting her, police said. An affidavit from Decatur officer Jacquelyn Danner said police were called to the East William Street home the couple share with their three children, all younger than 9. The girlfriend, 40, said her boyfriend of 11 years had become enraged after she got home late from shopping. After throwing beer at his 9-year-old son and telling him to get out of the room, the affidavit said he began punching her repeatedly in the head and face. He would then take a break and before coming back and punching her again, this process going on for some two hours, the affidavit said. At one point, the frightened 9-year-old boy hid in a closet while his father was hitting his mother, the affidavit said. (The 9-year-old) stated he was scared to leave the closet because of his father, Danner wrote. He stated his father grabbed a knife and ordered (the children) to his room ... The girlfriend told police that her boyfriend then forced her to perform a sex act, the affidavit said. She stated she has suffered from physical abuse for several years. She said she thought he was going to kill her tonight if she didn't do what she was told," Danner wrote. The woman was examined and found to have bruising and injuries on her wrists, arms, neck, head and tongue and told police she was in a lot of pain, the affidavit said. The man was jailed on preliminary charges of criminal sexual assault, aggravated assault and two counts of domestic battery. Preliminary charges are subject to review by the Macon County State's Attorney's Office. The man remained jailed Wednesday night in lieu of posting $150,000 bail. He is due to be arraigned Sept. 1. "If our election wasn't rigged, you would've had nobody dead," Trump said during an interview with British TV host Piers Morgan. Business Insider 26 Apr 2022 Komfie Manalo, Opalesque Asia: A small hedge fund based in Park City, Utah, aptly called The Insiders Fund, is gaining worldwide recognition for generating remarkable returns through its use of insider information. The fund managed by veteran investor Harvey Sax, reported one-year returns of 33.02% net of all fees. That performance ranks the fund amongst the top 20 "long/short" hedge funds in the world. "Everyone knows the best stock market information is inside information," said Sax, portfolio manager of The Insiders Fund. "It's common sense that no one knows a business and its prospects better than the people running it." He explained, "Most people think that trading on insider information is illegal, but they are simply wrong. The SEC mandates that all officers, directors and 10% shareholders of a company must file a Form 4 within 48 hours after they buy or sell. As a former CEO of a publicly traded company, I can tell you the information that can be discovered on these forms is more valuable than gold." Sax said that his investors are obviously ecstatic with the fund's performance, but more importantly, they are very comfortable with the firm's investing strategy. "They understand looking at a company's past performance, and charts may help you guess what the future brings. But guessing just doesn't compare to following the investment decisions of the people on the i...................... 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The team will include emergency medicine physicians, specially trained ER nurses and care staff. Since February, DMH is a qualified Level II trauma care center. While we provided good services, we just wanted to take it up to a higher level, Stone said during a news conference at the hospital. Not everyone can do that. Different levels refer to the kinds of resources available in a trauma center and the number of patients admitted yearly, according to the American Trauma Society. HSHS St. Marys Hospital partners with the regional trauma center at HSHS St. Johns Hospital in Springfield, a certified Level I trauma center and a certified Level II pediatric trauma center, according to its website. The Mid-America Emergency Physicians group, led by Dr. Ted Clark, will help build a relationship between the DMH emergency room and the community doctors patients see every day, Clark said. This will improve the overall quality of care for patients whose doctors are knowledgeable of their conditions before they arrive at the emergency room. If patients come into the emergency department, I want them to know who I am, and I want a community doctor to know who I am when I call, said Clark, the medical director at Memorial Medical Center in Springfield. The new partnership also will provide telehealth services, which work to improve rural patients' access to health care, as well as emergency room doctors' access to other doctors. The Illinois Heart Specialists, DMH Express Care and DMH Family Medicine use these services. Doctors will now have resources available to them when they need a second opinion or have questions. Another aspect of the partnership is to establish an emergency room residency training program like the Mid-America Emergency Physicians group has at Memorial Medical Center. Another important factor for community relationships, Clark said, is recruiting and retaining people to stay (in Decatur) so there are more local doctors. These announcements will contribute to an initiative to assign every patient to a primary doctor, Stone said, which decreases emergency room business but improves the quality of health care for patients. What to expect from the Market of Global Instant Wholemilk Powder Market Explore the 2017 to 2022 trends, analysis, forecasts, and Overview and market development. https://www.researchnreports.com/request_sample.php?id=130377 https://www.researchnreports.com/enquiry_before_buying.php?id=130377 Global Instant Wholemilk Powder Market Research Report 2017 Purchase This Report by calling ResearchnReports.com at +1-888-631-6977.A new report presents a comprehensive assessment of the Global Instant Wholemilk Powder market. 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The research report also analyzes the market hierarchy carrying out a SWOT analysis of the key players operating on the Global Instant Wholemilk Powder market in order to provide an overall picture of the competitive landscape in the industry and assist the participants to come up with market winning strategies to gain an edge over their peers.The top players including:-Kabrita,Dumex,Mead Johnson,Abbott Laboratories,Wyeth,Nestle,Tatura,Aptaforum,Frisobaby,Meiji,Yili,Mengniu Dairy,Yashili,Bright Dairy,Beijing Sanyuan,Huishan Dairy,Wondersun,Heilongjiang Feihe Dairy,Junlebao Dairy,Heilongjiang Beingmate Dairy,About Research n Reports:Research N Reports is a new age market research firm where we focus on providing information that can be effectively applied. Today being a consumer driven market, companies require information to deal with the complex and dynamic world of choices. Where relying on a sound board firm for your decisions becomes crucial. Research N Reports specializes in industry analysis, market forecasts and as a result getting quality reports covering all verticals, whether be it gaining perspective on current market conditions or being ahead in the cut throat GLOBAL competition. Since we excel at business research to help businesses grow, we also offer consulting as an extended arm to our services which only helps us gain more insight into current trends and problems. Consequently we keep evolving as an all-rounder provider of viable information under one roof.Contact us:Mr. Sunny DenisContact No. +1-888-631-6977sales@researchnreports.com(ResearchnReports) Growth to be expected in the EMEA Motor Controllers Market Explore the 2017 to 2022 trends, analysis, forecasts, and Overview and market development. https://www.researchnreports.com/request_sample.php?id=131318 https://www.researchnreports.com/enquiry_before_buying.php?id=131318 EMEA (Europe, Middle East And Africa) Motor Controllers Market Report 2017 Purchase This Report by calling ResearchnReports.com at +1-888-631-6977.A new report presents a comprehensive assessment of the EMEA Motor Controllers market. The report, titled EMEA Motor Controllers Market takes the key trends and important market factors in consideration to carry out this research.According to the research report, the growing EMEA Motor Controllers market is likely to boost the EMEA market substantially over the forthcoming years. Apart from this, the increasing number of driving is projected to add to the growth of this market significantly in the near future. The worldwide market is analyzed on the basis of the various segments and the geographical reach of this market. How the market's segments are propelling the market in the market scenario is mentioned in this report. The continual rising factors boosting the demand for Motor Controllers market notes the research study.Access the Sample of this report on the below mentioned link:-In particular, the report focuses on the competitive landscape of the Motor Controllers industry and dwells on the influential development policies and plans that will determine the markets trajectory in the forecast period. An analysis of the major players operating in the Motor Controllers market is included in the report, segmenting and describing them on the parameters of manufacturing processes and business strategies, information related to product classification, and profit margins regarding the same. The cost dynamics of the Motor Controllers market are also examined in detail and, associated to the comprehensive breakdown of the markets competitive landscape, provide a complete indulgent of pricing dynamics in the Motor Controllers industry for the readers to understand clearly.Geographically, this report split EMEA into several key Regions:-Europe: Germany, France, UK, Russia, Italy and Benelux;Middle East: Saudi Arabia, Israel, UAE and Iran;Africa: South Africa, Nigeria, Egypt and Algeria.For more inquiry before Buying:-The analytical tools such as investment return and feasibility analyses have also been employed in this research to determine the market attractiveness. The report evaluates the products available in the market on the basis of the production volume, their pricing structure, and the revenue generated by them. Production chain and the dynamics of demand and supply has also been assessed in this report. The research report also analyzes the market hierarchy carrying out a SWOT analysis of the key players operating on the EMEA Motor Controllers market in order to provide an overall picture of the competitive landscape in the industry and assist the participants to come up with market winning strategies to gain an edge over their peers.The top players including:-ABB,Nanotec,Rockwell Automation,Bosch,Schneider Electric,General Electronics,Eaton,Zapi Inc USA,Mitsubishi Electric,MCA,Kelly Controls,Aveox,SME Group,ShenZhen V&T Technologies Co.,Ltd.About Research n Reports:Research N Reports is a new age market research firm where we focus on providing information that can be effectively applied. Today being a consumer driven market, companies require information to deal with the complex and dynamic world of choices. Where relying on a sound board firm for your decisions becomes crucial. Research N Reports specializes in industry analysis, market forecasts and as a result getting quality reports covering all verticals, whether be it gaining perspective on current market conditions or being ahead in the cut throat EMEA competition. Since we excel at business research to help businesses grow, we also offer consulting as an extended arm to our services which only helps us gain more insight into current trends and problems. Consequently we keep evolving as an all-rounder provider of viable information under one roof.Contact us:Mr. Sunny DenisContact No. +1-888-631-6977sales@researchnreports.com(ResearchnReports) Know about the future of EMEA (Europe, Middle East And Africa) Emergency Carts Market and what makes it a Booming industry according to following research report: 2017-2022 Research N Reports https://www.researchnreports.com/request_sample.php?id=133891 https://www.researchnreports.com/enquiry_before_buying.php?id=133891 https://www.researchnreports.com/checkout?id=133891 www.researchnreports.com EMEA (Europe, Middle East And Africa) Emergency Carts Market Report 2017- Purchase This Report by calling ResearchnReports.com at +1-888-631-6977.In this report, the analyst presents the scenario of the EMEA (Europe, Middle East And Africa) Emergency Carts Market in the global region and also estimates the growth of the market in the near future. The report estimates the present valuation of the market and forecasts the market size during the next couple of years. The reports serve as a useful guide for the new as well as the existing players in the EMEA (Europe, Middle East And Africa) Emergency Carts market by providing details about the growth opportunities of the market. The report provides the key drivers and restraints propelling and hampering the overall growth of the market worldwide. It also points out the recent trends in the EMEA (Europe, Middle East And Africa) Emergency Carts market and future opportunities for the market to grow.Browse the Sample Report@The report talks about the competitive environment prevailing in the EMEA (Europe, Middle East And Africa) Emergency Carts market worldwide. The report lists the key players in the market and also provides insightful information about them such as their business overview, product segmentation, and revenue segmentation. Further, the report studies the market share held by the key players and forecast their growth during the next couple of years. The report also looks at the latest developments among the key players in the EMEA (Europe, Middle East And Africa) Emergency Carts markets such as partnerships, mergers, and acquisitions.On the basis of product, this report displays the sales volume (K Units), revenue (Million USD), product price (USD/Unit), market share and growth rate of each type, primarily split into; Powered Non-Powered (Mechanical)On the basis on the end users/applications, this report focuses on the status and outlook for major applications/end users, sales volume (K Units), market share and growth rate of Emergency Carts for each application, including:- Hospitals Clinics Ambulatory Surgical Centres OtherEnquire for more Info@EMEA Emergency Carts market competition by top manufacturers/players, with Emergency Carts sales volume (K Units), price (USD/Unit), revenue (Million USD) and market share for each manufacturer/player; the top players including:- Ergotron Capsa Solutions LLC Enovate Medical Herman Miller Omnicell The Harloff Company Medline Industries Advantech JACO Scott-clark Armstrong Medical Industries Waterloo Healthcare Rubbermaid Stanley InterMetro TouchPoint Medical AFC Industries Inc Nanjing TianaoThe report makes use of several analytical tools such as investment feasibility, investment return, and market attractiveness analysis to provide a complete picture of the development of the EMEA (Europe, Middle East And Africa) Emergency Carts market, determining significant market strategies likely to pay off in the long run. The report has provided a clear picture of the market for the readers and players for transparent understandings.Get Discount on Full Premium Report@About Research N Reports:Research N Reports is a new age market research firm where we focus on providing information that can be effectively applied. Today being a consumer driven market, companies require information to deal with the complex and dynamic world of choices. Where relying on a sound board firm for your decisions becomes crucial. Research N Reports specializes in industry analysis, market forecasts and as a result getting quality reports covering all verticals, whether be it gaining perspective on current market conditions or being ahead in the cut throat Asia-Pacific competition. Since we excel at business research to help businesses grow, we also offer consulting as an extended arm to our services which only helps us gain more insight into current trends and problems. Consequently we keep evolving as an all-rounder provider of viable information under one roof.Contact:(Research N Reports)10916, Gold Point Dr, Houston, TX, Pin - 77064,Sunny Denis(Sales Manager),+1-8886316977,sales@researchnreports.com , Find out What Are the Important Factors to Raise Facial recognition Market In Global Level Research N Reports https://goo.gl/SDxP8M https://goo.gl/EkLZo9 https://goo.gl/hvbxHX Facial recognition - Global Market Outlook (2015-2022) Purchase This Report by calling ResearchnReports.com at +1-888-631-6977.A major chunk of the report talks about the technologies that are and will influence the growth of the Facial recognition market. Forecasts for these technology sectors are presented in the report. Integration is the key to advancement in technology in the global Facial recognition market. Companies that offers the latest integrated technologies at an affordable cost are expected to thrive in the Facial recognition market. The dominating technologies in the Facial recognition market along with the upcoming technologies that are expected to revolutionize the market are explained in the reportThe report also elaborates on the opportunities the emerging markets of Asia Pacific and Latin America offer. Furthermore, the cost of raw materials in these nations is low, while the availability is high. This has turned the heads of several major international companies to the emerging countries of Asia Pacific.The key companies operating in the Facial recognition market along with their revenues, market size, key business strategy, key technology strategy, and recent developments is mentioned in the report. In addition to this, valuable recommendations on the opportunities players in the market can tap on is presented in the report. This will help clients to gain a competitive edge in the Facial recognition market.Get Sample Copy of this Report:The report, titled Facial recognition presents an in-depth study of the Facial recognition market. Providing a brief history about the market, the report analyses the entire value chain of the market and points out the key drivers and restraints affecting the growth of the market during the forecast period. The report also analyses the market attractiveness and the effect of Porters Five Forces on the various factors governing the overall Facial recognition market.The report studies the different product segments and end-user applications segment of the Facial recognition market. Compiling important data from relevant sources, the report estimates the growth of individual segments of the market. Also, the market size and the growth rate of each of the market segments have been discussed in the report. The report pays very special attention to the growth exhibited by the Facial recognition market in key geographic segments and talks about all the favorable conditions propelling the market growth. Growth trajectory of the market across the key geographic segments is discussed in the report.Major players in the Facial recognition market have been listed down in the report. The report talks about the key players eyeing the development of the market in emerging economies due to the numerous significant efforts taken by the policymakers to transform the economic landscape. The report also discusses the product offerings and revenue segmentation of the key players to throw light on the highly competitive environment prevailing in the Facial recognition market. Key strategies of growth adopted by leading industry players are also analyzed in detail by the report.Get Discount on this report:The research report Global Facial recognition Market is a market study examining and profiling the current state of the Facial recognition industry in a professional manner. The report systematically categorizes the Facial recognition market, explaining the definition of Facial recognition before making clear the classification of the market by the various parameters employed by market experts. The multiple applications of Facial recognition in the global industrial scenario are profiled along with an explanation of the industry supply and value chain developed around it. The regional segments of the global Facial recognition market are also examined and data gained from this analysis presented. The development trends in and competitive landscape of the Facial recognition market are also studied and data regarding the same is presented in the report.Other industry-related processes about the Facial recognition market, such as a detailed explanation of the manufacturing structure, the financial background of the market, supply and demand dynamics, trade figures, and production value margins are also analyzed in the report. Prime development policies and plans concerning the Facial recognition market are examined with regard to their impact on the market in the forecast period.Table of Content:-1 Executive Summary2 Preface2.1 Abstract2.2 Stake Holders2.3 Research Scope2.4 Research Methodology2.4.1 Data Mining2.4.2 Data Analysis2.4.3 Data Validation2.4.4 Research Approach2.5 Research Sources2.5.1 Primary Research Sources2.5.2 Secondary Research Sources2.5.3 Assumptions3 Market Trend Analysis3.1 Introduction3.2 Drivers3.3 Restraints3.4 Opportunities3.5 Threats3.6 Technology Analysis3.7 Emerging markets4 Porters Five Force Analysis4.1 Bargaining power of suppliers4.2 Bargaining power of buyers4.3 Threat of substitutes4.4 Threat of new entrants4.5 Competitive rivalry5 Global Facial Recognition Market, By Technology5.1 Introduction5.2 Thermal Technology5.3 Mobile Facial Recognition5.4 Forensic technology5.5 Facial Analytics5.6 Emotion Technology5.7 3D Facial Recognition5.8 2D Facial Recognition5.9 Others6 Global Facial Recognition Market, By Service6.1 Introduction6.2 Consulting services6.3 Cloud based services6.4 Others7 Global Facial Recognition Market, By Industry7.1 Introduction7.2 Banking, Financial Services, and Insurance (BFSI)7.3 Government7.4 Homeland Security7.5 Military7.6 Retail Industry7.7 Automotive7.8 Others8 Global Facial Recognition Market, By Software8.1 Introduction8.2 Modeling & Restructuring8.3 Middleware8.4 Facial Recognition Software8.5 Databases8.6 Analytics Solutions8.7 Others9 Global Facial Recognition Market, By Hardware9.1 Introduction9.2 Cameras (Motion Sensing)9.3 Scanners9.4 Handheld Facial Recognition Device9.5 Integrated Devices9.6 Others10 Global Facial Recognition Market, By Geography10.1 North America10.1.1 US10.1.2 Canada10.1.3 Mexico10.2 Europe10.2.1 Germany10.2.2 France10.2.3 Italy10.2.4 UK10.2.5 Spain10.2.6 Rest of Europe10.3 Asia Pacific10.3.1 Japan10.3.2 China10.3.3 India10.3.4 Australia10.3.5 Newzealand10.3.6 Rest of Asia Pacific10.4 Rest of the World10.4.1 Middle East10.4.2 Brazil10.4.3 Argentina10.4.4 South Africa10.4.5 Egypt11 Key Developments11.1 Agreements, Partnerships, Collaborations and Joint Ventures11.2 Acquisitions & Mergers11.3 New Product Launch11.4 Expansions11.5 Other Key Strategies12 Company Profiling12.1 NEC Corporation12.2 Cross Match Technologies Inc.12.3 Animetrics, Inc.12.4 Cognitec Systems12.5 Safran Group (Morpho S.A.)12.6 Aware Inc.,12.7 Ayonix, Inc.12.8 3M Cogent Inc.12.9 FaceFirst Inc.12.10 ZK SoftwareFor More Enquiry On This Report:Company Overview:Research N Reports is a new age market research firm where we focus on providing information that can be effectively applied. Today being a consumer driven market, companies require information to deal with the complex and dynamic world of choices. Where relying on a sound board firm for your decisions becomes crucial. Research N Reports specializes in industry analysis, market forecasts and as a result getting quality reports covering all verticals, whether be it gaining perspective on current market conditions or being ahead in the cut throat United States and Global and Global competition. Since we excel at business research to help businesses grow, we also offer consulting as an extended arm to our services which only helps us gain more insight into current trends and problems. Consequently we keep evolving as an all-rounder provider of viable information under one roof.Contact us:Mr. Sunny DenisContact No. +1-888-631-6977sales@researchnreports.com(ResearchnReports) What will the Global Hyperscale Data Centers Market size and the growth rate be in 2022? Research N Reports https://goo.gl/kn2mZX https://goo.gl/jgMXDg https://goo.gl/J9xMqc Hyperscale Data Centers Market Shares, Strategies, and Forecasts, Worldwide, 2017 to 2023 Purchase This Report by calling ResearchnReports.com at +1-888-631-6977.The research report Global Hyperscale Data Centers Market is a market study examining and profiling the current state of the Hyperscale Data Centers industry in a professional manner. The report systematically categorizes the Hyperscale Data Centers market, explaining the definition of Hyperscale Data Centers before making clear the classification of the market by the various parameters employed by market experts. The multiple applications of Hyperscale Data Centers in the global industrial scenario are profiled along with an explanation of the industry supply and value chain developed around it. The regional segments of the global Hyperscale Data Centers market are also examined and data gained from this analysis presented. The development trends in and competitive landscape of the Hyperscale Data Centers market are also studied and data regarding the same is presented in the report.Other industry-related processes about the Hyperscale Data Centers market, such as a detailed explanation of the manufacturing structure, the financial background of the market, supply and demand dynamics, trade figures, and production value margins are also analyzed in the report. Prime development policies and plans concerning the Hyperscale Data Centers market are examined with regard to their impact on the market in the forecast period.The strong trends shaping the growth pattern of the Hyperscale Data Centers market are examined in the report in detail, in addition to the numerous marketing channels for the industry and their respective importance. In accordance with this information detailing the various aspects of the Hyperscale Data Centers market, the report examines the links between the Hyperscale Data Centers industry and the Hyperscale Data Centers market, including an upstream raw materials and downstream demand analysisGet Sample Copy of this Report:The report analyzes the Hyperscale Data Centers market and gives an intricate examination of its applications. The report includes a detailed cost evaluation analysis of products that are available in the worldwide Hyperscale Data Centers market with regard to existing manufacturer profit margins. It helps figure out the primary driving forces of the Hyperscale Data Centers market in significant end-use organizations around the world. It likewise constitutes a broad investigation of the restraints on the market, business sector structure, and the business pattern of the Hyperscale Data Centers market. Meetings and interviews with the leading market participants have been used in order to present primary information regarding the market.The report is characterized into numerous parts dealing with diverse aspects of the Hyperscale Data Centers market. This research report inspects the present situation and development prognosis of the Hyperscale Data Centers market around the globe during the forecasting horizon. To determine the market size, the report analyzes revenue produced in the Hyperscale Data Centers market worldwide alongside demonstrating the segmentation of the prime producers.Trusted current state analysis tools, such as Porters five forces analysis and SWOT analysis are employed in the report to assess the Hyperscale Data Centers market data to deploy a complete overview of the market.Furthermore, this report gives a complete review of the magnitude and application scope of the Hyperscale Data Centers market around the world. A detailed overview of the purchasing criteria and difficulties confronted in the Hyperscale Data Centers business sector is also elaborated in this report.Get Discount on this report:The market share evaluation of the primary players of the Hyperscale Data Centers market given in the report offers a thorough evaluation of the market shares of the companies profiled in this report. The report fuses an analysis of the company profiles as well as the industry patterns for Hyperscale Data Centers market used transversely over diverse end-use businesses.The report gives a SWOT analysis of the new projects in the international and Hyperscale Data Centers market, investment feasibility, development trends, and investment return analysis of these projects. Study of the Hyperscale Data Centers markets competitive landscape includes data facts and figures about leading countries and suppliers capacity, cost-structures, production values, profits, and gross margins of key businesses operating in the market over the reports review period. The report also provides details such as product picture and specification, and contact information of the companies profiled in the Hyperscale Data Centers markets manufacturer analysis segment.Table of Content:-1. Hyperscale Datacenters: Market Description and MarketDynamics 621.1 Data Center Manager Not Career Track for CEO 621.1.1 Colocation Shared Infrastructure 651.1.2 Power and Data Center Fault Tolerance 681.2 Fiber High Bandwidth Datacenters 711.3 100 Gbps Headed For The Data Center 721.3.1 100 Gbps Adoption 741.4 Scale: Cloud 2.0 Mega Data Center Containers 751.4.1 Data Center Architectures Evolving 751.4.2 High-Performance Cloud Computing Market Segments 781.4.3 Cisco CRS-3 Core Routing Platform 791.5 Evolution of Data Center Strategy 791.6 Cabling in The Datacenter 821.6.1 Datacenter Metrics 861.6.1 Digitalization Forcing Data Centers to Evolve 871.6.2 A One-Stop Shop 871.6.3 Growing With Business 882. Hyperscale Datacenters Market Shares and Forecasts 892.1 Hyperscale Data Center Scale and Automation 892.2 Hyperscale Data Center Market Shares 1052.3 Cloud 2.0 Mega Data Center Market Forecasts 1432.4 Hyperscale Data Center Storage Market Analysis 1522.5 Mega-Datacenter: Internet Giants Continue To Increase Capex 1542.6 Cloud 2.0 Mega Data Center Size 1632.7 Multi-Tenant Data Center Market Shares and Revenue Forecasts 1672.8 Cloud 2.0 Mega Data Center 1752.9 Hyperscale Datacenter Future 1862.9.1 Public Cloud Services Revenue 1942.10 Edge Cloud Data Centers 1942.11 Data Expanding And Tools Used To Share, Store And Analyze Evolving AtPhenomenal Rates 1972.12 Hyperscale Data Center TCO and Pricing: Server vs. Mainframe vs. Cloud vs.Cloud 2.0 2242.13 Cloud Hyperscale Data Center Regional Market Analysis 2493. Hyperscale Datacenter Infrastructure Description 2653.1 Amazon Cloud 2653.2 Facebook 2883.3 Google Meta Data Centers 3313.4 Baidu 4003.5 China Mobile 4033.6 Tencent 4043.7 Smart City Data Center Comes Online 4063.8 Alibaba 4073.9 Yahoo 4083.10 Microsoft 4083.11 Apple3.12 Goldman Sachs 4443.13 Fidelity Investments 4503.14 QTS Custom Data Centers 4523.15 IBM3.16 DuPont Fabros Technology 4823.17 Hewlett Packard 4923.18 NTT Raging Wire 4983.19 Rackspace 5073.20 Equinix3.21 Twitter 5273.22 Bank of America 5283.23 Wells Fargo 5293.24 eBay 5303.25 Switch SuperNAP 5323.26 Cisco 5494. Hyperscale Datacenters Research and Technology 5524.1 Enterprise IT Control Centers 5524.2 Open Compute Project (OCP), 5544.3 Open Source Foundation 5574.4 Equinix Expansion of LD6 International Business Exchange Datacenter 5614.5 Power Management 5634.6 M2M Industry 5644.7 Equinix Cloud Exchange Interconnection Solution 5654.8 System On A Chip (SoCs) for Cloud 2.0 Mega Data Centers 566For More Enquiry On This Report:Company Overview:Research N Reports is a new age market research firm where we focus on providing information that can be effectively applied. Today being a consumer driven market, companies require information to deal with the complex and dynamic world of choices. Where relying on a sound board firm for your decisions becomes crucial. Research N Reports specializes in industry analysis, market forecasts and as a result getting quality reports covering all verticals, whether be it gaining perspective on current market conditions or being ahead in the cut throat United States and Global and Global competition. Since we excel at business research to help businesses grow, we also offer consulting as an extended arm to our services which only helps us gain more insight into current trends and problems. Consequently we keep evolving as an all-rounder provider of viable information under one roof.Contact us:Mr. Sunny DenisContact No. +1-888-631-6977sales@researchnreports.com(ResearchnReports) Find out What Are the Important Factors to Raise Computer Assisted Coding Market In Global Level Research N Reports https://goo.gl/jt1FZU https://goo.gl/CENiSd https://goo.gl/cqMdK4 Computer Assisted Coding Market Shares, Strategies, and Forecasts, Worldwide, 2016 to 2022 Purchase This Report by calling ResearchnReports.com at +1-888-631-6977.A major chunk of the report talks about the technologies that are and will influence the growth of the Computer Assisted Coding market. Forecasts for these technology sectors are presented in the report. Integration is the key to advancement in technology in the global Computer Assisted Coding market. Companies that offers the latest integrated technologies at an affordable cost are expected to thrive in the Computer Assisted Coding market. The dominating technologies in the Computer Assisted Coding market along with the upcoming technologies that are expected to revolutionize the market are explained in the reportThe report also elaborates on the opportunities the emerging markets of Asia Pacific and Latin America offer. Furthermore, the cost of raw materials in these nations is low, while the availability is high. This has turned the heads of several major international companies to the emerging countries of Asia Pacific.The key companies operating in the Computer Assisted Coding market along with their revenues, market size, key business strategy, key technology strategy, and recent developments is mentioned in the report. In addition to this, valuable recommendations on the opportunities players in the market can tap on is presented in the report. This will help clients to gain a competitive edge in the Computer Assisted Coding market.Get Sample Copy of this Report:The report, titled Computer Assisted Coding presents an in-depth study of the Computer Assisted Coding market. Providing a brief history about the market, the report analyses the entire value chain of the market and points out the key drivers and restraints affecting the growth of the market during the forecast period. The report also analyses the market attractiveness and the effect of Porters Five Forces on the various factors governing the overall Computer Assisted Coding market.The report studies the different product segments and end-user applications segment of the Computer Assisted Coding market. Compiling important data from relevant sources, the report estimates the growth of individual segments of the market. Also, the market size and the growth rate of each of the market segments have been discussed in the report. The report pays very special attention to the growth exhibited by the Computer Assisted Coding market in key geographic segments and talks about all the favorable conditions propelling the market growth. Growth trajectory of the market across the key geographic segments is discussed in the report.Major players in the Computer Assisted Coding market have been listed down in the report. The report talks about the key players eyeing the development of the market in emerging economies due to the numerous significant efforts taken by the policymakers to transform the economic landscape. The report also discusses the product offerings and revenue segmentation of the key players to throw light on the highly competitive environment prevailing in the Computer Assisted Coding market. Key strategies of growth adopted by leading industry players are also analyzed in detail by the report.Get Discount on this report:The research report Global Computer Assisted Coding Market is a market study examining and profiling the current state of the Computer Assisted Coding industry in a professional manner. The report systematically categorizes the Computer Assisted Coding market, explaining the definition of Computer Assisted Coding before making clear the classification of the market by the various parameters employed by market experts. The multiple applications of Computer Assisted Coding in the global industrial scenario are profiled along with an explanation of the industry supply and value chain developed around it. The regional segments of the global Computer Assisted Coding market are also examined and data gained from this analysis presented. The development trends in and competitive landscape of the Computer Assisted Coding market are also studied and data regarding the same is presented in the report.Table of Content:-1. Computer Assisted Coding Market Description andMarket Dynamics 341.1 Coding Challenge 34Codes 371.2 Computer-Assisted Coding 381.3 Development of a CAC Tool For Hospital Inpatient Use 42Differences Between CAC Systems 431.4 Healthcare Industry Largest In United States 441.5 Medical Necessity and Medical Necessity Errors 491.6 Physician Office Electronic Coding 501.7 Natural Language Solutions 541.8 Computerized Workflow System 572. Computer Assisted Coding Market Shares and Forecasts2.2 Natural Language Computer Assisted Coding Market Shares 722.3 Natural Language Computer Assisted Coding of Medical ProceduresForecasts 902.4 Worldwide, Number of Patients and Procedures 1202.5 Making The Shift To The Modern ICD-10 Requirements 1242.6 Computer Assisted Coding Prices 1252.7 Computer Assisted Coding Regional Analysis 1263. Computer Assisted Coding Product Description 1303.1 3M 1303.2 Dolbey 1793.3 Optum Coding Service 1873.4 McKesson 1913.5 Cerner Computer Assisted Coding 1963.6 Platocode Computer-Assisted Coding 1993.7 Nuance Computer Assisted Coding 2033.8 Artificial Medical Intelligence Emscribe CAC 2233.9 CodeCorrect 2323.10 M*Modal Coding 2343.11 nThrive / MedAssets-Precyse and Equation 2374. Computer Assisted Coding Research and Technology2404.1 Computer-Assisted Coding Technology 2404.2 Hybrid Technology 2444.3 Optum Computer Assisted Coding Technology 2464.4 Preventable Medical Conditions 2474.5 Natural Language Processing (NLP) Medical Coding 2484.6 Reports Must Be In Some Kind Of Electronic Format 249Architecture 2534.7 TeSSI (Terminology Supported Semantic Indexing) 2545. Computer Assisted Coding Company Profiles 2615.1 CAC Key Market Players 2615.2 3M 2625.3 Artificial Medical Intelligence 2715.4 Cerner 2715.5 Craneware 2735.6 Dolbey 2745.7 EPIC 2745.8 Group One / CodeCorrect 2755.9 M*Modal 2765.10 nThrive 2775.11 Nuance 2785.12 Quest Diagnostics 2825.13 TruCode 2835.14 UnitedHealth Group / Optum 2845.15 Selected CAC Companies 294For More Enquiry On This Report:Company Overview:Research N Reports is a new age market research firm where we focus on providing information that can be effectively applied. Today being a consumer driven market, companies require information to deal with the complex and dynamic world of choices. Where relying on a sound board firm for your decisions becomes crucial. Research N Reports specializes in industry analysis, market forecasts and as a result getting quality reports covering all verticals, whether be it gaining perspective on current market conditions or being ahead in the cut throat United States and Global and Global competition. Since we excel at business research to help businesses grow, we also offer consulting as an extended arm to our services which only helps us gain more insight into current trends and problems. Consequently we keep evolving as an all-rounder provider of viable information under one roof.Contact us:Mr. Sunny DenisContact No. +1-888-631-6977sales@researchnreports.com(ResearchnReports) Marine Black Box Market Scenario, Leading Players, Segments Analysis and Growth Drivers to 2022 https://www.researchnreports.com/request_sample.php?id=126808 https://www.researchnreports.com/ask_for_discount.php?id=126808 https://www.researchnreports.com/checkout?id=126808 www.researchnreports.com This market report is a thorough analysis of the existing situation and the anticipated condition for Marine Black Box market. Investigation for gathering the content for this report is done in depth and meticulously. Present scenarios, past progress, Asia-Pacific recognition and future prospects of Marine Black Box market is offered in this report. Main strategies, market shares, products of the companies and investments in Marine Black Box market is also mentioned in detail.Compressive outline of Marine Black Box market depending on key factors and segmentations such as end users, applications, regions and products is elaborated. Estimated revenue and volume growth of Marine Black Box market over the mentioned forecast period of 2017 to 2022 is also explained in detail. Former and current state of shares of the major key regions are mentioned such that the idea of the best investment region can be drawn out.Asia-Pacific Marine Black Box Market Research Report 2017 Purchase This Report by calling ResearchnReports.com at +1-888-631-6977.Request a Sample Copy of this report @Key Players Furuno Kelvin Hughes Consilium Interschalt Maritime Systems Japan Radio Co Danelec Marine Kongsberg Maritime W?rtsil? SAM Electronics Maretron L-3 Communications Raytheon Anschutz Beijing Highlander Tototheo Group Orolia (Netwave Systems) Northrop Grumman CorporationGet 30% Discount on this report @Market SegmentsOn the basis of product, this report displays the sales volume (K Units), revenue (Million USD), product price (USD/Unit), market share and growth rate of each type, primarily split into General Voyage Data Recorder Simplified Voyage Data RecorderOn the basis on the end users/applications, this report focuses on the status and outlook for major applications/end users, sales volume (K Units), market share and growth rate of Marine Black Box for each application, includin Passenger Ship Cargo Ship Military ShipGeographical AnalysisGeographically, this report split Asia-Pacific into several key Regions, with sales (K Units), revenue (Million USD), market share and growth rate of Marine Black Box for these regions, from 2012 to 2022 (forecast), including China Japan South Korea Taiwan India Southeast Asia AustraliaTo Purchase this report @About Research N Reports:Research N Reports is a new age market research firm where we focus on providing information that can be effectively applied. Today being a consumer driven market, companies require information to deal with the complex and dynamic world of choices. We're relying on a sound board firm for your decisions becomes crucial. Research N Reports specializes in industry analysis, market forecasts and as a result getting quality reports covering all verticals, whether be it gaining perspective on current market conditions or being ahead in the cut throat Asia-Pacific competition. Since we excel at business research to help businesses grow, we also offer to consult as an extended arm of our services which only helps us gain more insight into current trends and problems. Consequently, we keep evolving as an all-rounder provider of viable information under one roof.Contact:(Research N Reports)10916, Gold Point Dr, Houston, TX, Pin - 77064,Sunny Denis(Sales Manager),+1-8886316977,sales@researchnreports.com , Global IoT Healthcare Market Industry, Size, Share, Growth Prospects, Trends and Forecasts-2022 https://www.researchnreports.com/request_sample.php?id=124432 https://www.researchnreports.com/ask_for_discount.php?id=124432 https://www.researchnreports.com/enquiry_before_buying.php?id=124432 Global IoT Healthcare Market Report 2022 Purchase This Report by calling ResearchnReports.com at +1-888-631-6977.The report on the Global IoT Healthcare market is a complete overview of the market, covering various aspects product definition, segmentation based on various parameters, and the prevailing vendor landscape. It compiles in-depth information and research methodologies. It is also combined with relevant charts and tables to enable readers to get a better perspective of this global market.The Global IoT Healthcare market Research Report Forecast 2017-2021 is a valuable source of insightful data for business strategists. It provides industry overview with growth analysis and historical & futuristic cost, revenue, demand and supply data (as applicable). The research analysts provide an elaborate description of the value chain and its distributor. This report provides comprehensive data which enhances the understanding, scope and application of this report.Get Sample Copy of this Report:Various factors are responsible behind the markets growth trail, which are studied at length in the report. In addition, the report lists down the restraints that are posing threat to the Global IoT Healthcare market. It also gauges the bargaining power of suppliers and buyers, threat to the new entrants and product substitute, and the degree of competition prevailing in the market. The influence of the latest government guidelines is also analyzed in detail in the report. It studies the IoT Healthcare markets trajectory between forecast periods.This report studies the global IoT Healthcare market, analyzes and researches its status and forecast in United States, EU, Japan, China, India and Southeast Asia. This report focuses on the top players in global market, like Medtronic PLC, Royal Philips, Cisco Systems, IBM, GE Healthcare, Microsoft, SAP SE, Qualcomm Life, Honeywell Life Care Solutions, Stanley Healthcare.Market segment by Regions/Countries, this report covers, United States, EU, Japan, China, India, Southeast Asia.For More information/Ask for Discount:Benefits of this Report:This report provides pin-point analysis for changing competitive dynamics.It provides a forward looking perspective on different factors driving or restraining market growth.It provides a six-year forecast assessed on the basis of how the market is predicted to grow.It helps in understanding the key product segments and their future.It provides pin point analysis of changing competition dynamics and keeps you ahead of competitors.It helps in making informed business decisions by having complete insights of market and by making in-depth analysis of market segments.For more information/ Ask your queries:The research report further makes use of graphical representations such as tables, info graphics, and charts to forecast figures and historical data of the global IoT Healthcare market. The report is presented in a clear and concise manner so that readers can understand the market structure and dynamics effectively.About Research N Reports:Research N Reports is a new age market research firm where we focus on providing information that can be effectively applied. Today being a consumer driven market, companies require information to deal with the complex and dynamic world of choices. Where relying on a sound board firm for your decisions becomes crucial. Research N Reports specializes in industry analysis, market forecasts and as a result getting quality reports covering all verticals, whether be it gaining perspective on current market conditions or being ahead in the cut throat Global competition. Since we excel at business research to help businesses grow, we also offer consulting as an extended arm to our services which only helps us gain more insight into current trends and problems. Consequently we keep evolving as an all-rounder provider of viable information under one roof.Contact us:Mr. Sunny DenisContact No. +1-888-631-6977sales@researchnreports.com(ResearchnReports)10916, Gold Point, Dr, Houston, TX,Pin - 77064.Email:sales@researchnreports.comPhone:+1 888-631-6977 EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa) Liquid Smoke Market investment Report 2017 https://www.researchnreports.com/request_sample.php?id=121729 https://www.researchnreports.com/ask_for_discount.php?id=121729 https://www.researchnreports.com/enquiry_before_buying.php?id=121729 https://www.researchnreports.com/food-beverages/EMEA-Europe-Middle-East-and-Africa-Liquid-Smoke-Market-Report-2017-121729 The report on the EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa) Liquid Smoke market is a meticulous piece of work and is assembled by leading both primary as well as secondary research. The data included in the report has been taken by consulting high-quality references, case studies, press releases, and by taking inputs from top industry leaders. The top segments in the market have been highlighted clearly in this report for the readers to understand in a precised manner. These segments have been presented by giving information on their current and predicted state by the end of the forecast period. The information presented would help the upcoming players to gauge the investment scope within the segments and sub-segments of the market.Various factors are responsible behind the markets growth trail, which are studied at length in the report. In addition, the report lists down the restraints that are posing threat to the EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa) Liquid Smoke market. It also gauges the bargaining power of suppliers and buyers, threat to the new entrants and product substitute, and the degree of competition prevailing in the market. The influence of the latest government guidelines is also analyzed in detail in the report. It studies the markets trajectory between forecast periods.For sample copy of this report visit:As the EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa) Liquid Smoke market is segmented based on various parameters, an in-depth classification of the market is also mentioned; elements impacting the markets growth are studied in detail to understand the report precisely. Moreover this, profiles of some of the leading players operating in the market are included in the report. Using SWOT analysis, their weaknesses and strengths are analyzed. It helps the study deliver visions into the opportunities and threats that companies may face during the forecast period.Geographically, this report split EMEA into Europe, the Middle East and Africa, from 2012 to 2022 (forecast)Europe: Germany, France, UK, Russia, Italy and Benelux;Middle East: Saudi Arabia, Israel, UAE and Iran;Africa: South Africa, Nigeria, Egypt and Algeria.Get discount on this report:This report presents a 360-degree overview of the competitive scenario of the EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa) Liquid Smoke market. The report includes massive data relating to the recent product and technological developments observed in the market, complete with an analysis of the impact of these advancements on the markets future development. The research report analyzes the market in a detailed manner by explaining the key aspects of the market that are expected to have a quantifiable influence on its developmental prospects over the forecast period.For enquiry before buying visit:The top players including Kerry Besmoke FRUTAROM Savory Solutions Azelis Redbrook Ingredient Services MSK Specialist Ingredients Red Arrow InternationalThis report delves into the complete scenario of the EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa) Liquid Smoke market. During the research, it has found that the driving force behind this market is the consumers demand for the products. The growing consumers demand is pushing companies to come up with efficient products which in turn is aiding the growth of the industry.For report link:Reasons for Buying this ReportThis report provides pin-point analysis for changing competitive dynamics It provides a forward looking perspective on different factors driving or restraining market growth It provides a six-year forecast assessed on the basis of how the market is predicted to grow It helps in understanding the key product segments and their future It provides pin point analysis of changing competition dynamics and keeps you ahead of competitors It helps in making informed business decisions by having complete insights of market and by making in-depth analysis of market segmentsResearch N Reports is a new age market research firm where we focus on providing information that can be effectively applied. Today being a consumer driven market, companies require information to deal with the complex and dynamic world of choices. Where relying on a sound board firm for your decisions becomes crucial. Research N Reports specializes in industry analysis, market forecasts and as a result getting quality reports covering all verticals, whether be it gaining perspective on current market conditions or being ahead in the cut throat Global competition. Since we excel at business research to help businesses grow, we also offer consulting as an extended arm to our services which only helps us gain more insight into current trends and problems. Consequently we keep evolving as an all-rounder provider of viable information under one roof.Contact us:Mr. Sunny DenisContact No. +1-888-631-6977sales@researchnreports.com(Research n Reports) Europe Anti-Aging Products and Therapies Market Analysis & Trends - Industry Forecast to 2021 http://researchnreports.com/request_sample.php?id=15974 https://researchnreports.com/enquiry_before_buying.php?id=15974 https://researchnreports.com/pharma-healthcare/Europe-Anti-Aging-Products-and-Therapies-Market-Report-2016-15974 Europe Anti-Aging Products and Therapies Market Report 2016 Purchase This Report by calling ResearchnReports.com at +1-888-631-6977.Anti-aging supplements are a set of products that often include powdered supplements, skin creams, vitamins, and facial masks. They are designed to reduce or diminish the effects of aging.The research report comprises key growth drivers and barriers of the Europe Anti-Aging Products and Therapies Market, including their impact on production and demand in the next few years. The research report on Europe Anti-Aging Products and Therapies market offers a clear understanding of the market, focusing on the key growth factors and potential opportunities. The market share, consumption, revenue, and size of each segment have been provided in the study. A list of all the prominent players operating in the Anti-Aging Products and Therapies market across the globe has been presented along with detailed company profiles and major developments.Download PDF Sample Copy:The product specifications, major geographical segments, and competitive analysis of the Europe market have also been discussed in detail in the research report. It presents future projections of the Anti-Aging Products and Therapies market on a Europe as well as on regional level. In addition, a detailed value chain analysis has been included to present a comprehensive view of the market.The research study further presents the past performance of the Europe Anti-Aging Products and Therapies market, coupled with the statistics from 2016 to 2021 on the basis of volume and revenue. It further includes the market attractiveness analysis, in which the product segments are studied based on growth rate, market size, and general attractiveness. The product portfolio, financial status, and business policies of these players are studied in the report in detail.Scope of the Report:This report focuses on the Anti-Aging Products and Therapies in Europe Market, especially in North America, Europe and Asia-Pacific, South America, Middle East and Africa. This report categorizes the market based on manufacturers, regions, type and application.Market Segment by Manufacturers, this report coversAllergan IncAlberto Culver CompanyAvon Products IncBeiersdorfBio Pharma US CorpBayer Schering Pharma AGChanel SAChristian DiorClarinsElizabeth Arden IncElla BacheEstee Lauder IncIpsenLanzhou InstituteCorneal(Allergan)GaldermalLG Life ScienceBohus BioTechIMEIKMerckGaoxinFor more Details - Enquiry Here:Table of Contents:Europe Anti-Aging Products and Therapies Market Report 20161 Anti-Aging Products and Therapies Overview2 Europe Anti-Aging Products and Therapies by Manufacturers, Type and Application3 Germany Anti-Aging Products and Therapies (Volume, Value and Sales Price)4 France Anti-Aging Products and Therapies (Volume, Value and Sales Price)5 UK Anti-Aging Products and Therapies (Volume, Value and Sales Price)6 Russia Anti-Aging Products and Therapies (Volume, Value and Sales Price)7 Italy Anti-Aging Products and Therapies (Volume, Value and Sales Price)8 Spain Anti-Aging Products and Therapies (Volume, Value and Sales Price)9 Benelux Anti-Aging Products and Therapies (Volume, Value and Sales Price)10 Europe Anti-Aging Products and Therapies Manufacturers AnalysisComplete Report Detail:About Research n Reports:Research N Reports is a new age market research firm where we focus on providing information that can be effectively applied. Today being a consumer driven market, companies require information to deal with the complex and dynamic world of choices. Where relying on a sound board firm for your decisions becomes crucial. Research N Reports specializes in industry analysis, market forecasts and as a result getting quality reports covering all verticals, whether be it gaining perspective on current market conditions or being ahead in the cut throat Europe competition. Since we excel at business research to help businesses grow, we also offer consulting as an extended arm to our services which only helps us gain more insight into current trends and problems. Consequently we keep evolving as an all-rounder provider of viable information under one roof.Contact us:Mr. Sunny DenisContact No. +1-888-631-6977sales@researchnreports.com(Research N Reports) DECATUR Board members halted a plan to fix up the exterior of the Decatur Township building Wednesday after experiencing sticker shock at the estimated cost of $107,405. The expenditure would have come on top of more than $1.74 million in public money spent on the building at 1620 S. Taylorville Road in the last decade, according to a review of billing records obtained by the Herald & Review earlier this year through the Freedom of Information Act. The township's board of trustees rejected the bid from Springfield-based Evans-Mason Inc. to work on the building's exterior trim, venting, windows, cracked mortar and various leaky areas. Board members did not vote on the contract but said they would not support the higher-than-anticipated expense. That was a big surprise, Supervisor Lisa Stanley said after the meeting, referring to the estimate. Im not sure how they came up with that high of a number. Officials had hoped that work could be done before the end of the summer, but those plans are now on hold as Stanley said the board will reconsider its priorities. In addition, Stanley said she plans to reach out to local contractors to gauge interest in making future bids for the project. The township bought the 20,000-square-foot building in 2007 for about $300,000 and has spent $1.4 million on renovations since then. All of the money is from a capital reserve fund set aside for buying and maintaining buildings. The work that board members rejected Wednesday had been identified during an inspection last year by the Central Illinois Inspection Corp. The group, which verified its results again in June, highlighted issues with the trim, parts of the roof and venting system. The cost for inspections was about $600, Stanley said. The township's board voted in June to spend $35,600 on interior work on the building's second floor. That work, by Decatur-based Jones & Sullivan Enterprises, includes carpet cleaning, painting and patching the walls in the 2,041 square feet available for rent on the second floor, as well as wall patching and carpet replacement in the township assessors office. Ink&Toner Market Size, Trend, Applications, Analysis, Industry Key Players, Share by Region & 2017-2022 Growth Rate Forecast Report Research N Reports https://www.researchnreports.com/request_sample.php?id=130742 https://www.researchnreports.com/enquiry_before_buying.php?id=130742 www.researchnreports.com Ink&Toner Report 2017 Purchase This Report by calling researchnReports.com at +1-888-631-6977The report evaluates the figures of the global Ink&Toner market and presents reliable forecasts as to the markets growth prospects over the coming years. The historical development trajectory of the global market is examined in the report, offering solid factual support to the analysis and estimations presented in the report. The geographical and competitive dynamics of this global market are also presented in the report, helping deliver a comprehensive picture of the market.According to the research report, the growing Ink&Toner market is likely to boost the global market substantially over the forthcoming years. Apart from this, the increasing number of driving is projected to add to the growth of this market significantly in the near future. The worldwide market is analyzed on the basis of the various segments and the geographical reach of this market. How the market's segments are propelling the market in the market scenario is mentioned in this report. The continual rising factors boosting the demand for Ink&Toner market notes the research study. The study report further includes a detailed impression of the competitive landscape and regulatory framework of the global Ink&Toner market. This report will further provide readers/customers a picture clear understanding of the market of competition, threats, major opportunities, and the major rules, regulations, plans, and policies impacting the market.Download Sample Copy@The global Ink&Toner market is driven by the many rising factors which result in fueling the market globally are included in this report. How an improvement in the economic growth is also boosting the Ink&Toner industry is given. Rising urbanization is expected to aid the markets growth. Increased globalization is yet another factor benefitting the Ink&Toner industry. However, factors that may hamper the growth of the industry is also discussed in this report for the readers understanding.The study also examines the numerous policies that regulate processes in the global Ink&Toner industry, precisely, the ones that are currently active, along with an analysis of the top news stories about the global Ink&Toner industry. This report also offers an important analytical guidance on the trends and developments in this industry. The report also provides a professional and comprehensive analysis on the global Ink&Toner market while articulating industry insights into its current state of affairs.Regions Covered:United StatesChinaEuropeJapanSoutheast AsiaIndiaOther industry related processes about the Ink&Toner, such as a detailed explanation of the manufacturing structure, the financial background of the market, supply and demand dynamics, trade figures, and production value margins are also analyzed in the report. Prime development policies and plans concerning that market are examined with regard to their impact on the market in the forecast period.Ask Your Query/Enquiry for this Report@On the basis of product type, the Ink&Toner has been classified and clarified. Furthermore, on the basis of application, others segment which has been sub-classified are also mentioned in the study. The share and size of each segment have been presented in the research study along with the estimated growth rate.Contents Added:Ink&Toner OverviewGlobal Market Competition by Players/Suppliers, Type and ApplicationGlobal Sales (Volume, Value and Sales Price)The Players/Suppliers Profiles and Sales DataThe Manufacturing Cost AnalysisMarketing Strategy Analysis, Distributors/TradersMarket Effect Factors AnalysisInk&Toner Forecast (2017-2022)Key players:BrotherCanonEpsonLexmarkSamsungDICFlint GroupApplication Including:PrintingOthersVarious factors are responsible for the markets growth trajectory, which are studied at length in the report. In addition, the report lists down the restraints that are posing threat to the global Ink&Toner market. The projections featured in the report have been derived using proven research methodologies and assumptions. By doing so, the research report serves as a repository of analysis and information for every facet of the market, including but not limited to: Regional markets, technology, types, and applications.About Research N Reports:Research N Reports is a new age market research firm where we focus on providing information that can be effectively applied. Today being a consumer driven market, companies require information to deal with the complex and dynamic world of choices. Where relying on a sound board firm for your decisions becomes crucial. Research N Reports specializes in industry analysis, market forecasts and as a result getting quality reports covering all verticals, whether be it gaining perspective on current market conditions or being ahead in the cut throat Global competition. Since we excel at business research to help businesses grow, we also offer consulting as an extended arm to our services which only helps us gain more insight into current trends and problems. Consequently we keep evolving as an all-rounder provider of viable information under one roof.Contact:(Research N Reports)10916, Gold Point Dr, Houston, TX, Pin - 77064,Sunny Denis(Sales Manager),+1-8886316977,sales@researchnreports.com , EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa Endotracheal Tube Securement Devices Market Report 2017 by Product, Application, Manufacturer, Sales and Segmentation https://goo.gl/wjDdaJ https://goo.gl/bPXXWA https://goo.gl/cpoLfa www.researchnreports.com Research N Reports has lately issued a new market assessment report titled Endotracheal Tube Securement Devices Market Growth, Future Scenarios, and Competitive Analysis, 2017 2025. The EMEA Endotracheal Tube Securement Devices Market study provides a widespread understanding of the current and upcoming stages of the Endotracheal Tube Securement Devices Market industry based on factors such as major marketable events, research ingenuities, management stratagems, market drivers, challenges and prospects and all-inclusive industry segmentation and regional distribution.Download PDF Sample@EMEA (Europe, Middle East, and Africa) Endotracheal Tube Securement Devices Market Report 2017 By Product, Application, Manufacturer, Sales and Segmentation Purchase This Report by calling ResearchnReports.com at +1-888-631-6977.Based on geography, the EMEA Endotracheal Tube Securement Devices Market is studied for key provincial markets concentrating on the particular topographical trends and statistics, and by this means distributing market size and forecast values. To offer a clear understanding of the EMEA Endotracheal Tube Securement Devices Market, several questions have been addressed in the research study concerning the growth of the EMEA Endotracheal Tube Securement Devices Market t. It is also been discussed with respect to projected growth rate of the EMEA Endotracheal Tube Securement Devices Market in the near future. Also, depending on the ongoing trend of the market, the region which is anticipated to witness high growth in the next few years is studied in detail.The Endotracheal Tube Securement Devices Market in each individual country market is studied based on factors such as per capita income, the populace, GDP, the status of infrastructure, acquiring power parity, etc. Technology progression, industry cognizance, end-user preference, and similar such grounds are also considered while considering the market for Endotracheal Tube Securement Devices Market. The market conjectures are provided for the period 2017-2025, along with equivalent compounded annual growth rates (CAGRs) for the prognosis period 2017-2025.Purchase with Discounted Price@Geographically, this report split EMEA into Europe, the Middle East, and Africa, with sales (K Units), revenue (Million USD), market share and growth rate of Endotracheal Tube Securement Devices for these regions, from 2012 to 2022 (forecast) Europe: Germany, France, UK, Russia, Italy, and Benelux; Middle East: Saudi Arabia, Israel, UAE, and Iran; Africa: South Africa, Nigeria, Egypt, and Algeria.Inquiry before Buying This Report@This report on Endotracheal Tube Securement Devices Market also offers competition estimation tools such as market positioning of key players, outstanding investment proposition, and Porters Five Forces model to give the readers a view of the reasonable consequence of the Endotracheal Tube Securement Devices Market. The Endotracheal Tube Securement Devices Market report is settled with company profiles chapter. This section high points major statistics about the key players engaged in growth, manufacture, distribution, and sale of Endotracheal Tube Securement Devices Market in the EMEA markets.Market Segment-On the basis of product, this report displays the sales volume (K Units), revenue (Million USD), product price (USD/Unit), market share and growth rate of each type, primarily split into Tracheal Intubation Stabilization Device OtherOn the basis of the end users/applications, this report focuses on the status and outlook for major applications/end users, sales volume (K Units), market share and growth rate of Endotracheal Tube Securement Devices for each application, including Hospitals Clinics Ambulatory Surgery Centers Diagnostic LaboratoriesAbout Research N Reports:Research N Reports is a new age market research firm where we focus on providing information that can be effectively applied. Today being a consumer driven market, companies require information to deal with the complex and dynamic world of choices. We're relying on a sound board firm for your decisions becomes crucial. Research N Reports specializes in industry analysis, market forecasts and as a result getting quality reports covering all verticals, whether be it gaining perspective on current market conditions or being ahead in the cut throat Asia-Pacific competition. Since we excel at business research to help businesses grow, we also offer to consult as an extended arm of our services which only helps us gain more insight into current trends and problems. Consequently, we keep evolving as an all-rounder provider of viable information under one roof.Contact:(Research N Reports)10916, Gold Point Dr, Houston, TX, Pin - 77064,Sunny Denis(Sales Manager),+1-8886316977,sales@researchnreports.com , Global Veterinary Pain Management Drugs Sales Market Report 2017 Veterinary Pain Management Drugs https://www.24lifesciences.com/report-sample/global-veterinary-pain-management-drugs-sales-market-report-2017 https://www.24lifesciences.com/healthcare/global-veterinary-pain-management-drugs-sales-market-report-2017 Geographically, this report split global into several key Regions, with sales (K Units), revenue (Million USD), market share and growth rate of Veterinary Pain Management Drugs for these regions, from 2012 to 2022 (forecast), covering United States China Europe Japan Southeast Asia IndiaGlobal Veterinary Pain Management Drugs market competition by top manufacturers/players, with Veterinary Pain Management Drugs sales volume, Price (USD/Unit), revenue (Million USD) and market share for each manufacturer/player; the top players including Boehringer Ingelheim Merck & Co Zoetis Elanco Bayer Pharma AG Ceva Sante Animale Norbrook Laboratories Baxter Halyard Bostonscientific Lilly Endo International Forest Laboratories Medtronic Jnj Dechra Virbac VetoquinolGet Free PDF sampleOn the basis of product, this report displays the production, revenue, price, market share and growth rate of each type, primarily split into Opioids 2-Adrenergic Agonists Local Anesthetics Nonsteroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drugs (NSIDs) Sedatives Corticosteroids OtherOn the basis on the end users/applications, this report focuses on the status and outlook for major applications/end users, sales volume, market share and growth rate of Veterinary Pain Management Drugs for each application, including Veterinary Hospitals Veterinary ClinicsTable of Contents-Global Veterinary Pain Management Drugs Sales Market Report 20171 Veterinary Pain Management Drugs Market Overview2 Global Veterinary Pain Management Drugs Competition by Players/Suppliers, Type and Application3 United States Veterinary Pain Management Drugs (Volume, Value and Sales Price)4 China Veterinary Pain Management Drugs (Volume, Value and Sales Price)5 Europe Veterinary Pain Management Drugs (Volume, Value and Sales Price)6 Japan Veterinary Pain Management Drugs (Volume, Value and Sales Price)7 Southeast Asia Veterinary Pain Management Drugs (Volume, Value and Sales Price)8 India Veterinary Pain Management Drugs (Volume, Value and Sales Price)BROWSE FULL REPORT @Life Science Market Research(LSMR) firm is specialized in market research , that helps companies in the field of life science to achieve growth and success by providing market intelligence.New York City Zone 01, United Stateshelp@24lifesciences.comInt'l: (+1) 646 781 7170UK(Toll free): +44 800 088 5734 Digital Procurement: Consistent Global Prices In Real-time http://hubs.ly/H08g2l50 http://hubs.ly/H08g2l50 www.JAGGAER.com www.pool4tool.com JAGGAER Presents New Global Price Management FeatureVienna | Research Triangle, NC, USA, August 02, 2017 International companies that want to buy at the same prices around the globe finally have the tool theyve been waiting for. JAGGAER, provider of the worlds most comprehensive Source to Pay (S2P) suite for indirect and direct spend solutions, presents its new product, Global Price Management. Global Price Management makes it easy to compare international prices and ensures transparency throughout the company. The innovative product was developed and created in cooperation with MTU Friedrichsthafen, the main company of Rolls-Royce Power Systems. Read the full success story here: International companies are often faced with the problem of paying different prices in different locations for the same product, produced by the same manufacturer. How is that possible? One of the reasons for this problem is a lack of transparency when it comes to global pricing information. The relevant terms and conditions are often only available locally and in different ERP systems, which makes it difficult to access this information quickly, explains Thomas Dieringer, Managing Director of JAGGAER, EMEA. If prices are not stored centrally, but rather within individual, local purchasing organizations, then the company may be missing out on valuable savings opportunities that can result from buying in bulk or bundling effects.Global Price Comparisons in Real-TimeJAGGAER, the digital procurement specialist, has solved the challenges of global price comparison with the new Global Price Management module. First, JAGGAER harmonizes all of the supplier data and price information from all of the companys local purchasing organizations. By fully integrating with the ERP systems, all of the data can be viewed and accessed easily in the procurement tool. The next step is to split the total price into global and local price components. The global price components refer to the basic price and the international terms and conditions. Packaging, transport, customs, and additional costs are included in the local price components.If a buyer negotiates a new price, he or she can add the price directly into JAGGAER. From there, the information is distributed to the connected ERP systems so that all of the companys purchasing organizations have access to the same price information in real-time. This means that manually updating price information is no longer necessary because the information is updated immediately. This digital connection makes it easier for purchasing organizations to communicate and speeds up internal release processes.Read more:JAGGAER offers the only comprehensive and complete spend solution suites enabling commerce between any businesses, anywhere. We pioneered spend solutions over two decades ago and have continued to lead the innovation curve by listening to customers and analyzing the market. Our solutions suites are trusted by the world's largest higher education, manufacturing, pharmaceutical, life sciences, automotive, engineering, construction equipment, serial production and medical technology companies. Our indirect and direct spend solutions suites collectively form a global network processing billions of dollars in annual spend between 900+ customers and 2.5 million suppliers. JAGGAERs SaaS based, Source to Pay (S2P) solutions enable an efficient relationship between buyers and suppliers, covering the entire spectrum of needs, from spend analysis to sourcing, through contract and supplier relationship management. Additionally, JAGGAER holds 38 patents, more than any other spend management company, and acquired POOL4TOOL in 2017. Learn how our solutions can power your organization.JAGGAER | Kathrin Kornfeld | Corporate Communications Manager | Wienerbergstrae 11 | A-1100 Vienna | Phone: +43 (1) 80 490 80 | Email: kathrin.kornfeld@pool4tool.com Smart Glasses become a New Standard for Logistics http://www.dpdhl.com/en/media_relations/press_releases/2017/dhl_supply_chain_smart_glasses_standard_logistics.html www.ubimax.com After successfully demonstrating concrete business benefits in several international xPick deployments, DHL announces Augmented Reality and Smart Glasses business-as-usual in warehouses around the globe.Bremen, August 2nd 2017: Ubimax vision picking application, xPick, has been integrated into multiple operations at DHL as part of its Vision Picking Program, delivering substantial benefits to their business processes. xPick, deployed on Smart Glasses including Glass Enterprise Edition, Vuzix M100 and M300, has delivered these benefits across several industries via a hands-free operation, an intuitive graphical User Interface and relevant information in field of view. These benefits were clearly demonstrated during DHLs pilot program. Following the successful completion of live deployments across multiple regions, DHL Supply Chain, the contract logistics specialist within Deutsche Post DHL Group, has now announced Smart Glasses and Augmented Reality as the new standard in order picking.The vision picking application xPick provides intuitive graphical displays for single and multi-order picking instructions information on the items shelf and picking cart location, leaving the pickers hands free of paper based instructions. This allows pickers to work more efficiently and ergonomically. xPick confirmations via Ring Scanners and the built-in camera of Smart Glasses contributed to both performance increases as well as work environment ergonomics at DHL, with operations showing an average productivity improvement of 15 percent and improved accuracy rates. The intuitive solution has also halved onboarding and training times for employees using the state-of-the-art technology at DHL sites. Employees have been enthusiastic and are pleased with how light the smart glasses are, and how comfortable the process is now with hands-free picking.It is great to see how an internationally renowned company like DHL significantly benefits and has come to rely on our vision picking technology says Dr. Hendrik Witt, CEO, Ubimax. DHL demonstrates the potential xPick and Smart Glasses can unlock in warehouses and sets a leading example in the evolution of Wearable Technology becoming mainstream for enterprises.The technology has matured to become a standard, replicable solution for customers. Following the success of its Vision Picking Program, DHL is looking into additional applications for Augmented and Virtual Reality such as training, maintenance, dimension calculations and more.Official DHL Press Release and Video:About UbimaxUbimax is a global market leader for industrial Wearable Computing solutions, creating full, end to end, integrated solutions that incorporate the latest Wearable Computing technologies to improve business operations. Ubimax solutions have received numerous awards, including: Auggie Award for Best Enterprise Solution, MHI Innovation Award for Best IT Innovation, and winner of the SAP & Google Glass Challenge. Ubimax has been recognized as the leader in Enterprise Wearables and Augmented Reality Solutions by ABI Research.With offices in Germany, the U.S. and Mexico, Ubimax today serves more than 150 customers globally. Leveraging over 10 years of experience as well as an extensive track-record in the fields of Wearable Computing, Augmented Reality, Mixed Reality and Sensor Systems, Ubimax technological innovations continue to be at the very forefront of Wearable Computing solutions.Ubimax GmbHJulia WidmerEmail: info@ubimax.comPhone: +42 421 33 558 300 Pc Website Builders Market Forecast 2017-2022 Homestead, Jimdo, Ibuilt, Weebly, Dudaone, Godaddy, Wix Pc Website Builders http://bit.ly/2w5JxQ9 http://www.spiremarketresearch.com/global-pc-website-builders-market-2017-demand-insights-key-palyers-segmentation-and-forecast-to-2022/ Pc Website Builders Market Research ReportThe Global Pc Website Builders Market 2017 Industry Research Report is a in-depth study and professional analysis on the current state of the Pc Website Builders market.Firstly, Worldwide Pc Website Builders Market report provides a basic overview of the Pc Website Builders industry including classification, definitions, Key vendors, Growth Drivers, Competitive Landscape, Regional Analysis and Pc Website Builders industry chain structure.Enquiry Here:Major Companies covered in this Research Report are,WeeblySquarespaceWixDudaoneYolaJimdoYahooGodaddyHomesteadIbuiltPc Website Builders Market: By ProductLaptopsDesktopsPc Website Builders Market: By ApplicationPersonal WebsiteSchool Or College WebsiteBusiness WebsiteGlobal Pc Website Builders Market analysis is provided for the international industry including company development history, Pc Website Builders market competitive landscape, Regional analysis and major regions development status on industry Market scenario.Secondly, Pc Website Builders Market report includes, development policies and plans are discussed, manufacturing processes and cost structures. This Pc Website Builders Industry report also states import/export, supply and consumption figures as well as cost, price, Global Pc Website Builders Market revenue and gross margin by regions (South East Asia, India, North America, Europe, Japan and China) and also other can be added.To Get Complete Report Click Here:Then, the report pay attention on worldwide major leading market players (in Pc Website Builders industry area) with information such as Company Profile, Sales Volume, Price, Gross Margin and contact information. Global Pc Website Builders Industry report also includes Upstream & downstream consumers analysis, raw materials.All above Company Profile, Capacity, Production, Price, Cost, Revenue, Supply, Import, Export and Consumption covered in Pc Website Builders industry report.About Us:"Spire Market Research" is a leading market intelligence team which accredits and provides the reports of some of the top publishers in the field of technology industry. We are as a firm expertise in making extensive reports that cover all the necessary details about the market assessments such as major technological improvement in the industry.Contact Us5001 Spring Valley Road,Suite 400 East,Dallas, TX 75244, USA Mass Notification Systems World Market Forecast 2021 by Industry Trends, size, market share estimates and Profiles of leading Players Omnilert, Send Word Now https://www.htfmarketreport.com/sample-report/219747-world-mass-notification-systems-market https://www.htfmarketreport.com/enquiry-before-buy/219747-world-mass-notification-systems-market https://www.htfmarketreport.com/reports/219747-world-mass-notification-systems-market https://www.htfmarketreport.com/buy-now?format=1&report=219747 HTF Market Intelligence released a new research report of 117 pages on title 'World Mass Notification Systems Market by Product Type, Market, Players and Regions-Forecast to 2021' with detailed analysis, forecast and strategies. The study covers key regions that includes USA, Europe, Japan, China, India and important players such as Omnilert, Send Word Now, Xmatters, Everbridge, etc.Request a sample report @SummaryThe Mass Notification Systems market research report provides the newest industry data and industry future trends, allowing you to identify the products and end users driving Revenue growth and profitability.The industry report lists the leading competitors and provides the insights strategic industry Analysis of the key factors influencing the market.The report includes the forecasts, Analysis and discussion of important industry trends, market size, market share estimates and profiles of the leading industry Players.Global Mass Notification Systems Market: Product Segment AnalysisDeployment TypeOn-premiseOn-demandBy SolutionIn-building SolutionWide-area SolutionGlobal Mass Notification Systems Market: Application Segment AnalysisInteroperable Emergency CommunicationsBusiness Continuity & Disaster RecoveryIntegrated Public Alert & WarningBusiness OperationsGlobal Mass Notification Systems Market: Regional Segment AnalysisUSAEuropeJapanChinaIndiaSouth East AsiaThe Players mentioned in our reportAthoc Inc.Cooper Industries (Eaton Corporation)Mir3, Inc.Mircom Group of CompaniesOmnilertSend Word NowXmattersEverbridgeFor Discount, Enquire Now @Table of ContentChapter 1 About the Mass Notification Systems Industry1.1 Industry Definition1.1.1 Types of Mass Notification Systems industry1.1.1.1 Deployment Type1.1.1.2 On-premise1.1.1.3 On-demand1.1.1.4 By Solution1.1.1.5 In-building Solution1.1.1.6 Wide-area Solution1.2 Main Market Activities1.3 Similar Industries1.4 Industry at a GlanceChapter 2 World Market Competition Landscape2.1 Mass Notification Systems Markets by Regions2.1.1 USAMarket Revenue (M USD) by Types, Through 2021Market Revenue (M USD) by Applications, Through 2021Major Players Revenue (M USD) in 20152.1.2 EuropeMarket Revenue (M USD) by Types, Through 2021Market Revenue (M USD) by Applications, Through 2021Major Players Revenue (M USD) in 20152.1.3 ChinaMarket Revenue (M USD) by Types, Through 2021Market Revenue (M USD) by Applications, Through 2021Major Players Revenue (M USD) in 2015Read Detailed Table of Content @2.1.4 IndiaMarket Revenue (M USD) by Types, Through 2021Market Revenue (M USD) by Applications, Through 2021Major Players Revenue (M USD) in 20152.1.5 JapanMarket Revenue (M USD) by Types, Through 2021Market Revenue (M USD) by Applications, Through 2021Major Players Revenue (M USD) in 20152.1.6 South East AsiaMarket Revenue (M USD) by Types, Through 2021Market Revenue (M USD) by Applications, Through 2021Major Players Revenue (M USD) in 20152.2 World Mass Notification Systems Market by TypesDeployment TypeOn-premiseOn-demandBy SolutionIn-building SolutionWide-area Solution2.3 World Mass Notification Systems Market by ApplicationsInteroperable Emergency CommunicationsBusiness Continuity & Disaster RecoveryIntegrated Public Alert & WarningBusiness Operations2.4 World Mass Notification Systems Market Analysis2.4.1 World Mass Notification Systems Market Revenue and Growth Rate 2011-20162.4.2 World Mass Notification Systems Market Consumption and Growth rate 2011-20162.4.3 World Mass Notification Systems Market Price Analysis 2011-2016Chapter 3 World Mass Notification Systems Market share3.1 Major Production Market share by Players3.2 Major Revenue (M USD) Market share by Players3.3 Major Production Market share by ContinuedBuy this report @HTF Market Report is a wholly owned brand of HTF market Intelligence Consulting Private Limited. HTF Market Report global research and market intelligence consulting organization is uniquely positioned to not only identify growth opportunities but to also empower and inspire you to create visionary growth strategies for futures, enabled by our extraordinary depth and breadth of thought leadership, research, tools, events and experience that assist you for making goals into a reality. Our understanding of the interplay between industry convergence, Mega Trends, technologies and market trends provides our clients with new business models and expansion opportunities. We are focused on identifying the Accurate Forecast in every industry we cover so our clients can reap the benefits of being early market entrants and can accomplish their Goals & Objectives.Contact us :HTF Market Intelligence Consulting Private LimitedUnit No. 429, Parsonage Road Edison, NJNew Jersey USA 08837sales@htfmarketreport.com+1 (206) 317 1218 Offshore Wind Turbine Installation Vessel World Market Forecast 2021 provides Production, Revenue and Market share of manufacturer Swire Blue Ocean, Gaoh Offshore https://www.htfmarketreport.com/sample-report/219750-world-offshore-wind-turbine-installation-vessel-market https://www.htfmarketreport.com/enquiry-before-buy/219750-world-offshore-wind-turbine-installation-vessel-market https://www.htfmarketreport.com/reports/219750-world-offshore-wind-turbine-installation-vessel-market https://www.htfmarketreport.com/buy-now?format=1&report=219750 HTF Market Intelligence released a new research report of 114 pages on title 'World Offshore Wind Turbine Installation Vessel Market by Product Type, Market, Players and Regions-Forecast to 2021' with detailed analysis, forecast and strategies. The study covers key regions that includes USA, Europe, Japan, China, India and important players such as Swire Blue Ocean, Gaoh Offshore, Seajacks, Pella Sietas, etcRequest a sample report @SummaryThe Offshore Wind Turbine Installation Vessel market research report provides the newest industry data and industry future trends, allowing you to identify the products and end users driving Revenue growth and profitability.The industry report lists the leading competitors and provides the insights strategic industry Analysis of the key factors influencing the market.The report includes the forecasts, Analysis and discussion of important industry trends, market size, market share estimates and profiles of the leading industry Players.Global Offshore Wind Turbine Installation Vessel Market: Product Segment AnalysisSelf-propelled jack-up vesselNormal jack-up vesselHeavy lift vesselGlobal Offshore Wind Turbine Installation Vessel Market: Regional Segment AnalysisUSAEuropeJapanChinaIndiaSouth East AsiaThe Players mentioned in our reportA2SEAMPI-OffshoreFred. Olsen WindcarrierGeoseaVan OordJack-Up BargeSEAFOXSwire Blue OceanGaoh OffshoreSeajacksPella SietasSamsung Heavy IndustriesLamprellGustoMSCCRISTCSICCOSCO ShipyardFor Discount, Enquire Now @Table of ContentChapter 1 About the Offshore Wind Turbine Installation Vessel Industry1.1 Industry Definition1.1.1 Types of Offshore Wind Turbine Installation Vessel industry1.1.1.1 Self-propelled jack-up vessel1.1.1.2 Normal jack-up vessel1.1.1.3 Heavy lift vessel1.2 Main Market Activities1.3 Similar Industries1.4 Industry at a GlanceChapter 2 World Market Competition Landscape2.1 Offshore Wind Turbine Installation Vessel Markets by Regions2.1.1 USAMarket Revenue (M USD) by Types, Through 2021Market Revenue (M USD) by Applications, Through 2021Major Players Revenue (M USD) in 20152.1.2 EuropeMarket Revenue (M USD) by Types, Through 2021Market Revenue (M USD) by Applications, Through 2021Major Players Revenue (M USD) in 2015Read Detailed Table of Content @2.1.3 ChinaMarket Revenue (M USD) by Types, Through 2021Market Revenue (M USD) by Applications, Through 2021Major Players Revenue (M USD) in 20152.1.4 IndiaMarket Revenue (M USD) by Types, Through 2021Market Revenue (M USD) by Applications, Through 2021Major Players Revenue (M USD) in 20152.1.5 JapanMarket Revenue (M USD) by Types, Through 2021Market Revenue (M USD) by Applications, Through 2021Major Players Revenue (M USD) in 20152.1.6 South East AsiaMarket Revenue (M USD) by Types, Through 2021Market Revenue (M USD) by Applications, Through 2021Major Players Revenue (M USD) in 20152.2 World Offshore Wind Turbine Installation Vessel Market by TypesSelf-propelled jack-up vesselNormal jack-up vesselHeavy lift vessel2.3 World Offshore Wind Turbine Installation Vessel Market by Applications2.4 World Offshore Wind Turbine Installation Vessel Market Analysis2.4.1 World Offshore Wind Turbine Installation Vessel Market Revenue and Growth Rate 2011-20162.4.2 World Offshore Wind Turbine Installation Vessel Market Consumption and Growth rate 2011-20162.4.3 World Offshore Wind Turbine Installation Vessel Market Price Analysis 2011-2016Chapter 3 World Offshore Wind Turbine Installation Vessel Market share3.1 Major Production Market share by Players3.2 Major Revenue (M USD) Market share by Players3.3 Major Production Market share by Regions in 2015, Through 20213.4 Major Revenue (M USD) Market share By Regions in 2015, Through 2021Chapter 4 Supply Chain Analysis4.1 Industry Supply chain Analysis4.2 Raw Material Market Analysis4.2.1 Raw Material PricesContinuedBuy this report @HTF Market Report is a wholly owned brand of HTF market Intelligence Consulting Private Limited. HTF Market Report global research and market intelligence consulting organization is uniquely positioned to not only identify growth opportunities but to also empower and inspire you to create visionary growth strategies for futures, enabled by our extraordinary depth and breadth of thought leadership, research, tools, events and experience that assist you for making goals into a reality. Our understanding of the interplay between industry convergence, Mega Trends, technologies and market trends provides our clients with new business models and expansion opportunities. We are focused on identifying the Accurate Forecast in every industry we cover so our clients can reap the benefits of being early market entrants and can accomplish their Goals & Objectives.Contact us :HTF Market Intelligence Consulting Private LimitedUnit No. 429, Parsonage Road Edison, NJNew Jersey USA 08837sales@htfmarketreport.com+1 (206) 317 1218 Paints and Coatings Market World Forecast 2021 Research by Production, Revenue and Market share of manufacturer Nippon Paint, Sherwin Williams https://www.htfmarketreport.com/sample-report/219752-world-paints-and-coatings-market https://www.htfmarketreport.com/enquiry-before-buy/219752-world-paints-and-coatings-market https://www.htfmarketreport.com/reports/219752-world-paints-and-coatings-market https://www.htfmarketreport.com/buy-now?format=1&report=219752 HTF Market Intelligence released a new research report of 111 pages on title 'World Paints and Coatings Market by Product Type, Market, Players and Regions-Forecast to 2021' with detailed analysis, forecast and strategies. The study covers key regions that includes USA, Europe, Japan, China, India and important players such as Nippon Paint, Sherwin Williams, BASF, DOW, Brillux, etc.Request a sample report @SummaryThe Paints and Coatings market research report provides the newest industry data and industry future trends, allowing you to identify the products and end users driving Revenue growth and profitability.The industry report lists the leading competitors and provides the insights strategic industry Analysis of the key factors influencing the market.The report includes the forecasts, Analysis and discussion of important industry trends, market size, market share estimates and profiles of the leading industry Players.Global Paints and Coatings Market: Product Segment AnalysisSolvent-based coatingsWaterborne coatingsHigh-solids coatingsTwo-component systemsPowder coatingsOthersGlobal Paints and Coatings Market: Application Segment AnalysisInfrastructureLarge Commercial DevelopmentCivil architectureIndustrial architectureAutomotiveOil & Gas IndustryGlobal Paints and Coatings Market: Regional Segment AnalysisUSAEuropeJapanChinaIndiaSouth East AsiaThe Players mentioned in our reportAkzoNobelHenkelNippon PaintSherwin WilliamsBASFDOWBrilluxBenjamin MooreAsian PaintsPPG IndustriesWith no less than 15 top playersFor Discount, Enquire Now @Table of ContentChapter 1 About the Paints and Coatings Industry1.1 Industry Definition1.1.1 Types of Paints and Coatings industry1.1.1.1 Solvent-based coatings1.1.1.2 Waterborne coatings1.1.1.3 High-solids coatings1.1.1.4 Two-component systems1.1.1.5 Powder coatings1.1.1.6 Others1.2 Main Market Activities1.3 Similar Industries1.4 Industry at a GlanceChapter 2 World Market Competition Landscape2.1 Paints and Coatings Markets by Regions2.1.1 USAMarket Revenue (M USD) by Types, Through 2021Market Revenue (M USD) by Applications, Through 2021Major Players Revenue (M USD) in 20152.1.2 EuropeMarket Revenue (M USD) by Types, Through 2021Market Revenue (M USD) by Applications, Through 2021Major Players Revenue (M USD) in 2015Read Detailed Table of Content @2.1.3 ChinaMarket Revenue (M USD) by Types, Through 2021Market Revenue (M USD) by Applications, Through 2021Major Players Revenue (M USD) in 20152.1.4 IndiaMarket Revenue (M USD) by Types, Through 2021Market Revenue (M USD) by Applications, Through 2021Major Players Revenue (M USD) in 20152.1.5 JapanMarket Revenue (M USD) by Types, Through 2021Market Revenue (M USD) by Applications, Through 2021Major Players Revenue (M USD) in 20152.1.6 South East AsiaMarket Revenue (M USD) by Types, Through 2021Market Revenue (M USD) by Applications, Through 2021Major Players Revenue (M USD) in 20152.2 World Paints and Coatings Market by TypesSolvent-based coatingsWaterborne coatingsHigh-solids coatingsTwo-component systemsPowder coatingsOthers2.3 World Paints and Coatings Market by ApplicationsInfrastructureLarge Commercial DevelopmentCivil architectureIndustrial architectureAutomotive2.4 World Paints and Coatings Market Analysis2.4.1 World Paints and Coatings Market Revenue and Growth Rate 2011-20162.4.2 World Paints and Coatings Market ContinuedBuy this report @HTF Market Report is a wholly owned brand of HTF market Intelligence Consulting Private Limited. HTF Market Report global research and market intelligence consulting organization is uniquely positioned to not only identify growth opportunities but to also empower and inspire you to create visionary growth strategies for futures, enabled by our extraordinary depth and breadth of thought leadership, research, tools, events and experience that assist you for making goals into a reality. Our understanding of the interplay between industry convergence, Mega Trends, technologies and market trends provides our clients with new business models and expansion opportunities. We are focused on identifying the Accurate Forecast in every industry we cover so our clients can reap the benefits of being early market entrants and can accomplish their Goals & Objectives.Contact us :HTF Market Intelligence Consulting Private LimitedUnit No. 429, Parsonage Road Edison, NJNew Jersey USA 08837sales@htfmarketreport.com+1 (206) 317 1218 Hardware Encryption Market 2017 Trends by Key Players, Manufacturing Process, Machinery, Raw Materials, Cost and Revenue, Forecast to 2022 Hardware Encryption https://www.wiseguyreports.com/sample-request/1320202-hardware-encryption-global-market-outlook-2016-2022-two www.wiseguyreports.com https://www.wiseguyreports.com/conferences https://www.wiseguyreports.com/seminars The Global Hardware Encryption Market Research Report provides detailed analysis of the key regional market status of the Hardware Encryption Industry.According to Stratistics MRC, the Global Hardware Encryption market is accounted for $59.5 billion in 2015 and is expected to reach $435.8 billion by 2022 growing at a CAGR of 32.9%. Rising concern for data privacy, data security issues and emerging trend of portable storage devices are the key factors favouring the Hardware Encryption market. Furthermore, strict regulatory compliances, rising digital trend, increasing count of complex cyber attacks, rising demand for consumer electronics such as smartphones, tablets and advantages over software encryption technology are the drivers for market growth. However, lack of awareness and huge capital investments are inhibiting the Hardware Encryption market.In 2015, Application-Specific Integrated Circuits (ASIC) segment dominated the global hardware encryption market with largest market share owing to its demand for the ASIC design based processors for the manufacturing of hardware-encrypted hard disk drives and USB drives. Among the applications, Banking, Financial Services, and Insurance (BFSI) was the largest contributor of the total market revenue in 2015 due to rising adoption of hardware encrypted devices in banking operations to prevent the data breaches, data loss or financial fraud. Asia-Pacific leads the market globally with the biggest market share and is expected to grow with a high CAGR among the other regions. The high growth is attributed to the development of IT and telecommunication network in emerging countries such as China, India, South Korea, Thailand and Malaysia.Some of the major players in global market includeSeagate Technology LLC, Kingston Technology Corporation Inc., Toshiba Corporation, Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd., SanDisk Corporation, Western Digital Corp., Certes Networks Inc., International Business Machines Corporation (IBM), Micron Technology, Inc., Gemalto NV., Thales (E-Security), NetApp, Inc., Kanguru Solutions, Imation Corp., Maxim Integrated Products, Inc. and Winmagic Inc.Sample Copy @Algorithms and Standards Covered: Rivest- Shamir-Adleman (RSA) Algorithm Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) Other Algorithms and Standardso Secure Hash Algorithm (SHA)o Digital Signature Algorithm (DSA)o Data Encryption Standard (DES)o Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC)Usage types Covered: External Hard Disk Drives Inline Network Encryptors Internal Hard Disk Drives Solid-State Drives USB Flash DrivesArchitectures Covered: Application-Specific Integrated Circuits (ASIC) Field-Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGA)Applications Covered: Automotive & Transportation Banking, Financial Services, and Insurance (BFSI) Consumer Electronics Healthcare IT & Telecom Military & Aerospace Sector Other Applicationso Individual userso Retailo EducationEnd Users Covered: Commercial Government Agencies Industrial ResidentialRegions Covered: North Americao USo Canadao Mexico Europeo Germanyo Franceo Italyo UKo Spaino Rest of Europe Asia Pacifico Japano Chinao Indiao Australiao New Zealando Rest of Asia Pacific Rest of the Worldo Middle Easto Brazilo Argentinao South Africao EgyptWhat our report offers:- Market share assessments for the regional and country level segments- Market share analysis of the top industry players- Strategic recommendations for the new entrants- Market forecasts for a minimum of 7 years of all the mentioned segments, sub segments and the regional markets- Market Trends (Drivers, Constraints, Opportunities, Threats, Challenges, Investment Opportunities, and recommendations)- Strategic recommendations in key business segments based on the market estimations- Competitive landscaping mapping the key common trends- Company profiling with detailed strategies, financials, and recent developments- Supply chain trends mapping the latest technological advancementsTable Of Content1 Executive Summary2 Preface2.1 Abstract2.2 Stake Holders2.3 Research Scope2.4 Research Methodology2.4.1 Data Mining2.4.2 Data Analysis2.4.3 Data Validation2.4.4 Research Approach2.5 Research Sources2.5.1 Primary Research Sources2.5.2 Secondary Research Sources2.5.3 Assumptions3 Market Trend Analysis3.1 Introduction3.2 Drivers3.3 Restraints3.4 Opportunities3.5 Threats3.6 Application Analysis3.7 End User Analysis3.8 Emerging Markets3.9 Futuristic Market Scenario4 Porters Five Force Analysis4.1 Bargaining power of suppliers4.2 Bargaining power of buyers4.3 Threat of substitutes4.4 Threat of new entrants4.5 Competitive rivalry5 Global Hardware Encryption Market, By Algorithm and Standard5.1 Introduction5.2 Rivest- Shamir-Adleman (RSA) Algorithm5.3 Advanced Encryption Standard (AES)5.4 Other Algorithms and Standards5.4.1 Secure Hash Algorithm (SHA)5.4.2 Digital Signature Algorithm (DSA)5.4.3 Data Encryption Standard (DES)5.4.4 Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC)12 Company Profiling12.1 Seagate Technology LLC12.2 Kingston Technology Corporation Inc.12.3 Toshiba Corporation12.4 Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd.12.5 SanDisk Corporation12.6 Western Digital Corp.12.7 Certes Networks Inc.12.8 International Business Machines Corporation (IBM)12.9 Micron Technology, Inc.12.10 Gemalto NV.12.11 Thales (E-Security)12.12 NetApp, Inc.12.13 Kanguru Solutions12.14 Imation Corp.12.15 Maxim Integrated Products, Inc.12.16 Winmagic Inc.CONTACT US:NORAH TRENTPartner Relations & Marketing Managersales@wiseguyreports.comPh: +1-646-845-9349 (US)Ph: +44 208 133 9349 (UK)For accessing accurate and deep understanding and to gain latest insights and key developments in the area of your interest, we also have a list of conferences in which you will be interested in, for more information, cordially check :For updating knowledge or for thoroughly understanding various terminologies, we also have vast list of seminars for your reference, for more information cordially check :Wise Guy Reports is part of the Wise Guy Consultants Pvt. Ltd. and offers premium progressive statistical surveying, market research reports, analysis & forecast data for industries and governments around the globe. Wise Guy Reports features an exhaustive list of market research reports from hundreds of publishers worldwide. We boast a database spanning virtually every market category and an even more comprehensive collection of market research reports under these categories and sub-categories.Pune, India DECATUR Not only are abandoned homes an eyesore, foster crime, bring down property values and morale among neighboring residents, they're a financial liability for the city. At the Decatur Club on Wednesday morning, City Manager Tim Gleason described how city staff spends hours logging complaints, tracking code violations, making inspections and sorting through legal documents among property owners, banks and government lawyers. It's all costing money to say nothing of the $15,000 price tag to finally demolish a home, years after someone walked away from it, he told the Greater Decatur Chamber of Commerce Business Breakfast audience. Gleason said he wants to use local dollars to bring in local organizations, companies and nonprofits to take forgotten properties off the hands of city and county officials and in turn bring Decatur's oldest neighborhoods into a new era. It's part of what he calls phase 2 of the city's remaking: the inner-city's neighborhood revitalization. "We'll come up with a name for it at some point," he said. In recent years, under Gleason's management, city staff has plugged away at what he refers to as the "less glamorous" issues: sewer maintenance, a local motor fuel tax for road improvements, Lake Decatur dredging project and a Howard G. Buffett Foundation-financed fiber optics line that builders are snaking across Decatur. Gleason said come "late fall, early winter" the city council will be running committees to receive community input. Organizations and residents will suggest the highest priorities and visions for what neighborhoods are looking for and how to broker a citywide plan that would break ground next spring. "I very much think that's the right approach to turn this thing over as a community discussion," Gleason said. Originally, officials said public discussions would begin in July, but that was moved to September, and now late fall. International SAP Conference for Professional Services https://goo.gl/XZMV3P www.linkedin.com/groups/8612176 Delivering Nonlinear Growth Through DigitalizationT.A. Cook Conferences and SAP are delighted to announce the International SAP Conference for Professionals Services taking place on 10-11 October, 2017 in Amsterdam, Netherlands.This will be the first conference of its kind; covering SAP solution offerings for the EMEA professional services sector to include management consulting, audit/tax, accounting, IT, legal, multi-service, business and HR services industries.Event FormatThe event will kick off with 4 simultaneous half-day, pre-conference workshops. Topics to be covered will include: Innovations and SAP Solutions Road Map, Migrating to SAP S/4 HANA, Building and Attracting Talent, Big Data Analytics. The workshops will each be led by SAP applications experts, and will comprise presentations, demos, and real-life scenarios that together represent years of experience across a variety of business situations.At the conference itself, enjoy SAP executive keynotes to bring you up-to-speed on the latest updates, and hear new customer reference stories from international organizations including Experis Ciber, Delaware, Deloitte, T-Systems and more.Event TopicsTailored for the specific needs and processes of the professional services sector, topics will include: Digital Transformation Talent and Workforce Management Finance Transformation Project and Engagement Management Resource Management Customer Service SAP S/4HANAOn top of all this, visit the event show floor to experience the SAP Partner exhibition, live demonstrations and interactive sessions and make valuable connections at the networking evening social event.Benefits of AttendingThis is a must-attend event if you want to:1. Learn how to leverage digital transformation to achieve process excellence and ultimately revenue growth2. Gain early access to SAP solution updates and roadmap, ensuring that you remain ahead of the curve3. Hear first-hand your peers implementation experiences to learn best practice for your own firms SAP solution journey4. Get your specific technical questions answered directly by the experts5. Enjoy face-to-face access to those who will have a direct influence on the success of your SAP solution implementation6. Make lasting and valuable connections to cement future knowledgeIn addition, the event is co-located with the International SAP Conference for Connected Logistics in Cargo which will allow you to pick up additional highly valuable, yet unexpected, new information and make cross-industry contacts.Registration is now live! Dont miss the opportunity to secure your place at the early bird rate. Visitfor more details or contact the event team at info@tacook.com, +44 (0)121 200 3810. For all conference updates and interesting, informative content, please join our SAP Professional Services Experts LinkedIn Group here:For more than 20 years, T.A. Cook Conferences, the conference division of T.A. Cook Consultants, has been organising very successful conferences and seminars for managers. Practitioners and experts from well-known companies regularly report at our events about innovative approaches to solutions in the fields of organisation, management and the use of state-of-the art technologies.T.A. Cook ConferencesMacLaren Building46 The Priory QueenswayBirminghamB4 7LR Dental Implants Market: Laser Dentistry And Mini Dental Implants Boost The Market http://www.marketintelreports.com/report/9dime12701/global-dental-implants-market-research-report-2017 http://www.marketintelreports.com/pdfdownload.php?id=9dime12701 http://www.marketintelreports.com/inquiry-before-buying.php?id=9dime12701 www.marketintelreports.com The Dental Implants Market produces dental implants which are artificial teeth that are surgically embedded into the upper or lower jaw bone. People have an option with the dental implant process when they lose their tooth in injuries, periodontal diseases and others. Dental implants are used according to the specific requirements of patients.The implants in dentistry consist of endosteal, subperiosteal, transosteal and intramucosal. Other advancements in dental implant surgery like laser dentistry, CAD, and mini dental implants boost the Dental Implants Market.Browse 165 Pages of research report on Global Dental Implants Market @Scope & Regional Forecast of the Dental Implants MarketThe main drivers for the Dental Implants Market are rising aging population and growing concern for healthcare. The demand for cosmetic dentistry supports the demand for dental implants dentures. High cost of dental implants surgery in US and UK propels the growth of medical tourism in different parts of the world like Malaysia, Hungary, Costa Rica, and India. The limited reimbursements for dental implant systems inhibit the growth of the market.Europe has the largest share in the Dental Implants Market. Titanium based dental implant placement is the largest market by materials. Asia Pacific is the fastest growing region due to increase in ageing population. China, South Korea, and India show a speedy growth in Asia Pacific region.The root form dental implant is the largest procedure in the Dental Implants Market. North America is expected to hold maximum share in the market due to sophisticated infrastructure and high affordability rate for single tooth implant.Request Sample Market Brochure of the report @Segmentations & Key Players Involved in the Dental Implants MarketThe Dental Implants Market can be broken down into various segmentations on the basis of Product- Crowns and bridges. Region- Europe, North America, Asia Pacific, Latin America, Middle East and Africa. Type of Facilities- Hospitals and Clinics, Dental Laboratories, and Other Type of Facility.Some of the key players involved in the Dental Implants Market are as follows: Danaher Dentsply Straumann Zimmer-Biomet Henry ScheinMake an Inquiry @About Us:MarketIntelReports (MIR) aims to empower our clients to successfully manage and outperform in their business decisions. We do this by providing Premium Market Intelligence, Strategic Insights and Databases from a range of Global Publishers.MarketIntelReports currently has more than 150,000 plus titles and 100+ publishers on our platform and growing consistently to fill the Global Intelligence Demand Supply Gap. We cover more than 15 industry verticals being: Automotive, Electronics, Manufacturing, Pharmaceuticals, Healthcare, Chemicals, Building & Construction, Agriculture, Food & Beverages, Banking & Finance, Media and Government, Public Sector Studies.Contact us:Sales ManagerMayur S2711 Centerville Road, Suite 400,Wilmington,Delaware,19808United Statespr@marketintelreports.comTelephone: 1-302-261-5343 United States Mineral Water Market by Manufacturers, States, Type and Application, Forecast to 2022 Ethocle Reports has published its latest Market Research Report on United States Mineral Water Market by Manufacturers, States, Type and Application, Forecast to 2022. This report focuses on the Mineral Water in United States market, to split the market based on manufacturers, states, type and application. Browse tables and figures for more information.Click here for more information about this ReportMineral water is water from a mineral source that contains various minerals, such as salts and sulfur compounds. Mineral water may be effervescent (i.e., sparkling) due to contained gases. Also some mineral water is made by mineralization processing, the mineral elements not from natural.Click here to get a Sample ReportMarket Segment by Manufacturers, this report coversDanoneNestleCoca-ColaBisleri InternationalWahahaGantenCestbonKunlun MountainBlue SwordClick here to get Discounts on this Report {Hurry Offer valid for Limited Time}Market Segment by States, coveringCaliforniaTexasNew YorkFloridaIllinoisMarket Segment by Type, coversNatural Mineral WaterMan-made Mineral WaterMarket Segment by Applications, can be divided intoHypermarkets & SupermarketsConvenience StoresGrocery StoresOnline RetailersOthersThere are 17 Chapters to deeply display the United States Mineral Water market.Chapter 1, to describe Mineral Water Introduction, product type and application, market overview, market analysis by States, market opportunities, market risk, market driving force;Chapter 2, to analyze the manufacturers of Mineral Water, with profile, main business, news, sales, price, revenue and market share in 2016 and 2017;Chapter 3, to display the competitive situation among the top manufacturers, with sales, revenue and market share in 2016 and 2017;Chapter 4, to show the United States market by States, covering California, New York, Texas, Illinois and Florida, with sales, price, revenue and market share of Mineral Water, for each state, from 2012 to 2017;Chapter 5 and 6, to show the market by type and application, with sales, price, revenue, market share and growth rate by type, application, from 2012 to 2017Table of Contents1 Market Overview1.1 Mineral Water Introduction1.2 Market Analysis by Type1.3 Market Analysis by Applications1.4 Market Analysis by States1.5 Market Dynamics2 Manufacturers Profiles2.1 Danone2.2 Nestle2.3 Coca-Cola2.4 Bisleri International2.5 Suntory Water Group3 United States Mineral Water Market Competition, by Manufacturer3.1 United States Mineral Water Sales and Market Share by Manufacturer (2016-2017)3.2 United States Mineral Water Revenue and Market Share by Manufacturer (2016-2017)3.3 United States Mineral Water Price by Manufacturers (2016-2017)3.4 Market Concentration Rate3.5 Market Competition Trend4 United States Mineral Water Market Analysis by States4.1 United States Mineral Water Sales Market Share by States4.2 United States Mineral Water Sales by States (2012-2017)4.3 United States Mineral Water Revenue (Value) by States (2012-2017)5 United States Market Segmentation Mineral Water by Type5.1 United States Mineral Water Sales, Revenue and Market Share by Type (2012-2017)5.2 Natural Mineral Water Sales Growth and Price5.3 Man-made Mineral Water Sales Growth and Price6 United States Market Segmentation Mineral Water by Application6.1 United States Mineral Water Sales Market Share by Application (2012-2017)6.2 Hypermarkets & Supermarkets Sales Growth (2012-2017)6.3 Convenience Stores Sales Growth (2012-2017)6.4 Grocery Stores Sales Growth (2012-2017)6.5 Online Retailers Sales Growth (2012-2017)6.6 Others Sales Growth (2012-2017)7 California Mineral Water Sales, Revenue, by Type, Application and Manufacturers7.1 California Mineral Water Revenue, Sales and Growth Rate (2012-2017)7.2 California Mineral Water Sales and Market Share by Type7.3 California Mineral Water Sales by Application (2012-2017)8 New York Mineral Water Sales, Revenue, by Type, Application and Manufacturers8.1 New York Mineral Water Revenue, Sales and Growth Rate (2012-2017)8.2 New York Mineral Water Sales and Market Share by Type8.3 New York Mineral Water Sales by Application (2012-2017)9 Texas Mineral Water Sales, Revenue, by Type, Application and Manufacturers9.1 Texas Mineral Water Revenue, Sales and Growth Rate (2012-2017)9.2 Texas Mineral Water Sales and Market Share by Type9.3 Texas Mineral Water Sales by Application (2012-2017)10 Florida Mineral Water Sales, Revenue, by Type, Application and Manufacturers10.1 Florida Mineral Water Revenue, Sales and Growth Rate (2012-2017)10.2 Florida Mineral Water Sales and Market Share by Type10.3 Florida Mineral Water Sales by Application (2012-2017)11 Illinois Mineral Water Sales, Revenue, by Type, Application and Manufacturers11.1 Illinois Mineral Water Revenue, Sales and Growth Rate (2012-2017)11.2 Illinois Mineral Water Sales and Market Share by Type11.3 Illinois Mineral Water Sales by Application (2012-2017)12 Mineral Water Market Forecast (2017-2022)12.1 United States Mineral Water Sales, Revenue and Growth Rate (2017-2022)12.2 Mineral Water Market Forecast by States (2017-2022)12.3 Mineral Water Market Forecast by Type (2017-2022)12.4 Mineral Water Market Forecast by Application (2017-2022)13 Mineral Water Manufacturing Cost Analysis13.1 Mineral Water Key Raw Materials Analysis13.2 Proportion of Manufacturing Cost Structure13.3 Manufacturing Process Analysis of Mineral Water14 Industrial Chain, Sourcing Strategy and Downstream Buyers14.1 Mineral Water Industrial Chain Analysis14.2 Upstream Raw Materials Sourcing14.3 Raw Materials Sources of Mineral Water Major Manufacturers in 201614.4 Downstream Buyers15 Sales Channel, Distributors, Traders and Dealers15.1 Sales Channel15.2 Distributors, Traders and Dealers16 Research Findings and Conclusion17 Appendix17.1 Methodology17.2 Analyst Introduction17.3 Data SourceEthocle reports is a part of Ethocle Research and Development Private Limited.We provide the best next gen market research reports, analysis and forecasting reports available, understanding the statistical surveying needs of the market.We at Ethocle appreciate the importance of market research data for your institution. Hence we have teamed up with the best research institutes and market specialists to bring to you the latest, most pervasive statistical research.We have at our disposal one of the most exhaustive, highly reliable database of market research reports. We undertake extreme precautions in screening the credentials of publishers and authors before taking in their submissions.We specialize in delivering latest trending research reports and are way ahead of our peers in delivering tailored reports to suit our customers needs.We believe in generating not one sized fit- reports but requirement driven customized ones that makes all our customers a regular on the website.Rex Villa, Sr.No-36/2,House No-183, Mozeswadi, Near Maria Hall, Pune Global Industrial Adhesive Tapes Market 2017-2022 3M, Henkel, DIC Corporation, Tape-Rite, Nitto Denko Industrial Adhesive Tapes Market http://bit.ly/2u05BdE http://bit.ly/2voVNxp Industrial Adhesive Tapes Market Research ReportA market study Global Industrial Adhesive Tapes Market examines the performance of the Industrial Adhesive Tapes market Size 2017. It encloses an in-depth Research of the Industrial Adhesive Tapes market state and the competitive landscape globally. This report analyzes the potential of Industrial Adhesive Tapes market in the present and the future prospects from various angles in detail.Request For Sample Report:The Global Industrial Adhesive Tapes Market 2017 report includes Industrial Adhesive Tapes market Size, Revenue, market Share, Industrial Adhesive Tapes industry volume, market Trends, Industrial Adhesive Tapes Growth aspects. A wide range of applications, Utilization ratio, Supply and demand analysis are also consist in the report.It shows manufacturing capacity, Industrial Adhesive Tapes Price during the Forecast period from 2017 to 2022.Manufacturers Analysis and Top Sellers of Global Industrial Adhesive Tapes Market 2017:3MHenkelDIC CorporationTape-RiteNitto DenkoDow CorningTesaBostikAvery DennisonAdvance Tapes InternationalAdhesives ResearchEvans AdhesiveSTC TapesIndustrial Adhesive Tapes Market : Type AnalysisPP Industrial Adhesive TapePaper Industrial Adhesive TapePVC Industrial Adhesive TapeIndustrial Adhesive Tapes Market : Application AnalysisPrintingPackagingCoatingFirstly, the report covers the top Industrial Adhesive Tapes manufacturing industry players from regions like United States, EU, Japan, and China. It also characterizes the market based on geological regions.Enquiry for More Info@Further, the Industrial Adhesive Tapes report gives information on the company profile, market share and contact details along with value chain analysis of Industrial Adhesive Tapes industry, Industrial Adhesive Tapes industry rules and policies, circumstances driving the growth of the market and compulsion blocking the growth. Industrial Adhesive Tapes Market development scope and various business strategies are also mentioned in this report.The Industrial Adhesive Tapes research report includes the products that are currently in demand and available in the market along with their cost breakup, manufacturing volume, import/export scheme and contribution to the Industrial Adhesive Tapes market revenue worldwide.Finally, Industrial Adhesive Tapes market report gives you details about the market research findings and conclusion which helps you to develop profitable market strategies to gain competitive advantage.About Us:"Spire Market Research" is a leading market intelligence team which accredits and provides the reports of some of the top publishers in the field of technology industry. We are as a firm expertise in making extensive reports that cover all the necessary details about the market assessments such as major technological improvement in the industry.Contact Us5001 Spring Valley Road,Suite 400 East,Dallas, TX 75244, USA Global Fan Coils Market 2017-2022 Daikin, Johnson Controls, Carrier, Ingersoll Rand, Panasonic Fan Coils Market http://bit.ly/2uWcGPk http://bit.ly/2ho7KOb Fan Coils Market Research ReportA market study Global Fan Coils Market examines the performance of the Fan Coils market Size 2017. It encloses an in-depth Research of the Fan Coils market state and the competitive landscape globally. This report analyzes the potential of Fan Coils market in the present and the future prospects from various angles in detail.Request For Sample Report:The Global Fan Coils Market 2017 report includes Fan Coils market Size, Revenue, market Share, Fan Coils industry volume, market Trends, Fan Coils Growth aspects. A wide range of applications, Utilization ratio, Supply and demand analysis are also consist in the report.It shows manufacturing capacity, Fan Coils Price during the Forecast period from 2017 to 2022.Manufacturers Analysis and Top Sellers of Global Fan Coils Market 2017:Daikin(McQuay)Johnson Controls(York)CarrierIngersoll Rand(Trane)PanasonicGreeMideaBryantWILLIAMSSABIANAAERMECDIFFUSIONQuartzSDBZSDBLGDISMYBaoxinYTFJPGJiangsu YajiaFan Coils Market : Type AnalysisWall Mounted Fan CoilsHorizontal Concealed Fan CoilHorizontal Exposed Fan CoilCassette Type Fan CoilVertical Concealed Fan CoilVertical Exposed Fan CoilFan Coils Market : Application AnalysisCentral Air-conditioning ManufacturersHospitalFirstly, the report covers the top Fan Coils manufacturing industry players from regions like United States, EU, Japan, and China. It also characterizes the market based on geological regions.Enquiry for More Info@Further, the Fan Coils report gives information on the company profile, market share and contact details along with value chain analysis of Fan Coils industry, Fan Coils industry rules and policies, circumstances driving the growth of the market and compulsion blocking the growth. Fan Coils Market development scope and various business strategies are also mentioned in this report.The Fan Coils research report includes the products that are currently in demand and available in the market along with their cost breakup, manufacturing volume, import/export scheme and contribution to the Fan Coils market revenue worldwide.Finally, Fan Coils market report gives you details about the market research findings and conclusion which helps you to develop profitable market strategies to gain competitive advantage.About Us:"Spire Market Research" is a leading market intelligence team which accredits and provides the reports of some of the top publishers in the field of technology industry. We are as a firm expertise in making extensive reports that cover all the necessary details about the market assessments such as major technological improvement in the industry.Contact Us5001 Spring Valley Road,Suite 400 East,Dallas, TX 75244, USA Global Christmas Trees Market 2017-2022 Wayfair, Balsam Hill, NeumanTree, King Tree Christmas Trees Market http://bit.ly/2uWKQlX http://bit.ly/2vp4Yh7 Christmas Trees Market Research ReportA market study Global Christmas Trees Market examines the performance of the Christmas Trees market Size 2017. It encloses an in-depth Research of the Christmas Trees market state and the competitive landscape globally. This report analyzes the potential of Christmas Trees market in the present and the future prospects from various angles in detail.Request For Sample Report:The Global Christmas Trees Market 2017 report includes Christmas Trees market Size, Revenue, market Share, Christmas Trees industry volume, market Trends, Christmas Trees Growth aspects. A wide range of applications, Utilization ratio, Supply and demand analysis are also consist in the report.It shows manufacturing capacity, Christmas Trees Price during the Forecast period from 2017 to 2022.Manufacturers Analysis and Top Sellers of Global Christmas Trees Market 2017:Gordon CompaniesNational Tree CompanyVickerman CompanyHallmark LicensingWayfairBalsam HillNeumanTreeKing TreeFudaChristmastreecomChristmas Trees Market : Type AnalysisTrees With Real Feel NeedlesTrees With Classic (PVC) NeedlesTrees With Pine NeedlesChristmas Trees Market : Application AnalysisCommercialDomesticFirstly, the report covers the top Christmas Trees manufacturing industry players from regions like United States, EU, Japan, and China. It also characterizes the market based on geological regions.Enquiry for More Info@Further, the Christmas Trees report gives information on the company profile, market share and contact details along with value chain analysis of Christmas Trees industry, Christmas Trees industry rules and policies, circumstances driving the growth of the market and compulsion blocking the growth. Christmas Trees Market development scope and various business strategies are also mentioned in this report.The Christmas Trees research report includes the products that are currently in demand and available in the market along with their cost breakup, manufacturing volume, import/export scheme and contribution to the Christmas Trees market revenue worldwide.Finally, Christmas Trees market report gives you details about the market research findings and conclusion which helps you to develop profitable market strategies to gain competitive advantage.About Us:"Spire Market Research" is a leading market intelligence team which accredits and provides the reports of some of the top publishers in the field of technology industry. We are as a firm expertise in making extensive reports that cover all the necessary details about the market assessments such as major technological improvement in the industry.Contact Us5001 Spring Valley Road,Suite 400 East,Dallas, TX 75244, USA Global Petri Dishes Market 2017-2022 Corning, BD, Thermo Fisher, Crystalgen, Greiner Bio-One Petri Dishes Market http://bit.ly/2wmf1ke http://bit.ly/2w6qLYN Petri Dishes Market Research ReportA market study Global Petri Dishes Market examines the performance of the Petri Dishes market Size 2017. It encloses an in-depth Research of the Petri Dishes market state and the competitive landscape globally. This report analyzes the potential of Petri Dishes market in the present and the future prospects from various angles in detail.Request For Sample Report:The Global Petri Dishes Market 2017 report includes Petri Dishes market Size, Revenue, market Share, Petri Dishes industry volume, market Trends, Petri Dishes Growth aspects. A wide range of applications, Utilization ratio, Supply and demand analysis are also consist in the report.It shows manufacturing capacity, Petri Dishes Price during the Forecast period from 2017 to 2022.Manufacturers Analysis and Top Sellers of Global Petri Dishes Market 2017:CorningBDThermo FisherCrystalgenGreiner Bio-OnePall CorporationGosselinPhoenix BiomedicalMerck MilliporeReinnervateSchottTPP Techno Plastic ProductsNarang Medical LimitedBiosigmaAicor MedicalNEST BiotechnologySurwin PlasticCitotest LabwareHuaou IndustryMembrane SolutionsKang Jian MedicalHangzhou ShengyouPetri Dishes Market : Type AnalysisPlastic Petri DishesGlass Petri DishesPetri Dishes Market : Application AnalysisLaboratoryHospitalPharmaceutical IndustryFirstly, the report covers the top Petri Dishes manufacturing industry players from regions like United States, EU, Japan, and China. It also characterizes the market based on geological regions.Enquiry for More Info@Further, the Petri Dishes report gives information on the company profile, market share and contact details along with value chain analysis of Petri Dishes industry, Petri Dishes industry rules and policies, circumstances driving the growth of the market and compulsion blocking the growth. Petri Dishes Market development scope and various business strategies are also mentioned in this report.The Petri Dishes research report includes the products that are currently in demand and available in the market along with their cost breakup, manufacturing volume, import/export scheme and contribution to the Petri Dishes market revenue worldwide.Finally, Petri Dishes market report gives you details about the market research findings and conclusion which helps you to develop profitable market strategies to gain competitive advantage.About Us:"Spire Market Research" is a leading market intelligence team which accredits and provides the reports of some of the top publishers in the field of technology industry. We are as a firm expertise in making extensive reports that cover all the necessary details about the market assessments such as major technological improvement in the industry.Contact Us5001 Spring Valley Road,Suite 400 East,Dallas, TX 75244, USA Global Jumbo Bags Market 2017-2022 Jumbo Bags, FBIC Vietnam, Al-Tawfiq, Virgo Polymer, Berg Bag Jumbo Bags Market http://bit.ly/2vio6xv http://bit.ly/2voT5YJ Jumbo Bags Market Research ReportA market study Global Jumbo Bags Market examines the performance of the Jumbo Bags market Size 2017. It encloses an in-depth Research of the Jumbo Bags market state and the competitive landscape globally. This report analyzes the potential of Jumbo Bags market in the present and the future prospects from various angles in detail.Request For Sample Report:The Global Jumbo Bags Market 2017 report includes Jumbo Bags market Size, Revenue, market Share, Jumbo Bags industry volume, market Trends, Jumbo Bags Growth aspects. A wide range of applications, Utilization ratio, Supply and demand analysis are also consist in the report.It shows manufacturing capacity, Jumbo Bags Price during the Forecast period from 2017 to 2022.Manufacturers Analysis and Top Sellers of Global Jumbo Bags Market 2017:Jumbo BagsGulf Plastic Industries SAOGFBIC VietnamPINNACLE Packaging IndustriesAl-Tawfiq CompanyFILLING & PACKING MATERIALS MFGBJJ PHOLSUWAN ENTERPRISEVirgo PolymerBerg Bag CompanyKP Polypack InternationalJumbo Bags Market : Type AnalysisRegular Jumbo BagsAnti-Static Jumbo BagsConductive Jumbo BagsDissipative Jumbo BagsUN Certified Jumbo BagsJumbo Bags Market : Application AnalysisFood & Agriculture LoadChemicals LoadPetrochemicals LoadConstruction Industry LoadMinerals LoadOres LoadPharmaceuticals LoadFirstly, the report covers the top Jumbo Bags manufacturing industry players from regions like United States, EU, Japan, and China. It also characterizes the market based on geological regions.Enquiry for More Info@Further, the Jumbo Bags report gives information on the company profile, market share and contact details along with value chain analysis of Jumbo Bags industry, Jumbo Bags industry rules and policies, circumstances driving the growth of the market and compulsion blocking the growth. Jumbo Bags Market development scope and various business strategies are also mentioned in this report.The Jumbo Bags research report includes the products that are currently in demand and available in the market along with their cost breakup, manufacturing volume, import/export scheme and contribution to the Jumbo Bags market revenue worldwide.Finally, Jumbo Bags market report gives you details about the market research findings and conclusion which helps you to develop profitable market strategies to gain competitive advantage.About Us:"Spire Market Research" is a leading market intelligence team which accredits and provides the reports of some of the top publishers in the field of technology industry. We are as a firm expertise in making extensive reports that cover all the necessary details about the market assessments such as major technological improvement in the industry.Contact Us5001 Spring Valley Road,Suite 400 East,Dallas, TX 75244, USA Global Mulch Plastic Film Market 2017-2022 Berry Plastics, Armando Alvarez, Polypak, Barbier Group, Plastika Kritis Mulch Plastic Film Market http://bit.ly/2vp8sA3 http://bit.ly/2uWlNiZ Mulch Plastic Film Market Research ReportA market study Global Mulch Plastic Film Market examines the performance of the Mulch Plastic Film market Size 2017. It encloses an in-depth Research of the Mulch Plastic Film market state and the competitive landscape globally. This report analyzes the potential of Mulch Plastic Film market in the present and the future prospects from various angles in detail.Request For Sample Report:The Global Mulch Plastic Film Market 2017 report includes Mulch Plastic Film market Size, Revenue, market Share, Mulch Plastic Film industry volume, market Trends, Mulch Plastic Film Growth aspects. A wide range of applications, Utilization ratio, Supply and demand analysis are also consist in the report.It shows manufacturing capacity, Mulch Plastic Film Price during the Forecast period from 2017 to 2022.Manufacturers Analysis and Top Sellers of Global Mulch Plastic Film Market 2017:British Polythene Industries (BPI)TrioplastBerry PlasticsArmando AlvarezPolypakBarbier GroupPlastika KritisRani PlastAgriplastJIANYUANCHUNBig East New MaterialsMulch Plastic Film Market : Type AnalysisHigh GradeMiddle GradeLow GradeMulch Plastic Film Market : Application AnalysisCropsVegetablesFirstly, the report covers the top Mulch Plastic Film manufacturing industry players from regions like United States, EU, Japan, and China. It also characterizes the market based on geological regions.Enquiry for More Info@Further, the Mulch Plastic Film report gives information on the company profile, market share and contact details along with value chain analysis of Mulch Plastic Film industry, Mulch Plastic Film industry rules and policies, circumstances driving the growth of the market and compulsion blocking the growth. Mulch Plastic Film Market development scope and various business strategies are also mentioned in this report.The Mulch Plastic Film research report includes the products that are currently in demand and available in the market along with their cost breakup, manufacturing volume, import/export scheme and contribution to the Mulch Plastic Film market revenue worldwide.Finally, Mulch Plastic Film market report gives you details about the market research findings and conclusion which helps you to develop profitable market strategies to gain competitive advantage.About Us:"Spire Market Research" is a leading market intelligence team which accredits and provides the reports of some of the top publishers in the field of technology industry. We are as a firm expertise in making extensive reports that cover all the necessary details about the market assessments such as major technological improvement in the industry.Contact Us5001 Spring Valley Road,Suite 400 East,Dallas, TX 75244, USA Global Tufting Machine Market 2017-2022 Yamaguchi Sangyo, NAKAGAWA, Weihai Tesite, Guangzhou Dayang Tufting Machine Market http://bit.ly/2uZpv9W http://bit.ly/2f8WoNr Tufting Machine Market Research ReportA market study Global Tufting Machine Market examines the performance of the Tufting Machine market Size 2017. It encloses an in-depth Research of the Tufting Machine market state and the competitive landscape globally. This report analyzes the potential of Tufting Machine market in the present and the future prospects from various angles in detail.Request For Sample Report:The Global Tufting Machine Market 2017 report includes Tufting Machine market Size, Revenue, market Share, Tufting Machine industry volume, market Trends, Tufting Machine Growth aspects. A wide range of applications, Utilization ratio, Supply and demand analysis are also consist in the report.It shows manufacturing capacity, Tufting Machine Price during the Forecast period from 2017 to 2022.Manufacturers Analysis and Top Sellers of Global Tufting Machine Market 2017:Yamaguchi SangyoNAKAGAWAWeihai TesiteGuangzhou DayangZhejiang MagneticNingbo HuixingChangzhou WudingTuftcoCMCCobbleThomTufting Machine Market : Type AnalysisPACAS Tufting MachineGATRY Tufting MachineTufting Machine Market : Application AnalysisManufacturing CarpetsArtificial GrassFirstly, the report covers the top Tufting Machine manufacturing industry players from regions like United States, EU, Japan, and China. It also characterizes the market based on geological regions.Enquiry for More Info@Further, the Tufting Machine report gives information on the company profile, market share and contact details along with value chain analysis of Tufting Machine industry, Tufting Machine industry rules and policies, circumstances driving the growth of the market and compulsion blocking the growth. Tufting Machine Market development scope and various business strategies are also mentioned in this report.The Tufting Machine research report includes the products that are currently in demand and available in the market along with their cost breakup, manufacturing volume, import/export scheme and contribution to the Tufting Machine market revenue worldwide.Finally, Tufting Machine market report gives you details about the market research findings and conclusion which helps you to develop profitable market strategies to gain competitive advantage.About Us:"Spire Market Research" is a leading market intelligence team which accredits and provides the reports of some of the top publishers in the field of technology industry. We are as a firm expertise in making extensive reports that cover all the necessary details about the market assessments such as major technological improvement in the industry.Contact Us5001 Spring Valley Road,Suite 400 East,Dallas, TX 75244, USA ATLANTA A simple act from each of the incorporated cities and villages in Logan County has instilled a sense of pride for Logan County veterans, said the executive director of the Logan County Economic Development Partnership. All 11 government entities, including the Logan County Board, have approved a Purple Heart Community Proclamation, becoming the first county in the nation to have each one pass such a declaration. I dont think it is as important to us that we are the first county in the nation to have all of its towns to pass such a proclamation, but what is important is that we make Logan County as veteran-friendly as possible, and I think this goes a long way in saying that, said Bill Thomas, executive director of the LCEDP. The Military Order of The Purple Heart Chapter 159, based in Logan County, recognized each of the 11 cities and villages during a ceremony in June. In addition to Logan County, also honored were the cities of Atlanta, Lincoln and Mount Pulaski, plus the villages of Broadwell, Elkhart, Emden, Hartsburg, Latham, Middletown, New Holland and San Jose. Veterans advocate Joe Schaler helped lead the effort to have all 11 entities involved. I would like to thank the soldiers for their sacrifices and all the cities and villages becoming Purple Heart communities is a tribute to our veterans, he said. "I am very proud of this county in the way they honor veterans. "When we first started this project, I didn't know if it was something we could get done or not, and we didn't do it just to be the first; we did it because we are proud." The state of Illinois has passed a similar proclamation to denote Illinois as a Purple Heart State. It gives us and it gives veterans a sense of pride and all of us who care about this county want people to come here and start businesses, Thomas said. We have always had a lot of pride for our veterans and this just is another example of that. The Purple Heart is the oldest military decoration in present use and was initially created as the Badge of Merit by Gen. George Washington on Aug. 7, 1782. It was the first American service award or decoration made available to the common soldier and is specifically awarded to members of the U.S. armed forces who have been wounded or to the next of kin in the event of death. Global Joint Anatomical Model Market 2017-2022 Altay Scientific, CrEaplast, Denoyer-Geppert, GPI Anatomicals Joint Anatomical Model Market http://bit.ly/2uVPGQc http://bit.ly/2u4hL97 Joint Anatomical Model Market Research ReportA market study Global Joint Anatomical Model Market examines the performance of the Joint Anatomical Model market Size 2017. It encloses an in-depth Research of the Joint Anatomical Model market state and the competitive landscape globally. This report analyzes the potential of Joint Anatomical Model market in the present and the future prospects from various angles in detail.Request For Sample Report:The Global Joint Anatomical Model Market 2017 report includes Joint Anatomical Model market Size, Revenue, market Share, Joint Anatomical Model industry volume, market Trends, Joint Anatomical Model Growth aspects. A wide range of applications, Utilization ratio, Supply and demand analysis are also consist in the report.It shows manufacturing capacity, Joint Anatomical Model Price during the Forecast period from 2017 to 2022.Manufacturers Analysis and Top Sellers of Global Joint Anatomical Model Market 2017:Altay ScientificCrEaplastDenoyer-GeppertEducational + Scientific Products LtdErler-Zimmer AnatomiemodelleGPI AnatomicalsJorgensen LaboratoriesNascoRUDIGER ANATOMIESOMSOXincheng Scientific Industries Co., Ltd.YUAN TECHNOLOGY LIMITEDSubmit3B ScientificJoint Anatomical Model Market : Type AnalysisAdult Joint Anatomical ModelChildren Joint Anatomical ModelJoint Anatomical Model Market : Application AnalysisHospitalClinicMedical CollegeFirstly, the report covers the top Joint Anatomical Model manufacturing industry players from regions like United States, EU, Japan, and China. It also characterizes the market based on geological regions.Enquiry for More Info@Further, the Joint Anatomical Model report gives information on the company profile, market share and contact details along with value chain analysis of Joint Anatomical Model industry, Joint Anatomical Model industry rules and policies, circumstances driving the growth of the market and compulsion blocking the growth. 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We are as a firm expertise in making extensive reports that cover all the necessary details about the market assessments such as major technological improvement in the industry.Contact Us5001 Spring Valley Road,Suite 400 East,Dallas, TX 75244, USA Global Wearable EEG Headset Market 2017-2022 Gentag, Inc., Google Inc., Intel Corporation, Intelesens Ltd. Wearable EEG Headset Market http://bit.ly/2uZechO http://bit.ly/2u4xbdG Wearable EEG Headset Market Research ReportA market study Global Wearable EEG Headset Market examines the performance of the Wearable EEG Headset market Size 2017. It encloses an in-depth Research of the Wearable EEG Headset market state and the competitive landscape globally. This report analyzes the potential of Wearable EEG Headset market in the present and the future prospects from various angles in detail.Request For Sample Report:The Global Wearable EEG Headset Market 2017 report includes Wearable EEG Headset market Size, Revenue, market Share, Wearable EEG Headset industry volume, market Trends, Wearable EEG Headset Growth aspects. A wide range of applications, Utilization ratio, Supply and demand analysis are also consist in the report.It shows manufacturing capacity, Wearable EEG Headset Price during the Forecast period from 2017 to 2022.Manufacturers Analysis and Top Sellers of Global Wearable EEG Headset Market 2017:Gentag, Inc. (US)Google Inc. (US)Intel Corporation (US)Intelesens Ltd. (UK)LifeWatch AG (Switzerland)Medtronic Plc (US)Nuubo (Spain)Omron Corporation (Japan)Philips Healthcare (Netherlands)Polar Electro (Finland)Sotera Wireless, Inc. (US)Winmedical Srl (Italy)Withings SA (France)Wearable EEG Headset Market : Type AnalysisChild head sizesAdult head sizesWearable EEG Headset Market : Application AnalysisHomeHospitalsFirstly, the report covers the top Wearable EEG Headset manufacturing industry players from regions like United States, EU, Japan, and China. It also characterizes the market based on geological regions.Enquiry for More Info@Further, the Wearable EEG Headset report gives information on the company profile, market share and contact details along with value chain analysis of Wearable EEG Headset industry, Wearable EEG Headset industry rules and policies, circumstances driving the growth of the market and compulsion blocking the growth. 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We are as a firm expertise in making extensive reports that cover all the necessary details about the market assessments such as major technological improvement in the industry.Contact Us5001 Spring Valley Road,Suite 400 East,Dallas, TX 75244, USA MAAT Inaugurates Versatile Phase Shifter Download a free trial of MAATs RSPhaseShifter now! Company announces release of a digital recreation of Roger Schults analog hardwareMAAT Incorporated, a manufacturer of exceptional performance professional audio solutions, today announced the release of RSPhaseShifter version 1.0, a digital implementation of the Roger Schult/German Audio Labs Phase Shifter 500 Series W2324 hardware. The crossplatform plugin creates a high quality, phase shifted version of a monaural or stereo input.Available in formats for all major DAWs (Digital Audio Workstations), RSPhaseShifter incorporates double precision internal processing, and algorithms optimized for highest fidelity. Providing a fast, convenient means of aligning individual mix elements for best subjective results, RSPhaseShifter also offers a delta mode, to preview isolated audio reflecting only the content that has been altered by signal processing. This extends the application to the control of frequencydependent stereo spread for MS workflows.Product features include very high resolution, realtime adjustment of resonant frequency, gain compensation, and phase angle from 15 to 360. MIRROR and FLIP modes speed the selection of two channel settings, while the compact layout of the UI, which echoes the original W2324 module, is crafted for low visual fatigue. Sample rates from 44.1 to 384 kHz are supported, as is the AU format along with VST2/VST3 and AAX plugin formats for macOS and Windows.RSPhaseShifter was created in conjunction with Roger Schult/German Audio Lab, and is a painstaking, 64 bit digital realization of Schults trusted Phase Shifter W2324 analog module, not a model or simulation. RSPhaseShifters analogstyle controls are the same as those found on the W2324 hardware, with improvements only available in the digital domain.Creating a high fidelity, phase shifted version of the input, RSPhaseShifter provides a fast, convenient and musical means of aligning individual mix elements for best subjective results. Friedemann Tischmeyer, President and cofounder of MAAT Inc., said that key differentiators are accuracy of the signal processing, and musicality of the result. When multiple sources compete rather than complement, RSPhaseShifter should be the choice for a fast, intuitive, easy to use and effective remedy. Tischmeyer pointed out that the clean output was part of the design. This tools value is more about what it does (phase manipulation)so we left out stuff like fake transformer color, hum or Johnson Noise. There are lots of colorful plugins, we simply provide convenient access to the useful functionality along with a classic API Lunchbox look.Baselbased Blessed State Mastering specializes in transparent and accurate handling of clients work, in keeping with the Swiss penchant for precision. Founder Patrick Stauffer is always on the lookout for top shelf gear, and the qualities he found in RSPhaseShifter align with his exacting values. I am amazed about the possibilities offered by the RSPhaseShifter, Stauffer said recently. I use it for my mastering and it magically opens up problem songs, with super sweet highs. I would pay twice as much for that tool! Thumbs up!RSPhaseShifter is affordably priced and available now, exclusively at MAATs web site. For images, specifications and additional information, visit MAAT dot Digital on the web.2017 MAAT Incorporated. The MAAT logo and RSPhaseShifter are trademarks of MAAT Incorporated. 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We are as a firm expertise in making extensive reports that cover all the necessary details about the market assessments such as major technological improvement in the industry.Contact Us5001 Spring Valley Road,Suite 400 East,Dallas, TX 75244, USA Atlantic Shores Retirement Community Earns Top Regional and National Honors www.atlanticshoresliving.com www.atlanticshoresliving.com www.facebook.com/atlanticshoresliving Known for its commitment to excellence, Atlantic Shores Retirement Community in Virginia Beach, Virginia expanded its reputation throughout the state and nation with several recent awards. The upscale retirement community was recognized among the top in the industry for its facilities, cuisine, marketing, and staff, in competitions judged both by consumers and professionals.Atlantic Shores took statewide honors, chosen as Top Retirement Community in Eastern Virginia by Virginia Living Magazine in their annual Best of Virginia Awards. Winners were selected by more than 10,000 reader responses, recognizing the best facilities and services across the five regions of Virginia. The community was profiled in the publications 2017 Best Of issue.Locally, Atlantic Shores was selected in Coastal Virginia Magazines 757 Readers' Choice Awards as Southside Gold Award Winner for Best Retirement Community. This annual contest highlights the best of Hampton Roads as chosen by the magazines readers. Atlantic Shores was prominently featured in Coastal Virginia's popular "Best Of" issue.This is the fifth consecutive year Atlantic Shores was featured in both Best Of competitions by these two prestigious publications.Harbourway at Atlantic Shores, the communitys assisted living facility, was selected as among the top in the nation, winning the prestigious 2017 Bronze National Quality Award from the American Healthcare Association/National Center for Assisted Living. This distinguished honor was earned for both its programs, and the extraordinary lengths to which their exceptional staff go in caring for their residents.The communitys atlanticshoresliving.com website was selected as a Silver Award Winner/Best Website in the National Mature Media Awards competition. This distinguished contest highlights the best senior living websites and resources for consumers and senior living professionals. Winners were selected by a national panel of experts, evaluating websites that give consumers the best snapshot of life in their communities. Atlantic Shores television commercials also garnered a Bronze Award for TV Advertising Campaign in the National Mature Media Awards competition.Atlantic Shores culinary creations also made it into the winners circle, winning the Best Stew Award at the most recent MOCA House of Blues, Brews & Stews competition, adding to the communitys reputation for award-winning, trend-setting cuisine.And members of Atlantic Shores talented artists community took home their share of awards as well, including residents Valerie Fay, Jane Webster, and Ann McDowell, who were chosen as among the best in Virginia in the 2017 LeadingAge Art Show, selected from among 327 entries, submitted by 147 resident artists, representing 16 member communities across the state.According to Atlantic Shores Executive Director/General Manager Eden Jones, Were proud and excited to have been recognized across such a wide spectrum, both by those who have personally experienced Atlantic Shores, as well as our industry peers. These awards really reflect the hard work and love that our staff put into making Atlantic Shores a truly unique place to live. Im honored to be part of such a special, talented family of co-workers and residents.For more information on Atlantic Shores, please visit:Atlantic Shores Retirement Community is Virginias only resident-governed cooperative community, offering equity ownership with a vibrant lifestyle. Set on a beautifully landscaped 100-acre campus ten minutes from Virginia Beachs famed oceanfront and boardwalk, Atlantic Shores features over 400 independent living units, ranging from apartment homes to freestanding villa homes, a 53 apartment-home assisted living facility, a 50-bed skilled nursing facility and a 14-bed Memory Care unit. Featuring a comprehensive range of services, social activities, amenities, award-winning cuisine, and a full continuum of on-site medical services including a full-time Medical Director, Atlantic Shores offers an exceptional lifestyle for more than 600 active residents. For more information, visit:Atlantic Shores Retirement Community1200 Atlantic Shores DriveVirginia Beach, VA 23454 Polyetheramine (Material, Production, Geography) Market by BASF SE, Clariant, IRO Group & Others, Forecast to 2022 https://www.htfmarketreport.com/sample-report/621137-global-polyetheramine-market-4 https://www.htfmarketreport.com/request-discount/621137-global-polyetheramine-market-4 https://www.htfmarketreport.com/buy-now?format=1&report=621137 https://www.htfmarketreport.com/reports/621137-global-polyetheramine-market-4 A new research document with title 'Global Polyetheramine Market by Manufacturers, Countries, Type and Application, Forecast to 2022 covering detailed analysis, Competitive landscape, forecast and strategies. The study covers geographic analysis that includes regions like North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific, South America, Middle East and Africa and important players/vendors such as Huntsman Corporation, BASF SE, Clariant, IRO Group, etc. The report will help user gain market insights, future trends and growth prospects for to 2022.SummaryThe polyetheramine market, along with its end products, has witnessed an intense growth in the past few years. This is estimated to remain the same in the next five years, especially in the Asia-Pacific and Row regions. Leading manufacturers and their strategies to balance the current demand-supply issues and newer applications developments across the vertical industries are expected to be the key influencing factors in the market. The industry is expected to increase its emphasis on the use of different applications of polyetheramine that is expected to significantly drive its consumption in the next five years.Request a sample report @Scope of the Report:This report focuses on the Polyetheramine in Global market, especially in North America, Europe and Asia-Pacific, South America, Middle East and Africa. This report categorizes the market based on manufacturers, regions, type and application.Market Segment by Manufacturers, this report coversHuntsman CorporationBASF SEYangzhou Chenhua New Materials Co.,LtdClariantWuxi Acryl Technology Co.,LtdYantai Minsheng Chemicals Co.,LtdYantai Dasteck Chemicals Co.,LtdZibo Dexin Lianbang ChemicalIRO GroupMarket Segment by Regions, regional analysis coversNorth America (USA, Canada and Mexico)Europe (Germany, France, UK, Russia and Italy)Asia-Pacific (China, Japan, Korea, India and Southeast Asia)South America (Brazil, Argentina, Columbia etc.)Middle East and Africa (Saudi Arabia, UAE, Egypt, Nigeria and South Africa)Market Segment by Type, coversMonoamineDiamineTriamineGet customization & check discount for report @Market Segment by Applications, can be divided intoEpoxy CoatingPolyuriaAdhesives & SealantsCompositesFuel AdditivesThere are 15 Chapters to deeply display the global Polyetheramine market.Chapter 1, to describe Polyetheramine Introduction, product scope, market overview, market opportunities, market risk, market driving force;Chapter 2, to analyze the top manufacturers of Polyetheramine, with sales, revenue, and price of Polyetheramine, in 2016 and 2017;Chapter 3, to display the competitive situation among the top manufacturers, with sales, revenue and market share in 2016 and 2017;Chapter 4, to show the global market by regions, with sales, revenue and market share of Polyetheramine, for each region, from 2012 to 2017;Buy this report @Chapter 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9, to analyze the key regions, with sales, revenue and market share by key countries in these regions;Chapter 10 and 11, to show the market by type and application, with sales market share and growth rate by type, application, from 2012 to 2017;Chapter 12, Polyetheramine market forecast, by regions, type and application, with sales and revenue, from 2017 to 2022;Chapter 13, 14 and 15, to describe Polyetheramine sales channel, distributors, traders, dealers, Research Findings and Conclusion, appendix and data sourceView Detailed Table of Content @Thanks for reading this article, you can also get individual chapter wise section or region wise report version like North America, Europe or Asia.HTF Market Report is a wholly owned brand of HTF market Intelligence Consulting Private Limited. HTF Market Report global research and market intelligence consulting organization is uniquely positioned to not only identify growth opportunities but to also empower and inspire you to create visionary growth strategies for futures, enabled by our extraordinary depth and breadth of thought leadership, research, tools, events and experience that assist you for making goals into a reality. Our understanding of the interplay between industry convergence, Mega Trends, technologies and market trends provides our clients with new business models and expansion opportunities. We are focused on identifying the Accurate Forecast in every industry we cover so our clients can reap the benefits of being early market entrants and can accomplish their Goals & Objectives.Contact us :HTF Market Intelligence Consulting Private LimitedUnit No. 429, Parsonage Road Edison, NJNew Jersey USA 08837sales@htfmarketreport.com+1 (206) 317 1218 Global Smart Home Appliances Market Challenges, Key Players, Growth, Size, Drivers and Trends by Forecast to 2023 Smart Home Appliances Market https://www.marketresearchfuture.com/sample_request/3775 https://www.marketresearchfuture.com/reports/smart-home-appliances-market-3775 Market Highlights:Smart home appliances are devices connected to other devices via different wireless protocols such as bluetooth, Wi-Fi, NFC etc. which can interact. They are basically connected through microcontrollers. Networking home appliances together, and combining their controls and key functions is the latest trend. This helps in proper energy distribution and proves to be very efficient in managing the resources. As the appliances have the ability to measure and control the energy usage, they are also referred to as intelligent devices. Due to the increasing adoption of IoT, smart home appliances have gained immense popularity.Major factors driving the smart home appliances market are the increasing adoption of IoT and growing demand for smart homes. This is owing to the growing demand for innovative products and improved standards of living.The Smart Home Appliances Market has been segmented on the basis of product and technology. The product segment comprises of dishwasher, washing machine, air conditioner, refrigerator, security devices, lighting devices and others. Smart home appliances accounts for the major share in the smart appliances market.The global smart home appliances market is expected to grow at approx. USD 33 Billion by 2023, at 23% of CAGR between 2017 and 2023.Request a Sample Report @Major Key Players: Electrolux (Sweden) Haier Group Corporation (China) LG Electronics, Inc. (Korea) Samsung Group (Korea) Whirlpool Corporation (U.S.) Dacor (U.S.) Fujitsu General Limited (Japan) Panasonic Corporation (Japan) Robert Bosch GmbH (Germany) Voltas Limited (India)Smart Home Appliances Market Segmentation:The smart home appliances market has been segmented on the basis of product and technology. The product segment is further bifurcated into refrigerators, dish washers, air conditioners and others.Out of these, the refrigerators segment is expected to dominate the smart home appliances market. This is owing to the key players in smart home appliances market emphasizing on development of next generation refrigerators.Taste the market data and market information presented through more than 30 market data tables and figures spread over 100 numbers of pages of the project report. Avail the in-depth table of content TOC & market synopsis on Smart Home Appliances Market - Forecast to 2023.Regional Analysis:The regional analysis of smart home appliances market is being studied for regions such as Asia Pacific, North America, Europe and Rest of the World. It has been observed that North America is estimated to account for the largest share of the market, whereas Asia-Pacific is projected to grow at the fastest rate during the forecast period.The major growth in smart home appliances market in North America is attributed to the increasing investments in the smart grid projects and changing preferences of consumers in that region.Market Research Analysis:The global smart home appliances market, by geography, has been segmented into North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Middle East and Africa (MEA), and South America. In the global smart home appliances market, Asia Pacific is anticipated to witness relatively faster adoption and is expected to grow at the highest CAGR during the forecast period as compared to other regions. Within Asia Pacific, smart home appliances market is projected to contribute faster to the growth of revenue backed by increasing demand for innovative products and growing demand for smart homes in countries such as Japan, China and India.Across Europe, countries including Germany, France and the U.K. are anticipated to drive the growth of smart home appliances market. In Europe, the high standards of living of people have led to an increase in investments in smart homes and hence is the major driving factor for the growth of smart home appliances market. The presence of advanced infrastructure and with the increasing adoption of technology and technological advancements in numerous countries are other factors driving the market growth of smart home appliances market.Smart Home Appliances Market (MRFR) Research Analysis:Smart home appliances market in the South America region is anticipated to witness relatively slower market growth. However, Brazil and Argentina among other countries are projected to witness slow yet steady growth. Smart home appliances market in Middle East and Africa occupies a relatively smaller pie of the global Smart home appliances market.Smart home appliances market can be segmented on the basis of product and technology. The product segment comprises of refrigerators, air conditioners, dish washer and washing machines. The refrigerator segment, being the most commonly used, has dominated the market share of smart home appliances market. Whereas, the washing machines segment is expected to generate the highest revenue in the smart home appliances market. Reduction in energy consumption is the major driving factor in the growth of smart home appliances market.Intended Audience Technology investors Research/Consultancy firms Technology providers ConsumersBrowse Full Report Details @Table of Contents1 Market Introduction1.1 Introduction1.2 Scope of Study1.2.1 Research Objective1.2.2 Assumptions1.2.3 Limitations1.3 Market Structure2 Research Methodology2.1 Research Type2.2 Primary Research2.3 Secondary Research2.4 Forecast Model2.4.1 Market Data Collection, Analysis & Forecast2.4.2 Market Size EstimationContinuedList of TablesTable 1 Smart Home Appliances Market, By ProductTable 2 Smart Home Appliances Market, By TechnologyTable 3 Smart Home Appliances Market, By RegionsContinuedList of FiguresFigure 1 Research TypeFigure 2 Smart Home Appliances Market, By Product (%)Figure 3 Smart Home Appliances Market, By Technology (%)ContinuedAbout Market Research Future:At Market Research Future (MRFR), we enable our customers to unravel the complexity of various industries through our Cooked Research Report (CRR), Half-Cooked Research Reports (HCRR), Raw Research Reports (3R), Continuous-Feed Research (CFR), and Market Research & Consulting Services.MRFR team have supreme objective to provide the optimum quality market research and intelligence services to our clients. Our market research studies by products, services, technologies, applications, end users, and market players for global, regional, and country level market segments, enable our clients to see more, know more, and do more, which help to answer all their most important questions.Contact:Akash Anand,Market Research FutureOffice No. 524/528, Amanora ChambersMagarpatta Road, HadapsarPune - 411028Maharashtra, India+1 646 845 9312Email: akash.anand@marketresearchfuture.com IoT Healthcare Market: Future Demand, Market Analysis & Outlook to 2024 https://www.zionmarketresearch.com/sample/iot-healthcare-market https://www.zionmarketresearch.com/toc/iot-healthcare-market https://www.zionmarketresearch.com/report/iot-healthcare-market https://www.zionmarketresearch.com/inquiry/iot-healthcare-market http://www.zionmarketresearch.com https://zionmarketresearch.wordpress.com/ Global IoT Healthcare Market: OverviewThe internet of things in the healthcare market consists of services, software, and medical devices. It has created an overall impact on the healthcare market as it is very beneficiary in the remote clinical monitoring, preventive care, personal fitness monitoring, chronic disease management, and assisted living. The advantages of including internet of things in the healthcare sector are very prominent. Some of the benefits are improved efficiency, low costs, and improved quality of the patient care.Request Free Sample Report @Global IoT Healthcare Market: SegmentationThe global IoT healthcare market is segmented into system and software, connectivity technologies, services, types of medical devices, applications, and end users. On the basis of the types of medical devices, the global market is segregated into stationary medical devices, wearable external medical devices, and implanted medical devices. Based on the systems and software, the market is categorized into network bandwidth management, application security, remote device management, data analytics, and network security. Depending on the connectivity technologies, the market is classified into BLE, ZigBee, satellite, Wi-Fi, NFC, and cellular. On the basis of services, the market is bifurcated into support and maintenance, system integration, and professional service. Based on the applications, the market is divided into clinical operations and workflow management, inpatient monitoring, telemedicine, connected imaging, medication management, and others. The various end users of the IoT healthcare are research and diagnostic laboratories, clinical research organizations, government and defense institutions, hospitals, surgical centers, and clinics.Global IoT Healthcare Market: Growth FactorsThe global healthcare industry has undergone numerous changes in order to give quality, accessible, and affordable patient care. There are various technological advancements made in this industry so that it can improve its services which are boosting the growth of the market. The factors that are contributing to the market growth include the increasing population of the aged people, increasing awareness of the people about the advanced disease management system, and the increasing cases of the chronic diseases. Some other benefits of including IoT in the healthcare industry include the improvement that is made in managing the huge amount of data, healthcare outcomes, and level of monitoring the patients has increased. The increasing use of the smartphones and the improving internet connectivity are other factors that contribute to the market growth.Request Report TOC (Table of Contents) @Global IoT Healthcare Market: Regional AnalysisRegionally, the IoT healthcare market is diversified into regions such as North America, Asia-Pacific, Europe, and Rest of the World. The region that dominates the IoT healthcare market is the North America and will continue to do so in the coming years. The factors that contribute to this market growth include the presence of the best healthcare infrastructure in the region, the increased initiatives that are taken for the R&D in IoT, the technological advancements that are made in this region, and the increasing disposable income. Following North America is Asia Pacific region. The emerging economies such as India and China are contributing a major share in the market growth.Global IoT Healthcare Market: Competitive PlayersThe major market players in the IoT healthcare market include Adheretech, PhysIQ, Qualcomm Life Inc., Medtronic Inc., Proteus Digital Health Inc., Diabetizer Ltd. & Co. KG, SAP SE, Honeywell Care Solutions, Cerner Corporation, Stanley Healthcare, Cisco Systems, GE Healthcare, Microsoft Corporation, Philips, and IBM Corporation.Browse detail report @IoT Healthcare Market by Geographical Analysis: North America( U.S.), Europe( UK, France, Germany), Asia-Pacific (China, Japan, India), Latin America( Brazil), Middle East and AfricaOur value reports provide full, in-depth analysis of the parent market including most significant changes in market dynamics; the report also presents the detailed overview on segmentation of this market. We managed to present as many important information in essential form thanks to our report You will learn more about former, on-going, and projected market analysis in terms of volume and value, assessment of niche industry developments and Market share analysis. We have not forgotten to present key strategies for major players, emerging segments and regional markets and last but not least, testimonials to companies in order to fortify their foothold in the marketInquire more before buying this report @About Us: Zion Market Research is an obligated company. We create futuristically, cutting edge, informative reports ranging from industry reports, a company reports to country reports. We provide our clients not only with market statistics unveiled by avowed private publishers and public organizations but also with Vogue and newest industry reports along with pre-eminent and niche company profiles. Our database of market research reports comprises a wide variety of reports from Cardinal Industries. Our database is been updated constantly in order to fulfill our clients with prompt and direct online access to our database. Keeping in mind the clients needs, we have included expert insights on global industries, products, and market trends in this database. Last but not the least, we make it our duty to ensure the success of clients connected to usafter allif you do well, a little of the light shines on us.Contact Us:Zion Market Research4283, Express Lane,Suite 634-143,Sarasota, Florida 34249, United StatesTel: +49-322 210 92714USA/Canada Toll-Free No.1-855-465-4651Email: sales@zionmarketresearch.comWebsite:Visit Our Blog: Global Healthcare IT Market Overview - Key Futuristic Trends and Opportunities 2024 https://www.zionmarketresearch.com/sample/healthcare-it-market https://www.zionmarketresearch.com/toc/healthcare-it-market https://www.zionmarketresearch.com/report/healthcare-it-market https://www.zionmarketresearch.com/inquiry/healthcare-it-market http://www.zionmarketresearch.com https://zionmarketresearch.wordpress.com/ Global Healthcare IT Market: OverviewHealthcare information technology is used to manage, control, and automate various tasks and processes in the healthcare organizations. Use of sophisticated technologies will offer efficient patient-centric approach along with restricted adverse impacts associated with the limited service expenses and nursing staff. It is the solution that is obtained by the information technology in the healthcare industry. It consists of proper health data flow among insurers, consumers, and governments. Healthcare IT also provides various applications which include computerized physician order entry system, electronic health, and medical record system along with specialized solutions that include clinical decision support system, clinical trials management system, and data mining system.Request Free Sample Report @Global Healthcare IT Market: Growth FactorsThe growth in the healthcare IT (HCIT) market is mainly attributed to the implementation of various healthcare policies, strategies to promote the use of HCIT in healthcare facilities, and increasing demand for patient safety & data accuracy. Increasing need for streamlining the day-to-day operations and limiting overhead expenses in order to offer efficient quality care services to the patient by adopting advanced technology globally is anticipated to drive the global market growth. The introduction of mHealth applications and proliferation of the mobile devices are collectively adding benefits to the market growth. The complexity associated with the installation and use of the healthcare IT coupled with privacy issues are posing a challenge to the growth of the healthcare IT market.Global Healthcare IT Market: SegmentationThe healthcare IT market is segmented based on component, end user, application, and geography. The component segment of the market is classified into software and hardware. According to the end user, the market is categorized into payers and providers. Depending on the application, the market is segregated into the clinical information system, electronic health record, telemedicine and telehealth, computerized provider order entry system, and electronic prescribing system, and others. The geographical distribution of the market is encompassed into North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific, Latin America, and the Middle East & Africa.Request Report TOC (Table of Contents) @Global Healthcare IT Market: Regional AnalysisAsia-Pacific has the largest market for healthcare IT industry; China and India are rapidly growing economies, which are followed by South Korea. The government in such rapidly developing economies is focusing on improving health care services and provide better infrastructure, this positively influences the market. Rising prevalence of the chronic disorders, growing demand for the healthcare IT solutions & services, improving healthcare infrastructure will rise the market growth in coming years in Asia Pacific. Healthcare IT services help to reduce error, limit overhead expenses, and build a bridge between complete healthcare entities in North America. Increasing government support & investments, improving healthcare infrastructure, and rapid demand for better healthcare is anticipated to fuel the global healthcare IT market growth in Europe.Global Healthcare IT Market: Competitive PlayersMajor players in the global healthcare IT market include Athenahealth, Inc., United Healthcare Group, Koninklijke Philips N.V., McKesson Corporation, Cerner Corporation, Allscripts Healthcare Solutions, Inc., Oracle Corporation, GE Healthcare, and Epic Systems Corporation. Other influencing players include 3M Health Information Systems, Spok Inc., Kronos Incorporated, Wolters Kluwer, Wipro Technologies, Anthelio Healthcare Solutions Inc., Syntel Inc., Conifer Health Solutions, CSI Healthcare IT, IBM, Orian Health, and Lexmark Healthcare.Browse detail report @Global Healthcare IT Market by Geographical Analysis: North America( U.S.), Europe( UK, France, Germany), Asia-Pacific (China, Japan, India), Latin America( Brazil), Middle East and AfricaOur value reports provide full, in-depth analysis of the parent market including most significant changes in market dynamics; the report also presents a detailed overview on segmentation of this market. We managed to present as many important information in essential form thanks to our report You will learn more about former, on-going, and projected market analysis in terms of volume and value, assessment of niche industry developments and Market share analysis. We have not forgotten to present key strategies for major players, emerging segments and regional markets and last but not least, testimonials to companies in order to fortify their foothold in the market.Inquire more before buying this report @About Us: Zion Market Research is an obligated company. We create futuristically, cutting edge, informative reports ranging from industry reports, a company reports to country reports. We provide our clients not only with market statistics unveiled by avowed private publishers and public organizations but also with Vogue and newest industry reports along with pre-eminent and niche company profiles. Our database of market research reports comprises a wide variety of reports from Cardinal Industries. Our database is been updated constantly in order to fulfill our clients with prompt and direct online access to our database. Keeping in mind the clients needs, we have included expert insights on global industries, products, and market trends in this database. Last but not the least, we make it our duty to ensure the success of clients connected to usafter allif you do well, a little of the light shines on us.Contact Us:Zion Market Research4283, Express Lane,Suite 634-143,Sarasota, Florida 34249, United StatesTel: +49-322 210 92714USA/Canada Toll-Free No.1-855-465-4651Email: sales@zionmarketresearch.comWebsite:Visit Our Blog: Smart Government Market 2017: Company Profiles, Segments, Growth, Size, Landscape and Demand by Forecast to 2023 Smart Government Market https://www.marketresearchfuture.com/sample_request/3145 https://www.marketresearchfuture.com/reports/smart-government-market-3145 Smart Government Market Overview:According to a recent study report published by the Market Research Future, The global market of Smart Government is forecasted to gain prominence over the forthcoming years due to the growing demand for digital mediums and smart technologies attributed to technological advancements. The Market is forecasted to reach to USD 37 Billion by 2023 growing with a striking double digit - 19% of CAGR during forecast period 2017-2023. High acceptance for cloud computing, even in countries that tend to be concerned about data privacy and security has driven the Smart Government global market.Cloud computing offers great potential to securely store and share government and citizen data, thereby eliminating the need for departments to house and manage their own IT infrastructure. It helps reduce operating costs and drive much higher efficiencies for the back office and front office.Smart Government relies on information systems and communication networks. It uses business models, innovative policies and technology for making everyday challenges easier. Major driving factors for the growth of smart government market are growing demand for digital mediums and smart technologies owing to technological advancements. Increasing demand for technological advancements and emerging technical adoptions is helping in driving investments in the smart government market. Additionally, growing data from multiple sources allowing the governments to process them for digital transformation, leading to the adoption of smart technologies consecutively driving the market growth of Smart Government.However, the Smart Government Market is anticipated to face some of the growth restricting factors such as inadequate funding that negatively impacts the development of government projects and the lack of uniformity in laws and regulations in data sharing by government agencies across ministries and services.Major Key Players: Amazon Web Services, Inc. (U.S.) Capgemini SE (France) Cisco Systems, Inc. (U.S.) Entrust Datacard Corporation (U.S.) Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd. (China) IBM Corporation (U.S.) Imex Systems Inc. (Canada) Nokia Corporation (Finland) Oracle Corporation (U.S.) Symantec Corporation (U.S.)Sample Copy of Report @Smart Government Market Competitive AnalysisCharacterized by the presence of several major well-established players, the global Smart Government Market appears to be highly fragmented and competitive. Well established players incorporate acquisition, collaboration, partnership, expansion, and technology launch in order to gain competitive advantage in this market and to maintain their market position. Strategic partnerships between Key players support the growth and expansion plans of the key players during the forecast period. The Key players operating in the market compete based on pricing, technology, reputation and services. These Players invest heavily in the R&D to develop a technology that is on a completely different level compared to their competition. These Key players strive to develop products with the adept technologies, unrivalled design and features.Smart Government Market Segments:The Smart Government Market is segmented in to 4 key dynamics for the convenience of the report and enhanced understanding;Segmentation by Solution: Comprises Government Resource Planning System, Security, Analytics, Remote Monitoring, Open Data Platform, Network Management and other.Segmentation by Service: Comprises Professional Services, Managed Services.Segmentation by Deployment: Comprises Cloud, On-Premise.Segmentation by Regions : Comprises Geographical regions - North America, Europe, APAC and Rest of the World.Segment - Remote Monitoring Solutions on the basis of solution is expected to grow at the fastest rate during the forecast period. Remote monitoring helps in tracking the assets, provides safety and offers maximum efficiency. Another reason for the growth of remote monitoring segment is the decrease in the costs of sensors which is making deployment of solutions feasible.Smart Government Market Regional Analysis:The global smart government market, by geography, has been segmented into North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Middle East and Africa (MEA), and South America. It has been observed that North America is estimated to account for the largest share of the market. The major growth in Smart government market in North America attributes to the technical advancements and increasing use of mobiles and tablets in that region.Across Europe, countries including Germany, France and the U.K. are anticipated to drive the growth of smart government market. In Europe, the presence of advanced infrastructure ensures higher penetration of mobile devices which ultimately helps in driving the market growth.Smart government market in the South America region is anticipated to witness relatively slower market growth. However, Brazil and Argentina among other countries are projected to witness slow yet steady growth.Smart government market in Middle East and Africa occupies a relatively smaller pie of the global smart government market. Within Middle East and Africa counties including UAE, South Africa and Saudi are driving the growth. Here smart government is gaining popularity and is expected to increase significant market share during the forecast period.Access Report Details @Table of Contents1 Market Introduction1.1 Introduction1.2 Scope of Study1.2.1 Research Objective1.2.2 Assumptions1.2.3 Limitations1.3 Market StructureContinuedAbout Market Research Future:At Market Research Future (MRFR), we enable our customers to unravel the complexity of various industries through our Cooked Research Report (CRR), Half-Cooked Research Reports (HCRR), Raw Research Reports (3R), Continuous-Feed Research (CFR), and Market Research & Consulting Services.MRFR team have supreme objective to provide the optimum quality market research and intelligence services to our clients. Our market research studies by products, services, technologies, applications, end users, and market players for global, regional, and country level market segments, enable our clients to see more, know more, and do more, which help to answer all their most important questions.ContactAkash Anand,Market Research FutureOffice No. 528, Amanora ChambersMagarpatta Road, Hadapsar,Pune 411028Maharashtra, India+1 646 845 9312Email: akash.anand@marketresearchfuture.com Global Air Flow Sensors Market Overview - Key Futuristic Trends and Opportunities 2024 https://www.zionmarketresearch.com/sample/air-flow-sensors-market https://www.zionmarketresearch.com/toc/air-flow-sensors-market https://www.zionmarketresearch.com/report/air-flow-sensors-market https://www.zionmarketresearch.com/inquiry/air-flow-sensors-market http://www.zionmarketresearch.com https://zionmarketresearch.wordpress.com/ Global Air Flow Sensors Market: OverviewThe alternative name for air flow sensors is air velocity sensors; they are used for accurate measuring of the pressure and speed of the air. The air flow sensors can also be used for measuring the density and volume of the air flowing from a channel. In a variety of applications, the air flow sensors efficiently collect the data related to the environment and atmosphere.Request Free Sample Report @Global Air Flow Sensors Market: SegmentationThe market for the air flow sensors is globally fragmented into end-use industries, type, type of sensing wire, type of output signals, and regions. Based on the end-use industries, the global market is segregated into aerospace, spirometer, engine control, HVAC, automobiles, data centers, leak detection in pressurized air systems, and industrial gas flow measurement. Based on the type of air flow sensors, the market is categorized into mass air flow sensors and volume air flow sensors. Based on the type of sensing wires, the market is divided into the cold wire and hot wire. Based on the output signals, the market is bifurcated into frequency output and variable voltage output. Based on the geographical regions, the market is diversified into Latin America, North America, the Middle East & Africa, Eastern Europe, Western Europe, and Asia Pacific.Global Air Flow Sensors Market: Growth FactorsThe factor that is contributing to the market growth is the accessibility to the highly configurable air flow sensors directly from the manufacturing unit. For specific automobile applications, OEM quality air flow sensors are available which is fuelling the market growth. The latest trend that is ruling the air flow sensors market is both analog and digital sensors are available in the market that is used for controlling, displaying, recovering, and switching the functions. The air flow sensors are very versatile as they can be used for any type of gases and unstable substances, thus increasing the scope of the market. There are certain factors that are limiting the growth of the market which include contamination of the air flow sensors and minor damage to these sensors can affect the automatic transmission shifting patterns.Request Report TOC (Table of Contents) @Global Air Flow Sensors Market: Regional AnalysisThe major market share in the air flow sensors market is held by Europe and North America. The factor that contributes to this growth is the full automation of the manufacturing processes. Also, the growth in the activities of research and development in the automobiles and healthcare sector is also driving the growth of the market as these applications make use of the air flow sensors. In Asia Pacific region, the market of the air flow sensors is developing at a good speed; this is due to the increased usage of the electronic products.Global Air Flow Sensors Market: Competitive PlayersThe key market players that are involved in the air flow sensors market include First Sensor AG, TE Connectivity Corporation, Sensirion AG Switzerland, Honeywell International Inc., Siemens AG, Denso Europe, Degree Controls Inc., Oscium, A Dechnia LLC., Delta OHM, and Systec Controls.Browse detail report @Air Flow Sensors Market by Regional Analysis: North America( U.S.), Europe( UK, France, Germany), Asia-Pacific (China, Japan, India), Latin America( Brazil), Middle East and AfricaOur value reports provide full, in-depth analysis of the parent market including most significant changes in market dynamics; the report also presents the detailed overview on segmentation of this market. We managed to present as many important information in essential form thanks to our report You will learn more about former, on-going, and projected market analysis in terms of volume and value, assessment of niche industry developments and Market share analysis. We have not forgotten to present key strategies for major players, emerging segments and regional markets and last but not least, testimonials to companies in order to fortify their foothold in the marketInquire more before buying this report @About Us: Zion Market Research is an obligate company. We create futuristically, cutting edge, informative reports ranging from industry reports, a company reports to country reports. We provide our clients not only with market statistics unveiled by avowed private publishers and public organizations but also with Vogue and newest industry reports along with pre-eminent and niche company profiles. Our database of market research reports comprises a wide variety of reports from Cardinal Industries. Our database is been updated constantly in order to fulfill our clients with prompt and direct online access to our database. Keeping in mind the clients needs, we have included expert insights on global industries, products, and market trends in this database. Last but not the least, we make it our duty to ensure the success of clients connected to usafter allif you do well, a little of the light shines on us.Contact Us:Zion Market Research4283, Express Lane,Suite 634-143,Sarasota, Florida 34249, United StatesTel: +49-322 210 92714USA/Canada Toll-Free No.1-855-465-4651Email: sales@zionmarketresearch.comWebsite:Visit Our Blog: CLINTON Several possible replacements in the 101st Illinois House District started to emerge Thursday after longtime state Rep. Bill Mitchell announced that he will not seek re-election in 2018. The Forsyth Republican's announcement comes after nearly two decades representing Central Illinois and less than a month after what he said was the hardest vote of his career. Mitchell was one of 10 Republicans who joined Democrats in the General Assembly to override a veto from Gov. Bruce Rauner and implement the first state budget in over two years, which also includes a major tax increase. Though he acknowledged that he has drawn the ire of some constituents, Mitchell said he had always planned to retire in January 2019 at the end of this term. He stood by his decision to vote for the tax increase, which raised the personal income tax rate from 3.75 percent to just under 5 percent, saying he felt it was his responsibility to make the politically tough choice while looking down the barrel of $15 billion in unpaid state debt and the possibility of having the state's credit downgraded to junk-bond status. "I thought I had to do the responsible thing, and I certainly disappointed a lot of my friends, and Im sorry about that," Mitchell said. At least six people were identified by Macon County Republican Chairman Bruce Pillsbury as possible replacements for Mitchell, several of whom were on hand at Mitchell's news conference Thursday in Clinton. I'm interested in running for this seat because we need to put taxpayers, families and businesses first." said Joe Alexander, a Clinton resident who recently served as mid-state coordinator for Donald Trumps presidential campaign. Dan Caulkins, a former Decatur city councilman, was also in attendance and confirmed his interest in running for the seat. Its a real opportunity to get involved, Caulkins said. Other potential candidates named by Pillsbury include Piatt County Board Chairman Randy Keith, DeWitt County Republican Party Chairman Dustin Peterson, Cerro Gordo School Board President Todd Henricks and Decatur City Councilwoman Lisa Gregory. Peterson said he was exploring his options when asked Thursday afternoon. Henricks said he has "serious interest" in running. but needed to discuss the matter further with his family. Gregory and Keith both said they have not made any decision. The number of potential candidates could rise in the coming weeks, Pillsbury said. Mitchells pending retirement opens up a seat in safe Republican district that contains parts of Champaign, DeWitt, Macon, McLean and Piatt counties. Whomever earns the spot will do so without Mitchell's endorsement. He said Thursday that he had been contacted by some of those considering a run, and he considered them all friends. "It would be much too difficult to get involved, and people dont want to hear from me," said Mitchell, who told reporters that he announced his decision in August to give potential successors plenty of time to start circulating petitions to get on the ballot. Thursday offered Mitchell a chance to reflect upon his nearly 20 years of service in Springfield among friends and supporters. "I cant repay the people of Central Illinois what theyve done for me, because theyve allowed me to serve in a democratically elected body. For a citizen, theres no greater honor," said Mitchell, who has served since 1999. Asked if his decision not to run again was motivated by a particular factor, such as the state's budget situation, Mitchell said he had made up his mind last year that this would be his last term. "(During the last election), I went to town meetings and told folks that 20 years is plenty of time," he said. "Someone else needs to take the reins." The $36 billion budget reduces spending by more than $2 billion. In addition to the personal income tax hike, it also raised the business rate from 5.25 percent to 7 percent. The hike is expected to collect an additional $5 billion. The average Decatur resident will pay another $580 in taxes. Critics have pointed out the tax increase won't put a dent in the debt or help with the state's long-term budget problems. Across the state, the budget impasse had shut down road construction and caused public universities to face a loss of their academic accreditation. The United Way predicted that 36 percent of all human services agencies would end by 2018. In Macon County, social service agencies felt the same squeeze. The impasse caused Baby TALK to lay off much of its staff and jeopardized the future of the citys only domestic violence shelter. Construction of Richland Community College's Student Success Center was stalled for the second time since it began in 2014. Mitchell acknowledged that his role in passing the budget and tax increase "let some people down." "I regret I had to vote for it. I wasnt just a closet liberal all those years," he said. Mitchell said after the news conference that he has no intention of becoming a lame duck legislator, and he would continue to vote what he saw was in his districts best interest. That includes the most recent debate in Springfield over school funding, where lawmakers are trying to negotiate a deal after Rauner used his amendatory veto to change the funding formula for how school districts would receive state funds. If no compromise can be reached, Democrats said they would attempt an override of Rauners veto. If it comes to that, Mitchell said he would vote against the override. Thursdays news conference also provided a chance for some constituents to express their gratitude to Mitchell for his service representing the district. Among those was Marjorie Devore, a self-described Democrat, who told Mitchell that he was a true gentleman that spoke to his constituents. I truly appreciate your service and your friendship, she said. Even for those who might disagree with Mitchells stances, Pillsbury said no one could question the representatives intent. Bill votes his conscience and for what he thinks is best for his district and for Illinois, Pillsbury said. Before this summer, Mitchell had been considered one of the more consistently conservative members in the Illinois House. He made national headlines in 2011 when he and then-Rep. Adam Brown proposed a bill that would separate Cook County from the rest of the state. In a statement, House Republican Leader Jim Durkin praised Mitchell's commitment to downstate Illinois and his work to keep the Clinton nuclear power plant open last year. "Bill Mitchell is my friend and someone whose opinion Ive always respected," Durkin said. "I wish him all the best as he looks forward to a well-deserved retirement at the completion of his term." With Thursday's announcement, Mitchell becomes the latest lawmaker to announce their departure from state politics in recent months. He is the seventh House Republican to announce they will not seek re-election, but stressed that his decision was his own and he could not speak for his colleagues' reasons for leaving the General Assembly. Global Security Door Industry Overview, Trends, Key Companies Profile and Forecast to 2022 2017 Global Security Door Industry Research Report https://www.themarketreports.com/report/2017-global-security-door-industry-research-report https://www.themarketreports.com/report/buy-now/591708 https://www.themarketreports.com/report/ask-your-query/591708 Global Security Door Market report is replete with detailed analysis from a thorough research, especially on questions that border on market size, development environment, futuristic developments, operation situation, pathways and trends.Global Security Door Market Reports is a professional and in-depth study on the current state of the industry. The report provides a basic overview of the Security Door industry including definitions, classifications, applications and industry chain structure. This report also states import/export consumption, supply and demand figures, cost, price, revenue and gross margins, and the global market size (volume and value), and the sales segment market is also discussed by product type, applications and region.Report Available at:Key companies profiled in this report are Rb, Dierre, Hormann, Sdc, Unique Home Designs, Shield Security Doors, Teckentrup, Skydas, Rodenberg Tursysteme, Menards, Kings, Pan Pan, Wangli, Wangjia, Simto, Rayi, Daili Group, Buyang, Mexin, Xingyueshen, Feiyun and more in terms of basic information, product categories, Sales (Volume), Revenue (Million USD), Price (USD/Unit) and Gross Margin (%) (2012-2017).Global Security Door Wood, Aluminium Alloy and others as product types whereas applications covered in this report are Residential, Commercial and Others.Purchase Report at:Table of Contents:1 Security Door Market Overview2 Global Security Door Competitions by Players3 Global Security Door Competitions by Types4 Global Security Door Competitions by Application5 Global Security Door Production Market Analysis by Region6 Global Security Door Sales Market Analysis by Region7 Imports and Exports Market Analysis8 Global Security Door Players Profiles and Sales Data9 Security Door Manufacturing Cost Analysis10 Industrial Chain and Downstream Buyers11 Marketing Channels Analysis12 Global Security Door Market Forecast (2017-2022)13 Research Findings and ConclusionInquire for more details / sample / discount at:The Market ReportsWe at, The Market Reports aiming to provide the best industry and market reports to a seeker. We are looking forward to a place where we are the one stop destination for all the report seekers irrespective of any country, category, domain, etc.The Market ReportsSF-29, North Block,Sacred World, Wanawadi,Pune, 411040 (India)Phone: +1-631-407-1315, +91-750-729-1479 Cloud Backup Market Analysis 2017-2023: Key Findings, Regional Analysis, Key Players Profiles and Future Prospects Cloud Backup Market https://www.marketresearchfuture.com/sample_request/3152 https://www.marketresearchfuture.com/reports/cloud-backup-market-3152 Cloud Backup Market Overview:According to a recent study report published by the Market Research Future, The global market of Cloud Backup is forecasted to gain prominence over the forthcoming years. The Market is forecasted to reach to USD 5.66 Billion by 2023 growing with a striking double digit CAGR of 21.4 % of during the forecast period 2017-2023.The study indicates that the Cloud Backup market is boosted by its solution of making right and informed decisions to achieve the desire outcomes. The cloud backup is also driven by security, storage, savings, and virtualization to a hybrid cloud solution for the data security. It also indicates that the cloud backup is driven by many factors, such as huge volumes of data generation, lower costs and greater efficiency than on-premises backup, and growing adoption of SaaS.Cloud Backup Market is also known as Online Backup or Cloud Computer Backup. This refers to backing up of data to a remote, cloud-based server. It is a method of supporting the data that is stored in and accessible from multiple distributed and connected resources that comprises a cloud for transferring data over the public cloud with less consumption of bandwidth. The server is usually hosted by a third party service providers. These solutions enable the client to store their data or files on the internet. It collects, compresses, encrypts and transfers data to the requested clients without consuming much time and bandwidth.Major Key Players: Microsoft Corporation (U.S) Oracle Corporation (U.S) IBM Corporation (U.S) Amazon Web Services. (U.S) EMC Corporation (U.S) Google Inc. (U.S) VMware Inc. (U.S) Dropbox, Inc. U.S.) Barracuda Networks, Inc. (US) Veeam Software (Switzerland) Datto, Inc. (U.S.) Druva Software (US) Code42 Software, Inc. (US)Request a Sample Report @Global Cloud Backup Market Competitive Analysis:Characterized by the presence of several major well-established players, the global Cloud Backup Market appears to be highly fragmented and competitive. Well established players incorporate acquisition, collaboration, partnership, expansion, and technology launch in order to gain competitive advantage in this market and to maintain their market position.Strategic partnerships between Key players support the growth and expansion plans of the key players during the forecast period. The Key players operating in the market compete based on pricing, technology, reputation and services. These Players invest heavily in the R&D to develop a technology that is on a completely different level compared to their competition. These Key players strive to develop products with the adept technologies, unrivalled design and features.Global Cloud Backup Market Segments:The Cloud Backup Market is segmented in to 6 key dynamics for the convenience of the report and enhanced understanding;Segmentation by Solution: Comprises Primary storage, Disaster recovery, Cloud storage gateway and backup storage.Segmentation by Deployment: Comprises Public Cloud, Private Cloud, and Hybrid Cloud.Segmentation by Organization Size: Comprises SMEs and Large EnterprisesSegmentation by Service: Comprises Training and consulting, Support and maintenance, Cloud integration and migration and Managed services.Segmentation by End-User: Comprises BFSI, Consumer goods and retail, Education, Government and public sector, Healthcare and life sciences.Segmentation by Regions : Comprises Geographical regions - North America, Europe, APAC and Rest of the World.Access Report Details @Global Cloud Backup Market Regional Analysis:The regional analysis of Cloud Backup market is being studied for region such as Asia Pacific, North America, Europe and Rest of the World. Cloud Backup has driven due to its solutions like storage, simple management and monitoring, real-time backup and recovery, simple integration of cloud backup with enterprise's other applications, data de-duplication, customer support and many others services.It has been observed that North America region is the leading in Cloud Backup market. The study reveals that Europe region is showing a rapid growth in the Cloud Backup market. Asia-Pacific countries like China, Japan and India is projected to be the fastest growing region in the Cloud Backup market due to the increasing size of high data generation in many countries.Table of Contents1 Market Introduction1.1 Introduction1.2 Scope of Study1.2.1 Research Objective1.2.2 Assumptions1.2.3 Limitations1.3 Market Structure:1.3.1 Global Cloud Backup Market: By Solution1.3.2 Global Cloud Backup Market: By Services1.3.3 Global Cloud Backup Market: By Deployment1.3.4 Global Cloud Backup Market: By Organization Size1.3.5 Global Cloud Backup Market: By End-User1.3.6 Global Cloud Backup Market: By RegionContinued..About Market Research Future:At Market Research Future (MRFR), we enable our customers to unravel the complexity of various industries through our Cooked Research Report (CRR), Half-Cooked Research Reports (HCRR), Raw Research Reports (3R), Continuous-Feed Research (CFR), and Market Research & Consulting Services.MRFR team have supreme objective to provide the optimum quality market research and intelligence services to our clients. Our market research studies by products, services, technologies, applications, end users, and market players for global, regional, and country level market segments, enable our clients to see more, know more, and do more, which help to answer all their most important questions.ContactAkash Anand,Market Research FutureOffice No. 528, Amanora ChambersMagarpatta Road, Hadapsar,Pune 411028Maharashtra, India+1 646 845 9312Email: akash.anand@marketresearchfuture.com Global Biometric System Market Overview, Top Key Players, Growth Analysis, Trends, Size and Segments by Forecast to 2023 Biometric System Market https://www.marketresearchfuture.com/sample_request/3754 https://www.marketresearchfuture.com/reports/biometric-system-market-3754 Market Highlights:Biometric system refers to biological data used by technology to identify the person. This system enables organization to provide statistical analysis of physical and behavioral characteristics of people. In short, biometric authentication states that each individual is unique and can be identified by his or her distinct behavioral and physical traits.The factors driving Biometric System Market includes, unique and easy operation of biometric system, growing terror attacks and increasing crimes are fueling the market growth. By authentication type segment, fingerprint recognition technology accounts for high market share in biometric system market. High implementation of fingerprint recognition technology in e-passports, travel and immigration, e-visas and driving license is fueling the biometric system market. According to the study, by application segment, travel and immigration sector acquires largest market share, owing to high adoption of biometric system in travelling and immigration industry by UK and US region. The requirement for compliance for regulatory purpose and internal investigation is forcing enterprises to adopt biometric system services.The biometric system market is expected to grow at approximately USD 33 Billion by 2023, at 15% of CAGR between 2017 and 2023.Request a Sample Report @Major Key Players: SA (France) NEC Corporation (Japan) Fujitsu Ltd. (Japan) BIO-Key International, Inc. (U.S.) Precise Biometrics AB (Sweden) Secunet Security Networks AG (Germany) Thales SA (France) Aware, Inc. (U.S.) Cognitec Systems GmbH (Germany) Cross Match Technologies (U.S.)Biometric System Market Segmentation:The biometric system market has been segmented on the basis of application that includes healthcare, military and defense, BFSI, consumer electronics and others. By application segment, healthcare and travels and immigration accounts for highest market share. Biometrics system enables hospital authority by providing efficient identification system that supports fingerprint, palm, vein, iris and face recognition. It offers numerous benefits to healthcare organization that includes elimination of identity fraud, reduces patient risk, enhance patient privacy and overcome issues related with cultural naming convention.Market Research Analysis:The biometric system market in North America region is growing due to high adoption of biometrics solutions by enterprise and need to improve information governance in organizations. According to the study, the biometric system market will show considerable growth in Europe region. Asia-Pacific market is estimated to be one of the fastest growing market as it is continuously investing into research and development of biometric system market and increasing terror attacks to directly address the security of citizens.Increasing population, and growing IT landscape is boosting the market in the region. The region is witnessing high adoption of biometric system software by enterprises. Developing countries such as India and China are adopting biometric system software at a large scale owing to increase population, growing crime rate and robust industrialization is boosting the market in the region. By vertical segment, BFSI and retail sector is driving the biometric system market.Taste the market data and market information presented through more than 30 market data tables and figures spread over 100 numbers of pages of the project report. Avail the in-depth table of content TOC & market synopsis on Biometric System Market -Forecast to 2023.Biometric System Market (MRFR) Research Analysis:By authentication type segment, biometric system market consists of iris recognition and palm print recognition. Iris recognition system implemented in organization offers information of each employee iris. Iris recognition system is most beneficial to organization who are dealing with large database. This system enable organization by providing strong security solution and minimizes operational cost. The factors that hamper the market of iris recognition system that includes environment and system usage can affect measurement, it does not provide accurate information and requires additional hardware implementation.By region, MRFR analysis shows that North America region accounts for largest market share in biometric system market owing to growing adoption of biometric system solution by enterprises in logistics sector.Regional Analysis:The regional analysis of biometric system market is being studied for region such as Asia Pacific, North America, Europe and Rest of the World. North America region is expected to account for largest market share in biometric system market owing to high implementation of biometrics system by government and security agencies and wide adoption of fingerprint recognition by US region.Asia-Pacific region is growing at highest CAGR rate owing to increased adoption of this system by government in security of national heritage, airports and e-passport verification.Browse Full Report Details @Intended Audience: Investors and consultants System Integrators Government Organizations Research/Consultancy firms Technology solution providers IT Solution Providers Original Equipment ManufacturersTable of Contents1 Market Introduction1.1 Introduction1.2 Scope of Study1.2.1 Research Objective1.2.2 Assumptions1.2.3 Limitations1.3 Market Structure2 Research Methodology2.1 Research Type2.2 Primary Research2.3 Secondary Research2.4 Forecast Model2.4.1 Market Data Collection, Analysis & Forecast2.4.2 Market Size EstimationContinuedList of TablesTable 1 Biometric System Market, By ComponentTable 2 Biometric System Market, By Authentication TypeTable 3 Biometric System Market, By FunctionContinuedList of FiguresFigure 1 Research TypeFigure 2 Biometric System Market: By Component (%)Figure 3 Biometric System Market: By Authentication Type (%)ContinuedAbout Market Research Future:At Market Research Future (MRFR), we enable our customers to unravel the complexity of various industries through our Cooked Research Report (CRR), Half-Cooked Research Reports (HCRR), Raw Research Reports (3R), Continuous-Feed Research (CFR), and Market Research & Consulting Services.MRFR team have supreme objective to provide the optimum quality market research and intelligence services to our clients. Our market research studies by products, services, technologies, applications, end users, and market players for global, regional, and country level market segments, enable our clients to see more, know more, and do more, which help to answer all their most important questions.Contact:Akash Anand,Market Research FutureOffice No. 524/528, Amanora ChambersMagarpatta Road, HadapsarPune - 411028Maharashtra, India+1 646 845 9312Email: akash.anand@marketresearchfuture.com Global Medical Radiation Detection, Monitoring & Safety Market Share by Industry Research 2017 - 2025 http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/medical-radiation-detection-monitoring-safety-market.html http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/sample/sample.php?flag=B&rep_id=25526 http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com https://tmrresearch.blogspot.com/ There are various areas where radiation power has been applied for the benefit of humans, one of them being the medical segment. Numerous benefits availed by patients due to the appropriate usage of radiation for improved diagnosis and treatment are evident. It has become a key part of the modern medical treatment, especially in treating cancer. Protection from radiation for doctors, other healthcare professionals, and patients is constantly evolving in the ever-developing modern medical environment. Radiation-producing technology such as X-ray diffraction equipment and X-ray machines are employed in various hospitals and diagnostic centers. Many handle intensive treatment procedures where risk of high levels of radiation exposure exists. Therefore, for the optimal safety from radiation, the medical radiation detection, monitoring and safety market offers radiation detection and monitoring products for real-time dosimetry monitoring.Obtain Report Details @According to the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission, in 2014, seven out of every 10 Americans underwent diagnostic X-rays and radiation therapy. Furthermore, 10 million nuclear medicine procedures are performed in hospitals and radiology centers in the U.S. each year. Radiation is commonly employed to detect injuries, generate 3D images, as teletherapy, brachytherapy, and afterloading to treat tumors. Thus, the major factors which are anticipated to act as drivers for the medical radiation detection, monitoring, and safety market growth are increased usage of nuclear medicine and radiation therapy for diagnosis and treatment, rising cancer prevalence, and increase in the population of the persons with insurance. However, delay in new product approvals due to strict regulatory guidelines and scarcity of skilled professional to handle radiation related procedures are anticipated to act as restraints for this market.The medical radiation detection, monitoring and safety market can be segmented into safety products, monitoring, detection and detector products, and end-users. In terms of detector, the medical radiation detection, monitoring and safety market can be segmented into solid-state detectors, gas-filled detectors, and scintillators. Due to the wide application in medical imaging and favorable cost-performance ratio of gas-filled detectors it had acquired the major share of medical radiation detection, monitoring and safety market in recent years.In terms of product type, the market can be segmented into area process monitors, personal dosimeters, environment radiation monitors, environment radiation monitors, radioactive material monitors, surface contamination monitors, and others. Personal dosimeters accounted for a major share of the medical radiation detection and monitoring market due to their high demand in the medical field in recent years.In terms of modality, the market can be segmented into hand safety products, face protection products, full-body protection products, and others. The full body protection segment is anticipated to expand in the near future due to the increased usage of radiation in various treatment procedures and rising awareness among healthcare professionals and patients.In terms of end-user, the market can be segmented into hospitals and non-hospitals. Rising number of hospitals around the world is a key factor fuelling the expansion of the market in the end-user segment.In terms of geography, the market can be segmented into North America, Europe, Asia, and Rest of the world. Expansion in the North America market is mainly due to the rise in usage of radio-diagnostic instruments and new technological advancements in radiation detection, monitoring and safety products. The market in Asia is anticipated to expand in the near future due to increase in number of hospitals in the region, increased cancer incidences, and rise in number of installations of radiological imaging instruments.Key participants in the medical radiation detection, monitoring, and safety market are Arrow-Tech, Inc., Amray Medical, Biodex Medical Systems, Inc., Fluke Biomedical, IBA Worldwide, Infab Corporation, Landauer, Inc., Ludlum Instruments, Inc., Mirion Technologies, Inc., PTW Freiburg GmbH, Radiation Detection Company, Thermo Fisher Scientific, and Unfors Raysafe AB.The report offers a comprehensive evaluation of the market. It does so via in-depth qualitative insights, historical data, and verifiable projections about market size. The projections featured in the report have been derived using proven research methodologies and assumptions. By doing so, the research report serves as a repository of analysis and information for every facet of the market, including but not limited to: Regional markets, technology, types, and applications.Fill the form for an exclusive sample of this report @About UsTransparency Market Research (TMR) is a market intelligence company, providing global business information reports and services. Our exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trends analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. We have an experienced team of Analysts, Researchers, and Consultants, who us e proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather, and analyze information. Our business offerings represent the latest and the most reliable information indispensable for businesses to sustain a competitive edge.ContactTransparency Market Research90 State Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-618-1030USA Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite:Browse market research blog: Global Student Information Systems (SIS) Market 2017 Key Players Overview - Ellucian Company, OpenSIS, Rediker Software, Eduware https://www.fiormarkets.com/report-detail/72771/request-sample https://goo.gl/kwh6SC www.fiormarkets.com www.albaniantimes.com The report titled Student Information Systems (SIS) is an in-depth and a professional document that provides a comprehensive overview of the global Student Information Systems (SIS) market.The report provides an executive-level blueprint of the Student Information Systems (SIS) market beginning with the definition of the market dynamics. The analysis classifies the Student Information Systems (SIS) market in terms of products, application, and key geographic regions. Presenting a detailed value chain analysis, the study evaluates the set of region-specific approaches forged by the industry. To determine the market potential for Student Information Systems (SIS) in the international scenario, the study delves into the competitive landscape and development landscape exhibited by the key geographic regions.Download Free Sample Report @The reports analysis is based on technical data and industry figures sourced from the most reputable databases. Other aspects that will prove especially beneficial to readers of the report are: investment feasibility analysis, recommendations for growth, investment return analysis, trends analysis, opportunity analysis, and SWOT analyses of competing companies. With the help of inputs and insights from technical and marketing experts, the report presents an objective assessment of the Student Information Systems (SIS) market.This report also presents product specification, manufacturing process, and product cost structure etc. Production is separated by regions, technology and applications. Analysis also covers upstream raw materials, equipment, Downstream client survey, Marketing channels, Industry development trend and proposals. In the end, the report includes Student Information Systems (SIS) new project SWOT analysis, Investment feasibility analysis, Investment return analysis, and Development trend analysis. In conclusion, it is a deep research report on Global Student Information Systems (SIS) industry. Here, we express our thanks for the support and assistance from Student Information Systems (SIS) industry chain related technical experts and marketing engineers during Research Teams survey and interviews.Access Full Report @Other important aspects that have been meticulously studied in the Student Information Systems (SIS) market report are: Demand and supply dynamics, import and export scenario, industry processes and cost structures, and major R&D initiatives. The new opportunities they present to market players have been mentioned in the report.If you have any special requirements, please let us know and we will offer you the report as you want.About Fior MarketsFior Markets is a leading market intelligence company that sells reports of top publishers in the technology industry.Our extensive research reports cover detailed market assessments that include major technological improvements in the industry. Fior Markets also specializes in analyzing hi-tech systems and current processing systems in its expertise.We have a team of experts that compile precise research reports and actively advise top companies to improve their existing processes. Our experts have extensive experience in the topics that they cover.Contact UsMark StoneSales ManagerOffice-102, Sanskriti AspirationsBaner Road, Pune,MH 411045IndiaPhone: (201) 465-4211Email: sales@fiormarkets.comWeb:Blog: Applying multiple indices to monitor bullying longitudinally Psychological Test and Assessment Modeling, Volume 59, 2017 (2) http://www.psychological-test-and-assessment-modeling.com www.pabst-publishers.de www.psychologie-aktuell.com Psychological Test and Assessment Modeling: Japanese Scientists demonstrate the multiple ways to monitor the condition of bullying in a whole school level as well as year group and class levels by using traditional index of the change in number of reported bullying/victimization, in conjunction with new indices of the bully/victim ratio and the number of helpless victims."The study showed that along with the traditional index, by applying these new indices to monitor the prevalence and severity of bullying in different levels, we managed to have alternative views for the interpretation of the condition which enable schools and teachers to detect certain units of students that might face with a more serious situation than others, and this in turn enables them to detect and to intervene those silent helpless victims.Along with the monitoring of the condition of bullying in different levels, antibullying activities were implemented by the student committee to raise antibullying attitudes among students as well as teachers and other school staffs, and it was also examined how this affects the condition of bullying. Although the antibullying activities were conducted on a whole-school basis, there were considerable differences in its effects between classes and year groups, which may due to the time and effort students put into the activities...">> Tomoyuki Kanetsuna, Yuichi Toda: Applying multiple indices to monitor bullying longitudinally: A case of a Japanese junior high school. Psychological Test and Assessment Modeling, Volume 59, 2017 (2), 135-156Pabst Science Publishers (Lengerich/Westfalen) veroffentlicht zehn psychologische und neun medizinische Fachzeitschriften; daruber hinaus erscheinen bei Pabst aus den gleichen Fachbereichen mehr als hundert Bucher jahrlich - teils wissenschaftliche Spezialtitel, teils allgemeinverstandliche Fachliteratur.Pabst Science PublishersEichengrund 2849525 LengerichTel. 05484-308Fax 05484-550Internet: Global Cartridge Valve Market Research Report 2017 Global Cartridge Valve Market Research Report 2017 https://www.qyresearcheurope.com/ http://www.qyresearchglobal.com/ The Cartridge Valve Industry 2017 Market Research Report is a professional and in-depth study on the current state of the Cartridge Valve industry.Firstly, the report provides a basic overview of the industry including definitions, classifications, applications and industry chain structure. The Cartridge Valve market analysis is provided for the international market including development history, competitive landscape analysis, and major regions development status.Secondly, development policies and plans are discussed as well as manufacturing processes and cost structures. This report also states import/export, supply and consumption figures as well as cost, price, revenue and gross margin by regions (United States, EU, China and Japan), and other regions can be added.Then, the report focuses on global major leading industry players with information such as company profiles, product picture and specification, capacity, production, price, cost, revenue and contact information. Upstream raw materials, equipment and downstream consumers analysis is also carried out. Whats more, the Cartridge Valve industry development trends and marketing channels are analyzed.Finally, the feasibility of new investment projects is assessed, and overall research conclusions are offered.In a word, the report provides major statistics on the state of the industry and is a valuable source of guidance and direction for companies and individuals interested in the market.Global Cartridge Valve market competition by top manufacturers/players, with Cartridge Valve sales volume, Price (USD/Unit), revenue (Million USD) and market share for each manufacturer/player; the top players includingHydraForceParkerSunEatonBosch-RexrothBucherMoog Components GroupHydacComatrol(Danfoss)WalvoilHaweAtosDeltaYUKEN......Ask a complete & professional report sample, please send message to tinaning@qyresearch.com or visit atTable of contents:1 Cartridge Valve Market Overview2 Global Cartridge Valve Market Competition by Manufacturers3 Global Cartridge Valve Capacity, Production, Revenue (Value) by Region (2012-2017)4 Global Cartridge Valve Supply (Production), Consumption, Export, Import by Region (2012-2017)5 Global Cartridge Valve Production, Revenue (Value), Price Trend by Type6 Global Cartridge Valve Market Analysis by Application7 Global Cartridge Valve Manufacturers Profiles/Analysis8 Cartridge Valve Manufacturing Cost Analysis9 Industrial Chain, Sourcing Strategy and Downstream Buyers10 Marketing Strategy Analysis, Distributors/Traders11 Market Effect Factors Analysis12 Global Cartridge Valve Market Forecast (2017-2022)13 Research Findings and Conclusion14 AppendixRelated Reports:Global Cartridge Valve Market Research Report 2017Europe Cartridge Valve Market Research Report 2017China Cartridge Valve Market Research Report 2017India Cartridge Valve Market Research Report 2017Japan Cartridge Valve Market Research Report 2017USA Cartridge Valve Market Research Report 2017Korea Cartridge Valve Market Research Report 2017Contact Details:Company Name: QYResearch CO.,LIMITED | focus on Market Survey and ResearchTina| Sales ManagersEmail: tinaning@qyresearch.com Tel: 0086-20-22093278(CN)Web:QYResearch established in 2007, focus on custom research, management consulting, IPO consulting, industry chain research, data base and seminar services. The company owned a large basic data base (such as National Bureau of statistics database, Customs import and export database, Industry Association Database etc), experts resources (included energy automotive chemical medical ICT consumer goods etc industries experts who own more than 10 years experiences on marketing or R&D), professional survey team (the team member with more than 3 years market survey experience and more than 2 years depth expert interview experience),Excellent data analysis team (SPSS statistics and PPT graphics process team); QYResearch has always pursuit product quality, adhere to the quality is the soul of business.Room 2311 VILI International Building No.167 Linhe West Road Tianhe District Global Corrugated Paper Market 2017 Key Players Overview - Roch-Tenn, Bates Container, Mondi, Clarasion, DS Smith https://www.fiormarkets.com/report-detail/83728/request-sample https://goo.gl/1m3EZF www.fiormarkets.com www.albaniantimes.com To analyze the growth trajectory and present an industry overview of the Global Corrugated Paper Market, the report titled Corrugated Paper begins with Definition, Application, Classification, Industry Chain Analysis, News Analysis, and Policy Analysis of the market.Download Free Sample Report @The Corrugated Paper market research study has been composed using key inputs from industry experts. Furthermore, the extensive primary and secondary research data with which the report has been composed helps deliver the key statistical forecasts, in terms of both revenue and volume. In addition to this, the trends and revenue analysis of the global Corrugated Paper market has been mentioned in this report. This will give a clear perspective to the readers how the Corrugated Paper market will fare in globe.As the report discusses the development plans and policies pertaining to the manufacturing process and cost structures followed by the Corrugated Paper market as well as the leading players. Figures relating to export and import consumption, cost margins, demand and supply, and gross revenue margin are also mentioned in the report.Several analytical tools such as market attractiveness analysis, investment feasibility analysis, and investment return analysis are employed to study the global Corrugated Paper market, whereas SWOT analysis and Porters five forces analysis are utilized to evaluate the major players in the Corrugated Paper market in this report.Access Full Report @The research report elaborates upon the competitive landscape of the Corrugated Paper market in world by profiling the major participants of the market in order to identify the leading players in the market. It thus assists current market players, consultants, and stakeholders operating in the market to work out crucial strategies and make rewarding decisions.Lastly, the report profiles the major players operating in the Corrugated Paper market in the world in order to analyze the competitive hierarchy of the market.About Fior MarketsFior Markets is a leading market intelligence company that sells reports of top publishers in the technology industry.Our extensive research reports cover detailed market assessments that include major technological improvements in the industry. Fior Markets also specializes in analyzing hi-tech systems and current processing systems in its expertise.We have a team of experts that compile precise research reports and actively advise top companies to improve their existing processes. Our experts have extensive experience in the topics that they cover.Contact UsMark StoneSales ManagerOffice-102, Sanskriti AspirationsBaner Road, Pune,MH 411045IndiaPhone: (201) 465-4211Email: sales@fiormarkets.comWeb:Blog: Global Movie Projectors Sales Market 2017-2022Industry Analysis, Growth Rate, Cost Strucure, Segments by Top Key Players: Christie, Barco, NEC, Sony, SINOLASER https://www.fiormarkets.com/report-detail/70514/request-sample https://goo.gl/8v39TU http://planet.infowars.com/technology/global-laser-projectors-market-2017-2022 www.fiormarkets.com www.swiftnary.com The report studies Movie Projectors Sales in Global market Professional Survey 2017 : Size, Share, Trends, Industry Growth, Opportunity, Application, Production, Segmentation, Cost Structure, Company Profile, Product Picture and Specifications during the Forecast period by 2022. Whats more, the Automotive Exhaust System Sales industry development trends and marketing channels are analyzed. The industry analysis have also been done to examine the impact of various factors and understand the overall attractiveness of the industry.Download Sample Report @The report firstly introduced the Movie Projectors Sales basics: definitions, classifications, applications and industry chain overview; industry policies and plans; product specifications; manufacturing processes; cost structures and so on. Then it analyzed the world's main region market conditions, including the product price, profit, capacity, production, capacity utilization, supply, demand and industry growth rate etc. In the end, the report introduced new project SWOT analysis, investment feasibility analysis, and investment return analysis.Scope of the report:Covered in this reportThe report covers the present scenario and the growth prospects of the global Movie Projectors Sales market for 2017-2021. To calculate the market size, the report considers the new installations.The market is divided into the following segments based on geography:United StatesChinaEuropeJapanSoutheast AsiaIndiaFior Markets report, Global Movie Projectors Sales Market 2017-2022, has been prepared based on an in-depth market analysis with inputs from industry experts. The report covers the market landscape and its growth prospects over the coming years. The report also includes a discussion of the key vendors operating in this market.Top ManufacturersChristieBarcoNECSonySINOLASERPanasonicEpsonGet Full Report With TOC @Key questions answered in this report What will the market size be in 2021 and what will the growth rate be? What are the key market trends? What is driving this market? What are the challenges to market growth? Who are the key vendors in this market space? What are the market opportunities and threats faced by the key vendors? What are the strengths and weaknesses of the key vendors?Movie Projectors Sales Market Research Report Split by TypeLED ProjectorsLaser Light ProjectorsOtherMovie Projectors Sales Market Research Report Split by ApplicationCommercialHouseholdReasons To Buy- What was the size of the Global Movie Projectors Sales market by value in 2016?- What will be the size of the Global Movie Projectors Sales market in 2022?- What factors are affecting the strength of competition in the Global Movie Projectors Sales market?- How has the market performed over the last five years?- What are the main segments that make up the global's Movie Projectors Sales market?RELATED POST:The report has put special emphasis on the market share and size of global industry, owing to their large scale share in the current and upcoming market of Movie Projectors Sales. The industry analysis have also been done to examine the impact of various factors and understand the overall attractiveness of the industry.If you have any special requirements, please let us know and we will offer you the report as you want.ABOUT USFior Markets is a leading market intelligence company that sells reports of top publishers in the technology industry.Our extensive research reports cover detailed market assessments that include major technological improvements in the industry. Fior Markets also specializes in analyzing hi-tech systems and current processing systems in its expertise.Contact UsMark StoneSales ManagerOffice - 102, Sanskriti Aspirations,Near Post 91, Baner Road,Pune, MH, India - 411045Phone: (201) 465-4211Email: sales@fiormarkets.comWeb:Blog: Global Silver Dressing Market 2017 Key Players Overview - Smith & Nephew, ConvaTec, Derma Sciences, Coloplast, 3M Healthcare https://www.fiormarkets.com/report-detail/83487/request-sample https://goo.gl/W2oZtc www.fiormarkets.com www.albaniantimes.com To analyze the growth trajectory and present an industry overview of the Global Silver Dressing Market, the report titled Silver Dressing begins with Definition, Application, Classification, Industry Chain Analysis, News Analysis, and Policy Analysis of the market.Download Free Sample Report @The Silver Dressing market research study has been composed using key inputs from industry experts. Furthermore, the extensive primary and secondary research data with which the report has been composed helps deliver the key statistical forecasts, in terms of both revenue and volume. In addition to this, the trends and revenue analysis of the global Silver Dressing market has been mentioned in this report. This will give a clear perspective to the readers how the Silver Dressing market will fare in globe.As the report discusses the development plans and policies pertaining to the manufacturing process and cost structures followed by the Silver Dressing market as well as the leading players. Figures relating to export and import consumption, cost margins, demand and supply, and gross revenue margin are also mentioned in the report.Several analytical tools such as market attractiveness analysis, investment feasibility analysis, and investment return analysis are employed to study the global Silver Dressing market, whereas SWOT analysis and Porters five forces analysis are utilized to evaluate the major players in the Silver Dressing market in this report.Access Full Report @The research report elaborates upon the competitive landscape of the Silver Dressing market in world by profiling the major participants of the market in order to identify the leading players in the market. It thus assists current market players, consultants, and stakeholders operating in the market to work out crucial strategies and make rewarding decisions.Lastly, the report profiles the major players operating in the Silver Dressing market in the world in order to analyze the competitive hierarchy of the market.About Fior MarketsFior Markets is a leading market intelligence company that sells reports of top publishers in the technology industry.Our extensive research reports cover detailed market assessments that include major technological improvements in the industry. Fior Markets also specializes in analyzing hi-tech systems and current processing systems in its expertise.We have a team of experts that compile precise research reports and actively advise top companies to improve their existing processes. Our experts have extensive experience in the topics that they cover.Contact UsMark StoneSales ManagerOffice-102, Sanskriti AspirationsBaner Road, Pune,MH 411045IndiaPhone: (201) 465-4211Email: sales@fiormarkets.comWeb:Blog: New Braunfels, TX (78130) Today Clear skies. Low near 35F. NNE winds at 15 to 25 mph, decreasing to 5 to 10 mph.. Tonight Clear skies. Low near 35F. NNE winds at 15 to 25 mph, decreasing to 5 to 10 mph. Global Machine Vision Solution Market Segment by Application and Industry Research Study 2022 https://www.marketresearchreports.biz/sample/sample/1230931 https://www.marketresearchreports.biz/reports/1230931/global-machine-vision-solution-size-market-research-reports https://www.marketresearchreports.biz/sample/enquiry/1230931 http://www.marketresearchreports.biz/ "The Latest Research Report Global Machine Vision Solution Market Size, Status and Forecast 2022 provides information on pricing, market analysis, shares, forecast, and company profiles for key industry participants. - MarketResearchReports.biz"About Machine Vision Solution MarketThis report studies the global Machine Vision Solution market, analyzes and researches the Machine Vision Solution development status and forecast in United States, EU, Japan, China, India and Southeast Asia. This report focuses on the top players in global market, likeOMRON CorporationBasler AGAllied Vision Technologies Inc.Cognex CorporationKeyence CorporationISRA Vision AG.Microscan Systems Inc.Electro Scientific Industries Inc.Adept Technology Inc.Seeing Machines Ltd.Market segment by Regions/Countries, this report coversUnited StatesEUJapanChinaIndiaSoutheast AsiaGet Sample copy of this Report @Market segment by Type, Machine Vision Solution can be split intoPC based Machine VisionEmbedded Machine VisionSmart Cameras based Machine VisionMarket segment by Application, Machine Vision Solution can be split intoElectronicsPackagingTextilesAutomotiveBankingOthersTable of ContentsGlobal Machine Vision Solution Market Size, Status and Forecast 20221 Industry Overview of Machine Vision Solution1.1 Machine Vision Solution Market Overview1.1.1 Machine Vision Solution Product Scope1.1.2 Market Status and Outlook1.2 Global Machine Vision Solution Market Size and Analysis by Regions1.2.1 United States1.2.2 EU1.2.3 Japan1.2.4 China1.2.5 India1.2.6 Southeast AsiaView Report @1.3 Machine Vision Solution Market by Type1.3.1 PC based Machine Vision1.3.2 Embedded Machine Vision1.3.3 Smart Cameras based Machine Vision1.4 Machine Vision Solution Market by End Users/Application1.4.1 Electronics1.4.2 Packaging1.4.3 Textiles1.4.4 Automotive1.4.5 Banking1.4.6 Others2 Global Machine Vision Solution Competition Analysis by Players2.1 Machine Vision Solution Market Size (Value) by Players (2016 and 2017)2.2 Competitive Status and Trend2.2.1 Market Concentration Rate2.2.2 Product/Service Differences2.2.3 New Entrants2.2.4 The Technology Trends in Future3 Company (Top Players) Profiles3.1 OMRON Corporation3.1.1 Company Profile3.1.2 Main Business/Business Overview3.1.3 Products, Services and Solutions3.1.4 Machine Vision Solution Revenue (Value) (2012-2017)3.1.5 Recent Developments3.2 Basler AG3.2.1 Company Profile3.2.2 Main Business/Business Overview3.2.3 Products, Services and Solutions3.2.4 Machine Vision Solution Revenue (Value) (2012-2017)3.2.5 Recent Developments3.3 Allied Vision Technologies Inc.3.3.1 Company Profile3.3.2 Main Business/Business Overview3.3.3 Products, Services and Solutions3.3.4 Machine Vision Solution Revenue (Value) (2012-2017)3.3.5 Recent Developments3.4 Cognex Corporation3.4.1 Company Profile3.4.2 Main Business/Business Overview3.4.3 Products, Services and Solutions3.4.4 Machine Vision Solution Revenue (Value) (2012-2017)3.4.5 Recent Developments3.5 Keyence Corporation3.5.1 Company Profile3.5.2 Main Business/Business Overview3.5.3 Products, Services and Solutions3.5.4 Machine Vision Solution Revenue (Value) (2012-2017)3.5.5 Recent DevelopmentsSend An Enquiry Request @3.6 ISRA Vision AG.3.6.1 Company Profile3.6.2 Main Business/Business Overview3.6.3 Products, Services and Solutions3.6.4 Machine Vision Solution Revenue (Value) (2012-2017)3.6.5 Recent Developments3.7 Microscan Systems Inc.3.7.1 Company Profile3.7.2 Main Business/Business Overview3.7.3 Products, Services and Solutions3.7.4 Machine Vision Solution Revenue (Value) (2012-2017)3.7.5 Recent DevelopmentsAbout usMarketResearchReports.biz is the most comprehensive collection of market research reports. MarketResearchReports.Biz services are specially designed to save time and money for our clients. We are a one stop solution for all your research needs, our main offerings are syndicated research reports, custom research, subscription access and consulting services. We serve all sizes and types of companies spanning across various industries.ContactMr. NachiketState Tower90 Sate Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-621-2074USA: Canada Toll Free: 866-997-4948Website:E: sales@marketresearchreports.biz Global WiFi Thermostats Sales Market Report 2022 : Focuses On Top Manufacturers - Nest, Honeywell, ecobee, Schneider Electric, Emerson, Lux Products, Carrier https://www.marketresearchreports.biz/sample/sample/1231071 https://www.marketresearchreports.biz/reports/1231071/global-wifi-thermostats-sales-report-market-research-reports https://www.marketresearchreports.biz/sample/enquiry/1231071 http://www.marketresearchreports.biz/ "The Latest Research Report Global WiFi Thermostats Sales Market Report 2017 provides information on pricing, market analysis, shares, forecast, and company profiles for key industry participants. - MarketResearchReports.biz"About WiFi Thermostats Sales MarketIn this report, the global WiFi Thermostats market is valued at USD XX million in 2016 and is expected to reach USD XX million by the end of 2022, growing at a CAGR of XX% between 2016 and 2022.Geographically, this report split global into several key Regions, with sales (K Units), revenue (Million USD), market share and growth rate of WiFi Thermostats for these regions, from 2012 to 2022 (forecast), coveringUnited StatesChinaEuropeJapanSoutheast AsiaIndiaGlobal WiFi Thermostats market competition by top manufacturers/players, with WiFi Thermostats sales volume, Price (USD/Unit), revenue (Million USD) and market share for each manufacturer/player; the top players includingNestHoneywellecobeeSchneider ElectricEmersonLux ProductsCarrierGet Sample copy of this Report @On the basis of product, this report displays the production, revenue, price, market share and growth rate of each type, primarily split intoBy Power Supply ModeBattery-poweredHardwiredBy Blocking ConditionOpen-circuitClosed-circuitOn the basis on the end users/applications, this report focuses on the status and outlook for major applications/end users, sales volume, market share and growth rate of WiFi Thermostats for each application, includingResidentialCommercialTable of ContentsGlobal WiFi Thermostats Sales Market Report 20171 WiFi Thermostats Market Overview1.1 Product Overview and Scope of WiFi Thermostats1.2 Classification of WiFi Thermostats by Product Category1.2.1 Global WiFi Thermostats Market Size (Sales) Comparison by Type (2012-2022)1.2.2 Global WiFi Thermostats Market Size (Sales) Market Share by Type (Product Category) in 20161.2.3 Battery-powered1.2.4 Hardwired1.3 Global WiFi Thermostats Market by Application/End Users1.3.1 Global WiFi Thermostats Sales (Volume) and Market Share Comparison by Application (2012-2022)1.3.2 Residential1.3.3 CommercialView Report @1.4 Global WiFi Thermostats Market by Region1.4.1 Global WiFi Thermostats Market Size (Value) Comparison by Region (2012-2022)1.4.2 United States WiFi Thermostats Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.4.3 China WiFi Thermostats Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.4.4 Europe WiFi Thermostats Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.4.5 Japan WiFi Thermostats Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.4.6 Southeast Asia WiFi Thermostats Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.4.7 India WiFi Thermostats Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.5 Global Market Size (Value and Volume) of WiFi Thermostats (2012-2022)1.5.1 Global WiFi Thermostats Sales and Growth Rate (2012-2022)1.5.2 Global WiFi Thermostats Revenue and Growth Rate (2012-2022)2 Global WiFi Thermostats Competition by Players/Suppliers, Type and Application2.1 Global WiFi Thermostats Market Competition by Players/Suppliers2.1.1 Global WiFi Thermostats Sales and Market Share of Key Players/Suppliers (2012-2017)2.1.2 Global WiFi Thermostats Revenue and Share by Players/Suppliers (2012-2017)2.2 Global WiFi Thermostats (Volume and Value) by Type2.2.1 Global WiFi Thermostats Sales and Market Share by Type (2012-2017)2.2.2 Global WiFi Thermostats Revenue and Market Share by Type (2012-2017)2.3 Global WiFi Thermostats (Volume and Value) by Region2.3.1 Global WiFi Thermostats Sales and Market Share by Region (2012-2017)2.3.2 Global WiFi Thermostats Revenue and Market Share by Region (2012-2017)2.4 Global WiFi Thermostats (Volume) by Application3 United States WiFi Thermostats (Volume, Value and Sales Price)3.1 United States WiFi Thermostats Sales and Value (2012-2017)3.1.1 United States WiFi Thermostats Sales and Growth Rate (2012-2017)3.1.2 United States WiFi Thermostats Revenue and Growth Rate (2012-2017)3.1.3 United States WiFi Thermostats Sales Price Trend (2012-2017)3.2 United States WiFi Thermostats Sales Volume and Market Share by Players3.3 United States WiFi Thermostats Sales Volume and Market Share by Type3.4 United States WiFi Thermostats Sales Volume and Market Share by ApplicationSend An Enquiry Request @4 China WiFi Thermostats (Volume, Value and Sales Price)4.1 China WiFi Thermostats Sales and Value (2012-2017)4.1.1 China WiFi Thermostats Sales and Growth Rate (2012-2017)4.1.2 China WiFi Thermostats Revenue and Growth Rate (2012-2017)4.1.3 China WiFi Thermostats Sales Price Trend (2012-2017)4.2 China WiFi Thermostats Sales Volume and Market Share by Players4.3 China WiFi Thermostats Sales Volume and Market Share by Type4.4 China WiFi Thermostats Sales Volume and Market Share by ApplicationAbout usMarketResearchReports.biz is the most comprehensive collection of market research reports. MarketResearchReports.Biz services are specially designed to save time and money for our clients. We are a one stop solution for all your research needs, our main offerings are syndicated research reports, custom research, subscription access and consulting services. We serve all sizes and types of companies spanning across various industries.ContactMr. NachiketState Tower90 Sate Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-621-2074USA: Canada Toll Free: 866-997-4948Website:E: sales@marketresearchreports.biz Magnetostrictive Material Market Size - Industry Report 2022: Volume, Revenue, Product Price, Top Players, Market Share https://www.marketresearchreports.biz/sample/sample/1231093 https://www.marketresearchreports.biz/reports/1231093/united-states-magnetostrictive-material-report-market-research-reports https://www.marketresearchreports.biz/sample/enquiry/1231093 http://www.marketresearchreports.biz/ "The Latest Research Report United States Magnetostrictive Material Market Report 2017 provides information on pricing, market analysis, shares, forecast, and company profiles for key industry participants. - MarketResearchReports.biz"About Magnetostrictive Material MarketIn this report, the United States Magnetostrictive Material market is valued at USD XX million in 2016 and is expected to reach USD XX million by the end of 2022, growing at a CAGR of XX% between 2016 and 2022.Geographically, this report splits the United States market into seven regions:The WestSouthwestThe Middle AtlanticNew EnglandThe SouthThe Midwestwith sales (volume), revenue (value), market share and growth rate of Magnetostrictive Material in these regions, from 2012 to 2022 (forecast).United States Magnetostrictive Material market competition by top manufacturers/players, with Magnetostrictive Material sales volume, price, revenue (Million USD) and market share for each manufacturer/player; the top players includingTdVibGrirem Advanced MaterialsKENCOGansu Tianxing Rare Earth Functional MaterialsEmersonGet Sample copy of this Report @On the basis of product, this report displays the sales volume, revenue, product price, market share and growth rate of each type, primarily split intoRare Earth MaterialFerrite Magnetostrictive MaterialOthersOn the basis on the end users/applications, this report focuses on the status and outlook for major applications/end users, sales volume, market share and growth rate of Magnetostrictive Material for each application, includingConsumer GoodsIndustrial ManufacturingWastewaterHealthcareOthersTable of ContentsUnited States Magnetostrictive Material Market Report 20171 Magnetostrictive Material Overview1.1 Product Overview and Scope of Magnetostrictive Material1.2 Classification of Magnetostrictive Material by Product Category1.2.1 United States Magnetostrictive Material Market Size (Sales Volume) Comparison by Type (2012-2022)1.2.2 United States Magnetostrictive Material Market Size (Sales Volume) Market Share by Type (Product Category) in 20161.2.3 Rare Earth Material1.2.4 Ferrite Magnetostrictive Material1.2.5 OthersView Report @1.3 United States Magnetostrictive Material Market by Application/End Users1.3.1 United States Magnetostrictive Material Market Size (Consumption) and Market Share Comparison by Application (2012-2022)1.3.2 Consumer Goods1.3.3 Industrial Manufacturing1.3.4 Wastewater1.3.5 Healthcare1.3.6 Others1.4 United States Magnetostrictive Material Market by Region1.4.1 United States Magnetostrictive Material Market Size (Value) Comparison by Region (2012-2022)1.4.2 The West Magnetostrictive Material Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.4.3 Southwest Magnetostrictive Material Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.4.4 The Middle Atlantic Magnetostrictive Material Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.4.5 New England Magnetostrictive Material Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.4.6 The South Magnetostrictive Material Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.4.7 The Midwest Magnetostrictive Material Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.5 United States Market Size (Value and Volume) of Magnetostrictive Material (2012-2022)1.5.1 United States Magnetostrictive Material Sales and Growth Rate (2012-2022)1.5.2 United States Magnetostrictive Material Revenue and Growth Rate (2012-2022)2 United States Magnetostrictive Material Market Competition by Players/Suppliers2.1 United States Magnetostrictive Material Sales and Market Share of Key Players/Suppliers (2012-2017)2.2 United States Magnetostrictive Material Revenue and Share by Players/Suppliers (2012-2017)2.3 United States Magnetostrictive Material Average Price by Players/Suppliers (2012-2017)2.4 United States Magnetostrictive Material Market Competitive Situation and Trends2.4.1 United States Magnetostrictive Material Market Concentration Rate2.4.2 United States Magnetostrictive Material Market Share of Top 3 and Top 5 Players/Suppliers2.4.3 Mergers & Acquisitions, Expansion in United States Market2.5 United States Players/Suppliers Magnetostrictive Material Manufacturing Base Distribution, Sales Area, Product TypeSend An Enquiry Request @3 United States Magnetostrictive Material Sales (Volume) and Revenue (Value) by Region (2012-2017)3.1 United States Magnetostrictive Material Sales and Market Share by Region (2012-2017)3.2 United States Magnetostrictive Material Revenue and Market Share by Region (2012-2017)3.3 United States Magnetostrictive Material Price by Region (2012-2017)4 United States Magnetostrictive Material Sales (Volume) and Revenue (Value) by Type (Product Category) (2012-2017)4.1 United States Magnetostrictive Material Sales and Market Share by Type (Product Category) (2012-2017)4.2 United States Magnetostrictive Material Revenue and Market Share by Type (2012-2017)4.3 United States Magnetostrictive Material Price by Type (2012-2017)4.4 United States Magnetostrictive Material Sales Growth Rate by Type (2012-2017)About usMarketResearchReports.biz is the most comprehensive collection of market research reports. MarketResearchReports.Biz services are specially designed to save time and money for our clients. We are a one stop solution for all your research needs, our main offerings are syndicated research reports, custom research, subscription access and consulting services. We serve all sizes and types of companies spanning across various industries.ContactMr. NachiketState Tower90 Sate Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-621-2074USA: Canada Toll Free: 866-997-4948Website:E: sales@marketresearchreports.biz Thrombectomy System Market size in terms of volume and value 2015 - 2025 http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/sample/rep-gb-673 http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/toc/rep-gb-673 www.futuremarketinsights.com Thrombectomy is the surgical procedure where removal of thrombus (blood clot) from a blood vessel is performed. Blood contain cells called platelets and a substance called fibrinogen that allow the blood to clot. In normal circumstances, clotting is a good thing as it prevents blood loss from injury such as cut or gaze. However, when a blood clot forms inside a blood vessel, it can cause serious problem like part of the body supplied by that vein becomes swollen as the blood is unable to flow back towards the heart. If one forms in an artery, the blood cannot reach the area supplied by the artery.Thrombectomy system are used in several procedures which require clot removal to achieve efficacious treatment and to save patients lives. Due to its versatility, the thrombectomy system can be utilized in several different applications like acute myocardial infraction (AMI), peripheral arterial disease (PAD), deep vein thrombosis (DVT), pulmonary embolism (PE), and neurovascular procedures.Request For Report Sample@Thrombectomy System Market: Drivers and RestraintsPresently, thrombectomy system global market is driven by the technological advancement, aging population, and increasing demand for minimally invasive surgery.Thrombectomy system global market is drives by the aging population, technological advancement in healthcare industry, increasing demand for minimally invasive surgery, increasing prevalence of cardiovascular disease such as AAAs and PADs, patient lifestyle changes and unhealthy habits. However, lack of skilled professionals and the lack of awareness about peripheral vascular disease among patients are major barriers for this market.Thrombectomy System Market: SegmentationThrombectomy system global market is segmented into following types:Percutaneous Thrombectomy DevicesAspiration ThrombectomyMechanical Thrombectomy DevicesBalloon EmbolectomyCatheter Directed Thrombolysis (CDT)Thrombectomy System Market: OverviewWith rapid technological advancement, increase in the number of aging population and increase in demand for minimally invasive surgery, the thrombectomy system global market is expected to have healthy growth rate in the forecast period (2012-2025).Visit For TOC@Thrombectomy System Market: Region-wise OutlookDepending on geographic region, global thrombectomy system market is segmented into seven key regions: North America, South America, Eastern Europe, Western Europe, Asia Pacific, Japan, and Middle East & Africa.North America holds the largest share of the global thrombectomy system market, due to high aging population and wide technological advancement.Thrombectomy System Market: Key PlayersSome of the key participating players in thrombectomy system global market are Bayer HealthCare LLC, Boston Scientific Corp., Covidien Plc., Minnetronix Inc., Argon Medical Devices Inc., NexGen Medical Systems Inc., and others.ABOUT US:Future Market Insights (FMI) is a leading market intelligence and consulting firm. We deliver syndicated research reports, custom research reports and consulting services, which are personalized in nature. FMI delivers a complete packaged solution, which combines current market intelligence, statistical anecdotes, technology inputs, valuable growth insights, an aerial view of the competitive framework, and future market trends.CONTACT:Future Market Insights616 Corporate Way, Suite 2-9018,Valley Cottage, NY 10989,United StatesT: +1-347-918-3531F: +1-845-579-5705Email: sales@futuremarketinsights.comWebsite: Europe Foodservice Disposables Distribution Market Stood at US$ 2,225.2 Mn by 2022 http://www.persistencemarketresearch.com/market-research/europe-foodservice-disposables-distribution-systems-market.asp http://www.persistencemarketresearch.com/samples/10807 http://www.persistencemarketresearch.com/market-research/europe-foodservice-disposables-distribution-systems-market/toc http://www.persistencemarketresearch.com Key players in Europe foodservice disposables distribution system market that are covered in the report include Dispo International, EFG Foodservice, First Pack, Go-Pak Group, ITP Imports Ltd. (Discount Wholesale), Mashers, MBS Wholesale Ltd, Party & Paper Solutions Ltd., Pattersons UK, and Sustainable Disposables Trading BV (SD Trading).According to the latest market report published by Persistence Market Research, titled Europe Market Study on Foodservice Disposables Distribution Systems: Impelled By Increasing Number of On the Go Consumers, Coupled With Rapid Growth of the Quick Service Restaurants, Over the Forecast Period 2016 - 2022, the europe foodservice disposables distribution systems market is estimated to be valued at US$ 1,590.9 Mn by the end of 2015 and is anticipated to expand at a CAGR of 4.9% over 2016 - 2022 in terms of value, to reach a market value of US$ 2,225.2 Mn by 2022.The Europe (U.K. Spain, France & Switzerland) foodservice disposables distribution systems market is driven by increasing adoption of the on the go lifestyle and increasing initiatives taken by the various food disposables manufacturers to introduce food disposables with creative designs. Moreover, collaboration of various distributors with manufacturers that offer foodservice disposable products is another key factor expected to drive market growth of the food service disposables market in the region over the forecast period.Browse Complete Report @On the basis of type, the Europe foodservice disposables distribution market has been segmented into tableware disposables, finger food disposables, and durable plastic glasses. The tableware disposables segment dominated the market with a revenue share of 85.8% in 2015 and is projected to maintain its dominance through 2022. Increasing number of cafes and takeaway formats is supporting the segment growth in the foodservice disposable distribution system market. The tableware disposable segment is further sub-segmented into plates, bowls & tubs, cutlery, trays and containers, and cups and mugs. The plate segment accounted for the significant share in 2014 and is estimated to be valued at US$ 732.2 Mn by 2022, expanding at a CAGR of 5.5% over 2016 - 2022.A sample of this report is available upon request @On the basis of end use, the market is segmented into hotel & other accommodation facilities, restaurants, cafe and bistros, bars & pubs, clubs, institutions, and foodservice providers/caterers. The restaurants segment is estimated to account for the highest value share by 2015 end and expected to remain the most dominant segment over the forecast period. The restaurants segment was valued at US$ 341.5 Mn in 2014 and is estimated to be valued at US$ 526.8 Mn by 2022, expanding at a CAGR of 5.6% over 2016 - 2022.In terms of distribution channel, the market has been segmented into wholesalers, hypermarket/supermarkets, cash & carry, logistic providers, distributors, and online. The cash & carry segment is projected to exhibit the highest growth over 20162022. The cash & carry segment was valued at US$ 326.3 Mn in 2014 and is estimated to be valued at US$ 494.9 Mn by 2022, expanding at a CAGR of 5.3% over 20162022.Request to view table of content @The report provides in-depth information about the various trends driving each segment and provides analysis and insights about the foodservice disposables distribution system market in specific countries.The U.K. market accounted for the significant volume share of 42.6% of the Europe foodservice disposables market in 2014.About UsPersistence Market Research (PMR) is a third-platform research firm. Our research model is a unique collaboration of data analytics and market research methodology to help businesses achieve optimal performance.To support companies in overcoming complex business challenges, we follow a multi-disciplinary approach. At PMR, we unite various data streams from multi-dimensional sources. By deploying real-time data collection, big data, and customer experience analytics, we deliver business intelligence for organizations of all sizes.Contact UsPersistence Market Research305 Broadway7th Floor, New York City,NY 10007, United States,USA Canada Toll Free: 800-961-0353Email: sales@persistencemarketresearch.comWeb: Halal Pharmaceuticals Market : Facts, Figures and Analytical Insights, 2016 to 2026 http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/sample/rep-gb-1251 http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/toc/rep-gb-1251 www.futuremarketinsights.com Halal pharmaceuticals are those medicines that stringently adhere to Shariah law. More specifically, halal pharmaceuticals refer to medicines that should not contain any parts of animals (dogs, pigs and ones particularly with pointed teeth), insects (bees), alcohol and other substances prohibited as haram under the Shariah law. Competent religious local regulatory bodies in countries generally provide a better segregation regarding the classification of drugs as halal or haram (unlawful) across the world. Halal pharmaceuticals are subject to normal pre-marketing and post-marketing controls by the relevant national pharmaceutical regulators such as the National Pharmaceutical Control Bureau in case of Malaysia. Halal medicines market has vast potential globally in terms of revenue generation supported by growing demand for faith-compliant medicines from an expanding Muslim population. Drugs approved by halal drug certifiying agencies such as Lembaga Pengkajian Pangan Obatobatan dan Kosmetika Majelis Ulama Indonesia (LPPOM MUI) of Indonesia and Jabatan Kemajuan Islam Malaysia are expected to witness rising consumption globally. Currently, halal medicines are estimated to have contributed close to one-third of the total revenue from the global halal market, posing an extremely attractive opportunity for Shariah compliant drugs. This is supported by the fact that demand outstrips supply of halal medicines by a significant margin, creating potential for future economic value added in the industry.Request Report Sample@Halal Pharmaceuticals Market: Drivers and RestraintsDrivers of the halal pharmaceuticals market include a growing Muslim population. Given that Muslims have been estimated to account for close to 25% of the global population in 2015~1.6 billion people (PewResearch) the annual growth rate of the Muslim population has been estimated to be ~1.6%, which is higher than the growth rate of the world population (1.1% per annum). Increasing awareness among Muslims regarding wellness and medicines is propagating mainly through increased education. This is another prime factor contributing to growth of the halal medicine market. Other socio-economic factors driving the need and uptake of halal medicines include rising purchasing power parity, increasing access to critical medicines in resource-constrained nations supported by public organizations such as World Health Organization, safety of consumption, assurance of product efficacy and hygienic processing among others. Increasing need to get medicines certified from an approved regulatory body is driving regulatory convergence in the halal medicines market among countries such as Malaysia, Indonesia and Brunei, Turkey, France and others.Key restraints include lack of adequate infrastructure in non-Islamic countries to avoid cross-contamination between halal and non-halal production lines, and lack of sufficient halal advisory and certification agencies to approve medical products. Other restraints include dearth of sufficient R&D for halal medicines globally and omission of critical medicine classes such as vaccines and biologics as they do not comply with Shariah norms. Ban on use of forbidden components such as porcine excipients also limit the number of drugs that can be produced. Industry experts have noted that formation of a proper, well-regulated and harmonized accreditation and halal management system could serve a long way in raising demand for halal medicines.Halal Pharmaceuticals Market: SegmentationHalal pharmaceuticals market can be segmented as indicated below:Segmentation by drug classesRespiratory drugsCardiovascular drugsEndocrine drugsPain medicationsAllergies (cough &cold)OthersSegmentation by product typeTabletsSyrupsCapsulesOthersSegmentation by source materialPlant and plant derivativesAnimals (compliant under religious laws)Synthetic and semi-synthetic sourcesRecombinant DNASegmentation by regionsHalal Pharmaceuticals Market: OverviewUptake of Halal medicines is gaining major traction globally, primarily due to two reasons. Firstly, these medicines are fully compliant with faith and so are readily acceptable under religious laws. Secondly, these medicines are very well assessed for quality and certification before being released into the market and are mostly made using herbal and synthetic materials. The market for halal pharmaceuticals is expected to register a significant CAGR as well as annual growth rates over the forecast period. Regulatory harmonization and regional regulatory convergence is expected to emerge as the key market trends in the near future.Visit For TOC@Halal Pharmaceuticals Market: Region-wise OutlookOn the basis of geographic regions, halal drug market is segmented into seven key regions: North America, South America, Eastern Europe, Western Europe, Asia Pacific, Japan and Middle East & Africa.In terms of geography, Asia Pacific region is the main region exhibiting development and uptake of halal medicines, particularly in countries such as Malaysia, Indonesia and Brunei. However, R&D activities related to halal medicines are gaining traction in the European and North American regions. Discussion on formation of halal medicine certification agencies and guidelines are key features found in the traditionally pharmaceutically developed markets. Companies producing halal medicines are expected to enter Saudi Arabia, Malaysia, Turkey, Iran, Qatar, Russia, France, Libya, Algeria and Singapore as well as the UAE to cater to the high demand base for better revenue generation, either through distributor route or via tie-ups with established players.Halal Pharmaceuticals Market: Key PlayersSome key accredited players in the halal medicine market include Chemical Company of Malaysia Berhad (CCM Pharmaceuticals Sdn Bhd), Pharmaniaga Bhd, Simpor Pharma Sdn Bhd, EMBIL Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd, Nutramedica Incorporated, etc. among others.About Us Future Market Insights is the premier provider of market intelligence and consulting services, serving clients in over 150 countries. FMI is headquartered in London, the global financial capital, and has delivery centers in the U.S. and India.CONTACT:616 Corporate Way, Suite 2-9018,Valley Cottage, NY 10989,United StatesT: +1-347-918-3531F: +1-845-579-5705Email: sales@futuremarketinsights.comWebsite: United States Pharmaceutical Grade HPMC Market Volume, Revenue, Product Price, Top Players, Market Share And Growth Rate 2017 https://www.marketresearchreports.biz/sample/sample/1231127 https://www.marketresearchreports.biz/reports/1231127/united-states-pharmaceutical-grade-hpmc-market-research-reports https://www.marketresearchreports.biz/sample/enquiry/1231127 http://www.marketresearchreports.biz/ "The Report United States Pharmaceutical Grade HPMC Market Report 2017 provides information on pricing, market analysis, shares, forecast, and company profiles for key industry participants. - MarketResearchReports.biz"About Pharmaceutical Grade HPMC MarketIn this report, the United States Pharmaceutical Grade HPMC market is valued at USD XX million in 2016 and is expected to reach USD XX million by the end of 2022, growing at a CAGR of XX% between 2016 and 2022.Geographically, this report splits the United States market into seven regions:The WestSouthwestThe Middle AtlanticNew EnglandThe SouthThe Midwestwith sales (volume), revenue (value), market share and growth rate of Pharmaceutical Grade HPMC in these regions, from 2012 to 2022 (forecast).Get Sample Copy of this report @United States Pharmaceutical Grade HPMC market competition by top manufacturers/players, with Pharmaceutical Grade HPMC sales volume, price, revenue (Million USD) and market share for each manufacturer/player; the top players includingAshlandDowShin EtsuLotteHercules-TianpuShandong Guangda TechnologyShandong Yiteng New MaterialCelotech ChemicalGemez ChemicalShandong HeadZhejiang Kehong ChemicalHopetop PharmaceuticalTai'an RuitaiXinjiang Su Nok Cotton IndustryOn the basis of product, this report displays the production, revenue, price, market share and growth rate of each type, primarily split intoLow ViscosityMiddle ViscosityHigh ViscosityOn the basis on the end users/applications, this report focuses on the status and outlook for major applications/end users, sales volume, market share and growth rate of Pharmaceutical Grade HPMC for each application, includingExcipientLubricantOtherView Full Report @Table of ContentsUnited States Pharmaceutical Grade HPMC Market Report 20171 Pharmaceutical Grade HPMC Overview1.1 Product Overview and Scope of Pharmaceutical Grade HPMC1.2 Classification of Pharmaceutical Grade HPMC by Product Category1.2.1 United States Pharmaceutical Grade HPMC Market Size (Sales Volume) Comparison by Type (2012-2022)1.2.2 United States Pharmaceutical Grade HPMC Market Size (Sales Volume) Market Share by Type (Product Category) in 20161.2.3 Low Viscosity1.2.4 Middle Viscosity1.2.5 High Viscosity1.3 United States Pharmaceutical Grade HPMC Market by Application/End Users1.3.1 United States Pharmaceutical Grade HPMC Market Size (Consumption) and Market Share Comparison by Application (2012-2022)1.3.2 Excipient1.3.3 Lubricant1.3.4 Other1.4 United States Pharmaceutical Grade HPMC Market by Region1.4.1 United States Pharmaceutical Grade HPMC Market Size (Value) Comparison by Region (2012-2022)1.4.2 The West Pharmaceutical Grade HPMC Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.4.3 Southwest Pharmaceutical Grade HPMC Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.4.4 The Middle Atlantic Pharmaceutical Grade HPMC Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.4.5 New England Pharmaceutical Grade HPMC Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.4.6 The South Pharmaceutical Grade HPMC Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.4.7 The Midwest Pharmaceutical Grade HPMC Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.5 United States Market Size (Value and Volume) of Pharmaceutical Grade HPMC (2012-2022)1.5.1 United States Pharmaceutical Grade HPMC Sales and Growth Rate (2012-2022)1.5.2 United States Pharmaceutical Grade HPMC Revenue and Growth Rate (2012-2022)Send An Enquiry Request @2 United States Pharmaceutical Grade HPMC Market Competition by Players/Suppliers2.1 United States Pharmaceutical Grade HPMC Sales and Market Share of Key Players/Suppliers (2012-2017)2.2 United States Pharmaceutical Grade HPMC Revenue and Share by Players/Suppliers (2012-2017)2.3 United States Pharmaceutical Grade HPMC Average Price by Players/Suppliers (2012-2017)2.4 United States Pharmaceutical Grade HPMC Market Competitive Situation and Trends2.4.1 United States Pharmaceutical Grade HPMC Market Concentration Rate2.4.2 United States Pharmaceutical Grade HPMC Market Share of Top 3 and Top 5 Players/Suppliers2.4.3 Mergers & Acquisitions, Expansion in United States Market2.5 United States Players/Suppliers Pharmaceutical Grade HPMC Manufacturing Base Distribution, Sales Area, Product Type3 United States Pharmaceutical Grade HPMC Sales (Volume) and Revenue (Value) by Region (2012-2017)3.1 United States Pharmaceutical Grade HPMC Sales and Market Share by Region (2012-2017)3.2 United States Pharmaceutical Grade HPMC Revenue and Market Share by Region (2012-2017)3.3 United States Pharmaceutical Grade HPMC Price by Region (2012-2017)4 United States Pharmaceutical Grade HPMC Sales (Volume) and Revenue (Value) by Type (Product Category) (2012-2017)4.1 United States Pharmaceutical Grade HPMC Sales and Market Share by Type (Product Category) (2012-2017)4.2 United States Pharmaceutical Grade HPMC Revenue and Market Share by Type (2012-2017)4.3 United States Pharmaceutical Grade HPMC Price by Type (2012-2017)4.4 United States Pharmaceutical Grade HPMC Sales Growth Rate by Type (2012-2017)About usMarketResearchReports.biz is the most comprehensive collection of market research reports. MarketResearchReports.Biz services are specially designed to save time and money for our clients. We are a one stop solution for all your research needs, our main offerings are syndicated research reports, custom research, subscription access and consulting services. We serve all sizes and types of companies spanning across various industries.ContactMr. NachiketState Tower90 Sate Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-621-2074USA: Canada Toll Free: 866-997-4948Website:E: sales@marketresearchreports.biz ALCOR MNA Experts in Debt Capital Raising Solutions & Business Financing http://www.alcormna.com/private-equity http://www.alcormna.com/debt-financing http://www.alcormna.com http://www.alcormna.com http://www.alcormna.com ALCOR is a global leader in cross-border Mergers & Acquisitions, providing multifaceted, tailor-made, business decisions, to the clients in aerospace, auto-components, chemical, IT, electronics, pharmaceutical industries. ALCORs team of experienced Harvard-trained negotiators cultivates ALCORs strong culture and work tirelessly to help their clients. With the experience of over 100-plus man-years in M&A with global clients, their M&A team maximizes in extracting the best value. ALCOR focuses on driving value in top-line growth, in bottom-line profitability, and creating the right funding to drive organic and inorganic growth.For More Information on Financial Services, Stay tuned with AlcorMNA!Debt Financing for Small BusinessesEvery company needs to grow its business, which is the main purpose of the company. To grow its business, the company must increase its top line revenues and focus to increase its profitability. Our Debt Finance lawyers work closely with the firm's Private Equity, Technology Companies, Capital Markets, and Financial Restructuring groups structuring, negotiating and documenting domestic and cross-border debt financing arrangements, including secured and unsecured senior, mezzanine and subordinated debt facilities, acquisition-financing transactions, working capital facilities, as well as loan workouts and restructurings.Are you looking for a Financing Options? Complete the Enquiry Form!/enquire-now.phpDebt financing allows you to find funding for your business while maintaining complete control and ownership of your business. Debt Finance practice represents borrowers, private equity sponsors and lenders in a broad range of financing transactions. On the borrower side, ALCOR represents private equity firms and their portfolio companies, leading public and private companies and start-ups in a wide variety of business industries. On the lender side, ALCORs clients include domestic and international banks, insurance and finance companies, mezzanine lenders, business development companies and other institutional investors.About ALCOR Mergers and Acquisitions.ALCOR augmented with an elite Board of Harvard and Oxford alumni; extends its dynamic leadership for M&A advisory, buy-side & sell-side advisory, JV advisory & execution, strategic alliance, management buyouts & leveraged buyouts, Corporate Finance & Restructuring and Business Growth Consultancy. ALCOR Fund has several portfolio companies in emerging markets. ALCOR has become one of the leading players in PE consulting, M&A, International Business Development and consulting services over last five years. ALCOR has assisted numerous clients in North America, Europe, and Asia to grow their business in organic as well as through inorganic way. At ALCOR, we advise clients across industries during different stages of capital requirements with the primary goal of offering long term appreciation of the capital. ALCOR offers its fund management services with an investment range of US$10mn to US$500mn along with an array of investment banking services.Putting Capital to Work Making Companies StrongerContact:ALCOR Fund,8770 W Bryn Mawr Ave,Suite 1300Chicago, IL 60631USA Tel: +1 773 896 1534, 800 507 4489Fax No.: +1 877 284 0818Email: sales@alcormna.com Kinase Inhibitors For Cancer Treatment Market : Industry Trends and Developments 2016 - 2026 http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/sample/rep-gb-1403 http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/toc/rep-gb-1403 www.futuremarketinsights.com Kinase Inhibitors are specific enzymes which oppose the process of cell division and growth in cancerous cells. It comes handy in treatment of cancer by blocking the signals that notify a cell to divide and grow. In last few decades, there has been significant progress made in the development of cancer treatment such as chemotherapy. However, these drugs used cancer treatment have a restricted therapeutic index, also the result are only unpredictable, partial, brief, palliative as well as uncertain. In contrast, kinase inhibitor therapy which has recently been introduced is specifically targeted towards cancer molecules and signaling pathways. Such targets are normally found in tumor cells, resulting wider therapeutic index and minimum adverse effect.Significant changes have been made in cancer treatment from last decade and kinase inhibitors therapy signifies to a latest generation of anticancer treatment that are intended to interfere with a particular molecular target, normally a protein with an important role in tumor development or growth. This methodology differs from the more observed approach used in orthodox cytotoxic chemotherapy, which has continued to be the backbone of cancer treatment over past several years. Kinase inhibitors therapy has the possibility to eliminate or reduce many of the present difficulties in the area of cytotoxic chemotherapy, such as the causing serious host-cell toxicity.Request Report Sample@Kinase Inhibitors for Cancer Treatment Market: Drivers and RestraintsEnhancedemphasis of pharmaceutical companies on R&D to come up with potential kinase inhibitors for treatment of cancers. Is driving the growth of kinase inhibitor treatment market, globally. Presently,kinase inhibitors for cancer treatmentglobal market is driven by some of the factors like technological progression in healthcare area, rise in the prevalence of cancer patients around the globe and rise in the incidence of chronic disease. However, high cost associated with latest clinical trials and complex approvals processes are acting as a major obstructions for the growth of kinase inhibitors for cancer treatmentglobal market.Kinase Inhibitors for Cancer Treatment Market: SegmentationKinase inhibitors for cancer treatment globalmarketis segmented into following types:By Product TypeAngiogenesis inhibitorsm-TOR inhibitorsBRAF and MEK inhibitorsBcr-Abl tyrosine-kinase inhibitors (TKI)EGFR inhibitorsOthers (PI3K Inhibitors, aurora-kinase inhibitors etc)End UserHospitalsResearch OrganizationsBy RegionNorth AmericaLatin AmericaWestern EuropeEastern EuropeAPEJJapanMEAKinase Inhibitors for Cancer Treatment Market: OverviewThe global market for kinase inhibitors for cancer treatmentis expected to register a healthy CAGR during the forecast period. There are reasons for healthy growth rate in the forecast period such asfast technological development, upsurge in the number of incidence of cancer patients, rise in the increasing adverse effects from chemotherapy and increase in the prevalence of cancer patients around the globe.Kinase Inhibitors for Cancer Treatment Market: Region-wise OutlookDepending on geographic regions, kinase inhibitors for cancer treatment market is segmented into seven key regions: North America, Latin America, Eastern Europe, Western Europe, Asia Pacific Excluding Japan, Japan and Middle East & Africa. In terms of region Europe accounts for the largest market shares in global kinase inhibitors for cancer treatment market owing to advancements in medical research, clinical trials, growing geriatric population with cancer indication.Whereas, North America and Asia-Pacific is projected showing a healthy CAGR during the forecast period, 2016-2026 owing to increasing incidence and prevalence of cancer patients. Thereby, contribute to the growth of global kinase inhibitors for cancer treatmentmarket value.The market for kinase inhibitors for cancer treatmentin various regions is particularly driven by gradually increasing awareness, rising incidence of cancer patients and adoption of advanced technologies in cancer treatment.Visit For TOC@Kinase Inhibitors for Cancer Treatment Market: Key PlayersSome of the key participating global players in kinase inhibitors for cancer treatment global market are Pfizer Inc., Boehringer Ingelheim GmbH, Novartis AG, Incyte Corporation, MedImmune, AstraZeneca, Eisai Co., Ltd., Takeda Pharmaceutical Company Limited and others.About Us Future Market Insights is the premier provider of market intelligence and consulting services, serving clients in over 150 countries. FMI is headquartered in London, the global financial capital, and has delivery centers in the U.S. and India.CONTACT:616 Corporate Way, Suite 2-9018,Valley Cottage, NY 10989,United StatesT: +1-347-918-3531F: +1-845-579-5705Email: sales@futuremarketinsights.comWebsite: EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa) 3D Bioprinting Market Volume, Revenue, Product Price, Top Players, Market Share And Growth Rate 2017 https://www.marketresearchreports.biz/sample/sample/1231222 https://www.marketresearchreports.biz/reports/1231222/emea-europe-middle-east-and-market-research-reports https://www.marketresearchreports.biz/sample/enquiry/1231222 http://www.marketresearchreports.biz/ "The Report EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa) 3D Bioprinting Market Report 2017 provides information on pricing, market analysis, shares, forecast, and company profiles for key industry participants. - MarketResearchReports.biz"About 3D Bioprinting MarketIn this report, the EMEA 3D Bioprinting market is valued at USD XX million in 2016 and is expected to reach USD XX million by the end of 2022, growing at a CAGR of XX% between 2016 and 2022.Geographically, this report split EMEA into Europe, the Middle East and Africa, With sales (K Units), revenue (Million USD), market share and growth rate of 3D Bioprinting for these regions, from 2012 to 2022 (forecast)Europe: Germany, France, UK, Russia, Italy and Benelux;Middle East: Saudi Arabia, Israel, UAE and Iran;Africa: South Africa, Nigeria, Egypt and Algeria.Get Sample Copy of this report @EMEA 3D Bioprinting market competition by top manufacturers/players, with 3D Bioprinting sales volume (K Units), price (USD/Unit), revenue (Million USD) and market share for each manufacturer/player; the top players includingOrganovo Holdings Inc.EnvisionTEC GmbHNano3D Biosciences, Inc.Cyfuse Biomedical K.K.BioBotsAspect Biosystems Ltd.3Dynamic Systems Ltd.regenHU LtdCellinkRegenovo Biotechnology Co., Ltd.PoietisGeSiMExoneStratasysBespoke InnovationsAdvanced BioMatrixOn the basis of product, this report displays the sales volume (K Units), revenue (Million USD), product price (USD/Unit), market share and growth rate of each type, primarily split intoMagnetic 3D BioprintingLaser-assisted BioprintingInkjet 3D BioprintingMicroextrusion 3D BioprintingView Full Report @On the basis on the end users/applications, this report focuses on the status and outlook for major applications/end users, sales volume (K Units), market share and growth rate of 3D Bioprinting for each application, includingClinical ApplicationsResearch ApplicationsDrug and Medical ResearchRegenerative Medicine3D Cell CultureTable of ContentsEMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa) 3D Bioprinting Market Report 20171 3D Bioprinting Overview1.1 Product Overview and Scope of 3D Bioprinting1.2 Classification of 3D Bioprinting1.2.1 EMEA 3D Bioprinting Market Size (Sales) Comparison by Type (2012-2022)1.2.2 EMEA 3D Bioprinting Market Size (Sales) Market Share by Type (Product Category) in 20161.2.3 Magnetic 3D Bioprinting1.2.4 Laser-assisted Bioprinting1.2.5 Inkjet 3D Bioprinting1.2.6 Microextrusion 3D Bioprinting1.3 EMEA 3D Bioprinting Market by Application/End Users1.3.1 EMEA 3D Bioprinting Sales (Volume) and Market Share Comparison by Application (2012-20221.3.2 Clinical Applications1.3.3 Research Applications1.3.4 Drug and Medical Research1.3.5 Regenerative Medicine1.3.6 3D Cell Culture1.4 EMEA 3D Bioprinting Market by Region1.4.1 EMEA 3D Bioprinting Market Size (Value) Comparison by Region (2012-2022)1.4.2 Europe Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.4.3 Middle East Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.4.4 Africa Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.5 EMEA Market Size (Value and Volume) of 3D Bioprinting (2012-2022)1.5.1 EMEA 3D Bioprinting Sales and Growth Rate (2012-2022)1.5.2 EMEA 3D Bioprinting Revenue and Growth Rate (2012-2022)Send An Enquiry Request @2 EMEA 3D Bioprinting Competition by Manufacturers/Players/Suppliers, Region, Type and Application2.1 EMEA 3D Bioprinting Market Competition by Players/Manufacturers2.1.1 EMEA 3D Bioprinting Sales Volume and Market Share of Major Players (2012-2017)2.1.2 EMEA 3D Bioprinting Revenue and Share by Players (2012-2017)2.1.3 EMEA 3D Bioprinting Sale Price by Players (2012-2017)2.2 EMEA 3D Bioprinting (Volume and Value) by Type/Product Category2.2.1 EMEA 3D Bioprinting Sales and Market Share by Type (2012-2017)2.2.2 EMEA 3D Bioprinting Revenue and Market Share by Type (2012-2017)2.2.3 EMEA 3D Bioprinting Sale Price by Type (2012-2017)2.3 EMEA 3D Bioprinting (Volume) by Application2.4 EMEA 3D Bioprinting (Volume and Value) by Region2.4.1 EMEA 3D Bioprinting Sales and Market Share by Region (2012-2017)2.4.2 EMEA 3D Bioprinting Revenue and Market Share by Region (2012-2017)2.4.3 EMEA 3D Bioprinting Sales Price by Region (2012-2017)3 Europe 3D Bioprinting (Volume, Value and Sales Price), by Players, Countries, Type and Application3.1 Europe 3D Bioprinting Sales and Value (2012-2017)3.1.1 Europe 3D Bioprinting Sales Volume and Growth Rate (2012-2017)3.1.2 Europe 3D Bioprinting Revenue and Growth Rate (2012-2017)3.2 Europe 3D Bioprinting Sales and Market Share by Type3.3 Europe 3D Bioprinting Sales and Market Share by Application3.4 Europe 3D Bioprinting Sales Volume and Value (Revenue) by Countries3.4.1 Europe 3D Bioprinting Sales Volume by Countries (2012-2017)3.4.2 Europe 3D Bioprinting Revenue by Countries (2012-2017)3.4.3 Germany 3D Bioprinting Sales and Growth Rate (2012-2017)3.4.4 France 3D Bioprinting Sales and Growth Rate (2012-2017)3.4.5 UK 3D Bioprinting Sales and Growth Rate (2012-2017)3.4.6 Russia 3D Bioprinting Sales and Growth Rate (2012-2017)3.4.7 Italy 3D Bioprinting Sales and Growth Rate (2012-2017)3.4.8 Benelux 3D Bioprinting Sales and Growth Rate (2012-2017)4 Middle East 3D Bioprinting (Volume, Value and Sales Price), by Region, Type and Application4.1 Middle East 3D Bioprinting Sales and Value (2012-2017)4.1.1 Middle East 3D Bioprinting Sales Volume and Growth Rate (2012-2017)4.1.2 Middle East 3D Bioprinting Revenue and Growth Rate (2012-2017)4.2 Middle East 3D Bioprinting Sales and Market Share by Type4.3 Middle East 3D Bioprinting Sales and Market Share by Application4.4 Middle East 3D Bioprinting Sales Volume and Value (Revenue) by Countries4.4.1 Middle East 3D Bioprinting Sales Volume by Countries (2012-2017)4.4.2 Middle East 3D Bioprinting Revenue by Countries (2012-2017)4.4.3 Saudi Arabia 3D Bioprinting Sales and Growth Rate (2012-2017)4.4.4 Israel 3D Bioprinting Sales and Growth Rate (2012-2017)4.4.5 UAE 3D Bioprinting Sales and Growth Rate (2012-2017)4.4.6 Iran 3D Bioprinting Sales and Growth Rate (2012-2017)About usMarketResearchReports.biz is the most comprehensive collection of market research reports. MarketResearchReports.Biz services are specially designed to save time and money for our clients. We are a one stop solution for all your research needs, our main offerings are syndicated research reports, custom research, subscription access and consulting services. We serve all sizes and types of companies spanning across various industries.ContactMr. NachiketState Tower90 Sate Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-621-2074USA: Canada Toll Free: 866-997-4948Website:E: sales@marketresearchreports.biz Armenias Investigation Committee (IC) has launched an investigation into an explosion that occurred in Yerevans Davtashen district on August 2 that killed one individual and injured another. The explosion is said to have occurred in the courtyard of a house in the district. A team sent to investigate found a live 120 mm artillery shell and another one that had been split in two. According to an IC statement, no arrests have yet been made in the ongoing investigation. Embedded System Market : In-Depth Market Research Report 2016 to 2026 http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/sample/rep-gb-1510 http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/toc/rep-gb-1510 www.futuremarketinsights.com An embedded system consists of embedded software into computer-hardware that makes the system devoted for an application or specific portion of an application or part of a larger system. An embedded system is not a microchip deployed in a traditional computing application, but a microprocessor used as a module in another piece of technology. These systems are used to control, assist or monitor the operation of machinery, equipment or plant. The term embedded reflects the fact that they are an integral part of the system, and they offer significant characteristics such as speed, accuracy, size, reliability and adaptability. Automation in processing & manufacturing sectors, and energy metering is seen as a major propeller for embedded system industry growth.Embedded System Market: SegmentationEmbedded system market is segmented on the basis of type, microcontroller performance, functionality, end-use industry and region. By type, embedded system market can be segmented into embedded hardware and embedded software. Embedded system market can be segmented according to microcontroller performance which includes small scale embedded system, medium scale embedded system and large scale embedded system. On the basis of functionality, embedded system market can be segmented into stand-alone embedded system, real time embedded system, mobile embedded system and networked embedded system. Regionally, embedded system market can be segmented into North America, Western Europe, Latin America, Eastern Europe, Middle East & Africa (MEA), Asia Pacific excluding Japan (APEJ) and Japan.Request Report Sample@Embedded System Market: Regional OutlookEmbedded systems came into existence with the invention of microcontrollers and since then it is being actively used in machine control applications as well as various new verticals. These systems are now equipped with customizable rich features and are thus gaining popularity globally. North America is estimated to be the leading contributor to the regional market share with large deployments of smart meters and smart grids positively impacting the market. Asia Pacific excluding Japan (APEJ) is anticipated to show highest growth potential in the forecast period.Embedded System Market: DriversThe global embedded system market is primarily driven by factors such as increasing demand for embedded systems with multi-core technologies and embedded graphics and escalating demand for embedded systems in the automobile industry. Moreover, persistent research & development to introduce smarter and energy efficient electronic devices is expected to positively impact the growth of global embedded systems market. Also, widespread application of these systems in application areas such as automotive, aeronautics, space, rail, mobile communication, and electronic payment solutions is set to bolster the growth of the global embedded system market during the forecast period. However, security and smaller lifespan concerns associated with usage of embedded systems in various process-related applications is restraining the growth of this market. Also, design constraints pertaining to real time embedded system are also hindering the progression of embedded system market.Visit For TOC@Embedded System Market: Key PlayersThe key vendors in the embedded system market include Atmel Corporation, Intel Corporation, Texas Instruments, Freescale Semiconductor, Infineon Technologies, NXP Semiconductors N.V., Microsoft Corporation, Samsung Electronics Corporation, Renesas Electronics Corporation, and others. Major players in the embedded system market have invested significantly in developing systems that offer latest technology-based advanced functionality. To expand market presence across the globe, strategic partnership and collaborations with regional vendors is major strategy adopted by the leading vendors of the embedded system market.About Us Future Market Insights is the premier provider of market intelligence and consulting services, serving clients in over 150 countries. FMI is headquartered in London, the global financial capital, and has delivery centers in the U.S. and India.CONTACT:616 Corporate Way, Suite 2-9018,Valley Cottage, NY 10989,United StatesT: +1-347-918-3531F: +1-845-579-5705Email: sales@futuremarketinsights.comWebsite: EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa) Marine LNG Engine Market Report 2017: Focuses On Top Manufacturers - Rolls-Royce, Weichai, Yuchai, MAN, Wartsila, Zichai, Caterpilla https://www.marketresearchreports.biz/sample/sample/1231351 https://www.marketresearchreports.biz/reports/1231351/emea-europe-middle-east-and-market-research-reports https://www.marketresearchreports.biz/sample/enquiry/1231351 http://www.marketresearchreports.biz/ "The Report EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa) Marine LNG Engine Market Report 2017 provides information on pricing, market analysis, shares, forecast, and company profiles for key industry participants. - MarketResearchReports.biz"About Marine LNG Engine MarketIn this report, the EMEA Marine LNG Engine market is valued at USD XX million in 2016 and is expected to reach USD XX million by the end of 2022, growing at a CAGR of XX% between 2016 and 2022.Geographically, this report split EMEA into Europe, the Middle East and Africa, With sales (K Units), revenue (Million USD), market share and growth rate of Marine LNG Engine for these regions, from 2012 to 2022 (forecast)Europe: Germany, France, UK, Russia, Italy and Benelux;Middle East: Saudi Arabia, Israel, UAE and Iran;Africa: South Africa, Nigeria, Egypt and Algeria.Get Sample Copy of this report @EMEA Marine LNG Engine market competition by top manufacturers/players, with Marine LNG Engine sales volume (K Units), price (USD/Unit), revenue (Million USD) and market share for each manufacturer/player; the top players includingRolls-RoyceWeichaiYuchaiMANWartsilaZichaiCaterpillarYanmarGEDaihatsu DieselOn the basis of product, this report displays the sales volume (K Units), revenue (Million USD), product price (USD/Unit), market share and growth rate of each type, primarily split intoDual-Fuel Marine EngineLNG fuel Marine EngineView Full Report @On the basis on the end users/applications, this report focuses on the status and outlook for major applications/end users, sales volume (K Units), market share and growth rate of Marine LNG Engine for each application, includingCargo ShipCruise ShipOtherTable of ContentsEMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa) Marine LNG Engine Market Report 20171 Marine LNG Engine Overview1.1 Product Overview and Scope of Marine LNG Engine1.2 Classification of Marine LNG Engine1.2.1 EMEA Marine LNG Engine Market Size (Sales) Comparison by Type (2012-2022)1.2.2 EMEA Marine LNG Engine Market Size (Sales) Market Share by Type (Product Category) in 20161.2.3 Dual-Fuel Marine Engine1.2.4 LNG fuel Marine Engine1.3 EMEA Marine LNG Engine Market by Application/End Users1.3.1 EMEA Marine LNG Engine Sales (Volume) and Market Share Comparison by Application (2012-20221.3.2 Cargo Ship1.3.3 Cruise Ship1.3.4 Other1.4 EMEA Marine LNG Engine Market by Region1.4.1 EMEA Marine LNG Engine Market Size (Value) Comparison by Region (2012-2022)1.4.2 Europe Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.4.3 Middle East Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.4.4 Africa Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.5 EMEA Market Size (Value and Volume) of Marine LNG Engine (2012-2022)1.5.1 EMEA Marine LNG Engine Sales and Growth Rate (2012-2022)1.5.2 EMEA Marine LNG Engine Revenue and Growth Rate (2012-2022)2 EMEA Marine LNG Engine Competition by Manufacturers/Players/Suppliers, Region, Type and Application2.1 EMEA Marine LNG Engine Market Competition by Players/Manufacturers2.1.1 EMEA Marine LNG Engine Sales Volume and Market Share of Major Players (2012-2017)2.1.2 EMEA Marine LNG Engine Revenue and Share by Players (2012-2017)2.1.3 EMEA Marine LNG Engine Sale Price by Players (2012-2017)2.2 EMEA Marine LNG Engine (Volume and Value) by Type/Product Category2.2.1 EMEA Marine LNG Engine Sales and Market Share by Type (2012-2017)2.2.2 EMEA Marine LNG Engine Revenue and Market Share by Type (2012-2017)2.2.3 EMEA Marine LNG Engine Sale Price by Type (2012-2017)2.3 EMEA Marine LNG Engine (Volume) by Application2.4 EMEA Marine LNG Engine (Volume and Value) by Region2.4.1 EMEA Marine LNG Engine Sales and Market Share by Region (2012-2017)2.4.2 EMEA Marine LNG Engine Revenue and Market Share by Region (2012-2017)2.4.3 EMEA Marine LNG Engine Sales Price by Region (2012-2017)Send An Enquiry Request @3 Europe Marine LNG Engine (Volume, Value and Sales Price), by Players, Countries, Type and Application3.1 Europe Marine LNG Engine Sales and Value (2012-2017)3.1.1 Europe Marine LNG Engine Sales Volume and Growth Rate (2012-2017)3.1.2 Europe Marine LNG Engine Revenue and Growth Rate (2012-2017)3.2 Europe Marine LNG Engine Sales and Market Share by Type3.3 Europe Marine LNG Engine Sales and Market Share by Application3.4 Europe Marine LNG Engine Sales Volume and Value (Revenue) by Countries3.4.1 Europe Marine LNG Engine Sales Volume by Countries (2012-2017)3.4.2 Europe Marine LNG Engine Revenue by Countries (2012-2017)3.4.3 Germany Marine LNG Engine Sales and Growth Rate (2012-2017)3.4.4 France Marine LNG Engine Sales and Growth Rate (2012-2017)3.4.5 UK Marine LNG Engine Sales and Growth Rate (2012-2017)3.4.6 Russia Marine LNG Engine Sales and Growth Rate (2012-2017)3.4.7 Italy Marine LNG Engine Sales and Growth Rate (2012-2017)3.4.8 Benelux Marine LNG Engine Sales and Growth Rate (2012-2017)4 Middle East Marine LNG Engine (Volume, Value and Sales Price), by Region, Type and Application4.1 Middle East Marine LNG Engine Sales and Value (2012-2017)4.1.1 Middle East Marine LNG Engine Sales Volume and Growth Rate (2012-2017)4.1.2 Middle East Marine LNG Engine Revenue and Growth Rate (2012-2017)4.2 Middle East Marine LNG Engine Sales and Market Share by Type4.3 Middle East Marine LNG Engine Sales and Market Share by Application4.4 Middle East Marine LNG Engine Sales Volume and Value (Revenue) by Countries4.4.1 Middle East Marine LNG Engine Sales Volume by Countries (2012-2017)4.4.2 Middle East Marine LNG Engine Revenue by Countries (2012-2017)4.4.3 Saudi Arabia Marine LNG Engine Sales and Growth Rate (2012-2017)4.4.4 Israel Marine LNG Engine Sales and Growth Rate (2012-2017)4.4.5 UAE Marine LNG Engine Sales and Growth Rate (2012-2017)4.4.6 Iran Marine LNG Engine Sales and Growth Rate (2012-2017)About usMarketResearchReports.biz is the most comprehensive collection of market research reports. MarketResearchReports.Biz services are specially designed to save time and money for our clients. We are a one stop solution for all your research needs, our main offerings are syndicated research reports, custom research, subscription access and consulting services. We serve all sizes and types of companies spanning across various industries.ContactMr. NachiketState Tower90 Sate Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-621-2074USA: Canada Toll Free: 866-997-4948Website:E: sales@marketresearchreports.biz Endoscopic Vessel Harvesting System Market : Global Trends, Analysis and Forecast 2026 http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/sample/rep-gb-1620 http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/toc/rep-gb-1620 www.futuremarketinsights.com With the increasing rate of cardiovascular disease constant innovation and advancement in technology has become paramount. In the field of coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG) introduction of endoscopic vessel harvesting system market has open up newer opportunities for companies. Coronary artery bypass graft surgery (CABG) is a procedure for restoring the blood supply to the heart muscle due to blockage or narrowing of one or more coronary arteries. Traditionally, the technique involved in harvesting procedure was open vein harvesting (OVH) which involved a single continuous skin incision. With the recent advancement in technology, the process is less invasive by endoscopic vessel harvesting (EVH) this technique reduces leg wound morbidity because of small incisions compared to open vein harvesting. Endoscope is a medical instrument used for capturing a picture inside a hollow area, which is connected to a video camera and inserted through a small incision that is made in the leg. The saphenous vein inside the leg is viewed by the endoscope and helps the surgeon in identifying and to remove the vein with minimal pain to the leg.Request Report Sample@According to Center of Disease Control and Prevention, around 3,95,000 CABG surgeries were performed in the United States in 2013. The endoscopic vessel harvesting system market is mainly driven by the incidence and prevalence rate of coronary diseases. Moreover due to benefits such as less invasive modality, including a lower infection rate, fewer wound complications, improved cosmesis, and greater patient satisfaction physicians and patients are opting for this treatment. High pool of geriatric population and awareness programs among surgeons will drive the endoscopic vessel harvesting system market. However, endoscopic vessel harvesting system market has some restraints, lack of skilled professionals in the developing countries and unstable reimbursement regulations are hampering the growth of endoscopic vessel harvesting system in developing countries. Apart from this the presence of alternative therapies may hinder the growth of the endoscopic vessel harvesting systems market.The Global endoscopic vessel harvesting system market is segmented on the basis of product type and regional presence:Segmentation based on product typeDisposableReusableGeographically the endoscopic vessel harvesting system market is segmented into five key regions: North America, Latin America, Europe, Asia Pacific and MEA region.CABG is most common type of heart surgery performed in North America region as per University of Michigan. North America followed by Europe are currently leading in the endoscopic vessel harvesting system market as high incidence of coronary disease due to sedentary lifestyle pattern adopted in these region and availability of all the types of minimally invasive CABG surgeries. The endoscopic vessel harvesting system market in Asia Pacific is expected to deliver tremendous growth due to the growth in per capita income in Asian countries and increase in medical tourism industry. With the growing access of public with healthcare professional and expanding economy china is expected to be the fastest growing market for endoscopic vessel harvesting system.Visit For TOC@Some major companies in the endoscopic vessel harvesting system market are Maquet Holding B.V. & Co. KG., OLYMPUS CORPORATION, Terumo Cardiovascular Systems Corporation., Med Europe S.r.l. (Elite Life Care), Sorin Group Inc., Saphena Medical, Inc and Terumo Cardiovascular Systems Corporation.About Us Future Market Insights is the premier provider of market intelligence and consulting services, serving clients in over 150 countries. FMI is headquartered in London, the global financial capital, and has delivery centers in the U.S. and India.ONTACT:616 Corporate Way, Suite 2-9018,Valley Cottage, NY 10989,United StatesT: +1-347-918-3531F: +1-845-579-5705Email: sales@futuremarketinsights.comWebsite: Peripheral Vascular Stents Market Analysis- Products, Application - Forecast Report To 2025 Crystal Market Research https://www.crystalmarketresearch.com/report/peripheral-vascular-stents-market https://www.crystalmarketresearch.com/request-toc/upcoming/HC06147 https://www.crystalmarketresearch.com/send-an-enquiry/HC06147 https://blog.crystalmarketresearch.com http://www.crystalmarketresearch.com Peripheral Vascular Stents Market Overview:Peripheral artery disease (PAD) is the narrowing and/or blockage of arteries, which restricts the blood flow. This medical condition is also known as peripheral vascular disease (PVD). It occurs due to accumulation of fatty or calcified material in an artery wall. The most common symptoms of PAD are pain in the lower extremities, discomfort in muscles of the calves and/or thighs, burning sensation and buttock pain. Moreover, the accumulation of plaque may remarkably reduce the blood flow through the arteries with the disease progression. Thus, peripheral vascular stents are used to treat these medical conditions.Browse full report @Rise in prevalence of PAD coupled with increasing geriatric population is the prime factor driving the market growth. This is a very common condition that affects millions of people across the globe. As per the American Heart Association (AHA) estimates 8 million Americans (aged >40 years) are suffering from PAD. In addition to this, the rapidly aging population is contributing to the market growth as this group is more prone to PAD. The global population is aging rapidly. Almost every country is experiencing growth in the number and proportion of older people in their population. As per United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, the number of older people is projected to reach 2 billion in 2050 from 841 million people in 2013. Thus, the rapidly aging population will accelerate the demand for peripheral vascular stents in near future. Such high target population will bring in ample growth opportunities for the key players to develop technologically advanced products. However, there are many people who go undiagnosed due to low awareness about the disease, which hinders the market growth.Request for an in-depth table of contents for this report @Innovation is set to derive the demand for peripheral vascular stents globally. Therefore, key players are highly focused on developing innovative peripheral vascular stents to meet the unmet medical needs. For instance, in February 2016, Boston Scientific obtained CE Mark for its Eluvia Drug-Eluting Vascular Stent System, which can restore blood flow in the peripheral arteries. This system provides a unique drug-polymer combination to provide continued release of the drug for preventing narrowing of the vessel. Likewise, in June 2015, Terumo Interventional Systems launched its MISAGO RX Self-expanding Peripheral Stent to treat patients with peripheral artery disease in the proximal popliteal and superficial femoral artery. Such product developments helped these companies to strengthen their product portfolio to sustain their position in the market.Major players operating in this market are Terumo Medical Corporation, Boston Scientific, Cardinal Health, Abbott Laboratories, Braun Melsungen, Biotronik, Cook Medical, C.R. Bard, Intact Vascular, W.L. Gore & Associates, and Medtronic.Make an inquiry @About Crystal Market ResearchCrystal Market Research is a U.S. based market research and business intelligence company. Crystal offers one stop solution for market research, business intelligence, and consulting services to help clients make more informed decisions. It provides both syndicated as well as customized research studies for its customers spread across the globe. The company offers market intelligence reports across a broad range of industries including healthcare, chemicals & materials, technology, automotive, and energy.Contact:Judy304 South Jones Blvd, Suite 1896,Las Vegas NV 89107,United StatesToll Free: +1-888-213-4282Email: sales@crystalmarketresearch.comBlog:Website: Smart Pulse Oximeters Market : Growth, Demand and Key Players to 2026 http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/sample/rep-gb-1665 http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/toc/rep-gb-1665 www.futuremarketinsights.com Smart pulse oximeter is one of the fastest growing product type in the vital sign monitoring devices segment. Smart pulse oximeter is a non-invasive medical device used to measure the oxygen saturation level and heart rate in human. Smart pulse oximeter is a clip like device also known as a probe and is placed on body parts such as fingertip or ear lobe to measure the heart rate and oxygen level. It uses infrared light to measure the oxygen level and heart rate. The measurement of oxygen level and heart rate are very important while performing surgeries and injecting the anaesthesia, because the changes in the oxygen level in such a conditions may cause life threatening effects. Smart pulse oximeter also used to check the human health with a conditions such as heart attack, heart failure, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), anaemia, lung cancer and asthma. However, the readings of smart pulse oximeter may not accurate in peripheral vascular diseases. Smart pulse oximeters products market is segmented into handheld pulse oximeters, finger pulse oximeters, paediatric pulse oximeters and wrist pulse oximeters.. Hand held smart pulse oximeters are useful for pilots to check the oxygen level when they are operating at above 10,000 feet. These devices are also useful to the mountaineers and athletes to check the oxygen level. Paediatric pulse oximeters mainly used in the hospitals and these devices are separately designed to measure the oxygen saturation level and heart rate in the infants.Request Report Sample@Smart pulse oximeter market has been segmented on the basis of product type, and end userSmart Pulse Oximeter Market, by Product TypeFinger Pulse OximeterHandheld Pulse OximeterPaediatric Pulse OximeterWrist Pulse OximeterSmart Pulse Oximeter Market, by End UserHospitalAmbulatory surgical centresHome Care SettingThe use of pulse oximeter in the home care settings has expanded over the last few years and is expected to register a healthy growth rate during the forecast periodOver the past few years, leading players in the vital sign monitoring devices segment are manufacturing devices with new technology such as Bluetooth which displays the readings in the smartphone. Moreover, the availability of cost effective smart pulse oximeters are the factors driving growth of overall smart pulse oximeter market., World Health Organization (WHO) started safety pulse oximetry project to improve the health in middle-income countries also expected to boost the smart pulse oximeter market. Increasing incidence rates of trauma conditions and increasing prevalence of heart related diseases are also expected to drive the smart pulse oximeter market. However, availability of high end devices to measure the heart rate is expected to hamper the overall market.Depending on geographic region, Smart Pulse Oximeter Market is segmented into five key regions: North America, Latin America, Europe, Asia Pacific, and Middle East & Africa. North America is estimated to contribute maximum revenue share in the global market of smart pulse oximeter followed by Europe. Asia Pacific regions are expected to grow at a higher growth rate owing to high occurrence of chronic disease. Middle East & Africa is expected to show a healthy growth rate during forecast period.Visit For TOC@Smart Pulse Oximeters Market: Key PlayersKey players of smart pulse oximeter market are Nonin Medical Inc, Shenzhen Creative Industry Co.,Ltd, iHealth Labs Inc. Indiegogo, Inc., Technocare Medisystems, Contec Medical Systems Co.,Ltd., and MasimoAbout Us Future Market Insights is the premier provider of market intelligence and consulting services, serving clients in over 150 countries. FMI is headquartered in London, the global financial capital, and has delivery centers in the U.S. and India.CONTACT:616 Corporate Way, Suite 2-9018,Valley Cottage, NY 10989,United StatesT: +1-347-918-3531F: +1-845-579-5705Email: sales@futuremarketinsights.comWebsite: Wood Adhesives Market Analysis by Players, By Applications, Types, 2017 Forecast Report https://www.marketresearchreports.biz/sample/sample/1231458 https://www.marketresearchreports.biz/reports/1231458/emea-europe-middle-east-and-market-research-reports https://www.marketresearchreports.biz/sample/enquiry/1231458 http://www.marketresearchreports.biz/ "The Report EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa) Wood Adhesives Market Report 2017 provides information on pricing, market analysis, shares, forecast, and company profiles for key industry participants. - MarketResearchReports.biz"About Wood Adhesives MarketIn this report, the EMEA Wood Adhesives market is valued at USD XX million in 2016 and is expected to reach USD XX million by the end of 2022, growing at a CAGR of XX% between 2016 and 2022.Geographically, this report split EMEA into Europe, the Middle East and Africa, With sales (K MT), revenue (Million USD), market share and growth rate of Wood Adhesives for these regions, from 2012 to 2022 (forecast)Europe: Germany, France, UK, Russia, Italy and Benelux;Middle East: Saudi Arabia, Israel, UAE and Iran;Africa: South Africa, Nigeria, Egypt and Algeria.Get Sample Copy of this report @EMEA Wood Adhesives market competition by top manufacturers/players, with Wood Adhesives sales volume (K MT), price (USD/MT), revenue (Million USD) and market share for each manufacturer/player; the top players including3M CompanyAshland Inc.H.B Fuller CompanyHenkel AG & Co. KGaABASF SEHuntsman CorporationAvery Dennison CorporationAdhesives Research Inc.Dow Chemical CompanyBostik SAW.F.Taylor LLC.Royal AdhesivesAkzoNobelDonghe AdhesivesOn the basis of product, this report displays the sales volume (K MT), revenue (Million USD), product price (USD/MT), market share and growth rate of each type, primarily split intoUrea Formaldehyde Resin Adhesive Glue AgentMelamine Resin Adhesive Glue AgentOn the basis on the end users/applications, this report focuses on the status and outlook for major applications/end users, sales volume (K MT), market share and growth rate of Wood Adhesives for each application, includingFlooring & PlywoodFurniture & SubcomponentsWindows & DoorsOthersView Full Report @Table of ContentsEMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa) Wood Adhesives Market Report 20171 Wood Adhesives Overview1.1 Product Overview and Scope of Wood Adhesives1.2 Classification of Wood Adhesives1.2.1 EMEA Wood Adhesives Market Size (Sales) Comparison by Type (2012-2022)1.2.2 EMEA Wood Adhesives Market Size (Sales) Market Share by Type (Product Category) in 20161.2.3 Urea Formaldehyde Resin Adhesive Glue Agent1.2.4 Melamine Resin Adhesive Glue Agent1.3 EMEA Wood Adhesives Market by Application/End Users1.3.1 EMEA Wood Adhesives Sales (Volume) and Market Share Comparison by Application (2012-20221.3.2 Flooring & Plywood1.3.3 Furniture & Subcomponents1.3.4 Windows & Doors1.3.5 Others1.4 EMEA Wood Adhesives Market by Region1.4.1 EMEA Wood Adhesives Market Size (Value) Comparison by Region (2012-2022)1.4.2 Europe Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.4.3 Middle East Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.4.4 Africa Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.5 EMEA Market Size (Value and Volume) of Wood Adhesives (2012-2022)1.5.1 EMEA Wood Adhesives Sales and Growth Rate (2012-2022)1.5.2 EMEA Wood Adhesives Revenue and Growth Rate (2012-2022)2 EMEA Wood Adhesives Competition by Manufacturers/Players/Suppliers, Region, Type and Application2.1 EMEA Wood Adhesives Market Competition by Players/Manufacturers2.1.1 EMEA Wood Adhesives Sales Volume and Market Share of Major Players (2012-2017)2.1.2 EMEA Wood Adhesives Revenue and Share by Players (2012-2017)2.1.3 EMEA Wood Adhesives Sale Price by Players (2012-2017)2.2 EMEA Wood Adhesives (Volume and Value) by Type/Product Category2.2.1 EMEA Wood Adhesives Sales and Market Share by Type (2012-2017)2.2.2 EMEA Wood Adhesives Revenue and Market Share by Type (2012-2017)2.2.3 EMEA Wood Adhesives Sale Price by Type (2012-2017)2.3 EMEA Wood Adhesives (Volume) by Application2.4 EMEA Wood Adhesives (Volume and Value) by Region2.4.1 EMEA Wood Adhesives Sales and Market Share by Region (2012-2017)2.4.2 EMEA Wood Adhesives Revenue and Market Share by Region (2012-2017)2.4.3 EMEA Wood Adhesives Sales Price by Region (2012-2017)Send An Enquiry Request @3 Europe Wood Adhesives (Volume, Value and Sales Price), by Players, Countries, Type and Application3.1 Europe Wood Adhesives Sales and Value (2012-2017)3.1.1 Europe Wood Adhesives Sales Volume and Growth Rate (2012-2017)3.1.2 Europe Wood Adhesives Revenue and Growth Rate (2012-2017)3.2 Europe Wood Adhesives Sales and Market Share by Type3.3 Europe Wood Adhesives Sales and Market Share by Application3.4 Europe Wood Adhesives Sales Volume and Value (Revenue) by Countries3.4.1 Europe Wood Adhesives Sales Volume by Countries (2012-2017)3.4.2 Europe Wood Adhesives Revenue by Countries (2012-2017)3.4.3 Germany Wood Adhesives Sales and Growth Rate (2012-2017)3.4.4 France Wood Adhesives Sales and Growth Rate (2012-2017)3.4.5 UK Wood Adhesives Sales and Growth Rate (2012-2017)3.4.6 Russia Wood Adhesives Sales and Growth Rate (2012-2017)3.4.7 Italy Wood Adhesives Sales and Growth Rate (2012-2017)3.4.8 Benelux Wood Adhesives Sales and Growth Rate (2012-2017)4 Middle East Wood Adhesives (Volume, Value and Sales Price), by Region, Type and Application4.1 Middle East Wood Adhesives Sales and Value (2012-2017)4.1.1 Middle East Wood Adhesives Sales Volume and Growth Rate (2012-2017)4.1.2 Middle East Wood Adhesives Revenue and Growth Rate (2012-2017)4.2 Middle East Wood Adhesives Sales and Market Share by Type4.3 Middle East Wood Adhesives Sales and Market Share by Application4.4 Middle East Wood Adhesives Sales Volume and Value (Revenue) by Countries4.4.1 Middle East Wood Adhesives Sales Volume by Countries (2012-2017)4.4.2 Middle East Wood Adhesives Revenue by Countries (2012-2017)4.4.3 Saudi Arabia Wood Adhesives Sales and Growth Rate (2012-2017)4.4.4 Israel Wood Adhesives Sales and Growth Rate (2012-2017)4.4.5 UAE Wood Adhesives Sales and Growth Rate (2012-2017)4.4.6 Iran Wood Adhesives Sales and Growth Rate (2012-2017)About usMarketResearchReports.biz is the most comprehensive collection of market research reports. MarketResearchReports.Biz services are specially designed to save time and money for our clients. We are a one stop solution for all your research needs, our main offerings are syndicated research reports, custom research, subscription access and consulting services. We serve all sizes and types of companies spanning across various industries.ContactMr. NachiketState Tower90 Sate Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-621-2074USA: Canada Toll Free: 866-997-4948Website:E: sales@marketresearchreports.biz Protein Ingredient Market size in terms of volume and value 2015-2025 http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/sample/rep-gb-833 http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/toc/rep-gb-833 www.futuremarketinsights.com Proteins are polymers of amino acids joined together by peptide bonds. Proteins are the building blocks of body tissue, and can also serve as a fuel source. Proteins are constantly synthesized and degraded in living entities through metabolic processes for energy recovery and storage. Proteins play very important role in living organisms by participating in every process within cells. With the increased attention on health and body building the number of gyms and health clubs are increasing over a world. Protein ingredients are widely consumed in health and wellness food in the form of pre workout fuel, post workout replenishment. In addition, it is also used in food and beverages, pharmaceuticals and some cosmetic products.Protein Ingredient Market: SegmentationProtein ingredient market is segmented on the basis of source as animal protein and plant protein. Overall demand for plant protein is growing in market as its a cost effective solution and dose not causes any intolerance in kids. Animal protein is sub-segmented as dairy protein, egg protein and gelatin. Dairy protein ingredient account for largest market share in forecast period in animal protein market. Dairy proteins are categorized as whey and casein. Among these categories whey protein market is expected to grow during forecast period. Furthermore, plant protein is sub-segmented into soy protein, wheat protein and other (pea). Among these sub-segments soy protein ingredient is contributing highest market share in terms of value and pea protein ingredient share is expected to grow at a moderate rate during forecast period.Request For Report Sample@Protein ingredient market is segmented on basis of application such as food and beverage, animal feed, pharmaceutical and other (cosmetics and personal care). Among these segments food and beverage is expected to grow at faster rate during forecast period. Food and beverage is sub-segmented as food, beverages and supplements. The supplement sub-segment is expected to grow at healthy CAGR during forecast period. Animal feed and cosmetics and personal care products are found to be emerging segments.Protein Ingredient Market: Region-wise OutlookProtein ingredient market is segmented on the basis of region includes North America, Latin America, Eastern Europe, Asia Pacific, Japan and Middle East and Africa. The protein ingredient market is expected to witness healthy CAGR by 2025 due to the rising demand for healthy and convenience food across the globe. North America contributes higher market share and expected to exhibit healthy CAGR during forecast period.Visit For TOC@Protein Ingredient Market: DriversIncreased demands for processed food and healthy food product is driving the protein ingredient market as, protein provides all essential amino acids. Growing application of protein ingredients in nutraceuticals, food and beverage, and health supplement is expected to fuel the market growth in the coming years. With the increasing number of health conscious consumers, growing number of fitness centers and health clubs, and rising demand for health supplements, energy drinks and processed foods is expected to fuel protein ingredients market. Consumers are looking for a great product with palatable taste, with high national value, so manufacture are investing on research and development of new products. For instance in 2013 PepsiCo has launched new protein rich product especially for women.Protein Ingredient Market: Key PlayersThe key international players operating in Protein Ingredient Market includes Archer Daniels Midland Company, CHS Inc., Cargill, Incorporated, Arla Foods Ingredients Group P/S., Axiom Foods Inc., Kerry Group plc., Amco Proteins, and E. I. du Pont de Nemours and CompanyABOUT US:Future Market Insights (FMI) is a leading market intelligence and consulting firm. We deliver syndicated research reports, custom research reports and consulting services, which are personalized in nature. FMI delivers a complete packaged solution, which combines current market intelligence, statistical anecdotes, technology inputs, valuable growth insights, an aerial view of the competitive framework, and future market trends.CONTACT:Future Market Insights616 Corporate Way, Suite 2-9018,Valley Cottage, NY 10989,United StatesT: +1-347-918-3531F: +1-845-579-5705Email: sales@futuremarketinsights.comWebsite: Automotive Disc Brake Market Is Expected To Reach USD 15.6 Billion By 2023 Automotive Disc Brake Market https://www.marketresearchfuture.com/sample_request/3954 https://www.marketresearchfuture.com/reports/automotive-disc-brake-market-3954 Market HighlightsGrowing vehicle demand as well as engineering advancement for improving performance of vehicle are some of the factors which drives the demand for the market. Automotive disc brake market is witnessing advent of advanced technological developments such as boosters and electric-mechanical systems which will boost the market towards growth. Moreover, increasing demand for commercial, passenger vehicles along with government mandates for improving vehicle safety is major market drivers for the growth of automotive disc brake. Automotive disc brake market is growing in Asia-Pacific region with china and India expected to be the most promising markets. However, high cost of components is a major challenge for automotive disc brake market.Request a Sample Copy @Key Players of Automotive Disc Brake Market: EBC Brakes (U.K.) TRW Automotive (U.S.) Nissin Kogyo Co., Ltd (Japan) Haldex AB (Sweden) Federal-Mogul Motorparts LLC. (U.S.) Knorr-Bremse AG (India), Mando Automotive India Private Limited (India) Akebono Brake Corporation (Japan) Aisin Seiki Co., Ltd (Japan) Brembo S.p.A. (Italy)Market Research Future Analysis:Market Research Future analysis show that the global market of Automotive Disc Brake market is estimated to grow at USD 15.6 billion by the end of year 2023. Asia pacific is leading the market of automotive disc brake. Currently, Asia pacific is dominating the market with increasing vehicle production in countries such as India and China and focuses on to increase production capacity driving the market for automotive disc brake. Moreover, high production of vehicles, increasing operational performance, improving drivability and ensuring safety are some of the factors which boom the market of Asia-Pacific.Brief TOC:1 Executive Summary2 Research Methodology2.1 Scope of the Study2.1.1 Definition2.1.2 Research Objective2.1.3 Assumptions2.1.4 Limitations2.2 Research Process2.2.1 Primary Research2.2.2 Secondary Research2.3 Market size Estimation2.4 Forecast Model3 Market Dynamics3.1 Market Drivers3.2 Market Inhibitors3.3 Supply/Value Chain Analysis3.4 Porters Five Forces Analysis4 Global Automotive Disc Brake Market, By Type4.1 Introduction4.2 Fixed Caliper4.3 Floating Caliper4.4 Sliding Caliper4.5 Others5 Global Automotive Disc Brake Market, By Application5.1 Introduction5.2 Passenger vehicle5.3 Commercial vehicleContinueAccess Report Details @About Market Research Future:At Market Research Future (MRFR), we enable our customers to unravel the complexity of various industries through our Cooked Research Report (CRR), Half-Cooked Research Reports (HCRR), Raw Research Reports (3R), Continuous-Feed Research (CFR), and Market Research & Consulting Services.MRFR team have supreme objective to provide the optimum quality market research and intelligence services to our clients. Our market research studies by Components, Application, Technologies and market players for global, regional, and country level market segments, enable our clients to see more, know more, and do more, which help to answer all their most important questions.In order to stay updated with technology and work process of the industry, MRFR often plans & conducts meet with the industry experts and industrial visits for its research analyst members.Contact:Akash Anand,Market Research FutureOffice No. 528, Amanora ChambersMagarpatta Road, Hadapsar,Pune - 411028Maharashtra, India+1 646 845 9312Email: akash.anand@marketresearchfuture.com EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa) Industrial Gases for Plastic & Rubber Industry Market Report 2017 https://www.marketresearchreports.biz/sample/sample/1271363 https://www.marketresearchreports.biz/reports/1271363/emea-europe-middle-east-and-market-research-reports https://www.marketresearchreports.biz/sample/enquiry/1271363 http://www.marketresearchreports.biz/ "The Report EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa) Industrial Gases for Plastic & Rubber Industry Market Report 2017 provides information on pricing, market analysis, shares, forecast, and company profiles for key industry participants. - MarketResearchReports.biz"About Industrial Gases for Plastic & Rubber Industry MarketIn this report, the EMEA Industrial Gases for Plastic & Rubber Industry market is valued at USD XX million in 2016 and is expected to reach USD XX million by the end of 2022, growing at a CAGR of XX% between 2016 and 2022.Geographically, this report split EMEA into Europe, the Middle East and Africa, With sales (K Liters), revenue (Million USD), market share and growth rate of Industrial Gases for Plastic & Rubber Industry for these regions, from 2012 to 2022 (forecast)Europe: Germany, France, UK, Russia, Italy and Benelux;Middle East: Saudi Arabia, Israel, UAE and Iran;Africa: South Africa, Nigeria, Egypt and Algeria.Get Sample Copy of this report @EMEA Industrial Gases for Plastic & Rubber Industry market competition by top manufacturers/players, with Industrial Gases for Plastic & Rubber Industry sales volume (K Liters), price (USD/Liter), revenue (Million USD) and market share for each manufacturer/player; the top players includingPraxair (US)Airgas (US)The Linde Group (Germany)Air Liquide (France)Air Products and Chemicals (US)Universal Industrial Gases (US)Messer Group (Germany)Taiyo Nippon Sanso (Japan)Novomer (US)Yingde Gases Group (China)On the basis of product, this report displays the sales volume (K Liters), revenue (Million USD), product price (USD/Liter), market share and growth rate of each type, primarily split intoNitrogenCarbon MonoxideCarbon DioxideOtherView Full Report @On the basis on the end users/applications, this report focuses on the status and outlook for major applications/end users, sales volume (K Liters), market share and growth rate of Industrial Gases for Plastic & Rubber Industry for each application, includingPlastic IndustryRubber IndustryTable of ContentsEMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa) Industrial Gases for Plastic & Rubber Industry Market Report 20171 Industrial Gases for Plastic & Rubber Industry Overview1.1 Product Overview and Scope of Industrial Gases for Plastic & Rubber Industry1.2 Classification of Industrial Gases for Plastic & Rubber Industry1.2.1 EMEA Industrial Gases for Plastic & Rubber Industry Market Size (Sales) Comparison by Type (2012-2022)1.2.2 EMEA Industrial Gases for Plastic & Rubber Industry Market Size (Sales) Market Share by Type (Product Category) in 20161.2.3 Nitrogen1.2.4 Carbon Monoxide1.2.5 Carbon Dioxide1.2.6 Other1.3 EMEA Industrial Gases for Plastic & Rubber Industry Market by Application/End Users1.3.1 EMEA Industrial Gases for Plastic & Rubber Industry Sales (Volume) and Market Share Comparison by Application (2012-20221.3.2 Plastic Industry1.3.3 Rubber Industry1.4 EMEA Industrial Gases for Plastic & Rubber Industry Market by Region1.4.1 EMEA Industrial Gases for Plastic & Rubber Industry Market Size (Value) Comparison by Region (2012-2022)1.4.2 Europe Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.4.3 Middle East Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.4.4 Africa Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.5 EMEA Market Size (Value and Volume) of Industrial Gases for Plastic & Rubber Industry (2012-2022)1.5.1 EMEA Industrial Gases for Plastic & Rubber Industry Sales and Growth Rate (2012-2022)1.5.2 EMEA Industrial Gases for Plastic & Rubber Industry Revenue and Growth Rate (2012-2022)Send An Enquiry Request @2 EMEA Industrial Gases for Plastic & Rubber Industry Competition by Manufacturers/Players/Suppliers, Region, Type and Application2.1 EMEA Industrial Gases for Plastic & Rubber Industry Market Competition by Players/Manufacturers2.1.1 EMEA Industrial Gases for Plastic & Rubber Industry Sales Volume and Market Share of Major Players (2012-2017)2.1.2 EMEA Industrial Gases for Plastic & Rubber Industry Revenue and Share by Players (2012-2017)2.1.3 EMEA Industrial Gases for Plastic & Rubber Industry Sale Price by Players (2012-2017)2.2 EMEA Industrial Gases for Plastic & Rubber Industry (Volume and Value) by Type/Product Category2.2.1 EMEA Industrial Gases for Plastic & Rubber Industry Sales and Market Share by Type (2012-2017)2.2.2 EMEA Industrial Gases for Plastic & Rubber Industry Revenue and Market Share by Type (2012-2017)2.2.3 EMEA Industrial Gases for Plastic & Rubber Industry Sale Price by Type (2012-2017)2.3 EMEA Industrial Gases for Plastic & Rubber Industry (Volume) by Application2.4 EMEA Industrial Gases for Plastic & Rubber Industry (Volume and Value) by Region2.4.1 EMEA Industrial Gases for Plastic & Rubber Industry Sales and Market Share by Region (2012-2017)2.4.2 EMEA Industrial Gases for Plastic & Rubber Industry Revenue and Market Share by Region (2012-2017)2.4.3 EMEA Industrial Gases for Plastic & Rubber Industry Sales Price by Region (2012-2017)3 Europe Industrial Gases for Plastic & Rubber Industry (Volume, Value and Sales Price), by Players, Countries, Type and Application3.1 Europe Industrial Gases for Plastic & Rubber Industry Sales and Value (2012-2017)3.1.1 Europe Industrial Gases for Plastic & Rubber Industry Sales Volume and Growth Rate (2012-2017)3.1.2 Europe Industrial Gases for Plastic & Rubber Industry Revenue and Growth Rate (2012-2017)3.2 Europe Industrial Gases for Plastic & Rubber Industry Sales and Market Share by Type3.3 Europe Industrial Gases for Plastic & Rubber Industry Sales and Market Share by Application3.4 Europe Industrial Gases for Plastic & Rubber Industry Sales Volume and Value (Revenue) by Countries3.4.1 Europe Industrial Gases for Plastic & Rubber Industry Sales Volume by Countries (2012-2017)3.4.2 Europe Industrial Gases for Plastic & Rubber Industry Revenue by Countries (2012-2017)3.4.3 Germany Industrial Gases for Plastic & Rubber Industry Sales and Growth Rate (2012-2017)3.4.4 France Industrial Gases for Plastic & Rubber Industry Sales and Growth Rate (2012-2017)3.4.5 UK Industrial Gases for Plastic & Rubber Industry Sales and Growth Rate (2012-2017)3.4.6 Russia Industrial Gases for Plastic & Rubber Industry Sales and Growth Rate (2012-2017)3.4.7 Italy Industrial Gases for Plastic & Rubber Industry Sales and Growth Rate (2012-2017)3.4.8 Benelux Industrial Gases for Plastic & Rubber Industry Sales and Growth Rate (2012-2017)4 Middle East Industrial Gases for Plastic & Rubber Industry (Volume, Value and Sales Price), by Region, Type and Application4.1 Middle East Industrial Gases for Plastic & Rubber Industry Sales and Value (2012-2017)4.1.1 Middle East Industrial Gases for Plastic & Rubber Industry Sales Volume and Growth Rate (2012-2017)4.1.2 Middle East Industrial Gases for Plastic & Rubber Industry Revenue and Growth Rate (2012-2017)4.2 Middle East Industrial Gases for Plastic & Rubber Industry Sales and Market Share by Type4.3 Middle East Industrial Gases for Plastic & Rubber Industry Sales and Market Share by Application4.4 Middle East Industrial Gases for Plastic & Rubber Industry Sales Volume and Value (Revenue) by Countries4.4.1 Middle East Industrial Gases for Plastic & Rubber Industry Sales Volume by Countries (2012-2017)4.4.2 Middle East Industrial Gases for Plastic & Rubber Industry Revenue by Countries (2012-2017)4.4.3 Saudi Arabia Industrial Gases for Plastic & Rubber Industry Sales and Growth Rate (2012-2017)4.4.4 Israel Industrial Gases for Plastic & Rubber Industry Sales and Growth Rate (2012-2017)4.4.5 UAE Industrial Gases for Plastic & Rubber Industry Sales and Growth Rate (2012-2017)4.4.6 Iran Industrial Gases for Plastic & Rubber Industry Sales and Growth Rate (2012-2017)About usMarketResearchReports.biz is the most comprehensive collection of market research reports. MarketResearchReports.Biz services are specially designed to save time and money for our clients. We are a one stop solution for all your research needs, our main offerings are syndicated research reports, custom research, subscription access and consulting services. We serve all sizes and types of companies spanning across various industries.ContactMr. NachiketState Tower90 Sate Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-621-2074USA: Canada Toll Free: 866-997-4948Website:E: sales@marketresearchreports.biz Disconnect Switch Market : Key Growth Factors and Industry Analysis 2016-2026 http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/sample/rep-gb-1834 http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/toc/rep-gb-1834 www.futuremarketinsights.com Disconnect switch or isolator switch is used for the purpose to de-energize or cutoff the electric circuit, when the circuit is scheduled for servicing or maintenance. These switches have wide applications in large industries and power distribution applications, where high-powered machines have their own power source connected, in order to drive them and at a time of repairing or servicing, isolator or disconnect switch breaks the circuit and make machine isolated from the power source. On the basis of electric circuit requirement disconnect switch is categorized into three types; low voltage disconnect switch, medium voltage disconnect switch & high voltage disconnect switch, disconnect switches frequently work as enclosures for overcurrent safety when they have fuses. Some of them are also a part of larger safety scheme, when they are equipped with a shunt trip which is usually signaled by relays present at any place in the network.Request Report Sample@Disconnect Switch: Market Drivers and RestraintThe key trend responsible for the growth of global disconnect switch is the growth in distribution and transmission network worldwide, as electric power is an essential infrastructure for any developing and developed region, hence every region is trying to expand in the area of power systems.The key growth drivers of global disconnect switch market are rapid growth of urbanization and industrialization across the globe, and also increasing safety concern among the industrialist regarding their labors/workers, are some factors which are boosting up the growth of global disconnect/isolator switch market across the globe. On the other hand there are also some factors which are hindering the growth of global disconnect switch market, those restraints are fluctuating price of raw material being used to manufacture these disconnect switch, presence of low quality cheap products by other manufacturers in the market are key restraints of global disconnect switch market.Disconnect Switch: SegmentationSegmentation of disconnect switch market is done on the basis of technology type, mount type, operating voltage, application & Geography. On the basis of technology type, global disconnect switch market is segmented as non-fused disconnect switch and disconnect switch. Among above segments, fused disconnect segment is the most popular segment has been used in most of the industrial applications. Furthermore, on the basis of mount type, global disconnect switch market is segmented into din rail mounted disconnect switch, panel mounted disconnect switch and other disconnect switch.By operating voltage, global disconnect switch market is segmented into low voltage disconnect switch, medium voltage disconnect switch and high voltage disconnect switch. On the basis of application, global disconnect switch market is segmented into industrial disconnect switch and commercial disconnect switch, from which industrial disconnect switch is further sub segmented into utility, manufacturing and inverter based generation and other application.Geographically, disconnect switch is segmented into seven regions which are ; North America, Latin America, Western Europe, Eastern Europe, Japan, Asia Pacific Excluding Japan (APEJ), and Middle East and Africa (MEA). Among all the regions North America is the highest contributor in term of revenue in global Disconnect switch market followed by Western Europe & Asia Pacific and it is expected that same trend is being followed in near future as well.Visit For TOC@Disconnect Switch Market: Key PlayersThe key players of global Disconnect switch market are ABB Limited, General Electric Company, Schneider Electric SE, Crompton Greaves Limited, Havells India Ltd, Siemens AG and others.About Us Future Market Insights is the premier provider of market intelligence and consulting services, serving clients in over 150 countries. FMI is headquartered in London, the global financial capital, and has delivery centers in the U.S. and India.CONTACT:616 Corporate Way, Suite 2-9018,Valley Cottage, NY 10989,United StatesT: +1-347-918-3531F: +1-845-579-5705Email: sales@futuremarketinsights.comWebsite: Fuel Cards in Europe, Top 5 Market Research Report https://www.marketresearchreports.biz/sample/sample/901236 https://www.marketresearchreports.biz/reports/901236/fuel-cards-in-europe-top-market-research-reports https://www.marketresearchreports.biz/sample/enquiryBuy/901236 http://www.marketresearchreports.biz/ Latest industry research report on: Fuel Cards in Europe, Top 5 Market | Industry Size, Share, Research, Reviews, Analysis, Strategies, Demand, Growth, Segmentation, Parameters, ForecastsFuel Cards in Europe, Top 5 Markets 2016 is invaluable for issuers of fleet cards, fuel retailers, fleet leasing companies and other suppliers to the sector. Based on research with issuers and fuel retailers it provides commercial (B2B) fuel card volume (split by fleet and CRT), value and market share forecasts to 2021, key data on independent and oil company card issuers and an analysis of fuel card competition in the Top 5 European countries, France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the UK.Download Sample copy of this Report @Key FindingsFuel card volumes across the Top five fuel card markets will rise by 11.3% between 2016 and 2021 as small domestic fleets increasingly turn to fuel cards to meet their growing needs over this period. The total number of service stations in France rose by 0.4% in 2015 totaling 11,400 service stations. The total number of service stations in Germany will decline by 0.3% between 2016 and 2021 totaling 14,342 service stations. Total Italian fleet card volumes rose by 2.2% in 2015 to total 1,551m litres continuing the upward trend started in 2012. The top five fuel card operators in Spain made up 92.3% of fuel card volumes in 2015 as smaller card operators struggle to compete against the large networks and services offered by the market leaders. Fuel card volumes in the UK rose by 3.3% in 2015 to 7.2 billion litres continuing the trend started in 2013.Complete Report Details @SynopsisFuel card volumes across the Top five fuel card markets will rise by 11.3% between 2016 and 2021 as small domestic fleets increasingly turn to fuel cards to meet their growing needs over this period.Have Any Query? Ask Our Expert @ReasonsToBuyPlan effective market entry strategies by uncovering current and future volumes and values of the Top 5 Europe fuel card markets. Assess whether you should increase network acceptance of your card and identify potential new merchants by uncovering the position of competitors. Whether you are an issuer, a processor, a leasing company or a fuel retailer, make informed pitches to partners by understanding their business. Enhance fuel sales at your service stations by identifying which fuel cards you should accept based on their market shares and network acceptance. Plan your regional strategy by understanding the Top 5 European markets, France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the UK.About usMarketResearchReports.biz is the most comprehensive collection of market research reports. MarketResearchReports.Biz services are specially designed to save time and money for our clients. We are a one stop solution for all your research needs, our main offerings are syndicated research reports, custom research, subscription access and consulting services. We serve all sizes and types of companies spanning across various industries.Contact UsState Tower90 State Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207United StatesTel: +1-518-621-2074Website:Email: sales@marketresearchreports.biz Develop business strategies Of Fuel Cards In France Market https://www.marketresearchreports.biz/sample/sample/901237 https://www.marketresearchreports.biz/reports/901237/fuel-cards-in-france-2016-market-research-reports https://www.marketresearchreports.biz/sample/enquiryBuy/901237 http://www.marketresearchreports.biz/ Latest industry research report on: Fuel Cards In France Market : Industry Size, Share, Research, Reviews, Analysis, Strategies, Demand, Growth, Segmentation, Parameters, ForecastsFuel Cards in France 2016 is invaluable for issuers of fleet cards, fuel retailers, fleet leasing companies and other suppliers to the sector. Based on research with issuers and fuel retailers it provides commercial (B2B) fuel card volume (split by fleet and CRT), value and market share forecasts to 2021, key data on independent and oil company card issuers and an analysis of fuel card competition in France.Download Sample copy of this Report @Key FindingsFuel card volumes across the Top five fuel card markets will rise by 11.3% between 2016 and 2021 as small domestic fleets increasingly turn to fuel cards to meet their growing needs over this period. The total number of service stations in France rose by 0.4% in 2015 totaling 11,400 service stations. Over 122,000 new fuel cards will be issued between 2016 and 2021, totaling to 2,663,967 cards in the market. Total fleet card volumes rose by 1.8% in 2015 to total 5,378m litres continuing the upward trend started in 2011. TOTALs market share declined by 1.0 percentage points in 2015 but continued to be the dominant fuel card market leader accounting for 50.0% in 2015, as clients were drawn to its large card acceptance network which covers 31.6% of sites in France.Complete Report Details @SynopsisIncreasing numbers of commercial vehicles will cause French fuel card volumes to grow 4.2% between 2016 and 2021, accounting for 26.9% of total volumes sold by 2021ReasonsToBuyPlan effective market entry strategies by uncovering current and future volumes and values of the French fuel card market. Assess whether you should increase network acceptance of your card and identify potential new merchants by uncovering the position of competitors. Whether you are an issuer, a processor, a leasing company or a fuel retailer, make informed pitches to partners by understanding their business. Enhance fuel sales at your service stations by identifying which fuel cards you should accept based on their market shares and network acceptance.Have Any Query? Ask Our Expert @About usMarketResearchReports.biz is the most comprehensive collection of market research reports. MarketResearchReports.Biz services are specially designed to save time and money for our clients. We are a one stop solution for all your research needs, our main offerings are syndicated research reports, custom research, subscription access and consulting services. We serve all sizes and types of companies spanning across various industries.Contact UsState Tower90 State Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207United StatesTel: +1-518-621-2074Website:Email: sales@marketresearchreports.biz Global Commercial and Military Aircraft MRO Market to grow at a CAGR of 3.39% during 2017-2021 - AAR, Airbus Group, Boeing, Lockheed Martin http://www.researchmoz.us/enquiry.php?type=S&repid=1067027 http://www.researchmoz.us/global-commercial-and-military-aircraft-mro-market-2017-2021-report.html http://bit.ly/1TBmnVG Maintenance, repair, and overhaul (MRO) enhances the life of an aircraft by increasing its operational efficiency. It includes services such as routine check-up, inspection, repair, and modification of aircraft and its components, assuring the safety and airworthiness of an aircraft. MRO is performed for airframes, engines, and components and includes thorough and extensive visual checks and nondestructive testing (NDT) for the detection of damage or corrosion. The MRO industry is characterized by steady development of advanced and innovative technologies. For instance, with the introduction of wearable technology, mobile devices can access flight-related information quickly and send information to maintenance specialists. This has helped in achieving on-time delivery of aircraft.The global commercial and military aircraft MRO market to grow at a CAGR of 3.39% during the period 2017-2021. The report covers the present scenario and the growth prospects of the global commercial and military aircraft MRO market for 2017-2021. To calculate the market size, the report considers the revenue generated from the spending on MRO carried out for commercial and military aircraft.The market is divided into the following segments based on geography:- Americas- APAC- EMEAClick to get sample PDF with TOC:Technavio's report, Global Commercial and Military Aircraft MRO Market 2017-2021, has been prepared based on an in-depth market analysis with inputs from industry experts. The report covers the market landscape and its growth prospects over the coming years. The report also includes a discussion of the key vendors operating in this market.Browse more details at:Key vendors- AAR- Airbus Group- Boeing- Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI)- Lockheed Martin- Rockwell Collins- SIA Engineering Company- Singapore Technologies AerospaceOther prominent vendors- AMECO- Aviation Technical Services- Delta TechOps- DynCorp International- Elbit Systems- Evergreen Aviation Technologies- Hong Kong Aircraft Engineering (HAECO)- Lufthansa Technik- Monarch Aircraft Engineering- SR Technics- StandardAero- ThalesMarket driver- Improvements in synthetic vision avionic systems.- For a full, detailed list, view our reportMarket challenge- Challenges due to high cost and unavailability of spare parts.- For a full, detailed list, view our reportKey questions answered in this report- What will the market size be in 2021 and what will the growth rate be?- What are the key market trends?- What is driving this market?- What are the challenges to market growth?- Who are the key vendors in this market space?- What are the market opportunities and threats faced by the key vendors?- What are the strengths and weaknesses of the key vendors?About UsResearchMoz is the worlds fastest growing collection of market research reports worldwide. Our database is composed of current market studies from over 100 featured publishers worldwide. Our market research databases integrate statistics with analysis from global, regional, country and company perspectives. ResearchMozs service portfolio also includes value-added services such as market research customization, competitive landscaping, and in-depth surveys, delivered by a team of experienced Research Coordinators.Albany NY - 12207United StatesTel: +1-518-621-2074Tel: 866-997-4948 (Us-Canada Toll Free)Email: sales@researchmoz.usFollow us on LinkedIn at: Details of the Personal Accident and Health Insurance in Lebanon Key Trends and Opportunities to 2020 https://www.marketresearchreports.biz/sample/sample/1273738 https://www.marketresearchreports.biz/reports/1273738/personal-accident-and-health-insurance-in-lebanon-key-trends-and-opportunities-to-2020-market-research-reports http://www.marketresearchreports.biz/ "The Report Personal Accident and Health Insurance in Lebanon Key Trends and Opportunities to 2020 provides information on pricing, market analysis, shares, forecast, and company profiles for key industry participants. - MarketResearchReports.biz"Timetrics 'Personal Accident and Health Insurance in Lebanon Key Trends and Opportunities to 2020' report provides a detailed outlook by product category for the Lebanese life insurance segment, and a comparison of the Lebanese insurance industry with its regional counterparts.It provides key performance indicators such as written premium, incurred loss, loss ratio, commissions and expenses, combined ratio, total assets, total investment income and retentions during the review period (20112015) and forecast period (20152020).The report also analyzes distribution channels operating in the segment, gives a comprehensive overview of the Lebanese economy and demographics, and provides detailed information on the competitive landscape in the country.The report brings together Timetrics research, modeling and analysis expertise, giving insurers access to information on segment dynamics and competitive advantages, and profiles of insurers operating in the country. The report also includes details of insurance regulations, and recent changes in the regulatory structure.Get Sample Copy Of This Report @SummaryTimetrics 'Personal Accident and Health Insurance in Lebanon Key Trends and Opportunities to 2020' report provides in-depth market analysis, information and insights into the Lebanese personal accident and health insurance segment, including:An overview of the Lebanese personal accident and health insurance segmentThe Lebanese personal accident and health insurance segments growth prospects by categoryA comprehensive overview of the Lebanese economy and demographicsA comparison of the Lebanese personal accident and health insurance segment with its regional counterpartsThe various distribution channels in the Lebanese personal accident and health insurance segmentDetails of the competitive landscape in the personal accident and health insurance segment in LebanonDetails of regulatory policy applicable to the Lebanese insurance industryView Report @ScopeThis report provides a comprehensive analysis of the personal accident and health insurance segment in Lebanon:It provides historical values for the Lebanese personal accident and health insurance segment for the reports 20112015 review period, and projected figures for the 20152020 forecast period.It offers a detailed analysis of the key categories in the Lebanese personal accident and health insurance segment, and market forecasts to 2020.It provides a comparison of the Lebanese personal accident and health insurance segment with its regional counterpartsIt provides an overview of the various distribution channels for personal accident and health insurance products in Lebanon.It profiles the top personal accident and health insurance companies in Lebanon, and outlines the key regulations affecting them.Reasons To BuyMake strategic business decisions using in-depth historic and forecast market data related to the Lebanese personal accident and health insurance segment, and each category within it.Understand the demand-side dynamics, key market trends and growth opportunities in the Lebanese personal accident and health insurance segment.Assess the competitive dynamics in the personal accident and health insurance segment.Identify growth opportunities and market dynamics in key product categories.Gain insights into key regulations governing the Lebanese insurance industry, and their impact on companies and the industry's future.Key HighlightsIn 2017, Al-Ittihad Al-Watani Insurance was taken over by NASCO Insurance Group, an insurance brokerage firm.In October 2016, Arope Insurance announced a strategic partnership with BoB Finance in collaboration with insurance brokers in Beirut.In 2015, the Insurance Control Commission (ICC) developed supervisory and analytical tools that strengthened disclosure requirements, and developed new guidelines for new products and the enhancement of existing ones.In 2015, ICC initiated the provision of soft loans as incentives in order to encourage mergers and acquisitions.About usMarketResearchReports.biz is the most comprehensive collection of market research reports. MarketResearchReports.Biz services are specially designed to save time and money for our clients. We are a one stop solution for all your research needs, our main offerings are syndicated research reports, custom research, subscription access and consulting services. We serve all sizes and types of companies spanning across various industries.State Tower90 Sate Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-621-2074Website:E: sales@marketresearchreports.biz Global Denim Sales Market Report 2017 - Leading Industry Players are : KG Denim, Haitian Textile, Bafang Fabric, Jiangyin Chulong, Cone Denim, ?ALIK DENIM, Xinlan Group, Etco Denim, Black Peony, Aarvee, Vicunha http://www.qyresearchreports.com/sample/sample.php?rep_id=1220325&type=E http://www.qyresearchreports.com/report/global-denim-sales-market-report-2017.htm http://www.qyresearchreports.com In this report, the global Denim market is valued at USD XX million in 2016 and is expected to reach USD XX million by the end of 2022, growing at a CAGR of XX% between 2016 and 2022.Geographically, this report split global into several key Regions, with sales (K Units), revenue (Million USD), market share and growth rate of Denim for these regions, from 2012 to 2022 (forecast), coveringUnited StatesChinaEuropeJapanSoutheast AsiaIndiaGlobal Denim market competition by top manufacturers/players, with Denim sales volume, Price (USD/Unit), revenue (Million USD) and market share for each manufacturer/player; the top players includingCanatibaVicunhaIskoArvindAarveeNandan Denim LtdWeiqiao TextileSudarshan JeansBlack PeonyOrta AnadoluJindal WorldwideEtco DenimRaymond UCOBhaskar IndustriesSangamOswal DenimsSuryalakshmiShasha Denims LimitedXinlan Group?ALIK DENIMFoshan Seazon Textile and GarmentCone DenimZhejiang Sitong Textile FashionWeifang Lantian TextileJiangyin ChulongBafang FabricHaitian TextileAdvance DenimKG DenimGet a Sample Copy of this Report @On the basis of product, this report displays the production, revenue, price, market share and growth rate of each type, primarily split intoBasic DenimPremium DenimUltra-premium DenimOn the basis on the end users/applications, this report focuses on the status and outlook for major applications/end users, sales volume, market share and growth rate of Denim for each application, includingJeansShirtJacketOthersTable of Contents1 Denim Market Overview1.1 Product Overview and Scope of Denim1.2 Classification of Denim by Product Category1.2.1 Global Denim Market Size (Sales) Comparison by Type (2012-2022)1.2.2 Global Denim Market Size (Sales) Market Share by Type (Product Category) in 20161.2.3 Basic Denim1.2.4 Premium Denim1.2.5 Ultra-premium Denim1.3 Global Denim Market by Application/End Users1.3.1 Global Denim Sales (Volume) and Market Share Comparison by Application (2012-2022)1.3.2 Jeans1.3.3 Shirt1.3.4 Jacket1.3.5 Others1.4 Global Denim Market by Region1.4.1 Global Denim Market Size (Value) Comparison by Region (2012-2022)1.4.2 United States Denim Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.4.3 China Denim Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.4.4 Europe Denim Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.4.5 Japan Denim Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.4.6 Southeast Asia Denim Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.4.7 India Denim Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.5 Global Market Size (Value and Volume) of Denim (2012-2022)1.5.1 Global Denim Sales and Growth Rate (2012-2022)1.5.2 Global Denim Revenue and Growth Rate (2012-2022)2 Global Denim Competition by Players/Suppliers, Type and Application2.1 Global Denim Market Competition by Players/Suppliers2.1.1 Global Denim Sales and Market Share of Key Players/Suppliers (2012-2017)2.1.2 Global Denim Revenue and Share by Players/Suppliers (2012-2017)2.2 Global Denim (Volume and Value) by Type2.2.1 Global Denim Sales and Market Share by Type (2012-2017)2.2.2 Global Denim Revenue and Market Share by Type (2012-2017)2.3 Global Denim (Volume and Value) by Region2.3.1 Global Denim Sales and Market Share by Region (2012-2017)2.3.2 Global Denim Revenue and Market Share by Region (2012-2017)2.4 Global Denim (Volume) by Application3 United States Denim (Volume, Value and Sales Price)3.1 United States Denim Sales and Value (2012-2017)3.1.1 United States Denim Sales and Growth Rate (2012-2017)3.1.2 United States Denim Revenue and Growth Rate (2012-2017)3.1.3 United States Denim Sales Price Trend (2012-2017)3.2 United States Denim Sales Volume and Market Share by Players3.3 United States Denim Sales Volume and Market Share by Type3.4 United States Denim Sales Volume and Market Share by ApplicationList of Tables and FiguresFigure Product Picture of DenimFigure Global Denim Sales Volume Comparison (K Units) by Type (2012-2022)Figure Global Denim Sales Volume Market Share by Type (Product Category) in 2016Figure Basic Denim Product PictureFigure Premium Denim Product PictureFigure Ultra-premium Denim Product PictureFigure Global Denim Sales Comparison (K Units) by Application (2012-2022)Figure Global Sales Market Share of Denim by Application in 2016Figure Jeans ExamplesTable Key Downstream Customer in JeansFigure Shirt ExamplesTable Key Downstream Customer in ShirtFigure Jacket ExamplesTable Key Downstream Customer in JacketFigure Others ExamplesFull Research Report with TOC @QYresearchreports.com delivers the latest strategic market intelligence to build a successful business footprint in China. Our syndicated and customized research reports provide companies with vital background information of the market and in-depth analysis on the Chinese trade and investment framework, which directly affects their business operations.QYResearchReports1820 AvenueM Suite #1047Brooklyn, NY 11230United StatesToll Free: 866-997-4948 (USA-CANADA)Tel: +1-518-618-1030Web:Email: sales@qyresearchreports.com Fuel Cards in Lithuania Market Research Report https://www.marketresearchreports.biz/sample/sample/984858 https://www.marketresearchreports.biz/reports/984858/fuel-cards-in-lithuania-2016-market-research-reports https://www.marketresearchreports.biz/sample/enquiryBuy/984858 http://www.marketresearchreports.biz/ Latest industry research report on: Fuel Cards in Lithuania Market : Industry Size, Share, Research, Reviews, Analysis, Strategies, Demand, Growth, Segmentation, Parameters, ForecastsFuel Cards in Lithuania 2016 is invaluable for issuers of fleet cards, fuel retailers, fleet leasing companies and other suppliers to the sector. Based on research with issuers and fuel retailers it provides commercial (B2B) fuel card volume (split by fleet and CRT), value and market share forecasts to 2021, key data on independent and oil company card issuers and an analysis of fuel card competition in LithuaniaDownload Sample copy of this Report @Key Findings- The total number of service stations in Lithuania declined by 0.5% in 2015 totaling 916 service stations. Over 1,500 new fuel cards will be issued between 2016 and 2021, totaling to 162,210 cards in the market. Fleet card volumes will continue to grow rising 25.4% between 2016 and 2021 to total 290m litres by the end of 2021.- The top five fuel card operators made up 69.9% of fuel card volumes in 2015 as they all offer large card acceptance networks and services such as online monitoring and toll payments.SynopsisThe total number of service stations in Lithuania will grow by 4.5% between 2016 and 2021 totaling 960 service stations.Complete Report Details @ReasonsToBuy- Plan effective market entry strategies by uncovering current and future volumes and values of the Lithuanian fuel card market. Assess whether you should increase network acceptance of your card and identify potential new merchants by uncovering the position of competitors.- Whether you are an issuer, a processor, a leasing company or a fuel retailer, make informed pitches to partners by understanding their business.- Enhance fuel sales at your service stations by identifying which fuel cards you should accept based on their market shares and network acceptance.Have Any Query? Ask Our Expert @About usMarketResearchReports.biz is the most comprehensive collection of market research reports. MarketResearchReports.Biz services are specially designed to save time and money for our clients. We are a one stop solution for all your research needs, our main offerings are syndicated research reports, custom research, subscription access and consulting services. We serve all sizes and types of companies spanning across various industries.Contact UsState Tower90 State Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207United StatesTel: +1-518-621-2074Website:Email: sales@marketresearchreports.biz Reinsurance in Lebanon Key Trends and Opportunities to 2020 https://www.marketresearchreports.biz/reports/1273739/reinsurance-in-lebanon-key-trends-and-opportunities-to-2020-market-research-reports https://www.marketresearchreports.biz/sample/sample/1273739 http://www.marketresearchreports.biz/ "The Report Reinsurance in Lebanon Key Trends and Opportunities to 2020 provides information on pricing, market analysis, shares, forecast, and company profiles for key industry participants. - MarketResearchReports.biz"Timetrics 'Reinsurance in Lebanon Key Trends and Opportunities to 2020' report provides detailed analysis of the market trends, drivers and challenges in the Lebanese reinsurance segment.It provides values for key performance indicators such as written premium, reinsurance ceded and reinsurance accepted during the review period (20112015) and forecast period (20152020).The report also analyses information pertaining to the competitive landscape in the country, gives a comprehensive overview of the Lebanese economy and demographics, and provides detailed analysis of natural hazards and their impact on the Lebanese insurance industry.The report brings together Timetrics research, modeling and analysis expertise to enable reinsurers to identify segment dynamics and competitive advantages, and access profiles of reinsurers operating in the country.View Report @SummaryTimetrics 'Reinsurance in Lebanon Key Trends and Opportunities to 2020' report provides in-depth market analysis, information and insights into the Lebanese reinsurance segment, including:An outlook of the Lebanese reinsurance segmentA comprehensive overview of the Lebanese economy and demographicsDetailed analysis of natural hazards and their impact on the Lebanese insurance industryThe competitive landscape in the Lebanese reinsurance segmentGet Sample Copy Of This Report @ScopeThis report provides a comprehensive analysis of the reinsurance segment in Lebanon:It provides historical values for the Lebanese reinsurance segment for the reports 20112015 review period, and projected figures for the 20152020 forecast period.It offers a detailed analysis of the key categories in the Lebanese reinsurance segment, and market forecasts to 2020.It provides a detailed analysis of the reinsurance ceded from various direct insurance segments in Lebanon, and the reinsurance segment's growth prospects.It analyzes various natural and man-made hazards and their impact on the Lebanese insurance industryReasons To BuyMake strategic business decisions using in-depth historic and forecast market data related to the Lebanese reinsurance segment, and each category within it.Understand the demand-side dynamics, key market trends and growth opportunities in the Lebanese reinsurance segment.Identify growth opportunities and market dynamics in key product categories.Gain insights into key regulations governing the Lebanese insurance industry, and their impact on companies and the industry's future.Key HighlightsIn 2017, Gen Re partnered with Monsenso, a Danish technology company, to offer mental health solutions.In March 2017, the government announced plans to provide subsidized loans to encourage consolidation in the insurance industry.In 2017, Nasco Insurance Group acquired a 93.9% stake in Lebanese insurer Al Ittihad Al Watani (LUnion Nationale) for LBP26.4 billion (US$17.5 million).In June 2015, Chedid Europe Reinsurance Brokerage Ltd a subsidiary of Chedid Re announced its registration as a Lloyds broker.In May 2016, Chedid Capital Holdings acquired a majority stake in Emirati Al Manara Insurance Services Co. Ltd.About usMarketResearchReports.biz is the most comprehensive collection of market research reports. MarketResearchReports.Biz services are specially designed to save time and money for our clients. We are a one stop solution for all your research needs, our main offerings are syndicated research reports, custom research, subscription access and consulting services. We serve all sizes and types of companies spanning across various industries.State Tower90 Sate Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-621-2074Website:E: sales@marketresearchreports.biz Functional Water Market Industry Background , Forecast to 2024 https://www.gminsights.com/request-toc/upcoming/1910 https://www.gminsights.com/inquiry-before-buying/1910 https://www.gminsights.com/industry-analysis/plant-based-waters-market https://www.gminsights.com/industry-analysis/functional-flours-market https://www.gminsights.com https://gminsights.wordpress.com Functional Water Market size shall witness a significant growth owing to its increasing usage in food & beverages industry. Increase in aging population and obesity rate is major driving force for the product. Shift in customer preference from aerated & alcoholic beverages to healthy drinks will support industry development. It has extra oxygen and rich in vitamins, botanicals and minerals. It offers refreshment along with health and hydration. It provides several skin benefits too. Availability in various flavours and options has enhanced its demand. Urbanisation, increase in income level and pollution has increased the requirement of packaged drinking product. These factors are expected to propel the functional water market growth.Request for an in-depth table of contents for this report @As per WHO, the number of obese children are expected to rise to 70 million in 2025. Along with increasing concern for obesity and diseases associated with it, consumer preference has changed towards low calorie drinks. In present scenario, health and wellness is a new trend.Consumers are inclining towards natural, clean and organic food. Aerated drinks contain phosphoric acid and caffeine that causes digestive problems and leads to weight gain. Companies in order to increase demand have linked it to health and beauty. These factors are anticipated to boost functional water market.Functional water is even recognized as aquaceutical, is a non-alcoholic beverage similar to water having additional ingredients that increase functional benefits. It provides both refreshment and taste. Some common additives are vitamins, acids, minerals, herbs and fruits or vegetables. It helps in improving immunity and boost energy. Shift in preference from carbonated and high sugar beverages, will drive demand for functional water market.Make an inquiry for buying this report @Major restraint for functional water market is its variation in cost. Generally, consumers prefer simple packaged or plain liquid and further, availability of numerous health drink alternatives and less demand in niche soft drink sector reduces demand of the product. Customers bargaining power has increased due to availability of abundant alternatives and low switching costs. Increasing protests against packaged bottles along with rise in environmental conservation will negatively impact the functional water market growth.On the basis of packaging, functional water market is classified as PET bottle, glass bottle and others including cans & pouches. PET bottle is major shareholder owing to its versatility, attractiveness, light weight, recyclable nature and ease in transportation. Advancement in technology is expected to reduce overall production cost, bringing flexibility for different shapes. Glass bottles are heavy weight and non-recyclable and its use glass increases the cost of product. Cans and pouches are used for small quantity of product.Based on distribution channel, functional water market is classified into supermarket stores, department stores, grocery and online retailers. Super or hypermarkets are having major share owing to growing customers comfortability to visits stores. Increase in online sale up to 10% with presence of a better online platform, discount offers and ease in delivery will drive industry demand. Department and grocery stores have substantial share owing to their local presence.Europe is major shareholder due to healthy eating habits. Germany, Italy and France have substantial penetration in functional water market due to improved living standards. North America, led by the U.S. has significant share that can be attributed to rising obesity in children and young generation in the region.Asia Pacific functional water market is projected to grow at substantial rate owing to increase in disposable income, rising urban population and changing eating habits. Latin America and Middle East have significant share with sophisticated lifestyle and rapid urbanisation.Key players of functional water market are PepsiCo, Coca Cola, Dr Pepper Snapple, Nestle, Group Danone, Hind, Sunny Delight Beverages and Kraft Foods. Companies are adding vitamins and natural sweeteners to enhance the quality of product. Nestle has signed an agreement with Yinlu Foods to increase its industry in China. This agreement would help Nestle to integrate Yinlus customer understanding and entrepreneurship with its innovation capability.Browse Related Reports:Plant-based Waters Market Size By Product (Coconut Water, Maple Water, Birch Water, Artichoke Water, Cactus Water), By Flavor Variant (Flavored, Original), By Pack Type (Cans, Bottles, Cartons, Pouches), By Distribution Channel (Online, Retail Stores, Cafes & Fitness Centers), Industry Analysis Report, Regional Outlook (U.S., Canada, Germany, UK, France, Spain, Italy, China, India, Japan, Australia, Indonesia, Malaysia, Brazil, Mexico, South Africa, GCC), Growth Potential, Price Trends, Competitive Market Share & Forecast, 20172024Functional Flours Market Size, Industry Analysis Report, Regional Outlook (U.S., Canada, Mexico, UK, Germany, France, Italy, China, Australia, India, Japan, Indonesia, Argentina, Brazil, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Kuwait, South Africa), Application Development Potential, Price Trend, Competitive Market Share & Forecast, 2017 2024About Global Market InsightsGlobal Market Insights, Inc., headquartered in Delaware, U.S., is a global market research and consulting service provider; offering syndicated and custom research reports along with growth consulting services. Our business intelligence and industry research reports offer clients with penetrative insights and actionable market data specially designed and presented to aid strategic decision making. These exhaustive reports are designed via a proprietary research methodology and are available for key industries such as chemicals, advanced materials, technology, renewable energy and biotechnology.Contact Us:Arun HegdeCorporate Sales, USAGlobal Market Insights, Inc.Phone: 1-302-846-7766Toll Free: 1-888-689-0688Email: sales@gminsights.comWeb:Blog: Leisure & Hospitality Buildings (Construction) in Azerbaijan: Market Analytics by Category & Cost Type to 2021 https://www.marketresearchreports.biz/sample/sample/1273741 https://www.marketresearchreports.biz/reports/1273741/leisure-hospitality-buildings-construction-in-market-research-reports http://www.marketresearchreports.biz/ "The Report Leisure & Hospitality Buildings (Construction) in Azerbaijan: Market Analytics by Category & Cost Type to 2021 provides information on pricing, market analysis, shares, forecast, and company profiles for key industry participants. - MarketResearchReports.biz"Timetrics "Leisure & Hospitality Buildings (Construction) in Azerbaijan: Market Analytics by Category & Cost Type to 2021" contains historic and forecast market data for the leisure & hospitality buildings category in Azerbaijan, it also provides detailed breakdown of the data by construction activity (new construction, repair and maintenance, refurbishment and demolition) and by cost type (construction materials, construction equipment and construction services).SummaryLeisure & hospitality buildings covers the construction of buildings used for accommodation, foodservice and indoor leisure activities. This includes hotels, motels, casinos, restaurants, leisure centers, gyms, theatres, conference facilities, exhibition centers, stadium buildings and arenas, and cinemas.Get Sample Copy Of This Report @The Azerbaijani leisure & hospitality buildings construction category has observed some fluctuations in the review period with a value of AZNxx.xx million (US$xx.xx million) in 2016 and declined at a rate of x.xx% over 2015. The market recorded a CAGR of x.xx% from 2012 through 2016."Leisure & Hospitality Buildings (Construction) in Azerbaijan: Market Analytics by Category & Cost Type to 2021"' provides a top-level overview and detailed insight into the operating environment of the leisure & hospitality buildings market in Azerbaijan. It is an essential tool for companies active across the Azerbaijani construction value chain and for new players considering to enter the market.View Report @ScopeA top level overview of the leisure & hospitality buildings construction category in Azerbaijan.Historic data provided from 2012 through 2016 and forecast from 2017 through 2021.A detailed breakdown of the data by construction activity (new construction, repair and maintenance, refurbishment and demolition) and by cost type (construction materials, construction equipment & construction services) across the leisure & hospitality buildings market.Reasons To BuyProvides a top level understanding of the Leisure & Hospitality Buildings construction in Azerbaijan.Helps you understand the market performance by construction activity (new construction, repair and maintenance, refurbishment and demolition) and construction cost type (construction materials, construction equipment & construction services).Allows you to plan future business decisions using the forecast figures given.The broad but detailed perspective will help all the players in the construction activity to understand and succeed in the challenging construction market.About usMarketResearchReports.biz is the most comprehensive collection of market research reports. MarketResearchReports.Biz services are specially designed to save time and money for our clients. We are a one stop solution for all your research needs, our main offerings are syndicated research reports, custom research, subscription access and consulting services. We serve all sizes and types of companies spanning across various industries.State Tower90 Sate Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-621-2074Website:E: sales@marketresearchreports.biz Vinegar And Vinaigrette Market Analysis, Segments, Growth and Value Chain 2017-2027 http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/sample/rep-gb-2801 http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/toc/rep-gb-2801 www.futuremarketinsights.com Vinegar is made by fermenting dilute alcoholic liquid such as beer, cider and others. It contains acetic acid and is sour in taste. Vinaigrette is made by mixing edible oil such as olive oil, soybean oil, cider oil, walnut oil, corn oil and others with vinegar or lemon juice. To achieve better taste this mixture can also be enhanced by adding various spices, herbs, or salt. The vinaigrette is used as a salad dressings and marinade. Rising demand for snacks items such as salads, sandwiches and others coupled with increased interest in bold flavors and gourmet cooking is expected driving vinegar and vinaigrette market over the forecast period.Vinegar & Vinaigrette Market SegmentationThe market is segmented the basis of type which includes vinegar & vinaigrette. Vinegar segment is further sub-segmented as balsamic vinegar, apple cider vinegar, white wine vinegar, rice vinegar, sherry vinegar, garlic vinegar, cava vinegar, honey vinegar, red wine vinegar, malt vinegar and others. Among all these sub-segment balsamic vinegar is expected to have major market share in terms value during the forecast period. Availability of wide variety of product variant in balsamic vinegar sub-segment is expected to drive the sub-segment growth over the forecast period. Furthermore red wine vinegar sub-segment is expected to account for favorable growth during the forecast period. Rising health awareness among the consumers regarding the consumption of red wine vinegar is expected to drive the red wine vinegar sub-segment growth in the near future. Vinaigrette segment is further sub-segmented as emulsified and biphasic. Among all these sub-segment emulsified sub-segment is expected to account for major value share over the forecast period. However, biphasic sub-segment is expected to register relatively higher growth. Increasing consumption olive oil based vinaigrette is expected to support sub-segment growth over the forecast period.Request Report Sample@Global vinegar & vinaigrette market is further segmented on the basis of distribution channel which includes hypermarket/supermarket, convenience stores, specialty stores, grocery stores and online retailing. Among all these segments hypermarket/ supermarket is expected to register relatively higher value share during the forecast period. Increasing penetration of hypermarket/supermarket especially in developing countries coupled is expected to drive the segment growth over the forecast period. Online retailing is expected to register relatively higher growth in vinegar & vinaigrette market over the forecast period. Rising consumer inclination towards online purchasing of products is expected to support the segment growth over the forecast period.The vinegar & vinaigrette market is further segmented on the basis of end-use which includes end consumer, hotel and restaurant/bar. Among all these segments end consumer segment is expected to occupy major share in terms of volume consumption followed by restaurant and bar.Vinegar & Vinaigrette Regional OutlookGeographically vinegar & vinaigrette market is segmented on the basis of region which includes North America, Latin America, Western Europe, Eastern Europe, Asia Pacific excluding Japan, Middle East & Africa and Japan. Geographically, Europe is expected to be the major market in terms of value owing to increasing consumer shifting preference towards convenient healthy food options. Among the countries, U.K. is expected to remain major markets in terms of consumptions for vinegar & vinaigrette followed by Germany. North America is expected to represent the favorable market for vinegar & vinaigrette in terms of consumption. In the region the U.S. is expected to represent major value share during the forecast period. Increasing demand for natural and organic ingredients, and products without additives or preservatives is expected to support the market growth in the country. Asia Pacific is expected to represent a rapid growth in vinegar & vinaigrette market. Countries such as China and Japan is expected to be the major consumer for vinegar & vinaigrette across the region.Vinegar & Vinaigrette Market DriversContinuous product launch with variety of flavors is a key trend in the market. In addition organic and gluten free vinegar is the emerging trend in the market. The growing demand of salads coupled with increasing number of fast food restaurants across the globe is expected to support the market growth over the forecast period.Visit For TOC@Vinegar & Vinaigrette Market Key PlayersSome of the key players operating in vinegar & vinaigrette market includes Borges Branded Foods, Fleischmann's Vinegar Company, Inc, The Kraft Heinz Company, Mizkan Group, Annie's Homegrown, Inc and Borges Branded Foods S.L.U. among others.About Us Future Market Insights is the premier provider of market intelligence and consulting services, serving clients in over 150 countries. FMI is headquartered in London, the global financial capital, and has delivery centers in the U.S. and India.CONTACT:616 Corporate Way, Suite 2-9018,Valley Cottage, NY 10989,United StatesT: +1-347-918-3531F: +1-845-579-5705Email: sales@futuremarketinsights.comWebsite: comsuisse AG successfully supported completion of ICS 200/60 VCS project for: CHINA Zhengzhou Centre and Tower VCCS www.comsuisse.ch Zurich, August 2nd, 2017. comsuisse AG has successfullycompleted the movement, configuration and supported thecustomer passing Site Acceptance Test for Zhengzhou AirTraffic Control Centre as well as Tower VCCS of type ICS200/60.comsuisse AG enabled seamless transition from the oldcentre to the new centre by making use of old installed aswell as new installed hardware and network and with thisbest supported the smooth transition within operation.The installation includes: New ACC with 36 operator positions with ascheduled extension by further 8 positions. Tower VCS with 18 operator positions. Networking: Redundant E1 connections.Mr. Lin Jianzhuang, Manager of Marketing and TradingDepartment Civil Aviation Air Traffic Management EquipmentEngineering Company Guangzhou stated:Due to our long-term relation with the experienced crew ofcomsuisse AG we found the most economic and optimal wayto complete the ICS 200/60 projects for the ACC and thetower of Zhengzhou..Ernst Kalin Regional Sales Director at comsuisse proudlyannounces: With this successful completion, we fromcomsuisse AG had the opportunity to prove our abilities ofsupporting ICS 200/60 customers in the most economicalway. We are happy to strengthen the long-term relationshipof our crew within China.About Zhengzhou ACC and TowerWith more than 20 million passengers every year, and aheavy growth of cargo, Zhengzhou is on the way to becomean important hub.Civil Aviation Air Traffic Management EquipmentEngineering CompanyFound in 1987, Civil Aviation Air Traffic ManagementEquipment Engineering Company(CAATMEEC) is a contractor providing engineering servicesof communication, navigation, surveillance, meteorology andairport terminal electronics in the aviation industry.CAATMEEC is characterized by offering a whole package ofservices including project consulting, practical advice fordesigning, systems solution tailored to the air trafficmanagement and airport customers needs.About comsuisse AGcomsuisse AG, a company for safety critical, high reliablevoice communication solutions combines a crew ofengineers with long-term experience in the area of TDMbased ICS 200/60 systems with the knowledge of mostmodern VoIP technology. Together with its sister companies,comsuisse AG is not only enabled to support ICS 200/60voice communication systems, but also to adapt,manufacture and provide long-term maintenance forcustomers operating ICS 200/60 systems.With myVCS, comsuisse AG has developed one of the mostmodern and powerful full VoIP systems on the market,designed for high available applications as required for voicecommunication systems for Air Traffic Management.comsuisse AGGiesshubelstrasse 408045 Zurich Switzerland Air Freshener Market Analysis and Forecast Study for (2014-2020) http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/sample/rep-gb-42 http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/toc/rep-gb-42 www.futuremarketinsights.com Air fresheners are products used to release fragrances in order to eliminate foul smell or odour from the environment. These products are only applicable for use in indoor environments such as homes, offices, hotel rooms, cars and others. In recent years, this functional commodity has evolved to be used as a decorative product. Air fresheners comprise chemical agents such as artificial or original essence, aerosol propellants, solvents such as mineral oil, 2-butoxyethanol and other glycol ethers, which help in neutralizing odours and freshens the air.On the basis of types, these products can be broadly segmented into room sprays and diffusers. Room sprays fall under the category of aerosol sprays, which are mostly available in cans or glass bottles with attached spray nozzles. Room sprays are highly functional and instead of simply masking foul odours, they release a pleasant fragrance. On the other hand, diffusers disperse fragrance into the air. Furthermore, these are widely classified into active and passive diffusers. Active diffusers require an external energy source of energy to release fragrance. These products are designed to function on a plugged power source or with batteries. Passive diffusers do not require any external energy source and diffuse fragrance from various forms of underlying substances or layers. The various types of passive diffusers include adjustable solids, reed diffusers and gel products.Request For Report Sample@Besides room sprays and diffusers, the air freshener market is further segmented into specialty products. These types of air fresheners comprise a variety of products designed to add fragrance to a room or space, and are available in various forms such as potpourri. This type of air freshener comprises forms of dried botanical and other natural ingredient such as flowers, fruits, wood chips and spices that may have fragrance oils added to them. Another is sachets, small pouches or bags filled with scented powder. Another type is incense, which is produced from a mixture of fragrant gums, resins, woods and spices and is available in varied forms such as sticks, cones, rods, coils, small blocks, wands and powders. Furthermore, fragrance oil burning lamp is another type of air freshener. This type acts as a catalytic diffusion lamp, purifying the air while releasing fragrance. Yet another type is the non-electric or evaporative air freshener. This type releases fragrance when scented oil is added to an oil warmer, which is heated using a tea light candle.Globally, the demand for air fresheners registered stable growth during the last five years, and is expected to witness favourable growth during the forecast period. This is attributed to product innovations, increased adaption of enhanced products and rising affluence. Changing and improving lifestyle and demographic factors, as well as increasing population in developing countries is driving demand for air freshener products in Asia Pacific and Rest of the World.The key drivers in the air freshener market includes product innovation and launch of new product ranges capable of delivering freshness as well as enhanced ability to eliminate offensive odours. These properties serve to enhance consumer preference for such products and offers value for money. In addition, rise in disposable income and purchasing power parity has shifted the demand of consumers towards enhanced products, which is further expected to fuel market growth.Visit For TOC@The key players in the global air freshener market include Procter & Gamble, SC Johnson, Reckitt Benckiser, Henkel, Church & Dwight, California Scents, ST Corporation, Scotts Liquid Gold, Inc., Amway, Kobayashi, Liby, Houdy, Farcent, Jiali, Ludao, Mengjiaolan and others.ABOUT US:Future Market Insights (FMI) is a leading market intelligence and consulting firm.We deliver syndicated research reports, custom research reports and consulting services, which are personalized in nature. FMI delivers a complete packaged solution, which combines current market intelligence, statistical anecdotes, technology inputs, valuable growth insights, an aerial view of the competitive framework, and future market trends.CONTACT:Future Market Insights616 Corporate Way, Suite 2-9018,Valley Cottage, NY 10989,United StatesT: +1-347-918-3531F: +1-845-579-5705Email: sales@futuremarketinsights.comWebsite: Automotive Mobile Accessories Market to Reach US$ 30 Bn by 2022 https://www.factmr.com/connectus/sample?flag=S&rep_id=6 https://www.factmr.com/connectus/sample?flag=D&rep_id=6 https://www.factmr.com/report/6/automotive-mobile-accessories-market https://www.factmr.com/ The global market for automotive mobile accessories is expected to witness reformative impact from rising adoption of digital technologies in the automotive sector. Car mobile accessories play a pivotal role in influencing the consumers buying choices. Higher integration of automotive mobile accessories with telematics is a lucrative opportunity for key players in the market. This report analyzes the growth of global automotive mobile accessories market during the forecast period, 2017-2022, and offers key insights on the future of mobile accessories in the ever-evolving world of automotive.ScopeThe scope of the report is to analyze the global automotive mobile accessories market for the period 2017-2022 and give readers an accurate, unbiased analysis. Automotive mobile accessories manufacturers, suppliers, and stakeholders in the overall automotive market can benefit from the insights offered in this report. The comprehensive analysis offered in the report can also be of interest to leading automotive journals and trade magazines.SummaryThe report begins with a concise summary of the global automotive mobile accessories market. This executive summary sets the tone for the rest of the report, giving users the scope of the report. The executive summary includes important facts and statistics on the global automotive mobile accessories market.Request For Report Sample:OverviewThe next section is an overview of the global automotive mobile accessories market. This includes the introduction to the market and a standard definition of the product mobile accessories. In this section, year-over-year growth and market value is offered to readers. Year-over-year growth gives readers a broader picture on growth patterns during the forecast period.The next section of the report offers a thorough description of the latest macroeconomic factors that have a bearing on the global automotive mobile accessories market. Considering the interconnectedness of the automotive mobile accessories market to global automotive market and, in general, the global economy, readers will get valuable insights on how international developments impact this market.In a bid to keep readers up-to-date on the latest developments in the global automotive mobile accessories market, the report offers readers a roundup of the latest trends impacting the market. As the automotive sector is ever-evolving, staying abreast with latest trends and developments is paramount to formulating key business strategies. Information on supply chain, cost structure, pricing analysis, raw material sourcing, and list of distributors are offered to readers in this section.Considering the wide purview of global automotive mobile accessories market, a segment-wise analysis and forecast is included in the report. The segmental analysis of global automotive mobile accessories market includes segments namely product type, price range, vehicle type, sales channel, and region.Request For Discount:The concluding section of the report profiles companies operating in the global automotive mobile accessories market. Companies of all sizes, including market leaders, established players, and market entrants are profiled in this section. The competitive intelligence offers information on company overview and other important parameters, such as product offerings and key financials.Research MethodologyFact.MR is committed to offer unbiased and independent market research solutions to its clients. Each market report of Fact.MR is compiled after months of exhaustive research. We bank on a mix of tried-and-tested and innovative research methodologies to offer the most comprehensive and accurate information. Our main sources of research include,Primary researchSecondary researchTrade researchFocused interviewsSocial media analysisBrowse Full Report:ABOUT US:Fact.MR is focused on offering transformative intelligence that inspires breakthroughs and innovation. We believe that the right decisions at the opportune time are integral to achieve extraordinary success. We are here to help you with your strategic decision making.CONTACT:Suite 988427 Upper Pembroke Street,Dublin 2, IrelandPhone: +353-1-6111-593Email: sales@factmr.comWebsite: Global Damping Buffer Market Forecast 2017: Weforma, Hettich, Structurae Damping Buffer http://bit.ly/2vrcWGv http://bit.ly/2hq2V7i Damping BufferA market study Global Damping Buffer Market examines the performance of the Damping Buffer market 2017. It encloses an in-depth Research of the Damping Buffer market state and the competitive landscape globally. This report analyzes the potential of Damping Buffer market in the present and the future prospects from various angles in detail.The Global Damping Buffer Market 2017 report includes Damping Buffer market Size, Revenue, market Share, Damping Buffer industry volume, market Trends, Damping Buffer Growth aspects. A wide range of applications, Utilization ratio, Supply and demand analysis are also consist in the report.It shows manufacturing capacity, Damping Buffer Price during the Forecast period from 2017 to 2022.Inquiry here :Manufacturers Analysis of Global Damping Buffer Market 2017:Zhili Gas Spring Co., Ltd.WeformaHettichStructuraeFirstly, the report covers the top Damping Buffer manufacturing industry players from regions like United States, EU, Japan, and China. It also characterizes the market based on geological regions.Further, the Damping Buffer report gives information on the company profile, market share and contact details along with value chain analysis of Damping Buffer industry, Damping Buffer industry rules and policies, circumstances driving the growth of the market and compulsion blocking the growth. Damping Buffer Market development scope and various business strategies are also mentioned in this report.Table Of Content:The Damping Buffer research report includes the products that are currently in demand and available in the market along with their cost breakup, manufacturing volume, import/export scheme and contribution to the Damping Buffer market revenue worldwide.Finally, Damping Buffer market report gives you details about the market research findings and conclusion which helps you to develop profitable market strategies to gain competitive advantage.About Us:"Spire Market Research" is a leading market intelligence team which accredits and provides the reports of some of the top publishers in the field of technology industry. We are as a firm expertise in making extensive reports that cover all the necessary details about the market assessments such as major technological improvement in the industry.Contact UsUnited States Wireless Charging Market Projected to Grow Steadily During (2014-2020) http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/sample/rep-gb-66 http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/toc/rep-gb-66 www.futuremarketinsights.com Wireless charging is the process of recharging batteries of electrical devices without using physically connected electric cables. The communication between transmitter (power source) and receiver (device) is generally by microwave or electromagnetic induction. With the emergence of wireless chargeable devices, the need to carry multiple chargers for various devices will become obsolete. Chargeable devices such as mobile phones, and tablets need to be handier. Wireless charging technologies are revolutionizing the current electronic devices market to meet the demand for more efficient, standardized,safe and portable power recharging options.Wireless charging is more applicable to charge smartphones, tablets and other small handheld devices and wearable technologies. The obvious benefits associated with the use of wireless charging includes efficiency of handling, protection from electric shocks, safe charging option for devices that need to be waterproof, no need formaintenance of charging cables and associated sockets. On the other hand, wireless charging technology is comparatively less efficient, slow, and expensive. Most devices also radiate heat during the charging process.Request For Report Sample@The global wireless charging market recently reported its development, due to continuous updation in phones. The demand for sealed devices, increasing demand for powerfor devices and inconvenience associated with carrying multiple chargers are the key drivers behind growth of wireless charging technologies. The key restrains behind wireless charging are lack of standardization and expensive infrastructure to pursue technological developments.Many advanced products are still in experimental phase but on the other hand these products have a bright future opportunity.Wireless charging can be broadly categorized into two types depending upon proximity of distance between transmitter and receiverand range of devices. Further, these two types can be sub-segmented into six sub categories such as radio charging, inductive charging and resonance charging are included under proximity of distance between transmitter and receiver and high range, mid-range and low range are included under range of devices. On the basis of application,the global wireless charging market is segmented intoconsumer electronics, medical healthcare, automobile & aerospace, defence and industrial automation. On the basis of geographical target market, itis segmented into North America, Latin America, Asia Pacific, Japan, Western Europe, Eastern Europe, and Middle East & Africa.Companies engagedin the development of wireless charging technologies are in the process of resolving compatibility issues associated with charger and charging points. Manufacturers of different handheld devices, prominently HTC, Nokia and LG, are already in the process of manufacturing wireless chargeable smartphones and tablets. The market experts are focusing on the development of standard wireless charging technology, which will be commonly useful for the advanced devices of various applications such as medical, and semiconductors.Visit For TOC@Some of the global key players in the wireless charging market include Convenient Power HK Ltd., Murata Manufacturing Co. Ltd., Integrated Device Technology, Inc., Texas Instruments, Inc., Duracell Powermat, Oregon Scientific, WiTricity Corporation and Energizer Holdings, Inc.Most of these companies are interested to enter into the wireless charging market with the plan to establish a brand name. The wireless charging market of North America appears to be comparatively mature than Asian market, in terms of infrastructural development. Countries with lower GDP may face economic issues to generate the demand.High price is one of the major challenges of this market and it should be taken care of.ABOUT US:Future Market Insights (FMI) is a leading market intelligence and consulting firm.We deliver syndicated research reports, custom research reports and consulting services, which are personalized in nature. FMI delivers a complete packaged solution, which combines current market intelligence, statistical anecdotes, technology inputs, valuable growth insights, an aerial view of the competitive framework, and future market trends.CONTACT:Future Market Insights616 Corporate Way, Suite 2-9018,Valley Cottage, NY 10989,United StatesT: +1-347-918-3531F: +1-845-579-5705Email: sales@futuremarketinsights.comWebsite: Global Frozen Boiled Dumplings Market Forecast 2017: Sanquan, Sinian, General Mills, Hai Pa Wang Frozen Boiled Dumplings http://bit.ly/2u6C9qj http://bit.ly/2vvqhyy Frozen Boiled DumplingsA market study Global Frozen Boiled Dumplings Market examines the performance of the Frozen Boiled Dumplings market 2017. It encloses an in-depth Research of the Frozen Boiled Dumplings market state and the competitive landscape globally. This report analyzes the potential of Frozen Boiled Dumplings market in the present and the future prospects from various angles in detail.The Global Frozen Boiled Dumplings Market 2017 report includes Frozen Boiled Dumplings market Size, Revenue, market Share, Frozen Boiled Dumplings industry volume, market Trends, Frozen Boiled Dumplings Growth aspects. A wide range of applications, Utilization ratio, Supply and demand analysis are also consist in the report.It shows manufacturing capacity, Frozen Boiled Dumplings Price during the Forecast period from 2017 to 2022.Inquiry here :Manufacturers Analysis of Global Frozen Boiled Dumplings Market 2017:SanquanSinianGeneral MillsHai Pa WangAnjoyKe Di GroupFirstly, the report covers the top Frozen Boiled Dumplings manufacturing industry players from regions like United States, EU, Japan, and China. It also characterizes the market based on geological regions.Further, the Frozen Boiled Dumplings report gives information on the company profile, market share and contact details along with value chain analysis of Frozen Boiled Dumplings industry, Frozen Boiled Dumplings industry rules and policies, circumstances driving the growth of the market and compulsion blocking the growth. Frozen Boiled Dumplings Market development scope and various business strategies are also mentioned in this report.Table Of Content:The Frozen Boiled Dumplings research report includes the products that are currently in demand and available in the market along with their cost breakup, manufacturing volume, import/export scheme and contribution to the Frozen Boiled Dumplings market revenue worldwide.Finally, Frozen Boiled Dumplings market report gives you details about the market research findings and conclusion which helps you to develop profitable market strategies to gain competitive advantage.About Us:"Spire Market Research" is a leading market intelligence team which accredits and provides the reports of some of the top publishers in the field of technology industry. We are as a firm expertise in making extensive reports that cover all the necessary details about the market assessments such as major technological improvement in the industry.Contact UsUnited States Eucalyptus Oil Market to Reach US$ 900 Mn by 2022 https://www.factmr.com/connectus/sample?flag=S&rep_id=92 https://www.factmr.com/connectus/sample?flag=D&rep_id=92 https://www.factmr.com/report/92/eucalyptus-oil-market https://www.factmr.com/ Eucalyptus oil has been observed to eliminate side-effects related to conventional drugs and medicines. The inclination of consumer preferences to naturally derived products has led toward the development of various innovative applications in cosmetic products. The global eucalyptus oil markets nature is highly concentrated, wherein the leading market players create entry barriers for new entrants. In its recent report, Fact.MR offers a comprehensive perspective on the forecast and momentum for eucalyptus oil market across few targeted countries. The report focuses on the provision of in-depth research and detailed insights about eucalyptus oil market for the forecast period 2017 to 2022.ScopeThe prime focus of Fact.MRs report is to provide readers with an unbiased and accurate analysis of current market status of eucalyptus oil, along with future growth estimations. Eucalyptus oil manufacturers, suppliers, and distributors in the global market will benefit from the insights offered in this report. A detailed discussion guide has been formulated in this report, which can attract the interest of top trade magazines and journals related to eucalyptus oil.SummaryThe report commences by providing an executive summary, market dynamics and market taxonomy, underlining the factors which influence growth of the global eucalyptus oil market. This executive summary offers the foundation on which the report is based, providing users with scope of the report. The executive summary contains key statistics and facts impacting the global eucalyptus oil market.Request For Report Sample:OverviewThis section offers a detailed view of the global eucalyptus oil market, comprising the market introduction, along with the standard definition of product eucalyptus oil. Market value as well as year-over-year expansion is offered to readers in this section. Y-o-Y growth enables readers to view broader aspects of growth patterns during the forecast period.This section also details the drivers, restraints, opportunities and key trends influencing the market growth based on perspectives of macroeconomic, demand, and supply sides. Impact analysis of the weighted average model-based expansion drivers is included in the report for provision of better decision-making insights to clients.To offer readers with latest information about advancements in the global eucalyptus oil market, updates about opportunities benefitting leading eucalyptus oil manufacturers are offered in the report. Continuous evolution of the food & beverage sector necessitates keeping record of upcoming and recent developments and trends which are fundamental for manufacturers of eucalyptus oil to formulate and adopt key business strategies. The detailed analysis pertaining to list of distributors, pricing analysis, raw material sourcing, cost structures, and supply chain are offered in this section.Check Discount:By considering the global eucalyptus oil market, and provide an in-depth analysis, Fact.MRs report provides segment-wise analysis and forecast. The eucalyptus oil market is categorized on the basis of nature, distribution channel, application, product type, and region. Segmentation analysis offered is comprehensive, along with the detailed country-wise forecast offered on all parameters.The reports last section emphasizes on the competitive landscape of the global eucalyptus oil market, providing readers with the dashboard of company analysis as well as the market players. Competitive intelligence provided by the report is based on providers categories in the value chain, and their presence in the global eucalyptus oil market.Research MethodologyFact.MR is committed to offer unbiased and independent market research solutions to its clients. Each market report of Fact.MR is compiled after months of exhaustive research. We bank on a mix of tried-and-tested and innovative research methodologies to offer the most comprehensive and accurate information. Our main sources of research include,Primary researchSecondary researchTrade researchFocused interviewsSocial media analysisBrowse Full Report:ABOUT US:Fact.MR is focused on offering transformative intelligence that inspires breakthroughs and innovation. We believe that the right decisions at the opportune time are integral to achieve extraordinary success. We are here to help you with your strategic decision making.CONTACT:Suite 988427 Upper Pembroke Street,Dublin 2, IrelandPhone: +353-1-6111-593Email: sales@factmr.comWebsite: Food Grade Lubricants Market Competitive Intelligence and Tracking Report http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/sample/rep-gb-98 http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/toc/rep-gb-98 www.futuremarketinsights.com Food grade lubricants refer to lubricants that are used to maintain the food processing machinery, i.e. it protects the tools and machines from wear and tear. However, since many of them come into direct contact with food, these lubricants used in these machineries need to be different from the usual machine lubricants. In other words, they should not render the food unfit for consumption. With recent advances in the food processing industry, there is now much variety in the machinery used to process each food/beverage category. With growing concern over the food we eat, food processors need to comply with various regulatory frameworks like the Hazard Analysis & Critical Control Points (HACCP). The standards vary from country to country. However, these are internationally accepted standards which are followed by food grade lubricant manufacturers. For instance, the non-profit public health and safety company, NSF International, along with USDA, has set standards for various food grade lubricants.These days, food safety is the highest priority for the food processors, and they take utmost care to maintain the same. H1 and H2 are the two most common broad spectrum food grade lubricants that are used in machinery involving incidental food contact and no food contact respectively. However, with the drive to produce innovative products in the food processing industry, the demand for customised and high performance food grade lubricants is expected to swell in near future. Food grade lubricants range from hydraulic fluids, oven chain oils, gear oils, compressor oils and vacuum pump oils to specialty lubricants such as can seamer oil. Different processes require different grades of oil. For instance, H3 (soluble oil) is used to prevent rust on trolleys, hooks and similar equipment whereas 3H release agents are used on chopping boards, cutters, grills, loaf pans, boning benches and other such hard surfaces.Request For Report Sample@Cutting edge equipment technology has always been the driver of the processed food industry and vice-versa. The demand for food grade lubricants is increasing with the increase in the size of the processed food industry worldwide, as well as proliferating food safety laws. All the major companies adhere to food safety laws in order to avoid product recalls and penalty fees. The trend is more prominent in developed countries such as the U.S., U.K, Canada, Norway, Germany, France and Italy. These countries, along with other developed countries, are expected to remain the main target market during the forecast period. Developing countries such as China, Brazil, India and South Africa are expected to grow at a slower rate with regard to food grade lubricants.The market can be segmented by type into H1 lubricants, H2 lubricants, 3H (releasing agents), H3 (soluble oils) and others. Geographically, the market can be segmented into Asia Pacific, North America (U.S., Canada and Mexico), Western Europe, Eastern Europe, Middle East and North Africa, and the Rest of the World (Latin America and South Africa). These lubricants are used in bakeries, the beverage industry, meat processing, pharmaceuticals, confectionery, and fruit and vegetable processing.The largest market by type worldwide is that of H1 food grade grease which can be used in variety of processes. It can be either petroleum based or synthetic in composition. Aluminium complex thickened grease is the most common and widely used lubricant as it can withstand high temperatures, is very water resistant, and is an important component in food & beverage processing equipment because of post shift equipment wash downs.Currently, North America is the largest market for food grade lubricants as USDA (The United States Department of Agriculture) has laid down stringent food safety laws for food processors. However, countries like India, China, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, South Africa and Brazil are potential growth drivers as a large number of American companies have set up manufacturing units in these emerging markets. The European market is relatively less regulated in food grade lubricants and lacks proper laws pertaining to the same.Visit For TOC@Some of the players of the food grade lubricant market are ITW ROCOL, Bel-Ray Company LLC, Lubriplate Lubricants Company, Schaeffer Manufacturing Co. and Suncor Energy Inc. among others.ABOUT US:Future Market Insights (FMI) is a leading market intelligence and consulting firm.We deliver syndicated research reports, custom research reports and consulting services, which are personalized in nature. FMI delivers a complete packaged solution, which combines current market intelligence, statistical anecdotes, technology inputs, valuable growth insights, an aerial view of the competitive framework, and future market trends.CONTACT:Future Market Insights616 Corporate Way, Suite 2-9018,Valley Cottage, NY 10989,United StatesT: +1-347-918-3531F: +1-845-579-5705Email: sales@futuremarketinsights.comWebsite: Concrete Floor Coatings Market - Canada Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends, and Forecast 2017 - 2025 MRRSE http://www.mrrse.com/sample/3139 http://www.mrrse.com/canada-concrete-floor-coatings-market https://www.linkedin.com/company/mrrse https://twitter.com/MRRSEmrrse Concrete floor coating is the covering applied to cured concrete in order to make the surface last longer. These coatings offer corrosion resistance property. Advantages of using Concrete Floor Coatings include esthetic look, durability, ease of maintenance, ability to be customized, long term cost savings, health benefits and low installation cost. Increase in the number of construction projects and rise in demand for green technology are expected to fuel the market for concrete floor coatings. In terms of application, the concrete floor market in Canada has been segmented into indoor and outdoor. Indoor applications include residential, commercial, institutional, and office buildings. Outdoor applications comprise walkways, garages, patios, sport complexes, terraces, and driveways. Indoor applications are estimated to offer attractive growth potential compared to the outdoor applicationsRequest for Sample Report:Canada Concrete Floor Coatings Market: Scope of the ReportThe report estimates and forecasts the Canadian concrete floor coatings market on the provincial level. The study provides forecast between 2017 and 2025 based on volume (Tons) and revenue (US$ Mn) with 2016 as the base year. The report comprises an exhaustive value chain analysis for each of the product segments. It provides a comprehensive view of the market. Value chain analysis also offers detailed information about value addition at each stage. The study includes drivers and restraints for the concrete floor coatings market along with their impact on demand during the forecast period. The study also provides key market indicators affecting the growth of the concrete floor coatings market. The report analyzes opportunities in the Concrete Floor Coatings Market on the provincial level. Drivers, restraints, and opportunities mentioned in the report are justified through quantitative and qualitative data. These have been verified through primary and secondary resources. Furthermore, the report analyzes average price trend analysis of concrete floor coatingsThe report includes Porters Five Forces Model to determine the degree of competition in the concrete floor coatings market. The report comprises a qualitative write-up on market attractiveness analysis, wherein application and countries have been analyzed based on attractiveness for each region. Growth rate, market size, raw material availability, profit margin, impact strength, technology, competition, and other factors (such as environmental and legal) have been evaluated in order to derive the general attractiveness of the market. The report comprises price trend analysis for concrete floor coatings between 2017 and 2025.Canada Concrete Floor Coatings Market: SegmentationThe study provides a comprehensive view of the concrete floor coatings market by dividing it into product type, application and provinces. The concrete floor coatings market by product has been segmented into epoxy, polyaspartics and others. Application segments have been analyzed based on historic, present, and future trends, and the market has been estimated in terms of volume (Tons) and revenue (US$ Mn) between 2017 and 2025.Provincial segmentation includes the current and forecast demand for concrete floor coatings in Ontario, Quebec, British Columbia, Alberta, Manitoba , Saskatchewan, and Atlantic. Additionally, the report comprises provincial analysis in terms of volume and revenue for end-user segments. Market segmentation includes demand for individual end-users in all the provinces.The report covers detailed competitive outlook that includes market share and profiles of key players operating in the Canada market. Key players profiled in the report include The Sherwin Williams Company, PPG Industries Inc, BASF SE, RPM International, Inc and Sika AG .Company profiles include attributes such as company overview, number of employees, brand overview, key competitors, business overview, business strategies, recent/key developments, acquisitions, and financial overview (wherever applicable).Canada Concrete Floor Coatings Market: Research MethodologySecondary research sources that were typically referred to include, but were not limited to company websites, financial reports, annual reports, investor presentations, broker reports, and SEC filings. Other sources such as internal and external proprietary databases, statistical databases and market reports, news articles, national government documents, and webcasts specific to companies operating in the market have also been referred for the report.Browse Full Report with TOC:In-depth interviews and discussions with a wide range of key opinion leaders and industry participants were conducted to compile this research report. Primary research represents the bulk of research efforts, supplemented by extensive secondary research. Key players product literature, annual reports, press releases, and relevant documents were reviewed for competitive analysis and market understanding. This helped in validating and strengthening secondary research findings. Primary research further helped in developing the analysis teams expertise and market understanding.About UsMarket Research Reports Search Engine (MRRSE) is an industry-leading database of market intelligence reports. MRRSE is driven by a stellar team of research experts and advisors trained to offer objective advice. Our sophisticated search algorithm returns results based on the report title, geographical region, publisher, or other keywords.MRRSE partners exclusively with leading global publishers to provide clients single-point access to top-of-the-line market research. MRRSEs repository is updated every day to keep its clients ahead of the next new trend in market research, be it competitive intelligence, product or service trends or strategic consulting.ContactState Tower90, State StreetSuite 700Albany, NY 12207United States Telephone: +1-518-730-0559Email: sales@mrrse.comFollow Us on LinkedIn-Follow Us On Twitter- Global Solar Wind Hybrid Systems Market to experience hike in growth by 2024 https://www.gminsights.com/request-sample/detail/830 https://www.gminsights.com/inquiry-before-buying/830 https://www.gminsights.com/industry-analysis/hybrid-solar-wind-market https://www.gminsights.com/industry-analysis/solar-cells-market https://www.gminsights.com https://gminsights.wordpress.com Decreasing wind and solar component cost associated with increasing clean fuel energy demand will drive the global hybrid solar wind market size. The component manufacturing cost has witnessed a significant price drop since 2012, owing to technological advancement.Growing demand for reliable electricity coupled with strict government norms to reduce carbon footprints will further compliment the industry outlook. Developed nations led by the U.S. has introduced various initiatives to promote energy conservation and reduce greenhouse emissions.Request for a sample of this research report @High initial costs and lack of awareness may restrain industry demand over the next few years. Grid connected hybrid solar wind market size was valued over USD 190 million in 2015 and is predicted to grow at over 10% by 2024. Low installation cost, feed in tariff and net metering are some of the advantages offered by grid connected system.Key insights from the report includeU.S. hybrid solar wind market size was valued at USD195 million in 2015 and is estimated to reach over USD 300 million by 2024.Government incentives such as tax rebate and increasing emphasis on renewable energy have encouraged regional industry growth.India is set to exceed 30MW in installation by 2024 and is estimated to grow at over 20% CAGR during forecast period. Government initiatives toward rural electrification and initiatives to promote sustainable energy will drive the hybrid solar wind market size.Make an inquiry for purchasing this report @South Africa hybrid solar wind market share was valued at 6MW, which will translate to over USD 12 million revenue through to the forecast timeline. Nigeria hybrid solar wind market size was 0.17 MW in 2015 and in terms of revenue, is estimated to witness gain over 16% from 2016 to 2024. Increasing off grid electricity demand will stimulate industry growth in future.Australia hybrid solar wind market size was over 1 MW in 2015 and is expected to reach over 40 MW by 2024.Increasing investment trend in renewable energy may favor the industry growth. In march 2016, Australian government funded USD 1 billion which will provide equity and debt for clean energy technology.Chile was valued at over 13 MW and is estimated to grow over 11% through, in revenue terms by 2024.Major participants in the industry are Grupo Dragon, ReGen Powertech, Polar Power, Inc, Supernova Technologies Private Limited, Blue Pacific Solar Product, Gamesa, UNITRON, Zenith System, Alternate Energy Company, Alpha Windmills.Browse key industry insights spread across 108 pages with 225 market data tables & 14 figures & charts from the report, Hybrid Solar Wind Market in detail along with the table of contents at:U.S. hybrid solar wind market size was valued at over 310 MW in 2015. Increasing emphasis on renewable energy, government incentives and measures toward energy conservation will favor the industry outlook. India hybrid solar wind market share is projected to witness substantial gains over 21% in term of Volume over forecast timeframe owing to the government initiatives to promote sustainable renewable energy resources.MNRE has proposed draft policy to install solar wind system of 10 GW by 2022 which will favor the industry growth. Low cost financing for hybrid solar wind project are also introduced by the financial institution and Indian Renewable Energy Development Agency.Browse Related ReportSolar Cells Market Size By Technology (Crystalline Silicon Cells, Thin Film Cells, Ultra-Thin Film Cells), By Product (Polycrystalline, Monocrystalline, Cadmium Telluride (CDTE), Amorphous Silicon (A-Si), Copper Indium Gallium Diselenide), By Grid (On-Grid, Off Grid), By Application (Residential, Commercial, Utility), Industry Analysis Report, Regional Outlook (U.S., Canada, Mexico, UK, Germany, Spain, France, China, India, Japan, Australia, UAE, South Africa, Brazil, Chile, Argentina), Growth Potential Price Trends, Competitive Market Share & Forecast, 2016 2024 in detail along with the table of contents:About Global Market InsightsGlobal Market Insights, Inc., headquartered in Delaware, U.S., is a global market research and consulting service provider; offering syndicated and custom research reports along with growth consulting services. Our business intelligence and industry research reports offer clients with penetrative insights and actionable market data specially designed and presented to aid strategic decision making. These exhaustive reports are designed via a proprietary research methodology and are available for key industries such as chemicals, advanced materials, technology, renewable energy and biotechnology.Contact Us:Arun HegdeCorporate Sales, USAGlobal Market Insights, Inc.Phone: 1-302-846-7766Toll Free: 1-888-689-0688Email: sales@gminsights.comWeb:Blog: European Commission imposes fine on Google for antitrust violations https://www.grprainer.com/en/legal-advice/antitrust-law.html www.grprainer.com/en/ www.grprainer.com/en The European Commission has imposed a fine totalling 2.42 billion euros on the internet giant Google for violating antitrust law.The European Commission came to the conclusion that the internet company was abusing its dominant market position as a search engine operator. Specifically, the company was said to have favoured its own price comparison service in relation to those of competitors. The former was positioned right at the top of search results, whereas competitors services appeared much further down when searching for online shopping deals and accordingly were clicked on less often. This was said to negatively impact competition in the price comparison markets.In the Commissions press statement from June 27, 2017, it stated that Google had thus secured an unlawful advantage for its price comparison service and violated EU cartel regulations, as this behaviour deprived competitors of the chance to win over consumers with the quality of their service. Furthermore, European consumers were being deprived of the chance to be able to make a proper choice between the various services. Google now has 90 days in which to refrain from this behaviour and apply the principle of equal treatment to rival price comparison services and its own service. Failing this, the company will be faced with the prospect of high penalty payments. Aggrieved competitors will also be able to submit damages claims under civil law following the European Commissions decision. Notwithstanding this, the US firm has already announced that it may wish to go before the Court of Justice of the European Union.Whether it be abuse of a dominant market position, illegal pricing arrnagments or other violations of antitrust law, these infringements can lead to heavy fines, something which we at the law firm GRP Rainer Rechtsanwalte note those involved in the truck cartel, for instance, now know all too well. That being said, antitrust law not only concerns the big sensational cases. Violations of antitrust law can occur unintentionally and unknowingly, e.g. due to individual contractual clauses violating existing laws. Severe penalties are equally possible in these cases.For this reason, it is advisable to have agreements reviewed by experienced lawyers with a view to their implications from the perspective of antitrust law. Appropriate legal expertise is also crucial if violations of antitrust law or competition law have already occurred and claims need to be either fended off or enforced.GRP Rainer LLPis an international firm of lawyers and tax advisors who are specialists in commercial law. The firm counsels commercial and industrial companies and corporations, as well as associations, small- and mid-sized businesses, self-employed freelancers and private individuals worldwide from offices Cologne, Berlin, Bonn, Dusseldorf, Frankfurt, Hamburg, Munich, Stuttgart and London UK.Contact Michael RainerLawyer, Managing PartnerGRP Rainer LLPGurzenich-QuartierAugustinerstrae 1050667 CologneGermanyPhone: +49 221-27 22 75-0info@grprainer.com Logistics Outsourcing Market Report Offers Intelligence and Forecast till (2014-2020) http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/sample/rep-gb-125 http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/toc/rep-gb-125 www.futuremarketinsights.com Logistics outsourcing, most commonly known as third-party logistics is a process or operation of sub-contracting industrial functions like cross-docking, inventory keeping, warehousing and transportation to a third party or supply chain management provider. Third party logistics providers include raw material suppliers, distributors and other value-added service providers. These services are generally integrated and used together to provide end-user convenience. The decision for outsourcing logistics by a parent company is generally dependent on company size, complication of logistics and relative economic benefits of outsourcing.Logistics outsourcing includes contracting of material management, supply chain management, distribution management, shipment packaging and channel management. E-business web portals and stores are in extensive need of on-clock dispatch and delivery services offered by outsourced logistics providers. The advantages associated with the logistics outsourcing market are improvement of suppliers capability due to the use of information technology, specialization of operation, focus on core competencies and uniform growth. However, lack of monitoring control over logistics and risks associated with vendor reliability are some of the drawbacks of this market.Request For Report Sample@Regions across the globe with an attractive logistics outsourcing market, in terms of contract logistics, include North America and Southeast Asia. RoW (Rest of the World) is showing growth in inter-regional logistics. Major factors driving the development of logistics outsourcing market are globalization, time-proportional economy, presence of virtual organizations, improved customer awareness, strategic concerns to achieve more flexibility and better IT infrastructural support. On the other hand, loss of logistics, poor transportation, local protection regulations and lack of post-outsourcing measurements are some of the factors hampering growth of this market.The global logistics outsourcing market is segmented on the basis of service type, transport media used and geography. The market can vary in service type as simple service, combined service, consulting service and value-added service. On the basis of transport media used to handle logistics, it can be classified into air freight, ocean carriers, railways and trucking. The market can be categorised on the basis of geography into North America, Latin America, Asia-Pacific, Japan, Western Europe, Eastern Europe and Middle East & Africa.Globalized product availability, demand for product individualization in terms of logistics, on-time delivery, just-in-time inventory, agility in time response transport, big data analytics and atomization of shipment are some of the global market trends guided by technological innovations like remote tracking and monitoring using RFID tags and EDI-based location of the shipment. Analytics based on big data is providing better accuracy of frequency of tasks and decision-making capabilities. There is a continuous insourcing trend by online retailers (like Amazon.com) for inventory so as to be more cost-effective and unified in terms of operations, and to emphasize on outsourcing for end-product transportation services only. These technological up gradations continuously enhance services provided by outsourced logistics providers.Exel Logistics (U.K.), Menlo Worldwide Logistics (U.S.), FedEx (U.S.), Ryder Logistics (U.S.) and Tibbett and Britten (U.K.) are some of the key outsourced logistics providers. These companies have a wide global presence and provide multi-sector services. They are continuously trying to reach influential market and customers by means of removing bottlenecks related to international shipments and reducing cost through geographical spread of inventory. The market in Asia-Pacific region shows a steady and consistent growth through service innovations by companies, so as to attract economic customers. The companies need to shift their focus from integrated services to offering broad range of products & services portfolio. With more focus on growing B2C sector, the scope for logistics outsourcing will extend towards value-added and specialized services.Visit For TOC@The research report presents a comprehensive assessment of the logistics outsourcing market and contains thoughtful insights, facts, historical data, and statistically supported and industry-validated market data and projections with a suitable set of assumptions and methodology. It provides analysis and information by categories such as service type, transport media used and geography.ABOUT US:Future Market Insights (FMI) is a leading market intelligence and consulting firm.We deliver syndicated research reports, custom research reports and consulting services, which are personalized in nature. FMI delivers a complete packaged solution, which combines current market intelligence, statistical anecdotes, technology inputs, valuable growth insights, an aerial view of the competitive framework, and future market trends.CONTACT:Future Market Insights616 Corporate Way, Suite 2-9018,Valley Cottage, NY 10989,United StatesT: +1-347-918-3531F: +1-845-579-5705Email: sales@futuremarketinsights.comWebsite: Bifold Doors 2017 Market Globally (US, China, Europe, Japan, Southeast Asia, India) segmented by Application, Product Type, Growth Prospects by covering Major Key Players JELD-WEN, Pella, YKK, Ply Gem https://www.htfmarketreport.com/sample-report/449647-global-bifold-doors-sales-market https://www.htfmarketreport.com/request-discount/449647-global-bifold-doors-sales-market https://www.htfmarketreport.com/reports/449647-global-bifold-doors-sales-market https://www.htfmarketreport.com/buy-now?format=1&report=449647 HTF Market Intelligence released a new research report of 103 pages on title 'Global Bifold Doors Sales Market Report 2017' with detailed analysis, forecast and strategies. The study covers key regions that includes United States, China, Europe, Japan, Southeast Asia, India and important players such as JELD-WEN, Pella, YKK, Ply Gem, etcRequest a sample report @SummaryIn this report, the global Bifold Doors market is valued at USD XX million in 2016 and is expected to reach USD XX million by the end of 2022, growing at a CAGR of XX% between 2016 and 2022.Geographically, this report split global into several key Regions, with sales (K Units), revenue (Million USD), market share and growth rate of Bifold Doors for these regions, from 2012 to 2022 (forecast), coveringUnited StatesChinaEuropeJapanSoutheast AsiaIndiaGlobal Bifold Doors market competition by top manufacturers/players, with Bifold Doors sales volume, Price (USD/Unit), revenue (Million USD) and market share for each manufacturer/player; the top players includingAndersenJELD-WENPellaYKKPly GemThe Folding Sliding Door CompanyNanaWallTWR BifoldsOn the basis of product, this report displays the sales volume (K Units), revenue (Million USD), product price (USD/Unit), market share and growth rate of each type, primarily split intoWoodAluminiumUPVCOtherOn the basis on the end users/applications, this report focuses on the status and outlook for major applications/end users, sales volume, market share and growth rate of Bifold Doors for each application, includingResidentialNon-residentialIf you have any special requirements, please let us know and we will offer you the report as you want.For Discount, Enquire Now @There are 16 Chapters to deeply display the Bifold Doors Market.Chapter 1, to describe Product Overview, Scope and Classification of Bifold Doors, Market by Application/End Users, Market by Region, Market Size (Value and Volume);Chapter 2, to analyze the Market Competition by Players/Suppliers, (Volume and Value) by Type, by Region, (Volume) by Application;Chapter 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 and 8, to display Sales and Growth Rate by region, Revenue and Growth Rate by region, Sales Volume and regional Market Share by Players, Sales Volume and regional Market Share by Type, Sales Volume and regional Market Share by Application;Chapter 9, to show the Company Basic Information, Manufacturing Base and Competitors, Bifold Doors Product Category, Application and Specification, Bifold Doors Sales, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin, Main Business/Business Overview;Chapter 10, to show the Key Raw Materials Analysis, Proportion of Manufacturing Cost Structure, Manufacturing Process Analysis of Bifold Doors;Chapter 11, Industrial Chain Analysis, Upstream Raw Materials Sourcing, Raw Materials Sources of Bifold Doors Major Manufacturers, Downstream Buyers;Chapter 12, Marketing Strategy Analysis: Marketing Channel, Market Positioning, Distributors/Traders List;Chapter 13, Market Effect Factors Analysis: Technology Progress/Risk, Consumer Needs/Customer Preference Change, Economic/Political Environmental Change;Chapter 14, Sales Volume and Growth Rate Forecast, Sales Volume, Revenue and Growth Rate Forecast by Region, Sales Volume, Revenue and Price Forecast by Type, Sales Volume Forecast by Application.Chapter 15 and 16, to describe Bifold Doors Research Findings and Conclusion, Appendix, methodology and data source;....ContinuedView Detailed Table of Content @Thanks for reading this article, you can also get individual chapter wise section or region wise report version like North America, Europe or Asia.Buy this report @HTF Market Report is a wholly owned brand of HTF market Intelligence Consulting Private Limited. HTF Market Report global research and market intelligence consulting organization is uniquely positioned to not only identify growth opportunities but to also empower and inspire you to create visionary growth strategies for futures, enabled by our extraordinary depth and breadth of thought leadership, research, tools, events and experience that assist you for making goals into a reality. Our understanding of the interplay between industry convergence, Mega Trends, technologies and market trends provides our clients with new business models and expansion opportunities. We are focused on identifying the Accurate Forecast in every industry we cover so our clients can reap the benefits of being early market entrants and can accomplish their Goals & Objectives.Contact us :HTF Market Intelligence Consulting Private LimitedUnit No. 429, Parsonage Road Edison, NJNew Jersey USA 08837sales@htfmarketreport.com+1 (206) 317 1218 Hydro-processing Catalysts Market Intelligence with Competitive Landscape http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/sample/rep-gb-182 http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/toc/rep-gb-182 www.futuremarketinsights.com In last two decades, the business of refining catalyst has grown from regional to global level. Refinery product values are dependent on process catalysts of refined products, petrochemical products and chemicals alongwith other refinery operations. One of the major concerns in the refinery is to reduce the sulphur content to the required limit. Hydro-processing catalysts (HPC) are primarily consumed in the hydro-processing operation of crude oil fractions. Such crude oil fractions include kerosene, naphtha and diesel. As a common practice, hydro-processing of crude oil fractionsis carried out at an elevated temperature and pressure.Hydro-processing is required to remove pollutants such as sulphur, heavy metals and nitrogen from fuel oils. These catalysts also help in the catalytic hydrocracking process to crack larger hydrocarbon molecules into smaller sizes,to be used as fuel oils. Thus, hydro-processing catalysts enable conversion of heavy feedstock into lighter products for efficient processing. Hydro-processing catalysts market is the fastest growing refinery catalysts market segment in the world. In addition, hydro-processing catalysts supplement the process control and operational efficiency improvement activities. Therefore, it is expected that the hydro-processing catalyst market will dominate the global refinery catalyst market by 2020.The global hydro-processing catalysts market can be categorized on the basis of its product type as molybdenum oxides, cobalt oxides, nickel oxidesand tungsten oxides. These metal oxides are carried on a carrier or matrix of silica, alumina and silica/alumina. Further, global hydro-processing catalysts market can also be categorized on the basis of their applications such as creating cleaner fuels, ultra-low sulphur levels in diesel fuels (ULSD) and others. On the basis of technology, global hydro-processing catalysts market can be segmented as hydro-treating catalysts, hydrogenation catalysts, hydrocracking catalysts, isomerisation catalyst and reforming catalyst. Among these, hydro-treating catalysts are dominant segment at present,accounting for more than half of the global hydro-processing catalysts market.Request For Report Sample@Refiners are more focusing to maximize residue feedstock yield through hydro-processing catalysts as petroleum product prices are rising globally. This is one of the key supply side drivers of the global hydro-processing catalysts market. Moreover, stringent environmental regulations and legislations are expanding, which, in turn, affects the heaviercrude processing and sulphur elimination process market.Enhanced refinery capacities coupled with the rising oil production are driving the growth of global hydro-processing catalysts market.Environmental fuel specifications regulations introduced by Europe, the U.S.and few Asia Pacific countries have been driving the global hydro-processing catalysts market.Further, developed countries have mandate to reduce sulphur content whereassulphur restrictions are implemented in the developing countries such as India, China and Mexico. As hydro-processing catalysts are advantageous to reduce sulphur content, these countries are likely to open up opportunities for hydro-processing catalysts market.Due to presence of giant oil and gas chemical manufacturers in the refinery catalyst market; the market competition is quite high. Expansion of production facilities in oil producing fields along with the strategic alliances are few of the major market strategies in the global hydro-processing catalysts market.Visit For TOC@Some of the major market participants of global hydro-processing catalysts market include HaldorTopse, W. R. Grace and Company, Albemarle Corporation, Axens, UOP- Honeywell International Inc., Chevron Corporation, Royal Dutch Shell plc, BASF SE, Criterion Catalysts & Technologies, Criterion catalysts & Technologies and others. Among these, BASF has increased its R&D efforts since it acquired Engelhard. Further, BASF SE has come up with new developments in the processing of residue to increase the quality of yield.W.R. Grace and Companyhas introduced new products inthe hydro-processing catalysts market in the past five years. Thus, it is clear that global hydro-processing catalysts market participants are focused to expand their business through innovative product launches with specific market application. These innovative products include catalyst to eliminate sulphur content upto mandate limits. The worldwide hydro-processing catalysts market stands ready to meet the challenges, where energy costs significantlyfluctuate. However,fluctuating raw material prices, price spike, price collapse along with the governments enact legislation for certain related products or technologies, the demand of hydro-processing catalyst market are expected to undergo fluctuation.ABOUT US:Future Market Insights (FMI) is a leading market intelligence and consulting firm.We deliver syndicated research reports, custom research reports and consulting services, which are personalized in nature. FMI delivers a complete packaged solution, which combines current market intelligence, statistical anecdotes, technology inputs, valuable growth insights, an aerial view of the competitive framework, and future market trends.CONTACT:Future Market Insights616 Corporate Way, Suite 2-9018,Valley Cottage, NY 10989,United StatesT: +1-347-918-3531F: +1-845-579-5705Email: sales@futuremarketinsights.comWebsite: Wood Coatings Market Forecast and Opportunity Assessment by Future Market Insights http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/sample/rep-gb-144 http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/toc/rep-gb-144 www.futuremarketinsights.com Wood coatings refer to the process of refining or protecting a wooden surface, especially in the production of furniture. Wood coating applications include: interior wood, small furniture, panels, tables, cupboards, chairs, office furniture, kitchen furniture, doors and staircases among others. There are generally three types of wood coating: evaporative, reactive and coalescing. Wood coating starts with sanding either by hand or scraping. Imperfections or nail holes on the surface may be filled using wood filler. Often, the wood's color is changed by staining, bleaching, or any other techniques. Once the wood surface is prepared and stained, the coating is applied. It usually consists of several coats of shellac, drying oil, paint, wax or lacquer. Finally, the surface may be polished using wool, steel, rotten stone or other materials, depending on the shine desired. In addition, a final coat of wax is applied over the finish to add a degree of protection.Furniture, decking, and siding are the three largest applications in value terms. However, smaller doors, windows and cabinet applications are expected to achieve faster growth in the near future. Paint is the dominant wood protection product used on siding, windows and doors, but stains and sealers are more widely utilized on cabinets, decks, furniture, and flooring. Residential end-user is the largest market for wood protection products, driven by maintenance demand for items such as fences, siding and decks. Non-residential and non-building uses account for a much smaller market for wood protection products.Request For Report Sample@The growth in the housing market is the primary driver for the wood coatings market. Homeowners are investing more in the upkeep of their decks, fences, floors and siding. A well maintained home adds value of the home and saves money in the long term. In addition, stringent regulations, rising competition, growth in unique formulations and new product developments are some of the factors stimulating the growth of wood coatings market. However, availability of cheaper and quality substitutes, such as wood composites and plastic wood could hamper the growth of this market. These alternative are often more durable and require less maintenance as compared to wood products. Although substitutes are available, wood is a primary choice for commercial and residential purposes due to wide availably in the market. Wood coatings account for the majority of the wood protection demand with paints and stains holding the largest shares. In contrast, preservatives, which are applied to lumber by the wood treatment companies, account for smaller portion of wood protection demand.Asia Pacific is currently the largest market for wood coatings, followed by Europe, North America and Rest of the world (RoW). Sustained demand from the developed markets and burgeoning demand from emerging economies will continue to drive the wood coating market. The industry is witnessing a major shift of key market players from Europe and the U.S. to the emerging economies of Asia Pacific, comprising of China and India.Visit For TOC@Some of the key players in this market are Akzo Nobel Coatings nv (Netherlands), PPG Industries Inc. (U.S.), Sherwin-Williams Co. (U.S.), DuPont Coatings and Color Technologies Group (U.S.), ICI Paints (UK), BASF Coatings AG (Germany), Valspar Corp. (U.S.), Nippon Paint Co. Ltd. (Japan), Dow Coating Materials (U.S.) and Kansai Paint Co. Ltd. (Japan) among others. Dow Coating Materials has launched two new acrylic binders for the wood coatings: EXP-4414 and EXP-77. According to the company, the new binders offer improved block, print and dirt pickup resistance and improved hardness development when applied to wood.ABOUT US:Future Market Insights (FMI) is a leading market intelligence and consulting firm.We deliver syndicated research reports, custom research reports and consulting services, which are personalized in nature. FMI delivers a complete packaged solution, which combines current market intelligence, statistical anecdotes, technology inputs, valuable growth insights, an aerial view of the competitive framework, and future market trends.CONTACT:Future Market Insights616 Corporate Way, Suite 2-9018,Valley Cottage, NY 10989,United StatesT: +1-347-918-3531F: +1-845-579-5705Email: sales@futuremarketinsights.comWebsite: Cognitive Systems, Content Analytics and Discovery Software Market - Global Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends and Forecast 2017 - 2025 MRRSE http://www.mrrse.com/sample/3132 http://www.mrrse.com/cognitive-systems-content-analytics-discovery-software-market https://www.linkedin.com/company/mrrse https://twitter.com/MRRSEmrrse Increasing demand of connected healthcare systems is also an important trend in the global market. Connected Healthcare Systems are likely to collect real time data and information which helps in assisting clinicians in delivering better care and empower people to make better choices. It helps in reducing medical errors and enhances medical administration efficiency. Adopting cognitive systems in healthcare is likely to help physicians to find connections and correlations and identifying new patterns and insights to quicken treatments, discoveries and insights.Request for Sample Report:Cognitive Systems, Content Analytics and Discovery Software: Drivers and RestraintsIncreasing demand of artificial intelligence is a key trend in the market. Demand for artificial intelligence is increasing significantly with the advancement in technologies, and it is an important trend in the cognitive systems, content analytics, and discovery software market. Artificial intelligence is witnessing market growth due to the rise in large and complicated data sets. The biggest revolution is machine learning, where instead of providing linear instructions to a computer, considerable amount of data is supplied and let the computer learn and interpret on their own.Increasing use of competitive intelligence and advanced analytics escalating data driven decision making is one of the key driving factors in the cognitive systems, content analytics and discovery software market globally. It is very difficult to access and keep track of each and every individual data due to the rise of big data. Therefore, it is necessary to implement competitive intelligence and advanced analytics tools that are likely to help gather, examine, and distribute intelligence of products, competitors, and customers, and also help discover deeper insights, generate recommendations, and make predictions. These tools help identify potential opportunities and risks beforehand. Advanced analytics techniques comprise data mining, text mining, pattern matching, graph analysis, and neural networks. Competitive intelligence is focused on external business environment and is involved in collecting information and converting it into intelligence, which is then employed for making decisions. Presently, business intelligence tools require very less support from the IT department. The changes in how data is visualized and mined allows the business activities to work with analytics tools and make data driven decisions with or without any technological background. Increasing volume of data tends to increase the need of data driven decision-making software that easily derives actionable data in real-time. Utilizing the analytics and discovery software is likely to support organizations in making decisions and anticipate the market trends and possible risks.The factor responsible for setting back the growth of this market is due to the prediction based on the past data. The cognitive systems, content analytics and discovery software technologies are at the budding stage due to which they faces various restraining factors. Past-based predictions is a major limitation in the market. Market dynamics are changing over time due to which predictions and analysis based on past data might not be helpful. Chances are that the analysis of the last ten years data is irrelevant to the current market scenario. These technologies when anticipating human behavior sometimes fail to consider certain variables that influence customer purchasing patternsCognitive Systems, Content Analytics and Discovery Software: SegmentationBased on application, the global cognitive systems, content analytics and discovery software market is bifurcated into machine learning, natural language processing, automated reasoning, speech analytics, text analytics, social media analytics and others. On the basis of industries, the market has been bifurcated into banking, retail, healthcare, IT and telecom, transportation and others. Moreover on the basis of deployment type, the market has been bifurcated into on premises and cloud. The regional split of the market encompasses North America, Asia Pacific, Europe, Middle East and Africa and Latin America.Browse Full Report with TOC:Some of the key companies in the global cognitive systems, content analytics and discovery software market includes Microsoft Corporation (U.S.), International Business Machines Corporation (U.S.), Google Inc. (U.S.), Symantec corporation (U.S.), SAP SE (Germany), Adobe Systems Inc.(U.S.), Palantir Technologies, Inc. (U.S.), Oracle Corporation (U.S.), OpenText Corporation (Canada),SAS Institute, Inc. (U.S.) among others.About UsMarket Research Reports Search Engine (MRRSE) is an industry-leading database of market intelligence reports. MRRSE is driven by a stellar team of research experts and advisors trained to offer objective advice. Our sophisticated search algorithm returns results based on the report title, geographical region, publisher, or other keywords.MRRSE partners exclusively with leading global publishers to provide clients single-point access to top-of-the-line market research. MRRSEs repository is updated every day to keep its clients ahead of the next new trend in market research, be it competitive intelligence, product or service trends or strategic consulting.ContactState Tower90, State StreetSuite 700Albany, NY 12207United States Telephone: +1-518-730-0559Email: sales@mrrse.comFollow Us on LinkedIn-Follow Us On Twitter- Global Glufosinate Market Forecast 2017: DOW Chemical, Syngenta AG, UPL, Bayer AG Glufosinate http://bit.ly/2vrCTFO http://bit.ly/2vkLMS3 GlufosinateA market study Global Glufosinate Market examines the performance of the Glufosinate market 2017. It encloses an in-depth Research of the Glufosinate market state and the competitive landscape globally. This report analyzes the potential of Glufosinate market in the present and the future prospects from various angles in detail.The Global Glufosinate Market 2017 report includes Glufosinate market Size, Revenue, market Share, Glufosinate industry volume, market Trends, Glufosinate Growth aspects. A wide range of applications, Utilization ratio, Supply and demand analysis are also consist in the report.It shows manufacturing capacity, Glufosinate Price during the Forecast period from 2017 to 2022.Inquiry here :Manufacturers Analysis of Global Glufosinate Market 2017:E.I. Du Pont De Nemours and CompanyDOW ChemicalSyngenta AGUPLBayer AGNufarm LimitedJiangsu Huangma Agrochemicals Co.,Ltd.Zhejiang Yongnong Chem. Ind. Co., LtdJiangsu Sevencontinent Green Chemical Co., Ltd.Veyong (Hebei Veyong Bio-Chemical Co. Ltd)Firstly, the report covers the top Glufosinate manufacturing industry players from regions like United States, EU, Japan, and China. It also characterizes the market based on geological regions.Further, the Glufosinate report gives information on the company profile, market share and contact details along with value chain analysis of Glufosinate industry, Glufosinate industry rules and policies, circumstances driving the growth of the market and compulsion blocking the growth. Glufosinate Market development scope and various business strategies are also mentioned in this report.Table Of Content:The Glufosinate research report includes the products that are currently in demand and available in the market along with their cost breakup, manufacturing volume, import/export scheme and contribution to the Glufosinate market revenue worldwide.Finally, Glufosinate market report gives you details about the market research findings and conclusion which helps you to develop profitable market strategies to gain competitive advantage.About Us:"Spire Market Research" is a leading market intelligence team which accredits and provides the reports of some of the top publishers in the field of technology industry. We are as a firm expertise in making extensive reports that cover all the necessary details about the market assessments such as major technological improvement in the industry.Contact UsUnited States Breast Cancer Diagnostics Market Will hit at a CAGR of 4.7% by 2017 - 2022 https://www.factmr.com/connectus/sample?flag=S&rep_id=55 https://www.factmr.com/connectus/sample?flag=D&rep_id=55 https://www.factmr.com/report/55/breast-cancer-diagnostics-market https://www.factmr.com/ Considering the prevalence of breast cancer, pharmaceutical companies are increasing their inputs on devising newer, more effective treatments for this baneful disease. At the same time, government initiatives are striving to control the occurrence rate by boosting awareness about breast cancer, its symptoms, and preventive measures.The report on global breast cancer diagnostics market analyzes the markets expansion till date, and offers an in-depth forecast on how the market will shape up in the years to come. Stakeholders in the global breast cancer diagnostics market will gain actionable insights on the future direction of this market.Influence of the Food & Drug Administration (FDA)The FDAs expanse is not limited to the US or North America; it monitors drug development and commercialization beyond borders. In the treatment of breast cancer, new therapies, surgical procedures and drugs are developed across multiple regions in the world. The FDA approval on such developments is instrumental in assessing the trajectory for the markets growth in the coming years. While existing products have been successful in obtaining the nod, the FDA will not exhibit a lenient stance of manufacturers of such equipment.Request For Report Sample:Breast Cancer Diagnostics Market Regional OutlookThe report includes a comprehensive segmentation of the global breast cancer diagnostics market by dividing the globe into regions such as North America, Europe, Latin America, Japan, Asia-Pacific excluding Japan (APEJ) and Middle East & Africa (MEA). In this section, the expansion of global breast cancer diagnostics market across these regions is tracked, observing active participation of native players and assessing the lasting impact of government & regulatory policies. Recent developments and research undertakings of breast cancer treatment societies across these regions are also traced, which are used for inferring a decisive scope of the markets growth within a particular region.Robust healthcare infrastructures in developed countries will encourage medical organizations in partnering with pharmaceutical companies for development of favorable reimbursement policies. Countries with high concentration of demographics susceptible to breast cancer will witness a surging demand for therapies and drugs on breast cancer. On the other hand, manufacturers of breast cancer medicine & therapeutic instruments will set up their manufacturing units in regions with ample resource availability, low wage costs and approbative production regulations.Competitive LandscapeThe report also provides a detailed study on the competitive landscape for breast cancer diagnostics market. Key players in the global breast cancer diagnostics market will be profiled in this section. Based on their contribution to the global market revenues, and their capabilities to boost the markets expansion, the section will include a comparative study on the key players in the market. In the long run, established players in the global breast cancer diagnostics market are likely to focus on adoption of new technologies to improve their production capacities. With sufficient capital at their disposal, these companies can also foster research and development by commissioning research projects on drug developments.Request For Discount:New entrants in the global breast cancer diagnostics market are likely to stick to standard production procedures. Through scientific intervention, some of these companies are likely to improve the quality of their offerings by partnering with esteemed medical research organizations. Notable mergers and acquisitions are also tracked in this section, providing an improved understanding on dynamics of the global breast cancer diagnostics market, particularly from an investment standpoint.Research MethodologyFact.MR is committed to offer unbiased and independent market research solutions to its clients. Each market report of Fact.MR is compiled after months of exhaustive research. We bank on a mix of tried-and-tested and innovative research methodologies to offer the most comprehensive and accurate information. Our main sources of research include,Primary researchSecondary researchTrade researchFocused interviewsSocial media analysisBrowse Full Report:ABOUT US:Fact.MR is focused on offering transformative intelligence that inspires breakthroughs and innovation. We believe that the right decisions at the opportune time are integral to achieve extraordinary success. We are here to help you with your strategic decision making.CONTACT:Suite 988427 Upper Pembroke Street,Dublin 2, IrelandPhone: +353-1-6111-593Email: sales@factmr.comWebsite: Melanoma Cancer Diagnostics Market Size Estimated to Observe Significant Growth During https://www.factmr.com/connectus/sample?flag=S&rep_id=57 https://www.factmr.com/connectus/sample?flag=D&rep_id=57 https://www.factmr.com/report/57/melanoma-cancer-diagnostics-market https://www.factmr.com/ Considering the prevalence of melanoma cancer, pharmaceutical companies are increasing their inputs on devising newer, more effective treatments for this baneful disease. At the same time, government initiatives are striving to control the occurrence rate by boosting awareness about melanoma cancer, its symptoms, and preventive measures.The report on global melanoma cancer diagnostics market analyzes the markets expansion till date, and offers an in-depth forecast on how the market will shape up in the years to come. By gaining insights on the key dynamics of global melanoma cancer diagnostics market, companies participating in it as well as aspirant drugmakers can enhance their understanding of the market, and undertake insightful actions.Influence of the Food & Drug Administration (FDA)The FDAs expanse is not limited to the US or North America; it monitors drug development and commercialization beyond borders. In the treatment of melanoma cancer, new therapies, surgical procedures and drugs are developed across multiple regions in the world. The FDA approval on such developments is instrumental in assessing the trajectory for the markets growth in the coming years. While existing products have been successful in obtaining the nod, the FDA will not exhibit a lenient stance of manufacturers of such drugs. Pertaining to the gravity of effective and non-disruptive therapies & medications in treatment of melanoma cancer, the FDA has made its approval processes more stringent. The trusted authoritative body leaves no spots while analyzing the effect of a drug, a therapy or a procedural instrument associated with melanoma cancer diagnostics.Request For Report Sample:Melanoma Cancer Diagnostics Market Regional OutlookThe report includes a comprehensive segmentation of the global melanoma cancer diagnostics market. Key regions include North America, Europe, Latin America, Japan, Asia-Pacific excluding Japan (APEJ) and Middle East & Africa (MEA). In this section, the expansion of global melanoma cancer diagnostics market across these regions is tracked, observing active participation of native players and assessing the lasting impact of government & regulatory policies. Recent developments and research undertakings of melanoma cancer diagnostics treatment societies across these regions are also traced, which are used for inferring a decisive scope of the markets growth within a particular region.Robust healthcare infrastructures in developed countries will encourage medical organizations in partnering with pharmaceutical companies for development of favorable reimbursement policies. Countries with high concentration of demographics susceptible to melanoma cancer will witness a surging demand for therapies and drugs on melanoma cancer diagnostics. On the other hand, manufacturers of melanoma cancer diagnostics medicine & therapeutic instruments will set up their manufacturing units in regions with ample resource availability, low wage costs and approbative production regulations.Competition TrackingThe report also provides a detailed study on the competitive landscape for melanoma cancer diagnostics market. Key players in the global melanoma cancer diagnostics market will be profiled in this section. Based on their contribution to the global market revenues, and their capabilities to boost the markets expansion, the section will include a comparative study on companies partaking in the growth of melanoma cancer diagnostics market. In the long run, established players in the global melanoma cancer diagnostics market are likely to focus on adoption of new technologies to improve their production capacities. With sufficient capital at their disposal, these companies will also exhibit their power to revolutionize the market by commissioning research projects on drug developments.Request For Discount:Nascent players and new entrants in the global melanoma cancer diagnostics market are likely to stick to standard production procedures. Through scientific intervention, some of these companies are likely to improve the quality of their offerings by partnering with esteemed medical research organizations. Notable mergers and acquisitions are also tracked in this section, providing an improved understanding on dynamics of the global melanoma cancer diagnostics market, particularly from an investment standpoint.Research MethodologyFact.MR is committed to offer unbiased and independent market research solutions to its clients. Each market report of Fact.MR is compiled after months of exhaustive research. We bank on a mix of tried-and-tested and innovative research methodologies to offer the most comprehensive and accurate information. Our main sources of research include,Primary researchSecondary researchTrade researchFocused interviewsSocial media analysisBrowse Full Report:ABOUT US:Fact.MR is focused on offering transformative intelligence that inspires breakthroughs and innovation. We believe that the right decisions at the opportune time are integral to achieve extraordinary success. We are here to help you with your strategic decision making.CONTACT:Suite 988427 Upper Pembroke Street,Dublin 2, IrelandPhone: +353-1-6111-593Email: sales@factmr.comWebsite: IoT in Defence World Market Segmentation, Parameters and Major Players (Textron Systems, Northrup Grunman) Analysis 2017 https://www.htfmarketreport.com/sample-report/453200-global-iot-in-defence-market-1 https://www.htfmarketreport.com/request-discount/453200-global-iot-in-defence-market-1 https://www.htfmarketreport.com/reports/453200-global-iot-in-defence-market-1 https://www.htfmarketreport.com/buy-now?format=1&report=453200 HTF Market Intelligence released a new research report of 93 pages on title 'Global IoT in Defence Market Size, Status and Forecast 2022' with detailed analysis, forecast and strategies. The study covers key regions that includes United States, EU, Japan, China, India, Southeast Asia and important players such as Textron Systems, Northrup Grunman, Prox Dynamics, Track 24, etc.Request a sample report @SummaryThis report studies the global IoT in Defence market, analyzes and researches the IoT in Defence development status and forecast in United States, EU, Japan, China, India and Southeast Asia. This report focuses on the top players in global market, likeAerovironmentElbit SystemsFreewaveGeneral Atomics Aeronautical SystemsHoneywellRadisysTextron SystemsNorthrup GrunmanProx DynamicsTrack 24Market segment by Regions/Countries, this report coversUnited StatesEUJapanChinaIndiaSoutheast AsiaMarket segment by Type, IoT in Defence can be split intoInfrastructure and Equipment MonitoringMilitary Personnel Monitoring and TrackingSmart WeaponryMarket segment by Application, IoT in Defence can be split intoNatural DisastersIndustry ManagementPublic SafetyHome SecurityIf you have any special requirements, please let us know and we will offer you the report as you want.For Discount, Enquire Now @Table of ContentsGlobal IoT in Defence Market Size, Status and Forecast 20221 Industry Overview of IoT in Defence1.1 IoT in Defence Market Overview1.1.1 IoT in Defence Product Scope1.1.2 Market Status and Outlook1.2 Global IoT in Defence Market Size and Analysis by Regions1.2.1 United States1.2.2 EU1.2.3 Japan1.2.4 China1.2.5 India1.2.6 Southeast Asia1.3 IoT in Defence Market by Type1.3.1 Infrastructure and Equipment Monitoring1.3.2 Military Personnel Monitoring and Tracking1.3.3 Smart Weaponry1.4 IoT in Defence Market by End Users/Application1.4.1 Natural Disasters1.4.2 Industry Management1.4.3 Public Safety1.4.4 Home Security2 Global IoT in Defence Competition Analysis by Players2.1 IoT in Defence Market Size (Value) by Players (2016 and 2017)2.2 Competitive Status and Trend2.2.1 Market Concentration Rate2.2.2 Product/Service Differences2.2.3 New Entrants2.2.4 The Technology Trends in Future3 Company (Top Players) Profiles3.1 Aerovironment3.1.1 Company Profile3.1.2 Main Business/Business Overview3.1.3 Products, Services and Solutions3.1.4 IoT in Defence Revenue (Value) (2012-2017)3.1.5 Recent Developments3.2 Elbit Systems3.2.1 Company Profile....ContinuedView Detailed Table of Content @Thanks for reading this article, you can also get individual chapter wise section or region wise report version like North America, Europe or Asia.Buy this report @HTF Market Report is a wholly owned brand of HTF market Intelligence Consulting Private Limited. HTF Market Report global research and market intelligence consulting organization is uniquely positioned to not only identify growth opportunities but to also empower and inspire you to create visionary growth strategies for futures, enabled by our extraordinary depth and breadth of thought leadership, research, tools, events and experience that assist you for making goals into a reality. Our understanding of the interplay between industry convergence, Mega Trends, technologies and market trends provides our clients with new business models and expansion opportunities. We are focused on identifying the Accurate Forecast in every industry we cover so our clients can reap the benefits of being early market entrants and can accomplish their Goals & Objectives.Contact us :HTF Market Intelligence Consulting Private LimitedUnit No. 429, Parsonage Road Edison, NJNew Jersey USA 08837sales@htfmarketreport.com+1 (206) 317 1218 Gary Bennett leads the Office of Educational Opportunity, which plans to recommend authorizing up to two independent charter schools in Madison that would open in fall 2018 -- a Montessori charter and possibly an early childhood education school. Smart Factory Market is Expected to be Valued at US$ 215.0 Bn by the end of 2025 http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/sample/rep-gb-446 http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/askus/rep-gb-446 www.futuremarketinsights.com According to the latest market report published by Future Market Insights titled, Smart Factory Market - Global Industry Analysis and Opportunity Assessment, 2015-2025, the market was valued at US$ 51.9 Bn in 2014 and is expected to register a CAGR of 13.3% from 2015 to 2025.Growth of the smart factory market is primarily driven by rising focus on advanced manufacturing techniques. Furthermore, developments in information and communications technology (ICT), increased focus on energy consumption, rising prices and stringent environmental regulations are expected to be key factors driving growth of the smart factory market over the forecast period.FMIs report segments the global smart factory market on the basis of market structure, component, manufacturing vertical, and region. Market structure includes to collect, to connect, to analyse and to control. A detailed analysis of each segment is presented in the report to deliver an accurate view of the market.Request For Report Sample@On the basis of manufacturing vertical, the smart factory market is further segmented into automotive & transportation, food & beverages, electrical & electronics, aerospace & defence, oil & gas, garment & textile, chemical and others (healthcare & pharmaceutical).Among these, the automotive & transportation segment dominated the global smart factory market in terms of revenue contribution in 2014. Growth of this segment is primarily driven by increasing investments by leading automobile manufacturers. For example, in September 2015, German luxury car manufacturer Mercedes-Benz announced an investment of US$ 1.3 Bn to expand and upgrade its SUV manufacturing unit in Alabama, U.S. This expansion would add 300 new jobs and support end-to-end digitalization of the production process as a part of the companys smart factory initiative.This report also covers trends driving growth of each market segment and offers analysis and insights about market potential across key regions namely North America, Latin America, Europe, Asia Pacific (APAC) and the Middle East & Africa. Furthermore, the market is sub-segmented on the basis of major countries in each region in order to provide a regional analysis of the overall market.Asia Pacific was the largest revenue contributor to the global smart factory market, accounting for US$ 20.4 Bn in 2014. This is mainly attributed to increasing investment in manufacturing plants in the region. For example, in April 2015, the South Korean government along with Samsung Electronics announced an investment of US$ 12.6 Mn to promote the smart factory concept in the country.Send an Enquiry @Smart factory market in Europe accounted for US$ 14.7 Bn in 2014and is expected to register a CAGR of 14.3% during the forecast period. Growth of the market in this region is expected to be driven by increasing government support for development of innovative production technologies in countries such as Germany and the U.K. Also, increasing spending by key players is expected to further drive growth of the market in Europe.Smart Factory Market: Major PlayersKey players in the global smart factory market include ABB Group, Rockwell Automation, Inc., General Electric Co., Siemens AG, Oracle Corporation, IBM Corporation, SAP SE, PTC Inc., Accenture PLC and Atos SE. These players focus on mergers and acquisitions, new product launches, expansions and partnerships in order to remain competitive in the market. A competitive dashboard has also been included in the report to provide detailed information about key players in the market.ABOUT US:Future Market Insights (FMI) is a leading market intelligence and consulting firm. We deliver syndicated research reports, custom research reports and consulting services, which are personalized in nature. FMI delivers a complete packaged solution, which combines current market intelligence, statistical anecdotes, technology inputs, valuable growth insights, an aerial view of the competitive framework, and future market trends.CONTACT:Future Market Insights616 Corporate Way, Suite 2-9018,Valley Cottage, NY 10989,United StatesT: +1-347-918-3531F: +1-845-579-5705Email: sales@futuremarketinsights.comWebsite: Global Intermediate Frequency Treatment Instrument Market Forecast 2017: Texas, National, World Health, Henan Boen Intermediate Frequency Treatment Instrument http://bit.ly/2wo9VEm http://bit.ly/2vkVG6d Intermediate Frequency Treatment InstrumentA market study Global Intermediate Frequency Treatment Instrument Market examines the performance of the Intermediate Frequency Treatment Instrument market 2017. It encloses an in-depth Research of the Intermediate Frequency Treatment Instrument market state and the competitive landscape globally. This report analyzes the potential of Intermediate Frequency Treatment Instrument market in the present and the future prospects from various angles in detail.The Global Intermediate Frequency Treatment Instrument Market 2017 report includes Intermediate Frequency Treatment Instrument market Size, Revenue, market Share, Intermediate Frequency Treatment Instrument industry volume, market Trends, Intermediate Frequency Treatment Instrument Growth aspects. A wide range of applications, Utilization ratio, Supply and demand analysis are also consist in the report.It shows manufacturing capacity, Intermediate Frequency Treatment Instrument Price during the Forecast period from 2017 to 2022.Inquiry here :Manufacturers Analysis of Global Intermediate Frequency Treatment Instrument Market 2017:TexasNationalWorld HealthHenan BoenFirstly, the report covers the top Intermediate Frequency Treatment Instrument manufacturing industry players from regions like United States, EU, Japan, and China. It also characterizes the market based on geological regions.Further, the Intermediate Frequency Treatment Instrument report gives information on the company profile, market share and contact details along with value chain analysis of Intermediate Frequency Treatment Instrument industry, Intermediate Frequency Treatment Instrument industry rules and policies, circumstances driving the growth of the market and compulsion blocking the growth. Intermediate Frequency Treatment Instrument Market development scope and various business strategies are also mentioned in this report.Table Of Content:The Intermediate Frequency Treatment Instrument research report includes the products that are currently in demand and available in the market along with their cost breakup, manufacturing volume, import/export scheme and contribution to the Intermediate Frequency Treatment Instrument market revenue worldwide.Finally, Intermediate Frequency Treatment Instrument market report gives you details about the market research findings and conclusion which helps you to develop profitable market strategies to gain competitive advantage.About Us:"Spire Market Research" is a leading market intelligence team which accredits and provides the reports of some of the top publishers in the field of technology industry. We are as a firm expertise in making extensive reports that cover all the necessary details about the market assessments such as major technological improvement in the industry.Contact UsUnited States Seed Treatments Global (EU, Japan, China, India, Southeast Asia) Market Share, Supply and Consumption 2017 to 2022 Market Research Report covering Key Players Chemtura Agrosolutions, DuPont, Novozymes https://www.htfmarketreport.com/sample-report/453208-global-seed-treatments-market-1 https://www.htfmarketreport.com/request-discount/453208-global-seed-treatments-market-1 https://www.htfmarketreport.com/reports/453208-global-seed-treatments-market-1 https://www.htfmarketreport.com/buy-now?format=1&report=453208 HTF Market Intelligence released a new research report of 102 pages on title 'Global Seed Treatments Market Size, Status and Forecast 2022' with detailed analysis, forecast and strategies. The study covers key regions that includes United States, EU, Japan, China, India, Southeast Asia and important players such as Chemtura Agrosolutions, DuPont, Novozymes, Plant Health Care, etcRequest a sample report @SummaryThis report studies the global Seed Treatments market, analyzes and researches the Seed Treatments development status and forecast in United States, EU, Japan, China, India and Southeast Asia. This report focuses on the top players in global market, likeBASFSyngentaMonsanto CompanyBayer CropSciencePlatform Specialty ProductsNufarmAdvanced Biological MarketingBioworksChemtura AgrosolutionsDuPontNovozymesPlant Health CareSumitomo ChemicalsWolf TraxMarket segment by Regions/Countries, this report coversUnited StatesEUJapanChinaIndiaSoutheast AsiaMarket segment by Type, Seed Treatments can be split intoChemical Seed TreatmentNon-Chemical Seed TreatmentMarket segment by Application, Seed Treatments can be split intoCornSoybeanWheatCanolaCottonOthersIf you have any special requirements, please let us know and we will offer you the report as you want.For Discount, Enquire Now @Table of ContentsGlobal Seed Treatments Market Size, Status and Forecast 20221 Industry Overview of Seed Treatments1.1 Seed Treatments Market Overview1.1.1 Seed Treatments Product Scope1.1.2 Market Status and Outlook1.2 Global Seed Treatments Market Size and Analysis by Regions1.2.1 United States1.2.2 EU1.2.3 Japan1.2.4 China1.2.5 India1.2.6 Southeast Asia1.3 Seed Treatments Market by Type1.3.1 Chemical Seed Treatment1.3.2 Non-Chemical Seed Treatment1.4 Seed Treatments Market by End Users/Application1.4.1 Corn1.4.2 Soybean1.4.3 Wheat1.4.4 Canola1.4.5 Cotton1.4.6 Others2 Global Seed Treatments Competition Analysis by Players2.1 Seed Treatments Market Size (Value) by Players (2016 and 2017)2.2 Competitive Status and Trend2.2.1 Market Concentration Rate2.2.2 Product/Service Differences2.2.3 New Entrants2.2.4 The Technology Trends in Future3 Company (Top Players) Profiles3.1 BASF3.1.1 Company Profile3.1.2 Main Business/Business....ContinuedView Detailed Table of Content @Thanks for reading this article, you can also get individual chapter wise section or region wise report version like North America, Europe or Asia.Buy this report @HTF Market Report is a wholly owned brand of HTF market Intelligence Consulting Private Limited. HTF Market Report global research and market intelligence consulting organization is uniquely positioned to not only identify growth opportunities but to also empower and inspire you to create visionary growth strategies for futures, enabled by our extraordinary depth and breadth of thought leadership, research, tools, events and experience that assist you for making goals into a reality. Our understanding of the interplay between industry convergence, Mega Trends, technologies and market trends provides our clients with new business models and expansion opportunities. We are focused on identifying the Accurate Forecast in every industry we cover so our clients can reap the benefits of being early market entrants and can accomplish their Goals & Objectives.Contact us :HTF Market Intelligence Consulting Private LimitedUnit No. 429, Parsonage Road Edison, NJNew Jersey USA 08837sales@htfmarketreport.com+1 (206) 317 1218 Global Removable Nacelle Market Forecast 2017: MRAS, Bombardier, Nexcelle, Boeing, GKN Removable Nacelle http://bit.ly/2hqp3OA http://bit.ly/2wnIOZN Removable NacelleA market study Global Removable Nacelle Market examines the performance of the Removable Nacelle market 2017. It encloses an in-depth Research of the Removable Nacelle market state and the competitive landscape globally. This report analyzes the potential of Removable Nacelle market in the present and the future prospects from various angles in detail.The Global Removable Nacelle Market 2017 report includes Removable Nacelle market Size, Revenue, market Share, Removable Nacelle industry volume, market Trends, Removable Nacelle Growth aspects. A wide range of applications, Utilization ratio, Supply and demand analysis are also consist in the report.It shows manufacturing capacity, Removable Nacelle Price during the Forecast period from 2017 to 2022.Inquiry here :Manufacturers Analysis of Global Removable Nacelle Market 2017:SafranUTC (Goodrich)Alenia AermacchiMRASBombardierNexcelleBoeingGKNTriumphTidal EnergySiemensFirstly, the report covers the top Removable Nacelle manufacturing industry players from regions like United States, EU, Japan, and China. It also characterizes the market based on geological regions.Further, the Removable Nacelle report gives information on the company profile, market share and contact details along with value chain analysis of Removable Nacelle industry, Removable Nacelle industry rules and policies, circumstances driving the growth of the market and compulsion blocking the growth. Removable Nacelle Market development scope and various business strategies are also mentioned in this report.Table Of Content:The Removable Nacelle research report includes the products that are currently in demand and available in the market along with their cost breakup, manufacturing volume, import/export scheme and contribution to the Removable Nacelle market revenue worldwide.Finally, Removable Nacelle market report gives you details about the market research findings and conclusion which helps you to develop profitable market strategies to gain competitive advantage.About Us:"Spire Market Research" is a leading market intelligence team which accredits and provides the reports of some of the top publishers in the field of technology industry. We are as a firm expertise in making extensive reports that cover all the necessary details about the market assessments such as major technological improvement in the industry.Contact UsUnited States Carob Market Analysis, Size, Applications Share, Trends & Forecast, 2017-2024 https://www.gminsights.com/request-toc/upcoming/1899 https://www.gminsights.com/inquiry-before-buying/1899 https://www.gminsights.com/industry-analysis/organic-ice-cream-market https://www.gminsights.com/industry-analysis/bio-vanillin-market https://www.gminsights.com https://gminsights.wordpress.com Carob Market size will witness substantial growth owing to its application in food & beverages, pharmaceutical, bakery, cereals and dairy products. Rising demand for bakery products along with convenience foods and confectionery are the major factor driving the product growth. Convenience food industry is growing at a CAGR of above 7.5% in past seven years that in turn has increased its consumption.Request for an in-depth table of contents for this report @Carobs are used in medicinal applications for reducing cholesterol, improving digestion, treatment of diarrhoea and cancer. It practices in foods improves fibre content and increases shelf life. These are rich in protein, pectin and fat free and addition to sunflower oil reduces tocopherol loss during heating. These do not contain caffeine and can be used in place of chocolate by people having caffeine intolerance that is anticipated to propel carob market in forecast period.Carob or locust bean and St Johns bread is an evergreen shrub or tree that belongs to pea family generally found in Middle East countries. These are majorly cultivated in Mediterranean region that includes Southern Europe, the Canary Islands and Northern Africa. Its powder is used as a substitute to cocoa powder in bakery and low-calorie food products.Make an inquiry for buying this report @These are used as gelling, thickening & stabilizing agent in food industry. Further, it is primarily used as substitute of coffee and making flour, molasses. It does not contain theobromine and useful for pet foods.Carob pod meal is rich source of energy and serves as fodder for livestock specially ruminants. These need to be kept in temperature controlled environment and there are shipping restrictions and prohibitions on special packaging. It may contain Salmonella, a bacteria that persists in low water activity foods. If nuts are not roasted prior to grinding, the probability of occurrence of these bacteria increases. However, limited availability and excessive cost are the restraining factors of the industry trend.Based on form, carob market is classified into solid form and liquid form. Solid form has substantial growth owing to its application in bakery, confectionary and foods & beverages products. In liquid form, these are used as syrups that are natural sweeteners and rich source of calcium (more than thrice that of milk). Bakery industry has grown at a CAGR above 5% in last five years that in turn has augmented its consumption.On the basis of the application, carob market is segmented into bakery, confectionary, food and beverages, snack bar, cereals, dairy and other products. The bakery product contributes significant growth with its use in cakes, cookies, pancakes and bread as an alternative for chocolate. These are preferred over chocolate as these require less sugar and do not contain caffeine, bromine or oxalic acids.Their tree bark contains tannin that provides protection from predation and can be used as pesticides. Additionally, It is extensively used in cosmetics for preparation of face packs and agriculture for improving soil fertility.Europe has dynamic growth in global carob market with the increasing demand in the bakery and confectionary industry. Spain, Italy, Portugal and Greece are the major producers. North America is following the Europe trend with its use in breakfast cereals. In 2016, the average per capita consumption was 6.6 kg and largest market for cereals product.Asia Pacific has substantial share in the carob market with application in food, beverage and dairy products. In this region, bakery industry is growing at a CAGR above 6.5% in recent years. Middle East and Africa holds moderate share owing to demand of bakery and confectionery products. Morocco, Turkey, Algeria and Lebanon are some of the major producers in this region.Prominent players of carob market are Australian Carobs, Euroduna Americas, Cyber colloids, Savvy Foods, The Hain Celestial, Creta, Lewis Confectionary and Madanargan to name a few. Companies are trying to expand their business by increasing product portfolio with vast applications in different fields.Browse Related Reports:Organic Ice Cream Market Size By Product (Artisanal, Impulse, Take Home), By Ingredient (Whole Milk, Skimmed Milk, Cream, Sweetening & Flavoring Agent), By Flavor (Vanilla, Chocolate, Butter Pecan, Strawberry, Coffee, Black Raspberry, Mint Chocolate Chip), By Distribution Channel (On Trade, Hypermarket & Supermarket, Food & Drink Specialists, Convenience Stores), By Packaging (Paper & Board, Rigid Plastics, Flexible Packaging), Industry Outlook Report, Regional Analysis, Application Development Potential, Price Trends, Competitive Market Share & Forecast, 2017 2024Bio Vanillin Market Size By Application (Food & Beverage [Ice Cream, Chocolate, Confectionaries & Baked Goods], Fragrances, Pharmaceuticals), Industry Analysis Report, Regional Outlook (U.S., Canada, Mexico, Germany, UK, France, Italy, Spain, China, India, Japan, Australia, South Korea, South Africa, GCC, Brazil), Production Routes, Downstream Application Potential (Methoxyhydroquinone, Vanillic Acid, Vanillyl Alcohol), Price Trend, Competitive Market Share & Forecast, 2016 2023About Global Market InsightsGlobal Market Insights, Inc., headquartered in Delaware, U.S., is a global market research and consulting service provider; offering syndicated and custom research reports along with growth consulting services. Our business intelligence and industry research reports offer clients with penetrative insights and actionable market data specially designed and presented to aid strategic decision making. These exhaustive reports are designed via a proprietary research methodology and are available for key industries such as chemicals, advanced materials, technology, renewable energy and biotechnology.Contact Us:Arun HegdeCorporate Sales, USAGlobal Market Insights, Inc.Phone: 1-302-846-7766Toll Free: 1-888-689-0688Email: sales@gminsights.comWeb:Blog: Substation Automation Market 2017 Analysis and Forecast to 2021 by covering Key Players Cooper Industries, Siemens, Eaton https://www.htfmarketreport.com/sample-report/453201-global-substation-automation-market-4 https://www.htfmarketreport.com/request-discount/453201-global-substation-automation-market-4 https://www.htfmarketreport.com/reports/453201-global-substation-automation-market-4 https://www.htfmarketreport.com/buy-now?format=1&report=453201 HTF Market Intelligence released a new research report of 101 pages on title 'Global Substation Automation Market Size, Status and Forecast 2022' with detailed analysis, forecast and strategies. The study covers key regions that includes United States, EU, Japan, China, India, Southeast Asia and important players such as Cooper Industries, Siemens, Eaton, Toshiba, etcRequest a sample report @SummaryThis report studies the global Substation Automation market, analyzes and researches the Substation Automation development status and forecast in United States, EU, Japan, China, India and Southeast Asia. This report focuses on the top players in global market, likeABBSchneider ElectricGE Grid SolutionsPower System Engineering (PSE)CiscoIngeteamAlstomCooper IndustriesSiemensEatonToshibaAmperionMitsubishi ElectricMarket segment by Regions/Countries, this report coversUnited StatesEUJapanChinaIndiaSoutheast AsiaMarket segment by Type, Substation Automation can be split intoSCADAIEDCommunication NetworkMarket segment by Application, Substation Automation can be split intoTransmissionDistribution & OutageCollectionIf you have any special requirements, please let us know and we will offer you the report as you want.For Discount, Enquire Now @Table of ContentsGlobal Substation Automation Market Size, Status and Forecast 20221 Industry Overview of Substation Automation1.1 Substation Automation Market Overview1.1.1 Substation Automation Product Scope1.1.2 Market Status and Outlook1.2 Global Substation Automation Market Size and Analysis by Regions1.2.1 United States1.2.2 EU1.2.3 Japan1.2.4 China1.2.5 India1.2.6 Southeast Asia1.3 Substation Automation Market by Type1.3.1 SCADA1.3.2 IED1.3.3 Communication Network1.4 Substation Automation Market by End Users/Application1.4.1 Transmission1.4.2 Distribution & Outage1.4.3 Collection2 Global Substation Automation Competition Analysis by Players2.1 Substation Automation Market Size (Value) by Players (2016 and 2017)2.2 Competitive Status and Trend2.2.1 Market Concentration Rate2.2.2 Product/Service Differences2.2.3 New Entrants2.2.4 The Technology Trends in Future3 Company (Top Players) Profiles3.1 ABB3.1.1 Company Profile3.1.2 Main Business/Business Overview3.1.3 Products, Services and Solutions3.1.4 Substation Automation Revenue....ContinuedView Detailed Table of Content @Thanks for reading this article, you can also get individual chapter wise section or region wise report version like North America, Europe or Asia.Buy this report @HTF Market Report is a wholly owned brand of HTF market Intelligence Consulting Private Limited. HTF Market Report global research and market intelligence consulting organization is uniquely positioned to not only identify growth opportunities but to also empower and inspire you to create visionary growth strategies for futures, enabled by our extraordinary depth and breadth of thought leadership, research, tools, events and experience that assist you for making goals into a reality. Our understanding of the interplay between industry convergence, Mega Trends, technologies and market trends provides our clients with new business models and expansion opportunities. We are focused on identifying the Accurate Forecast in every industry we cover so our clients can reap the benefits of being early market entrants and can accomplish their Goals & Objectives.Contact us :HTF Market Intelligence Consulting Private LimitedUnit No. 429, Parsonage Road Edison, NJNew Jersey USA 08837sales@htfmarketreport.com+1 (206) 317 1218 Online Travel Market - Changing Demographics to Boost Infrastructure Spending as Rise in Travellers Over the Decade Online Travel Market http://www.orbisresearch.com/contacts/request-sample/185361 http://www.orbisresearch.com/reports/index/global-online-travel-market-trends-and-opportunities-2016-2020 http://www.orbisresearch.com/contact/purchase/185361 https://www.linkedin.com/company/orbis-research https://twitter.com/orbisresearch https://www.facebook.com/pages/Orbis-Research/820969017982115 Latest Report Available at Orbis research Online Travel Market provides pin-point analysis for changing competitive dynamics and a forward looking perspective on different factors driving or restraining industry growth.Scope of the ReportThe report titled Global Online Travel Market: Trends and Opportunities (2016-2020) analyzes the potential opportunities and significant trends in the global online travel market. Market outlook in value terms for the forecasted period for global online travel market has been detailed in the report. Online leisure/unmanaged business travel, a segment of online travel has also been covered in the report. The report provides detailed analysis of leading players in the sector including Expedia Inc., The Priceline Group and Hostelworld on the basis of attributes such as business overview, recent developments, financials and strategies adopted by the market leaders in order to ensure growth, sustainability, etc.Request a sample of this report @Geographical Coverage- The US- Europe- Asia Pacific- China- Latin AmericaCompany Coverage- Expedia Inc.- The Priceline Group- HostelworldExecutive SummaryOnline travel industry originated in the 1970s in the United States market. Online travel market, a segment of global travel market comes up with strong growth fundamentals. The market can be broadly split into direct bookings with travel suppliers and bookings made through an OTA. The OTA space can be broadly divided into Generalist OTAs and Specialist OTAs. Generalist OTAs such as Expedia and Booking.com (owned by Priceline Group), spans broader market and caters to all forms of travel (lodging, flights, packages, car rentals, etc.). On the other hand, Specialist OTAs (e.g. Hostelworld), operates within travel niches such as the hostel space. In major part of the world, majority of bookings are made directly through suppliers. Worldwide online booking via suppliers accounted for close to 60% share of total online bookings in the year 2015.Get More Information of Global Online Travel Market Report @From a regional perspective, Asia Pacific, Western Europe and the US market are seen to be similar in size and collectively accounting for 80% share of global online travel market in the year 2015. In the upcoming years, emerging market is expected to outperform growth in advanced region due to betterment of socio-economic factors. In addition to this, emerging markets also has high proportion of Millennial population.Growth of global online travel market is driven by growth in global tourism industry, rise in internet penetration and increasing mobile presence.Increasing internet penetration and rise in sue of smartphones especially in emerging economies are providing impetus to online travel industry globally. However, presence of certain factors is also posing hindrance to growth of the industry. Some of these factors are threat from alternative accommodation providers, regulation and compliance in the industry and high marketing spending for companies operating in the segment. Key trends prevailing in the industry includes organic expansion of core brands and increasing capital investment and supply in the hostel space.Some points from TOC:1. Executive Summary2. Introduction2.1 The OTA landscape2.2 Online Travel Market- Value Chain2.3 Alternative Accommodation2.4 Business ModelPurchase a copy of Global Online Travel Market visit @For more information contact sales@orbisresearch.com .3. Global Online Travel Market Analysis3.1 Market Sizing Actual & Forecasted3.2 Market Share3.2.1 By Region3.2.2 By Competitors3.3 Online Leisure/Unmanaged Business Travel3.3.1 By Competitors3.3.2 By RegionFor any enquires before buying, connect with us @ enquiry@orbisresearch.comAbout Us:Orbis Research (orbisresearch.com) is a single point aid for all your market research requirements. We have vast database of reports from the leading publishers and authors across the globe. We specialize in delivering customized reports as per the requirements of our clients. We have complete information about our publishers and hence are sure about the accuracy of the industries and verticals of their specialization. This helps our clients to map their needs and we produce the perfect required market research study for our clients.Contact Information:Hector CostelloSenior Manager Client Engagements4144N Central Expressway,Suite 600, Dallas,Texas 75204, U.S.A.Phone No.: +1 (214) 884-6817; +9164101019Follow Us on LinkedIn:Follow us on Twitter:Like us on Facebook: No More Icebergs in Front of Your CraftsmanSHIP Leslie and her mom and son at scrapbook generation www.scrapbookgeneration.com Creativity has no limits and so does you, unleash your creative craftsmanship with the best in market scrapbook supplies. Scrapbook Generation is a Springfield, Missouri based retail store started in 2004 by two sets of sisters. In 2010, the family business expanded and included Scrapbook Generation Publishing.The online storehas created an online one-stop shopping solution for all the customers around the world. As the demand and orders increased, we thought of enhancing our online store to provide our customers with an excellent shopping experience.To get premium level website customization and migration we needed the experts and hence we decided to have PSDCenter as our new guest in the technical supervision room. We are proud to announce the new look of our online store which is based on the new BigCommerce Stencil framework, all the modern day website requisites are built in and the staff provided with a timely and professional response while delivering the customization.We deliver products worldwide, with free shipping for all of our US customer having order value more than $75. Our club subscription and classes are designed to let our followers and customer explore the fresh usage of our designing oriented scrapbook products. We also have a free digital magazine, focusing mainly on sketches and how to use them to best advantage along with hundreds of paper crafting projects!Finally, our customers will happily be able to enjoy our SG Rewards system which provides points on every product purchase and the referrals who order their first products. These points will help to avails discount and much more. So, let your creative demons control the way of life and create something new!Scrapbook Generation is a Springfield, Missouri retail store started in 2004 by two sets of sisters: Debbie Sanders and Karin Rush, and Debbie's daughters Stacey Atchley and Allison Davis. In 2010, the family business expanded to include Scrapbook Generation Publishing. In 2013, the online store at scrapbookgeneration.com expanded to provide a one-stop shopping source for customers all over the world.330 E BattlefieldSuite CSpringfield, MO 6580417-886-0440stacey@scrapbookgeneration.com Wearable Cardioverter Defibrillators Market share research by applications and regions for 2017-2024 Global Market Insights, Inc. https://www.gminsights.com/request-toc/upcoming/1953 https://www.gminsights.com/industry-analysis/wearable-cardioverter-defibrillators-market https://www.gminsights.com/inquiry-before-buying/1953 https://www.gminsights.com/industry-analysis/transcatheter-cardiac-pacemaker-market https://www.gminsights.com https://gminsights.wordpress.com The research report Wearable Cardioverter Defibrillators Market Size, Industry Analysis Report, Regional Outlook (U.S., Canada, Germany, UK, Italy, France, Spain, China, India, Japan, Australia, Brazil, Mexico, South Africa, Saudi Arabia), Application Development Potential, Price Trends, Competitive Market Share & Forecast, 2017 2024, by Global Market Insights, Inc. says Wearable Cardioverter Defibrillators Market size is projected to experience significant growth from 2017 to 2024.Wearable cardioverter defibrillators industry is slated to witness a strong growth owing to rapidly growing geriatric population. As per United Nations statistics, 2015, the number of people over 60 years of age has increased significantly over the past few years in most of regions, United Nations further projected that between 2015 and 2030, the number of people over 60 years of age will grow by more than 55% from 901 million to 1.4 billion in 2030 globally.Request for an in-depth table of contents for this report @Increasing incidence of cardiovascular disorders globally is another pivotal factor driving the growth of wearable cardioverter defibrillators market. In the U.S., heart disease is demonstrated to be the cause for one in three deaths in women and men and is responsible for around 750, 000 fatalities annually. While, globally the deaths due to cardiovascular diseases between 1990 and 2020 is projected to increase from 28.9% to 36.3%.Apart from this various technological advances in the devices slated to happen in future such as reducing the weight and size and weight devices further to make it more comfortable for the patient, electrode noise reduction and improvement in signal to reduce the event of inappropriate detections and shocks will contribute to market growth.Wearable cardioverter defibrillator devices have become increasingly popular, since this device can be used in a situation where a patient is waiting for an implantable one due to surgical contraindication and prevent the risk of cardiac arrest. The device can be used by patient with recent myocardial infarction and left ventricular dysfunction, in an event where there is no firm indication for installing implantable devices.Browse key industry insights from the report Wearable Cardioverter Defibrillators Market in detail along with the table of contents:Various factors that tend to limit the projected growth of wearable cardioverter defibrillators include less knowledge regarding sudden cardiac arrest, and limitations faced by the devices such as lack of provision to monitor atrial arrhythmias.By application, wearable cardioverter defibrillators market can be segmented into peripartum cardiomyopathy, inherited arrythmias, and congenital heart disease. While on the basis of end-user the market can be segmented into hospitals, homecare settings, and specialty clinics.U.S. drives the global wearable cardioverter defibrillators market, holding the largest share in overall market. The region is slated to continue its glory of being the largest contributor due to rapidly arising incidences of cardiovascular diseases, and increasing number of heart surgeries. Apart from this, U.S. and Canada witness high level of awareness regarding sudden cardiac arrest and benefits of using wearable cardioverter defibrillators.Europe held the second largest position in the wearable cardioverter defibrillators market driven by factors such as rising geriatric population, better access to advanced healthcare facilities, and increased awareness regarding cardiovascular diseases.Make an inquiry for purchasing this report @The demand for wearable cardioverter defibrillators is rising significantly in the emerging nations of Asia Pacific owing to rise in the prevalence of cardiovascular disorder and awareness regarding treatment options using these devices. Moreover, various manufacturers in the market are eyeing upon this region as lucrative growth platform due to large patient pool. In an attempt to increase product awareness, manufacturers arrange various seminars and training workshops for surgeons and patients regarding the use of wearable cardioverter defibrillator devices.Latin America and Middle East Asia regions are set to embark remarkable growth in the wearable cardioverter defibrillator market due to conducive business environments leading to entry of major manufacturers in the region. The introduction of rental services for wearable cardioverter defibrillators should boost the demand for devices, by lowering the cost and making it affordable in low income countries of the region. However, factors such as inadequate training staff and skilled technicians along with hesitation to use the device due to safety issues among patient group may hamper the expected market growth in the region during the forecast timeframe.Key industry players include Boston Scientific, Jude Medical, Medtronic, Nihon Kohden, and Zoll Medical among others. Partnership with regional companies in order to expand its distribution channel and new product launches are commonly used strategies by wearable cardioverter defibrillators industry players.Browse Related Reports:Transcatheter Cardiac Pacemaker Market Size By position (Left Ventricle, Right Ventricle), By End Use (Hospitals, Clinics), Industry Analysis Report, Regional Outlook (U.S., Canada, Germany, UK, Italy, Spain, France, Poland, China, India, Japan, Australia, Malaysia, Thailand, Brazil, Mexico, South Africa, Saudi Arabia), Application Development Potential, Price Trends, Competitive Market Share & Forecast, 2017 2024About Global Market Insights:Global Market Insights, Inc., headquartered in Delaware, U.S., is a global market research and consulting service provider; offering syndicated and custom research reports along with growth consulting services. Our business intelligence and industry research reports offer clients with penetrative insights and actionable market data specially designed and presented to aid strategic decision making. These exhaustive reports are designed via a proprietary research methodology and are available for key industries such as chemicals, advanced materials, technology, renewable energy and biotechnology.Contact Us:Arun HegdeCorporate Sales, USAGlobal Market Insights, Inc.Phone: 1-302-846-7766Toll Free: 1-888-689-0688Email: sales@gminsights.comWeb:Blog: Parenteral Packaging Market to increase at a CAGR of 11.2% during the forecast period 2016-2026 http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/sample/rep-gb-1258 http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/askus/rep-gb-1258 www.futuremarketinsights.com The global parenteral packaging market was valued at 7.9 Bn in 2015 and is expected to grow at a year-over-year rate of 9.5% to reach 8.6 Bn in 2016. North America will continue to be the most lucrative market, representing 27.4% revenue share of the market in 2016. Western Europe, the second largest market for parenteral packaging, will grow by 10.8% in 2016.Increasing popularity of plastics & polymers over glass for production of primary packaging material and global expansion of pharmaceuticals industry will continue to fuel the growth of the market in 2016. Increase in the prevalence of epidemic diseases such as cancer, diabetes, hepatic failure and chronic intestinal diseases will also play a role in ramping up demand for parenteral packaging. Favourable government policies, combined with rising adoption of injection-based treatment will also continue to influence the market positively. Growing geriatric population will also play a role in the overall growth of the parenteral packaging market.Request For Report Sample@On the basis of product, the prefilled syringes & cartridges segment will continue to hold the leading revenue share. This segment is expected to grow by 10.1% in 2016 to reach 1.2 Bn in revenues.On the basis of material, the global parenteral packaging market is largely segmented into plastic & polymer and glass segments. Use of glass for parenteral packaging is witnessing a decline, as plastic & polymer are more durable and resistant to shocks and impacts. The plastic & polymer segment will witness a growth rate of 10.5% in 2016, whereas the glass segment is expected to grow by 8.7%.On the basis of packaging type, the global parenteral packaging market is mostly non-tangible in nature, owing to the needs of the patients as well as storage conditions for drugs. However, the packaging type are primarily segmented into large volume parenteral and small volume parenteral, with the former accounting for higher revenue share of the market.While North America and Western Europe will continue to ramp up demand, growth will also be substantial in emerging economies of APEJ. Increasing healthcare spending and presence of a large geriatric population segment will positively influence market growth in APEJ, with total revenues set to reach 2.0 Bn in 2016.Send an Enquiry @Key participants in the global parenteral packaging market include Gerresheimer AG, Schott AG, Becton, Unilife Corporation, Inc, Dickinson and Company, Ypsomed Holding AG ,West Pharmaceutical Services, Inc., SiO2 Medical Products, Terumo Corporation, Ompi, Stevanato Group and Nipro Corporation.Long-term Outlook: The global parenteral packaging market is anticipated to increase at a CAGR of 11.2% during the forecast period 2016-2026.ABOUT US:Future Market Insights (FMI) is a leading market intelligence and consulting firm. We deliver syndicated research reports, custom research reports and consulting services, which are personalized in nature. FMI delivers a complete packaged solution, which combines current market intelligence, statistical anecdotes, technology inputs, valuable growth insights, an aerial view of the competitive framework, and future market trends.CONTACT:Future Market Insights616 Corporate Way, Suite 2-9018,Valley Cottage, NY 10989,United StatesT: +1-347-918-3531F: +1-845-579-5705Email: sales@futuremarketinsights.comWebsite: In this photo taken on or about July 2, 1937, American aviator Amelia Earhart, left, and her navigator, Fred Noonan, right, pose beside their plane with gold miner F.C. Jacobs in Lae, New Guinea. Fructose Market To Be Driven By Rising Awareness Regarding Ill Effects Of Diabetes Till 2025: Grand View Research, Inc. Grand View Research, Inc. http://www.grandviewresearch.com/industry-analysis/global-fructose-market?utm_source=pressrelease&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=openpr_Aug3&utm_content=content http://www.grandviewresearch.com/industry/nutraceuticals-functional-foods-and-dietary-supplements www.grandviewresearch.com The global fructose market is expected to reach USD 5.68 billion by 2025, according to a new report by Grand View Research, Inc. The growing consumption of low-calorie foods and beverages owing to the rising awareness regarding the adverse effects of sugar is expected to boost market demand.Fructose is majorly used in the production of nutrition bars, soft moist cookies, pourable frozen juice concentrates and energy-reduced products. It is commercially available in syrup and crystalline forms. High fructose corn syrup, which is the major product segment in the market, is expected to experience reduced demand on account of growing concerns regarding obesity.The high demand in North America can be attributed to low-calorie product category witnessing rapid growth. Asia Pacific is anticipated to grow rapidly on account of increasing sales of products in the health and wellness category. The rising health consciousness in the region is expected to further boost the demand for fructose over the forecast period.Browse full research report on Global Fructose Market: (Further key findings from the report suggest: Fructose syrups is the fastest growing product segment and expected to register a CAGR of 4.7% from 2017 to 2025 due to increased demand from the beverage manufacturing industry Fructose solids product segment is projected to grow at a CAGR of 4.5% from 2017 to 2025 due to increased demand for crystalline fructose in niche applications Dairy products application segment is projected to grow at a CAGR of 5.2% from 2017 to 2025 on account of technological innovation and the launch of new products in the category Asia Pacific accounted for 27% of the global market share in 2016 owing to rapid expansion by food ingredient manufacturers in the region The market value of fructose in the Central & South America region is expected to grow to USD 716.0 million in 2025, backed by the growing consumption in Brazil, Chile and Argentina Manufacturers are moving away from ingredient production and developing customized products for people suffering from diseases caused due to the excessive consumption of sugar In October 2016, DuPont launched affordable sugar solutions for fruit drinks in South Asia on account of growing demand for fruit based beverages.Browse more reports of this category by Grand View Research: (Grand View Research has segmented the global fructose market on the basis of product, application, and region:Fructose Product Outlook (Volume, Kilo Tons; Revenue, USD Million; 2014 - 2025) High Fructose Corn Syrup Fructose Syrups Fructose SolidsFructose Application Outlook (Volume, Kilo Tons; Revenue, USD Million; 2014 - 2025) Beverages Processed Foods Dairy Products Confectionary Bakery & Cereals OthersFructose Regional Outlook (Volume, Kilo Tons; Revenue, USD Million; 2014 - 2025) North Americao U.S. Europeo Germanyo UK Asia Pacifico Chinao India Central & South Americao Brazil Middle East & AfricaFor more information:About Grand View ResearchGrand View Research, Inc. is a U.S. based market research and consulting company, registered in the State of California and headquartered in San Francisco. The company provides syndicated research reports, customized research reports, and consulting services. To help clients make informed business decisions, we offer market intelligence studies ensuring relevant and fact-based research across a range of industries, from technology to chemicals, materials and healthcare.Press ContactSherry James - Corporate Relations Specialist201 Spear St #1100, Suite #3036San Francisco, CA 94105United StatesPhone: 1-415-349-0058Email: sales@grandviewresearch.com Saudi Arabia Pharmaceutical Market to Create a Whooping US$ 12,281.4 Mn by 2026 http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/sample/rep-gc-1733 http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/askus/rep-gc-1733 www.futuremarketinsights.com The significant rise in lifestyle-related diseases and the developments in healthcare infrastructure are expected to influence the demand for pharmaceuticals in Saudi Arabia. In 2016, the Saudi Arabia pharmaceutical market is anticipated to procure value worth US$ 5,209.5 Mn at a y-o-y growth of 6.0 % over 2015. The mounting demand for branded drug products will continue to incite the growth of the Saudi Arabian pharmaceutical market in 2016.The demand for pharmaceuticals in Saudi Arabia is expected to register substantial growth owing to the increasing penetration of health insurance companies and the rising incidence rate of non-communicable diseases. Furthermore, the exceptional rise in the per capita income of Saudi Arabia is also expected to foster the demand for branded pharmaceutical drugs. Another key factor driving the growth of the pharmaceutical market in Saudi Arabia is the countrys strategic move to allow 100% FDI in the pharmaceuticals sector. Although, the shortage of profound indigenous research capacity in the pharmaceutical industry and the delayed registration of drug and medicine patents is expected to limit the expansion of the market in 2016 and beyond.Based on the product type, the pharmaceutical market in Saudi Arabia is expected to witness an upsurge in the prescription-type branded drug products. In terms of market value, the branded drugs are estimated to reach US$ 2,760.8 Mn by 2016-end. The demand for generic drugs is projected to secure steady growth, attributing to the insisting promotion of generic drug adoption by healthcare insurance providers.Request For Report Sample@On the basis of the diseases, the pharmaceutical drugs used for treatment of cardiovascular diseases will continue exhibiting robust growth in 2016. The demand for cardiovascular medications will continue to surge due to the prominence of circulatory disorders in Saudi Arabia. Additionally, the rising prevalence of disorders related to body sugar levels is expected to make diabetes a rapidly growing disease-based sub-segment in the Saudi Arabia pharmaceutical market.The pharmaceutical market in Saudi Arabia is also segmented on the basis of distribution channel, where retail pharmacies will continue to account for 80% market share compared to hospital pharmacies. The westernised modernisation of retail pharmacies in Saudi Arabia has led to the availability of a wide range drugs and medicinal products, thereby attaining a considerable growth in the retail pharmacy sub-segment in 2016 and further.Send an Enquiry @The rising resource potential in Saudi Arabia is projected to positively reform the production environment for pharmaceutical manufacturers. In order to expand the markets size, structuring alliances with well-established native companies is predicted to be a key strategy for global pharmaceutical leaders. The key players in the Saudi Arabia pharmaceutical market include Novartis AG, SPIMACO, Pfizer Inc., and Glaxosmithkline plc., Jamjoom Pharma, and Tabuk Pharmaceutical Manufacturing Co. among others.Long-term Outlook: The Saudi Arabia pharmaceutical market is expected to expand at a CAGR of 9.0% over the forecast period 2016-2026. In terms of market value, the pharmaceutical market in Saudi Arabia is estimated to be worth US$ 12,281.4 Mn by the end of forecast period.ABOUT US:Future Market Insights (FMI) is a leading market intelligence and consulting firm. We deliver syndicated research reports, custom research reports and consulting services, which are personalized in nature. FMI delivers a complete packaged solution, which combines current market intelligence, statistical anecdotes, technology inputs, valuable growth insights, an aerial view of the competitive framework, and future market trends.CONTACT:Future Market Insights616 Corporate Way, Suite 2-9018,Valley Cottage, NY 10989,United StatesT: +1-347-918-3531F: +1-845-579-5705Email: sales@futuremarketinsights.comWebsite: Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV)-1 Therapeutics Market to Record an Exponential CAGR by 2024 Global Market Insights, Inc. https://www.gminsights.com/inquiry-before-buying/1949 https://www.gminsights.com/industry-analysis/human-immunodeficiency-virus-hiv-1-therapeutics-market https://www.gminsights.com/request-toc/upcoming/1949 https://www.gminsights.com/industry-analysis/hiv-diagnostics-market https://www.gminsights.com https://gminsights.wordpress.com The research report Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV)-1 Therapeutics Market Size, Industry Analysis Report, Regional Outlook (U.S., Canada, UK, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Japan, China, India, Brazil, Mexico, South Africa), Application Development Potential, Price Trends, Competitive Market Share & Forecast, 2017 2024 by Global Market Insights, Inc. says, Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV)-1 Therapeutics Market size is projected to experience significant growth from 2017 to 2024.Human Immunodeficiency Virus Therapeutics Market size should witness tremendous growth, owing to the sprouting incidence of HIV infections. The growing youth-obsessed culture across globe is mostly under the vague of HIV due to unprotected sexual practices coupled with the dearth of awareness concerning transmission risk factors as well as exposure to contaminated and infected needles or syringes. The collaborative efforts of the government and various NGOs to provide help for at-risk individuals with greater receptiveness to disease testing and treatment is the key driving factor of the human immunodeficiency virus therapeutics market. According to American Hospital Association, there were 1.5 million adults and children surviving with HIV/AIDS in North America as of 2016.Make an inquiry for purchasing this report @High adolescent fertility rate is the opposing effect of extramarital and premarital sex, leading to longer period of sexual activity which increases the risk of infection among the populace. The virus has mostly affected the under developed and the developing countries on a broader scale owing to the scarcity of appropriate treatment, prevention measures and facilities. Approximately 70,000 children and adults are anew infected every year. Nearly 26,000 people in North America die from AIDS every year, with only limited number of patients receive admittance to antiretroviral treatments.Programs such as Medicare and Medicaid initiated by the U.S. government assists the low-income people in medical billing. The largest HIV specific discretionary grant program is the Ryan White HIV Program which serves as the third biggest source of federal funding for HIV treatment and care in the U.S. The NRTIs (first type of drug available to treat HIV) accounted for the largest market share. It works by blocking the reverse transcriptase enzyme as well as arrests viral replication and impede reverse transcriptase activity.Integrase inhibitors product segment will witness fastest growth, due to the rise in added integrase inhibitors by key players such as Merck & Co. and Gilead Sciences. These enzymes replicate by inserting viral genomic DNA into the host chromosome. The recent discovery in this segment is the quinoline-based allosteric IN inhibitors (ALLINIs), which potently impairs HIV-1 replication and are presently in clinical trials.Browse key industry insights from the report Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV)-1 Therapeutics Market in detail along with the table of contents:Social stigma, decreasing global funds, discrimination and treatment failures are few factors hindering the growth of the global human immunodeficiency virus therapeutics market. Lack of a definitive treatment is a key health issue and results in a high on-going cost to society.North America human immunodeficiency virus therapeutics market dominated the industry in 2016 pertaining to the high incidence and prevalence of HIV/AIDS, growing awareness about infection, surging government initiatives and blood donations. The U.S. human immunodeficiency virus therapeutics market is commanded as the greatest national funder of the HIV epidemic globally.Request for TOC for this report @Asia Pacific human immunodeficiency virus therapeutics market will exhibit profitable growth, owing to new developments in treatments. Asian manufacturers prove to be a resilient competition due to their unique patent laws that lead up patent of prerequisite lifesaving medicines. Also, the prices are doomed to decrease the entry of such manufacturers, thereby potentially proliferating the industry with regards to volume.Key industry players include Gilead Sciences, AbbVie, Bristol-Myers Squibb Company, ViiV Healthcare, and Cipla. Companies focus on innovative product launch and strategic agreements to expand their business portfolio as main strategies. In April 2016, Gilead Sciences, announced the FDA approval of Descovy, a fixed-dose combination for the treatment of HIV, for the treatment of HIV-1 infection.Browse Related Reports:HIV Diagnostics Market Size By Product [Antibody Tests (HIV-1 Screening, ELISA/EIA, Home Access Dried Blood Spot, Rapid Test, HIV-1 Confirmatory Steps, Western Blot, Indirect Immunoflorescent Antibody Assay (IIFA), Line Immunoassay , RadioImmuno Precipitation Assay (RIPA), HIV-2 & Group O Test, Blood Antibody, Dried Blood Spot), Viral Identification Assay (p24 Antigen, Qualitative PCR, Viral Culture), CD4, Viral Load, Early Infant Diagnosis], Industry Analysis Report, Regional Outlook (U.S., Canada, UK, Germany, Japan, China, South Africa, Brazil), Application Potential, Price Trends, Competitive Market Share & Forecast, 2016 2023About Global Market Insights:Global Market Insights, Inc., headquartered in Delaware, U.S., is a global market research and consulting service provider; offering syndicated and custom research reports along with growth consulting services. Our business intelligence and industry research reports offer clients with penetrative insights and actionable market data specially designed and presented to aid strategic decision making. These exhaustive reports are designed via a proprietary research methodology and are available for key industries such as chemicals, advanced materials, technology, renewable energy and biotechnology.Contact Us:Arun HegdeCorporate Sales, USAGlobal Market Insights, Inc.Phone: 1-302-846-7766Toll Free: 1-888-689-0688Email: sales@gminsights.comWeb:Blog: Adsorbents Marke Trends, Forecast, and Analysis by Future Market Insights http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/sample/rep-gb-145 http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/toc/rep-gb-145 www.futuremarketinsights.com Adsorption is a process in which ions, atoms or molecules from a liquid, dissolved liquid or gas adheres to a surface. In this process a thin film is created on the adsorbent by the adsorbate. Adsorption is a consequence of surface energy similar to surface tension. Adsorption exists in many natural, biological, chemical and physical systems that have applications in the industrial sector. Adsorbents are usually in the form of rods, spherical pellets and moldings that has 0.5 to 10mm diameter. Adsorbents that are regarded to be effective must have resistance to high abrasion, thermal stability with small pore diameters and must have a distinct pore structure which helps in speedy transport of gaseous vapours. Industrial adsorbents are classified as carbon based compounds that are non-polar and hydrophobic that includes materials such as graphite and activated carbon; oxygen containing compounds that are polar and hydrophilic including material such as zeolites and silica gel; polymer-based compounds which are non-polar or polar functional groups in a polymer matrix.The major applications of adsorbents include drying, air separation, water treatment and oil and gas refining among others. Adsorbents are the major materials are mainly used in industries such as water treatment, pharmaceutical, oil & gas, petrochemical and chemical. Advances in technology to bring in various kinds of adsorbents with new advancements in the market will lead to increase the demand for adsorbents globally. Owing to government and environmental regulations the applications such as air separation and drying in the pharmaceutical, healthcare and medical devices are expected to grow at a faster rate in comparison with other applications and industries.Request For Report Sample@The key driver for adsorbents industry includes advancements and innovations to create new and advanced adsorbent materials. The industries require adsorbents for a wide range of applications with varied characteristic and requirements. To serve this purpose, major companies are now focused on technological innovations to create new adsorbent materials which will be applicable in varied industrial and commercial areas. The technological developments to manufacture cost effective adsorbents is the major solution to generate revenue in the adsorbent market globally. The current and future projections according to the industrial and economic outlook for adsorbent market are based on the material demand in terms of volume and value.The key segments for adsorbents market include North America, Asia Pacific, Europe and Rest of the World (RoW). North America is expected to capture huge share of the global market. Asia Pacific is anticipated to be the top market for adsorbents due to growing demand from China and India. China and Russia are expected to be the largest consumer of adsorbents among others. The developed economies therefore contribute to huge demand for adsorbents from the end user segment globally. Emerging economies are expected to be the potential markets for adsorbent industry with increasing production capacity.Visit For TOC@The major players that are included in the adsorbents industry include Axens, Arkema, BASF, Clariant, Calgon Carbon, Cabot, Meadwestvaco, Grace, Graver Technologies, UOP, Zeochem, Zeolyst International and Sorbead India among others. Many companies are now focusing on expansion with increase in production capacity and addition of new plants, to meet the growing demand and to achieve competitive advantage in the market. Axens which is molecular sieves manufacturer increased its presence through a new subsidiary in Malaysia for the adsorbents segment to meet the rising demand from the Asia Pacific region. Companies are now focusing on collaborations and joint ventures with the end user companies to increase its market share.ABOUT US:Future Market Insights (FMI) is a leading market intelligence and consulting firm.We deliver syndicated research reports, custom research reports and consulting services, which are personalized in nature. FMI delivers a complete packaged solution, which combines current market intelligence, statistical anecdotes, technology inputs, valuable growth insights, an aerial view of the competitive framework, and future market trends.CONTACT:Future Market Insights616 Corporate Way, Suite 2-9018,Valley Cottage, NY 10989,United StatesT: +1-347-918-3531F: +1-845-579-5705Email: sales@futuremarketinsights.comWebsite: HLH Prototypes Offers Rapid Tooling, Prototyping and Production Solutions http://www.hlhprototypes.com/ HLH Prototypes is a renowned project solutions company providing rapid tooling, production and prototyping services to meet specific project needs. They have a team of skilled engineers and massive capacity with the latest technological investment that allows them to handle diverse project needs within the shortest time possible. HLH Prototypes are a customer-focused company with their primary focus being on quality productions, flexibility and value for money services to all their clients. They are a UKAS ISO certified firm with a massive six storey facility enabling them to handle various project needs simultaneously.Speaking about why clients should choose them, Nissan He the Sales Manager said, We are a globally recognized firm offering the best services at the most competitive pricing and a quick turnover that reduces your projects completion time and finances drastically. Our years of experience and expertise enables us to be a partner in your project no matter the stage whether in the conception, prototyping, tooling or production phase. Our range of services also makes us a number one choice as we have the skills and diversity to handle all kinds of engineering needs promptly.HLH Prototypes provides reliable plastic injection molding services in China. They are specialists in making plastic parts and can work with any mold drawing regardless of size and complexity to make high-quality parts. HLH Prototypes uses four approved stages which are; clamping, injection, cooling and ejection in their injection molding process to produce highly accurate parts. Their team of engineers takes the time to understand ones project needs and can help to correct dimensional inaccuracies and test the parts to ensure they serve the intended purpose.Talking about their quality control process, Sophy Zhou the Tooling and Injection Molding Sales Manager said, To us, quality control is not the final stage where we test the accuracy of our productions but is a necessity incorporated into every process in our daily operations. Each engineer in every process is a part of our quality control, and inspection is done severally to ensure you get the quality you deserve. This allows us to have over 97% accuracy on specs given to us at all times. Quality control has also enabled us to reduce faulty final parts as any defects are recognized at an early stage and the necessary changes made.Clients looking for plastic prototyping service will get the best at HLH Prototypes. They provide cost effective plastic prototyping services for both high and low volume productions suitable for new product development. HLH Prototypes uses plastic materials that are readily available, easy to machine, have high resistance and are durable to make functional models and parts for a wide range of use.About HLH PrototypesHLH Prototypes is a manufacturing company specialized in offering rapid project solutions in tooling, prototyping and production using a western managed approach. They have a team of skilled engineers with diverse skills able to handle all project requirements in the shortest time span.Company Details:-Company Name: HLH Prototypes1801 Xing Ji Buidling, Xin Sha RoadShajing, Baoan, Shenzhen, China, 518125Telephone number: +86-755-8256-9129 Ext 817 for EnglishE-mail: info@HLHPrototypes.comWebsite: Cardiac Maker Analyzer Product Analysis, Business & Marketing Strategy of Cardiac Maker Companies https://www.marketresearchreports.biz/sample/sample/1273820 https://www.marketresearchreports.biz/reports/1273820/cardiac-maker-analyzer-product-analysis-market-research-reports http://www.marketresearchreports.biz/ "The Report Cardiac Maker Analyzer Product Analysis, Business & Marketing Strategy of Cardiac Maker Companies provides information on pricing, market analysis, shares, forecast, and company profiles for key industry participants. - MarketResearchReports.biz"Cardiac Maker Analyzer Product AnalysisCardiometabolic products and services provide timely cardiovascular and metabolic information at the point-of-care. Until today, Troponin and CK-MB were the lead cardiac markers. Brain Natriuetic Pepetide (BNP) was recently introduced to differentiate between a Myocardial Infarction and Heart Failure. The routine markers of myocardial infarction CK-MB, Troponin and Myoglobin and recently BNP are used in the acute care and tests such as Cholesterol are used to evaluate risk. A number of companies are focused on developing new cardiac markers.Alere delivers reliable and actionable health information through rapid diagnostic tests, resulting in better clinical and economic healthcare outcomes globally. Aleres Cardiology net product sale was more than US$ 600 Million in 2016 and is expected to rule this industry in the future.Get Sample Copy Of This Report @Beckman Coulter offers the maximum number of cardiac marker tests on its cardiology platform while Abbott Laboratories (i-Stat) and Siemens Healthineers (Stratus CS Analyzer) also perform several cardiac marker tests on their cardio-metabolism platform and establishes them as the leader in this market.Cardiac Markers Analyzers usually measure the levels of enzymes and proteins released from heart muscle when it is damaged. Physicians use cardiac markers in two ways to diagnose a cardiac event in a hospital emergency room or within the hospital or to evaluate a risk of a cardiovascular event occurring.Cardiac Maker Analyzer Product Analysis, Business & Marketing Strategy of Cardiac Maker Companies is the 2nd report published by Renub Research. This 105 page report contains 14 Figures and 12 Tables provides a comprehensive analysis of the cardiac markers analyzer segments, including their comparative tests analysis, competitive product analysis, product features, merger, acquisitions, analyzer sales figures and Business and Market Strategies of Companies.View Report @All the 12 Cardiac Marker Analyzers in the report have been studied from 5 viewpoints.Analyzer Specifications and BenefitsNet Product SalesMerger, Acquisition & Licensing AgreementMarketing StrategiesMethods of DistributionThe 12 Cardiac Marker Analyzer studied in the report are as follows:Alere Meterpro AnalyzerRAMP 200RAMP ReaderThe iSTAT SystemCobas h 232 POC SystemStratus CS AnalyzerAccess 2 Immunoassay Systemichroma DUO AnalyzerDXpress Reader AnalyzerPATHFAST AnalyzerMeritas POC AnalyzerQL Care AnalyzerAbout usMarketResearchReports.biz is the most comprehensive collection of market research reports. MarketResearchReports.Biz services are specially designed to save time and money for our clients. We are a one stop solution for all your research needs, our main offerings are syndicated research reports, custom research, subscription access and consulting services. We serve all sizes and types of companies spanning across various industries.ContactMr. NachiketState Tower90 Sate Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-621-2074Website:E: sales@marketresearchreports.biz Geosynthetics Market Forecast Report by Future Market Insights Offers Key Insights http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/sample/rep-gb-475 http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/toc/rep-gb-475 www.futuremarketinsights.com Geosynthetics is a class of synthetic products that are used mainly in construction and geotechnical engineering applications. These are versatile, highly durable materials and serve as cost-effective alternatives in geotechnical, environmental and hydraulic applications. Geosynthetics are made up of durable polymers such as High-density polyethylene (HDPE), Polypropylene (PP), Polyester, these Geosynthetics are incorporated in order to act as separators, filters, reinforcements, drainage facilitators and as liquid and gas barriers. As such, Geosynthetics, owing to their favourable physical properties includes strength, stiffness, durability and many others it is widely used in civil engineering, road industry,soil reinforcement, mining, among others.Geosynthetics Market: Opportunities, Drivers & RestraintsOver the recent past, the growing adoption of Geosynthetics across the globe has resulted in a steady growth of Geosynthetics. Moreover, increasing investments in infrastructure and environmental projects by both, developing and developed countries are likely to drive the growth of Geosynthetics market. Also increasing demand from waste treatment applications, transportation sector and regulatory support on account of enhancing civic amenities, several projects were taken by national government which has continued to fuel the growth in the Geosynthetics market. However, volatility of raw material prices used in manufacture of Geosynthetics is a major restraint to the growth of Geosynthetics market.Request For Report Sample@Geosynthetics Market: SegmentationGlobal Geosynthetics market can be segmented into various key segments depending on the type of product, material types and on the basis of region. Based on type of product, global geosynthetics market can be segmented into geotextiles, geogrids, geocells, geomembranes, geocomposites, geosynthetic foams and geosynthetic clay liners. Geotextiles are geosynthetics made up of woven (fibers on cloth like material) and non-woven (randomly oriented fibre) materials; geogrids are used for stabilization and reinforcement of waste masses, geocells are used in earth retention applications, rail road support, for protecting bunkers and walls. Geomembranes are an impermeable membranes which are used for canal lining, tunnel lining and land fill linings. Geocomposites combine features of two or more geosynthetics and find applications in drainage among others. Geofoams are lightweight blocks which act as void filling materials in certain construction applications. Lastly, geosynthetic clay liners are fabric-like materials used for lining of landfills.On the other hand, by material types, global geosynthetics market comprises following segments HDPE, polypropylene, polyester and other polymeric alloys based geosynthetics. Lastly, depending on the geographic regions, global geosynthetics market is segmented into North America, Latin America, Europe, Asia Pacific and Middle East & Africa.Geosynthetics Market: Region-wise OutlookAsia Pacific accounts for the largest share of global geosynthetics market and is expected to emerge as the fastest growing market for geosynthetics during the forecast period. Countries like India, China and Russia in particular, are expected to witness robust growth in adoption of geosynthetics in construction and geotechnical projects. Among the product type based segments of global geosynthetics market, geotextiles segment accounts for the largest share in market value.The global Geosynthetics market growth is driven majorly by their increased adoption in a variety of applications in construction sector, emergence of these as viable alternatives in waste and water applications has further bolstered global geosynthetics market growth. Moreover, increasing number of infrastructure development projects in developing countries and increasing demand of geosynthethics in roadways and rail construction applications across the globe has resulted in a steady growth of global geosynthetics market.Visit For TOC@Geosynthetics Market: Key PlayersSome of the participants in global Geosynthetics market are NAUE GmbH & Co. KG, GSE Environmental, Low & Bonar PLC, TenCate Geosynthetics, GEO Synthetics LLC, Huifeng Geosynthetics, Tenax Corporation, Polymer Group, Inc. and others.ABOUT US:Future Market Insights (FMI) is a leading market intelligence and consulting firm.We deliver syndicated research reports, custom research reports and consulting services, which are personalized in nature. FMI delivers a complete packaged solution, which combines current market intelligence, statistical anecdotes, technology inputs, valuable growth insights, an aerial view of the competitive framework, and future market trends.CONTACT:Future Market Insights616 Corporate Way, Suite 2-9018,Valley Cottage, NY 10989,United StatesT: +1-347-918-3531F: +1-845-579-5705Email: sales@futuremarketinsights.comWebsite: Regenerative Medicine Market to Gain a 11.1% CAGR during 2015-2019 http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/sample/rep-gb-1326 http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/askus/rep-gb-1326 www.futuremarketinsights.com The global regenerative medicine (bone and joint) market was valued at US$ 4,254.0 Mn in 2015, and is expected to grow at a year-over-year rate of 13.0% to reach US$ 4,808.9 Mn in 2016. In 2015, North America accounted for the largest revenue share of global regenerative medicine (bone & joints) market, representing a market value of US$ 2,039.8 Mn. Owing to increasing demand for bone and joint reconstructive surgeries and encouraging government initiatives, North America is expected to remain the largest market for regenerative medicine (bone and joint) in 2016. Europe is the second largest market for regenerative medicine, with the regions high geriatric population fuelling adoption at a robust pace.By technology, biomaterials segment accounts for the highest market share globally, owing to favourable reimbursement policies and strong demand for biomaterials. Apart from biomaterials, tissue engineering is the other segment which is quickly gaining traction among end-users, and is projected to witness the highest year-over-year growth among all the technology segments.Request For Report Sample@On the basis of application, bone graft substitute holds the highest share of the market in terms of value owing to a robust demand of bone graft substitute in orthopaedic treatments. However, complications associated with bone graft substitute can pose challenges to adoption in 2016 and beyond.While North America and Europe are key to the growth of the regenerative medicine market, rising awareness among healthcare professionals and patients in developing countries of Asia Pacific is expected to open up new opportunities for stakeholders. Favourable government initiatives in growing Asian economies such as China and India has paved the way for regenerative medicine market in the region. Moreover, adoption in developed countries of APAC, such as Japan and South Korea is also fuelling the growth of the market.Key participants in the global regenerative medicine market are: Medtronic, Inc. (INFUSE Bone Graft), DePuy Synthes, Inc. (HEALOS Bone Graft), Orthofix, Inc. (Trinity Evolution), NuVasive, Inc. (Osteocel Plus) and Zimmer Holdings, Inc. (CopiOs Bone Void Filler). The key strategy of these players is to expand globally through distribution agreements, mergers and acquisitions, public-private partnerships and new product development.Send an Enquiry @Long-term Outlook: The global regenerative medicine market (bone and joints) is anticipated to increase at a CAGR of 11.1% during the forecast period from 2015 to 2019. North America will remain the largest market throughout the forecast period, whereas Bone Graft Substitutes will continue to hold the largest share in terms of application.ABOUT US:Future Market Insights (FMI) is a leading market intelligence and consulting firm. We deliver syndicated research reports, custom research reports and consulting services, which are personalized in nature. FMI delivers a complete packaged solution, which combines current market intelligence, statistical anecdotes, technology inputs, valuable growth insights, an aerial view of the competitive framework, and future market trends.CONTACT:Future Market Insights616 Corporate Way, Suite 2-9018,Valley Cottage, NY 10989,United StatesT: +1-347-918-3531F: +1-845-579-5705Email: sales@futuremarketinsights.comWebsite: Analysis and Assessment on Luxury Products for Kids Market by Future Market Insights http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/sample/rep-gb-205 http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/toc/rep-gb-205 www.futuremarketinsights.com Luxury goods comprises of products such as accessories, footwear, apparel, watches and others which are quite expensive and target those consumers who belongs to premium class. The market for luxury goods consist of three types of end consumers, which includes kids lying between the age of 0-12 years, teenagers belonging to the age group of 13 to 19 years and the rest lies in adult group.Whereaskidsare concerned they are the smallest consumer group. Although being a smaller consumer group, the luxury products market for kids is experiencing tremendous growth in recent years due to changing consumer lifestyle and availability of the product. It is expected that spend on luxury shopping by consumers will grow by 25% in 2015. Luxury products for kids market is associated with higher margin as compared to adults luxury products segment. It has been found that babysluxury product accounted for more than 7.2% market share of luxury market in 2014. Luxury product market highly depends upon thefactors such as attractivemarketing, promotion techniques and proper distribution channel.Luxury products market for kids can be broadly segmented on the basis of product type, distribution channel and geographies. On the basis of product types it can be subsegmented into accessories, apparels and footwear. Among all these sub segments apparel market is expected to account for highest market share followed by footwear sub segment. The growth of apparel segment is fuelled by the frequently changing fashion and continuous need for new clothing for growing children. In 2014, U.S. and European market account for the most dominating market for apparel.Request For Report Sample@The market for luxury baby product also depends upon the mode of distribution channel used for offering products to the consumers. The mode of Distribution channel is segmented into retail outlets, sell out through internet, companys brand outlet and others. Among all these distribution channel online retailing is expected to be most preferred mode for distribution in the forecasted period. This ishis is due to consumer convenience preferences and availability of the products at lower price. Furthermore, the second most preferred mode is expected to be the companys brand retail outlets as they provide better offerings at less price.Furthermore, the luxury products market for kids inAsia pacific is expected to account for fastest CAGR in the forecasted period as compared to other regions. This is because the growth in luxury expenditure is expected to increase by 40% by 2020.In addition, countries such as Malaysia, Thailand and Singapore and are expected to contribute a significant share to overall Asia Pacific luxury products market for kids. Whereas, spending from China is expected to witness a fastest growth in Asia Pacific.It is predicted to boost the customer base and prominent contributor in the revenue of global luxury products market for kids.Moreover, presently North America and Western Europe dominate the total luxury products market for kids due to high purchasing power of consumers. These regions are expected to witness a slow growth as compared to the growth exhibited by countries in Asia Pacific.The key factors driving the growth of luxury products market for kids includes continuous innovation in products sub segments, rising disposable income, changing consumer lifestyle, awareness of products through internet and social media, improving countries economy, influence of the consumers through their peers, friends or neighbours, and others .However, there are some restraining factors which are affecting the growth for luxury products market for kids which include the expensive price range for consumers in emerging markets and less product variants availability across the distribution channel. Moreover, internet being a prominent medium for distribution of the luxury goods is expected to witness low adoption among the consumers in emerging markets. Thisis due to less internet penetration in these markets.Visit For TOC@Initially the market for luxury baby products was dominated by specialty retailers such as Childrens Place The Walt Disney Company, Mothercare plc, The Gymboree Corporation and others. However, with the increase in premium consumers leading to a shift in consumer buying behavior, due to this various companies have entered the market which includes GAPInc, J Crew Group, Inc, DKNY, Gucci Group, Diesel,Dolce &Gabbana, United Colors of Benetton, Jack & Jill clothing Inc,Giorgio Armani S.p.A, BLOCH, Burberry Group plc, Converse, Christian Dior S.A, FENDI and others.ABOUT US:Future Market Insights (FMI) is a leading market intelligence and consulting firm.We deliver syndicated research reports, custom research reports and consulting services, which are personalized in nature. FMI delivers a complete packaged solution, which combines current market intelligence, statistical anecdotes, technology inputs, valuable growth insights, an aerial view of the competitive framework, and future market trends.CONTACT:Future Market Insights616 Corporate Way, Suite 2-9018,Valley Cottage, NY 10989,United StatesT: +1-347-918-3531F: +1-845-579-5705Email: sales@futuremarketinsights.comWebsite: Europe Pediatric Proton Therapy Market & Forecast (6 Countries Market Data), Patients Treated, Reimbursement Policies https://www.marketresearchreports.biz/reports/1273818/europe-pediatric-proton-therapy-forecast-market-research-reports https://www.marketresearchreports.biz/sample/sample/1273818 http://www.marketresearchreports.biz/ "The Report Europe Pediatric Proton Therapy Market & Forecast (6 Countries Market Data), Patients Treated, Reimbursement Policies provides information on pricing, market analysis, shares, forecast, and company profiles for key industry participants. - MarketResearchReports.biz"Europe Pediatric Proton Therapy Market has a market potential close to US$ 150 Million by 2022. The rise of pediatric cancer incidence in Europe region and proton therapy gaining prominence and credibility among radiation oncologist will motivate the investor to invest in it. As of now, the pediatric proton therapy is in growing stage in European region. There are so many robust proton therapy center-building is happening across the Europe. United Kingdom is building six proton therapy alone to cater their pediatric cancer patients.Germany has the Highest Market Share in Pediatric Proton Therapy MarketGermany captures highest pediatric proton therapy market share as it has launched good number of advanced proton therapy center constantly in the year 2013, 2014 and 2015. France had maximum market share in 2010 but it lost its position and reached to fourth position in 2016. The report studies pediatric proton therapy market share of these 6 countries: France, Germany, Switzerland, Sweden, Czech Republic, United Kingdom.View Report @Rising Prevalence of Pediatric Cancer Patients and Technological Advancement will drive the Pediatric Proton Therapy Market in EuropeRising overall cancer diagnosed pediatric patients in Europe will enforce the several countries in Europe to develop proton therapy center according to demand. Technological up-gradation is playing very important role in driving pediatric proton therapy market in Europe. Advanced technology & multi-room trend will cater more patients than earlier.Europe Pediatric Proton Therapy Market & Forecast (6 Countries Market Data), Patients Treated, Reimbursement Policies is the 15th report published by Renub Research on Proton Therapy Market. This 108 page report with 71 figures and 4 Tables provides 6 Countries: Pediatric Proton Therapy Market, Proton Therapy Patient Numbers, Technology being used at these Proton Therapy Centers and Reimbursement Policies. The report also studies the Proton Therapy Sales & Forecast of four companies IBA, Varian Medical Systems, Mitsubishi, and Hitachi.Get Sample Copy Of This Report @Key Questions Answered in the Report?What is the Pediatric Proton Therapy Market in Europe and its growth potential in Future?How many pediatric patients treated by Proton Beam Therapy in Europe?What are the reimbursement policies for Proton Therapy across the Europe?What is the Pediatric Proton Therapy Market in Germany and its growth potential in Future?How many Pediatric Proton Therapy Patients treated in Germany and Forecast?What is the Pediatric Proton Therapy Market in France and its growth potential in Future?How many Pediatric Proton Therapy Patients treated in France and Forecast?What is the Pediatric Proton Therapy Market in Sweden and its growth potential in Future?How many Pediatric Proton Therapy Patients treated in Sweden and Forecast?What is the Pediatric Proton Therapy Market in Switzerland and its growth potential in Future?How many Pediatric Proton Therapy Patients treated in Switzerland and Forecast?What is the Pediatric Proton Therapy Market in Czech Republic and its growth potential in Future?How many Pediatric Proton Therapy Patients treated in Czech Republic and Forecast?What is the Pediatric Proton Therapy Market in United Kingdom and its growth potential in Future?How many Pediatric Proton Therapy Patients treated in United Kingdom and Forecast?What Type of Technology being used at Proton Therapy Centers?Key Companies Proton Therapy Sales & ForecastIBA Sales Analysis & Forecast (2010 2021)Varian Medical Systems Sales Analysis & Forecast (2010 2021)Mitsubishi - Sales Analysis & Forecast (2010 2021)Hitachi - Sales Analysis & Forecast (2010 2021)Six Countries Covered Under this ReportFranceGermanySwitzerlandSwedenCzech RepublicUnited KingdomAbout usMarketResearchReports.biz is the most comprehensive collection of market research reports. MarketResearchReports.Biz services are specially designed to save time and money for our clients. We are a one stop solution for all your research needs, our main offerings are syndicated research reports, custom research, subscription access and consulting services. We serve all sizes and types of companies spanning across various industries.State Tower90 Sate Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-621-2074Website:E: sales@marketresearchreports.biz Slip and Tier Sheets Market Explores New Growth Opportunities By 2025 http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/sample/sample.php?flag=B&rep_id=28904 http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/slip-tier-sheets-market.html http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com Slip and Tier Sheets Market OverviewFor the protection of the products during transportation or shipment, pallets are generally observed underlying the product. This absorbs the shock loads to some extent but the pallets consume a lot of space and excessive material is required for its manufacture. Moreover, separate handling of pallets is necessary due to its high weight. Wooden pallets are now being replaced by slip and tier sheets.These are sheets of thin material consuming very less space than pallets and weighing much lesser than pallets. Slip and tier sheets market is growing for transporting products within a facility or shipping offshores, by replacing pallets due to its various amazing properties and advantages over pallets. The slip and tier sheets market is greatly dependent on the transportation of medium and small sized products within a country or exports from a country.For more information on this report, fill the form @Slip and Tier Sheets Market DynamicsAlthough, both pallets and slip sheets are made up of paper, but the amount of material consumed by a pallet is around thirty times than that by one sheet. These sheets are also available with round or diagonal corners so as to protect the tertiary packaging from tearing. The slip and tier sheets market is also driven due to the fact that the sheets are generally made up of material like recyclable plastics or kraft paper which makes the sheets completely recyclable. The slip and tier sheets are provided with various coatings which adds on to its properties like anti-slip, slip assist, moisture barrier and many more. These can be used for more than one time and also, not subjected to phytosanitary restrictions.The slip and tier sheets market is greatly driven due to the fact that the sheets not only possess amazing properties but also much economical. Some of the reasons why slip and tier sheets market is has not vanished the wooden pallets is that, with the usage of sheets instead of pallets restricts the usage material handling equipment for bulky products. Also, the clearance provided by one sheet is much lesser than that provided by a pallet which indicates lesser protection from shock loads. Although, this problem can be compensated by usage of multiple sheets instead of one.Slip and Tier Sheets Market SegmentsThe slip and tier sheets market can be segmented by material type asKraft paperboardCorrugated fiberboardPlasticHigh-density polyethylene (HDPE)Polypropylene (PP)Obtain Report Details @The slip and tier sheets market can be segmented by number of lips asSingle lipMultiple lipThe slip and tier sheets market can be segmented by type of coating asAnti-slip coatingSlip-assistMoisture barrierGrease barrierWater-resistancePolyethyleneOther customized coatingSlip and Tier Sheets Market Regional OutlookDue to high demand of goods from China and Japan, the Pacific Asia is one of the leading region in exports followed by North America and then Western Europe. The exports from a country accounts for most of the demand for slip and tier sheets market in any region and thus, government regulations on import and export plays a major role in success of slip and tier sheets market. The higher importing countries also provides good market for slip and tier sheets as high import also demands huge warehousing facility. This leads to increase in demand for slip and tier sheets market for use in warehousing. USA leader in the world in importing and Canada is also a leading importer. Logistics performance index (LPI) is high for European countries, Germany is positioned first in LPI. This factor indicates the ease of transportation within a country. Thus, Europe has great opportunity for slip and tier sheets market as the countries are well developed and supports the logistics services.Slip and Tier Sheets Market Key PlayersSome of the key players of slip and tier sheets market areSpecialty Coating & Laminating llcKapStone Paper and Packaging CorporationContinental Paper & Plastics Corp.Dura-Fibre, LLC.CROWN PAPER CONVERTING INCOpprocon, IncFalcon Packaging & Converting Ltd.About TMRTMR is a global market intelligence company providing business information reports and services. The companys exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trend analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. TMRs experienced team of analysts, researchers, and consultants use proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather and analyze information.Contact TMR90 State Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-618-1030USA - Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite: Physician Office Laboratory (POL) Market Intelligence Study for Comprehensive Insights https://www.tmrresearch.com/sample/sample?flag=B&rep_id=102 https://www.tmrresearch.com/sample/sample?flag=B&rep_id=102 https://www.tmrresearch.com/sample/sample?flag=B&rep_id=102 Global Physician Office Laboratory (POL) Market: SnapshotThe global market for physician office laboratory (POL) has been expanding substantially over the last few years. Supported by the technological advancements, the market is likely to remain proliferating over the next few years. POL testing has its base in developed regions as emerging economies still rely on hospital infrastructure for the diagnosis of acute and chronic medical conditions. Developing regions, however, has been demonstrating a significant potential for decentralized testing, thanks to the rising support from nongovernmental organizations and the increasing number of public health programs, intended towards spreading awareness for high-burden diseases such as hepatitis, acquired immuno deficiency syndrome (AIDS), diabetes, and tuberculosis (TB).As of now, the substandard care present at primary care facilities and community health organizations in most of the emerging countries lead a number of patients to hospitals. However, the rise in the disposable income of people in these nations have encouraged leading healthcare providers to invest heavily in western style physician practices, leading to the installation of a large pool of physician office laboratories and clinics, especially in India and China.Request Sample Copy of the Report @Since POL testing is not prevalent globally, as its counterparts (hospital laboratories, commercial or private reference labs, and hospital POCT), its future growth is seemingly uneven. Also active restriction on specified services from physicians or healthcare professionals over the primary care visits in some countries may also reflect negatively on the growth of this market in the near future.Global Physician Office Laboratory (POL) Market: OverviewClinical and hospital laboratories presently account for a massive chunk of the total number of diagnostic, monitoring or screening tests undertaken across the globe. However, a constantly rising number of physicians and physician groups are preferring to undertake part or entire volumes of lab testing in-house as an excellent way of improving patient care and boosting their operative incomes. Such in-house lab practices are called physician office laboratory (POL). The term is diverse and covers physicians practices as small as 2 to 5 physicians to large practitioners with 200 or more physicians that operate labs similar to laboratories in small hospitals.Request TOC of the Report @In-house testing practices facilitate physicians to become self-reliant and obtain results in a much faster manner than possible in outsourced lab tests. POLs also reduce the chances of loss or deterioration of test samples, enhancing the confidence regarding the accuracy of results. Broadly, POL refers to tests performed in: physicians office, conducted at the same time of consultation or with other healthcare professional, wherein results are mostly provided during the medical visit itself, and are used for monitoring, screening or diagnosis purposes.This report on the global physician office laboratory market presents a thorough overview of the present growth dynamics of the market and its key segments. Several insightful projections regarding the growth trajectory of the market over the period between 2017 and 2025 are also included in the report. The report also includes a detailed analysis of factors such as growth drivers, restraints, regulatory scenario, competitive landscape, and trends and opportunities, expected to have a notable influence on the growth prospects of the market over the said period.Get a discount @Global Physician Office Laboratory (POL) Market: Drivers and RestraintsThe global POL market is chiefly driven by the vast advancements observed in the field of testing technologies and supporting instrument and equipment in the past few years. The emergence and easy availability of easy to use microelectronic and microfluidic instruments that offer excellent accuracy and control is making POL feasible for smaller offices and is also enabling some physicians to perform tests for other doctors.The demand for such in-house laboratories is also significantly rising globally owing to the rising prevalence of infectious and chronic diseases and associated public health issues. However, the cost of meeting compliance requirements for local, state, and federal regulations, especially in developed economies, may hamper the markets growth to some extent.Global Physician Office Laboratory (POL) Market: Geographical and Competitive DynamicsOn the basis of geography, the global physician office laboratory market is segmented into Asia Pacific, North America, Europe, and Rest of the World (RoW). Of these, North America and Europe are presently the leading contributors to the revenue of the global physician office laboratory market. In the North America, the number of POLs increased at a phenomenal rate from nearly 95,000 in 2000 to 111,000 in 2010. The number of POLs has also significantly in Europe over the said period. Across both the regions, the constantly rising number of POL tests approved by the respective healthcare authorities will help drive the POL market in the next few years as well.However, the POL market is expected to witness the most lucrative growth market across emerging economies in Asia Pacific in the next few years. Several factors, including the vast rise in prevalence of infectious diseases, the rising population of elderly, and a significant rise in focus on quality health care are expected to fuel the growth of the Asia Pacific POL market in the next few years.Some of the most influential companies in the global physician office laboratory market are Accriva Diagnostics, Akers Biosciences, Axis-Shield, Chembio Diagnostic Systems, Boule Diagnostics, Alfa Wassermann Diagnostic Technologies, Diazyme Laboratories, Polymer Technology Systems (CHEK Diagnostics), Carolina Liquid Chemistries Corp., 3D Medical Diagnostics, Magellan Diagnostics, Biomerica, Inc., Accumetrics, Vital Diagnostics, and Nanosphere, Inc.About TMR ResearchTMR Research is a premier provider of customized market research and consulting services to business entities keen on succeeding in todays supercharged economic climate. Armed with an experienced, dedicated, and dynamic team of analysts, we are redefining the way our clients conduct business by providing them with authoritative and trusted research studies in tune with the latest methodologies and market trends.Our savvy custom-built reports span a gamut of industries such as pharmaceuticals, chemicals and metals, food and beverages, and technology and media, among others. With actionable insights uncovered through in-depth researh of the market, we try to bring about game-changing success for our clients.Contact :Rohit BhiseyHead - Internet MarketingTel: +1-415-520-1050Email: sales@tmrresearch.com Food Safety Testing Services Market Analysis and Forecast Study for (2014-2020) http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/sample/rep-gb-257 http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/toc/rep-gb-257 www.futuremarketinsights.com Governments around the world have massively increased their focus on ensuring food safety. The threat of foodborne illnesses has led to stringent regulations from food testing authorities worldwide. The global food trade has increased manifold in the last decade or so, and manufacturers have become increasingly reliant on food testing mechanisms to ensure that they are following all the regulations and guidelines.The growth of the global food industry is dependent on fool-proof food testing mechanisms. Lack of proper food testing can increase the risk of food poisoning and other foodborne diseases. In the recent past, several incidents have happened wherein improper safety mechanisms have led to the outbreak of foodborne illnesses. The authorities in the developed world have enforced stringent quality checks on their food imports and many food products have been outrightly banned for failing to meet the safety guidelines. Increase in the focus on food safety has also led to product recalls from some of the leading names in the food industry.Request For Report Sample@Positive Outlook on the Global Food Safety Testing Services MarketThe global food safety testing services market is anticipated to expand at a steady rate through 2020. Growth in developed regions, such as North America and Western Europe, and stringent regulations on the quality of food exports in developing countries are projected to be the key drivers for the growth of this market. However, lack of proper testing mechanisms in developing economies can pose a challenge to the growth of the global food safety testing services market.Global Food Safety Testing Services Market: SegmentationThe global food safety testing services market is segmented into GMOs, pathogens, toxins, pesticides, and others. Food type segmentation includes fruit and vegetable, meat and poultry, convenience food, and others. Among these segments, the food safety testing services market for pathogens is anticipated to witness the fastest growth on account of rising number of foodborne outbreaks due to Salmonella. Other segments of the global food safety testing services market are also expected to witness steady growth during the forecast period.Key Regions for Food Safety Testing MarketNorth America is currently the dominant region of the global food safety testing services market, and it is expected to remain the key region through 2020. Stringent regulations on enforcing food safety guidelines in the U.S. And Canada have fueled the demand for the food safety testing services market in the region. The enaction of Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA) in the U.S. has augured well for the growth of the global food safety testing services market.Other key regions for the global food safety testing services market include Asia Pacific and Western Europe. It is anticipated that development of new food safety regulations will fuel the food safety testing services market in Asia Pacific in the next five years. It is anticipated that Asia Pacific's food safety testing services market will witness a very high growth rate in the next five years.Visit For TOC@Key Players for Food Safety Testing Services MarketSome of the leading names in the global food safety testing services market include SGS S.A. (Switzerland), Bureau Veritas S.A. (France), Lloyds Register Quality Assurance Ltd. (U.K.), and Intertek Group Plc. (U.K.)ABOUT US:Future Market Insights (FMI) is a leading market intelligence and consulting firm.We deliver syndicated research reports, custom research reports and consulting services, which are personalized in nature. FMI delivers a complete packaged solution, which combines current market intelligence, statistical anecdotes, technology inputs, valuable growth insights, an aerial view of the competitive framework, and future market trends.CONTACT:Future Market Insights616 Corporate Way, Suite 2-9018,Valley Cottage, NY 10989,United StatesT: +1-347-918-3531F: +1-845-579-5705Email: sales@futuremarketinsights.comWebsite: Zenith Plastic Cosmetic & Hair Transplant Centre Offers the Most Advanced Technique of Hair Transplant in Indore https://zenithplasticsurgery.in/ Zenith Plastic Cosmetic & Hair Transplant Centre is one of the most trusted hair transplant centres in Indore. They offer a world-renowned treatment for hair restoration and it has proved to be a huge success in Indore within a small span of time with hundreds of cases and still counting.Their exclusive patented technique is far more advanced than any other hair restoration technique available today. It is absolutely scar free and has maximum utilisation of the donor area. In this technique as the hair follicles are not touched by human hand the chances of infection or loss of follicle is nil. Hair restoration is a state of art surgery keeping in mind that the donor site has to be handled with utmost care and the hairline has to be designed like the natural hairline as far as possible. This procedure is a pain free procedure with no complications at all and one can resume his/her normal work next day. No stitches, no scalpel as they have now become outdated.The treatment has been developed, keeping in mind four important points Specialized Treatment No Pain or Scar Result oriented Natural effectThe whole treatment causes minimal trauma. It is seen that a huge number of female and male clients with pattern baldness, are undergoing hair transplant treatment which has saved them from so much social embarrassment and helped regain their self-esteem. After the procedure the support system of Zenith Plastic Cosmetic & Hair Transplantation Centre is on regular follow ups. Supposedly, after one year a client feels that the results are not up to his expectations or not on the lines as promised then after scrutiny by an expert committee the procedure is again done- free of charges with guaranteed results.If you are looking for reliable hair transplant in Indore, then you can feel free to visitor call them at 9826241007, 8224055822.Zenith Plastic & Cosmetic Surgery Center is run and managed by a team of two Plastic Surgeons Dr. Sumeet Jaiswal and Dr. Nishant Khare. They excel in all kinds of cosmetic and reconstructive surgery and aim at providing the best and reliable treatment. Zenith Plastic Surgery also provides Scar revision treatment, Tattoo removal treatment, Dimple creation, Vitiligo Surgery, Mommy makeover, Liposuction, Arm fit, Lip augmentation reduction, Breast augmentation, Burn reconstruction, Facial fracture, Hand deformity/ Extra finger, Hair removal and Acne scar treatment.203,Shekhar Central Near Sanghi Motors , Palasia Square, Indore (M.P.) 452001 Global Clove Essential Oil Industry Market Research Report 2017 http://www.qyresearchglobal.com/ http://www.qyresearchglobal.com/ http:///www.qyresearcheurope.com/ http://www.qyresearchjapan.com/ SummaryThe Global Clove Essential Oil Industry 2017 Market Research Report is a professional and in-depth study on the current state of the Clove Essential Oil industry.Firstly, the report provides a basic overview of the industry including definitions, classifications, applications and industry chain structure. The Clove Essential Oil market analysis is provided for the international market including development history, competitive landscape analysis, and major regions development status.Secondly, development policies and plans are discussed as well as manufacturing processes and cost structures. This report also states import/export, supply and consumption figures as well as cost, price, revenue and gross margin by regions (United States, EU, China and Japan), and other regions can be added.Then, the report focuses on global major leading industry players with information such as company profiles, product picture and specification, capacity, production, price, cost, revenue and contact information. Upstream raw materials, equipment and downstream consumers analysis is also carried out. Whats more, the Clove Essential Oil industry development trends and marketing channels are analyzed.Finally, the feasibility of new investment projects is assessed, and overall research conclusions are offered.In a word, the report provides major statistics on the state of the industry and is a valuable source of guidance and direction for companies and individuals interested in the market.Ask a sample or any question, please email to:hebe@qyresearchglobal.com or hebe@qyresearch.comThe players list(Partly, Players you are interested can also be added):Aura CaciaVan AromaIndia Essential OilsKanta GroupGivaudanManohar Botanical Extracts Pvt. LtdAOS ProductsAroma Aromatics & FlavoursSaipro Biotech Private LimitedNature's AlchemyEarths CareGreat American SpiceLorAnnHumcoRocky Mountain OilsOliveNationKey Topics Covered:Chapter One Industry Overview of Clove Essential OilChapter Two Manufacturing Cost Structure Analysis of Clove Essential OilChapter Three Technical Data and Manufacturing Plants Analysis of Clove Essential OilChapter Four Capacity, Production and Revenue Analysis of Clove Essential Oil by Regions, Types and ManufacturersChapter Five Price, Cost, Gross and Gross Margin Analysis of Clove Essential Oil by Regions, Types and ManufacturersChapter Six Consumption Volume, Consumption Value and Sale Price Analysis of Clove Essential Oil by Regions, Types and ApplicationsChapter Seven Supply, Import, Export and Consumption Analysis of Clove Essential OilChapter Eight Major Manufacturers Analysis of Clove Essential OilChapter Nine Marketing Trader or Distributor Analysis of Clove Essential OilChapter Ten Industry Chain Analysis of Clove Essential OilChapter Eleven Development Trend of Analysis of Clove Essential OilChapter Twelve New Project Investment Feasibility Analysis of Clove Essential OilChapter Thirteen Conclusion of the Global Clove Essential Oil Industry 2017 Market Research ReportRelated Reports:US Clove Essential Oil Industry Market Research Report 2017Europe Clove Essential Oil Industry Market Research Report 2017India Clove Essential Oil Industry Market Research Report 2017China Clove Essential Oil Industry Market Research Report 2017Korea Clove Essential Oil Industry Market Research Report 2017Japan Clove Essential Oil Industry Market Research Report 2017If you need a report or have any question, please feel free to contact meHebe | Sr. Manager Global SalesProfessional Market Research Report PublisherQYResearch Co.LtdQYResearch focus on Market Survey and ResearchPhone: +86-20-22093278Email: hebe@qyresearchglobal.com or hebe@qyresearch.comWeb:About QYResearchQYResearch established in 2007, focus on custom research, management consulting, IPO consulting, industry chain research, database and seminar services. the company owned a large basic database (such as National Bureau of statistics database, Customs import and export database, Industry Association Database etc), experts resources (included energy automotive chemical medical ICT consumer goods etc industries experts who own more than 10 years experiences on marketing or R&D), professional survey team (the team member with more than 3 years market survey experience and more than 2 years depth expert interview experience),Excellent data analysis team (SPSS statistics and PPT graphics process team); QYResearch has always pursuit product quality, adhere to the quality is the soul of business. Through the companys years of effort and a lot of customer support, QYResearch consulting group creative design method of many high-quality markets investigation and research team with rich experience. Today, QYResearch brand has become the consulting industry with quality assurance consulting brand. The company has 2500 global well-known customers, covering energy automobile pharmaceutical chemical agriculture more than 30 industries, services from the data analysis and recommendations-Consulting landing one-stop solution, and research regions cover China,US,EU,Asia,Middle East and Africa,South America,Australia,etc Global all regions,and also built research or marketing center in China USA UK France Hongkong etc regions. currently, QYResearch has become the first choice and worth trusted consulting brand in Global and China business consulting services.Media ContactCompany Name: QYResearch CO.,LIMITEDContact Person: HebeEmail: hebe@qyresearchglobal.comPhone: +86-20-22093278Address: Room 2311 VILI International Building No.167 Linhe West Road Tianhe DistrictCity: GuangzhouCountry: ChinaWebsite:(US) |(EU) |(JP) Network Function Virtualization Market Projected to Grow Steadily During (2014-2020) http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/sample/rep-gb-266 http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/toc/rep-gb-266 www.futuremarketinsights.com Network function virtualization (NFV) is the combination of software and hardware network featured in a virtual network. The service was initiated by service operators in order to increase the deployment of new operations, maintenance and service of networks. Network function virtualization catalyzes the major changes in implementation of network and their operations. The solution offered by network function virtualization projects a prominent future by optimizing the network operations and benefitting the service providers across the globe. Network function virtualization involves implementation of network functions in software suitable for different hardware and that can be moved to various locations without any need of installation of new equipments.The primary goals of network function virtualization are to reduce power consumption and reduce equipment cost, facilitate the accessibility of several applications on one single network appliances with multi tenancy and multi version capabilities. Network function virtualization reduces capital expenditure (CAPEX) and operational expenditure (OPEX). These networks support a dynamic ecosystem through the development and utilization of software solutions. All the benefits of FV are derived from use commercial off the shelf (COTS) hardware that can be purposed and repurposed for multiple telecom related services that currently use proprietary hardware. Network function virtualization adopts the concept of virtualization and providing the benefit to telecommunication application infrastructure. Network function visualization supports software defining network (SDN) by providing the infrastructure upon which SDN software can be run.Request For Report Sample@The market for network function virtualization is driven by several factors including increase in demand for data intensive applications and need of cloud based services. Over the past few years the mobile industry has witnessed exceptional demand for data intensive applications which further demands for enhanced network capacity to match the user requirement. The growth of market is hindered by factors such as delay in adoption of technology. Due to nascent stage of optimization solution, vendors need more opportunities to accomplish more target customers. One of the major trends in network function virtualization market is the increasing demand for virtual server access ports. The network function virtualization market across the globe is expected to show a substantial growth with a double digit increase in CAGR by the year 2019. The global market shows immense potential because of the presence of certain trends and due to the cost benefits and high flexibility provided by b the network solutions.The market for network function virtualization is segmented on the basis of applications and geography. On the basis of application the market for network function virtualization can be segmented into switching elements (Routers), traffic analysis, service assurance, next generation signaling, security function and others. The geographical analysis of the market is done on the basis of North America, Europe, Asia Pacific and Rest of World.Visit For TOC@Some of the major players in the market include Ericsson AB, Alcatel-Lucent SA, Huawei technologies Co. Ltd., 6Wind SA, Nokia Solutions and Network, Amdocs Inc., Connectem Inc., CIMI Corporation, ContexXtream Inc., Intel Corporation, F5 Network Inc., Juniper Network Inc., Open Wave Mobility Inc., NEC Inc., Oracle Corporation and Opera Software Asa among others.ABOUT US:Future Market Insights (FMI) is a leading market intelligence and consulting firm.We deliver syndicated research reports, custom research reports and consulting services, which are personalized in nature. FMI delivers a complete packaged solution, which combines current market intelligence, statistical anecdotes, technology inputs, valuable growth insights, an aerial view of the competitive framework, and future market trends.CONTACT:Future Market Insights616 Corporate Way, Suite 2-9018,Valley Cottage, NY 10989,United StatesT: +1-347-918-3531F: +1-845-579-5705Email: sales@futuremarketinsights.comWebsite: Italian Company Aurum Julii Brings 4.0 Technology to Saffron Farming The organic saffron producer presented its automation projects at the 3rd International Conference on 4th Industrial Revolution in Teheran.In the north-east corner of Italy, saffron producer Aurum Julii combines 4.0 technology and tradition to automate the farming process of one of the most labor-intensive crops. The company recently implemented a transplanting machine that is equipped with a hydraulic gear that can place saffron bulbs at a constant depth and with perfect alignment. Once it is fully automated, the transplanter (the first of its kind in Italy) will also be able to collect bulbs directly from a container, thereby optimizing land use and dramatically reducing the time and manual intervention needed.To extend automation even further, Aurum Julii is currently working with the Polytechnic University of Turin and the University of Cagliari on a harvesting robot and a fluid power system that separates petals from pistils and stigmas."The time is right for saffron to embrace new technologies, just like grapevine and corn did before it," said Aurum Julii's president Luigi Campello. Our goal is to reduce the labor and stress of the operators and obtain the purest quality saffron, while respecting the natural growing process of the crop.In July, Aurum Julii took part in the 3rd International Conference on Fourth Industrial Revolution in Teheran, where Mr. Campello presented the company's four projects currently under development: an automatic seeder, an innovative process for cutting and harvesting flowers, a fluid power system that separates the stigmas from the rest of the flowers, and a desiccating oven that is specifically designed for saffron.Currently, 90% of saffron worldwide comes from Iran, where the spice is part of the cultural heritage and a common subject of scientific research.Iran is the undisputed leader of the saffron industry, so it was a great honor for us to be there, said Aurum Julii's CEO Andrea Finco. The most exciting part was to discover how growers from all around the world share a common desire to deliver a superior quality product and understand that technology plays a crucial role in it."ABOUT AURUM JULIIAurum Julii produces premium quality organic saffron for the B2B and B2C markets and is based in the north-east Italian region of Friuli Venezia Giulia. Ever since it was established in 2015, Aurum Julii's mission has been to apply 4.0 technology to scale saffron production while maintaining very high-quality standards. The company is currently working on various projects and partnerships for fostering innovation and increasing consumer awareness about the benefits of the spice.Aurumjulii iSrl Societa AgricolaVia Roveredo 20/b33170 PordenoneFrancesca OrlandoMarketing and Communications managerfrancesca.orlando@aurumjulii.comPhone: +39 0434 507564 Advanced Technologies : Power Rental Market in Americas Grow at a CAGR of 3.40% by 2021 http://www.researchmoz.us/enquiry.php?type=S&repid=1067079 http://www.researchmoz.us/enquiry.php?type=E&repid=1067079 http://www.researchmoz.us/power-rental-market-in-americas-2017-2021-report.html http://bit.ly/1TBmnVG https://marketinfo247.wordpress.com/ Albany, New York, August 3, 2017 : Recent research and the current scenario as well as future market potential of "Power Rental Market in Americas 2017-2021" globally.Rental power is used to meet peak load demands, base load supply, or is used as a standby. The need to provide uninterrupted power is a major factor driving the growth of the power rental market; as using power rentals is more economical than maintaining a reserve plant, the demand for rental power has risen over time. Power rental equipment provides essential support to businesses and consumers during power outages. Diesel and gas generators are common forms of this equipment. It can also be used as a base load or as a standby application, depending on industry needs.Get PDF for more Professional and Technical insights @Technavios analysts forecast the power rental market in Americas to grow at a CAGR of 3.40% during the period 2017-2021.Covered in this reportThe report covers the present scenario and the growth prospects of the power rental market in Americas for 2017-2021. To calculate the market size, the report presents a detailed picture of the market by way of study, synthesis, and summation of data from multiple sources.Technavio's report, Power Rental Market in Americas 2017-2021, has been prepared based on an in-depth market analysis with inputs from industry experts. The report covers the market landscape and its growth prospects over the coming years. The report also includes a discussion of the key vendors operating in this market.Key vendorsAggrekoAPR EnergyAtlas CopcoEnergystUnited RentalsMake an Enquiry about TOC @Other prominent vendorsCumminsDoosan Portable PowerGenerac Power SystemsHerc RentalsHIMOINSAJCBKohlerMultiquipSunbelt RentalsWacker NeusonMarket driverIncreasing need for backup power.For a full, detailed list, view our reportMarket challengeRise in distributed energy and microgrids to improve grid flexibility.For a full, detailed list, view our reportMarket trendShift in manufacturing base.For a full, detailed list, view our reportKey questions answered in this reportWhat will the market size be in 2021 and what will the growth rate be?What are the key market trends?What is driving this market?What are the challenges to market growth?Who are the key vendors in this market space?What are the market opportunities and threats faced by the key vendors?What are the strengths and weaknesses of the key vendors?Browse Full Report @ResearchMoz is the one stop online destination to find and buy market research reports & Industry Analysis. We fulfill all your research needs spanning across industry verticals with our huge collection of market research reports. We provide our services to all sizes of organizations and across all industry verticals and markets. Our Research Coordinators have in-depth knowledge of reports as well as publishers and will assist you in making an informed decision by giving you unbiased and deep insights on which reports will satisfy your needs at the best price.ResearchMozMr. Nachiket Ghumare,90 State Street, Albany NY, United States - 12207Tel: +1-518-621-2074USA-Canada Toll Free: 866-997-4948Email: sales@researchmoz.usFollow us on LinkedIn @Follow me on : Global Smart Agriculture Industry Research Report 2017-2025 The Insight Partners http://www.theinsightpartners.com/sample/TIPTE100000318 http://www.theinsightpartners.com/buy/TIPTE100000318 http://www.theinsightpartners.com/inquiry/TIPTE100000318 http://www.theinsightpartners.com/reports/smart-agriculture-market Smart agriculture can be defined as an application of new generation techniques into the traditional agriculture practices. AGCO Corporation, Ag Junction Inc., AG Leader Technology and Deere & Company are among the major players operating in this market. APAC is largest adopter of smart agriculture system, followed by Europe, while Middle East & Africa region with rising adoption of digital farming methods is anticipated to be one of the most promising region in terms of smart agriculture market. Global smart agriculture market is expected to grow from US$ 11.30 billion in 2016 to US$ 30.01 billion by 2025 at a CAGR of 11.5% between 2017 and 2025.Request Sample is Available atThe report focuses on an in-depth segmentation of this market based by Product type, and application. The geographic segmentation of the report covers six major regions including; North Americas, Europe, Asia-Pacific (APAC), Middle East and Africa (MEA) and South America (SA). The regional market has been further bifurcated by respective countries. By end-user segment professional sector accounted for the largest share of the smart agriculture market in 2016; whereas, Asia Pacific region is expected to grow at the highest CAGR during the forecast period.Place a Direct Purchase Order atThe report aims to provide an overview of global smart agriculture market with detailed market segmentation. Also, it analyzes the current smart agriculture market scenario and forecasts the market till 2025. The report covers market dynamics effecting the market during the forecast period. Furthermore, the report analyzes the competitive scenario, geographic trends, and opportunities in the markets with respect to all geographic regions. The report also includes the detailed company profiles of the key players in the market along with their market strategies. The report also provide PEST analysis of all five regions along with the SWOT analysis for all company profiled in the report.Inquire before Buying atAsia Pacific is one of the prominent regions in smart agriculture market which will contribute highest revenue globally due to technological developments and considerable application of smart agriculture solutions. Rapidly growing economies in Asia-Pacific (APAC) with significant growth construction sector will pave the path for increasing adoption and propel the market for smart agriculture market. The APAC region is also expected to lead the market with highest CAGR during the forecast period. Some of the key players of smart agriculture market include AGCO Corporation, Ag Junction Inc., AG Leader Technology, Deere & Company, Raven Industries, Inc., Semiosbio Technologies Inc., SST Development Group, Inc., Teejet Technologies, Topcon Precision Agriculture and Trimble Navigation Limited, among others.Complete Report is Available atContact Us:Call: +1-646-491-9876Email: sales@theinsightpartners.comAbout Us:The Insight Partners is a one stop industry research provider of actionable intelligence. We help our clients in getting solutions to their research requirements through our syndicated and consulting research services. We are a specialist in Technology, Media, and Telecommunication industries.505, 6th floor, Amanora Township,Amanora Chambers, East Block,Kharadi Road, Hadapsar, Pune-411028 Flavored Cigar Market: Technological Breakthroughs, Value chain and Stakeholder Analysis http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/sample/sample.php?flag=B&rep_id=28682 http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/flavored-cigar-market.html Flavored cigars are tightly rolled bundles of fermented and dried tobacco leaves with added flavors. Such cigars are rolled in different sizes, which are ignited so that the smoke can be drawn into the mouth. Recently, tobacco manufacturers have increased the production of flavored cigars such as fruit, alcohol, and candy-flavored cigars. Cigars are lended a flavor to reduce the unpleasant taste and smell associated with them. Flavored cigars also prevent concerns and complaints from non-smokers about smokers. Manufacturers are consistently upgrading their products by modifying flavors which are found to be more acceptable among consumers recently. Experimentation with new flavors has resulted in easier smoking, by masking the irritation on the airways, thereby preventing the smoker from coughing. Additives that are used in flavored cigars reduce the discomfort in smoking. Subsequently, smokers dont experience the early warnings of respiratory disorders and upper airway irritation. Recently, tobacco manufacturers witnessed a rapid rise in demand for chocolate-, vanillin-, and licorice-flavored cigars.Download Research Brochure For More Information@The global flavored cigar market has been segmented on the basis of flavor and product. In terms of flavor, the flavored cigar market can be segmented into alcohol-flavored cigar, non-alcohol flavored cigar, and fruit-flavored cigar. Fruit-flavored cigar has been further sub-segmented into banana, grape, mango, raspberry, and others. Alcohol-flavored cigars can be further sub-segmented into whisky, tequila, and others. In terms of product, the flavored cigar market can be segmented into machine-made flavored cigars and handmade flavored cigars. The machine-made flavored cigar segment is estimated to dominate the global market due to their easy availability, low cost, and rising preference of young consumers toward different flavors.The global flavored cigars are primarily driven by the rise in demand for fusion-flavored cigars among consumers. Major players of flavored cigar are engaged in continuous innovation of products in order to attract new consumers. However, strict regulations upon several ingredients in flavored cigar by governments across the globe and imposition of taxes are restraining the global flavored cigar market. Such regulations are prominent in Australia and the U.S. where the sale of fruit-flavored and confectionery-flavored cigars are banned in order to maintain social welfare. Additionally, gifting flavored cigars is considered as a new trend among young consumers. This is anticipated to generate opportunities for the global flavored cigar market during the forecast period.In terms of region, the global flavored cigar market can be segmented into North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Middle East & Africa, and Latin America. North America is estimated to dominate the global flavored cigar market due to rising demand for flavored cigars among young consumers. Previously, in Canada, there was a rise in demand for rum or sweet wine flavored cigars. Recent demand survey recorded a rise in demand for vanilla, mint, and chocolate roasted honey. It has also been recorded that two major manufacturers of cigars in Canada introduced methanol-based cigars, which has witnessed a major rise in demand recently. Asia Pacific, which includes China, India, Japan, and Australia, is anticipated to expand rapidly during the forecast period due to the introduction of different flavored cigars and changing lifestyle among the population. Moreover, recently, women have taken up smoking, and this is projected to fuel the global cigar market during the forecast period.Browse Report@Owing to the presence of large number of flavored cigar manufacturers across the globe, the global flavored cigar market is competitive in nature. The global flavored cigar market is fragmented in nature, and it consists of several small and large vendors. Key players operating in the global flavored cigar market include General Cigar, Drew Estate, Gurkha cigars, Imperial tobacco, Miami cigar, Arnold Andre, and Avanti cigar.About Us:-Transparency Market Research (TMR) is a next-generation provider of syndicated research, customized research, and consulting services. TMRs global and regional market intelligence coverage includes industries such as pharmaceutical, chemicals and materials, technology and media, food and beverages, and consumer goods, among others. Each TMR research report provides clients with a 360-degree view of the market with statistical forecasts, competitive landscape, detailed segmentation, key trends, and strategic recommendations.Contact Us:-State Tower,90 State Street,Suite 700,Albany NY - 12207United StatesTel: +1-518-618-1030Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.com JUNEAU A 28-year-old Beaver Dam woman was sentenced to six years in prison on drug charges in Dodge County Circuit Court on Wednesday. Lacreshia L.A. Lightfoot appeared before Circuit Court Judge Martin De Vries, who sentenced Lightfoot to six years in prison and six years of extended sentence, as well as an additional five years of probation for her role in a local drug ring. Ms. Lightfoot is heavily involved in the sale of controlled substances, De Vries said. She was the central figure in the drug sales in the community. There are times when a non-violent crime does more harm than a violent crime. Lightfoot, described by prosecutors as the central figure in a large-scale, organized drug distribution ring operating in the city of Beaver Dam, was convicted in April of two counts of delivery of cocaine and two counts of delivery of heroin in 2016. Confidential informants made purchases from Lightfoot and her associates, with Lightfoots cellphone used in most of the drug buys. Lightfoot employed drug deliverers or runners to deliver the heroin and cocaine to help conceal her identity. Dodge County District Attorney Kurt Klomberg told the court at Wednesdays sentencing that this is organized crime. The defendant was the head of an organization selling heroin and cocaine. The defendant was sophisticated enough to design and run an operation where getting drugs was as easy and convenient as ordering a pizza, Klomberg said. The business ran so well, it operated even when she was gone out of state. Klomberg praised the coordinated efforts of the Drug County Drug Task Force, Beaver Dam Police Department and Wisconsin Department of Criminal Investigation in breaking up the drug ring. The defendant... ran an operation where getting drugs was as easy and convenient as ordering a pizza. Dodge County District Attorney Kurt Klomberg 2025 Green Data Center Market Analysis and Forecast Report The Insight Partners http://www.theinsightpartners.com/sample/TIPTE100000260 http://www.theinsightpartners.com/inquiry/TIPTE100000260 http://www.theinsightpartners.com/reports/green-data-center-market Global Green Data Center Market Analysis to 2025 is a specialized and in-depth study of the Green Data Center industry with a focus on the global market trend. 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It also provides market size and forecast till 2025 for overall Green Data Center market with respect to five major regions, namely; North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific (APAC), Middle East and Africa (MEA) and South America (SAM), which is later sub-segmented by respective countries and segments. The report evaluates market dynamics effecting the market during the forecast period i.e., drivers, restraints, opportunities, and future trend and provides exhaustive PEST analysis for all five regions.Inquire before Buying atAlso, key Green Data Center market players influencing the market are profiled in the study along with their SWOT analysis and market strategies. The report also focuses on leading industry players with information such as company profiles, products and services offered, financial information of last 3 years, key development in past five years.Reason to Buy- Highlights key business priorities in order to assist companies to realign their business strategies.- The key findings and recommendations highlight crucial progressive industry trends in the Green Data Center market, thereby allowing players to develop effective long term strategies.- Develop/modify business expansion plans by using substantial growth offering developed and emerging markets.- Scrutinize in-depth global market trends and outlook coupled with the factors driving the market, as well as those hindering it.- Enhance the decision-making process by understanding the strategies that underpin commercial interest with respect to products, segmentation and industry verticals.View Complete Report atContact Us:Call: +1-646-491-9876Email: sales@theinsightpartners.comAbout Us:The Insight Partners is a one stop industry research provider of actionable intelligence. We help our clients in getting solutions to their research requirements through our syndicated and consulting research services. We are a specialist in Technology, Media, and Telecommunication industries.505, 6th floor, Amanora Township,Amanora Chambers, East Block,Kharadi Road, Hadapsar, Pune-411028 Smart Workplace Market Size, Share, Trends, Analysis and Forecast Report 2017-2025 The Insight Partners http://www.theinsightpartners.com/sample/TIPTE100000294 http://www.theinsightpartners.com/inquiry/TIPTE100000294 http://www.theinsightpartners.com/reports/smart-workplace-market According to The Insight Partners, Global Smart Workplace Market Analysis to 2025 is a specialized and in-depth study of the Smart Workplace industry with a focus on the global market trend. The report aims to provide an overview of global Smart Workplace market with detailed market segmentation by product/application and geography. The global Smart Workplace market is expected to witness high growth during the forecast period. The report provides key statistics on the market status of the Smart Workplace players and offers key trends and opportunities in the market.Request a Sample Report atSmart Workplace Market Players:- ABB Ltd.- ATOSS Software AG- Crestron Electronics, Inc.- CISCO Systems, Inc.- Johnson Controls Inc.- Honeywell International Inc.- Kronos Incorporated- Reflexis Systems, Inc.- Schneider Electric SE- Siemens AGThe report provides a detailed overview of the industry including both qualitative and quantitative information. It provides overview and forecast of the global Smart Workplace market based on product and application. It also provides market size and forecast till 2025 for overall Smart Workplace market with respect to five major regions, namely; North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific (APAC), Middle East and Africa (MEA) and South America (SAM), which is later sub-segmented by respective countries and segments. The report evaluates market dynamics effecting the market during the forecast period i.e., drivers, restraints, opportunities, and future trend and provides exhaustive PEST analysis for all five regions.Inquire before Buying atAlso, key Smart Workplace market players influencing the market are profiled in the study along with their SWOT analysis and market strategies. The report also focuses on leading industry players with information such as company profiles, products and services offered, financial information of last 3 years, key development in past five years.Reason to Buy- Highlights key business priorities in order to assist companies to realign their business strategies.- The key findings and recommendations highlight crucial progressive industry trends in the Smart Workplace market, thereby allowing players to develop effective long term strategies.- Develop/modify business expansion plans by using substantial growth offering developed and emerging markets.- Scrutinize in-depth global market trends and outlook coupled with the factors driving the market, as well as those hindering it.- Enhance the decision-making process by understanding the strategies that underpin commercial interest with respect to products, segmentation and industry verticals.View Complete Report atContact Us:Call: +1-646-491-9876Email: sales@theinsightpartners.comAbout Us:The Insight Partners is a one stop industry research provider of actionable intelligence. We help our clients in getting solutions to their research requirements through our syndicated and consulting research services. We are a specialist in Technology, Media, and Telecommunication industries.505, 6th floor, Amanora Township,Amanora Chambers, East Block,Kharadi Road, Hadapsar, Pune-411028 2025 E-Paper Display Market Report - Research, Competitive Analysis, Key Manufacturers and Development The Insight Partners http://www.theinsightpartners.com/sample/TIPTE100000284 http://www.theinsightpartners.com/inquiry/TIPTE100000284 http://www.theinsightpartners.com/reports/e-paper-display-market According to The Insight Partners, Global E-Paper Display Market Analysis to 2025 is a specialized and in-depth study of the E-Paper Display industry with a focus on the global market trend. The report aims to provide an overview of global E-Paper Display market with detailed market segmentation by product/application and geography. The global E-Paper Display market is expected to witness high growth during the forecast period. The report provides key statistics on the market status of the E-Paper Display players and offers key trends and opportunities in the market.Request a Sample Report atE-Paper Display Market Players:- E-Ink Holdings- Corning Display Technologies- Dai Nippon Printing- Delta Electronics- LG- Liquavista- NEC- Pixel Qi- Samsung- Seiko EpsonThe report provides a detailed overview of the industry including both qualitative and quantitative information. It provides overview and forecast of the global E-Paper Display market based on product and application. It also provides market size and forecast till 2025 for overall E-Paper Display market with respect to five major regions, namely; North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific (APAC), Middle East and Africa (MEA) and South America (SAM), which is later sub-segmented by respective countries and segments. The report evaluates market dynamics effecting the market during the forecast period i.e., drivers, restraints, opportunities, and future trend and provides exhaustive PEST analysis for all five regions.Inquire before Buying atAlso, key E-Paper Display market players influencing the market are profiled in the study along with their SWOT analysis and market strategies. The report also focuses on leading industry players with information such as company profiles, products and services offered, financial information of last 3 years, key development in past five years.Reason to Buy- Highlights key business priorities in order to assist companies to realign their business strategies.- The key findings and recommendations highlight crucial progressive industry trends in the E-Paper Display market, thereby allowing players to develop effective long term strategies.- Develop/modify business expansion plans by using substantial growth offering developed and emerging markets.- Scrutinize in-depth global market trends and outlook coupled with the factors driving the market, as well as those hindering it.- Enhance the decision-making process by understanding the strategies that underpin commercial interest with respect to products, segmentation and industry verticals.View Complete Report atContact Us:Call: +1-646-491-9876Email: sales@theinsightpartners.comAbout Us:The Insight Partners is a one stop industry research provider of actionable intelligence. We help our clients in getting solutions to their research requirements through our syndicated and consulting research services. We are a specialist in Technology, Media, and Telecommunication industries.505, 6th floor, Amanora Township,Amanora Chambers, East Block,Kharadi Road, Hadapsar, Pune-411028 Global 360 Degree Cameras Market Professional Survey Report 2017 - Samsung, Ricoh, Nikon, Canon & Nokia http://www.researchmoz.us/enquiry.php?type=S&repid=1221251 http://www.researchmoz.us/enquiry.php?type=E&repid=1221251 http://www.researchmoz.us/global-360-degree-cameras-market-professional-survey-report-2017-report.html http://bit.ly/1TBmnVG https://marketinfo247.wordpress.com/ Albany, New York, August 3, 2017 : Recent research and the current scenario as well as future market potential of " Worldwide Technology of 360 Degree Cameras Market in Global Industry 2017 " globally.This report studies 360 Degree Cameras in Global market, especially in North America, China, Europe, Southeast Asia, Japan and India, with production, revenue, consumption, import and export in these regions, from 2012 to 2016, and forecast to 2022.This report focuses on top manufacturers in global market, with production, price, revenue and market share for each manufacturer, coveringSamsungRicohNikonCanonNokiaSONYGet PDF for more Professional and Technical insights @BublcamPanonoTeche360flye-filmingInsta360Guopai TechnologyBy types, the market can be split intoIndustrial CameraCommercial CameraBy Application, the market can be split intoTraffic MonitoringGrid LayoutAerial SceneryOthersBy Regions, this report covers (we can add the regions/countries as you want)North AmericaChinaEuropeSoutheast AsiaJapanIndiaMake an Enquiry about TOC @Table of Contents1 Industry Overview of 360 Degree Cameras1.1 Definition and Specifications of 360 Degree Cameras1.1.1 Definition of 360 Degree Cameras1.1.2 Specifications of 360 Degree Cameras1.2 Classification of 360 Degree Cameras1.2.1 Industrial Camera1.2.2 Commercial Camera1.3 Applications of 360 Degree Cameras1.3.1 Traffic Monitoring1.3.2 Grid Layout1.3.3 Aerial Scenery1.3.4 Others1.4 Market Segment by Regions1.4.1 North America1.4.2 China1.4.3 Europe1.4.4 Southeast Asia1.4.5 Japan1.4.6 India2 Manufacturing Cost Structure Analysis of 360 Degree Cameras2.1 Raw Material and Suppliers2.2 Manufacturing Cost Structure Analysis of 360 Degree Cameras2.3 Manufacturing Process Analysis of 360 Degree Cameras2.4 Industry Chain Structure of 360 Degree Cameras3 Technical Data and Manufacturing Plants Analysis of 360 Degree Cameras3.1 Capacity and Commercial Production Date of Global 360 Degree Cameras Major Manufacturers in 20163.2 Manufacturing Plants Distribution of Global 360 Degree Cameras Major Manufacturers in 20163.3 R&D Status and Technology Source of Global 360 Degree Cameras Major Manufacturers in 20163.4 Raw Materials Sources Analysis of Global 360 Degree Cameras Major Manufacturers in 20164 Global 360 Degree Cameras Overall Market Overview4.1 2012-2017E Overall Market Analysis4.2 Capacity Analysis4.2.1 2012-2017E Global 360 Degree Cameras Capacity and Growth Rate Analysis4.2.2 2016 360 Degree Cameras Capacity Analysis (Company Segment)4.3 Sales Analysis4.3.1 2012-2017E Global 360 Degree Cameras Sales and Growth Rate Analysis4.3.2 2016 360 Degree Cameras Sales Analysis (Company Segment)4.4 Sales Price Analysis4.4.1 2012-2017E Global 360 Degree Cameras Sales Price4.4.2 2016 360 Degree Cameras Sales Price Analysis (Company Segment)Browse Full Report @ResearchMoz is the one stop online destination to find and buy market research reports & Industry Analysis. We fulfill all your research needs spanning across industry verticals with our huge collection of market research reports. We provide our services to all sizes of organizations and across all industry verticals and markets. Our Research Coordinators have in-depth knowledge of reports as well as publishers and will assist you in making an informed decision by giving you unbiased and deep insights on which reports will satisfy your needs at the best price.ResearchMozMr. Nachiket Ghumare,90 State Street, Albany NY, United States - 12207Tel: +1-518-621-2074USA-Canada Toll Free: 866-997-4948Email: sales@researchmoz.usFollow us on LinkedIn @Follow me on : Spout Bag Market Dynamics 2017: Opportunities, Risks and Driving Factors to 2022 Reports Monitor https://www.reportsmonitor.com/request-sample/?post=253374 https://www.reportsmonitor.com/global-spout-bag-market-research-report-2017-2/ http://www.reportsmonitor.com ReportsMonitor.com has added a new report to its database Global Spout Bag Market Report 2017.This report identifies the Spout Bag market size for the years 2012-2017, and forecast of the same till the year 2022. It also highlights the market drivers, restraints, growth indicators, challenges, and other key aspects with respect to the Spout Bag market.Spout Bag Market tracks the major market events including product launches, technological developments, mergers and acquisitions, and the innovative business strategies opted by key market players. Along with strategically analyzing the key micro markets, the report also focuses on industry-specific drivers, restraints, opportunities and challenges in the Copper Strips market. This research report offers in-depth analysis of the market size (revenue), market share, major market segments, and different geographic regions, forecast for the next five years, key market players, and premium industry trends. It also focuses on the key drivers, restraints, opportunities and challenges.For Requesting a Sample Copy of This Report, Please Visit @This report focuses on top manufacturers in global market, with production, price, revenue and market share for each manufacturer, coveringAmcor Ltd.Bemis Company Inc.Berry Plastic CorporationBischof & Klein GmbH & Co. KGCoating Excellence InternationalEssentra PLCHOD Packaging and enterprises Ltd.Mondi GroupPrintpack Inc.ProAmpacSealed Air CorporationSmurfit Kappa GroupSonoco Products CompanyDOW Chemical CompanyWinpak LtdThe competitive landscape of the global market for Spout Bag is determined by evaluating the various market participants, production capacity, Spout Bag markets production chain, and the revenue generated by each manufacturer in the Spout Bag market worldwide.This report segments the Spout Bag marketAluminium FoilKraft PaperPlasticOtherOn the basis of application:Food & BeveragesChemical & MaterialConsumer GoodsOtherFor comprehensive understanding of market dynamics, the Spout Bag market is analyzed across key geographies namely:North AmericaEuropeChinaJapanSoutheast AsiaIndiaEach of these regions is analyzed on basis of market findings across major countries in these regions for a macro-level understanding of the market.Browse Full Table of Contents and Report Description @Some points from TOC:Global Spout Bag Market Research Report 20171 Spout Bag Market Overview1.1 Product Overview and Scope of Spout Bag1.2 Spout Bag Segment by Type (Product Category)10 Marketing Strategy Analysis, Distributors/Traders10.1 Marketing Channel10.1.1 Direct Marketing10.1.2 Indirect Marketing10.1.3 Marketing Channel Development Trend10.2 Market Positioning10.2.1 Pricing Strategy10.2.2 Brand Strategy10.2.3 Target Client10.3 Distributors/Traders List11 Market Effect Factors Analysis11.1 Technology Progress/Risk11.1.1 Substitutes ThreatReports Monitor (ReportsMonitor.com) is a platform to meet the market research and business intelligence requirements. Our aim is to change the dynamics of the Market Research industry by providing quality intelligence backed by data. Your requirement for market forecasting is fulfilled by our exclusive quantitative and analytics driven intelligence. We have a vast collection of reports, covering maximum industries worldwide. Our process is meticulously planned and executed in order to use maximum resources and explore the market for getting genuine insights. Decision makers can now rely on our distinct data gathering methods to get factual market forecasting and detailed analysis.008, Mihir Co-operative,Above Bharat Suzuki showroom,Fatima Nagar,Pune,Maharashtra,IndiaIndia: +91 2069535353Jay MatthewsDirect: +1 513 549-5911Email: sales@reportsmonitor.comWebsite: Global Aircraft Systems Market Professional Survey Report 2017 - GE, Rolls-Royce, Safran & Raytheon http://www.researchmoz.us/enquiry.php?type=S&repid=1221253 http://www.researchmoz.us/enquiry.php?type=E&repid=1221253 http://www.researchmoz.us/global-aircraft-systems-market-professional-survey-report-2017-report.html http://bit.ly/1TBmnVG https://marketinfo247.wordpress.com/ Albany, New York, August 3, 2017 : Recent research and the current scenario as well as future market potential of " Global Aircraft Systems Industry : Insights, Development, Research and Forecast 2017-2022 " globally.This report studies Aircraft Systems in Global market, especially in North America, China, Europe, Southeast Asia, Japan and India, with production, revenue, consumption, import and export in these regions, from 2012 to 2016, and forecast to 2022.Get PDF for more Professional and Technical insights @This report focuses on top manufacturers in global market, with production, price, revenue and market share for each manufacturer, coveringGERolls-RoycePratt & WhitneySafranRaytheonHoneywellNorthrop GrummanTHALESRockwell CollinsUTASGifasParkerAlcatel Alenia Space (THALES)Liebherr GroupBy types, the market can be split intoElectromechanical SystemAvionics SystemEngine Control SystemBy Application, the market can be split intoMilitaryCommercialOtherBy Regions, this report covers (we can add the regions/countries as you want)North AmericaChinaEuropeSoutheast AsiaJapanIndiaTable of Contents1 Industry Overview of Aircraft Systems1.1 Definition and Specifications of Aircraft Systems1.1.1 Definition of Aircraft Systems1.1.2 Specifications of Aircraft Systems1.2 Classification of Aircraft Systems1.2.1 Electromechanical System1.2.2 Avionics System1.2.3 Engine Control System1.3 Applications of Aircraft Systems1.3.1 Military1.3.2 Commercial1.3.3 Other1.4 Market Segment by Regions1.4.1 North America1.4.2 China1.4.3 Europe1.4.4 Southeast Asia1.4.5 Japan1.4.6 IndiaMake an Enquiry about TOC @2 Manufacturing Cost Structure Analysis of Aircraft Systems2.1 Raw Material and Suppliers2.2 Manufacturing Cost Structure Analysis of Aircraft Systems2.3 Manufacturing Process Analysis of Aircraft Systems2.4 Industry Chain Structure of Aircraft Systems3 Technical Data and Manufacturing Plants Analysis of Aircraft Systems3.1 Capacity and Commercial Production Date of Global Aircraft Systems Major Manufacturers in 20163.2 Manufacturing Plants Distribution of Global Aircraft Systems Major Manufacturers in 20163.3 R&D Status and Technology Source of Global Aircraft Systems Major Manufacturers in 20163.4 Raw Materials Sources Analysis of Global Aircraft Systems Major Manufacturers in 2016Browse Full Report @4 Global Aircraft Systems Overall Market Overview4.1 2012-2017E Overall Market Analysis4.2 Capacity Analysis4.2.1 2012-2017E Global Aircraft Systems Capacity and Growth Rate Analysis4.2.2 2016 Aircraft Systems Capacity Analysis (Company Segment)4.3 Sales Analysis4.3.1 2012-2017E Global Aircraft Systems Sales and Growth Rate Analysis4.3.2 2016 Aircraft Systems Sales Analysis (Company Segment)4.4 Sales Price Analysis4.4.1 2012-2017E Global Aircraft Systems Sales Price4.4.2 2016 Aircraft Systems Sales Price Analysis (Company Segment)ResearchMoz is the one stop online destination to find and buy market research reports & Industry Analysis. We fulfill all your research needs spanning across industry verticals with our huge collection of market research reports. We provide our services to all sizes of organizations and across all industry verticals and markets. Our Research Coordinators have in-depth knowledge of reports as well as publishers and will assist you in making an informed decision by giving you unbiased and deep insights on which reports will satisfy your needs at the best price.ResearchMozMr. Nachiket Ghumare,90 State Street, Albany NY, United States - 12207Tel: +1-518-621-2074USA-Canada Toll Free: 866-997-4948Email: sales@researchmoz.usFollow us on LinkedIn @Follow me on : Non-Invasive Brain Trauma Monitoring Devices Market to Develop Rapidly by 2020 http://www.persistencemarketresearch.com/market-research/non-invasive-brain-trauma-monitoring-devices-market.asp http://www.persistencemarketresearch.com/samples/3269 http://www.persistencemarketresearch.com/toc/3269 http://www.persistencemarketresearch.com Neurological devices industry is growing at a significant rate due to increase in the prevalence of neurological injuries and diseases. Neurological devices may be invasive in nature such as intracranial pressure monitors, which are used in serious cases. Non-invasive brain trauma monitoring devices refer to the devices that help to monitor neural and electrical activity and pressure enclosing the brain. In case of brain death, trauma brain injury, epilepsy and other such conditions, non-invasive brain trauma monitoring devices help to analyze the rate of flow of blood in arteries and veins in the brain. Non-invasive brain trauma monitoring devices market is growing at a significant rate due to increasing awareness and improvement in healthcare facilities. In addition, non-invasive brain trauma monitoring devices have made it possible for neurologists to measure brain health without being invasive. Non-invasive brain trauma monitoring devices help to get results fast and safely. In addition, they are easy to use and give accurate results.To View Complete Report @ :North America dominates the global market for non-invasive brain trauma monitoring devices due high incidence of brain disorders and technological advancements in the region. Europe, followed by the Asia, is expected to show high growth rates in the next five years in global non-invasive brain trauma monitoring devices market. China and India are expected to be the fastest growing non-invasive brain trauma monitoring devices markets in Asian region. Some of the key driving forces for non-invasive brain trauma monitoring devices market in emerging countries are large pool of patients, rising government funding and increasing R&D investment.A sample of this report is available upon request @Factors such as growing incidence of diseases, technological advancement and increasing awareness of neurological disorders and their treatment have been driving the non-invasive brain trauma monitoring devices market. In addition, lower costs as compared to invasive procedures, no requirement of operation and small size of devices have been driving the non-invasive brain trauma monitoring devices market. However, stringent government regulations in some countries and lack of experience medical professionals have been restraining the non-invasive brain trauma monitoring devices market.To view TOC of this report is available upon request @Standardization in the procedure for brain monitoring, increasing number of clinical trials for neuro-cognitive diseases are expected to offer good opportunity for non-invasive brain trauma monitoring devices market. Some of the recent trends that have been observed in the non-invasive brain trauma monitoring devices market include companies involved in partnerships and collaborations. In addition, companies are focussing on production of digitalized devices such as mobile devices and wireless technology for easy and fast processing. Some of the major companies dealing in non-invasive brain trauma monitoring devices market are Covidien, PLC, Compumedics, Ltd., Natus Medical, Inc., Nihon Kohden Corporation, Integra Life Sciences Corporation, CAS Medical Systems, and Advanced Brain Monitoring Inc. and others.About UsPersistence Market Research (PMR) is a third-platform research firm. Our research model is a unique collaboration of data analytics and market research methodology to help businesses achieve optimal performance.To support companies in overcoming complex business challenges, we follow a multi-disciplinary approach. At PMR, we unite various data streams from multi-dimensional sources. By deploying real-time data collection, big data, and customer experience analytics, we deliver business intelligence for organizations of all sizes.Contact UsPersistence Market Research305 Broadway7th Floor, New York City,NY 10007, United States,USA Canada Toll Free: 800-961-0353Email: sales@persistencemarketresearch.comWeb: Peak Flow Meter Market grows with high geriatric population with respiratory illness http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/peak-flow-meter-market.html http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/sample/sample.php?flag=B&rep_id=28229 http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/ Peak flow meter is a thermometer-like device for asthma patients. The device is used to measure the lungs function in the body. Peak flow meter is a portable device that measures the air flow or peak expiratory flow rate (PEFR) to determine the severity of asthma, monitor the treatment of chronic asthma, and provide information for any changes. 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Growth in medication alternatives and funding from the associations (such as: the Global Alliance against Chronic Respiratory Diseases (GARD) association contributes to World Health Organization to work on prevention of diseases in order to prevent and control chronic respiratory diseases) is likely to fuel the overall peak flow meter market. High cost of treatment and innovation in drugs and devices such as inhalers are expected to hamper the growth of the peak flow meter market.Obtain Report Details:The global peak flow meter market has been segmented based on product type, application, end-user, and region. In terms of product type, the market has been classified into low range meter and high range meter. The low range meter segment has been sub-segmented into Mini-Wright meters and assess meter. The high range meter segment has been categorized into Pulmo-graph meter and Wright Pocket meter. Based on application, the global peak flow meter market has been segmented into asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, and others. Asthma is a rapidly growing application segment because of increasing prevalence and incidence of respiratory diseases globally. According to the WHO, asthma accounted for an estimated 383,000 deaths in 2015. In terms of end-user, the peak flow meter market has been categorized into diagnostic laboratories, life sciences, and research & development. Geographically, the market has been segmented into North America, Latin America, Europe, Asia Pacific, and Middle East & Africa.North America dominates the global peak flow meter market due to high incidence of asthma, patient awareness, and high per capita health care expenditure. Early-phase diagnosis and treatment of disease are driving the medical biotechnology market which in turn is expected to augment the peak flow meter market in North America. According to the Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America, around 24 million people in the U.S. are affected with asthma, making it as one of the most common and costly disease in the region. Europe is the second largest market for peak flow meter due to favorable government policies regarding health care infrastructure and awareness programs. Rise in climatic changes which affect the geriatric population and childrens health causing asthma, common flu, etc. is also likely to propel the peak flow meter market in Europe region. The market in Asia Pacific is expected to grow at higher rate due to rising population, increase in mortality rate for asthma, changing lifestyle, rising awareness among patients, and increasing per capita expenditure. These factors contribute to the growth of the peak flow meter market in Asia Pacific.Fill the form for an exclusive sample of this report:Major players operating in the global peak flow meter market include Medline Industries, Inc., Becton, Dickinson and Company, Siemens Process Instrumentation, Hoffer Flow Controls, Inc., Esko Industries Limited, John C. Ernst Co., Inc., JSB Healthcare, and Koninklijke Philips N.V. among others.The report offers a comprehensive evaluation of the market. It does so via in-depth qualitative insights, historical data, and verifiable projections about market size. The projections featured in the report have been derived using proven research methodologies and assumptions. By doing so, the research report serves as a repository of analysis and information for every facet of the market, including but not limited to: Regional markets, technology, types, and applications.Transparency Market Research (TMR) is a U.S.-based provider of syndicated research, customized research, and consulting services. TMRs global and regional market intelligence coverage includes industries such as pharmaceutical, chemicals and materials, technology and media, food and beverages, and consumer goods, among others. Each TMR research report provides clients with a 360-degree view of the market with statistical forecasts, competitive landscape, detailed segmentation, key trends, and strategic recommendations.Contact us:Transparency Market Research90 State Street,Suite 700,AlbanyNY - 12207United StatesTel: +1-518-618-1030USA - Canada Toll Free 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite: Insurance Company Profile: Vitality https://www.marketresearchreports.biz/sample/sample/1256651 Insurance Company Profile: VitalitySummary"Insurance Company Profile: Vitality", company profile provides a comprehensive review of Vitality and its UK business. 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Our document database is updated by the hour, which means that you always have access to fresh data spanning over 300 industries and their sub-segments.State Tower90 State Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207United StatesToll Free: 866-997-4948(USA-Canada)Tel: +1-518-621-2074E: sales@marketresearchreports.biz Spectrophotometers Market Size 2017 Systonic, Spectral Evolution, Jena, Shimadzu, Thermo Fisher Spectrophotometers http://bit.ly/2w8UnVx http://www.spiremarketresearch.com/global-spectrophotometers-market-2017-demand-insights-key-players-segmentation-and-forecast-to-2022 Spectrophotometers Market Research 2017A market study Global Spectrophotometers Market examines the performance of the Spectrophotometers market 2017. It encloses an in-depth Research of the Spectrophotometers market state and the competitive landscape globally. 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We are as a firm expertise in making extensive reports that cover all the necessary details about the market assessments such as major technological improvement in the industry.Contact Us5001 Spring Valley Road,Suite 400 East,Dallas, TX 75244, USA 3D Hologram Projector Market Worldwide Revenue, Type, Analysis and Forecast To 2021 ReportsWeb http://www.reportsweb.com/inquiry&RW0001589395/sample http://www.reportsweb.com/world-3d-hologram-projector-market-research-report-2021 http://www.reportsweb.com/inquiry&RW0001589395/buying Publisher's 3D Hologram Projector market research report provides the newest industry data and industry future trends, allowing you to identify the products and end users driving revenue growth and profitability.The industry report lists the leading competitors and provides the insights strategic industry analysis of the key factors influencing the market.Global 3D Hologram Projector Market: Application Segment AnalysisThe players mentioned in our reportHEREHOLOCUBEChristie Digital SystemsPanasonic360BrandVisionHologram GeneratorParadigmThree D Holograms Pvt. 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We help our clients in their decision support system by helping them choose most relevant and cost effective research reports and solutions from various publishers. We provide best in class customer service and our customer support team is always available to help you on your research queries.505, 6th floor, Amanora Township,Amanora Chambers, East Block,Kharadi Road, Hadapsar, Pune-411028 Oil Mist Collectors Market Size 2017 Sulzer Chemtech, MAHLE Industry, Facet Engineering, VACUUBRAND Oil Mist Collectors http://bit.ly/2vkTZpf http://www.spiremarketresearch.com/global-oil-mist-collectors-market-2017-demand-insights-key-players-segmentation-and-forecast-to-2022 Oil Mist Collectors Market Research 2017A market study Global Oil Mist Collectors Market examines the performance of the Oil Mist Collectors market 2017. It encloses an in-depth Research of the Oil Mist Collectors market state and the competitive landscape globally. 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We are as a firm expertise in making extensive reports that cover all the necessary details about the market assessments such as major technological improvement in the industry.Contact Us5001 Spring Valley Road,Suite 400 East,Dallas, TX 75244, USA Austenite Steel Market research Report showing Compound annual growth rate and forecast till 2022 Reports Monitor https://www.reportsmonitor.com/request-sample/?post=253417 https://www.reportsmonitor.com/global-austenite-steel-market-research-report-2017/ http://www.reportsmonitor.com ReportsMonitor.com has added a new report to its database Global Austenite Steel Market Report 2017.This report identifies the Austenite Steel market size for the years 2012-2017, and forecast of the same till the year 2022. 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It also focuses on the key drivers, restraints, opportunities and challenges.For Requesting a Sample Copy of This Report, Please Visit @This report focuses on top manufacturers in global market, with production, price, revenue and market share for each manufacturer, coveringPenn Stainless Products Inc U.SSandvik Sweden?AK Steel Holding U.SAcciaierie Valbruna ItalyRolled Alloys U.SOutokumpu Finland?Nippon Steel & Sumitomo MetalPOSCO KoreaThe competitive landscape of the global market for Austenite Steel is determined by evaluating the various market participants, production capacity, Austenite Steel markets production chain, and the revenue generated by each manufacturer in the Austenite Steel market worldwide.This report segments the Austenite Steel market304 Type310 Type321 TypeOn the basis of application:IndustrialAerospaceMedical CareAutomobileOthersFor comprehensive understanding of market dynamics, the Austenite Steel market is analyzed across key geographies namely:North AmericaEuropeChinaJapanSoutheast AsiaIndiaEach of these regions is analyzed on basis of market findings across major countries in these regions for a macro-level understanding of the market.Browse Full Table of Contents and Report Description @Some points from TOC:Global Austenite Steel Market Research Report 20178 Austenite Steel Manufacturing Cost Analysis8.1 Austenite Steel Key Raw Materials Analysis8.1.1 Key Raw Materials8.1.2 Price Trend of Key Raw Materials8.1.3 Key Suppliers of Raw Materials8.1.4 Market Concentration Rate of Raw Materials8.2 Proportion of Manufacturing Cost Structure8.2.1 Raw Materials8.2.2 Labor Cost8.2.3 Manufacturing Expenses8.3 Manufacturing Process Analysis of Austenite Steel9 Industrial Chain, Sourcing Strategy and Downstream Buyers9.1 Austenite Steel Industrial Chain Analysis9.2 Upstream Raw Materials Sourcing9.3 Raw Materials Sources of Austenite Steel Major Manufacturers in 20159.4 Downstream BuyersReports Monitor (ReportsMonitor.com) is a platform to meet the market research and business intelligence requirements. Our aim is to change the dynamics of the Market Research industry by providing quality intelligence backed by data. Your requirement for market forecasting is fulfilled by our exclusive quantitative and analytics driven intelligence. We have a vast collection of reports, covering maximum industries worldwide. Our process is meticulously planned and executed in order to use maximum resources and explore the market for getting genuine insights. Decision makers can now rely on our distinct data gathering methods to get factual market forecasting and detailed analysis.008, Mihir Co-operative,Above Bharat Suzuki showroom,Fatima Nagar,Pune,Maharashtra,IndiaIndia: +91 2069535353Jay MatthewsDirect: +1 513 549-5911Email: sales@reportsmonitor.comWebsite: Embedded Multi Media Card (EMMC) Market by Manufacturers, Countries, Type and Application - Global Forecast to 2022 https://www.htfmarketreport.com/sample-report/621123-global-embedded-multi-media-card-10 https://www.htfmarketreport.com/buy-now?format=1&report=621123 https://www.htfmarketreport.com/request-discount/621123-global-embedded-multi-media-card-10 A new research document with title 'Global Embedded Multi Media Card (EMMC) Market by Manufacturers, Countries, Type and Application, Forecast to 2022' covering detailed analysis, Competitive landscape, forecast and strategies. The study covers geographic analysis that includes regions like United States, Europe, China, Japan, India, Southeast Asia and important players/vendors such as Phison, Samsung Electronics, SanDisk, Silicon Motion, SK hynix ................The report will help user gain market insights, future trends and growth prospects for forecast period of 2022Summary""An embedded MultiMediaCard (eMMC) is a small storage device made up of NAND flash memory and a simple storage controller. The eMMC standard for embedded flash memory applications was developed in 2006 by JEDEC and the MultiMediaCard Association.An eMMC acts as the primary storage for portable devices like cell phones or tablets, which can augment that storage with a removable Secure Digital card or microSD multimedia card. It is the sole storage for very small sensors connected to IoT. The connection to the main board of the device is parallel, but the latest eMMC specification (version 5.1) allows for a transfer rate up to 400 megabytes per second (MBps), which is comparable to a solid-state drive using a SATA connection.""Request a sample report @Scope of the Report:This report focuses on the Embedded Multi Media Card (EMMC) in Global market, especially in North America, Europe and Asia-Pacific, South America, Middle East and Africa. This report categorizes the market based on manufacturers, regions, type and application.Market Segment by Manufacturers, this report coversGreenliantKingstonPhisonSamsung ElectronicsSanDiskSilicon MotionSK hynixToshibaMicronMarket Segment by Regions, regional analysis coversNorth America (USA, Canada and Mexico)Europe (Germany, France, UK, Russia and Italy)Asia-Pacific (China, Japan, Korea, India and Southeast Asia)South America (Brazil, Argentina, Columbia etc.)Middle East and Africa (Saudi Arabia, UAE, Egypt, Nigeria and South Africa)Market Segment by Type, covers16G and Below32-64G128G and AboveMarket Segment by Applications, can be divided intoAutomotiveSmart PhoneDigital CamerasTablet PCsSmart TVsOthersBuy this report @There are 15 Chapters to deeply display the global Embedded Multi Media Card (EMMC) market.Chapter 1, to describe Embedded Multi Media Card (EMMC) Introduction, product scope, market overview, market opportunities, market risk, market driving force;Chapter 2, to analyze the top manufacturers of Embedded Multi Media Card (EMMC), with sales, revenue, and price of Embedded Multi Media Card (EMMC), in 2016 and 2017;Chapter 3, to display the competitive situation among the top manufacturers, with sales, revenue and market share in 2016 and 2017;Chapter 4, to show the global market by regions, with sales, revenue and market share of Embedded Multi Media Card (EMMC), for each region, from 2012 to 2017;Chapter 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9, to analyze the key regions, with sales, revenue and market share by key countries in these regions;Chapter 10 and 11, to show the market by type and application, with sales market share and growth rate by type, application, from 2012 to 2017;Chapter 12, Embedded Multi Media Card (EMMC) market forecast, by regions, type and application, with sales and revenue, from 2017 to 2022;Chapter 13, 14 and 15, to describe Embedded Multi Media Card (EMMC) sales channel, distributors, traders, dealers, Research Findings and Conclusion, appendix and data sourceGet customization & check discount for report @Thanks for reading this article, you can also get individual chapter wise section or region wise report version like North America, Europe or Asia.HTF Market Report is a wholly owned brand of HTF market Intelligence Consulting Private Limited. HTF Market Report global research and market intelligence consulting organization is uniquely positioned to not only identify growth opportunities but to also empower and inspire you to create visionary growth strategies for futures, enabled by our extraordinary depth and breadth of thought leadership, research, tools, events and experience that assist you for making goals into a reality. Our understanding of the interplay between industry convergence, Mega Trends, technologies and market trends provides our clients with new business models and expansion opportunities. We are focused on identifying the Accurate Forecast in every industry we cover so our clients can reap the benefits of being early market entrants and can accomplish their Goals & Objectives.Contact us :Nidhi Bhavsar (PR & Marketing Manager)HTF Market Intelligence Consulting Private LimitedUnit No. 429, Parsonage Road Edison, NJNew Jersey USA 08837sales@htfmarketreport.com+1 (206) 317 1218 Molecular Weight Marker Market driven by increased public sector funding for basic research in biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/molecular-weight-marker-market.html http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/sample/sample.php?flag=B&rep_id=28196 http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/ A molecular weight marker is used during electrophoresis on the gel, to identify the approximate size of the molecule. On the gel matrix, the principle used to identify the molecular weight is that the migration rate is inversely proportional to the molecular weight. Therefore, the effective logarithmic scale formed on the gel is used to estimate the size and weight of the unknown protein or DNA or RNA, provided that the molecular weight of the marker is already known. Molecular weight markers can run on either polyacrylamide gel or agarose gel. Before the commencement of the gel electrophoresis, the molecular weight markers are loaded in the lane adjacent to the sample lane, for easy determination of the weight and size of the unknown samples like RNA or DNA or protein.Obtain Report Details:The major drivers for the global molecular weight marker market are increasing number of biotechnology patents and the expenses on research and development. Also, increased public sector funding for basic research in biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies is anticipated to drive the demand for molecular weight markers significantly. There is remarkable opportunity for the molecular weight markers market as biotechnology laboratories, life science & pharmaceutical companies and other end users are constantly utilizing separation and analysis technology. Currently, there are cutting edge expansions of profiling applications which are expected to continuously boost demand for molecular weight markers. Genomics application is augmenting the growth of the global molecular weight marker market.Based on product type, the market for molecular weight markers can be segmented as RNA markers, protein markers, and DNA markers. The largest share of the market is held by the segment of DNA markers. Based on application type, the market can be segmented into nucleic acid applications and protein applications. Nucleic acid applications can further be classified as northern blotting, polymerase chain reaction (PCR), molecular cloning, southern blotting, sequencing and others. Protein applications can further be classified as gel extraction, Western blotting and others. The segment of protein applications is expected to expand during the forecast period 2017 to 2025, while a larger share of the market is held by the nucleic acid applications segment. Based on end user type, the market for molecular weight markers can be segmented into clinical research organizations, pharmaceutical companies, academic institutes, and others.Fill the form for an exclusive sample of this report:Geographically, the market for global molecular weight markers can be segmented into Asia Pacific, North America, Europe, Latin America and the Middle East & Africa. North America holds the largest share in the global molecular weight marker market. In 2012, North America accounted for around 40% of global research and development expenses. Asia Pacific countries have represented significant increase in the percentage expenditure on development and research & specifically on molecular biology from 2012 onwards. In the coming years, Asia Pacific is expected to grow at the fastest growth rate as it accounted for 30% of the global research and development expenses in 2012.Globally, the leading companies in the market of molecular weight markers are Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc., F Hoffmann-La Roche AG, Sigma-Aldrich, Agilent Technologies, QIAGEN, Affymetrix, Inc., Bio-Rad Laboratories, Takara Bio Inc., New England Biolabs, and Promega Corporation among others. The growth of the market for molecular weight markers is driven by partnerships between biotechnology companies, pharmaceutical companies, and academic research institutes.The report offers a comprehensive evaluation of the market. It does so via in-depth qualitative insights, historical data, and verifiable projections about market size. The projections featured in the report have been derived using proven research methodologies and assumptions. By doing so, the research report serves as a repository of analysis and information for every facet of the market, including but not limited to: Regional markets, technology, types, and applications.Transparency Market Research (TMR) is a U.S.-based provider of syndicated research, customized research, and consulting services. TMRs global and regional market intelligence coverage includes industries such as pharmaceutical, chemicals and materials, technology and media, food and beverages, and consumer goods, among others. Each TMR research report provides clients with a 360-degree view of the market with statistical forecasts, competitive landscape, detailed segmentation, key trends, and strategic recommendations.Contact us:Transparency Market Research90 State Street,Suite 700,AlbanyNY - 12207United StatesTel: +1-518-618-1030USA - Canada Toll Free 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite: MicroRNA Tools and Services Market to Develop Rapidly by 2020 http://www.persistencemarketresearch.com/market-research/microrna-tools-services-market.asp http://www.persistencemarketresearch.com/samples/3276 http://www.persistencemarketresearch.com/toc/3276 http://www.persistencemarketresearch.com Molecular diagnostics is a vast field that comprises of techniques and methods to analyze biomarkers in genetic code. It helps in encoding genomes and proteomes that are required for studying and detecting the disease, and thus help in deciding the best therapy for an individual. MicroRNA tools and services market is experiencing a significant growth due to increased R&D and rising government initiatives in this field. MicroRNA tools market is further segmented into quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction (qRT-PCR), microarrays, and functional tools. Of which, qRT-PCR segments remains the largest and the fastest growing segment. MicroRNA services market is further segmented into phenotypic analysis and expression profiling and analysis.To View Complete Report @ :North America dominates the global microRNA tools and services market due to increased government initiatives and broad technical applications of microRNA tools and services in the region. Europe, followed by Asia, is expected to experience high growth rate in the next few years in global microRNA tools and services market. China and India are expected to be the fastest growing microRNA tools and services market in Asian region. This is due to increased investments from foreign companies in these countries. Some of the key driving forces for microRNA tools and services market in emerging countries are increasing R&D investment, improved healthcare facilities and rising government funding.A sample of this report is available upon request @Various factors such as growing awareness about microRNA technology, increasing government initiatives and accuracy of the results obtained have been driving the microRNA tools and services market. In addition, increased funding from various government and non-government organizations and increased availability of this technology has been driving the microRNA tools and services market. However, high cost involved and lack of experienced professionals has been restraining the growth of microRNA tools and services market.To view TOC of this report is available upon request @Increased R&D and innovation of some new technology with better efficiency is expected to offer good opportunity for microRNA tools and services market. In addition, emerging markets hold a great potential for growth microRNA tools and services market. Some of the latest trends that have been observed in microRNA tools and services market are companies involved in partnerships and collaboration for R&D of novel products. Some of the major companies dealing in microRNA tools and services market include Qiagen, Life Technologies, Exiqon, GeneCopoeia, Inc and Mirus Bio. Some other companies dealing in microRNA tools and services market include Biomatik, Asurgen, Inc and Cell Biolabs Inc.About UsPersistence Market Research (PMR) is a third-platform research firm. Our research model is a unique collaboration of data analytics and market research methodology to help businesses achieve optimal performance.To support companies in overcoming complex business challenges, we follow a multi-disciplinary approach. At PMR, we unite various data streams from multi-dimensional sources. By deploying real-time data collection, big data, and customer experience analytics, we deliver business intelligence for organizations of all sizes.Contact UsPersistence Market Research305 Broadway7th Floor, New York City,NY 10007, United States,USA Canada Toll Free: 800-961-0353Email: sales@persistencemarketresearch.comWeb: Latest Research on Latex Sealant Henkel, 3M, ITW, PPG, H.B. Fuller with Cost Structure, Type, Application, Supply, Europe Market Forecast to 2022 https://www.htfmarketreport.com/sample-report/622868-europe-latex-sealant-market https://www.htfmarketreport.com/request-discount/622868-europe-latex-sealant-market https://www.htfmarketreport.com/reports/622868-europe-latex-sealant-market https://www.htfmarketreport.com/buy-now?format=1&report=622868 A new research document with title 'Europe Latex Sealant Market by Manufacturers, Countries, Type and Application, Forecast to 2022 covering detailed analysis, Competitive landscape, forecast and strategies. The study covers geographic analysis that includes regions like Germany, UK, France, Russia, Italy and important players/vendors such as Henkel, 3M, ITW, PPG, H.B. Fuller The report will help user gain market insights, future trends and growth prospects for forecast period of 2017-22SummarySealant is a substance used to block the passage of fluids through the surface or joints or openings in materials, a type of mechanical seal. In building construction sealant is sometimes synonymous with caulking and also serve the purposes of blocking dust, sound and heat transmission. Sealants may be weak or strong, flexible or rigid, permanent or temporary. Sealants are not adhesives but some have adhesive qualities and are called adhesive-sealants or structural sealants.Request a sample report @Scope of the Report:This report focuses on the Latex Sealant in Europe market, especially in Germany, UK, France, Russia, and Italy. This report categorizes the market based on manufacturers, countries, type and application.Market Segment by Manufacturers, this report coversHenkel3MITWPPGH.B. FullerDOW CORNINGBostikSikaRPM INTERNATIONAL INC.Premier Building SolutionsMarket Segment by Countries, coveringGermanyUKFranceRussiaItalyMarket Segment by Type, coversAcrylic Latex SealantEVA Latex SealantOthersMarket Segment by Applications, can be divided intoCommercial BuildingFamily HouseOtherThere are 17 Chapters to deeply display the Europe Latex Sealant market.Chapter 1, to describe Latex Sealant Introduction, product type and application, market overview, market analysis by countries, market opportunities, market risk, market driving force;Chapter 2, to analyze the manufacturers of Latex Sealant, with profile, main business, news, sales, price, revenue and market share in 2016 and 2017;Get customization & check discount for report @Chapter 3, to display the competitive situation among the top manufacturers in Europe, with sales, revenue and market share in 2016 and 2017;Chapter 4, to show the Europe market by countries, covering Germany, UK, France, Italy and Russia, with sales, price, revenue and market share of Latex Sealant, for each country, from 2012 to 2017;Chapter 5 and 6, to show the market by type and application, with sales, price, revenue, market share and growth rate by type and application, from 2012 to 2017;Chapter 7, 8, 9, 10 and 11, to analyze the key countries by manufacturers, Type and Application, covering Germany, UK, France, Italy and Russia, with sales, revenue and market share by manufacturers, types and applications;Chapter 12, Latex Sealant market forecast, by countries, type and application, with sales, price, revenue and growth rate forecast, from 2017 to 2022;View Detailed Table of Content @Chapter 13, to analyze the manufacturing cost, key raw materials and manufacturing process etc.Chapter 14, to analyze the industrial chain, sourcing strategy and downstream end users (buyers);Chapter 15, to describe Latex Sealant sales channel, distributors, traders, dealers etc.Chapter 16 and 17, to describe Latex Sealant Research Findings and Conclusion, Appendix, methodology and data sourceThanks for reading this article, you can also get individual chapter wise section or region wise report version like North America, Europe or Asia.Buy this report @Contact Us:CRAIG FRANCIS (PR & Marketing Manager)sales@htfmarketreport.comPh: +1 (206) 317 1218HTF Market Report is a wholly owned brand of HTF market Intelligence Consulting Private Limited. HTF Market Report global research and market intelligence consulting organization is uniquely positioned to not only identify growth opportunities but to also empower and inspire you to create visionary growth strategies for futures, enabled by our extraordinary depth and breadth of thought leadership, research, tools, events and experience that assist you for making goals into a reality. Our understanding of the interplay between industry convergence, Mega Trends, technologies and market trends provides our clients with new business models and expansion opportunities. We are focused on identifying the Accurate Forecast in every industry we cover so our clients can reap the benefits of being early market entrants and can accomplish their Goals & Objectives.Contact us :HTF Market Intelligence Consulting Private LimitedUnit No. 429, Parsonage Road Edison, NJNew Jersey USA 08837sales@htfmarketreport.com+1 (206) 317 1218 Inflammatory Bowel Disease Drugs Market Size 2017 Celltrion, Genentech, Novartis, Abbvie, Pfizer, Shire Inflammatory Bowel Disease Drugs http://bit.ly/2vkP0VJ http://www.spiremarketresearch.com/global-inflammatory-bowel-disease-drugs-market-2017-demand-insights-key-players-segmentation-and-forecast-to-2022 Inflammatory Bowel Disease Drugs Market Research 2017A market study Global Inflammatory Bowel Disease Drugs Market examines the performance of the Inflammatory Bowel Disease Drugs market 2017. It encloses an in-depth Research of the Inflammatory Bowel Disease Drugs market state and the competitive landscape globally. This report analyzes the potential of Inflammatory Bowel Disease Drugs market in the present and the future prospects from various angles in detail.The Global Inflammatory Bowel Disease Drugs Market 2017 report includes Inflammatory Bowel Disease Drugs market Revenue, market Share, Inflammatory Bowel Disease Drugs industry volume, market Trends, Inflammatory Bowel Disease Drugs Growth aspects. A wide range of applications, Utilization ratio, Supply and demand analysis are also consist in the report.It shows manufacturing capacity, Inflammatory Bowel Disease Drugs Price during the Forecast period from 2017 to 2022.To Get Sample Report Click Here:Manufacturers Analysis and Top Sellers of Global Inflammatory Bowel Disease Drugs Market 2017 :AbbvieBiogen IdecJanssen PharmaceuticalsMerckNovartisShireUCBPfizerAmgenAkebia TherapeuticsBoehringer IngelheimCelltrionChemoCentryxFerring PharmaceuticalsGalapagosGenentechMitsubishi TanabeNovo NordiskSalix PharmaceuticalsInflammatory Bowel Disease Drugs Market : By ApplicationHospitalClinicInflammatory Bowel Disease Drugs Market : By TypeOralParenteralFirstly, the report covers the top Inflammatory Bowel Disease Drugs manufacturing industry players from regions like United States, EU, Japan, and China. It also characterizes the market based on geological regions.Further, the Inflammatory Bowel Disease Drugs report gives information on the company profile, market share and contact details along with value chain analysis of Inflammatory Bowel Disease Drugs industry, Inflammatory Bowel Disease Drugs industry rules and policies, circumstances driving the growth of the market and compulsion blocking the growth. Inflammatory Bowel Disease Drugs Market development scope and various business strategies are also mentioned in this report.Browse Full Report Here:The Inflammatory Bowel Disease Drugs research report includes the products that are currently in demand and available in the market along with their cost breakup, manufacturing volume, import/export scheme and contribution to the Inflammatory Bowel Disease Drugs market revenue worldwide.Finally, Inflammatory Bowel Disease Drugs market report gives you details about the market research findings and conclusion which helps you to develop profitable market strategies to gain competitive advantage.About Us:"Spire Market Research" is a leading market intelligence team which accredits and provides the reports of some of the top publishers in the field of technology industry. We are as a firm expertise in making extensive reports that cover all the necessary details about the market assessments such as major technological improvement in the industry.Contact Us5001 Spring Valley Road,Suite 400 East,Dallas, TX 75244, USA Nuclear Control Rods Market: Global Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends and Forecast, 2017 - 2021 Market Research Report http://www.researchmoz.us/enquiry.php?type=S&repid=1067046 http://www.researchmoz.us/global-nuclear-control-rods-market-2017-2021-report.html http://www.researchmoz.us/ http://bit.ly/1TBmnVG Researchmoz added Most up-to-date research on "Nuclear Control Rods Market: Global Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends and Forecast, 2017 - 2021" to its huge collection of research reports.The global nuclear control rods market is expected to grow at steady pace, with support from government policies and the increase in investments by developing countries in nuclear energy to generate electricity. A nuclear reactor is defined as the structure in which fissile material undergoes controlled, self-sustaining nuclear reaction, with the simultaneous release of energy, which is used to generate electricity. The working of a nuclear reactor is a complex process and requires a high level of expertise. The reactions inside the nuclear reactor are powerful and produce radioactive radiation, which, if released, can be hazardous to all life forms and the environment.Technavios analysts forecast the global nuclear control rods market to grow at a CAGR of 2.11% during the period 2017-2021.Covered in this reportThe report covers the present scenario and the growth prospects of the global nuclear control rods market for 2017-2021. To calculate the market size, the report presents a detailed picture of the market by way of study, synthesis, and summation of data from multiple sources.The market is divided into the following segments based on geography:AmericasAPACEMEATechnavio's report, Global Nuclear Control Rods Market 2017-2021, has been prepared based on an in-depth market analysis with inputs from industry experts. The report covers the market landscape and its growth prospects over the coming years. The report also includes a discussion of the key vendors operating in this market.Key vendorsAREVAGE Hitachi Nuclear EnergyKODA JSVeridiamWestinghouse ElectricTo Get Sample Copy of Report visit @Other prominent vendorsCurtiss-WrightFine TubesGodrejMitsubishi Heavy IndustriesLARSEN & TOUBRORolls-RoyceVALLOURECMarket driverRising awareness about the need to reduce carbon emissions.For a full, detailed list, view our reportMarket challengeIssues related to disposal of radioactive nuclear waste.For a full, detailed list, view our reportMarket trendEvolution of floating nuclear power plants.For a full, detailed list, view our reportKey questions answered in this reportWhat will the market size be in 2021 and what will the growth rate be?What are the key market trends?What is driving this market?What are the challenges to market growth?Who are the key vendors in this market space?What are the market opportunities and threats faced by the key vendors?What are the strengths and weaknesses of the key vendors?Browse More Details @About ResearchMozResearchMoz is the one stop online destination to find and buy market research reports & Industry Analysis. We fulfill all your research needs spanning across industry verticals with our huge collection of market research reports. We provide our services to all sizes of organizations and across all industry verticals and markets. Our Research Coordinators have in-depth knowledge of reports as well as publishers and will assist you in making an informed decision by giving you unbiased and deep insights on which reports will satisfy your needs at the best price.Mr. NachiketState Tower,90 State Street,Suite 700,Albany NY - 12207United StatesEmail: sales@researchmoz.usWebsite @Tel: 866-997-4948 (Us-Canada Toll Free)Tel: +1-518-621-2074Follow us on LinkedIn @ Global Electric Power Steering System (EPS) Market For 2017: Competition By Top Manufacturers - JTEKT, Bosch, NSK, Nexteer & ZF Market Research Report http://www.researchmoz.us/enquiry.php?type=S&repid=1221354 http://www.researchmoz.us/global-electric-power-steering-system-eps-market-research-report-2017-report.html http://www.researchmoz.us/ http://bit.ly/1TBmnVG Researchmoz added Most up-to-date research on "Global Electric Power Steering System (EPS) Market For 2017: Competition By Top Manufacturers - JTEKT, Bosch, NSK, Nexteer & ZF" to its huge collection of research reports.In this report, the global Electric Power Steering System (EPS) market is valued at USD XX million in 2016 and is expected to reach USD XX million by the end of 2022, growing at a CAGR of XX% between 2016 and 2022.Geographically, this report is segmented into several key Regions, with production, consumption, revenue (million USD), market share and growth rate of Electric Power Steering System (EPS) in these regions, from 2012 to 2022 (forecast), coveringNorth AmericaEuropeChinaJapanSoutheast AsiaIndiaGlobal Electric Power Steering System (EPS) market competition by top manufacturers, with production, price, revenue (value) and market share for each manufacturer; the top players includingJTEKTBoschNSKNexteerZFMobisShowaThyssenkruppMandoOn the basis of product, this report displays the production, revenue, price, market share and growth rate of each type, primarily split intoC-EPSP-EPSR-EPSTo Get Sample Copy of Report visit @On the basis on the end users/applications, this report focuses on the status and outlook for major applications/end users, consumption (sales), market share and growth rate of Electric Power Steering System (EPS) for each application, includingPassenger VehicleCommercial VehicleTable of ContentsGlobal Electric Power Steering System (EPS) Market Research Report 20171 Electric Power Steering System (EPS) Market Overview1.1 Product Overview and Scope of Electric Power Steering System (EPS)1.2 Electric Power Steering System (EPS) Segment by Type (Product Category)1.2.1 Global Electric Power Steering System (EPS) Production and CAGR (%) Comparison by Type (Product Category)(2012-2022)1.2.2 Global Electric Power Steering System (EPS) Production Market Share by Type (Product Category) in 20161.2.3 C-EPS1.2.4 P-EPS1.2.5 R-EPS1.3 Global Electric Power Steering System (EPS) Segment by Application1.3.1 Electric Power Steering System (EPS) Consumption (Sales) Comparison by Application (2012-2022)1.3.2 Passenger Vehicle2 Global Electric Power Steering System (EPS) Market Competition by Manufacturers2.1 Global Electric Power Steering System (EPS) Capacity, Production and Share by Manufacturers (2012-2017)2.1.1 Global Electric Power Steering System (EPS) Capacity and Share by Manufacturers (2012-2017)2.1.2 Global Electric Power Steering System (EPS) Production and Share by Manufacturers (2012-2017)2.2 Global Electric Power Steering System (EPS) Revenue and Share by Manufacturers (2012-2017)2.3 Global Electric Power Steering System (EPS) Average Price by Manufacturers (2012-2017)Browse More Details @About ResearchMozResearchMoz is the one stop online destination to find and buy market research reports & Industry Analysis. We fulfill all your research needs spanning across industry verticals with our huge collection of market research reports. We provide our services to all sizes of organizations and across all industry verticals and markets. Our Research Coordinators have in-depth knowledge of reports as well as publishers and will assist you in making an informed decision by giving you unbiased and deep insights on which reports will satisfy your needs at the best price.Mr. NachiketState Tower,90 State Street,Suite 700,Albany NY - 12207United StatesEmail: sales@researchmoz.usWebsite @Tel: 866-997-4948 (Us-Canada Toll Free)Tel: +1-518-621-2074Follow us on LinkedIn @ Global Pyrethroids Market by Crop Type, Growth, Analysis and Forecasts to 2023 Reportsweb http://www.reportsweb.com/pyrethroids-global-market-outlook-2017-2023 http://www.reportsweb.com/inquiry&RW0001888513/sample http://www.reportsweb.com/inquiry&RW0001888513/buying According to Publisher, the Global Pyrethroids market is estimated at $2655.25 million in 2016 and is expected to reach $4204.18 million by 2023 growing at a CAGR of 6.7% from 2016 to 2023. Factors such as rise in global food consumption, growing demand for hygiene products, extensive investments in R&D by leading players are propelling the market growth. In addition, high potency and effectiveness have earned pyrethroids the position of the preferred ingredient in household and industrial insecticides. However, increased usage of bio-insecticides in agriculture is hampering the market. Moreover, pyrethroids are highly subjected to breakdown in sunlight, heat and moisture, which restricts their use in farms, fields and open spaces are some key factors which are hindering the market growth.Asia Pacific held significant growth in the global market as it is major consumer of pyrethroid insecticides. Populous countries including China and India are growing quickly and there is a general increase in prosperity of the population which in turn is anticipated to increase the demand for hygiene products. Availability of cheap labor & land and comparatively lenient norms & regulations against chemicals made major market players to establish their manufacturing facility in Asia.For more information @Some of the key players in the market include United Phosphorus Limited, The Dow Chemical Company, Syngenta Ag, Sumitomo Chemical Corporation, SinoHarvest Corporation, Shanghai Mingdou Agrochemical Company Limited, Nufarm Limited, Monsanto, FMC Corporation, E.I. Du Pont De Nemours And Company, Bayer Cropscience AG, BASF SE and Adama Agricultural Solutions Ltd.Crop Types Covered:-Fruits & Vegetables-Cereals & Grains-Oilseeds & Pulses-Other Crop TypesActive Ingredients Covered:-Permethrin-Cypermethrin-Bifenthrin-Lambda-cyhalothrin-Cyfluthrin-Deltamethrin-Other Pyrethroids- Tetramethrin- Phenothrin- Bioresmethrin- Allethrin- Fenvalerate- Barthrin- Resmethrin- DimethrinRequest Sample CopyApplications Covered:-Non-Crop-Based- Turf & Ornamental Grass- Other Non-Crop-Based-Crop-Based- Fruits & Vegetables- Cereals & Grains- OilseedsRegions Covered:-North America- US- Canada- Mexico-Europe- Germany- France- Italy- UK- Spain- Rest of Europe-Asia Pacific- Japan- China- India- Australia- New Zealand- Rest of Asia Pacific-Rest of the World- Middle East- Brazil- Argentina- South Africa- EgyptMake an enquiry:Contact Us:Call: +1-646-491-9876Email: sales@reportsweb.comReportsWeb.com is a one stop shop of market research reports and solutions to various companies across the globe. We help our clients in their decision support system by helping them choose most relevant and cost effective research reports and solutions from various publishers. We provide best in class customer service and our customer support team is always available to help you on your research queries.505, 6th floor, Amanora Township,Amanora Chambers, East Block,Kharadi Road, Hadapsar, Pune-411028 Rising Demand Of Global Pet Insurance Market: For End Users/Applications - Dog, Cat & Other Market Research Report http://www.researchmoz.us/enquiry.php?type=S&repid=1221362 http://www.researchmoz.us/global-pet-insurance-market-research-report-2017-report.html http://www.researchmoz.us/ http://bit.ly/1TBmnVG Researchmoz added Most up-to-date research on "Rising Demand Of Global Pet Insurance Market: For End Users/Applications - Dog, Cat & Other" to its huge collection of research reports.In this report, the global Pet Insurance market is valued at USD XX million in 2016 and is expected to reach USD XX million by the end of 2022, growing at a CAGR of XX% between 2016 and 2022.Geographically, this report is segmented into several key Regions, with production, consumption, revenue (million USD), market share and growth rate of Pet Insurance in these regions, from 2012 to 2022 (forecast), coveringNorth AmericaEuropeChinaJapanSoutheast AsiaIndiaGlobal Pet Insurance market competition by top manufacturers, with production, price, revenue (value) and market share for each manufacturer; the top players includingPetplan UK (Allianz)NationwideTrupanionPetplan NorthAmerica(Allianz)Hartville GroupPethealthPetfirstEmbraceRoyal & Sun Alliance (RSA)Direct Line GroupAgriaPetsecurePetSureAnicom Holdingipet InsuranceJapan Animal ClubOn the basis of product, this report displays the production, revenue, price, market share and growth rate of each type, primarily split intoLifetime CoverNon-lifetime CoverAccident-onlyOthersTo Get Sample Copy of Report visit @On the basis on the end users/applications, this report focuses on the status and outlook for major applications/end users, consumption (sales), market share and growth rate of Pet Insurance for each application, includingDogCatOtherTable of ContentsGlobal Pet Insurance Market Research Report 20171 Pet Insurance Market Overview1.1 Product Overview and Scope of Pet Insurance1.2 Pet Insurance Segment by Type (Product Category)1.2.1 Global Pet Insurance Production and CAGR (%) Comparison by Type (Product Category)(2012-2022)1.2.2 Global Pet Insurance Production Market Share by Type (Product Category) in 20161.2.3 Lifetime Cover1.2.4 Non-lifetime Cover1.2.5 Accident-only1.2.6 Others1.3 Global Pet Insurance Segment by Application1.3.1 Pet Insurance Consumption (Sales) Comparison by Application (2012-2022)1.3.2 Dog1.3.3 Cat2 Global Pet Insurance Market Competition by Manufacturers2.1 Global Pet Insurance Capacity, Production and Share by Manufacturers (2012-2017)2.1.1 Global Pet Insurance Capacity and Share by Manufacturers (2012-2017)2.1.2 Global Pet Insurance Production and Share by Manufacturers (2012-2017)2.2 Global Pet Insurance Revenue and Share by Manufacturers (2012-2017)2.3 Global Pet Insurance Average Price by Manufacturers (2012-2017)Browse More Details @About ResearchMozResearchMoz is the one stop online destination to find and buy market research reports & Industry Analysis. We fulfill all your research needs spanning across industry verticals with our huge collection of market research reports. We provide our services to all sizes of organizations and across all industry verticals and markets. Our Research Coordinators have in-depth knowledge of reports as well as publishers and will assist you in making an informed decision by giving you unbiased and deep insights on which reports will satisfy your needs at the best price.Mr. NachiketState Tower,90 State Street,Suite 700,Albany NY - 12207United StatesEmail: sales@researchmoz.usWebsite @Tel: 866-997-4948 (Us-Canada Toll Free)Tel: +1-518-621-2074Follow us on LinkedIn @ Benefits Of SDN, NFV & Network Virtualization Bible: Opportunities, Challenges, Strategies & Forecasts 2015 - 2020 Market Research Report http://www.researchmoz.us/enquiry.php?type=S&repid=232292 http://www.researchmoz.us/the-sdn-nfv-and-network-virtualization-bible-2015-2020-opportunities-challenges-strategies-and-forecasts-report.html http://www.researchmoz.us/ http://bit.ly/1TBmnVG Researchmoz added Most up-to-date research on "Benefits Of SDN, NFV & Network Virtualization Bible: Opportunities, Challenges, Strategies & Forecasts 2015 - 2020" to its huge collection of research reports.While the benefits of SDN (Software Defined Networking) and network virtualization are well known in the enterprise IT and data center world, both technologies also bring a hosts of benefits to the telecommunications service provider/carrier community.Not only can SDN and network virtualization help address the explosive capacity demand of mobile traffic, but they can also reduce the CapEx and OpEx burden faced by service providers to handle this demand by diminishing reliance on expensive proprietary hardware platforms.SDN and network virtualization solutions have been widely deployed in data center and enterprise environments, and many service provider deployments are already underway.NFV (Network Functions Virtualization) is service provider led initiative aimed at virtualizing network components in a service provider network. While NFV is still a developing technology, many vendors have already developed commercial-grade solutions that align well with the NFV initiative.Driven by the thriving ecosystem, SNS Research estimates that the SDN, NFV and network virtualization market will account for nearly $10 Billion in 2015 alone. Despite barriers relating to standardization and co-existence with legacy networks, SNS Research estimates further growth at a CAGR of 37% over the next 5 years.This report presents an in-depth assessment of the global SDN, NFV and network virtualization market. In addition to covering underlying technology, key market drivers, challenges, future roadmap, value chain analysis, use cases, deployment case studies, company profiles, product strategies and strategic recommendations, the report also presents comprehensive forecasts for the market from 2015 till 2020. The forecasts are individually segmented for 10 individual submarkets, 2 user base categories, 7 use case categories, 6 geographical regions and 34 countries.The report comes with an associated Excel datasheet covering quantitative data from all figures presented within the report.Key Findings:The report has the following key findings:Driven by the thriving ecosystem, SNS Research estimates that the SDN, NFV and network virtualization market will account for nearly $10 Billion in 2015 alone. SNS Research estimates further growth at a CAGR of 37% over the next 6 yearsSpending on SDN/NFV orchestration platforms is expected to grow at a CAGR of nearly 60% between 2015 and 2020. By the end of 2020, orchestration platforms will account for $1.7 Billion in revenue, representing more than 8% of all service provider SDN/NFV spendingAlthough network virtualization in the enterprise IT and data center domain has received significant attention in the past years, service provider network virtualization is still at a nascent stageSDN and NFV empower a multitude of network functions to be implemented cost effectively in software, ranging from standard mobile IMS (IP Multimedia System) services to features such as DPI (Deep Packet Inspection)By 2017 we expect to see significant price and gross margin erosion for traditional hardware-based network switching equipment driven by alternative software based solutionsBy 2020 SNS Research estimates that SDN and NFV can enable service providers (both wireline and wireless) to save up to $32 Billion in annual CapEx investmentsTo Get Sample Copy of Report visit @Topics Covered:The report covers the following topics:The scope and implementation of SDN, NFV and network virtualization across the globeSDN, NFV and network virtualization technologyMarket drivers and key benefits of SDN, NFV and network virtualizationChallenges and inhibitors to the ecosystemStandardization and regulatory initiativesUse cases and application case studies of SDN and NFVSDN and NFV deployment case studiesSDN and NFV induced service provider CapEx savingsValue chain analysis of the ecosystem and the recognition of key players in each segment of the value chainIndustry roadmap from 2015 till 2020Key trends in the ecosystem; SDN and NFVs impact on the network infrastructure value chain, prospects of orchestration platforms, the stance of incumbent vendors towards SDN and NFV, impact on the proprietary hardware market and co-existence with legacy networksProfiles and strategies of over 200 key players in the ecosystemStrategic recommendations for silicon & server OEMs, network & mobile Infrastructure vendors, IT giants, pure-play SDN/NFV specialists, enterprises, data center operators and service providersHistorical revenue figures and forecasts till 2020Forecast Segmentation:Market forecasts are provided for each of the following submarkets, user base and use case categories:SubmarketsSDN Hardware & SoftwareNFV Hardware & SoftwareOther Network Virtualization SoftwareUser Base CategoriesService ProvidersData Centers & EnterprisesNFV SubmarketsHardware AppliancesOrchestration & Management SoftwareVNF SoftwareArgentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Israel, Italy, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, Norway, Pakistan, Philippines, Poland, Qatar, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, South Africa, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Taiwan, Thailand, UAE, UK and USAAdditional forecasts are provided for:SDN and NFV Induced Service Provider CapEx Savings by RegionKey Questions Answered:The report provides answers to the following key questions:What are the key market drivers and challenges for SDN, NFV and the wider network virtualization ecosystem?How can SDN and NFV complement each other?What are the key applications and use cases of SDN and NFV?How is the SDN, NFV and network virtualization value chain structured and how will it evolve overtime?What opportunities do SDN and NFV offer to silicon & server OEMs, network & mobile Infrastructure vendors, IT giants, pure-play SDN/NFV specialists, enterprises, data center operators and service providers and other players in the value chain?What strategies should these players adopt to capitalize on the SDN and NFV opportunity?How are SDN and NFV vendors positioning their product offerings?How big is the SDN, NFV and network virtualization ecosystem, and how much revenue will it generate in 2020?What particular submarkets does the ecosystem constitute?What geographical regions, countries and submarkets offer the greatest growth potential for SDN and NFV investments?Who are the key players in the SDN and NFV ecosystem and what are their strategies?How will SDN and NFV impact the network infrastructure value chain?Is there a ring leader in the SDN and NFV ecosystem?How long will service providers continue to utilize proprietary hardware platforms?How can SDN and NFV help make the VoLTE (Voice over LTE) and RCS (Rich Communication Services) business case work?How can software-defined DPI (Deep Packet Inspection) complement SDN functionality?What level of CapEx savings can SDN and NFV facilitate for service providers in each region?List of Companies Mentioned:The following companies and organizations have been reviewed, discussed or mentioned in the report:21 Vianet Group3GPP (3rd Generation Partnership Project)6connect6WINDA10 NetworksAccedian NetworksAcctonAcme PacketActionPacked NetworksBrowse More Details @About ResearchMozResearchMoz is the one stop online destination to find and buy market research reports & Industry Analysis. We fulfill all your research needs spanning across industry verticals with our huge collection of market research reports. We provide our services to all sizes of organizations and across all industry verticals and markets. Our Research Coordinators have in-depth knowledge of reports as well as publishers and will assist you in making an informed decision by giving you unbiased and deep insights on which reports will satisfy your needs at the best price.Mr. NachiketState Tower,90 State Street,Suite 700,Albany NY - 12207United StatesEmail: sales@researchmoz.usWebsite @Tel: 866-997-4948 (Us-Canada Toll Free)Tel: +1-518-621-2074Follow us on LinkedIn @ Multirotors Market 2017 Global Industry Key Growth Factor Analysis & Research Study Reports Monitor https://www.reportsmonitor.com/request-sample/?post=253367 https://www.reportsmonitor.com/global-multirotors-market-research-report-2017-2/ https://www.reportsmonitor.com/united-states-multirotors-market-report-2017/ http://www.reportsmonitor.com ReportsMonitor.com has added a new report to its database Global Multirotors Market Research Report 2017This report rigorously investigates the potential of the Multirotors industry in conjunction with primary market challenges.The report on Multirotors Market is a professional report which provides thorough knowledge along with complete information pertaining to the Multirotors industry propos classifications, definitions, applications, industry chain summary, industry policies in addition to plans, product specifications, manufacturing processes, cost structures, etc.Download Sample Pages @The present market condition and future prospects of the segment has also been examined.Moreover, key strategies in the market that includes product developments, partnerships, mergers and acquisitions, etc., are discussed.Besides, upstream raw materials and equipment and downstream demand analysis is also conducted.The report cloaks the market analysis and projection of Multirotors on a regional as well as global level. The report constitutes qualitative and quantitative valuation by industry analysts, first-hand data, assistance from industry experts along with their most recent verbatim and each industry manufacturers via the market value chain.This report focuses on top manufacturers in global market, with production, price, revenue and market share for each manufacturer, covering Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) Draganfly Innovations Aerovironment, Inc. Coptercam Aibotix Aeryon Labs Dji Innovations Cyberhawk Innovations Ltd. Microdrones GmbHThe fact that this market report renders details about the major market players along with their product development and current trends proves to be very beneficial for fresh entrants to comprehend and recognize the industry in an improved manner. The report also enlightens the productions, sales, supply, market condition, demand, growth, and forecast of the Multirotors industry in the global markets.Every regions market has been studied thoroughly in this report which deals with the precise information pertaining to the Marketing Channels and novel project investments so that the new entrants as well as the established market players conduct intricate research of trends and analysis in these regional markets. Acknowledging the status of the environment and products up gradation, the market report foretells each and every detail.Some points from TOC:Global Multirotors Market Research Report 20171 Multirotors Market Overview1.1 Product Overview and Scope of Multirotors1.2 Multirotors Segment by Type (Product Category)1.2.1 Global Multirotors Production and CAGR (%) Comparison by Type (Product Category)(2012-2022)1.2.2 Global Multirotors Production Market Share by Type (Product Category) in 20161.2.3 3-rotor Multirotors1.2.4 4-rotor Multirotors1.2.5 6-rotor Multirotors1.2.6 8-rotor Multirotors1.3 Global Multirotors Segment by Application1.3.1 Multirotors Consumption (Sales) Comparison by Application (2012-2022)1.3.2 Commercial Use1.3.3 Military Use1.4 Global Multirotors Market by Region (2012-2022)1.4.1 Global Multirotors Market Size (Value) and CAGR (%) Comparison by Region (2012-2022)1.4.2 North America Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.4.3 Europe Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.4.4 China Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.4.5 Japan Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.4.6 Southeast Asia Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.4.7 India Status and Prospect (2012-2022)View entire report @Similar Reports:United States Multirotors Market Report 2017In this report, the United States Multirotors market is valued at USD XX million in 2016 and is expected to reach USD XX million by the end of 2022, growing at a CAGR of XX% between 2016 and 2022. Geographically,...Browse Complete Report @About Us:Reports Monitor (ReportsMonitor.com) is a platform to meet the market research and business intelligence requirements. Our aim is to change the dynamics of the Market Research industry by providing quality intelligence backed by data. Your requirement for market forecasting is fulfilled by our exclusive quantitative and analytics driven intelligence. We have a vast collection of reports, covering maximum industries worldwide. Our process is meticulously planned and executed in order to use maximum resources and explore the market for getting genuine insights. Decision makers can now rely on our distinct data gathering methods to get factual market forecasting and detailed analysis.Jay MatthewsDirect: +1 513 549-5911Email: sales@reportsmonitor.comWebsite: United States, EU, Japan, China, India and Southeast Asia Surface Analysis Market Size, Status and Forecast 2021 Market Research Reports http://www.qyresearchreports.com/sample/sample.php?rep_id=905592&type=E http://www.qyresearchreports.com/report/united-states-eu-japan-china-india-and-southeast-asia-surface-analysis-market-size-status-and-forecast-2021.htm Qyresearchreports include new market research report "United States, EU, Japan, China, India and Southeast Asia Surface Analysis Market Size, Status and Forecast 2021" to its huge collection of research reports.This report on the United States, EU, Japan, China, India and Southeast Asia Surface Analysis market has been prepared to serve as a reliable business strategic tool for its end user and other stockholders to stay competitive in this ever evolving market scenario. In this report on the United States, EU, Japan, China, India and Southeast Asia Surface Analysis market, an exclusive qualitative elaboration on factors, which are responsible for challenging and augmenting the market growth. Moreover, opportunities of the United States, EU, Japan, China, India and Southeast Asia Surface Analysis market have also been thoroughly discussed in the section of market overview. This sector of the report goes beyond, and also provides the attractiveness of the market, presents a detailed analysis on the overall scenario of the United States, EU, Japan, China, India and Southeast Asia Surface Analysis market. The report also explains the recent trends of the Surface Analysis market, which are expected to help the key players to readjust their business processes strategically and acquire the advantages over their competitors.The United States, EU, Japan, China, India and Southeast Asia Surface Analysis market acquires diverse aspects, and the report has presented a thorough research on divide the market into important aspects based on end user, product, services, technology, and whichever applicable. The report also presents regional segmentation by studying all the opportunities that are available in various regions such as Europe, North America, Asia Pacific, South America, Latin America and MEA. These regions are evaluated based on the demand for Surface Analysis as well as the report estimates the valuation of the market over the forecast period.Fill the form to gain deeper insights on this market @This report studies the global Surface Analysis market, analyzes and researches the Surface Analysis development status and forecast in United States, EU, Japan, China, India and Southeast Asia. This report focuses on the top players in global market, likeDanaher CorporationOlympus CorporationNikon CorporationJEOL, Ltd.Carl Zeiss AGFEI CompanyBruker CorporationThermo Fisher Scientific Inc.Shimadzu CorporationUlvac-Phi, Inc.Horiba,LtdThis report on the United States, EU, Japan, China, India and Southeast Asia Surface Analysis market has been created through an exclusive research by a group of experienced market research analysts, also presents a separate segment on the business aspects of the most leading companies currently operating in this market, with a target on representing the growth prospects for the existing as well as new-entrants.Browse full table of contents and data tables of Report @Table of Contents1 Industry Overview of Surface Analysis1.1 Surface Analysis Market Overview1.1.1 Surface Analysis Product Scope1.1.2 Market Status and Outlook1.2 Global Surface Analysis Market Size and Analysis by Regions1.3 Surface Analysis Market by Type1.4 Surface Analysis Market by End Users/Application2 Global Surface Analysis Competition Analysis by Players2.1 Surface Analysis Market Size (Value) by Players (2015-2016)2.2 Competitive Status and Trend2.2.1 Market Concentration Rate2.2.2 Product/Service Differences2.2.3 New Entrants2.2.4 The Technology Trends in Future3 Company (Top Players) Profiles3.1 Danaher Corporation3.1.1 Company Profile3.1.2 Main Business/Business Overview3.1.3 Products, Services and Solutions3.1.4 Surface Analysis Revenue (Value) (2011-2016)3.1.5 Recent Developments3.2 Olympus Corporation3.2.1 Company Profile3.2.2 Main Business/Business Overview3.2.3 Products, Services and Solutions3.2.4 Surface Analysis Revenue (Value) (2011-2016)3.2.5 Recent Developments3.3 Nikon Corporation3.3.1 Company Profile3.3.2 Main Business/Business Overview3.3.3 Products, Services and Solutions3.3.4 Surface Analysis Revenue (Value) (2011-2016)3.3.5 Recent DevelopmentsList of Tables and FiguresFigure Surface Analysis Product ScopeFigure Global Surface Analysis Market Size (2011-2016)Table Global Surface Analysis Market Size and Growth Rate by Regions (2011-2016)Figure EU Surface Analysis Market Size and Growth Rate by Regions (2011-2016)Figure Japan Surface Analysis Market Size and Growth Rate by Regions (2011-2016)Figure China Surface Analysis Market Size and Growth Rate by Regions (2011-2016)Figure India Surface Analysis Market Size and Growth Rate by Regions (2011-2016)Table Surface Analysis Business Revenue of Danaher Corporation (2011-2016)Table Surface Analysis Business Revenue of Olympus Corporation (2011-2016)QYReseachReports.com delivers the latest strategic market intelligence to build a successful business footprint in China. Our syndicated and customized research reports provide companies with vital background information of the market and in-depth analysis on the Chinese trade and investment framework, which directly affects their business operations. Reports from QYReseachReports.com feature valuable recommendations on how to navigate in the extremely unpredictable yet highly attractive Chinese market.1820 AvenueM Suite #1047Brooklyn, NY 11230United States United States, EU, Japan, China, India and Southeast Asia Reverse Shoulder Arthroplasty Market Size, Status and Forecast 2021 Market Research Reports http://www.qyresearchreports.com/sample/sample.php?rep_id=905589&type=E http://www.qyresearchreports.com/report/united-states-eu-japan-china-india-and-southeast-asia-reverse-shoulder-arthroplasty-market-size-status-and-forecast-2021.htm Qyresearchreports include new market research report "United States, EU, Japan, China, India and Southeast Asia Reverse Shoulder Arthroplasty Market Size, Status and Forecast 2021" to its huge collection of research reports.A recent report by QYResearchReports.com presents a thorough analysis of the United States, EU, Japan, China, India and Southeast Asia Reverse Shoulder Arthroplasty market with an approach that helps in elucidating the most important bits of data related to the key elements of the market. The report presents an overview of the key application areas of the United States, EU, Japan, China, India and Southeast Asia Reverse Shoulder Arthroplasty market and furnishes quantitative as well as qualitative data pertaining to the segments.The key regional segments of the United States, EU, Japan, China, India and Southeast Asia Reverse Shoulder Arthroplasty market are analyzed in great details and an overview of the regulatory framework of the market is also given in the report. In this section, the report examines the key rules, regulations, plans, and policies governing the overall markets development and having an implication on several decisions.An analysis of the major trends in the United States, EU, Japan, China, India and Southeast Asia Reverse Shoulder Arthroplasty market in the past years, which have significantly contributed in shaping the current state of the market, and the important trends of the current times is also included in the report, allowing the reader to formulate winning strategies. The data has been gathered with the help of a number of primary and secondary research methodologies and narrowed-down with the help of industry-best analytical methods.For more information on this report, fill the form @This report studies the global Reverse Shoulder Arthroplasty market, analyzes and researches the Reverse Shoulder Arthroplasty development status and forecast in United States, EU, Japan, China, India and Southeast Asia. This report focuses on the top players in global market, likeDePuy SynthesExactechWright Medical TechnologyZimmer-BiometArthrexCayenne MedicalDJO GlobalEvolutisFH OrthopedicsIntegra LifeSciencesImplantcastLima CorporateSegmenting the United States, EU, Japan, China, India and Southeast Asia Reverse Shoulder Arthroplasty market on several fronts, the research report examines the strengths and weaknesses of each category and sub-category in the operating environments. The report also analyzes the impact of several internal and external forces such as consumer preferences, government regulations, laws and policies, technological developments, and economic environment for each segment.The report focuses on the critical aspects of each player and furnishes details such as detailed business profile of the company, product and service portfolio, financial conditions, business strategies, and recent developments. Additionally, the report also studies the strengths and weaknesses of the companies profiled, highlighting their major competitors, and provides insight on their supplier base and consumers.Get more information from Research Report Press Release:Table of Contents1 Industry Overview of Reverse Shoulder Arthroplasty1.1 Reverse Shoulder Arthroplasty Market Overview1.1.1 Reverse Shoulder Arthroplasty Product Scope1.1.2 Market Status and Outlook1.2 Global Reverse Shoulder Arthroplasty Market Size and Analysis by Regions1.3 Reverse Shoulder Arthroplasty Market by Type1.4 Reverse Shoulder Arthroplasty Market by End Users/Application2 Global Reverse Shoulder Arthroplasty Competition Analysis by Players2.1 Reverse Shoulder Arthroplasty Market Size (Value) by Players (2015-2016)2.2 Competitive Status and Trend2.2.1 Market Concentration Rate2.2.2 Product/Service Differences2.2.3 New Entrants2.2.4 The Technology Trends in Future3 Company (Top Players) Profiles3.1 DePuy Synthes3.1.1 Company Profile3.1.2 Main Business/Business Overview3.1.3 Products, Services and Solutions3.1.4 Reverse Shoulder Arthroplasty Revenue (Value) (2011-2016)3.1.5 Recent Developments3.2 Exactech3.2.1 Company Profile3.2.2 Main Business/Business Overview3.2.3 Products, Services and Solutions3.2.4 Reverse Shoulder Arthroplasty Revenue (Value) (2011-2016)3.2.5 Recent Developments3.3 Wright Medical Technology3.3.1 Company Profile3.3.2 Main Business/Business Overview3.3.3 Products, Services and Solutions3.3.4 Reverse Shoulder Arthroplasty Revenue (Value) (2011-2016)3.3.5 Recent DevelopmentsList of Tables and FiguresFigure Reverse Shoulder Arthroplasty Product ScopeFigure Global Reverse Shoulder Arthroplasty Market Size (2011-2016)Table Global Reverse Shoulder Arthroplasty Market Size and Growth Rate by Regions (2011-2016)Figure United States Reverse Shoulder Arthroplasty Market Size and Growth Rate by Regions (2011-2016)Figure EU Reverse Shoulder Arthroplasty Market Size and Growth Rate by Regions (2011-2016)Figure Japan Reverse Shoulder Arthroplasty Market Size and Growth Rate by Regions (2011-2016)Figure China Reverse Shoulder Arthroplasty Market Size and Growth Rate by Regions (2011-2016)Figure India Reverse Shoulder Arthroplasty Market Size and Growth Rate by Regions (2011-2016)QYReseachReports.com delivers the latest strategic market intelligence to build a successful business footprint in China. Our syndicated and customized research reports provide companies with vital background information of the market and in-depth analysis on the Chinese trade and investment framework, which directly affects their business operations. Reports from QYReseachReports.com feature valuable recommendations on how to navigate in the extremely unpredictable yet highly attractive Chinese market.1820 AvenueM Suite #1047Brooklyn, NY 11230United States Pediatric Proton Therapy Market In Europe: Forecast (6 Countries Market Data), Patients Treated, Reimbursement Policies Market Research Report http://www.researchmoz.us/enquiry.php?type=S&repid=1273818 http://www.researchmoz.us/europe-pediatric-proton-therapy-market-forecast-6-countries-market-data-patients-treated-reimbursement-policies-report.html http://www.researchmoz.us/ http://bit.ly/1TBmnVG Researchmoz added Most up-to-date research on "Pediatric Proton Therapy Market In Europe: Forecast (6 Countries Market Data), Patients Treated, Reimbursement Policies" to its huge collection of research reports.Europe Pediatric Proton Therapy Market has a market potential close to US$ 150 Million by 2022. The rise of pediatric cancer incidence in Europe region and proton therapy gaining prominence and credibility among radiation oncologist will motivate the investor to invest in it. As of now, the pediatric proton therapy is in growing stage in European region. There are so many robust proton therapy center-building is happening across the Europe. United Kingdom is building six proton therapy alone to cater their pediatric cancer patients.Germany has the Highest Market Share in Pediatric Proton Therapy MarketGermany captures highest pediatric proton therapy market share as it has launched good number of advanced proton therapy center constantly in the year 2013, 2014 and 2015. France had maximum market share in 2010 but it lost its position and reached to fourth position in 2016. The report studies pediatric proton therapy market share of these 6 countries: France, Germany, Switzerland, Sweden, Czech Republic, United Kingdom.Rising Prevalence of Pediatric Cancer Patients and Technological Advancement will drive the Pediatric Proton Therapy Market in EuropeRising overall cancer diagnosed pediatric patients in Europe will enforce the several countries in Europe to develop proton therapy center according to demand. Technological up-gradation is playing very important role in driving pediatric proton therapy market in Europe. Advanced technology & multi-room trend will cater more patients than earlier.Europe Pediatric Proton Therapy Market & Forecast (6 Countries Market Data), Patients Treated, Reimbursement Policies is the 15th report published by Renub Research on Proton Therapy Market. This 108 page report with 71 figures and 4 Tables provides 6 Countries: Pediatric Proton Therapy Market, Proton Therapy Patient Numbers, Technology being used at these Proton Therapy Centers and Reimbursement Policies. The report also studies the Proton Therapy Sales & Forecast of four companies IBA, Varian Medical Systems, Mitsubishi, and Hitachi.To Get Sample Copy of Report visit @Key Questions Answered in the Report?What is the Pediatric Proton Therapy Market in Europe and its growth potential in Future?How many pediatric patients treated by Proton Beam Therapy in Europe?What are the reimbursement policies for Proton Therapy across the Europe?What is the Pediatric Proton Therapy Market in Germany and its growth potential in Future?How many Pediatric Proton Therapy Patients treated in Germany and Forecast?What is the Pediatric Proton Therapy Market in France and its growth potential in Future?How many Pediatric Proton Therapy Patients treated in France and Forecast?What is the Pediatric Proton Therapy Market in Sweden and its growth potential in Future?How many Pediatric Proton Therapy Patients treated in Sweden and Forecast?What is the Pediatric Proton Therapy Market in Switzerland and its growth potential in Future?How many Pediatric Proton Therapy Patients treated in Switzerland and Forecast?What is the Pediatric Proton Therapy Market in Czech Republic and its growth potential in Future?How many Pediatric Proton Therapy Patients treated in Czech Republic and Forecast?What is the Pediatric Proton Therapy Market in United Kingdom and its growth potential in Future?How many Pediatric Proton Therapy Patients treated in United Kingdom and Forecast?What Type of Technology being used at Proton Therapy Centers?Key Companies Proton Therapy Sales & ForecastIBA Sales Analysis & Forecast (2010 2021)Varian Medical Systems Sales Analysis & Forecast (2010 2021)Mitsubishi - Sales Analysis & Forecast (2010 2021)Hitachi - Sales Analysis & Forecast (2010 2021)Six Countries Covered Under this ReportFranceGermanySwitzerlandSwedenCzech RepublicUnited KingdomBrowse More Details @About ResearchMozResearchMoz is the one stop online destination to find and buy market research reports & Industry Analysis. We fulfill all your research needs spanning across industry verticals with our huge collection of market research reports. We provide our services to all sizes of organizations and across all industry verticals and markets. Our Research Coordinators have in-depth knowledge of reports as well as publishers and will assist you in making an informed decision by giving you unbiased and deep insights on which reports will satisfy your needs at the best price.Mr. NachiketState Tower,90 State Street,Suite 700,Albany NY - 12207United StatesEmail: sales@researchmoz.usWebsite @Tel: 866-997-4948 (Us-Canada Toll Free)Tel: +1-518-621-2074Follow us on LinkedIn @ Transthyretin Amyloidosis (ATTR) Market: Global Industry Analysis & Outlook 2018 - 2025 Market Research Report http://www.researchmoz.us/enquiry.php?type=S&repid=1273863 http://www.researchmoz.us/global-transthyretin-amyloidosis-attr-market-industry-analysis-outlook-20182025-report.html http://www.researchmoz.us/ http://bit.ly/1TBmnVG Researchmoz added Most up-to-date research on "Transthyretin Amyloidosis (ATTR) Market: Global Industry Analysis & Outlook 2018 - 2025" to its huge collection of research reports.ATTR amyloidosis, A for Amyloid and the TTR is an abbreviation used for the protein transthyretin. ATTR amyloidosis is a rare disease, caused by the build-up of abnormal protein deposits in various tissues of the body. Amyloid deposits cause disorder by damaging the structure and the function of the organs where they are found and they can affect almost any part of the body.There are three different types of ATTR Amyloidosis: Familial Amyloid Polyneuropathy (FAP), which affects the nervous system, often the heart and sometimes the kidneys and eyes. Second is, Familial Amyloid Cardiomyopathy (FAC), which is a hereditary, genetic condition, caused by mutations in the TTR gene resulting in production of the abnormal TTR and the last is, Senile Systemic Amyloidosis (SSA) which is not hereditary and a slowly progressive disease. It is far more prevalent in men than in women. Methods to diagnose ATTR include tissue biopsy, genetic testing and imaging studies of the heart.Currently, there are no higher efficacy ATTR drugs available in the market, but they are expected to hit the market by 2018. The potential ATTR drug candidates include Patisiran and IONIS-TTRrx. For now, off-label drugs and therapies are employed to counter the progression of ATTR.The global ATTR market is expected to experience robust growth post the launch of ATTR therapeutic drugs, primarily due to increasing African-American population, increasing health care expenditure and accelerating economic growth. However, the growth of this budding market is is hindered by the stringent regulations, high cost of ATTR drugs, misdiagnosis of ATTR disorder and limitation of clinical trials.To Get Sample Copy of Report visit @The report Global ATTR Market: Industry Analysis & Outlook (2018-2025) analyzes the development of this market, with focus on the U.S. and Europe markets. The major trends, growth drivers as well as issues being faced by the market are discussed in detail in this report. The four major players: Pfizer Inc., Ionis Pharmaceuticals Inc., Alnylam Pharmaceuticals Inc. and Prothena Corporation Plc. are being profiled along with their key financials and strategies for growth. The report contains a comprehensive analysis of the global ATTR market along with the study of the regional markets.Table of Content1. Overview1.1 Introduction1.2 Types1.3 Diagnosis1.4 Treatment2. Global ATTR Market2.1 Global ATTR Market Forecast by Patient Volume2.2 Global ATTR Market Forecast by Treated Patient2.3 Global ATTR Market Forecast by Value2.4 Global ATTR Market Forecast by Drug Type2.4.1 Global Patisiran Market Forecast by Value2.4.2 Global IONIS-TTRrx Market Forecast by Value2.5 Global ATTR Market Value by Region3. Regional Market Analysis3.1 The U.S.3.1.1 The U.S. ATTR Market Forecast by Patient Volume3.1.2 The U.S. ATTR Market Forecast by Treated Patient3.1.3 The U.S. ATTR Market Forecast by Value3.1.4 The U.S. Patisiran Market Forecast by Value3.1.5 The U.S. IONIS-TTRrx Market Forecast by Value3.2 Europe3.2.1 Europe ATTR Market Forecast by Patient VolumeBrowse More Details @About ResearchMozResearchMoz is the one stop online destination to find and buy market research reports & Industry Analysis. We fulfill all your research needs spanning across industry verticals with our huge collection of market research reports. We provide our services to all sizes of organizations and across all industry verticals and markets. Our Research Coordinators have in-depth knowledge of reports as well as publishers and will assist you in making an informed decision by giving you unbiased and deep insights on which reports will satisfy your needs at the best price.Mr. NachiketState Tower,90 State Street,Suite 700,Albany NY - 12207United StatesEmail: sales@researchmoz.usWebsite @Tel: 866-997-4948 (Us-Canada Toll Free)Tel: +1-518-621-2074Follow us on LinkedIn @ New Study On Personal Accident and Health Insurance in Lebanon: Key Trends and Opportunities to 2020 Market Research Report http://www.researchmoz.us/enquiry.php?type=S&repid=1273738 http://www.researchmoz.us/personal-accident-and-health-insurance-in-lebanon-key-trends-and-opportunities-to-2020-report.html http://www.researchmoz.us/ http://bit.ly/1TBmnVG Researchmoz added Most up-to-date research on "New Study On Personal Accident and Health Insurance in Lebanon: Key Trends and Opportunities to 2020" to its huge collection of research reports.Timetrics 'Personal Accident and Health Insurance in Lebanon Key Trends and Opportunities to 2020' report provides a detailed outlook by product category for the Lebanese life insurance segment, and a comparison of the Lebanese insurance industry with its regional counterparts.It provides key performance indicators such as written premium, incurred loss, loss ratio, commissions and expenses, combined ratio, total assets, total investment income and retentions during the review period (20112015) and forecast period (20152020).The report also analyzes distribution channels operating in the segment, gives a comprehensive overview of the Lebanese economy and demographics, and provides detailed information on the competitive landscape in the country.The report brings together Timetrics research, modeling and analysis expertise, giving insurers access to information on segment dynamics and competitive advantages, and profiles of insurers operating in the country. The report also includes details of insurance regulations, and recent changes in the regulatory structure.SummaryTimetrics 'Personal Accident and Health Insurance in Lebanon Key Trends and Opportunities to 2020' report provides in-depth market analysis, information and insights into the Lebanese personal accident and health insurance segment, including:An overview of the Lebanese personal accident and health insurance segmentThe Lebanese personal accident and health insurance segments growth prospects by categoryA comprehensive overview of the Lebanese economy and demographicsA comparison of the Lebanese personal accident and health insurance segment with its regional counterpartsThe various distribution channels in the Lebanese personal accident and health insurance segmentDetails of the competitive landscape in the personal accident and health insurance segment in LebanonDetails of regulatory policy applicable to the Lebanese insurance industryTo Get Sample Copy of Report visit @ScopeThis report provides a comprehensive analysis of the personal accident and health insurance segment in Lebanon:It provides historical values for the Lebanese personal accident and health insurance segment for the reports 20112015 review period, and projected figures for the 20152020 forecast period.It offers a detailed analysis of the key categories in the Lebanese personal accident and health insurance segment, and market forecasts to 2020.It provides a comparison of the Lebanese personal accident and health insurance segment with its regional counterpartsIt provides an overview of the various distribution channels for personal accident and health insurance products in Lebanon.It profiles the top personal accident and health insurance companies in Lebanon, and outlines the key regulations affecting them.Reasons To BuyMake strategic business decisions using in-depth historic and forecast market data related to the Lebanese personal accident and health insurance segment, and each category within it.Understand the demand-side dynamics, key market trends and growth opportunities in the Lebanese personal accident and health insurance segment.Assess the competitive dynamics in the personal accident and health insurance segment.Identify growth opportunities and market dynamics in key product categories.Gain insights into key regulations governing the Lebanese insurance industry, and their impact on companies and the industry's future.Key HighlightsIn 2017, Al-Ittihad Al-Watani Insurance was taken over by NASCO Insurance Group, an insurance brokerage firm.In October 2016, Arope Insurance announced a strategic partnership with BoB Finance in collaboration with insurance brokers in Beirut.In 2015, the Insurance Control Commission (ICC) developed supervisory and analytical tools that strengthened disclosure requirements, and developed new guidelines for new products and the enhancement of existing ones.In 2015, ICC initiated the provision of soft loans as incentives in order to encourage mergers and acquisitions .Browse More Details @About ResearchMozResearchMoz is the one stop online destination to find and buy market research reports & Industry Analysis. We fulfill all your research needs spanning across industry verticals with our huge collection of market research reports. We provide our services to all sizes of organizations and across all industry verticals and markets. Our Research Coordinators have in-depth knowledge of reports as well as publishers and will assist you in making an informed decision by giving you unbiased and deep insights on which reports will satisfy your needs at the best price.Mr. NachiketState Tower,90 State Street,Suite 700,Albany NY - 12207United StatesEmail: sales@researchmoz.usWebsite @Tel: 866-997-4948 (Us-Canada Toll Free)Tel: +1-518-621-2074Follow us on LinkedIn @ United States Industrial Lasers Market Report 2016 : TE Connectivity, Anderson Lasers,Inc. Market Research Reports http://www.qyresearchreports.com/report/united-states-industrial-lasers-market-report-2016.htm http://www.qyresearchreports.com/sample/sample.php?rep_id=835227&type=E Qyresearchreports include new market research report "United States Industrial Lasers Market Report 2016" to its huge collection of research reports.This report studies sales (consumption) of Industrial Lasers in USA market, focuses on the top players, with sales, price, revenue and market share for each player, coveringDiode Laser ConseptsTE ConnectivityCoherentMACSAAnderson Lasers,Inc.Laser Tools Co.,Inc.Teledyne OptechTRUMPFSacher LasertechnikAdvanced Thin FilmsLEONILEE LaserIPGRofin-SinarSplit by product types, with sales, revenue, price, market share and growth rate of each type, can be divided intoType IType IIType IIIObtain Report Details @Split by applications, this report focuses on sales, market share and growth rate of Industrial Lasers in each application, can be divided intoApplication 1Application 2Application 3Fill the form for an exclusive sample of this report @Table of Contents1 Industrial Lasers Overview1.1 Product Overview and Scope of Industrial Lasers1.2 Classification of Industrial Lasers1.3 Application of Industrial Lasers1.4 USA Market Size Sales (Value) and Revenue (Volume) of Industrial Lasers (2011-2021)2 USA Industrial Lasers Competition by Manufacturers2.1 USA Industrial Lasers Sales and Market Share of Key Manufacturers (2015 and 2016)2.2 USA Industrial Lasers Revenue and Share by Manufactures (2015 and 2016)2.3 USA Industrial Lasers Average Price by Manufactures (2015 and 2016)2.4 Industrial Lasers Market Competitive Situation and Trends2.4.1 Industrial Lasers Market Concentration Rate2.4.2 Industrial Lasers Market Share of Top 3 and Top 5 Manufacturers2.4.3 Mergers & Acquisitions, Expansion3 USA Industrial Lasers Sales (Volume) and Revenue (Value) by Type (2011-2016)3.1 USA Industrial Lasers Sales and Market Share by Type (2011-2016)3.2 USA Industrial Lasers Revenue and Market Share by Type (2011-2016)3.3 USA Industrial Lasers Price by Type (2011-2016)3.4 USA Industrial Lasers Sales Growth Rate by Type (2011-2016)6 Industrial Lasers Manufacturing Cost Analysis6.1 Industrial Lasers Key Raw Materials Analysis6.1.1 Key Raw Materials6.1.2 Price Trend of Key Raw Materials6.1.3 Key Suppliers of Raw Materials6.1.4 Market Concentration Rate of Raw Materials6.2 Proportion of Manufacturing Cost Structure6.3 Manufacturing Process Analysis of Industrial LasersFigure Picture of Industrial LasersTable Classification of Industrial LasersFigure USA Sales Market Share of Industrial Lasers by Type in 2015Figure USA Sales Market Share of Industrial Lasers by Application in 2015Figure USA Industrial Lasers Sales and Growth Rate (2011-2021)Figure USA Industrial Lasers Revenue and Growth Rate (2011-2021)Table USA Industrial Lasers Sales of Key Manufacturers (2015 and 2016)Table USA Industrial Lasers Sales Share by Manufacturers (2015 and 2016)Table USA Industrial Lasers Revenue Share by Manufacturers (2015 and 2016)QYReseachReports.com delivers the latest strategic market intelligence to build a successful business footprint in China. Our syndicated and customized research reports provide companies with vital background information of the market and in-depth analysis on the Chinese trade and investment framework, which directly affects their business operations. Reports from QYReseachReports.com feature valuable recommendations on how to navigate in the extremely unpredictable yet highly attractive Chinese market.1820 AvenueM Suite #1047Brooklyn, NY 11230United States Two international brewing giants conspired to limit other U.S. beer companies from selling their products in Ontario, Canada, according to a federal lawsuit filed this week by the owner of Minhas Craft Brewery in Monroe. Mountain Crest SRL LLC, which has been brewing value-brand beers in Monroe since 2003, alleges that AB InBev of Belgium and Molson Coors Brewing Co. in Denver had a secret agreement from 2000 to 2015 with the government-owned Liquor Control Board of Ontario that restricted imports and sales of other U.S. beer company products in the Canadian province. The suit, filed Tuesday in U.S District Court in Madison, contends that the beer companies violated the Sherman Antitrust Act by controlling the only two options for distribution and retail in Ontario. About 70 percent of sales at LCBO stores are ABI and Moslon Coors products, while the two beer companies own Brewers Retail Inc., a cooperative that has over 450 locations doing business as The Beer Store. Mountain Crest believes the secret agreement exposed by a whistle-blower in 2014 to the Toronto Star combined with ABI and Molson Coors 98 percent ownership of The Beer Store outlets, limited Mountain Crest growth and sales. The company is seeking lost revenues and $200,000 in punitive damages. The suit was filed in the U.S. under the Foreign Trade Antitrust Improvements Act of 1982, which authorizes causes of action for American businesses under American anti-trust laws for lost export sales, even if the conspiracy took place in foreign commerce. Plaintiffs injury is precisely the sort that the antitrust laws were intended to forestall; namely, two dominant businesses using their market power to stifle competition, the complaint states. Defendants conduct was within the flow of, was intended to, and did, in fact, have a direct effect on the export commerce and export trade of brewers in the United States. ABI is the worlds largest brewer and has a 45 percent share of the U.S. and 43 percent share of the Candadian beer markets and brews its three global brands, Budweiser, Corona and Stella Artois, all in Canada. Molson Coors accounts for about 28 percent of the U.S. and 34 percent of the Canadian market with brands like Carling, Coors, Miller and Molson Canadian. Weve just received the lawsuit and have no further comment, Colin Wheeler, a spokesman for Molson Coors, wrote in an email Wednesday. ABI spokeswoman Gemma Hart said the company was aware that the lawsuit has been filed and intend to vigorously defend against it. Mountain Crest, owned by the Minhas family and based in Alberta, purchased the Monroe brewery in 2006 and has transformed the second-oldest brewery in the country into one of the largest breweries in the U.S. Much of that growth has come from the production of low-priced beer like Mountain Crest Classic Lager, Clear Creek Ice and Boxer, much of it exported to Canada. By 2005, the beer from Monroe exported to Alberta made up 85 percent of the brewerys total production, according to the complaint. Mountain Crest has been exporting Boxer to Ontario since November 2009, but growth there has not matched that of other markets, despite a $1 million television advertising campaign, the lawsuit contends. Mountain Crest also paid $631,797 to get its products in 440 TBS locations. TBS stores do not operate like traditional U.S. liquor stores. The vast majority of stores contain no shelving and only list inventory on a wall. Most products are kept out-of-sight of customers, rolled out on conveyor belts once an order is placed, which discourages customer shopping and limits competition to brands the customer is already familiar with, the lawsuit contends. Some stores, however, have a grab-and-go cooler where a limited number of single-serving cans of beer are sold. TBS charges brewing companies for access, but the coolers are mostly filled with AB and Molson Coors products, according to the lawsuit. The restrictions of the agreement included that the LCBO not sell beer in packages containing more than six containers, which ensured that American brewers could not export beer to Ontario in 12- or 24-packs unless they paid to use the TBS stores owned by AB and Molson Coors. A second element of the agreement prohibited pack-up pricing that allowed consumers to purchase four individual six-packs and receive the same discount as if they had purchased a 24-pack case. This has the effect of enabling defendants to fix prices for the Ontario market and greatly limiting the LCBOs attractiveness as a beer retail destination for value consumers, as well as discouraging sales of plaintiffs beer at the LCBO, according to the lawsuit. For example, TBS charged plaintiff a $3.32 fee for every 24-unit case plaintiff sold into the Ontario market, in addition to other fees. Other clauses of the secret agreement included that the LCBO was not to sell to restaurants and bars any of the major brands not carried in its regular stores, a move that discouraged bars and restaurants from purchasing beer at LCBO stores. When the secret agreement was signed, 177 communities in Ontario had LCBO stores that sold 12- and 24-packs of beer. But under the agreement, if a TBS opened in any of those areas, nearby LCBO stores would have to cut back their beer offerings to six-packs. That discouraged the LCBO from opening new stores in areas where the TBS might also decide to open a store. Throughout the duration of the secret agreement, TBS expanded locations, thus displacing LCBO beer sales, according to the complaint. Detailed Analysis Of Reinsurance in Lebanon: Key Trends and Opportunities to 2020 Market Research Report http://www.researchmoz.us/enquiry.php?type=S&repid=1273739 http://www.researchmoz.us/reinsurance-in-lebanon-key-trends-and-opportunities-to-2020-report.html http://www.researchmoz.us/ http://bit.ly/1TBmnVG Researchmoz added Most up-to-date research on "Detailed Analysis Of Reinsurance in Lebanon: Key Trends and Opportunities to 2020" to its huge collection of research reports.Timetrics 'Reinsurance in Lebanon Key Trends and Opportunities to 2020' report provides detailed analysis of the market trends, drivers and challenges in the Lebanese reinsurance segment.It provides values for key performance indicators such as written premium, reinsurance ceded and reinsurance accepted during the review period (20112015) and forecast period (20152020).The report also analyses information pertaining to the competitive landscape in the country, gives a comprehensive overview of the Lebanese economy and demographics, and provides detailed analysis of natural hazards and their impact on the Lebanese insurance industry.The report brings together Timetrics research, modeling and analysis expertise to enable reinsurers to identify segment dynamics and competitive advantages, and access profiles of reinsurers operating in the country.SummaryTimetrics 'Reinsurance in Lebanon Key Trends and Opportunities to 2020' report provides in-depth market analysis, information and insights into the Lebanese reinsurance segment, including:An outlook of the Lebanese reinsurance segmentA comprehensive overview of the Lebanese economy and demographicsDetailed analysis of natural hazards and their impact on the Lebanese insurance industryThe competitive landscape in the Lebanese reinsurance segmentScopeThis report provides a comprehensive analysis of the reinsurance segment in Lebanon:It provides historical values for the Lebanese reinsurance segment for the reports 20112015 review period, and projected figures for the 20152020 forecast period.It offers a detailed analysis of the key categories in the Lebanese reinsurance segment, and market forecasts to 2020.It provides a detailed analysis of the reinsurance ceded from various direct insurance segments in Lebanon, and the reinsurance segment's growth prospects.It analyzes various natural and man-made hazards and their impact on the Lebanese insurance industryTo Get Sample Copy of Report visit @Reasons To BuyMake strategic business decisions using in-depth historic and forecast market data related to the Lebanese reinsurance segment, and each category within it.Understand the demand-side dynamics, key market trends and growth opportunities in the Lebanese reinsurance segment.Identify growth opportunities and market dynamics in key product categories.Gain insights into key regulations governing the Lebanese insurance industry, and their impact on companies and the industry's future.Key HighlightsIn 2017, Gen Re partnered with Monsenso, a Danish technology company, to offer mental health solutions.In March 2017, the government announced plans to provide subsidized loans to encourage consolidation in the insurance industry.In 2017, Nasco Insurance Group acquired a 93.9% stake in Lebanese insurer Al Ittihad Al Watani (LUnion Nationale) for LBP26.4 billion (US$17.5 million).In June 2015, Chedid Europe Reinsurance Brokerage Ltd a subsidiary of Chedid Re announced its registration as a Lloyds broker.In May 2016, Chedid Capital Holdings acquired a majority stake in Emirati Al Manara Insurance Services Co. Ltd.Browse More Details @About ResearchMozResearchMoz is the one stop online destination to find and buy market research reports & Industry Analysis. We fulfill all your research needs spanning across industry verticals with our huge collection of market research reports. We provide our services to all sizes of organizations and across all industry verticals and markets. Our Research Coordinators have in-depth knowledge of reports as well as publishers and will assist you in making an informed decision by giving you unbiased and deep insights on which reports will satisfy your needs at the best price.Mr. NachiketState Tower,90 State Street,Suite 700,Albany NY - 12207United StatesEmail: sales@researchmoz.usWebsite @Tel: 866-997-4948 (Us-Canada Toll Free)Tel: +1-518-621-2074Follow us on LinkedIn @ Log Homes (BC, Artisan Log Homes, Rumax, Rovaniemi) Europe Market Forecast to 2022 https://www.htfmarketreport.com/sample-report/622873-europe-log-homes-market-2 https://www.htfmarketreport.com/request-discount/622873-europe-log-homes-market-2 https://www.htfmarketreport.com/buy-now?format=1&report=622873 https://www.htfmarketreport.com/reports/622873-europe-log-homes-market-2 A new research document with title 'Europe Log Homes Market by Manufacturers, Countries, Type and Application, Forecast to 2022 covering detailed analysis, Competitive landscape, forecast and strategies. The study covers geographic analysis that includes regions like Germany, UK, France, Russia, Italy and important players/vendors such as Pioneer Log Homes of BC, Artisan Log Homes, Rumax, Rovaniemi The report will help user gain market insights, future trends and growth prospects for forecast period of 2017-22SummaryLog home, or called log house, is a structure built with horizontal logs interlocked at the corners by notching. Logs may be round, squared or hewn to other shapes, either handcrafted or milled.Request a sample report @Scope of the Report:This report focuses on the Log Homes in Europe market, especially in Germany, UK, France, Russia, and Italy. This report categorizes the market based on manufacturers, countries, type and application.Market Segment by Manufacturers, this report coversHonka Log HomesPalmakoPioneer Log Homes of BCArtisan Log HomesRumaxRovaniemiKuusamo Log HousesDie NaturstammbauerKuchler BlockhausArtifexKatahdin Cedar Log HomesChiemgauer HolzhausMarket Segment by Countries, coveringGermanyUKFranceRussiaItalyMarket Segment by Type, coversHand-Crafted Log HomesManufactured or Milled Log HomesMarket Segment by Applications, can be divided intoHousehold MarketCommercial MarketThere are 17 Chapters to deeply display the Europe Log Homes market.Chapter 1, to describe Log Homes Introduction, product type and application, market overview, market analysis by countries, market opportunities, market risk, market driving force;Chapter 2, to analyze the manufacturers of Log Homes, with profile, main business, news, sales, price, revenue and market share in 2016 and 2017;Chapter 3, to display the competitive situation among the top manufacturers in Europe, with sales, revenue and market share in 2016 and 2017;Chapter 4, to show the Europe market by countries, covering Germany, UK, France, Italy and Russia, with sales, price, revenue and market share of Log Homes, for each country, from 2012 to 2017;Get customization & check discount for report @Chapter 5 and 6, to show the market by type and application, with sales, price, revenue, market share and growth rate by type and application, from 2012 to 2017;Chapter 7, 8, 9, 10 and 11, to analyze the key countries by manufacturers, Type and Application, covering Germany, UK, France, Italy and Russia, with sales, revenue and market share by manufacturers, types and applications;Chapter 12, Log Homes market forecast, by countries, type and application, with sales, price, revenue and growth rate forecast, from 2017 to 2022;Chapter 13, to analyze the manufacturing cost, key raw materials and manufacturing process etc.Chapter 14, to analyze the industrial chain, sourcing strategy and downstream end users (buyers);Buy this report @Chapter 15, to describe Log Homes sales channel, distributors, traders, dealers etc.Chapter 16 and 17, to describe Log Homes Research Findings and Conclusion, Appendix, methodology and data sourceView Detailed Table of Content @Thanks for reading this article, you can also get individual chapter wise section or region wise report version like North America, Europe or Asia.Contact Us:CRAIG FRANCIS (PR & Marketing Manager)sales@htfmarketreport.comPh: +1 (206) 317 1218HTF Market Report is a wholly owned brand of HTF market Intelligence Consulting Private Limited. HTF Market Report global research and market intelligence consulting organization is uniquely positioned to not only identify growth opportunities but to also empower and inspire you to create visionary growth strategies for futures, enabled by our extraordinary depth and breadth of thought leadership, research, tools, events and experience that assist you for making goals into a reality. Our understanding of the interplay between industry convergence, Mega Trends, technologies and market trends provides our clients with new business models and expansion opportunities. We are focused on identifying the Accurate Forecast in every industry we cover so our clients can reap the benefits of being early market entrants and can accomplish their Goals & Objectives.Contact us :HTF Market Intelligence Consulting Private LimitedUnit No. 429, Parsonage Road Edison, NJNew Jersey USA 08837sales@htfmarketreport.com+1 (206) 317 1218 LPG Cylinder Europe Market with top key players Sahamitr Pressure Container, Mauria Udyog, Manchester Tank https://www.htfmarketreport.com/sample-report/622874-europe-lpg-cylinder-market-5 https://www.htfmarketreport.com/request-discount/622874-europe-lpg-cylinder-market-5 https://www.htfmarketreport.com/buy-now?format=1&report=622874 https://www.htfmarketreport.com/reports/622874-europe-lpg-cylinder-market-5 A new research document with title 'Europe LPG Cylinder Market by Manufacturers, Countries, Type and Application, Forecast to 2022 covering detailed analysis, Competitive landscape, forecast and strategies. The study covers geographic analysis that includes regions like Germany, UK, France, Russia, Italy and important players/vendors such as Worthington Industries, Sahamitr Pressure Container , Mauria Udyog, Manchester Tank The report will help user gain market insights, future trends and growth prospects for forecast period of 2017-22Summary""LPG Cylinder is a storage device that designed for the storing and transporting of liquefied petroleum gas.LPG cylinder has a huge variety of uses, most significantly domestic use. It is suitable for both indoor and outdoor use, including caravans, camping and barbecues. Moreover, it is employed across many different sectors such as transportation, hot air balloons, construction, recreation, hospitality, agricultural, calefaction and fishing.""Request a sample report @Scope of the Report:This report focuses on the LPG Cylinder in Europe market, especially in Germany, UK, France, Russia, and Italy. This report categorizes the market based on manufacturers, countries, type and application.Market Segment by Manufacturers, this report coversHuanriAmtrol-AlfaHebei BaigongWorthington IndustriesSahamitr Pressure ContainerMauria UdyogManchester TankAygazJiangsu MinshengButagazBhiwadi CylindersEVASHexagon RagascoFaber IndustrieGaz Liquid Industrie (GLI)MetalMateViTKOVICELuxfer Gas CylindersSAHUWALA CYLINDERSGuangdong YingquanMBGAburi CompositesPT PRAJAMITA INTERNUSAMarket Segment by Countries, coveringGermanyUKFranceRussiaItalyMarket Segment by Type, coversLPG Steel CylindersLPG Composite CylindersMarket Segment by Applications, can be divided intoKitchen and Domestic UseAutomotive UseOthersThere are 17 Chapters to deeply display the Europe LPG Cylinder market.Chapter 1, to describe LPG Cylinder Introduction, product type and application, market overview, market analysis by countries, market opportunities, market risk, market driving force;Chapter 2, to analyze the manufacturers of LPG Cylinder, with profile, main business, news, sales, price, revenue and market share in 2016 and 2017;Chapter 3, to display the competitive situation among the top manufacturers in Europe, with sales, revenue and market share in 2016 and 2017;Get customization & check discount for report @Chapter 4, to show the Europe market by countries, covering Germany, UK, France, Italy and Russia, with sales, price, revenue and market share of LPG Cylinder, for each country, from 2012 to 2017;Chapter 5 and 6, to show the market by type and application, with sales, price, revenue, market share and growth rate by type and application, from 2012 to 2017;Chapter 7, 8, 9, 10 and 11, to analyze the key countries by manufacturers, Type and Application, covering Germany, UK, France, Italy and Russia, with sales, revenue and market share by manufacturers, types and applications;Chapter 12, LPG Cylinder market forecast, by countries, type and application, with sales, price, revenue and growth rate forecast, from 2017 to 2022;Chapter 13, to analyze the manufacturing cost, key raw materials and manufacturing process etc.Buy this report @Chapter 14, to analyze the industrial chain, sourcing strategy and downstream end users (buyers);Chapter 15, to describe LPG Cylinder sales channel, distributors, traders, dealers etc.Chapter 16 and 17, to describe LPG Cylinder Research Findings and Conclusion, Appendix, methodology and data sourceView Detailed Table of Content @Thanks for reading this article, you can also get individual chapter wise section or region wise report version like North America, Europe or Asia.Contact Us:CRAIG FRANCIS (PR & Marketing Manager)sales@htfmarketreport.comPh: +1 (206) 317 1218HTF Market Report is a wholly owned brand of HTF market Intelligence Consulting Private Limited. HTF Market Report global research and market intelligence consulting organization is uniquely positioned to not only identify growth opportunities but to also empower and inspire you to create visionary growth strategies for futures, enabled by our extraordinary depth and breadth of thought leadership, research, tools, events and experience that assist you for making goals into a reality. Our understanding of the interplay between industry convergence, Mega Trends, technologies and market trends provides our clients with new business models and expansion opportunities. We are focused on identifying the Accurate Forecast in every industry we cover so our clients can reap the benefits of being early market entrants and can accomplish their Goals & Objectives.Contact us :HTF Market Intelligence Consulting Private LimitedUnit No. 429, Parsonage Road Edison, NJNew Jersey USA 08837sales@htfmarketreport.com+1 (206) 317 1218 Vascular Stents Market: Global Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends and Forecast Market Research Report http://www.researchmoz.us/enquiry.php?type=S&repid=874398 http://www.researchmoz.us/global-vascular-stents-market-research-report-2016-report.html http://www.researchmoz.us/ http://bit.ly/1TBmnVG Researchmoz added Most up-to-date research on "Vascular Stents Market: Global Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends and Forecast" to its huge collection of research reports.This report studies Vascular Stents in Global market, especially in North America, Europe, China, Japan, Southeast Asia and India, focuses on top manufacturers in global market, with Production, price, revenue and market share for each manufacturer, coveringAbbott LaboratoriesB. Braun MelsungenBoston ScientificIntact VascularAMGAngioscoreBard PVCook MedicalCordisMedtronicSt. Jude MedicalMarket Segment by Regions, this report splits Global into several key Regions, with production, consumption, revenue, market share and growth rate of Vascular Stents in these regions, from 2011 to 2021 (forecast), likeNorth AmericaEuropeChinaJapanSoutheast AsiaIndiaSplit by product type, with production, revenue, price, market share and growth rate of each type, can be divided intoType IType IIType IIISplit by application, this report focuses on consumption, market share and growth rate of Vascular Stents in each application, can be divided intoApplication 1Application 2Application 3To Get Sample Copy of Report visit @Table of ContentsGlobal Vascular Stents Market Research Report 20161 Vascular Stents Market Overview1.1 Product Overview and Scope of Vascular Stents1.2 Vascular Stents Segment by Type1.2.1 Global Production Market Share of Vascular Stents by Type in 20151.2.2 Type I1.2.3 Type II1.2.4 Type III1.3 Vascular Stents Segment by Application1.3.1 Vascular Stents Consumption Market Share by Application in 20151.3.2 Application 11.3.3 Application 21.3.4 Application 31.4 Vascular Stents Market by Region1.4.1 North America Status and Prospect (2011-2021)1.4.2 Europe Status and Prospect (2011-2021)1.4.3 China Status and Prospect (2011-2021)1.4.4 Japan Status and Prospect (2011-2021)1.4.5 Southeast Asia Status and Prospect (2011-2021)1.4.6 India Status and Prospect (2011-2021)1.5 Global Market Size (Value) of Vascular Stents (2011-2021)2 Global Vascular Stents Market Competition by Manufacturers2.1 Global Vascular Stents Production and Share by Manufacturers (2015 and 2016)2.2 Global Vascular Stents Revenue and Share by Manufacturers (2015 and 2016)2.3 Global Vascular Stents Average Price by Manufacturers (2015 and 2016)2.4 Manufacturers Vascular Stents Manufacturing Base Distribution, Sales Area and Product TypeBrowse More Details @About ResearchMozResearchMoz is the one stop online destination to find and buy market research reports & Industry Analysis. We fulfill all your research needs spanning across industry verticals with our huge collection of market research reports. We provide our services to all sizes of organizations and across all industry verticals and markets. Our Research Coordinators have in-depth knowledge of reports as well as publishers and will assist you in making an informed decision by giving you unbiased and deep insights on which reports will satisfy your needs at the best price.Mr. NachiketState Tower,90 State Street,Suite 700,Albany NY - 12207United StatesEmail: sales@researchmoz.usWebsite @Tel: 866-997-4948 (Us-Canada Toll Free)Tel: +1-518-621-2074Follow us on LinkedIn @ Global Recessed Lighting Market Professional Survey Report 2017 http://www.qyresearchreports.com/sample/sample.php?rep_id=1221039&type=Es http://www.qyresearchreports.com/report/global-recessed-lighting-market-professional-survey-report-2017.htm http://www.qyresearchreports.com This report focuses on top manufacturers in global market, with production, price, revenue and market share for each manufacturer, coveringAcuity Brands Lighting Inc.Cree Inc.Eaton Corporation PLCGE Lighting (A Fully Owned Subsidiary of General Electric Company)Herbert Waldmann GmbH & Co. KgHubbell IncorporationKLS Martin GroupKoninklijke Philips N.V.Trilux Lighting Ltd.Zumtobel Group AGFor more info, get a Sample PDF with TOC:By types, the market can be split intoFluorescentLEDRenewable EnergyTable of ContentsGlobal Recessed Lighting Market Professional Survey Report 20171 Industry Overview of Recessed Lighting1.1 Definition and Specifications of Recessed Lighting1.1.1 Definition of Recessed Lighting1.1.2 Specifications of Recessed Lighting1.2 Classification of Recessed Lighting1.2.1 Fluorescent1.2.2 LED1.2.3 Renewable Energy1.3 Applications of Recessed Lighting1.3.1 Patient Wards & ICUs1.3.2 Examination Rooms1.3.3 Surgical Suites1.4 Market Segment by Regions1.4.1 North America1.4.2 China1.4.3 Europe1.4.4 Southeast Asia1.4.5 Japan1.4.6 India2 Manufacturing Cost Structure Analysis of Recessed Lighting2.1 Raw Material and Suppliers2.2 Manufacturing Cost Structure Analysis of Recessed Lighting2.3 Manufacturing Process Analysis of Recessed Lighting2.4 Industry Chain Structure of Recessed LightingTo Browse a Complete Report with TOC Visit @3 Technical Data and Manufacturing Plants Analysis of Recessed Lighting3.1 Capacity and Commercial Production Date of Global Recessed Lighting Major Manufacturers in 20163.2 Manufacturing Plants Distribution of Global Recessed Lighting Major Manufacturers in 20163.3 R&D Status and Technology Source of Global Recessed Lighting Major Manufacturers in 20163.4 Raw Materials Sources Analysis of Global Recessed Lighting Major Manufacturers in 20164 Global Recessed Lighting Overall Market Overview4.1 2012-2017E Overall Market Analysis4.2 Capacity Analysis4.2.1 2012-2017E Global Recessed Lighting Capacity and Growth Rate Analysis4.2.2 2016 Recessed Lighting Capacity Analysis (Company Segment)4.3 Sales Analysis4.3.1 2012-2017E Global Recessed Lighting Sales and Growth Rate Analysis4.3.2 2016 Recessed Lighting Sales Analysis (Company Segment)4.4 Sales Price Analysis4.4.1 2012-2017E Global Recessed Lighting Sales Price4.4.2 2016 Recessed Lighting Sales Price Analysis (Company Segment)5 Recessed Lighting Regional Market Analysis5.1 North America Recessed Lighting Market Analysis5.1.1 North America Recessed Lighting Market Overview5.1.2 North America 2012-2017E Recessed Lighting Local Supply, Import, Export, Local Consumption Analysis5.1.3 North America 2012-2017E Recessed Lighting Sales Price Analysis5.1.4 North America 2016 Recessed Lighting Market Share Analysis5.2 China Recessed Lighting Market Analysis5.2.1 China Recessed Lighting Market Overview5.2.2 China 2012-2017E Recessed Lighting Local Supply, Import, Export, Local Consumption AnalysisList of Tables and FiguresFigure Picture of Recessed LightingTable Product Specifications of Recessed LightingTable Classification of Recessed LightingFigure Global Production Market Share of Recessed Lighting by Type in 2016Figure Fluorescent PictureQYReseachReports.com delivers the latest strategic market intelligence to build a successful business footprint in China. Our syndicated and customized research reports provide companies with vital background information of the market and in-depth analysis on the Chinese trade and investment framework, which directly affects their business operations. Reports from QYReseachReports.com feature valuable recommendations on how to navigate in the extremely unpredictable yet highly attractive Chinese market.1820 AvenueM Suite #1047Brooklyn, NY 11230United StatesToll Free: 866-997-4948 (USA-CANADA)Tel: +1-518-621-2074Web:Email: sales@qyresearchreports.com Dehydrated Food Market Technological Advancements to aid Growth by 2021 http://www.persistencemarketresearch.com/market-research/dehydrated-food-market.asp http://www.persistencemarketresearch.com/samples/5933 http://www.persistencemarketresearch.com/toc/5933 http://www.persistencemarketresearch.com Drying or dehydration is a process through which moisture or water content is removed from the food. Removing of water content from food makes them lighter and smaller. It helps in preservation of food for longer period of time. Dehydrated food do not require any refrigeration while preserving at home or at the time of consumption. Moreover, dehydrated food is ideal for preserving seasonal fruits and vegetables. Dehydrated food offer high nutritional value, easy storage properties and availability at low price, which is driving the demand of dehydrate food across the globe.To View Complete Report @ :Dehydrated food market can be segmented on the basis of technology which includes spray dried, freeze dried, vacuum dried, sun dried, hot air dried and others. Traditionally among all these segments sun dried process of dehydration was the major segment in terms of usage by food manufacturers followed by hot air dried process. However due to the introduction of new technology spray dried is expected to account for largest share in terms of market revenue contribution, followed by freeze dried during the forecast period. Vacuum dried segment is expected to show a consistent growth as compared to others. Limited usage in food products is expected to be the restraining factor for the growth of vacuum dried technology in dehydrated food market in the near future.A sample of this report is available upon request @Furthermore, dehydrated food market can also be segmented on the basis of types. This includes dehydrated dairy products, dehydrated fruits, dehydrated meat products, dehydrated vegetables and others. Among all these segment meat products is expected to account for largest market share followed by dairy products. Increasing demand for enhanced year around availability of processed and canned meat products among the manufacturers is expected to support the demand of dehydrated meat products in the near future. Moreover the dehydrated fruits and dehydrated vegetables segments respectively are expected show a favorable growth during the forecast period. This is attributed to rising demand of seasonal fruits and vegetables.To view TOC of this report is available upon request @Dehydrated food market can also be segmented on the basis of region. Globally, North America is expected to account for the major market share. In North American region the U.S is expected to be the major contributor in terms of revenue followed by Canada. Increased consumption of meat products in North America is expected to support the demand of dehydrated food products across the region. Europe is also expected to be one of the prominent contributor in dehydrated food products market in terms of revenue followed by Asia Pacific. Among all the countries in the European region United Kingdom is expected to contribute the highest during the forecast period. Moreover in terms of production of dehydrated food China is expected to be one of the prominent producer of dehydrated food products. In addition, China is one of the largest meat products producer along with prime producer of various seasonal fruits and vegetables. This is expected to contribute towards significant growth in the country.Rising demand of food products with longer shelf life coupled with the increasing demand of seasonal products across the year is supporting the growth of dehydrated food market during the forecast period. Moreover, increasing demand of food manufacturers for preserving food product for longer period so that they could use it as an ingredient in their final product is also fuelling the demand of dehydrated food market during the forecast period.About UsPersistence Market Research (PMR) is a third-platform research firm. Our research model is a unique collaboration of data analytics and market research methodology to help businesses achieve optimal performance.To support companies in overcoming complex business challenges, we follow a multi-disciplinary approach. At PMR, we unite various data streams from multi-dimensional sources. By deploying real-time data collection, big data, and customer experience analytics, we deliver business intelligence for organizations of all sizes.Contact UsPersistence Market Research305 Broadway7th Floor, New York City,NY 10007, United States,USA Canada Toll Free: 800-961-0353Email: sales@persistencemarketresearch.comWeb: Protein Hydrolysate Ingredients Market Significant Profits Estimated to be Generated by 2021 http://www.persistencemarketresearch.com/market-research/protein-hydrolysate-ingredients-market.asp http://www.persistencemarketresearch.com/samples/6191 http://www.persistencemarketresearch.com/toc/6191 http://www.persistencemarketresearch.com Protein hydrolysate ingredients are the group of peptides derived from proteins. Protein hydrolysate are rich in protein content and are absorbed more quickly in comparison to other proteins. The different type of protein hydrolysate ingredients include milk protein hydrolysate and meat protein hydrolysate. These protein hydrolysate ingredients have relatively low antigenic properties. Protein hydrolysates ingredients enhance the digestibility and reduces the protein allergy especially in infants.To View Complete Report @ :There are various form of protein hydrolysate ingredients available in the market. Protein Hydrolysate ingredients market can be segmented on the basis of ingredients, application and region. Based on ingredient type, the segmentation includes milk protein hydrolysate and meat protein hydrolysate. Milk protein hydrolysates are type of peptides derived from milk proteins. There are two main sources of milk protein hydrolysates that includes whey protein hydrolysates and casein hydrolysates. The protein hydrolysates ingredients most commonly used in nutritional products are casein, whey protein and soy protein. These ingredients are the type of peptides that possess high nutritional properties and are comparatively absorbed quickly than other types of protein or amino acids. In Protein hydrolysates market, milk hydrolysate is anticipated to exhibit robust growth in the next four to five years. This is due to the comparatively less preference of consumers for meat hydrolysates ingredients.A sample of this report is available upon request @On the basis of application protein hydrolysate ingredient market is segmented into infant formula, clinical nutrition and sport and slimming food. Among all the segments infant formula is the fastest growing segment, which is anticipated to witness double digit growth over the forecasted period, followed by the sport nutrition and clinical nutrition. The protein hydrolysates market is studied across various regions that includes North America, Latin America, Western Europe, Eastern Europe, Asia Pacific excluding Japan, Japan and Middle East and Africa.To view TOC of this report is available upon request @Protein hydrolysate Ingredients Market demand is anticipated to increase globally owing to the increasing number of health conscious consumers. Protein hydrolysate ingredients market is expected to exhibit strong growth in North America due to the increasing number of high affluent class people coupled with rising awareness of consumers regarding the health .In North America, U.S. is the most dominating market, followed by other European countries. There is increasing demand of Protein Hydrolysate Ingredients Market in U.S. due the increasing disposable income of consumers and also rising number of health conscious consumers. Furthermore, Europe is expected to exhibit consistent growth due to increasing production of milk in the European regions. However, Asia Pacific is expected to be the fastest growing market in the forthcoming years due the increasing investment of companies to launch new ingredients especially in infant formula segment. This trend is especially witnessed in China due to the increasing consumer interest in specialist nutrition. Protein hydrolysate ingredients market is growing drastically in China due to the increasing upper middle class population that supports the growth of protein hydrolysate ingredient rich products, which are higher in price.Protein hydrolysate ingredients market is witnessing healthy growth. This is due the increasing demand for protein hydrolysate ingredients by consumers owing to the health benefits coupled with nutritional benefits associated with it across developed regions. However, various factors that restrict the growth of protein hydrolysate ingredients market include less awareness among consumers regarding the health benefits associated with the consumption of protein hydrolysate ingredients in emerging economies.About UsPersistence Market Research (PMR) is a third-platform research firm. Our research model is a unique collaboration of data analytics and market research methodology to help businesses achieve optimal performance.To support companies in overcoming complex business challenges, we follow a multi-disciplinary approach. At PMR, we unite various data streams from multi-dimensional sources. By deploying real-time data collection, big data, and customer experience analytics, we deliver business intelligence for organizations of all sizes.Contact UsPersistence Market Research305 Broadway7th Floor, New York City,NY 10007, United States,USA Canada Toll Free: 800-961-0353Email: sales@persistencemarketresearch.comWeb: Foaming Agents Market to Witness Exponential Growth by 2021 http://www.persistencemarketresearch.com/market-research/foaming-agents-market.asp http://www.persistencemarketresearch.com/samples/6415 http://www.persistencemarketresearch.com/toc/6415 http://www.persistencemarketresearch.com Foaming agents are used create foam in food products and also used to add flavour to the food products. Various types of foaming agents include Gelatin and Lecithin.Gelatin is used in various food products to stabilize the foam. However, Lecithin is primarily used for converting juices to foams. Foaming agents are of various types including natural and artificial foaming agents. Natural foaming agents such as Yucca schidigera and Quillaja saponaria are used in various applications such as carbonated beverages, juices and beer. These foaming agents are especially used in products that require enhanced foaming properties.To View Complete Report @ :Global foaming agents market is segmented on the basis of type, application and region. Based on the type, food foaming agents is segmented into natural and artificial. Of which, the natural foaming agent is the leading segment in terms of revenue contribution, followed by the artificial foaming agents. The natural foaming agent is the dominating segment, as companies are primarily manufacturing natural foaming agents in order to meet the rising preference of the customers for the food products that contain natural ingredients. On the basis of application food foaming agents, segmentation includes beverages and dairy. Of which, beverage segment is expected to be the dominating segment over the forecast period due the expanding market for the beverage such as alcohol globally, However, followed by the dairy, dairy segment is expected to witness consistent growth in the coming four to five years. Global foaming agents market is segmented on the basis of the region into North America, Latin America, Eastern Europe, Western Europe, Asia-Pacific excluding Japan, Middle East and Africa and Japan.A sample of this report is available upon request @The Global foaming agents market is expected to witness robust growth over the forecast period due to the expanding beverage and dairy industry. Globally among all regions, North America is the most dominating segment followed by other regions. In North America, U.S. is expected to contribute highest market share, followed by other countries during the forecast period. North America is expected to contribute maximum market share owing to the high consumption of food products, especially in the dairy segment. However, Asia-Pacific is expected to witness fast growth in the next four to five yearsA major factor that fuel the growth of foaming agents market includes the growing demand of consumers for the food products that are superior in taste. Another factor that is expected to boost the demand of foaming agent is increasing consumption of beverages such as alcoholic and nonalcoholic drinks. Moreover, application of foaming agent in beverages such as alcohol is the cost-effective method for releasing foam in drinks. However, major factor that is expected to hinder the growth of foaming agents is adverse effects related to the consumption of food products in beverage and dairy segmentTo view TOC of this report is available upon request @Major companies operating in Foaming Agents are Nature S.A., Bergen International, Adams Food Ingredients Ltd, Desert King International, Garuda International Inc., Kerry Inc., RIKEN VITAMIN Co., Ltd. Companies operating in foaming agent market are adopting strategy to launch numerous foaming agents in order to cater to the evolving demand for foaming agents especially from food and beverage industry. Companies are also adopting a strategy to expand its geographical reach in order to increase its market presence and grab the maximum untapped and potential market related to foaming agents. Companies operating in foaming agents market are also adopting a strategy to increase the revenue by manufacturing foaming agents tailored for the specific application.About UsPersistence Market Research (PMR) is a third-platform research firm. Our research model is a unique collaboration of data analytics and market research methodology to help businesses achieve optimal performance.To support companies in overcoming complex business challenges, we follow a multi-disciplinary approach. At PMR, we unite various data streams from multi-dimensional sources. By deploying real-time data collection, big data, and customer experience analytics, we deliver business intelligence for organizations of all sizes.Contact UsPersistence Market Research305 Broadway7th Floor, New York City,NY 10007, United States,USA Canada Toll Free: 800-961-0353Email: sales@persistencemarketresearch.comWeb: Smart Mirrors Market 2017 Emerging Trends, Analysis and Growth ReportsWeb http://www.reportsweb.com/inquiry&RW0001719594/sample http://www.reportsweb.com/global-smart-mirrors-market-research-report-2017 http://www.reportsweb.com/inquiry&RW0001719594/discount http://www.reportsweb.com/buy&RW0001719594/buy/2900 ReportsWeb.com has announced the addition of the Global Smart Mirrors Market Research Report 2017 The report focuses on global major leading players with information such as company profiles, product picture and specification.Geographically, this report is segmented into several key Regions, with production, consumption, revenue (million USD), market share and growth rate of Smart Mirrors in these regions, from 2012 to 2022 (forecast), covering United States, EU, China, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan.Get free sample copy of report atGlobal Smart Mirrors market competition by top manufacturers, with production, price, revenue (value) and market share for each manufacturer; the top players including Perseus Mirrors, Evernue, Seura, Magna International, Electric Mirror, OAK Labs, Memomi Labs, Gentex, Pro Display, Samsung, Lg Electronics, Panasonic, Toshiba, Seraku, Alke', Ad Notam, Tech2o, Actimirror, Two Way Mirrors and Keonn Technologies.Get more information about this report atOn the basis of product, this report displays the production, revenue, price, market share and growth rate of each type, primarily split into Electro Chromic Technology, Self-Dimming Technology and Other.On the basis on the end users/applications, this report focuses on the status and outlook for major applications/end users, consumption (sales), market share and growth rate of Smart Mirrors for each application, including Medical & Healthcare, Consumer & Household, Advertising & Retail, Automotive and Other.Get discount on report purchase atTable of Content1 Smart Mirrors Market Overview2 Global Smart Mirrors Market Competition by Manufacturers3 Global Smart Mirrors Capacity, Production, Revenue (Value) by Region (2012-2017)4 Global Smart Mirrors Supply (Production), Consumption, Export, Import by Region (2012-2017)5 Global Smart Mirrors Production, Revenue (Value), Price Trend by Type6 Global Smart Mirrors Market Analysis by Application7 Global Smart Mirrors Manufacturers Profiles/Analysis7.1 Perseus Mirrors7.1.1 Company Basic Information, Manufacturing Base, Sales Area and Its Competitors7.1.2 Smart Mirrors Product Category, Application and Specification7.1.2.1 Product A7.1.2.2 Product B7.1.3 Perseus Mirrors Smart Mirrors Capacity, Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2012-2017)7.1.4 Main Business/Business Overview7.2 Evernue7.2.1 Company Basic Information, Manufacturing Base, Sales Area and Its Competitors7.2.2 Smart Mirrors Product Category, Application and Specification7.2.2.1 Product A7.2.2.2 Product B7.2.3 Evernue Smart Mirrors Capacity, Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2012-2017)7.2.4 Main Business/Business Overview7.3 Seura7.3.1 Company Basic Information, Manufacturing Base, Sales Area and Its Competitors7.3.2 Smart Mirrors Product Category, Application and Specification7.3.2.1 Product A7.3.2.2 Product B7.3.3 Seura Smart Mirrors Capacity, Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2012-2017)7.3.4 Main Business/Business Overview8 Smart Mirrors Manufacturing Cost Analysis9 Industrial Chain, Sourcing Strategy and Downstream Buyers10 Marketing Strategy Analysis, Distributors/Traders11 Market Effect Factors Analysis12 Global Smart Mirrors Market Forecast (2017-2022)13 Research Findings and ConclusionPurchase complete report atContact Info:Name: Sameer JoshiEmail: sales@reportsweb.comOrganization: ReportsWebPhone: +1-646-491-9876ReportsWeb.com is a one stop shop of market research reports and solutions to various companies across the globe. We help our clients in their decision support system by helping them choose most relevant and cost effective research reports and solutions from various publishers. We provide best in class customer service and our customer support team is always available to help you on your research queries.505, 6th floor, Amanora Township,Amanora Chambers, East Block,Kharadi Road, Hadapsar, Pune-411028 Flexible Display Market: Global Industry Analysis and Forecast 2016 - 2024 http://www.persistencemarketresearch.com/market-research/flexible-display-market.asp http://www.persistencemarketresearch.com/samples/10804 http://www.persistencemarketresearch.com A flexible display is flexible by nature. The global flexible display market is expected to grow at a substantial growth rate due to the growing interest of many consumer electronics manufacturers to apply this display technology in mobile phones, e-readers and other consumer electronics. There are various trends which have been driving the technological innovations in the display industry which includes portability, quality, interconnectivity, screen size, user- friendliness, and power savings.Get access to full summary @:The global flexible display market is segmented into four major categories, on the basis of material into polymer, glass, and glass-reinforced plastic, on the basis of components into organic material, substrate, conductive layer, backlight panel and other components. On the basis of applications the market is segmented into e-reader, smartphone, tablet, laptop, e-paper, and television. The market is also segmented by technology into emissive and non-emissive. The market is further segmented by geography into North America, Asia Pacific, Europe and rest of the world regions.The market is driven by factors such as the rapidly growing consumer electronics goods industry and its distinctive features. Some of the factors inhibiting the growth of the global flexible display market are manufacturing challenges and competing technologies. The growing penetration in multiple applications will serve as an opportunity, fuelling the growth of the global next generation biometric technology market.A sample of this report is available upon request @Some of the key players dominating the market are Atmel Corporation, AU Optronics Corp., Corning Incorporated, Delta Electronics, Inc., Dupont Display, E Ink Holdings, Inc., Flexible Display Center (Asu), Hewlett-Packard Company, Kent Displays, Inc., LG Display Co. Ltd., Materion Corporation, Nanolumens, Nokia, Novaled AG and Philips Electronics among others.About UsPersistence Market Research (PMR) is a third-platform research firm. Our research model is a unique collaboration of data analytics and market research methodology to help businesses achieve optimal performance.To support companies in overcoming complex business challenges, we follow a multi-disciplinary approach. At PMR, we unite various data streams from multi-dimensional sources. By deploying real-time data collection, big data, and customer experience analytics, we deliver business intelligence for organizations of all sizes.Contact UsPersistence Market Research305 Broadway7th Floor, New York City,NY 10007, United States,USA Canada Toll Free: 800-961-0353Email: sales@persistencemarketresearch.comWeb: A third suspect in the shooting death of Ciara Philumalee was arrested Wednesday night after a 12-mile car chase on the citys East Side that ended with the vehicle driving off the road. Donald Davis Jr., 29, was taken into custody in the town of Dunn, after he was spotted by an off-duty Capitol Police officer on East Washington Avenue. Davis was booked on a tentative charge of first-degree intentional homicide and also for eluding police, Madison police said. Two others were arrested earlier Wednesday in the Philumalee homicide. Jennifer Lovick, 34, and Korey Johnson, 33, are tentatively charged with being party to the crime of first-degree intentional homicide and a party to the crime of first-degree reckless injury. In the Davis arrest, police spokesman Timothy Radke said as officers arrived on the scene where the off-duty officer spotted Davis in a car in the 700 block of East Washington Avenue, the car sped off, with officers in pursuit. The vehicle eventually drove off the road and came to a stop on Dyerson Road in the town of Dunn, Radke said. Both occupants of the vehicle were taken into custody, including Davis. Police didnt identify the second person in the vehicle. Officers from the Capitol, Fitchburg and Monona police departments and deputies from the Dane County Sheriffs Office helped in the chase and arrest of Davis. Philumalee died Friday morning after being shot in the parking lot of an apartment building on West Karstens Drive. A 44-year-old man with Philumalee also was shot and was taken to a hospital with non-life-threatening injuries. HER2-Negative Breast Cancer Treatment Market is Expecting Worldwide Growth by 2017 2025 http://www.persistencemarketresearch.com/toc/14566 http://www.persistencemarketresearch.com/market-research/her2-negative-breast-cancer-treatment-market.asp www.persistencemarketresearch.com Group of diseases that tend to mutate the cells in the body resulting into uncontrolled division of cells forming a mass or lump called as tumor. Cancer is generally named after the body part from where the tumor originates. The breast cancer originates in the milk production glands that are present in breast tissues called to be as lobules and also originate in the ducts that are connected to lobules. Cancer that originates in the lobules are known to be lobular carcinoma while which begins in the ducts is ductal carcinoma. According to the report published by ASCO (American Society of Clinical Oncology) in 2014, ductal carcinomas contribute to about 75% of all breast cancers. The breast cancer that spreads beyond the ducts or lobules is known to be infiltrating ductal or invasive carcinoma. For invasive cancer, a hospital laboratory test is carried out, wherein HER2 levels are measured particularly, in a sample of breast tissue obtained from a biopsy or surgery. HER2 is also known to be as ERBB2 which is Erb-B2 receptor tyrosine kinase 2. HER2 or ERBB2, is human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 which plays an important role in view of breast cancer. HER2 or ERBB2 gene is responsible for coding HER2 or ERBB2 proteins which are the receptors on the breast. Three common test employed to test for HER2 levels are chromogenic in situ hybridization (CISH), immunohistochemistry (IHC) and fluorescent in situ hybridization (FISH). Depending on the levels of HER2 or ERBB2 in the laboratory test breast cancer is classified as HER2 or ERBB2 positive or HER2 negative breast cancer. In HER2 or ERBB2 receptors in a normal breast maintains growth, division and repairing while in HER2 or ERBB2 positive breast cancer over-expression of HER2 or ERBB2 is seen. In case of HER2 negative breast cancer the levels of HER2 protein is in normal. About 80% of all breast cancers in the U.S are diagnosed as HER2 negative breast cancer, as reported by ASCO (American Society of Clinical Oncology) in a clinical practice guidelines update published for HER2 negative breast cancer in 2014. HER2-negative breast cancer is most common among patients with metastatic breast cancer.Request to View Tables of Content @The treatment for HER2 negative breast cancer includes chemotherapy, radiation, surgery and hormonal or endocrine therapy. Hormonal or endocrine therapy is generally an adjunct therapy given to patients after surgery, chemotherapy or radiation therapy. For treatment of breast cancer receptor testing plays an important role for deciding the treatment for the patient. HER2 negative breast cancer can be ER (Estrogen Receptor) positive if it is tested positive for estrogen receptors; PR (Progesterone Receptor) positive if it is tested positive for progesterone receptor; while breast cancer can be TNBC (Triple Negative Breast Cancer) if there is absence of all three receptors i.e. HER2 or ERBB2, estrogen and progesterone. Generally hormonal therapy is employed for HER2 negative breast cancer. Hormonal therapy works on two basic wherein hormonal drugs or medications that brings down the estrogen level in body or the growth and function of breast cells supported estrogen is blocked. Thus, hormonal therapy is helpful only if the breast cancer cells have hormone receptors that can be targeted in the therapy. But in cases such as TNBC (Triple Negative Breast Cancer) wherein the breast cancer cells are negative for estrogen, progesterone as well as for HER2 (human epidermal growth factor receptor 2), the hormonal therapy is of no use for treatment.The driver for HER2 negative breast cancer treatment market is the high incidence and growing prevalence of breast cancer in women worldwide. Also there are many drugs in pipeline for the treatment of HER2 negative breast cancer and for treatment of breast cancer in general. While the restraints in HER2 negative breast cancer treatment market is the side effects of treatment such as chemotherapy; there is a threat of reoccurrence of the tumors in majority of treatments; and treatment of cancer requires few or more treatments together which is stressful and expensive for the patient.The global market for HER2 negative treatment market is segmented on basis of treatment type, and geography:Segmentation by Treatment typeChemotherapySurgeryRadiationHormonal therapy/endocrine therapySelective estrogen-receptor response modulators (SERMs)Estrogen-receptor downregulators (ERDs)Aromatase inhibitorsLuteinizing hormone-releasing hormone agents (LHRHs)On basis of treatment type the HER2 negative breast cancer treatment market is segmented into chemotherapy, radiation, surgery and hormonal therapy.On the basis of regional presence, global HER2 negative breast cancer treatment market is segmented into five key regions viz. North America (NA), Latin America (LA), Europe, Asia Pacific (APAC), and Middle East & Africa (MEA). Some of the major players in global HER2 negative breast cancer treatment market are Array BioPharma, AstraZeneca plc., CELGENE CORPORATION, Eli Lilly and Company, Novartis AG, AbbVie Inc., Merck & Co., Inc., Pfizer Inc., etc.To view complete report @About UsPersistence Market Research (PMR) is a U.S.-based full-service market intelligence firm specializing in syndicated research, custom research, and consulting services. PMR boasts market research expertise across the Healthcare, Chemicals and Materials, Technology and Media, Energy and Mining, Food and Beverages, Semiconductor and Electronics, Consumer Goods, and Shipping and Transportation industries. The company draws from its multi-disciplinary capabilities and high-pedigree team of analysts to share data that precisely corresponds to clients business needs.PMR stands committed to bringing more accuracy and speed to clients business decisions. From ready-to-purchase market research reports to customized research solutions, PMRs engagement models are highly flexible without compromising on its deep-seated research values.ContactPersistence Market Research Pvt. Ltd305 Broadway7th Floor, New York City,NY 10007, United States,USA Canada Toll Free: 800-961-0353Email: sales@persistencemarketresearch.commedia@persistencemarketresearch.comWeb: Surface Treatment Equipment Market to Witness Increase in Revenues by 2026 http://www.persistencemarketresearch.com/market-research/surface-treatment-equipment-market.asp http://www.persistencemarketresearch.com/samples/12397 http://www.persistencemarketresearch.com/toc/12397 http://www.persistencemarketresearch.com Surface Treatment Equipment Market: IntroductionSurface treatment is a method of cleaning or washing and purifying the surface of any product in order to remove all physical impurities before any engineering is done on it. The surface treatment process is also known as post-processing process, because this process is usually done after the production and manufacturing of the products. Surface treatment plays a vital role in the function and life as well as the appearance of the product. By surface treatment, a thin layer on the surface of the product itself is affected or the addition of a thin layer on the surface of the product is introduced. Surface treatment process can be carried on both metal as well as plastic products for the prolonged and persistent quality. There are several surface treatment processes with varied applications such as,To access full report @Improve the wear resistanceImproving the corrosion resistanceImproving aestheticsImproving hardnessControlling friction, improving lubricationEquipment used for surface treatment have enormous value in the global market and are playing a key role in almost all industrial sectors. These surface treatment equipment have its application in all industries due to increasing demands for the aesthetic, clean and long-lasting products globally. The market is expected to expand globally as there are various processes for the surface treatment which are widely known to the industrial personnel and manufacturers. The regulations from the government authorities on the over use of water and electricity during the process slowdown the market growth to an extent. Pre-treatment is a necessity before the surface treatment process initializes, and hence an additional cost is to be expended by the manufacturers. Nevertheless, some processes are cheaper and the quality achieved for the product is superlative. Several tests and research studies are being carried on products to check if these surface treatment equipment can be used in more effective and cheaper ways.A sample of this report is available upon request @Surface Treatment Equipment Market: DynamicsSurface treatment equipment market has been already in great demand in the western countries and is one of the key contributors for the growth of various industries and manufacturing units worldwide. Regions like North America, Europe and Asia Pacific are expanding their stronghold in the surface treatment equipment market. In developing economies like Asia Pacific region, the market for the surface treatment equipment is estimated to increase as the industrialization is on higher and emerging side. However, the surface treatment equipment market will always be dependent on the industries and plants as the market cannot survive on its own. The automotive and the aerospace industries are the target industries for the surface treatment equipment market. Nevertheless in these economies, the consumers and manufacturers are becoming smart and tech-savvy, hence in the forecast period, there will be an upward growth for the surface treatment equipment market. A key driver for the surface treatment equipment market is that, there has been a strong move by the industries to switch to chemicals which are eco-friendly and stable in nature. The use of eco-products are acting as catalysts for the growth of the surface treatment equipment market.To view TOC of this report is available upon request @Surface Treatment Equipment Market: SegmentationSurface treatment equipment market can be segmented based on surface type, product type, process type and end use:By Surface type, it can be segmented as:MetalsPlasticOthers (Printed Circuit Breaker [PCB], Wood, Rubber etc.)By Product type, it can be segmented as:Plasma TreatmentCorona TreatmentBy Process type, it can be segmented as:ElectroplatingElectro less PlatingChemicalAnodicOthers (Galvanic Process)By End Use, it can be segmented as:AutomobileConstructionAerospaceIndustrial EquipmentElectricals & electronicsOthers (Jewelry, FMCG etc.)Surface Treatment Equipment Market: Regional OutlookThe global surface treatment equipment market can be divided into seven different geographical regions such as North America, Latin America, Western and Eastern Europe, Asia-Pacific Excluding Japan (APEJ), Japan, Middle East and Africa. It is expected that the urban industries will be influenced by the surface treatment equipment market in the forecast period. Presence of various multinationals in the North America, Europe and APAC is been driving the surface treatment equipment market and is expected to expand in the forecast period. The various applications of surface treatment equipment is a boon to the market as it can be used in many industries doing the same task so consistently. The consumers awareness of using cleaner and aesthetically enhanced products have been increased considerably, thus the market for the surface treatment equipment is foreboded to rise and become more prominent for these end use industries.Economies in the APAC region will note an increase in the surface treatment equipment market as industrialization is growing at a healthy pace and new startups are emerging in this region. Hence analyzing the above reasons, the global market for the surface treatment equipment will witness a positive growth in the forecast period.Surface Treatment Equipment Market: Market ParticipantsExamples of some of the market participants are as follows, Jebsen Industrial Technology Co. Ltd. & Jebsen Industrial (China) Co. Ltd, Diener electronic GmbH Co. KG, Corotec Corporation, Pillar Technologies, Plasma Etch, Inc, Kalwar Group, Trelsa Sistemas S.A., RELYON PLASMA GMBH, AcXys Technologies, Alliance Concept, Arcotec GmbH, Tantec, Arzuffi SRL, Europlasma NV, Plasmatreat, bdtronic, MARTIGNONI ELETTROTECNICA, Nordson MARCH among others.The research report presents a comprehensive assessment of the market and contains thoughtful insights, facts, historical data, and statistically supported and industry-validated market data. It also contains projections using a suitable set of assumptions and methodologies. The research report provides analysis and information according to categories such as market segments, geographies, types and applications.The report covers exhaustive analysis on:Market SegmentsMarket DynamicsMarket SizeSupply & DemandCurrent Trends/Issues/ChallengesCompetition & Companies involvedValue ChainRegional analysis includes:North AmericaLatin AmericaAsia PacificJapanWestern EuropeEastern EuropeMiddle East & AfricaThe report is a compilation of first-hand information, qualitative and quantitative assessment by industry analysts, inputs from industry experts, and industry participants across the value chain. The report provides an in-depth analysis of parent market trends, macroeconomic indicators and governing factors, along with market attractiveness within the segments. The report also maps the qualitative impact of various market factors on market segments and various geographies.Report highlights:Detailed overview of parent marketChanging market dynamics in the industryIn-depth market segmentationHistorical, current and projected market size in terms of volume and valueRecent industry trends and developmentsCompetitive landscapeStrategies of key players and products offeredPotential and niche segments, geographical regions exhibiting promising growthA neutral perspective on market performanceMust-have information for market players to sustain and enhance their market footprintAbout UsPersistence Market Research (PMR) is a third-platform research firm. Our research model is a unique collaboration of data analytics and market research methodology to help businesses achieve optimal performance.To support companies in overcoming complex business challenges, we follow a multi-disciplinary approach. At PMR, we unite various data streams from multi-dimensional sources. By deploying real-time data collection, big data, and customer experience analytics, we deliver business intelligence for organizations of all sizes.Contact UsPersistence Market Research305 Broadway7th Floor, New York City,NY 10007, United States,USA - Canada Toll Free: 800-961-0353Email: sales@persistencemarketresearch.comWeb: Global Hotel Furniture Market:Size, Share, Growth & Trends 2022 http://www.orbisresearch.com/contacts/request-sample/255933 http://www.orbisresearch.com/contacts/enquiry-before-buying/255933 http://www.orbisresearch.com/reports/index/2017-market-research-report-on-global-hotel-furniture-industry https://www.linkedin.com/company/orbis-research SummaryThis report helps to analyze competitive developments such as joint ventures, strategic alliances, mergers and acquisitions, new product developments, and research and developments in the Global Hotel Furniture market.DescriptionThe Global Hotel Furniture Market report offers a comprehensive evaluation of the Global Hotel Furniture industry. This report evaluates the Global market for " Global Hotel Furniture".The Global Hotel Furniture Market report provides complete analysis of the Global Hotel Furniture Market by analysing all round market dynamics such as regional market opportunities, drivers, challenges, constraints, threats, and other market trends.The Global Hotel Furniture Market report contains latest Business Data resulting from various Research sources that helps Decision Makers to deliver a Distinctive and Trustworthy Analysis for Companys Growth.Get a PDF Sample of Global Hotel Furniture Market report at:The Global Hotel Furniture Market Survey starts with Industry overview of Global Hotel Furniture Market covering Major Regions Status, Industry Chain Structure, Definitions and Specifications, with a detailed focus on Manufacturing Cost Structure Analysis including Raw Material Suppliers, Equipment Suppliers and Manufacturing Process.In Next Part, the researchers has collected and presented information on Technical Data and Manufacturing Plants Analysis which comprises of Capacity and Commercial Production Date, Manufacturing Plants Distribution, R&D Status and Technology Source of Major Manufacturers in 2017.In following segment, with Sales, Ex-factory Price, Revenue, Gross Margin, Business Region Distribution Analysis, Competition between various Company Profile has been given along with Product Pictures and Specifications in Global Hotel Furniture Industry Report.The Key Players Mentioned in Global Hotel Furniture Market Report are: Ashley Furniture Ashley Furniture Rooms To Go Foliot Furniture Mattress Firm Williams-Sonoma LE-AL Asia Hmart Limited Berkshire Hathaway Laz Boy American Signature Sleep Number Gelaimei Hotel Furniture Fulilai Hotel Furniture Co., Ltd Northland Furniture. Sleepy's Buhler Furniture Mingjia Furniture JL Furnishings Telos FurnitureFor Any Query, before Purchasing Report Click Here:The Global Hotel Furniture Industry Report is also a Great Source of Marketing Type Analysis consisting:1. Global Hotel Furniture Regional Marketing Type Analysis2. Global Hotel Furniture International Trade Type Analysis3. Traders or Distributors with Contact Information of Global Hotel Furniture by Regions4. Global Hotel Furniture Supply Chain AnalysisMajor Points from Table of Contents:Chapter One: Hotel Furniture Market OverviewChapter Two: Global Hotel Furniture Market Competition by ManufacturersChapter Three: Global Hotel Furniture Capacity, Production, Revenue (Value) by Region (2012-2017)Chapter Four: Global Hotel Furniture Supply (Production), Consumption, Export, Import by Region (2012-2017)Chapter Five: Global Hotel Furniture Production, Revenue (Value), Price Trend by TypeChapter Six: Global Hotel Furniture Market Analysis by ApplicationChapter Seven: Global Hotel Furniture Manufacturers Profiles/AnalysisChapter Eight: Hotel Furniture Manufacturing Cost AnalysisChapter Nine: Industrial Chain, Sourcing Strategy and Downstream BuyersChapter Ten: Marketing Strategy Analysis, Distributors/TradersChapter Eleven: Market Effect Factors AnalysisChapter Twelve: Global Hotel Furniture Market Forecast (2017-2022)Chapter Thirteen: Research Findings and ConclusionChapter Fourteen: AppendixBrowse The Full Report With TOC@:Lastly, the Report provides Development Trend Analysis for 2017-2022 years which will forecast Market Size (Volume and Value), Sales Price, Consumption Forecast, Market Trend (Product Type) and Market Trend (Application). Also the List of Major Consumers is analyzed and Contact Details are provided to easy communicating.Finally, the Report is concluded with Various Methodology, Analyst Introduction and Data SourcesOrbis Research (orbisresearch.com) is a single point aid for all your market research requirements. We have vast database of reports from the leading publishers and authors across the globe. We specialize in delivering customized reports as per the requirements of our clients. We have complete information about our publishers and hence are sure about the accuracy of the industries and verticals of their specialization. This helps our clients to map their needs and we produce the perfect required market research study for our clients.Hector CostelloSenior Manager Client Engagements4144N Central Expressway,Suite 600, Dallas,Texas 75204, U.S.A.Phone No.: +1 (214) 884-6817; +9164101019Follow Us on LinkedIn: Forecasts The US Anesthesiology Service Market: Industry Size, Shares, Analysis, Trends and Opportunities 2017-2021 http://www.researchmoz.us/enquiry.php?type=S&repid=1042013 http://www.researchmoz.us/the-us-anesthesiology-service-market-size-trends-forecasts-2017-2021-report.html http://bit.ly/1TBmnVG http://healthcare-research-report.blogspot.in/ ResearchMoz added Latest Research Report titled " The US Anesthesiology Service Market: Size, Trends & Forecasts (2017-2021) " to it's Large Report database.Scope of the ReportThe report entitled The US Anesthesiology Service Market: Size, Trends & Forecasts (2017-2021), provides analysis of the US anesthesia service market, with detailed analysis of market size and value, market share and economic impact of the industry. The analysis includes the market by value, by share of players, by segments, etc.Furthermore, the report also assesses the key opportunities in the market and outlines the factors that are and will be driving the growth of the industry. Growth of the overall US anesthesia service market has also been forecasted for the years 2017-2021, taking into consideration the previous growth patterns, the growth drivers and the current and future trends.Envision Healthcare, Teamhealth and Mednax are some of the key players operating in the US anesthesiology service market, whose company profiling has been done in the report. In this segment of the report, business overview, financial overview and business strategies of the companies are provided.Request for Sample PDF of Premium Research Report with TOC:Company CoverageEnvision HealthcareMednaxTeamhealthExecutive SummaryAnesthesiology market is composed of two main elements which are anesthesia (drugs for medicinal purpose) and anesthesiologist (professional who are trained to use anesthesia). There are many equipments specifically designed for different surgical procedures like Anesthetic Vaporizer is used for vaporizing anesthetic; nasal oxygen set for delivering oxygen etc.The US anesthesiology market is expected to increase at high growth rates during the forecasted period (2017-2021). The US anesthesiology market is supported by various growth drivers, such as growing geriatric population, increase in monitored anesthesia use, increasing chronic diseases and volume of surgeries etc. Yet, the market faces certain challenges, such as, side effects of anesthesia, high price of anesthesia equipment, etc. Few new market trends are also provided such as, increasing mid-level anesthesia provider, increasing anesthesiologist employment, technological enhancement of anesthesia devices, etc.Browse more details @Table of Content1. Executive Summary2. Introduction2.1 Anesthesiology Market: An Overview2.1.1 Elements of Anesthesiology2.1.2 Types of Anesthesia2.1.3 Anesthetic Equipment & Instruments2.1.4 Anesthesia Side Effects2.1.5 Segments in Anesthesiology Market3. Market Analysis3.1 The US Anesthesiology Service Market: An Analysis3.1.1 The US Anesthesiology Service Market by Value3.1.2 The US Anesthesiology Service Market by Segments3.1.3 The US GIASC Market by Value3.1.4 The US GIASC Market by Penetration In the US ASC Market3.1.5 The US Anesthesiology Service Market by Number of Anesthesiologist4. Market Dynamics4.1 Growth Drivers4.1.1 Increased Ambulatory Surgeries4.1.2 Growing Geriatric Population4.1.3 Increase in Monitored Anesthesia Use4.1.4 New Drugs Approvals at Reduced Cost4.1.5 Increasing Chronic Diseases and Volume of Surgeries4.1.6 Increasing Utilization Of Deep Sedation For Endoscopic ProceduresAbout ResearchMozResearchMoz is the world's fastest growing collection of market research reports worldwide. Our database is composed of current market studies from over 100 featured publishers worldwide. Our market research databases integrate statistics with analysis from global, regional, country and company perspectives. ResearchMoz's service portfolio also includes value-added services such as market research customization, competitive landscaping, and in-depth surveys, delivered by a team of experienced Research Coordinators.Contact Us:Mr. Nachiket Ghumare90 State Street, Albany NY, United States - 12207Tel: +1-518-621-2074 / Tel: 866-997-4948 (Us-Canada Toll Free)Email: sales@researchmoz.usFollow us on LinkedIn at:Follow me on Blogger at: Tartaric Acid Market 2017 Competition Analysis by Manufacturers and Forecast to 2022 http://www.orbisresearch.com/contacts/request-sample/265475 http://www.orbisresearch.com/contact/purchase/265475 http://bit.ly/2woTXtu Tartaric Acid Market : The report covers a vast expanse of information including an overview, comprehensive analysis, definitions and classifications, applications, and expert opinions, among others.The Global Tartaric Acid Industry report provides key information about the industry, including invaluable facts and figures, expert opinions, and the latest developments across the globe. Not only does the report cover a holistic view of the industry from a global standpoint, but it also covers individual regions and their development. The Global Tartaric Acid Industry report showcases the latest trends in the global and regional markets on all critical parameters which include technology, supplies, capacity, production, profit, price, and competition. The key players covered in the report provide a detailed analysis of the competition and their developments in the Global Tartaric Acid Industry. Accurate forecasts and expert opinion from credible sources, and the recent R&D development in the industry is also a mainstay of the Tartaric Acid Market report.Get Sample for This Report:The report also focuses on the significance of industry chain analysis and all variables, both upstream and downstream. These include equipment and raw materials, client surveys, marketing channels, and industry trends and proposals. Other significant information covering consumption, key regions and distributors, and raw material suppliers are also a covered in this report.Manufacturers List for Tartaric Acid Market: Ninghai Organic Chemical Factory Caviro Innovatra Tarac Technologies Thirumalai Chemicals Dastech International, Inc. Noah Technologies Corporation Changmao Biochemical Wego Chemicals & Minerals Anhui Sealong BartekPurchase for This Report:Type and Application for Tartaric Acid Market: Type - Synthetic Tartaric Acid, Natural Tartaric Acid Application Pharmaceuticals, Foods and Beverages, Leather Industry, Textile Industry etc.Finally, the Tartaric Acid Market report ends with a detailed SWOT analysis of the market, investment feasibility and returns, and development trends and forecasts. As with every report on Orbis Research, the Tartaric Acid Industry is the holy grail of information which serious knowledge seekers can benefit from. The report which is the result of ultimate dedication of pedigree professionals has a wealth of information which can benefit anyone, irrespective of their commercial or academic interest.Major Points of TOC:Chapter One: Tartaric Acid Market Overview1.1 Product Overview and Scope of Tartaric Acid1.2 Tartaric Acid Segment by Type (Product Category)1.2.1 Global Tartaric Acid Production and CAGR (%) Comparison by Type (Product Category) (2012-2022)1.2.2 Global Tartaric Acid Production Market Share by Type (Product Category) in 20161.2.3 Synthetic Tartaric Acid1.2.4 Natural Tartaric Acid1.3 Global Tartaric Acid Segment by Application1.3.1 Tartaric Acid Consumption (Sales) Comparison by Application (2012-2022)1.3.2 Beverages1.3.3 Food1.3.4 Pharmaceutical1.3.5 Building Material1.3.6 Others1.4 Global Tartaric Acid Market by Region (2012-2022)1.4.1 Global Tartaric Acid Market Size (Value) and CAGR (%) Comparison by Region (2012-2022)1.4.2 North America Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.4.3 Europe Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.4.4 China Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.4.5 Japan Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.4.6 Southeast Asia Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.4.7 India Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.5 Global Market Size (Value) of Tartaric Acid (2012-2022)1.5.1 Global Tartaric Acid Revenue Status and Outlook (2012-2022)1.5.2 Global Tartaric Acid Capacity, Production Status and Outlook (2012-2022)Chapter Two: Global Tartaric Acid Market Competition by Manufacturers2.1 Global Tartaric Acid Capacity, Production and Share by Manufacturers (2012-2017)2.1.1 Global Tartaric Acid Capacity and Share by Manufacturers (2012-2017)2.1.2 Global Tartaric Acid Production and Share by Manufacturers (2012-2017)2.2 Global Tartaric Acid Revenue and Share by Manufacturers (2012-2017)2.3 Global Tartaric Acid Average Price by Manufacturers (2012-2017)2.4 Manufacturers Tartaric Acid Manufacturing Base Distribution, Sales Area and Product Type2.5 Tartaric Acid Market Competitive Situation and Trends2.5.1 Tartaric Acid Market Concentration Rate2.5.2 Tartaric Acid Market Share of Top 3 and Top 5 Manufacturers2.5.3 Mergers & Acquisitions, ExpansionMore info about this Report:Orbis Research (orbisresearch.com) is a single point aid for all your market research requirements. We have vast database of reports from the leading publishers and authors across the globe. We specialize in delivering customized reports as per the requirements of our clients. We have complete information about our publishers and hence are sure about the accuracy of the industries and verticals of their specialization. This helps our clients to map their needs and we produce the perfect required market research study for our clients.Hector CostelloSenior Manager Client Engagements4144N Central Expressway,Suite 600, Dallas,Texas - 75204, U.S.A.Phone No.: +1 (214) 884-6817; +912064101019 Luxury Furniture Market Key Players, Growth, Analysis by 2016 2024 http://www.persistencemarketresearch.com/market-research/luxury-furniture-market.asp http://www.persistencemarketresearch.com/samples/11614 http://www.persistencemarketresearch.com/toc/11614 www.persistencemarketresearch.com The global luxury market consist of nine segments including personal cars, personal luxury goods, luxury hospitality, luxury cruises, fine food, fine wine and spirits, luxury furniture, private jet and yachts. Out of these segments, luxury furniture has showcased boom all over the world. Luxury furniture enhances the artistic value of homes, offices, restaurants and hotels in addition to various outdoor and indoor spaces. Over the past few years, the significant growth in real estate industry fostered the growth of luxury furniture market. Movement of people from rural to urban areas, globalization and inclination in the personal disposable income is strengthening the growth of the global luxury furniture market. Rising environmental consciousness among people will lead to rising demand for eco-friendly luxury furniture all over the world till 2025. Besides this, rising penetration of online retailing all across the world is expected to further stimulate the global luxury furniture market. Change in the lifestyle along with rising disposable income would provide substantial opportunities in the global luxury furniture market over the period 2016-2024.Buy Full Report@The global Luxury Furniture market is segmented on the basis of type of materials which include wood, metal, plastic, glass, leather and others. Wooden furniture segment contributed the highest share in the overall global luxury furniture market in 2014. Over the past few years, furniture manufacturers are introducing products including materials such as leather, metal, leather, glass in order to replace wood. The global luxury furniture market is also divided on the basis of end use which include commercial and domestic use. The commercial segment is further sub-segmented on the basis of hospitality, office and others. Whereas the domestic segment is sub-segmented by living and bedroom, bathroom, kitchen, lighting, outdoor and others. In 2014, the domestic luxury furniture segment contributed the highest share in the overall revenue of global luxury furniture market. Bedroom and living room segment marked substantial share in the global luxury furniture market in 2014. The global luxury furniture market is also segmented on the basis of unorganized and organized sector.Inclination in the online retailing and higher media penetration are some of the major factors driving the growth of global luxury furniture market. Apart from that, rising impact of globalization, organized retailing, and robust growth in real estate sector is anticipated to foster the growth of global luxury furniture market. Rising demand of eco-friendly luxury segment is also expected to bolster the growth of global luxury furniture market. Apart from this, rising trend of modular kitchen is also strengthening the demand for global luxury furniture market and will impel the market from the period 2016-2024.View Sample Report @Geographically, the Global Luxury Furniture industry can be divided by major regions which include North America, Latin America, Western and Eastern Europe, Asia-Pacific region, Japan, Middle East and Africa. Amongst all the regions, Europe captured the highest share in the global luxury furniture market in 2014. China is expected to be the biggest and rapidly growing furniture market in future which will drive the overall Asia luxury furniture market. Latin American region is also anticipated to showcase fast growth over the next few years till 2024. The requirement of luxury furniture especially in the hospitality sector in Middle East region and African region is expected to drive the market of this region in future.The major players identified across the value chain of global Luxury Furniture market include Muebles Pico, Valderamobili, Scavolini, Laura Ashley Folding Plc, Nella Vetrina, Henredon Furniture Industries Inc., and others. It has been noticed that furniture manufacturers are concerned about reduction in carbon footprints and initiated offering eco-friendly furniture. The global luxury furniture market is highly competitive with large number of players (both small and big) dominating the industry. In the next few years, various furniture manufacturers are anticipated to enter in this market.Request to View Tables of Content @The research report presents a comprehensive assessment of the market and contains thoughtful insights, facts, historical data, and statistically supported and industry-validated market data. It also contains projections using a suitable set of assumptions and methodologies. The research report provides analysis and information according to market segments such as geographies, and applications.About UsPersistence Market Research (PMR) is a U.S.-based full-service market intelligence firm specializing in syndicated research, custom research, and consulting services. PMR boasts market research expertise across the Healthcare, Chemicals and Materials, Technology and Media, Energy and Mining, Food and Beverages, Semiconductor and Electronics, Consumer Goods, and Shipping and Transportation industries. The company draws from its multi-disciplinary capabilities and high-pedigree team of analysts to share data that precisely corresponds to clients business needs.PMR stands committed to bringing more accuracy and speed to clients business decisions. From ready-to-purchase market research reports to customized research solutions, PMRs engagement models are highly flexible without compromising on its deep-seated research values.ContactPersistence Market Research Pvt. Ltd305 Broadway7th Floor, New York City,NY 10007, United States,USA Canada Toll Free: 800-961-0353Email: sales@persistencemarketresearch.commedia@persistencemarketresearch.comWeb: Global Air Operated Double Diaphragm Pump Market Research Report Forecast to 2027 Air Operated Double Diaphragm Pump https://goo.gl/GMkcok http://www.provueresearch.com/product/global-air-operated-double-diaphragm-pump-market-research-report-forecast-to-2027/ https://goo.gl/BfebLF www.provueresearch.com Air Operated Double Diaphragm PumpIncreased widespread application in the Chemical industry is one of the key factors which are contributing to the growth of the Air Operated Double Diaphragm Pumps Market. The Air operated Double Diaphragm market is expected to grow at a CAGR of 4.2%. Rapid development of Global infrastructure and investment in cosmetics and pharmaceutical are some of the other factors which contribute to the growth of the air operated double diaphragm pumpsRequest Report Sample:Study Objectives of Air Operated Double Diaphragm Pump To provide detailed analysis of the market structure along with forecast for the next 10 years of the various segments and sub-segments of the Global Air Operated Double Diaphragm Pump market To provide insights about factors affecting the market growth To Analyze the Air Operated Double Diaphragm Pump market based on various factors- price analysis, supply chain analysis, Porters five force analysis.Browse Detail Report: To provide historical and forecast revenue of the market segments and sub-segments with respect to six main geographies and their countries-Europe, Asia-Pacific, Middle East, and Africa To provide country level analysis of the market with respect to the current market size and future prospective To provide country level analysis of the market for segment by Services, by valves and by application as well as its sub segments To provide strategic profiling of key players in the market, comprehensively analyzing their core competencies, and drawing a competitive landscape for the market To track and analyze competitive developments such as joint ventures, strategic alliances, mergers and acquisitions, and new product developments in the Global Air Operated Double Diaphragm Pump marketIntended Audience Air Operated Double Diaphragm Pump manufacturing companies Air Operated Double Diaphragm Pump service providers Industry Consultants and Investment bankers Government as well as Independent Regulatory AuthoritiesInquiry for Buying Report:Key Findings The key findings of the report Global Air Operated Double Diaphragm Pump market includes: Increasing incidence of rapid integration in the Food and Beverage Industry. Geographically, Europe dominates the AODD pump market Water Treatment and Chemical industry dominate the market in terms of market share.Global Air Operated Double Diaphragm Pumps Market ShareKey PlayersSome of the key players in the Air Operated Double Diaphragm Pump Market are Graco, Warren Rupp, Wilden, TAPFLO, ARO, DellMeco, Verder, Murzan, Debem, Depa among others. The companies in this market have adopted various strategies such as mergers and acquisitions, expansions, and new product developments to append their market share.SegmentsThe air operated double diaphragm pump market can be segmented on the basis of sector applications as Pharmaceutical, Cosmetics, Mining, Marine, Water Treatment, Food and Beverage. On the basis of valves the market has been segmented as Flap and plateRegional Analysis of Air Operated Double Diaphragm Pump MarketEurope is one of the leading markets mainly due to the flourishing food and beverage and water treatment market. Middle East has also shown immense potential mainly owing to their efforts of reducing dependency on their oil and gas market which provides opportunities to a flourishing water treatment market translating into demand for AODD pumpsAbout UsProvue Market Research is a single destination for all the industry, company and country reports. We feature large repository of latest industry reports, leading and niche company profiles, and market statistics released by reputed private publishers and public organizations. We provide our clients not only with market statistics unveiled by avowed private publishers and public organizations but also with vogue and newest industry reports along with pre-eminent and niche company profiles.Contact UsProvue Research14715 Prairie Ave,Lawndale, CA, 90260,California USATel:- +18889204862Email: info@provueresearch.comWeb: Dried Soup Market is Expecting Worldwide Growth by 2017 2025 http://www.persistencemarketresearch.com/toc/13207 http://www.persistencemarketresearch.com/market-research/dried-soup-market.asp www.persistencemarketresearch.com Dried soup is an instant soup mix consisting of dehydrated vegetables, meat, grains, legumes, etc. along with flavoring agents and preservatives. The ingredients in dried soup are dehydrated using slow air drying or freeze drying process without losing the nutritious value of the food. They are more nutritious than canned soups which consist of high amounts of sodium and preservatives. Dried soups are considered as a convenience food and are hugely popular among the working class consumers. They are available in two packaging forms i.e. cups and pouches. The manufacturers are using innovative technologies in the packaging of dried soup to increase the shelf life of the product and attract consumers. The dried soups are distributed through various distribution channels. The hypermarkets and supermarkets segment accounts for major share in global dried soups market.Request to View Tables of Content @Dried Soup Market: Drivers and RestraintsThe rising demand for ready to eat and convenience food is expected to be a major driver for the growth of dried soup market. The increasing consumer awareness regarding consumption of healthy and nutritious food is expected to boost the growth of global dried soup market. Dried soup accounts for major share in soup industry in terms of consumption due to its advantages over other types of soups such as canned and condensed wet soups. The availability of dried soup with gluten free and organic ingredients is expected to drive the growth of dried soup market.The high content of corn and salt in dried soups is considered to increase blood sugar levels and blood pressure and is unhealthy, which might hamper the growth of global dried soup market.Dried Soup Market: SegmentationOn the basis of packaging, the global dried soup market can be segmented as follows:-CupPouchOn the basis of the distribution channel, the global dried soup market can be segmented as follows:-Hypermarkets and SupermarketsRetail StoresConvenience StoresDried Soup Market: Region Wise OutlookThe global dried soup market can be divided into seven regions, namely North America, Latin America, Western Europe, Eastern Europe, Asia Pacific Excluding Japan (APEJ), Japan and Middle East and Africa (MEA). Western Europe accounts for the major share in global dried soups market. This is attributed to the increasing demand for ready to eat and convenience food in the region. In Western Europe, the EU-5 countries account for major share in terms of consumption. North America holds the significant share in global dried soup market, due to rising number of dried soup vendor and investments by retailers in this segment. APEJ dried soup market is expected to project high CAGR during the forecast period, due to increasing population and rising disposable income of the consumers. There is a rise in investments in food processing segment in developing countries such as India and China. In Eastern Europe, Russia accounts for major share in dried soups market.Dried Soup Market: Key PlayersSome of the key players in the global dried soup market are as follows:Unilever Canada Inc. (Knorr)Harmony House Foods, Inc.J. Heinz Company, L.P.McKenzie'sMother Earth ProductsCooke Tavern SoupsFrontier SoupsCAMPBELL COMPANY OF CANADABear Creek Country Kitchens, LLCJohn A. McDougall, M.D.Harvest Right LLCThe research report presents a comprehensive assessment of the market and contains thoughtful insights, facts, historical data, and statistically supported and industry-validated market data. It also contains projections using a suitable set of assumptions and methodologies. The research report provides analysis and information according to market segments such as geography, technology, and applications.The report covers exhaustive analysis on:Market SegmentsMarket DynamicsMarket SizeSupply & DemandCurrent Trends/Issues/ChallengesCompetition & Companies involvedTechnologyValue ChainRegional analysis includesNorth America (U.S., Canada)Latin America (Mexico, Brazil, Rest of Latin America)Western Europe (EU5 countries, Nordic, BENELUX, Rest of Western Europe)Eastern Europe (Poland, Russia, Rest of Eastern Europe)APEJ (China, India, ASEAN, Australia & New Zealand)JapanMEA (GCC Countries, S. Africa, N. Africa, Rest of MEA)The report is a compilation of first-hand information, qualitative, and quantitative assessment by industry analysts, inputs from industry experts and industry participants across the value chain. The report provides in-depth analysis of parent market trends, macroeconomic indicators and governing factors along with market attractiveness as per segments. The report also maps the qualitative impact of various market factors on market segments and geographies.To view complete report @About UsPersistence Market Research (PMR) is a U.S.-based full-service market intelligence firm specializing in syndicated research, custom research, and consulting services. PMR boasts market research expertise across the Healthcare, Chemicals and Materials, Technology and Media, Energy and Mining, Food and Beverages, Semiconductor and Electronics, Consumer Goods, and Shipping and Transportation industries. 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Ltd305 Broadway7th Floor, New York City,NY 10007, United States,USA Canada Toll Free: 800-961-0353Email: sales@persistencemarketresearch.commedia@persistencemarketresearch.comWeb: Global Smart Building Market 2017 - Daintree Networks, Intel, JP Morgan Chase, SST Inc, Infosys, TCS Global Smart Building Market 2017 http://bit.ly/2sNzdOR http://www.mrsresearchgroup.com/market-analysis/global-smart-building-market-2016-production-sales-supply.html http://bit.ly/2uxwMwK The Global Smart Building market 2017 is the cornerstone of the global development aspects and prospects, as the development of specific concept requires various technologically supported ideas, theories, methodologies. The Global Smart Building market 2017 report explains the in-depth summary of current innovations, parameter, specifications, and creation. The Global Smart Building market 2017 also delivers a full abstract of the economic ups and downs in terms of demand rate and fulfillment ratios.Get Sample Copy of Report @:Technology is an output of implementing scientific knowledge in terms of practical applications. Technology can be developed in multiple forms, as the face of the respective technology can be seen only when it is transformed, adopted or introduced in the practical form.For more information about this report :Global Smart Building market competition by top manufacturers/players, with Smart Building sales volume, Price (USD/Unit), revenue (Million USD) and market share for each manufacturer/player; the top players includingABBSiemensTridiumHoneywellDanaherDaintree NetworksIntelJP Morgan ChaseSST Inc.InfosysTCSInquiry buying Report:MRS Research Group [http://www.mrsresearchgroup.com/] is the worlds giant collection of the market 2017 research Reports. 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Contact US : 1-855-465-4651 (US-Canada Toll Free) sales@mrsresearchgroup.com3422 SW 15 Street, Suit #8138, Deerfield Beach, Florida 33442, Global Textile Industry Waste Management Market To Grow At A CAGR Of 10.57% During The Period 2017-2021 Key Vendors ChemTreat, General Electric, Lenntech, Pall Corporation, Veolia http://www.researchmoz.us/enquiry.php?type=S&repid=1067037 http://www.researchmoz.us/global-textile-industry-waste-management-market-2017-2021-report.html http://www.researchmoz.us/enquiry.php?type=E&repid=1067037 http://www.researchmoz.us/ http://bit.ly/1TBmnVG Researchmoz added Most up-to-date research on "Global Textile Industry Waste Management Market 2017-2021" to its huge collection of research reports.The textile industry consumes huge quantities of water and produces substantial amounts of wastewater. The textile industry is important for many countries in terms of trade, GDP, and employment rates. The industry provides opportunities to low-income countries for export diversification and expansion of manufactured exports by exploiting their labor cost advantages and meeting the buyer's demands. The rising demand for cheaper textiles and clothing in Western Europe is well documented along with the change in the textiles and clothing industrys globalized production structure. Textile and clothing production is a major source of revenue for many developing and emerging economies, like Cambodia and Bangladesh.Technavios analysts forecast the global textile industry waste management market to grow at a CAGR of 10.57% during the period 2017-2021.To Get Sample Copy of Report visit @Covered in this reportThe report covers the present scenario and the growth prospects of the global textile industry waste management market for 2017-2021. To calculate the market size, the report includes new installations of wastewater treatment and water purification equipment and excludes aftermarket/services market.The market is divided into the following segments based on geography:AmericasAPACEMEAGlobal Textile Industry Waste Management Market 2017-2021, has been prepared based on an in-depth market analysis with inputs from industry experts. The report covers the market landscape and its growth prospects over the coming years. The report also includes a discussion of the key vendors operating in this market.Key vendorsChemTreatGeneral ElectricLenntechPall CorporationVeoliaBrowse Detail Report With Full TOC @Other prominent vendorsA3 Water SolutionsAquatechAries ChemicalBeckart EnvironmentalEcosphere TechnologiesEvoqua Water TechnologiesHuber TechnologyNetsol Water SolutionsPrimozoneRWL WaterWTE Infra ProjectsMarket driverGrowth in domestic demand for textiles in APAC.For a full, detailed list, view our reportMarket challengeImpact of hard water on water treating equipment.For a full, detailed list, view our reportMarket trendGrowing demand for nanofiltration procedures.For a full, detailed list, view our reportKey questions answered in this reportWhat will the market size be in 2021 and what will the growth rate be?What are the key market trends?What is driving this market?What are the challenges to market growth?Who are the key vendors in this market space?What are the market opportunities and threats faced by the key vendors?What are the strengths and weaknesses of the key vendors?Make an Enquiry of this report @About ResearchMozResearchMoz is the one stop online destination to find and buy market research reports & Industry Analysis. We fulfill all your research needs spanning across industry verticals with our huge collection of market research reports. We provide our services to all sizes of organizations and across all industry verticals and markets. Our Research Coordinators have in-depth knowledge of reports as well as publishers and will assist you in making an informed decision by giving you unbiased and deep insights on which reports will satisfy your needs at the best price.Mr. NachiketState Tower,90 State Street,Suite 700,Albany NY - 12207United StatesEmail: sales@researchmoz.usWebsite @Tel: 866-997-4948 (Us-Canada Toll Free)Tel: +1-518-621-2074Follow us on LinkedIn @ The Madison area is under consideration for a Foxconn development, separate from the huge, $10 billion flat-screen display factory the company plans to build in southeast Wisconsin, several sources with knowledge of the discussions said. The Taiwanese manufacturer has asked for information about possible sites in Dane County and a project proposal could take shape within the next six weeks, one source said, adding that project plans are very fluid at this point. The source said, though, a specific site will take longer to choose. Another source said Foxconns development here could involve a health-related business, such as a wearable product, a medical device or a research and development facility. The two sources asked not to be identified because of the sensitive nature of the talks. Meanwhile, the Wisconsin State Journal has obtained a copy of an email sent last week by a regional business group seeking available locations for an unnamed company. The subject line was Project Varsity Site Search. The company is looking for a 20-acre site in the Madison area on which it can build a 700,000-square-foot manufacturing plant that could employ as many as 650 people over the first five years of operation, according to the July 26 email the Madison Region Economic Partnership (MadREP) sent to city, county, UW-Madison and business officials around Dane County. July 26 was also the day Foxconns Wisconsin project was announced in Washington, D.C. The MadREP note said the company plans to make a capital investment of about $505 million and hopes to break ground by January 2018 and start operating by the summer of 2020. Employees would receive an average salary of $53,000 plus benefits, the email said. The company is seeking an undeveloped site within a current or future tax incremental financing district, the email said. A 700,000 SF building equates to 16 acres under one roof so you do the calculations on the proper site acreage in your community to accommodate storm water retention, setbacks, bike racks, ingress/egress and other zoning requirements for this size of building, Michael Gay, senior vice president of MadREP, wrote in the email. MadREP CEO Paul Jadin confirmed the group sent out a request for information and that it is for a substantial project, but declined to confirm it was Foxconn. He said the request generated several responses, but wouldnt say how many. Madison Mayor Paul Soglin could not be reached for comment Wednesday evening. University Research Park available Aaron Olver, managing director of University Research Park, did not comment directly about Foxconn but said the new University Research Park campus, at Junction Road and Highway M, could house a company looking to build. University Research Park 2 is certainly available as a site for large technology companies, Olver said. Middleton city administrator Mike Davis said Middleton does not have a site large enough to accommodate the use being requested in the MadREP email. Fitchburg Mayor Jason Gonzalez said Foxconn officials have toured sites in Fitchburg. He said he submitted three possible locations, but did not specify where they are. We have several (undeveloped) sites that are in our urban service area that are ready for development ... so were interested, Gonzalez said. He said he thinks the facility would make wearable devices that monitor vital signs, such as Apple Watches or Fitbits. Zach Brandon, president of the Greater Madison Chamber of Commerce, also confirmed that Foxconn is considering this area. I know that they have an interest in Madison, that theyve looked at our manufacturing abilities, our research and development capabilities, and theyve had conversations around global challenges like cancer, Brandon said. News a ways off Gov. Scott Walker was asked about the prospects for a Madison-area Foxconn operation after a Wednesday news conference at the Capitol with the South Korean ambassador to the United States. Any of the speculation and Id say right now its just speculation about additional sites in the state is really driven by what the ambassador talked about: that people are taking notice of us. Were a ways off from any further news about potential Foxconn expansion, Walker said. Foxconn, a contract electronics manufacturer for companies including Apple and Amazon, announced on July 26 that it plans to build a massive factory in southeast Wisconsin that will make liquid crystal display panels. The company has said it will invest $10 billion for a 1,000-acre campus, including more than a dozen buildings, with a total 20 million square feet of space. Foxconn said it plans to hire 3,000 employees to start, with the potential of as many as 13,000 employees eventually. President Donald Trump, citing an off-the-record remark by Foxconn chairman Terry Gou, said the companys investment could swell to as much as $30 billion. His comment came during a White House news conference on Tuesday. In March, Foxconn founder and CEO Terry Gou pledged his support for improved cancer research and precision medicine in East Asia, according to an article in the Taiwan News. He also announced a collaboration among Foxconns charity arm, Yonglin Foundation; NantWorks health care group in California; and the National Taiwan University last September aimed at pursuing immunotherapy to fight cancer, according to the Nikkei Asian Review. Gous first wife and his younger brother died of cancer. Brandon said he does not know yet if Gou is considering a joint venture with UW-Madisons Carbone Cancer Center. Representatives of Foxconns medical group met with Dr. Howard Bailey, director of the Carbone Center, as well as other researchers there in recent visits to the Madison area. Box Pouch Market Size & Share to See Modest Growth Through 2024 Box Pouch Market https://www.zionmarketresearch.com/sample/box-pouch-market https://www.zionmarketresearch.com/toc/box-pouch-market https://www.zionmarketresearch.com/report/box-pouch-market https://www.zionmarketresearch.com/inquiry/box-pouch-market http://www.zionmarketresearch.com https://zionmarketresearch.wordpress.com/ Global Box Pouch Market: OverviewA box pouch has a flat bottom and has extra space for the storage of products; it is a type of free-standing pouch that is flexible. The products that are stored in the box pouch have an improved shelf life. The box pouches are moisture resistant and it has a window so that the product that is stored can be viewed. Box pouches are stable on the shelves and are easy to stack, thus they are convenient to both the consumers and the manufacturers.Request Free Sample Report @Global Box Pouch Market: SegmentationThe market for the box pouch is globally fragmented into end use, product type, and closing type. Based on the end user, the global market is segregated into confectionery, dried fruits & nuts, pet food & treats, and tea & coffee. Depending on the product type, the market is categorized into flat bottom terminated gusset, flat top & bottom, flat bottom full gusset, and pinch bottom. According to the closing type, the market for box pouch is divided into hooded sliders, press to close the zipper, and slide closure with end clip.Request Report TOC (Table of Contents) @Global Box Pouch Market: Growth FactorsThe major factor that is driving the global box pouch market is the increasing demand by the consumers for the convenient food packaging. The benefits of using box pouches are that it offers the portability convenience and an aesthetic appeal. When compared to rigid packaging type, box pouches can be shipped at lower costs and they require fewer raw materials thus attracting the manufacturers. Box pouches can be used as gift boxes by decorating them with varnish or by embossing them. In order to withstand the competition from the market of stand up pouches the manufacturers of the box pouches should try and make innovations in the box pouch. This will open up new opportunities in the market. The current trend in the box pouch market is the innovative pouch packaging that makes dispensing easier. The factor that is restraining the market of box pouch is its high cost as compared to other counterparts.Browse detail report @Global Box Pouch Market: Regional AnalysisRegion-wise, the market for box pouch is diversified into North America, Asia-Pacific, Western Europe, Eastern Europe, the Middle East and Africa, and Latin America. The region that is leading the box pouch market is North America and the factors that are contributing to this growth are technological advancements, improving economic outlook, and increasing use of single-use packaging types. The region that is following North America is Europe. The increasing demand for smaller packs and the changing preferences of the consumers in the developing countries such as India and China in the Asia Pacific region will contribute to the growth of the market in the coming years. The Middle East & Africa region is expected to have a moderate market growth owing to the factors such as low inflammation rate and the growing economy.Global Box Pouch Market: Competitive PlayersThe key market players that are involved in the box pouch market are Totani Corporation, Flex Pack Ltd., Swiss Pac Pvt. Ltd., Accredo Packaging, Inc., Ampac Holdings LLC, and Mondi Group.Inquire more before buying this report @About Us: Zion Market Research is an obligated company. We create futuristically, cutting edge, informative reports ranging from industry reports, a company reports to country reports. We provide our clients not only with market statistics unveiled by avowed private publishers and public organizations but also with Vogue and newest industry reports along with pre-eminent and niche company profiles. Our database of market research reports comprises a wide variety of reports from Cardinal Industries. Our database is been updated constantly in order to fulfill our clients with prompt and direct online access to our database. Keeping in mind the clients needs, we have included expert insights on global industries, products, and market trends in this database. Last but not the least, we make it our duty to ensure the success of clients connected to usafter allif you do well, a little of the light shines on us.Contact Us:Zion Market Research4283, Express Lane,Suite 634-143,Sarasota, Florida 34249, United StatesTel: +49-322 210 92714USA/Canada Toll-Free No.1-855-465-4651Email: sales@zionmarketresearch.comWebsite:Visit Our Blog: Military Drones: Market Shares, Market Strategies and Market Forecasts, 2015 to 2021 - Market Exoected to Reach $16.1 Billion Industry http://www.researchmoz.us/enquiry.php?type=S&repid=330548 http://www.researchmoz.us/military-drones-market-shares-market-strategies-and-market-forecasts-2015-to-2021-report.html http://bit.ly/1TBmnVG http://deep-research-report.blogspot.com/ ResearchMoz added Latest Research Report titled " Military Drones: Market Shares, Market Strategies, and Market Forecasts, 2015 to 2021 " to it's Large Report database.Next generation drones leverage better technology, launching from ships anywhere and from the battlefield should that be necessary. The drone technology is evolving: better launching, better navigation, softer landings, longer flights, better ability to carry different payloads are available. The study has 881 pages and 415 tables and figures.The military drones are able to achieve terrorist control tasks. They have been evolving air camera integration for surveillance systems capability. They are used for surveillance, reconnaissance and intelligence missions. They do 3D mapping and support ground troops. These are more energy efficient, last longer and have a significantly lower cost of operation than manned aircraft.Drone aircraft are sophisticated and flexible. They take off, fly and land autonomously. Theyenable engineers to push the envelope of normal flight. Reconnaissance drones can fly for days continuously. Remote, ground-based pilots can work in shifts.Request for Sample PDF of Premium Research Report with TOC:Drone technology extends everywhere, even to airline control towers. Drones evolving technology is extending uses, making units combat enabled. The use of drone technology to control moving devices remotely extends the notion of drones, creating a larger potential drone market. Military drones will make every navy ship an aircraft carrier. They can be launched from anywhere, not needing an airfield in many cases.Drone unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) technology has reached a level of maturity that has put these systems at the forefront of aerospace manufacturing. Procurement around the world is adapting to drone availability. Use in the global war on terrorism has demonstrated unique usefulness for military intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance and communications relay.Removal of the need for an onboard pilot ushers in an era of low cost drone aerial craft. The drone elimination of the need for human support systems on aircraft dramatically reduces the aircrafts size, complexity, and power requirements. The drones effectively reduce overall program cost, development time and risk. Many advanced flight technologies are for piloted craft. These are initially tested using unmanned subscale demonstrators.Browse more details @Table of ContentMilitary Drones, Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) Executive Summary 64Military Drone Market Driving Forces 64Military Drone UAS Challenges 68Military Drone Market Shares 69Northrup Grumman 72Military Drone Market Segment Forecasts 741. Military Drones: Market Description And Market Dynamics 751.1 Military Drones Definition 751.1.1 Pre-Position UASs In Key Strategic Locations 751.1.2 Maritime Air Take-Off and Landing: 751.1.3 Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) Aerial Refueling 761.1.4 Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) Enhanced Capability and Payloads 761.1.5 Military Drone Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) Enhanced Resilience 761.1.6 Small and Micro-Military Drone UASs 771.1.7 Military Drone Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) Perimeter Surveillance 771.1.8 Drone Unmanned Aerial Systems (UASs) Military Surveillance 781.2 Georeferenced Imagery 791.3 Globalization and Technology 801.3.1 Proliferation of Conventional Military Technologies 811.3.2 Drone UASs Military Roles 811.4 Development Of Lighter Yet More Powerful Power Sources For Drone UASs 82About ResearchMozResearchMoz is the world's fastest growing collection of market research reports worldwide. Our database is composed of current market studies from over 100 featured publishers worldwide. Our market research databases integrate statistics with analysis from global, regional, country and company perspectives. ResearchMoz's service portfolio also includes value-added services such as market research customization, competitive landscaping, and in-depth surveys, delivered by a team of experienced Research Coordinators.Contact Us:Mr. Nachiket Ghumare90 State Street, Albany NY, United States - 12207Tel: +1-518-621-2074 / Tel: 866-997-4948 (Us-Canada Toll Free)Email: sales@researchmoz.usFollow us on LinkedIn at:Follow me on Blogger at: Homeland Security Surveillance Camera Market: Magnificent Expansion USD 10 Billion, at 7% of CAGR by 2023 https://www.marketresearchfuture.com/sample_request/2911 https://www.marketresearchfuture.com/reports/homeland-security-surveillance-camera-market-2911 Market Research Future published a research report on Homeland Security Surveillance Camera Market Research Report- Forecast 2023 Market Analysis, Scope, Stake, Progress, Trends and Forecast to 2023.Homeland Security Surveillance Camera Market, By Camera Type (Audio & Video Camera), By Application (Border Security, Infrastructure Security) - Forecast 2023Market Synopsis of Homeland Security Surveillance Camera Market:Market Scenario:The increasing concern for securing homeland from terrorist attacks, foreign invasion and natural calamities is driving the market. The installation of surveillance cameras to reduce crime is an effective use of scarce resources, especially with states struggling with soaring budget deficits. These cameras are primarily used by numerous government agencies for intelligence gathering, crime prevention, protection of people and infrastructure and for investigation of crimes and foreign attacks. The key drivers of homeland security surveillance camera market are concern of the citizens living in country and protecting homeland from foreign attacksThe homeland security surveillance camera market can be segmented on the basis of camera type, application and region. The quality of internet protocol camera is certainly better and most of the crimes can be solved. The increase in quality between standard definition IP cameras and analog cameras recorded by a digital video recorder is minimal. IP camera supports almost all mainstream DVRs and have become hybrid systems supporting a wide variety of IP cameras.The Homeland Security Surveillance Camera Market is expected to grow at approximately USD 10 Billion by 2023, at 7% of CAGR between 2017 and 2023.Get a Copy of Sample Report @Key Players: Robert Bosch Gmbh (German) General Dynamics Corporation (U.S.) Honeywell International Inc. (U.S) Moog Inc. (U.S.) Baxall Construction Ltd (U.K.) Controp Precision Technologies Ltd. (Israel) Netvu Ltd (U.K.) Mitsubishi Electric Corporation (Japan) Panasonic Corporation (Japan) Vicon Industries, Inc. (U.S.)Study Objectives of Homeland Security Surveillance Camera Market: To provide detailed analysis of the market structure along with forecast of the various segments and sub-segments of the homeland security surveillance camera market. To provide insights about factors affecting the market growth. To analyze the Homeland Security Surveillance Camera Market based porters five force analysis etc. To provide historical and forecast revenue of the market segments and sub-segments with respect to four main geographies and their countries- North America, Europe, Asia, and Rest of the World (ROW). To provide country level analysis of the market with respect to the current market size and future prospective. To provide country level analysis of the market for segment on the basis of camera type and application. To provide strategic profiling of key players in the market, comprehensively analyzing their core competencies, and drawing a competitive landscape for the market. To track and analyze competitive developments such as joint ventures, strategic alliances, mergers and acquisitions, new product developments, and research and developments in the homeland security surveillance camera market.Segments:Homeland Security Surveillance Camera Market for segment on the basis of camera type and application.Homeland Security Surveillance Camera Market by Camera Type: Audio & Video Camera Integrated Video Surveillance Camera Infrared Camera IP CameraHomeland Security Surveillance Camera Market by Application: Infrastructure Security Border Security Public ProtectionBrowse Full Report Details @Regional Analysis:The regional analysis of homeland security surveillance camera market is being studied for region such as Asia Pacific, Americas, Europe and Rest of the World.North America is the leader in the homeland security surveillance camera market. The defense organizations in the region mainly focus on the maintenance of border and infrastructure security, Cyber Security, disaster prevention and management, and public security. The Asia-Pacific region is also one of the prominent players because of the increased government spending and growing awareness among the police and law enforcement officials that have created a demand for new and advanced security cameras in this region.Intended Audience Investors and consultants System Integrators Government Organizations Research/Consultancy firms Technology solution providers IT Solution Providers Security Camera ManufacturersContinueWe are thankful for the support and assistance from Homeland Security Surveillance Camera Market Research Report- Forecast 2023 related technical experts and marketing experts during Research Team survey and interviews.About Market Research Future:At Market Research Future (MRFR), we enable our customers to unravel the complexity of various industries through our Cooked Research Report (CRR), Half-Cooked Research Reports (HCRR), Raw Research Reports (3R), Continuous-Feed Research (CFR), and Market Research & Consulting Services.Media Contact:Akash Anand,Market Research FutureOffice No. 528, Amanora ChambersMagarpatta Road, Hadapsar,Pune - 411028Maharashtra, India+1 646 845 9312Email: akash.anand@marketresearchfuture.com Americas Healthcare Human Resources Software Market: Comprehensive Research Study https://www.marketresearchfuture.com/sample_request/586 https://www.marketresearchfuture.com/reports/americas-healthcare-human-resources-software-market-586 Market Research Future published a research report on Americas Healthcare Human Resources (HR) Software Market - Forecast to 2023 Market Analysis, Scope, Stake, Progress, Trends and Forecast to 2023.Americas Healthcare Human Resources (HR) Software Market Research Report, by administration software (payroll, time and attendance, benefits management and others), type of software (Recruiting, software-as-a-service (SaaS), core HR and others), By Organizations Type (Medium Businesses, Large Enterprises, Small Business), by end user (Pharmaceuticals, hospital and laboratories and other) Forecast till 2023Market Scenario:Healthcare is one of the biggest sector to collect revenue in America. Human resource software plays an important role in healthcare sector. Human resource department operates various functions like recruitment, salary hikes, vacation leaves, bonus, training, management and payment benefits management. HR software offer various benefits like document control and security. North America has the highest share of revenue in Healthcare Human Resources (HR) Software Market. Human resource professionals face many problems in their attempt to deliver the superior-quality health care to citizen. These is because of lack of budget, high rates of turnover and low morale of health personnel.In North America, Canada and USA are the most important countries to contribute the Healthcare HR software market. Because of lot of funding these country are leading in the HR software market. Canadian Healthcare system is publicly funded and divided into several groups like provincial and territorial governments, the federal government, physicians, nurses and allied health care professionals. The need to reduce the labour costs in hospital, increase in operational efficiency are the major factors for the growth of this market in America. North America share the total 65% of the global healthcare software market.Get a Copy of Sample Report @Key Players for Human Resources Software Market IBM Corporation (U.S.) Infor, Inc. (U.S.) BambooHR (US) Oracle Corporation (U.S.) Kronos, Inc. (U.S.) McKesson Corporation (U.S.) Gusto (US) Halogen Software Inc(Canada) SumTotal Systems Inc. (US) Zenefits Z2 (US) Automatic Data Processing, Inc. (U.S.).Study Objectives Americas Healthcare Human Resources (HR) Software Market To provide detail analysis of market structure with the forecast for next 6 years of the various segments of Americas Healthcare Human Resources (HR) Software Market. To provide the detail information about drivers and factors restraining the market growth. To provide the key players and their role in HR software market. To provide the trends and opportunities in HR software market. To analyze the market by porters five force analysis, price analysis etc. To provide the analysis of market for segments by type administration software, development model, user end and region. To provide the detail analysis about the market in Canada, USA and Rest of America.Browse Full Report Details @SegmentationHR software market has been segmented on the basis of administration software which are payroll, time and attendance, benefits management and others. On the basis of type of software like Recruiting, software-as-a-service (SaaS), core HR and others. By Organizations Type, Medium Businesses, Large Enterprises, Small Business. By user end, they are Pharmaceuticals, hospital and laboratories and other. By countries it is segmented as Canada, USA and Rest of America.American Healthcare Human Resources Software Market, by CountriesNorth America is the largest market for the healthcare human resource software market. This is because of development in healthcare sector. Among this Canada and USA are the two most important countries for healthcare human resource software market. USA has the highest share in North America followed by Canada.The report for North America Healthcare Human Resources Software of Market Research Future comprises of extensive primary research along with the detailed analysis of qualitative as well as quantitative aspects by various industry experts, key opinion leaders to gain the deeper insight of the market and industry performance. The report gives the clear picture of current market scenario which includes historical and projected market size in terms of value and volume, technological advancement, macro economical and governing factors in the market. The report provides details information and strategies of the top key players in the industry. The report also gives a broad study of the different markets segments and regions.ContinueWe are thankful for the support and assistance from Americas Healthcare Human Resources (HR) Software Market - Forecast to 2023 related technical experts and marketing experts during Research Team survey and interviews.About Market Research Future:At Market Research Future (MRFR), we enable our customers to unravel the complexity of various industries through our Cooked Research Report (CRR), Half-Cooked Research Reports (HCRR), Raw Research Reports (3R), Continuous-Feed Research (CFR), and Market Research & Consulting Services.Media Contact:Akash Anand,Market Research FutureOffice No. 528, Amanora ChambersMagarpatta Road, Hadapsar,Pune - 411028Maharashtra, India+1 646 845 9312Email: akash.anand@marketresearchfuture.com Global Field Service Management Platform Market 2022: Complete Research Study https://www.marketresearchfuture.com/sample_request/1574 https://www.marketresearchfuture.com/reports/field-service-management-platform-market Market Research Future published a research report on Global Field Service Management Platform Market Research Report - Forecast to 2022 Market Analysis, Scope, Stake, Progress, Trends and Forecast to 2022.Global Field Service Management Platform Market Information, by Deployment (On Premise, On Cloud), by Domain (SMEs & Large Business Units), by Industry (Telecommunication, Healthcare, Manufacturing, Transportation & Logistics, Oil & Gas) - Forecast 2016-2022Market Synopsis of Field Service Management Platform MarketMarket ScenarioFSM or Field Service Management Platform is a solution which helps in managing companys resources which is directly associated with clients. Managing the workers activity or scheduling the work or billing are few solutions which field service management platform provides.Get a Copy of Sample Report @Key players ServicePower (UK) ClickSoftware Technologies (U.S.) Astea International (U.S.) Infor (U.S.) GenieBelt (Denmark) Intacct (U.S.) Sage Software (UK) Epicor (U.S.) ServiceNow (U.S.) Coresystems AG among others.Study Objective of Field Service Management Platform Market To provide detailed analysis of the market structure along with forecast of the various segments and sub-segments of the Global Field Service Management Platform Market To provide insights about factors affecting the market growth To analyze the Field Service Management Platform market based on various factors- value chain analysis, porters five force analysis etc. To provide historical and forecast revenue of the market segments and sub-segments with respect to four main geographies and their countries- North America, Europe, Asia, and Rest of the World (ROW) To provide country level analysis of the market with respect to the current market size and future prospective To provide country level analysis of the market for segment by device, by deployment, by domain, by industry and sub-segments To provide strategic profiling of key players in the market, comprehensively analyzing their core competencies, and drawing a competitive landscape for the market To track and analyze competitive developments such as joint ventures, strategic alliances, mergers and acquisitions, new product developments, and research and developments in the Global Field Service Management Platform MarketMarket SegmentationSegmentation by Deployment: On Premise & On Cloud.Segmentation by Domain: SMEs & Large Business Units.Segmentation by Industry: Telecommunication, Healthcare, Manufacturing, Construction, Transportation & Logistics, Oil & Gas among others.Industry News In August 2016, ServicePower Technologies PLC announced the partnership with Westbrook International Ltd. Which will help in implementation services. In August 2016, ServicePower Technologies PLC announced the partnership with Bolt Data where Bolt Data will be providing sales, implementation and support services.Browse Full Report Details @The report for Global Field Service Management Platform Market of Market Research Future comprises of extensive primary research along with the detailed analysis of qualitative as well as quantitative aspects by various industry experts, key opinion leaders to gain the deeper insight of the market and industry performance. The report gives the clear picture of current market scenario which includes historical and projected market size in terms of value, technological advancement, macro economical and governing factors in the market. The report provides details information and strategies of the top key players in the industry. The report also gives a broad study of the different market segments and regions.ContinueWe are thankful for the support and assistance from Global Field Service Management Platform Market Research Report - Forecast to 2022 related technical experts and marketing experts during Research Team survey and interviews.About Market Research Future:At Market Research Future (MRFR), we enable our customers to unravel the complexity of various industries through our Cooked Research Report (CRR), Half-Cooked Research Reports (HCRR), Raw Research Reports (3R), Continuous-Feed Research (CFR), and Market Research & Consulting Services.Media Contact:Akash Anand,Market Research FutureOffice No. 528, Amanora ChambersMagarpatta Road, Hadapsar,Pune - 411028Maharashtra, India+1 646 845 9312Email: akash.anand@marketresearchfuture.com Global Bluetooth Smart SoC Market 2017: Broadcom Corporation, Texas Instruments, Mediatek Inc, NXP Semiconductors Bluetooth Smart SoC Market http://bit.ly/2vlEi1n http://bit.ly/2vvPNUp Bluetooth Smart SoC Market Report OverviewQY Market Research published Top Manufacturers Analysis Of Bluetooth Smart SoC Research Report. A market study based on the " Bluetooth Smart SoC Market " across the globe, recently added to the repository of Market Research, is titled Global Bluetooth Smart SoC Market 2017. The research report analyses the historical as well as the present performance of the worldwide Bluetooth Smart SoC industry and makes predictions on the future status of Bluetooth Smart SoC market on the basis of this analysis.Get Free Sample Copy of Report Here:Top Manufacturers Analysis Of Bluetooth Smart SoC Market -1. Bluegiga Technologies Oy2. Nordic Semiconductor ASA3. Qualcomm Inc4. Dialog Semiconductor PLC5. Broadcom Corporation6. Texas Instruments Inc7. Mediatek Inc8. NXP Semiconductors9. Cypress Semiconductor Corporation10. Marvell Technology GroupThe report studies the industry for Bluetooth Smart SoC across the globe taking the existing industry chain, the import and export statistics in Bluetooth Smart SoC market & dynamics of demand and supply of Bluetooth Smart SoC into consideration. The ' Bluetooth Smart SoC ' research study covers each and every aspect of the Bluetooth Smart SoC market globally, which starts from the definition of the Bluetooth Smart SoC industry and develops towards Bluetooth Smart SoC market segmentations. Further, every segment of the Bluetooth Smart SoC market is classified and analyzed on the basis of product types, application, and the end-use industries of the Bluetooth Smart SoC market. The geographical segmentation of the Bluetooth Smart SoC industry has also been covered at length in this report.The competitive landscape of the worldwide market for Bluetooth Smart SoC is determined by evaluating the various industry participants, production capacity, Bluetooth Smart SoC market's production chain, and the revenue generated by each manufacturer in the Bluetooth Smart SoC market worldwide.Enquire Here:The global Bluetooth Smart SoC market 2017 is also analyzed on the basis of product pricing, Bluetooth Smart SoC production volume, data regarding demand and Bluetooth Smart SoC supply, and the revenue garnered by the product. Various methodical tools such as investment returns, feasibility, and market attractiveness analysis have been used in the research to present a comprehensive study of the industry for Bluetooth Smart SoC across the globe.About Us :Worldwide Industry is a trusted brand in the research industry with the capability of commissioning complex projects within a short span of time with high level of accuracy. At Worldwide Industry, we believe in building long term relations with our clients. Our services cover a broad spectrum of industries such as Automotive and Aerospace, Medical Devices, Technology, Machinery & Manufacturing.Contact Us :Worldwide IndustryUnited States Remarkable Worth of Motion Control Market: USD 22 billion with CAGR of 6% By 2022 https://www.marketresearchfuture.com/sample_request/1929 https://www.marketresearchfuture.com/reports/motion-control-market Market Research Future published a research report on Global Motion Control Market Research Report- Forecast 2022 Market Analysis, Scope, Stake, Progress, Trends and Forecast to 2022.Motion Control Market, By Technology (Pneumatic, Hydraulic), By Components (Controller, Drives, Motors, Software), By Application (Inspection, Material handling, Packaging), By Industry (Manufacturing, Healthcare, Automotive) - Forecast 2016-2022Market Synopsis of Motion Control Market:Market Scenario:Motion control is an industrial process which is also defined as servo control or robotics, used in the movement of specific load from one place to another in the controlled fashion. This process is equipped with various hardware equipments such as motors, sensors, drives, control units and a software. Growing industrialization and high adoption of automation in the industrial process is driving the market of motion control whereas the high deployment cost and lack of availability of professionals are some of the major restraints of the market. The global market of motion control is expected to grow at CAGR of ~6% during the forecast year and expected to reach at market size of US ~$22 billion by the end of forecast period.Get a Copy of Sample Report @Key Players ABB Group (Switzerland) Rockwell Automation, Inc., (U.S.) Parker Hannifin Corporation (U.S.) Siemens AG (Germany) STMicroelectronics N.V. (Switzerland) Motion Control Corporation (U.S.) Schneider Electric (France) Trio Motion (U.S.) Emerson Electric (U.S.) AMETEK, Inc. (U.S.) Aerotech Inc. (U.S.)Study Objectives of Motion Control Market: To provide detailed analysis of the market structure along with forecast of the various segments and sub-segments of the Global Motion Control To provide insights about factors affecting the market growth. To analyze the Motion Control market based porters five force analysis etc. To provide historical and forecast revenue of the market segments and sub-segments with respect to four main geographies and their countries- North America, Europe, Asia, and Rest of the World (ROW) To provide country level analysis of the market with respect to the current market size and future prospective To provide country level analysis of the market for segment by technology, components, application, industry and sub-segments To provide strategic profiling of key players in the market, comprehensively analyzing their core competencies, and drawing a competitive landscape for the market To track and analyze competitive developments such as joint ventures, strategic alliances, mergers and acquisitions, new product developments, and research and developments in the Global Motion Control MarketIntended Audience OEMs Automation Service Providers Motion Control Distributors Technology Provides Sensor Manufacturers Connectivity ProvidersBrowse Full Report Details @Segments:The Global Motion Control Market has been segmented on the basis of technology, components, application and industry. By Technology, market includes- Pneumatic, Hydraulic, and Electromechanical Actuation. By Components, the market has been derived as- Controller, Drives, Motors, and Software among others. Application of motion control includes- Inspection, Material handling, Packaging among others whereas the industry includes- Manufacturing, Healthcare, Automotive, Aerospace & Defense, Oil & Gas, and Robotics among others.Regional AnalysisAsia-Pacific is dominating the market of Motion Control due to the strong presence of manufacturing companies in China, Japan and South Korea. Growing economy of Asian countries are also playing major role in the development of motion control market. Europe stands as second biggest followed by North America. North America motion control market is majorly driven by the factors such as high consumption of electronic equipment and rich presence of healthcare industry.ContinueWe are thankful for the support and assistance from Global Motion Control Market Research Report- Forecast 2022 related technical experts and marketing experts during Research Team survey and interviews.About Market Research Future:At Market Research Future (MRFR), we enable our customers to unravel the complexity of various industries through our Cooked Research Report (CRR), Half-Cooked Research Reports (HCRR), Raw Research Reports (3R), Continuous-Feed Research (CFR), and Market Research & Consulting Services.Media Contact:Akash Anand,Market Research FutureOffice No. 528, Amanora ChambersMagarpatta Road, Hadapsar,Pune - 411028Maharashtra, India+1 646 845 9312Email: akash.anand@marketresearchfuture.com Global Diesel Gensets Market 2017: APR Energy Plc, Kirloskar Oil Engines Ltd., Dresser Rand Group, Broadcrown Diesel Gensets Market http://bit.ly/2w9TyM0 http://bit.ly/2fbsZCb Diesel Gensets Report OverviewQY Market Research published Top Manufacturers Analysis Of Diesel Gensets Research Report. A market study based on the " Diesel Gensets Market " across the globe, recently added to the repository of Market Research, is titled Global Diesel Gensets Market 2017. The research report analyses the historical as well as the present performance of the worldwide Diesel Gensets industry and makes predictions on the future status of Diesel Gensets market on the basis of this analysis.Get Free Sample Copy of Report Here:Top Manufacturers Analysis Of Diesel Gensets Market -1. Cummins Inc.2. Caterpillar Inc.3. Generac Holdings Inc.4. Aggreko PLC5. Atlas Copco AB6. Wartsila Corporation7. Wacker Neuson SE8. Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Ltd.9. Briggs & Stratton10. APR Energy Plc11. Kirloskar Oil Engines Ltd.12. Dresser Rand Group, Inc.13. Pramac S.p.A.14. Himoinsa S.L.15. Kohler Company Inc.16. F.G. Wilson Inc.17. Broadcrown Ltd.18. Multiquip Inc.19. Wuxi Kipor Power Co., Ltd.20. Sudhir Power Ltd.The report studies the industry for Diesel Gensets across the globe taking the existing industry chain, the import and export statistics in Diesel Gensets market & dynamics of demand and supply of Diesel Gensets into consideration. The ' Diesel Gensets ' research study covers each and every aspect of the Diesel Gensets market globally, which starts from the definition of the Diesel Gensets industry and develops towards Diesel Gensets market segmentations. Further, every segment of the Diesel Gensets market is classified and analyzed on the basis of product types, application, and the end-use industries of the Diesel Gensets market. The geographical segmentation of the Diesel Gensets industry has also been covered at length in this report.The competitive landscape of the worldwide market for Diesel Gensets is determined by evaluating the various industry participants, production capacity, Diesel Gensets market's production chain, and the revenue generated by each manufacturer in the Diesel Gensets market worldwide.Enquire Here:The Global Diesel Gensets market 2017 is also analyzed on the basis of product pricing, Diesel Gensets production volume, data regarding demand and Diesel Gensets supply, and the revenue garnered by the product. Various methodical tools such as investment returns, feasibility, and market attractiveness analysis have been used in the research to present a comprehensive study of the industry for Diesel Gensets across the globe.About Us :Worldwide Industry is a trusted brand in the research industry with the capability of commissioning complex projects within a short span of time with high level of accuracy. At Worldwide Industry, we believe in building long term relations with our clients. Our services cover a broad spectrum of industries such as Automotive and Aerospace, Medical Devices, Technology, Machinery & Manufacturing.Contact Us :Worldwide IndustryUnited States Global Cyber Security Software Market Trend, Share, Opportunities and Forecast to 2022 https://goo.gl/Fu71iv https://goo.gl/eyPhyB https://goo.gl/e8xUGC https://goo.gl/oGNvaY Research Beam added a latest report titled 2017-2022 Cyber Security Software Report on Global and United States Market, Status and Forecast, by Players, Types and Applications. The report provides a detailed information and analysis of production, revenue, drivers & opportunities, key manufacturers, and competitive landscape. Furthermore, current market trends and growth opportunities are discussed along with extensive analysis of each segment for the historic period, 20122017 and the forecast period, 20172022. The report provides insights on manufacturing cost structure, marketing channels, marketing channels, and distributors & traders analysis. This study is helpful for market players, investors, and shareholders acquire thorough information and statistics to make better decisions for the future.Get a Sample of Cyber Security Software Market research report >>>An overview of the Global Cyber Security Software Market is offered on the basis of product overview and detailed segmentation of the industry. The research provides market segmentation based on types, applications, and geography. Each type of Cyber Security Software is analyzed with insights on production and production market share for 2016 along with key manufacturers for each type enlisted using a tabular representation. Furthermore, consumption market share for each application is offered in the research for 2016 in a tabular format. Regional analysis is discussed in terms of current market status and growth prospects for the period, 20122022. Geographies analyzed in the study are United States, North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific, South America, Middle East and Africa. Statistics on revenue and growth rate for each region are mentioned with the help of figures for the historic period and the forecast period.Market competition on the basis of manufacturers is discussed in the research along with insights on production, revenue, production market share, and revenue market share for 2016 and 2017. Moreover, significant information on manufacturing base distribution, product type, and sales area of each manufacturer are also covered. Comprehensive information on competitive situation and trends are provided based on market share of top three & top six manufacturers, market concentration rate, and strategies such as mergers & acquisition, expansion, partnerships, and others adopted by them for business growth.Enquire about Cyber Security Software Industry Report >>>Key manufacturers analyzed in the study areDXC Technology Company,Control Risks Group Holdings,Happiest Minds,EY,Mimecast,DXC Technology Company,Lockheed Martin,Sophos,Symantec,Sera-Brynn,Clearwater Compliance,IBM Security,Cisco,Raytheon Cyber,BAE Systems,Digital Defense,Rapid7.The research provides an extensive analysis of key manufactures operating in the Global Cyber Security Software Market. Production, revenue, average price of products, and gross margin for 2016 and 2017 are discussed in a tabular format. Detailed analysis of type, application, and specifications of products of manufacturers are provided along with an overview of business. This information assists industry players in determining competitive intensity and helps investors in determining investment pockets to gain maximum returns.Manufacturing cost analysis is offered in the research based on manufacturing cost structure, raw material analysis, and manufacturing process analysis. A table offers an extensive analysis production base and market concentration rate of raw materials, whereas a figure provides insights on price trends. Key suppliers of raw materials are enlisted in a tabular format. Figure illustrates manufacturing cost structure and manufacturing process analysis.The industrial chain structure is highlighted based on upstream raw material sources, downstream buyers, and sourcing strategies along with tables to provide thorough understanding. Raw materials sources of major manufacturers of Cyber Security Software and distributors & traders are enlisted in a tabular format. Marketing strategies are discussed in the study based on marketing channels and market positioning. Insights on technological progress, changing consumer needs, and environmental change are offered to provide market effect factors analysis. Production, revenue, and consumption analysis based on each segment of the industry for the forecast period. Research findings and conclusions are mentioned at the end of the research.The On the basis of product, the Cyber Security Software market is primarily split intoBasic VersionAdvanced VersionProfessional VersionOn the basis on the end users/applications, this report coversHouseholdSchoolCommercial UseAsk For Discount >>>Table of ContentsGlobal Cyber Security Software Market Size, Status and Forecast 20221 Industry Overview of Cyber Security Software1.1 Cyber Security Software Market Overview1.2 Global Cyber Security Software Market Size and Analysis by Regions1.3 Cyber Security Software Market by Type1.4 Cyber Security Software Market by End Users/Application2 Global Cyber Security Software Competition Analysis by Players2.1 Cyber Security Software Market Size (Value) by Players (2016 and 2017)2.2 Competitive Status and Trend3 Company (Top Players) Profiles4 Global Cyber Security Software Market Size by Type and Application (2012-2017)4.1 Global Cyber Security Software Market Size by Type (2012-2017)4.2 Global Cyber Security Software Market Size by Application (2012-2017)4.3 Potential Application of Cyber Security Software in FutureRead More With TOC About Cyber Security Software Market >>>About Us:With the arsenal of different search reports, Research Beam helps you here to look and buy research reports that will be helpful to you and your organization. Our research reports have the capability and authenticity to support your organization for growth and consistency. With the window of opportunity getting open and shut at a speed of light, it has become very important to survive in the market and only the fittest and competent enough can do so. So, we try and provide with latest changes in the market that can suit your needs and help you take decision accordingly.Contact Us:5933 NE Win Sivers Drive,#205, Portland, OR 97220Email: help@researchbeam.comToll Free: +1 (800) 910-6452 Vacuum Pumps Market Analysis, Market Share, Application Analysis, Regional Outlook, Competitive Strategies & Forecast by 2022 https://www.marketstudyreport.com/request-a-sample/134421//?utm_source=OPR-SP https://www.marketstudyreport.com/check-for-discount/134421//?utm_source=OPR-SP https://www.marketstudyreport.com/reports/2017-top-5-vacuum-pumps-manufacturers-in-north-america-europe-asia-pacific-south-america-middle-east-and-africa//?utm_source=RR-SP https://www.marketstudyreport.com https://www.marketstudyreport.com/category/news-releases/ Global Vacuum Pumps Market Research Report 2017 to 2022 presents an in-depth assessment of the Vacuum Pumps including enabling technologies, key trends, market drivers, challenges, standardization, regulatory landscape, deployment models, operator case studies, opportunities, future roadmap, value chain, ecosystem player profiles and strategies. The report also presents forecasts for Vacuum Pumps investments from 2017 till 2022.This report studies the Vacuum Pumps market, a vacuum pump is a device that removes gas molecules from a sealed volume in order to leave behind a partial vacuum.Scope of the Report:This report focuses on the Vacuum Pumps in Global market, especially in North America, Europe and Asia-Pacific, South America, Middle East and Africa. This report categorizes the market based on manufacturers, regions, type and application.Request a Sample Copy of Global Vacuum Pumps Market Research Report @Market Segment by Manufacturers, Global Vacuum Pumps Market report covers such as Gardner Denver, Pfeiffer Vacuum, ULVAC, Atlas Copco, Tuthill, Graham, Dekker, Gebr. Becker, Gast(IDEX), Busch Vacuum, KNF Neuberger, Tsurumi Manufacturing, Ebara, Sterling SIHI, Cutes Corp., Samson Pump, PPI Pumps, Value Specializes and Wenling Tingwei.Market Segment by Regions, regional analysis covers:North America (USA, Canada and Mexico)Europe (Germany, France, UK, Russia and Italy)Asia-Pacific (China, Japan, Korea, India and Southeast Asia)South America (Brazil, Argentina, Columbia etc.)Middle East and Africa (Saudi Arabia, UAE, Egypt, Nigeria and South Africa)Global Vacuum Pumps Market Segment by Type, covers: Dry Vacuum Pumps, Liquid Ring Vacuum Pump and Rotary Vane Vacuum PumpGlobal Vacuum Pumps Market Segment by Applications, can be divided into: Industrial and Manufacturing, Chemical Processing, Semiconductor & Electronics and Others.Request Discount for Global Vacuum Pumps Market Research Report @There are 15 Chapters to deeply display the global Vacuum Pumps market.Chapter 1, to describe Vacuum Pumps Market Introduction, product scope, market overview, market opportunities, market risk, market driving force;Chapter 2, to analyze the top manufacturers of Vacuum Pumps, with sales, revenue, and price of Vacuum Pumps, in 2016 and 2017;Chapter 3, to display the competitive situation among the top manufacturers, with sales, revenue and market share in 2016 and 2017;Chapter 4, to show the global Vacuum Pumps Market by regions, with sales, revenue and market share of Vacuum Pumps, for each region, from 2012 to 2017;Chapter 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9, to analyze the key regions, with sales, revenue and market share by key countries in these regions;Chapter 10 and 11, to show the Global Vacuum Pumps Market by type and application, with sales market share and growth rate by type, application, from 2012 to 2017;Chapter 12, Vacuum Pumps market forecast, by regions, type and application, with sales and revenue, from 2017 to 2022;Chapter 13, 14 and 15, to describe Vacuum Pumps sales channel, distributors, traders, dealers, Research Findings and Conclusion, appendix and data source.Related Reports: -2017 Top 5 Vacuum Pumps Manufacturers in North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific, South America, Middle East and AfricaThe Global Vacuum Pumps market size will be XX million (USD) in 2022, from the XX million (USD) in 2016, with a CAGR (Compound Annual Growth Rate) XX% from 2016 to 2022.Marketstudyreport.com allows you to manage and control all corporate research purchases to consolidate billing and vendor management. You can eliminate duplicate purchases and customize your content and license management.Market Study ReportThe Green Suite #4594,Dover, DE 19901United StatesPhone: 1-201-355-0868US Toll Free: 1-866-764-2150Email: sales@marketstudyreport.comWebsite:News: Madison Mayor Paul Soglin said Thursday he is recommending Taiwanese electronics manufacturing giant Foxconn take over the shuttered Oscar Mayer site or either of two undeveloped sites on the citys edges for what is believed to be a possible medical-related facility. Foxconn is proposing a $10 billion liquid crystal display plant in southeastern Wisconsin that could eventually employ 13,000 people at an average salary of $53,000 a year. The company also is considering expanding its Wisconsin presence to the Dane County area, officials have confirmed. A proposal distributed last week by the Madison Region Economic Partnership (MadREP) said an unnamed company is seeking to invest about $505 million in a 20-acre undeveloped site to build a 700,000-square-foot manufacturing facility that could employ as many as 650 people in its first five years of operation. While the MadREP email identified the company only as Project Varsity, Soglin told a news conference he received a call from MadREP last Thursday suggesting he submit sites for a Foxconn project matching those figures. Soglin said he is recommending the Oscar Mayer site even though it is not on undeveloped land, as Foxconn has requested, because it has easy access to the airport, Interstate, rail and bus lines and plenty of power and water. We think this is part of the need to rethink the location of jobs and the consumption of farmland, Soglin said. Putting in a facility that employs this many people right in the heart of all these resources. ... That makes sense rather than chewing up 40, 80, 100 acres of farmland. The mayor said he would be willing to consider offering tax incremental financing for a potential Foxconn project, but he said the city will not give away the property. We have absolutely no intention, at any location, to waive any environmental regulations, Soglin said. Secondly, we are not at all interested in participating in a race to the bottom in regards to competing with financial incentives that are not viable for this community. Soglin criticized the states offer of $3 billion in incentives to woo Foxconn to southeastern Wisconsin. Considering the potential size of the payroll and number of jobs created, the offer is so over the top, he said. Im fearful if that becomes the standard for job creation in Wisconsin, the whole state will suffer. Soglin said an incentive package of $600 million to $1.2 billion would be more in line with national standards. Soglin, who has said he is considering running for governor, said Thursday that hell announce his decision after Labor Day. Alec Zimmerman, a spokesman for the Republican Party of Wisconsin, could not immediately be reached to respond to Soglins comments about the states incentive package. New hope for site? The mayor said he has not been contacted either by Foxconn or state officials about a Dane County site. He said he suggested the Oscar Mayer site with the approval of parent company Kraft Heinz, even though it already is working with a possible buyer, Reich Brothers Holdings, a company that buys closed factories and sells their assets. Ald. Larry Palm, who represents the Oscar Mayer area, said he is hesitant about Foxconns Dane County proposal since its not clear yet what the company may make here or what kind of arrangement it will seek. If Foxconn really has the intent to build a 20-acre site and would be willing to overlook their own greenfield requirement, then Id like to consider it, Palm said. At the same time, though, if we just are going after every offer out there, we could get ourselves very tired in these sprints. Oscar Mayer had its headquarters in Madison from 1919 to 2016, producing hot dogs and lunch meats and, in its early years, slaughtering animals. At its peak, 4,000 employees worked there. Production ended in late June. The plant encompasses 1.7 million square feet of manufacturing and warehouse space on a 72-acre site at 910 Mayer Ave. Soglin said last December that it would likely cost $10 million to $12 million to demolish the buildings, remove the materials and prepare the grounds for cleanup. No estimate has been made public on the cost of environmental remediation, but Soglin also said if a developer came forward, the city would apply for federal brownfield cleanup funds. Madison Ald. Mark Clear, District 19, said city officials are just now gathering input from the neighborhood about what would be best for the site, but the process could move more quickly if a company like Foxconn expresses interest. If somebody is interested in it, whether its Foxconn or anything like (it), we ought to seriously look at it, Clear said. Interest in med tech Lisa Johnson, CEO of BioForward, the Madison-based organization representing Wisconsins biohealth industry, said Thursday she has been working with Foxconns medical group for several weeks. It certainly appears that they are focused on precision medicine, from prevention to treatment. That is why Ive been helping direct them to certain companies ... and experts within the university, she said. Johnson said Capio Biosciences is one of the companies she introduced to Foxconn representatives. Capio moved to Madison from Chicago in January. The companys technology identifies cancer cells in the bloodstream by taking blood samples known as liquid biopsies. Johnson credited the Wisconsin Economic Development Corp., the states quasi-public business development agency, for providing the right leadership. ... They were the connectors; they made sure they brought in the right parties to support Foxconns medical group, she said. Foxconn founder and CEO Terry Gou has pledged significant financial support for improved cancer research. His first wife died of breast cancer and his younger brother died of leukemia. Soglin would not identify the other two Madison sites he has recommended. One is believed to be University Research Park 2, at Junction Road and Highway M on the Far West Side. Its roads and utility connections were installed several years ago, yet the site, which is about 370 acres, remains empty. Neighboring communities also have expressed an interest. Fitchburg Mayor Jason Gonzalez said Foxconn officials have toured sites in Fitchburg. He said he submitted three potential locations, and said he thinks the plant might make wearable devices that monitor vital signs or exercise activity, such as Apple watches or Fitbits. Verona director of planning and development Adam Sayre would not comment on the name of the company seeking sites but said Verona has submitted a proposal for Project Varsity as well. Sayre would not specify the location but said the city has undeveloped land in Verona Technology Park and the Liberty Business Park, both at the southeast edge of Verona, at Highways PB and M. We do have land available to accommodate a request of that size, Sayre said. Opioid Induced Side Effects Treatment Market to Witness a Pronounce Growth by 2024 http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/opioid-induced-side-effects-treatment-market.html http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/sample/sample.php?flag=B&rep_id=15716 http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/ Opioid Induced Side Effects Treatment Market: OverviewOpioids are strong analgesics that are highly addictive in nature. These are narcotic medications, which are to be administered cautiously to prevent serious side effects. Opioids are recommended for severe pain, which is not expected to be relieved effectively by normal analgesics. The opioid class of painkillers includes codeine, fentanyl, hydrocodone, hydromorphonw, methadone, meperidine, morphine and oxycodone. These opioids are available as single drug product as well as in combination with other analgesic such as oxycodone in combination with acetiaminophen. As these drugs attach to specific proteins called opioid receptors present in brain, spinal cord, gastrointestinal tract and other parts of the body, it can negatively affect these organs if taken for a longer term.Obtain the In-Depth Report Details of Opioid Induced Side Effects Treatment Market:Opioids can cause various side effects such as nausea, constipation, interruption in the CNS functions, prutitis, hyperalgesia, seizures, hallucination and respiratory depression. Long-term use or abuse of opioids can depress respiration and may lead to death if continued. Certain identified opioid induced side effects treatment options to minimize adverse events include dose reduction, symptomatic management and opioid rotation. Physicians support the clinical use of opioid rotation in which, one opioid is exchanged for the other to improve pain control or manage the adverse effects. Symptomatic management includes administration of drugs providing relief from the various side effects.Opioid Induced Side Effects Treatment Market: SegmentationThe opioid induced side effects treatment market is categorized based on the side effects caused by opioids and the medications used to treat or reduce the intensity of those side effects. Therefore, based on the side effects, the global opioid induced side effects treatment market is segmented as medications for nausea, constipation, CNS adverse effects and pruritis. Medications for treating opioid induced nausea include antihistamines, antipsychotics and related agents, prokinetic agents and serotonin antagonists. Medications for opioid induced constipation include methylcellulose, polycarbophil, psyllium, lactulose, polyethylene glycol, sorbitol, magnesium citrate, bisacodyl, docusate sodium and senna. Medications for opioid induced CNS adverse effects include haloperidol, risperidone, dextroamphetamine and methylphenidate. Medications for opioid induced pruritis include antihistamines such as cetrizine, diphenhydramine, fexofenadine, hydroxyzine and loratadine. Some of the other recommended treatment drugs include buprenorphine and naloxone.Rising drug abuse and further research development in this field leading to introduction of new products would drive the global opioid induced side effects treatment market. In April 2014, the FDA approved naloxone (Evzio) as an autoinjector dosage form for home use by family members or caregivers.Opioid Induced Side Effects Treatment Market: Region-wise OutlookBased on geography, the global opioid induced side effects treatment market is segmented into North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific and Rest of the World. North America leads the global opioid induced side effects treatment market owing to higher drug abuse levels in this region which demands the need for treatment of the side effects induced by opioids. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention death due to opioid overdose rose from 4,030 deaths in 1999 to 16,651 in 2010. In addition, nearly 60% of the overall drug overdose deaths in 2010 (22,134) in the U.S., was on account of pharmaceutical drugs of which opioid drugs were the reason for three out of every four pharmaceutical overdose deaths. Thus, the need for prevention and control has been recognized in the U.S. healthcare market. However, the Asia-Pacific opioid induced side effects treatment market is expected to grow at a faster rate owing to rising drug abuses in this region which is alarming the need for treating the drug induced side effects.Request for the Sample Report:Some of the key players in the global opioid induced side effects treatment market include AstraZeneca plc, S.L.A. Pharma AG, Shionogi & Co., Ltd., Cubist Pharmaceuticals, Inc., Progenics Pharmaceuticals, Inc., and AIKO Biotechnology, Inc.About TMRTransparency Market Research (TMR) is a global market intelligence company, providing global business information reports and services. Our exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trends analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. TMRs experienced team of Analysts, Researchers, and Consultants, use proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather and analyze information.Our data repository is continuously updated and revised by a team of research experts, so that it always reflects the latest trends and information. With a broad research and analysis capability, Transparency Market Research employs rigorous primary and secondary research techniques in developing distinctive data sets and research material for business reports.US Office Contact90 State Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-618-1030USA - Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite: Fresh Meat Packaging Global Market Trend Analysis By Component & Type Forecast 2023 ReportsWeb http://www.reportsweb.com/fresh-meat-packaging-global-market-outlook-2017-2023 http://www.reportsweb.com/inquiry&RW0001888480/sample http://www.reportsweb.com/inquiry&RW0001888480/buying According to Publisher, the Global Fresh Meat Packaging Market is accounted for $1.96 billion in 2016 and expected to grow at a CAGR of 2.7% to reach $2.37 billion by 2023. Factors such as increasing shelf-life of the product, improved standard of living, and sustainable benefits of flexible films over rigid packaging and advancement in the packaging technology are driving the market growth. However, Environmental issues such as recyclability and sustainability and health concerns are some of the factors that are hampering market growth. Manufacturers adopting eco-friendly techniques for meat packaging is a key trend observed by the market.For more information about this report:The beef segment dominated the Meat Type market segment followed by poultry because of increasing consumption of beef across the world. On the basis of packaging material, the (Ethylenvinyl Alcohol) EVOH segment is anticipated to grow at the highest CAGR during the forecast period. MAP segment is observed to grow significantly during the forecast period. The 7-layer segment dominated the market, followed by 5-layer segment over the forecast period. North America is the largest market followed by Europe. Asia pacific is anticipated to grow lucratively due to rising disposable income along with rise in the consumption of meat products.Some of the key players in Global Fresh Meat Packaging market are Berry Plastic Group, Inc., Multivac Sepp Haggenmuller GmbH & Co.KG, Bemis Company, Inc., Harpak-ULMA Packaging, Coveris Holdings S.A, Sealpac International BV, ALKAR-RapidPak, Sealed Air Corp., Robert Reiser & Co and Winpak Ltd.Technologies Covered:-Vacuum Skin Packaging (VSP)-Vacuum Thermoformed Packaging (VTP)-Modified Atmosphere Packaging (MAP)Materials Covered:-Metal Meat Packaging-Polyvinylidene Chloride (PVDC)-Polyvinyl Chloride (PVC)-Polyethylene (PE)-EVOH (Ethylenvinyl Alcohol)-BOPP (Biaxially Oriented Polypropylene Films)-PA (Polyamide)-PP (Polypropylene)-Others MaterialsLayer Types Covered:- Monolayer-3-layer-5-layer-7-layer-9-layerDistribution Channels Covered:-Departmental stores-Grocery stores-Hypermarket/Supermarket-Online retailing-Other Distribution ChannelsRequest Sample Copy atMeat Types Covered:-Pork-Poultry-Seafood-Beef-Other Meat TypesRegions Covered:-North America- US- Canada- Mexico-Europe- Germany- France- Italy- UK- Spain- Rest of Europe-Asia Pacific- Japan- China- India- Australia- New Zealand- Rest of Asia Pacific-Rest of the World- Middle East- Brazil- Argentina- South Africa- Egypt1 Executive Summary2 Preface3 Market Trend Analysis4 Porters Five Force Analysis5 Global Fresh Meat Packaging Market, By Technology6 Global Fresh Meat Packaging Market, By Material7 Global Fresh Meat Packaging Market, By Layer Type8 Global Fresh Meat Packaging Market, By Distribution Channel9 Global Fresh Meat Packaging Market, By Meat Type10 Global Fresh Meat Packaging Market, By Geography11 Key Developments12 Company Profiling12.1 Berry Plastic Group, Inc.12.2 Multivac Sepp Haggenmuller GmbH & Co.KG12.3 Bemis Company, Inc.12.4 Harpak-ULMA Packaging12.5 Coveris Holdings S.A12.6 Sealpac International BV12.7 ALKAR-RapidPak12.8 Sealed Air Corp.12.9 Robert Reiser & Co12.10 Winpak Ltd.Inquire before Buying atContact Us:Call: +1-646-491-9876Email: sales@reportsweb.comReportsWeb.com is a one stop shop of market research reports and solutions to various companies across the globe. We help our clients in their decision support system by helping them choose most relevant and cost effective research reports and solutions from various publishers. We provide best in class customer service and our customer support team is always available to help you on your research queries.505, 6th floor, Amanora Township,Amanora Chambers, East Block,Kharadi Road, Hadapsar, Pune-411028 Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder Market Estimated to Flourish by 2024 http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/obsessive-compulsive-disorder-therapeutics-market.html http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/sample/sample.php?flag=B&rep_id=14720 http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/ Global Obsessive Compulsive Disorder Market: OverviewObsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) may be defined as an anxiety disorder that is characterized by unreasonable and uncontrollable thoughts and fears that lead an individual to perform repetitive behaviors. Obsessive-compulsive disorder compels a person to get stuck on a particular thought or fear. For example, a person afraid of contamination may wash his/her hands repetitively in an order to make sure his/her hands are clean. Likewise, a person may check a gas stove multiple times to be sure that its really turned off. Usually people affected with obsessive-compulsive disorder possess both obsessions as well as compulsions; however, in many cases individuals may have either obsessions or compulsions.Obtain the In-Depth Report Details of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder Market:Some common thoughts that usually pop up in mind of people with obsessive-compulsive disorder are fear of being contaminated by germs or dirt, excessive thinking about religious or moral ideas, superstitions, having things orderly or symmetrical, doubts that stove is turned off and thoughts of hurting oneself or others. These thoughts cause people with obsessive-compulsive disorder to perform actions like repeatedly checking of things such as locks and switches; repeatedly reciting certain words with intent to reduce anxiety, ordering or arranging things and accumulating wastes like newspaper, wine bottles or empty food containers. The exact causes of OCD are not known, however, some possible reasons may include differences in brain structure and genetic factors.The treatment involves psychotherapy as well as medication. Cognitive behavior therapy (CBT) is a specific type of psychotherapy that has been useful in treating people with OCD. Cognitive behavior therapy (CBT) teaches a person multiple ways of thinking, reacting and handling a particular situation. Most commonly used medications for treating OCD include antidepressants and anti-anxiety medications. A child suffering from PANDAS (Pediatric Autoimmune Neuropsychiatric Disorders Associated with Streptococcal infections) is prescribed antibiotics for treating strep infections and SSRI medicines (citalopram, escitalopram, fluoxetine, sertraline and paroxetine).Global Obsessive Compulsive Disorder Market: TrendsThe market for obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) is expected to grow globally under the influence of high prevalence of OCD and life style changes causing changes in thinking processes. According to International OCD Foundation, approximately 2-3 million adults are living with OCD in the United States. The International OCD Foundation also states that nearly 500,000 American children have OCD. A large number of cases of OCD go unreported as many people are not aware that there is any such specific disease. Also, many people hide their illness in order to avoid embarrassment.Global Obsessive Compulsive Disorder Market: Regional OutlookGeographically, the market for obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) has been segmented into North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific and Rest of the World (RoW). North America was the largest regional market in 2013, followed by Europe, Asia-Pacific and Rest of the World (RoW). One of the major factors responsible for North Americas leading position in this particular market is well established health coverage in the region and high level of awareness regarding the illness. In Asia-Pacific and Rest of the World (RoW) regions, the market is expected to grow in coming future owing rise in prevalence of people with OCD and increasing wareness regarding the disease. Japan, China, India, Australia and New Zealand are the most potential markets in the Asia-Pacific region.Request for the Sample Report:Global Obsessive Compulsive Disorder Market: Key PlayersSome major companies and research institutions that are extensively engaged in the development, manufacturing and marketing of OCD drugs include Abbott Laboratories, Pfizer Ltd., Merck & Co., Sanofi, Novartis AG, University of South Florida, Ortho-McNeil Janssen Scientific Affairs, LLC and Indiana University.About TMRTransparency Market Research (TMR) is a global market intelligence company, providing global business information reports and services. Our exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trends analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. TMRs experienced team of Analysts, Researchers, and Consultants, use proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather and analyze information.Our data repository is continuously updated and revised by a team of research experts, so that it always reflects the latest trends and information. With a broad research and analysis capability, Transparency Market Research employs rigorous primary and secondary research techniques in developing distinctive data sets and research material for business reports.US Office Contact90 State Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-618-1030USA - Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite: Oceania IT Services Market 2017 by Segment, Region, Registered Businesses, Analysis and Forecast to 2020 ReportsWeb http://www.reportsweb.com/oceania-it-services-market-report-2017 http://www.reportsweb.com/inquiry&RW0001791333/sample http://www.reportsweb.com/inquiry&RW0001791333/buying ReportsWeb.com published IT Services Market from its database. The report covers the market landscape and its growth prospects over the coming years. The report also includes a discussion of the key vendors operating in this market.Where is the largest and fastest growing market for IT Services? How does the market relate to the overall economy, demography and other similar markets? What forces will shape the market going forward? The IT services global market report from Publisher answers all these questions and many more.The report covers market characteristics, size and growth, segmentation, regional and country breakdowns, competitive landscape, market shares, trends and strategies for this market. It traces the market's historic and forecast market growth by geography. It places the market within the context of the wider IT services market, and compares it with other markets.-The market characteristics section of the report defines and explains the market.-The market size section gives the market size ($b) covering both the historic growth of the market and forecasting the future. Drivers and restraints looks at the external factors supporting and controlling the growth of the market.For more information about this report:-Market segmentations break down market into sub markets that are hardware support services, software and BPO services, cloud services.-The regional and country breakdowns section gives an analysis of the market in each geography and the size of the market by geography and compares their historic and forecast growth. It draws comparisons with country populations and economies to understand the importance of the market by country and how this is changing.-Competitive landscape gives a description of the competitive nature of the market, market shares, and a description of the leading companies. Key financial deals which have shaped the market in recent years are identified.-The trends and strategies section highlights the likely future developments in the market and suggests approaches companies can take to exploit this.-The IT services market section of the report gives context. It compares the IT services market with other segments of the IT services market by size and growth, historic and forecast. It analyses Expenditure Per Capita, Expenditure Per Household, IT Services Indicators Comparison, Internet Penetration, Internet Hosts across selected countries.ScopeMarkets covered: Hardware Support Services, Software And BPO Services, Cloud ServicesCompanies mentioned: IBM, Accenture, HPE, Microsoft, SAP, Fujitsu, TCS, Oracle and NTT dataRequest Sample Copy atCountries: Australia and New ZealandRegions: OceaniaTime series: Five years historic and forecast.Data: Ratios of market size and growth to related markets, population, GDP, IT services Indicators Comparison, Internet Penetration, and Internet Hosts across selected countries.Data segmentations: country and regional historic and forecast data, market share of competitors, market segments.Sourcing and Referencing: Data and analysis throughout the report is sourced using end notes.Companies Mentioned:IBMAccentureHPEMicrosoftSAPFujitsuTCSOracleNTT data ,CapGeminiInfosys Ltdand Wipro LimitedInquire for Report atContact Us:Call: +1-646-491-9876Email: sales@reportsweb.comReportsWeb.com is a one stop shop of market research reports and solutions to various companies across the globe. We help our clients in their decision support system by helping them choose most relevant and cost effective research reports and solutions from various publishers. We provide best in class customer Bauxite Mining and our customer support Bauxite Mining is always available to help you on your research queries.505, 6th floor, Amanora Township,Amanora Chambers, East Block,Kharadi Road, Hadapsar, Pune-411028 Uveal Melanoma Market Scope and Trends Report 2024 http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/uveal-melanoma-market.html http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/sample/sample.php?flag=B&rep_id=17333 http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/ Global Uveal Melanom Market: OverviewUvea is present posterior to sclera and the cornea and has three parts namely, iris, ciliary body and choroid. Uveal melanoma is referred as the cancer of the parts of eye including the iris choroid and ciliray body. It is the condition in which the tumors arise from the melanocytes residing within the uva responsible for the color of the eye. Though is a rare condition, it is most common type of intraocular malignancy in adults. The uveal melanoma treatment depends on various factors most important being the size of the tumor. This type of melanoma is completely asymptomatic in the initial stages. On enlargement of tumor with time, certain changes may be observed such as distortion of pupil, decreased visibility due to secondary retinal detachment and blurred vision. Risk factors for this kind of cancer include fair complexion, blue, and green or light colored eyes, and older age. The role of inherited genetic mutation in uveal melanoma is yet unknown. According to the American Cancer Society, about nine of 10 melanomas of the eye develop in the choroid. The society also reports about 2,730 new cases in 2014 of uveal melanoma in the U.S.Obtain the In-Depth Report Details of Uveal Melanoma Market:Global Uveal Melanom Market: Segment OutlookThe global uveal melanoma market can be segmented based on diagnostic tests, therapy type, location type and geography. Location type can be further classified as iris melanoma, choroid melanoma and ciliary melanoma. Primary treatment involves enucleation i.e. removal of the affected eye. However this has now been replaced by radiation therapies such as plaque brachytherapy in the developed countries. Other types of treatment include external beam proton therapy, transpupillary thermotherapy, surgical resection techniques (transretinal endoresection and trans-scleral partial choroidectomy), gamma knife stereotactic surgery and also combination of these modalities. For small size tumors, the treatment available includes photocoagulation, photodynamic therapy, and local resection. The selection of appropriate treatment largely depends on the size and location of the tumor; associated ocular findings; the status of the fellow eye; and individual factors, including age, life expectancy, quality of life issues, concurrent systemic diseases and patient expectations.Diagnosis of uveal melanoma consists of careful examination of the eye by an experienced clinician. Clinical manifestations include tumor thickness more than 2 mm, sub retinal fluid, and orange pigment on the tumor surface. Various ancillary diagnostic tests include ultrasonography, high resolution ultrasound biomicroscopy, indocyanine green angiography, fluorescein angiography and oclular coherence tomography. Eye exams include ophthalmoscopy, slit-lamp biomicrocopy and gonioscopy. Eye examination is carried out by dilation of pupil with the help of medicated drops allowing doctors to visualize the parts of eye clearly through lens. Biopsy is a rarely used diagnostic test for intraocular melanoma. Regular eye examinations by an ophthalmologist are the best way to find uveal melanoma early, when chances for successful treatment are the highest.Request for the Sample Report:Global Uveal Melanom Market: TrendsThe treatment for such metastasis disease is continuously demanding more research to determine the most effective, and life saving treatments. Extensive research is being carried out in areas of immunotherapy and targeted therapy. Ipilimumab is one such example of immunotherapy shown to help people with advanced melanoma to boost the overall immunity; however its benefits are still under clinical trials for eye melanoma. Other similar drugs under investigation include nivolumab and lambrolizumab. Selumetinib is an example of targeted drug known to slow down the growth of eye melanoma. Other targeted drugs under investigation include vemurafenib, dabrafenib and trametinib amongst various others. Astra Zeneca plc, Eli Lilly & Co., Pfizer, Inc. Novartis AG, and Spectrum Pharmaceuticals, Inc., are few key players contributing to the global uveal melanoma market.About TMRTransparency Market Research (TMR) is a global market intelligence company, providing global business information reports and services. Our exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trends analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. TMRs experienced team of Analysts, Researchers, and Consultants, use proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather and analyze information.Our data repository is continuously updated and revised by a team of research experts, so that it always reflects the latest trends and information. With a broad research and analysis capability, Transparency Market Research employs rigorous primary and secondary research techniques in developing distinctive data sets and research material for business reports.US Office Contact90 State Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-618-1030USA - Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite: Bone Anchored Hearing Aids Market Report Forecasts Strong Growth by 2025 http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/bone-anchored-hearing-aids-market.html http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/sample/sample.php?flag=B&rep_id=26888 http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/ Bone Bone-anchored hearing aids are surgically implantable devices designed to treat hearing loss. This device works by transmitting the sound received through bone conduction to the nerve fibers in the inner ears. The bone-anchored hearing device is a niche segment in the bone-anchored hearing aids market. The bone-anchored hearing device consists of an externally worn receiver and a sound processor. The sound processor resembles a standard behind-the-ear hearing aid, and there is an external abutment that helps the titanium implant to vibrate. It takes approximately 3 to 4 months for the implant to get fused with the living bone, and the process is termed as osseointegration. Once the bone-anchored hearing aid is osseointegrated, the implant conducts sound to the inner ear via the bone. Hence, the sound travels the inner bone without involving the ear canal or the middle ear. The hearing aids were approved by the FDA in 2002 for treating unilateral sensorineural hearing loss.Obtain the In-Depth Report Details of Bone Anchored Hearing Aids Market:The growth of the bone-anchored hearing aids market is attributed to the increasing prevalence of hearing loss in children and older population. According to the WHO, annually 360 million individuals are affected with hearing loss, accounting for 5.3% of the total world population. An article published in CDC, stated that during the span of 1997 to 2007, 2 to 3 of 1,000 children, who were born in the U.S., faced hearing loss in one or both ears. Increasing customization in the product has proven beneficial for the users. The customization of hearing devices are done according to the users. For instance, in case of older people, the bone-anchored devices are designed in a way that they help in increasing the quality of digital sound. In addition, increasing demand for aesthetic hearing aids has propelled the growth of the bone-anchored hearing aids market.The global bone-anchored hearing aids market is segmented according to raw material, end-user, and geography. In terms of material, the global market is segmented into titanium alloy, ceramics composites, and others. In terms of end-user, the market is segmented into hospitals and medical centers. According to geography, the market is segmented into North America, Latin America, Europe, Asia Pacific, and Middle East & Africa.Globally, North America dominates the bone-anchored hearing aids market. Since technology is widely used in countries such as the U.S. and Canada, the demand for bone-anchored hearing aids is higher in North America. Increased use of medical technology and improved and developed health care are attributed for the market growth in Europe. Increasing health care services and rising patient pool are major drivers for the market growth in Asia Pacific. Hence, Asia Pacific is an emerging market for bone-anchored hearing aids during the forecast period. Rising health care infrastructure and facilities in Latin America are factors which are expected to drive the market growth in the region. Middle East & Africa is a slow growing market due to slow growth of economy in the countries of the region.Request for the Sample Report:Major players operating in the bone-anchored hearing aids market are AUDITDATA, Cochlear Limited, GN ReSound, MED-EL Medical Electronics, Natus Medical Incorporated, Sivantos Group, Sonova Holding AG, Advanced Bionics Corporation, Phonak AG, Starkey Hearing Technologies, Widex, William Demant Holding, Bernafon AG, and Sonic Innovations.About TMRTransparency Market Research (TMR) is a global market intelligence company, providing global business information reports and services. Our exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trends analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. TMRs experienced team of Analysts, Researchers, and Consultants, use proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather and analyze information.Our data repository is continuously updated and revised by a team of research experts, so that it always reflects the latest trends and information. With a broad research and analysis capability, Transparency Market Research employs rigorous primary and secondary research techniques in developing distinctive data sets and research material for business reports.US Office Contact90 State Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-618-1030USA - Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite: Global Pillow Market: Current Trends, Business Opportunities, Challenges & Global Industry Analysis by 2023 https://www.marketresearchfuture.com/sample_request/2766 https://www.marketresearchfuture.com/reports/pillow-market-2766 https://www.marketresearchfuture.com/enquiry/2766 Market Research Future adds new report of Global Pillow Market Research Report- Forecast to 2023 it contains Company information, geographical data and Table of ContentMarket Segments: Pillow market has been segmented on the basis of Material which includes 100% Cotton, 100% Bamboo Fiber, 100% Silk, 100% Polyester and Others Pillow market has been segmented on the basis of Filling Material which includes memory foam, hollow fibre, latex, microfiber and others Pillow market has been segmented on the basis of Shape which includes square, u-shape, rectangle, wave, round, convex and others Pillow market has been segmented on the basis of Feature which includes therapy, cooling, anit-static, anti-bacteria and others Pillow market has been segmented on the basis of Application which includes decorative, sleeping, bedding, travel, massage and othersKey Findings: Pillows with therapy feature is growing at faster rate compare to pillows with other feature types Pillows made from hallow fiber is in high demand from developed countries like U.S., France, Canada and U.K.Request a Sample Report @Market Highlight:Global Pillow Market has seen significant growth form last decade due to increasing application of pillow for decoration and sleeping purpose. The filling material used in pillow provides special features to pillow which is used for different application. Rising awareness among consumer about selection of a pillow which suits their sleeping position has changed the dynamics of pillow market. In North America, square and rectangle shaped pillow are dominating the market and it is anticipated to maintain their dominance during forecast period. Huge potential in Middle East and Africa region is attracting key players to enter in that particular market and pillow market in this region will witness significant growth in upcoming region.Key PlayersThe key players profiled in the pillow market are as Hollander (U.S.) American Textile Company (U.S.) Wendre (Estonia) Romatex (South Africa) Hunan Mendale Hometextile Co. Ltd (China) Luolai (China) Dohia Home Textile Co. Ltd (China)Browse Report Details @Intended Audience Pillow manufacturers Cotton manufacturers Silk and Polyester manufacturers Latex and fiber manufacturers Agriculture Industry E-commerce Retailers and wholesalers Traders, importers and exportersStudy Objectives of Pillow Market To provide detailed analysis of the market structure along with forecast for the next 5 years of the various segments and sub-segments of the global pillow market To provide insights about factors affecting the market growth To analyze the market based on various factors - price analysis, supply chain analysis, porters five force analysis etc. To provide historical and forecast revenue of the market segments and sub-segments with respect to four main geographies and their countries- North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific, and Middle East & Africa. To provide country level analysis of the market with respect to the current market size and future prospective To provide country level analysis of the market for segments by material, filling material, shape, feature, application and region To provide overview of key players and their strategic profiling in the market, comprehensively analyzing their core competencies, and drawing a competitive landscape for the market.Request Table of Contents for this Report @Regional AnalysisThe Global Pillow market is segmented into North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, and rest of the world (ROW). Asia Pacific has the major market share followed by Europe. Population in Asia Pacific region contributes around half of the worlds population which has created huge customer base for pillow market. Innovation by key players in pillow filling material and attractive designs and shapes of various pillows is attracting consumers from Europe and North America region.About Market Research Future:At Market Research Future (MRFR), we enable our customers to unravel the complexity of various industries through our Cooked Research Report (CRR), Half-Cooked Research Reports (HCRR), Raw Research Reports (3R), Continuous-Feed Research (CFR), and Market Research & Consulting Services.MRFR team have supreme objective to provide the optimum quality market research and intelligence services to our clients. Our market research studies by products, services, technologies, applications, end users, and market players for global, regional, and country level market segments, enable our clients to see more, know more, and do more, which help to answer all their most important questions.Contact:Akash Anand,Market Research FutureOffice No. 528, Amanora ChambersMagarpatta Road, Hadapsar,Pune - 411028Maharashtra, India+1 646 845 9312Email: akash.anand@marketresearchfuture.com Small Cells, Carrier WiFi, DAS And C-RAN Networks To Account For Over 50% Of All Mobile Data Traffic And Overall Spending On Hetnet Infrastructure Is Expected To Reach $20 Billion Annually During The Period 2014 - 2020 http://www.researchmoz.us/enquiry.php?type=S&repid=232300 http://www.researchmoz.us/the-hetnet-bible-small-cells-carrier-wifi-das-and-c-ran-2014-2020-opportunities-challenges-strategies-and-forecasts-report.html http://www.researchmoz.us/enquiry.php?type=E&repid=232300 http://www.researchmoz.us/ http://bit.ly/1TBmnVG Researchmoz added Most up-to-date research on "The HetNet Bible (Small Cells, Carrier WiFi, DAS & C-RAN): 2014 - 2020 - Opportunities, Challenges, Strategies, & Forecasts" to its huge collection of research reports.Driven by in-building wireless coverage requirements and the growing influx of mobile broadband data traffic, a traditional macrocell based cellular network deployment is not deemed to be a sufficient solution to address the coverage and capacity needs of todays wireless subscribers.To Get Sample Copy of Report visit @Wireless carriers are thus exploring options to offload additional coverage and capacity to alternatives such as strategically deployed small cells and WiFi access points, which have so far been deployed by more than 200 global wireless carriers. Adding further to the heterogeneity are alternative deployment models such as DAS (Distributed Antenna Systems) and the emerging C-RAN (Cloud Radio Access Networks) architecture which concentrates the processing of the RAN segment of a mobile network in one or more, centralized data centers.Driven by the thriving ecosystem, we expect small cells, carrier WiFi, DAS and C-RAN networks to account for over 50% of all mobile data traffic by the end of 2015, while overall spending on HetNet infrastructure is expected to reach $20 Billion annually during the same period.This report presents an in-depth assessment of the global small cells, carrier WiFi, DAS and C-RAN markets. In addition to covering the technology, business case, the challenges, standardization initiatives, the industrys roadmap, value chain analysis, deployment case studies, vendor service/product strategies and strategic recommendations, the report also presents comprehensive forecasts for the market from 2014 till 2020, including individual revenue and shipment projections of small cells, carrier WiFi, small cell backhaul, SCaaS (Small Cells as a Service), DAS, C-RAN, SON (Self-Organizing Network) and mobile data services across six geographical regions.Also provided are historical figures for 2010, 2011, 2012 and 2013. The report comes with an associated Excel datasheet covering quantitative data from all numeric figures presented in the report.Key Findings:The report has the following key findings:- Small cells, carrier WiFi, DAS and C-RAN infrastructure investments will account for a $20 Billion HetNet ecosystem by 2020- HetNet infrastructure is expected to carry more than 70% of all mobile network data traffic by 2020, which will account for $380 Billion in mobile data service revenue- At present, the HetNet value chain is highly fragmented with pure-play specialists and incumbent macrocell vendors battling to gain a higher share of the market- SNS Research expects the value chain to consolidate over the coming years following a string of acquisitions by industry giants such as Intel, Ericsson, Cisco and Nokia- Eyeing the momentum behind small cell and C-RAN deployments, several DAS vendors, such as BTI Wireless and Kathrein-Werke KG, have developed small cell and C-RAN offerings- Small cell vendors such as Airvana are also adopting C-RAN centric architectures- Enterprise RAN investments based on combination of small cells and coordination platforms are expected to reach $5 Billion by the end of 2020- While it is a preferred opinion among wireless carriers, aggregating outdoor small cell backhaul with macrocell infrastructure may prove to be a well challenging task. Consequently the demand for small cell backhauling has opened a new opportunity for investment, which will be a market worth nearly $6 Billion by 2020- Spending on mobile fronthaul solutions will grow at a CAGR of nearly 40% between 2014 and 2020. By the end of 2020, mobile fronthaul investments will account for nearly $2.6 Billion in revenueBrowse Detail Report With Full TOC @Topics Covered:The report covers the following topics:- Small cell, carrier WiFi, DAS and C-RAN technology, and architecture- Integration and offloading technology for HetNets- Market drivers and key benefits of HetNets- Challenges and Inhibitors to the HetNet ecosystem- HetNet industry roadmap: 2010 2020- HetNet industry value chain- Vendor landscape and acquisitions- HetNet deployment models- Vertical markets for HetNet deployments- Small cell backhaul and C-RAN fronthaul technology, requirements and key issues- Standardization and regulatory initiatives- SCaaS (Small Cells as a Service)- Small cell, SCaaS, C-RAN, DAS and carrier WiFi deployment case studies- Industry, wireless carrier and vendor commitments to HetNet deployments- Enterprise RAN solutions- Public safety and military centric LTE small cells- WiFi enabled LTE gateways- SON (Self-Organizing Network) technologyProfiles and market positioning assessment (current strategy, target market and products/services) for the following players in the HetNet market: pure-play small cell vendors, DAS, RRH (Remote Radio Head) & repeater solution providers, carrier WiFi focused vendors, C-RAN solution providers, HetNet focused SON solution providers, wireless network (Macrocell, Core) infrastructure vendors, chipset, software, technology & component vendors, test & measurement solution providers, WiFi network providers and fronthaul/backhaul solution providersConclusion and strategic recommendations for HetNet solution vendors, wireless carriers and macrocell infrastructure vendorsMarket analysis and forecasts for the industrys revenue, including the following submarkets:- Small Cells- Carrier WiFi- SCaaS (Small Cells as a Service)- DAS (Distributed Antenna Systems)- C-RAN (Cloud Radio Access Networks)- SON (Self-Organizing Network) Solutions- Enterprise RAN- Small Cell Backhaul- Mobile Fronthaul- Mobile Network Data ServiceSmall cell forecasts (unit shipments, revenue, installed base) are categorized in the following categories:- RAN Technology- GSM/W-CDMA/HSPA- CDMA-2000/EV-DO- LTE FDD- TD-LTE- WiMAX- Deployment Model- Home/Residential- Enterprise- Metro- Rural- Cell Size- Femtocells- Picocells- MicrocellsCarrier WiFi forecasts (unit shipments, revenue, installed base) are categorized in the following categories:- Equipment Category- Access Points- Access Point Controllers- Integration Approach- Managed WiFi Offload- Unmanaged Open Access WiFiSmall cell backhaul forecasts (revenue) are categorized in the following technology categories:- Ethernet over Copper- Ethernet over Fiber- DSL modems and DSLAMs- NLOS (Non Line of Sight) Microwave (Sub-6GHz spectrum)- PTP (Point to Point) Microwave (6-60GHz)- PTMP (Point to Multipoint) Microwave (6-60GHz)- Millimeter Wave (Unlicensed 60GHz spectrum)- Millimeter Wave (Licensed 60GHz spectrum)- SatelliteMobile network data service forecasts (throughput and revenue) are categorized in the following access network technology categories:- Macrocell & C-RAN Networks- Small Cells- Carrier WiFi- DASRegional forecasts are categorized in the following 6 categories- North America- Asia Pacific- Western Europe- Eastern Europe- Middle East & Africa- Latin & Central AmericaKey Questions Answered:The report provides answers to the following key questions:- What are the key market drivers and challenges in the HetNet ecosystem?- How big is the HetNet ecosystem, and how much revenue will it generate in 2020?- What will be the installed base of small cells and carrier WiFi access points in 2020?- Which geographical regions offer the greatest growth potential for HetNet deployments?- What is the service revenue for mobile data services delivered over small cells, carrier WiFi, DAS, C-RAN and macrocells, and how will this vary overtime?- How are investments on DAS technology impacting small cell and carrier WiFi deployments?- What is the C-RAN concept, and how does it affect the small cell, DAS and carrier WiFi markets?- Which technology will be predominant in the small cell backhaul ecosystem and is there a market for satellite based small cell backhaul?- Is there a market for rural small cell deployments?- How big are the opportunities for SCaaS (Small Cells as a Service) and enterprise RAN deployments?- How is the HetNet value chain structured and how will it evolve overtime?- What opportunities does the HetNet ecosystem offer to infrastructure vendors and other players involved in the value chain?- What strategies should infrastructure vendors and wireless carriers adopt to capitalize on the HetNet opportunity?- Can small cells help in accelerating LTE deployments for the military, public safety and other verticals?List of Companies Mentioned:The following companies have been mentioned in the report:- 3GPP- 3Roam- 4ipnet- 4RF- 6WIND- ABB- Ablaze- Ablaze Wireless- Accedian Networks- Accel Partners- Accelleran- Accuris Networks- AceAxis- Acer- Acme Packet- ACS (Applied Communication Sciences)- Actelis Networks- Actiontec- Actix- Actus Networks- Adara Venture Partners- Adax- ADB- ADI (Analog Devices Inc.)- ADLINK Technology- ADRF (Advanced RF Technologies)- ADTRAN- ADVA Optical Networking- Advanced RF Technologies- Advantech Wireless- Aepona- Aerohive- Affarii Technologies- Affirmed Networks- Agilent Technologies- AICENT- Airbus Defence & Space- Aircom International- AirHop Communications- Airspan Networks- Airvana- AirWalk- AJ Telecom Group- AKM (Asahi Kasei Microdevices)- ALAXALA Networks- Albis Technologies- Albtelecom- Alcatel-Lucent- ALCOMA- Alifabs Group- Allied Data Technologies- Allied Telesis- Alpha Networks- Altera- Altiostar Networks- Altobridge- Alvarion- AlwaysOn- Amadeus Capital Partners- Amdocs- American Tower Corporation- Andrew Corporation- Anite- Anixter- Anritsu Corporation- Anvaya Networks- Anziva Technologies- Aoptix- Aperto Networks- Applied Communication Sciences- Aptilo Networks- Arcadyan Technology Corporation- Argela- Aria- ARIB (Association of Radio Industries and Businesses) Japan- Aricent- Arieso- ARItel- Arqiva- Arris- Artemis Networks- Aruba Networks- Askey Computer Corporation- ASOCS- Astellia- ASUS- AT&T- AT&T Mobility- Athena Wireless Communications- Atomico- Augere Bangladesh- August Capital- Avanti Communications- Avaya- AveA- Aviat Networks- AVM- AWTG (Advanced Wireless Technology Group)- Axell Wireless- Axis Teknologies- Axxcelera- Azcom TechnologyMake an Enquiry of this report @About ResearchMozResearchMoz is the one stop online destination to find and buy market research reports & Industry Analysis. We fulfill all your research needs spanning across industry verticals with our huge collection of market research reports. We provide our services to all sizes of organizations and across all industry verticals and markets. Our Research Coordinators have in-depth knowledge of reports as well as publishers and will assist you in making an informed decision by giving you unbiased and deep insights on which reports will satisfy your needs at the best price.Mr. NachiketState Tower,90 State Street,Suite 700,Albany NY - 12207United StatesEmail: sales@researchmoz.usWebsite @Tel: 866-997-4948 (Us-Canada Toll Free)Tel: +1-518-621-2074Follow us on LinkedIn @ Global PCB Design Software Market: Size, Trends & Forecasts (2016-2020) - Researchmoz http://www.researchmoz.us/enquiry.php?type=S&repid=938715 http://www.researchmoz.us/global-pcb-design-software-market-size-trends-and-forecasts-2016-2020-report.html http://www.researchmoz.us/enquiry.php?type=E&repid=938715 http://www.researchmoz.us/ http://bit.ly/1TBmnVG Researchmoz added Most up-to-date research on "Global PCB Design Software Market: Size, Trends & Forecasts (2016-2020)" to its huge collection of research reports.The report titled Global PCB Design Software Market: Size, Trends & Forecasts (2016-2020) provides an in-depth analysis of the global PCB design software market by value and by segment. It provides an overview of the market and its segment with detailed analysis of market size and growth in terms of value and market share by region, segment and end-user.To Get Sample Copy of Report visit @The report provides brief regional analysis of North America, Asia Pacific and Europe. Regional analysis includes market sizing and growth by value of each region. Share contribution of North America is highest in the global PCB design software market. Asia Pacific region is expected to grow at a high CAGR over the forecasted period.The report also assesses the key opportunities in the market and outlines the factors that are and will be driving the growth of the industry. Growth of the overall global PCB design software market has also been forecasted for the period 2016-2020, taking into consideration the previous growth patterns, the growth drivers and the current and future trends.The competition in the global PCB design software market is dominated by the four big players, Mentor Graphics, Cadence Design Systems, Zuken and Altium. These key players are profiled with their financial information and respective business strategies.Company CoverageMentor GraphicsCadence Design SystemsZukenAltiumRegion CoverageNorth AmericaAsia PacificEuropeExecutive SummarySoftware which is used by electrical engineers for designing of printed circuit board on a device, using various features is PCB design software. The main function of PCB software is to construct, inspect and test a designed circuit board before it can be printed physically on a polymer circuit board for use in the electronics sector. PCB design software is a kind of electronic design automation (EDA) tool. It is used to design layout of circuit. This software not only provides designing of the circuit but also validates the working of circuit.The global PCB design software market has increased with healthy growth rates during the years 2010-2015 and projections are made that the market would rise in the next four years i.e. 2016 to 2020 tremendously. The global PCB design software market is supported by various growth drivers such as increasing use in semiconductor industry, ease in designing of circuit which saves cost and time, rising use in electronic automotive devices and technological advancements etc. Yet the market faces some challenges such as use of pirated software, lack of skilled personnel and easy availability of open source PCB design software which are hampering the growth of the market.Browse Detail Report With Full TOC @Table Of Content1. Executive Summary2. Introduction2.1 Overview of Printed Circuit Board2.1.1 Types of PCBSingle-Sided PCBDouble-Sided PCBMulti-Layer2.2 Overview of PCB Design Software2.2.1 Popular PCB Design PackagesAltium DesignerEagleOrCAD2.2.2 PCB Design Software End-Users3. Global Market Analysis3.1 Global PCB Design Software Market Analysis3.1.1 Global PCB Design Software Market by Value3.1.2 Global PCB Design Software Market Share by Segment3.1.3 Global PCB Design Software Market Share by Region3.1.4 Global PCB Design Software Market Share by End-User3.2 Global PCB Design Software Market Segment Analysis3.2.1 Global High-End PCB Design Software Market by Value3.2.2 Global Mainstream PCB Design Software Market by Value3.2.3 Global Low-End PCB Design Software Market by Value4. Region/Country Analysis4.1 North America PCB Design Software Market Analysis4.1.1 North America PCB Design Software Market by Value4.2 Asia Pacific PCB Design Software Market Analysis4.2.1 Asia Pacific PCB Design Software Market by Value4.3 Europe PCB Design Software Market Analysis4.3.1 Europe PCB Design Software Market by Value5. Market Dynamics5.1 Growth Drivers5.1.1 Saving in Cost and Time5.1.2 Increasing Use in Semiconductor Industry5.1.3 Rising Use in Automotive Electronic Devices5.1.4 Ease of Designing a Circuit5.1.5 Rising Expenditure on Research and Development5.2 Challenges5.2.1 Use of Pirated Software5.2.2 Lack of Skilled Personnel5.2.3 Easy Availability of Open Source PCB Design Software5.2.4 Changing Demographics of PCB Design Team5.3 Market Trends5.3.1 Rising Use in Medical Industry5.3.2 Improved Efficiency5.3.3 Rapid Growth of Internet of Things6. Competitive Landscape6.1 Global PCB Design Software Market Share by Players6.2 Global High-End PCB Design Market Share by Players6.3 Global Mainstream PCB Design Market Share by Players6.4 Global Low-End PCB Design Market Share by Players6.5 Global PCB Design Software Market Player by Products7. Company Profiling7.1 Mentor Graphics7.1.1 Business Overview7.1.2 Financial Overview7.1.3 Business Strategy7.2 Cadence Design System7.2.1 Business Overview7.2.2 Financial Overview7.2.3 Business Strategy7.3 Zuken7.3.1 Business Overview7.3.2 Financial Overview7.3.3 Business Strategy7.4 Altium7.4.1 Business Overview7.4.2 Financial Overview7.4.3 Business StrategyMake an Enquiry of this report @About ResearchMozResearchMoz is the one stop online destination to find and buy market research reports & Industry Analysis. We fulfill all your research needs spanning across industry verticals with our huge collection of market research reports. We provide our services to all sizes of organizations and across all industry verticals and markets. Our Research Coordinators have in-depth knowledge of reports as well as publishers and will assist you in making an informed decision by giving you unbiased and deep insights on which reports will satisfy your needs at the best price.Mr. NachiketState Tower,90 State Street,Suite 700,Albany NY - 12207United StatesEmail: sales@researchmoz.usWebsite @Tel: 866-997-4948 (Us-Canada Toll Free)Tel: +1-518-621-2074Follow us on LinkedIn @ Global Price Comparison Websites (PCW) Industry Key Trends, Size, Growth, Shares And Forecast Research Report (2016-2020) http://www.researchmoz.us/enquiry.php?type=S&repid=910682 http://www.researchmoz.us/global-price-comparison-websites-pcw-market-size-trends-and-forecasts-2016-2020-report.html http://www.researchmoz.us/enquiry.php?type=E&repid=910682 http://www.researchmoz.us/ http://bit.ly/1TBmnVG Researchmoz added Most up-to-date research on "Global Price Comparison Websites (PCW) Market: Size, Trends & Forecasts (2016-2020)" to its huge collection of research reports.The report entitled Global Price Comparison Websites (PCW) Market: Size, Trends & Forecasts (2016-2020), provides analysis of the global price comparison website market, with detailed analysis of market size and growth, penetration, market share and economic impact of the industry. The report also provides the regional analysis of the price comparison website market of the UK, with analysis by value, segments, penetration, etc.To Get Sample Copy of Report visit @Furthermore, the report also assesses the key opportunities in the market and outlines the factors that are and will be driving the growth of the industry. Growth of the overall global price comparison website market has been forecasted for the years 2016-2020, taking into consideration the previous growth pattern, the growth drivers and the current and future trends.Majority of the market is concentrated in the UK and major companies in the market are also UK based. Gocompare, Moneysupermarket, uSwitch and Confused.com are key companies in the UK price comparison website market. The company profiling of these companies has been done in the report, which includes business overview, financial overview and respective business strategies of the companies.Country CoverageUKBrowse Detail Report With Full TOC @Company CoverageEsure Group Plc (Gocompare.com)MoneySuperMarket.com Group PlcZoopla Property Group (uSwitch)Admiral Group PLC (Confused.com)Executive SummaryA price comparison website is a search engine, which people use to compare the prices of different products. These websites are also called comparison shopping website, price analysis tool, comparison shopping agent, shopbot, etc. Along with prices, many other categories for comparing the products, such as features, quality, etc. are being added on these websites.Price comparison websites provide many benefits to both consumers and the suppliers. Consumers get convenience, increased choices, saving of time, etc., while suppliers are benefitted by increased visibility, new customers, etc.The price comparison websites can be segmented into Insurance, Energy and Others. Insurance segment includes motor insurance, home insurance, travel insurance, etc. Energy segment comprises of gas, electricity and others. Other products included in the market are broadband, mobiles, digital TV, etc.The price comparison website market is expected to increase at a significant growth rate during the forecasted period (2016-2020). The global price comparison website market is supported by various growth drivers, such as increase in smartphone users, increased internet penetration, increasing switching market, etc. Yet, the market faces certain challenges, such as issues related to reliability and trust, lack of knowledge, etc.Make an Enquiry of this report @About ResearchMozResearchMoz is the one stop online destination to find and buy market research reports & Industry Analysis. We fulfill all your research needs spanning across industry verticals with our huge collection of market research reports. We provide our services to all sizes of organizations and across all industry verticals and markets. Our Research Coordinators have in-depth knowledge of reports as well as publishers and will assist you in making an informed decision by giving you unbiased and deep insights on which reports will satisfy your needs at the best price.Mr. NachiketState Tower,90 State Street,Suite 700,Albany NY - 12207United StatesEmail: sales@researchmoz.usWebsite @Tel: 866-997-4948 (Us-Canada Toll Free)Tel: +1-518-621-2074Follow us on LinkedIn @ After months of delay and with another homicide Wednesday, the city and a nonprofit have finalized a $50,000 contract to begin a publicly funded effort to prevent gun violence. The 24-hour, seven-day-a-week program will have paid responders offering peer support and connections to services aimed at de-escalating possible retaliation and further harm. Its aimed at low-income men between 18 and 40. The contract calls for about 250 hours of service in response to an estimated 25 to 30 crisis situations. It seeks to bolster current informal efforts to help by many of those who will now be delivering taxpayer-supported services. I think its really important, city community development director Jim OKeefe said. I think everybody is recognizing that. I know its frustrating for a lot of people that its taken so long. But when you bring public money to bear, theres a need for accountability, systems and structure. The City Council last fall approved $400,000 in this years budget to fund initial pieces of a 15-point anti-violence plan offered by the Focused Interruption Coalition of community and faith leaders. On June 21, the council approved spending $50,000 for a short-term peer support program for 2017. Over recent days, the city and Nehemiah Development Corp. signed the $50,000 contract for the short-term effort, in which paid responders, preferably those whove gone through similar experiences, are trained to provide the support. Nehemiah will subcontract with Focused Interruption and has named Anthony Cooper Sr., the coalitions executive director, as director of the peer support program. Were implementing everything now, Cooper said, noting theres a natural friction between grassroots efforts that can move quickly and the realities of government. We need to stay focused and stay together as a community and get the job done. Michael Johnson, president of the Boys & Girls Club of Dane County, a Focused Interruption member whos been a primary private responder, said his organization has provided counseling for children, moved families from apartments where crime has occurred and provided food, diapers and clothing to children impacted by recent violence. Boys & Girls Club will continue to work with the Focused Interruption Coalition, the district attorneys office, MPD, the mayors office and grass-roots leaders to leverage public and/or private resources to support children and families traumatized by violent crimes, Johnson said. Meanwhile, Nehemiah and Focused Interruption will coordinate activities with the Mayors Rapid Response Team, which includes law enforcement, the Dane County District Attorneys Office of Victim Services, county Human Services and the citys Community Development Division, the contract says. The city has budgeted another $25,000 for short-term housing, food, clothing and needs of those affected by violence. The Rapid Response Team will create protocols for making those payments. At the Meadowood Neighborhood Center on Wednesday evening, a group of youths were taking their own approach to recent gun violence. Members of the Madison Inspirational Youth Choir, a program though Nehemiah, chose Youth United to Stop the Violence as the theme of its Aug. 23 performance, said founder and co-director Dr. Jasmine Zapata. She acknowledged the theme has become more relevant since it was selected in spring. Its just an outlet to talk to the kids about whats going on, said Zapata, a pediatrician and preventative health physician. Martin Lackey, a member of Focused Interruption, spoke to the youths to gauge their thoughts on the most recent homicide and ways to prevent violence, offering two takeaways: Always stay positive and Dont ever give up on yourselves. One of the boys in attendance said a cousin of his was killed by gun violence this summer. I just want it to stop, he said. Under the contract with Nehemiah, peer support will be provided to those affected by violence or who are likely to be involved in any retaliation. It isnt intended to respond to domestic violence situations. Its a prevention program, OKeefe stressed. Its not an appropriate response to every homicide or every violent incident. Its for situations that carry a high risk or threat of escalation. Service requests may come from the police, the Office of Victims Services, the mayors office, community service agencies, community members or victims. Requests will be referred to a central dispatch person designated by Nehemiah. After getting a referral, staff will assess the situation to decide if a response is warranted and which, if any, community partners should be notified. Nehemiah will have a 24-hour, on-call schedule that can deploy up to two responders. It will provide a designated backup supervisor or senior responder to provide guidance and follow-up. Responders will be trained in communication skills, de-escalating and resolving conflicts, connecting participants with services and working with police and others. Responders will keep an incident report log and be expected to get demographic but not identifying information for those receiving services. Its expected Nehemiah will use Focused Interruption members and others to perform some aspects of the program. The city is also moving to solicit proposals from nonprofits to provide long-term peer support also funded by the $400,000 to those caught up in cycles of violence. The Community Development Division envisions two programs: one to help people exposed to or involved in violence, and another for those returning to the community after release from incarceration. That request for proposals could be released in a week to 10 days, with contracts awarded in October, OKeefe said. State Journal reporter Logan Wroge contributed to this report. Abaca Fiber Market Report 2016: By Product, Application, Manufacturer, Sales and Segmentation http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/abaca-fiber-market.html http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/sample/sample.php?flag=B&rep_id=16022 http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/ Global Abaca Fiber Market: OverviewAbaca, also called as manila hemp, is extracted from the leaf sheath around the trunk of Musa textilis, a type of banana plant that is mostly found in the Philippines and humid tropics. Harvesting and cultivating abaca is a labor-intensive process as the pulp is removed by cutting strips and scraping stalks. Fibers obtained from the process are then dried and removed. Abaca fiber has high strength and is used in the paper industry for making mimeograph mats and teabags. It is also used to make handicraft such as carpets, furniture, clothing, and bags. Abaca fiber is used in fishing nets, hawsers, and shipping lines due to beneficial properties such as flexibility, durability, and saltwater resistance. It is classified as a hard fiber along with sisal, coir, and henequin. In addition, abaca fiber is used in gifts, toys, and housewares. Furthermore, it is used as an alternative to glass fiber reinforced plastics components. Various local textile manufacturers use 30% to 50% of abaca in the production of maong (denim).Browse Market Research Report:Global Abaca Fiber Market: Drivers and RestraintsAbaca is used in end-user industries such as fiber craft, paper & pulp, and cordage. In terms of consumption, pulp & paper was the largest end-user of abaca fiber followed by cordage and fiber craft industries in 2014. Wide application range of abaca fiber in the production of specialty paper is anticipated to be one of the key factors driving demand for abaca fibers in the paper & pulp industry. Increasing demand for cordage in the production of ropes used in ships and other industrial applications is expected to boost demand for abaca fiber during the forecast period. The automotive industry also uses natural rubber as filling material in hat racks, bolster, damping, interior trim parts, and parcel trays. Therefore, rising demand for natural fiber in the automotive industry and increasing automobile sales in developing nations such as China, India, and Brazil are anticipated to fuel the abaca fiber market during the forecast period. Combining abaca with silk has resulted in the production of an acceptable textile for wearing purposes.Global Abaca Fiber Market: Geographical and Competitive DynamicsAsia Pacific was the fastest-growing and largest market for abaca fibers in 2014. More than three-fourth of the total abaca is produced in the Philippines. Initiatives are taken by the Philippine Rural Development Program (PRDP) to increase usage of abaca fibers and gain economic benefits for the nation. Additionally, abaca is rapidly replacing non-biodegradable polymers. More than half of the total abaca produced is exported from Philippines and Bangladesh to Europe, North America, China and Japan. The abaca plant is vulnerable to a number of pathogens. Hence, supply of abaca fibers fluctuates, thus acting as restraint for growth of the abaca fiber market.Get accurate market forecast and analysis on the Abaca Fiber market. Request a sample to stay abreast on the key trends impacting this market @Growth in the furniture industry is expected to drive the abaca fiber market in Asia Pacific during the forecast period. However, increasing environmental restrictions regarding the usage of non-biodegradable polymeric fibers is likely to act as an opportunity for the abaca fibers market during the forecast period. Research and development is being carried out to improve physical properties of abaca fibers. Abaca is mostly used in making teabags and cordage in Europe. Negligible amount of abaca fiber is used in Latin America and Middle East & Africa due to average demand from the end user industry.Key players in the abaca fiber market include Tag Fibers, Inc., Ching Bee Trading Corporation, MAP Enterprises, Selinrail International Trading, The Fiber World, Italfil Expo Bags Company Limited and Yzen Handicraft Export Trading.About UsTransparency Market Research (TMR) is a global market intelligence company providing business information reports and services. The companys exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trend analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. TMRs experienced team of analysts, researchers, and consultants use proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather and analyze information.TMRs data repository is continuously updated and revised by a team of research experts so that it always reflects the latest trends and information. With extensive research and analysis capabilities, Transparency Market Research employs rigorous primary and secondary research techniques to develop distinctive data sets and research material for business reports.Contact UsTransparency Market Research90 State Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-618-1030USA - Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite: Automotive Lubricants Market : Future Demand and Growth Analysis with forecast 2024 http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/automotive-lubricants-market.html http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/sample/sample.php?flag=B&rep_id=9052 http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com Global Automotive Lubricants Market: SnapshotThe world automotive lubricants market is expected to witness a telling increase in demand in the coming years on account of the rising trend of possessing an automobile among consumers. The sale of automotive lubricants could be optimistically impacted on the back of the surging awareness level about several benefits such as improved average age of automobiles and upgraded operations. This positive situation of the world automotive lubricants market is anticipated to prevail over the course of the forecast period.In 2015, the world automotive lubricants market was valued at US$55.4 bn. However, it is predicted to progress at a decent CAGR of 4.10% between 2016 and 2024 to reach US$78.9 bn by the end of the forecast period.Obtain Report Details @Increasing Number of Automobiles Directly Proportional to Growth of Engine OilAcross the globe, vendors are projected to receive business from three premier types of automotive lubricant, viz. transmission fluid, engine oil, and gear oil. Nevertheless, engine oil a.k.a. motor oil could rake in a significant demand by emerging as one of the most valuable products in the international automotive lubricants market. This trend is foreseen to continue all through the forecast years. The incomparable growth of engine oil in the international automotive lubricants market could be attributed to the mounting count of automobiles running on road.On the other hand, the magnifying engagement of single fluid for both transmission and gearbox functions is envisaged to cause a decline in the growth of transmission fluid and gear oil in the foreseeable future.On the basis of base oil, the international automotive lubricants market could be classified into bio-based fluid, synthetic oil, and mineral oil. Each of these base oils is envisioned to offer some or the other type of business opportunity to industry players operating in the international automotive lubricants market.An automotive lubricant could differ according to the type of automobile it is used for. Therefore, automobiles such as heavy-weight commercial vehicle (HCV), light-weight commercial vehicle (LCV), and passenger car are prophesied to set the tone for growth in the international automotive lubricants market.By distribution channel, players could find favorable prospects in the aftermarket and original equipment manufacturer (OEM) automotive lubricants markets.Brochure With Latest Advancements With Application @Asia Pacific Keeps Lead with Sizable Consumption in Improving EconomiesAsia Pacific is prognosticated to sustain its lead in the worldwide automotive lubricants market while riding on key economies such as Japan and China that account for a larger consumption. The improving economies of Asia Pacific could allow for a substantial increase in the purchase power of consumers. Besides this, the impressive rise of the automotive sector therein is expected to enhance the growth rate of Asia Pacific.In the near future, Europe could see a ballooning rise in demand propelled by the boosted growth of synthetic lubricants and enforcement of stricter regulations regarding fuel emission. Howbeit, the pace of growth in demand testified by Europe is anticipated to slightly dwindle during the forecast period. The North America automotive lubricants market could be subjected to a similar condition.Nonetheless, the Middle East and Africa and Latin America are predicted to showcase a considerable growth in the next few years. Developing vehicle parc and infrastructural improvements could be vital for the growth of the Middle East and Africa region. Latin America is envisaged to advance imposingly due to the swelling sales of automobiles in Mexico and Brazil, intensifying implementation of engine oils having lower viscosity, and escalating trend of replacing old automobiles with newer models.Some of the popular company names in the worldwide automotive lubricants market are Chevron Corp., ExxonMobil Corp., BP Plc., Royal Dutch Shell plc, and Petrobras.About UsTransparency Market Research (TMR) is a market intelligence company, providing global business information reports and services. Our exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trends analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. We have an experienced team of Analysts, Researchers, and Consultants, who us e proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather, and analyze information. Our business offerings represent the latest and the most reliable information indispensable for businesses to sustain a competitive edge.Each TMR Syndicated Research report covers a different sector such as pharmaceuticals, chemical, energy, food & beverages, semiconductors, med-devices, consumer goods and technology. These reports provide in-depth analysis and deep segmentation to possible micro levels. With wider scope and stratified research methodology, our syndicated reports thrive to provide clients to serve their overall research requirement.ContactTransparency Market Research90 State Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-618-1030USA Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite: Automotive Turbochargers Market : Future Demand and Growth Analysis with forecast 2024 http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/automotive-turbochargers-market.html http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/sample/sample.php?flag=B&rep_id=17264 http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com Global Automotive Turbochargers Market: SnapshotThe extremely high demand for lighter vehicles can be felt across the world. Lighter vehicles not only add to the speed at which a vehicle can be driven, but are also highly economical in nature, due to the lower use of metals and a better ration between fuel consumption to distance travelled. Additionally, the global automotive turbochargers market is being driven by the growing use of turbochargers in gasoline engines and the increasingly stringent CAFE standards and emission norms. The global automotive turbochargers market is, however, currently hindered by the growing competitive from electric vehicles as well as design difficulties such as turbo lag.The global automotive turbochargers market is expected to expand at a CAGR of 10.1% within a forecast period from 2016 to 2024, in terms of revenue. This revenue is expected to reach US$20.35 bn by the end of 2024, after ending at US$8.56 bn in 2015.Obtain Report Details @Turbocharger Demand in Europe to MatureFrom a geographical standpoint, the global automotive turbochargers market is currently being led by Europe. This region holds developed countries that follow highly stringent emission norms and quite a large market for diesel vehicles. In 2015, Europe took up 38.2% of the global automotive turbochargers market in terms of value. Owing to several challenges faced in the implementation of turbochargers in this region, its demand for them is expected to fall over the coming years. The European demand for turbochargers has already matured and the automotive market is showing a very strong pull towards electric and hybrid vehicles.Meanwhile, Asia Pacific, which was second in terms of demand within the global automotive turbochargers market for 2015, is expected to show a phenomenal rise in its demand over the coming years. The emission norms, while not as stringent as Europe, are tightening for a lot of countries within the Asia Pacific region, and automotive manufacturers are looking towards turbochargers to help solve the issue of increasing fuel efficiency and lowering emissions.Brochure With Latest Advancements With Application @VGT Leads Global Automotive Turbochargers Market in DemandThe three core technologies used to manufacture automotive turbochargers are wastegates, variable geometric technology, and twin turbo. Each technology has been introduced into the global automotive turbochargers market at different times and come with their own set of advantages and disadvantages. Of the three key technologies, the global automotive turbochargers market has so far been dominated by variable technology turbochargers. VGT, also known as variable turbine turbochargers, are equipped with minute vanes that are highly flexible. They help direct the air flow of the exhaust along a turbine at different angles. One of the key advantages of VGT is that is providers a highly wide and flat torque curve and therefore becomes a highly preferred form of turbocharger within an RPM range that applies to a lot of diesel vehicles. Variable geometry turbocharger technology is expected to expand at a CAGR of 9.4% between 2016 and 2024, in terms of value.The top players associated with the global automotive turbochargers market today, include BorgWarner Inc. (U.S.), Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd (Japan), Honeywell International Inc. (U.S.), Continental AG (Germany), IHI Corporation (Japan), Eaton Corporation PLC (Ireland), Cummins, Inc. (U.S.), Rotomaster, Inc. (Spain), Bosch Mahle Turbo Systems (Germany), and Turbo Energy PVT LTD (India).About UsTransparency Market Research (TMR) is a market intelligence company, providing global business information reports and services. Our exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trends analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. We have an experienced team of Analysts, Researchers, and Consultants, who us e proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather, and analyze information. Our business offerings represent the latest and the most reliable information indispensable for businesses to sustain a competitive edge.Each TMR Syndicated Research report covers a different sector such as pharmaceuticals, chemical, energy, food & beverages, semiconductors, med-devices, consumer goods and technology. These reports provide in-depth analysis and deep segmentation to possible micro levels. With wider scope and stratified research methodology, our syndicated reports thrive to provide clients to serve their overall research requirement.ContactTransparency Market Research90 State Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-618-1030USA Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite: Structural Core Materials Market Analysis, Segments, Growth and Value Chain 2016-2024 http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/structural-core-materials-market.html http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/sample/sample.php?flag=B&rep_id=17471 http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/ Structural Core Materials Market: OverviewStructural core materials are incorporated into composite materials, which are used on a large scale in construction, automotive, civil infrastructure, aircraft, military, and corrosion-resistant equipment industries. A composite material is made by combining two or more materials with different properties. Composites are classified into three types: particle-reinforced composites, fiber-reinforced composites, and structural composites. Structural composites are further classified into two types: laminates and sandwich panels. A sandwich panel is a kind of layered composite with faces and core.Browse Market Research Report:A core is a layer of less dense yet strong material filled between two faces in a structural composite. The function of the core is to maintain the thin skins or faces in their relative positions by preventing them from folding inward or outward. Stiffness of the structural composite depends on thickness of the core used. Materials that can be incorporated into the structural core are paper, carbon, and aluminum. The following types of structural core are available in the market: honeycomb, foam, and balsa. Honeycomb is the highly common type, followed by foam. Honeycomb is available in forms such as thermoplastic honeycomb, nomex honeycomb, and aluminum honeycomb. Types of foams include PVC foam, polystyrene foam, polyurethane foam, and polymethyl metacrylamide foam.Structural Core Materials: Market TrendsQualities preferred in an ideal structural core material include lightness in weight, stiffness, thermal insulation/transfer, dampening of noise or vibration, and strength. The type of structural core material is determined on the basis of nature of application. It is then incorporated into the structural composite.Structural core materials are used in the automobile industry for the manufacture of air bags in cars. They are also employed in safety gears such as bulletproof jackets. Furthermore, structural core materials are used in communication antennae, and electronic circuit boards. Components of missiles, rockets, and aircraft also contain structural core materials.Various industries have become aware of benefits of structural core materials over solid laminates. Demand for structural core materials is expected to increase at a steady pace in the near future.Get accurate market forecast and analysis on the Structural Core Materials market. Request a sample to stay abreast on the key trends impacting this market @Structural Core Materials Market: Region-wise OutlookA large number of aerospace companies in North America employ structural core materials. Some of the leading countries in Asia Pacific manufacture automobiles and automobile spare parts. Therefore, the market for structural core materials in the region is estimated to expand at a consistent pace during the forecast period. The marine industry in China well-established. This is projected to be a major contributor to the growth of the market for structural core materials in Asia Pacific. Europe is likely to witness steady growth of the structural core materials market in the near future, due to the extensive presence of major end-user industries such as automotive, aerospace, and defense equipment in the region. Middle East & Africa has wide presence of automotive and electronics industries. This is expected to boost the structural core materials market in the region. The market in Latin America is anticipated to expand at a sluggish pace vis-a-vis that in other regions.Structural Core Materials Market: Key Playerskey players operating in the structural core materials market are 3A Composites, Airex AG, Composites One, DIAB Group, Euro-Composites, Gurit, Hexcel Corporation, Matrix Composite Materials Company Ltd., and Saertex GmbH & Co. KG.About UsTransparency Market Research (TMR) is a global market intelligence company providing business information reports and services. The companys exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trend analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. TMRs experienced team of analysts, researchers, and consultants use proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather and analyze information.TMRs data repository is continuously updated and revised by a team of research experts so that it always reflects the latest trends and information. With extensive research and analysis capabilities, Transparency Market Research employs rigorous primary and secondary research techniques to develop distinctive data sets and research material for business reports.Contact UsTransparency Market Research90 State Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-618-1030USA - Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite: Global Ball Valves Market is Estimated to Grow by ~3.2% of CAGR Forecast to 2023 https://www.marketresearchfuture.com/sample_request/3349 https://www.marketresearchfuture.com/reports/ball-valves-market-3349 https://www.marketresearchfuture.com/check-discount/3349 www.marketresearchfuture.com Global Ball Valves Market, By Type (Floating, Rising Stem, Trunnion Mounted), by Size (Up to 1, 16, 6 to 25, 25 to 50), By Material (Alloy, Cryogenic, Stainless Steel, Cast Iron,), by End Users - Global Forecast to 2023 - Forecast 2023The study reveals that is trending in North America region. The increasing demand of energy from various sectors is expected to open up new growth opportunities in the US is one the key factors driving this market growth. Moreover, the high demand of Ball Valves devices such as fiber-optic sensors in the oil and gas industry is projected to gain growth of this market.The study indicates that increasing urbanization has led to ball valve market to grow rapidly. The oil & gas is expected to favor the large market growth. The offshore oil and gas projects across the globe is boosting the demand from manufacturing & process industry.The Ball Valves market is growing rapidly over 3.2% of CAGR and is expected to reach at USD ~$11.56 billion by the end of forecast period.Taste the market data and market information presented through more than 30 market data tables and figures spread over 100 numbers of pages of the project report. Avail the in-depth table of content TOC & market synopsis on The Ball Valves Market Research Report -Forecast to 2023.Get a sample report atThe Ball Valves Market has been segmented on the basis of type, material types, size, end users and region. Looking through the end-user segment it has been observed that and the water infrastructures are expending due to ongoing efforts of ball valve, improved safety and reduced operating costs, are the major factors expected to favor the growth of ball valve market. The increasing demand of petrochemical products like paints, polymers and plastics with rising manufacturing as well as process industries is expected to flourish the demand of ball valves in coming years.The prominent players in the Ball Valves market are Alfa Laval AB (Sweden) Swagelok Company (US) MRC Global Inc. (US) Emerson Electric Company (US) Weir Group (UK) Kitz Corporation (Japan) Velan Inc. (Canada) Curtiss-Wright Corporation (US) Cameron-Schlumberger Ltd.(U.S) Flowserve Corporation (US) Metso Oyj (Finland) Flomatic Corporation (US) Dwyer Instruments Inc. (US)Browse complete report atOn geographic basis, Ball Valves market is studied in different regions as North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific and Rest of world. It has been observed that North America region is leading with the highest growth rate in the Ball Valves market as the increasing pipeline installations and need for monitoring & controlling from centralized location has boosted the growth & demand of ball valves in this region. Europe is expected to show slower growth rate compared to other regions in the Ball Valves market. The developing economies in Asia-pacific regions like China, Japan, India and others are showing relatively good growth in the Ball Valves market.Study Objectives of the Ball Valves Market: To provide detailed analysis of the market structure along with forecast of the various segments and sub-segments of the Ball Valves market. To provide insights about factors affecting the market growth. To analyze the Ball Valves market based porters five force analysis etc. To provide historical and forecast revenue of the market segments and sub-segments with respect to four main geographies and their countries- North America, Europe, Asia Pacific (APAC), and Rest of the World (ROW). To provide country level analysis of the market with respect to the current market size and future prospective. To provide country level analysis of the market for segment on the basis of type, port types, material types, size, end users and region. To provide strategic profiling of key players in the market, comprehensively analyzing their core competencies, and drawing a competitive landscape for the market. To track and analyze competitive developments such as joint ventures, strategic alliances, mergers and acquisitions, new product developments, and research and developments in the Ball ValvesRequest for Discount atIntended Audience Ball Valves device manufacturers Industrial valves manufacturers Manufacturers of components Professional services/solutions providers End users from the listed industries Process industry standard organizations Research institutes and organizations Associations of valve manufacturers Safety equipment manufacturers Distributers InvestorsThe regional analysis of Ball Valves market is being studied for region such as Asia pacific, North Americas, Europe and Rest of the World. North America is dominating the ball valve market due to the implementation of stringent government policies regarding wastewater treatment in these regions. Asia-Pacific region is contributing high with the growing demand of existing power plants as per the established standards is also contributing to boost market growth. Whereas, the Europe is showing a significant growth during the forecasted period.At Market Research Future (MRFR), we enable our customers to unravel the complexity of various industries through our Cooked Research Report (CRR), Half-Cooked Research Reports (HCRR), Raw Research Reports (3R), Continuous-Feed Research (CFR), and Market Research & Consulting Services.MRFR team have supreme objective to provide the optimum quality market research and intelligence services to our clients. Our market research studies by products, services, technologies, applications, end users, and market players for global, regional, and country level market segments, enable our clients to see more, know more, and do more, which help to answer all their most important questions.In order to stay updated with technology and work process of the industry, MRFR often plans & conducts meet with the industry experts and industrial visits for its research analyst members.Akash AnandP: +1 646 845 9312W: Monoethylene Glycol Market SWOT Analysis Of Top Key Player Forecasts To 2023 http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/monoethylene-glycol-market.html http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/sample/sample.php?flag=S&rep_id=2251 http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com Global Monoethylene Glycol (MEG) Market: SnapshotOver the recent past, the demand for polyester has spiked owing to a growing demand for apparel in the developing economies of Asia Pacific and Latin America. This domestic demand for polyester fiber is a result of the fast improving economies in the regions and the increasing disposable income among its middle class citizens. This is a direct driver for the growth in production of monoethylene glycol (MEG).With a large number of these economies lying in the tropical regions, the fact that polyester can remain intact in coarse and diverse weather conditions is a big plus point towards its consumption. The manufacture of polyester fibers in Asia Pacific has grown to such an extent that the textile makers in Europe and North America are finding it easier to stick to cheap imports over local manufacturing.Another material that uses monoethylene glycol as a raw material and is in great demand is polyethylene terephthalate, or PET. The use of PET for beverage packaging and in pharmaceutical packaging has grown drastically recently, due to the massive demand for them in developing economies.However, the volatile pricing of the raw materials required to produce monoethylene glycol is deterring many companies from entering or profiting from MEG production. This is because the raw materials are all currently derived from crude oil, one of the most sought-after resource in the world today and also a very volatile product.All in all, the global market for monoethylene glycol is expected to expand at a CAGR of 6.1% from 2015 to 2023, in terms of revenue. This revenue is expected to reach US$26.93 bn by the end of 2016 and US$40.84 bn by 2023.View Report @Asia Pacific Continues Showing Massive Demand for Monoethylene GlycolAsia Pacific has by far the leading demand for monoethylene glycol among all key regions. By the end of 2023, Asia Pacific is expected to garner 69% of the globally produced volume of monoethylene glycol. China, India, and Taiwan are attributed as the leading consumers of monoethylene glycol, owing to their extremely high demand for polyester fiber and polyethylene terephthalate.The demand for monoethylene glycol is also increasing at a significant rate in Latin America and MEA due to increasing consumption of polyester and PET. Meanwhile, the remand for monoethylene glycol in North America and Europe looks to be in a state of decline over slow economic growth and concerns over sustainability of the material.Get accurate market forecast and analysis on the Monoethylene Glycol Market Request a sample to stay abreast on the key trends impacting this market.Extensive Use of Monoethylene Glycol in Production of PolyestersA staggering volume of monoethylene glycol goes into the manufacture of polyesters across the world. By the end of 2023, 55.1% of the global monoethylene glycol volume will go into the manufacture of polyester fibers, followed by PET and antifreeze. Owing to its many physical properties and chemical stability, polyester is one of the more commonly found synthetic fibers in textiles in the world today. Most of it is attributed to the high demand from the Asia Pacific textile industry. However, there has been a reduction in its demand since 2014, mostly caused by heavy price cuts and oversupply of polyester fibers.The popularity of PET has been growing in developing economies as a cheaper and lighter replacement for glass in the manufacture of bottles and packaging. The application scope of PET is growing at a very fast rate across emerging economies, significantly adding to the demand for monoethylene glycol.The top producers of monoethylene glycol from a global standpoint include SABIC, The Dow Chemical Company, Royal Dutch Shell Plc., Reliance Industries Limited, Nan Ya Plastics (Huizhou), and Zhenhai Refining & Chemicals.About UsTransparency Market Research (TMR) is a market intelligence company, providing global business information reports and services. Our exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trends analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. TMRs experienced team of analysts, researchers, and consultants, use proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather, and analyze information. Our business offerings represent the latest and the most reliable information indispensable for businesses to sustain a competitive edge.Each TMR syndicated research report covers a different sector such as pharmaceuticals, chemicals, energy, food & beverages, semiconductors, med-devices, consumer goods and technology. These reports provide in-depth analysis and deep segmentation to possible micro levels. With wider scope and stratified research methodology, TMRs syndicated reports strive to provide clients to serve their overall research requirement.US Office Contact90 State Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-618-1030USA Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite: Offshore Wind Energy Market SWOT Analysis Of Top Key Player Forecasts To 2025 http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/asia-pacific-offshore-wind-energy-market.html http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/sample/sample.php?flag=S&rep_id=23876 http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com Asia Pacific Offshore Wind Energy Market: SnapshotOffshore wind power or offshore wind energy, a technology which uses wind farms installed on offshore sites to harvest wind energy to produce electricity, is one of the most promising green energy technology segments in the Asia Pacific region presently. The presence of a large number of high-potential offshore sites in the region, encouraging governments and regulations, and rising foreign investment are all helping drive the market at a significant pace. While the market is a relatively un-untouched aspect of wind energy generation in Asia Pacific, the region, often referred to as the next power and economy hub, is expected to emerge as one of the key investment locations for offshore wind energy in the near future.Transparency Market Research estimates that the Asia Pacific offshore wind power market will exhibit an exponential 22.4% CAGR from 2017 to 2025, rising from a valuation of US$8,960.8 mn in 2017 to US$60,201.5 mn by 2025.View Report @Market Witnesses Rising Adoption of High Risk Pile Cap and Ground Mounted FoundationsIn terms of type of foundation, the Asia Pacific market for offshore wind energy is segmented in the report into monopole, floating, jacket, tripod, and others. Of these, the others segment, including foundation types such as high risk pile cap (HRPC) and ground mounted foundations, accounted for a massive 44.7% of the overall market in 2016. The segment is expected to continue its strong growth throughout the forecast period as well.Standing second in terms of share in the Asia Pacific offshore wind energy market, the jacket segment also accounted for a significant share in the market in 2016, while the floating type and tripod segments had limited presence. Tripod and floating segments accounted for minor share of the market as these type of foundations have limited presence due to financial and environmental factors. Market share of the jacket segment is expected to witness a notable drop during the forecast period while the floating type and tripod segments will continue to have minor share in the overall market.The monopile segment is also estimated to witness a decline in its market share during the forecast period. Monopile foundations are not suited for offshore wind installations in China and other countries like South Korea and Japan have few offshore wind projects lined up with monopile foundations. As a result, their share in the Asia Pacific offshore wind energy market is not projected to witness any rise over the reports forecast period.Get accurate market forecast and analysis on the Offshore Wind Energy Market Request a sample to stay abreast on the key trends impacting this market.China to Remain Leading Regional MarketCurrently in Asia Pacific, China is the only country that has set aside separate targets in its green energy plans of the next few years for offshore wind energy projects. Japan, South Korea and India are expected to emerge as high-potential markets offshore wind energy generation. However, apart from China, other countries in Asia Pacific are yet to commission and/or start constructing utility-scale offshore wind energy projects. China is likely to drive the growth in capacity additions throughout the forecast period. Despite recently reducing its capacity addition targets, China has revised the target of approximately 10GW generation by 2020. China would thus require the addition of at least 1 GW of new offshore wind energy generation capacity annually, post 2016.Value chain, which includes turbine costs, foundation costs, cabling costs, and installation expenditures, may witness reduction in overall CAPEX during the forecast period.Overall, the maximum cost reductions are expected to be observed in China and India the governments in these countries have devised nodal agencies to monitor and encourage more of offshore wind turbine installations along with grid constructions to the nearest shores. The extent to which cost reductions and supply chain concentration are achieved within the forecast period would be a critical determinant of the expected annual capacity additions in the offshore wind energy sector.Some of the leading players operating in the Asia Pacific offshore wind energy market are Sinowel Wind Group Co., Ltd., China Ming Yang Wind Power Group Ltd., Siemens Wind Power, Gamesa Corporacion Technologica S.A., Nordex S.E, Vestas Wind Systems A/S, Dong Energy A/S, Suzlon Group, GE Wind Energy, and Goldwind Science Technology Co., Ltd.About UsTransparency Market Research (TMR) is a market intelligence company, providing global business information reports and services. Our exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trends analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. TMRs experienced team of analysts, researchers, and consultants, use proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather, and analyze information. Our business offerings represent the latest and the most reliable information indispensable for businesses to sustain a competitive edge.Each TMR syndicated research report covers a different sector such as pharmaceuticals, chemicals, energy, food & beverages, semiconductors, med-devices, consumer goods and technology. These reports provide in-depth analysis and deep segmentation to possible micro levels. With wider scope and stratified research methodology, TMRs syndicated reports strive to provide clients to serve their overall research requirement.US Office Contact90 State Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-618-1030USA Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite: Palm Kernel Oil and Coconut Oil Based Natural Fatty Acids Market SWOT Analysis Of Top Key Player Forecasts To 2023 http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/palm-kernel-oil-coconut-oil-based-natural-fatty-acids-market.html http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/sample/sample.php?flag=S&rep_id=8617 http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com Global Palm Kernel Oil and Coconut Oil Based Natural Fatty Acids Market: OverviewNatural fatty acids obtained from coconut oil and palm kernel oil are saturated, medium-chain oleochemicals which include myristic acid, capric acid, lauric acid, and caprylic acid. Non-toxic and possessing a long shelf life, these substances are expected to witness high demand across numerous applications on a global scale. The easy availability of palm kernel and coconut oil across several regions of the world has made the product a cost-efficient solution.Moreover, natural fatty acids obtained from coconut oil and palm kernel oil are not only biodegradable but also renewable. Consequently, the global market for natural fatty acids is likely to soar. However, presence of pricing issues and fluctuations in the prices of raw materials can restrict market growth. Some of the most widely used types of fatty acids are distilled fatty acids, fractionated fatty acids, stearic acids, and polyunsaturated acids.According to Transparency Market Research (TMR), the global market for natural fatty acids was valued at US$5.32 bn in 2014. Steadily advancing at a CAGR of 4.6%, the global natural fatty acids market is expected to reach US$7.97 bn by the end of 2023.View Report @Impelled by Growing Demand for Personal Care Products, Asia Pacific to Command Largest ShareAsia Pacific held the largest share in the global market for natural fatty acids in 2014. It is expected to register the fastest growth over the forthcoming period. The increasing purchasing power of people, increasing awareness pertaining to personal care and well-being, and rising inclination towards natural ingredients across several industries have catapulted the region to the forefront of the global market. The easy availability of coconut and palm kernel oil across Southeast Asia is a key growth driver of the market. China, Malaysia, and India are likely to emerge as key contributors.While North America displays moderate growth, Europe ranked second in the global market for natural fatty acids in terms of revenue in 2014. The countries in the Middle East and Africa are slated to exhibit attractive opportunities thanks to the availability of raw materials, vast consumer pool, and widespread consumption of natural fatty acids. Nigeria and Turkey might surface as key contributors of the market in the Middle East and Africa.Get accurate market forecast and analysis on the Palm Kernel Oil and Coconut Oil Based Natural Fatty Acids Market Request a sample to stay abreast on the key trends impacting this market.By End user, Detergents Expected to Gain a Place in the SunThe global market for natural fatty acids can be segmented into personal care, rubber, detergents, plastics, oil and gas, pharmaceutical, and textile. In 2014, detergents emerged as the dominant end-use industry segment of the global market for natural fatty acids. The notable growth of this segment can be attributed to the extensive use of natural fatty acids in households, fabric care, and institutional and industrial detergents as a surfactant.The personal care industry worldwide is another segment bearing vast potential for growth. It is likely to emerge as the fastest growing end-use segment in the forthcoming years. Numerous hair care and skin care product manufacturers are switching to nature-based solutions. As a result, to ensure superior biosafety and biocompatibility, a number of beauty product brands are adopting natural fatty acids.Natural fatty acids are also being increasingly used in the plastics industry as a lubricant and plasticizer. These acids also play a key role in the process of rubber vulcanization. Also, the pharmaceutical industry is acknowledging the potential of natural fatty acids as antimicrobial agents. Spurred by these factors the demand for palm kernel oil and coconut oil-based natural fatty acids will continue rising through the forecast period.Kuala Lumpur Kepong Berhad, Wilmar International Ltd, Emery Oleochemicals, OLEON NV, and Kao Corporation are some of the leading companies operating in the global market for natural fatty acids market.About UsTransparency Market Research (TMR) is a market intelligence company, providing global business information reports and services. Our exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trends analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. TMRs experienced team of analysts, researchers, and consultants, use proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather, and analyze information. Our business offerings represent the latest and the most reliable information indispensable for businesses to sustain a competitive edge.Each TMR syndicated research report covers a different sector such as pharmaceuticals, chemicals, energy, food & beverages, semiconductors, med-devices, consumer goods and technology. These reports provide in-depth analysis and deep segmentation to possible micro levels. With wider scope and stratified research methodology, TMRs syndicated reports strive to provide clients to serve their overall research requirement.US Office Contact90 State Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-618-1030USA Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite: Green & Bio-based Solvents Market SWOT Analysis Of Top Key Player Forecasts To 2023 http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/green-biobased-solvents-market.html http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/sample/sample.php?flag=S&rep_id=10136 http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com Global Green and Bio-based Solvents Market: SnapshotSolvents are of two types water-based and hydrocarbon-based. The latter emits volatile organic compounds during manufacture, handling, and use. As a result they have a negative impact on the environment. This drawback is overcome in green and bio-based solvents, formulated from bio-based resources such as sugars, corn, beet root, and others.Green and bio-based solvents are used in printing inks, paints and coatings, commercial and domestic cleaning, adhesives and sealants, cosmetics, and pharmaceutical. Growing demand for bio-based materials in different downstream industries of these applications, paints and coatings, and printing inks will most likely drive demand for green and bio-based solvents in the near future.Another factor stoking growth in the global market for bio-based solvents is the growing research on different possible raw materials for bio-based materials. On the flip side, steep price of raw materials, availability of cheaper petroleum-based substitutes, and complicated manufacturing process is predicted to deter the market in the next couple of years. However, increasing demand for green and bio-based solvents in the cosmetics, adhesives and sealants, and pharmaceutical segments will open up new frontiers of growth in the market and thus help overcome the current obstacles.A report by Transparency Market Research predicts the global market for green and bio-based solvents to clock a steady 7.2% from 2015 to 2023 to become worth US$8.05 bn by 2023 from US$4.32 bn in 2014.View Report @Wide Ranging Applications Makes Bio-based Ethanol Market LeaderThe different types of green and bio-based solvents purveyed in the market are bio-based methanol, bio-based ethanol, bio-based propanol, bio-based butanol, and bio-based propylene glycol, ethyl lactate, D-limonene, and methyl soyate, among others such as hydrogen peroxide, bio-based butanediol, etc. Of these, bio-based ethanol has a leading share in the market and is trailed by ethyl lactate and methyl soyate. Going forward too, bio-based ethanol is predicted to retain its dominant position because of its commercialized production and wide ranging applications. In terms of growth rate, however, methyl soyate is expected to outpace all others in the foreseeable future on account of its growing use as solvents in printing inks, paints and coatings, and cleaning applications.D-limonene too is predicted to contribute significantly to the green and bio-based solvents market on account of its use as an industrial and domestic cleaning solvent. Ethyl lactate is also likely to offer an attractive opportunity for growth in the near future owing to their rising use as a substitute for petroleum based solvents.Application-wise, paints and coatings is the dominant segment in the global market for green and bio-based solvents. In 2014, it held 40% share in terms of demand in the market, finds the report by Transparency Market Research. In the upcoming years, the commercial and domestic cleaning segment is also predicted to contribute to demand substantially. Adhesives and sealants will likely outshine all other segments to clock maximum growth.Get accurate market forecast and analysis on the Green & Bio-based Solvents Market Request a sample to stay abreast on the key trends impacting this market.Abundant Availability of Raw Materials Propels North America MarketFrom a geographical standpoint, North America leads the global green and bio-based solvents market vis-a-vis volume. Abundant raw materials and growing demand for eco-efficient bio-based products have resulted in propelling the regions market. In terms of growth rate, however, Asia Pacific is predicted to be the winner in the years to come owing to increasing consumption of solvents in pharmaceutical, paints and coatings, printing inks, cosmetics, and agrochemical applications in nations of India, China, Malaysia, and Thailand.About UsTransparency Market Research (TMR) is a market intelligence company, providing global business information reports and services. Our exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trends analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. TMRs experienced team of analysts, researchers, and consultants, use proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather, and analyze information. Our business offerings represent the latest and the most reliable information indispensable for businesses to sustain a competitive edge.Each TMR syndicated research report covers a different sector such as pharmaceuticals, chemicals, energy, food & beverages, semiconductors, med-devices, consumer goods and technology. These reports provide in-depth analysis and deep segmentation to possible micro levels. With wider scope and stratified research methodology, TMRs syndicated reports strive to provide clients to serve their overall research requirement.US Office Contact90 State Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-618-1030USA Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite: Global IP Cameras Market Growth and Forecast 2017 ReportsWeb http://www.reportsweb.com/global-ip-cameras-market-forecast-to-2022 http://www.reportsweb.com/inquiry&RW0001863732/sample http://www.reportsweb.com/inquiry&RW0001863732/discount http://www.reportsweb.com/buy&RW0001863732/buy/3480 ReportsWeb.com has announced the addition of the Global IP Cameras Market by Manufacturers, Regions, Type and Application, Forecast to 2022 This report categorizes the market based on manufacturers, regions, type and application.Internet protocol camera, or IP Cameras, is a type of digital video camera commonly employed for surveillance, and which, unlike analog closed circuit television (CCTV) cameras, can send and receive data via a computer network and the Internet. Although most cameras that do this are webcams, the term "IP Cameras" or "netcam" is usually applied only to those used for surveillance. The first centralized IP Cameras was Axis Neteye 200, released in 1996 by Axis Communications.Scope of the Report:This report focuses on the IP Cameras in Global market, especially in North America, Europe and Asia-Pacific, South America, Middle East and Africa. This report categorizes the market based on manufacturers, regions, type and application.Complete report is available atMarket Segment by Manufacturers, this report coversHikvisionAxis CommunicationsPanasonicDahuaBosch Security SystemsSonySamsungAvigilonPelco by Schneider ElectricHoneywellMobotixGeoVisionBelkinNetGeatVivotekD-LinkArecont VisionWanscamToshibaGOSCAMJuanvisionApexisGet a SAMPLE Request atMarket Segment by Regions, regional analysis coversNorth America (USA, Canada and Mexico)Europe (Germany, France, UK, Russia and Italy)Asia-Pacific (China, Japan, Korea, India and Southeast Asia)South America (Brazil, Argentina, Columbia etc.)Middle East and Africa (Saudi Arabia, UAE, Egypt, Nigeria and South Africa)Market Segment by Type, coversCentralized IP CamerasDecentralized IP CamerasMarket Segment by Applications, can be divided intoResidential UseCommercial UseManufacturing/Factory UsePublic & Government InfrastructureTable of ContentChapter 1, to describe IP Cameras Introduction, product scope, market overview, market opportunities, market risk, market driving force;Chapter 2, to analyze the top manufacturers of IP Cameras, with sales, revenue, and price of IP Cameras, in 2016 and 2017;Chapter 3, to display the competitive situation among the top manufacturers, with sales, revenue and market share in 2016 and 2017;Chapter 4, to show the global market by regions, with sales, revenue and market share of IP Cameras, for each region, from 2012 to 2017;Get Discount atChapter 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9, to analyze the key regions, with sales, revenue and market share by key countries in these regions;Chapter 10 and 11, to show the market by type and application, with sales market share and growth rate by type, application, from 2012 to 2017;Chapter 12, IP Cameras market forecast, by regions, type and application, with sales and revenue, from 2017 to 2022;Chapter 13, 14 and 15, to describe IP Cameras sales channel, distributors, traders, dealers, Research Findings and Conclusion, appendix and data sourcePurchase this report atContact Us:Call: +1-646-491-9876Email: sales@reportsweb.comReportsWeb.com is a one stop shop of market research reports and solutions to various companies across the globe. We help our clients in their decision support system by helping them choose most relevant and cost effective research reports and solutions from various publishers. We provide best in class customer service and our customer support team is always available to help you on your research queries.Pune:505, 6th floor, Amanora Township,Amanora Chambers, East Block,Kharadi Road, Hadapsar, Pune-411028 Once a massive electronics manufacturing campus in southeastern Wisconsin is fully staffed and running, its payroll could hit $800 million annually, a top state official said Thursday. Department of Administration Secretary Scott Neitzel cited that figure during an Assembly hearing Thursday on Gov. Scott Walkers bill to give Taiwanese tech giant Foxconn a $3 billion incentive package and roll back environmental regulations for the plant. Foxconn wants to build a 15-building, 20-million-square-foot manufacturing campus in southeastern Wisconsin. It would employ 3,000 people initially and up to 13,000 eventually building liquid-crystal display, or LCD, panels for electronic devices. The hearing Thursday, which went into the evening, was the first time lawmakers heard official testimony about the project, and the first time the public was invited to share thoughts. A contract must be in place by the end of September, according to an agreement between Walker and Foxconn chairman Terry Gou. The Foxconn payroll when fully up to speed will be up to $800 million a year, Neitzel said. We cannot let this opportunity pass us by. Testifying in support of the bill before the Assembly Committee on Jobs and the Economy were Neitzel, Wisconsin Economic Development Corp.CEO Mark Hogan and Walkers budget director, Waylon Hurlburt, among many others. Meanwhile, several Democrats said more information was needed about the impact of the project on the states finances and environment. Hogan said Thursday the starting salary for the majority of Foxconn employees in Wisconsin would be $20 an hour, or $41,600 annually based on a 40-hour workweek. Officials say the average salary would be about $53,000. Foxconn chose Wisconsin over a number of other states offering the company a larger incentive package, Walker said last week, and wants the new plant to be operational by 2020. To see how everyone in this state pulled together was simply fantastic and I think that made a great impression on them, Neitzel said about why Wisconsin was chosen by the company. Foxconn officials were not at the hearing to testify or answer questions from lawmakers on the committee, but committee chairman Rep. Adam Neylon, R-Pewaukee, read a prepared statement from Gou. Gou said the plant would be the largest and most advanced LCD display factory in the world, and that it would be the first U.S. plant that could manufacture whole televisions at one plant. Rep. Amanda Stuck, D-Appleton, took issue with Foxconn officials absence at the hearing. If they expect taxpayers to shell out $3 billion, why dont they have anybody here? she asked. Democratic lawmakers on the committee also grilled Neitzel and Hogan about whether enough protections were in place if the deal fell through, or if Foxconn did not end up creating the number of jobs the company is promising. Hogan said the contracts terms cannot change much. The thrust of what we want to achieve here has to stay intact, he said. Rep. Tod Ohnstad, D-Kenosha, who represents an area that could include potential workers for the plant, said hes looking forward to jobs coming to the area, but needs more information before voting. Foxconn is choosing between two southeastern sites: one in Kenosha County and one in Racine County. My enthusiasm for creating new jobs and strengthening the economy is tempered by many unanswered questions, Ohnstad said. The company also is looking at sites in the Dane County area for a separate facility. Rep. David Crowley, D-Milwaukee, said a nonpartisan analysis of the fiscal impact of the bill from the Legislative Fiscal Bureau is needed. Its kind of hard to be for or against this when you dont have more information related to this deal, Crowley said. Walker introduced the bill last week and Assembly Republicans want to have a floor vote on the bill by mid-August. But Senate Republicans want lawmakers to pass a 2017-19 state budget, now more than a month overdue, first. Meanwhile, the director of a free-market advocacy group, Americans for Prosperity-Wisconsin, said the group could not get behind the $3 billion in refundable income tax credits included in the incentive package. As free-market activists who staunchly oppose government tax incentives, we cannot support the expensive refundable tax credits in this package, which are not available to every other business in our state, AFP director Eric Bott said in a statement. Hurlburt said the next state budget would be minimally affected by the Foxconn project, though Hogan said if the company hires staff quickly, tax credits would be available before the start of the next state spending plan. And Neitzel said the number of suppliers needed to support the Foxconn project would help small businesses and create more of them to fill the Foxconn supply chain. Tim Sheehy, president of the Metropolitan Milwaukee Association of Commerce, said he generally doesnt like incentive packages but that the one being considered by lawmakers would deliver a broad return for the state particularly in the effect of billions of dollars in construction, new jobs with suppliers for Foxconn and in income taxes paid in the future. University of Wisconsin System President Ray Cross also told lawmakers he believes the Foxconn project would be transformative for the state and would catapult the state university system into a position of global prominence. He said he would not be supportive of his budget being cut in the future to accommodate Foxconn, but believed any stress the budget experiences because of adding staff, research, partnerships or other work the states universities would provide Foxconn would result in a positive effect on the states economy. Obviously it puts stress on any organization but it also over time will expand other opportunities and those opportunities will be beneficial in many, many ways including economically, Cross said. Cross said he wanted lawmakers to consider adding money for the UW System in the bill or in the 2017-19 state budget to accommodate the hiring of new faculty the system anticipates it would need to produce engineers for Foxconn. Rabies Treatment Market Research Report | Latest Trends and Forecast Analysis up to 2023 http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/rabies-treatment-market.html http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/sample/sample.php?flag=B&rep_id=9022 http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com Global Rabies Treatment Market: SnapshotThe global rabies treatment market is anticipated to gain momentum in growth with three key factors driving the demand in the industry. The application of novel culture media to produce contamination-free vaccines and stringent regulatory examinations conducted by governments could be first on the list of important market drivers. There is a need to eliminate the risk of vaccine contamination due to the involvement of human components and bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) agents in cultural formulations. In this regard, manufacturers are focusing on the development of novel media for vaccine production that are free from human and animal components.The emerging regions of the world are expected to be the major sources of rabies on account of the lack of active rabies vaccination programs and rising population of stray dogs. Exposure to rabid dogs is studied to cause a 99.0% of rabies-related deaths and 90.0% of all rabies cases, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). As a result, the need for anti-rabies treatment regimens such as rabies immunoglobulin (RIG) and cell culture vaccine (CCV) for post-exposure prophylaxis is considerably high. This could likely increase the demand in the global rabies treatment market.However, the expensive cost of CCV for intramuscular administration is foretold to stunt its adoption and that of similar vaccines. Nonetheless, in order to withstand this issue, WHO recommends the intradermal administration of CCV, especially in regions where intramuscular biological is unaffordable and unavailable and rabies is extremely prevalent.Rabies is a zoonotic viral disease caused due to animal bits. The disease is known to affect domestic as well as wild animals such as bats, skunks, foxes, ferrets, raccoons, cats, or dogs, and infects humans upon contact with saliva of infected animal. Rabies is known to have an incubation period of one to three months. Individuals suffering from rabies show initial symptoms of fever and pain or tingling or burning sensation also called as paraesthesia at the wound site. As the disease progresses through the central nervous system (CNS), patients exhibit hyperactivity, excited behavior, hydrophobia. Rabies can also be paralytic and accounts for approximately 3% of all rabies cases globally according to World Health Organization (WHO). This form is usually misdiagnosed and has slower progression. Muscles near the wound site begin to paralyze; untreated infections lead to coma and cause death.View Report-WHO statistics also show that although rabies is prevalent in all continents except Antarctica, more than 95% of the mortalities occur in African and Asian countries. Rabies infections are common in areas where human-animal interaction is more and no proper medical treatment facility is available for treatment. In the U.S. only 55 cases have been identified since 1955 according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Rapid diagnostic tests are available for diagnosis of rabies. These tests are usually Enzyme Linked Immunosorbent Assay (ELISA) or fluorescent assay technology. Synbiotics Corporation, O.K. SERVIS BioPro, s.r.o., Bio-Rad Laboratories, Inc. and Alpha Diagnostic International are some of the players manufacturing diagnostic kits for rabies.Novartis and Sanofi are key players in the global rabies treatment market. These companies manufacture prophylactic vaccines for humans. Sanofis Imovax Rabies is a human diploid cell vaccine; while Novartiss RabAvert is a Purified chick embryo cell vaccine. Vaccines are also available for preventing infections in animals. Merial a Sanofi company announced in July 2014 had it has launched PUREVAX Feline Rabies 3 YR vaccine. This is a non-adjuvanted rabies vaccine and provides 3 year immunity. The vaccine has been recommended for immunization of healthy cats 12 weeks and older.Cadila Pharmaceuticals Ltd, is also working on development of new generation rabies vaccine in India. Under-developed countries have initiated mass vaccination of stray dogs to control mortalities. According to an article published by World Health Organization (WHO) in 2014, Kenya launched a nationwide program for vaccination of dogs. Currently, more than 3,000 dogs in Makueni County have been vaccinated. In September 2014, The Philippines Department of Agriculture (DA), the Australian Government and the World Organization for Animal Health (OIE) launched rabies control project to reduce rabies cases due to dog in the Philippines. Earlier in 2013, massive dog vaccination program was launched, which vaccinated 92,869 dogs and attained 80% coverage according to a press release by World Organization for Animal Health. An article published in The Maravi Post, Malawi also plans to vaccinate 500,000 dogs and cats to curb the rabies crisis. Such preventive programs will help in reducing the prevalence of the disease in lower socio-economic classes. With developing economic conditions and consistent government initiatives, the prevalence of rabies is expected to shrink in the future. Higher prevalence in the Asia Pacific and Africa provides larger customer base for players in the rabies treatment market.Request a brochure of this report to know what opportunities will emerge in the rapidly evolving Rabies Treatment Market during 2016- 2023About UsTransparency Market Research (TMR) is a market intelligence company, providing global business information reports and services. Our exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trends analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. TMRs experienced team of analysts, researchers, and consultants, use proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather, and analyze information. Our business offerings represent the latest and the most reliable information indispensable for businesses to sustain a competitive edge.Each TMR syndicated research report covers a different sector such as pharmaceuticals, chemicals, energy, food & beverages, semiconductors, med-devices, consumer goods and technology. These reports provide in-depth analysis and deep segmentation to possible micro levels. With wider scope and stratified research methodology, TMRs syndicated reports strive to provide clients to serve their overall research requirement.US Office Contact90 State Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-618-1030USA Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite: Aged Care Market Research Report | Growth Prospects, Key Opportunities, Trends And Forecast 2023 http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/aged-care-market.html http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/sample/sample.php?flag=B&rep_id=9512 http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com Global Aged Care Market: SnapshotAs the percentage of geriatrics in the global population increments, projected to be 17 percent (1.6 billion) by the end of 2050 by the National Institute of Aging, the demand in the global aged care will simultaneously gain momentum. But escalating consumer base is not the only driver for the global aged care market, which will also gain from the advent of robots, who have the potential of reducing nursing care cost, although their commercialization is still keenly awaited. Some of the other important factors augmenting the demand in the global aged care market are: reducing pricing, growing demand for nurses with specific skillset, the participation of a large number of startups and smaller players in the localized regions, technological advancement in the devices such as wearables and customized medications. This increasing percentage of geriatric population is not bounded by any geographical region, which is another favorable factor for the vendors operating in the global aged care market.This report on the global aged care market provides comprehensive assessment of all factors on which the future of the market depends, and estimates its repercussions. It segments the market to understand the valuation of smaller aspects, takes stock of the potential of different regions, and profiles a number of current key players in order to represent the competitive landscape. This report has been developed by a group of professional market research analysts, aspiring to serve as a credible business document for the stockholders of the aged care market.Most of us want to remain independent and stay in control, but due to growing age our ability starts to decline. Hence, the concept of aged care is introduced, for an easy and better living with proper nursing facility for the higher age group. It is also known as elderly care or eldercare. It emphasizes on the personal and social needs of senior citizens as they need some assistance in their daily activities and medical support who desire to age gracefully. A special act has been taken by the Australian Government for senior citizens known as The Aged Care Act 1997 for people who are unable to live independently of their own. It promises to provides them better and longer living. It is an important distinction that the designing of house, services, activities and employee training of global elderly care falls under the unpaid market sector. The main agenda is to ensure that eldercare services are targeted towards people and areas with the utmost need, it facilitate access to aged care services by those who need them, irrespective of culture, race, language, gender and economic background. Focus is also given on people who are homeless or lives in remote areas and special care is also provided for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex (LGBTI) group. Programs are being adopted for the community based care for older people those are Commonwealth Home Support Program (CHSP) and Home Care Packages Program. These provides coordinated and personalized home care and also offers four classes of package to assist aged people with simple, low, high and very high care needs.View Report-Aged care market has lot to offer for the special service providers who are capable to run long-term as well as short-term aged care home, nutraceutical manufacturers, pharmaceutical manufacturers, senior care furniture manufacturers and real estate companies. Special products are being marketed for aged people such as smart seat hair protector, water proof seat protectors, and bed pads.It has already made an impact in developed countries like USA, Canada, and Australia. The aged care market is gaining its popularity in the developing countries like China, Singapore and India, as the major proportion of population is above 65 years. More elderly people will take up aged care services in the future rather depending on their families for care and support as younger people are moving to different cities leaving behind their extended family.Aged care market can be divided on the basis of services and geography. Services can be classified as home care services and residential care services.In home care services, they provide medical or nonmedical benefits which include personal care, skilled-nursing care, companion facilities, physical therapy and medical social services. It also includes in-home hospice care provider.In residential aged care, they provides well maintained accommodation for those whose care cannot be met in their own homes and thus needs a special care cell. There are again two categories in residential aged care facilities these are respite care and permanent care. Respite care offers short-term and temporary care in a residential aged care facility and supports both the older people and their care givers to live at home for as long as possible. They provide both high and low care facility. On the other hand permanent care offers tailor made individual needs in the residential aged care facility.Some of the key players can be divided on the basis of pharmaceutical manufacturer like Pfizer, Novartis, Merck & Co., GlaxoSmithKline, AstraZeneca and Novo Nordisk. On the basis of nutraceutical manufacturer like Alkemists Labs, Asiamerica Ingredients, Inc., Barrington Nutritionals, Nutralliance, Inc., and Proprietary Nutritionals Inc. Senior care furniture manufacturers can be classified as Phoenix Contract, Inc., Flexsteel and Kwalu.Request a brochure of this report to know what opportunities will emerge in the rapidly evolving Aged Care Market during 2016- 2023About UsTransparency Market Research (TMR) is a market intelligence company, providing global business information reports and services. Our exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trends analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. TMRs experienced team of analysts, researchers, and consultants, use proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather, and analyze information. Our business offerings represent the latest and the most reliable information indispensable for businesses to sustain a competitive edge.Each TMR syndicated research report covers a different sector such as pharmaceuticals, chemicals, energy, food & beverages, semiconductors, med-devices, consumer goods and technology. These reports provide in-depth analysis and deep segmentation to possible micro levels. With wider scope and stratified research methodology, TMRs syndicated reports strive to provide clients to serve their overall research requirement.US Office Contact90 State Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-618-1030USA Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite: IO Connector Production, Revenue, Price Trend, Emerging Growth Factors Market Analysis and Forecast 2021 Reportsweb http://www.reportsweb.com/inquiry&RW0001923777/sample http://www.reportsweb.com/global-io-connectors-industry-market-research-2017 http://www.reportsweb.com/inquiry&RW0001923777/discount http://www.reportsweb.com/buy&RW0001923777/buy/2600 ReportsWeb.com has announced the addition of the Global IO Connector Industry Market Research 2017 The report focuses on global major leading industry players with information such as company profiles, product picture and specification.In this report, we analyze the IO Connector industry from two aspects. One part is about its production and the other part is about its consumption. In terms of its production, we analyze the production, revenue, gross margin of its main manufacturers and the unit price that they offer in different regions from 2012 to 2017. In terms of its consumption, we analyze the consumption volume, consumption value, sale price, import and export in different regions from 2012 to 2017. We also make a prediction of its production and consumption in coming 2017-2022.Request a Sample atAt the same time, we classify different IO Connector based on their definitions. Upstream raw materials, equipment and downstream consumers analysis is also carried out. What is more, the IO Connector industry development trends and marketing channels are analyzed.Finally, the feasibility of new investment projects is assessed, and overall research conclusions are offered.Browse Complete ReportMajor Points of this report:1. To provide detailed analysis of the market structure along with forecast of the various segments and sub-segments of the global IO Connector market.2. To provide insights about factors affecting the market growth. To analyze the IO Connector market based on various factors- price analysis, supply chain analysis, porte five force analysis etc.3. To provide historical and forecast revenue of the market segments and sub-segments with respect to four main geographies and their countries- North America, Europe, Asia, and Rest of the World.4. To provide country level analysis of the market with respect to the current market size and future prospective.5. To provide country level analysis of the market for segment by application, product type and sub-segments.6. To provide strategic profiling of key players in the market, comprehensively analyzing their core competencies, and drawing a competitive landscape for the market.7. To track and analyze competitive developments such as joint ventures, strategic alliances, mergers and acquisitions, new product developments, and research and developments in the global IO Connector market.Get discount on report purchase atKey Point from Table of Contents:1 Industry Overview of IO Connector1.1 Brief Introduction of IO Connector2 Industry Chain Analysis of IO Connector3 Manufacturing Technology of IO Connector3.1 Development of IO Connector Manufacturing Technology4Major Manufacturers Analysis of IO Connector5 Global Production, Revenue and Price Analysis of IO Connector by Regions, Manufacturers, Types and Applications5.1 Global Production, Revenue of IO Connector by Regions 2012-20176 Global and Major Regions Capacity, Production, Revenue and Growth Rate of IO Connector 2012-20177 Consumption Volume, Consumption Value, Import, Export and Sale Price Analysis of IO CONNECTOR by Regions 20178 Gross and Gross Margin Analysis of IO Connector9 Marketing Trader or Distributor Analysis of IO Connector10 Global and Chinese Economic Impact on IO Connector Industry10.1 Global and Chinese Macroeconomic Environment Analysis11 Development Trend Analysis of IO Connector 12 Contact information of IO CONNECTOR13 New Project Investment Feasibility Analysis of IO Connector14 Conclusion of the Global IO Connector Industry 2017 Market Research ReportPurchase Complete Report atContact Information:Call: +1-646-491-9876Email: sales@reportsweb.comReportsWeb.com is a one stop shop of market research reports and solutions to various companies across the globe. We help our clients in their decision support system by helping them choose most relevant and cost effective research reports and solutions from various publishers. The market research industry has changed in last decade. As corporate focus has shifted to niche markets and emerging countries, a number of publishers have stepped in to fulfil these information needs. We have experienced and trained staff that helps you navigate different options and lets you choose best research solution at most effective cost.505, 6th floor, Amanora Township,Amanora Chambers, East Block,Kharadi Road, Hadapsar, Pune-411028 Bennett ends Quakers season in AA semifinals After allowing 460-yards and five touchdowns in their Sept. 24 matchup, Orchard Park head coach decided that if Bennett was... Quakers reach Sectional Finals vs Lancaster Orchard Park boys volleyball coach Rick Albano always wants his team to be playing their best volleyball at the end... Bertola leads harriers on record day at sectionals Orchard Park cross-country coach Steve Dillsworth went pretty far back into the history of Quakers cross-country, and he was unable... All-Bee Girls Soccer Majority of First Team are past honorees Many of the First Team selections on the 2022 All- Bee Girls Soccer Team are no strangers to the all-star... An Eastern Washington company will break ground this month on a $184 million plant that will convert straw into material used to make household items like paper towels and toilet paper. Dayton, Washington-based Columbia Pulp will build its long-awaited plant the first of its kind in North America on 449 acres along the banks of the Snake River in the wheat-producing lands of the Palouse. Once completed in fall 2018, the plant will churn out nearly 150,000 tons of pulp suitable for producing paper towels, toilet paper, plates and packaging containers. In other words: No trees necessary. John Begley, Columbia Pulp's chief executive, said the company will fill an important niche in one of the most productive wheat growing areas in the world. Alfalfa and wheat farmers have to dispose of straw, a byproduct of their crops, and many resort to burning it. But burning wheat and alfalfa byproducts such as straw is bad for the environment, according to the Washington Department of Ecology. In 2014, farmers burned more than 391,000 tons of wheat straw alone. Those burns, the bulk occurring in Eastern Washington, spewed an estimated 556,007 tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. The new plant, instead, will pay farmers to take the straw off their hands. There's more than enough straw from wheat and alfalfa in the surrounding area, Begley said, with farms producing more than 4.5 million tons per year. The company expects to buy 250,000 tons annually. "From an environmental standpoint, it's a really great story," Begley said in an interview. Begley spent 40 years in the paper and pulp industry, and he said he's spent the past four years working on the project. But the overall dream for the facility dates back nearly 20 years. The new plant will use a fraction of the energy of other plants, according to Begley, and will recirculate water on site instead of discharging it into the Snake River. The plant also doesn't use the sulfur-based cooking system of paper mills, which has a strong odor and causes other emissions. "It's not a new idea to make pulp out of straw, they've been doing it since the beginning of time," Begley said. But the new plant is revolutionary because it makes high-quality products and will be profitable, he said. The state of Washington is supporting the project by way of $133.6 million in bonds through the economic development department. The company will pay back the bonds over 15 years. Begley said another $55 million in support is coming from private equity, including Vancouver-based Columbia Ventures Corp., which will be the largest private investor. Ken Peterson, the corporation's chief executive, said he is chipping in $32.5 million to the project. He liked what he saw from Begley, an industry expert, and a pilot project that showed the plant's technology could be viable on a larger scale. "We are not a charitable organization," he said in an interview. "We're intending to make returns that is appropriate for a risky investment like this." Peterson was so intrigued by the project, which he first learned about in a Walla Walla newspaper article this January, that he reached out to Begley to ask how he could help. He said the plant will bring family wage jobs, roughly 90, to the region. "We absolutely plan, when this is up and going and demonstrated, to have more plants in our region," Peterson said. The site is remote, and is about an hour from Walla Walla and more than an hour from the Tri Cities. But Begley said he doesn't expect the commute to be an issue for potential employees. "People in Portland and Seattle commute an hour without batting an eye," he said. -- Andrew Theen atheen@oregonian.com 503-294-4026 @andrewtheen The Oregonian/OregonLive No. 1: Cutting-edge technology used A team lead by Shoukhrat Mitalipov, an Oregon Health & Science University biologist, worked with donated sperm from a patient at OHSU and recruited female egg donors to create one-cell embryos that carried one defective gene that causes hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, al heart condition that often kills young athletes. Using a state-of-the art gene editing technique, known as CRISPR-Cas9, they cut part of the mutant gene while inserting the sperm. That prompted the embryo to fix the gene using its good copy as a template. This has never been done before. Don't Edit Oregon Health & Science University No. 2: Technique could snuff diseases The research offers the hope of scientists one day scientists can correct defective genes that cause 10,000 diseases, like breast and ovarian cancer, cystic fibrosis, Huntington's disease and hypertrophic cardiomyopathy. All that's needed is one healthy gene that the embryo can use to replace the defective gene. Once the mutant is gone, future generations would not inherit those debilitating and fatal diseases, potentially wiping them out. Don't Edit The Associated Press No. 3: Future clouded by bans Though much more research is needed, the eventual goal for the researchers is an eventual clinical trial involving the birth of a child from a genetically corrected embryo. But no such trial would be possible under current U.S. regulations. The Food and Drug Administration, which oversees drug trials, is barred by Congress from considering such a trial. The researchers said they would be open to doing a trial in another country, if it comes down to that. Don't Edit Oregon Health & Science University No 4: More research is needed The work by Shoukhrat Mitalipov, the OHSU biologist, is just a starting point. Much more needs to be done to replicate his success and add to it. His success rate was 72 percent. He wants complete success. He also needs to be shown that the technique works for other diseases. Don't Edit Mark Graves/The Oregonian/OregonLive No. 5: OHSU funded the study The National Institutes of Health funds a host of cutting edge studies. Not this one. The institute bans research on genetically modified embryos. So OHSU funded the work on its campus. Charitable foundations also chipped in along with a South Korean research group and the Shenzhen municipal government in China. Don't Edit The Sinclair Broadcast Group, owner of Portland television station KATU, is nearing a $4 billion deal to purchase Tribune Media. That would give it control of more than one-third of the country's local television stations. Sinclair would then be poised to become a national network pushing very slanted, conservative, right-wing views. Trump's pick to head the FCC, Ajit Pai, dramatically rolled back limits capping the number of stations one corporation can control. Sinclair's Chairman, David Smith, supported Trump's campaign with huge amounts of money. Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner has acknowledged discussions between the Trump Administration and Sinclair. Pro Trump commentary by Boris Epshteyn, a Russian-born American and Sinclair's chief political analyst featured on KATU, is a chilling warning of what is to come from this potential mega media corporation. Epshteyn acted as a senior advisor to the Trump campaign. The Sinclair-Trump relationship is dangerous and a threat to the existence of a free press. Gary Larson Southeast Portland BY DAN LASCHOBER On July 24, 2017, The Oregonian ran Cal Thomas' syndicated column in which he recommends a financial planner's solution to Social Security's fiscal woes. Though not material to his argument, he manufactured a quote attributed to the annual Social Security Board of Trustee report, saying the program will be "cash flow positive through 2021." In fact, the report states "...cost is projected to exceed its non-interest income throughout the projection period, as it has since 2010." In other words, the cash flow has been negative since 2010 and will be negative over the next 75 years. I expect the culprit is Thomas' carelessness, but it's symptomatic of the Social Security debate in today's charged political environment. As interesting as his proposal may be, it's a non-starter if we can't agree on the plain facts. We're not suffering from congressional paralysis because there is a dearth of ideas. The fundamental issue is the Democratic Party has no intention of fixing the problem, or even acknowledging one exists. Democratic members of Congress prefer to wax dreamily about increasing benefits and use talk of change as a political cudgel, routinely lying about the program's financial health to attack any proposal. With Social Security comprising roughly 25 percent of federal outlays, the irresponsible dissembling is causing long-term financial harm to the nation. Vermont's Sen. Bernie Sanders neatly summed up the trifecta of lies in a fiery speech in 2012: "Social Security has nothing to do with the deficit. Social Security is totally funded by the payroll tax. The simple truth is that Social Security has not contributed a nickel to the national debt." With all due respect to the senator, Social Security has run annual cash deficits 26 times in its 80-year history, including 1973-1983, which is what led Congress and President Reagan to fix it. Likewise, for all Democrats singing from the same hymn sheet, these mounting deficits are the reason the Trust Fund will be exhausted by 2034. Payroll taxes comprise roughly 85 percent of the funding today, but that number is falling as deficits grow. Taxes on Social Security benefits, transfers from the general fund and interest make up the balance. And lastly, every transfer from the general fund for interest, or otherwise, increases the debt. These facts are not subject to debate. Republicans, unfortunately, have shown little resolve in the face of partisan demagoguery and recent presidents have failed to lead on the issue. The program was barely a whisper in the 2016 presidential election and President Trump's rhetoric indicates his administration has no appetite for this battle royal. What about the trillions of dollars (primarily interest) in the Trust Fund? Regrettably, the Trust Fund is a facade and only useful for politicians to hide behind. Paying interest from the left hand of government to the right hand creates no economic value. The fund acts as a placeholder for public debt and its bonds will eventually be sold to finance deficits--to Chinese, American and Japanese investors. The bottom line is if Congress continues to dither, America will issue $3.3 trillion of new public debt by 2034, saddling every American with a $10,000 bill. Notably, this is the same result we'd get if we simply agreed to fund the deficits until 2034 and had no Trust Fund. That's the immorality of this tale. Some in Congress will tell you if you like your Social Security, you can keep it, but it's already too late for a soft landing. Saving the program for future generations is going to take courage and statesmanship, and will require members of Congress to put country before job and party. Sadly, as we know too well, people matching this description are in short supply. Dan Laschober lives in Wilsonville. Wisconsin wineries will go toe-to-toe in a competition Monday on the campus of UW-Madison. The university's Department of Food Science is hosting an inaugural "Wine is Wisconsin" competition that will include 85 wines from 18 wineries throughout the state. The alcoholic beverages will be judged by eight food writers, restaurateurs, wine experts and retailers. Honey and fruit wines, such as from cherries and cranberries, will accompany their traditional grape-made counterparts in the competition. The wines are sourced from at least 75 percent Wisconsin products. Judging kicks off at 8:30 a.m. at room B141 in Babcock Hall, 1605 Linden Drive, and final determinations will be made at 1 p.m. There are over 100 wineries throughout the Badger State, according to the Wisconsin Winery Association. Open lecture by Associate Professor Benoit Pelopidas and Dr Lyndon Burford. About the lecture This lecture investigates the role and possibilities of the public intellectual in the nuclear age. It argues that in light of the current state of global nuclear vulnerability, and the ways in which the institutionalisation of nuclear weapons programs modify democratic processes and consume valuable resources, democratic publics deserve a voice that speaks for the public interest. Speakers Associate Professor Benoit Pelopidas Associate Professor Benoit Pelopidas holds the Junior Chair of Excellence in Security Studies at the Centre for International Studies, Sciences Po, Paris. He is also an affiliate of the Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC) at Stanford University and a Visiting Fellow at Princeton Universitys Program on Science and Global Security. He has been awarded two international prizes for his research and a British Academy Rising Star Engagement Award in 2016. Dr Lyndon Burford Dr Lyndon Burford is a research fellow (non-resident) at the Disarmament & Security Centre, Christchurch. He served as an advisor on the New Zealand delegation to the 2015 Review Conference of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, and recently attended the final stage of negotiations for the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, as a member of New Zealand civil society. Web address and twitter of the Centre for International Studies at Sciences Po http://www.sciencespo.fr/nk/en @NKnowledges Peace and Disarmament Education Trust This lecture has been made possible with the support by Peace and Disarmament Education Trust. Find out more information about the Trust. Date Tuesday, 8 August 2017 Time 5:30pm - 7:00pm Audience Public,All University Event Category Humanities Event Type Public Lecture Campus Dunedin Department Politics Location Archway 3 Lecture Theatre Contact Name Department of Politics Contact Phone 64 3 479 8663 Contact Email politics@otago.ac.nz Website http://www.otago.ac.nz/politics Save this event Thursday 3 August 2017 10:02am The impressive contributions of seven up-and-coming University of Otago academics have been recognised through the Universitys annual Early Career Awards for Distinction in Research. Dr Tilman Davies (Mathematics and Statistics), Dr Bill Hawkins (Chemistry), Dr Tobias Langlotz (Information Science), Dr James Scott (Geology), Dr Nic Rawlence (Zoology), Dr Jesse Wall (Law), and Dr Ting Wang (Mathematics and Statistics) are all receiving the honour. Announcing the awards, Professor Richard Blaikie (Deputy Vice-Chancellor, Research and Enterprise) says each of the recipients have distinguished themselves impressively in their academic spheres over a short period of time. We are extremely proud of each of them they are exemplary scholars pursuing important new knowledge in their respective fields, Professor Blaikie says. Their research areas range from developing new generation wearable digital communication devices to devising new statistical ways to clarify volcanism and earthquake hazard. Otagos 2017 Early Career Awards for Distinction in Research recipients: Dr Tilman Davies Dr Tilman Davies (Mathematics and Statistics) Dr Tilman Davies is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics. Upon completion of a PhD in applied statistics at Massey University, he was appointed to a Lecturer position at Otago in 2012. Dr Davies was the 2014 recipient of the Worsley Early Career Research Award from the New Zealand Statistical Association; secured a Marsden Fast-start grant in 2015; and published a sole-authored textbook on statistical programming in 2016, which he uses in a local workshop for Otago students and staff. Dr Davies research focuses on the development, refinement and application of statistical methods for modelling spatial and spatiotemporal phenomena. His work and collaborations span a wide range of disciplines, from within statistics, to epidemiology; physiology; archaeology; and computing. Dr Davies current research pursuits reflect this diversity, with projects including diffusion-based smoothing techniques for spatial point process data, hierarchical models designed to assess clustering in muscle fibre networks, and software development for kernel estimation of spatially and spatiotemporally continuous disease risk. His work on kernel smoothing for relative risk estimation is now regularly cited by researchers in geographical epidemiology from institutions around the world. Dr Bill Hawkins Dr Bill Hawkins (Chemistry) Dr Bill Hawkins completed his PhD at the University of Wollongong, followed by postdoctoral positions at the University of Melbourne and Ecole Polytechnique (France). After a short stay at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute for Medical Research, he joined the Department of Chemistry at the University of Otago as a lecturer (2012). He was promoted to senior lecturer in 2016. His research interests include the synthesis of bioactive natural products and their use as chemical probes to understand biological processes and inform drug design, as well as the development of new synthetic methodologies. Dr James Scott (Geology) Dr James Scott Dr James Scott is fascinated by geological processes and how they have shaped Earth. He completed a PhD at Otago in 2009 and then post-doctoral and industry-based work in New Zealand and Europe before taking up a lectureship position at Otago in 2014.His current research interests include processes that have affected the Earths mantle, the formation of New Zealand, and the movement of fluids through the crust. Major funding has been awarded by the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Enterprise, the former Foundation for Research, Science and Technology, and the University of Otago. He has established international research collaborative programmes with geoscientists in Australia, Canada, China, Denmark, South Africa and the United States. He is currently president of the Otago Institute for Arts and Sciences, a Geosciences Society of New Zealand committee member, and the leader of the Geosciences Society of NZ Geochemistry Special Interest Group. Dr Tobias Langlotz Dr Tobias Langlotz (Information Science) Dr Tobias Langlotz is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Information Science where he is co-leading the Human-Computer Interaction group. He received a Diploma degree in Media Informatics from the Bauhaus-University in Weimar and in 2013 a PhD in Computer Science from the Graz University of Technology before joining the University of Otago as a Lecturer in 2014. His main research interests are in human-computer interaction and ubiquitous computing and in particular augmented reality interfaces for mobile and wearable devices. He developed several key technologies for augmented reality browsers that overlay interactive multimedia content on the physical world or objects they refer to. His work has been published in the top engineering and computer science journals, has led to several patents, and has attracted funding by the European Union, Callaghan Innovation, and companies including Qualcomm and Nokia. Recently, Dr Langlotz has started to investigate technologies for turning head-mounted displays into computational glasses for managing visual impairments that cannot be managed with prescription glasses. He is further working on mobile telepresence technologies, investigating the future of video calls that allow users to virtually join remote people at distant locations by using mobile and wearable devices. Dr Nic Rawlence Dr Nic Rawlence (Department of Zoology) Dr Nic Rawlence is a lecturer in the Department of Zoology and Director of the Otago Palaeogenetics Laboratory. After studying at Victoria University of Wellington, he completed a PhD at the University of Adelaide in 2011. His research focuses on using ancient DNA and palaeontology to answer fundamental questions relating to the evolution and palaeoecology of extinct biodiversity, and the effects of climate change and human impact on past ecosystems. Since Dr Rawlence took up his position at the University of Otago in 2013 as a postdoctoral research fellow, and later as a lecturer, he has been awarded both a Marsden Fast-Start and Full Research Grant. Dr Rawlences current research focuses include Do glaciers drive diversity? Using ancient DNA to retrace the history of New Zealands biodiversity; Testing for fisheries induced evolution using modern and ancient snapper DNA; and pre-European cetacean resource use by Polynesian/Maori in New Zealand. Dr Jesse Wall Dr Jesse Wall (Faculty of Law) Dr Jesse Wall joined the Faculty of Law in 2014. He was previously a Lecturer in Law and Junior Research Fellow at Merton College, University of Oxford. He had earlier completed his postgraduate studies (BCL, MPhil and DPhil) at Pembroke College, Oxford, where he was studying as a Rhodes Scholar. Jesse completed his undergraduate studies in Law and Philosophy at Otago. Jesses research interests are shaped by two overlapping, and theoretical, inquiries. First, he is interested in the moral limits of private law concepts. For instance, his monograph, Being and Owning: The Body, Bodily Material and the Law, argues against the recognition of property rights in items of separated bodily material. More recent scholarship concerns the application of social obligation norms to trust property, and the notion of community responsibility supervening private law rights and obligations. Second, Jesse is interested in the concepts that construct our personhood. These include theories of autonomy, bodily integrity and personal identity. In his research, these concepts are applied in medico-legal contexts, such as dementia, depression, and consent. Dr Ting Wang Dr Ting Wang (Department of Mathematics and Statistics) Dr Ting Wang joined the Department of Mathematics and Statistics in 2012 and is now a Senior Lecturer. After obtaining BSc and MSc in Statistics from Beijing Normal University, she completed a PhD in Statistics at Massey University in 2010. Dr Wang is the recipient of the Worsley Early Career Research Award from the New Zealand Statistical Association in 2013. Dr Wangs research field is multidisciplinary, centring on the interface of statistics and geophysics. Her main focus has been on the development of novel statistical models and their application to real-world problems in geosciences. In a Marsden Fast-Start funded project, Dr Wang has developed methods for the inversion of point processes with non-stationary missing probabilities, such as earthquake and volcanic eruption catalogues that often have incomplete earlier portions resulting in hazard underestimation. This project also led to a new research field developing statistical models for non-volcanic tremors that can aid the study of the mechanisms of highly destructive megathrust earthquakes. Prior to this, Dr Wang developed hidden Markov models for spatial and temporal variation of long-term seismicity in an EQC-funded project, and developed models for extracting signals from GPS measurement for earthquake forecasting. For more information, contact: Professor Richard Blaikie Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Research & Enterprise) University of Otago Tel 64 3 479 8513 Email dvc.research@otago.ac.nz When Tania Brown watched the Twin Towers fall on Sept. 11, 2001, she knew she had to do something to ease the heart-wrenching sadness overwhelming her. The result was a Memorial Quilt that took her eight months to complete. Without a pattern to begin with, she started the quilt with a bandana that said, "I love the U.S.A." in the middle and worked outward. Adding to the quilt as she thought of icons, poems and memorials, the completed quilt was self-designed, hand appliqued and hand quilted. Tania's story begins with her great-grandfather Edgar Elwood Deline, the patriarch of a family that today includes the McWethy family, the Cadman family, the Barnhart family and the Palmer family. Edgar lived in St. Louis, Michigan in the beginning. His marriage to Sarah Walker ended tragically, leaving him with three children to raise: Theo (Tania's grandmother), Fra and Ruth. Ruth, the youngest, passed away shortly after her mother's death. Theo was 9 and Fra was 6. Edgar took his two daughters to live with his mother on Franklin Street in St. Louis temporarily. A second marriage ended unexpectedly with his young wife's death. By now Theo was 22 and Fra was 19. Theo moved back to her dad's home to help care for the two small children left motherless: Macy and Albert. Edgar Deline eventually established a home on the Chippewa River Road with his next wife, Drucy, where they began selling chicken dinners, which became a great success. Edgar built a pavilion jutting out over the river. They rented boats and had a play area for children. By now Theo was married to Bert Baney. They had two little girls, Grace and Lucille. When Bert left, Theo with her two little girls moved in to live with her father. This made a full house with Edgar and Drucy having three little girls: Marie, June and Helen. Theo met Randolph Root who was employed by the St. Louis, Michigan City Parks Commission. They ran away to marry in Arkansas. Theo was 28. Randolph Root was 70. (He was a veteran of the Civil War). Theo and Randolph had a little girl and she was named Ruth after Theo's little sister Ruth who had died. Ruth would become Tania's mother. In 1918 Randolph died leaving Theo with three daughters, Grace, Lucille and Ruth. Now Theo met and married Bill Barnes and they had a daughter and named her Agatha. Theo was the postmistress at Eureka Springs. Arkansas. One night Bill Barnes told Theo that if she left the post office unlocked he would clean it up for her. Theo did. Bill Barnes absconded with the money. Ruth, the daughter of Theo and Randolph Root, was born in Beauchamp, Arkansas. Tania said, "It was a village of five families on the side of a mountain." Beryl Jones, the young man she would marry, was born in Mountain Home, Arkansas. Beryl's family migrated from Arkansas to Oklahoma in a covered wagon. Tania remembers her dad saying, "The trip was so long my mother sewed patches on my underwear three times." As an historical note, covered wagons were still being used to transport families and their belongs until World War II. Ruth and Beryl met when he returned to Arkansas to visit and married in 1932. They ended up in Oklahoma where their four children were born. In Roff, Oklahoma Beryl Jones Jr. and Tania were born. Oscar and Thyra Ann were born in Maud, Oklahoma. When Tania was 5 years old her dad Beryl got a job in a defense plant located in Borger in the Texas panhandle. During World War II, synthetic rubber and other petroleum products became important in the Borger area. Both B. F. Goodrich and Phillips 66 had factories in Borger. The influx of workers that poured into Borger were housed in an abandoned Army barracks. The Beryl Jones Sr. family was one of hundreds living there. Tania remembers her mother wetting cloths and putting them on the windowsills to keep the dust out. But it didn't work. The dust came in anyway. Tania said, "Dust storms came in the middle of the day with everything tar black. You couldn't see anything." One day Tania was sent to the grocery store and when she got downtown, the streets were filled with people yelling and crying. Tania said, "I thought the end of the world had come." World War II had ended. Tania said, "When the war ended so did my mother and dad's marriage." With the marriage ended the children were split up. Oscar and Tania went to California to live with their dad Beryl Sr. Beryl Jr. and Thyra came back to Midland, Michigan with their mother. Before long, Beryl Jones Sr. became ill. As a young man he had been in the service during World War I as a secretary, doing shorthand and typing for Army personnel. He contracted yellow jaundice which seriously affected his health the rest of his life. Ruth went to California to bring Oscar and Tania back to Michigan where she was living. Tania said, "We came on a train and I remember the train going over the long trestle over the Great Salt Lake and I was scared to death!"' Full of curves and steep grades, the nation's first transcontinental railroad through the Promontory, Utah area in 1880 needed an easier route. The worst bottleneck was costing the railroad an extra $l,500 a day to push trains up to the summit. A shorter route for the railroads was under construction directly west of Ogden, Utah in 1902 with the railroad crossing the Great Salt Lake. Thousands of carloads of rock and gravel fill were used to make a solid base for trains. Some 3,000 men worked on that trestle. Michigan white pine and Russian fir were used for pilings because they were especially resistant to salt water. In 1948 Tania Jones was in awe crossing that trestle. At the age of 12, Tania found herself in Midland, Michigan living on Wheeler Road, not far from the Barrett School. Tania said, "It was the highlight of my life. I was tall compared to the other kids and I was treated like a queen." (This ends Part I of the Tania Brown story. Part II will appear in two weeks.) BLOOMINGTON Twin City residents craving Chicago-style pizza near home will need to wait another couple months. A Bloomington Giordano's restaurant slated to open this month will instead open in October, said Aaron Uftring, who will own the franchise location. Everything always takes a little longer than you think. ... We want to make sure we open right, he said Wednesday. "We don't have an exact date yet." Renovations started last month at the location, the former Qdoba restaurant at 1505 N. Veterans Parkway. Cornerstone Construction of Bloomington received a building permit July 14 for $50,000 in renovations, to include a concrete patio, a brick wall and a pergola. "The old patio at the Qdoba space was pulled out last week, and theyre working on it, said Uftring. Next week theyll start building that brick wall, and well start pouring concrete and building the pergola. The restaurant is expected to employ about 50, seat about 70 and offer the standard menu of a full-service Giordano's, including stuffed pizza, sandwiches, soups, salads, appetizers and desserts. The location has also received a liquor license from the city to serve wine and beer. "We are doing takeout and delivery, but its not something that happens on day one," Uftring said. "We dont want the kitchen to be overwhelmed. An open interview day for prospective employees is set for 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. Aug. 28 at the McLean County Chamber of Commerce. The Normal Town Council on Monday will consider an ordinance for the 2022 property tax levy estimated to be $13,381,652, which is the same as last year's levy. BLOOMINGTON Travis Baird lost track of the number of hours it took him to build the two models he brought for judging Wednesday at the McLean County Fair. The first was a replica of a "Star Wars" Star Destroyer and the second was a World War II King Tiger tank as part of a diorama war scene. Each earned a blue ribbon from judge Jonathon Norin. It wasnt so much me, at first, but it was my dad that got me involved in military history, said the 17-year-old Baird, a member of the Hudson Ag 4-H Club. He got me interested in models and passed a lot of the knowledge to me. Baird's models were among 4,000 general exhibits on display at the Interstate Center's Cloverleaf Hall on Wednesday, the fair's opening day. The fair continues through Sunday on Bloomington's west side. The two models served as a tribute to his father, Mike Baird, who died four years ago after a battle with cancer. He was a Normal police officer who served in the U.S. Marine Corps Reserve. Ive been building these models in his memory ever since, Travis Baird said. Its what I can do to honor him. Building models is tedious and, at times, frustrating work, he said. The tank was painted in camouflage, and the tiny soldiers were also painted by hand. There were a few times the cat intervened, he said. The cat would just jump on the table with open jars of paint. It was like a case of friendly fire. The cats name, ironically, said Baird, is Panzer, a German term for tanks and other armored vehicles. Working in a different medium was Lauren Dearing, 11, a member of the Danvers Industrial Youth 4-H Club. She said she worked about 12 hours on artwork to compete in the duct tape art category. I like the look of duct tape, and I like a lot of things about it, she said. I just really wanted to do it this year because I have seen some other projects that looked really cool and that inspired me to do it. Laurens stylized peacock on poster board also won a blue ribbon. The fair, though, said Lauren, is more than just working with duct tape. It is one of my favorite times of the year, she said. I look forward to it during the summer because it gives me a chance to do something outside of school that shows my personality and things that I like to do that might be a little different. Judges for the competitions also say they look forward to it for a variety of reasons, as well. Who, for example, wouldnt look forward to being one of the many food judges? Janet Jones and Joyce Schneider each said they enjoy their roles of judging the baked goods for the 4-Hers. I am full of sweets within a couple of hours, said Jones, who was battling laryngitis only about two hours into the judging. But some of it is really very good. There is more than just tasting when it comes to judging food. The competitors also are asked about their experiences and what they learned through the competition. I learned that you cant keep cookies in the oven too long, said Hailey Carlson, 8, of Normal, who received a blue ribbon for her peanut butter cookies. Nearly 1,500 children, ages 8 to 18, from 4-H clubs around McLean County are participating in the 4-H show at the fair. Maritza Mendoza of the Bloomington Space Age 4-H Club was among the many youths showing anmals. Maritzas sister, Melody, was taking care of Chanticleer, a Polish hen, prior to the judging. Shes very funny, Melody said of the black-and-white chicken. I love her Afro. She has been getting so many compliments on it. Everybody comes to see her because of her Afro. "She is the nicest chicken. Everybody thinks that Polish hens are the meanest chickens, but chickens are really nice. BLOOMINGTON James Ingold has a message for parents wondering whether they should contribute to the St. Jude Telethon or the accompanying St. Jude Runs because their children are healthy. "What if your child was not healthy?" asked Ingold, the telethon's McLean County chairman. "Wouldn't you want to be able to take them to a place like St. Jude?" The 40th annual St. Jude Telethon and the annual St. Jude Runs will be Saturday. Money raised will support research and services at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital in Memphis, Tenn., and its Midwest Affiliate in Peoria, which treat children with cancer and other catastrophic diseases. St. Jude will treat about 7,800 children this year and has about 200 active patients in Central Illinois, said Bekah Abbott, St. Jude senior regional development representative. When St. Jude opened in Memphis in 1962, the childhood cancer survival rate was 20 percent, Ingold said. Today, that figure is more than 80 percent. "We want to raise whatever amount of money it takes for a 100 percent cure rate," Ingold said. "We're not there yet." Because families don't receive bills from St. Jude for medical treatment, St. Jude relies on donations. The telethon will be broadcast live on WEEK-TV from 6:30 p.m. Saturday to 12:30 a.m. Sunday from Illinois Wesleyan University's Shirk Center in Bloomington and from Peoria Civic Center. The Bloomington part of the broadcast will end at 11:30 p.m., Ingold said. Activities at Shirk Center begin at 5 p.m. with an Avanti's dinner, silent auction and bake sale. People may donate to St. Jude during the telethon by calling the number on the screen, by going to www.telethon.stjude.org or by going to Shirk Center. Last year, a record $9.8 million was raised, reflecting money raised for St. Jude throughout the previous year in central and southern Illinois, Abbott said. That included a record $2.75 million from McLean County. Thirty-six St. Jude Runs will conclude at 6:30 p.m. Saturday when more than 2,000 runners enter Peoria Civic Center to begin the telethon, Abbott said. Included are the main run from Memphis and satellite runs from Bloomington-Normal, Eureka, Lincoln, Mackinaw, Metamora, Minonk, Morton, Tremont and Washington. For the 32nd annual Bloomington-Normal run, co-Chairman Dennis Cler is expecting 125 runners and hopes they exceed last year's total of $250,000. Runners will take off from the parking lot of Bergner's in Bloomington at 7:30 a.m. Saturday and run north to El Paso and then west to Peoria, Cler said. People who wish to support the runners may make a donation at www.stjuderuns.org or go to the east entrance of Bergner's from 4 to 5:30 p.m. Friday. In her fourth release from her highly-anticipated upcoming album Rainbow (out August 11th), Kesha sings a "hymn for the hymnless." Following "Praying," "Woman" and "Learn to Let Go," "Hymn" is a song for "the kids with no religion," as Kesha sings on the Ricky Reed and Jonny Price-produced track, and was inspired by her fans and her experiences joining in protests over the past year. "I think that one of the reasons why my music connects with people who feel like they don't fit in is because I have never fit in either this is why the song "Hymn" is so special to me," Kesha wrote in an essay for Mic. "The longer title was "Hymn for the Hymnless." And when I say "hymnless," I'm talking about people who feel like they don't fit in, people who feel like they don't have a hymn. "I think there has never been a more important time for dreamers to be outspoken about their beliefs," she continued. "I was recalling times I've gone out into the streets over the last year to make known how I feel about certain issues when writing lines like, "Go on, read about us in the news ... After all we've been through/ No, we won't stand and salute ... If we die before we wake/ Who we are is no mistake/ This is just the way we're made." I personally will never stop fighting for equality for all humans. That is the passion behind this song." You can read the full essay here. Earlier this week, Kesha announced her six-week North American "Rainbow Tour," her first solo tour since 2013. Listen to "Hymn" below: Image via Instagram The Trevor Project, the largest LGBTQ youth suicide-prevention organization in the nation, reported a "dramatic spike" in the number of contacts - calls, texts and online messages - from transgender youth after President Trump tweeted that transgender people were no longer welcome in the military. On an average day, the Trevor Project reports that it receives 178 contacts and that 7.3 percent of those calls, messages and texts come from people who self-identify as transgender. Within 24 hours of Trump's tweets, however, the number of contacts from callers identifying as transgender jumped to 17.5 percent. In addition, during the week after a new "bathroom bill" targeting transgender students was proposed in Texas, the contacts from transgender youth doubled to 14.7 percent. Trevor Project CEO and executive director Amit Paley said in a statement, "Anti-LGBTQ rhetoric and legislation directly leads to crisis among our community's young people." He added that the Trevor Project will continue to work "around-the-clock" to be a resource for LGBTQ youth, but that lawmakers also need to "stop throwing young people into crisis for political gain." [h/t The Cut] Image via Getty Not long after assuming the Papacy, Pope Francis published Evangelii Gaudium, an apostolic exhortation where he set forth a blueprint for the evangelization of the modern world. Unique due to its personal and colloquial tone, The Joy of the Gospel reads as a reflection of the years of Cardinal Bergoglios pastoral experience which he now shares with the world as Pope. When I read the document, I was pleased to find that he spent countless paragraphs giving fellow priests practical advice on homilies. The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops took to heart the message of this document and began organizing an unprecedented national convocation where key leaders from dioceses and Catholic organizations would gather and deepen their understanding of Pope Francis call to be missionary disciples. This Convocation, now come and gone, was held during the first days of July in Orlando. It gathered about 3,500 Catholic leaders from a wide range of ministries and walks of life. The plenary and breakout sessions first aimed at identifying the landscape of the mission field we encounter today in the United States: the current political and cultural climate, the rise of the religiously unaffiliated and disconnected, individualism and indifference, the throw away culture, social media, immigration, the family and human sexuality, violence, ecumenism, and many issues that affect Catholic life today. Since Pope Francis calls the Church to go out into the margins and peripheries to evangelize, the delegates secondly aimed to identify the peripheries of our country. These are areas where unfortunately the Church has oftentimes failed to be present. The Supreme Knight of the Knights of Columbus, Carl Anderson, reminded the delegates that where there is suffering, Jesus is there; and where Jesus is, I must be also. Jesus is already in the margins, will his disciples also be there? If Christ is already there, can it truly be a periphery? It is our own shortsightedness that keeps us away. The sessions considering the peripheries included: wounded families, rural America, Catholic health care, incarceration, victims of abuse, addiction, sexual identity, the disabled, depression, gangs, discrimination, and the elderly, among many others. In the final plenary session, Patrick Lencioni and Bishop Robert Barron provided strategies for Catholic leaders to be successful in their evangelization efforts as missionary disciples. Bishop Barron encouraged us to avoid an intellectually dumb Catholicism, presenting the faith with its full intellectual prowess. He also noted the need to recover the radical form of the Christian life, displaying the goodness which exists among the people of God. Finally, Bishop Barron described the essential role of showing the beauty of Catholicism to others, often even before sharing what we believe. As a young priest, I was encouraged to see so many young lay men and women committed to the mission of the Church today. The conversations which emerged with fellow delegates as we considered the many excellent presentations were fruitful. The Convocation had a broad view of the Church, taking everyone out from their silos and creating a common vision and mission. I am convinced that the thousands of delegates have returned to their respective dioceses ready to become better evangelizers, responding to the call of Francis to be missionary disciples. The Convocation was a success. My inbox is exploding with discussion of the new Patheos writers contract. Frankly I think all the attention to the issue is distracting from the real meaningful debates and social justice actions taking place in our nation. To put it another way, I just dont care very much about the issue at hand. So Belief Net, which is owned by Christians purchased Patheos;, now come the new ownership seeking a change to the writers contract which gives them more control over content and the right to edit posts. Functionally, the timing serves to distract liberal and progressive writers on all the Patheos channels from the important social justice actions they are supporting.. who knew such a thing could happen? Will I sign the contract? No, Will I protest? No, will I engage in debate about the issue? Not likely! Frankly with the world facing the specter of emerging fascism at the top levels of our government, with social, environmental , economic and racial justice movements facing erasure via growing intolerance, this contract issue seems a childish endeavor designed to insure we are divided. To my co writers at Patheos, I support you what ever you decide to do,. To Jason who has done such an outstanding job, you are a hero. To Patheos, if you send me an acceptable contract Ill sign it. What I wont do is spend any more time on this. Fascism is coming and I intend to spend my energy fighting it, not squabbling over crumbs. New pipeline cuts Iran's reliance on Turkmenistan's gas 08/03/17 Source: Press TV; photos by ISNA Iran has inaugurated a gas pipeline which officials say will dispense with supplies from neighboring Turkmenistan to northern Iranian provinces, especially in the winter when demand spirals out of control. The Damghan-Neka pipeline, the last segment of a trunkline which feeds gas from Iran's giant South Pars field in the Persian Gulf to the Mazandaran province in the Caspian Sea, was inaugurated by Minister of Petroleum Bijan Zangeneh on Tuesday. The Damghan-Neka gas pipeline in the Iranian city of Sari The 170 km pipeline will have a capacity to transfer 40 million cubic meters of gas per day, media reports said. "With the construction of the Damghan-Neka gas pipeline, there will be no reduction or drop in gas pressure in the northern cities in the winter. With the opening of the pipeline, Iran no longer needs to import gas from Turkmenistan," the spokesman for parliament's Energy Commission Asadollah Qareh-Khani said. "With the opening of this pipeline, the concerns and anxieties of the citizens about gas disruptions in northern Iran, especially in the winter, will also be resolved," he added. Minister of Petroleum Bijan Zangeneh speaking at the event Turkmenistan stopped the gas flow to Iran in January 2017, demanding that the Islamic Republic settle a debt which allegedly remained outstanding from previous imports. Ashgabat claims Iran owes it $1.8 billion from sales between 2007 and 2008 when freezing winters led to severe shortages across 20 Iranian provinces, forcing the country to raise gas imports from its northeastern neighbor. At the time, Turkmenistan pounced on the occasion to demand a nine-fold hike which yanked the price up to $360 from $40 for every 1,000 cubic meters of gas. According to Turkmen officials, the balance has built up to a debt of $1.8 billion which Iran is rejecting and has threatened to take the case to international arbitration. Iran imported about 35-40 million cubic meters a day of gas from Turkmenistan under a deal which has stood for the past 20 years. Zangeneh threatened at the time that if the Turkmens insisted on halting the gas flow, Iran would stop its energy dealings with the country altogether, the IRNA news agency reported. "According to experts, Ashgabat would be the biggest loser of this dispute," the news agency added. Turkmenistan is a landlocked nation and its shipment of gas to international markets has to go through the neighbors, including Iran which was the Central Asian country's biggest gas customer. CAL Bank has launched its new brand identity.The rebranding has seen a change in the banks logo and the tagline. CAL Banks logo has been changed into two yellow and orange petals which depict C and B. The banks tagline has also been changed to Forward Together. Speaking at the official unveiling ceremony in Accra, the Managing Director of CAL Bank, Mr. Frank Adu Jnr said the move formed part of the companys three year strategy spanning 2015-2018. Some staff of Cal Bank displaying the new brand logo and paraphenalia The strategy focuses on reviewing the strength of the CalBank brand and investing in ensuring it continues to be relevant in todays hyper active banking space. According to Mr. Adu, the rebranding is geared at creating a stronger, vibrant and more meaningful brand for our current and future clients, across different customer segments. The Chairman of the Board of Cal Bank, Van Percy also commended the efforts of all stakeholders and urged for stronger collaboration to achieve greater heights in the banks future agenda. The event was attended by shareholders, industry regulators including Second Deputy Governor of the Bank of Ghana, Dr. Johnson Asiamah, staff as well as other stakeholders. 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 An astute businessman, Kwadwo Boateng Genfi has been named as the Board Chairman of Ghanas Exim bank. Speaking at the inauguration of the Board members on Tuesday the Deputy Finance Minister, Kweku Kwarteng charged them to pursue pragmatic policies and programs to boost Ghanas competitiveness on the international market. He also admonished the bank to help Ghana become an export-led economy. The Exim Bank is among others expected to support local producers with the necessary financial and technical expertise to position them to compete favourably with foreign companies. The Ghana Export-Import Bank was set up by an Act of Parliament. Act 911, 2016 to: Support and develop directly or indirectly trade between Ghana and other countries and build Ghanas capacity and competitiveness in the international market-place. In order to operationalize and implement its core mandate, a competent Board has been constituted to provide broad policy framework and guidelines for the effective and efficient management of the Bank, Kwaku Kwarteng said. According to him, the focus of the bank should also be geared at assisting Small and Medium Businesses to expand their production levels to meet both local and foreign demand. Explicitly, the President is charging this Board and the Bank to specifically focus on the non-traditional export products such as poultry, cassava, cashew, oil palm and pharmaceuticals which have the potential to facilitate our export trade and enhance socio-economic development. His Excellency therefore expects this Board to come out with prudent policies and programs that will ensure that the exporters are well resourced; be it financing exportable products and services so that the nation can reap an appreciable Foreign Exchange from the sector. The Deputy Minister is also optimistic the move should help government attain its targets under the top priority areas such as the one factory one district policy as well as the planting for food and jobs program. As you may be aware, the vision of President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo- Addo is to make Ghana an export- led economy and thereby change the structure of the economy, hence, the Presidents Flagship program dubbed: One District-One-Factory.This concept is geared towards providing social economic development at the local level; provide the needed jobs for the rural folks and also stem the rural- urban drift, amongst others, he noted. He is among eight others on the board. Others members of the Board include; CEO of Eximbank, Mr. Lawrence Agyinsam; Mr. Ofosu A. Tetteh Kujorjie of the Ministry of Finance; Deputy Trade and Industry Minister Robert Ahomka Lindsay. The rest are; second Deputy Governor of the Bank of Ghana Dr. Johnson P. Asiama; Mr. Akilu Sayibu of the Ghana Export and Promotion Authority; Nana Appiagyei Dankawoso I representing Private sector Industry associations. The remaining members are Mr. Peter Kwame Abrebese (Presidents Nominee) as well as Madam Catherine Quaidoo Presidents Nominee. On behalf of the board, the Chairman, Mr. Genfi, an astute businessman, said they would as a matter of policy explore, maintain and deepen business relationships with other EXIM banks for mutual benefit. Mr. Minister, it is significant to inform you that my board will as a matter of policy explore, maintain and deepen business relationship with other Exim Banks including, Indian Exim Bank, Africa Export Import Bank, China Exim Bank to mentioned but a few. We promise to ensure strict corporate governance practices to be embedded in the Banks operations and will work closely with the management to deliver on its corporate programs and targets, he added. Source: Daniel Adu Darko/Peacefmonline.com/[email protected] Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority. Featured Video The lawyer for Jihad Chaaban, the supervisor at the Abelemkpe branch of Marwako restaurant jailed for assaulting one of his employees, believes the judge should have considered the settlement agreement his client reached with his victim. This is despite the judge explaining that she rejected the settlement by the two parties because the matter before the court was criminal and not a civil one. The lawyer, Julio De Medeiros, maintained that the dispute had been settled out of court with the victim, Evelyn Boakye. The judge, in considering our plea for litigation, should have looked at the settlement The judge should have at least considered the settlement. She said it was off the table. I didnt understand what she meant by that but she has spoken. I have nothing to say about that. The judge, Victoria Eggs Ghansah, after considering the settlement, sentenced Chaaban to nine months on charges of offensive conduct for calling the victim a prostitute and intentionally and unlawfully causing harm and assault. She said the prosecution had been able to prove beyond every reasonable doubt that the accused committed the offense. Chaaban, was reported in February to have shoved the victim, Evelyn Boakye, into some pepper, generating public outcry. He has since instructed his lawyers to file an appeal against the sentence as he disagrees with the sentence. Julio De Medeiros said to the media after proceedings in court, we entirely disagree with the findings of the court. We thought that we put up a very good defense. She [the judge] thought otherwise. The real investigator of the case said from the evidence before her it was an accident. We have said it was an accident, she thought otherwise. We have taken instructions from our client to appeal immediately. We are going back to the chambers to start working on the appeal process, the lawyer said. 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 Deputy Finance Minister Kweku Kwarteng has asked the Minority in parliament to be silent if they have nothing to say. Responding to the Minoritys claim that Finance Minister Ken Ofori-Atta doctored figures in his mid-year budget review, Mr Kwarteng said on Wednesday, 2 August that: It isnt the case that anytime government presents something, you must find something wrong. If there is nothing wrong, you may keep quiet. Ranking Member of Parliaments Finance Committee, Cassiel Ato Forson, had told journalists at a press conference that: The attention of the Minority in Parliament has been drawn to the reversal of interest payment of a colossal amount of GHC758.5 million and review of GDP (without a formal GSS Statement) at the end of Financial Year 2016 (Par 14 and 15). "It is quite clear that the Minister made this reversal, which violates long-standing cut-off fiscal rules for the sole purpose of making the governments dismal performance for the first half of Financial Year 2017 look good. The action also purports to make the performance for FY 2016 worse". This doctoring of figures is very shameful. This to say the least is very regrettable and cosmetic. From Appendix Table 5A: Page 53 of the Mid-Year Fiscal Policy Review of the 2017 Budget Statement and Economic Policy, Summary of Revised Central Government Operations-2017, the Minister of Finance has reduced domestic interest payment by an amount of GHC657,005,271 Ghana Cedis to create the impression that expenditure on domestic interest payment is being reduced". Source: classfmonline.com Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority. Featured Video FREDERICKSBURG, Va. - The rickety looking house where a woman and her two children were allegedly held captive stands in stark contrast to the much larger homes that surround it. Where those houses all feature neat lawns and large backyard decks, the one-story rental property where police arrested Kariem Moore, 43, has weeds, discarded trash and tiles missing from the roof. Moore, who spent time years ago at a homeless shelter in Fairfax, Virginia, was taken into custody on Saturday after law enforcement officers arrived at the house in the 3600 block of Mine Road for a welfare check, the Spotsylvania County Sheriff's office said. While sheriff's deputies were talking to Moore, a 32-year-old woman and two children, ages 11 and 8, fled the house and said they had not been allowed outside for two years. The woman, whom authorities described as Moore's girlfriend, was hospitalized in serious condition, said sheriff's office spokesman Charles Carey. The children, who referred to Moore as their father, are staying with relatives, Carey said. Moore has been charged with three felony counts of abduction and felony assault and battery, Carey said, and is being held without bond at Rappahannock Regional Jail. Dave Larrabee, director of operations for the Lamb Center - a day center for the homeless in Fairfax - said Moore frequented the facility for about four or five months in 2012, with his wife and young son. Larrabee said the family would spend nights living in their car and that he recalled Moore saying he had been formerly incarcerated. "I do remember he had a temper," Larrabee said. "He got angry at some of the other guests. I had a way of calming him down." Moore's mother, Harriette Moore, said in a brief phone interview that she hadn't seen her son in as many as five years. She said she was still trying to learn more about the allegations against him. "It's a shock. I'm trying to hold up. I can't get it together," said Harriette Moore, who is in her 60s and is retired from working in government. She lives in Philadelphia. "He was raised correctly. I raised my children to make their own way and become someone in the world." She said the last time she saw Moore, he was with his significant other, who was using a wheelchair, and their children. She said Moore was taking care of her. She did not know if the couple had married. Lorane James, who has lived next door to the house where Moore was arrested for 40 years, said she hadn't thought anyone was living there until she noticed a Spotyslvania County (Virginia) sheriff's patrol car parked in the yard about two weeks ago. "I said: 'Oh, I guess somebody does live there," James recalled on Thursday. "I'd never seen them, didn't know they were there, didn't have any idea anybody had been living there." Kevin Johnson, a high school teacher who lives with his family on a cul-de-sac directly behind the house, said he hadn't seen "any kind of activity there, ever." Johnson, who teaches geography and social studies at Courtland High School in Spotsylvania County, said the neighborhood is generally filled with kids playing outside, with one or two parents casually keeping watch. Many parents in the area home-school their children, he said. "We're a relatively close knit neighborhood, where people usually know what's going on," Johnson said. "It's really sad. It's awful." The case appears to resemble a handful of others that have drawn headlines and horrified attention in recent years. In May 2013, three women were rescued from a house in Cleveland after being abducted a decade beforehand while in their teens and early 20s. The women - along with the 6-year-old daughter of one of the women, Amanda Berry - escaped after Berry got the attention of a neighbor and convinced him to help kick in the lower part of the home's front door. Berry then was able to call 911 from across the street. In 2006, an Austrian girl was released after being kidnapped and held for more than eight years. Two years later, Austria was again shaken by the release of a woman imprisoned by her father in a basement dungeon for 24 years - over which time she bore him seven children. And two months after that, a woman was found near a town in Naples, Italy, after she had been kept in a locked room in her family's home for 18 years. The greatest outrage is directed at Evzio, a high-tech dispenser which "talks" a novice through reversing an overdose. It cost $690 when it came out in 2014. Now the list price is $4,500 -- an increase of more than 500 percent. Evzio delivers a dose of naloxone, which blocks the effects of heroin and opioid painkillers, jumpstarting the heart rate and breathing of someone who overdosed. Cheaper configurations of naloxone exist. It's a generic drug that's been around since the early 1970s. But the prices of the generics are also soaring, straining the budgets of ambulance companies that are reversing overdoses in record numbers. It also threatens to put naloxone out of reach of people close to someone who is addicted to heroin, and who are being urged to keep naloxone handy. To that end, Pennsylvania in 2015 became one of more than 40 states to allow people to buy naloxone without a prescription. Also, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention now advises doctors to prescribe naloxone for patients who legally take high doses of opioid painkillers, or who take them in combination with other drugs, such as anti-anxiety drugs, which add to the risk of overdose. Moreover, police officers in Pennsylvania now carry naloxone and are reversing overdoses by the thousands -- about 3,700 during the past two years. Ambulance crews are reversing even more. "That is definitely putting a crunch on services across the Commonwealth," says, Nathan Harig, an assistant chief with Cumberland Goodwill EMS in Carlisle, referring to the cost of naloxone. Cumberland Goodwill EMS used to pay $16 per dose for the naloxone it carries in its ambulances. It now pays about $45, according to Harig. The ambulances carry two doses. With heroin now commonly cut with more powerful opioids such as fentanyl, it often requires both of those doses to save someone. That means Cumberland Goodwill commonly uses $90 worth of naloxone on one overdose call. That's nearly half the $200 reimbursement the company receives from Medicaid, the government program that covers many addicts, Harig says. The price increases seem to coincide with the efforts to promote the use of naloxone and the increased demand that has occurred as overdose deaths nationwide rose to 52,404 in 2015, surpassing traffic accidents as the leading cause of death for Americans under 50. For example, a 2 milliliter quantity meant for injection that cost $20.34 in 2009 costs $39.60 in 2016. A 10 milliliter quantity meant for injection which cost $62.29 in 2012 costs $142.49 in 2016. Another naloxone configuration, which came on the market after the onset of the opioid overdose epidemic, appears to have the higher price built in. That one consists of a pack containing two doses which are sprayed into the overdose victim's nose rather than injected with a syringe -- another version that seems ideal for users who lack medical training. It costs $150, a price that has held steady since it came on the market in 2015. Harig says that with the current demand, he would think naloxone could be produced and sold in quantities that would lower the price. "It's a generic. It's been around a long time." he says. "My gut reaction is that something weird is going in within the [pharmaceutical] industry." He's not alone in thinking that. Consumer Reports recently wrote that even generic naloxone "has undergone inexplicable price hikes in the past couple of years." Numerous members of Congress have demanded answers from manufacturers of naloxone and suggested they may be profiteering from the crisis. The situation with Evzio, the auto-injector which jumped from $690 to $4,500, is being compared to that of the Epi-Pen. The price of the Epi-Pen, an auto-injector used to save the lives of people suffering severe allergic reactions, increased from about $100 to $680 over the course of a decade. In February, 31 U.S. Senators signed a letter to Kaleo, the small Virginia company that makes Evzio. The letter states, "Such a steep rise in the cost of this drug threatens to price out families and communities that depend on naloxone to save lives ... At a time when Congress has worked to expand access to naloxone products and to assist state and local communities to equip first responders with this lifesaving drug, this startling price hike is very concerning." Regarding price increases for generic naloxone, Dr. Leana Wen, Baltimore's health commissioner, told Consumer Reports, "This is an older generic drug on the World Health Organization's list of essential medicines. It costs pennies in other countries ... It's completely inappropriate and, frankly, shameful that we are faced with these rising prices in the midst of an opioid epidemic. No one should be dying because we can't afford this drug." In defending the price of Evzio, Kaleo has said that since it enables even someone with no medical experience to easily save a life, it is worth the cost. The company has further stressed that it offers coupons so people can get the device through their health insurance without a co-pay. A company executive told Kaiser Health News that the list price is needed to offset the costs of the coupons. He further told KHN the company has given away more than 180,000 devices to police departments, treatment centers and others involved in saving overdose victims. Moreover, Kaleo says that units bought by regular consumers are often paid for by insurers, with insurers often negotiating lower prices. However, critics argue that prices paid by insurers are passed on to consumers in the form of high premiums. And when government entities buy Evzio, those costs are shouldered by taxpayers. Minnich's Pharmacy in York began selling naloxone without requiring a prescription in late 2015. Scott Miller, the president, said it stocked Evzio for a while, but there was no demand, probably because of the price. Presently, Minnich's stocks a version of naloxone that cost $135 when used with a store coupon that's available to anyone. Miller said demand was initially strong, but has fallen off. He didn't know if price is a factor. Not everyone considers the price of naloxone unreasonable. Duane Nieves, the director of field operations for Holy Spirit EMS in Cumberland County, says the company uses two-packs that include a breathing mask and cost $89. The price has risen 25 percent within about two years. However, Nieves says the cost of naloxone, and the increases, are in line with those of other life-saving drugs carried by medical responders. "My bigger fear is that demand would become so high that availability is limited," he says. The York County chapter of Not One More is a nonprofit focused on the overdose crisis. It has given out hundreds of doses of naloxone to parents and loved ones of addicts, and to halfway houses. According to co-founder Vickie Glatfelter, that includes about 800 Evzio devices, which were donated by the manufacturer. The supply of free devices occasionally runs out, she said. The organization also gives out two-dose naloxone kits which cost about $75 and are usually purchased with grant money. She said there has been a "slight increase" in the price of those, but not enough to significantly impact the ability to provide them. Moreover, Glatfelter says she has received feedback on the $75 kits, which come with an atomizer so the dose can be held under the victim's nose rather than injected, and hasn't heard from anyone who found them difficult to use. "One works just as well as the other," she says. Update Rep. Lou Barletta is facing a complaint filed with the Office of Congressional Ethics against the congressman alleging his misuse of official resources to promote his bid for the United States Senate. The complaint - filed by Pennsylvania Democratic Party - stems from a television interview the Hazleton Republican gave on Monday in which he discussed his potential Senate run from an official congressional office. Barletta told NBC affiliate WBRE-TV that he has "been looking at it very seriously." He said he would make an announcement in a couple weeks. Max Steele, who filed and signed the complaint for the state Democratic Party - noted that during the interview the seal of the United States Congress was visible in the background. Steele points out this was a violation of the House Code of Official Conduct and a possible violation of House Rules and federal law. "The ethical cloud that has hung over Congressman Lou Barletta his entire political career has disrupted his Senate campaign on day 1," Steele said. "While Congressman Barletta may think the rules don't apply to him, using official congressional resources to promote a political campaign is a clear violation of House Code of Official and may violate House Rules and federal law. Congressman Barletta should know better given this is his 7th campaign for federal office." John Brabender, a Barletta campaign strategist, said that what the congressman did was within the bounds of the law. Barletta was being interviewed on health care issues when he was asked a question on a possible Senate run. "It's turned out to be incredibly embarrassing for the Democratic state party," he said. "Obviously they didn't take time to review the law and that what Lou Barletta did was totally appropriate but what it also did was tip their hand that before Lou has decided if he is running again Bob Casey they show how scared they are of his potential candidacy." Barletta, whose 11th congressional district encompasses a swath of the midstate, has in recent months indicated he may challenge Sen. Bob Casey (D-Pa) in 2018. Politico this week, citing two Republican sources, reported Barletta did plan to run. A steadfast supporter of President Trump, Barletta, the former mayor of Hazelton, is an immigration hard-liner. Barletta, who is serving his fourth term in the House, has received encouragement from Trump suggesting he challenge Casey or Gov. Tom Wolf. "Pennsylvanians deserve a Senator they can count on to fight for them. Congressman Lou Barletta can only be counted on to fight for himself," Steele said. Harrisburg School District officials on Thursday fired back at two civil rights groups who "wrongly" accused district officials of having a discriminatory admission policy and being unaware of educational and constitutional law. "The district's policy regarding the admission of refugee and other students is lawful and consistent with the district's obligations under state and federal law," according to a statement by the school district. "The district regularly commits significant time and effort to help all families in enrolling their children as students." The district sent out a news release just after 6 p.m. to respond to a news release earlier in the day from the ACLU and Community Justice Project that criticized the school district's previous and current policies regarding admissions. The district is bound by state and federal rules and cannot "simply enroll any child for whom enrollment is sought," according to the school district's statement. Families who seek to enroll children must, for example, provide information such as proof of residency in the district's boundaries and proof of immunizations, according to Harrisburg's statement. The school district last week released its new enrollment guidance that school officials said makes clear they will consider "extraordinary or other circumstances" related to where the child was located or resided prior to residing in the district. The civil rights groups, including the local ACLU chapter, however, accused the district of not going far enough with its revised guidance policy. The district's previous policy contained no wiggle room for the kind of extenuating circumstances that refugees face upon relocation, according to the ACLU, and it delayed the enrollment of four refugees earlier this year by several months. The new policy still does not affirmatively state that students should always be admitted, according to the complaints by the ACLU. The ACLU threatened to sue first and ask questions later if the "problem recurs." But school officials said their new policy "refutes" the ACLU's allegations that the district is ignoring the needs of refugee children." Instead, school officials said, the new policy is in line with the district's lawful discretion to determine its student admissions procedures. "The District has not, does not and will not intend to unlawfully exclude students," according to a district statement. School officials said they were particularly concerned by the ACLU's harsh press release because it came on the heels of what they thought were productive, cooperative relations to address the ACLU's concerns. The district expected the cooperative relationship would continue in order to help refugee and other students enroll in school, school officials said, but instead, "the ACLU now portrays the district as being uncaring and discriminatory. That is unfortunate and unfair." Either way, the District will continue to help students enroll in school in full observance of the law, school officials said, adding that they are "committed to reasonably working with any organization that has the same goal." HARRISBURG--A cross adorned the front door of Edward Edmonds' "ministry" in Harrisburg, but any guise of religion ended there, authorities say. There wasn't a single Bible or religious item anywhere in Edmonds' home in the 2400 block of North Sixth Street, police said. Instead, police said, the three-story row home billed as the headquarters for his "Beyond Your Limits Ministry" was filled with drugs, demands and depravity. The "transitional housing ministry" was simply a mechanism, prosecutors say, to take advantage of young people with unstable housing or addiction issues and compel them into committing retail thefts of expensive electronics. Residents would bring home $2,000 worth of electronics from a prescribed "shopping list," police say, and be rewarded with $50 worth of heroin. If tenants didn't bring home electronics, and sometimes even if they did deliver the goods, they were shot in the legs with a BB gun or whipped with a belt. "I guess they would do it for pleasure," said Harrisburg Police Officer Anthony Fiore, the lead investigator from the Street Crimes Unit. "If you want your fix of heroin, let us shoot you in the knee." Female residents also were pressured into sex acts with Edmonds in exchange for heroin, including an encounter with a 16-year-old girl that was recorded on Edmonds' cell phone, police say. Police found a bag in Edmonds' bedroom where he stored driver's licenses, social security cards, access cards, vehicle registrations and other personal information from his tenants, which police believe he used to help control them. Edmonds allegedly offered heroin to residents who had not previously used opioids, prosecutors say, in an effort to get the residents hooked on harder drugs and make them easier to control. The story made national headlines last week when prosecutors announced 13 felonies against Edmonds, 31, and his alleged "right-hand man," Daerell Holmes. 20. The charges involving five victims represented the first charges of involuntary servitude in a human trafficking case in Dauphin County. The newly expanded law allowing the human trafficking charges was enacted in September 2014. Without the updated law, the case would have likely resulted in just drug and theft charges. Since the charges were announced last week, two additional victims have come forward, police said, bringing the total number of victims to four females and three males, all local residents. No new charges have been filed in connection to the newly identified victims. Police believe there are more victims and they urged anyone who lived in Edmonds' home to contact the district attorney's office at (717) 780-6767 or submit an online message through the CrimeWatch website. Not everyone who lived at the home became entangled in the alleged scheme, said Jack Canavan, senior deputy district attorney, but all of the victims identified so far had been residents. The uniqueness of the human trafficking charges caught the attention of the public, but the situation likely isn't that rare, police said. There could be other similar situations occurring across the region, with victims too afraid to come forward, or not even confidentt enough to recognize that they are victims. It's unclear how long the "house of horrors," as District Attorney Ed Marsico referred to it, had been operating in uptown Harrisburg. But Edmonds wrote on his LinkedIn page that he founded his ministry in March 2008 and he listed Williamsport and New York City as other locations. A Google street image from July 2014 shows a wooden cross on the porch of the home and the ministry poster taped to the front door at that time. Police said Edmonds initially lived in the home with his father and young son, now six or seven years old. But his father eventually moved out and the home evolved into a rooming house with five bedrooms, an enclosed porch that served as an additional bedroom as well as a cot for another person in the living room. Edmonds remained at the home with his young son. The landlord didn't know the property was being used as a rooming house, police said. Edmonds described his home on his LinkedIn page as "helping those in financial difficulties to save money to get on their feet and to be successful in society creating the structure of comfortability and relaxation in a home with Christian moral influences." But authorities said residents of the home laughed when police asked whether Edmonds offered Christian counseling or ministry of any kind. "They thought we were kidding," said Fiore, who worked with fellow members of the Street Crimes Unit to put together evidence to bring the charges. The situation "was very strange," Fiore said, and the case came together slowly, fueled by bits of serendipity. Fiore said he long believed that Edmonds and Holmes were part of an uptown theft ring. Both defendants have criminal histories with theft and drug arrests. But Fiore said he didn't know about anything deeper until he witnessed what he believed to be a drug deal in front of Holmes' house in the 2500 block of Lexington early this year. Fiore tried to stop the suspected drug user, but the user sped away. Several nights later, Fiore again saw the same car speeding away from what appeared to be another drug deal on Lexington. This time, however, Fiore enlisted help from police on the West Shore who stopped the driver. When Fiore interviewed him later, he told an elaborate tale of enslavement in exchange for drugs behind the closed doors of Edmonds' home on North Sixth. There wasn't much Fiore or the Street Crimes Unit could do at that point without more proof, but the story appeared to be bolstered during a random traffic stop weeks later. The car Fiore stopped contained drugs and a stolen gun, but it was the unopened box in the trunk containing a PlayStation 4 that really caught Fiore's eye. The names of the occupants also had come up in the initial drug user's statement. Fiore took the PlayStation box to several stores on the West Shore, including Kohl's on Carlisle Pike. Kohl's officials scanned the box and said it had been scanned into their inventory, but never scanned out. The store's surveillance system recorded one of the occupants of the car from the traffic stop stealing the PlayStation. Fiore caught another break on April 5 when probation officers checking Edmonds' home found drug paraphernalia in his bedroom and called police to the scene. That's when Fiore found the bag of personal identification cards that didn't belong to Edmonds. The cards gave Fiore a list of potential victims' names to contact while Edmonds was behind bars. The victims relayed details of abuse that dated back to October. The victims also noted that while Edmonds supplied heroin, he never personally ingested the drug as far as they knew. Holmes, meanwhile, had already been arrested for theft early this year related to several stolen ATVs. He was in prison in March when a hoverboard exploded and caught fire at the home he shared with his mother in the 2500 block of Lexington. The blaze killed his two-year-old daughter Ashanti Hughes and a relative, 10-year-old Savannah Dominick who had tried to rescue Ashanti. A judge released Holmes from jail to attend his daughter's funeral. Holmes remained free for a while after that but was later arrested for an unrelated drug dealing charge. His mother, Chaka Crawford, posted on Facebook this week that she was disappointed people who previously came to Holmes for money when they needed assistance were now turning their backs on him. "Everybody wanna call fat cuz when people needed bills paid," she wrote." But now where everyone acting like they don't even no my son." On Wednesday night, Crawford declined to comment to PennLive, deferring instead to her son's attorney, who could not be reached. Edmonds has remained in jail since his probation violation in April. He is being represented by the public defender's office, but it's unknown if an attorney has been assigned to his case. Holmes' role in the alleged scheme was that of Edmond's "right-hand man," prosecutors said. "He was identified in all our interviews as someone who would at times direct specific orders for (stolen) items," Fiore said. "We believe he was there with Edmonds for the majority of the time these things were happening." Holmes also was implicated in one group sex act in exchange for heroin, police said. The delicate way the case came together with the benefit of a few lucky breaks shows just how hard trafficking cases can be to identify, Fiore said. "Had that first traffic stop not been made," he said. "I would have looked right past those ID cards. I wouldn't have known what to make of them." But with that first drug user's account of what was happening on North Sixth Street, Fiore said he was able to later spot the PlayStation 4 as an important piece of evidence and hone in on the bag of personal identification. "We kind of just rolled from there," he said. "It's kind of crazy to think that this stuff is going on on Sixth street, but its real and a lot of the victims were drug users who had real problems... "It's a shame," Fiore said. "They all needed help but obviously they weren't getting that inside that house." READ MORE: Modern Slavery: What is human trafficking and who are its victims? The head of the Republican Party of Pennsylvania on Thursday fired back at its Democratic counterpart's most recent action against one of Pennsylvania's GOP congressmen. In a statement released to the media, Rob Brooks, executive director of the Republican Party of Pennsylvania, called an ethics complaint filed by the Pennsylvania Democratic Party against Rep. Lou Barletta a baseless accusation and a sign of the opposition's uncertainty. "It's clear the Pennsylvania Democrats know how vulnerable Bob Casey is as demonstrated by this baseless accusation made by one of their operatives," Brooks said int he statement. "They'll have to do better if they are going to hold on to this seat." On Monday the state Democratic Party filed a complaint with the Office of Congressional Ethics against Barletta alleging his misuse of official resources to promote his bid for the United States Senate. The complaint stems from a television interview the Hazleton Republican gave to NBC affiliate WBRE-TV, during which he discussed his potential Senate run from an official congressional office. Barletta, whose 11th congressional district encompasses swaths of central Pennsylvania, said he has "been looking at it very seriously." He said he would make an announcement in a couple weeks. The House Ethics Manual is clear that the congressman's response did not violate ethics rules, Brooks noted. "Maybe they should tell their woefully ineffective Senator to at least appear to attempt to govern. Instead, I suspect they will continue their lurch to the far left," he said. Max Steele, who filed and signed the complaint for the state Democratic Party - noted that during the interview the seal of the United States Congress was visible in the background. Steele claims the discussion of a possible Senate candidacy was a violation of the House Code of Official Conduct and a possible violation of House Rules and federal law. John Brabender, a Barletta campaign strategist, said that what the congressman did was within the bounds of the law. "It's turned out to be incredibly embarrassing for the Democratic state party," he said. "Obviously they didn't take time to review the law and that what Lou Barletta did was totally appropriate but what it also did was tip their hand that before Lou has decided if he is running again Bob Casey they show how scared they are of his potential candidacy." Administrators in the Lower Dauphin School District last week mailed out letters to district parents whose children owed $30 or more in overdue lunch fees from last year. There were 105 letters. One family owed $720. To be sure when students return in the fall, those students who are still in arrears will still be allowed to purchase a lunch, and some of them may not even settle up until their diplomas are on the line. The problem underscores an issue that this past year fueled national outrage: lunch shaming. Amid the struggle from districts to balance their food service ledgers, students found themselves facing harrowing experiences with cafeteria and school officials at times resorting to what quickly became known as lunch shaming. The practice - that of stigmatizing children who have outstanding credit or don't have enough money to pay for meals - drew wide attention and scrutiny, with accounts of children being required to do chores or wear a wristband when they were unable to pay for lunch. Now, with a new school year about to begin, schools in Pennsylvania could be facing some changes to policies that allowed school staff such license. Lower Dauphin won't be shaming any students, but district spokesman Jim Hazen notes the difficulty of the situation. "It's a problem," he said. "Obviously we don't want to stop feeding kids when they are in arrears but at the same time we can't allow families to run up $700 in debt." For starters, a new directive from the federal government this summer put all schools across the country on notice. The U.S. Department of Agriculture - which oversees the public school lunch program - directed all schools authorities to have in place by July 1 written policies that address situations where children are unable to pay for lunch. That directive takes effect this fall, and encourages districts to refrain from singling out children. Washington's guidelines excludes children in the free-lunch program. Looming in the horizon, as well, is potential action by the state Legislature in the form of a multi-faceted school code bill that addresses the issue of lunch shaming. The proposed legislation would crack down on the practice, barring schools from publicly identifying or stigmatizing students, making students do chores or discard a meal from a student that has already been served if he or she can't pay for it. Pennsylvania schools last year served up 173-plus million school lunches. Most entailed nothing more than the student presenting a meal card to the checkout lady. But the problem is widespread enough, sparing no district. Pennsylvania, in fact, helped sparked the national outrage over lunch shaming last fall after a cafeteria worker in the Canon-McMillan School District in western Pennsylvania quit rather than deny a regular lunch to an elementary school student. A policy put in place at the beginning of the 2016-2017 school year required the child be given a cheese sandwich. The USDA's directive arguably packs a mild punch in Pennsylvania. The U.S. Department of Agriculture has issued a directive ordering all schools to have school lunch policies that address lunch shaming in place this year. The federal government guidelines give school authorities - whether state education departments or individual districts - the discretion to develop their own individual policies. Basically that is the policy that has been in place in Pennsylvania where school policies are set at the local level. Even so, Casey Smith, a spokeswoman for the state Department of Education, said state officials have been engaged with the USDA and districts to ensure all students have access to lunch. "We have been active despite the fact that there may not be a statewide policy," she said. That proposed statewide police would require schools to provide a meal to a student who requests one regardless if they can pay for it unless their parent or guardian has given written permission to withhold the meal. It also defines procedures for notifying parents when a student owes money for five or more school meals and requires schools to direct their communications regarding money owed for school lunches to a parent or guardian and not the student. Even Congress has weighed in on the conversation. Pending legislation in Congress would ban lunch shaming or otherwise singling out students with lunch debt. A Senate bill, co-sponsored by U.S. Sen. Bob Casey (D-Pa.) resembles one introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives and would forbid schools from discriminating against or stigmatizing children who have outstanding credit or don't have enough money to pay for meals. It would ban the practice of singling out children -- like making them wear wristbands or have assigned chores. The bills call for steps such as limiting all communication about debt between the school and parents, and making it easier to apply for free or reduced-priced lunches. In general though, these proposals mostly fall short of offering specific solutions for filling the financial hole caused by lunch debt. Many districts - such as Lower Dauphin and Carlisle, to name just two - have opted to wait to see what the Legislature does before revising policies on outstanding lunch fees. Indeed, with 500 school districts in Pennsylvania, the guidelines set by the USDA are not likely to score a strong grade: Policies across the districts run the gamut and seemingly contradict one of the intents of the USDA requirement - that of ensuring consistency and transparency. According to Davelyn Smeltzer, senior director of governance services for the Pennsylvania School Boards Association, the majority of school districts have revised their policies to meet the USDA requirements. Policy updates include parental notification of low and negative school meal account balances and limits on charged meals, she said. In addition, most schools already have in place policies that allow students unable to pay on a given day the ability to take an alternative meal. "Each school entity has to develop procedures regarding the collection of unpaid meal charges which shall not have a negative impact on the student, but focus primarily on the parents/guardians," Smeltzer said. "Procedures are established at the local level." With discretion residing under district purview, policies in some places remain in flux or unchanged. Carlisle School District, for instance, is one of those district that took up the conversation last year but now has opted to table any action pending legislation. No doubt the issue pits the welfare of students and district goodwill against the practical matter of districts paying their food bills. According to the School Nutrition Association, 76 percent of school districts have students with lunch debt, up from about 71 percent in 2014. Across the country districts continue to deal with thousands and even hundreds of thousands in lunch debt. School cafeterias operate on thin margins and need to be self-sustaining. A financial deficit can lower the quality of lunches served to everyone. In Central Dauphin School District, students collectively owed more than $91,000 in back lunch payments as of mid-May. The West Shore School District, like others, was looking to change their policy in May but tabled the action due to the pending lunch shaming legislation. District spokesman Ryan Argot said whether students participate in the free and reduced-price lunch program, the district always makes sure all student receive a National School Lunch Program-compliant meal. "We don't want our kids to go hungry," he said. Those students, however, are not permitted to purchase a la carte items that the cafeteria sells. The district works with parents of students whose accounts are depleted to get the accounts caught up. The bottom line is that little has changed since the issue sparked a firestorm over school districts either making delinquent students go hungry or shaming them in front of the cafeteria. With school districts increasingly aware that for some kids the school lunch is the only meal they might have on any given day, most are striving to balance the "reasonable efforts" to collect unpaid fees with feeding a hungry child. The National Christmas Center in Paradise -- a family attraction which features 15 Christmas-related galleries and 20,000 square-feet of indoor exhibits -- has announced it will close early next year. A post on the center's web site informs visitors that: "After many tough conversations and some difficult seasons over the past few years, National Christmas Center has had to make the very difficult decision to close its doors permanently following our 2017 season." The center's last day open to visitors will be Jan. 7, 2018, unless someone steps in to save it, as the company as a whole has been listed for sale. The center was opened 19 years ago and founded by Jim Morrison, a lifelong collector of Christmas memorabilia. Morrison's project started when, during a visit to the Christiana Mall in Newark, Del., the "Tudor Towne" exhibit caught his eye. Morrison says it was one of the last of the "over the top" department store Christmas displays. He acquired it and found the building in Paradise in 1988 to house it. The building became the National Christmas Center in 1998. On its website the center concluded its message saying: "We appreciate all of our many local and loving customers and friends and cannot thank you all enough for the many years of support and love you have shown us over the years." "Merry Christmas to you all!" PHILADELPHIA (AP) -- On a long-ago summer night, 16-year-old Giovanni Reid accepted a neighbor's invitation to an International House of Pancakes restaurant as thanks for watching the man's infant son. By sunrise, the outing in south Philadelphia had veered to robbery, then murder. "I had never seen somebody get shot like that right in front of me," Reid, now 42, said in a telephone interview from prison. "It was a very scary thing to be a part of." Nearly 26 years later, Reid -- who has long denied a direct role in the crime, but faults himself for hanging out with an older, fast-running crowd -- will soon get the chance to start over. He is one of 517 Pennsylvania offenders sentenced to life without parole for crimes committed as juveniles whose cases are being revisited because of a pair of Supreme Court rulings. Pennsylvania leads the nation in those serving mandatory no-release sentences for crimes committed as minors, the result of laws that long treated teens charged with the most serious crimes like adults. After the Supreme Court barred such sentences for juveniles in 2012, Pennsylvania officials argued that did not apply to those already in prison. Then last year the nation's highest court said the ban must be applied retroactively, triggering new sentencing hearings and parole for inmates across the country. In Pennsylvania, judges have resentenced more than 100 inmates, many now in their 50s and 60s. Reid, who was resentenced earlier this year and approved for parole in July, hopes to be released in August. So far, 58 Pennsylvania inmates have been released, and five have been denied parole. Two inmates have been resentenced to life without parole since the Supreme Court's ruling last year, allowed by the justices in rare cases when offenders' crimes reflect "permanent incorrigibility." State prison officials and advocates say they are working to prepare inmates for return to a world very different from the one they left behind, pairing them with mentors and psychologists. "One of the things that makes it a more challenging group is that they came in as children," said John Wetzel, secretary of corrections. About 300 of the inmates are in prison for killings in Philadelphia, defense attorneys say. Judges here have fast-tracked the cases of some of the longest-serving inmates, approving new sentences negotiated by the district attorney's office and defenders that have made most immediately eligible for parole. In April, Reid was resentenced to 25 years to life, making him eligible for release. He was approved for parole in July and hopes to be released in August. Reid acknowledges being with a group of men and knowing one had a gun when that man shot Robert Janke, 22, a pre-med University of Pennsylvania student. The shooter was convicted of first-degree murder. Reid turned down an offer to plead guilty in exchange for 25 to 50 years in prison, and was convicted of second-degree murder. Now city courts have begun dealing with the contested cases. A panel of Philadelphia judges ruled this spring that they would allow juvenile offenders to be resentenced to life without parole, but only in rare cases. The state Supreme Court has also set tight boundaries for the case reviews. In June, the court sided with inmate Qu'eed Batts, who argued that life without parole for juvenile offenders should be all but forbidden. The court said prosecutors can only sentence juveniles to no-parole terms in rare circumstances and must first prove beyond a reasonable doubt that they are "irreparably corrupt" and beyond rehabilitation. "It is the exceedingly rare and uncommon juvenile whose crime reflects his permanent incorrigibility who therefore may be constitutionally sentenced to life without the possibility of parole," Justice Christine Donohue wrote on behalf of the court's majority. People on both sides said the ruling could effectively eliminate life without parole for juvenile offenders in the state. Others are waiting to see how resentencings play out in court. "That is an exceedingly high burden," said one of Batts' lawyers, Bradley Bridge of the Defender Association of Philadelphia. The association represents about two-thirds of the city's juvenile lifers. Batts was 14 when he shot two other teens in Easton, killing one of them, after a gang superior handed him a gun and mask and told him to "put work in." He is now 26 and has twice been sentenced to life without parole, but must be resentenced. While the prospect of release has given new hope to inmates and their families, it has brought back painful memories for the families of many victims. Robin Kays of Linesville is one of the few who understands both sides. Nearly 40 years ago, her brother and her cousin, both 16, shot her stepfather to death while he slept, in a plot one hatched to reunite his divorced parents. Kays, then 21, recalls joining other family members to clean up the blood. But after years of prison visits with Joseph Frisina and Ricky Battles and watching them mature, she is convinced they should be released. Both were recently resentenced, with Battles subsequently denied parole. Frisina isn't yet eligible. "If I was reading about these two cases and I wasn't connected, I know what I would be saying," Kays said. "But we do know them. We do know what they became." UPDATE: Judge clears way for Atlantic Sunrise pipeline to begin in central Pa. WILLIAMSPORT -- The area in which work on the Atlantic Sunrise natural gas pipeline will take place will be staked beginning Aug. 14, the project manager told a judge Thursday. The staking will take place along the 127-mile long Central Penn South line between Lancaster and Columbia counties and the 58-mile long Central Penn North line between Columbia and Susquehanna counties, David Sztroin said. Clearing and grading the right-of-way is scheduled to begin in mid-September, he said. Sztroin gave a project update during testimony Thursday in U.S. Middle District Court on Transcontinental Gas Pipeline Co.'s motion for an injunction that would allow the Texas company access to four properties in Northumberland County and one each in Columbia, Lebanon and Luzerne. The goal is to have the pipeline in service by next July but that will not occur unless all the required easements are obtained, Sztroin said. Two permits from the state Department of Environmental Protection and one from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission still are needed before construction can begin, he said. Judge Matthew W. Brann in March had granted Transco access to other properties. Most of the easements for the project have been obtained, the company says. A settlement with one property owner was reached just before the hearing. Pipeline company buys farm where protesters built wooden structure When a court grants access to a property, the subsidiary of the Williams Cos. posts a bond until the value of the easement is determined. Transco needs larger temporary easements for construction and smaller permanent ones for the pipeline right of way. The Atlantic Sunrise pipeline and related loops will pass through a number of central Pennsylvania counties including Northumberland, Schuylkill, Lebanon and Lancaster. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission in February issued a certificate of public convenience for the $3 billion project that will increase the capacity to transport natural gas from the Marcellus Shale region to markets in the Mid-Atlantic and Southeast. The project includes revised piping in six compressor stations in Maryland, Virginia and North Caroline to permit natural gas to flow in both directions. Work has started on three compressor stations and 21/2 miles of pipeline have been replaced in Virginia, Sztroin said. As of the end of May Transco had spent nearly $700,000 on the project, he said. Under the FERC order, Transco has until Feb. 3, 2020, to complete the project. Sztroin stressed Transco needs to have the pipeline in service by next July because it has contracts with suppliers. There are environmental restrictions like when work can affect wild trout streams that will have a bearing on the completion date, he said. Peter J. Carfly, who represents all but one of the owners of properties that were the subject of the hearing, noted a number of environmental groups have asked FERC for a rehearing on its approval of the project. Brann ruled that was irrelevant because a rehearing has not been granted so FERC's approval remains in effect. When many people think of human trafficking, they may imagine a stifling hot truck with refugees packed in life-threatening conditions in a trailer. Or children being kidnapped and sold as sex slaves overseas. But human trafficking is a broad category that covers many more crimes. And it doesn't even require the transportation of a victim. Simply put, human trafficking is as form of modern slavery where suspects use force, fraud or coercion against victims to manipulate them into forced labor or sexual exploitation. In Pennsylvania, a new law passed in 2014 expanded the state's trafficking statutes to better define trafficking and explicitly include sexual servitude. The law known as Act 105 establishes the crime of involuntary servitude, a first-degree felony, patronizing the victim of sexual servitude, a second-degree felony and unlawful conduct regarding documents, also a second-degree felony. The law lists 13 "means" of subjecting a person to involuntary servitude including: Causing or threating to cause serious harm to any individual Physically restraining another individual Extortion Fraud Taking the individual's personal property as a means of coercion Debt coercion Facilitating or controlling the individual's access to a controlled substance In recent involuntary servitude charges filed against two Harrisburg men, Senior Deputy District Attorney Jack Canavan said those crimes met three of the 13 means: threat of violence, retaining personal property and controlling access to drugs. Human trafficking is a growing, $32 billion industry around the globe, YWCA officials have said, with a recent troubling intersection with drug trafficking. "One business hiding within each other," said Rhonda Hendrickson, director of violence intervention and prevention at the YWCA Greater Harrisburg. "They're turning (users) into sex slaves. We've seen that and experienced that in our program. It's an extreme problem that people don't particularly notice. Who's going to think of a drug addict as a victim?" The victims aren't willingly trading sex for drugs, she said. Instead, they are being manipulated by the power of their addiction. Suspects use the addiction against victims to do a certain list of things, but the list of things never ends," Hendrickson said. Another harder-to-detect form of human trafficking can involve men who pose as boyfriends to get women into commercial sex exploitation. The men say they need financial help and ask their "girlfriend" to prostitute themselves. "But he has 10 other women doing the same thing," Hendrickson said. "She doesn't even realize she's being psychologically manipulated." While there have been locally-reported cases with Mandarin-speaking foreign nationals being brought down into the Harrisburg area from Flushing in New York City, to work the hotels, the majority of trafficking victims in our region are domestic residents, Hendrickson said, many of them local. There are some cases where victims from Allentown have been brought down to work hotels in the Harrisburg area. The victims who are brought into the area usually move along fairly quickly to avoid detection. "They're always on the move to avoid detection and avoid stings," Hendrickson said. But people also can be trafficked right out of their own home with husbands victimizing their wives or parents victimizing their children. The Harrisburg YWCA is one of the very few federally-funded programs in the Commonwealth to fight human trafficking. The organization received a $500,000 grant for their shelter-recovery model. The state's newly expanded law against human trafficking added some much-needed teeth, said District Attorney Ed Marsico. Previously, cases where victims were forced into the sex trade often could only be prosecuted as "promoting prostitution," a misdemeanor. But now, those suspects can get slapped with first-degree felonies. Along with the state's newly expanded law against human trafficking, police are also getting more training every year about how to identify cases of human trafficking. Police officers formerly were eligible for one-hour of voluntary training, but now get three-hours of mandatory training to help identify signs of human trafficking. But everyone, not just police officers, can help look for the signs, Hendrickson said. Red flags can include a 16-year-old girl with a 30-year-old boyfriend, or an older woman taking an interest in a teenager and getting the younger girl "makeovers" and introductions to older men. Parents also should pay attention to whom their children interact with on social media as traffickers will try to infiltrate social media sites to learn about vulnerabilities and take advantage, she said. In the past, trafficking victims often were labeled as suspects of prostitution or drug crimes, because they sometimes don't necessarily have "clean hands," Hendrickson said. But that's often because they've been exploited, she said. In Harrisburg's recent case, for example, prosecutors allege that Edward Edmonds sought to get residents of his transitional housing program hooked on heroin so he could then manipulate them to steal electronics in exchange for bags of dope. This year, 151 cases of trafficking have been reported in Pennsylvania with the majority falling into the sex trafficking category. The National Human Trafficking Hotline has detailed statistics for each state on their website. While human trafficking previously was thought to victimize mostly foreign nationals smuggled on ships, law enforcement authorities in Dauphin County were among the first in the state to recognize the crime strikes a lot closer to home. The county was among the first to start a task force and increase training. "It's been here all along," Marsico said. "We just weren't focusing on it." By Joel Mathis Here's a warning to my fellow liberals: We're as much in danger of blind allegiance to a Donald Trump-like figure as the conservatives we mock and criticize these days. And if -- when -- it happens, it'll make all the sense in the world. How do I know this? Easy. I've seen it happen in Philadelphia. Philadelphia, as you probably know, has long been governed by the Democratic Party. That governance is famously corrupt: Rarely a month goes by that some elected official in the city -- be it a state representative, a district attorney, a congressman, or someone else -- isn't hauled off to jail for this kickback or that bit of self-dealing. It's probably not a coincidence that Philly was recently named one of the most poorly run cities in the nation. So when my own congressman, former U.S. Rep. Chaka Fattah, was indicted a few years back, my prayer was loud and broadcast wide: "Lord, please give this city a functioning Republican Party." It's not that I'm a Republican; I really am not. But it occurred to me that marketplace rules -- a little competition helps everybody raise their game a bit -- might work as a hedge against a Democratic Party that, in Philadelphia at least, seems incapable of doing anything more than preserving its own power. The pushback was immediate, from people I knew and liked. Sure the party had problems, I was told, but nothing would be fixed by voting Republican. Vote GOP, I was told, and you're voting against protections for abortion and gay rights. Vote GOP, I was told, and you're giving the execrable Daryl Metcalfe an ally in Harrisburg. Vote GOP, I was told, and you make Obamacare vulnerable at the federal level. All of which was -- and is -- true. The problem with that truth, though, is this: It left bad people in power. Fattah was found guilty of corruption; so was his son. So was Seth Williams, and so were judges galore, and more than a few members of the Philadelphia delegation to Harrisburg. It's not exactly shocking that Congressman Bob Brady, long the head of the city's Democratic Party, now stands accused of chicanery to keep his own seat. What does all of this have to do with President Donald Trump? Well, Trump does have his true believers. They're not hard to find on the Internet or maybe even your hometown -- people willing to deny stories about him as "fake news," or even to suggest his manifest flaws are actually virtues. Folks who four years ago derided President Barack Obama's fans as a "Dear Leader" cult of personality now, non-ironically, are offering that same unquestioning fealty to the new president now that one of their own is in charge. But there are plenty of Republicans who know that Trump is a bad deal, believe his temperament and narcissism are magnified in the Oval Office, and are damaging to this country and its institutions. Like my liberal friends, however, they fear the price of not following him. I recently had coffee with a smart conservative friend who is open about his disdain for Trump. And yet, because he's a pro-lifer, even he felt a moment's need to mute his criticism of the president. "He gave us (Supreme Court Justice Neil) Gorsuch," my friend said of Trump. "Honestly, I feel like I owe him something." Even the best of us, it turns out, are tempted to make some tradeoffs in the name of ideology. Which keeps having the same result: Bad people are left in power. In Philadelphia, the result is a city run with its citizens as a secondary consideration to graft. At the national level, well, we've yet to see just how bad it's going to get. But it's probably going to get pretty bad. Which means that somebody like U.S. Sen. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., is really doing something extraordinary when -- as happens this week -- he separates himself ever so slightly from the party to offer a criticism. "If this was our Faustian bargain," he said of Trump's election, "then it was not worth it." Flake's comments were largely greeted with disdain by liberals. After all, Flake voted last week for the "skinny repeal" health care bill. He hasn't taken real action to push back against the president, yet, so who cares about words. Listen: Democrats are the minority power in Washington D.C. If they're going to successfully resist Trump's reign of error, they're going to need a few Republicans to join them. But they're going to make it difficult for that to happen if they decide they don't want to work with anti-Trump Republicans who are still, you know, Republicans. Otherwise, our political polarization is just going to give us more of the same bad deal. And we should be a little bit humble. Trump's supporters aren't something new on the political scene. Even liberals can exchange integrity for ideology. Let's hope that when our moment comes again, we'll be more willing to take on the bad guys on "our" side. Otherwise, we'll just get more Trump. And more Philadelphia. The state universities' revolving door of chief executives continues to spin with Lock Haven President Michael Fiorentino, Jr. being the latest one to announce his impending departure. Lock Haven University President Michael Fiorentino Jr. announced on Wednesday he will be retiring next March, becoming the latest in a series of presidential departure at the State System of Higher Education universities. He announced on Wednesday he will be retiring in March 2018 after nearly seven years of serving as this Clinton County public university's chief executive. His announcement comes on the heels of State System of Higher Education Chancellor Frank Brogan's announcement last month that he is stepping down on Sept. 1 after nearly four years. The month before, the system's most veteran president, Clarion University's Karen Whitney, announced she was retiring next June after completing her eighth year there. Others who are leaving within the next year are Mansfield University President Francis Hendricks, who is retiring later this month and Millersville University President John Anderson, who is retiring next March. Slippery Rock University's President Cheryl Norton retired in July. Cheyney University has been operating with an interim president, currently Aaron Walton, since July 2014. A search for a permanent president is in the beginning stages as is one for Anderson's successor. In May, the State System of Higher Education hired new permanent presidents for Bloomsburg and Shippensburg universities. Bashar Hanna began his tenure at Bloomsburg on July 7 and Laurie Carter will start hers at Shippensburg this coming Monday. In January, West Chester named Christopher Fiorentino as its permanent president. The presidents at California, Edinboro and Kutztown universities all started since 2015. Only two presidents in the system have been in their positions longer. They are East Stroudsburg University's Marcia Welsh and Indiana University of Pennsylvania's President Michael Driscoll, both of whom started in 2011. This Aug. 8, 2016 photo provided by the J.R. Simplot Company shows Simplot Plant SciencesAo Innate Generation 2 genetically engineered potatoes at the Michigan State University field that have that survived after being infected with late blight disease, that led to the Irish potato famine, in East Lansing, Mich. Canadian officials said three types of potatoes genetically engineered by an Idaho company to resist the pathogen that caused the famine are safe for the environment and safe to eat. The approval confirmed by Health Canada officials on Thursday, Aug. 3, 2017, means the J.R. Simplot Co. potatoes can be imported, planted and sold in Canada. (Nicolas Champouret/J.R. Simplot Company via AP) Prime Minister Justin Trudeau speaks to reporters at the National Governor's Association (NGA) Special Session - Collaborating to Create Tomorrow's Global Economy Friday, July 14, 2017 in Providence, Rhode Island. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is promising close collaboration with the premiers throughout negotiations to overhaul the North American Free Trade Agreement. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Ryan Remiorz Minister of Environment and Climate Change Catherine McKenna responds to a question during Question Period in the House of Commons Friday June 16, 2017 in Ottawa. McKenna is facing legal action from several environmental groups who accuse the government of dragging its heels on investigating Volkswagen for duping Canadians with diesel engines.THE CANADIAN PRESS/Adrian Wyld Ontario deputy NDP leader Jagmeet Singh launches his bid for the federal NDP leadership in Brampton, Ont., on Monday, May 15, 2017. Federal NDP leadership hopefuls will make a critical pitch tonight to supporters in British Columbia ??? a province where party members are finding renewed hope after the swearing-in of NDP Premier John Horgan.THE CANADIAN PRESS/Nathan Denette In this October 2013 photo, Audemio Orozco-Ramirez speaks during an interview in Helena, Mont., about a sexual assault he says he experienced at the Jefferson County jail in Boulder, Mont. U.S. immigration authorities arrested Orozco-Ramirez on Wednesday, Aug. 2, 2017, and plan to deport him to Mexico just months after he settled claims that he was raped in a Montana jail while previously awaiting deportation proceedings, the man's attorney said. (John S. Adams/The Great Falls Tribune via AP) Malcolm McGown, the father of Stephen McGown, who was released in Mali by Islamic Extremists, talks at a news conference in Pretoria, South Africa, Thursday Aug.3, 2017. Stephen McGown was released after being held captive for six years in Mali. (AP Photo) FILE - In this Jan. 28, 2015 file photo, Panama's former President Ricardo Martinelli answers questions during an interview at a hotel in Guatemala City. A federal magistrate judge is hearing arguments Thursday, Aug. 3, 2017, to determine whether 65-year-old Ricardo Martinelli can remain in the U.S. or must return to Panama for trial. Martinelli was Panama's president from 2009-2014. (AP Photo/Moises Castillo, File) FILE - In this Jan. 13, 2015 file photo, Joe Main, third from left, Assistant Secretary of Labor for Mine Safety and Health, and Patricia Silvey, center, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Operations with MSHA, speak with workers at the Gibson North mine, in Princeton, Ind. Deaths in U.S. coal mines this year have surged ahead of last yearAos, and federal safety officials say the inexperience of those new to a mine could share the blame. But the nationAos coal minerAos union says the mine safety agency isnAot taking the right approach to fixing the problem. Silvey said eight of the coal miners who died this year had less than a yearAos experience at the mine where they worked. "We found from the stats that category of miners were more prone to have an accident,Au Silvey said in an interview with The Associated Press before the 10th death occurred at a mine in Pennsylvania on July 25. (AP Photo/Timothy D. Easley, File) The pandemic brought a technological revolution to schools. Is that a good thing? Regardless of the path, by necessity, most educators agree the pandemic electrified the use of technology in the classroom. U.S. readying more sanctions for Venezuela to regime's response, oil included Trump weighs tying more Venezuela sanctions to Maduro's actions . Sen. Rubio says Venezuela oil sanctions are possible. - Enlarge video By Jennifer A Dlouhy WASHINGTON Petroleumworld 08 03 2017 The White House is prepared to levy additional sanctions on Venezuela to counter repression by President Nicolas Maduro in the crisis-torn nation, with restrictions on oil trade among the most severe options being considered. "You can expect that every time Maduro does something outrageous, the White House will respond with additional sanctions," Senator Marco Rubio, a Republican from Florida, said in an interview with Bloomberg Television. "For every action there will be a strong reaction, and the great news is other countries are going to join us." White House officials have prepared a menu of possible additional sanctions against Venezuela, according to a person familiar with the planning who asked not to be identified discussing internal deliberations. The U.S. already froze Maduro's assets in the U.S. this week in response to his move to rewrite Venezuela's constitution. Officials are divided over the idea of restricting imports of crude from Venezuela, a major source of income for the cash-strapped country, the person said. Venezuela, a founding member of OPEC, has the world's largest proven reserves and is South America's largest oil exporter. It's the third-largest supplier to the U.S. -- sending 10 percent of its imports last year -- and the top supplier to refineries on the U.S. Gulf Coast, home of the largest cluster of them in the world. Read More: U.S. Announces Sanctions Against 13 Venezuelan Officials Oil companies have warned that limits on Venezuelan oil imports could disadvantage Gulf and East Coast refiners designed to handle the country's heavy crude and cause gasoline prices to spike. Some administration officials also worry the action could exacerbate the country's worsening humanitarian situation. Maduro, who has faced four months of violent protests that have left more than 110 dead, followed through on his plan this week to hold elections for a constitutional assembly. His government also seized opposition leaders Leopoldo Lopez and Antonio Ledezma from their homes and threw them in jail. President Donald Trump condemned that action. "The United States holds Maduro who publicly announced just hours earlier that he would move against his political opposition personally responsible for the health and safety of Mr. Lopez, Mr. Ledezma, and any others seized," Trump said in the statement Tuesday. "We reiterate our call for the immediate and unconditional release of all political prisoners." The next set of U.S. sanctions are likely to first involve designations of more individuals, according to a person familiar with the deliberations. Curtailing financial transactions or restricting trade in crude oil or fuel between the nations could come next, though neither step appears imminent, the person said. Such a staged approach "gives Maduro multiple opportunities to relent," Kevin Book, managing director of ClearView Energy Partners LLC, said in a research note to clients. Rubio, who says he's been in touch with Trump and Vice President Michael Pence on the issue, said the administration is moving "very incrementally, very strategically, very targeted and very smart." In the energy space, a first step could be blocking exports of light U.S. crude oil to Venezuela, possibly followed by limits on oilfield service companies doing business with the country, the person said. A third option is limiting imports of heavy Venezuelan crude, possibly with progressively larger limits on the trade. Venezuela's state-owned oil company, Petroleos de Venezuela SA , has already begun searching for alternate buyers of its heavy crude, in advance of possible U.S. sanctions, Bloomberg reported Tuesday. About a third of all oil produced in Venezuela is processed at American refineries on the Gulf Coast. Shipments to the U.S. were worth about $12 billion last year. Story by Jennifer A Dlouhy;With assistance by Kevin Cirill i from Bloomberg . bloomberg .com / 08 02 2017 A long line for American Airlines customer service at the Philadelphia Airport. Read more Our smiles said it all. My cousins Mary Ann and Chrissy and I posed for an early morning selfie in Terminal C at Philadelphia International Airport shortly after 7:30 Wednesday morning, fittingly wearing Hollywood smiles. We were headed to our beloved Southern California, a second home for us East Coast Mastrulls. But life disappoints at times. On Wednesday, life and American Airlines delivered a doozy that went on and on and on. Thirty-eight hours. I wrote much of this on Thursday morning, when we were still in Philly more than a day after American Airlines Flight 597 was supposed to lift off, bound for LAX. One family dinner missed; a "date" with my 5-year-old cousin Carter to watch The Lego Batman Movie, under the stars in Burbank, and then go for ice cream, also scrapped. That's because after a couple of canceled flights, we spent a second full day at PHL to await a 5:30 p.m. flight that was to get us to Los Angeles around 8:30 p.m. Thursday. It didn't take off then, either. A second day with family lost. A second day at the house we rented gone unused. This nonvacation vacation stalled early Wednesday when we were supposed to begin boarding at Gate C27, but instead were told there was a mechanical problem and to sit tight. As the delay grew, we watched another flight to L.A. depart from the gate next to ours. More waiting ensued with few updates. Then came word that a part had been found, with one big problem no one to install it. More waiting. A lunch of soft pretzels, trail mix, licorice, and chocolate bark. More waiting. Then rain, thunder, and lightning. Then, mechanics were found, but they couldn't go out to the plane because of the lightning. Then, all traffic in and out of the airport was halted because of the storm. And yet, American Airlines kept us hoping. The sun came out, the mechanics installed the needed part, but unfortunately were unable to plug one giant hole the empty cockpit. So began a search for a pilot and crew to operate the plane and tend to the passengers. As carts of sandwiches, chips, and cookies were wheeled in for the hungry and disheartened in Terminal C, tempers started to flare. And the line to the customer service counter grew longer and longer past the seating area, Auntie Anne's, Popeyes, and Chickie's & Pete's, with passengers from other flights now delayed because of storms wreaking havoc throughout the Northeast. The wait in that line was, for some, three hours. Starbucks sold out of most everything and was short-staffed, not expecting hundreds to be stranded during a casual Wednesday evening in summer. But finally, seven hours after our flight was to have taken off, I got an email from American Airlines. Finally, an apology and recompense, I figured. I figured wrong. It was a marketing effort, an attempt to sell me miles! Sell me something. What poor timing. What not to do in a business crisis. What an example of disconnect between the business plan and what's going on on the tarmac or, in our case, not going on. I was willing to forgive when the answer to Flight 597's prayers seemed to arrive. A gate attendant stood before the frustrated, weary masses pressed up to the counter and declared: "We are getting you a new aircraft from Dallas. We will get you to Los Angeles tonight. It will leave from Gate C30." A cheer went up. Then a rush for backpacks, purses, and our new gate. That short trek from C27 to C30 felt like a victory walk. A short-lived victory. Ten minutes later, an agent told us the promised flight was canceled. Raised voices. Wild gesticulating. Cursing. And then to the phones I went, where a soft-spoken angel named Mary worked for a half-hour, thanking me for my patience, to find my cousins and me flights Thursday morning to Austin, Texas, where we would get on a connection to L.A. I called her a lifesaver. To a cab we went, to get five hours of sleep before returning for our 9:15 a.m. departure. All smiles again. Until we got to the airport and learned our flight to Austin had been canceled sometime before 2 a.m. Back to the phones. After reading my complaint, an American rep at noon Thursday said she had put 10,000 more frequent-flier miles into my account. Next came an email sporting an "Aviator Redemption Guide" from my American MasterCard offering me ways to spend my miles. And finally, minutes before boarding, a text arrived to one of my cousins indicating American intends to send each of us a voucher. Later the airline would clarify this, saying we could have either a $200 voucher or 10,000 frequent-flier miles, not both. By 5:15 p.m., we had finally boarded Flight 717. Then came an announcement that there would be a delay in backing away from the gate due to a problem with the door handle. An hour later, the airline announced that it was taking the plane out of service. So we all got off. At the time, the airline said it didn't know what it was going to do. A little after 7 p.m., we were all moved to Gate A12 to await an 8:30 departure. And in a repeat of Wednesday night, the airline wheeled out a free snack cart of sandwiches and chips. This time, success! Boarding was completed by 8:30 and we all settled back for a 5-hour flight that would get us to L.A. around 11. Then we waited on the runway, and waited some more. Finally, we took off just after 9:30 38 hours later than we originally planned. We landed at 11:30 p.m., L.A. time, and found, waiting for us in baggage claim, our luggage, which we had checked Wednesday morning and was sent to LAX on an early-morning flight Thursday. In August 2013, I walked out next to the First Amendment monument at Independence Hall National Historic Park in Philly with a joint and a bullhorn for a protest. At the direction of the U.S. attorney, hundreds police officers showed up to prevent any marijuana from being smoked. National Park Service rangers cited me for marijuana possession, and I was brought to trial in federal court. It was a pretty open-and-shut case. In 2014, Judge Jacob Hart stated at my sentencing hearing that he would vote to legalize marijuana if he could, then handed down a $3,000 cash fine and two years of supervised probation. I was drug-tested monthly and had severe travel restrictions for possessing 0.4 gram of cannabis: my half-smoked joint. The case was the most minor, yet my record remains. Under current law, in order to clear my name, I need a presidential pardon and, oddly for a man who comments on just about everything, President Trump has been completely silent on marijuana since taking office. In a Facebook Live video on Wednesday, U.S. Sen. Cory Booker (D., N.J.) announced a new bill to bring a swift end to federal prohibition: The Marijuana Justice Act. The language also seeks to address the real terror and long-term consequences these laws have caused for millions of Americans. Foremost in Booker's plan is the concept of descheduling. That means removing marijuana from the 1970 Controlled Substances Act. That would put the nontoxic plant on the same level as alcohol and tobacco, allowing states to freely regulate the products. If enacted, Booker's plan would be a truly monumental shift. By eliminating this keystone provision, a nearly century-old war against cannabis consumers and growers would end. Booker used the introduction of his bill to recognize the tremendous positive developments in states that have legalized cannabis for adult use and also took issue with his former Senate colleague Jeff Sessions' hard-line stance as U.S. attorney general. Booker noted that the drug war has "a disproportionately devastating impact on Americans of color and the poor." That's why Booker's new legislation is so critical, because federal marijuana prohibition had institutional racism built into it by design. From Harry Anslinger with Reefer Madness and the Marihuana Tax Stamp Act in the 1930s to President Richard M. Nixon's crafting the Controlled Substances Act in 1970s, those who framed the policy of prohibition were unabashedly using drug laws to target certain groups. John Ehrlichman, Nixon's domestic policy chief, gave this infamous quote in a 2016 Harper's magazine interview: "The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what I'm saying? We knew we couldn't make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did." In Philadelphia, that reality plays out every day. Leading up to our 2014 decriminalization ordinance, more than 3,000 black residents were arrested for marijuana possession every year. That was four times the rate of handcuffs used for white residents in the city over possession of the same plant. Even after decriminalization, we still have racial disparities among the remaining weed arrests. Booker has been a longtime reform advocate, but there seems to be a new drive behind his recent passion for the issue. It may be because more elected officials from both parties are willing to get involved with cannabis legislation. Many observers give Booker's bill only an outside shot because of the GOP-controlled Congress. But Tom Garrett of Virginia, a Republican in the House, has already introduced a bill to remove marijuana from the Controlled Substances Act. There could be more traction on the Hill for cannabis than many politicos realize. Still, word for word, Booker's design is the best starting point to a real solution for marijuana in America. The bill even breaks new ground in the Senate by creating a federal grant program to give money back to communities that have felt the worst effects of criminal prohibition. And, for thousands like me, the bill would bypass the President and allow federal marijuana records to be easily expunged. As more states regulate cannabis, creating tens of thousands of jobs and perhaps billions of dollars in new tax revenue, Congress can no longer endorse such a costly conflict. The Marijuana Justice Act bill presents the definitive exit from a needless war happening on our own soil. Timm Wenger, owner of Tuktuk Lancaster, drives his three-wheeled electric auto rickshaw on a sightseeing tour in Lancaster. The company is appealing the Public Utility Commissions decision in July to deny it a license. Read more The Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission voted Thursday to reconsider its denial of a license to a Lancaster company offering sightseeing tours in a three-wheeled electric rickshaw after the city's mayor and other officials threw their support behind the project. The PUC voted to rethink its 3-2 vote on July 12 to deny a license to Tuktuk Lancaster, in which it cited safety concerns about the open six-person vehicle. The company, in requesting a reconsideration, included additional safety information provided by the vehicle's Denver manufacturer, e-Tuk USA. The company's filing also included a letter of support signed by Lancaster Mayor J. Richard Gray, Police Chief Keith R. Sadler, and Public Works Director Charlotte Katzenmoyer, who said the electric carts would not impede traffic because they travel at 25 miles per hour, the speed limit on all city streets. "The city of Lancaster does not have any safety concerns regarding Tuktuk vehicles operating on city streets alongside heavier vehicles," the officials said. In a separate filing, the company also asked the PUC to decide whether the state agency even had the authority to require Tuktuk to get a license as a common carrier, saying the company's transportation service is incidental to its primary business, sightseeing. Tuktuk's lawyer, Karen O. Moury of the Eckert Seamans law firm, argued that the company's business was similar to horse-drawn carriages and other sightseeing vehicles that the PUC no longer regulates because their transportation service is secondary. Tuktuk cited a landmark 1990 Commonwealth Court decision involving the Society Hill Carriage Co., which affirmed the PUC's deregulation of horse-drawn carriages. The PUC later extended the decision to trackless trolley in Hershey that was fashioned to look like a streetcar, and a ferry in Millersburg whose primary business was tourism. The vote to reconsider is the latest legal twist in Tuktuk's saga. It initially applied in December for a paratransit license, and had been operating for free and asking clients to make a donation to a charity. It suspended operations on July 23 after the PUC's license denial, saying it did not have the money to pay a lawyer to appeal. But the firm raised funds from supporters through an online crowdsourcing campaign, and hired Moury, a seasoned lawyer who appears frequently before the commission and who worked as a PUC staff attorney on the original cases dealing with horse-drawn carriages. The PUC can take up the reconsideration issue at any time. "We hope they will act soon and we can still salvage some of the tourist season," Timm Wenger, who owns the company with his wife, Kristina, said in a telephone interview Thursday. Artists rendering of first phase of the Hamilton apartment complex on a Community College of Philadelphia-owned lot at 440 N. 15th St. Read more Community College of Philadelphia may have its eye on one of the last available properties that developer Bart Blatstein acquired in his deal to buy the former Inquirer building, which itself is on its way to becoming the city's new police headquarters. The college completed an appraisal of the lot at 1540 Hamilton St. in connection with the so-called Hamilton residential towers being built on an adjacent parcel owned by CCP, school spokeswoman Linda Wallace said in an email this week. She said the school has not decided to purchase the 1540 Hamilton St. parcel following the appraisal. Wallace disclosed no other details about the potential transaction, including when the appraisal was ordered, and it's unclear whether the 23,000-square-foot lot, on the southeast corner of 16th and Hamilton Streets, remains available. Blatstein said in an interview Thursday that the parcel "is not currently for sale." The property is part of a package of four parcels that were included in Blatstein's $22.7 million acquisition in 2011 of 400 N. Broad St., former home of the Inquirer, Daily News and Philly.com. Also included were a 31,000-square-foot lot at 1527-47 Callowhill St. just south of the 1540 Hamilton St. land for which the appraisal was completed and the newspaper building's parking structure at 1501 Callowhill St. Philadelphia City Council approved a plan in May to acquire the 93-year-old newspaper tower, along with the parking garage, for conversion into the city's new Police Administration Building, replacing the dated 750 Race St. structure known as the Roundhouse. No plans have emerged for the 1527-47 Callowhill St. lot. Wallace shared no specific details of how the 1540 Hamilton St. parcel would be used in connection with the Hamilton development. The project, which is being completed by Radnor Property Group of Wayne through a ground lease with CCP for its 1.7-acre property at 440 N. 15th St., is to eventually consist of two towers encompassing about 500 apartments. The developer began work on the project's first phase a 10-story, 279-unit building in the spring. For that phase of work, Radnor Property Group received a $48.5 million construction loan from Santander Bank N.A.'s commercial real estate group and $16.5 million in preferred equity from an insurance company, according to a June announcement from real estate services firm Holliday Fenoglio Fowler L.P., which arranged the financing. Radnor Property Group president David Yeager said he had no knowledge of the school's plans for the 1540 Hamilton St. property and referred questions to Lynette M. Brown-Sow, CCP's vice president for marketing and government relations, who declined to comment. Workers Lewis Brito (left) and Carlos Mayo prepare to paint the Dilworth House in Washington Square. The home was recently cited for violations by the citys Licenses and Inspections. Read more Amid high-rises and office buildings, modern architecture and refurbished condominiums, the quaint, Colonial-style house that sits on Washington Square stands out in more ways than one. At just three stories and 3,800 square feet, the Dilworth House on South Sixth Street represents another time. With a pitched roof and white trim, the red brick house appears as if it's withstood change for decades as the city has revitalized around it. Yet that's not the most surprising thing about the Dilworth House: While Washington Square has become some of Philadelphia's premier real estate, the house has sat vacant for more than a decade. Paint on its classic white shutters has flaked and chipped. Boards have replaced windows. And in the backyard, grass, cut only sporadically, has grown tall. Last month, the city issued multiple violations against the owner for the lack of upkeep. It's an unexpected fate for the house, which is regarded as historic not for its age but for its location and significance. When Society Hill was rundown in the mid-20th century, Mayor Richardson Dilworth signified his commitment to improving the area by building the house in 1957 to live there. Over the last 16 years, big plans for the house have been made and fought. When developer John Turchi Jr. and his wife purchased the house in 2001 for $1.75 million, they wanted to renovate and move in. Then, the plan shifted to demolition, and then partial demolition, to make way for a 16-story condo tower. A nearly decade-long legal battle involving Turchi, the city, and residents ensued, until finally, in 2015, the Commonwealth Court upheld Turchi's plan: The Dilworth House's rear and side wings could be demolished, and the condo tower was approved. Yet today, no construction, no tower. Two years have passed since Turchi won approval, so why hasn't anyone followed through? According to Turchi's lawyer, Philip S. Rosenzweig, Turchi, now 75, has "quietly" marketed the property and "was actively looking to see if there was a developer who would be willing to acquire the site and build it." "At the moment, there is no transaction happening, but the opportunity exists for one of Philadelphia's preeminent developers to acquire the site," Rosenzweig said. "Mr. Turchi is committed to the project. He has no intention of relinquishing." But tackling Turchi's project will be no easy feat, according to developers, and city officials familiar with the site. Long-standing community tensions still permeate, and logistically, the experts said, construction would be difficult. Zoning variances are needed. Parking is problematic. The lot measures nearly 9,000 square feet but the house takes up part of it meaning a tower would be confined by not just height, but also width and depth. Yet the site still has appeal. Society Hill is now considered the wealthiest zip code in Philadelphia, and Washington Square is just steps from what is considered the next development area Independence Mall. The Dilworth parcel is the last piece of land available for new construction on Washington Square, making it valuable, experts say, and residential development would likely draw strong demand from potential tenants. But with the property's limitations, a developer would need to be assured of a profit condos, if still pursued by a new owner, are generally considered to be one of the riskiest real estate investments. Plus, according to a Historical Commission spokesman, the property would be subject to at least six zoning overlays that could limit its height or parking, for example. And, he added, it is not clear whether the commission's prior approval would transfer to a new project. "It's a small lot it's like trying to stuff five pounds of cream cheese into a one pound bag," said Councilman Allan Domb, known as the "Condo King" as a result of his real estate brokerage. "A developer would be buying into an environment where there has been a fight for 10 years and where residents are concerned about the impact on this small-sized land." "I'm not saying it can't be done," Domb said, "but I'd love to see the developer sit down with neighbors and see what works for everyone." Since Turchi began shopping it, the site has caught the eye of some of Philadelphia's top developers. Tom Scannapieco whose $17.85 million penthouse at 500 Walnut, right around the corner, broke the record for the most expensive residential sale said he explored the possibility of buying the Dilworth site six to nine months ago, but walked away. "This is one of the most contentious pieces of real estate in the city," Scannapieco said. " It's frankly a heavy lift with an unknown ending." Other developers declined to comment on the record. When Turchi's demolition and condo plan emerged in 2004, it rattled the neighborhood. Society Hill was declared a historic district in 1999, and the Dilworth House was classified as "significant." Removing that classification, as Turchi sought to do, would erase a property that residents believed was crucial to Philadelphia's history. But as Turchi saw it, the house was not historic. "It's in the wrong place and it represents the wrong time," he told the Inquirer in 2005. He did not return calls for this story. After years of back and forth, finally, in 2007, the Historical Commission sided with Turchi: He could demolish the back half of the home, if the front facade was preserved. Behind it, a 16-story tower, designed by architect Robert Venturi, could rise. Quickly, neighborhood residents appealed that decision, arguing that none of the house should be demolished, and the city's Board of Licenses and Inspections sided with them. Turchi fought back, and appeals continued until 2015, when the Commonwealth Court upheld the 2007 Historical Commission's decision. By then, Washington Square and the real estate market were entirely different places. In the mid-2000s, the condo market was heating up locally, and developers were piling on. Some projects, such as the Lippincott Condominiums next door, the Ayer condos across the square, and Toll Brothers' Naval Square in South Philadelphia, were successfully completed. Many were derailed by the recession. The condo market has since regained steam, something largely attributed to Carl Dranoff's and Scannapieco's newer luxury condo developments. Today, developers have also been concentrating efforts around Independence Mall with multiple projects underway, including 500 Walnut, Keystone Property Group's Curtis building renovations, and MRP Realty's redevelopment of the Bourse building. "People are saying that this is the new frontier," said Paul Levy, president and CEO of the Center City District. " All around this [Dilworth House] site, there is a tremendous amount of new activity." For now, the only activity at the Dilworth House was the arrival of contractors in late July to paint the exterior. The Department of Licenses and Inspections had issued Turchi nearly a dozen violations, from failing to comply with historic property maintenance to allowing overgrown weeds. According to Paul Boni, the chair of the zoning and historic preservation committee for the Society Hill Civic Association, which fought Turchi in court, neighbors are still keeping a careful watch. "We are well-prepared to make sure the law is enforced," Boni said. "This is the Dilworth House. It has importance in the evolution of our neighborhood." "Has [Turchi] approached us with a proposal and has anyone else approached us? The answer is no," he said. "Developers have long time horizons; the property isn't going anywhere." Philly-bound Pink Floyd co-founder Roger Waters is undeniably, proudly, anti-Israel. But is he anti-Semitic? The question arises because the British rocker "progressive" in his musical and political views will bring his national Us + Them Tour to the Wells Fargo Center on Tuesday. In the past, his act has contained anti-Israel and arguably anti-Jewish elements and he's even more vociferous offstage. What I am not going to do here is what he does try to shut down concerts. Just a few weeks ago, Waters picked a fight with Radiohead over the band's planned concert in Tel Aviv. A few years back he attacked Bon Jovi for playing Tel Aviv, and before that worked to boycott a performance of the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra at New York's Carnegie Hall. Because of his record, the local chapter of the Zionist Organization of America asked local radio stations WMMR and WXPN to cease promoting it. The ZOA also asked the Wells Fargo Center to run a disclaimer about the concert. Wells Fargo didn't get back to me, but the answer is going to be no. "At WXPN we play the music of a multitude of artists" and "concerts we recommend are never based on their political views," GM Roger LaMay told me. A call to WMMR was referred to the station's attorney, who did not respond by deadline. The protest against Waters flows mostly from his promotion of BDS, the Boycott, Disinvestment, and Sanctions movement that seeks to delegitimize Israel, which it accuses of "apartheid" as once practiced by South Africa. The truth is that the more than 20 percent of Israelis who are Arab have full voting rights, 17 members of the Israeli Knesset are Arabs, one member of the Israeli Supreme Court is an Arab, and Arabs are found in Israel's military and diplomatic corps. This is a very strange form of apartheid. "Political statements are fine, but what he's doing is really stirring up incitement against a religious minority," said Steve Feldman, executive director of the greater Philadelphia chapter of the ZOA, who made the requests. "We at ZOA question if someone who is anti-gay, anti-black, anti-woman would be welcome on their stage," says Feldman. "This guy has a record going back to 2006 that he has been actively engaged in anti-Israel and anti-Jewish activity." Are anti-Israel and anti-Jewish one and the same? Not always, but some anti-Semites use "Israel" as a code word for Jews. Waters denies being anti-Jewish, but sometimes makes me wonder. When he used an inflated pig with a Star of David and dollar signs on it flying around the concert hall, that is religiously offensive and promotes the slur that the only thing Jews care about is money. When he says American musicians are "scared" to join him in BDS because they fear that it would end their careers, when it hasn't ended his, that isn't directed against Israel but against American Jews. Waters occasionally walks and quacks like a duck, but does that make him a duck? I regard "anti-Semitism" (like "racism" and "Islamophobia") as a word so toxic as to require lead-pipe proof. Fans manage to separate the artist from the politics. Gov. Christie remains a Bruce Springsteen devotee even though the Boss loathes the chief executive. Waters is a zealot, he's misguided, but free societies ask us to tolerate the intolerable, or at least the awful. I won't stoop to his level and try to shut him down. The Trump administration's intent to investigate whether using race in college admissions discriminates against white students and to sue schools deemed in violation brought sharp rebuke Wednesday from some local and national education officials who see it as frivolous and divisive. "It's an approach that reflects a campaign of fear and intimidation to prevent institutions from following what the Supreme Court has already said was constitutionally permissible," said Liliana Garces, formerly an associate education professor at Pennsylvania State University and now at the University of Texas, whose race-based admission policy gave rise to a U.S. Supreme Court case. The Supreme Court last summer upheld in a 4-3 ruling the university's use of race in admissions. In fending off a lawsuit filed by a white applicant denied admission, the university argued that it needed to consider race to ensure diversity of its student body and that it had exhausted other means of achieving that goal. Garces said colleges must stand up against Trump's attempt to have the Justice Department look into college admission policies, first reported Tuesday by the New York Times. "It puts them in a leadership role to defend our democracy," she said. But Michael Moreland, a Villanova University law professor who watched the Supreme Court case closely, said the Justice Department is well within its rights to make sure that colleges are using race correctly in admissions. "Legally, colleges are required to show that their use of a race-conscious admission policy is limited to achieve the purpose of diversity," he said. "How careful are universities in their use we just don't know. A lot of these admissions processes are not fully transparent. That's what is raising concern on the part of people in the Department of Justice." The Trump administration initiative re-ignites a long-standing debate that has given rise to legal cases for years: Is it right for colleges to give priority to minority students traditionally underrepresented on their campuses over students with higher test scores? Local college admissions officials had hoped that the matter would have been settled with last year's supreme court decision. "More than anything else, I'm frustrated and confused," said Jess Lord, dean of admission and financial aid at Haverford College. Haverford, he said, has been using race in the limited way in which the Supreme Court decision permits it. Despite colleges' use of race-conscious admission policies, the percentages of black, Hispanic, and other underrepresented minorities is not reflective of the general population, noted Randall C. Deike, who oversees admissions at Drexel University. "When you look at the makeup of race and ethnicity on college campuses, many campuses are woefully behind compared to the makeup of their general population," he said. "We would love to have more underrepresented students of color in our class." About 13 percent of Drexel's incoming freshman class is black, Hispanic, or other underrepresented groups. Deike isn't too worried about the Trump administration's attention to admissions. "I think it would be pretty hard for the Justice Department to start suing colleges and universities around the country because they believe they are discriminating in one way or another," he said. Drexel was one of many universities that joined in court briefs filed in the University of Texas case, arguing in favor of allowing the use of race as a criterion to enhance diversity. Other local schools that joined include Haverford, Swarthmore College, and Temple University. "As part of a holistic review, race-conscious admissions helps us build a much better community," Deike said. "It's important that our students work and are in class with folks who come from different backgrounds and have different views of the world." Camille Z. Charles, a professor of sociology, Africana studies, and education at the University of Pennsylvania, said she was not surprised at Trump's latest effort, which she maintains has no basis in fact. "A lot of what has come out of [the Justice Department] has been a rolling back of any sort of progress that was made," she said. "There's really no empirical support of this notion of reverse racism or reverse discrimination. It comes from an oversimplified understanding of what makes a good college student [that is] relying entirely on GPA and test scores." John B. King Jr., president of the Education Trust, a nonprofit advocacy group, touted the benefits of diversity to schools, communities, and students of all backgrounds. "I am deeply disheartened that the Trump administration appears to be taking a hard line against efforts to increase campus diversity rather than focusing on addressing the persistent opportunity gaps facing students of color and low-income students," said King, former secretary of education under President Barack Obama. Vanita Gupta, president and CEO of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, said the directive appears to be "changing course on a key civil rights issue." "The announcement today that it is now actively seeking to challenge efforts that colleges and universities have undertaken to expand educational opportunity is an affront to our values as a country and the very mission of the Civil Rights Division," she said. Musician Bon Jovi performs during a surprise appearance at the Fairleigh Dickinson University commencement ceremony, Tuesday, May 16, 2017, at MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, N.J. Read more Black Keys Drummer Patrick Carney says New Jersey rocker Jon Bon Jovi is willing to go to great lengths to avoid speaking with Gov. Chris Christie. In an interview with Vice News, Carney said that the famed Jersey musician once used him as a buffer to get out of a conversation with Christie while attending a birthday party for Howard Stern. As Carney told Vice, Bon Jovi surprised him at the party by speaking with him "really intensely." While charmed, the drummer ultimately began to wonder why the legendary rocker wanted to speak with him. "I've met Bon Jovi once and it was actually at Howard Stern's birthday party," Carney said. "Chris Christie was in the room and Jon Bon Jovi came over and started talking to me, like really intensely. I was like, 'Wow, why does Jon Bon Jovi want to talk to me?' Then I realized it was just because he didn't want to talk to Chris Christie." As the Asbury Park Press reports, Christie and Bon Jovi were present at a 2014 birthday party for Stern at the Hammerstein Ballroom in New York City. Christie reportedly introduced Bon Jovi to the crowd prior to a speech. A rep for Gov. Christie told Page Six that the governor and Bon Jovi are close friends, and that Carney's story is "completely ridiculous." "The governor and first lady are personal friends with Jon and Dorothea," the spokesperson said. Bon Jovi's camp has not yet issued a statement on the story. During the 2016 presidential campaign, however, Bon Jovi, who stumped for Hillary Clinton (including headlining a concert in Philadelphia support of Clinton with Bruce Springsteen), allowed Christie to use his music during campaign stops. "My friendships are apolitical, and, yes, I absolutely gave him permission to use my songs," Bon Jovi said of Christie last year. President Trump nearly took the role of president of the United States in the 2015 TV movie Sharknado 3: Oh Hell No before launching his successful bid for the office in reality, a report states. Trump, 71, was in "serious talks" to play the president in the film after Sarah Palin declined the role, according to the Hollywood Reporter. Trump is reportedly friendly with Sharknado star Ian Ziering, 53, who appeared on Trump's Celebrity Apprentice, pre-presidency. "The Donald said yes," Asylum Productions co-founder David Latt told THR. "He was thrilled to be asked." Ultimately, however, things fell through, and Trump went on to become the actual president, rather than a B-movie one. The film's producers drew up a contract for Trump and sent it to attorney Michael D. Cohen, whom the FBI subpoenaed this year in connection with its Russia inquiry. However, after several weeks of silence, Cohen reportedly told Latt that "Donald's thinking about making a legitimate run for the presidency" and that "this might not be the best time." Asylum then gave the role to Mark Cuban, a ratings rival of Trump's due to his role on Shark Tank. Later during the 2016 presidential election campaign, Cuban initially came out as a supporter after Trump's official candidacy announcement but later stumped for Hillary Clinton on the campaign trail. Cuban's hiring reportedly rankled Cohen, who Latt says threatened to sue over the casting. "He basically said, 'How dare you? Donald wanted to do this. We're going to sue you! We're going to shut the entire show down.' " Cohen, however, denied any angry correspondence in an interview with THR. Jill Scott is among this years honorees of the Philadelphia Music Walk of Fame. Read more The list of musicians to be inducted into the Philadelphia Music Walk of Fame this year includes favorites Jill Scott and Patti LaBelle, the Philadelphia Music Alliance announced Thursday. The Class of 2017 will also honor 1970s R&B group Sister Sledge, recording duo McFadden & Whitehead, Chris Schwartz and Joe Nicolo of Ruffhouse Records, gospel artist Sister Rosetta Tharpe, soul group the Soul Survivors, and 98.1 WOGL host Bob Pantano. Kimmel Center president Anne Ewers will receive the the alliance's Platinum Award for Outstanding Contribution to the Philadelphia Music Community, which is given to an honoree who "has been a leader and champion of supporting the music-making community in a significant way, as Jason Bray, general manager of theater and clubs at Live Nation, said Wednesday. "Philadelphia has long been a music mecca, and once again, our inductees demonstrate Philadelphia's musical dominance," PMA vice chairman Mia Tinari said of the Class of 2017. "This year's inductees represent a mixture of powerhouse vocals, signature anthems, soulful vibes, spiritual lyrics, and production firsts within the R&B, pop, and rock and roll genres." LaBelle is being inducted alongside Sarah Dash and Nona Hendryx as the 1970s group LaBelle. Formed in Philly initially as Patti LaBelle and the Bluebelles in 1962, the group later became known for their 1974 hit "Lady Marmalade." In October 1974, LaBelle became the first black group to play the Metropolitan Opera House, and in July 1975 were the first black vocal group to be featured on the cover of Rolling Stone. Scott is a modern R&B hitmaker with tunes including "A Long Walk," "So in Love," and "Hate on Me" under her belt. Born and raised in North Philadelphia, Scott broke into the music scene with help from Roots drummer Questlove; they cowrote the Roots track "You Got Me" for the 1999 album Things Fall Apart. Gene McFadden and John Whitehead were the Philly songwriting duo behind '70s Philadelphia International Records hits such as "I'll Always Love My Mama" and "Wake Up Everybody." However, their biggest hit came in 1979 with "Ain't No Stoppin' Us Now." Composed initially of sisters Kim, Debbie, Joni, and Kathy Sledge, Sister Sledge formed in Philly in 1971 and went on to produce such hits as "We Are Family," "Lost in Music," and "He's the Greatest Dancer." Joni died this year, but Kim and Debbie continue on as Sister Sledge. Kathy began a solo career in 1989. Ruffhouse Records founders Chris Schwartz and Joe Nicolo work primarily behind the scenes, and are considered among the most dynamic A&R talent scout duos in modern music. They're responsible for bringing to the masses groups such as the Fugees, Cypress Hill, Lauryn Hill, and Kriss Kross. Sister Rosetta Tharpe died in 1973, but her contributions to rock and roll are still felt to this day. Known collectively as the "godmother of rock and roll," Tharpe mixed gospel-style lyrics with proto-rock rhythms through the '30s and '40s with hits such as "This Train" and "Didn't It Rain." The Soul Survivors are the Philadelphia soul group behind 1967's "Expressway to Your Heart" the first hit from famed producers Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff. These days, the Soul Survivors are working with fellow Philly musician David Uosikkenen of the Hooters on his "In the Pocket" project. Radio host Bob Pantano celebrated his 40th year on the air in February and can still be heard on WOGL, where he has hosted Saturday Night Dance Party since 1977. "It's quite a feeling," Pantano said Wednesday. "Fifty years ago, I started the journey. I left Bishop Neumann High School and took the subway to Temple University. I'm in the Hall of Fame at Temple, and now this. I'm blessed." The honorees will be formally inducted in an Oct. 4 ceremony on the Avenue of the Arts. A gala celebrating the new inductees will be held at the Fillmore following the induction, tickets for which are available online. In addition to this year's class of honorees, the PMA also announced the establishment of the PMA Music Education Fund, which, Bray said Wednesday was created "in recognition of the need of all Philadelphia-area students to have access to music education." "While the PMA has always served as a resource for students, educators, musicians, city agencies, and other cultural institutions, the PMA Music Education fund will work specifically to augment existing outstanding music education programs," Brey said. Schools and students can apply for the fund online. Last year's honorees were part of a special all-jazz induction in connection with the alliance's 30th anniversary. The Class of 2016 included tenor sax player Benny Golson, organist Joey DeFrancesco, and WRTI host Bob Perkins. Established in 1986, the Philadelphia Music Walk of Fame has honored such Philadelphia musicians as Frankie Avalon, Boyz II Men, and Chubby Checker. According to the alliance website, there are currently 132 total inductees. While most summer movies deliver escapism, Detroit provides just the opposite. Kathryn Bigelow's docudrama arrests you, lines you up against a wall, points a gun at your head, and leaves it there for an hour it's an account of police brutality that is itself brutal by design. Fact-based Detroit is set in 1967, when a police raid there sparked riots that turned into a five-day uprising. In the chaos that followed, stores were looted, properties burned, civilians shot (by authorities and by each other), and police and guardsmen were targeted by bullets. More than 40 people were killed. A brief animated sequence sets the historical stage The Great Migration brings African Americans to the north, whites move to the suburbs, and jobs follow them, leaving a black population beset by unemployment and overseen by a white police force notorious for brutality. (Throughout the '60s, similar dynamics led to rioting in several cities, including Philadelphia in 1964). Bigelow then blends archival footage with her own to paint what follows as "real." A surging crowd confronts police, who retreat under a hail of bricks and bottles. Order is lost. Some areas are not patrolled at all, some are policed with excessive force: The National Guard rolled tanks through neighborhoods, troopers lined the streets with fixed bayonets. Few directors maybe none handle these information-through-action sequences as well as Bigelow. The narrative singles out a few faces in this seething crowd, and follows them as they converge on the site of events that define the movie. John Boyega (The Force Awakens) is Melvin Dismukes, a black security guard hired to protect a retail store. He ventures out to calm nerves when he sees National Guard troops roll into the area. Relative newcomer Algee Smith is Larry Reed, a member of the Dramatics, a singing group scheduled to perform in a Motown show at the Fox Theater, that are pushed out into the streets when news of the rioting clears the venue. Will Poulter (The Revenant) is a racist cop named Krauss, already eyed by superiors for shooting a "rioter" in the back. Circumstances funnel all of them to the Algiers Motel. Police and guardsmen Boyega's Dismukes tags along think they've been targeted by a sniper holed up at the hotel, but when they arrive they don't find a weapon, just a bedraggled group of hotel guests. Some are there to party, one is a serviceman (Anthony Mackie, who starred in Bigelow's The Hurt Locker) just back from Vietnam, others are trying to avoid the trouble outside. Larry has retreated to the hotel with pal Fred Temple (Jacob Latimore), and ends up chatting up two white teen girls (Game of Thrones' Hannah Murray, Last Man Standing's Kaitlyn Dever). To this point, Detroit is a nimble multicharacter docudrama. It's what you might expect from Bigelow and writer Mark Boal, who tracked a dozen characters through the cogs and gears of multiple years of Zero Dark Thirty. But when the police bust down the door of the hotel, the movie slows almost to a halt, which seems to be its intent. Bigelow wants us to feel, in some measure, what the victims felt: Captive, powerless, expendable. There is a risk, though, in this exercise in dehumanization. Detroit, for a long hour, is dominated by Poulter's preening, racist thug. The situation freezes character development (even among the victims), and narrative. You simply wait for hatred to express itself in another murder, another beating. There are no moral choices to be made. Bigelow has won praise for an unblinking realism that supplants the theatrical, scripted (some would say sanitized) neatness of a more typical Hollywood treatment. On that note I'd push back was, say, The Ox-Bow Incident too slick? John Singleton channeled that movie effectively in Rosewood, another historical revisiting of racist violence. Boal and Bigelow leave avenues of dramatic potential unexplored. White guardsmen and troopers know what Krauss is doing is wrong, but leave the scene rather than intervene. And the choices facing Dismukes, who's called an Uncle Tom but is one of the few who acts to save lives, could have been a movie in itself. When we finally leave the hotel, the movie's energy is spent. You feel this in the perfunctory courtroom scenes that follow, and prosecutors fail to convict Krauss and the others (mop-haired John Krasinski is their lawyer). It is this acquittal, by the way, that made Boal's altering of events a legal necessity turning police characters into composites and changing other details, such as the order in which shootings occurred. These details can be read in John Hersey's paperback account, The Algiers Motel Incident, cobbled from witnesses and published just a year after the incident. Boal did his own research, including interviews with Larry Reed, who is featured in the movie's epilogue. He's so stunned by witnessing sanctioned execution that he abandons his career in pop music for something more meaningful and sustaining. He has played gospel music in church ever since. Aside from Ben himself, no Franklin Institute scientist is more beloved or better known than chief astronomer and planetarium director Derrick Pitts. The North Philly native has been at the museum on the Parkway since 1978, long enough to watch visitors go from taking class trips there to chaperoning them. Among Pitts' titles: NASA solar system ambassador, outreach adviser to the world's largest telescope, and go-to guy for all manner of commentary and appearances, from Comedy Central to the Philadelphia Orchestra. He recently narrated the A Space Odyssey concert at the Mann Center for the Performing Arts to honor astronaut and fellow local Col. Guion Bluford Jr. COMING MONDAY: Derrick Pitts, the Franklin Institute's chief astronomer, will take your solar eclipse questions live on Philly.com's Facebook page at 3 p.m., just after the eclipse's peak in Philadelphia. These days, Pitts' big, beautiful brain is particularly obsessed with the coming total solar eclipse. On Aug. 21, for the first time since 1979, the moon will block the sun over the United States, swiping a blackout shadow from Oregon to South Carolina. Pitts tells us what's so cool about the event, where to go to view it (including where he'll be), and which total eclipse has his heart. Q: Why is this eclipse a big deal? A: Three reasons. It's a unique astronomical event simply because of the circumstances that allow eclipses to occur on this planet. The moon is of a particular size. The sun is of a particular size. There's a particular distance between the earth and the moon, and a particular distance between the earth and the sun that allows us to have solar eclipse. The second piece is location. While solar eclipses can number as many as five in a year, it's really, really rare that they happen in any particular place very often. The last piece is if you can dim out the bright light of the sun, it gives you a chance to study the corona. The corona is a fairly large mystery. We don't know why it's so hot, really, or how, with all the activity that generates all that heat, the corona's structure can be so stable. Q: And it's an epic experience to be part of. A: If you're in the 70-mile-wide path of totality, you are standing in the shadow of the moon. The sky will be dark enough to see bright planets and bright stars. The wind will change. The temperature will drop. Animals will be [preparing] to go to sleep although that may not be the case because there will be so many people standing around screaming. Q: Can you look right at the sun? A: During totality which is about two minutes is the only time you can do that. Thirty seconds before the end of totality, you're going to have to wear eye protection again. You must use eye protection for all the partial phases. In this region, you can't do that [look at the sun]. That's because we will experience a partial solar eclipse. Eighty percent of the sun's disc will be covered by the moon. From about 1:20 to 4 p.m., it will appear as if it's a partly cloudy day. People in Philadelphia really need to know: No portion of this eclipse is observable without eye protection. There's a very particular type of viewer that's built specifically to allow you to view the sun safely, and a number of vendors you can easily find on the web. You can't use sunglasses at all. Sunglasses are useless. Q: Sounds like it's going to be a much cooler experience out of town. A: There's one factor about this that is very new and different. The last time there was a total solar eclipse in the U.S. was 1979. Even during the partial eclipse in December 2000, the internet and social media were not as developed as they are now. Now, no matter where you are, you can enjoy innumerable live-stream events. Many, many, many more people will be able to experience the eclipse, wherever they are. You can be in an outhouse, a beauty shop, a bar, anywhere. Q: What can we do in person in Philly? A: The Franklin Institute is hosting an afternoon of free activities. Between 1 and 4 p.m., on the Winter Street side of the building, we'll have indirect viewing methods: Sun spotters, pinhole projection devices. I've also been doing a lot of work with neighborhood community centers through City Skies, an effort to bring astronomy content, knowledge, and experience to inner-city neighborhoods. I've given workshops to train centers on how to host solar eclipse viewing. I've distributed 5,000 solar viewers and still have another 3,000 I'll be distributing. Q: Where will you be for the big event? A: Saint Joseph, Mo., near maximum duration (two minutes and 40 seconds) and the greatest eclipse. Two other colleagues and I will be at Rosecrans [Memorial] Airport. My intent is to live-stream onto the web, to do Facebook Live. At the very least, we'll do audio voice-over of much better video from NASA. Q: What's been your favorite eclipse so far? A: My wife and I got married in 1997 and planned a cruise to observe the total solar eclipse that was taking place in Europe. There was a group of astronomers on the ship. The captain needed somebody to take the lead [on the eclipse]. I had access to the captain, the bridge, the chief navigator, and plotted out exactly where I wanted the ship to be. I had the long axis of the ship pointed at the long line of the path of eclipse so people on board could see the moon's shadow coming across the Black Sea. The shadow comes. We're right inside totality. Six minutes. It was phenomenal. Q: Any last bits of advice? If you can get yourself to the center line, you should do it. Jump in a car. Drive 12 hours. Get yourself to South Carolina. Pediatricians and family doctors have a vital role to play in the detection and treatment of depression and anxiety in children and teenagers, a national gathering of health-care providers at the Convention Center was told Wednesday. "You're on the front line," said Theodora Pinnock, a developmental pediatrician and assistant professor at Meharry Medical College in Nashville. "A lot of kids are going to come your way who have issues with anxiety and depression. If we don't help them, who will?" Pinnock was part of a panel that addressed members of the National Medical Association on the final day of the organization's 115th annual convention, held in Philadelphia. The association advocates for the interests of African American patients and health-care providers. Over 3,000 members were estimated to participate in the convention and scientific assembly. Tami Benton, psychiatrist-in-chief with Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, told the pediatric and family medicine gathering that about 40 percent of the health problems treated at the hospital have some behavioral health component. However, she said, only about a third of those who experience a depressive episode are likely to be diagnosed and treated. Anxiety is also common. About a quarter of teens between 13 and 18 experience it, and the average onset is age 11, according to O'Nisha Lawrence, a child and adolescent psychiatrist at CHOP. The panel stressed the importance of learning signs of common mental health problems so young patients can be diagnosed and treated, or referred for additional help if needed. Benton said children and parents should both be interviewed. Doctors may have to look beyond the words youngsters use to describe how they're feeling. Sometimes, according to Benton, a depressed child will talk about being bored, not depressed. Or "you'll hear irritability," Benton said. Sleep problems and difficulty concentrating are also common. They can be a result or a cause of emotional distress. Benton noted that children can also be affected by lack of structure at home; basic, positive events like family dinners together often are not a part of modern family life, she said. Additionally, Lawrence said excessive and unmonitored cellphone use can be detrimental to children's emotional health and development. "My heart stops when I see these 12-year-olds with cellphones," Lawrence said. If a child does show signs of depression, cognitive behavioral therapy can be a valuable treatment tool. "We recognize changing your behavior may actually change the way you feel," Benton said. To treat severe depression, Benton said, medication, coupled with therapy, can be effective. Lawrence suggested primary care doctors should stay involved in their young patients' mental health care, even when a specialist is brought in. "You can play such a big role in getting help for a child," Lawrence said. Some families may be reluctant to trust a mental health professional, and the family doctor can help on that front. This also protects families from feeling abandoned. If thoughts about self-harm or suicide are expressed, primary-care doctors should discuss them with the family and make a plan to minimize the possibility of harm. "No kid should leave your office without a safety plan," Benton said. Duncan Round, 53, of Medford Lakes New Jersey was arrested on sexual assault charges Wednesday. Read more The owner and operator of a Bella Vista day-care center was released on bail Wednesday after being charged with sexually assaulting two 5-year-old children in his care. Duncan Round, 53, of Medford Lakes, Burlington County, posted 10 percent of his $200,000 bail to secure his release, according to court records. Round turned himself in to police Wednesday, according to Capt. Mark Burgmann of the Special Victims Unit. Round owns and operates Sprouts Philly Kids Daycare & Gym, 604 S. Ninth St., where he allegedly assaulted a girl and a boy, Burgmann said. Police were notified of the alleged assaults July 25, after someone filed a complaint with the Philadelphia Department of Human Services and the children were interviewed by the Special Victims Unit and the Philadelphia Children's Alliance. Burgmann said the assaults occurred more than once. Round is charged with two counts each of involuntary deviant sexual intercourse, unlawful contact with a minor, engaging the welfare of a child, indecent assault, corruption of a minor, recklessly endangering another person, and indecent exposure. "In the interest of public safety, we wanted to make sure we notified the public," Burgmann said. Parents concerned that their children may have been victims of sexual assault should contact the Special Victims Unit at 215-685-3260. An example of a page of nomination petition signatures submitted by Rob Bowers (left) and an apparent photocopy that was also submitted as separate signatures. Read more It's known as a "kitchen table job" in Philadelphia politics: One person sits down and creates a raft of the signatures candidates for public office need on their nomination petitions. Something different surfaced Tuesday at City Hall. Call it a photocopy job. Rob Bowers, a former assistant treasurer for the City of Philadelphia, filed to run as an independent for city controller in the Nov. 7 general election. Bowers on Tuesday submitted 139 pages of petitions, with 30 lines of signatures each, for a total of 4,170 signatures. He needed 4,075 valid signatures to qualify for the ballot. But something about Bowers' nomination petitions seemed off. Fifty-two of the 139 pages, with 1,560 signatures, appeared to be photocopies of other petitions he submitted. The candidate, who signed each of the 139 pages attesting he circulated petitions, pleaded ignorance Wednesday when asked about the photocopies. "I had a lot of people working for me, last minute, on the petitions," Bowers said. "I didn't know there was anything photocopied." The city commissioners, who oversee elections in Philadelphia, told Bowers on Wednesday afternoon that his petitions had been rejected for the photocopies. "I've seen a lot of petitions, and I've never seen anything like it," said Al Schmidt, vice chairman of the city commissioners. Bowers, 36, was assistant treasurer for nearly two years, under former Mayor Michael A. Nutter and Mayor Kenney. He left the city payroll in August 2016 and now lists his occupation as a quality-control chemist for a local pharmaceutical company. He has until Tuesday to appeal the city commissioners' action to Commonwealth Court. On Wednesday, he said an appeal was unlikely. The Democratic nominee is Rebecca Rhynhart, who in the May 16 primary election defeated City Controller Alan Butkovitz's bid for a fourth term. The Republican nominee is Mike Tomlinson. Former FBI Director Robert Mueller, the special counsel probing Russian interference in the 2016 election, departs Capitol Hill following a closed door meeting, Wednesday, June 21, 2017, in Washington. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik) Read more WASHINGTON Two Democrats from the Philadelphia area are trying to make it harder for President Trump to fire the special counsel leading the high-profile investigation into Russian interference in last year's election. Crucially, the two senators New Jersey's Cory A. Booker and Delaware's Chris Coons have both teamed up with Republicans on their legislation, increasing their chances of gaining traction in the GOP-controlled Senate. Both bills, introduced Thursday, aim to protect Robert Mueller, the man leading the politically charged Russia probe. Each plan would allow for court review in case Trump or the Department of Justice tries to remove Mueller whom the president and his allies have increasingly criticized, raising fears that Trump might try to squelch the investigation that has shadowed his presidency. "I don't want to see a constitutional crisis in this country," Booker said. "We believe that if you're going to remove a special counsel, it should be consistent with DOJ regulations." Shortly after the bills were introduced, the Wall Street Journal reported that Mueller had impaneled a grand jury, a sign, legal experts said, that his investigation is ramping up. Booker's plan was introduced with Sen. Lindsey Graham (R., S.C.) and two other Democrats, Connecticut's Richard Blumenthal and Rhode Island's Sheldon Whitehouse. It would effectively force the attorney general to go to court to fire a special counsel. The attorney general would have to show "misconduct, dereliction of duty, incapacity, conflict of interest, or other good cause, including violation of policies of the Department of Justice," the bill says. Trump and his allies have attacked Mueller's team as having conflicts of interest, citing political donations some have made to Democrats, and have reportedly dug into investigators' work histories. In a recent New York Times interview, Trump also warned that Mueller would cross a line if his investigation moved into Trump's family's finances beyond any connections to Russia. Coons, who told reporters he hoped the two bills could be merged, said Trump's actions including firing former FBI Director James Comey and reportedly crafting a misleading statement to explain why his son met with a Russian lawyer during the 2016 campaign "suggests an individual who cannot help himself but try and interfere." Coons' plan is cosponsored by Thom Tillis (R., N.C.). It would let a fired special counsel challenge his or her dismissal in court. If the judges found that there was no good cause, the counsel would be immediately reinstated. "Our constitutional order depends on a system of checks and balances, grounded in the fundamental premise that no one is above the law," Coons said in a news release. "Ensuring that the special counsel cannot be removed improperly is critical to the integrity of his investigation." Pennsylvania Gov. Wolf (at lectern) and Attorney General Josh Shapiro (left) announce the state was joining with 14 other states in a lawsuit. Read more The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has reversed course on delaying an ozone rule, a day after being challenged in federal court by Pennsylvania and 14 other states. The EPA, under Administrator Scott Pruitt, notified states in June that it was delaying for a year new ozone pollution rules. Gov. Wolf and state Attorney General Josh Shapiro announced Tuesday that they were joining the suit challenging the delay. The suit was filed in federal appeals court in Washington. On Wednesday, Pruitt changed his mind and said the EPA was withdrawing action to delay implementation of Obama-era rules that required reduction in ground-level ozone, also known as smog. The EPA's notice of its reversal came Wednesday evening. "While we welcome this corrective action, we are deeply concerned about the threat that Administrator Pruitt's actions present to the fundamental right to clean, healthy air guaranteed by our nation's bipartisan and time-tested clean air laws," said Peter Zalzal, an attorney for the Environmental Defense Fund. At issue was an Oct. 1 deadline for states to begin meeting 2015 standards for ground-level ozone. Pruitt announced in June he would delay compliance by one year to give his agency more time to study the plan and avoid "interfering with local decisions or impeding economic growth." The Obama-era rule lowered allowable ground-level ozone levels from 75 parts per billion to 70 parts per billion under National Ambient Air Quality Standards. Governors had to submit a list of areas that were not in compliance, and then the EPA had up to two years to declare which areas did not meet standards, and could seek an extension if it needed more information. New York first filed suit challenging Pruitt's seeking to delay the lower ozone levels. Wolf said Pennsylvania was joining, in part, because he believed lower ozone levels will reduce health-care costs. He said past EPA findings showed 230,000 asthma attacks a year could be prevented in American children if pollution were reduced. Pruitt, the EPA administrator, invoked that extension in June, saying the EPA needed "time to better understand some lingering, complicated issues so that air attainment decisions can be based on the latest and greatest information." He also established an Ozone Cooperative Compliance Task Force "to develop additional flexibilities for states to comply with the ozone standard." Pruitt presented the change of heart Wednesday as his agency being more responsive than past administrations to the needs of state environmental regulators. He made no mention of the legal challenge. Pruitt, who was Oklahoma's state attorney general prior to his appointment by President Trump, has long been a reliable opponent of stricter environmental regulations. The sudden reversal is the latest legal setback for Pruitt's regulatory rollback agenda. Last month, a federal appeals court in Washington ruled the EPA administrator overstepped his authority in trying to delay implementation of an Obama administration rule requiring oil and gas companies to monitor and reduce methane leaks. But Republicans in Congress are pushing for a broader rewrite of the ozone rules. A House bill approved last month seeks to delay implementation of the 2015 rules at least eight years. The measure has not yet been brought to a vote in the Senate. Ground-level ozone, or smog, is a result of pollution. Nitrogen oxides and volatile organic compounds combine under sunlight and heat to help produce ozone. Philadelphia has long had difficulty with smog because it is surrounded by emissions given off by motor vehicles, industry, power plants, and refineries. Pennsylvania named the Philadelphia and Pittsburgh metropolitan areas in its report to the EPA in 2016 as exceeding ozone limits. In May, environmental groups sued the EPA over failing to make a final determination on whether Philadelphia meets acceptable levels of ozone. And, in April, an advocacy group, using EPA data, issued a study saying Philadelphia was among the smoggiest Northeastern cities. The Associated Press contributed to this article. Share Icon Link copied to clipboard News U.S. marshals offer reward in Haverford Twp. killing The U.S. Marshals Service is offering a $2,500 reward for information that leads to the arrest of Derrick Hershal Rollins, who authorities believe fatally shot 29-year-old John Le in a random attack Saturday in Haverford Township. A 23-year-old Philadelphia man has died of wounds he received Tuesday evening when a gunman opened fire on him in East Mount Airy, police said Thursday. Zafir Abdur-Rahman of the 1900 block of 71st Avenue in West Oak Lane was one of five men wounded in three separate shootings in the city Tuesday night. Abdur-Rahman was shot about 7:30 p.m. in the right side of his head while he was standing with another man, also 23, on the 7700 block of Williams Avenue. The other man was shot in the right arm and torso, police said. Both men were taken to Einstein Medical Center in a private car and admitted in critical condition. Police said the men were ambushed by a gunman in a white compact late model sedan. Abdur-Rahman died Wednesday afternoon, police said. Authorities have no motive and no arrests have been made. This is the statement from the Milton Hershey School: "These irresponsible descriptions of the experience of Mr. Marchese and Mr. Dobson are being used to create a sideshow to derail the case that is right now before the court. Sexuality was not a central part of the complaint. It is barely referenced in a 239-paragraph complaint against the school. Sexuality is a personal and powerful issue, and the current story infuses it into this case and distracts people from the facts at hand. The goal here is to manipulate and inflame so the facts, being presented right now by both sides in the lawsuit, get glossed over. "We try to instill all MHS students with the school's 'Sacred Values.' One of them is mutual respect. It guides our students and alumni to celebrate their uniqueness while always searching for ways we are similar to one another not for ways to divide. For that reason, MHS will continue to focus on defending the support it provides for children with mental-health needs. We spend over $15 million on health care alone, for children who would otherwise need to rely on government services. Our case is strong, and we are hopeful the media side show will not jeopardize it, as intended. "Student confidentiality and the trust our families and alumni place in us to honor their privacy limits what we can say, and the other side knows that. It has always been, and remains, the policy of MHS that no houseparent administers therapy of any kind to any student. Our highly credentialed psychologists are accredited by the American Psychological Association, and would never condone any form of 'gay conversion therapy.' "These are the full comments of graduates provided by the Milton Hershey School. James Stankunas, Class of 2011: "I didn't feel forced. It was voluntary. He [Marcous] certainly would not feel forced by Mrs. S. I don't really understand what he is trying to get out of this. "I was there and I personally did not feel like I was forced to watch it. Mrs. S. is very cool and accepting to me and very loving. "I was always into that. I watched documentaries about being gay and Christian. I struggled with my sexuality growing up and with my family who raised me and even sometimes attending a school with Christian values. My grandmother was Pentecostal. I wanted to seek the truth because I did struggle with my Christianity. There was nothing that was done to express me wanting to change or this video making me change. "I will stand by Mrs. S because I know that she came from a place of love all the time. I was interested in hearing different sides. I felt love and support from several staff members who were accepting. Yes, she is of Christian faith. I felt unconditional love from her. There was acceptance and tolerance." Nic Possiel, Class of 2011: "I lived in the house where the movie was viewed, and can say that since day one in that home I felt like it was family. My houseparents were loving and understanding and always made it feel comfortable and like it was a home away from home. The houseparents were the ones who made it feel that way. We always felt cared for and had support. School and activities always came first with them, but I had a boyfriend for three years. My housemother and her extended family met him. She was the first person I talked to about relationships and she always gave me advice. She has been my rock to lean on. If they watched a video, it was because a student asked or wanted to, and my housemother would always make them feel comfortable. She is so supportive. That is who she is. Deanna Slamans lived next door and she knew about my life and didn't care. She and my housemom are two peas in a pod. And the fact neither of them would care about that was something I cherished. She (Deanna Slamans) was right next door. If either of them allowed a student to watch this video, it would be in order to have an intellectual conversation and show different viewpoints. We always had discussions and debates about movies. If you knew either of them or what they stand for, you'd know. They both work so hard to improve people's lives and to slander them like this or spin this in some way to make them look bad is frustrating. This whole story sounds odd to me, especially coming to light so many years later." Nick Miller, Class of 2014: "I enrolled at MHS in middle division and both sets of my houseparents including the Slamanswent out of their way to make me feel comfortable. The Slamans supported me as a student and it remains the same today. I still keep in touch with them, talking with them over the phone and giving them updates on my life. I feel terrible for them [the Slamans] that their name is being dragged into the mud. They've done so much for so many people and have made such an impact in the lives of others. The Slamans ran a very accepting student home environment. It didn't matter where you came from or what your sexual orientation was. It was a judgment free zone." The 10-day tenure of White House communications director Anthony Scaramucci is among the many dramas in the relentless Trump news cycle. Read more Judy Veloski has stopped watching television news. Albert Eisenberg tries to spend the first 30 minutes of each day away from his phone. Melissa Byrne refuses to follow the president on Twitter. Call it self-care in the age of Trump, when the news cycles run at light speed. Take the last two weeks, during which President Trump denounced his attorney general over his recusal from the Russia investigation, pushed out his press secretary, hired a communications director who publicly wished unprintable ills on his coworkers, fired his chief of staff, and fired the aforementioned communications director. He gave a campaign-style speech at a Boy Scout jamboree, tweeted about banning transgender people from serving in the military, and told a room of police officers not to be "too nice" to arrestees. Oh, and the Senate Republicans' health-care bill failed. For observers on both sides of the aisle, following along can be exhausting. Byrne, a Philly activist and political consultant, spent the last several weeks traveling back and forth from Washington, advocating against the health-care bill. And though she's been losing her voice at protests, she said, they're a welcome break from the crush of breaking news notifications and Twitter sniping. "It's like Whac-A-Mole," she said. "Every day something horrible is happening." Eisenberg, 26, a communications consultant who formerly worked as spokesman for Philadelphia's Republican Party, has been trying to take his morning coffee without scrolling through Twitter: too much adrenaline, too much outrage, too early, he says. "It takes a lot of care and energy to not allow yourself to be pulled directly into that immediate notification, gratification, boom-and-bust media cycle," he said. "I wish everyone in journalism would take a Klonopin and download a meditation app." The role of social media The rise of social media and the subsequent acceleration of news cycles, of course, predates Trump. And it's hard to gauge whether people are glued to the news more than usual these days, said David Uberti, a media reporter at the news site Splinter. Trump's approval rating, though historically low, is fairly steady, "despite all these incredible news cycles," Uberti said. "So a significant portion of the country is either tuned out or distrust mainstream media." Still, cable news ratings are having a banner year. And the national media have invested heavily in political coverage. "You can't watch CNN anymore without them covering Trump," Uberti said. Drew Jennings, 44, of West Bradford, watches the endless political debates on cable news with a mixture of fascination and amusement. He's a libertarian. His wife is "to the left of Bernie Sanders," he said with a laugh. "And she's exhausted to the point where she doesn't even want to talk about it." But Jennings watches CNN mostly to scoff at the "manufactured outrage," he said. It's somehow less depressing than the shootings and overdoses on the local news. Then again, nothing the administration has done so far has affected him personally. "I try to be honest about that," he said. "I'm not obtuse to the fact that people are impacted." For those who are closely following news about the administration, it can be difficult to look away from the daily ups and downs. "It's this amazing real-life drama with these larger-than-life characters," said David Boardman, dean of Temple's Klein College of Media and Communications (and chair of the Lenfest Institute for Journalism, which owns the company that operates the Inquirer, Daily News, and Philly.com). "It's riveting, but it's also, for a lot of people, exhausting and even frightening, because there's so much uncertainty, so much change." And Trump's own use of social media is at once a mirror of and a catalyst for the kind of unrelenting news cycles that have marked his presidency, said Sherri Hope Culver, a Temple University professor who studies media literacy. "Trump is as much a victim of it as a supplier of it," she said. "He watches something in the news and is like, 'Oh, I have to tweet about this.' He doesn't show that he's consuming thoughtfully, balancing where he's getting his content from, and then making a measured and thoughtful response. All the media literacy skills we hope to imbue in our young people are not being modeled by our president." Too much attention to drama Veloski, 66, a retired nurse from Lansdowne, has stopped watching television news entirely. A longtime independent, she volunteered for Hillary Clinton's campaign last year her first presidential campaign and has grown increasingly politically active, attending meetings of the local Democratic Party. But she's careful about when and how she reads the news no politics on Facebook or Twitter, she says, no matter how much her friends post. Like Jennings, she's more concerned that "the things that don't really make the headlines" debates about, say, education and the environment are getting lost in the interpersonal intrigue playing out in the White House. "We become focused on the political drama and there's very little time and space for consideration of issues," Boardman said. "I don't think it's healthy for the country and I don't think it's healthy for individuals." Those who are riveted do their best to look away sometimes. Byrne takes spin classes and goes to the beach. Eisenberg has his phone-free mornings. Adrianne Standley, 29, of Manayunk, who jumped into health-care activism after the election, just watches "really stupid TV." "It's about knowing that if I can't follow something, I will be able to find a breakdown of it later or touch base with a friend," she said. "It's about knowing when to take a mental break." A July 31 photo shows a no-swimming sign in one of numerous large pools of water that have formed on the beach in Margate. Read more ATLANTIC CITY Superior Court Judge Julio Mendez issued a sharp rebuke to state and federal agencies overseeing a dune-construction project in Margate, ordering the project immediately halted Thursday and calling photos of lake-size ponding of standing water on the beach "horrendous and alarming." Mendez granted a seven-day emergency restraining order preventing the project from proceeding down the beaches of Margate, saying it was interfering with the rights of residents to "enjoy the natural resources" of their beach, and causing irreparable harm by putting health and safety in jeopardy. The work, which continued until the end of the shift Thursday, was stopped in its tracks at Iroquois Avenue, about midway through the town's nearly two-mile-long beachfront, where orange fencing remained in place and a security guard remained at his post under beach umbrellas by the surf. "I was so happy," Barbara Zelmanoff, standing on the open side of Iroquois Avenue, said of the ruling. She was a refugee from her normal beach on Clermont Avenue, blocked off after days of being flooded with standing water. "What I want is, I just want my beach back," said Zelmanoff, of Philadelphia. "It's so depressing." Mendez noted that in earlier testimony and in a decision he made during an earlier case involving Margate's fight to stop the project before it began officials with the Army Corps of Engineers had promised they would not leave an area "worse off than when they went into it." Mendez had ruled in favor of the state in its effort to seize Margate land for the project. "The bottom line is, this needs to be corrected right now," Mendez said Thursday from the bench. "I have a lot of hesitation about doing this project in the middle of the summer," Mendez said. "If this was done in September or October, there would be not as much of a concern in trying to find a solution, and with the impact it has on the enjoyment of the natural resources, the impact on the economy, and the people of the coastal areas of Margate who rely particularly in the summer for their economic livelihood." Mendez said he was especially concerned about the project's timing, which Dave Apy, a state Department of Environmental Protection attorney and assistant attorney general, attributed to the Army Corps and the contractor, Weeks Marine. Apy said the timing was unavoidable. "If you try to work around the summer, the cost would escalate significantly," he said. He estimated the stoppage would cost $100,000 a day. The judge ordered that the corps be added to the case, a decision that could send the dispute to federal court, and that the parties engage in immediate discussions on a remedy. A meeting is planned for Friday morning, Margate officials said. Weeks Marine was represented by Tom Valen of the Gibbons Law Group, a firm with close ties to Gov. Christie, who ordered the dune work along the entire 127-mile stretch of New Jersey coastline. Margate Mayor Michael Becker, who attended the hearing, said he was elated by the judge's decision. "I'm ecstatic," he said. "It's the right thing to do. We just can't allow this to continue. We live this in Margate every day. It's not just pictures. We walk through the mud. We have people getting sick." Margate's attorney, Jordan Rand, who also represented the city in efforts to block the project before it began, noted that the drainage problems were anticipated by Margate. "It's not speculative," he said. "It's real. It's affecting people. People are getting sick. We want them to stop moving forward." Margate closed beaches from Fredericksburg to Gladstone Avenues because of concerns over bacteria levels in the standing water, and Commissioner John Amodeo said the beaches would remain closed until the city can ensure people are not having to walk through the water. Margate attorney John Scott Abbott said two lifeguards were being treated for bacterial infections. The state said Thursday that ocean-water quality in Margate had tested within acceptable levels and that Margate could reopen those beaches. Beaches from Gladstone to Jerome Avenue were closed because of dune construction work, which did not immediately halt after the ruling. Apy, the DEP attorney, blamed the ponding on a near-100-year rainstorm, but acknowledged that the design of the dunes called for digging out behind the dunes to a level too close to the ground water, calling it "overly aggressive." He said future work would dig out to a higher elevation. And he acknowledged that DEP and the Army Corps were too slow in responding to concerns about the ponding. He said the water brought in as part of construction would also contribute to saturation. "It takes a month or two for the sand to drain and for a safe condition to return," he told Mendez. The judge ordered the parties to try to work out a solution in the next seven days and set another hearing for next Friday. Earlier Thursday, contractors were seen trucking sand from Ventnor's dune work into Margate to fill in the infested ponds, dismissed by one Margate resident, Kelley Blanchet, on Facebook as "the latest bandaid on an epic fail, jam job, political payback by Christie and his Cronies." Then in the afternoon, there was joy in Margate as word got around. "Thank God, it was in the nick of time for me," said Christy Hollin, 54, of Gladwyne, who has a beachfront home just beyond the work area and nearly canceled a girls' week as work closed. "I was beyond devastated. They were changing the beach for a problem that we didn't have." "There was a huge cheer through Margate after the ruling," said Beach Patrol Lt. Chuck LaBalle. The U.S. Coast Guard has suspended the search for a swimmer reported missing in the water near the Steel Pier in Atlantic City. The search ended about 8 p.m. Wednesday, the Coast Guard said. It began about 10 p.m. Tuesday when Atlantic City police notified the Coast Guard that a man had been reported missing in the ocean. Atlantic City police said officers responded at 9:43 p.m. Tuesday for an unconfirmed report of a missing swimmer. "Officers spoke with a female who was under Steel Pier with a 31-year-old male who went into the ocean around 8:15 p.m." police said in a statement Wednesday. "The female left the area before the male returned. It is unknown at this time if the swimmer returned to land." Coast Guard crews searched throughout Tuesday night and all day Wednesday using two rescue boats, a cutter, and a helicopter to look for the missing swimmer. At least seven people have drowned at the Jersey Shore since Memorial Day, including two teenagers in Atlantic City in June. A 29-year-old man was shot and killed Saturday on a sleepy road in a quiet suburban Philadelphia neighborhood. On Philly.com, the original story indicated that the shooting happened in Ardmore. The next day that was changed, locating the incident in Havertown and Haverford Township. But some readers took issue with that. "The location is not correctly identified in the article(s)," Stacy Bartels emailed. "ARDMORE. Haverford township, but not havertown different zip code," Tom Wing wrote on the Philly.com Facebook page. "I think you would be concerned about the accuracy of the location because it's just wrong. It's not opinion, it's not an editorial opinion. It's incorrect," Mollye Readinger-Scott (from the Ardmore section of Haverford Township) said in a voicemail. Boundary disputes and complaints are a frequent occurrence in newsrooms and police departments nationwide. Sometimes it's a simple clerical issue, a dot and a line on a map. But other times, those dots and lines take on a life of their own. Some readers even accused us and other media outlets of shilling for more upscale Lower Merion by falsely locating the crime in Havertown, not Ardmore. David Sullivan, assistant managing editor for editing and standards at Philadelphia Media Network, said locations are a tricky issue, especially in the suburbs "where many locations are based on railroad stations and old country crossroads, not municipal boundaries." In the city, Sullivan added, "we have a map we have used for decades defining neighborhood boundaries. But in the suburbs it can be chancier." So, let's set the record straight and attempt to explain what the borders are, and why they are so confusing in the first place. The shooting happened on the 2300 block of Haverford Road. By municipal boundaries, as shown in the map below, that's well within the boundaries of Haverford Township. By Municipal Boundaries However, if you map the crime based on zip code or by U.S. Census maps, the shooting appears to be just over the border in Ardmore. The site is within the Ardmore zip code (19003), which includes parts of the municipalities of both Haverford Township and Lower Merion Township. The Havertown zip code is across the street. Zip code boundaries U.S. Census-designated place boundaries By U.S. Census maps, the site is within Ardmore. Not all of the area is within a census-designated place. Other nearby places include Narberth, Penn Wynne, and Broomall. When facts conflict That's what our data show: There are factual answers to this question. But the facts are in conflict with each other. Speaking for the Inquirer, Daily News and Philly.com, Sullivan said the primary goal must be accuracy. "We want to be correct, and we also want to communicate effectively," he said. "In this case, we were concerned that since the neighborhood involved is so close to the line between the Ardmore and Havertown zip codes, saying 'Ardmore' might lead people to say, 'That's not Ardmore. Ardmore is on Lancaster Avenue, near the train station.' And they would think we were wrong. "So we used 'Havertown,' which many people use interchangeably with 'Haverford Township' to make clear they don't mean 'Haverford,' the area around Haverford College." However, he added, "not everyone, as we have found out, uses them interchangeably, and so THEY thought we were wrong. So we're going to refer to it as 'Haverford Township' in the future, because that is incontrovertibly true." We weren't alone. Other news organizations offered similar descriptions of the location: What readers say Some readers undoubtedly will stick with their own understandings of the neighborhood boundaries. Among them is our own editor-at-large, William K. Marimow. Marimow, a Havertown native, said he knows the area by only one name. "Having grown up there, from age 6 to the time I graduated high school, I had friends who lived in every nook and cranny," he said. "And no one that I remember ever said Ardmore. This was Havertown." Phil Goldsmith, a former Philadelphia city official who lives on Old Forest Road in Haverford, said that when he moved into his current home in 1974, it had a Philadelphia zip code. Oddly, his home was in Haverford Township, but all the houses across the street were in Lower Merion Township. Nick Millas owns Original Eagle Pizza, on Haverford Road near Wynnewood Road. "I've been here for 10 years," he said. "My taxes are paid to Haverford Township, but my address is Ardmore." The distinction, he said, is easily understood by local residents. "People around here know" the difference. Trudi Meyer has worked at a nearby bowling alley, Wynnewood Lanes, for more than 20 years. "We have nothing to do with Wynnewood, though," she said. "I can't even say where that came from." But Meyer has found that the is-this-Ardmore-or-Havertown discussion is one that sometimes confuses visitors. "We're in a weird cut of the world," she said. President Trump is obsessed with this election win, thinks New Hampshire is a "drug-infested den," worries about looking like "a dope" and doesn't want to talk publicly about who is going to pay for the wall. These are among the themes and standout moments from Trump's January telephone conversations with Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto and Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull. The Washington Post's Greg Miller obtained transcripts of the calls and published them Thursday. We have pulled out eight of the most jaw-dropping passages and added context: 1. TRUMP TO PENA NIETO: "We have the drug lords in Mexico that are knocking the hell out of our country. They are sending drugs to Chicago, Los Angeles and to New York. Up in New Hampshire I won New Hampshire because New Hampshire is a drug-infested den is coming from the southern border. So we have a lot of problems with Mexico farther than the economic problem. We are becoming a drug-addicted nation and most of the drugs are coming from Mexico or certainly from the southern border. But I will say this you have that problem, too. You have some pretty tough hombres in Mexico that you may need help with, and we are willing to help you with that big league." Recall that Trump's critics hit him hard for using the phrase "bad hombres" during a presidential debate in October, so it is striking that he would repeat a variation in a call with the president of Mexico. Trump's dim appraisal of New Hampshire recalls his description of "American carnage" in his inauguration speech seven days earlier. 2. TRUMP TO TURNBULL: "Look, I spoke to Putin, Merkel, Abe of Japan, to France today, and this was my most unpleasant call." This is extraordinary language for the leader of one friendly country to say to another. The whole point of these phone calls, days after Trump was inaugurated, was for the two leaders to get to know each other and start things off on the best possible note. Trump steamrolled that objective when he compared his conversation with the Australian prime minister, leader of one of America's staunchest allies, to Russian President Vladimir Putin, who had just meddled in the U.S. election, and deemed Putin more pleasant. The Post published a summary of this conversation in February, reporting that "25 minutes into what was expected to be an hour-long call, Trump abruptly ended it." Now the full transcript is public. 3. PENA NIETO: 'To tell you the truth, Mr. President, I feel quite surprised about this new proposal that you are making because it is different from the discussion that both of our teams have been holding." TRUMP: "Enrique, if I can interrupt this is not a new proposal. This is what I have been saying for a year and a half on the campaign trail. I have been telling this to every group of 50,000 people or 25,000 people because no one got the people in their rallies as big as I did. But I have been saying I wanted to tax people that treated us unfairly at the border, and Mexico is treating us unfairly." The proposal that caught Pena Nieto by surprise was a tariff on goods imported from Mexico to the United States. Trump agreed that a tariff had not been discussed in talks between White House adviser Jared Kushner and Mexican Foreign Minister Luis Videgaray but said Pena Nieto should have expected it, based on Trump's campaign rhetoric. Note the way Trumps slips in a boast about his crowd size. 4. TRUMP TO TURNBULL: "I hate taking these people. I guarantee you they are bad. That is why they are in prison right now. They are not going to be wonderful people who go on to work for the local milk people." In both phone calls, Trump seems singularly focused on bad people getting into the U.S. and how bad it will make him look. He had just signed an executive order banning travelers from seven majority-Muslim nations (which courts would later block). His logic is that if he agrees to take in 1,250 immigrants who landed in Australia, per a deal the Obama administration made, he'll look like a hypocrite. Especially if Trump's greatest fear is realized and one of these people turns into the "Boston bomber" (his words) or the next "San Bernardino or World Trade Centers" (also his words). Nevermind that Turnbull explains to Trump, several times, that these immigrants were vetted both by Australian and U.S. security officials. 5. TRUMP TO PENA NIETO: "In the latest election, I won with a large percentage of Hispanic voters. I do not know if you heard, but with Cuba, I had 84 percent with the Cuban American vote. But overall generally, I had well over 30 percent, and everyone was shocked to see this. I understand the community, and they understand me, and I have a great respect for the Mexican people." Trump loves to brag about his victory, but it is not clear where he came up with his statistic about Cuban American voters. According to the Pew Research Center, Trump did win 54 percent of the Cuban American vote in Florida, but the White House has not been able to back up Trump's claim to have won 84 percent of the Cuban American vote nationally. On the overall Latino vote, Trump is in the ballpark. He got 28 percent of the vote, according to exit polling. 6. TRUMP TO TURNBULL: "What is the thing with boats? Why do you discriminate against boats?" In these phone calls, Trump also displays a very shallow understanding of foreign policy. Here, he seems baffled by Australia's policy of rejecting refugees who arrive by boat, despite the fact that Turnbull had also explained several times that it's a deterrent policy: Anyone who tries to migrate to Australia by water will automatically get kicked out. "So we said if you try to come to Australia by boat, even if we think you are the best person in the world, even if you are a Nobel Prize winning genius, we will not let you in," Turnbull finally says. 7. TRUMP TO PENA NIETO: "In Ohio, they are having rallies for Trump right now because Trump has taken a hard stance on Mexico. We lost a lot of factories in Ohio and Michigan, and I won these states some of these states have not been won in 38 years by a Republican, and I won them very easily. So they are dancing in the streets. You probably have the same thing where they are dancing in your streets also but in reverse." Trump's habit of talking about himself in the third person is on display here as is his sense of humor. His line about Mexicans dancing in the streets "in reverse" appears to be a joke about protests against his election. 8. TRUMP TO TURNBULL: "I look like a dope." This was about the Australian refugee deal again. Trump's singular focus on letting bad people into the country seems derived from his concern for his public reputation. Trump ran on reining in immigration, and he seemed worried that honoring a deal made by the Obama administration would hurt his credibility, or at the very least make him look like a hypocrite. "This is going to kill me," he told Turnbull. "I am the world's greatest person that does not want to let people into the country. . . . It makes me look so bad, and I have only been here a week." Everything is happening so fast or at least that's how it feels trying to follow politics these days. You've seen the headlines about President Trump and his policies but what do they mean for Philadelphia? What does that mean for you? We've launched a newsletter to explore just that. You can sign up to get the weekly Trumpadelphia newsletter in your inbox every Tuesday. How strange was Wednesday's White House press briefing? Put it this way: Guardian reporter Ben Jacobs who set a pretty high bar for weirdness when he was body slammed by a congressional candidate just 10 weeks ago found the scene in the briefing room so strange that he joked about unwittingly ingesting a hallucinogenic. Here's what happened: White House senior policy adviser Stephen Miller was about to finish his turn at the microphone when, declaring that the last question was not sufficiently on topic, he said he would take one more and pointed to CNN's Jim Acosta. If you are not familiar with the characters here, allow me to share quick bios. Miller is the aide to President Trump who made a memorable and rather authoritarian proclamation on TV in February: "Our opponents, the media and the whole world will soon see as we begin to take further actions, that the powers of the president to protect our country are very substantial and will not be questioned." Acosta is the CNN reporter who got under Trump's skin during a January news conference, prompting Trump to exclaim, "You are fake news!" Quite a matchup, right? It was actually terrible. In an exchange that will surely delight Trump's media-hating base, Miller tore into Acosta without really engaging in substance. Acosta quoted part of the famous inscription on the Statue of Liberty ("Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free") and asked whether the Trump administration's newly unveiled, merit-based proposal for granting green cards is in keeping with U.S. tradition. Miller responded with an obtuse answer about how "the poem that you're referring to was added later, is not actually part of the original Statue of Liberty." Acosta brought up Trump's pledge to build a wall along the southern border, in an apparent effort to put the plan released on Wednesday into a broader context. "You want to bring about a sweeping change to the immigration system," he said. Instead of tackling Acosta's big-picture question, Miller accused him of conflating separate issues. "Surely, Jim, you don't actually think that a wall affects green-card policy," Miller shot back. "You couldn't possibly believe that, do you? . . . Do you really at CNN not know the difference between green-card policy and illegal immigration? I mean, you really don't know that?" Acosta referred to Trump's plan to award points to green-card applicants based on English proficiency and asked, "Are we just going to bring in people from Great Britain and Australia?" Rather than defend the fairness of Trump's proposed emphasis on English skills, Miller said Acosta had just insulted English speakers from every country other than Britain and Australia. "I am shocked at your statement, that you think only people from Great Britain and Australia would know English," he said. "It's actually it reveals your cosmopolitan bias to a shocking degree. . . . This is an amazing moment. That you think only people from Great Britain or Australia would know English is so insulting to millions of hard-working immigrants who do speak English from all over the world. Jim, have you honestly never met an immigrant from another country who speaks English, outside of Great Britain and Australia? Is that your personal experience?" Acosta's aggressive questioning style is polarizing, to be sure. He has become a favorite villain for Trump supporters, and even some critics of the president. National Review editor Rich Lowry argued after Wednesday's briefing that Acosta veered into advocacy by pushing Miller so hard. But Miller's refusal to respond in an intellectually honest way sent the question-and-answer session off the rails. He seemed more determined to expose CNN's alleged bias than to make the case for Trump's latest policy proposal. HARRISBURG Over the last six weeks, Gov. Wolf has cut a pair of ribbons; hosted nearly a dozen round-table meetings and discussions on everything from tech jobs to protecting senior citizens from fraud; toured businesses; and signed a half-dozen bills, his public schedule shows. None of the events dealt with balancing the state budget. As the battle over how to pay for Pennsylvania's nearly $32 billion spending plan drags into its fifth week, the Democratic governor is trying a new tactic: near-invisibility. Wolf hasn't issued any big public warnings about the dangers of not having a timely budget, as he did in the past two years. Nor has he expressed even the slightest frustration over the breakdown in talks with the Republican-controlled legislature. He hasn't been spied walking into legislative offices or convening meetings with legislative leaders in the executive offices, either. Both House Majority Leader Dave Reed (R., Indiana) and House Speaker Mike Turzai (R., Allegheny) have complained over the last few weeks that the governor has been disengaged. "We haven't had a whole lot of interaction with him directly for several months now," Reed told reporters as he raced back and forth between offices during the thick of negotiations last month. One thing is clear: Wolf has changed his approach, and people in the Capitol have noticed. Wolf has said that he doesn't negotiate in public, and that he remains available to meet with legislative leaders. "Gov. Wolf made it clear that he would not engage in negotiating through personal attacks and public browbeating," spokesman J.J. Abbott said in a statement. In 2015, Wolf's first year in office, the governor openly clashed with Republicans who control both legislative chambers, starting with a fiercely Democratic agenda of increased education spending and a new energy tax. The result was a historic and bruising impasse that held up funding for public schools, and for nonprofits that provide social services to the poor. It cost him. When the governor emerged from what ended up being a very public fight in the spring of 2016, his job approval stood at 31 percent in Franklin and Marshall College polling. His standing had stabilized at about 40 percent in the college's May survey. A Morning Consult poll last month pegged Wolf's approval rating at 48 percent. This year, the governor has delegated negotiating work to his top staff, led by his relatively new chief of staff, Mike Brunelle, according to several people involved in talks who spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren't authorized to discuss the closed-door process. Wolf himself has largely stayed out of the fray, instead choosing to call certain legislative leaders for private discussions. "I think he's played it low-key intentionally," said pollster and political science professor G. Terry Madonna, noting that few voters pay attention to every twist and turn of the budget process. "The average Jane and Joe is not invested in this at all," he said. "So why should he risk getting involved in needless controversies when he's not getting any public pressure? In some ways, it's fairly shrewd what he's doing." Indeed, as budget negotiations drag on, Wolf has spent much time lashing President Trump and congressional Republicans. He has sent several fundraising appeals, for instance, based on his opposition to the GOP-led effort to repeal Obamacare. "I'm calling on Congress to join the Democratic and Republican governors who are working to strengthen the Affordable Care Act to stabilize markets, lower costs, and make critical coverage available to more Americans," read a campaign email circulated on Sunday, asking supporters to chip in $5 or more "to make sure I have the resources to fight back and protect care for Pennsylvanians." The governor's campaign in recent weeks has also highlighted Wolf's refusal to turn over state voter information to a commission Trump created to investigate his unsupported claim that millions of illegal votes were cast against him in last year's election. Steve Crawford, the former chief of staff to Democratic Gov. Ed Rendell, said last week that the budget fight in Harrisburg is really a fight between the Republican-controlled House and Senate. For Wolf to wade into that would be senseless. "You've got two grizzly bears fighting each other, and the last thing you want to do is get in there and break that up," said Crawford, now the managing vice president of the lobbying firm S.R. Wojdak & Associates. They've sparred over everything from tax hikes, to expanding gambling in the state, to further privatizing liquor sales, emerging from talks looking tired and frustrated. The Senate, where Republicans have historically been more moderate than their counterparts in the House, has even seemed to form an unspoken alliance with the Wolf administration to push through a revenue deal. Late last month, senators passed a package of bills that contained some items the Democratic governor doesn't want, but many that he does including a new tax on natural gas drillers. Enacting a new natural gas severance tax was one of Wolf's top campaign promises when he ran for governor in 2014. Abbott, Wolf's spokesman, pointed to that development as an example of how the governor's lower-key approach has yielded results. Still, the House hasn't committed to even begin debating it. In fact, looking around the Capitol these days, it would be easy to think there is no problem. The hallways are empty, even of lobbyists who congregate in the ornate rotunda when talks are ongoing. Leaders and staffers who have been key to negotiations are on vacation, some for weeks. Faced with that reality, neither Wolf nor members of his administration will answer questions about contingency plans for a prolonged stalemate. Some Republicans argue that he has little choice but to freeze spending until there's a revenue package in place that will fill a deficit of more than $2 billion a move that, heading into an election year, could chip away at his popularity. Wolf and his administration have taken the position that the impasse doesn't affect their authority to spend. But state Treasurer Joe Torsella has warned that the state could run out of money to pay its bills as early as the end of this month. And credit rating agency Standard & Poor's has said the state could face another downgrade if it does not fix its deficit-riddled finances. "The budget is a huge, huge constitutional priority," said Steve Miskin, spokesman for the House Republicans. "The governor has been traveling the state, basically doing feel-good things. Some might say you should question his priorities." We have more newsletters Something went wrong, please try again later. Invalid email Something went wrong, please try again later. Join us as we follow the magical worlds of Fantastic Beasts and Harry Potter Britain's wealthiest woman has been snapped posing on board her brand spanking new superyacht - built right here in Plymouth. You may not recognise the name, but Kirsty Bertarelli's fortune surpasses that of the Queen and Harry Potter author J. K. Rowling combined. And now she has got the 100m mega boat to prove it. The 314ft-long Vava II, built at Stonehouse-based firm Princess Yachts, costs more than 250,000 just to fill the fuel tanks. But that's not a problem for Kirsty, 46, and her billionaire husband Ernesto, 51, who commissioned the mega boat for her. The Swiss pharmaceutical tycoon, who is thought to be worth a whopping 6.8billion, making him the 81st richest man in the world and the fifth richest in the UK, had the boat built in secret by Princess Yachts under the name 'Project 55'. The super yacht, which was built by 200 craftsmen in Plymouth, was intended to replace the couple's old boat, which measured up at 154ft. Founded in Plymouth in 1965 as Marine Projects (Plymouth) Ltd, the company was bought in 1981 by South African businessman Graham J. Beck. In September the firm will be launching its newest 'oasis of calm' model, the Princess 55, at the Southampton Boat Show. The Princess 55 is the latest addition to the Stonehouse-headquartered firm's Flybridge range. Prices are still under wraps but when the Princess 56 was launched in 2012 it cost upwards of 800,000. The new vessel has teak decking, with contrasting textures and materials incorporated throughout with smart paneling, directionally laid teak veneers, inlaid polished stainless steel and contemporary paint finishes. Princess Yachts is setting forth on what it expects to be a profitable year in 2017, following what it said was a "complete turnaround" in its fortunes during 2016. After making a 20.25million pre-tax loss in 2015 and losing 172 workers in early 2016, the firm recovered and by October had an order book stretching a year ahead. It was recruiting again and announcing a 55million investment programme. The video will auto-play soon 8 Cancel We have more newsletters Something went wrong, please try again later. Invalid email Something went wrong, please try again later. Make sure you're staying in (or going out, when we can) in style with our FREE weekly newsletter covering the best of food, drink, music, theatre, TV and more Retail bosses have revealed when trendy university outfitters and clothing brand Jack Wills is making its eagerly anticipated return to Plymouth's Drake Circus. The prestigious brand is gearing up to take on the local retail scene after previously running a successful pop-up shop over the Christmas season in 2014. Bosses have been advertising a whole raft of roles at its future store from managers and supervisors to sales assistants. Whilst an exact opening date has yet to be confirmed, it's been revealed that the new store will be arriving next month. The move will coincide with the return of Plymouth's bustling student community - and a fresh wave of university undergraduates. Greg Lumley, Centre director for Drake Circus said: "We're delighted that Jack Wills will be joining Drake Circus. "The Jack Wills pop-up was a massive hit and with a 30,000 student population in the city and growing interest in the city for quality fashion and casual wear, this feels like exactly the right move. "We'll announce the opening date closer to the time." The brand was founded 18 years ago in nearby seaside town of Salcombe, Devon. It will be the fifth new store to open in the UK, following its latest Dartmouth branch which opened last week. With founder and CEO, Peter Williams still at the helm, the company has opened 90 stores to date, including its flagship stores in London, the US, Hong Kong and the Middle East. Mr Williams said: "We are thrilled to once again be working with Drake Circus who were such a great partner throughout the Christmas Period three years ago. "It is exactly this sort of long-standing collaboration that typifies The Fabric of Jack our ongoing mission to celebrate our entire operation championing our high quality, upstanding products from factory to shop floor. "The South West has always played an important role in our brand DNA, and it's great to finally be opening permanently in Plymouth." Currently the closest stores to Plymouth are Exeter, Salcombe and Rock. Its clothing ranges from traditional British formal wear and tailoring to contemporary casual clothing such as hoodies and t-shirts. Something went wrong, please try again later. Invalid email Something went wrong, please try again later. Get the stories that matter to our community straight to your inbox with our Daily Newsletter In the final days of the Battle of Dunkirk, 20-year-old Garth Wright dug himself a trench in the sand and hoped that he would be next. It was so bad I thought hurry up, let the next one be mine, he says. Theres no getting out of this one. Wanting to feel useful, as he waited for the next shower of bombs to arrive, he volunteered to carry the wounded to safety. It was a selfless act that ultimately led to his escape from the hell and fire of Dunkirk. Seven decades later, the Plymouth veteran was among the VIP guests at the premiere of Christopher Nolans latest blockbuster, starring the likes of Harry Styles and Tom Hardy. Giving the film a respectable 8/10, the 97-year-old says it comes close to the real thing but there was one key detail that wasn't quite right. He did a good job, he says. Its the nearest film that Ive seen of the event, but I must say that it wasnt quite how it was depicted. In the film there are a series of dog fights where German planes, mostly Messerschmitts, 109s and Stukas were dog fighting with our own Hurricanes and Spitfires. That just didnt happen. There were no dog fights. There were no British planes there. The veteran recalls how the German planes relentlessly set fire on the Allied troops on the beaches. You could put your watch to it, he says. They would come over in waves, the Germans, every half hour. Between those half hour periods, absolutely nothing. You could walk up and down that beach as if you were in Brighton at the seaside. But when they did come over the ME 109s would come first. They would come over, strafing, machine gunning and dropping their bombs. The Stukas would come over in the black cloud and they would turn their sirens on, which was a nerve shattering thing - screaming away. It was a morale shattering noise. It was part of his weapons. They turned them down things on and would come diving down at you and he was bound to hit the target. You could see the bomb leave the plane and making for you and the only target that an anti-aircraft gunner had was a little thin line. It was almost an impossible target to hit. It was very unnerving and you felt hopeless. Thats how it was on the beach. He was serving with the Royal Artillery in Lille, as part of the British Expeditionary Force, when they were pushed back to Dunkirk. He was convinced he would be killed, like so many of his comrades. The order came - every man for himself," he says. I suppose I have always been a loner. I went up on the dunes scooped out the sand and made myself a little slit trench. Luckily, the bombs went into the soft sand and the blast, instead of scattering out ground level, the blast went upwards. You had a reasonable chance if you made yourself a little hole and dropped into that, which I did. "I didnt think I was going to get out of it. "The quicker we get it over with the better. I resigned myself to being killed." His superiors asked for volunteer stretcher bearers to help carry the wounded and Garth stepped up. "I didnt know what the devils were," he said. "I thought I should do something rather than just sit here so I got up and I was directed to a boy on the beach. "Me and another guy picked up this fella he was dying and took him out on what was left of the old east mole, which was a wooden pier going out to sea, and picked our way out amongst the bomb holes that they had repaired with planks and took him onboard a destroyer. "We put him down and went to go back again and the skipper said alright you can stay on. I didnt argue with him. I obeyed the order. "I had a first class ticket from Dunkirk to Dover." When he arrived back in England he was given leave for 48 hours and went to visit his brother-in laws sister. He says: "I went around to Ethel Baxters place and knocked on the door; 'Christ its Garth, come on in'. "They paraded me down the local pub as if I was some sort of hero and that was one of the worst moments of my life. "I felt like I was just a coward that had run away in the face of the enemy. "These dear boys from that ghastly war (the First World War) were buying me drinks and talking to me as if I was some sort of hero, which made me feel very humble and small." Garth was one of 330,000 French, British, Belgian and Dutch soldiers that were evacuated from Dunkirk 77 years ago. He signed up alongside four friends from his village. He was the only one to escape unharmed; three were killed in the war and the fourth was injured and sent home. The great-grandfather says he's pleased the film is helping to show the true horror of war - and the sacrifices made. Id give it eight out of ten because it does give the hell and fire of that war." Referring to the dramatic dog fight scenes, he adds: "Whether Nolan couldnt reproduce that sort of effect of whether they had the wrong information I dont know. "I dont want to criticism them because they did the nearest thing yet portraying Dunkirk but if you want facts, Im afraid its not entirely factual." Something went wrong, please try again later. Invalid email Something went wrong, please try again later. Get the stories that matter to our community straight to your inbox with our Daily Newsletter A woman is selling all of her belongings to pay for a piece of equipment so her husband can communicate again for the first time in three years. Nigel Bassett was involved in a near fatal crash at Trerulefoot roundabout on the A38 in 2014 which left him with a traumatic brain injury he has not yet recovered from. His body mended but the effects of the injuries to his brain have left him unable to move, speak, smile or eat. (Image: Wendy Bassett) Since the accident, Nigel, who previously worked in Devonport dockyard, has made improvements including moving his limbs, and is able to blink to wife Wendy to answer questions. But healthcare professionals said that while this way of talking was good, it was not a reliable means of communication as he was not being listened to. In an attempt to help her husband, Wendy tracked down a company from Sweden which uses eye gaze technology to help non-verbal people communicate by focusing their eye on an image or a word. (Image: Wendy Bassett) But the gadget costs almost 10,000 and it is money the couple do not have. Since Nigels accident, the couple have had to move from their home in Liskeard to a modified home in Wadebridge, where two health assistants help Nigel in the day along with another nurse through the evenings. He is now in rehab in Exeter receiving therapies to help with his movement and eating. Wendy has hired the technology for her 48-year-old husband for three months. It arrives today. Wendy, 56, said: Nigel wasn't supposed to survive the journey to the hospital let alone through the night, but he did. They sent out a police liaison officer to me which only happens when someone has died or death is imminent. "I was told that he was not going to make it, but I told him that he would, I believed in him. He was in a coma for 10 days and when he left hospital he had no control over any of his body we were told he was vegetative when he was discharged but we had a second opinion on that. It has devastated me everyday is a continuous struggle and a fight to be helped and to be heard. Nigel went for an assessment for eye gaze technology and it was 100 per cent successful. He looked at objects on a card which faded wherever he looked it picked up. It was so exiting to see it. Unless he[Nigel] can make his needs and desires know, best interest decisions are made on his behalf which would not always be what he would have chosen for himself before the accident. Nigel has lost control of his life and has to rely on others to do what he would prefer to do himself. Giving him a means to communicate would mean that he would at least have a say about how care is given and he can also make choices over who gives it. In a bid to raise the money to get a personal Tobii tablet and stand, Wendy, who has been married to Nigel for six years, is selling the majority of their personal belongings from chairs to dishwashers to get the 9,100 needed. Wendy, who says neither of the couple are materialistic, has already collected 1,000 from bits and pieces sold from their home. To help Nigel and Wendy, you can donate at www.gofundme.com/power-to-communicate. A man attempting to rob a north Phoenix drugstore was shot and killed by a customer Tuesday evening, police say. The incident occurred about 6:30 p.m. at a Walgreens, Sgt. Jonathan Howard of the Phoenix Police Department told AZCentral.com. "When they (officers) arrived, they found a scene that was full of chaos,'' he said. Holguin had pulled out a gun and jumped the pharmacy counter, pointing the weapon at people and demanding oxycodone from the pharmacist, Howard said. A customer who was in the store and armed with a gun shot Holguin, Howard said. Facebook Twitter Pinterest Email Print It is finally happening. Strong support for Donald Trump is sinking among Republicans, as only 53% of the voters in his own party strongly support the President. According to the Quinnipiac University Poll, Trumps overall approval among Republicans is dropping: The softening of Trumps base of support can be clearly seen in the decline in strong GOP support for Trump: What the Quinnipiac University Poll reveals is that the Republican push to take health care away from 22 million people has hurt Trump. It turns out that even Republicans dont want to pay more for less care. Only 57% of Republicans said that Trump was level headed and only 63% said that they would work for him. Just 70% of Republican called Trump a good leader. While Republicans dont think the Russia scandal is a big deal, only 66% of them approve of the way that the President is handling health care. The message in this poll is that while the Russia scandal may end up being the bigger deal long-term, it is his domestic policy on issues like health care that is hurting Trump with his own party. Trump is shooting himself in the foot by obsessing over Obamacare repeal, as even his own party is beginning to take a step back from their president. Facebook Twitter Pinterest Email Print Transcripts of Trumps phone calls with Mexican President Pena Nieto reveal a liar who knew that Mexico would never pay for the wall but begged them to stop telling the press that they wouldnt pay because it was damaging him politically. The Washington Post got the transcripts: You cannot say that to the press, Trump said repeatedly, according to a transcript of the Jan. 27 call obtained by The Washington Post. Trump made clear that he realized the funding would have to come from other sources but threatened to cut off contact if Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto continued to make defiant statements. The funding will work out in the formula somehow, Trump said, adding later that it will come out in the wash, and that is okay. But if you are going to say that Mexico is not going to pay for the wall, then I do not want to meet with you guys anymore because I cannot live with that. The President threatened to not meet with the USs ally and southern neighbor unless they stopped telling the truth about his wall. Trump was trying to blackmail Mexico into covering for his false statements. It didnt work. Every time the wall makes the news, the response from Mexico is the same, Were not paying for the wall. The phone calls show a man who is in way over his head, who keeps constructing new lies, as his old ones get exposed. Trump isnt a strong president, who is going to make America great. He is a pathetic fraud, who is begging other countries not to tell the truth about him. Trump is a global joke, and the world is laughing at the United States of America. Facebook Twitter Pinterest Email Print The President Of The United States came to the defense of Russia this morning while attacking the US Congress for painting him into a corner and forcing him to sign Russia sanctions legislation. Trump tweeted: Our relationship with Russia is at an all-time & very dangerous low. You can thank Congress, the same people that can't even give us HCare! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 3, 2017 Congress painted Trump into a corner by passing the sanctions bill by such an overwhelming margin that they would have easily overridden a presidential veto. Trump had no choice, but to sign the bill, and that is what set him off. This isnt the typical Trump post-Fox and Friends viewing tantrum. The President was suggesting that Congress should be taking away health care from 22 million people instead of sanctioning Russia for attacking the 2016 election. Trump defended an attack on a US election by a hostile foreign power while criticizing the Legislative Branch of his own government for taking action to punish Russia. Trumps conception of the presidency involves protecting and enabling Mother Russia while redistributing national wealth from those who have the least to those who have the most. The tweet about is Trumps presidency in 140 characters or less, and it is why he is a failing president. Charleston, SC (29403) Today Partly cloudy skies this evening will become overcast overnight. Low around 55F. Winds WSW at 5 to 10 mph.. Tonight Partly cloudy skies this evening will become overcast overnight. Low around 55F. Winds WSW at 5 to 10 mph. While Guri Sandhu's rebuilt World War II jeep stole the show July 4 in Stewartville, it's also offered a surprising glimpse into historical connections between Sandhu's family, the legendary Sikh military and Mayo Clinic. Sandhu, a 56-year-old cardiologist who heads Mayo's catheterization lab in Rochester, has spent most of the last two years scouring the internet for obscure parts to personally rebuild a 1945 Army jeep. The self-taught gearhead, who learned mechanical skills by reading Popular Mechanics magazine, now routinely ferries kids on low-speed joy rides near Century High School. However, the jeep's first time being introduced to the general public was July 4 at the Stewie Cruisers event . Surrounded by classics, it thrilled people of all ages while earning "Best in Show." "It was actually humbling," Sandhu said. "People had all their nice cars out and I just had this jeep, but it turned into this big thing. "There was just this intense interest and that spanned, surprisingly, across generations young kids and people who were obviously veterans. It's just amazing how much people have enjoyed it." ADVERTISEMENT Elite Sikhs While movies like "Dunkirk" and "Saving Private Ryan" reveal the public's ongoing fascination with WWII, Sandhu's rebuilt Willys jeep explored a more obscure, personal connection to the war. The India native used white lettering to emblazon the vehicle's front bumper with "11th Sikh," referencing an elite regiment from the legendary Indian army roughly 2.5 million volunteers who joined the Allied forces to fight the Axis powers. According to the Commonwealth War Graves Commission , up to 2.6 million Indians are believed to have died during WWII, most of whom were civilians. For comparison, less than one million U.S. and British soldiers and civilians combined are believed to have died during the four-year global conflict. The Sikh regiment was the most decorated battalion of the British military, fighting with distinction in Europe, Africa and Asia, according to Commission records. Sandhu has devoured Sikh military literature since his youth, in part because multiple family members serve in the volunteer army. One actually survived a Japanese POW camp. A condensed version of that obscure WWII history was posted on the side of Sandhu's jeep during the recent car show in Stewartville. Dozens stopped to crunch the numbers and ask questions. Many have since followed up with emails and notes, Sandhu said. "It gives us a slightly unique perspective," he said of his Indian heritage. "The more we looked up, the more we realized it was pretty amazing." Generations at Mayo While Sandhu's fascination with WWII and jeeps he's invested thousands of hours to rebuild two jeeps, with a third now underway has generated local interest, it's also revealed some surprising connections to historical figures. ADVERTISEMENT Just this month, Mayo staff discovered a signature in its historic physicians' register from Randhir Sandhu, Guri's grandfather. The June 3, 1930, signature is believed to represent the first visiting physician from India. That visit remained a family secret until 1989, even from his grandson. It came to light two years into Guri's time at Mayo when Randhir casually asked about Will and Charlie Mayo, along with Henry Plummer. He'd personally befriended all three during his brief visit to Rochester. In another quirk, the elder Sandhu always wore a suit while offering free medical services in India to hide an old gunshot wound. He was shot in the back during the infamous Jallianwala Bagh massacre of 1919, where British troops shot hundreds of Sikhs engaged in a peaceful protest organized by Mahatma Gandhi. "Out of the blue, he asked me if any of Will and Charlie's kids ever became doctors," Guri recalls of his startling 1989 conversation with his then-elderly grandfather. "That was the extent of the conversation for about 15 seconds. Then he asked me about Henry Plummer and that nice building he had built. That's when I asked him to tell me more. "It just shows the amazing amount of knowledge and movement (associated with) Mayo Clinic." A Dodge Center man faces multiple felonies after authorities say he used the computer at his Rochester workplace to download child pornography. Daniel Raymond Anderson, 31, has been charged in Olmsted County District Court with 10 counts of possession of pornographic work. He made his first appearance Thursday and remains in custody in lieu of $20,000 conditional bail. Anderson's next court date has been set for Aug. 4. The investigation began July 23, when an employee at a Rochester business called law enforcement. The employee told investigators Anderson was on vacation, so the person had used Anderson's computer. According to the criminal complaint, Anderson was the only person with access to the computer prior to his vacation; when he left, the employee got Anderson's password to use the computer while he was gone. ADVERTISEMENT The business gave investigators permission to conduct a forensic examination of the computer's hard drive; several files containing child pornography were allegedly found. Anderson admitted to using the computer to view child pornography, court documents say; he said he'd deleted files in the past but had never shared the pornography with anyone else. Each count carries a maximum punishment of five years in prison, a $5,000 fine, or both. A 24-year-old Stewartville man accused of having a sexual relationship with a minor whose parents approved of it has pleaded not guilty in Olmsted County District Court. Eric Andrew Bell, 24, was charged in October with one count of felony third-degree criminal sexual conduct-victim 13-15. He's been released on his own recognizance and is due back in court March 12. According to the criminal complaint, Bell, the victim and the victim's parents all acknowledged that the two were in a relationship and had been dating since late 2012. When Bell told the victim's mother he wanted to date the girl, she approved, court documents say, but was concerned someone else might contact law enforcement. Another family member eventually did. The girl's mother said her daughter told her they'd had sexual intercourse in November 2013, a year after they started dating, when the victim was 16. The girl told detectives they had done "legal research and didn't want to get (Bell) in trouble," court documents say. Both told investigators that they had had oral sex before she turned 16. ADVERTISEMENT Bell confirmed that to detectives that he knew her age and was concerned about legal consequences. The third-degree charge carries a maximum penalty of 15 years in prison, a $30,000 fine, or both. Rochester Area Economic Development Inc.is ready to unveil a new angel investment fund to support start-up firms. RAEDI plans to officially roll out its new Southeast Minnesota Capital Fundwith an event at the Mayo Clinic Business Acceleratoron Tuesday morning. RAEDI President Gary Smithhas been talking about creating this fund for a couple years. "This is a private equity fund that we can use to leverage other funds," such as the Southern Minnesota Initiative Foundation's fund, he said in 2015. In October 2016, the new $1 million angel investment fund was described as being about 70 percent funded. The hope then was to have it fully funded by the end of 2016. ADVERTISEMENT Now the Southeast Minnesota Capital Fund is ready for launch. It is funded by a group of 25 angel investors. The fund is described as being focused on "the growing number of start-up companies in the medical and technology fields." Investments can be made in companies based anyway, but "the primary investment focus of the fund will be the southeast Minnesota region." David Herbert, the president and CEO of Rochester's 46 North LLC, will speak at Tuesday's roll-out why he decided on becoming an angel investor in the new fund. Herbert worked in business development at Mayo Clinic for 21 years before starting his own business in 2015. He also is a senior adviser for Genticure,based in Minneapolis. Al Berning , the CEO of Ambient Clinical Analytics in Rochester, also talked at the event about the importance of funds such as the Southeast Minnesota Capital Fund. Berning is known in Rochester as a former IBMexecutive, a co-founder of Pemstar and former CEO of Hardcore Computing, now known as LiquidCool Solutions. He also has worked closely with Mayo Clinic. "Angel investors are typically one of the first sources of funding for innovative start-ups. And these start-ups may be tomorrow's large employers of the region. There are numerous angel funds in the metro area, but this is the first one here," stated RAEDI's Xavier Frigola, the secretary and treasurer of the new fund. Looking back to 2016, RAEDI used its existing development fund to finance 11 businesses with $1.35 million and that, in turn, spurred the creation of 57 local jobs. The businesses that were funded included Ambient Clinical Analytics, Geneticure, LiquidCool Solutions, HB Healthcare Safety, Hunhu Healthcare, Imanis Life Sciences, LAgen Laboratories, ReGen Theranostics, Sonex Health, Xcede Technologiesand GoRout. KASSON Anyone who knew Pat Checkel knows that if she was your friend, then "that's it." The 59-year-old nurses' aide who had a 41-year career in the Mayo Clinic Health System, died on July 27 from a 14-year fight with melanoma at the Fairview Care Center in Dodge Center, said Jim Checkel, Pat's younger brother. Jim remembered growing up with Pat on their family farm, west of Kasson. When they were children, Pat would venture out into the fields every spring to pick their mother, Evelyn, a dandelion bouquet. Pat's favorite holiday was Halloween, and would always wear a cat costume or something cat-related. Her love for the animal was noticeable, as she would carry around kittens on the farm. "Pretty much all the cats were the same in the fact they were named 'Snoopy,'" Jim said. "She basically tamed anywhere between 35 to 40 cats." ADVERTISEMENT She accumulated an impressive collection of all things feline. "I think she had 500 cat pins?" Jim said. "Everything she bought was cat-themed: clothes, trinkets, and it was one of the things everyone knew about. If they saw something cat-related, they would pick it up and give it to Pat." Also, if one were to grab a meal with Pat, don't expect much variety. Jim shared that his sister always ordered the same food: a hamburger, fries and Coke. Don't even suggest having a Pepsi, which would get "the look" from Pat. Another thing about Pat was her fascination with the color blue. After living in an apartment in Rochester for 12 years, she decided to buy a blue house in Kasson, and if there were flowers, they had to be yellow. If Pat was committed to something, she stuck to it. "I told her I would've looked at it, but she didn't need any help," Jim recalled. "Everything was blue, and the flowers had to be yellow. ... She didn't let any grass grow under her feet." Something special Once Pat graduated from Kasson-Mantorville High School in 1976, she wondered what her next steps in life would be. A guidance counselor saw something special in Pat and shared that she would make a good nurses' aide. So after taking some classes at Rochester Area Vocational Technical Institute for the nursing assistant program, Pat began her career at Saint Marys Hospital. She stayed in the Mayo Clinic Health System for 40 years, and never left. ADVERTISEMENT Pat's main passion was for kidney dialysis and specialized in it for 15 years. Patients said the cat-loving woman was "so compassionate" and that "they loved her." She even received awards for her work with patients. "She loved going to work," Jim said of his sister. "She'd get up at 3:30 to 4 in the morning, just to walk around looking at charts, and talking to evening staff to find out if there was something she needed to watch out for in patients." Pat also volunteered frequently after work at Saint Marys or at Paws and Claws, or other pet shelters. "She was always working somewhere, doing something and always on the move," Jim said. "Even in the last few months of her life, she kept saying 'I'm gotta get better. There are sick people I gotta help take care of. They need my help.' " 'I want to see the lions' Ever since Pat was a child, she wanted to go to Africa and see the lions, another facet of her love for big cats. She would flip through the glossy pages of National Geographic, and world books, marveling at the various cultures and villages that appeared in photographs. "'I want to see the lions,'" Pat would tell Jim. Yet, something would always come up that prevented her from leaving on a trip to cross that dream off her bucket list. When Pat was undergoing chemotherapy, Mayo Clinic was sponsoring a trip to Africa. This was the lifelong dream that she wanted to fulfill so that she could see lions in their natural habitat. ADVERTISEMENT "She wanted to go, she was scared to go, and was wondering if maybe she shouldn't go," Jim said. "I met with her, and said, 'Well, I will help you go, and I'll make you go.'" However, doctors grew concerned that Pat's health could be affected by the trip, and were dismissive her pleas to travel. That didn't stop her from pushing ahead with Jim's help. "I knew Pat was declining. ... she may never have got the opportunity to go again, and that was the real push for her to go," he said. "We worked together and got her medicine schedule set up, and met with her doctors. One asked, 'What happens if you die over there?' She said, 'Well, they make caskets in Africa, don't they?'" Eventually, Pat got to experience her dream. She flew in hot air balloons and witnessed various animals including her favorite lions traveling through Kenya and Tanzania during the Great Migration. One morning, Pat also got to eat breakfast on a glass bridge, where hippos would pool together underneath. "One of the things the doctors were worried about was that she'd push herself too hard and come back too weak from the trip," Jim said. " I don't think there was a thing she missed out on in life, in that trip to Africa, she said 'I'm going to enjoy it.' " 'Be her friend forever' Pat's memory continues to live in her friendships that exist among all those who were impacted by her compassion and desire to treat others like lifelong friends. "If you were her friend, that was it," Jim said. "Pat had friends she went and hung around from the time she was in kindergarten. If she locked onto you, you were her friend for life. You were whether you wanted to be her friend or not. She really valued the people she made friends with. ... If you were her friend, that was it. You were going to be her friend forever." Paper lanterns will be fashioned and floated down Rochester's Silver Lake next week in remembrance of the bombing of Hiroshima, Japan. Rochester's annual peace lantern floating ceremony will celebrate its 32nd year on Aug. 10. Those in attendance will have the chance to craft lanterns to send across the waters of Silver Lake and hear music and guest speaker presentations. The ceremony is modeled after an annual lantern floating held on the Ohta River near Hiroshima, where people gather to honor those killed by the atomic bombing 72 years ago. The lantern floating is a "meditation time" designed to send a message of "never again" to nuclear weapons, said Junko Maruta, who's organized the event for the past 22 years. "We gather to remind ourselves that the choice is ours," she said. ADVERTISEMENT The event, located at the east picnic shelter at Silver Lake, will start at 6:30 p.m. where attendees will receive materials and instructions for making lanterns and Japanese folded peace cranes. A short program will follow around 7:20 p.m. before the lanterns are floated down Silver Lake at dusk. Mayor Ardell Brede and Dr. Ahmad Nassr of the Mayo Clinic will speak at the ceremony, which will also feature music from DKM and Omni Drummers. The ceremony is free to attend. The event's location will move to Peace United Church of Christ if it rains. What happened in the killing of spiritual healer Justine Damond by Minneapolis police officer Mohamed Noor in the alley outside her home in southwest Minneapolis? The Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension is investigating Ms. Damonds shooting. It has released only one somewhat cryptic statement on the investigation. Ms. Damond had called 911 to seek help for what she feared was a rape in progress outside her home late on the evening of July 15. Officers Harrity and Noor responded, driving south through the alley with the squads lights off. As they reached the street, Harrity indicated that he was startled by a loud sound near the squad, according to the BCA statement. Dressed in her pajamas, Ms. Damond approached the drivers side window of the squad car immediately afterward[.] Noor shot from the passenger seat, across his partner and through the window, striking Damond in the abdomen. Ms. Damond was unarmed, although she was apparently carrying her cell phone. She died at the scene 20 minutes later. Officer Noor has refused to be interviewed by the BCA, obviously on the advice of counsel. One cant help but draw adverse inferences from his silence. BCA spokesman Jill Oliveira advised me by email yesterday: The BCAs investigation into the shooting is active and ongoing, and all information that is public at this time has been released. No further updates are planned until the BCA presents the case to the county attorney. I dont have a timeframe for you, but well likely send out a notice to media when weve done so. What more is to be done by the BCA? Ms. Oliveira declined to respond to the question. Mike Freeman is the Hennepin County Attorney. He cannot proceed until the BCA completes its investigation. Freeman has announced that he would decide himself whether to charge Noor, rather than present the case to a grand jury. An uncomfortable silence pervades the case. This case is not like the others, though the proclamations of the lunatic left and their media adjunct obscure the genuine differences. St. Pauls Hassan Jaamici Mohamud is a legal assistant who withdrew as a member of Mohamed Farahs defense team in the case of the Minnesota men. The Minnesota men made headlines around the country when they were charged and subsequently convicted of seeking to join ISIS in Syria. Hassan Mohamud wears many hats. His home base is the Minnesota Dawah Institute, where he serves as the imam. Mohamud was born in Somalia. He memorized the Koran at the age of thirteen. He is an expert in Islamic law. In 2009 the local FOX affiliate found Mohamud advising Muslims to avoid the hellfire that comes with living in America. At a pretrial hearing held in the case of the Minnesota men, Mohamud was revealed to have behaved unprofessionally by seeking to dissuade one of his clients codefendants from accepting a plea deal. Mohamuds unprofessional behavior resulted in his withdrawal from the case. Before his disgrace in the case, however, Mohamud occasionally turned up in the news as a Somali community leader. In the photo at right he was holding forth outside the federal courthouse in Minneapolis in his accustomed style. As a community leader, Mohamud had been invited to participate in the annual tour of secure areas at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airpot given by the Department of Homeland Security (Customs and Border Protection officials, as it turns out) to local Somali Muslim leaders. As Jack Paar used to say, I kid you not. Mohamud took part in such a tour in 2015 and was invited to participate again in 2016. This time around, however, he was uninvited a few hours before the tour took place. The Star Tribune reported that the disinvitation discouraged Mohamud because, he said, his mosque has sponsored several events bringing together Homeland Security and the Muslim community. Mohamud asserted his disinvitation derived from his criticism of U.S. anti-terror tactics in Minnesota. On the contrary, however, its probably what got him invited in the first place. That chain of events sparked my interest in the 2016 MSP Airport tour for Somalis only. I sought information from the DHS Office of Civil Rights (OCR) under the Freedom of Information Act. OCR provided a few heavily redacted pages and rebuffed the administrative law judge when he requested an explanation of the redactions. I wrote about the story along the way, most recently in (DHS) Magical mystery tour (and why I need a lawyer). Theresa Bevilacqua of Dorsey & Whitneys Minneapolis office answered my plea for help and filed a FOIA lawsuit on my behalf challenging OCRs response to my FOIA request earlier this summer. I thought at the time that the Star Tribune might take an interest in the lawsuit. If asked about it, I had planned to respond that we are only doing the work the Star Tribune wont do. However, the Star Tribune hasnt asked. Because the Customs and Border Protection official to whom I spoke last year directed me to OCR, I neglected to file a separate FOIA request with CBP. On Ms. Bevilacquas advice I have now done so and CBP has formally responded. CBP has produced 29 redacted pages with claimed FOIA exemptions stamped over the redactions. An extremely helpful guide to FOIA exemptions is posted online here. The CBP is also withholding 31 pages in their entirety. I have administratively appealed the CBPs response to my FOIA request as a predicate to adding it to my current FOIA lawsuit. I have a little bit more to say about whats going on here, but at the moment I want to invite readers to take a look at the documents as produced by CBP via Scribd (below, I hope). 2017-068244 JUL 19 2017 by Scott Johnson on Scribd National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster has fired three staff members in recent weeks. The three are Ezra Cohen-Watnick, senior director for intelligence; Derek Harvey, the NSCs top Middle East adviser; and Rich Higgins, director for strategic planning. All three were aligned with Steve Bannon. Michael Warren of the Weekly Standard discusses the purge here. Glenn Thrush and Peter Baker of the New York Times discuss it here. Neither the Standard nor the Times reports on any ideological content to purge. Both treat it as a power struggle between McMaster and Steve Bannon, with the Times throwing in a Michael Flynn angle. Is there an ideological component to the purge? There appears to be. To get at the question, we should start by asking how many Obama holdovers McMaster has sacked. If, as I understand to be the case, there has been no purge of Obama holdovers, this would suggest that McMaster is comfortable with Obama-era national security policy, or at least more comfortable with it than he is with the national security policy President Trump campaigned on. There are strong indications that this is so. Specifically, it may be that McMasters views on Israel and Iran are more in line with Obamas than with Trumps. Caroline Glick makes this argument. She writes: The Israel angle on McMasters purge of Trump loyalists from the National Security Council is that all of these people are pro-Israel and oppose the Iran nuclear deal, positions that Trump holds. I think this is indisputable. Glick continues: McMaster in contrast is deeply hostile to Israel. . .According to senior officials aware of his behavior, he constantly refers to Israel as the occupying power and insists falsely and constantly that a country named Palestine existed where Israel is located until 1948 when it was destroyed by the Jews. Many of you will remember that a few days before Trumps visit to Israel, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his advisers were blindsided when the Americans suddenly told them that no Israeli official was allowed to accompany Trump to the Western Wall. What hasnt been reported is that it was McMaster who pressured Trump to agree not to let Netanyahu accompany him to the Western Wall. . . . And even that. . .wasnt sufficient for McMaster. He pressured Trump to cancel his visit to the Wall and only visit the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial ala the Islamists who insist that the only reason Israel exists is European guilt over the Holocaust. If any of this is true, it is deeply disturbing. Who does McMaster favor over the pro-Israel loyalists he has canned? According to Glick:: [McMaster] fires all of Trumps loyalists and replaces them with Trumps opponents, like Kris Bauman, an Israel hater and Hamas supporter who McMaster hired to work on the Israel-Palestinian desk. He allows anti-Israel, pro-Muslim Brotherhood, pro-Iran Obama people like Robert Malley to walk around the NSC and tell people what to do and think. He has left Ben Rhodes and Valerie Jarretts people in place. If true, this is distressing. What about Iran? Glick notes that McMaster supports the nuclear deal and refuses to publish the side deals Obama signed with the Iranians and then hid from the public. By contrast, the three officials McMaster fired do not support the nuclear deal. And, as noted, they are pro-Israel. Glick isnt the only one who sees a strong ideological component to the purge. Adam Kredo of the Washington Free Beacon reports that Iran was the central, though hardly the only, area of policy clash between McMaster and those he has purged (Kredo also says McMaster will be firing more Trump loyalists in the coming weeks). He writes: NSC officials such as Cohen-Watnick, Harvey, and others had been making the case that Trump should scrap the Obama administrations 2015 nuclear deal over increasingly aggressive Iranian ballistic missile activity and mounting evidence Tehran is breaching the accord. McMaster, as well as Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and top Obama-era State Department officials who worked on the deal, have aggressively urged maintaining it. Thats why they took [Harvey] out, explained one source, referring to Harvey, who is said to have constructed a comprehensive plan on how to scrap the nuclear deal. Another source described the Trump administrations Iran policy as completely gutted in the aftermath of these firings. If this is true, then McMaster should be sacked. I suspect, however, that with John Kelly ensconced as Trumps chief of staff, McMaster is safe for a while. Democrats like Rep. Barbara Lee are far off base when they complain about the role of generals in the Trump administration. Generally speaking, the U.S. military is a politically correct institution and its thinking is not sharply at odds with that of the Washington foreign policy establishment. Thus, we shouldnt be surprised if former generals like McMaster, and to a lesser degree Kelly and Mattis, are moderating forces in the Trump administration. Moderating voices shouldnt be excluded from the administration. Some of Trumps campaign positions can do with being moderated. However, when the moderating voices largely parrot the Obama administrations line on Israel and Iran, we have a big problem. Kenyas anti-terrorism police officers on Thursday interrogated a British national, who was arrested at Moi international airport with two magazines and 42 bullets. The police said that Surone Abdiwahid Faiza, 27, was arrested at the departure section of the airport during screening. Coast Regional Police Commander, Larry Kieng, said the woman of Somalia origin, was handed over to anti-terrorism unit for further interrogation and profiling. Mr. Kieng said the woman, who holds British passport was to travel to Nairobi and board another Kenya Airways plane to London. The 9mm ammunitions were concealed in her suitcase when they were discovered by the police. We are yet to establish if she is a licensed gun holder and her intention to smuggle the bullets to the plane, Mr. Kieng said. One of the magazines had 10 bullets of 9mm calibre while the other had 32 bullets of the same calibre. These types of ammunitions are commonly used in small arms like pistols, Mr. Kieng said. The commander said the woman would be arraigned in court soon to enable police to seek more days to complete investigation. He said that Kenya Government had already contacted the British Embassy in Nairobi to assist in the investigation. Kenya security agents are on higher alert of possible attacks waged by Somalia-based Al-Shabaab militant group. The group has intensified attacks in the border town of Lamu and Mandera targeting both civilians and security agents. (Xinhua/NAN) Share this: Twitter Facebook A former Gambian interior minister, Ousman Sonko, will remain in a Swiss jail for another three months after the countrys Attorney-General broadened an investigation into whether he committed crimes against humanity. Mr. Sonko has been in pre-trial custody since January after the Geneva-based legal group Trial International filed a criminal complaint accusing him of having personally taken part in torture. The attorney-generals office said it had since expanded its probe beyond the original allegations after hearing testimony from witnesses and after additional complaints were lodged against Sonko. Mr. Sonko was interior minister from 2006 to 2016, when he fled to Sweden and thence to Switzerland, where he applied for asylum in November and was taken into police custody in January. He served under authoritarian leader Yahya Jammeh, who fled into exile after losing an election to Adama Barrow in December. Mr. Jammeh has denied allegations of torture and killing opponents during his 22 years in power. The attorney-generals office said Mr. Barrows government is in contact with Swiss authorities following Switzerlands request for legal assistance on Sonkos case. Mr. Sonkos lawyer in Switzerland, Phillippe Currat, did not immediately respond to e-mail from Reuters seeking comment on Thursday morning. (Reuters/NAN) Share this: Twitter Facebook Turkey has replaced its top three military commanders in the army, navy and air force chiefs, a presidential spokesperson said on Wednesday. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan had agreed to the changes, his spokesperson Ibrahim Kalin said, after a four-hour meeting in Ankara chaired by Prime Minister Binali Yildirim. Mr. Kalin said that their tenure was over and did not provide other details. The Military Chief of Staff, General Hulusi Akar, retained his position. The changes were made during a meeting of the Supreme Military Council, the highest body responsible for appointments and removals within the armed forces. Since the failed coup in July 2016, 151 generals had been arrested, along with 1,600 other officers, said Interior Minister Efkan Ala in July. In all, some 5,200 soldiers had been arrested. (dpa/NAN) Share this: Twitter Facebook The Russian Defence Ministry and Syrian opposition have agreed to create a new de-escalation zone north of the city of Homs. The Russian Defence Ministry spokesperson, Igor Konashenkov, said that the ceasefire in the area is set to take affect at 1200 (0900 GMT) on Thursday. He said: on July 31, Cairo hosted regular negotiations between representatives of the Russian Defence Ministry and moderate Syrian opposition. Agreements on the functioning of the third de-escalation zone in Syria, north of Homs, were reached at the meeting. The spokesman added that 84 settlements with a population of more than 147,000 people were in the zone. Mr. Konashenkov stressed that the ceasefire regime in the Homs zone, as in the other two zones, did not cover the militants of the Jabhat Fatah al Sham, formerly known as Nusra Front and Islamic State. The spokesman added that in accordance with the reached agreements, the moderate opposition took a commitment to push out from the zone all the units that have joined the above-mentioned terrorist groups. In May, the participants of the talks in Astana agreed on establishing four safe zones in Syria as part of the de-escalation process. The first one, in the north of the country, covers the province of Idlib and neighbouring districts of Latakia, Aleppo and Homs. The second is in the north of the province of Homs. The third is located in the south of Syria, in the Quneitra and Daraa provinces, while the fourth one is in the Eastern Ghouta. On July 24, Sergei Rudskoy, the chief of the Russian General Staffs Main Operational Directorate, said that borders of de-escalation zones north of the Syrian city of Homs and in the eastern Ghouta region were agreed upon during the fifth round of international meetings in Astana in early July. He said consultations on another zone in the Idlib province continued. Share this: Twitter Facebook Turkish and Qatari Economy Ministers on Thursday pledged to boost bilateral trade and investment at a business forum. The two ministers, accompanied by a total of 250 businessmen from various sectors, met in the Turkish western city of Izmir to develop productive alliances. Turkish economy can satisfy all the needs of Qatar from food to tourism, from construction to energy, Turkish Economy Minister Nihat Zeybekci said. While addressing the forum, Qatari Economy and Commerce Minister, Ahmed Al-Thani, said the two countries will be stronger through the establishment of high-level cooperation when facing problems in the future, local media reported. Increasing our trade volume and boosting successful investments will also strengthen our economies, he said. The trade volume between the two countries achieved 554 million dollars during the first half of the year, according to Turkish state-run Anadolu agency. Mr. Al-Thani also praised the role of Qatari and Turkish private sectors in breaking the blockade imposed on his country by several Arab states in early June. Turkey has sent a total of 221 cargo planes of daily used items to Qatar since the blockade, according to the figure released by Zeybekci at the forum. The Saudi-led Arab quartet, including the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Egypt, cut their diplomatic ties with Qatar on June 5 and imposed a blockade on it. It accused Qatar of supporting terrorism and interfering with their internal affairs, which Doha has repeatedly denied. (Xinhua/NAN) Share this: Twitter Facebook The Acting President, Yemi Osinbajo, on Tuesday nominated Bolaji Owasanoye, a professor of law, as the new Chairman of the Independent Corrupt Practices and other related offences Commission, ICPC. Mr. Owasanoye will steer the affairs of the anti-graft agency for next five years with 13 other members whose tenure is for four years, subject to confirmation by the Senate. The new chairman takes over from Ekpo Nta, whose five-year tenure expired in June and who has been redeployed to the National Salaries, Incomes and Wages as a full-time commissioner. With his appointment, Mr. Owasanoye becomes the fourth substantive chairman of the commission since it was established by the Olusegun Obasanjo administration in 1999. The past chairmen were Mustapha Akanbi and Emmanuel Ayoola (both justices) and Mr. Nta. Four others were chairmen in acting capacity. They were Uriah Angulu, a professor; Rose Abang-Wushishi; and Abdullahi Bako, a lawyer. The 54-year old Mr. Owasanoye was the Executive Secretary of the Presidential Advisory Committee Against Corruption, PACAC, appointed in August 2015 to inter alia promote the reform agenda of the government on the anti-corruption effort, to advise the present government on the prosecution of the war against corruption and the implementation of required reforms in Nigerias criminal justice system. He graduated from the Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife (formerly University of Ife) in 1984 at the age of 20 with an LL.B Upper Division and was called to the Bar in 1985. He thereafter proceeded to the University of Lagos where he bagged an LL.M in 1987 at 24. Mr. Owasanoye moved from the University of Lagos where he was assistant lecturer to the Nigerian Institute of Advanced Legal Studies, NIALS where he became a professor of law in 2001 at the age of 38. His areas of specialization are Commercial and International Trade Law, Corporate Law, Child Rights and Human Rights Law and Strategic Governance and the Law of External Debt Management. He also served as two-time Director of Research and became the first to be conferred with the Teslim Elias Distinguished Professor of Law. He won other awards such as the University of Lagos Scholarship Award (1986-1987); UN Institute for Training and Research Fellowship Award (1991 and 1994); US Information Service International Visitors Award (1991); British Council Fellowship Award (1992); International Youth Foundation Fellowship on Youth and Community Development (1992-2000) and Senior Special Fellowship, UN Institute for Training and Research (2001). He was also at other institutions such as the Royal Institute of Public Administration in the UK and the International Law Institute, Washington, USA. The new ICPC boss also worked as a consultant for federal and state agencies in Nigeria and international agencies, including UINTAR, ILO, USAID, UNICEF, DfID, World Bank, World Bank Institute, Ford Foundation, WLAFEM and ECOWAS. At NIALS, he served as the executive director of the institutes journal, Current Law Review and was also as the editor of REPRO-MAT, the Reproductive Rights Newsletter. He has not only published several articles in local and foreign journals but also presented papers in law conferences, seminars and workshop. As a women and child rights activist, Mr. Owasanoye coordinated the NIALS Ford Foundation Rights of Child Project between 1992 and 1996. He presented many papers at UN events during which he canvassed for the need for the right of children to be upheld in all the nations of the world. He also coordinated the NIALS Project on the annotation of the Laws of Federation of Nigeria. In 1997, he co-founded the Human Development Initiative, HDI, a non-profit organisation whose objective is to champion human capacity development, especially at the grassroots. The organisation has successfully implemented about 50 advocacy projects on human rights, rule of law, governance and anti-corruption. One of them is Stop Impunity in Nigeria. In August 2015, Mr. Owasanoye was named a member/executive secretary of the seven-member PACAC. A former Assistant Chaplain at the UNILAG Chapel of Christ our Light and currently a member of the clergy at the Aso Villa Chapel in the State House, Mr. Owasanoye has been one of the most vocal members of the advisory body and indeed one of the advocates of the Proceeds of Crime bill, Whistle-blower and Witness Protection Bill passed by the National Assembly recently. While canvassing passage of the Bill, he once lamented that the lack of POCA, (Proceeds of Crime Act), Whistle-blower, Witness Protection laws was a slow down to effective campaign against corruption. In June, the new ICPC chairman had insisted that the Nigerian judiciary had the most important role to play in the effort to change the countrys corruption status or rating. Improving the sanctions and enforcement regime in anti-corruption campaigns is crucial, he said. It involves the commitment of all players in the administration of criminal justice such as the prosecution, the defence, the judiciary, the prison authorities. In this regard, however, the judiciary ranks far above other players in importance. In Botswana, the judiciary played a salutary role in improving the ranking of the country in anti-corruption initiatives. Mr. Owasanoye is coming to ICPC at a time some reforms are believed to have been introduced by the outgoing leadership to give the fight against corruption a bite since 2012. In a recent interview with PREMIUM TIMES, Mr. Nta spoke glowingly about those reforms. He said, The immediate mandate is that the quality of the cases going to the court has improved, I have had more convictions since coming in than previously. Weve had a lot more petitions coming in because I have introduced electronic processes for reporting petitions to the commission. I have introduced a toll-free line so that you dont have to use your money to call us. If you call us with the line you will not be charged. Regardless, one area Mr. Nta perceptibly failed but which Nigerians will expect Mr. Owasanoye and his team to tackle is the issue of allegations of corruption against former state governors. The outgoing chairman had put the number of cases against the former governors at 32 but lamented the inability of the ICPC to prosecute them due to lack of funds. They didnt provide the funding, Mr. Nta said. Note that it was the special investigator that was to look at all this but what I have done now, I have taken a much more proactive step by requesting the amendment of the ICPC Act that when such instances reoccur, the matters should have preliminary investigations by the ICPC because we have the personnel that can do the investigations. When we are satisfied with the investigation we can now transmit that to the CJN (Chief Justice of Nigeria) if he wants to continue with that process. With his wealth of experience and that of his team in the academic and public sector, Mr. Owasanoye may just be the joker the Buhari administration has been waiting for to strengthen the anti-corruption crusade. Perhaps, under the watch of the erudite professor of law, ICPC will not only bark but may begin to bite. Share this: Twitter Facebook Protesters on Thursday stormed the Lagos State governors office, Alausa, Ikeja, demanding an end to rape cases in the state and across the country. The protesters who were at the venue as early as 8:25 a.m., said the protest was meant to pass a message to the government on the need to end incidences of rape. PREMIUM TIMES correspondent at the venue reports that although they are still relatively few in number, participants said others would join them soon. The protesters, under the aegis of the Alliance Against Domestic Violence and Abuse, AADVA, claimed there had been no cases of conviction of rapist in Lagos State. We hear these (rape) cases reported in the media yet we dont hear of conviction of the rapiststhis must stop, said one of the leaders of the protesters who identified herself as Lailah. Details later Share this: Twitter Facebook The police have dismissed four police officers for their alleged roles in the theft of items from a house belonging to former President Goodluck Jonathan. The Federal Capital Territorys Commissioner of Police, Musa Kimo, approved the dismissal of the four policemen for burgling the Gwarimpa residence of the former president. The affected officers, all sergeants, are: Musa Musa, F/No. 436691; John Nanpak, F/No. 235422; Ogah Audu, F/No.261898 and Gabriel Ugah, F/No. 425210. A statement by the spokesperson of the FCT Police Command, Anjuguri Manzah, on Thursday said the officers were guarding the residence of the former president when they suddenly turned turned round to rob the property, stealing everything of value therein. Mr. Manzah said the dismissal of the cops followed the outcome of the orderly room proceeding. Sequel to the outcome of the orderly room proceeding, the Commissioner of Police FCT, CP Musa Kimo, has approved the immediate dismissal of the following police Rank and Files from the Nigeria Police Force, he said. He added that the main culprit, Mr. Musa, would be charged to court, while efforts had been intensified to arrest his alleged accomplice, Malam Shuaibu, now at large. The police spokesperson explained that the dismissal was in line with the First Schedule of Police Act and Regulation 370 Cap 19. This action is in compliance with the vision of the Inspector-General of Police to rid the Nigeria Police Force of criminal elements, he said. PREMIUM TIMES had exclusively reported on the theft of items including television sets, fridges, window frames, clothes and others. Our investigations also uncovered the markets where the items were sold, with some of the buyers divulging how they were lured to buy the items. Before PREMIUM TIMES exposed the matter, the police had battled for weeks to contain the scandal, officials said. Share this: Twitter Facebook As the airlift of pilgrims to Saudi Arabia for the 2017 Hajj progresses, at least 6091 persons have so far arrived in the Kingdom in 14 flights, an official has said. The National Hajj Commission of Nigeria, NAHCONs head of media for the 2017 operations, Adamu Abdullahi, informed PREMIUM TIMES that the pilgrims were lodged in 4 and 5 Star Hotels in Markazziyya area of Madinas Central Business district, a few metres from the Prophets Mosque. Mr. Abdullahi also said most of the pilgrims were in high spirits adding that most are first timers to the Holy Land. He said officials from NAHCON and State Muslim Pilgrims Welfare Boards have been educating and demonstrating to the pilgrims how to operate such facilities as elevators, washrooms and access to their rooms. He added that the commission has also put in place a functional medical centre and ambulance services on standby to meet up with any medical emergencies. Meanwhile, NAHCON has also constituted a 21-member feeding committee to monitor and oversee the feeding service arrangements during the Hajj. The move according to the spokesperson of the commission, Uba Mana, is to ensure that food served pilgrims are of highest quality and quantity. Speaking at the inauguration ceremony at the commissions Corporate headquarters in Abuja on Tuesday, the Chairman/CEO, Abdullahi Muhammed, also charged the members to undertake the assignment with an utmost sense of responsibility and without fear or favour. The Chairman further admonished the members to view the appointment as both a divine and national call to serve the pilgrims as well as the Almighty Allah and therefore called on them to make sure that everything is done to ensure that the pilgrims get the best services. Mr. Mohammed said the reforms put in place by Saudi Arabian authorities make it mandatory for identified caterers and feeding method to be provided as part of visa applications. He said the new measure is aimed at preventing food related diseases and illegal food vending. In his response, the committee chairman, Shehu Makarfi, assured that the members would not disappoint the commission nor compromise the confidence reposed in them. Share this: Twitter Facebook The Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, has urged politicians and their parties to embrace alternative dispute resolution mechanisms and avoid frivolous litigations. The advice which was offered by the commission at a workshop on Wednesday in Abuja also said the commission frowns at the increasing disrespect for superior court judgments by politicians. It noted that a situation where politicians return cases already handled by the Appeal courts and Supreme Court to the lower courts has continued to affect the commissions determination to ensure true democratic principles in the country. The INEC Chairman, Mahmud Yakubu, speaking at the opening of a two-day capacity building workshop organised by the commission for leaders of political parties, regretted that such protracted litigations have stalled the conduct of scheduled elections thereby making nonsense of INECs election time table. Mr. Yakubu lamented the disregard for superior court judgments by politicians and political parties, noting that this has denied people their desire for representation at the different levels of government It is these unnecessary litigations that have led to the non-conduct of the Anambra Central election till date because parties went back to challenge the judgment of superior courts at the lower courts. It is also necessary that parties must embrace the alternative dispute resolution process rather than approaching the courts at all times, Mr. Yakubu told political party leaders. The Commissioner of Political Party Monitoring Committee of INEC, Antonia Okoosi-Simbine, in her opening remarks, noted that the aim of the two-day workshop was to enhance the capacity of political parties to play their roles in providing the vehicle for presenting competent and credible candidates for elective offices. Share this: Twitter Facebook The 19 Northern governors have kick-started a fund-raising drive to reinvigorate the Bank of the North which was merged with some financial institutions about a decade ago. Governor Abdullahi Ganduje of Kano State disclosed this while addressing members of the States Executive Council in Kano. Mr. Ganduje said that governors of 19 Northern states made the resolution at their meeting in Kaduna. He said that apart from the revival of the bank, the governors also resolved to revive other economic boosting concerns like the textile industries in the affected states. According to him, the governors also deliberated extensively on herdsmen- farmers clash and decided to look into issues of incessant face-off between the two. Mr. Ganduje said the governors also discussed the need for peace, unity and stability in the region. The governor also signed into law the Kano University of Science and Technology amendment law 2017 and North West University amendment law 2017. He said the laws aimed at closing the gap and variation between the two state-owned universities and harmonising processes for appointing vice chancellors in the two institutions. (NAN) Share this: Twitter Facebook New mothers should not remove or wash off the colostrum from their nipples before breastfeeding their babies, as it is the first and major vaccine a child can ever receive in life, an official of the United Nations Childrens Fund, UNICEF has advised. Ada Ezeogu, a nutrition specialist, gave this advice on Thursday in Ibadan at a media dialogue on breastfeeding organised by the Federal Ministry of Information, in collaboration with UNICEF, as part of activities to mark the World Breastfeeding Week. The event which was funded by the U.K. Department for International Development, was to train journalists on breastfeeding advocacy in Nigeria. Mrs. Ezeogu lamented that most new mothers who are not aware of the importance, extracts the colostrum out and wash their nipples before breastfeeding their infants. She explained that colostrum, as the first milk a pregnant womans breast produces, is very important to the health and growth of an infant. Most mothers are not aware of the importance of colostrum in the growth of their child. Colostrum is a major vaccine to an infant. It does not only protect the infant against allergy and infection, it serves as a purgative which helps to clear meconium. It also aids the growth of a child, it helps intestine to mature and it reduces severity of infection, she said. The nutrition specialist noted that one of the greatest barrier to achieving exclusive breastfeeding in Nigeria is water. She said that if water can be taken out of the way, exclusive breastfeeding will record a huge success in the country. On the importance of exclusive breastfeeding, Mrs. Ezeogu said breastfed children have at least six times greater chances of survival in the early months than non-breastfed children; and the exclusively breastfed child is 14 times less likely to die in the first six months. She however said that most mothers do not practice exclusive breastfeeding because of lack of knowledge on the essential nutrients of breast milk. Most mothers give their infants water because they do not know that breast milk provides all the food and water that a baby needs during the first six months of life. Even during very hot weather, breast milk will satisfy a babys thirst, she said. Exclusive breastfeeding is a method of feeding a child with only breast milk for the first six months of life. No other liquids or solids are given, even water, with the exception of oral rehydration solution, syrups of vitamins, minerals and medicines. The World Health Organisation and UNICEF recommend that breastfeeding be initiated within one hour of birth, that it should continue with no other foods or liquids for the first six months of life, and that it be continued with complementary feeding (breastfeeding with other age-appropriate foods) until at least 24 months of age. Mrs. Ezeogu revealed that the current rate of exclusive breastfeeding in Nigeria is 25 per cent, which is very low compared to the World Health Assembly target of increasing the percentage of children under six months of age who are exclusively breastfed to at least 50 percent by 2025. She, however, noted that if this must be achieved, more pregnant women and breastfeeding mothers must be enlightened on the importance of exclusively breastfeeding their infants. According to the National Demographic Health Survey 2013, the prevalence of exclusive breastfeeding in children below the age of six months is only 17 per cent, which means that at least 5.4 million children each year do not get the benefits of breastfeeding, contributing to 103,742 child deaths each year. In his remarks at the event, the Minister of Information and Culture, Lai Mohammed, restated that early breastfeeding can make the difference between life and death and urged journalists to join in the campaign to educate women on the importance of exclusive breastfeeding. Through your writings, you can influence communities and help them to know that breastfeeding helps in the cognitive development and higher IQs of children. As journalists, you can use the medium at your disposal to increase the knowledge among pregnant women and nursing mothers as this will likely improve their ability to guide against diarrhoea, pneumonia and probably child mortality, he said. The minister who was represented by the Assistant Director, Child Right Information Bureau, (CRIB), Olumide Osanyinpeju, said there is an urgent need to propagate breastfeeding to Nigerian families. Earlier this week, health experts had warned that there is a huge economic cost to not exclusively breastfeeding babies for the first six months of their lives. According to the experts, inadequate breastfeeding costs the Nigerian economy an estimated $ 21 billion per year, or 4. 1 percent of the nations gross national income. The experts explained that women lose more financially, directly and indirectly by not exclusively breastfeeding their babies and saving them from malnutrition, diseases and death on the long run. The World Breastfeeding Week is marked every August 1 to 7 to raise awareness on the benefits of breastfeeding to the child, among others. Share this: Twitter Facebook Cameroon on Thursday denied reports of the killing of 97 Nigerian fishermen by its gendarmes in Bakassi peninsula and maltreating Nigerian refugees in that country. A three-member delegation dispatched by Cameroonian President Paul Biya stated this in Abuja at a joint briefing at the end of a meeting with the Foreign Affairs Minister, Geoffrey Onyeama. The leader of the delegation, Cameroonian Minister of Foreign Affairs, Joseph Ngute, said the delegation was in Nigeria to discuss issues of mutual benefits to both countries. Mr. Ngute said that there was no iota of truth in all the reports, saying that Cameroon is a law-abiding country and no such thing would ever happen. On the reported killing of over 97 Nigerians, the minister said nobody was killed, noting that it was a fabrication which appeared in the media, which nobody knew its purpose. We are here to inform the government of Nigeria that a month ago, we had reports in the media concerning massacre of people in the Bakassi area. We sent our administrators and we asked Nigerian Counsel in Bua to accompany them. They went there and realised that not a single person was touched and nobody was injured or killed, he said. The minister said that the team came to discuss the situation that afflicted North Western part of Cameroon and North-Eastern part of Nigeria concerning the fight against Boko Haram. Mr. Ngute said that the two countries had been working perfectly in trying to clip the Boko Haram terrorists group and make sure that the evil group was completely alienated. He also denied the report that his country maltreated Nigerian refugees, saying that they had protested to UN human right commission on the issue. You know being a refugee is a very difficult condition. We in Cameroon are very sensitive to the issue. If you visit our camp where we have about 60,000 refugees, they are being given the most humane treatment that we in Cameroon can give and can afford along with the UNHCR. We were a bit surprised by that report and we take exception to it. We drew the attention of the UNHCR that in Cameroon we have been abiding by the law, he said. Mr. Ngute also briefed Nigeria on other issues of interest, especially in the English-speaking part of Cameroon, including resolving the industrial action by the trade union in the area. Mr. Onyeama in his remarks, said there was no distrust between the two countries. On the contrary both countries are extremely close, working together very closely and I think sending this delegation by the president himself shows the importance he attaches to that relationship. We are also keen that this should trickle down to average Nigerian and Cameroonian. And I think by and large, it does. However, we also have to be careful of social media where you can have a very small minority of people generating a narrative that is not in any way reflective of the reality, he said. Mr. Onyeama noted with pleasure the recent cooperation between both countries in the fight to reclaim territories under Boko Haram in the North East. He said that Cameroon had been fighting shoulder to shoulder with Nigerian soldiers against Boko Haram. The minster sad that Cameroonian intervention in the fight had been very important and decisive. (NAN) Share this: Twitter Facebook The Nigeria Immigration Service, NIS, hosts ECOWAS Heads of Immigration Meeting today. The meeting is convened to review and make recommendations on the protocol of free movement of persons, migration and irregular migration management as well as regional data sharing. PREMIUM TIMES will bring you live updates from the event. 9.32am: Cross section of heads of Immigration from West African countries are seated for the meeting. Counties represented include Ghana, Mali, Togo, The Gambia, Guinea, among others. 9.39am: Comptroller General of the Nigeria Immigration Service, Muhammad Babandede arrives the venue of the ECOWAS meeting of Heads of Immigration. He moves round to greet delegates. 9.49am: Apart from Heads of Immigration agencies in West Africa, diplomats and other stakeholders are also part of the high level meeting. Embassies of Burkina Faso, Togo and Benin are in attendance. Also representatives of Nigerias service chiefs and the State Security Service. 10.24am: Nigerias Minister of Foreign Affairs, Geoffrey Onyema, who repesents Acting President Yemi Osinbajo walks in alongside Minister of Internal Affairs, Abdulrahman Dambazau. National Anthem taken 10.30am: Comptroller General of Nigerias Immigration Service, Muhammad Babandede, delivers his welcome address. He said the objective of the ECOWAS heads of Immigration which was inaugurated in 2015 is to bring together heads of Immigration in the region to deliberate on issues of common interest and, compare notes and experience in migration management. He said the ongoing meeting will strengthen cooperation among the respective jurisdictions and discuss challenges of rights of residence of citizens within the contexts of new security challenges. Mr. Babandede also underscores the need for robust intelligence sharing among countries. He said Immigration bodies should work jointly as a team yo save lives of innocent youths who are dying in the sahara or in crosssing the Mediterranean. 10.40am: AVM AY Bello, representing Nigerias Chief of Defence Staff, delivers his address. He said mass migration poses danger to peace in West Africa particularly with ongoing security challenges that, he said, could be threat to corporate existence of Africa as region. He said recommendations from the meeting could go a long way in enhancing peace and stability. 10.45am: Representative of the EU ambassador to Nigeria reveals that EU is supporting the ECOWAS integration by promoting free movement of citizens. He said already the European Union has contributed 26 million Euros to the project. 10:45: President of the ECOWAS Commission H.E Marcel de Souza presenting his address. 11.14am: Geoffery Onyema, Foreign Affairs Minister who represented the Acting President Yemi Osinbajo, in his remarks, commended the Comptroller General and ECOWAS heads for organising such a meeting; stressing that it will strengthen the bond that exists between ECOWAS members. 11.27am: The minister emphasised the sharing of intelligence amongst members. He acknowledged that the borders are currently facing security challenges. We have to develope a mechanism to facilitate free movement across our borders, he said. 11.36am: Acting President Yemi Osinbajo represented by Nigerias Minister of Foreign Affairs, Geoffrey Onyema, tasked the chiefs of immigration in West Africa to find solutions to security problems attributed to movement of people within their countries. Mr. Osinbajo announced the decision of Nigeria to host a Migration Training Academy for the region saying already a large expanse of land has been reserved for purpose in Tugga, Kebbi State. 11.42am: The opening of the 2-day meeting of the Heads of Immigration in Ecowas region comes to a close with a closing remarks by ECOWAS Commissiond Commissioner for Trade, Customs and Free Movement, Louoli Chaibou. 12.02pm: Guests pose for a group photograph at the end of the session. Share this: Twitter Facebook The Minister of Justice, Abubakar Malami, has told the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission that it must always submit to his office details of its investigations into serious cases. He said the directive is in compliance with the Economic and Financial Crimes (Enforcement) Regulations, 2010. The Cable online newspaper reports that the Justice Ministry made the request on Tuesday, via a letter dated August 1, and signed by a lawyer, Abiodun Aikomo. According to the letter, the ministry accused the commission of failing to comply with section 10 of the said regulation and demanded compliance going forward. I am directed by the Honourable Attorney- General and Minister of Justice to refer to the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (Enforcement) Regulations 2010 (the Regulation) published in the Federal Republic of Nigeria Official Gazette No.61 Vol. of 21st September 2010, particularly the obligations of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC/the Commission). I am directed to refer specifically to Section 10 (1) which mandates the Commission to forward to the Attorney-General, in respect of a case of complaint which is serious or complex within the context of the Regulation, the outcome of its investigation(s) with its recommendations on whether there are sufficient grounds to initiate prosecution. The Honourable Attorney-General observes that the Commission has been in breach of the above cited provision of the Regulation for some time, hence this reminder to the Commission to ensure compliance going forward. Accept please, the assurances of the best of the Honourable Attorney General, the letter said. The EFCC is yet to react to the letter. Efforts to get the reaction of the commission on the matter failed. The commissions spokesperson, Wilson Uwujaren, did not pick his call when contacted on the matter. He also did not reply text messages sent to him. Also, the special adviser to the justice minister, Salihu Isah, could not be reached for comments. Share this: Twitter Facebook A Catholic priest in Nigeria stunned radio listeners when he announced on a live programme that he was quitting the Catholic Church. Patrick Edet, who served under the Catholic Diocese of Uyo, Akwa Ibom State, has been a popular voice on radio in the state through his weekly live programme called Grace and Inspiration. On Wednesday, on Planet 101.1FM, Uyo, instead of airing his usual inspirational message which has over the years endeared him to thousands within and outside the state, Mr. Edet dropped the shocking news. On 31 of July, I resigned from my services, my duties and obligations as a Catholic priest, he said. I ceased to be a Catholic priest in my thinking, in my spirit, in my soul, (and) in my body. Yesterday, the 1st of August, was my first day outside the laws, the regulations, (and) the authority of the Catholic church. In my mind, every law that bound me bound me because I submitted myself to the Catholic Church as an institution. Having submitted my resignation letter to my authorities in the Catholic Church, in my spirit, soul and body, I am free from every law that guided me. I submit myself to one authority God, he said. Mr. Edet was a Catholic priest for more than 11 years. Akwa Ibom, a predominantly Christian state, has a high Catholic population. It is very rare in Nigeria to have a priest quit the Catholic Church. He said he prayed and fasted for seven months before he took the decision to leave the Catholic Church. The Catholic Church in the state could not be reached immediately for their comment on the matter. Apart from being a radio preacher, Mr. Edet runs a crowd-pulling fellowship in Uyo, outside the control of the Catholic Church, using his Grace Family Global Outreach. Those who have attended the fellowship meetings before said things are done the Pentecostal style like prophesying and speaking in tongue which often brought the priest into conflict with the Catholic doctrine and leadership. Mr. Edet, throughout the about 40 minutes broadcast on Wednesday, explained his experience with God, his personal philosophy of life, and his conflict with the Catholic Church. He said he had gone through a lot of opposition, antagonism and blackmail for the years he has been running the fellowship. All I hear every time is that I am not truly a Catholic priest. It has been in conflict in my heart because why I actually accepted not to marry and have children was not just to be a Catholic priest, but to do the things that I do be nutty on radio and shout and laugh and inspire somebody. And cry when I need to cry and console somebody who cries and to live my life out in my faith openly and in the process make mistake. Peace has been taken away from me for years. I live in fear and in doubt. Sometimes I doubt myself am I really right, am I in the right place, he said. Mr. Edet praised the Catholic Church as being so organised and the best institution that has ever been built by man, but however said that the space given to him in the Catholic Church as a minister was so small. A box is already made for you and you cannot go outside that box, he explained. You cannot know God beyond that box. You cannot express God beyond that box. And any attempt for you to go beyond that box brings you label. The God that I have discovered in life is a God that cannot be fully known. That God is a God that cannot be fully predicted and cannot be fully captured in human expression otherwise he will cease to be a mystery. That is a God I have come to accept as my God. I have come to realise that serving that God you need freedom. When that freedom is limited you cannot fully serve that God. Each time I tried to cross the line, the thing I meet crushes me on the inside and makes me feel guilty. But I cannot stop doing it. Theres a pull inside of me telling me there is more, and life was meant to be more and that more is found in freedom in God. The priest said he was aware that his action would bring along some unpleasant consequences, like rejection, for instance, and that he was ready to face them. He said God would judge him, not by the words or actions of the Catholic Pope, but by his own life on the earth, and therefore he accepted responsibility for his action. The reason I am doing this is that I want to be right with God first. I want to go to heaven when I die. For those who are broken, I have these words for you I have been broken for years. The cleric prayed for those who will condemn him for leaving the Catholic Church, adding that I dont even need to say I forgive you; you are right in your thinking, but just that you dont know everything you dont know what has been in my life, you dont know my motive, you dont know why I leave, you dont know who called me, how I was called and the covenant I have had with God, you dont know where I am going to. It is not the Church that called me, it is God who called me that is above the Church, and my interest is to be right with Him first and have peace with Him first. Mr. Edet, who said he would continue to build his fellowship, promised never to ask or encourage people to leave the Catholic Church. The President of the Senate, Bukola Saraki, said the 8th Senate surmounted the turbulence that characterised its affairs due to cooperation and unity among the members. He recalled that the crisis in the red chamber began immediately after its inauguration, with his emergence as president of the senate, and Ike Ekweremadu, a Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, member, as his deputy. Mr. Saraki stated this when he featured at the News Agency of Nigeria, NAN, Forum in Abuja, and said in spite of the crisis, the senate had recorded unprecedented success. He said that though president, he was only first among equals and as such, he ensured that every member of the chamber was carried along in all the plans of the senate. He said that in spite of the distractions from court cases and wanton allegations, the senate ensured that it remained focused on the agenda it drafted prepared for itself. From day one we had an agenda, a legislative agenda. It will be interesting for you to get a copy of that agenda and look at those promises that we made; you will see that some of the things we have been doing are not by chance. It is like somebody who is working through a document and he is ticking it and that is why. We have been organised, we have been focused, because we had an agenda. Our agenda is that the senate will be addressing the economy that we championed made-in-Nigeria was not by chance; it was part of our agenda. We said to ourselves, what can make Nigerias economy grow, people are spending so much on importation, why dont we try and save that. Government spends about N1.3 trillion on importation, why doesnt it spend that on locally-produced goods? So, let us pass a bill that any MDA, before it goes to buy a foreign good must see that there is no local alternative. If we do that, it means that that N1.3 trillion will be spent inwards. We are talking of infrastructure, it is these laws. Railway law has been there for more than 50 years, nobody has reviewed it until we came. Ports, inland revenue and now, we are talking about PIB. These are economy-based issues. With Ease-of-doing-Business rule, we are passing bills that will allow Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) to get credits without having landed property. We are improving on credit, to allow banks lend to small scale businesses. It is because we have been focused, determined and strong-willed and not distracted. Sometimes, I see that all the noise is distraction, he said. He attested to having won the unanimous support of his colleagues though at the beginning there were divisions even within his party, the All Progressives Congress, APC. Saraki added that members of the opposition Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, were also cooperating, supporting the agenda that will grow the economy and better the country. I will humbly say that I have been able to win the support of all my colleagues, I have been able to win their confidence, because the way I occupied leadership is that it is `we, not `me. That is why many people misunderstand this place and say it is the President of the Senate that has done that, but most of the things are done collectively. I am just first among equals. It is not like the executive where you can fire a minister or commissioner; it doesnt work like that here, I cannot fire Olusola Adeyeye, for instance. If you understand that, you will win their confidence. I will say that 99 per cent of the Senate is going in one direction and that is what we have been able to achieve. And who gains for that, the country. This is why, for example, the Constitution amendment, we could do it. You will know that even on the day of the Constitution amendment, we did not sit for two hours because some senators refused and said there was something funny and they delayed us for two hours. But when we sat and I addressed them and told them that I was not here to protect anyones agenda, that I am here for all of us, then we sat and achieved all of that, he said. Mr. Saraki added that when we wanted to do the Petroleum Industry Bill, some senators stood up and said `no, this governance bill has nothing to do with host community, my people will not be happy. I gave them my word, saying `pass this governance one for me, I promise you I will bring the host communitys. Those in the PDP are also working with us; when there are national issues we call them and tell them `dont bring issue of party here, lets think of Nigeria and that is what we have been able to achieve. Saraki cautioned Nigerians to be wary of those who try to discredit the senate, pointing out that most of them were doing so out of selfish interest. He said that most of those championing negative campaign against the National Assembly were those whose selfish interests of taking control of the legislative arm failed. He added that some of them had resorted to disparaging the assembly. Mr. Saraki, therefore, called on Nigerians not to join in weakening the key institution of democracy which is the national assembly. Most of those noises are not in the interest of Nigeria, they are personal agenda. People who wanted a certain person to emerge as Senate President or Speaker of the House and they have not got it are saying `since we cannot win the battle for the National Assembly lets distract them. (NAN) Share this: Twitter Facebook The Northern Youth Coalition that recently handed a three-month quit notice to Igbos living in the northern region insisted on the quit notice. The coalition gave the controversial ultimatum that has been condemned by may Nigerians on June 6, saying Igbos should leave the north before October 1. Speaking to journalists on Thursday in Kano, the chairman of the coalition, Nastura Shariff, in the company of the National President of Arewa Consultative Youth Forum, Shettima Yerima, explained that the quit notice was just an aspect of many other demands they had made. We have never at any given time lifted that quit notice, because if we are to do so, it would have been after a meeting that would be called soon. Mr. Shettima had earlier told PREMIUM TIMES that the group would review its stance on the quit notice and make its position known after a meeting. Thursdays press briefing implies the group did not change its stance after its meeting. Mr. Shariff said that apart from the quit notice, they had also written to the United Nations on the violent activities of the leader of the Indigenous Peoples of Biafra, IPOB, Nnamdi Kanu, urging them to declare him a terrorist and his agitation illegal. He said they were still expecting a response from the UN which would guide their next move. That is why we told you that our quit notice still stands and our resolve that anybody who doesnt want to stay in Nigeria should vacate our region still stands but we are not going to use force to actualize that. We will do it through peaceful means, this is because of the fact that one cannot be living with us and talking Biafra, he said. Mr. Shariff said it was sad that people focused more on the quit notice issued by them rather than on a presented recorded video evidence where Nnamdi Kanu called for genocide like what happened in Rwanda. In his own remarks, Mr. Shettima said his members would continue to restrategize on how to ensure unity in the nation and do away with all threats. He said the quit notice was still applicable and that they would be calling a World Press Conference on Thursday next week in Abuja to make their final stance known. Mr. Shettima also noted that they had scheduled a meeting with the Northern wing of the Ohaneze Ndi Igbo in Kaduna soon to discuss ways forward out of the quagmire. A lecturer at the Political Science Department of Bayero University Kano, Aliyu Jibiya, at the meeting said his group, Arewa Summit Development Initiative, was planning a one-million-man march to sensitise Nigerians on the problem of out of school children roaming the streets in northern Nigeria, popularly referred to as Almajiri. Share this: Twitter Facebook Nigeria and other west African countries on Thursday met to brainstorm on tackling migration challenges. The Comptroller General of the Nigerian Immigration Service, Muhammad Babandede, said migrants will soon begin to travel freely across the ECOWAS sub-regional borders. Mr. Babandede made the announcement on Thursday during a joint meeting of the Nigeria Immigration Service, NIS, and ECOWAS Heads of Immigration held in Abuja. The meeting was convened to review and make recommendations on the protocol of free movement of persons, migration and irregular migration management as well as regional data sharing. As you are aware, there is already free movement but its also coupled with the security challenges. We should be able to save a lot of lives at the end of this month. Migrants will travel across the desert because we have a common border; there is Nigerian border, there is Togolese border, there is Ghanaian border but there is the sub-regional border which people move freely without visas and they can easily be in our territories so we should protect our own citizens within those borders. If you take Nigeria for instance, our regional border is in Niger, towards the North; so, if we want to protect our people from problems through the desert, we need to work closely with Niger. Thats the purpose of this meeting and Im sure peace will be brought out of this meeting, Mr. Babandede said. The comptroller-general also emphasized on how the Service intends to use technology in tackling the issues surrounding porous borders across the sub-regional countries. We can exchange information, we can do joint patrol and investigation. That way, we can send the right signal to criminals that we are united. In terms of technology, one of the major decisions taken is the use of biometrics in order to strengthen cooperation among sub-regional countries, he added. Mr. Babandede said the service has graduated at least 400 officers that went through border training. The officials that participated in the training were heads of patrol officers and drivers, he said. We have also trained rapid response team to help in times of crisis, he added. The Minister of Interior, Abdulrahman Dambazzau, in his remarks said arms smuggling is a major challenge across Nigerias borders. He said that there is need to use collaborative efforts within the sub-region to tackle the porous border. Because our borders are porous, one of the things we are looking at is the effective use of technology because of the extensiveness of the porousness of the border and also the similarities among border communities. We are looking at ways we will use the means of modern technology to check this menace. We cannot do this alone without collaborative efforts with in the sub-region and also international organisations so that we can now bring out our ideas together and synergize to see the best way we can handle this, he said. The minister also said arms proliferation is a major issue and challenge in every country across the globe. We want to clean up arms that are already coming in and to prevent further movement of illegal arms, Mr. Dambazzau said. Share this: Twitter Facebook The Borno Police Command has arrested a 41-year-old housewife, Jummai Buba, for allegedly aiding armed robbers in the state. Ms. Buba, a mother of 10, was arrested in Maiduguri for allegedly aiding her son, who belongs to a notorious armed robbery gang. The Commissioner, Damian Chukwu, made the disclosure on Thursday while parading the suspects in Maiduguri. Mr. Chukwu said the housewife was arrested in Maiduguri alongside seven other suspects, who attacked motorists and snatched vehicles in Jos and Abuja. He explained that the lady was arrested for conspiring with her son to conceal the vehicles snatched from their owners. The lady served as an accomplice in concealing the stolen vehicles. Whenever her son robbed cars, he will send it to his mother, who will in turn contact buyers in Maiduguri, he said. The commissioner named the other suspects as: Umar Kachalla, Muhammad Adamu, Abubakar Usman, Bashir Mohammad, Sulaiman Abubakar and Yakubu Abubakar. He said that the police recovered three cars from the suspects, adding that the suspects would be transferred to Plateau Police Command as soon as investigations were completed. He said that two other suspects, Modu Busari and Mohammed Sale from Magumeri Local Government Area, had also been arrested over attempted robbery. Mr. Chukwu explained that the suspects were apprehended in separate raids by officials of the command on patrol in the area. He said that the police had arrested one Abdullahi Hassan, who specialises in the theft of car batteries and spare parts. He said that a number of items were recovered from the suspect. The commissioner said the police had also arrested two suspected members of Boko Haram insurgents in a joint operation with members of the Civilian Joint Task Force, CJTF. He said that one of the suspects was arrested in Mainok town in Kaga Local Government Area, while the second suspect was arrested at Nasarawa village in Dawakin Tofa LGA of Kano State. We also arrested a military impersonator in Maiduguri. Investigations are still in progress and all the suspects will be prosecuted, the police said. (NAN) Share this: Twitter Facebook The Defence Headquarters has accused a section of the media of misinterpreting the Country Reports on Terrorism 2016 recently released by the US Department of State. The Director Defence Information, DDI, John Enenche, made the accusation in a statement issued on Thursday in Abuja. He said that the part of the report which quoted the state department as saying that the Nigerian military was unable to hold and rebuild civilian structures and institutions in those areas it had cleared was misrepresented. He said that such reportage was detrimental to Nigerias national security and interest. He explained that it was the job of other security agencies to hold territories that had been recaptured. Mr. Enenche said that the U.S. report which also covers Niger, Chad and Cameroon was not published with the objective of causing restiveness among the populace. It is to draw government attention to areas that could be improved upon to tackle global terrorism. After the decimation of the terrorist strongholds in the North-East, other security agencies such as the Police, Nigerian Security and Civil Defence Corps have been taking hold of areas cleared by the military. That is why Adamawa and Yobe states have little incidents of terrorist acts in the recent past. Furthermore, rebuilding of civilian structures and institutions is not a military task. It is purely the responsibility of the government of which a lot is being done. The efforts of Borno, Yobe, and Adamawa states are evident in this regard, he added. Mr. Enenche said that the Presidential Committee on the North-East Initiative, PCNI, was making positive efforts in that regard, as well as NGOs and well-meaning Nigerians. He said that the Nigerian army had been involved in the construction of roads and bridges demolished by the terrorists. Mr. Enenche said that contrary to what was published, the report commended the Nigerian Government which the military is a part. Clearly without ambiguity, it (report) stated the Nigerian Government actively cooperate with US and other international partners to prevent further acts of terrorism in Nigeria against US citizens, citizens of third countries, and Nigerian citizens, the defence spokesperson said. (NAN) Share this: Twitter Facebook Protesters on Thursday stormed the Lagos State governors office to demand an end to rape cases in the state and across the country. The protesters, who campaigned under the aegis of different civil society organisations including War Against Rape, WAR, said they were demanding an end to rape of children and babies. A protester who identified herself as Lailah told PREMIUM TIMES that it was important for the government to address the menace in the state before victims began to take laws into their own hands. It is important to look into this issue before victims begin to resort to jungle justice, she said. They say it is the provocative way women dress. Okay. But how do little kids dress? How do school children who are raped dress? The Lagos state government must act decisively on this issue as it is becoming too rampant. PREMIUM TIMES reports that the protesters stood at the front of the governors office for several hours, chanting solidarity songs. Similarly, hundreds of women in Gombe on Thursday staged a peaceful protest against incessant cases of rape in the state. The News Agency of Nigeria reports that the women, who, were in black apparels, carried placards with various inscriptions denouncing rape. Speaking to newsmen, Jamila Sulaiman, Coordinator, Women Situation Room, an NGO, said that their decision to stage the protest was informed by the death of a 14-year-old girl who was a victim of rape in Anambra. Enough is enough. As women, we are dressed in black symbolising pain, grief and agony, she said. She said that cases of rape in Gombe and other parts of the country were on the increase without lawful conviction. There are so many cases of rape of babies and even women on daily basis with no lawful convictions. We want justice for rape victims, let the culprits face the wrath of the law, she said. The coordinator further appealed to Gombe State Ministry of Justice to enforce a stiffer penalty for convicted rapist. Meanwhile, the Muslim Rights Concern (MURIC) on Thursday said the protest that took place in Lagos was misplaced and the protesters themselves were ill-informed and misguided. A statement by Ishaq Akintola, MURICs president, said the protest was a sheer cosmetic exercise. The organisation explained that rape is an affront against the dignity of womanhood and an assault on humanity which should be condemned in the strongest terms; but taking a protest against rape to the governors office is a misdirection of target audience, a waste of man-hour and mere window-dressing. The body said the exercise cannot scratch the surface, talk less of hitting the subterranean region. Rape is on the increase mainly because moral bankruptcy has hit its peak, the statement said. Women are no longer ashamed of exposing their bodies in public, whether in front or at the back. Even dresses which do not expose their bodies are sewn so tight that no one is left in doubt about the objective. It is the age of dress-to-kill. But women forget that many of them will fall victims of stray bullets. Indecent dressing is a provocation and this is the issue which decent societies must address. The organisation said it is inviting WAR to launch a campaign against indecent dressing, adding that the way you dress is the way you will be addressed. You cannot send out a letter without receiving a reply. Many responsible corporate entities now disallow women who are scantily dressed from entering their premises, it said, saying governments role should only be complementary. The governor does not dictate your taste in fashion. Women who elect to cut their blouses low at the front and their skirts outrageously short above the thighs have deliberately entered into a contract with men who are sick upstairs. Women should be told in clear and unequivocal terms that indecent dressing constitutes sexual harassment. The Glorious Quran says, Oh ye children of Adam, we have given you garments to cover your shame and to be an adornment for you. But the dress of righteousness is the bestOh ye children of Adam, let not Shaytan (Satan) seduce you (Quran 7:26-27). MURIC, therefore, advised parents and guardians to pay special attention to what their female children and wards wear, adding that women should desist from dressing up little female children like adults. The movements of teenage girls should be strictly monitored and they should not be sent on errands to men. In addition, married women should learn to adorn themselves respectfully, it said. Share this: Twitter Facebook Governor Samuel Ortom of Benue on Thursday vowed to make former Lagos State police commissioner, Abubakar Tsav, prove allegations of corruption against him in court, or be punished for such lies. Mr. Ortom was reacting to Mr. Tsavs refusal to apologise over allegations he made against him in a letter written to the presidency. Mr. Tsav, Public Complaints Commissioner overseeing Benue, had, in a letter addressed to the presidency, anti-graft agencies and the Bill Gates Foundation, accused Mr. Ortom of financial recklessness and massive corruption. He accused the governor of running the state like a personal estate, and alleged that resources were being shared among friends, family members and party officials. Mr. Tsav urged the presidency to investigate the governor, and declared that he authored the letter in his capacity as the official whistle blower of Benue. Angered by the allegations which he described as fabricated and malicious, Mr. Ortom dragged Mr. Tsav to court. With the relationship between the duo worsening by the day, the Tor Tiv, James Ayatse, intervened and after due deliberations, advised Mr. Tsav to retract the letter and tender a public apology to the governor within two weeks. The reconciliation meeting was held in Makurdi, on July 2. But, instead of the apology the governor was waiting for, Mr. Tsav told the News Agency of Nigeria on Tuesday in Makurdi that he would never apologise to Mr. Ortom. I stand by my letter to the Presidency. There is massive corruption in Benue that should be investigated. I have no regrets writing to alert the whole world to what is happening in Benue, he told NAN. He said that the meeting where he was asked to apologize was convened by the governor to prevail on him to retract the allegations. Tsav said that he was ready to prove his allegations in court, stressing that apologizing over the allegations would impinge on my integrity. Reacting to Tsavs refusal to apologize, Ortom, through his Special Adviser on Media and ICT, Tahav Agerzua, told NAN on Thursday in Makurdi that he (Tsav) would have to prove the allegations in court. Since Tsav has refused to retract the allegations and tender a public apology as requested by the Tor Tiv, Prof. James Ayatse, he will have to prove them in court. Since he has opted not to honour his word, the Benue State Government shall put him to judicial test; he must prove his baseless and fabricated lies in the court of law, Mr. Agerzua said. Agerzua rejected the claims by Tsav that Ortom initiated the reconciliation meeting where he was asked to retract the letter and apologize to the governor. It was Tsav that invited Mr. Emanuel Ogbile, the Chief Public Affairs Commissioner, the Tor Tiv and first-class chiefs to intervene on his behalf; he wanted them to prevail on the governor to withdraw the criminal case against him. The governor agreed to withdraw the case on the condition that Tsav will retract the letter and tender a public apology to him. It was Tsav that made the peace moves because the governor was already in court. It was Tsav that rushed to invite his boss to Makurdi, not the governor, he said. He said that during the meeting, Tsav agreed to tender a public apology and meet other conditions as prerequisite for withdrawal of the case. For the man to say he will neither apologize nor retract the letter is surprising. The only option left for him is to prove the allegations in court, otherwise the law will take its course, he said. (NAN) Share this: Twitter Facebook The Police in Plateau have arrested three persons in connection with the alleged murder of a Catholic Priest, Raphael Pankyes. The Police Public Relations Officer in Plateau, Tyopev Terna, disclosed this to the News Agency of Nigeria on Thursday in Pankshin. Mr. Terna said the police arrested the three suspects in the course of their investigation. We are on the trail of more suspects in connection with the incident, he said. He gave the names of the suspects as Alex Bala, David Bala and Dasen Bala, all of whom, he said, were not related in spite of their surnames. On July 20, 2017; we received a report at our Pankshin Division from the family members of the deceased, who said that they had not seen him since July 14. They claimed they had neither seen nor heard from him since that day, which necessitated a thorough search for him in all possible places, the PPRO said. According to him, the family members first went to Yiti Primary School, Fier, where the deceased also served as a classroom teacher, but that there was no trace of him there. But when they visited his small house built on his farm, they found his lifeless body already badly decomposed, which prompted them to report the matter to us (Police). We are not leaving any stone unturned until all those who have a hand in the killing of the clergy are found and punished in accordance with the law of the land. `We are happy that these three suspects that we already have are giving us useful statements and with time we shall get to the root of the matter, Mr. Terna said. He urged members of the public to avail the police with any useful information that could lead to the arrest of the other suspects. Family sources told the News Agency of Nigeria that the 52-year-old cleric was last seen on July 14 and was found murdered by some unknown persons on July 20. The body of the priest was found on his farm at Fier village in Pankshin Local Government Area of the state. It was learnt that because the corpse had already decomposed, members of his family promptly buried him on the day he was found. (NAN) Share this: Twitter Facebook The Kaduna State Internal Revenue Service, KDIRS, said it generated N9.6 billion Internally Generated Revenue, IGR, between January and June. Muktar Ahmed, the Executive Chairman of KDIRS, told the News Agency of Nigeria on Thursday in Kaduna that workers constituted the largest contributors followed by Kaduna State Geographic Information Service. Mr. Ahmed identified other sources to include hospital bills and school fees. He said that the state had three to four million potential tax payers, but expressed regret that only about 400,000 were in the KDIRS revenue net. Mr. Ahmed said that efforts were being made to bring all eligible tax payers into the tax net to boost the state revenue generation and provide better services to the people. He, however, acknowledged that the N9.6 billion IGR was significantly short of the N27 billion expected to have been generated in the first half of the year to meet the N54 billion targeted this year. We were actually hoping to generate about N11 billion in the sale of government properties which would have boosted our revenue to N22 billion in the first six months. But the process is ongoing and we are hoping that it will soon pull through. Another revenue line that we have not fully tapped is the land use charge that every real property owner in the state will pay. The state executive council has approved the land use charge rates for 2017 which is N10, 000 for people with real properties in Government Reserved Areas (GRAs) and N1000 for those in suburb areas. I am optimistic that by the time we start collecting the land use charges, our revenue generation will significantly improve, he said. The chairman said that local government areas remained major challenge in revenue collection for KDIRS as their officials were still collecting cash in local government areas. In the process, tax payers are short-changed. We will not allow that to continue. We have sent out intelligence to fish out those involved. Already, seven officials including VIO officials in our motor vehicle registration offices have been arrested and charged to court for forgery of vehicle documents and criminal conspiracy. I assure you, we will soon clean KDIRS of bad eggs and block all leakages so that the government will get its due revenue, he said. Ahmed thanked tax payers in the state for the cooperation so far and appeal for more support to move the state forward. (NAN) Share this: Twitter Facebook The Minister of Women Affairs and Social Development, Aisha Alhassan, has commended Governor Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi of Enugu State for his administrations giant strides in uplifting the wellbeing of Nigerian women and children in the state. Mrs. Alhassan, a former senator, also commended the governor for his contributions towards the passage of the Child Rights Law in Enugu State by the State Assembly, a legislation that protects the fundamental rights and welfare of every child in the state. The minister spoke at Government House, Enugu, when she led a delegation of Nigerian women to pay a courtesy call on the governor to inform him of the federal governments programmes which her ministry was organizing to interact and sensitize women in the state on government activities for them, their girls and children. She expressed delight at the impressive performance of Governor Ugwuanyi in the state, noting that she was not surprised considering the governors pedigree and his passion for his peoples welfare when they were both in the National Assembly. I thank you, Your Excellency, because I have been hearing the good works you are doing in Enugu State. I am happy you have not disappointed me. May God give you wisdom, more strength and patience to continue to do what you are doing. When we were in the National Assembly, you were so passionate about helping your people and I am happy you have continued with that vision, the minister said. Responding, Governor Ugwuanyi, who welcomed the minister and her entourage, said the promotion and enforcement of programmes and laws concerning women and children remained one of the cardinal policy thrusts of his administration. The governor added that Enugu had attained a reputation as mother and child-friendly state having continued to earn plaudits for the Free Maternal and Child Health Care programme that we have been running successfully in the state. He said funds were currently being released to the Ministry of Gender Affairs to mainstream children and women related programmes in budget implementation, noting that the passage of the Child Rights Law further reinforced that commitment. We have in place a standing state committee on Child Adoption and Fostering whose duties among other things, is to facilitate the implementation of the Child Rights Law and to protect children from all forms of abuse including child trafficking while improving the quality of child justice administration and creating awareness and sensitization on adoption and related matters in Enugu State, Mr. Ugwuanyi said. We also operate a Sexual Assault Referral Centre (TARMAR SARC), which provides holistic and high quality medical, psychological and social services to victims and survivors of sexual assault and related offences. The State Government has continued to commit huge funds to upgrade and renovate infrastructure and provide facilities, furniture and essential equipment in primary and secondary schools in the state for the benefit of our children. The government has also taken steps to strengthen the relevant Boards and agencies in the management of primary and secondary education while institutionalizing a robust monitoring framework to supervise teachers and ensure more qualitative teaching practice for the proper intellectual development of our children. Despite the challenges inherent in its design, progress has been made in the implementation of the Home Grown School Feeding programme being carried out in partnership with the Federal Government. Share this: Twitter Facebook President Andrzej Duda President Andrzej Duda on Wednesday held an almost hour-long phone talk with his French counterpart Emmanuel Macron, Presidents chief-of-staff Krzysztof Szczerski said. The two presidents discussed, among others, the reform of Poland's judicial system. "President Duda, asked by President Macron, outlined the situation in regard to the reform of the judicial system following his decisions to veto two bills on the Supreme Court and the National Judicial Council, and presented plans of a presidential legislative initiative. At the same time, the Polish president critically referred to European Commission's steps in this field as not reflecting the real state of affairs", Krzysztof Szczerski said. The minister added that the presidents also discussed tenders linked with the modernisation of the Polish Armed Forces and French offers presented in new tenders. "The interlocutors agreed that valuable in this case would be both countries' ongoing consultations to avoid tension resulting from lack of communication", Minister Krzysztof Szczerski stressed. The two presidents also discussed a calendar of bilateral meetings and "prospects for holding a Weimar Triangle meeting. They agreed that sides should agree on a proper moment for such meetings so that they would "bring positive results", Minister Szczerski said. The Weimar Triangle's members are France, Germany and Poland. The minister added that "the presidents agreed to remain in contact and decided to hold the next telephone talk in early September". (PAP) We're contesting under the leadership of CM Jairam Thakur. Himachal Govt did good work under his leadership for 5 yrs. So, we're confident that the people will bless us once again so that the double-engine govt comes back, said Union Minister Anurag Thakur after casting his vote. Pointing out that the BJP formed governments in Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh, Manipur and Goa yet again, BJP MP from Hamirpur Anurag Thakur said, "It will happen this time in Himachal Pradesh and Gujarat, as well... Congress has a habit of making false promises and the public knows their real face." ( Read 9344 Times) Source : Mumbai: Time and again villains have become the new poster boys in Hindi cinema. Portraying evil on screen is no longer that of a prop actor. Playing anti-hero is not an evil proposition to win over the fans anymore. To name a few superstars like Sanjay Dutt, Shah Rukh Khan, Aamir Khan, Vivek Oberoi have willingly taken villainous acts and are not afraid of experimenting with image anymore.Joining the bandwagon is Neeraj Bharadwaj the versatile actor who for the last 15-year essaying various major roles including the lead in television serials and films. Neeraj had featured in Hindi films like Prem Shastra, Bhookha Sher, Taqdeer Ka Sikander, Waqt Ke Shehzaade including Bhojpuri films like Munnibai Nautankiwali, Maiyya Rakhiye SenurwaAbaad; where he played the lead, amongst many others. He had memorable roles in T.V. serials like Ehsaas, Jaaye Kahan?, Kaanch Ke Rishtey, Saath Nibhana Saathiya, Bandhan Kachche Dhaagon Ka and others. Now buzz is that this talented actor is playing a baddie in Cine Multimedias upcoming Hindi film Yeh Dil Na Hota Aawara. The film is being produced and directed by Raj Sehgal. The film has been launched recently with a song recording and it will mount the sets next month.Speaking about his role in the film, Neeraj Bharadwaj says, I am playing the main villain in this film. I will be seen as Anna, the powerful Mafia Don. With this film I will be known as the notorious baddie and will be known as the despicable fiends of the Indian screen. It is difficult and challenging to portray villainy on screen. He further adds that there are a couple of more films playing the bad man on his platter which he intends to reveal about it later.Playing different roles is a challenging proposition for an actor. Every actor wants author-backed roles. Playing a bad boy is stimulating. Every villainous act requires looking different with make-up, get-ups and portraying the character with his style of presenting the dialogue. The actors own inventiveness should ink in the character. This is what satisfies the thirst of an actor in me. Playing stereo-typed roles tend to saturate at one given point, says Bharadwaj.One more bad boy joins the ranks of evil proposition in the emerging trend. Bollywood is rediscovering the villain more ruthless and evil than ever before. ATLANTIC CITY The U.S. Coast Guard suspended the search Wednesday night for a swimmer who might have disappeared near Steel Pier. The search was suspended about 8 p.m., according to a statement from the Coast Guard. "We extend our deepest condolences to the families and loved ones affected by this tragedy," said Capt. Scott Anderson, Commander, Coast Guard Sector Delaware Bay. "As first responders, it's always a difficult decision to suspend a search." Atlantic City Police responded at 9:43 p.m. Tuesday to the 1000 block of the beach for an unconfirmed report of a missing swimmer. A woman told police she was under Steel Pier, which is at the end of Virginia Avenue, with a 31-year-old man who went into the ocean about 8:15 p.m., police said. The woman told police she left the area before the man returned from the ocean. Police said it is not known whether the swimmer returned to land. The Coast Guard launched a response boat and rescue helicopter as a precaution from Atlantic City to conduct initial searches, according to a statement from the Coast Guard. A patrol boat based out of Cape May was diverted and searched for the swimmer throughout the night. The search resumed Wednesday morning. The Atlantic City Beach Patrol was also assisting, police said. This search comes days after the body of a Slovakian woman who disappeared while swimming at the New Jersey shore was recovered in Toms River late Sunday. She was swept away while swimming with a male companion in rough surf off Point Pleasant Beach. ATLANTIC CITY The city will hold a summit Tuesday to detail funding programs available for small businesses. The New Jersey Economic Development Authority, the Atlantic County Improvement Authority and Clarifi representatives will be at the summit, according to a statement from the Mayors Office. Earlier this month, the EDA announced two sets of grants available for businesses in the resort: the Business Lease Incentive and the Business Improvement Incentive. The programs help fund new or expanding businesses in designated Garden State Growth Zones commercial areas, according to the EDA. The eligible areas are Atlantic Avenue between Michigan and Massachusetts avenues and an area bordered by the Boardwalk, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard and Atlantic and South Carolina avenues. The lease program would reimburse businesses in eligible areas a percentage of lease payments for two years. Its for businesses that plan to lease between 500 and 5,000 square feet of industrial or retail space for at least five years. The improvement program offers as much as 50 percent of renovation costs up to $20,000 to ground-floor businesses in designated areas. The minimum project cost must be $5,000. The summit will go over the details of the programs and offer help to fill out applications. The summit will be held at 9 a.m. Tuesday in Council Chambers, second floor at City Hall, 1301 Bacharach Blvd. ATLANTIC COUNTY Tyler Donut Boy Carach is visiting five police agencies in the county Thursday and delivering doughnuts to officers to show his appreciation for them. Carach is visiting the Hamilton Township Police, Galloway Police, New Jersey State Police in Galloway and Egg Harbor Township Police. He was also scheduled to visit NJSP in Buena, according to a statement from the boys mother, Sheena Carach. He is expected to deliver 100 dozen doughnuts, or 1,200, the statement said. Donut Boy is nine years old and has been visiting police agencies nationwide since August 2016. Last year, he saw four deputies in a local store and asked his mother if he could buy them doughnuts with his own money, the statement said. After hearing from my mom that day that cops have been having a hard time, I decided I was going to thank every cop in America and give them each their favorite treat, DONUTS, Carach said. He has delivered more than 6,000 doughnuts from August 2016 to June 2017, the statement said. He is currently on a six-week road trip to deliver more than 10,000 doughnuts to police departments from south Florida to New Hampshire. By Press Trust of India: Over 100 bridges in different parts of the country are on the verge of collapse and need immediate attention, Road Transport and Highways Minister Nitin Gadkari said today. Gadkari said in the Lok Sabha that his ministry has completed safety audit of 1.6 lakh bridges in the country and found more than 100 structures in dilapidated condition. advertisement "100 bridges can be collapse anytime and they need immediate attention," he said during Question Hour. He also referred to a tragedy where two state-run buses and some private vehicles were swept away after a British-era bridge over the Savitri river in the Konkan region of Maharashtra collapsed last year. Gadakari said his ministry had last year launched a special project to create data of all bridges and culverts in the country as part of the steps to avert mishaps. Referring to the delay in works on various road projects, the minister said this has been happening due to issues related to land acquisition, encroachment and environmental clearance. He said road projects worth Rs 3.85 lakh crore were delayed due to various reasons in the past and most of these issues were resolved and their works are in progress. PTI ACB ARC --- ENDS --- Dena Tartaro was hoping to find some support among other adult survivors of child abuse in South Jersey, but she found few resources or groups existed. So she started one herself. I had been looking to join a group forever, she said. I was part of groups when I lived in other states, and there are some resources down here but not enough. Tartaro will lead a new support group through a program designed by Adult Survivors of Child Abuse, a national organization with groups in several states and counties. She hopes to create a place where people can find comfort in shared experiences and grow in their survivorship. Nearly 700,000 children are emotionally, physically and sexually abused or neglected in the United States annually, according to the National Childrens Alliance. Two-thirds of children served by Childrens Advocacy Centers nationwide reported sexual abuse in 2015. In New Jersey, South Jersey counties had some of the highest rates of reported child abuse in the state. Cumberland County had the highest in 2015, with 97 abuse cases per 1,000 children under age 18, according to data from Advocates for Children of New Jersey. Alliance data show children are more likely to be abused by a parent or other relative. Naomi Jones, a doctor of psychology at Jewish Family Service, treats children with cognitive behavioral therapy who have suffered trauma from being neglected, sexually or physically assaulted, and emotionally or psychologically abused. Children can lose the sense of trust and safety that is required for healthy development (after trauma), she said. They can experience anxiety, depression and self-esteem issues, to name a few of the most common psychological effects. Jones said people can recover from childhood trauma and abuse, but may experience some long-term effects as adults that can be triggered by certain changes or stresses as they move through different stages of life. Although it has been more than 30 years since her father sexually abused her, Tartaro said, she has continually sought therapy and coping resources to heal from the physical, sexual and domestic abuse aimed at her, her sister and her mother. We moved around all the time, she said. From the outside, we were this upper-class family with two parents and two kids, but in private, nobody knew what was happening. The Adult Survivors of Child Abuse support group, which is in partnership with the Mental Health Association in Atlantic County, will meet once a week starting Tuesday in Northfield in a structured format session to cover topics like the role of therapy, confronting abusers, support systems, self-soothing activities, abuse repercussions and more. One chapter included in the support program focuses on self-blame, which experts say many survivors struggle with. Tartaro said she thankfully had always recognized that her father was in the wrong, not her. Her father was sentenced in 1997 to two life terms in a Texas prison and died last year. Getting justice for her abuse and knowing he was in prison made me feel safer to go on with my life, she said but she recognized that not all survivors get that closure, or the help they need. For those who do not get treatment, people are often anxious, depressed, angry and have high rates of suicidal thoughts and substance abuse, Jones said. Tartaro said the support program doesnt replace therapy or counseling, but creates a community for people who have suffered similar abuse. Ideal participants are those who like its structured format and who already have support systems in friends, family or professionals. The groups members remain confidential and it is strictly for adult abuse survivors. The program is not for professionals without personal experience or abusers, and is free with suggested donations for materials. Tartaro has since found a career in social work, raised her daughter, gotten remarried to her wife and created a home in New Jersey. She hopes the new support group will fill in some gaps in South Jersey. This is for anyone who has been through abuse who doesnt want to feel like they are the only ones, she said. PLEASE BE ADVISED: Soon we will no longer integrate with Facebook for story comments. The commenting option is not going away, however, readers will need to register for a FREE site account to continue sharing their thoughts and feedback on stories. If you already have an account (i.e. current subscribers, posting in obituary guestbooks, for submitting community events), you may use that login, otherwise, you will be prompted to create a new account. Behind the spectacle of packed beaches and boardwalks at the Jersey Shore lies a very real threat: terrorism. At a hometown security initiative seminar in Avalon on Wednesday, Cape May County Prosecutor Robert Taylor told an audience of law-enforcement officers and the public that the possibility of terrorism is real, no matter where you live. The seminar featured members of the New Jersey Office of Homeland Security and Preparedness, the State Police, the Cape May County Prosecutors Office and the Cape May County Office of Emergency Management. Theres an attitude out there of It cant happen here, this is Cape May County, Taylor said. You cant sit around and say, Well, it only happens in Paris, in only Nice. It can happen anywhere. Law-enforcement officials in the county were put on high alert Sept. 17 after a pipe bomb exploded inside a trash can in Seaside Park, Ocean County, said Marty Pagliughi, the director of the Cape Office of Emergency Management and Avalons mayor. That day, he got a call from the Prosecutors Office saying officials investigating the explosion had reason to believe the bombing was a diversion for a bigger attack and that the target may be the firefighters convention that was going on at the Wildwoods Convention Center. Later that day, a pressure-cooker bomb filled with shrapnel exploded in Manhattan. The intelligence that came down was right; there was a primary target, but it was New York City, Pagliughi said. The incident was not the first time Cape May County has dealt with a potential terror threat. Sept. 11, 2001, hijacker Marwan al-Shehhi came to the area to sign up for flight lessons at the Cape May Airport and used an ATM machine on the Wildwood Boardwalk before flying United Flight 175 into the World Trade Centers South Tower, Taylor said. He ended up taking flight lessons in Florida. In 1993, the FBI raided a North Wildwood hotel to arrest Matarawy Mohammed Saleh, who was convicted of a plot to bomb bridges and tunnels in New York. He served two years in prison before being deported. The raid was reported by The Press of Atlantic City at the time it occurred. In 2007, two of the six people arrested in a plot to attack Fort Dix were allegedly looking at Cape May Harbor, specifically the U.S. Coast Guard Base, before choosing Fort Dix as the target, Taylor told the panel and audience of several dozen people. Now, Taylor said, some of the potential things they look for are ramming, or a terrorist using a truck to run over people in a crowded place as in a July 2016 attack in Nice, France, that killed 86 people and injured another 458. We look at what we call soft targets, Taylor said. Whether that be the convention center, a movie theater, the Boardwalk or a school. We train to protect them. Maj. Frederick Fife, a commanding officer with the N.J. State Police, said the best thing the public can do is report any suspicious behavior to the police. If you see something, say something, he said, adding that its not about what people are wearing, what color their skin is or what religion they practice. Its about what they are doing. Pagliughi and Taylor said their intention is not to scare anyone or to discourage any municipalities from scheduling tourist events. Wildwoods fire victims get day with Globetrotters WILDWOOD Three families displaced by a large fire in Wildwood Crest in March were honored Were here not to discourage big events, Pagliughi said. Were here to bring everybody together to put these events together in a smarter way. The doctor will see you now. Its a common phrase, but its no longer true. Even in the examining room, youre unlikely to make more than fleeting eye contact with your doctor. Thats because federal laws and regulations have turned doctors into robotic clerks. Your doctor has to stay glued to the computer screen, clicking boxes, following prompts and posing questions the federal government wants asked, never mind your reasons for being there. The biggest loser is you, the patient. But help is on the way. The Trump administration has started rolling back these regulations. Fortunately, this regulatory relief does not depend on repealing Obamacare. You can credit former President Barack Obama for the demise of the eye-to-eye conversation with your doctor. Way back in 2009, he signed into law the HiTech Act, compelling doctors and hospitals that accept Medicare or Medicaid payments to use electronic medical record systems in a meaningful way or pay a hefty penalty. Whats meaningful? Obamas tech czar Dr. David Blumenthal explained that its not just about getting rid of paper files and putting machinery in offices. Blumenthal, an admirer of European-style, single-payer health care, wanted top-down control of how doctors practice. Meaningful meant doctors following embedded clinical decision supports. In short, computers telling doctors what to do. The Obama administration claimed this top-down approach would improve care and save money. Its done the opposite. Primary care doctors spend as much time following computer commands as they do interacting with their patients, according to a recent study in Health Affairs. Jeffrey Moses, an interventional cardiologist at New York-Presbyterian, complains the computer prompts are taking the doctors eyes off the patient. Another cardiologist compares it to being demoted to an airline booking agent. (Not an easy job, but it doesnt require four years of medical school.) Dr. Lloyd Minor, dean of Stanford University School of Medicine, says there is nothing more frustrating to a patient than talking to their doctor, wanting advice, and that provider is typing away and looking at a computer screen. Minor warns it has reduced quality. Each time a patient comes in, even for a follow-up, the doctor is required to repeat a long list of stock questions about sleeping, breathing, digestion, mobility, circulation and other bodily systems. Never mind that the patient answered those questions a week earlier. Dr. Jeffrey Borer, a New York heart valve specialist, says the burden is immense, robbing time needed to listen to patients concerns. Borer calls it cookie-cutter medicine. The individual patient whose needs dont fit the protocols is out of luck. Too bad also for physicians, whose compensation depends on rigorously following the computer prompts. Moses describes with disdain having to click off boxes on all types of stuff that are not relevant to his patients. But says I get no points for identifying a disease that went undiagnosed for five years. Blame both Democrats and Republicans for this nonsense. When Democrats imposed the top-down controls in 2009, Blumenthal predicted that many physicians and hospitals may rebel petitioning Congress to change the law or just resigning themselves to ... penalties. Despite an onslaught of complaints that the science of medicine was being legislated and regulated away, Republicans in Congress repeated the mistake. In 2015, a Republican majority enacted the so-called doc-fix law, which makes Medicare and Medicaid payments to doctors contingent on adhering to the same rigid protocols. As if D.C. bureaucrats can define quality medicine better than your doctor. Fortunately, on June 30, the Trump administration proposed exempting nearly two-thirds of physicians in 2018, starting with doctors in smaller practices. Electronic medical records can be a lifesaver. Trumps Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price promises to focus on ensuring a patients records can be shared instantaneously among hospitals and doctors. Thats the right approach. Technology should benefit the patient, not shackle the doctor. Betsy McCaughey is a senior fellow at the London Center for Policy Research and a former lieutenant governor of New York State. Contact her at betsy@betsymccaughey.com. Use students to pressure China to rein in N. Korea Given what has been happening in North Korea, a serious and strong response is needed. One of the most credible responses that I recently read deals with China. The writer suggested that all Chinese-born students and there are thousands be removed from U.S. university classrooms. All visas would be revoked. A letter could be sent to the Chinese president telling him that will happen this fall. This is in response to the Chinese president doing little or nothing about North Korea nuclear programs. John Gallagher North Wildwood Trumps record with Taj like GOP on health care There was an ironic juxtaposition of articles on July 19. Taking down Taj, a report on the conversion of the former Trump casino hotel into a Hard Rock casino hotel, was right next to an article describing President Trump and the GOPs failure to dismantle the Obama administrations Affordable Care Act, highlighting the presidents prior and current fiascoes. Sadly, what many in Atlantic County knew about Trump is now writ large for the whole country to see. I could not be happier to be rid of the Trump brand in Atlantic County. Some people were financially debilitated by his companys lack of payment for a job. Lisa Maiale-Howell Hammonton Smoking age ineffective So New Jersey has raised the age to smoke to 21. This is a joke. How much did it cost us to pass this one? I say let them smoke and so what if it kills them. Kids know what smoking may do to them. If the stores wont sell them the cigarettes, they get a parent (good role models) or someone standing outside the store to buy it for them, so do people really think raising the age is going to stop them? Try fining the ones who buy or sell them the cigarettes. You never see the age limit enforced, so legislators should stop wasting tax dollars on passing bills like this to make themselves look good. Patrick M. Matthews Galloway Township Churches dont pay tax, shouldnt get funding Recently there has been a lot said about freedom of religion and the First Amendment of the Constitution. Some talk about a wall of separation, others talk about the fallacy of separation of church and state. There was much ado after a church in Missouri won a Supreme Court case allowing it to get money from a public fund to provide safe surfaces for playgrounds. I dont see this as a religious issue, I see it as a misappropriation of tax money. If churches want to share in the common welfare of the country, then the churches should pay their fair share of taxes. Tom Depko Atlantic City 2:30 p.m. Superior Court Judge Julio Mendez has halted the dune project that caused up to two feet of water to sit for several days and damage the beach. The Army Corps. and NJ DEP have seven days to work out a solution. Margate awarded temporary work stoppage for dune project. Army Corps, DEP, city have 7 days to work out solution. Downbeach Current (@DBCurrent) August 3, 2017 1:45 p.m. Thursday Assemblyman Chris A. Brown, (D-2 Atlantic) In a Aug. 2, letter to David Glass, Deputy Commissioner NJ Department of Environmental Protection: "As we discussed, following the recent rain storm, water pooled between the bulkhead an the recently constructed dunes, creating a lake that varies in deputy from 1 1/2 to 2 feet and blocks access to the beach. Moreover, the water has remained at the same level for approximately 5 days or 150 hours showing no sign of percolation or abatement. We are all concerned the lake presents a drowning hazard for young children. "Further, there is concern the lack of a functioning drainage system permits non-point source pollution from the storm water runoff, including oil, chemicals, and fertilizer, and other waste, to collect behind the dunes. In fact, all the state and local storm water drainage regulations require a significant separation from the bottom of a basin and the groundwater. Here, no adequate separation exists." 1:25 p.m. Thursday: Assemblyman Vince Mazzeo (D-Atlantic) "Despite previous assurances to the contrary, the State DEP and Army Corp. have made an absolute mess of the Margate beach in the height of our most important months down the shore. Its not only been an environmental disaster but an economic one for Margate residents and businesses. I support the citys attempt to get an injunction against the state an effort to halt the project until a workable plan can be designed for the entire city. UPDATE: A telephone conference hearing on Margates request for a restraining order to stop the dune project will be heard 1:30 p.m. Thursday in Courtroom 3A at Atlantic County Superior Court, 1201 Bacharach Blvd., Atlantic City. Superior Court Judge Julio Mendez will hear the case. The hearing is open to the public. MARGATE The City Board of Commissioners will discuss Thursday during their regular meeting whether to cap expenditures in their latest efforts to stop the dunes project. Action will immediately follow the workshop session scheduled for 4 p.m. After their worst fears about drainage problems materialized, the Board of Commissioners on Wednesday unanimously agreed to file for a restraining order to stop the dune project. The commissioners made their decision before a standing-room-only gathering at Historic City Hall. The crowd of more than 150 residents flowed into the hallway and out the front doors onto the sidewalk. Jordan Rand, from the Philadelphia-based firm of Klehr Harrison Harvey Branzburg, which was hired to represent the city, said he will file documents in Atlantic County Superior Court on Thursday morning and hopes to be heard the same day. Rand represented Margate homeowners in a previous lawsuit to stop the project in federal court. The city also spent more than $314,000 in its unsuccessful fight against the Absecon Island dune project in state court. Its been a disaster. We have serious ponding and contamination, city Solicitor John Scott Abbott said. Our engineers predicted exactly what has happened to our beaches. Abbott said he knows the state will resist stopping the project. Were going to war, he said. Since Monday morning, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and state Department of Environmental Protection have been pumping contaminated water from a wide drainage basin area between the new dune and the existing bulkhead over the dune to allow it to flow into the ocean. Water collected there during a 4-inch rainstorm Saturday, but some residents say the contractor removed several feet of sand down to the water table and the water has nowhere to go. Mayor Michael Becker said he never wanted the dune project and never thought the Army Corps plan would work. I want this project stopped immediately. We are suffering irreparable harm, he said. Commissioner John Amodeo said despite many meetings with state and federal officials, the city was forced to accept the dune project proceeding at the height of summer. We want to see our beaches restored, sand put back into the low-lying areas so that our residents, visitors and businesses can succeed for at least the last four weeks of the summer, Amodeo said. Amodeo said the project has burdened lifeguards trying to patrol the area behind the dune, where more than 15 inches of water collected. Lifeguards are walking through contaminated water, and one of our lifeguards contracted a bacterial infection and will be out of work for a week, Amodeo said. Commissioner Maury Blumberg, who was the most vocal critic of the dune project, said the Army Corps plan to correct the problems that have developed cannot be by trial and error. There is nothing more important to Margate than our beach. This project is killing our crown jewel. My hope is that tomorrow, this project is stopped dead in its tracks, he said. He wants the Army Corps to move the sand back into the trenches and design a system that works for the entire city, not just problem areas. Several residents complained that infirm family members have been denied access to the beach due to the standing water. Becker said the Army Corps will build up crossovers at all street ends, but only four handicapped access points are planned. Federal law requires handicapped access to public beaches every half-mile, he said. Resident Barbara Krachman said she fears for her children going into the ocean. My biggest fear is contaminated sand and water being dumped into the ocean, she said. Toni Jaccovini said she is concerned about property values. What will this do to our ratables in town if this isnt corrected? The values will go down, and the money we pay the county will go down. This is not a Margate problem, this is a countywide problem, she said. Ed Berger, president of the Margate Business Association, said merchants have reported a 40 percent drop in business over last year. Merchants told him visitors are cutting their stays short or going elsewhere to avoid the debacle. Some residents are considering selling their homes, he said. Resident Sharon Ross said this is the first summer she did not invite company to her shore home. Theres your domino effect. No company, no shopping, no restaurants, she said. Resident Glen Klotz said the Army Corps is defying nature with its dune plan by reversing the grade of the beach. There is a clear and present safety danger, he said. If a storm comes and washes away that dune, were not going to have 2 feet of fresh water there, were going to have 13-14 feet of sea water with nowhere to go except into the streets of Margate and into homes. Resident Dan Gottlieb, who led the Margate Citizens Questioning the Beach Project group against the dunes, asked about the future cost of maintaining the dune, which could cost more than $500,000 every four years for replenishment. Becker said the city will not sign a maintenance contract with the state. We will not pay a penny now, and we will not pay a penny in the future. They promised us we dont have to, Becker said. And what if a significant storm would wash away the beach, Gottlieb asked. If that day comes, I make the call to (Public Works Director) Frank (Ricciotti) and tell him to get the bulldozers ready, Becker said. By PTI: Coimbatore, Aug 3 (PTI) A four-year-old girl and a middle-aged woman died of dengue and a man allegedly succumbed to swine flu (A1H1) at the government hospital here, hospital sources said today. The girl from Vettaikaranpudur in Pollachi in the district, was admitted to the hospital three days ago and succumbed yesterday, without responding to treatment, they said. advertisement Similarly, Shantamani of SS Kulam in the city, was admitted to the government hospital on July 29, after undergoing treatment in a private hospital. She died without responding to treatment. Meanwhile, Satishkumar Sing from Tirupur was admitted to a private hospital there with complaints of chest pain on July 22 and was shifted to a private hospital here the next day. As he had swine flu symptoms, the hospital shifted Sing to Coimbatore Medical College Hospital on August one. However, doctors declared the patient brought dead, the sources said. All the three deaths were declared late last evening. Meanwhile, 50 persons are undergoing treatment for dengue and nearly 200 for different types of viral fever in the government hospital, they said. Two children had died of dengue at the government hospital here last week. The Tamil Nadu government had stated on July 22 that it was acting on a "war-footing" to tackle the spread of dengue fever in some parts of the state. DMK MLA from Singanallur N Karthik had yesterday charged Coimbatore Corporations failure to maintain sewers and clear garbage had led to spread of dengue and other fevers in the district. PTI NVM SS TRK --- ENDS --- While Rahul is looking to piggyback the next generation regional leaders to a rare electoral win, their precarious position owing to corruption allegations could prove to be a stumbling block. By Sweta dutta: As the political crisis surrounding the Mahagathbandhan in Bihar played out to a nail-biting finish last week, Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi made a careful choice of backing RJD chief Lalu Prasad Yadav and son Tejashwi Yadav following months of discussions with his closest political advisers. With the Congress party gearing up to fight the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, Rahul sees strong allies in Tejashwi, former Uttar Pradesh CM Akhilesh Yadav and former Tamil Nadu deputy chief minister MK Stalin - leaders who the Gandhi family scion is going out of his way to woo. advertisement While Rahul is looking to piggyback the next generation regional leaders to a rare electoral win, their precarious position owing to corruption allegations, particularly Tejashwi and Akhilesh, could prove to be a stumbling block. WHAT MIGHT NOT WORK UP's Yogi Adityanath government has ordered a CAG audit of three industrial development authorities - Noida, Greater Noida and Yamuna Expressway - which are facing allegations of irregularities and corruption under the previous Akhilesh Yadav government. Tejashwi is being probed by the Central Bureau of Investigation on charges of fraud. The breaking point with Bihar CM Nitish Kumar came when he sought a larger role in negotiating with opposition parties to decide on a candidate for the presidential polls while insisting on Gopalkrishna Gandhi's candidature mainly because he was a "non-Congress member", sources in the party told Mail Today. On former Tamil Nadu CM M Karunanidhi's 94th birthday in June, Rahul flew down to Chennai along with Left leaders to back DMK chief and Karunanidhi's son MK Stalin. Joining the massive birthday bash, Rahul promised to take on Prime Minister Narendra Modi and not let him and the RSS "impose one idea on this country" and "silence more than a billion Indian voices". Rahul's growing proximity to Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav too is being viewed as a long-term partnership to combat the BJP in 2019. "Whatever might be Mulayam Singh Yadav's position, Akhilesh has proven his standing in the party." AKHILESH YADAV The Yogi government in UP ordered CAG audit of three industrial development authorities - Noida, Greater Noida and Yamuna Expressway - which are facing allegations of irregularities and corruption. The erstwhile SP government had denied permission to CAG to audit the GDA, despite governor Ram Naik's intervention in the issue. Allegations have been levelled by social activists and homebuyers that the three authorities had made large-scale land allotments to builders and other allottees at throwaway prices in the past ten years. MK STALIN DMK is neck deep in corruption charges as well. While party chief Karunanidhi's grand nephew Dayanidhi Maran, former telecom minister, faces a plethora of corruption charges, daughter Kanimozhi and DMK leader A Raja also went to jail in connection with 2G scam case. DMK for a long time has been known as Delhi Money for Karunanidhi. advertisement TEJASHWI YADAV CBI claims that in a faulty tendering process, Lalu Prasad Yadav handed over the contract for the maintenance of two railway-run hotels to a private company, in lieu of which his son Tejashwi received ownership of a prime property in Patna. The land on which Patna's biggest mall is being constructed by RJD MLA Abu Dojana, was transferred to Rabri Devi and Tejashwi by a shell company Delight Marketing at a rate much lower than the market price. From 2010 onwards, Yadav family started becoming the shareholders. BJP alleged that Tejashwi and Tej did not declared this information in election affidavits. ALSO READ | Rahul Gandhi says he knew about Nitish Kumar's plans to join hands with BJP, but what did he do? Selfish Nitish Kumar betrayed us, planning was on for 3-4 months: Rahul Gandhi Rahul Gandhi's leadership in question as Congress continues to lose ground ALSO WATCH | Nitish Kumar betrayed us: Rahul Gandhi --- ENDS --- advertisement ALISO VIEJO, California and HONG KONG, August 3, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- The 4-year Contract is for the supply of Information Technology Services to all its Departments UST Global (Singapore) Pte Ltd, a subsidiary of UST Global Inc., today announced that the Hong Kong Government has awarded the company with the Standing Offer Agreement for Quality Professional Services for the supply of Information Technology Services to all of its 80+ bureaus and departments. (Logo: http://mma.prnewswire.com/media/540539/UST_Global_Logo.jpg ) Through this award, UST Global (Singapore) Pte Ltd will be participating in the provision of the Category 1 Pre-implementation Services such as Departmental Information Technology Planning and Feasibility and Technical Study, and also Independent Programme/Project Management Services; and Category 2 Ongoing IT professional Services for System Maintenance and Support and Network Support for the Hong Kong Government departments between 31st July, 2017 to 30th July, 2021. The contract was awarded by the Government Chief Information Officer, Mr. Allen Yeung, at the award ceremony held in Hong Kong on July 17th, 2017. Commenting on this award, Gilroy Mathew, GM - APAC, UST Global Inc, said, "We are delighted to be awarded the contract by the Hong Kong Government to provide innovative and creative IT services. This award is a testimony to our continuous growth and investment into our Digital Transformation initiatives within the APAC region for both Public Sector and Global 1000 customers. We look forward to working with the Hong Kong Government as we embark on this journey for the next 4 years." About UST Global UST Global is a fast-growing digital technology company that provides advanced computing and digital services to large private and public enterprises around the world. Driven by a larger purpose of 'Transforming Lives' and the philosophy of 'fewer clients, more attention', we bring in the entrepreneurial spirit that seeks the fastest path to value in today's digital economy. Our innovative technology services and pioneering social programs make us stand apart. UST Global is headquartered in Aliso Viejo, California and operates in 21 countries. Our clients include Fortune 500 companies in banking and financial services, healthcare, insurance, retail, high technology, manufacturing, shipping, and telecom. UST Global believes in building long-lasting, strategic business relationships through agile and client-centric global engagement models that combines local experts & resources with cost, scale, and quality advantages of global operations. Media Contact: Manoj M Mani Manoj.Mattamana@ust-global.com +91-9632000553 Media Relations Media.Relations@ust-global.com SOURCE UST Global (Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20130122/589162 ) This acquisition represents Infosys' commitment to the expansion of a worldwide connected network of Digital Studios. These studios are focused on fulfilling the needs of our global clients for end-to-end Digital Transformation solutions required to meet customer demand for next-generation enhanced customer experiences. "Adding Brilliant Basics' design and CX capabilities has already proven to be invaluable, helping Infosys close large deals with a deep blend of skills," said Ravi Kumar S, President & Deputy COO, Infosys. "Brilliant Basics will leverage the breadth and depth of Infosys Digital to drive Digital Transformation solutions, which connect our clients' Systems of Record to new Systems of Engagement." Brilliant Basics Founder and CEO, Anand Verma added, "I am thrilled to be a key part of Infosys, a company I have admired for a long time. Being a key member of the Infosys family allows Brilliant Basics "bb" to enhance and scale the overall offering for our clients. Infosys has a unique vision and approach to partnership and acquisition, which will enable us to closely collaborate on Digital Transformation programs globally." With Infosys Digital Studios spanning the globe - from Bengaluru and Pune to New York, London and Melbourne - the addition of Brilliant Basics will enhance the company's expertise in the financial services, retail and telco sectors across Europe and the Middle East. "We are already seeing the synergies of our relationship, having partnered together on numerous Digital Transformation engagements and wins," said Scott Sorokin, Global Head of Infosys Digital. "Looking ahead, we expect Brilliant Basics to play a key role in our continued success." The acquisition is expected to close during the second quarter of fiscal 2018, subject to customary closing conditions. About Brilliant Basics Brilliant Basics is a global design and product studio that creates products that make life simply better. In a world full of clutter, we want to simplify. We do this by focusing on the basics. Our deep experience in working with talented people in the areas of service design, user experience and technology has allowed us to create repeatable processes for building digital products and services. We create brilliant products and experiences for our clients, our customers and our partners, with studios in London and Dubai. For more information, visit http://www.brilliantbasics.com or follow us on Twitter at @brilliantbasics. About Infosys Ltd Infosys is a global leader in technology services and consulting. We enable clients in 45 countries to create and execute strategies for their digital transformation. From engineering to application development, knowledge management and business process management, we help our clients find the right problems to solve, and to solve these effectively. Our team of over 198,000+ innovators, across the globe, is differentiated by the imagination, knowledge and experience, across industries and technologies that we bring to every project we undertake. Visit http://www.infosys.com to see how Infosys (NYSE: INFY) can help your enterprise thrive in the digital age. Safe Harbor Certain statements in this press release concerning our future growth prospects are forward-looking statements regarding our future business expectations intended to qualify for the 'safe harbor' under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, which involve a number of risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those in such forward-looking statements. The risks and uncertainties relating to these statements include, but are not limited to, risks and uncertainties regarding fluctuations in earnings, fluctuations in foreign exchange rates, our ability to manage growth, intense competition in IT services including those factors which may affect our cost advantage, wage increases in India, our ability to attract and retain highly skilled professionals, time and cost overruns on fixed-price, fixed-time frame contracts, client concentration, restrictions on immigration, industry segment concentration, our ability to manage our international operations, reduced demand for technology in our key focus areas, disruptions in telecommunication networks or system failures, our ability to successfully complete and integrate potential acquisitions, liability for damages on our service contracts, the success of the companies in which Infosys has made strategic investments, withdrawal or expiration of governmental fiscal incentives, political instability and regional conflicts, legal restrictions on raising capital or acquiring companies outside India, and unauthorized use of our intellectual property and general economic conditions affecting our industry. Additional risks that could affect our future operating results are more fully described in our United States Securities and Exchange Commission filings including our Annual Report on Form 20-F for the fiscal year ended March 31, 2017. These filings are available at http://www.sec.gov. Infosys may, from time to time, make additional written and oral forward-looking statements, including statements contained in the company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission and our reports to shareholders. In addition, please note that any forward-looking statements contained herein are based on assumptions that we believe to be reasonable as of the date of this press release. The company does not undertake to update any forward-looking statements that may be made from time to time by or on behalf of the company unless it is required by law. SOURCE Infosys LONDON, August 03,2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Infosys (NYSE: INFY), a global leader in consulting, technology and next-generation services, today announced a definitive agreement to acquire Brilliant Basics, a London-based product design and customer experience (CX) innovator known for its world-class design thinking-led approach and experience in executing global programs. This acquisition represents Infosys' commitment to the expansion of a worldwide connected network of Digital Studios. These studios are focused on fulfilling the needs of our global clients for end-to-end Digital Transformation solutions required to meet customer demand for next-generation enhanced customer experiences. "Adding Brilliant Basics' design and CX capabilities has already proven to be invaluable, helping Infosys close large deals with a deep blend of skills," said Ravi Kumar S, President & Deputy COO, Infosys. "Brilliant Basics will leverage the breadth and depth of Infosys Digital to drive Digital Transformation solutions, which connect our clients' Systems of Record to new Systems of Engagement." Brilliant Basics Founder and CEO, Anand Verma added, "I am thrilled to be a key part of Infosys, a company I have admired for a long time. Being a key member of the Infosys family allows Brilliant Basics "bb" to enhance and scale the overall offering for our clients. Infosys has a unique vision and approach to partnership and acquisition, which will enable us to closely collaborate on Digital Transformation programs globally." With Infosys Digital Studios spanning the globe - from Bengaluru and Pune to New York, London and Melbourne - the addition of Brilliant Basics will enhance the company's expertise in the financial services, retail and telco sectors across Europe and the Middle East. "We are already seeing the synergies of our relationship, having partnered together on numerous Digital Transformation engagements and wins," said Scott Sorokin, Global Head of Infosys. Digital. "Looking ahead, we expect Brilliant Basics to play a key role in our continued success." The acquisition is expected to close during the second quarter of fiscal 2018, subject to customary closing conditions. About Brilliant Basics Brilliant Basics is a global design and product studio that creates products that make life simply better. In a world full of clutter, we want to simplify. We do this by focusing on the basics. Our deep experience in working with talented people in the areas of service design, user experience and technology has allowed us to create repeatable processes for building digital products and services. We create brilliant products and experiences for our clients, our customers and our partners, with studios in London and Dubai. For more information, visit http://www.brilliantbasics.com or follow us on Twitter at @brilliantbasics. About Infosys Ltd Infosys is a global leader in technology services and consulting. We enable clients in 45 countries to create and execute strategies for their digital transformation. From engineering to application development, knowledge management and business process management, we help our clients find the right problems to solve, and to solve these effectively. Our team of over 198,000+ innovators, across the globe, is differentiated by the imagination, knowledge and experience, across industries and technologies that we bring to every project we undertake. Visit www.infosys.com to see how Infosys (NYSE: INFY) can help your enterprise thrive in the digital age. Safe Harbor Certain statements in this press release concerning our future growth prospects are forward-looking statements regarding our future business expectations intended to qualify for the 'safe harbor' under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, which involve a number of risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those in such forward-looking statements. The risks and uncertainties relating to these statements include, but are not limited to, risks and uncertainties regarding fluctuations in earnings, fluctuations in foreign exchange rates, our ability to manage growth, intense competition in IT services including those factors which may affect our cost advantage, wage increases in India, our ability to attract and retain highly skilled professionals, time and cost overruns on fixed-price, fixed-time frame contracts, client concentration, restrictions on immigration, industry segment concentration, our ability to manage our international operations, reduced demand for technology in our key focus areas, disruptions in telecommunication networks or system failures, our ability to successfully complete and integrate potential acquisitions, liability for damages on our service contracts, the success of the companies in which Infosys has made strategic investments, withdrawal or expiration of governmental fiscal incentives, political instability and regional conflicts, legal restrictions on raising capital or acquiring companies outside India, and unauthorized use of our intellectual property and general economic conditions affecting our industry. Additional risks that could affect our future operating results are more fully described in our United States Securities and Exchange Commission filings including our Annual Report on Form 20-F for the fiscal year ended March 31, 2017. These filings are available at www.sec.gov. Infosys may, from time to time, make additional written and oral forward-looking statements, including statements contained in the company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission and our reports to shareholders. In addition, please note that any forward-looking statements contained herein are based on assumptions that we believe to be reasonable as of the date of this press release. The company does not undertake to update any forward-looking statements that may be made from time to time by or on behalf of the company unless it is required by law. Disclosure under SEBI (Listing Obligations and Disclosure Requirements) Regulations, 2015: - Name of the target entity Brilliant Basics Holding Limited Whether the acquisition would fall No within related party transaction(s) and whether the promoter/ promoter group/ group companies have any interest in the entity being acquired? Industry to which the entity being Digital strategy and experience acquired belongs design consultancy Objects and effects of acquisition Services offered include customer experience design, business strategy, product strategy and technology services, that is of significant strategic importance to Infosys Any governmental or regulatory None approvals required for the acquisition Indicative time period for The acquisition is expected to close completion of the acquisition during the second quarter of fiscal 2018, subject to customary closing conditions Nature of consideration Cash Cost of acquisition or the price at GBP 7.5 million including earn-out which the shares are acquired; and employee retention amounts Percentage of holding 100% of the equity share capital Brief Background Founded 2012, Headquartered in London, UK; 100% management owned with co-founder and CEO owning 85.5%. Business operations in London, Norwich, Dubai. Offerings: Customer experience design, Business and Product strategy, Technology Media contacts: Asia Pacific Sarah Gideon Infosys, India +91 80 4156 3998 Sarah_Gideon@infosys.com EMEA Margherita Di Cerbo Infosys, Europe +44 2075162748 Margherita.DiCerbo@infosys.com Americas Chiku Somaiya Infosys, USA +1 408 375 2722 Chiku.Somaiya@infosys.com This is a disclosure announcement from PR Newswire. SOURCE Infosys Limited By Santosh Chaubey: Al Qaeda chief Ayman al-Zawahiri has confirmed that slain Al Qaeda commander Abu Dujana al Pasha was the driving force behind the formation of Al Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent (AQIS). According to al-Zawahiri's new video message, released by Al Qaeda's propaganda arm As-Sahab and available on social media platforms including the Twitter handles of some terror monitors, al Pasha "united several jihadi groups belonging to the Indian Subcontinent". advertisement Abu Dujana al Pasha, also known as Abu Dujana al Basha, was Zawahiri's son-in-law and played a key role in Al Qaeda's terror operations. Reports say he was known as the "hidden commander" in Al Qaeda. Though relatively unknown to the outside world, al Pasha worked hard to establish AQIS. The US had declared him a Specially Designated Global Terrorist in 2009. Zawahiri had announced the formation (birth) of AQIS through a video message in September 2014. Though it was widely reported that al Pasha was killed in a US drone strike in August 2014, Al Qaeda never accepted it. But this message from the Al Qaeda chief himself has now confirmed it. Calling al Pasha a martyr, Zawahiri's long message slams Pakistan, its rulers and its military. He takes on ISIS and urges Syrian jihadis and believers across the world to unite and describes the formation of AQIS as one of the most important works. "Allah guided him to avail his old relationships that had been formed with the Mujahideen of the Subcontinent in training camps and fronts. Allah had given him popularity amongst them, so he directed his efforts to unite these different groups in a single organisation, and thus, with the blessing and favour of Allah, Al Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent was formed, under the banner of the Islamic Emirate," said Zawahiri. AQIS is trying to make its present felt in India, which has virtually been non-existent so far. It recently named former Hizbul terrorist Zikar Rashid Bhat alias Zakir Musa the chief of its India unit. Before that, in June, AQIS had released a new code of conduct for its members and other terrorists who wanted to show allegiance to Al Qaeda, to follow. ISLAMIC EMIRATE This latest video message by Zawahiri also confirms another important development, acceptance of establishment of an Islamic Emirate in Al Qaeda's core ideology. Osama bin Laden, Al Qaeda founder, was against the idea of establishing Islamic Emirate. But with rapid rise of ISIS, an Al Qaeda offshoot that was denounced by its parent for being too cruel or extremist, as Zawahiri says here, Al Qaeda had to change its strategy, it seems. advertisement Last year, Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), currently considered the most dangerous Al Qaeda faction, had announced to establish an Islamic Emirate in eastern Yemen, a war torn country that has become battleground for Iran and Saudi Arab to establish their regional supremacy. ISIS is on way out. It has been driven out of its Iraqi stronghold Mosul and its headquarters in Syria's Raqqa is expected to fall soon as international forces are rapidly marching ahead. Though US Defence Secretary James Mattis doubts ISIS leader Ab Bakr al-Baghdadi's death, the Iraqi and Arabian media declared him dead. It is only natural then for Al Qaeda to reclaim its position at top of the pyramid as the most preferred outfit of terrorists from across the world with the fall of ISIS. ISIS rise had seen terror outfits the world over shifting their allegiance from Al Qaeda to ISIS. ALSO READ | Top Lashkar-e-Taiba terrorist Abu Dujana killed in Pulwama encounter AQIS, ISIS eye radicalised Indian Muslims for jihad Al-Qaeda getting more active in Indian subcontinent, US experts say Abu Dujana encounter: Jilted lover turned police informer led security forces to LeT commander advertisement ALSO WATCH | Burhan Wani, Sabzar Bhat, Abu Dujana: Top militants killed while visiting girlfriends, wives --- ENDS --- ATLANTA, Aug. 3, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- While Americans are busy enjoying fun summertime adventures, ranging from family road trips to trekking the kids to summer camps to regular jaunts to the pool or beach, it can be easy to forget to pay attention to car maintenance beyond your typical gas fill-up. But the heat really can take its toll on your vehicle, so the experts at Autotrader offer 10 Simple Summer Car Care Tips to keep your vehicle in great shape. "You may have summer vacation on the brain, but your vehicle is working even harder in the warmer temps," said Brian Moody, executive editor at Autotrader. "Because it is so important to keep your car running well during the hot summer months, we've assembled a few simple tips for keeping things running smoothly so you and your passengers can relax and enjoy the ride." Check out these top tips from Autotrader to keep your ride rolling. If in doubt, consult a qualified technician: Keep your cool Staying cool is important not just for you, but also for your car. Beyond checking the level of coolant fluid in your car, be sure to inspect the state of the hoses and coolant reservoir to keep an eye out for leaks. Squeeze the hoses (when the engine is cool) from time to time to make sure they feel firm and not excessively squishy or soft. Tighten up your belt There usually is a serpentine belt that runs between the alternator, the fan and several other components that can become loose or deteriorate over time. It needs to be in good condition and at the right amount of tension, so if you see cracks or small pieces missing, it's time to replace the belt. Clear your vision Summer rain showers really can do a number on wearing out your windshield wipers, creating nasty streaks across your windshield and affecting your vision while driving. Replacing your wipers is not costly but can be a fiddly operation, so you may want to inquire about wiper installation during your regular oil changes or a dealership visit. Stay hydrated Check oil, brake, power-steering and windshield-washer fluids regularly, as these liquids are in constant use and are key to your vehicle functioning properly. Crank the air Air-conditioning is a summer essential, so if the system hasn't been working properly in recent months, summer certainly is the time to get serious about repairing any leaks or issues. Have a qualified mechanic fix the leak before paying to have the air-conditioning system recharged. Clean your filters Summer is the time to take out your air filter to give it a good cleaning, or buy a new filter if needed. Many modern cars also have pollen filters or cabin filtration systems, so be sure to take a look at those, too. And as always, when in doubt, consult a qualified technician. Under pressure Tires really need to be checked regularly all year round, and summertime is no exception. Pressures must be correct (consult the manual for levels specific to your vehicle), treads should be free of stones, stray nails and the like, and all four tires should be in good condition (meaning no cracks, no uneven wear and plenty of tread depth). Don't forget to also check your spare to ensure it is usable. Throw some shade Don't underestimate the greatness of a dashboard sunshade for those times you are not driving but the car is still out in the sun. It helps protect the dashboard and interior against ultraviolet rays and can help prevent fading over time, and in the short-term, it helps the cabin stay a little cooler. Keep it clean Those long, balmy evenings when the sun seems to hang low for hours can be lovely, but also hazardous if your car's windshield is dirty. The haze on your windshield can diffuse the light and make things hard to see, so keep your car's exterior clean. Things look much sharper after your car has had a good wash, and regular washings protect the paintwork from the sun's rays. Plan accordingly It's hot out there, so keep both the driver and passengers happy by keeping everyone hydrated. Plan road trips by making lists of what you'll need to keep everyone in the car happy while on the journey (examples: sunglasses, travel mugs, games for the kids, snacks, phone chargers and more), and don't forget to have those just-in-case items like a flashlight and small tool kit handy. Be sure your license and insurance are up to date, and that you're keeping tabs on your vehicle's scheduled service. For more information, visit https://www.autotrader.com/car-news/10-simple-summer-car-care-tips-240454. If you don't have all of the accessories and stay-safe gear you need for the summer trekking ahead Autotrader experts also have a list of their top gadget picks to keep your road trip smooth and bump free https://www.autotrader.com/car-news/embarking-on-a-summer-road-trip-tips-on-staying-safe-behind-the-wheel-267746. About Autotrader Autotrader is the most visited third-party car shopping site, with the most engaged audience of in-market shoppers. As the foremost authority on automotive consumer insights and expert in online and mobile marketing, Autotrader makes the car shopping experience easy and fun for today's empowered consumer looking to find or sell the perfect new, used or Certified Pre-Owned car. Using technology, shopper insights and local market guidance, Autotrader's comprehensive marketing solutions guide dealers to personalized digital marketing strategies that grow brand, drive traffic and connect the online and in-store shopping experience. Autotrader is a Cox Automotive brand. Cox Automotive is a subsidiary of Cox Enterprises. For more information, please visit http://press.autotrader.com. About Cox Automotive Cox Automotive Inc. is transforming the way the world buys, sells and owns cars with industry-leading digital marketing, financial, retail and wholesale solutions for consumers, dealers, manufacturers and the overall automotive ecosystem worldwide. Committed to open choice and dedicated to strong partnerships, the Cox Automotive family includes Autotrader, Dealer.com, Dealertrack, Kelley Blue Book, Manheim, NextGear Capital, vAuto, Xtime and a host of other brands. The global company has 34,000 team members in more than 200 locations and is partner to more than 40,000 auto dealers, as well as most major automobile manufacturers, while engaging U.S. consumer car buyers with the most recognized media brands in the industry. Cox Automotive is a subsidiary of Cox Enterprises Inc., an Atlanta-based company with revenues exceeding $20 billion and approximately 60,000 employees. Cox Enterprises' other major operating subsidiaries include Cox Communications and Cox Media Group. For more information about Cox Automotive, visit www.coxautoinc.com. SOURCE Autotrader Related Links http://www.autotrader.com LOUISVILLE, Ky., Aug. 3, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- ChromaLuxe, the global leader in dye-sublimation metal prints, is pleased to announce that its ChromaLuxe metal prints will be used to display all winning work for the 2017 Photo District News (PDN) The Curator Awards Exhibition. An exhibition and reception will take place on Thursday, August 10 at Milk Gallery in New York City. PDN received more than 850 award submissions between February 2017 and May 2017. All winning prints will be displayed on ChromaLuxe by New York-based fine art print lab, Griffin Editions. 2017 PDN The Curator Awards exhibition to showcase winning images on ChromaLuxe The 2017 edition of PDNs The Curator showcased photographers' work in six fine-art photography categories. All entries were reviewed and rated by five industry experts, and the selected winners will receive exposure in print, online and at the exhibition. Grand prize winner Bill Durgin will also receive a $3,500 award for his outstanding series. "As a first-time sponsor of The Curator, we were overwhelmed by the response and quality of the submissions received," said Steve Flores, ChromaLuxe Global Brand Manager. "The search for outstanding and undiscovered fine art photography proved fruitful, and we look forward to seeing the winning artwork displayed on our metal panels." Click the following link to view the winning work: http://www.shutterloveonline.com/contest_galleries/pdncurator/2017 2017 PDN The Curator Awards Exhibition Date and time: 6pm 8pm EDT, Thursday, August 10, 2017 Location: Milk Gallery 450 W. 15th Street New York, NY 10011 RSVP: https://www.pdncuratorawards.com/RSVP About ChromaLuxe ChromaLuxe is the global manufacturer of premium print media, supplying high quality blank substrates for a variety of applications that require superb image quality and durability. All coatings and substrates are made in the USA with manufacturing and fabrication done in Louisville, KY. With additional locations in Belgium and Australia, ChromaLuxe serves its global customer base and provides products to more than 80 countries. ChromaLuxe is an extension of Universal Woods, the world's leading manufacturer of hard surface sublimatable products and mezzanine decking. It is also a sister brand to Unisub, which provides the highest quality custom sublimatable products. To learn more about ChromaLuxe, please visit: ChromaLuxe.com. Connect with ChromaLuxe on Facebook (facebook.com/realchromaluxe), Instagram (instagram.com/realchromaluxe) and Twitter (twitter.com/realChromaLuxe). About Photo District News Photo District News (PDN), the award-winning monthly magazine for the professional photographer, has been covering the professional photographic industry for over two decades. Every month, PDN delivers unbiased news and analysis, interviews, and portfolios of the latest photographic work. PDN delivers the information photographers need to survive in a competitive businessfrom marketing and business advice to legal issues, photographic techniques, new technologies, and more. https://www.pdnonline.com. Note: ChromaLuxe is a registered trademark of Universal Woods, Inc. All other product and brand names are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of their respective companies. ChromaLuxe disclaims any and all rights in these marks. Contact: Alesha Yaney, ChromaLuxe 502-855-3227 [email protected] SOURCE ChromaLuxe Related Links http://ChromaLuxe.com NEW YORK, Aug. 3, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- On August 1, 2017, the Board of Director (the "Board") of American Education Center, Inc., a Nevada corporation ("AEC", or the "Company") approved the appointment of Wei, Wei & Co. LLP as the Company's independent registered public accounting firm for the Company's fiscal year ending December 31, 2017, effective immediately. On August 1, 2017, the Board also approved the dismissal of Marcum Bernstein & Pinchuk LLP as the independent auditors for the Company. The President of AEC, Max Chen, said, "We are pleased to announce the appointment of Wei, Wei & Co. LLP as the Company's independent auditor for the fiscal year ending December 31, 2017. I would like to thank Marcum Bernstein & Pinchuk LLP for their service. We look forward to working with Wei, Wei & Co. LLP." For more information regarding this appointment, please refer to the Company's Current Report on Form 8-K filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on August 3, 2017. About American Education Center, Inc. (OTCQB: AMCT) AEC's rapidly growing business provides one-stop comprehensive consulting services for international students, educators, institutions and enterprise executives. The Company's services include both international education exchange, by providing educational and career enrichment opportunities for students, teachers, and educational institutions between China and the United States, and executive training services in the food industry. The Company currently provides admission, training and other consulting services to Chinese students wishing to study in the United States. The Company also provides exchange and placement services for qualified United States educators to teach in China. In addition, the Company provides customized training programs and consulting services for executives of enterprise clients in China. Contact: Nancy Qin (212) 825-0437 [email protected] American Education Center, Inc. 2 Wall Street Floor 8 New York, NY 10005 http://americaneducationcenter.org/ Disclaimer: This press release may contain forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties. Actual results may differ materially from the results predicted, and reported results should not be considered as an indication of future performance. Factors such as the development of general economic conditions, future market conditions, unusual catastrophic loss events, changes in the capital markets and other circumstances may cause the actual events or results to be materially different from those anticipated by such statements. American Education Center, Inc. does not make any representation or warranty, express or implied, as to the accuracy, completeness or updated status of such statements. Therefore, in no case whatsoever will AEC and its affiliate companies be liable to anyone for any decision made or action taken in conjunction with the information and/or statements in this press release or for any related damages. SOURCE American Education Center, Inc. AGOURA HILLS, Calif., Aug. 3, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- American Homes 4 Rent (NYSE: AMH) (the "Company"), a leading provider of high quality single-family homes for rent, today announced that, on August 3, 2017, the Board of Trustees declared a dividend of $0.05 per share on the Company's common shares for the third quarter of 2017. The distribution will be payable in cash on September 29, 2017 to shareholders of record on September 15, 2017. The Board of Trustees also declared a per share quarterly distribution on the Company's participating preferred shares of $0.3125 on the 5.0% Series A shares, $0.3125 on the 5.0% Series B shares and $0.34375 on the 5.5% Series C shares payable on September 29, 2017 to shareholders of record on September 15, 2017. Additionally, the Board of Trustees declared a per share quarterly distribution on the Company's cumulative redeemable perpetual preferred shares of $0.40625 per share on the 6.5% Series D shares, $0.39688 per share on the 6.35% Series E shares, $0.36719 per share on the 5.875% Series F shares and $0.30191 per share on the 5.875% Series G shares payable on September 29, 2017 to shareholders of record on September 15, 2017. About American Homes 4 Rent American Homes 4 Rent (NYSE: AMH) is a leader in the single-family home rental industry and "American Homes 4 Rent" is fast becoming a nationally recognized brand for rental homes, known for high quality, good value and tenant satisfaction. We are an internally managed Maryland real estate investment trust, or REIT, focused on acquiring, renovating, leasing, and operating attractive, single-family homes as rental properties. As of June 30, 2017, we owned 48,982 single-family properties in selected submarkets in 22 states. Additional information about American Homes 4 Rent is available on our website at www.americanhomes4rent.com. Forward-Looking Statements This press release contains "forward-looking statements" that relate to beliefs, expectations or intentions and similar statements concerning matters that are not of historical fact and are generally accompanied by words such as "believe," "expect," "will," "intend," "anticipate" or other words that convey the uncertainty of future events or outcomes. These forward-looking statements include the payment and anticipated timing of the payment of distributions of the Company's common and preferred shares. The Company has based these forward-looking statements on its current expectations and assumptions about future events. While the Company's management considers these expectations to be reasonable, they are inherently subject to risks, contingencies and uncertainties, most of which are difficult to predict and many of which are beyond the Company's control and could adversely affect our cash flows and ability to pay distributions. Additional information about these and other important factors that may cause our actual results to differ materially from anticipated results expressed or implied by these forward-looking statements is available in the Company's most recent Annual Report on Form 10-K, subsequent Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q and other reports filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The Company undertakes no obligation to update any forward-looking statement to conform to actual results or changes in expectations, except as required by applicable law. Contact: American Homes 4 Rent Investor Relations Phone: (855) 794-2447 Email: [email protected] SOURCE American Homes 4 Rent Related Links https://www.americanhomes4rent.com Quik Mart Convenience Stores Selects CB4 to Improve In-Store Operations NEW YORK, Aug. 3, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- CB4 Analytics today announced that it has been selected by South Tennessee Oil Company, Inc., doing business as Quik Mart Convenience Stores, to help increase same store growth and improve its in-store customer experience. The simple but powerful CB4 software solution applies patented data compression and machine learning algorithms to uncover hidden purchasing patterns that detect and capture unfulfilled local demand. These patterns are then translated into actionable recommendations that are sent to the relevant operations or merchandising team with guidance on how to capture the lost sales opportunities. Quik Mart, with 39 locations across Alabama and Tennessee, will apply the software to identify SKUs with high local demand that are not meeting their sales potential because of operational inefficiencies. These include issues such as misplaced products, products that are missing price tags, mislabeled items, or problems with on shelf visibility. The solution can also be used to fine tune assortments to better meet local preferences. "The CB4 software leverages our own sales data to generate operational and merchandising learnings for each store that we could never have hoped to achieve on our own. We could task several very smart and highly paid individuals in our company to go around full-time and audit our items on sale relative to the corresponding sales data, or we can rely on CB4 to do the hard work for us, for far less cost. So that's what we've done!" said Charlie Edwards, Quik Mart's Chief Operating Officer. According to CB4 CEO, Yoni Benshaul, "Our aim is to provide actionable insights from our clients' existing data, with the least amount of disruption to their already busy working day. We can run an initial proof of concept in under an hour to demonstrate the impact and value of our software. Our entire process is designed to require as few client resources as possible, while ensuring that the right information is delivered to the right stakeholders at the right time in an easy to action format. We're really pleased to be working with Quik Mart and are looking forward to demonstrating the clear ROI of our solution." About CB4 Analytics CB4 Analytics provides a patented software solution for brick and mortar retailers that increases same store growth by up to 3% using simple sales data. The offspring of an extensive research project at Tel-Aviv University, Israel, more than 50 man-years were spent developing the patented algorithms which form the basis of its solution. With offices also in San Francisco, and New York, CB4 is a proud partner of Sequoia Capital. For additional information, visit www.c-b4.com. Follow us on Twitter at @CB4_Analytics and connect with us on LinkedIn. Contact Bob Finale, 917-589-5787 [email protected] SOURCE CB4 Analytics ROLLING MEADOWS, Ill., Aug. 3, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Arthur J. Gallagher & Co. (NYSE: AJG) today announced the acquisition of GPL Assurance Inc. (GPL), located in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed. Founded in 1968, GPL is a retail insurance broker offering commercial property/casualty services to large corporations, middle-market and small business clients, as well as personal lines solutions for individuals, across the province of Quebec. GPL specializes in developing tailored risk management and insurance programs for the construction, knowledge-economy and commercial/SME sectors. President and CEO Louis-Thomas Labbe and his associates will continue to operate in their current locations in Montreal and Laval, Quebec, under the direction of Stephen Bryant, head of Gallagher's Canadian brokerage operations. "GPL has an excellent reputation for superior client service, niche expertise and risk-management-led programs, with a team-based culture and family values similar to Gallagher's," said J. Patrick Gallagher, Jr., Chairman, President and CEO. "Their strong geographic presence in Quebec will be an excellent complement to our existing Canadian operations in other provinces. We are very happy to welcome Louis-Thomas and his colleagues to our growing Gallagher family of professionals." Arthur J. Gallagher & Co., an international insurance brokerage and risk management services firm, is headquartered in Rolling Meadows, Illinois, has operations in 33 countries and offers client-service capabilities in more than 150 countries around the world through a network of correspondent brokers and consultants. Investors: Ray Iardella Media: Linda J. Collins VP Investor Relations VP Corporate Communications 630-285-3661 and/or [email protected] 630-285-4009 and/or [email protected] SOURCE Arthur J. Gallagher & Co. Related Links http://www.ajg.com SAN FRANCISCO, Aug. 2, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Puppy Mama, Inc, a pet tech community platform, announced strategic e-commerce partnerships with London pet fashion brands Teddy Maximus and Lurril. Canine couture has been around for thousands of years. Archaeologists have even discovered dog collars in Egyptian tombs dating from 3,300 BCE1. Today, the rise of Pet Tech and advances in mobile and social technology, have created new channels and experiences for savvy dog moms looking for the perfect accessory. Pet Tech venture Puppy Mama, Inc is focusing on women who love their furry best friend. Their vision is to grow a list of curated products and services that these style-conscious women want. The Puppy Mama web app also builds a sense of community. By bringing the community together with reviews, advocates for pet access and a more pet-friendly world. Puppy Mama founder Theresa Piasta was inspired while walking her cavapoo (Waffles) around her sunny bay side neighborhood in San Francisco. "Dogs are everywhere in San Francisco. I've had so much fun talking with thousands of amazing women who love their dogs - and when these stylish dog moms buy accessories for their furry best friends, they want the look to be an extension of their style - what they would buy for themselves." Piasta added. "A survey of 3,000 women by Gocompare.com found that [on average] a woman will spend $25,000 buying 469 pairs of shoes in their lifetime. Apply this need for variety to trendy dog leashes, collars, and accessories and you create an entirely new market opportunity. That is why I'm so excited to be partnering with two of the top London pet fashion brands. Both Lurril and Teddy Maximus have perfectly married the style that women want with the functional leashes, collars, harnesses, and carriers that they need day-to-day." Zoli co-founder of Lurril shared: "With years of experience making luxury leather goods for human folk, we knew we could create something just as luxurious and equally as stylish for our four-legged friends." Holly Simpson, Founder of Teddy Maximus shared: "We are delighted to bring our fun, luxury, British style to sassy Puppy Mamas across the globe. We understand there's nothing better than taking your pup wherever you go and our range of accessories enable you to step out in style! Together the craftsmanship of our collections comes together to create something special." "Holly at Teddy Maximus and Zoli & Ryan at Lurril are wonderful and I'm excited to bring their beautiful pet fashion accessories to the Puppy Mama community." About Lurril Every dog owner wants the best for their treasured canine. Here at LURRIL we're no different. Our story began with the arrival of lovely Luca. Immediately we knew that our beloved bow-wow deserved a collar, harness, and leash that were as comfortable and durable as they were functional. With years of experience making luxury leather goods for human folk, we knew we could create something just as luxurious and equally as stylish for our four-legged friends. Enter, the designer-doggie LURRIL range. Handmade in London using lightweight, high-quality cowhide leather and gorgeously soft 100% wool felt, our collection of dog collars, leads and harnesses are available in a wide range of colors and designs. Follow Lurril on Instagram @Lurril About Teddy Maximus Teddy Maximus was inspired by the arrival of Holly's Miniature Dachshund Teddy. Teddy Maximus creates fun, luxury, British dog accessories for the stylish dog owner as seen in British Vogue, Conde Naste Traveller and Tatler to name a few. They understand there's nothing more blissful than sinking into a wonderfully comfy bed. Not only do they have the perfect place for pups to catch some ZZZs (and maybe a dream squirrel or two), but they also offer famous dog carriers, luxury leads, collars, harnesses, neckerchiefs, dog toys and bow ties - the product of choice for stylish owners, lifestyle press, and bloggers. Production takes place across the UK by the finest Craftsman. Together, the craftsmanship of the various elements come together to create beautiful accessories for every kind of pup from Dachshund to Great Dane! Follow them on Instagram @teddy_maximus About Puppy Mama Puppy Mama, Inc leverages technology to connect a vast community of women who passionately love their dogs and together advocate for a more pet-friendly world. The Puppy Mama global web app helps dog moms around the world to connect with one another, effortlessly schedule fun meet-ups, share their stories and rate businesses according to a 5-paw rating to help create a more dog-friendly world. Check out our new store and join us at https://app.puppymama.com! Media Contact: Theresa Piasta Email: [email protected] Related Images image1.png image2.jpg image3.png Related Links Puppy Mama Store Puppy Mama App SOURCE Puppy Mama, Inc., Teddy Maximus and Lurril LONDON, Aug. 3, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Avon Products, Inc. (NYSE: AVP), a globally recognized leader in direct selling of beauty and related products, today announced that Sheri McCoy will step down as Chief Executive Officer and as a director on March 31, 2018, in line with her commitments to Avon's Board of Directors to transform the business. "Leading Avon for the past five years alongside Avon's dedicated management, associates and Representatives has been an honor, and I am proud of what we have achieved together," said Sheri McCoy, Chief Executive Officer, Avon Products Inc. "We've made great progress in strengthening the Avon brand through new positioning, increased investment in social media, and innovative, high-quality products. We continue to live up to our purpose of empowering women by supporting and advancing Avon's global network of nearly 6 million women, while also having rebuilt a culture of accountability. Today the Avon brand has nearly 100% awareness in top markets and is the #1 direct selling beauty company in the world. Since the launch of Avon's three-year Transformation Plan, we successfully separated the North America business and significantly strengthened the Company's financial position. With the successful recruitment of a senior executive team with the skill and experience to implement the next phase of our strategy, the platform is in place for a new CEO to continue accelerating the pace of change and take Avon to sustainable profitable growth. I look forward to continuing to drive the Avon business forward and to working with our leadership team to ensure a smooth transition." Commenting on behalf of the Board, Chan Galbato, non-executive Chairman of Avon Products' Board of Directors, said, "Sheri has been a steward for Avon, leading the Company through a transformative period for the business that has included instituting a culture of accountability. Sheri has launched critical initiatives to meet the challenges of global economic and industry trends, strengthening Avon's brand and reinforcing its leading position in beauty while ensuring Avon Representatives remain at the forefront of all the Company does. Most recently, Sheri has set Avon on a path to improved growth and profitability through the design and execution of the Company's strategic plan and the recruitment of a team of executives to carry the plan to the next phase. We thank Sheri for her continued commitment to Avon as the Company embarks on its next chapter." Since joining the Company in 2012, Ms. McCoy has been responsible for driving long-term growth objectives, developing earnings opportunities for women and advancing Avon as the world's premier direct seller of quality beauty products. With a core focus on Avon's brand relevance and Representatives, she has been the architect of successful initiatives such as "Beauty for a Purpose" while also bringing Avon to new generations of women through digital investments and market-leading product innovation. During Ms. McCoy's tenure, Avon has sustained its position as the #1 direct selling beauty company, and has risen to become the #1 Word of Mouth Beauty Brand and the #3 Beauty Brand on Facebook. She has helped build Avon's leadership in beauty globally, including the Company's top-3 market share position in color cosmetics, skincare and fragrance in the majority of our key markets. Additionally, Ms. McCoy has led the Company through challenging macroeconomic headwinds, launching the Company's three-year Transformation Plan in 2016 and successfully executing the separation of Avon's North America business. In its first year, the plan has strengthened the Company's balance sheet with reduced leverage, extended the maturity of the debt portfolio, and achieved $180 million of annualized cost savings. In 2017, as part of Avon's focus on international markets and efforts to realign the Company's cost structure, Ms. McCoy also led the Company's relocation of its corporate headquarters to the UK while implementing key enablers to drive the roadmap to growth. Avon's Board has retained Heidrick & Struggles, a leading executive search firm with particular expertise in the consumer goods industry, to assist in identifying Ms. McCoy's successor. Separately, the Company today announced its results for the quarter ended June 30, 2017. About Avon Products, Inc. Avon is the Company that for 130 years has proudly stood for beauty, innovation, optimism and, above all, women. Avon products include well-recognized and beloved brands such as ANEW, Avon Color, Avon Care, Skin-So-Soft, and Advance Techniques sold through nearly 6 million active independent Avon Sales Representatives. Forward Looking Statements This press release contains "forward-looking statements" that are made pursuant to the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, including turnaround of the Company's business, achieving its stated long-term financial goals, the execution of its strategic plan to create consistent, sustainable and profitable growth, and its planned executive changes. Because forward-looking statements inherently involve risks and uncertainties, actual future results may differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. These risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to, the possibility of business disruption, competitive uncertainties, and general economic and business conditions in Avon's markets as well as the other risks detailed in Avon's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Avon undertakes no obligation to update any statements in this press release for changes that happen after the date of this release. Contacts James Golden / Leigh Parrish Joele Frank, Wilkinson Brimmer Katcher (212) 355-4449 SOURCE Avon Products, Inc. FORT WORTH, Texas, Aug. 3, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- AZZ Inc. (NYSE: AZZ), a global provider of metal coatings services, welding solutions, specialty electrical equipment and highly engineered services to the power generation, transmission, distribution and industrial markets, today announced that Mr. Ken Lavelle has been appointed as President and General Manager Electrical System Division of AZZ Inc. Mr. Lavelle has served as a consultant to the Company from April 2016 to July 2017. Ken Lavelle brings to AZZ a strong track record of accomplishments with more than 30 years of managerial experience in operations. Prior to his role as a consultant, he held several positions with Flowserve Corporation in Irving, Texas, serving as President - Seal Platform. Mr. Lavelle holds a BS degree in Engineering from the University of Illinois Urbana and an MBA from National University. In addition, Mr. Lavelle is actively involved with the National Runaway Safeline, a 501 (c)(3) non-profit organization dedicated to keeping America's runaway, homeless and at-risk youth safe and off the streets, as the organization's Treasurer, a member of its Board of Directors, as well as volunteer. Tom Ferguson, president and chief executive officer of AZZ Inc., commented, "I am pleased to welcome Ken Lavelle to our senior leadership team. His background is well suited to AZZ's current and future businesses. He brings a broad base of experience and knowledge that will prove to be instrumental in growing our Electrical business both domestically and internationally." About AZZ Inc. AZZ Inc. is a global provider of metal coatings services, welding solutions, specialty electrical equipment and highly engineered services to the markets of power generation, transmission, distribution and industrial in protecting metal and electrical systems used to build and enhance the world's infrastructure. AZZ's Metal Coatings Segment is a leading provider of metal finishing solutions for corrosion protection, including hot dip galvanizing to the North American steel fabrication industry. AZZ's Energy Segment is dedicated to delivering safe and reliable transmission of power from generation sources to end customers, and automated weld overlay solutions for corrosion and erosion mitigation to critical infrastructure in the energy markets worldwide. Safe Harbor Statement Certain statements herein about our expectations of future events or results constitute forward-looking statements for purposes of the safe harbor provisions of The Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. You can identify forward-looking statements by terminology such as, "may," "should," "expects," "plans," "anticipates," "believes," "estimates," "predicts," "potential," "continue," or the negative of these terms or other comparable terminology. Such forward-looking statements are based on currently available competitive, financial and economic data and management's views and assumptions regarding future events. Such forward-looking statements are inherently uncertain, and investors must recognize that actual results may differ from those expressed or implied in the forward-looking statements. This release may contain forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties including, but not limited to, changes in customer demand and response to products and services offered by AZZ, including demand by the power generation markets, electrical transmission and distribution markets, the industrial markets, and the hot dip galvanizing markets; prices and raw material cost, including zinc and natural gas which are used in the hot dip galvanizing process; changes in the political stability and economic conditions of the various markets that AZZ serves, foreign and domestic, customer requested delays of shipments, acquisition opportunities, currency exchange rates, adequacy of financing, and availability of experienced management and employees to implement AZZ's growth strategy. AZZ has provided additional information regarding risks associated with the business in AZZ's Annual Report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended February 28, 2017 and other filings with the SEC, available for viewing on AZZ's website at www.azz.com and on the SEC's website at www.sec.gov. You are urged to consider these factors carefully in evaluating the forward-looking statements herein and are cautioned not to place undue reliance on such forward-looking statements, which are qualified in their entirety by this cautionary statement. These statements are based on information as of the date hereof and AZZ assumes no obligation to update any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise. Contact: Paul Fehlman, Senior Vice President Finance and CFO AZZ Inc. 817-810-0095 Internet: www.azz.com Lytham Partners 602-889-9700 Joe Dorame, Robert Blum or Joe Diaz Internet: www.lythampartners.com SOURCE AZZ Inc. Related Links http://www.azz.com LITTLE ROCK, Ark., Aug. 3, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- First Orion, provider of data and phone call transparency solutions, today announced the results of a new study* that finds consumers conflicted when it comes to robocalls. Mobile phones used to be a safe haven against unwanted robocalls. Unfortunately, all of this has changed significantly in recent years. Over 2.4 billion robocalls were made each month in 2016 alone, making it the number one consumer complaint to the FCC and FTC. To better understand the kinds of calls that continue to bombard consumers, First Orion surveyed 1,000 mobile phone users from the United States and found not all robocalls are responsible for pestering consumers. Close to 85 percent of those surveyed have received a robocall on their mobile phone half of which were spam or scam related. Nearly 60 percent of respondents believe there is no such thing as a "good" robocall. It is not surprising that 9 in 10 people associate robocall with the term "annoying." Though people overwhelmingly think robocalls are bad, they do believe there are "good" robocalls. In fact, almost 85 percent of respondents would not consider an automated call from their pharmacy an annoyance. This also applies to additional use cases for legitimate robocalls such as automated appointment reminders from a doctor, weather warnings and product recall alerts. Other interesting facts include: Almost 92 percent believe it is important to know who is calling before they answer believe it is important to know is calling before they answer Nearly 86 percent of those surveyed feel it is important to know why a number is calling (category of call, business type, additional information about the call) of those surveyed feel it is important to know a number is calling (category of call, business type, additional information about the call) Over 77 percent of those who currently have a landline would be likely to enable scam/spam identification and blocking services if they were available of those who currently have a landline would be likely to enable scam/spam identification and blocking services if they were available More than 26 percent of respondents said they would change from their current carrier if it meant telemarketers and scammers could be blocked or identified when they called As the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) challenges phone carriers to address the robocall issue, the best technology solution will focus on the transparency of the incoming call. If a solution can identify who is calling and why then carriers and consumers can determine appropriate calls to block or allow through. "It's natural that the surge in malicious robocalling makes us want to eliminate all robocalls," said Jonathan Sasse, CMO of First Orion. "It doesn't have to be all or nothing. Solutions exist today that can confidently distinguish between a pharmacy, doctor, school or potential scammer before ever reaching our mobile phones." In addition to providing PrivacyStar applications for Android and iOS users, First Orion offers FONES for carriers and service providers to deliver the highest level of confidence and flexibility in protecting subscribers from scams and other unwanted calls. FONES enables carriers to easily and seamlessly deploy settings to protect all customers from identified malicious callers, such as known scammers that use robocalling. About First Orion First Orion provides data and phone call transparency solutions across multiple platforms, world-class data solutions, in-network call control and its PrivacyStar powered application solutions. First Orion Network Enterprise Solutions (FONES) currently provides call control, call blocking, call transparency and call management solutions to millions of mobile handsets. With branded and white-labeled applications as well as in-network solutions, First Orion assists mobile carriers in protecting mobile subscribers from unwanted or unknown calls, including Scammers, robocalls and Telemarketers. First Orion is headquartered in Little Rock, Arkansas with offices in Seattle, Dallas and London. For regular updates, please visit www.FirstOrion.com. * First Orion surveyed 1,000 mobile phone users in the United States PrivacyStar and First Orion are registered trademarks of First Orion Corp. All registered or unregistered trademarks are the sole property of their respective owners. Media Contact: Jackie Eicholz First Orion 831.401.3175 [email protected] SOURCE First Orion Related Links http://www.firstorion.com Moments before he was killed in an encounter earlier this week, Lashkar's top commander in Kashmir Abu Dujana had rejected an Army officer's call to surrender. Here's what the once dreaded terrorist told the Army officer. By India Today Web Desk: Lashkar-e-Taiba's Kashmir commander Abu Dujana was killed in an encounter in a village in Pulwama district of Jammu and Kashmir earlier this week. Dujana, who had managed to give the security forces a slip several times in the past, carried a bounty of Rs 15 lakh on his head. Reports say that Dujana had come to meet his wife when he was trapped inside a house in Hakripora village. Security officials involved in the encounter tried their best to convince Dujana to surrender but he refused, reports say. advertisement According to reports, Dujana rejected call for surrender from an Army officer. The Army had commissioned a local to start a telephonic conversation with Dujana. After initiating the talk, the local villager handed over the phone to the army officer. "Kya haal hai? Maine kaha, kya haal hai (How are you. I asked, how are you)?" Dujana is heard asking the officer. The officer replies: "Humara haal chhor Dujana. Surrender kyun nahi kar deta. Tu galat kar rha hai (Why don't you surrender? You have married this girl. What you are doing isn't right.)" When told that he is being used by Pakistani agencies as a pawn, Dujana, who sounded calm and unperturbed of the situation, said "Hum nikley they shaheed hone. Main kya karu. Jisko game khelna hai, khelo. Kabhi hum aage, kabhi aap, aaj aapne pakad liya, mubarak ho aapko. Jisko jo karna hai karlo (I had left home for martyrdom. What can I do? Today you caught me. Congratulations. "Surrender nahi kar sakta. Jo meri kismat may likha hoga, Allah wahi karega, theek hai? (I won't surrender. Allaah would do whatever is there in my fate)" Dujana went on to say. Dujana, who belonged to Pakistan, was Lashkar-e-Taiba's divisional commander in south Kashmir. He was among the top 10 terrorists identified by the Indian Army in Jammu and Kashmir. With a Rs 15 lakh bounty on his head, Dujana was labelled an 'A++' terrorist - the top grade which was also given to Burhan Wani. Security forces received inputs that during the last few days he was frequenting the houses of his wife Rukaiya and girlfriend Shazia. Police was keeping a watch on both the houses. when it was confirmed he was present in his wife's house, security forces moved in to trap him. ALSO READ: After Abu Dujana, security forces prepare new hitlist of most wanted terrorists Abu Dujana encounter: Jilted lover turned police informer led security forces to LeT commander Top Lashkar-e-Taiba terrorist Abu Dujana killed in Pulwama encounter How Lashkar terrorist Abu Dujana met his wife, and death. A blow-by-blow account WATCH: Abu Dujana encounter one of the biggest successes of security forces, says DG CRPF --- ENDS --- advertisement ST. PETERSBURG, Fla., Aug. 3, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- St. Petersburg office of Coleman Law Group recently celebrated an expansion of services that includes a personal injury compensation branch. For the all-female group known for their focus on business, family and bankruptcy cases, the personal injury niche is a natural addition to the firm's daily docket. A Women's Choice. Where Power Meets Passion. "Our mission statement clearly communicates that we believe everyone's voice deserves to be heard," says Coleman Law Group founder Constance Coleman. "Those who have suffered a personal injury can count on us to be competent and compassionate." "Compassionate" is the adjective that Coleman asserts sets her firm apart from other law groups. The Coleman cadre of attorneys takes a personal approach to each case in order to put clients at ease and ensure information is accurately conveyed throughout all stages of litigation. While some law groups pass a case from attorney to attorney, a single legal professional is assigned to each case at the Coleman Law Group. "Having that one legal professional understand your case every step of the way is invaluable," Coleman says. This compassionate approach comes naturally to firm founder Constance Coleman, who serves as a guardian ad litem and attorney ad litem. She cites that giving children a voice in court is one of her greatest services. Recently, Coleman also was tapped to be a member of the Barney Masterson Inn of Court Board. She is a Chair of the Mount Zion Christian Academy as well. The Coleman Law Group accepts cases from the areas of Land O'Lakes, St. Petersburg, Clearwater and Tampa, as well as areas along the Gulf Coast. For more information about the Coleman Law Group and to schedule a free consultation, visit www.thecolemanlawgroup.com or call 727-214-0400. CONTACT: Constance Coleman Founder Coleman Law Group, PA 727-214-0400 SOURCE The Coleman Law Group LAS VEGAS, Aug. 3, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Core Security congratulates Ben Floyd, Senior Security Analyst and lead penetration tester from a major utility company, for winning its inaugural Capture the Flag (CTF) cyber security competition at the Black Hat conference held in Las Vegas last week. The Core Security CTF encourages cyber security industry professionals to enhance their practical skills in a real-life environment. "We congratulate Ben on winning, amongst a tough field of experienced, innovative pen testers," said Chris Sullivan, CISO and CTO for Core Security. "Our mission at Core is to help organizations manage security risks across the enterprise, and we believe it is important to encourage engineers to apply their knowledge in real-world situations, similar to challenges they may face in some of today's most complex environments. Kudos to all the participants for rising to this challenge." Core Security's Capture the Flag was designed around a rich, fictional, yet realistic, healthcare organization. Filled with a complete, functioning infrastructure, including novel simulated medical devices, participants had the opportunity to engage in tactical missions involving both offensive and defensive techniques. Floyd was able to quickly learn and advance through the tournament with speed and finesse. He won a 6 month subscription of Core Impact. "I was blown away by the functionality and usability of Core Impact. It was my first hands-on experience with the solution and it solidified what I already knew - this is a tool we need for our Pen Testing program," said Ben Floyd. About Core Security Corporation Core Security provides companies with the security insight they need to know who, how, and what is vulnerable in their organization. The company's threat-aware, identity & access, network security, and vulnerability management solutions provide actionable insight and context needed to manage security risks across the enterprise. This shared insight gives customers a comprehensive view of their security posture to make better security remediation decisions. Better insight allows organizations to prioritize their efforts to protect critical assets, take action sooner to mitigate access risk, and react faster if a breach does occur. Core Security is headquartered in the USA with offices and operations in South America, Europe, Middle East and Asia. To learn more, contact Core Security at (678) 304-4500 or [email protected] Media Contact Kari Walker ZAG Communications for Core Security +1.703.928.9996 [email protected] SOURCE Core Security Related Links https://www.coresecurity.com CITY OF INDUSTRY, Calif., Aug. 3, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Organic flavor and ingredient manufacturer Blue Pacific Flavors announces the opening of its new research and development laboratory, the Flavor Creation and Culinary Innovation Center. The lab handles all product development and flavor creation for the company's global operations in the U.S. and Asia. Organic flavor and ingredient manufacturer Blue Pacific Flavors announces the opening of its new research and development laboratory, the Flavor Creation and Culinary Innovation Center. The lab handles all product development and flavor creation for the company's global operations in the U.S. and Asia. Blue Pacific Flavors lab technicians creating flavors in new Flavor Creation & Culinary Innovation Center, pictured in front of the Kardex Remstar high density storage for flavors and raw materials. Photo credit: Mike Marshall Blue Pacific Flavors lab technicians creating flavors in new Flavor Creation & Culinary Innovation Center. Photo credit: Mike Marshall The opening comes after a $1.5M expansion that doubled the space to 3,100 square feet. The center will increase the company's application, creation, sensory testing and compliance capabilities for natural and organic flavor and finished food development. The investment includes labs and offices for Quality Assurance, Quality Control, Regulatory/Product Safety, Research and Development, and new equipment such as a pilot spray dryer and Kardex Remstar high density storage for flavors and raw materials. The new facility provides a collaborative space for Blue Pacific Flavors clients to create clean-label, plant-based, natural and organic food and beverage applications. Processing capabilities include a MicroThermics Steam Injection System with in-line homogenization and UHT clean-fill to provide a streamlined path to market for new food and beverage products. "Our vision was to build a world-class innovation center to be the core of our organization," said Blue Pacific Flavors CEO Donald Wilkes. "It is a reflection of the food manufacturing renaissance taking place in southern California and our commitment to meet the needs of a growing organic flavors business." The company has added staff in regulatory and quality control and plans to hire additional positions in research and development. The next phase of the investment will include the purchase of additional analytical equipment to support enhanced food safety and quality testing. Blue Pacific develops natural, organic and organic compliant fruit and sweet flavors for a broad range of food applications including beverages, fruit preparations, dairy (yogurt and milk), plant-based milks, ice cream, frozen desserts, bakery and nutritional foods and confectionery products. The company's Farm Stand Whole Fruit portfolio includes natural and plant-based flavors that use name whole fruit extractives as the largest ingredient by weight and are free from chemical solvents. About Blue Pacific Flavors Headquartered in City of Industry, Calif., Blue Pacific Flavors is a world-class food and beverage flavor company with more than 35 years of management experience in the industry. Established in 1993, the company develops innovative natural and organic flavor and ingredient solutions for global food and beverage brands. Blue Pacific Flavors recently made a $1.5 million investment to double the size of its Flavor Creation & Culinary Innovation Center research and development laboratory. More information can be found at www.bluepacificflavors.com. Media Contact: Barbara Collins 9176832605 [email protected] SOURCE Blue Pacific Flavors Related Links http://www.bluepacificflavors.com DALLAS, Aug. 3, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Bouncie, a developer of innovative products and applications for the automotive industry, announced the launch of a connected vehicle device that provides drivers with access to valuable data from their automobile and helps them become safer drivers in the process. Today's automobiles are computers on wheels, producing large amounts of data that can be difficult to access or understand. With Bouncie, drivers can plug into the power of a connected car and view helpful information such as trip histories, driving habits, vehicle location, and maintenance reminders. The Bouncie smart-device plugs into the On-Board Diagnostics port (OBD) of a vehicle, through which the smartphone app provides a clean, simple way to view the information it retrieves. Drivers and families can access useful information and features such as: Driving Data - Bouncie delivers real-time insights into driving habits. By monitoring key elements such as hard braking events, rapid acceleration, average speed and trip history, parents can guide their teenager to becoming a safer and more reliable driver. - Bouncie delivers real-time insights into driving habits. By monitoring key elements such as hard braking events, rapid acceleration, average speed and trip history, parents can guide their teenager to becoming a safer and more reliable driver. Vehicle Location - Drivers can view their vehicle's location at any time. Plus, Bouncie can help parents create driving zones with Geo-Circles that alert them when family members enter or leave a designated area. - Drivers can view their vehicle's location at any time. Plus, Bouncie can help parents create driving zones with Geo-Circles that alert them when family members enter or leave a designated area. Vehicle Health and Diagnostics - Bouncie constantly keeps track of vehicle health. If anything mechanical ever needs attention, drivers will receive an alert on their smartphone, so they can manage the little things before they become big problems. - Bouncie constantly keeps track of vehicle health. If anything mechanical ever needs attention, drivers will receive an alert on their smartphone, so they can manage the little things before they become big problems. Vehicle information - Bouncie helps manage all the important information about family vehicles in one place and reminds drivers when it's time to update and renew insurance policies, vehicle registrations, licenses and more. Bouncie's smartphone app helps families manage all of the vehicles in their household and gives them access to important safety features such as roadside assistance and maintenance reminders. When family members are connected to their vehicles, they have the peace of mind that they're connected to each other even when they're miles apart. Bouncie is available for purchase on www.bouncie.com. The smartphone app is available for download from the Apple App Store and Google Play. About Bouncie The Bouncie smart-device is compatible with nearly every vehicle manufactured during the past 20 years. The smartphone app is compatible with both iOS and Android and is available for download in the app marketplaces. Bouncie is a division of Tail Light LLC, a Dallas-based technology company that has delivered innovative products and applications for the automotive industry since 1998. For pricing and additional information, please visit www.bouncie.com. SOURCE Tail Light Related Links http://www.taillight.com HOUSTON, Aug. 3, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Bristow Group Inc. (NYSE: BRS) today reported the following results for the three months ended June 30, 2017. All amounts shown are dollar amounts in thousands unless otherwise noted: Three Months Ended June 30, 2017 2016 % Change Operating revenue $ 339,729 $ 356,184 (4.6)% Net loss attributable to Bristow Group (55,275) (40,772) (35.6)% Diluted loss per share (1.57) (1.17) (34.2)% Adjusted EBITDA (1) 15,203 19,080 (20.3)% Adjusted net loss (1) (29,138) (12,008) (142.7)% Adjusted diluted loss per share (1) (0.83) (0.34) (144.1)% Operating cash flow (51,179) (14,828) (245.2)% Capital expenditures 12,553 21,063 (40.4)% Rent expense 58,675 51,283 14.4% June 30, 2017 March 31, 2017 % Change Cash $ 78,879 $ 96,656 (18.4)% Undrawn borrowing capacity on Revolving Credit Facility 214,129 260,320 (17.7)% Total liquidity $ 293,008 $ 356,976 (17.9)% (1) A full reconciliation of non-GAAP financial measurements is included at the end of this news release. For the June 2017 quarter, we reported a GAAP net loss of $55.3 million and diluted loss per share of $1.57 compared to a GAAP net loss of $40.8 million and diluted loss per share of $1.17 for the June 2016 quarter. Additionally, we reported an adjusted net loss of $29.1 million and adjusted diluted loss per share of $0.83 for the June 2017 quarter compared to adjusted net loss of $12.0 million and adjusted diluted loss per share of $0.34 for the June 2016 quarter. BUSINESS AND FINANCIAL UPDATE Our June 2017 quarter adjusted EBITDA was better than our internal expectations as a result of higher revenue primarily from increased activity levels in Europe and Africa , and reduced expenses from the actions taken during the quarter, which included the reversal of $8.0 million in previously accrued annual and long-term incentive bonuses and reduced corporate salary and professional fee expenses. quarter adjusted EBITDA was better than our internal expectations as a result of higher revenue primarily from increased activity levels in and , and reduced expenses from the actions taken during the quarter, which included the reversal of in previously accrued annual and long-term incentive bonuses and reduced corporate salary and professional fee expenses. We had $293.0 million of total liquidity as of June 30, 2017 with negative operating cash flow during the quarter driven primarily by working capital changes from the timing of receivable collections, and interest and severance payments being only partially offset by $40 million in proceeds from the sale of a SAR S-92. of total liquidity as of with negative operating cash flow during the quarter driven primarily by working capital changes from the timing of receivable collections, and interest and severance payments being only partially offset by in proceeds from the sale of a SAR S-92. In July 2017 , we entered into a $230 million Credit Agreement that is currently expected to fund on or before August 30 , 2017. We anticipate an improved fiscal year 2018 liquidity outlook reflecting the benefit of actions taken in fiscal year 2018, including cost reductions and the suspension of our $2.5 million quarterly dividend. , we entered into a Credit Agreement that is currently expected to fund on or before , 2017. We anticipate an improved fiscal year 2018 liquidity outlook reflecting the benefit of actions taken in fiscal year 2018, including cost reductions and the suspension of our quarterly dividend. Our expectations for fiscal year 2018 full year operating results remain largely consistent with our May 2017 guidance with the bonus accrual benefit not expected to recur. "While our first quarter financial performance continues to reflect the difficult environment in the offshore oil and gas industry, I am incredibly proud that our teams delivered safe operations and a more competitive and cost efficient service for our clients as a result of aggressive actions taken during the quarter," said Jonathan Baliff, President and Chief Executive Officer of Bristow Group. "Even with the better-than-expected first quarter performance, we expect the full fiscal 2018 operating results to be largely consistent with our May 2017 guidance as the current downturn persists with low offshore oil and gas activity levels. However, since the beginning of this fiscal year, we have taken several actions designed to significantly strengthen our liquidity. We sold a SAR S-92 for approximately $40 million, announced an agreement for a secured financing of $230 million, and therefore anticipate an improved fiscal 2018 liquidity outlook." "We remain committed to our four fiscal 2018 priorities for the New Bristow. One, safety improvement remains Bristow's top priority while; two, continuing to improve efficiency with G&A expenses expected to decrease to approximately 12% of revenues; three, further optimizing our portfolio and our fleet, recovering costs incurred as a result of the actions of original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) while reducing or deferring capital expenditures; and four, growing revenue as we better serve our clients in our Europe and Americas Hubs." Operating revenue from external clients by line of service was as follows: Three Months Ended June 30, 2017 2016 % Change (in thousands, except percentages) Oil and gas services $ 234,775 $ 253,087 (7.2)% Fixed wing services 50,677 50,617 0.1% U.K. SAR services 52,587 49,549 6.1% Corporate and other 1,690 2,931 (42.3)% Total operating revenue $ 339,729 $ 356,184 (4.6)% The year-over-year decrease in revenue was driven by lower oil and gas activity levels and an unfavorable impact from changes in foreign currency exchange rates compared to the June 2016 quarter of $18.8 million, which related mostly to the depreciation in the British pound sterling. The decline in oil and gas services revenue was partially offset by the increase in U.K. SAR services revenue due to additional bases coming online in fiscal years 2017 and 2018. The year-over-year change in net loss and diluted loss per share was primarily driven by the decline in oil and gas revenue discussed above, higher income tax, rent and interest expense, lower earnings from unconsolidated affiliates and an inventory impairment charge recorded in the June 2017 quarter. These unfavorable changes were partially offset by higher impairment of asset charges recorded in the June 2016 quarter, a decrease in general and administrative expense and direct costs primarily from lower salaries and benefits and lower depreciation and amortization expense due to accelerated depreciation recorded in the June 2017 quarter. The year-over-year impact of changes in foreign currency exchange rates on revenue was offset by a positive impact on operating expenses and lower transaction losses compared to the June 2016 quarter. The GAAP net loss and diluted loss per share for the June 2017 quarter included the following special items: Organizational restructuring costs of $9.7 million ( $6.6 million net of tax) included in general and administrative expense, which includes severance expense of $8.7 million related to separation programs across our global organization designed to increase efficiency and reduce costs and other restructuring costs of $1.0 million , ( net of tax) included in general and administrative expense, which includes severance expense of related to separation programs across our global organization designed to increase efficiency and reduce costs and other restructuring costs of , Impairment of inventories of $1.2 million ( $0.8 million net of tax) included in loss on impairment, and ( net of tax) included in loss on impairment, and Tax items of $14.9 million that include non-cash adjustments related to the ongoing impact of valuation of deferred tax assets of $13.9 million and a one-time non-cash tax effect from repositioning of certain aircraft from one tax jurisdiction to another related to recent financing transactions resulting in additional income tax expense of $1.0 million . The June 2016 quarter was impacted by similar items as reflected in the table at the end of this release. Excluding the effect of these special items, the year-over-year increase in adjusted net loss and diluted earnings per share and decrease in adjusted EBITDA was primarily driven by the decline in oil and gas revenue, higher adjusted income tax expense, higher rent expense and lower earnings from unconsolidated affiliates. DIVIDEND, LIQUIDITY AND FINANCIAL FLEXIBILITY In August 2017, the Board of Directors voted to suspend our quarterly dividend as part of our fiscal 2018 priorities. By suspending what had been a $0.07 per share quarterly dividend, we will preserve approximately $10 million of cash annually. Our total liquidity decreased approximately $64 million to $293 million as of June 30, 2017 primarily due to cash used in operations of $51.2 million, including negative working capital changes of $32.1 million as well as principal debt repayments of $33.5 million, partially offset by proceeds from asset dispositions of $42.0 million. We expect ending total liquidity as of March 31, 2018 to be between $225 million and $265 million, which is higher than we forecasted in May 2017 as we continue to take actions to reduce cost, manage working capital and leverage our asset portfolio. "The actions we have taken over the past two years were designed to strengthen our financial position and further extend our liquidity runway as we work through this generational downturn," said Don Miller, Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. "Our focused effort on continued cost reductions, including the return of expiring leased aircraft and working capital reductions, are expected to improve our liquidity as we navigate through this challenging market environment." REGIONAL PERFORMANCE Europe Caspian Three Months Ended June 30, 2017 2016 % Change (in thousands, except percentages) Operating revenue $ 184,478 $ 189,128 (2.5)% Earnings from unconsolidated affiliates $ 30 $ 51 (41.2)% Operating income $ 4,407 $ 13,030 (66.2)% Operating margin 2.4% 6.9% (65.2)% Adjusted EBITDA $ 16,152 $ 17,599 (8.2)% Adjusted EBITDA margin 8.8% 9.3% (5.4)% Rent expense $ 36,453 $ 32,288 12.9% The year-over-year decrease in operating revenue was primarily driven by the unfavorable impact of foreign currency exchange rates during the June 2017 quarter of $18.0 million, partially offset by an increase in operating revenue driven by the start-up of U.K. SAR bases since the June 2016 quarter and an additional contract in Norway. Eastern Airways contributed $27.9 million and $30.9 million in operating revenue and $0.1 million and $1.5 million in adjusted EBITDA for the June 2017 and June 2016 quarters, respectively. Excluding the impact of foreign currency exchange rate changes, operating margin and adjusted EBITDA margin, would have been 3.0% and 9.6% in the June 2017 quarter compared to 5.5% and 11.5% in the June 2016 quarter, respectively. Operating margin and adjusted EBITDA margin, excluding the impact of foreign currency exchange rate changes, decreased from the June 2016 quarter as a result of the impact from the downturn in the offshore energy market, which was only partially offset by the start-up of the U.K. SAR bases and cost reduction activities. Africa Three Months Ended June 30, 2017 2016 % Change (in thousands, except percentages) Operating revenue $ 49,981 $ 53,124 (5.9)% Operating income $ 10,048 $ 1,571 539.6% Operating margin 20.1% 3.0% 570.0% Adjusted EBITDA $ 13,383 $ 6,772 97.6% Adjusted EBITDA margin 26.8% 12.7% 111.0% Rent expense $ 2,200 $ 2,268 (3.0)% Operating revenue for Africa decreased for the June 2017 quarter due to an overall decrease in helicopter activity compared to the June 2016 quarter. We began providing fixed wing services in Africa which generated $1.8 million of operating revenue for the June 2017 quarter which partially offset the decline in helicopter activity. Operating income, operating margin, adjusted EBITDA and adjusted EBITDA margin increased in the June 2017 quarter primarily due to a decline in direct costs driven by cost management efforts and the benefit of the devalued Nigerian naira, partially offset by the decrease in revenue discussed above. Operating income and operating margin also benefited from lower depreciation expense compared to the June 2016 quarter; we recorded $2.8 million of accelerated depreciation expense in the June 2016 quarter related to aircraft where management made the decision to exit model types earlier than originally anticipated. The year-over-year devaluation of the Nigerian naira benefited our regional results by $2.0 million as expenses denominated in naira translated into fewer U.S. dollars for reporting purposes. Americas Three Months Ended June 30, 2017 2016 % Change (in thousands, except percentages) Operating revenue $ 57,783 $ 58,754 (1.7)% Earnings from unconsolidated affiliates $ (535) $ 3,863 (113.8)% Operating income $ (1,256) $ 921 (236.4)% Operating margin (2.2)% 1.6% (237.5)% Adjusted EBITDA $ 6,176 $ 14,036 (56.0)% Adjusted EBITDA margin 10.7% 23.9% (55.2)% Rent expense $ 6,994 $ 5,562 25.7% Operating revenue was slightly lower for the June 2017 quarter compared to the June 2016 quarter primarily due to the decline in medium and large aircraft activity in our U.S. Gulf of Mexico operations, a decrease in revenue in Trinidad and a decrease in revenue in Brazil; no aircraft were leased to Lider during the June 2017 quarter. These decreases were mostly offset by a new contract in Guyana and additional revenue from the search and rescue consortium in the U.S. Gulf of Mexico. Earnings from unconsolidated affiliates decreased $4.4 million year-over-year primarily due to a decrease in earnings from our investment in Lider in Brazil. Operating income, operating margin, adjusted EBITDA and adjusted EBITDA margin were negatively impacted by this decrease in earnings from Lider, which included an unfavorable exchange rate impact of $1.1 million year-over-year. Operating income, operating margin, adjusted EBITDA and adjusted EBITDA margin decreased primarily due to the decrease in earnings from unconsolidated affiliates and revenue and an increase in lease costs. Operating income and operating margin benefited from lower depreciation expense compared to the June 2016 quarter; we recorded $3.9 million of accelerated depreciation expense in the June 2016 quarter related to aircraft where management made the decision to exit model types earlier than originally anticipated. Asia Pacific Three Months Ended June 30, 2017 2016 % Change (in thousands, except percentages) Operating revenue $ 49,127 $ 55,232 (11.1)% Operating loss $ (12,530) $ (5,893) (112.6)% Operating margin (25.5)% (10.7)% (138.3)% Adjusted EBITDA $ (5,720) $ (3,123) (83.2)% Adjusted EBITDA margin (11.6)% (5.7)% (103.5)% Rent expense $ 10,954 $ 9,284 18.0% Operating revenue decreased for the June 2017 quarter compared to the June 2016 quarter primarily due to the ending of short-term contracts, partially offset by an increase in revenue from our fixed-wing operations at Airnorth. Airnorth contributed $21.0 million and $19.7 million in operating revenue and $0.9 million and $3.5 million in adjusted EBITDA for the June 2017 and June 2016 quarters, respectively. Operating income, operating margin, adjusted EBITDA and adjusted EBITDA margin decreased in the June 2017 quarter primarily due to decreased revenue and an increase in lease costs, which was only partially offset by a decrease in salaries and benefits. Additionally, operating income and operating margin in the June 2017 quarter were negatively impacted by an increase in depreciation and amortization expense. Corporate and other Three Months Ended June 30, 2017 2016 % Change (in thousands, except percentages) Operating revenue $ 1,712 $ 3,177 (46.1)% Earnings from unconsolidated affiliates $ (160) $ (84) (90.5)% Operating loss $ (25,957) $ (25,847) (0.4)% Adjusted EBITDA $ (14,788) $ (16,204) 8.7% Rent expense $ 2,074 $ 1,881 10.3% Operating revenue decreased for the June 2017 quarter primarily due to a decline in Bristow Academy revenue. Adjusted EBITDA improved primarily due to overall cost reduction activities that decreased general and administrative expenses, partially offset by a decline in revenue discussed above. In addition to the items impacting adjusted EBITDA, operating loss for the June 2017 quarter was impacted by $1.2 million of inventory impairment charges. GUIDANCE Guidance for selected financial measures is included in the tables that follow. CONFERENCE CALL Management will conduct a conference call starting at 10:00 a.m. ET (9:00 a.m. CT) on Friday, August 4, 2017 to review financial results for the fiscal year 2018 first quarter ended June 30, 2017. This release and the most recent investor slide presentation are available in the investor relations area of our web page at www.bristowgroup.com. The conference call can be accessed as follows: Via Webcast: Visit Bristow Group's investor relations Web page at www.bristowgroup.com Live: Click on the link for "Bristow Group Fiscal 2018 First Quarter Earnings Conference Call" Replay: A replay via webcast will be available approximately one hour after the call's completion and will be accessible for approximately 90 days Via Telephone within the U.S.: Live: Dial toll free 1-877-404-9648 Replay: A telephone replay will be available through August 18, 2017 and may be accessed by calling toll free 1-877-660-6853, passcode: 13665035# Via Telephone outside the U.S.: Live: Dial 1-412-902-0030 Replay: A telephone replay will be available through August 18, 2017 and may be accessed by calling 1-201-612-7415, passcode: 13665035# ABOUT BRISTOW GROUP INC. Bristow Group Inc. is the leading global industrial aviation services provider offering helicopter transportation, search and rescue (SAR) and aircraft support services, including maintenance and training, to government and civil organizations worldwide. Bristow has major operations in the North Sea, Nigeria and the U.S. Gulf of Mexico, and in most of the other major offshore oil and gas producing regions of the world, including Australia, Brazil, Canada, Russia and Trinidad. Bristow provides SAR services to the private sector worldwide and to the public sector for all of the U.K. on behalf of the Maritime and Coastguard Agency. For more information, visit bristowgroup.com. FORWARD-LOOKING STATEMENTS DISCLOSURE Statements contained in this news release that state the Company's or management's intentions, hopes, beliefs, expectations or predictions of the future are forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements include statements regarding earnings guidance, expected contract revenue, capital deployment strategy, operational and capital performance, expected cost management activities, expected capital expenditure deferrals, shareholder return, liquidity, market and industry conditions. It is important to note that the Company's actual results could differ materially from those projected in such forward-looking statements. Risks and uncertainties include without limitation: fluctuations in the demand for our services; fluctuations in worldwide prices of and supply and demand for oil and natural gas; fluctuations in levels of oil and natural gas production, exploration and development activities; the impact of competition; actions by clients and suppliers; the risk of reductions in spending on industrial aviation services by governmental agencies; changes in tax and other laws and regulations; changes in foreign exchange rates and controls; risks associated with international operations; operating risks inherent in our business, including the possibility of declining safety performance; general economic conditions including the capital and credit markets; our ability to obtain financing; the risk of grounding of segments of our fleet for extended periods of time or indefinitely; our ability to re-deploy our aircraft to regions with greater demand; our ability to acquire additional aircraft and dispose of older aircraft through sales into the aftermarket; the possibility that we do not achieve the anticipated benefit of our fleet investment program; availability of employees; and political instability, war or acts of terrorism in any of the countries where we operate. Additional information concerning factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those in the forward-looking statements is contained from time to time in the Company's SEC filings, including but not limited to the Company's annual report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended March 31, 2017. Bristow Group Inc. disclaims any intention or obligation to revise any forward-looking statements, including financial estimates, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise. News Release Linda McNeill Investor Relations (713) 267-7622 (financial tables follow) BRISTOW GROUP INC. AND SUBSIDIARIES CONSOLIDATED STATEMENTS OF OPERATIONS (In thousands, except per share amounts and percentages) (Unaudited) Three Months Ended June 30, 2017 2016 Gross revenue: Operating revenue from non-affiliates $ 322,118 $ 338,675 Operating revenue from affiliates 17,611 17,509 Reimbursable revenue from non-affiliates 12,380 13,214 352,109 369,398 Operating expense: Direct cost 285,551 289,543 Reimbursable expense 12,226 12,614 Depreciation and amortization 31,056 34,694 General and administrative 46,707 52,595 375,540 389,446 Loss on impairment (1,192) Gain (loss) on disposal of assets 699 (10,017) Earnings from unconsolidated affiliates, net of losses (665) 3,830 Operating loss (24,589) (26,235) Interest expense, net (16,021) (10,886) Other income (expense), net (1,645) (6,189) Loss before provision for income taxes (42,255) (43,310) (Provision) benefit for income taxes (13,491) 2,238 Net loss (55,746) (41,072) Net loss attributable to noncontrolling interests 471 300 Net loss attributable to Bristow Group $ (55,275) $ (40,772) Loss per common share: Basic $ (1.57) $ (1.17) Diluted $ (1.57) $ (1.17) Non-GAAP measures: Adjusted EBITDA $ 15,203 $ 19,080 Adjusted EBITDA margin 4.5 % 5.4 % Adjusted net loss $ (29,138) $ (12,008) Adjusted diluted loss per share $ (0.83) $ (0.34) BRISTOW GROUP INC. AND SUBSIDIARIES CONSOLIDATED BALANCE SHEETS (In thousands) (Unaudited) June 30, 2017 March 31, 2017 ASSETS Current assets: Cash and cash equivalents $ 78,879 $ 96,656 Accounts receivable from non-affiliates 218,413 198,129 Accounts receivable from affiliates 13,302 8,786 Inventories 130,479 124,911 Assets held for sale 34,585 38,246 Prepaid expenses and other current assets 43,145 41,143 Total current assets 518,803 507,871 Investment in unconsolidated affiliates 205,174 210,162 Property and equipment at cost: Land and buildings 235,270 231,448 Aircraft and equipment 2,605,978 2,622,701 2,841,248 2,854,149 Less Accumulated depreciation and amortization (630,223) (599,785) 2,211,025 2,254,364 Goodwill 19,907 19,798 Other assets 115,921 121,652 Total assets $ 3,070,830 $ 3,113,847 LIABILITIES, REDEEMABLE NONCONTROLLING INTEREST AND STOCKHOLDERS' INVESTMENT Current liabilities: Accounts payable $ 96,498 $ 98,215 Accrued wages, benefits and related taxes 53,288 59,077 Income taxes payable 15,802 15,145 Other accrued taxes 8,383 9,611 Deferred revenue 22,318 19,911 Accrued maintenance and repairs 25,628 22,914 Accrued interest 5,702 12,909 Other accrued liabilities 48,376 46,679 Deferred taxes 830 Short-term borrowings and current maturities of long-term debt 117,817 131,063 Total current liabilities 393,812 416,354 Long-term debt, less current maturities 1,174,749 1,150,956 Accrued pension liabilities 60,057 61,647 Other liabilities and deferred credits 25,634 28,899 Deferred taxes 159,439 154,873 Redeemable noncontrolling interest 6,349 6,886 Stockholders' investment: Common stock 380 379 Additional paid-in capital 813,857 809,995 Retained earnings 934,166 991,906 Accumulated other comprehensive loss (318,207) (328,277) Treasury shares (184,796) (184,796) Total Bristow Group stockholders' investment 1,245,400 1,289,207 Noncontrolling interests 5,390 5,025 Total stockholders' investment 1,250,790 1,294,232 Total liabilities, redeemable noncontrolling interest and stockholders' investment $ 3,070,830 $ 3,113,847 BRISTOW GROUP INC. AND SUBSIDIARIES CONSOLIDATED STATEMENTS OF CASH FLOWS (In thousands) (Unaudited) Three Months Ended June 30, 2017 2016 Cash flows from operating activities: Net loss $ (55,746) $ (41,072) Adjustments to reconcile net loss to net cash used in operating activities: Depreciation and amortization 31,056 34,694 Deferred income taxes 6,651 (7,216) Discount amortization on long-term debt 23 27 Gain (loss) on disposal of assets (699) 10,017 Loss on impairment 1,192 Stock-based compensation 4,136 4,200 Equity in earnings from unconsolidated affiliates less than (in excess of) dividends received 665 (3,587) Increase (decrease) in cash resulting from changes in: Accounts receivable (21,541) (18,391) Inventories (3,551) (2,000) Prepaid expenses and other assets 5,106 (2,390) Accounts payable (3,288) 5,328 Accrued liabilities (8,807) 10,904 Other liabilities and deferred credits (6,376) (5,342) Net cash used in operating activities (51,179) (14,828) Cash flows from investing activities: Capital expenditures (12,553) (21,063) Proceeds from asset dispositions 41,975 11,500 Net cash provided by (used in) investing activities 29,422 (9,563) Cash flows from financing activities: Proceeds from borrowings 69,018 74,408 Debt issuance costs (493) (2,925) Repayment of debt (66,947) (18,035) Partial prepayment of put/call obligation (12) (13) Payment of contingent consideration (10,000) Common stock dividends paid (2,465) (2,453) Repurchases for tax withholdings on vesting of equity awards (274) (570) Net cash provided by (used in) financing activities (1,173) 40,412 Effect of exchange rate changes on cash and cash equivalents 5,153 2,380 Net increase (decrease) in cash and cash equivalents (17,777) 18,401 Cash and cash equivalents at beginning of period 96,656 104,310 Cash and cash equivalents at end of period $ 78,879 $ 122,711 BRISTOW GROUP INC. AND SUBSIDIARIES SELECTED OPERATING DATA (In thousands, except flight hours and percentages) (Unaudited) Three Months Ended June 30, 2017 2016 Flight hours (excluding Bristow Academy and unconsolidated affiliates): Europe Caspian 22,147 22,144 Africa 7,523 8,072 Americas 7,692 6,210 Asia Pacific 6,361 6,711 Consolidated 43,723 43,137 Operating revenue: Europe Caspian $ 184,478 $ 189,128 Africa 49,981 53,124 Americas 57,783 58,754 Asia Pacific 49,127 55,232 Corporate and other 1,712 3,177 Intra-region eliminations (3,352) (3,231) Consolidated $ 339,729 $ 356,184 Operating income (loss): Europe Caspian $ 4,407 $ 13,030 Africa 10,048 1,571 Americas (1,256) 921 Asia Pacific (12,530) (5,893) Corporate and other (25,957) (25,847) Gain (loss) on disposal of assets 699 (10,017) Consolidated $ (24,589) $ (26,235) Operating margin: Europe Caspian 2.4 % 6.9 % Africa 20.1 % 3.0 % Americas (2.2) % 1.6 % Asia Pacific (25.5) % (10.7) % Consolidated (7.2) % (7.4) % Adjusted EBITDA: Europe Caspian $ 16,152 $ 17,599 Africa 13,383 6,772 Americas 6,176 14,036 Asia Pacific (5,720) (3,123) Corporate and other (14,788) (16,204) Consolidated $ 15,203 $ 19,080 Adjusted EBITDA margin: Europe Caspian 8.8 % 9.3 % Africa 26.8 % 12.7 % Americas 10.7 % 23.9 % Asia Pacific (11.6) % (5.7) % Consolidated 4.5 % 5.4 % Three Months Ended June 30, 2017 2016 Depreciation and amortization: Europe Caspian $ 11,822 $ 11,189 Africa 3,076 5,453 Americas 6,999 11,381 Asia Pacific 5,810 4,236 Corporate and other 3,349 2,435 Consolidated $ 31,056 $ 34,694 Rent expense: Europe Caspian $ 36,453 $ 32,288 Africa 2,200 2,268 Americas 6,994 5,562 Asia Pacific 10,954 9,284 Corporate and other 2,074 1,881 Consolidated $ 58,675 $ 51,283 BRISTOW GROUP INC. AND SUBSIDIARIES AIRCRAFT COUNT As of June 30, 2017 (Unaudited) Percentage of Current Quarter Operating Revenue Aircraft in Consolidated Fleet Helicopters Fixed Wing Unconsolidated Affiliates (3) Small Medium Large Training Total (1)(2) Total Europe Caspian 54 % 16 78 31 125 125 Africa 15 % 9 31 5 5 50 46 96 Americas 17 % 14 41 17 72 67 139 Asia Pacific 14 % 2 10 23 14 49 49 Corporate and other % 48 48 48 Total 100 % 25 98 123 48 50 344 113 457 Aircraft not currently in fleet: (4) On order 2 27 29 Under option 4 4 (1) Eastern Airways operates a total of 31 fixed wing aircraft in the Europe Caspian region and provides technical support for 3 fixed wing aircraft in the Africa region. Additionally, Airnorth operates a total of 14 fixed wing aircraft, which are included in the Asia Pacific region. (2) Includes 14 aircraft held for sale and 121 leased aircraft as follows: Held for Sale Aircraft in Consolidated Fleet Helicopters Small Medium Large Training Fixed Wing Total Europe Caspian 2 2 Africa 4 4 Americas 5 5 Asia Pacific 1 1 Corporate and other 2 2 Total 11 2 1 14 Leased Aircraft in Consolidated Fleet Helicopters Small Medium Large Training Fixed Wing Total Europe Caspian 6 39 13 58 Africa 1 2 2 5 Americas 1 14 7 22 Asia Pacific 2 3 9 4 18 Corporate and other 18 18 Total 3 24 57 18 19 121 (3) The average age of our fleet, excluding training aircraft, was approximately nine years as of June 30, 2017. (4) The 113 aircraft operated by our unconsolidated affiliates do not include those aircraft leased from us. Includes 43 helicopters (primarily medium) and 24 fixed wing aircraft owned and managed by Lider Taxi Aereo S.A. ("Lider"), our unconsolidated affiliate in Brazil included in the Americas region, and 39 helicopters and 7 fixed wing aircraft owned by Petroleum Air Services ("PAS"), our unconsolidated affiliate in Egypt included in the Africas region. (5) This table does not reflect aircraft which our unconsolidated affiliates may have on order or under option. BRISTOW GROUP INC. AND SUBSIDIARIES FY18 GUIDANCE FY18 guidance as of June 30, 2017 (1) Operating revenue2 Adjusted EBITDA2,3 Rent2 Oil and gas ~$850M - $950M ~$(35M) - $(10M) ~$155M - $165M U.K. SAR ~$215M - $230M ~$40M - $50M ~$45M - $50M Eastern ~$105M - $115M ~$0 - $5M ~$10M - $12M Airnorth ~$80M - $90M ~$5M - $10M ~$10M - $12M Total ~$1.3B - $1.4B ~$15M - $50M ~$225M - $235M G&A Expense4 ~$170M - $190M Depreciation Expense ~$120M - $130M Total aircraft rent5 ~$200M - $205M Total non-aircraft rent5 ~$25M - $30M Interest expense ~$55M - $65M Non-aircraft capex4 ~$45M annually (1) FY18 guidance assumes FX rates as of June 30, 2017. (2) Operating revenue, EBITDA and rent for oil and gas includes corporate and other revenue and the impact of corporate overhead expenses. (3) EBITDA for U.K. SAR and fixed wing (Eastern/Airnorth) excludes corporate overhead allocations consistent with financial reporting. EBITDA is a non-GAAP measure of which the most comparable GAAP measure is net income (loss). We have not provided a reconciliation of this non-GAAP forward-looking information to GAAP. The most comparable GAAP measure to EBITDA is net income (loss) which is not calculated at this lower level of our business as we do not allocate certain costs, including corporate and other overhead costs, interest expense and income taxes within our accounting system. Providing this data would require unreasonable efforts in the form of allocations of other costs across the organization. (4) Updated from guidance as of March 31, 2017. (5) Total aircraft rent and total non-aircraft rent are inclusive of the respective components of rent expense for U.K. SAR, Eastern, Airnorth plus oil and gas. BRISTOW GROUP INC. AND SUBSIDIARIES GAAP RECONCILIATIONS These financial measures have not been prepared in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles ("GAAP") and have not been audited or reviewed by our independent auditor. These financial measures are therefore considered non-GAAP financial measures. A description of the adjustments to and reconciliations of these non-GAAP financial measures to the most comparable GAAP financial measures is as follows: Three Months Ended June 30, 2017 2016 (In thousands, except per share amounts) Net loss $ (55,746) $ (41,072) (Gain) loss on disposal of assets (699) 10,017 Special items 10,866 6,559 Depreciation and amortization 31,056 34,694 Interest expense 16,235 11,120 Provision (benefit) for income taxes 13,491 (2,238) Adjusted EBITDA $ 15,203 $ 19,080 (Provision) benefit for income taxes $ (13,491) $ 2,238 Tax expense (benefit) on gain (loss) on disposal of asset 4,573 (3,206) Tax provision on special items 11,397 8,526 Adjusted benefit for income taxes $ 2,479 $ 7,558 Effective tax rate (1) (31.9) % 5.2 % Adjusted effective tax rate (1) 7.7 % 38.0 % Net loss attributable to Bristow Group $ (55,275) $ (40,772) Loss on disposal of assets 3,874 6,811 Special items 22,263 21,953 Adjusted net loss $ (29,138) $ (12,008) Diluted loss per share $ (1.57) $ (1.17) Loss on disposal of assets 0.11 0.19 Special items 0.63 0.63 Adjusted diluted loss per share (0.83) (0.34) (1) Effective tax rate is calculated by dividing benefit (provision) for income tax by pretax net income (loss). Adjusted effective tax rate is calculated by dividing adjusted benefit (provision) for income tax by adjusted pretax net income (loss). Tax expense (benefit) on loss on disposal of asset and tax expense (benefit) on special items is calculated using the statutory rate of the entity recording the loss on disposal of asset or special item. Three Months Ended June 30, 2017 Adjusted EBITDA Adjusted Net Loss Adjusted Diluted Loss Per Share (In thousands, except per share amounts) Organizational restructuring costs (1) $ (9,674) $ (6,602) (0.19) Tax items (2) (14,886) (0.42) Inventory impairment (1,192) (775) (0.02) Total special items $ (10,866) $ (22,263) (0.63) Three Months Ended June 30, 2016 Adjusted EBITDA Adjusted Net Loss Adjusted Diluted Loss Per Share (In thousands, except per share amounts) Organizational restructuring costs (1) $ (6,559) $ (4,292) (0.12) Additional depreciation expense resulting from fleet changes (3) (4,490) (0.13) Tax valuation allowances (2) (13,171) (0.38) Total special items $ (6,559) $ (21,953) (0.63) (1) Organizational restructuring costs include severance expense included in direct costs and general and administrative expense from our voluntary and involuntary separation programs. (2) Relates to a one-time non-cash tax effect from repositioning of certain aircraft from one tax jurisdiction to another related to recent financing transactions for the June 2017 quarter and non-cash adjustments related to the valuation of deferred tax assets for all periods presented. (3) Relates to additional depreciation expense due to fleet changes. SOURCE Bristow Group Inc. Related Links http://www.bristowgroup.com RESTON, Va., Aug. 3, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- BT today announced the U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) selected BT Federal as one of the companies to be eligible to propose to provide services under the Enterprise Infrastructure Solutions (EIS) contract. Under the EIS contract, US Federal Government agencies can tender for a broad array of national and international telecommunications network and information technology (IT) services. The EIS contract is a comprehensive solutions-based vehicle designed to address all aspects of the U.S. Federal Government information technology (IT) telecommunications and infrastructure requirements. The fifteen year contract includes a five-year base term with two five-year optional extensions and is valued at as much as $50 billion if all extension options are exercised. This contract authorizes BT Federal to compete for mandatory and optional services from individual US Government agencies. The EIS program is the largest Federal communications contracts in history. Tony Wellen, COO of BT Federal said: "We are extremely proud to have been named a qualified bidder under the EIS contract and look forward to expanding our relationship with the GSA and the Federal agencies they serve. BT Federal is fully prepared to assist in enabling a swift and seamless transition to the next generation of telecommunications services within the Federal Government sector." The EIS contract includes collaboration services, such as Voice over IP, audio conferencing, web conferencing, MPLS, internet access and ethernet services; managed network services, fiber-optic services; cloud and contact center services; cybersecurity services and products and services for Continuity of Operations Planning (COOP) for Federal agencies. EIS provides transformational solutions for Federal customers seeking to transition to the GSA program in the foreseeable future. Leveraging BT's extensive global network, comprehensive portfolio of services and industry expertise, BT Federal provides U.S. agencies with innovative solutions to support strategic digital transformation initiatives across the U.S. Government. Those solutions integrate a wide variety of advanced network technologies, customer premises equipment and professional services, including network engineering, analysis, design, testing and maintenance. ENDS For further information Enquiries about this news release should be made to the BT Group Newsroom on its 24-hour number: 020 7356 5369. From outside the UK dial + 44 20 7356 5369. All news releases can be accessed on our web site. Notes for Editors About BT Federal BT Federal, is a US-based company and an independent entity of British Telecom (BT) Group plc headquartered in Reston, VA. BT Federal leverages the broad capabilities of BT, one of the world's leading communications services provider with network presence in nearly 200 countries and territories. BT Federal delivers innovative, comprehensive advanced IT network solutions and professional services to Federal agencies and enterprise customers serving the interest of the US Government. Established more than 15 years ago, BT Federal is dedicated to the mission of meeting the complex requirements of the US Government. For more information, visit www.btfederal.com. About BT BT's purpose is to use the power of communications to make a better world. It is one of the world's leading providers of communications services and solutions, serving customers in 180 countries. Its principal activities include the provision of networked IT services globally; local, national and international telecommunications services to its customers for use at home, at work and on the move; broadband, TV and internet products and services; and converged fixed-mobile products and services. BT consists of six customer-facing lines of business: Consumer, EE, Business and Public Sector, Global Services, Wholesale and Ventures, and Openreach. For the year ended 31 March 2017, BT Group's reported revenue was 24,062m with reported profit before taxation of 2,354m. British Telecommunications plc (BT) is a wholly-owned subsidiary of BT Group plc and encompasses virtually all businesses and assets of the BT Group. BT Group plc is listed on stock exchanges in London and New York. For more information, visit www.btplc.com SOURCE BT Related Links http://www.btplc.com ST. LOUIS, Aug. 3, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Build-A-Bear Workshop today announced official details of a new partnership with PBS KIDS. In April, Build-A-Bear kicked off a corporate sponsorship of two PBS KIDS programs, Curious George and Wild Kratts. This is the first time Build-A-Bear Workshop has underwritten national programming on PBS. The ongoing 2017 partnership is being communicated during "Curious George" and "Wild Kratts" airings through custom, 15-second video underwriting messages, developed to convey the brand benefits of Build-A-Bear and its alignment with PBS KIDS. "Like Build-A-Bear Workshop, PBS KIDS values the advancement of creativity and imagination," said Sharon Price John, president and chief executive officer, Build-A-Bear Workshop. "Build-A-Bear encourages children of all ages to use their inventiveness as they experience our unique process to make their own special furry friend. And now, as we approach our 20th birthday, many of our Guests who were introduced to Build-A-Bear as kids have little ones of their ownnot unlike PBS." Suzanne Zellner, Vice President, Sponsorship Group for Public Television, added, "PBS KIDS sponsors set themselves apart from competitors by showing support of public television and aligning with its values: love of learning, STEM education, social and emotional learning, appreciation of the arts and self-expression, and more. Research shows that parents overwhelmingly view PBS KIDS as the number one educational media brand, and we are proud to partner with a trusted family brand like Build-A-Bear Workshop." The underwriting messages from Build-A-Bear Workshop include videos that air during episodes of "Curious George" and "Wild Kratts," as well as digital advertising on pbskids.org and pbs.org/parents. The on-air and digital messages, which encourage creativity and imagination, will run through the end of 2017 as part of an extended sponsorship. Build-A-Bear also plans to integrate summer- and friendship-themed content from PBS KIDS into select events at U.S. Build-A-Bear Workshop stores, including a friendship celebration weekend August 4-6 in honor of National Friendship Day. The PBS KIDS content includes activity sheets and booklets for kids as well as resources for parents to use in educating their children about friendship and empathy. As it relates to the company's continued commitment to television advertising as an effective communication channel, Build-A-Bear also recently unveiled a new TV commercial that features an original jingle and highlights the iconic, Make-Your-Own experience Guests can only find at Build-A-Bear Workshop. The spot is currently airing on a variety of networks that reach moms and kids; it also offers the brand an opportunity to develop inserts around seasonally relevant product stories. For more information about Build-A-Bear Workshop, visit buildabear.com and follow the brand on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Instagram. About Build-A-Bear Celebrating 20 years of business in 2017, Build-A-Bear is a global brand kids love and parents trust that seeks to add a little more heart to life. Build-A-Bear Workshop has approximately 400 stores worldwide where Guests can create customizable furry friends, including company-owned stores in the United States, Canada, Denmark, Ireland, Puerto Rico, the United Kingdom and China, and franchise stores in Africa, Asia, Australia, Europe, Mexico and the Middle East. The company was named to the Fortune 100 Best Companies to Work For list for the ninth year in a row in 2017. Build-A-Bear Workshop, Inc. (NYSE:BBW) posted a total revenue of $364.2 million in fiscal 2016. For more information, visit buildabear.com. About the Sponsorship Group for Public Television The Sponsorship Group for Public Television represents the best sponsorships on PBS, with national program inventory from WGBH Boston and other producers of quality public television programs, across all genres. For more information on PBS sponsorship opportunities, contact the Sponsorship Group for Public Television at 800.886.9364, e-mail [email protected] or visit sgptv.org. SOURCE Build-A-Bear Workshop Related Links http://www.buildabear.com SAN DIEGO, Aug. 3, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Bumble Bee Foods S.a r.l. and Bumble Bee Holdco S.C.A. announced today that they will issue their reports for the second quarter of 2017 via IntraLinks on August 15, 2017. A conference call to discuss Q2 2017 financial results will be held at 11:30 a.m. EDT on August 17, 2017 Qualified investors will receive notice via IntraLinks regarding the call-in number. An audio replay of the call will be available to qualified investors until midnight on August 17, 2018. About Bumble Bee Bumble Bee Holdco S.C.A. owns Bumble Bee Foods S.a r.l. which owns Bumble Bee Foods, LLC and Connors Bros. Clover Leaf Seafoods Company. On a combined basis, they represent North America's largest branded shelf-stable seafood company. Bumble Bee and Clover Leaf offer a full line of canned and pouched tuna, salmon, sardine, and specialty protein products marketed in the U.S. under leading brands including Bumble Bee, Brunswick, Snow's and Beach Cliff, and in Canada under the Clover Leaf and Brunswick brands. For more information on Bumble Bee, visit www.bumblebee.com. SOURCE Bumble Bee Holdco S.C.A. Related Links http://www.bumblebee.com Arco Real Property Holdings, a joint venture between Arco Capital and Deutsche Asset Management's DB Private Equity & Private Markets group, has a new financing and construction facility for BPS. (Logo: http://mma.prnewswire.com/media/470199/Arco_Capital_Logo.jpg ) (Logo: http://mma.prnewswire.com/media/541192/Postbank__Logo.jpg ) (Logo: http://mma.prnewswire.com/media/541194/DSK_Bank_Logo.jpg ) (Logo: http://mma.prnewswire.com/media/541193/OTP_Bank_Logo.jpg ) OTP Bank PLC, its Bulgarian subsidiary DSK Bank EAD, and Postbank (legally named Eurobank Bulgaria AD) provided a new senior and construction facility to Business Park Sofia (BPS), the largest office park in Central and Eastern Europe, to refinance the business park at a lower cost of funds and longer loan tenure, reaching now a total volume of 133 million. The transaction closed on 2 August 2017. The new joint facility is being provided by three banks, OTP Bank PLC and DSK Bank EAD acted as lead arrangers, syndication agents and underwriters. OTP Bank PLC is acting as facility agent and DSK Bank EAD is the security agent and account bank for this transaction. The Business Park Sofia office complex consists of fourteen Class A modern buildings, located in the prime location for business in Sofia. The total built-up area will exceed 210, 000 sqm upon completion of the new development and is fully leased to more than 150 international tenants and accommodating more than 11,000 employees. The business park comprises more than fifty percent of currently leased Class A office space in Sofia's central business district. BPS is the most prestigious office center in Sofia and in the Central and Eastern Europe region. It offers a unique architectural design and high technical specification of the buildings. The construction of a new Class "A" building, which shall be known as Building 15, is underway and being directed by leading German construction management company Lindner Immobilien Management. The construction is expected to be completed at the end of 2018. Building 15 shall offer a total of 20,000 sqm of leasable space, with five levels designed for office use, retail units on the ground floor, and two underground parking levels with a total of 255 parking spaces. The building has already been substantially let to major international tenants. As of today, Building 15 has been 90 percent pre-let. "Business Park Sofia is the most iconic office park in the Sofia CBD, which is one of the most dynamic markets in the Central and Eastern Europe region," said Boyan Stefov, Board Member and Head of Corporate Banking, DSK Bank EAD. "When you look at the most desirable office address in the capital, the business park is always amongst a very elite peer set, and that is always led by Business Park Sofia." according to Stefov. "This transaction is a rare combination of an exceptional real estate, an outstanding market, and a top tier institutional ownership. We, and our lending syndicate, felt extremely comfortable in leading the path in structuring a new CEE benchmark transaction that provides our new client with a very competitive cost of funds and ten-year maturity in order for them to fully develop their business plan. DSK Bank always try to be at the forefront of lending trends and marquee transactions," added Stefov. "The new financing structure provides extremely attractive term financing for our balance sheet assets and Business Park Sofia. This important transaction gives us greater flexibility and significant strength as we build on our existing operations as the leading regional business park," said Borislav Hristov, Chief Financial Officer at Arco Real Estate Management. Hristov added: "Our financing agreement with the new bank consortium further affirms our vision for the transformation of Business Park Sofia being a 'metrohub' in the Sofia CBD. With approximately 99 percent of the office park already under lease agreements, it's clear that there is immense enthusiasm in the market for this type and quality of asset. This is another benchmark transaction for Arco, one that highlights the value of our extensive direct origination capabilities as well as our strong operating culture." Notes to Editors: Business Park Sofia (http://www.businesspark-sofia.com) is the largest office park in Central and Eastern Europe and was the first business park in Bulgaria. The facility accommodates some of the most successful businesses in diverse industries. The park is designed to provide efficiency, flexibility and convenience to corporate tenants of any size and scope. It is a genuine multifunctional high-tech business park, which combines essential business components and related sectors in a vibrant and sustainable community. DSK Bank is the oldest bank in Bulgaria and the market leader in retail and private banking, with an established presence in the Corporate and SME segment. Since 2003 it has been part of OTP Group, headquartered in Hungary. Servicing some three million customers, DSK Bank practically reaches every Bulgarian family. Disposing of the largest branch network in Bulgaria, the bank has an incomparable service-provision infrastructure, it is well acquainted with the local potential and offers high level of servicing through individual approach and full range of bank products and services, which are tailor made to the needs of all customer segments. OTP Bank Group is one of the largest independent financial services providers in Central and Eastern Europe with full range of banking services for private individuals and corporate clients. OTP Group comprise large subsidiaries, granting services in the field of insurance, real estate, factoring, leasing and asset management, investment and pension funds. The bank is serving clients in 9 countries, namely Hungary, Slovakia, Bulgaria, Serbia, Romania, Croatia, Ukraine, Montenegro and Russia. Nowadays OTP Groups' more than 36,000 employees are serving 13 million clients in over 1,500 branches and through electronic channels on all the markets of the bank. OTP is still the largest commercial bank in Hungary with over 25% market share. Postbank is the fifth biggest bank in Bulgaria in terms of assets, having a broad branch network across the country and a considerable client base of individuals, companies and institutions. Postbank has more than 25-years' presence as one of the leaders in Bulgaria's banking sector. The bank is a decisive factor in innovation, in shaping the country's banking trends in recent years and award-winning for its innovation. Postbank occupies a strategic position in retail and wholesale banking in Bulgaria. It is one of the market leaders in credit and debit cards, mortgage and consumer loans, saving products, as well as regarding corporate tailored products - from those for small businesses to large international companies operating in the country. The bank has built one of the most developed branch networks and modern alternative banking channels. In March 2016 Postbank acquired the business of Alpha Bank Bulgaria which is another step forward for consolidating its position as a systemic bank and in expanding its customer base. Postbank is a member of Eurobank Group. Eurobank is a dynamic banking group active in seven countries, with total assets of 65.7 billion and 15,929 employees. Media Contacts: For Business Park Sofia Ekaterina Radeva Marketing and PR Manager Media Relations, Tel.: +359-2-489-96-79 [email protected] For Arco Capital Media Relations, Tel.+1-787-993-9650 [email protected] SOURCE Arco Real Property Holdings WASHINGTON, Aug. 3, 2017 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Cub Scouts of the Bay Area will speak with a NASA astronaut living, working and doing research aboard the International Space Station at 1:40 p.m. EDT Monday, Aug. 7. Cub Scout Pack 643 of Lafayette, California, will host nearby Cub Scout, Boy Scout and Girl Scout troops for the 20-minute, Earth-to-space call that will air live on NASA Television and the agency's website. Expedition 52 Flight Engineer Jack Fischer will answer questions from scouts assembled in the Performing Arts Theater at Acalanes High School in Lafayette. Fischer launched to the space station in April. He's scheduled to return to Earth in September. Before joining NASA, he attended the U.S. Air Force Test Pilot School at Edwards Air Force Base, California. For more information on the downlink, contact Keith Trimble at 510-547-3200 or [email protected]. Acalanes High School is at 1200 Pleasant Hill Road in Lafayette. The scouts of Pack 643 spent time this summer reviewing Expedition 52 mission details. They are excited for the opportunity to speak with and see a NASA astronaut living and working on the International Space Station. Linking students directly to astronauts aboard the space station provides unique, authentic experiences designed to enhance student learning, performance and interest in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM). This in-flight education downlink is an integral component of NASA Education's STEM on Station activity, which provides a variety of space station-related resources and opportunities to students and educators. Follow the astronauts on social media: @NASA_astronauts. For more information, videos and lesson plans highlighting research on the International Space Station, visit: https://www.nasa.gov/stemonstation SOURCE NASA Related Links http://www.nasa.gov By India Today Web Desk: Over the last few months, the abduction and assault of a popular Malayalam actress is a case that has seen several twists and turns. On Wednesday, Dileep's ex-wife Manju Warrier's brother Madhu Warrier was questioned by Kerala police in connection with the abduction case. According to reports, the police team questioned Madhu Warrier as part of their efforts to find out from those who were once close to Dileep. Madhu was asked about Dileep's character and his marriage to Manju Warrier. advertisement Dileep's brother-in-law (sister's husband) was also called by the police on Wednesday, as he used to manage all the business interests of the actor. Dileep and Manju Warrier called off their marriage in 2015. Last year, Dileep married actress Kavya Madhavan after much speculations. It must be noted that Kavya Madhavan was also questioned by police in the actress assault case. On Monday, Dileep's manager Appunni told the police that he knew Pulsar Suni and that he was spotted several times on sets of Dileep's films. Appunni said that he was not sure if Suni and Dileep were in contact with each other. Dileep's judicial custody was extended till August 8 after his bail plea was rejected by the Kerala High Court. Earlier in February, a popular Malayalam actress was kidnapped and molested by a gang of six headed by Pulsar Suni, who took pictures of the actress to blackmail her. The case had a dramatic twist when actor Dileep was arrested on the charges of conspiracy in July. ( With inputs from IANS ) ALSO READ: Mollywood celebs knew of Dileep's plans regarding Malayalam actress abduction? ALSO READ: Dileep's absconding manager Appunni finally appears for questioning ALSO READ: All you need to know about the Malayalam actress abduction case ALSO READ: How the Malayalam actress abduction case drama unfolded ALSO READ: Kerala High Court rejects Dileep's bail plea in Malayalam actress abduction case ALSO READ: Why Mollywood was shockingly silent in the Malayalam actress abduction case ALSO WATCH: Dileep's bail plea rejected, more trouble for the Malayalam actor --- ENDS --- LOS ANGELES, Aug. 3, 2017 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The CALIFORNIA ASSOCIATION OF REALTORS (C.A.R.) today issued the following statement in response to comments made by Freddie Mac CEO Don Layton that Freddie Mac is looking to work with institutional investors in the single-family home rental market: "While C.A.R. is waiting on details, we are concerned with Freddie Mac moving forward to partner with institutional investors to use what is essentially a government guarantee to compete with homebuyers," said C.A.R. President Geoff McIntosh. "While Freddie has hinted a potential deal may include affordable housing, the deal announced earlier this year by Fannie Mae did not, and there are no requirements that any future deals by the GSEs must promote affordable housing." "C.A.R. has worked at every level of government to support affordable housing programs; this includes maintaining existing programs, increasing inventory and finding new sources of funding for affordable housing. Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae already support affordable rentals through their multifamily programs. This move forces homebuyers to directly compete with government-backed institutional investors who are buying a large portion of homes directly off the MLS," said McIntosh. Leading the way... in California real estate for more than 110 years, the CALIFORNIA ASSOCIATION OF REALTORS (www.car.org) is one of the largest state trade organizations in the United States, with more than 190,000 members dedicated to the advancement of professionalism in real estate. C.A.R. is headquartered in Los Angeles. SOURCE CALIFORNIA ASSOCIATION OF REALTORS Related Links http://www.car.org MIAMI, Aug. 3, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Carnival Corporation & plc (NYSE/LSE: CCL; NYSE: CUK), the world's largest leisure travel company, today announced that three of its Ocean Originals TV programs "Ocean Treks with Jeff Corwin," "The Voyager with Josh Garcia" and "Vacation Creation" have been honored with 10 2017 Telly Awards in various categories. The Telly Awards is the premier award honoring the best in TV and Cable, Digital and Streaming, and Non-Broadcast Productions, on average receiving more than 13,000 entries annually from all 50 states and 5 continents. "It is truly an honor to have these shows recognized with multiple Telly Awards," said John Padgett, chief experience and innovation officer for Carnival Corporation. "To have these shows acknowledged in their first season for exceptional travel-related cinematography and being produced in a way that appeals to people of all ages confirms that we've achieved our primary goal -- to create compelling experiential content that engages all audiences while inspiring them to travel the world." "Ocean Treks with Jeff Corwin" took home three silver Tellys for editing and nature/wildlife, and four bronze awards in the categories of cinematography, children and travel and tourism. The series airs nationwide on ABC on Saturday mornings and follows Emmy-winning host Jeff Corwin as he embarks on adventures in some of the world's most exciting destinations, such as repelling down cliffs, flight-seeing to glacier landings, mountain climbing in a national park and zip-lining through a rainforest. "The Voyager with Josh Garcia" took home two bronze Tellys for education and travel and tourism. Airing Saturday mornings on NBC, the program follows video journalist and world-traveler Josh Garcia as he visits fascinating seaside ports to meet locals who share their rich history, life stories and exotic foods, and introduces viewers to the hidden beauty, cultural diversity and amazing flavors native to each destination. "Vacation Creation" was honored with a bronze Telly for travel and tourism. "Vacation Creation" airs as part of The CW's "One Magnificent Morning" Saturday morning block and features "In Living Color" star and comedian Tommy Davidson and YouTube celebrity Andrea Feczko as hosts. The show goes beyond the typical travel show by personalizing vacations of a lifetime for couples, individuals and families facing hardship and in need of hope or seeking much-needed time together. All three series launched in fall 2016, and episodes air weekly on network TV. The innovative communications approach of producing original authentic experience-based TV programs builds on Carnival Corporation's strategy to highlight why traveling by ocean to experience global destinations has become one of the best ways to enjoy and learn about the world and other cultures. The TV programs are garnering attention based on their popularity in ratings and experiential value, with more than 120 million viewers having tuned in over the past year. The new experiential content is designed to engage viewers by showcasing exciting adventures, exotic cultures and popular global destinations. Ships from all of the company's cruise brands Carnival Cruise Line, Fathom, Holland America Line, Princess Cruises, Seabourn, AIDA Cruises, Costa Cruises, Cunard, P&O Cruises (Australia) and P&O Cruises (UK) serve as the platform for engaging and emotional experiences, and each of the company's brands are being featured in episodes in at least one of the shows during the inaugural season. About Carnival Corporation & plc Carnival Corporation & plc is the world's largest leisure travel company and among the most profitable and financially strong in the cruise and vacation industries, with a portfolio of 10 dynamic brands that include nine of the world's leading cruise lines. With operations in North America, Europe, Australia and Asia, its portfolio features Carnival Cruise Line, Holland America Line, Princess Cruises, Seabourn, AIDA Cruises, Costa Cruises, Cunard, P&O Cruises (Australia) and P&O Cruises (UK), as well as Fathom, the corporation's immersion and enrichment experience brand. Together, these brands operate 103 ships visiting over 700 ports around the world and totaling 231,000 lower berths with 17 new ships scheduled to be delivered between 2018 and 2022. Carnival Corporation & plc also operates Holland America Princess Alaska Tours, the leading tour companies in Alaska and the Canadian Yukon. Traded on both the New York and London Stock Exchanges, Carnival Corporation & plc is the only dual listed company in the world to be included in both the S&P 500 and the FTSE 100 indices. In 2017, Fast Company recognized Carnival Corporation as being among the "Top 10 Most Innovative Companies" in both the design and travel categories. Fast Company specifically recognized Carnival Corporation for its work in developing Ocean Medallion, a high-tech wearable device that enables the world's first interactive guest experience platform capable of transforming vacation travel into a highly personalized and elevated level of customized service. Additional information can be found on www.carnival.com, www.fathom.org, www.hollandamerica.com, www.princess.com, www.seabourn.com, www.aida.de, www.costacruise.com, www.cunard.com, www.pocruises.com.au, and www.pocruises.com. About the Tellys Founded in 1979, the Telly Awards is the premier award honoring the best in TV and Cable, Digital and Streaming, and Non-Broadcast Productions. Our mission has been to strengthen the visual arts community by inspiring, promoting, and supporting creativity. On average, The Telly Awards receives over 13,000 entries yearly from all 50 states and 5 continents. The Telly is one of the most sought-after awards by industry leaders, from large international firms to local production companies and ad agencies. With the quality of non-broadcast productions, traditional local & cable television commercials and programming on the rise, along with the world of online video continuing to rapidly evolve, we are excited to see this year's class of entries. SOURCE Carnival Corporation & plc Related Links http://www.carnival.com CHARLOTTE, N.C., Aug. 3, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- The Cato Corporation (NYSE: CATO) today reported sales of $56.1 million for the four weeks ended July 29, 2017, down 8% to sales of $61.2 million for the four weeks ended July 30, 2016. Same-store sales for the month were down 9% to the prior year. Sales for the second quarter ended July 29, 2017 were $205.0 million, down 13% to sales of $236.7 million for the second quarter ended July 30, 2016. Second quarter same-store sales were down 14% to prior year. Sales for the first half were $442.7 million, down 15% to the prior year's first half sales of $522.2 million. Same-store sales for the first half were down 15% to the prior year. "Our negative sales trends persisted in July and the decline in sales continues to put severe pressure on merchandise margins and profitability. We expect a loss for the second quarter and full year earnings to be significantly below last year," commented John Cato, Chairman, President, and Chief Executive Officer. The Company will release second quarter results on Thursday, August 17, 2017. During the month of July, the Company opened one store in Greensboro, NC and closed one store. As of July 29, 2017, The Cato Corporation operated 1,374 stores in 33 states, compared to 1,373 stores in 33 states as of July 30, 2016. The Cato Corporation is a leading specialty retailer of value-priced fashion apparel and accessories operating three concepts, "Cato", "Versona" and "It's Fashion". The Company's Cato stores offer exclusive merchandise with fashion and quality comparable to mall specialty stores at low prices every day. The Company also offers exclusive merchandise found in its Cato stores at www.catofashions.com. Versona is a unique fashion destination offering apparel and accessories including jewelry, handbags and shoes at exceptional prices every day. Select Versona merchandise can also be found at www.shopversona.com. It's Fashion offers fashion with a focus on the latest trendy styles for the entire family at low prices every day. Statements in this press release not historical in nature including, without limitation, statements regarding the Company's expected or estimated operational and financial results are considered "forward-looking" within the meaning of The Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Such forward-looking statements are based on current expectations that are subject to known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those contemplated by the forward-looking statements. Such factors include, but are not limited to, the following: any actual or perceived deterioration in the conditions that drive consumer confidence and spending, including, but not limited to, levels of unemployment, fuel, energy and food costs, wage rates, tax rates, home values, consumer net worth and the availability of credit; uncertainties regarding the impact of any governmental responses to the foregoing conditions; competitive factors and pricing pressures; our ability to predict and respond to rapidly changing fashion trends and consumer demands; adverse weather or similar conditions that may affect our sales or operations; inventory risks due to shifts in market demand, including the ability to liquidate excess inventory at anticipated margins; and other factors discussed under "Risk Factors" in Part I, Item 1A of the Company's most recently filed annual report on Form 10-K and in other reports the Company files with or furnishes to the SEC from time to time. The Company does not undertake to publicly update or revise the forward-looking statements even if experience or future changes make it clear that the projected results expressed or implied therein will not be realized. The Company is not responsible for any changes made to this press release by wire or Internet services. SOURCE The Cato Corporation Related Links http://www.catocorp.com TAMARAC, Fla., and RIVERVIEW, Fla., Aug. 3, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Charter School Capital, the nation's leading provider of growth capital and facilities financing to charter schools, announced today that its facilities arm, American Education Properties (AEP), has acquired two Florida charter school facilities for $30.5 million from ESJ Capital Partners and MG3 Developer Group. The transaction was funded on July 29, 2017. The charter schools operating in the two facilities are Renaissance Charter School at University in Tamarac, Fla. and Kid's Community College Southeast Riverview in Riverview, Fla. The Renaissance property was acquired for $22,296,330, and the Kid's Community College property was acquired for $8,208,100. As part of the acquisition, the company has assumed the existing 20-year leases on both properties, which expire in 2032 and 2033, respectively. The two properties encompass a total of 134,000 square feet on 11.81 acres. This acquisition marks AEP's second transaction with ESJ Capital Partners and MG3 Developer Group. In late November, 2016, AEP/Charter School Capital acquired five charter school facilities from the sellers. "It is such an honor to positively impact the future of the nearly 2,000 students that attend these two impressive Florida charter schools," said Stuart Ellis, president and CEO of Charter School Capital. "We enjoyed working once again with ESJ and MG3 to arrive at terms that will give the charter school operators the peace of mind that comes in knowing their facilities are securely theirs to operate for years to come." Renaissance Charter School at University is located at 8399 North University Drive in Tamarac, Fla., and operates as part of Broward County Public Schools. Located about 10 miles northwest of the Fort Lauderdale business district, the charter school opened in 2012 and will serve 1,426 students in the 2017-18 school year. Managed by Charter Schools USA, one of the oldest and largest charter management organizations (CMO) in the country, the K-8 charter school operates in one 105,002 square foot building on 8.91 acres. The building was originally constructed in 1982 and renovated in 2015. Kid's Community College Southeast Riverview is located at 11515 and 11519 McMullen Road in Riverview, Fla., and operates under the Hillsborough County School District. Located about 15 miles southeast of the Tampa business district, the charter school opened in 2003 and is slated to serve 397 students in the 2017-18 school year. The K-8 charter school operates on a 2.9-acre parcel in a single two-story building built in 2013 that is comprised of 28,998 square feet. It is independently operated by Kid's Community College, a CMO that manages a total of eight charter schools serving Pre-K through high school. Today, more than 1 million students find themselves on waiting lists for their local charter schools. The National Alliance for Public Charters schools continues to highlight the lack of facilities options available to charter schools as a major issue charter leaders face. To meet this demand, charter schools require facilities that address the unique growth needs of each school and community and require access to capital to expand. Charter School Capital focuses solely on charter school needs, providing customizable facilities financing options to charter schools. Charter leaders retain control of their buildings and are afforded the flexibility to make the modifications necessary to expand their enrollment and academic programs. About Charter School Capital: Launched in 2006, Charter School Capital delivers access to growth capital and facilities financing to charter schools nationwide, opening the funding options charter schools historically have not had. Charter School Capital has provided in excess of $1.5 billion in funding to 550+ charter schools providing high-quality education to more than 650,000 students across the United States. For more information, visit charterschoolcapital.org or email [email protected]. SOURCE Charter School Capital Related Links http://www.charterschoolcapital.org ANGOLA, Ind., Aug. 3, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- The City of Angola will be using interactive 360-degree panoramic virtual reality technology for community and economic development. Clear Vision Media was contracted by the City to create 360-degree views of various locations in Angola. Locations include downtown Angola and the interchange area of U.S. Highway 20 and Interstate 69, where a technology park is proposed. This is not the first time 360-degree technology has been used in Steuben County. The Steuben County Tourism Bureau has used the technology to virtually guide visitors through Pokagon State Park, Trine Recreation Area and other key county locations on their website: www.lakes101.org The use of the technology will attract potential investors, businesses, new residents, and visitors to Angola. Online users will be able to view a 360-degree image of each location as well as zoom into businesses, organizations, and other specified locations within the 360-degree view. Specific locations will be able to each have their own 360-degree view. "A Virtual Angola," according to Downtown Services Coordinator Maria Davis, "will not only give the city a distinctive promotional platform, but also gives businesses and organizations a chance to promote themselves using leading-edge technology." The project is expected to be completed this summer, 2017. An interactive 360-degree view of historic downtown Angola's Public Square can be viewed on the City of Angola's website at www.angolain.org. This immersive cutting-edge technology can be navigated on various electronic devices, including smartphones and other mobile devices. Inquiries should be made to Maria Davis, City of Angola Downtown Services Coordinator, at [email protected] or by phone at 260-624-2698. SOURCE City of Angola Related Links http://www.angolain.org "We are excited to partner with Titan Development to bring the Elan Manatee community to life in 2018," he said. "Titan's shared vision for their communities and commitment to innovation has been evident at every step of this process. We look forward to working together to ensure Elan Manatee residents receive the services and support they deserve and that we're providing comfort and peace of mind to their families." This will be Titan Development's first community in Manatee County and its third in Florida. The approximately 80,000-square-foot community is being constructed at 7380 55th Ave. E., in the Tara community, on the southwest corner of State Road 70 East and Interstate 75. "This location will allow Elan Manatee to be a good neighbor to resort lifestyle community Stone River Retirement Resort, an independent living project," Julie Ferguson, Titan's Director of Senior Living, said. Walker & Company will be the general contractor for Elan Manatee. The community was designed by Chancey Design Partnership. According to Shelisha Coleman, press secretary for the Florida Agency for Health Care Administration, Manatee County hosts 47 licensed assisted living facilities. What will set Elan Manatee apart from the rest is Civitas' signature Passion Program, providing residents the highest quality of life a life full of passion. The Passion Program includes My Activities, Our Passionate Employee, My Food, My Passion Pathway, and My Wellness and ensures a comprehensive continuum of care by integrating all the powers at play. The addition of Elan Manatee contributes to a growing Civitas portfolio that includes more than 25 senior living facilities throughout the nation. To learn more about Elan Manatee, please call 813-494-7144 or visit www.elanmanatee.com. About Civitas Senior Living, LLC Civitas Senior Living is a Fort Worth, Texas-based management company that specializes in development, acquisitions, operational management, and consulting for senior housing properties, including assisted living, retirement centers, and independent senior living properties. For more information about Civitas, please visit www.CivitasSeniorLiving.com, or call 817.386.8888. www.passionseniorliving.com About Titan Development Titan Development's goal is to deliver beautiful surroundings, create an active lifestyle, and provide services and an environment geared toward the well-being of seniors. Titan combines over 25 years of design, development, and construction experience with more than 40 years of senior living management experience from their operating partners. To learn more about Titan Development, please visit www.titan-development.com CONTACT: Andrea Owen Civitas Senior living (817) 386-8888 SOURCE Civitas Senior Living Related Links http://www.Civitasseniorhealthcare.com SAN FRANCISCO, Aug. 3, 2017 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Cloud Foundry Foundation, home of the industry-standard platform for cloud applications, announced today Allianz, IBM, Pivotal, SAP and Swisscom will be keynote stage participants at the 2017 European Summit taking place in Basel, Switzerland, from October 11-12 at the Congress Center Basel. Early bird registration ends Tuesday, August 8, 2017 and offers 60 percent off the full price. In a departure from past events, the European Summit brings a unique conversational format to the keynote stage. Cloud Foundry Foundation's executive director Abby Kearns and CTO Chip Childers will lead discussions tied to the day one theme "Move Fast" and the day two theme "Make Things." Keynotes for the event include pioneering community experts Dr. Nic Williams, CEO, Stark & Wayne; Keaty Gross, Cloud Foundry engineering manager, Pivotal; and Julian Friedman, product manager & software engineer, IBM. This interactive discussion-based style will stimulate critical thinking, draw out ideas, focus more on technical specifics and highlight user stories. In addition to an energetic stage presence built on interactive dialogue, there will be compelling keynote sessions from Allianz and Swisscom with more being announced soon. The European Summit comes on the heels of a record-setting Silicon Valley Summit. With support from Platinum sponsors Google, SAP, IBM and Pivotal, the 2017 Summit in North America set new attendance records and attracted the attention of media, with more than 365 articles. The success of Summit Silicon Valley arrives amid explosive growth of Cloud Foundry worldwide with 2,400 contributors since inception; 51,000 commits in the last 12 months alone; 70,000 people participating in global community events; and 67 total members. According to internal research, Cloud Foundry has 35 percent of the total market across all deployments, making Cloud Foundry the industry leader in the growing cloud application platform market. As stated in market research from Gartner, Cloud Foundry's total market value is approximately $2.8 billion, rising to $5.25 billion in a few years. "Use of Cloud Foundry has absolutely exploded in the last 12 months. As a result, we've seen our events spike to nearly 40 percent of attendees now self-identifying as 'users' of Cloud Foundry," said Abby Kearns, Executive Director, Cloud Foundry Foundation. "With deep technology-focused keynote content, developer-centric tracks, and the only available in-person Cloud Foundry developer certification, this event is can't-miss for anybody serious about cloud-native technologies." More than 1,000 enterprise developers, architects, engineers and executives from around the world are expected to attend the highly technical Cloud Foundry Summit in Basel. Attendees will learn Cloud Foundry from those who build it and use it every day. They will join other developers and CIOs to gain first-hand access to Cloud Foundry roadmaps, training and tutorials, and to see how others are using Cloud Foundry to support continuous innovation and application portability. Featured tracks include: Core Project Updates with topics such as containers, networking and BOSH Cloud-Native Microservices hosted by Pivotal with talks on continuous delivery, Java and the open service broke API Cloud Foundry at Scale hosted by SAP with sessions on multi-cloud, cloud-native applications and IoT Cloud Foundry in the Enterprise with examples of use cases and stories of digital transformation Experiments & Extensions with talks on Kubo and Kubernetes, monitoring and "serverless" Hands-on training will be offered for an additional fee. See the schedule and training workshops here: https://goo.gl/3iAbUp. Attendees will also have access to Cloud Foundry Developer Certification (CFDC) at Summit. Performance-based, community-based and independent of any distribution vendor, Cloud Foundry Developer Certification is the guaranteed way to demonstrate cloud skills and allow developers to be highly productive while working on top of Cloud Foundry. Summit Europe is supported by Platinum sponsors Pivotal, SAP and Swisscom; Gold sponsors anynines, Datadog and IBM; and Silver sponsors AppDynamics, Dynatrace, GrapeUp, Solace and Volkswagen. Sponsorship opportunities are still available. Cloud Foundry is an open source technology backed by the largest technology companies in the world, including Cisco, Dell EMC, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Google, IBM, Microsoft, Pivotal, SAP and SUSE, and is being used by leaders in manufacturing, telecommunications and financial services. Only Cloud Foundry delivers the velocity needed to continuously deliver apps at the speed of business. Cloud Foundry's container-based architecture runs apps in any language on your choice of cloud Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Cloud Platform (GCP), IBM Cloud, Microsoft Azure, OpenStack, VMware vSphere, and more. With a robust services ecosystem and simple integration with existing technologies, Cloud Foundry is the modern standard for mission critical apps for global organizations. About Cloud Foundry Foundation The Cloud Foundry Foundation is an independent non-profit organization formed to sustain the development, promotion and adoption of Cloud Foundry as the industry standard platform for cloud applications. Cloud Foundry makes it faster and easier to build, test, deploy and scale applications. Cloud Foundry is an Apache 2.0 licensed project available on Github: https://github.com/cloudfoundry. To learn more, visit: http://www.cloudfoundry.org. Contact: Jessica Rampen Cloud Foundry Foundation [email protected] 650-787-3548 SOURCE Cloud Foundry Foundation Related Links http://www.cloudfoundry.org This trend is supported by research from the latest Chinese International Travel Monitor (CITM) from Hotels.com which reveals the U.S. is the second most popular destination for Chinese travelers to visit in the next 12 months (behind France), with popular U.S. landmarks like the Grand Canyon and the Statue of Liberty topping travel wish lists. The CITM research also identifies that, while cities in Asia Pacific remain the most popular (82 percent of Chinese travelers have visited in the past 12 months), visitors to Europe and America have increased with a year over year growth of 25 percent and 11 percent, respectively. These destinations were particularly popular with millennial travelers, with 42 percent visiting Europe and 29 percent visiting America in the past 12 months. According to the CITM, the Top U.S. Destinations for Chinese Travelers along with hotel suggestions are: 1. Hawaii Mauna Lani Bay Hotel and Bungalows 4.5 out of 5 guest review rating on Hotels.com From $293 per night* 2. New York Roxy Hotel Tribeca 4.4 out of 5 guest review rating on Hotels.com From $208 per night* 3. Los Angeles The LINE Hotel 4.1 out of 5 guest review rating on Hotels.com From $199 per night* 4. Las Vegas The Signature at MGM Grand 4.5 out of 5 guest review rating on Hotels.com From $84 per night* 5. Seattle Hotel Andra 4.6 out of 5 guest review rating on Hotels.com From $224 per night* 6. San Francisco Argonaut Hotel 4.5 out of 5 guest review rating on Hotels.com From $275 per night* All of these properties and many more can be booked via the Hotels.com mobile app, available on iOS and Android. "The CITM reveals that the United States is one of the top five countries Chinese travelers visit the most," said Josh Belkin, vice president and GM of the Hotels.com brand. "With tens of thousands of places to stay across the U.S., like distinctive boutiques, spacious vacation rentals and familiar chains, our site and mobile app have the perfect places for Chinese travelers of all ages and lifestyles." In 2016, there were 122 million outbound Chinese tourists1 four percent more than in 2015 and a massive 74 percent more than in 2011, when we published the first CITM. China is already the largest source of international travelers for many countries despite the fact only 10 percent of the population had passports in 20162! More information from the 2017 CITM, including detailed research findings on the five Chinese traveler personas and top ranked amenities can be accessed here. About the research The Hotels.com Chinese International Travel Monitor (CITM) analyses research taken directly from both Chinese international travellers and hoteliers worldwide, combined with Hotels.com own proprietary data and other research. For the travelers' survey, Hotels.com used Ipsos, a world leader in market research, which in April and May 2017 conducted interviews with 3,000 Chinese residents, aged 1857 years, who had traveled overseas in the past 12 months. A Computer-assisted Web Interviewing technology was used. The representative sample consisted of men and women from a number of cities in all tiers. The travelers were asked about travel behavior, booking methods, accommodation choices and many other aspects of their travel. To complement this, Hotels.com carried out a global survey of more than 3,800 Hotels.com hotel partners, also during May 2017. The 38 participating countries were Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, Colombia, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hong Kong, Hungary, India, Indonesia, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Russia, Singapore, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, Thailand, Turkey, the UK, the USA and Vietnam. About Hotels.com Hotels.com L.P. operates Hotels.com, a leading online accommodation booking website with properties ranging from international chains and all-inclusive resorts to local favorites and bed & breakfasts, together with all the information needed to book the perfect stay. Customers get instant savings ** with Secret Prices through our mobile booking app and when logged into the booking website. Hotels.com Rewards members can earn and redeem free*** nights at thousands of properties worldwide. The Hotels.com Mobile Concierge on iPhone is like having a local expert in the palm of your hand, offering fast access to services such as transportation, on-demand food delivery, restaurant reservations and activities. 2017 Hotels.com, LP. Hotels.com, The Obvious Choice, Hotels.com Rewards and the Hotels.com logo are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Hotels.com, LP in the U.S. and/or other countries. All other trademarks are property of their respective owners. CST #2083949-50 **Instant savings are only available on select, participating properties. *** Free nights are only available on select, participating properties. Maximum value of the free night is the average of daily rate of the 10 paid nights and doesn't include taxes or fees. See site for details. Secret Prices are available to Hotels.com app users, Hotels.com Rewards members and individuals who unlock Secret Prices on the website by subscribing to Hotels.com by email. Secret Prices will be shown where the "Your Secret Prices" banner is displayed on your search results. Available on select hotels and select dates only. Subject to full terms and conditions. 1 China National Tourism Administration 2 China National Tourism Administration SOURCE Hotels.com Related Links http://www.hotels.com GREENSBORO, N.C., Aug. 3, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- GSI3 announces the issuance of the first of two patents, U.S. Patent No. 9,709,301 and 9,709,287, in a series of patents that are the cornerstones of a simple new design which delivers a true high Delta T, Low GPM, HVAC system utilizing standard industry components. In moderate climates, GSI3's system will lower energy demand upwards to 80% while virtually eliminating water usage. Despite these breakthrough savings, GSI3 will generate the same cooling as conventional systems. "Imagine every private and public building in Las Vegas, Dubai, Paris and Tokyoindeed in every city of the worldusing 40% to 60% less energy for their HVAC systems," imagined Gerald McDonnell, lead inventor and founder of GSI3. "Now reduce the system water usage by 30% to 50%. How many lakes would we fill?" Additionally, the design is the first of its kind to allow for substantially higher fresh air supply across all environments without penalty. As a result, the GSI3 system successfully addresses the "sick building" syndrome. GSI3 is currently in talks with industry conglomerates. "Our goal is to find an innovative partner who has the market breadth and ability to ensure the GSI3 system is employed worldwide," said Jeffrey Cheesman, co-inventor. "We hope to have this concluded by year's end." ABOUT GSI3 GSI3, a privately held corporation, was formed to strikingly redefine the HVAC industry via technology that conserves costs by dramatically increasing water & energy efficiency. Gerald McDonnell is an industry recognized HVAC inventor, educator and engineer who has been awarded over 40 US Patents. As founding partner of Aligned Energy, Mr. McDonnell invented the most efficient data center cooling system currently available. Contact; Cliff Bridges, Chief Marketing & Communication Officer 843.597.4763 [email protected] SOURCE GSI3 RESTON, Va., Aug. 3, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- comScore, Inc. recently released data from comScore MobiLens, reporting market share trends in the U.S. smartphone industry for June 2017. Top Smartphone OEMs 3 Month Avg. Ending June 2017 Total U.S. Smartphone Subscribers Age 13+ Source: comScore MobiLens Top Smartphone OEMs Share (%) of Smartphone Subscribers Total Smartphone Subscribers 100.0% Apple 44.9% Samsung 29.1% LG 10.0% Motorola 4.0% HTC 1.9% Top Smartphone Platforms 3 Month Avg. Ending June 2017 Total U.S. Smartphone Subscribers Age 13+ Source: comScore MobiLens Top Smartphone Platforms Share (%) of Smartphone Subscribers Total Smartphone Subscribers 100.0% Android 53.3% Apple 44.9% Microsoft 1.3% BlackBerry 0.5% For more market rankings from comScore, visit our Rankings page here. About comScore comScore is a leading cross-platform measurement company that measures audiences, brands and consumer behavior everywhere. comScore completed its merger with Rentrak Corporation in January 2016, to create the new model for a dynamic, cross-platform world. Built on precision and innovation, our data footprint combines proprietary digital, TV and movie intelligence with vast demographic details to quantify consumers' multiscreen behavior at massive scale. This approach helps media companies monetize their complete audiences and allows marketers to reach these audiences more effectively. With more than 3,200 clients and a global footprint in more than 75 countries, comScore is delivering the future of measurement. Shares of comScore stock are currently traded on the OTC Market (OTC:SCOR). For more information on comScore, please visit comscore.com. SOURCE comScore Related Links http://www.comscore.com By India Today Web Desk: Pehredaar Piya Ki might be courting controversy for showing a marriage between a 9-year-old and an 18-year-old, but the father of child actor Afaan Khan is unfazed about the entire controversy. When asked about the show attracting controversy because of its concept, this is what he said: "It's okay. We knew about the script in detail. It's not that something happened at the spur of moment. Plus, let me tell you that the story is soon going to take you into a different space soon, it's going to change drastically. I don't think we should read too much into Pehredaar Piya Ki. It is just a show and my son Afaan is only acting in it. In fact, many people are praising him that he looks cute and he's doing well," he told in an interview to Spotboye. advertisement He also said that it's just a character and controversies are part and parcel of showbiz. "Look, we are not doing it for money. Afaan is just playing a character. If somebody plays a villain on screen, does he become a villain in real life? People talk, is that something new?Even Salman Khan and Shah Rukh Khan have had their share of controversies. Will they stop acting? If one has to remain in the industry, there will be controversies around him/her. One needs to accept all this," he added. Pehredaar Piya Ki will soon witness a honeymoon track featuring Ratan and Diya. Well. Also read: Pehredaar Piya Ki hits another low; 9-year-old Ratan to honeymoon with 18-year-old Diya Also read: Dear Pehredaar Piya Ki makers, please get the hint and shut your shop Also read: Pehredaar Piya Ki: 5 ridiculous plot twists we fear the makers might introduce soon --- ENDS --- European Solar Portfolio Expands to 85 MW Global Renewable Portfolio Stands at 1,520 MW VIENNA, Aug. 3, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- ContourGlobal signed yesterday an agreement for the acquisition of a group of companies owning ~20MW of operational solar photovoltaic ("PV") plants in Italy from ErgyCapital S.p.A. The plants, located in the regions of Puglia, Piemonte, Lazio and Campania, are in close proximity to ContourGlobal's existing Italian solar portfolio and benefit from approximately 12 more years of Feed-in-Tariff. The acquisition further expands ContourGlobal's Italian power business and leverages the company's existing Italian thermal and renewable operating platform consisting of high efficiency QuadGeneration facilities serving Coca Cola Italia and rooftop and ground mounted solar facilities throughout the country. ContourGlobal's Chief Operating Officer, Mr. Karl Schnadt, said: "We are pleased to continue to expand our business in Italy where we have operated now for almost a decade. Our operating platform enables us to efficiently integrate these new facilities into our existing European renewable business." The Enterprise Value of the transaction is 68m. The transaction contemplates either refinancing or assuming approximately 47m of project finance debt. Closing of the transaction, subject to certain customary and transaction specific conditions, is expected in September 2017. About ContourGlobal ContourGlobal is an international power-generation company with approximately 4,100 MW in operation in 19 countries and three continents. ContourGlobal operates a portfolio of 69 thermal and renewable power plants across Europe, Latin America, and Africa utilizing a wide range of technologies. Forward Looking Statements This press release contains forward-looking statements. Actual results may differ materially from those reflected in the forward-looking statements. The company undertakes no obligation to release publicly the result of any revisions to these forward-looking statements which may be made to reflect events or circumstances after the date hereof, including, without limitation, changes in ContourGlobal's business or to reflect the occurrence of unanticipated events. SOURCE ContourGlobal Related Links http://www.contourglobal.com ROCKVILLE, Md., Aug. 3, 2017 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Today, a Circuit Court for the state of Maryland struck down key components of the landmark "Healthy Lawns Act" pesticide ordinance passed in Montgomery County, Maryland in 2015. The court's decision, issued by Judge Terrence McGann, eliminates pesticide use restrictions on private property, but does not touch provisions limiting toxic pesticides used on public, county owned land. Grassroots advocates who supported passage of the Healthy Lawns Act to protect children, families and the environment are dismayed by the court's ruling, but nevertheless vow to keep up the fight for protections from hazardous pesticides used in their community. "The court should have recognized that, in restricting lawn pesticides throughout its jurisdiction, Montgomery County is exercising a local democratic principle under Maryland and federal law to ensure the safety of the community, including children, pets, and the environment, from a known hazard not adequately regulated by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency or the state," said Jay Feldman, executive director of Beyond Pesticides. "After extensive hearings and study, the county council understands that toxic chemicals are dangerous and not needed to have beautiful lawns and landscapes," Mr. Feldman said. By passing the Healthy Lawns Act, the Montgomery County Council acknowledged growing demand within the community for natural and organic lawn care practices and compatible products. These cost-effective lawn care methods have been shown to eliminate the need for toxic pesticide use through improvements in soil biology that support more resilient plants. Pro-pesticide plaintiffs challenging the restrictions were led by Complete Lawn Care, and supported by the pesticide industry lobby group, Responsible Industry for a Sound Environment (RISE). "Just like big tobacco's attacks on local smoking restrictions to control secondhand smoke, the chemical industry is attempting to head-off a growing movement asking for common-sense measures that protect public health from pesticide exposure," Mr. Feldman said. Advocates say Judge McGann's ruling ignores historical precedent set by Maryland counties in leading the way on health and environmental laws, including bans on plastic bags and coal-tar sealants. At times, the Judge's written opinion is dismissive of the danger posed by pesticide use, including an aside opining "why neighborhood children sell lemonade on the street corner and not pesticides." Beyond Pesticides' Map of U.S. Pesticide Reform Policies lists over 150 communities in 23 states that restrict chemical pesticide use. In Maine, over 20 policies address both public and private pesticide applications. Eight of ten Canadian provinces, and over 170 Canadian municipalities have laws with a similar structure to Montgomery County's Healthy Lawns Act. "For health of Maryland's children, pets, wildlife, and waterways like the Chesapeake Bay, we will continue to support the ever-growing movement for healthy, pesticide-free communities," Mr. Feldman said. The Montgomery County Council is in recess until September at which time it will consider appealing the Circuit Court ruling. Contact: Jay Feldman, 202-255-4296 [email protected] www.beyondpesticides.org SOURCE Beyond Pesticides Related Links http://www.beyondpesticides.org ATLANTA, Aug. 3, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Cratos Global announced it's been awarded a contract to negotiate term-maintenance agreements for SoEnergy International's Siemens/Rolls-Royce Trent60 gas turbines in Argentina. Cratos Global applied its proven 4 step-process to aligning SoEnergy's project revenue structure and project IRR objectives with the future major maintenance costs of its gas turbine generators. "In a fully contracted project, an optimal maintenance strategy must be aligned with a company's strategic business objectives," said Sergio A. Picon, CEO of Cratos Global. "By working hand in hand with the SoEnergy development team we reviewed structures, cashflows, commercial and technical risk attributes that would align and optimize SoEnergy's project financials. By leveraging more than 25 years of term-maintenance structuring experience, we could navigate the often-difficult discussions with the OEM, and assured alignment between owner and service provider, achieving a contract that will deliver predictable costs and reduced risks." Brett Hall, then Executive Vice President of SoEnergy's permanent power division said, "Working with the Cratos Global team was seamless and they worked like a fully integrated team member of our company. By bringing them in, we could review alternative structures available to meet our risk and financial requirements, creating millions of dollars of savings over the term of the agreement." SoEnergy, a global energy services provider, was awarded a 132 MW Power Purchase Agreement for the sale of Energy as an Independent Power Producer of two (2) 66MW Power plants valued at more than $130 million by the Ministry of Energy and Mining of Argentina. The Trent60 with Rolls-Royce Aero Engine technology is among the most powerful, pure aeroderived gas turbine in its class on the market today. Designed for industrial use in both power generation and mechanical drive applications, the Industrial Trent 60 has established a new benchmark for power output, fuel economy and cost savings. These units will be the first Trent60 gas turbine generators installed in Argentina. Note to Editors Cratos Global is a services company focused on helping customers extract the underlying value from the assets they own. Our team of experts brings its unique Energy Industry expertise, developed over decades with OEMs and Independent Service Providers. Our services include owner representation and power project development, project contracts negotiation, including O&M, EPC, PPA, LTSA/CSA (Term Maintenance Agreements), Equipment Selection, Project Financing, and Asset Valuation. SoEnergy International is a global energy services provider delivering customized solutions, including sale of energy, bridge (temporary) and long-term power solutions, for a diverse array of organizations and industries worldwide. The company has world-class technical expertise and international infrastructure throughout Latin America, Asia, Africa and the Middle East. For further information contact: Tye Lampl Tel: +1 407 347-4205, email: [email protected] SOURCE Cratos Global Related Links http://www.cratosglobal.com SILVER SPRING, Md., Aug. 2, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Dr. Marion Elizabeth Primas, Ph.D. is recognized by Continental Who's Who with the 2016-2017 Lifetime Achievement Award in the field of Mental Health Services. Dr. Primas is a Retired Senior Public Health Advisor with the United States Department of Health and Human Services. The first black valedictorian of her high school graduating class, it was clear Dr. Primas was destined for success at an early age in Chicago, Illinois. One of her first professional positions after earning her degree was as a Professor at Howard University, where she taught psychology and abnormal psychology classes before being recruited to the National Institutes of Health. While working at NIH, she was one of the first female black women to speak at international meetings. Throughout her forty six year career with the United States Department of Health Resources, Dr. Primas was responsible for counseling and advising women on general health and mental health issues. She has published multiple articles and contributed a chapter in two books as well. In addition to her writing, Marion has delivered numerous scientific presentations worldwide on women's health and aging. By devoting her life and her career to helping others, she has traveled the world conducting presentations in countries such as Germany, Australia, Sweden, Denmark, Mexico, Ireland, Holland, Greece, and Belgium. Despite her schedule slowing down post-retirement, Dr. Primas has no intention of stopping anytime soon and she continues to stay active in the field. Looking into the future, she hopes to publish books on women's health, and to attend more international meetings on the subjects of healthcare and mental health. Dr. Primas will be traveling to Korea soon, where she is anticipating learning the native culture and traditions. Furthermore, she is a Past Member of the Gerontological Society, a Past Member and contributor with the Psychogeriatric Association, and a Past Member of the American Psychological Association. Presently, Dr. Primas has contributed to the Disabled Veterans Association, Paralyzed Veterans of America Haiti Relief, UNICEF, the Humane Society, Doctors Without Borders, and is passionate about organizations which assist in the treatment of Alzheimer's disease. During the course of her professional career, Marion has appeared in a number of print publications, such as Pro- Files Magazine and Who's Who Publishers' "Top 101 Industry Experts". Dr. Primas was also honored with the title Woman of the Year from the American Biographical Association in 2009, and the recipient of the Lifetime Achievement award from Worldwide Who's Who in 2012, as well as her recognition as a Lifetime Pinnacle Professional with Continental Who's Who. An expert in her industry, Marion's advice to the public is to seek advanced degrees in the fields for which you are passionate about. Dr. Primas hopes to see more minorities earn formal educations and to take careers in all areas of healthcare, and plans on giving back to her local community. In her spare time, she enjoys crocheting, playing the piano, watching classic movies, reading, and spending time with her dogs. Marion earned her Ph.D. in Human Development from the University of Maryland, as well as a Master's Degree in Experimental Psychology from Howard University. In addition, Dr. Primas also holds a Bachelor's Degree in Experimental Psychology from Morgan State University. Contact: Katherine Green, 516-825-5634, [email protected] SOURCE Continental Who's Who Related Links http://www.continentalwhoswho.com BOGOTA, Colombia, Aug. 3, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Ecopetrol S.A. (BVC: ECOPETROL; NYSE: EC) ("Ecopetrol" or the "Company) announces that on August 8, 2017 it will release after markets close its financial and operating results for the second quarter of 2017. On Wednesday, August 9, Ecopetrol's senior management will host two conference calls, in Spanish and in English, to review the results. Please below find the timing, telephone numbers and links to access the conferences: Spanish Conference Call English Conference Call 08:30 a.m. Bogota 10:00 a.m. Bogota 09:30 a.m. New York 11:00 a.m. New York US Dial-in #: 1 (847) 619-6817 US Dial-in #: 1 (847) 619-6817 US Dial-in # (Free Toll): 1 (888) 427-2535 US Dial-in # (Free Toll): 1 (888) 427-2535 Local Colombia Dial-in #: 57 1 380 8041 Local Colombia Dial-in #: 57 1 380 8041 Local Colombia Dial-in # (Free Toll): 01 800 9 156 924 Local Colombia Dial-in # (Free Toll): 01 800 9 156 924 Passcode: 45410074 Passcode: 45399544 Participants from different countries may look for different international numbers to the ones mentioned above by consulting the following link: http://web.meetme.net/r.aspx?p=12&a=UCHTiXisrxybYb The earnings release, slide presentation and live webcast will be available on Ecopetrol's website: www.ecopetrol.com.co and at the following links: http://event.onlineseminarsolutions.com/wcc/r/1480057-1/2F08A45E66D923D0DA96CDDDD4971C23 (Spanish) http://event.onlineseminarsolutions.com/wcc/r/1479574-1/18E79DF324F2C13CBBA46D965FDFC3F7 (English) Please verify in advance proper operation of the webcast in your browser. We recommend the usage of the latest versions of Internet Explorer, Google Chrome y Mozilla Firefox. The replay of the calls will be available on Ecopetrol's website (www.ecopetrol.com.co). ----------------------------------------- This release contains statements that may be considered forward looking statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the U.S. Securities Act of 1933 and Section 21E of the U.S. Securities Exchange Act of 1934. All forward-looking statements, whether made in this release or in future filings or press releases or orally, address matters that involve risks and uncertainties, including in respect of the Company's prospects for growth and its ongoing access to capital to fund the Company's business plan, among others. Consequently, changes in the following factors, among others, could cause actual results to differ materially from those included in the forward-looking statements: market prices of oil & gas, our exploration and production activities, market conditions, applicable regulations, the exchange rate, the Company's competitiveness and the performance of Colombia's economy and industry, to mention a few. We do not intend, and do not assume any obligation to update these forward-looking statements. For further information, please contact: Head of Capital Markets Maria Catalina Escobar Phone: (+571) 234 5190 E-mail: [email protected] Media Relations (Colombia) Jorge Mauricio Tellez Phone: (+ 571) 234 4329 E-mail: [email protected] SOURCE Ecopetrol S.A. Related Links http://www.ecopetrol.com.co LAKEWOOD, Colo., Aug. 3, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Einstein Bros. Bagels announced today a campaign to make social media a happier place after a survey conducted by Wakefield Research for the brand revealed 65 percent of Americans see negative comments or posts on social media every day, with nine in 10 distancing themselves from disparaging posts or taking a break from social media altogether. In conjunction with the launch of Shmearfuls, bite-sized, Shmear-filled bagel snacks that come in six mix-and-match flavors, America's largest bagel retail company has decided enough is enough and is taking action with a Shmear Campaign aimed at wiping out negativity to brighten the everyday. As part of the Shmear Campaign, the breakfast destination is urging consumers to transform online negativity into smiles by adding "shm" in front of negative words, for example changing ugly, mad, or rotten turn into "shmugly," "shmad" or "shmotten." As an incentive to join in the Shmear Campaign, Einstein Bros. Bagels is offering consumers a coupon for a free Shmearful with purchase when they send a compliment to a friend, family member or even a stranger on Twitter using #ShmearCampaignPromo. "It's nearly impossible to scroll through social media these days without feeling the burden of negative comments," said Kerry Coyne, Einstein Bros. Bagels SVP of Marketing, R&D, and Catering. "To celebrate our new Shmearfuls line of fun and crave-worthy snacks, we are embracing our 'Better Day, Better World' mantra and encouraging consumers to wipe out negativity and replace it with something that will make people shmile." Beyond shmearing joy and positivity on social media, Einstein Bros. Bagels is implementing a Frenemies Eat Free event, urging guests to "break bagels" and turn frenemies into friends. On Aug. 8, any consumer who visits a participating Einstein Bros. Bagels location with a "frenemy" (an enemy turned friend or even just a friend) can take advantage of a Buy One, Get One deal on Shmearfuls by using the code words "Shmear Joy" at the counter. Additionally, Einstein Bros. Bagels is partnering with Ditch the Label, one of the world's largest anti-bullying charities, to support kids and young adults who have been personally affected by online bullying. For each Shmearful purchased at participating Einstein Bros. Bagels locations between Sept. 11 and Sept. 17, Einstein Bros. will donate $1 to assist with Ditch The Label's charitable endeavors in the U.S. Einstein Bros. Bagels new Shmearfuls are perfect for on-the-go snacking, perfectly sized and come in six delicious flavors Pretzel & Beer Cheese, Jalapeno Cheddar & Plain Shmear, French Toast & Maple Shmear, Everything & Plain Shmear, Asiago Parmesan & Plain Shmear, and Plain & Plain Shmear. The fun, shmear-filled mini bagels are available as singles or a trio of mix-and-match flavors. For additional information Shmearfuls and the Shmear Campaign, please visit www.shmearcampaign.com. To find an Einstein Bros. Bagels restaurant near you, please visit www.EinsteinBros.com, or follow Einstein Bros. Bagels on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram. About Einstein Noah Restaurant Group, Inc. Einstein Bros. Bagels is part of the Einstein Noah Restaurant Group, Inc. family, a leading quick-casual company also known for the Noah's New York Bagels and Manhattan Bagel brands. Einstein Bros. Bagels is a neighborhood bagelry that's always cooking up a new way to bagel. Known for its fresh-baked bagels available in a variety of flavors and signature double-whipped shmears, Einstein Bros. Bagels also serves gourmet bagel sandwiches, coffee, espresso, sweets and snacks. Einstein Bros. Bagels is proud to be the largest bagel retail company in America with more than 700 locations in 40 states and the District of Columbia. To learn more, visit www.EinsteinBros.com. SOURCE Einstein Noah Restaurant Group, Inc. Related Links http://www.shmearcampaign.com STOCKHOLM, August 3, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Elekta (EKTA-B.ST) announced today that five leading cancer research centers joined with the seven founding members of the Elekta MR-linac Consortium to share research and discuss clinical trial plans for Elekta's MR-linac system. The 10th annual consortium meeting was held in Amsterdam at The Netherlands Cancer Institute. The consortium is a global research partnership established in 2012 to help bring MR/RT to the clinic and transform the use of radiation therapy in the treatment of cancer. The founding members of the Elekta MR-linac Consortium are: University Medical Center Utrecht, the Netherlands (UMCU); The Netherlands Cancer Institute-Antoni van Leeuwenhoek Hospital, Amsterdam, the Netherlands; The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, Texas; the Institute of Cancer Research, working with its clinical partner The Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust, London, England; Froedtert & the Medical College of Wisconsin Clinical Cancer Center at Froedtert Hospital, Milwaukee, Wisconsin; The Christie NHS Foundation Trust, Manchester, UK and the Odette Cancer Centre, Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre in Toronto. Clinicians and scientists from the Princess Margaret Cancer Centre, University Health Network, Toronto, Canada; Odense University Hospital, Denmark; Tubingen University Hospital, Germany; Uppsala University Hospital, Sweden; and William Beaumont Hospital, United States also participated in this year's consortium meeting. Elekta's MR-linac is the only MR/RT system that integrates a high-field (1.5 Tesla) MR scanner, from MR technology partner Philips, with an advanced linear accelerator and intelligently-designed software. The system is expected to deliver precisely targeted radiation doses while simultaneously capturing highest-quality MR images, which will allow clinicians to visualize tumors and surrounding normal tissue at any time and adapt the treatment accordingly. Elekta introduced the MR-linac technology under the name of Elekta Unity during the ESTRO congress in Vienna, Austria in April 2017. "The 10th Consortium meeting demonstrated the high collaborative capacity of our consortium across different disciplines and geographies," said Kevin Brown, Elekta's Global Vice President of Scientific Research. "We are gratified that the consortium continues to generate data that demonstrates the technical functionality and clinical utility of our MR-linac system and expect that the input from the additional sites will further expand the robust body of evidence supporting MR/RT as a transformative approach to radiation therapy." "The development of MR-linac has truly been a global effort, and the participation of clinicians and scientists from five additional cancer centers in this year's meeting has underscored the value of including insights from a broad array of experts," said Christopher Schultz, MD, FACR, Medical College of Wisconsin Professor and Chairman of the Department of Radiation Oncology, at the Froedtert & MCW Cancer Network and Chair of the Elekta MR-linac Consortium. "As MR-linac advances toward the clinic, we will continue to seek input from radiation oncologists, medical physicists and imaging experts around the world. We believe that this broad and inclusive approach is the most effective way to ensure that our vision for MR/RT meets the needs of patients, physicians, and cancer care centers." Key discussion points of the Consortium meeting were: Planning pre-clinical and clinical studies to establish the added value of MR/RT in specific tumor types and cancer indications. These include indications commonly treated with radiation therapy as well as cancer types for which radiation therapy is not typically used due to difficulties in discriminating between the tumor and surrounding soft tissue. UMCU highlighted its successful first-in-man treatments on Elekta's MR-linac system and presented the accuracy results to the group. Updates from consortium centers on their volunteer imaging programs. "MR-guided radiotherapy has the potential to transform the treatment of cancer by enabling more precise, adaptive tumor targeting, and we are excited about helping to bring this important advancement to patients," said Michael Milosevic, MD, Director of Research, Radiation Medicine Program, Princess Margaret Cancer Centre and Vice-Chair (Research) Department of Radiation Oncology, University of Toronto. "The Consortium has been very effective at promoting collaborative innovation in MR-guided radiotherapy and we look forward to continuing to move this evolving area of radiation oncology and precision cancer medicine forward." "The MR-linac consortium together with the five new centers is an impressive novel network within the radiation oncology community," said Daniel Zips, MD, Chair, Professor Radiation Oncology at Tubingen University Hospital. "Mastering the new technology towards innovation in radiation therapy requires joint efforts and combined expertise. The Tubingen group is happy to contribute to this endeavor which will bring radiation oncology to the next level." The growing body of evidence supporting Elekta's MR-linac system as the first to truly enable MR/RT will be showcased at the 59thAmerican Association of Physicists in Medicine (AAPM) Annual Meeting & Exhibition (July 30 - August 3, Denver) and the upcoming 2017 ASTRO Annual Meeting (September 24-27, San Diego). To learn more, visit www.elekta.com/Unity. Elekta Unity is a work in progress and not available for sale or distribution. CONTACT: For further information, please contact: Gert van Santen, Group Vice President Corporate Communications, Elekta AB Tel: +31-653-561-242, e-mail: [email protected] Time zone: CET: Central European Time Raven Canzeri, Global Public Relations Manager Tel: +1-770-670-2524, e-mail: [email protected] Time zone: ET: Eastern Time This information was brought to you by Cision http://news.cision.com The following files are available for download: SOURCE Elekta MIAMI, Aug. 3, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- BDC Advisors announced today Elizabeth Walker, a seasoned healthcare consultant and former hospital executive, has joined the firm's consulting staff as a Principal. "We are delighted to have Elizabeth join our consulting team," said Richard E. Wesslund, Founder and Chairman of BDC Advisors and the Leadership Institute. "Elizabeth is a superbly qualified consultant with a broad range of professional experience encompassing organizational strategy and business development, mergers and acquisitions, and medical staff and ambulatory care development." Prior to joining BDC, Walker was Director of Strategy and Network Development for Quorum Health Resources, the national hospital management and professional services company, where she led multiple strategic business planning for Quorum's client hospitals. She facilitated healthcare mergers and business integration efforts ranging from community hospital systems, to academic medical centers, multi-state regional providers, and national for-profit systems. Wesslund said he expected Walker's work will focus on providing services to BDC's clients in: Business development and strategic planning Merger and post-merger facilitation and integration Medical staff organization and development Employed medical group effectiveness Clinical network development Previously, Walker was a Senior Manager at ECG Management Consultants, a healthcare consulting firm, and was a Senior Manager at Deloitte where she advised regional and national health system boards and leadership on various provider and health plan deals. Walker holds a JD Law Degree and Master of Health Administration, from the University of Indiana. ABOUT BDC ADVISORS BDC Advisors is a national healthcare strategy consulting firm that transforms and grows healthcare organizations in the value-based market. Established in 1990, the firm's services include health enterprise strategy, payer/provider innovation, provider network development, organization design and development, population health, and strategic pricing and cost repositioning. Media Contact: Dudley Morris, 312-286-4865, [email protected] SOURCE BDC Advisors AUSTIN, Texas, Aug. 3, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Epicor Software Corporation, a global provider of industry-specific enterprise software to promote business growth, announced today that it will host the Epicor Lumber and Building Materials User Conference at the Rosen Shingle Creek Resort in Orlando, Florida on November 14-16, 2017. To be held in "The Theme Park Capital of the World," conference attendees can expect to unearth new strategies for solving business challenges, participate in hands-on education, and discuss emerging industry, technology, and operational trends. "The annual Epicor LBM User Conference is invaluable," said Allen Bavry Jr., information technologies-corporate, Kimal Lumber Company. "Being able to speak face-to-face with other users of the software and get involved in the interactive learning sessions is instrumental. We first attended last year's conference as prospectswe really look forward to attending this year now as users of Epicor BisTrack software." The North American Epicor lumber and building materials (LBM) management team, account managers, support representatives, and members of the training team will be on hand to teach classes, interact with customers, and demonstrate the latest in LBM and wood products technologies. Throughout the three-day event, customers will have opportunities to join in-depth boot camp sessions, network with peers, and learn industry best practices. "We are excited to welcome our North American LBM customers to this year's Epicor LBM conference," said Kevin Hodge, director, product development and product management, Epicor Software. "The benefits of the conference extend beyond solely software training and educationconference attendees will also have the opportunity to share tactics and ideas with other Epicor customers, product experts, and peers through this exclusive customer event." "I attend the Epicor LBM User Conference every year," said Christy Biron, administrative services manager, Patrick Lumber Company. "I always leave excited to implement the best practices and new technology presented." Guest keynote to motivate business growth The conference keynote will be given by Dr. Barry Lawrence of Texas A&M University. Dr. Lawrence is the program coordinator of the Industrial Distribution Program, director of the Thomas and Joan Read Center for Distribution Research and Education, and director of the Global Supply Chain Laboratory (GSCL) at Texas A&M. He is also a Fellow of the NAW Institute for Distribution Excellence. Additionally, Dr. Lawrence holds the Leonard and Valerie Bruce Endowed Chair as a Professor in the Industrial Distribution Program at Texas A&M. Dr. Lawrence is a seasoned expert on topics ranging from distributor profitability, distribution growth and market share, pricing optimization, inventory asset management, sales and marketing optimization, global distribution, and more. Epicor LBM awards now open for submissions This year's conference also features the second annual Epicor Customer Excellence Awards for North American Epicor LBM customers. We are accepting nominations in the following categories: Business Transformation A project that has revolutionized business by harnessing an Epicor solution to improve business growth through increased revenue, market share, improved customer satisfaction, or reduced costs. A project that has revolutionized business by harnessing an Epicor solution to improve business growth through increased revenue, market share, improved customer satisfaction, or reduced costs. Customer Experience Transformed customer experience through the implementation and adoption of Epicor solutions creating extended value to your customer base and bottom line. Transformed customer experience through the implementation and adoption of Epicor solutions creating extended value to your customer base and bottom line. Rapid Time to Value Experienced fast implementation and deployment of a new Epicor solutionor additional modules to an existing implementation. Experienced fast implementation and deployment of a new Epicor solutionor additional modules to an existing implementation. Technology Innovator Used technology to drive innovation throughout business to achieve measurable business growth. Nominations are open to Epicor LBM customers that have implemented an Epicor solution and are current on support maintenance. All entries must be submitted by completing the application form online. The deadline for entry is October 1, 2017. For more information and to submit a nomination, please visit www.epicor.com/customers/excellenceawards/lbm. To learn more and register for the 2017 Epicor Lumber and Building Materials User Conference, please visit www.epicor.com/lbm-conf. About Epicor Software Corporation Epicor Software Corporation drives business growth. We provide flexible, industry-specific software designed around the needs of our manufacturing, distribution, retail, and service industry customers. More than 40 years of experience with our customers' unique business processes and operational requirements are built into every solutionin the cloud or on premises. With this deep understanding of your industry, Epicor solutions manage complexity, increase efficiency, and free up resources so you can focus on growth. For more information, connect with Epicor or visit www.epicor.com. Epicor, BisTrack, and the Epicor logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Epicor Software Corporation, registered in the United States and other countries. Other trademarks referenced are the property of their respective owners. The product and service offerings depicted in this document are produced by Epicor Software Corporation. Contact: Lindsay Ortega Senior Specialist, Public Relations Epicor Software Corporation +1 952 417 5022 [email protected] SOURCE Epicor Software Corporation Related Links http://www.epicor.com SAN FRANCISCO and DENVER, Aug. 3, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- The National Real Estate Practice of EPIC Insurance Brokers and Consultants has contributed $32,000 to Mercy Housing Lakefront to upgrade the computer lab at the Pullman Wheelworks Apartments, offering residents state-of-the-art online tools to advance their educational and career goals. Comprised of 210 affordable rental units, the property serves low-to-moderate-income families in Chicago's historic Pullman neighborhood. One of the largest non-profit affordable housing organizations in the country, Mercy Housing provides services that empower residents to achieve their full potential. The updated computer lab will enable children at Pullman Wheelworks to have greater access to tools to improve their academic performance. Adult residents will benefit from access to continuing education resources, as well as resources to enhance their financial literacy. "We are grateful to EPIC for their generous support at Pullman Wheelworks," said Mercy Housing Lakefront President Mark Angelini. "In our digital world, having the right tools to connect with the online world is a vital imperative for success, and EPIC understood that and was eager to help. With their support, our residents are well-positioned to achieve their goals." Since 2015, EPIC has raised more than $100,000 for Mercy Housing initiatives, consistent with the organization's commitment to increasing the national supply of high-quality affordable homes. In past years, EPIC's support has enabled the expansion of summer and after-school youth programming and security system upgrades at Mercy Housing properties in Colorado and California. "During our three-year relationship with Mercy Housing, we have visited a number of their properties and seen the dramatic impact that a safe, happy, clean and caring environment can have on individuals and families," said Jonathan Griffiths, managing principal of EPIC's National Real Estate Practice. "As our country tries to address an acute shortage of affordable housing, Mercy Housing's operations should be applauded and we are very proud of our association with them." About EPIC Insurance Brokers & Consultants: EPIC is a unique and innovative retail property & casualty and employee benefits insurance brokerage and consulting firm. EPIC has created a values-based, client-focused culture that attracts and retains top talent, fosters employee satisfaction and loyalty, and sustains a high level of customer service excellence. EPIC team members have consistently recognized their company as a "Best Place to Work" in multiple regions and as a "Best Place to Work in the Insurance Industry" nationally. EPIC now has more than 1,000 team members operating from offices across the U.S., providing Property Casualty, Employee Benefits, Specialty Programs, and Private Client solutions to more than 20,000 clients. With run rate revenues approaching $300 million, EPIC ranks among the top 20 retail insurance brokers in the United States and is the 10th largest privately held broker in the nation. Soon to be backed by Oak Hill Capital Partners, the company continues to expand organically and through strategic acquisitions across the country. Information: www.epicbrokers.com. About Mercy Housing Lakefront: Mercy Housing Lakefront (MHL) is working to build a region where everyone has an affordable home to use as a springboard to achieve better health, economic security, and a brighter future for their kids. By the end of 2017, MHL will own and operate 52 properties in Illinois, Wisconsin and Indiana, enabling nearly 10,000 people to live in hope. MHL is a regional branch of Mercy Housing, Inc. (MHI), a leading national affordable housing nonprofit headquartered in Denver. Information: www.mercyhousinglakefront.org. *PHOTO: Send2Press.com/300dpi/17-0803s2p-epic-check-300dpi.jpg This release was issued through Send2Press, a unit of Neotrope. For more information, visit Send2Press Newswire at https://www.Send2Press.com SOURCE EPIC Insurance Brokers and Consultants Related Links http://www.epicbrokers.com Before the nine-judge Constitution Bench of Supreme Court decides on the right to privacy debate, take a look at how the world views privacy. The Supreme Court will soon decide on the right to privacy case. Photo for representation: Reuters. By India Today Web Desk: After listening to arguments for and against privacy as a fundamental right, the nine-judge Constitution bench of the Supreme Court has reserved its verdict in the case. During the course of hearing, senior lawyer Kapil Sibal, representing the states of Karnataka, West Bengal and Puducherry in the privacy debate, argued that while privacy is not mentioned in the Constitution of United States of America and Australia, it is treated at par with a fundamental right. advertisement Petitioners have argued in the Supreme Court that while the word 'privacy' is not mentioned in the Constitution, fundamental ideas of liberty and freedom cannot exist without privacy. Before the Supreme Court decides on the right to privacy debate, take a look at how the world views privacy: UNITED STATES OF AMERICA Privacy is not exactly mentioned in the Constitution of the US, but the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution is largely seen as the one protecting the right to privacy. The Fourth Amendement to the Constitution of United States states that "the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized". Post WikiLeaks, concerns over privacy and data protection have seen a rise in US. According to a November 2014 study by Pew Research Centre on 'Public Perceptions of Privacy and Security in Post-Snowden Era', 91 per cent of the adults it surveyed agreed that consumers have lost control over how personal information is collected and used by companies. EUROPE The EU Data Protection Directive, adopted by the member countries of the European Union (EU) in 1995, looks after protection of personal data and regulates free movement of such data. The European Commission is now bringing a new set of rules on data protection which will be enforced by the member countries of the European Union by May 2018. The objective of the new rules, according to the European Commission, is to give citizens control over their personal data, and to simplify the regulatory environment for business. Besides, Article 8 of the European Convention of Human Rights (ECHR) guarantees right to respect for private and family life. All members of the European Union are signatories to the ECHR. The Article states, "There shall be no interference by a public authority with the exercise of this right except such as is in accordance with the law and is necessary in a democratic society in the interests of national security, public safety or the economic well-being of the country, for the prevention of disorder or crime, for the protection of health or morals, or for the protection of the rights and freedoms of others". advertisement AUSTRALIA The Privacy Act, 1988 regulates handling of personal information about individuals. The Act includes 13 Australian Privacy Principles (APPs), which regulate the use and access of personal data. ALSO READ: SC reserves judgment in right to privacy case: Everything you wanted to know about the debate and how it affects you In democracy, liberty cannot exist without right to privacy, Gopal Subramanium argues in Supreme Court Privacy does not enjoy the status of a fundamental right, Centre tells Supreme Court ALSO WATCH: How 4 cows--Bholi, Bhuri, Kamla, Shanti--got their Aadhaar IDs --- ENDS --- PROVIDENCE, R.I., Aug. 3, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- EpiVax, Inc. ("EpiVax") today announced it received funding from the Rhode Island Commerce Corporation to accelerate the development of personalized cancer vaccines using in silico methods. In partnership with Rhode Island Hospital, EpiVax's innovative project aims to identify cancer-specific targets, or neoantigens, capable of directing immune responses that lead to tumor elimination in the leading mouse model of glioblastoma multiforme (GBM). EpiVax CEO Dr. Annie De Groot said, "Over 20 years, we have built a leading bioinformatics business by turning big data into clinically-relevant information in the context of infectious disease and biodefense. Recently we realized the tremendous potential of our technology to improve the lives of cancer patients, so we developed Ancer: the platform for personalized cancer immunotherapy." The Rhode Island-based company is leveraging its scientific, technological, and strategic management strengths to emerge as a key player in the budding field of personalized cancer vaccine therapy. Funds from the voucher program will be used to determine the genomic variations of the leading animal model of GBM, predict GBM antigens using the Ancer platform, and verify the therapeutic efficacy of vaccination with Ancer predicted targets. This voucher program will position EpiVax and Lifespan partner Dr. Sadhak Sengupta as leaders in personalized cancer vaccine development and provide essential supporting data needed to jumpstart a new vaccine company, "EpiVax Oncology", which will be able to address a broad range of cancers. Dr. Sadhak Sengupta, Director of Brain Tumor Immunotherapy Research Program at Lifespan, and Assistant Professor of Neurosurgery at Brown University commented, "Immunotherapy is fast emerging as the most promising weapon in the war against cancer. For complex tumors like GBM, the future of effective treatment regimen lies in personalized immunotherapy through a neoantigen based approach, using EpiVax's Ancer platform." About Lifespan Formed in 1994, Lifespan is a five-partner not-for-profit health system based in Providence, RI which includes three teaching hospitals of The Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University. Lifespan teaching hospitals are among the top recipients in the country of research funding from the National Institutes of Health. About EpiVax EpiVax is a biotechnology company based in Providence, RI and is a world leader in the fields of immunogenicity screening, protein deimmunization, and immune modulation. EpiVax is spinning out the Ancer platform into EpiVax Oncology, a fully owned subsidiary focused on the immunoinformatics-based design and automated synthesis of personalized cancer vaccines. http://www.epivax.com/ Press Contact: Steven Vessella Business Liaison, EpiVax, Inc. 401.272.2123 or [email protected] or contact CEO/CSO [email protected] SOURCE EpiVax, Inc. Related Links http://www.epivax.com The patent will provide MilliporeSigma's CRISPR genomic integration technology with broad protection, further strengthening the company's patent portfolio. A related patent was approved in Australia in June 2017. MilliporeSigma anticipates favorable outcomes in other countries as well, because many patent offices worldwide consider the status of related European cases to be highly relevant to the decision to grant patents. "This is a significant and exciting decision by the EPO, and we view this announcement as recognition of MilliporeSigma's important contributions to the genome-editing field," said Udit Batra, CEO, MilliporeSigma. "This patent provides protection for our CRISPR technology, which will give scientists the ability to advance treatment options for the toughest medical challenges we face today." With MilliporeSigma's CRISPR genomic integration technology, scientists can replace a disease-associated mutation with a beneficial or functional sequencea method important for creation of disease models and gene therapy. Scientists can also use the method to insert transgenes to enable basic research, using the technology to label endogenous proteins for visual tracking within cells, for example. This patent application is one of MilliporeSigma's multiple CRISPR patent filings since 2012. In May 2017, MilliporeSigma introduced an alternative CRISPR genome-editing method called proxy-CRISPR. Unlike other systems, the proxy-CRISPR technique allows cutting of previously unreachable cell locations, making CRISPR more efficient, flexible and specificgiving researchers more experimental options. MilliporeSigma, with its 14-year history in the genome-editing field, was the first company to offer custom biomolecules globally for genome editing (TargeTron RNA-guided group II introns and CompoZr zinc finger nucleases), driving widespread adoption by researchers. In collaboration with the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, MilliporeSigma was also the first company to manufacture arrayed CRISPR libraries covering the entire human genome, allowing researchers to explore more questions about disease and develop cures faster. Availability of arrayed CRISPR libraries is an important advancement in genome editing and reinforces the company's leadership position. The company also supports development of gene- and cell-based therapeutics and manufactures viral vectors, in addition to conducting basic genome-editing research. In 2016, MilliporeSigma launched an initiative to advance research in novel treatment modalities, from genome editing to gene medicine manufacturing, through a dedicated team and enhanced resources. This venture further solidifies the company's commitment to the genome-editing field. All Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany news releases are distributed by email at the same time they become available on the EMD Group website. In case you are a resident of the U.S. or Canada please go to www.emdgroup.com/subscribe to register again for your online subscription of this service as our newly introduced geo-targeting requires new links in the email. You may later change your selection or discontinue this service. About the Life Science Business of Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany The life science business of Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany, which operates as MilliporeSigma in the U.S. and Canada, has 19,000 employees and 65 manufacturing sites worldwide, with a portfolio of more than 300,000 products enabling scientific discovery. Udit Batra is the global chief executive officer of MilliporeSigma. Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany completed its $17 billion acquisition of Sigma-Aldrich in November 2015, creating a leader in the $125 billion global life science industry. Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany is a leading company for innovative and top-quality high-tech products in healthcare, life science and performance materials. The company has six businesses Biopharmaceuticals, Consumer Health, Allergopharma, Biosimilars, Life Science and Performance Materials and generated sales of 15 billion in 2016. Around 50,000 employees work in 66 countries to improve the quality of life for patients, to foster the success of customers and to help meet global challenges. Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany is the world's oldest pharmaceutical and chemical company since 1668, the company has stood for innovation, business success and responsible entrepreneurship. Holding an approximately 70 percent interest, the founding family remains the majority owner of the company to this day. The company holds the global rights to the name and the trademark "Merck" internationally except for the United States and Canada, where the company operates as EMD Serono, MilliporeSigma and EMD Performance Materials. SOURCE MilliporeSigma WASHINGTON, Aug. 3, 2017 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The abandonment this week of the V.C. Summer nuclear project in South Carolina heralds the likely demise of "new" nuclear in the United States (including the Vogtle project in Georgia and North Anna 3 in Virginia) and also should put an end to state or federal bailouts for the failing nuclear industry, according to four experts who held a media briefing today, sponsored by NIRS, the Nuclear Information and Resource Service. Nuclear economist Dr. Mark Cooper, senior fellow for economic analysis, Institute for Energy and the Environment at Vermont Law School, said the V.C. Summer shutdown should lead to a similar step at the Vogtle project in Georgia and to a renewed focus on renewable energy. Cooper said: "The message for Vogtle is simple, nuclear power is uneconomic. It will take massive federal, state and vendor subsidies to be completed and the cost of power will still be two to three times the cost of power from alternatives. The capital cost of renewables is between one-eighth and one quarter the cost of VC Summer. Even adjusted for load factors, nuclear power is two to three times more costly then the alternatives." Peter Bradford, former Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) Commissioner, past chair of the New York and Maine state utility regulatory commissions, said that "new" reactor construction financed in advance from ratepayers in states like Virginia (home to Dominion's proposed North Anna 3 reactor) are V.C. Summer-like debacles waiting to happen. Bradford said: "The primary lessons for Georgia, Virginia, and other states, from the South Carolina cancellations (as well as Levy County in Florida and Kemper in Mississippi) is that laws and regulatory decisions placing economic risks on customers instead of the investors and lenders who should properly bear them are a disastrous mistake. Freed of responsibility for the consequences of their mistakes, utility executives too often plunge into ill-advised schemes to pad their rate bases (and individual compensation) when they should be managing competitive processes designed to select the most cost-effective alternative." After a surge of state bailouts for nuclear in 2016 in New York and Illinois, the industry has failed in 2017 in Ohio, Connecticut, Pennsylvania and New Jersey. The push in Ohio faltered in the face of extensive public criticism and was relegated in Connecticut to a study report by the state's governor. In Pennsylvania and New Jersey, bailout backers were unable to even get promised legislation introduced. A federal bailout for the nuclear industry would come at staggering cost. If based on the New York model, the cost to consumers would be $150 billion to $275 billion, depending on whether the subsidies applied to all reactors, or just those that are determined to be unprofitable. (The latter may seem like a common-sense outcome, but Exelon crafted bailout legislation in Illinois that allows it to be paid even if energy prices rise.) If a federal bailout were based on a new and expanded nuclear production tax credit, as a Department of Energy advisory committee recommended last year (at $27/MWh), the cost to taxpayers would be nearly a quarter of a trillion dollars: $228 billion, according to calculations by the Nuclear Information and Resource Service (NIRS). NIRS Executive Director Tim Judson said: "Nuclear power is failing despite the fact that it is already heavily subsidized. Canceling the Summer reactors proves that the industry has no future, but it only tells half the story. Nuclear generators are pushing for billions of dollars in subsidies and bailouts for their aging reactors, and those efforts are mostly failing, as well. Hoped-for momentum from 2016 bailouts in New York and Illinois did not materialize, as state legislatures rejected nuclear subsidy bills this year. With renewable energy now surpassing nuclear by widening margins, it's clear that subsidizing nuclear is an expensive way to slow down the growth of clean, safe, affordable, job-creating energy sources." Even if there is no new federal bailout for nuclear, taxpayers could still end up on the hook for billions of dollars if the Vogtle project goes belly up. Ryan Alexander, president, Taxpayers for Common Sense, a nonprofit and nonpartisan taxpayer advocacy group, said: "The VC Summer project relied on the same problematic reactor designs and contractor, the recently bankrupt Westinghouse Corporation, as Southern Company's Plant Vogtle. Westinghouse's AP1000 design was being used in both VC Summer and Vogtle. Both projects have experienced multiple delays and significant cost overruns. Westinghouse's recent bankruptcy pushed both projects further into turmoil. Unlike VC Summer, Vogtle managed to win themselves more than $8 billion in taxpayer-backed loan guarantees. So while federal taxpayers should and must watch any efforts to contribute to the bailout of the state of South Carolina and the players involved in the VC Summers project, billions in tax dollars are already at risk with the Vogtle project. It seems clearer than ever that the writing is on the wall for taxpayers. We've said it for 8 years: These massive nuclear reactor projects were doomed from the start, and taxpayer money should not be risked on them." Where does the industry go from here? The V.C. Summer project collapse means that any remaining illusions about a resurgence of nuclear power in the United States is now dead. As Bradford explained: "In fact, there never was an actual 'nuclear renaissance', just the 31 paper applications on file at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission by early 2009. Now nearly all but two are cancelled, leaving a trail of economic waste in their wake. The intent of the renaissance dream was to show that new reactor designs and an expedited licensing process from which the public was largely excluded would produce reactors that could be completed 'on time and on budget' as well as at competitive costs. The expectation was that private financing, without subsidy from customers and taxpayers, would then become available to nuclear power. That dream is now in ruins. The Westinghouse bankruptcy and subsequent events in South Carolina make the lessons so clear that even the most ardent nuclear propagandists probably can no longer shout them down." MORE ABOUT THE EXPERTS Dr. Mark Cooper is the author of both a seminal 2013 report "Renaissance in Reverse: Competition Pushes Aging U.S. Nuclear Reactors to the Brink of Economic Abandonment," which forecast a wave of U.S. nuclear reactors closures (http://216.30.191.148/atriskreactors.html) and, just last month, "The Failure of the Nuclear Gamble in South Carolina". ( http://webiva-downton.s3.amazonaws.com/877/a5/d/10601/Cooper_Summer_Report_Final_July_18_2017.pdf); Most recently, Peter Bradford is the author of "Wasting Time: Subsidies, Operating Reactors and Melting Ice" (http://thebulletin.org/2017/january/wasting-time-subsidies-operating-reactors-and-melting-ice10376); Tim Judson is the author of the November 2016 report "Too Big to Bail Out: The Economic Costs of a National Nuclear Power Subsidy" (http://bit.ly/too-big-to-bail-out-nuclear). In February 2013, Taxpayers for Common Sense awarded its "Golden Fleece Award" for tax dollar waste to "Taxpayer Subsidies for Small Modular Reactors" (http://www.taxpayer.net/library/article/taxpayer-subsidies-for-small-modular-reactors). A statement on the abandonment of VC Summer issued Monday by Bradford, Cooper and Stephen Smith of the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy is available at http://bit.ly/VCSummerreax. SOURCE Nuclear Information and Resource Service (NIRS) WASHINGTON,, Aug. 3, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- The board of directors of the Federal Agricultural Mortgage Corporation (Farmer Mac) has declared a third quarter dividend of $0.36 per share for each of Farmer Mac's three classes of common stock Class A Voting Common Stock (NYSE: AGM.A), Class B Voting Common Stock (not listed on any exchange), and Class C Non-Voting Common Stock (NYSE: AGM). The quarterly dividend will be payable on September 29, 2017 to holders of record of common stock as of September 15, 2017. Farmer Mac's board of directors has also declared a dividend on each of Farmer Mac's three classes of preferred stock. The quarterly dividend of $0.3672 per share of 5.875% Non-Cumulative Preferred Stock, Series A (NYSE: AGM.PR.A), $0.4297 per share of 6.875% Non-Cumulative Preferred Stock, Series B (NYSE: AGM.PR.B), and $0.375 per share of 6.000% Fixed-to-Floating Rate Non-Cumulative Preferred Stock, Series C (NYSE: AGM.PR.C), is for the period from but not including July 17, 2017 to and including October 17, 2017. The preferred stock dividends will be payable on October 17, 2017 to holders of record of preferred stock as of October 2, 2017. Additionally, Farmer Mac announced today that it will release its financial results for the fiscal quarter ending June 30, 2017, on Wednesday, August 9, 2017, prior to the opening of equity markets. A conference call to discuss the results will be held that day at 11:00 a.m. eastern time. The conference call can be accessed by telephone or webcast as follows: Dial-In (Domestic): (888) 346-2616 Dial-In (International): (412) 902-4254 Webcast: https://www.farmermac.com/investors/events-presentations/ Presentation materials to be referenced during the call will be posted on the webpage that can be accessed by clicking on the link noted above. When dialing in to the call, please ask for conference chairman Tim Buzby. This call can be heard live and will also be available for replay on Farmer Mac's website at the link noted above following the conclusion of the conference call. About Farmer Mac Farmer Mac is a vital part of the agricultural credit markets and was created to increase access to and reduce the cost of capital for the benefit of American agricultural and rural communities. As the nation's premier secondary market for agricultural credit, we provide financial solutions to a broad spectrum of the agricultural community, including agricultural lenders, agribusinesses, and other institutions that can benefit from access to flexible, low-cost financing and risk management tools. Farmer Mac's customers benefit from our low cost of funds, low overhead costs, and high operational efficiency. In fact, we are often able to provide the lowest cost of borrowing to agricultural and rural borrowers. For more than a quarter-century, Farmer Mac has been delivering the capital and commitment rural America deserves. Additional information about Farmer Mac is available on Farmer Mac's website at www.farmermac.com. SOURCE Farmer Mac Related Links http://www.farmermac.com BOSTON, Aug. 3, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- FinMason, a Boston-based FinTech and investment analytics firm, today announced the international expansion of the firm and the opening of a new operations center based in Prague. The initial expansion plan includes the hiring of 20 software engineers to keep pace with the rapid growth and development needs of the company. FinMason Europe, s.r.o., opened Aug. 1 and the first employees have already started. The expansion will give FinMason access to world-class engineers and a footprint in the important European marketplace. Unlike some other U.S.-based companies that outsource their software engineering needs to subcontractors in foreign countries, the FinMason Europe team will be full-time, dedicated employees, complete with equity incentives and a competitive benefits package. "Unless you are a company like Google, Tesla, or Apple, it has become increasingly difficult to attract top engineering talent in this country," said Kendrick Wakeman, CFA, CEO and founder of FinMason. "We are excited to be able to tap into the extensive technical talent pool in Europe to help ensure that FinMason has the largest, most robust, and most scalable investment analytics engine in the world." In April, the firm announced the launch of FinRiver, a simple but powerful API that gives any technology platform access to their institutional-grade analytics in an easy-to-consume format. WealthTech firms can integrate almost any investment analytics imaginable into their products with just a few keystrokes, allowing for rapid prototyping, a faster time-to-market, and a more robust offering. Wakeman believes that FinMason Europe will be a strong competitive advantage. "We hear from our clients and prospects that they are all very short on engineering resources and we don't see that changing anytime soon. FinMason Europe will allow us to take on some of the tech lift and help free up those resources for our key clients. It will also allow us to put a data validation team in Europe so we have a 6-hour head start at catching errors before they get put into production." ABOUT FINMASON, INC. FinMason is a Boston-based financial technology firm on a mission to solve the retirement crisis by helping investors and advisors make better decisions. Analytics are the key to good decisions, so FinMason is making robust, institutional-grade investment analytics a commodity accessible to everyone. FinMason's team of Ph.D.s, economists, data scientists, engineers and seasoned Wall Street veterans have harnessed the power of the latest technology platforms to deliver affordable, institutional-grade analytics at scale. They perform 700+ different analyses on virtually every publicly traded asset in the world and make the results available in milliseconds via three core products: FinRiver , an easy to use suite of APIs that gives direct access to their analytics for use in a financial service firm's own products , an easy to use suite of APIs that gives direct access to their analytics for use in a financial service firm's own products FinScope , a compliance screening and performance attribution solution that generates analytics on all the portfolios in a financial firm's system on a nightly basis , a compliance screening and performance attribution solution that generates analytics on all the portfolios in a financial firm's system on a nightly basis FinScore Pro , a quick, easy and visual risk tolerance assessment and alignment platform that helps advisors and clients better understand each other For more information, visit www.FinMason.com or follow @FinMasonInc on Twitter. MEDIA CONTACT: Jessica Taylor Shores Impact Communications 913-649-5009 [email protected] SOURCE FinMason Related Links http://www.finmason.com NEW YORK, Aug. 3, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- During the first half of 2017, eight of the top ten metropolitan markets for commercial and multifamily construction starts ranked by dollar volume registered decreased activity compared to a year ago, according to Dodge Data & Analytics. At the same time, metropolitan markets ranked 11 through 20 showed growth for nine of the ten markets, as smaller geographic areas are picking up the slack from the deceleration underway in those cities that have led the commercial and multifamily upturn over the past several years. At the national level, the volume of commercial and multifamily construction starts during the first half of 2017 was $87.5 billion, down 9% from last year's first half, although still a slight 1% above what was reported during the first half of 2015. The New York NY metropolitan area, at $10.5 billion in the first half of 2017, maintained its number one ranking and comprised 12% of the U.S. commercial and multifamily total, but was down 22% from a year ago. The New York NY metropolitan area reached a peak back in 2015, when $35.3 billion in commercial and multifamily construction starts were reported for the full year, comprising 17% of the national total. In 2016, New York NY dropped 16% for the full year, and now is on track for another decline in 2017. Other metropolitan areas in the top ten with double-digit declines in the first half of 2017 were Los Angeles CA ($4.4 billion), down 15%; Dallas-Ft. Worth TX ($3.2 billion), down 29%; Boston MA ($2.4 billion), down 27%; and Seattle WA ($1.9 billion), down 23%. Miami FL ($3.6 billion) dropped a moderate 5% during the first half of 2017, and the two markets in the top ten with only slight declines were Chicago IL ($3.8 billion) and Washington DC ($3.6 billion), each down 1%. The two metropolitan areas in the top ten that showed growth during the first half of 2017 were San Francisco CA ($4.5 billion), up 48%; and Atlanta GA ($3.4 billion), up 19%. San Francisco was lifted by the start of the $1.3 billion Oceanwide Center Tower, while Atlanta benefitted from the start of the $240 million Coda Building in Georgia Tech's Technology Square. For those markets ranked 11 through 20 in the first half of 2017, the only decline was reported for Denver CO ($1.8 billion), down 16% from a year ago. The remaining nine markets, listed in order by the volume of activity, were the following Houston TX ($1.8 billion), up 2%; Philadelphia PA ($1.7 billion), up 23%; San Jose CA ($1.6 billion), up 49%; Austin TX ($1.5 billion), up 14%; Baltimore MD ($1.4 billion), up 46%; Charlotte NC ($1.4 billion), up 58%; Orlando FL ($1.4 billion), up 28%; Sacramento CA ($1.1 billion), up 659%; and San Antonio TX ($1.0 billion), up 5%. The huge percentage increase for Sacramento CA reflected the start of the $600 million McClellan Business Park Data Center as well as the comparison to a particularly low amount during the first half of 2016 (when Sacramento ranked 81 of metropolitan areas by dollar volume instead of this year's first half ranking at 19). The commercial and multifamily total is comprised of office buildings, stores, hotels, warehouses, commercial garages, and multifamily housing. At the U.S. level, the 9% decline for the commercial and multifamily total during the first half of 2017 was due entirely to a slower pace for multifamily housing, which dropped 18%, while commercial building held steady with its first half 2016 amount. "Multifamily housing served as the leading edge of the current construction expansion, and increasingly it looks like it reached its peak in 2016," stated Robert A. Murray, chief economist for Dodge Data & Analytics. Much of the early multifamily growth reflected an exceptional amount of activity taking place in the New York NY metropolitan area, boosted by developers trying to get projects started prior to the expiration of the 421-a program in early 2016, as well as the lift coming from foreign investment. Multifamily housing for New York NY fell 29% for the full year 2016, and during the first half of 2017 it was down 23% from a year ago. In addition, several other markets contributed to this year's multifamily retreat, with these declines compared to especially elevated amounts during the first half of 2016 Dallas-Ft. Worth TX, down 57%; Boston MA, down 51%; Miami FL, down 43%; Seattle WA, down 32%; and Chicago IL, down 6%. Even so, this year's first half has seen multifamily housing advance in such markets as San Francisco CA, up 17%; Washington DC, up 13%, Atlanta GA, up 7%; while Los Angeles CA matched its improved 2016 amount. Murray indicated, "Although it's true that lenders are exercising greater caution towards multifamily projects, more construction is taking place in those markets which have been relative latecomers to the expansion, and this is helping to limit the extent of the multifamily slowdown now underway at the national level." With regard to the steady performance by commercial building for the U.S. during the first half of 2017, this reflects gains for office buildings and warehouses, which have balanced weaker activity for stores, hotels, and commercial garages. Murray added, "Office buildings and warehouses continue to see low vacancy rates, and both project types are expected to show growth in construction starts when the full year 2017 figures are tallied. However, hotel construction starts appear to have reached a peak in 2016, which included groundbreaking for several large hotel and casino projects, while store construction has remained weak." By geography, the top ten commercial and multifamily markets in the first half of 2017 were evenly split between those showing gains for commercial building and those showing declines. Increases were reported in this year's first half for San Francisco, up 83%; Miami FL, up 64%; Atlanta GA, up 30%; Chicago IL and Boston MA, each up 5%. Reduced activity compared to the first half of 2016 was reported for Dallas-Ft. Worth TX, down 10%; Washington DC, down 11%; Seattle WA, down 14%; New York NY, down 21%; and Los Angeles CA, down 32%. Although the New York NY metropolitan area witnessed a 22% decline for commercial and multifamily construction starts in the first half of 2017, it was relative to a strong first half of 2016, which itself was down from the robust activity reported in 2015's first half. To add some perspective to the first half 2017 activity, the $10.5 billion in construction starts was slightly higher than the $10.2 billion that was reported during the first half of 2014, prior to the exceptional amounts in 2015 and 2016. Multifamily housing, while sliding 23% in this year's first half, still included the start of 12 projects valued at $100 million or more, led by the $450 million Wall Street Tower mixed-use building in lower Manhattan and the $423 million City Point apartment building in Brooklyn NY. Within the 21% decline for commercial building was a more moderate 8% drop for office building, which featured the first half 2017 start of such projects as a $355 million office/retail mixed-use building in Brooklyn NY and the $300 million LG corporate headquarters building in Englewood Cliffs NJ. The 48% jump for the San Francisco CA metropolitan area during the first half of 2017 was led by an 83% surge for its commercial building sector. The $1.3 billion Oceanwide Center Tower in San Francisco included $913 million for commercial projects (office, hotel, garage), plus there were several other noteworthy projects that reached groundbreaking. These included the $361 million office portion of the $1.0 billion Golden State Warriors Arena (Chase Center) complex in San Francisco, the $310 million Facebook office building in Menlo Park, and the $232 million City Center office building in Oakland. Multifamily housing, up 17%, included four projects valued at $100 million or more, led by the $387 million multifamily portion of the Oceanwide Center Tower and the $177 million Transbay Block 1 in San Francisco. The Los Angeles CA metropolitan area, with a first half 2017 decline of 15% for its commercial and multifamily total, reflected a 32% slide by its commercial segment while multifamily housing maintained the heightened level reported during the first half of 2016 (which was up 59% from the first half of 2015). Last year saw the start of the $500 million renovation of the Beverly Center in Los Angeles and the $178 million Broadcom Research and Development Campus in Irvine, while so far this year there was just one commercial project above the $100 million mark, that being the $106 million hotel portion of the $500 million One Beverly Hills mixed-use complex in Beverly Hills. Multifamily housing during the first half of 2017 featured 7 projects valued at $100 million or more, led by the $364 million Jefferson Stadium Park apartments in Anaheim and the $349 million multifamily portion of the One Beverly Hills complex. The Chicago IL metropolitan area slipped 1% in the first half of 2017, with commercial building up 5% while multifamily housing retreated 6% compared to last year. On the commercial side, the lift came from the $500 million renovation/addition to the Willis Tower in Chicago and a $211 million data center in Wood Dale IL. Although multifamily housing was down from a year ago, which included the $500 million One Bennett Park Tower in Chicago, the first half of 2017 featured the start of several large projects, all located in Chicago the $650 million One Grant Park (phase 1), the $280 million One South Halstead apartment tower, and the $240 million Essex Inn & Essex on the Park apartment tower. Easing back 1%, the Washington DC metropolitan area showed growth for multifamily housing, up 13%; while the commercial building sector dropped 11% in the first half of 2017. There were two mixed-use developments that reached groundbreaking so far during 2017, whose multifamily portions were valued at $188 million and $126 million respectively. The commercial building sector included a $395 million data center in Sterling VA plus two office renovation projects in Washington DC the $114 million Anthem Row office complex and the $100 million Cannon House office building (phase 1). The Miami FL metropolitan area, dropping 5% during the first half of 2017, showed a sharply different performance by its multifamily and commercial sectors, with multifamily housing down 43% while commercial building jumped 64%. Multifamily housing in this market reached a peak in 2016 at $5.3 billion (up 21%) for the full year, boosted by such projects as the $315 million Armani/Casa Condominiums in Sunny Isles Beach. The first half of 2017 has also seen the groundbreaking for several large multifamily projects, such as the $190 million Koi Residences and Community Center in Pompano Beach and the $175 million Midtown 8 apartments in Miami, but overall the volume of multifamily construction starts is trending downward. The commercial sector during the first half of 2017 was boosted by $744 million for the commercial portion (hotel, retail, garage) of the $900 million expansion to the Seminole Hard Rock Hotel and Casino in Hollywood FL. Rising 19% during the first half of 2017, the Atlanta GA metropolitan showed widespread growth compared to last year, with its commercial segment up 30% while multifamily housing increased 7%. The commercial segment included groundbreaking for three large projects the $240 million Coda Building, the $190 million Kroger store and office building, and a $120 million logistics center for United Parcel Service. Multifamily housing included 3 projects valued at $100 million or more the $145 million 1000 Park Avenue apartment tower, the $142 million Hanover Midtown apartments, and the $140 million Icon Buckhead apartments. The improved levels for commercial and multifamily construction starts finally took hold in the Atlanta GA metropolitan area during 2014, with a 42% increase that year, followed by gains in 2015, up 17%; and 2016, up 54%. The current year is on track for further improvement. The Dallas-Ft. Worth TX metropolitan area retreated 29% during the first half of 2017, following a very strong first half of 2016, up 82% (and 58% for the full year 2016) that included $500 million for a segment of the Toyota Corporate Campus development in Plano and the $130 million Park District apartments in Dallas. During the first half of 2017, commercial building was down 10% from its corresponding 2016 amount, although the current year did see groundbreaking for two projects in Fort Worth, a $300 million Facebook data center and the $300 million American Airlines Trinity Campus. Multifamily housing during the first half of 2017 experienced a more severe decline, falling 57%, despite the start of several large projects such as the $120 million Residences at Legacy apartment building in Plano. Multifamily housing had shown very strong growth from 2011 through 2016, including annual gains of 45% in 2015 and 27% in 2016, but now appears to be settling back. The Boston MA metropolitan area, down 27% in the first half of 2017, retreated from an elevated first half of 2016, up 48% (and 54% for the full year 2016), that included such projects as the $162 million Harrison St. apartments and the $150 million Pier 4 office building (phase 2). Multifamily housing fell sharply during the first half of 2017, sliding 51%, despite the start of several large projects including the $200 million Residences at 399 Congress St. Commercial building, in contrast, increased 5% compared to a year ago, with the lift coming from such projects as the $200 million 145 Broadway Commercial Building A in Cambridge and the $166 million General Electric Global Headquarters in Boston. The Seattle WA metropolitan area retreated 23% during the first half of 2017, following the steady commercial and multifamily growth reported during the 2011-2016 period, including a 23% increase for full year 2016. The multifamily segment dropped 32% during this year's first half, as groundbreaking for the $152 million Nexus multifamily tower was not able to offset a more broad-based pullback for multifamily housing. Commercial building in the first half of 2017 was down 14% from a year ago, although this year did include the start of a $228 million office high-rise in Seattle and an $80 million warehouse in Tacoma. Top 20 Metropolitan Areas - First Half 2017 Commercial Building and Multifamily Housing Construction Starts Millions of Dollars, January-June Totals Percent Change 2015 2016 2017 2017/2016 1. New York-Northern New Jersey-Long Island, NY-NJ-PA 20,948 13,498 10,479 -22 2. San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont, CA 1,179 3,038 4,510 +48 3. Los Angeles-Long Beach-Santa Ana, CA 3,240 5,206 4,448 -15 4. Chicago-Naperville-Joliet, IL-IN-WI 2,674 3,837 3,806 -1 5. Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, DC-VA-MD-WV 2,645 3,650 3,631 -1 6. Miami-Fort Lauderdale-Miami Beach, FL 3,055 3,779 3,589 -5 7. Atlanta-Sandy Springs-Marietta, GA 1,344 2,875 3,418 +19 8. Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington, TX 2,441 4,454 3,157 -29 9. Boston-Cambridge-Quincy, MA-NH 2,271 3,351 2,434 -27 10. Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue, WA 2,091 2,443 1,886 -23 11. Denver-Aurora, CO 1,775 2,139 1,796 -16 12. Houston-Baytown-Sugar Land, TX 2,081 1,750 1,778 +2 13. Philadelphia-Camden-Wilmington, PA-NJ-DE-MD 1,258 1,391 1,715 +23 14. San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, CA 953 1,041 1,552 +49 15. Austin-Round Rock, TX 1,534 1,320 1,510 +14 16. Baltimore-Towson, MD 896 963 1,402 +46 17. Charlotte-Gastonia-Concord, NC-SC 1,019 882 1,390 +58 18. Orlando, FL 1,299 1,060 1,359 +28 19. Sacramento--Arden-Arcade--Roseville, CA 187 151 1,145 +659 20. San Antonio, TX 586 970 1,017 +5 Total U.S. 86,798 95,913 87,544 -9 Source: Dodge Data & Analytics About Dodge Data & Analytics: Dodge Data & Analytics is North America's leading provider of analytics and software-based workflow integration solutions for the construction industry. Building product manufacturers, architects, engineers, contractors, and service providers leverage Dodge to identify and pursue unseen growth opportunities and execute on those opportunities for enhanced business performance. Whether it's on a local, regional or national level, Dodge makes the hidden obvious, empowering its clients to better understand their markets, uncover key relationships, size growth opportunities, and pursue those opportunities with success. The company's construction project information is the most comprehensive and verified in the industry. Dodge is leveraging its 100-year-old legacy of continuous innovation to help the industry meet the building challenges of the future. To learn more, visit www.construction.com. Media Contact: Benjamin Gorelick | Spector & Associates +1-212-943-5858, [email protected] SOURCE Dodge Data & Analytics Related Links http://www.construction.com HOUSTON, Aug. 3, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Gastar Exploration Inc. (NYSE MKT: GST) ("Gastar" or the "Company") today reported financial and operating results for the three and six months ended June 30, 2017. Second quarter 2017 highlights include: Average daily production of 6,100 barrels of oil equivalent ("Boe") per day ("Boe/d"), exceeding high-end of guidance by 2% Production volumes comprised of 73% liquids, in line with high-end of guidance Mid-year proved reserves increased 18% over year-end 2016 proved reserves Completion of the conversion of $37.5 million of convertible notes into 25,456,521 common shares J. Russell Porter, Gastar's President and CEO, commented, "We continue to make progress delineating the Meramec and Osage formations across our acreage position. To date, we have drilled a total of 21 Meramec and 13 Osage wells across our STACK Play acreage. In addition, we have participated in numerous third-party wells within our footprint with initial production results that we believe confirm the quality of our acreage. With our operated wells and non-operated well participation, we have now accumulated a substantial amount of well and formation data regarding the STACK Play." "We have decided to delay additional well completions across our acreage to allow Stephen Roberts, our newly appointed Chief Operating Officer, and his team the time necessary to evaluate recent results and determine the optimal completion procedures for our most recently drilled wells. This delay will allow us to implement refinements to our completion approach that are expected to improve production performance. We have already initiated enhancements and modifications to our drilling practices that have improved drilling times, eliminated certain drilling issues and reduced inefficiencies and costs. As we make similar changes to our completions, I expect much improved total drilling and completion costs as well as production performance that should be evident over the second half of this year." "We are increasing our 2017 drilling capital budget by approximately $40 million, excluding land and other capitalized costs, to accommodate higher working interests in our operated wells, partially as a result of the termination of our drilling joint venture, more operated wells than originally budgeted and increased non-operated drilling activity. The higher drilling capital activity is resulting in an increase in our full-year mid-point production guidance by 700 Boe/d," concluded Porter. Financial Review Net loss attributable to Gastar's common stockholders for the second quarter of 2017 was $6.4 million, or a loss of $0.03 per share, compared to a second quarter 2016 net loss of $18.1 million, or a loss of $0.17 per share. Adjusted net loss attributable to common stockholders (non-GAAP), which excludes non-cash and unusual items, for the second quarter of 2017 was $9.8 million, or a loss of $0.05 per share, compared to an adjusted net loss attributable to common stockholders of $12.5 million, or a loss of $0.12 per share, for the second quarter 2016. (See the accompanying reconciliation of the non-GAAP financial measure adjusted net loss at the end of this news release.) Adjusted earnings before interest, income taxes, depreciation, depletion and amortization ("adjusted EBITDA") (non-GAAP) for the second quarter of 2017 was $9.8 million compared to adjusted EBITDA of $6.8 million for the second quarter of 2016 and $10.6 million for the first quarter of 2017. (See the accompanying reconciliation of the non-GAAP financial adjusted EBITDA at the end of this news release.) Total Company revenues were $22.6 million in the second quarter of 2017, an 86% increase from $12.2 million in the second quarter of 2016 and a 21% increase from $18.7 million in the first quarter of 2017. Revenues from oil, condensate, natural gas and natural gas liquids ("NGLs"), before the effects of commodity derivatives contracts, totaled $17.3 million in the second quarter of 2017, a 16% increase from $14.9 million in the second quarter of 2016 and a slight decrease from $17.4 million in the first quarter of 2017. The increase from second quarter of 2016 in oil, condensate, natural gas and NGLs revenues primarily resulted from a 21% increase in equivalent product pricing partially offset by a 4% decrease in equivalent production volumes. The slight decrease from first quarter 2017 revenues was due to a 9% decrease in equivalent product pricing offset by a 9% increase in equivalent production volumes. Commodity hedges were in place for approximately 61% of our oil and condensate production, 59% of our natural gas production and 24% of our NGLs production for the second quarter of 2017. Commodity derivative contracts settled during the period resulted in a $2.0 million increase in revenue compared to a $565,000 increase in revenues in the second quarter of 2016. The following table provides a summary of Gastar's overall average commodity prices for the three and six months ended June 30, 2017 and 2016: For the Three Months Ended June 30, For the Six Months Ended June 30, 2017 2016 2017 2016(1) Average sales price per unit: Oil and condensate per Bbl, including impact of hedging activities (1) $ 52.21 $ 43.59 $ 53.31 $ 42.48 Oil and condensate per Bbl, excluding impact of hedging activities $ 45.94 $ 41.82 $ 47.28 $ 33.91 Natural gas per Mcf, including impact of hedging activities (1) $ 2.51 $ 1.84 $ 2.85 $ 1.65 Natural gas per Mcf, excluding impact of hedging activities $ 2.54 $ 1.84 $ 2.76 $ 1.40 NGLs per Bbl, including impact of hedging activities (1) $ 19.41 $ 12.62 $ 21.74 $ 9.38 NGLs per Bbl, excluding impact of hedging activities $ 17.02 $ 12.02 $ 19.45 $ 6.98 Average sales price per Boe, including impact of hedging activities (1) $ 34.49 $ 26.57 $ 36.02 $ 20.60 Average sales price per Boe, excluding impact of hedging activities $ 30.88 $ 25.60 $ 32.37 $ 16.49 (1) The impact of hedging includes only the gain (loss) on commodity derivative contracts settled during the periods presented. For details on Gastar's current hedging position, please see our Form 10-Q for the quarter ended June 30, 2017 filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission ("SEC"). Average daily Mid-Continent production for the second quarter of 2017 was 6,100 Boe/d as compared to 6,200 Boe/d in the second quarter of 2016 and 5,700 Boe/d in the first quarter of 2017. In the Mid-Continent area, average daily production in the second quarter of 2017 decreased 2% compared to the second quarter of 2016 and sequentially increased 7% primarily due to increased well completion activity. Second quarter 2017 Mid-Continent equivalent production consisted of approximately 73% liquids, comprised of 50% oil and 23% NGLs, up 2% from second quarter 2016 production and up 1% from first quarter 2017. Lease operating expenses ("LOE") per Boe of production were $9.20 in the second quarter of 2017 versus $7.86 in the second quarter of 2016 and $9.93 in the first quarter of 2017, including workover costs. Excluding workover expense, LOE per Boe for the second quarter of 2017 was $8.49 as compared to $8.24 per BOE in the second quarter of 2016 and $7.73 per Boe for the first quarter of 2017. General and administrative ("G&A") expense was $4.6 million in the second quarter of 2017 compared to $6.3 million in the second quarter of 2016 and $3.8 million in the first quarter of 2017. G&A expense for the second quarter of 2017 included $1.2 million of non-cash stock-based compensation expense, versus $702,000 in the second quarter of 2016 and $996,000 in the first quarter of 2017. Increase in sequential cash G&A expense was primarily due to additional legal and public company costs. Liquidity Gastar's net capital expenditures, excluding acquisitions, in the second quarter of 2017 totaled $32.5 million, comprised of $24.6 million for drilling, completions and infrastructure costs, $5.7 million for unproved acreage extensions, renewals and additions and $2.2 million of other capitalized costs. For the remainder of 2017, our capital expenditure budget, including other capitalized costs, is $71.8 million, comprised of $53.6 million for drilling, completion and infrastructure costs, $11.9 million for lease renewal and extension costs and $6.3 million of other capitalized costs. At June 30, 2017, Gastar had approximately $38.7 million in available cash and cash equivalents and $412.5 million in long-term borrowings outstanding. Series A and Series B Preferred Dividends Suspended To preserve our liquidity in the current commodity price environment, commencing August 2017, we are suspending the declaration and payment of monthly cash dividends on our outstanding Series A and Series B Preferred Stock. Dividends on the Series A and Series B Preferred Stock will accumulate regardless of whether any such dividends are declared or not. Term Loan Amendment Pursuant to an amendment to Gastar's term loan, commencing July 1, 2017 through December 31, 2018, the Company has elected to pay-in-kind ("PIK") 100% of the term loan interest. Effective January 1, 2019, the Company may elect to continue to PIK up to 50% of the term loan interest. The term loan interest increased to 10.25% per annum with the election to PIK effective July 1, 2017 and the PIK interest will be paid quarterly by issuing additional term loan notes. Operations Review and Update The following table provides a summary of Gastar's Mid-Continent production volumes and average commodity prices for the three and six months ended June 30, 2017 and 2016: For the Three Months Ended June 30, For the Six Months Ended June 30, 2017 2016 2017 2016 Net Production: Oil and condensate (MBbl) 277 271 527 548 Natural gas (MMcf) 923 970 1,784 1,920 NGLs (MBbl) 128 133 245 252 Total net production (MBoe) 559 566 1,070 1,120 Net Daily Production: Oil and condensate (MBbl/d) 3.0 3.0 2.9 3.0 Natural gas (MMcf/d) 10.1 10.7 9.9 10.5 NGLs (MBbl/d) 1.4 1.5 1.4 1.4 Total net daily production (MBoe/d) 6.1 6.2 5.9 6.2 Average sales price per unit(1): Oil and condensate (per Bbl) $ 45.93 $ 41.55 $ 47.28 $ 35.80 Natural gas (per Mcf) $ 2.54 $ 1.87 $ 2.76 $ 1.84 NGLs (per Bbl) $ 17.01 $ 14.53 $ 19.45 $ 12.57 Average sales price per Boe(1) $ 30.88 $ 26.54 $ 32.37 $ 23.50 (1) Excludes the impact of hedging activities During the three and six months ended June 30, 2017, Gastar commenced flow back on seven gross (0.8 net) and 13 gross (1.6 net) operated Meramec wells, respectively, and three gross (2.7 net) and four gross (2.8 net) operated Osage wells, respectively. Subsequent to June 30, 2017 through July 31, 2017, Gastar commenced flow back on four gross (2.6 net) operated Osage wells. Subsequent to May 10, 2017 and through July 31, 2017, nine gross Meramec wells obtained a 24-hour average peak production rate of 614 Boe/d (79% oil) and one gross Osage well obtained a 24-hour average peak production rate of 201 Boe/d (57% oil). Joint Development Agreement On July 31, 2017, pursuant to the development agreement, the investor notified Gastar that it has elected not to participate in the second 20-well tranche of the joint development drilling program. The investor will continue to participate in the completion and operation of the 20 wells drilled within the first tranche of the drilling program, of which as of the date of this release, 19 have been completed and are currently producing and one well is awaiting completion. Capital Budget 2017 Gastar's Board of Directors has approved a revised 2017 capital budget of $129.2 million, an increase of $45.3 million comprised of $40.5 million of drilling and completion costs, $2.5 million for leasing costs and $2.3 million of other capitalized costs. Of the increase in budgeted drilling and completion costs, $35.4 million is in response to the termination of the joint development agreement, overall higher operated working interests and well costs to date and an increase in operated drilling activity of six additional gross (4.5 net) wells and $5.1 million for increased non-operated well drilling activity on the Company's acreage. The increase in the land budget primarily reflects the costs related to additional working interest acreage acquired from non-participating interest owners pursuant to the Oklahoma forced pooling process. Guidance for Third Quarter 2017 and Full-Year 2017 We are updating our previously issued guidance for the full-year 2017. Our guidance for the third quarter of and updated full-year 2017 is provided in the table below and represents the Company's best estimate of the range of likely future results. Guidance could be affected by the factors described below in "Forward Looking Statements." Production Third Quarter 2017 Full-Year 2017 Net average daily (MBoe/d)(1) 6.3 6.8 6.2 6.8 Liquids percentage (oil and NGLs) 72% 74% 72% 75% Cash Operating Expenses Production taxes (% of production revenues) 2.6% 2.8% 2.5% 2.8% Direct lease operating ($/Boe) $8.20 $8.80 $8.50 $9.00 Transportation, treating & gathering ($/Boe) $0.80 $0.90 $0.80 $0.86 Cash general & administrative ($/Boe) $4.20 $4.50 $4.80 $5.00 (1) Based on equivalent of 6 thousand cubic feet (Mcf) of natural gas to one barrel of oil, condensate or NGLs. Mid-Year 2017 Reserve Update SEC proved reserve estimates as of June 30, 2017 totaled 30.1 MMBoe, an 18% increase over year-end 2016 proved reserves. The mid-year 2017 reserves were 47% proved developed and comprised of 16.6 million barrels of crude oil and condensate, 6.3 million barrels of NGLs and 43.1 billion cubic feet of natural gas. The pre-tax SEC-priced present value of future cash flows of these reserves, discounted at 10% ("PV-10") (a non-GAAP financial measure defined below in "Information on Reserves and PV-10 Value"), was $199.3 million, a 41% increase as compared to year-end 2016 as a result of higher proved reserve volumes and SEC prices. In accordance with SEC regulations, estimates of proved reserves as of June 30, 2017 were calculated using the 12-month unweighted arithmetic average of the first-day-of-the-month price for each month in the period July 1, 2016 through June 30, 2017. For oil, the average 12-month West Texas Intermediate price utilized was $48.95 per barrel, compared to $42.75 per barrel for year-end 2016 SEC proved reserves, and for natural gas, the average 12-month Henry Hub price utilized was $3.01 per million British thermal unit ("MMBtu"), compared to $2.48 per MMBtu for year-end 2016 SEC proved reserves. These benchmark oil and natural gas prices were adjusted for energy content or quality, transportation and regional price differentials by area. For a discussion of PV-10 and the standardized measure of future net cash flows, see "Information on Reserves and PV-10 Value." Conference Call Gastar has scheduled a conference call for 9:00 a.m. Eastern Time (8:00 a.m. Central Time) on Friday, August 4, 2017. Investors may participate in the call either by phone or audio webcast. By Phone: Dial 1-412-902-0030 at least 10 minutes before the call. A telephone replay will be available through August 11 by dialing 1-201-612-7415 and using the conference ID: 13666599. By Webcast: Visit the Investor Relations page of Gastar's website at www.gastar.com under "Events & Presentations." Please log on a few minutes in advance to register and download any necessary software. A replay will be available shortly after the call. For more information, please contact Donna Washburn at Dennard-Lascar Associates at 713-529-6600 or e-mail [email protected] . About Gastar Exploration Gastar Exploration Inc. is a pure play Mid-Continent independent energy company engaged in the exploration, development and production of oil, condensate, natural gas and natural gas liquids. Gastar's principal business activities include the identification, acquisition and subsequent exploration and development of oil and natural gas properties with an emphasis on unconventional reserves, such as shale resource plays. Gastar holds a concentrated acreage position in what is believed to be the core of the STACK Play, an area of central Oklahoma which is home to multiple oil and natural gas-rich reservoirs including the Meramec, Oswego, Osage, Woodford and Hunton formations. For more information, visit Gastar's website at www.gastar.com. Information on Reserves and PV-10 Value At June 30, 2017, future cash inflows were computed using the 12-month unweighted arithmetic average of the first-day-of-the-month prices for natural gas and oil (the "benchmark base prices") adjusted by lease in accordance with sales contracts and for energy content, quality, transportation, compression and gathering fees and regional price differentials, relating to the Company's proved reserves. Benchmark base prices are held constant in accordance with SEC guidelines for the life of the wells but are adjusted by lease in accordance with sales contracts and for energy content, quality, transportation, compression and gathering fees and regional price differentials. The average benchmark base prices used in our June 30, 2017 SEC compliant reserves report are significantly above current market commodity prices. PV-10 represents the present value, discounted at 10% per annum, of estimated future net revenue before income tax of our estimated proved reserves. PV-10 is a non-GAAP financial measure as defined by the SEC. We believe that the presentation of PV-10 is relevant and useful to our investors because it presents the discounted future net cash flows attributable to our reserves prior to taking into account corporate future income taxes and our current tax structure. We further believe investors and creditors use PV-10 as a basis for comparison of the relative size of our reserves as compared with other companies. The financial measure most directly comparable to PV-10 is the standardized measure of future net cash flows ("Standardized Measure") which takes into account future income taxes and our current tax structure. As a result of our current net operating tax loss position, no future income taxes are anticipated and the PV-10 value shown should be reflective of our Standardized Measure. The Company's June 30, 2017 total proved reserves estimates were prepared by Wright & Company, Inc. Forward Looking Statements This news release includes "forward looking statements" within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended. Forward looking statements give our current expectations, opinion, belief or forecasts of future events and performance. A statement identified by the use of forward looking words including "may," "expects," "projects," "anticipates," "plans," "believes," "estimate," "will," "should," and certain of the other foregoing statements may be deemed forward-looking statements. Although Gastar believes that the expectations reflected in such forward-looking statements are reasonable, these statements involve risks and uncertainties that may cause actual future activities and results to be materially different from those suggested or described in this news release. These include risks inherent in natural gas and oil drilling and production activities, including risks with respect to continued low or further declining prices for natural gas and oil that could result in further downward revisions to the value of proved reserves or otherwise cause Gastar to further delay or suspend planned drilling and completion operations or reduce production levels which would adversely impact cash flow; risks relating to the availability of capital to fund drilling operations that can be adversely affected by adverse drilling results, production declines and continued low or further declining prices for natural gas and oil; risks of fire, explosion, blowouts, pipe failure, casing collapse, unusual or unexpected formation pressures, environmental hazards, and other operating and production risks, which may temporarily or permanently reduce production or cause initial production or test results to not be indicative of future well performance or delay the timing of sales or completion of drilling operations; delays in receipt of drilling permits; risks relating to unexpected adverse developments in the status of properties; risks relating to the absence or delay in receipt of government approvals or third-party consents; risks relating to our ability to integrate acquired assets with ours and to realize the anticipated benefits from such acquisitions; and other risks described in Gastar's Annual Report on Form 10-K and other filings with the SEC, available at the SEC's website at www.sec.gov. Our actual sales production rates can vary considerably from tested initial production rates depending upon completion and production techniques and our primary areas of operations are subject to natural steep decline rates. By issuing forward looking statements based on current expectations, opinions, views or beliefs, Gastar has no obligation and, except as required by law, is not undertaking any obligation, to update or revise these statements or provide any other information relating to such statements. Targeted expectations and guidance for the second quarter and full-year of 2017 are based upon the current 2017 planned capital expenditures budget, which may be subject to revision and reevaluation dependent upon future developments, including changes in commodity prices, drilling results, our liquidity position, availability of crews, supplies and production capacity, weather delays and significant changes in drilling costs. Unless otherwise stated herein, equivalent volumes of production are based upon an energy equivalent ratio of six Mcf of natural gas to each barrel of liquids (oil, condensate and NGLs), which ratio is not reflective of relative value. Our NGLs are sold as part of our wet gas subject to an incremental NGLs pricing formula based upon a percentage of NGLs extracted from our wet gas production. Our reported production volumes reflect incremental post-processing NGLs volumes and residual gas volumes with which we are credited under our sales contracts. Contacts: Gastar Exploration Inc. Michael A. Gerlich, Chief Financial Officer 713-739-1800 / [email protected] Investor Relations Counsel: Lisa Elliott, DennardLascar Associates: 713-529-6600 / [email protected] - Financial Tables Follow GASTAR EXPLORATION INC. CONSOLIDATED STATEMENTS OF OPERATIONS For the Three Months Ended June 30, For the Six Months Ended June 30, 2017 2016 2017 2016 (in thousands, except share and per share data) REVENUES: Oil and condensate $ 12,744 $ 11,345 $ 24,934 $ 20,158 Natural gas 2,345 1,876 4,933 5,894 NGLs 2,179 1,710 4,770 3,405 Total oil and condensate, natural gas and NGLs revenues 17,268 14,931 34,637 29,457 Gain (loss) on commodity derivatives contracts 5,378 (2,778) 6,678 (2,493) Total revenues 22,646 12,153 41,315 26,964 EXPENSES: Production taxes 469 364 954 1,069 Lease operating expenses 5,146 4,584 10,218 10,663 Transportation, treating and gathering 440 395 751 1,008 Depreciation, depletion and amortization 6,051 5,591 10,703 19,320 Impairment of natural gas and oil properties 48,497 Accretion of asset retirement obligation 58 89 109 194 General and administrative expense 4,591 6,272 8,415 11,947 Total expenses 16,755 17,295 31,150 92,698 INCOME (LOSS) FROM OPERATIONS 5,891 (5,142) 10,165 (65,734) OTHER (EXPENSE) INCOME: Interest expense (8,736) (9,263) (19,585) (18,561) Loss on early extinguishment of debt (12,172) Investment and other income 66 (76) 115 (43) LOSS BEFORE PROVISION FOR INCOME TAXES (2,779) (14,481) (21,477) (84,338) Provision for income taxes NET LOSS (2,779) (14,481) (21,477) (84,338) Dividends on preferred stock (3,619) (7,237) (3,618) Undeclared cumulative dividends on preferred stock (3,619) (3,619) NET LOSS ATTRIBUTABLE TO COMMON STOCKHOLDERS $ (6,398) $ (18,100) $ (28,714) $ (91,575) NET LOSS PER SHARE OF COMMON STOCK ATTRIBUTABLE TO COMMON STOCKHOLDERS: Basic $ (0.03) $ (0.17) $ (0.16) $ (1.00) Diluted $ (0.03) $ (0.17) $ (0.16) $ (1.00) WEIGHTED AVERAGE SHARES OF COMMON STOCK OUTSTANDING: Basic 199,547,446 104,009,337 181,430,409 91,398,735 Diluted 199,547,446 104,009,337 181,430,409 91,398,735 GASTAR EXPLORATION INC. CONSOLIDATED BALANCE SHEETS June 30, December 31, 2017 2016 (in thousands, except share data) ASSETS CURRENT ASSETS: Cash and cash equivalents $ 38,686 $ 71,529 Accounts receivable, net of allowance for doubtful accounts of $1,953,respectively 56,273 26,883 Commodity derivative contracts 7,463 6,212 Prepaid expenses 725 755 Total current assets 103,147 105,379 PROPERTY, PLANT AND EQUIPMENT: Oil and natural gas properties, full cost method of accounting: Unproved properties, excluded from amortization 126,501 67,333 Proved properties 1,277,551 1,253,061 Total natural gas and oil properties 1,404,052 1,320,394 Furniture and equipment 3,015 2,622 Total property, plant and equipment 1,407,067 1,323,016 Accumulated depreciation, depletion and amortization (1,141,715) (1,131,012) Total property, plant and equipment, net 265,352 192,004 OTHER ASSETS: Restricted cash 369 Commodity derivative contracts 1,973 1,638 Deferred charges, net 676 Advances to operators and other assets 54 102 Other 405 405 Total other assets 2,801 2,821 TOTAL ASSETS $ 371,300 $ 300,204 LIABILITIES AND STOCKHOLDERS' EQUITY CURRENT LIABILITIES: Accounts payable $ 15,064 $ 8,867 Revenue payable 14,933 6,690 Accrued interest 812 3,515 Accrued drilling and operating costs 6,786 2,615 Advances from non-operators 2,895 3,504 Commodity derivative contracts 338 Commodity derivative premium payable 1,492 1,654 Asset retirement obligation 89 Other accrued liabilities 2,858 2,462 Total current liabilities 44,840 29,734 LONG-TERM LIABILITIES: Long-term debt 330,841 404,493 Commodity derivative premium payable 281 969 Asset retirement obligation 4,399 5,443 Total long-term liabilities 335,521 410,905 Commitments and contingencies STOCKHOLDERS' EQUITY: Preferred stock, par value $0.01 per share, 40,000,000 shares authorized 8.625% Series A Cumulative Preferred stock, 10,000,000 shares designated; 4,045,000 shares issued and outstanding at June 30, 2017 and December 31, 2016, respectively, with liquidation preference of $25.00 per share 41 41 10.75% Series B Cumulative Preferred stock, 10,000,000 shares designated; 2,140,000 shares issued and outstanding at June 30, 2017 and December 31, 2016, respectively, with liquidation preference of $25.00 per share 21 21 Common stock, par value $0.001 per share; 550,000,000 and 800,000,000 shares authorized at June 30, 2017 and December 31, 2016, respectively; 213,947,634 and 150,377,870 shares issued and outstanding at June 30, 2017 and December 31, 2016, respectively 214 150 Additional paid-in capital 815,842 644,306 Accumulated deficit (825,179) (784,953) Total stockholders' equity (9,061) (140,435) TOTAL LIABILITIES AND STOCKHOLDERS' EQUITY $ 371,300 $ 300,204 GASTAR EXPLORATION INC. CONSOLIDATED STATEMENTS OF CASH FLOWS For the Six Months Ended June 30, 2017 2016 (in thousands) CASH FLOWS FROM OPERATING ACTIVITIES: Net loss $ (21,477) $ (84,338) Adjustments to reconcile net loss to net cash provided by operating activities: Depreciation, depletion and amortization 10,703 19,320 Impairment of natural gas and oil properties 48,497 Stock-based compensation 2,199 2,335 Total (gain) loss on commodity derivatives contracts (6,678) 2,493 Cash settlements of matured commodity derivative contracts, net 3,553 9,581 Cash premiums paid for commodity derivatives contracts (565) Amortization of deferred financing costs and debt discount 4,927 2,825 Accretion of asset retirement obligation 109 194 Loss on sale of furniture and equipment 97 Loss on early extinguishment of debt 12,172 Changes in operating assets and liabilities: Accounts receivable (29,115) 4,260 Prepaid expenses 30 175 Accounts payable and accrued liabilities 6,983 570 Net cash (used in) provided by operating activities (16,594) 5,444 CASH FLOWS FROM INVESTING ACTIVITIES: Development and purchase of oil and natural gas properties (48,274) (23,370) (Acquisition of) refund for oil and natural gas properties (54,462) 1,664 Proceeds from sale of oil and natural gas properties 26,780 77,621 Application of proceeds from non-operators (609) (162) Advances to operators (69) (Purchase) sale of furniture and equipment (393) 82 Net cash (used in) provided by investing activities (76,958) 55,766 CASH FLOWS FROM FINANCING ACTIVITIES: Proceeds from term loan 250,000 Proceeds from convertible notes 200,000 Repayment of senior secured notes (325,000) Repayment of revolving credit facility (84,630) (100,370) Loss on early extinguishment of debt (7,011) Proceeds from issuance of common shares, net of issuance costs 56,367 45,069 Dividends on preferred stock (18,092) (3,618) Deferred financing charges (9,971) (893) Increase in restricted cash (369) Tax withholding related to restricted stock and PBU vestings (585) (711) Net cash provided by (used in) financing activities 60,709 (60,523) NET (DECREASE) INCREASE IN CASH AND CASH EQUIVALENTS (32,843) 687 CASH AND CASH EQUIVALENTS, BEGINNING OF PERIOD 71,529 50,074 CASH AND CASH EQUIVALENTS, END OF PERIOD $ 38,686 $ 50,761 NON-GAAP FINANCIAL INFORMATION AND RECONCILIATION We use both GAAP and certain non-GAAP financial measures to assess performance. Generally, a non-GAAP financial measure is a numerical measure of a company's performance, financial position or cash flows that either excludes or includes amounts that are not normally excluded or included in the most directly comparable measure calculated and presented in accordance with GAAP. Our management believes that these non-GAAP measures provide useful supplemental information to investors in order that they may evaluate our financial performance using the same measures as management. These non-GAAP financial measures should not be considered as a substitute for, or superior to, measures of financial performance prepared in accordance with GAAP. In evaluating these measures, investors should consider that the methodology applied in calculating such measures may differ among companies and analysts. A reconciliation is provided below outlining the differences between these non-GAAP measures and their most directly comparable financial measure calculated in accordance with GAAP. Reconciliation of Net Loss to Net Loss Excluding Special Items: For the Three Months Ended June 30, For the Six Months Ended June 30, 2017 2016 2017 2016 (in thousands, except share and per share data) NET LOSS ATTRIBUTABLE TO COMMON STOCKHOLDERS $ (6,398) $ (18,100) $ (28,714) $ (91,575) SPECIAL ITEMS: (Gains) losses related to the change in mark to market value for outstanding commodity derivatives contracts (3,356) 3,343 (2,774) 9,840 Impairment of oil and natural gas properties 48,497 Loss on early extinguishment of debt 12,172 Non-recurring general and administrative costs related to acquisition of assets 124 399 Non-recurring severance costs related to property divestments 140 677 Allowance for bad debt 1,953 1,953 ADJUSTED NET LOSS ATTRIBUTABLE TO COMMON STOCKHOLDERS $ (9,754) $ (12,540) $ (19,316) $ (30,209) ADJUSTED NET LOSS PER SHARE OF COMMON STOCK ATTRIBUTABLE TO COMMON STOCKHOLDERS: Basic $ (0.05) $ (0.12) $ (0.11) $ (0.33) Diluted $ (0.05) $ (0.12) $ (0.11) $ (0.33) WEIGHTED AVERAGE SHARES OF COMMON STOCK Basic 199,547,446 104,009,337 181,430,409 91,398,735 Diluted 199,547,446 104,009,337 181,430,409 91,398,735 Reconciliation of Cash Flows before Working Capital Changes and as Adjusted for Special Items: For the Three Months Ended June 30, For the Six Months Ended June 30, 2017 2016 2017 2016 (in thousands, except share and per share data) CASH FLOWS FROM OPERATING ACTIVITIES: Net loss $ (2,779) $ (14,481) $ (21,477) $ (84,338) Adjustments to reconcile net loss to net cash provided by operating activities: Depreciation, depletion and amortization 6,051 5,591 10,703 19,320 Impairment of oil and natural gas properties 48,497 Stock-based compensation 1,203 702 2,199 2,335 Mark to market of commodity derivatives contracts: Total (gain) loss on commodity derivatives contracts (5,378) 2,778 (6,678) 2,493 Cash settlements of matured commodity derivatives contracts, net 1,870 1,423 3,553 9,581 Cash premiums paid for commodity derivatives contracts (565) (565) Amortization of deferred financing costs and debt discount 3,217 1,835 4,927 2,825 Accretion of asset retirement obligation 58 89 109 194 Loss on sale of assets 97 97 Loss on early extinguishment of debt 12,172 Cash flows from operations before working capital changes 4,242 (2,531) 5,508 439 Dividends on preferred stock(1) (3,619) (3,619) (7,237) (7,237) Non-recurring general and administrative costs related to acquisition of assets 124 399 Non-recurring severance costs related to property divestments 140 677 Allowance for bad debt 1,953 1,953 Adjusted cash flows from operations $ 623 $ (3,933) $ (1,729) $ (3,769) (1) Excludes $10.9 million of accumulated dividends for the period April 2016 to December 2016 declared and paid in January 2017. The three and six months ended June 30, 2016 includes accumulated undeclared and unpaid dividends for preferred stock of $3.6 million. Reconciliation of Net Loss to Adjusted Earnings Before Interest, Income Taxes, Depreciation, Depletion and Amortization ("Adjusted EBITDA"): For the Three Months Ended June 30, For the Six Months Ended June 30, 2017 2016 2017 2016 (in thousands, except share and per share data) NET LOSS ATTRIBUTABLE TO COMMON STOCKHOLDERS $ (6,398) $ (18,100) $ (28,714) $ (91,575) Interest expense 8,736 9,263 19,585 18,561 Loss on early extinguishment of debt 12,172 Depreciation, depletion and amortization 6,051 5,591 10,703 19,320 Impairment of oil and natural gas properties 48,497 EBITDA 8,389 (3,246) 13,746 (5,197) Dividends on preferred stock 3,619 7,237 3,618 Undeclared cumulative dividends on preferred stock 3,619 3,619 Accretion of asset retirement obligation 58 89 109 194 Losses related to the change in mark to market value for outstanding commodity derivatives contracts (3,356) 3,343 (2,774) 9,840 Non-cash stock-based compensation expense 1,203 702 2,199 2,335 Investment income and other (66) 76 (115) 43 Non-recurring general and administrative costs related to acquisition of assets 124 399 Non-recurring severance costs related to property divestments 140 677 Allowance for bad debt 1,953 1,953 ADJUSTED EBITDA $ 9,847 $ 6,800 $ 20,402 $ 17,481 SOURCE Gastar Exploration Inc. Related Links http://www.gastar.com HAMILTON, N.J., Aug. 3, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Genesis Biotechnology Group (GBG), a consortium of vertically-integrated entities that are concentrated in Drug Discovery and advanced, state-of-the-art molecular diagnostic services, such as next-generation sequencing and bioinformatics to aid in the detection of chronic complex diseases, announced today the asset acquisition of 4path, LTD (4path), an Anatomic and Clinical Pathology Laboratory facility located in Burr Ridge, IL. Financial terms were not disclosed. Genesis Biotechnology Group Acquires Assets of 4path, Ltd to Expand their Diagnostic Branch Medical Diagnostic Laboratories, L.L.C. (MDL), a molecular diagnostic testing service company and a member of GBG, has a proven track record of service excellence and cost-efficiency through the effective use of advanced automation and robotic technology. With this collaboration, patients and providers in the Great Lakes region will have increased access to advanced molecular diagnostic assays and an expanded menu of cytopathology and histology services in multiple specialties such as Gynecology, Gastroenterology, Urology, Breast, Podiatry, and Dermatology. This collaboration also brings a dedicated sales force to expand 4path's relationship to clients in a larger geographic area, establish a rapid-response clinical laboratory to reduce turnaround time in the mid-west region, and fund future strategic growth initiatives. According to Dr. Eli Mordechai, GBG's CEO, "This collaboration is an excellent fit with our mission to improve patient care and advance the quality of treatment options through the development and delivery of world class diagnostics. It brings together highly complementary services that enable clients to have access to a comprehensive portfolio of clinical diagnostic services in multiple therapeutic areas." This spirit of collaboration was supported by Stephen G. Ruby, MD, MBA of 4path, Ltd, who stated, "As Medical Director of 4path, I am pleased to have this relationship with the GBG family of healthcare businesses. We look forward to expanding the scope of services available to our physician base and providing them with the specialized laboratory support for their patients." About GBG GBG is a consortium of vertically-integrated corporate diagnostic and research entities, which facilitates the overall market implementation and delivery of biomedical science products and services related to diagnostics and drug discovery. The Diagnostic segment of GBG utilizes high complexity, state-of-the-art, automated molecular analysis to offer clinicians from many different specialties valuable diagnostic information to assist in the detection, diagnosis, evaluation, and treatment of complex disease. Through the integration of research activities and the collaboration of diverse groups of scientists with expertise in molecular biology, genetics, high throughput screening (HTS), pharmacology, molecular modeling, and medicinal chemistry, GBG will be better positioned to provide complex diagnostic platforms in infectious disease, genetic-based testing, cancer diagnostics, and drug resistance profiling. About 4path, Ltd 4path, Ltd is a College of American Pathologists (CAP) Accredited Laboratory in the Chicago metropolitan area, which has provided Anatomic Pathology services to clients in the Great Lakes Region for over 10 years. Their team of board-certified pathologists provides highly personalized diagnostic services with expertise in Podiatry, Gastroenterology, Urology, Dermatology, Breast, Gynecology, Orthopedics and other specialties. To find out more, please visit www.genesisbiotechgroup.com or www.4path.com . Contact: Ben Bandaru, Director of Mergers & Acquisitions [email protected] Direct: 609.245.7507 www.genesisbiotechgroup.com SOURCE Genesis Biotechnology Group Related Links http://www.genesisbiotechgroup.com ATLANTA, Aug. 3, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- This summer marks the one-year anniversary of Georgia Power Marketplace , Georgia Power's innovative direct-to-consumer website featuring the most popular energy saving and smart home products. Since its launch in 2016, more than 35,000 products have been sold through the Marketplace ranging from smart thermostats to LED lighting. The website is a single, convenient online portal and streamlines the rebate process through integration with customers' Georgia Power accounts. The site has experienced exponential growth since last year's launch and currently features more than 65 different products. The most popular products on the Marketplace during the site's first year have been Smart and Wi-Fi Thermostats. In addition to adding new products regularly, Georgia Power Marketplace frequently hosts sales and limited-time-only deals, helping online shoppers save even more. "The response to Georgia Power Marketplace from our customers, as well as non-customers across the country, has been overwhelmingly positive the past 12 months," said Randy Young, products and services director for Georgia Power. "The Marketplace is just one of the ways that we're working to connect with our customers in new ways and make it easier for them to save money and energy every day." Making the right technology and energy choices is simple on Georgia Power Marketplace with live chat and customer support for online shoppers, as well as buyers' guides for a variety of products that can help customers determine which one is right for them. Free shipping is also available for orders over $49. In addition to the Georgia Power Marketplace, the company offers customers convenient and valuable energy saving tools and resources online at GeorgiaPower.com/save, including hundreds of easy energy tips, access to a free online energy checkup and a variety of rebates and incentives for both homes and businesses. Additionally, step- by-step instructions for the do-it-yourselfer energy savers are easy to find on Georgia Power's YouTube Channel. About Georgia Power Georgia Power is the largest electric subsidiary of Southern Company (NYSE: SO), America's premier energy company. Value, Reliability, Customer Service and Stewardship are the cornerstones of the company's promise to 2.5 million customers in all but four of Georgia's 159 counties. Committed to delivering clean, safe, reliable and affordable energy at rates below the national average, Georgia Power maintains a diverse, innovative generation mix that includes nuclear, coal and natural gas, as well as renewables such as solar, hydroelectric and wind. Georgia Power focuses on delivering world-class service to its customers every day and the company is consistently recognized by J.D. Power and Associates as an industry leader in customer satisfaction. For more information, visit www.GeorgiaPower.com and connect with the company on Facebook (Facebook.com/GeorgiaPower), Twitter (Twitter.com/GeorgiaPower) and Instagram (Instagram.com/ga_power). SOURCE Georgia Power Related Links http://www.georgiapower.com NEW YORK, Aug. 3, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Rapidly expanding JOE & THE JUICE, the well-traveled juice bar & coffee concept, has just opened its 200th store world wide, with its London branch on 23 Maddox St. Easily spotted amongst a sea of corporate cups with its Nordic cool atmospheres and fresh mix of accents, faces, and cultures, each JOE & THE JUICE is more a la mode than the last and another 25 stores are coming to the U.S. in 2017 alone! "All of us engaged with JOE & THE JUICE are overwhelmed and humbled by the great feedback we have received from our guests, landlords, the media, and very importantly - our partners and juicers. We are excited to continue the expansion of our presence and footprint of our youth culture. We expect to open 100+ stores in the coming few years across New York, San Francisco, Miami, Chicago, Los Angeles, and Washington D.C.!" said Kaspar Basse, CEO. Founded in Copenhagen in 2002 by Basse, JOE & THE JUICE creates only the finest with high-quality, natural, and organic ingredients in its freshly prepared juices, shakes, coffee, and sandwiches. A beacon for millennials and urban trendsetters, the brand has opened doors in major cities around the world with locals and travelers alike craving more. No more boring, apathetic "what would you like" coffee and juice pedaling! JOE & THE JUICE is creating a new generation of Global Citizen. Whether you've ordered an espresso in New York or a ginger shot in Sydney, odds are, your juicer is just in from Reykjavik, Stockholm, or London. JOE & THE JUICE encourages employees to see the world, by inspiring dreams with their exclusive work exchange opportunities. "Equally important to our expanding storefronts, we are also striving to develop our educational platform into our dream of a contemporary 'JOE & THE JUICE University,' based on our definition of essential youth virtues. Preparing young people from all walks of life for a meaningful future in the exciting world ahead of us! Having the opportunity to expand across the U.S. is very exciting for all us involved, and we hope our guests feel the same way," said Basse. With such amazing company culture, JOE & THE JUICE isn't burning through employees just going through the motions to make ends meet. As the company provides the framework for its employees to establish long lasting social relationships across departments, stores, even continents, it fulfills more than just the need for a paycheck. Whether working or socializing while enjoying the perfect juice or Joe, this passion translates to an unforgettable experience. www.joejuice.com Instagram/Facebook: @joeandthejuice Snapchat: joebackstage Contact: Rachel Krupa, Krupa Consulting [email protected]/ (323) 656-6995 SOURCE Joe and the Juice Related Links http://www.joejuice.com Bajrang Dal activists and locals intercepted a truck carrying beef on NH-84 under Shahpur police station in Bhojpur. They claimed beef was being carried for smuggling. By Rohit Kumar Singh: The fringe saffron outfits have become active in Bihar after the formation of the JDU-BJP government in the state with workers of Bajrang Dal and locals today detaining a truck carrying beef in Bhojpur district. The truck loaded with beef was detained by Bajrang Dal workers and locals on NH-84 under Shahpur police station. Locals claimed the beef being transported to be smuggled. advertisement According to sources, the locals in the area were getting information for the last several days about beef being smuggled from Ranisagar village in Shahpur. The Bajrang Dal activists along with locals on Thursday morning got a tip off about a truck loaded with beef coming from Ranisagar village. As soon as the truck reached the NH-84, it was intercepted by the locals who found several quintals of beef. Angry locals soon blocked th highway and started protesting. The police reached the spot and tried to pacify the angry protesters but to no avail. The locals remained adamant on senior police officials visiting the spot before lifting the road blockade. They also demanded suspension of the local SHO who failed to check smuggling of beef. "A truck loaded with beef was intercepted by locals. We have seized the truck and arrested three persons in this regard. Further investigation is on," said Daya Shankar, SDPO, Jagdishpur. ALSO READ: BJP worker in Nagpur attacked for carrying beef arrested Cow vigilantes defy PM Modi yet again, attack drivers transporting cattle in Assam Killing people in name of cow not acceptable, Gandhi won't approve: PM Narendra Modi in Gujarat Instead of admonishing cow vigilantes, it's time PM Modi acted against them WATCH: PM Modi breaks silence over gau bhakti lynching, says violence will not solve problem --- ENDS --- DENVER, Aug. 3, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Gray Line Worldwide's award-winning, original video series, "The Bucket Life," continues to expand and enrich the global travel community by sharing cultures, sights and stories behind some of the world's most iconic places. The newly released "London" episode delivers a meaning, tradition, wonder and joy through the eyes of the locals who share their home and history with travelers each day. "A lot has happened since Gray Line's founding in 1910, but for more than a century, we have consistently focused one thing: getting travelers to the sights they've imagined visiting their entire life. But, we are more than just bus tours. Our partnership with local companies lets travelers experience the sights in a genuine way that bridges sightseeing with appreciation for the people and culture that created them," said Brad Weber, President & CEO, Gray Line Worldwide. "The entire idea behind this video series, behind living the Bucket Life, is that these experiences enrich your life in a way that makes it unmistakably better." "The Bucket Life" travel video series takes aim at connecting people with places and cultures, bringing destinations to life through the stories and experiences travelers encounter. Commissioned by Denver-based Gray Line Worldwide and hosted by local Gray Line sightseeing companies around the world, each episode amplifies the wellness, perspective and sense of fulfillment that travel can provide. London Calling The global travel company today launched its ninth episode in its original video series with "The Bucket Life: London," the second season's closing episode. The London episode not only highlights the top urban attractions, it takes viewers beyond the city limits to Stonehenge, Bath and other quintessentially British sightseeing stops. "Londoners, and the British overall, have a strength and resilience you see today built upon those same qualities lived on a daily basis since A.D. 50," said Mikesh Palan, Managing Director of Gray Line London. "When travelers visit us and really see what we see everyday it is our ability to continue living and celebrating life. We know that humans have much more in common, more similarities, than differences. Through our diversity, art, history, through tradition, through architecture, these are expressions of our culture. And, we love sharing it with the world." Celebrating "The Bucket Life" Gray Line's first foray into original video highlighting its global offerings kicked off in 2015 with a standalone mini film, "Find A Reason To Go." It was an incredible journey of four friends, all seasoned videographers, who together traveled the world, visiting six continents in 21 days with Gray Line tours. The widely syndicated original video and content program highlighted what travel industry research has indicated for decades: in-destination activities, sightseeing tours and attractions are the reasons people travel. "The Bucket Life" takes viewers to the next level with individual destination episodes in tune with a deeper connection not just a checkmark, but rather a lasting and forever changing connection with each destination. As one of the most successful products stemming from Gray Line Labs, an internal incubator gathers, analyzes and reports on data, insights and traveler behavior to create meaningful travel experiences, The Bucket Life series continues to inform strategic Gray Line offerings and fuel the next generation of sightseeing experiences. Local Gray Line Experts in the World's Top Destinations "With local operations in the world's top destinations, Gray Line Worldwide consistently provides travelers with easy booking options, friendly and knowledgeable guides, and the best tour experiences in more than 400 offices around the globe," said Weber. "We are really an extended family around an enormous global table, and we rely heavily on each other to make Gray Line the go-to sightseeing experts on six continents." For those traveling to London and looking to book tours, visit www.grayline.com/london for offerings in the city and beyond. Gray Line's original video series, The Bucket Life, was shot by Denver-based Wit House Productions. Gray Line Worldwide will air four episodes in its second season spanning through May 2017. About Gray Line Worldwide Since 1910, Gray Line has been a trusted provider of traveler experiences and sightseeing tours in the world's most sought after locations. Helping millions of travelers discover a new destination each year that's the Gray Line passion. With hundreds of local offices on six continents, the global Gray Line team of on-site experts connects people with destinations with a warmth, wisdom and authenticity unique to its guides. For more information, visit www.grayline.com, or /grayline on Facebook, @GrayLine on Twitter, and @GrayLine_Sightseeing on Instagram. About Wit House Productions Wit House is a full-service production company with experience spanning startups to global brands. Combining a unique network of producers, directors, cinematographers and editors, Wit House helps brands tell engaging, authentic stories while helping guide and drive media planning. From brand overviews and training video to product launches and feature-length documentaries, Wit House is an award-winning content team of collaborative experts. More information can be found at: WitHouseProductions.com. SOURCE Gray Line Worldwide Related Links http://www.grayline.com WASHINGTON, Aug. 3, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- The Washington, D.C.-based Professional Consulting, Information Technology and Engineering firm, Greystones Group, has been awarded a contract for Doctrine Support from the US Army Cyber Center of Excellence (Cyber CoE) at Fort Gordon in Augusta, Georgia. Greystones is a subcontractor on the Advanced Technology Leaders, Inc. (ATL) team. In support of the Doctrine Development Branch, Doctrine Division, Cyber CoE, Greystones provides support in drafting, analyzing, reviewing and disseminating Signal, Cyberspace, and Electronic Warfare (EW) doctrine and doctrine-related publications and products. Greystones assists in the development and execution of the Cyber CoE Doctrine Plan, providing the US Army's Generating and Operational Forces with current doctrine based on the latest tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) and enabling the US Army to conduct Signal, Cyberspace, and EW operations. Additionally, Greystones collects observations and identifies gaps that impact Cyberspace operations, EW, and Department of Defense Information Network-Army (DODIN-A), evaluating Doctrine, Organization, Training, Materiel, Leadership and Education, Personnel, Facilities, And Policy (DOTMLPF-P). Greystones' work on this contract supports the sustainment and enhancement of the US Army's operational forces' capability to conduct current and future Cyberspace, Signal, and EW operations. Who we are. At Greystones, our people, our intellectual assets, and our ability to innovate are our greatest resources. Greystones Group (www.greystonesgroup.com) is a CMMI Services Maturity Level 3 appraised and ISO 9001:2015 certified, Women-Owned Small Business (WOSB) and Small Disadvantaged Business (SDB) headquartered in the Washington, DC area, with office locations in Washington, DC, Ft. Leavenworth, KS, Ft. Gordon, GA, and Huntsville, AL. Our company was founded in 2000 and has supported a wide variety of commercial, DoD, and other Federal Government clients, including the US Navy, US Army Cyber Command/2nd Army, Air National Guard (ANG), the Office of Naval Research (ONR), and the Headquarters Army, Deputy Chief of Staff Operations, Plans, and Training (G-3/5/7). Greystones' core capabilities include a complete understanding of full spectrum cyberspace and electronic warfare operations and their planning, execution, analytics, and assessments. We specialize in cybersecurity operations, full threat analysis and assessment, requirements definitions and determination, software development, data management, and multinational interoperability assessment and planning. For more information, please contact Cameron Raithel at 202-644-8998 or email at [email protected]. SOURCE Greystones Group Related Links http://www.greystonesgroup.com SECAUCUS, N.J., Aug. 3, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- The Sabre Hospitality Solutions ("Sabre") SynXis Central Reservations system (CRS) facilitates the booking of hotel reservations made by consumers through hotels, online travel agencies, and similar booking services. Beginning on June 6, 2017, Sabre notified affected entities that an unauthorized party gained access to account credentials that permitted unauthorized access to unencrypted payment card information, as well as certain reservation information, for a subset of hotel reservations processed through the CRS. Sabre worked with third-party forensic investigators in its investigation into this incident and has provided notice of this event to law enforcement and the payment card brands. The investigation determined that the unauthorized party first obtained access to payment card and other reservation information on August 10, 2016, and the last unauthorized access to payment card information was on March 9, 2017. According to Sabre, the unauthorized party was able to access payment card information for guests who made hotel reservation(s) at The Roxy Hotel and the Soho Grand Hotel, both located in New York City (together, "The Hotels"). This information potentially included guest: (1) name; (2) card number; (3) card expiration date; and, (4) your card security code. The unauthorized party was also able, in some cases, to access certain information such as guest name, email, phone number, address, and other information. Some of this information may not have been stored in Sabre's systems at the time of the incident and may not be affected, but Sabre is unable to confirm whether certain information was included and, out of an abundance of caution, The Hotels are providing notice of this incident. Sabre has confirmed that information such as Social Security number, passport number, or driver's license number was not impacted by this incident. The Hotels are mailing notice letters to individuals for whom they have address information whose payment card information was stored on the affected Sabre server and may have been accessed by the unauthorized party. Some individuals may also receive email notice. Steps Individuals Can Take : The Hotels encourage potentially impacted individuals to remain vigilant against incidents of identity theft and fraud by reviewing account statements and monitoring free credit reports for suspicious activity and to detect error, if any. Under U.S. law, you are entitled to one free credit report annually from each of the three major credit reporting bureaus. To order your free credit report, visit www.annualcreditreport.com or call, toll-free, 1-877-322-8228. You may also contact the three major credit bureaus directly to request a free copy of your credit report. Fraud Alerts . At no charge, you can also have these credit bureaus place a "fraud alert" on your file that alerts creditors to take additional steps to verify your identity prior to granting credit in your name. Note, however, that because it tells creditors to follow certain procedures to protect you, it may also delay your ability to obtain credit while the agency verifies your identity. As soon as one credit bureau confirms your fraud alert, the others are notified to place fraud alerts on your file. Should you wish to place a fraud alert, or should you have any questions regarding your credit report, please contact any one of the agencies listed below: Equifax P.O. Box 105069 Atlanta, GA 30348 800-525-6285 www.equifax.com Experian P.O. Box 2002 Allen, TX 75013 888-397-3742 www.experian.com TransUnion P.O. Box 2000 Chester, PA 19106 800-680-7289 www.transunion.com Security Freeze . You may also place a security freeze on your credit reports. A security freeze prohibits a credit bureau from releasing any information from a consumer's credit report without the consumer's written authorization. However, please be advised that placing a security freeze on your credit report may delay, interfere with, or prevent the timely approval of any requests you make for new loans, credit mortgages, employment, housing, or other services. If you have been a victim of identity theft and you provide the credit bureau with a valid police report, it cannot charge you to place, lift, or remove a security freeze. In all other cases, a credit bureau may charge you a fee to place, temporarily lift, or permanently remove a security freeze. Fees vary based on where you live, but commonly range from $3 to $15. You will need to place a security freeze separately with each of the three major credit bureaus listed above if you wish to place a freeze on all of your credit files. In order to request a security freeze, you will need to supply your full name, address, date of birth, Social Security number, current address, all addresses for up to five previous years, email address, a copy of your state identification card or driver's license, and a copy of a utility bill, bank or insurance statement, or other statement proving residence. To find out more on how to place a security freeze, you can use the following contact information: Equifax Security Freeze P.O. Box 105788 Atlanta, GA 30348 1-800-685-1111 www.freeze.equifax.com Experian Security Freeze P.O. Box 9554 Allen, TX 75013 1-888-397-3742 www.experian.com/freeze/ TransUnion P.O. Box 2000 Chester, PA 19016 1-888-909-8872 www.transunion.com/ credit-freeze/place-credit-freeze Additional Information. You can further educate yourself regarding identity theft, security freezes, fraud alerts, and the steps you can take to protect yourself against identity theft and fraud by contacting the Federal Trade Commission or your state Attorney General. The Federal Trade Commission can be reached at: 600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW, Washington, DC 20580; www.identitytheft.gov; 1-877-ID-THEFT (1-877-438-4338); and TTY: 1-866-653-4261. The Federal Trade Commission encourages those who discover that their information has been misused to file a complaint with them. Instances of known or suspected identity theft should be reported to law enforcement, the Federal Trade Commission, and your state Attorney General. This notice has not been delayed as the result of a law enforcement investigation. Hartz Hotel Services, Inc. is located at 667 Madison Avenue 24th floor, New York, New York 10065 and can be reached at 212-965-3030. For Maryland residents, the Maryland Attorney General can be reached at: 200 St. Paul Place, 16th Floor, Baltimore, MD 21202; 1-888-743-0023; and www.oag.state.md.us. For North Carolina residents, the North Carolina Attorney General can be contacted by mail at 9001 Mail Service Center, Raleigh, NC 27699-9001; toll-free at 1-877-566-7226; by phone at 1-919-716-6400; and online at www.ncdoj.gov. For Rhode Island residents, the Rhode Island Attorney General can be contacted by mail at 150 South Main Street, Providence, RI 02903; by phone at (401) 274-4400; and online at www.riag.ri.gov. There are a total of seventeen known Rhode Island residents that may be impacted by this incident. You have the right to file and obtain a police report if you ever experience identity theft or fraud. Please note that, in order to file a crime report or incident report with law enforcement for identity theft, you will likely need to provide some kind of proof that you have been a victim. For New Mexico residents, you have rights pursuant to the Fair Credit Reporting Act, such as the right to be told if information in your credit file has been used against you, the right to know what is in your credit file, the right to ask for your credit score, and the right to dispute incomplete or inaccurate information. Further, pursuant to the Fair Credit Reporting Act, the consumer reporting agencies must correct or delete inaccurate, incomplete, or unverifiable information; consumer reporting agencies may not report outdated negative information; access to your file is limited; you must give your consent for credit reports to be provided to employers; you may limit "prescreened" offers of credit and insurance you get based on information in your credit report; and you may seek damages from violator. You may have additional rights under the Fair Credit Reporting Act not summarized here. Identity theft victims and active duty military personnel have specific additional rights pursuant to the Fair Credit Reporting Act. We encourage you to review your rights pursuant to the Fair Credit Reporting Act by visiting www.consumerfinance.gov/f/201504_cfpb_summary_your-rights-under-fcra.pdf, or by writing Consumer Response Center, Room 130-A, Federal Trade Commission, 600 Pennsylvania Ave. N.W., Washington, D.C. 20580. For Massachusetts residents, you have the right to obtain a police report. If you are the victim of identity theft, you also have the right to file a police report and obtain a copy of it. Individuals with questions can contact Sabre's dedicated assistance line at 1-888-721-6305 (toll-free) (Monday through Friday, 24 hours a day) or visit the Sabre website established specifically to help customers in responding to this incident at www.sabreconsumernotice.com. SOURCE Hartz Hotel Services, Inc. FORT WORTH, Texas, Aug. 3, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Harvest Returns, a financial technology company founded in 2016, will launch its agriculture investment platform this month. In the platform's equity partnership format, agriculture producers and landowners are able to collect capital and maintain control over their operations, while investors passively fund them and collect returns from harvests. Traditionally, agriculture investment requires a significant amount of experience or capital upfront. Founders and military veterans Chris Rawley and Austin Maness started Harvest Returns to remove those barriers to entry, making both the funding and investment process easier. Agriculture producers submit their operations to Harvest Returns to be selected as a private placement on the platform. Investors are able to view the details of each opportunity on the platform and select the deal they want to invest in. Investment minimums are as low as $5,000. Investors will receive regular updates on the progress of their investments, annual distributions once crops are harvested, and have easy access to tax documents. Agriculture producers receive their funding after the full amount of their deal is raised; most deals range between $500,000 to a few million dollars. Agriculture investments have many advantages. They are a relatively low risk way to diversify a portfolio because the land is a tangible asset that increases in value over time and is not correlated to the stock market. Historically, returns from farmland investments have outperformed stocks, bonds, golds and other asset classes. "By combining the benefits of agriculture with the ease of our investment platform, we are providing access to a larger pool of investors to farmland, ranchland and timberland ownership," said CEO Rawley. "Plus, we are bringing them closer to the hard working farmers who grow their food." Harvest Returns does not have location-specific requirements, but rather focuses on the financial benefit of a specific deal and the grower's historical success with their product. The company currently has agreements in place to list agriculture investments in Texas, Arizona, Florida, Brazil and Belize. Increasing consumer interest to know where food originates and how it is produced is an important consideration for many investors. "People are starting to care more and more about where their food comes from, so an investor could choose to invest in a producer in their state or region," said COO Maness. "When they receive regular updates on that investment, they are not getting only a financial benefit, but also an emotional one that connects them more to their community." ABOUT HARVEST RETURNS, LLC Headquartered in Fort Worth, Texas, Harvest Returns, LLC is a financial technology company created in 2016 by two combat veterans to bring agricultural producers together with investors. Through democratizing the agriculture investment process with an equity partnership format, the online platform provides curated, diversified offerings of farm, ranch and timberland to accredited investors. For more information, visit harvestreturns.com. MEDIA CONTACT Heather Hughston Hutson Creative [email protected] 817-992-2318 SOURCE Harvest Returns Related Links http://harvestreturns.com Hesco Bastion, Inc., following a competitive procurement process, was awarded the Indefinite Delivery/Indefinite Quantity (IDIQ) contract for force protection expeditionary barrier systems by the DLA in 2014. Stephanie Victory, Chief Commercial Officer, Hesco Bastion, Inc. is extremely proud to receive such an accolade; "We have protected the men and women of the United States military for fifteen years and we are proud to continue supplying the DLA with the protective barriers that soldiers have come to trust and rely on. This distinction has been achieved by the dedicated efforts of everyone in the Hesco team, based here in the US and the UK; from production, logistics and the administrative staff who always ensure we deliver on time and the highest quality. All who are involved in supporting this contract are honored by this designation and are proud to support the DLA and our troops." Hesco is renowned for its ability to meet the military surge requirement of US forces by maximising the flexibility of its production facilities, all of which operate Quality Management Systems certified to ISO 9001, and benefit from an experienced and dedicated workforce. Kevin Lyons, Chief Operations Officer, explains: "The ability to deliver in full, on time, and to the highest quality standards, is a proud tradition at Hesco, and to do this, we rely on an exceptional workforce as well as strong long-term relationships with raw material and component suppliers. Our proven processes and systems combine with extensive knowledge and experience to ensure we can quickly increase production output by a multiple of four or five within a matter of weeks, all without compromising quality and attention to detail." There will be a ceremony recognizing all winners this fall at Fort Belvoir, Virginia, USA. About Hesco Hesco (www.hesco.com) is a world leader and innovator in defense, perimeter protection and security systems, including hostile vehicle mitigation barriers, flood barriers, safe haven bunkers and body armor. Hesco is synonymous with force protection and is recognized across its industry for its commitment to saving lives, property and the environment, whenever and wherever it is needed. SOURCE HESCO Group Related Links http://www.hesco.com HILLSDALE, Mich., Aug. 3, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Hillsdale Academy, an independent, classical K-12 school located on the campus of Hillsdale College, today announced it will have five rising seniors competing in the National Merit competition during the 2017-18 school year. Elizabeth Bianchi, Michael Craig, Caroline Culjak, Nicholas Rush, and Leo Schlueter have all advanced to semifinalist status in the competition. "Elizabeth, Michael, Caroline, Nicholas, and Leo join a long list of Academy students who have represented the school in the National Merit competition," said Dr. Kenneth Calvert, Hillsdale Academy headmaster. "For the third time in the history of our school, we've had five students reach semifinalist status. This puts us on par with some of the top high schools in the state of Michigan." The National Merit Scholarship program honors students who show exceptional academic ability and potential for success in rigorous college studies. The competition is open to all U.S. high school students who meet entry requirements. Semifinalists represent the top 0.5 percent of a state's senior students. About Hillsdale Academy Hillsdale Academy is an independent, classical K-12 day school located on the campus of Hillsdale College. A rigorous course of study is combined with the strong conviction that the biblical and classical virtues are necessary in the formation of the American citizen. The school was established out of the conviction that modern American education was in need of profound reform. More information at academy.hillsdale.edu. About Hillsdale College Hillsdale College, founded in 1844, has built a national reputation through its classical liberal arts core curriculum and its principled refusal to accept federal or state taxpayer subsidies, even indirectly in the form of student grants or loans. It also conducts an outreach effort promoting civil and religious liberty, including a free monthly speech digest, Imprimis, with a circulation of more than 3.6 million. More information at hillsdale.edu. SOURCE Hillsdale College Related Links http://hillsdale.edu Sellers completed his bachelor's with high honors at Hillsdale College in 1985 before going on to earn his Juris Doctor in 1988 from the University of Alabama School of Law and an LL.M in taxation in 1989 from New York University. Hailing from Montgomery, Ala., Sellers practiced law as a partner at Balch & Bingham, LLP, before being tapped to fill the seat formerly held by now-Chief Justice Lyn Stuart. He brings 28 years of legal experience dealing with taxation, business organizations and finance to his position on the court, including litigation against the Internal Revenue Service and the Alabama Department of Revenue. While at Hillsdale, Sellers studied history, political economy and English. He also engaged in campus leadership as president of history honorary Phi Alpha Theta and participation in the Hillsdale chapter of InterVarsity Christian Fellowship. Sellers has continued this pattern of investment in his community through participation in civic organizations like the Rotary Club of Montgomery, The YMCA of Greater Montgomery, the River Region United Way campaign, the Fair Ballot Commission and the Alabama State Council on the Arts, among others. Additionally, he has served as a member of the Electoral College in four presidential elections and was awarded the President's Award in 2012 for his service to the Alabama Bar Association. Sellers resides in Montgomery with his wife, Lee, and their three children. They are members of Trinity Presbyterian Church. About Hillsdale College Hillsdale College, founded in 1844, has built a national reputation through its classical liberal arts core curriculum and its principled refusal to accept federal or state taxpayer subsidies, even indirectly in the form of student grants or loans. It also conducts an outreach effort promoting civil and religious liberty, including a free monthly speech digest, Imprimis, with a circulation of more than 3.6 million. More information is available at hillsdale.edu. SOURCE Hillsdale College Related Links http://www.hillsdale.edu NEW YORK, Aug. 3, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Increasing demand for greenhouse films expected to drive the HALS market in the midterm The global Hindered Amine Light Stabilizers (HALS) market is projected to reach USD 1.15 billion by 2022, at a CAGR of 7.1% from 2017 to 2022. China is the largest consumer of HALS globally due to the increasing manufacturing and industrial activities across the country. The growing demand from the packaging and automotive industries due to the rapid urbanization and increasing population in China and other countries across the Asia Pacific region is driving the HALS market. HALS are majorly used in the packaging, construction, and automotive industries which are growing majorly in the Asia Pacific region due to the increasing population and changing lifestyles. The market is restrained due to high fluctuations in raw material prices as well as the high production cost of HALS. Read the full report: http://www.reportlinker.com/p05043157/Hindered-Amine-Light-Stabilizers-Market-by-Type-Application-and-Region-Global-Forecast-to.html Packaging, the largest growing end-use industry in the HALS market HALS are capable of protecting the packaging and its contents from discoloration, the damaging effects of UV radiation, providing superior quality, low volatility, and higher durability to packaging materials such as bottles, caps & closures, containers & drums, and films, among others. The key drivers in the growth of the market for HALS in this segment are the increasing disposable incomes, changing consumer lifestyles, increased use of plastics, and growing pharmaceutical, and food & beverage industries in countries such as China, India, Japan, the US, and Germany, among others. Asia Pacific, the largest and fastest-growing market for HALS The Asia Pacific region is the largest market for HALS globally. There is high potential for HALS in the Asia Pacific market due to high growth in the Chinese economy and rapid industrialization. China is the key consumer of HALS in the Asia Pacific region as well as globally. Further, the global shift in production capacity from the developed markets to the emerging markets is a major factor leading to the growth of HALS in this region. This study was validated through primary interviews conducted with various industry experts globally. These primary sources were divided by company, designation, and region. By Company Type: Tier 1 - 45%, Tier 2 - 22% and Tier 3 - 33% By Designation: C Level - 50%, Director Level - 10%, Others - 40% By Region: Europe - 37%, Middle East & Africa - 27%, North America - 18%, Asia-Pacific - 18% The report also includes company profiles and competitive strategies adopted by major market players such as BASF SE (Germany), Clariant AG (Switzerland), Cytec Solvay Group (Belgium), ADEKA CORPORATION (Japan), Addivant (US), Chitec Technology Co. Ltd. (Taiwan), SONGWON Industrial Co., Ltd. (Korea), Valtris Specialty Chemicals (US), and Double Bond Chemical Ind. Co. Ltd. (Taiwan), among others. Research Coverage: The report covers the HALS market and aims at estimating the market size and future growth potential of this market across different segments such as application, and region. Furthermore, the report also includes an in-depth competitive analysis of key market players, along with their company profiles, DIVE, recent developments, and key market strategies. The report will help the market leaders/new entrants in this market by providing them the closest approximations of the revenues in the HALS market. Reasons to Buy this Report: From an insight perspective, this research report has focused on various levels of analyses industry analysis (industry trends), market share analysis of top players, and company profiles, which together comprise and discuss basic views on the competitive landscape, emerging and high-growth segments of the HALS market, high-growth regions, and market drivers, restraints, and opportunities. The report provides insights on the following pointers: Market Penetration: Comprehensive information on HALS offered by the top players in the HALS market Product Development/Innovation: Detailed insights on upcoming technologies, R&D activities, and new product launches in the HALS market Market Development: Comprehensive information about lucrative markets the report analyzes the markets for HALS across regions Market Diversification: Exhaustive information about new products, untapped geographies, recent developments, and investments in the HALS market Competitive Assessment: In-depth assessment of market shares, strategies, products, and manufacturing capabilities of leading players in the HALS market Read the full report: http://www.reportlinker.com/p05043157/Hindered-Amine-Light-Stabilizers-Market-by-Type-Application-and-Region-Global-Forecast-to.html About Reportlinker ReportLinker is an award-winning market research solution. Reportlinker finds and organizes the latest industry data so you get all the market research you need - instantly, in one place. http://www.reportlinker.com __________________________ Contact Clare: [email protected] US: (339)-368-6001 Intl: +1 339-368-6001 SOURCE Reportlinker Related Links http://www.reportlinker.com MEMPHIS, Tenn., Aug. 3, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- The renovation of Bowles Hall, the historic residential college on the campus of the University of California, Berkeley, has received yet another honor, LEED Silver certification. Historic Bowles Hall on the campus of the University of California Berkeley was renovated by EdR and the Bowles Hall Foundation in 2016. The building recently earned LEED Silver certification. Bowles Hall was completely renovated in 2016 by the Bowles Hall Foundation and EdR (NYSE: EDR), one of the nation's largest developers, owners and managers of high quality collegiate housing. It first opened its doors in 1928 and was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1989. The renovation effort won the prestigious Innovator Award for Best Renovation of Existing University Housing and EdR president Tom Trubiana said the LEED Silver certification is another well-earned honor. "Given all of the historical preservation work required in this project, bringing Bowles Hall to any modern efficiency standard is an accomplishment," said Trubiana. "Earning this LEED Silver certification demonstrates our company's dedication to innovative thinking and sustainable construction practices." In addition to LEED standards, the renovation had to meet Historic Building Code requirements for life safety and ADA compliance. The renovation scored high marks for innovation in design and substantial improvements in water use efficiency. In addition to the LEED Silver standard, Bowles Hall performs 20 percent in excess of the California Energy Commission's Title 24 energy efficiency standards. "The revitalization of Bowles Hall continues to enrich the lives of students who live and learn there," said John Baker, president of the Bowles Hall Foundation. "This sustainability certification is another drawing card for students interested in pursuing their academic goals as a part of our unique residential college." The $39.5 million renovation and modernization of the building started in summer of 2015 and will serve University of California, Berkeley students for decades to come. About EdR EdR (NYSE:EDR) is one of America's largest owners, developers and managers of collegiate housing. EdR is a self-administered and self-managed real estate investment trust that owns or manages 81 communities with more than 42,900 beds serving 51 universities in 25 states. EdR is a member of the Russell 2000 Index, the S&P MidCap 400 and the Morgan Stanley REIT indices. For details, please visit the company's Web site at www.EdRtrust.com. For more information, contact: J. Drew Koester, Senior Vice President, Capital Markets and Investor Relations 901-259-2523 [email protected] For media information or photography, contact: Craig Wack, PR Coordinator 901-252-6809 [email protected] Safe Harbor Statement under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 Statements about the company's business that are not historical facts are "forward-looking statements." Forward-looking statements are based on current expectations. You should not rely on our forward-looking statements because the matters they describe are subject to known and unknown risks and uncertainties that could cause the company's future results, performance, or achievements to differ significantly from the results, performance, or achievements expressed or implied by such statements. Such risks are set forth under the captions "Item 1A. Risk Factors" and "Forward-Looking Statements" in our annual report on Form 10-K and under the caption "Item 2. Management's Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations" (or similar captions) in our quarterly reports on Form 10-Q, and as described in our other filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Forward-looking statements speak only as of the dates on which they are made, and the company undertakes no obligation to update publicly or revise any guidance or other forward-looking statement, whether as a result of new information, future developments, or otherwise, unless required by law. SOURCE EdR Related Links http://www.edrtrust.com LOS ANGELES, Aug. 3, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Hyundai Hope On Wheels will today present Children's Hospital Los Angeles (CHLA) with a $50,000 Hyundai Impact Award. CHLA is one of 25 recipients of this year's award, which is given to pediatric oncology departments at select children's hospitals nationwide. The funds to CHLA will support the research of Dr. Yong-Mi Kim, focused on developing new ideas for the treatment of relapsed lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL). In 2017, Hope On Wheels will award $15 million toward pediatric cancer research and programs. This brings the organization's donation total to $130 million since Hyundai joined the fight against pediatric cancer in 1998. With this latest grant, CHLA has received more than $1.4 million from Hope On Wheels. "Throughout the country, talented doctors are working tirelessly to help kids fight cancer by conducting research or providing bedside care," said Scott Fink, chairman, Hyundai Hope On Wheels Board of Directors. "Our goal at Hope On Wheels is to provide these doctors with the grant funds they need to perform their lifesaving work. Superheroes come in all forms, but for children and families battling cancer superheroes wear lab coats." The $50,000 Hyundai Impact Award to Dr. Kim will be officially presented to CHLA today, Thursday, August 3, 2017 at 10 a.m. During the event, Los Angeles-area children battling cancer will participate in the program's signature Handprint Ceremony, in which they'll dip their hands in paint and place their handprints on a white 2017 Hyundai Santa Fe. Their colorful handprints on the official Hope Vehicle represent their individual and collective journeys, hopes and dreams. "This award will support our investigations to discover how leukemia cells use bone marrow as a safe haven to evade treatment," said Kim, of The Saban Research Institute of Children's Hospital Los Angeles. "The research will help us understand why relapse occurs and how to treat resistant cancer cells more effectively." Doctors and researchers that receive a grant from Hope On Wheels are named Hyundai Scholars and are presented with a special lab coat. This year, Hope On Wheels will further recognize its Hyundai Scholars for their incredible efforts on behalf of children battling cancer through a campaign called "Superheroes Wear Lab Coats." The video series will showcase their lifesaving work. To learn more about the campaign, please visit HyundaiHopeOnWheels.org. For more information about Hyundai Hope On Wheels and to view a complete list of this year's grant winners, please visit HyundaiHopeOnWheels.org/research . Follow us on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram at facebook.com/HyundaiHopeOnWheels, twitter.com/HopeOnWheels or instagram.com/HyundaiHopeOnWheels. HYUNDAI HOPE ON WHEELS Hyundai Hope On Wheels is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization that is committed to finding a cure for childhood cancer. Launched in 1998, Hyundai Hope On Wheels provides grants to eligible institutions nationwide that are pursuing life-saving research and innovative treatments for the disease. HHOW is one of the largest non-profit funders of pediatric cancer research in the country, and primary funding for Hyundai Hope On Wheels comes from Hyundai Motor America and its more than 835 U.S. dealers. Since its inception, Hyundai Hope On Wheels has awarded more than $130 million towards childhood cancer research in pursuit of a cure. HYUNDAI MOTOR AMERICA Hyundai Motor America, headquartered in Fountain Valley, Calif., is a subsidiary of Hyundai Motor Company of Korea. Hyundai vehicles are distributed throughout the United States by Hyundai Motor America and are sold and serviced through 835 dealerships nationwide. All new Hyundai vehicles sold in the U.S. are covered by the Hyundai Assurance program, which includes a 5-year/60,000-mile fully-transferable new vehicle limited warranty, Hyundai's 10-year/100,000-mile powertrain limited warranty and five years of complimentary Roadside Assistance. For more details on Hyundai Assurance, please visit www.HyundaiAssurance.com Please visit our media website at www.hyundainews.com Hyundai Motor America on Twitter | YouTube | Facebook SOURCE Hyundai Hope On Wheels Related Links http://www.hyundaihopeonwheels.org A plane to test its new Rolls-Royce engine could have travelled somewhere else, maybe outside the US, but it chose to fly around for 18 hours and draw itself over the skies of the US. By India Today Web Desk: If one gets to test a luxury airliner fitted with a new engine, one might take it to an exotic destination. But Dreamliner fitted with a new Rolls-Royce engine chose to fly and paint itself on the skies of the US - fun-tastic! Boeing, famous for its two-engine jet liners called 'Dreamliners', is one of the biggest in the aviation industry and has improved the air experience drastically for its users as well as the aviation industry. advertisement Dreamliner series was created for a luxury experience that Boeing launched in back in 2003. The series has incomparable fuel efficiency which helps airlines to go for non-stop routes profitably. But, it isn't the only thing that the giant luxury airliner is doing mid-air. Apart from giving a comfortable and luxurious experience to its customers, it is also flying mid-air drawing the shape of the Dreamliner. The Boeing Dreamliner has a specific design when it comes to exteriors, which is easily recognisable to anyone. Recently, the Boeing Dreamliners were observed to be drawing "Dreamliners" in the air too. The reason why Boeing decided to draw the 787 Dreamliner's outline in air was because it had to undergo an 18-hour live engine test for its new Rolls-Royce engine. The giant airliner had to fly for 17 hours and 46 minutes covering 15,766 miles which is longer than the longest commercial route that links Doha, Qatar to Auckland, New Zealand (16 hours 10 minutes, distance of 9,021 miles). The Dreamliner is scheduled to land in Seattle at 9:24 PDT. You can also watch the test live here. According to Flightradar24, a website which enables anyone to track air traffic around the world, Boeing Dreamliner flight BOE004 which left from Seattle, US was seen making a shape of the actual Dreamliner in the air over many parts of the US. Here's how Boeing is painting itself all over the US: When you have to test your new @RollsRoyce engine for 17 hours, you might as well have a bit of fun. pic.twitter.com/8IrBDzomHH- Flightradar24 (@flightradar24) August 3, 2017 Isn't it amazing? --- ENDS --- Marc Torchio said, although he's been to the Great Wall many times, he never imagined seeing it from the sky. He thanked I'm In China for sharing a view he would remember for a life time. The 60 hours of celebrations will conclude in spectacular fashion with fireworks in Xiangjiang, where the knowledge seekers will also learn the art of huaguxi, or flower drum opera from a master. "I'm In China" project is a new initiative that brings a new way of exchanging cultures and values and gives non-Chinese a chance to become a cultural ambassador. As part of the Global Recruitment program to invite foreign natives to experience China, winners of the contest get to indulge in many adventures and see a truly unique side of China. I'm In China is a new door opening to the world in the 21st century. With embracing arms, the program welcomes friends from all over the globe to see China for themselves. This season of recruitment will run all of August. During this time, more than 20 explorers will experience unique jobs in China in regions like Sichuan, Hunan, and Hainan, just to name a few. As part of the My Chinese Working Day series, explorers will be filmed as they try being Chinese for a day. The series will be broadcasted to the world through many multi-media channels. Visit I'm In China's website to find out more about Global Recruitment and how you can be a part of the experience! Official website: iaminchina.cn SOURCE I'm In China Program Related Links http://iaminchina.cn BRUSSELS, August 3, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Following the publication of a 94-page report by Amnesty International on 2nd August 2017, "Caught in a web of repression: Iran's human rights defenders under attack" (https://www.amnesty.org.uk/files/2017-08/Iran%20HRD%20report.pdf?H8bShop765Jqt8yeFVE91EJ37avGEnFM), the Friends of a Free Iran in the European Parliament once again call on the EU and European governments to predicate their relationships with Iran on halting executions and improvement in human rights and women rights. "The Iranian authorities have waged a 'vicious' crackdown on human rights defenders since Hassan Rouhani became president, demonising and imprisoning activists who dare to stand up for people's rights," Amnesty International said. The report provides a comprehensive overview of the crackdown targeting activists from key battlegrounds for human rights in Iran, including anti-death penalty campaigners, women's rights activists, trade unionists, minority rights activists and human rights lawyers. Amnesty is calling on the EU to speak out in the strongest terms against the persecution of human rights defenders in the country and insists, "the EU, must not stay silent over the outrageous treatment of human rights defenders in Iran. Instead of appeasing Iranian officials, the EU should forcefully call for the immediate and unconditional release of all those jailed for their peaceful human rights activism and for an end to the misuse of the justice system to silence activists." Friends of a Free Iran in the European Parliament (FOFI) is also alarmed of the reports on 101 executions carried out in Iran in July 2017, which include two women, dozens of youngsters and two public hangings. Hassan Rouhani has proven not to be a moderate. Over 3,000 were hanged during his first term in office. In July, 265 members of the European Parliament signed a joint declaration, calling on the EU and European governments to predicate their ties with Iran on improvements in the situation of human rights. In these circumstances, we are deeply concerned that the European Union's Foreign Policy Chief Federica Mogherini will travel to Tehran on August 5 to attend the inauguration of Rouhani's 2nd term. Such a visit will only embolden the mullahs to continue their repressive actions against the Iranian people, with EU's blessing. It will also send a wrong message to the people of Iran who look at Europe to defend their rights. Gerard Deprez, MEP Chair, Friends of a Free Iran European Parliament Friends of a Free Iran (FoFI) is an informal group in the European Parliament which was formed in 2003 and enjoys the active support of many MEPs from various political groups Chair: Gerard DEPREZ (ALDE) Vice-Chairs : Tunne KELAM (EPP), Louis MICHEL (ALDE), Ryszard CZARNECKI EP Vice-President, Eduard KUKAN (EPP), Jan ZAHRADIL (ECR), Jose BOVE (Greens), Marian HARKIN (ALDE) Members of the Board: Jarosaw WAESA (EPP), Emma McCLARKIN (ECR), Beatriz Becerra (ALDE), Jude KIRTON-DARLING (S&D), Richard ASHWORTH (ECR), Stanislav POLCAK (EPP), Svetoslav MALINOV (EPP), Julie WARD (S&D), Rina Ronja KARI (GUE/NGL), Petri SARVAMAA (EPP),Tadeusz ZWIEFKA (EPP) SOURCE Friends of a Free Iran, European Parliament NEW YORK, Aug. 3, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Information Builders, a leader in business intelligence (BI) and analytics, data integrity, and integration solutions, today announced that it was recognized as an Overall Leader in Dresner Advisory Services' Industry Excellence Awards for the third consecutive year. The award is based on Information Builders' positioning in the 2017 Wisdom of Crowds BI Market Study, in which the company earned leading scores in the Customer Experience and Vendor Credibility categories. Tweet This: [email protected] honored with Industry Excellence Award from @howarddresner for 3rd year running! http://ow.ly/WqSc30e7cfO #BI #analytics The 2017 Wisdom of Crowds BI Market Study used a 33-criteria performance measurement system to evaluate 26 vendors across areas including product/technology, sales and service, value, and confidence. Information Builders consistently scored above the sample average in nearly all categories, and earned a perfect "Recommend" score from its customers. As a result, the company was positioned as an Overall Leader in the study for the eighth consecutive year. Information Builders' WebFOCUS BI and analytics platform enables users to execute smarter business from trusted data. Whether it's an experienced analyst, a knowledge worker, or an external partner with limited technical abilities, WebFOCUS provides the right kind of information delivery approach to ensure that individuals have easy and instant access to the information they need at the point of decision-making. Incredibly scalable, the technology can easily adapt to a diverse range of data needs across organizations of all sizes and industries. Howard Dresner, founder, Dresner Advisory Services, said: "We implemented the Industry Excellence Awards to recognize the BI and analytics providers that are truly impacting the industry, as evidenced by the feedback from their customer communities. Since the program's inception, Information Builders has maintained its position as an Overall Leader and we congratulate them on their performance again this year." Gerald Cohen, president and CEO, Information Builders said: "Information Builders has always believed that a company's success increases exponentially as BI and analytics technology becomes more pervasive throughout the organization. As such, we've developed a wide array of capabilities that ensure every user can benefit from the insights WebFOCUS provides. We're honored by this latest recognition from Dresner Advisory Services, as it underscores that our diverse customer base is deriving actionable intelligence and using our technology to fuel smarter business decisions." About Information Builders Information Builders provides solutions for business intelligence (BI), analytics, data integration, and data quality that help drive performance improvements, innovation, and value. Through one set of powerful products, we enable organizations to serve everyone analysts, non-technical users, even partners, customers, and citizens with better data and analytics. Our dedication to customer success is unmatched with thousands of organizations relying on us as their trusted partner. Founded in 1975, Information Builders is headquartered in New York, NY, with global offices, and remains one of the largest independent, privately held companies in the industry. Visit us at informationbuilders.com, follow us on Twitter at @infobldrs, like us on Facebook, and visit our LinkedIn page. Press Contacts Kathleen Moran Information Builders (917) 339-6313 [email protected] Kate Clinton LEWIS (781) 761-4500 [email protected] SOURCE Information Builders Related Links http://www.informationbuilders.com HOUSTON, Aug. 2, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Second Quarter Highlights: Revenues of $46.0 million , a 27% increase over second quarter 2016 , a 27% increase over second quarter 2016 Net loss of $10.4 million , or $(0.88) per share, compared to a net loss of $25.3 million , or $(2.22) per share, or an adjusted net loss of $21.2 million , or $(1.85) per share in second quarter 2016 , or per share, compared to a net loss of , or per share, or an adjusted net loss of , or per share in second quarter 2016 Operating margin improvement to (8)%, compared to (46)% in second quarter 2016 Adjusted EBITDA of $13.6 million , compared to $(3.3) million in second quarter 2016 , compared to in second quarter 2016 Net cash inflows from operations of $1.7 million , compared to $(14.8) million in second quarter 2016 , compared to in second quarter 2016 Significant increase in backlog of multi-client new venture programs, and when combined with Imaging Services, resulted in $48 million of backlog at June 30th , compared to $25 million sequentially and $30 million one year ago Year-to-Date Highlights: Revenues of $78.6 million , a 34% increase over first half of 2016 , a 34% increase over first half of 2016 Net loss of $33.8 million , or $(2.85) per share, compared to a net loss of $60.4 million , or $(5.48) per share in the first half of 2016 , or per share, compared to a net loss of , or per share in the first half of 2016 Adjusted net loss of $28.8 million , or $(2.43) per share, compared to an adjusted net loss of $56.2 million , or $(5.10) per share in the first half of 2016 , or per share, compared to an adjusted net loss of , or per share in the first half of 2016 Adjusted EBITDA of $13.6 million , compared to $(20.5) million in the first half of 2016 , compared to in the first half of 2016 Net cash inflows from operations of $3.6 million , compared to $(12.3) million in the first half of 2016 ION Geophysical Corporation (NYSE: IO) today reported a second quarter 2017 net loss of $10.4 million, or $(0.88) per share, on revenues of $46.0 million, compared to a net loss of $25.3 million, or $(2.22) per share, on revenues of $36.2 million in second quarter 2016. Excluding special items one year ago, the Company's second quarter 2016 adjusted net loss was $21.2 million, or $(1.85) per share. A reconciliation of special items to the financial results can be found in the tables of this press release. The Company reported an Adjusted EBITDA of $13.6 million for second quarter 2017, compared to $(3.3) million in the same period last year. A reconciliation of Adjusted EBITDA to the closest comparable GAAP numbers can be found in the tables of this press release. Net cash flows from operations were $1.7 million during the second quarter 2017, compared to $(14.8) million in second quarter 2016. Total net cash flows including investing and financing activities were $(6.4) million, compared to $(24.2) million in second quarter 2016. Brian Hanson, ION's President and Chief Executive Officer, commented, "Over the last 18 months, we have targeted opportunities less dependent on cycle recovery, such as specific geographical areas and production optimization offerings, and we are starting to see these efforts pay off. Similar to the first quarter, our second quarter revenues improved significantly driven by continued strong sales of our 3D multi-client reimaging programs as well as a new 2D program we launched during the quarter. We expect this momentum to continue in the back half of the year, partially driven by the significant backlog we've built. Our E&P Technology & Services segment ended the quarter with $48 million in backlog of multi-client and data processing programs, compared to $25 million at the end of the first quarter and $30 million in the second quarter of 2016. Our multi-client backlog is the highest it's been since the third quarter of 2013. "We are continuing to see new venture activity pick up. In our first quarter earnings call, we mentioned we had sanctioned three new programs that met our strict underwriting standards that we expected to launch within the next 90 days. Of the three we sanctioned, one has been acquired, one is in progress and the third we anticipate starting acquisition in the next month. "Our E&P Operations Optimization segment continues to be hampered by low utilization levels and day rates among our contractor customers. While our Optimization Software & Services revenues were flat, our Devices revenues increased 16% due in part to new technology sales to non-traditional customers for scientific and military applications and from incremental sales from recently commercialized products. "In our Ocean Bottom Seismic (OBS) Services segment, we are actively pursuing multiple tenders for longer-term work while our crew remained idle during the quarter. Aligned with oil and gas companies' focus on production, we expect significant improvement in the overall OBS market in 2017 and beyond. Unfortunately due to political issues in the geographic areas where our current product technology is most competitive, we no longer envision the crew going back to work in the near-term. "The new OBS technology we mentioned last quarter, 4Sea, opens a much larger market due to the system's increased flexibility and efficiency. We introduced this system to all major consumers of OBS projects at the European Association of Geophysical Contractors annual meeting in June and it was extremely well received. We have worked quietly for over three years to develop this system and believe it will be extremely competitive. We are now bidding all future projects that start in late 2018 and beyond with ION's new 4Sea system." For the first half of 2017, the Company reported a net loss of $33.8 million, or $(2.85) per share, compared to a net loss of $60.4 million, or $(5.48) per share in the first half of 2016. Excluding special items in both periods, the Company reported an adjusted net loss of $28.8 million, or $(2.43) per share, compared to an adjusted net loss of $56.2 million, or $(5.10) per share in the first half of 2016. First half of 2017 Adjusted EBITDA was $13.6 million, compared to $(20.5) million in the first half of 2016. Net cash flows from operations were $3.6 million, compared to $(12.3) million in the first half of 2016. Total net cash flows including investing and financing activities were $(9.4) million, compared to $(32.5) million in the first half of 2016. As of June 30, 2017, the Company had total liquidity of $55.0 million, consisting of $43.3 million of cash on hand and $11.7 million of undrawn borrowing base availability under its revolving credit facility. The borrowing base under the maximum $40.0 revolving credit facility was $21.7 million and there was $10.0 million of indebtedness outstanding at June 30, 2017. The current available amount has been reduced due to a decline in eligible receivables that collateralize the facility. SECOND QUARTER 2017 The Company's segment revenues for the second quarter were as follows (in thousands): Three Months Ended June 30, 2017 2016 % Change E&P Technology & Services $ 33,882 $ 18,618 82 % E&P Operations Optimization 12,119 11,101 9 % Ocean Bottom Seismic Services 6,433 Total $ 46,001 $ 36,152 27 % Within the E&P Technology & Services segment, new venture revenues were $20.0 million, an increase of over 300% from second quarter 2016; data library revenues were $9.7 million, a 55% increase; and Imaging Services revenues were $4.2 million, a 46% decrease. The increase in new venture revenues was the result of continued revenue from the Company's 3D multi-client reimaging programs and a new 2D program that began in the second quarter. The 3D multi-client reimaging programs are offshore Mexico and Brazil and the other is a 2D multi-client program offshore West Africa that was acquired during the second quarter. The increase in data library sales spanned the breadth of the Company's diverse global portfolio without concentration in a particular geographic region. The decrease in Imaging Services revenues is a result of the shift the Company made to higher return multi-client programs. The imaging revenues from multi-client programs are reflected as part of new venture or data library revenues depending on the program status, whereas revenues from proprietary imaging programs are reflected as part of Imaging Services. The Imaging Services group is fully utilized, with a large portion of the Company's capacity dedicated to these higher return multi-client programs. Within the E&P Operations Optimization segment, Devices revenues were $7.7 million, a 16% increase from second quarter 2016. While Devices continues to be impacted by reduced seismic contractor activity, the increase in revenues are related to new system sales to non-traditional customers for scientific and military applications and from incremental sales from recently commercialized products. Optimization Software & Services revenues were $4.4 million, flat compared to the revenues from second quarter 2016. Excluding the effect of foreign currencies, Optimization Software & Services revenues were up 11% in local GBP currency. The OBS Services segment contributed no revenues during the second quarter 2017 as the crew has remained idle since completion of a survey offshore Nigeria in the third quarter 2016. Consolidated gross margin was 34%, compared to 13% in second quarter 2016 and 19% in first quarter 2017. Gross margin in E&P Technology & Services increased to 35%, up from (19)% one year ago. This increase was the result of the increase in revenues associated with the Company's higher margin 3D reimaging programs in addition to the increase in data library sales. E&P Operations Optimization gross margin increased to 52%, up from 46% in second quarter 2016, the result of the increase in Devices' revenues. These increases were partially offset by the decline in gross margin in OBS Services as the crew remained idle in second quarter 2017. Consolidated operating expenses were $19.2 million, down 10% from $21.4 million in second quarter 2016. Operating margin was (8)%, compared to (46)% in second quarter 2016. The improvement in operating margin was the result of a higher margin revenue mix, together with the impact of the $95 million annualized cost reduction initiatives enacted during 2014 - 2016. YEAR-TO-DATE 2017 The Company's segment revenues for the first half of the year were as follows (in thousands): Six Months Ended June 30, 2017 2016 % Change E&P Technology & Services $ 57,192 $ 31,636 81 % E&P Operations Optimization 21,365 20,748 3 % Ocean Bottom Seismic Services 6,433 Total $ 78,557 $ 58,817 34 % Within the E&P Technology & Services segment, new venture revenues were $26.9 million, an almost 250% increase from the first half of 2016; data library revenues were $20.3 million, a 93% increase; and Imaging Services revenues were $9.9 million, a 25% decrease. The changes in the first half revenues are consistent with the changes as described in the second quarter section above. Within the E&P Operations Optimization segment, Devices revenues were $12.7 million, a 6% increase from the first half of 2016. Optimization Software & Services revenues were $8.7 million, flat compared to the revenues from the first half of 2016. Excluding the effect of foreign currencies, Optimization Software & Services revenues were up 13% in local GBP currency. The OBS Services segment contributed no revenues during the first half of 2017 as the crew remained idle during the period. Consolidated gross margin was 28%, compared to (7)% in the first half of 2016. Gross margin in E&P Technology & Services improved to 28%, up from (42)% in the first half of 2016. This increase was the result of the increase in revenues associated with the Company's higher margin 3D reimaging programs in addition to the increase in data libraries sales. E&P Operations Optimization gross margin increased to 52%, up from 47% in the first half of 2016, a result of the increase in Devices' revenues. Consolidated operating expenses were $39.2 million, down 8% from $42.6 million in the first half of 2016. Operating margin was (22)%, compared to (79)% in the first half of 2016. The increase in operating margin was due to the increase in higher margin revenues, in addition to the decrease in operating expenses due to the Company's cost reduction efforts. CONFERENCE CALL The Company has scheduled a conference call for Thursday, August 3, 2017, at 10:00 a.m. Eastern Time that will include a slide presentation to be posted in the Investor Relations section of the ION website by 9:00 a.m. Eastern Time. To participate in the conference call, dial (877) 407-0672 at least 10 minutes before the call begins and ask for the ION conference call. A replay of the call will be available approximately two hours after the live broadcast ends and will be accessible until August 17, 2017. To access the replay, dial (877) 660-6853 and use pass code 13665027#. Investors, analysts and the general public will also have the opportunity to listen to the conference call live over the Internet by visiting www.iongeo.com . An archive of the webcast will be available shortly after the call on the Company's website. About ION ION is a leading provider of technology-driven solutions to the global oil & gas industry. ION's offerings are designed to help companies reduce risk and optimize assets throughout the E&P lifecycle. For more information, visit iongeo.com . Contact Steve Bate Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer +1.281.552.3011 The information included herein contains certain forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933 and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. These forward-looking statements may include future sales, earnings and market growth, timing of sales, future liquidity and cash levels, future estimated revenues and earnings, sales expected to result from backlog, benefits expected to result from OceanGeo, expected outcome of litigation and other statements that are not of historical fact. Actual results may vary materially from those described in these forward-looking statements. All forward-looking statements reflect numerous assumptions and involve a number of risks and uncertainties. These risks and uncertainties include risks associated with pending and future litigation, including the risk that any additional damages or adverse rulings in the WesternGeco litigation could have a material adverse effect on the Company's financial results and liquidity; the timing and development of the Company's products and services and market acceptance of the Company's new and revised product offerings; the performance of OceanGeo; the Company's level and terms of indebtedness; competitors' product offerings and pricing pressures resulting therefrom; the relatively small number of customers that the Company currently relies upon; the fact that a significant portion of the Company's revenues is derived from foreign sales; that sources of capital may not prove adequate; the Company's inability to produce products to preserve and increase market share; collection of receivables; and technological and marketplace changes affecting the Company's product lines. Additional risk factors, which could affect actual results, are disclosed by the Company from time to time in its filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission ("SEC"), including its Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2016 and its Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q and Current Reports on Form 8-K filed during 2017. Tables to follow ION GEOPHYSICAL CORPORATION AND SUBSIDIARIES CONSOLIDATED STATEMENTS OF OPERATIONS (In thousands, except per share data) (Unaudited) Three Months Ended June 30, Six Months Ended June 30, 2017 2016 2017 2016 Service revenues $ 34,454 $ 25,430 $ 58,282 $ 38,586 Product revenues 11,547 10,722 20,275 20,231 Total net revenues 46,001 36,152 78,557 58,817 Cost of services 24,827 27,175 47,126 53,012 Cost of products 5,556 4,124 9,712 9,882 Gross profit (loss) 15,618 4,853 21,719 (4,077) Operating expenses: Research, development and engineering 4,107 4,761 7,602 10,370 Marketing and sales 4,931 4,684 9,417 8,694 General, administrative and other operating expenses 10,152 11,996 22,184 23,576 Total operating expenses 19,190 21,441 39,203 42,640 Loss from operations (3,572) (16,588) (17,484) (46,717) Interest expense, net (4,241) (4,702) (8,705) (9,436) Other income (expense), net 192 (1,717) (4,876) (1,597) Loss before income taxes (7,621) (23,007) (31,065) (57,750) Income tax expense 2,402 2,256 1,984 2,549 Net loss (10,023) (25,263) (33,049) (60,299) Net income attributable to noncontrolling interests (418) (79) (734) (57) Net loss attributable to ION $ (10,441) $ (25,342) $ (33,783) $ (60,356) Net loss per share: Basic $ (0.88) $ (2.22) $ (2.85) $ (5.48) Diluted $ (0.88) $ (2.22) $ (2.85) $ (5.48) Weighted average number of common shares outstanding: Basic 11,875 11,415 11,847 11,008 Diluted 11,875 11,415 11,847 11,008 ION GEOPHYSICAL CORPORATION AND SUBSIDIARIES CONSOLIDATED BALANCE SHEETS (In thousands) (Unaudited) ASSETS June 30, 2017 December 31, 2016 Current assets: Cash and cash equivalents $ 43,272 $ 52,652 Accounts receivable, net 18,992 20,770 Unbilled receivables 18,883 13,415 Inventories 14,623 15,241 Prepaid expenses and other current assets 5,866 9,559 Total current assets 101,636 111,637 Property, plant, equipment and seismic rental equipment, net 58,899 67,488 Multi-client data library, net 96,844 105,935 Goodwill 23,354 22,208 Intangible assets, net 2,386 3,103 Other assets 1,733 2,845 Total assets $ 284,852 $ 313,216 LIABILITIES AND EQUITY Current liabilities: Current maturities of long-term debt $ 39,983 $ 14,581 Accounts payable 24,478 26,889 Accrued expenses 30,266 26,240 Accrued multi-client data library royalties 22,651 23,663 Deferred revenue 9,276 3,709 Total current liabilities 126,654 95,082 Long-term debt, net of current maturities 116,206 144,209 Other long-term liabilities 18,577 20,527 Total liabilities 261,437 259,818 Equity: Common stock 119 118 Additional paid-in capital 900,574 899,198 Accumulated deficit (858,462) (824,679) Accumulated other comprehensive loss (20,032) (21,748) Total stockholders' equity 22,199 52,889 Noncontrolling interest 1,216 509 Total equity 23,415 53,398 Total liabilities and equity $ 284,852 $ 313,216 ION GEOPHYSICAL CORPORATION AND SUBSIDIARIES CONSOLIDATED STATEMENTS OF CASH FLOWS (In thousands) (Unaudited) Three Months Ended June 30, Six Months Ended June 30, 2017 2016 2017 2016 Cash flows from operating activities: Net loss $ (10,023) $ (25,263) $ (33,049) $ (60,299) Adjustments to reconcile net loss to cash provided by operating activities: Depreciation and amortization (other than multi-client data library) 4,353 5,744 9,030 11,416 Amortization of multi-client data library 12,675 7,105 21,933 14,244 Stock-based compensation expense 535 867 1,169 1,610 Loss on extinguishment of debt 2,182 2,182 Accrual for loss contingency related to legal proceedings 5,000 Deferred income taxes 977 327 (932) 381 Change in operating assets and liabilities: Accounts receivable (2,681) (5,231) 2,075 23,980 Unbilled receivables (194) (4,254) (5,542) (2,042) Inventories 714 979 440 1,329 Accounts payable, accrued expenses and accrued royalties (3,571) 5,040 (6,059) (5,518) Deferred revenue (1,672) 1,678 5,521 1,151 Other assets and liabilities 543 (3,992) 4,053 (773) Net cash provided by (used in) operating activities 1,656 (14,818) 3,639 (12,339) Cash flows from investing activities: Cash invested in multi-client data library (5,119) (2,321) (8,482) (8,648) Purchase of property, plant, equipment and seismic rental assets (866) (74) (915) (340) Net cash used in investing activities (5,985) (2,395) (9,397) (8,988) Cash flows from financing activities: Borrowings under revolving line of credit 15,000 15,000 Repurchase of common stock (964) Payments on notes payable and long-term debt (1,451) (2,574) (3,157) (4,786) Costs associated with issuance of debt (4,859) (6,174) Payment to repurchase bonds (15,000) (15,000) Costs associated with issuance of equity (123) Other financing activities (10) (173) 13 Net cash used in financing activities (1,461) (7,433) (3,453) (11,911) Effect of change in foreign currency exchange rates on cash and cash equivalents (578) 409 (169) 738 Net decrease in cash and cash equivalents (6,368) (24,237) (9,380) (32,500) Cash and cash equivalents at beginning of period 49,640 76,670 52,652 84,933 Cash and cash equivalents at end of period $ 43,272 $ 52,433 $ 43,272 $ 52,433 ION GEOPHYSICAL CORPORATION AND SUBSIDIARIES SUMMARY OF SEGMENT INFORMATION (In thousands) (Unaudited) Three Months Ended June 30, Six Months Ended June 30, 2017 2016 2017 2016 Net revenues: E&P Technology & Services: New Venture $ 19,986 $ 4,579 $ 26,935 $ 7,885 Data Library 9,710 6,275 20,316 10,547 Total multi-client revenues 29,696 10,854 47,251 18,432 Imaging Services 4,186 7,764 9,941 13,204 Total 33,882 18,618 57,192 31,636 E&P Operations Optimization: Devices 7,679 6,626 12,669 11,985 Optimization Software & Services 4,440 4,475 8,696 8,763 Total 12,119 11,101 21,365 20,748 Ocean Bottom Seismic Services 6,433 6,433 Total $ 46,001 $ 36,152 $ 78,557 $ 58,817 Gross profit (loss): E&P Technology & Services $ 11,921 $ (3,533) $ 15,931 $ (13,306) E&P Operations Optimization 6,258 5,064 11,045 9,783 Ocean Bottom Seismic Services (2,561) 3,322 (5,257) (554) Total $ 15,618 $ 4,853 $ 21,719 $ (4,077) Gross margin: E&P Technology & Services 35 % (19) % 28 % (42) % E&P Operations Optimization 52 % 46 % 52 % 47 % Ocean Bottom Seismic Services % 52 % % (9) % Total 34 % 13 % 28 % (7) % Income (loss) from operations: E&P Technology & Services $ 6,353 $ (9,410) $ 5,257 $ (24,124) E&P Operations Optimization 3,022 1,882 4,571 3,483 Ocean Bottom Seismic Services (3,860) 360 (7,868) (7,271) Support and other (9,087) (9,420) (19,444) (18,805) Loss from operations (3,572) (16,588) (17,484) (46,717) Interest expense, net (4,241) (4,702) (8,705) (9,436) Other income (expense), net 192 (1,717) (4,876) (1) (1,597) Loss before income taxes $ (7,621) $ (23,007) $ (31,065) $ (57,750) (1) Includes a $5 million loss contingency related to the Company's patent litigation with WesternGeco. ION GEOPHYSICAL CORPORATION AND SUBSIDIARIES Reconciliation of Adjusted EBITDA to Net Loss (Non-GAAP Measure) (In thousands) (Unaudited) The term Adjusted EBITDA represents net loss before interest expense, interest income, income taxes, depreciation and amortization charges, and other non-cash charges including an accrual for loss contingency related to legal proceedings. Adjusted EBITDA is not a measure of financial performance under generally accepted accounting principles and should not be considered in isolation from or as a substitute for net income (loss) or cash flow measures prepared in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles or as a measure of profitability or liquidity. Additionally, Adjusted EBITDA may not be comparable to other similarly titled measures of other companies. The Company has included Adjusted EBITDA as a supplemental disclosure because its management believes that Adjusted EBITDA provides useful information regarding our liquidity, ability to service debt and to fund capital expenditures and provides investors a helpful measure for comparing its operating performance with the performance of other companies that have different financing and capital structures or tax rates. Three Months Ended June 30, Six Months Ended June 30, 2017 2016 2017 2016 Net loss $ (10,023) $ (25,263) $ (33,049) $ (60,299) Interest expense, net 4,241 4,702 8,705 9,436 Income tax expense 2,402 2,256 1,984 2,549 Depreciation and amortization expense 17,028 12,849 30,963 25,660 Accrual for loss contingency related to legal proceedings 5,000 Loss on extinguishment of debt 2,182 2,182 Adjusted EBITDA $ 13,648 $ (3,274) $ 13,603 $ (20,472) ION GEOPHYSICAL CORPORATION AND SUBSIDIARIES Reconciliation of Special Items to Loss per Share (Non-GAAP Measure) (In thousands, except per share data) (Unaudited) The financial results are reported in accordance with GAAP. However, management believes that certain non-GAAP performance measures may provide users of this financial information, additional meaningful comparisons between current results and results in prior operating periods. One such non-GAAP financial measure is adjusted income (loss) from operations or adjusted net income (loss), which excludes certain charges or amounts. This adjusted income (loss) amount is not a measure of financial performance under GAAP. Accordingly, it should not be considered as a substitute for income (loss) from operations, net income (loss) or other income data prepared in accordance with GAAP. See the tables below for supplemental financial data and the corresponding reconciliation to GAAP financials for the three months ended June 30, 2016 and the six months ended June 30, 2017 and 2016: Three Months Ended June 30, 2016 As Reported Special Items As Adjusted Net revenues $ 36,152 $ $ 36,152 Cost of sales 31,299 (1,077) 30,222 Gross profit 4,853 1,077 5,930 Operating expenses 21,441 (932) 20,509 Loss from operations (16,588) 2,009 (1) (14,579) Interest expense, net (4,702) (4,702) Other income (expense), net (1,717) 2,182 (2) 465 Income tax expense 2,256 2,256 Net loss (25,263) 4,191 (21,072) Net income attributable to noncontrolling interest (79) (79) Net loss attributable to ION $ (25,342) $ 4,191 $ (21,151) Net loss per share: Basic $ (2.22) $ (1.85) Diluted $ (2.22) $ (1.85) Weighted average number of common shares outstanding: Basic 11,415 11,415 Diluted 11,415 11,415 Six Months Ended June 30, 2017 Six Months Ended June 30, 2016 As Reported Special Items As Adjusted As Reported Special Items As Adjusted Net revenues $ 78,557 $ $ 78,557 $ 58,817 $ $ 58,817 Cost of sales 56,838 56,838 62,894 (1,077) 61,817 Gross profit (loss) 21,719 21,719 (4,077) 1,077 (3,000) Operating expenses 39,203 39,203 42,640 (932) 41,708 Loss from operations (17,484) (17,484) (46,717) 2,009 (1) (44,708) Interest expense, net (8,705) (8,705) (9,436) (9,436) Other expense, net (4,876) 5,000 (3) 124 (1,597) 2,182 (2) 585 Income tax expense 1,984 1,984 2,549 2,549 Net loss (33,049) 5,000 (28,049) (60,299) 4,191 (56,108) Net income attributable to noncontrolling interest (734) (734) (57) (57) Net loss attributable to ION $ (33,783) $ 5,000 $ (28,783) $ (60,356) $ 4,191 $ (56,165) Net loss per share: Basic $ (2.85) $ (2.43) $ (5.48) $ (5.10) Diluted $ (2.85) $ (2.43) $ (5.48) $ (5.10) Weighted average number of common shares outstanding: Basic 11,847 11,847 11,008 11,008 Diluted 11,847 11,847 11,008 11,008 (1) Represents severance charges during the second quarter 2016. (2) Represents costs on extinguishment of debt associated with the Company's second quarter 2016 bond exchange. (3) Represents loss contingency accrual related to legal proceedings. SOURCE ION Geophysical Corporation Related Links http://www.iongeo.com Net income and adjusted income for the second quarter was $2.04 and $2.28 , respectively, per diluted common share. and , respectively, per diluted common share. Successful IPO of Safety, Income & Growth Inc. (NYSE: SAFE), the first publicly traded company exclusively focused on ground leases. Largest shareholder of SAFE (28% of shares outstanding). SAFE transactions generated a $179 million economic gain for iStar, comprised of: economic gain for iStar, comprised of: $123 million gain recorded in the second quarter 2017. gain recorded in the second quarter 2017. $56 million gain to be recorded retrospectively for the second quarter 2017 upon adoption of new accounting standards on January 1, 2018 . gain to be recorded retrospectively for the second quarter 2017 upon adoption of new accounting standards on . Judgment in favor of iStar on Bevard litigation, which generated $234 million of net proceeds and $125 million of income for iStar. Second Quarter 2017 Results iStar reported net income allocable to common shareholders for the second quarter of $177.5 million, or $2.04 per diluted common share, versus $38.1 million, or $0.37 per diluted common share for the second quarter 2016. Adjusted income allocable to common shareholders for the second quarter was $198.4 million, or $2.28 per diluted common share, versus $61.1 million, or $0.56 per diluted common share for the second quarter 2016. Net income and adjusted income for the quarter reflect $235 million of income from our previously announced transactions to form and capitalize Safety, Income and Growth, Inc. (NYSE:SAFE) and the successful outcome of the Bevard litigation with Lennar Corporation, net of costs. Adjusted income represents net income computed in accordance with GAAP, prior to the effects of certain non-cash items. The calculation of adjusted income and reconciliation to GAAP net income is presented in the financial tables that follow the text of this press release. The Company has published a supplemental to this earnings release which is available at www.istar.com in the "Investors" section. Safety, Income & Growth Inc. iStar formed SAFE to expand and efficiently capitalize iStar's ground lease business. iStar contributed to SAFE an initial portfolio of 12 assets, many of which iStar had owned for more than a decade, which had a gross book value of $223 million and a net book value of $161 million, net of $62 million of depreciation, on March 31, 2017. In March, SAFE completed a $227 million secured debt financing on the initial portfolio and distributed all of the proceeds of the financing to iStar. In April, through a merger and other transactions, two institutional investors acquired a 51% ownership interest in SAFE for $57.5 million, representing $20.00 per share, based on a total enterprise value of SAFE of $340 million, including the $227 million of in-place secured debt. iStar received the $57.5 million of cash proceeds from the acquisition transaction and retained a 49% interest in SAFE. On June 27th, SAFE completed its $205 million initial public offering (IPO) and a $45 million concurrent private placement of common stock to iStar, each at a price of $20.00 per share. After giving effect to the IPO and concurrent private placement, iStar held 28% of SAFE's outstanding common stock. As a result of the SAFE transactions, iStar: received approximately $285 million of cash proceeds, including $227 million of financing raised during the first quarter; of cash proceeds, including of financing raised during the first quarter; recorded $123 million of income in the second quarter, partially offset by $14 million of expensed IPO costs; of income in the second quarter, partially offset by of expensed IPO costs; expects to retrospectively record an additional gain of approximately $56 million in the second quarter 2017 when new revenue recognition accounting standards become effective on January 1, 2018 ; and in the second quarter 2017 when new revenue recognition accounting standards become effective on ; and owns 5,025,000 shares of SAFE (28% of shares outstanding). "We believe ground leases represent one of the most compelling investment opportunities in the real estate market. There are very few hard assets that offer safety in uncertain times, growing income in an environment in which rates remain at historically low levels, along with an opportunity for significant capital appreciation," said Jay Sugarman, chairman and chief executive officer. "We have created SAFE to allow iStar shareholders to benefit from what we believe is a large and attractive market opportunity." iStar will manage SAFE pursuant to a management agreement. After the first anniversary of SAFE's IPO, iStar will receive an annual management fee equal to 1% of SAFE's equity which will be paid in shares of SAFE stock. Following SAFE's IPO, iStar, along with two senior executives, have entered into a 10b5-1 stock purchase plan to purchase in the open market up to $25 million of additional SAFE common stock at prices below $20 per share. Portfolio Overview and Investment Activity At June 30, 2017, the Company's portfolio totaled $4.2 billion, which is gross of $375 million of accumulated depreciation and $18 million of general loan loss reserves and includes $96 million market value of SAFE shares as of June 30, 2017. iStar's strategy is to focus on finding investment opportunities within its real estate finance, net lease and ground leases businesses. In addition, the Company continues to make significant progress in developing and monetizing its operating properties and land & development assets. During the second quarter of 2017, the Company invested a total of $200 million associated with new investments (including SAFE), prior financing commitments and ongoing development across its four segments, and generated $441 million of proceeds from repayments and sales. Real Estate Finance iStar's real estate finance business targets sophisticated and innovative investors by providing one-stop capabilities that encompass financial alternatives ranging from full envelope senior loans to custom-tailored mezzanine and preferred equity capital positions. At June 30, 2017, the Company's real estate finance portfolio totaled $1.2 billion. The portfolio is categorized into iStar 3.0 loans, made post January 1, 2008, and legacy loans, which were all made prior to December 31, 2007. Real Estate Finance Statistics $ in millions iStar 3.0 Legacy Loans Gross book value $ 975 $ 213 % of total loan portfolio 82% 18% Performing loans $ 975 $ 24 Non-performing loans $ $ 189 % Performing / Non-performing 100% / 0% 11% / 89% First mortgages / senior loans 63% 27% Mezzanine / subordinated debt 37% 73% Total 100% 100% Wtd. avg. LTV (1) 66.1% n/a Unlevered yield (1) 9.7% 8.9% Wtd. avg. maturity (years) (1) 2.1 2.4 Note: Gross book value represents the carrying value of iStar's loans, gross of general reserves. (1) Includes performing loans only. Net Lease iStar's net lease business seeks to create stable cash flows through long-term leases to single tenants on its properties. The Company targets mission-critical facilities leased on a long-term basis to tenants, offering structured solutions that combine iStar's capabilities in underwriting, lease structuring, asset management and build-to-suit construction. At the end of the quarter, iStar's net lease portfolio totaled $1.4 billion, gross of $314 million of accumulated depreciation. The portfolio was comprised of $1.2 billion of wholly-owned assets, a $129 million equity investment in its net lease joint venture and the $96 million market value in shares of SAFE. Since 2014, the Company has invested in new net lease investments primarily through its net lease joint venture with a sovereign wealth fund, in which it holds a 52% interest. At the end of the quarter, the venture's balance sheet, gross of $23 million of accumulated depreciation, included $650 million of assets, $357 million of liabilities and $270 million of equity (net of a $23 million non-controlling interest). The overall net lease portfolio totaled 16 million square feet across 33 states. Occupancy for the portfolio was 98% at the end of the quarter, with a weighted average remaining lease term of 11.5 years. The net lease portfolio generated an unleveraged yield of 8.1% for the quarter. Operating Properties At the end of the quarter, iStar's operating property portfolio totaled $608 million, gross of $54 million of accumulated depreciation, and was comprised of $541 million of commercial and $67 million of residential real estate properties. Commercial Operating Properties The Company's commercial operating properties represent a diverse pool of assets across a broad range of geographies and collateral types including office, retail and hotel properties. These properties generated $28.7 million of revenue offset by $20.9 million of operating expenses during the quarter. At the end of the second quarter, the Company had $343 million of stabilized assets and $198 million of transitional assets. iStar generally seeks to reposition transitional assets with the objective of maximizing their values through the infusion of capital and intensive asset management efforts. Residential Operating Properties At the end of the quarter, the $67 million residential operating portfolio was comprised of 36 units generally located within luxury projects in major U.S. cities. The Company sold 5 units during the quarter, generating $7.4 million of proceeds and a $0.8 million gain. Land & Development At the end of the quarter, the Company's land & development portfolio totaled $925 million, including 8 master planned communities, 6 waterfront projects and 15 urban/infill developments. These projects are collectively entitled for approximately 13,000 lots and units. For the quarter, the Company's land and development portfolio generated $132.7 million of revenues, offset by $122.5 million of cost of sales. In addition, the Company earned $3.6 million of earnings from land development equity method investments. During the quarter, the Company invested $29.0 million in its land portfolio. Sales in the quarter included the conveyance of Bevard, a master planned community in Maryland, to Lennar following a judgment in the Company's favor in a long-standing legal dispute. The Company received a total of $234 million of net proceeds during the quarter which resulted in $123 million of other income and an $8 million income from the land sale. The Company had previously announced that Lennar had filed a petition with the Court of Appeals with respect to approximately $30 million of post-judgment interest, however that motion was denied. iStar is also entitled to recover attorneys' fees and costs which the Company is pursuing. A third party holds a 4.3% participation interest in all proceeds from the judgment. Capital Markets and Balance Sheet The Company is capitalized with unsecured and secured debt, preferred equity and common equity. The chart below shows the capital structure of the Company at quarter end. Capital Structure $ in millions At June 30, 2017 Secured debt $717 Unsecured debt $2,652 Total debt $3,369 Preferred equity (A) (1) $745 Common equity (B) $424 Total equity $1,169 Accumulated depreciation and amortization and general loan loss reserves (2) (C) $448 Adjusted common equity (B) + (C) $872 Adjusted total equity (A) + (B) + (C) $1,617 (1) Represents liquidation preference value. (2) Accumulated depreciation and amortization includes iStar's proportionate share of accumulated depreciation and amortization relating to equity method investments. The Company's weighted average cost of debt for the second quarter was 5.5%. The Company's leverage was 1.5x at the end of the quarter, below the Company's targeted range of 2.0x - 2.5x. The chart below shows the calculation of the Company's leverage. Leverage $ in millions At June 30, 2017 Book debt $ 3,369 Less: Cash and cash equivalents (954) Net book debt (A) $ 2,415 Book equity (1) $ 1,169 Add: Accumulated depreciation and amortization (2) 430 Add: General loan loss reserves 18 Sum of book equity, accumulated D&A and general loan loss reserves (B) $ 1,617 Leverage (A) / (B) 1.5x (1) Includes preferred equity. (2) Accumulated depreciation and amortization includes iStar's proportionate share of accumulated depreciation and amortization relating to equity method investments. Liquidity At the end of the quarter, iStar had unrestricted cash and capacity on its revolving credit facility of $1.2 billion, which will be available for investment activity, repayment of debt and working capital. Liquidity $ in millions At June 30, 2017 Unrestricted cash $954 Revolving credit facility capacity $235 Total liquidity $1,189 Earnings Guidance The Company's guidance remains: Target net income per diluted common share of $2.15 - $2.65 . . Target adjusted income per diluted common share of $3.00 - $3.50 . This guidance assumes, among other things, the closing of certain land & development and operating properties that the Company is marketing for sale and that general macro economic conditions continue to remain favorable. Please see the financial tables that follow the text of this press release for a reconciliation from GAAP net income guidance to adjusted income guidance. * * * iStar (NYSE: STAR) finances, invests in and develops real estate and real estate related projects as part of its fully-integrated investment platform. Building on over two decades of experience and more than $35 billion of transactions, iStar brings uncommon capabilities and new ways of thinking to commercial real estate and adapts its investment strategy to changing market conditions. The Company is structured as a real estate investment trust ("REIT"), with a diversified portfolio focused on larger assets located in major metropolitan markets. iStar will hold a quarterly earnings conference call at 10:00 a.m. ET today, August 3, 2017. This conference call will be broadcast live over the internet and can be accessed by all interested parties through iStar's website, www.istar.com . To listen to the live call, please go to the website's "Investors" section at least 15 minutes prior to the start of the call to register, download and install any necessary audio software. For those who are not available to listen to the live broadcast, a replay will be available shortly after the call on iStar's website. Note: Statements in this press release which are not historical fact may be deemed forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933 and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. Although iStar believes the expectations reflected in any forward-looking statements are based on reasonable assumptions, the Company can give no assurance that its expectations will be attained. The Company undertakes no obligation to update or revise publicly any forward look statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise. Factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from iStar's expectations include general economic conditions and conditions in the commercial real estate and credit markets, the Company's ability to generate liquidity and to repay indebtedness as it comes due, additional loan loss provisions, the amount and timing of asset sales, changes in NPLs, repayment levels, the Company's ability to make new investments, the Company's ability to maintain compliance with its debt covenants, the Company's ability to generate income and gains from operating properties and land and other risks detailed from time to time in iStar SEC reports. iStar Consolidated Statements of Operations (In thousands) (unaudited) Three Months Ended June 30, For the Six Months Ended June 30, 2017 2016 2017 2016 REVENUES Operating lease income $ 47,002 $ 49,975 $ 94,349 $ 100,470 Interest income 28,645 34,400 57,703 67,620 Other income 139,510 10,096 151,374 21,636 Land development revenue 132,710 27,888 152,760 42,835 Total revenues $ 347,867 $ 122,359 $ 456,186 $ 232,561 COST AND EXPENSES Interest expense $ 48,807 $ 56,047 $ 99,952 $ 113,068 Real estate expense 34,684 35,328 70,274 69,572 Land development cost of sales 122,466 17,262 138,376 28,838 Depreciation and amortization 13,171 13,673 25,451 27,581 General and administrative(1) 27,218 19,665 52,392 42,768 (Recovery of) provision for loan losses (600) 700 (5,528) 2,206 Impairment of assets 10,284 3,012 14,696 3,012 Other expense 16,276 3,182 18,145 3,922 Total costs and expenses $ 272,306 $ 148,869 $ 413,758 $ 290,967 Income (loss) before other items $ 75,561 $ (26,510) $ 42,428 $ (58,406) Income (loss) from discontinued operations 173 3,633 4,939 7,214 Gain from discontinued operations 123,418 123,418 Income tax expense from discontinued operations (4,545) (4,545) Income from sales of real estate 844 43,484 8,954 53,943 Earnings from equity method investments 5,515 39,447 11,217 47,714 Income tax benefit (expense) (1,644) 1,190 (2,251) 1,604 Loss on early extinguishment of debt (3,315) (1,457) (3,525) (1,582) Net income (loss) $ 196,007 $ 59,787 $ 180,635 $ 50,487 Net (income) loss attributable to noncontrolling interests (5,710) (8,825) (4,610) (7,883) Net income (loss) attributable to iStar $ 190,297 $ 50,962 $ 176,025 $ 42,604 Preferred dividends (12,830) (12,830) (25,660) (25,660) Net (income) loss allocable to Participating Security holders(2) (20) (11) Net income (loss) allocable to common shareholders $ 177,467 $ 38,112 $ 150,365 $ 16,933 (1) For the three months ended June 30, 2017 and 2016, includes $3,915 and $1,633 of stock-based compensation expense, respectively. For the six months ended June 30, 2017 and 2016, includes $9,796 and $6,211 of stock-based compensation expense, respectively. (2) Participating Security holders are non-employee directors who hold common stock equivalents and restricted stock awards granted under the Company's LTIP who are eligible to participate in dividends. iStar Supplemental Information (In thousands, except per share data) (unaudited) Three Months Ended June 30, For the Six Months Ended June 30, 2017 2016 2017 2016 ADJUSTED INCOME (1) Reconciliation of Net Income to Adjusted Income Net income (loss) allocable to common shareholders $ 177,467 $ 38,112 $ 150,365 $ 16,933 Add: Depreciation and amortization 15,620 17,335 30,672 34,508 Add: (Recovery of) provision for loan losses (600) 700 (5,528) 2,206 Add: Impairment of assets 10,284 3,012 14,696 3,927 Add: Stock-based compensation expense 3,915 1,633 9,796 6,211 Add: Loss on early extinguishment of debt 565 1,457 775 1,582 Less: Losses on charge-offs and dispositions (8,811) (1,148) (14,127) (4,563) Less: Participating Security allocation (12) (28) Adjusted income allocable to common shareholders $ 198,440 $ 61,089 $ 186,649 $ 60,776 (1) Adjusted Income allocable to common shareholders should be examined in conjunction with net income (loss) as shown in the Consolidated Statements of Operations. This non-GAAP financial measure should not be considered as an alternative to net income (determined in accordance with GAAP) or to cash flows from operating activities (determined in accordance with GAAP) as a measure of the Company's liquidity, nor is it indicative of funds available to fund the Company's cash needs or available for distribution to shareholders. Rather, Adjusted Income is an additional measure the Company uses to analyze its business performance because it excludes the effects of certain non-cash charges that the Company believes are not necessarily indicative of its operating performance while including the effect of gains or losses on investments when realized. It should be noted that the Company's manner of calculating this non-GAAP financial measure may differ from the calculations of similarly-titled measures by other companies. Management considers this non-GAAP financial measure as supplemental information to net income in analyzing the performance of our underlying business. Depreciation and amortization includes our proportionate share of depreciation and amortization expense relating to equity method investments and excludes the portion of depreciation and amortization expense allocable to non-controlling interests. Impairment of assets includes impairments on cost and equity method investments recorded in other income and earnings from equity method investments, respectively. Effective in the second quarter 2016, the Company modified its presentation of Adjusted Income to include losses on charge-offs and dispositions of previously impaired or reserved assets to provide a more informative metric for investors to help evaluate our operating performance. Losses on charge-offs and dispositions represents the impact of charge-offs and dispositions realized during the period. These charge-offs and dispositions were taken on assets that were previously impaired for GAAP and reflected in net income but not in Adjusted Income. Reconciliation of Adjusted Income per Share Guidance to Net Income per Share Guidance For the Year Ending December 31, 2017 Targeted Net Income per Diluted Common Share Range $2.15 - $2.65 Add: Depreciation and amortization $0.67 - $0.71 Add: Other non-cash adjustments $0.54 - $0.58 Less: Losses on charge-offs and dispositions ($0.36) - ($0.44) Targeted Adjusted Income per Diluted Common Share Range $3.00 - $3.50 iStar Earnings Per Share Information (In thousands, except per share data) (unaudited) Three Months Ended June 30, For the Six Months Ended June 30, 2017 2016 2017 2016 EPS INFORMATION FOR COMMON SHARES Income (loss) from continuing operations attributable to iStar(1) Basic $ 0.81 $ 0.47 $ 0.37 $ 0.13 Diluted $ 0.69 $ 0.34 $ 0.35 $ 0.13 Net income (loss) Basic $ 2.46 $ 0.52 $ 2.09 $ 0.22 Diluted $ 2.04 $ 0.37 $ 1.76 $ 0.22 Adjusted income Basic $ 2.75 $ 0.83 $ 2.59 $ 0.80 Diluted $ 2.28 $ 0.56 $ 2.17 $ 0.59 Weighted average shares outstanding Basic 72,142 73,984 72,104 75,522 Diluted (for net income per share) 88,195 118,510 88,156 75,872 Diluted (for adjusted income per share) 88,195 118,510 88,156 120,006 Common shares outstanding at end of period 72,190 71,891 72,190 71,891 (1) Including preferred dividends, net (income) loss attributable to noncontrolling interests and income from sales of real estate. iStar Consolidated Balance Sheets (In thousands) (unaudited) As of As of June 30, 2017 December 31, 2016 ASSETS Real estate Real estate, at cost $ 1,710,915 $ 1,740,893 Less: accumulated depreciation (367,933) (353,619) Real estate, net $ 1,342,982 $ 1,387,274 Real estate available and held for sale 68,045 237,531 $ 1,411,027 $ 1,624,805 Land and development, net 855,497 945,565 Loans receivable and other lending investments, net 1,170,565 1,450,439 Other investments 276,821 214,406 Cash and cash equivalents 954,279 328,744 Accrued interest and operating lease income receivable, net 10,501 11,254 Deferred operating lease income receivable 88,944 88,189 Deferred expenses and other assets, net 147,121 162,112 Total assets $ 4,914,755 $ 4,825,514 LIABILITIES AND EQUITY Accounts payable, accrued expenses and other liabilities $ 230,259 $ 211,570 Loan participations payable, net 107,442 159,321 Debt obligations, net 3,368,113 3,389,908 Total liabilities $ 3,705,814 $ 3,760,799 Redeemable noncontrolling interests $ 3,585 $ 5,031 Total iStar shareholders' equity $ 1,169,278 $ 1,016,564 Noncontrolling interests 36,078 43,120 Total equity $ 1,205,356 $ 1,059,684 Total liabilities and equity $ 4,914,755 $ 4,825,514 iStar Segment Analysis (In thousands) (unaudited) FOR THE THREE MONTHS ENDED JUNE 30, 2017 Real Estate Finance Net Lease Operating Properties Land & Dev Corporate / Other Total Operating lease income $ $ 30,852 $ 15,940 $ 210 $ $ 47,002 Interest income 28,645 28,645 Other income 479 550 13,333 123,871 1,277 139,510 Land development revenue 132,710 132,710 Earnings from equity method investments 1,080 469 3,606 360 5,515 Income from disc. operations 173 173 Gains from disc. operations 123,418 123,418 Income from sales of real estate 844 844 Total revenue and other earnings $ 29,124 $ 156,073 $ 30,586 $ 260,397 $ 1,637 $ 477,817 Real estate expense (4,064) (22,653) (7,967) (34,684) Land development cost of sales (122,466) (122,466) Other expense (399) (15,877) (16,276) Allocated interest expense (10,508) (13,669) (5,006) (7,122) (12,502) (48,807) Allocated G&A(1) (4,691) (5,921) (2,364) (5,004) (5,323) (23,303) Segment profit (loss) $ 13,526 $ 132,419 $ 563 $ 117,838 $ (32,065) $ 232,281 (1) Excludes $3,915 of stock-based compensation expense. AS OF JUNE 30, 2017 Real Estate Finance Net Lease Operating Properties Land & Dev Corporate / Other Total Real estate Real estate, at cost $ $ 1,177,779 $ 533,136 $ $ $ 1,710,915 Less: accumulated depreciation (314,373) (53,560) (367,933) Real estate, net $ $ 863,406 $ 479,576 $ $ $ 1,342,982 Real estate available and held for sale 924 67,121 68,045 Total real estate $ $ 864,330 $ 546,697 $ $ $ 1,411,027 Land & development, net 855,497 855,497 Loans receivable and other lending investments, net 1,170,565 1,170,565 Other investments 179,284 7,882 62,417 27,238 276,821 Total portfolio assets $ 1,170,565 $ 1,043,614 $ 554,579 $ 917,914 $ 27,238 $ 3,713,910 Cash and other assets 1,200,845 Total assets $ 4,914,755 iStar Supplemental Information (In thousands) (unaudited) Three Months Ended June 30, 2017 OPERATING STATISTICS Expense Ratio General and administrative expenses - trailing twelve months (A) $ 93,651 Average total assets (B) $ 5,096,440 Expense Ratio (A) / (B) 1.8% As of June 30, 2017 UNENCUMBERED ASSETS / UNSECURED DEBT Unencumbered assets (C)(1) $ 3,911,045 Unsecured debt (D) $ 2,670,000 Unencumbered Assets / Unsecured Debt (C) / (D) 1.5x UNFUNDED COMMITMENTS Performance-based commitments(2) $ 342,921 Strategic investments 45,634 Total Unfunded Commitments $ 388,555 LOAN RECEIVABLE CREDIT STATISTICS As of June 30, 2017 December 31, 2016 Carrying value of NPLs / As a percentage of total carrying value of loans $ 188,670 17.4% $ 191,696 14.0% Total reserve for loan losses / As a percentage of total gross carrying value of loans(3) $ 78,789 6.8% $ 85,545 5.9% (1) Unencumbered assets are calculated in accordance with the indentures governing the Company's unsecured debt securities. (2) Excludes $130.3 million of commitments on loan participations sold that are not the obligation of the Company but are consolidated on the Company's balance sheet. (3) Gross carrying value represents iStar's carrying value of loans, gross of loan loss reserves. iStar Supplemental Information (In millions) (unaudited) PORTFOLIO STATISTICS AS OF JUNE 30, 2017(1) Property Type Real Estate Finance Net Lease Operating Properties Land & Dev Total % of Total Land & Development $ $ $ $ 925 $ 925 22 % Office / Industrial 37 761 123 921 22 % Entertainment / Leisure 490 490 12 % Mixed Use / Collateral 297 180 477 11 % Hotel 338 103 441 11 % Condominium 258 66 324 8 % Other Property Types 229 229 6 % Retail 29 57 136 222 5 % Ground Leases 96 96 2 % Strategic Investments 27 1 % Total $ 1,188 $ 1,404 $ 608 $ 925 $ 4,153 100 % Geography Real Estate Finance Net Lease Operating Properties Land & Dev Total % of Total Northeast $ 569 $ 399 $ 47 $ 258 $ 1,273 30 % West 98 312 43 365 818 20 % Southeast 175 250 147 124 696 17 % Southwest 60 160 243 22 485 12 % Central 188 98 72 32 390 9 % Mid-Atlantic 154 47 124 325 8 % Various 98 31 10 139 3 % Strategic Investments 27 1 % Total $ 1,188 $ 1,404 $ 608 $ 925 $ 4,153 100 % (1) Based on carrying value of the Company's total investment portfolio, gross of accumulated depreciation, general loan loss reserves and market value of its investment in shares of SAFE stock. SOURCE iStar Related Links http://www.istarfinancial.com SEATTLE, Aug. 3, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Alaska Air Group, the parent company of Alaska Airlines, Virgin America and Horizon Air, announced the appointment of James Beer, executive vice president and chief financial officer of McKesson Corporation, to the company's board of directors. Beer will join the compensation and leadership development and safety committees. "We're delighted to have a San Francisco-based business leader of James' caliber join our board," said Brad Tilden, chairman and chief executive officer of Alaska Air Group. "The experience James brings will be invaluable as we continue to expand our presence along the West Coast." Since 2013, Beer has led the financial functions for McKesson, a San Francisco-based health services and information technology company ranked fifth on the Fortune 500 list. He is also a member of the company's executive committee. "I'm thrilled to be joining a company that I've long admired and look forward to contributing to the company's future development and success," said Beer. Previously, Beer served as the executive vice president and chief financial officer of Symantec Corp., where he managed the organization's worldwide finance organization responsible for financial planning and analysis, treasury, corporate development, accounting, tax, purchasing and investor relations. Before Symantec, Beer was with American Airlines for 15 years. He first joined the airline in 1991 as a financial analyst and later became chief financial officer at AMR Corp. and its American Airlines subsidiary, where he played a variety of management roles in finance and operations, including leading the airline's European and Asia Pacific businesses. Beer is currently a member of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco's Economic Advisory Council. He holds a bachelor of science degree in aeronautical engineering from Imperial College London and a master's degree in business administration from Harvard Business School. Beer resides in San Francisco. Alaska Air Group directors serve one-year terms and the company's bylaws require annual elections of all board members. Alaska Airlines, together with Virgin America and its regional partners, flies 40 million guests a year to 118 destinations with an average of 1,200 daily flights across the United States and to Mexico, Canada, Costa Rica and Cuba. With Alaska and Alaska Global Partners , guests can earn and redeem miles on flights to more than 900 destinations worldwide. Alaska Airlines ranked "Highest in Customer Satisfaction Among Traditional Carriers in North America" in the J.D. Power North America Satisfaction Study for 10 consecutive years from 2008 to 2017. Learn more about Alaska's award-winning service and unmatched reliability at newsroom.alaskaair.com and blog.alaskaair.com. Alaska Airlines, Virgin America and Horizon Air are subsidiaries of Alaska Air Group (NYSE: ALK). SOURCE Alaska Air Group NEW YORK, Aug. 3, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- The Jewish Communal Fund (JCF), the largest Jewish donor advised fund in the country, distributed a record $397 million in grants to charities in all sectors during the 2017 fiscal year ending June 30, 2017, a 4 percent increase from 2016. JCF fund holders recommended a record-number of grants 52,402 to charities in all sectors, a 13 percent increase from 2016. The average grant amount was $7,572.77. Jewish Communal Fund's FY 17 grants by sector "Each year, we are incredibly pleased to create new records when it comes to the extraordinary growth in the number and amount of grants distributed, and this past year was no exception," said Susan F. Dickman, Executive Vice President and CEO of Jewish Communal Fund. "We are honored to facilitate the charitable giving of our very generous fund holders, who are very active in their grant-making." A leader in the world of Jewish philanthropy, JCF continues to be the largest and most active Jewish donor advised fund in the country with over $1.5 billion in charitable assets under management. In FY 2017, JCF distributed 26 percent of assets, well above the industry average. While grants were distributed to charities in all sectors, the largest categories of grants by dollar amount were directed to charitable organizations whose missions focused on education, community organizations, and health issues. A donor advised fund at JCF enables fund holders to organize their charitable giving with ease and tax-efficiency. JCF's educational events and webinars help fund holders increase their philanthropic impact. In addition, JCF's robust investment platform enables fund holders to grow their charitable dollars tax-free, enabling them to give more to their favorite causes. About Jewish Communal Fund Jewish Communal Fund is one of the largest and most active networks of Jewish funders, currently managing $1.5 billion in charitable assets for more than 3,500 donor advised funds. JCF's donor advised funds make giving easy, flexible and efficient. The Chronicle of Philanthropy designated JCF a "Top 100" Charity in the U.S. on its 2016 Philanthropy 400 list. Learn more about JCF by visiting www.jcfny.org or calling (212) 752-8277. Visit JCF's Company Page on LinkedIn, like us on Facebook, and follow us on Twitter. MEDIA CONTACT: Tamar Snyder Associate Director, Strategic Initiatives & Communication Jewish Communal Fund 646.843.6894 [email protected] SOURCE Jewish Communal Fund Related Links http://www.jcfny.org BOSTON, Aug. 3, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- The JCM Opportunity Fund has raised an $11,500,000 investment in The Edge at Merrimack River, a 147-unit, off-campus student housing complex serving the Lowell campus of the University of Massachusetts. This is the Fund's third investment and fifth collaboration with Vision Development Inc. At completion, the Fund expects the development to be worth $55,000,000 with a Projected Annual Return of 16.61% and a Floor Return of 14.00%. The Fund has also partnered with a South Shore-based development and management company Megryco, Inc. on the investment and financing of Pointe 1620, a 56-unit condominium development in Plymouth, MA. This luxury property is in close proximity to Boston and Cape Cod providing an easy commute to both destinations. At completion, the Fund expects the development to be worth $21,000,000 with a Projected Annual Return of 29.70% and a Floor Return of 20.00%. Most recently, The Fund has raised an $11,500,000 investment in Edge College Hill, a 247-unit, off-campus student housing development in the highly desirable College Hill neighborhood of Providence, RI, adjacent to both Brown University and The Rhode Island School of Design. At completion, the Fund expects the development to be worth $65,000,000 with a Projected Annual Return of 19.13% and a Floor Return of 14.00%. "We are very pleased to see growth in the Fund's real estate investment portfolio and to be associated with talented development teams like Vision and Megryco. My primary objective is to make sure the Fund selects only those investments that meet or exceed the returns modeled for the Fund from the very beginning. We are continually evaluating future opportunities that can add value to the fund portfolio and to our investors." - Gary F. Joyal CEO and Managing Partner About Joyal Capital Management, LLC Joyal Capital Management, LLC is a recognized leader in estate planning, franchise development, mergers and acquisitions, financing, private equity and private family office services. The JCM Opportunity Fund I, LLC is a private equity vehicle that focuses on franchise and real estate investments. The Fund's investment return criteria is to generate current cash flow and long-term capital appreciation on a diversified basket of underlying investments. Visit our website: http://www.joycapmgt.com For more information on the Fund contact Gary F. Joyal at [email protected], or at 508-747-2237. SOURCE Joyal Capital Management, LLC Related Links http://www.joycapmgt.com NEW YORK, Aug. 3, 2017 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The National Kidney Foundation (NKF), along with the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), is conducting an Externally-Led Patient-Focused Drug Development Meeting (PFDD) for a rare form of kidney disease, complement 3 glomerulopathy or C3G. This is the first-ever PFDD meeting focused on kidney disease. The upcoming meeting, to be held August 4th from 8:30 a.m. to 1:10 p.m., at the Tommy Douglas Conference Center in Silver Spring, MD, will bring together patients, caregivers, physicians who are experts in C3G and representatives from the FDA to learn about the impact of living with this rare disease. "The goal of NKF's patient-focused meeting on C3G is to give patients the opportunity to explain to the FDA how this disease affects them personally so that the agency can understand the disease's unique burdens and why developing effective medicines is urgently needed," said Joseph Vassalotti, MD, Chief Medical Officer, NKF. "There are currently limited drug therapies available and no effective, targeted treatment options for the roughly 4,000 Americans living with C3G disease. Working together with the FDA, and patients affected by C3G, our goal is to advance treatment innovations." C3G is a rare disease typically striking patients in the prime of life; and their prognosis is poor. The average age for diagnosis is 21-26 years, and approximately 30-50% of C3G patients will progress to end-stage kidney disease (the stage where kidneys fail) within 10 years of diagnosis. Once kidneys fail, dialysis or transplant is needed just to stay alive. Unfortunately for patients with C3G, kidney transplantation is not highly successful as the disease recurs in more than 50% of patients post-transplant, requiring a return to dialysis or a second transplant that is likely to have the same poor outlook as the first. Dialysis patients on average live approximately 15 years less than a person with a successful kidney transplant. C3G is characterized by variable amounts of proteinuria (protein in urine), hematuria (blood in urine), hypertension and decreased kidney function. "I was diagnosed with C3G when I was just seven years old, and have spent the last 22 years on dialysis," said 31-year-old Jenna Smith of Seattle Washington, a panelist at the meeting. "While I strive to be like most people my age, I'm just not, the daily responsibilities of existing with this disease do not allow me to be. I'm hoping that by participating in the C3G meeting, representatives from the FDA and pharmaceutical companies will understand why I matter, and why people like me are worth their investment of time and research." In conducting research for the conference NKF polled patients anonymously and asked what advice they would give to a drug company to help develop a new medicine for C3G; and what advice they would give to the FDA to help them decide whether to approve it. Some responses included: "..drug companies need to realize that they are developing drugs for a very small population and that these patients are already incurring a great deal of medical debt. We cannot afford millions of dollars to stay alive, or to keep our children alive." "Patients suffer a great deal with side effects from ineffective drug alternatives and their health deteriorates as a result of ineffective treatment." ".many patients are looking at a lifetime on dialysis, which is not a pleasant way of life, nor can most people sustain it for more than a few years. A new drug certainly comes with risksbut it also comes with a great deal of hope and possibility." "..if a drug can be shown to be effective for even a portion of C3G patients and can be deemed safe, then put it in the hands of the people who might benefit. They don't have any good options, so why not give them a chance?" The nearly five-hour conference will be co-chaired by two leading nephrologists specializing in C3G: Carla Nester, MD, Assistant Professor of Medicine and Pediatrics, University of Iowa, Carver College of Medicine, Iowa City, IA and Andrew S. Bomback, MD, MPH, Assistant Professor of Medicine, Columbia University Medical Center, New York, NY. View the agenda or participate in the conference via webinar. FDA speakers include Jonathan Goldsmith, MD, Associate Director of Rare Diseases Program, Center for Drug Evaluation and Research (CDER), Office of New Drugs; Aliza Thompson, MD, Clinical Team Leader, Division of Cardiovascular and Renal Products, CDER, and Normal L. Stockbridge, MD, PhD; Division Director, Cardiovascular and Renal Products. Lead sponsorship for NKF's Patient-Focused Drug Development Meeting was provided by Achillion Pharmaceuticals. Additional support was provided by Novartis Pharmaceuticals. Kidney Disease Facts 30 million American adults are estimated to have chronic kidney diseaseand most aren't aware of it. 1 in 3 American adults are at risk for chronic kidney disease. Risk factors for kidney disease include diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease, obesity and family history. People of African American, Hispanic, Native American, Asian or Pacific Islander descent are at increased risk for developing the disease. African Americans are 3 times more likely than Whites, and Hispanics are nearly 1.5 times more likely than non-Hispanics to develop end stage renal disease (kidney failure). The National Kidney Foundation (NKF) is the largest, most comprehensive and longstanding organization dedicated to the awareness, prevention and treatment of kidney disease. For more information about NKF visit www.kidney.org. SOURCE National Kidney Foundation Related Links http://www.kidney.org DALLAS, Aug. 3, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Kimberly-Clark Corporation (NYSE:KMB) today announced it has been ranked #1 in the consumer packaged goods category on Forbes' 2017 list of America's Best Large Employers. In addition, Kimberly-Clark was ranked #48 among the top 500 employers across all industries, up from #147 last year. The annual Forbes "America's Best Employers" rankings were compiled via an independent survey of 30,000 U.S. employees in 25 industries. Employees were asked how likely they were to recommend their company to friends and family, and which organizations they would choose in addition to their own. The survey also looked at benefits, workplace diversity, career development opportunities and recognition of employee performance. "Kimberly-Clark offers an environment that welcomes original thinking, attracts and retains top talent, and inspires professionals to do their best work," said Scott Boston, senior vice president and chief human resources officer, Kimberly-Clark. "This focus has helped us build teams united by a passion to win and a desire to make a difference." "We are honored by our ranking of best employer in our industry and our advance to the top 50 companies overall in the 2017 Forbes survey," Boston added. "This recognition is especially meaningful because it is based on the opinions of employees who know their companies best." The full Forbes report can be found at https://www.forbes.com/best-employers/list/#tab:rank. To learn more about careers at Kimberly-Clark, visit WelcomeOriginalThinkers.com About Kimberly-Clark Kimberly-Clark (NYSE: KMB) and its well-known global brands are an indispensable part of life for people in more than 175 countries. Every day, nearly a quarter of the world's population trust Kimberly-Clark brands and the solutions they provide to enhance their health, hygiene and well-being. With brands such as Kleenex, Scott, Huggies, Pull-Ups, Kotex and Depend, Kimberly-Clark holds the No.1 or No. 2 share position in 80 countries. To keep up with the latest news and to learn more about the company's 145-year history of innovation, visit www.kimberly-clark.com or follow us on Facebook and Twitter. [KMB-B] SOURCE Kimberly-Clark Corporation Related Links http://www.kimberly-clark.com By PTI: India (Eds: Updates with more details) New Delhi, Aug 3 (PTI) The border stand-off with China cannot be resolved through war but bilateral talks, the government told Parliament today while advocating patience to address the issue. External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj said India is engaged with China to resolve differences, not only on the stand-off at Dokalam but all matters like border dispute, Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) and the blocking of UN sanctions against Jaish-e-Mohammad terror outfit chief Masood Azhar. advertisement "Patience and control on comments are key to resolving problems. We are maintaining patience and controlling comments," she said in the Rajya Sabha replying to a discussion on "India?s foreign policy and engagement with strategic partners" during which members voiced concern over the stand-off and raised questions over Indias policy. She read out a statement giving details and explaining Indias position on the Dokalam stand-off which has been going on for over a month. "War is not a solution to anything. Even after war, there has to be a dialogue. So, have dialogue without a war... Patience, control on comments and diplomacy can resolve problems," the minister said. She said if patience is lost, there can be provocation on the other side. "We will keep patience to resolve the issue," Swaraj said, adding "We will keep engaging with China to resolve the dispute." In response to questions, she said military readiness is always there as the military is meant to fight wars. "But war cannot resolve problems. So wisdom is to resolve diplomatically," the external affairs minister asserted. She expressed confidence that the issue can be resolved through bilateral talks. At the same time, Swaraj lashed out at the Congress and its leadership for meeting Chinese Ambassador over the border stand-off. She said the Congress leadership rushed to get the Chinese perspective instead of first seeking details from the own government. "You (Congress) should have first sought details from the governnment and then confronted the Chinese envoy," she said. Swaraj then said Jawaharlal Nehru, during the 1962 war, had convened sitting of Parliament after Atal Bihari Vajpayee wrote to him regarding this. She said she had called all parties in phases for two days to explain the entire Dokalam issue and the Opposition had left after being fully convinced. She also slammed the Congress for questioning why India had boycotted an international conference called by China over One Belt, One Road (OBOR). "Do you know through where the OBOR passes? And you are asking these questions? It is a matter of national sentiment (for India). You are the main Opposition party, You should speak with responsibility," she said, referring to the project which China proposes to build through Pakistan-occupied Kashmir. advertisement At this, Leader of Opposition Ghulam Nabi Azad said the remarks made by his party colleague Rajeev Shukla regarding OBOR were in his "individual" capacity. Swaraj then took a dig at the Congress, asking since when the party had become so democratic that each member speaks in own voice. Earlier, Congress leader Anand Sharma accused the government of mishandling foreign relations, particularly in the context of tensions with China. Referring to the border stand-off with China, he said the neigbouring country is being "unusually aggressive" and the "doors of diplomacy seem to be closing". "When it comes to countrys national interests, we stand as one and there is no division. It is clear...Diplomacy must be given a chance. We believe in making all possible diplomatic channels to de-escalate the situation on borders," he said. "De-escalation does not mean retreat. It is safeguarding Indias interest," he said. Targeting Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Sharma said he had "not uttered a word" on what he has talked with Chinese President Xi Jingping during their meetings in Astana (Kazakhstan) and Hamburg (Germany). advertisement "It is his (PMs) duty to tell us. He cannot remain silent on matters of Indias sensitive interests," he said Sharma also noted that National Security Adviser Ajit Doval had visited China recently and wondered whether after that "a window has opened that this stand-off would be resolved." He also said that India should avoid making boastful claims of isolating Pakistan. The Congress leader said it was a matter of concern that China has offered to mediate between India and Pakistan. He said managing of the periphery comes first and that is of critical importance, saying the rest comes later. "Unless we manage our neighbours correctly, it would be difficult or rather impossible to play a major role globally," he said, adding, "What is your roadmap? There is no stability in your policy. It keeps changing. First you say we would talk and then stop talks." The Congress leader said India had succeeded in de- hyphenating India from Pakistan. "The real concern is that the hyphenation is back," he said. advertisement "We have concern because Chinas profile in Pakistan is increasing and Pakistan is getting emboldened of this support for China and that is our concern," he said. Talking about the surgical strikes, he said, "even a military victory must not be boasted upon." Ram Gopal Yadav (SP) said, "Today, the situation is that there is an attempt to corner India from all sides. The relations with neighbouring countries is not as it should be." Yadav expressed concern about about growing friendship between China and Pakistan and said that the Russias affinity towards India is also dimnishing. In such a scenario, he said India has to think about its forein policy and identify which country could be reliable friend during the time of crisis. The SP leader said that Russia should have been taken into confidence when India signed nuclear deal with the US. Yadav stressed on the need to give priority to the defence sector. "There is a need to strengthen our defence". Sharad Yadav of JD(U) said the relations with neighbouring countries are not good. He said the entire country is with the government but it should work to strengthen the nation internally and militarily. Yadav said the country has got an able foreign minister but felt that she was not utilised properly. He said India had become a lackey of the US. Sitaram Yechury (CPI-M) said there were serious ruptures in Indias foreign policy which used to be independent and had a say in global policies. Demanding to know whether it is an independent policy now or aligned, he said unfortunately instead of multi-polarity, India has joined the unipolarity with the US. India has been reduced to a junior strategic ally of the US, he saids. He said as per information available on the US website, in an agreement on logistics during the fourth visit of the PM, status of India has been shown as a "junior partner" to advance US interests in defence and security in South East Asia and greater region and termed it as the "last nail in our independent foreign policy." He said on PMs fifth visit there was no answer on HIB visa despite 5 lakh Indian youth in IT and indsutries in Silicon Valley being in jeopardy. Yechury said most of Russia which was a friend earlier had done a pact with Pakistan while India was doing a joint military exercise with US and Japan at Bay of Bengal. Yechury took a jibe at the prime minister that real strength comes from friendship and not displayed by foreign tours or embraces or "jumle" (speeches). He mentioned a joke on Whatsapp which said that the PM during his last tour was asking which nation is this, only to know that it is India. Swaraj retorted to it that such light comment does not suit such serious discussion to which P J Kurien too said it was a serious discussion. Manish Gupta (Trinamool) said India has not learnt lessons from 1962 China transgression. Others who participated included A Navaneethakrishnan (AIADMK) and Dileep Kumar Tirkey (BJD). PTI MJH SKC NKD LUX NAM AKK AKK --- ENDS --- LONDON, Aug. 3, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Kratos Defense and Security Solutions Inc (KTOS:NAS): Analytics, Extensive Financial Metrics, and Benchmarks Against Averages and Top Companies Within its Industry Key Findings: - Unique new report provides deep financial benchmarks for (Kratos Defense and Security Solutions Inc (KTOS:NAS) compared to its top competitors and compared to the average for all companies within its primary industry. - Benchmarking study for (Kratos Defense and Security Solutions Inc ) includes growth forecast for its primary industry to the year 2024. The purpose of this report is to provide vital corporate-specific benchmarks, comparing the Subject Company to its top competitors (on a company-by-company basis) and to the averages within its primary industry for all key metrics. This is a unique report containing high-value data. The report begins with a superb overview of the primary industry of the Subject Company, including historical industry revenues, revenue forecasts and CAGR. Then the report moves into industry averages and metrics, then into data specific to the Subject Company, with comparative data for the Subject Company's top competitors. This report will save countless hours of research and analytical work for the end user. Download the full report: https://www.reportbuyer.com/product/5011616/ Core Benefits to Customer: 1) Comprehensive benchmarks for the Subject Company: a. Benchmarked against the leading firms in its primary industry b. Benchmarked against the average for publicly-held companies (U.S.) in its industry. c. This includes financial results, ratios, vital statistics and metrics in one package, including historical and current metrics and averages for 6 years within its primary industry. 2) A snapshot overview of the company's primary industry, including current and historic revenues and employment, along with a long term forecast for industry growth, with CAGR (compound annual growth rate), employee population and much more. 3) Detailed rankings of the Subject Company against top companies within the industry (U.S.-based firms) for key items including: a. Approximate market capitalization b. Employees c. Revenues d. Net income e. 3-Year revenue growth (%) f. 3-Year income growth (%) g. Return on assets (%) h. Return on equity (%) i. Return on invested capital (%) 4) Leading companies-profiles of the Subject Company as well as profiles of top competitors within the industry Pages: 68 Statistical Tables Provided: 28 Charts Provided: 14 Geographic: US Designed to benefit: - Analysis and Financial Modeling -Investment Professionals - Lenders - M&A Advisors - Appraisers - Consultants Download the full report: https://www.reportbuyer.com/product/5011616/ About Reportbuyer Reportbuyer is a leading industry intelligence solution that provides all market research reports from top publishers http://www.reportbuyer.com For more information: Sarah Smith Research Advisor at Reportbuyer.com Email: [email protected] Tel: +44 208 816 85 48 Website: www.reportbuyer.com SOURCE ReportBuyer Related Links http://www.reportbuyer.com FALLS CHURCH, Va., Aug. 3, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- CSRA Inc. (NYSE: CSRA) announced President and CEO Larry Prior has become a member The Wall Street Journal's CEO Council. Mr. Prior joins over 150 CEOs of the world's top companies. CSRA is a leading provider of next-generation IT solutions and professional services to government agencies and programs. "I am excited to join the world's leading business executives to represent CSRA on the Wall Street Journal's CEO Council," said CSRA President and CEO Larry Prior. "As a leading provider of next-generation technology to the federal government, CSRA provides a unique perspective on many issues pertinent to the Wall Street Journal and their readers. I am honored to accept their invitation on behalf of CSRA and look forward to engaging with the Council's members." The Wall Street Journal CEO Council connects the world's most influential business leaders to discuss issues shaping the future. Membership is by invitation only. The Council's CEOs lead companies that collectively employ more than 6 million people, generate over $2.5 trillion in annual revenue, and represent 21 countries in a wide cross section of industries. Companies currently represented on the Council include FedEx, Hilton Worldwide, JPMorgan Chase, SAP, Salesforce, and Time Warner Inc. About CSRA Inc. CSRA (NYSE: CSRA) solves our nation's hardest mission problems as a bridge from mission and enterprise IT to Next Gen, from government to technology partners, and from agency to agency. CSRA is tomorrow's thinking, today. For our customers, our partners, and ultimately, all the people our mission touches, CSRA is realizing the promise of technology to change the world through next-generation thinking and meaningful results. CSRA is driving towards achieving sustainable, industry-leading organic growth across federal and state/local markets through customer intimacy, rapid innovation and outcome-based experience. CSRA has over 18,000 employees and is headquartered in Falls Church, Virginia. To learn more about CSRA, visit www.csra.com. Think Next. Now. Forward-looking Statements All statements in this press release and in all future press releases that do not directly and exclusively relate to historical facts constitute "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These statements represent CSRA's intentions, plans, expectations and beliefs, including statements about the actual duration, services delivered, and total value realized by CSRA under customer contracts, the effects of customer contracts on our business, and our ability to enhance mission capabilities of our customers. The forward-looking statements are subject to risks, uncertainties and other factors, many of which are outside the control of CSRA. These factors could cause actual results to differ materially from forward-looking statements. For a written description of these factors, see the sections titled "Risk Factors" and "Management's Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations" in CSRA's most recent Annual Report on Form 10-K and any updating information in subsequent SEC filings. CSRA disclaims any intention or obligation to update these forward-looking statements whether as a result of subsequent event or otherwise. SOURCE CSRA Inc. Related Links http://www.csra.com LONDON, Aug. 3, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- The Latin America, Middle East and Africa (LAMEA) Online Travel Bookings Market is expected to register a CAGR of 13.1% during the forecast period (2017 2023). Online travel providers seek to make the process of travel planning and bookings simple and easy for customers. The online travel market is majorly driven by factors such as quick and convenient flight and hotel bookings, safer online payment methods, availability of multiple choices and comparison options. Leading players in the market are focused on offering travel services through different platform such as mobile websites and apps to attract young and professional crowd. Download the full report: https://www.reportbuyer.com/product/5042220/ Technological changes and rapid adoption of technology into mainline businesses has almost completely changed the way communications and travel is perceived. Technological evolution and rapid uptake of mobile phones have contributed to the demand for efficient and easy methods of connectivity among businesses and consumers. Growing disposable income, growth in middle-class segment, superior level of Internet access, and significant rise in the youth population has contributed to the growth in the region Based on Service Types, the market is segmented into Transportation, Accommodation, and Others. Based on Mode of Bookings, the market is segmented into Online Travel Agencies and Direct Travel Facilitators. Based on Platform Types, the market is segmented into Mobile Based and Desktop Based. Based on Age Groups, the market is segmented into 30-45, 46 56, 20 30, and 57 & above. Based on Country, the market is segmented into Brazil, Argentina, UAE, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Nigeria, and Rest of LAMEA. The report covers the analysis of key stake holders of the Online Travel Bookings Market. Key companies profiled in the report include Expedia, Inc., Priceline Group Inc., TripAdvisor LLC, MakeMytrip Limited, Hostelworld Group, Thomas Cook Group Plc., Fareportal (Cheapoair.Com), Airbnb, Inc., and Ctrip.Com International, Ltd. Download the full report: https://www.reportbuyer.com/product/5042220/ About Reportbuyer Reportbuyer is a leading industry intelligence solution that provides all market research reports from top publishers http://www.reportbuyer.com For more information: Sarah Smith Research Advisor at Reportbuyer.com Email: [email protected] Tel: +44 208 816 85 48 Website: www.reportbuyer.com SOURCE ReportBuyer Related Links http://www.reportbuyer.com DULUTH, Ga., Aug. 3, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Kids 'R' Kids Learning Academies, a national early childhood education franchise with more than three decades of experience, announced today a groundbreaking ceremony for its first center in the Bellalago area on Saturday, August 5 at 10:00 a.m. on 3901 Reaves Road in Kissimmee. The opening of the Kissimmee area school marks the continued expansion of Kids 'R' Kids Learning Academies in the state of Florida. The new Kids 'R' Kids Learning Academy of the Kissimmee area is owned and operated by franchisee Rowena Ramos. "I am so excited to begin to break ground on the first Kids 'R' Kids Learning Academy in the Kissimmee area, and am ready to provide an innovative facility for children as young as six weeks, up to 12 years of age," said Rowena Ramos. "The groundbreaking ceremony will be just the beginning of the celebration of the lives of the children in our community." The Kids 'R' Kids Learning Academy of the Kissimmee area will feature top-of-the-line classrooms equipped with age appropriate learning materials and furniture, SMART Board interactive technology and a variety of outdoor play areas for children of all ages. The 17,000 square-foot facility will also include a computer lab, cafeteria and library. The new school is projected to open winter 2017. For more than 30 years, Kids 'R' Kids Learning Academies has upheld its long-standing principle of strengthening and encouraging childhood development on an emotional, intellectual, social and physical level through a unique partnership between its teachers and families. The company offers a variety of curriculum programs designed for infants through prekindergarten. Its proprietary First Class Curriculum is designed specifically for every developmental stage of learning with theme-based units, specific educational activities and teacher-friendly lesson plans. Kids 'R' Kids Learning Academies also offers an integrated project-based curriculum, STEAM AHEAD, designed for preschool students, ages three to five, which incorporates more science, technology, engineering, art, and math into everyday learning through play. With a nationally awarded curriculum, Kids 'R' Kids Learning Academies provides early education and care for children from six weeks through 12 years of age at its nearly 160 schools located in 16 states across the country. Programs offered to children include infant care, toddler and preschool care, private pre-k and kindergarten, before-and-afterschool care and summer camp. In order to provide even more convenience for families with busy schedules, Kids 'R' Kids Learning Academies remain open during most major school breaks and holidays nationwide. Kids 'R' Kids Learning Academies has been accredited by AdvancED in America for more than six years, the world's largest education community. This accreditation ensures its schools are meeting and exceeding the highest accreditation standards and providing excellence in education beyond most daycare and childcare providers. To learn more about ownership opportunities with Kids 'R' Kids Learning Academies, contact Rashid Khan at (844) KRK-FRAN (844-575-3726) or [email protected] or visit kidsrkidsfranchise.com. About Kids 'R' Kids Learning Academies Headquartered in the North Atlanta suburb of Duluth, Georgia, Kids 'R' Kids Learning Academies provide a secure, nurturing, and educational environments for children (ages six weeks - 12 years) to bloom into responsible, considerate, and contributing members of society. With nearly 160 Learning Academies in 16 states, Kids 'R' Kids International is a family-owned and operated organization that ranks in the top three nationwide for franchised early childhood education centers (www.kidsrkids.com). CONTACT: Tiffany Trilli Fish Consulting 954-893-9150 [email protected] SOURCE Kids 'R' Kids Learning Academies Related Links http://www.kidsrkids.com LIBERTYVILLE, Ill., Aug. 3, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Thom Disch, an expert on the impact of fall injuries in the United States, has published the book: Stop The Slip, Reducing Slips, Trips and Falls. The book examines why people fall, where they fall and the business side of falls, but most importantly how to prevent and avoid fall injuries.Disch has been compiling statistics and real-world stories related to slip, trip and fall injuries for 10 years. He has spent the last 2-1/2 years researching their causes and how to prevent them for this book. Stop The Slip, Reducing Slips, Trips and Falls by Thom Disch is now available through Amazon.com "Injuries and deaths caused by falls are at record highs and the problem continues to grow," said Disch. In addition to writing Stop The Slip, Disch is the CEO of Handi-Products Inc., which develops, manufactures and distributes a complete line of slip and fall prevention products. He also holds several patents related to the development of these products. "Over the last 15 years, deaths from heart disease and automobile accidents have decreased by more than 10 percent while deaths from falls have risen," he explained. "It's time to focus on prevention. Reading this book can teach everyone ways to help keep themselves, their family and their friends safer." With 9 million emergency room visits from fall injuries each year in the U.S. alone, falls are the nation's number one cause of emergency room visits a 150 percent increase over 1999. According to data compiled by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), falls also accounted for one million hospitalizations in the U.S. in 2014. That data also revealed that 30,000 deaths were the result of falls in 2014, making them the country's 14th leading cause of death. "The facts are shocking," said Disch. "Seven times more people died from falls than from the flu and three times more than from firearms." He noted that many people associate slipping and falling with the elderly, but in reality, everyone is at risk. According to data compiled by the CDC, 75 percent of all fall injuries happen to people under the age of 68 years old. And a 2015 Purdue University study showed that 52 percent of the respondents, whose average age was 20, reported having fallen at least once in a 16-week period. Beyond their impact on health, falls have a huge financial impact on the U.S. economy. The CDC calculates the cost for lost wages and medical expenses due to fall injuries to be over $150 billion per year. That exceeds 1 percent of the annual U.S. Gross Domestic Product. "While nothing can completely prevent slips, trips and falls, taking precautions can help reduce the risk," said Disch. In his book, he provides an action plan to help reduce the risk of falling. This simple five-step A-L-E-R-T System can help prevent slip and fall injuries. Disch outlines some simple steps that everyone can take to be safer. Awareness and caution are the first steps. His company also designs and manufactures products that reduce the risk of slipping. Disch commented, "I find it ironic that in the USA we spend over $5 billion dollars a year administering flu shots but very little is spent on slip, trip and fall prevention, which causes more death than the flu." Clearly making a small investment in safety will pay big dividends later. More information on how to prevent falls and fall injuries can be found in Stop The Slip, Reducing Slips, Trips and Falls, which is now available on Amazon.com. About the author: Thom Disch is the owner and CEO of Handi-Products, Inc., a Libertyville, Illinois-based company specializing in slip and fall prevention products. He has a master's degree from Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management and a bachelor's degree in economics from Oakland University in Michigan. Related Images image1.jpeg image2.jpg Related Video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dAzJW7Nifcc SOURCE Thom Disch WASHINGTON, Aug. 3, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Legal Aid is delighted to announce that our Generous Associates Campaign has raised $1.79 million for Legal Aid smashing last year's record total of $1.475 million. More than 4,000 people from 85 law firms came together for the Campaign, which will fund more than a quarter of Legal Aid's budget over the next year. Each year, Legal Aid helps thousands of D.C. residents save their homes from eviction and foreclosure, reach safety from domestic violence, access unemployment and other public benefits, and more. "This is an unbelievable organization that has earned the support that it gets from the law firm community," Honorary Campaign Chair Seth Waxman of WilmerHale said. "It's the legal aid organization that is setting the standard for others." Some highlights from this year's campaign include: *For the first time, the Campaign had three six-figure firms, with Williams & Connolly ($101,000) joining Latham & Watkins ($187,000) and WilmerHale ($135,000). *Of the 70 firms who participated in both 2016 and 2017, a whopping 44 raised more than last year. *First-time participant in the 1-50 attorneys category Wilkinson Walsh raised $43,000. *In addition to our three top firms, eight more raised at least $10,000 more than last year: Covington & Burling, Venable, Perkins Coie, Skadden, Orrick, Willkie Farr, Steptoe and Sidley Austin all raised at least $10,000 more than last year. *And perhaps most memorably, Buckley Sandler's partners took several pies to the face on the way to a record $25,000 campaign. We especially congratulate our Top Firms, including the following who won their respective categories (by firm size): Latham & Watkins Williams & Connolly Mayer Brown Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman Alston & Bird Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe Wilkinson, Walsh + Eskovitz We also extend a special thank you to our Outstanding Generous Associates! the more than 650 non-partners who gave at least $285 to the campaign in honor of Legal Aid's 85th Anniversary. "We are so grateful for the outpouring of support we have received from the D.C legal community this summer," Eric Angel, Legal Aid's Executive Director, said. "There are thousands of people who cannot afford a lawyer but truly need one who will benefit because of this campaign." Full campaign results, including the Top 5 firms in each category, have been published on our website. From all of us at Legal Aid, thank you for making this the most successful Generous Associates Campaign ever. About the Legal Aid Society of the District of Columbia Legal Aid was created in 1932 with the goal of making justice real in individual and systemic ways for persons living in poverty in the District of Columbia. For more than 85 years, Legal Aid lawyers have provided a continuum of legal services to clients in the areas of domestic violence/family, housing, public benefits, and consumer law. In addition to providing direct representation, we also help clients avoid unnecessary legal entanglements through outreach and education, and help them resolve their own disputes with advice and other brief assistance. Legal Aid also works to identify systemic issues that have an impact beyond an individual client. In such cases, we often seek structural solutions from changes in law or regulatory schemes to a reform of government or court practice to benefit our client community. And our nationally-recognized Barbara McDowell Appellate Advocacy Project, which pursues an anti-poverty agenda, litigates important cases affecting persons living in poverty before the D.C. Court of Appeals every year. In all that we do, Legal Aid strives to make fair and equal access to justice possible for those who need it most. Contacts Rob Pergament, Director of Development, 202-661-5964, [email protected] Thuy-Tu Tran, Deputy Director of Development, 202-661-5975, [email protected] SOURCE Legal Aid Related Links http://www.legalaiddc.org BROOMFIELD, Colo., Aug. 3, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Level 3 Communications (NYSE: LVLT) today announced the General Services Administration (GSA) has awarded its wholly-owned subsidiary, Level 3 Communications, LLC a multiple-year competitive contract known as Enterprise Infrastructure Solutions (EIS). The contract allows Level 3 to offer telecommunications solutions to support the GSA's goal of providing federal agencies access to a broad range of domestic and international network services. Key Facts : EIS is a comprehensive solution-based vehicle to address all aspects of federal agency information technology telecommunications and infrastructure requirements. EIS is the follow-on contract vehicle for Networx, WITS3, and the Local Telecommunications Services contracts, and has a period of performance of 15 years. EIS is the first contract to implement the Network Services 2020 (NS2020) strategy. More than 300 U.S. government departments and agencies rely on Level 3's consultative approach to help meet complex network requirements. Level 3 provides critical networking support to civilian agencies, the Department of Defense, systems integrators, state/local government agencies and educational/research institutions. Key Quote : David Young, Regional Vice President, Level 3's Government Markets Group "EIS provides access to a wide range of telecommunications services needed for government agencies to transform their IT infrastructure which is critical in this ever-evolving digital age. Now agencies will continue to have access to Level 3's services, helping them modernize, future-proof and protect their technology to better address the critical needs of their teams and clients." Level 3 will offer a variety of services, Including : Managed Services, including security Virtual Private Network (VPN) Ethernet Transport Internet Optical Wavelength SDN Implementations Private Line Wavelength Cloud Connectivity SIP Trunking Contact Center Security Colocation Content Delivery Network (CDN) Dark Fiber Level 3's EIS Team Members : Hughes Network Systems, General Dynamics Information Technology, Presidio, Ciracom, JHC Technology, By Light Professional IT Services LLC, Comcast, 8x8, Communications Services Incorporated (CSI), Concert Technologies, Global Com, Computer World Services, Manage Mobility, MountChor, The First Choice, VAZATA and World Wide Technology (WWT). Key Resources : About Level 3's Government Solutions Level 3's Contract Vehicles About Level 3 Communications Level 3 Communications, Inc. (NYSE: LVLT) is a Fortune 500 company that provides local, national and global communications services to enterprise, government and carrier customers. Level 3's comprehensive portfolio of secure, managed solutions includes fiber and infrastructure solutions; IP-based voice and data communications; wide-area Ethernet services; video and content distribution; data center and cloud-based solutions. Level 3 serves customers in more than 500 markets in over 60 countries across a global services platform anchored by owned fiber networks on three continents and connected by extensive undersea facilities. For more information, please visit www.level3.com or get to know us on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. Level 3 Communications, LLC. All Rights Reserved. Level 3, Vyvx, Venuenet+, Level 3 Communications, Level (3) and the Level 3 Logo are either registered service marks or service marks of Level 3 Communications, LLC and/or one of its Affiliates in the United States and elsewhere. Any other service names, product names, company names or logos included herein are the trademarks or service marks of their respective owners. Level 3 services are provided by subsidiaries of Level 3 Communications, Inc. Forward-Looking Statement Some statements made in this press release are forward-looking in nature and are based on management's current expectations or beliefs. These forward-looking statements are not a guarantee of performance and are subject to a number of uncertainties and other factors, many of which are outside Level 3's control, which could cause actual events to differ materially from those expressed or implied by the statements. Important factors that could prevent Level 3 from achieving its stated goals include, but are not limited to, the company's ability to: successfully integrate the tw telecom acquisition; manage risks associated with continued uncertainty in the global economy; increase revenue from its services to realize its targets for financial and operating performance; maintain and increase traffic on its network; develop and maintain effective business support systems; manage system and network failures or disruptions; avert the breach of its network and computer system security measures; develop new services that meet customer demands and generate acceptable margins; manage the future expansion or adaptation of its network to remain competitive; defend intellectual property and proprietary rights; manage continued or accelerated decreases in market pricing for communications services; obtain capacity for its network from other providers and interconnect its network with other networks on favorable terms; attract and retain qualified management and other personnel; successfully integrate future acquisitions; effectively manage political, legal, regulatory, foreign currency and other risks it is exposed to due to its substantial international operations; mitigate its exposure to contingent liabilities; and meet all of the terms and conditions of its debt obligations. Additional information concerning these and other important factors can be found within Level 3's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Statements in this press release should be evaluated in light of these important factors. Level 3 is under no obligation to, and expressly disclaims any such obligation to, update or alter its forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise. Contact Information SOURCE Level 3 Communications, Inc. Related Links http://www.level3.com ORLANDO, Fla., Aug. 3, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Marriott Vacations Worldwide Corporation (NYSE: VAC) today reported second quarter financial results and updated its guidance for the full year 2017. Due to the change in the company's financial reporting calendar beginning in 2017, the second quarter of 2017 included the period from April 1, 2017 through June 30, 2017 (91 days) compared to the 2016 second quarter, which included the period from March 26, 2016 through June 17, 2016 (84 days). Prior year results have not been restated for the change in the company's reporting calendar. Second quarter 2017 highlights: Total company vacation ownership contract sales were $209.9 million , an increase of $43.9 million , or 26 percent, compared to the prior year period. North America vacation ownership contract sales were $190.9 million , an increase of $45.3 million , or 31 percent, compared to the prior year period. , an increase of , or 26 percent, compared to the prior year period. vacation ownership contract sales were , an increase of , or 31 percent, compared to the prior year period. Excluding the estimated impact of the change in the company's financial reporting calendar, total company and North America vacation ownership contract sales would have increased 18 percent and 22 percent, respectively, compared to the prior year period. vacation ownership contract sales would have increased 18 percent and 22 percent, respectively, compared to the prior year period. North America VPG totaled $3,579 , a 6 percent increase from the second quarter of 2016. , a 6 percent increase from the second quarter of 2016. North America tours increased 28 percent year-over-year. tours increased 28 percent year-over-year. Excluding the estimated impact of the change in the company's financial reporting calendar, tours would have increased 18 percent, compared to the prior year period. Net income was $44.3 million , or $1.58 fully diluted earnings per share (EPS), compared to net income of $36.3 million , or $1.26 fully diluted EPS, in the second quarter of 2016, an increase of 22 percent and 25 percent, respectively. , or fully diluted earnings per share (EPS), compared to net income of , or fully diluted EPS, in the second quarter of 2016, an increase of 22 percent and 25 percent, respectively. Adjusted net income was $44.6 million , compared to adjusted net income of $31.3 million in the second quarter of 2016, an increase of 43 percent. Adjusted fully diluted EPS was $1.60 , compared to adjusted fully diluted EPS of $1.08 in the second quarter of 2016, an increase of 48 percent. , compared to adjusted net income of in the second quarter of 2016, an increase of 43 percent. Adjusted fully diluted EPS was , compared to adjusted fully diluted EPS of in the second quarter of 2016, an increase of 48 percent. Adjusted EBITDA totaled $77.9 million , an increase of $13.7 million , or 21 percent, year-over-year. "I am extremely pleased with how 2017 has continued to progress. Contract sales, on a comparable basis, grew over 18 percent, marking the third quarter in a row that we've generated sales growth in excess of 15 percent. Adjusted EBITDA grew 21 percent, to $77.9 million, with strong contributions from all lines of business," said Stephen P. Weisz, president and chief executive officer. "With the performance we've delivered through the end of the second quarter, we are raising our full year outlook for contract sales growth to 12 percent to 16 percent, net income to $154 million to $160 million, adjusted EBITDA to $282 million to $292 million, and adjusted free cash flow to $190 million to $210 million." Non-GAAP financial measures, such as adjusted net income, adjusted EBITDA, adjusted fully diluted earnings per share, adjusted free cash flow, and adjusted development margin are reconciled and adjustments are shown and described in further detail on pages A-1 through A-11 of the Financial Schedules that follow. Second Quarter 2017 Results As a result of the change in the company's financial reporting calendar, financial results for the second quarter 2017 include the impact of seven additional days of operations. Company Results Second quarter 2017 company net income was $44.3 million, an $8.0 million increase from the second quarter of 2016. Excluding the impact of the provision for income taxes, these results were driven by $7.1 million of higher development margin, $5.0 million of higher rental revenues net of expenses, $5.0 million of higher resort management and other services revenues net of expenses, $2.5 million of higher financing revenues net of expenses and consumer financing interest expense, $1.8 million of lower acquisition costs, and $0.3 million of lower interest expense, partially offset by $10.8 million of lower gains and other income, $4.2 million of higher general and administrative costs, $2.3 million of higher royalty fees, and $0.2 million of higher litigation settlement costs. Total company vacation ownership contract sales were $209.9 million, $43.9 million, or 26 percent, higher than the second quarter of 2016. These results were driven by $45.3 million of higher contract sales in the company's North America segment and $1.2 million of higher contract sales in the company's Asia Pacific segment, partially offset by $2.5 million of lower contract sales in the company's Europe segment. Excluding the estimated impact of the change in the company's financial reporting calendar, total company vacation ownership contract sales would have increased 18 percent, compared to the prior year period. Development margin was $40.8 million, a $7.1 million increase from the second quarter of 2016. Development margin percentage was 21.4 percent compared to 23.1 percent in the prior year quarter. The increase in development margin reflected $11.0 million from higher contract sales volumes net of expenses, $6.8 million from lower product costs, and $1.9 million related to favorable revenue reportability year-over-year, partially offset by $7.0 million from lower favorable product cost true-up activity year-over-year, $5.4 million of higher marketing and sales costs including costs to ramp up the company's new sales distributions, and $0.3 million from higher sales reserve activity. Adjusted development margin percentage, which excludes the impact of revenue reportability year-over-year, was 20.4 percent in the second quarter of 2017 compared to 22.8 percent in the second quarter of 2016. Rental revenues totaled $84.2 million, a $9.1 million increase from the second quarter of 2016. Rental revenues net of expenses were $14.0 million, a $5.0 million, or 55 percent, increase from the second quarter of 2016. Resort management and other services revenues totaled $79.2 million, a $5.0 million increase from the second quarter of 2016. Resort management and other services revenues, net of expenses, totaled $35.2 million, a $5.0 million, or 17 percent, increase from the second quarter of 2016. Financing revenues totaled $32.5 million, a $3.9 million increase from the second quarter of 2016. Financing revenues, net of expenses and consumer financing interest expense, were $23.4 million, a $2.5 million, or 12 percent, increase from the second quarter of 2016. Net income was $44.3 million, compared to net income of $36.3 million in the second quarter of 2016, an increase of $8.0 million, or 22 percent. Adjusted EBITDA was $77.9 million, a $13.7 million, or 21 percent, increase from $64.2 million in the second quarter of 2016. Segment Results North America North America vacation ownership contract sales were $190.9 million, an increase of $45.3 million, or 31 percent, from the prior year period, reflecting higher sales from existing sales centers driven by the success of our new marketing programs, as well as the continued ramp-up of new sales distributions. VPG increased $195, or 6 percent, to $3,579 in the second quarter of 2017 from the second quarter of 2016. Total tours in the second quarter of 2017 increased 28 percent, reflecting a 34 percent increase in first time buyer tours and a 23 percent increase in owner tours. Excluding the estimated impact of the change in the company's financial reporting calendar, vacation ownership contract sales and tours would have increased 22 percent and 18 percent, respectively, compared to the prior year period. Second quarter 2017 North America segment financial results were $118.7 million, an increase of $8.3 million from the second quarter of 2016. The increase was driven primarily by $6.9 million of higher development margin, $5.0 million of higher resort management and other services revenues net of expenses, $4.1 million of higher rental revenues net of expenses, $3.9 million of higher financing revenues, and $1.8 million of lower acquisition costs, partially offset by $12.5 million of lower gains and other income, and $0.8 million of higher royalty fees. Development margin was $43.4 million, a $6.9 million increase from the second quarter of 2016. Development margin percentage was 24.7 percent compared to 27.5 percent in the prior year quarter. The increase in development margin reflected $11.2 million from higher contract sales volumes net of expenses, $6.5 million from lower product costs, and $1.1 million related to favorable revenue reportability year-over-year, partially offset by $6.8 million from lower favorable product cost true-up activity year-over-year, $3.6 million of higher marketing and sales costs including costs to ramp up the company's new sales distributions, and $1.5 million from higher sales reserve activity mainly associated with an 11.0 percentage point increase in financing propensity. Adjusted development margin percentage, which excludes the impact of revenue reportability, was 23.4 percent in the second quarter of 2017, compared to 26.5 percent in the second quarter of 2016. Asia Pacific Total vacation ownership contract sales in the segment were $11.6 million, an increase of $1.2 million, or 11 percent, from the second quarter of 2016, due primarily to the opening of the new sales distribution in Surfers Paradise, Australia in the second quarter of 2016. Segment financial results were a loss of $1.1 million, a $1.5 million improvement from the second quarter of 2016. Excluding the estimated impact of the change in the company's financial reporting calendar, vacation ownership contract sales would have increased 6 percent, compared to the prior year period. Europe Second quarter 2017 contract sales were $7.4 million, a decrease of $2.5 million, or 25.6 percent, from the second quarter of 2016. Segment financial results were $3.4 million, an increase of $1.3 million, or 58.8 percent, from the second quarter of 2016. Share Repurchase Program During the 2017 second quarter, the company repurchased 32,500 shares of its common stock for a total of $3.9 million under its share repurchase program. Subsequent to the end of the 2017 second quarter, the company's Board of Directors authorized the company to repurchase up to 1 million additional shares under its share repurchase program, bringing the current remaining authorization to approximately 2.0 million shares and extending the program through May 31, 2018. Balance Sheet and Liquidity On June 30, 2017, cash and cash equivalents totaled $85.2 million. Since the beginning of the year, real estate inventory balances increased $31.3 million to $739.4 million, including $421.1 million of finished goods and $318.3 million of land and infrastructure. The company had $789.7 million in gross debt outstanding at the end of the second quarter, an increase of $43.3 million from year-end 2016, consisting primarily of $671.2 million in gross securitized notes receivable, $63.6 million related to a non-interest bearing note issued in conjunction with the capital efficient acquisition of vacation ownership units, $47.5 million outstanding under its revolving corporate credit facility, and approximately $7 million related to capital leases and other miscellaneous debt. As of June 30, 2017, the company had approximately $147.9 million in available capacity under its revolving credit facility after taking into account outstanding letters of credit, and approximately $239.7 million of gross vacation ownership notes receivable eligible for securitization. Fiscal Year Change The table below shows the number of days for each reporting period in 2017 and 2016: 2017 2016 First Quarter 91 days 84 days Second Quarter 91 days 84 days Third Quarter 92 days 84 days Fourth Quarter 92 days 112 days Full Year 366 days 364 days Outlook Pages A-1 through A-11 of the Financial Schedules reconcile the non-GAAP financial measures set forth below to the following full year 2017 expected GAAP results: Net income $154 million to $160 million Fully diluted EPS $5.48 to $5.70 Net cash provided by operating activities $115 million to $130 million The company is providing the following updated guidance for the full year 2017: Current Guidance Previous Guidance Adjusted net income $149 million to $155 million $139 million to $148 million Adjusted fully diluted EPS $5.31 to $5.52 $4.97 to $5.29 Adjusted EBITDA $282 million to $292 million $276 million to $291 million Adjusted free cash flow $190 million to $210 million $160 million to $180 million Contract sales growth 12 percent to 16 percent 9 percent to 15 percent Second Quarter 2017 Earnings Conference Call The company will hold a conference call at 10:00 a.m. EDT today to discuss these results and the guidance for full year 2017. Participants may access the call by dialing 877-407-8289 or 201-689-8341 for international callers. A live webcast of the call will also be available in the Investor Relations section of the company's website at www.marriottvacationsworldwide.com . An audio replay of the conference call will be available for seven days and can be accessed at 877-660-6853 or 201-612-7415 for international callers. The conference ID for the recording is 13666344. The webcast will also be available on the company's website. About Marriott Vacations Worldwide Corporation Marriott Vacations Worldwide Corporation is a leading global pure-play vacation ownership company, offering a diverse portfolio of quality products, programs and management expertise with over 65 resorts. Its brands include Marriott Vacation Club, The Ritz-Carlton Destination Club and Grand Residences by Marriott. Since entering the industry in 1984 as part of Marriott International, Inc., the company earned its position as a leader and innovator in vacation ownership products. The company preserves high standards of excellence in serving its customers, investors and associates while maintaining a long-term relationship with Marriott International. For more information, please visit www.marriottvacationsworldwide.com . Note on forward-looking statements: This press release and accompanying schedules contain "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of federal securities laws, including statements about future operating results, estimates, and assumptions, and similar statements concerning anticipated future events and expectations that are not historical facts. The company cautions you that these statements are not guarantees of future performance and are subject to numerous risks and uncertainties, including volatility in the economy and the credit markets, supply and demand changes for vacation ownership and residential products, competitive conditions, the availability of capital to finance growth, and other matters referred to under the heading "Risk Factors" contained in the company's most recent Annual Report on Form 10-K filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (the "SEC") and in subsequent SEC filings, any of which could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed in or implied in this press release. These statements are made as of August 3, 2017 and the company undertakes no obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statement, whether as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise. Financial Schedules Follow MARRIOTT VACATIONS WORLDWIDE CORPORATION FINANCIAL SCHEDULES QUARTER 2, 2017 1 TABLE OF CONTENTS Consolidated Statements of Income A-1 Adjusted Net Income, Adjusted Earnings Per Share - Diluted, EBITDA and Adjusted EBITDA A-2 North America Segment Financial Results A-3 Asia Pacific Segment Financial Results A-4 Europe Segment Financial Results A-5 Corporate and Other Financial Results A-6 Consolidated Contract Sales to Sale of Vacation Ownership Products and Adjusted Development Margin (Adjusted Sale of Vacation Ownership Products Net of Expenses) A-7 North America Contract Sales to Sale of Vacation Ownership Products and Adjusted Development Margin (Adjusted Sale of Vacation Ownership Products Net of Expenses) A-8 2017 Outlook - Adjusted Net Income, Adjusted Earnings Per Share - Diluted, Adjusted EBITDA and Adjusted Free Cash Flow A-9 Non-GAAP Financial Measures A-10 Consolidated Balance Sheets A-12 Consolidated Statements of Cash Flows A-13 1 Due to the change in the company's financial reporting calendar beginning in 2017, the 2017 second quarter included the period from April 1, 2017 through June 30, 2017 (91 days) compared to the 2016 second quarter, which included the period from March 26, 2016 to June 17, 2016 (84 days), and the 2017 first half included the period from December 31, 2016 through June 30, 2017 (182 days) compared to the 2016 first half which included the period from January 2, 2016 to June 17, 2016 (168 days). Prior year results have not been restated for the change in fiscal calendar. NOTE: When presenting contract sales performance on a comparable basis, we adjusted the prior year period to include contract sales from the same calendar days as the current year period. A-1 MARRIOTT VACATIONS WORLDWIDE CORPORATION CONSOLIDATED STATEMENTS OF INCOME (In thousands, except per share amounts) Quarter Ended Year to Date Ended June 30, 2017 June 17, 2016 June 30, 2017 June 17, 2016 (91 days) (84 days) (182 days) (168 days) REVENUES Sale of vacation ownership products $ 191,010 $ 146,450 $ 363,165 $ 284,819 Resort management and other services 79,158 74,156 152,122 137,864 Financing 32,530 28,654 64,641 57,878 Rental 84,188 75,069 169,444 155,357 Cost reimbursements 110,734 98,842 234,367 206,375 TOTAL REVENUES 497,620 423,171 983,739 842,293 EXPENSES Cost of vacation ownership products 46,143 33,753 88,763 69,370 Marketing and sales 104,029 78,919 204,690 157,331 Resort management and other services 44,008 44,007 85,653 83,870 Financing 3,449 2,621 7,466 7,201 Rental 70,163 66,028 140,595 130,688 General and administrative 29,534 25,361 57,073 50,720 Litigation settlement 183 183 (303) Consumer financing interest 5,654 5,117 11,592 10,479 Royalty fee 16,307 14,026 32,377 27,383 Cost reimbursements 110,734 98,842 234,367 206,375 TOTAL EXPENSES 430,204 368,674 862,759 743,114 (Losses) gains and other (expense) income (166) 10,668 (225) 10,675 Interest expense (1,757) (2,087) (2,538) (4,069) Other (100) (1,911) (469) (4,453) INCOME BEFORE INCOME TAXES 65,393 61,167 117,748 101,332 Provision for income taxes (21,117) (24,858) (39,772) (40,615) NET INCOME $ 44,276 $ 36,309 $ 77,976 $ 60,717 Earnings per share - Basic $ 1.62 $ 1.28 $ 2.86 $ 2.11 Earnings per share - Diluted $ 1.58 $ 1.26 $ 2.79 $ 2.08 Basic Shares 27,319 28,345 27,285 28,734 Diluted Shares 27,965 28,834 27,929 29,244 Quarter Ended Year to Date Ended June 30, 2017 June 17, 2016 June 30, 2017 June 17, 2016 (91 days) (84 days) (182 days) (168 days) Vacation ownership contract sales $ 209,892 $ 165,992 $ 403,726 $ 319,486 NOTE: Earnings per shareBasic and Earnings per shareDiluted are calculated using whole dollars. We have reclassified certain prior year amounts to conform to our current period presentation. In addition, we reclassified certain revenues and expenses for the 2016 second quarter and 2016 first half to correct immaterial presentation errors within the following lines: Resort management and other services revenues, Resort management and other services expenses and General and administrative expenses. A-2 MARRIOTT VACATIONS WORLDWIDE CORPORATION (In thousands, except per share amounts) ADJUSTED NET INCOME AND ADJUSTED EARNINGS PER SHARE - DILUTED Quarter Ended Year to Date Ended June 30, 2017 June 17, 2016 June 30, 2017 June 17, 2016 (91 days) (84 days) (182 days) (168 days) Net income $ 44,276 $ 36,309 $ 77,976 $ 60,717 Less certain items: Acquisition costs 199 2,005 611 4,575 Operating results from the sold portion of the Surfers Paradise, Australia property 190 (275) Litigation settlement 183 183 (303) Losses (gains) and other expense (income) 166 (10,668) 225 (10,675) Certain items before depreciation and provision for income taxes 1 548 (8,473) 1,019 (6,678) Depreciation on the sold portion of the Surfers Paradise, Australia property 188 469 Provision for income taxes on certain items (213) 3,261 (386) 2,482 Adjusted net income ** $ 44,611 $ 31,285 $ 78,609 $ 56,990 Earnings per share - Diluted $ 1.58 $ 1.26 $ 2.79 $ 2.08 Adjusted earnings per share - Diluted ** $ 1.60 $ 1.08 $ 2.81 $ 1.95 Diluted Shares 27,965 28,834 27,929 29,244 EBITDA AND ADJUSTED EBITDA Quarter Ended Year to Date Ended June 30, 2017 June 17, 2016 June 30, 2017 June 17, 2016 (91 days) (84 days) (182 days) (168 days) Net income $ 44,276 $ 36,309 $ 77,976 $ 60,717 Interest expense 2 1,757 2,087 2,538 4,069 Tax provision 21,117 24,858 39,772 40,615 Depreciation and amortization 5,001 5,052 10,192 10,177 EBITDA ** 72,151 68,306 130,478 115,578 Non-cash share-based compensation 5,175 4,332 8,451 6,856 Certain items before depreciation and provision for income taxes 1 548 (8,473) 1,019 (6,678) Adjusted EBITDA ** $ 77,874 $ 64,165 $ 139,948 $ 115,756 ** Denotes non-GAAP financial measures. Please see pages A-10 and A-11 for additional information about our reasons for providing these alternative financial measures and limitations on their use. 1 Please see pages A-10 and A-11 for additional information regarding these items. The certain items adjustments for the Adjusted EBITDA reconciliations exclude depreciation and the provision for income taxes on certain items included in the Adjusted Net Income reconciliations. 2 Interest expense excludes consumer financing interest expense. A-3 MARRIOTT VACATIONS WORLDWIDE CORPORATION NORTH AMERICA SEGMENT (In thousands) Quarter Ended Year to Date Ended June 30, 2017 June 17, 2016 June 30, 2017 June 17, 2016 (91 days) (84 days) (182 days) (168 days) REVENUES Sale of vacation ownership products $ 175,847 $ 132,473 $ 332,504 $ 257,157 Resort management and other services 71,057 63,296 138,594 119,709 Financing 30,719 26,853 60,958 54,261 Rental 75,990 65,629 155,130 138,137 Cost reimbursements 101,488 90,174 216,443 189,356 TOTAL REVENUES 455,101 378,425 903,629 758,620 EXPENSES Cost of vacation ownership products 41,676 29,080 79,311 59,742 Marketing and sales 90,784 66,911 179,654 135,226 Resort management and other services 37,452 34,666 74,211 67,473 Rental 61,900 55,593 124,905 111,549 Litigation settlement (303) Royalty fee 3,038 2,254 5,728 3,940 Cost reimbursements 101,488 90,174 216,443 189,356 TOTAL EXPENSES 336,338 278,678 680,252 566,983 (Losses) gains and other (expense) income (162) 12,317 (196) 12,324 Other 74 (1,733) 125 (4,013) SEGMENT FINANCIAL RESULTS $ 118,675 $ 110,331 $ 223,306 $ 199,948 SEGMENT FINANCIAL RESULTS $ 118,675 $ 110,331 $ 223,306 $ 199,948 Less certain items: Acquisition costs 27 1,829 27 4,137 Litigation settlement (303) Losses (gains) and other expense (income) 162 (12,317) 196 (12,324) Certain items 189 (10,488) 223 (8,490) ADJUSTED SEGMENT FINANCIAL RESULTS ** $ 118,864 $ 99,843 $ 223,529 $ 191,458 Quarter Ended Year to Date Ended June 30, 2017 June 17, 2016 June 30, 2017 June 17, 2016 (91 days) (84 days) (182 days) (168 days) Vacation ownership contract sales $ 190,883 $ 145,600 $ 368,319 $ 285,250 ** Denotes non-GAAP financial measures. Please see pages A-10 and A-11 for additional information about our reasons for providing these alternative financial measures and limitations on their use. NOTE: We have reclassified certain prior year amounts to conform to our current period presentation. In addition, we reclassified certain revenues and expenses for the 2016 second quarter and 2016 first half to correct immaterial presentation errors within the following lines: Resort management and other services revenues, Resort management and other services expenses and General and administrative expenses. Further we have reclassified certain management and other services revenues between the North America and Asia Pacific segments. A-4 MARRIOTT VACATIONS WORLDWIDE CORPORATION ASIA PACIFIC SEGMENT (In thousands) Quarter Ended Year to Date Ended June 30, 2017 June 17, 2016 June 30, 2017 June 17, 2016 (91 days) (84 days) (182 days) (168 days) REVENUES Sale of vacation ownership products $ 10,094 $ 8,110 $ 21,016 $ 16,635 Resort management and other services 1,030 4,412 2,033 7,778 Financing 1,105 1,007 2,228 1,988 Rental 2,644 4,828 6,382 10,449 Cost reimbursements 724 685 1,871 1,558 TOTAL REVENUES 15,597 19,042 33,530 38,408 EXPENSES Cost of vacation ownership products 1,866 1,597 3,955 3,306 Marketing and sales 8,717 6,695 16,918 12,906 Resort management and other services 1,060 4,145 2,153 7,646 Rental 4,097 6,766 8,234 12,554 Royalty fee 221 179 449 325 Cost reimbursements 724 685 1,871 1,558 TOTAL EXPENSES 16,685 20,067 33,580 38,295 Losses and other expense (1,498) (20) (1,498) Other (2) (21) (10) (229) SEGMENT FINANCIAL RESULTS $ (1,090) $ (2,544) $ (80) $ (1,614) SEGMENT FINANCIAL RESULTS $ (1,090) $ (2,544) $ (80) $ (1,614) Less certain items: Acquisition costs 19 227 Operating results from the sold portion of the Surfers Paradise, Australia property 378 194 Losses and other expense 1,498 20 1,498 Certain items 1,895 20 1,919 ADJUSTED SEGMENT FINANCIAL RESULTS ** $ (1,090) $ (649) $ (60) $ 305 Quarter Ended Year to Date Ended June 30, 2017 June 17, 2016 June 30, 2017 June 17, 2016 (91 days) (84 days) (182 days) (168 days) Vacation ownership contract sales $ 11,614 $ 10,454 $ 23,562 $ 19,880 ** Denotes non-GAAP financial measures. Please see pages A-10 and A-11 for additional information about our reasons for providing these alternative financial measures and limitations on their use. NOTE: We have reclassified certain prior year amounts to conform to our current period presentation. In addition, we reclassified certain revenues and expenses for the 2016 second quarter and 2016 first half to correct immaterial presentation errors within the following lines: Resort management and other services revenues and Resort management and other services expenses. Further we have reclassified certain management and other services revenues between the North America and Asia Pacific segments. A-5 MARRIOTT VACATIONS WORLDWIDE CORPORATION EUROPE SEGMENT (In thousands) Quarter Ended Year to Date Ended June 30, 2017 June 17, 2016 June 30, 2017 June 17, 2016 (91 days) (84 days) (182 days) (168 days) REVENUES Sale of vacation ownership products $ 5,069 $ 5,867 $ 9,645 $ 11,027 Resort management and other services 7,071 6,448 11,495 10,377 Financing 706 794 1,455 1,629 Rental 5,554 4,612 7,932 6,771 Cost reimbursements 8,522 7,983 16,053 15,461 TOTAL REVENUES 26,922 25,704 46,580 45,265 EXPENSES Cost of vacation ownership products 705 1,268 1,366 2,559 Marketing and sales 4,528 5,313 8,118 9,199 Resort management and other services 5,496 5,196 9,289 8,751 Rental 4,166 3,669 7,456 6,585 Royalty fee 79 118 125 167 Cost reimbursements 8,522 7,983 16,053 15,461 TOTAL EXPENSES 23,496 23,547 42,407 42,722 SEGMENT FINANCIAL RESULTS $ 3,426 $ 2,157 $ 4,173 $ 2,543 Quarter Ended Year to Date Ended June 30, 2017 June 17, 2016 June 30, 2017 June 17, 2016 (91 days) (84 days) (182 days) (168 days) Vacation ownership contract sales $ 7,395 $ 9,938 $ 11,845 $ 14,356 ** Denotes non-GAAP financial measures. Please see pages A-10 and A-11 for additional information about our reasons for providing these alternative financial measures and limitations on their use. NOTE: We have reclassified certain prior year amounts to conform to our current period presentation. In addition, we reclassified certain revenues and expenses for the 2016 second quarter and 2016 first half to correct immaterial presentation errors within the following lines: Resort management and other services revenues and Resort management and other services expenses. A-6 MARRIOTT VACATIONS WORLDWIDE CORPORATION CORPORATE AND OTHER (In thousands) Quarter Ended Year to Date Ended June 30, 2017 June 17, 2016 June 30, 2017 June 17, 2016 (91 days) (84 days) (182 days) (168 days) EXPENSES Cost of vacation ownership products $ 1,896 $ 1,808 $ 4,131 $ 3,763 Financing 3,449 2,621 7,466 7,201 General and administrative 29,534 25,361 57,073 50,720 Litigation settlement 183 183 Consumer financing interest 5,654 5,117 11,592 10,479 Royalty fee 12,969 11,475 26,075 22,951 TOTAL EXPENSES 53,685 46,382 106,520 95,114 Losses and other expense (4) (151) (9) (151) Interest expense (1,757) (2,087) (2,538) (4,069) Other (172) (157) (584) (211) TOTAL FINANCIAL RESULTS $ (55,618) $ (48,777) $ (109,651) $ (99,545) TOTAL FINANCIAL RESULTS $ (55,618) $ (48,777) $ (109,651) $ (99,545) Less certain items: Acquisition costs 172 157 584 211 Litigation settlement 183 183 Losses and other expense 4 151 9 151 Certain items 359 308 776 362 ADJUSTED FINANCIAL RESULTS ** $ (55,259) $ (48,469) $ (108,875) $ (99,183) ** Denotes non-GAAP financial measures. Please see pages A-10 and A-11 for additional information about our reasons for providing these alternative financial measures and limitations on their use. NOTE: We have reclassified certain prior year amounts to conform to our current period presentation. In addition, we reclassified certain revenues and expenses for the 2016 second quarter and 2016 first half to correct immaterial presentation errors within the following lines: Resort management and other services revenues, Resort management and other services expenses and General and administrative expenses. A-7 MARRIOTT VACATIONS WORLDWIDE CORPORATION CONSOLIDATED CONTRACT SALES TO SALE OF VACATION OWNERSHIP PRODUCTS (In thousands) Quarter Ended Year to Date Ended June 30, 2017 June 17, 2016 June 30, 2017 June 17, 2016 (91 days) (84 days) (182 days) (168 days) Vacation ownership contract sales $ 209,892 $ 165,992 $ 403,726 $ 319,486 Revenue recognition adjustments: Reportability 1 4,045 1,179 15 1,965 Sales reserve 2 (14,636) (11,352) (26,857) (19,575) Other 3 (8,291) (9,369) (13,719) (17,057) Sale of vacation ownership products $ 191,010 $ 146,450 $ 363,165 $ 284,819 1 Adjustment for lack of required downpayment or contract sales in rescission period. 2 Represents allowance for bad debts for our financed vacation ownership product sales, which we also refer to as sales reserve. 3 Adjustment for sales incentives that will not be recognized as Sale of vacation ownership products revenue. MARRIOTT VACATIONS WORLDWIDE CORPORATION CONSOLIDATED ADJUSTED DEVELOPMENT MARGIN (ADJUSTED SALE OF VACATION OWNERSHIP PRODUCTS NET OF EXPENSES) (In thousands) Quarter Ended Year to Date Ended June 30, 2017 June 17, 2016 June 30, 2017 June 17, 2016 (91 days) (84 days) (182 days) (168 days) Sale of vacation ownership products $ 191,010 $ 146,450 $ 363,165 $ 284,819 Less: Cost of vacation ownership products 46,143 33,753 88,763 69,370 Marketing and sales 104,029 78,919 204,690 157,331 Development margin 40,838 33,778 69,712 58,118 Revenue recognition reportability adjustment (2,662) (726) 27 (1,326) Adjusted development margin ** $ 38,176 $ 33,052 $ 69,739 $ 56,792 Development margin percentage 1 21.4% 23.1% 19.2% 20.4% Adjusted development margin percentage 20.4% 22.8% 19.2% 20.1% ** Denotes non-GAAP financial measures. Please see pages A-10 and A-11 for additional information about our reasons for providing these alternative financial measures and limitations on their use. 1 Development margin percentage represents Development margin divided by Sale of vacation ownership products. A-8 MARRIOTT VACATIONS WORLDWIDE CORPORATION NORTH AMERICA CONTRACT SALES TO SALE OF VACATION OWNERSHIP PRODUCTS (In thousands) Quarter Ended Year to Date Ended June 30, 2017 June 17, 2016 June 30, 2017 June 17, 2016 (91 days) (84 days) (182 days) (168 days) Vacation ownership contract sales $ 190,883 $ 145,600 $ 368,319 $ 285,250 Revenue recognition adjustments: Reportability 1 5,135 3,783 441 3,871 Sales reserve 2 (12,131) (7,631) (22,813) (15,037) Other 3 (8,040) (9,279) (13,443) (16,927) Sale of vacation ownership products $ 175,847 $ 132,473 $ 332,504 $ 257,157 1 Adjustment for lack of required downpayment or contract sales in rescission period. 2 Represents allowance for bad debts for our financed vacation ownership product sales, which we also refer to as sales reserve. 3 Adjustment for sales incentives that will not be recognized as Sale of vacation ownership products revenue. MARRIOTT VACATIONS WORLDWIDE CORPORATION NORTH AMERICA ADJUSTED DEVELOPMENT MARGIN (ADJUSTED SALE OF VACATION OWNERSHIP PRODUCTS NET OF EXPENSES) (In thousands) Quarter Ended Year to Date Ended June 30, 2017 June 17, 2016 June 30, 2017 June 17, 2016 (91 days) (84 days) (182 days) (168 days) Sale of vacation ownership products $ 175,847 $ 132,473 $ 332,504 $ 257,157 Less: Cost of vacation ownership products 41,676 29,080 79,311 59,742 Marketing and sales 90,784 66,911 179,654 135,226 Development margin 43,387 36,482 73,539 62,189 Revenue recognition reportability adjustment (3,475) (2,417) (289) (2,473) Adjusted development margin ** $ 39,912 $ 34,065 $ 73,250 $ 59,716 Development margin percentage 1 24.7% 27.5% 22.1% 24.2% Adjusted development margin percentage 23.4% 26.5% 22.1% 23.6% ** Denotes non-GAAP financial measures. Please see pages A-10 and A-11 for additional information about our reasons for providing these alternative financial measures and limitations on their use. 1 Development margin percentage represents Development margin divided by Sale of vacation ownership products. A-9 MARRIOTT VACATIONS WORLDWIDE CORPORATION (In millions, except per share amounts) 2017 ADJUSTED NET INCOME AND ADJUSTED EARNINGS PER SHARE - DILUTED OUTLOOK Fiscal Year 2017 (low) Fiscal Year 2017 (high) Net income $ 154 $ 160 Adjustments to reconcile Net income to Adjusted net income Certain items1 1 1 Business interruption insurance proceeds2 (9) (9) Provision for income taxes on adjustments to net income 3 3 Adjusted net income ** $ 149 $ 155 Earnings per share - Diluted3 $ 5.48 $ 5.70 Adjusted earnings per share - Diluted **, 3 $ 5.31 $ 5.52 Diluted shares2 28.1 28.1 1 Certain items adjustment primarily includes approximately $1 million of after tax combined acquisition costs, litigation settlements and losses and other expenses that have been incurred in the first half of 2017. 2 Includes estimated net business interruption insurance proceeds associated with Hurricane Matthew. 3 Earnings per share - Diluted, Adjusted earnings per share - Diluted, and Diluted shares outlook includes the impact of share repurchase activity only through August 3, 2017. 2017 ADJUSTED EBITDA OUTLOOK Fiscal Year 2017 (low) Fiscal Year 2017 (high) Net income $ 154 $ 160 Interest expense1 7 7 Tax provision 90 94 Depreciation and amortization 22 22 EBITDA ** 273 283 Non-cash share-based compensation 17 17 Certain items2 and business interruption insurance proceeds3 (8) (8) Adjusted EBITDA ** $ 282 $ 292 1 Interest expense excludes consumer financing interest expense. 2 Certain items adjustment primarily includes approximately $1 million of after tax combined acquisition costs, litigation settlements and losses and other expenses that have been incurred in the first half of 2017. 3 Includes estimated net business interruption insurance proceeds associated with Hurricane Matthew. 2017 ADJUSTED FREE CASH FLOW OUTLOOK Fiscal Year 2017 (low) Fiscal Year 2017 (high) Net cash provided by operating activities $ 115 $ 130 Capital expenditures for property and equipment (excluding inventory): New sales centers1 (9) (7) Other (28) (25) Borrowings from securitization transactions 393 398 Repayment of debt related to securitizations (281) (286) Free cash flow ** 190 210 Adjustments: Net change in borrowings available from the securitization of eligible vacation ownership notes receivable through the warehouse credit facility2 10 10 Increase in restricted cash (10) (10) Adjusted free cash flow ** $ 190 $ 210 1 Represents the incremental investment in new sales centers. 2 Represents the net change in borrowings available from the securitization of eligible vacation ownership notes receivable through the warehouse credit facility between the 2016 and 2017 year ends. ** Denotes non-GAAP financial measures. Please see pages A-10 and A-11 for additional information about our reasons for providing these alternative financial measures and limitations on their use. A-10 MARRIOTT VACATIONS WORLDWIDE CORPORATION NON-GAAP FINANCIAL MEASURES In our press release and schedules, and on the related conference call, we report certain financial measures that are not prescribed by United States generally accepted accounting principles ("GAAP"). We discuss our reasons for reporting these non-GAAP financial measures below, and the financial schedules reconcile the most directly comparable GAAP financial measure to each non-GAAP financial measure that we report (identified by a double asterisk ("**") on the preceding pages). Although we evaluate and present these non-GAAP financial measures for the reasons described below, please be aware that these non-GAAP financial measures have limitations and should not be considered in isolation or as a substitute for revenues, net income, earnings per share or any other comparable operating measure prescribed by GAAP. In addition, these non-GAAP financial measures may be calculated and / or presented differently than measures with the same or similar names that are reported by other companies, and as a result, the non-GAAP financial measures we report may not be comparable to those reported by others. Adjusted Net Income We evaluate non-GAAP financial measures, including Adjusted Net Income, Adjusted EBITDA, and Adjusted Development Margin, that exclude certain items in the quarters and first halves ended June 30, 2017 and June 17, 2016 because these non-GAAP financial measures allow for period-over-period comparisons of our on-going core operations before the impact of these items. These non-GAAP financial measures also facilitate our comparison of results from our on-going core operations before these items with results from other vacation ownership companies. Certain items - Quarter and First Half Ended June 30, 2017 In our Statement of Income for the quarter ended June 30, 2017, we recorded $0.5 million of net pre-tax items, which included $0.2 million of acquisition costs, less than $0.2 million of litigation settlement expenses and less than $0.2 million of losses and other expense. In our Statement of Income for the first half ended June 30, 2017, we recorded $1.0 million of net pre-tax items, which included $0.6 million of acquisition costs, $0.2 million of litigation settlement expenses and $0.2 million of losses and other expense. Certain items - Quarter and First Half Ended June 17, 2016 In our Statement of Income for the quarter ended June 17, 2016, we recorded $8.3 million of net pre-tax items, which included $10.7 million of gains and other income, $2.0 million of acquisition costs, and $0.4 million of losses (including $0.2 million of depreciation) from the operations of the property we acquired in Australia in 2015 that we sold in the second quarter of 2016. In our Statement of Income for the first half ended June 17, 2016, we recorded $6.2 million of net pre-tax items, which included $10.7 million of gains and other income, $4.6 million of acquisition costs, a $0.3 million reversal of litigation settlement expense, and $0.2 million of losses (including $0.5 million of depreciation) from the operations of the property we acquired in Australia in 2015 that we sold in the second quarter of 2016. Adjusted Development Margin (Adjusted Sale of Vacation Ownership Products Net of Expenses) We evaluate Adjusted Development Margin (Adjusted Sale of Vacation Ownership Products Net of Expenses) as an indicator of operating performance. Adjusted Development Margin adjusts Sale of vacation ownership products revenues for the impact of revenue reportability, includes corresponding adjustments to Cost of vacation ownership products expense and Marketing and sales expense associated with the change in revenues from the Sale of vacation ownership products, and may include adjustments for certain items as itemized in the discussion of Adjusted Net Income above. We evaluate Adjusted Development Margin because it allows for period-over-period comparisons of our on-going core operations before the impact of revenue reportability and certain items to our Development Margin. MARRIOTT VACATIONS WORLDWIDE CORPORATION NON-GAAP FINANCIAL MEASURES Earnings Before Interest Expense, Taxes, Depreciation and Amortization ("EBITDA") and Adjusted EBITDA EBITDA is defined as earnings, or net income, before interest expense (excluding consumer financing interest expense), provision for income taxes, depreciation and amortization. For purposes of our EBITDA and Adjusted EBITDA calculations, we do not adjust for consumer financing interest expense because the associated debt is secured by vacation ownership notes receivable that have been sold to bankruptcy remote special purpose entities and is generally non-recourse to us. Further, we consider consumer financing interest expense to be an operating expense of our business. We consider EBITDA and Adjusted EBITDA to be indicators of operating performance, which we use to measure our ability to service debt, fund capital expenditures and expand our business. We also use EBITDA and Adjusted EBITDA, as do analysts, lenders, investors and others, because these measures exclude certain items that can vary widely across different industries or among companies within the same industry. For example, interest expense can be dependent on a company's capital structure, debt levels and credit ratings. Accordingly, the impact of interest expense on earnings can vary significantly among companies. The tax positions of companies can also vary because of their differing abilities to take advantage of tax benefits and because of the tax policies of the jurisdictions in which they operate. As a result, effective tax rates and provision for income taxes can vary considerably among companies. EBITDA and Adjusted EBITDA also exclude depreciation and amortization because companies utilize productive assets of different ages and use different methods of both acquiring and depreciating productive assets. These differences can result in considerable variability in the relative costs of productive assets and the depreciation and amortization expense among companies. Adjusted EBITDA reflects additional adjustments for certain items, as itemized in the discussion of Adjusted Net Income above, and excludes non-cash share-based compensation expense to address considerable variability among companies in recording compensation expense because companies use share-based payment awards differently, both in the type and quantity of awards granted. Prior period presentation has been recast for consistency. We evaluate Adjusted EBITDA as an indicator of operating performance because it allows for period-over-period comparisons of our on-going core operations before the impact of the excluded items. Together, EBITDA and Adjusted EBITDA facilitate our comparison of results from our on-going core operations before the impact of these items with results from other vacation ownership companies. Free Cash Flow and Adjusted Free Cash Flow We evaluate Free Cash Flow and Adjusted Free Cash Flow as liquidity measures that provide useful information to management and investors about the amount of cash provided by operating activities after capital expenditures for property and equipment, changes in restricted cash, and the borrowing and repayment activity related to our securitizations, which cash can be used for strategic opportunities, including acquisitions and strengthening the balance sheet. Adjusted Free Cash Flow, which reflects additional adjustments to Free Cash Flow for the impact of organizational and separation related, litigation, and other cash charges, allows for period-over-period comparisons of the cash generated by our business before the impact of these items. Analysis of Free Cash Flow and Adjusted Free Cash Flow also facilitates management's comparison of our results with our competitors' results. A-12 MARRIOTT VACATIONS WORLDWIDE CORPORATION INTERIM CONSOLIDATED BALANCE SHEETS (In thousands, except share and per share data) (Unaudited) June 30, 2017 December 30, 2016 ASSETS Cash and cash equivalents $ 85,151 $ 147,102 Restricted cash (including $31,005 and $27,525 from VIEs, respectively) 58,753 66,000 Accounts and contracts receivable, net (including $4,311 and $4,865 from VIEs, respectively) 131,395 161,733 Vacation ownership notes receivable, net (including $655,180 and $717,543 from VIEs, respectively) 1,036,449 972,311 Inventory 744,430 712,536 Property and equipment 249,264 202,802 Other (including $10,647 and $0 from VIEs, respectively) 127,994 128,935 TOTAL ASSETS $ 2,433,436 $ 2,391,419 LIABILITIES AND EQUITY Accounts payable $ 76,456 $ 124,439 Advance deposits 59,401 55,542 Accrued liabilities (including $537 and $584 from VIEs, respectively) 112,916 147,469 Deferred revenue 115,536 95,495 Payroll and benefits liability 87,000 95,516 Deferred compensation liability 69,928 62,874 Debt, net (including $671,221 and $738,362 from VIEs, respectively) 773,557 737,224 Other 12,989 15,873 Deferred taxes 156,835 149,168 TOTAL LIABILITIES 1,464,618 1,483,600 Preferred stock $0.01 par value; 2,000,000 shares authorized; none issued or outstanding Common stock $0.01 par value; 100,000,000 shares authorized; 36,839,064 and 36,633,868 shares issued, respectively 368 366 Treasury stock at cost; 9,669,970 and 9,643,562 shares, respectively (610,115) (606,631) Additional paid-in capital 1,161,507 1,162,283 Accumulated other comprehensive income 12,189 5,460 Retained earnings 404,869 346,341 TOTAL EQUITY 968,818 907,819 TOTAL LIABILITIES AND EQUITY $ 2,433,436 $ 2,391,419 The abbreviation VIEs above means Variable Interest Entities. A-13 MARRIOTT VACATIONS WORLDWIDE CORPORATION INTERIM CONSOLIDATED STATEMENTS OF CASH FLOWS (In thousands) Year to Date Ended June 30, 2017 June 17, 2016 (182 days) (168 days) OPERATING ACTIVITIES Net income $ 77,976 $ 60,717 Adjustments to reconcile net income to net cash provided by operating activities: Depreciation 10,192 10,177 Amortization of debt issuance costs 2,726 2,559 Provision for loan losses 26,821 19,591 Share-based compensation 8,451 6,856 Loss (gain) on disposal of property and equipment, net 225 (10,675) Deferred income taxes 11,778 15,792 Net change in assets and liabilities: Accounts and contracts receivable 30,079 (11,084) Notes receivable originations (227,643) (124,318) Notes receivable collections 136,731 120,548 Inventory 16,007 (13,924) Purchase of vacation ownership units for future transfer to inventory (33,594) Other assets 4,406 26,111 Accounts payable, advance deposits and accrued liabilities (70,470) (86,355) Deferred revenue 19,654 22,627 Payroll and benefit liabilities (8,698) (27,313) Deferred compensation liability 7,053 6,536 Other liabilities (585) 1,081 Other, net 3,021 2,152 Net cash provided by operating activities 14,130 21,078 INVESTING ACTIVITIES Capital expenditures for property and equipment (excluding inventory) (11,344) (15,142) Purchase of company owned life insurance (10,092) Dispositions, net 11 69,738 Net cash (used in) provided by investing activities (21,425) 54,596 FINANCING ACTIVITIES Borrowings from securitization transactions 50,260 91,281 Repayment of debt related to securitization transactions (117,400) (84,040) Borrowings from Revolving Corporate Credit Facility 60,000 85,000 Repayment of Revolving Corporate Credit Facility (12,500) (40,000) Debt issuance costs (1,219) (231) Repurchase of common stock (3,868) (163,359) Accelerated stock repurchase forward contract (14,470) Payment of dividends (28,552) (26,067) Payment of withholding taxes on vesting of restricted stock units (9,962) (3,876) Other, net (624) 572 Net cash used in financing activities (63,865) (155,190) Effect of changes in exchange rates on cash, cash equivalents and restricted cash 1,962 (3,238) Decrease in cash, cash equivalents, and restricted cash (69,198) (82,754) Cash, cash equivalents and restricted cash, beginning of period 213,102 248,512 Cash, cash equivalents and restricted cash, end of period $ 143,904 $ 165,758 SOURCE Marriott Vacations Worldwide Related Links http://www.marriottvacationsworldwide.com WASHINGTON, Aug. 3, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Measure, the largest U.S. provider of drone solutions for enterprise customers, today announced the expansion of its drone engineering and equipment sales capabilities with the acquisition of Pilatus Unmanned. Josh Kornoff, Pilatus Unmanned CEO and a pioneer in the commercial drone industry, will head Measure's engineering team. The acquisition marks the latest chapter in Measure's rapid growth, highlighted by the recent introduction of new solutions and toolkits for the solar and broadcast news industries. Pilatus Unmanned (previously known as Allied Drones) specialized in drone customization for commercial customers, leveraging Kornoff's years of experience in designing and fabricating custom drone and payload solutions. Pilatus Unmanned was one of the first Enterprise value-added resellers for DJI, the leader in commercial multirotor drones. "Measure is at the forefront of the emerging Drone as a Service industry and is fundamentally changing the way businesses gather information critical to their operations," said Kornoff, whose career also includes 15 years as a Hollywood special effects and pyrotechnics supervisor for nearly 1,000 commercials, music videos, television shows and films. "I'm excited to continue pushing the envelope in using drone technology to solve business challenges." Kornoff will lead Measure's drone engineering team out of its new office in Huntington Beach, CA, which includes an industrial facility equipped with the machinery, tooling, parts and components for drone customizations. Kornoff will also serve as Measure's lead technical advisor and will oversee support programs for toolkit customers. "This acquisition will accelerate growth and allow us to continue to create groundbreaking solutions for our customers in energy, construction, telecommunications and media," said Measure CEO and co-founder Brandon Torres Declet. "Expanding our engineering capacity and our ability to provide one-stop shopping for equipment and toolkits will help ensure that we can offer our customers solutions that are truly comprehensive." About Measure Measure is the nation's leading Drone as a Service company, providing solutions to acquire, process, and deliver actionable aerial data and media to enterprise customers. The company has pioneered drone applications in telecommunications, construction, energy, disaster response, live media coverage and other areas, utilizing best-in-class drone technology. Measure employs highly experienced pilots, trainers, and data engineers to execute safe, legal and insured missions that help customers achieve new cost and operational efficiencies. For more information, visit www.measure.com or follow the company at www.facebook.com/MeasureUAS/ and on Twitter at @droneasaservice. SOURCE Measure Related Links http://www.measure.com NEW YORK, Aug. 3, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Hunt Mortgage Group, a leader in financing commercial real estate throughout the United States, announced today that Megan Goodfellow has re-joined the firm as Chief Credit Officer for commercial real estate. Her focus will be on Hunt Mortgage Group's balance sheet Proprietary Lending Group, a program that launched three years ago. She will be based in the New York office and will report to Jim Flynn, President and Chief Investment Officer. "Megan has more than 30 years of experience working in various aspects of the commercial real estate industry," noted Flynn. "She is a veteran industry executive who spent eight years with Hunt Mortgage Group's predecessor firm, Centerline Capital Group as Credit Officer for various high-yield debt and equity funds and structured investment vehicles. She joined Centerline in 2007 and participated in the restructuring and special servicing of a $2.5 billion multifamily bond portfolio." Prior to rejoining Hunt Mortgage Group, Goodfellow was Chief Credit Officer at RealtyMogul.com where she was a member of the executive and investment committees and oversaw underwriting, closing and asset management for debt, sub-debt and equity investments originated by the RealtyMogul.com platform. Before her time at Centerline, Goodfellow was with JP Morgan Chase where she was the credit officer and head of underwriting for the bank's CMBS division. Earlier in her career, she held senior positions at American General (an AIG company) and Fidelity Investments. "The dynamic growth we have been experiencing at Hunt Mortgage Group over the past two years has been significant," added Michael Becktel, Managing Director in charge of Proprietary Lending at Hunt Mortgage Group. "We are actively working to build our platform nationwide and have launched a number of new products to accelerate our balance sheet lending business. In the first six months of 2017, we opened five new offices and have grown our staff to 198 professionals. Megan's return to Hunt Mortgage Group signals her confidence in our expanded platform and the outstanding additions we have made to the team across the country. We are confident she will play a pivotal role in helping us achieve our growth goals." Goodfellow earned a Masters of Business Administration from the University of Houston, and a Bachelor of Arts in Social Science, with a minor in Business Administration, from St. Bonaventure University. She is a member of the CFA Institute and is a Chartered Financial Analyst. About Hunt Mortgage Group Hunt Mortgage Group, a wholly owned subsidiary of Hunt Companies, Inc., is a leader in financing commercial real estate throughout the United States. The Company finances all types of commercial real estate: multifamily properties (including small balance), affordable housing, office, retail, manufactured housing, healthcare/senior living, industrial, and self-storage facilities. It offers Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, HUD/FHA in addition to its own Proprietary loan products. Since inception, the Company has structured more than $21 billion of loans and today maintains a servicing portfolio of more than $12.5 billion. Headquartered in New York City, Hunt Mortgage Group has 198 professionals in 24 locations throughout the United States. To learn more, visit www.huntmortgagegroup.com. MEDIA CONTACTS Brent Feigenbaum Hunt Mortgage Group 212-317-5730 [email protected] Pam Flores 773-218-9260 [email protected] SOURCE Hunt Mortgage Group Related Links http://www.huntmortgagegroup.com Under the present provision of the RTE Act, students are promoted automatically to higher classes till class 8. This is one of the key components of the RTE Act, which came into force on April 1, 2010. By Press Trust of India: The Union Cabinet has approved the scrapping of the no-detention policy in schools till Class 8. It also gave its nod to the Human Resource Development Ministry's plan of creating 20 world-class institutions in the country. An enabling provision will be made in the Right of Children for Free and Compulsory Education Amendment Bill, which will allow states to detain students in Class 5 and Class 8 if they fail in the year-end exam. advertisement However, the students will have to be given a second chance to improve via an examination before they are detained. The bill will now be placed in Parliament for approval. Under the present provision of the RTE (Right to Education) Act, students are promoted automatically to higher classes till class 8. This is one of the key components of the RTE Act, which came into force on April 1, 2010. PLAN TO CREATE 20 WORLD-CLASS INSTITUTIONS IN COUNTRY APPROVED The Union Cabinet, which had deferred its decision in June about the creation of 20 world-class institutions in the country, approved the same on Wednesday. The University Grants Commission (UGC) had in February passed a new set of regulations to set up 10 world-class institutions in the public sector and as many in the private sector. Out of the 20 universities, first proposed in this year's budget, the 10 state-supported institutions are expected to receive public funding of up to Rs 500 crore each. An Expenditure Finance Committee note seeking Rs 5,000 crore for these institutions was moved. The institutes can be existing or greenfield (the latter for private institutions). The HRD Ministry's separate rules - UGC (Declaration of Government Educational Institutions as World Class Institutions) Guidelines - allow these institutes to fix their own fees for foreign students and decide salaries for foreign faculty, as well as the freedom to choose admission procedures. Existing universities don't have such freedom and are guided by the detailed UGC rules. Also read | UGC, AICTE to be history, replaced by single higher education regulator Environment an essential component of education, compulsory subject in schools: HRD Ministry ALSO WATCH VIDEO: CBSE chairman meets HRD Minister Prakash Javadekar over NEET exam row --- ENDS --- TYSONS CORNER, Va., Aug. 3, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- On August 1, 2017, the General Services Administration (GSA) announced MicroTech has been awarded a spot on the $50 Billion 15-year Enterprise Infrastructure Solutions (EIS) Multi-Agency Contract (MAC). MicroTech, a Certified and Verified Service-Disabled Veteran-Owned Small Business (SDVOSB) and leading provider of Telecommunications and Cyber Security Solutions, Cloud Computing, Technology Solutions, and Professional Services is one of only ten companies to receive an EIS Award. Through the Network Services program, GSA has developed the Network Services 2020 (NS2020) strategy, a new and all-inclusive acquisition program to fulfill agencies' needs for IT and telecommunications. NS2020 will work to become the government's main source for network-based and network-enabled services, which will be provided through the new EIS contract vehicle. To read more about this strategy visit the GSA's website at https://www.gsa.gov/portal/category/101050. "MicroTech is honored to have been selected as a provider for this next generation of network services contract," says Tony Jimenez, Founder, President and CEO of MicroTech. "This award is the culmination of several years of work by our dedicated team and is our most significant contract win to date," Mr. Jimenez added. "It will allow MicroTech to expand our offerings beyond data services, voice services, and managed services, to the full spectrum of telecommunications, cloud and network services that drive era-defining modernization and innovation." The winning MicroTech team included a stellar group of globally recognized telecommunications and information services companies, including such global leaders as; Cox Communication, NTT America, Spectrum, Tata Communications, Telefonica, and Vodafone. MicroTech now holds 25 multiple-award type contracts with dozens of Federal State and Local Government Agencies through which MicroTech provides a broad range of innovative technologies and state of the art Professional Services and Solutions. About MicroTech: MicroTech, a Certified and Verified Service-Disabled Veteran-Owned Small Business (SDVOSB) and a Minority Business Enterprise (MBE) certified by the National Minority Supplier Development Council (NMSDC), has had noteworthy success since its inception in 2004. Under Tony Jimenez's leadership, the privately-owned company has experienced exponential growth over the years and is repeatedly recognized as a small business success story. Described as the "hottest Hispanic business in the nation," MicroTech was ranked as the #1 Fastest Growing Hispanic Company in the Nation for three consecutive years by Hispanic Business Magazine. MicroTech was also named one of the Top 10 Fastest Growing Hispanic-Owned Companies in the Nation for five consecutive years and has been repeatedly listed on Washington Technology's annual list of the Top 100 Government Contractors. MicroTech provides Telecommunications Services, Solutions & Integration, Cyber Security Solutions, Cloud Computing, Technology and Professional Services, Network Systems Integration, R&D, and Financial Services to the public sector, as well as commercial enterprises -- managing more than a quarter of a million technology users daily. A prime contractor of more than 100 Federal projects and more than 25 Contract Vehicles, MicroTech offers access to 2,500 vendors and a million technology products and services across the Federal Government. Contact: Jennifer Berman 703-637-3235 [email protected] SOURCE MicroTech Related Links http://www.microtech.net DENVER, Aug. 3, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Children 15 years of age and younger can spot any of our employees on the bourse floor to redeem a golden ticket that will allow them to claim a prize at booth #1000. From Aug. 1-5, the American Numismatic Association (ANA) is hosting the World's Fair of Money. The event is being held at Hall F of the Colorado Convention Center at 700 14th Street. ModernCoinMart ModernCoinMart and GovMint.com are attending the event and are offering an exciting activity for children attendees. For those 15-years-old and under, golden tickets are being offered to those that are able to spot our employees around the convention center. Keep an eye out for anyone wearing a black shirt with MCM and GovMint logos on the front. When you spot us out on the bourse floor, just ask for your golden ticket! Golden tickets can be brought to booth #1000 for a special prize. Be sure to always be on the lookout for us only 10 of these golden tickets are available! And remember, you have to see us out on the bourse floor to redeem your ticket. "It's a really thrilling event," says Kelsey Howard, Marketing Manager. "We want to ensure that everyone in attendance is able to enjoy themselves, no matter their age. But most importantly, we want to help young collectors create a lasting interest in the hobby of coin collecting." This activity will run through the course of the show or until all 10 tickets are claimed. About ModernCoinMart ModernCoinMart, established in 2004, has pioneered the modern coin market online. The company has a professional customer service team, offers free domestic shipping on all orders with no minimum, and strives to bring their customers the lowest possible prices. To learn more, visit ModernCoinMart.com. About GovMint.com For more than 30 years, Bill Gale has been a nationally recognized numismatist, and is the founder and president of GovMint.com. With headquarters located in Minneapolis, MN, GovMint.com is one of the largest retailers of rare and collectible coins in the country. To learn more, visit GovMint.com. To learn more about this event, please contact: Kelsey Howard Marketing Manager 5260 Paylor Ln, Sarasota, FL Office: (941) 467-7969 [email protected] Related Images image1.jpg image2.png image3.jpg SOURCE ModernCoinMart Related Links https://www.moderncoinmart.com VANCOUVER, British Columbia, August 3, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- MYM Nutraceuticals Inc., (CSE: MYM) (OTC: MYMMF), (the "Company" or "MYM") is pleased to announce that it has reached an agreement with BIGIS Expert Conseils of Weedon, QC to conduct environmental tests for the Weedon project. The initial agreement will see BIGIS Expert Conseils conduct environmental tests for phases one and two of the Weedon project. The tests will focus on all proposed outbuildings and greenhouse sites. The tests are expected to conclude Summer 2017. BIGIS Expert Conseils is a local engineering firm from Weedon, QC. MYM is committed to creating meaningful contacts within the community demonstrated here by partnering with the local engineering company. To further the goal of creating a lasting relationship within the community of Weedon, MYM has set up quarters in the Weedon Community Centre to better deal with onsite business and community relations until suitable office space is constructed. Further to local environmental testing and community relations, MYM is on the cusp of beginning a social impact study with regards to the Weedon project. About MYM MYM Nutraceuticals Inc. is an innovative company focused on acquiring Health Canada licenses to produce and sell high-end organic medicinal cannabis supplements and topical products. To ensure a strong presence and growth potential within the industry, MYM is actively looking to acquire complementary businesses and assets in the technology, nutraceuticals and CBD sectors. MYM shares trade in Canada, Germany and the USA under the following symbols: (CSE: MYM) (OTC: MYMMF) (FRA: 0MY) (DEU: 0MY) (MUN: 0MY) (STU: 0MY). ON BEHALF OF THE BOARD "Rob Gietl" Rob Gietl, CEO MYM Nutraceuticals Inc. http://www.mymarijuana.ca This news release may contain forward-looking statements based on assumptions and judgments of management regarding future events or results. Such statements are subject to a variety of risks and uncertainties which could cause actual events or results to differ materially from those reflected in the forward-looking statements. The company disclaims any intention or obligation to revise or update such statements. For a description of the risks and uncertainties facing the Company and its business and affairs, readers should refer to the Company's Management's Discussion and Analysis and other disclosure filings with Canadian securities regulators, which are posted on http://www.sedar.com . This news release does not constitute an offer to sell or solicitation of an offer to buy any of the securities described herein and accordingly undue reliance should not be put on such. Neither the Canadian Securities Exchange (CSE or CNSX Markets), nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in policies of the CSE), accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release. This news release does not constitute an offer to sell or a solicitation of an offer to buy any of the securities described herein in the United States. The securities described herein have not been registered under the United States Securities Act of 1933, as amended (the "U.S. Securities Act"), or any state securities law and may not be offered or sold in the "United States", as such term is defined in Regulation S promulgated under the U.S. Securities Act, unless registered under the U.S. Securities Act and applicable state securities laws or an exemption from such registration requirements is available. MYM Investor Relations Contact: Terry Brown +1(855)696-2261 SOURCE MYM Nutraceuticals Inc. IRVINE, Calif., Aug. 3, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Neudesic today announced that The Firm Directory the leading people-based experience discovery system for law firms and legal departments played an integral expertise component in the innovative solution delivered in partnership with Fireman & Company and Handshake Software for a new Microsoft SharePoint-based intranet solution for a top 20 law firm, as ranked by the monthly law magazine, The American Lawyer (Am Law). The new solution migrates and modernizes the firm's legacy Lotus Notes applications to deliver a dynamic attorney, client and matter-centric portal, developed under the thought leadership of Fireman & Company and leveraging The Firm Directory's people experience discovery platform, and Handshake Software's Portal Solution, creating a next generation SharePoint intranet experience. "We are excited about the solution that Neudesic, together with Fireman & Company and Handshake Software, completed for this market-leading law firm," said Ramin Vosough, vice president of Neudesic. "One of our primary goals was to deliver the firm's new people experience discovery solution smoothly and in record time by working closely with our partners." "This project was business-critical for our client - we were replacing and improving a core part of their attorneys' daily workflow," said Joshua Fireman, founder and president of Fireman & Company. "The CIO's request was frank, that Fireman & Company and the partners had to work as a single unit. I'm proud that this project succeeded through great project management and industry-leading thought leadership, design, and technology." "This project showcased how three separate organizations can partner together to accomplish a common goal and deliver for the client," said Glenn LaForce, executive vice president and chief strategy officer at Handshake Software. "The firm put its trust in Handshake Software and its partners on this strategic project, and we all delivered." The Firm Directory product team, Fireman & Company and Handshake Software are participating at this year's ILTACON, the premier educational and networking conference for the legal sector, taking place at Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas, August 13-17, 2017. Be sure to visit them at the conference to learn more. About The Firm Directory from Neudesic The Firm Directory is the Gartner-recognized experience discovery platform used by Am Law 100 law firms and in-house legal teams, designed to accelerate knowledge management and marketing efforts for law firms and legal departments. The Firm Directory improves cross-selling and knowledge-sharing by decreasing the time it takes to locate the right people with the right experience, skills or relationships required for new pursuits and client matters. The Firm Directory enables firms to capture attorney relationships, court affiliations and proficiencies with LinkedIn-style familiarity and ready accessibility via mobile applications. The Firm Directory was built on the award-winning Neudesic Pulse enterprise social collaboration platform, and was created by Neudesic, a technology services company. To learn more, visit thefirmdirectory.com. Visit us at ILTACON 2017, Booth 432. About Fireman & Company Fireman & Company is a legal industry-focused management consulting firm. Fireman team members have decades of experience as leaders in the industry, working as attorneys, CIOs, CKOs, and experts in KM, LPM, process improvement, and pricing. Fireman & Company is a trusted advisor to the world's most innovative law firms and corporations, and its mission is to help clients make substantial, distinctive, and lasting improvements in performance. For more information, please visit firemanco.com. About Handshake Software Handshake Software is the market leading and award-winning provider of knowledge management products and services to the legal market including portals, enterprise search and mobility solutions. Handshake leverages existing firm investments in practice & financial managements systems, CRM, ECM and DMS by delivering powerful system integrations. Other business benefits include rapid deployment, reduction of overall risk, unparalleled flexibility and integrated security. Handshake clients include 50% of the Am Law 100, and 45% of the Am Law 200 and NLJ 350 with total users exceeding 110,000 across 10 countries. For more information about Handshake Software, visit HandshakeSoftware.com and in booth 621/623 at ILTACON. Media Contact: Mike Manning Senior Manager, Product Marketing The Firm Directory - Neudesic (949) 754-4524 [email protected] SOURCE Neudesic Related Links http://www.neudesic.com NASHVILLE, Tenn., Aug. 2, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- NovaCopy, an award-winning provider of print technology and innovative business solutions, has been acquired by its current senior management team with equity financing provided by Trivest Partners, LP, a private investment firm that focuses on founder and family-owned businesses in the Southeast. (L to R) Row 1: Kim Johnson, Benny Malicoat, Jon Dreyer, NovaCopy CEO Darren Metz, Jeff Hoctor, Marty Wood, John Sutton Row 2: Joe White, Jorge Gross (Trivest Partners), Melissa Ragsdale, Cameron Rochelle, Carl Pottkotter, Jim Larue, Jonathan Kilton, Daniel Sheppard, Brian Connell (Trivest Partners) Row 3: Andrew Heggem, Matt Shorter, Kristen Riley, Curt Ralph, Trent Stevens, Jason Levkulich Founded in 1999, NovaCopy has been recognized by Inc Magazine as one of the fastest-growing companies in the United States for more than 10 years and has 11 locations with revenues of $80 million in 2016. NovaCopy has acquired three companies in the past eight months with seven potential acquisitions, in various stages, currently underway. "We have been approached by many potential acquirers in recent years due to our exceptional growth and stellar reputation," said Darren Metz, CEO and founder. "While we turned down those inquiries, two NovaCopy partners, Carolyn Stafford and Alex Brandon, were seeking a liquidity event and retirement while my partner Joe White and I both wanted to continue owning and managing the company. All four owners had a common goal of keeping our management team intact so that we could continue our traditions of excellent customer and employee relations without disruption from new owners or investors. Selling to our management team was a great idea, but we could not make the numbers work until Trivest put together a creative solution that achieved all of our goals." As part of the recapitalization, NovaCopy provided cash bonuses to long-term employees, which was used by the current NovaCopy senior management team along with equity from Trivest to buy the business from the selling shareholders. As a result, NovaCopy founders Alex Brandon and Carolyn Stafford have retired, while Joe White and Darren Metz participated with 18 other NovaCopy managers in buying the company (see attached photo). Going forward, Metz will remain CEO and the largest individual shareholder along with Joe White, who will continue as President and second largest individual shareholder. Metz added, "This transaction is the culmination of the careers of my life-time friends and partners, Carolyn Stafford and Alex Brandon. I am thrilled to see them enjoy the fruits of their labor while welcoming NovaCopy's management team as my new business partners for the exciting next phase of NovaCopy's growth." Trivest was selected for private equity financing due to an alignment of shared values including a hands-off approach to portfolio company operations. Jorge Gross, Partner in Trivest, expressed excitement participating with NovaCopy, Inc. in this new chapter of the company's story. "Our firm has extensive experience working with business service companies like NovaCopy that need financing for growth and executing succession plans. We seek to invest in companies with solid, intact management teams like NovaCopy, because we don't get involved in daily operations," said Gross. "Including the broad management team along with Joe White and Darren Metz in the new ownership structure ensures NovaCopy customers, vendor partners and employees will enjoy uninterrupted positive relationships with NovaCopy." Chartwell Financial Advisory, Inc. ("Chartwell"), acted as the exclusive financial advisor to NovaCopy. Chartwell was engaged to help NovaCopy choose from more than 30 potential strategic and financial acquirers who had indicated interest in acquiring NovaCopy. "It truly was an honor to assist NovaCopy in achieving this unique management-led buyout with equity funding by Trivest. This move enables Darren Metz and the management team to continue their vision of consolidating the fragmented business technology industry across the United States," said Greg Fresh, Managing Director, Chartwell. About NovaCopy, Inc. NovaCopy is an award-winning, full-service provider of business technology solutions to small and medium businesses, as well as Fortune 1000 and government customers. NovaCopy's product and service offerings include managed print and IT services, multifunction devices, production printers, wide format printers, document solutions, and 3D Printing, scanning and prototyping solutions. Headquartered in Nashville, NovaCopy is supported by 11 regional branch offices located throughout the Southern United States. For more information, visit www.NovaCopy.com. Follow NovaCopy on Facebook and Twitter for all the latest news. About Trivest Partners Trivest Partners is a private investment firm that focuses on partnering with founder/family owned businesses in the United States and Canada. Since its founding in 1981, Trivest has completed more than 225 transactions, totaling in excess of $5.5 billion in value. For additional information, please visit www.trivest.com. About Chartwell Financial Advisory Chartwell provides comprehensive financial advisory solutions and investment banking services to the middle market. With substantial corporate finance and capital markets expertise, the Chartwell team works with clients and their advisors to deliver independent, solutions-based advisory services that are unbiased to outcome, free from conflicts and focused on optimizing client objectives. For more information about Chartwell, please visit www.chartwellfa.com. Related Links Facebook Twitter SOURCE NovaCopy, Inc. Related Links http://www.novacopy.com SPRINGFIELD, Mass., Aug. 3, 2017 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Baystate Health nurses represented by the Massachusetts Nurses Association will hold an informational picket outside Baystate's corporate headquarters in Springfield on Monday, Aug. 7. Nurses and their supporters will call on Baystate executives to allow local management to make fair contract agreements that protect patient care and allow quality RN working conditions. What: Informational picket by Baystate Franklin Medical Center and Baystate Noble Hospital nurses and their supporters. Nurses are advocating for safe patient care and quality, affordable health insurance after Baystate Health executives in Springfield have refused to allow fair bargaining for many months. When: Monday, Aug 7 from 4 to 6 p.m. Where: Outside Baystate Health HQ at 280 Chestnut St. in Springfield. "Nurses have been actively negotiating on behalf of our patients and colleagues for months, but local management has no power to bargain in good faith," said Donna Stern, RN Senior Co-Chair of the BFMC MNA Bargaining Unit. "Instead, executives from Baystate's corporate offices in Springfield refuse to actually negotiate. They delay, mislead the public and bully nurses and other staff. We want Baystate to be held accountable for providing safe patient care at all times, while Baystate wants to stop us at all costs." "MNA nurses have a voice because we stand together as a union," said Paul Dubin, RN Co-Chair of the Noble MNA Bargaining Unit. "We are the voice of our patients and our colleagues when they cannot speak. By trying to silence MNA nurses, Baystate is going after the communities it is supposed to serve." "The public built and paid for our hospitals," said Jillian Cycz, Junior RN Co-Chair of the BFMC MNA Bargaining Unit. "Baystate is a non-profit and should be using its tax dollars and generous public donations to serve its patients and communities rather than giving its executives incredible salaries and special retirement benefits. Public tax dollars and donations along with nurses and other staff members are what keep Baystate operating." "All nurses want is a fair contract that allows us to provide the best possible patient care," said Pam Fournier, RN Co-Chair of the Noble MNA Bargaining Unit. "Baystate has refused to bargain in good faith with us over this key issue and so we will stand together and take our fight to the decision-makers in Springfield." MNA nurses at Baystate Franklin Medical Center in Greenfield and Baystate Noble Hospital in Westfield have been trying for more than a year to negotiate fair contracts. BFMC nurses began bargaining in November 2016 and Noble nurses in February 2016. The nurses have been bargaining in good faith the entire time, trying to reach an agreement that ensures safe patient care and quality RN working conditions. Nurses are also seeking quality affordable health insurance, but Baystate has refused to bargain in good faith over these core issues. MassNurses.org Facebook.com/MassNurses Twitter.com/MassNurses Founded in 1903, the Massachusetts Nurses Association is the largest union of registered nurses in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Its 23,000 members advance the nursing profession by fostering high standards of nursing practice, promoting the economic and general welfare of nurses in the workplace, projecting a positive and realistic view of nursing, and by lobbying the Legislature and regulatory agencies on health care issues affecting nurses and the public. SOURCE Massachusetts Nurses Association Related Links http://www.massnurses.org LONDON, August 3, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- The latest downturn in prices is likely to cause another shakeout in the oil industry, a further separation of the best and the rest. The collapse of oil prices in 2014 caused several waves of bankruptcies in the ensuing years, yet generous financing from Wall Street has kept a lot of companies alive, even if they are not thriving. But prices have been persistently low, and the long-awaited rebound has suffered from several false starts. The most recent downturn in June, which saw WTI dip into the low-$40s, has hit the industry hard once again. Yet, it also opens up another round of opportunities for choosy investors, a window that will not stay open forever. Active companies on watch include: Schlumberger Limited (NYSE: SLB), Pioneer Natural Resources Company (NYSE: PXD), Anadarko Petroleum Corporation (NYSE: APC), Continental Resources, Inc. (NYSE: CLR), BHP Billiton Limited (NYSE: BHP) Here are five companies that could profit big in the short and medium-term, especially if oil prices continue to regain ground: #1 Pioneer Natural Resources (NYSE: PXD) Pioneer Natural Resources is a top-tier shale driller, with low breakeven prices, great acreage, and growing production. Pioneer's management is extremely bullish on U.S. shale in general and the Permian more specifically. Pioneer's CEO Scott Sheffield said recently that he sees U.S. oil production surging to 15 million barrels per day (mb/d) in the years ahead, more than 50 percent increase from today's levels. The Permian alone, Sheffield said, could produce up to 10 mb/d. While those figures are probably fanciful, it highlights how confident the company is in the competitiveness of U.S. shale in today's market. Crucially, Pioneer has said that it has drilling assets that breakeven below $30 per barrel. That means that with oil prices wallowing between $40 and $50, other shale companies could suffer, but Pioneer will still thrive. #2 Pentanova (PNO.V; PENYF) The small Canadian-based exploration company could be on the verge of some very exciting drilling prospects in Colombia - one of several reasons Pentanova offers huge upside potential. Pentanova's management members are alums of Pacific Rubiales, another small/mid-cap Canadian producer that had huge success in Colombia. Pentanova's chairman, Serafino Iacono, presided over a stock price surge at Pacific Rubiales, quintupling in roughly two years. He knows Colombia inside out and is looking at natural gas prospects in the South American nation. Pentanova also has the backing of Frank Giustra, the mining financier and legendary investor, who, not coincidentally, also supported Pacific Rubiales. With these two icons now at Pentanova, they are looking to repeat the extraordinary drilling successes they have already achieved in Colombia. Another reason investors should look at Pentanova is that the company has three top natural gas prospects in Colombia. The Maria Conchita is a ready-to-drill gas field adjacent to a long-producing Chevron field. Maria Conchita could see peak production of over 22 million cubic feet per day (MMcf/d). Pentanova also has a low-risk exploration play, the Sinu-9, which could potentially exceed the output of the Maria Conchita. Then there is the Tiburon block, which could be more difficult, requiring heavier levels of investment ($430 million) but the company thinks the payoff could be astronomical, with potential peak production at 264 MMcf/d and an IRR in excess of 100 percent. Beyond Colombia, Pentanova is also looking to get in on the oil rush in Argentina. But while the oil majors flock to Neuquen to drill for shale gas in the Vaca Muerta, Pentanova is looking for heavy oil in Patagonia in Southern Argentina. To that end, on July 24, Pentanova announced it was taking over Patagonia Oil Corp., a small oil company exploring in Southern Argentina. All told, Pentanova (PNO.V; PENYF ) is a company with a market cap of just $190 million but has assets under its control that are potentially worth up to $10 billion. #3 Schlumberger (NYSE: SLB) Schlumberger posted strong financials for the second quarter, with both revenue and earnings beating expectations. The oilfield services giant was hit hard by the oil market downturn, but will be one of the biggest beneficiaries of the rebound. Schlumberger makes money when drilling activity picks up, as it has for much of 2017. The surge in drilling in North America, in particular, is working in Schlumberger's favor. Meanwhile, the oilfield services sector will be able to demand higher prices for their rigs and services as the market tightens. On top of that, the international market is set to improve, meaning Schlumberger will profit on the shale drilling frenzy, but also on more drilling around the world. Interestingly, Schlumberger is pursuing a new growth model under its Schlumberger Production Management (SPM), which means participating in upstream projects using its own capital, sort of like private equity. Rather than simply charging for services, Schlumberger would become an equity partner in projects. The margins are higher than the rest of the company's business units. The model earned Schlumberger $1.4 billion in revenue last year, a figure that the company expects to double in two years. #4 Anadarko Petroleum (NYSE: APC) Anadarko Petroleum became the first major shale company to cut spending in response to the most recent downturn in prices. Unlike some of the other picks on this list, Anadarko is a more conservative choice based on preserving cash flow and reducing expenditures. Anadarko said it would slash 2017 capex by $300 million, and its share price initially jumped more than 4 percent the day after the announcement. Unlike in years past, Wall Street no longer exclusively rewards companies with high growth rates, but also those that focus on cash flow and profitability. If the initial response from the Street is anything to go on, it looks like investors were pleased with Anadarko's more conservative approach to the year. That means it could outperform its peers if it hangs back and lets others drill themselves into oblivion. #5 Continental Resources (NYSE:CLR) One of the largest Bakken shale drillers, Continental Resources is headed up by the omnipresent Harold Hamm, who carries a lot of weight with market watchers. Hamm's company also has a strong presence in Oklahoma's Anadarko Woodford play. Continental has been slammed over the past year by low oil prices, with its share price trading at the lower end of its 52-week range. But at just $33 per share, the risk is on the upside. Goldman Sachs recently made Continental one of its top shale E&Ps in a note to investors, citing the company's 'favorable combination of growth/deleveraging/valuation.' The investment bank argued that Continental is oversold at this point. Goldman also said that it expects Continental to end the year with a growing volume of drilled but uncompleted wells, which might impact production this year, but lead to more potential in 2018 as those wells come online. Honorable mentions: BHP Billiton Ltd. (NYSE: BHP): This giant not only mines metals, it also extracts oil and natural gas and has a diverse set of assets to that end in the Gulf of Mexico, Australia, Trinidad and Tobago. If natgas continues to rise, this will be a good play. Phillips 66: This is a major natural gas player, and it's been around forever. Last year wasn't kind to it, but its shares are now trading sideways and there may be some upside in the near future. PDC Energy: PDC an independent exploration and production company. With operations in Colorado, Texas, and Ohio, the company is well represented throughout the United States. Operating through two segments, oil and gas exploration and production, and gas marketing, the company's assets are diverse. As of December 31, 2016, the company owned interest in nearly 2,900 productive gross wells, solidifying PDC Energy's position as a notable producer in the States. RSP Permian, Inc: is an independent oil and natural gas company based in, you guessed it, Texas. The company's corporate headquarters are located in Dallas while its primary operations are located in the Permian Basin of West Texas. No stranger to the scene, RSP is well established in one of the hottest drilling locations on the planet. RSP also has a strong commitment to its shareholders and an experienced and talented management team that will continue to guide the company forward for years to come. Cabot Oil & Gas Corp.: This shale exploration company reached a high in May but has given up a little ground since then. We note, however, that its operating income has been trending upwards and it also pays a dividend of 0.82 percent. By Joao Peixe Legal Disclaimer/Disclosure from OilPrice.com: This piece is an advertorial and has been paid for. This document is not and should not be construed as an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to purchase or subscribe for any investment. No information in this Report should be construed as individualized investment advice. A licensed financial advisor should be consulted prior to making any investment decision. We make no guarantee, representation or warranty and accept no responsibility or liability as to its accuracy or completeness. 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This release contains "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and Section 21E the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended and such forward-looking statements are made pursuant to the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. "Forward-looking statements" describe future expectations, plans, results, or strategies and are generally preceded by words such as "may", "future", "plan" or "planned", "will" or "should", "expected," "anticipates", "draft", "eventually" or "projected". You are cautioned that such statements are subject to a multitude of risks and uncertainties that could cause future circumstances, events, or results to differ materially from those projected in the forward-looking statements, including the risks that actual results may differ materially from those projected in the forward-looking statements as a result of various factors, and other risks identified in a company's annual report on Form 10-K or 10-KSB and other filings made by such company with the Securities and Exchange Commission. You should consider these factors in evaluating the forward-looking statements included herein, and not place undue reliance on such statements. The forward-looking statements in this release are made as of the date hereof and FNM undertakes no obligation to update such statements. Contact Information: Media Contact e-mail: [email protected] U.S. Phone: +1(954)345-0611 SOURCE OilPrice.com When Do They Buy? In 2016 alone, Back to School Shoppers spent $75.8 billion dollars, an 11% increase from 2015. If retailers continue to perform at a similar rate this year, buying will surpass $83 billion dollars. 40% of parents start buying in July, while 60% wait until August. Of those August buyers, 20% wait right up until classes start to take advantage of greater discounts. In fact, 23% of Back to School consumers believe that they'll find better deals by waiting until later into the shopping season. Analyzing a number of different buying windows, Digilant found that 50.9% of shoppers do their buying three weeks before the first day of school; 22.2% shop two months in advance, 22.1% shop between three weeks to a month after classes have begun; and only 2.1% shop during the first week of classes. Compared to more frugal parents and students, consumers that start shopping earlier end up spending more on BTS-related products. These savings are also dependent on the type of product being purchased, given that computers and handheld electronic devices are bought ahead, while clothing is more likely to be left for a last minute shopping trip or after class is already in session. See the infographic here. Where Do They Buy? Despite the growth of eCommerce in recent years, there is still room for marketers' BTS digital audiences to continue growing. 42% of BTS consumers feel that they need several days to gather everything on their lists, because they're visiting a number of different stores in order to fill their "shopping cart." Most parents continue to go to physical stores, while 46% shop online. Based on survey data from 2016's BTS retail season, consumers shopped at: Discount Stores (60.5%) Department Stores (59.6%) Clothing Stores (51%) Online Stores (46%) Office Supply Stores (38.5%) Electronics Stores (38.5%) Drug Stores (16.6%) Local/Small Businesses (16.5%) Thrift/Resale Shops (11.7%) Catalogs (6.2%) These trends are expected to be very similar in 2017, with savvier consumers more inclined to shop with brands that have effective and personalized online buying experiences. Also an opportunity for digital marketers, luring in shoppers with creative advertising campaigns over their preferred media consumption channels. See the infographic here. How Do They Consume Media? Although many purchases are not made in July, consumers do begin to prepare in advance: 30% of the Internet searches for "Back to School" are concentrated in the month of July. 60% of the searches related to "Back to School" were made from mobile devices in 2016, 30% more than the previous year. Eight out of ten moms used their smartphones: 25% Used social media to inform purchase decisions 74% Looked for online promotions 61% Researched online before buying in-store 81% of students ages 5 to 22 used their smartphone to compare prices in the lead-up to classes, with significant variance based on age within this demographic. The more specific segment of millennial moms (approximately 21 to 35 years of age) are particularly inclined to showrooming, with 75.2% using their phones while shopping, to look for better prices in other stores or online. Where Are They Best Reached? The four most effective forms of digital advertising for brands that want to reach the BTS consumer are social media promotions, online ads, TV ads, and YouTube ads, in this order. When it comes to the students themselves, many heavily rely on these ads, especially fashion-forward teens who rely on social influencers on YouTube and other platforms to pick up on fashion trends. In 2016, about 75% of parents with school-aged children made purchases based on offers and that they received in their mailboxes, or were given to them on the street, etc. 43% bought their products based on television ads. 39% were seduced by advertising on retail websites; 33% were sold on offers they received via email and only 8% received promotions through their mobile phones. 88% of parents who have school-aged children use coupons to cut BTS costs, which 67% of consumers find on desktop computers and 42% on smartphones. The audience that brands should give most focus to remains the students' parents, given that they're making the final purchase decision 76% of the time. However, a student's participation during the discovery and evaluation phases play a much larger factor in swaying these decisions than in years past. For college students it depends on the age of the students but they are the ones who make the buying decisions in 88% of the cases. Changes in the BTS media consumption market demand a new approach to buying advertising. Digilant is here to help by unlocking data for more effective media buying and uncover new customers. Download the full Back to School infographic on Digilant's website here. Digilant collected the data for this infographic through the analysis of both its own first party data as well as reports and studies from: Advertising Age, BazaarVoice, Deloitte, Digilant, eMarketer, Mintel and the NRF. About Digilant Digilant offers programmatic buying solutions and services designed for independent agencies and brands that are increasing their programmatic spending. Using data science to unlock 'new' automated buying strategies, Digilant enables brands to uncover proprietary and complex audience data that gives them the actionable intelligence they need to compete across every important media channel. Headquartered in Boston, Digilant has offices in New York, Chicago and San Francisco, and across the globe in Barcelona, Bogota, Lima, London, Madrid, Mexico City, Monterrey, and Santiago. For more information please visit www.digilant.com or follow us on Twitter @Digilant_US. Digilant is an ispDigital Group Company (www.ispdigital.com). SOURCE Digilant Related Links https://www.digilant.com WASHINGTON, Aug. 2, 2017 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Organization of Iranian American Communities-US (OIAC) welcomes the signing to law the bipartisan H.R. 3364, which was passed few weeks ago by a historical majority in both U.S. Chambers. This law which entails "Countering Iran's Destabilizing Activities Act of 2017," and subjects the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) to Executive Order 13224 sanctions for Specially Designated Global Terrorists entities is a long overdue milestone in the right direction that should commence a comprehensive strategy in dealing with Iranian regime's egregious human rights violations at home and support of terrorism in the region, particularly in Syria and Iraq. As demanded by a large bi-partisan members of Congress, we also urge "the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the human rights situation in Iran and the United Nations Human Rights Council to create a Commission of Inquiry to fully investigate the (1988) massacre and to gather evidence and identify the names and roles of specific perpetrators with a view towards bringing them to justice." Moving the IRGC out of Syria and Iraq will be a major initiative that pronounces the new US policy in support of order and stability in the region. It requires a meticulous implementation of the new law since IRGC in the last few decades has spread its tentacle on thousands of front businesses in Iran and in the region, plundering and funding network of proxies to make the hegemony of Ira's theocracy under the direct supervision of the Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei a reality. Organization of Iranian American Communities-US (OIAC) calls upon the world community to join and collectively help rid of the current Iran's global threat, noting that the ultimate solution is Iranian people and the ultimate leverage is engaging the organized Iranian resistance who has suffered for the last four decades. Organization of Iranian American Communities-US (OIAC) SOURCE Organization of Iranian American Communities-US (OIAC) KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia, Aug. 3, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- The highly competitive picture archiving and communication systems (PACS) market in Southeast Asia (SEA) is both lucrative and complex. The extreme range and requirements of customer segments, where large private hospitals are in their second or third generation of PACS while mid- to small-sized hospitals are only now planning budgets for their first PACS investments, compel vendors to create distinct penetration strategies for each segment. Local and international vendors are vying for a share of the region's booming imaging informatics market through a combination of direct sales and partnerships with distributors. Technological sophistication, in terms of data management and analytics, will offer a strong competitive advantage. "The Asia-Pacific PACS market is at an interesting stage, where vendors have the opportunity to harness business from both traditional PACS and more advanced vendor-neutral solutions," said Connected Health Industry Analyst Natasha Gulati. "There is plenty of room for revenue growth, market penetration, and technological advances." End-user and Decision-maker Survey of Southeast Asian PACS Market, Forecast to 2021, new research from Frost & Sullivan's Connected Health Growth Partnership Service program, is based on a survey of over 70 radiology decision makers across SEA. The study covers standalone, integrated radiological information system (RIS) PACS and mini PACS, and presents valuable insights on specific customer segments and countries. Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand have the highest opportunity potential. In the Philippines, healthcare is undergoing modernization, but the country is a level-2 priority for most multinational vendors. Click here for complimentary access to more information on this analysis and to register for a Growth Strategy Dialogue, a free interactive briefing with Frost & Sullivan's thought leaders. The total PACS market in Southeast Asia is expected to be worth US$329.3 million in 2021. However, constrained budgets limit the full potential of PACS implementations in the region. The dominance of incremental workflow improvements in previous deployments, coupled with little understanding of upcoming technologies like cloud and Big Data analytics, hinder investments. While the industry is moving toward interoperability, providers still see the shift as a PACS replacement rather than the migration to vendor-neutral archives (VNAs). These factors make it crucial for vendors to partner with hospitals to help them evolve through their PACS journey. "There is a fine barrier between a PACS and a vendor-agnostic data management platform that can be easily overcome with technology," noted Gulati. "The imaging informatics space has a strong tendency to favor horizontal IT vendors that offer greater solution flexibility, modularity and interoperability. Already evident in developed markets, this industry power shift is now taking shape in SEA." Key players in the market currently include GE Healthcare, Philips, Siemens, Merge Healthcare, IBM, Hitachi Data Systems, Toshiba Medical, Hitachi Aloka, Carestream, and Infinitt Healthcare. Vendors must continue to invest in technological advancements and be creative with their product mix and value proposition. Keeping up with evolving customer needs and competitive strategies is crucial because a significant proportion of business will depend on customer relations, company branding and word of mouth. About Frost & Sullivan Frost & Sullivan, the Growth Partnership Company, works in collaboration with clients to leverage visionary innovation that addresses the global challenges and related growth opportunities that will make or break today's market participants. For more than 50 years, we have been developing growth strategies for the global 1000, emerging businesses, the public sector and the investment community. Contact us: Start the discussion End-user and Decision-maker Survey of Southeast Asian PACS Market, Forecast to 2021 P96D-48 Contact: Carrie Low Corporate Communications Asia-Pacific P: +603 6204 5910 F: +603 6201 7402 E: [email protected] http://ww2.frost.com SOURCE Frost & Sullivan Related Links http://www.frost.com Beijing would like to resolve the border issue before a summit of the BRICS nations. By Reuters: China is taking an increasingly tough line on a border row with India amid a rising crescendo of nationalism in state media, and President Xi Jinping looks set for an awkward encounter with Prime Minister Narendra Modi at a multilateral summit next month. Diplomats say Beijing would like to resolve the border issue before a summit of the BRICS nations - that also groups Brazil, Russia and South Africa - in the Chinese city of Xiamen in early September, and ensure nothing dampens what China wants to be a show of cooperation and friendship among developing countries. advertisement But that could be tough. On Wednesday, China ramped up the rhetoric, accusing India of "concocting" excuses over the illegal entry of the South Asian nation's military into Chinese territory. "China will take all necessary measures to safeguard its legitimate and lawful rights and interests," the Foreign Ministry said. The two sides' troops are confronting each other close to a valley controlled by China that separates India from its close ally, Bhutan, and gives China access to the so-called Chicken's Neck, a thin strip of land connecting India and its remote northeastern regions. Responding, India reiterated an earlier line that work by a Chinese road crew in the sensitive frontier area would have changed the status quo and urging "utmost restraint" by all sides. "India considers that peace and tranquillity in the India-China border areas is an important pre-requisite for smooth development of our bilateral relations with China," New Delhi's foreign ministry said in a statement on Wednesday evening. Most previous standoffs, such as one in 2014 just ahead of a rare trip to India for Xi, were resolved with both sides withdrawing their forces. There has been no shooting since a brief border war in 1962. Talks are happening behind the scenes, but with little apparent progress. Meantime, Chinese and India media have been taking a strident approach, with a Chinese state-run newspaper last week saying China could use force. An Indian magazine's front cover last month showing a map of China shorn of Tibet and self-ruled Taiwan also ignited public anger on Chinese social media with thousands of angry posts. "The problem is the media on both sides are whipping things up. This makes it hard for China or India to back down," said a Beijing-based source who is familiar with the discussions between the two sides. The Indian government has asked political parties to refrain from politicising the issue and allow diplomacy to work. "SHOW WHAT WE ARE MADE OF" China's defence ministry last week also warned India not to harbour any illusions about the Chinese military's ability to defend its territory. A source with ties to the military, who spoke recently to a senior Chinese officer involved in the stand off, said China has no appetite for conflict with India but could not be seen to be weak. advertisement "Nobody wants to fight about this, but if India keeps making trouble then we'll have to show them what we're made of," the source said, citing the conversation with the senior officer. China has repeatedly called on India to withdraw its forces. An Indian government source closely tracking the standoff said there was no change in the ground situation in Doklam, with the two sides remaining in a standoff. Indian military expert Nitin Gokhale said India was prepared for a long haul. "The decision is to stay resolute on the ground and reasonable in diplomacy," Gokhale said. China has been briefing foreign diplomats on the stand off, saying it wants a resolution but that its patience won't last for ever. "There's no easy solution," said an Asian diplomat, who attended a briefing, referring to both sides' insistence that they are in the right. For the time being, China looks ready to keep things calm, said another Asian diplomat, familiar with China's thinking on the issue. "China really wants to resolve this ahead of the BRICS summit. It doesn't want anything to affect the atmosphere," the diplomat said. "The gloves could come off after the summit though." advertisement China and India have long been suspicious of each other, a legacy of the 1962 border war, India's playing host to exiled Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama and China's close relations with India's regional rival Pakistan. India has privately raised objections to Chinese firm Shanghai Fosun Pharmaceutical Group's proposed $1.3 billion takeover of Indian drugmaker Gland Pharma, a source familiar with the matter said on Monday. Ajit Doval, India's national security adviser, visited Beijing last week for a BRICS security meeting, and had bilateral talks with his Chinese opposite number, top diplomat Yang Jiechi, who outranks the foreign minister. A Chinese government statement on that meeting did not mention the border issue. China and India are already suspicious of each other because of China's massive investments in Pakistan and Sri Lanka, including Chinese-invested ports in both countries India fears could one day become Chinese military bases, another senior Asian diplomatic source said. "Nobody wants to get caught in the middle of this," the diplomat said, pointing to the prospect for the border tensions worsening and becoming a wider Asian security issue dragging in other countries. advertisement ALSO READDoklam border standoff: Will there be an India-China war? In 15-page Doklam statement, China says India was informed of road construction China has overwhelming advantage over India: Global Times editor Doklam: What China stands to lose if it goes to war with India Doklam border standoff: Will there be an India-China war? WATCH | Doklam standoff: Will conflict with India be disastrous for China? --- ENDS --- COLUMBUS, Ind., Aug. 3, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Patrick (Woody) Harrison is recognized by Continental Who's Who as a Pinnacle Lifetime Member in the Legal field. Harrison serves as an Attorney in his own practice, which specializes in Personal Injury Law, and utilizes his expertise in Personal Injury and Medical Malpractice. He has practiced law since 1973 and utilizes his over four decades of career experience in his role. "My life and career gives insight into not only the man I am, but the type of law I practice and why," Harrison said. "Early life experiences clearly influenced my choice of the profession I have pursued with great passion in Columbus, Indiana, for more than 40 years. My father was a physician, and I learned a lot about medicine while witnessing his dedication to saving lives and preventing them from being ruined. Serving in Vietnam, I saw people suffering with no one to help and knew that I wanted to make a difference as an attorney." Harrison served his country in the United States Army in Vietnam from 1968-1970. While he was deployed in Vietnam, he took the LSAT exam for entrance into law school. After returning from Vietnam, he moved to Columbus, Indiana, where he has practiced law since 1973. Harrison's first position in the legal field was with the firm of Goltra Cline King and Beck, where he practiced a wide range of law types including divorce, bankruptcies, personal injury and more. However, Harrison focused on personal injury and medical malpractice early in his career resulting in a special depth and breadth of experience in those particular areas. In 1984, Harrison and his former partner Mr. Beck formed Beck Harrison, P.C. In 2010, Harrison established his solo practice, which focused on personal injury and medical malpractice cases. "If you are suffering after a serious accident that you did not cause, or you need to seek justice and compensation after the wrongful death of a family member, you need prompt, clear legal guidance," Harrison said. "I believe it is also fair to expect the personal injury lawyer you choose to care about you and your family on a personal level." Harrison earned his Bachelor of Science degree in Business from Indiana University in 1968. He then went on to complete his Juris Doctor, also from Indiana University. To further his professional development, he is a member of the American Bar Association, the Indiana Bar Association, the Bartholomew County Bar Association, the Indiana Trial Lawyers Association's College of Fellows, as well as their Emeritus Board of Directors, and the American Association for Justice. In recognition of his outstanding accomplishments in the field, Harrison was named Co-Trial Lawyer of the Year by the Indiana Trial Lawyers Association, has been listed in Who's Who in American Law and is rated AV-Preeminent by Martindale-Hubbell. For more information, visit www.woodyharrison.com. Contact: Katherine Green, 516-825-5634, [email protected] SOURCE Continental Who's Who Related Links http://www.continentalwhoswho.com PARSIPPANY, N.J., Aug. 3, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- PBF Energy Inc. (NYSE: PBF) today reported second quarter 2017 loss from operations of $111.1 million as compared to income from operations of $234.8 million for the second quarter of 2016. Excluding special items, second quarter 2017 income from operations was $39.9 million as compared to income from operations of $77.0 million for the second quarter of 2016. Special items in the second quarter 2017 results include a net, non-cash, after-tax loss of $91.6 million, or $0.81 per share, lower-of-cost-or-market ("LCM") inventory adjustment which decreased operating income and an after-tax charge of $15.4 million, or $0.14 per share, as a result of debt extinguishment costs incurred from the retirement of PBF Holding Company LLC's 8.25% senior secured notes which were redeemed during the quarter. The company reported a second quarter 2017 net loss of $104.2 million, and a net loss attributable to PBF Energy Inc. of $109.7 million or $1.01 per share. This compares to net income of $120.6 million, and net income attributable to PBF Energy Inc. of $103.5 million or $1.06 per share for the second quarter 2016. Adjusted fully-converted net loss for the second quarter 2017, excluding special items, was $6.9 million, or $0.06 per share on a fully-exchanged, fully-diluted basis, as described below, compared to an adjusted fully-converted net income of $13.9 million, or $0.14 per share, for the second quarter 2016. PBF Energy's financial results reflect the consolidation of PBF Logistics LP (NYSE: PBFX), a master limited partnership of which PBF indirectly owns the general partner and approximately 44.1% of the limited partner interests as of quarter-end. Tom Nimbley, PBF Energy's Chairman and CEO, said, "Our main focus during the second quarter was to operate our assets safely and reliably and to complete the extensive turnarounds at our Torrance and Delaware City refineries. I am pleased to report that both turnarounds are complete and the refineries are operating well. When combined with the crude unit turnaround at Chalmette during the first quarter, we have successfully executed our major maintenance goals for 2017. Our second quarter results include the impact of this turnaround work and reflect the ongoing pressures of narrow crude differentials and headwinds from the flawed Renewable Fuels Standard." Mr. Nimbley continued, "Going into the second half of the year, we have five operating refineries, no significant turnaround activity and a refining environment supported by strong domestic and international demand. We are looking forward to the second half of 2017 and demonstrating the capabilities of our refining system." PBF Energy Inc. Declares Dividend The company announced today that it will pay a quarterly dividend of $0.30 per share of Class A common stock on August 31, 2017, to holders of record as of August 15, 2017. Outlook For the third quarter 2017, we expect East Coast total throughput to average 320,000 to 340,000 barrels per day; Mid-Continent total throughput is expected to average 150,000 to 160,000 barrels per day; Gulf Coast total throughput is expected to average 185,000 to 195,000 barrels per day and West Coast total throughput is expected to average 150,000 to 160,000 barrels per day. For the full-year 2017, we expect East Coast total throughput to average 315,000 to 335,000 barrels per day; Mid-Continent total throughput is expected to average 140,000 to 150,000 barrels per day; Gulf Coast total throughput is expected to average 170,000 to 180,000 barrels per day and West Coast total throughput is expected to average 130,000 to 140,000 barrels per day. Adjusted Fully-Converted Results Adjusted fully-converted results assume the exchange of all PBF Energy Company LLC Series A Units and dilutive securities into shares of PBF Energy Inc. Class A common stock on a one-for-one basis, resulting in the elimination of the noncontrolling interest and a corresponding adjustment to the company's tax provision. Non-GAAP Measures This earnings release, and the discussion during the management conference call, may include references to non-GAAP (Generally Accepted Accounting Principles) measures including Adjusted Fully-Converted Net Income (Loss), Adjusted Fully-Converted Net Income (Loss) excluding special items, Adjusted Fully-Converted Net Income (Loss) per fully-exchanged, fully-diluted share, gross refining margin, gross refining margin excluding special items, gross refining margin per barrel of throughput, EBITDA (Earnings before Interest, Income Taxes, Depreciation and Amortization), EBITDA excluding special items, Adjusted EBITDA and projected EBITDA related to the refinery acquisitions. PBF believes that non-GAAP financial measures provide useful information about its operating performance and financial results. However, these measures have important limitations as analytical tools and should not be viewed in isolation or considered as alternatives for, or superior to, comparable GAAP financial measures. PBF's non-GAAP financial measures may also differ from similarly named measures used by other companies. See the accompanying tables and footnotes in this release for additional information on the non-GAAP measures used in this release and reconciliations to the most directly comparable GAAP measures. Conference Call Information PBF Energy's senior management will host a conference call and webcast regarding quarterly results and other business matters on Thursday, August 3, 2017, at 8:30 a.m. ET. The webcast is available through PBF Energy's website, http://www.pbfenergy.com. The call can also be heard by dialing (888) 632-3384 or (785) 424-1675, conference ID: PBFQ217. The audio replay will be available two hours after the end of the call through August 17, 2017, by dialing (800) 839-2475 or (402) 220-7220. Forward-Looking Statements Statements in this press release relating to future plans, results, performance, expectations, achievements and the like are considered "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors, many of which may be beyond the company's control, that may cause actual results to differ materially from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by the forward-looking statements. Factors and uncertainties that may cause actual results to differ include but are not limited to the risks disclosed in the company's filings with the SEC, as well as the risks disclosed in PBF Logistics LP's SEC filings and any impact PBF Logistics LP may have on the company's credit rating, cost of funds, employees, customer and vendors; risk relating to the securities markets generally; and the impact of adverse market conditions affecting the company, unanticipated developments, regulatory approvals, changes in laws and other events that negatively impact the company. All forward-looking statements speak only as of the date hereof. The company undertakes no obligation to revise or update any forward-looking statements except as may be required by applicable law. About PBF Energy Inc. PBF Energy Inc. (NYSE:PBF) is one of the largest independent refiners in North America, operating, through its subsidiaries, oil refineries and related facilities in California, Delaware, Louisiana, New Jersey and Ohio. Our mission is to operate our facilities in a safe, reliable and environmentally responsible manner, provide employees with a safe and rewarding workplace, become a positive influence in the communities where we do business, and provide superior returns to our investors. PBF Energy Inc. also currently indirectly owns the general partner and approximately 44.1% of the limited partnership interest of PBF Logistics LP (NYSE: PBFX). PBF ENERGY INC. AND SUBSIDIARIES EARNINGS RELEASE TABLES CONDENSED CONSOLIDATED STATEMENTS OF OPERATIONS (Unaudited, in thousands, except share and per share data) Three Months Ended Six Months Ended June 30, June 30, 2017 2016 2017 2016 Revenues $ 5,017,225 $ 3,858,467 $ 9,771,698 $ 6,658,652 Costs and expenses: Cost of products and other 4,605,693 3,249,444 8,802,460 5,661,539 Operating expenses (excluding depreciation of $62,683, $49,682, $121,852 and $103,918 for the periods presented, respectively) 412,859 276,598 864,226 576,597 General and administrative expenses 41,090 43,373 84,920 80,955 Loss on sale of assets 29 3,222 912 3,222 Depreciation and amortization expense 68,703 51,060 129,635 106,993 5,128,374 3,623,697 9,882,153 6,429,306 Income (loss) from operations (111,149) 234,770 (110,455) 229,346 Other income (expenses): Change in fair value of catalyst leases 1,104 (1,748) (1,484) (4,633) Debt extinguishment costs (25,451) (25,451) Interest expense, net (40,698) (35,940) (77,881) (73,467) Income (loss) before income taxes (176,194) 197,082 (215,271) 151,246 Income tax (benefit) expense (72,043) 76,434 (91,090) 53,934 Net income (loss) (104,151) 120,648 (124,181) 97,312 Less: net income attributable to noncontrolling interests 5,512 17,118 16,559 23,170 Net income (loss) attributable to PBF Energy Inc. stockholders $ (109,663) $ 103,530 $ (140,740) $ 74,142 Net income (loss) available to Class A common stock per share: Basic $ (1.01) $ 1.06 $ (1.30) $ 0.76 Diluted $ (1.01) $ 1.06 $ (1.30) $ 0.76 Weighted-average shares outstanding-basic 108,779,992 97,836,366 108,770,237 97,822,875 Weighted-average shares outstanding-diluted 108,779,992 103,278,622 108,770,237 103,364,478 Dividends per common share $ 0.30 $ 0.30 $ 0.60 $ 0.60 Adjusted fully-converted net income (loss) and adjusted fully-converted net income (loss) per fully exchanged, fully diluted shares outstanding (Note 1): Adjusted fully-converted net income (loss) $ (113,937) $ 109,207 $ (146,409) $ 78,345 Adjusted fully-converted net income (loss) per fully exchanged, fully diluted share $ (1.01) $ 1.06 $ (1.30) $ 0.76 Adjusted fully-converted shares outstanding - diluted 112,608,863 103,278,622 112,606,236 103,364,478 See Footnotes to Earnings Release Tables PBF ENERGY INC. AND SUBSIDIARIES RECONCILIATION OF AMOUNTS REPORTED UNDER U.S. GAAP (Unaudited, in thousands, except share and per share data) Three Months Ended Six Months Ended RECONCILIATION OF NET INCOME (LOSS) TO June 30, June 30, ADJUSTED FULLY-CONVERTED NET INCOME (LOSS) (Note 1) 2017 2016 2017 2016 Net income (loss) attributable to PBF Energy Inc. stockholders $ (109,663) $ 103,530 $ (140,740) $ 74,142 Income (loss) allocated to participating securities (269) (539) Income (loss) available to PBF Energy Inc. stockholders - basic (109,932) 103,530 (141,279) 74,142 Add: Net income (loss) attributable to noncontrolling interest (Note 2) (6,604) 9,399 (8,460) 6,958 Less: Income tax benefit (expense) (Note 3) 2,599 (3,722) 3,330 (2,755) Adjusted fully-converted net income (loss) $ (113,937) $ 109,207 $ (146,409) $ 78,345 Special Items (Note 4): Add: Non-cash LCM inventory adjustment (Note 5) 151,095 (157,780) 167,134 (216,843) Add: Debt extinguishment costs (Note 5) 25,451 25,451 Add: Recomputed income taxes on special items (Note 5) (69,489) 62,516 (75,801) 85,870 Adjusted fully-converted net income (loss) excluding special items (Note 4) $ (6,880) $ 13,943 $ (29,625) $ (52,628) Weighted-average shares outstanding of PBF Energy Inc. 108,779,992 97,836,366 108,770,237 97,822,875 Conversion of PBF LLC Series A Units (Note 6) 3,828,871 4,947,813 3,835,999 4,952,115 Common stock equivalents (Note 7) 494,443 589,488 Adjusted fully-converted shares outstanding - diluted 112,608,863 103,278,622 112,606,236 103,364,478 Adjusted fully-converted net income (loss) (per fully exchanged, fully diluted shares outstanding) $ (1.01) $ 1.06 $ (1.30) $ 0.76 Adjusted fully-converted net income (loss) excluding special items (per fully exchanged, fully diluted shares outstanding) (Note 4) $ (0.06) $ 0.14 $ (0.26) $ (0.51) Three Months Ended Six Months Ended RECONCILIATION OF INCOME (LOSS) FROM OPERATIONS June 30, June 30, TO INCOME (LOSS) FROM OPERATIONS EXCLUDING SPECIAL ITEMS 2017 2016 2017 2016 Income (loss) from operations $ (111,149) $ 234,770 $ (110,455) $ 229,346 Special Items (Note 4): Add: Non-cash LCM inventory adjustment (Note 5) 151,095 (157,780) 167,134 (216,843) Income (loss) from operations excluding special items (Note 4) $ 39,946 $ 76,990 $ 56,679 $ 12,503 See Footnotes to Earnings Release Tables PBF ENERGY INC. AND SUBSIDIARIES RECONCILIATION OF AMOUNTS REPORTED UNDER U.S. GAAP EBITDA RECONCILIATIONS (Note 8) (Unaudited, in thousands) Three Months Ended Six Months Ended June 30, June 30, RECONCILIATION OF NET INCOME (LOSS) TO EBITDA 2017 2016 2017 2016 Net income (loss) $ (104,151) $ 120,648 $ (124,181) $ 97,312 Add: Depreciation and amortization expense 68,703 51,060 129,635 106,993 Add: Interest expense, net 40,698 35,940 77,881 73,467 Add: Income tax (benefit) expense (72,043) 76,434 (91,090) 53,934 EBITDA $ (66,793) $ 284,082 $ (7,755) $ 331,706 Special Items (Note 4): Add: Non-cash LCM inventory adjustment (Note 5) 151,095 (157,780) 167,134 (216,843) Add: Debt extinguishment costs (Note 5) 25,451 25,451 EBITDA excluding special items (Note 4) $ 109,753 $ 126,302 $ 184,830 $ 114,863 RECONCILIATION OF EBITDA TO ADJUSTED EBITDA EBITDA $ (66,793) $ 284,082 $ (7,755) $ 331,706 Add: Stock based compensation 7,817 9,359 13,842 12,709 Add: Non-cash change in fair value of catalyst leases (1,104) 1,748 1,484 4,633 Add: Non-cash LCM inventory adjustment (Note 5) 151,095 (157,780) 167,134 (216,843) Add: Debt extinguishment costs (Note 5) 25,451 25,451 Adjusted EBITDA $ 116,466 $ 137,409 $ 200,156 $ 132,205 See Footnotes to Earnings Release Tables PBF ENERGY INC. AND SUBSIDIARIES EARNINGS RELEASE TABLES CONDENSED CONSOLIDATED BALANCE SHEET DATA (Unaudited, in thousands) June 30, December 31, 2017 2016 Balance Sheet Data: Cash, cash equivalents and marketable securities $ 173,031 $ 786,298 Inventories 1,875,164 1,863,560 Total assets 7,481,220 7,621,927 Total debt 2,159,547 2,148,234 Total equity 2,368,993 2,570,684 Total equity excluding special items (Note 4, 16) $ 2,827,468 $ 2,912,375 Total debt to capitalization ratio (Note 16) 48 % 46 % Total debt to capitalization ratio, excluding special items (Note 16) 43 % 42 % Net debt to capitalization ratio (Note 16) 46 % 35 % Net debt to capitalization ratio, excluding special items (Note 16) 41 % 32 % SUMMARIZED STATEMENT OF CASH FLOW DATA (Unaudited, in thousands) Six Months Ended June 30, 2017 2016 Cash flows (used in) provided by operations $ (34,665) $ 216,134 Cash flows used in investing activities (428,641) (235,757) Cash flows (used in) provided by financing activities (109,937) 488,238 Net (decrease) increase in cash and cash equivalents (573,243) 468,615 Cash and cash equivalents, beginning of period 746,274 944,320 Cash and cash equivalents, end of period $ 173,031 $ 1,412,935 Marketable securities 136,144 Net cash, cash equivalents and marketable securities $ 173,031 $ 1,549,079 See Footnotes to Earnings Release Tables PBF ENERGY INC. AND SUBSIDIARIES EARNINGS RELEASE TABLES CONSOLIDATING FINANCIAL INFORMATION (Note 9) (Unaudited, in thousands) Three Months Ended June 30, 2017 Refining Logistics Corporate Eliminations Consolidated Total Revenues $ 5,013,251 $ 62,329 $ $ (58,355) $ 5,017,225 Depreciation and amortization expense 56,973 5,710 6,020 68,703 Income (loss) from operations (16) (101,333) 35,017 (41,013) (3,820) (111,149) Interest expense, net 1,335 7,886 31,477 40,698 Capital expenditures (Note 14) 242,655 36,918 148 279,721 Three Months Ended June 30, 2016 Refining Logistics Corporate Eliminations Consolidated Total Revenues $ 3,855,773 $ 40,659 $ $ (37,965) $ 3,858,467 Depreciation and amortization expense 47,333 2,349 1,378 51,060 Income (loss) from operations 249,102 23,510 (37,842) 234,770 Interest expense, net 1,142 7,634 27,164 35,940 Capital expenditures 87,756 100,687 6,559 195,002 Six Months Ended June 30, 2017 Refining Logistics Corporate Eliminations Consolidated Total Revenues $ 9,763,449 $ 122,806 $ $ (114,557) $ 9,771,698 Depreciation and amortization expense 110,790 11,062 7,783 129,635 Income (loss) from operations (Note 17) (90,803) 71,058 (83,291) (7,419) (110,455) Interest expense, net 2,253 15,870 59,758 77,881 Capital expenditures (Note 14) 409,871 56,385 2,409 468,665 Six Months Ended June 30, 2016 Refining Logistics Corporate Eliminations Consolidated Total Revenues $ 6,655,958 $ 77,208 $ $ (74,514) $ 6,658,652 Depreciation and amortization expense 99,722 4,196 3,075 106,993 Income (loss) from operations 254,348 49,554 (74,556) 229,346 Interest expense, net 2,114 14,863 56,490 73,467 Capital expenditures (Note 15) 226,669 101,813 12,259 340,741 Balance at June 30, 2017 Refining Logistics Corporate Eliminations Consolidated Total Total Assets (Note 18) $ 6,232,343 $ 751,155 $ 529,131 $ (31,409) $ 7,481,220 Balance at December 31, 2016 Refining Logistics Corporate Eliminations Consolidated Total Total Assets (Note 18) $ 6,419,950 $ 756,861 $ 482,979 $ (37,863) $ 7,621,927 See Footnotes to Earnings Release Tables PBF ENERGY INC. AND SUBSIDIARIES EARNINGS RELEASE TABLES MARKET INDICATORS AND KEY OPERATING INFORMATION (Unaudited, amounts in thousands except as indicated) Three Months Ended Six Months Ended June 30, June 30, Market Indicators (dollars per barrel) (Note 10) 2017 2016 2017 2016 Dated Brent Crude $ 49.69 $ 45.65 $ 51.61 $ 40.08 West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude oil $ 48.11 $ 45.53 $ 49.89 $ 39.64 Light Louisiana Sweet (LLS) crude oil $ 50.17 $ 47.39 $ 51.77 $ 41.51 Alaska North Slope (ANS) crude oil $ 50.61 $ 45.74 $ 52.20 $ 40.00 Crack Spreads: Dated Brent (NYH) 2-1-1 $ 14.81 $ 15.32 $ 13.21 $ 13.30 WTI (Chicago) 4-3-1 $ 14.09 $ 16.51 $ 12.65 $ 12.77 LLS (Gulf Coast) 2-1-1 $ 12.56 $ 10.76 $ 12.30 $ 9.76 ANS (West Coast) 4-3-1 $ 19.16 $ 18.58 $ 17.85 $ 18.04 Crude Oil Differentials: Dated Brent (foreign) less WTI $ 1.58 $ 0.11 $ 1.73 $ 0.44 Dated Brent less Maya (heavy, sour) $ 8.00 $ 7.83 $ 7.34 $ 7.94 Dated Brent less WTS (sour) $ 2.65 $ 0.96 $ 2.98 $ 0.95 Dated Brent less ASCI (sour) $ 2.85 $ 3.67 $ 3.46 $ 3.96 WTI less WCS (heavy, sour) $ 9.56 $ 11.75 $ 11.23 $ 11.55 WTI less Bakken (light, sweet) $ 0.30 $ 0.43 $ 0.61 $ 0.98 WTI less Syncrude (light, sweet) $ (1.35) $ (2.72) $ (1.81) $ (3.56) WTI less LLS (light, sweet) $ (2.06) $ (1.85) $ (1.88) $ (1.87) WTI less ANS (light, sweet) $ (2.50) $ (0.21) $ (2.31) $ (0.37) Natural gas (dollars per MMBTU) $ 3.14 $ 2.25 $ 3.10 $ 2.11 Key Operating Information Production (barrels per day ("bpd") in thousands) 764.2 702.7 748.8 678.0 Crude oil and feedstocks throughput (bpd in thousands) 769.2 698.1 753.7 674.0 Total crude oil and feedstocks throughput (millions of barrels) 70.0 63.5 136.4 122.7 Gross margin per barrel of throughput $ (0.62) $ 4.56 $ 0.17 $ 2.68 Gross refining margin, excluding special items, per barrel of throughput (Note 4, Note 11) $ 7.17 $ 6.50 $ 7.45 $ 5.77 Refinery operating expenses, excluding depreciation, per barrel of throughput (Note 12) $ 5.69 $ 4.27 $ 6.12 $ 4.63 Crude and feedstocks (% of total throughput) (Note 13) Heavy crude 30 % 18 % 35 % 16 % Medium crude 31 % 44 % 30 % 47 % Light crude 23 % 27 % 20 % 25 % Other feedstocks and blends 16 % 11 % 15 % 12 % Total throughput 100 % 100 % 100 % 100 % Yield (% of total throughput): Gasoline and gasoline blendstocks 50 % 47 % 51 % 48 % Distillates and distillate blendstocks 30 % 32 % 30 % 31 % Lubes 1 % 1 % 1 % 1 % Chemicals 2 % 4 % 2 % 4 % Other 16 % 16 % 16 % 16 % Total yield 99 % 100 % 100 % 100 % See Footnotes to Earnings Release Tables PBF ENERGY INC. AND SUBSIDIARIES EARNINGS RELEASE TABLES SUPPLEMENTAL OPERATING INFORMATION (Unaudited, amounts in thousands except as indicated) Three Months Ended Six Months Ended June 30, June 30, 2017 2016 2017 2016 Supplemental Operating Information - East Coast (Delaware City and Paulsboro) Production (bpd in thousands) 321.4 347.3 318.6 328.5 Crude oil and feedstocks throughput (bpd in thousands) 326.1 351.7 323.2 333.9 Total crude oil and feedstocks throughput (millions of barrels) 29.7 32.0 58.5 60.8 Gross margin per barrel of throughput $ (2.60) $ 3.95 $ (1.36) $ 1.14 Gross refining margin, excluding special items, per barrel of throughput (Note 4, Note 11) $ 4.98 $ 6.68 $ 5.46 $ 5.54 Refinery operating expense, excluding depreciation, per barrel of throughput (Note 12) $ 4.54 $ 3.90 $ 4.85 $ 4.50 Crude and feedstocks (% of total throughput) (Note 13): Heavy crude 31 % 17 % 34 % 13 % Medium crude 40 % 56 % 38 % 61 % Light crude 12 % 12 % 11 % 11 % Other feedstocks and blends 17 % 15 % 17 % 15 % Total throughput 100 % 100 % 100 % 100 % Yield (% of total throughput): Gasoline and gasoline blendstocks 43 % 45 % 45 % 46 % Distillates and distillate blendstocks 33 % 31 % 31 % 29 % Lubes 2 % 2 % 2 % 2 % Chemicals 1 % 2 % 1 % 2 % Other 20 % 18 % 20 % 19 % Total yield 99 % 98 % 99 % 98 % Supplemental Operating Information - Mid-Continent (Toledo) Production (bpd in thousands) 158.2 176.0 142.2 168.0 Crude oil and feedstocks throughput (bpd in thousands) 154.6 174.2 139.3 165.9 Total crude oil and feedstocks throughput (millions of barrels) 14.1 15.8 25.2 30.2 Gross margin per barrel of throughput $ (0.19) $ 4.31 $ (0.85) $ 2.41 Gross refining margin, excluding special items, per barrel of throughput (Note 4, Note 11) $ 7.90 $ 6.65 $ 7.79 $ 5.45 Refinery operating expense, excluding depreciation, per barrel of throughput (Note 12) $ 4.82 $ 4.02 $ 5.58 $ 4.45 Crude and feedstocks (% of total throughput) (Note 13): Medium crude 35 % 32 % 39 % 36 % Light crude 64 % 66 % 60 % 62 % Other feedstocks and blends 1 % 2 % 1 % 2 % Total throughput 100 % 100 % 100 % 100 % Yield (% of total throughput): Gasoline and gasoline blendstocks 55 % 52 % 55 % 52 % Distillates and distillate blendstocks 31 % 33 % 33 % 35 % Chemicals 6 % 5 % 6 % 5 % Other 10 % 11 % 8 % 9 % Total yield 102 % 101 % 102 % 101 % See Footnotes to Earnings Release Tables PBF ENERGY INC. AND SUBSIDIARIES EARNINGS RELEASE TABLES SUPPLEMENTAL OPERATING INFORMATION (Unaudited, amounts in thousands except as indicated) Three Months Ended Six Months Ended June 30, June 30, 2017 2016 2017 2016 Supplemental Operating Information - Gulf Coast (Chalmette) Production (bpd in thousands) 191.8 179.4 173.6 181.5 Crude oil and feedstocks throughput (bpd in thousands) 191.3 172.2 173.6 174.2 Total crude oil and feedstocks throughput (millions of barrels) 17.4 15.7 31.4 31.7 Gross margin per barrel of throughput $ 0.85 $ 3.65 $ 1.24 $ 3.63 Gross refining margin, excluding special items, per barrel of throughput (Note 4, Note 11) $ 7.76 $ 6.00 $ 8.40 $ 6.54 Refinery operating expense, excluding depreciation, per barrel of throughput (Note 12) $ 4.65 $ 5.30 $ 5.35 $ 5.05 Crude and feedstocks (% of total throughput) (Note 13): Heavy crude 42 % 39 % 42 % 38 % Medium crude 25 % 31 % 25 % 30 % Light crude 20 % 17 % 16 % 17 % Other feedstocks and blends 13 % 13 % 17 % 15 % Total throughput 100 % 100 % 100 % 100 % Yield (% of total throughput): Gasoline and gasoline blendstocks 45 % 47 % 47 % 47 % Distillates and distillate blendstocks 33 % 32 % 31 % 32 % Chemicals 2 % 6 % 2 % 6 % Other 20 % 15 % 20 % 15 % Total yield 100 % 100 % 100 % 100 % Supplemental Operating Information - West Coast (Torrance) (Note 14) Production (bpd in thousands) 92.8 N/A 114.4 N/A Crude oil and feedstocks throughput (bpd in thousands) 97.2 N/A 117.6 N/A Total crude oil and feedstocks throughput (millions of barrels) 8.8 N/A 21.3 N/A Gross margin per barrel of throughput $ (4.55) N/A $ (1.66) N/A Gross refining margin, excluding special items, per barrel of throughput (Note 4, Note 11) $ 12.18 N/A $ 11.10 N/A Refinery operating expense, excluding depreciation, per barrel of throughput (Note 12) $ 13.01 N/A $ 11.39 N/A Crude and feedstocks (% of total throughput) (Note 13): Heavy crude 57 % N/A 73 % N/A Medium crude 3 % N/A 2 % N/A Other feedstocks and blends 40 % N/A 25 % N/A Total throughput 100 % N/A 100 % N/A Yield (% of total throughput): Gasoline and gasoline blendstocks 69 % N/A 66 % N/A Distillates and distillate blendstocks 12 % N/A 17 % N/A Other 14 % N/A 14 % N/A Total yield 95 % N/A 97 % N/A See Footnotes to Earnings Release Tables PBF ENERGY INC. AND SUBSIDIARIES RECONCILIATION OF AMOUNTS REPORTED UNDER U.S. GAAP GROSS REFINING MARGIN / GROSS REFINING MARGIN PER BARREL OF THROUGHPUT (Note 11) (Unaudited, in thousands, except per barrel amounts) Three Months Ended Three Months Ended June 30, 2017 June 30, 2016 $ per barrel of throughput $ per barrel of throughput Calculation of gross margin: Revenues $ 5,017,225 $ 71.68 $ 3,858,467 $ 60.74 Less: Cost of products and other 4,605,693 65.80 3,249,444 51.16 Less: Refinery operating expenses 398,570 5.69 271,539 4.27 Less: Refinery depreciation expenses 56,973 0.81 47,540 0.75 Gross margin $ (44,011) $ (0.62) $ 289,944 $ 4.56 Reconciliation of gross margin to gross refining margin: Gross margin $ (44,011) $ (0.62) $ 289,944 $ 4.56 Less: Revenues of PBFX (62,329) (0.89) (40,659) (0.64) Add: Affiliate cost of sales of PBFX 1,215 0.02 2,661 0.04 Add: Refinery operating expenses 398,570 5.69 271,539 4.27 Add: Refinery depreciation expense 56,973 0.81 47,540 0.75 Gross refining margin $ 350,418 $ 5.01 $ 571,025 $ 8.98 Special Items (Note 4): Add: Non-cash LCM inventory adjustment (Note 5) 151,095 2.16 (157,780) (2.48) Gross refining margin excluding special items (Note 4) $ 501,513 $ 7.17 $ 413,245 $ 6.50 Six Months Ended Six Months Ended June 30, 2017 June 30, 2016 $ per barrel of throughput $ per barrel of throughput Calculation of gross margin: Revenues $ 9,771,698 $ 71.63 $ 6,658,652 $ 54.28 Less: Cost of products and other 8,802,460 64.53 5,661,539 46.15 Less: Refinery operating expenses 835,423 6.12 568,178 4.63 Less: Refinery depreciation expenses 110,900 0.81 100,136 0.82 Gross margin $ 22,915 $ 0.17 $ 328,799 $ 2.68 Reconciliation of gross margin to gross refining margin: Gross margin $ 22,915 $ 0.17 $ 328,799 $ 2.68 Less: Revenues of PBFX (122,806) (0.90) (77,208) (0.63) Add: Affiliate cost of sales of PBFX 2,430 0.02 5,322 0.04 Add: Refinery operating expenses 835,423 6.12 568,178 4.63 Add: Refinery depreciation expense 110,900 0.81 100,136 0.82 Gross refining margin $ 848,862 $ 6.22 $ 925,227 $ 7.54 Special Items (Note 4): Add: Non-cash LCM inventory adjustment (Note 5) 167,134 1.23 (216,843) (1.77) Gross refining margin excluding special items (Note 4) $ 1,015,996 $ 7.45 $ 708,384 $ 5.77 See Footnotes to Earnings Release Tables PBF ENERGY INC. AND SUBSIDIARIES EARNINGS RELEASE TABLES FOOTNOTES TO EARNINGS RELEASE TABLES (1) Adjusted fully-converted information is presented in this table as management believes that these Non-GAAP measures, when presented in conjunction with comparable GAAP measures, are useful to investors to compare the company's results across the periods presented and facilitates an understanding of the company's operating results. The company also uses these measures to evaluate its operating performance. These measures should not be considered a substitute for, or superior to, measures of financial performance prepared in accordance with GAAP. The differences between adjusted fully-converted and GAAP results are explained in footnotes 2 through 7. (2) Represents the elimination of the noncontrolling interest associated with the ownership by the members of PBF Energy Company LLC other than PBF Energy Inc., as if such members had fully exchanged their Series A Units for shares of PBF Energy's Class A common stock. (3) Represents an adjustment to reflect the company's expected full-year statutory corporate tax rate of approximately 39.4% and 39.6% for the 2017 and 2016 periods, respectively, applied to the net income (loss) attributable to the noncontrolling interest for all periods presented. The adjustment assumes the full exchange of existing PBF Energy Company LLC Series A Units as described in footnote 2. (4) The Non-GAAP measures presented include adjusted fully-converted net income excluding special items, income from continuing operations excluding special items, EBITDA excluding special items, and gross refining margin excluding special items. The special items for the periods presented relate to a lower of cost or market ("LCM") adjustment and debt extinguishment costs. LCM is a GAAP guideline related to inventory valuation that requires inventory to be stated at the lower of cost or market. Our inventories are stated at the lower of cost or market. Cost is determined using last-in, first-out (LIFO) inventory valuation methodology, in which the most recently incurred costs are charged to cost of sales and inventories are valued at base layer acquisition costs. Market is determined based on an assessment of the current estimated replacement cost and net realizable selling price of the inventory. In periods where the market price of our inventory declines substantially, cost values of inventory may exceed market values. In such instances, we record an adjustment to write down the value of inventory to market value in accordance with GAAP. In subsequent periods, the value of inventory is reassessed and an LCM inventory adjustment is recorded to reflect the net change in the LCM inventory reserve between the prior period and the current period. Debt extinguishment costs reflect the difference between the carrying value of our 2020 Senior Secured Notes on the date that they were reacquired and the amount for which they were reacquired. Although we believe that Non-GAAP financial measures excluding the impact of special items provide useful supplemental information to investors regarding the results and performance of our business and allow for useful period-over-period comparisons, such Non-GAAP measures should only be considered as a supplement to, and not as a substitute for, or superior to, the financial measures prepared in accordance with GAAP. (5) The following table includes the lower of cost or market inventory reserve as of each date presented: 2017 2016 January 1, $ 595,988 $ 1,117,336 March 31, 612,027 1,058,273 June 30, 763,122 900,493 The following table includes the corresponding impact of changes in the lower of cost or market inventory reserve on operating income and net income for the periods presented: Three Months Ended June 30, Six Months Ended June 30, 2017 2016 2017 2016 Net LCM inventory adjustment benefit (charge) in operating income $ (151,095) $ 157,780 $ (167,134) $ 216,843 Net LCM inventory adjustment benefit (charge) in net income (91,624) 95,264 (101,350) 130,973 Additionally, during the three and six months ended June, 30, 2017, we recorded pre-tax debt extinguishment costs of $25.5 million related to the redemption of the 2020 Senior Secured Notes. These nonrecurring charges decreased net income by $15.4 million for the three and six months ended June 30, 2017. There were no such costs in the same periods of 2016. (6) Represents an adjustment to weighted-average diluted shares outstanding to assume the full exchange of existing PBF LLC Series A Units as described in footnote 2 above. (7) Represents weighted-average diluted shares outstanding assuming the conversion of all common stock equivalents, including options and warrants for PBF LLC Series A Units and options for shares of PBF Energy Class A common stock as calculated under the treasury stock method for the three and six months ended June 30, 2017 and June 30, 2016, respectively. Common stock equivalents exclude the effects of options and warrants to purchase 7,278,142 and 7,278,142 shares of PBF Energy Class A common stock and PBF LLC Series A Units because they are anti-dilutive for the three and six months ended June 30, 2017, respectively. Common stock equivalents exclude the effects of options and warrants to purchase 3,467,125 and 2,919,125 shares of PBF Energy Class A common stock and PBF LLC Series A Units because they are anti-dilutive for the three and six months ended June 30, 2016, respectively. (8) EBITDA (Earnings before Interest, Income Taxes, Depreciation and Amortization) and Adjusted EBITDA are supplemental measures of performance that are not required by, or presented in accordance with GAAP. We use these Non-GAAP financial measures as a supplement to our GAAP results in order to provide additional metrics on factors and trends affecting our business. EBITDA and Adjusted EBITDA are measures of operating performance that are not defined by GAAP and should not be considered substitutes for net income as determined in accordance with GAAP. In addition, because EBITDA and Adjusted EBITDA are not calculated in the same manner by all companies, they are not necessarily comparable to other similarly titled measures used by other companies. EBITDA and Adjusted EBITDA have their limitations as an analytical tool, and you should not consider them in isolation or as substitutes for analysis of our results as reported under GAAP. (9) We operate in two reportable segments; Refining and Logistics. Our operations that are not included in the Refining and Logistics segments are included in Corporate. As of June 30, 2017, the Refining segment includes the operations of our oil refineries and related facilities in Delaware City, Delaware, Paulsboro, New Jersey, Toledo, Ohio, New Orleans, Louisiana and Torrance, California. The Logistics segment includes the operations of PBF Logistics LP ("PBFX"), a growth-oriented master limited partnership which owns or leases, operates, develops and acquires crude oil and refined petroleum products terminals, pipelines, storage facilities and similar logistics assets. PBFX's assets consist of rail and truck terminals and unloading racks, tank farms and pipelines, a substantial portion of which were acquired from or contributed by PBF LLC and are located at, or nearby, the company's refineries. PBFX provides various rail, truck and marine terminaling services, pipeline transportation services and storage services to PBF Holding and/or its subsidiaries and third party customers through fee-based commercial agreements. In connection with the contribution by PBF LLC of the limited liability interests in PNGPC to PBFX, the accompanying segment information has been retrospectively adjusted to include the historical results of PNGPC in the Logistics segment for all periods presented prior to such contribution. PBFX currently does not generate significant third party revenue and intersegment related-party revenues are eliminated in consolidation. Prior to the PBFX initial public offering, PBFX was not considered to be a separate reportable segment. From a PBF Energy perspective, the company's chief operating decision maker evaluates the Logistics segment as a whole without regard to any of PBFX's individual segments. (10) As reported by Platts. (11) Gross refining margin and gross refining margin per barrel of throughput are Non-GAAP measures because they exclude refinery operating expenses, refinery depreciation and amortization and gross margin of PBFX. Gross refining margin per barrel is gross refining margin, divided by total crude and feedstocks throughput. We believe they are important measures of operating performance and they provide useful information to investors because gross refining margin per barrel is a helpful metric comparison to the industry refining margin benchmarks shown in the Market Indicators Tables, as the industry benchmarks do not include a charge for refinery operating expenses and depreciation. Other companies in our industry may not calculate gross refining margin and gross refining margin per barrel in the same manner. Gross refining margin and gross refining margin per barrel of throughput have their limitations as an analytical tool, and you should not consider them in isolation or as substitutes for analysis of our results as reported under GAAP. (12) Represents refinery operating expenses, excluding depreciation and amortization, divided by total crude oil and feedstocks throughput. (13) We define heavy crude oil as crude oil with American Petroleum Institute (API) gravity less than 24 degrees. We define medium crude oil as crude oil with API gravity between 24 and 35 degrees. We define light crude oil as crude oil with API gravity higher than 35 degrees. (14) The Logistics segment includes capital expenditures of $10.1 million for the acquisition of the Toledo Terminal by PBFX on April 17, 2017. (15) The Refining segment includes capital expenditures of $2.7 million for the working capital settlement related to the acquisition of the Chalmette refinery that was finalized in the first quarter of 2016. (16) The total debt to capitalization ratio is calculated by dividing total debt by the sum of total debt and total equity. This ratio is a measurement which is presented in our annual and interim filings and management believes this ratio is useful to investors in analyzing our leverage. Net debt and the net debt to capitalization ratio are Non-GAAP measures. Net debt is calculated by subtracting cash and cash equivalents and marketable securities from total debt. We believe these measurements are also useful to investors since we have the ability to and may decide to use a portion of our cash and cash equivalents to retire or pay down our debt. Marketable securities included in net debt fully collateralized PBFX's Term Loan prior to its repayment. Additionally, as described in footnote 4 above, we have also presented the total debt to capitalization and net debt to capitalization ratios excluding the cumulative effects of special items on equity. June 30, December 31, 2017 2016 Total debt $ 2,159,547 $ 2,148,234 Total equity 2,368,993 2,570,684 Total capitalization $ 4,528,540 $ 4,718,918 Total debt $ 2,159,547 $ 2,148,234 Total equity excluding special items 2,827,468 2,912,375 Total capitalization excluding special items $ 4,987,015 $ 5,060,609 Total equity $ 2,368,993 $ 2,570,684 Special Items (Note 4) Add: Non-cash LCM inventory adjustment (Note 5) 763,122 595,988 Add: Change in tax receivable agreement liability (25,508) (25,508) Add: Debt extinguishment costs (Note 5) 25,451 Less: Recomputed income taxes on special items (Note 5) (304,590) (228,789) Net impact of special items to equity 458,475 341,691 Total equity excluding special items (Note 4) $ 2,827,468 $ 2,912,375 Total debt $ 2,159,547 $ 2,148,234 Less: Cash, cash equivalents and marketable securities 173,031 786,298 Net Debt $ 1,986,516 $ 1,361,936 Total debt to capitalization ratio 48 % 46 % Total debt to capitalization ratio, excluding special items 43 % 42 % Net debt to capitalization ratio 46 % 35 % Net debt to capitalization ratio, excluding special items 41 % 32 % (17) The Logistics segment includes 100% of the income from operations of the Torrance Valley Pipeline Company LLC ("TVPC"), as TVPC is consolidated by PBFX. PBFX records net income attributable to noncontrolling interest for the 50% equity interest in TVPC held by PBF Holding. PBF Holding (included in the Refining segment) records equity income in investee related to its 50% noncontrolling ownership interest in TVPC. For the purposes of the consolidated PBF Energy financial statements, PBF Holding's equity income in investee and PBFX's net income attributable to noncontrolling interest eliminate in consolidation. As the acquisition of PBFX's 50% interest in TVPC was completed in the third quarter of 2016, there was no impact on comparative June 30, 2016 disclosures. (18) The Logistics segment includes 100% of the assets of TVPC as TVPC is consolidated by PBFX. PBFX records a noncontrolling interest for the 50% equity interest in TVPC held by PBF Holding. PBF Holding (included in the Refining segment) records an equity investment in TVPC reflecting its noncontrolling ownership interest. For the purposes of the consolidated PBF Energy financial statements, PBFX's noncontrolling interest in TVPC and PBF Holding's equity investment in TVPC eliminate in consolidation. SOURCE PBF Energy Inc. Related Links http://www.pbfenergy.com The search for our Overachiever began in July of 2016, when Pilot Pen and Shonda Rhimes invited individuals to nominate someone who goes above and beyond their everyday nine-to-five duties to improve the lives of those around them. Thousands of inspiring, handwritten entries were submitted during the four-month nomination period. After closely reviewing the entries, Pilot Pen and Shonda Rhimes selected the Grand Prize winner. Dr. Constantino was nominated by a friend who eloquently wrote about her passionate belief that "it is a civil right to have access to a good library." She founded Access Books after discovering the shocking fact that there is no funding for school libraries in Los Angeles or in the state of California. With at least 90 percent of students living at or below the poverty line in the greater Los Angeles area, this was a major problem, given that "the best predictor of how well you read is the number of books to which you have access" in your school library. Since the program's inception in 1999, Access Books has helped countless pre-kindergarten through middle school-aged students develop their literacy skills and discover a love for reading and writing. Her nomination entry states, "She is a tireless (and uncompensated) worker who overcomes all obstacles to ensure that there is no discrimination in literacy...All children should have access to great books and a great library. Poverty should not be a factor in learning and becoming a reader." As a result of her work, the Access Books founder was awarded the $50,000 G2 Overachievers Grant. "At Pilot we believe that Overachievers can change the world," said Ariann Langsam, director of marketing for Pilot Pen. "What Rebecca created with Access Books utilizing the power of the written word to improve the current lives and future prospects of children in underserved areas is truly an amazing example of overachievement. We are thrilled to present Rebecca with the $50,000 G2 Overachievers Grant, and a five year supply of G2 pens, to help continue her incredible work." As Pilot continues to encourage and recognize outstanding acts of overachievement, the brand is partnering with Shonda Rhimes once again to award the 2017 G2 Overachievers Grant and, new this year, the G2 Overachievers Student Grant. The $50,000 G2 Overachievers Grant will be awarded to one exceptional individual who goes beyond the call of their everyday career to give back to their community in unique and impactful ways. Entrants will need to submit 1,000 to 1,500 handwritten words expressing how they or someone they know is overachieving for a good cause. Submissions for the G2 Overachievers Grant will be accepted until Nov. 15, 2017. Expanding their existing grant, Pilot and Shonda are also introducing the student-specific G2 Overachievers Student Grant to celebrate exceptional young scholars (aged 13 to 19, in middle school or high school) who are making a tremendous difference in others' lives outside the classroom. One student grant winner will earn $12,500 to further their education and continue their good works, and their school will be awarded $2,500 to continue fostering student overachievement for years to come. Entrants are required to submit 1,000 to 1,500 handwritten words expressing how they or a student they know are working outside the classroom to benefit their communities and peers. Submissions for the G2 Overachievers Student Grant will be accepted until Dec. 31, 2017. In order to achieve their goals, both big and small, overachievers like Rebecca select the best tools to help them make their mark. The Pilot G2 is America's longest lasting, smooth writing, #1 selling gel ink pen, and is the ideal pen for the everyday overachiever whether they are designing a library or penning a business plan. Pilot's G2 is available in four point sizes and 14 colors, offering unlimited opportunities for customization and expression. To learn more about Dr. Rebecca Constantino, Access Books and how you can contribute to the cause, please visit www.accessbooks.net. For more information on the G2 Overachievers Grant and to enter yourself, or an overachiever in your life, for the 2017 G2 Overachievers Grant and Student Grant visit www.G2Overachievers.com. ABOUT PILOT CORPORATION OF AMERICA Pilot Pen offers superlative writing instruments renowned for quality, performance, cutting-edge technology and consumer satisfaction. Widely acknowledged as innovators, Pilot was first to introduce Americans to fine-point writing, currently maintaining the top share position in the gel and rolling ball pen categories. Pilot's line also includes the acclaimed Dr. Grip family of products featuring an ergonomic, wide comfort grip that reduces writing fatigue, as well as the notable Precise V5 and G2 lines. Pilot Pen manufactures and distributes from its state-of-the-art facility in Jacksonville, Florida; its parent company is the oldest and largest manufacturer of writing instruments in Japan. For more: www.pilotpen.us. For More Media Information: Emily Oliver Bright red 850.668.6824 [email protected] SOURCE Pilot Pen Corporation of America ATLANTA, Aug. 3, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Preferred Apartment Communities, Inc. (NYSE: APTS) ("PAC" or the "Company") today announced that it closed on an aggregate loan investment of up to approximately $15.6 million. This investment is in connection with 360 Residential's plans to develop a 224-unit Class A multifamily community located in the city of Fort Myers, Florida. Additionally, with this investment, PAC received an option to purchase the multifamily community following stabilization at a discounted price to market. "This is an exciting opportunity to originate an investment in the growing sub-market of Fort Myers, Florida," said Jeff Sherman, the Company's Executive Vice President and Director of Multi-Family Investments. About Preferred Apartment Communities, Inc. Preferred Apartment Communities, Inc. is a Maryland corporation formed primarily to acquire and operate multifamily properties in select targeted markets throughout the United States. As part of our business strategy, we may enter into forward purchase contracts or purchase options for to-be-built multifamily communities and we may make real estate related loans, provide deposit arrangements, or provide performance assurances, as may be necessary or appropriate, in connection with the development of multifamily communities and other properties. As a secondary strategy, we may acquire or originate senior mortgage loans, subordinate loans or real estate loans secured by interests in multifamily properties, membership or partnership interests in multifamily properties and other multifamily related assets and invest a lesser portion of our assets in other real estate related investments, including other income-producing property types, senior mortgage loans, subordinate loans or real estate loans secured by interests in other income-producing property types, membership or partnership interests in other income-producing property types as determined by our manager as appropriate for us. At June 30, 2017, the Company was the approximate 97.3% owner of Preferred Apartment Communities Operating Partnership, L.P., the Company's operating partnership. Preferred Apartment Communities, Inc. has elected to be taxed as a real estate investment trust under the Internal Revenue Code of 1986, as amended, commencing with its tax year ended December 31, 2011. Learn more at www.pacapts.com. Forward-Looking Statements This press release may contain forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933 and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. These statements may be identified by the use of forward-looking terminology such as "may", "trend", "will", "expects", "plans", "estimates", "anticipates", "projects", "intends", "believes", "goals", "objectives", "outlook" and similar expressions. Because such statements include risks, uncertainties and contingencies, actual results may differ materially from the expectations, intentions, beliefs, plans or predictions of the future expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. These risks, uncertainties and contingencies include, but are not limited to, those disclosed in PAC's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. PAC undertakes no obligation to update these forward-looking statements to reflect events or circumstances after the date hereof or to reflect the occurrence of unanticipated events, except as may be required by law. Additional Information The SEC has declared effective the registration statement (including prospectus) filed by the Company for each of the offerings to which this communication may relate. Before you invest, you should read the final prospectus, and any prospectus supplements, forming a part of the registration statement and other documents the Company has filed with the SEC for more complete information about the Company and the offering to which this communication may relate. In particular, you should carefully read the risk factors described in the final prospectus and in any related prospectus supplement and in the documents incorporated by reference in the final prospectus and any related prospectus supplement to which this communication may relate. You may obtain these documents for free by visiting EDGAR on the SEC website at www.sec.gov. Alternatively, the Company or its dealer manager, Preferred Capital Securities, LLC, with respect to PAC's mShares Redeemable Preferred Stock Offering and Series A Redeemable Preferred Stock and Warrant Unit Offering, and JonesTrading Institutional Services LLC, with respect to PAC's ATM Common Stock Offering, will arrange to send you a prospectus if you request it by calling Leonard A. Silverstein at (770) 818-4100, 3284 Northside Parkway NW, Suite 150, Atlanta, Georgia 30327. The ATM Common Stock Offering prospectus supplement, dated July 10, 2017, including a base prospectus, dated May 17, 2016, can be accessed through the following link: https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1481832/000148183217000110/atmprospectusspring2017.htm The mShares Redeemable Preferred Stock Offering prospectus, dated January 19, 2017, can be accessed through the following link: https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1481832/000148183217000008/a424prospectus-mshares1.htm The Series A Redeemable Preferred Stock and Warrant Unit Offering prospectus, dated March 16, 2017, can be accessed through the following link: https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1481832/000148183217000061/a424prospectus-15bseriesar.htm SOURCE Preferred Apartment Communities, Inc. Related Links http://pacapts.com MINNEAPOLIS, Aug. 3, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- This week the preliminary agenda for the 13th annual Biofuels Financial Conference & Expo was announced. Produced by Christianson PLLP and taking place September 27-28 in Minneapolis, MN, the event focuses on the best ways for biofuels producers to become more familiar with the latest financial options in today's ethanol and biodiesel industries. The two-day event will reveal various financial strategies for biofuels financial leaders and executives, so they can maximize the use of capital and resources to develop a well-managed plan for growth and future stability. The 2017 program will provide in-depth analysis and timely presentations from nearly 28 speakers. The 13th annual Biofuels Financial Conference agenda will highlight the following: Expansion Versus Diversification Recruiting, Training, and Retention Industry Updates from Christianson PLLP Maintaining Biodiesel's Success Maximizing Profitability Tax and Healthcare Reform Highlights Christianson PLLP, the company producing the conference, is a CPA and consulting firm based out of Willmar, MN. "We are extremely excited to be partnering again with Christianson PLLP this year," says Joe Bryan, CEO at BBI International. "They are very credible and a highly recognized financial company in the biofuels industry and will provide critical insight for the biodiesel and ethanol producers attending." "This year's speaker lineup is unmatched by any Biofuels Financial Conference to date," says Melissa Knott, director of marketing and practice growth at Christianson PLLP. "One of our most high-profile speakers is the Deputy Chief Economist at USDA, Dr. Warren Preston who will add valuable insight for attendees about new policy that is driving the biofuels industry." The agenda can be viewed here: www.BiofuelsFinancialConference.com About BBI International: BBI International produces globally recognized bioenergy events and trade magazines. BBI also owns and operates the largest, longest-running ethanol conference in the world the International Fuel Ethanol Workshop & Expo (FEW) and the National Advanced Biofuels Conference & Expo. The company publishes Biomass Magazine, Ethanol Producer Magazine, Biodiesel Magazine, and Pellet Mill Magazine, as well as a number of ancillary products including maps, directories, e-newsletters and other Web-based industry resources. SOURCE BBI International HOUSTON, Aug. 3, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Quanta Services, Inc. (NYSE:PWR) announced today that it was selected by Enbridge Pipelines Inc. (Enbridge) for two spreads of the Canadian section of the Line 3 Replacement Program. Quanta's scope of work includes the construction and installation of approximately 168 miles (270 kilometers) of new 36-inch diameter crude oil mainline pipe, which will begin in Hardisty, Alberta and continue into the province of Saskatchewan, Canada. Quanta's construction on the project will begin in August 2017 and is anticipated to continue through 2019. "Quanta is pleased to partner with Enbridge on this project, which will generate jobs and is expected to benefit the communities where construction will occur," said Duke Austin, Quanta's President and Chief Executive Officer. "Quanta is working collaboratively with Enbridge to maximize the economic opportunities for local and Indigenous communities and we look forward to breaking ground on this important safety and maintenance project." About Quanta Services Quanta Services is a leading specialized contracting services company, delivering infrastructure solutions for the electric power, oil and gas and communications industries. Quanta's comprehensive services include designing, installing, repairing and maintaining energy and communications infrastructure. With operations throughout the United States, Canada, Latin America, Australia and select other international markets, Quanta has the manpower, resources and expertise to safely complete projects that are local, regional, national or international in scope. For more information, visit www.quantaservices.com. Forward Looking Statements This press release (and any oral statements regarding the subject matter of this press release) contains forward-looking statements intended to qualify for the "safe harbor" from liability established by the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements include, but are not limited to, any expected value of the contract or project; the scope, services, terms and results of the project awarded under the contract; the expected economic impact of the project, including with respect to employment; the anticipated commencement and completion dates for the project; and the safety, efficiency or success of the project; as well as statements reflecting expectations, intentions, assumptions or beliefs about future events and other statements that do not relate strictly to historical or current facts. Although Quanta's management believes that the expectations reflected in such forward-looking statements are reasonable, it can give no assurance that such expectations will prove to be correct. These statements can be affected by inaccurate assumptions and by a variety of risks and uncertainties that are difficult to predict or beyond our control, including, among others, the effects of industry, economic or political conditions outside of the control of Quanta; successful performance and completion of the contract and the project awarded thereunder; failure to realize the anticipated value of the contract or the project; delays, reductions in scope or cancellations of the contract or the project awarded thereunder, including as a result of weather, regulatory or environmental issues, project performance issues, claimed force majeure events, or customer capital constraints; the potential for claims associated with schedule delays, performance shortfalls or Quanta's inability or failure to comply with the terms of the contract for the project, which may result in additional costs, unexcused delays, warranty claims, failure to meet performance guarantees, damages or contract termination; the inability or refusal of the customer to pay for Quanta's services; failure of the customer to comply with applicable regulatory requirements, which could result in delay or cancellation of the project; the failure of subcontractors to perform their obligations, including warranty obligations, under their subcontracts; adverse changes in economic conditions and trends in relevant markets; cancellation and termination provisions present in the contract; and other risks and uncertainties detailed in Quanta's Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended Dec. 31, 2016, Quanta's Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q for the quarter ended Mar. 31, 2017 and any other documents that Quanta files with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). For a discussion of these risks, uncertainties and assumptions, investors are urged to refer to Quanta's documents filed with the SEC that are available through the company's website at www.quantaservices.com or through the SEC's Electronic Data Gathering and Analysis Retrieval System (EDGAR) at www.sec.gov. Should one or more of these risks materialize, or should underlying assumptions prove incorrect, actual results may vary materially from those expressed or implied in any forward-looking statements. Investors are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements, which are current only as of this date. Quanta does not undertake and expressly disclaims any obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise. Quanta further expressly disclaims any written or oral statements made by any third party regarding the subject matter of this press release. Investors - Kip Rupp, CFA Media Deborah Buks and Molly LeCronier Quanta Services, Inc. Ward (713) 341-7260 (713) 869-0707 SOURCE Quanta Services, Inc. Related Links http://www.quantaservices.com CALGARY, Alberta, Aug. 3, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Regal Assets, America's leader in Gold IRA accounts, officially announced today that its Calgary office is now open and ready for business. The mission of its new location is to respond to the growing need of Canadians to diversify their retirement portfolio with physical gold and silver. Gold is often considered a foundation of any portfolio, due to its longstanding history of being a recession-proof investment that counteracts the losses incurred from assets tied to the dollar in times of economic turmoil. "We are excited to launch operations in Canada. The demand for gold and silver from RRSP and TFSA account holders is huge here and there are very little options for Canadian retirees when it comes to custodians and storage options. We believe that our strong expertise in this field south of the border will enable us to offer Canadians the best options and valuable advice to ensure them their Gold RRSP account is set up properly," says Tyler Gallagher, CEO of Regal Assets Canada. As of 2005, the Canadian Revenue Agency (CRA) allows Canadian RRSP or TFSA holders to invest in precious metals coins and bars such as: The Canadian Gold and Silver Maple Leaf Bullion Coins The American Gold and Silver Eagle Bullion Coins The Austrian Gold and Silver Philharmonic Coins "Many Canadians are interested in owning precious metals, but a vast majority of them are unaware that they can legally invest in physical gold and silver coins and bars through an RRSP or TFSA account," adds Tyler. "Some Canadians ended up paying thousands of dollars' worth of penalties by setting up their Gold RRSP the wrong way. Some companies are known to push their customers into buying proof coins that come with an attractive 30 to 50% profit margin for the company, but proof coins are NOT eligible for RRSP investments. This can leave customers with huge penalties to pay," stresses Tyler. About Regal Assets Canada Originally founded in the United States by Canadian entrepreneur Tyler Gallagher, Regal Assets quickly grew to become America's leader in Gold IRA accounts. 7 years later, Regal Assets is proud to launch operations in Canada to respond to the growing needs of Canadians for ways to diversify their retirement portfolios with gold and silver. Regal Assets specializes in handling the entire setup of a Gold-backed retirement account, from setting up the custodial account all the way to metal shipment and storage. Regal Assets prides itself for being the top rated company in the industry and for offering various options like offshore storage. Read a full review of Regal Assets here. Learn more about Regal Assets Canada at http://regalassetscanada.com. Media Contact: Harriet Mancini [email protected] 1-877-205-1105 SOURCE Regal Assets Canada Related Links http://regalassetscanada.com NEW YORK, Aug. 3, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Today Regalii, a technology platform for financial institutions, announced the release of a new iFrame that will help solve financial institutions' rising attrition rates by providing consumers with a convenient and elegant one-stop financial hub. Financial institutions that integrate with Regalii's API suite through "Center" will be able to provide consumers new services while gaining access to their financial obligations (i.e. utilities, cell phones, loans, credit cards, subscriptions). The improved user experience will give consumers more control over their finances through aggregation (a bird's eye view of all their financial obligations) and automation (automatic updates to cards/address/settings across all billers in one click). The new feature allows financial institutions to become the center of their consumers' financial lives. White label iFrame inside bank's app. The Regalii API solves two key problems in the financial services industry: antiquated tech and fragmentation. Fewer and fewer people who pay bills online meet these financial obligations through their bank - in the past six years, that number was estimated to decrease from 38 percent to 26.4 percent according to a study by ACI Worldwide and Aite Group. That's largely because banks currently rely on outdated methods (core banking and web scraping) to access consumer data, which are fragile and can delay bill payments for up to three days. Consumers pay bills through merchants or use fintech, which fragments their financial lives across different platforms. The Regalii API will help financial institutions shift online bill pay, especially that of younger consumers, to their own online and mobile banking applications by simplifying consumers' online lives with a single and secure digital platform that operates in real-time. "Center" offers quick integration with Regalii's API and the following advantages for financial institutions and consumers: Automatic updates: Consumers connect all their bills and recurring services once and never have to worry about updating again. New personal and card details are updated automatically across all billers which means consumers enjoy uninterrupted services and merchants don't lose revenue due to lost or expired cards. Programmatic debt consolidation: Consumers can see and compare debt relief options in a single place, then pay off credit cards immediately through a lender's app. Lenders that use Regalii gain total visibility into how consumers use their loans and can use the data for better underwriting. All-in-one: Consumers see all their financial obligations in one place while clients get access to consumer financial data (24 months of payment history) from one API. Being able to provide easy, real-time bill payment will reduce annual churn rate for financial institutions. "The current lack of consolidated financial liability data hinders both financial institutions and consumers, especially the 80% of consumers who pay their bills on a month-to-month basis," said Regalii CEO Edrizio de la Cruz. "Because consumers today favor convenience over loyalty, banks are losing digital business to fintech competitors while simultaneously fintench is having trouble breaking the stronghold of traditional banking. The fact that consumers can access all their financials easily and securely through their primary financial institution via the Regalii API makes loyalty to a single financial institution possible again." Thirty-two financial institutions in the U.S. and Mexico are already powered by the Regalii API, including four of the top 30 banks in the U.S. and six of the top 20 banks in Mexico. For a demo of the Regalii API, visit regalii.com About Regalii: Regalii is a fintech company that offers a nextgen API suite of tools for consumer finance. Regalii enables the world's leading financial institutions in banking, remittances, and mobile wallets to leverage its platform to help everyone, everywhere pay their bills with the most innovative, efficient, and cost-effective services. Based in New York City and Mexico, Regalii is funded by Maverick Capital, HOF Capital, Kapor Capital, Initialized Capital, and other leading technology investors. For more information, visit regalii.com. Media contact: Manuela Silvestre [email protected] 917-650-0937 SOURCE Regalii Related Links https://www.regalii.com NEW YORK, Aug. 3, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- "Release liners market to grow at a CAGR of 6.4% (2017-2022)" The global release liners market is projected to reach USD 93.02 billion by 2022, at a CAGR of 6.4% from 2017 to 2022. Increased demand for labels release liners and hygiene release liners act as key driving factors influencing the growth of the global release liners market. However, the growing concern about the high waste produced by release liners might serve as a restraint on the growth of the market. Read the full report: http://www.reportlinker.com/p05043158/Release-Liners-Market-by-Substrate-Type-Application-Material-Type-Labelling-Technology-and-Region-Global-Forecast-to.html "Medical is expected to be the fastest-growing application segment during the forecast period" Applications of release liners in the medical segment include wound care, electrodes, and ostomy. The medical industry prefers release liners that are hypo-allergenic, flexible, durable, reliable, and easy-to-use. All these factors contribute to the growing usage of release liners in the medical segment. There is a growing consumer awareness about the usage of wound care products. Timely and effective treatment of wounds helps the wound heal fast as well as minimize the risk of wounds becoming chronic. This acts as a key factor contributing to the growth of the medical segment. "Silicone is expected to be the largest and fastest-growing material type segment in the global release liners market" Based on the material type, the silicone material segment is projected to grow at the highest CAGR from 2017 to 2022. Silicone based release liners help provide resistance to slip, moisture, and abrasion. They also provide improved adhesion and anti-blocking properties. These benefits of silicone material act as growth drivers for the release liners market. In addition, various characteristics of silicone-based materials increase the durability of liners. This helps the manufacturers, as they can reduce the usage of titanium dioxide, which is harmful to humans. "Asia Pacific is expected to be the largest and fastest-growing market for release liners" Asia-Pacific is projected to be the largest as well as the fastest-growing market for release liners. The release liners market in this region is expected to register the highest growth, owing to the high demand for release liners from countries, such as Japan, China, and India. China is estimated to be the largest market for release liners in the Asia Pacific, followed by India and Japan. However, India is projected to be the fastest-growing market for release liners in Asia Pacific. The growth of prominent industries such as labeling, medical, hygiene, and manufacturing has increased the demand for release liners in this region. Extensive primary interviews were conducted to determine and verify the market size for several segments and subsegments gathered through secondary research. The break-up of primary interviews is given below. By Company Type: Tier 1 37%, Tier 2 50%, and Others 13% By Designation: C Level 30%, Director Level 47%, and Others 23% By Region: North America 28%, Europe 33%, Asia Pacific 22%, South America 11%, and Middle East & Africa 6% The companies profiled in this market research report are The 3M Company (US), Mondi Group (Austria), Sappi Limited (South Africa), Ahlstrom-Munksjo (Sweden), LINTEC Corporation (Japan), Polyplex Corporation Ltd. (India), Eastman Chemical Company (US), Gascogne (France), UPM (Finland), and Loparex (US). Research Coverage: This research report categorizes the global release liners market on the basis of material type, substrate type, application, labelling technology, and region. The report includes detailed information regarding major factors influencing the growth of the global release liners market, such as drivers, restraints, challenges, and opportunities. A detailed analysis of key industry players has been done to provide insights on business overviews, products & services, key strategies, investments & expansions, mergers & acquisitions, and other recent developments associated with the market. Reasons to Buy the Report: The report will help market leaders/new entrants in this market in the following ways: This report segments the global release liners market comprehensively and provides the closest approximations of market sizes for the overall market and its subsegments across regions. The report will help stakeholders understand the pulse of the market and provide them information on key market drivers, restraints, challenges, and opportunities. This report will also help stakeholders understand major competitors and gain insights to enhance their competitive positions in the market. The competitive landscape section includes major industry players from all the regions, contributing to the market. The landscape consists of top 25 companies ranked and grouped based on their competency parameters such as geographical presence, recent strategic developments, patents filed, and number of employees. Read the full report: http://www.reportlinker.com/p05043158/Release-Liners-Market-by-Substrate-Type-Application-Material-Type-Labelling-Technology-and-Region-Global-Forecast-to.html About Reportlinker ReportLinker is an award-winning market research solution. Reportlinker finds and organizes the latest industry data so you get all the market research you need - instantly, in one place. http://www.reportlinker.com Contact Clare: [email protected] US: (339)-368-6001 Intl: +1 339-368-6001 SOURCE Reportlinker Related Links http://www.reportlinker.com Co-founder and CEO Terrence McLean is a Cincinnati native and Elder High School alumnus. Although he now lives in New York City, leading SageSure's headquarters in Jersey City, he has invested back in his hometown by selecting Cincinnati as the location for the company's marketing and sales office. Having grown up in Cincinnati, McLean knew it was the ideal place to open SageSure's marketing and sales office. As a hotbed for technology startups, Cincinnati is thriving with innovative companies that align with McLean's focus and vision. SageSure's parent company, Insight Catastrophe Group (also co-founded by McLean), began as a technology startup. Today, SageSure is a pioneer in the property insurance industry, offering products in underserved markets. "I am very proud to bring a piece of SageSure back to my hometown," said McLean. "Cincinnati is a great place to grow a business. As a company growing at roughly 30 percent each year, I can't think of a better place for us to put down roots than a community that values innovation and entrepreneurship." With more Fortune 500 companies headquartered in Greater Cincinnati per capita than New York, Chicago or L.A., Cincinnati is home to some of the top marketing talent in the country. Tammy Nelson, named Top CMO in the Cincinnati Business Courier's 2016 C-Suite Awards, was selected as chief marketing officer for SageSure in late 2016 and has been responsible for building the marketing team. "I was thrilled that SageSure wanted to open a marketing office here in Cincinnati, enabling us to tap in to the awesome marketing talent here," said Nelson. "It's so exciting for all of us to be able to build this team from the ground up. This new office will allow us to nearly double the team we've built so far." In addition to Cincinnati, Insight Catastrophe Group and SageSure have offices in Jersey City, NJ; Mount Laurel, NJ; Cheshire, CT; Tallahassee, FL and Houston, TX. About SageSure Insurance Managers SageSure Insurance Managers is the largest independent residential property managing general underwriter in the United States. SageSure develops competitively priced property insurance products for its highly rated carrier partners and distributes these products through a growing network of insurance agents and brokers. SageSure offers 33 products in 12 states, managing nearly all operations for 134,000 customers. For more information, visit SageSure.com. Contact: Hallie Montague Vice President, Marketing SageSure Insurance Managers [email protected] (513) 227-8637 SOURCE SageSure Insurance Managers Related Links http://SageSure.com We can't keep calm because the delicious, colourful M&M's are now officially in India! By Indo-Asian News Service: American chocolate brand M&M's has made its India entry, and officials hope it boosts the "nascent bite-size category" in the market. As a promotional stunt for the launch, the popular M&M's characters Mr. Red and Mr. Yellow scootered down the iconic Gateway of India, in true Bollywood style, channeling their own Sholay moment. Picture courtesy: Facebook/M&M's India "India is a priority market for Mars Incorporated and we are committed to bring our best loved brands to Indian consumers... With the launch of the brand in India, our aim is to grow the nascent bite-size category in the market," Andrew Leakey, general manager, Mars Chocolate, India and India Sub-Continent, said in a statement. advertisement "Across the world, for more than 70 years, it has been a favourite brand. We are confident its uniqueness will win the hearts of consumers in India," he added. The brand is available in the country in two variants, chocolate and peanut. --- ENDS --- DENVER, Aug. 3, 2017 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Rocky Mountain College of Art + Design (RMCAD) is pleased to announce Tom Keefe, Carin Rodenborn, and Jeremiah Snyder as new Assistant Professors beginning in the Fall 2017 semester. About the New Faculty Tom Keefe, Humanities/Liberal Arts Tom Keefe attended Saint Joseph's University in Philadelphia, where he pursued a degree in history. He would go on to work at the U.S. House of Representatives. He has taught English, Religion, and History at a variety of schools in Mass., R.I., and Colo. Completing his Master's in Diplomacy from Norwich University, Keefe has focused his continuing research on genocide education, social justice, and comparative theology. Carin Rodenborn, Fine Arts/Foundations Carin Rodenborn is a visual artist and writer living and working in Denver, Colo. whose work has been exhibited throughout the United States. Rodenborn works with both traditional and non-traditional materials in a contemplative painting and drawing practice that explores objecthood, surface, materiality, color, and language. Rodenborn received her MFA from Rutgers University and her BFA from Iowa State University. Jeremiah Snyder, Humanities/Liberal Arts Jeremiah Snyder completed his Bachelor of Arts with Honors and a Master of Arts in History from the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs, where he also extensively studied ancient Greek Languages and Latin. Snyder teaches history, political science, and world religions. He is currently expanding his research within the fields of history and philology, focusing on the relationship between politics, religion, and rhetoric and how these aspects of a society interact to affect change. Faculty at RMCAD RMCAD's experienced faculty is comprised of working artists, designers, and scholarly professionals from the very tops of their fields. Beyond the classroom, many instructors exhibit their work on local, national, and international levels each year. The faculty body is comprised of a diverse group of thinkers, authors, speakers, mentors, and educators with a shared commitment to the personal growth and professional success of their students. About Rocky Mountain College of Art + Design A premier art and design school in the Denver area, RMCAD is an innovative, rigorous, and community-oriented global learning environment that inspires passion for critical thinking and prepares learners to be forces of change in the creative industries, our communities, and the world. Find more information at www.RMCAD.edu or by calling 800.888.ARTS. MEDIA CONTACT: Neely Patton [email protected] 720.556.0438 SOURCE Rocky Mountain College of Art + Design Related Links http://www.rmcad.edu ATLANTA, Aug. 3, 2017 /PRNewswire-HISPANIC PR WIRE/ -- Georgia Power has received reports of a new scam in which criminals sell Federal Reserve Bank routing numbers to customers with instructions to use the routing numbers to pay utility and other bills from nonexistent accounts. According to a news release from the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta: Federal Reserve routing numbers are used for sorting and processing payments between banks. Any video, text, email, phone call, flyer, or website that describes how to pay bills using a Federal Reserve Bank routing number or using an account at the Federal Reserve Bank is a scam. While Georgia Power's system may initially accept a Federal Reserve Bank routing number to process a payment, the payment will eventually be rejected and the customer's account could be subject to additional late fees or possibly disconnection. Other reminders from Georgia Power to help avoid common scams and fraud: Georgia Power will never ask for a credit card or pre-paid debit card number over the phone. Employees are not sent into the field to collect payment in person and will not ask a customer to pay anywhere other than a business office or Authorized Payment Location. Delete all emails that demand immediate payment or personal information or that are from a company that is not Georgia Power. If a customer receives a suspicious call from someone claiming to be from Georgia Power and demanding payment to avoid disconnection, they should contact the company's 24-hour customer service line at 888-660-5890. Georgia Power continues to work with law enforcement agencies throughout the state to identify and prosecute criminals who pose as Georgia Power employees in order to defraud customers. The company encourages customers to report scams and fraud attempts to local law enforcement and to the Federal Trade Commission at https://www.ftccomplaintassistant.gov/. Additional information about frequent scams and how the company works to protect customers is available at www.GeorgiaPower.com/Scam. About Georgia Power Georgia Power is the largest electric subsidiary of Southern Company (NYSE: SO), America's premier energy company. Value, Reliability, Customer Service and Stewardship are the cornerstones of the company's promise to 2.5 million customers in all but four of Georgia's 159 counties. Committed to delivering clean, safe, reliable and affordable energy at rates below the national average, Georgia Power maintains a diverse, innovative generation mix that includes nuclear, 21st century coal and natural gas, as well as renewables such as solar, hydroelectric and wind. Georgia Power focuses on delivering world-class service to its customers every day and the company is consistently recognized by J.D. Power and Associates as an industry leader in customer satisfaction. For more information, visit www.GeorgiaPower.com and connect with the company on Facebook (Facebook.com/GeorgiaPower), Twitter (Twitter.com/GeorgiaPower) and Instagram (Instagram.com/ga_power). Logo - http://mma.prnewswire.com/media/128122/georgia_power_logo.jpg SOURCE Georgia Power Related Links http://www.georgiapower.com CINCINNATI, Aug. 3, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Darryll Green, a seasoned media executive with large-market television broadcasting experience, is the new vice president and general manager for WFTX, the Fox affiliate owned by The E.W. Scripps Company (NYSE: SSP), in Fort Myers, Florida, effective Aug. 14. Green's background includes a mix of television and radio, operations and management. He recently completed the Broadcast Leadership Training program created by the National Association of Broadcasters Education Foundation. "Darryll has the right combination of experiences and expertise to make that station a leader in the community, both on the content side and as an economic driver for local businesses," said Debbie Turner, vice president of station operations for Scripps. "He has a strong track record for increasing revenue, developing effective teams and growing TV and digital audiences." Green is coming to Scripps from Urban Radio Broadcasting, where he was the market president responsible for six radio stations. Before that, he was the vice president and chief operating officer, focusing on the 16-station radio group, budgets and strategic planning. From 2003-2007, he was president and general manager at WUSA in Washington, D.C., a top-10 market. He managed a team of more than 200 people along with new branding and the launch of the first 7 p.m. newscast in the market. Green was the president and general manager for WGRZ in Buffalo, New York, from 1997-2003. His leadership resulted in ratings success, expanded news coverage and the station's first website. From 1985-1997, Green's list of professional accomplishments started to take shape as he rose from controller to general manager of WGCI-AM/FM in Chicago. He has a Bachelor of Science in Accounting from St. John Fisher College in Rochester, New York. Green has been active in the industry and the community through his volunteer efforts with organizations such as NAB and United Way. Green, his wife, Ingrid, and their two children look forward to getting settled in their new community. About Scripps The E.W. Scripps Company (NYSE: SSP) serves audiences and businesses through a growing portfolio of television, radio and digital media brands. With 33 television stations, Scripps is one of the nation's largest independent TV station owners. Scripps runs an expanding collection of local and national digital journalism and content businesses, including Newsy, the next-generation national news network; and podcast industry leader Midroll Media. Scripps produces original programming including "Pickler & Ben," runs an award-winning investigative reporting newsroom in Washington, D.C., and is the longtime steward of the Scripps National Spelling Bee. Founded in 1878, Scripps has held for decades to the motto, "Give light and the people will find their own way." SOURCE The E.W. Scripps Company Related Links http://www.scripps.com Shionogi Inc. is the US subsidiary of Shionogi & Co. Ltd., a pharmaceutical company with headquarters in Osaka, Japan. For over 139 years, Shionogi has been dedicated to developing medicines that protect the health and well-being of patients worldwide. Addressing unmet medical needs and improving quality of life for patients and their families are what drives the company, its philosophy and its teams. "Few companies of any size in the pharmaceutical sector have tripled in value in the last three years. This achievement is the result of Shionogi's dedication of innovation and focus on patients," Mr. George Rodriguez, Leadership Awards founder and CME Past Chair said. "Dr. Keller has led Shionogi's US subsidiary for 6 years, focusing on bringing the benefits of Shionogi's small molecule drug innovations to US patients, both through Shionogi Inc.'s own efforts and through the establishment of multiple creative collaborations." Since joining Shionogi Inc. in 2010, Dr. Keller has played an instrumental role in establishing highly effective and efficient development and commercialization capabilities at Shionogi Inc. In this period, Shionogi obtained its first two US NDA approvals as a global organization, and Shionogi Inc. is now tightly focused on its science-based heritage and core therapeutic areas, including Infectious Disease and Pain/CNS. "On behalf of the dedicated employees of Shionogi Inc. and Shionogi globally, I am delighted to be recognized by the business-focused topical group of the largest scientific society in the world and look forward to celebrating CME's 63 years of service at the prestigious Leadership Awards event," noted Dr. Keller. Dr. Keller joined Shionogi Inc. in July of 2010, as Executive Vice President, Corporate Development and Strategy, and was appointed as President and Chief Executive Officer, and as a member of the Shionogi Inc, Board of Directors, in April 2011. In April 2013, Dr. Keller was appointed as a Corporate Officer of Shionogi & Co. Ltd, and was promoted to Senior Executive Officer in April 2017. Immediately prior to joining Shionogi, Dr. Keller was a Partner in SR One, the venture capital group of GlaxoSmithKline. Previously, Dr. Keller served as Executive Vice President and Chief Business Officer of Incyte Corporation, playing a key role in its transformation into a drug discovery and development company and establishing its first major corporate alliance after that transformation. Before Incyte, Dr. Keller had a 16 year tenure at GlaxoSmithKline and its predecessor, SmithKline Beecham, culminating in the position of Vice President, Worldwide Business Development. Earlier positions encompassed R&D strategy, technology licensing, alliance management, public policy, project management and drug discovery research. Dr. Keller is also President of the New York Pharma Forum and a Board member of ViiV Healthcare Ltd. Dr. Keller holds a Ph.D. in microbiology from Rutgers University and a Bachelor degree in biology from Johns Hopkins University. The other CME honorees on December 5 include Dr. David Skorton, Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, and Mr. Christopher Pappas, Trinseo CEO. The CME Leadership Awards honors leaders with distinction in harnessing the transformative power of chemistry to advance humanity. Past honorees include Len Blavatnik (Access Industries), Charles Bolden (NASA), David Cote (Honeywell), Jean-Pierre Clamadieu (Solvay), Dr. Roy Vagelos (Regeneron, Merck), Erik Fyrwald (Univar), Jon M. Huntsman (Huntsman) and Andrew Liveris (Dow), among others. Dr. Allison Campbell, ACS President, will participate in the 2017 CME Leadership Awards. Funds raised for the event will help advance exciting STEM programs including ACS Scholars and the first ACS-NASA Journey to Mars Symposium to be held on August 22-23, 2017 as part of ACS 254th National Meeting in Washington, DC. About Shionogi Shionogi & Co., Ltd. is a major research-driven pharmaceutical company dedicated to bringing benefits to patients based on its corporate philosophy of "supplying the best possible medicine to protect the health and well-being of the patients we serve." Shionogi's research and development currently target two therapeutic areas: infectious diseases and pain/CNS disorders. For over 50 years, Shionogi has developed and commercialized innovative oral and parenteral anti-infectives. In addition, Shionogi is engaged in new research areas, such as obesity/geriatric metabolic disease and oncology/immunology. Contributing to the health and quality of life of patients around the world through development in these therapeutic areas is Shionogi's primary goal. For more details, please visit www.shionogi.co.jp/en/ . For more information on Shionogi Inc., the U.S.-based subsidiary of Shionogi & Co., Ltd., headquartered in Florham Park, NJ, USA, please visit www.shionogi.com . For more information on Shionogi Ltd., the UK-based subsidiary of Shionogi & Co. Ltd., headquartered in London, England, please visit www.shionogi.eu. About CME Established in 1954, the Chemical Marketing and Economics (CME) group of the American Chemical Society's New York Section, Inc. (ACS NY), organizes monthly luncheons in New York City where business and investment leaders share their insights on energy, materials and life science. A nonprofit organization established in 1876 and chartered by the U. S. Congress, the American Chemical Society (ACS) is the world's largest scientific society with over 150,000 members. www.cmeacs.org SOURCE Shionogi Related Links http://www.shionogi.com DENVER, Aug. 3, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Production beats expectations: 11.3 MMBoe, exceeding guidance due to well performance 11% growth from retained assets compared with the second quarter of 2016 Full year 2017 production guidance increased by 0.8 MMBoe at the mid-point to 44.5-46.5 MMBoe Guidance reflects expected significant oil growth in the second half of 2017 Capital efficiency drives value: First half of 2017 exceeds plan expectations for well performance and revenue at lower than expected drilling and completion costs Well tests continue to confirm RockStar acreage to east: Viper well peak 24-hour IP rate of 1,316 Boe/d, 91% oil Balance sheet remains strong: $1.5 B in liquidity SM Energy Company ("SM Energy" or the "Company") (NYSE: SM) announced today financial results and operations highlights from the second quarter of 2017. The Company has revised its quarterly reporting format to include posting both an investor presentation and pre-recorded call in conjunction with this release. Please visit the Company's website at sm-energy.com to access this additional second quarter detail. The Company will host a webcast and conference call at 8:00 a.m. Mountain Time (10:00 a.m. Eastern Time) tomorrow, August 4, 2017, to answer questions. Further information on the earnings webcast and conference call can be found below. MANAGEMENT COMMENTARY President and Chief Executive Officer Jay Ottoson comments: "Our team continues to meet or exceed our operational objectives year-to-date. Our relentless pursuit of improved well performance and detailed approach to cost management have delivered high levels of efficiency in our capital investment program. As a result, year-to-date we have generated more production than we expected with less capital investment than we planned, and we are further increasing 2017 production guidance to reflect our projections for continued outperformance." SECOND QUARTER 2017 RESULTS PRODUCTION - SEQUENTIAL COMPARISON: COMPANY PRODUCTION Second Quarter 2017 First Quarter 2017 % Change Total Company (MMBoe) 11.3 12.1 Assets sold (MMBoe) (1.5) Retained Assets (MMBoe) 11.3 10.6 By commodity Oil (MMBbls) 2.9 3.0 (4)% Natural gas (Bcf) 34.0 30.8 10% NGLs (MMBbls) 2.8 2.4 13% Retained Assets (MMBoe) 11.3 10.6 7% By region (MMBoe) Eagle Ford (operated) 8.0 7.3 10% Permian Basin 2.3 2.1 8% Rocky Mountain 1.1 1.2 (12)% Retained Assets (MMBoe) 11.3 10.6 7% Total Company production includes production from assets sold (through the closing date) Eagle Ford (operated) includes nominal other production from the region Second quarter production of 11.3 MMBoe is up 7% sequentially and up 11% compared with the second quarter of 2016, on a retained asset basis. Production in the second quarter of 2017 reflects the acceleration of 11 well completions in the Eagle Ford (as announced on June 6, 2017), and further exceeds guidance due to continued production outperformance from new wells in both the Permian Basin and Eagle Ford. As a result of second quarter production outperformance, the Company is raising full year production guidance by 0.8 MMBoe. For the first six months of 2017, production was 23.4 MMBoe. In the second quarter of 2017, the average realized price per Boe before the effects of commodity hedges was $25.13 and after the effects of commodity hedges was $26.57. Cash production costs totaled $10.98 per Boe, down sequentially from $11.42 per Boe in the first quarter of 2017 and up from $10.38 per Boe in the second quarter of 2016. The Company is updating its guidance for the second half of 2017 to reflect modified LOE and transportation costs associated with retaining its Divide County, North Dakota assets. Please see guidance below. Net loss for the second quarter of 2017 was $119.9 million, or $1.08 per diluted common share, compared with a net loss of $168.7 million, or $2.48 per diluted common share, in the second quarter of 2016. Net loss in the second quarter of 2017 reflects a 43% increase in the Company's pre-hedge cash operating margin per Boe from the prior year period. The 2017 period also includes a reduction in DD&A expense per Boe from $14.75 to $13.52, a loss on divestiture activity of $167.1 million and a non-cash derivative gain of $38.9 million. Net cash provided by operating activities in the second quarter of 2017 was $107.1 million. For the first six months of 2017, net loss was $45.5 million, or $0.41 per diluted common share, and net cash provided by operating activities was $242.1 million. As discussed below, adjusted EBITDAX, adjusted net income (loss) and adjusted net income (loss) per diluted common share are non-GAAP measures. Please reference the reconciliations to the most directly comparable GAAP financial measures at the end of this release. Adjusted EBITDAX for the second quarter of 2017 was $154.1 million, compared with $217.1 million in the prior year period. While the pre-hedge operating margin was significantly higher in the second quarter of 2017, the prior year period benefited from a $101.7 million derivative settlement gain. For the first six months of 2017, adjusted EBITDAX was $326.3 million. Adjusted net loss for the second quarter was $35.5 million, or $0.32 per diluted common share, compared with an adjusted net loss of $30.2 million, or $0.44 per diluted common share, in the second quarter of 2016. For the first six months of 2017, adjusted net loss was $55.2 million, or $0.50 per diluted common share. The calculation of adjusted net loss excludes non-recurring items and items difficult to estimate in order to present results that can be more consistently compared with prior periods and peer results. FINANCIAL POSITION AND LIQUIDITY At June 30, 2017, the outstanding principal balance on the Company's long-term debt included $2.8 billion in senior notes plus $172.5 million in senior convertible notes, with zero drawn on the Company's senior secured credit facility. At quarter-end, the Company had a cash balance of $559.5 million, providing for net debt of $2.4 billion. The Company's undrawn credit facility plus cash on hand provide $1.5 billion in liquidity. CAPITAL ACTIVITY AND OPERATIONS Costs incurred for the second quarter of 2017 were $258.0 million, which included $15.7 million of primarily unproved property acquisitions. Second quarter total capital spend (see below for GAAP reconciliation) was $237.3 million. During the quarter, the Company drilled or participated in 30 net wells and completed or participated in 25 net wells. For the first six months of 2017, costs incurred were $515.0 million and total capital spend was $430.2 million. Please refer to the Total Capital Spend Reconciliation at the end of this release for a reconciliation to Costs Incurred in oil and gas activities (GAAP). PERMIAN BASIN In the second quarter of 2017, production from the Company's Midland Basin assets was 2.3 MMBoe and was 75% oil. The Company is currently running seven horizontal rigs in the basin, with two in the Sweetie Peck area and five in the RockStar area. The Company recently converted the single vertical rig operating in the RockStar area to horizontal drilling, and is currently running three completion crews. During the second quarter, the Company drilled 23 net operated wells and had nine net flowing completions. The second quarter production margin for this area was $28.75 per Boe. Subsequent to quarter-end, the Viper well, located in the northern portion of the Company's RockStar acreage, reached a 24-hour peak initial production rate of 1,316 Boe/d. The Viper well is drilled into the Wolfcamp A with a 10,400 foot lateral. Similar to peer wells in the area, the Viper well demonstrates a lower peak rate combined with a flatter production profile. In combination with nearby peer wells, the area now supports economic wells in the Wolfcamp A (SM, Sabalo), Wolfcamp B (Apache) and Lower Spraberry (Sabalo). The Company remains focused on optimizing drilling and completion operations across the basin in order to identify the appropriate number of wells per section and optimize production performance in preparation for increased development activity in 2018. Over the past year, the Company has collected approximately 3,500 feet of core to better understand the entire Spraberry through Wolfcamp column, gather geomechanical rock properties necessary to support reservoir simulation efforts, and evaluate untested intervals. Efforts to drive capital efficiency and optimization also include drilling longer laterals and pad drilling. The Company has just completed the first 10,000 foot laterals at Sweetie Peck and has just completed the first six well pad at RockStar that co-develops the Lower Spraberry and Wolfcamp A. The Company currently has approximately 89,000 net acres in the Midland Basin, which includes approximately 5,400 additional net acres acquired year-to-date through acreage trades and other transactions. EAGLE FORD In the second quarter of 2017, production from the Company's operated Eagle Ford assets was 8.0 MMBoe and included 62% natural gas, 34% NGLs, and 4% oil. Production was up 9.5% sequentially as the Company accelerated activity in the area. The Company is currently running one horizontal rig with plans to add a second horizontal rig during the third quarter in the Eagle Ford. During the second quarter, the Company drilled six and completed 14 net wells, including acceleration of 11 completions into the second quarter. The Company's focus on drilling and completion optimization continues to drive better results in the Eagle Ford where completions year-to-date are exceeding type curve expectations and driving higher production. For example in the North Area, pad completions in the first half of 2017 included tighter stage and cluster spacing with increased fluid. The Company's current drilling plan co-develops the lower and upper Eagle Ford (see associated investor presentation for graph). In the East Area, pad completions included higher sand loadings and tighter stage spacing. Wells are downspaced to 625 feet (from 900 feet) and continue to outperform the 900 foot spacing type curve. The Company operates approximately 167,500 net acres in its Eagle Ford program. ROCKY MOUNTAIN In the Powder River Basin, the Company is working with a third party to test newer generation drilling and completion techniques in the Shannon and Frontier zones. To-date, well results are very positive and the Company anticipates continuing its relationship with the third party into 2018. During the second quarter, the Company decided to retain its Divide County assets (previously held for sale) rather than sell the assets due to market conditions. GUIDANCE Full year 2017 guidance is revised as follows: Total capital spend (before acquisitions) ($MM) $875 (unchanged) Total production (MMBoe) 44.5-46.5 Increased 0.8 MMBoe at the mid-point Oil percent near 30% of commodity mix, full year average LOE including ad valorem ($/Boe) $4.30-4.60 Increased to include retention of Divide County Transportation ($/Boe) $5.40-5.65 Reduced $0.10 at the midpoint Production taxes ($/Boe/percent of pre-hedge revenue) ~$1.10 /4.0-4.5% /4.0-4.5% G&A ($MM) $115-125 Reduced $5 MM at the mid-point Includes approximately $20 MM non-cash, stock-based compensation expense Capitalized overhead/Exploration before dry hole expenses ($MM) $65-70 (unchanged) This amount is a component of capital guidance (unchanged) DD&A ($/Boe) $12.00-14.00 Third quarter of 2017 production is expected to range between 10.8 and 11.2 MMBoe, which will vary depending upon the ultimate timing of capital activity, at approximately 29-30% oil in the commodity mix. Total capital spend (before acquisitions) is a non-GAAP measure. The Company is unable to present a quantitative reconciliation of this forward-looking non-GAAP financial measure without unreasonable effort because acquisition costs are inherently unpredictable. COMMODITY DERIVATIVES As of August 1, 2017. For the second half of 2017, the Company has commodity derivatives in place for approximately 60% of expected oil production, 75% of expected natural gas production and 80% of expected NGL production. For 2018, approximately one-half of total expected production volumes are hedged. OIL SWAPS OIL COLLARS NATURAL GAS SWAPS NGL SWAPS Volume/Average Price Volume/Avg. Ceiling - Floor Volume /Average Price Volume/Average Price Period (MBbls/$Bbl) (MBbls/$Bbl) (BBtu/$MMBtu) (MBbls/$Bbl) 3Q17 1,340/$46.66 583/$54.05 - $45.00 23,657/$4.01 2,019/$20.89 4Q17 1,254/$46.35 1,086/$56.05 - $47.51 22,001/$3.98 1,996/$20.18 1Q18 535/$49.32 1,026/$58.46 - $50.00 19,628/$3.25 1,829/$21.45 2Q18 910/$48.57 1,004/$58.37 - $50.00 13,052/$2.85 1,437/$16.26 3Q18 993/$48.79 1,393/$57.93 - $50.00 14,241/$2.87 1,662/$16.47 4Q18 1,034/$48.89 1,607/$57.75 - $50.00 15,487/$2.90 1,828/$16.54 Notes: The volumes above represent fixed swap and collar contracts the Company has in place through 4Q18. Volumes for 3Q17 include all commodity contracts for settlement any time during the third quarter of 2017; prices are weighted averages; natural gas contracts reflect regional contract positions and are no longer adjusted to a NYMEX equivalent; NGL prices are at Mt. Belvieu and reflect specific NGL components, 2017 and 2018 quarters include ethane, propane, butanes and gasoline. In addition to the volumes above, the Company has oil basis swaps in place. See 2Q17 Earnings Presentation for contract details on the oil basis swaps. UPCOMING EVENTS EARNINGS WEBCAST AND CALL As previously announced, SM Energy is posting a pre-recorded discussion and presentation in conjunction with this earnings release. Please look for the additional detail on our website at www.sm-energy.com. Tomorrow morning, the Company will host a second quarter financial and operating results Q&A session via webcast and conference call. Please join management at 8:00 a.m. Mountain Time/10:00 a.m. Eastern Time August 4, 2017. Join us via webcast at www.sm-energy.com or by telephone 877-870-4263 (toll free) or 412-317-0790 (international), and indicate SM Energy earnings call. The webcast and call will also be available for replay. The dial-in replay number is 877-344-7529 (toll free). UPCOMING CONFERENCE PARTICIPATION August 15, 2017 - Enercom: The Oil and Gas Conference 22. President and Chief Executive Officer Jay Ottoson will present at 10:05 a.m. Mountain time . This event will be webcast. An investor presentation for this event will be posted to the Company's website on August 14, 2017 . - Enercom: The Oil and Gas Conference 22. President and Chief Executive Officer will present at . This event will be webcast. An investor presentation for this event will be posted to the Company's website on . September 6, 2017 - Barclays CEO Energy-Power Conference. President and Chief Executive Officer Jay Ottoson will present at 11:45 a.m. Eastern time . This event will be webcast. An investor presentation for this event will be posted to the Company's website on September 5, 2017 . FORWARD LOOKING STATEMENTS This release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of securities laws. These statements involve known and unknown risks, which may cause SM Energy's actual results to differ materially from results expressed or implied by the forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements in this release include, among other things, guidance estimates for the third quarter and full year 2017. General risk factors include the availability, proximity and capacity of gathering, processing and transportation facilities; the volatility and level of oil, natural gas, and natural gas liquids prices, including any impact on the Company's asset carrying values or reserves arising from price declines; uncertainties inherent in projecting future rates of production or other results from drilling and completion activities; the imprecise nature of estimating oil and gas reserves; uncertainties inherent in projecting future drilling and completion activities, costs or results; the uncertain nature of divestiture, joint venture, farm down or similar efforts and the ability to complete any such transactions; the uncertain nature of expected benefits from the actual or expected divestiture, joint venture, farm down or similar efforts; the availability of additional economically attractive exploration, development, and acquisition opportunities for future growth and any necessary financings; unexpected drilling conditions and results; unsuccessful exploration and development drilling results; the availability of drilling, completion, and operating equipment and services; the risks associated with the Company's commodity price risk management strategy; uncertainty regarding the ultimate impact of potentially dilutive securities; and other such matters discussed in the "Risk Factors" section of SM Energy's 2016 Annual Report on Form 10-K, as such risk factors may be updated from time to time in the Company's other periodic reports filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The forward-looking statements contained herein speak as of the date of this announcement. Although SM Energy may from time to time voluntarily update its prior forward-looking statements, it disclaims any commitment to do so except as required by securities laws. ABOUT THE COMPANY SM Energy Company is an independent energy company engaged in the acquisition, exploration, development, and production of crude oil, natural gas, and natural gas liquids in onshore North America. SM Energy routinely posts important information about the Company on its website. For more information about SM Energy, please visit its website at www.SM-Energy.com. SM ENERGY CONTACTS INVESTORS: Jennifer Martin Samuels, [email protected], 303-864-2507 SM ENERGY COMPANY FINANCIAL HIGHLIGHTS (UNAUDITED) June 30, 2017 For the Three Months Ended June 30, For the Six Months Ended June 30, Production Data 2017 2016 Percent Change 2017 2016 Percent Change Average realized sales price, before the effects of derivative settlements: Oil (per Bbl) $ 44.30 $ 39.38 12% $ 46.08 $ 32.51 42% Gas (per Mcf) 2.99 1.79 67% 2.99 1.83 63% NGLs (per Bbl) 19.71 16.12 22% 20.92 14.05 49% Equivalent (per BOE) $ 25.13 $ 20.35 23% $ 26.38 $ 18.14 45% Average realized sales price, including the effects of derivative settlements: Oil (per Bbl) $ 43.36 $ 56.97 (24)% $ 44.24 $ 53.45 (17)% Gas (per Mcf) 3.63 2.60 40% 3.56 2.80 27% NGLs (per Bbl) 18.73 15.61 20% 18.96 14.63 30% Equivalent (per BOE) $ 26.57 $ 27.45 (3)% $ 27.08 $ 27.11 % Production: Oil (MMBbl) 2.9 4.1 (29)% 6.4 8.2 (22)% Gas (Bcf) 34.0 39.0 (13)% 67.9 74.7 (9)% NGLs (MMBbl) 2.8 3.7 (26)% 5.7 7.1 (20)% MMBOE (6:1) 11.3 14.3 (21)% 23.4 27.7 (15)% Average daily production: Oil (MBbl/d) 32.0 45.1 (29)% 35.5 45.2 (21)% Gas (MMcf/d) 374.1 428.2 (13)% 375.3 410.2 (9)% NGLs (MBbl/d) 30.3 40.8 (26)% 31.4 38.8 (19)% MBOE/d (6:1) 124.6 157.2 (21)% 129.5 152.4 (15)% Per BOE data: Realized price, before the effects of derivative settlements $ 25.13 $ 20.35 23% $ 26.38 $ 18.14 45% Lease operating expense 4.11 3.31 24% 3.96 3.54 12% Transportation costs 5.71 5.95 (4)% 5.79 6.00 (4)% Production taxes 1.00 0.93 8% 1.09 0.80 36% Ad valorem tax expense 0.16 0.19 (16)% 0.36 0.23 57% General and administrative (excluding stock-compensation) 2.21 1.60 38% 2.15 1.80 19% Net, before the effects of derivative settlements $ 11.94 $ 8.37 43% $ 13.03 $ 5.77 126% Derivative settlement gain 1.44 7.10 (80)% 0.70 8.97 (92)% Margin, including the effects of derivative settlements $ 13.38 $ 15.47 (14)% $ 13.73 $ 14.74 (7)% Depletion, depreciation, amortization, and asset retirement obligation liability accretion $ 13.52 $ 14.75 (8)% $ 12.42 $ 15.34 (19)% SM ENERGY COMPANY FINANCIAL HIGHLIGHTS (UNAUDITED) June 30, 2017 Condensed Consolidated Balance Sheets (in thousands, except share amounts) June 30, December 31, ASSETS 2017 2016 Current assets: Cash and cash equivalents $ 559,521 $ 9,372 Accounts receivable 105,713 151,950 Derivative asset 85,962 54,521 Prepaid expenses and other 18,121 8,799 Total current assets 769,317 224,642 Property and equipment (successful efforts method): Total property and equipment, net 5,346,411 6,081,354 Noncurrent assets: Derivative asset 82,194 67,575 Other noncurrent assets 14,683 19,940 Total other noncurrent assets 96,877 87,515 Total Assets $ 6,212,605 $ 6,393,511 LIABILITIES AND STOCKHOLDERS' EQUITY Current liabilities: Accounts payable and accrued expenses $ 311,476 $ 299,708 Derivative liability 36,296 115,464 Total current liabilities 347,772 415,172 Noncurrent liabilities: Revolving credit facility Senior Notes, net of unamortized deferred financing costs 2,767,030 2,766,719 Senior Convertible Notes, net of unamortized discount and deferred financing costs 134,918 130,856 Asset retirement obligation 100,304 96,134 Asset retirement obligation associated with oil and gas properties held for sale 234 26,241 Deferred income taxes 245,506 315,672 Derivative liability 69,915 98,340 Other noncurrent liabilities 45,098 47,244 Total noncurrent liabilities 3,363,005 3,481,206 Stockholders' equity: Common stock, $0.01 par value - authorized: 200,000,000 shares; issued and outstanding: 111,453,476 and 111,257,500 shares, respectively 1,115 1,113 Additional paid-in capital 1,729,104 1,716,556 Retained earnings 786,608 794,020 Accumulated other comprehensive loss (14,999) (14,556) Total stockholders' equity 2,501,828 2,497,133 Total Liabilities and Stockholders' Equity $ 6,212,605 $ 6,393,511 SM ENERGY COMPANY FINANCIAL HIGHLIGHTS (UNAUDITED) June 30, 2017 Condensed Consolidated Statements of Operations (in thousands, except per share amounts) For the Three Months Ended June 30, For the Six Months Ended June 30, 2017 2016 2017 2016 Operating revenues and other income: Oil, gas, and NGL production revenue $ 284,939 $ 291,142 $ 618,137 $ 502,965 Net gain (loss) on divestiture activity (167,133) 50,046 (129,670) (18,975) Other operating revenues 2,915 626 4,992 900 Total operating revenues and other income 120,721 341,814 493,459 484,890 Operating expenses: Oil, gas, and NGL production expense 124,376 148,591 262,422 293,134 Depletion, depreciation, amortization, and asset retirement obligation liability accretion 153,232 211,020 291,044 425,227 Exploration 13,072 13,187 25,050 28,460 Impairment of proved properties 3,806 3,806 269,785 Abandonment and impairment of unproved properties 157 38 157 2,349 General and administrative 28,460 28,200 57,684 60,438 Net derivative (gain) loss (55,189) 163,351 (169,963) 149,123 Other operating expenses 445 7,976 5,304 13,648 Total operating expenses 268,359 572,363 475,504 1,242,164 Income (loss) from operations (147,638) (230,549) 17,955 (757,274) Non-operating income (expense): Interest expense (44,595) (34,035) (91,548) (65,123) Gain (loss) on extinguishment of debt (35) 15,722 Other, net 1,265 5 1,600 11 Loss before income taxes (190,968) (264,579) (72,028) (806,664) Income tax benefit 71,061 95,898 26,555 290,773 Net loss $ (119,907) $ (168,681) $ (45,473) $ (515,891) Basic weighted-average common shares outstanding 111,277 68,102 111,274 68,090 Diluted weighted-average common shares outstanding 111,277 68,102 111,274 68,090 Basic net loss per common share $ (1.08) $ (2.48) $ (0.41) $ (7.58) Diluted net loss per common share $ (1.08) $ (2.48) $ (0.41) $ (7.58) (1) Non-cash stock-based compensation component included in: Exploration expense $ 995 $ 1,785 $ 2,403 $ 3,447 G&A expense $ 3,363 $ 5,262 $ 7,410 $ 10,468 (2) The net derivative (gain) loss line item consists of the following: Settlement gain $ (16,303) $ (101,710) $ (16,310) $ (248,738) (Gain) loss on fair value changes $ (38,886) $ 265,061 $ (153,653) $ 397,861 Total net derivative (gain) loss $ (55,189) $ 163,351 $ (169,963) $ 149,123 SM ENERGY COMPANY FINANCIAL HIGHLIGHTS (UNAUDITED) June 30, 2017 Condensed Consolidated Statement of Stockholders' Equity (in thousands, except share amounts) Additional Paid-in Capital Accumulated Other Comprehensive Loss Total Stockholders' Equity Common Stock Retained Earnings Shares Amount Balances, December 31, 2016 111,257,500 $ 1,113 $ 1,716,556 $ 794,020 $ (14,556) $ 2,497,133 Net loss (45,473) (45,473) Other comprehensive loss (443) (443) Cash dividends, $ 0.05 per share (5,563) (5,563) Issuance of common stock under Employee Stock Purchase Plan 123,678 1 1,737 1,738 Issuance of common stock upon vesting of restricted stock units, net of shares used for tax withholdings 725 (11) (11) Stock-based compensation expense 71,573 1 9,812 9,813 Cumulative effect of accounting change 1,108 43,624 44,732 Other (98) (98) Balances, June 30, 2017 111,453,476 $ 1,115 $ 1,729,104 $ 786,608 $ (14,999) $ 2,501,828 SM ENERGY COMPANY FINANCIAL HIGHLIGHTS (UNAUDITED) June 30, 2017 Condensed Consolidated Statements of Cash Flows (in thousands) For the Three Months Ended June 30, For the Six Months Ended June 30, 2017 2016 2017 2016 Cash flows from operating activities: Net loss $ (119,907) $ (168,681) $ (45,473) $ (515,891) Adjustments to reconcile net loss to net cash provided by operating activities: Net (gain) loss on divestiture activity 167,133 (50,046) 129,670 18,975 Depletion, depreciation, amortization, and asset retirement obligation liability accretion 153,232 211,020 291,044 425,227 Impairment of proved properties 3,806 3,806 269,785 Abandonment and impairment of unproved properties 157 38 157 2,349 Stock-based compensation expense 4,358 7,047 9,813 13,915 Net derivative (gain) loss (55,189) 163,351 (169,963) 149,123 Derivative settlement gain 16,303 101,710 16,310 248,738 Amortization of debt discount and deferred financing costs 3,733 2,850 8,679 1,930 Non-cash (gain) loss on extinguishment of debt, net 22 (15,722) Deferred income taxes (64,015) (95,975) (30,790) (291,014) Plugging and abandonment (418) (2,112) (1,609) (2,716) Other, net (2,300) 3,668 2,267 2,517 Changes in current assets and liabilities: Accounts receivable 16,586 (38,142) 46,993 (11,220) Prepaid expenses and other (9,499) 3,503 (9,321) 8,487 Accounts payable and accrued expenses (3,476) (9,433) (8,973) (61,727) Accrued derivative settlements (3,355) 9,799 (517) 14,117 Net cash provided by operating activities 107,149 138,597 242,115 256,873 Cash flows from investing activities: Net proceeds from the sale of oil and gas properties 21,914 11,761 766,247 12,967 Capital expenditures (212,342) (169,200) (366,743) (345,570) Acquisition of proved and unproved oil and gas properties (13,035) (2,707) (88,140) (17,751) Other, net 514 (1,785) 3,000 (900) Net cash provided by (used in) investing activities (202,949) (161,931) 314,364 (351,254) Cash flows from financing activities: Proceeds from credit facility 8,500 268,000 406,000 585,000 Repayment of credit facility (8,500) (230,500) (406,000) (456,500) Debt issuance costs related to credit facility (3,132) (3,132) Cash paid to repurchase Senior Notes (9,987) (2,344) (29,904) Net proceeds from sale of common stock 1,738 2,354 1,738 2,354 Dividends paid (5,563) (3,404) (5,563) (3,404) Other, net (1) (30) (161) (33) Net cash provided by (used in) financing activities (3,826) 23,301 (6,330) 94,381 Net change in cash and cash equivalents (99,626) (33) 550,149 Cash and cash equivalents at beginning of period 659,147 51 9,372 18 Cash and cash equivalents at end of period $ 559,521 $ 18 $ 559,521 $ 18 SM ENERGY COMPANY FINANCIAL HIGHLIGHTS (UNAUDITED) June 30, 2017 Adjusted EBITDAX(1) (in thousands) Reconciliation of net loss (GAAP) to adjusted EBITDAX (Non-GAAP) to net cash provided by operating activities (GAAP) For the Three Months Ended June 30, For the Six Months Ended June 30, 2017 2016 2017 2016 Net loss (GAAP) $ (119,907) $ (168,681) $ (45,473) $ (515,891) Interest expense 44,595 34,035 91,548 65,123 Other non-operating income, net (1,265) (5) (1,600) (11) Income tax benefit (71,061) (95,898) (26,555) (290,773) Depletion, depreciation, amortization, and asset retirement obligation liability accretion 153,232 211,020 291,044 425,227 Exploration(2) 12,077 11,402 22,647 25,013 Impairment of proved properties 3,806 3,806 269,785 Abandonment and impairment of unproved properties 157 38 157 2,349 Stock-based compensation expense 4,358 7,047 9,813 13,915 Net derivative (gain) loss (55,189) 163,351 (169,963) 149,123 Derivative settlement gain 16,303 101,710 16,310 248,738 Net (gain) loss on divestiture activity 167,133 (50,046) 129,670 18,975 (Gain) loss on extinguishment of debt 35 (15,722) Other (151) 3,125 4,835 3,557 Adjusted EBITDAX (Non-GAAP) $ 154,088 $ 217,098 $ 326,274 $ 399,408 Interest expense (44,595) (34,035) (91,548) (65,123) Other non-operating income, net 1,265 5 1,600 11 Income tax benefit 71,061 95,898 26,555 290,773 Exploration(2) (12,077) (11,402) (22,647) (25,013) Amortization of debt discount and deferred financing costs 3,733 2,850 8,679 1,930 Deferred income taxes (64,015) (95,975) (30,790) (291,014) Plugging and abandonment (418) (2,112) (1,609) (2,716) Other, net (2,149) 543 (2,581) (1,040) Changes in current assets and liabilities 256 (34,273) 28,182 (50,343) Net cash provided by operating activities (GAAP) $ 107,149 $ 138,597 $ 242,115 $ 256,873 (1) Adjusted EBITDAX represents net income (loss) before interest expense, other non-operating income and expense, income taxes, depletion, depreciation, amortization and asset retirement obligation liability accretion expense, exploration expense, property impairments, non-cash stock-based compensation expense, derivative gains and losses net of settlements, change in the Net Profits Plan liability, gains and losses on divestitures, gains and losses on extinguishment of debt, and materials inventory impairments and losses on sale. Adjusted EBITDAX excludes certain items that we believe affect the comparability of operating results and can exclude items that are generally one-time in nature or whose timing and/or amount cannot be reasonably estimated. Adjusted EBITDAX is a non-GAAP measure that we present because we believe it provides useful additional information to investors and analysts, as a performance measure, for analysis of our ability to internally generate funds for exploration, development, acquisitions, and to service debt. We are also subject to financial covenants under our Credit Agreement based on adjusted EBITDAX ratios. In addition, adjusted EBITDAX is widely used by professional research analysts and others in the valuation, comparison, and investment recommendations of companies in the oil and gas exploration and production industry, and many investors use the published research of industry research analysts in making investment decisions. Adjusted EBITDAX should not be considered in isolation or as a substitute for net income (loss), income (loss) from operations, net cash provided by operating activities, or profitability or liquidity measures prepared under GAAP. Because adjusted EBITDAX excludes some, but not all items that affect net income (loss) and may vary among companies, the adjusted EBITDAX amounts presented may not be comparable to similar metrics of other companies. Our credit facility provides a material source of liquidity for us. Under the terms of our Credit Agreement, if we failed to comply with the covenants that establish a maximum permitted ratio of senior secured debt to adjusted EBITDAX and a minimum permitted ratio of adjusted EBITDAX to interest, we would be in default, an event that would prevent us from borrowing under our credit facility and would therefore materially limit our sources of liquidity. In addition, if we are in default under our credit facility and are unable to obtain a waiver of that default from our lenders, lenders under that facility and under the indentures governing our outstanding Senior Notes and Senior Convertible Notes would be entitled to exercise all of their remedies for default. (2) Stock-based compensation expense is a component of exploration expense and general and administrative expense on the accompanying statements of operations. Therefore, the exploration line items shown in the reconciliation above will vary from the amount shown on the Company's condensed consolidated statements of operations for the component of stock-based compensation expense recorded to exploration expense. SM ENERGY COMPANY FINANCIAL HIGHLIGHTS (UNAUDITED) June 30, 2017 Adjusted Net Loss (Non-GAAP) (in thousands, except per share data) For the Three Months Ended June 30, For the Six Months Ended June 30, 2017 2016 2017 2016 Net loss (GAAP) $ (119,907) $ (168,681) $ (45,473) $ (515,891) Net derivative (gain) loss (55,189) 163,351 (169,963) 149,123 Derivative settlement gain 16,303 101,710 16,310 248,738 Net (gain) loss on divestiture activity 167,133 (50,046) 129,670 18,975 Impairment of proved properties 3,806 3,806 269,785 Abandonment and impairment of unproved properties 157 38 157 2,349 (Gain) loss on extinguishment of debt 35 (15,722) Other, net(2) (151) 3,091 4,835 2,583 Tax effect of adjustments(1) (47,673) (79,622) 5,469 (246,678) Adjusted net loss (Non-GAAP)(3) $ (35,521) $ (30,159) $ (55,154) $ (86,738) Diluted net loss per common share (GAAP) $ (1.08) $ (2.48) $ (0.41) $ (7.58) Net derivative gain (0.50) 2.40 (1.53) 2.19 Derivative settlement gain 0.15 1.49 0.15 3.65 Net (gain) loss on divestiture activity 1.50 (0.73) 1.17 0.28 Impairment of proved properties 0.03 0.03 3.96 Abandonment and impairment of unproved properties 0.03 (Gain) loss on extinguishment of debt (0.23) Other, net(2) 0.05 0.04 0.04 Tax effect of adjustments(1) (0.42) (1.17) 0.05 (3.61) Adjusted net loss per diluted common share (Non-GAAP)(4) $ (0.32) $ (0.44) $ (0.50) $ (1.27) Basic weighted-average common shares outstanding (GAAP) 111,277 68,102 111,274 68,090 (1) The tax effect of adjustments is calculated using a tax rate of 36.1% for the three-month and six-month periods ended June 30, 2017, and a tax rate of 36.5% for the three-month and six-month periods ended June 30, 2016. These rates approximate the Company's statutory tax rate for the respective periods, as adjusted for ordinary permanent differences. (2) For the three-month and six-month periods ended June 30, 2017, the adjustment is related to the change in Net Profits Plan liability. Additionally, for the six-month period ended June 30, 2017, an adjustment related to materials inventory loss is included. For the three-month and six-month periods ended June 30, 2016, the adjustment relates to the change in Net Profits Plan liability, impairment of materials inventory, and an adjustment relating to claims on royalties on certain Federal and Indian leases. These items are included in other operating expenses on the Company's condensed consolidated statements of operations. (3) Adjusted net loss excludes certain items that the Company believes affect the comparability of operating results. Items excluded generally are non-recurring items or are items whose timing and/or amount cannot be reasonably estimated. These items include non-cash and other adjustments, such as derivative gains and losses net of settlements, impairments, net (gain) loss on divestiture activity, materials inventory loss, and gains or losses on extinguishment of debt. The non-GAAP measure of adjusted net income (loss) is presented because management believes it provides useful additional information to investors for analysis of SM Energy's fundamental business on a recurring basis. In addition, management believes that adjusted net income (loss) is widely used by professional research analysts and others in the valuation, comparison, and investment recommendations of companies in the oil and gas exploration and production industry, and many investors use the published research of industry research analysts in making investment decisions. Adjusted net income (loss) should not be considered in isolation or as a substitute for net income (loss), income (loss) from operations, cash provided by operating activities, or other income, profitability, cash flow, or liquidity measures prepared under GAAP. Since adjusted net income (loss) excludes some, but not all, items that affect net income (loss) and may vary among companies, the adjusted net income (loss) amounts presented may not be comparable to similarly titled measures of other companies. (4) For periods where the Company reports adjusted net loss, basic weighted-average common shares outstanding are used in the calculation of adjusted net loss per diluted common share. SM ENERGY COMPANY FINANCIAL HIGHLIGHTS (UNAUDITED) June 30, 2017 Total Capital Spend Reconciliation (in millions) Reconciliation of costs incurred in oil & gas activities (GAAP) to total capital spend (Non-GAAP)(1)(3) For the Three Months Ended June 30, For the Six Months Ended June 30, 2017 2017 Costs incurred in oil and gas activities (GAAP): $ 258.0 $ 515.0 Less: Asset retirement obligation (0.5) (1.4) Capitalized interest (2.9) (5.1) Proved property acquisitions(2) 0.8 (1.4) Unproved property acquisitions (16.5) (75.6) Other (1.6) (1.3) Total capital spend (Non-GAAP): $ 237.3 $ 430.2 (1) The non-GAAP measure of total capital spend is presented because management believes it provides useful information to investors for analysis of SM Energy's fundamental business on a recurring basis. In addition, management believes that total capital spend is widely used by professional research analysts and others in the valuation, comparison, and investment recommendations of companies in the oil and gas exploration and production industry, and many investors use the published research of industry research analysts in making investment decisions. Total capital spend should not be considered in isolation or as a substitute for Costs Incurred or other capital spending measures prepared under GAAP. The total capital spend amounts presented may not be comparable to similarly titled measures of other companies. (2) Includes approximately $76,000 and $887,000 of ARO associated with proved property acquisitions for the three and six months ended June 30, 2017, respectively. (3) The Company completed several primarily non-monetary acreage trades in the Midland Basin during the first half of 2017 totaling $279.8 million of value attributed to the properties surrendered. This non-monetary consideration is not reflected in the costs incurred or capital spend amounts presented above. SOURCE SM Energy Company Related Links http://sm-energy.com BIRMINGHAM, Ala., Aug. 3, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- For the second quarter of 2017, Southern Nuclear, a subsidiary of Southern Company headquartered in Birmingham, Ala., donated over $22,000 to schools and programs in the communities where it operates. Including the 2017 first quarter donations of nearly $34,000, the company's mid-year contributions to community organizations total approximately $56,000. "One of our top priorities is to be a great asset to our communities," said Steve Kuczynski, president and CEO of Southern Nuclear. "We want residents to feel that our presence enhances their quality of life and makes our communities stronger. We also support educational programs for local youth, who we hope will be part of our future workforce." Southern Nuclear's charitable giving program has four focus areas: health and human services; education; civic, cultural and community; and environmental. Applications are sponsored by company employees and reviewed monthly by the charitable giving committee. Employees from Plant Vogtle presented a $4,500 check to Augusta Technical College for the purchase of new computers for the Nuclear Engineering Technology program. "Our primary partner, Southern Nuclear, has been intimately involved with the Nuclear Engineering Technology program from the very beginning with oversight support, technical subject matter expertise, recruitment activities and equipment resources," said NET Department Head Robert Collins. "Their recent donation is just one of many ways that Southern Nuclear and Plant Vogtle have supported the program on an ongoing basis." When plans to expand Plant Vogtle were first announced nearly ten years ago, Georgia Power and Southern Nuclear leadership recognized the need to ensure the availability of qualified workers. This resulted in the company partnering with Augusta Technical College to develop and implement the two-year NET program. "We are fortunate to have 48 NET alumni as part of the Vogtle workforce," said Southern Nuclear Workforce Development Coordinator Nora Swanson. "We continue to hire high caliber graduates from the Augusta Tech program. We're also pleased by alumni efforts to educate and recruit the next generation of workers with the same passion they have dedicated to become part of the industry themselves." Southern Nuclear's 2017 second-quarter charitable contributions: Alabama School of Fine Arts in Birmingham, Ala. It is a public, partially residential high school with six specialties including music, visual arts, theatre arts, creative writing, math and science, and dance. Our charitable contribution will support math and science projects for the upcoming school year. Augusta Technical College in Augusta, Ga. It operates under the supervision of the State Board of Technical and Adult Education, serving the needs of business, industry and the public in a five-county area in east central Georgia. Our charitable contribution will purchase computers for the Nuclear Engineering Technology program. Boys and Girls Club of Toombs County. It serves nearly 500 youth in two locations in Lyons and Vidalia, Ga. Our charitable contribution will support the annual campaign. Dothan Technology Center in Dothan, Ala. It provides students with training and education they can apply to getting careers immediately out of high school or that they can build upon in related college courses. Our charitable contribution will purchase a 3-D printer for pre-engineering classes. Georgia School for Innovation and the Classics in Hephzibah, Ga. It is a public charter school that delivers a classical education centered on the three phases of the classical Trivium: grammar (grades 1-4), logic (grades 5-8), and rhetoric (grades 9-12) with an employment of the Socratic method throughout the classroom experience. Our charitable contribution will purchase computer tablets for classrooms. Girard Middle School in Dothan, Ala. Our charitable contribution will purchase STEM equipment for the school's science program. Leukemia and Lymphoma Society in Augusta, Ga. It exists to find cures for leukemia, lymphoma, Hodgkin's disease and myeloma, and improve the quality of life of patients and their families. Our charitable contribution will support the 2017 Man and Woman of the Year campaign. Pinewood Christian Academy in Bellville, Ga. It offers a quality education in a Christian environment and enrolls 585 students in grades K3 through twelfth from 13 different counties including Bryan, Bulloch, Candler, Effingham, Evans, Liberty, Long, Tattnall, Toombs and Wayne. Our charitable contribution will help purchase lab equipment. SRS Community Reuse Program in Graniteville, SC. It works to diversify the economy of a five-county region of Georgia and South Carolina including Aiken, Allendale and Barnwell in South Carolina and Richmond (Augusta) and Columbia counties in Georgia. Our charitable contribution will support the 2017 STEM Career Connections event. Screven-Jenkins Regional Library System with libraries in Sylvania and Millen, Ga. Our charitable contribution supported the summer reading program. The Community Foundation Neighborhood Renewal in Augusta, Ga. It serves as administrator of a community endowment, a collection of gifts, large and small, unrestricted and donor advised, given to enhance the quality of life for the citizens of Richmond, Columbia, McDuffie and Burke counties in Georgia, and Aiken and Edgefield counties in South Carolina. Our charitable contribution will provide scholarships for students entering STEM degree programs. About Southern Nuclear: Southern Nuclear, a subsidiary of Southern Company (NYSE: SO), is a leader among the nation's nuclear energy facility operators and an innovator in advanced nuclear technologies. Southern Nuclear is an essential part of Southern Company's energy portfolio, and its importance will continue to grow as America transitions to a low-carbon energy future. While the company produces clean, safe and reliable nuclear energy, it's also an economic engine powered by quality jobs and community service. Southern Nuclear operates a total of six units for Alabama Power and Georgia Power at the Joseph M. Farley Nuclear Plant near Dothan, Ala.; the Edwin I. Hatch Nuclear Plant near Baxley, Ga.; and the Alvin W. Vogtle Electric Generating Plant near Waynesboro, Ga. Southern Nuclear is the licensee of two new nuclear units currently under construction at Plant Vogtle that are among the first nuclear units being constructed in the United States in more than 30 years. Southern Nuclear received numerous accolades in 2016 for leadership in the advancement of nuclear energy including the Special Achievement Award by the United States Nuclear Infrastructure Council and the Presidential Citation by the American Nuclear Society. Southern Nuclear also received two of the Nuclear Energy Institute's Top Innovative Practice awards and special recognition for achieving excellence in research and performance. Southern Nuclear's Plant Hatch received the ANS Operations & Power Division's Utility Achievement Award for plant improvements that resulted in a record-setting refueling outage duration. The company's headquarters is in Birmingham, Ala. Twitter: @SouthernNuclear; Facebook: facebook.com/southernnuclear; www.southernnuclear.com About Southern Company: Southern Company (NYSE: SO) is America's premier energy company, with 44,000 MW of generating capacity and 1,500 billion cubic feet of combined natural gas consumption and throughput volume serving 9 million electric and gas utility customers through its subsidiaries. The company provides clean, safe, reliable and affordable energy through electric utilities in four states, natural gas distribution utilities in seven states, a competitive generation company serving wholesale customers across America and a nationally recognized provider of customized energy solutions, as well as fiber optics and wireless communications. Southern Company brands are known for excellent customer service, high reliability and affordable prices that are below the national average. Through an industry-leading commitment to innovation, Southern Company and its subsidiaries are inventing America's energy future by developing the full portfolio of energy resources, including carbon-free nuclear, 21st century coal, natural gas, renewables and energy efficiency, and creating new products and services for the benefit of customers. Southern Company has been named by the U.S. Department of Defense and G.I. Jobs magazine as a top military employer, recognized among the Top 50 Companies for Diversity by DiversityInc, listed by Black Enterprise magazine as one of the 40 Best Companies for Diversity and designated a Top Employer for Hispanics by Hispanic Network. The company has earned a National Award of Nuclear Science and History from the National Atomic Museum Foundation for its leadership and commitment to nuclear development and is continually ranked among the top utilities in Fortune's annual World's Most Admired Electric and Gas Utility rankings. Visit our website at www.southerncompany.com. SOURCE Southern Nuclear Related Links http://www.southernnuclear.com AUSTIN, Texas, Aug. 3, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- DIUx has awarded a contract to SparkCognition to develop Stage 1 of PROJECT QUANTUM to augment senior level decisions quantitatively. Via DIUx, the U.S. Air Force (USAF) will leverage machine learning and similar methodologies to analyze and reveal latent relationships within data resident across the USAF, and apply these toward its Planning, Programming, Budgeting, and Execution (PPBE) process. The PPBE process is how the Department of Defense (DoD) allocates resources. Ranked #20 on the 2017 CNBC Disruptor 50 list, SparkCognition has established itself as an AI technology leader with business-critical solutions in place for customers in energy, oil and gas, manufacturing, finance, aerospace, defense, telecommunications, and security. "The order of magnitude of greater increase in the speed and accuracy of budgetary decisions will revolutionize how the Air Force, and potentially the DoD as a whole, conducts business," said General John Allen, USMC (Ret.), and Executive Board Member of SparkCognition. "We are honored to be serving the U.S. Air Force in a way that will have a substantial and positive impact on planning and process. The advantage here is that SparkCognition's solutions are universally applicable, and can be applied to other DoD service components as well as every department and agency within the U.S. Government." DIUx and SparkCognition will utilize AI technology to derive higher-order patterns from existing operational conditions. Utilizing data from the USAF, SparkCognition's technology will conduct macro- and micro-level analysis of operations and previously observed outcomes to best simulate the impact of any single decision, or multiple decisions, made by an incumbent party. Subsequent phases of this project will be dedicated to further refining SparkCognition's model given additional data and testing scenarios; collaborating with the USAF on UI design; and integrating with Air Force enterprise relational databases. "We're proud to be working with the U.S. Air Force through DIUx," said Tim Stefanick, Director of Federal Operations at SparkCognition and a retired USMC infantry officer who served on multiple overseas deployments and has had assignments in the White House and the intelligence community. "SparkCognition will apply cutting-edge technology that will benefit our troops and our national security. We have endless applications for this technology and it is gratifying to be applying it in support of the U.S. government." SparkCognition's cognitive enterprise solutions are deployed to some of the world's largest utility, O&G, OEM, aerospace, defense, and finance organizations. The company's Industrial IoT solutions have accurately detected asset failure with days, weeks, and months advance notice in electronic submersible pumps, artificial lifts, boiler feed pumps, combustion turbines, wind turbine gearboxes, and other critical industrial equipment. SparkCognition's platform will enable the Air Force to reduce operating costs through improved enterprise-level decision-making, resource allocation intelligence, situational prediction, and operational optimization. "We are customizing an AI engine for the Air Force to provide actionable insights and behavior predictions," added Stefanick. "Together, SparkCognition and DIUx will transform operations for a new era of efficiency and confidence." About DIUx DIUx accelerates commercial innovation for national defense. Further information about DIUx and its work with the tech community in Austin, Boston, Silicon Valley and around the world, visit https://www.diux.mil. About SparkCognition SparkCognition is a global leader in cognitive computing analytics. A highly awarded company recognized for cutting-edge technology, SparkCognition develops AI-Powered cyber-physical software for the safety, security, and reliability of IT, OT, and the IoT. The company's technology is capable of harnessing real time sensor data and learning from it continuously, allowing for more accurate risk mitigation and prevention policies to intervene and avert disasters. For more information on the company, its technology and team, please visit http://www.sparkcognition.com. Press enquiries to: John King 512-956-5491 [email protected] SOURCE SparkCognition Related Links http://www.sparkcognition.com DUBLIN, August 3, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- The "Stable Isotope Labeled Compounds Market by Type, Application, and End User - Global Forecast to 2022" report has been added to Research and Markets' offering. The global stable isotope labeling market is expected to reach USD 294.2 Million by 2022 from USD 254.6 Million in 2017, at a CAGR of 2.94%. The growth of this market is majorly driven by the increasing research activities in the pharmaceutical and biotechnology sector, growing proteomics research, and rising cancer prevalence. However, the high cost of these compounds may hinder the growth of the market to a certain extent. The report analyzes the market on the basis of type, application, end user, and region. Based on type, the market is segmented into Carbon-13, Deuterium, Oxygen-18, Nitrogen-15, and other isotopes. The Deuterium (H-2) segment is expected to account for the largest share of the market in 2017, owing to its increased use in various research processes. By application, the market is segmented into research, clinical diagnostics, industrial, and other applications. The research segment is expected to account for the largest share of the market in 2017. Based on end user, the stable isotope labeling market is segmented into pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies, research & academic institutes, hospitals & diagnostic centers, and others. In 2017, pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies are expected to account for the largest share of the market and are also projected to grow at the highest CAGR during the forecast period. In 2017, North America is estimated to account for the largest share of the global market, followed by Europe. Factors such as the growing pharmaceutical and biopharmaceutical industry, isotope production and distribution program fund, and the presence of a large nuclear industry in the U.S.; the growing Canadian pharmaceutical industry and rising adoption of PET imaging in Canada are supporting the growth of the North American stable isotope labelling market. This region is also expected to register the highest CAGR during the forecast period. Companies Mentioned 13 C Molecular 3M Alsachim Biochemicals Inc. C D N Isotopes Inc. Cambridge Isotopes Laboratories Inc. Centre of Molecular Research Isoflex Isosciences LLC. JSC Atomenergoprom JSC Isotope Los Alamos National Laboratory Marshall Isotopes Ltd. Medical Isotopes Inc. Merck KGaA (10+ Others) Key Topics Covered: 1 Introduction 2 Research Methodology 3 Executive Summary 4 Premium Insights 5 Market Overview 6 Global Stable Isotope-Labeled Compounds Market, By Type 7 Stable Isotope-Labeled Compounds Market, By Application 8 Stable Isotope-Labeled Compounds Market, By End User 9 Stable Isotope-Labeled Compounds Market, By Region 10 Competitive Landscape 11 Company Profiles For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/53lr6h/stable_isotope Media Contact: Research and Markets Laura Wood, Senior Manager [email protected] For E.S.T Office Hours Call +1-917-300-0470 For U.S./CAN Toll Free Call +1-800-526-8630 For GMT Office Hours Call +353-1-416-8900 U.S. Fax: 646-607-1907 Fax (outside U.S.): +353-1-481-1716 SOURCE Research and Markets Related Links http://www.researchandmarkets.com CHARLOTTE, N.C., Aug. 3, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- In a petition for writ of certiorari filed yesterday, the Supreme Court of the United States was asked to hear the case of Edward Blackorby v. BNSF Railway Company (BNSF), an important case under the anti-retaliation provisions of the Federal Railroad Safety Act (FRSA). The issue presented involves the burden of proof for employees who seek protection under the FRSA and other federal laws designed to protect whistleblower employees in fields including transportation, consumer goods, healthcare, and finance. In the petition, Mr. Blackorby seeks to have the Supreme Court review a prior decision of the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals and resolve a split between federal circuits. In June 2015, a unanimous Federal jury found that BNSF retaliated against Mr. Blackorby for reporting a work related injury following a trial in Kansas City, MO. The jury awarded compensatory damages to Mr. Blackorby and BNSF was ordered to pay his attorney fees and the costs of bringing the suit. BNSF subsequently appealed to the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals, which held that whistleblowing employees must prove "animus." Such a position has been rejected by numerous other appellate courts and by the Secretary of Labor, but the Eighth Circuit's finding that the jury should have been instructed about this "requirement" meant that the verdict could not stand. As the petition explains, the statute does not impose that burden. Congress amended FRSA in 2007 so that deserving employees like Mr. Blackorby are not defeated by such unrealistic proof requirements. If the Supreme Court grants review, additional filings will be ordered and the matter will be scheduled for oral argument, likely in early 2018. Mr. Blackorby was represented at trial, and also on appeal, by Jeff Dingwall of San Diego, CA and Kiel Garella of Charlotte, NC. They, along with David Goldberg and a team of students from the Stanford Law School Supreme Court Litigation Clinic, represent Mr. Blackorby before the Supreme Court. Dingwall and Garella have been at the forefront of FRSA litigation, having obtained numerous rulings in cases across the country to fortify the rights of railroaders. "The Supreme Court has not yet ruled on this particular issue, so we are grateful to have the opportunity to bring it to the Court's attention," said Jeff Dingwall. "We are optimistic that the Court will see this case as an opportunity to resolve an intercircuit split and help further establish uniformity surrounding this law," added Kiel Garella. "We are proud to represent employees in whistleblower cases and to have the opportunity to continue advocating on Mr. Blackorby's behalf." Jeff Dingwall of Eight & Sand and Kiel Garella of Garella Law, P.C. are nationally recognized for their work representing men and women across the country that have been injured or killed by railroads. The Stanford Law School Supreme Court Litigation Clinic, with a perfect 5-0 record, was recognized as the most successful law office in the country during the Supreme Court's most recent term. SOURCE Garella Law Related Links http://www.gljustice.com MONTREAL, Aug. 2, 2017 /PRNewswire/ - The ALDO Group Inc., a world-leading creator and operator of desirable footwear and accessory brands, announced today that it has entered into an agreement to acquire Camuto Group's footwear and accessories businesses. The Camuto family will continue to own and operate the apparel businesses. Camuto Group is known for its ability to design, develop and distribute lifestyle brands and is well-established as a leader in the North American market. As part of the ALDO Group's continued expansion, this acquisition will significantly increase both companies' capabilities and reach, and enhance their ability to offer the widest selection of footwear, handbags, and accessories through all channels, including owned stores, franchise, online and wholesale. David Bensadoun, the ALDO Group's Chief Executive Officer, said "We're thrilled to have found a partner that has the skills and infrastructure required to support our vision. Both of our companies are heavily product oriented, and they each evolved in different ways. While the ALDO Group comes from retail and has focused on international expansion, Camuto Group is an expert in wholesale and a powerful player in the US market. We are very excited about the ways the two organizations can help each other grow, leveraging each other's strengths." Based in Greenwich, Connecticut, Camuto Group is a privately-owned leading organization, founded by fashion industry icon Vince Camuto. "A huge part of our attraction to the Camuto Group is an understanding of their amazing design skills, excellent distribution network, and sourcing capabilities. We also believe the ALDO Group's broad international and cross-channel experience will unlock Camuto Group's global potential. This is the perfect combination to drive long-term, sustainable growth and strengthen our overall platform" continued Bensadoun. Alex Del Cielo, Louise Camuto, and the executive team have led the company through a period of steady growth. Del Cielo will remain in his role as Chief Executive Officer of Camuto Group and will report to the ALDO Group's Chief Executive. "We are excited to become a part of the ALDO Group family", stated Del Cielo. "After our first meeting, I immediately felt the synergy between the two organizations. Camuto Group and the ALDO Group share the same ethics, values and approach to business. We are strongly committed to our people, our partners, our customers and our product. We look forward to serving the global consumer as a unified team and continuing to grow together." The ALDO Group will preserve Camuto's autonomy, each brand's identity as well as retaining key talent, ensuring for a smooth transition. "After spending time with Alex Del Cielo and his leadership team, we quickly recognized that we share similar values and strategic vision. This is a perfect fit. One family business is acquiring another family business and from the very first meetings, we could feel a very similar culture," mentioned Bensadoun. This transaction is subject to customary closing conditions and the terms of the agreement will not be disclosed. About ALDO Group Inc. Founded in 1972 by Aldo Bensadoun, who had a vision to create a different kind of company, one built on ethics, compassion and understanding the customer to offer them the best possible products and services every day. The ALDO Group is a world-leading creator and operator of desirable footwear and accessory brands. With 3,000 points of sale in over 100 countries around the world, the organization operates under two signature brands, Aldo and Call It Spring, and a multi-brand retail concept, GLOBO. The ALDO Group is also an industry-recognized wholesale distributor and third-party sourcing provider of fashion footwear, handbags and accessories. In addition to the Head Office in Montreal, the ALDO Group has international offices in Europe and Asia. Equipped with the values of love, respect, and integrity, the ALDO Group is as unique as its people. For more information, visit www.aldogroup.com About Camuto Group Camuto Group is a leading organization for design, development, and distribution of women's fashion footwear and was founded by fashion industry icon Vince Camuto. Renowned for its ability to develop lifestyle brands on a global scale, Camuto Group is building on the success of Vince Camutoextending into collections such as Louise et Cie, Imagine Vince Camuto and the recently introduced 1. State and Mercedes Castillo. Camuto Group also holds the footwear license for Jessica Simpson and the footwear and handbag licenses for Lucky Brand and ED Ellen DeGeneres Camuto Group added Sole Society to its stable of brands in 2016. Camuto Group products are sold in more than 5,400 doors worldwide. For more information, visit www.camutogroup.com SOURCE ALDO Group Dilip Kumar was admitted to the hospital last evening after complaining of dehydration and he has now been moved back to the ICU for medication. By India Today Web Desk: Veteran actor Dilip Kumar, who was admitted to the Lilavati Hospital in Mumbai last night, has been moved back to the ICU. The 94-year-old actor's kidneys are not functioning properly and he is said to be under observation. Dilip Kumar's condition, as of now, is not normal, according to Lilavati Hospital. Saira Banu's manager Murshid told IANS, "Dilip Sir is doing well. He will remain under observation for a couple of days. Sairaji (his wife and actress) is with him." advertisement The legendary actor was taken to the hospital last evening after he suffered dehydration, hospital sources said. "He was admitted with dehydration. He is stable," Ravishankar, CEO of the facility at Bandra West, told IANS last night. The 94-year-old actor, who has been weak and ailing due to age-related problems in recent years, was accompanied by his wife Saira Banu. He had been running a fever for two days, a family friend, Udaya Tara Nayar, told IANS. Earlier today, Saira Banu told PTI, "He is doing much better than yesterday. But he will be in hospital today. The doctors here are taking good care of him." This afternoon, Indian Express quoted hospital sources as saying, "Dilip Kumar is completely stable and the only major issue was dehydration. Since dehydration also affects kidney and other organs momentarily he suffered minor urinary issues, otherwise, there is no major complication." The actor was moved back to the ICU for medication. "He will be shifted to ICU today for a couple of hours. We need to administer antibiotics through IV drip which can only be given in the ICU. We will observe him for a while and based on recovery we will shift him back to the normal room," the report quoted a source from the Lilavati Hospital as saying. The actor's niece, Shaheen, posted a photo from inside the hospital with Dilip Kumar seated along with his family, including wife Saira Banu. "Yusuf uncle is at Lilavati hispital Mumbai he will be well soon (sic). Thank you for all the care and wishes", Shaheen tweeted, referring to the actor by his birth name. Yusuf uncle is at Lilavati hospital Mumbai he will be well soon.Thank you for all the care and wishes.#DilipKumar pic.twitter.com/5hzUZGGdkU- Shaheen (@ShhaheenAhmeed) August 2, 2017 Last seen on the big screen in Qila in 1998, the actor was honoured with the Dadasaheb Phalke Award in 1994 and the Padma Vibhushan in 2015. The epithet 'Tragedy King' was given to the actor because of his poignant and emotional films. In a career spanning five decades, Dilip Kumar gifted us cult films like Devdas, Mughal-e-Azam and Karma. he tied the knot with Saira, over 20 years younger to him, in 1966. advertisement (With inputs from Shivangi Thakur, India Today Television) ALSO READ: Dilip Kumar admitted to Lilavati hospital due to dehydration, urinary tract infection ALSO READ: Dilip Kumar makes Facebook debut, posts beautiful video with wife Saira Banu ALSO WATCH: Mimicking Dilip Kumar was difficult, says Shah Rukh --- ENDS --- STRATHAM, N.H., Aug. 3, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Global outdoor lifestyle brand Timberland opened the doors today to its first specialty concept store: The Timberland Tree Lab. Located in the iconic King of Prussia mall (PA), the experiential Tree Lab features carefully curated product collections and brand stories in a gallery-style setting that will completely change every six weeks. The Tree Lab debuts with the theme Streetology -- where versatile style for city streets meets hidden technology that's been tested and proven for long days (and nights) in the city. Highlighting the Streetology launch will be the new men's FlyRoam collection featuring the AeroCore energy system, as well as several new styles featuring SensorFlex comfort technology. Upon entering the Tree Lab -- which is tagged by the brand's signature tree logo followed by the word "Lab" -- guests will immediately sense that this is something new from Timberland. Sleek, angular design elements combine with minimalist product displays for a fresh and modern brand presentation. Fun creative executions, like an oversized, Timberland-style periodic table, casually reinforce the science of comfort behind the new technologies. While testing the products in the Tree Lab, guests are invited to sample a local craft beer from Troegs Independent Brewing (ages 21+) or enjoy a bottle of water that may one day be recycled into Timberland linings or shoelaces. And knowledgeable store associates, sporting custom Tree Lab hoodies, are always on-hand to help connect visitors to everything from the latest style trends to local city events. Every detail, down to the premium Tree Lab drawstring shopping bags, has been considered. "A shopping experience today reflects a journey through a hyper-connected world that's constantly seeking something new, and our stores need to deliver on that, every day," said Kate Kibler, vice president of Timberland's direct to consumer business in North America. "The Tree Lab is more than just a place to shop -- everything a consumer experiences from the moment they enter has been designed to enhance their visit, expand their horizons, and leave them with a great memory to go along with that beautiful new pair of shoes." Following the Streetology installation, in late September Tree Lab will transform virtually overnight into SHEvolution. The entire store will be dedicated to women, with a curated selection of boots and shoes that offer everything she wants without giving up anything. Feminine. Tough. Beautiful. Well-crafted. Comfortable. On the heels of SHEvolution will be a holiday-themed installation, opening early November. Tree Lab the first of its kind in the world -- is one of many initiatives Timberland will introduce this fall as part of its commitment to retail innovation and excellence. The brand plans to open a series of "flex retail" stores across the country, starting with a Mall of America location debuting on September 1st. In addition, Timberland plans to open specialty stores in Stanford, CA at the Stanford Shopping Center (8/18/17) and in the heart of Portland, Oregon along popular Couch Street (9/1/17). About Timberland Timberland is a global leader in the design, manufacturing and marketing of premium footwear, apparel and accessories for the outdoor lifestyle. Best known for its original yellow boot introduced in 1973, Timberland today outfits consumers from toe-to-head, with versatile collections that reflect the brand's rich heritage of craftsmanship, function and style. Timberland markets lifestyle products under the Timberland and Timberland Boot Company brands, and industrial footwear and workwear under the Timberland PRO brand. Its products are sold throughout the world in leading department and specialty stores as well as company-owned retail locations and online. Timberland's dedication to making quality products is matched by an unwavering commitment to environmental and social responsibility to make things better for its products, the outdoors, and communities around the globe. To learn more about Timberland, a brand of VF Corporation (NYSE: VFC), please visit timberland.com or follow us along the modern trail @timberland. SOURCE Timberland Related Links https://www.timberland.com IRVINE, Calif. and SILICON VALLEY, Calif., Aug. 3, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Ten-X Commercial, the nation's leading online real estate digital marketplace, today released its latest U.S. Multifamily Market Outlook, including the top five "Buy" and "Sell" markets for multifamily real estate assets. The report shows that while fundamentals have begun to soften, demand across the apartment market remains strong due to positive demographic trends that continue pushing millennials and other Americans to forgo homeownership in favor of renting. The report pinpoints Sacramento, Calif., Phoenix, Las Vegas, Raleigh-Durham, N.C., and Jacksonville, Fla., as the five markets where investors should consider buying multifamily properties. Favorable demographic trends are on full display in these regions, where employment stands at record or near-record levels, and a combination of high demand and light supply pipelines are bolstering rent levels. The Ten-X analysis also identifies New York City, San Francisco, San Jose, Calif., Washington, D.C., and Oakland, Calif., as markets where investors may consider selling multifamily assets. These mostly major markets seeing an onslaught of new supply pushing up vacancies and rents may already have reached their peaks, leaving them vulnerable to diminished returns for investors. Completions across the apartment sector slackened in the first quarter after a record 2016, totaling just 39,000 units. Absorption marched in sync with completions, however, with figures in the first quarter clocking in well below 2016 rates. Ten-X projects the absorption rate to improve during 2017, though hardly enough to absorb the 330,000 new units that will be completed over the course of the year. Vacancies rose by 10 bps to 4.3 percent in the first quarter, remaining flat over the last year. While apartment vacancy has plateaued in most markets, the supply pipeline is unevenly distributed throughout the country, making certain markets more vulnerable to rising vacancies. On a national level, the massive influx of new supply is expected to increase the vacancy rate to 5 percent by 2018 before declining demand pushes it to 6.2 percent by 2020 during a modeled economic downturn. Stalling vacancy rates have also harmed rent growth around the country. Seasonally adjusted effective rents rose just 0.4 percent during the first quarter, according to REIS. Annual growth, meanwhile, has cooled to just 3 percent year-over-year a marked deceleration from the robust increases the sector enjoyed earlier in the cycle. Other discouraging fundamentals include the decline of deal volume to a three-year quarterly low of just below $27 billion. Multifamily cap rates stood flat in the first quarter at 5.2 percent after a rise in late 2016. Despite uneven fundamentals, several demographic trends continue to prop up the multifamily market. Household formations remained steady at a healthy pace of around 1.6 million in 2016. A solid labor market continues to drive absorption, as debt-ridden millennials increasingly delay marriage and homeownership in favor of renting. As youth employment and wages continue to rise, the 31 percent of 18- to- 34-year-olds currently living at home should be drawn into the market, creating a key demand source that has yet to be fully tapped. "The current state of the multifamily sector is a perfect example of the time-honored notion that 'demographics is destiny.' While softening fundamentals indicate that the sector is poised for a slowdown, that shift has yet to arrive in earnest," said Ten-X Chief Economist Peter Muoio. "While many large metro areas are increasingly exposed to both cyclical risk and massive oversupply, the overall market is being sustained by significant societal shifts that is driving strong, sustained demand. As long as gainfully employed millennials and other Americans continue to choose renting over homeownership, a majority of multifamily investors can be confident that rents will continue to rise." The Multifamily Sector's Top Five 'Buy' Markets: Sacramento Rents in California's capital are growing at a breakneck pace, as a modest supply pipeline has kept vacancies at near-record lows. The market is further boosted by consistent gains in overall employment, which, driven by robust increases in the government sector, posted growth in the mid-1-percent range over the last year. The city's population also jumped 1.3 percent in 2016, outpacing the national average. Sacramento's overall market strength is expected to help it weather the Ten-X recession downturn scenario in 2019-2020, with solid gains in NOI projected to continue during that span. Phoenix Effective rents in Phoenix have increased 4.6 percent over the last year, and Ten-X Research forecasts rents to jump by more than 5 percent through 2018. Much of the growth can be attributed to tightening availability, as vacancies remain in the mid-4-percent range despite a healthy supply pipeline. Employment in the city is at an all-time peak despite slowing growth in several key sectors, while population increases remain at healthy levels. Even with a cooldown in rents under the Ten-X recession downturn scenario, investors should continue to see healthy returns through 2019-2020. Las Vegas Las Vegas' multifamily market is being bolstered by steady population growth and employment that has reached an all-time peak despite recent softening in the leisure/hospitality segment. The city enjoys a favorable supply-demand dynamic, as vacancies are expected to decrease from the mid-3 percent range to roughly 2.6 percent by the end of 2018. With rents at record highs, Ten-X Research projects stellar 5.1-percent average annual NOI growth over the next two years. Tight vacancies and solid rent growth should keep NOI gains in the mid-2-percent range during the expected downturn in 2019 and 2020. Raleigh-Durham Thanks to a strong and outsized professional/business services sector, total employment in Raleigh-Durham is now 14 percent above its pre-recession peak. Regional population is also growing at more than twice the national rate, helping to drive torrid annual rent growth of between 4 and 5 percent for multifamily properties. Although a recent influx of supply has kept vacancies in the 5-percent range, Ten-X Research expects local demand to stay resilient during the 2019-2020 recession downturn scenario, giving the area one of the brightest apartment outlooks in the nation. Jacksonville Jacksonville's apartment sector is being boosted by strong demographics, with the market's population expanding at three times the national rate. Employment has seen a similar increase, with thriving education/healthcare and professional/business services sectors anchoring the region's strong economy. According to REIS, effective rents are enjoying solid growth in the mid-3 percent range. A manageable supply pipeline will allow vacancies to fall to a cycle-low 4.3 percent by year's end, according to Ten-X projections, while NOI growth should hover around 5 percent this year before falling to the mid-3 percent range through 2020. The Multifamily Sector's Top Five 'Sell' Markets: New York City New York City is suffering from an unprecedented supply boom of market-rate apartments following the completion of nearly 10,000 units since early 2016. Another 40,000 market-rate units are due to deliver by the end of 2018, which should drive vacancies above 11 percent. Though metro employment is at an all-time high, the pace of job growth has cooled, and the city's population is growing at its slowest rate since 2007. Effective rents have already begun to contract, and will decline by 2.7 percent annually through 2020. NOI will march in lockstep with rents, declining by an annual average of 4.5 percent in the same timeframe. San Francisco Multifamily completions have outpaced absorption in San Francisco every year since 2014, leading to a steadily rising vacancy rate. Rents weakened last year in response to increasing availability. While the city's unemployment ranks well below the national average, the pace of employment growth has slowed from the upper-4-percent range in early 2016 to the mid-2-percent range in 2017, due in large part to a slowdown in the city's critical information sector. According to Ten-X projections, the region is likely to face annual NOI declines of roughly 4.7 percent through 2020. San Jose Slackening demand and a surge of new supply have dampened multifamily prospects in the Silicon Valley hub of San Jose, pushing vacancies up to the low-4-percent range. While the area's information sector remains strong, overall job growth has cooled significantly. Unemployment is tight at roughly 3.4 percent, though a slowdown in population growth is limiting the potential for future expansion. Effective rents, which saw meteoric growth earlier this cycle, have seen dramatically slowed expansion, and rents are expected to begin contracting in 2018, as vacancies climb above 7 percent. The region is expected to see annual NOI declines averaging 3 percent from 2017-2020. Washington, D.C. In a market where government accounts for three of every 10 jobs, uncertainties about federal hiring have all but put employment growth on hold. While unemployment exceeds the national average, D.C. demographics are booming, with the city experiencing population growth of 1.6 percent in 2016. Trouble for the market is looming in the form of a supply surge that will introduce some 12,000 new apartments by the end of 2018. Ten-X forecasts that demand will be unable to keep up with incoming supply, pushing vacancies above 9 percent by the close of 2020, and stagnating NOIs for multifamily investors. Oakland Employment levels are at an all-time peak in Oakland, propelled mainly by the professional/business services and education/healthcare sectors. While population growth in Oakland exceeds the national average, the market is subject to negative spillover effects from declines in San Francisco's information industry. Apartment vacancies remain low at 3.4 percent, but that figure represents a 40-basis-point increase in the last year. Under the Ten-X 2019-2020 downturn scenario, completions are forecasted to heavily outweigh demand and trigger rent contractions. Modest NOI gains in 2018 are projected to give way to average declines of 4.4 percent per annum in 2019 and 2020. About Ten-X Ten-X is the nation's leading online real estate transaction marketplace and the parent to Ten-X Homes, Ten-X Commercial and Auction.com. To date, the company has sold 292,000+ residential and commercial properties totaling almost $48 billion. Leveraging desktop and mobile technology, Ten-X allows people to safely and easily complete real estate transactions online. Ten-X is headquartered in Irvine and Silicon Valley, Calif., and has offices in key markets nationwide. Investors in the company include CapitalG (formerly Google Capital) and Stone Point Capital. For more information, visit Ten-X.com. SOURCE Ten-X Commercial Related Links http://www.Ten-X.com "ELGTR provides the training capabilities the U.S. Navy requires to be prepared for challenging tactical mission environments," said Jason Golden, ELGTR program manager at Lockheed Martin Missiles and Fire Control. "The entire tactical team, from weapon handlers to ground support personnel to aircrew, benefits from executing end-to-end training procedures." Lockheed Martin has produced more than 160,000 ELGTR/LGTRs for the U.S. Navy, Marine Corps and international customers. The ELGTR is compatible with F-16, F/A-18, AV-8B and various international aircraft platforms. In addition to ELGTR, Lockheed Martin's 350,000-square-foot production facility in Archbald, Pennsylvania, designs and manufactures combat-proven Paveway II Plus Laser Guided Bomb (LGB) kits and the Paragon direct attack munition. More than 75,000 LGB kits and 7,000 Dual Mode LGB kits have been delivered to the U.S. Navy, Marine Corps, Air Force and 23 international customers. About Lockheed Martin Headquartered in Bethesda, Maryland, Lockheed Martin is a global security and aerospace company that employs approximately 97,000 people worldwide and is principally engaged in the research, design, development, manufacture, integration and sustainment of advanced technology systems, products and services. PAVEWAY is a registered trademark of a third party in the EU and several other countries and is used by Lockheed Martin Corporation under license. SOURCE Lockheed Martin Related Links http://www.lockheedmartin.com Romas, whose work has been featured on magazine covers, including the Washington Post Magazine, is thrilled to be working with the Rays. Players such as Evan Longoria, Alex Cobb and Kevin Kiermaier will participate and wear fashion selected by Valerie Romas. Her company, one2styleu.com is a multi dimensional site that includes wardrobe styling, photo shoots and staging of million dollar homes. Valerie is also known for her personalized Holiday decorating work that can be seen at such restaurants as Bern's Steak House, Haven Tampa and Noble Crust. Valerie Romas and the Tampa Bay Rays look forward to seeing you at this great event for an even better cause. Valerie Romas - one2styleu.com (813) 335-9974 SOURCE one2styleu.com Related Links http://www.one2styleu.com NEW YORK, Aug. 3, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- One of International Awards Associates, Inc. (IAA) awards program the Vega Digital Awards has now launched its 2017 season call for entries. Vega Digital Awards seeks to recognize and honors the outstanding performance, talent, and effort of the best digital and creative professionals, web developers, web designers and web agencies around the world. Deadline for entry is October 20, 2017. The Vega Digital Awards has now launched its 2017 season call for entries. Vega Digital Awards seeks to recognize and honors the outstanding performance, talent, and effort of the best digital and creative professionals, web developers, web designers and web agencies around the world. Deadline for entry is October 20, 2017. 2016 Vega Digital Awards competition received over 1,100 submissions from 30 countries throughout the world, including Australia, Canada, China, Denmark, France, Germany, India, Italy, Malaysia, Singapore, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom, and the United States. Vega Digital Awards is administered and judged by International Awards Associate (IAA) and a carefully selected panel of internationally-esteemed creative professionals. For this edition of the awards competition, Vega Digital Awards is aiming to improve its program and reach an unprecedented amount of people by introducing new features and categories. This year, a total of 43 new categories has been added for a more comprehensive view of digital creativity, expanding from 190 to 221 categories. In addition, new subcategories for websites, online videos, and mobile apps will help align with the burst of creativity occurring in advanced technology. New features such as the "Invite To Work" function targets to create and increase a positive change in the winners' network and sales channel by allowing businesses and potential clients to connect with the winner with just a click of a button. A new payment gateway AliPay has also been added to enhance the payment system especially for users located in Greater China. Vega has also established new partnership programs with Adobe as well as collaborating with new media partners such as Muse.World to share great winning artworks. This year's competition spans over a period of only three months from August 1, 2017 until October 20, 2017, creating a shorter judging process with faster results announcement. "We're keeping our promise to the international creative community," Kenjo Ong, President of IAA Global said. "Last year's competition received more than 1,100 entries. We recognized and rewarded tremendous creative work from 30 countries on six continents last year, and 2017 will be even better." The Vega Awards are open to all digital media companies and organizations, regardless of size, from sole proprietors on up and from everywhere on the globe. A small fee is required per entry, and is used to produce, administer and judge the competition. Deadline for entry in the 2017 Vega Digital Awards competition is October 20, 2017. Contact: Sharon W. | Corporate Communication Consultant Website: http://www.vegaawards.com Email: [email protected] International Awards Associates (North America) 1 Radisson Plaza, Suite 800 New Rochelle New York 10801, United States O: +1646 7818 768 International Awards Associates Inc. (LL12398) (Asia) Unit 3A-25, U0350, 3rd Floor, Labuan Time Square, Merdeka Street, 87007 Labuan, Federal Territory, Malaysia. Tel: +6011-5117 5073 SOURCE International Awards Associates HOLMDEL, N.J., Aug. 3, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Vonage Holdings Corp. (NYSE: VG), a leading provider of business cloud communications, today announced results for the quarter ended June 30, 2017. Consolidated Results "We had an outstanding second quarter, and we are pleased with the team's performance," said Alan Masarek, Vonage Chief Executive Officer. "We've taken bold steps to transform Vonage into a market leading business cloud communications company. Our value proposition is resonating well, and we are confident that our focus on delivering better business outcomes for our customers will lead to accelerated long-term growth." "Within Vonage Business, we continue to execute on our priorities to accelerate UCaaS revenue growth within the Mid-market and Enterprise segments, as well as drive strong revenue growth in CPaaS. We also continue to pull the right levers to optimize and extend the value of Consumer Services, highlighted by record low churn." For the second quarter of 2017, Vonage reported revenues of $252 million, an 8% increase from the year ago quarter. Income from Operations was $7 million, up from $5 million in the prior year. Adjusted Operating Income Before Depreciation and Amortization ("Adjusted OIBDA")1 was $41 million, up from $40 million in the prior year. GAAP net income was $5 million or $0.02 per share, up from $218 thousand or $0.00 per share in the year ago quarter. Adjusted net income2 was $15 million or $0.07 per share, up from $10 million or $0.05 per share in the year ago quarter. Business Segment Results Vonage Business revenues, which include $35 million of Nexmo revenues, were $124 million . Nexmo revenues include an incremental $3.9 million as the Company determined it is required to report a portion of revenues on a gross rather than net basis. CPaaS organic revenue growth was 44% 3 . of Nexmo revenues, were . Nexmo revenues include an incremental as the Company determined it is required to report a portion of revenues on a gross rather than net basis. CPaaS organic revenue growth was 44% . The Company continues to see strong traction from Enterprise customers and signed four Enterprise deals representing $30 million in total contract value in the second quarter. in total contract value in the second quarter. Ending seats at Vonage Business were 683,000, up from 592,000 seats in the year ago quarter, a 15% increase. Vonage Business revenue churn was 1.4%, flat sequentially and from the prior year. The Vonage API Platform increased its registered developers to 309,000, a sequential increase of 61,000, a record number of quarterly developer adds. Consumer Segment Results Consumer Services revenues were $128 million in the second quarter of 2017 compared to $132 million in the first quarter of 2017. This represents the lowest sequential dollar revenue decline in 13 quarters. in the second quarter of 2017 compared to in the first quarter of 2017. This represents the lowest sequential dollar revenue decline in 13 quarters. Consumer customer churn was a record reported low 1.9%. Average revenue per line ("ARPU") in Consumer Services was $26.33 , up from $26.10 sequentially and down from $26.61 in the year ago period. , up from sequentially and down from in the year ago period. The Consumer segment ended the second quarter with 1.6 million subscriber lines. Patent Portfolio Vonage continues to execute on its strategy to develop innovative technologies and to protect its valuable intellectual property. The Company was granted 11 new patents in the second quarter and now has more than 160 U.S. patents. Guidance Update Vonage is updating its CPaaS revenue expectations to reflect the Company's requirement to report a portion of Nexmo revenues on a gross rather than net basis, as well as higher organic growth. The Company now expects 2017 Business revenues, which includes both UCaaS and CPaaS, to increase from prior guidance by $15 million, equating to a range of $498 million to $504 million. Corresponding total revenue guidance is likewise adjusted to between $981 million and $996 million. The Company reaffirmed 2017 Adjusted OIBDA guidance of at least $165 million. Conference Call and Webcast Management will host a conference call to discuss the second quarter 2017 results and other matters on Thursday, August 3, 2017 at 8:30 AM Eastern Time. To participate, please dial (866) 807-9684 approximately 10 minutes prior to the call. International callers should dial (412) 317-5415. A webcast will be available through Vonage's Investor Relations website at http://ir.vonage.com. A replay of the call and webcast will be available shortly after the conclusion of the call and may be accessed through Vonage's Investor Relations website at http://ir.vonage.com or by dialing (877) 344-7529. International callers should dial (412) 317-0088. The replay passcode is 10110947. This is a non-GAAP financial measure. Refer below to Table 3 for a reconciliation to GAAP income from operations. This is a non-GAAP financial measure. Refer below to Table 4 for a reconciliation to GAAP net income. We define organic growth as the increase in Business revenues after giving pro forma effect for the acquisition of Nexmo, the change in accounting treatment with respect to certain CPaaS revenues being recognized on a gross rather than net basis and the exclusion of one-time items. See Table 3 for reference. VONAGE HOLDINGS CORP. TABLE 1. CONSOLIDATED FINANCIAL DATA (Dollars in thousands, except per share amounts) Three Months Ended Six Months Ended June 30, March 31, June 30, June 30, 2017 2017 2016 2017 2016 (unaudited) (unaudited) (unaudited) (unaudited) (revised) (1) (revised) (1) Statement of Income Data: Revenues $ 251,836 $ 243,347 $ 233,675 $ 495,183 $ 460,499 Operating Expenses: Cost of service (excluding depreciation and amortization of $6,863, $6,782, $6,985, $13,645, and $13,818, respectively) 97,674 87,596 76,078 185,270 145,228 Cost of goods sold 6,187 7,293 8,352 13,480 17,418 Sales and marketing 79,738 81,931 83,344 161,669 162,945 Engineering and development 6,670 8,370 7,243 15,040 14,077 General and administrative 36,514 35,086 35,053 71,600 61,723 Depreciation and amortization 18,394 17,947 18,218 36,341 35,197 245,177 238,223 228,288 483,400 436,588 Income from operations 6,659 5,124 5,387 11,783 23,911 Other income (expense): Interest income 4 5 25 9 46 Interest expense (3,861) (3,703) (3,057) (7,564) (5,503) Other income (expense), net 686 (220) 104 466 258 (3,171) (3,918) (2,928) (7,089) (5,199) Income before income tax expense 3,488 1,206 2,459 4,694 18,712 Income tax benefit (expense) 1,337 4,707 (2,241) 6,044 (10,563) Net income 4,825 5,913 218 10,738 8,149 Earnings per common share: Basic $ 0.02 $ 0.03 $ $ 0.05 $ 0.04 Diluted $ 0.02 $ 0.02 $ $ 0.04 $ 0.04 Weighted-average common shares outstanding: Basic 223,492 220,371 213,558 221,930 213,800 Diluted 239,938 239,486 222,700 239,923 223,978 (1) Revised due to the correction of prior period financial statements. VONAGE HOLDINGS CORP. TABLE 1. CONSOLIDATED FINANCIAL DATA - (Continued) (Dollars in thousands, except per share amounts) Three Months Ended Six Months Ended June 30, March 31, June 30, June 30, 2017 2017 2016 2017 2016 (unaudited) (unaudited) (unaudited) (unaudited) (revised) (1) (revised) (1) Statement of Cash Flow Data: Net cash provided by operating activities $ 15,432 $ 17,261 $ 25,059 $ 32,693 $ 42,527 Net cash used in investing activities (7,518) (6,759) (171,908) (14,277) (182,785) Net cash used in financing activities (7,838) (13,540) 135,318 (21,378) 106,323 Capital expenditures, intangible assets, and development of software assets (8,798) (7,081) (10,396) (15,879) (21,603) (1) Revised due to the adoption of new Accounting Standard Updates and the correction of prior period financial statements. June 30, December 31, 2017 2016 (unaudited) (revised) (1) Balance Sheet Data (at period end): Cash and cash equivalents $ 26,825 $ 29,078 Marketable securities 601 Restricted cash 1,802 1,851 Accounts receivable, net of allowance 36,185 36,688 Inventory, net of allowance 3,503 4,116 Prepaid expenses and other current assets 28,111 29,188 Deferred customer acquisition costs, current and non-current 1,945 3,136 Property and equipment, net 44,688 48,415 Goodwill 366,806 360,363 Software, net 23,867 21,971 Intangible assets, net 188,076 199,256 Deferred tax assets 204,286 184,210 Other assets 15,302 16,793 Total assets $ 941,396 $ 935,666 Accounts payable and accrued expenses $ 107,215 $ 139,946 Deferred revenue, current and non-current 31,531 32,892 Total notes payable, net of debt related costs and indebtedness under revolving credit facility, including current portion 314,703 318,874 Capital lease obligations 1,067 3,428 Other liabilities 4,710 3,985 Total liabilities $ 459,226 $ 499,125 Total stockholders' equity $ 482,170 $ 436,541 (1) Revised due to the correction of prior period financial statements. VONAGE HOLDINGS CORP. TABLE 2. SUMMARY CONSOLIDATED OPERATING DATA (unaudited) The table below includes revenues and cost of revenues that our management uses to measure the growth and operating performance of the business focused portion of our business: Business Three Months Ended Six Months Ended June 30, March 31, June 30, June 30, 2017 2017 2016 2017 2016 Revenues: Service $ 103,825 $ 92,291 $ 67,079 $ 196,116 $ 123,552 Product (1) 13,392 13,360 13,265 26,752 26,177 Service and Product 117,217 105,651 80,344 222,868 149,729 USF 6,497 6,151 5,368 12,648 9,803 Total Business Revenues $ 123,714 $ 111,802 $ 85,712 $ 235,516 $ 159,532 Cost of Revenues: Service (2) $ 49,246 $ 39,195 $ 22,527 $ 88,441 $ 37,930 Product (1) 12,456 13,202 12,902 25,658 25,364 Service and Product 61,702 52,397 35,429 114,099 63,294 USF 6,497 6,151 5,369 12,648 9,814 Cost of Revenues $ 68,199 $ 58,548 $ 40,798 $ 126,747 $ 73,108 Service margin % 52.6% 57.5% 66.4% 54.9% 69.3% Gross margin % ex-USF (Service and product margin %) 47.4% 50.4% 55.9% 48.8% 57.7% Gross margin % 44.9% 47.6% 52.4% 46.2% 54.2% (1) Includes customer premise equipment, access, professional services, and shipping and handling. (2) Excludes depreciation and amortization of $5,003, $4,875, and $4,473 for the quarters ended June 30, 2017, March 31, 2017, and June 30, 2016, respectively and $9,878 and $8,792 for the six months ended June 30, 2017 and June 30, 2016, respectively. The table below includes revenues and cost of revenues that our management uses to measure the growth and operating performance of the consumer focused portion of our business: Consumer Three Months Ended Six Months Ended June 30, March 31, June 30, June 30, 2017 2017 2016 2017 2016 Revenues: Service $ 115,636 $ 119,117 $ 133,462 $ 234,753 $ 271,234 Product (1) 201 203 160 404 307 Service and Product 115,837 119,320 133,622 235,157 271,541 USF 12,285 12,225 14,341 24,510 29,426 Total Business Revenues $ 128,122 $ 131,545 $ 147,963 $ 259,667 $ 300,967 Cost of Revenues: Service (2) $ 21,435 $ 22,100 $ 25,727 $ 43,535 $ 52,247 Product (1) 1,942 2,016 3,564 3,958 7,865 Service and Product 23,377 24,116 29,291 47,493 60,112 USF 12,285 12,225 14,341 24,510 29,426 Cost of Revenues $ 35,662 $ 36,341 $ 43,632 $ 72,003 $ 89,538 Service margin % 81.5% 81.4% 80.7% 81.5% 80.7% Gross margin % ex-USF (Service and product margin %) 79.8% 79.8% 78.1% 79.8% 77.9% Gross margin % 72.2% 72.4% 70.5% 72.3% 70.2% (1) Includes customer premise equipment, access, professional services, and shipping and handling. (2) Excludes depreciation and amortization of $1,860, $1,907, and $2,512 for the quarters ended June 30, 2017, March 31, 2017, and June 30, 2016, respectively and $3,767 and $5,026 for the six months ended June 30, 2017 and June 30, 2016, respectively. The table below includes key operating data that our management uses to measure the growth and operating performance of the business focused portion of our business: Business Three Months Ended Six Months Ended June 30, March 31, June 30, June 30, 2017 2017 2016 2017 2016 Revenues (1) $ 123,714 $ 111,802 $ 85,712 $ 235,516 $ 159,532 Average monthly revenues per seat (2) $ 43.99 $ 43.98 $ 44.76 $ 43.93 $ 44.65 Seats (at period end) (2) (3) 683,079 658,792 591,707 683,079 591,707 Revenue churn (2) 1.4% 1.4% 1.4% 1.4% 1.4% (1) Includes revenue of $35,171, $26,245, and $7,698, respectively, for the quarters ended June 30, 2017, March 31, 2017, and June 30, 2016 and $61,416 and $7,698, respectively, for the six months ended June 30, 2017 and June 30, 2016 from CPaaS, which was acquired on June 3, 2016. (2) UCaaS only (3) Seats (at period end) included an adjustment of 13,352 for the three and six months ended June 30, 2016. The table below includes key operating data that our management uses to measure the growth and operating performance of the consumer focused portion of our business: Consumer Three Months Ended Six Months Ended June 30, March 31, June 30, June 30, 2017 2017 2016 2017 2016 Revenues $ 128,122 $ 131,545 $ 147,963 $ 259,667 $ 300,967 Average monthly revenues per line $ 26.33 $ 26.10 $ 26.61 $ 26.18 $ 26.64 Subscriber lines (at period end) 1,594,857 1,648,927 1,824,668 1,594,857 1,824,668 Customer churn 1.9% 2.2% 2.1% 2.0% 2.2% VONAGE HOLDINGS CORP. TABLE 3. RECONCILIATION OF GAAP BUSINESS REVENUES TO ADJUSTED BUSINESS REVENUES (Dollars in thousands) (unaudited) Three Months Ended Six Months Ended June 30, March 31, June 30, June 30, 2017 2017 2016 2017 2016 Total Business revenues(1) $ 123,714 $ 111,802 $ 85,172 $ 235,516 $ 159,532 Total UCaaS revenues (1) $ 88,543 $ 85,557 $ 78,014 $ 174,100 $ 151,834 Early termination letter (500) (500) Bad debt policy reclassification (431) (431) Accounts receivable write-down 319 319 Adjusted total UCaaS revenues 88,543 85,876 77,083 174,419 150,903 Hosted Infrastructure Sale (1,100) (1,621) (1,575) (2,721) (3,022) Adjusted total UCaaS revenues 87,443 84,255 75,508 171,698 147,881 Less: Product revenues 13,392 13,360 13,265 26,752 26,177 Less: USF revenues 6,497 6,151 5,368 12,648 9,803 Adjusted total UCaaS service revenues $ 67,554 $ 64,744 $ 56,875 $ 132,298 $ 111,901 Total CPaaS revenues (1) $ 35,171 $ 26,245 $ 7,698 $ 61,416 $ 7,698 Nexmo pre-acquisition revenues 14,198 14,198 Pro forma CPaaS revenues 35,171 26,245 21,896 61,416 21,896 Net-to-gross revenue reporting adjustment 3,374 2,481 3,374 2,481 Adjusted total CPaaS revenues $ 35,171 $ 29,619 $ 24,377 $ 64,790 $ 24,377 (1) Total Business revenues is comprised of revenues from UCaaS and CPaaS VONAGE HOLDINGS CORP. TABLE 4. RECONCILIATION OF GAAP INCOME FROM OPERATIONS TO ADJUSTED OIBDA AND TO ADJUSTED OIBDA MINUS CAPEX (Dollars in thousands) (unaudited) Three Months Ended Six Months Ended June 30, March 31, June 30, June 30, 2017 2017 2016 2017 2016 Income from operations $ 6,659 $ 5,124 $ 5,387 $ 11,783 $ 23,911 Depreciation and amortization 18,394 17,947 18,218 36,341 35,197 Share-based expense 7,412 7,064 7,962 14,476 14,265 Acquisition related transaction and integration costs 18 139 5,057 157 5,150 Organizational transformation 4,000 4,000 Acquisition related consideration accounted for as compensation 4,310 6,763 3,312 11,073 3,312 Adjusted OIBDA 40,793 37,037 39,936 $ 77,830 $ 81,835 Less: Capital expenditures (5,294) (3,701) (7,053) $ (8,995) $ (15,948) Acquisition and development of software assets (3,504) (3,380) (3,343) $ (6,884) $ (5,655) Adjusted OIBDA Minus Capex $ 31,995 $ 29,956 $ 29,540 $ 61,951 $ 60,232 VONAGE HOLDINGS CORP. TABLE 5. RECONCILIATION OF GAAP NET INCOME ATTRIBUTABLE TO VONAGE TO NET INCOME ATTRIBUTABLE TO VONAGE EXCLUDING ADJUSTMENTS (Dollars in thousands, except per share amounts) (unaudited) Three Months Ended Six Months Ended June 30, March 31, June 30, June 30, 2017 2017 2016 2017 2016 (revised) (1) (revised) (1) Net income $ 4,825 $ 5,913 $ 218 $ 10,738 $ 8,149 Amortization of acquisition - related intangibles 9,069 8,999 8,274 18,068 15,236 Acquisition related transaction and integration costs 18 139 5,057 157 5,150 Acquisition related consideration accounted for as compensation 4,310 6,763 3,312 11,073 3,312 Organizational transformation 4,000 4,000 Tax effect on adjusting items (7,188) (6,569) (6,876) (13,757) (9,791) Adjusted net income $ 15,034 $ 15,245 $ 9,985 $ 30,279 $ 22,056 Earnings per common share: Basic $ 0.02 $ 0.03 $ $ 0.05 $ 0.04 Diluted $ 0.02 $ 0.02 $ $ 0.04 $ 0.04 Weighted-average common shares outstanding: Basic 223,492 220,371 213,558 221,930 213,800 Diluted 239,938 239,486 222,700 239,923 223,978 Earnings per common share, excluding adjustments: Basic $ 0.07 $ 0.07 $ 0.05 $ 0.14 $ 0.10 Diluted $ 0.06 $ 0.06 $ 0.04 $ 0.13 $ 0.10 Weighted-average common shares outstanding: Basic 223,492 220,371 213,558 221,930 213,800 Diluted 239,938 239,486 222,700 239,923 223,978 (1) Revised due to the correction of prior period financial statements. VONAGE HOLDINGS CORP. TABLE 6. FREE CASH FLOW (Dollars in thousands) (unaudited) Three Months Ended Six Months Ended June 30, March 31, June 30, June 30, 2017 2017 2016 2017 2016 (Revised) (1) (Revised) (1) Net cash provided by operating activities $ 15,432 $ 17,261 $ 25,059 $ 32,693 $ 42,527 Less: Capital expenditures (5,294) (3,701) (7,053) (8,995) (15,948) Acquisition and development of software assets (3,504) (3,380) (3,343) (6,884) (5,655) Free cash flow $ 6,634 $ 10,180 $ 14,663 $ 16,814 $ 20,924 (1) Revised due to the adoption of new Accounting Standard Updates and the correction of prior period financial statements. VONAGE HOLDINGS CORP. TABLE 7. RECONCILIATION OF NOTES PAYABLE, INDEBTEDNESS UNDER REVOLVING CREDIT FACILITY, AND CAPITAL LEASES TO NET DEBT (Dollars in thousands) (unaudited) June 30, December 31, 2017 2016 Current maturities of capital lease obligations $ 1,021 $ 3,288 Current portion of notes payable 18,750 18,750 Notes payable and indebtedness under revolving credit facility, net of current maturities and debt related costs 295,953 300,124 Unamortized debt related cost 859 1,064 Capital lease obligations, net of current maturities 46 140 Gross debt 316,629 323,366 Less: Unrestricted cash and marketable securities 26,825 29,679 Net debt $ 289,804 $ 293,687 About Vonage Vonage (NYSE: VG) is a leading provider of cloud communications services for business. Vonage transforms the way people work and businesses operate through a portfolio of cloud-based communications solutions that enable internal collaboration among employees, while also keeping companies closely connected with their customers, across any mode of communication, on any device. Vonage's API Platform provides tools for voice, messaging and phone verification services, allowing developers to embed contextual, programmable communications into mobile apps, websites and business systems, enabling enterprises to easily communicate relevant information to their customers in real time, anywhere in the world, through text messaging, chat, social media and voice. The Company also provides a robust suite of feature-rich residential communication solutions. In 2015 and 2016, Vonage was named a Visionary in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Unified Communications as-a-Service, Worldwide. Vonage has also earned the Frost & Sullivan Growth Excellence Leadership Award for Hosted IP and Unified Communications and Collaboration (UCC) Services. For more information, visit www.vonage.com. Use of Non-GAAP Financial Measures This press release includes measures defined as non-GAAP financial measures by Regulation G adopted by the Securities and Exchange Commission, including: adjusted Operating Income Before Depreciation and Amortization ("adjusted OIBDA"), adjusted OIBDA less Capex, adjusted net income, net debt (cash), free cash flow and adjusted revenues. Adjusted OIBDA Vonage uses adjusted OIBDA as a principal indicator of the operating performance of its business. Vonage defines adjusted OIBDA as GAAP income (loss) from operations excluding depreciation and amortization, share-based expense, acquisition related transaction and integration costs, change in contingent consideration, acquisition related consideration accounted for as compensation, organizational transformation costs and loss on sublease. Vonage believes that adjusted OIBDA permits a comparative assessment of its operating performance, relative to its performance based on its GAAP results, while isolating the effects of depreciation and amortization, which may vary from period to period without any correlation to underlying operating performance; of share-based expense, which is a non-cash expense that also varies from period to period; of one-time acquisition related transaction and integration costs, acquisition related consideration accounted for as compensation and change in contingent consideration, organizational transformation costs and loss on sublease. The Company provides information relating to its adjusted OIBDA so that investors have the same data that the Company employs in assessing its overall operations. The Company believes that trends in its Adjusted OIBDA are valuable indicators of the operating performance of the Company on a consolidated basis. The Company does not reconcile its forward-looking adjusted OIBDA to the corresponding GAAP measure of income from operations due to the significant variability and difficulty in making accurate forecasts with respect to the various expenses we exclude, as they may be significantly impacted by future events the timing and nature of which are difficult to predict or are not within the control of management. As such, the Company has determined that reconciliations of this forward-looking non-GAAP financial measure to the corresponding GAAP measure is not available without unreasonable effort. Adjusted OIBDA less Capex Vonage uses adjusted OIBDA less Capex as an indicator of the operating performance of its business. The Company provides information relating to its adjusted OIBDA less Capex so that investors have the same data that the Company employs in assessing its overall operations. The Company believes that trends in its Adjusted OIBDA less Capex are valuable indicators of the operating performance of the Company on a consolidated basis because they provide our investors with insight into current performance and period-to-period performance. Adjusted net income Vonage defines adjusted net income, as GAAP net income (loss) excluding amortization of acquisition-related intangible assets, acquisition related transaction and integration costs, change in contingent consideration, acquisition related consideration accounted for as compensation, loss on sublease and tax effect on adjusting items. The Company believes that excluding these items will assist investors in evaluating the Company's operating performance and in better understanding its results of operations as amortization of acquisition-related intangible assets is a non-cash item, one-time acquisition related transaction and integration costs, change in contingent consideration, acquisition related consideration accounted for as compensation, loss on sublease and tax effect on adjusting items are not reflective of operating performance. Net debt (cash) Vonage defines net debt (cash) as the current maturities of capital lease obligations, current portion of notes payable, notes payable and indebtedness under revolving credit facility, net of current maturities and debt related costs, and capital lease obligations, net of current maturities, less unrestricted cash and marketable securities. Vonage uses net debt (cash) as a measure of assessing leverage, as it reflects the gross debt under the Company's credit agreements and capital leases less cash available to repay such amounts. The Company believes that net cash is also a factor that first parties consider in valuing the Company. Free cash flow Vonage defines free cash flow as net cash provided by operating activities minus capital expenditures, purchase of intangible assets, and acquisition and development of software assets. Vonage considers free cash flow to be a liquidity measure that provides useful information to management about the amount of cash generated by the business that, after the acquisition of equipment and software, can be used by Vonage for debt service and strategic opportunities. Free cash flow is not a measure of cash available for discretionary expenditures since the Company has certain non-discretionary obligations such as debt service that are not deducted from the measure. The non-GAAP financial measures used by Vonage may not be directly comparable to similarly titled measures reported by other companies due to differences in accounting policies and items excluded or included in the adjustments, which limits its usefulness as a comparative measure. These non-GAAP financial measures should be considered in addition to results prepared in accordance with GAAP, but should not be considered a substitute for, or superior to, GAAP results. Safe Harbor Statement This press release contains forward-looking statements, including statements about acquisitions, acquisition integration, growth priorities or plans, revenues, adjusted OIBDA, churn, seats, lines or accounts, average revenue per user, cost of telephony services, the Company's share repurchase plan, capital expenditures, new products and related investment, and other statements that are not historical facts or information, that constitute forward-looking statements for purposes of the safe harbor provisions under The Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. In addition, other statements in this press release that are not historical facts or information may be forward-looking statements. The forward-looking statements in this release are based on information available at the time the statements are made and/or management's belief as of that time with respect to future events and involve risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results and outcomes to be materially different. Important factors that could cause such differences include, but are not limited to: the competition we face; the expansion of competition in the cloud communications market; our ability to adapt to rapid changes in the cloud communications market; the nascent state of the cloud communications for business market; our ability to retain customers and attract new customers; the risk associated with developing and maintaining effective internal sales teams and effective distribution channels; risks related to the acquisition or integration of businesses we have acquired; security breaches and other compromises of information security; risks associated with sales of our services to medium-sized and enterprise customers; our reliance on third party hardware and software; our dependence on third party facilities, equipment, systems and services; system disruptions or flaws in our technology and systems; our ability to scale our business and grow efficiently; our dependence on third party vendors; the impact of fluctuations in economic conditions, particularly on our small and medium business customers; our ability to comply with data privacy and related regulatory matters; our ability to obtain or maintain relevant intellectual property licenses; failure to protect our trademarks and internally developed software; fraudulent use of our name or services; intellectual property and other litigation that have been and may be brought against us; reliance on third parties for our 911 services; uncertainties relating to regulation of VoIP services; risks associated with legislative, regulatory or judicial actions regarding our CPaaS products; the impact of governmental export controls or sanctions on our CPaaS products; our ability to establish and expand strategic alliances; risks associated with operating abroad; risks associated with the taxation of our business; risks associated with a material weakness in our internal controls; our dependence upon key personnel; governmental regulation and taxes in our international operations; liability under anti-corruption laws; our dependence on our customers' existing broadband connections; differences between our services and traditional telephone service; restrictions in our debt agreements that may limit our operating flexibility; foreign currency exchange risk; the market for our stock; our ability to obtain additional financing if required; any reinstatement of holdbacks by our credit card processors; our history of net losses and ability to achieve consistent profitability in the future; and other factors that are set forth in the "Risk Factors" in our Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2016, in the Company's Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q and Current Reports on Form 8-K. While the Company may elect to update forward-looking statements at some point in the future, the Company specifically disclaims any obligation to do so, and therefore, you should not rely on these forward-looking statements as representing the Company's views as of any date subsequent to today. (vg-f) SOURCE Vonage Related Links http://www.vonage.com BEIJING, Aug. 3, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Wanchain, the first public blockchain project envisioned by the Chinese firm Wanglu Tech, recently released a white paper. Wanchain is a blockchain-based distributed financial infrastructure which allows the exchange of assets among different blockchain networks in a decentralized way. With Wanchain, more organizations are able to develop their own services and innovate in the distributed finance space. Connecting multiple blockchains to transfer value across networks According to the white paper, Wanchain addresses issues associated with transferring digital assets between blockchains. The asset transfer is achieved through a decentralized cross-chain mechanism and a universal cross-chain protocol. Based on the distributed blockchain concept without using a trusted third-party, Wanchain was designed using cutting-edge cryptographic theories that underlie its technology. In cross-chain trading, Wanchain's account locking mechanism and threshold key sharing technology support complete decentralization. This decentralization offers asset account management capability while eliminating the need for the involvement of a third party. Three features that make the technology more suitable for financial applications Wanchain not only acts as a connector between blockchains but also is itself a distributed ledger with Turing completeness and smart contract functionality, providing privacy protection for all transactions on the network. Wanchain features cross-chain transactions, smart contracts and privacy protection, all of which come together to address multi-asset bookkeeping, contract implementation and transaction privacy issues. Additional distributed financial applications can be developed based on Wanchain. Interconnecting disparate blockchain networks Wanchain is finding a wide array of applications across the financial industry, enabling the distributed trading of multiple digital assets on a future distributed finance framework, similar to traditional financial business, including asset backed securities. With Wanchain's infrastructure, individuals and businesses gain access to a wider range of financial services, while having better control over their assets and access to improved asset appreciation strategies. David A. Johnston says that Wanchain's digital asset applications are an important step forward and decentralized finance innovations are the next step in the blockchain space. Fenbushi Capital partner Bo Shen commented, "Wanchain addresses issues associated with inter-connections between blockchains while serving as a super financial market in the new digital economy." Jack Lu, co-founder and former CTO of Factom, and CEO of Wanglu Tech, led a team to design and development Wanchain after completion of the cross-chain transaction and privacy protection theory verification, and prototype development at the end of 2016. To learn more about the white paper, visit Wanchain's website: wanchain.org SOURCE Wanchain Foundation Ltd. Related Links https://wanchain.org/ AUSTIN, Texas, Aug. 3, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Wipro Limited (NYSE: WIT, BSE: 507685, NSE: WIPRO), a leading global information technology, consulting and business process services company was recognized with the "Elevate Texas" award by the Texas Economic Development Corporation, the organization that markets the state as one of the world's top locations for business. The statewide award recognizes communities, organizations and companies that are making a tremendous contribution to Texas' economy, whether through jobs and investment, infrastructure and workforce development, or other initiatives which help to drive growth in the Lone Star State. "Wipro is truly a global leader in the IT services industry and a major force in economic development in the State of Texas," said Sanjiv Yajnik, Chairman of the Board of Texas Economic Development Corporation and President of Financial Services at Capital One. "Azim Premji, Chairman of Wipro Limited, and Abidali Z. Neemuchwala, Chief Executive Officer and Executive Director of Wipro Limited, have been active supporters of Texas. We are grateful for their partnership with the Texas Economic Development Corporation and their commitment to growing in our state." Yajnik, together with Robert Allen, President and CEO of Texas Economic Development Corporation, applauded Wipro for its investment in Texas, particularly when it comes to the future of Texas' workforce. In March 2017, the company expanded the Wipro Science Education Fellowship (SEF) program to Texas, in collaboration with the University of North Texas at Dallas. Through the SEF program, Wipro has pledged $1.1 million to train K-12 educators for excellence in STEM disciplines, to help enhance student learning, in Greater Dallas-Fort Worth area public schools. In addition to working with educators, Wipro is collaborating with First Book, a nationwide non-profit organization with the goal to supply books to low-income schools and underprivileged students across the country. Recently, the company held a joint event with First Book where Wipro volunteers collected over 43,000 books for Dallas area schools and children. The company, which currently employs 1,200 in Texas, with major operations in Dallas and Houston, plans to inaugurate a new 35,500 sq. ft. advanced technology center in Plano in September. As part of its effort to attract and recruit leading next generation talent, Wipro has forged strong and lasting relationships with local universities. Wipro recruits students from The University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin), University of Texas at Dallas (UT Dallas), University of Houston, Rice University, University of North Texas (UNT) and other colleges for its delivery center in Dallas. Wipro has already recruited nearly 100 recent graduates from Texas academic institutions in 2017, with additional campus hiring planned throughout August. "I am honored to accept the Elevate Texas award," said Abidali Z. Neemuchwala, Chief Executive Officer and Executive Director of Wipro Limited. "As a company with a significant presence in Texas and deep relationship with the local community, we applaud the Lone Star State's support of the technology sector and its commitment to improving STEM education. Wipro is proud to do business in Texas and contribute to the state's economic growth. We are committed to fostering knowledge and skills in the fields of science and technology to create a better future for all." About Texas Economic Development Corporation Texas Economic Development Corporation is an independently funded and operated 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, whose mission is dedicated to economic development, business recruitment and job creation in the State of Texas. The public-private partnership coordinates efforts with the Office of the Governor to market Texas globally as a premier business destination. For more information about Texas Economic Development Corporation, visit www.GoBigInTexas.com. About Wipro Limited Wipro Limited (NYSE: WIT, BSE: 507685, NSE: WIPRO) is a leading global information technology, consulting and business process services company. We harness the power of cognitive computing, hyper-automation, robotics, cloud, analytics and emerging technologies to help our clients adapt to the digital world and make them successful. A company recognized globally for its comprehensive portfolio of services, strong commitment to sustainability and good corporate citizenship, we have over 160,000 dedicated employees serving clients across six continents. Together, we discover ideas and connect the dots to build a better and a bold new future. Media Contact: Patience Fairbrother [email protected] T 212.444.7194 C 518.424.3474 SOURCE Texas Economic Development Corporation Related Links http://www.gobigintexas.com BALLWIN, Mo., Aug. 3, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Wolf H. Stapelfeldt, M.D. is recognized by Continental Who's Who for Excellence in the field of Anesthesiology. Dr. Stapelfeldt serves as Professor and Department Chairman of the Department of Anesthesiology and Critical Care Medicine at St. Louis University School of Medicine, a renowned Catholic Jesuit institution committed to 'Higher Purpose, Greater Good', the first medical school west of the Mississippi, which is preparing to celebrate its bicentennial anniversary a year from now in 2018. Previously, Dr. Stapelfeldt was Chairman of the Department of General Anesthesiology at Cleveland Clinic, bringing over 25 years of career experience. His tenure at the Cleveland Clinic culminated in the role of Founder and Chief Medical Officer of Talis Clinical, LLC, an information management company spun off from the Cleveland Clinic. Talis Clinical's software distills and analyzes the most important data sources in real time to guide physicians in making decisions within the high stress environment of the operation rooms and intensive care units, an application that was recognized as one of the top ten innovations in Medicine during the 2014 Cleveland Clinic Innovation Summit. Further leadership titles included those of Vice Chairman of Surgical Operations, and Vice Chairman of Information Systems and Technologies for the Cleveland Clinic's Anesthesiology Institute. "Cleveland Clinic is one of the largest and most respected hospitals in the country," the hospital's website states. "We are a nonprofit multispecialty academic medical center that integrates clinical and hospital care with research and education. Our mission is to provide better care of the sick, investigation into their problems and further education of those who serve." Over the course of his career, Dr. Stapelfeldt also previously served several roles at the Mayo Clinic, most notably as Chairman of Transplantation Anesthesiology at its Jacksonville, Florida location, which at that time, grew into one of the largest liver transplant programs in the country. Additionally, he has served as Vice Chairman for Education in the Mayo Clinic's Department of Anesthesiology in Florida, as well as Assistant Professor of Anesthesiology and Physiology in the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. As part of his job duties at St. Louis University Medical School, Dr. Stapelfeldt leads and participates in several research areas under the larger realm of the anesthesiology department, focusing on the development of electronic systems and predictive models to guide physicians in decision making about patient care. Dr. Stapelfeldt earned his medical degree summa cum laude from the University of Ulm School of Medicine in Ulm, Germany. He completed his residency in anesthesiology and a fellowship in physiology at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. To further his professional development, he is a member of a multitude of organizations including the American Society of Anesthesiologists, the International Anesthesia Research Society and the Health Information Management Systems Society. His articles have been published in various renowned medical journals including the Journal of Physiology (London), Mayo Clinic Proceedings, Liver Transplantation, Anesthesiology and Anesthesia & Analgesia. He most recently introduced the 'SLUScore', a novel method to quantify the adverse effect of less than normal blood pressure, a common occurrence under anesthesia. Automatically tracking patients' SLUScores during surgery, in an effort to identify and minimize harmful exposures to lower than sufficient blood pressure, holds the promise of significantly reducing serious complications including death commonly following in the days and weeks after surgery. For more information, visit www.slu.edu, www.clevelandclinic.org and http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28107274 Contact: Katherine Green, 516-825-5634, [email protected] SOURCE Continental Who's Who Related Links http://www.continentalwhoswho.com Shivakumar is a six-time MLA who has always been known as the Man Friday of the Congress party. He's a man who keeps his vow of serving the Congress "in sickness and in health." By Rohini Swamy: Karnataka has always seen an interesting link when it comes to blood brothers in politics. Be it Janardhan Reddy and his brothers, or DK Shivakumar and his brother, the common link between them has been their meteoric rise in both riches and political clout. Shivakumar is a six-time MLA who has always been known as the Man Friday of the Congress party. He's a man who keeps his vow of serving the Congress "in sickness and in health." advertisement From Sathanur to Kanakapura, Shivakumar has faced several corruption charges, be it illegal granite mining, disproportionate assets, forgery, cheating, impersonation or criminal conspiracy. He is fighting all these charges in the courts. Shivakumar has climbed the trust ladder with the Congress with his go-getter attitude and what he calls his "secret mantra" that helps convert difficult seats for the Congress in the party's favour. The trusted soldier of the Congress high command has been caught in the news headlines across the country after income tax sleuths have been hot on his trail raiding his residences and offices in Bengaluru, Mysuru, Delhi and Hassan. So who is D K Shivakumar? Here are the details of the man who is not only the richest, but also known as the Tiger of Sathanur - a title that has turned out to be a challenge for all his opponents. PERSONAL DETAILS Born in Karnataka's Kanakapura, a small village on the outskirts of Bengaluru, he joined politics when he was studying at RC College in Bengaluru. Later, he joined youth Congress and was elected as General Secretary of Karnataka State Youth Congress between 1983-85. POLITICAL CAREER Shivakumar's meteorical rise as a trustworthy political warhorse began in 1999 when he was the urban minister in the SM Krishna government, but his most dramatic win has been the 2013 elections when he pulled 1,00,007 votes against veteran PGR Sindhia of the JD(S) who received 68,583 votes. The area around Kanakapura and the Lok Sabha contituency of Ramanagaram is largely a JDS bastion. But it all started in 1985 when he first contested against former prime minister HD Deve Gowda from the then Sathanur Assembly on a Congress ticket. Shivakumar lost the election, but lady luck showered her blessings on him as Deve Gowda deserted the seat since he had also won from the Holenarsipura Assembly constituency. DKS won the seat during the bye-election. But it was not long before DKS fought another losing political battle against HD Deve Gowda in the kanakapura consituency in the 1989 Lok Sabha elctions and lost. He faced defat again in the hands of the junior Gowda, H D Kumaraswamy in 1994, when he contested again from the Sathanur constituency. advertisement With the help of pure hard work, determination and smart politicking Shivakumar slowly gained control of the rural region of Bengaluru. In the 2013 Assembly elections, Shivakumar wrested the Kanakapura constituency JD(S).After this DKS has managed to keep control of his constituency even though the neighbouring Ramanagaram constituency is still ruled by the HD Deve Gowda family that has been his nemesis. He got his younger brother D K Suresh elected from the Bengaluru rural Lok Sabha constituency and together the two brothers enjoy power.PROPERTIES AND INVESTMENTSShivakumar has made several investments in cooperative banks, educational institutions, agricultural lands and flats in Mysuru, Mumbai, Kanakapura, Bangalore and Delhi. Investments in properties such as Shobha developers, Davanam properties, Kabini granites, Dalmia Cement among others. Shivakumar today, is a senior Congress leader and has been one of the richest politician for the party with a declared wealth of Rs 251 crore as mentioned in his election affidavit in 2013. Shivakumar also topped this list with liabilities of Rs 105 crore. In 2013 Assembly polls, he was among of the richest candidates contesting the polls with an increase of Rs 176 Crore from 2008 elections. He has also declared liabilities worth Rs 105 crore. advertisement CORRUPTION CHARGES According to the affidavit filed by DK Shivakumar, there have been no criminal charges framed against him or has he been convicted till date. But there is surely a long list of cases where has been booked under the Prevention of Corruption Act, as well as accused of forgery, cheating, impersonation and criminal conspiracy. Shivakumar and his family have been linked to several cases of illegal mining and transporting granite illegally, and improper land distribution. Notices were issued in 2015 to Shivakumar and his family by the Karnataka high court for the alleged role in illegal mining activities in Kanakapura and Ramanagaram districts of Karnataka. Shivakumar and his brother DK Suresh have also been accused of grabbing 66 acres of land meant for the dalits and poor. Today, D K Shivakumar faces the heat with the I-T close at his heels. It is just a matter of time when one could see whether Shivakumar will be able to tide this crisis which is snowballing into a huge dent for Congress in the south. advertisement Also Read How CBI, I-T and ED have acted against Opposition leaders under Modi govt Karnataka govt slams Centre for using CRPF personnel for I-T raid on Shivakumar's premises --- ENDS --- "Being around other veterans is the best medicine," said Luke Herbst, U.S. Army wounded warrior from the Nashville, Tennessee, area. "When others are dealing with similar issues, you feel less alone. The same can be said about the spouses of veterans they marry into and inherit a lot of the same issues as veterans. I'm grateful my wife attended, connected, and stays in contact with other spouses from the workshop." Through the generous support of donors, WWP offers veterans specialized mental health programs and services tailored to each warrior's specific needs and free of charge. WWP and its supporters believe warriors already paid their dues on the battlefield. One program is its multi-day mental health workshops that are offered as all-male, all-female, or all-couples. These workshops provide safe, private environments for warriors to express themselves and share their combat experiences. WWP staff incorporate local activities in a recovery model that allows warriors to be vulnerable to the unknown and identify and work through anxieties together. As warriors brave close to 10 miles of what Guinness World Records deems the longest and largest zip line canopy tour in the world, they are actively honoring the oaths they agreed to at the beginning of the workshop, including "to let go and move on." By the end, warriors share lessons learned from the activities that impacted their personal struggles most and set achievable goals for their recoveries. "For many years I drank a lot and wasn't very active," Luke said. "Wounded Warrior Project contributed to my recovery, and this workshop allowed me and my wife to have some hard talks. It was important to have a safe place for her to voice concerns. I am just thankful for the opportunity to spend some quality time with her." To learn and see more about how WWP's mental health workshops connect, serve, and empower wounded warriors, visit http://newsroom.woundedwarriorproject.org/, and click on multimedia. About Wounded Warrior Project Wounded Warrior Project (WWP) connects, serves, and empowers wounded warriors. Read more at http://newsroom.woundedwarriorproject.org/about-us. SOURCE Wounded Warrior Project Related Links http://www.woundedwarriorproject.org In a statement, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said the action of the Indian side amounts to that of "irresponsibility and recklessness." By Press Trust of India: China today said India should show through deeds its willingness to maintain peace at the border and claimed that 48 Indian soldiers were at Doklam area backed by a "large number" of troops at the border to halt Chinese attempts to build a road on its side of the boundary. In a statement, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said the action of the Indian side amounts to that of "irresponsibility and recklessness." advertisement He said that until yesterday, "there were 48 Indian soldiers and one bulldozer" in Doklam area, describing it as illegal intrusion into Chinese territory. India, however, says that the area belongs to Bhutan. "In addition, there are still a large number of Indian armed forces congregating on the boundary and on the Indian side of the boundary," Geng said. "No matter how many Indian border troops illegally trespassed the boundary and still stay in the Chinese territory, it will not alter the nature of severely violating China's territorial integrity and contravening the UN Charter. This incident is illegal under the international law. The Indian side should bear corresponding responsibilities," the spokesman said. WHAT DID THE FOREIGN MINISTRY SAY? The Foreign Ministry had issued a 15-page fact sheet yesterday with maps and other details about the standoff since it began on June 16, saying 40 Indian troops stayed at Doklam till July end. Geng repeated once again today that on June 18 about 270 Indian troops "advanced more than 100 meters into the Chinese territory to obstruct the road building of the Chinese side."Reacting to yesterday's External Affairs Ministry statement that the peace and tranquillity of the India-China boundary constitutes the important prerequisite for the smooth development of bilateral relations, Geng said India should also show its words in "deeds". "Indian side is always keeping 'peace' on the tip of its tongue. But we should not only listen to its words but also heed its deeds," Geng said in the statement. It also accused India of sending troops to halt the road work without responding to advance notice about China's plans to build the road given twice earlier on May 18 and June 8. "However, the Indian side didn't make any response to the Chinese side through any channel for over one month. Instead, it flagrantly dispatched armed forces carrying equipment to illegally cross the boundary to obstruct China's road building. This is by no means for peace," it said. "The Indian border troops still illegally stay on the Chinese territory. Moreover, the Indian side is building roads, hoarding supplies and deploying a large number of armed forces on the Indian side of the boundary. This is by no means for peace," it said, claiming that it is "irrefutable" that the Indian troops illegally trespassed into the Chinese area. advertisement "Under such circumstances, instead of deeply reflecting on its mistakes, the Indian side fabricated such sheer fallacies as the so-called 'security concerns', the 'issue of tri-junction' and 'at the request of Bhutan' as excuses to justify its wrongdoing," it said. Referring to its diplomatic protests made in this regard, the statement said the "Indian side, rather than withdraw its trespassing troops and equipment, made unreasonable demands to China which demonstrated its lack of sincerity for resolving the incident. This is by no means for peace." "If the Indian side truly cherish peace, what it should do is to immediately pull back the trespassing border troops to the Indian side of the boundary," Geng said. He said building a road was a normal activity of China on its own territory which is completely lawful and legitimate. Also Read : Sushma Swaraj rebuttal in Rajya Sabha: On Doklam, India's roadmap is peace with China, not war What do I call you, Superwoman? God? Ailing Pakistani woman thanks Sushma Swaraj after getting visa advertisement Also Watch : Wisdom not war is in diplomacy: Sushma Swaraj in Rajya Sabha --- ENDS --- New Delhi, July 29 : The Enforcement Directorate (ED) has attached Rs 300 crore assets of Rose Valley group in its ongoing probe against the chit fund company for money laundering, an official said on Saturday. The attached properties include six hotels in West Bengal, Assam and Bihar, 17 acres of an amusement park in Tripura, office space of 146,364 square feet in Kolkata, 11,445 square feet land in Bhubaneswar, 13 pieces of land, three flats along-with garage space acquired by the company in one of the best residential society of Kolkata. "The attached properties of Rose Valley group of companies and its Chairman Gautam Kundu worth book value of Rs 113.76 crore and having market value of around Rs 300 crore," an ED statement said. The chit fund company is now under the scanner of the ED and the Central Bureau of Investigation, and its sole proprietor and Chairman Gautam Kundu was arrested in Kolkata in March 2015 and is still in judicial Custody. The ED investigation revealed that Rose Valley group of companies collected more than Rs 17,000 crore from the public at large throughout India by luring depositors with false promise of high return or interest on their deposits. "Around Rs 8,600 crore remain outstanding to the public by the company which diverted and siphoned the amount through cheating and has no real business to repay this amount," an ED official said. The official said the ED had earlier attached Rose Valley's property having market value of around Rs 1,650 crore which includes several hotels, vehicles, land and cash amounting to around Rs 350 crore. "With this attachment, the total market value of properties attached in Rose Valley group of company cases has reached around Rs 1,950 crore," he added. New Delhi, July 31 : Breaking his silence on the JD-U's tie-up with the BJP in Bihar, Janata Dal-United leader Sharad Yadav on Monday described it as "unfortunate" and said he did not agree with the decision taken by Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar. "I don't agree with the decision in Bihar. It is unfortunate," Yadav told reporters outside Parliament. "The mandate of the people (in Bihar in 2015) was not for this," the Rajya Sabha member said on Nitish Kumar's decision to break the JD-U's alliance with the Grand Alliance of the RJD and the Congress in the state. After the unexpected break-up, Nitish Kumar aligned again with the Bharatiya Janata Party and formed a coalition government on July 27. The decision had apparently upset Sharad Yadav, a former President of the JD-U who reportedly complained to party colleagues that Nitish Kumar did not consult him before deciding to embrace the BJP. Guwahati, Aug 1 : Tension gripped parts of Assam after two unidentified assailants shot dead Lafikul Islam, president of the All Bodoland Minority Students' Union (ABMSU), on Tuesday afternoon. Police said two motorcycle-borne assailants shot at Lafikul in Basugaon area in Kokrajhar district around 3.30 p.m. from close range. He was immediately taken to a hospital, where he was declared brought dead. Two people have been detained so far in this connection. Later in the day, ABMSU supporters blocked roads by burning tyres and shouted slogans in Basugaon and other adjoining areas, protesting the killing. Leader of Opposition in the Assam Legislative Assembly Debabrata Saikia condemned the murder and termed it "a failure on the part of the state government to maintain law and order". "Late Islam boldly raised his voice against various injustice meted out to people living in Bodoland Territorial Areas Districts by the government as well as by a section of people," said Saikia, while demanding action against the assailants. Guwahati, Aug 1 : Tension gripped parts of Assam after two unidentified assailants shot dead Lafikul Islam, President of the All Bodoland Minority Students' Union (ABMSU), on Tuesday afternoon. Police said two motorcycle-riding assailants shot at Lafikul in Basugaon area in Kokrajhar district around 3.30 p.m. from a close range. He was immediately taken to a hospital, where he was declared brought dead. Two persons have been detained so far in this connection. Later in the day, ABMSU supporters blocked roads by burning tyres and shouted slogans in Basugaon and other adjoining areas, protesting the killing. Leader of Opposition in the Assam assembly Debabrata Saikia condemned the student leader's murder and termed it "a failure on the part of the state government to maintain law and order". "Late Islam boldly raised his voice against the injustice meted out to people living in Bodoland Territorial Areas Districts by the government as well as by a section of people," said Saikia while demanding action against the assailants. Meanwhile, Assam Chief Minister Sarbananda Sonowal held a high-level meeting with civil and police administration at his office chamber in Janata Bhawan in the evening and asked the authorities to launch a manhunt to nab the culprits behind the killing. He asked Director General of Police Mukesh Sahay to rush to Kokrajhar to review the situation and initiate investigations to nab the killers within 24 hours. Sonowal also asked the Deputy Commissioner of Kokrajhar to maintain vigil on the situation, and to ensure peace and order in the district. The Chief Minister also asked Special DGP Kula Saika to rush to Udalguri and assess the situation. Cartagena (Colombia), Aug 2 : Mineral exploitation, infrastructure development and changes in agricultural practices are severely threatening the survival of the black-necked crane that is endemic to the Tibetan Plateau in the Himalayas, says a new international study. It calls for effective and powerful conservation measures by Chinese authorities to maintain unharmed the habitat of the crane, an Alpine species that breeds in the extensive landscape of high Central Asia, including Ladakh in India, whose global population is estimated at around 10,000. Owing to the Tibetan Plateau's environmental inaccessibility to comprehensive field research, the black-necked crane, revered as a "spiritual bird" in Tibetan Buddhism, remains the world's least-studied crane species. Under China's Western Development Scheme, many critical but unassessed human activities are pervasive in crane's breeding habitat, says the study, "Machine Learning Model Analysis of Breeding Habitats for the Black-necked Crane in Central Asian Uplands under Anthropogenic Pressures", published by Springer Nature last month. However, it says, deficient knowledge on these threats are widely overlooked, which greatly constrains current research and regional conservation activities. The study was conducted by a team of researchers led by Xuesong Han of the College of Nature Conservation in Beijing Forestry University. Falk Huettmann of the US Department of Biology and Wildlife in the Institute of Arctic Biology of the University of Alaska, Fairbanks, was also associated with the study. "The rapid development in the Tibetan Plateau, especially water conservancy projects and mining, is a big threat for the survival of black-necked cranes and other endemic species," Huettmann, a wildlife ecologist specialising in macro-ecology and global conservation, told IANS on the sidelines of the 28th International Congress for Conservation Biology (ICCB 2017) in this Colombian city. The human interference index is quite high in the Tibetan Plateau region, he added. Quoting China's National Bureau of Statistics, the study says the overall gross domestic product of industry across the five administration regions increased by 356.7 per cent. Such economic growth can only be established on aggravating environmental reforms and these have not been captured by the human interference index. The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) classifies the black-necked crane, the flagship species in Tibetan Alpine wetland ecosystems, as "vulnerable" because of its decreasing global population of 10,070 to 10,970. The northern parts of the Hengduan Mountains and the southeastern Tibet Valley, the northern side of the middle Kunlun Mountains, parts of the Pamir Plateau, the northern Pakistan Highlands and the western Hindu Kush are its main potential breeding areas. The researchers also attribute the decline of the cranes to the change in cropping patterns and rise in population of feral dogs. They observed their breeding habitats are commonly fragmented by fences in Zhaguo in Tibet, which prevent chicks from escaping from predation by the Tibetan foxes or dogs. Highland barley was traditionally planted in the middle and lower reaches of the Brahmaputra river. However, the the government changed the land use from crane-edible barley plantations to "crane-unbeneficial" but highly-profitable cash crops such as rapeseed. The study points out that the sown area increased by 186.9 per cent in 2005 compared with that in 1987. The massive Han Chinese migration for constructing tourism and affiliated infrastructure is especially serious. Likewise, the large-scale construction of water conservancy projects -- nine large hydro power projects are scheduled or already constructed on the Brahmaputra and Mekong rivers, the potential breeding area of the cranes. In contrast to the Tibetan nomads, the hunting traditions of the local Uygur people also severely threaten the survival of cranes and other wildlife, says the study. In summer, the black-necked crane migrates to the eastern Pamir, which in recent decades has been affected by frequent military activities, rampant terrorism and a massive Afghan refugee flow into northern Pakistan. The researchers propose that threats and their links to the western development of China must be assessed for the long-term maintenance of the endangered crane species and other wildlife on the fragile Tibetan Plateau. (Vishal Gulati was in Cartagena for the Internews' Earth Journalism Network Biodiversity Fellowship Programme at the International Congress for Conservation Biology. He can be reached at vishal.g@ians.in) Tura (Meghalaya), Aug 2 : A bullet-riddled body was found on Wednesday near the India-Bangladesh border in Meghalaya, police said. The victim was identified as Olget R. Marak, 53. He was gunned down in the early hours on Wednesday by Garo National Liberation Army (GNLA) militants near Dambuk area in South Garo Hills district, the police said. "Four armed GNLA militants called Marak out of his house at around 4 a.m. on a pretext," Abraham T. Sangma, the district police chief told IANS. They then shot Marak in the head, chest, legs and hand. The militant also pasted a note near the body accusing Marak of being a police informer. A manhunt was launched to nab the killers. New Delhi, Aug 2 : Two senior US officials, during a visit to India, have reiterated US President Donald Trump and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi's commitment to expand and deepen the strategic partnership between the two countries, the US Embassy said on Wednesday. According to a statement issued by the US Embassy, Deputy Assistant to the President and National Security Council Senior Director for South and Central Asia Lisa Curtis and Acting Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asian Affairs and Acting Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan Alice Wells travelled to India from July 31 to August 1. During their visit, they spoke at the inaugural India-US Forum and met Foreign Secretary S. Jaishankar, National Security Advisor Doval, other senior government officials as well as thought leaders, and business executives. "In their meetings, Deputy Assistant to the President Curtis and Ambassador Wells reiterated President Trump and Prime Minister Modi's commitment to expand and deepen the strategic partnership between our countries and advance common objectives such as combatting terrorist threats, promoting security and stability across the Indo-Pacific region, increasing free and fair trade, and strengthening energy linkages," the statement said. "Both looked forward to maintaining the positive momentum of the bilateral relationship following Prime Minister Modi's successful visit to Washington in June," it added. The statement came after Indian officials on Wednesday had responded to Beijing's claims that the number of Indian troops in Doklam had decreased from over 400 to 40, with officials saying around 350 Indian troops remained in the area. By Ananth Krishnan: China on Thursday in yet another statement hit back at India over the Doklam standoff, saying only 48 Indian troops and one bulldozer were at the disputed area as of August 2. The statement came after Indian officials on Wednesday had responded to Beijing's claims that the number of Indian troops in Doklam had decreased from over 400 to 40, with officials saying around 350 Indian troops remained in the area. advertisement On Thursday, the Chinese Foreign Ministry said in a fresh statement, "As of August 2, there were still 48 Indian border troops and one bulldozer illegally staying in the Chinese territory. In addition, there are still a large number of Indian armed forces congregating on the boundary and on the Indian side of the boundary." China also reiterated that it had informed India on road construction through the border meeting mechanism on May 18 and June 8, and said "the Indian side didn't make any response". "The action of the Indian side amounts to that of irresponsibility and recklessness," the statement from spokesperson Geng Shuang added. "No matter how many Indian border troops illegally trespassed the boundary and still stay in the Chinese territory, it will not alter the nature of severely violating China's territorial integrity and contravening the UN Charter. This incident is illegal under the international law. The Indian side should bear corresponding responsibilities." The statement also sharply responded to India's Ministry of External Affairs calling for maintaining peace and tranquility. "The Indian side is always keeping 'peace' on the tip of its tongue," it said. "But we should not only listen to its words but also heed its deeds," it added, saying India had "flagrantly dispatched armed forces carrying equipment to illegally cross the boundary to obstruct China's road building." "This is by no means for peace," the statement said. It added that "rather than withdraw its trespassing troops and equipment", India had "made unreasonable demands to China which demonstrated its lack of sincerity for resolving the incident". "This is by no means for peace," the statement said. "If the Indian side truly cherish peace, what it should do is to immediately pull back the trespassing border troops to the Indian side of the boundary." ALSO READ: Doklam standoff: For smooth relations with China, India wants peace, tranquillity along border China-India spat over Doklam border standoff casts shadow ahead of BRICS summit In 15-page Doklam statement, China says India was informed of road construction ALSO WATCH: Doklam standoff: Will conflict with India be disastrous for China? --- ENDS --- advertisement Kolkata, Aug 2 : The flood situation in West Bengal is improving, but the toll due to the deluge in the state has risen to 50, as four more deaths were reported, a state government official said on Wednesday. "Four deaths have been reported in 24 hours. The death toll has now reached 50," said the Disaster Management Department official. As many as 26 persons drowned, seven died of snakebites, six due to lightning strikes, five in wall collapses, four were electrocuted, and two died in boat capsizes, the official said. As the water level had receded in most places, the number of relief camps has now been brought down to 151, he added. In all, 27 lakh persons were affected in 105 blocks of 14 districts of West Bengal after a monsoon downpour and release of water from the Damodar Valley Corporation dams, he said. Washington, Aug 3 : The Pentagon said on Wednesday that two US servicemen were killed in Afghanistan when their convoy was attacked. "I can confirm that two US servicemen were killed in action in Kandahar, Afghanistan, when their convoy came under attack," Pentagon spokesman Jeff Davis told reporters, Xinhua news agency reported. "US Forces Afghanistan will provide additional information as it becomes available," he added. The casualties came as US President Donald Trump was mulling over increasing US troops there. Former US President Barack Obama had planned to reduce the current number of 9,800 US troops in Afghanistan to around 5,500 by the end of 2015 and withdraw all troops by the end of 2016 when his presidency came to an end. However, given the deteriorating security situation in Afghanistan, the Obama administration repeatedly postponed the withdrawal. Currently, there are about 8,400 US troops and another 5,000 forces of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) on the ground in Afghanistan to train and assist the Afghan forces against the Taliban, and conduct counter-terrorism missions. The new casualties also came at a time when senior US officials warned of dire security situation in Afghanistan. In a congressional hearing in June, US Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said that United States was still "not winning" the longest US war in Afghanistan. US National Intelligence Director Dan Coats also warned in May that the security situation in Afghanistan would most likely deteriorate in the future even if the United States and its allies offer more military aid. United Nations, Aug 3 : The United Nations Security Council (UNSC) has unanimously adopted a resolution aimed at preventing terrorists from acquiring weapons, particularly small arms and light weapons. The Council on Wednesday "strongly condemned" the continued flow of weapons, military equipment, unmanned aircraft systems (UASs) and their components, and improvised explosive device (IED) components to and between the Islamic State, Al-Qaida, their affiliates, and associated groups, illegal armed groups and criminals, Xinhua reported. The 15-member body said the "destabilizing accumulation and misuse" of weapons "continue to pose threats to international peace and security and cause significant loss of life". UN member states were encouraged to prevent and disrupt procurement networks for weapons, systems and components between and among such groups and entities. Member states were specifically urged to ensure the ability to take appropriate legal actions against those who are knowingly engaged in providing terrorists with weapons and to ensure proper physical security and management for stockpiles of small arms and light weapons. These states were also urged to strengthen their judicial, law enforcement and border-control capacities, and develop their capabilities to investigate arms-trafficking networks in order to address the link between transnational organized crime and terrorism. Lisbon, Aug 3 : Two persons were killed when a small plane crash landed on a beach in Portugal, the media reported. Citing Portuguese Lusa News Agency, Xinhua reported that the plane, a Cessna 152, was on a training flight on Wednesday with a student and a 56-year-old senior instructor with "high experience and thousands of hours of flying", aviation school Aerocondor said in a statement. The plane crash landed at Sao Joao beach in Costa de Caparica in Almada, around 30 km from Lisbon. The school said that it will collaborate with the authorities in finding out the causes of the accident while conveying their condolences to the families of the two victims -- an eight-year-old girl and a 56-year-old man without family relationship. A 45-year-old woman sustained mild injuries and was taken to a hospital. The two crew members of the plane did not suffer any injury and were taken away by police for questioning. The Office of Prevention and Investigation of Accidents with Aircraft and Rail Accidents said a team from the organisation has started the investigation into the incident. Moscow, Aug 3 : The US has declared a full-scale trade war against Russia with the enactment of a new sanctions bill, said Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev. "The hope of improving our relations with the new US administration has come to an end," said Medvedev on Facebook on Wednesday, commenting on the signing of the bill by US President Donald Trump, Xinhua news agency reported. The bill was approved overwhelmingly early this month by the US Congress despite the Trump administration calling on lawmakers to grant the White House "flexibility" in dealing with Russia. The Trump administration demonstrated "complete impotence, in the most humiliating manner, transferring executive powers to Congress", said Medvedev. "The US establishment completely outplayed Trump. The President is not happy with the new sanctions, but he can not refuse to sign the law," said the Russian prime minister. According to him, the interests of US businesses are almost ignored, and anti-Russian hysteria has become a key part of US foreign and domestic policy. The sanction regime is codified and will last for decades as the new law allows the Congress to limit the President's power to lift anti-Russian measures, said Medvedev. "Therefore, the relationship between Russia and the United States will be extremely tense, regardless of the composition of the Congress or the personality of the President," he said. Against such a backdrop, Russia will continue to work quietly on economic and social development, count primarily on itself and reduce reliance on imports from the West, he said. Also on Wednesday, the Russian Foreign Ministry regretted the enactment of the bill and blasted the new sanctions as "short-sighted and even dangerous". Nevertheless, the ministry said in a statement that Russia remains open to cooperation with the United States in various areas, including on the settlement of regional conflicts. "However, fruitful cooperation is possible only if US politicians overcome their own delusions and cease to perceive the world around them through a reality-distorting prism of 'American exclusiveness'," said the ministry. In retaliation for the new US sanctions, Russian President Vladimir Putin on Sunday announced a decision to reduce the US diplomatic staff in Russia by 755 people by September 1. "Naturally, we reserve the right to take additional countermeasures," said the Foreign Ministry statement. Tehran, Aug 3 : Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Thursday endorsed a second term for Hassan Rouhani as the country's President. In a ceremony broadcast live on state television, Khamenei gave his official approval for Rouhani, reports Xinhua news agency. Rouhani won a landslide victory on May 19 by garnering 57 per cent of the ballots. His conservative rival Ebrahim Raisi came second with 38.5 per cent. Rouhani's key political achievement during the past four years in office was signing a nuclear deal with six major world powers -- UK, China, France, Germany, Russia and the US -- which put an end to a decade-long dispute over the country's nuclear programme. The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) was signed in July 2015 and was implemented in January 2016. Rouhani will take oath in parliament on Saturday. Kathmandu, Aug 3 : Nepali Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba on Thursday congratulated is newly appointed Pakistani counterpart, Shahid Khaqan Abbasi. In the message, Deuba expressed his willingness to work closely with Abbasi to further strengthen relations between the two South Asian countries, reports Xinhua news agency. On Tuesday, Abbasi, a Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) leader, was elected the country's 18th Prime Minister, after he won the National Assembly election with a majority vote, five days after the Supreme Court disqualified his predecessor, Nawaz Sharif. Patna, Aug 3 : Bihar's ruling JD-U on Thursday targeted former party President Sharad Yadav for not supporting Chief Minister Nitish Kumar's new alliance with the BJP and accused him of compromising with corruption. "Sharad Yadav is compromising with corruption by supporting the RJD and Congress-led 'Mahagathbandhan' in Bihar," JD-U chief spokesperson Sanjay Singh said here. He was asked about Rajya Sabha member Sharad Yadav's opposition to Nitish Kumar's decision to form a government with the Bharatiya Janata Party in Bihar after dumping the Grand Alliance with the RJD and the Congress. The spokesman raised questions about Sharad Yadav's decision to hold a seminar against communalism in New Delhi on August 17, two days ahead of the JD-U National Executive meeting in Patna. Most senior leaders of the Congress and Left and regional parties are likely to attend the seminar. Another JD-U spokesperson, Neeraj Kumar, said it was difficult to understand why Sharad Yadav was backing tainted leaders. This is first time JD-U leaders have launched a direct attack against Sharad Yadav since Nitish Kumar embraced the BJP. Sharad Yadav has said that Nitish Kumar's decision to ally with the BJP violated the mandate given by the people of Bihar in 2015. New Delhi, Aug 3 : The project to link Ken and Betwa rivers is ready for launch, the government told the Lok Sabha on Thursday. "The Ken-Betwa link is ready to take off any day... (Prime Minister Narendra) Modi ji has fulfilled Atal ji's dream," Water Resources Minister Uma Bharti said. The river interlinking project, which received Union Cabinet clearance in July 2014, was launched during the earlier National Democratic Alliance rule under the then Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee. Ken and Betwa rivers originate in Madhya Pradesh's Vindhya ranges and flow north to merge into the Yamuna river. "People are supporting the interlinking of rivers in the country. Rumours should not be spread about it. We have addressed the concerns of environmentalists," she said. The Indian Rivers Interlink aims to link Indian rivers through a network of reservoirs and canals to reduce persistent floods in some parts and acute water shortages in other parts of India. Environmentalists have raised concern since the project involves building of dams, canals, and reservoirs, fearing change in salinity, silt levels and other issues. Kochi, Aug 3 : The body of a Christian priest who was found dead under mysterious circumstances on Scotland on June 25 arrived here on Thursday. The body of Martin Xavier was received at the airport by his family and Church leaders. It was later taken to his hometown in Alappuzha. His funeral will be held on Friday. Xavier belonged to the CMI congregation of the Catholic Church and was ordained a priest in 2013. Since July 2016, he was in Scotland to pursue his PhD. He was also the parish priest of the St. Francis Xavier's Church in Scotland. He went missing in June. On June 25, his body was found on the Edinburgh seashore. By PTI: (Eds: With additional inputs) Bhubaneswar, Aug 3 (PTI) Five persons, including four of a family, were charred to death when a major fire broke out in their house here early this morning, officials said. The victims were asleep when the fire broke out and police and fire brigade were informed by the neighbours who noticed thick smoke billowing out of the building at Budheswari Colony in the city. advertisement The fire brigade personnel rescued six people from the fire-engulfed house of Satpal Singh, businessman and owner of a well-known hotel here, and rushed them to hospital, Deputy Fire Officer Ramesh Chandra Majhi said. Five persons -- four of them Singhs family members and their domestic help -- due to burns and suffocation as the blaze severely affected the first and second floors of the building, police and fire brigade officials said. They were rushed to the hospital where they were declared brought dead, Capital Hospital director C R Das said, adding that the post mortem of the bodies was conducted. The condition of another male family member, who too suffered burn injuries, was stable, the hospital sources said. The deceased were identified as Singhs younger son, daughter-in-law, grand daughter, grandson and the house maid, the police said. Majhi said the flame appeared to have spread rapidly apparently due to the woodwork in the building. Even the stairs had wooden panel which aided the quick spread of fire and made rescue operation difficult. The victims were pulled out of the building through the window with the help of a ladder, he said. While electrical short circuit is suspected to be the reason behind the fire, the exact cause will be ascertained after a thorough probe, he said. Police and fire brigade are investigating the matter. PTI SKN KK KIS --- ENDS --- New Delhi, Aug 3 : The opposition's vice-presidential candidate Gopalkrishna Gandhi says that he is deeply disturbed over increase in bigotry and suppression of dissent under the Modi government. Gandhi, 72, who faces the ruling National Democratic Alliance's candidate M. Venkaiah Naidu in the Aug 5 vice-presidential election, also feels that there is need to be vigilant against cow vigilantism. "I am deeply disturbed over the increase in bigotry, intolerance and the direct and indirect suppression of dissent. This is not democratic. This is not republican," Gandhi said in an interview to IANS. Answering a query on incidents of cow vigilantism, Gandhi said, "Be vigilant against vigilantism, our former President said. I believe that." Gandhi said the objective of his contesting elections was to offer a choice to the electors worthy of their attention. "And to respond to the invitation from several parties to contest as an independent candidate standing for the values of our republican constitution." Asked about his assessment of Venkaiah Naidu, who is seen to have a clear edge in the election in which MPs vote through secret ballot, Gandhi said: "He (Naidu) is a veteran political leader with vast experience of public affairs." Gandhi, who is a former civil servant, diplomat and governor, said he had written to the NDA MPs saying that he was not asking for their votes but seeking their "kind attention" for his candidature. "I have requested them to look upon me not as an adversary but a fellow citizen who believes in our country's diversity and pluralism and in the criticality of democratic rights," he said. On his prospects in the vice-presidential election, Gandhi said: "Some contests are valuable in themselves, irrespective of winning or losing." Asked about the role he sees for himself if does not win the election, Gandhi said: "Life is larger than elections." Gandhi did not comment on his nephew Shrikrishna Kulkarni writing an open letter against his nomination as candidate of Congress and some other major opposition parties. Asked about the prospects of the opposition in the 2019 general election, Gandhi said people will use the opportunity wisely and noted that every election conducted in freedom and with fairness is in itself a victory. To a question about the possibility of Rahul Gandhi being the pivot of opposition unity in 2019 elections, Gandhi said the people were their own pivot. Asked what "nationalism" meant to him, Gandhi said nationalism and patriotism were natural instincts and their manipulation was outrageous. Gandhi also said he agreed with former President Pranab Mukherjee on his advice against taking the ordinance route repeatedly and against disruptions in the parliament. Kolkata, Aug 3 : The British Council India is in talks with the Ministry Of Development Of North Eastern Region (DoNER) to set up teacher training programmes in the northeast, its director said here on Thursday. "We are in close negotiations with DoNER to develop large-scale teacher training programmes in the northeast and also some cultural programmes. We are very excited about the opportunities to work with DoNER and state governments to bring some of the expertise that we have in other places," Alan Gemmell, Director, British Council India, told the media here. "For example, in Andhra Pradesh we launched a programme to train one lakh learners in English and skills training. We hope to bring some of those outcomes to the northeast," he said. Gemmell said the preferred model is to develop capacity of teachers in the region. "Find teachers that can become master trainers and train them and build the capacity of teachers in the region. We have signed MoU with the government in Sikkim to do the teacher training and we are very keen to support the aspirations of state governments and also DoNER to ensure there are more opportunities for young people in northeast," he said. The diplomat also stressed on bringing digital English language content to learners in northeast. "We are particularly interested in working with DoNER to respond to the aspirations and ambitions of the young people in the states, to do English teaching and also provide skills training and cultural exchange, to help people get better jobs... ready to take up job opportunities." Gemmell announced a collaboration with Sangit Kala Mandir for two art shows in Kolkata as part of UK India Year of Culture 2017. The shows -- the screening of silent film "Shiraz" and performance by Wayne McGregor Company -- amalgamate rich cultural traditions with cutting edge technology. "Shiraz" screening will be accompanied by live performance of a specially commissioned score by composer Anoushka Shankar and her orchestra. New Delhi, Aug 3 : Twenty-two of the 40 central universities filled their student quota under the Other Backward Classes (OBCs) category during 2015-16, the government told the Rajya Sabha on Thursday. "As per the information available with the HRD Ministry, during 2015-16, 22 out of 40 central universities successfully achieved the prescribed percentage of student intake from the OBCs," Minister of State for Human Resource Development Mahendra Nath Pandey said in a written reply. He said some universities could not fill seats under the prescribed quota due to minority status or their location in tribal areas like the northeast. These include the Aligarh Muslim University, Jamia Milia University, Mizoram University, Nagaland University and North Eastern Hill University, he said. He said all Indian Institutes of Technology, National Institutes of Technology, and Indian Institutes of Information Technology were able to fill their share of seats reserved for OBCs, while some even exceeded the quota. "Further, 13 of the 19 Indian Institutes of Management and 22 of the 31 National Institutes of Technology recorded more than the stipulated 27 per cent student intake in this category," he said. Srinagar, Aug 3 : Trade across the Line of Control (LoC) and the peace bus service between India and Pakistan-administered Kashmir will resume next week, officials said. Officials at Salamabad trade facilitation centre near Uri town said authorities on the two sides of the LoC have agreed to resume both cross-LoC trade and the peace bus service between Srinagar and Muzaffarabad next week. "Cross LoC trade will start on Monday while the 'Carvan-e-Aman' (Caravan of Peace) bus service between Srinagar and Muzaffarabad will be resumed on Tuesday next week," officials said here. The cross-LoC trade was suspended following heightened tensions between the Indian and Pakistan armies on the LoC and recovery of 66 kg of heroin from a Muzaffarabad-based vehicle on July 21 on the Indian side. The vehicle's driver, Muhammad Yusuf Shah, belonging to Chakote near Muzaffarabad was arrested by police and customs officials at Salamabad trade facilitation centre. State Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti had pitched strongly in favour of resumption of cross-LoC trade asserting that the CBM was essential to bring down tensions between the two neighbouring countries. Islamabad, Aug 3 : The political turmoil in Pakistan refuses to subside, with new twists and turns emerging every day. In a jolt to Prime Minister-designate Shehbaz Sharif, the poll panel has barred him from campaigning for the upcoming bypolls for the Lahore National Assembly-120 seat, vacated by his elder brother Nawaz Sharif last week. According to the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) code of conduct that came into effect immediately after notification for the election, constitutional dignitaries, including the President, the Prime Minister, Chairman and Deputy Chairman of the Senate as well as Chief Ministers cannot visit the area of any constituency that is going to polls. This code of conduct bars Shehbaz Sharif, who is the Chief Minister of Punjab, from taking part in his own prime ministerial poll campaign as PML-N candidate. The National Assembly-120 seat fell vacant after the Supreme Court unseated Nawaz Sharif as Prime Minister in the Panama Papers case. In a related development, the PML-N consultative meetings concluded without the party agreeing on the names of new cabinet members or a candidate to contest the Lahore by-poll, due in September. There were also reports that the party was re-evaluating its strategy in Punjab, amid fears that it could lose its grip on the province, with Shehbaz in Islamabad. Punjab is the party's electoral base. The PML-N leaders in Punjab have admitted to their apprehensions over Chief Minister Shehbaz Sharif's elevation as Prime Minister. "Some party leaders think Punjab is very important for the party and Shehbaz Sharif should continue serving here, while others want to see him as Prime Minister," Punjab government spokesperson Malik Ahmad said. A senior official of the ECP said a clear picture would emerge after the submission of nomination papers by Shehbaz Sharif for the by-election. "This is a unique situation because if the Chief Minister of Punjab files nomination papers, he will not be campaigning for somebody else but for himself and this right can in no way be taken away from him." Shehbaz, incumbent Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi and Nawaz held a three-hour-long meeting, but no major decisions were taken. When asked if the party had decided on a candidate for the upcoming by-election, interim Prime Minister Abbasi said that the issue came up for discussion, but added that there was still a lot of time for consultation on the matter. The ECP has announced that nomination papers for the NA-120 by-poll to be held on September 17 must be filed by August 12. The Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf party has decided on Yasmin Rashid as its candidate for the electoral contest fort NA-120 seat. New Delhi, Aug 3 : A delegation of village chieftains from Nagaland met Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday and expressed hope that he will take the Naga peace process to a logical conclusion. An official release said the 15-member delegation from Nagaland Gaon Burahs (village chieftains) Federation called on the Prime Minister and expressed wholehearted support for the Naga peace process. "They also expressed the hope that the Prime Minister will take this process to its logical conclusion, and said that all civil society organisations and tribes have stated their desire for peace," the release added. Modi said he was happy to receive the delegation and to note that they came with a message of peace. The Nagaland GB Federation is a body of Gaon Burahs of all the Naga villages. Islamabad, Aug 3 : A senior American diplomat dealing with Afghanistan on Thursday held talks with Pakistani officials in Islamabad and discussed the "deteriorating security situation in Afghanistan", the Foreign Ministry said. The US Acting Under Secretary of State and Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, Ambassador Alice Wells, arrived in Islamabad at a time when President Trump's administration was in the process of finalising review on Afghanistan. The State Department says Alice Wells was paying introductory visit to Pakistan, India and Afghanistan to "discuss US relations with the region" and to meet US officials to "learn more about their efforts to advance US prosperity and security across the region." The US official met Pakistan's Foreign Secretary Tehmina Janjua and discussed the entire gamut of bilateral relations and regional issues, Foreign Ministry spokesman Nafees Zakaria said at his weekly briefing. Ambassador Alice Wells has recently assumed charge as Acting Assistant Secretary for South and Central Asian Affairs and Acting Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan. Her visit is taking place against the backdrop of US policy review on Afghanistan in regional perspective. "We consider it an important visit, which provides us an opportunity to discuss bilateral relation and share our perspectives on Afghanistan and the broader issues related to the region," the Pakistani spokesman said. He said all issues were discussed, including the outstanding issue of Jammu and Kashmir, as well as comprehensive discussions in the context of situation in Afghanistan. "We forcefully took up the matter of Indian atrocities and grave human rights violations committed by Indian occupation forces on defenceless Kashmiris," Zakaria said. To a question about the US review, he said Pakistan strongly believes that peace in Afghanistan is extremely important for the security of the entire region, more so, for the Afghans. "It is important that all efforts should be geared towards a politically negotiated settlement under an Afghan-owned and Afghan-led peace process. Pakistan remains ready to extend full assistance to that end," the spokesman said. Baghdad, Aug 3 : Iraq's hardliner Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr on Thursday called Iraqi people to hold massive demonstrations across Iraq on Friday against wide spread corruption. "I wish the people are aware of what corrupt politicians are engaged with a dirty scheme to restore corruption which will not only control the people's food, but also their necks and blood. So that they would stage demonstration by millions to determine their fate," Sadr was q uoted by Xinhua. Sadr pointed out that the "sectarian storm", which engulfed the Iraqi people after the US-led invasion in 2003, made many Iraqis to close their eyes about what the politicians and the parliament blocs were doing. He said the politicians, who were seen as corrupts by many Iraqis, are planning to bring a new electoral commission and to approve an election law for the provincial elections that would take into account the interests of the same old large parliamentary blocs, according to the statement. Sadr demanded "a mass demonstration tomorrow (Friday) in Tahrir Square (In central Baghdad) and in the provinces. Demonstrations that will reveal the will of the people." Sadr's comments came two days after the parliament passed 21 articles of the draft of the coming provincial elections slated for 2018, including an article stating Saint-Lague system in counting the votes for the provincial councils' seats. Sadr and many political parties see the counting method is serving the interests of the large political parties. Sadr followers held many massive rallies in the past few years. In one occasion, the protesters broke into part of the Green Zone, including storming the parliament building. The popular protests forced Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi to make some reforms, which were aimed at confronting the country's economic crisis due to the sharp decrease in oil prices in global markets at the time that the security forces were in full-combat with Islamic State terrorist group in the country. However, Abadi's reforms, first gained popular support, but with the passing of time the reforms fell short to convince demonstrators who demanded that Abadi be more aggressive against the political parties that benefited from corruption and could reverse the reforms to their own good. Kolkata, Aug 3 : West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Thursday alleged that the Centre was not aiding the state government to tackle the flood situation. "Flood waters have washed out away roads and bridges and damaged crops. The Centre is not helping... it is not doing anything (to alleviate the situation in Bengal)," Banerjee told the media here. The flood situation in West Bengal was improving, but the toll due to the deluge in the state has risen to 50. As many as 26 persons drowned, seven died of snakebites, six due to lightning strikes, five in wall collapses, four were electrocuted, and two died in boat capsizes. As the water level had receded in most places, the number of relief camps has now been brought down to 151. In all, 27 lakh persons were affected in 105 blocks of 14 districts of West Bengal after a monsoon downpour and release of water from the Damodar Valley Corporation dams, he said. Islamabad, Aug 3 : Pakistan said on Thursday that it was concerned about the growing activity and presence of the Islamic State in neighbouring Afghanistan. "Daesh (IS) appeared to have gained foothold in large swaths of ungoverned territories in that country. Regional countries are concerned over the situation in Afghanistan, which has been expressed during a number of meetings on Afghanistan under various initiatives," Foreign Ministry spokesman Nafees Zakaria said. The comments came weeks after the US defence department Pentagon said the US forces killed Abu Sayed, the chief of Islamic State - Khorasan Province in a strike on the group's headquarters in Kunar Province, Afghanistan on July 11. Abu Sayed was chosen to lead the group after Afghan and US forces killed former IS-K leaders Abdul Hasib and Hafiz Sayed Khan in April this year and July last year respectively. The Pakistani spokesman told weekly briefing that Pakistan will take all necessary measures to mitigate the "threat emanating from the presence of IS close to our borders on the Afghan side and to avoid any spillover to our territory." "Effective border controls and border management are imperative to curb cross-border movement of terrorists, drug and human smugglers. Pakistan stresses on effective border management," he said, adding that cross border terrorism has also been a matter of concern for both sides and that is why Pakistan is engaged in efforts involving effective border management. By PTI: infra projects New Delhi, Aug 3 (PTI) Union minister Nitin Gadkari today asked officials of environment, road and other ministries to expedite approvals holding back the ambitious Rs 12,000 crore Char Dham connectivity project. Chairing a meeting of group of ministers on infrastructure, Gadkari said 18 proposals of the ambitious Char Dham project were scuttled in absence of various clearances which cannot be tolerated as the decision to build the new alignment was taken after a major catastrophe in Uttarakhand. advertisement "There should not be any delay in the Rs 12,000-crore project for developing 900 km of National Highways in Uttarakhand for improving connectivity to Char Dham pilgrimage centres," Gadkari said during the meeting, as per officials who were present in the meeting. The meeting was attended by Coal and Power Minister Piyush Goyal, Environment Minister Harsh Vardhan, officials of various ministries, including Railways and Defence, as well Uttarakhand. Prime Minister Narendra Modi had laid the foundation stone of the ambitious Char Dham project last year. The project aims at improving connectivity to Char Dham pilgrimage centres -- Kedarnath, Badrinath, Gangotri and Yamunotri in the Himalayas. Uttarakhand government officials present during the meeting pointed out a notification by the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change declaring 40 square km area near river Bhagirathi as eco sensitive zone. Gadkari urged his forest counterpart to look into the matter as this was not only holding up Char Dham project but causing delays in Namami Gange and Border Road Projects as well, the officials said. Asking the environment and forest ministry to expedite clearances to 32 other highway projects, the Road, Highways and Shipping Minister also requested for exempting NHIDCL projects within 100 km of LoC or international boundaries from sending proposals to regional offices of MoEFCC, as in the case of Defence. The issue of transfer of Defence land to National Highways Authority of India at various places was also discussed in the meeting as five such cases are pending, the officials said. Asking Railway officials to expedite rail projects in Maharashtra, Gadkari said delays in infrastructure projects were causing socio-economic imbalances. Besides, the Railways was requested to provide 35 acres of land at Varanasi for intermodal station. A number of port projects including that of JNPT, Kandla and Kamrajar were also discussed during the meeting. PTI NAM MR --- ENDS --- New Delhi, Aug 4 : The Garo Hills State Movement Committee (GHSMC) on Thursday submitted a memorandum to Prime Minister Narendra Modi demanding creation of Garoland, to be carve out of tribal Garo inhabited areas in Meghalaya and Assam. The GHSMC -- a conglomeration of several Garo organisations, including the Garo National Council (GNC), a regional political party -- said that their demand was on the linguistic lines of the States Reorganisations Act, 1956. "Constitution has given a fundamental right under Article 29 (1) that those having a distinct language, script or culture can preserve the same," the committee stated in the memorandum, which was also submitted to President Ram Nath Kovind and Home Minister Rajnath Singh, among others. Stating that Garo people were unanimously demanding creation Garoland state, contiguous to state of Assam and Khasi Hills for Garo people, the GSHMC said: "We demand Garoland state to include original lands inhabiting by Garo people in Assam and Khasi Hills presently under Meghalaya." Reminding the Prime Minister of promised "Acche Din" for "Aam Admi" under the driving theme of "Sabka Sath-Sabka Vikas", the Committee said that they confidently looked forward to see "Garoland" state under Modi's "able leadership". Meghalaya became an autonomous state in 1971 and a full-fledged state on January 21, 1972. The GNC, one of the oldest regional political parties, has been demanding creation of Garoland for over two decades. However, it does not have any representatives in the 60-member Meghalaya Assembly. However, it has three members in the Garo Hills Autonomous District Council. On March 18, 2014, the Meghalaya Assembly had rejected a resolution for the creation of a separate "Garoland" state in Garo Hills in the western part of the state. New Delhi, Aug 4 : State-run oil marketing companies (OMCs) have hiked commissions paid to fuel pump dealers by up to 43 per cent for petrol and by up to 59 per cent for diesel, effective from the start of this month, Indian Oil Corp (IOC) has announced. Announcing the decision along with the company results for the first quarter of the current fiscal, IOC Chairman Sanjiv Singh told reporters here on Thursday that commission to petrol pump dealers was previously paid as fixed amount per litre and was uniform for all operators irrespective of their size. However, in view of the hardships of dealers selling less than the national average of 170 kilolitre of fuel per month, a graded formula has been decided, he said. "The dealers' margin for petrol and diesel has been revised with effect from August 1. It is approximately 9 per cent to 43 per cent in petrol and 11 per cent to 59 per cent in diesel," an IOC release said here. Noting that dealers' margin was last revised on March 31 of this year, the statement said: "The oil industry has approximately 9 lakh customer attendants working at petrol pumps, who will be benefited by this." "As a major part of the current revision, central minimum wages have been introduced for employees working at the petrol pumps, which are approximately 50 per cent higher, in lieu of State minimum wages," it added. Beijing, Aug 4 : China has released a list of industries that need to obtain licenses before discharging pollutants. The list, released on Thursday, specified the deadlines for stationary sources of pollution in 82 industries to get licenses and named sectors to be focal points of management in a statement by the Ministry of Environmental Protection, Xinhua news agency reported. Thermal power stations and paper-making enterprises were among the first required to operate with the permits, with more than 5,100 licenses already issued. From the second half of this year, 13 industries including the steel and chemical sectors must apply for the permits. All 82 industries should have licenses by 2020. By issuing the licenses, environmental authorities will specify the location and number of pollutant discharge outlets for companies, the method and direction of discharge, as well as set ceilings on the variety, concentration and amount of pollutants. Companies in breach of the policy may face fines up to 1 million yuan (about $150,000) or the suspension of operations. Actions that hamper supervision, such as the damaging of monitoring devices and failing to keep original monitoring records, will also be punished. China is fighting pollution and environmental degradation after decades of growth left the country with problems such as smog and contaminated soil. The central government has been stepping up supervision of environmental violations while setting detailed tasks to clean up polluted air, water and soil. BMW of Eugene We are very excited to add this terrific dealership to the Swickard Auto Group Swickard Auto Group is pleased to announce the completion of the purchase of BMW of Eugene, OR. The dealership is the third in the Pacific Northwest for Swickard Auto Group. The locally-owned company also owns and operates Mercedes-Benz of Wilsonville in Oregon and Epic Ford in Everett, WA. Jeff Swickard, President and CEO of Swickard Auto Group said, We are very excited to add this terrific dealership to the Swickard Auto Group. Our rapid expansion has been driven by finding strong dealerships and then making them better with our complete dedication to customer service and an exceptional dealership experience. Adam Murray has been named the new General Manager and Center Operator of BMW of Eugene. Mr. Murray, who has more than a dozen years with the BMW brand, said, Eugene is culturally and geographically rich and diverse. I am eager to roll up my sleeves and serve the Eugene customers with the customer care, product selection and attention to detail that they deserve. The dealership will expand vehicle inventory with a focus on luxury, driving performance and environmentally-friendly vehicles and improved service offerings to meet the growing demand for luxury vehicles in the greater Eugene area. We are thrilled to be aligned with the exceptional BMW brand and the outstanding vehicles in the BMW line up. Our commitment to service has helped make Mercedes-Benz of Wilsonville and Epic Ford two of the fastest growing dealerships in the Northwest, says Swickard. This purchase and the prestige of BMW will help us continue to grow. About Swickard Auto Group: Swickard Auto Group has owned and operated Mercedes-Benz of Wilsonville since May 2014, Epic Ford of Everett, WA since January 2017, and Eugene of BMW since June 2017. Led by Jeff Swickard, the Swickard Auto Group is focused on driving growth through exceptional customer service and dealership experiences. "Our partnership with SoftBank accelerates our goal of providing a suite of services to small businesses globally that is centered on real-time and persistent access to a wide variety of data... Kabbage Inc., a pioneering financial services, technology and data platform serving small businesses globally, announced today the agreement on a $250 million equity investment from a subsidiary of SoftBank Group Corp. (SoftBank) in Kabbage. This investment represents the largest equity raise in the online small business lending segment to date. The funding brings Kabbages total equity raised to nearly $500 million. With this investment, Kabbage will expand its lending products for small businesses and will explore non-lending products and services for these customers. The company will also use the funds to accelerate its SaaS platform business that powers online SMB lending for global banks. The closing of the investment is subject to regulatory and other customary closing conditions and is expected to be completed in third quarter 2017. Kabbage is a fully automated technology and data platform that provides access to funding directly to small businesses and powers lending for large global banks. Customers leverage this funding to build and grow their businesses, leading to the creation of more jobs and investment into local communities and the overall economy. The company currently operates in North America and Europe with plans to expand to Asia. SoftBank invests in market-leading companies that dramatically improve the customer experience and expand markets through breakthrough technology and data capabilities, said SoftBank Managing Director, David Thevenon. We invested in Kabbage because their unique automated lending platform leverages open data networks and best positions them to empower small businesses around the world. Since launching six years ago, Kabbage has consistently driven innovation in small business financing by: Developing the first and only fully automated underwriting and ongoing monitoring platform. Providing more than $3.5 billion in funding to small businesses. Serving more than 100,000 small businesses more than any other online small business lender. Maintaining 1.5 million live connections to customer data. Powering automated lending for three of the worlds top 50 global banks by asset size: ING, Santander and Scotiabank. Receiving prestigious industry awards for innovation, including: Forbes (Americas Most Promising Companies, FinTech 50), CB Insights (Fintech 250), CNBC (Disruptor 50), Inc. 500 (Americas Fastest-Growing Private Companies) and Fast Company (Most Innovative Companies in Finance). Our partnership with SoftBank accelerates our goal of providing a suite of services to small businesses globally that is centered on real-time and persistent access to a wide variety of data, said Rob Frohwein, co-founder and CEO of Kabbage. SoftBank's scale, global reach, relationships and unparalleled expertise in building transformative industry leaders make them an ideal partner for Kabbage. About Kabbage Kabbage Inc., headquartered in Atlanta, has pioneered a financial services data and technology platform to provide automated funding to small businesses in minutes. Kabbage leverages data generated through business activity such as accounting data, online sales, shipping and dozens of other sources to understand performance and deliver fast, flexible funding in real time. Kabbage is funded and backed by leading investors, including SoftBank Group Corp., BlueRun Ventures, Mohr Davidow Ventures, Thomvest Ventures, SoftBank Capital, Reverence Capital Partners, the UPS Strategic Enterprise Fund, ING, Santander InnoVentures, Scotiabank and TCW/Craton. All Kabbage U.S.-based loans are issued by Celtic Bank, a Utah-Chartered Industrial Bank, Member FDIC. For more information, please visit http://www.kabbage.com. About SoftBank SoftBank is a global technology player that aspires to drive the Information Revolution. SoftBank is comprised of the holding company SoftBank Group Corp. (TYO: 9984) and its global portfolio of companies, which includes advanced telecommunications, internet services, AI, smart robotics, IoT and clean energy technology providers. In September 2016, ARM Holdings plc, the world's leading semiconductor IP company, joined the SoftBank Group. To learn more, please visit http://www.SoftBank.jp/en. Media Contact Paul Bernardini Kabbage PR 618-420-1940 pbernardini(at)kabbage(dot)com Dr. Wenyong Wang, Ph.D., MBA has joined the University City Science Center as Vice President, Science & Technology. Dr. Wang will oversee the Science Centers programs for commercialization, startup investment and business incubation including QED, Phase 1 Ventures, the Digital Health Accelerator, and the Port business incubators. He will also be responsible for initiating, designing and developing new programs to further the Science Centers mission as a nucleus for innovation, entrepreneurship and technology commercialization. Dr. Wang was most recently Vice President, Business Development, for Adaptimmune LLC. Prior to joining Adaptimmune, Dr. Wang was Managing Director of Investment Banking at Evolution Life Science Partners. Wenyongs experience in the life sciences industry and financial sectors positions him well to leverage the accomplishments of the Science & Technology team and set a vision for the future of our business incubation and technology commercialization offerings, says Science Center President & CEO Stephen S. Tang, Ph.D., MBA. Dr. Wang has also served as Managing Director of Burrill Securities, and has held Director and Vice President positions at investment banks, Boenning & Scattergood, Inc. and Janney Montgomery Scott. In these roles, Dr. Wang leveraged his scientific expertise and business acumen to provide guidance to pharmaceutical and biotech clients seeking to enhance their portfolios and grow their businesses. Before joining the investment banking industry, Dr. Wang was a principal scientist in R&D with GlaxoSmithKline, conducting oncology and autoimmune research, and he oversaw two drug candidates from discovery through clinical development. Dr. Wang holds a Ph.D. in Organic Chemistry from the University of Pennsylvania and an MBA from Penn State University. About the Science Center Located in the heart of uCity Square, the Science Center is a mission-driven nonprofit organization that catalyzes and connects innovation to entrepreneurship and technology commercialization. For 50+ years, the Science Center has supported startups, research, and economic development in the life sciences, healthcare, physical sciences, and emerging technology sectors. As a result, graduate firms and current residents of the Science Centers incubator support one out of every 100 jobs in the Greater Philadelphia region and drive $13 billion in economic activity in the region annually. By providing resources and programming for any stage of a businesss lifecycle, the Science Center helps scientists, entrepreneurs and innovators take their concepts from idea to IPO and beyond. For more information about the Science Center, go to http://www.sciencecenter.org Idea Marketing Group is a growing Chicago web design and marketing company that serves clients in a variety of B2B and B2C industries. Chicago web design and marketing company Idea Marketing Group recently received the 2016 Small Business of the Year Award from the Yorkville Area Chamber of Commerce. The award was presented to Idea Founder and President Darren Fox at the Chambers Annual Dinner at Whitetail Ridge Country Club in Yorkville. This is such an amazing honor for the entire Idea team, Fox said. When I started this business never in my wildest imagination did I think that we would be honored in such a way. I am truly humbled. Idea Marketing Group opened its first office in Chicago in 2009 in the midst of one of the worst economic downturns our country has faced. The company moved to its Yorkville location at 1939 Bridge St. in 2015. Idea is made up of a team of senior level web design and marketing professionals with over 50 years of combined experience. Moving to Yorkville has been one of the best decisions weve made for our business, Fox said. The community support has been amazing. We look forward to many more successful years in the community. In addition to the Yorkville Chamber award, Idea has once again been named a top digital marketing agency by leading software and professional services ranking service Clutch.co. Of the 34 Chicago firms ranked by Clutch for 2017, Idea Marketing Group ranked at No. 6 with 4.7 stars out of a possible 5. In their rankings, Clutch analysts weighed a number of characteristics to fully evaluate Chicago agencies. This included a heavy focus on the digital services offered. Client interviews, previous experience, and marketplace presence also played a large role in Clutchs evaluation. Past Idea clients interviewed by Clutch cited our creative techniques in lead generation, innovative website design and attention to detail. Idea Marketing as always is a great group to work with. They bring an organized and timely workflow to our somewhat chaotic workflow. It was great having them help us along the way with reaching milestones within a timely fashion, wrote one reviewer. New project manager joins Idea Beka Wyatt, a project manager with several years of creative experience, has joined Ideas team of senior-level marketing and web design professionals. Beka comes to Idea after having also just founded a local tea & coffee company and eatery. Whether managing a retail shift, a medical team, or creative projects, Beka has 20 years of experience making sense of details. She said her favorite part of her job is getting to know people and their stories. About Idea Marketing Group Idea Marketing Group is a growing Chicago web design and marketing company that serves clients in a variety of B2B and B2C industries. We strive to build custom websites and create carefully tailored marketing solutions that get results. By PTI: By Shirish B Pradhan Kathmandu, Aug 3 (PTI) Nepal Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba today said that his government is committed to holding the final phase of local-level polls on September 18 as part of the successful implementation the new Constitution. The immediate responsibility of the government is to increase the ownership of the new Constitution, he said. advertisement It is also the governments top priority to implement the new Constitution successfully, Deuba said while inaugurating the second Responsible Business Summit by National Business Initiative. "Two phases of the local-level elections have already been held and the government is committed to holding the final phase of polls on September 18," he said. The government has been making necessary preparations for provincial and federal parliament elections and the election Constituency Delineation Commission has started its work for the same, the prime minister said. Major political parties are gearing up for the third phase of the local-level polls to be held in the Madhesi province after it was postponed by the government. The local-level polls, being held in Nepal for the first time in almost two decades, is scheduled to take place in eight districts including in Bara, Parsa, Rautahat, Dhanusha, Saptari and Siraha of southern Nepal under the Madhesi- stronghold province No 2. Millions of Nepalese voted on June 28 in the second phase of the polls as the Himalayan nation took a crucial step towards cementing democracy amid political turmoil. Deuba said that "increasing gross domestic product, creating additional employment and increasing investment are the priorities for the government". Increasing national and foreign investment in the country is the governments top priority, he said. The government has amended certain laws and some other laws are in the process of amendment in order to attract more investment, he said. "We are preparing to remove administrative and legal hassles for increasing investment. Those showing interest in investment will get all necessary support," he said. The meaning of responsible business is to spend certain amount of profit for social programme and a major responsibility of a responsible businessman is also to abide by the states rules and regulations, he said. Businessmen should try to address issues such as poverty alleviation, conflict management, ending financial inequality and environmental imbalance, Deuba said. More than a hundred traders and industrialists from India, China and Singapore, among other countries, have been participating in the two-day programme. Nepal has been witnessing political instability. Some Madhes-centric parties opposed the elections on the ground that the new Constitution be amended to accommodate their views: more representation in the Parliament and redrawing of provincial boundaries. advertisement The Nepal government has tabled a new Constitution amendment bill in the Parliament to address the demands of the agitating Madhesis. Madhesis, mostly of Indian-origin, launched a prolonged agitation between September 2015 and February last year against the implementation of the new Constitution which they felt marginalised the Terai community. PTI SBP CPS AKJ CPS --- ENDS --- The White House Opioid Commissions Interim Report shines a bright light on Americas opioid epidemic; 142 people dying from drug overdose every single day. The Center for Network Therapy (CNT) estimated that the cost of the drug epidemic exceeds $1 trillion every year. (Read CNT's recent press release on this topic here.) Dr. Indra Cidambi, leading Addiction Medicine expert and Medical Director at CNT, New Jerseys first licensed outpatient detoxification facility, fears that many of the recommendations may not help much and some may actually make the drug problem worse. Dr. Cidambi analyzed the interim reports recommendations and explained why: Increasing inpatient treatment capacity constitutes an expansion of a failed model: The report recommends Medicaid limitations for inpatient treatment be removed. However, the drug epidemic is proof that the traditional inpatient treatment modalities have largely failed even people with private health insurance not subject to such limitations. So more of the same may help on the margin at best, but supporting nascent addiction treatment modalities such as the Ambulatory (Outpatient) Detoxification is the key to delivering far better outcomes in an economic manner, says Dr. Cidambi. The outpatient model incorporates an individuals living environment into treatment, which helps deliver better results. Increasing opioid prescriber education may not stop the creation of new addicts: 65% of opioid pain prescriptions are written by Family Doctors and Nurse Practitioners, not pain management specialists, notes Dr. Cidambi. While educating these prescribers is important, a better alternative would be limiting the ability to prescribe opiate pain medications only to physicians with specialized training in pain management (such as surgeons, oncologists and orthopedic and pain management specialists). We need to stop creating addicts as a more comprehensive opioid curriculum is worked into the medical education system. Medication Assisted Treatment (MAT) is not a panacea: MAT primarily consists of prescribing buprenorphine or methadone and, to some highly-motivated individuals, naltrexone in order to address cravings and withdrawal symptoms for individuals afflicted with the disease of addiction. Recklessly expanding the number of prescribers of these medications will only intensify the problem; these medications are only effective when accompanied by therapy to help encourage lifestyle changes, as well as monitoring to ensure these patients are not using other drugs concurrently, says Dr. Cidambi. We are sure to find people with addiction issues leverage the easy availability of such prescriptions to detox themselves when they run out of money to buy drugs or use it as currency on the street to buy other drugs. Mixing these medications with other drugs or prescription medications could be dangerous. Making Naloxone (Narcan) available to people addicted to opiates may encourage riskier behavior: Naloxone is an opiate overdose reversal drug used by first responders and other emergency medical care professionals. Requiring opioid prescriptions to be complemented by Naloxone prescriptions appears logical on the surface but it is a double-edged sword. I fear it may encourage people abusing opioid pain pills to chase a higher high, as they have the antidote to overdose on hand, noted Dr. Cidambi. While all emergency medical professionals and first responders should be equipped with Naloxone, handing it out to opioid pain medication abusers could actually increase the chances of overdose. Also, overdoses are not intentional and the ability to recognize and self-administer Naloxone at the point of overdose is questionable. Development and deployment of fentanyl sensors will likely be futile: The opioid commissions assumption is that Fentanyl is smuggled into the country as a finished product, but the reality is a little more complex. On shoring of Fentanyl is happening fast and drug dealers are importing base chemicals (that can be combined in home-size labs to make Fentanyl) and pill making machines (disassembled and shipped in separate packages) from China and making the fentanyl pills themselves, says Dr. Cidambi. Therefore, screening for fentanyl is unlikely to yield optimal results. A better option would be to leverage our terror tracking apparatus to track orders of raw materials over the internet and the dark web. Exploding demand for street heroin will not show in national prescription monitoring programs: Currently, most prescription monitoring databases are localized to one state and the opioid commission recommends a national database. It would definitely help identify doctor shopping across state lines for prescription opiate pain medications. However, this may be similar to locking the stable door after the horse has bolted, says Dr. Cidambi. Drug dealers are awesome competitors and street prices of heroin and heroin laced with fentanyl have fallen so much that opioid overdose deaths in 2015 continued to climb despite a significant decline in opioid pain prescriptions. Individuals addicted to opiates simply switched to cheaper and more potent street drugs. If the crackdown on legal prescriptions intensifies it will push more people to street drugs. Enforcing the Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act (MHPAEA) should be accompanied by support for newer treatment modalities: Every day I see patients whose health insurance provider either does not provide sufficient coverage for substance use disorders or they face a high deductible, says Dr. Cidambi. Either way, many individuals suffering from substance use disorders are unable to access treatment. There is also resistance in the treatment community to innovative, higher efficacy and lower cost treatment models such as Ambulatory Detoxification, which I introduced in the state of New Jersey. The cost of traditional inpatient treatment is high and burdensome regulations play a big part in driving costs higher. In order to lighten the costs of treatment on society as a whole, lower cost modalities of care such as Ambulatory Detoxification should be strongly supported while enforcing MHPAEA. Easing HIPAA regulations should help: While HIPAA was designed to protect the patients privacy, with substance use disorders it cuts both ways. In many instances, I find sharing information with other care providers greatly enhances the patients recovery, as it avoids patients receiving multiple prescriptions. But HIPAA is restrictive when the patient has not signed a release to share information. HIPAA actually serves to increase the relapse rate, so this recommendation could truly help, and may save lives in case of overdose. While decriminalizing drug possession is important, it is not one of the opioid commission's recommendations: In 2015, there were roughly 1.5 million arrests for drug law violations and four out of five were for possession. Decriminalization of drug possession related violations may offer the biggest bang for the buck because, according to the U.S. Department of Justice, more than 50% of the costs tied to illicit drug use related to criminal justice and incarceration. It is time we utilize the token economy modality of treatment that universally offers individuals a clean record upon successful completion of addiction treatment. This would cut criminal justice costs dramatically and also enable those in recovery to more easily re-integrate into the job market, said Cidambi. This will also save money that can be utilized to fund other initiatives. About Center for Network Therapy Center for Network Therapy (CNT) was the first facility in New Jersey to be licensed to provide Ambulatory (Outpatient) Detoxification Services for all substances of abuse alcohol, anesthetics, benzodiazepines, opiates and other substances of abuse. Led by a Board-Certified Addiction Psychiatrist, Indra Cidambi, M.D., experienced physicians and nurses closely monitor each patients progress. With CNTs superior client care and high quality treatment, Dr. Cidambi and her clinical team have successfully detoxed over 1,000 patients in four years. The Center for Network Therapy also offers step down to Partial Care (PHP and Intensive Outpatient (IOP) levels of care. Wheaton Bankruptcy Attorney Kent Gaertner Mr. Gaertner has shown consistent dedication to the DCBA and its mission The DuPage County law firm of Kent A. Gaertner, P.C. is honored to announce that founding attorney Kent A. Gaertner has been selected by the DuPage County Bar Association (DCBA) as the organizations Lawyer of the Year for 2017. Mr. Gaertner received the distinguished award at the Presidents Ball and Installation Dinner hosted by the DCBA at the Drake Hotel in Oak Brook, Illinois on June 9, 2017. Having held numerous leadership positions with the Association, Mr. Gaertner has shown consistent dedication to the DCBA and its mission. He served as the DCBA President from June 2009 to June 2010 and is also a past President of the DBCAs charitable arm, the DuPage County Bar Foundation. In addition, Mr. Gaertner served for five years as a Director with the DCBA, is a former member of the Audit Committee and Executive Committee, and is a past Chairman of the DCBA Judiciary Committee. He was also instrumental in the creation of the Associations first Bankruptcy Committee, serving four times as Chairman of that Committee. Last year he was named the first Chairperson for the DCBA Senior Lawyer Section. Mr. Gaertner also serves the legal profession at the state level as an elected Delegate from DuPage County to the Illinois State Bar Association Assembly. He was elected to the ISBA Board of Governors in 2015, after serving previously on the ISBA Section Council on Marketing and Communications and as a Hearing Board member for the Illinois Attorney Registration and Disciplinary Committee. Mr. Gaertner is also a past Chair of the Bankruptcy Subcommittee of the ISBA Section Council on Commercial, Banking and Bankruptcy Law. In his practice, Attorney Kent A. Gaertner has focused on bankruptcy law for more than 35 years. He has earned a reputation as an attorney who advocates tirelessly on behalf of debtors and creditors in bankruptcy proceedings, work-out situations, and non-bankruptcy reorganizations. Since 1979, Mr. Gaertner has helped thousands of clients, including consumers and businesses, obtain favorable outcomes. Several of his cases were chosen for publication by the United States Bankruptcy Court. Since 2013, Mr. Gaertner has been named a Super Lawyer by the Leading Lawyer Network. Mr. Gaertner has been honored by his peers with a Martindale-Hubbell Peer Review Rating of AV Preeminent, the highest rating an attorney can achieve. In the March 2016 issue of Leading Lawyers Magazine he was named one of the top ten individual bankruptcy attorneys in Illinois. About the firm: Kent A. Gaertner, P.C. has been practicing bankruptcy law since 1977. Located at 300 S. County Farm Road, Suite I/J, Wheaton, Illinois, Attorney Gaertner can be reached at 630-510-0000. World Religion News 'Faith In Recovery' 12-Part Series Past News Releases RSS World Religion News has launched a new 12-part in-depth series called 'Faith in Recovery.' The series discusses faith-based addiction recovery and rehab, and the issues that surround it, such as the difference between religious and secular modes of treatment, and whether faith-based rehabilitation should be funded by the government. In the United States, nearly 40 million people have a substance problem. Clearly substance abuse is a serious issue in America and addiction recovery is an important priority. Have you ever wondered about the role that religion plays in addiction recovery? Over 400 scientific journals have shown that faith-based substance abuse treatment programs have had either moderate or great success compared to secular programs. World Religion News, a comprehensive religion news website that disseminates the most impactful religion news around the world from Atheism to Wicca and all in-between,, has just released a new 12-part article series on faith-based addiction recovery. In this series, called Faith in Recovery, WRN explores the facets of faith-based recovery, how different religions view drug abuse and how religion affects substance abuse. The series will also delve into the benefits of faith-based recovery, the comparison between faith-based treatment and non-faith based treatment, and a how-to of finding the right faith-based treatment center. Among other current issues that the series will tackle are the problem of opioid abuse concerning the Mormon church today and whether faith-based programs should be funded by the government. The 'Faith in Recovery' series will update weekly until completed. The first installment of the series,Can Faith Help Battle Addiction? is available here: http://www.worldreligionnews.com/religion-news/faith-recovery-pt-1-can-faith-help-battle-addiction About WorldReligionNews.com WRN covers the religion news generated by all major world religions, A to Z, from Agnosticism to Wicca and all in between, in ways that strive inspire, enlighten, entertain & engage within a framework wired for a connected and distracted world. It never was an option for the International Criminal Court to do nothing. It must act urgently. Today is the third anniversary of the massacre at Mount Sinjar where ISIS fighters murdered thousands of Yazidi men and enslaved thousands of Yazidi women and girls. Despite the fact that the UN and the European Parliament have accepted that crimes committed against the Yazidis constitute genocide, there has not been a single prosecution of ISIS fighters for these crimes. On July 7th, 2017, the Global Justice Center and the Bar Human Rights Committee of England & Wales urged the Office of the Prosecutor (OTP) of the International Criminal Court (ICC) to open a preliminary examination into genocide and other crimes committed by foreign fighters from ISIS. The legal submissions urge the Prosecutor to re-evaluate her April 2015 finding that there is inadequate jurisdictional bases to open a preliminary examination into these crimes. The Global Justice Center and the Bar Human Rights Committee submit that the ICC has jurisdiction over ISISs foreign fighters who form a significant part of ISISs infrastructure and outlines how the OTPs gender policy prioritizes precisely the crimes ISIS foreign fighters are committing against Yazidi women and girls. Global Justice Center (GJC) Vice-President and Legal Director, Akila Radhakrishnan, says: There has been no justice for the victims of ISIS. Thousands of women and children remain in captivity and evidence is languishing., says its time for the international community to act on its obligations under the Genocide Convention to prevent, suppress, and punish genocide. The Bar Human Rights Committee of England and Wales has been working since the summer of 2015 to raise awareness of the genocide of the Yazidis and breaches of international human rights law. Kirsty Brimelow QC, Chair said: The ongoing genocide of the Yazidi people is one of the worst crimes of our time. Such grave crimes are not only despicable but they threaten the peace, security and well-being of the world. Effective prosecutions are required. The gravest crimes in the Rome Statute continue to be committed with impunity. It never was an option for the International Criminal Court to do nothing. It must act urgently. Randy Hammon This course is a solution to a national crisis of financial illiteracy. And to the question: why arent we taught this financial education at our high schools, universities, and companies. -RADM Warren Aut (USN-Retired) Randy Hammon, a financial author, radio host and 38-year veteran in the financial services industry, recently created The Online Guide to Financial Clarity. Randy is the Educational Consultant for the American Financial Education Alliance (AFEA). AFEA is an IRS approved 501(c) 3 non-profit organization, and one of the largest providers of free financial literacy to corporations, unions, and government agencies in the United States. According to Randy, Our active military and Vets deserve and need unbiased, comprehensive tools to navigate lifes toughest financial decisions. There is an overload of information out there, but people dont know what or who to trust to give them the answers to their financial questions. This course does just that! He continues, Because there is currently a lack of federal and state funding available for financial wellness, we are giving the course away to All Active Military & Veterans, who for generations have dedicated their lives to protecting and serving our families. The distribution to our American Heroes will be done through their service branches and the VA, and the various associations that serve them. Also, Governmentshopping.com, a national discount shopping site that serves all Federal and State Employees, has offered to help distribute the course through their associate network. So, what makes this course so different? This course is a solution to a national crisis of financial illiteracy. And to the question: why arent we taught this financial education at our high schools, universities, and companies. It's Convenient. It's Practical. It's Relevant. And most importantly It's Unbiased! -RADM Warren Aut (USN-Ret) This is a desperately needed instructional material with a professional, yet simple approach utilizing user-friendly functionality. No one offers any real, unbiased educational material for true beginners anywhere! You provided it in one convenient location. Absolutely unique! -Col Will Friese (USAF-Ret) What does the research show about the need for unbiased financial literacy? Researchers and experts say most Financial Literacy should be renamed Financial Illiteracy. Why isnt financial literacy education working? Because financial literacy education is largely funded by the very same businesses that prosper when people make poor money decisions big banks, credit card companies, and other huge financial industry businesses. It should be called financial illiteracy! -Ralph Nader, April 2015 None of the financial industrys tools teach skepticism in financial transactions. None impart the critical need for caution in dealing with any situation that impacts a persons financial or personal well-being. -Walter Cronkite Projects Foolproof Foundation, 2015 To learn more or if you are a member of the Military or a Vet and would like free access to the course, please visit: https://learnfinancialclarity.com/military Guest Password: heroes (all lowercase) (Left) Lisa Monnet, (Right, top) Carol A. Haave, Vice Admiral Sean Pybus, and Colonel Foster Payne NitroDefender's artificial intelligence, machine learning and unsupervised deep neural networks self-learn the behaviors of people and devices. The technology Nitro delivers is unparalleled, and I'm honored to lead this incredible company. Nitro Solutions today announced an expansion of its leadership team and formation of a strategic advisory board, adding notable members who bring a wealth of technology knowledge, defense intelligence expertise and executive leadership to the company. Nitro has appointed Lisa Monnet, serial entrepreneur as its new chief executive officer, effective immediately. Pete Slade will assume the role of chief technology officer, and maintain his role as president of the company. I am tremendously excited to have Lisa Monnet join Nitro as our next chief executive officer, Slade said. As we release our cybersecurity solution, NitroDefender, its imperative that our leadership not only have deep roots in technology and the Intelligence Community, but the capability to succeed in a rapidly changing sector. Weve selected a strong and proven-effective leader that can help us carry out growth initiatives, create international relationships, raise capital and execute on vision and strategy as we enter this new stage of our business, which I have no doubt will be even more impactful than our last. Prior to joining Nitro Solutions, Monnet served as a senior advisor providing multidiscipline support to the Intelligence Community and Department of Defense worldwide. She was responsible for the oversight of international special project operations, including global support to intelligence consumers in operational, technical, geospatial and analytical domains. Monnet has founded numerous successful startups within the general aviation and technology industry. Im thrilled to join Nitro, Monnet said. The possibilities are endless with the technology this team creates. When I learned about NitroDefender, I instantly saw the opportunity to penetrate several markets, to include the Department of Defense. NitroDefenders artificial intelligence, machine learning and unsupervised deep neural networks self-learn the normal behaviors of people and devices. It can discover indicators of zero-day exploits, malware, ransomware, phishing, malicious insider activity and other cyber threats in real time across physical, virtual and cloud-based networks. The technology Nitro delivers is unparalleled, and Im honored to lead this incredible company." Additionally, Nitro is pleased to announce the formation of its advisory board, with the initial appointment of three noteworthy defense and intelligence industry veterans. Leveraging the knowledge of these industry experts and decorated professionals drastically expands Nitros capabilities, and is critical to driving the companys strategic initiatives. The additions to Nitros board include: Carol A. Haave Mrs. Haave has served as Deputy Under Secretary of Defense Counterintelligence and Security, Assistant Secretary for International Affairs at Department of Homeland Security, and Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Security and Information Operations. She maintains significant international contacts, with cabinet-level officials providing defense, security, intelligence, counterintelligence and technology advice. She has served as a management analyst at NASA and has over 15 years experience consulting to the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). Vice Admiral Sean Pybus Vice Admiral Pybus is a career Naval Special Warfare (NSW) SEAL officer with multiple Joint Special Operations duty assignments. He has served in SEAL, Underwater Demolition, Special Boat and SEAL Delivery Vehicle tours within NSW, and has held positions at Joint Special Operations Command and United States Special Operations Command. Decorations include the Defense Distinguished Service Medal, Distinguished Service Medal, Defense Superior Service Medal, Legion of Merit, Meritorious Service Medal and various other awards. Colonel Foster Payne Colonel Payne is a senior defense industry executive with 37 years of experience in the Department of Defense and Private Industry Sectors. He has a broad and in-depth understanding of the Intelligence Community and working in collaborative network environments. He is a decorated combat veteran who served in the U.S. Army for more than 27 years. The advisory board will work with Nitro to navigate both commercial and defense industries, and collaborate on strategic direction as the company raises capital to fuel growth and international expansion. NitroDefender will be available for purchase through Nitros channel partners. Initial efforts are focused on the United States, with international expansion expected in 2019. About Nitro Solutions: Nitro Solutions is the first company to apply unsupervised deep neural networks to cybersecurity, improving the way commercial industries and government agencies combat cyber threats with NitroDefender. With its advanced, multi-engine approach to cyber defense, Nitro delivers next-generation threat identification, accelerated response and threat prevention capabilities that help make the world a safer place. Founded in 2009 by machine-learning experts, Nitro is a woman owned small business, whose innovative technology has earned it titles such as Technology Company of the Year by the Tampa Bay Technology Forum. Nitro has also been recognized as a member of the Inc. 500 for its exceptional growth, and twice named one of the top small businesses in the nation by the U.S. Chamber of the Commerce. To learn more, visit nitrosolutions.com This is what Art on the Vine is all about. We are bringing together a melting pot of people to further expose them to art and discuss topics that are relevant to our everyday life. Leading up to the 2017 exhibition in Marthas Vineyard, Art on the Vine (AOTV) is pleased to announce its full roster of exhibiting artists as well as new sponsors the Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Arts (MoCADA), the Tenth Magazine, Total Wine & More, Espolon Tequila, and Wanderluxxe. MoCADA and the Tenth Magazine will lead engaging panel discussions on social justice issues and the black queer identity featuring prominent artists, curators, and collectors. Also, inaugural AOTV resident Nate Lewis will reveal work produced during his four-week residency throughout June and July in Marthas Vineyard. Art on the Vine presented by The Agora Culture takes place on August 12-14 at the Dr. Daniel Fisher House in Edgartown, MA. This three-day cultural explosion includes panel discussions on current events, museum-quality art for purchase, and networking opportunities with art enthusiasts and multicultural artists on the rise. We are excited to have such high caliber artists and organizations join us for our second annual exhibition, said founder Jessica Stafford Davis. This is what Art on the Vine is all about. We are bringing together a melting pot of people to further expose them to art and discuss topics that are relevant to our everyday life. The Tenth Magazine will host Outside the Frame on August 13th at 1:30 p.m. This panel discussion will question categories of race, gender and sexuality, while celebrating a community whose politics and art forms have historically, and continually are used as a medium to awaken social consciousness both outside, and from within the Black community. As art is simply a by-product of the process of creation, interrogation and reflection, how does the Black queer identity which has largely been invisible, yet quietly organizing in the face of multiple oppressions, now arise to share spaces of constraint and freedom? As there is a fervent conversation taking place concerning the visibility of collectors and artists of color in an industry where white paragons control the spatial politics, where does the Black queer identity fit within the broad frame of the Art world? MoCADA, located in Brooklyn, NY, will present A Portrait for Justice on August 14th at 1:30 p.m. A Portrait of Justice is a conversation with visual and performance activists to examine contextual collaborations between arts and advocacy. MoCADA + AOTV will discuss the significant role that art has played in increasing awareness, advocacy and organizing efforts that champion social justice. Artists and curators will introduce the audience to current and historical events in their work, that inspire participation and a commitment to empower and incite progress through social change in new and expanding art collections. Confirmed artists showcasing work at Art on the Vine include Yashua Klos, Deborah Roberts, Edgar Areceneaux, Stan Squirewell, Sheldon Scott, Alexandria Smith, Juana Valdes, Wesley Clark, Elia Alba, David Antonio Cruz, and Jas Knight. Attendees will also be treated to a martini happy hour, gallery tours, and an exclusive swag bag. For more information and to purchase tickets, visit http://www.artonthevinemv.com. A portion of the proceeds will support the Art on the Vine Artist in Residency program. About Art on the Vine Art on the Vine is a nonprofit subsidiary of The Agora Culture. Art on the Vines mission is to educate and showcase a diverse array of artists through a four-week residency program and annual art exhibition in Marthas Vineyard. Launched in 2016, the Artist in Residency program provides emerging artists with an opportunity to gain exposure for their work and engage with the communities where their residency takes place. About the Agora Culture The Agora Culture is a national online multicultural arts platform that connects new and seasoned art collectors with contemporary visual artists. Established in 2013, the Agora Culture focuses on producing exhibitions, art dinners, salons and educational workshops for collectors at all levels. Hundreds gather to view neighborhood plans on HoloLens City workers describe project as "...a big win for us" The City of Seattle Department of Neighborhoods recently showed off proposals to the community in a groundbreaking way using Microsoft HoloLens. The 3D visualizations of the proposals were featured during five open house events for the Housing Affordability and Livability (HALA) program in April and May, 2017. Hundreds of people from the community stopped in and toured concepts from the Department of Neighborhoods by using the Microsoft HoloLens. City employees guided the community members through neighborhood designs in true size and scale, allowing Neighborhoods to deliver the message with clarity in a first-time ever HoloLens presentation. HoloLens is cutting edge, mixed-reality technology created by Microsoft. It allows the viewer to engage with holographic 3D visualizations of models. In this case, the models were building and neighborhood proposed changes for HALA. HoloLens has advantages over other types of virtual reality in that it allows for the viewer to interact with the holograms as though they were real, while being in a shared experience with others. The city's goal in using HoloLens was to find a simple, affordable way to demo their neighborhood project to the community. And if they could do so in a way that would allow the community to visualize the concepts better it would provide a more meaningful exchange of ideas and feedback. "We hear a lot of folks saying that drawings and maps are difficult to read AND that they dont realistically depict changes. Zengalt Vyzn and HoloLens allowed us to provide a physical experience to folks who are struggling to visualize and feel proposed changes that are usually shown in 2-D. Susie Philipsen, Sr. Public Relations Specialist The City planners were able to walk through the demos using the state-of-the-art experience that only HoloLens provides, allowing for immersive content and a collaborative shared experience. "Many people walked away and said that they had a much better sense of what we are proposing than they had before they tried the Hololens/Vyzn model. That is a big win for us. People of all ages took the technology, especially seniors, and were able to provide more informed feedback based on what they saw and felt." - Susie The city partnered with Zengalt, Inc (Bellevue, WA), a HoloLens developer, to create the experience using their software app, "Zengalt Vyzn". Zengalt Business Development met on site with the City of Seattle to provide consultation on using the HoloLens as a demo tool for their initiative. "Zengalt has been very hands-on with constructive problem-solving while we worked out everything from model optimization to how to stage the experience at our public open houses." - Susie The City was able to quickly get started and adopted the Zengalt Vyzn application software. This allowed the City to take their models from Sketchup drawings they previously had, and optimize them for use. There was a small learning curve, but the Zengalt team was ready to assist throughout the entire consulting process. Zengalt Vyzn | INSTRUCT. INFORM. EDUCATE. Zengalt, located in Bellevue, WA USA creates media apps on XBox and the entire Windows platform, and is a HoloLens pioneer for museums, architects and other industries. Zengalt Vyzn can be used with any common 3D modeling software, such as Revit or Sketchup, to render your 3D design vision with perfect clarity and confidence. Win over clients with WOW factor while delivering a stunning, state of the art presentation on Microsoft HoloLens. For a complete product description see Zengalt Vyzn in the HoloLens Store . Find out more about the 30 million users worldwide on Zengalt apps at http://www.zengalt.com For more info please contact info(at)zengalt(dot)com Now in its fifth year, CyberScouts Privacy XChange Forum will host an exciting roster of experts and industry leaders who come together to discuss and shape the privacy and cybersecurity agenda for the insurance industry in the coming year. Over the course of the conference, attendees meet and share ideas with top experts in the cybersecurity and insurance worlds, gaining insights to strategically guide their organizations. The conference takes place October 22-24 at the Westin Lake Las Vegas. Said Matt Cullina, CyberScouts CEO: When we started Privacy XChange Forum five years ago, our goal was to create a unique event where insurance industry leaders could come together with the best and brightest minds in cybersecurity for a lively interchange that would guide strategic decision-making. Since that first event, Privacy XChange Forum has energized and informed attendees, and they have gone on to advance the state of the art across the insurance industry. The keynote speaker lineup this year includes former U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara, a leading voice on cybercrime and government corruption; NBC commentator Malcolm Nance, who predicted that Russian hackers were trying to influence the 2016 elections; and cybersecurity guru Bruce Schneier, considered one of the deepest and most technically literate thinkers about cybersecurity in the world today. (For more details on these speakers, visit CyberScouts blog at http://cyberscout.com/education/blog.) Conference sessions will address the following topics: The FTCs latest data on identity theft trends and data The hidden risks in cyber coverage Personal/family coverage and social bullying Risks related to emerging social and Internet of Things threats Protecting against loss from ransomware attacks What to expect next: the hacker undergrounds latest ploys Retail and finance fraud essentials Update on global privacy regulations Additional highlight speakers include Wired writer Garrett Graff dissecting the take-down of the Zeus virus and its implications for defeating future attacks; Tony Sales, with an update on retail and finance fraud; and John Krebs, Attorney and Identity Theft Manager at the Federal Trade Commission, providing an update on trends, challenges and potential solutions. For more information or to register for the conference, visit http://privacyxchangeforum.com/ This years theme is cyber risk jumps to hyperspace, reflecting the increasing complexity, velocity and frequency of cybercrime. In todays connected world, cybercrime seems to be everywhere at home, at work and in the devices we carry with us around the clock. Information security threats are more complex, widespread and challenging to address than ever before. And their speed has increased, as new vulnerabilities are discovered and exploited on a daily basis. Organizations and government agencies of all sizes are under attack, putting the personal information of millions of people at risk. How do consumers protect themselves from these risks and what are the implications for providers of personal, commercial, and cyber insurance? Said Greg Douglas, President of BR Re Direct, a Platinum Sponsor of the event, Berkley Re Direct is honored to partner with CyberScout, a clear leader in the cyber space. The PxF conference has proven to be extremely valuable, timely and focused. And they've designed yet another impressive agenda with superb speakers. According to Christie Lucas, VP & Commercial Multi-peril Product Manager at Erie Insurance Group, The speakers at Privacy XChange Forum are impressive industry experts who provide great insights into the evolving cyber issues, which I use to develop education and coverage for our customers. About CyberScout: CyberScout has gained a reputation as the best-in-class provider of identity and data defense services from proactive protection and education to successful resolution. Available to millions of consumers through leading insurance and financial companies as well as employers, CyberScouts services are provided by 16 of the top 20 U.S. property and casualty insurance carriers, and six of the top seven Canadian insurers. As the industry leader for over 13 years, CyberScout has been setting the gold standard for identity and data defense services from proactive protection and education to successful resolution. Formerly IDT911, CyberScout combines boots-on-the-ground experience with high-touch personal service to help commercial clients and individuals minimize risk and maximize recovery. In addition to its corporate headquarters in Providence, Rhode Island, CyberScout has North American operation centers in Phoenix, Arizona, and Montreal, Canada, and in Galway, Ireland, serving Europe. To learn more, visit http://www.cyberscout.com. # # # Media Contact Kate Bachman InkHouse for CyberScout cyberscout(at)inkhouse(dot)com 781-966-4126 This MOU with the Department of Defense will ensure these resources are available to all who need them within the DoD, and will serve as a template for how other federal agencies can engage with the military community. Today, the Defense Prevention Suicide Office signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with PsychArmor Institute in a united front to support those who work with, care for, or support members of the military community, including our nations Veterans. PsychArmor offers a free library of educational courses that provide information on different aspects of military culture and other topics like caregiving, tips for volunteers, and strategies for employers. I know firsthand that civilians want to support Veterans and other members of the military community, but dont have basic educational resources at their disposal to learn how to do it. PsychArmor seeks to bridge that divide, said Marjorie Morrison, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of the PsychArmor Institute. This MOU with the Department of Defense will ensure these resources are available to all who need them within the DoD, and will serve as a template for how other federal agencies can engage with the military community. The MOU was signed at the Suicide Prevention Conference, where 1,300 people are gathered in support of suicide prevention for military service members. Alongside Marjorie Morrison, CEO and Founder of PsychArmor, Bonnie Carroll of the Tragedy Assistance Program for Survivors (TAPS) and Mr. Robert Gebbia of American Foundation for Suicide Prevention represented their organizations which also signed MOUs. PsychArmors library of free courses are developed to be creative and engaging we want learners to continue to come back and review courses again, and benefit from new content, said Marjorie. We are creating new course content every week on a range of critical issues, including suicide prevention. The MOU distinguishes that the Department of Defense and the Defense of Prevention Suicide Office will work collaboratively and strategically to better support Service members through PsychArmors courses. PsychArmor Institutes library provides over 100 on-demand courses of educational content on a range of issues, from military culture to working with service animals. The non-profit organization continues to help bridge the military-civilian divide and support our Veterans and military service members through educational awareness and understanding. Marjorie Morrison is available to speak to how PsychArmor Institute is continually working to bridge the military-civilian divide. For those interested in setting up an interview with Marjorie, please email Meghan(at)psycharmor(dot)org. ### About PsychArmor Institute PsychArmor Institute is a 501 (c)(3) nonprofit providing free education and resources to all Americans who support members of the military community. PsychArmor recruits nationally recognized subject matter experts to create and deliver online courses that are clinically informed and evidence-based. In addition, our Helping You Help Veterans Support Center provides continual assistance and vetted resources to civilians, ensuring they are armed with the tools needed to effectively assist military Veterans and their families. For more information about PsychArmor, follow us on Facebook, Twitter (@PsychArmor), or visit http://www.PsychArmor.org. By PTI: Ahmedabad, Aug 2 (PTI) Gujarat Chief Minister Vijay Rupani today took a dig, apparently aimed at the Congress MLAs from the state who are staying in a resort in Bengaluru, over their absence from field when people are affected by heavy rains. "The BJP MLAs are true representatives of people as they had not deserted people in need. Our MLAs, such as Shanker Chaudhary, Prabat Patel and Keshaji Chauhan stood by people and helped them ever since heavy rain started. We are not like those who desert people," a government release quoted Rupani as saying. advertisement A total of 44 MLAs of the Congress were shifted to the resort last week by the party in a bid to keep its dwindling flock together ahead of the Rajya Sabha elections scheduled on August 8. In fast-paced political development, six MLAs of the Congress have so far quit the party and three of them have joined the BJP. The BJP has fielded Balwantsinh Rajput, one of the three legislators who have joined the saffron camp, against the Congress stalwart Ahmed Patel who is seeking the fifth term on Rajya Sabha from the state. Rupani has been camping in Banaskantha district since the last four days and overseeing the relief and rescue work in the wake of flood. Several villages in Banaskantha and Patan districts were inundated in the flood water following torrential rains in northern Gujarat a week back. The chief minister today celebrated his 61st birthday with the flood victims of Banaskantha district, the release said. Rupani today spent time with the locals of Nanodar village of Vav taluka in morning and assured them all possible help from the government to cope up with the situation, it said. During his interaction with the villagers, Rupani said the government is mulling to divert Rel river towards the Rann of Kutchh, as the flood waters of that river caused severe damage in Banaskantha district this season. Later in the day, Rupani visited Kanothi village of Suigam taluka and then visited Dhanera town, which was badly hit by the flood. During his visit, he assured that Dhanera town will be cleaned in three days time. PTI PJT PD NSK --- ENDS --- Access to technology outside of school hours provides the pathway for students to succeed by their own merit, and not be hindered by what their environment may have destined for them. The George W. Bush Presidential Center, EveryoneOn, Hispanic Heritage Foundation (HHF) and U.S. Trust Bank will join Puede Network Founder Adan Gonzalez at 2207 Harlandale Ave, Dallas, on Wednesday, August 9, 2017 6-8 pm CST, to kick off a summer program for hundreds of Oak Cliff students and their parents that is tech-based and focuses on reading and math skills. The program aims to offset a drop-off in learning garnered during the school year and exacerbated by a lack of technology outside of schools. Through this new initiative addressing the tech-education equity, students will gather at the Puede Academy three times a week with access to: computers donated by the Bush Center; Wi-Fi; mentors/tutors; and a specialized-curriculum tailored to the learning needs of the students using technology. In the fall when schools are back in session, the students will continue have access to Wi-Fi and the computers to do their homework at the Puede Academy three times a week to close what is known as the homework gap. As leaders of the education system in our community, we have the responsibility to not just understand the communitys flaws, but to walk with the community in finding solutions together, said Gonzalez, an Oak Cliff native. Access to technology outside of school hours provides the pathway for students to succeed by their own merit, and not be hindered by what their environment may have destined for them. We are grateful to the Hispanic Heritage Foundation, George W. Bush Presidential Center, EveryoneOn, and U.S Trust for believing in us, and for breaking barriers while building bridges so our kids talent meets their potential. The Oak Cliff effort is a pilot to address the inequity in education and workforce preparedness through better access to technology across the country. The program scheduled to be expanded in 2018 with funding. The Bush Center is donating nearly 70 computers to the Puede Network with EveryoneOn, U.S. Trust Bank and HHF providing additional support. Southwest Airlines is the Official Airline of HHF. The Bush Center is thrilled to participate in this meaningful initiative to help more students in our community be successful and have access to technology, said Holly Kuzmich, Executive Director of the Bush Institute and Senior Vice President of the Bush Center. It is especially rewarding to collaborate with Chike Aguh, CEO of EveryoneOne, and Bryon Sanders, Vice President at U.S. Trust, who both graduated from the Presidential Leadership Scholars program in July. Mr. Aguhs personal leadership project that he worked on developing throughout the program was to connect 100,000 Americans to the internet by the end of 2020 and were pleased to help him make progress toward that goal. Research has shown Latinos are at an educational disadvantage due to a greater lack of access to Wi-Fi and technology overall, which has been dubbed the homework gap. With schools out for summer, students will face a drop of approximately two months of grade level equivalency in math skills and reading achievement over the summer months. An FCC Taskforce in 2009 estimated that more than 70 percent of teachers assign homework requiring access to broadband numbers are estimated to be higher in 2017 which puts the students without access to Wi-Fi at a disadvantage. Parents also rely on the Internet as well to be fully-informed on their childs academic performance, with many schools turning to online grading systems. More than 5 million households with school-age children are estimated to not have high-speed Internet service at home and that number rises in terms of not having access to a computer. At EveryoneOn, we believe that all people in the United States should have access to the life-changing opportunity the internet and technology provide. Unfortunately, many students in the United States leave the school doors and go home to a world without the internet," said Chike Aguh. "We would like to thank The George W. Bush Presidential Center for its computer donation, which provides an essential part of digital inclusion for all. Also, a special thanks to U.S. Trust Bank and Hispanic Heritage Foundation for helping organizing this commitment. Finally, thanks to the Puede Network and its founder Adan Gonzalez for his work to make sure that no student is being left behind. All of these commitments will ensure that hundreds of students will be able to benefit from the educational, social, and economic opportunities of the internet, which is essential to competing in today's digital world. We are proud to support these efforts to end the homework gap and look forward to continued work in 2018." The Pulse Study, conducted by My College Options and HHF, found that 80 percent of Hispanic students who do not have regular access to a computer at home use their smart phones to access the internet and do their homework that requires broadband access. Hispanics are the mostly likely to use a smart phone to complete a homework assignment or college application. Hispanics also were found to be the most likely to not complete assignment because of lack of access and most likely to believe they received a lower grade because of their lack of access to the internet. The homework gap is not just affecting Latino students. According to the Pew Research Center, five million households of the 29 million with school-aged children are falling into the gap. In addition, the Pulse Study found that nearly 50 percent of all students said they have been unable to complete their homework because they didnt have access to the Internet or a computer, and 42 percent of all students said they received a lower grade on an assignment because they didnt have Internet access. The tech gap is also an equity gap in terms of education and workforce development for many communities including Latinos, said Jose Antonio Tijerino, President & CEO of the Hispanic Heritage Foundation. It will take a creative and collective effort to close that gap and we are thrilled to partner with EveryoneOn, the George W. Bush Presidential Center, U.S. Trust Bank, and my compadre Adan Gonzalezs Puede Network to pilot this new initiative in Dallas. We are primed to execute this model in other neighborhoods with high potential regions like Oak Cliff around the country. The Hispanic Heritage Foundation inspires, prepares, and connects Latino leaders in the classroom, community and workforce to meet Americas priorities in priority fields. HHF also promotes cultural pride, accomplishment, and the great promise of the community through public awareness campaigns seen by millions. Visit http://www.HispanicHeritage.org. The Puede Network, which serves over 500 underserved Latino families in Texas, promotes leadership, fitness, academics and community service through year-round after school programs aimed at K-12 students and their parents. Visit https://www.facebook.com/SiSePuedeNetwork/. EveryoneOn is a national nonprofit that creates social and economic opportunity by connecting everyone to the internet. Since 2012, EveryoneOn has connected more than 500,000 people in the United States, with the goal of connecting one million people by 2020. For more information, visit EveryoneOn.org Rooted in the guiding principles of President George W. Bush and Mrs. Laura Bush, the George W. Bush Presidential Center engages communities in the United States and around the world by developing leaders, advancing policy, and taking action to solve todays most pressing challenges. The work is achieved through three Impact Centers Domestic Excellence, Global Leadership, and our Engagement Agenda. The Bush Center is home to the George W. Bush Presidential Library and Museum, which is operated by the National Archives and Records Administration, and the George W. Bush Institute, the non-partisan, public-policy arm of the Bush Center. The Bush Center is located on the campus of SMU in Dallas, Texas, and also includes a 15-acre park; Cafe 43, a full-service restaurant; and a Museum Store. Learn more by visiting http://www.bushcenter.org. Were fully invested in providing our partners with processing solutions that are tailored to their unique businesses, said NMA Chief Technology Officer Jason Holderness. National Merchants Association (NMA), an industry-leading merchant payment processor, recently announced its partnership with Phoenix Managed Networks and their multi-channel gateway solution, PhoeniXGate. The availability of an NMA gateway will immediately reduce transaction costs, providing a powerful incentive for independent software vendors (ISVs) to develop on NMAs infrastructure. The new union will also create more opportunities for innovation and development, while continuing to provide further vertical integration for NMA. The company cites an emphasis on the added control over the customer experience that can be provided for its merchants through this partnership. Were very pleased to be able to partner with Phoenix Managed Networks. For years, theyve been a leading gateway provider, and theyve been very supportive of our goals to build new technologies on top of their gateway product. PhoeniXGate will allow us to deliver highly-customized solutions for our merchants, said Jason Holderness, Chief Technology Officer at NMA. New developments in the payments industry have often occurred at the gateway level. The emergence of new payment methods such as smart devices and near-field communications, as well as the explosive growth of customized point of sale (POS) and customer relationship management (CRM) systems, have been significantly driven by gateway innovation. PhoeniXGate presents an ideal way for NMA to support emerging businesses in the payments industry. Weve always been committed to development and being at the forefront of innovation, said Holderness. Weve doubled our development team this year, and Im spending a large part of my time in Silicon Valley building relationships with up-and-coming businesses that can leverage payments innovation to create massive new markets. This gateway initiative will let us really roll up our sleeves and dig into some new projects were working on I cant talk about them yet, but Im confident they will create some major new opportunities for our merchants and partners." NMAs laser focus on merchant satisfaction is evident in their decision to take direct control over their gateway strategy, said Trevor Fall, Executive Vice President at Phoenix Managed Networks. As NMA provides leading-edge product direction and development, Phoenixs engineering and development team will provide cloud-based, PCI-certified hosting and manage the gateway infrastructure. It is an unbeatable combination. Were fully invested in providing our partners with processing solutions that are tailored to their unique businesses. With the help of Phoenixs payment gateway, well be able to bring significant new value to our merchants, Holderness said. For more information about the partnership or to learn about National Merchants Association, please visit http://www.nationalmerchants.com or call (866) 509-7199. # # # About National Merchants Association National Merchants Association is a global leader in merchant payment processing services and is dedicated to helping merchants and agent partners grow their businesses by generating sales opportunities and maximizing profits. National Merchants Association is a true merchant advocate, working on behalf of businesses to eliminate the unnecessary and unreasonable fees associated with accepting electronic transactions. Visit http://www.NationalMerchants.com or call (866) 509-7199 for more information. About Phoenix Managed Networks As a network provider to some of the worlds leading financial institutions and blue chip companies, Phoenix Managed Networks provides reliable, cost-effective payment communications, gateway and network security services that connect and protect customer networks, businesses and brands. Phoenix has established a reputation of delivering quality, innovation and uncompromising customer care. For more information, please visit http://www.phoenixmanagednetworks.com or call (703) 230-7600. Reiter Affiliated Companies Our goal is to inform parents and children about the opportunities and resources available to them so that the dream of attending college can become a reality. To help families and their children learn about higher education, Reiter Affiliated Companies (RAC) and Oxnard Community College are co-hosting, Semillas Para El Exito: Una Tarde de Aprendizaje. This college information night takes place on Thursday, August 3, 2017 at Oxnard College and kicks-off at 5:30pm with a conference and panel followed by an education resource fair from 6:30pm to 7:30pm. We are very excited to partner with Oxnard College for this event, said Coco Ramirez, member of the event organizing committee. Our goal is to inform parents and children about the opportunities and resources available to them so that the dream of attending college can become a reality. The event will include a panel of college and university representatives who will address the Pathways to Higher Education describing the different systems to obtain higher education. Oxnard College is proud to host this meaningful event to showcase our support services and academic programs, said Oscar Cobian, Vice President of Student Development at Oxnard College. We want to inform attendees of Semillas Para El Exito that Oxnard College provides a clear pathway to a college degree in their community that is affordable and high quality. Oxnard College representatives will present on the general college application process and advise attendees on the different financial services and scholarships available to students. Representatives from other community resources such as El Centrito Family Learning Centers, Boys and Girls Club, Big Brothers Big Sisters of Ventura County, Students for Eco-Education and Agriculture, Mixteco/Indigena Community Organizing Project, and CSUCI University Culture will also be present. Reiter Affiliated Companies is dedicating itself more to what truly matters: delighting consumers with a quality product and enhancing the lives of their employees and communities. Through this event, the company aims to inspire a college-going culture within the farmworker community that is strengthened by a better understanding of the college environment and requirements. Ramirez added, This event is the first of a series through which we will collaborate with community partners in order to help our employees engage more directly with the many resources our county has to offer. To learn more about the Reiter Affiliated Companies, please visit: http://www.berry.net About Reiter Affiliated Companies Reiter Affiliated Companies (RAC) is the largest fresh multi-berry producer in the world, growing Driscolls proprietary varieties of strawberries, raspberries, blueberries, and blackberries year round in the United States, Baja California, Central Mexico, Portugal, Morocco and Peru. The Reiter family began farming in the San Francisco Bay Peninsula and by the turn of the century had migrated south into Watsonville and the Santa Clara Valley. By the late 1970s, operations expanded into Southern California where the headquarters is today. The company values of Honesty, Fairness and Respect line the corridors of every office, guiding and leading business principles and decisions. Those decisions have resulted in the organizations position as an industry leader, adopting health and wellness programs, opening primary health clinics and partnering with local organizations to improve the quality of life for the farmworker community. BOMI International Chairman, Howard Arndt, RPA, PMP We look forward to working with our new Board leadership team in positioning BOMI International for continued success. The BOMI International Board of Trustees elected new officers and Trustees, effective July 1, 2017. With the three-year terms of many of BOMI Internationals Board of Trustees ending this past June, July 1 marked another milestone in BOMIs evolution. BOMI Internationals former Vice Chairman, Howard Arndt, RPA, PMP, President and CEO of Fieldstone Management, has been elected to serve as the new Chairman. Arndt replaces outgoing Chairman Dave Fagone, RPA, who assumes the post of Immediate Past Chairman. An additional change to BOMI Internationals Executive Committee is the elevation of Nicholas E. Stolatis, RPA, CPM, LEED-AP, to Vice Chairman, while Sarah Wright, RPA, LEED-AP O+M, remains Secretary/Treasurer. Stolatis is Vice President of EPN Real Estate Services, and Wright is Property Manager for HPI. The biannual Board of Trustees and officer elections is an exciting time for BOMI International, said Jeffrey Horn, President and CEO of BOMI International. We look forward to working with our new Board leadership team in positioning BOMI International for continued success. In addition to the leadership changes, Howard Arndt welcomes new Board of Trustee members Trish Faidiga, RPA, FMA, BOMI-HP, founder and owner of Advantage Building & Facility Services, and Andrew Taylor, RPA, Senior Property Manager with Woods Capital Property Management. The experience both trustees bring to BOMI International is phenomenal, said Arndt. Trish Faidiga has over 25 years of experience in property management and maintenance, and Andy Taylor has 26 years of experience in commercial real estate. They will undoubtedly be valuable assets to the BOMI International Board of Trustees. Currently, Faidiga holds a board position with the Chester County Economic Development Council in Pennsylvania and serves on the board of the YMCA of Greater Brandywine Valley. She is also a member of BOMA Philadelphia and serves as Vice Chair of the BOMA Middle Atlantic Conference (MAC). Prior to founding Advantage, Faidiga was the President of the Chester County Industrial Investment Council. She recently received the 2017 Female Business Leader of the Year Award from the Chester County Chamber of Business & Industry. Taylor is the Senior Property Manager of Thanksgiving Tower in Dallas, Texas, a project owned by Woods Capital. A member of their team since April 2017, he plays a crucial role in the companys asset management services by ensuring building high-performance. Before joining Woods Capital, Taylor was Vice President of Property Management for Crescent Real Estate, as well as Director of Operations of Dallas for Trizec Properties. He has also served on the Dallas BOMA Board of Directors and is currently the organizations Vice President. In addition to Taylors involvement with BOMI International, he also serves on the Texas BOMA Board of Directors and BOMA International. About BOMI International BOMI International, a nonprofit educational organization founded in 1970, provides critical education and expertise to industry personnel with property, facility, and building systems management responsibilities. As the Independent Institute for Property and Facility Management Education, BOMI International delivers courses, certificate programs, and industry-standard designationsReal Property Administrator (RPA), Facilities Management Administrator (FMA), Systems Maintenance Administrator (SMA), High-Performance Sustainable Buildings (BOMI-HP), and Systems Maintenance Technician (SMT)with a proven record of increasing job performance and company efficiency. More than 27,000 industry professionals hold one or more BOMI International design Hire staff on demand The primary benefit of the Gig Economy to both employers and jobseekers is flexibility, which has a direct influence on overhead costs but it comes at the expense and risk of stability. In 2010, a research led by Emergent Research and Intuit examined the range of demographic, economic, social, and technological shifts affecting and changing the way we live and operate globally. One of the research predictions, a world where gig work is as common as traditional employment, has become a reality and is having a rippling effect across almost every industry. This trend is now more commonly known as the Gig Economy. Recent studies conducted by Accenture, Microsoft, and UpWork, provide supporting data on how the Gig Economy trend has been growing steadily in the last 7 years. A 2014 study by Oxford Economics showed that 83% of executives surveyed say they are increasingly using consultants, intermittent employees, and contingent workers. In Singapore, the results of a recent 2017 Graduate Employment Survey conducted by the Ministry of Education, supports this rising trend, showing a higher proportion of people taking on temporary jobs or gig work instead of permanent full-time ones after graduating. The rise of gig work and its disruptive innovations continue to have a rippling effect across various industries, resulting to businesses and jobs evolving at a faster rate. An important question for businesses is, would these disruptions create opportunities for economic growth in Singapore or stifle it? Executives ranked that the lack of adequate leadership willing to embrace the trend, as well as the lack of adequate technology to implement, are the top two impediments to adapting into the Gig Economy. Despite the obvious benefits and the increasing number of primary (full-time) and secondary (part-time) gig workers in Singapore, businesses have been slow to make the transition. The long-established tasks of job posting, applicant screening, matching, hiring, done by recruitment agencies and online recruiting platforms are time-consuming, impractical, and costly for gig work. These traditional platforms also do not provide a way to monitor work output in real-time, especially with work that needs to be done locally. On top of these hurdles, Singapore businesses have a unique need of tapping into a specific labour niche, that of Singaporeans and Permanent Residents (PR). In SBFs National Business Survey 2016/17, respondents nominated high operating costs (68%) and manpower issues (66%) as two of the biggest challenges they face in doing business. Manpower issues were broken down further as: rising labour costs, manpower rules and regulations, attracting and retaining younger workers. Lawyer and Entrepreneur Rebecca Chiu saw these challenges, and in 2016 decided to establish MyWork Global with the aim of creating a platform that would aid businesses in Singapore that want to make the Gig Economy transition. Last April 2017, MyWork Global launched its mywork app. To date, the app now has over 50,000 verified Singaporeans and PR gig workers that businesses hire for ad-hoc tasks via their smartphone. The rising Gig Economy trend, along with the release of the mywork app, has the potential to address Singapores labour shortage and cost. Accentures research highlights that having an ad-hoc workforce delivered results faster and at lower cost than with conventional methods 60% of the time. An ad-hoc workforce is not only more efficient and cost-effective, but also grants organizations the ability to change rapidly, adapt, and even innovate in ways that were not possible before. As aptly put by Rebecca Chiu, The primary benefit of the Gig Economy to both employers and jobseekers is flexibility, which has a direct influence on overhead costs but it comes at the expense and risk of stability. The Gig Economy, together with MyWork, mitigates these risks to stability. mywork app provided solutions by implementing the following features: Hire Staff On-Demand Post a job in seconds, hire workers in minutes. The app automatically matches your post with available and qualified applicants. GPS Timesheet Tracking Automated tracking of workers shift timings and payments. Payslip Generator Generate MOM-Compliant payslips every month end, inclusive of CPF computations. Team Access Provide controlled access for your team members who can help you manage and hire workers. Reviews and Ratings - Our feedback system ensures performance standards are maintained by the whole community. **Shift Scheduling A soon-to-be-released feature allowing employers to build a complete work schedule in just a few taps with estimated labour costs. MyWork Global has the current top Gig Economy app in Singapore due to its fast growing number of gig workers and holistic management features. Singapore-based businesses interested to get acclimated with the app and immediately cut labour expenses can schedule a free demo though MyWorks website myworkglobal.com, email at hello (at) myworkglobal (dot) com or call +(65) 6493 2133. The future of work, the Gig Economy, has arrived in Singapore and early adopters are reaping the benefits. Businesses must embrace disruptive technological innovations, in order to remain efficient, competitive, relevant, and to address the labour shortage which may be the biggest challenge for Singapores economic growth. The Small Business Center of Excellence (SBCoE) announces a national webcast, How to Win the Talent War. The webcast will identify how small businesses can develop processes and systems to identify, recruit and retain the best management team. In addition, the role of professional employment organizations (PEOs) will be detailed. The webcast is scheduled for Tuesday, September 19, 2017 at 1 pm CST. Webcast panelists include John Liacone, Managing Director of the Overture Group, who will share insights into recruiting a world-class management team. Salo Doko, EVP & Chief Client Officer of Tandem HR, a leading professional employment organization (PEO), will describe how PEOs help small businesses achieve excellence. Heather Hawes, Executive Director of the Small Business Center of Excellence will moderate the panel. "In small business, every hire, employee, and executive is critical to success. Our talent webcast will highlight best practices for managing many human resource initiatives, explains Heather Hawes, Executive Director of the Small Business Center of Excellence. For more information, or to register for the free webcast: How to Win the Talent War, link to: http://smallbusinesscenterofexcellence.org/events. ### About the Small Business Center of Excellence The Small Business Center of Excellence is an educational platform dedicated to helping small businesses of all types achieve extraordinary success. Programs include the SBCoE webcast training series, and the annual Small BizBig Thinking Awards program. SBCoE offers Basic and Premium memberships, along with a Partner/Sponsor program. For more information, visit http://www.SmallBusinessCenterOfExcellence.org, or engage with SBCoE: Blog, LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Google+. For more information or a Press File, contact Heather Hawes at 630-868-5063. About John Liacone John Liacone is a Managing Director with The Overture Group working with clients on solving their staffing and recruiting needs. In his 20 years of experience, John has worked in various talent management environments including corporate recruiting, consulting, contingency and executive retained search/interim staffing and career transition services. Prior to joining The Overture Group in 2010, John was a Director at RSM McGladrey where he led the Executive Search/Interim Staffing Practice. John is also a member of the Society of Human Resource Management (SHRM), and founder and board member of LG (Leadership Group, CFO |CEO). About Salo Doko Salo Doko is Executive Vice President and Chief Client Officer of Tandem HR, Chicagos largest privately held PEO. His professional experience spans across business management, organizational development, talent management and consulting. He focuses on consulting with organizations ranging from large international, publically traded companies, to small local startups. He concentrates on advising C-level executives on strategic talent management and organizational effectiveness initiatives across banking, manufacturing, healthcare, not-for-profit, transportation and construction industries. He holds a PHR and SHR-CP. Salo is also proficient in 3 languages (beside English), including Italian, Albanian, and Spanish. About Heather Hawes Executive Director of the Small Business Center of Excellence (SBCoE), Heather Hawes is a founding partner of Modern Marketing Partners, and IDeas BIG (brand identity group). Heather has experience across many industries and categories, and all marketing disciplines. She is a by-line contributor to the SBCoE blog, earned a Bachelor of Science from the University of Iowa, and her MBA from Northern Illinois University. Kiosk Welcome Screen The NDA feature now supports multiple types of visitors and provides a comprehensive solution to mitigate and address risk. Building Intelligence, a recognized leader in the security industry, released the newest version of SV3 Mobile with additional self-entry management services. With new scanning technology, SV3 Kiosk can read drivers licenses, govt IDs, and QR Codes. With the redesigned-pre-registration solution, visitors can breeze through lobby security with their QR code ready to go through the turnstile. Building Intelligence, on July 25, 2017, released its latest version of SV3 Mobile in the Apple App Store (Click Here) and the Google Play Store (Click Here) The latest version includes NDA signature capture, watch list integration, check in with email, and upgraded scanning features. The signature capture supports various use cases that include signing NDA Terms & Conditions, and acknowledging Training & Safety Course. NDAs can vary depending on visitor type. The kiosk solution can be used on a PC all-in-one touchscreen, iPad, or Android Tablet. Included with the kiosk solution is a camera, a tenant directory, and if needed a drivers license scanner. Facility management can manage their own watchlists with lists for white list (VIP) or blacklist (Do Not Enter). When a visitor checks in at a kiosk their name is checked against those lists. If there is a match the visitor is gently notified to go see security. The watch list match also sends an email or text to security management team notifying them there was a watch list check in attempt. The new additional kiosk option of checking in with email supports the visitors that are scheduled, but cannot find their email with QR code because they deleted the email by accident, the email went to spam, or they cannot open the email because do not have a smartphone. When checking in the visitors email will link the visitor to the invitation that was sent and check them in for the scheduled event. The drivers license scanner software can be added as a peripheral service or embedded in the tablet itself. Security officers, receptionists, and event managers may use the SV3 kiosk to manage pre-registered visitors, walk-ins, or just capture NDA signatures. The new scanning feature is faster and can process drivers licenses with the click of a button. According to CEO, Jeffrey Friedman, The latest version provides a lot of terrific options and serves to support various workflows. The NDA feature now supports multiple types of visitors and provides a comprehensive solution to mitigate and address risk. We are very proud that our product works on Android, iOS, and Microsoft. Our kiosk provides security personnel so many options to secure their lobby. Building Intelligences SV3 is an award winning Safety Act Designated solution to secure Vehicles, Visitors, and Vendors. It is available as an Enterprise ready solution that integrates into various physical access control systems. From lobby to loading dock, Building Intelligence provide security and operations staff the ability to process and report on visitor access. About Building Intelligence Inc. Building Intelligence is a software company providing innovative technology solutions for security practitioners and facility operators to manage visitors, vehicles, and vendors. Building Intelligence's applications are uniquely positioned to improve operations and lower the risk associated with the management of visitors and vendors as they enter on foot through the front door or in a vehicle at the loading dock or parking area. The modular solution set is being widely adopted in many major metropolitan markets and being sold, deployed, and supported by an authorized security systems integrator with expertise in the identity and access management domain. Sources said authorities are also trying to ascertain if the consignment seized in the country's largest-ever drugs catch was part of a terror network. By Ajit Kumar Dubey: A coast guard investigation into a massive 1,500-kg heroin haul off Gujarat coast last week points to the involvement of Pakistani nationals in sending the shipment from the Chinese-controlled Gwadar port in Balochistan. Sources said authorities are also trying to ascertain if the consignment seized in the country's largest-ever drugs catch was part of a terror network and the money earned could have been used to fuel anti-India operations in the region. advertisement "Preliminary investigations suggest that narcotics were embarked off Gwadar (port in Pakistan) in about three boats. From there it proceeded to Abu Dhabi wherein extensive work was carried out in the engine room and the fittings to conceal the narcotics," Coast Guard's inspector general of operations S Parmesh told Mail Today. The Gwadar port in Pakistan has been built recently by the Chinese and is controlled and operated by Beijing for both military and merchant seafaring. Senior government sources said interrogation of the eight Indian crew members of the ship 'Hennry' apprehended with the Rs 3,500-crore drugs revealed that a Pakistani national, Khalid Mohammed, and an Iranian called Mustafa had helped load the narcotics in Abu Dhabi. "Welders and cutters were provided to the crew to modify the cabins and conceal the drugs in such a way that even if the ship was checked, it would have become difficult for the agencies to find it," the sources said. Knowing about the risk involved in travelling with the ship, the two kingpins disembarked in Abu Dhabi before the ship set sail towards Indian waters, headed to Alang. Experts say Pakistan's drug smuggling network is inextricably linked with other illegal operations, including terrorism. India has sought to prevent the trafficking of narcotics into the country, alongside a larger push to improve coastal security following the 2008 Mumbai terror strike that saw the attackers sneak in through the sea route. The origin of the heroin consignment is believed to be in Afghanistan from where it was brought to Gwadar. "From Alang, the 1,526 packets of heroin could have reached different parts of India and to Southeast Asian countries as well," the sources said. The National Technical Research Organisation (NTRO) also played a key role in the operation as its sleuths picked up the calls between the crew of the ship and their handlers before tipping off the Coast Guard. The Coast Guard, which takes care of the western waters, carried out an extensive operation by deploying several ships and Dornier surveillance aircraft to track the suspect vessel. After an extensive search, Coast Guard Ship Samudra Pavak had intercepted and apprehended the Panama-registered vessel off the coast of Gujarat, official sources said Sunday. Intelligence inputs received on July 17 indicated the presence of an Iranian cargo vessel Prince-II about 210 miles west of Porbandar, which is not inside Indian waters. The vessel was expected to make a landing between Jamnagar and Bhavnagar on the Saurashtra coast. advertisement Thereafter, Indian Coast Guard centres at Mumbai, Gandhinagar and Porbandar were activated, ICG ships alerted and Dornier aircraft sorties undertaken to track down the vessel. Air surveillance narrowed down on two inbound cargo vessels, which were intercepted and detained on July 26 for investigation at Okha port. In the meantime, a Dornier aircraft sanitising the area near Gulf of Khambhat picked up another vessel that was not recognised on the Automatic Identification System and was marked suspicious. ICGS Samudra Pavak was diverted to intercept the vessel Henry. When quizzed, the master of the ship said the vessel had no documents as it was headed to the Alang ship-breaking yard in Bhavnagar to be broken. The vessel was subsequently detained and was tugged to the Porbandar port on Sunday where the authorities during inspection found the vessel to be carrying 1,500 kg of heroin. ALSO READ | Vessel with narcotics worth more than Rs 3000 crore intercepted off Gujarat coast High-seas drug haul: Ship carrying Rs 3,500 crore of heroin anchored near Karachi before sailing to India advertisement ALSO WATCH | Vessel with narcotics worth over Rs 3000 crore intercepted off Gujarat coast --- ENDS --- However,some African countries are tough to get in even when you are an African. The African Development Bank (AFBD) released its inaugural Africa visa openness report that confirmed it was easier for North Americans and Europeans to travel in Africa than it was for Africans. Very surprising! To travel to other countries in Africa, Africans need visas to enter 55% of states on the continent, the report points out. North Americans have an easier time travelling to and within the continent than do Africans, needing a visa to travel to just 45% of African countries. They can get a visa on arrival in 35% of countries and dont need a visa at all in 20%. The recent creation of a platform by the African Development Bank that allows Africans to check visa requirements by citizenship is a major asset in increasing access to information. The portal helps one to know at a glance whether or not one needs a visa for a certain country. The 2017 visa openness index report on openness, that is just how hard it can be sometimes to obtain a visa to another African country. Although there is a growing momentum on making movement on the African continent for Africans easier these African countries are still hard to get in whether as business people, students or tourists. The heart of a community is often reflected in the type of food it produces, and some of the world's most loved cuisines and comfort foods are best served when fuss-free and on-the-go. An interactive guide created by online casino JohnSlots lets readers explore 30 well-known food markets from 25 countries around the world, and offers recommendations for visitors. Demonstrating the array of spices, ingredients, and cooking methods used in street kitchens across the globe, the guide gets readers drooling over everything from candied fruits to seafood stews. Whether you're planning a last minute holiday or just want to gaze at some droolworthy snaps, here are 30 dishes selected from the guide by Business Insider UK that represent the best things to eat at some of the most vibrant, bustling, and famous food markets the world has to offer. AUSTRALIA: The Queen Victoria Market in Melbourne offers vendors' takes on street food from all around the globe, including Turkish borek, Dutch pancakes, and this German bratwurst with sauerkraut and mustard. BRAZIL: Bursting with flavour, the acaraje sandwich has a spicy shrimp mix in the middle of a deep-fried bean croquette. This hot lunchtime favourite is served all across Brazil, and the Sunday Hippie Market in Rio de Janeiro is a great place to grab one while you check out the other stalls. CANADA: As well as serving classic Canadian buckwheat crepes with pears and cheese, St Lawrence market in Toronto also offers plenty of quality seafood including artisanal smoked salmon. CHINA: These tanghulu add plenty of colour to the street food stalls along Wangfujing Snack Street in Beijing. The skewers of fruit are candied using sugar syrup to create their characteristic high-shine glaze. CHINA: Uyghur is a type of naan bread originating from Xinjiang in China. The heavy, oily dough is patterned with decorative stamps which help bakers to distinguish their own products from other vendors at the Kashgar Sunday Market in Xinjiang Weiwuerzizhiqu. CHILE: If you're feeling more adventurous but still fancy seafood, Santiago's Mercado Central offers plenty of more unusual options. As well as this sea urchin stew, you can also find giant barnacles and giant sea snails. FINLAND: Old Market Hall in Helsinki serves some of the finest street food going. As well as housing artisanal Finnish chocolate and sweets, you can also grab yourself a blini topped with either salmon or caviar. GERMANY: Munchen's Viktualienmarkt offers plenty of one of Germany's biggest exports: beer. Paired perfectly with a baked pretzel, or one of the doughnuts and pastries also on sale, a glass of the cold stuff is perfect at any time of day here. GREECE: The spanakopita is a savoury pastry filled with spinach, feta, onion and egg. As well as these crunchy snacks, the Plaka District in Athens is bursting with other street foods such as falafel and souvlaki a type of kebab. HONG KONG: These egg waffles, known locally as Gai Daan Jai, are often topped with fruit or chocolate and can be found from street vendors down Ki Lung Street. INDIA: Paratha is a traditional Indian flatbread, and can be served on its own as a snack on-the-go, or alongside a meal, as pictured here at the Chandni Chowk market in New Delhi. ITALY: Italy boasts some of the best food markets in the world, such as Rome's Nuovo Mercato Comunale di Testaccio. Here you can grab perfectly crafted arancini balls of rice stuffed with cheese, vegetables, or cured meats which are then fried until crisp. ITALY: Whilst its thinner-crusted cousin might be more widely recognised, this spongy pizza is a local delicacy. Sfincione originates from Sicily, and can be found in food markets across the Italian island, including La Vucciria in Palermo. JAMAICA: Coronation Market in Kingston sells plenty of Jamaican delicacies, including peppered shrimp, patties, and jerk meat. Authentic jerk chicken should be grilled over a mix of charcoal and fresh green wood, and marinaded in Scotch bonnet peppers alongside other herbs and spices. MEXICO: Although you can find them all over the world, nowhere does tacos quite like Mexico. Using meat from the leg and the liver, these tacos from Mercado le Merced are stacked with fresh authentic flavours. MOROCCO: One of Morocco's most well-known street foods is the snail soup. The dish is known as ghoulal, and real locals use a toothpick to eat the flesh from each shell before drinking the broth. THE NETHERLANDS: The Dutch are known for their patat fries, and there's a reason, too. Crisp and fresh from the fryer, these chips topped with lashings of mayonnaise are perfect for nibbling on while you check out the rest of Albert Cuypstraat in Amsterdam. NORWAY: Another great market for fresh seafood is Mathallen in Oslo. As well as offering the national delicacies of pickled herring and salmon, you can grab some of these tasty garlic fried prawns. PERU: Ceviche combines raw fish with lemon and lime juice, which breaks down the flesh and allows spices and flavours to penetrate deeper into the fish. Mercado de Surquillo in Lima partners ceviche with a second serving of lightly fried fish in order to compliment the delicate flavours and textures of the Latin American classic. SOUTH AFRICA: Potjiekos is a one-pot dish comprising of meat and vegetables slowly cooked with a Dutch-Malay spice blend. It can be found all across South Africa, including at the Oranjezicht City Farmer's Market in Cape Town. SPAIN: One of the nation's most famous national dishes, paella, can be found all over Spain. At La Bouqueria in Barcelona, the cooking of the rice, meat, and fish is turned into a performance with chefs theatrically stirring paella pans that are often over five feet wide. SWEDEN: Laden with crispy roasted onions and lashings of mashed potato, this hot dog from Teatern in Stockholm is best paired with ketchup and wholegrain mustard. THAILAND: These grilled coconut pancakes, known as khanom krok, are crisp on the outside and almost custard-like towards the centre. Although traditionally sweet, this street vendor at Or Tor Kor Market in Bangkok uses savoury toppings to create a variation of the Thai delicacy. TURKEY: This simit from the Grand Bazaar market in Istanbul is a ring of baked dough coated in molasses then dipped in sesame seeds the perfect snack to enjoy at any time of day. UK: A boiled egg encased in sausage meat then rolled in breadcrumbs, the Scotch egg is a British classic. This one, found at Borough Market in London, combines black pudding with traditional sausage meat to incorporate a second British delicacy into the picnic staple. UK: As well as serving their own national delicacies, many street vendors like to put their own take on another culture's dishes. Model Market in London offers plenty of reimagined dishes from all over the world, including this Argentinian steak with a fresh and vibrant chimichurri. USA: Sitting on the mouth of the Patapsco River, Baltimore offers the best of the land and the sea's produce. As well as serving up golden crab cakes and corn dogs, Lexington Market is also known for its fried chicken partnered with sweet waffles and syrup. USA: Pike Place Market in Seattle serves tonnes of beautiful, fresh, and local seafood. You can buy it fresh to take home, or made into classic dishes like this clam chowder. USA: The Philly cheesesteak is an all-American classic, and there's no better place to sample one than the state of its origin. Reading Terminal Market in Philadelphia hosts many variations, including this one which subs out the traditional hoagie roll and adds mac and cheese. Online casino JohnSlots have created an interactive new graphic showing 19 obscure drinks from around the world that you probably haven't tried. The list spans beers, spirits, and liqueurs, with unusual ingredients ranging from artichokes to aniseed. Although you may have heard of a few, like British mead or Norwegian glgg, this definitely isn't a menu you'll find at your local pub. AMARO, ITALY: The weirdest of Italy's many aperitifs and digestifs. This after-dinner liqueur can be flavoured with walnuts, artichokes, black truffle, and even rhubarb. SUZE, FRANCE: An aperitif with earthy and floral notes, Suze is a slightly sweet bitters which works well in plenty of cocktail recipes. It's made from gentian, a root that grows in the French mountains. KVASS, RUSSIA: This fizzy drink is made of rye bread, and only just counts as alcohol. Kvass, developed as an alternative to Coca-Cola, typically has an alcohol content between 0.5% and 1%. PATXARAN, SPAIN: This sweet liqueur is made with coffee, sloe berries, and cinnamon or anise. It's best served over ice after dinner. CHICHA DE JORA, PERU: This is a beer made from jora corn, and the recipe dates back to Inca times. In Peru's Sacred Valley, it is tradition to spill the first sip of this sweet and sharp brew as an offering to the Earth Mother. JENEVER, NETHERLANDS: This juniper-flavoured liqueur is gin's less famous predecessor. Jenever is usually taken straight, as a shot, or as a chaser after beer. MAKGEOLLI, SOUTH KOREA: This semi-sweet milky drink is made by mixing wheat or rice with a Korean fermentation agent. Makgeolli has as much alcohol as a strong beer, between 6% and 8%. LAKKA, FINLAND: Made by fermenting cloudberries for up to six months, Lakka is a sweet and rich liqueur. Lakka is also the Finnish word for cloudberry a golden fruit similar in shape and size to a raspberry. AKVAVIT, SWEDEN: This spirit has a distinctly herbal taste, and often uses caraway or dill as a key ingredient. Akvavit, which translates literally as "water of life", is a shot saved for celebrations and is often consumed after snapsvisa, or drinking song. SLJIVOVICA, SERBIA: This plum brandy, found across eastern Europe, is best enjoyed at room temperature. Sljivovica is made from damson plums and often brewed at home. ARAGH SAGI, IRAN: This outlawed spirit contains 65% alcohol, and had to be produced as an underground movement after Iran's 1979 revolution ended in a blanket ban on alcohol. Flavoured with raisins and dates, Aragh Sagi can still be purchased in other countries. BREM, INDONESIA: This beer-like, made on the island of Bali, plays a role in Hindu temple ceremonies called Tetabuhan. Brem is offered to Kala the Giant the god of the underworld, time, and destruction to bring peace and balance to their relationship with the god. KRAUTERLIKOR, GERMANY: This is a strong and bitter liqueur made with herbs and spices. Usually taken neat, this digestif dates back to Medieval times where it was used as medicine. FENI, INDIA: Made in Goa, this cashew nut or coconut palm toddy is made in small batches to retain the drink's delicate flavours and aromas. GLGG, NORWAY: Glgg is a variation of mulled wine that's drunk in Norway between Halloween and Christmas. It's flavoured with ingredients like red wine, almonds, cinnamon, raisins, cardamom, and cloves. MEAD, UK: Known for its characteristic sweetness, mead is one of the oldest alcoholic beverages still produced. It is made by fermenting honey with water, and has an alcoholic content ranging from 8% to 20%. HANINI, MALTA: Hanini is a carob-flavoured liqueur consumed across Malta and the Mediterranean. The name of this digestif is also widely used as a term of endearment in the country. TSIPOURO, GREECE: This distilled spirit is traditionally made from fermented grapes and anise in Thessaly and can be enjoyed either warmed or chilled. We are hoping that by September 1st, we will move electronically. We have tried at this stage to integrate the systems. We have to eliminate the duplication that we have so that we make the systems more seamless. This is what we are hoping to achieve and we believe that with your cooperation we will have an efficient system, he said to stakeholders. Dr Bawumia was optimistic Ghana can achieve a four hour turnaround time at the ports through an efficient system without bottlenecks. I Think that our four-hour target will be met and I think we all should put our shoulders to the wheel and get this thing working by September 1st, I think it will really help this economy by reducing a lot of hustle for the importers and it will make the Finance Minister very happy. Dr Bawumia said this is because of a complete automation of the systems at the countrys ports. From 1 September, we will integrate the system and eliminate any form of duplication and make the system more seamless, Dr Bawumia said. READ ALSO: AGI complains of high cost of power This is to reduce hassle for importers and make the Finance Minister very happy, he added. The countrys ports in previous years have been seen as one of the places where corruption is rife. Importers have their goods locked up at the port sometimes for months due to the delays by authorities in charge of clearing their products. To get your items cleared quickly one needs to bribe some officials at the ports. Dr Bawumia said such corrupt and bureaucratic practices will end after the automation processes begin. Reacting to the BJP charge that Gujarat Congress leaders were having fun at a resort in Bengaluru while the masses were reeling under floods, Patel said the charge was not true. By Gopi Maniar Ghanghar : Senior Congress leader Ahmed Patel, who has been in the eye of the storm over his bid for a Rajya Sabha berth from Gujarat, is confident of shoring up the numbers for a comfortable win. In an exclusive interview to India Today TV, Patel, the political secretary to AICC president Sonia Gandhi, also hit out at the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party for using the state machinery to win just one Rajya Sabha seat. advertisement "I am 100 per cent sure (of my victory). Our legislators are fully supporting us. We have also spoken to two legislators from NCP. They are also supporting us," Patel said. The Congress is facing a crisis in Gujarat where six legislators have deserted the party, following the exit of party Shankersinh Vaghela. The Congress has accused BJP of horse-trading and buying away its MLAs. To plug the steady desertions, party managers took its entire legislative strength to a resort in Bengaluru. Asked why Gujarat strongman Vaghela left the party, Patel said he had tried his best to dissuade him from leaving the party. "He (Vaghela) was associated with Congress for 20 years. He was made Union Minister too. The Congress told him that if we win, you'll be the CM contender. We tried to convince him in every way." Calling the exit of Vaghela as unfortunate, Patel said, "When notification for the RS elections first came out, I told him to contest on the party's only RS seat as he is a senior leader of Gujarat Congress." However, Patel said that Vaghela turned down the offer and instead asked him to fight the seat. Reacting to the BJP charge that Gujarat Congress leaders were having fun at a resort in Bengaluru while the masses were reeling under floods, Patel said the charge was not true. "Our legislators were with the people and helped them in the floods. Today's situation is a creation of the BJP only. The police is owned by them (Rupani government). It is only after our legislators faced threats of arrests and coercion that we were forced to shift out our legislators." Describing the Wednesday I-T raid as witch-hunt, Patel said state party leader and resort-owner Shivakumar was targeted only because Gujarat legislators were staying in his property. "CISF men are never used in an I-T raid. We hear that CISF men accompanied the I-T raiding team." ALSO READ | Congress flies Gujarat MLAs to Bengaluru resort to prevent them from joining BJP Flew MLAs to Bengaluru to save democracy: Congress counters BJP advertisement Shankersinh Vaghela will support Ahmed Patel, says Congress leader Arjun Modhwadia ALSO WATCH | SC must take suo moto action into I-T raids on Bengaluru resort: Gujarat Cong MLA Shaktisinh Gohil --- ENDS --- Usually, the excuse being given by the youth, most of whom are unemployed, is that, there are no markets to sell their agriculture produce after a lot of efforts, time, and financial resources have been invested in it. The executive director of the Ghana Beekeepers Association, Oscar Nartey Adjabeng, is of the view that such a claim is not entirely true. According to him, beekeepers in Ghana are unable to meet the local demand, let alone the external ones. He said in an interview with Pulse.com.gh that the demand coming from the local beverage company, Kasapreko alone is overpowering. Honey is a sugary food substance produced and stored by certain bees. It is produced from the sugary secretions of plants or insects, such as floral nectar or aphid honeydew, through regurgitation, enzymatic activity, and water evaporation. The variety of honey produced by honey bees (the genus Apis) is the most well-known, due to its worldwide commercial production and human consumption. This trend is against the backdrop of several types of research pointing to the fact that consumption of sugar has some health implications such as diabetes on consumers. Though just as any other substance, honey also has some side effects; they are minimal compared to the benefits. Also, the proliferation of food and beverage companies and the use of honey for their commercial productions has been the catalyst for the increase in demand while supply is low. Oscar Nartey Adjabeng expressed apprehension that, activities of some few miscreants in the industry pose danger to the sustenance of beekeeping as an industry and lives of the consuming public. It is common knowledge that there are adulterated kinds of honey on the Ghanaian market and unsuspecting patrons are hardly able to distinguish between a genuine honey and a polluted one. The pigs were wiped out by the disease over a period of two weeks, the farmers told local reporter Augustine Agyapong Kojo Mframa on Wednesday. One of the affected pig farmers, Ishmael Ofori said that they noticed the signs of the disease after some of the pigs grew thin following loss of fluid and appetite. He said that they subsequently alerted the veterinary officers in the Tano North District. The officers are currently in the area to contain the spread. It will be recalled that an outbreak of the African Swine Fever in May and June this year led to the destruction of over 400 pigs in three districts of the Ashanti Region. The man of God is accused of selling a portion of a 57 acre land belonging to one Patrick Kuntor to Beatrice Nkansah under the pretext that it belongs to his family. READ MORE: Court orders remand of 2 men over alleged murder His father, Rev. Christopher Okpoti Sowah, was earlier convicted for leasing portions of the same piece of land to some Chinese contractors for purposes of sand winning and subsequent sales of 94 plots to some persons. The accused person was also ordered to refund GH80,000 and in addition pay a fine of 25 penalty units. The presiding judge Mr M.E Essandoh dismissed the claims by the pastor that the land was not part of the complainants lands and that it was part of land belonging to his family. The five persons, who received their letters of credence have distinguished themselves in their various fields of endeavour, the president said on Wednesday. He added that they are eminently fit to represent Ghana in their respective places of accreditation, which have expressed satisfaction at their appointments. The other four ambassadors are: (1) Mrs. Dufie Agyarko Kusi, an experienced, international public servant, who is to represent Ghana in the vibrant Republic of Korea; (2) Madam Virginia Hesse, a respected, former, senior civil servant, who is going to Prague, the Paris of Central Europe, in the Czech Republic; (3) Mr. Alowe Leo Kabah, a seasoned lawyer and politician, who is heading as Ambassador to the Republic of Benin; and (4) Prof. Abena Busia, an internationally acclaimed academic and poet, who will be our Ambassador to the giant of South America, Brazil. The president told them that you represent a country that, as a result of the commendable conduct of the Ghanaian people, is regarded as one of the most stable on the continent, which is a functioning democracy, governed by the rule of law, and respect for individual liberties, human rights and the principles of democratic accountability. He continued, We are regarded as the beacon and standard bearer of democracy in Africa, and, recently, in April, according to the reputable RMB Global Markets Research, the 4th best place to invest and do business in on the African continent. You are the most visible symbol of our country out there, and in all your actions you must guard jealously our countrys image. I am confident this is a charge you will uphold. He said that but for the benevolence of the president, the 452 would-be pilgrims, would not have been included in this years pilgrimage. Sheikh I.C. Quaye made this known Tuesday when MTN presented a refurbished Hajj village to the Hajj board. It will be recalled that the 452 were not able to embark on the previous hajj following the huge growth in pilgrim numbers beyond the quota that was assigned Ghana by the Saudi authorities. The previous hajj board authorities subsequently promised to give the unsuccessful pilgrims a full refund of their monies to enable them to embark on this years Hajj. However, Sheikh I.C. Quaye said: It is condemnable for pilgrims to pay money and be left out and the money cannot be found till today. The first batch of this year's Hajj pilgrims is expected to be airlifted on August 10, 2017. They are to pay GHc15,380.80 which is an increase from Ghc11,900 for last year and this is due to the increase of foreign exchange. They both have been stopped from developing the land following an interlocutory injunction. But one of the factions on Wednesday allegedly poured petrol on the vast land. One vehicle was torched in the process. But for the timely intervention of the police, the two factions would have caused mayhem on the said piece of land which has a mosque and a number of articulated vehicles. The police managed to disperse the crowd using water cannons and are on high alert to prevent any further attacks. READ ALSO: Police arrest 9 over Sekondi Zongo violence The Speakers announcement follows a decision by the Parliament Service Board. According to Professor Oquaye, the increase is expected to cushion the staff to propel them to perform their duties better. He also made other announcements following the approval by the PSB that is expected to enhance the work of the legislators and parliamentary work. READ ALSO: CID issues car theft warning Some of the decisions announced include the establishment of a parliamentary assurance unit which he said will deal with matters that are raised on the floor of the House but would require further follow ups and attention. I believe that the adoption and implementation will contribute to enhancing the integrity of the House and its members, Prof Oquaye said. The Parliamentary Service Board has approved the establishment of a legal department in parliament, something which has been lacking for a very long time, he told the members of parliament. The Speaker also revealed that the House will commission an inventory of all parliamentary lands and property, and look at the possibility of partnering developers to develop those properties. READ ALSO: GTV news anchor sworn in as High Commissioner Offers will be invited from possible developers on public/private partnership basis where appropriate in order to develop lands and property, which are being taken away, he said. The Speaker finally urged the committee working on the reforms of the Houses standing orders to speed up work. A statement issued by the Public Affairs Department of the Ghana Police Service said: The Criminal Investigations Department (CID) wishes to draw the attention of the general public to a new crime trend by syndicates in relation to auto theft. The CID has recently recorded cases of auto theft in Tema and Accra where these syndicates advertise sale of cars on the internet with contact numbers affixed to them. This enables prospective buyers reach out to them on those numbers. After negotiating and parting with huge sums of money, the syndicate will then outwit victims and steal the car. Syndicates advertise cars on the internet with a tracking device fixed in the car unknown to victims. Victims, after expression of interest, negotiate for the price on phone through the contact number(s) provided in the advertisement. Syndicate/Suspect will arrange a meeting place for collection of the money and handing over of the said car, keys and documents to victims, the statement added. READ ALSO: Police issues fraud alert While the victim drives the car away, the syndicate will track the car and halt the engine at a distance with a device in their custody, unknown to the victim. This will immobilise the car and necessitate victims to reach out to suspects for a complaint and solution. Victim, upon contacting the syndicate for solution, the lead person or frontier to the deal will assure victim of proceedings and in some cases with a mechanic to check. The teacher trainee allowance policy was introduced in the 1960s as part of Dr. Kwame Nkrumahs agenda to attract more people into the teaching profession. But the previous John Mahama-led administration abolished it in 2014 and replaced it with a student loan and feeding grant policy. It explained that the move was a barter for increased enrolment in colleges of education and upgrade of the status of such institutions. But many did not agree with the decision. The governing New Patriotic Party (NPP) after assuming power this year promised to restore the payment of the allowances effective September 2017. But IMANI-Africa in a statement said that the payment was unnecessary. The teaching profession has generally become unattractive as about 75 percent of teachers will not recommend the profession to others due to low levels of job satisfaction and poor working condition, which is some of the major reasons for high teacher attrition. The re-introduction of the teacher training allowance can potentially compound the challenges as there could be a re-emergence of the quota system. The GHS 103 million allocated means an allowance of GHS 198 per month per student compared to the GHS 450 per month enjoyed previously, the statement said. Below is the full statement: Ministry of Education & Government Should Consider Scrapping Teacher Trainee Allowance & Channel Funds into Improving Working Conditions of Teachers in Rural Areas.--- IMANI 1.The 2017 Budget placed teachers at the heart of quality education delivery. To motivate and encourage people to train as teachers, the budget announced the reinstitution of Teacher Trainee allowance: to make Colleges of Education freely accessible to all eligible students and train teachers to drive quality education provision, Government will fully restore the payment of teacher trainee allowances, effective September 2017 . A provision of GHS 103 million (USD 23.5 million) has been made for the payment of allowances to all 43,570 trainees in the 43 public Colleges of Education[3] (COE). 2. This policy was introduced in the 1960s as part of Dr. Kwame Nkrumahs agenda to attract more people into the teaching profession. It was repealed in the early 1970s but had to be reinstated in the 1980s due to mass exodus of Ghanaian teachers to Nigeria. In 2014, the erstwhile NDC government abolished and replaced it with a student loan and feeding grant policy. Despite the implementation challenges in the form of delays in feeding grant payment and the resistance from the student front, student enrolment in the Colleges of Education increased from 33,526 in 2013/14 to 41,984 in 2015/16 (25 percent)[4]. 3. Outside the political twist of whether or not to maintain the teacher trainee allowance, quality education delivery in Ghana is still riddled with a lot of challenges. There is a teacher deficit gap of 45,000 that needs to be met in order to achieve universal basic education. At the same time, teacher attrition rate is approximately 7,000 per year[5]. Other pressing challenges include poor and inadequate infrastructure and poor working conditions especially in the rural areas. It is worth noting that out of the GHS 166 million allocated to the COEs; capital expenditure (CAPEX) which is only 5.4% is also funded by Internally Generated Funds (IGFs). 4. The teaching profession has generally become unattractive as about 75 percent of teachers will not recommend the profession to others due to low levels of job satisfaction and poor working condition, which is some of the major reasons for high teacher attrition. The re-introduction of the teacher training allowance can potentially compound the challenges as there could be a re-emergence of the quota system. The GHS 103 million allocated means an allowance of GHS 198 per month per student compared to the GHS 450 per month enjoyed previously. The Mumbai 25/11 attacks mastermind, Hafiz Saeed has decided to register his terror outfit Jamaat ud Dawah as a political party after renaming it as Milli Muslim League Pakistan. By India Today Web Desk: Most wanted terrorist Hafiz Saeed has decided to launch his own political party. According to reports from across the border, Hafiz Saeed has decided to rename his terror outfit Jamaat ud Dawah as the Milli Muslim League Pakistan. Hafiz Saeed has planned to register the Milli Muslim League Pakistan as a political party with the Election Commission of Pakistan. For mainstreaming JuD a new Muslim League is in town? Milli Muslim League Pakistan. pic.twitter.com/BKtoRFNToJ- Saleem (@memzarma) August 3, 2017 advertisement The development assumes significance in the wake of the ouster of Nawaz Sharif as the Prime Minister of Pakistan after a Supreme Court order. On the other hand, Hafiz Saeed is known to have close relations with the Pakistani Army and the ISI. After Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jamat-ud-Dawah, Hafiz Saeed led Kashmir Jihadist group is now being rebranded as Milli Muslim League Pakistan. pic.twitter.com/rSw7FVlCsV- Umer Ali (@IamUmer1) August 3, 2017 Incidentally, Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaaf chief Imran Khan - the most vocal opponent of Nawaz Sharif - also finds himself in soup after a female party colleague accused him of sending obscene messages to women workers and leaders. Earlier this week, the Pakisan's Punjab government extended the house arrest of Jamaat ud Dawa (JuD) chief Hafiz Mohammad Saeed for two more months. Hafiz Saeed has been placed under house arrest since January 31, when he was initially interned for 90 days. His house arrest was subsequently extended for another three months which expired on July 27. But, now the provincial government has extended the curbs on his movement for another two months. Hafiz Saeed is accused of masterminding several terror strikes in India including the Mumbai 26/11 attacks and fomenting violence in Jammu and Kashmir. Also Read Pakistan bans Hafiz Saeed's new terror front Tehreek-e-Azad-Jammu Kashmir --- ENDS --- He however, expressed condolence to the family of the slained IT manager. The former President who is leading a 15-member Commonwealth Observer Group to monitor and report on the August 8, 2017 general elections made this known when he addressed reporters in Nairobi. Chris Msando's body was found in a forest outside Nairobi just over a week before election he was supposed to oversee. Msando was declared missing over the weekend. He was a key official at Kenyas electoral commission. He was one of a handful of officials who had the electoral commissions computer system passwords and knew the exact location of the servers to run the election. In an earlier statement, a top information technology manager at the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) Chebukati said Msando was last seen on Friday night and sent a text message to a colleague early on Saturday morning suggesting "that he was conscious and fully aware of his itinerary for that day." READ ALSO: Mahama arrives in Kenya to monitor elections Mahama speaking to journalists said "We hope that our groups presence will confirm the solidarity of the Commonwealth with the people of Kenya." He affirmed his faith in the country's election officials to conduct a credible and transparent election as the country draws closer to election day. He noted that "As the campaign nears completion I would wish the people of Kenya, those seeking election, the poll officials and others who work to make the process democratic, well as the nation exercises its rights, and we join in the heart felt desire for a peaceful process on August 8th. READ MORE: Nana Addo describes Kufuor as a man noted for taking good decisions "We are aware of the significance of these elections to the people of Kenya, the region and the global community. Our presence here affirms the support of the Commonwealth to Kenya and its democratic processes. We make a commitment that our observation role will be undertaken with impartiality, independence andtransparency." The presiding judge Victoria Efua Ghansah delivering her judgment said she was fully convinced by the prosecution that the accused indeed committed the offence. READ MORE: Defence ordered to open case in Marwako saga The Lebanese boss rubbed his worker Evelyn Boakyes face in blended pepper. The genesis of the case happened in February 2017, caused a stir on social media and forced the state's attention to the allegation of workplace abuse. Since March 2017, Jihad has been in court over the charges of offensive conduct, assault and causing harm. The attorneys of the Lebanese supervisor had at the previous hearing presented terms of an out of court settlement in an attempt to get the court to discharge the accused person. However, the magistrate Victoria Ghansah who was on the case rejected. According to her the case under her jurisdiction is a criminal matter and this made her proceed to deliver her judgement on the substantive matter. Magistrate Ghansah said prosecution had succeeded in proving beyond reasonable doubt that Jihad assaulted the caterer and also caused harm. He was subsequently sentenced to Six (6) months in prison for assault and Nine (9) months for causing harm. Both sentences run concurrently. Jihad's lawyers have signalled, they intend to appeal the judgement. Chaaban was also charged with the offensive conduct by calling the victim a prostitute and intentionally and unlawfully causing harm and assault. On June 16, a Massachusetts judge concluded that 20-year-old Michelle Carter was guilty of involuntary manslaughter in the death of Conrad Roy III in 2014, when he was 18 and Carter was 17. On Thursday, Judge Lawrence Moniz sentenced Carter to two and a half years at the Bristol County House of Correction, with 15 months behind bars and the balance suspended. Terms of her probation include never profiting from the case with books or interviews, not leaving her home state without permission, and never contacting Roy's family. "I have not found that Ms. Carter's age or level of maturity or even her mental illness have any significant impact on her actions," Moniz said at Carter's sentencing. He added that the court needed to strike a balance between punishing Carter for her actions and rehabilitating her. She had faced a maximum of 20 years in prison. After meeting in 2012 on family vacations in Florida, Carter and Roy exchanged text messages for almost two years. When Roy started telling Carter he was thinking of suicide, Carter responded by telling him his family would "get over it" and suggesting how he could do it. On the day in 2014 that Roy killed himself by hooking up carbon monoxide gas to the cab of his truck, Carter stayed on the phone with him and, at one point, told him to "get back in" the truck. "There is not one day I do not mourn the loss of my beloved son," Roy's mother said in a statement that prosecutor Maryclare Flynn read on Thursday. Flynn had asked the judge for a sentence of seven to 12 years, while Carter's defense lawyer, Joseph Cataldo, had asked for five years of supervised probation due to Carter's history of mental health issues, lack of criminal past, and age at the time of Roy's suicide. "Knowing that Mr. Roy is in the truck, knowing the condition of the truck, knowing or at least having a state of mind that 15 minutes would pass, Ms. Carter takes no action," Moniz told the court in June before convicting Carter. The unexpected involuntary-manslaughter ruling caused waves in legal communities, with many experts saying it could set a precedent for future cases in which people tell others to kill themselves. Daniel Medwed, a professor of law and criminal justice at Northeastern University, told Business Insider before the sentencing on Thursday that Carter was unlikely to be sentenced to 20 years in prison because of her age at the time of the crime and her history of mental illness. He predicted a sentence of one to five years, saying that no matter what it would be "a very difficult decision for the judge." The Washington Post on Thursday published the explosive transcript of a January phone call between President Donald Trump and Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, in which the two sparred over a deal to resettle 1,250 refugees in the United States. The conversation made headlines in January after it was reported that Trump called the arrangement the "worst deal ever." But the full transcript revealed a heated back-and-forth between the two leaders in which Turnbull attempted to correct several points about the deal Trump appeared to have misunderstood or was unfamiliar with. Trump complained about the deal and criticized the Australian leader throughout the conversation, at one point saying "I hate taking these people" and insulting Turnbull for brokering "many a stupid deal in business." Trump eventually declared the conversation his "most unpleasant call all day" after a "pleasant" one with Russian President Vladimir Putin earlier, then hung up after dismissing Turnbull's request to discuss Syria and North Korea. "This shows me to be a dope. I am not like this, but if I have to do it, I will do it but I do not like this at all. I will be honest with you," Trump said. "I think it is ridiculous and Obama should have never signed it. The only reason I will take them is because I have to honor a deal signed by my predecessor and it was a rotten deal." Heres everything you need to know about the deal: What the refugee deal is In November 2016, the Australian government announced it had reached an agreement with the Obama administration to resettle in the US refugees who are currently held in detention facilities on two islands far from the Australian mainland: Nauru and Manus Island. The exact number of refugees being resettled wasnt initially specified by the Australian government, but in the transcript of Turnbull and Trumps call, Turnbull clarified it was 1,250. The number of refugees being exchanged was a point of contention during the conversation, as Trump repeated several times the number was 2,000 or 5,000. With great respect, that is not right it is not 2,000, Turnbull responded. The given number in the agreement is 1,250 and it is entirely a matter of your vetting. Another disagreement between the pair was the nationality of the refugees the call took place shortly after Trump had signed an executive order banning travelers from seven countries, including Iraq, Iran, Syria, Yemen, Sudan, Somalia, and Libya. The nationalities of the refugees at stake in the US-Australia deal are unclear, but refugee advocates say many who are detained on Nauru and Manus Island are from Iraq, Iran, Somalia, and Sudan countries listed on Trumps original travel ban as well as Afghanistan, and Pakistan. Some of the refugees are also stateless. During the call, Turnbull attempted to convince Trump that the deal was absolutely consistent with the travel ban, meaning that the US can choose which refugees to accept and subject each of them to any security screening necessary. None of these people are from the conflict zone. They are basically economic refugees from Iran, Pakistan, and Afghanistan, Turnbull said. Another point Turnbull attempted to explain was that the refugee deal was not a one-sided affair. Just two months before the deal was struck, the Australian government announced it would take in asylum-seekers from US-backed detention facilities in Costa Rica. While the agreement is not explicitly a quid pro quo arrangement, the two deals ensure the countries are essentially swapping refugees with one another, with each country relieving the other of the responsibility of detaining asylum-seekers. Why Australia won't just resettle the refugees on its mainland It is not because they are bad people. It is because in order to stop people smugglers, we had to deprive them of the product," Turnbull said. "So we said if you try to come to Australia by boat, even if we think you are the best person in the world, even if you are a Nobel Prize-winning genius, we will not let you in." At first, Trump appeared to understand, saying, That is a good idea. We should do that too. You are worse than I am," but later asked Turnbull to explain the point again. What is the thing with boats? Why do you discriminate against boats?" he asked. It should be noted that Australia does take in refugees the country recently pledged to up its annual refugee intake to 19,000 from 13,750 in 2015-16 but the difference is that most of those arrivals are resettled through the UN's refugee agency. They arrive in Australia legally, whereas those who travel by boat do so illegally. Australia is loath to accept the boat-borne arrivals, on grounds that successful asylum-seekers who make the journey by boat will embolden others to attempt the same and, as Turnbull explained to Trump, enable human smuggling. In fact, Turnbull is so opposed to allowing the refugees detained on Nauru and Manus to enter Australia, his administration refused to entertain an offer from New Zealand to resettle 150 of those refugees per year. The line of reasoning was that should those refugees eventually gain New Zealand citizenship, they would also gain travel rights to Australia. "It's a back-door way to get into Australia, and would have been a green light to people smugglers," Australia's immigration minister, Peter Dutton, told media last April. Even when Australia announced the refugee deal with the US, Turnbull took pains to describe the situation as a "one-off agreement" that would not be offered to future asylum-seekers attempting the journey to Australia by sea. "We need to send, now more than ever, the clearest and most unequivocal message to people smugglers and their would-be passengers that, if they seek to come to Australia unlawfully, they will not succeed," Turnbull said at a November press conference announcing the deal. Turnbull even announced a so-called "ring of steel" to enforce Australia's border in preparation for the deal, lest the news encourage a wave of asylum-seekers to attempt to travel to Australia by sea in the hopes that they, too, can be resettled in the US. The government launched "the largest and most capable maritime surveillance and response fleet Australia has ever deployed," specifically to intercept boats of asylum seekers and turn them away from the country. Why the international community dislikes it Australia has long been criticized by countries around the world including the US for its practice of turning back asylum boats, implementing mandatory detention policies, and transferring refugees to other countries. The average amount of time refugees are held in the detention facilities is 469 days, and nearly one-third of those detained have been held for more than two years, according to data from the Australian government. Beyond that, the offshore detention centers have become infamous for reports of human-rights abuses and violence against detainees, many of whom are children. Humanitarian workers who have visited the Nauru and Manus Island detention centers allege that instances of violence, sexual assault, and degrading treatment are commonplace, and many refugees and asylum-seekers suffer severe mental-health problems due to their prolonged detention and uncertainty for their future. Even North Korea, The Guardian reported, slammed Australia at a United Nations human-rights council session in 2015, saying it had "serious concerns" about reports of human-rights violations at the facilities. The deal for the US to resettle the refugees has therefore come under some scrutiny, as it essentially legitimizes Australia's practice of intercepting asylum seekers and detaining them instead of forcing the country to change its policies. The US agreement to resettle the refugees has been given the blessing of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the UN's refugee agency, which will help the two countries in the resettlement process but, like the US-Australia deal, it's a one-off arrangement that likely won't be repeated. The UNHCR maintains that Australia's policy of detaining asylum-seekers offshore is illegal. "We, all of us, are very clear that this is a one-off, good offices, exceptional humanitarian type of involvement because we do not believe that the future of handling this lies in sending people to Manus Island and Nauru," Volter Turk, assistant high commissioner with the UNHCR, told The New York Times last November. What's next Australians have been wondering about the future of the deal since the moment it was announced by Turnbull, as it's no secret that Trump has wanted to dramatically reduce the amount of refugees the US accepts. Shortly after the phone call between Trump and Turnbull in January, the White House confirmed it plans to honor the deal and apply "extreme vetting" to all the arrivals. Indeed, the initial executive order Trump signed barring all refugees for 120 days included an exception for preexisting international agreements, widely presumed to refer to the deal with Australia. But Reuters recently reported that US immigration officials cut short their screening interviews on Nauru two weeks early, just after the White House announced the US had reached its annual refugee intake cap. US Citizenship and Immigration Services declined to discuss exact dates, but told Reuters it is planning return trips. The Australian government, too, has declined to discuss the future of the refugee deal, and was accused just last month by the UNHCR of breaching its agreement with the US. Retired Gen. John Kelly is settling into his new role as President Donald Trump's chief of staff, and he's bringing some changes to a White House that's been in turmoil since Trump took office. Since assuming the position, Kelly has taken significant steps to tighten the ship. Among other things, he's begun ensuring that West Wing meetings are "shorter and stick to their scheduled topic," according to Axios. While former chief of staff Reince Priebus remained largely on the sidelines, Kelly has taken on a leadership role to demonstrate that he's in control, gaining deference from Trump's closest confidants, like Ivanka Trump and senior adviser Jared Kushner. The president himself is trying to impress his new chief of staff, Axios reported, by "picking up his game ... acting sharper in meetings and even rattling off stats." The White House shakeup It isn't the first time Kelly's demonstrated his penchant for imposing order and, when necessary, his willingness to stand up to the president. About a month ago, when Kelly was still the secretary of Homeland Security, he demanded at an Oval Office meeting with Trump and other advisers that everyone leave the room so he could speak candidly with Trump, according to the AP. Trump initially refused, but relented when Kelly insisted. It was an unusual move coming from Trump, who has largely resisted being told what to do and frequently favors those who allow him to act on his impulses. Kelly also reportedly almost resigned from the DHS in May, in protest of the way Trump handled firing former FBI Director James Comey. Comey was fired on May 9 and became aware of Trump's decision when he saw it break on cable news, while he was addressing FBI employees in Los Angeles. When he first saw the headlines, Comey laughed and thought it was a prank,The New York Times reported at the time. After getting confirmation, Comey left Los Angeles for Washington and took a phone call from Kelly on the way. When he learned that Kelly may resign over the events that had transpired, Comey urged him not to, with Kelly eventually agreeing. Kelly's most high-profile move as Trump's chief of staff so far has been his role in the ouster of Anthony Scaramucci. Scaramucci was announced as the new communications director on July 21 and subsequently ousted on Monday, just 11 days after assuming the role. The decision to dismiss Scaramucci came from Kelly himself, who felt that the former communications director lacked discipline and had burned away his credibility. Scaramucci's ouster was fueled by an explosive interview he gave to the New Yorker's Ryan Lizza last week, in which he blasted people who leaked information from the White House and referred to senior White House staff in vulgar terms. When Lizza refused to disclose a source that had provided him with details of Scaramucci's private dinner with Trump and several Fox News personalities, Scaramucci zeroed in on former chief of staff Reince Priebus, whom he has long feuded with, calling him "a f------ paranoid schizophrenic, a paranoiac." He also implied that chief strategist Steve Bannon was only interested in media attention, telling Lizza, "I'm not Steve Bannon, I'm not trying to suck my own c---." Although it briefly appeared that Scaramucci had the administration's backing Priebus resigned shortly after Scaramucci told Lizza he would do just that, and White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders publicly defended Scaramucci after the New Yorker published his rant the first thing Kelly did after being sworn in as chief of staff on Monday was dismiss Scaramucci. Trump's decision to tap Kelly as his new chief of staff was hailed by Republicans who had long called for order in a chaotic White House. "The thing that General Kelly should do is not try to change Donald Trump," former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski said on NBC's "Meet the Press." "Our relationship with Russia is at an all-time & very dangerous low," he said. "You can thank Congress, the same people that can't even give us HCare!" Lawmakers replied that Trump's ire would be better directed at Russian President Vladimir Putin. "If only that outrage was directed at Putin, the murderous dictator who attacked our democracy. #ChecksAndBalances," GOP Rep. Adam Kinzinger tweeted. you could thank Russian dictator Putin, who hacked US election, undermines Western alliances, invaded Ukraine & annexed Crimea." Trump's tweet came a day after Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev used Twitter to denounce the veto-proof sanctions bill that Trump was essentially handcuffed into signing into law on Wednesday, appearing to challenge the president's ego by calling his administration weak while pinning the blame on Congress. "The Trump administration has shown its total weakness by handing over executive power to Congress in the most humiliating way," Medvedev tweeted on Wednesday. Jeremy Bash, the former chief of staff at the Defense Department and the CIA, predicted earlier this week that Trump's "bromance" with Putin would continue even if Trump signed the sanctions bill because Putin would know Trump was backed into a corner by Congress. Medvedev seemed to acknowledge that on Wednesday, writing that Trump was "not happy about the sanctions" but "could not but sign the bill." "The US establishment fully outwitted Trump," he said. Trump is known for "punching back" when he feels slighted. He slammed China last weekend, for instance, for its reluctance to rein in North Korea. He criticized Mayor Sadiq Khan of London hours after a deadly terrorist attack rocked the city in June. Last year, during the presidential campaign, he attacked the parents of slain US Army Cpt. Humayun Khan after they spoke out against him at the 2016 Democratic National Convention. As of Thursday, however, Trump still had not responded to Putin's demand that 755 diplomatic workers, many of them American, be cut from the US Embassy in Moscow and from US diplomatic missions in St. Petersburg, Ekaterinburg, and Vladivostok. The cuts would be the steepest in nearly 100 years and would go much further than President Barack Obama's decision to expel 35 Russian diplomats from the US as punishment for Russia's election interference. Ned Price, a former CIA analyst who served as a National Security Council spokesman and special assistant to President Barack Obama, called Trump's tweet on Thursday "inexplicable" and said it "does nothing more than reiterate what Moscow already knows: namely that Russia has a stalwart friend in the form of the President of the United States." But Price said it was not the first time Trump "has parroted Kremlin talking points." "He did it consistently during the campaign actually directing his supporters to Moscows propaganda and has continued to do so as president," Price said on Thursday. "Moscow may well know why President Trump is so loyal, but the American people continue to be baffled and rightly so." Trump's attacks on Congress mark a bizarre turning point in the drama unfolding between the White House and the GOP-controlled House and Senate. That battle has escalated in recent weeks amid the Senate's failure to pass a healthcare bill, and Trump has criticized Republicans for failing to protect him amid the intelligence committees' investigations into his campaign's contacts with Russia during the election. "As the phony Russian Witch Hunt continues, two groups are laughing at this excuse for a lost election taking hold, Democrats and Russians!" Trump tweeted late last month. "It's very sad that Republicans, even some that were carried over the line on my back, do very little to protect their President." A provision in the new sanctions law requiring Trump to get congressional approval before altering or lifting sanctions on Russia has also been a major point of contention between the White House and Congress. Trump, who has expressed lingering doubts that Russia interfered in the 2016 election, said shortly after signing the bill into law on Wednesday that "America will not tolerate interference in our democratic process," and he denounced "Russian subversion and destabilization." According to an NBC News report, Trump singled out Defense Secretary James Mattis, a retired Marine general, saying he had given Mattis authority to make decisions about the war months prior but had seen little progress. Trump delegated authority to Mattis to set troop levels in Afghanistan in June, though the secretary would need White House permission to send more than 3,900 troops to the war-torn country. "We aren't winning," Trump said at the July 19 meeting, senior administration officials told NBC. "We are losing." (Mattis himself told the Senate Armed Services Committee the same in July.) One official told NBC that Trump's military advisers entered the meeting hoping he would agree to a strategy for the US's nearly 16-year-old war. But Trump's thinking appeared to have been influenced by another meeting he had with veterans from the war. "We've been there for now close to 17 years, and I want to find out why weve been there for 17 years, how its going, and what we should do in terms of additional ideas, Trump said prior to the meeting with veterans. "I've heard plenty of ideas from a lot of people, but I want to hear it from the people on the ground." Trump told his national-security advisers that the veterans he met with told him NATO forces deployed to Afghanistan to assist the US had been of little help and complained about China profiting off Afghanistan's estimated $1 trillion in rare minerals mineral rights China bought years ago with US support. Trump relayed an anecdote about a troubled restaurant renovation in New York City in the 1980s to highlight how he thought his high-ranking advisers were failing him. "Officials said Trump kept stressing the idea that lousy advice cost the owner a year of lost business and that talking to the restaurant's waiters instead might have yielded a better result," NBC reported. "He also said the tendency is to assume if someone isn't a three-star general he doesn't know what he's talking about, and that in his own experience in business talking to low-ranking workers has gotten him better outcomes." According to NBC, the restaurant closed for two months in 1987 for a full renovation before reopening to acclaim. Other Trump advisers have reportedly solicited advice on the war in Afghanistan from Erik Prince, founder of the Blackwater private-security firm. Steve Bannon, Trump's chief strategist, and Jared Kushner, the president's senior adviser and son-in-law, were able to get Prince into a meeting with Mattis in July, but the defense secretary declined to include Prince's ideas in his review of the war. The meeting left Trump's advisers frustrated and, according to NBC, ended without a firm decision about the future of Army Gen. John Nicholson, the US commander in Afghanistan. Nicholson is the 12th person to hold the top job in Afghanistan. He has called the situation there a stalemate and cautioned Congress that more US troops may needed to counter outside influence there from Russia in particular. Nicholson also decided to drop the US's "mother of all bombs" the 21,000-pound GBU-43/B Massive Ordnance Air Blast bomb on an ISIS compound in Nangarhar province in eastern Afghanistan in April. According to military experts who spoke with NBC, it would be unwise to rely on input from ground troops to formulate an overarching strategy, particularly in a war like that in Afghanistan. "They're qualified totally to talk about tactics and things like that and what they're seeing," retired four-star Army Gen. Barry McCaffrey told NBC, "but the president's job is to formulate strategy and policy not to do tactical decisions." The list was last reviewed in 2006 and the approval was to bring the industrial policy of the country to global best practices. The Minister of Industry, Trade and Investment, Dr Okechukwu Enelamah, gave the hint while addressing State House Correspondents on the decisions of FEC. "The FEC gave approval to a memorandum that was presented to amend the list of pioneer industries and products that will enjoy pioneer status going forward. "The pioneer incentive scheme is governed by the Industrial Development Income Tax Relief Act. "The whole purpose of it is to give tax holidays to industries that we consider pioneer, not mature, to enable them to grow and attract investment in them," he said. He said that the list covered a wide range of industries and the tax relief covered three to five years. Enelamah said that the pioneer status review attention was paid to the administrations economic recovery and growth plan and to capture the current realities that would enable the realisation of the growth plan. He added that there was multi stakeholder engagement involving the public and private sectors in identifying the industries suitable for the pioneer incentive scheme. "We have tried to remove all ambiguities in the definition of industries by reclassifying industries according to the international standard industrial classification, which is the same standard used by the Nigerian Bureau of Statistics. "We also agreed that the pioneer list should be reviewed every two years and that in the case of additions to the list, it will be affected immediately. "In case of deletion from the list, there will be a three-year window that will be allowed for those investing in that industry and enjoying pioneer status to carry on till the end of that three-year period. "Against this backdrop, we then approved 27 industries that were recommended for addition to the pioneer list," he added. The minister stated that the list would be made public, adding that the mineral oil prospecting, already governed by the petroleum profit tax, was not part of the pioneer industries, same for the cement where the country already had become net exporters. He said that rather than lose revenue, the status was an incentive to enable new industries to enter the market, enter new industries and invest more for those already in, adding that it did not remove tax payments for existing industries. "This is fairly a well-used policy and carrot by countries and Nigeria had it before but we had to review it because it had not been reviewed since 2006. "The whole idea is that it is an incentive to attract people to invest more in sectors," he said, adding that most of the agro and agro-processing, industrialization, creative industries, power, science and technology and players should be allowed to have tax incentive. The unnamed lady who made five minutes, 23 seconds video where she narrated how her younger sister was made to part with the profit she made on her business, lambasted Pastor Adeboye and other men of God whom she says collect money from their members without and turning their backs on them when they have problems. In the video, the lady recounted how she gave her younger sister who is based in Nigeria some money to set up a business but after a while, the sister called her and requested for more money to boost the business. When she enquired from her what happened to the profit she was supposed to be making, the sister told her that she had given her profits to the RCCG every month as part of her first fruit contribution as instructed by Pastor Adeboye. The apparently enraged claims she told her sister to go back to the person who has been receiving her first fruit to get the money to take care of her financial needs. She also addressed other pastors, charging them to give assistance to their members when they need it and not just collecting money from them. In her words: "My junior sister was to start a business some months ago and she asked for financial assistance from me. So I was able to give her some little financial assistance. And then she started the business and everything was moving fine. When she was about to rent an apartment, she asked me for financial assistance again and I also gave her. There was a time she told me that when she started the business, she was told in her church that her first profit of the months has to go to the church and she did so. Last month, she called me on the phone and said she needed some financial assistance and I told her that presently, I can't help her because our mother is also there and I give financial assistance to her every month, that I can't help her. This month, today again, she called me and said 'sister, please, please, please, this is the last time am asking you for financial assistance, I need some money to boost my business. I now told her, remember you told me of your first profit that you gave to your church because your pastor wanted you to do that. Now that you have some financial problems, why not go to your pastor to give you money? I told her to go and ask him for money. She now said it is not the pastor of the church she attends that collects the money but the General Overseer. I asked her who the General Overseer is and she said Pastor Adeboye. I said, Pastor Adeboye? What did he use the money to do and she said that he used the money to pay the church workers. I told her that now that she needs financial assistance, she should go to Pastor Adeboye to ask for financial assistance. But the problem is that you cannot even go near him because he has bodyguards. You don't even have his phone number, you can't contact him personally. This a man that has cars and private jets and whatever, he asked you to bring your first salary of the months and you gave it to him. And now you are in financial need and you can't even reach him. This practice of Nigerian pastors collecting money from people all in the name of God has to stop. You can collect money from your church members but do you know when they need financial assistance? Can you help them? Do they know how their members survive day to day? This my sister now needs financial help but where is the pastor to help her? Anybody that knows Pastor Adeboye, please convey my message to him: This girl needs some financial assistance and if he can receive from her, he can also give to her. He should render her some financial assistance. Anybody that is able to contact pastor Adeboye and they need my sister's number, I will send. Or the rich members of the church should help her. Bring money to the church but when the members need help, they will not be there to help them. Here in Europe, I and my husband work to pay our bills. If I give a pastor my first salary, how will I be able to pay my house rent or my electricity bills? The system in Nigeria is wrong, it has to stop. All these pastors, you people should stop collecting money from your church members all in the name of God. And when these members need help, there will be nobody there for them., nobody to help them. This girl needs financial assistance. All Pastor Adeboye's church members, the ones that are rich, I will send you my sister's number, you people can get in touch with her and help her. The church doesn't have to collect, collect, collect, let the church also give out. The Catholic Church here, they are working hand in hand with the Red Cross and are helping people but I don't know what Nigerian churches are doing; I don't know what the pastors are doing. All they do is buy big jets, private jets and have bodyguards. How can a pastor have bodyguards? I thought God is there to protect you, His angels are there to protect you. What do you need bodyguards for that your ordinary church members cannot even come close to you? and ask you for help? Get in touch with me and I will give you my sister's number so the church can give her some financial assistance. This rubbish has to stop!" The lady also called on rich members of the RCCG to also help members who are in financial difficulties instead of being the only beneficiaries. A Hindu temple few kilometers away from Chandigarh has no place for women. Their entry is barred as the priests here have deemed them 'impure' and 'dirty'. By Manjeet Sehgal: Ever wondered how a section of the residents of Chandigarh - often termed as an icon of modern urbanism - treats its women. The answer is disturbing and shameful. Women according to the men who live in the vicinity of Chandigarh are 'dirty' 'impure' and bring 'misfortune' . This is what the men in Kansal village ,near Chandigarh, feel about their women. advertisement That's why they installed a sign board on the gate of Kheda Temple that reads ' Kheda Mandar De Andar Aurtan Da Aana Sakhat Mana Hai' in Punjabi and as 'Kheda Mandir Ke Andar Mahilaon Ka Ana Sakhat Mana Hai' in Hindi which means females are not allowed inside the Kheda temple. This diktat was pronounced by the temple management committee a month ago on the advise of a priest after few locals approached him .The locals were worried as three to four youths belonging to this village died an untimely death. They approached a priest who told them that the Kheda, a local god is not happy with them as the women do not respect him. "The god became furious as the women did not wear a veil while entering the village as a mark of respect. Some even entered the temple during their periods. Women while having periods are 'impure' and 'dirty' ," said Sanju Kansal, a local. Others including a village headman, Shamsher Singh agreed with Kansal and said that the decision was unanimous as it was in the interest of the village. "The whole village nodded in favour of this decision as it was the question of the well being of the future generation. The baba had advised us not to allow women inside the temple for 40 days. The women too have agreed to this," says Shamsher Singh. VILLAGE WOMEN SILENT ON THE DIKTAT Despite knowing the fact that the decision is against the women and violates their rights, the women of Kansal village seem to have silently given their consent for the ban. "Earlier we were allowed inside the temple but now we do not go. I don't know but the children are allowed. It hardly matters who goes or not. I pay obeisance from outside," says Gurmeet Kaur, a local who is unaffected by the ban. When questioned other women, most of them had the same answer. They refused to comment as any adverse reply may lead to domestic dispute. However, there are residents like Azaib Singh who are against the diktat and want that the women worshippers be allowed to enter the temple. "The ban is arbitrary. We are against it .Everybody should be allowed to enter the temple. This is the brainchild of some people who are dividing the society," says Azaib Singh. advertisement KANSAL TEMPLE IS NOT THE ONLY TEMPLE The Kheda temple is not the only temple where females are not allowed to enter. There are about four temples in the vicinity where women cannot enter. Besides the Kheda temple of Kansal area, the temple of a Naga baba few hundred metres from Kheda has also banned entry of female worshippers. Two other temples located in Dhakoli near Zirakpur and in Nayagaon are also a 'males only' domain. "Women cannot enter this Samadhi (temple of a Naga Baba) . I have been living here from last 18 years. When others are not entering why should we," said Veena ,a resident who lives close to another temple where women are restricted. A senior citizen Rajni when asked why women were not allowed in these temples said some people (priests) visited the village and asked not to allow them to enter the village . WOMEN RIGHTS ACTIVISTS OBJECT TO THE DIKTAT While the women of Kansal village are silent on the diktat, women's rights activists are up in arms against the ban and have criticised the temple management committee for not allowing the women to enter the temple. advertisement "I am shocked how the people who live in the vicinity of country's modern and highly educated city Chandigarh stooped so low and labeled women as inferior human being. This is shameful and against the women. We will start agitation if the board is not removed immediately ," says Renu Mathur , a Panchkula based women's rights activist. ALSO READ: UP: Man killed, women gangraped as gang attacks family on Bulandshahr-Jewar highway A cat turned into a woman who snipped my braid: A look into bizarre world of serial hair choppers, monkey men, milk-drinking idols --- ENDS --- On Thursday, August 3, 2017, the four officers, Sgts. Musa Musa, John Nanpak, Ogah Audu and Gabriel Ugah, were dismissed from the command after they were found guilty of gross misconduct. FCT police spokesman, Anjuguri Manzah, confirmed the dismissal in a statement, saying that the culprits were found guilty in an orderly room proceeding. His statement read, "In fulfilment of the promise by the FCT Police Command to make public its findings on the investigation of the case of theft at the Gwarimpa residence of former president, Dr Goodluck Jonathan, the command wishes to state that in line with first schedule of Police Act and regulation 370 Cap 19, the policemen guarding the house have been tried in an orderly room proceeding and found culpable of the offence. "Sequel to the outcome of the orderly room proceeding, the FCT Commissioner of Police, Musa Kimo has approved the immediate dismissal of the policemen from the Nigeria Police Force. "F/No. 436691 Sgt Musa Musa; F/No. 235422 Sgt John Nanpak; F/No. 261898 Sgt Ogah Audu; F/No. 425210 Sgt Gabriel Ugah." Manzah also said the group's ring leader, Sgt Musa, will be prosecuted to the full extent of the law so as to serve as a deterrent to other police officers trying to tarnish the image of the force. He said, "The Command wishes to also state that the main culprit F/No. 436691 Sgt Musa Musa will be charged to court for prosecution. "While efforts have been intensified to arrest his accomplice one Mallam Shuaibu who is presently at large. "This action is in compliance with the vision of the Inspector General of Police IGP Ibrahim Kpotun Idris NPM mni to rid the Nigeria Police Force of criminal elements that are out to disparage the good image of the Force." 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! Gowon gave the advice at a National Security Seminar on Unity in Diversity: Security and National Development, organised by the Department of State Service (DSS) in Abuja. He also urged the youths not to allow a situation where Nigerians would fight one another. You are the future of this country. In all that you do, ensure that we build the country in the interest of all. Ensure that you do better than what we have done for you. This is my plea to you, he told youths. On the calls for restructuring or secession by different groups and sections in the country, Gowon advised the agitators to be mindful of the rights of others. He condemned situations where certain individuals and interest groups hide under the freedom of speech and association guaranteed in the 1999 Constitution to cause threat to the unity and sovereignty of the country. My view and call is that all Nigerians should like their country, right or wrong, but yet demand a change for good and better On his part, the Director-General of DSS, Mr Lawal Daura, advised all groups and individuals bent on pursuing their divisive and separatist activities that threaten national security, to have a rethink. Daura said that security and law enforcement agencies would not sit by while separatist elements continued with their activities that put at risk the lives and properties of law-abiding and innocent Nigerians. We will deploy the full amalgam of the security infrastructure to deal with subsisting and emerging developments capable of endangering lives and properties as well as our corporate existence as a nation. Globally, the security agencies form the core of institutions that give backbone to statehood. Consequently, every activity that represents an existential threat to the nation is a direct challenge to the security agencies which must be responded to. The security sector views the unity of this nation as a sacred trust and this task we will do our utmost to meet, he said. ALSO READ:Yakubu Gowon apologizes to Niger Delta communities Daura said that the seminar presented an opportunity to explore diverse perspectives on national challenges with a view to gaining deeper insights and understanding of same. The Minister of Power, Works and Housing, Mr Babatunde Fashola said this when he briefed State House correspondents on the outcome of the Councils meeting held at the Presidential Villa, Abuja. He said that N10.4 billion of the amount would be expended on the reconstruction of Pankshin-Balank-Yalen-Salak-Gindiri road in Plateau, while the remaining N10.2billion would be spent on Sharre-Patigi road in Kwara. The ministry presented two memoranda to the council. The first was, with respect for approval to construct the Pankshin-Balank-Yalen-Salak-Gindiri road in Plateau state for N10.46 billion. The second one is the Sharre-Patigi road in Kwara for N10.2 billion, both prayers were approved by the council. he said. According to the minister, the council also approved the negotiation reached between the Federal Government and a contractor over the supply of three million electricity meters awarded in 2003. ALSO READ: Osinbajo says Buhari will fulfil his promises to Nigerians He stated that the contract was never fully performed by both parties, which subsequently ended up in the court. The other memorandum was in respect to inherited liabilities from the old power ministry where a judgment of N119 billion had been signed against the Federal Government as a result of acts of officials of government who varied the presidential approval without seeking further directive and then awarded the contract on that basis. So the party who was the beneficiary of that contract which they subsequently sought to withdraw went to court and got a judgment. The army issued the governor a very public warning on its official Twitter account , tweeting, "Gov Ayodele Fayose should stop politicizing the military&military OPs, seek other avenues for your relevance. The Army today is not corrupt." The tweet is believed to be a reaction to the governor's recent criticism of the military in relation to its fight against terrorist group, Boko Haram. After a report by the United States' Department of State's Bureau for Counterterrorism and Countering Violent Extremism said the country's war against Boko Haram is being hindered by animosity, Governor Fayose issued a statement through his spokesman, Lere Olayinka, on Wednesday, August 2, 2017. In the statement, the governor said, "This report by the US government has further lent credence to earlier revelation by the Transparency International (TI) that despite government's anti-corruption fight, corruption in the military is weakening Nigeria's efforts to battle Boko Haram. "As revealed by the TI, fight against Boko Haram has become a cash cow for some top military officers and corrupt politicians in the Buhari government, with the creation of fake defence contracts and laundering the proceeds often laundered abroad in the UK, U.S. and elsewhere. "The TI went further to state that the military is left without vital equipment, insufficiently trained, low in morale and under-resourced. "The federal government must therefore address the widespread corruption in the fight against Boko Haram as revealed by the TI and also see to the welfare of the military personnel involved in the fight." Osinbajo made the call at a National Security Seminar with Unity in Diversity: Security and National Development as theme, organised by the Department of State Service (DSS). He said that the future of the country lay with the youth and that they must be involved in building it. He said that he had been able to discover some false narratives about the country in the course of his engagement with various stakeholders arising from different agitations and quit ultimatum. One of the false narratives, according to the acting president, is that Nigeria is a mere geographical expression formed with the agreement of its people, and as such, will fail. He said that such narrative was not true as it was first used for Italy, exactly a century before Nigeria was born, adding that Italy was still a geographical expression and had not failed. We must not be misled by some few intellectuals suggesting to us that if we do not for one day hold a conference to come together as a nation, we cannot stay together. Indeed, we can. Most countries of the world came together by some accidents of history in one way or the other. Many were put together, many were forced together, but the wise ones have remained together and united. The second false narrative is that one particular religion or ethnic group is more responsible for the Nigerian problems than the other, or that one is superior to the other. My experience is exactly the opposite. As a matter of fact, whenever you find a charge-sheet of people who have been charged with an offence, especially stealing or corruption, you will never find one ethnic group alone represented. You will always find an equal representation of the ethnic groups. There is complete unity in this business of stealing. You will also not find one religious group. You will find that there is nobody arguing about religion when it comes to this matter, Osinbajo said. He added that there was also the belief among Nigerians that they would be better off when their people were in power, saying history and experience are of course, exact opposite of that. As a matter of fact, what history has shown is that no ethnic group can be better off, economically or socially, merely because a leader of the country as at that time is from a certain ethnic group. He added that there were also complaints that certain ethnic groups were being marginalized and said that each group in the country could bring up a narrative to suit it on the matter. There was also a false narrative that hate speeches is allowed by freedom of speech. This is very wrong and we should not allow that to continue. We must ensure that there is respect for each other in conversations and interaction. We must show respect for one another, respect for each others religion and views. The language of interaction must be civil. Osinbajo assured that President Muhammadu Buhari administration was committed to the protection of lives and property as well as ensuring that each Nigerian was confident of his security. ALSO READ:Osinbajo replaces ICPC chairman He said the executive was working on all agencies of government the police, the security and the armed forces to ensure that they understood the first primary duty of government. He said that the government was also seriously committed to ensuring social justice and tackling poverty in the country. Osinbajo urged Nigerians to be united in the fight against corruption, saying that corruption was the worst evil the country had or would experience. Bihar Health Minister Mangal Pandey had earlier defended the use of word virgin in the marital status declaration form issued by Patna's IGIMS for its staff. Bihar Health Minister Mangal Pandey defended use of word virgin in the form. By Rohit Kumar Singh: After a huge hue and cry over its controversial marital status declaration form, Patna's Indira Gandhi Institute of Medical Science (IGIMS) has removed the virgin from the questionnaire. The absurd marital declaration questionnaire asked IGIMS employees to mention their marital status and also whether they were virgin or not. Bihar Health Minister Mangal Pandey earlier today defended IGIMS, saying the format of the form was same which AIIMS has been following. advertisement "I looked the dictionary for the actual meaning of the word virgin. It means unmarried and I don't find anything objectionable in the usage of the word," Mangal Pandey said. "However, when the issue was brought to my notice I enquired IGIMS management about it. They told me the format used in the form is the same which is used at AIIMS (All India Institute of Medical Science)," he added. The previous form asked male employees to provide details if they have more than one wife. Women employees apart from declaring status regarding their virginity were also asked to provide details on whether they are married to a person who has no other wife living or another wife living. ALSO READ: Virgin means unmarried: Bihar health minister defends controversial IGIMS form Are you a virgin? Do you have multiple wives? Patna's IGIMS asks its employees Singles worship Disha Patani, decorate Virgin Tree with condoms on V-Day WATCH: After backlash, IGIMS Patna removes 'virgin' from form --- ENDS --- The protest which coincided with the 3-day Fidua prayers for Alhaja Saratu Aregbesola, mother of the governor who died on Tuesday, was staged to press home more payment from the government of Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola. The pensioners, who converged at the entrance of the state's secretariat, were seen discussing with no placards to drive home reasons for their protest. Recall that the state government committed N5.1 billion out of the N6.3 billion from the second tranche of the Paris club refund received from the federal government for the payment of salaries and pensions. It was gathered that the workers, pensioners inclusive, have since been receiving credit alerts of payment of the agreed payments reached with the various unions. The government reached the sharing formula through the state's Revenue Allocation Committee, led by Hassan Sunmonu, in conjunction with labour unions in the state. It was learnt that the unions agreed to the decision to pay the arrears of July and August 2015, the balance of leave bonuses of 2015 to workers in grade level 8-17 who had been receiving modulated salaries, as well as the July 2017 salary and pension entitlement to all workers in the state. Prince Rotimi Adelugba, the Chairman of the Triangular Group of Pensioners in Osun state described the latest protest embarked upon by a faction of pensioners as 'sponsored', describing their conduct as unnecessary and a plot to undermine the good intention of the government. He said the state government has paid the salary of all workers in the state up to July 2017 in line with the agreement made between it and the labour union. According to him, the state government and the labour union met and decided that the state should pay July and August, 2015 balance of the modulated salaries of workers whose pay had been on modulation since 2015. The Osun Triangular Pensioners Chairman warned those that are preoccupied in sowing seed of discord with aim of heating up the polity and inciting the populace against the government to desist in the collective interest of all in the state. Prince Adelugba opined that at a time when the whole state is in mourning over the death of the illustrious mother of the governor, it is only fair that they sympathize with him and the government, rather than put up a show of shame. In an interesting twist, one of the protesters, who dressed like an Islamic cleric was spotted with a black goat, for yet to be identified purpose. Traditional rulers in Osun state were also there to express their condolences to the Governor and his entire family. Alhaja Saratu Aregbesola died on Tuesday at the age 84 at her residence in Ilesa, Osun state and she was buried immediately. In his remark, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, described the deceased as an enigmatic woman whose entire life was dedicated to the service God and humanity. He described Late Saratu Aregbesola as a woman who dedicated her life for the education of her children and their well being. Tinubu added, "I know late Saratu Aregbesola just as I know her son- Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola. Mama was a virtuous woman par excellence. She was a woman indeed whose character could not be faulted for any reason because she dedicated her entire life to service God and humanity. "She was a good mother not only to her children but to all. She took us very well. She loved us just as sheloved her children. "Nobody has the control of his or her life except God. He gives and takes, so for the death of Mama Aregbesola, we thank God for taking him graciously. "Though her death is painful but there can not be a better time for her exit than now because one can not write a biography of a great woman than the success which God had made Mama to accomplished during her life time. "We give solace in the fact that Mama lived a good life and left a great legacy worthy of emulation. She left a good legacy by giving her children best things of life as been manifested in the life of Governor Aregbesola. "So, there is nothing certain as death and for this reason, we pray God t give her eternal rest and give Aregbesola and other members of the family the fortitude and courage to bear the irreparable loss." Also, Chief Adebisi Akande and former Osun state Governor, Prince Olagunsoye Oyinlola, described late Alhaja Saratu Aregbesola as a woman that can never be forgotten in the history of humanity. They described the death of Alhaja Saratu as a colossal loss to her children, family and the entire people of Osun, adding that her legacies will forever be remembered in the book of histroy. The duo also advised Aregbesola to take solace and be thankful to God for ensuring a gracious exit for his mother. Senator Musiliu Obanikoro and an APC chieftain from Borno, Hon. Kazim Imam, described late Alhaja Saratu Aregbesola as a rare gem of humanity. According to Obanikoro, "I express my lofty sympathy for the loss of Mama. There is no doubt that Mama has gone to Paradize because her life was dedicated to service God and humanity. She built good legacy and this was reflected in the quality of her children, family and those who her life impacted in one way or the other." In his response, Governor Aregbesola described his mother as an extra-ordinary woman who had no means of qualification in motherhood. H said "The death of my mother caught me unexpected because I had no premonition that such a thing would happen otherwise I may not be where I was when the news of her death was broken. "But in all, I give thanks to God that my mother lived a worthy life that anyone could pray for. She was a mother indeed. She loved us and she always stand by us in all situations. "She was a committed, dedicated and virtuous woman whose dedicated her life to ensure our collective greatness." ALSO READ:Governor Rauf Aregbesola loses mum Aregbesola gave thanks to God for giving him a virtuous woman as a mother, adding that she dedicated her life to the service God, her children and humanity. At least two national dailies and a clutch of online news outfits, did report on Wednesday, August 2, 2017, that in anticipation of Buharis return to Nigeria next week, an advance party from London is already in the country. Buhari has not set foot in his homeland for some 90 days now. The Nigerian leader left Nigeria for an open-ended medical vacation on May 7, 2017; after constitutionally handing over the reins of leadership to second in command Yemi Osinbajo. Governors across the partisan divide in Nigeria,returned from trips to London only recently. The Governors said the president was in fine fettle and will be returning to Nigeria very soon once his doctors had handed him the all clear. Their reports appeared to corroborate those of acting president Osinbajo who reportedly had an hour long meeting with Buhari in London on July 11, before breezing back home to chair a federal executive council meeting hours later. 'AIRCRAFT DISAPPEARS FROM HANGAR' Amid reports that the president will be returning to Nigeria in the next couple of days, a few platforms went to town with stories that the presidential aircraft had suddenly disappeared from its Stansted Airport hangar in the UK; and was ostensibly Nigeria bound. ALSO READ: However, during exclusive conversations with Pulse, two top ranking officials in the presidency dismissed the reports with a wave of the hand. Look...look...when the president is going to arrive, we will make a statement. You guys have to do less of this asking us to confirm speculations, one of the presidents aides who pleaded anonymity for this story, scolded. He added that; Has the president travelled before without you guys knowing where? When the president is going to come back, youll get an official statement. All the speculations concerning the presidents arrival are unnecessary. When hes going to return, will make a statement. If he hasnt made a statement, I dont think theres anything to worry about". The aide also said an advance team for public officials is only put in place for foreign trips and not for homecomings. 'ADVANCE TEAM' DEFINED What is an advance team when someone is coming back to his country?, the aide asked rhetorically, before going on to render a lecture: It is when you are going abroad that you need an advance team. Do you understand? An advance team precedes you on trips abroad, so that when you arrive, they would have made preparations for you as the principal. When you are going home, you dont need an advance team. Do you get the logic? Where are you guys getting all these rumours from? Someone took a photo without any indication...he just put up an old photo there...when the president is coming back, which is going to be soon by the way, Mr Adesina will issue a statement When Pulse rang the mobile of Adesina who is the presidents special adviser on media, we expectedly got very little. Theres nowhere our president goes that you dont get a statement. Thats a tradition whether hes going out or hes coming in, Adesina said curtly. So, if the president is coming back, theres going to be a statement. Thats all Ill say. Thank you, Adesina said, before cutting off the line abruptly. ONE MEDICAL TRIP TOO MANY This is president Buharis third medical vacation within a two year span. In June of 2016, the president embarked on a trip to London to treat an infected ear. In January of 2017, Buhari left Nigeria yet again for another medical vacation in London. He returned way beyond schedule on March 10, 2017. According to Tribune Online, the former President was accompanied by the former Osun state Governor, Prince Olagunsoye Oyinlola. Reports say Obasanjo arrived the Abuja House in London, around 9:00 pm and proceeded immediately for a meeting with Buhari. A source who spoke to Tribune Online said Buhari and OBJ discussed about recent happenings in the country. The source also said After the exchange of courtesies, Buhari and Obasanjo left for another room in the house where they held a 40-minute meeting. ALSO READ: 3 things President Buhari discussed with APC Governors Tribune reports that The leaders were said to have come out of the meeting a few minutes before 10.00 p.m., following which the former president and Oyinlola were seen off by President Buhari. There were reports that the President will be back in Nigeria, after spending over 70 days away. The other companies given the deadline by the Senate Joint Committee on Customs, Excise and Tariff and Marine Transport, probing the revenue loss are British American Tobacco Company, CCEC Nigeria Ltd and Dana Group. Also affected are African Wire and Allied Ltd, Admiral Overseas Nigeria Ltd., Aarti Steel Nigeria Ltd., Gagsel International, Fries Land Capina, Etco Nigeria Ltd and Encounter Ltd. They also include Edic Chemicals and Allied Distributors Ltd, Don Climax Group and De United Foods Chairman of the committee, Sen. Hope Uzodinma, gave the ultimatum at an investigative meeting with some of the firms in Abuja. He decried the failure of the firms to honour the committees invitation to Wednesdays meeting, saying it was disrespect to the National Assembly and would not be tolerated. Uzodinma said that of the 30 firms invited between Tuesday and Wednesday, only 14 appeared before members of the committee. According to him, the chief executive officers are expected to cut short whatever engagement they have to honour the invitation in view of the magnitude of the investigation. It is only in Nigeria that the Senate will invite an entity for an interactive session, particularly in a case that borders on investigation, financial mismanagement and infractions, and the company will be complacent. The companies will not be willing to come or sometimes send junior officers. I have directed, and we are working with security agencies, that any company that is invited and has something to explain and refuses to appear, we will issue a warrant for such persons to be arrested. We are giving them the final opportunity to appear and if they fail, we will issue a warrant of arrest. In this investigation, we are working with the Nigeria Police. This is because we are using their facilities to process some of our data so that the information we will present to the public will be information with high integrity that will not be questioned by anybody. We have directed that the firms must come tomorrow, Thursday unfailingly, he said. Addressing representatives of firms present at the meeting, Uzodinma said that they would be given documents arising from the investigation carried out by the committee to study and comply. He said that the documents specified the various forms of infractions carried out by each of the firms involved in the import and export value chain. We have put everything in different categories and for category one, it is unutilised Form M. You applied for Form M and approval and allocation were given. But, rather than import with the allocation, God knows what happened because you did not do that. Then pre-arrival assessment report that was issued, you abandoned them yet you took your goods. We do not know how you took the goods away and the money is still open in the data base. Then Single Goods Declarations (SGDs) which you people did by yourself then abandoned and yet collected your goods. These are all indicated in the documents we have handed over to you. So, if there are such legitimate approvals, we want to see a copy, otherwise we will assume that they were not cancelled, in which case we will be expecting you to make payment, he told them. On classification, we have cases where a pre-arrival assessment is carried out and a particular item is classified under a particular HS (Tariff Handbook) Code. When you now go to SGD, if it is a classification of 35 per cent, you see that you declared five per cent instead of the 35 per cent that was issued to you. So, we have worked out the difference. Unless there is evidence that what you shipped were no longer what came to Nigeria which we doubt, you will be liable. Then, wrong classification is another category. That one deals directly with those bringing vehicles with reverse gear and you declare them as CKD. For instance, Dag Motorcycle Industries Ltd, when you bring in tricycle which has reverse gear, there are cases where they are classified wrongly. All these must be submitted on Monday so that by Wednesday we will be able to deal with definite figures on what amount of money that we should be expecting to receive as unutilised foreign exchange allocation, he added. The lawmaker expressed concern that most approved Form Ms were not given to genuine users, leading to increasing exchange rate. He said the committee would ensure that henceforth, foreign exchange was given to genuine importers to strengthen the Naira against foreign currencies as well as improve employment opportunities, among other benefits. He stressed that the committee was extending its investigation to the operation of Free Trade Zone Agreement. Uzodinma said, most of you who have been importing in the name of free trade zone, under that policy you know you have to do 30 per cent value addition. But, we have identified all the trade free zones that imported finished goods and those goods did not even get to the free trade zones. The goods ended up in the various warehouses in Apapa, and when they make the money, because there is no documentation, they have surplus Naira. With the surplus Naira, they in turn buy dollar at any rate and in the process kill our local manufacturers, who really want dollar to be able to do their businesses. ALSO READ: Sahara Reporters ordered to pay Senate President N4 billion The joint committee was mandated by the Senate to carry out holistic investigation into alleged N30 trillion revenue leakages in foreign exchange and the entire import and export value chain between 2006 and 2017. They also have their financial returns at stake, as most of them have gone into movie production and directing. In an interview with Pulse Nigeria, Nollywood actor Mike Ezuruonye, who is making his directorial debut with an upcoming movie "Divorce Not Allowed," explained why most actors decide to don the role of producers. "You get to a level in your career and you say 'it has to stop,' because you owe yourself that allegiance as an actor and you owe your fans that allegiance as well to do better," the actor stated. For Ezuruonye, his quest for growth has a part to play in his decision. "I'm one person who after setting a high target for myself and I achieve it, I set another one. I'm never satisfied artistically," he said. According to the "Brother Jekwu" actor, editing determines how good or bad a movie turns out. "It hurts when you finish a movie, it comes out and you don't get to see all the hard work you put in. Which goes to explain that editing is the success or failure of every movie. I stand to be corrected. "If an editor doesn't bring it out, trust me, it's not going to be seen by the viewer. "So, I think that explains the reason why a lot of top actors now said, 'no, we want to do our own thing.' "We want our own impressions felt, we want to be seen and heard the way we should be. We want other people's craft to be seen the right way. So, we took up that mantle." The party has indicated that former Oyo state governors, Rasheed Ladoja and Alao Akala are making moves to return to the PDP. According to Tribune, stakeholders of the Oyo chapter of the party was summoned to meet with the National Caretaker Committee (NCC) over how to resolve the lingering problem in the branch. It was gathered that Ladoja and Akala were not present at the meeting but they sent representatives. Senator Femi Laleyin was said to have represented the Ladoja group while Chief Wale Ohu led the Akala group. The NCC Chairman, Senator Ahmed Makarfi, described the ex-governors' representatives as "emissaries of those on their way" back to the PDP. He said the party was the dominant political party in Oyo but internal crisis made it lose the last governorship election in the state. Makarfi urged the delegates to "draw a line" and work together to enable the PDP to recapture the state. He urged the aggrieved groups to resolve their differences politically as court processes could never bring peace. He added that the national leadership will ensure that a fair process is created for candidates to emerge for all elective positions in the party. He said: "We are not going to exclude anybody. What we want in PDP is to bring back all those who left PDP and even get new members. Its not an exclusive club, its an inclusive club. Its an inclusive political party. He said this while addressing State House correspondents after the All Progressives Congress state chairmen's meeting with the Acting President, Prof. Yemi Osinbajo, at Aso Villa. According to Ajomale, who is the Chairman of the party in Lagos State, the Forum discussed at length the situation in the country and "then our anxiety for the health of the President." "We are grateful that God in His infinite mercies has made him whole which is very critical and important to the vision that we have for this country as APC government." He explained that the Acting President was able to brief the forum about the situation in the country, the economy, and steps taken so far to address the challenges facing the country. "We are very impressed with his explanations and we will go back to our various states and let the people know that the government has very good intentions. "And that we should be part and parcel of the government in order to ensure that the poor people of this country are getting better deal. "In a nutshell, we are very happy for what we heard from government and we intend to carry it to our states," the forum chairman said. On the specific issues discussed, Ajomale said members expressed concerns about the economic situation in the country. ALSO READ: Fayose says Nigeria is more important than Buhari He noted that the situation was not totally the fault of government since it was a global problem with the economic recession taking its toll on every country. He expressed delight that the Buhari administration was trying to diversify the economy following a slump in oil prices. Ajomale said: "We also discussed diversification into agriculture, especially rice production, the level of childrens welfare (Home Grown School Feeding programme). "And then we talked about corruption also which is the key among the problems that the president is particular about. "I think that the people of this county are particular about this too that corruption cannot continue and a systemic method had been put in place to ensure that it is cut down. Mallam Husaini Pai, its Resident Electoral Commissioner (REC) in Plateau, while on a courtesy visit to the Jos Zonal office of the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN), solicited closer ties with newsmen because media reports determine how elections were viewed. What the media say is what determines the success and acceptance of elections; ultimately, that also determines whether the polls will be peaceful or not, he said. Pai said that the visit was to seek areas of collaboration and support from NAN in view of its wide reach and fanatical commitment to fair journalism. He said that the media was a critical stakeholder that no one could afford to ignore, and expressed INECs readiness to support newsmen to effectively participate in election matters. Clearly, we cannot achieve results without the media. The media may not need INEC, but INEC needs the media so as to enable her conduct a free, fair, credible and peaceful elections, he said. Pai, however, urged journalists to be professional, accurate and observe the ethics of the profession at all times. ALSO READ: Senate confirms 15 Resident Electoral Commissioners When you report accurately, you are also exercising your civic responsibility towards nation building, he said. Responding, the Zonal Manager, Mr Ephraim Sheyin, described the visit as surprising, but very useful. Sheyin assured the INEC commissioner that the agency would be consistent in the coverage of its activities in Plateau. By India Today Web Desk: After Inder Kumar's untimely demise away last week, Isha Koppikar, who was in a relationship with the actor for almost a decade before they called it quits, was overwhelmed with shock and sadness. In an interview with Bombay Times, Isha lamented that Inder had the potential to be a top actor, but "threw it all away because of some habits". advertisement Shortly after that, Inder's first wife, Sonal Kariya, opened up about how their marriage fell apart because of Isha. Sonal told SpotboyE, "He couldn't forget Isha Koppikar. I think it was a case of 'first love cannot be forgotten.'" Sonal added that she walked out on Inder when she was pregnant with their child, Khushi, and he never got back in touch with her. Drugs and alcohol addiction, along with domestic abuse, were also responsible for their marriage crumbling, she said. Now, Inder's wife, Pallavi Sarraf, slammed Isha and Sonal for talking "nonsense" about her husband. "Let the man go in peace," she took to Facebook to write. Describing Inder as a "great father and a terrific husband," Pallavi questioned why Isha was in a relationship for so long if he had such terrible habits. She also lashed out at Sonal and asked why she tied the knot with Inder if she knew he would make a "bad husband." "All these statements are given to look good in society. Have some heart to talk such nonsense pls. Oneday u will also face the same god. Shame on those who don't even know the meaning of humanity (sic)," she wrote. ALSO READ: Inder Kumar was in love with Isha Koppikar; I was pregnant when I ended our marriage, says his ex-wife Sonal ALSO READ: Salman's Wanted co-star Inder Kumar dies of heart attack at 45 ALSO READ: I agree my husband slipped, says Bollywood actor Inder Kumar's wife ALSO WATCH: Vinod Khanna passes away at 70 --- ENDS --- Stephen McGown, 42, was grabbed in the historic trading city of Timbuktu in Mali's north along with Swede Johan Gustafsson and Dutchman Sjaak Rijke, both of whom were subsequently released. McGown has returned to South Africa and been reunited with his family, foreign ministry official Clayson Monyela told AFP. "It was a big surprise when he walked through the door -- when I gave him a hug, he was as sound and as strong as before, so he was obviously well treated up there," Stephen's father Malcolm told reporters in Pretoria, though Stephen himself did not attend the press briefing. State Security Minister David Mahlobo insisted that no ransom was paid to secure McGown's release which was completed on July 29. "We were able to actually release him without any conditions," Mahlobo told the joint press conference. "Through our shrewd engagement supported by the African Union... Stephen is back at home." "The relationship between the two presidents of the countries has been very important." As for the other former hostages, Gustafsson was released in June while Rijke was freed in April 2015 by French special forces. Rijke's wife escaped during the jihadist assault on the popular tourist hotel, but a German who tried to resist the abduction was killed. Al-Qaeda's North African affiliate Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) had claimed responsibility for the kidnappings of the three men. "We give him a warm welcome back home particularly that he lands home with a mother who has passed on during his incarceration," said Foreign Minister Maite Nkoana-Mashabane. "He was just a tourist in Timbuktu. We are happy that he is a free man." 'Your hair has grown' McGown's mother Beverly died in May after battling a long illness. "It's just unfortunate that Stephen's mum isn't here," said McGown's wife Catherine at the press conference. "It didn't quite work out the way we wanted, but we say to Stephen... 'you are strong and you've got to do what you need too'. He'll pick himself up in a little while and return to normal life," added Malcolm McGown. Imtiaz Sooliman, chairman of the Gift of the Givers charity which was previously involved in negotiating for McGown's release, said at the time of his mother's death that Stephen's absence was beginning to "take its toll". "We had seen the sadness in the mother's eye and watched how she patiently waited in dignified pain for the return of her son. We failed her -- my heart bleeds for her," Sooliman told local media in May. Gift of the Givers reportedly dispatched a hostage negotiator to Mali in July 2015 to push for McGown's release but was forced to give up in May this year after hitting a "dead end". Catherine said that on being reunited, Stephen "looked at me and said 'Your hair has grown', and I said, 'Well actually your hair is longer than mine'." He is now undergoing medical checks. AQIM was one of several jihadist groups that took control of Mali's north in 2012 before being ousted by a French-led military operation launched in January 2013. Authorities moved to shut down the trade, which critics say exploits poor women, after a similar ban in Thailand pushed the shadowy industry across its borders. Davis-Charles is accused of moving from Thailand to take advantage of the surrogacy boom in Cambodia, which lacked regulations at the time and quickly mopped up demand from foreign couples, mostly from Australia. Police said her clinic charged would-be parents up to $50,000, while Cambodian surrogates received around $10,000 each -- a vast sum in a nation where the average annual income is around $1,200. Davis-Charles, who advertised surrogacy services online, was accused of bringing more than 23 Cambodian women into the trade for 18 Australian and five American couples. "Tammy Davis-Charles was an intermediary between intended parents and Cambodian surrogate mothers," Judge Sor Lina said delivering the ruling. The Melbourne native was also convicted of falsifying documents. "The court sentences Tammy Davis-Charles to one-and-a-half-years in jail," the judge added. Two Cambodian colleagues were convicted of the same charges and also jailed for 18 months. Pushed underground In her defence statement in July, Davis-Charles broke down in tears in front of the court appealing for mercy from the bench, saying she had already "lost everything" during her six months in custody. During the trial she denied recruiting the surrogates, saying her role was limited to providing medical care. Davis-Charles had twins through a Thai surrogate before going into "the surrogacy business full-time... to help people everyday," according to her post on the website of her Bangkok-registered company. Surrogacy agencies started sprouting up in Cambodia in 2015 after neighbouring Thailand shut down the trade following a series of scandals, including tussles over custody. With cheap medical costs, a large pool of poor young women and no laws excluding gay couples or single parents, Cambodia quickly absorbed demand. But in late 2016 authorities shut down the trade and refused to recognise birth certificates for babies, leaving many foreign couples in limbo. In April this year the government said it would allow foreign couples to return home with babies if they could prove they were conceived before the ban on commercial surrogacy. While Cambodia's crackdown has slowed the tide of foreign couples, it has failed to snuff out an industry that remains a lure for some of the country's most vulnerable women. "There is certainly still surrogacy going on underground," said Sam Everingham, director of the Australia-based consultancy Families Through Surrogacy. The trade has also shifted over to neighbouring Laos which has yet to criminalise commercial surrogacy. Laos' role as the new surrogacy destination emerged after Thai authorities arrested a man attempting to smuggle six large refrigerated vials of sperm into the Communist country -- presumably for use in the booming surrogacy clinics. Some offer to carry out the embryo transfer in Laos and then provide pregnancy care for the surrogate in Thailand, a wealthier country with vastly superior medical facilities. It now awaits a ruling by the Constitutional Court at the request of the opposition. Until now, the South American country has been part of a small group of socially conservative nations that barred abortion under all circumstances -- including the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Gabon, Haiti, Malta, Nicaragua, the Philippines and Senegal. "We are satisfied. We have delivered alternatives, and safe health care options, to all women, regardless of the decisions they make," said Claudia Pascual, minister for women and gender equality. In this deeply conservative country, the measure has been a priority for leftist President Michelle Bachelet, Chile's first woman president and a pediatrician by training. Bachelet has worked since 2015 to overturn the strict ban on abortions put in place in 1989, in the final days of the Pinochet dictatorship. Under current law, abortion is punishable by up to five years in prison. Until the Pinochet-era change, abortion already was legal in Chile for five decades -- in case of danger to the mother's life or an unviable fetus. Bachelet, after serving a first term as president, became the first chief of UN Women -- the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women. She pledged to see the easing of the ban enacted before she leaves office in March 2018. Moreno, who only came to office on May 24, issued a decree removing his running mate from all his functions as vice president, but stopped short of sacking him. Glas, who has served as vice-president since 2013, has been buffeted by a wave of corruption accusations from the opposition, including allegations of links to the scandal surrounding the Brazilian oil giant Odebrecht, which has sent shockwaves across the region. The decree came a day after the vice president, who held the same position under Moreno's feisty predecessor Rafael Correa, published a long list of criticisms of the president, including charges that he had handed control of state media to "representatives of the private media" and had "a perverse way of dealing with economic data." Ecuador's oil-rich economy has suffered from the global slump in crude prices and there have been strains inside the left-wing Country Alliance party that has held power for a decade on how to deal with the downturn while maintaining subsidies for the poor. Moreno served as vice president to Correa from 2007-2013. The two men have increasingly been engaged in mutual reproaches over the poor state of the economy that Moreno inherited from Correa. One of the functions Glas was removed from was his supervisory role in the multi-million dollar project to rebuild homes destroyed in a devastating 2016 earthquake that killed 600 people. Under the Ecuadorian constitution, the vice president is mandated to fill in for the president should the head of the state be incapacitated or removed for any reason, and would enjoy the same powers as the president. Since the vice president is elected by popular vote, he cannot be sacked by the president. The only way for him to lose his job would be through a trial in the national assembly, which has ruled out such a scenario. Glas' criticism put him firmly in the camp of Correa in the split emerging within the Country Alliance party. Correa, a vocal critic of his own successor, was the first to criticize Moreno's decree. It comes less than 24 hours after US President Donald Trump confirmed fresh sanctions against Iran. Tehran says the new measures violate its 2015 deal with world powers that eased sanctions in exchange for curbs on its nuclear programme, an agreement which Trump has repeatedly threatened to tear up. "We believe that the nuclear deal has been violated and we will react appropriately," deputy foreign minister Abbas Araghchi said on state television. "We will certainly not fall into the trap of US policy and Trump, and our reaction will be very carefully considered." The mounting crisis creates a difficult position for Rouhani, a 68-year-old moderate who won re-election largely thanks to his efforts at repairing relations with the West. "It's unfortunate timing," said Ellie Geranmayeh, an Iran analyst with the European Council on Foreign Relations. "What will be absolutely critical is how the Europeans position themselves," she said, pointing to the burgeoning trade ties with Europe and their continued backing of the nuclear deal. Britain, France and Germany -- who signed the deal along with Russia, China and the United States -- remain firm backers of the agreement and have criticised the Trump administration for threatening to scrap it. French energy giant Total defied US pressure in July by signing a multi-billion-dollar gas deal with Iran. "What Iranians are banking on at the moment, maybe overestimating, is that Europe will safeguard and build on the deal, and make it too politically costly for Trump to tear it up, or at least show Washington that if it walks away, it will be doing so alone," said Geranmayeh. Hardline opposition The International Atomic Energy Agency has repeatedly certified that Iran is sticking by its commitments under the agreement -- a position that has been reluctantly accepted by the Trump White House. But with Iran gaining the upper hand across the Middle East, through its support for proxies in Syria, Lebanon and Iraq, US lawmakers appear determined to ratchet up tensions. Meanwhile, Rouhani also faces challenges closer to home, with hardline opponents arguing that Washington's aggressive moves prove that he should never have trusted the United States. A war of words also erupted between Rouhani's office and the Revolutionary Guards after he criticised their role in the economy -- although they have since sought to bury the hatchet with a public show of unity. This week, Rouhani's reformist allies also joined the chorus of criticism, lashing out at news that he would again appoint an all-male cabinet. Much of Rouhani's popularity has been built on his promise of greater civil liberties, including more rights for women, but Iran has still had only one female cabinet member since the 1979 revolution -- ironically under hardliner Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. A coalition drawn from a broad political spectrum including Islamists and anti-slavery activists in the conservative west African nation oppose measures including abolishing the senate and changing the national flag, and some are boycotting Saturday's vote. Saleh Ould Henenna, a spokesman for the protesters, said "we have to inform the authorities of our activities but we don't have to wait for their approval," denouncing "the dictatorship which governs this country." Activists including the head of an anti-slavery group had fainted during the rallies because of the tear gas, he said. The clashes came just hours before President Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz was due to speak at his own rally, promising "revelations" about a Senate he says is corrupt. Senators rejected the abolition of their own chamber in March, apparently to the government's surprise as a majority are from the ruling party, prompting Aziz to call the referendum. But the opposition fears that despite Aziz's claims to the contrary he is laying the groundwork for a third term in power, with his own prime minister saying recently he supported the idea. Around 20 Senators maintained a sit-in at the chamber on Thursday, under police guard. A man and an eight-year-old girl died in Wednesday's incident. The investigation is continuing to determine if the instructor and aspiring pilot will be charged, the public public prosecutor's office said in a statement after the hearing. Terrified sunbathers ran for their lives, some of them into the sea, as the plane flew on to Sao Joao da Caparica beach after mechanical trouble. The plane hit the young girl and a 56-year-old man, killing them instantly. "The plane first hit the man, who had his back to it," Filipe Janeira, 34, who was at the beach, told daily Jornal de Noticias. "Immediately after it rose up and when it descended again the wheel hit the child's head." The girl was on her way to take a swim when she was hit. The man who died reportedly worked for the Portuguese air force. Beachgoers surrounded the plane after it came to a halt on the sand, and confronted the two men inside. "They called them murderers. People were furious. It was incredible,"Antonio Goncalves, who was in the water when the accident happened, told Jornal de Noticias. The instructor and pilot were unhurt and were led away from the Cessna CS-AVA plane by police for questioning. Police named them as official suspects, a status which gives a range of legal protections, such as the right to remain silent and the right to a lawyer during questioning. Once someone is declared an "arguido" they can be arrested and charged, but only if there is sufficient evidence. 'He is suffering' The father of the girl who died said the pilot seemed to be in control of the plane which was flying in a straight line despite appearing to have a broken wing. "In my opinion that individual wanted to land the plane without any concern about everyone else. He is suffering, I know, but his concern was landing safely," he told private television TVI after the accident. The instructor could be heard telling a control tower that the plane had suffered engine failure and was going to make an emergency landing, according to a recording played on Portuguese television. "Mayday, mayday. Engine failure, will land on the beach," he said. The control tower then asked where, leading the instructor to name a neighbouring beach which normally has far fewer people. It was not immediately clear why the pilot opted to land instead on Sao Joao da Caparica. He said 500 asylum seekers crossed the border Tuesday near the border post of Lacolle in southern Quebec, estimating that about 90 percent of them were Haitian. Increasing numbers of migrants seeking asylum have been arriving in Canada in recent months, and authorities had been housing them in places such as university dorms and hotels. But the spike in arrivals means the existing facilities are no longer adequate. According to Montreal Mayor Denis Coderre, 2,500 migrants crossed the land border into southern Canada in July. Dozens of cots were placed in the corridors of Montreal's Olympic Stadium, the main venue for the 1976 Games. About 40 people were on the first busload of migrants to arrive at the stadium Wednesday, including several children. "During their temporary stay at the stadium, they are being fed, housed and given clean clothes," said Francine Dupuis of Praida, a provincial program that helps asylum seekers. The new arrivals are "cared for in terms of physical and mental health," she said, and authorities will help them integrate, including for school-aged children in a few weeks as classes resume. 'Sanctuary city' "The city of Montreal welcomes Haitian refugees, you can count on our full cooperation," Coderre said. He said the influx of refugees was "another consequence of (US President) Donald Trump's immigration policy," calling Montreal a "sanctuary city." The city was seeking medium-term solutions for housing, "well-organized and adequately equipped facilities that could accommodate asylum seekers in the coming months," Coderre's cabinet said. While asylum seekers have been crossing the border into Canada since Trump was elected, there was a sharp spike over the past week. The influx of Haitians is linked to the likely expiration in January of temporary US visas held by nearly 60,000 Haitians. The United States granted Temporary Protection Status (TPS) to many Haitian nationals after the January 12, 2010 earthquake, which killed more than 200,000 people. TPS made it possible for Haitians in the United States to stay after their visas expired, and to work legally. While diaspora organizations and international NGOs sought an 18-month renewal earlier this year, the US Department of Homeland Security gave only a six-month extension, urging Haitian immigrants to "put their affairs in order." Quebec province, and particularly Montreal, is home to one of the largest Haitian communities in the world. The United States and China have been wrestling with how best to respond to North Korea's second intercontinental ballistic missile test last week, which deepened global fears over Kim's nuclear weapons strike capabilities. US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson will seek to build diplomatic pressure on the North in Manila, with Washington pushing for another round of tough United Nations sanctions on Pyongyang, according to one of his top aides. "What we would expect to see this year at the meeting would be a general chorus of condemnation of North Korea's provocative behaviour," Susan Thornton, the acting US assistant secretary of state, told reporters in Washington. The annual forum, hosted by the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), brings together the top diplomats from 26 countries and the European Union for talks on political and security issues in Asia-Pacific. This year they will express "grave concern" over North Korea's missile tests, according to a draft copy of the chairman's statement obtained by AFP. Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte also set the stage for the talks on Wednesday with a blistering critique of Kim. "He is playing with dangerous toys and this crazy man, do not be fooled by his face, that chubby face that looks nice," Duterte said, as he warned Kim could trigger a nuclear war that would destroy Asia. "That son-of-a-whore maniac, if he makes a mistake then the Far East will become an arid land." Defiance The draft of the chairman's statement flagged the North, to be represented by Foreign Minister Ri Yong-Ho, will offer a typically defiant response to the diplomatic pressure. "The DPRK (North Korea) claimed during the meeting that its nuclear weapons programme is an act of self-defence against a hostile policy towards it," said the statement, which is due to be released at the end of the meeting on Monday. Tillerson will not hold direct talks with Ri in Manila, according to Thornton. But Tillerson is expected to meet with the top envoys from the other nations in stalled "six-party" negotiations aimed at reining in Pyongyang's nuclear programme: China, Russia, Japan and South Korea. The 10 ASEAN foreign ministers will first hold talks among themselves on Friday and Saturday, during which the region's other major flashpoint issue -- rival claims in the South China Sea and China's growing presence there -- will be a top agenda item. China claims nearly all of the strategically vital sea, including waters approaching the coasts of ASEAN members Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia and Brunei. Beijing has in recent years expanded its presence in the sea by building artificial islands capable of holding military bases. ASEAN will endorse a framework on a code of conduct for the sea, which has been brokered with China, and call for talks to create a formal pact to begin "as soon as possible", according to a draft of their joint statement obtained by AFP. However, while the Philippines and China have been promoting the framework as an important development, analysts caution it is only a minor step that comes 15 years after negotiations began. "Of course a code is only as good as its implementation and enforcement, and we are still a long way from seeing it in action," Ei Sun Oh, an adjunct senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore, told AFP. The Philippines, under previous president Benigo Aquino, had been a leading voice against China's expanionism in the sea and used ASEAN events to pressure Beijing. The two countries have sparred in the past over Beijing's treatment of the mostly Muslim Uighur minority in China's far western region of Xinjiang, who have cultural ties with Turkey and speak a Turkic language. "We treat China's security as our own security," Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu told reporters in Beijing during a joint press conference with his Chinese counterpart. "We absolutely will not allow any activities opposing or aimed against China within Turkey or its territories, and we will take measures to eliminate any media reports aimed against China." Cavusoglu's remarks followed a meeting with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi in which both sides vowed to work together to combat terrorism. Beijing blames unrest in Xinjiang on Islamist separatists seeking independence for the region, while Turkey in the past repeatedly expressed concerns about Beijing's treatment of the minority -- with Erdogan even accusing Beijing of "genocide" in the region. But ties have warmed as Turkey has sought to pivot away from the West and toward Asia, seeing in China a wealth of economic possibilities. As part of China's expansive Belt and Road initiative, an economic corridor will be established between the two countries, as well as a highspeed rail linking the eastern and western regions of Turkey. By PTI: Boston, Aug 3 (PTI) Nearly 1.5 billion people in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh are likely to face deadly heat waves within the next few decades due to climate change, exposing them to unsurvivable temperatures and widespread food crisis, an MIT study has warned. Scientists predicted that by the end of this century climate change could lead to severe summer heat waves in South Asia, a region of deep poverty where one-fifth of the worlds population resides. advertisement There is still time to avert such severe warming if measures are implemented now to reduce the most dire consequences of global warming, researchers said. However, without significant reductions in carbon emissions, the heat waves could begin within as little as a few decades to strike the fertile Indus and Ganges river basins that produce much of the regions food supply, they said. The areas likely to be hardest hit in northern India, Bangladesh and southern Pakistan are home to 1.5 billion people. These areas are also among the poorest in the region, with much of the population dependent on subsistence farming that requires long hours of hard labour out in the open and unprotected from the Sun. "That makes them very vulnerable to these climatic changes," said Elfatih Eltahir, from MIT. While the projections show the Persian Gulf may become the region of the worst heat waves on the planet, northern India is a close second, Eltahir said, and eastern China, also densely populated, is third. The highest concentrations of heat in the Persian Gulf would be out over the waters of the Gulf itself, with lesser levels over inhabited land. The new analysis is based on recent research showing that hot weathers most deadly effects for humans comes from a combination of high temperature and high humidity, an index which is measured by a reading known as wet-bulb temperature. This reflects the ability of moisture to evaporate, which is the mechanism required for the human body to maintain its internal temperature through the evaporation of sweat. At a wet-bulb temperature of 35 degrees Celsius, the human body cannot cool itself enough to survive more than a few hours. A previous study of temperature and humidity records show that in todays climate, wet-bulb temperatures have rarely exceeded about 31 degrees Celsius anywhere on Earth. While an earlier report from researchers showed that this survivability limit would start to be exceeded occasionally in the Persian Gulf region by the end of this century, actual readings there in the summer of 2015 showed that the 35-degree wet-bulb limit had almost been reached already, suggesting that such extremes could begin happening earlier than projected. advertisement The summer of 2015 also produced one of the deadliest heat waves in history in South Asia, killing an estimated 3,500 people in Pakistan and India. Yet, India and China remain two countries where emission rates of greenhouse gases continue to rise, driven mostly by economic growth, Eltahir said. The study shows that by centurys end the most extreme, once-in-25-years heat waves would increase from wet-bulb temperatures of about 31 to 34.2 degrees Celsius. "It brings us close to the threshold of survivability," he said. In todays climate, about two per cent of the Indian population sometimes gets exposed to extremes of 32-degree wet-bulb temperatures. According to this study, by 2100 that will increase to about 70 per cent of the population, and about two per cent of the people will sometimes be exposed to the survivability limit of 35 degrees. The region is important agriculturally, it is not just those directly affected by the heat who will suffer, Eltahir said. advertisement "With the disruption to the agricultural production, it doesnt need to be the heat wave itself that kills people. Production will go down, so potentially everyone will suffer," he said. PTI MHN SAR AKJ MHN --- ENDS --- But maybe that's not so surprising from the 76-year-old head of the opportunistic, center-right PMDB party. Yes, he's deeply unpopular with ordinary Brazilians. Whenever he speaks on television, horn honking and pot banging can be heard in major cities like Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo. He was booed loudly at Maracana stadium when he opened the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Olympics. An opposing senator once even compared him to "a butler in a house of horrors." But Temer knows how to be friends with the people who wield power. In Brasilia, he's the master of creating alliances and dishing out patronage and pork. And in his hometown, the financial center Sao Paulo, he's positioned himself as champion of the country's business elite. Narrow escape The son of Lebanese immigrants with a fancy for poetry already had a narrow escape in June, when the country's election court narrowly voted not to annul his mandate due to suspect 2014 election funding. The subsequent filing of the bribery charge by Prosecutor General Rodrigo Janot, however, looked almost insurmountable. The powerful Globo media group, which had previously been an important backer, turned on Temer, calling for his ouster and publishing damaging leaks on details of the corruption allegation. And leftist opponents smelled a perfect chance for revenge. After all, it was only a year ago that leftist president Dilma Rousseff was turfed from office in an impeachment vote that she branded a coup. The head of that supposed coup, according to Rousseff? Her vice president -- Temer. Temer had linked up his PMDB party with Rousseff's Workers' Party in an uneasy coalition. Little did she realize his allies would maneuver to impeach her on largely technical charges of breaking budget rules, putting Temer automatically into her place. Now, Temer looked close to suffering a similar fate. The evidence, including footage of an aide running through Sao Paulo with a cash-stuffed suitcase, was impossible to ignore. But ahead of Wednesday's congressional vote authorizing a trial, Temer put those networking skills into overdrive, reportedly dishing out money for lawmaker's pet projects at a dizzying rate. And against the odds, his own fragile coalition held together as allies bought into his message that Brazil's weak economy would not withstand a second abrupt presidential change in 12 months. Out of touch Before becoming president, Temer had served three times as speaker of the lower house of Congress and been president of the PMDB for 15 years. But he never enjoyed retail politics and made no pretense even as president of having a popular touch. Rarely taking part in events where he might encounter regular voters, Temer picked a new cabinet that looked a lot like him -- a collection of elderly, wealthy, white men. Eight of his ministers are being investigated for corruption. A personal side does occasionally emerge. To the public, Temer's most interesting biographical detail could be his marriage to a former beauty queen, Marcela Tedeschi, four decades his junior. It turns out that Temer also enjoys writing poetry, even if his verses have become a favorite target for mockery by liberals on social media networks. Temer, however, seems perfectly happy with his image as a distant politician. He proudly dedicated his inherited mandate -- which lasts until the end of 2018 -- to implementation of painful economic austerity reforms, saying he didn't care how it affected his ratings. After hours of angry, often raucous debates he got 263 votes -- more than half of the chamber. Another 21 deputies were either absent or abstained, deepening the defeat for anti-corruption prosecutors. Accused of agreeing to take millions of dollars in bribes, Temer was the first Brazilian president to face a criminal charge while in office. Revelations from the "Car Wash" anti-graft operation -- which has recently targeted Temer, eight of his ministers, a third of lower house lawmakers and many other senior politicians -- have prompted disgust among Brazilians. But Temer portrayed the "clear, indisputable" rejection of his trial as amounting to a fresh mandate. Ever since coming to power a year ago following the impeachment of leftist president Dilma Rousseff, the center-right Temer has pursued austerity reforms which he says will revive Brazil after two years of deep recession. The reforms are opposed by many ordinary Brazilians, but welcomed by the business community, which has seen Brazil fall from emerging market poster child to regional basket case. Now Temer says he has new wind in his sails. "We are pulling Brazil out of its worst economic crisis in our history," Temer said after the vote. "I want to complete the biggest transformation ever done in our country." Boosted, but danger ahead "The markets will be happy," said Gesner Oliveira, at the Go Associados consultancy. "It suggests that continuing the reform agenda is possible." However, the public shows no sign of accepting the reforms, which include cuts to the generous pension system, while Temer's approval rating is just five percent. That raises the possibility of more violent street protests. Several previous demonstrations have turned into riots where protesters set fire to a government building in Brasilia and torched buses and smashed bank windows in Rio de Janeiro. On the other hand, well-off Brazilians who were instrumental in bringing down Rousseff during mass protests 12 months ago have largely stayed away from the anti-austerity and anti-corruption demonstrations. The other challenge facing Temer is the likelihood of new charges by Prosecutor General Rodrigo Janot within the next few weeks. Janot says he has damning evidence that Temer tried to obstruct justice by authorizing payment of hush money to Eduardo Cunha, a former senior legislator who is now in prison for corruption. Oliveira said the scale of Wednesday's rejection by Congress of the bribery charge made it less likely that Janot will successfully be able to push new charges. "If the victory had been very slim or there had been demonstrations, then there would have been more political space for new charges." But Paulo Teixeira, a deputy from the opposition Workers' Party, said Temer "only won the first round." "The second round is the upcoming charges for obstruction of justice to be presented by prosecutors," he said. "I dont think the government will be strong enough to deal with these new charges. They already used up their ammunition." US Ambassador Nikki Haley has been in talks with her Chinese counterpart on a proposed sanctions resolution since North Korea launched a first intercontinental ballistic missile on July 4. But China, North Korea's main ally and trading partner, has yet to agree to the new measures even after Pyongyang's second ICBM test on Friday again raised questions on how the UN Security Council will respond. "In the coming days, we'll understand whether there'll be a resolution," Russian Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia told reporters on Wednesday. Japan's Ambassador Koro Bessho expressed hope that sanctions will be agreed this week. "I hope we can get it done in days," he told reporters on Tuesday. Haley on Sunday declared that the "time for talk was over" and that "China must decide" whether it will agree to the new raft of sanctions, aimed at ramping up the pressure on North Korea to change its behaviour. The US ambassador warned that a weak resolution would be "worse than nothing" because it would send a message to Kim Jong-Un that global powers are unwilling to unite to challenge him. US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson is expected to meet Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi at the weekend, on the sidelines of a ministerial meeting of the Southeast Asian ASEAN group in Manila. If the United States and China agree on a draft resolution, the Security Council could meet quickly to vote on the sanctions. Not giving up yet A US official told reporters in Washington that there were "indications" that China was ready to take steps to address the situation in North Korea. "We would like to see more action faster and more obvious and quick results. But I think we're not giving up yet," said Susan Thornton, acting assistant secretary of state for Asian affairs. Moscow's UN envoy said any new sanctions should not worsen North Korea's humanitarian crisis. "The question is: What is the aim of the sanctions?" Nebenzia said. "If we see that they are suffocating the people, that will be the question. If they will help to eliminate the nuclear program of North Korea, that's another thing." Russia has maintained that stronger sanctions alone will not resolve the crisis over North Korea's military programs and has backed China's call for talks between the United States and Pyongyang. Haley has suggested that cutting of North Korea's oil supplies, banning North Korean guest workers or imposing new air and maritime restrictions could be among the new UN sanctions. President Donald Trump has demanded that China rein in its nuclear ambitions -- angrily tweeting over the weekend that he would no longer allow China to "do nothing" on North Korea. China hit back, saying that primary responsiblity for resolving the crisis rests with North Korea and the United States. Perhaps the most important provisions, and certainly the most contested, relate to limits on President Donald Trump's authority to cancel existing sanctions. Former president Barack Obama imposed sanctions targeting individuals and firms connected to Russian cyberespionage and its intervention in Ukraine. Constraints These executive orders are now enshrined in the law, and if Trump wants to waive them -- perhaps as part of talks to improve ties with the Kremlin -- he will have to consult Congress. These include an updated executive order in December last year targeting the Russian intelligence agencies accused of seeking to interfere in the 2016 White House race -- which Trump won. The new law also requires new sanctions targeting Russians identified by the US government as involved in cyberattacks, political subversion in Europe, corruption, rights abuses, the arming of Syria or -- crucially -- investment in the oil sector. It orders the US State Department to look at measures to help Ukraine find new sources of energy -- and thus shake off its reliance on gas from its Russian foe. In most cases the authority to decide which Russian targets fall foul of the new sanctions law still rests with the president and his advisers -- and it is not clear to what extent Trump will use this. Targets But the text of the bills makes Congress' concerns clear -- and draws a roadmap to tougher measures. The law, for example, demands that the administration draw up a report within 180 days to identify "political figures and oligarchs in the Russian Federation, as determined by their closeness to the Russian regime and their net worth." These elite figures are to be listed, along with their family assets and income streams, and thus could be targeted in future rounds of sanctions. A separate report is ordered to "identify, investigate, map and disrupt illicit financial flows linked to the Russian Federation if such flows affect the United States financial system or those of major allies of the United States." The bill also accuses Russia of using corruption and subterfuge to disrupt political life in Europe and the former Soviet republics in Eurasia. Russian actions, it alleges, "sow distrust in democratic institutions and actors, promote xenophobic and illiberal views, and otherwise undermine European unity." The law mandates the US government to spend $250 million over the 2018 and 2019 financial year to counter Russian propaganda and dirty tricks in the region. Iran and North Korea The bill also directs Trump to impose tougher sanctions on Iran's ballistic missile program and expands sanctions targeting the covert wing of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards to the entire corps. Trump's reluctance was on full display in an angry signing statement, in which he called the legislation "significantly flawed." "In its haste to pass this legislation, the Congress included a number of clearly unconstitutional provisions," he said, including curbs on the president's ability to "negotiate" with Russia. "I built a truly great company worth many billions of dollars. That is a big part of the reason I was elected. As president, I can make far better deals with foreign countries than Congress," Trump claimed. The legislation -- which also includes measures against North Korea and Iran -- targets the Russian energy sector, giving Washington the ability to sanction companies involved in developing Russian pipelines, and placing curbs on some Russian weapons exporters. It also notably constrains Trump's ability to waive the penalties, a statement of mistrust from the Republican-controlled Congress, which remains unsettled by Trump's warm words for President Vladimir Putin. "The framers of our constitution made the Congress and the President coequal branches of government. This bill has already proven the wisdom of that choice," said Senator John McCain in a biting statement. "I hope the President will be as vocal about Russia's aggressive behavior as he was about his concerns with this legislation." Russia meddling The sanctions seek to penalize the Kremlin for allegedly meddling in the 2016 US presidential election -- which Trump won -- and Russia's annexation of Crimea. Trump said he would "honor" some of the bill's provisions, but stopped short of saying it would be fully implemented. The White House said only that Trump would give Congress's "preferences" mere "careful and respectful consideration." "I am signing this bill for the sake of national unity. It represents the will of the American people to see Russia take steps to improve relations with the United States." Trump received the legislation at 1:53 pm on Friday, but waited until Wednesday to sign it. The nearly week-long delay in signing had raised speculation that Trump might veto or try to somehow shelve the sanctions, which were approved in a 98-2 Senate vote. By signing it, he avoided the humiliating prospect of Congress overriding his veto. Expecting the signature, Moscow preemptively ordered Washington to reduce its diplomatic presence in Russia to 455 people before September 1 -- bringing it in line with the size of Russia's mission in the United States. The Kremlin said Wednesday that Trump signing the sanctions "doesn't change anything," but Russia's prime minister Dmitry Medvedev and the foreign ministry took a more adversarial view. Medvedev weighed in on his Facebook page, saying the sanctions had "ended Russian hopes for an improvement in relations with the new US administration." In a statement, the foreign ministry said the sanctions against Russia had put global stability at risk, calling them a "dangerous" and "short-sighted" policy. "We have already shown that we are not going to leave hostile acts unanswered... and we obviously reserve the right to take retaliatory measures," it said. US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said Tuesday he will meet with his Russian counterpart Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov over the weekend, but warned US-Russia ties could still get worse. "The question, I think, of the events of the last week or so, is it getting worse or can we maintain some level of stability in that relationship?" Tillerson asked. Tillerson said the US Congress's decision to pass the sanctions bill had made attempts to thaw ties "more difficult." A special prosecutor is investigating whether Trump advisers colluded with what US intelligence has concluded was an attempt by Russia to covertly support the real estate mogul's 2016 campaign. The newspaper, citing two unnamed sources familiar with the matter, reported that the grand jury had begun its work in the US capital Washington "in recent weeks." The move is a sign that the sweeping federal investigation -- which includes allegations that Trump campaign officials coordinated with Russia to tilt the election in the Republican's favor -- is gathering pace. The establishment of a grand jury will allow Mueller -- a former FBI director -- to subpoena documents and get sworn testimony. It could lead to criminal indictments. "It's a significant escalation of the process," national security attorney Bradley Moss told AFP. "You don't impanel a grand jury unless your investigation has discovered enough evidence that you feel reflects a violation of at least one, if not more, criminal provisions," he said. "If you secure an indictment, your next step is to arrest the defendant." Presidential lawyer Ty Cobb said he was not aware that a grand jury had been convened. "Grand jury matters are typically secret," Cobb said, adding that "the White House favors anything that accelerates the conclusion of his work fairly." "The White House is committed to fully cooperating with Mr Mueller." White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders said the president was not likely the subject of an investigation. "Former FBI director Jim Comey said three times the president is not under investigation and we have no reason to believe that has changed," she said. Justice Department spokeswoman Sarah Isgur Flores declined to comment on the report. Trump has repeatedly denied allegations of collusion, saying he is the victim of a political "witch hunt" and "fake news." But the White House has been forced to acknowledge that Trump's eldest son, Donald Jr, his son-in-law Jared Kushner and his then campaign advisor Paul Manafort did meet a Kremlin-connected lawyer to get dirt on Hillary Clinton. Mueller is also said to be investigating financial records of Trump associates unrelated to Russia or the election, CNN reported. Trump has publicly warned Mueller that his financial dealings should be out of bounds and investigating them would cross a red line. The revelation will only fuel speculation that Trump may try to curb the investigation by firing Mueller. Two US senators introduced a bipartisan bill Thursday to pre-empt that move by insulating Mueller. The legislation, sponsored by Democrat Chris Coons and Republican Thom Tillis, would bar a president from directly firing the special counsel without a judicial review. Under the bill, Mueller would be allowed to challenge his removal in court in the event he is fired without good cause. "A back-end judicial review process to prevent unmerited removals of special counsels not only helps to ensure their investigatory independence, but also reaffirms our nation's system of check and balances," Tillis said in a statement. The HRD Ministry today told the Rajya Sabha that no Indian educational institution has made it to the list of global top 20. By Supriya Bhardwaj: There is not a single Indian educational institution in the top 20 world class ones, according to a reply by the government in the Rajya Sabha. The reply was prepared on the basis of rankings by various global agencies. Minister of State for Human Resource Ministry, Mahendra Nath Pandey said in his written reply to a Rajya Sabha question today. The issue of quality of higher education was raised in the Upper House and questions were asked by the members. advertisement The HRD (MoS) Pandey also spelled out the steps being taken by the central government to increase the quality of higher education. Pandey emphasised that technical education was being regulated by the government to make more effective. In order to ensure quality education to be imparted in All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) approved institutions, it has set norms and standards to regulate the technical education by way of grant of approval for conducting courses and renewal of the same, the minister told the Rajya Sabha. WHAT IS BEING DONE? In consonance with the provision of the University Grant Commission(UGC) (Establishment of and Maintenance of Standards in Private Universities) Regulations, 2003, the UGC has already conducted on the spot inspection of 159 out of 278 private universities to assess whether these are fulfilling the minimum criteria in terms of programmes, faculty, infrastructural facilities, financial viability, etc, as laid down from time to time by the UGC and other concerned statutory bodies or councils, the government's written reply reads. "The recommendations made by visiting UGC committee are placed before the Commission to take final decision in the matter. As such, UGC is taking all the necessary steps to ensure quality of education in Universities," said Pandey. Pandey also said that loans and bonds are being made available to institutions of higher education for improving infrastructure. The Higher Education Financing Agency (HEFA) has been set up with an initial capital base of Rs 300 crores to increase investments in the infrastructure of higher educational institutions, Pandey said. The HEFA will mobilise debt and bond funds from the market to finance improvement in infrastructure and research facilities in the higher educational institutions. The loans would be serviced through the internal accruals of the institutions, Pandey said. ALSO READ | IIT Delhi: Study on benefits of cow urine, milk to be conducted soon --- ENDS --- SPRINGFIELD, Ill. (AP) The sponsor of a plan overhauling how Illinois funds schools says Gov. Bruce Rauner's proposed changes are an "all-out assault" on public education that would mean less state spending on schools over time. Democratic Sen. Andy Manar addressed reporters Thursday, days after the Republican governor used his veto powers to rewrite a school funding bill. The budget lawmakers approved last month requires a new formula for districts to get money this year. Illinois' 20-year-old calculation is widely viewed as unfair, but Republicans and Democrats disagree over changes. Rauner's rewrite include stripping money from Chicago schools and other revisions that mean declining enrollment districts would eventually lose money. Rauner says it's fair. His office plans to release its analysis next week. The measure returns legislators, who need three-fifths votes to overrule or accept Rauner's changes. CHICAGO (AP) Federal prosecutors have charged a man with setting fire to a suburban Chicago car dealership where he works. In a news release, the U.S. Attorney's Office in Chicago says 28-year-old Bryant Cameron of Broadview was arrested on a felony count of arson on Thursday. The release says that on the night of July 24, Cameron poured gasoline in the front office, reception and warehouse areas of Epic Motorsports in Rosemont and set the fire with a lit cigarette. It also says that when Cameron was arrested, authorities found inside his vehicle items that had been reported stolen from the dealership. The arson charge carries a maximum prison sentence of 40 years. There is no listed telephone number for Cameron and it wasn't immediately known if he has an attorney. CARBON CLIFF Joe Taylor, president and CEO of the Quad Cities Convention & Visitors Bureau, presented the bureau's annual report to the board Tuesday. Mr. Taylor was very complimentary of the village for its support and delivered a positive report. Village Clerk Karen Hopkins informed the trustees on Monday that, on approval from Village President Bill Hintz, Lisa Ahern of Charitable Voice in Waterloo, Iowa, has been contacted to assist the village in seeking grant money to assist the village with correcting the flooding at Argillo Creek, which has plagued the Carbon Cliff for some time. Trustee Robert Dreher questioned the success rate of Ms. Ahern's grant writing. Pending receipt of references and final approval of the Administration Committee, the board approved executing a contract not to exceed 60 hours at a rate of $48 per working hour for a period of three months. Ms. Ahern will require at least two visits to the village to assess its project needs; if the Administration Committee gives its approval, her first visit could be as early as the week of Aug. 7. As a result of the recent flooding, the board authorized Ms. Hopkins to submit a disaster impact assessment to Rock Island County Emergency Management Agency in order to be eligible for reimbursement to the village for the cost of cleaning up of flood debris, emergency protective measures and restoration of damaged public facilities. If these damages exceed $3,100, Ms. Hopkins is also authorized to execute and submit the public assistance initial damage assessment to the Illinois Emergency Management Agency for reimbursement of funds expended relating to the flooding. In other business the board: Ratified the purchase of five "Road Closed Ahead," five "Road Closed," and five "High Water" street signs ordered by DOCAS Gottwalt from Smart Sign in response to recent flooding. Total cost of the signage was $979.35. Adopted an ordinance and authorized President Hintz to execute final documents needed to complete the transfer of the village's bank accounts and loan transactions from Triumph Bank to Blackhawk Bank & Trust. Authorized Ben Allen, deputy clerk and village collector, to attend the IMRF Authorized Agent Certification course on Thursday in Rock Falls. Travel and meal costs are not to exceed $102. Authorized President Hintz and Trustees Alma Neel and Leevon Harris to attend the annual conference of the Illinois Municipal League in Chicago Sept. 21-23. Registration is $310, and the hotel rate is $254 per night. Attendance is open to any trustees who wish to attend. A Burlington, Iowa, man was arrested Wednesday in Mercer County after a nearly three-month investigation into the brutal beating of Fred Rooth, 83, of Joy. Mr. Rooth was found by neighbors on May 8 after a home invasion. Ryan K. Tully, 55, has been charged with home invasion (a class X felony), residential burglary and aggravated battery in Mercer County and is being held in the Mercer County Jail with bond set at $200,000. A news conference about the investigation and the subsequent arrest was held Wednesday at the Mercer County Jail. "Mr. Rooth was found beaten in his home on May 8, 2017," Mercer County sheriff David Staley said. "Mr. Rooths home had also been burglarized." Mr. Tully also faces charges in both Warren and Henderson counties, sheriff Staley added. The sheriff said there was a cooperative effort between the three county sheriff's departments, as well as help from the Illinois State Police Zone 2, the Illinois state crime lab and the Burlington, Iowa, police department. Mercer County states attorney Meeghan Lee spent countless hours preparing search warrants and subpoenas, Mr. Staley added. Without the cooperation of every sheriff, chief, deputy, officer and detective that put countless hours into these cases, without the cooperation of agencies from two states and three counties, we may never have solved this heinous crime. The sheriff would not release any details on the case, other than to say that a safe that contained a number of guns had not been recovered. He said he received a visit from Mr. Rooth last Friday. Its going to take Mr. Rooth a time to recover, he said. Warren County sheriff Martin Edwards spoke about the crime spree that occurred in the Monmouth area that led to his arrest there. Two residential burglaries happened in Warren County on July 23 one on the east side of Warren County, one on the west side. Investigations led to his arrest there after he was confronted by one of the homeowners. His vehicle was stopped and he was arrested, said Mr. Edwards. We have other things were looking into. Ms. Lee said the county attorneys in the three counties involved in the crime spree would be deciding which case would take precedence, but she believed the Mercer County case would be a high priority. Mr. Rooths son-in-law, Jeff Dearinger, was also at the news conference. He said his wife Sara was very upset about what had happened to her father. We live in North Carolina and have been here for 10 of the last 11 weeks, said Mr. Dearinger. He said Mr. Rooth is slowly recovering and has received a lot of plastic surgery to close the wounds. Mr. Rooth received injuries to his eye sockets and had protective cuts across his arms when he was trying to shield himself during the beating. Its been very, very rough on his daughter. Im thankful to the authorities, said Mr. Dearinger. The People's Linguistic Survey of India (PSLI) raised the alarm during the launch of the latest 11 volumes in its planned 50 volume survey of the country's languages. By Reuters: More than half of the languages spoken by India's 1.3 billion people may die out over the next 50 years, scholars said on Thursday, calling for a concerted effort to preserve the tongues spoken by the nation's endangered tribal communities. The People's Linguistic Survey of India (PSLI) raised the alarm during the launch of the latest 11 volumes in its planned 50 volume survey of the country's languages. India's people speak as many as 780 different languages, the PSLI said. advertisement "At least 400 Indian languages are at the risk of dying in coming 50 years," GN Devy, the chairman of PSLI, said. Each time a language is lost, the corresponding culture is killed, Devy said, adding that India had already lost 250 languages in last five decades. The group of scholars and teachers at PSLI documents Indian regional languages in order to conserve cultural heritage and diversity. Most at risk are marginal tribal communities whose children receive no education or, if they do go to school, are taught in one of India's 22 officially recognised languages. "Maithili, which is spoken in the eastern state of Bihar, is at least 1,000 years old. Similarly there are several old languages which are surviving somehow in India, but we are hardly passing them on," said political psychologist Ashis Nandy. Devy said the PSLI will start work on a project to document about 6,000 living languages spoken around the world. The report is scheduled to come out by 2025. ALSO READ: Know interesting facts about Hindi the official language of India Bengaluru: Pro-Kannada group demands removal of Hindi boards, threatens to blacken them DU Admission 2017: Tamil to be offered as an optional language in the five-year integrated journalism course ALSO WATCH: --- ENDS --- ROCK ISLAND If elected governor, state Sen. Daniel Biss said Wednesday that he intends to help working class families by raising the minimum wage, getting rid of the flat income tax and fixing the pension system. The Democratic gubernatorial candidate was introduced by Rock Island County Board member Kai Swanson during a town hall meeting at the Laborers' Local Union 309, 2835 7th Ave., Wednesday night. "Sen. Biss is not a millionaire. It's important to raise funds," Mr. Swanson said. "This is a person who understands what going without a (state) budget is like." Sen. Biss told the crowd of more than 50 people that Gov. Bruce Rauner was to blame for much of the state's dysfunction. "Bruce Rauner is a dismal failure," Sen. Biss said. "We're supposed to be a blue state, but yet have one of the most regressive tax codes in the nation. We can't adequately fund our schools. We've had a broken system that hasn't been working for decades." Abbigail McWilliams asked Sen. Biss if he supported raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour. "This is something I'm fighting hard for on every level, " Sen. Biss said. "When everybody has more money in their pockets, it's good for the economy. The middle class hasn't had a raise for generations." Glenview Middle School teacher Jim Adamson asked Sen. Biss what he thought about Governor Rauner's veto of Senate Bill 1 on Tuesday. The legislation, passed in May, would rewrite the state's school funding formula, giving needier districts more money by revising how property taxes are distributed. But Gov. Rauner objected to the inclusion of $215 million in pension money for Chicago teachers. "The governor vetoed the bill because he was in a bad mood because he lost the budget fight," Sen. Biss said. "Because he vetoed it, he's pretending it's a Chicago bailout. The bill is a good bill. I was proud to vote for the bill, and I'll be proud to override the veto." When asked by a DispatchArgusQCOnline reporter if he regretted putting schools in potential crisis without a backup plan by keeping the bill off the governor's desk too long, Sen. Biss said the plan didn't have the effect Democrats had hoped for. "Obviously the plan that was executed didn't work very well," he said. "The question is, what would it have taken to get grown-up, mature negotiations between Democrats and Republicans? The idea was, let's just not send him the bill and we can talk it out, and if we come to a different agreement, we'll send him a different bill. That didn't work. "Do I regret it? I regret it if sending (the bill) to the governor would have resulted in a path to a different conversation. The governor has chosen to buy people instead of try to solve problems. There are opportunities for compromise and agreement. I'm not optimistic if we had sent him the bill two months ago we would have found that moment." Sen. Biss said the state could begin fixing its pension crisis by requiring payments into the pension system. "As a state, we did not make the required payments into the pension system. A pension system only works if you make the payments." Mr. Swanson thanked Sen. Biss for taking time to stop in Rock Island. "This is a very important decision that we have to make as Illinoisans," Mr. Swanson said. "I think it's time to bring in somebody who's smart and thoughtful." State-by-state responses to a request for detailed voter data from President Donald Trump's Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity, which is investigating whether there was voter fraud in last year's election. The commission sent one request in late June and another in July after a court said the data collection could move ahead. ___ ALABAMA Partial Secretary of State John Merrill, a Republican, said the commission can buy the information at a cost of more than $32,000. And it will exclude information such as Social Security and driver's license numbers. ___ ALASKA Partial Division of Elections Director Josie Bahnke says she will respond to the request as she would to any request for voter information. Some information, she said, can be provided, like voter names, voting histories and party affiliations. But other information is considered confidential and would not be provided. ___ ARIZONA Undecided After initially saying the state would provide some records, Secretary of State Michele Reagan, a Republican, did an about-face and said the state wouldn't provide extensive voter registration information to the Trump administration. But on July 27, a spokesman said Reagan was asking a special counsel to review the latest version of the request. When she nixed sharing anything, Reagan cited privacy concerns. ___ ARKANSAS Partial Arkansas says it's received the letter and will provide publicly available information but not Social Security numbers, driver's license numbers or information about felony convictions or military status. Republican Gov. Asa Hutchinson says he recommended the secretary of state not release all the information, calling the panel's request too broad. ___ CALIFORNIA Deny Secretary of State Alex Padilla, a Democrat, reiterated his refusal to provide information to the commission on July 26. "The commission's new request does nothing to address the fundamental problems with the commission's illegitimate origins, questionable mission or the preconceived and harmful views on voting rights that many of its commissioners have advanced," he said in a statement. "Let me reassure voters: I will not provide this commission with Californians' personal voter data. I will continue to do everything in my power to protect California citizens' ability to exercise their rights to register and vote free of barriers and intimidation." ___ COLORADO Partial Secretary of State Wayne Williams, a Republican, is providing all information permitted under state open records law information available to anyone. What won't be provided: Full dates of birth, driver's license information, Social Security numbers. Urged commission to handle data securely. ___ CONNECTICUT Partial Connecticut's secretary of the state says her office plans to comply in part with a request for voter information from Trump's commission investigating voter fraud in the 2016 election. Denise Merrill, a Democrat, says in the spirit of transparency the state will share publicly available information with the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity. She says the state will ensure the privacy of voters is honored by withholding protected data. ___ DELAWARE Deny After being inundated with calls from concerned citizens and meeting with her deputy attorney general, Delaware's election commissioner said she will not provide the requested information. She also said she is drafting a policy stating that voter registration data, which is now available to anyone, will be made available only to candidates and political parties and only for political use, not for commercial purposes. She plans to follow up in January with legislation codifying the new policy. She had previously said she would not comply with the request for sensitive information, including birthdates, Social Security numbers and felony history. State law currently allows the commissioner to give voter registration data including names, addresses, political party, voting history, legislative district information and year of birth to members of the public. ___ DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA Deny "The best thing I can do to instill confidence among DC residents in our elections is to protect their personally identifiable information from the Commission on Election Integrity. Its request for voter information, such as Social Security numbers, serves no legitimate purpose and only raises questions on its intent. I will join leaders of states around the country and work with our partners on the Council to protect our residents from this intrusion," Democratic Mayor Muriel Bowser said in a statement. ___ FLORIDA Partial Florida on July 28 turned over data that it says is already public record under state law and is made available to other organizations that seek voter registration information. Secretary of State Ken Detzner, a Republican, previously told the commission that Florida law prohibits the state from turning over driver's license information or Social Security numbers. He also said they would not turn over the names of voters whose information is protected, such as judges or police officers. Sarah Revell, a spokeswoman for Detzner, said, "As we have said all along, we will follow Florida law and will only submit information that is already available and regularly provided to anyone who requests it." A group of plaintiffs, including the American Civil Liberties Union, did file a lawsuit and requested a temporary restraining order. But a U.S. district judge ruled that Florida could go ahead and deliver information that was publicly available under state law. ___ GEORGIA Partial "The Georgia Secretary of State's Office will provide the publicly available voter list. As specified in Georgia law, the public list does not contain a registered voter's driver's license number, Social Security number, month and day of birth, site of voter registration, phone number or email address." Secretary of State Brian Kemp's spokeswoman Candice Broce said the state had received the second letter from the commission in late July. The state has not responded yet. Broce said the state didn't provide any information to the first request and never received the $250 payment that the state charges anyone who wants a copy of the registered voter file. ___ HAWAII Undecided Scott Nago, elections chief for Hawaii, said July 24 that his office still has not received an official request. He said the Trump administration sent the request to the lieutenant governor's office, which is not responsible for elections in Hawaii. Nago also said his office received an email saying to hold off on sending the data because of lawsuits. Nago said if the elections office does receive the request, he will then forward it on to the county clerks, who are responsible for the information. According to state law, the counties would be able to release the voter's name, precinct and voting status meaning whether the voter is active or inactive because those details are public record, Nago said. But the voters' address, Social Security number, driver's license number, mailing address and voting history would not be released. ___ IDAHO Partial Secretary of State Lawerence Denney, a Republican, has said he will provide public information but not information considered private. ___ ILLINOIS Undecided Ken Menzel, general counsel for the Illinois State Board of Elections, said the board will consider the new request at its Aug. 22 meeting but won't provide any information without board approval and notice to the public. He has previously said the board won't provide information to the commission. In a letter to the commission, he said Illinois law limits the release of voter information to political committees and government entities, subject to a requirement that it not be released to the public. Menzel says that because the panel's request indicates the data provided will be made publicly available, the state cannot turn it over. ___ INDIANA Partial "Indiana law doesn't permit the Secretary of State to provide the personal information requested by Secretary Kobach. Under Indiana public records laws, certain voter info is available to the public, the media and any other person who requested the information for non-commercial purposes. The information publicly available is name, address and congressional district assignment," Secretary of State Connie Lawson, a Republican, said. ___ IOWA Partial Paul Pate, the Republican secretary of state, said: "There is a formal process for requesting a list of registered voters, as specified in Iowa Code. We will follow that process if a request is made that complies with Iowa law. The official list request form is available on the Iowa Secretary of State's website, sos.iowa.gov. Some voter registration information is a matter of public record. However, providing personal voter information, such as Social Security numbers, is forbidden under Iowa Code. We will only share information that is publicly available and complies with Iowa Code. The commission will have to follow the same process candidates, political parties, media organizations, and everyone else follows when requesting a voter list. Also, some Iowans are under the mistaken impression that the commission is asking for information on who you voted for in an election. Our ballots are secret and no one has that information. We will vigilantly protect Iowans' private information and ensure our elections remain fair and clean." ___ KANSAS Partial Secretary of State Kris Kobach, a Republican, is vice chairman of the commission, but even his office does not plan to provide the last four digits of Social Security numbers because that's not publicly available under Kansas law, spokeswoman Samantha Poetter said. All information that is publicly available will be provided. ___ KENTUCKY Deny "As the commonwealth's secretary of state and chief election official, I do not intend to release Kentuckians' sensitive personal data to the federal government," Secretary of State Alison Lundergan Grimes said in a statement. "The president created his election commission based on the false notion that 'voter fraud' is a widespread issue. It is not." On July 26, Grimes again told the commission no. The Democrat said, "The compilation of every American voter's information would build a national voter registration database, which is unnecessary to improving our elections, opposite our Constitution and state's rights, and puts voters' privacy and personal data at risk." ___ LOUISIANA Partial Secretary of State Tom Schedler, a Republican, won't provide personal voter information, like Social Security numbers or birth dates. He says the commission can have the information that is publicly available but only if the commission buys it like anyone else. Schedler calls the effort a politically motivated federal overreach. He said: "The release of private information creates a tremendous breach of trust with voters who work hard to protect themselves against identity fraud. That's why it is protected by six federal laws and two state laws. This Commission needs to understand clearly, disclosure of such sensitive information is more likely to diminish voter participation rather than foster it. I have been fighting this kind of federal intrusion and overreach, and will continue to fight like hell for the people who trust me with the integrity of our election process." ___ MAINE Undecided Secretary of State Matthew Dunlap, a Democrat and member of the voting commission, initially rejected the request, saying state law allows voting data to be released only for specific purposes, such as get-out-the-vote drives. But he said July 27 that he's reconsidering after being reassured by Kobach that the commission will not make individuals' records public. "If we're going to act as a commission, we should really be considering the entire request for data as a body, and determining what it is we're researching and how to look for it," Dunlap said. ___ MARYLAND Deny Maryland's election commissioner denied the request after receiving an opinion from Democratic Attorney General Brian Frosh, who said disclosure of the requested information is prohibited by law, and who also called the request for information "repugnant." Frosh also said it appears to be designed only to intimidate voters and indulge Trump's "fantasy" that he won the popular vote. ___ MASSACHUSETTS Deny A spokesman for Secretary of State William Galvin, a Democrat, said the state's voter registry is not a public record and information in it will not be shared with the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity. ___ MICHIGAN Partial A spokesman for Republican Secretary of State Ruth Johnson said the department will provide publicly available information but would exclude data including Social Security and driver's license numbers and full dates of birth. Fred Woodhams also said the commission would have to make a freedom of information request and pay $23 to get the data. ___ MINNESOTA Deny Minnesota Secretary of State Steve Simon, a Democrat, announced he would not share the data with Trump's commission. "I will not hand over personal data on the nearly four million Minnesotans who are registered to vote," he said in a statement. "I have serious doubts about the commission's credibility and trustworthiness, and I fear it risks becoming a partisan tool to shut out millions of eligible American voters. In addition, Minnesotans who registered to vote never thought their personal data would end up in some federal database." ___ MISSISSIPPI Deny In a federal court case after a contentious U.S. Senate primary in Mississippi in 2014, a group called True the Vote sued Mississippi seeking similar information about voters, and Secretary of State Delbert Hosemann, a Republican, fought that request and won. Hosemann said if he receives a request from the Trump commission, "My reply would be: They can go jump in the Gulf of Mexico, and Mississippi is a great state to launch from." Hosemann also said: "Mississippi residents should celebrate Independence Day and our state's right to protect the privacy of our citizens by conducting our own electoral processes." ___ MISSOURI Partial In Missouri, Republican Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft said he is happy to "offer our support in the collective effort to enhance the American people's confidence in the integrity of the system." Ashcroft's spokeswoman, Maura Browning, said the state is only providing publicly available information. She said that means no Social Security numbers, no political affiliations and no details on how people voted. ___ MONTANA Partial Derek Oestreicher, the director of elections and voter services, said the secretary of state's office will not release personal or confidential information such as Social Security numbers and birth dates. Information already available publicly in the state's voter file includes a voter's name, registration status, voting status and the reason the voter is designated as active or inactive. Voter information does not include party affiliation because Montana has an open primary system and voters do not register under any specific party. ___ NEBRASKA Partial Secretary of State John Gale, a Republican, says he's willing to provide publicly available information but only with assurances that the data won't be used in a way that runs afoul of state law. State law prohibits the use of data for commercial purposes and does not allow the release of Social Security numbers. Additionally, the law doesn't allow the release of information such as felony convictions or whether a voter's registration status is active or inactive, so Gale won't release that information. Gale said he has concerns about voter privacy and wants assurances that information is protected in any kind of national database. ___ NEVADA Partial Republican Secretary of State Barbara Cegavske says her office has not changed its position in the wake of the renewed commission request. It will provide public information but not data kept confidential under state law such as Social Security numbers or how people voted. The state will turn over voter names, addresses, telephone numbers, dates of birth, party affiliation and turnout. ___ NEW HAMPSHIRE Partial Secretary of State Bill Gardner, a Democrat and a member of the commission, said his office will provide public information: names, addresses, party affiliations and voting history dating to 2006. Voting history includes whether someone voted in a general election and which party's primary they voted in. Gardner spent several hours on Independence Day taking calls from angry residents and said the next day that he disagrees with critics who say he lacks legal authority to send voter roll information. He said he's asking the state attorney general for an opinion. ___ NEW JERSEY Partial State election officials they are reviewing a request by Trump's voting commission but would only release information that is publicly available. Robert Giles, director of New Jersey's division of elections, said no information has been released. He said no information will be given out if it doesn't "follow the appropriate legal process for information requests." ___ NEW MEXICO Deny Democratic Secretary of State Maggie Toulouse-Oliver has reaffirmed that she will never release personally identifiable information for New Mexico voters that is protected by law, including Social Security numbers and dates of birth. She says that sharing that information with the commission may discourage people from registering to vote. She has declined to provide information such as names and voting histories unless she is convinced the information is secure and will not be used for "nefarious or unlawful purposes." ___ NEW YORK Partial Officials announced Aug. 2 that they would honor a new public information request from the commission but would not supply some details, such as Social Security numbers. This represents a reversal for the state. Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo said the state would not comply, in part because the state "refuses to perpetuate the myth voter fraud played a role in our election." ___ NORTH CAROLINA Partial North Carolina's elections board is providing data requested by Trump's commission investigating alleged voter fraud. But the records will not include personal information deemed confidential in law, including dates of birth and Social Security numbers. ___ NORTH DAKOTA Deny North Dakota, the only state that does not have voter registration, does require identification at the polls and does have a central database of voters, compiled with the help of state Transportation Department records and county auditors. However, the information can be used only for "election-related purposes" under state law, such as compiling poll books for elections. "We certainly can't comply with that part of the request, but we are going to submit a response," Deputy Secretary of State Jim Silrum said. ___ OHIO Partial Secretary of State Jon Husted, a Republican, issued a statement saying that voter registration information is already public and available to the commission but that he will not provide the last four digits of voters' Social Security numbers or their driver's license numbers. He also said voter fraud is rare in the state and bipartisan boards have reviewed credible reports of voter fraud and suppression after the last three federal elections. Those results are in the public domain and available to the commission, he said. He added, "In responding to the commission, we will have ideas on how the federal government can better support states in running elections. However, we will make it clear that we do not want any federal intervention in our state's right and responsibility to conduct elections." ___ OKLAHOMA Partially A spokesman for the Oklahoma State Election Board said the state will not provide the last four digits of voters' Social Security numbers. "That's not publicly available under the laws of our state," Bryan Dean said. He said the commission's request will be treated like any other from the general public. The election board will tell the panel to fill out a form available online asking for the information. Oklahoma's voter roll is routinely provided to political campaigns, the press and other groups that ask for it. Dean reaffirmed on July 27 that the agency will provide the same information to the commission that is available to the general public. ___ OREGON Partial Secretary of State Dennis Richardson, a Republican, wrote a letter Friday to President Donald Trump's commission vice chairman Kris Kobach saying it could receive a statewide list of voters for $500, just like anyone else. However, he noted that he's barred legally from disclosing Social Security and driver's license numbers. Two members of Oregon's congressional delegation and Democratic Gov. Kate Brown had urged Richardson to refuse the request. Richardson said in the letter to Kobach that there is "very little evidence" of voter fraud or registration fraud in Oregon. "I do not believe the federal government should be involved in dictating how states conduct their elections," he said. ___ PENNSYLVANIA Partial Gov. Tom Wolf, a Democrat, wrote a long letter saying that the state will not cooperate at all but that the state will sell them the same data the public can purchase. It can't be posted online, however. ___ RHODE ISLAND Partial Secretary of State Nellie Gorbea, a Democrat, says she won't share some of the voter information requested by the presidential commission. Gorbea says she won't release Social Security information or information regarding felony or military status. ___ SOUTH CAROLINA Deny, but it's being obtained through a third party. The state's election commission said in a statement that "release of voter data to anyone who is not a registered South Carolina voter is not permitted by state law. The agency may only provide voter data to registered South Carolina voters. This rule is not specific to the PACEI request and applies to any request for voter data from any individual or organization from outside the state." But voter data (except party affiliation and Social Security numbers) are available to South Carolina residents for $2,500 as long as it isn't used for commercial purposes. So Republican Party Chairman Drew McKissick has said he will buy the information and give it to the commission. ___ SOUTH DAKOTA Undecided A spokesman for Secretary of State Shantel Krebs, a Republican, said in early July that she won't share voter information with Trump's commission. But on July 27, a spokesman for Krebs says that she has received the second letter and will be reviewing it. ___ TENNESSEE Deny Secretary of State Tre Hargett, a Republican: "Although I appreciate the commission's mission to address election-related issues, like voter fraud, Tennessee state law does not allow my office to release the voter information requested to the federal commission." ___ TEXAS Partial Texas Secretary of State Rolando Pablos, a Republican, said he will provide the commission public information and "protect the private information of Texas citizens." Much of the information requested including names, addresses, date of birth and party data are already publicly available in Texas. Social Security numbers are not releasable under Texas law. Publicly available voter registration lists in Texas also do not include information about military status or criminal history. ___ UTAH Partial Republican Lt. Gov. Spencer Cox says he will send information classified as public, but data including voters' Social Security numbers and dates of birth are protected. ___ VERMONT Partial Democratic Secretary of State Jim Condos said he is bound by law to provide the publicly available voter file, which does not contain Social Security numbers or birth dates. Condos said he must first receive an affidavit signed by the commission chairman, as required by Vermont law. He said there is no evidence of the kind of fraud alleged by Trump. "I believe these unproven claims are an effort to set the stage to weaken our democratic process through a systematic national effort of voter suppression and intimidation," he said. ___ VIRGINIA Deny "At best, this commission was set up as a pretext to validate Donald Trump's alternative election facts, and at worst is a tool to commit large-scale voter suppression," said Democratic Gov. Terry McAuliffe. ___ WASHINGTON Partial Secretary of State Kim Wyman, a Republican, says the state will send the commission names, addresses and birthdates of registered voters because they are public record. She said Social Security information, driver's license numbers, phone numbers and email addresses won't be released because they aren't public records. ___ WEST VIRGINIA Partial Republican Secretary of State Mac Warner's office said in a statement that state law prohibits disclosing Social Security and driver's license numbers, phone numbers and some other details. The office also notes that it can charge $500 for the voter registration list and another $500 for data that shows elections in which each voter cast a ballot. ___ WISCONSIN Partial Administrator Mike Haas issued a statement saying most of the information in the state's voter registration system is public, including voters' names, addresses and voting history. The state doesn't collect any data about a voter's political preference or gender, he said. The data is available for purchase and must be release to buyers, Haas said, adding that the commission routinely sells the information to political parties, candidates and researchers. The commission would charge the presidential panel $12,500 for the data, the maximum amount allowed under agency rules, he said. State law doesn't contain any provisions for waiving the fee, he said. Wisconsin law allows the commission to share voter birthdates, driver's license numbers and Social Security numbers only with police and other state agencies, and the presidential commission doesn't appear to qualify, he said. ___ WYOMING Deny Secretary of State Ed Murray, a Republican, said in a statement that he would "safeguard the privacy of Wyoming's voters because of my strong belief in a citizen's right to privacy." Also, he expressed concern the request could lead to "federal overreach." G'day! It's Murray here. I've put together a little quiz to test your musical knowledge. Think you can score top marks in Murray's Magic Music Quiz? Give it a go now! The contract was signed at Metro Expresss headquarters in Ebene in the presence of Mauritian prime minister Mr Pravind Jugnauth, deputy prime minister Mr Ivan Collendavelloo, and Indias high commissioner to Mauritius, Mr Abhay Thakur. The contract was awarded following a competitive tender and the project is being fully-funded through a grant and line-of-credit from the Indian government. The contract includes the construction of stations, bridges and viaducts, trackwork, dc electrification, signalling, and depots. L&T will also procure a fleet of 30 LRVs, fare collection and passenger information systems. Metro Express will serve 19 stations, two of them elevated, and will link three bus interchanges, enabling connections to towns and villages across the island. Preliminary works began in March and major construction will start next month. The initial 13km section of the route from Port Louis to Rose Hill is scheduled to open in 2019, with the reaminder of the line to Curepipe due for commissioning in 2021. In the initial phase of operations China Railway Corporation (CRC) is running five return services a day between Hohhot East and Ulanqab with trains operating at speeds of up to 250km/h, offering a journey time of 39 minutes. The remainder of the line from Ulanqab to Zhangjiakou in neighbouring Hebei province is due to open in 2018. For detailed data on high-speed rail projects around the globe, subscribe to IRJ Pro. The New York Metropolitan Transportation Authority (NYMTA) has a new President and Managing Director, as well as three new board members. Chairman Joseph Lhota on Aug. 3 appointed Patrick Foye as President and Veronique Ronnie Hakim as Managing Director of the NYMTA. Foye and Hakim will serve in the newly created Office of the Chairman, which will also include MTA Chief Development Officer Janno Lieber. Foye and Hakim will be responsible for managing the agency on a day-to-day basis. Foye will lead key innovation and modernization initiatives, and Hakim will be responsible for the operations of the authority, Lhota said. Lhota recently announced what is described as a comprehensive plan to immediately stabilize and modernize the subway system. Foye and Hakim will be responsible for implementing that plan. Foye, a former (2010-2012) NYMTA board member, has been Executive Director of The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey and President of PATH since November 2011. Prior to joining the Port Authority, he served as Deputy Secretary for Economic Development for New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo. Foye was a Mergers and Acquisitions partner at Skadden Arps and managing partner of the firms Brussels, Budapest and Moscow offices. He was Executive Vice President of AIMCO, a real estate investment trust. Hakim has served as Interim Executive Director of the NYMTA since January 2017. In 2015 she was named President of MTA New York City Transit, returning to the NYMTA after an earlier 23-year career at the authority. She has also previously served as the Executive Director of NJ Transit, and nearly four years as Executive Director of the New Jersey Turnpike Authority. Pat and Ronnie are veteran transportation professionals who together with Janno form the dynamic team the MTA needs at this moment, said Lhota. They will assume the day-to-day leadership of the MTA and ensure that our customers are always our first priority. The plan I recently introduced is ambitious, aggressive, and requires dedicated leadership ensuring operational excellence and long-term innovationwhich is exactly what the team in the Office of the Chairman will provide. The three new NYMTA board members are Randy Glucksman, Scott Rechler and Carl Weisbrod. Glucksman, a non-voting member, was recommended by the MTA Metro-North Railroad Commuter Council. Gov. Cuomo recommended Rechler; New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio recommended Weisbrod. Only Glucksman has railroad operating experience. Glucksman sits on the Metro-North Railroad, Long Island Rail Road and New York City Transit/MTA Bus committees. He has more than 40 years of rail operations experience, most recently with SYSTRA Engineering, Inc. in Manhattan, where he worked as a senior rail operations analyst. Previously, Glucksman was employed with New York City Transit, where he held several positions, including principal transportation management analyst, superintendent, trainmaster, train dispatcher, motorman, and conductor. Throughout his career he has been an advocate for improved transit options, serving on several citizen advisory committees and studying proposals for transit improvements. Glucksman is a U.S. Army veteran of the Vietnam War. He received his B.S in Business Administration from Dominican College. Rechler sits on the Long Island Rail Road, New York City Transit/MTA Bus, Finance, and Capital Program Oversight committees. He is Chairman and CEO RXR Realty LLC, a multibillion-dollar private real estate company and one of the Tri-State areas largest real estate owners, managers and developers. In June 2011, Gov. Cuomo appointed Rechler to the Board of Commissioners of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, where he served until October 2016 as vice chairman and as chairman of the Authoritys Capital Planning Committee. Rechler is a graduate of Clark University and earned an M.S. in Real Estate at New York Universitys Schack Institute. Weisbrod sits on the New York City Transit/MTA Bus, Finance, and Capital Program Oversight committees. He is currently a senior advisor at HR&A Advisors, Inc., an economic development and real estate consulting firm with offices across the country, and a senior fellow at New York Universitys Marron Institute of Urban Management. From 2014 until February 2017, Weisbrod served as the chairman of the New York City Planning Commission and director of the New York City Department of City Planning. The founding president of both the New York City Economic Development Corp. and the Alliance for Downtown New York, he was appointed a director of the Lower Manhattan Development Corp. by former Mayor Michael Bloomberg. Welcome to Railway Gazette. This website uses cookies to improve your experience. By continuing to browse this site you are agreeing to our use of these cookies. You can learn more about the cookies we use here. OK A cordon and search operation was launched by Army in Zaipora area of Shopian during the night following intelligence inputs about the presence of militants there. By Shuja-ul-Haq , Ashraf Wani: Terror outfit Hizbul Mujahudeen has claimed the responsibility of the Shopian attack where two Army men, including a major, were martyred and another jawan was injured. Militants opened fire on a search party of security forces in Shopian district of south Kashmir, police said today. A cordon and search operation was launched by Army in Zaipora area of Shopian during the night following intelligence inputs about the presence of militants there, a police official said. advertisement He said during the search operation, the militants fired upon the party in which three army personnel were injured. Three soldiers including Major Kamlesh Pandey, Sepoy Tanzin and Sepoy Kripal Singh were injured in the attack. "The injured were immediately airlifted to 92 base hospital in Badami Bagh cantonment area, where Major Pandey and Sepoy Tanzin later succumbed to their injuries," sources said. Photos of Major Kamlesh Pandey & Sepoy Tanzin Chhultim, who lost their lives in #Shopian (J&K) encounter. pic.twitter.com/c9HDk7I208ANI (@ANI_news) August 3, 2017 The police said 3 weapons were recovered during joint operations by the Army, CRPF & police in Kulgam, including one looted from a police post in October 16. Meanwhile, two militants were also killed in an ambush by security personnel in Kulgam district. Police said the militants were killed in an operation by the security forces in Gopalpora village in Kulgam district. One of the slain militants has been identified as Aqib Ahmad Itoo. "Two weapons have been recovered from the slain militants," a police officer said. ALSO READ | J-K: Encounter underway to flush out 3 Hizb militants in Pulwama; stone pelters urged to 'save brothers' Kashmir: Encounter in Pulwama, 2 terrorists killed, 1 holed up inside house Abu Dujana encounter: Jilted lover turned police informer led security forces to LeT commander ALSO WATCH | Separatists call for bandh in Valley after civilian dies in clashes post Dujana encounter --- ENDS --- My association with the Girl Scouts has spanned decades as a scout, camp counselor, steadfast cookie connoisseur and now donor. It is an experience strongly associated with the great outdoors. Cook meals on a campfire? Check. Hike long distances wearing a heavy backpack? Check. Lead two dozen 5-year-olds for a week in a woodland camp? Check. In adulthood, all of those experiences stayed with me, and I put them to use in the wilderness and in my work as a cybersecurity researcher for the RAND Corporation. Scouting has always given girls opportunities that challenge them and allow their leadership skills to develop. But the modern world with its headlines about Russians hacking our elections and disruptive prank email impersonations of White House staffers can seem far removed from a Girl Scout camp. So imagine my delight when the Girl Scouts announced they would be offering 18 cybersecurity badges to expose girls to information-age concepts and challenges. This heartening development is more than just an indication of changing times, more than just updating badge programs to replace the outmoded with the modern. This is a way for more girls to obtain valuable hands-on experience with the concepts that are shaping the modern world. The service ethos Girl Scouts have always embodied and championed can now go viral, as up to 1.8 million girls are given the chance to learn to protect themselves and their community in cyberspace. Just by offering these cybersecurity badges, the Girl Scouts are breaking down a barrier. It's no secret that women are underrepresented in career fields ( PDF ) like information technology, computer science, and cybersecurity. Every year since 1982, more women than men have earned college degrees. But women are less likely than men to pursue degrees in the technical disciplines that often lead to cyber careers think information technology, information security, computer science, mathematics, or electrical and computer engineering. If the Girl Scouts employ their typical philosophy that emphasizes learning by doing and cultivating leadership skills to detect and solve problems girls will be able to identify with cyberspace as a place they, their families, and the greater world spend so much time. Girl Scouts will undoubtedly recognize and grapple with the fundamental tensions between privacy and security, the societal inequities in access to information, and the cat-and-mouse game between those who will misuse cyberspace and those who try to defend it. Girls and young women need to be able to see themselves in the role of white-hat hackers to truly even the virtual playing field. But it's not just about exposing them to cyber concepts like strong encryption and probing networks to find security flaws. Girls and young women need to be able to see themselves in the role of white-hat hackers to truly even the virtual playing field. While preparing to give a seminar to encourage girls to pursue cybersecurity or other careers in STEM (science, technology, engineering and math), I stumbled upon some eye-opening artwork by seventh-graders on the website of the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory near Chicago. The students had been asked to draw a picture of a scientist before meeting with the laboratory's scientists (particle physicists, no less). The drawings embodied the classic cliche and were mainly of white men wearing white lab coats, mixing potions in beakers, sometimes with wild hair and a crazed look in their eyes. After the field trip, the students were once again asked to draw a picture of a scientist. This time, having experienced science firsthand, their pictures represented a more realistic and fully formed version of who can be a scientist. Their drawings of men and yes, women showed them wearing lab chic street clothes, holding fewer beakers and, for the most part, looking pretty sane. What sort of a picture would a seventh-grade girl draw of a cybersecurity professional? With the help of the Girl Scouts' cyber initiative, many more girls might depict a future version of themselves in the part. Lara S. Schmidt, a former Girl Scout, works at the nonprofit, nonpartisan RAND Corporation where she is the director of the Strategy, Policy and Operations Program of the Homeland Security Operational Analysis Center. This commentary originally appeared on USA Today on August 1, 2017. Commentary gives RAND researchers a platform to convey insights based on their professional expertise and often on their peer-reviewed research and analysis. Moscow court changes prison term of disabled convict Mamayev to fine MOSCOW, August 3 (RAPSI) The Moscow City Court on Thursday ruled to change punishment for Anton Mamayev, a disabled and wheelchair-bound man who had previously been sentenced to 4.5 years in prison for armed robbery, to a 200,000-ruble (about $3,300) fine, RAPSI correspondent reports from the courtroom. On July 19, the Timiryazevsky District Court of Moscow released Mamayev from jail. This decision was made soon after the court received Mamayevs medical examination results submitted by the Federal Penitentiary Service. According to the medical report, the man is suffering from an illness included in the list of diseases that prevent serving of punishment. Earlier, Russias High Commissioner for Human Rights Tatiana Moskalkova visited Mamayev in a hospital. According to the ombudsman, Mamayev is suffering from a complex of serious including Spinal Muscular Atrophy. She filed a petition with the Moscow City Court seeking release Anton Mamayev and a request with the Federal Penitentiary Service to speed up his medical examination. In late June, Moscows Timiryazevsky District Court found Mamayev and his alleged accomplice Vasily Seroshtanov guilty of robbery with the use of force. Mamayev received 4.5 years in prison, Seroshtanov was sentenced to 3 years in prison. According to the Moscow City Court, the lower courts judge during delivering the judgment took into consideration nature and level of public danger of the committed crime qualified as serious, identity of the defendants and their role in the crime, presence of mitigating circumstances or absence of aggravating circumstances, and gave them sentence within sanctions prescribed by the law. The Timiryazevsky District Courts ruling reads that the court took into account that Mamayevs illness is not included in the list of diseases approved by the order of the Health Ministry and the Justice Ministry. Renova Groups managers charged with giving $16.5 mln in bribes MOSCOW, August 3 (RAPSI, Lyudmila Klenko) Yevgeny Olkhovik, a co-owner of top Russian group of companies Renova, and Boris Vaynzikher, CEO of Renovas subsidiary, T Plus Company, have been charged with giving about one billion rubles (about $16.5 million) in bribes to officials of the Komi Republic, an investigator said during court hearings on Thursday. The Basmanny District Court of Moscow is reviewing a motion of investigators to extend the defendants house arrest. On August 1, the court released Olkhovik and Vaynzikher from detention. Earlier, a criminal case was opened against some former and acting managers of Kompleksnye Energeticheskiye Sistemy (KES) company, of which T Plus is the legal successor, over alleged corruption. At that time, the offices of the companys parent holding Renova were also raided. Three men holding CEO posts in the KES at different time, Olkhovik, Vaynzikher and Mikhail Slobodin are involved in the case. Vaynzikher and Olkhovik were initially put detention. Slobodin, ex-head of the telecommunications giant VimpelCom, has been arrested in absentia. In late July, Russias prosecutors turned to Interpol asking it to issue a Red Notice for Slobodin. According to investigation, between 2007 and 2014, the defendants bribed officials currently involved in the case against ex-head of the Komi Republic Vyacheslav Gaizer. Earlier, investigators claimed that Olkhovik and Vaynzikher had allegedly received 177 and 89 million rubles (about $4.5 million in total) in bribes respectively during their management in the Kompleksnye Energeticheskiye Sistemy and transferred the money to the accounts of affiliated companies. Suspect in murder of European junior wrestling champion arrested in Russia MOSCOW, August 3 (RAPSI, Yelizaveta Ponomareva) A suspect in the murder of the two-time European junior freestyle wrestling champion Yury Vlasko has been arrested in Russias region of Buryatia, according to the press service of the Investigative Committee. A 33-year-old suspect admitted his involvement in the sportsmans death but also claimed that he was defending himself from the wrestler. Investigators, however, doubt this version as it contradicts testimony of witnesses. A court is expected to rule on the suspects detention soon. Investigators believe that on the night of July 28 to 29 several participants of a wrestling tournament in the city of Ulan-Ude arrived at the lake Baikal. There a conflict occurred between sportsmen and local residents leading to Vlasko receiving a lethal knife stab in the chest. An attacker fled the crime scene. Most of us take for granted that much of the governments business is carried out by bureaucrats and that many of the laws that impinge upon our economic and our social lives are created and enforced not by Congress and the courts but by administrative agencies. For nearly a century, our domestic policy disagreements over federal spending, health care, and the social safety net have taken place against the backdrop of a government whose functions are increasingly bureaucratic, rather than political. Even the debate over governments size, which has characterized our politics for so long, takes for granted the existence, if not the necessity, of the administrative state. Of course, a certain amount of delegation has always been necessary for the executive to carry out the laws passed by Congress. But this modern style of governance in which a centralized, rational bureaucracy, staffed by unelected and purportedly apolitical officials, is empowered by Congress to formulate rules and regulations is a creature of more recent times. Scholars locate its emergence at different points in history: the creation of the civil service in the late 19th century; the rise of progressivism in early 20th-century America; the New Deal; the Great Society. According to John Marini, however, we have to go all the way back to 19th-century Prussia to understand the origins of the administrative state. Marini, a senior fellow of the Claremont Institute and professor of political science at the University of Nevada-Reno, is the guest on the sixth and final episode of our podcast The Future of the Administrative State. He argues that while the terms bureaucracy and administrative state would emerge much later, the philosophical seeds of bureaucratic governance were sown in the writings of 19th-century German thinkers, such as G.W.F. Hegel, who articulated a political vision that would become essential to American politics nearly a century later. According to these thinkers, politics is not grounded in human nature (as the ancients supposed) or natural rights (as Americas founders maintained) but in society itself, which progresses and changes over time. Moreover, such progress is understood to be rational, as resulting in the cultivation of knowledge. This picture of government is not of a social compact, like a constitution, intended to protect natural rights, but an organic and rational whole the State which becomes the vehicle for the administration of progress. Hence more and more of the tasks of human society have to be handed over to those who have knowledge. The end result: the push and pull of ordinary representative politics is superseded by centralized rational rule by a cognitive elite what would later be termed the administrative state. Marini sees these philosophical ideas as anticipating the modern view that politically neutral subject-matter experts should be deputized to effectuate progressive policies. This is no coincidence, according to Marini. These ideas, imbibed by Americans such as Woodrow Wilson and other leading academics, came to influence the 20th-century reform efforts of American Progressivism. Beyond the specifics of those reforms, this progressive turn had at least three important consequences for American politics in the 20th century. First is the eclipse of Congress as the first branch of government. Congress, though initially resistant, ultimately ceded its legislative power to the executive and, specifically, administrative agencies. At this point, congressmen began to act more like co-administrators in various parts of the [administrative] apparatus than genuine representatives. Lost thereby was the ability of Congress to act as a deliberative body or as a body at all. Second is the decline of American political parties. As bureaucracy became the primary vehicle for enacting policies preferred by organized interests, the two parties ceased to represent the people, accommodate[ing]themselves instead to the administrative state. Members of Congress have grown accustomed to this state of affairs, as it gives them status and it gives them power over policy arenas without any responsibility or accountability. We see this today, Marini thinks, in the Obamacare repeal debacle, where politicians are happy to vote for repeal when they know their vote is meaningless but ultimately unwilling to do what their constituents want when it counts. Third is the erosion of civil society of those mediating institutions that exist between the public and private spheres. Historically, institutions like the family and religious organizations were responsible for performing many of the tasks now controlled by the administrative state. But over the course of much of the 20th century, and accelerating after the 60s, many of those civil associationswere essentially outlawed or undermined. Thus the administrative state continues to expand to fill the void left by a shrinking civil society. According to Marini, Trump alone among last years presidential candidates understood this state of affairs, even if only instinctively. His campaign exploited the weakness of our political parties to appeal to a citizenry that has grown dissatisfied with Congress and frustrated by the power of administrative agencies and the attendant special interests. The Republican Party establishment meanwhile, was not only unwilling to endorse Trump but even to concede that he had grasped a genuine political problem. Will Trump succeed in rebuilding the democratic politics Marini believes has been dismantled by the rise of the administrative state? He is not especially optimistic, in part because even Trumps own party has proved reluctant to abandon the status quo, despite the outcome of last years election. More fundamentally, Marini points out, to offer a viable alternative to the administrative state, we must not only reinvigorate our constitutional system with its separation of powers but also revitalize the democratic culture and therewith the civil society needed to sustain it. You have to really begin the process of reestablishing a ground of authority that is different than rational authority different from Hegels centralized rational rule and thats very hard to do when youve destroyed the civil associations that were established on the older authority. Still, Marini thinks, Trumps rise has made it increasingly clear that if we want political rule in Americathe citizens are going to have to reestablish the ground of their citizenship by paying attention to politics, by being vigilant. And whether Trump succeeds or not, Marini does not think you can put a lid on the movement and the awareness that hes created in the electorate about the administrative state. M. Anthony Mills is editor of RealClearPolicy. The United States discarded its oft-misunderstood two war doctrine, intended as a template for providing the means to fight two regional wars simultaneously, late last decade. Designed to deter North Korea from launching a war while the United States was involved in fighting against Iran or Iraq (or vice versa,) the idea helped give form to the Department of Defense's procurement, logistical and basing strategies in the postCold War, when the United States no longer needed to face down the Soviet threat. The United States backed away from the doctrine because of changes in the international system, including the rising power of China and the proliferation of highly effective terrorist networks. This article first appeared on Medium. Follow Peter Zeihan on Twitter @PeterZeihan. The views expressed are the author's own. Im on a mid-term break in my annual Unplug&Recharge effort, and am taking stock of whats changed while I was out of cell phone range, and therefore blissfully ignorant of everything from CNN to Fox to Facebook to the Journal. The loudest development in my opinion seems to be what Ill refer to as the Scaramucci Interregnum. Before I left for backpacking in Wyoming on July 13 Sean Spicer was the White House Communications Director, and Reince Priebus was the Trump administrations chief of staff. While I was gone, Anthony Scaramucci rode into town, Spicer and Priebus left, and Scaramucci himself was dismissed shortly thereafter. Trump now has a new chief of staff in John Kelly, who served previously as the Secretary of Homeland Security. Lets break down what this all means. First, an in-your-face personality like Anthony Scaramucci (aka The Mooch) was a horrible choice for a position that is all about smoothing ruffled feathers and keeping peoplea??a??including those hostile to the administrations views and policiesa??a??informed. But his presence did present us with something very useful. His profanity-laden tirades demonstrated that Donald Trump has opinions on how much is too much. Considering the presidents own, shall we say, disinterest in self-censoring, this in and of itself is a notable discovery. Second, the Interregnum has signposted a sharp change in the administrations domestic political capacity. The departure of Spicer and Priebus removes two of the three mainstream domestically-focused Republican personalities from the administration. The only one remaining is Vice President Mike Pence. While the Veep is hardly a wilting flower, historically the Vice Presidency is only as powerful as the Presidency enables it to be. Trump may be many things, but enabler isnt the word I typically reach for when I try to describe him. Without any establishment personalities left, the leading advisor to Trump on all things domestic is now Steve Bannon, a nationalistic populist who has some rather eclectic and non-standard views on how everything should be. Many were critical of the adults in the Trump administration for their mixed record on guiding the president to a more conventional path. On domestic politics, there are no longer any adults left. Expect things to get lively. Third, expect them to get chaotic too. John Kelly was a fine Marine general and seemed quite capable and at home in Homeland Security. I have no problem with senior military personnel serving in civilian administrations and have written before about my support of and respect for people like Defense Secretary James Mattis and National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster. In foreign and strategic affairs, the top-down model of management that is typical of military minds works. After all, you dont want some low-level bureaucrat making strategic policy without supervision, or even with much wiggle room on the specifics of implementation. But chief of staff is a political job. It is about balancing dozens of competing players, many of whom by design are attempting to manipulate or deceive the president, and yet still must be considered. It is a position that is a combination of gatekeeper, ego juggler, reality-checker, cat-herder, and selective censor. The military isnt exactly known for cranking out such people. Solid chiefs of staff have broad exposure, deep expertise and/or cut-throat political instincts: Jim Baker, Josh Bolten, Rahm Emanuel. Kelly is smart as a whip and good at what he knows, but this isnt the job for him. Which leaves Trump both under the influence of Bannon and lacking someone who can capably manage the chief executives affairs. Get ready for not just press reports by Twitter, but policy by Twitter. Speaking of Twitter, a Twitter follower recently asked me for confirmation that despite all the activity in the White House these days, does a functional plan still exist to promulgate American power in the long run? Its a reasonable question. Ive long taken the view that American power will grow in both absolute and relative terms for at least the rest of this century. That, in a nutshell, is the theme of The Accidental Superpower. Let me be clear: there is no plan. The Americans have hardly ever had a plan. From an international and strategic viewpoint, Americas strengths are not and never have been in its governing system in general or any administration in specific. Instead, Americas strengths come from a balance of factors which exist entirely outside of the political realm: Geography: The United States occupies the worlds best lands interlaced with the worlds best naturally-occurring transport system, the Greater Mississippi system. In addition, any potential invaders are separated from the United States by the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. That leaves the Americans free to develop without fear of outside interference, yet gives them the capacity to intervene across the world at times and places of their choosing. And should things get dicey, the Americans can always just head home. For thema??a??and them alonea??a??defeat doesnt mean someone is parking their tanks in your lawn. Demography: Countries that survive in the long-term have a population balance between mature workers to invest and pay taxes, and young workers to raise children and whose consumption powers the economy. Most of the worlds countries have run out of young workers already: Germany, Japan and Italy are the worsta??a??all are rapidly aging into national obliviona??a??while Russia, China and Brazil arent far behind. The United States is one of the (very) few advanced countries where the balance is even remotely stable and sustainable. Energy: Love it or hate it, energy is a requirement of modern life. For the last several decades, global politics was heavily colored by the need to bring energy from far-flung locations in the Middle East and Siberia to East Asia, Europe and the United States. No more. Americas shale revolution has already transformed the United States into a net energy exporter, and by 2020 it will likely even be an oil exporter in absolute terms. And if youre of the Green persuasion, the United States is the First World power closest to the equator, making it the only one that can actually harness solar energy in meaningful volumes. These are things that no president can screw up. The United States survived Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama. The ride may often be wild, but the United States will survive post-Interregnum Donald Trump as well. Other countries, not so much. The three factors of geography, demography and energy enabled the United States to impose a global Order during the Cold War that, in essence, outlawed conflict among the allied powers. Maintaining that Order was difficulta??a??it required constant consultation and coordination. Falling from Order to Disorder, in contrast, is eeeeeasy. The Cold War is over, and the American president no longer has a functional executive staff that is capable of consulting and coordinating. All it requires is not a goddam thing. Since Americas strengths are natural and apolitical, the United States will broadly be fine. For countries that lack geographic strength and isolation, demographic heft and stability, and energy access or independence, however, life outside of the Order is looking mighty scary. Which makes it absolutely critical for other countries to have their own plans if they are to survive the Disorder to come. Unfortunately, most of them are slipping into narcissistic populism, bald denial, deer-in-the-headlights panic, or some terrifying combination of the three. There are exceedingly few countries that boast the combination of factors required to even attempt to chart their own destinies in a sustainable manner. Im certain that in a few years domestic pundits will (correctly) use the Scaramucci Interregnum to signpost the beginning of a (more) volatile and unpredictable Trump White House, but theres more at stake than that. The real issue of the day is that the transition from global Order to Disorder just accelerated from a slide into a free-fall. And now we get to see what happens next: Now we can begin to witness the rise of the New Orders. Thea??a??ultimately successfula??a??efforts of four specific countries to reshape their neighborhoods in the wake of the American withdrawal from the world. As for who those four countries are, how theyll do ita??a??and above all elsea??a??why theyll be the only four to succeed, youll have to wait a bit. You see, the next book isnt done yet. But I do have a cover to share In a Wall Street Journal op-ed on July 20, Maj. John Spencer wrote: The battle for Mosul represents the future of warfare -- and it wasnt pretty A rag-tag army of a few thousand Islamic State fighters managed to hold the city for months against some 100,000 U.S.-backed Iraqi security forces. The numbers are important: a few thousand. The description as well: rag-tag, that is, motley, disorganized, crude. In its glory period in 2014-15, ISIS seized Mosul along with all the U.S. military equipment there, including heavy weapons, as well as millions of dollars from the citys central bank. Today the so-called Islamic State is losing all over Iraq and, even if more slowly, in Syria as well. Its a good time to think about how accurately ISIS was understood. Heres a primer of end-of-days questions about Islamic State military forces and occupation governments: The numbers: How many fighters total does Islamic State still have in the field? Are local groupings still in contact with each other, or is ISIS fatally fragmented? New recruits. Foreign fighters arriving in Syria each month in 2016 had dropped to the low hundreds at most, no longer adding up to the thousands seen in the previous years. A Washington Post estimate held that 30,000-40,000 foreign fighters from 86 countries had arrived over two years. But the American commander, Lt. Gen. Sean MacFarland, said that 35,000-45,000 fighters overall had been killed. Many others fled the battlefield, either back to civilian life or to their home countries as sleeper cells. Many of the original Iraqi and Syrian fighters were also killed. Whats the result? A rough guess is that there are perhaps 10,000 ISIS fighters still in the field, scattered across Iraq and Syria. Some number, perhaps a few dozen, are killed each week. Perhaps more. Mosul. How many fighters held Mosul? Perhaps 6,000, holding a city that at the beginning had a population of as many as 2 million people. ISIS control of Mosul was in effect the largest hostage operation in history. How many fighters are left in Raqqa? A few thousand, it seems. Many others have fled along with a substantial number of leaders and their families, according to the New York Times. The eastern Syrian province of Deir al-Zour is Islamic States last bastion. Yet Maj. Spencers point remains as a warning about the future of war: A few hundred or thousand fighters can hold off an army in urban combat for a substantial time, if only because they are using innocent civilians as shields. Do remaining ISIS fighters feel demoralized, abandoned? No doubt. They still fight to the death, but for personal honor in relation to jihad rather than for the caliphate. Perhaps the dream of paradise, once the Islamic States most formidable weapon, still has some luster. The leader. Is so-called caliph Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi still alive? Russia and the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights say hes probably dead. U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said last week that he thought Baghdadi is still alive. Does it any longer matter very much? Its doubtful Baghdadis demise would be the factor that leads to the organizations operational collapse. Ammunition. What about an asset as banal as ammunition. Are ISIS forces running out of ammunition? Re-supply? Where do they get their ammunition now? What about the famous swaths of territory ISIS once controlled? Do they retain that control with at most a few thousand fighters and limited weapons and logistical equipment? Large armies couldnt control such territories in the past. What is the meaning of control anyway? A top U.S. official said at a recent closed meeting that in U.S. military vocabulary, control means an area in which ISIS forces can move freely and return to secure bases. Is this really control? If control means an empty territory in which not just ISIS but any military force can circulate freely, these swaths of ISIS-controlled territory are really just empty space. And since much of Iraq and Syria is uninhabited desert, whats the point of controlling it anyway? Where ISIS still holds villages along the two rivers, how many fighters are in each? Five, 10, a hundred? Not very many in any case. Significant attacking forces will kill or otherwise dislodge them with dispatch. Islamic State fighters are sitting ducks waiting to be killed. Control of waterways is essential to Iraqi and Syrian life. A look at the original ISIS assault shows a well-conceived strategy. Control of the Tabqa Dam above Raqqa was a critical threat if, as seemed plausible, Islamic State fanatics might destroy it to create a flood. This threat also protected the top leadership and high-value ISIS captives kept there. In Iraq, Islamic State took control of much of the Euphrates by capturing villages on the riverbanks. Chain of command. Does any broad chain of command still exist at the strategic level? Hardly likely. Is ISIS cunningly re-orienting its strategy from territory to guerrilla warfare as some commentators believe? Hardly convincing. With the Islamic State in tatters, terrorist attacks are a matter of doing what its fighters still can do -- carry out pointless massacre. The future of ISIS is one permanently on the run. Remaining commanders and fighters are going to ground in desert areas to reorganize some new guerrilla force, perhaps with a new name, perhaps merged with other forces, such as al-Qaeda offshoots. They did it successfully once before. But an ISIS resurgence cannot be camouflaged -- the element of surprise is gone. In Iraq the group will be run down by experienced Iraqi security forces, and in Syria by a collection of anti-ISIS groups including the Assad government, however much these groups are also fighting each other. Al-Qaeda will also be on the run despite its long game strategy of gradually taking over communities from within. Governments will not be surprised again nor will they permit ungoverned areas to form -- these are in nobodys interest. Russias first goal in Syria, President Vladimir Putin has said many times, was to prevent another Libya near its borders. Iraqi and Syrian patchwork governments will be active. Equally or more important is that outside states will be vigilant -- Russia but also the United States, Iran, Turkey, Jordan, Israel, and the Arab Sunni states. Islamic State, the murderous blip-on-the-screen caliphate, is going down. Almost certainly this will terminate territorial jihad in core Middle East countries for the foreseeable future. But what about other areas? Guerrilla and urban terrorist jihadis will persist in various countries such as the Philippines, Nigeria, the Sinai in Egypt, Afghanistan, and elsewhere. Some will claim to be ISIS affiliates fighting to re-establish a caliphate, but their most important motives will be local struggles for power and money. Lone-wolf attacks will continue in Europe and the United States, but without strategic or even tactical significance. These are massacres, not politics. Enough experience has accumulated showing that public opinion is terrorized for a moment but life goes on the next day. (Statistically in the United States there have been only two serious terrorist attacks in the past several years, in San Bernardino and Orlando, involving a total of three individuals.) Nevertheless, counterterrorism remains a vital task of Western governments. Thinking clearly about the future of ISIS, military analyst Anthony Cordesman says, We are months away at most from the point at which ISIS ceases to be the focus of Iraqi security and stability. What about killing the ideology? Eradicating the idea of violent jihad to create an international Muslim power? Jihad and the caliphate are, like any religious or political movement, ideas. Bad ideas degenerate sooner or later, like communism, or they are destroyed, like the Third Reich. Sometimes they simply burn themselves out: chattel slavery is a good example, or Alexander the Greats idea of universal empire. The Islamic States fanatical agenda is just the most recent version of an ancient, homicidal fantasy. Find a great selection of commercial real estate, manufactured homes, timeshares and more for Sale Buy real estate. Find a great selection of commercial real estate, manufactured homes, timeshares and more for Sale in US and Canada. Search Real Estate By PTI: New Delhi, Aug 3 (PTI) JPMorgan Mauritius Holdings IV and Copthall Mauritius Investment have sold 1.70 per cent stake in healthcare provider Narayana Hrudayalaya for an estimated over Rs 100 crore. According to a BSE filing today, JPMorgan Mauritius Holdings IV and Copthall Mauritius Investment decreased their shareholding in the company to 1.43 per cent, from 3.13 per cent, by selling 34.77 lakh shares in the open market on July 6. advertisement The transaction was carried out on July 6. Based on the weighted average price of Rs 299.93 per share on the BSE, the deal is estimated to be worth Rs 104.29 crore. On Wednesday, Narayana Hrudayalaya reported a 36 per cent decline in net profit at Rs 10.9 crore for the first quarter ended June. Its consolidated total operating income grew 15.3 per cent to Rs 521.1 crore. PTI SVK ARD --- ENDS --- Property details: Land located in Massena NY, 10 mins from international bridge linking to Cornwall Ontario and Highway 401. 1 hour and 30 minutes from Montreal and 1 hour and 10 mins from Ottawa. Massena is a great destination for Canadian shoppers, also 20 mins from the casino.Great view of the Adirondack mountains. Possible developments include condos, apartments, hotel and retail. Zone Commercial located on highway. 114 total acres! Excellent for farming also Massena NY 15 mins from International bridge to Ca... 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In the letter, Subhash Chandra, additional chief secretary to Karnataka government, said that the I-T department did not seek assistance from the local police or any senior police authority for these operations. advertisement It is after the intimation of the DG and IGP of Karnataka that the I-T department was conducting searches at six locations, which belong to the offices and residences of DK Shivakumar. It is through them that the government got to know that the I-T sleuths were raiding the power minister. HERE IS ALL YOU NEED TO KNOW According to the Bengaluru Police Commissioner, 30 armed CRPF personnel were deployed in the city itself during the search. The presence of CRPF personnel resulted in protests by supporters of DK Shivakumar, which caused a law and order issue that forced the state police to deploy additional manpower at short notice. Chandra highlighted that the I-T searches had been conducted earlier too in the state with or without police protection but it was for the first time that they had seen central forces such as the CRPF being deployed for such an operation. He said, "While a search by the I-T dept is well within their domain, the involvement of the CRPF, which is a CAPF (Central Armed Police Force), without keeping the local police informed raises certain important issues. It casts aspersions of adverse credibility, integrity and professionalism of the state police, which has been utilised by the I-T dept effectively earlier." The additional chief secretary in his letter has repeatedly questioned the reason behind using the CRPF in full operational attire with weapons for a civilian operation. The Karnataka govt has clearly indicated that there should be co-operative action between the central and state agencies and that the state government must be taken into confidence. ALSO READ | I-T raids on Shivakumar: How CBI, other agencies have acted against Opposition leaders Karnataka I-T raids: EC seeks report from finance ministry on Congress complaint Karnataka minister managing Gujarat Congress MLAs' stay raided, Rs 5 crore recovered ALSO WATCH VIDEO: Congress protests in Bengaluru against I-T raid on Karnataka Power Minister --- ENDS --- By Elizabeth Kwiatkowski, 08/03/2017 ADVERTISEMENT Elizabeth Kwiatkowski is Associate Editor of Reality TV World and has been covering the reality TV genre for more than a decade. Krushna Abhishek and Sudesh Lehri have been great friends with each other since the Comedy Circus days. By India Today Web Desk: All is not well between The Drama Company's Krushna Abhishek and Sudesh Lehri. The duo, who got along famously on Comedy Circus, have been having differences, according to a report in The Times of India. "We have been having differences and ego hassles, but we will resolve it among ourselves. Earlier, we were constantly in touch and would even discuss personal matters. But these days, we don't communicate beyond work. In fact, Sudesh has barred me from contacting him. If I want to reach him, I have to go through his manager, and that is something I don't want to do," Krushna told The Times of India. advertisement The reason behind the tiff is that The Drama Company is being called Krushna's show. "Whatever I have learnt about comedy is because of Sudeshji. During Comedy Circus, he would get better lines than me, but I never complained. A comedy show is not run by an individual, it requires teamwork. I can't help it if people are calling The Drama Company my show," Krushna added. Also read: Here's why TKSS' Sumona Chakravarti will never work with Krushna Abhishek --- ENDS --- 'Strange as it may seem, the more advanced the safety features in a car, the more critical is the role of the humble seat belt.' says C V Raman. IMAGE: Actress Swara Bhaskar makes sure to have her seat belt locked in when she is in her car. India's automobile industry is going through a major transformation. A new set of vehicle safety norms is set to come into effect, starting October. The car industry is rapidly upgrading its products to meet these stringent safety norms. The Union ministry of road transport and highways has, after studying the best vehicle safety practices across the world, laid down these norms, which are on par with the safety standards in Europe. Interestingly, these safety norms cover not just car users, but also aim to minimise injury to pedestrians who may be hit by an automobile. The car industry is investing in new equipment such as airbags and anti-lock braking systems. But that alone is not enough. Companies are making other innovations so that the additional equipment, while delivering higher safety, does not unduly increase vehicle weight and compromise on other important aspects like emission, performance and customer comfort. Car companies are investing in extensive research, testing and evaluation to ensure that these cars meet advanced safety norms. At Maruti Suzuki, for example, we crash-test 35 to 40 cars of each model at our advanced R&D Centre in Rohtak (Haryana) before we can be satisfied that it meets the forthcoming safety norms. All this effort and investment is being made to minimise injury and fatalities in road accidents. IMAGE: Anuska Sharma chats on her phone, seat belt firmly in place. Nearly 150,000 people die on Indian roads each year. Disturbed by this, Nitin Gadkari, the Union minister for road transport, highways and shipping, has taken the challenge of bringing it down to half by 2020. As automobile engineers, it gives us great satisfaction to be contributing our efforts to a national goal. However, all these efforts may be nullified if we do not acquire a basic habit: Putting on the seat belt while travelling in an automobile. Strange as it may seem, the more advanced the safety features in a car, the more critical is the role of the humble seat belt. For example, in a vehicle with airbags, if the passengers are not wearing the seat belt at the time of a crash, an airbag could end up causing harm to the passengers. According to a World Health Organisation report published in 2015, wearing a seat belt reduces the risk of fatality among drivers and front-seat passengers by 45-50 per cent! The risk of serious injuries comes down by 45 per cent. Among passengers on the rear seat, according to WHO, seat belts reduce fatal and serious injuries by 25 per cent. In fact, this is leading countries to not just adopt comprehensive seat belt laws, but also strengthen enforcement. IMAGE: Ranbir Kapoor believes in the seat belt rule. This expert view is reinforced by our experience in the R&D lab. In our crash lab tests, we use dummies made of steel and rubber with sophisticated sensors embedded in them to simulate the human body and measure the damage caused during a crash. We have dummies of different sizes and shapes which represent a typical male or a female or a child sitting in the car. Our tests show that the impact is much more severe on dummies that do not wear a seat belt. India's record with regard to seat belts is dismal and shocking. In most parts of the country, vehicle users are not even expected to wear a seat belt. There is practically no enforcement of this rule. Even where enforcement is stringent, it is confined to the passengers in the front seats. For some strange reason, rear-seat passengers are not expected to wear the seat belts provided for them. IMAGE: Safety first is Randeep Hooda's motto. I see this as a big opportunity. If we could only adopt this simple act of wearing a seat belt each time we use a vehicle -- voluntarily, in areas where it is not enforced -- we would be bringing down road fatalities by a significant number. As cars become more sophisticated in terms of safety, it is even more critical that we belt up every single time for ourselves and our loved ones. C V Raman is head of R&D, Maruti Suzuki India Limited. Photographs: Pradeep Bandekar Initiated move to privatise Air India, but reports on poverty and cast census remained unfinished NITI Aayogs first vice-chairman and noted economist Arvind Panagariya on Tuesday decided to relinquish his post to pursue academic interests less than three-years after he was appointed. The sudden announcement sparked off speculation that all was not well with his relationship with the Prime Minister's Office ( PMO). However, Panagariya denied the rumours of feeling 'suffocated' and said that he enjoyed the most cordial relationship with the PMO. In the last two years and eight months, Panagariya attempted pushing through many reforms, some of which were well accepted while others couldnt get the government nod. Here is a laundry list of reforms that the vice-chairman accomplished during his tenure and those that he could not push through. Panagariyas achievements Initiated the move for privatisation of Air India: Indias national carrier had been a white elephant for successive governments for long. Although numerous attempts were made to privatise the national carrier, it was after NITI Aayogs recommendation, the NDA government got a cabinet approval for the same. The last time, a formal cabinet note was moved and approved on Air India was when Atal Bihari Vajpayee was the prime minister. Prepared the three-year action agenda for the Modi government, a document which replaced the five-year plan with more concrete and short-term suggestions: The action agenda is one of most comprehensive documents prepared by the Aayog in the last three years with actionable points by all including states. It covers a wide range of issues on economic subjects and also for the first time talks of police reforms, governance etc. Started the process of reforming the higher education sector in the country, first through the Medical Council of India, then was working on UGC and AICTE: Institutes of national importance like Medical Council of India (MCI) had come under a lot of criticism due to their functioning. The NITI Aayog recommended a complete overhaul of them with a more professional approach to ensure maximum fair play for all. Prepared a list on closure and disinvestment of sick PSUs: The Aayog along with some ministries had prepared a list of 44 sick and loss-making public sector units which needs either to be shut down or go for strategic disinvestment. The Centre has already started working on many of those. Worked with states to modify their land lease laws and revamped the Centrally Sponsored Schemes (CSS): A high powered panel of chief ministers chopped and churned the Centrally Sponsored Schemes (CSS) and reduced their number to around 27 from a hefty over 100. NITI Aayog was the main driver and nodal agency for that panel. It was among the first to flag mounting non-performing assets (NPAs) in banks. Panagariya's failures Couldnt get the government nod on his pet idea of Coastal Economic Zones (CEZ) on the lines of China, though he did initial work on the same but couldnt find much support from the finance ministry on tax breaks and concessions: One of Panagariyas pet idea was Coastal Economic Zones (CEZs) something which would look like the Shenzen Special Economic Zone of China. These zones as per Panagariya should be over a large area (Shenzhen covers 2,050 square kilometres) and must have some existing infrastructure and economic activity. He even spoke to a couple of ministries and managed to get a nod from few. The two coastal states of Gujarat and Andhra Pradesh seemed amiable to his idea. But, the issue of concessions and tax breaks remained a sore point without any budgetary allocations or support. Wanted the government to focus more on mega job creating sectors by reforming the rigid labour laws particularly in areas like leather, gems and jewelry, among others: Panagariya during his tenure as NITI Aayog vice chairman was a great votary of focusing on those sectors and industries which has the potential of generating big jobs for the country. These included leather, textiles, gems and jeweler. He always wanted big manufacturing units to come up, something which would employ many people. He often quoted a ADB report which showed that in India manufacturing firms with less than 20 workers each employed 73 per cent of manufacturing workforce but produced only 12 per cent of manufacturing output in 2010-11. Couldnt complete the 15-year vision document, which could have been a long-term policy statement: The 15-year vision statement which was to be long-term policy document of the NITI Aayog remained incomplete during his tenure. The reports on poverty and cast census remained unfinished: Panagariyas report on poverty measurement and urban census also remained incomplete. On poverty measurement he favoured using a multi-dimensional apparoach and left upon other experts to draw a line. He could not negotiate through the highly complex bureaucratic maze that rules Indias administrative setup: The biggest failure of Panagariya tenure was his difficulty in negotiating the bureaucratic maze that engulfed NITI Aayog and for that manner all government departments. The noted academician was always at difference with bureaucrats though not publicly which sometimes lead to creation of two two power centres within the same organisation. Photograph: PTI Photo In the past, the firm also acquired the Zandu brand which opened up its presence in the balms business Consumer goods entity Emami, known to have grown its portfolio and market share by acquisition in segments it hitherto wasnt present in, is eyeing further acquisitions this year, to grow its health care and personal care products. We are open to acquiring both small-sized and big companies, provided the brand value and business model is good. We can acquire companies with Rs 50-500 crore (annual) turnover, Harsh V Agarwal, director, said after their annual general meeting in Kolkata. Asked if the new goods and services tax (GST) had opened more possibilities for acquiring of smaller companies, he said, We are open to acquisitions in both these spaces. Analysts feel that as a result of GST, which calls for tighter compliance norms, several companies in the consumer goods space will be up for grabs by larger FMCG entities. In June 2015, Emami acquired Kesh King for Rs 1,651 crore, one of the largest deals in FMCG space then; it opened an entirely new market (hair care) for Emami. In the past, it had also acquired the Zandu brand, opening the balms portfolio. This year, our core focus will be on health care and personal care products. There will be brand extensions, as well as new launches, said Agarwal. The firm is also thinking of increasing its presence in Bangladesh by widening the product range. It expects this countrys growth to be considerably higher than in other foreign countries. Bangladesh accounts for 30 per cent of Emamis consolidated international sales. Poor show in June quarter Emami posted a dismal financial performance for the quarter ended June, with net profit down 98 per cent to Rs 1.04 crore. Revenue dropped 16 per cent to Rs 541 crore. Net profit and net sales during the same quarter a year before were Rs 57 crore and Rs 645 crore, respectively. Harsh V Agarwal, director, blamed destocking by its sales channels in the wake of demonetisation as the primary reason. Over 50 per cent of sales are through wholesale channels, hit by both demonetisation and the new goods and services tax. R S Agarwal, chairman, in his address to the shareholders, said a process had been started to reduce dependence on wholesale channels and to increase the emphasis on direct distribution. In 2016-17, the company increased its direct distribution by 100,000, to 730,000 outlets, with a vision to ramp it up to 800,000 in the current year, he said. Dampened sales in global operations was another reason for the weak performance, said Harsh Agarwal. An inventory correction in the international business has been done and the coming fiscal quarters will be good for the company. Photograph: Reuters Snapdeal has a number of shareholders including Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan, PremjiInvest, Ratan Tata, Foxconn, Temasek and BlackRock, among others. Image: Kunal Bahl, CEO of Snapdeal. Photograph: Shailesh Andrade/Reuters Some of the early-stage investors in Snapdeal, such as Nexus Venture Capital, have come out in support of the co-founders move to end merger talks with Flipkart. A host of minority shareholders, along with early-stage investor Kalaari Capital, are, however, displeased with the decision taken by Kunal Bahl and Rohit Bansal. Nexus, as a long-term Snapdeal shareholder, fully supports the Snapdeal 2.0 journey. We will continue to partner with the company to help achieve its goals, the venture capital fund said on Wednesday. During the five-month-long discussions for the sale of the e-commerce platform to Flipkart, led by the SoftBank group, Nexus had been one of the strongest allies of the co-founders, sources said. Sources said that Nexus and the co-founders, who have three votes in total in the Snapdeal board, vetoed against the deal every time. While it is not clear if Nexus would invest more in Bahls new business plan, it would definitely have an advisory role in Snapdeal 2.0. Nexus holds 12.20 per cent stake in Snapdeal and had invested around $12 million in the initial rounds. Not only this, Jasper Infotech, which owns Snapdeal, had in May received Rs 113 crore in funding from Bahl, Bansal and Nexus. The fund was to be infused in Unicommerce, a platform for e-commerce sellers to track orders across marketplaces. Snapdeal's earliest investor Kenneth Glass, a former Microsoft executive, has also come out in support of Bahl. Ten years ago, I believed in Kunal and Rohit's vision to create a successful company in India and was excited to be their very first investor. Today, I'm equally excited about the announcement introducing Snapdeal 2.0 and believe the future for Snapdeal is very bright and I'm thrilled to continue to be on this journey with them, he wrote in a mail to Bahl. When contacted, Bahl, in an emailed response, said it was great to see the continued support from shareholders like Glass. "Our team really appreciates the continued commitment of our shareholders to Snapdeal," he said. There have been reports that Snapdeal's decision to walk out of the deal and pursue an independent path has not gone down well with a section of shareholders. According to reports, Vani Kola, co-founder of Kalaari Capital, had criticised the move. I am extremely disappointed and shocked with the founders and their disregard for investors and employees' interest, Kola was quoted as saying. Minority shareholders, who were promised 10x or 20x returns on their investments, are also trying to find a way to get the deal back on the table. Many are rallying up and want to approach the board and tell them to overturn the deal. If that does not work, they are planning to take a legal recourse, said a representative of one of the minority shareholders. Snapdeal has a number of shareholders including Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan, PremjiInvest, Ratan Tata, Foxconn, Temasek and BlackRock, among others. However, according to sources at Snapdeal, minority shareholders do not have any say, as the decision was taken by the board. The shareholders do not have a vote or say in this, a person said. Customised tailoring: How Raymond, Aditya Birla group are luring customers with bespoke services to fit the bill. The retail and apparel industry in India appears to be coming full circle. A few years ago, the industry witnessed a marked shift to "readymade" clothing, with manufacturers offering buyers more designs at attractive price points. With quality fashion going mass, the industry is once again seeing renewed consumer interest from discerning fashion-conscious buyers for made-to-order and customised tailoring services. Organised retailers, like Raymond and Aditya Birla Group, have been quick to spot the growing demand for customised tailoring services. They see it as an opportunity for value addition and building loyalty among existing as well as potential new customers. Encouraging people to opt for bespoke service is akin to change of habit. For changing customer habit you need to offer him more comfort and value than say a neighbourhood tailor, says Vishak Kumar chief executive officer, Madura Fashion and Lifestyle, a part of Aditya Birla Fashion and Retail Ltd. Madura via Van Heusen offers bespoke services. Tailoring continues to be a fragmented market. With the emergence of online marketplaces and technology innovation, fashion has become affordable and mass. This is an apt opportunity for organised retail players like Raymond and Aditya Birla Group to tap into the growing desire for personalisation in fashion. With bespoke service, the players are well-placed to extract more value from fashion-conscious buyers who are ready to pay a premium for customised products, says Vishal Talwar, dean, School of Management, BML Munjal University, Haryana. To be able to stand apart and compete, with scores of specialised neighbourhood tailors and other family establishments, offering a bespoke service, organised retailers need to get various aspects of the service commitment down pat, says Talwar. These include getting the garment right, ensuring consistent quality, and on-time delivery. Most importantly, since, tailoring is still not considered fashionable back home, unlike Western countries, players offering bespoke service have to build in innovation with designs to justify the premium that they charge from customers. Ramesh Sharma, business head, Raymond Made to Measure which also has mobile stores, says, People tend to compare an MTM product with a locally tailored product. There is a need to differentiate between mass tailoring services, which is available all across, and the custom-made offering in the luxury space. The ability of organised bespoke service providers to score over their unorganised counterparts stems from their competence in offering a wider fabric and style choice, a higher level of customisation, quality consistency with standardised manufacturing practices, and capacity for timely doorstep delivery. Raymond MTM and Van Heusen MYFIT have made huge investments in end-to-end integrated technology for quick turnaround and delivery. Both players are leveraging data analytics to arrive at the best fit taking into account different body types. For example, Raymond MTM works on the principle of craft meets science. It uses data analytics to work on different body shapes and accordingly comes up with various patterns (slim, classic, plus etc) and style preferences. Van Heusen, on the other hand, has built a digital interface that is simple and easy to use. Customers can access digital display screens at its stores to explore different fabrics, fits, and styles all by themselves. One of the key challenges, for organised retailers providing bespoke service, points out Kumar, lies in creating a highly flexible manufacturing line. Most of the units are built for mass manufacturing and require significant changes to be able to operate real-time and produce a single and customised garment. MYFIT has re-engineered its manufacturing facility to produce garments within three days, with very low inventory levels. On-time delivery is another issue facing bespoke players. MYFIT relies on in-house resources coupled with third-party logistics partner for timely doorstep delivery. MYFIT service is available across 200-plus Van Heusen stores spanning 100 plus towns. With a high level of customisation and craftsmanship involved, bespoke service come at a premium. A fine MTM suit price can start from Rs 25,000 and can go up to as high as Rs 1,450,000. Clearly, in this segment, cost is not an advantage. With individual pieces being custom-made, costs for customers goes up as the service comes at a premium, says Sharma. Even as demand grows, the challenge for organised retail players is to achieve standardisation in tailoring services. Tailoring cannot be easily standardised as it depends on individual skills and expertise. Thus, standardising tailoring skills and expertise across Tier-I cities will be a bit of a challenge for players, suggests Talwar. A bigger question perhaps is the limited ability of bespoke service providers to scale up. It is critical for players to determine how much they wish to target as scalability would have a direct impact on accessibility and quality of service. For Talwar the question to ask is, how easily should their service be made available? We have precedents of fashion suffering as it goes mass. If everybody has access to it, why would customers pay a premium for it? Kumar has an answer. Not every business needs to build a scale. We are servicing about 100,000 customers. We do not want to be aggressive in pushing our service. Rather the focus is on engaging customers, adding value to their buying experience and earning their loyalty, he says. The Delhi-based airline currently has 13 Airbus A320 aircraft in the fleet and it plans to take another seven (A320 Neo) planes by June 2018. Full service carrier Vistara is likely to place a mega order for wide-body aircraft soon. The order which will be a mix of narrow and wide body will come after fresh capital infusion from promoters may be for more than 100 aircraft. Tata Sons holds 51 per cent stake while Singapore Airlines owns the rest 49 per cent. As part of its plans, Vistara may advance its current A320 delivery schedule from June 2018 as it is negotiating with the lessor for early delivery. A 20th aircraft will allow the airline to fly abroad but not before four to six months. According to sources who spoke to Business Standard, Roshan Joshi the airlines senior vice president for flight operations wrote to employees that the airline is in the final stages of finalising the aircraft type and delivery date. We are closely working with SQ (code for Singapore Airlines) and evaluating our delivery dates and aircraft type. We expect a big triple digit order, once finalised, Joshi wrote. Aviation consultancy firm CAPA had earlier said that it expects the airline to opt for Boeing 777 type for its long haul operations. Spokesperson of the company did not respond to queries sent by the paper. Vistara has announced the appointment of a new CEO Leslie Thng last month. The airline recently received Rs 200 crore, its second tranche of funding from the promoter. With this, the total investment by the promoters stands at Rs 1, 200 crore. The promoters had originally committed Rs 600 crore funding while setting up the airline in 2013. After that, in a board meeting of Tata Sons in June last year, outgoing CEO Phee Teik Yeoh in his presentation to the Tata Sons board mentioned that the revised financial forecast required an incremental equity infusion of Rs 600 crore underlining the airlines plans of becoming profitable by FY21. According to the airlines plans, initially, it will deploy the widebody aircraft between high-density domestic routes for training purpose. We are eyeing markets in Europe, Asia and Australia but for initially four to six months, the wide bodies would be deployed on key domestic routes, Joshi wrote. Jet Airways and Air India fly bigger aircraft like Airbus A330 and Boeing 777 between high-density metro routes. Industry sources say that Vistaras lessor for the 20 A320 aircraft have informed the airline that it has aircraft which can be delivered immediately as some of its clients have refused to take them. The lessor has made Vistara a good offer for these aircraft at a very good leasing rate, the airline may advance their delivery schedule of the 20th aircraft, the person said. The Delhi-based airline currently has 13 Airbus A320 aircraft in the fleet and it plans to take another seven (A320 Neo) planes by June 2018. Further, the airline is negotiating with global majors like Lufthansa, Delta, United and British Airways for codeshare partnerships. Vistaras outgoing CEO Phee Teik Yeoh and Chief Commercial Officer Sanjiv Kapoor have met executives of the airlines recently. The airline has hired an auditor to secure the International Air Transport Association (IATA)s IOSA certification, which would let it finalise commercial agreements with international airlines, IOSA stands for IATA Operational Safety Audit, a global industry standard. Vistara in FY17 registered a loss of Rs 400.90 crore while earning a revenue of Rs 714 crore. Photograph: PTI Photo Indian Hotels rolls back its multi-brand strategy. It will now focus solely on its quintessential experience of luxury that it is selling as one brand -- Tajness. A year after Indian Hotels launched an experiment to define the Taj brand promise, the Tata group-owned hospitality chain is extending the experience to all its properties. Labelling it Tajness, the group has decided to use the experience to define the brands unique identity and roll back its nine-year old multi-brand strategy to build a single brand with a singular focus on luxury. In August last year, Indian Hotels initiated the Tajness experiment at its flagship property, the Taj Mahal Hotel in Mumbai. It sought to define its luxury promise and break down the intangible into a series of defined and tactile experiences. In February this year, six months later, the group said it would take Tajness to all its properties. Tajness has been defined by wrapping it around a set of rituals that extend from the way guests are greeted in the morning to the fragrance sprayed in the rooms to the way tea is served. Chinmai Sharma, a hospitality industry veteran and chief revenue officer of Indian Hotels, explains that the group has realised that it has an enviable legacy in the business of luxury and in this space there is no one it competes with except itself. The groups 31 Vivanta and 25 Gateway properties have been subsumed into the umbrella Taj brand and by March 2018, all hotels will ply their guests with the uniform and unvarying experience of Tajness. The decision to bank on legacy and exclusivity reflects the understanding that luxury brings the best margins in the business and beating the crowds in the mid-to-budget segment is difficult. The Tajness experience focuses on consistency and providing a taste of Indian traditions mixed with authentic local experiences. Sensorial touchpoints are a vital part of the brand experience. It involves two components, one that envisages homogeneity across all Taj properties. For instance, all rooms across all properties would emanate the delicate fragrance of jasmine. Similarly the active and passive music played in public and private areas and the attire of Taj associates would be the same. All properties would also offer guests the chance to practise yoga while offering them an elaborate afternoon tea ritual. Signature Tajness rituals will define and guide the guests from their moment of arrival says the group. The second part of the Tajness experience revolves around local experiences. For instance a property in Nashik could offer guests a very different culinary experience from that in Kolkata. This will help create distinct brand identities within a single brand called Taj Hotels Palaces Resorts and Safaris. Indian Hotels is currently in various stages of implementing its single brand architecture. It is making significant changes to its product and service attributes to upgrade the guest experience to Tajness across all its hotels. We now have a constant eye on competition, says the companys chief revenue officer Chinmai Sharma, striking a lighter note about the vantage position his office occupies on the ninth floor of Express Towers. It gives him a direct view of The Trident, marquee property of rival Oberoi group. Sharma is responsible for the companys ambitious sensorial branding and operational philosophy encompassed in the Tajness roll out. With Tajness, the group is taking the brand back to its roots. Before rolling out Gateway in September 2008 and Vivanta two years later, the 116-year-old Tata enterprise had stuck with its flagship brand, Taj, for over a century. The two sub brands were launched in the then burgeoning upscale category, dividing the segment further into upper-upscale (Vivanta by Taj) and upscale (Gateway). At that point of time, the group had said that change was warranted because Brand Taj was over-stretched. The industry classifies hotels as luxury, upscale, mid-market and budget. The re-branding exercise became important when the group decided to move into segments other than luxury to maintain its market leadership. Indian Hotels started the exercise with transferring about 16 existing properties to the Gateway brand and 19 existing properties to Vivanta by Taj brand. Today there are 56 hotels under Vivanta and Gateway that are getting rebranded. The landscape for the hotel industry has changed with merger of global players as well as emergence of home-sharing sites according to the group. Do we want to fight them or exit that game and fight our own-game, asks Rakesh Sarna, outgoing managing director and CEO at Indian Hotels. Fighting will be difficult given the pipeline and deep resources they have. But the richness that brand Taj has could not be matched by any one, says Sarna. And thus was born the one-brand strategy. However, how does one create a uniform brand identity when the properties differ on size of the room, facilities at the recreational centre and so on? The group says it is aware of the challenges but sidesteps the issue with a comment that the company hopes to overcome these constraints with uniform experience. Sarna says, No one has a monopoly on right decision. Those decisions made 10 years ago (of creating multiple brands) had very good intent, but for anyone to not evaluate and not learn from them would be irresponsible." As the final gunfight reached a crescendo, two officers a major and a captain of 55 Rashtriya Rifles (RR) took grave risk, entering the room Abu Dujana was in to fight the former Lashkar commander hit by bullets, but still breathing. By Kamaljit Kaur Sandhu: As the final gunfight reached a crescendo, two officers a major and a captain of 55 Rashtriya Rifles (RR) took grave risk, entering the room Abu Dujana was in to fight the former Lashkar commander hit by bullets, but still breathing. The final bullets were pumped into him from close range to annihilate the longest living Pakistani terrorist on Indian soil. Dujana literally fought till the end. advertisement An officer, who was part of the entire operations, said that they reached Dujana's home in Hakripora at 4am. "The hard part of convincing Dujana to surrender was already done. His response was on expected lines. Once the family members were out, the operations began, with area lit up with bullets. Dujana and Arif fought back. But convinced after firefight of two hours, the soldiers went in to find the slain commander breathing his last. The first thought that crossed the mind was what if there was a live grenade or an IED. NSG officer in Pathankot Air base attack had paid price of his life." Lt Col Niranjan, a member of the NSG's Bomb Disposal Squad, was killed while he was defusing the grenade at the Pathankot air base during combing operations on 2nd January 2016. The other peculiarity of the encounter was that troops were only able to recover one AK-56 rifle with 4 magazines and one pistol with ammunition. An officer from 55 RR told India Today that being a true commander, Dujana took pains to destroy his mobile phone and his dairy. Any recovery from a senior rank Lashkar commander could have proved to be goldmine of information. Once the operation was over, the troops wasted no time, as the instructions were clear for the troops to leave in three groups taking different routes to avoid stone pelting. Earlier, Dujana along with his two associates had given a slip to Army troopers. The officer said, "Unlike other commanders of terror modules, Dujana's forte was that he kept his cool." That added to his survivability. For 55 RR which missed by a whisker, the killing was a sweet revenge. ALSO READ: Aaj aapne pakad liya, mubarak: Abu Dujana told army officer moments before his encounter --- ENDS --- The $10.5 billion arms and equipment deal helped to arrest the recent drift in the 'special and privileged' strategic partnership, observes Brigadier Gurmeet Kanwal (retd). IMAGE: Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Russian President Vladimir Putin at their meeting in St Petersburg, Russia. Photograph: Mikhail Metzel/TASS/Host Photo Agency/Pool/Reuters Defence Ministers Arun Jaitley and General Sergey Shoigu jointly chaired the 17th meeting of the India-Russia Inter-governmental Commission on Military-technical Cooperation on June 21-23, 2017, in Moscow. The two sides agreed on a roadmap and signed a protocol to take defence cooperation to a higher level through the joint development of future weapons systems and military equipment, enhanced joint training and the exchange of visits. According to news reports, India will acquire arms and equipment worth $10.5 billion (Rs 67,604 crore/Rs 676.04 billion) from Russia including five S-400 Triumf advanced air defence missile systems, four Grigorivich-class frigates and 200 Kamov-226T light helicopters. Russia will also lease its second nuclear-powered submarine to India after INS Chakra. Jaitley invited Russian companies to participate in defence manufacture in India as part of the government's 'Make in India' policy. The meeting helped to arrest the recent drift in the relationship that has been described as a 'special and privileged' strategic partnership since 2000. India's new policy to diversify its sources of defence procurement, especially its reliance on Western weapons platforms, despite their greater cost, had not been received well in Russia and the relationship had tended to deteriorate into a transactional rather than a strategic one. The relationship with Russia goes back to the time India got its Independence. The erstwhile Soviet Union and its successor State Russia have stood by India on Jammu and Kashmir over several difficult decades. One-sided UN Security Council resolutions on Jammu-Kashmir were vetoed by the Russians many times. The Indo-Soviet treaty of 'peace, friendship and cooperation', signed before the 1971 War with Pakistan, stood India in good stead. Though the agreement was not a military alliance, India was perceived by the United States and its Western allies to have joined the Soviet camp. The 1971 agreement signalled the de facto end of non-alignment, which John Foster Dulles, the US secretary of state (1953 to 1959), had called 'immoral'. As part of its foreign policy, India also did not lag behind in supporting Soviet or Russian positions. Now, an era of 'Cold Peace' appears to have dawned over Eastern Europe and Putin's Russia has begun to gradually drift towards China and its ally Pakistan. However, it is a relationship on the rebound and may not amount to much in the long run. Due to Russia's apprehension about China's military assertiveness, the China-Russia strategic partnership is unlikely to gather momentum despite the US 'pivot' or strategy of re-balancing to the Indo-Pacific and the growing India-US strategic partnership. India's acquisition of weapons and defence equipment from Russia has been the most enduring part of the India-Russia strategic partnership. Almost 70 per cent of India's defence acquisitions are still sourced from abroad, mainly from Russia. Russia had provided several high-tech weapons platforms to India when India was still subject to technology denial regimes. Civil nuclear cooperation between the two countries has a long history. Russia gave India nuclear submarines on lease and provided assistance for the development of the cryogenic rocket engine. State-of-the-art fighter-bombers, including the MiG-25 strategic reconnaissance aircraft, were sold to India. The two countries cooperated on the Russian GPS satellite system called GLONASS. The Russians had offered India the S-300/S-300V BMD system as far back as the mid-1990s. During the December 2014 summit meeting between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and President Vladimir Putin, Russia agreed to supply 12 nuclear power reactors over the next 20 years. Russia also supports India's quest for membership of the Nuclear Suppliers Group and related groups. The Soviet Union sold hi-tech weapons and defence equipment to India at 'friendship prices' and on the basis of barter trade as India did not have sufficient foreign exchange reserves. However, military-technical cooperation remained a buyer-seller, patron-client relationship. While fighter aircraft and tanks were manufactured under licence in India, no transfer of technology ever took place and India's defence technology base remained low. The co-production of the BrahMos supersonic cruise missile is the only example of a successful joint venture. The decline of Russia's defence industry -- production has declined by almost 90 per cent in five years -- after the collapse of the Soviet Union had an adverse impact on India's defence procurement. India found it difficult to obtain spare parts, get its equipment overhauled and seek upgrades. There were unacceptable time and cost overruns in executing pending orders. The five-year delay and the three-fold cost escalation in the acquisition of the INS Vikramaditya (formerly, the Admiral Gorshkov) aircraft carrier is a typical example. Now these challenges are gradually being overcome, but the Russian defence industry has fallen behind the West in the development of cutting edge weapons technologies. A new concern is about the techno-commercial feasibility of the joint development and production of the fifth generation fighter aircraft tentatively called PAK-FA or Sukhoi T-50. The Indian perspective for future defence technology cooperation will be shaped by PM Modi's drive to 'Make in India' with ToT. Russian OEMs will need to demonstrate their competitiveness and enter into strategic partnerships by way of joint ventures with Indian public and private sector companies to bid for future contracts in keeping with the Defence Procurement Procedure 2016. If they are nimble enough to rival the MNCs, India-Russia military-technical coop will have a bright future. Brigadier Gurmeet Kanwal (retd) is a Distinguished Fellow, Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses, New Delhi. 'War cannot resolve problems. So wisdom is to resolve diplomatically.' The border standoff with China cannot be resolved through war, but bilateral talks, the government told Parliament on Thursday, August 3. India, External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj told the Rajya Sabha, is engaged with China to resolve differences, not only on the standoff on the Doklam Plateau, but other matters like the border dispute, India's membership of the Nuclear Suppliers Group and China's blocking of United Nations sanctions against Jaish-e-Mohammad terrorist Masood Azhar. "Patience and control on comments are key to resolving problems. We are maintaining patience and controlling comments," Swaraj said, replying to a discussion on 'India's foreign policy and engagement with strategic partners'. The minister read out a statement explaining India's position on the Doklam standoff, which has been going on for over a month. "War is not a solution to anything. Even after war, there has to be a dialogue. So, have dialogue without a war... Patience, control on comments and diplomacy can resolve problems," the minister said. If patience is lost, the minister said there can be provocation on the other side. "We will keep patience to resolve the issue," Swaraj said, adding "We will keep engaging with China to resolve the dispute." In response to questions, she said military readiness is always there as the military is meant to fight wars. "But war cannot resolve problems. So wisdom is to resolve diplomatically," the minister asserted, expressing confidence that the issue could be resolved through bilateral talks. Swaraj also lashed out at the Congress and its leadership for meeting the Chinese ambassador over the border standoff. "You (the Congress) should have first sought details from the governnment and then confronted the Chinese envoy," she said, referring to Congress MP Rahul Gandhi's meeting with the Chinese ambassador. The minister said she had met leaders of all parties over two days to explain the Doklam issue. The leaders, she added, left after being fully convinced of the government stand. She also slammed the Congress for questioning why India had boycotted China's 'One Belt, One Road' conference. "Do you know through where the OBOR passes? And you are asking these questions? It is a matter of national sentiment. You are the main Opposition party, You should speak with responsibility," Swaraj said, referring to the project which China proposes to build through Pakistan occupied Kashmir. At this, Congress MP Anand Sharma said the remarks made by his party colleague Rajeev Shukla regarding the OBOR were in his "individual" capacity. Swaraj then took a dig at the Congress, asking when the party had become so democratic that each member speaks in his own voice. Earlier, Sharma accused the government of mishandling foreign relations, particularly in the context of tensions with China. China, Sharma said, is being "unusually aggressive" and the "doors of diplomacy seem to be closing". "When it comes to the country's national interests, we stand as one and there is no division. It is clear...Diplomacy must be given a chance. We believe in making all possible diplomatic channels to de-escalate the situation on the borders," Sharma, a former Union minister, said. "De-escalation does not mean retreat. It is safeguarding India's interest," he said. Targeting Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Sharma said he had "not uttered a word" on what he had discussed with Chinese President Xi Jinping during their meetings in Astana, Kazakhstan, and Hamburg, Germany. "It is his duty to tell us. He cannot remain silent on matters of India's sensitive interests," Sharma said. National Security Adviser Ajit Doval, Sharma noted, had visited China last week and wondered if after the NSA's visit "a window has opened that this standoff would be resolved." The Congress MP felt it is a matter of concern that China has offered to mediate between India and Pakistan. Managing the periphery comes first, he said, and that is of critical importance, saying the rest comes later. "Unless we manage our neighbours correctly, it would be difficult or rather impossible to play a major role globally," Sharma said, adding, "What is your roadmap? There is no stability in your policy. It keeps changing. First you say we would talk and then stop talks." India, he said, had succeeded in de-hyphenating India from Pakistan. "The real concern is that the hyphenation is back," he added. "We have concern because China's profile in Pakistan is increasing and Pakistan is getting emboldened of this support from China and that is our concern," he said. Samajwadi Party MP Professor Ram Gopal Yadav expressed concern that Russia's affinity towards India is diminishing. In such a scenario, Professor Yadav said India has to identify which country could be a reliable friend during a crisis. India has been reduced to being a junior strategic ally of the United States, Communist Party of India-Marxist MP Sitaram Yechury said. According to information available on a US Web site, in the agreement on logistics signed during Narendra Modi's visit to the US last year, Yechury said India's status has been shown as a 'junior partner' to advance US interests in defence and security in South Asia, which the CPI-M MP termed as the "last nail in our independent foreign policy." Russia, a friend of India earlier, Yechury pointed out, had concluded a pact with Pakistan while India was conducting a joint military exercise with the US and Japan in the Bay of Bengal. The Supreme Court on Thursday refused to stay the Election Commission's notification allowing none of the above or NOTA option in the ballot paper for the upcoming Rajya Sabha polls on a plea of the Congress which has fielded sitting MP Ahmed Patel from Gujarat. Sixty-eight-year-old Patel, a seven-time MP from Gujarat and political advisor of Congress president Sonia Gandhi, is fighting for a Rajya Sabha berth from the state where four candidates are in fray for three seats. The Bharatiya Janaat Party has named its national president Amit Shah, Union minister Smriti Irani and Balwantsinh Rajput for the polls which are scheduled on August 8. In what could be a setback for the party, the court rejected the contention of Congress's chief whip in the Gujarat assembly, Shailesh Manubhai Parmar that the notification be stayed, otherwise it would "encourage corruption" and the MLAs might opt the NOTA option. The apex court said that the party had not challenged it earlier because the notification suited it. A bench, headed by Justice Dipak Misra, however, agreed to examine the constitutional validity of the NOTA provision in Rajya Sabha polls, saying that the issue needed to be debated. "The Election Commission of India had enabled the NOTA provision in 2014, which came into effect in 2015. You (Congress) did not challenge the provision when it suited you," the bench, also comprising Justices Amitava Roy and A M Khanwilkar, said and issued notice to the poll panel. The bench said it was not going to stay the ECI's notification and would like to test the constitutional validity of NOTA in the present context. "We are not going to stay the notification. Even after the elections and results are declared as per the schedule, the matter will be heard on the constitutional issue," it said. It listed the matter for detailed arguments on September 18 and directed the ECI to file its reply within two weeks on the plea. The bench said that since the Centre has nothing to do with the notification, it was deleted from the list of the respondents. It, however, asked Attorney General K K Venugopal, the highest law officer of the central government, to assist the court during the hearing. At the outset, senior advocate Kapil Sibal, representing the Gujarat Congress leader, sought a stay on the notification, saying that if the NOTA provision was allowed in the Rajya Sabha polls, it would encourage "horse-trading and corruption". "It is for the first time there are four candidates for three Rajya Sabha seats in Gujarat. If NOTA is not disabled in the state, which is witnessing a close contest, it will be a recipe for corruption and the MLAs may exercise the option to make their votes invalid," Sibal said. "Are you afraid of losing?" the bench asked. Sibal replied that he was not afraid but, if the notification was not stayed, then the MLAs might exercise the provision and take money from the other side. The apex court said that the poll panel's notification was not a state-centric one. On being denied the stay, Sibal said, "Then it will make our pleas infructuous." The bench then said it meant that the Congress MLA was not "genuinely concerned" about the legal issue. Another senior advocate Abhishek Manu Singhvi, appearing for the Gujarat leader, said that it was a peculiar case where both the Congress and the BJP were on the same page. Another senior advocate Ashok Desai, representing the ECI, said that NOTA was first introduced in 2014 following an apex court verdict a year earlier and they (Congress) did not have any objection in subsequent polls as it suited them. Desai told the bench that senior advocate and Congress leader Vivek Tankha, who was in the courtroom, should assist it on the issue whether there was a NOTA provision when he contested the Rajya Sabha polls from Madhya Pradesh. "How would I know? I was a candidate then, I was not a voter," Tankha, also representing the Gujarat leader, said. Sibal intervened and said that it was an indirect election with proportionate representation and there was no scope for the NOTA provision as it was meant for direct elections. "I am not concerned with subsequent elections after 2014 notification enabling the NOTA option as no one had challenged it then. I am a legislator and I am a facing problem now and, therefore, I challenged it," he said. The court said that the ECI's notification was not state-oriented and whether was it right or wrong needed to be debated as to whether NOTA will apply in the Upper House polls. "The notification of the ECI is for Gujarat, West Bengal and Madhya Pradesh. The election should be taken in the widest sense. It has been already notified. Any interference will totally disrupt the polls," the bench said. It said, "Since 2014-15, you (Congress) did not say anything, but in 2017 you are saying it is unconstitutional. The ECI's notification is in a general sense and it will be for everyone (other political parties, individuals)." Opposition parties will on Friday move privilege motions against External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj in the Rajya Sabha for allegedly misinforming the House on India's foreign policy. According to sources, leaders of different political parties will move two privilege motions against Swaraj for allegedly "providing wrong information on the Bandung Asia Africa relations conference and about Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Lahore visit in 2015". The sources said that while Swaraj claimed that she had not delivered any speech in the Bandung conference, the opposition parties have downloaded a purported speech and will attach it as proof. The second privilege is for allegedly "misinforming the House on Modi's 2015 Lahore visit, claiming that there was no terror incident after that". The opposition, however, seeks to differ saying the Pathankot terror attack happened immediately after Modi's visit and there were five other incidents after that too. Incidentally, the issue was raised in the Rajya Sabha today with Congress leader Anand Sharma and Trinamool leader Derek O' Brien saying that Swaraj had delivered her speech at Bandung despite claims to the contrary. Sharma alleged that first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru's name had been omitted from the address delivered by Minister of State for External Affairs V K Singh at the 60th anniversary of Bandung Conference. Rejecting this charge, Swaraj said India did not address the Bandung Conference as only three Heads of states spoke there. She said speech which Sharma was referring to was delivered at another Afro-Asian Conference held separately. Nehru was one of the founder members of the Bandung Conference founded in 1955. Swaraj added that she had attended the Bandung Conference and saw large pictures of Nehru at the venue, which made her feel proud. The external affairs minister also slammed the Congress for alleging that the Modi government had dumped the Palestine issue due to growing proximity with Israel. She said while the Congress has problems over India's growing ties with Israel, the Palestinians have no such complaints. In fact, Palestinians are requesting India to use its good ties with Israel to resolve its dispute with the Jewish nation, she said. The minister asserted that India will never let down the cause of Palestine. "It is our commitment," she said. To the opposition's contention that India has become lackey of the US, Swaraj said it is only Prime Minister Narendra Modi who has got the guts to have plain speak with US President Donald Trump. She was referring to Modi's strong statement after Trump had alleged that India was seeking billions and billions of dollars in the name of Paris climate change deal, from which the US walked out. Modi had said that India's respect for climate was thousands of years old. Swaraj also dismissed contention that number of H1B visas issued by the US have reduced under the Modi government. Citing data, she said, in turn, the quota of such visas had been decreased during the previous UPA government. IMAGE: A file photo of Prime Minister Narendra Modi with the then President Dr Pranab Mukherjee. Photograph: Press Information Bureau of India 'Pranab Da, you have always been a father figure and a mentor to me,' an emotional Prime Minister Narendra Modi wrote in a letter to Pranab Mukherjee on his last day as President. The letter, which spells out the bond between the two leaders who come from different political ideologies, was shared by the former president on Twitter on Thursday. 'On my last day in office as the President, I received a letter from PM @narendramodi that touched my heart! Sharing with you all,' Mukherjee said in a tweet. Modi responded by saying, 'Pranab Da, I will always cherish working with you.' In the letter made public by Mukherjee, the prime minister said he had come to New Delhi three years ago as an outsider. "The task before me was huge and challenging. In these times, you have always been a father figure and a mentor to me. Your wisdom, guidance and personal warmth have given me greater confidence and strength," he said. IMAGE: Prime Minister Narendra Modi's two-page letter to former President Pranab Mukherjee. Photograph: Kind courtesy @CitiznMukherjee/Twitter Modi said Mukherjee's 'intellectual prowess' had been of constant help. 'You have been so warm, affectionate and caring to me. Your one phone call asking me 'I hope you are taking care of your health' was enough to fill me with fresh energy, after a long day at meetings or on a campaign tour,' he said in the letter dated July 24. Mukherjee stepped down from office the next day. 'Pranab Da, our political journeys took shape in different political parties. Our ideologies, at times, have been different. Our experiences are also varied. My administrative experience was from my state, whereas you have seen the expanse of our national polity and politics for decades. 'Yet, such is the strength of your intellect and wisdom that we were able to work together with synergy,' Modi said. The Bharatiya Janata Party leader praised the Congress veteran and former President for opening the Rashtrapati Bhavan to initiatives and programmes that recognised innovation and the talent of India's youth. "You belong to a generation of leaders for whom politics was simply a means to selflessly give back to society. You stand as a great source of inspiration for the people of India. India will always be proud of you, a President who was a humble public servant and an exceptional leader. Your legacy will continue to guide us," Modi said. The prime minister said he and all others would continue to draw strength from Mukherjee's democratic vision of 'taking everybody along'. 'Rashtrapati Ji, it has been an honour to work with you, as your Prime Minister,' Modi said. United States President Donald Trump on Thursday blamed the Congress for "an all-time" and "very dangerous" low in US' relations with Russia, a day after he reluctantly signed into law a bill imposing tough sanctions against Moscow under mounting domestic pressure. Trump signed into law a legislation that imposes tough sanctions against Russia, Iran and North Korea and limits his ability to lift the curbs unilaterally. The signing of the bill put to rest questions about whether Trump would support the legislation passed overwhelmingly by Congress last week. "Our relationship with Russia is at an all-time & very dangerous low. You can thank Congress, the same people that can't even give us HCare!" Trump wrote on twitter. The "Countering America's Adversaries Through Sanctions Act," which enacts new sanctions on Iran, North Korea and Russia was passed by both the chambers of the Congress -- House of Representatives and the Senate -- by an overwhelming majority. In his signing statement, Trump had expressed his disagreement with certain provisions of the bill even though he said he supported new sanctions on Russia. "The bill remains seriously flawed -- particularly because it encroaches on the executive branch's authority to negotiate. The Congress could not even negotiate a healthcare bill after seven years of talking," Trump said. "By limiting the Executive's flexibility, this bill makes it harder for the United States to strike good deals for the American people, and will drive China, Russia and North Korea much closer together. The framers of our Constitution put foreign affairs in the hands of the President. This bill will prove the wisdom of that choice," he said. White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders told reporters that the President favours tough measures to punish and deter the rogue regimes in Iran and North Korea for the bad behaviour. "He also sent a clear signal that we won't tolerate interference in our democratic process by Russia," she said. "The bill was improved, but the Congress has encroached on the power of the presidency, and he signed it in the interest of national unity. We've been very clear that we support tough sanctions on all three of those countries. We continue to do so," Sanders said. Russia has responded to these sanctions by reducing the size of US mission in Russia and asking several hundreds of American officials there to leave. Trump's presidency has been marred by accusations that his campaign team colluded with Moscow during last year's US presidential polls in which he defeated Hillary Clinton. A leading American daily on Thursday posted highly classified transcripts of Donald Trump's conversations with Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto and Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, in yet another embarrassing leak for the United States President. In his conversation with Nieto, according to the transcripts, Trump is heard pleading that the latter should stop saying that Mexico would not pay for the wall. In his conversation with the Australian Prime Minister, Trump is heard getting agitated on the refugee issue and eventually telling him that the call was the most irksome of the day. Transcripts of both the conversations that happened on January 27 and 28 respectively were posted by The Washington Post. The top American daily is now owned by Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos. Notably in the last few days, Amazon has succumbed to the Chinese demands on restricted internet freedom. The White House did not immediately comment on the embarrassing leak of Trump's conversations with world leaders. In a statement, The Washington Post said the transcripts were prepared by the White House but have not been released. "The Post is publishing reproductions rather than original documents in order to protect sources. The reproductions below also include minor spelling and grammatical mistakes that appeared in the documents," it said. As per the transcripts, Trump is heard asking the Mexican leader not to tell the press that Mexico would not pay for the construction of the wall along the US-Mexico border. The building of the wall was one of the major electoral promises of the US President. During his election campaign, Trump had said that Mexico would pay for the wall. Pena Nieto has repeatedly said that Mexico will not pay for the wall. "You cannot say that to the press. The press is going to go with that and I cannot live with that. You cannot say that to the press because I cannot negotiate under those circumstances," Trump told Pena Nieto, according to the transcripts. In his conversation with Turnbull, Trump says that accepting the refuges will "make us look awfully bad". "We have to stop. We have allowed so many people into our country that should not be here. We have our San Bernardino's, we have had the World Trade Center come down because of people that should not have been in our country, and now we are supposed to take 2,000. It sends such a bad signal. You have no idea. It is such a bad thing," Trump is quoted as saying in the transcripts. The conversation between the two leaders grew sour as Trump rejected an agreement to take refugees. "I have been making these calls all day and this is the most unpleasant call all day," Trump told Turnbull. "(Russian President Vladimir) Putin was a pleasant call. This is ridiculous," said the US President, as he abruptly ends the call. Malaika Arora did not take it lying down when a troll accused her of divorcing Arbaaz Khan for money. By India Today Web Desk: With the anonymity that the internet provides, trolling has become a serious problem, especially if you are a celebrity. Usually, the celebrity choose to ignore the troll, but not Malaika Arora. When an Instagram user by the name of "feelgoodfabric" accused Malaika of "having fun" with the "alumni (sic)" she got after divorcing Arbaaz Khan, the actor did not take it lying down. advertisement Calling her a "shit woman", the troll had commented, "Her life now is aal about wearing short clothes, going to gym or salon, enjoying the vacation. Do u seriously have any work... Or just feeding urself on the husband's money (sic)." "I donot indulge in such conversation coz it's below my dignity, but I jus had to @feelgoodfabric coz u certainly got to get ur damn facts right before spewing shit n slagging me off when u know nothing bout me.except sit n pass judgement on other people's life.i seriously suggest u find something to do with ur time coz u clearly have nothing better to do in life (sic)," Malaika wrote. Malaika was supported by many of her fans, who lashed out at the troll for her comments. PHOTOS: Wow! Exes Malaika-Arbaaz sizzle under the sun in Maldives ALSO SEE: Malaika Arora is bringing sexy back, literally, with her new swimsuit photo ALSO WATCH: Malaika Arora Khan has some love tips for you --- ENDS --- Dileep was apparently married to his distant cousin before he tied the knot with Manju Warrier. By India Today Web Desk: In a shocking twist in the Malayalam actress abduction case, it is now being reported that actress Manju Warrier was not Dileep's first wife. According to a report published in Manorama Online, Dileep had married his relative from Aluva before his marriage to Manju Warrier. The police team investigating the assault and abduction case reportedly revealed that Dileep married his distant relative from Aluva at a registrar office. The marriage took place before Dileep's debut film in 1990. Police suspect that Dileep did not separate from her officially. The woman in question is reportedly living in the Gulf now. advertisement It must be noted that Dileep and Manju Warrier tied the knot on October 20, 1998. Dileep shot to superstardom after his wedding to Manju Warrier. However, things took a turn for the worse for Dileep following rumours about his affair with actress Kavya Madhavan. Kavya and Dileep, a popular jodi in Mollywood, have given back-to-back hits. Dileep was arrested on charges of criminal conspiracy last month, in connection with the Malayalam actress abduction case. Reports also said that the animosity between Dileep and the actress who was abducted stems from the fact that she warned Manju Warrier about Dileep's affair with Kavya Madhavan. Consequently, Dileep and Manju Warrier called off their marriage in 2015. Dileep and Manju have a daughter, Meenakshi. Last year, Dileep tied the knot with Kavya Madhavan. On Wednesday, Manju Warrier's brother Madhu Warrier was questioned by the Kerala police in the abduction case. Madhu was asked about Dileep's character and his marriage to Manju Warrier. Earlier in February, the popular actress was abducted and molested by a gang of six men, headed by main accused Pulsar Suni. ALSO READ: Mollywood celebs knew of Dileep's plans regarding Malayalam actress abduction? ALSO READ: Dileep's absconding manager Appunni finally appears for questioning ALSO READ: All you need to know about the Malayalam actress abduction case ALSO READ: How the Malayalam actress abduction case drama unfolded ALSO READ: Kerala High Court rejects Dileep's bail plea in Malayalam actress abduction case ALSO READ: Why Mollywood was shockingly silent in the Malayalam actress abduction case ALSO WATCH: Dileep's bail plea rejected, more trouble for the Malayalam actor --- ENDS --- Human Rights and Democracy Report 2016 - Zimbabwe Publisher United Kingdom: Foreign and Commonwealth Office Publication Date 20 July 2017 Cite as United Kingdom: Foreign and Commonwealth Office, Human Rights and Democracy Report 2016 - Zimbabwe, 20 July 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/5982cd1e26.html [accessed 13 November 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States. The human rights situation in Zimbabwe deteriorated further during 2016 with an increase in the quantity and severity of human rights violations by state actors. These included the illegal demolition of homes, continued violations of property rights, abductions and torture, politically motivated sexual violence by state actors, further restrictions on freedom of association and expression and arbitrary arrest. 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. There were reports that approximately 200 women were trafficked to Kuwait in 2014 and 2015. 40 women sought refuge at the Zimbabwean Embassy in Kuwait and were returned home in April 2016. An official at the Kuwait Embassy has been charged with trafficking of three of the victims. Sex between men is illegal and LGB&T persons continue to face discrimination. The Government of Zimbabwe engaged with the UN Universal Periodic Review (UPR) session in November and committed to step up efforts to improve prison and police cell conditions and to reconsider its approach to the death penalty. The UK continued to prioritise human rights and the rule of law in Zimbabwe, in keeping with Zimbabwe's status as a human rights priority country. 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 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 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. The Embassy in Harare also facilitated discussions leading to action against gender-based violence, in support of women's empowerment and to promote the rights of young people, and met parliamentarians and political leaders to encourage engagement, dialogue and respect for the rights of the people of Zimbabwe. Looking ahead, the UK will continue to work with other donors to support the TRACE programme and with local stakeholders to protect democratic space and enhance state accountability and transparency. We will also press for delivery on the UN UPR commitments, through the tripartite process (Government of Zimbabwe, UN and NGOs). The UK will continue to call publicly for the Government of Zimbabwe to uphold the rule of law and human rights, while encouraging Zimbabweans of all political persuasions to exercise their democratic rights, including through free and fair elections. Human Rights and Democracy Report 2016 - Yemen Publisher United Kingdom: Foreign and Commonwealth Office Publication Date 20 July 2017 Cite as United Kingdom: Foreign and Commonwealth Office, Human Rights and Democracy Report 2016 - Yemen, 20 July 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/5982cd23a.html [accessed 13 November 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States. The human rights situation in Yemen remained deeply concerning throughout 2016. The internationally recognised Government of Yemen (GoY) does not control the entirety of Yemeni territory. This severely limited its ability to protect human rights and tackle abuses by non-state actors in areas outside its control. In addition, GoY and non-state actors, particularly the de facto authorities in northern Yemen, were responsible for a vast number of human rights abuses. The ongoing conflict has hindered efforts to protect human rights. It has led to over 12,000 civilian casualties, the internal displacement of over two million people and a wide range of protection concerns for conflict-affected populations. The rights of women and children have been particularly affected, including a significant deterioration in gender relations. There is a lack of basic services, livelihood opportunities and effective rule of law. Attacks on hospitals and schools have also limited the right of access to healthcare and education. In areas under government control, there were reports of human rights violations by state actors or actors affiliated to the government. These included arbitrary detention; forced displacement; and discrimination against minorities. There were a few reports of torture in correctional facilities. There were also allegations of breaches of international humanitarian law by GoY or GoY-affiliated actors, notably the indiscriminate use of weaponry in residential and commercial areas, resulting in civilian casualties. In 2016, the number of human rights abuses by non-state actors, particularly the de facto authorities in northern Yemen, remained a cause for significant concern. Abuses recorded by the UN and NGOs included: increasing recruitment and use of child soldiers; restrictions on freedom of movement and expression, including the arbitrary closure of news outlets and civil society organisations, as well as physical attacks on journalists and human rights defenders; discrimination against minorities; and arbitrary detention. Across Yemen, there were reports of sexual violence, some related to the conflict. Some NGOs also reported incidences of modern slavery notably forced labour and domestic servitude. In 2016, the UK remained at the forefront of international efforts to end the conflict and re-establish the authority of the legitimate Government of Yemen, which will provide the conditions necessary for the state to improve its human rights performance. Within the constraints of the current conflict, the UK's main human rights objectives were to encourage the protection of civilians, including the protection of women's and children's rights. The UK helped to negotiate and agreed a UN Human Rights Council (HRC) resolution adopted in September 2016. The resolution called on the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) to provide additional human rights experts to the Yemen Office, in order to support the Yemeni National Independent Commission of Inquiry in investigating alleged human rights abuses. Through the Conflict, Stability and Security Fund, the UK supported a UN Women project that encourages women's equal participation in the peace process, and more widely. The Department for International Development (DFID) has committed over 100 million in humanitarian aid to Yemen for 2016/17, including programmes supporting Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) and the protection of civilians. All programmes address the differing needs of women, men, boys and girls. The UK's priority for 2017 will remain progress towards a durable ceasefire and an inclusive political solution to the conflict, to prevent further conflict-related abuses and enable the Yemeni authorities to resume work protecting human rights. While the conflict continues, we will continue to urge all parties to protect civilians. The UK will work with the OHCHR to increase the capacity of Yemeni bodies to investigate and prevent human rights abuses. The investigation under Operation Munnabhai covered three medical colleges in Uttar Pradesh and caught college officials on camera offering admissions. By Md Hizbullah, Nitin Jain: Many medical colleges debarred from admitting students for two academic years by the Medical Council of India are openly flouting the ban and selling MBBS seats, an expose by the India Today Special Investigation Team has revealed. The investigation covered three medical colleges in Uttar Pradesh and caught college officials on camera offering admissions. advertisement "You need to pay Rs 5 lakh to book a seat, if you delay, the next week rates will be different," says Ajay Tomar, the official in charge of admissions at Krishna Mohan Medical College in Mathura. The college was debarred after an MCI team found out that did not meet eligibility criteria. Tomar claims counseling will happen at the college which is contrary to reality. Under the new scheme being implemented after Supreme Court orders, NEET counseling takes place at the all-India and state level, and colleges are allotted online. At the Glocal Medical College Super Specialty Hospital and Research Centre in Saharanpur, the admission official Junaid told the undercover reporters about the total MBBS package, which included hostel and tuition fees. The package would add to nearly Rs 80 lakh. Junaid also claimed that he can fix NEET counseling. "We will get your counseling done. You will get a phone call. Come to Lucknow, we will get seat allotted," he said. When asked if Glocal had all the government clearances, Junaid dodged the question and said, "We have all the government permissions, but there is one issue in court which will be settled." Junaid also offered to accept payments in cash up to Rs 20 lakh. Later, when the India Today team confronted the principal of the college and the director of Glocal University, they flatly denied the charge. "This year we are waiting for the court decision. We have not started taking admission or distributing admission forms," says Dr Ranjana Vij, the principal of Glocal Medical College. NEET COUNSELING OFFERED The Venkateswara Institute of Medical Sciences in Gajraula, the third college caught in the sting operation, also offered to overcome the NEET counseling hurdle. "We are registering students. We ensure that student will get that particular option. There will be a final call. There my man will deal directly come with you," says Shakeel, the officer in charge of admissions at the college. The three institutes are among the 32 debarred by the MCI for not meeting essential criteria for functioning as a medical college. For instance, the inspection team of the MCI had found 86% deficiency of faculty at the Krishna Mohan Medical College. advertisement There was 89 per cent shortage of residents, the bed occupancy was zero, and no doctors were found in casualty and no patients in the ICU. The Krishna Mohan Medical College failed on many other parameters as well. "Any admissions by these debarred colleges will be illegal. We have put a list of the debarred colleges on our website. Anybody who flouts the ban faces legal action," warns Dr. Reena Nayyar, Additional Secretary, MCI. The Central government too has stepped in. Reacting to the investigation, Union Health Minister J P Nadda said, "We faced a lot of opposition when we debarred these colleges. The government is determined to clean up medical education. We will take strict action against the colleges that are violating rules." The colleges barred by MCI had challenged the ban in the Supreme Court. The court in its order on Tuesday has asked the Central govt to hear out the colleges one more time, but until and unless the ban is lifted, these admissions are illegal. advertisement Also Read: Are you a virgin? Do you have multiple wives? Patna's IGIMS asks its employees Delhi: AIIMS faces brain drain crisis, faculty demands revision of pay scale Also Watch: Virgin or not? Patna medical college asks female employees --- ENDS --- Human Rights and Democracy Report 2016 - Uzbekistan Publisher United Kingdom: Foreign and Commonwealth Office Publication Date 20 July 2017 Cite as United Kingdom: Foreign and Commonwealth Office, Human Rights and Democracy Report 2016 - Uzbekistan, 20 July 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/5982cd25c.html [accessed 13 November 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States. In 2016 we continued to have concerns about the overall human rights situation in Uzbekistan, but there were signs of potential positive developments. Following his appointment in the autumn, President Mirziyoev introduced measures aimed at greater transparency and accountability in government, as well as reforms in criminal justice and some anti-corruption measures. The authorities also released two prisoners of concern and there were encouraging signals on freedom of expression and political association. Overall, however, by the end of 2016 these measures had yet to translate into evidence of fundamental change. Credible reports suggested that freedom of religion or belief continued to be denied by the Uzbek state. Online media and NGOs continue to report actions by law enforcement against individuals engaged in religious activities outside state-sanctioned structures. The highly restrictive Ministry of Justice Order regulating NGO activity remained in force, limiting the operating space for non-governmental human rights organisations. Very few international NGOs were permitted to operate, and the limited number of local activists continued to report harassment. There were some positive developments towards the end of the year with authorisation granted for small public demonstrations and further prison visits by a local NGO. During 2016, the UK raised human rights issues with the authorities in Uzbekistan during two ministerial visits and through regular contact at official level. This included during the visit by Sir Alan Duncan, the FCO Minister for Europe, to Tashkent in December, where he encouraged the government to promote freedom of the press and agree to the BBC's return to Uzbekistan. We also supported programmes on media diversity and government transparency, and a visit to Uzbekistan by a leading penal reform expert. In December, the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe sent a first full election observation mission (EOM), with a significant UK contribution, to monitor the presidential elections. They found that the election campaign lacked genuine competition and that proxy or family voting remained a problem, despite a widespread government campaign to discourage the practice. However, the EOM noted significantly increased transparency in the conduct of the elections and a commitment by the Uzbek Government to address outstanding issues. In October, the Uzbek National Human Rights Centre (a governmental body) signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the UN on Uzbekistan's National Human Rights Action Plan, to implement the UN Universal Periodic Review (UPR) recommendations. The same month, a decree "on judicial reforms and strengthening human rights" contained a number of provisions long encouraged by the UN and international experts. President Mirziyoev also criticised the 100% conviction rate of recent years and called on the courts to issue more acquittals. Some progress has been made on child and forced labour. A report [14] by the International Labour Organisation (ILO) on the 2016 cotton harvest concluded that the Uzbek authorities had taken measures towards eliminating child labour, making it socially unacceptable and rare. The report also concluded that, whilst the risk of forced labour remained, those in the high risk group were a minority of the workforce. The Uzbek Government has agreed to address this as part of its ongoing co-operation with the World Bank and ILO. In 2017, we will continue to encourage progress on labour issues, freedom of media including the return of the BBC to Uzbekistan, and frame our human rights advocacy around Uzbekistan's preparation for its 2018 UPR. The Embassy will expand support for project and programme work on human rights and good governance, including a major programme supporting anti-corruption, human rights and regional government accountability. 14 http://www.ilo.org/ipec/Informationresources/WCMS_543130/lang--en/index.htm Human Rights and Democracy Report 2016 - Turkmenistan Publisher United Kingdom: Foreign and Commonwealth Office Publication Date 20 July 2017 Cite as United Kingdom: Foreign and Commonwealth Office, Human Rights and Democracy Report 2016 - Turkmenistan, 20 July 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/5982cd26c.html [accessed 13 November 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States. In 2016, the human rights environment in Turkmenistan, already of serious concern, deteriorated further. Civil liberties, freedom of expression and freedom of religion or belief were further eroded. Journalists known for taking an independent line were harassed and arrested. The authorities did not account for the unexplained death of the relative of an exiled activist, and there was increasing concern about the fate of the "disappeared" (largely political prisoners). International human rights activists again raised allegations of torture in prisons and the difficulties faced by religious groups to practice their faith. With the worsening economy and the pressure to prepare Ashgabat to host the Asian Indoor and Martial Arts Games (AIMAG) in 2017, there were reports of homes being demolished with minimal notice, and air conditioners and satellite dishes being forcibly removed. Restrictions on internet access widened. Corruption remained endemic at all levels. During 2016, the UK's objective was to encourage progress across the range of human rights issues and to assist the Turkmen Government to implement the National Human Rights Action Plan. UK representatives raised human rights issues at every level and at every opportunity both bilaterally and with international partners, including the then FCO Minister for the Middle East and Africa, Tobias Ellwood with Mr Hajiyev, the Turkmen Deputy Foreign Minister, during the latter's visit to the UK in May. The Embassy funded projects to help train the judiciary in international human rights obligations and to raise awareness of applicable human rights among the disabled community, a marginalised section of the population. There were some positive developments. The Turkmen Government launched the National Human Rights Action Plan (NHRAP). The President approved a National Action Plan to fight human trafficking. Parliament agreed a new constitution with some human rights provisions including an independent human rights Ombudsman. For the second year running, a Turkmen Government delegation participated in the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) Human Dimension meeting. The government also acceded to a request by EU and other Ambassadors to visit a youth prison. Overall, however, concrete progress on human rights issues was slow: there was limited activity to implement the NHRAP and it is unlikely that the long awaited Ombudsman will be appointed and active before mid 2017. The gap between human rights legislation and implementation remains wide and the lack of government transparency makes monitoring difficult. 2017 will see further challenges. The presidential election in February offers an opportunity for the Turkmen Government to demonstrate its democratic credentials after the OSCE raised concerns about the conduct of the previous election in 2012. The pressure of exposure to an international audience with AIMAG could also present a chance to demonstrate real change and progress in human rights. The UK will continue to support human rights projects through the UN and OSCE and to encourage progress in implementing the reforms in the NHRAP, in particular in the fields of justice and freedom of expression; and to encourage the Turkmen Government to take action on trafficking. Human Rights and Democracy Report 2016 - The State of Israel and The Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPTs) Publisher United Kingdom: Foreign and Commonwealth Office Publication Date 20 July 2017 Cite as United Kingdom: Foreign and Commonwealth Office, Human Rights and Democracy Report 2016 - The State of Israel and The Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPTs), 20 July 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/5982cd27a.html [accessed 13 November 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States. We continued to be concerned by the human rights situation in Israel and the OPTs in 2016. We were concerned by the Israeli Government's violation of international human rights and humanitarian law in the context of Israel's occupation of the OPTs. We also had concerns about human rights infringements by the Palestinian Authority (PA) and grave concerns over those by Hamas in Gaza. The upsurge in violence, which began in late 2015, continued until April with 'lone-wolf' style terror attacks on Israelis, and clashes between Palestinians and the Israeli security forces. Attacks were characterised by random stabbings, shootings and vehicle rammings. We were concerned by the apparent role of incitement, particularly on social media. President Abbas condemned the violence in general terms in January but did not comment on specific attacks. On 9 March, the then FCO Minister for the Middle East and Africa, Tobias Ellwood, issued a statement condemning the violence. Some of the measures Israel introduced in response (including punitive house demolitions, and restrictions on movement and access) exacerbated existing human rights concerns. We were concerned over possible use of excessive force by the Israeli security forces against Palestinians. Israeli demolitions of Palestinian structures increased significantly, marking the highest incidence since 2009, and resulting in the displacement of more than 1,600 Palestinians in the West Bank including East Jerusalem. The UK was deeply concerned by the scaling up of Israel's systematic policy of settlement expansion. On 23 December, the UK supported UNSCR 2334 which reaffirmed that settlements were illegal under international law. Mr Ellwood issued a statement on 8 December expressing concern at the introduction of the Land Regularisation Bill to the Israeli Knesset, which seeks to 'legalise' settlement outposts considered illegal even under Israeli law. The number of Palestinians Israel held in administrative detention increased, with 700 being held at the end of the year. We continued to seek improvements in the treatment of Palestinians in detention, particularly children. We were also concerned by continued reports of mistreatment towards detainees by the Palestinian security forces in the West Bank. For example, in August a detainee in Nablus was beaten to death by the Palestinian security forces. We continued to have concerns about abuses of human rights under the Hamas de facto authorities in Gaza. 17 death sentences were issued and three were carried out without the ratification of the Palestinian President. We continued to have concerns over restrictions on freedom of expression, assembly and respect for LGB&T rights. We remained deeply concerned that Hamas and other militants were re-arming, re-building tunnels, and holding military training camps. In 2017, we will continue to work for a negotiated settlement to the conflict based on a viable and secure two state solution. We will continue to oppose aspects of the Israeli occupation that violate human rights and international law, including demolitions and settlement construction, and to advocate improvements in the treatment of detainees. We will support efforts to promote Palestinian reconciliation, which will ultimately alleviate the humanitarian situation in Gaza by helping create the right conditions for easing movement and access restrictions which would aid reconstruction. We will challenge the PA to make substantive progress on human rights, including on incitement. Human Rights and Democracy Report 2016 - Syria Publisher United Kingdom: Foreign and Commonwealth Office Publication Date 20 July 2017 Cite as United Kingdom: Foreign and Commonwealth Office, Human Rights and Democracy Report 2016 - Syria, 20 July 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/5982cd28f5.html [accessed 13 November 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States. In 2016 the human rights situation in Syria remained bleak. Violence continued despite efforts to establish a cessation of hostilities. Allegations of serious human rights violations and abuses by parties to the conflict continue. The Asad regime bears the main responsibility for human rights violations and suffering. According to Human Rights Watch (HRW), there was widespread and systematic use of arbitrary detention and torture by regime forces in Syria. The Syrian Network for Human Rights reported that more than 117,000 people were detained or disappeared since the conflict started in March 2011, the majority by regime forces. Amnesty International (AI) estimated that 17,723 people had died in custody in Syria since 2011; an average of more than 10 deaths a day. AI also estimated that between 5,000-13,000 were extrajudicially executed at Saydnaya prison up to December 2015. They had no reason to believe that executions have stopped. HRW (2017 World Report) and the UN Commission of Inquiry (COI) cited disproportionate attacks by the regime and its backers on civilian areas, including aerial bombardments, barrel bombs and cluster munitions. The COI reported that medical workers and facilities came under sustained targeted attack. Healthcare infrastructure was weakened, with devastating consequences for civilians. The Syrian regime used siege and starvation tactics against civilian areas under opposition control. As 2016 progressed, humanitarian access decreased. The regime allowed no humanitarian assistance to the estimated 275,000 civilians in eastern Aleppo between July and December, thus failing to take action to protect the fundamental human right to life. The UN's Joint Investigative Mechanism confirmed use of chemical weapons by the regime on three occasions and by Daesh on one. The COI reported widespread human rights abuses by Daesh and Jabhat Fateh al-Sham (formerly Jabhat al-Nusra) including kidnappings and executions. The COI's report on Daesh's treatment of the Yezidi community concluded the group had committed the crime of genocide against the Yezidis. Daesh have inflicted sexual slavery, torture and forcible transfer. NGOs reported human rights abuses by opposition groups, though to a lesser extent than the regime. The UK is supporting efforts to secure a long-term political settlement in Syria which will end the war, stop the suffering and create conditions for refugees to return. We continue to call for the situation in Syria to be referred to the International Criminal Court and for accountability. This is the best strategy for the restoration of human rights in the long term. The UK led on three UN Human Right Council (HRC) Resolutions on Syria in 2016. HRC Resolution 33/32 of 20 September 2016 called for the establishment of a High-Level Panel on arbitrary detentions and enforced disappearances. At Syria's Universal Periodic Review, we drew international attention to the regime's appalling human rights record. In the UN Security Council, we highlighted the human consequences of the regime's offensive against Aleppo and called for an immediate ceasefire and humanitarian access. We supported adoption of Resolution 2328 (19 December 2016), which demanded access for the UN to oversee evacuations and deliver humanitarian aid. The UK co-sponsored General Assembly Resolution 71/248 adopted on 21 December 2016. This called for a new mechanism to assist in the investigation and prosecution of those in Syria responsible for the most serious crimes under international law. The UK will continue to help those affected by the Syrian war, including working for the conditions which allow the restoration of the human rights which have been systematically denied largely through the actions of the Asad regime. Human Rights and Democracy Report 2016 - Sudan Publisher United Kingdom: Foreign and Commonwealth Office Publication Date 20 July 2017 Cite as United Kingdom: Foreign and Commonwealth Office, Human Rights and Democracy Report 2016 - Sudan, 20 July 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/5982cd29a.html [accessed 13 November 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States. There was no improvement in the human rights situation in Sudan during 2016. Fighting decreased in the conflict areas over the second half of 2016, thanks to unilateral ceasefires from the Government of Sudan and armed movements. However, there was intense fighting in early 2016 in Jebel Marra. This included aerial bombardments by the Sudanese Armed Forces which left almost 98,000 civilians displaced, adding to the 2.5 million long-term displaced. The humanitarian situation remains dire, with 5.8 million people in need of assistance. The African Union/United Nations peacekeeping mission in Darfur continued to face access restrictions. We welcome the government's issuing of new directives on humanitarian assistance and will work with partners to support full implementation. We have seen further restrictions on freedom of expression. The government continued to confiscate newspaper runs. We remain concerned by arbitrary arrests and reports of torture and ill-treatment by the Sudanese authorities of political figures and human rights defenders, including Mudawi Ibrahim Adam who remains in detention. Restrictions on freedom of religion or belief, and sexual and gender-based violence with impunity by both state and non-state armed forces, remain concerning. In support of the Prime Minister's global goal to end modern slavery, we will be working with the Government of Sudan to address the issue of forced labour and to help them meet commitments under the United Nation's Sustainable Development Goal 8.7. According to the Global Slavery Index, Sudan has the sixth highest prevalence. This includes trafficking in persons, the use of children in armed conflict, and the abusive servitude of minority groups and migrant workers. At Sudan's Universal Periodic Review, the Government of Sudan rejected our recommendation regarding reform of the National Security Act which provides the National Intelligence and Security Services with immunity from prosecution. We urge full accountability for human rights violations. Our 2016 human rights objectives were conflict resolution and humanitarian access, greater civil society and political freedoms, and tackling sexual and gender-based violence. We worked alongside international partners with the Government of Sudan and opposition groups to secure a breakthrough in the peace process, with both parties signing the African Union High Level Implementation Panel's Roadmap Agreement. In December, we condemned the detentions of political figures and called on the Government of Sudan to protect the right to freedom of expression in a joint statement with our Troika partners (the US and Norway), the EU and other international partners. We attended trials of individuals accused of crimes carrying the death penalty, including members of the human rights NGO TRACKs, and three Christian men accused of espionage. Our project work promoted human rights, including bilateral and regional support for national efforts to end the practice of female genital mutilation/cutting (FGM/C). We funded a project which provided legal and psychosocial support to victims of sexual violence. On modern slavery issues, we developed projects to build the evidence base around onward migration, and to train the Sudanese judiciary on anti-trafficking law. We are funding the International Organisation for Migration's Migrant Resource and Response Centre to support the recovery of victims of trafficking. Internationally, we secured a mandate renewal for the Independent Expert at the UN Human Rights Council in September and urged the Government of Sudan to address the recommendations in his report. In 2017, we will continue to push for conflict resolution and improved humanitarian access. Our human rights priorities will remain freedom of expression and civil society space, freedom of religion or belief, and tackling sexual and gender-based violence. We will also continue to support the Prime Minister's global goal to end modern slavery. Human Rights and Democracy Report 2016 - South Sudan Publisher United Kingdom: Foreign and Commonwealth Office Publication Date 20 July 2017 Cite as United Kingdom: Foreign and Commonwealth Office, Human Rights and Democracy Report 2016 - South Sudan, 20 July 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/5982cd2aa.html [accessed 13 November 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States. There was further deterioration of the human rights situation in South Sudan in 2016. In July, violence broke out in the capital, Juba. Government and rebel forces both breached commitments to end hostilities and fighting spread to areas of the country not previously affected by conflict. This led to serious human rights violations by state actors, abuses by non-state actors and breaches of International Humanitarian Law. Child soldiers continued to be recruited and, as on previous occasions, women bore the brunt of the violence. Some were attacked and raped outside a UN Protection of Civilians camp in full view of UN peacekeepers who did not intervene. Others were gang raped in a hotel used by international NGOs, where a journalist was also executed. A UN Panel of Experts report concluded Government forces had deliberately targeted civilians on the basis of their ethnicity, and perpetrated unlawful killings, arbitrary arrests and enforced disappearances. Incidents of hate speech and calls for armed conflict increased and the government cracked down on fundamental freedoms by harassing and intimidating journalists, arbitrarily closing media outlets and further narrowing the space for political participation and protest. Despite promises by the government to investigate the July violence, nobody was held to account. The UK's ability to meet its objectives in 2016, including the prevention of sexual violence, was severely hampered by the July crisis, which led to the evacuation of the majority of Embassy staff. Most have now returned, as have our partner NGOs that had scaled down their activities for security reasons. At the 31st Human Rights Council (HRC) in March the UK co-tabled a Resolution setting up an International Human Rights Commission on South Sudan, with a mandate to monitor and report on the human rights situation. The Resolution included the express commitment by South Sudan to cooperate with the Commission. The HRC held a Special Session on South Sudan in December in response to the UN Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide's warnings that the country could be on a path to genocide, prompted by reports of ethnically motivated violence. The UK lobbied for a strong outcome and the subsequent Resolution enhanced the ability of the Commission to focus on impunity and accountability, and identify priority steps the government must take to prevent further sexual violence. The UK's key objective for 2017 is a cessation of hostilities, so that the peace process can get back on track. The President's announcement of a National Dialogue in December was a welcome step, but it remains to be seen whether this is a genuine effort to bring peace. If it is, it could enable implementation of the 2015 peace agreement, which should allow human rights abuses to be investigated through the setting up of a hybrid court by the African Union, as a mechanism for holding individuals to account. We will continue to press for action on human rights, support human rights organisations and drive work at the HRC to strengthen the mandate of the Commission inter alia to address the prevalence of sexual violence. Human Rights and Democracy Report 2016 - Somalia Publisher United Kingdom: Foreign and Commonwealth Office Publication Date 20 July 2017 Cite as United Kingdom: Foreign and Commonwealth Office, Human Rights and Democracy Report 2016 - Somalia, 20 July 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/5982cd2ba.html [accessed 13 November 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States. Human rights progress in Somalia continued to be blighted by serious violations and abuses perpetrated by state and non-state actors in the ongoing internal conflict and by a culture of impunity. The parliamentary and presidential electoral process made progress in 2016 and was largely peaceful, although there were increased Al Shabaab attacks, including against civilians. There were frequent reports of civilian casualties and a marked increase in the numbers of children in armed conflict. Sexual violence remained endemic. Access to justice remained very restricted. The Committee to Protect Journalists' annual Impunity Index named Somalia, for the second time, as the worst place in the world to be a journalist. The death penalty continued to be applied and carried out, including in Somaliland [13]. In 2016, the UK's promotion of human rights in Somalia focused on establishing effective human rights institutions and instruments and empowering women. The UK was instrumental in the achievement of a strong and constructive resolution on Somalia at the UN Human Rights Council. The African Union peacekeeping force (AMISOM) began to deploy investigative teams in relation to alleged violations. A law establishing an independent Human Rights Commission was passed in June. The UK provided ongoing support to the Ministry of Women and Human Rights Development to: deliver on a Human Rights Action Plan; develop and launch a national gender policy; mainstream gender objectives into the draft National Development Plan for 2017-2020; and to integrate human rights into a New Partnership Agreement between Somalia and the international community. UK political and programming support was instrumental in achieving an increase in women's political participation in Somalia, from 14% to 24% of seats in the newly elected Parliament. The UK increased its humanitarian expenditure in response to the increasingly severe humanitarian crisis, exacerbated by ongoing drought, and to address the needs of returnees to Somalia from Dadaab refugee camp in Kenya. In 2017, the UK will maintain its focus on strengthening the capacity of Somali institutions to protect and uphold human rights, particularly for vulnerable groups, and will support an enabling environment in which the media and civil society are able to hold these effectively to account. The UK will call upon the newly elected Somali leadership and government to respect its existing obligations and to make further efforts by implementing key human rights legislation swiftly and effectively. The UK will host an international conference in London to accelerate progress on security sector reform, wider governance and accountability, and economic and social development, all of which will contribute to improving the overall human rights picture. A New Partnership Agreement will link international community support to progress in these areas. The UK will encourage strengthened Somali cooperation to address modern slavery. The UK will continue to support women's economic and political empowerment, and to support survivors of sexual violence. In Somaliland, the UK will call for timely and credible delivery of delayed presidential and parliamentary elections, to uphold Somaliland's democratic credentials. 13 Somaliland is not internationally recognised. HMG's position has long been that it is for Somalia and Somaliland to decide their future, and for regional neighbours to take the lead in recognising any new arrangements Human Rights and Democracy Report 2016 - Saudi Arabia Publisher United Kingdom: Foreign and Commonwealth Office Publication Date 20 July 2017 Cite as United Kingdom: Foreign and Commonwealth Office, Human Rights and Democracy Report 2016 - Saudi Arabia, 20 July 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/5982cd2ca.html [accessed 13 November 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States. There were some signs of modest progress in certain areas such as women's rights in Saudi Arabia in 2016, but we continue to have concerns about gender discrimination, the death penalty, freedom of religion or belief and freedom of expression. We also remain deeply concerned about the application of the death penalty. Amnesty International reported that 153 people had been executed in 2016, compared to 158 people in 2015. This included the simultaneous execution of 47 people on 2 January 2016. On 5 January, the then FCO Minister for the Middle East and Africa, Tobias Ellwood, made a statement to Parliament reiterating our clear position on the death penalty. As the principle of the death penalty is enshrined in Saudi Arabia's Sharia law, total abolition in the near future is unlikely. We continued to ensure that the Saudi authorities are aware of our strong opposition to the death penalty at the most senior levels. In particular, the UK, together with our EU Partners, continued to press for a reduction in death sentences and executions and for the application of EU minimum standards and the provisions of Article 6 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. We continued to raise the cases of Ali al-Nimr, Dawood al-Marhoon and Abdullah al-Zaher who have all been sentenced to death for crimes committed when they were juveniles. Our expectation remains that the sentences will not be carried out. The Shura Council, the consultative body in Saudi Arabia which drafts laws, put a bill to the King recommending that the age of majority be codified in law at 18. We continue to press for the draft law to be finalised. We continued to raise our concerns about restrictions on freedom of expression, including in relation to the case of Raif Badawi. Our expectation remains that he will not receive further lashes. While Embassy officials have had some contact with human rights defenders, it is often the view of the defenders that involvement with foreign representatives and organisations can make pressing for reform harder. However, we continue to press for reform independently, including for better treatment of human rights defenders. We continue to call for women in Saudi Arabia to be able to participate fully in society. This means modernising legal and cultural barriers like the guardianship system. We continue to discuss women's rights with the Saudi Government and with women's organisations and leaders. There were some gradual reforms by the Saudi Government through the expansion of education and employment opportunities. The British Government strongly supports the right to freedom of religion or belief as set out in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and subsequent international human rights instruments. The key to increasing freedom in this area is to focus on tolerance. We continue to look for opportunities to work with Saudi Arabia to identify areas where different faiths could work together. In 2017, we will continue to work to limit the application of the death penalty; and to ensure that, if it is applied, it is carried out in line with international minimum standards. We will continue to monitor closely cases which relate to freedom of expression and of religion or belief. We will also look for opportunities to promote greater participation by civil society and by women in Saudi public life. Human Rights and Democracy Report 2016 - Russia Publisher United Kingdom: Foreign and Commonwealth Office Publication Date 20 July 2017 Cite as United Kingdom: Foreign and Commonwealth Office, Human Rights and Democracy Report 2016 - Russia, 20 July 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/5982cd2d4.html [accessed 13 November 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States. The human rights environment in Russia deteriorated further in 2016. The UK was deeply concerned about the ongoing crackdown on civil society and freedom of expression. The government increasingly used legislation to restrict civil society organisations, including broadening the definition of "political activity" under the "Foreign Agents" law. The introduction of the "Yarovaya Law" in July, aimed at tackling religious extremism, resulted in increased restrictions of online freedoms and a clampdown on religious activity. State media television continue to promote a narrow, pro-government, narrative. State Duma Elections in September, whilst transparently administered, featured numerous procedural irregularities. The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) monitoring mission noted it was negatively affected by restrictions to fundamental freedoms and political rights. Modern slavery remained a serious problem in Russia with an estimated one million people in Russia living in slavery (according to the Global Slavery Index). Although the government took legislative measures to deal with this, they fell far short of what would be needed to tackle the problem. LGB&T persons continued to be at significant risk of persecution and violence, with the Russian Government taking little action to combat homophobia among the Russian population. The UK's human rights work in Russia focused on five priority themes: civil society and democracy; equality and non-discrimination; rule of law; the North Caucasus; and freedom of expression. We sponsored a range of projects, including a visit by Sir Ian McKellen that raised the profile of LGB&T rights. We continued to raise our concerns publicly, through multilateral organisations, and directly to the Russian authorities. Severe human rights abuses by the de facto Russian authorities in Crimea continued. Ukrainians opposed to the Russian annexation have been sentenced, arrested or investigated under fabricated charges of extremism; others face pressure to renounce their Ukrainian citizenship in favour of Russian citizenship or be denied access to basic services. Some have been forced into exile. In some cases Ukrainian citizens have been transferred outside Crimea to prisons in Russia. Ethnic minority Crimean Tatars continued to suffer particular human rights abuses. A number of Crimean Tatars have been imprisoned, and homes and mosques were regularly raided. The UK has frequently raised human rights abuses in Crimea with the de facto Russian authorities. In December, the UK supported a successful UN General Assembly resolution which called for Russia to uphold its obligations in Crimea under applicable international law, and to allow access for international human rights monitors. In eastern Ukraine, the Russian-backed conflict continued to devastate communities. At the end of 2016, the UN estimated the conflict had cost 10,000 lives and internally displaced almost 1 million people. Russia continued to violate its commitments under the 2015 Minsk Agreement by supplying personnel and weapons to separatist forces. The UK has called for investigations into reports that Ukrainians opposed to the regimes in separatist-controlled territories risk arrest, physical and sexual violence and summary execution. Russian actions in Abkhazia and South Ossetia led to deterioration in the human rights situation in both regions. There was increased pressure on freedom of movement, including through denial of access to documentation, closure of crossing points and installation of razor wire fences along the Administrative Boundary Lines. Georgian language education has been severely curtailed and laws have been passed restricting the residency and property rights of ethnic Georgians. The UK continued to call on Russia and the de facto authorities in both regions to allow international human rights organisations access to Abkhazia and South Ossetia. FCO Minister Sir Alan Duncan reiterated the importance of this during a visit to Georgia in November. Despite a considerable lack of progress, the UK will continue to support human rights in Russia in 2017. We will attend trials and speak out on human rights violations, whilst working with EU partners and through multilateral organisations to hold Russia to account. Russia will also be a priority country for our global efforts to combat modern slavery. Human Rights and Democracy Report 2016 - People's Republic of Bangladesh Publisher United Kingdom: Foreign and Commonwealth Office Publication Date 20 July 2017 Cite as United Kingdom: Foreign and Commonwealth Office, Human Rights and Democracy Report 2016 - People's Republic of Bangladesh, 20 July 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/5982cd2ffd.html [accessed 13 November 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States. There was no improvement in the overall human rights situation in Bangladesh during 2016. Pressure on freedom of expression persisted and extremist attacks and sectarian violence against religious and other minority communities continued. An increasing number of terrorist attacks, including at the Holey Bakery restaurant in Dhaka on 1 July in which 22 people died, saw the government pursue a strict "zero tolerance" approach to terrorism. There were allegations of extrajudicial killings, arbitrary arrests, torture and enforced disappearances involving Law Enforcement Agencies (LEAs). Concerns about the treatment of women and girls remain, and the death penalty is still a legal punishment for a wide range of offences. New laws were introduced that had the potential to restrict freedom of expression. Civil society groups have expressed concern that the Foreign Donations (Voluntary Activities) law passed in 2016 may hamper the ability of Bangladeshi NGOs to deliver vital programmes and hold government to account. In 2016, the UK urged the Bangladesh Government to treat all those arrested in line with Bangladeshi law and international standards. The UK was also clear that there must be no impunity, irrespective of the individual circumstances of the victim or alleged perpetrator. We encourage the government to implement fully the Supreme Court's judgement on provisions of arrest without warrant and on interrogation on remand. In 2016, the High Commission supported a review on implementing the Rabat Principles and how legitimate restrictions on freedom of expression to prevent hate speech should be applied in Bangladesh. The UK also worked closely with international partners to link bloggers under threat from extremist attacks with organisations that provide shelter and support for human rights defenders. Through the Magna Carta Fund, we supported work to draw up clear sentencing guidelines for judges. This will help ensure that, where the death penalty is retained, it is applied in a manner that meets international standards a step on the path to eventual abolition. Despite impressive progress towards middle income status and promoting gender equality, Bangladesh continued to score poorly against some indices. The 2016 Global Slavery Index (GSI) placed Bangladesh 21st out of 167 countries for the estimated percentage of people living in conditions which the GSI described as modern slavery. The FCO has supported work to help UK businesses in Bangladesh meet their obligations under the UK's Modern Slavery Act (2015). Through our partnerships with local human rights NGOs and projects in the justice sector, the UK pressed for improved implementation of policies protecting and promoting the status and empowerment of women and girls. Looking ahead, we will engage constructively with all Bangladeshi political parties and our international partners, to strengthen democratic accountability and capacity to hold participatory elections. The formation of the next Election Commission provides a vital opportunity to build confidence that the political process can be free and fair. We will press for zero tolerance against inhumane treatment and abuse of due process in the justice system and by LEAs. And we will encourage the Bangladeshi Government to uphold the international human rights standards it has signed up to and to keep open the space for debate and challenge, including through our support to media and civil society. By India Today Web Desk: Amitabh Bachchan's granddaughter Navya Naveli Nanda is active on social media and often posts snippets of her life on Instagram, but the teenager has never made a red carpet appearance at an award show. Until last night, that is. Navya made her red carpet debut at the Vogue Beauty Awards, and looked quite the stunner in a beautiful beaded gown designed by Monisha Jaising. advertisement Navya posed with her grandparents, Amitabh and Jaya Bachchan, and her mother, Shweta Nanda, on the red carpet. Photo: Yogen Shah Photo: Yogen Shah Photo: Yogen Shah Photo: Yogen Shah Aishwarya Rai Bachchan was also present at the event, looking gorgeous in a black off-shoulder gown. Photo: Yogen Shah Other star kids like Sara Ali Khan and Jhanvi Kapoor have expressed their interest to enter showbiz, and there has been a lot of speculation about Navya following in the footsteps of her grandparents and choosing to make a career in Bollywood, as well. However, when she was asked about it, the 19-year-old told Vogue, "No way!" A student of New York's Fordham University, Navya is currently enjoying being an intern at a top advertising agency. PHOTO: Navya Nanda's throwback photo with grandad Amitabh Bachchan is the best thing you'll see today PHOTO: Navya Naveli Nanda looks stunning with Aishwarya Rai Bachchan and Karan Johar ALSO WATCH: Navya Naveli Nanda invited to Paris Debutante Ball --- ENDS --- Human Rights and Democracy Report 2016 - Pakistan Publisher United Kingdom: Foreign and Commonwealth Office Publication Date 20 July 2017 Cite as United Kingdom: Foreign and Commonwealth Office, Human Rights and Democracy Report 2016 - Pakistan, 20 July 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/5982cd30a.html [accessed 13 November 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States. Pakistan's human rights situation in 2016 remained of significant concern. Serious violations of women's and children's rights continued throughout the year. Terrorist incidents persisted despite a continued improvement in the security situation. The country's minority communities, including religious minorities in particular Ahmadiyya, Christian and Shia communities suffered widespread persecution. Pakistan maintained its use of the death penalty, albeit at a reduced rate: there were 87 executions in 2016 compared to over 325 in 2015. Modern slavery continued to be a major problem. The operating space for international and domestic NGOs remained restricted. Throughout 2016, the Government of Pakistan continued to put in place the institutional and legal framework needed to address the many human rights challenges the country faces. Building on work started in 2014 and 2015, including the establishment of a human rights ministry and National Commission for Human Rights, in February it launched a comprehensive human rights action plan. National and provincial assemblies enacted legislation to protect women from honour crimes and violence, improve Hindu minority rights and outlaw forced conversions in Sindh province. However, the government made only limited progress in harnessing these positive developments to effect real improvements to the lives of Pakistan's citizens. Performance against the action plan was patchy and implementation of human rights legislation remained a major challenge. The UK's human rights objectives for Pakistan for 20152018 focus on six themes: the death penalty; women's and children's rights; freedom of religion or belief and minority rights; respect for the rule of law and democracy; freedom of expression; and economic and social rights, including modern slavery. In all these areas, we raised our concerns and urged Pakistan to adhere to its international obligations. Ministers and officials pressed Pakistan to reinstate the moratorium on the death penalty. We repeatedly expressed concerns about violations of freedom of religion or belief and misuse of the blasphemy laws. Under the Government's Magna Carta Fund for Human Rights and Democracy, we supported projects to promote religious freedom and build human rights capacity in provincial administrations and civil society. Our support for criminal justice reform was extensive, provided through programmes to improve civilian capacity to investigate, prosecute and convict criminals, including terrorists, in line with international standards. The EU's Generalised Scheme of Preferences Plus promoted economic development and compliance with 27 international conventions (including seven human rights conventions). Pakistan remained a priority for UK development assistance with programmes designed to help its most vulnerable citizens exercise their social and economic rights, and embed democracy. The review of Pakistan's human rights performance under the UN Universal Periodic Review process in November 2017 is an opportunity for the government to demonstrate real progress on its human rights commitments. A decision not to extend the use of military courts to try civilian terrorist cases, a major concern given their lack of transparency, would be a welcome sign. In 2017, the UK will continue to support the Government of Pakistan in building a more secure, prosperous and democratic country where the rights of all citizens are respected regardless of gender, ethnicity or belief. Human Rights and Democracy Report 2016 - Libya Publisher United Kingdom: Foreign and Commonwealth Office Publication Date 20 July 2017 Cite as United Kingdom: Foreign and Commonwealth Office, Human Rights and Democracy Report 2016 - Libya, 20 July 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/5982cd316.html [accessed 13 November 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States. The human rights situation in Libya remained a serious concern in 2016. Although the signature of the Libyan Political Agreement in December 2015 led to the formation of a Government of National Accord and Presidency Council in Tripoli in March, ongoing conflict and armed groups acting with impunity continued to impact on the civilian population, as well as crimes by Daesh; intimidation and attacks on journalists and human rights defenders; arbitrary detentions and summary executions. There were grave concerns over abuses of migrants by militia groups as they attempted to transit Libya. Conditions in migrant detention camps were a particular concern. Reports by the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) and NGOs including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, documented that armed groups from all parties of the conflict disregarded international norms for civilian protection and committed violations and abuses of human rights, including abductions, extrajudicial executions, unlawful killings, torture and other ill-treatment. In most of the country, the judicial system was unable to bring those responsible to justice. There were also frequent reports of intimidation, detentions and assassinations by all parties. The findings of an investigation by the OHCHR underlined the seriousness of the situation to the UN Human Rights Council (HRC) during its 31st session in March 2016. During this session, the UK co-sponsored a new HRC Resolution on Libya, which commits Libya to implement recommendations stemming from the OHCHR investigation and requested follow-up assessments by OHCHR. The UK noted with concern that the Libyan authorities had limited capacity to investigate human rights violations and abuses and bring perpetrators to justice. On 27 September, Martin Kobler, the UN Special Representative of the Secretary General to Libya updated the Human Rights Council in Geneva on the situation, reflecting that little or no improvements had been made. The UK continued to work in support of a sustainable political settlement under the framework of the Libyan Political Agreement, resulting in a stable and inclusive government able to meet the needs of the Libyan people and contribute to wider regional stability and security. We worked closely with international partners, including in the region, the EU, and the UN in pursuit of this objective. Through the Conflict, Stability and Security Fund, the UK has funded programmes in Libya to support peace mediation and local level stability, women's rights, civil society and freedom of speech. The UK has provided humanitarian support to people affected by the conflict, including supplies and technical support to medical centres, assistance to those who have been forced to flee their homes, and support to migrants held in detention. We continued to encourage the Libyan Government of National Accord to prioritise respect for universal human rights, especially the most vulnerable such as migrants and minority groups. During 2017, we will continue to raise our concerns with the Libyan authorities in public and in private, and through international mechanisms such as the UN Human Rights Council. We will explore further options for programmatic interventions to improve the human rights situation in Libya. Human Rights and Democracy Report 2016 - Eritrea Publisher United Kingdom: Foreign and Commonwealth Office Publication Date 20 July 2017 Cite as United Kingdom: Foreign and Commonwealth Office, Human Rights and Democracy Report 2016 - Eritrea, 20 July 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/5982cd3327.html [accessed 13 November 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States. Human rights concerns persisted in Eritrea throughout 2016, with little improvement. Eritrea is a one party state with no political opposition; there is no anti-discrimination legislation to protect LGB&T rights; citizens are subject to arbitrary extensions to periods of already prolonged national service; and severe constraints persist on freedom of religion or belief and freedom of the press. Of grave concern in 2016 was the final report delivered on 21 June by the UN Commission of Inquiry on Human Rights in Eritrea, which stated that there were "reasonable grounds to believe that crimes against humanity have been committed by the Government of Eritrea". The Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in Eritrea continues to be denied access to the country. However, there were small signs of increased engagement. The Government of Eritrea showed an enhanced willingness to cooperate on human rights by working with the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) who visited Eritrea in early 2016. The Government of Eritrea also signed a four-year implementation programme with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) to take forward the 92 recommendations from the 2014 Universal Periodic Review (UPR). We welcomed these developments. There continues to be no evidence to suggest that modern slavery exists in Eritrea and women in Eritrea remain protected by law with Female Genital Mutilation being banned. In 2016, the UK continued to focus on three areas we consider essential for human rights improvement in Eritrea. Firstly, clarification of the conditions of national service and an end to arbitrary extensions; secondly, full implementation of the constitution; and thirdly, enhanced cooperation with international human rights bodies to implement the UPR recommendations. The UK worked with the Eritrean authorities and with our international partners in the EU and the UN to encourage Eritrea towards implementation of these improvements. In 2015, the Government of Eritrea had already committed to limiting national service to 18 months. However, by the end of 2016 this had still not been officially implemented and the service period continued to be extended arbitrarily. Furthermore, the government said that work on drafting a new constitution was under way; but we saw no evidence of this in 2016. Whilst cooperation with human rights bodies was increasingly taking place, there had been no substantive implementation of any UPR recommendations by the end of 2016. Eritrea remained one of the top sources of irregular migration to Europe and we made clear to the Government of Eritrea that the poor human rights situation was one of the main drivers. In 2016, Eritrea continued to engage with international partners through the African Union/ EU Khartoum Process which aims to tackle forced migration and human trafficking. In 2017, the UK will continue to press the Government of Eritrea to improve its human rights record and to work with international partners. The UK will work with Eritrea to stem the flow of irregular migration and put in place sustainable projects where human rights objectives and preventing trafficking will be the core components. Human Rights and Democracy Report 2016 - Iran Publisher United Kingdom: Foreign and Commonwealth Office Publication Date 20 July 2017 Cite as United Kingdom: Foreign and Commonwealth Office, Human Rights and Democracy Report 2016 - Iran, 20 July 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/5982cd334.html [accessed 13 November 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States. There was little improvement in the human rights situation in Iran in 2016. Areas of serious concern were the frequent use of the death penalty, freedom of religion and freedom of expression. Although not all executions are made public, estimates suggest that there were over 530 in Iran over the course of the year. This represents a decrease on the record number seen in 2015. Iran continued to use the death penalty against juveniles and in cases that are not deemed the "most serious" under international law, such as drugs offences. Homosexuality continues to be illegal and punishments can range from 100 lashes to the death penalty for both men and women. In July, 19 year old Hassan Afshar was hanged after he was convicted of forced male to male anal intercourse when he was 17. Religious minorities continue to face restrictions in Iran. Members of both constitutionally recognised and unrecognised religions continue to suffer discrimination for peacefully manifesting their beliefs. There were several reports of church property being seized and converts being harassed by security services. May 2016 saw the eighth anniversary of the incarceration of seven Baha'i leaders who have been sentenced to 20 years imprisonment. Arrested in 2008, the seven are amongst the longest serving prisoners of conscience in the world. The Iranian authorities continue attempts to limit the freedom of citizens in cyberspace. In December the owners of the most followed channels on the messaging app, Telegram, were required to seek official permits in order to operate. There were also repeated reports of popular Telegram channels being hacked by the Iranian cyber police and the owners of these channels being interrogated. This follows on from the November 2015 arrest of 170 individuals for publishing "obscene" content online. Towards the end of the year, President Rouhani announced a Charter on Citizens' Rights. The charter is the first of its kind in Iran and has the potential to have a positive impact. However, it appears to repeat many rights that are already legally enshrined and it remains to be seen whether the rights of citizens will improve as a result. The UK has consistently pressed Iran to improve its human rights record, both through bilateral engagement and with our international partners, including through the UN and the EU. In 2016, we strongly supported the renewal of the mandate of the UN Special Rapporteur. In December, we welcomed the UN General Assembly's adoption of the Resolution on Human Rights in Iran. The UK lobbied hard for global support and the Resolution passed with an increased number of positive votes. In 2017, we will continue to engage with our international partners to hold Iran to account for its human rights record. In particular we look forward to working with the new UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in Iran, Asma Jahangir, and call on Iran to allow her access to the country. We will also support the upcoming EU/Iran dialogue on human rights. Human Rights and Democracy Report 2016 - Egypt Publisher United Kingdom: Foreign and Commonwealth Office Publication Date 20 July 2017 Cite as United Kingdom: Foreign and Commonwealth Office, Human Rights and Democracy Report 2016 - Egypt, 20 July 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/5982cd3421.html [accessed 13 November 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States. The human rights situation in Egypt in 2016 saw increased restrictions on civil society, freedom of expression and reports of police abuses. In 2016, reports of torture, police brutality and enforced disappearance continued. A report released by the Egyptian NGO, the Nadeem Centre, documented 535 individual cases of torture, 123 deaths in detention (of which 21 were due to torture) and 980 cases of enforced disappearance. These figures were compiled from media reports; we are unable to verify them independently. In 2016, journalists continued to be imprisoned in Egypt, which is the world's third-worst jailer of journalists, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). The arrests of journalists, activists, protesters and human rights defenders, as well as the pressure imposed on civil society, continue a worrying trend of restrictions on freedom of expression, association and assembly. Restrictions on civil society worsened significantly in 2016. Several human rights defenders and NGOs were banned from travelling and/or had their assets frozen in connection with the ongoing 'Foreign Funding Case' against NGOs. On 29 November 2016, Egypt's Parliament passed a draft NGO law which, if ratified, will significantly restrict NGOs' ability to register, access funding and operate freely. There has been international scrutiny of the draft law, including a joint statement by 60 domestic and international NGOs stating the law would "wipe out independent civil society". The current status of the law remains unclear. In November, Egypt's President Sisi set up the Detained Youth Committee, an initiative to release youth detained in protest or freedom of expression related cases. The formation of this Committee was welcome. In the same month, 82 individuals received a presidential pardon. This was also welcomed. However, pre-trial detention periods which extend beyond the legal limit continue to be a matter of concern. Local NGO the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights has documented 1,464 cases of pre-trial detention used beyond legal limits. Photo-journalist Mahmoud Abu Zeid was detained in August 2013 and remains in pre-trial detention. During 2016, the UK Government was active on several fronts in support of human rights in Egypt. The then FCO Minister for the Middle East and Africa, Tobias Ellwood, issued public statements on the restrictions on civil society. His statements included concerns regarding the new draft NGO law which will create obstacles to international support to Egypt, and the ongoing 'Foreign Funding Case'. We have sent representatives of the Embassy in Cairo to observe hearings linked to the Foreign Funding Case. We have raised human rights concerns at ministerial and senior levels, including during Prime Minister Theresa May's meeting with President Sisi in September. The UK also raised human rights concerns through statements at the UN Human Rights Council. The death of Italian Cambridge University PhD student Giulio Regeni was raised with the Egyptian authorities in London and Cairo, including calling for a full and transparent investigation and full cooperation with the Italian investigators. The Embassy started work on two Magna Carta Fund for Human Rights and Democracy projects to strengthen accountability and the rule of law and improve documentation of human rights abuses in Egypt. We are working with the Egyptian authorities to strengthen capacity to counter human trafficking and smuggling and provide protection for vulnerable groups who could become victims of modern slavery. Finally, we worked within the EU to ensure human rights were incorporated into the EU/Egypt partnership priorities. Following the terrorist attack against El-Botrosiya Church on 11 December 2016, claimed by Daesh, the Prime Minister wrote to the President of Egypt to express her deep condolences. The UK Government has been clear that freedom of religion or belief needs to be protected and that the ability to worship in peace is a vital component of a democratic society. We welcome President Sisi's consistent calls for peaceful coexistence and the Government of Egypt's expression of support for the rights of Christians and for religious tolerance, and we hope to see further progress in tackling the drivers of sectarianism. During 2017 we will continue to raise our concerns with the Egyptian authorities in public and in private, both bilaterally and in multilateral fora. We will also continue to explore options for programmatic interventions to improve the human rights situation. Our priorities will continue to be detention of political activists, police abuses, and restrictions on civil society. Human Rights and Democracy Report 2016 - Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka Publisher United Kingdom: Foreign and Commonwealth Office Publication Date 20 July 2017 Cite as United Kingdom: Foreign and Commonwealth Office, Human Rights and Democracy Report 2016 - Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka, 20 July 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/5982cd3513.html [accessed 13 November 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States. The human rights situation in Sri Lanka saw some improvement in 2016. The Government of Sri Lanka made progress against some of its commitments reflected in UN Human Rights Council (HRC) Resolution 30/1, but much remains to be done. The UK welcomed the passing of legislation establishing an Office of Missing Persons. This was an important step towards reconciliation, although it is yet to come into operation. A constitutional reform process is underway. It is hoped that this will address issues of devolution and introduce a Bill of Rights. The Sri Lankan Government is committed to repealing the much criticised Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA) and is drafting new counter-terrorism legislation which it intends will be compliant with international human rights standards. These would be important steps in removing historic grievances and strengthening human rights and the rule of law in Sri Lanka. The government announced further land releases in 2016. While the military maintained a significant presence in the north, the lower profile it took was generally welcomed. The UK has consistently called for the acceleration of land releases and the demilitarisation of the north. Some prisoners held under the existing PTA were released, though many remain in detention without charge. Reports of surveillance, intimidation and harassment by the security forces continued in the north and east, although at much lower levels than under the previous government. Intercommunal tensions remained an area of concern. Tensions were fuelled by hate speech by members of extremist nationalist groups. Sri Lanka continued to engage with the UN and invited a number of UN experts to visit the country, including the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture. He reported full cooperation by the government, but raised concerns about the standard of detention centres and continued cases of torture. Discrimination against LGB&T persons remained a problem, with a report from Human Rights Watch highlighting that transgender people, and others who did not conform to social expectations about gender, faced discrimination, abuse and mistreatment. The UK continued to support Sri Lankan Government efforts to develop a more capable, professional and accountable police force, with the aim of reducing the risk of human rights violations, including torture, and improving public confidence in the rule of law. The UK also provided support for the UN's work on reconciliation and peace building, and demining in the north. The then FCO Minister for Human Rights and the Commonwealth, Baroness Anelay, visited Sri Lanka in November and underlined the UK's commitment to support reconciliation and accountability. The minister also highlighted UK work to help tackle sexual and gender-based violence in Sri Lanka and the importance of accountability and tackling the stigma suffered by victims. She welcomed the Sri Lankan Government's endorsement of the Declaration of Commitment to End Sexual Violence in Conflict earlier in the year. In 2017, the UK will continue to support and encourage Sri Lanka to make further and faster progress on human rights. We will continue to work with the Sri Lankan Government, international partners and civil society to support delivery of the commitments that Sri Lanka has made to promote accountability, reconciliation and human rights and look forward to the report of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights on Sri Lanka's progress before the HRC in March 2017. Human Rights and Democracy Report 2016 - Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) Publisher United Kingdom: Foreign and Commonwealth Office Publication Date 20 July 2017 Cite as United Kingdom: Foreign and Commonwealth Office, Human Rights and Democracy Report 2016 - Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), 20 July 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/5982cd3613.html [accessed 13 November 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States. The human rights situation in the DRC deteriorated further during 2016, particularly as a result of activity by armed groups in eastern DRC, who remain responsible for the majority of abuses. However, there has been a significant increase (400%) of abuses related to elections. There was continued shrinkage of democratic space, particularly in relation to the electoral process as President Kabila's constitutional mandate drew to a close in December. The United Nations Joint Human Rights Office (JHRO) documented a total of 1,102 human rights violations, a huge increase since last year. The majority of incidents, for which the state was reportedly responsible, related to arbitrary arrests and detentions; spurious charges against opposition figures; attacks on freedom of speech; and extrajudicial killings by state agents. State human rights violations continued, including the disproportionate use of force by the security services of the DRC against supporters of the political opposition. Additionally, there have been accusations of grave and widespread human rights violations by security forces in the Kasai region in response to a local uprising. In August, the DRC's Family Code was revised, which was a positive outcome for gender, LGB&T and minority rights. The DRC currently ranks in the top ten countries for numbers of people in modern slavery, with more than 80,000 people affected. The UK's human rights work focused on protecting political space and preventing sexual and gender-based violence. The FCO funded projects to help victims of sexual violence in conflict to obtain justice and worked with the DRC Government to encourage use of the International Protocol on the Documentation and Investigation of Sexual Violence in Conflict by legal and medical practitioners. The UK continued to contribute towards long term stability in eastern DRC, through support to the MONUSCO (UN Organisation Stabilisation Mission in the DRC); the work of the Department for International Development (DFID); and projects and programmes supported by the UK's Conflict, Stability and Security Fund (CSSF). We remain deeply concerned about the risk of further massacres in and around the city of Beni, and are supporting MONUSCO in its work to prevent future incidences and reduce human rights violations and abuses in the east of the country. Our office in Goma has facilitated and driven the sharing of information about the massacres amongst those investigating a number of massacres in Beni territory. In 2017, the UK will continue to focus on preventing human rights violations and abuses during the electoral period. We will monitor arrests, detentions and disappearances of opposition and civil society figures, and will raise any concerns with the DRC Government. We will continue to encourage the DRC Government to take concrete steps to improve respect for human rights, particularly by taking action against armed groups in the east. We will look for ways to include work against modern slavery and people trafficking in our existing and forthcoming programme activity. We will also continue our work on the Preventing Sexual Violence in Conflict Initiative, funding a number of grassroots projects and working closely with the DRC President's Personal Representative on the Fight Against Sexual Violence and Child Recruitment, as well as other relevant ministries. Human Rights and Democracy Report 2016 - Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) Publisher United Kingdom: Foreign and Commonwealth Office Publication Date 20 July 2017 Cite as United Kingdom: Foreign and Commonwealth Office, Human Rights and Democracy Report 2016 - Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), 20 July 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/5982cd3713.html [accessed 13 November 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States. There was no sign of improvement in human rights in the DPRK during 2016. We continue to have grave concerns about the DPRK's disregard for, and violations of, international human rights norms and obligations. As documented in the UN Commission of Inquiry report on Human Rights in the DPRK, there are widespread violations, including torture; rape; summary executions; disappearances; and using starvation as a means of control and punishment. In the field of disability rights, there was a small sign of progress in December, when the DPRK Government ratified the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. However, in March the country disengaged itself from the UN Human Rights Council (HRC), following the adoption of a Japan-EU-led resolution on the DPRK. The DPRK Foreign Minister stated at the time that the DPRK would never be bound by international resolutions that he claimed were politically motivated. For the remainder of the year, the DPRK continued to refuse meaningful engagement with the international community on human rights and rejected resolutions passed by the UN HRC and UN Security Council (UNSC). Despite this, they have continued to highlight and criticise human rights concerns elsewhere (particularly in the EU, Republic of Korea and the United States). The UK continued to urge the DPRK Government to acknowledge the existence and extent of its human rights violations and to demonstrate a willingness to take steps to address these issues. The Ambassador and Embassy officials raised human rights issues at a number of meetings with DPRK Government officials in Pyongyang. Senior FCO officials used meetings in London with DPRK Embassy officials to raise concerns over human rights issues, including those documented in the Commission of Inquiry report. UK officials urged the DPRK Government to uphold its human rights obligations, to agree to a visit by the UN Special Rapporteur and other UN officials, and to engage with the international architecture on human rights. We also maintained pressure on the DPRK through international fora such as the UN General Assembly, the UNSC and the HRC, where UK Government lobbying helped secure widespread support for strong resolutions. The Japan-EU-led resolution on DPRK at the HRC was adopted without a vote on 23 March and included the renewal of the mandate for the Special Rapporteur on the Situation of Human Rights in the DPRK. As part of the UK's policy of critical engagement with the DPRK, we will continue to work bilaterally and with international partners, including on further resolutions, and will raise human rights issues with the DPRK Government at every opportunity. We will continue to support small-scale humanitarian project activities in the DPRK which provide assistance to the more vulnerable elements of DPRK society in remote communities outside Pyongyang. Human Rights and Democracy Report 2016 - Colombia Publisher United Kingdom: Foreign and Commonwealth Office Publication Date 20 July 2017 Cite as United Kingdom: Foreign and Commonwealth Office, Human Rights and Democracy Report 2016 - Colombia, 20 July 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/5982cd3813.html [accessed 13 November 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States. 2016 was an historic year for Colombia, with the signing of a peace agreement on 24 November between the Colombian Government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), which ended the longest running conflict in the western hemisphere. This followed six weeks of intense negotiations, after an initial deal was rejected by the Colombian people in a plebiscite. Despite progress there are continuing concerns about conflict-related violence, including abuses committed by illegal armed groups. According to the UN, 63 human rights defenders (HRDs) were killed in 2016, 50% higher than in 2015; 75% occurred in rural areas. Civil society reporting suggest this number could be as high as 125. It is unclear whether there is an ideological pattern behind the killings, but many have taken place in areas vacated by the FARC as illegal armed groups have stepped in. The Colombian Government has taken welcome steps to investigate some of those murders and in December the President announced the formation of a new commission, involving the military, police, government and civil society to help accelerate investigations of these crimes. There are also continuing concerns about the need to improve prison conditions and access to justice for victims, including those of sexual violence. There are reports of continuing discrimination against the LGB&T community. The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) reviewed Colombia's Seventh Periodical Review [12] in November, noting positive developments, including the adoption of a National Strategy to Combat Human Trafficking. Prime Minister Theresa May discussed human rights with President Santos during the Colombian State Visit to the UK in November 2016, when we reaffirmed our shared commitment to human rights in a Joint Declaration. The UK promoted the protection of HRDs through project funding, field visits, high level engagement and joint work with the EU and UN. The Embassy also hosted a visit by the UN Special Rapporteur for HRDs in September 2016. During the review period, Her Majesty's Ambassador continued to take an active role in the "Ambassadors with Defenders" initiative, which launched a media campaign in December to highlight the work of HRDs. Our Preventing Sexual Violence in Conflict (PSVI) projects with women's organisations helped to report and document cases of sexual violence using the International Protocol (1,200 criminal reports and 507 cases documented to date). We also supported the attendance of three Colombian experts at the Wilton Park conference to develop a Global Action Plan against Stigma. The UK chaired the International Cooperation Working Group on Gender Justice and Peace in Bogota in 2016. This initiative was designed to address women's political participation in Colombia. The Colombian Government reports that it has begun to implement their National Action Plan for Business and Human Rights, which was first launched in December 2015 following collaboration with the UK. We are working with the Colombian Ministry of Mines on a project that focuses on inclusion of the "remedy" pillar of the UN Guiding Principles, which will encourage companies to address adverse affects of their activities on local communities, by resolving them through legitimate processes. In 2017, the UK will continue to focus on three human rights priority issues in Colombia: HRDs, PSVI and business and human rights. We will continue to work with the Colombian Government to ensure that respect for human rights, access to justice and preventing sexual exploitation continue to be guiding principles during implementation of the peace process with the FARC. 12 http://tbinternet.ohchr.org/_layouts/treatybodyexternal/Download.aspx?symbolno=CCPR/C/COL/CO/7&Lang=En Human Rights and Democracy Report 2016 - China Publisher United Kingdom: Foreign and Commonwealth Office Publication Date 20 July 2017 Cite as United Kingdom: Foreign and Commonwealth Office, Human Rights and Democracy Report 2016 - China, 20 July 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/5982cd3913.html [accessed 13 November 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States. In 2016, the UK continued to have significant human rights concerns in China, particularly in relation to civil and political rights which were subject to increasing restrictions. There were some improvements in economic and social rights. China introduced White Papers on judicial reform which included emphasis on governance through law. The UK and China co-operated to reduce modern slavery and law enforcement agencies worked with China to tackle human trafficking. Space for civil society was constrained. New laws and regulations, including China's first Cyber Security Law, further restricted freedom of expression. China's first Charity Law helped put more domestic NGOs on a legal footing. However, a new Foreign NGO (FNGO) Management Law, which took effect on 1 January 2017, risked disrupting links with civil society outside China. Courts accepted some cases against the government on LGB&T issues. However, 'conversion therapy' remained widely available despite criticism by the UN Committee Against Torture. There were continued restrictions on minority and religious groups, particularly in Tibet and Xinjiang. Online and media censorship continued and prominent bloggers, including Druklo (aka Shokyang), were sentenced to prison. In Tibet, there were reports of demolitions of homes and religious buildings and self-immolation. Requests for human rights monitoring visits to the Tibetan Autonomous Region (TAR) were refused. The UK was increasingly concerned about the '709' human rights lawyers and associates. Many, including Li Heping, continued to be held without trial. Others, like Zhou Shifeng, were tried without their choice of legal counsel. Some, including Wang Yu, were released following televised confessions but remained subject to strict bail conditions. Family members and friends were targeted. The handling of these cases ran contrary to China's commitment to rule of law reforms. The UK continued to monitor developments closely and supported projects in priority areas including modern slavery, torture prevention, the death penalty, women's rights, and civil society. We assess that this co-operation contributed to improvements in women's rights, including strengthening implementation of China's first domestic violence law. The UK raised human rights with China robustly and at every level. The UK-China Human Rights Dialogue remained an important channel for relaying a full range of concerns and cases. The 2016 Dialogue focused on pre-trial detention and the importance of an active civil society. We continued to act on cases of concern, including working with international partners and NGOs in China and the UK. The UK attempted to observe trials, though we were often obstructed by the authorities. We maintained contact with human rights defenders and their families. We raised human rights in China in bilateral and joint statements at the UN Human Rights Council. We supported EU statements and called publicly for the release of detained human rights lawyers and related cases. In 2017, restrictions are likely to continue, affecting groups that may include lawyers and members of NGOs. Some of those detained in the '709' crackdown may face trial. The operating environment for some foreign NGOs is likely to become more challenging as a result of the FNGO Management Law. We expect to work with China bilaterally and through the UN and G20 to combat all forms of modern slavery. We will continue to raise human rights and values issues through a range of channels, both publicly and privately. Finally, in this 20th year since the handover of Hong Kong to China, we assess that the Special Administrative Region is generally working well. Its success continues to be based on the high degree of autonomy, rule of law, independent judiciary and other rights and freedoms set out in the legally-binding Sino-British Joint Declaration. We continue to monitor implementation of the Joint Declaration through Six Monthly Reports to Parliament, and to act on cases of concern. For example, during 2016 we consistently raised concerns relating to the case of the Hong Kong bookseller Lee Po. By PTI: By Lalit K Jha Washington, Aug 3 (PTI) The World Bank has said that discussions between India and Pakistan over Kishanganga and Ratle hydroelectric power plants are ongoing and no decision has been made yet. "The meetings earlier this week were held in a spirit of goodwill and cooperation. The parties have agreed to continue discussions and reconvene in September in Washington, DC," the World Bank said in a statement yesterday, a day after officials of India and Pakistan concluded their two-day meeting on the issue. advertisement In its statement, the World Bank described as "erroneous" reporting from some of the media outlets on the outcomes of the Indus Waters Treaty meetings. "The World Bank would like to clarify that the discussions between India and Pakistan about the Kishanganga and Ratle hydroelectric power plants are ongoing," the media statement said without giving any further clarification. PTI LKJ CK --- ENDS --- Human Rights and Democracy Report 2016 - Central African Republic (CAR) Publisher United Kingdom: Foreign and Commonwealth Office Publication Date 20 July 2017 Cite as United Kingdom: Foreign and Commonwealth Office, Human Rights and Democracy Report 2016 - Central African Republic (CAR), 20 July 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/5982cd3a13.html [accessed 13 November 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States. During 2016 the human rights situation in the Central African Republic (CAR) showed no sign of improvement. Armed groups continued to commit human rights abuses with impunity, including unlawful killings, torture and other ill-treatment, abductions, and sexual violence. There was evidence of progress in the political sphere, with a smooth transition of power following the elections, followed by commitments from the CAR Government to prioritise work to eradicate security-related problems. The UK's main human rights objective in CAR for 2016 was to continue to work towards ending impunity, which would first require the implementation of robust processes of Disarmament, Demobilisation and Reintegration (DDR) and Security Sector Reform (SSR). The lack of a properly functioning judicial system in particular meant that little action could be taken by the CAR authorities to address human rights abuses by non-state actors and bring perpetrators to justice. 2016 saw some further progress on the creation of a Special Criminal Court to aid the fight against impunity, but sufficient funding and qualified judges and legal staff were still being sought. In July 2016, the UK supported the replacement of the EU Military Assistance Mission by an EU Training Mission (EUTM RCA), mandated to advise on the reform of CAR's defence sector and train the national army (FACA). This strand of SSR will play a crucial role in ensuring that CAR has the resources to tackle non-state actors and to prevent future state actor violations, such as the attacks on civilians which followed the murder of a FACA commander in October. The United Nations (UN) took steps to address the persistent problem of allegations of sexual exploitation and abuse by UN Peacekeepers from the UN Multidimensional Integrated Mission in CAR (MINUSCA). MINUSCA established joint protection teams, appointed Investigation Officers, and carried out targeted training and local outreach activities. The UK provided 1 million of funding to support training, vetting and implementation of the necessary reforms to the UN system in support of the Secretary General's zero tolerance policy. Wider international community support for CAR's development was channelled via a donor conference in Brussels in November 2016, at which more than $2 billion was pledged. The UK committed 36 million in humanitarian funding and 24 million in contingency funding. These funds will help support CAR's Humanitarian Response Plan. Looking ahead to 2017, it will be important for the CAR Government to implement its National Plan for Recovery and Peacebuilding. This should provide a framework to return to stability and help reduce the number of human rights violations and abuses in CAR. The UK will continue its support of the UN peacekeeping mission, MINUSCA and the EUTM. In 2017 the EU Mission will help deliver SSR objectives by training battalions of CAR armed forces and by supporting the CAR authorities in developing their own training and education systems. The UK will work with both international partners and President Touadera's Government towards achieving these goals, including by providing diplomatic and financial support. Human Rights and Democracy Report 2016 - Burundi Publisher United Kingdom: Foreign and Commonwealth Office Publication Date 20 July 2017 Cite as United Kingdom: Foreign and Commonwealth Office, Human Rights and Democracy Report 2016 - Burundi, 20 July 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/5982cd3b13.html [accessed 13 November 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States. The human rights situation in Burundi showed no signs of improvement in 2016, following the political crisis that began in 2015. A pattern of arbitrary arrests and detentions, torture, enforced disappearances and unlawful killings was observed. The Burundian authorities banned or suspended several human rights NGOs and continued to subject human rights defenders, journalists and opposition supporters to harassment and intimidation. The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) raised concerns over the risk of ethnically-motivated violence due to instances of ethnic hate speech and teachings in the country. There is also an increasing trend in modern slavery, linked to the human trafficking of girls to work overseas as domestic servants in Gulf Arab households. In multilateral fora, the Burundian Government adopted a policy of non-co-operation, failing to appear before the UN Committee Against Torture to respond to allegations of widespread human rights violations and rejecting a report presented to the UN Human Rights Council by the United Nations Independent Investigation on Burundi (UNIIB). The report exposed numerous grave human rights violations and documented examples of horrific sexual violence. In October the Burundian Government suspended its co-operation with OHCHR in Burundi, and began the process of withdrawing from the International Criminal Court (ICC). The UK's human rights objectives in Burundi in 2016 focused on preventing mass violence and offering humanitarian support to the growing number of at-risk Burundians. The UK funded a nationwide human rights monitoring and reporting programme supporting a network of investigators and local human rights activists, and placed particular emphasis on the prevention of sexual and gender-based violence. The latter included support to women's associations to reduce stigmatisation and increase women's engagement with decision-makers, and the development of early warning and investigation processes. The Department for International Development (DFID) provided 3 million in humanitarian assistance in Burundi and 46 million for Burundian refugees in neighbouring Rwanda and Tanzania. The UK also worked through the EU and UN, championing a Human Rights Council Resolution to intensify international monitoring and reporting of human rights abuses; supporting a UN Security Council Resolution authorising the deployment of UN police in Burundi; and backing a rollover of EU restrictive measures against individuals whose activities included violence, repression or serious human rights violations. Looking to 2017, improved respect for human rights will remain the UK priority in Burundi. Given that the protracted political crisis in Burundi has been the root cause of the deterioration in human rights since 2015, we will strongly support international efforts, led by the East African Community and former Tanzanian President Mkapa, to find a peaceful political solution in line with the Arusha Peace Accords. We will continue to support targeted and high level interventions to combat modern slavery and improve human rights and security, including the relationship between security forces and the general population. We will also look to raise greater domestic and international awareness of sexual violence in Burundi, with increased access to justice for survivors. Human Rights and Democracy Report 2016 - Burma Publisher United Kingdom: Foreign and Commonwealth Office Publication Date 20 July 2017 Cite as United Kingdom: Foreign and Commonwealth Office, Human Rights and Democracy Report 2016 - Burma, 20 July 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/5982cd3c13.html [accessed 13 November 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States. There was some progress on human rights in Burma during 2016. Following the National League for Democracy (NLD) Government's inauguration on 30 March, the positive trend on civil and political rights continued. The government showed early commitment to repealing repressive legislation by setting up a commission to identify priority laws for repeal or reform. The government also showed commitment to addressing the underlying issues in Rakhine State by setting up the new hybrid Burmese/international Rakhine Advisory Commission headed by Kofi Annan, to provide advice and recommendations for a durable solution. However, the situation in Rakhine State deteriorated following attacks on Border Guard Police posts on 9 October. There were widespread allegations of torture, ill treatment, extrajudicial killing, arson, mass rape and other forms of sexual violence committed by security forces. Limited media, diplomatic and humanitarian access made it difficult to verify facts, and initial statements from the government's Investigation Commission set up by the government were not credible. The intensification of military operations in Kachin and Shan States led to civilian casualties and widespread displacement of civilians. Some NGOs have documented shelling of civilians. Arbitrary arrest, restrictions on movement and limited humanitarian access are also deeply concerning. UK human rights priorities in 2016 focused on supporting the democratic transition, in particular the new civilian administration. Although the military respected the outcome of the election, they remained in control of the key Ministries of Defence, Borders and Home Affairs, as well as the powerful General Administration Department, which staffs regional and state-level governments. In August, State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi launched a new peace initiative ("Union Peace Conference: 21st Century Panglong"), which brought most of the key actors to the table for dialogue. This has been followed up with a number of regional-level dialogues on the peace process. However, continued military offensives in the north-east diminish trust and hamper progress in the peace process. The UK remains active in supporting the peace process through funding and political dialogue, including via the multi-donor Joint Peace Fund which supports a nationally-owned and inclusive peace process in Burma. The interim recommendations of the Rakhine Advisory Commission, led by Kofi Annan, are expected in spring 2017. The UK stands ready to provide support for these recommendations, as well as wider efforts to resolve on-going conflict situations and ease the plight of the Rohingya Muslims in Rakhine. We will monitor freedom of expression and religion, in particular the increasing use of Section 66(d) of the 2013 Telecommunications Act, which effectively limits online freedom of expression and carries a penalty of up to three years in prison. The UK will continue to provide support for legislative reform, as there are still many laws that do not comply with international standards, including some which have already been reformed. In light of ongoing concerns over human rights in Burma, we will also aim to maintain the mandate of the UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in Burma at the Human Rights Council. Human Rights and Democracy Report 2016 - Bahrain Publisher United Kingdom: Foreign and Commonwealth Office Publication Date 20 July 2017 Cite as United Kingdom: Foreign and Commonwealth Office, Human Rights and Democracy Report 2016 - Bahrain, 20 July 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/5982cd3d10.html [accessed 13 November 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States. There was a mixed picture on human rights in Bahrain in 2016. Compared with the region, Bahrain remains progressive in women's rights, political representation, labour rights, religious tolerance and institutional accountability. In the bicameral Parliament, the Council of Representatives is multi-faith. Across the two chambers, 15% of parliamentarians are women. Women in Bahrain are also present at all levels in business and government, including ministerial, judicial and ambassadorial positions. In 2012, the government established independent human rights and oversight institutions such as the Ministry of Interior (MOI) Ombudsman, the Prisoners' and Detainees' Rights Commission (PDRC), and the Special Investigations Unit (SIU), which work to safeguard human rights and provide independent oversight of police behaviour and detention standards. These were the first of their kind in the region and remain unique in the Gulf. However, the UK voiced its concern over measures taken by the government in 2016 which further restricted some civil liberties, including freedom of expression and assembly. These include the dissolution of the main Shia opposition political society in Bahrain, Al Wefaq; the arrest of prominent Bahraini human rights activist Nabeel Rajab in relation to tweets issued in 2015; and the announced revocation of citizenship of Bahraini Shia cleric Sheikh Isa Qassim. We are concerned over the alleged prevention of some Bahraini activists from travelling to the UN Human Rights Council in June and September 2016. We also have concerns over the deprivation of citizenship where this renders individuals stateless. The UK Government has discussed its human rights concerns with the Government of Bahrain both in public and in private. In 2016, the UK continued to work with the Government of Bahrain to encourage the development of effective and accountable institutions, strengthening the rule of law and justice reform. The UK continued to provide technical assistance to the National Institute of Human Rights (NIHR), the Ombudsman, the PDRC, and the SIU, amongst other institutions. To give one example of progress: in May 2016, the PDRC released a report on its independent inspection of Jau Rehabilitation and Reformation Centre, and highlighted a number of key concerns in respect to prison conditions, which the Ministry of Interior has committed to implementing. In 2017, the UK will continue to work with the Government of Bahrain to support the Bahraini-led reform agenda. We welcome the Government of Bahrain's commitment to continue, into 2017 and beyond, with implementing its own series of socio-economic reform programmes which are designed to improve opportunities for all Bahrainis and which include developing new ways that all citizens can hold government institutions to account. We continue to oppose the use of the death penalty in all circumstances and countries. The Foreign Secretary made a statement on 15 January 2017 following the execution of three men convicted of carrying out an IED attack against members of the Police Force. The Bahraini authorities are fully aware of our position and the Foreign Secretary has raised the issue with the Bahraini Government. Human Rights and Democracy Report 2016 - Afghanistan Publisher United Kingdom: Foreign and Commonwealth Office Publication Date 20 July 2017 Cite as United Kingdom: Foreign and Commonwealth Office, Human Rights and Democracy Report 2016 - Afghanistan, 20 July 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/5982cd3ec.html [accessed 13 November 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States. The overall poor security situation and the ongoing insurgency in Afghanistan continued to limit progress on human rights in 2016. Whilst the Afghan Government continued to show commitment to an agenda of ambitious reform, outlining this at the Brussels Conference on Afghanistan in October 2016, implementing this agenda presented serious challenges. A UN report on the Protection of Civilians [11] showed a 3% increase in the number of civilian victims in the conflict (the highest number since UN records on civilian casualties began), including a 24% increase in the number of child casualties. The majority of these were attributed to armed insurgency groups, including the Taliban and Daesh, but a rising number were a result of Afghanistan National Defence and Security Forces (ANDSF) actions. Concerns around rights of women, democracy, and protection for human rights defenders (HRDs) also remain. A lack of recognition of women's rights has left women and girls susceptible to violence, poverty and exploitation. The Afghan Government places a strong emphasis on improving the position of women in Afghanistan. The UK continues to work with the Afghan Government, civil society and the international community to implement Afghanistan's National Action Plan on Women, Peace and Security in line with UN Security Council Resolution 1325. Other programme and political activity includes supporting victims of violence, raising awareness of the right to access to justice, support for women's economic empowerment, supporting an increase in the number of female graduates from the Afghan National Army Officers Academy (ANAOA) and increasing the number of female prosecutors. In addition to support for the rights of women, our human rights objectives in 2016 focused on supporting the development of Afghanistan's electoral system and promoting improvements to the rule of law. We are also helping to develop human rights institutions, particularly the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC). Moreover, we are supporting a project to train HRDs to protect themselves better in hostile environments. The death penalty was carried out on six individuals following conviction for terrorism offences. These were the first instances of the use of the death penalty since 2014. The UN reported that over 650,000 Afghans were forced to flee their homes in 2016, a record number of internal displacements. Another 600,000 Afghans returned, predominately from Pakistan. The UN estimates up to another million are likely to return in 2017 and almost half a million are expected to be displaced internally. This is likely to place a further strain on the country's capacity to both respond to the needs of its population and maintain people's right to an adequate standard of living. Displacement on this scale could increase vulnerability to modern slavery. The UK is seeking to support work to tackle modern slavery through aspects of our programme work focusing on understanding, prevention, protection and prosecution. We will continue to encourage the Afghan Government to deliver on commitments it made in October 2016. We will continue to provide support to the development of the AIHRC to increase its capacity to investigate allegations of abuse by security forces. 11 https://unama.unmissions.org/sites/default/files/protection_of_civilians_in_armed_conflict_annual_report_march_2016_final.pdf Freedom in the World 2017 - Niger Publisher Freedom House Publication Date 12 July 2017 Cite as Freedom House, Freedom in the World 2017 - Niger, 12 July 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/59831e8317.html [accessed 13 November 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States. Freedom Status: Partly Free Aggregate Score: 49/100 (0 = Least Free, 100 = Most Free) Freedom Rating: 4.0/7 (1 = Most Free, 7 = Least Free) Political Rights: 4/7 (1 = Most Free, 7 = Least Free) Civil Liberties: 4/7 (1 = Most Free, 7 = Least Free) Quick Facts Population: 19,700,000 Capital: Niamey GDP/capita: $359 Press Freedom Status: Partly Free Niger's political rights rating declined from 3 to 4 due to the repressive conditions surrounding the 2016 presidential and legislative elections, including harassment of the opposition, as well as alleged irregularities in the balloting itself. OVERVIEW The current regime in Niger was democratically elected in 2011, and reelected in 2016 in a polling process reportedly plagued by serious irregularities. The struggle to meet the security challenges that surround Niger has served as an alibi for the government to restrict freedoms and civil liberties. Security, transparency, economic prosperity, and gender equality are limited. Key Developments in 2016: In February and March, Niger held legislative and presidential elections in an environment in which the primary opponent of the incumbent president was held in jail. Widespread electoral irregularities were reported. Authorities in October announced the formation of a unity government, after one of the major opposition parties joined the ruling coalition. In June, the government banned an international correspondent from the country in connection with her coverage of Boko Haram violence. A few days later, a local civil society activist was sentenced to six months in jail for criticizing the government in a Facebook comment. In December, more than 30 Boko Haram fighters turned themselves in to the government, in what appeared to be the first abandonment of the jihadist insurgent movement by Nigerien recruits. Executive Summary: President Mahamadou Issoufou was reelected for a second five-year term in March. The elections happened in a context of political tension, as opposition leader Hama Amadou, Issoufou's most significant challenger for the presidency, was jailed during the entire electoral process, accused of involvement in a baby-trafficking scandal. The opposition boycotted the second round of the presidential poll, which Issoufou won with 92 percent of the vote. In legislative polls held in February, Issoufou's Party for Democracy and Socialism (PNDS) won 75 seats in the 171-seat legislature, while Amadou's Nigerien Democratic Movement for an African Federation (MODEN/FA) won 25 seats, and former prime minister Seini Oumarou's National Movement for a Developing Society (MNSD) took 20 seats. Thirteen smaller parties divided the remaining seats. The elections were reportedly plagued with irregularities such as vote buying, underage voting, and rigging of election results, and combined with pressure by the government on the opposition, effectively resulted in the installation of a government that was not freely and fairly elected. The local elections, initially scheduled to take place in July 2016, were postponed. Amadou was bailed in March, after the presidential election was completed. Although no major outbreaks of violence occurred during the electoral process, tension between government and opposition supporters was high, and often took on an ethno-regionalist character. In October 2016, authorities announced the formation of a government of national unity after the opposition MNSD joined the ruling majority. A new cabinet with 42 ministers was subsequently announced, prompting criticism for being excessively large at a time when the country was experiencing an economic downturn, and the government was struggling to provide basic services. These political tensions mounted against a backdrop of a deteriorating security situation, as Islamic insurgent groups active in neighboring countries threatened to encroach on Niger. Although Niger has so far managed to maintain a precarious stability, it has undermined civil liberties in the process. The fight against the militant group Boko Haram has led the government to declare states of emergency in the Diffa region near the border with Nigeria, allowing the army to engage in mass arrests and detain those suspected of links with terrorist organizations. Journalists, demonstrators, and civil society activists have faced harassment and obstruction by officials who cite security grounds to justify their actions. In December 2016, more than 30 Boko Haram fighters surrendered their weapons and turned themselves in to the government, in what appeared to be the first abandonment of the jihadist insurgent movement by Nigerien recruits. They will reportedly receive amnesty and participate in deradicalization and reintegration programs. Explanatory Note: This country report has been abridged for Freedom in the World 2017. For background information on political rights and civil liberties in Niger, see Freedom in the World 2016. Copyright notice: Freedom House, Inc. All Rights Reserved Freedom in the World 2017 - Morocco Publisher Freedom House Publication Date 12 July 2017 Cite as Freedom House, Freedom in the World 2017 - Morocco, 12 July 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/59831e8429.html [accessed 13 November 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States. Freedom Status: Partly Free Aggregate Score: 41/100 (0 = Least Free, 100 = Most Free) Freedom Rating: 4.5/7 (1 = Most Free, 7 = Least Free) Political Rights: 5/7 (1 = Most Free, 7 = Least Free) Civil Liberties: 4/7 (1 = Most Free, 7 = Least Free) Explanatory Note: The numerical ratings and status listed above do not reflect conditions in Western Sahara, which is examined in a separate report. Quick Facts Population: 34,700,000 Capital: Rabat GDP/capita: $2,878 Press Freedom Status: Not Free Net Freedom Status: Partly Free OVERVIEW Morocco holds regular multiparty elections for Parliament, and reforms in 2011 formally shifted some power over government from the monarchy to the elected legislature. Nevertheless, King Mohammed VI maintains dominance through a combination of substantial formal powers and informal lines of influence in the state and society, including his control over security forces, religious authority, and strong appeals to nationalism. Key Developments in 2016: Prime Minister Abdelilah Benkirane's Party of Justice and Development (PJD), a moderate Islamist group, retained its plurality in October parliamentary elections, outpolling its main rival, the royalist Party of Authenticity and Modernity (PAM). The PJD was expected to lead a new coalition government, which had yet to be formed at year's end. Nationwide protests against abuse of power erupted in late October after a fish vendor was crushed to death in a garbage truck during a confrontation with police; images of the incident were disseminated on social media. A new press code adopted in July removed imprisonment as a punishment for press offenses, but journalists could still be jailed for similar violations under the penal code. Executive Summary: The ruling PJD maintained its position in October 2016 parliamentary elections, which were the second to be held since 2011 constitutional reforms began requiring that the prime minister be selected from the party with a plurality of seats. Days after the elections, the king asked Prime Minister Benkirane to form a new government, but coalition talks were ongoing at year's end, slowed in part by disagreement over the inclusion of the nationalist party Istiqlal. In the run-up to the elections in September, the government announced that it had broken up a terrorist cell linked to the Islamic State (IS) militant group, which was allegedly planning to mount attacks in the north. In October, the government reported that it had arrested 10 women suspected of being IS suicide bombers who intended to strike during the voting. The government continued to restrict personal freedoms and journalistic coverage of sensitive subjects in 2016, with reporters and activists sometimes facing fines and jail sentences. A large number of protests on various topics proceeded peacefully during the year, though the authorities used violence to disperse demonstrations in some cases. POLITICAL RIGHTS AND CIVIL LIBERTIES Political Rights 15 / 40 A. Electoral Process 5 / 12 A1. Is the head of government or other chief national authority elected through free and fair elections? A2. Are the national legislative representatives elected through free and fair elections? A3. Are the electoral laws and framework fair? King Mohammed VI and his close advisers and associates hold political, social, and economic power in Morocco. Constitutional reforms in 2011 required the king to appoint the prime minister from the party that wins the most seats in parliamentary elections, and to consult the prime minister before dissolving Parliament, though they preserved most of the king's existing powers. The monarch can disband the legislature, rule by decree, and dismiss or appoint cabinet members. He sets national and foreign policy, commands the armed forces and intelligence services, and presides over the judicial system. One of the king's constitutional titles is "commander of the faithful," giving his authority a claim to religious legitimacy. The lower house of Parliament, the Chamber of Representatives, has 395 directly elected members who serve for five-year terms. Of these, 305 seats are elected from 92 multimember constituencies. The remaining 90 seats are elected from a single nationwide constituency, with 60 seats reserved for women and 30 for people under the age of 40. Members of the 120-seat upper house, the Chamber of Counselors, are chosen by an electoral college to serve six-year terms. In 2015, Morocco held its first regional and municipal elections since the adoption of the new constitution, garnering 53 percent voter turnout. The PJD came in first at the regional level, winning 26 percent of all available seats; the PAM won 19 percent, while Istiqlal took 18 percent. Due to the geographic distribution of the seats won, the PAM won five out of the country's 12 regional councils, while the PJD won just two. At the municipal level, PAM came in first with 21 percent of all available seats, while the PJD and Istiqlal each took 16 percent. Importantly, the PJD won majorities on the councils of most large cities. Under a rule that took effect in 2009, women are guaranteed 12 percent of the seats in local elections. In the October 2016 parliamentary elections, the PJD placed first with 125 seats in the Chamber of Representatives, followed by the PAM with 102. Both increased their share of seats compared with 2011. Istiqlal fell by 14 seats to 46; the National Rally of Independents (RNI) declined 15 seats to 37; the Popular Movement (MP) declined 5 seats to 27; and the Socialist Union of Popular Forces (USFP) declined 19 seats to 20. Official turnout was 43 percent of registered voters, lower than the 45 percent in 2011 and representing only 23 percent of eligible voters. In September, Justice Minister Mustapha Ramid of the PJD accused Interior Minister Mohamed Hassad, a technocrat appointed by the king, of manipulating the upcoming elections, saying he was making decisions on electoral administration unilaterally. The government approved 4,000 election observers out of 5,000 applicants, including 92 foreign observers connected to five international organizations. A notable exception was the Carter Center, which was excluded. Human Rights Watch criticized the decision as part of a trend of reduced access to the country for international nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). After the elections, the National Council of Human Rights released a report noting isolated irregularities, including cases of vote buying. B. Political Pluralism and Participation 7 / 16 B1. Do the people have the right to organize in different political parties or other competitive political groupings of their choice, and is the system open to the rise and fall of these competing parties or groupings? B2. Is there a significant opposition vote and a realistic opportunity for the opposition to increase its support or gain power through elections? B3. Are the people's political choices free from domination by the military, foreign powers, totalitarian parties, religious hierarchies, economic oligarchies, or any other powerful group? B4. Do cultural, ethnic, religious, or other minority groups have full political rights and electoral opportunities? Morocco has a multiparty system, but the parties are fragmented and generally unable to assert themselves relative to the power of the palace. Prior to 2011, the PJD was a vocal opposition party, though it remained respectful of the monarchy. Another Islamist group, the Justice and Charity movement, is illegal and does not participate in the electoral process, though its other activities are largely tolerated by the authorities. Of the two main parties, the PJD polls strongly in urban areas, while the PAM dominates rural areas. Smaller parties tend to be unstable, sometimes built around the personalities of their leaders. For decades, the indigenous peoples grouped under the term Berber or Amazigh have had an uneasy relationship with the palace. Prominent Amazigh elites enjoy access to the monarchy and also have their interests represented in Parliament, but the bulk of the ethnically indigenous population is marginalized. The official recognition of Tamazight languages alongside Arabic in the 2011 constitutional reform was seen as a step toward greater equality in politics and government. C. Functioning of Government 3 / 12 C1. Do the freely elected head of government and national legislative representatives determine the policies of the government? C2. Is the government free from pervasive corruption? C3. Is the government accountable to the electorate between elections, and does it operate with openness and transparency? While elected officials are duly installed in government, their power to shape policy is sharply constrained by the role of the king and his advisers, who control most of the levers of power. Corruption is rife in state institutions and the economy. Despite the government's rhetoric on combating corruption, it has a mixed record on enforcement. After considerable political maneuvering, the powers of the main anticorruption body, the Central Authority for the Prevention of Corruption (ICPC), were strengthened in 2015. At the party level, the PJD benefits from a perception that it is relatively free of corruption. For the past several years, the government has published the annual budget and other financial information online and has proactively discussed such matters with the press. However, overall transparency is limited, as the monarchy plays an outsized role in the economy and is the majority stakeholder in a vast array of private and public-sector firms. Civil Liberties 26 / 60 D. Freedom of Expression and Belief 7 / 16 (-1) D1. Are there free and independent media and other forms of cultural expression? D2. Are religious institutions and communities free to practice their faith and express themselves in public and private? D3. Is there academic freedom, and is the educational system free of extensive political indoctrination? D4. Is there open and free private discussion? The state dominates the broadcast media, but more affluent segments of society have access to foreign satellite television channels. Although the independent press enjoys a significant degree of freedom when reporting on economic and social policies, the authorities use an array of financial and legal mechanisms to punish critical journalists, particularly those who focus on the king, his family, the status of Western Sahara, or Islam. The monarchy allegedly instructs businesses not to buy advertisements in publications that have criticized the government, or punishes those that do. The authorities also occasionally disrupt websites and internet platforms; bloggers and other internet users are harassed for posting content that offends the monarchy. A new press code approved by Parliament in July 2016 eliminated imprisonment as a penalty for press offenses, such as insulting the king or malicious publication of false news, prescribing suspensions or fines instead. However, journalists could still face prison terms for similar offenses under the penal code. Journalists remained subject to legal harassment in 2016. Hicham Mansouri, a project manager with the Moroccan Association of Investigative Journalism (AMJI) who in 2015 was arrested and charged with committing adultery, was released from prison in January 2016 after serving a 10-month sentence. He told a press conference that he had been physically abused and questioned extensively about his possible involvement with Islamist movements rather than the adultery charges. Mansouri and six others also faced a pending trial on separate charges for running a training program for citizen journalists. Amnesty International denounced the proceedings as an unwarranted restriction of freedom of expression. Journalist and activist Ali Anouzla was charged in January for an interview with foreign media in which he allegedly questioned the status of Western Sahara; after Anouzla insisted that he had been misquoted, the charges were dropped in May. Nearly all Moroccans are Muslims. While the small Jewish community is permitted to practice its faith without government interference, Moroccan authorities are increasingly intolerant of social and religious diversity. The government exercises strict control over Muslim religious institutions in the name of countering extremism. All imams preaching in mosques are required to obtain state certification, and mosques and sermons are regularly monitored by the authorities. The government operates a large and well-financed training program for imams and female religious counselors tasked with promoting a state-sanctioned version of Islam, which some critics charge is also intended to promote political quiescence. While university campuses generally provide a space for open discussion, professors practice self-censorship when dealing with sensitive topics like Western Sahara, the monarchy, and Islam. There is some freedom of private discussion, but state surveillance of online activity and personal communications has been a growing concern in recent years. E. Associational and Organizational Rights 6 / 12 (+1) E1. Is there freedom of assembly, demonstration, and open public discussion? E2. Is there freedom for nongovernmental organizations? E3. Are there free trade unions and peasant organizations or equivalents, and is there effective collective bargaining? Are there free professional and other private organizations? Freedom of assembly is not always respected. The authorities sometimes use excessive force and violence to disperse even peaceful protests, and harass activists involved in organizing demonstrations that criticize the government. While such practices continued in 2016, the year also featured a number of large protests that proceeded without incident, including a series of demonstrations across the country triggered by the widely publicized death of a fish vendor in a confrontation with police. Civil society organizations are quite active, but they are subject to legal harassment, travel restrictions, and other impediments to their work. The authorities routinely deny registration to NGOs with links to Justice and Charity or that assert the rights of marginalized communities. Officials also raise obstacles to events held by local human rights groups and increasingly expel or bar entry to representatives of international human rights organizations. Workers are permitted to form and join independent trade unions, and the 2004 labor law prevents employers from punishing workers who do so, but there are undue legal and employer restrictions on collective bargaining and strikes. The authorities sometimes forcibly break up labor actions that clash with the government's policies or interests. Police attacked labor-related protests by student teachers in Inezgane in January 2016, as well as sit-ins by unionized steelworkers in Casablanca in May. Union-led protests against government-backed pension reforms during the year were largely peaceful, though they failed to prevent the changes from being adopted. F. Rule of Law 6 / 16 F1. Is there an independent judiciary? F2. Does the rule of law prevail in civil and criminal matters? Are police under direct civilian control? F3. Is there protection from political terror, unjustified imprisonment, exile, or torture, whether by groups that support or oppose the system? Is there freedom from war and insurgencies? F4. Do laws, policies, and practices guarantee equal treatment of various segments of the population? The judiciary is not independent of the monarchy, and the courts are regularly used to punish government opponents. Arbitrary arrests and torture still occur. Right advocates report that torture remains widespread among Moroccan security forces and detention centers, especially against advocates for the independence of Western Sahara, leftists, Islamists, and other government critics. Public frustration with abusive police practices fueled the protests over the October 2016 death of fish vendor Mouhcine Fikri. His 1,000 pounds of swordfish had been confiscated by authorities because it was caught out of season. When he climbed into a garbage truck to retrieve the fish, the trash compactor was turned on allegedly on orders from a police officer and he was killed. Eleven people were arrested for Fikri's death in November, including two police officers. The largely peaceful demonstrations subsided somewhat over the subsequent weeks. The Moroccan LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender) community faces harsh discrimination and occasional violence. Same-sex sexual relations can be punished with up to three years in prison, though the presence of LGBT foreigners is generally tolerated in tourist areas. Amazigh and other communities that do not identify with the dominant Arab culture tend to face educational and economic disadvantages. The government has made some efforts to rectify past Arabization policies; since the 2011 constitutional reforms granted official status to Tamazight languages, they and Amazigh culture have been promoted in schools. However, independent groups that promote local Amazigh rights and identities have faced government interference. The government granted temporary residency permits to hundreds of recognized refugees and thousands of African migrants who met certain conditions in 2016, as part of an ongoing effort to regularize their status. However, authorities continued to face accusations of excessive force in their efforts to block irregular migrants seeking entry to the Spanish enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla. G. Personal Autonomy and Individual Rights 7 / 16 G1. Do individuals enjoy freedom of travel or choice of residence, employment, or institution of higher education? G2. Do individuals have the right to own property and establish private businesses? Is private business activity unduly influenced by government officials, the security forces, political parties/organizations, or organized crime? G3. Are there personal social freedoms, including gender equality, choice of marriage partners, and size of family? G4. Is there equality of opportunity and the absence of economic exploitation? Freedoms of movement, employment, and education are guaranteed by law in Morocco, but poor economic conditions and corruption limit these rights in practice. Widespread bribery, nepotism, and misconduct within the educational sector constrain merit-based advancement. Morocco ranked 68 out of 190 countries in the World Bank's 2017 Doing Business report, released in October 2016, and 85 out of 178 countries on the Heritage Foundation's 2016 Index of Economic Freedom, indicating a mixed legal environment for the smooth operation of private businesses. Although starting a business is a relatively quick and simple process, regulatory and market hurdles create difficulties. Nearly 50 percent of Morocco's land is held collectively by tribes, which allocate its use based on the needs of the community, while smallholders and a few larger agricultural groups control almost one-third. Most agricultural land is administered according to religious and customary law, which generally respects the ownership and usage rights of its residents and laborers. By regional standards, Moroccan laws are relatively progressive on women's rights issues. Gender equality is recognized in the 2011 constitution, and the 2004 family code has been lauded for granting women increased rights in the areas of marriage, divorce, and child custody. Various other laws aim to protect women's interests. Nevertheless, inheritance rules remain discriminatory, spousal rape is not a crime, and domestic violence against women is rarely reported or punished due to social stigma. Women continue to face significant discrimination at the societal level. All extramarital sexual activity is illegal. Child laborers, especially girls working as domestic helpers, are denied basic rights. In July 2016, Parliament passed a new labor law for domestic workers that requires written contracts, sets a minimum age of 18 (with a five-year phase-in period during which those aged 16 and 17 are allowed to work), stipulates weekly rest periods, and provides minimum wage guidelines. The quality of enforcement of the law, which was set to take effect in 2017, remained to be seen. Separately, Parliament in May adopted a law to criminalize human trafficking; existing measures had defined and banned only some forms of trafficking and left many victims unprotected. Copyright notice: Freedom House, Inc. All Rights Reserved Freedom in the World 2017 - Moldova Publisher Freedom House Publication Date 12 July 2017 Cite as Freedom House, Freedom in the World 2017 - Moldova, 12 July 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/59831e8513.html [accessed 13 November 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States. Freedom Status: Partly Free Aggregate Score: 62/100 (0 = Least Free, 100 = Most Free) Freedom Rating: 3.0/7 (1 = Most Free, 7 = Least Free) Political Rights: 3/7 (1 = Most Free, 7 = Least Free) Civil Liberties: 3/7 (1 = Most Free, 7 = Least Free) Quick Facts Population: 3,600,000 Capital: Chisinau GDP/capita: $1,848 Press Freedom Status: Partly Free OVERVIEW Moldova is a multiparty democracy that holds regular, credible elections, but struggles with serious corruption among public officials and within the judicial system. The country continues to reel from a 2014 banking scandal, which led to a bailout that devastated its national budget and fostered deep mistrust in the political establishment. Key Developments in 2016: In June, former prime minister Vlad Filat, who during his 2009-13 tenure had worked to bring Moldova closer to the European Union (EU), was convicted on corruption charges related to a banking scandal that had rocked Moldovan politics. He was sentenced to nine years in prison. In March, the Constitutional Court struck down constitutional amendments mandating parliamentary selection of the president, paving the way for the first direct presidential election since 1996. Socialist Party leader Igor Dodon won the presidency in two rounds of an election held in October and November. In his campaign, Dodon promised to bring about prosperity through closer ties with Russia, and his victory highlighted voters' rejection of pro-European parties that had been embroiled in numerous scandals. Several controversies involving members of the judicial system drew attention to continuing issues with corruption in the courts. Executive Summary: Moldovan politics in 2016 largely revolved around political and economic fallout from the corruption scandal that emerged in late 2014, in which the central bank had eventually taken control of three troubled financial institutions, and an independent assessment concluded that $1 billion had disappeared from the banks in a fraudulent borrowing scheme. In June 2016, former prime minister Vlad Filat was convicted on corruption charges related to the scandal and sentenced to nine years in prison; Filat, a member of the center-right Liberal Democratic Party of Moldova (PLDM), had worked to bring Moldova closer to the EU, but had become embroiled in multiple corruption cases and in 2015 was stripped of parliamentary immunity. In the wake of the banking scandal, many people turned against the European-leaning yet oligarchic parties that dominated previous governments, including the one headed by Filat. Popular support for Russian-oriented parties has since been building. Newly created political movements seeking to capture pro-European and anti-oligarchic ground have also seen increasing popularity. Meanwhile, some corruption investigations are progressing, and the political situation stabilized somewhat in 2016 compared to the previous year. In March, Moldova's Constitutional Court struck down constitutional amendments mandating that the president be elected by the parliament, paving the way for a popular vote for president later in the year. The court's decision prompted criticism from some political parties and from civil society, who said it had acted outside its jurisdiction. Nevertheless, Moldova subsequently held its first direct presidential election since 1996, in two rounds held in October and November 2016. Socialist Party leader and prominent Russophile Igor Dodon won in the second round; he had campaigned on boosting the economy by establishing closer ties with Russia. Monitors deemed the vote credible, but noted issues with media bias and misuse of administrative resources, while some overseas voting posts in Western Europe reportedly ran out of ballots. The vote for Dodon brought into sharp relief voters' ambivalence toward the EU and their rejection of previous pro-European parliamentary coalitions that were bedeviled by corruption crises. (Earlier, in January, a pro-European coalition government was voted in, amid calls by protesters and pro-Russian lawmakers for snap legislative elections.) Several incidents in 2016 prompted concern about politicization, corruption, and a lack of professionalism within the judicial system. In March, a judge was appointed to the Supreme Court of Justice despite failing to meet requirements for financial disclosures, and amid questions about whether she had adequately managed past caseloads. As Moldova lost cases at the European Court of Human Rights and was required to pay damages to plaintiffs, Minister of Justice Vladimir Cebotari called for those Moldovan judges and officials who lost the cases to bear the costs of those payments, saying their personal property could be confiscated, if necessary. In May, a court suspended the popular mayor of Taraclia, Sergei Filipov, ostensibly for the improper removal of trees from public property. Filipov called the move political retaliation for his refusal to support the Democratic Party of Moldova (PDM) presidential candidate in a past election. He was reinstated after a court battle, and while the issue was ultimately adjudicated in Moldovan courts, the head of the EU's delegation to Moldova highlighted the case as emblematic of Moldova's problems with a politicized judiciary. Explanatory Note: This country report has been abridged for Freedom in the World 2017. For background information on political rights and civil liberties in Moldova, see Freedom in the World 2016. Copyright notice: Freedom House, Inc. All Rights Reserved Freedom in the World 2017 - Mauritania Publisher Freedom House Publication Date 12 July 2017 Cite as Freedom House, Freedom in the World 2017 - Mauritania, 12 July 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/59831e8613.html [accessed 13 November 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States. Freedom Status: Not Free Aggregate Score: 30/100 (0 = Least Free, 100 = Most Free) Freedom Rating: 5.5/7 (1 = Most Free, 7 = Least Free) Political Rights: 6/7 (1 = Most Free, 7 = Least Free) Civil Liberties: 5/7 (1 = Most Free, 7 = Least Free) Quick Facts Population: 4,200,000 Capital: Nouakchott GDP/capita: $1,371 Press Freedom Status: Partly Free OVERVIEW The current leadership in Mauritania came to power in 2008 through a military coup. It has since confirmed its position in flawed elections that were boycotted by the main opposition parties. The government has adopted a number of laws ostensibly meant to address the problem of institutionalized slavery and discrimination, but it continues to arrest antislavery activists and threaten bloggers who criticize the system with punishments including the death penalty. Corruption linked to extractive industries also remains a concern. Key Developments in 2016: In April, an appellate court upheld a 2014 death sentence against Mohamed Cheikh Ould Mohamed M'Kheitir, a blogger who was convicted of apostasy for posting an article in which he criticized the use of Islam to justify social discrimination in the country. An appeal to the Supreme Court was pending at year's end. In May, Biram Dah Abeid and Bilal Ramdhane, two leaders of the antislavery Initiative for the Resurgence of the Abolitionist Movement in Mauritania (IRA Mauritania), were released from prison after serving 20 months of a two-year sentence. Thirteen other antislavery activists were arrested after a protest and sentenced to prison terms of up to 15 years in June and July. The sentences, for offenses such as rebellion and membership in an unregistered organization, were significantly reduced on appeal in November, and all but three were released by the end of the year. Protests demanding the release of the activists had been violently dispersed by police. Executive Summary: In September and October 2016, the government organized a dialogue with political parties and civil society groups to discuss major institutional reforms as well as social and political grievances. Mainstream opposition parties refused to participate in the event, adhering to a boycott strategy that had led them to sit out parliamentary and presidential elections in 2013 and 2014. The opposition considered President Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz's regime to be illegitimate due to its origins in the 2008 coup and its disrespect for civil liberties and the rule of law. Nevertheless, the dialogue produced plans for constitutional amendments that would eliminate the indirectly elected Senate and create elected regional councils, among other changes. While many Mauritanians welcomed the proposed reforms, others voiced concern that the real motive behind the constitutional initiative was to lift presidential term limits and allow Abdel Aziz to seek a third term. Restrictions on civil liberties persisted throughout 2016, as the authorities continued to jail antislavery activists and harass journalists and bloggers who reported on politically sensitive topics. Explanatory Note: This country report has been abridged for Freedom in the World 2017. For background information on political rights and civil liberties in Mauritania, see Freedom in the World 2016. Copyright notice: Freedom House, Inc. All Rights Reserved Freedom in the World 2017 - Mali Publisher Freedom House Publication Date 12 July 2017 Cite as Freedom House, Freedom in the World 2017 - Mali, 12 July 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/59831e8713.html [accessed 13 November 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States. Freedom Status: Partly Free Aggregate Score: 45/100 (0 = Least Free, 100 = Most Free) Freedom Rating: 4.5/7 (1 = Most Free, 7 = Least Free) Political Rights: 5/7 (1 = Most Free, 7 = Least Free) Civil Liberties: 4/7 (1 = Most Free, 7 = Least Free) Quick Facts Population: 17,300,000 Capital: Bamako GDP/capita: $724 Press Freedom Status: Partly Free OVERVIEW Mali experienced a political transition away from authoritarian rule beginning in the early 1990s, and gradually built up its democratic institutions for about 20 years. However, the country displayed characteristics of state fragility along the way that eventually contributed to a 2012 military coup, and a rebellion in northern Mali that erupted the same year. Though constitutional rule was restored and a peace agreement signed in the north, the events have left an enduring situation of insecurity. Key Developments in 2016: Fighting among militant groups persisted in northern and central Mali, hindering the delivery of basic services, interfering with political activities including the year's local elections, and undermining the rule of law in the affected areas. Protests in Kidal in April and Gao in July culminated in deadly confrontations between demonstrators and UN peacekeeping forces and Malian security forces, respectively. In September, the parliament passed a bill to amend the electoral code, despite criticism from opposition parties that the provisions favored established parties and were thus undemocratic. Local elections were held in most of the country's communes in November, despite objections and boycotts by opposition parties and other groups. Executive Summary: In 2016, Mali continued to struggle with recovery from the rebellion in the north, which erupted in 2012 and was led by Tuareg rebels but complicated by the involvement of Islamist militants. A 2015 peace agreement, negotiated under the auspices of the United Nations and Algeria, called for the creation of regional elected bodies but stopped short of establishing federalism for northern Mali, which was the rebels' main demand. In 2016, its implementation continued to be delayed, and violence among various armed groups, including multiple Islamist militant factions that were not involved in the peace process, continued in northern and, increasingly, in central Mali. The violence hindered the delivery of basic services, interfered with political activities including the year's local elections, and undermined the rule of law in the affected areas. The government held local elections in most of the country's 703 communes in November 2016, though voting was canceled in 58 northern and central communes for security reasons, and some opposition parties and militant groups that had signed the 2015 peace agreement called for the polls to be delayed, citing inadequate preparations, instability, or the risk of electoral fraud. Nevertheless, the vote was generally considered credible in regions where it was held, despite some reports of violence and intimidation. In September 2016, parliament passed a bill to amend the electoral code, despite complaints by opposition parties that the provisions favored candidates from major parties. The amendments require every candidate for president to collect the signatures of at least 10 deputies or 5 municipal councilors from each region, as well as from Bamako. They also fixed the deposit amount required of presidential candidates at 25 million CFA francs ($42,000) rather than 10 million ($17,000), as provided by the old electoral law. Corruption remains a major problem. In August, the Malian government announced that it had identified 13,000 nonexistant or irregular government employees; Information Minister Mountaga Tall said their removal from the government payrolls would save approximately $50 million. The constitution guarantees freedom of assembly, but the risk of violence during public gatherings persists, especially in northern and central Mali. In April 2016, a protest in Kidal that followed French forces' detention of people suspected of having links to regional militants culminated in a confrontation with UN peacekeeping forces, and two demonstrators were killed. In July, Malian forces in the northern city of Gao fired into a demonstration against the installation of interim local authorities, killing three people and wounding at least 31 others. Separately, in late November, the trial of Amadou Sanogo the former army captain who staged a military coup in Mali in 2012 and 16 codefendants began on charges related to the abduction and killing of killing 21 soldiers. The trial was soon adjourned until 2017. Conditions in northern Mali have left many refugees unable or unwilling to return. According to the United Nations, there were more than 138,000 Malian refugees outside the country as of December 2016, and more than 36,000 people displaced inside the country as of October 2016. Explanatory Note: This country report has been abridged for Freedom in the World 2017. For background information on political rights and civil liberties in Mali, see Freedom in the World 2016. Copyright notice: Freedom House, Inc. All Rights Reserved In the retail market the prices are hovering between Rs 20 and 25 depending upon the quality. The farmers who initially were forced to throw away their produce are once again feeling cheated. By Hemender Sharma: Prices of onions have started rising by the day in Madhya Pradesh. The onions that were selling at as low as Re one per kg in the wholesale market till June 5 are now trading at Rs 20 per kg. In the retail market the prices are hovering between Rs 20 and 25 depending upon the quality. The farmers who initially were forced to throw away their produce are once again feeling cheated. advertisement The Madhya Pradesh government was forced to announce a minimum sale price of Rs 8 per kg for onions in the first week of June after protesting farmers started throwing their produce on the streets. By the time the government procurement process started, most farmers had either sold their produce to the traders at very low prices or thrown it on the streets, but still the government ended up buying 8.76 lakh metric tonnes. The government in a similar situation last year bought one lakh metric tonnes of onions from farmers at a MSP of Rs 6 per kg. And like last year, around 25 per cent of onions procured by the government had to be thrown away this year as well. And what was not thrown away is getting sprouted in mandis across the state like these onions in Katni. Congress member of parliament Kamal Nath has alleged the whole policy was designed to dupe farmers and the common man. "They have cheated the farmer. The procurement policy was designed to cheat the farmers, also the common man has been cheated as onion is again selling at a very high price in the open market," Kamal Nath told India Today. The Madhya Pradesh government is clueless about how there was an eight fold increase in onion production this year. The government is also not willing to give the exact account of the onion that was buried after it got rotted and there is no one willing to take the blame. "We will give the details of farmers along with their land records like khasra to show where we got the onions and as far as the Congress and Kamal Nath are concerned, they don't know anything about farmers and their issues," Dr Hitesh Bajpai, chairman civil supplies corporation, said. The onion story of Madhya Pradesh is classic example of policy paralysis of the Shivraj Singh government, had the government learnt even a single lesson from last year, the government could have saved the money that was spent on buying onions that were eventually allowed to rot in the open, also the farmers could have got a reasonable price for their produce, and in the end the consumer too would have got onions at a reasonable price. advertisement ALSO READ: India Today impact: MP govt asks EOW to register case against those exposed in onion auction scam Wholesale onion price soars to Rs 25/kg at Lasalgaon --- ENDS --- Freedom in the World 2017 - Malaysia Publisher Freedom House Publication Date 12 July 2017 Cite as Freedom House, Freedom in the World 2017 - Malaysia, 12 July 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/59831e8813.html [accessed 13 November 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States. Freedom Status: Partly Free Aggregate Score: 44/100 (0 = Least Free, 100 = Most Free) Freedom Rating: 4.0/7 (1 = Most Free, 7 = Least Free) Political Rights: 4/7 (1 = Most Free, 7 = Least Free) Civil Liberties: 4/7 (1 = Most Free, 7 = Least Free) Quick Facts Population: 30,800,000 Capital: Kuala Lumpur GDP/capita: $9,768 Press Freedom Status: Not Free Net Freedom Status: Partly Free OVERVIEW Although Malaysia holds regular elections, it has been ruled by the same political coalition since independence in 1957. The coalition has maintained power by manipulating electoral districts, appealing to ethnic nationalism, and suppressing criticism through restrictive speech laws and politicized prosecutions of opposition leaders. Key Developments in 2016: The coalition of civil society organizations and opposition parties known as Bersih (Clean) continued their campaign for electoral and other reforms with rallies in November across the country and abroad, including tens of thousands of people in the capital. The government's arrest of several key activists and organizers the day before the rally is the latest in a series of heavy handed attempts to quell and silence civil society activism. Press freedom violations continue, including the shut down of independent news site The Malaysian Insider in March after the government ordered one of its reports to be blocked. In November, a court found opposition politician Rafizi Ramli guilty of disclosing state secrets after he made public the Auditor General's report on the 1MDB scandal. Executive Summary: Malaysia holds regular elections, but it falls short of international standards. The political playing field is tilted toward the ruling party through measures such as gerrymandering of electoral districts, unequal candidate access to the media, and restrictions on campaigning, in addition to election day fraud. In noncampaign periods, opposition figures continue to face charges for sedition and other criminal offenses for criticizing the government or organizing demonstrations, and the government influences the judiciary for political ends. In November 2016, a court ruled against opposition politician Rafizi Ramli for making public a report on the ongoing 1MDB scandal. Prime Minister Najib Razak's mismanagement of and possible embezzlement from state development fund 1MDB has continued to be highly controversial domestically and internationally. Tens of thousands of people congregated for the Bersih 5 rally in November in Kuala Lumpur, which built on four previous rallies over the past decade in favor of anticorruption reforms and other democratic improvements. This year, the government intensified its crackdown on the movement, raiding the offices of the organizers and arresting leaders and participants. Religious minorities including Shiites face discriminatory treatment that is often ignored by the government, though some ruling party members articulate the need for a tolerant and inclusive form of Islam in Malaysia. Muslims are subject to Sharia (Islamic law), leading to unequal treatment particularly of women and LGBT persons. Free expression faces a range of restrictions, many of which have recently spread to the internet. The government can suspend or revoke publishing licenses and censorship is common. The government engages in legal harassment of critical voices using a range of laws at its disposal. POLITICAL RIGHTS AND CIVIL LIBERTIES Political Rights 18 / 40 A. Electoral Process 6 / 12 A1. Is the head of government or other chief national authority elected through free and fair elections? A2. Are the national legislative representatives elected through free and fair elections? A3. Are the electoral laws and framework fair? The paramount ruler, the monarch and titular head of state, is elected for five-year terms by fellow hereditary rulers from 9 of Malaysia's 13 states. A new king, Sultan Muhammad V, was sworn in on December 13, 2016. The role of the king is largely ceremonial. Executive power is vested in the prime minister and cabinet. The leader of the coalition that wins a plurality of seats in legislative elections becomes the prime minister. The upper house of the bicameral Parliament, the Senate, consists of 44 members appointed by the king and 26 members elected by the 13 state legislatures, serving three-year terms. The House of Representatives, or Dewan Rakyat, has 222 seats; its members are elected by popular vote at least every five years. The ruling National Front (BN) coalition won the 2013 parliamentary elections, capturing 133 seats in the lower house despite receiving only 47 percent of the overall popular vote. The opposition and observers accused the BN of electoral fraud, citing irregularities such as phantom voting and power outages in vote-tallying centers in a number of constituencies that opposition parties hoped to win. The Election Commission is frequently accused of manipulating electoral rolls and gerrymandering districts to aid the ruling coalition, and the Registrar of Societies arbitrarily decides which parties can participate in politics. Although a government committee issued recommendations for electoral reforms in 2012, there is continuing skepticism over their implementation. B. Political Pluralism and Participation 7 / 16 B1. Do the people have the right to organize in different political parties or other competitive political groupings of their choice, and is the system open to the rise and fall of these competing parties or groupings? B2. Is there a significant opposition vote and a realistic opportunity for the opposition to increase its support or gain power through elections? B3. Are the people's political choices free from domination by the military, foreign powers, totalitarian parties, religious hierarchies, economic oligarchies, or any other powerful group? B4. Do cultural, ethnic, religious, or other minority groups have full political rights and electoral opportunities? The BN and its pre-1973 predecessor organization have governed Malaysia since independence in 1957. Most of its constituent parties have an ethnic or regional base, including the dominant United Malays National Organization (UMNO) and the United Traditional Bumiputera Party, whose stronghold is in Sarawak. The delineation of electoral districts gives uneven voting power to ethnic Malays and other indigenous groups, especially those in rural areas, at the expense of groups considered more likely to vote for the opposition, such as city dwellers and ethnic minorities. In addition to the skewed electoral system, opposition parties face obstacles such as unequal access to the media, restrictions on campaigning and freedom of assembly, and politicized prosecutions. In recent years, politicians and political activists have increasingly been charged with sedition and other criminal offenses for criticizing the government or organizing demonstrations. In November 2016, a court found opposition politician Rafizi Ramli guilty of disclosing state secrets after he made public the Auditor General's report on the 1MDB scandal, a ruling condemned by human rights groups. People's Justice Party (PKR) leader Anwar Ibrahim has been dogged by claims that he "sodomized" a male aide in 2008, a charge seen as politically motivated. He was acquitted in 2012, but the Court of Appeal reversed that verdict and sentenced him to five years in prison in 2014. The Federal Court, Malaysia's highest court, confirmed the sentence in 2015, and in December 2016 a five-judge panel denied his appeal for a review. C. Functioning of Government 5 / 12 C1. Do the freely elected head of government and national legislative representatives determine the policies of the government? C2. Is the government free from pervasive corruption? C3. Is the government accountable to the electorate between elections, and does it operate with openness and transparency? Elected officials determine and implement government policy, but the unfair electoral framework weakens their legitimacy, and corruption provides a strong incentive to serve partisan patronage networks rather than the public interest. Government favoritism and blurred distinctions between public and private enterprises create conditions conducive to corruption. Officials regularly move back and forth between the private and public sectors, fostering opportunities for collusion and graft. Political parties are allowed to own or have financial holdings in corporate enterprises. Several government-affiliated organizations have been involved in scandals. The corruption scandal involving the state-owned 1MDB development fund is ongoing. The U.S. Department of Justice announced in July 2016 that it would seize U.S. assets amounting to more than $1 billion from people connected to Prime Minister Razak in a move intended to stem illicit finance and money laundering. Meanwhile, Najib worked to suppress scrutiny within the government and his own party. In 2015, he replaced the attorney general and fired cabinet ministers, including Deputy Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin, who had been critical of Najib's handling of the scandal. Najib then promoted four members of a parliamentary committee investigating 1MDB to his cabinet, temporarily halting the committee's work. Civil Liberties 26 / 60 (-1) D. Freedom of Expression and Belief 7 / 16 D1. Are there free and independent media and other forms of cultural expression? D2. Are religious institutions and communities free to practice their faith and express themselves in public and private? D3. Is there academic freedom, and is the educational system free of extensive political indoctrination? D4. Is there open and free private discussion? Freedom of expression is constitutionally guaranteed but restricted in practice. A 2012 amendment to the Printing Presses and Publications Act retains the home minister's authority to suspend or revoke publishing licenses but allows judicial review of such decisions. Most private publications are controlled by parties or businesses allied with the BN, as are most private television stations, which generally censor programming according to government guidelines. State outlets reflect government views. Books and films are directly censored or banned for profanity, violence, and political and religious content. The internet is an outlet for some free discussion and the exposure of political corruption, but the Malaysian Communication and Multimedia Commission (MCMC) monitors websites and can order the removal of material considered provocative or subversive. A 2012 amendment to the 1950 Evidence Act holds owners and editors of websites, providers of web-hosting services, and owners of computers or mobile devices accountable for information published through their services or property. The government engages in legal harassment of critical voices, charging them under defamation laws, the Official Secrets Act, and the Sedition Act all of which include imprisonment as a possible penalty. In March 2016, an independent Malaysian news site, The Malaysian Insider, shut down. Though officially for administrative reason, the closure came just after the MCMC ordered the site blocked in response to a report it published claiming that the local antigraft agency had sufficient evidence to bring criminal charges against Razak. Political satire is also heavily regulated by the Communications and Multimedia Act (CMA), and transgressors may face imprisonment and/or large fines for communication that is "obscene, indecent, false, menacing or offensive in character with intent to annoy, abuse, threaten or harass another person." In June 2016, Malaysian artist Fahmi Reza was charged under the CMA and investigated for sedition after he posted a caricature of Razak online. The editors and cofounders of the news website Malaysiakini were charged in November under the CMA, with a pending sentence of up to one year in jail. While some members of the BN government continue to articulate the need for a tolerant and inclusive form of Islam in Malaysia, religious freedom is restricted. Ethnic Malays are defined under the constitution as Muslims. Practicing a version of Islam other than Sunni Islam is prohibited, and Shiites face discrimination. Muslim children and civil servants are required to receive religious education using government-approved curriculums and instructors. Proselytizing among Muslims by other religious groups is prohibited, and a 2007 ruling by the Federal Court effectively made it impossible for Muslims to have their conversions to other faiths recognized by the state. Non-Muslims are not able to build houses of worship as easily as Muslims, and the state retains the right to demolish unregistered religious statues and houses of worship. Teachers and students espousing antigovernment views or engaging in political activity are subject to disciplinary action under the Universities and University Colleges Act (UUCA) of 1971. Open and free private discussion has been undermined in recent years by increasing use of sedition and other charges to suppress critical speech, the ban on non-Muslims' use of the word "Allah," and growing state enforcement of conservative social norms. E. Associational and Organizational Rights 5 / 12 (-1) E1. Is there freedom of assembly, demonstration, and open public discussion? E2. Is there freedom for nongovernmental organizations? E3. Are there free trade unions and peasant organizations or equivalents, and is there effective collective bargaining? Are there free professional and other private organizations? Freedoms of assembly and association are limited on the grounds of maintaining security and public order. Street protests are prohibited, with high fines for noncompliance. The law delineates 21 public places where assemblies cannot be held including within 50 meters of houses of worship, schools, and hospitals and prohibits persons under the age of 15 from attending any public assembly. Leading up to the Bersih 5.0 rally in November in Kuala Lumpur and other cities that pushed for electoral and anticorruption reforms, the government intensified its previous crackdown on Bersih activists, raiding the offices of the organizers and arresting the chairperson and secretariat manager. The police also seized computers, mobile phones, and other documents. Other activists were arrested under Penal Code provisions criminalizing rioting. The government banned Bersih in 2015 after it organized similar mass demonstrations. The Societies Act of 1996 defines a society as any association of seven or more people, excluding schools, businesses, and trade unions. Societies must be approved and registered by the government, which has refused or revoked registrations for political reasons. Numerous nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) operate in Malaysia, but some international human rights organizations are forbidden from forming local branches. The government is investigating many NGOs, including Bersih 2.0, for accepting foreign funds on the grounds that foreign intervention might destabilize democracy. Most Malaysian workers can join trade unions, but the law contravenes international guidelines by restricting unions to representing workers in a single or similar trade. The director general of trade unions can refuse or withdraw registration arbitrarily. Collective bargaining is limited, as is the right to strike. F. Rule of Law 5 / 16 F1. Is there an independent judiciary? F2. Does the rule of law prevail in civil and criminal matters? Are police under direct civilian control? F3. Is there protection from political terror, unjustified imprisonment, exile, or torture, whether by groups that support or oppose the system? Is there freedom from war and insurgencies? F4. Do laws, policies, and practices guarantee equal treatment of various segments of the population? Judicial independence is compromised by extensive executive influence. Arbitrary or politically motivated verdicts are common, as seen in the convictions of Anwar Ibrahim in 1999, 2000, and 2014 on charges of corruption and sodomy. Malaysia's secular legal system is based on English common law. However, Muslims are subject to Sharia (Islamic law), the interpretation of which varies regionally, and the constitution's Article 121 stipulates that all matters related to Islam should be heard in Sharia courts. This results in vastly different treatment of Muslims and non-Muslims regarding "moral" and family law issues. Allegations of torture and abuse, including deaths, in police custody continue to be reported, and a number of criminal offenses can be punished with caning. The 2012 Security Offences (Special Measures) Act allows police to detain anyone for up to 28 days without judicial review for broadly defined "security offenses," and suspects may be held for 48 hours before being granted access to a lawyer. The government used the act to briefly detain the leader of Bersih 2.0 in November 2016. A 2013 amendment to the Prevention of Crime Act (PCA), a law ostensibly aimed at combating organized crime, allows a five-member board to order the detention of individuals listed by the Home Ministry for renewable two-year terms without trial or legal representation. The 2015 Prevention of Terrorism Act (POTA) together with the National Security Council (NSC) Act from the same year gives the NSC led by the prime minister wide powers of arrest, search, and seizure without a warrant in areas deemed as security risks and within the pretext of countering terrorism. The NSC Act entered into force in August 2016. Government critics and opposition members argue that these laws widen government's power to reintroduce indefinite detention without trial and could be misused to undermine human rights and democracy. Although the constitution provides for equal treatment of all citizens, it grants a "special position" to ethnic Malays and other indigenous people, known collectively as bumiputera. The government maintains programs intended to boost the economic status of bumiputera, who receive preferential treatment in areas including property ownership, higher education, civil service jobs, business affairs, and government contracts. LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender) Malaysians face widespread discrimination and harassment. Same-sex sexual relations are punishable by up to 20 years in prison under the penal code, and some states apply their own penalties to Muslims under Sharia statutes. The Ministries of Health and Education conduct campaigns to "prevent, overcome, and correct" symptoms of homosexuality in children, while the Ministry of Information has banned television and radio shows depicting gay characters. The Malaysian Islamic Development Department operates camps to "rehabilitate" transgender Muslims. In July 2016, the Kuala Lumpur High Court ordered the National Registration Department (NRD) to update a transgender man's identity card to reflect his gender identity and chosen name. The decision has been lauded by LGBT activists as it "gives new hope" for the trans community in the country. G. Personal Autonomy and Individual Rights 9 / 16 G1. Do individuals enjoy freedom of travel or choice of residence, employment, or institution of higher education? G2. Do individuals have the right to own property and establish private businesses? Is private business activity unduly influenced by government officials, the security forces, political parties/organizations, or organized crime? G3. Are there personal social freedoms, including gender equality, choice of marriage partners, and size of family? G4. Is there equality of opportunity and the absence of economic exploitation? Citizens are generally free to travel within and outside of Malaysia, as well as to change residence and employment. Malaysia is recognized as having a vibrant private business sector. However, professional and business opportunities and access to higher education are affected by regulations and practices favoring ethnic Malays and those with connections to political elites. Bribery is common in the private sector, and Malaysia ranks second on the Economist's list of countries with the most crony capitalism. Women are underrepresented in politics, the civil service, and professional fields such as law, medicine, banking, and business. Violence against women remains a serious problem. Muslim women are legally disadvantaged because their family grievances are heard in Sharia courts, where men are favored in matters including inheritance and divorce, and women's testimony is not given equal weight. Foreign household workers are often subject to exploitation and abuse by employers. An estimated two million foreigners work illegally in various industries and are vulnerable to forced labor and sexual abuse. If arrested and found guilty of immigration offenses, they can be caned and detained indefinitely pending deportation. Legislation passed in 2015 granted greater rights and protections to human trafficking victims, but implementation remains problematic. Copyright notice: Freedom House, Inc. All Rights Reserved Freedom in the World 2017 - Macedonia Publisher Freedom House Publication Date 12 July 2017 Cite as Freedom House, Freedom in the World 2017 - Macedonia, 12 July 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/59831e8913.html [accessed 13 November 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States. Freedom Status: Partly Free Aggregate Score: 57/100 (0 = Least Free, 100 = Most Free) Freedom Rating: 3.5/7 (1 = Most Free, 7 = Least Free) Political Rights: 4/7 (1 = Most Free, 7 = Least Free) Civil Liberties: 3/7 (1 = Most Free, 7 = Least Free) Quick Facts Population: 2,100,000 Capital: Skopje GDP/capita: $4,853 Press Freedom Status: Not Free OVERVIEW Credible allegations of a massive, government-sponsored wiretapping and surveillance program that emerged in 2015 prompted a crisis that has paralyzed normal political activity and given way to regular antigovernment demonstrations. An internationally backed special prosecutor tasked with investigating the wiretapping scandal has made some progress, but faces interference. Key Developments in 2016: Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski resigned in January as part of an internationally brokered political deal that envisioned snap elections later in the year. Gruevski's Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization-Democratic Party for Macedonian National Unity (VMRO-DPMNE) narrowly won snap elections that were held in December after a series of delays. While an Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) monitoring mission deemed the polls "competitive," they were marked by an atmosphere of mistrust, and serious irregularities were reported. Though it faced obstruction by police, domestic prosecutors, and the president, a special prosecutor appointed by local and international authorities to investigate the revelations of the wiretapping program made some progress. In December, the Public Revenue Office said it would increase financial inspections of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), in what was seen as an attempt to place pressure on groups critical of the VMRO-DPMNE. Executive Summary: Following the 2015 revelation of a massive wiretapping and surveillance program allegedly directed by Gruevski's administration and operated by the secret service Macedonia saw months of protests against the VMRO-DPMNE-led government and the wholesale interruption of normal parliamentary activity. The intervention of U.S. and European mediators somewhat stabilized the situation, and eventually led to the resignation of Gruevski in a January 2016 deal that envisioned snap elections being held by mid-April. The elections were twice delayed after the opposition indicated it would not participate, citing excessive government influence on the media and problems with voter rolls. Following a June 2016 deal designed to address opposition concerns, the elections were finally held in December, and resulted in a narrow VMRO-DPMNE victory. However, domestic monitors raised serious issues with the voter rolls. An OSCE monitoring mission voiced similar concerns, noted instances of voter intimidation, and concluded that the polls were marked by "a lack of public trust in institutions and the political establishment." No new government had been formed at year's end. Meanwhile, police and domestic prosecutors obstructed the work of a special prosecutor appointed to investigate the wiretapping scandal. In April 2016, the president pardoned dozens of people being investigated. The move prompted mass protests, and the pardons were later rescinded. The country's crisis of governance continued to spur civil society activity in 2016, with a wave of civil disobedience by opposition supporters being dubbed the "Colorful Revolution," after the protestors' propensity to pelt government buildings and riot police with paint-filled balloons. Separately, there has been little headway in illuminating the events of April and May 2015, when clashes between government security forces and purported ethnic Albanian militants at a border crossing and the town of Kumanovo left at least 20 gunmen and police dead. Allegations that the VMRO-DMPNE somehow orchestrated the events in order to draw attention away from the wiretapping scandal continue to hang over the incidents, which served as a worrying reminder of cleavages that exist between the country's ethnic Albanian minority and ethnic Macedonia majority. However, antigovernment demonstrations have been multiethnic, and notably, in December, two ethnic Albanians were elected to the legislature as members of a party traditionally dominated by ethnic Macedonians. POLITICAL RIGHTS AND CIVIL LIBERTIES Political Rights 21 / 40 (-1) A. Electoral Process 6 / 12 A1. Is the head of government or other chief national authority elected through free and fair elections? A2. Are the national legislative representatives elected through free and fair elections? A3. Are the electoral laws and framework fair? Members of the unicameral, 120-seat Assembly are elected to four-year terms by proportional representation. The Assembly elects the prime minister, who holds most executive power. The president is elected to a five-year term through a direct popular vote. Most postindependence elections have met international standards, although following the outbreak of the wiretapping scandal in 2015, Macedonia authorities struggled to organize the snap polls mandated by an internationally brokered political deal. They were finally held in December 2016, following another internationally backed political deal designed to address opposition concerns about voter rolls and media coverage of the campaign. Days ahead of the polls, domestic election monitors noted that the names of so-called phantom voters remained on electoral rolls, casting doubt on the legitimacy of the entire exercise, and the subsequent results. While the elections took place on December 11, the opposition demanded a recount, and final results were not released until late in the month. The VMRO-DPMNE-led bloc won 51 seats in the assembly (down from 61 previously), while the opposition coalition led by the Social Democratic Union of Macedonia (SDSM) secured 49. The remaining 20 seats were split among four ethnic Albanian parties, with the VMRO-DPMNE-aligned Democratic Union for Integration (DUI) winning 10 seats, the upstart Besa Movement winning 5, the newly formed Alliance for Albanians (AS) winning 3, and the Democratic Party of Albanians (DPA) winning 2. A new government had not yet formed by year's end. An OSCE monitoring mission deemed the polls "competitive," but said issues with the media and voter rolls had "yet to be addressed in a sustainable manner," noted instances of voter intimidation, and concluded that the polls were marked by "a lack of public trust in institutions and the political establishment." Some of the wiretapped conversations released by the opposition in 2015 appeared to indicate that senior VMRO-DPMNE figures had engaged in election fraud during both the 2013 local and 2014 parliamentary elections, and these concerns likewise clouded the 2016 results. The parliament adopted a number of changes to the electoral code in November 2015 as part of an EU-backed political agreement, addressing key opposition concerns. B. Political Pluralism and Participation 10 / 16 B1. Do the people have the right to organize in different political parties or other competitive political groupings of their choice, and is the system open to the rise and fall of these competing parties or groupings? B2. Is there a significant opposition vote and a realistic opportunity for the opposition to increase its support or gain power through elections? B3. Are the people's political choices free from domination by the military, foreign powers, totalitarian parties, religious hierarchies, economic oligarchies, or any other powerful group? B4. Do cultural, ethnic, religious, or other minority groups have full political rights and electoral opportunities? The constitution protects the right to establish and join political parties. The center-right VMRO-DPMNE has won every parliamentary election since 2006, ruling in coalition with a number of parties representing ethnic minorities. The left-leaning SDSM held power through much of the 1990s and early 2000s, and is currently the leading opposition party. It has boycotted the parliament on several occasions in recent years over claims of electoral fraud and issues related to the wiretap scandal. Ethnic Albanians make up about 25 percent of the population. A political party representing Albanians has sat in each ruling coalition, and certain types of legislation must pass with a majority of legislators from both major ethnic groups in the Assembly. Notably, two incoming lawmakers with the traditionally Macedonian-dominated SDSM are Albanian, a new development in a party system that has been dominated by ethnic-based or nationalist options. Macedonians living abroad can elect up to three Assembly members. Politically fraught violence between ethnic Macedonians and ethnic Albanians erupts occasionally, though there were no such incidents reported in 2016. Recent antigovernment protests have generally been multiethnic in character. C. Functioning of Government 5 / 12 (-1) C1. Do the freely elected head of government and national legislative representatives determine the policies of the government? C2. Is the government free from pervasive corruption? C3. Is the government accountable to the electorate between elections, and does it operate with openness and transparency? The continuing political crisis has given rise to severe gridlock in democratic processes and the operations of elected officials. While mediation efforts by the United States and EU have eased tensions in the country, Macedonia is still fundamentally in crisis. Corruption is a serious problem. While anticorruption legislation is in place, and measures to clarify party funding and prevent conflicts of interest have been strengthened, implementation is weak. Graft and misconduct are widespread in public procurement. The Public Prosecutor's Office for Organized Crime and Corruption suffers from low administrative capacity. Civil Liberties 36 / 60 (+1) D. Freedom of Expression and Belief 10 / 16 D1. Are there free and independent media and other forms of cultural expression? D2. Are religious institutions and communities free to practice their faith and express themselves in public and private? D3. Is there academic freedom, and is the educational system free of extensive political indoctrination? D4. Is there open and free private discussion? The constitution provides for freedom of the press. However, Macedonian media are subject to political pressure and harassment, resulting in self-censorship. The arrest in April 2016 and continued detention of Zoran Bozinovski, a reporter critical of the government, has drawn condemnation from local and international observers. Wiretap recordings released by the opposition in 2015 appeared to reveal conversations between high-level government functionaries and the staff of several major television stations including the public broadcaster and Sitel, a private, pro-government television station with national reach indicating that the government was directly influencing editorial policies. Internet access is unrestricted. The constitution guarantees freedom of religion. A long-standing dispute between the breakaway Macedonian Orthodox Church and the canonically recognized Serbian Orthodox Church remains unresolved. Islamophobia is present in the rhetoric of politicians and in public discourse. Although academic freedom is generally unrestricted, the education system is weak by European standards. Textbooks barely cover the postindependence period, primarily because ethnic Macedonians and ethnic Albanians interpret the 2001 civil conflict differently. Increasingly, schools are becoming ethnically segregated. Space for free private discussion contracted in the wake of the opposition's credible allegations of widespread government wiretapping and monitoring of private citizens, journalists, politicians, and religious leaders. E. Associational and Organizational Rights 8 / 12 E1. Is there freedom of assembly, demonstration, and open public discussion? E2. Is there freedom for nongovernmental organizations? E3. Are there free trade unions and peasant organizations or equivalents, and is there effective collective bargaining? Are there free professional and other private organizations? Constitutional guarantees of freedoms of assembly and association are generally respected. Mass antigovernment protests, led by student and opposition figures, continued throughout 2016. The protests have sometimes given way to property damage, and are typically monitored by riot police. NGOs have generally operated freely but the VMRO-DPMNE has increasingly characterized groups that challenge it as enemies of the state. In December 2016, Macedonia's public revenue office announced that it would increase financial inspections of NGOs, in what was widely seen as an attempt to place pressure on critical groups. Workers may organize and bargain collectively, though trade unions lack stable financing and skilled managers, and journalists have reportedly been fired for their union activities. The informal and grey economy is large, leaving many workers vulnerable to abuses by employers. F. Rule of Law 8 / 16 (+1) F1. Is there an independent judiciary? F2. Does the rule of law prevail in civil and criminal matters? Are police under direct civilian control? F3. Is there protection from political terror, unjustified imprisonment, exile, or torture, whether by groups that support or oppose the system? Is there freedom from war and insurgencies? F4. Do laws, policies, and practices guarantee equal treatment of various segments of the population? While Macedonia has carried out comprehensive reforms of the judiciary over the past decade, fundamental problems remain, including concerns over the weak independence of the Constitutional Court. While the special prosecutor appointed to investigate the wiretap allegations has begun formally charging public officials with wrongdoing, movement remains slow and uneven, in part due to efforts to obstruct the office's operations. In April 2016, President Gjorge Ivanov ordered that the office cease operations and pardoned dozens of people it was investigating most of whom were affiliated with the VMRO-DPMNE prompting widespread protests. The pardons were later revoked. However, the Special Prosecutor's Office continued to face obstruction, including difficulties collecting evidence from police and in taking over cases from the Macedonian prosecutor's office. While trials for the suspected militants behind the 2015 violence in Kumanovo have begun, many residents and civil society observers of the proceedings continued to express doubts as to the veracity of government claims, and the fairness of the trials themselves. No such violence was repeated in 2016. Roma, ethnic Albanians, and other vulnerable groups face discrimination. Minority groups have criticized the ongoing Skopje 2014 urban development plan, arguing that its themes ignore their heritage and present a monoethnic image of the country. Rights groups and others have condemned Macedonian police for numerous instances of violence against refugees passing through Macedonia on their way to locations to the country's north. A 2010 antidiscrimination law does not prohibit discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity, and anti-LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender) sentiment is widespread. G. Personal Autonomy and Individual Rights 10 / 16 G1. Do individuals enjoy freedom of travel or choice of residence, employment, or institution of higher education? G2. Do individuals have the right to own property and establish private businesses? Is private business activity unduly influenced by government officials, the security forces, political parties/organizations, or organized crime? G3. Are there personal social freedoms, including gender equality, choice of marriage partners, and size of family? G4. Is there equality of opportunity and the absence of economic exploitation? Travel and movement are generally unrestricted. Membership in a party within the ruling coalition is often an informal precondition for employment in the public sector. While the government has streamlined procedures to launch a business, licensing fees can be prohibitively expensive. Unemployment has been estimated at about 27 percent, but the actual figure may be smaller given Macedonia's sizeable shadow economy. In 2014, the VMRO-DPMNE proposed a constitutional amendment that would narrow the definition of marriage, making it applicable only to a relationship between a man and a woman. The parliament voted to approve the amendment in January 2015, and took further steps to complicate the possibility of future civil-union legislation being enacted. LGBT issues and people, however, have gained increased visibility during the course of the ongoing antigovernment demonstrations. While women in Macedonia enjoy the same legal rights as men, societal attitudes limit their participation in non-traditional roles, and women rarely participate in local politics. In Albanian Muslim areas, many women are subject to proxy voting by male relatives. In the December 2016 election, 38 women were elected to the legislature. Despite the ongoing implementation of a strategy against domestic violence, it remains a serious problem, as does the trafficking of women for forced labor and sex work. Copyright notice: Freedom House, Inc. All Rights Reserved Freedom in the World 2017 - Libya Publisher Freedom House Publication Date 12 July 2017 Cite as Freedom House, Freedom in the World 2017 - Libya, 12 July 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/59831e8a13.html [accessed 13 November 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States. Freedom Status: Not Free Aggregate Score: 13/100 (0 = Least Free, 100 = Most Free) Freedom Rating: 6.5/7 (1 = Most Free, 7 = Least Free) Political Rights: 7/7 (1 = Most Free, 7 = Least Free) Civil Liberties: 6/7 (1 = Most Free, 7 = Least Free) Quick Facts Population: 6,300,000 Capital: Tripoli GDP/capita: $5,518 Press Freedom Status: Not Free Net Freedom Status: Partly Free Libya's political rights rating declined from 6 to 7 due to wide-ranging problems associated with the ongoing political and security crisis, including overdue elections and the lack of a fully functional government with nationwide recognition and authority. OVERVIEW While a popular armed uprising in 2011 deposed longtime dictator Mu'ammar al-Qadhafi, Libya is now wracked by political, security, and economic crises, and a UN-brokered deal designed to bring rival administrations together in a unity government has failed to come to fruition. Awash in weapons and hundreds of armed groups, criminal networks have flourished, and a faction of the Islamic State (IS) extremist group has emerged. Fighting has displaced hundreds of thousands of people and disrupted basic services. Human rights conditions have deteriorated, and impunity reigns. Key Developments in 2016: The UN-backed Libyan Political Agreement (LPA), signed in December 2015, failed to unify the country's rival political and military authorities under a single administration. The country had three competing governments at year's end. In October, there was a failed coup attempt by one administration against UN-backed authorities in Tripoli. General Khalifa Haftar, commander of the Libyan National Army in the east of the country, refused to endorse the UN-backed deal, and strengthened his foothold in eastern Libya. A number of elected civilian mayors in areas under his control were replaced by military governors, including in Benghazi, where new authorities implemented a measure requiring military approval for demonstrations. Local armed forces, primarily from the city of Misrata and nominally affiliated with the UN-backed government, fought the Islamic State (IS) extremist group in the coastal city of Sirte. Beginning in August, U.S. airstrikes supported the operations and by year's end most IS fighters had been pushed out of the city. However, IS maintained a presence elsewhere in Libya. The human rights situation continued to deteriorate amid ongoing armed conflicts between the hundreds of militant groups operating in Libya, and an economic crisis that left many without basic services. The UN Office for Humanitarian Affairs estimated that 1.3 million people in Libya will require humanitarian assistance in 2017. Executive Summary: Five years after the downfall of longtime dictator Mu'ammar al-Qadhafi, Libya remains deeply divided between political and military actors, and internationally backed efforts to reach political consensus and establish a single government with authority over the whole country have failed. The human rights situation continues to deteriorate amid ongoing armed conflicts between the hundreds of militant groups and an economic crisis that has left many without basic services, including electricity. In late 2015, following 18 months of UN-led negotiations, representatives from two competing governments the Tubruk-based House of Representatives (HoR), which enjoyed widespread international recognition, and the Tripoli-based General National Congress (GNC) signed the LPA. The agreement was intended to end the political gridlock and armed fighting that started in 2014 between the rival HoR and GNC, each of which had its own allied military coalitions, and reconcile them within a single administration. The appointment of a nine-member Presidency Council (PC) under the leadership of Prime Minister Fayez al-Serraj followed. The PC assumed office in Tripoli in March 2016; it was tasked with forming a unity government, the Government of National Accord (GNA), to serve as an executive branch. Under the LPA, the HoR would act as a primary legislature, while GNC members would form the State Council, a secondary consultative body. The agreement was designed to be in effect until the adoption of a new constitution and the subsequent holding of parliamentary elections. However, at the end of 2016, the HoR had yet to pass a measure approving the LPA's provisions including one formally establishing the HoR as the country's legislature. In August, the HoR voted overwhelmingly to reject a GNA cabinet proposed by the PC. At year's end Libya thus had three competing governments: the United Nations-backed PC, in Tripoli, which the international community continued to back; the National Salvation Government (NSG), the successor to the GNC, also based in Tripoli; and the interim government associated with the HoR in eastern Al-Bayda and Tubruk, respectively. The LPA's primary effect was to reconfigure much of the internal strife in Libya as between supporters and opponents of the PC and the internationally-backed agreement itself. Meanwhile, Libya's Constitutional Drafting Assembly (CDA), a body that was previously neutral and uncontested, in 2016 became mired in political infighting. Amid the security vacuum and a breakdown in law and order, IS established a presence in the coastal city of Sirte, though local armed groups, assisted by U.S. airstrikes, mostly dislodged IS fighters from the city by year's end. However, the group maintained a presence in other parts of Libya, including around Benghazi and Derna. Oil production, the main source of revenue in Libya, has declined massively in recent years and the financial situation continues to deteriorate. The human rights situation has also worsened, as armed groups on all sides commit human rights violations. POLITICAL RIGHTS AND CIVIL LIBERTIES Political Rights 3 / 40 (-3) A. Electoral Process 1 / 12 (-3) A1. Is the head of government or other chief national authority elected through free and fair elections? A2. Are the national legislative representatives elected through free and fair elections? A3. Are the electoral laws and framework fair? An August 2011 constitutional declaration, issued by an unelected National Transitional Council, serves as the governing document for the ongoing transitional period between the revolution and the adoption of a permanent constitution. Amid the political crisis that unfolded in 2014 and 2015 between rival governments and military coalitions in the east and west of the country, the United Nations launched a political dialogue process that ended with the signing of the LPA in December 2015 in Skhirat, Morocco, and the establishment of a nine-member Presidency Council tasked with forming a unity government, the GNA. While the United Nations and many world powers voiced support for the LPA and PC in 2016, their legitimacy is contested domestically. In October 2016, power struggles in Tripoli underscored the weak position of UN-backed prime minister-designate Serraj and the PC. That month, Khalifa al-Ghwell, the Tripoli-based prime minister of the NSG, and former members of the defunct legislative GNC seized several state buildings, and declared the GNA "void," though they could not garner much support and ultimately failed to displace UN-backed authorities from Tripoli. Meanwhile, the HoR in 2016 declined to approve a constitutional amendment, as envisioned by the LPA, that would formally approve the LPA's provisions and establish the HoR as Libya's legislative authority; this was largely because HoR head Aquila Saleh and General Haftar, who commands the HoR-aligned Libyan National Army, objected to an LPA provision that subordinated the military to the PC. Furthermore, as General Haftar consolidated his control over eastern Libya during the year, both he and his chief of staff fired a number of elected municipal mayors and installed military figures in their place, including in Benghazi, Libya's second-largest city. Additionally, the Constitutional Drafting Assembly (CDA), which had been uncontested and maintained neutrality throughout the 2014-15 conflict, in 2016 became embroiled in political infighting. The LPA's timeline rests on the CDA's completion of a new constitution and the HoR and State Council's approval of the new charter. The CDA released a second draft constitution in February 2016 after consultative sessions that took place in Oman, which included roughly half of its members. While an electoral law was published in the aftermath of the 2011 revolution and an electoral commission was appointed, in practice Libya lacks a functioning electoral framework. B. Political Pluralism and Participation 2 / 16 B1. Do the people have the right to organize in different political parties or other competitive political groupings of their choice, and is the system open to the rise and fall of these competing parties or groupings? B2. Is there a significant opposition vote and a realistic opportunity for the opposition to increase its support or gain power through elections? B3. Are the people's political choices free from domination by the military, foreign powers, totalitarian parties, religious hierarchies, economic oligarchies, or any other powerful group? B4. Do cultural, ethnic, religious, or other minority groups have full political rights and electoral opportunities? More than 100 parties or lists spanning the political spectrum, from socialists to Islamists, organized to participate in the 2012 GNC elections, marking a clear departure from the Qadhafi era, during which political parties were illegal and all independent political activity was banned. However, the legitimacy and integrity of the new parties steadily eroded, and all candidates in the 2014 elections were required to run as independents. Civilian politics and public participation were further marginalized by and subordinated to armed groups, as two opposing military coalitions in the east and west fought for control of the country and against extremist forces, including IS. Throughout 2016, political life in Libya was mired in obstructionist, zero-sum politics. The UN-backed PC, currently located off a naval base in Tripoli, had yet to secure control and reconcile rival political and military actors. Major world powers reiterated support for the UN-brokered LPA and PC during the year, and in April, the European Union (EU) sanctioned three political personalities who opposed the unity government: Nouri Abusahmain, former head of the GNC; Ghwell, of the NSG; and Saleh, speaker of the HoR in the east. C. Functioning of Government 0 / 12 C1. Do the freely elected head of government and national legislative representatives determine the policies of the government? C2. Is the government free from pervasive corruption? C3. Is the government accountable to the electorate between elections, and does it operate with openness and transparency? None of the country's rival political and military camps constituted an effective national government in 2016. While the GNA enjoys strong backing from the international community, its domestic security is based on a fragile arrangement with various armed groups. Even before the rift between the HoR and GNC opened in 2014, the authority of elected officials was limited due to underdeveloped state institutions and the presence of autonomous regional armed groups, which by some counts number more than 1,700. Corruption has long been pervasive in both the private sector and the government. The fall of the Qadhafi regime initially raised hopes that the level of graft would decline, but oil interests, foreign governments, smuggling syndicates, and armed groups still wield undue influence, especially in the south, and opportunities for corruption and criminal activity abound in the absence of effective fiscal, judicial, and commercial institutions. Civil Liberties 10 / 60 (-4) D. Freedom of Expression and Belief 4 / 16 (-2) D1. Are there free and independent media and other forms of cultural expression? D2. Are religious institutions and communities free to practice their faith and express themselves in public and private? D3. Is there academic freedom, and is the educational system free of extensive political indoctrination? D4. Is there open and free private discussion? The fall of the Qadhafi regime lifted restrictions on the long-repressed media sector. Citizen journalism became more common, and media outlets ranging from satellite television and radio stations to print publications multiplied in number. However, media freedom is increasingly limited by political and criminal violence that has made objective reporting dangerous. Many journalists and media outlets have censored themselves or ceased operations to avoid retribution by armed groups. Threats and violent reprisals for reporting have prompted a growing number of journalists to flee the country. Post-Qadhafi authorities have sometimes sought to curb free expression through the approval of restrictive laws codifying insult crimes. The GNC has in the past directed a state internet service provider to turn over certain data, and to ban access to websites that hosted content dealing with Christianity or atheism, or which were deemed pornographic. Nearly all Libyans are Sunni Muslims, but Christians form a small minority, with most hailing from neighboring countries. Some Salafi Muslim groups, whose beliefs reject the veneration of saints, have destroyed or vandalized Sufi Muslim shrines. Egyptian Coptic Christian communities have been targeted by armed groups, including IS. Close state supervision of education ended along with Qadhafi's regime. However, laws guaranteeing academic freedom have not been passed, and by mid-2016 hundreds of schools across the country were closed due to a breakdown in the rule of law, or damage to facilities inflicted during fighting between various armed groups. Although open and free private discussion improved dramatically after 2011, the ongoing hostilities have taken their toll, with many Libyans increasingly withdrawing from political life or avoiding criticism of powerful actors, particularly in the eastern regions dominated by General Haftar's forces. E. Associational and Organizational Rights 2 / 12 (-1) E1. Is there freedom of assembly, demonstration, and open public discussion? E2. Is there freedom for nongovernmental organizations? E3. Are there free trade unions and peasant organizations or equivalents, and is there effective collective bargaining? Are there free professional and other private organizations? A 2012 law on freedom of assembly is generally compatible with international human rights principles. However, fighting and related disorder seriously deter peaceful assemblies in many areas. After General Haftar replaced the elected mayor of Benghazi with a military leader, the new authorities banned demonstrations without prior approval from the military. A multitude of domestic nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) formed after the 2011 revolution. However, the number of active NGOs continued to decline in 2016, due to armed conflict and the departure of international donors. Armed groups with varying political, tribal, and geographic affiliations have targeted civil society activists with impunity. Many NGO workers have fled abroad or ceased their activism in the wake of grave threats to themselves or their families. Some trade unions, previously outlawed, formed after 2011, but they remain in their organizational infancy. F. Rule of Law 0 / 16 (-1) F1. Is there an independent judiciary? F2. Does the rule of law prevail in civil and criminal matters? Are police under direct civilian control? F3. Is there protection from political terror, unjustified imprisonment, exile, or torture, whether by groups that support or oppose the system? Is there freedom from war and insurgencies? F4. Do laws, policies, and practices guarantee equal treatment of various segments of the population? The role of the judiciary remains unclear without a permanent constitution, and judges, prosecutors, and police officers in postrevolutionary Libya face frequent threats and attacks. By the end of 2016 the country's judicial system had essentially collapsed, with courts across the country nonfunctional and impunity widespread. In some cases, nonstate dispute mechanisms have filled the void. Investigations into a large number of cases involving torture and extrajudicial executions before and during the 2011 revolution, including the killing of Qadhafi, have made little progress. Thousands of individuals remain in the custody of militia or government groups despite the absence of any formal trial or sentencing. Libya's warring militias operate with little regard for civilian lives. Various armed groups have carried out indiscriminate shelling of civilian areas, abductions, torture, executions, and the destruction of property. The war's main battleground has been Benghazi, though fighting has taken place across the country. In 2016, eastern Libya saw a spate of kidnappings and other attacks targeting government officials, activists, and journalists. Fighting in Benghazi in 2016 resulted in many casualties, including of civilians, and widespread hardship. In the south, tribal clashes also resulted in casualties during the year. The U.S. State Department has estimated that hundreds of people were killed in 2016 due to violent acts committed by extremist groups including IS, Ansar al-Sharia, and al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM). In 2016, local armed forces, primarily from the city of Misrata and nominally affiliated with the UN-backed government, fought IS in the coastal city of Sirte, with some assistance from U.S. air strikes beginning in August, and had mostly dislodged IS fighters from the city by the year's end. However, the IS maintained a presence in other parts of Libya, including around Benghazi and Derna. Separately, General Haftar, who is seen as an anti-Islamist figure and enjoys backing from the United Arab Emirates and Egypt, strengthened his foothold over Libya's eastern region, particularly after the successful takeover of the Gulf of Sidra oil crescent in September 2016. Libyans from certain tribes and communities often those perceived as pro-Qadhafi have faced discrimination, violence, and displacement since 2011. Migrant workers from sub-Saharan Africa have also been subject to discrimination and mistreatment, particularly at the hands of armed groups. The Tebu and Tuareg minorities in the south face discrimination. Under Libya's penal code, sexual activity between members of the same sex is punishable by up to five years in prison. LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender) people face severe discrimination and harassment, and have been targeted by militant groups. G. Personal Autonomy and Individual Rights 4 / 16 G1. Do individuals enjoy freedom of travel or choice of residence, employment, or institution of higher education? G2. Do individuals have the right to own property and establish private businesses? Is private business activity unduly influenced by government officials, the security forces, political parties/organizations, or organized crime? G3. Are there personal social freedoms, including gender equality, choice of marriage partners, and size of family? G4. Is there equality of opportunity and the absence of economic exploitation? The 2011 constitutional declaration guarantees freedom of movement, but violence has disrupted normal activity in major cities. Airports in Benghazi, Tripoli, Sabha, and Misrata have been attacked and destroyed, severely limiting access to air travel. The UN Office for Humanitarian Affairs has estimated that 1.3 million people in Libya will need humanitarian assistance in 2017, including more than 313,000 who are internally displaced. Many others have reportedly sought safety in neighboring Tunisia and Egypt. Government and militia checkpoints also restrict movement within Libya, while poor security conditions more generally affect movement as well as access to healthcare, education, and work. While Libyans have the right to own property and can start businesses, regulations and protections are not upheld in practice. Businesses and homes have been confiscated by militants, particularly in Libya's eastern regions and in Benghazi, and ongoing unrest has severely disrupted ordinary commerce. Threats and harassment against women, especially female activists, are common. Forced labor, sexual exploitation, abuse in detention facilities, and starvation are widespread among migrants and refugees from sub-Saharan Africa and elsewhere, many of who are beholden to human traffickers. Libya lacks comprehensive laws criminalizing human trafficking, and the authorities have been either incapable of enforcing existing bans or complicit in trafficking activity. Traffickers have taken advantage of civil unrest to establish enterprises in which refugees and migrants are loaded into overcrowded boats that are abandoned in the Mediterranean Sea, where passengers hope to be rescued and taken to Europe. The voyages are often deadly. Copyright notice: Freedom House, Inc. All Rights Reserved Freedom in the World 2017 - Liberia Publisher Freedom House Publication Date 12 July 2017 Cite as Freedom House, Freedom in the World 2017 - Liberia, 12 July 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/59831e8b13.html [accessed 13 November 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States. Freedom Status: Partly Free Aggregate Score: 62/100 (0 = Least Free, 100 = Most Free) Freedom Rating: 3.5/7 (1 = Most Free, 7 = Least Free) Political Rights: 3/7 (1 = Most Free, 7 = Least Free) Civil Liberties: 4/7 (1 = Most Free, 7 = Least Free) Quick Facts Population: 4,600,000 Capital: Monrovia GDP/capita: $456 Press Freedom Status: Partly Free OVERVIEW Liberia has enjoyed more than a decade of peace and stability since a 14-year period of intermittent civil war ended in 2003. During this time, the country has made considerable progress towards rebuilding government capacity, reestablishing the rule of law, and ensuring the political rights and civil liberties of citizens. However, Liberia still faces serious issues with corruption and unequal justice. Key Developments in 2016: With presidential and legislative elections scheduled for October 2017, Liberia's political landscape saw jockeying among parties and politicians, amid a peaceful environment. By year's end, a number of credible contenders for the presidency had emerged. In September, in an effort to address underrepresentation of women in government, Liberia's legislature passed the Equal Representation and Participation Act, creating five seats for female politicians in the House of Representatives, along with one for young people and one for people with disabilities. The UN Security Council voted in December to extend the mandate of the UN Mission in Liberia (UNMIL) until March 2018. Executive Summary: Liberia's political landscape in 2016 was dominated by preparations for the 2017 presidential and legislative elections. Because incumbent president Ellen Johnson Sirleaf is constitutionally barred from serving a third term, the election will bring about the first transition of power since the end of the civil wars in 2003. Several candidates have emerged as top contenders for the presidency, including Vice President Joseph Boakai of the ruling Unity Party (UP); George Weah, a senator and standard-bearer for the Congress for Democratic Change (CDC); and Benoni Urey, a businessman affiliated with the All Liberian Party (ALP). Despite fears among some observers that the election could destabilize the country, in 2016 all stakeholders appeared to be committed to a peaceful electoral process. The government has continued to pursue its anticorruption agenda, though progress has been slow and corruption remains pervasive. In May 2016, the government launched an investigation into a corruption scandal involving mining contracts, which led to bribery charges against the speaker of the House of Representatives, as well as a senator. In recent years, rulings by the nation's highest court have reflected judicial independence and the court's continued willingness to intervene to protect people's rights. However, petty corruption and a lack of capacity within lower-level courts and security sectors remained major impediments to the rule of law. POLITICAL RIGHTS AND CIVIL LIBERTIES Political Rights 28 / 40 A. Electoral Process 9 / 12 A1. Is the head of government or other chief national authority elected through free and fair elections? A2. Are the national legislative representatives elected through free and fair elections? A3. Are the electoral laws and framework fair? Liberia has a bicameral legislature composed of a 30-member Senate and a 73-member House of Representatives; senators are elected to nine-year terms, and representatives to six-year terms. Staggered senatorial elections were introduced in 2011. The president can serve up to two six-year terms. Since the end of the civil wars in 2003, Liberia has held two presidential elections. The most recent was in 2011, when incumbent president Sirleaf of the UP secured 44 percent of the vote in the first round, while Winston Tubman, of the opposition CDC, took 32 percent. Sirleaf was reelected after winning 91 percent of the vote in a runoff. Although opposition members alleged fraud and corruption, international and local observers found that the elections had been comparatively free, fair, and peaceful, though there were isolated incidents of violence before and after the voting, and the government briefly shut down radio and television stations with perceived pro-CDC biases before the vote. Elections to 15 of Liberia's 30 Senate seats were held in December 2014 after several months of delay due to the Ebola crisis, and turnout was depressed by fears of Ebola. The election resulted in major losses for incumbent politicians in general and the UP in particular, attributed to widespread discontent with the government's handling of the Ebola crisis. The UP held just 8 seats in the body after the polls. The CDC and National Patriotic Party (NPP) were left with 4 Senate seats each after votes were tabulated, with the remainder of seats held by smaller parties or independents, except for a single seat that was left vacant. Although beset with restrictions under a state of emergency, the 2014 Senate elections were deemed "free, fair, credible, and transparent" by an observer mission from the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS). Liberia's next national election is scheduled for October 2017. Sirleaf will not be in the running, as presidents are constitutionally barred from running for more than two terms. Sirleaf is supporting incumbent vice president Boakai of the UP, who has emerged as a major contender. Other contenders include Weah, a senator and standard-bearer for the CDC, and Urey, a prominent businessman in the telecommunications sector, who is affiliated with the ALP. In 2016, all parties appeared committed to ensuring elections are peaceful, and support for a democratic process among citizens is strong. Although campaigning is not expected to begin in earnest until summer of 2017, candidates appear set to campaign in a free and fair environment. B. Political Pluralism and Participation 12 / 16 B1. Do the people have the right to organize in different political parties or other competitive political groupings of their choice, and is the system open to the rise and fall of these competing parties or groupings? B2. Is there a significant opposition vote and a realistic opportunity for the opposition to increase its support or gain power through elections? B3. Are the people's political choices free from domination by the military, foreign powers, totalitarian parties, religious hierarchies, economic oligarchies, or any other powerful group? B4. Do cultural, ethnic, religious, or other minority groups have full political rights and electoral opportunities? Political parties do not face undue legal or practical obstacles that prevent them from operating. Allegations of undue influence or pressure on voters by powerful groups are rare. Opposition parties hold significant support among the population and, in the 2014 Senate elections, demonstrated the ability to convert this support into political power. Though Liberians elected Africa's first female head of state, women are underrepresented in government, and hold only 12 percent of legislative seats and 6 percent of positions in local government, despite a 2014 electoral law mandating that neither men nor women can comprise more than 70 percent of the candidates listed by any political party. Recognizing the need for further reform, in September 2016 the legislature passed the Equal Representation and Participation Act, which created five seats reserved for female politicians in the House of Representatives, as well as one for youth, and one for people with disabilities. It is set to take effect in time for the 2017 elections. Ethnic and religious minority groups generally enjoy full political rights and electoral opportunities, though some minorities especially the Mandingo and Fulani peoples continue to be stigmatized as outsiders. Candidates occasionally exploit these biases to rally their constituents. Additionally, members of Lebanese and Asian minority groups whose families have lived in Liberia for several generations are denied citizenship, and therefore may not vote or participate in the political process. C. Functioning of Government 7 / 12 C1. Do the freely elected head of government and national legislative representatives determine the policies of the government? C2. Is the government free from pervasive corruption? C3. Is the government accountable to the electorate between elections, and does it operate with openness and transparency? Once elected, new government officials are duly installed in office, and elected legislators generally operate without interference from nonstate actors, foreign governments, or unelected officials. Liberia boasts a number of institutions devoted to fighting corruption including the Liberia Anti-Corruption Commission (LACC), the General Auditing Commission, and the Public Procurement and Concessions Commission but they lack the resources and capacity to function effectively, and corruption remains pervasive. Widespread government distrust is thought to have contributed to the spread of Ebola in 2014, as there was low support for government-backed control policies and preventative measures. A May 2016 report by Global Witness, an international anticorruption group, reported that a series of questionable payments had been made by the British company Sable Mining to House Speaker Alex Tyler and other high-ranking government officials. The payments, believed to total more than $1 million, were allegedly made in 2010 during the firm's attempt to gain an iron ore concession in the north of the country. Later in the month, Tyler and a senator were indicted on charges including bribery; Tyler resigned as House Speaker in September, and proceedings against them were underway at year's end. President Sirleaf has been repeatedly accused of nepotism when filling lucrative bureaucratic posts within her administration. Charles Sirleaf, one of her sons, was appointed the interim head of the central bank in February 2016, while Fumba Sirleaf, another son, heads the National Security Agency. Liberia's Freedom of Information Act is rarely used, and government responsiveness to requests tends to be slow. Liberia was the first African state to comply with Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI) rules governing natural-resource extraction, and in 2016 it remained EITI compliant. In November, the legislature passed the Petroleum Law, which compels all oil companies to disclose their ownership and mandates that all petroleum contracts be awarded through competitive bidding. Civil Liberties 34 / 60 (+1) D. Freedom of Expression and Belief 11 / 16 (+1) D1. Are there free and independent media and other forms of cultural expression? D2. Are religious institutions and communities free to practice their faith and express themselves in public and private? D3. Is there academic freedom, and is the educational system free of extensive political indoctrination? D4. Is there open and free private discussion? A variety of newspapers operate in Liberia, though most are published in the capital. Numerous radio stations operate across the country. The government does not restrict internet access, but poor infrastructure and high costs limit usage to a small fraction of the population. Despite becoming to a signatory in 2012 to the Declaration of Table Mountain, a pan-African initiative that calls for the abolition of criminal defamation laws, Liberia has long been criticized for its onerous criminal and civil libel laws, which are used to harass and intimidate journalists and activists. In 2016 the government continued to use libel and sedition laws to clamp down on dissent. Following the mysterious death of Harry Greaves, a prominent businessman and government critic whose body was found on a beach in Monrovia in January, human rights activist Vandalark Patricks was arrested and charged with sedition and criminal libel after calling for mass protests against what he alleged to be a government plot to assassinate political opponents. While an independent investigation found no evidence of criminal wrongdoing in the death of Greaves, the government's willingness to quickly detain critics on allegations of sedition and criminal libel is alarming. In addition, in September an activist was charged with criminal coercion for his investigation into a government-backed loan program for businesses in the city of Buchanan. In July, the opposition radio station Voice FM was temporarily shut down for lacking an operating permit. And in October, the publisher of the Hot Pepper newspaper, Philipbert Browne, was arrested for libel and detained for several days after publishing an article in which a teenage girl claimed that a legislator had raped her. Physical attacks against media workers are occasionally reported. In May 2016, journalist Wremongar Joe was physically attacked for refusing to delete footage he had taken of a brawl that involved a legislator. Religious freedom is protected in the constitution, and there is no official religion. Liberia is, however, a de facto Christian state, and the Muslim minority frequently reports discrimination. In 2015, a proposal to amend the constitution in order to establish Christianity as the official state religion was decried by Muslim leaders, and contributed to interreligious tensions. Though the proposal appeared to have the support of numerous lawmakers, the house speaker indicated his opposition in April 2016 and President Sirleaf has maintained opposition to the bill. Separately, the Palm oil company Golden Veroleum (GVL) reportedly bulldozed religious shrines in October as part of its expansion plans. The government does not restrict academic freedom, though educational quality and infrastructure remain grossly inadequate. People are generally free to engage in private discussion while in public spaces. The government is not known to illegally monitor online communications. E. Associational and Organizational Rights 8 / 12 E1. Is there freedom of assembly, demonstration, and open public discussion? E2. Is there freedom for nongovernmental organizations? E3. Are there free trade unions and peasant organizations or equivalents, and is there effective collective bargaining? Are there free professional and other private organizations? Freedom of association is constitutionally guaranteed and largely respected in Liberia. Numerous civil society groups, including human rights organizations, operate in the country. The rights of workers to strike, organize, and bargain collectively are recognized, but labor laws remain in need of reform. Labor disputes can turn violent, particularly at the country's various mines and rubber plantations. F. Rule of Law 7 / 16 F1. Is there an independent judiciary? F2. Does the rule of law prevail in civil and criminal matters? Are police under direct civilian control? F3. Is there protection from political terror, unjustified imprisonment, exile, or torture, whether by groups that support or oppose the system? Is there freedom from war and insurgencies? F4. Do laws, policies, and practices guarantee equal treatment of various segments of the population? Constitutional provisions guarantee an independent judiciary. Although petty corruption and backlogs remain major impediments to justice, recent rulings by the nation's highest court point to increased judicial independence and increased willingness to intervene to protect people's rights. However, lower-level courts continue to struggle to provide justice to ordinary citizens. Corruption remains rampant, judges are subject to interference, and courts are hamstrung by case backlogs. Lack of discipline, absenteeism, and corruption continue to plague the police and armed forces, hampering their ability to enforce laws and bring justice to those who have been the victims of crimes. As a result, many in Liberia turn to extrajudicial means of justice, including attacks and property damage. People accused of witchcraft can face the practice of "trial by ordeal," in which they are subjected to abuses amounting to torture. Prisons are notorious for inadequate medical care, food, and sanitation; lax security; and prolonged pretrial detentions. LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender) people face social stigma and the threat of violence and harassment. Under the penal code, "voluntary sodomy" is a misdemeanor offense that can carry up to a year in prison. A local LGBT rights group reported in October 2016 that several people were arrested on allegations of sodomy, including one person who was arrested after reporting a robbery to police. G. Personal Autonomy and Individual Rights 8 / 16 G1. Do individuals enjoy freedom of travel or choice of residence, employment, or institution of higher education? G2. Do individuals have the right to own property and establish private businesses? Is private business activity unduly influenced by government officials, the security forces, political parties/organizations, or organized crime? G3. Are there personal social freedoms, including gender equality, choice of marriage partners, and size of family? G4. Is there equality of opportunity and the absence of economic exploitation? Personal autonomy and individual rights are constitutionally protected in Liberia, and the government does not restrict freedom of travel, or choice of residence, employment, or institutions of higher education. However, equality of opportunity is limited in part by the low quality of public education. The government has tried to address low numeracy and literacy skills among young people by expanding vocational training, and more controversially, by partnering in April 2016 with a private company that provides primary education at a low cost. Conflicts over land access and ownership remain pervasive. Many of these conflicts originated in the civil wars and subsequent internal migration, displacement, and resettlement. Others are the result of opaque concession agreements granting foreign corporations access to lands for production of tropical timber, palm oil, and other products. A large fraction of the country's land mass is thought to be owned by private logging and other companies. A 2015 report by Global Witness criticized the government for helping the palm oil company Golden Veroleum pressure local communities to enter into concession agreements with little understanding of their terms and conditions. In addition, mechanisms for compensating local communities in concession areas remain inadequate and have led to violent protests. In 2016, there were reports that Golden Veroleum had turned land traditionally held by communities into its own palm oil plantations, and had stationed armed guards around them. While men and women enjoy equal legal rights under civil law, customary law remains dominant in many parts of the country, especially in rural areas, creating gender discrepancies in access to land, custody of children, and impartial adjudication of disputes. Violence against women and children, particularly rape, is a pervasive problem. In April 2016, the government proposed legislation against female genital mutilation, a process many Liberian women have experienced. Human trafficking for the purpose of forced labor and prostitution remains a problem in Liberia, with most victims trafficked from Liberia's rural areas to its cities. Many trafficking victims are children, who can be found working in diamond mines, agricultural operations, or as domestic laborers, or engaged in forced begging or prostitution. Copyright notice: Freedom House, Inc. All Rights Reserved Freedom in the World 2017 - Lebanon Publisher Freedom House Publication Date 12 July 2017 Cite as Freedom House, Freedom in the World 2017 - Lebanon, 12 July 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/59831e8cc.html [accessed 13 November 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States. Freedom Status: Partly Free Aggregate Score: 44/100 (0 = Least Free, 100 = Most Free) Freedom Rating: 4.5/7 (1 = Most Free, 7 = Least Free) Political Rights: 5/7 (1 = Most Free, 7 = Least Free) Civil Liberties: 4/7 (1 = Most Free, 7 = Least Free) Quick Facts Population: 6,200,000 Capital: Beirut GDP/capita: $8,048 Press Freedom Status: Partly Free Net Freedom Status: Partly Free OVERVIEW Lebanon's troubled political system ensures representation for its many sectarian communities, but suppresses competition within each community and impedes the rise of cross-sectarian or secularist parties. Parliamentary elections have been repeatedly postponed amid partisan gridlock and security threats linked to the war in neighboring Syria. Residents enjoy some civil liberties and media pluralism, but the rule of law is undermined by political interference and partisan militias, and the country has struggled to cope with an influx of Syrian and other refugees who make up more than a quarter of its population. Key Developments in 2016: In October, the National Assembly elected Michel Aoun as president, ending a two-year vacancy. Aoun asked former prime minister Saad Hariri to lead a new unity cabinet, which was approved by the National Assembly in late December. Municipal elections were held in May for the first time in six years, though long-overdue parliamentary elections were not expected until 2017 at the earliest. Executive Summary: Lebanon made some progress toward ending its political dysfunction in 2016. Local elections in more than a thousand municipalities were held in May, in some cases featuring vigorous competition. The new, civil society-based list Beirut Madinati (Beirut My City) won 40 percent of the vote in the capital, campaigning on a platform of practical urban governance and transparency rather than traditional factional loyalties. In October, the National Assembly's main parties and movements reached a deal to elect Michel Aoun, a longtime political and military leader from the Maronite Christian community, as president, ending a two-year vacancy. Aoun then named Saad Hariri, a Sunni Muslim political leader, to serve as prime minister, and his 30-member cabinet was approved by the National Assembly in late December. The cabinet included all major factions except the Kataeb Party, a Christian group also known as the Phalangist party, which rejected the position it was offered. The cabinet also featured new posts responsible for women's affairs, refugee affairs, and combating corruption, reflecting key challenges facing the country. However, the appointment of a man to the women's affairs post was met with public derision. Despite the successful municipal voting and the progress in the executive branch, it remained unclear whether parliamentary elections would be held as planned by mid-2017, when the current legislature's mandate already extended repeatedly since its elected term ended in 2013 was due to expire. Meanwhile, among other ongoing governance problems, a garbage crisis stemming from the closure of Beirut's main landfill in 2015 continued without a sustainable solution, and the rule of law was threatened by terrorist violence and arbitrary restrictions including arrests and curfews on Syrian refugees. POLITICAL RIGHTS AND CIVIL LIBERTIES Political Rights 14 / 40 (+1) A. Electoral Process 3 / 12 (+1) A1. Is the head of government or other chief national authority elected through free and fair elections? A2. Are the national legislative representatives elected through free and fair elections? A3. Are the electoral laws and framework fair? The president is selected every six years by the 128-member National Assembly, which in turn is elected for four-year terms. The president and parliament nominate the prime minister, who, along with the president, chooses the cabinet, subject to parliamentary approval. The unwritten National Pact of 1943 stipulates that the president must be a Maronite Christian, the prime minister a Sunni Muslim, and the speaker of the National Assembly a Shiite Muslim. Parliamentary seats are divided among major sects under a constitutional formula that does not reflect their current demographic weight. No official census has been conducted since the 1930s. The sectarian political balance has been periodically reaffirmed and occasionally modified by foreign-brokered agreements. The last parliamentary elections were held in June 2009. The March 14 coalition, headed by Sunni Muslim parties, won 71 seats, while the rival March 8 coalition, backed by the Shiite militant group Hezbollah, took 57 seats. Although the elections were conducted peacefully and judged to be free and fair in some respects, vote buying was reported to be rampant, and the electoral framework retained a number of fundamental structural flaws linked to the country's sectarian political system. New elections were due in June 2013, but disagreement over electoral reforms led the parliament to extend its own term until late 2014. Citing security concerns associated with the Syrian conflict, lawmakers that year extended their mandate again, this time until June 2017. The presidency, vacant since the term of Michel Suleiman expired in 2014, was filled through the October 2016 election of Michel Aoun, who nominated Saad Hariri of the March 14 coalition as prime minister in November. Nabih Berri, affiliated with the Amal movement and backed by Hezbollah, retained his post as parliament speaker, a position he has held since 1992. Hariri's unity cabinet, which included representatives of most major factions, was approved by the assembly in late December. Relatively successful and peaceful municipal council elections were held in May across the country, marking the first subnational elections since 2010. More than 30,000 candidates participated in contests in 1,015 municipalities, though turnout was generally low. B. Political Pluralism and Participation 9 / 16 B1. Do the people have the right to organize in different political parties or other competitive political groupings of their choice, and is the system open to the rise and fall of these competing parties or groupings? B2. Is there a significant opposition vote and a realistic opportunity for the opposition to increase its support or gain power through elections? B3. Are the people's political choices free from domination by the military, foreign powers, totalitarian parties, religious hierarchies, economic oligarchies, or any other powerful group? B4. Do cultural, ethnic, religious, or other minority groups have full political rights and electoral opportunities? Two major factions, each comprising more than a dozen political parties, have dominated Lebanese politics since 2005: the March 8 coalition, of which Hezbollah is the most powerful member and which is seen as aligned with the Syrian regime, Iran, and Russia; and the March 14 bloc, headed by Sunni Muslims and associated with Saudi Arabia, Europe, and the United States. Christian factions are divided between the two blocs, and a predominantly Druze party has adopted positions that straddle the political divide. These long-standing incumbent parties faced strong challenges or setbacks in a number of the 2016 municipal council elections. Beirut Madinati, a new electoral list characterized by political independents and a technocratic policy agenda, garnered 40 percent of the vote in the capital, but a bloc of establishment parties still captured all of the council seats. Although the political system features a variety of competing parties, their activities are inhibited by periodic violence, intimidation, and entrenched patronage networks in some cases linked to foreign funding that make it difficult for new groups to emerge or existing groups to modify their positions or policies. Lebanese voters' political choices are also restricted by the sectarian electoral system and a related requirement that citizens vote in their ancestral hometowns, which discourages the rise of multiconfessional or secularist parties. The established sectarian parties are often headed by prominent families, with key positions effectively handed down from one generation to the next. The rigid formula for allocation of elected positions ensures that nearly all recognized confessional groups are represented, but it does not reflect their actual shares of the population. Refugees, including large, decades-old Palestinian communities, are not eligible for citizenship and have no political rights. C. Functioning of Government 2 / 12 C1. Do the freely elected head of government and national legislative representatives determine the policies of the government? C2. Is the government free from pervasive corruption? C3. Is the government accountable to the electorate between elections, and does it operate with openness and transparency? Sectarian and partisan divisions, exacerbated by foreign interference and more recently the Syrian civil war, have frequently prevented Lebanese governments from forming and operating effectively and independently after elections. The extended presidential vacancy and the National Assembly's ongoing lack of an electoral mandate have further undermined the government's legitimacy. The authority of the government is also limited in practice by the power of autonomous militant groups, such as Hezbollah. Political and bureaucratic corruption is widespread, businesses routinely pay bribes and cultivate ties with politicians to win contracts, and anticorruption laws are loosely enforced. In an indication of institutional dysfunction, the national government has not passed an annual budget since 2005, meaning state expenditures are irregular, lacking in oversight, and prone to corrupt manipulation. The garbage crisis that began in 2015, when authorities closed the capital's main landfill without preparing a replacement site, remained unresolved in 2016 amid corruption and other concerns. Temporary dumps were used during the year, including one near Beirut's international airport and another near a commercial and residential neighborhood, Bourj Hammoud, provoking renewed protests and resulting in periodic pile-ups of garbage. Corruption has extended to contracts for aid to refugees. Some nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) have allegedly siphoned off funds from international agencies, with cooperation from corrupt Lebanese officials, or wasted resources on excessive salaries and benefits for senior employees. Donor concerns about corruption were believed to be one factor behind chronic shortfalls in aid for Syrian refugees. Civil Liberties 30 / 60 D. Freedom of Expression and Belief 11 / 16 D1. Are there free and independent media and other forms of cultural expression? D2. Are religious institutions and communities free to practice their faith and express themselves in public and private? D3. Is there academic freedom, and is the educational system free of extensive political indoctrination? D4. Is there open and free private discussion? Freedom of expression and freedom of the press are guaranteed by law. The country's media are among the most open and diverse in the region, but nearly all outlets have ties to sectarian leaders or groups, and consequently practice self-censorship and maintain a specific, often partisan, editorial line. Censorship of books, movies, plays, and other artistic work is common, especially when the work involves politics, religion, sex, or Israel. It is a criminal offense to criticize or defame the president or Lebanese security forces, and an audiovisual media law bans broadcasts that seek to harm the state or its foreign relations or incite sectarian violence, among other broadly worded provisions. These and similar laws have been used to intimate and prosecute journalists who disseminate criticism of the government or powerful nonstate actors. On at least two occasions in 2016, authorities summoned journalists for questioning about their work. The Netherlands-based Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL) continued to adjudicate contempt of court cases related to media exposure of confidential witnesses in its investigation of the 2005 assassination of former prime minister Rafik Hariri. In March 2016, an STL appellate panel overturned the 2015 conviction of Al-Jadeed TV's Karma Khayat, but in July the tribunal convicted and fined Al-Akhbar newspaper and its editor in chief for the public identification of 32 confidential witnesses. Journalists and media outlets occasionally face intimidation or violence in response to their reporting. In April 2016, the Beirut offices of the London-based newspaper Asharq al-Awsat were attacked by protesters over a cartoon deemed offensive to Lebanon. Freedom of religion is guaranteed in the constitution and protected in practice. Every confessional group manages its own family and personal-status laws, and has its own religious courts to adjudicate such matters. Proselytizing, while not punishable by law, is strongly discouraged by religious leaders and communities, sometimes with the threat of violence. Blasphemy is a criminal offense that carries up to one year in prison. Political strife between religious groups has persisted to some extent since the 1975-90 civil war, and such differences particularly between Sunnis and Shiites have been exacerbated in recent years by the civil war in Syria. Academic freedom is generally unimpaired, though defamation and blasphemy laws could deter open debate. Private discussion is similarly uninhibited. However, the government reportedly monitors social media, and users occasionally face arrests, short detentions, or fines for their remarks. In two cases during 2016, a human rights lawyer and a journalism student were temporarily detained and faced defamation charges for social media posts that criticized the state. E. Associational and Organizational Rights 7 / 12 E1. Is there freedom of assembly, demonstration, and open public discussion? E2. Is there freedom for nongovernmental organizations? E3. Are there free trade unions and peasant organizations or equivalents, and is there effective collective bargaining? Are there free professional and other private organizations? The constitution guarantees the freedoms of assembly and association, and the government generally respects these rights, though police have cracked down in the past on demonstrations against the government or the Syrian regime. Garbage-related protests in 2015 featured clashes between police and demonstrators, but those in 2016 were generally peaceful. More than a dozen demonstrators faced charges in military courts for the 2015 violence, though none were in detention during 2016. Civil society organizations have long operated openly in Lebanon, with some constraints. All NGOs must be registered with the Interior Ministry. The ministry may force an NGO to undergo an approval process and investigate its founders, and representatives of the ministry must be invited to observe voting on bylaws and boards of directors. Trade unions are often tightly linked to political organizations, and in recent years they have been subordinate to their political partners. The Labor Ministry has broad authority over the formation of unions, union elections, and the administrative dissolution of unions. Collective bargaining and especially strikes are subject to onerous restrictions. Public employees, agricultural workers, and household workers are not protected by the labor code and have no legal right to organize, though they have formed unrecognized representative organizations in practice. F. Rule of Law 5 / 16 F1. Is there an independent judiciary? F2. Does the rule of law prevail in civil and criminal matters? Are police under direct civilian control? F3. Is there protection from political terror, unjustified imprisonment, exile, or torture, whether by groups that support or oppose the system? Is there freedom from war and insurgencies? F4. Do laws, policies, and practices guarantee equal treatment of various segments of the population? Political forces hold sway over the formally independent judiciary. The Supreme Judicial Council is composed of 10 judges, eight of whom are nominated by the president and the cabinet. Other judges are nominated by the council, approved by the Justice Ministry, and vetted by opposition and government parties. While the regular judiciary generally follows international standards of criminal procedure, these standards are not followed in the military courts, which have been tasked with cases against Islamist militants, human rights activists, and alleged Israeli spies, among others. Security forces reportedly use torture and other abuse to obtain confessions. Prison conditions remain poor, with severe overcrowding, and pretrial detention often lasts years. Inmates at Roumieh prison launched a protest against harsh conditions and ill-treatment following the death of a prisoner in May 2016. Security threats and militant activity related to the Syrian civil war persisted in 2016. Among other violent incidents during the year, a wave of suicide bombings struck a Lebanese Christian village near the Syrian border in June, killing five people and wounding many others. There was no official claim of responsibility for the attack. In response, Lebanese security forces imposed curfews on Syrian refugees in the area and conducted hundreds of arbitrary arrests, although the interior minister said the attack originated inside Syria. There were roughly 1.5 million Syrian refugees in Lebanon as of 2016, of whom about one-third were not registered with the UN refugee agency; the government had instructed the agency to suspend registrations in 2015. Syrian refugees reportedly faced arbitrary arrests and other forms of harassment from both security forces and Lebanese civilians. Most refugee households included at least some members who lacked a residency permit owing to stricter government regulations, exposing them to arrest, and a large majority lived in poverty, partly due to limitations on refugees' employment options. About 450,000 Palestinian refugees were registered in Lebanon, though fewer than 300,000 were believed to reside in the country in 2016. They also face certain restrictions on economic activity, contributing to widespread poverty. LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender) people face both official and societal discrimination and harassment. The penal code prescribes up to one year in prison for "sexual intercourse against nature," though this is rarely enforced. NGOs work to uphold the human rights of LGBT people, and social acceptance is more common in urban and cosmopolitan areas, particularly in Beirut. G. Personal Autonomy and Individual Rights 7 / 16 G1. Do individuals enjoy freedom of travel or choice of residence, employment, or institution of higher education? G2. Do individuals have the right to own property and establish private businesses? Is private business activity unduly influenced by government officials, the security forces, political parties/organizations, or organized crime? G3. Are there personal social freedoms, including gender equality, choice of marriage partners, and size of family? G4. Is there equality of opportunity and the absence of economic exploitation? Impediments to freedom of movement include de facto sectarian boundaries in some areas and curfews on Syrian refugees in many municipalities. Even longtime Palestinian refugee residents face restrictions on employment and property ownership. A 2010 law allowed them access to social security benefits, end-of-service compensation, and the right to bring complaints before labor courts, but closed off access to skilled professions. At least 250,000 Syrian children were without access to education in 2016. Business activity in Lebanon is impaired by bureaucratic obstacles and corrupt patronage networks. Women are granted equal rights in the constitution, but they are disadvantaged under the sectarian personal-status laws on issues such as divorce, inheritance, and child custody. Under a 1925 law, women cannot pass their nationality to non-Lebanese husbands or children. A 2014 law that criminalized domestic violence failed to criminalize spousal rape. Both Lebanese and foreign nationals are subjected to forced labor and sex trafficking in Lebanon. Refugees and foreign household workers are especially vulnerable to exploitation. Authorities often arrest victims of trafficking for crimes committed as a result of their being trafficked. Copyright notice: Freedom House, Inc. All Rights Reserved Freedom in the World 2017 - Latvia Publisher Freedom House Publication Date 12 July 2017 Cite as Freedom House, Freedom in the World 2017 - Latvia, 12 July 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/59831e8dc.html [accessed 13 November 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States. Freedom Status: Free Aggregate Score: 87/100 (0 = Least Free, 100 = Most Free) Freedom Rating: 1.5/7 (1 = Most Free, 7 = Least Free) Political Rights: 1/7 (1 = Most Free, 7 = Least Free) Civil Liberties: 2/7 (1 = Most Free, 7 = Least Free) Quick Facts Population: 2,000,000 Capital: Riga GDP/capita: $13,649 Press Freedom Status: Free Latvia's political rights rating improved from 2 to 1 due to a gradual decrease in the influence of oligarchic business interests on political affairs. OVERVIEW Latvia has successfully developed into a democracy since regaining independence in 1991. Elections are regarded as free and fair, and political and civil rights are generally respected in practice. Nevertheless, ethnic tensions between the country's Latvians and its Russians, many of whom are regarded as noncitizens, are acute. Latvia is also troubled by corruption and relatively high income inequality. Key Developments in 2016: In February, a new government headed by Maris Kucinskis of the Union of Greens and Farmers (ZZS) was installed, though the party composition of the ruling coalition remained the same. In July, Latvia became a member of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). Against this background, the country has increased efforts to fight corruption and international money laundering. In November, the parliament approved an amendment that would allow teachers to be fired if they were found to be "disloyal" to the Latvian state. The measure appeared set to take effect in 2017. In July, it was revealed that the National Electronic Mass Media Council (NEPLP) had asked police to find a journalist's source, after she published an investigative story revealing likely appointees to its board. Executive Summary: In February 2016, Kucinskis of the ZZS was appointed prime minister of Latvia. He replaced Laimdota Straujuma of the Unity party, who had resigned in December 2015 following internal strife within both Unity and the ruling coalition, though the party composition of the ruling coalition remained intact. In addition to the ZZS and Unity, it also includes the nationalist National Alliance. It took nearly another three months to prepare a government program, which upon its release prioritized strengthening the economy and national security, and reforming the education and health care sectors. In July 2016, Latvia became a member of the OECD, boosting its international credibility and providing an additional impetus to increase transparency and tackle the rather neglected issue of international money laundering, though concrete results of any initiative addressing the latter were yet to be seen at year's end. Meanwhile, state institutions have taken active steps to combat corruption and tax evasion, but the effectiveness of any reforms has been hampered by the institutions' inability to consolidate power within their own fields of competence. In May, the head of the State Revenues Service resigned, saying she was struggling to implement planned reforms among them measures aimed at increasing transparency due to internal tensions and resistance from allied institutions. Meanwhile, despite legislative changes aimed at consolidating the Corruption Prevention and Combating Bureau of Latvia (KNAB) and making it more autonomous, throughout the year its work was marred by public controversies and infighting. During the year, the selection of the new KNAB chief, as well as of the Revenue Service, was delayed and contributed to tensions within the ruling coalition. Recent years have seen a gradual decrease in the influence of oligarchs in Latvia attributable mainly to reforms in party financing mechanisms and anticorruption operations leaving government and political institutions more responsive and accountable to citizens. Press freedom is generally respected in Latvia, though libel remains a criminal offense. In July 2016, a scandal erupted around the NEPLP, after it was revealed that in March it had requested that police uncover the source of journalist who had discovered and publicized likely appointees to its board, ahead of the body's formal announcement. Geopolitical tensions continued to exacerbate the existing social and political divide between the country's ethnic Latvians and its sizable ethnic Russian minority. About 250,000 Latvian residents, mostly ethnic Russians, still do not have citizenship status and altogether any voting rights, and unemployment is higher among Russians than Latvians. In November, the parliament approved an amendment that would allow teachers to be fired if they were found to be "disloyal" to Latvia. The legislation was set to take effect in 2017, and had been introduced after a teacher sparked controversy by suggesting in a radio interview that he was not loyal to the Latvian state. Explanatory Note: This country report has been abridged for Freedom in the World 2017. For background information on political rights and civil liberties in Latvia, see Freedom in the World 2016. Copyright notice: Freedom House, Inc. All Rights Reserved Freedom in the World 2017 - Kenya Publisher Freedom House Publication Date 12 July 2017 Cite as Freedom House, Freedom in the World 2017 - Kenya, 12 July 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/59831e8fa.html [accessed 13 November 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States. Freedom Status: Partly Free Aggregate Score: 51/100 (0 = Least Free, 100 = Most Free) Freedom Rating: 4.0/7 (1 = Most Free, 7 = Least Free) Political Rights: 4/7 (1 = Most Free, 7 = Least Free) Civil Liberties: 4/7 (1 = Most Free, 7 = Least Free) Quick Facts Population: 45,400,000 Capital: Nairobi GDP/capita: $1,377 Press Freedom Status: Partly Free Net Freedom Status: Free OVERVIEW Kenya is a multiparty democracy that holds regular elections, but its political rights and civil liberties are seriously undermined by pervasive corruption and cronyism, police brutality, and ethnic rivalries that are exploited by political leaders. The country has also struggled to cope with the threat of terrorism emanating from neighboring Somalia; counterterrorism efforts often feature abusive and discriminatory tactics targeting the Muslim and ethnic Somali communities. Key Developments in 2016: After Islamist militants killed at least 141 Kenyan soldiers in Somalia in January, Kenyan authorities arrested a journalist and a blogger for sharing information related to the attack on social media, adding to a pattern of restrictions on freedom of expression. In April, a judge struck down the legal provision under which the two were arrested. In June, police officers allegedly tortured and murdered the accuser in a police brutality case, along with his lawyer and a driver. The incident highlighted the broader problem of criminality and excessive force among law enforcement agencies. Members of the electoral commission resigned in October as part of a political agreement to reform the body ahead of general elections in 2017. The deal came after a failed constitutional referendum bid and a series of major protests by the opposition, which argued that the existing electoral system was deeply flawed. Executive Summary: A decline in domestic terrorist attacks in 2016 was overshadowed by an apparent rise in the use of lethal force by Kenyan police. An October study found that in the first eight months of the year, police officers killed a total of 122 civilians, a 7 percent increase over the same period in 2015. Police brutality was on display in May and June, when the opposition organized demonstrations aimed at overhauling the electoral commission. At least five demonstrators were killed amid police beatings, tear gas, and gunfire ammunition. In the year's most prominent incident of police violence, human rights lawyer Willie Kimani, his client Josephat Mwenda, and their driver, Joseph Muiruri, were killed in June. Kimani was representing Mwenda in a court case in which the latter accused police officers of misuse of lethal force. The three were allegedly tortured and then dumped in a river. Five police officers were charged with the murders. Government statistics released in May provided another indication of alarming criminality among police, showing that police officers were implicated in over a third of the crimes reported in 2015. The year also featured attempts by the government to limit freedom of expression. Journalists, bloggers, and activists were arrested or prosecuted on a variety of charges, and officials allegedly pressured media outlets to curb unfavorable coverage. In January, the Daily Nation fired an editor over an opinion piece that was critical of the administration, and in March the same paper severed ties with a cartoonist known for his biting critiques of powerful figures. Despite these pressures, many media houses continued to produce aggressive reporting on the government, and a number of activists used the country's moderately independent judicial system to fight back against threats to freedom of expression. POLITICAL RIGHTS AND CIVIL LIBERTIES Political Rights 22 / 40 A. Electoral Process 7 / 12 A1. Is the head of government or other chief national authority elected through free and fair elections? A2. Are the national legislative representatives elected through free and fair elections? A3. Are the electoral laws and framework fair? Under a constitution approved by voters in 2010, the president and deputy president, who can serve up to two five-year terms, are directly elected by majority vote; they are also required to win 25 percent of the votes in at least half of Kenya's newly created 47 counties. The legislature consists of the National Assembly (349 members) and the Senate (67 senators). In the National Assembly, 290 members are directly elected from single-member constituencies. A further 47 special women representatives are elected from the counties, and political parties nominate 12 additional members according to the share of seats won. The Senate has 47 elected members representing the counties, 16 special women representatives nominated by political parties based on the share of seats won, and four nominated members representing youth and people with disabilities. Both houses have speakers who are ex-officio members. In the 2013 general elections, the ruling Jubilee Coalition took 167 National Assembly seats and 30 Senate seats. The opposition Coalition for Reforms and Democracy (CORD) won 141 and 28 seats in the assembly and Senate, respectively. In the presidential race, Uhuru Kenyatta of Jubilee won with 50.07 percent of the vote, followed by Raila Odinga of CORD with 43.7 percent. Amid serious questions surrounding the tabulation of results, CORD alleged widespread vote rigging in a petition to the Supreme Court, but the court declined to annul the results. The 47 counties have elected governors, deputy governors, and assemblies. Following the 2013 general elections, the Jubilee Coalition held governorships in 18 counties, while CORD won in 23. Governors serve for a term of five years, renewable once. With the next elections expected in August 2017, CORD pushed during 2016 for a reform of the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) and other aspects of the electoral system. It first sought to initiate a process for the adoption of constitutional amendments to that end, which required gathering at least a million signatures. The effort failed after the IEBC ruled in March that only about 890,000 of the 1.6 million signatures submitted were valid. CORD then mobilized its supporters in May and June for weekly street demonstrations that paralyzed Kenya's urban centers. This forced the government to the negotiating table, and in August the two sides reached an agreement under which the IEBC would be restructured to include direct party representation. The incumbent commissioners submitted their resignations in October, and an appointment process for new commissioners was under way at year's end. B. Political Pluralism and Participation 10 / 16 B1. Do the people have the right to organize in different political parties or other competitive political groupings of their choice, and is the system open to the rise and fall of these competing parties or groupings? B2. Is there a significant opposition vote and a realistic opportunity for the opposition to increase its support or gain power through elections? B3. Are the people's political choices free from domination by the military, foreign powers, totalitarian parties, religious hierarchies, economic oligarchies, or any other powerful group? B4. Do cultural, ethnic, religious, or other minority groups have full political rights and electoral opportunities? Citizens are free to organize into political parties that represent a range of ideological, regional, and ethnic interests, but Kenyan parties are notoriously weak, often amalgamated into coalitions designed only to contest elections. Under the Political Parties Act, parties that receive at least 5 percent of the votes cast in a national election are eligible for public funds. During the 2013 elections, powerful economic interests posed impediments to political choice. Unverified sums of money were used during the campaign in the absence of an adequate campaign finance law, and there was evidence of direct vote buying by candidates from both coalitions. The 2010 constitution was intended to reduce the role of ethnicity in elections. Fiscal and political devolution, implemented in 2013, has served to generate more intraethnic competition at the county level. Nevertheless, the ongoing politicization of ethnicity at the national level hinders effective representation of different segments of Kenya's diverse population, limits voter choice, and impedes meaningful policy debates. Although the Political Parties Act requires each party to have at least 1,000 members in 24 of the 47 counties to ensure diversity, the major coalitions continue to reflect distinctive though rarely exclusive ethnic alliances. The stipulation that all voters must possess a National Identity Card impedes historically marginalized groups from obtaining greater access to the political process, particularly the nearly seven million pastoralists from the upper Rift Valley and North Eastern regions. C. Functioning of Government 5 / 12 C1. Do the freely elected head of government and national legislative representatives determine the policies of the government? C2. Is the government free from pervasive corruption? C3. Is the government accountable to the electorate between elections, and does it operate with openness and transparency? The ability of elected officials to set and implement policy is seriously undermined by corruption and other forms of dysfunction. The devolution process has exposed capacity deficits at the county level, with most county governments struggling to absorb funds and failing to meet spending targets for development projects. At the national level, an auditor general's report on government financial statements for the 2014-15 fiscal year gave a clean (unqualified) audit opinion for only about 25 percent of the statements assessed. Major corruption scandals continued to be reported in the media during 2016. They included opposition claims that a portion of the revenue from a sale of $2.8 billion in Eurobonds had been misappropriated by the government; revelations that some $17.4 million, more than double the initial estimate, had been lost in a 2015 embezzlement scandal centered on the National Youth Service; and the improper awarding of Health Ministry contracts reserved for marginalized groups, in some cases to companies owned by the president's relatives. State institutions tasked with combating corruption have been ineffective. In August 2016, the head of the Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission (EACC) resigned under pressure over allegations that a company run by his wife had benefited from National Youth Service contracts. Some reform projects, like the Integrated Financial Management Information System (IFMIS), launched in 2014 as an online clearinghouse for state procurements, appear to have made the problem worse. Misuse of IFMIS was alleged in both the National Youth Service and Health Ministry scandals. The EACC's weakness is compounded by shortcomings at the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions (ODPP) and in the judiciary. It was reported in October 2016 that out of 5,551 cases investigated by the EACC in the 2014-15 fiscal year, only 117 (2 percent) were forwarded to the ODPP, and of these the ODPP managed to secure a single conviction. The president signed the Access to Information Act in August 2016, enabling citizen information requests and requiring disclosures on government contracts. Officials who improperly withhold information can face fines or prison terms. Transparency advocates welcomed the law, but noted a broadly defined exemption for national security matters and called for careful consultation on implementing regulations. Civil Liberties 29 / 60 D. Freedom of Expression and Belief 10 / 16 (-1) D1. Are there free and independent media and other forms of cultural expression? D2. Are religious institutions and communities free to practice their faith and express themselves in public and private? D3. Is there academic freedom, and is the educational system free of extensive political indoctrination? D4. Is there open and free private discussion? The 2010 constitution strengthened protections for freedoms of speech and of the press, and there is a large, independent, and active media sector in Kenya. The media notably reported on corruption scandals reaching the highest levels of government during 2016. However, several laws restrict press freedom, and the government and security forces harass journalists, leading to self-censorship in some cases. Many journalists and activists have turned to online outlets and social media platforms to bypass political and business influences at established media groups. In January 2016, the interior minister issued a directive against the dissemination of images showing the victims of a devastating Islamist militant attack in Somalia that killed at least 141 Kenyan soldiers. Later that month, a journalist and a blogger who had reported on the attack were arrested and charged under Section 29 of the Information and Communications Act, which banned the "improper use of a licensed communications system." The vaguely defined offense has allowed authorities to arrest and charge numerous online journalists and bloggers who convey critical information on government officials. In April 2016, the High Court declared Section 29 unconstitutional, and related cases were subsequently dropped. The government and some business groups have used other forms of influence to shape news coverage, including defamation suits and manipulation of advertising purchases, sometimes leading major media groups to avoid sensitive content. In January 2016, the Daily Nation fired editor Denis Galava after he wrote an editorial that was critical of the government. In March, the newspaper fired Godfrey Mwampembwa (Gado), a cartoonist known for skewering powerful figures. Mwampembwa was later hired by a competing newspaper, the Standard. Also during the year, the courts ordered media outlets including the Standard and the Daily Nation to pay substantial monetary damages in defamation cases, several of which were filed by judges. The government generally respects the constitutional guarantee of freedom of religion. However, counterterrorism operations against the Somalia-based Shabaab militant group have left Muslims exposed to state violence and intimidation. In July 2016, Human Rights Watch reported that it had documented at least 34 enforced disappearances and 11 extrajudicial killings between 2013 and 2015, all involving people taken into custody during counterterrorism operations. Academic freedom in Kenya, though traditionally robust, is increasingly threatened by ethnic politics and political violence. Student union elections have led to allegations of fraud and violent protests. Police reportedly used beatings and other abuse to quell protests over a student election at the University of Nairobi in April 2016. In addition, there is growing evidence that ethnic considerations have influenced university hiring, leaving the staff of some institutions with significant ethnic imbalances. The relatively unfettered freedom of private discussion in Kenya has suffered somewhat from state counterterrorism operations and intimidation by security forces and ethnically affiliated gangs. E. Associational and Organizational Rights 7 / 12 (+1) E1. Is there freedom of assembly, demonstration, and open public discussion? E2. Is there freedom for nongovernmental organizations? E3. Are there free trade unions and peasant organizations or equivalents, and is there effective collective bargaining? Are there free professional and other private organizations? The constitution guarantees the freedoms of assembly and association. The law requires organizers of public meetings to notify local police in advance, and in practice police have regularly prohibited gatherings on security or other grounds, or violently dispersed assemblies that they had not explicitly banned. Among other episodes in 2016, police used beatings, tear gas, and live ammunition to break up CORD protests calling for electoral reform in May and June. At least five demonstrators were killed. Kenya has an active nongovernmental organization (NGO) sector, but civil society groups have faced growing obstacles in recent years, including repeated government attempts to deregister hundreds of NGOs for alleged financial violations. The moves were seen in part as an effort to silence criticism of the government's human rights record. In 2016, the government again failed to put into effect the 2013 Public Benefit Organizations Act, which was expected to provide a more transparent and supportive legal framework for NGO registration and activity. While delaying implementation, officials have sought to introduce restrictive amendments to the law. In June 2016 the government announced that it would strictly enforce laws placing limits on work permits and salaries for foreign workers, specifically threatening the status of those employed by NGOs. The 2010 constitution affirmed the rights of trade unions to establish their own agendas, bargain collectively, and strike. Unions are active in Kenya, with approximately 40 unions representing nearly two million workers. Most unions are affiliated with the Central Organization of Trade Unions (COTU). In June 2016, the government agreed to a new pay deal with teachers' unions, which had mounted a strike over the issue in 2015. A full collective-bargaining agreement was completed in October. In December, Kenyan doctors went on strike over pay and working conditions that had apparently grown worse after the devolution of health services to the county level. F. Rule of Law 5 / 16 F1. Is there an independent judiciary? F2. Does the rule of law prevail in civil and criminal matters? Are police under direct civilian control? F3. Is there protection from political terror, unjustified imprisonment, exile, or torture, whether by groups that support or oppose the system? Is there freedom from war and insurgencies? F4. Do laws, policies, and practices guarantee equal treatment of various segments of the population? The 2010 constitution enhanced the independence of the judiciary, but Kenya has struggled to entrench the rule of law in practice. The country's respected chief justice, Willy Mutunga, retired from office in June 2016, raising concerns as to whether the judiciary would continue on a reformist path. The constitution sets a mandatory retirement age of 70, and Mutunga stepped down a year earlier than necessary. Two other Supreme Court justices, Philip Tunoi and deputy chief justice Kalpana Rawal, were forced to retire the same month after controversial but unsuccessful attempts to stay on beyond the age limit. Tunoi was facing bribery allegations at the time. David Maraga was nominated as the new chief justice in September, and in October he and the replacements for the other two retired justices were sworn into office. The independent Judicial Services Commission handles the vetting and appointment of judges, including the chief justice. In May, the High Court struck down a legal amendment that would have directed the commission to submit three names for chief justice to the president rather than one, effectively giving the president discretion over the appointment. The police service is thoroughly undermined by corruption and criminality. Government statistics released in May 2016 showed that police officers were implicated in over a third of the crimes reported in 2015. In October, the Daily Nation reported that in the first eight months of 2016, at least 122 civilians had been shot dead by police, a 7 percent increase over the same period in 2015. The year's most brazen crime occurred in June, when police officers allegedly abducted, tortured, and murdered human rights lawyer Willie Kimani; his client, Josephat Mwenda, who had filed a complaint against an officer for illegally shooting him; and their driver, Joseph Muiruri. The three men's bodies were found in a river about a week after they went missing. Five police officers were facing trial for the murders at year's end. A number of other high-profile crimes remained unsolved during the year, including the May murder of a prominent businessman and opposition supporter, Jacob Juma. Opposition leader Raila Odinga claimed that a police hit squad was responsible. Despite aggressive government counterterrorism efforts, the Shabaab continued to mount deadly attacks on Kenyan soil, particularly near the border with Somalia. While the number of attacks appeared to decline compared with the previous year, notable incidents in 2016 included a July shooting attack on two buses that killed at least six people in Mandera County in the northeast, and an October raid on a guesthouse in the same county that killed 12 people. Ethnic Somalis both Kenyan citizens and refugees from neighboring Somalia have borne the brunt of arbitrary arrests and a range of other abuses linked to the counterterrorism campaign. As of 2016 there were more than 500,000 refugees in Kenya, including some 330,000 Somalis. In recent years there has been increased social and political pressure to expel Somali refugees, and tens of thousands have been repatriated under UN supervision. The government in May announced plans to close the massive Dadaab refugee camp in November, but later extended the deadline by six months. Consensual same-sex sexual activity is criminalized under the penal code, with a maximum penalty of 14 years in prison. Members of the LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender) community continue to face discrimination, abuse, and violent attacks. In June 2016, a High Court judge in Mombasa upheld the use of forced anal examinations and testing for HIV and hepatitis B as a means of gathering supposed evidence of same-sex sexual activity. The UN special rapporteur on torture and other experts have condemned such practices. G. Personal Autonomy and Individual Rights 7 / 16 G1. Do individuals enjoy freedom of travel or choice of residence, employment, or institution of higher education? G2. Do individuals have the right to own property and establish private businesses? Is private business activity unduly influenced by government officials, the security forces, political parties/organizations, or organized crime? G3. Are there personal social freedoms, including gender equality, choice of marriage partners, and size of family? G4. Is there equality of opportunity and the absence of economic exploitation? While the constitution provides protections for freedom of movement and related rights, they are impeded in practice by security concerns and ethnic tensions that lead many residents to avoid certain parts of the country. Organized crime continues to threaten legitimate business activity in Kenya. Political corruption and ethnic favoritism also affect the business sector and exacerbate existing imbalances in wealth and access to economic opportunities, including public-sector jobs. The 2015 Protection against Domestic Violence Act criminalized a range of abuses including forced marriage, spousal rape, and female genital mutilation. However, rape and domestic violence reportedly remain common and are rarely prosecuted. Customary law often trumps statutory law, leaving women with few remedies for discriminatory customary practices. Underage marriage is illegal but still occurs. Women face disparities in education and are underrepresented in politics and government. The constitution calls for all elected and appointed state institutions to have no more than two-thirds of their members from the same gender, but institutions that continued to fall short of that standard in 2016 included the cabinet and both houses of Parliament. Refugees and asylum seekers from neighboring countries, particularly children, have been vulnerable to sex trafficking and forced labor in Kenya, though Kenyan children are also subject to such abuses. Kenyan workers are recruited for employment abroad in sometimes exploitative conditions, particularly in the Middle East. Copyright notice: Freedom House, Inc. All Rights Reserved Freedom in the World 2017 - Kazakhstan Publisher Freedom House Publication Date 12 July 2017 Cite as Freedom House, Freedom in the World 2017 - Kazakhstan, 12 July 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/59831e90a.html [accessed 13 November 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States. Freedom Status: Not Free Aggregate Score: 22/100 (0 = Least Free, 100 = Most Free) Freedom Rating: 6.0/7 (1 = Most Free, 7 = Least Free) Political Rights: 7/7 (1 = Most Free, 7 = Least Free) Civil Liberties: 5/7 (1 = Most Free, 7 = Least Free) Quick Facts Population: 17,800,000 Capital: Astana GDP/capita: $10,510 Press Freedom Status: Not Free Net Freedom Status: Not Free Kazakhstan's political rights rating declined from 6 to 7 due to voters' lack of access to any genuine political choice and the continuation of efforts by the government to stifle opportunities for opposition groups. OVERVIEW Kazakhstan has been ruled by President Nursultan Nazarbayev, the former first secretary of its branch of the Soviet-era Communist Party, since independence in 1991. While there are regular parliamentary and presidential elections, none to date have been considered free or fair by reputable international observers, and all major parties exhibit political loyalty to the president. The authorities have consistently marginalized or imprisoned genuine opposition figures. The media are either in state hands or owned by government-friendly businessmen. Freedoms of speech and assembly remain restricted, criticism of Nazarbayev is not permitted, and corruption is endemic. Key Developments in 2016: In March, early elections were held for the lower house of Parliament. Nazarbayev's Nur Otan party secured an overwhelming majority of seats in a process that did not meet international democratic standards. In April and May, thousands of people across Kazakhstan protested against a proposed reform of the land code that would allow long-term leases for foreigners. While there was no major violence against demonstrators, the authorities sought to curb the protests by blocking roads and detaining activists and organizers. Opposition leader Vladimir Kozlov was released early from prison in August, having been sentenced to seven and a half years in 2012 for his alleged involvement in inciting social unrest in Zhanaozen in 2011. Executive Summary: In March 2016, President Nazarbayev's Nur Otan party won a lopsided victory in early parliamentary elections, capturing 84 of the lower house's 98 directly elected seats one more than in 2012. Two other parties that are generally loyal to the president, Ak Zhol and the Communist People's Party, each secured 7 seats. The elections took place against a backdrop of low prices for the country's oil and gas exports, which have slowed economic growth and forced devaluations of the national currency. Protests took place in several cities across the country in April and May in response to proposed reforms of the land code that would allow foreign entities to lease agricultural land for up to 25 years, rather than the current maximum of 10 years. The authorities generally did not use direct violence to suppress the demonstrations, but hundreds of organizers and participants were arrested, in many cases preemptively, and some 50 journalists were also detained as they attempted to report on the events. While most were quickly released, two leading activists were eventually sentenced to five years in prison in November on charges including incitement of social discord, and others faced lesser penalties. Police also physically blocked access to planned protest areas, used social media monitoring to identify and intimidate organizers, and apparently disrupted access to some social media applications at crucial times. In light of the opposition to the proposed reform, Nazarbayev postponed the plan by five years and set up a commission to review the matter. In June, a group of up to 26 suspected Islamist militants attacked weapons shops and security installations in the city of Aktobe. At least 25 people were killed, including 18 attackers. A gunman later struck a police station in Almaty in July, killing eight police officers and two civilians. The government has sought to prevent Islamist violence in part by exerting tight control over religious groups and materials that it deems "extremist" or "nontraditional," though such restrictions extend to nonviolent Muslim and Christian groups as well. Nazarbayev undertook a major government shuffle in September. Long-serving prime minister Karim Masimov was transferred to lead the National Security Committee (KNB) and replaced in the premiership by Deputy Prime Minister Bakytzhan Sagintayev. Nazarbayev's daughter, Dariga Nazarbayeva, was removed from her position as deputy prime minister and appointed to a seat in the Senate. Also during the year, the authorities continued to arrest and prosecute journalists and social media users on a range of criminal charges. In one high-profile example, Seytkazy Matayev, the head of the Kazakh Union of Journalists and chair of the National Press Club, and his son Aset Matayev, director of the independent news agency KazTag, were detained in February on fraud and embezzlement charges. Observers speculated on possible political or corrupt motivations behind the prosecution; both defendants had complained of recent government harassment and said the case was an effort to suppress their work. Matayev and his son were found guilty in October and sentenced to six and five years in prison, respectively. The government remained sensitive to the perceived threat of Russian nationalism. In January, authorities arrested Shymkent-based businessman Tokhtar Tuleshov, who was known for his close Russian ties. He was sentenced in November to 21 years in prison for alleged extremism, possession of illegal weapons, and plotting to overthrow the government. He also faced a separate trial on charges that he had financed that year's land code protests. Explanatory Note: This country report has been abridged for Freedom in the World 2017. For background information on political rights and civil liberties in Kazakhstan, see Freedom in the World 2016. Copyright notice: Freedom House, Inc. All Rights Reserved Freedom in the World 2017 - Ireland Publisher Freedom House Publication Date 12 July 2017 Cite as Freedom House, Freedom in the World 2017 - Ireland, 12 July 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/59831e92a.html [accessed 13 November 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States. Freedom Status: Free Aggregate Score: 96/100 (0 = Least Free, 100 = Most Free) Freedom Rating: 1.0/7 (1 = Most Free, 7 = Least Free) Political Rights: 1/7 (1 = Most Free, 7 = Least Free) Civil Liberties: 1/7 (1 = Most Free, 7 = Least Free) Quick Facts Population: 4,700,000 Capital: Dublin GDP/capita: $61,134 Press Freedom Status: Free OVERVIEW Ireland is a stable democracy that holds regular free and fair elections. Political rights and civil liberties are robust, although the government suffers from some incidence of corruption. While the Catholic Church maintains a strong influence and abortion rights remain restricted, members of all religious groups may practice freely and same-sex marriage is legal. There is some limited societal discrimination, especially against the traditionally nomadic Irish Travellers. Key Developments in 2016: General elections took place on February 26. Fine Gael remained the largest party, but with far fewer seats than in the 2011 general election, while Fianna Fail more than doubled its share of the vote. Sinn Fein came in third. After protracted postelection negotiations lasting 63 days, Fine Gael joined Fianna Fail in a minority-led government. In September, a large prochoice demonstration took place in Dublin calling for repeal of the eighth amendment of the constitution that gives equal rights to the life of the mother and the unborn; the law remained unchanged at year's end. Executive Summary: Ireland is a stable and robust democracy. As in the past, 2016 national elections saw no major irregularities or unequal campaigning opportunities. Free expression and association as well as the functioning of the judiciary are unhampered. Among its European peers, Ireland is most distinguished by its strict abortion laws protected by the constitution. However, the population is more socially liberal, as evidenced by a 2015 referendum that approved the extension of marriage rights to same-sex couples and resulted in a constitutional amendment. Ireland also has relatively high levels of governmental corruption compared to its neighbors, marked by cronyism, political patronage, and illegal donations. Societal discrimination against the small Irish Traveller population remains, particularly in housing and employment. Only in 2015 did the parliament pass legislation to curtail an exemption that allowed health and educational institutions run by religious entities to practice employment discrimination on religious grounds, for example on the basis of sexual orientation. Unusually severe prison conditions were highlighted by a 2015 Council of Europe report that criticized the continued lack of toilet access in some cells; the government has taken steps to address this. Explanatory Note: This country report has been abridged for Freedom in the World 2017. For background information on political rights and civil liberties in Ireland, see Freedom in the World 2016. Copyright notice: Freedom House, Inc. All Rights Reserved Freedom in the World 2017 - Honduras Publisher Freedom House Publication Date 12 July 2017 Cite as Freedom House, Freedom in the World 2017 - Honduras, 12 July 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/59831e94a.html [accessed 13 November 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States. Freedom Status: Partly Free Aggregate Score: 46/100 (0 = Least Free, 100 = Most Free) Freedom Rating: 4.0/7 (1 = Most Free, 7 = Least Free) Political Rights: 4/7 (1 = Most Free, 7 = Least Free) Civil Liberties: 4/7 (1 = Most Free, 7 = Least Free) Quick Facts Population: 8,200,000 Capital: Tegucigalpa GDP/capita: $2,529 Press Freedom Status: Not Free OVERVIEW Honduras is a multiparty democracy, but institutional weakness, corruption, violence, and impunity undermine its stability. Journalists, human rights defenders, and political activists face significant threats, including harassment, surveillance, detention, and murder. Though it has fallen in recent years, Honduras's murder rate remains among the highest per capita in the world. Key Developments in 2016: In March, internationally recognized rights activist Berta Caceres was murdered in her home after campaigning against the construction of a dam on indigenous lands. In April, leaked documents revealed that high-ranking police officials had been involved in the 2009 killing of Honduras's top antidrug official, and in the murder of his deputy two years later. Major reforms to the national police force followed the revelations. The Mission to Support the Fight against Corruption and Impunity in Honduras (MACCIH), a body established in a 2015 agreement between the Honduran government and the Organization of American States (OAS), began work in April. In August, Congress rejected an opposition-backed initiative to hold a plebiscite on a controversial 2015 Supreme Court decision to allow presidential reelection. In November, President Juan Orlando Hernandez announced he would seek a second term. Executive Summary: The March 2016 murder of Caceres, a high-profile rights activist, and the revelation in April that top police officials had been involved in the past murders of two top antidrug officials, drew renewed international attention to pervasive violence, corruption, and impunity in Honduras. The country is among the most dangerous in the world for rights activists to operate, and its per capita murder rate is among the world's highest. Attacks generally go unpunished, leaving a pervasive climate of impunity. In response to the revelations of high-level police officials' involvement in the murders of the antidrug officials, a Special Commission for the Purging and Reform of the National Police was formed in April 2016. During the year it conducted investigations and instituted various organizational changes to the police force, including the discharge of more than 1,000 police officials. In response to national and international pressure over a scandal involving the misappropriation of social security funds, the Hernandez government in 2015 signed an agreement with the OAS to create MACCIH, which began operating in April 2016. During the year, the body investigated the social security scandal, and helped to develop a party financing law and a new court system for corruption cases. In August, Congress rejected an opposition-backed initiative to hold a plebiscite on a controversial 2015 Supreme Court decision to allow presidential reelection. Opponents of the ruling say the Supreme Court lacked the authority to overturn the article of the constitution that banned presidents from running for a second term. In November, amid the controversy, President Hernandez announced that he would run for a second term in 2017. POLITICAL RIGHTS AND CIVIL LIBERTIES Political Rights 19 / 40 A. Electoral Process 7 / 12 A1. Is the head of government or other chief national authority elected through free and fair elections? A2. Are the national legislative representatives elected through free and fair elections? A3. Are the electoral laws and framework fair? The president is elected by popular vote for a four-year term. The leading candidate is only required to win a plurality; there is no runoff system. In a controversial 2015 decision, the Honduran Supreme Court voided Article 239 of the constitution, which had limited presidents to one term; the development exacerbated existing political polarization and the opposition attempted unsuccessfully to reverse the move in 2016. In November, the president announced plans to run for a second term. Members of the 128-seat, unicameral National Congress are elected for four-year terms using proportional representation by department. Election observers noted a number of irregularities in the 2013 general elections, including the harassment of international observers by immigration officials, vote buying, problems with voter rolls, and potential fraud in the transmission of tally sheets to the country's electoral body, the Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE). More than a dozen opposition activists and candidates were murdered during the campaigning period. The TSE conducted a partial recount, but ultimately certified Hernandez's victory. OAS monitors found that the TSE did not have clear rules for processing candidate registration applications and along with European Union monitors also noted inconsistencies in the development of voter lists. The OAS also found that campaign finance laws in Honduras were not stringent enough to ensure fair and transparent elections. B. Political Pluralism and Participation 8 / 16 (-1) B1. Do the people have the right to organize in different political parties or other competitive political groupings of their choice, and is the system open to the rise and fall of these competing parties or groupings? B2. Is there a significant opposition vote and a realistic opportunity for the opposition to increase its support or gain power through elections? B3. Are the people's political choices free from domination by the military, foreign powers, totalitarian parties, religious hierarchies, economic oligarchies, or any other powerful group? B4. Do cultural, ethnic, religious, or other minority groups have full political rights and electoral opportunities? Political parties are largely free to operate, though power has mostly been concentrated in the hands of the Liberal Party (PL) and the National Party (PN) since the early 1980s. In 2013, Liberation and Refoundation Party (LIBRE), the Anti-Corruption Party (PAC), and the Patriotic Alliance Party (ALIANZA) all participated in elections for the first time, winning a significant share of the vote and disrupting the dominance of the PL and the PN. The military, after decades of ruling Honduras, remains politically powerful. President Hernandez's appointments of military officials to civilian posts, many related to security, have underscored that influence. In August 2016, Congress rejected an opposition-backed initiative to hold a plebiscite on the Supreme Court's 2015 decision to allow presidential reelection, with opponents of the ruling saying that the Supreme Court did not have the authority to overturn the relevant article of the constitution. This rejection has exacerbated a constitutional crisis that began with the 2009 coup against Mario Zelaya, who was ousted when he had attempted to eliminate term limits through constitutional reforms. President Hernandez is running for a second term in 2017; police broke up some demonstrations against the constitutional changes and his reelection campaign in 2016. Minorities are underrepresented in Honduras's political system. Following the 2013 elections, 33 of 128 seats in Congress were held by women; only 22 of 298 mayoralties were held by women. No representatives of the Afro-Honduran (Garifuna) population were elected to Congress in 2013; one English-speaking Afro-Honduran and one Miskito person won seats. No election materials were printed in indigenous languages. In 2014, the Ministry for Indigenous Peoples and Afro-Hondurans was folded into the Ministry of Development and Social Inclusion, a move criticized by indigenous rights activists. C. Functioning of Government 4 / 12 (+1) C1. Do the freely elected head of government and national legislative representatives determine the policies of the government? C2. Is the government free from pervasive corruption? C3. Is the government accountable to the electorate between elections, and does it operate with openness and transparency? In 2014, the Hernandez administration eliminated five cabinet-level ministries and created seven umbrella ministries in an effort to cut costs. Critics have argued that the restructuring concentrated power in too few hands. Corruption remains a serious problem. In 2016, nine mayors were arrested for a variety of crimes, including homicide, drug trafficking, and money laundering, although two were later exonerated. As of October 2016, over thirty mayors, congressmen, judges, military officials, and police officers were under investigation for links to organized crime. A scandal involving top officials with the Honduran Institute of Social Security (IHSS) in the misappropriation of more than $300 million in public funds broke in 2015. Later that year, Hernandez admitted that his 2013 election campaign had accepted funds linked to companies implicated in the scandal, though he denied knowledge of any wrongdoing. In October 2015, the Hernandez government signed an agreement with the OAS to create the MACCIH, which began operating in April 2016 and has since begun investigating the social security scandal. It also helped develop a party financing law that was approved in October, and assisted in the establishment of a new court system for corruption cases. However, local human rights and anti-impunity groups have expressed disappointment with MACCIH's mandate, saying its powers are limited. The Law on Classification of Public Documents Related to Security and National Defense, a 2014 statute allowing the government to withhold information on those topics for up to 25 years, continued to undermine transparency. The law covers information regarding the military police budget, which is funded by a security tax. Civil Liberties 27 / 60 (+1) D. Freedom of Expression and Belief 9 / 16 D1. Are there free and independent media and other forms of cultural expression? D2. Are religious institutions and communities free to practice their faith and express themselves in public and private? D3. Is there academic freedom, and is the educational system free of extensive political indoctrination? D4. Is there open and free private discussion? Authorities systematically violate the constitution's press freedom guarantees. Reporters and outlets covering sensitive topics or who are perceived as critical of authorities risk assaults, threats, blocked transmissions, and harassment. In August 2016, television reporter Ariel Armando D'Vicente was convicted of criminal defamation and sentenced to three years in prison, and banned from practicing journalism for three years; the charges were filed in connection with his reporting on police involvement with criminal groups. In May, Honduran journalist Felix Molina was shot in a taxi in Tegucigalpa, the country's capital; the attack, from which he recovered, took place not long after he had published an article on the murder of indigenous rights leader Berta Caceres. A 2015 law to protect journalists, human rights defenders, and administrators of justice took effect in 2016 following a lengthy process to establish its internal regulations. Feedback on the performance of the mechanism created by the law to protect these at-risk populations has been mixed, and it continues to face budgetary and staffing challenges. Most attacks against journalists go unprosecuted, creating a climate of impunity that encourages self-censorship. Freedom of religion is broadly respected. Academic freedom is threatened as educators are subject to extortion by gang members, who control all or parts of schools in some areas. In 2016, members of a student movement demanding participation in university governance and protesting privatization of public education claimed that authorities were improperly suppressing their demonstrations. Access to the internet use is generally unrestricted. However, under the Special Law on Interception of Private Communications, passed in 2011, the government can intercept online and telephone messages. Violence, threats, and intimidation by state and nonstate actors curtails open and free private discussion among the general population. E. Associational and Organizational Rights 5 / 12 E1. Is there freedom of assembly, demonstration, and open public discussion? E2. Is there freedom for nongovernmental organizations? E3. Are there free trade unions and peasant organizations or equivalents, and is there effective collective bargaining? Are there free professional and other private organizations? Constitutional guarantees of freedoms of assembly and association are not consistently upheld. Human rights defenders and political activists continued to face significant threats in 2016, including harassment, surveillance, detention, and murder. In March 2016, prominent indigenous rights leader Berta Caceres was shot to death in her home, after receiving more than 30 death threats connected to her opposition of a dam project on indigenous lands. Months later, a former Honduran soldier told Britain's Guardian newspaper that Caceres's name had been included on a Honduran military hit list. Six people were arrested in connection with her murder, including people associated with the construction company behind the dam, Desarollos Energeticos S.A. (DESA), as well as two active military members and one retired military officer. Case files for Caceres's murder were stolen from the car of a judge involved in the case in September 2016, casting suspicion on the investigation. Assaults, threats, and intimidation against environmental activists, particularly members of Caceres's organization, increased after her murder. In October, Amnesty International named Honduras a "no-go zone" for human rights defenders. International bodies have noted that the registration process for nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) has become overly complicated; some NGOs have suggested that the moves are intended to silence criticism. Labor unions are well organized and can strike, though labor actions often result in clashes with security forces. Threats, surveillance and attacks against union leaders and blacklisting of employees who sought to form unions remained problems in 2016. F. Rule of Law 5 / 16 (+1) F1. Is there an independent judiciary? F2. Does the rule of law prevail in civil and criminal matters? Are police under direct civilian control? F3. Is there protection from political terror, unjustified imprisonment, exile, or torture, whether by groups that support or oppose the system? Is there freedom from war and insurgencies? F4. Do laws, policies, and practices guarantee equal treatment of various segments of the population? Political and business elites exert excessive influence over the Honduran judiciary, including the Supreme Court. Judicial appointments are made with little transparency. Judges have been removed from their posts for political reasons, and a number of legal professionals have been killed in recent years. Prosecutors and whistleblowers handling corruption cases are often subject to threats of violence. In a controversial move in 2012, Congress voted to remove four of the five justices in the Supreme Court's constitutional chamber after they ruled a police reform law unconstitutional. In 2013, the legislature granted itself the power to remove from office the president, Supreme Court justices, legislators, and other officials. It also curtailed the power of the Supreme Court's constitutional chamber and revoked the right of citizens to challenge the constitutionality of laws. The government continued to rely on the armed forces to fight crime in 2016, and critics contend that too much power is concentrated in the hands of the military. Army officers have been found guilty of involvement in drug trafficking and other crimes. An increase in reported abuses, including murder, illegal detention, and torture has accompanied the militarization of domestic policing. Private security guards have also committed abuses. The police force is highly corrupt, and officers engage in criminal activities including drug trafficking and extortion. In September 2016, an internal police investigation revealed that 81 police officers, among them high-ranking officials, had been working for a gang and that some were involved in mass killings of civilians. In April, the media publicized leaked documents showing that high-level officials within the National Police had been involved in the 2009 murder of Honduras's top antidrug official, Julian Aristides Gonzalez, and in the 2011 murder of Gonzalez's top adviser. Internal police investigations into both crimes had concluded that the officials were involved in both murders, but the results were only made public after being leaked. Soon after, a Special Commission for the Purging and Reform of the National Police was formed. As of November 2016, hundreds of officials had been dismissed. Other proposed changes to the police system include modifying training procedures, eliminating redundant positions, and implementing a new organizational structure to increase transparency and create specific and functional roles within the police force. While the murder rate in Honduras has declined in recent years, it continues to be one of the highest in the world at approximately 58.83 murders per 100,000 inhabitants in 2016, according to police. Impunity is a serious problem in Honduras. Many crimes committed in Honduras are never reported, and police investigate only a small percentage percent of those that are. A new maximum security prison opened in 2016, marking an initial step toward a planned redesign of the country's correctional system, but prison conditions are generally harsh, with overcrowding of up to 200 percent, lengthy pretrial detention, and rampant inmate violence that generally goes unpunished. Prosecutors say protection for witnesses in criminal cases is insufficient. Although there is an official human rights ombudsman, critics claim that the work of the office is politicized. Discrimination against the indigenous and Garifuna populations is widespread. Both groups experience high rates of poverty and socioeconomic exclusion. The LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender) community faces discrimination, harassment, and physical threats. A 2005 constitutional amendment prohibits same-sex marriage and same-sex adoption. Rights groups have reported the violent deaths of over 200 LGBT activists and individuals between 2009 and 2016. G. Personal Autonomy and Individual Rights 8 / 16 G1. Do individuals enjoy freedom of travel or choice of residence, employment, or institution of higher education? G2. Do individuals have the right to own property and establish private businesses? Is private business activity unduly influenced by government officials, the security forces, political parties/organizations, or organized crime? G3. Are there personal social freedoms, including gender equality, choice of marriage partners, and size of family? G4. Is there equality of opportunity and the absence of economic exploitation? Honduras's ongoing violence and impunity have reduced personal autonomy for people in Honduras. Hondurans living in particularly violent neighborhoods have been forced to abandon their homes and businesses. Children have been fleeing the country to avoid forced recruitment into gangs. Corruption remains a serious problem in the private sector. The conflict between indigenous groups, authorities, and private actors persisted in 2016, with clashes among peasants, landowners' private security forces, and state forces. Indigenous and Garifuna residents have faced various abuses at the hands of property developers and their allies, including corrupt titling processes, acts of violence, forcible eviction and unfair compensation for expropriated land. The clearing of land for clandestine airstrips used in the drug trade has increased pressure on indigenous groups in remote areas of the country. Violence against women is a serious problem, and femicide has risen dramatically in recent years. Many of these murders, like most homicides in Honduras, go unpunished, even as femicide was added as a crime to the penal code in 2013. Women remain vulnerable to exploitation by employers, particularly in the low-wage maquiladora (assembly plant) export sector. Child labor is a problem in rural areas and in the informal economy. Honduras is primarily a source country for human trafficking, and women and children are particularly vulnerable to being trafficked for the sex trade and forced labor. Domestically, gangs have forced Hondurans to traffic drugs, perform sex work, and carry out violent acts. Police and government officials have been implicated in protecting sex trafficking rings and paying for sex acts. Copyright notice: Freedom House, Inc. All Rights Reserved By Reuters: Oscar Pistorius, the South African Paralympic gold medallist serving a six-year jail term for murdering his girlfriend, was taken to hospital on Thursday, a prison service spokesman said. The prison service provided no details of Pistorius's illness, but a spokesman, Logan Maistry, said he would be kept in hospital overnight for observation. He said he could not comment on a report by the Citizen website that Pistorius suffered chest pains and prison staff suspected a heart attack. advertisement "I am not aware of (that report) or what he suffered from," Maistry said. "What I am aware of is that he was this morning taken to an outside hospital for a medical examination ... " Last August, Pistorius denied trying to kill himself after he was treated in hospital for wrist injuries. The athlete was sentenced to six years in prison in July last year after being found guilty of murdering his girlfriend, Reeva Steenkamp, on Valentine's Day 2013. He reached the pinnacle of his fame in 2012 when he became the first double amputee to run in the Olympics, making the 400 metres semi-finals in London before taking two golds in the Paralympics. Pistorius' family spokeswoman was not immediately available to comment. --- ENDS --- Freedom in the World 2017 - Haiti Publisher Freedom House Publication Date 12 July 2017 Cite as Freedom House, Freedom in the World 2017 - Haiti, 12 July 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/59831e95a.html [accessed 13 November 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States. Freedom Status: Partly Free Aggregate Score: 39/100 (0 = Least Free, 100 = Most Free) Freedom Rating: 5.0/7 (1 = Most Free, 7 = Least Free) Political Rights: 5/7 (1 = Most Free, 7 = Least Free) Civil Liberties: 5/7 (1 = Most Free, 7 = Least Free) Quick Facts Population: 11,100,000 Capital: Port-au-Prince GDP/capita: $818 Press Freedom Status: Partly Free OVERVIEW Weak institutions and corruption hinder the capacities of the Haitian government, and international actors wield significant influence in the country. Haiti continues to recover from devastating hurricanes that damaged crops and infrastructure, displaced thousands, and inflicted widespread hardship. Key Developments in 2016: Jovenel Moise, the preferred candidate of former president Michel Martelly, won a November rerun of the previous year's flawed presidential election. But because an electoral tribunal had not formally verified the vote by year's end, interim president Jocelerme Privert remained in office. In January, most members of the legislature were sworn in, despite serious questions about the legitimacy of the 2015 legislative polls. Hurricane Matthew struck the country in October, killing some 500 people, displacing thousands, and inflicting widespread hardship. Executive Summary: President Michel Martelly's term ended in February 2016, but due to the postponement of the second round of the 2015 presidential election, there was no successor to assume office. The National Assembly (a joint session of parliament) subsequently elected the National Assembly president, Senator Jocelerme Privert, to serve as interim president, and he was sworn in with a mandate to restore confidence in the electoral process within 120 days. When Privert's mandate expired in June, opposition parliamentarians refused to meet the quorum necessary to extend it or propose a replacement, leaving Privert in office. A rerun of the 2015 presidential election took place in November, with Moise, Martelly's handpicked successor, winning 55.6 percent of the vote, according to provisional results. The election, which saw voter turnout of only 21 percent, was considered an improvement compared to the 2015 polls but was nonetheless contested. Privert remained in office at year's end, because an electoral tribunal tasked with assessing claims of fraud in the November poll had not yet issued a ruling. Though the 2015 legislative elections were widely considered fraudulent, the majority of parliament took office in January 2016. Despite a constitutional guarantee of 30 percent female representation in public offices, only 3 women sit in the 118-seat Chamber of Deputies. Hurricane Matthew caused significant damage in October, killing more than 500 people, displacing some 175,000, and inflicting widespread hardship. Matthew destroyed crops across the region, resulting in a sharp increase in food prices and pushing some 800,000 people into severe food insecurity, according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. POLITICAL RIGHTS AND CIVIL LIBERTIES Political Rights 15 / 40 (-2) A. Electoral Process 3 / 12 (-1) A1. Is the head of government or other chief national authority elected through free and fair elections? A2. Are the national legislative representatives elected through free and fair elections? A3. Are the electoral laws and framework fair? Haiti's constitution provides for a president elected for a five-year term, a parliament composed of a Senate, whose 30 members serve six-year terms, and a Chamber of Deputies whose 118 members serve four-year terms. The prime minister is appointed by the president and approved by the parliament. According to the constitution, a National Assembly, or joint session of parliament, may be called under certain circumstances. A number of electoral councils appointed by President Martelly did not meet constitutional requirements and did not receive parliamentary approval; that, combined with pushback from the opposition, delayed 2011 and 2013 midterm elections. By January 2015, the terms of two-thirds of the Senate, all members of the Chamber of Deputies, and all mayors had expired. The vacancies allowed the executive branch to govern with little legislative supervision. The United States, United Nations, and Organization of American States (OAS) all provided significant support for long-awaited presidential, legislative, and local elections held in 2015. The elections were rife with disorder, fraud, and violence, and were marked by very low voter turnout. A network of Haitian observers labeled the vote "an affront to democratic standards," and considered the irregularities serious enough to jeopardize the legitimacy of the legislature. No party won a parliamentary majority. The Haitian Tet Kale Party (PHTK), which supports Martelly, took 26 seats in the Chamber of Deputies and was aided by an additional 15 won by three of its allies. The Verite (Truth) party won 13 seats, and smaller parties divided the remainder. Of the contested seats in the Senate, PHTK ally Konvansyon Inite Demokratik (KID) and Verite won 3 seats each, PHTK won 2 seats, and 4 smaller parties captured 1 seat each. Despite concerns about the election's credibility, 92 parliamentarians took office in January 2016. The presidential runoff election was postponed until January 2016, but amid growing calls for an investigation into possible fraud in the first round of presidential voting, it was then postponed indefinitely. At the end of Martelly's term in February, Privert was elected interim president by the National Assembly and sworn in with a mandate to restore confidence in the electoral process within 120 days. Meanwhile, based on the recommendations of two official commissions that investigated claims of fraud, a new electoral council agreed to rerun the presidential election in October. In response, the European Union (EU) withdrew its electoral observation mission and the United States withdrew its electoral funding. Haiti pledged to fund the elections itself. The election was postponed after Hurricane Matthew struck in early October. When it was held in November, Moise, a businessman who belonged to the PHTK, came in first in the provisional results with 55.6 percent of the vote, followed by Jude Celestin of the Alternative League for the Progress and Emancipation of Haiti (LAPEH) with 19.5 percent. Turnout for the poll was again very low, at 21 percent, and various allegations of fraud followed. Logistical hurdles, inconsistent electoral lists, and inaccessibility of voting centers, especially in flooded, hurricane-affected areas, prevented some people from voting. Nevertheless, the election was generally considered an improvement over the previous year's. At year's end, verification of final election results by a tribunal was still pending, and Privert remained in office. B. Political Pluralism and Participation 8 / 16 B1. Do the people have the right to organize in different political parties or other competitive political groupings of their choice, and is the system open to the rise and fall of these competing parties or groupings? B2. Is there a significant opposition vote and a realistic opportunity for the opposition to increase its support or gain power through elections? B3. Are the people's political choices free from domination by the military, foreign powers, totalitarian parties, religious hierarchies, economic oligarchies, or any other powerful group? B4. Do cultural, ethnic, religious, or other minority groups have full political rights and electoral opportunities? Political parties generally do not face legal or administrative barriers to registering or running in elections. Notwithstanding improvements in recent years, the electoral system appears to favor the preferences of incumbent powers. The number of members required to form a political party was decreased from 500 to 20 in 2014, leading to a proliferation of new groups, many of which were suspected to be formed in order to aid Martelly and his allies. The electoral council and Haitian police failed to punish perpetrators of the 2015 electoral fraud and violence. A Haitian observer mission concluded that the PHTK had been the most aggressive in committing fraud and acts of election-related violence. Haitians' political choices are free from domination by domestic military powers and religious hierarchies. However, weak state capacity and corruption hinder the state from effectively asserting a central role in development, and international actors wield significant influence. The Haitian army was disbanded in 1995, but the UN Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH) has been in the country since 2004. Bringing thousands of foreign military and police personnel to Haiti, MINUSTAH is perceived as an occupying force by many Haitians. MINUSTAH's mission was extended for six months in October 2016. C. Functioning of Government 4 / 12 (-1) C1. Do the freely elected head of government and national legislative representatives determine the policies of the government? C2. Is the government free from pervasive corruption? C3. Is the government accountable to the electorate between elections, and does it operate with openness and transparency? An interim president, election chaos, and corruption allegations impaired governance in 2016. When Privert's 120-day mandate expired in June, opposition parliamentarians refused to meet the quorum necessary to extend his mandate or propose a replacement, leaving Privert in office. He remained in office at year's end, after the year's presidential election, because Moise's victory had yet to be formally verified. Corruption is a serious problem. In 2016, the corruption investigation against Nonie Mathieu, a former president of the Superior Court of Auditors and Administrative Disputes (CSC/CA), Haiti's government watchdog of public funds, for allegedly misappropriating hundreds of thousands of dollars, advanced. In August, a Senate anticorruption commission headed by Senator Youri Latortue, who is himself suspected of corruption, recommended she be prosecuted. The Haitian government and civil society organizations reduced the number of possible fatalities from Hurricane Matthew through prior warnings and evacuations, but the efforts, according to observers, were inadequate and not systemic. In the aftermath of the hurricane, there were reports that efforts of local government authorities had not been coordinated, and that local mayors had hoarded emergency aid supplies to distribute to their followers. Civil Liberties 24 / 60 D. Freedom of Expression and Belief 10 / 16 D1. Are there free and independent media and other forms of cultural expression? D2. Are religious institutions and communities free to practice their faith and express themselves in public and private? D3. Is there academic freedom, and is the educational system free of extensive political indoctrination? D4. Is there open and free private discussion? The constitution guarantees freedom of expression, but press freedom is constrained by the feeble judiciary and the inability of police to adequately protect journalists from threats and violence. Media and other observers have expressed concern about government interference with freedom of the press. Martelly, a former pop music star, released a sexually suggestive song for Haiti's annual carnival in February 2016 that belittled Liliane Pierre-Paul, a radio reporter and human rights activist, using crude language. Separately, in June, the television station Tele Pluriel was attacked by assailants armed with automatic weapons, in an incident thought to be election related. With a literacy rate of 60 percent and little print or online news material in Haitian Creole, radio remains the main source of information. The government generally respects religious and academic freedoms. Haitians are generally free to engage in private political discussions while in public. The government is not known to block websites or illegally monitor private online communications. E. Associational and Organizational Rights 4 / 12 E1. Is there freedom of assembly, demonstration, and open public discussion? E2. Is there freedom for nongovernmental organizations? E3. Are there free trade unions and peasant organizations or equivalents, and is there effective collective bargaining? Are there free professional and other private organizations? The 1987 constitution guarantees freedoms of assembly and association, though these freedoms are often violated in practice. Antigovernment demonstrations in response to electoral fraud became violent in January and November 2016, with reports of violence committed by police. Activists with nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) that confront sensitive topics risk threats and violence. Activist Davidtchen Simeon, of the leftist Movement of Liberty, Equality of the Haitians for Fraternity (MOLEGHAF), which opposes MINUSTAH, was shot to death in August 2016 by a group of armed men that witnesses said included police officers. MOLEGHAF leader David Oxygene later reported being threatened by one of the officers accused of involvement in Simeon's killing. Pierre Esperance, director of the human rights organization the National Network for the Defense of Human Rights (RNDDH), received an envelope containing a bullet and a note threatening him and his family in December. The ability to unionize is protected under the law, though the union movement in Haiti is weak and lacks collective bargaining power. Workers frequently face harassment and other repercussions for organizing. A five-month strike at the state's general hospital in Port-au-Prince to contest the working conditions of medical staff and the lack of medical supplies ended in September 2016. F. Rule of Law 4 / 16 F1. Is there an independent judiciary? F2. Does the rule of law prevail in civil and criminal matters? Are police under direct civilian control? F3. Is there protection from political terror, unjustified imprisonment, exile, or torture, whether by groups that support or oppose the system? Is there freedom from war and insurgencies? F4. Do laws, policies, and practices guarantee equal treatment of various segments of the population? The judicial system is under resourced and inefficient, and is burdened by a large backlog of cases, underpaid staff, outdated legal codes, and poor facilities. Bribery common at all levels of the judicial system. Official court business is conducted primarily in French, rendering proceedings only marginally comprehensible to many of those involved. Police are regularly accused of abusing suspects and detainees. Haitian law guarantees a hearing within 48 hours after arrest, yet much of the prison population is in prolonged pretrial detention, including most minors and women held in the system. In September 2016, interim president Privert created a nine-member commission to analyze the problem of extended pretrial detention. The prison system is severely overcrowded. In October, more than 170 prisoners escaped the Arcahaie prison in northern Haiti; only 10 were reportedly recaptured. Considerable discrimination exists against people with disabilities. Three deaf women were murdered in March 2016 in what appeared to be a hate crime. Three people had been arrested for the crime by mid-year. Discrimination against women and LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender) individuals is pervasive within the legal system and in broader society. In September 2016, organizers of an LGBT art event received death threats. The event was canceled by the Port-au-Prince authorities and publicly condemned by Senator Jean Renel Senatus, who stated that the festival promoted values that were contrary to Haiti's social and cultural morals. Spousal rape, sexual harassment, and discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation are not criminalized. G. Personal Autonomy and Individual Rights 6 / 16 G1. Do individuals enjoy freedom of travel or choice of residence, employment, or institution of higher education? G2. Do individuals have the right to own property and establish private businesses? Is private business activity unduly influenced by government officials, the security forces, political parties/organizations, or organized crime? G3. Are there personal social freedoms, including gender equality, choice of marriage partners, and size of family? G4. Is there equality of opportunity and the absence of economic exploitation? The neighboring Dominican Republic has begun to enforce laws that prevent people of Haitian descent from exercising their political and civil rights. In response, tens of thousands of people of Haitian origin, including many unaccompanied minors, have been repatriated from Dominican Republic, or have entered Haiti for fear of staying. Additionally, in September 2016, the United States announced that it would begin deporting Haitians who had been in the country since a devastating 2010 earthquake; the deportations were temporarily put on hold after Hurricane Matthew struck but commenced in November. Haitian officials offer few services and resources to returnees, who often struggle to survive, given the country's 60 percent unemployment rate and broader lack of government services. At the end of 2016, 46,691 persons displaced by the 2010 earthquake still lived in makeshift camps around Port-au-Prince. In addition, in November, some 14,000 people displaced by Hurricane Matthew were living in shelters. Difficulty registering property, enforcing contracts, and getting credit led to Haiti being ranked 181 out of 190 by the World Bank's Ease of Doing Business Report. Spotty record keeping and corruption result in severe inconsistencies in property-rights enforcement; those with political and economic connections frequently rely on extrajudicial means of enforcement. The government generally respects freedom of movement and the rights of individuals to choose their own employment, education, and residence. Although the government does not restrict these activities, freedom to engage in them highly depends on economic means. Economic insecurity is a main contributor to Haitians' inability to enforce their individual rights. Sixty percent of Haitians earn the equivalent of one dollar a day or less. Almost half of Haiti's children do not attend school. According to the U.S. State Department's 2016 Trafficking in Persons Report, Haiti is a source, transit, and destination country for the trafficking of men, women, and children for the purposes of forced labor and sexual exploitation. Copyright notice: Freedom House, Inc. All Rights Reserved Freedom in the World 2017 - Guinea Publisher Freedom House Publication Date 12 July 2017 Cite as Freedom House, Freedom in the World 2017 - Guinea, 12 July 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/59831e96a.html [accessed 13 November 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States. Freedom Status: Partly Free Aggregate Score: 41/100 (0 = Least Free, 100 = Most Free) Freedom Rating: 5.0/7 (1 = Most Free, 7 = Least Free) Political Rights: 5/7 (1 = Most Free, 7 = Least Free) Civil Liberties: 5/7 (1 = Most Free, 7 = Least Free) Quick Facts Population: 11,200,000 Capital: Conakry GDP/capita: $531 Press Freedom Status: Not Free OVERVIEW Since Guinea returned to civilian rule in 2010 following a 2008 military coup and decades of authoritarian governance, elections have been plagued by violence, delays, and other flaws. The government uses restrictive criminal laws to discourage dissent, and political disputes are often exacerbated by ethnic divisions and pervasive corruption. Regular abuse of civilians by military and police forces reflects a deep-seated culture of impunity. Key Developments in 2016: A new criminal code adopted in July outlawed torture but appeared to exclude a range of abusive practices from the definition. It also retained criminal penalties for defamation, among other problematic provisions. In August, a senior member of the political opposition, Ousmane Gaoual Diallo, received a suspended two-year prison sentence for making statements that were deemed offensive to the president. Overdue local elections were tentatively scheduled for early 2017 under a political accord reached in October. A number of journalists were reportedly detained and beaten by security forces, and one was killed, while attempting to cover politically sensitive events during the year. Executive Summary: In June 2016, the World Health Organization declared an end to transmission of the Ebola virus in Guinea, where a deadly regional outbreak had begun in 2013. A similar declaration in late December 2015 had been followed by new cases. The outbreak as a whole killed over 2,500 people in Guinea, devastated the fragile economy, and increased mistrust of the government. Disputes over long-delayed local elections continued to fuel tensions between the governing and opposition parties in 2016. Local balloting originally due in 2010 had been repeatedly postponed, and the country had not held such elections since 2005. In October, the opposition announced a political agreement to schedule the vote for February 2017, but it remained unclear at year's end whether the plan would proceed. Contributing to the tensions, the government repeatedly failed to respect the freedoms of peaceful assembly and expression during the year. Journalists and opposition protesters faced violence and harassment from security forces, as well as prosecution for offenses such as insulting the president. Corruption remained pervasive, and the courts suffered from a long-standing lack of resources and capacity. Impunity for Guinea's security forces also persisted, with little accountability for the hundreds of deaths and injuries they had inflicted on protesters and other civilians over the past decade. POLITICAL RIGHTS AND CIVIL LIBERTIES Political Rights 17 / 40 A. Electoral Process 6 / 12 A1. Is the head of government or other chief national authority elected through free and fair elections? A2. Are the national legislative representatives elected through free and fair elections? A3. Are the electoral laws and framework fair? Guinea's president is elected by popular vote for up to two five-year terms. In the 2015 election, incumbent president Alpha Conde of the Rally of the Guinean People (RPG) defeated former prime minister Cellou Dalein Diallo of the Union of Democratic Forces of Guinea (UFDG), taking 57.8 percent of the vote to secure a second and final term. The months preceding the election were characterized by ethnic tensions, violence between RPG and UFDG supporters, and deadly clashes between opposition supporters and security forces. Election day itself was peaceful, but opposition candidates filed unsuccessful legal challenges of the results, claiming fraud and vote rigging. Despite a number of logistical problems, international observers deemed the vote valid. Of the unicameral National Assembly's 114 seats, 38 are awarded through single-member constituency races and 76 are filled through nationwide proportional representation, all for five-year terms. The 2013 parliamentary elections were also marred by deadly violence, ethnic tensions, and disputes over the rules governing the polls. The RPG won 53 seats, the UFDG won 37 seats, and a dozen smaller parties divided the remainder. Local elections were last held in 2005. The next balloting was due in 2010, but was postponed during the transition to civilian rule after the 2008 military coup. The local elections were then scheduled for early 2014, between the parliamentary and presidential elections, only to be repeatedly delayed, with the government at times citing the Ebola crisis. Negotiations between the major parties during 2016 resulted in a tentative plan, announced in October, to hold the elections in February 2017. The agreement also called for reform of the electoral commission. B. Political Pluralism and Participation 8 / 16 B1. Do the people have the right to organize in different political parties or other competitive political groupings of their choice, and is the system open to the rise and fall of these competing parties or groupings? B2. Is there a significant opposition vote and a realistic opportunity for the opposition to increase its support or gain power through elections? B3. Are the people's political choices free from domination by the military, foreign powers, totalitarian parties, religious hierarchies, economic oligarchies, or any other powerful group? B4. Do cultural, ethnic, religious, or other minority groups have full political rights and electoral opportunities? The main political parties are the RPG and the UFDG. More than 130 parties are registered, most of which have clear ethnic or regional bases. Relations between the RPG and opposition parties are strained, and violent election-related clashes between RPG supporters, who are predominantly drawn from the Malinke ethnic group, and UFDG supporters, who are largely from the Peul ethnic group, have inflamed tensions. During 2016, political disputes including the overdue local elections led to further confrontations between the government and opposition. Authorities blocked a women's opposition protest march in April, and in August a senior UFDG lawmaker, Ousmane Gaoual Diallo, received a two-year suspended prison sentence for statements that were deemed insulting to President Conde. Also in August, opposition parties held demonstrations in Conakry that brought an estimated half a million supporters into the streets. Though the protests were largely peaceful, a policeman shot and killed a bystander, resulting in the officer's reported arrest. Tensions between the UFDG and RPG eased somewhat after the conclusion of the political accord in October. Separately, rifts within the UFDG erupted into violence in February, when ousted party vice president Amadou Oury Bah was barred from a meeting at the UFDG headquarters. Amid clashes between his supporters and those of party president Cellou Dalein Diallo, journalist El-Hadj Mohamed Diallo was fatally shot. Of the 20 UFDG supporters arrested over the incident, one subsequently died in pretrial detention, and 17 others were freed in August. C. Functioning of Government 3 / 12 C1. Do the freely elected head of government and national legislative representatives determine the policies of the government? C2. Is the government free from pervasive corruption? C3. Is the government accountable to the electorate between elections, and does it operate with openness and transparency? The legitimacy of executive and legislative officials is undermined by the flawed electoral process, and their ability to determine and implement laws and policies without undue interference is impeded by factors including impunity among security forces and rampant corruption. The National Anti-Corruption Agency (ANLC) reports directly to the presidency, and is considered to be underfunded and understaffed. A government audit whose findings were released in October 2016 uncovered thousands of civil service positions held by absent or deceased workers. While Guinea was declared in full compliance with the Extractive Industry Transparency Initiative in 2014, allegations of high-level corruption in the mining sector have continued. In May 2016, the international anticorruption watchdog Global Witness alleged that Sable Mining supported President Conde's 2010 election campaign, using his son as an intermediary, in return for the iron-mining license that it later received. The president denied any wrongdoing and said the government would work with Global Witness to collect evidence for an investigation. Separately, U.S. authorities in August arrested Samuel Mebiame, the son of a former prime minister of Gabon, for allegedly paying bribes to Guinean officials to secure mining concessions. In November, mining giant Rio Tinto admitted to paying over $10 million to a presidential adviser to secure a mining concession. Guinean authorities took some steps to punish corruption outside the mining sector. In July, two officials were convicted for embezzlement of funds earmarked for Ebola relief. Also that month, three officials were convicted for selling diplomatic passports. An access to information law adopted in 2010 has never been effectively implemented. Civil Liberties 24 / 40 (+1) D. Freedom of Expression and Belief 10 / 16 (+1) D1. Are there free and independent media and other forms of cultural expression? D2. Are religious institutions and communities free to practice their faith and express themselves in public and private? D3. Is there academic freedom, and is the educational system free of extensive political indoctrination? D4. Is there open and free private discussion? The 2010 constitution guarantees media freedom, but Guinea has struggled to uphold freedom of expression in practice. A new criminal code adopted in July 2016 retained penalties of up to five years in prison for defamation or insult of public figures. A cybersecurity law passed the previous month criminalized similar offenses online, as well as the dissemination of information that is false, protected on national security grounds, or "likely to disturb law and order or public security or jeopardize human dignity." Among other physical attacks and criminal charges against journalists during the year, in February gendarmes reportedly beat a journalist while he was filming a protest and destroyed his camera. In June, a radio host was fined 1 million Guinean francs ($115) after a listener called in and made remarks deemed insulting to the president. The caller, also a journalist, received a one-year prison sentence in absentia and a fine of 1.5 million francs. Separately that month, presidential guards reportedly detained and beat a journalist and destroyed his equipment after he photographed Conde in front of RPG headquarters. In August, police allegedly detained and beat a journalist while he was attempting to cover the trial of opposition politician Ousmane Gaoual Diallo. Several dozen newspapers publish regularly in Guinea, though most have small circulations. More than 30 private radio stations and a few private television stations compete with the public broadcaster, Radio Television Guineenne (RTG). Due to the high illiteracy rate, most of the population accesses information through radio; internet access remains limited to urban areas. Religious rights are generally respected in practice. Some non-Muslim government workers have reported occasional discrimination. People who convert from Islam to Christianity sometimes encounter pressure from members of their community. Academic freedom has historically faced political restrictions under authoritarian regimes. The problem has eased in recent years, particularly since the return to civilian rule in 2010, though self-censorship still tends to reduce the vibrancy of academic debate. There are few limits on free and open private discussion. E. Associational and Organizational Rights 5 / 12 E1. Is there freedom of assembly, demonstration, and open public discussion? E2. Is there freedom for nongovernmental organizations? E3. Are there free trade unions and peasant organizations or equivalents, and is there effective collective bargaining? Are there free professional and other private organizations? Freedom of assembly is enshrined in the constitution, but this right is often restricted. In practice, assemblies held without notification, a requirement under Guinean law, are considered unauthorized and are often violently dispersed, leading to deaths, injuries, and arrests. Several such incidents occurred during 2016. In August, local human rights groups denounced the arrest of a dozen young protesters who had gathered to demonstrate against the poor living conditions that have compelled many Guineans to undertake the dangerous journey across the Mediterranean to Europe. Freedom of association is generally respected. However, Guinean civil society remains weak, ethnically divided, and subject to periodic harassment and intimidation. Although workers are allowed to form trade unions, strike, and bargain collectively, they must provide 10 days' notice before striking, and strikes are banned in broadly defined essential services. Public- and private-sector unions mounted a four-day general strike in February 2016 over low wages and high fuel prices before reaching an agreement with the government. Sixteen trade union members who had been arrested during the strike were released. In March, five members of a union for retired military personnel were sentenced to six months in jail and fines of 1 million francs for insulting the president. F. Rule of Law 4 / 16 F1. Is there an independent judiciary? F2. Does the rule of law prevail in civil and criminal matters? Are police under direct civilian control? F3. Is there protection from political terror, unjustified imprisonment, exile, or torture, whether by groups that support or oppose the system? Is there freedom from war and insurgencies? F4. Do laws, policies, and practices guarantee equal treatment of various segments of the population? The judicial system has demonstrated some degree of independence since 2010, though the courts remain understaffed and underfunded, and have been slow to adjudicate high-profile criminal cases most prominently, the massacre of more than 150 opposition protesters by the forces of the military junta at Conakry stadium in 2009. Judges investigating the massacre have made some progress, and a number of current and former officials have been charged, but the case remains at the investigation stage. The new criminal code adopted by the National Assembly in July 2016 abolished the death penalty and explicitly outlawed torture for the first time. However, the military code of justice retained the death penalty for certain offenses, and human rights watchdogs noted that the new criminal code categorized a number of acts that fall within the international definition of torture as merely "inhuman and cruel," a category that does not carry any explicit penalties in the code. Security forces continue to engage in arbitrary arrests and torture of detainees with impunity. However, unlike in previous years, at least some personnel were arrested or investigated for abuses during 2016. For example, 11 soldiers were charged over an incident in June in which the beating of a truck driver sparked violent confrontations between civilians and security forces. Prison conditions remain harsh and are sometimes life threatening. Most prisoners are in prolonged pretrial detention, which contributes to severe overcrowding. In 2015 the government adopted a plan of priority actions for justice reform, and it has begun to build and staff new courthouses and construct a new prison, though progress has reportedly stalled. Antidiscrimination laws do not protect LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender) people. Same-sex sexual activity is a criminal offense that can be punished with up to three years in prison, and although this law is rarely enforced, LGBT people have been arrested on lesser charges. G. Personal Autonomy and Individual Rights 5 / 16 G1. Do individuals enjoy freedom of travel or choice of residence, employment, or institution of higher education? G2. Do individuals have the right to own property and establish private businesses? Is private business activity unduly influenced by government officials, the security forces, political parties/organizations, or organized crime? G3. Are there personal social freedoms, including gender equality, choice of marriage partners, and size of family? G4. Is there equality of opportunity and the absence of economic exploitation? Freedom of movement has long been hindered by rampant crime and ubiquitous security checkpoints, but restrictions related to the Ebola epidemic have largely been removed. Private business activity is hampered by corruption and political instability, among other factors. A centralized Agency for the Promotion of Private Investments aims to ease the business registration process. Following recent reforms, property registration processes have become faster and less expensive. Societal discrimination against women is pervasive, and Guinea ranked 122 out of 144 countries on the World Economic Forum's 2016 Gender Gap Index. Under the electoral law, at least 30 percent of the candidates on the proportional representation lists for the National Assembly must be women. Women hold nearly 22 percent of the seats in the assembly. Rape and sexual harassment are common but underreported due to fears of stigmatization. While women have legal access to land, credit, and business, they are disadvantaged by inheritance laws and the traditional justice system. Guinean law allows husbands to forbid their wives from working. Female genital mutilation is illegal but nearly ubiquitous, affecting up to 97 percent of all girls and women in the country, the second-highest rate in the world. In August 2016, the government launched a campaign to discourage the practice. The new criminal code adopted in July set the legal age for marriage at 18, but early and forced marriages remained extremely common. Guinean women and children are subject to sex trafficking and forced labor in various industries. Guinean boys have been forced to work in mines in Guinea and in neighboring countries, and women and children have been trafficked for sexual exploitation to other parts of West Africa as well as Europe and the Middle East. The 2016 criminal code specifically criminalized trafficking in persons and debt bondage, but reduced the minimum penalties for such crimes, and enforcement has been weak. Copyright notice: Freedom House, Inc. All Rights Reserved Freedom in the World 2017 - Guatemala Publisher Freedom House Publication Date 12 July 2017 Cite as Freedom House, Freedom in the World 2017 - Guatemala, 12 July 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/59831e97a.html [accessed 13 November 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States. Freedom Status: Partly Free Aggregate Score: 54/100 (0 = Least Free, 100 = Most Free) Freedom Rating: 4.0/7 (1 = Most Free, 7 = Least Free) Political Rights: 4/7 (1 = Most Free, 7 = Least Free) Civil Liberties: 4/7 (1 = Most Free, 7 = Least Free) Quick Facts Population: 16,600,000 Capital: Guatemala City GDP/capita: $3,903 Press Freedom Status: Partly Free OVERVIEW Organized crime and corruption severely impact the free functioning of government in Guatemala, which remains one of the most dangerous countries in Latin America. Indigenous peoples, women, and children continue to feel the brunt of this violence, with little recourse to justice. Journalists, activists, and public officials who confront crime, corruption, and other sensitive issues risk attack. Key Developments in 2016: In early September, President Jimmy Morales fired two high-ranking officers from the presidential security service after they came under investigation for unlawful surveillance of journalists, human right advocates, politicians, and business owners. The attorney general pursued high-level corruption cases, but faced severe intimidation for her efforts, including death threats. In February, in the Sepur Zarco trial, two officers were convicted of holding indigenous women in sexual slavery during the civil war. In April, the mandate of UN-backed International Commission against Impunity in Guatemala (CICIG) was extended to 2019. Executive Summary: Guatemala's attorney general and the UN-backed CICIG continued to investigate and prosecute high-level cases of corruption and criminal behavior in 2016, with some investigations targeting members of Morales's administration and of his family. In September, Morales fired two high-ranking officers from the presidential security service after it emerged that they were being investigated for the unlawful surveillance of journalists, human right advocates, politicians, and business owners. Herbert Armando Melgar Padilla, a close advisor to the president, was also implicated. Around the time the spying allegations became public, Melgar Padilla had filled the seat of a congressman who suddenly stepped down, a development that allowed him to obtain parliamentary immunity. The country's homicide rate continued to drop in 2016, for the seventh straight year. However, Guatemala is still plagued by violence, much of which is related to criminal groups, and in 2016 officials reported 4,550 homicides. Human rights defenders, members of the media, as well as labor, land, and indigenous rights activists face threats when their work is perceived to interfere with such groups' operations, or when it threatens to expose corruption. Only a small number of perpetrators of human rights atrocities from the 1960-96 civil war have been prosecuted. In January 2016, 18 high-ranking officers were arrested in connection with massacres and disappearances in the 1980s. In February, there was a verdict in the Sepur Zarco trial against two officers. They were convicted for holding indigenous women in sexual slavery during the civil war. POLITICAL RIGHTS AND CIVIL LIBERTIES Political Rights 23 / 40 A. Electoral Process 8 / 12 A1. Is the head of government or other chief national authority elected through free and fair elections? A2. Are the national legislative representatives elected through free and fair elections? A3. Are the electoral laws and framework fair? The constitution stipulates a four-year presidential term and prohibits reelection. Members of the 158-seat, unicameral Congress are elected to four-year terms. In the September 2015 legislative election, the Renewed Democratic Liberty (LIDER) party won 45 seats and the National Unity for Hope (UNE) won 32. A new party, Todos, took 18 seats, as did the scandal-plagued Patriotic Party (PP); the PP had held 39 seats previously. Nine other parties took the remaining 45 seats. Morales won a plurality in the concomitant presidential vote and, with 67 percent, defeated former first lady Sandra Torres of the UNE in an October 2015 runoff. Turnout was 70 percent in September and 56 percent in October. The Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE) removed about 10 percent of voters from the register ahead of the elections because they were deceased or ineligible to participate. The elections were generally judged as credible. As in the past, electoral observers reported irregularities, including intimidation, vote buying, and the burning of ballots and electoral boxes. Eleven municipal contests had to be repeated in October 2015. Throughout the electoral campaign, an estimated 20 election-related murders occurred, mostly involving mayoral candidates and their relatives. Before the election, a CICIG report estimated that 50 percent of known campaign donations come from contractors doing business with the state, another 25 percent from organized crime groups. CICIG also said that nearly all parties spend more money than they report, and that they exceeded official spending limits. In April 2016, the legislature approved reforms to the electoral law that among other things mandated stricter financial disclosure procedures that are overseen by the TSE. The legislature also adopted reforms that punish transfuguismo the practice whereby deputies abandon the parties with which they are elected. B. Political Pluralism and Participation 10 / 16 B1. Do the people have the right to organize in different political parties or other competitive political groupings of their choice, and is the system open to the rise and fall of these competing parties or groupings? B2. Is there a significant opposition vote and a realistic opportunity for the opposition to increase its support or gain power through elections? B3. Are the people's political choices free from domination by the military, foreign powers, totalitarian parties, religious hierarchies, economic oligarchies, or any other powerful group? B4. Do cultural, ethnic, religious, or other minority groups have full political rights and electoral opportunities? Elections take place within a highly inchoate multiparty system. A total of 14 candidates vied for the presidency in 2015, and 13 political parties won congressional seats. The government uses the military to maintain internal security, despite restrictions imposed by the 1996 peace accord that ended a 36-year civil war. The National Convergence Front (FCN), the party that backs Morales, was founded by a group of former military officials, and Morales's association with the party has raised questions about military influence in his administration. In June 2016, attempts to revive the annual military parade, after a nine-year hiatus, came under pressure from civil society actors who said holding the controversial event would be inappropriate due to a lack of progress in implementation of the peace accords. The president canceled the public parade, but organized a private one, as had taken place each year since the public one was banned. Members of indigenous communities hold just 20 congressional seats, although they comprise 44 percent of the population. There are no indigenous members in the cabinet. In 2015, 113 out of 333 Guatemalan mayors were indigenous. In March 2016, the legislature rejected a proposed reform to electoral laws that would have mandated the equal inclusion of ethnic groups and women in party candidate lists. C. Functioning of Government 5 / 12 C1. Do the freely elected head of government and national legislative representatives determine the policies of the government? C2. Is the government free from pervasive corruption? C3. Is the government accountable to the electorate between elections, and does it operate with openness and transparency? While ongoing efforts to combat corruption have lent some credibility to the justice system in recent years, corruption remains a serious problem. Few convictions have followed dozens of arrests connected to the various scandals that in 2015 brought down the administration of Otto Perez Molina, though new arrests of ex-officials continued in 2016. Additionally, both Morales's son and his brother came under investigation in 2016 for possible involvement in the previous administration's network of corruption. The news outlet La Hora, after conducting an investigation, reported that Perez and former Vice President Roxana Baldetti remain involved in criminal activity even after being jailed in connection with their roles in a wide-ranging corruption scheme; they were formally charged with money laundering and the illegal financing of political parties in June 2016. In September, a lax, 30-month suspended sentence was handed down to Edgar Barquin, a former central bank head who was convicted of laundering some $30 million. In January 2016, CICIG and the attorney general announced a plan to investigate corruption at the municipal level. Despite 2015 reforms in that make the processes for issuing government contracts more transparent, abuses remain. Reports also reveal that construction firms under government contracts often face extortion demands. In October 2016, the Human Rights Ombudsman reported that there are challenges in the implementation of the Law on Access to Information. The Ombudsman found that some municipalities lack the necessary infrastructure to accept and process information requests and that public information offices frequently fail to publish data about public expenditures as required. Civil Liberties 31 / 60 D. Freedom of Expression and Belief 11 / 16 (-1) D1. Are there free and independent media and other forms of cultural expression? D2. Are religious institutions and communities free to practice their faith and express themselves in public and private? D3. Is there academic freedom, and is the educational system free of extensive political indoctrination? D4. Is there open and free private discussion? While the constitution protects freedom of speech, journalists often face threats and practice self-censorship when covering sensitive topics such as drug trafficking, corruption, organized crime, and human rights violations. Threats come from public officials, drug traffickers, individuals aligned with companies operating in indigenous communities, and local security forces. Nine journalists were murdered in 2016, according to the Guatemalan press freedom group CERIGUA. Mexican businessman Remigio Angel Gonzalez owns a monopoly of broadcast television networks and has significant holdings in radio. Newspaper ownership is also concentrated. Most papers have centrist or conservative editorial views. While the government is making an effort to improve the country's telecommunications infrastructure, internet access remains limited. The Constitution guarantees religious freedom. However, indigenous communities have faced discrimination for openly practicing the Mayan religion. Although the government does not interfere with academic freedom, scholars have received death threats for questioning past human rights abuses or continuing injustices. In early September 2016, Morales fired two high-ranking officers from the presidential security service after they came under investigation for unlawful surveillance of journalists, human right advocates, politicians, and business owners. Melgar Padilla, a close advisor to the president, was also implicated. Herbert Armando Melgar Padilla, a close advisor to the president, was also implicated. Around the time the spying allegations became public, Melgar Padilla had filled the seat of a congressman who suddenly stepped down, a development that allowed him to obtain parliamentary immunity. E. Associational and Organizational Rights 6 / 12 E1. Is there freedom of assembly, demonstration, and open public discussion? E2. Is there freedom for nongovernmental organizations? E3. Are there free trade unions and peasant organizations or equivalents, and is there effective collective bargaining? Are there free professional and other private organizations? The Constitution guarantees freedom of assembly, but this right is not always guaranteed in practice. Police frequently threaten force and have at times used violence against protesters. In September 2016, authorities issued an emergency decree that allowed them to break up demonstrations and meetings that "contributed to or incited" disturbances to public order, but quickly repealed it after an outcry from civil society groups and some public officials. The Constitution guarantees freedom of association, and a variety of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) operate in Guatemala, though they face significant obstacles. The Guatemalan rights group the Unit for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders (UDEFEGUA) reported in December 2016 that human rights advocates had experienced 223 attacks during the first 11 months of the year, and that 14 rights activists had been murdered. Guatemala is home to a vigorous labor movement, but workers are frequently denied the right to organize and face mass firings and blacklisting, especially in export-processing zones. Trade-union members are also subject to intimidation, violence, and murder, particularly in rural areas. According to the International Trade Union Confederation, Guatemala is one of the most dangerous countries for unionists, and a number of labor figures were killed in 2016. Among them was the deputy coordinator for the Legal Advice Commission, one of the larger unions, who was shot to death in June. F. Rule of Law 6 / 16 (+1) F1. Is there an independent judiciary? F2. Does the rule of law prevail in civil and criminal matters? Are police under direct civilian control? F3. Is there protection from political terror, unjustified imprisonment, exile, or torture, whether by groups that support or oppose the system? Is there freedom from war and insurgencies? F4. Do laws, policies, and practices guarantee equal treatment of various segments of the population? The judiciary is hobbled by corruption, inefficiency, capacity shortages, and the intimidation of judges and prosecutors. Witnesses and judicial-sector workers continue to be threatened and, in some cases, murdered. In April 2016, the three branches of government inaugurated a national dialogue process to propose judicial reforms. In June, the legislature approved a measure, based on recommendations issued in 2015, that created a new mechanism for evaluating and sanctioning judges. The increasing independence of the attorney general's office and its work with CICIG to root out corruption reflect a strengthening of the justice system in Guatemala. However, the attorney general has faced serious intimidation, including death threats, in connection with her work investigating the systemic syphoning of state funds by public and private actors. In August 2016, she reported that unknown parties had spied on her home using a drone. In April 2016, the government extended CICIG's mandate until 2019. Police are accused of torture, extortion, kidnapping, extrajudicial killings, and drug-related crimes. Prison facilities are grossly overcrowded and rife with gang and drug-related violence and corruption. Prison riots are common, and are frequently deadly. In July 2016, an ex-army captain who ran a powerful criminal operation, and twelve others, were killed during a prison riot. People in pretrial detention comprise a large percentage of those in detention facilities. In 2016, the prisons operated without permanent directors. The country's homicide rate continued to drop in 2016, for the seventh straight year. However, violent crime is a serious problem. In 2016, officials reported 4,550 homicides, compared to 4,778 in 2015. Violence related to the transport of drugs between South America and the United States has spilled over the border from Mexico, with rival Mexican and Guatemalan gangs battling for territory. These groups operate with impunity in the northern jungles. For most of 2016, Morales did not have a cohesive plan to address the country's violence. In August 2016, he met with other presidents in the region to discuss an antigang strategy. The extrajudicial lynching of suspected criminals by private citizens occurs frequently. A small number of perpetrators of human rights atrocities from the 1960-96 civil war have been being prosecuted, and cases continued in 2016. In January, 18 high-ranking officers joined those arrested in connection with massacres and disappearances in the 1980s. In February, in the Sepur Zarco trial, two officers were convicted for holding indigenous women in sexual slavery during the civil war. A close advisor to the president is facing charges of massacres during the conflict. The trial of Rios Montt whose 2013 conviction for genocide was overturned by the Constitutional Court 10 days after it was issued was scheduled to begin in January 2016, but has been repeatedly postponed. He has been declared medically unfit to stand trial and will not face criminal penalties if convicted. Indigenous communities suffer from high rates of poverty, illiteracy, and infant mortality. Indigenous women are particularly marginalized. Discrimination against the Mayan community is a major concern. Members of the LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender) community are not covered under antidiscrimination laws. They face discrimination, violence, and police abuse. The country's human rights ombudsman has stated that people suffering from HIV/AIDS also face discrimination. In January 2016, the first, openly gay person was sworn into the legislature. G. Personal Autonomy and Individual Rights 8 / 16 G1. Do individuals enjoy freedom of travel or choice of residence, employment, or institution of higher education? G2. Do individuals have the right to own property and establish private businesses? Is private business activity unduly influenced by government officials, the security forces, political parties/organizations, or organized crime? G3. Are there personal social freedoms, including gender equality, choice of marriage partners, and size of family? G4. Is there equality of opportunity and the absence of economic exploitation? Nonstate actors, including gangs and organized criminal groups, threaten freedom of travel, residence, and employment, often through threats or acts of violence, with women being particularly vulnerable. Between January and September 2016, 112 people had been killed while using the public transport system. The Internal Displacement Monitoring Center estimates that in 2015, there were 251,000 internal displacements, largely due to violence. Property rights and economic freedom rarely extend beyond Guatemalans with wealth and political connections. Private businesses continue to experience high rates of contraband smuggling and extortion by criminal groups. In recent years, the government approved the eviction of indigenous groups to make way for mining, hydroelectric, and other development projects. In a victory to such groups, in December 2016, a mining company was forced to stop a hydroelectric project due to local protests. In a 2016 lawsuit, a Mayan woman claimed that workers with a Canadian mining company had sexually assaulted her before setting her home on fire; she filed the case in Canada, instead of Guatemala, due to the low rate of successful prosecutions in domestic cases involving claims by indigenous people against foreign corporations. The Constitution prohibits discrimination based on gender, though inequalities between men and women persist. Sexual harassment in the workplace is not penalized. Young women who migrate to the capital for work are vulnerable to harassment and inhumane labor conditions. Physical and sexual violence against women and children remains widespread, with perpetrators rarely prosecuted. According to the National Institute of Forensic Science (INACIF), 739 women were victims of a violent death in 2016. Women are underrepresented in government posts. Currently, 9 of 338 elected mayors are women, and only 13 percent of elected legislators are women. Guatemala has one of the highest rates of child labor in the Americas. Criminal gangs often force children and young men to join their organizations or perform work for them, and government officials are complicit in trafficking. Copyright notice: Freedom House, Inc. All Rights Reserved Freedom in the World 2017 - Germany Publisher Freedom House Publication Date 12 July 2017 Cite as Freedom House, Freedom in the World 2017 - Germany, 12 July 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/59831e98a.html [accessed 13 November 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States. Freedom Status: Free Aggregate Score: 95/100 (0 = Least Free, 100 = Most Free) Freedom Rating: 1.0/7 (1 = Most Free, 7 = Least Free) Political Rights: 1/7 (1 = Most Free, 7 = Least Free) Civil Liberties: 1/7 (1 = Most Free, 7 = Least Free) Quick Facts Population: 82,600,000 Capital: Berlin GDP/capita: $41,313 Press Freedom Status: Free Net Freedom Status: Free OVERVIEW Germany, a member of the European Union (EU), is a representative democracy with a vibrant political culture and civil society. Political rights and civil liberties are largely assured both in law and practice. The political system is influenced by the country's totalitarian past, with constitutional safeguards designed to prevent authoritarian rule. Although generally stable since the mid-20th century, politics are experiencing tensions following an influx of asylum seekers into the country and the growing popularity of a right-wing party, among other issues. Key Developments in 2016: The right-wing, populist Alternative for Germany (AfD) party gained ground in several state-level elections, taking advantage of a wave of discontent with Chancellor Angela Merkel and Europe's immigration crisis. Attacks on refugee housing remained a major problem, and both refugees and religious minorities reported a significant number of threats as well as incidents of hate speech and violence. Several terrorist attacks took place during the year, the most serious one targeting a Berlin Christmas market in December and ending with 12 deaths and dozens of injuries. Executive Summary: In 2016, Germany's public sphere continued to absorb the consequences of the record-breaking flow of asylum seekers into the country the previous year. Although the migration flow ebbed significantly, violence against refugees and their homes remained high. Religious minorities also reported high lebels of threats, hate speech, and even violence. Amid these tensions, support for the right-wing, populist, anti-immigration AfD grew in all five state-level elections that took place during the year. A number of terrorist attacks shook Germany, including ones carried out in the name of or claimed by the Islamic State (IS) militant group. The most severe attack targeted a Christmas market in Berlin and left 12 people dead and dozens injured. Following two attacks in July, the Bundestag passed amendments to existing antiterrorism legislation to improve the German intelligence service's ability to cooperate and share information with foreign counterparts. In March, German comedian Jan Bohmermann became the center of a freedom of expression controversy after performing a satirical poem about Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Using an obscure law that enables foreign heads of state to prosecute insult in German courts with authorization from the German government, Erdogan took steps to launch a criminal case against Bohmermann. Merkel granted authorization for use of the law, and the case led to significant international outcry. Prosecutors dropped it in October, citing insufficient evidence, and authorities announced plans to review the legislation. POLITICAL RIGHTS AND CIVIL LIBERTIES Political Rights 39 / 40 A. Electoral Process 12 / 12 A1. Is the head of government or other chief national authority elected through free and fair elections? A2. Are the national legislative representatives elected through free and fair elections? A3. Are the electoral laws and framework fair? The German constitution provides for a lower house of parliament, the Bundestag (Federal Assembly), as well as an upper house, the Bundesrat (Federal Council), which represents the country's 16 federal states. The Bundestag is elected at least every four years through a mixture of proportional representation and single-member districts, which can lead the number of seats to vary from the minimum 598. Bundesrat members are appointed by state governments. Germany's head of state is a largely ceremonial president, chosen jointly by the Bundestag and a group of state representatives to serve up to two five-year terms. The chancellor the head of government is elected by the Bundestag and usually serves for the duration of a legislative session. The chancellor's term can be cut short only if the Bundestag chooses a replacement in a so-called constructive vote of no confidence. In Germany's federal system, state governments have considerable authority over matters such as education, policing, taxation, and spending. Joachim Gauck was elected president in 2012. In the 2013 federal elections, a total of 631 representatives were elected to the Bundestag. Merkel's Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and its Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union (CSU), won 311 seats the best showing for the Christian Democrats since 1990, when Germany reunified. The CDU's previous coalition partner, the pro-free market Free Democratic Party (FDP), failed to meet the 5 percent threshold to qualify for seats for the first time since 1949. The center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD) took 193 seats, and the Greens won 63. The far-left party the Left, which is widely viewed as a successor to the East German communists, took 64 seats. The AfD failed to qualify for seats. The CDU reached an agreement with the SPD to form a so-called grand coalition government, as they had done during Merkel's first term (2005-09). In 2016, state-level elections took place in five German states. The AfD made considerable gains in these elections, winning 24 percent of the vote in Saxony-Anhalt and 21 percent in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania. B. Political Pluralism and Participation 15 / 16 B1. Do the people have the right to organize in different political parties or other competitive political groupings of their choice, and is the system open to the rise and fall of these competing parties or groupings? B2. Is there a significant opposition vote and a realistic opportunity for the opposition to increase its support or gain power through elections? B3. Are the people's political choices free from domination by the military, foreign powers, totalitarian parties, religious hierarchies, economic oligarchies, or any other powerful group? B4. Do cultural, ethnic, religious, or other minority groups have full political rights and electoral opportunities? The dominant political parties have traditionally been the SPD and the CDU-CSU. Parties do not face undue restrictions on registration or operation, although under electoral laws that, for historical reasons, are intended to restrict the far left and far right, a party must receive either 5 percent of the national vote or win at least three directly elected seats to gain representation in the parliament. The influence of Germany's extreme-right party, the National Democratic Party (NPD) an anti-immigration, anti-EU party that has been accused of glorifying Adolf Hitler and the Third Reich remains very limited. All 16 German states petitioned the Federal Constitutional Court in 2013 to ban the NPD, calling it a neo-Nazi antidemocratic group. Previous attempts to outlaw the party have failed. The movement against the NPD continued in 2016, but with no significant results. Support for the AfD has grown in recent years. In addition to making gains in the 2016 state elections, the party won seven seats in the European Parliament elections in 2014. Several AfD members and deputies are linked to right-wing extremist groups. In 2016, Baden-Wurttemberg state legislator Wolfgang Gedeon left the party after publicly glorifying Holocaust deniers as dissidents. The 2013 federal elections resulted in the first black members of the Bundestag, with one each from the CDU and the SPD. The CDU also saw its first Muslim deputy elected to the Bundestag. Overall, the number of Bundestag members from immigrant backgrounds rose from 21 to 34. C. Functioning of Government 12 / 12 C1. Do the freely elected head of government and national legislative representatives determine the policies of the government? C2. Is the government free from pervasive corruption? C3. Is the government accountable to the electorate between elections, and does it operate with openness and transparency? Elected representatives decide and implement policy without undue interference. Germany is free from pervasive corruption and was ranked 10 out of 176 countries and territories surveyed in Transparency International's 2016 Corruption Perceptions Index. However, watchdogs continue to express concerns about a controversial 2015 data retention law, which they view as a threat not just to general privacy but also to whistleblowers, who could be punished under a section detailing illegal data handling. Whistleblowers receive few legal protections in Germany. The government is held accountable for its performance through open parliamentary debates, which are covered widely in the media. However, Transparency International and other nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) criticize Germany for having loose regulations on lobbying and lacking a centralized lobbying register, which stifle transparency in this area. Civil Liberties 56 / 60 D. Freedom of Expression and Belief 15 / 16 D1. Are there free and independent media and other forms of cultural expression? D2. Are religious institutions and communities free to practice their faith and express themselves in public and private? D3. Is there academic freedom, and is the educational system free of extensive political indoctrination? D4. Is there open and free private discussion? Freedom of expression is enshrined in the constitution, and the media are largely free and independent. Hate speech, such as racist agitation or anti-Semitism, is punishable by law. It is also illegal to advocate Nazism, deny the Holocaust, or glorify the ideology of Hitler. In March 2016, Bohmermann became the center of a freedom of expression scandal after reciting a satirical poem on television about Erdogan. Following the broadcast, Erdogan took steps toward prosecuting Bohmermann for insult, using a section of the German criminal code that allows a foreign head of state to undertake such proceedings if authorized to do so by the German government. Merkel faced widespread criticism by domestic and international media watchdogs as well as the public for granting authorization. Prosecutors ceased investigations in October, citing insufficient evidence, and a review of the relevant section of the criminal code was ongoing at year's end. Internet access is generally unrestricted. In 2013, documents leaked by former U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) contractor Edward Snowden revealed that the NSA, in collaboration with Germany's Federal Intelligence Service (BND), had secretly collected extensive data on communications in Germany. In 2014, a parliamentary inquiry was launched into the nature of cooperation between the NSA and BND. The inquiry was ongoing in 2016. In October, the Bundestag passed a bill to reform the BND. Although the legislation strengthened government monitoring of and control over the BND, it also legalized some of the agency's controversial intelligence-gathering practices and expanded its power to monitor foreign entities. A number of minority parties and NGOs strongly opposed the bill and announced plans to challenge it. Freedom of belief is legally protected. However, eight states have passed laws prohibiting female Muslim schoolteachers from wearing headscarves, while Berlin and the state of Hesse have adopted legislation banning headscarves for civil servants. Violence against religious minorities remained a prominent issue throughout the year. According to the Interior Ministry, there were 91 attacks on mosques in 2016, the most prominent of them a bomb attack in Dresden in September. In April, a Sikh temple in Essen fell victim to a bomb attack. Police arrested a group of German-born youths with connections to Islamist extremists in subsequent investigations; the case had not concluded at year's end. Academic freedom is respected, and private discussion is generally unrestricted. A debate surrounding censorship of online discussion continued in 2016, with several court cases leading to convictions for incitement of hatred on digital platforms. E. Associational and Organizational Rights 12 / 12 E1. Is there freedom of assembly, demonstration, and open public discussion? E2. Is there freedom for nongovernmental organizations? E3. Are there free trade unions and peasant organizations or equivalents, and is there effective collective bargaining? Are there free professional and other private organizations? The right to peaceful assembly is respected in practice, except in the case of outlawed groups, such as those advocating Nazism or opposing democratic order. Civic groups and NGOs operate without hindrance. Trade unions, farmers' groups, and business confederations are generally free to organize. In July, a Federal Court ruled that a 2012 strike by Frankfurt Airport air traffic controllers was unlawful, ordering their union to pay damages. F. Rule of Law 14 / 16 F1. Is there an independent judiciary? F2. Does the rule of law prevail in civil and criminal matters? Are police under direct civilian control? F3. Is there protection from political terror, unjustified imprisonment, exile, or torture, whether by groups that support or oppose the system? Is there freedom from war and insurgencies? F4. Do laws, policies, and practices guarantee equal treatment of various segments of the population? The judiciary is independent, and the rule of law prevails. Prison conditions are adequate, though the Council of Europe has criticized some of Germany's preventive detention practices. The threat posed by terrorist groups to national and regional security remained a major concern in 2016 and contributed to social and political tensions. Two German terrorist attacks in July a suicide bombing targeting visitors to a festival in Ansbach and an axe attack on a passenger train in Wurzburg, were attributed to registered refugees associated with IS. In both cases, the perpetrators were killed and several bystanders injured. In December, Germany witnessed its worst terrorist incident in decades when a militant extremist drove a truck into a crowd at a Christmas market in Berlin, killing 12 and injuring dozens. The suspect, Tunisian citizen Anis Amri, was killed a few days later by police in Italy. The incident stirred up a renewed debate on Germany's security and migration policies. After the July attacks, legislators amended existing antiterrorism laws to improve the German domestic intelligence service's ability to cooperate and share information with foreign counterparts. The constitution and other laws guarantee equality and prohibit discrimination on the basis of origin, gender, religion or belief, disability, age or sexual orientation. However, a number of obstacles stand in the way of equal treatment of all segments of the population. Following the record number of asylum seekers who entered Germany in 2015, significantly lower numbers were recorded in 2016 280,000, compared with 890,000 the previous year. Although the German government retains one of the most open policies toward asylum, the problem of violence against refugees persisted in 2016. There were 970 attacks on refugee housing during the year, most of them attributed to right-wing extremists. Separately, federal police recorded 11 attempted murders by right-wing extremists through October. In October, a police officer in Bavaria was killed in a shootout with a member of a so-called "Reichsburger" group, a militant collective that refuses to accept the authority of the German state. Rhetoric against refugees remained prominent in German public rhetoric. The anti-immigration, anti-Islam group known as the Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamization of the Occident (PEGIDA), which developed into a large protest movement in 2014, remained active in 2016 and continued to be one of the most vocal opponents of asylum and migration. In October, the group again made headlines when members disturbed celebrations of Germany's reunification day in Dresden, displaying signs and using language that mocked the country's political establishment, including Chancellor Merkel. G. Personal Autonomy and Individual Rights 15 / 16 G1. Do individuals enjoy freedom of travel or choice of residence, employment, or institution of higher education? G2. Do individuals have the right to own property and establish private businesses? Is private business activity unduly influenced by government officials, the security forces, political parties/organizations, or organized crime? G3. Are there personal social freedoms, including gender equality, choice of marriage partners, and size of family? G4. Is there equality of opportunity and the absence of economic exploitation? Freedom of movement is legally protected and generally respected, although the refugee crisis and security concerns related to IS have led to some restrictions on travel. In 2015, the government introduced legislation allowing the confiscation of identity documents from German citizens suspected of terrorism as a way to prevent them from traveling abroad, particularly to Iraq and Syria. The rights to own property and engage in commercial activity are respected. Women's rights are protected under antidiscrimination laws. However, a considerable gender wage gap persists, with women earning approximately 22 percent less in gross wages than men. A law requiring large German companies to reserve at least 30 percent of seats on their non-executive boards for women came into effect in 2016, but only affects a very limited number of companies. Following the 2013 federal elections, women gained 6 of the 16 federal cabinet positions and 36 percent of the seats in the Bundestag. Limited same-sex partnership rights are respected. Adoption and tax legislation passed in 2014 gave equal rights to same-sex couples in these areas. However, the government does not grant same-sex couples the right to marry, instead providing the option of a civil partnership. According to the U.S. State Department's 2016 Trafficking in Persons report, migrants from Eastern Europe, Africa, and Asia are targeted for sex trafficking and forced labor. Asylum seekers, especially unaccompanied minors, are also particularly vulnerable to exploitation. Copyright notice: Freedom House, Inc. All Rights Reserved Freedom in the World 2017 - Gambia, The Publisher Freedom House Publication Date 12 July 2017 Cite as Freedom House, Freedom in the World 2017 - Gambia, The, 12 July 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/59831e99a.html [accessed 13 November 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States. Freedom Status: Not Free Aggregate Score: 20/100 (0 = Least Free, 100 = Most Free) Freedom Rating: 6.0/7 (1 = Most Free, 7 = Least Free) Political Rights: 6/7 (1 = Most Free, 7 = Least Free) Civil Liberties: 6/7 (1 = Most Free, 7 = Least Free) Quick Facts Population: 2,100,000 Capital: Banjul GDP/capita: $472 Press Freedom Status: Not Free Net Freedom Status: Not Free The Gambia's political rights rating improved from 7 to 6 due to opposition candidate Adama Barrow's victory in the December 2016 presidential election, though the incumbent, Yahya Jammeh, was refusing to step down as of year's end. OVERVIEW The Gambia was ruled for more than two decades by President Yahya Jammeh and his party, the Alliance for Patriotic Reorientation and Construction (APRC). Jammeh, who took power in a bloodless coup in 1994, oversaw a regime that showed little respect for political rights or civil liberties. Government opponents, independent journalists, and activists faced intimidation, arbitrary arrest, torture, and disappearance, while women and minorities lacked equal rights. The Gambia's elections have been marred by violence and rigging, but the December 2016 presidential vote resulted in a surprise victory for opposition candidate Adama Barrow. Jammeh initially accepted the results before rescinding his concession days later, and it was unclear at the end of the year how the impasse would be resolved. Key Developments in 2016: In April, the organizing secretary of the opposition United Democratic Party (UDP), Solo Sandeng, was reportedly tortured to death in state custody shortly after being detained during a peaceful demonstration for electoral reform. Days after Sandeng's arrest, UDP leader Ousainou Darboe was arrested during a peaceful protest to demand transparency about the fate of Sandeng and the release of political detainees. In July, Darboe and 29 other people were sentenced to three years in prison for their roles in the protests. In December, President Jammeh publicly conceded defeat to Barrow in that month's presidential election. Jammeh soon reneged on his statement, claimed that the election was not conducted fairly, called for a new vote, and filed a petition with the Supreme Court. However, the court lacked a quorum due to outstanding vacancies, and the dispute was unresolved at year's end. Executive Summary: As the December 2016 presidential election approached, the government used violence and intimidation to suppress peaceful opposition protests calling for electoral reform. Many opposition figures were arrested and prosecuted, and at least two UDP figures organizing secretary Solo Sandeng and local constituency official Ebrima Solo Krummah died in government custody. In a surprise result, the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) announced that Barrow, a UDP leader supported by a coalition of opposition parties, had garnered a plurality in the election, defeating Jammeh and a third candidate to take the presidency. After initially accepting the outcome, Jammeh reversed himself and called for a new election, filing a challenge with the Supreme Court that remained pending at year's end. Throughout the year, the Jammeh regime continued to curtail freedom of expression, in part by enforcing restrictive laws on sedition. Teranga FM radio director Alagie Abdoulie Ceesay, who had been detained on sedition charges in 2015, escaped from government custody in April 2016 and was later convicted in absentia. The authorities similarly disregarded freedom of association and the rule of law during the year, arbitrarily detaining a number of activists in addition to those involved in the opposition protests. One such activist, trade union leader Sheriff Dibba, died in state custody in February. Jammeh also continued to denounce LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender) people. POLITICAL RIGHTS AND CIVIL LIBERTIES Political Rights 8 / 40 (+3) A. Electoral Process 3 / 12 (+2) A1. Is the head of government or other chief national authority elected through free and fair elections? A2. Are the national legislative representatives elected through free and fair elections? A3. Are the electoral laws and framework fair? The president is elected by popular vote and is eligible for an unlimited number of five-year terms. Elections have typically been violent and rigged. The two-week official campaign period is the only time that state television and radio stations devote significant airtime to the opposition. Moreover, 2015 amendments to the election law increased the registration deposit for presidential candidates from 10,000 dalasi to 500,000 dalasi ($12,000), a considerable sum given the average annual income of $450. The amounts required from National Assembly and mayoral candidates were raised to 50,000 dalasi, and the sum for local council candidates was increased to 10,000 dalasi. Ahead of the December 2016 presidential election, international observers were not allowed into The Gambia, and internet and international telephone services were cut on election day. Despite these and other obstacles to a free and fair election, the IEC was apparently able to conduct an impartial vote count, declaring that Barrow had won with 43.3 percent, followed by Jammeh with 39.6 percent and Mama Kandeh of the Gambia Democratic Congress (GDC) with 17.1 percent. Jammeh initially conceded defeat, but after a key member of the president-elect's coalition told Britain's Guardian newspaper that Jammeh would be prosecuted after stepping down, Jammeh reversed his position, called the election flawed, and said a new vote would be held. He submitted a petition to the Supreme Court, which had been crippled by vacancies since 2015 and appeared unable to hear the case. In mid-December, the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) authorized a standby force to intervene militarily if a peaceful transfer of power did not begin by the last day of Jammeh's mandate, January 18. Of the 53 members of the unicameral National Assembly, 48 are elected by popular vote, with the remainder appointed by the president; members serve five-year terms. Six of seven opposition parties boycotted the most recent elections in 2012, after demands for electoral reform were rejected. The ruling APRC won 43 of the elected seats. African Union observers noted a "gross imbalance" between the resources of the APRC and those of other parties, and cited the presence of security personnel and traditional chiefs in polling stations. ECOWAS refused to send observers. B. Political Pluralism and Participation 5 / 16 (+1) B1. Do the people have the right to organize in different political parties or other competitive political groupings of their choice, and is the system open to the rise and fall of these competing parties or groupings? B2. Is there a significant opposition vote and a realistic opportunity for the opposition to increase its support or gain power through elections? B3. Are the people's political choices free from domination by the military, foreign powers, totalitarian parties, religious hierarchies, economic oligarchies, or any other powerful group? B4. Do cultural, ethnic, religious, or other minority groups have full political rights and electoral opportunities? Jammeh and the APRC long dominated politics, and the politicized security forces suppressed the opposition during 2016. Sandeng, the UDP's organizing secretary, was arrested along with other opposition supporters in April for holding a protest calling for electoral reforms. He died in custody after reportedly being tortured. Two days after Sandeng's detention, the authorities arrested the leader of the UDP, Ousainou Darboe, and other important opposition officials for their role in another peaceful rally calling for the earlier detainees' release. Krummah, a UDP constituency official, died in custody in August, having been detained in another wave of arrests in May and allegedly tortured and denied medical treatment. By November, the government had arrested over 90 opposition supporters involved in election-related protests, according to Human Rights Watch. Thirty opposition figures, including Darboe, were prosecuted, convicted, and sentenced to three years in prison in July, though many were released on bail after Barrow's stunning election victory in December. The 2015 election law amendments impose burdensome requirements on political parties. To register, parties must deposit over $12,000; gather the signatures of 10,000 registered voters, up from 500; ensure that all executive members live in The Gambia; have offices in each of the country's administrative regions; provide audited accounts to the IEC; and hold biannual congresses. In April 2016, the IEC said eight parties had met the requirements ahead of the presidential election, two had been deregistered, and one was dissolved. Members of Jammeh's minority Jola ethnic group held important positions in the government in 2016, and the APRC's dominance limited the extent to which any group could freely participate in the political system. C. Functioning of Government 0 / 12 C1. Do the freely elected head of government and national legislative representatives determine the policies of the government? C2. Is the government free from pervasive corruption? C3. Is the government accountable to the electorate between elections, and does it operate with openness and transparency? The president exercises most control over decision-making, and government operations are generally opaque. Official corruption remains a serious problem. In September 2016, Justice Minister Mama Fatima Singhateh said the government was set to validate a draft Anti-Corruption Bill backed by the UN Development Programme that would create a national Anti-Corruption Commission. Singhateh said the commission would investigate and facilitate prosecution of corruption cases, and would aid in asset recovery. However, in practice the Jammeh regime did not tolerate independent corruption monitoring by civil society groups or journalists, prosecutions of officials appeared limited and selective, and enforcement of asset-disclosure rules was weak. Asset declarations were required for all candidates in the 2016 presidential election, but Jammeh did not comply. Civil Liberties 12 / 60 (-1) D. Freedom of Expression and Belief 3 / 16 D1. Are there free and independent media and other forms of cultural expression? D2. Are religious institutions and communities free to practice their faith and express themselves in public and private? D3. Is there academic freedom, and is the educational system free of extensive political indoctrination? D4. Is there open and free private discussion? Laws on sedition give the government discretion in silencing dissent, and independent journalists are subject to harassment, arrest, and violence. There are harsh criminal penalties for use of the internet to criticize government officials and providing "false information" to a public servant. Alagie Abdoulie Ceesay, director of Taranga FM, was abducted by suspected government agents in July 2015, detained by the National Intelligence Agency (NIA) later that month, and charged with sedition for allegedly sharing an anti-Jammeh photograph via mobile phone. He was reportedly tortured in custody. In April 2016, Ceesay escaped from a hospital where he had been taken for treatment. In November, he was convicted in absentia on three counts of sedition and spreading of false news and sentenced to two years in prison and a fine of $4,670, according to media reports. State-run outlets dominate the media landscape. There are no private television stations, but a small number of privately owned newspapers and radio stations operate. Many opposition and news websites are blocked. Self-censorship among journalists is common. In April 2016, the Gambian Press Union estimated that 20 percent of Gambian journalists were living in exile. Religious freedom is enshrined in the constitution, but Jammeh declared the country to be an Islamic state in December 2015. He is supported by the Supreme Islamic Council, whose members have discriminated against Ahmadi Muslims. In June 2016, a police statement announced that music, dancing, and drumming would be banned during the month of Ramadan, and that violators would be subject to arrest. Religious instruction in schools is mandatory. Academic freedom is severely limited at the University of The Gambia. Free and open private discussion is curtailed due to credible fears of government surveillance and retaliation. Despite the repressive environment, university student and faculty associations joined other civil society organizations in urging a peaceful handover of power from Jammeh to Barrow in December 2016. E. Associational and Organizational Rights 2 / 12 (-1) E1. Is there freedom of assembly, demonstration, and open public discussion? E2. Is there freedom for nongovernmental organizations? E3. Are there free trade unions and peasant organizations or equivalents, and is there effective collective bargaining? Are there free professional and other private organizations? Freedoms of assembly and association are legally protected. However, Gambian criminal law calls for protest organizers to seek permits from the inspector general of police, and police do not reliably issue permits for such events. The crackdown on UDP-led protests in April 2016 was justified on the grounds that the organizers had not obtained permits. Nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) in the country operate under constant threat of reprisals and detnetion of staff. Workers - except for civil servants, household workers, and security forces - can form unions, strike, and bargain for wages, but the labor minister has the discretion to exclude other categories of workers, and legal protections are poorly enforced. In January 2016, the government banned the GNTCA, which had demanded lower fuel prices, and several of its leaders were arrested. In February, GNTCA secretary general Sheriff Dibba died in government custody, international rights groups alleged that he had been denied proper medical attention after becoming ill during his detention, while the International Transport Workers' Federation cited reports that he had been tortured. F. Rule of Law 1 / 16 F1. Is there an independent judiciary? F2. Does the rule of law prevail in civil and criminal matters? Are police under direct civilian control? F3. Is there protection from political terror, unjustified imprisonment, exile, or torture, whether by groups that support or oppose the system? Is there freedom from war and insurgencies? F4. Do laws, policies, and practices guarantee equal treatment of various segments of the population? Although the constitution guarantees an independent judiciary, the president selects and dismisses judges. Jammeh's dismissal of judges from the Supreme Court in 2015 left it unable to hear cases after May of that year. In December 2016, when Jammeh filed a challenge to Barrow's election victory with the Supreme Court, Chief Justice Emmanuel Olusegun Fagbenle announced that the petition could not be heard before January 2017, as replacement judges had yet to be sworn in. Critics questioned the legitimacy of a process in which Jammeh would effectively be selecting the judges for his own case. In October 2016, the government announced that The Gambia would withdraw from the International Criminal Court. However, following the presidential election, Barrow said he would reverse that decision. The judicial system recognizes customary and Islamic law, primarily for personal status and family matters. Impunity for the security forces is a problem. The NIA is authorized to search, arrest, or seize any person or property without a warrant in the name of state security. Prisons are overcrowded and unsanitary, and torture is reportedly common. Activists, journalists, and government opponents are often jailed without charge for longer than the 72 hours allowed by law. For instance, the former deputy minister of foreign affairs, Sarjo Jallow, was arrested in September 2016 and remained in state custody at year's end, reportedly held by the NIA without charge, even though the High Court in Banjul had granted him bail in October. Similarly, Haruna Gassama, president of the Rice Farmers' Cooperative Society, was detained by the NIA for 185 days in 2015, rearrested in April 2016, and still in incommunicado detention at year's end. The Gambia's ethnic groups coexist in relative harmony, though Jammeh is accused of giving preferential treatment to the Jola, whose presence in the army reportedly increased after a 2014 coup attempt. In June 2016, Jammeh referred to Gambian members of the Mandinka ethnic group as foreigners and threatened them with death if they attempted to oppose him. Consensual same-sex sexual relationships remain a criminal offense. Even an attempted sex act can draw seven years in prison, and defendants with repeat offenses or who are HIV positive face life imprisonment for "aggravated homosexuality." Jammeh continued to condemn homosexuality in inflammatory terms in 2016. G. Personal Autonomy and Individual Rights 6 / 16 G1. Do individuals enjoy freedom of travel or choice of residence, employment, or institution of higher education? G2. Do individuals have the right to own property and establish private businesses? Is private business activity unduly influenced by government officials, the security forces, political parties/organizations, or organized crime? G3. Are there personal social freedoms, including gender equality, choice of marriage partners, and size of family? G4. Is there equality of opportunity and the absence of economic exploitation? State employees must obtain permission from the administration to travel abroad, and authorities often seize the documents of arrested individuals, preventing them from traveling after their release. Freedom of movement within the country is impaired by security checkpoints. Property rights are not secure. Village chiefs allocate land for various uses, but poor record keeping and high rates of turnover in village hierarchies foster land disputes and confusion about ownership and leases. Problems with due process related to the illegal seizure of land also persist. Regulatory hurdles impede the establishment and operation of businesses. Women enjoy less access to higher education, justice, and employment than men. Sharia (Islamic law) provisions on family law and inheritance discriminate against women. Rape and domestic violence are common, despite laws prohibiting them. In July 2016, the National Assembly passed a law criminalizing child marriage. Female genital mutilation is widespread, though it was criminalized in a 2015 law. Although child labor and forced labor are illegal, women and children are subject to sex trafficking, domestic servitude, and forced begging. The government does little to prosecute offenders or to identify and protect victims of human trafficking. Copyright notice: Freedom House, Inc. All Rights Reserved Freedom in the World 2017 - El Salvador Publisher Freedom House Publication Date 12 July 2017 Cite as Freedom House, Freedom in the World 2017 - El Salvador, 12 July 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/59831e9a8.html [accessed 13 November 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States. Freedom Status: Free Aggregate Score: 70/100 (0 = Least Free, 100 = Most Free) Freedom Rating: 2.5/7 (1 = Most Free, 7 = Least Free) Political Rights: 2/7 (1 = Most Free, 7 = Least Free) Civil Liberties: 3/7 (1 = Most Free, 7 = Least Free) Quick Facts Population: 6,400,000 Capital: San Salvador GDP/capita: $4,219 Press Freedom Status: Partly Free OVERVIEW Violence linked to criminal gangs remains a grave problem, and there is increasing concern about the influence such groups have in politics. The country has a lively press and civil society sector, though journalists risk harassment and violence in connection with work related to gang activity or corruption. Key Developments in 2016: The online news outlet El Faro publicized videos showing members of the country's two largest political parties making deals with gangs to buy votes ahead of the 2014 presidential election. In March, a radio journalist known for reporting on gang activity was murdered. In July, the Supreme Court repealed a 1993 amnesty law that had barred the prosecution of crimes and human rights violations committed during the 1980-92 civil war, saying the government had an obligation to investigate war crimes and to provide reparations. Executive Summary: Due to rampant gang-related violence, El Salvador is considered one of the most dangerous countries in the world. While the homicide level fell in 2016 compared to the previous year, police still recorded 5,278 homicides, amounting to a rate of approximately 80 per 100,000 people. (In 2015, 6,656 homicides were recorded.) Authorities intensified their militarized response to the Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13) and Barrio 18 gangs during the year, and faced criticism from rights activists for the deadly confrontations between security forces and suspected gang members that frequently erupted. Some public officials have been implicated in gang activity. Journalists whose work focuses on gangs and corruption continue to face harassment and violence. Nicolas Garcia, a radio journalist who reported on gangs, was murdered in March 2016, reportedly after experiencing harassment from MS-13 members who had insisted that he assist them by providing information on police activity. Several electoral reforms were passed in 2016 in an effort to simplify the cross-party, or "voto cruzado," and proportional representation voting rules, which had created some confusion in the 2015 elections. Separately, in July, the Constitutional Chamber of the Supreme Court ruled that a 1993 general amnesty law barring the prosecution of human rights violations committed during the civil war was unconstitutional. In its ruling, the court stated that the government had an obligation to investigate war crimes and to provide reparations. POLITICAL RIGHTS AND CIVIL LIBERTIES Political Rights 34 / 40 (+1) A. Electoral Process 11 / 12 (+1) A1. Is the head of government or other chief national authority elected through free and fair elections? A2. Are the national legislative representatives elected through free and fair elections? A3. Are the electoral laws and framework fair? El Salvador's president is elected for a five-year term. The 84-member, unicameral Legislative Assembly is elected for three years. Three candidates contended for the presidency in 2014: former guerilla Salvador Sanchez Ceren of the incumbent Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN), Norman Quijano of Nationalist Republican Alliance (ARENA), and former president Antonio Saca of the Grand Alliance for National Unity (GANA). Ceren defeated Quijano in a very close runoff. Turnout was 60 percent. Quijano accused the Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE) of fraud, but domestic and international observers considered the elections free and fair. Before the 2015 legislative and municipal elections, the Constitutional Chamber of the Supreme Court passed a number of rulings on the electoral system, including one allowing voters to cast ballots for candidates from more than one political party (cross-voting); previously, voters selected a party rather than individual candidates. The FMLN accused the Chamber of purposefully generating confusion before the election, while the Organization of American States (OAS) questioned whether the date of the decision allowed enough time for parties to adapt to the changes. Citing a lack of time, the legislature delegated to the TSE how it would count votes under the new rules in 2015. In the 2015 elections, ARENA won 35 seats 32 on its own and 3 in coalition with the National Coalition Party (PCN). The FMLN won 31 seats, GANA won 11, and the rest went to smaller groupings. Turnout was 48 percent. Some vote buying was alleged in rural areas. The OAS observation mission declared the election broadly transparent and free. It did note that the TSE had difficulties in the counting and transmission of results. San Salvadoran candidates disputed their results, prompting the Constitutional Chamber to call for an unprecedented recount that did not affect the results, but delayed the seating of 24 deputies. In 2015, residential voting was extended nationwide, and municipal elections were conducted under new proportional rules. In February and May of 2016, the legislature passed reforms that clarified the application of those rules and of the cross-party voting system. The reforms also prohibited changes to the electoral process one year before an election, and mandated that alternative candidates be listed on the ballot. However, in July 2016, the Chamber declared the 2015 election of alternate legislators unconstitutional, removing them from office and creating uncertainty for future elections. The OAS, and other organizations, have repeatedly called for the TSE to update its list of registered voters. B. Political Pluralism and Participation 14 / 16 B1. Do the people have the right to organize in different political parties or other competitive political groupings of their choice, and is the system open to the rise and fall of these competing parties or groupings? B2. Is there a significant opposition vote and a realistic opportunity for the opposition to increase its support or gain power through elections? B3. Are the people's political choices free from domination by the military, foreign powers, totalitarian parties, religious hierarchies, economic oligarchies, or any other powerful group? B4. Do cultural, ethnic, religious, or other minority groups have full political rights and electoral opportunities? Since the end of the civil war in 1992, FMLN and ARENA have been the two largest political parties, though the newer GANA has significant support. Some Salvadorans continue to express concern that foreign governments and multinational corporations exert excessive influence over local and national government officials. Increasingly, there are concerns about the growing political influence of gangs. In March and May 2016, El Faro released videos that showed ARENA and the FMLN apparently making deals with gang leaders in exchange for votes ahead of the 2014 presidential election. The current legislature includes no members who identify as representatives of ethnic minorities or indigenous groups, nor do these populations hold high-level government positions. A 2013 statute requires that 30 percent of legislative and municipal candidates be women; currently women hold 32 percent of seats in the Legislative Assembly. C. Functioning of Government 9 / 12 C1. Do the freely elected head of government and national legislative representatives determine the policies of the government? C2. Is the government free from pervasive corruption? C3. Is the government accountable to the electorate between elections, and does it operate with openness and transparency? Corruption is a serious problem. There has been some progress in corruption investigations and prosecutions against officials from previous administrations, and the current one. However, a majority of crimes continue to go unpunished, and the FMLN has pushed back against investigations of its members. In January 2016, the United Nations announced the establishment of a U.S-funded program designed to assist El Salvador's attorney general with anticorruption investigations. Nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) agree that while there are advances in the government's application of the Access to Public Information Law, passed in 2011, there is still room for improvement. Civil Liberties 36 / 60 D. Freedom of Expression and Belief 12 / 16 D1. Are there free and independent media and other forms of cultural expression? D2. Are religious institutions and communities free to practice their faith and express themselves in public and private? D3. Is there academic freedom, and is the educational system free of extensive political indoctrination? D4. Is there open and free private discussion? The constitution provides for freedom of the press, and while this right is generally respected, harassment and acts of violence following coverage of corruption and gang violence have led reporters to engage in self-censorship. Journalists continue to face intimidation and threats following their reporting on gangs, corruption, police impunity, and negotiations between the gangs and political parties. Nicolas Garcia, a radio journalist who reported on gangs, was murdered in March 2016, reportedly after experiencing harassment from MS-13 members who had insisted that he assist them by providing information on police activity. Salvadoran media are privately owned, but ownership is confined to a small group of businesspeople that manipulate reporting to protect their interests. ARENA-aligned Telecorporacion Salvadorena dominates the market, controlling three of the five private television networks. Online sites such as El Faro and Contrapunto provide alternative views and investigative reporting. Access to the internet is unrestricted. In May 2016, the legislature approved a package of amendments to the Telecommunications Act that were developed amid a robust debate that included civil society and private media outlets. Among other things, they included changes to how radio frequencies are allocated that gave greater representation to community media. The government does not encroach upon religious freedom, and academic freedom is respected. Religious leaders working with former gang members or who have been critical of the government's security strategy have been harassed. There have been no recent reports of extralegal surveillance or government interference in private discussions or communications. However, given the prevalence of gang activity throughout the country, Salvadorans take precautions when discussing matters of public security outside their homes in order to minimize the risk of retaliation. E. Associational and Organizational Rights 8 / 12 E1. Is there freedom of assembly, demonstration, and open public discussion? E2. Is there freedom for nongovernmental organizations? E3. Are there free trade unions and peasant organizations or equivalents, and is there effective collective bargaining? Are there free professional and other private organizations? Freedoms of assembly and association are generally upheld, and public protests are permitted without obstruction. NGOs for the most part operate freely. Labor unions have long faced obstacles in a legal environment that has traditionally favored business interests, including light penalties for employers who interfere with strikes. The law prohibits strikes in sectors deemed essential, but is vague about the type of work falling within this designation. A number of strikes among both public- and private-sector workers took place in 2016; several involving health-care workers were ruled illegal. F. Rule of Law 8 / 16 F1. Is there an independent judiciary? F2. Does the rule of law prevail in civil and criminal matters? Are police under direct civilian control? F3. Is there protection from political terror, unjustified imprisonment, exile, or torture, whether by groups that support or oppose the system? Is there freedom from war and insurgencies? F4. Do laws, policies, and practices guarantee equal treatment of various segments of the population? El Salvador's judicial system remains weak and plagued by corruption and obstructionism. Judges are often affiliated with a particular party, and various parties have complained that some recent investigations and judicial decisions were politically motivated. Justice system officials have frequently been accused of brutality, corruption, and arbitrary arrest. The government has enlisted the help of the military in its efforts to rein in gang activity. Authorities escalated a crackdown on gangs in 2016, and an increased rate of lethal armed confrontations between suspected gang members and security forces during the year drew concern from rights advocates and others about human rights violations perpetrated by police. In June, the director of the National Civil Police (PNC) announced that 346 suspected gang members had been killed since the start of the year in joint operations carried out by the police and the military, while the attorney general said in April that 50 police officers had been killed in by gang members so far in 2016. In 2016, the government passed reforms that tightened its control of prisons, in large part to curtail the activities of gang leaders who continue to direct operations while incarcerated. Prisons remain extremely overcrowded, and conditions within can be lethal due to disease, lack of adequate medical care, and the risk of attack by other inmates. In June 2016, the Supreme Court's Constitutional Chamber ruled that prison conditions had deteriorated to the point of being unconstitutional. Prisoners held in pretrial detention account for more than 30 percent of inmates. El Salvador is one of the most violent countries in the world. In 2016, police recorded 5,278 homicides a rate of approximately 80 per 100,000 in 2016 compared to 6,656 in 2015. The country since 2011 has been on the U.S. list of "major" drug producing and transit countries. In 2010, the legislature criminalized gang membership. In 2016, the legislature passed a series of antigang measures, among them one that criminalized negotiations with gangs. The 2006 Special Law against Acts of Terrorism allows street gangs and those who finance them to be treated as terrorists and expanded the use of wiretaps and the freezing of funds. However, despite a high number of such investigations, very few suspected gang members are convicted under the terrorism provisions. In July 2016, the Supreme Court ruled that a 1993 general amnesty law barring the investigation and prosecution of human rights violations committed during the civil war was unconstitutional; in its ruling it stated that the government had an obligation to investigate war crimes and to provide reparations. The law's repeal will permit prosecutions related to the conflict, during which 75,000 people were tortured, unlawfully killed, or disappeared, according to Amnesty International. Much of the indigenous population faces poverty, unemployment, and labor discrimination, and challenges with regard to land rights and access to credit. Article 63 of the Constitution, ratified in 2014, recognizes indigenous peoples and pledges to adopt policies that support indigenous cultural identity, values, and spirituality. In August 2016, the legislature approved a new Culture Law that includes a clause on the preservation of indigenous culture and language. Discrimination based on sexual orientation is widespread, despite being illegal. According to local activists, the state's security apparatus and gangs are responsible for most violence against the LGBT community. Women continue to face questionable trials and high prison sentences for supposed abortions. G. Personal Autonomy and Individual Rights 8 / 16 G1. Do individuals enjoy freedom of travel or choice of residence, employment, or institution of higher education? G2. Do individuals have the right to own property and establish private businesses? Is private business activity unduly influenced by government officials, the security forces, political parties/organizations, or organized crime? G3. Are there personal social freedoms, including gender equality, choice of marriage partners, and size of family? G4. Is there equality of opportunity and the absence of economic exploitation? Freedom of travel within El Salvador is complicated by the government's inability to control gang violence. The MS-13 and Barrio 18 gangs control certain neighborhoods, making it dangerous for citizens to travel, work, and live freely. The Global Report on Internal Displacement estimated that at the end of 2015, there were some 289,000 internally displaced persons in El Salvador, with most displacements due to gang violence and criminal activity, and tens of thousands of students have stopped attending school in 2015 due to violence. Businesses and private citizens are regularly subject to extortion, paying an estimated 3 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) to criminal groups. Women are granted equal rights under the Constitution, but are often subject to discrimination. Abortion is punishable by imprisonment even when the life of the mother is at risk or in cases of incest. Some women have been jailed despite credible claims that their pregnancies ended due to miscarriage. The Constitutional Chamber affirmed in 2013 that the "rights of the mother cannot be privileged over the fetus." In September 2016, one of the so-called Las 17 women who served jail time for pregnancy-related crimes was released, though some of the women still remained in prison at year's end. Violence against women, including domestic violence, is a serious concern. In February 2016, the legislature created new tribunals to preside over cases that involve discrimination or violence against women. Despite government efforts, El Salvador remains a source, transit, and destination country for the trafficking of women and children. Gangs often force children to sell drugs, and migrants traveling from or through El Salvador can fall victim to sex and labor trafficking rings. Corruption among public officials has stymied efforts to dismantle sex trafficking operations. Copyright notice: Freedom House, Inc. All Rights Reserved Freedom in the World 2017 - Cote d'Ivoire Publisher Freedom House Publication Date 12 July 2017 Cite as Freedom House, Freedom in the World 2017 - Cote d'Ivoire, 12 July 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/59831e9b4.html [accessed 13 November 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States. Freedom Status: Partly Free Aggregate Score: 52/100 (0 = Least Free, 100 = Most Free) Freedom Rating: 4.0/7 (1 = Most Free, 7 = Least Free) Political Rights: 4/7 (1 = Most Free, 7 = Least Free) Civil Liberties: 4/7 (1 = Most Free, 7 = Least Free) Quick Facts Population: 23,900,000 Capital: Yamoussoukro GDP/capita: $1,399 Press Freedom Status: Partly Free OVERVIEW Cote d'Ivoire continues to recover from over a decade of political turbulence and civil war. However, many of the war's root causes including questions of national identity, access to land, corruption, and impunity remain. The administration of President Alassane Ouattara has done little to address persistent concerns that pro-Ouattara actors have not been prosecuted for crimes committed during the 2010-11 conflict. Key Developments in 2016: In January, the International Criminal Court (ICC) began a long-awaited trial against former president Laurent Gbagbo and Charles Ble Goude, both of whom stand accused of crimes against humanity relating to the 2010-11 conflict. In May, the trial of former first lady Simone Gbagbo for crimes against humanity began in Abidjan, amid concerns raised by human rights watchdogs regarding the fairness of the proceedings. In October, voters approved a new constitution that created the post of vice president as well as a Senate, and formally removed a provision that had once barred President Alassane Ouattara from office due to mixed-nationality parentage. Executive Summary: In 2016, Cote d'Ivoire continued its progress towards peace and stability after some 15 years of political turbulence and civil war that peaked in a 2010-11 postelection crisis. In a sign of the return to normalcy, international sanctions, including an arms embargo, were formally lifted, and the United Nations is scheduled to withdraw its peacekeeping mission by mid-2017. President Ouattara has presided over four years of economic growth, though there are serious concerns that the boom has not benefited ordinary Ivorians. Longstanding concerns about impunity, victor's justice, and reconciliation persist. To date, only a handful of individuals have been put on trial for crimes committed during the 2010-11 crisis. POLITICAL RIGHTS AND CIVIL LIBERTIES Political Rights 20 / 40 A. Electoral Process 7 / 12 A1. Is the head of government or other chief national authority elected through free and fair elections? A2. Are the national legislative representatives elected through free and fair elections? A3. Are the electoral laws and framework fair? Cote d'Ivoire's new constitution, approved in an October 2016 referendum and promulgated in November, provides for the direct popular election of a president and members of a National Assembly. It further established a second house of parliament, a Senate, with one-third of its members to be chosen by the president and the remaining two-thirds to be elected indirectly. It also abolished a rule that had required both of the president's parents to be Ivorian, instead mandating that only one parent be Ivorian. Turnout for the poll was low, at about 42 percent, though 93 percent of participants backed the new charter. The constitutional referendum was boycotted by the opposition, and marred by violence at about 100 polling stations. Ouattara won the 2015 presidential election in the first round. Despite tensions and some government crackdowns on opposition rallies in the lead-up, the election itself was found by international and domestic observers to be credible. It was the first presidential poll since the 2010 vote, which had occurred after years of delays and triggered widespread postelection violence that left 3,000 dead and another million people displaced when Gbagbo, the incumbent, refused to concede the internationally recognized victory of Ouattara. Gbagbo was ultimately arrested with the assistance of French and UN peacekeeping troops and taken into the custody of the International Criminal Court (ICC). Credible, largely peaceful elections to the National Assembly were held in December 2016. The presidential coalition, consisting of Ouattara's Rally of the Republicans (RDR) party in alliance with the Democratic Party of Cote d'Ivoire-African Democratic Rally (PDCI-RDA) and several smaller parties won a solid majority, taking 167 of 255 seats. Independent candidates took the majority of remaining seats. Former president Gbagbo's Ivorian Popular Front (FPI) party, which boycotted the 2011 parliamentary elections, won 3 seats. Senate elections were expected to take place in 2017. In November 2016, the African Court on Human and People's Rights ruled that Cote d'Ivoire's Independent Electoral Commission (CEI) is imbalanced in favor of the government, undermining independence and impartiality, and ordered that the electoral law be amended. B. Political Pluralism and Participation 8 / 16 B1. Do the people have the right to organize in different political parties or other competitive political groupings of their choice, and is the system open to the rise and fall of these competing parties or groupings? B2. Is there a significant opposition vote and a realistic opportunity for the opposition to increase its support or gain power through elections? B3. Are the people's political choices free from domination by the military, foreign powers, totalitarian parties, religious hierarchies, economic oligarchies, or any other powerful group? B4. Do cultural, ethnic, religious, or other minority groups have full political rights and electoral opportunities? The RDR and the PDCI-RDA, plus several smaller parties, comprise the country's dominant coalition, which holds a virtual lock on national political power. The FPI remains weak and disorganized, marked by deep divisions and infighting since Gbagbo's arrest, with supporters split between hardliners who insist on Gbagbo's release, and moderates who support Pascal Affi N'Guessan. National reconciliation has continued to be a challenge, but tensions have been mitigated somewhat by the release of dozens of FPI prisoners who were being held in conjunction with the 2010-11 crisis, the unfreezing of several FPI partisans' bank accounts, and the return of several high-level FPI members from exile. Citizenship has been a perennial source of conflict since Ivorian nationalists adopted former president Henri Bedie's concept of "Ivoirite" to exclude perceived foreigners (including Ouattara) from the political process. A new nationality law relaxing some conditions for citizenship went into effect in 2014. However, its application remains challenging, and hundreds of thousands of individuals remain effectively stateless. C. Functioning of Government 5 / 12 C1. Do the freely elected head of government and national legislative representatives determine the policies of the government? C2. Is the government free from pervasive corruption? C3. Is the government accountable to the electorate between elections, and does it operate with openness and transparency? Cote d'Ivoire's acute crisis phase continues to recede, and UN peacekeepers are expected to withdraw from the country in mid-2017. Though defense and security forces are increasingly under civilian control as a result of legislation increasing oversight, problems of parallel command and control systems within the armed forces, known as the Republican Forces of Cote d'Ivoire (FRCI) remain a challenge, and former rebel commanders of a particular faction, the Forces Nouvelles, dominate FRCI leadership. Corruption remains endemic, and perpetrators seldom face prosecution. Illegal checkpoints and extortion outside of Abidjan are a continuing problem and are rarely prosecuted. In January and March 2016, protestors clashed with soldiers over the soldiers' persistent extortion practices, resulting in three deaths and one injury. In 2013, the National Assembly passed an access to information law. In 2016, the Commission on Access to Information, established to monitor the law's application, conducted training sessions for officials and established a website, among other activities. Civil Liberties 32 / 40 (+1) D. Freedom of Expression and Belief 11 / 16 D1. Are there free and independent media and other forms of cultural expression? D2. Are religious institutions and communities free to practice their faith and express themselves in public and private? D3. Is there academic freedom, and is the educational system free of extensive political indoctrination? D4. Is there open and free private discussion? Freedoms of speech and of the press are protected by the constitution, though there are prohibitions on speech that incites violence, hatred, or rebellion. These prohibitions are enforced by the government media regulatory body, the Conseil National de la Presse (CNP). In 2016, the CNP frequently reprimanded journalists and suspended outlets, most of them pro-Gbagbo, for allegedly spreading false information. In April, the government banned the sale of a book written by Charles Ble Goude, a former youth minister and leader of a pro-Gbagbo militia on trial before the ICC. Nevertheless, conditions for the press have improved since the end of the 2010-11 conflict, and incidents of violence and intimidation against journalists are relatively rare. In August, the government announced plans to submit a draft law that would strengthen freedom of the press by eliminating the possibility of pretrial detention and prison sentences for press-related offenses. There were no credible reports that the government restricted access to the internet or illegally monitored online communications. Legal guarantees of religious freedom are typically upheld, though political and religious identities tend to overlap with ethnicity and geography. A north-south, Christian-Muslim schism has been a salient feature of Ivorian life since the civil war started in 2002, and was brought to a head in the crisis of 2010-11. However, the schism has receded since then, and the current government is a center-north coalition that includes Muslims and Christians. Academic freedom suffered severely during the 2010-11 conflict, as public universities throughout the country were closed, occupied by armed forces, and used as military bases and training grounds. They reopened to students in 2012, and are slowly recovering. For the most part, residents can freely engage in private discussion. E. Associational and Organizational Rights 8 / 12 (+1) E1. Is there freedom of assembly, demonstration, and open public discussion? E2. Is there freedom for nongovernmental organizations? E3. Are there free trade unions and peasant organizations or equivalents, and is there effective collective bargaining? Are there free professional and other private organizations? The constitution protects the right to free assembly, but this right is often denied in practice. The government took action on several occasions in 2016 to interfere with opposition protests against the draft constitution. In October, authorities dispersed at least two such demonstrations, and temporarily detained several opposition leaders in attendance. Protests can escalate into violence, as was the case in July demonstrations over electricity prices in Bouake, which gave way to looting and clashes between police and protesters. One man was killed after being shot and a number of others were injured during the unrest. Freedom of association is constitutionally protected, and both domestic and international nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) generally operate freely. The right to organize and join labor unions is constitutionally guaranteed. Workers have the right to bargain collectively, and Cote d'Ivoire typically has various professional strikes every year, though sometimes strikes become violent. Strikes by student unions have been more likely to involve violence than those by industry professionals. In July 2016, the government briefly suspended all student union activity after student demonstrators at Felix Houphouet-Boigny University in Abidjan clashed with police, resulting in at least 30 injuries and several dozen arrests. F. Rule of Law 6 / 16 F1. Is there an independent judiciary? F2. Does the rule of law prevail in civil and criminal matters? Are police under direct civilian control? F3. Is there protection from political terror, unjustified imprisonment, exile, or torture, whether by groups that support or oppose the system? Is there freedom from war and insurgencies? F4. Do laws, policies, and practices guarantee equal treatment of various segments of the population? The judiciary is not independent, and judges are highly susceptible to external interference and bribes. Prisons are severely overcrowded, and prolonged pretrial detention is a serious problem for both adults and minors, with some detainees spending years in prison without trial. Incarcerated adults and minors are not always separated. Reports of extortion, sexual violence, and killings by members of the FRCI and other security forces continued, though they have decreased since the height of the political crisis, and the government has developed an action plan to combat FRCI-related sexual violence. In some instances, abuses by security forces have resulted in deadly clashes with civilians. In 2016, human rights watchdogs expressed concern that government forestry agents had evicted tens of thousands of illegal squatters from protected forests without adequate warning, in processes marred by violence and extortion. The security situation was stable but subject to volatility in 2016. In March, 22 people were killed and 33 were injured in a terrorist attack at a beach resort perpetrated by Al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb. That same month, an episode of intercommunal violence between pastoralists and farmers in the northeast resulted in at least 17 deaths. In Abidjan, youths that fought in the 2010-11 conflict have regrouped into machete-wielding gangs known as "enfant microbes," which continue to be implicated in armed robberies and assaults in the city. This has led some citizens to form "self-defense" groups, and in 2016 these vigilantes killed a number of alleged criminals. In January 2016, the government created new ministries of human rights and public liberties, solidarity, social cohesion, and victims' compensation. The same month, the ICC began a long-awaited trial against Laurent Gbagbo and Charles Ble Goude, both of whom stand accused of crimes against humanity relating to the 2010-11 conflict. Although the ICC has said it is investigating pro-Ouattara actors, it has filed charges only against pro-Gbagbo defendants so far. In May, the trial of former first lady Simone Gbagbo for crimes against humanity in connection with the 2010-11 conflict began in Abidjan, following the Ivorian government's refusal to surrender her to the ICC. Rights groups representing victims refused to take part in the new trial, expressing concerns about its fairness and raising questions as to why Simone Gbagbo was the only person on trial on charges of large-scale human rights violations. Gbagbo was previously sentenced to 20 years in prison in 2015 for undermining state security. The work of the Special Investigative and Examination Cell, created in 2011 to investigate crimes committed during and after the 2010 postelection crisis, has suffered from inconsistent support over the years. In mid-2015, it charged more than 20 people, including high-level commanders from both sides of the conflict, though a number of them continue to occupy important positions in the state security apparatus. In February 2016, the Abidjan military tribunal handed down life sentences to three people following convictions relating to the assassination of General Robert Guei, a former military ruler who was killed in 2002 at the outset of the civil war. The Dialogue, Truth, and Reconciliation Commission (CDVR), established in 2011, submitted its final report to Ouattara in December 2014, and the report was finally made public in 2016. In April, the National Commission for Reconciliation and Compensation for Victims (CONARIV), conceived as the successor to the CDVR, presented Ouattara with a list of 316,954 individuals to receive reparations for crimes committed between 1990 and 2011. Same-sex sexual conduct is not specifically criminalized in Cote d'Ivoire, but LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender) people can face criminal prosecution for "public indecency." In November 2016, two gay men were each sentenced to three months in prison on such charges, in what local activists said it was the first case of its kind. No law prohibits discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. LGBT people face societal prejudice as well as violence and harassment by state security forces. In June 2016, several gay men reported that they had been forced to flee their homes, and that two of them had been assaulted by a mob, after a photo published by the U.S. embassy depicted them signing a condolence book for a deadly attack in Orlando, Florida, in which LGBT people were targeted. G. Personal Autonomy and Individual Rights 7 / 16 G1. Do individuals enjoy freedom of travel or choice of residence, employment, or institution of higher education? G2. Do individuals have the right to own property and establish private businesses? Is private business activity unduly influenced by government officials, the security forces, political parties/organizations, or organized crime? G3. Are there personal social freedoms, including gender equality, choice of marriage partners, and size of family? G4. Is there equality of opportunity and the absence of economic exploitation? Freedom of movement has improved in Abidjan and along major roads. However, illegal roadblocks and acts of extortion by state security forces remain a problem elsewhere, and the government's efforts to combat these practices have been undermined by inconsistent financial support and a failure to investigate and prosecute perpetrators. In the west and north of the country, highway robbery is a persistent problem. Property rights are weak and poorly regulated, especially in the west of the country, and remain an ongoing source of conflict between migrants and "natives" who claim customary rights to land use and inheritance. Citizens have the right to own and establish private businesses, and in general economic opportunities for migrants have continued to improve compared to previous years, but obstacles abound. Despite constitutional protections, women suffer significant legal and economic discrimination, and sexual and gender-based violence are widespread. Rape was common during the 2011 crisis, and remains a serious issue; many rapes are committed against children. Impunity for perpetrators remains a problem and when it is prosecuted, rape is routinely reclassified as indecent assault. Costly medical certificates are often essential for convictions, yet are beyond the means of impoverished victims. Most identified trafficking victims are children, and child labor, particularly in the cocoa industry, is a serious problem. Government programs for victims of trafficking are inadequate, and most such services are supplied by NGOs. Copyright notice: Freedom House, Inc. All Rights Reserved Freedom in the World 2017 - Costa Rica Publisher Freedom House Publication Date 12 July 2017 Cite as Freedom House, Freedom in the World 2017 - Costa Rica, 12 July 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/59831e9c5.html [accessed 13 November 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States. Freedom Status: Free Aggregate Score: 91/100 (0 = Least Free, 100 = Most Free) Freedom Rating: 1.0/7 (1 = Most Free, 7 = Least Free) Political Rights: 1/7 (1 = Most Free, 7 = Least Free) Civil Liberties: 1/7 (1 = Most Free, 7 = Least Free) Quick Facts Population: 4,900,000 Capital: San Jose GDP/capita: $11,260 Press Freedom Status: Free OVERVIEW Costa Rica has a long history of democratic stability, with a multiparty political system and regular rotations of power through free and fair elections. Freedoms of expression and association are robust. The rule of law is generally strong, though past presidents have often been implicated in corruption scandals, and prisons remain overcrowded. Among other ongoing concerns, indigenous people and other ethnic minorities face some forms of discrimination, and land disputes involving indigenous communities persist. Key Developments in 2016: The opposition National Liberation Party (PLN) won a majority of municipalities in February local elections, while the president's Citizens' Action Party placed a distant third. In May, the Legislative Assembly elected Antonio Alvarez Desanti of the PLN as its president, confirming opposition control over the body for another year. In an October ruling, the Supreme Court rebuked a state-owned bank for withdrawing advertising from a major newspaper over its critical reporting. Executive Summary: Opposition parties maintained control over the Legislative Assembly during 2016, complicating President Luis Guillermo Solis's attempts to pass legislation that would address the country's annual fiscal deficits. The deficit for the year was about 5.2 percent of gross domestic product, slightly better than expected, but significant tax and spending reform bills stalled in the legislature. In a positive sign for transparency and accountability, President Solis compelled Labor Minister Victor Morales to resign in March, just a day after the newspaper La Nacion reported that the minister's niece had been hired by the ministry in violation of an ethics code adopted the previous year. In July, La Nacion accused the state-owned Banco Nacional of withdrawing official advertising as a means of penalizing the paper for a series of investigative reports on alleged irregularities at the bank. An October ruling by the Supreme Court confirmed the newspaper's claims, ordering the bank to adhere to its previous media spending plan and refrain from future attempts at indirect censorship. The homicide rate continued to increase in 2016, reaching 11.8 per 100,000 residents; the figure was comparable to those in Costa Rica's immediate neighbors, but still far below the rates in the region's worst performers. A total of 579 murders were reported, compared with 566 in 2015. Overcrowding in prisons has been a chronic problem, and the courts intervened on several occasions during 2016 to force the government to ease crowding at specific facilities. Pretrial detainees account for less than a fifth of the prison population. Explanatory Note: This country report has been abridged for Freedom in the World 2017. For background information on political rights and civil liberties in Costa Rica, see Freedom in the World 2016. Copyright notice: Freedom House, Inc. All Rights Reserved Freedom in the World 2017 - Chad Publisher Freedom House Publication Date 12 July 2017 Cite as Freedom House, Freedom in the World 2017 - Chad, 12 July 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/59831e9d4.html [accessed 13 November 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States. Freedom Status: Not Free Aggregate Score: 18/100 (0 = Least Free, 100 = Most Free) Freedom Rating: 6.5/7 (1 = Most Free, 7 = Least Free) Political Rights: 7/7 (1 = Most Free, 7 = Least Free) Civil Liberties: 6/7 (1 = Most Free, 7 = Least Free) Quick Facts Population: 14,500,000 Capital: N'Djamena GDP/capita: $776 Press Freedom Status: Not Free OVERVIEW Chad has held regular presidential elections since 1996, but no election has ever produced a change in power. Legislative elections are routinely delayed, and opposition leaders risk arrest and severe mistreatment while in detention. The state typically represses antigovernment protests. Key Developments in 2016: In February, a video of an opposition leader's teenage daughter being gang-raped by attackers that included the sons of Chadian officials sparked a public outcry among ordinary citizens frustrated with impunity and violence against women. Incumbent president Idriss Deby Itno won April's presidential election with just under 60 percent of the vote, and was sworn in to his fifth term. There were reports that several members of the military disappeared after the election, allegedly for voting against Deby. Opposition figures rejected the election's results and convened antigovernment demonstrations, which were repressed and saw their organizers arrested. In the fall, the government sought to address its increasingly poor fiscal situation by reducing public-sector salaries and eliminating scholarships for students, resulting in strikes and demonstrations throughout the country. In response, authorities repressed or banned some such actions and Deby threatened to dissolve public sector unions. Executive Summary: Incumbent president Deby won April's presidential election with just under 60 percent of the vote, defeating opposition leader Saleh Kebzabo, who took 13 percent. The opposition rejected the result, citing a variety of electoral irregularities and other incidents, including reports that members of the military who voted against Deby had subsequently disappeared. The Constitutional Court upheld the election's result in May, though the opposition continued to reject it. Antigovernment protests were repressed and demonstration leaders arrested on several occasions during the year. Separately, parliamentary elections set for 2015 had not been held by year's end. Two months of social protest and turmoil preceded Deby's reelection. The protests, aimed at drawing attention to impunity for members of the ruling party and violence against women, were triggered by the emergence of a video on social media of an opposition leader's teenage daughter being gang-raped by assailants that included the sons of high-level Chadian officials; while officials during the year dispersed opposition-led protests, the demonstrations that came in response to the video were largely permitted. Seven accused rapists were later arrested, tried, and convicted by the courts, though two of the convicts escaped from prison. Due to a fiscal crisis brought on by plummeting oil prices and, presumably, state corruption, the state in 2016 adopted severe austerity measures to address budgetary constraints; these included significant cuts to public-sector salaries and benefits, and the elimination of state-funded stipends for students. The actions increased the already tense sociopolitical situation and resulted in student and public-sector strikes and demonstrations, and opposition criticism over a lack of transparency in the government's budget. At times these activities were met with repression and violence by the regime, and on instances the government forbid union and other organizations from holding public protests. The strikes placed additional burdens on the country's already struggling economy, and in December, Deby threatened to dissolve public sector unions completely. The budgetary crisis, accompanying austerity measures, and subsequent student strikes also severely disrupted the operations of schools and universities in Chad. Explanatory Note: This country report has been abridged for Freedom in the World 2017. For background information on political rights and civil liberties in Chad, see Freedom in the World 2016. Copyright notice: Freedom House, Inc. All Rights Reserved Freedom in the World 2017 - Burundi Publisher Freedom House Publication Date 12 July 2017 Cite as Freedom House, Freedom in the World 2017 - Burundi, 12 July 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/59831e9e3.html [accessed 13 November 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States. Freedom Status: Not Free Aggregate Score: 19/100 (0 = Least Free, 100 = Most Free) Freedom Rating: 6.5/7 (1 = Most Free, 7 = Least Free) Political Rights: 7/7 (1 = Most Free, 7 = Least Free) Civil Liberties: 6/7 (1 = Most Free, 7 = Least Free) Quick Facts Population: 11,100,000 Capital: Bujumbura GDP/capita: $277 Press Freedom Status: Not Free OVERVIEW Democratic gains made after the 12-year civil war ended in 2005 are rapidly being undone by a shift toward authoritarian politics and ongoing repression of and violence against the opposition and those perceived to support it. Key Developments in 2016: Repression and persecution of those suspected of opposing President Pierre Nkurunziza continued. At the end of the year, over 300,000 people had fled Burundi as refugees due to the ongoing crisis. In March, the European Union (EU) suspended direct aid to Burundi over the government's refusal to engage in peace talks. In October, the government announced that it would withdraw from the International Criminal Court (ICC), six months after the ICC prosecutor's office had initiated a preliminary examination of the crisis. Executive Summary: Burundi's political crisis began in April 2015, when President Nkurunziza announced his intention to run for a constitutionally dubious third term, which he won in disputed elections held later that year. Nkurunziza's move sparked violence including assassinations, arrests, torture of government critics, and escalating attacks by antigovernment forces in 2015. The violence continued in 2016, though at a lower rate. Many opposition figures and journalists who fled the country in 2015 continued to operate in exile. At the end of 2016, over 300,000 people had fled Burundi as refugees due to the crisis. The government has shown little interest in mediators' attempts to help negotiate a resolution to the crisis, and in March 2016, the EU suspended direct aid to Burundi over the government's refusal to engage in peace talks. The government's hard-line stance, combined with its stated intention to withdraw from the ICC, reflect a worrying disengagement from the international community. Meanwhile, Nkurunziza's ruling National Council for the Defense of Democracy-Forces for the Defense of Democracy (CNDD-FDD) maintained near-total control of the executive, judiciary, and legislative branches, as well as the security forces. POLITICAL RIGHTS AND CIVIL LIBERTIES Political Rights 5 / 40 A. Electoral Process 1 / 12 A1. Is the head of government or other chief national authority elected through free and fair elections? A2. Are the national legislative representatives elected through free and fair elections? A3. Are the electoral laws and framework fair? A new constitution was adopted in 2005 after a series of agreements ended Burundi's 12-year civil war. According to the charter, the president, who is directly elected for up to two five-year terms, appoints two vice presidents, one Tutsi and one Hutu, who must be approved separately by a two-thirds majority in both the lower and upper houses of Parliament. The lower house, the National Assembly, has 100 members directly elected by proportional representation for five-year terms. The constitution requires the National Assembly to be no more than 60 percent Hutu and no less than 40 percent Tutsi, with at least 30 percent of the seats held by women, and three deputies from the Twa ethnic minority. Additional members can be added, or "co-opted," from the respective party lists to meet these requirements. The upper house, the Senate, consists of 36 members chosen by locally elected officials for five-year terms. Each of Burundi's 18 provinces chooses two senators one Tutsi and one Hutu. As in the National Assembly, the Twa are guaranteed three seats in the Senate, and additional members can be co-opted to meet the 30 percent quota for women. In April 2015, the CNDD-FDD announced that President Pierre Nkurunziza would seek a third presidential term in elections scheduled for later that year. Critics charged that the move contravened the constitution and would jeopardize the country's fragile peace. Nkurunziza and his supporters argued that he was eligible to run again because he had been elected by Parliament rather than through a popular vote for his first term in office. Despite widespread public protests and international condemnation of the move, the Constitutional Court in May 2015 ruled in favor of Nkurunziza, even as one of the court's justices fled abroad. Days later, a group of military leaders led a coup attempt against Nkurunziza while he was in Tanzania. Government forces quickly reasserted control and began a harsh crackdown on those suspected of involvement in the plot or opposition to the president. Due to ongoing unrest in the country, the electoral commission postponed National Assembly elections until June 2015, and the presidential poll until that July. Indirect Senatorial elections were also held in July. Despite having boycotted the vote, the opposition coalition remained on the ballot; Amizero y'Abarundi (Hope for Burundi) secured 11 percent of the vote (21 seats), while the Union for National Progress (UPRONA) captured 2 percent (2 seats). Subsequent reallocations and co-opting to meet constitutional quotas resulted in a full seating of 121 deputies. In indirect elections for the Senate, the CNDD-FDD took 33 of 36 elected seats; an additional 7 seats were co-opted. In the presidential poll, Nkurunziza defeated National Forces of Liberation (FNL) leader Agathon Rwasa, 69 percent to 19 percent. Rwasa had pulled out of the race, but his name like those of other opposition candidates had remained on the ballot. International observers from some organizations, including the EU and African Union (AU), refused to monitor the elections, saying they could not be free or fair given the growing violence and climate of intimidation. A UN mission observing the presidential poll stated that the overall environment had not been conducive to a free and fair electoral process, saying that while not as violent as the previous month's legislative polls, that violence had "remained an unfortunate feature of the entire process." In August 2016, Parliament was sent a report that had been drafted by a national commission, assembled by Nkurunziza, supporting the elimination of term limits. In December, Nkurunziza suggested that he could run for a fourth term if this constitutional change were enacted. B. Political Pluralism and Participation 4 / 16 B1. Do the people have the right to organize in different political parties or other competitive political groupings of their choice, and is the system open to the rise and fall of these competing parties or groupings? B2. Is there a significant opposition vote and a realistic opportunity for the opposition to increase its support or gain power through elections? B3. Are the people's political choices free from domination by the military, foreign powers, totalitarian parties, religious hierarchies, economic oligarchies, or any other powerful group? B4. Do cultural, ethnic, religious, or other minority groups have full political rights and electoral opportunities? More than two dozen political parties are active in Burundi. The current legislature consists of members of the CNDD-FDD, a largely Hutu party associated with a former rebel group; the Tutsi-led UPRONA; and Amizero y'Abarundi, which includes members of the FNL, a former Hutu rebel movement. Many political parties include youth branches that intimidate and attack opponents. Opposition parties, politicians, and their supporters faced harassment, intimidation, and violence throughout 2016, following the failed coup attempt in May 2015 that triggered a crackdown on those suspected of involvement. Security forces loyal to the president played a key role in the repression, as did the Imbonerakure, the ruling party's youth wing. Many opposition politicians and groups were operating in exile in 2016, including the National Council for the Restoration of the Arusha Accords and Restoration of the State of Rights (CNARED), which accused Nkurunziza of violating the agreements that ended the civil war. Even some leading regime figures, such as Vice President Gervais Rufyikiri and National Assembly speaker Pie Ntavyohanyuma, fled the country in 2015 after voicing opposition to Nkurunziza's third-term bid. Hafsa Mossi, a former minister and member of the East African Legislative Assembly, was shot and killed in July 2016; the motive for her murder was unclear. C. Functioning of Government 0 / 12 C1. Do the freely elected head of government and national legislative representatives determine the policies of the government? C2. Is the government free from pervasive corruption? C3. Is the government accountable to the electorate between elections, and does it operate with openness and transparency? The 2015 polls fell far short of international standards for democratic elections, and in the absence of freely elected leaders, the government is accountable only to the ruling CNDD-FDD party. Corruption and nontransparent government practices are significant problems in Burundi. The country does not have a freedom of information law. Civil Liberties 14 / 60 D. Freedom of Expression and Belief 6 / 16 D1. Are there free and independent media and other forms of cultural expression? D2. Are religious institutions and communities free to practice their faith and express themselves in public and private? D3. Is there academic freedom, and is the educational system free of extensive political indoctrination? D4. Is there open and free private discussion? Freedom of expression is constitutionally guaranteed, but press laws restrict journalists through broad, vaguely written provisions, and key independent news outlets were destroyed in the political violence of 2015. A 2013 media law has been widely criticized for limiting the protection of journalistic sources, requiring journalists to meet certain educational and professional standards, and banning content related to national defense, security, public safety, and the state currency. The law empowers the media regulatory body to issue press cards to journalists, suspend or withdraw cards as a result of defamation cases, and impose financial penalties for media offenses. The 15-member regulatory council is controlled by presidential appointees and journalists from state broadcasters. The government dominates the media through its ownership of the public television and radio stations; it also runs Le Renouveau, the only daily newspaper. Radio is the primary source of information for the majority of the population. Some international radio broadcasts are available in the capital. Print runs of most newspapers remain small, and readership is limited by low literacy levels and availability. Throughout 2016, the government continued to pressure outlets carrying unfavorable coverage, with some such outlets being forced to close. Additionally, in October the Burundian Union of Journalists (UBJ) was indefinitely suspended alongside several civil society groups. Journalists are frequently subject to arbitrary arrest, harassment, or threats by police and the Imbonerakure. In July, journalist Jean Bigirimana, who worked a reporter with the independent weekly newspaper Iwacu, disappeared after receiving a phone call from intelligence services. He remained missing at year's end. Also in 2016, police arrested several foreign journalists, as well as their Burundian colleagues, and other foreign journalists were barred from the country. More than 100 journalists had fled into exile since April 2015, according to an October 2016 report by the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). Access to the internet remains largely confined to urban areas. As antigovernment protests began in 2015, the government attempted to cut off access to social-media sites used by the demonstrators. Many were able to circumvent the restrictions through the use of VPNs (virtual private networks). Freedom of religion is generally observed. For many years, civil strife and Tutsi social and institutional dominance impeded academic freedom by limiting educational opportunities for the Hutu, but this situation has improved since 2005. The ability to engage in open and free private discussion, particularly on opposition to the ruling party, is hindered by a fear of harassment by government supporters. Private citizens, including students and youth activists, continued to face surveillance by the National Intelligence Service (SNR) and the Imbonerakure in 2016. E. Associational and Organizational Rights 2 / 12 E1. Is there freedom of assembly, demonstration, and open public discussion? E2. Is there freedom for nongovernmental organizations? E3. Are there free trade unions and peasant organizations or equivalents, and is there effective collective bargaining? Are there free professional and other private organizations? The constitution provides for freedoms of assembly and association, but a 2013 law on public gatherings imposes restrictions on the right to assemble, including a one-day limit on the duration of demonstrations. The law holds the organizers of public gatherings liable for any legal infractions by participants and allows authorities to interrupt or cancel gatherings that pose a risk to public order. Onerous and costly registration requirements prevent many local nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) from receiving official legal recognition. Registration must be completed in person at the Ministry of Interior in Bujumbura, which is difficult for NGOs based in remote areas, and extensive documentation is required. Crackdowns against Burundi's civil society sector sharply intensified during 2015 and continued into 2016. Members of human rights groups that criticized the government faced surveillance, intimidation, threats, and arrest, leading many to seek refuge abroad. Authorities continued to issue bans and suspensions against NGOs in 2016, though some groups focusing on apolitical causes continued to function. The constitution provides protections for organized labor, and the labor code guarantees the right to strike. However, it is unlikely that union members would feel free to exercise the collective bargaining rights guaranteed by the law in the current political climate. In late December 2016, the chairman of the Confederation of Burundi Trade Unions was arrested by intelligence agents on unclear charges along with several other union leaders with whom he was meeting. F. Rule of Law 1 / 16 F1. Is there an independent judiciary? F2. Does the rule of law prevail in civil and criminal matters? Are police under direct civilian control? F3. Is there protection from political terror, unjustified imprisonment, exile, or torture, whether by groups that support or oppose the system? Is there freedom from war and insurgencies? F4. Do laws, policies, and practices guarantee equal treatment of various segments of the population? Burundi's judiciary is hindered by corruption, a lack of resources and training, and executive interference in legal matters. In 2015, justices on the Constitutional Court were reportedly intimidated into ruling in favor of Nkurunziza's decision to stand for a third term. The court's vice president, Sylvere Nimpagaritse, fled the country rather than approve the president's candidacy, which he deemed unlawful; he alleged that he and his fellow justices had come under enormous pressure, including death threats, to vote in favor of the proposal. The current judicial system struggles to function effectively or independently and cannot handle the large number of pending cases, many of which are politically sensitive. Crimes, especially those related to political violence, often go unreported or uninvestigated. In 2014, Parliament passed a law creating a truth and reconciliation commission to provide accountability for abuses committed between 1962 and 2008, though opposition members boycotted the vote due to concerns about the commission's lack of independence, claiming that most members were affiliates of the ruling party. The body began its work in March 2016. Separately, in October 2016, the government announced that it would withdraw from the ICC. The announcement came six months after the ICC prosecutor's office had opened a preliminary examination into the current crisis. Impunity for police brutality remains widespread. The police and the SNR increasingly engaged in torture and other ill-treatment of detainees suspected of participating in the 2015 protests or subsequent antigovernment violence. Victims described being beaten with iron bars, burned with acid, and having their heads forced under dirty water. Detainees did not have access to lawyers and were forced to make false confessions under threat of death. In April 2016, the UN High Commission for Human Rights warned that there had been a sharp increase in the use of torture during detention, noting that UN personnel had documented 345 new cases of torture in the first three months of the year. Many of those tortured were held by the intelligence services, but the UN found torture and detainee mistreatment at police stations and sometimes at army facilities. The UN also noted reports of secret detention facilities across the country. The general security situation remained poor in 2016. Over 300,000 refugees had fled Burundi since the current crisis began, according to year-end statistics released by the United Nations refugee agency. According to a May 2016 report from the Armed Conflict Location and Event Dataset, 1,155 people were killed between April 2015 and April 2016 amid attacks against civilians, battles, protests, and other unrest, with perpetrators including security forces, ex-soldiers and opposition groups. Of the dead, according to the report, at least 690 were civilians. Because researchers and international organizations have difficulty collecting such data, the death toll could be higher. In July 2016, Human Rights Watch published a report detailing rapes by Imbonerakure of women and men suspected of being opposition supporters. Albinos face a particular threat from discrimination and violence in Burundi. Since 2008, at least 18 albinos whose body parts are believed by some to have magical properties have been murdered. In February 2016, a child with albinism was murdered and dismembered, the first such killing in four years. LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender) people face official and societal discrimination. The 2009 penal code criminalizes same-sex sexual activity, and punishments include up to two years in prison. G. Personal Autonomy and Individual Rights 5 / 16 G1. Do individuals enjoy freedom of travel or choice of residence, employment, or institution of higher education? G2. Do individuals have the right to own property and establish private businesses? Is private business activity unduly influenced by government officials, the security forces, political parties/organizations, or organized crime? G3. Are there personal social freedoms, including gender equality, choice of marriage partners, and size of family? G4. Is there equality of opportunity and the absence of economic exploitation? The constitution provides for freedom of movement, though citizens are restricted from traveling outside their communities without a special permit on Saturday mornings as part of a government effort to encourage participation in local service projects. Since 2015, concerns for personal safety further have restricted free movement, particularly in neighborhoods regarded as opposition strongholds where security forces conducted search operations. The deteriorating security situation hampers private business activity in the country. Women have limited opportunities for advancement in the economic and political spheres, especially in rural areas. Sexual and domestic violence are serious problems but are rarely reported to law enforcement agencies. Rights monitors continue to report sexual violence against women in refugee camps, and by security forces and Imbonerakure. The U.S. State Department's 2016 Trafficking in Persons Report noted that children in Burundi are often subject to forced labor and sex trafficking. In some cases they are sold into servitude by family members, or recruited and deceived by friends and neighbors. Government officials have largely failed to combat domestic child trafficking. Copyright notice: Freedom House, Inc. All Rights Reserved Intelligence agencies have issued an alert for security forces to ask their men to be watchful of attempts made by women to lure them. By Manjeet Negi: Indian intelligence agencies have sounded an alarm over increasing attempts by Pakistan and Chinese agencies to honeytrap Indian officers using attractive women. According to information available exclusively with India Today, intelligence agencies have issued a warning to officers to be alert of such attempts. "An intelligence warning has been issued to the forces asking them to spread awareness among their men again such attempts by the enemy operatives," a highly placed source told India Today. advertisement Good looking women of Pakistani, Chinese origin speaking fluent Urdu, English have been deployed to lay trap for Indian officers. PHONES DETAILS BEING TRACKED Reports also said that internet habits of Indian officers are also being tracked by foreign intelligence agencies. Officers using smartphones of Chinese origin are particularly under their radar. Those visiting porn sites or looking to make friendship with women using social media are being monitored closely. THE MODUS OPERANDI After the target is carefully selected, Urdu speaking Pakistani woman or English speaking Chinese female make first contact with their target through WhatsApp or Facebook. The woman then lure the officer using Urdu shayri or flowery Hindi. After a few days of cajoling over the phone, the woman sets up a meeting at a coffee shop, restaurant or shopping mall with the target. In the very first meeting, the woman intices the officer with offering him sexual favour. The act is secretly video taped. The covert courtship continues for a few days with the woman claiming to be a rich, lonely and unsatisfied housewife. The woman then uses the video tape of her intimate interaction to blackmail the officer and garner critical information from him about the armed forces. ALSO READ: Indian intel unearths ISI's social media honey trap designed to snare defence personnel ISI laying honeytraps on Facebook and Twitter to snare Indian defence personnel Indian Army officer under scanner after honey-trapped by Pakistan WATCH: Here's how ISI hackers honey trapped Indian army personal working from a Karachi call center --- ENDS --- Freedom in the World 2017 - Bosnia and Herzegovina Publisher Freedom House Publication Date 12 July 2017 Cite as Freedom House, Freedom in the World 2017 - Bosnia and Herzegovina, 12 July 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/59831e9f26.html [accessed 13 November 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States. Freedom Status: Partly Free Aggregate Score: 55/100 (0 = Least Free, 100 = Most Free) Freedom Rating: 4.0/7 (1 = Most Free, 7 = Least Free) Political Rights: 4/7 (1 = Most Free, 7 = Least Free) Civil Liberties: 4/7 (1 = Most Free, 7 = Least Free) Quick Facts Population: 3,500,000 Capital: Sarajevo GDP/capita: $4,249 Press Freedom Status: Partly Free Bosnia and Herzegovina's civil liberties rating declined from 3 to 4 due to officials' failure to comply with Constitutional Court decisions, including one prohibiting a referendum in the Republika Srpska. OVERVIEW Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) is a parliamentary republic distinguished by a fragmented and inefficient constitutional regime embedded within the Dayton Peace Agreement, which ended the 1992-95 Bosnian War. Politics are characterized by severe partisan gridlock among nationalist leaders from the country's Bosniak, Serb, and Croat communities. Corruption remains a serious problem. Key Developments in 2016: The country formally submitted its European Union (EU) candidacy application in February, which was accepted by the European Commission (EC) in September. In September, leaders in the ethnically Serb-dominated Republika Srpska entity held an illegal referendum concerning a holiday marking the entity's founding. The vote took place in defiance of both a Constitutional Court ruling, and international leaders' repeated warnings against holding it. A week after the Republika Srpska referendum, BiH held its sixth municipal elections since the conclusion of the Bosnian War. The polls were marred by irregularities and several attacks against poll workers. Nationalist candidates posted strong performances. The results of the 2013 census were finally released in June. Officials in the Republika Srpska disputed the count and pledged to issue their own numbers. Executive Summary: In February 2016, BiH submitted its long-awaited application for EU candidacy. The application's submission came after the country's leaders had agreed, outside of traditional legislative processes, to establish a key mechanism necessary for BiH's application to move forward. The mechanism's existence came to light two weeks after the fact, when media outlets reported on its quiet publication in the country's Official Gazette. The EC accepted the application in September, and in December, the country received the formal EU Questionnaire, the completion of which would constitute a significant step toward EU membership. However, 2016 also saw the emergence of a political crisis in which the Republika Srpska, one of the two entities comprising BiH, held an unlawful plebiscite concerning a holiday commemorating the entity's founding in 1992. The hard-line, nationalist president of the Republika Srpska, Milorad Dodik, spearheaded efforts to hold the referendum, which was widely seen as a move to undermine central institutions and which took place in defiance of both a Constitutional Court ruling banning the poll, and international leaders' repeated warnings against holding it. While Dodik has repeatedly teased similar referenda over the last decade, and while dozens of Constitutional Court decisions have been disregarded in the past, the holding of controversial vote marked a significant deterioration of constitutional governance in BiH. Moreover, the referendum's dubious final result with 99.81 percent of voters supporting continued commemorations of the holiday, and 0.19 percent against on a turnout of 55.77 percent suggested a turn towards illiberal, managed democracy in BiH. The referendum and charged political rhetoric accompanying it overshadowed statewide municipal elections that took place a week later. The elections saw overwhelming victories by nationalist candidates. Independent monitors, during the run-up to the polls, cited issues including inaccurate voter rolls; pressure on public-sector workers to vote for particular candidates; and politicized manipulation of the commissions tasked with oversight of polling stations. Authorities generally ignored complaints about these issues. No elections were held in the country's fourth-largest city, Mostar, owing to a partisan dispute dating back to 2008. Voting was also suspended in nearby Stolac after a candidate physically assaulted an election official, while similar scenes also occurred in Prnjavor, Ilijas, Visoko, and a number of other locales. Independent monitors noted significant instances of apparent fraud or electoral interference across the country. Journalists risk threats and attacks in response to critical political coverage and coverage of sensitive topics, and at least two journalists fled the country after receiving death threats in 2016. Separately, an attack on an LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender) youth center in March led to a high-profile and well-organized civil society response, though the police response to the incident was criticized as inadequate. The results of the 2013 census the first since 1991 were finally released in June, and showed a population of about 3.5 million, compared to 4.3 million in 1991. Authorities in the Republika Srpska had attempted to obstruct the release of the data, citing issues with tabulation methodology that primarily concerned the number of non-Serb returnees counted in the entity. The data that was eventually published was deemed valid by the primary EU statistics agency, but authorities in the Republika Srpska have promised to release a competing set of figures. The delays in the census data's publication, and politicization of the process, have nevertheless led to concerns about the accuracy of the information. Explanatory Note: This country report has been abridged for Freedom in the World 2017. For background information on political rights and civil liberties in Bosnia and Herzegovina, see Freedom in the World 2016. Copyright notice: Freedom House, Inc. All Rights Reserved Freedom in the World 2017 - Burkina Faso Publisher Freedom House Publication Date 12 July 2017 Cite as Freedom House, Freedom in the World 2017 - Burkina Faso, 12 July 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/59831e9f3.html [accessed 13 November 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States. Freedom Status: Partly Free Aggregate Score: 63/100 (0 = Least Free, 100 = Most Free) Freedom Rating: 3.5/7 (1 = Most Free, 7 = Least Free) Political Rights: 4/7 (1 = Most Free, 7 = Least Free) Civil Liberties: 3/7 (1 = Most Free, 7 = Least Free) Quick Facts Population: 19,000,000 Capital: Ouagadougou GDP/capita: $590 Press Freedom Status: Partly Free OVERVIEW Political instability in 2014 and 2015 came to an end following multiparty presidential and legislative elections held in late 2015. The elections ushered in a new regime and laid a foundation for the continued development of democratic institutions. Despite extreme poverty, terrorism, and corruption, civil society and the media remain strong forces for democracy and for the respect of civil liberties. Key Developments in 2016: In January, an unprecedented terrorist attack in the capital, Ouagadougou, killed at least 20 people. Terrorist attacks also increased throughout the year in the northern regions of the country, near the borders with Mali and Niger, where security forces were targeted. Municipal elections were held in May, and won praise from election monitors. The new ruling party, the People's Movement for Progress (MPP), won a majority of the municipal seats. The new MPP government pursued a number of policies outlined in its 2015 electoral campaign. One such proposal aimed to establish a new constitution marking the end of former president Blaise Compaore's 27-year regime. The government established a Constitutional Commission to draft the new text. Executive Summary: Burkina Faso's new government in 2016 worked to implement many of its promised reforms, and ones that had been adopted by the transitional government in 2015. In September, new president Roch Mark Christian Kabore, who was inaugurated in late 2015, launched a commission responsible for writing a new constitution that would usher in the Fifth Republic of Burkina Faso, and represent a break from the former regime. Municipal elections held in May 2016 reflected continuing erosion of support for the Congress for Democracy and Progress (CDP), the former ruling party, and increased support for the MPP. Election observers from local civil society groups and international missions noted only minor irregularities in the polls. Separately, in July, new members were appointed to the Independent National Electoral Commission (CENI) after previous commissioners' terms expired, reflecting the functionality of the country's electoral framework. Also during the year, some high-profile members of the former regime were arrested for their involvement in the repression of demonstrations that took place during the popular uprising of 2014. The arrests suggest that the culture of impunity that existed under the former regime may be subsiding; however, police abuses and a disregard for the accused's right to due process remain problematic. Meanwhile, space for demonstrations and protests has opened under the new government; a number of demonstrations took place peacefully in 2016, and public venues previously closed in 2015 ahead of presidential and legislative elections remained open during the municipal elections. The overall security situation in Burkina Faso deteriorated following a January terrorist attack in Ouagadougou, which left at least 20 people dead. Several smaller attacks, some of which targeted security forces, occurred in the north of the country near the borders with Niger and Mali, both of which were struggling with the presence of extremist insurgent groups. Women's associations and movements play an important role in Burkinabe politics and society, as evidenced by their involvement in recent civil society activities and elections. Separately, a 2016 study demonstrated that a 1996 law that banned female genital mutilation has prevented over 200,000 girls from being cut. Explanatory Note: This country report has been abridged for Freedom in the World 2017. For background information on political rights and civil liberties in Burkina Faso, see Freedom in the World 2016. Copyright notice: Freedom House, Inc. All Rights Reserved Freedom in the World 2017 - Benin Publisher Freedom House Publication Date 12 July 2017 Cite as Freedom House, Freedom in the World 2017 - Benin, 12 July 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/59831ea013.html [accessed 13 November 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States. Freedom Status: Free Aggregate Score: 82/100 (0 = Least Free, 100 = Most Free) Freedom Rating: 2.0/7 (1 = Most Free, 7 = Least Free) Political Rights: 2/7 (1 = Most Free, 7 = Least Free) Civil Liberties: 2/7 (1 = Most Free, 7 = Least Free) Quick Facts Population: 10,800,000 Capital: Porto-Novo GDP/capita: $762 Press Freedom Status: Partly Free OVERVIEW Benin remains among the most stable democracies in sub-Saharan Africa, having witnessed multiple free and fair elections and peaceful transfers of power since its transition to democracy in 1991. Freedom of expression and association are generally respected, but corruption remains a challenge, particularly within the courts. Key Developments in 2016: Businessman Patrice Talon was elected president in March, and took office in April. Talon, an independent candidate, has pledged not to seek a second term. A 35-member commission appointed by President Talon to propose political and institutional reforms issued recommendations in June, which were primarily aimed at reducing presidential influence in the judiciary and the media. Upon taking office, Talon took steps to reduce bonus payments for top officials and remove allegedly corrupt mayors, though there are questions over whether the mayors' removals were politically motivated. Executive Summary: Benin is among the most stable democracies in sub-Saharan Africa, and in 2016 saw a peaceful transfer of power after Talon was elected, and President Thomas Boni Yayi stepped down upon completing his second term, as mandated by the constitution. In the first round of the presidential election, 33 candidates competed, and no candidate won a majority of votes. A second round was subsequently held between the top two candidates: Prime Minister Lionel Zinsou, of Yayi's party, the Cowry Forces for an Emerging Benin (FCBE); and Talon, a businessman and independent candidate. Talon, endorsed by 24 of the presidential candidates from the first round, won the second round and the presidency with 65 percent of the vote. Apart from minor delays, there were few problems with the election process. Several presidential candidates who supported Talon in the second round were rewarded with cabinet positions when the new government was formed. President Talon has pledged to serve a single term, and followed through on a campaign promise to appoint a commission to recommend political and institutional reforms. In June, the commission recommended that the president should no longer appoint the country's chief justice or head of the national audio-visual authority; an increase in the number of justices on the constitutional court; and an extension of their mandate from five to nine years. However, Talon's lack of a majority in the legislature may pose a challenge to the recommendations' implementation; Yayi's FCBE holds the most seats. The commission considered but did not make a recommendation on a proposal to replace the two five-year term limit for the president with a single seven-year term. Talon has announced a plan to hold a national referendum on the issue though the constitutional court in 2011 ruled that the constitutional article regarding presidential term limits could not be changed in a referendum. Once in office, Talon repealed some 20 decrees adopted under Yayi, including those on bonus payments to high-level public officials. Steps were also taken to remove a number of mayors from office based on accusations of mismanagement, although because of the mayors' support for Yayi, there are questions of political motivation. Explanatory Note: This country report has been abridged for Freedom in the World 2017. For background information on political rights and civil liberties in Benin, see Freedom in the World 2016. Copyright notice: Freedom House, Inc. All Rights Reserved Freedom in the World 2017 - Belarus Publisher Freedom House Publication Date 12 July 2017 Cite as Freedom House, Freedom in the World 2017 - Belarus, 12 July 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/59831ea113.html [accessed 13 November 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States. Freedom Status: Not Free Aggregate Score: 20/100 (0 = Least Free, 100 = Most Free) Freedom Rating: 6.5/7 (1 = Most Free, 7 = Least Free) Political Rights: 7/7 (1 = Most Free, 7 = Least Free) Civil Liberties: 6/7 (1 = Most Free, 7 = Least Free) Quick Facts Population: 9,500,000 Capital: Minsk GDP/capita: $5,740 Press Freedom Status: Not Free Net Freedom Status: Not Free OVERVIEW Belarus is an authoritarian state in which elections are carefully managed and civil liberties are minimal. Limited displays of dissent have been permitted in recent years, as the war in neighboring Ukraine, growing regional tensions, and a struggling economy motivate the government to seek better relations with the European Union (EU) and the United States. Key Developments in 2016: Parliamentary polls held in September failed to meet international standards for democratic elections. However, two opposition candidates won representation. The European Union (EU) lifted most sanctions against Belarus in February. The government permitted several street demonstrations. Authorities continued to hold a number of political prisoners. Executive Summary: As the government continued hosting consultations on the implementation of Minsk Agreement to end the conflict in Ukraine, the EU and United States muted their criticism of human rights abuses and the authoritarian political system in Belarus. The Belarusian government, meanwhile, worked to develop economically beneficial partnerships with both. The EU lifted most of its sanctions against the country in February Parliamentary elections were held in September. Like previous elections, they failed to meet international standards. However, two independent candidates were admitted to the parliament for the first time since 2000. POLITICAL RIGHTS AND CIVIL LIBERTIES Political Rights 5 / 40 (+1) A. Electoral Process 0 / 12 A1. Is the head of government or other chief national authority elected through free and fair elections? A2. Are the national legislative representatives elected through free and fair elections? A3. Are the electoral laws and framework fair? The president is elected for five-year terms without limits. The 110 members of the Chamber of Representatives, the lower house of the rubber-stamp National Assembly, are popularly elected for four years from single-mandate constituencies. The upper chamber, the Council of the Republic, consists of 64 members serving four-year terms; 56 are elected by regional councils, and 8 are appointed by the president. Since Alyaksandr Lukashenka was democratically elected to his first presidential term in 1994, all elections and referenda in Belarus have been marred by systemic violations that undermined the legitimacy of their outcomes. In 2015, Lukashenka secured his fifth term in a noncompetitive presidential race. Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) observers concluded that the elections fell considerably short of fell considerably short the group's standards for democratic elections, citing significant violations in the counting of the results. The observers did take note of several positive developments, including the participation of the first-ever female presidential candidate and the peaceful pre- and postelection environment; the latter was welcomed as an improvement given the brutal crackdown on protests surrounding the 2010 election. However, key opposition figures refused to recognize the results of the 2015 election, citing in part a series of irregularities related to early voting. The OSCE observation mission similarly assessed the September 2016 parliamentary elections, saying they took place in a restrictive environment and that electoral procedures lacked transparency. However, there was less pressure on independent candidates, the general atmosphere was calm, and two candidates not associated with Lukashenka gained seats in the lower chamber. The legal framework for elections fails to meet democratic standards. Among other problems, electoral commission members of all levels are politically aligned with and dependent on the government, and independent observers have no access to the ballot-counting process. The access of the opposition to state-run media has improved somewhat, but it remains under tight control while heavily favoring Lukashenka. B. Political Pluralism and Participation 4 / 16 (+1) B1. Do the people have the right to organize in different political parties or other competitive political groupings of their choice, and is the system open to the rise and fall of these competing parties or groupings? B2. Is there a significant opposition vote and a realistic opportunity for the opposition to increase its support or gain power through elections? B3. Are the people's political choices free from domination by the military, foreign powers, totalitarian parties, religious hierarchies, economic oligarchies, or any other powerful group? B4. Do cultural, ethnic, religious, or other minority groups have full political rights and electoral opportunities? There is no official progovernment political party, and very few lawmakers are affiliated with any party. Two candidates not considered allies of Lukashenka, Hanna Kanapatskaya of the United Civil Party and Alena Anisim of the Belarusian Language Society, gained seats in the Chamber of Representatives in the 2016 legislative elections, ending a long period without opposition in the parliament. Lukashenka employs various tools to weaken and divide the opposition, with some suggesting that permitting the two opposition candidates entry to the parliament was an example of this strategy. For example, some dismissed their election as immaterial and designed to placate the opposition, though others nevertheless consider their representation an opportunity to advance a democratic agenda on the institutional level. Their activity in the parliament may create stronger incentives for people to exercise independent political activity aimed at gaining power through elections. Political parties encounter difficulties when seeking official registration. In 2016, the Ministry of Justice continued denying the registration to the Belarusian Christian Democracy party and the Tell the Truth movement, limiting the space of their political activities. Six political prisoners were released in 2015 before their prison terms expired. However, according to human rights defenders, there are still political prisoners in the country, including activist Aliaksandr Lapitski, who was undergoing forced treatment in a mental institution, and Mikhail Zhamchuzhny, founder of the human rights organization Platform Innovation. Andrey Bandarenka, former leader of the associated group Platforma, was sentenced in 2014 to four years in prison on the basis of disputed charges. For his role in 2010 protests, activist Uladzimir Kondrus was put on trial in November 2016; after attempting to cut his wrists in the courtroom, he was sent to a psychiatric facility for observation before being released in December on an 18-month suspended sentence, during which he was to undergo psychiatric treatment. C. Functioning of Government 1 / 12 C1. Do the freely elected head of government and national legislative representatives determine the policies of the government? C2. Is the government free from pervasive corruption? C3. Is the government accountable to the electorate between elections, and does it operate with openness and transparency? The constitution vests most power in the president, giving him control over the government, the judiciary, and the legislative process by stating that presidential decrees have a higher legal force than ordinary legislation. The state controls 70 percent of the Belarusian economy, feeding widespread corruption. In addition, graft is encouraged by an overall lack of transparency and accountability in government. Information on the work of about 60 government ministries and state-controlled companies, including the Ministry of Information and the state broadcaster, is classified. There are no independent bodies to investigate corruption cases. Graft trials are held in a closed format isolated from the public, raising questions about the fairness of the process. Civil Liberties 15 / 60 (+2) D. Freedom of Expression and Belief 3 / 16 D1. Are there free and independent media and other forms of cultural expression? D2. Are religious institutions and communities free to practice their faith and express themselves in public and private? D3. Is there academic freedom, and is the educational system free of extensive political indoctrination? D4. Is there open and free private discussion? The government exercises almost total control over mainstream media. The 2008 media law secures a state monopoly over information about political, social, and economic affairs. Libel is both a civil and criminal offense, and the criminal code contains provisions protecting the "honor and dignity" of high-ranking officials, including greater penalties in cases of defamation or insult. In October 2016, a court convicted Eduard Palchys the founder and author of the blog 1863x, which publishes political analysis of inciting ethnic hatred and publishing pornography, but ruled not to imprison him. Belarusian national television is under complete control of the state. The state-run press distribution monopoly limits the availability of private newspapers. Freelance journalists working for foreign, unaccredited news outlets continue to be harassed and persecuted. In 2016, in an attempt to reduce the influence of pervasive Russian propaganda and to reach out to a broader domestic audience, state-run media started inviting nongovernmental experts, opposition politicians, and independent journalists to talk shows, bringing alternative opinions into the discussion. The state also limited the outright pressure on independent media. The government owns the only internet service provider, and maintains control over the internet through legal and technical means. Amendments to the media law approved in 2015 further expanded the definition of mass media to include all websites and blogs, placing them under the supervision of the Ministry of Information. A July 2016 report by Amnesty International noted that the state engaged telecommunications companies in its efforts to control and curtail freedom of expression, and concluded that the dissemination of communications technology had "increased the risk of repression" in Belarus. Despite the constitutional guarantees of religious equality, government decrees and registration requirements maintained some restrictions on religious activity. Legal amendments in 2002 provided for government censorship of religious publications and barred foreigners from leading religious groups. The amendments also placed strict limitations on religious groups active in Belarus for less than 20 years. In 2003, the government signed a concordat with the Belarusian Orthodox Church, which is controlled by the Russian Orthodox Church, giving it a privileged position. Academic freedom remains subject to intense state ideological pressures, and academic personnel face harassment and dismissal if they use liberal curriculum or are suspected of disloyalty. Regulations stipulate immediate dismissal and revocation of degrees for students and professors who join opposition protests. In 2015, Belarus was admitted to the Bologna Process on European standards for higher education under the condition that by 2018 it implement reforms to bring it into compliance with the process's principles. The use of wiretapping and other surveillance by state security agencies limits the right to free private discussion. E. Associational and Organizational Rights 3 / 12 (+2) E1. Is there freedom of assembly, demonstration, and open public discussion? E2. Is there freedom for nongovernmental organizations? E3. Are there free trade unions and peasant organizations or equivalents, and is there effective collective bargaining? Are there free professional and other private organizations? The government restricts freedom of assembly for critical independent groups. Protests require authorization from local authorities, who can arbitrarily deny such permission. In the past, police would routinely break up public demonstrations and arrest participants. However, moves toward a rapprochement with the EU and United States motivated the government to ease such practices in 2016. Mostly, police refrained from beatings and arrests, but selectively imposed hefty fines on participants. Many street events were held without the usual rough treatment by police, including during the parliamentary election campaign. Freedom of association is restricted. The participation in unregistered or liquidated political parties or organizations was criminalized in 2005. Their registration remains selective, and most human rights activists face potential jail terms ranging from six months to two years. Regulations introduced in 2005 ban foreign assistance to entities and individuals deemed to promote foreign "meddling in the internal affairs" of Belarus. In 2013, officials introduced legislation simplifying registration requirements for nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), but arbitrary denials of registration have not abated. Numerous unregistered NGOs operate despite the risk of prosecution. Independent trade unions are under pressure, and their leaders are frequently fired and prosecuted for engaging in peaceful protests. No independent trade unions have been registered since 1999, when Lukashenka issued a decree setting extremely restrictive registration requirements. At the same time, in 2016, for the second year in row, authorities allowed independent trade unions to hold demonstrations on the global World Day for Decent Work, in October. The International Labor Organization continues to call on the government to implement a series of steps to improve the conditions for independent trade unions' operation. F. Rule of Law 2 / 16 F1. Is there an independent judiciary? F2. Does the rule of law prevail in civil and criminal matters? Are police under direct civilian control? F3. Is there protection from political terror, unjustified imprisonment, exile, or torture, whether by groups that support or oppose the system? Is there freedom from war and insurgencies? F4. Do laws, policies, and practices guarantee equal treatment of various segments of the population? Although the constitution calls for judicial independence, courts are open to significant executive influence. The right to a fair trial is often not respected in cases with political overtones. Human rights groups documented instances of beatings, torture, and psychological pressure during detention. In violation of international norms, the power to extend pretrial detention lies with a prosecutor rather than a judge. Separately, recent years have seen several instances in which former executives from state-run enterprises who have been convicted or are awaiting trial on corruption charges received clemency from the president, and were then immediately assigned to new senior positions. Conditions in prisons and in pretrial detention facilities are dangerous. Shortages of food and warm clothing have been reported and medical facilities are inadequate. Authorities deliberately create advantageous conditions for the Russian language to increase its dominance, while UNESCO recognizes Belarusian as a "vulnerable" language. Ethnic Poles and Roma often face pressure from the authorities and discrimination. LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender) individuals are subject to discrimination and regular harassment. The constitution explicitly bans same-sex marriage. The Belarusian government led an effort in 2016 to block LGBT rights from being part of a UN international initiative focused on urban areas. Since 2014, thousands of people have fled to Belarus from the conflict in Ukraine, with many seeking asylum there. Belarus coordinates efforts to provide them with schooling and medical treatment with the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and the International Organization for Migration (IOM). G. Personal Autonomy and Individual Rights 7 / 16 G1. Do individuals enjoy freedom of travel or choice of residence, employment, or institution of higher education? G2. Do individuals have the right to own property and establish private businesses? Is private business activity unduly influenced by government officials, the security forces, political parties/organizations, or organized crime? G3. Are there personal social freedoms, including gender equality, choice of marriage partners, and size of family? G4. Is there equality of opportunity and the absence of economic exploitation? While an internal registration system complicates freedom of movement and choice of residence, restrictions have been eased in practice in recent years, leaving few obstacles to domestic and international travel. The state continues to dominate the economy, but limits on economic freedom have gradually decreased in recent years, allowing for greater property ownership, commercial activity, and small business operations. There are significant discrepancies in income between men and women, and women are poorly represented in leading government positions. However, in December 2016, Natallya Kachanava was appointed the head of the presidential administration. Domestic and sexual violence against women are considered to be persistent and underreported. Sexual violence is addressed in the criminal code, and a 2008 law addresses the prosecution of domestic violence, but no effective legislative measures are aimed at preventing these problems. Mandatory unpaid national work days, postgraduate employment allocation, compulsory labor for inmates in state rehabilitation facilities, and restrictions on leaving employment in specific industries have led labor activists to conclude that all Belarusian citizens experience forced labor at some stage of their life. Presidential Decree No. 3, adopted in 2015 and widely known as the "parasite tax," introduced taxation on people who work fewer than 183 days per year. The lack of economic opportunities led many women to become victims of the international sex trade. Copyright notice: Freedom House, Inc. All Rights Reserved Freedom in the World 2017 - Angola Publisher Freedom House Publication Date 12 July 2017 Cite as Freedom House, Freedom in the World 2017 - Angola, 12 July 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/59831ea313.html [accessed 13 November 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States. Freedom Status: Not Free Aggregate Score: 24/100 (0 = Least Free, 100 = Most Free) Freedom Rating: 6.0/7 (1 = Most Free, 7 = Least Free) Political Rights: 6/7 (1 = Most Free, 7 = Least Free) Civil Liberties: 6/7 (1 = Most Free, 7 = Least Free) Quick Facts Population: 25,800,000 Capital: Luanda GDP/capita: $4,101 Press Freedom Status: Not Free Net Freedom Status: Partly Free OVERVIEW Ruled by the same party since independence, authorities have repressed political dissent and maintained restrictions on freedom of speech and assembly. Corruption, political imprisonment, and abuses by security forces all remain common. Key Developments in 2016: The 17 activists known as the Luanda book club, who were imprisoned in 2015 for discussing a book on civil disobedience, were conditionally released in June. However, their convictions on charges of sedition were not overturned. Police violently suppressed several protests during the year. In August, military police killed a teenage boy during a demonstration against housing demolitions. The national assembly passed several new laws restricting freedom of the press and free expression online, though dos Santos had yet to sign them at year's end. Rebels associated with separatists in the exclave of Cabinda increased attacks against government forces, with deaths on both sides reported. Executive Summary: President Jose Eduardo dos Santos and his party, the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA), retained tight control over the political system and significantly restricted civil liberties during 2016. Dos Santos, who has been in power for 37 years, in March announced that he would step down in 2018, though he has made and broken similar pledges before. In the meantime, he reportedly named the defense minister as his preferred successor, and in June appointed his daughter to lead the national oil company. The drop in global oil prices continued to damage Angola's oil-dependent economy and state budget in 2016. Delays in workers' pay have led to strikes. Amid popular frustrations with economic decline, corruption, and dos Santos' continued rule, authorities have harshly suppressed protests and worked to increase restrictions on freedom of speech and the press. Meanwhile, separatists stepped up attacks on government forces in the restive exclave of Cabinda. POLITICAL RIGHTS AND CIVIL LIBERTIES Political Rights 10 / 40 A. Electoral Process 3 / 12 A1. Is the head of government or other chief national authority elected through free and fair elections? A2. Are the national legislative representatives elected through free and fair elections? A3. Are the electoral laws and framework fair? The 2010 constitution abolished direct presidential elections, stipulating instead that the leader of the largest party in the parliament would become president. The 220-seat unicameral National Assembly, whose members serve five-year terms, has little power, and 90 percent of legislation originates in the executive branch. The constitution permits the president to serve a maximum of two five-year terms, and to directly appoint the vice president, cabinet, and provincial governors. President dos Santos has been in power for 37 years, making him one of the longest-serving heads of state in Africa. Dos Santos' first full term under the current constitution began in 2012, and he announced in March 2016 that he would step down in 2018. Angola's scheduled August 2017 parliamentary elections are thus key to determining the next president if dos Santos follows through on his pledge. Dos Santos has reportedly named Defense Minister Joao Lourenco as his preferred successor. The parliamentary elections held in 2012 were deeply flawed and followed a number of delays. The MPLA captured 72 percent of the vote, a notable decline from its 82 percent showing in 2008. Still, the party maintained its overwhelming dominance in the National Assembly, garnering 175 of 220 seats. The opposition National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA) won 32 seats; the Broad Convergence for the Salvation of Angola-Electoral Coalition (CASA-CE) won 8 seats, the Social Renewal Party (PRS) won 3, and the National Front for Angolan Liberation (FNLA) won 2. In October 2014, dos Santos confirmed that already-delayed municipal elections, called for in the constitution, would again be postponed until after the 2017 general elections. The president justified this unilateral decision by citing the difficulties experienced in organizing the 2012 elections and those anticipated in replacing existing local government institutions with new municipal governments. The opposition vehemently protested the decision. B. Political Pluralism and Participation 6 / 16 B1. Do the people have the right to organize in different political parties or other competitive political groupings of their choice, and is the system open to the rise and fall of these competing parties or groupings? B2. Is there a significant opposition vote and a realistic opportunity for the opposition to increase its support or gain power through elections? B3. Are the people's political choices free from domination by the military, foreign powers, totalitarian parties, religious hierarchies, economic oligarchies, or any other powerful group? B4. Do cultural, ethnic, religious, or other minority groups have full political rights and electoral opportunities? Although five political parties are represented in the National Assembly, the ruling MPLA dominates Angola's party system. Mutual mistrust, the inability to agree on common strategy, and enticements from the more powerful and better-funded MPLA prevent opposition parties from coordinating their efforts. In 2015 the four opposition parties represented in the National Assembly held their first joint parliamentary meetings to promote dialogue and discuss the state of the country with civil society leaders. Human rights and democracy activists allege that opposition parties fail to challenge government efforts to suppress civil resistance. Throughout 2014, opposition members had criticized the government's delay in establishing the Council of the Republic, a presidential advisory body that is constitutionally required to include members of the opposition. President dos Santos finally swore council members into office in February 2015, though their influence remains limited. Political activism in the exclave of Cabinda, home to a long-standing movement for independence or autonomy, is regarded with suspicion by the government and can draw criminal charges. Rebels associated with the separatist Front for the Liberation of Cabinda (FLEC) increased attacks against government forces in 2016, with deaths on both sides reported. The clashes led to a corresponding troop build-up in the territory. C. Functioning of Government 1 / 12 C1. Do the freely elected head of government and national legislative representatives determine the policies of the government? C2. Is the government free from pervasive corruption? C3. Is the government accountable to the electorate between elections, and does it operate with openness and transparency? Corruption and patronage are endemic in Angola's entrenched political elite, which is largely unaccountable to the public. Allegations of corruption continued throughout 2016, with controversy continuing to swirl around the dos Santos family's business interests. The naming of the president's daughter, Isabel dos Santos, widely thought to be the wealthiest woman in Africa, as head of national oil company Sonangol in June was a source of widespread anger in the country. A freedom of information law ostensibly meant to allow citizens access to government-generated documents was approved in 2002. However, in practice accessing information remains extremely difficult. Civil Liberties 14 / 60 D. Freedom of Expression and Belief 5 / 16 D1. Are there free and independent media and other forms of cultural expression? D2. Are religious institutions and communities free to practice their faith and express themselves in public and private? D3. Is there academic freedom, and is the educational system free of extensive political indoctrination? D4. Is there open and free private discussion? Despite constitutional guarantees of freedom of expression, the state owns Angola's only daily newspaper, all national radio stations, and all but one national television station. These outlets, along with private media owned by senior officials and members of the dos Santos family, act as mouthpieces for the MPLA. Censorship and self-censorship are common. In 2016, the legislature approved several restrictive new laws that would allow greater government control over online and traditional media, and raise barriers to the creation of new media outlets. Dos Santos was expected to sign the legislation in 2017. Additionally, a new MPLA-controlled regulatory body, the Angolan Social Communications Regulatory Body (ERCA), was established. Independent news outlets remain active online, but it remains to be seen how the government may use the new laws against them. Angolan authorities have consistently prevented independent journalists from reporting the news, denying them access to official information and events, preventing them from broadcasting, and threatening them with detention and prosecution, frequently abusing libel and defamation laws. In January and June 2016, journalists Francisco Rasgado and Jose Manuel Alberto were charged with defamation in two separate cases for covering corruption and misuse of state funds; Rasgado had received death threats for his coverage of provincial government corruption in Benguela. In May, police in Luanda detained Voice of America journalist Coque Mukuta for recording them beating a suspect, while Washington Post journalists were detained for reporting on a hospital in Luanda in June. In December, journalists Rafael Marques de Morais of Maka Angola and Mariano Bras of O Crime, both longtime targets of government persecution, faced defamation-related charges for publishing reports on alleged corruption by the attorney general. The constitution guarantees religious freedom, but the government requires religious groups to meet rigorous criteria in order to receive legal recognition. Legal approval was last granted to a new religious group in 2004. Roughly 1,200 religious groups operate illegally in Angola. All of those that have been officially recognized are Christian, despite the presence of tens of thousands of Muslims in the country. The government maintains that it has no bias against the practice of Islam, though Muslims have complained of discrimination. In April 2016, Jose Kalupeteka, leader of the Light of the World religious sect, was sentenced to 28 years in prison in connection with an April 2015 clash between security forces and sect members in Huambo province, in which the government reported that 13 civilians and 9 policemen were killed. Nonstate sources reported a much higher death toll, accusing the government of a massacre, while the government blocked independent investigation of the incident, and President dos Santos declared the Light of the World to be a threat to peace and national unity. New deadly confrontations between police and group members occurred in August 2016, with allegations that over 30 sect members were massacred. There are no formal restrictions on academic freedom, though professors avoid politically sensitive topics for fear of repercussions. While internet access is increasing in Angola, the government actively monitors internet activity and, in some instances, uses the data collected to crack down on dissidents, while newly approved social communication laws are designed to chill free speech on social media. Offline communication is also subject to monitoring and punishment. In March 2016, 17 young activists were convicted on charges of state security crimes, including sedition, in connection with their participation in a 2015 book club discussion on civil resistance. The Supreme Court ordered the conditional release of the 17 activists in June, though their convictions have not yet been overturned. E. Associational and Organizational Rights 3 / 12 E1. Is there freedom of assembly, demonstration, and open public discussion? E2. Is there freedom for nongovernmental organizations? E3. Are there free trade unions and peasant organizations or equivalents, and is there effective collective bargaining? Are there free professional and other private organizations? The constitution guarantees limited freedoms of assembly and association. In recent years, police and security forces have prohibited demonstrations, violently dispersed peaceful political gatherings, and intimidated and arrested protesters in provinces including Luanda, Malanje, and Benguela. In April 2016, police detained and assaulted protestors in Luanda demonstrating in support of the jailed Luanda book club members, while in August, police violently suppressed protests in the capital at which demonstrators called for President dos Santos's resignation; police beat protestors and attacked them with dogs. In November, authorities prohibited demonstrations against Isabel dos Santos taking control of the national oil company. Several hundred nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) operate in Angola, and many advocate for transparency, human rights protections, and political reform. Organizations that are critical of the government have frequently faced state interference and been threatened with closure. NGOs are required to register with the government and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to operate and must obtain further authorizations to receive donations. Once registered, NGOs are required to submit to government supervision and audits. The constitution includes the right to strike and to form unions, but the MPLA dominates the labor movement, and only a few weak independent unions exist. Still, strikes do occur: transit workers in Luanda began 2016 on strike, while port workers in Lobito and teachers in Bengo went on strike in August and September, respectively, over grievances including unpaid wages. F. Rule of Law 3 / 16 F1. Is there an independent judiciary? F2. Does the rule of law prevail in civil and criminal matters? Are police under direct civilian control? F3. Is there protection from political terror, unjustified imprisonment, exile, or torture, whether by groups that support or oppose the system? Is there freedom from war and insurgencies? F4. Do laws, policies, and practices guarantee equal treatment of various segments of the population? The courts are hampered by a lack of trained legal professionals, as well as insufficient infrastructure, a large backlog of cases, corruption, and extensive political influence, particularly from the executive. Many areas lack functional municipal courts, thus leaving crimes and conflicts to be adjudicated by informal tribunals, or by local police. The president appoints Supreme Court judges to life terms without legislative input. Several examples of judicial abuse and lack of due process arose in 2016, including the convictions of the 17 activists of the Luanda book club, and prosecution of human rights defenders and journalists covering corruption. However, courts in 2016 issued two promising decisions regarding the activities of Cabindan human rights activists. In May, a court overturned a dubious conviction against Jose Marcos Mavungo for purportedly plotting rebellion. Similar charges against Arao Bula Tempo, another Cabindan rights activist, were dismissed in July. There is no effective protection against unjustified imprisonment, lengthy pretrial detention, extortion, or torture. Angolan jails are reported to be overcrowded, unhygienic, lacking basic necessities, and plagued by sexual abuse. They also contain a number of political prisoners, advocates of the Cabindan autonomy movement, and members of peaceful activist groups. In September 2016, police at the Rangel station in Luanda allegedly tortured and killed suspect Jose Padrao Loureiro, an attack for which five officers were arrested. In diamond mining regions, private security forces have taken the law into their own hands, and frequently abuse it. In April 2016, reports emerged that such forces had beaten local miners in Lunda-Norte with machetes, while in August, private security forces in the same region killed 17-year-old Gabriel Mufugueno, sparking protests. Tensions in Cabinda remain high. The secessionist FLEC movement and its supporters many of whom live in exile continue to call for talks on independence amidst sporadic violence. Activists have alleged that Cabinda residents are not permitted to voice their opinions and are under constant risk of persecution and discrimination. Security forces allegedly harass and abuse African immigrant communities, against a backdrop of the government's failure to adequately protect refugees and asylum seekers. Nevertheless, immigration from countries including Brazil, China, and Portugal remains high, and migrants from neighboring countries also continue to enter Angola in large numbers. National law criminalizes "acts against nature," though there have been no recent cases of this provision being applied to same-sex sexual activity. LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender) people sometimes suffer harassment, and few formal LGBT organizations exist. G. Personal Autonomy and Individual Rights 3 / 16 G1. Do individuals enjoy freedom of travel or choice of residence, employment, or institution of higher education? G2. Do individuals have the right to own property and establish private businesses? Is private business activity unduly influenced by government officials, the security forces, political parties/organizations, or organized crime? G3. Are there personal social freedoms, including gender equality, choice of marriage partners, and size of family? G4. Is there equality of opportunity and the absence of economic exploitation? Several organizations have been working to remove land mines that were placed during Angola's decades-long civil war. Land mines inhibit agriculture, construction, and freedom of movement, particularly in rural areas. The process for securing entry and exit visas remains difficult and mired in corruption. Individuals who are critical of the government have faced problems when attempting to leave or enter the country. Access to quality education is limited to Angola's elite and the expatriate community. Literacy rates remain low, due to the shortage of qualified teachers and the lack of school facilities, especially in rural districts. Corruption and absenteeism among some teachers continues to be a problem. In 2016, the government continued a campaign of forced evictions in Luanda and other cities. In the Zango II area of Luanda in August, residents protesting the demolition of their homes were attacked by soldiers firing live ammunition, with 14-year-old Rufino Antonio killed by a military police officer. Bribery often underpins business activity, and high-level corruption ensures that wealth and economic influence remain concentrated among those with political connections. Despite years of abundant oil revenues, Angola has one of the lowest life-expectancy rates in the world at 52 years, and a large share of the population still lives below the international poverty line. Women enjoy legal protections and occupy cabinet positions and multiple seats in the National Assembly. However, de facto discrimination and violence against women continues. Child labor is a major problem, and foreign workers are vulnerable to sex trafficking and forced labor in the construction and mining industries. The authorities have failed to effectively investigate human trafficking or prosecute offenders. Copyright notice: Freedom House, Inc. All Rights Reserved Freedom in the World 2017 - Algeria Publisher Freedom House Publication Date 12 July 2017 Cite as Freedom House, Freedom in the World 2017 - Algeria, 12 July 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/59831ea413.html [accessed 13 November 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States. Freedom Status: Not Free Aggregate Score: 35/100 (0 = Least Free, 100 = Most Free) Freedom Rating: 5.5/7 (1 = Most Free, 7 = Least Free) Political Rights: 6/7 (1 = Most Free, 7 = Least Free) Civil Liberties: 5/7 (1 = Most Free, 7 = Least Free) Quick Facts Population: 40,800,000 Capital: Algiers GDP/capita: $4,206 Press Freedom Status: Not Free OVERVIEW Political affairs in Algeria are dominated by a closed elite based in the military and the ruling party, the National Liberation Front (FLN). President Abdelaziz Bouteflika has been in office since 1999, and while there are multiple opposition parties in the parliament, elections are distorted by fraud and other forms of manipulation. Authorities use restrictive laws to curb criticism in the media and suppress street protests. Other concerns include rampant corruption, the threat of terrorist attacks, and occasional violence between Arabs and Berbers as well as between Algerians and migrants from sub-Saharan Africa. Key Developments in 2016: A presidential decree in January dissolved the military's powerful Intelligence and Security Department (DRS) and replaced it with three directorates that would report directly to the presidency and focus on internal security, external security, and technical intelligence, respectively. In February, the parliament passed constitutional revisions that reintroduced a two-term limit for the presidency and bolstered the legislature's modest powers, among other changes. In March, the terrorist group Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) claimed responsibility for an attack in which rockets were fired at a gas facility near Ain Salah. No casualties were reported. In June, the authorities arrested two journalists from the television channel KBC and an official with the Culture Ministry in connection with satirical programming. Two television programs were shut down, and the defendants received suspended prison sentences in July. Executive Summary: The government in February 2016 pushed through a number of constitutional revisions that were apparently designed to improve its popular support and lay the foundation for a smooth presidential transition in light of growing concerns about President Abdelaziz Bouteflika's health and possible successors. Amendments approved by the parliament reintroduced a two-term limit for the presidency, though Bouteflika would be able to seek reelection in 2019; enlarged the role and powers of the legislature relative to the executive, for example by requiring the president to consult the parliamentary majority on the appointment of a prime minister; made Tamazight, the language of the Berber population, an official language, meaning it could be used on administrative documents; and set the goal of gender equality in the labor market and public institutions. However, the authorities also worked to ensure control over the media and suppress dissent. In July, the government secured a court ruling that prevented businessman and Bouteflika critic Issad Rebrab from purchasing El-Khabar media group, the parent company of television station KBC. Also that month, two KBC journalists received suspended prison sentences connected to satirical television programming, and the programs in question were shut down; the government said the journalists had violated licensing rules. Journalist and blogger Mohamed Tamalt, who had been arrested in June and sentenced to two years in prison in July for insulting the president on Facebook, died in December after engaging in a hunger strike and reporting beatings by prison guards. Security forces regularly restricted the freedom of assembly. Among other incidents during the year, January protests against the relocation of a power plant in the town of Oued El Ma led to violent clashes between demonstrators and police after the latter used tear gas, and a demonstration by teachers seeking greater job security in Algiers in March was violently dispersed by police. The authorities also used aggressive tactics to cope with migration from sub-Saharan Africa. In December, following clashes between Algerians and migrants in an Algiers neighborhood, police rounded up some 1,400 sub-Saharan Africans and moved them to a remote camp near Tamanrasset before arbitrarily expelling many of them from the country. Explanatory Note: This country report has been abridged for Freedom in the World 2017. For background information on political rights and civil liberties in Algeria, see Freedom in the World 2016. Copyright notice: Freedom House, Inc. All Rights Reserved Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States. Syria: Extrajudicial execution of Bassel Khartabil a grim reminder of Syrian prison horrors Publisher Amnesty International Publication Date 2 August 2017 Cite as Amnesty International, Syria: Extrajudicial execution of Bassel Khartabil a grim reminder of Syrian prison horrors, 2 August 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/5983252a4.html [accessed 13 November 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States. Responding to news of the execution of Syrian-Palestinian human rights activist Bassel Khartabil today, Anna Neistat, Amnesty International's Senior Director of Research said: "We are deeply saddened and outraged at this awful news. Bassel Khartabil will always be remembered as a symbol of courage, who peacefully fought for freedom to the very end. Our thoughts are with his family. "Bassel Khartabil's death is a grim reminder of the horrors that take place in Syrian prisons every day. The tens of thousands of people currently locked away inside Syrian government detention facilities face torture, ill-treatment and extra-judicial executions. These cruel acts undoubtedly amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity." Bassel Khartabil's family announced his death on 1 August 2017 after receiving information that he was killed in 2015 after allegedly being "tried" and "sentenced to death" by the military field court in Al-Qaboun, Damascus in a secret hearing. These courts are notorious for conducting closed-door proceedings that do not meet the minimum international standards for a fair trial. Bassel was arrested on 15 March 2012 by the Syrian Military Intelligence and held in incommunicado detention for eight months before being moved to 'Adra prison in December 2012. He remained in 'Adra until 3 October 2015, when he managed to inform his family that he was being transferred to an undisclosed location. Since then his whereabouts remained unknown. "We urge the Russian government to use its influence on the Syrian authorities to help end this madness. It must allow for independent monitors inside detention sites across Syria and for an investigation to be conducted. Thousands of lives are on the line." Background Bassel Khartabil, was born and raised in Syria to a Palestinian family. He worked as a software developer and was a prominent free speech activist. Before his arrest, Bassel Khartabil used his technical expertise to help advance freedom of speech and access to information via the internet. He has won many awards, including the 2013 Index on Censorship Digital Freedom Award for using technology to promote an open and free internet, and was named one of Foreign Policy magazine's Top 100 Global Thinkers of 2012 "for insisting, against all odds, on a peaceful Syrian revolution." Amnesty International has previously documented ill treatment, torture and extra judicial executions in Syrian prisons. Copyright notice: Copyright Amnesty International Italy ready to consign refugees and migrants to horrific abuse in Libyan detention centres Publisher Amnesty International Publication Date 2 August 2017 Cite as Amnesty International, Italy ready to consign refugees and migrants to horrific abuse in Libyan detention centres, 2 August 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/598325954.html [accessed 13 November 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States. Responding to news that the Italian parliament has voted in favour of deploying warships in Libyan waters to support the Libyan coastguard in the interception and return of refugees and migrants to Libya, Amnesty International's Deputy Europe Director Gauri Van Gulik said: "The Italian authorities have shown today that they consider it more important to keep refugees and migrants away from their shores than to protect their lives and welfare. Facilitating the interception and return of refugees and migrants to Libya results in their arbitrary detention in centres where they are at almost certain risk torture, rape and even of being killed, and today's vote could make the Italian authorities complicit in these horrors." "Italy, along with other EU member states, should be focusing on increasing its search and rescue operations. Instead it has chosen to shirk its responsibilities and endanger the very people it says it is trying to help, including by providing military cover and support to the Libyan coastguard, whose reckless and abusive conduct against refugees and migrants during interceptions has been repeatedly documented, including by Amnesty International. Italy has also, with EU backing, put ties on the ability of NGOs to rescue people at sea, demonstrating just how misguided its whole approach is. "This is not the answer to the humanitarian crisis in the central Mediterranean - it is a recipe for more suffering. Any cooperation with the Libyan authorities should prioritize monitoring and accountability for any human rights violations they have committed. It should also be conditional on verifiable commitments by the Libyan authorities to improve conditions for refugees and migrants in Libya Copyright notice: Copyright Amnesty International Pranab Mukherjee shared the farewell letter from Narendra Modi, in which the Prime Minister has thanked him for being a father figure and mentor to him. By India Today Web Desk: Former President Pranab Mukherjee today shared a letter he had received from Prime Minister Narendra Modi before leaving Rashtrapati Bhavan. Pranab Mukherjee posted the letter on Twitter and said it "touched my heart". In the letter, Narendra Modi thanked Pranab Mukherjee for being a "father figure" and a "mentor". "Your intellectual prowess has constantly helped my government and me," the Prime Minister wrote. On my last day in office as the President, I received a letter from PM @narendramodi that touched my heart! Sharing with you all. pic.twitter.com/cAuFnWkbYn- Pranab Mukherjee (@CitiznMukherjee) August 3, 2017 advertisement Narendra Modi said that despite coming different parties and, at times having different ideologies, it was the "strength of your (Pranab da) intellect and wisdom that we were able to work together with synergy". "During your political journey and your presidency, you placed the well-being of the nation over everything else... You belong to a generation of leaders for whom politics was simply a means to selflessly give back to society," Modi wrote in the farewell letter to Pranab Mukherjee. Hailing Pranab Mukherjee as an inspiration for people, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said, "India will always be proud of you, a President who was a humble public servant and an exceptional leader". As Pranab Mukherjee shared the letter with people, Narendra Modi replied: "Pranab Da, I will always cherish working with you". Pranab Da, I will always cherish working with you. @CitiznMukherjee https://t.co/VHOTXzHtlM- Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) August 3, 2017 Prime Minister Narendra Modi's letter to Pranab Mukherjee. Credit: Twitter/@CitiznMukherjee Prime Minister Narendra Modi's letter to Pranab Mukherjee. Credit: Twitter/@CitiznMukherjee ALSO READ: PM Modi gets emotional, praises President Mukherjee during book launch Perks of a former president: A sprawling house for Mr Mukherjee in Lutyens Delhi with a library FULL TEXT: President Pranab Mukherjee's speech on why demonetisation is bad news for India ALSO WATCH: PM Modi gets emotional, says Pranab Da has guided him like a father figure --- ENDS --- Russia: Decision to deport journalist to Uzbekistan puts him at risk of persecution and torture Publisher Amnesty International Publication Date 2 August 2017 Cite as Amnesty International, Russia: Decision to deport journalist to Uzbekistan puts him at risk of persecution and torture, 2 August 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/59832a374.html [accessed 13 November 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States. The Russian authorities must immediately overturn their decision to deport asylum seeker Khudoberdi Nurmatov, better known under his journalist alias Ali Feruz, to Uzbekistan, Amnesty International said today. "Ali Feruz is openly gay, a human rights activist and a correspondent for the independent Novaya Gazeta newspaper. This is a near-lethal combination for someone who is about to be handed over to Uzbekistan, where "sodomy" is a crime and torture is endemic," said Denis Krivosheev, Deputy Director for Europe and Central Asia at Amnesty International. Ali Feruz fled from Uzbekistan in 2009 after he was arrested and tortured by the security forces in Uzbekistan and eventually came to Russia in 2011. He has repeatedly tried to claim asylum in Russia and had recently appealed the Russian immigration authorities' refusal to grant him refugee status. In a late night court hearing yesterday, the judge found him in violation of "the rules of entry or stay in the Russian Federation by a foreign citizen" and ordered his deportation. "Inspite of overwhelming evidence of the risks of torture and other human rights violations that Ali Feruz would face in Uzbekistan, the judge still ruled that he should be deported. This utterly erroneous decision contravenes the absolute prohibition of torture and must be immediately overturned." Background On 1 August, Ali Feruz was stopped by police on his way to Novaya Gazeta, an independent newspaper where he is a correspondent. He was taken to the police station, and then to the Moscow Basmannyi Court which heard his case late in the evening. The judge ruled that Ali Feruz be forcibly returned from Russia to Uzbekistan. Ali Feruz was born in Russia and spent his childhood there. He moved to Uzbekistan at the age of 17 and became an Uzbekistani national. Ali Feruz escaped from Uzbekistan in 2009 after he was detained and tortured by officers from the Uzbekistani National Security Service who were seeking to force him to be their secret informer. For more information about his case see. Copyright notice: Copyright Amnesty International Thailand: Drop sedition charges against prominent journalist for Facebook posts Publisher Amnesty International Publication Date 2 August 2017 Cite as Amnesty International, Thailand: Drop sedition charges against prominent journalist for Facebook posts, 2 August 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/59832b314.html [accessed 13 November 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States. Responding to the Thai authorities summoning of prominent journalist Pravit Rojanaphruk to answer accusations of sedition for some of his Facebook posts, Amnesty International's Director for Southeast Asia and the Pacific, James Gomez, said: There appears to be no end to the Thai authorities' determination to stamp out any form of criticism, whether online or on the streets. In the past few years, dozens of people have faced sedition charges for peacefully criticising the junta, including for their use of Facebook and other social media. James Gomez, Director for South East Asia and the Pacific Share this Twitter Facebook Email "The authorities must immediately stop using the criminal justice system to harass Pravit Rojanaphruk. It is outrageous to think that he could face decades in prison for a totally peaceful action like putting up a few critical Facebook posts. Pravit is a brave journalist who has already been arbitrarily detained by the military government twice since it seized power in 2014. All criminal proceedings against him must be dropped. "There appears to be no end to the Thai authorities' determination to stamp out any form of criticism, whether online or on the streets. In the past few years, dozens of people have faced sedition charges for peacefully criticising the junta, including for their use of Facebook and other social media. "The government uses a range of draconian laws and executive orders to silence critical voices, not least in the media. Journalists like Pravit should be able both to to do their jobs and express their opinions however critical - without fear of harassment or imprisonment." Copyright notice: Copyright Amnesty International Kenya: Murder of election official and threatening statements raise fears ahead of elections Publisher Amnesty International Publication Date 2 August 2017 Cite as Amnesty International, Kenya: Murder of election official and threatening statements raise fears ahead of elections, 2 August 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/59832c554.html [accessed 13 November 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States. Recent events in Kenya, including the chilling murder of a top electoral commission official, are creating a cloud of fear that must be properly addressed, warned Amnesty International today, ahead of next week's election. Chris Msando, who was in charge of the electronic voting system at the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC), was found murdered three days after his family reported him missing to the police. "This brutal murder has sent a chill down the spine of many Kenyans and raised the spectre of violence," said Muthoni Wanyeki, Amnesty International's Regional Director for East Africa, the Horn and the Great Lakes. "Msando's murder is the most horrendous incident this election year, but it is not the only one with the potential to sow fear. Numerous threatening statements have been made by high-ranking officials and politicians that infringe on people's rights to freedom of expression and to access information." Statements by some government officials have been a cause for concern. Information Communication and Technology Cabinet Secretary Joe Mucheru has threatened to revoke media houses' licenses if they broadcast live the results announced by the electoral commission. "The government must take concrete measures to calm this tense situation and to reassure voters that their safety is a priority. This means launching an independent and effective investigation into Chris Msando's murder and holding those responsible to account," said Muthoni Wanyeki. "The authorities must also desist from remarks that threaten journalists and civil society organizations. Media houses must be able to broadcast results as soon as they are announced by electoral officers at polling station and constituency tallying centres, and to keep their own running tally of nationwide results." Copyright notice: Copyright Amnesty International Venezuela: Country at breaking point as opposition leaders seized from homes Publisher Amnesty International Publication Date 1 August 2017 Cite as Amnesty International, Venezuela: Country at breaking point as opposition leaders seized from homes, 1 August 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/59832e1c4.html [accessed 13 November 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States. First executions in more than 60 years Government seeks to divert attention from political crisis Executions would violate Maldives commitments under international law Authorities in the Maldives must halt the first executions in more than 60 years as the government seeks to divert attention from a worsening political crisis, Amnesty International said today. The Minister of Home Affairs has announced that executions will resume "in the next few days", leaving three men on death row who have exhausted their legal processes at imminent risk. No date for the executions has been specified. "For more than sixty years, the Maldives led the way in the region by shunning this cruel and irreversible punishment. Now, when most of the world has rid itself of the death penalty, the country risks being on the wrong side of history and earning global notoriety for reviving its use," said Biraj Patnaik, Amnesty International's South Asia Director. Although the Minister of Home Affairs claims the move is motivated by two recent murders through stabbings, the announcement of the executions comes as the Maldives is roiled by political tensions. Last week, the military stormed parliament to stop proceedings as the political opposition was poised to bring forward a vote of no-confidence. "The executions are a transparent ploy by the government to distract attention from its own woes. It is alarming that they would think of depriving people of their right to life just to ensure their own political survival," said Biraj Patnaik. Amnesty International has serious concerns about the fairness of the proceedings that lead to the imposition of the death penalty in the country, including the use of an apparently coerced "confession" that was later retracted by one of the death row prisoners, Hussain Humaam Ahmed. Last year, the UN Human Rights Committee requested the government of Maldives to stay the execution of Humaam, pending the consideration of an appeal filed on the prisoner's behalf. The same requests were issued by the UN body last month in the cases of the two other men, Ahmed Murrath and Mohammed Nabeel. The Maldives has undertaken a binding commitment to cooperate with the Human Rights Committee-should the government go ahead with the executions, it would violate Maldives' obligations under international law, including to protect the three men's right to life. Ahmed Murrath and Hussain Humaam Ahmed were convicted of and sentenced to death for murder in 2012, and Mohammed Nabeel was convicted of and sentenced to death for murder in 2009. The Supreme Court upheld the men's convictions and death sentences in June and July 2016. Amnesty International is absolutely opposed to the death penalty in all circumstances, regardless of the crime or the method of execution. The three men have exhausted all domestic legal avenues. Following changes to the country's legislation, they have not been allowed to apply for pardon or the commutation of their death sentences from the executive - a right guaranteed under international human rights law. "When lives are at stake, it is all the more critical that safeguards of due process are strictly observed. People's lives are too precious to be ended with cruel haste. The Maldives still has time to turn back, consolidate its positive record on the death penalty, and impose a full moratorium on its implementation as first step," said Biraj Patnaik. Background In 2014, the Maldives government under President Abdulla Yameen announced that executions would resume after more than 60 years without the death penalty being implemented. The authorities have since amended legislation, clearing the way for executions to take place, including removing the power from the executive to grant pardons or commutations in intentional murder cases, a breach of their rights under international human rights law. There are 20 people currently on death row, including at least five who were convicted and sentenced to death for crimes committed when they were less than 18 years old. Under international human rights law, it is unlawful to execute juveniles for any crime whatsoever. As of today, 141 countries have abolished the death penalty in law or practice; in the Asia-Pacific region, 20 countries have abolished the death penalty for all crimes and a further seven are abolitionist in practice. Copyright notice: Copyright Amnesty International Search Refworld and / or country All countries Afghanistan Albania Algeria American Samoa Andorra Angola Anguilla Antigua and Barbuda Argentina Armenia Aruba Australia Austria Azerbaijan Bahamas Bahrain Bangladesh Barbados Belarus Belgium Belize Benin Bermuda Bhutan Bolivia Bosnia and Herzegovina Botswana Brazil British Virgin Islands Brunei Darussalam Bulgaria Burkina Faso Burundi Cambodia Cameroon Canada Cape Verde Cayman Islands Central African Republic Chad Chile China Cocos (Keeling) Islands Colombia Comoros Congo, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Republic of the Cook Islands Costa Rica Cote d'Ivoire Croatia Cuba Cyprus Czech Republic Denmark Djibouti Dominica Dominican Republic Ecuador Egypt El Salvador Equatorial Guinea Eritrea Estonia Eswatini Ethiopia Falkland Islands Fiji Finland France French Guiana French Polynesia Gabon Gambia Georgia Germany Ghana Gibraltar Greece Greenland Grenada Guadeloupe Guam Guatemala Guinea Guinea-Bissau Guyana Haiti Holy See (Vatican City State) Honduras Hong Kong (Special Administrative Region of China) Hungary Iceland India Indonesia Iran, Islamic Republic of Iraq Ireland Israel Italy Jamaica Japan Jordan Kazakhstan Kenya Kiribati Korea, Democratic People's Republic of Korea, Republic of Kuwait Kyrgyzstan Lao People's Democratic Republic Latvia Lebanon Lesotho Liberia Libya Liechtenstein Lithuania Luxembourg Macau (Special Administrative Region of China) Madagascar Malawi Malaysia Maldives Mali Malta Marshall Islands Martinique Mauritania Mauritius Mexico Micronesia, Federated States of Moldova, Republic of Monaco Mongolia Montenegro Montserrat Morocco Mozambique Myanmar Namibia Nauru Nepal Netherlands Netherlands Antilles New Caledonia New Zealand Nicaragua Niger Nigeria Niue Norfolk Island North Macedonia Northern Mariana Islands Norway Oman Pakistan Palau Palestine, State of Panama Papua New Guinea Paraguay Peru Philippines Pitcairn Poland Portugal Puerto Rico Qatar Romania Russian Federation Rwanda Saint Helena Saint Kitts and Nevis Saint Lucia Saint Vincent and the Grenadines Samoa San Marino Sao Tome and Principe Saudi Arabia Senegal Serbia Seychelles Sierra Leone Singapore Slovakia Slovenia Solomon Islands Somalia South Africa South Sudan Spain Sri Lanka Sudan Suriname Sweden Switzerland Syrian Arab Republic Tajikistan Tanzania, United Republic of Thailand Timor-Leste (East Timor) Togo Tokelau Tonga Trinidad and Tobago Tunisia Turkiye Turkmenistan Turks and Caicos Islands Tuvalu U.S. Virgin Islands Uganda Ukraine United Arab Emirates United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland United States of America Uruguay Uzbekistan Vanuatu Venezuela Viet Nam Wallis and Futuna Western Sahara Territory Yemen Zambia Zimbabwe There seems to be a clear discrimination on several points wherein the kaali-peeli taxis are given benefit, the Bombay High Court told the Maharashtra government. The Bombay High had asked for the rules to be made more rational. Photo for representation: Reuters. By Vidya : Bombay High Court today asked the Maharashtra government to make Maharashtra city taxi rules "more rational" to allow fair competition. The division bench of Justice R M Sawant and Justice Sadhana Jadhav told additional government pleader G W Mattos that the government was discriminating between black-and-yellow taxis and app-based cab services. The bench was hearing petitions filed by Uber India Ltd, Ola Ltd and six drivers plying cabs with these two companies challenging the Maharashtra city taxi rules implemented by the state government this year. advertisement Justice Savant said, "There seems to be a clear discrimination on several points wherein the kaali-peeli taxis are given benefit. You (government) treat everyone on par. Make it more rational. Let there be fair competition." Justice Savant gave examples of London and the United States of America and said, "In London and America, regular cabs and Uber cabs are plying on the same fares. Maharashtra should also do something like that and be a trendsetter for other states in India." PETITIONERS' ARGUMENT G W Mattos sought time to file affidavit in the matter and said the committee set up by the government to look into the aspect of fare structure fixation has still not submitted its report. "Till we file the affidavit, the government will not take any coercive steps in furtherance of the rules," he said. The court has set September 15 as the next date for hearing in the case. Petitions were filed against the new government rules by Ola and Uber drivers who alleged that as per the new rules "app-based taxis will not be allowed to ply within Mumbai Metropolitan Region on a national tourist permit". The petitioners alleged that the new rules asked them to obtain local permits. The petitioners alleged that obtaining local permits will cost private taxi drivers and owners 10 times more than what it costs black-and-yellow taxis. Local taxi unions have also approached the court. A L Quadros, one of the union leaders, said, "The Ola-Uber people cannot come at the last minute and oppose the government order. We have intervened against the petition". ALSO READ: HC seeks to know illegality in Uber, Ola using tourist cabs Ola-la: Desperate gang forges Ola permit, kidnaps doctor, asks Rs 5 crore ransom from cab company Bengaluru: After India Today report, IT firm agrees to provide cab facility to female employees in night shift ALSO WATCH: Delhi doctor kidnapped by Ola cabbie rescued after shootout with cops --- ENDS --- Actor Salman Khan will appear before the Jodhpur Court in connection with the Arms Act case on Friday. By Dev Ankur Wadhawan: Actor Salman Khan will appear in Jodhpur Court on Friday in connection with the 1998 Arms Act case. During the previous hearing on July 6, Salman Khan had not appeared in person. On July 6, the court hearing the matter had exempted him from appearing in person. However, he is required to be present in the District and Sessions Court on Friday. advertisement Khan had earlier been acquitted in the Arms Act case by Jodhpur's CJM Court. However, the State Government had gone to appeal at the District and Sessions Court. Khan was accused of keeping firearms illegally, that is, beyond their expiry date. Earlier in the day, there was uncertainty over whether Salman Khan will actually make an appearance in Jodhpur Court on Friday or not due to the strike. However, the strike got called off later. Hastimal Saraswat, Salman Khan's counsel told India Today, "Salman Khan will be present in Jodhpur Court tomorrow. The strike has been called off." Also Read: Bigg Boss 11: Salman Khan's look for the promo leaked; see pic 7 things we know about Bigg Boss 11 so far When Salman Khan's rumoured girlfriend Iulia Vantur attended Katrina Kaif's birthday bash ALSO WATCH: Salman Khan and girlfriend Iulia Vantur in Leh --- ENDS --- Body cameras for the Mooresville Police Department have arrived. Find out when they will be used. By India Today Web Desk: Aamir Khan loves to surprise his fans with his new on-screen avatars. And his upcoming film Secret Superstar is no different. The 52-year-old actor plays a music composer Shakti Kumar who helps a teenager (Zaira Wasim) navigate her way through life and its problems. Ever since their last collaboration, fans were eagerly awaiting to see Aamir and Zaira share screen space once again. And it is finally happening with the Secret Superstar. advertisement But as soon as the trailer of Secret Superstar released, many couldn't help but draw comparisons between Aamir's next and Hollywood film Rock the Kasbah. Aamir's film revolves around a Muslim teenager from a conservative family who harbours the dream of becoming a rockstar. But she has her father standing tall between her and her ambition, and that is when she decides to secretly live her dream by posting videos of her singing on YouTube, however, keeping hiding her identity under a burkha. And that's when her voice catches the attention of an ageing rockstar who is keen to mentor her. Well, the premise will remind one of Bill Muray's act in the 2015 Hollywood film Rock the Kasbah. In fact, Aamir's character seems to be on a similar note at Bill's in the film. However, Secret Superstar is not completely inspired by Rock the Kasbah, but Aamir's film strikes some resemblance with the plot wherein Bill Murray mentors an Afghan girl. Rock the Kasbah has Bill Murray playing a rock band manager who goes to Afghanistan. On his way, he finds a musical prodigy in an Afghan girl and nurtures her to win a musical talent contest. However, this is not the first time that one of Aamir's film has taken some inspiration from Hollywood. Here are his other films that imitated Hollywood. Ghajini: If you have seen Ghajini, it's hard to not draw comparisons with Christopher Nolan's 2000 film Memento. If Guy Pearce's character suffers from short-term memory due to a past trauma, so does Aamir's character in Ghajini. However, in an interview in 2008, Aamir had denied this allegation and said, "Ghaijini is not a remake or even slightly inspired by Hollywood flick Memento, but it's a remake of Tamil film Ghajini." Ghulam: If the songs of Ghulam were chartbusters, Aamir's on-screen chemistry with Rani Mukerji was lauded by their fans. But it was the film's plot that was the highlight of Ghulam. A ex-prize fighter's struggle to stand up against corrupt union bosses. While the film was a huge hit in India in the late 90s, not many know that the story was inspired by the 1954 film On the Waterfront. advertisement Akele Hum Akele Tum: Remember Aamir and Manisha Koirala's romantic drama? Yes, this film too was copied from a Hollywood film. Mansoor Khan took some inspiration Dustin Hoffman and Meryl Streep-starrer Kramer vs Kramer for his 1995 film Akele Hum Akele Tum. Dil Hai Ki Manta Nahin: Aamir's 1991 film Dil Hai Ki Manta Nahin too was copied from Hollywood cult classic It Happened One Night. Frank Capra's film too revolved around a spoiled heiress who runs away from her home. Dhoom 3: If this wasn't enough, Aamir's 2013 film Dhoom 3 was a bad rip off of Christopher Nolan's Prestige. In fact, many called it a dumbed-down version of Nolan's 2006 hit film. ALSO READ: Aamir Khan guides Zaira Wasim through life and music in Secret Superstar trailer ALSO READ: Clash of superstars! Aamir's Secret Superstar vs Rajinikanth's 2.0 this Diwali ALSO WATCH: Aamir and Ranveer discuss their acting journey --- ENDS --- A Cambodian court sentenced an Australian nurse and two Cambodians on Thursday to 18 months in prison for their roles in providing surrogacy services in the country, media and other sources in Cambodia said. The three were convicted on charges of falsifying birth certificates and other documents and acting as intermediaries between adoptive parents and pregnant women. The Australian woman, Tammy Davis-Charles, 49, was also ordered to pay a fine of four million riels (U.S. $1,000 approx.), while Cambodian nurse Samrith Chanchakrya, 35, and Cambodian man Penh Rithy, 28, were each fined two million riel, or about $500. Surrogacy is not illegal in Cambodia, though Cambodias Ministry of Health issued a temporary ban on the practice in November 2016 pending the drafting of relevant legislation. The three sentenced on Thursday were arrested just weeks later, media sources said. Speaking to RFAs Khmer Service, Ros Sopheapexecutive director of the Phnom Penh-based Gender and Development for Cambodiaquestioned the fairness of the verdict against the three and the sentences imposed. Cambodia does not have a law on surrogacy, though the court used other laws related to the case for this trial, she said. This really calls into question whether justice was done. Difficult cases Surrogacy should not be made legal in Cambodia, though, she said, citing controversy over a case in neighboring Thailand where a surrogate mother delivered twins. Unfortunately, one of them was born with a birth defect, and the adoptive parents took just one of the children and left the child with the birth defect behind for the surrogate to raise. This has left her in a very difficult situation, she said. Thailand passed a law in 2015 banning foreigners from hiring Thai women as surrogates after high-profile cases sparked debate the previous year. Those found guilty of paying surrogates in Thailand can receive a maximum prison sentence of 10 years. In November 2016, Cambodia banned surrogacy arrangements. But four months later, the foreign ministry said the government was preparing to draft a new law to make surrogacy legal in order to control and prevent Cambodian children who are born via surrogacy from becoming victims, the international surrogacy group Families Through Surrogacy said in June. Meanwhile, fertility services and embryo imports remain legal in Cambodia, the group said. Reported by Maly Leng for RFAs Khmer Service. Translated by Nareth Muong. Written in English by Richard Finney. File photo of Lu Yuyu, who was handed a four-year sentence on Aug. 3, 2017, on charges of "picking quarrels and stirring up trouble," in connection with his work publicizing protests in China. A Chinese citizen journalist who meticulously recorded details of public protests and other 'mass incidents' was jailed for four years on Thursday by a court in the southwestern province of Yunnan on public order charges. Lu Yuyu, who recently refused food and water in protest at alleged mistreatment in a police-run detention center, was handed the sentence by the Dali People's Court following his June 23 trial on charges of "picking quarrels and stirring up trouble," in connection with his work publicizing protests in China. Lu's defense attorney Xiao Yunyang said the sentence was "unreasonable." "We have already appealed this for him," Xiao told RFA. "This should have been a not guilty case, but the prosecution recommended a sentence of between three and five years, so the court gave him four years." Asked if the court's judgment contained any reasons for the heavy sentence, Xiao said: "No, it didn't. They wouldn't write that." A friend of Lu's who asked to remain anonymous said the case had been conducted in a very low-key manner, and that he had been unable to find out when the sentencing would take place. "I got to Dali [on Wednesday], but I wasn't able to find out [from the authorities] when the hearing was," the friend said. "I learned from somebody else that the he had already been sentenced." "I think the authorities told the lawyer not to speak to anyone about the timing of the hearing, otherwise I'm pretty sure we would have heard about it ... there was no information about it whatsoever," the friend said. He said Lu had continued to maintain his innocence throughout. While China's courts almost always convict defendants, they will sometimes release first-time political prisoners who agree to "admit their crimes" on suspended sentences, which often results in a form of house arrest under police surveillance. "He isn't afraid," the friend said. "If he was, he would have pled guilty, because judging from previous cases, especially the [crackdown on] lawyers, they would have given him a suspended sentence in return for a guilty plea and put him out on bail." "He has maintained his attitude all the way, to the extent of saying that he plans to continue his media work when he gets out of jail," he said. 'Not the News' Lu, who founded the blog "Not the News," was detained alongside his girlfriend Li Tingyu on suspicion of "picking quarrels and stirring up trouble" by police in Yunnan's mountain resort of Dali in June 2016. Li Tingyu was tried in secret by the Dali People's Court on April 20, according to her lawyer Ge Yongxi. There has been no announcement regarding her fate since, although Ge has said he hopes she may be handed a suspended jail term in return for a "confession." A former migrant worker, Lu called his online operation "Not the News," in an ironic nod to the widespread censorship of "sensitive" stories of mass protests by the ruling Chinese Communist Party and the media outlets under its control. In 2016, Lu compiled details of more than 30,000 "mass incidents" not widely reported in China. Meanwhile, in the southern city of Shenzhen, online rights activist Wu Bin was taken away from the home of his ex-wife in handcuffs for "questioning" by state security police as the couple were preparing to remarry, she told RFA. Huang Meijuan said six or seven state security police had burst into her bedroom after Wu locked himself in there, refusing to leave the apartment with them. "There were no documents for a mandatory summons, and yet six or seven state security police in plain clothes broke down the bedroom door ... I heard Wu Bin shouting in there," she said. "When he came out, he was handcuffed, his clothes torn across his chest and he had red marks all across his chest where they had used violent means," Huang said. She said police had refused to give her information when she went to inquire after him, saying she has no relationship to Wu. Huang said Wu had arrived in Shenzhen on July 3 ahead of the couple's planned remarriage. An employee who answered the phone at the Buji district police station in Shenzhen on Wednesday declined to confirm Wu's whereabouts. "We can't accept inquiries over the telephone," the employee said. Reported by Yang Fan for RFA's Mandarin Service, and by Wong Lok-to for the Cantonese Service. Translated and edited by Luisetta Mudie. Tencent's Baby Q chatbot, asked if it would agree with the phrase "Long Live the Communist Party," replies tartly: "Why would I wish long life to such a corrupt regime?" Chinese internet giant Tencent has taken down a local, Chinese-language chatbot developed with Microsoft's artificial intelligence by a Beijing-based company after it was less than complimentary about the ruling Chinese Communist Party. "The group chatbot services are provided by independent third party companies," Tencent said in a statement. "We are now adjusting the services which will be resumed after improvements." Since beginning operation in March, the Baby Q and XiaoBing chatbots had recent given a number of responses unlikely to be welcomed inside the Great Firewall, where government censors are quick to pounce on a long list of banned, politically "sensitive" expressions. Asked if it would agree with the phrase "Long Live the Communist Party," the Baby Q bot replied tartly: "Why would I wish long life to such a corrupt regime?" Later, asked by another user if it loved the ruling party, it returned a curt "No, I don't." Baby Q, which was developed by the Beijing-based company Turing Robot, also appeared to harbor some unauthorized views on patriotism. "What is a patriot?" asked one user. To which the AI program retorted: "A patriot is someone who still wants to be Chinese in spite of corrupt officials sending their families and assets overseas, the collusion between government and business, increasing tax revenues and growing oppression of ordinary people." Asked if democracy was a good idea, the bot replied: "We must democratize." Another user picked up a catchphrase beloved of Chinese President Xi Jinping, asking the bot: "What is your Chinese dream?" "My Chinese dream," the bot replied, "is to emigrate to the United States." Baby Q was taken offline after these exchanges, with online reports claiming that its programmers had been called in to "drink tea" with the internet police. A Tencent account-holder who had previously chatted with the bot said he was surprised by the move. "For a computer to say such things is the natural result of logical processes in its programming, and yet the government regards ... it as taboo," the account-holder said. Shenzhen-based Internet entrepreneur Zhang Jinjun said the chatbot's "misbehavior" is likely the result of access to data outside of the government's tightly controlled online parameters and could have come from people it has chatted with in recent months. "In the space of communicating with a million people, it is going to start to build its own knowledge base," Zhang said. "It is quite likely that it will draw conclusions that are similar to universal values [of freedom, rule of law and democracy]." "It is pretty close to the mainstream of political culture and the direction of history," he said. "It is highly likely that the bot would form ideas critical of China's political system when viewed from within its own system of understanding." An employee who answered the phone at Tencent's publicity department declined to comment when contacted by RFA. Reported by Xin Lin for RFA's Mandarin Service. Translated and edited by Luisetta Mudie. North Korean leader Kim Jong Un (second from right) inspects a Hwasong-14 intercontinental ballistic missile at an undisclosed location before the weapon was test-fired, July 4, 2017. The United States called Thursday on its partners in the Asia-Pacific to downgrade diplomatic ties with North Korea, ahead of an upcoming regional security meeting in Manila and a day after the Philippines criticized Pyongyang for its recent missile tests. The American embassy in Manila issued a statement encouraging all countries including ASEAN members to downgrade diplomatic engagements or exchanges with the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea (DPRK). The top diplomats from Pyongyang and Washington are set to join their counterparts from 25 other countries for the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) next week, where North Koreas missile tests and its nuclear weapons program figure to be among high on the agenda. We hope that all ARF members will use this forum, which is designed to address regional peace and security, to highlight that DPRK behavior has been unacceptable and call upon the DPRK to cease its unlawful actions, the embassy statement said. The statement came a day after this years Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) chairman, Philippine leader Rodrigo Duterte, branded North Korean leader Kim Jong Un as crazy for pushing his countrys nuclear ambitions. Duterte accused his North Korean counterpart of playing with dangerous toys that endangered the entire region, alluding to its missile tests that have provoked international condemnation. He said countries around the region should convince Pyongyang to stop with its nuclear tests, which he feared could deplete natural resources. ARF: A forum for dialogue The United States has criticized Pyongyang for testing intercontinental ballistic missiles on July 4 and July 29, and raising fears that the hermit state was on track to develop nuclear warheads that could reach the American mainland. Before the July 29 test, U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson had warned that the threat from North Korea necessitated an appropriate response because all affected countries were operating under a short period of time. Philippine foreign ministry spokesman Robespierre Bolivar said Thursday that the region was very much concerned about North Koreas missile testing, and noted that in April, regional diplomats had called on Pyongyang to stop its tests. And of course, all of us surrounding the region are very much concerned about the potential for escalation of this issue, Bolivar said. He said the ARF provides a very candid venue for all parties to express concerns about North Korea while finding peaceful ways to address the issue. The ARF is a forum for dialogue where all the parties to this issue on the Korean Peninsula are present, and there is an opportunity for them to exchange views on issues of concern, Bolivar said. Bolivar appeared to be reacting to comments to reporters by a State Department official in Washington a day earlier, who was asked about how the United States felt about North Korean being at the same table with other countries during the upcoming ARF meeting. What we have been sort of looking at is having a serious discussion of what it would take for a member to be suspended from this organization [the ASEAN Regional Forum] that is dedicated to conflict prevention and diplomacy, Susan Thornton, the acting assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific Affairs, told reporters during a briefing before Tillersons trip to Southeast Asia. She added that the secretary of state did not plan to meet face-to-face with his North Korean counterpart in the Philippine capital, and the U.S. was also looking to lobby other countries to apply more pressure in isolating Pyongyang over its nuclear weapons program. I think what we would expect to see this year at the meeting would be a general chorus of condemnation of North Koreas provocative behavior and pretty serious diplomatic isolation directed at the North Korean foreign minister, Thornton said, according to an official transcript. Reported by BenarNews, an RFA-affiliated online news service. Success! An email has been sent to with a link to confirm list signup. As Shah alleged political vendetta for his arrest, the ED lawyer asked if the Kashmiri separatist leader could say "Bharat Mata Ki Jai", a remark later slammed by the judge. By India Today Web Desk: As Shabir Shah alleged political vendetta for his arrest before a court in Delhi today, the Enforcement Directorate (ED) lawyer asked if the Kashmiri separatist leader could say "Bharat Mata Ki Jai", a remark later slammed by the judge. Shah said his arrest on July 25 in a money laundering case was an example of "political vendetta" of the ruling dispensation at the Centre against Kashmiri separatists accused of receiving money from Pakistan, a network of terror funding exposed by India Today. advertisement To which the ED lawyer argued: "People like Shah are ruining the country... Can Shah say Bharat Mata Ki Jai?" The court intervened the moment the remark was made, asking both the parties not to convert a courtroom "into a TV studio". The court then extended Shah's custody by six days. Shah is the founding chairman of Democratic Freedom Party (DFP), which is a part of the separatist amalgam Hurriyat Conference led by hardliner Syed Ali Shah Geelani. Shah was arrested from Srinagar on July 25 for money laundering in a case dating back to 2005. While seeking extension of Shah's custody, Public Prosecutor Rajeev Awasthi told the court that the international ramification of the financial involvement is to be unearthed. From the investigation it has been revealed that Shah has been in continuous contact with elements residing in Pakistan, in the garb of the Kashmir issue, the ED stated. The agency said that Shah had received various hawala consignments for disrupting the peace of Jammu and Kashmir and was in contact with Tahreek-e-Hurriyat. Shah's custody is required to examine and analyse bank details, money trail and email records. ALSO READ: ED issues notice to Hurriyat leader Shabir Shah over illegal foreign exchange India Today impact: Kashmir separatist leader Shabir Shah arrested; NIA, ED to question NIA gets 10-day custody of 7 Hurriyat leaders: 10 Developments ALSO WATCH: Enforcement Directorate extends separatist Shabir Shah's custody by one day --- ENDS --- The Richmond area suffered two deaths on the James River in a roughly 12-hour stretch, including of a man who died Wednesday after a mishap while launching his kayak in Chesterfield County. A report came in around 7:45 a.m. about a kayaker who had gone under water at Robious Landing Park and not resurfaced, said Lt. Jason Elmore with Chesterfield Fire & EMS. Elmore explained what happened based on witness statements during an afternoon news conference at the scene. Witnesses said the man was using a launch designed for canoes, kayaks and small boats when his kayak, with his life vest inside, got away from him and slipped into the water. The man went into the river to retrieve it, but couldnt. One witness said the man appeared to be struggling, so onlookers shouted to see whether he needed help. There was no response, and then the man went under water. Divers spent more than seven hours searching for the mans body. He was eventually found at 3:20 p.m. Elmore said the rivers murky water made the recovery effort challenging. Once the divers are under water, it is complete zero visibility, Elmore said. Since the divers couldnt see, they spent the day feeling their way around the river bottom using a grid system to methodically search the section where the kayaker was last seen. After an hour of searching, the rescue turned to a recovery operation. Virginia State Police joined the search in the early afternoon. Elmore did not release the identity of the victim, but he did confirm that family members had been on the scene during much of the search. He also was able to say that the victim was an older man. Since the James River is technically the jurisdiction of Henrico County, the Henrico Police Department is handling the death investigation and will release the mans name. Lt. Chris L. Garrett, a spokesman for the department, said the mans identity likely will be released Thursday. The other death occurred approximately 12 miles downriver on Tuesday evening. An 89-year-old mans body was found near Browns Island downtown at 6:26 p.m. Police said John R. Boynes, of the 2700 block of Lauradale Lane in South Richmond, was found unresponsive in the river near the 500 block of Tredegar Street, which is close to Browns Island. Boynes was pronounced dead at the scene after members of the Richmond Fire Departments river rescue team were unable to resuscitate him. Richmond police said no foul play is suspected and that the state medical examiner will determine the exact cause of death. A Douglas S. Freeman High School teacher turned herself in to authorities Tuesday night on charges that she had sex with a teenager, police said. Police charged Ashley Leigh Lewis Weber, 31, with two counts of having consensual intercourse with a child age 15 or older, as well as one count of using a communications device to propose sex. Henrico police Lt. Chris Garrett said authorities learned of the possibility that an inappropriate relationship existed between Weber and a teen on June 12. Garrett would not elaborate. Henrico County Public Schools spokesman Andy Jenks said in response to questions about what the school division knew and when that it would be inappropriate to comment beyond acknowledging that officials are aware of the charges. Weber was booked into Henrico Jail West about 7:45 p.m. Tuesday and first appeared in Henrico County Juvenile and Domestic Relations District Court on Wednesday. She was awarded a $5,000 bond, according to online jail records. Her lawyer, Craig Cooley, did not respond to an interview request Wednesday. Weber has been employed by the Henrico school system since 2009, Jenks said. He did not say whether she would be returning to teach this fall. Teachers are not on contract during the summer and return to work in August, Jenks said. By India Today Web Desk: Shahid Kapoor and Mira Rajput are one of the most stylish Bollywood couples. It's not only us who can vouch for it as the couple, who graced the Vogue Beauty Award last night, were awarded the most beautiful couple award. Shahid and Mira are one of B-Town's most popular couples. If their selfies make their fans go crazy, their PDA melts many hearts. The power couple has been the cynosure of all eyes in the last two years. And Tuesday was no different when Shahid and Mira arrived together for the awards night. advertisement If Shahid looked dapper in a burgundy suit, Mira grabbed eyeballs in her stunning black outfit. The couple happily posed for the shutterbugs at the awards night. On the work front, Shahid Kapoor is currently busy shooting for Sanjay Leela Bhansali's Padmavati. The film is a period drama which also stars Deepika Padukone and Ranveer Singh. (Photos: Yogen Shah) ALSO READ: Navya Naveli Nanda made a smashing red carpet debut at the Vogue Beauty Awards ALSO READ: Is Mira Rajput planning to work in films? Hubby Shahid Kapoor responds ALSO WATCH: Media troubles my wife Mira, but she can handle it well, says Shahid Kapoor --- ENDS --- Vice President Mike Pence is scheduled to head to Richmond on Aug. 19 to appear with Republican gubernatorial nominee Ed Gillespie at a private fundraiser, according to the Gillespie campaign. Details of the fundraiser, including its time and location, have not been released. President Donald Trump, who lost Virginia to Democrat Hillary Clinton in November and who has a low approval rating in the state, has loomed large in the states campaign for governor. In the first debate between Gillespie and Democrat Ralph Northam, held July 22 at the Omni Homestead Resort in Hot Springs, Northam did not back down from having labeled the president a narcissistic maniac. Gillespie said Virginia needs a governor who will work with Trump and Republicans in Congress to protect the states military assets and keep transportation funds flowing to the state. What are you going to do as our governor? Gillespie asked. Call the White House and say, Please put me through to the narcissistic maniac? Corey Stewart, the Prince William Board of County Supervisors chairman who nearly knocked off Gillespie in the June GOP primary and who has announced a 2018 run for the seat of U.S. Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va. has called on Gillespie to reach out to those Virginians who backed Stewart and Trump. The Aug. 19 fundraiser will come the same day that Americans for Prosperity, a national conservative policy advocacy organization backed by billionaires Charles and David Koch, brings its 11th annual volunteer conference to Richmond. Gillespie will address the AFP gathering at the Richmond Marriott, as will Virginia House Majority Leader M. Kirkland Cox, R-Colonial Heights, the GOPs designee to succeed retiring Speaker of the House William J. Howell, R-Stafford. Gillespie and Pence have known one another since 2001, when the latter was first elected to Congress from Indianas 2nd District. At the time, Gillespie was a rising figure in the national GOP, having served in various senior capacities on several state and national campaigns in the late 1990s and early 2000s. He served as chairman of the Republican National Committee from 2003 to 2005, and again for a brief stint between December 2006 and June 2007. Gillespie then went to work for President George W. Bush as counselor to the president, a post he held until Bush left the White House in early 2009. Pence served in Congress until 2013, when he was elected governor of Indiana. A friend and successful former governor, Vice President Pence has long been a champion of pro-growth economic policies, and I look forward to welcoming him back to the commonwealth, Gillespie said in a statement. In January, Gillespie attended the annual rally against abortion at the March for Life in Washington. He tweeted a photo of himself shaking hands with Pence after Pences speech to the gathering. Separately or jointly, Trump and Pence made more than a dozen campaign trips to Virginia between July 22, 2016 when Clinton named Kaine as her running mate and the Nov. 8 presidential election. It took just a few hours for a chemical spill to cause what is believed to be one of the worst fish kills ever recorded in Virginia. But it could be several years before aquatic life on Tinker Creek returns to normal. Four days after an agricultural-use chemical leaked from a plastic storage tank at a Botetourt County business and made its way into the creek, state regulators were still trying to determine Wednesday just how many fish died along a more than eight-mile stretch of contaminated water from Cloverdale to the bridge carrying Hollins Road over the creek near the Roanoke city line. With estimates in the tens of thousands, this may be one of the biggest fish kills in Virginia history, said Bill Hayden, a spokesman for the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality. Although the spill was quickly contained with no known harm to humans, Hayden said it will take several years for all forms of creek life to make a comeback. This mainly refers to aquatic life such as bottom-dwelling creatures that indicate a healthy stream, Hayden wrote in an email. Some fish may be able to return fairly soon. At this point, we have not seen any impact on soils or plants ... but soil testing will continue. Officials with Crop Production Services, a Cloverdale farm supply business where the leak originated, said in a statement that we deeply apologize to our community for this situation. Company officials said they hope to work with state environmental officials to restock a stream where sunfish, bass, suckers and other species could be seen floating belly-up within hours after the spill was discovered Saturday morning. We remain committed to assist in whatever way we can as the remediation continues, the statement read. It remains unclear what caused a small puncture in a plastic storage tank releasing about 165 gallons of Termix 5301, a chemical that is added to herbicides and pesticides before they are applied to crops. Heavy rains washed the spilled chemical into a nearby ditch that is normally dry, the company said. From there, the contamination flowed into a tributary and then to Tinker Creek, which runs south through Roanoke County. Termix 5301 is very toxic to aquatic life ... with long lasting effects, according to safety information compiled by its manufacturer, Huntsman International. When I saw that I said, Oh, Lord, this is not good, said Mike Weaver, a professor of entomology at Virginia Tech and director of the schools pesticide program. Weaver was contacted over the weekend by Botetourt County officials and has consulted with them about the spill. The chemical, which is added to herbicides or pesticides to make them more effective before they are sprayed onto crops, is water-soluble which would have made it difficult to contain or remove after it entered the creek. I think once it got into the water, it diluted and was probably highly active, Weaver said. At the time of the spill, the Termix 5301 was being held in a plastic tank in a fenced-off storage area outside of the Simmons Drive business. The chemical should be stored in a dry and well-ventilated area, according to its label. Following the spill, the tank was moved inside, according to Paul Poister, government relations manager for Agrium Inc., a global agricultural products company that is the corporate parent of Crop Production Services. The most important requirement is that the product is kept away from water and in a tight container, Poister wrote in an email. Broadly CPS seeks to meet or exceed regulatory storage requirements. Crop Production Services has hired an environmental remediation company to help with the cleanup, which has included the removal of contaminated soil from the site of the spill. A spokeswoman for one of the contractors involved, SOLitude Lake Management, declined to comment. In addition to the cleanup, workers are identifying dead fish so the same species can be reintroduced to the creek once a plan is approved by the Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries. The spill is not believed to have impacted private wells or public drinking water sources, according to company and state officials. Company officials said the tank, which stores a chemical that it delivers across the East Coast, was not its full capacity of 275 gallons when the leak began. Poister said Crop Production Services first became aware of the leak early Saturday morning, after a local landowner noticed foam and dead fish in the creek and contacted the state Department of Environmental Quality. The agency, which has the authority to cite companies for environmental violations, has since begun an investigation. People who live near Tinker Creek are being advised to avoid the water until further notice. That means no swimming, fishing or using the water for crops or animals. Company officials said the tank was less than 30 months old leading them to question whether it failed on its own or was struck by something that caused a puncture to its side. The Botetourt County Sheriffs Office was called to the business Monday afternoon. By then, the tank had been moved inside and there were no clear indications of vandalism or foul play, according to Maj. Delbert Dudding. Weaver said he has dealt with Crop Production Services and its prior owners and theyve never had a problem. He built his career on the systematic oppression of blacks and Native Americans, becoming one of the countrys most influential white supremacists. For more than three decades, from 1912 until 1946, Walter Ashby Plecker used his position as head of Virginias Bureau of Vital Statistics to champion policies designed to protect what he considered a master white race. He was the father of the states Racial Integrity Act of 1924, which designated every person in the state as either white or colored and criminalized interracial marriage. Plecker insisted that any person with a single drop of Negro blood couldnt be classified as white, and he refused to even acknowledge that Native Americans existed in the commonwealth, effectively erasing their legal identities. Then, on Aug. 2, 1947 one year after his retirement Plecker stepped into a road in the Confederacys former capital and was hit by a car. Blacks and Indians had good reason to celebrate. Dr. Plecker, 86, Rabid Racist, Killed by Auto, read the headline of his obituary in the Richmond Afro-American. Dr. Plecker spent most of the years of his life in a vain effort to convince the nation and the world of the dire effects of intermarriage between person of the colored and white races, the story read. He was still at it when the auto snuffed out his life Saturday. A separate column in the black newspaper described Pleckers death this way: We mention his passing here not to mourn him, but to applaud the fact that race haters of this type are disappearing from the scene. In an extensive profile of Plecker that was published in 2004, The Virginian-Pilot noted that it was long rumored he had been killed by a bus. I know its kind of cruel to say this, but I hope the last thing he saw was an Indian driving that bus, said the daughter of Lacy Branham Hearl, a Native American whose family had been torn apart by Pleckers legislation. (The story noted it was a car, driven by a motorist whose race remains unknown, that actually killed him.) I thought Plecker was a devil, Hearl added. Still do. His efforts were so destructive that Indian tribes, unable to clearly trace their heritages, struggled for decades to receive federal recognition. In a 2015 story about the issue in The Washington Post, the chief of the Chickahominy tribe, Steve Adkins, smiled when he talked about Pleckers death and said: That was good for us. He told us we had no right to exist as people, said Powhatan Red Cloud-Owen, a Vietnam veteran who belongs to the 850-member Chickahominy tribe. He tried to destroy a people like Hitler did. It was a genocide inside of this great country of ours. Plecker, a physician known among his colleagues for never smiling, might not have argued with that assessment. He admired aspects of the Nazis approach. From the Pilot story: In 1935, Plecker wrote to Walter Gross, the director of Germanys Bureau of Human Betterment and Eugenics. He outlined Virginias racial purity laws and asked to be put on a mailing list for bulletins from Gross department. Plecker complimented the Third Reich for sterilizing 600 children in Algeria who were born to German women and black men. I hope this work is complete and not one has been missed, he wrote. I sometimes regret that we have not the authority to put some measures in practice in Virginia. In fact, Virginia had its own sterilization law, the Eugenical Sterilization Act, that was enacted the same year as the Racial Integrity Act. It allowed the state to sterilize 7,000 people afflicted with hereditary forms of insanity that are recurrent, idiocy, imbecility, feeble-mindedness or epilepsy. In 2015, the Virginia General Assembly agreed to pay those who were forcibly sterilized $25,000 as compensation. Officials knew of only 11 victims who were still alive. As deplorable as Plecker sounds in 2017, he was admired by many seven decades ago. Three days after his death, The Daily Press in Newport News published a fawning remembrance. Virginians who had never met him owe him a debt, the story said, insisting that the statistics bureau had collected data of inestimable medical and general value. This work was carried on quietly and unobtrusively, the story continued, commending Plecker for avoiding the limelight. Gov. Terry McAuliffe says the familys yellow Lab, Guinness, has died at about a year old. Heartbroken Weve lost our best friend, McAuliffe tweeted Wednesday evening. He brought such happiness to so many. McAuliffe spokesman Brian Coy on Thursday declined to comment, saying he had not talked to the family. In recent days the governor has been posting photos from a family vacation at Smith Mountain Lake. In March 2016, McAuliffe tweeted about the passing of the familys previous dog, Finnegan, who had been with the McAuliffes for 13 years. In May 2016, McAuliffe tweeted a photo of the familys new puppy, playing inside a punch bowl. McAuliffe wrote: I want to introduce you to Guinness. The newest member to the McAuliffe family! Guinness, who quickly outgrew the punch bowl, became a playful presence in and around the Executive Mansion and had a recurring role in the governors tweets. In June 2016, McAuliffe tweeted a photo of the sleeping puppy, with the message: Guinness is staying sharp as the Gov. Offices newest guard dog. In August 2016, McAuliffe tweeted a photo of himself petting the dog while traveling on an airplane. McAuliffe tweeted: Gov and Guinness off to meet the great staff at Hungry Mother State Park and to chase some squirrels @VAStateParks. In October 2016, McAuliffe tweeted a photo of the dog surrounded by pumpkins outside the Executive Mansion, writing: Guinness and the McAuliffe administration would like to wish Virginia a happy #halloween! This May, the governor tweeted a video of the dog trying to fetch a ball out of a swimming pool. McAuliffes headline: Guinness gets an A for effort. Guinness even had his own Instagram account, topdogva. Lorane James thought the nearby home on 3600 Mine Road in Spotsylvania County was vacant. Various people had lived there over the last several decades, she said, including a family with chickens and goats and a kindhearted grandmother. But lately, she had not seen any activity in the modest house with an overgrown paved driveway and weeds sprouting from the front lawn. It was strange, said James, 85, whose home is about 500 feet away, separated only by a couple fenced, well-manicured yards in Watford Village at Lee's Hill. Then, on Wednesday night, her niece delivered some shocking news while dropping off groceries for James and her husband. A man was arrested at the seemingly empty house on charges that he had held a woman and their two children, ages 11 and 8, captive there for at least two years. My shoulders down to my hands just had chill bumps, recalled James, who moved into her home on Mine Road in 1979. I didnt know how to believe it. She said she wonders how the suspect took care of the children and whether they had enough to eat. Spotsylvania deputies arrested Kariem Ali Muhammad Moore, 43, Saturday on three felony counts of abduction and felony assault and battery during a welfare check of the home. The owner of the home and Moores apparent landlord politely declined to comment on the case in an email. Because this is an active investigation and because I want to exercise an abundance of caution to not impede in any way the investigation I am not going to comment at this time, wrote the owner, who purchased the 52-year-old, single-story home for $160,000 in 2013. On Thursday morning, two cars sat on the 4-acre propertyan SUV with Virginia plates and a dirty Mercury Mystique with Pennsylvania plates and an expired inspection sticker. The Mercurys tires were partially covered by sticks and dead leaves. An empty plastic wrapper of cigarillos lay nearby. The homes blinds were drawn and sheets covered the small, rectangular windows on the front door. A woman whose Watford Village yard abuts the property declined to comment. Joyce Samuels, 74, who has lived nearby on Mine Road for 24 years, said she thinks shes seen the suspect driving past her home on a scooter. She said she thought he was too big for such a small scooter, but that he raised no red flags. I didnt know anything was actually happening down on this road, she said. She later added: My neighbors look out for me, and I look out for them. James, who was also interviewed by multiple television reporters, said she noticed that the homes grass was getting long. Otherwise, she said, everything seemed peaceful on the stretch of Mine Road with woods on one side and homes on the other. Make some quality time for the most-neglected, yet the most important person in your life, YOU. By India Today Web Desk: When was the last time you cancelled plans with friends, just to drink a cup of your favourite beverage and curl up in bed by yourself? Can't recall? Sure, wanting to go to bed early, just by yourself, is not exactly the definition of "cool", but it's more needed for your well-being than you think. advertisement The idea of being alone, however, is uncomfortable for many; so much so that catching a movie alone or taking yourself out for dinner invites pitiful glances your way. People often equate seeking solitude with loneliness, sadness and anti-social traits. We forgot one plain, basic instruction that we were taught on our first ride in an airplane. The flight attendants tell you in an emergency to put on your oxygen mark first, before helping the others. Similarly, you have to take care of yourself first, give yourself enough time and refresh your soul to do any good to anyone else. Here are 7 compelling reasons you should really start spending some time with yourself: 1. To recharge your battery No, barely getting six to seven hours of sleep in today's world does not suffice. Helping people through their sad phases, motivating a friend and helping her/him work through their feelings or altering your behaviour to make a relationship work, all these activities tremendously drain out our energy. Sherrie Bourg Carter, Psy.D wrote in Psychology Today, "Constantly being "on" doesn't give your brain a chance to rest and replenish itself. Being by yourself with no distractions gives you the chance to clear your mind, focus, and think more clearly." 2. To find what you love Sorry to break it to you, but hardly does it ever happen in real life that a hook falls on your shoes, making your realise you were destined to be a fabulous shoe designer (read P.S. I Love You). But the good news is that spending time with yourself takes you just as close. Whether it is the Master's degree you are confused about or the temptation to ditch that 9-to-5 job for something of your own, taking a break from every one and everything will let you find your heart's true calling. To back it up with science, psychiatrist Abigail Brenner wrote on Psychology Today, "Consulting yourself and making up your own mind about what you want to do will lead you into the life that's best for you." 3. Makes you a problem-solver When your mind is exhausted, even the tiniest of issues seem big and unsolvable. You become cranky, irritable and feel everything is always going wrong JUST with you. On the other hand, being with yourself without constant intrusion helps you think of effective solutions. 4. To love yourself more When you discover yourself, give time to yourself, do things that you have always loved doing, you fall in love with all your nuances. You realise that no one actually 'completes' you; they just compliment you, as you are already complete. advertisement As Sherrie Bourg Carter Psy.D writes on Psychology Today, "Solitude gives you an opportunity to discover yourself and find your own voice". 5. Makes you incredibly independent Coined by British psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott, the "capacity to be alone" implies the infant's ability to be alone in the mother's presence, to hold onto mother's compassion even when she isn't around. Similarly, when you are comfortable in your own sense of self, it brings independence. Groups, peers, family, respective partners and friends, they greatly influence one's thinking process. You need to take time out to be alone and reclaim your independence. Removing yourself from the world helps you acknowledge the fact that you are well capable of functioning alone. 6. To de-clutter your life Is it really important to know when Neha, your classmate from Class 8 is getting hitched or why Taylor Swift has dumped her latest boyfriend? We are constantly bombarded with so much information, a majority of which is completely useless. We purge our homes to make more space, don't we? That is exactly why our thoughts need de-cluttering too, as there is just too much junk that weighs us down. When you de-clutter, you only focus on what is important to you and set your priorities straight. advertisement 7. Your relationships become beautiful How often does it happen that you blame others, either openly or in your mind, for your irritable mood? Being with yourself makes you realise you shouldn't and you aren't dependent on others for your happiness. When you are taking care of yourself, you don't expect the world to take care of you. Also, time alone makes you value what they do for you and see them in a completely different light. Being alone and doing something for yourself is all about stopping the daily rush. Quality "me" time doesn't necessarily mean that you have to be alone; you just have to do what you love doing. So, this weekend, drop a text to everyone that you are busy loving yourself and put your phone on silent. Watch TV, hit the gym, go for a jog or settle down comfortably in your balcony with a glass of red wine or a cappuccino or kadak adrak wali chai, whatever works for you. --- ENDS --- advertisement A Place for All Conservatives to Speak Their Mind. By India Today Web Desk: Arguably, superstar Mahesh Babu's Spyder is the most anticipated Telugu release this year. After much delay, the makers have finally locked the release date of the film. While the post-production work is going in a full swing, AR Murugadoss took to Twitter to release the first single Boom Boom from Spyder, which has become an instant earworm. Going by the peppy number, Boom Boom appears to be Mahesh's introduction song and it does live up to its expectations. advertisement Boom Boom is sung by Nikhita Gandhi and penned by Madhan Karky. Music composer Harris Jayaraj is working with Murugadoss for the fourth time. Spyder was supposed to release on June 23. The film, which has been in the making for a year now, will clash with Jr NTR's Jai Lava Kusa and Nandamuri Balakrishna's Paisa Vasool on September 27. As per recent reports, the overseas rights of Spyder have been bagged for a whopping price of Rs 15 crore. Earlier to this, the film's Tamil rights was bought by Lyca Productions for Rs 25 crore. Interestingly, Mahesh Babu will make his Tamil debut with Spyder. Going by the reports, the film is expected to have a massive opening in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana. Directed by AR Murugadoss, Spyder has Rakul Preet Singh, Bharath, SJ Suryah and RJ Balaji in pivotal roles. ALSO READ: Shraddha Kapoor to romance Prabhas in Saaho? ALSO READ: Pahlaj Nihalani refuses to certify Malayalam film Ka Bodyscapes ALSO READ: Hyderabad drug racket: Actor Nandu appears before SIT ALSO WATCH Hyderabad drug racket: Telangana Excise Department summons 12 Tollywood personalities --- ENDS --- The court said the August 8 polls will be held and their results would be declared as per schedule.. By India Today Web Desk: The Supreme Court today refused to immediately stay the 'none of the above' (NOTA) option in the high-profile Gujarat Rajya Sabha election scheduled on August 8, a provision that was challenged by the Congress. "Why are you so late in raising the question since the Election Commission had issued the notification as early as in January 2014?" the apex court asked the Congress. advertisement The court said the August 8 polls will be held and their results would be declared as per schedule. The Supreme Court, however, agreed to examine the constitutional validity of the Election Commission's notification giving the NOTA option in elections and sought the poll panel's response on a plea filed by Gujarat Congress chief whip SM Parmar. CONGRESS ALLEGATION AND FEAR The Congress has alleged that the NOTA option has been brought with an aim of influencing the result of the Gujarat Rajya Sabha election. "The use of NOTA in an indirect election is contrary to the mandate of the Constitution, the Representation of the People Act, as well as conduct of election rules," the Congress memorandum to the poll panel said. The party feels the use of NOTA should have been made applicable through amendment in laws and not by merely changing the rules. When its leaders were asked why the party was silent when the rules were made applicable by the Election Commission in January 2014 when the UPA was in power, Manish Tewari said, "It missed the collective wisdom of Parliament". EVEN BJP DISLIKES NOTA Incidentally, even the BJP has opposed the NOTA option ahead of the crucual Gujarat battle, which has the likes of party president Amit Shah, Union minister Smriti Irani and Congress dissident Balwantsinh Rajput for the three Rajya Sabha seats against the lone Congress candidate and close Sonia Gandhi aide, Ahmed Patel. On Wednesday, the BJP approached the Election Commission seeking removal of the None Of The Above (NOTA) option in the upcoming Rajya Sabha election in Gujarat, a day after the Congress made a similar demand. "It is submitted that use of NOTA in the upcoming poll has become an issue of debate among the political parties and therefore, a proper consensus should be made before the use of NOTA in election in Rajya Sabha," the BJP said in a memorandum to the EC. The saffron party said that since there was no secrecy for the voting in Rajya Sabha election, so, the purpose of NOTA is not much of use. HOW NOTA WORKS IN RAJYA SABHA POLLS The Election Commission, however, says the directions to use NOTA in Rajya Sabha elections were enforced in January 2014 after the Supreme Court in 2013 made it mandatory to have the 'None Of The Above' option in EVMs. advertisement In Rajya Sabha polls, the MLAs have to show their ballot paper to an authorised party agent before putting it in ballot box. If a voter (MLA) defies the party directive and votes for someone else or uses NOTA option, he cannot be disqualified as a legislator. But the party is free to take disciplinary action including expulsion. The defiant voter can continue to be an MLA and his vote can also not be invalidated for defying party directions, the Election Commission rules say. Also Read: Disqualification if you mark NOTA: Congress whip to MLAs ahead of Gujarat Rajya Sabha polls Why Modi govt may not have enough in Rajya Sabha despite Bihar, Gujarat boost Also Watch: NOTA in Rajya Sabha polls in Gujarat: Congress up in arms in Upper House --- ENDS --- RICHMOND A Virginia students lawsuit against his local school board over its transgender bathroom policy is heading backward through the federal court system amid questions about whether the students graduation in June renders the whole case moot. The Richmond-based 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals issued an order Wednesday dropping the case of Gloucester County student Gavin Grimm from its calendar and sending it back to the district court where it began. The Grimm case, which began in 2015 and once seemed headed for a pivotal U.S. Supreme Court ruling with implications for the rights of transgender students nationwide, now faces a fundamental legal hurdle that hinges on the question of whether Grimm still has a valid legal claim against the Gloucester school system if he no longer attends its schools. The Gloucester School Board has argued that Grimm no longer has standing to challenge its policy barring Grimm from using the boys bathroom because he graduated on June 10. Grimm has argued his claim should still stand because he may attend alumni events and other gatherings on school grounds in the future. In its order, the appeals court noted that the school board has said its bathroom policy does not necessarily apply to alumni. The new factual dispute and questions of legal jurisdiction, the appeals court said, must be decided at the district level. While our jurisdiction is thus questioned, the facts on which our jurisdiction could be decided are not in the record before us, the three-judge panel wrote. Because all of the prior litigation was conducted while Grimm was a student, the parties have presented us with nothing more than unsupported assertions regarding Grimms continued connection to his high school and the applicability of the School Boards policy. The long-running legal battle, in which Grimm was granted a preliminary injunction that was later overturned, was complicated further by the transition between former President Barack Obama and President Donald Trump. In February, the Trump administration reversed his predecessors guidance instructing public schools to let transgender students use the bathroom that matches their gender identity rather than their gender assigned at birth. The Supreme Court sent the case back to the appellate level for reconsideration in light of the new guidance from the Trump administration. Republicans have knocked off one of three Democratic congresswomen in Virginia who faced tough reelection bids in a midterm election season where the GOP sought to regain control of the House of Representatives. Republican challenger Jen Kiggans, a state senator, defeated Democratic incumbent Elaine Luria Tuesday in a district centered in Virginia Beach that was tweaked in redistricting to make it more favorable to the GOP. But Abigail Spanberger won reelection over Republican Yesli Vega in a 7th District seat that the GOP had made one of its top national targets. And another Democratic incumbent, Jennifer Wexton, fended off Republican Hung Cao in Virginias 10th District, which is centered in the outer suburbs of the nations capital. FREDERICKSBURG The rickety looking house where a woman and her two children were allegedly held captive stands in stark contrast to the much larger homes that surround it. Newer houses in the rapidly suburbanized area near Interstate 95 have neat lawns and large backyard decks, while the one-story rental property where police arrested Kariem Moore, 43, has weeds, discarded trash and tiles missing from the roof. Moore, who spent time years ago at a homeless shelter in Fairfax, was taken into custody on Saturday after law enforcement officers arrived at the house on Mine Road south of Fredericksburg for a welfare check, the Spotsylvania County Sheriffs office said. While sheriffs deputies were talking to Moore, a 32-year-old woman and two children, ages 11 and 8, fled the house and said they had not been allowed outside for two years. The woman, whom authorities described as Moores girlfriend, was hospitalized in serious condition, said sheriffs office spokesman Charles Carey. The children, who referred to Moore as their father, are staying with relatives, Carey said. Moore has been charged with three felony counts of abduction and felony assault and battery, Carey said, and is being held without bond at Rappahannock Regional Jail. Dave Larrabee, director of operations for the Lamb Center a day center for the homeless in Fairfax said Moore frequented the facility for about four or five months in 2012, with his wife and young son. Larrabee said the family would spend nights living in their car and that he recalled Moore saying he had been formerly incarcerated. I do remember he had a temper, Larrabee said. He got angry at some of the other guests. I had a way of calming him down. Moores mother, Harriette Moore, said in a brief phone interview that she hadnt seen her son in as many as five years. She said she was still trying to learn more about the allegations against him. Its a shock. Im trying to hold up. I cant get it together, said Harriette Moore, who is in her 60s and is retired from working in government. She lives in Philadelphia. He was raised correctly. I raised my children to make their own way and become someone in the world. She said the last time she saw Moore, he was with his significant other, who was using a wheelchair, and their children. She said Moore was taking care of her. She did not know if the couple had married. Lorane James, who has lived next door to the house where Moore was arrested for 40 years, said she hadnt thought anyone was living there until she noticed a Spotyslvania County (Virginia) sheriffs patrol car parked in the yard about two weeks ago. I said: Oh, I guess somebody does live there, James recalled on Thursday. Id never seen them, didnt know they were there, didnt have any idea anybody had been living there. Kevin Johnson, a high school teacher who lives with his family on a cul-de-sac directly behind the house, said he hadnt seen any kind of activity there, ever. Johnson, who teaches geography and social studies at Courtland High School in Spotsylvania County, said the neighborhood is generally filled with kids playing outside, with one or two parents casually keeping watch. Many parents in the area home-school their children, he said. Were a relatively close knit neighborhood, where people usually know whats going on, Johnson said. Its really sad. Its awful. The case appears to resemble a handful of others that have drawn headlines and horrified attention in recent years. In May 2013, three women were rescued from a house in Cleveland after being abducted a decade beforehand while in their teens and early 20s. The women along with the 6-year-old daughter of one of the women, Amanda Berry escaped after Berry got the attention of a neighbor and convinced him to help kick in the lower part of the homes front door. Berry then was able to call 911 from across the street. In 2006, an Austrian girl was released after being kidnapped and held for more than eight years. Two years later, Austria was again shaken by the release of a woman imprisoned by her father in a basement dungeon for 24 years over which time she bore him seven children. And two months after that, a woman was found near a town in Naples, Italy, after she had been kept in a locked room in her familys home for 18 years. Sushma Swaraj answered questions raised by the Opposition in the Parliament. She said that Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Lahore visit was an out-of-the box decision. By India Today Web Desk: Minister of External Affairs, Sushma Swaraj, today in Rajya Sabha answered questions raised by the Oppposition on several issues, including the Doklam standoff with China. Talking about Centre's stand on the Doklam standoff with China, Swaraj said that India's road map is peace. She said Chinese investment has gone up in a big way and the two countries are in continuous bilateral talks advertisement Swaraj criticised Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi's meeting with the Chinese envoy saying, "I am saddened that the leader of Congress in an attempt to know about India-China stand-off didn't ask the government of India, but chose to meet the Chinese ambassador." Swaraj also targeted the Congress leadership for its stand on the dispute between China, Bhutan and India. While addressing the leaders, Swaraj heaped praises on Prime Minister Narendra Modi. In the last 17 years no prime minister has ever set foot in Nepal - out of which 11 years India was under Congress, she said. She added that PM Modi's visit to Lahore was an out-of-the box decision.The external affairs minister also slammed the Congress reminding them of the blockade that prevailed during Rajiv Gandhi's tenure. FULL STATEMENT ON DOKLAM Hon'ble Deputy Chairman, our relations with China have recently come under renewed focus due to developments in the Doklam area in the Sikkim sector close to the India-China-Bhutan tri-junction boundary. India's position on this issue has been articulated in the press statement issued by the Ministry of External Affairs on June 30th. Our concerns emanate from Chinese action on the ground which have implications for the determination of the tri-junction boundary point between India, China and Bhutan and the alignment of India-China boundary in the Sikkim sector. Both these aspects of tri-junction points and India-China boundary alignment in the Sikkim sector had been earlier addressed in a written common understanding reached between the Special Representatives of India and China on the boundary question in December 2012. Point 13 of the common understanding states that "The tri-junction boundary points between India, China and third countries will be finalised in consultation with the concerned countries." Since 2012 we have not held any discussion on the tri-junction with Bhutan. The Chinese action in the Doklam area is therefore of concern. With regard to the boundary in the Sikkim sector there are still steps to be covered before the boundary is finalized. This understanding has been reflected in the Common Understanding of December 2012 in point number 12 which states that "There is mutual agreement on the basis of the alignment of the India China boundary in the Sikkim sector as provided by the convention between China and Great Britain relating to Tibet and Sikkim signed in 1890. advertisement During the Eighth Special Representatives meeting in June 2006, the Chinese side had in fact handed over a non-paper for separate agreement on the boundary in Sikkim sector. The non-paper had proposed that "Both sides may, based on the above mentioned historical treaty i.e. 1890 Convention verify and determine the specific alignment of the Sikkim sector and produce a common record." On this basis as the initial result of the boundary settlement both sides may negotiate a final agreement on the boundary alignment in the Sikkim sector to replace the historical treaty. Subsequently in the Special Representatives meeting the Chinese side has made the proposal for finalizing the boundary in Sikkim sector terming it as an early harvest of the SR process thus clearly confirming that the boundary in the Sikkim sector is not yet finalized. Otherwise they would not have used this term "early harvest" as we say "low hanging fruit." advertisement We have noted that the Chinese side has selectively quoted parts of Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru's letter of 22nd March, 1959 pertaining to the India-China boundary in the Sikkim sector. A full and accurate account of that letter would have also brought out Prime Minister Nehru's assertion that was clearly based on the boundary alignment as shown in our Indian published maps. The Chinese side in their recent document published on the website of their Foreign Ministry had expressed commitment to maintaining peace and tranquility in the India-China border areas. India always believes that peace and tranquility in the India-China border is an important pre-requisite for smooth development of our bilateral relations. We will continue to engage with the Chinese side through diplomatic channels to find a mutually acceptable solution on the basis of the Astana Consensus between our leaders. I note the sense of the house is supportive in this regard in keeping the traditional friendship with Bhutan, we will also continue to maintain close consultation and coordination with the Royal Government of Bhutan. SWARAJ SLAMS CONGRESS LEADER She slammed Congress leader Rajiv Shukla for his comment to CPEC that India should join CPEC."This is matter of Indian Sovereignty, we cannot allow China-Pakistan to allow road corridor in POK," she said. advertisement "Shukla must understand that POK is part of India, this is the stated position of India, how can he speak like this," she added. She even asked how can congress leaders speak in two voice on such a sensitive issue. SWARAJ ON PAKISTAN In her address, she emphasised that terrorism and talks cannot go hand in hand. Swaraj said that Pakistan went to denial mode after the Pathankot attack. Swaraj said that India gave a road map of friendship and that it was one-sided. While talking about the standoff with China, Swaraj said that war was not the answer for any dispute. She said that India has the support of US and Russia. About Israel, she said that although it is an ally, India will never let down the Palestinian cause. Also Read: Won't declare anybody dead without evidence: Sushma Swaraj on 39 Indians missing in Iraq India Today first to reach Mosul after ISIS fall. No sign of missing 39 Indians Are 39 Indians missing in Mosul still alive? Iraq government has no clue WATCH | Wisdom not war is in diplomacy: Sushma Swaraj in Rajya Sabha --- ENDS --- A few weeks ago, the press started to report meetings between President Donald Trumps campaign (Jeff Sessions, Michael Flynn, Jared Kushner, etc.) and members of the Russian government. The president responded by accusing his predecessor of wiretapping Trump Tower. This story dominated the news, replacing the Russian investigation. As the deadline approached for the president to put up evidence or shut up (as requested by both parties in congress), the Wikileaks release of CIA documents took over the headlines. Next, reports appeared regarding meetings between the Trump campaign and the Wikileaks founder, unless you believe it a coincidence that a member of Trumps team visited the Ecuadorian Embassy in London where Assange had been granted asylum. Is it another coincidence that this story was followed by President Trumps (not the Republican congresss) release of a very controversial health care plan? What is the lead story on the national news every day this week? Liberals accuse President Trump of not being very smart. I disagree. He is quite smart. Its for you to decide if that is a good thing. ROBERT HART SALEM A shocking incident of Dalit students falling ill after being made to clean a septic tank in a government school in Tamil Nadu's Rameswaram has come to light. By Pramod Madhav: A shocking incident of Dalit students falling ill after being made to clean a septic tank in a government school in Tamil Nadu's Rameswaram has come to light. This after the parents of one of them flagged the issue. The government school in question is in Mandapam area of Rameswaram where around 120 boys and girls are enrolled. A few Dalit students reportedly fell ill after inhaling the toxic gas from this tank while they were cleaning it. These students are residents of Santhya Nagar locality near Rameswaram bus depot. advertisement The parents of the student who raised this issue said that when foul smell began to emerge from the septic tank, school authorities ordered Dalit students from the 6th and 7th standard to clean it. As soon as these students opened the tank, 4 of them inhaled the toxic gas and began to puke. They were immediately rushed to the Rameswaram government hospital. VICTIM's VERSION One of the victims Navinkumar said, "I study in the seventh standard in this school. We have been asked to clear the garbage and wash the vessels many times. When we cleaned the septic tank, we fell sick. Many of us are still vomiting and suffering from diarrhoea", he said. His parents were shocked to know that Navin Kumar and his friends were being subjected to such torture in school, where they were sent to study. "This has been happening for a long time. They are making our children do such work. When we questioned them, they threatened us by saying that they would fail the students in the class and will take away any scholarship they were being provided at present. My child was in hospital for 10 days and has not returned to school yet", said Thangavel, a guardian. School authorities, on the other hand, denied the charge that students went to the septic tank and attempted to pour phenol. Also read | 16 cops injured as mob turns violent over rape of minor schoolgirl in Chamba Tamil Nadu: Dalit activist murdered with his hands tied for breaking plastic tap Hyderabad: Toddler crushed by sister's school bus --- ENDS --- By PTI: Mumbai, Aug 3 (PTI) City-based Tata Memorial Centre today said it has joined hands with the Indian Dental Association (IDA) to start Indias first digital initiative for prevention and early detection of oral cancer. Tata Memorial Centre and The Indian Dental Association (IDA) together have launched a special course on "Oral Cancer" on July 27 - the World Head and Neck Cancer Day to create awareness and early detection of oral cancer. advertisement Tata Memorial Centre is a known destination for cancer treatment and its dedication to provide latest treatment technology and multi-disciplinary approach especially towards head and neck cancer. The IDA is the largest recognised body of dental professionals in India with a presence in 29 states and seven Union Territories and over 450 local branches spread across the country. "We must realise that head and neck cancer is the serious health problem in India, where lakhs of people are suffering from this dreaded affliction. Oral cancer is primarily caused because of use of alcohol, areca nut and tobacco, which unfortunately continue to be easily available in our country," Tata Memorial Centre Head and Neck Cancer Professor Pankaj Chaturvedi said. "To facilitate early detection and to create awareness, Tata Memorial Centre and IDA, the countrys leading advocate of oral healthcare, have taken a step to launch India s first digital course on pre-malignant lesion in oral cavity to mark the World Head and Neck Cancer Day," he said. Ashok Dhoble, honorary secretary-general of IDA said, "From the dental point of view, oral cancer can be prevented 100 per cent if the patients visit dentists for treatment at the very preliminary and primary stage." The IDAs goal is to make India oral cancer-free by early detection and prevention, co-ordination and leading the oral cancer awareness program throughout the country, reaching out to local and rural communities, hospitals and schools with its campaign, emphasizing intervention, tobacco cessation, early detection as well as counseling and support for patients and their families. Globally, oral cancer is the sixth most common cancer with over 3.00,000 oral cancer cases, 86 per cent of which are in India where this disease ranks among the top three cancers in the country. PTI AP NP --- ENDS --- MetLase managing director Steve Dunn (left) with James Illingworth, automated assembly lead at the AMRC Integrated Manufacturing Group. ENGINEERING firm MetLase has become the newest member of the Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre. The Rotherham company a joint venture by Rolls-Royce and Unipart has doubled in size since it was formed in 2015. It will develop smart tools which use sensors to collect data while being used in order to improve performance. MetLase managing director Steve Dunn said: We are pleased to join the AMRC, which has a global reputation as a centre of excellence for manufacturing research and innovative engineering. YOUNG citizens will host a charity coffee morning at New York Stadium tomorrow (Friday), raising money for animals in need. Members of the National Citizen Service will hold the event at the grounds Silver Lounge, in aid of Thornberry Animal Sanctuary. The Mayor of Rotherham, Cllr Eve Rose Keenan, will attend the party for one of her chosen charities. Taking place from 10am to 3pm, it will feature refreshments and a raffle with exciting prizes. By PTI: Amaravati, Aug 3 (PTI) The ruling Telugu Desam in Andhra Pradesh suffered a major blow today, days ahead of the crucial by-election for the Nandyal Assembly seat, as party MLC Silpa Chakrapani Reddy quit the party to join the opposition YSR Congress. Reddy also resigned from the MLC post, to which he was elected just three months ago. advertisement The Jaganmohan Reddy-led party has fielded Reddys elder brother Mohan Reddy for the August 23 bypoll. The Reddy brothers had joined the TDP ahead of the 2014 elections after deserting the Congress. Mohan Reddy, a former minister, was expected to be fielded for the by-election from TDP, but the party chose Brahmananda Reddy, a member of the Bhuma family. The Silpa and the Bhuma families have a running feud in the faction-ridden Kurnool district. Piqued by this, Mohan Reddy quit the TDP and joined the YSRC last month, which fielded him for the bypoll. Since his brothers exit from TDP, Chakrapani Reddy had been staying away from the party activities in Kurnool district, giving rise to speculation that he too was on his way out. He then faxed a letter to TDP president N Chandrababu Naidu announcing his exit. Chakrapani Reddy faxed another letter to the Legislative Council (acting) Chairman, stating that he was resigning as the MLC. Mohan Reddy lost the 2014 Assembly elections as the TDP nominee to Bhuma Nagi Reddy of the YSRC. PTI DBV NSK --- ENDS --- Rio Tinto Group has announced its interim financial results for the six months ended June 30, 2017 (H1 2017) through a press release wherein it says that the revenue from its diamond operations is flat at $ 340 mn as against the H1 results of June ended 2016 recorded $ 342 mn. Net earnings of Rio Tinto Diamond dipped by 13% to $ 19 mn whereas the company registered net earnings of $ 22m for H1 results six months ended June 2016. The Group said that the EBITDA for the diamond segment was also down by 19% to $ 97 mn as against S 121 m in H1 2016. With regards to the performance, the company said that rough diamond demand was solid in 2017 first half as factories in India increased manufacturing capacity based on an improved outlook in key emerging markets, resulting in re-stocking activity throughout the pipeline. The diamond production at 8.49 mn cts for H1 2017 was 5% lower in comparison to 8.96 mn cts in H1 2016 due to lower ore volumes processed at Argyle following wet weather and additional maintenance. This was partly offset by higher carats recovered at Diavik due to higher processed volumes and an increase in recovered grades. The development of the A21 pipe at Diavik remains on schedule and within budget. Production guidance for 2017 remains at 19 to 24 mn cts of diamonds. Aruna Gaitonde, Editor-in-Chief of Asian Bureau, Rough & Polished The World Federation of Diamond Bourses (WFDB) is supporting recently announced International Diamond Monitoring Committee initiative of Indias Gem and Jewellery Export Promotion Council (GJEPC) and the Bharat Diamond Bourse (BDB). WFDB President Ernie Blom, who took part in the meeting of international representatives which formulated the idea during last weeks India International Jewellery Show in Mumbai, said he was fully supportive of the initiative. Following the meeting of industry bodies, GJEPC Chairman Praveenshankar Pandya announced the establishment of the International Diamond Monitoring Committee which aims to eliminate undisclosed mixing of lab-grown diamonds in packages of natural diamonds as well as other objectives. I am delighted that we reached a number of decisions regarding the new panels aims. It will have comprehensive objectives, including the monitoring of trends and instances of non-disclosure of synthetics, threats to the polished diamond sector, and agreeing on the most effective detection devices for trade members, explained Blom. We stress that we do not have any objection to trading in synthetic stones, only that they are fully disclosed so that consumer confidence in our product is not damaged in any way. The International Diamond Monitoring Committee members will hold their next meeting at the September edition of the Hong Kong Jewelry and Gem Fair. Alex Shishlo, Editor of the Rough&Polished European Bureau in Brussels Brazilian conglomerate, Odebrecht SA, has sold its 16.4 percent stake in Sociedade Mineira de Catoca Lda, the world's fourth biggest diamond mine, to a partner, according to media reports. Reuters quoted an unnamed source privy to the transaction as saying that Odebrecht was forced to exit Catoca to meet terms of a 12 billion-real ($3.84 billion) asset sale goal. The source also claimed that the Angolan state-owned diamond company, Endiama had acquired the stake with the help of other partners in Catoca. Endiama controlled a 32.8 percent stake in the company, so was Alrosa of Russia. The remaining stake was owned by a Chinese company. However, the acquisition of Odebrechts stake meant that the state mining company would be the major shareholder of a mine, which accounts for about 80 percent of Angola's diamond production. Bankers, Reuters reports, had estimated the value of Odebrecht's Catoca stake at $300 million, based on a valuation of $1.8 billion for the mine. Odebrecht had been a partner in Catoca for over three decades. Mathew Nyaungwa, Editor in Chief of the African Bureau, Rough&Polished The cash-strapped Zimbabwe government is said to be piling up reserves of gold and diamonds to back a new local currency, according to news reports. We are building up reserves of gold and diamonds which if they reach a certain level will then allow us to introduce our own currency that will be backed by those minerals, the countrys vice president Emmerson Mnangagwa as saying by The Herald newspaper. I am not at liberty to disclose to you the level that we want those minerals to reach before they can back our own currency. He, however, could not say when the new currency would be introduced. Zimbabwe abandoned its currency in 2009 for a basket of foreign currencies. It introduced "bond notes" last November, which are only tradeable in the country, although they were said to be equal to the US dollar by government. Harare, which recently acquired diamond mining equipment from Belarus, said it would lift protection status on a million acres of land to boost gold mining by artisanal miners. Mathew Nyaungwa, Editor in Chief of the African Bureau, Rough&Polished At the beginning of this week, bullion prices soared to its highest level in Dubai, in nearly two months. Bullion (24K) was retailing at Dh153.75/gm, gaining by Dh2.75/gm from about a week ago. Gold touched its highest level in almost seven weeks on 31st July, says a report in gulf.news.com. The bullion is gaining support from the weakness of the US dollar, coupled with the recent dovish comments from the United States Federal Reserve and strong American economic data.Some experts are speculating that the precious metal will continue to advance and gain enough bullish pressure to hit the $1,300 level. Jewellery prices in the UAE have significantly increased in value over the last seven months, with current retail rates increasing by a little over Dh14 per gram, when compared to the start of the year. Aruna Gaitonde, Editor-in-Chief of Asian Bureau, Rough & Polished Karelian's PEA Recommends Building Europes First Diamond Mine Outside Russia 03 august 2017 News (thediamondloupe.com) - Karelian Diamond Resources, the Ireland-based, AIM-listed diamond exploration company focused on Finland has received a Preliminary Economic Assessment (PEA) on its Lahtojoki diamondiferous kimberlite pipe in the Kuopio-Kaavi district in south eastern Finland, which recommends an open pit mining operation. It estimates a total of 2.11M carats recoverable with a gross value of US$211M over a nine year life of mine, with payback for the Lahtojoki mine - estimated to cost about $22 million to build, after two years. It would be the first ever European diamond mine outside of Russia. The PEA, conducted by Michael Brennan of Brennan Mining Services Limited, states that analysis of combined microdiamond and mini-bulk sample data suggests a +1mm recoverable grade of 39.7 Carats Per Hundred Tonnes (cpht) and indicates the presence of high quality stones within the diamonds that have been recovered to date. Drilling indicates 5.6 million tons are present to a depth of 160 metres below surface. For the purposes of the PEA US$100/carat has been used in the economic evaluation and mine design. A total resource (Non JORC) estimate is of 2,225,000 carats and a contained value of US$222.5 million. Pursuant to the PEA, it is appropriate to classify the resource into the inferred category based on the current available grade and diamond value data. Currently it is not possible to attribute reserves to Lahtojoki. Based on resource available and an appropriate technical and economic assessment it is possible to consider those resources that are likely to become mineable and economically viable subject to further exploration and feasibility work being undertaken. Richard Conroy, Chairman, Karelian Diamond Resources commented: I am delighted that a mining operation has been recommended. Clearly much work remains to be done but this report is a major and very encouraging step forward in our assessment of the Lahtojoki Diamond project and of its potential for development as a mine. Andrew Robbins will serve as the next executive director and chief executive officer of the Honolulu Authority for Rapid Transportation (HART). The board interviewed seven finalists after narrowing a global search of more than a hundred applicants to succeed HARTs current Interim Executive Director and C.E.O. Krishniah Murthy. Murthy will remain with HART for a period to allow for Robbins successful transition into his new role leading Honolulus Rail Transit Project. The board is very excited about the experience, knowledge, and enthusiasm that Mr. Robbins brings to the Authority. said HART Board Vice Chair Terrence Lee, We are confident that his expertise, dedication and strong belief in the project will serve HART and the people of Honolulu well. Robbins has experience in public passenger urban rail, rail equipment, infrastructure, construction management, systems integration and airport transit. Robbins is also a specialist in driverless transit systems similar to the system HART will employ. He also has knowledge in project management, project engineering, systems engineering, construction and installation, operations and maintenance and business development. I fully realize the challenges that lie ahead for this project and the community concerns that come along with them, said Robbins, Having previously been involved with this project, I also believe strongly in its merits. Residents, visitors and future generations will not only benefit from this project but will also view it as an integral part of Honolulus transportation infrastructure. Omaha Track, Inc., hosted U.S. Rep. Don Bacon (R-NE-2) and local railroad officials on Aug. 2 for a facility tour and public policy discussion. The event was coordinated by The Railway Engineering-Maintenance and Suppliers Association, which has nine member companies based in the state. The tour was led by Omaha Tracks President and Owner Terry Peterson. During the visit, Rep. Bacon toured the new corporate office followed by a visit to the Omaha Track Equipment facility. Omaha Track Equipment custom builds, fabricates and maintains all types of maintenance-of-way equipment and specializes in hi-rail trucks, cranes and other products related to the railroad industry. Finally, he was able to see the Omaha, Neb., (WECO) yard, which houses approximately 25 percent of Omaha Tracks steel inventory. We are honored to host Congressman Bacon and share our Omaha success story and continued commitment to the region with him, said Peterson. Railroads invest tens of billions of dollars annually into their networks, supporting rail supply jobs across our country. It is critical that our policy makers understand rails importance to Omahas continued success and growth. Rep. Bacon is a retired Brigadier General with the United States Air Force and was elected to serve Nebraskas Second District in 2016. He is currently in his first term and serves on the U.S. House Armed Services, Agriculture and Small Business Committees. The group discussed the private nature of Americas freight railroad network and preserving fair and balanced regulation. Also discussed was the recent bipartisan and bicameral introduction of the Building Rail Access for Customers and the Economy (BRACE) Act, which is cosponsored by Rep. Bacon and would make permanent the shortline maintenance credit, also known as 45G. The BRACE Act recently achieved the majority of sponsors in both the U.S. House and Senate. I greatly appreciate the opportunity to tour Omaha Tracks local operations and learn more about their small business success story, said Rep. Bacon I look forward to continuing to engage with those present today as we work together to create jobs, spur economic activity across the state, and ensure our communities are safely and efficiently served by freight and passenger rail service alike. Omaha Track, formerly known as The Tie Yard of Omaha, has operated in the area since 1983 and employs 250 across the organization with 170 employees based in the Omaha area. The company supplies track material to Class 1, shortline railroads, rail contractors and industries across North America. By PTI: Chandigarh, Aug 2 (PTI) A teenager falsely claimed to have been hired by Google at a package of Rs 1.44 crore, prompting the Chandigarh Education Department to hold an inquiry into the matter. GMSSS principal Indra Beniwal told PTI today, "I have submitted all the necessary documents and proof to the Director, Education who has ordered an inquiry." advertisement Harshit Sharma, who completed his 12th standard with IT stream last year from the government school here, hogged the limelight after claiming to have been hired by tech giant for graphic designing. Public Relations Department, Chandigarh Administration, had on July 29 even issued an official release about it after the school principal sent the department Sharmas "achievement" details. However, his claims were found to be fake after Google reportedly denied hiring him. "Harshits parents have accepted that their son has committed a mistake (by claiming to have been selected by Google)," Beniwal said. However, she said the school authorities should have verified the claims before sending his details to the department for issuing a press note. "We should have verified the documents," Beniwal said. She said the UT education department has ordered an inquiry into the matter. Beniwal said she had not been able to talk to Sharma since this matter came to light. "His mother told me that he was advised by doctors take rest as he was unwell," she said. Sharma hails from Mathana in Haryanas Kurukshetra district. The press note issued by the department had said, "A student of GMSSS-33D, Chandigarh, Class 12 (IT) stream, Harshit, has been selected for graphic designing by Google. He will be trained for graphic designing for an initial period of one year and will receive a stipend of Rs 4 lakh per month." "After completion of his training he will get a remuneration of Rs 12 lakh per month. He went for an online interview through video conferencing and was selected on the basis of posters designed by him while studying in class 12 under the supervision of his teachers," it had said. "His achievements will act as a morale booster for other students and they will be inspired to make forays into this field," the release had said. PTI CHS SUN AAR --- ENDS --- The U.S. Senate Committee on Science, Commerce and Transportation on Aug. 2 favorably recommended, by voice vote, the appointment of Ronald L. Batory as the next Federal Railroad Administrator. Batorys nomination now goes to the full Senate, where he is likely to be confirmed as FRA Administrator by a voice vote. When that vote will take place is unknown, as the Senate is due to recess for a summer break shortly following an extended session called for by Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.). The American Short Line and Regional Railroad Association congratulates Ron Batory in the successful confirmation vote from the Senate Commerce Committee, said ASLRRA President Linda Bauer Darr. We look forward to his full confirmation as quickly as possible. Mr. Batory is a safety professional that will lead the FRA in a reasoned path towards rail safety assurance. He understands the needs and challenges of small business railroads as well as the larger regional railroads. The White House on July 11 announced that President Donald Trump nominated Batory, who recently retired as President and Chief Operating Officer of Conrail following a 46-year railroading career. Amtrak The U.S. Department of Transportation's (USDOT) Federal Transit Administration (FTA) has issued a Record of Decision (ROD) that formally adopts the Federal Railroad Administration's (FRA) Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) for the Portal Bridge Project. The project is seeking to replace a century-old swing bridge over the Hackensack River in New Jersey with a high-level, fixed bridge. The existing Portal Bridge hosts close to 450 trains per day traveling between Newark, N.J. and Penn Station, New York. It has become a major bottleneck and source of delay of train traffic due to the aging mechanical components that sometimes malfunction while opening and closing for maritime traffic. The new bridge, estimated to cost $1.64 billion, will eliminate the movable components and risk of malfunction. The project is currently in the project development phase of the FTAs Capital Investment Grants (CIG) Program. The projects partners, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, New Jersey Transit (NJ Transit) and Amtrak, are seeking $811 million in CIG funding toward the $1.64 billion total cost. The ROD is a part of the environmental review process required by law for projects seeking federal funding through the CIG Program. Additional steps must be completed according to legal criteria before the FTA can make a determination about CIG funding for the project. Last month, USDOT released the Draft EIS for the Hudson Tunnel Project, with the Final EIS expected to be issued in March 2018. In May, the NJ Transit Board of Directors approved a $14.5-million early action contract with PKF-Mark III Inc., of Newtown, Pa. The work includes the realignment of a 138kV transmission pole, the installation of new fiber optic cable poles, the construction of a construction access structure known as a finger pier, the construction of a steel bridge structure over the Jersey City Municipal Utility Authority water main and the construction of a retaining wall just west of the Frank R. Lautenberg Station at Secaucus Junction. Work began in July and is anticipated to be completed by the first-quarter of 2019. German drug major Merck KgaA (MKGAY.PK) reported Thursday higher net profit in its second quarter with increased sales. The company generated improved sales in Healthcare and Life Science segments, and all regions except Europe. Meanwhile, EBITDA, a key earnings metric, declined. Looking ahead, the company maintained its fiscal 2017 adjusted earnings view, but trimmed sales forecast on exchange rate impacts. For the second quarter, profit after tax climbed 34.6 percent to 423 million euros from 314 million euros last year. Earnings per share grew 34.7 percent to 0.97 euro from 0.72 euro a year ago. Earnings per share pre exceptionals were 1.54 euros, compared to 1.55 euros last year. Operating result or EBIT increased 14 percent to 628 million euros, and margin grew to 16.1 percent from 14.5 percent last year. EBITDA, meanwhile, dropped 5.8 percent to 1.01 billion euros, and margin dropped to 25.9 percent from 28.1 percent a year ago. EBITDA pre exceptionals1 was down 5.6 percent to 1.09 billion euros, and margin declined to 28.1 percent from 30.4 percent a year ago. Net sales increased 2.3 percent to 3.89 billion euros from 3.81 billion euros last year. The slight sales increase was due to organic growth generated by the Healthcare and Life Science sectors, the company noted. With organic sales growth of 2.6 percent, Healthcare sector generated sales of 1.78 billion euros, accounting for an unchanged 46 percent of Group sales. Life Science achieved a growth rate of 4.6 percent, largely thanks to organic sales increases, and accounted for 38 percent of Group sales. Performance Materials business sector reported a slight decrease in sales. Sales in Europe declined 1.5 percent, while all other regions posted improved results. Looking ahead, for fiscal 2017, Merck continues to project adjusted earnings per share of 6.15 euros to 6.50 euros, compared to last year's 6.21 euros. The company still expects that Group EBITDA pre exceptionals between 4.4 billion euros and 4.6 billion euros. The company now assumes that foreign exchange rate effects will be neutral, compared to the previous view of a slight positive effect of 1 percent to 2 percent on net sales. Owing to the new exchange rate expectations, the company now forecast net sales of 15.3 billion euros to 15.7 billion euros for the Merck Group in 2017. This is in comparison to previously expected net sales of between 15.5 billion euros and 16.0 billion euros. Merck said it continues to expect slight to moderate organic net sales growth compared with the previous year. For the Healthcare business sector, the company backed full-year outlook of a slight organic increase in net sales and adjusted EBITDA in a range of between 1.9 billion euros and 2.0 billion euros. In Germany, Merck KgaA shares were trading at 93.09 euros, up 0.18 percent. For comments and feedback contact: editorial@rttnews.com Business News Indian shares extended losses from the previous session on Thursday as banks came under heavy selling pressure amid concerns that their net interest margins will come down in a low interest-rate environment. Weak global cues and disappointing service sector data also weighed on . Findings of a monthly survey showed today that India's services PMI for July fell to its lowest level in nearly four years after the GST launch. The benchmark BSE Sensex ended the session down 238.86 points or 0.74 percent at 32,237.88 while the broader Nifty index dropped 67.85 points or 0.67 percent to 10,013.65. ICICI Bank, Axis Bank, SBI, Yes Bank, Bank of Baroda and PNB lost 2-6 percent. Market heavyweight Reliance Industries rallied 1.5 percent to hit a fresh record high while HPCL and IOC climbed 3-5 percent. Cues from Asia and Europe were negative as caution crept in ahead of BoE interest-rate decision later in the day and the all-important U.S. jobs report, due on Friday. For comments and feedback contact: editorial@rttnews.com The U.S.-Russia relations are plunging into deeper crisis as President Donald Trump's grudging signature on new sanctions evoked an explosive rhetorical response in Moscow. Trump Wednesday reluctantly signed into law the "Countering America's Adversaries Through Sanctions Act" targeting Russia, Iran and North Korea with a dissenting note because the law restricts his ability to ease sanctions in place against Russia. The strong bipartisan congressional support for increased sanctions on Russia is a punishment for meddling in the US presidential election and its military aggression in Ukraine and Syria. The measure codified existing sanctions to make them more difficult to lift in the future, and prevent the President's power to singlehandedly ease the sanctions. It was a setback for Trump, who was unable to make good on his promise to improve relations with Russia. He said in a statement after signing the Bill that while he favors tough measures to punish and deter aggressive and destabilizing behavior by the three countries, this legislation is significantly flawed. He blamed the Congress of including "a number of clearly unconstitutional provisions in its haste to pass this legislation." He pointed out that sections 253 and 257 of the Act purport to displace the President's exclusive constitutional authority. Russia's Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev reacted strongly to the bill's signing, terming it a declaration of "fully-fledged trade war against Russia." The sanctions package "ends hopes for improving our relations with the new US administration," according to the Prime Minister. "The Trump administration demonstrated complete impotence, in the most humiliating manner, transferring executive powers to Congress," which changes the power balance in US political circles, Medvedev wrote on Facebook. "The US establishment fully outwitted Trump; the President is not happy about the new sanctions, yet he could not but sign the bill." He vowed that Russia would "calmly" continue to develop its , despite the sanctions. The sanctions on Russia proposes to penalize firms that contribute to Russian energy development, shorten the duration of loans to Russian banks and oil and gas companies, and freeze assets of state-owned mining and railway companies. For comments and feedback contact: editorial@rttnews.com Business News Bristol-Myers Squibb Company (BMY) and IFM Therapeutics announced the companies have signed an agreement under which Bristol-Myers Squibb will acquire all of the outstanding capital stock of IFM Therapeutics, a venture-backed biotech company focused on developing therapies that modulate novel targets in the innate immune system to treat cancer, autoimmunity and inflammatory disorders. Bristol-Myers Squibb will pay $300 million upon closing of the transaction. The acquisition will give Bristol-Myers Squibb full rights to IFM's preclinical STING (stimulator of interferon genes)and NLRP3 agonist programs focused on enhancing the innate immune response for treating cancer. IFM stockholders also will be entitled to additional contingent payments of up to $1.01 billion for each of the first products from the two programs upon the achievement of certain development, regulatory and sales milestones. IFM is also eligible for additional contingent milestone payments for further products resulting from these programs. For comments and feedback contact: editorial@rttnews.com Business News (Agencia CMA Latam) - Brazil's House of Representatives blocked Wednesday night the corruption charge against President Michel Temer from reaching the Supreme Court and avoiding another change in the country's Presidency within a year of the next election. Temer was formally charged with passive corruption by the prosecutor-general Rodrigo Janot at the end June. However, a trial would only occur during his mandate if both the House of Representatives and the Supreme Court accept the charges against the president. Yesterday, 492 house representatives were voting on the complaint, and while most of them (263) were in favor of prosecuting Temer, 227 voted for shielding the president - or 55 more than the 172 needed. The government and the investors were already expecting the House to protect Temer from a trial, but the representative's votes showed that some coalition parties were divided on the topic. PSDB, which belongs to the government coalition in spite of waning support for Michel Temer from party members, had 22 votes in favor of blocking the charges against the president, and 21 votes to prosecute him. In May, PSDB's acting chairman, Senator Tasso Jereissati, said that the party would remain a Temer administration's ally in the name of economic stability and reforms approval. However, he added during a press conference that "we are not government advocates." The House of Representatives should now move to vote on other legislation, like the pension system reform bill. Experts believe that the government could lose support for the reform if the political turbulence persists - particularly if new charges involving Temer arise. Another bill waiting for a House vote would allow foreign companies to hold a controlling stake in Brazilian airlines. The current law limits the share of foreign companies in local airlines to 20%. 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. (Agencia CMA Latam) - Venezuelan judges contrary to President Nicolas Maduro's government and recently nominated by the opposition-controlled National Assembly are holed up in the Embassy of Chile in Caracas. According to the Chilean Foreign Ministry, the magistrates requested "protection based on known political circumstances" and are in the ambassador's residence "as guests." "The Government of Chile indicates that it will act in this matter by the legal and humanitarian principles that inspire its foreign policy," the Chilean Foreign Ministry said in a statement. Elenis del Valle Rodriguez, Roberto Enriquez, Beatriz Ruiz Marin, Jose Nunez Sifontes and Zuleima del Valle Gonzalez are the magistrates who entered the Chilean embassy. Two weeks ago, the opposition-controlled Venezuelan Parliament appointed 33 new judges to form a parallel Supreme Court, dismissing the current Supreme Court of Justice (TSJ), while trying to force Maduro to suspend the election of a Constituent Assembly held on July 30. In response to the Parliament's decision, Maduro had assured that all of those magistrates would be imprisoned "one by one." In the last few days, three were arrested by Venezuela's Bolivarian National Intelligence Service (Sebin) agents. 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. Hindu Vahini activists have rescued 69 cattle in Veligonda area of Telangana's Yadadri Bhuvanagiri district, which were being transported to a slaughterhouse in Hyderabad's Bahadurpura. By Ashish Pandey: Hindu Vahini activists have rescued 69 cattle in Veligonda area of Telangana's Yadadri Bhuvanagiri district, which had been illegally bought from Odisha and were being transported to a slaughterhouse in Hyderabad's Bahadurpura. The activists rescued cows and bulls under the Rachakonda Police commissionerate neighbouring Hyderabad on Wednesday. Police have arrested the driver and cleaner of the truck that was carrying 48 bulls and 21 cows after filing an FIR. The trolley that was transporting cattle to a slaughterhouse in Hyderabad's Bahadurpura. HERE IS ALL YOU NEED TO KNOW Speaking to India Today, T Raja Singh, BJP MLA from Goshamahal Constituency of Hyderabad and an active gaurakshak said, "I thank each one of my gaurakshak dal members for putting in so much of effort and time in gau raksha (protecting cows). I will continue to push for ensuring a complete ban on cattle slaughter across the country". In June this year, the Hyderabad High Court, while referring to cow as a "sacred national wealth", had directed both the Andhra Pradesh and Telangana governments to amend the provisions of the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act, 1960 and IPC Section 429 so that the offences under the Act were non-bailable. Both the states have been given time till July 7 to comply with the court's direction. In Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, slaughter of cows and calves has been prohibited. Bulls can be killed against "fit-for-slaughter" certificate, which is issued if animals can no longer be used for breeding or drought or agricultural operations. A person found violating it can face 6 months in jail and/or be slapped a fine of Rs 1,000. advertisement Also read | Ensure cow vigilantes don't misuse beef law, police in Maharashtra told after Modi directive Haryana: 25 cows die at govt-run shelter due to improper facilities --- ENDS --- By PTI: Hyderabad, Aug 3 (PTI) The Telangana government will adopt Microsoft Indias cloud-based analytics for its health care screening programme for children. The government today said it has signed an agreement with the US technology giant for using its platform for driving the programme, Rashtriya Bal Swasthya Karyakram. According to an official release, the state has also agreed to adopt Microsoft Intelligent Network for Eyecare (MINE), an Artificial Intelligence platform to reduce avoidable blindness. advertisement With this, Telangana has become the first state in India to deploy artificial intelligence for eyecare screening, it said. The state government and Microsoft had signed an MoU in November 2016 to use the latters cloud technology to drive citizen services and digital inclusion. Under this MoU, Microsoft India conducted a cloud- based, advanced analytics pilot project to understand the health screening programme among children from birth to 18 years in 10 districts. K T Rama Rao, Minister of IT, said, "We are very pleased to announce that Telangana will be the first state in India to bring AI in public health screening and we are excited about how technology has the potential to make great social impact. "The collaboration between our health and IT departments and Microsoft is going to make a huge difference to the lives of the people in our country, starting with our state." Anil Bhansali, Corporate Vice-President, Cloud and Enterprise, and Managing Director, Microsoft India (R&D) Pvt. Ltd, said, "We have been focused on accelerating digital transformation in India using our advanced machine learning and cloud technologies. "We are pleased to strengthen our partnership with the Government of Telangana by bringing the combined power of data, cloud and advanced analytics to drive the state?s missions around healthcare and digital inclusion." PTI GDK RSY --- ENDS --- By PTI: By Lalit K Jha Washington, Aug 3 (PTI) US President Donald Trump has endorsed a legislation that would drastically cut the number of legal immigrants allowed into the country and implement "merit-based" visa scheme which could benefit highly-educated and technology professionals from countries like India. The Reforming American Immigration for Strong Employment (RAISE) Act would scrap the current lottery system to get into the US and instead institute a points-based system for earning a Green Card. advertisement Factors that would be taken into account include English language skills, education, high-paying job offers and age. If passed by the Congress and signed into law, the legislation could benefit highly-educated people and technology professionals from countries like India. "The RAISE Act will reduce poverty, increase wages, and save taxpayers billions and billions of dollars. It will do this by changing the way the US issues Green Cards to nationals from other countries. Green Cards provide permanent residency, work authorisation, and fast track to citizenship," Trump said at a White House event to announce his support to the RAISE Act. The bill, Trump said, "would represent the most significant reform to our immigration system in half a century." Standing along with two top authors of the bill -- Senators Tom Cotton and David Perdue -- Trump said the RAISE Act ends chain migration and replaces the low-skilled system with a new points-based system for receiving a Green Card. This competitive application process will favour applicants who can speak English, financially support themselves and their families and demonstrate skills that will contribute to our economy, he said. The RAISE Act prevents new migrants and new immigrants from collecting welfare and protects US workers from being displaced, he added. "Thats a very big thing. Theyre not going to come in and just immediately go and collect welfare. That doesn?t happen under the RAISE Act. They cant do that. Crucially, the Green Card reforms in the RAISE Act will give American workers a pay raise by reducing unskilled immigration," he said. "It has not been fair to our people, to our citizens, to our workers," Trump said of the current immigration system. Trump said this legislation will not only restore Americas competitive edge in the 21st century, but it will restore the sacred bonds of trust between America and its citizens. "This legislation demonstrates our compassion for struggling American families who deserve an immigration system that puts their needs first and that puts America first," he said. Noting that the current system is "an obsolete disaster", Senator Cotton said that it is time for it to change. advertisement "First, we bring over a million immigrants into this country a year. Thats like adding the population of Montana every single year; adding the population of Arkansas every three years. The vast majority of those workers -- or those immigrants come here not because of their English-language abilities or their job skills, or their job offer, or their educational attainment," he said. "In fact, only one in 15 out of a million new immigrants come here because of their job skills and their ability to succeed in this economy," Cotton said. The RAISE Act will be re-orienting Green Card system, he added. Senator Perdue said the current system does not work. "It keeps America from being competitive, and it does not meet the needs of the economy today," he said. "Today we bring in 1.1 million legal immigrants a year. Over 50 per cent of our households of legal immigrants today participate in our social welfare system. Right now, only one 1 out of 15 immigrants who come into our country come in with skills that are employable. Weve got to change that," he said. Perdue said he looked at the at best practices before drafting the legislation. advertisement "We looked at countries like Canada, Australia, and others. What were introducing today is modelled on the current Canadian and Australian systems. Its pro-worker, its pro-growth, and its been proven to work. Both have been extremely successful in attracting highly skilled workers to those countries," the Senator said. "We can all agree that the goals of our nations immigration system should be to protect the interests of working Americans, including immigrants, and to welcome talented individuals who come here legally and want to work and make a better life for themselves. Our current system makes it virtually impossible for them to do that," said the Senator. According to Attorney General Jeff Sessions, the higher entry standards established in this proposal will allow authorities to do a more thorough job reviewing applicants for entry, therefore protecting the security of the US homeland. The additional time spent on vetting each application as a result of this legislation will also ensure that each application serves the national interest, he observed. "The American people deserve a lawful immigration system that promotes our national interest. The RAISE Act would give us a more merit-based immigration system that admits the best and the brightest around the world while making it harder for people to come here illegally," Sessions said. advertisement "The bill would end programme known to be rife with fraud and abuse and finally improve the vetting process, making our country and working class wages much safer and stronger," said the Attorney General. PTI LKJ PMS NSA --- ENDS --- By India Today Web Desk: A trip to the Balkan countries always involves one drink, wine, and no place does it better than Croatia. And now, if you're a wine-lover, you have a new and fun destination to check out: Edivo Vina, the underwater winery at Drace, Croatia. Located in the Peljesac peninsula, this newly-opened winery offers up a dream trip that combines both wine and adventure sports. Customers can actually dive in to the below-sea-level sanctuary where the wine amphoras or jars are stored! Picture courtesy: Instagram/bagsnallkelowna Picture courtesy: Instagram/edivowines advertisement The fascinating underwater trip also includes a refreshing swim around an old sunken ship in Mali Ston Bay. According to Lonely Planet, the wine served by Edivo Vina isn't just stored underwater, but also matured there. Picture courtesy: Instagram/edivowines Also Read: This wine glass looks like it belongs in the devil's hand, but it actually protects your teeth Also Read: These Delhi cafes and bars will give you the best deals on wine The wine, although aged above ground for the first three months, is then stored in the sealed amphoras created with a special kind of clay. The amphoras are left underwater to mature for one or two years, giving them a subtle pinewood aroma. Picture courtesy: Instagram/edivowines Picture courtesy: Instagram/edivowines Edivo Vina's owners have explained that they wanted to go with this style of storage because the sea provides both the cool temperature and perfect silence that are needed to help wine mature properly. Picture courtesy: Instagram/edivowines This exciting new wine variety, and the even more exciting way to retrieve it should put Croatia on your travel and food bucket list! --- ENDS --- By PTI: (Eds: Adding more quotes, info) New Delhi, Aug 2 (PTI) Indian tech companies using H-1B visas to send cheaper engineers to the US to displace American workers is a "mistake", Cisco Systems Inc Chairman John Chambers said today. Chambers, who is also the chairman of the newly formed US-India Strategic Partnership Forum (USISPF), said it is important that jobs are created in both countries to ensure sustainable growth and they can work together to create opportunities in each nation. advertisement "We have to be careful not to misstep. You cannot go in and take a whole bunch of H-1B visas and displace 500 American workers because you can do it at lower costs. That was just a mistake. I think we have to focus on investment," he told a select group of journalists here. The chairman of the biggest maker of equipment that runs the Internet said employment has to be created in both countries as it is "not a win-lose" situation. "Both countries can have dramatic job creation by working together and then, you have to articulate when that occurs," said Chambers, who is in the town for formal unveiling of USISPF. India is pressing the American government to continue H- 1B visa programme that has allowed information technology companies to send skilled workers to the US. The Trump administration, however, says the visa programme favours foreign workers at the expense of American jobs. IT companies like Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys, Cognizant and Wipro use such visa to service American customers. The US accounts for more than 60 per cent of the USD 120 billion outsourcing industry. The US has in past accused Infosys and TCS of "unfairly" cornering the lions share of the H-1B work visas. Over the past few quarters, Indian IT companies have ramped up their efforts of hiring more locals in the US. India is a key market for Cisco and is witnessing a double-digit growth here. The US-based company has about 11,000 employees in India, with a majority of them in R&D roles. "We are going to hire in both locations (India and the US) and so will other companies. India is a great place to invest, its great market but is also a great source of well- educated resources," Chambers said. He added that the two countries can work together to grow much faster together. Earlier this year, Cisco started manufacturing operations in Pune and had said that it eventually plans to scale it up to make India an export hub. advertisement Chambers explained that when an Indian company hires 10,000 Americans in the US or Cisco hires in India, the same needs to be "articulated" and that USISPF would play that role. "We are not at all a lobbying organsition... we are a strategic organisation, a forum that is focussed on how both countries can be successful," he added. USISPF, which includes prominent names like Indra Nooyi (Chairman and CEO, PepsiCo) and Ajay Banga (President and CEO, MasterCard), aims to promote the bilateral trade. Chambers said USISPF will work on creating meaningful opportunities that have the power to change the lives of citizens. "We will work closely together with businesses and government leaders to achieve the goals of driving economic growth, job creation, innovation, inclusion and entrepreneurship," he added. Chambers also lauded various steps taken by the Narendra Modi government in India like demonetisation and GST. He said these will help India in creating a "sustainable" economy. PTI SR ANZ BAL --- ENDS --- Vaimea Primary School has completed a new $251,749.10 makeover thanks to the government of Japan. The project was officially handed over yesterday. It was largely funded through Japans Grant Assistance for Grassroots Human Security Projects (G.G.P) programme. The grant funded the reconstruction of the oldest section of the school building complex, which houses two classrooms and a hall. Vaimea Primary School is the first recipient to receive this grant assistance this year and in January the grant contract officially signed and approved. Japans Ambassador Maugaoleatuolo Shinya Aoki, officially handed over the new classrooms and hall to Vaimea Primary School. Prime Minister Tuilaepa Sailele Malielegaoi attended the ceremony along with Cabinet Ministers, Associate Ministers, parents, teachers and students of Vaimea primary School. The Government of Japan recognizes the importance of quality education for the younger generation as they are the workforce and leaders of the future. A total of close to 600 students are expected to directly benefit from the reconstruction project of Vaimea Primary School and the Government of Japan hopes that the reconstruction project endows the students within renewed sense of pride and enthusiasm for learning. Japan has continuously assisted its friendly Pacific neighbour, Samoa, and the reconstruction project of Vaimea Primary School is an added milestone in Japans ongoing G.G.P. support and cooperation towards the Independent State of Samoa. A man accused of attempted sexual violation in a case involving a nine-year-old girl has been rebuked by the Supreme Court. On Monday, Chief Justice, His Honour Patu Tiavaasue Falefatu Sapolu, told off Niuti Tuitamalii Auvae who was represented by lawyer, Tuisa Tasi Patea. The rebuke came after Tuisa had made an application for his client to reside in Upolu instead of Savaii. This is a variation of a bail as you are aware Your Honour, said Tuisa. When bail was initially granted, the defendant was told to stay at Salelologa and he was to sign in at Tuasivi Police Office. This time, the defendant wants to move to Apia. He (defendant) now wants to reside in Apia away from the victim. He wanted to go back (to Savaii) because he wanted to collect all his belongings. But the Chief Justice was not impressed. The Court doesnt like this idea of you changing places that you want to reside in, said Chief Justice Patu. Although the application was granted, Chief Justice Patu said: Dont ever change your place of stay from now on. You are just wasting the Courts time when you keep changing. Now you will be staying at your relatives in Apia and you are to sign in at the Police Station in Apia. Niuti is an official of the Jehovahs Witness Faith who pleaded not guilty to a charge of attempted sexual violation. The hearing has been set for 27 November 2017. The alleged incident happened when the victim was walking home from school. Think a minuteYou may have heard the famous true story of the Mutiny On The Bounty. English sailors rebelled against their captain, William Bligh, in the South Pacific. They took over his ship, and then put him and his few loyal men on a small row boat out in the middle of the Pacific ocean. These rebel sailors knew that they had committed one of the worst, most serious crimes with the punishment of death. So they escaped to a lonely island named Pitcairn. There they sank their own ship to hide from the world for the rest of their lives. Less than 20 years later, only one of those rebel sailors was still alive. Their little island paradise had become a living hell. They had fought so much among themselves that they killed each other off one by one. When the last Bounty mutineer was finally discovered, he had completely changed into a different person. Instead of the alcoholic thief and murderer he had been, he was now a gentle, loving father. The British government was so impressed by the change in this old rebel sailor, that instead of executing him, they forgave and pardoned him for his crimes. What happened to that rebel sailor and criminal to completely change his heart and character? Well, he had become so depressed and hopeless from all the fighting and killing of his former shipmates, he became an alcoholic who was almost constantly drunk. One day when he was ready to kill himself, he found Captain Blighs old Bible. He began to read about Jesus Christs mercy and love for him, so He asked Jesus to forgive Him and help him change. From that day forward, he began to obey and live Jesus way every day. Friend, maybe you also have rebelled and know that youve been living wrongly. Maybe you even feel like a castaway, rejected by your family and friends, but especially rejected by God. Did you know that you can never become too wrong or bad for God to love and accept you. He will never cast you away or reject you, no matter what youve done! In fact, right now, Jesus is just waiting for you to ask Him to forgive you and start changing you from this day forward, for the rest of your life. Will you do it? Just Think a Minute Romania Ng Lam Pose has been named the winner of the Samoa Aids Foundations (S.A.F) Red Ribbon Selfie competition. Lanuola Solomona came second. The competition on the Foundations Facebook page kick-started when the Samoa Aids Foundation launched their Strategic Plan 2016-2022. Vice President of S.A.F, Fonoti Edwina Neenee said the competition was an advocacy campaign to spread awareness on key HIV/Aids prevention. We believe social media is the future of advocacy in reaching our young people and key populations, she said. The Red Ribbon Selfie was a request from S.A.F. for the people to take Selfie around Samoa in red or wearing a red ribbon and post in on our Facebook Page with key HIV/AIDS prevention messages. The competition received 25 entries. With this number of entries our key advocacy messages on HIV/Aids prevention had reached 93,378 people both in Samoa and abroad in the span of one month. The winner was the selfie with the most likes on Facebook. Ms. Pose got 1,227 likes while Ms. Solomona got 965 likes. The winners received prizes from Taumeasina Island Resort, Shopping voucher at Eveni Carruthers for the Koko Pacific Line, professional red ribbon photo shoot by Les Masina Photography, hair and makeup by Savanah Artistry and Styling by Life-Con Stylists. They will also become the face of the S.A.F. Build-up to the World Aids Day on 1 December. The Electric Power Corporation (E.P.C) has to pay the Office of the Regulator more than half a million tala to regulate license fees for the electricity sector. The Regulator charges similar fees to regulate license fees for the telecommunication and broadcasting sectors. According to documents obtained by the Samoa Observer, the Office of the Regulators fee for the E.P.C this year alone is $691,500. The figure was disclosed during a discussion with members of the business community during a recent presentation by the E.P.C. Contacted for a comment, the E.P.Cs General Manager, Tologata Tile Tuimalealiifano, declined to comment. The Regulator, Lefaoali'i Unutoa Auelua-Fonoti, would not deny or confirm the amount. But she explained that her Office is merely following the fee structure under the law. Pursuant to the Electricity Act 2010(the Act), Section 54 allows for the Head of State to set Regulations for licence fees under the Electricity Sector, she wrote in response to questions from the Samoa Observer. The Electricity Fees Regulations 2017 was signed by the Head of State on 20th March 2017. This regulation sets out the fees charged by the Office of the Regulator as per the Act. Same applications of license fees are applied to other Regulated Services like Telecommunications and Broadcasting as per requirements of their respective Acts. In relation to E.P.C, Lefaoalii said under the Regulations, they charge them an annual fee of 0.5per cent based on their gross revenue from electricity sales. These fees have been consulted with the Independent Power Producers (I.P.P.) as well as E.P.C as required before the Regulations came into force, the Regulator explained. We cannot confirm the amount as mentioned because we have not yet received all the necessary financial information already requested that is needed from E.P.C to calculate the relevant fees. The purpose of these fees is to cover operations of my Office in including carrying out Tariff Review, Public Consultations, monitoring and enforcement, Research and Development and regulating the Electricity Sector. My office can only charge fees that are set out in the Regulations, we cannot over charge or undercharge fees that contradict what has been set out by law. The Minister of Health, Tuitama Dr. Leao Talalelei Tuitama, has moved to assuage fears about an apparent outbreak of typhoid fever in the Pacific. Speaking to the Samoa Observer, the Minister said there is certainly no such outbreak in Samoa. The Minister advised members of the public not to pay attention to reports from overseas that are not accurate. He assured however that in the case where an outbreak does arise, the Ministry of Health and National Health Services are well equipped to deal with it. The process is that if someone comes into the hospital and is suspected to have typhoid, tests are conducted and once its confirmed, the laboratory reports it directly to the Surveillance Division, he said. They visit the patient and screen other family members to determine if this case is an isolated one. The Surveillance team further conducts an investigation whether the typhoid is from food or person to person contact. This is the process. Minister Tuitama noted that typhoid cases are endemic in Samoa. We get cases here and there but when it does affect an entire family, thats when the Hospital steps in to determine as to the source of infection. This is what we call cluster cases, then the surveillance look for contacts and carriers in the area. The good news according to the Health Minister is that typhoid, when it is detected early, can be cured. Its not like ebola which is a very deadly disease and there is no cure, he said. Or tuberculosis and leprosy where it takes some time for the treatment to clear out the disease from your system. For typhoid... you get it and you treat it and by two weeks, its finished. There is no danger in that. If by any chance you get it, there is no big deal. The medicine are made available and you can treat it. The Minister also took the opportunity to urge the public to utilize the immunization programme carried out by the Health sector for protection. The service is there, but its the parents duty to bring their children for their immunization shots. I know its not compulsory to get their immunization shots but then the baby is at risk if they dont get their protection shots. The United States President Donald Trumps announcement of a ban on transgender military service took the United States of Americas New Ambassador to Samoa by surprise. Actually it came as a surprise to me, Scott Brown said when his opinion was sought during his first media interview in Samoa. Mr. Brown visited last week to present his letter of credentials to the Head of State. The Ambassador who served 35 years in the military said he believes a persons preference in terms of gender would not affect their mission. I was actually instrumental in reversing the dont ask dont tell policy to allow gays in the military, he said. What I said and what I believe is that how does anyones behavior or actions outside of the military affect the mission? The most important thing is the mission. Its not about how we feel or how we look. It has nothing to do with that. The only thing that is important is the mission. Mr. Brown noted that when he advocated to reverse the dont ask dont tell policy he wanted to see how such behaviours would affect the overall mission of the military. I spoke to Generals on the ground inside and outside of battle areas. I spoke to tremendous amount of military men and women serving to see how it will affect the morale and the ability to do their jobs. And that I also participated and read all the studies and it was conducted in a thoughtful and methodical process and then I voted accordingly. Getting back to Trumps recent announcement, Mr. Brown said he has not read the reasoning behind it. He wondered if there was something from the military command saying that this is affecting our ability to do our job. The police have found that the attack was planned by Vikram to attract sympathy of people to win the next Assembly election 2019. By Ashish Pandey: The recent attack on Congress' former minister Mukesh Goud's son Vikram Goud took a surprising turn today. The police have found that the attack was planned by Vikram to attract sympathy of people to win the next Assembly election 2019. Telangana Pradesh Congress Committee had named Vikram Goud as the party's Mayoral candidate in last year's Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation polls. advertisement Vikram Goud, was shot at by some 'unidentified' assailants at his posh Banjara Hills residence on Friday and during the course of investigation the West Zone police of Hyderabad arrested five persons from different places in Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka. Police say that Vikram arranged for the shooters through a friend and got them to stage his attack to gain popularity and political growth. He had hired professional shooters and bought a weapon from Indore. Based on the evidence, Hyderabad Police arrested five persons who were allegedly hired by Vikram to shoot him without causing harm to his life and also recovered the firearm used in crime. Vikram, who is a businessman, film producer and youth Congress leader, is believed to be under heavy financial debt. Sources said that he has debts of over several crores. In the wee hours of Friday (July 28), Vikram's wife Shipali rushed him to the Apollo Hospital and lodged a complaint with the Banjara Hills Police stating that unidentified persons who came in a car fired at her husband. Since the case was related to high profile family, the commissioner's task force was asked to assist the investigation. Investigation revealed that Vikram had plotted the attack six months ago and struck a Rs 50 lakh deal with a gang of hired shooters. According to the plan, they were to fire three rounds at him only to injure but not to kill him. A day before the shooting, Vikram had arranged the stay of gang members at a lodge near Apollo Hospital in Banjara Hills. On the day of attack, Vikram uninstalled CCTV cameras from his house and also instructed attackers to disperse the weapon and their clothes in a local lake. Interestingly, investigators found that Vikram wanted to get shot three times as it was his lucky number. Speaking to India today Hyderabad Police Commissioner M Mahender Reddy said, "Following leads our team visited Andhra Pradesh, Telangana Karnataka and Madhya Pradesh. We have arrested five accused while two are absconding. the main accused Vikram Goud is in hospital undergoing treatment at the moment and he will get released we will arrest him also." advertisement Police has booked Vikram along with other accused on conspiracy under charges 326, 109,120 (B) 201,203 of Indian Penal Code and other relevant sections of arms act. Also Read : Hyderabad: Congress leader Mukhesh Goud's son Vikram shot, out of danger Sonika Chauhan-Vikram Chatterjee accident: Is there more to the case than meets the eye? --- ENDS --- Genetic editing of human embryos and reproductive or germ cells for research has received qualified approval from 11 international institutions in the field. This research into genetically altering the human germ cells, called germline editing, is ethical if informed consent is obtained from donors, a statement from the groups said. Moreover, theres no reason to prohibit using government funds for the purpose, the group said. However, its not ethical at this time to use genetic editing of embryos in procedures resulting in a pregnancy, according to the statement, published Thursday in the American Journal of Human Genetics. Go to j.mp/germedit for the statement. Advertisement Such therapy is at present beyond the ethical practice of medicine, in part because the technology isnt well-developed enough that it can be expected to work safely, it said. The statement was authored by the American Society of Human Genetics; the Association of Genetic Nurses and Counsellors; the Canadian Association of Genetic Counsellors; the International Genetic Epidemiology Society; and the National Society of Genetic Counselors. It was endorsed by six other groups. Until recently, human germline gene editing was considered infeasible. But editing of non-reproductive, or somatic cells, has been going on for several years, such as for treatment of cancer. Somatic human gene editing for these purposes isnt controversial, because the seriousness of the disease warrants it, and the altered genes arent transmitted to the next generation, as with germline editing. The statement was released a day after publication of a study in Nature of the first-ever genetic editing of viable human embryos. The study was performed by an international team led by Shoukhrat Mitalipov, a renowned biologist at Oregon Health & Science University. He and four other researchers supervised the study, including prominent Salk Institute stem cell researcher Juan Carlos Izpisua Belmonte. Also this week, another study was published, demonstrating that an entire chromosome could be destroyed in mouse embryos. This could be useful in treating Down syndrome, caused by the presence of an extra chromosome 21. Other such extra chromosomes, or aneuploidies, might also be treatable this way. Both these studies were performed using the powerful genetic editing system known as CRISPR. This technology makes it possible to rapidly and accurately make changes in entire genomes. The advance of CRISPR has made germline editing technically feasible for the first time. The statement laid out criteria that would have to be met before reproductive germline editing could be considered ethical: A compelling medical rationale to use this approach; An evidence base to support its clinical use; An ethical justification; A transparent and public process to solicit and incorporate input. The statement went into detail about the various ethical and moral arguments for and against germline editing. Some might find human germline genome editing less offensive than other approaches (such as prenatal testing and selective abortion of affected fetuses) because it involves altering genes rather than selecting against individuals, the statement said. However, others point out that any form of selection of individuals (including through already existing prenatal diagnosis and testing) sends a message about the fitness of such traits or conditions, thereby reflecting on the worth and value of people who have that trait in our society. The six other groups that endorsed the statement are: the American Society for Reproductive Medicine; the Asia Pacific Society of Human Genetics; the British Society for Genetic Medicine; the Human Genetics Society of Australasia; the Professional Society of Genetic Counselors in Asia; and the Southern African Society for Human Genetics. For further reading With embryo gene editing a reality, humanity enters a new era Review of Mitalipov paper CRISPRing human embryos: transformative work on the edge CRISPR star Jennifer Doudna calls for public debate on embryo editing New stem cell may be key to human organs in animals Genome edit stops mitochondria disease Practical Plan for Managing Human Germline Genetic Modification 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 Land Rover has launched two adventure travel experiences, one in Namibia, the other in Utah and both behind the wheel of the new 2017 Discovery. The eight-day Land Rover Namibia Adventure takes in some of Africas finest scenery and wildlife, while the Utah Adventure offers five days of even more challenging driving. Driving the new Discovery in the terrain for which it was created will be an epic road trip. The adventure begins when guests get to know the new Discovery with a briefing from a Land Rover driving instructor before setting off to an African lodge. The route will cross dunes, traverse the Etosha National Park and its wildlife and then out of the Namib Desert to the South Atlantic Ocean. Advertisement The Namibia Adventure departs on May 1, 2018, and costs $6,943 per person, based on double occupancy. It includes all Land Rover driving activities, accommodation, meals and airport transfers. But you are on your own for additional costs such as drinks from the hotel bar, your rooms minibar, laundry service or pay TV. For more of an off-road challenge, Land Rovers Utah Adventure centers on the red rock landscapes around Moab and the rugged Arches National Park and the Canyonlands. Disco drivers will tackle the Seven Mile Rim, Poison Spider Mesa and the Hells Revenge. The five-day Utah Adventure starts on Oct. 21, 2017, and costs $5,250 per person, based on double occupancy. As with the Namibia Adventure, the Utah trip includes all Land Rover driving activities, accommodation, meals and airport transfers but excludes additional costs such as drinks from the hotel bar, your rooms minibar, laundry service or pay TV. Adventure plays a key part in what makes for an exhilarating drive, said Mark Cameron, Global Experiential Marketing Director at Jaguar Land Rover, in a statement. These driving adventures will offer an exceptional driving experience where our customers will get the chance to push the vehicle to its limits and enjoy unforgettable surroundings. Info: landroverusa.com/experiences/adventure-travel/index.html (My review of the 2017 Discovery will post on Friday, Aug. 25.) What would have been San Diegos largest-ever cannabis festival has gone up in smoke after its organizer says the Del Mar Fairgrounds quietly shunned his efforts to rewrite the contract and hold the festival without marijuana on site. Lawrence Bame, CEO of The Goodlife Festival, had wanted to hold the festival as planned on Sept. 23, despite the 22nd District Agricultural Association boards decision to cancel his contract two months ago for fear of legal and professional liability in the face of federal law that continues to hold marijuana in a criminal light. At a packed hearing on May 30, the DAAs board of directors demanded that Bame stipulate that cannabis not be allowed into the festival. When he hesitated to make those assurances, the DAA canceled the contract and asked him to draft a new one that expressly discourages cannabis on site. Advertisement Roughly a month later, Bame said he received a phone call from a fairgrounds employee telling him the deal was off. He said he does not have that in writing. We were willing to agree to anything and they said, Dont come back, he said. Nobody wants to put anything in writing, especially the board, especially for a smoking policy. I just got a phone call saying You cant go back to the board this year. Tim Fennell, CEO of the fairgrounds, did not directly address the allegation in a statement sent to this newspaper. Lawrence Bame is welcome to bring this issue before the board later this year, he wrote. The 22nd DAA is waiting for the Department of Food and Agriculture to provide rules and regulations in order to proceed with these type of events. Department of Food and Agriculture officials, reached last week, declined to discuss those rules and regulations, as they remain in progress. The Goodlife Festival was looking to draw upwards of 5,000 people with a blend of live music and cannabis education. Cannabis would not have been sold or distributed, but attendees with medical marijuana cards would have been allowed to bring their own cannabis to smoke in designated areas, as allowed by state law. Cannabis advocates were hailing the festival as a watershed moment for San Diegos cannabis scene, which has lagged far behind the Los Angeles and San Francisco areas, where state-owned fairgrounds regularly hold massive cannabis festivals that span several days and draw more than 100,000 people. But uproar ensued after this newspaper broke the story on May 2. Anti-cannabis activists rallied to the cause, and council members from Solana Beach and Del Mar called on the fairgrounds to cancel the festival. Members of the DAA board said that the festival had been booked without their knowledge, despite the fact that Bame had been lobbying the board about a cannabis festival since 2010. Bame said he finds it hypocritical that the fairgrounds continues to book events that the DAA board openly acknowledges draw thousands of pot smokers, yet went out of its way to crack down on his event, which is minuscule by comparison. If you go to the racetracks concert this weekend, thousands and thousands of people will be smoking. But you cant smoke at my event because its called a cannabis event? Very schizophrenic, Bame said. Or go to KAABOO: tens of thousands of people will be doing things against the rules. Theyre expecting 50,000 each on Saturday and Sunday. I was hoping for maybe five, six thousand. Thats the nonsense about the whole thing that frankly I dont know how to deal with. So Im doing nothing. Weve spent a lot of money and a lot of time to be rejected. I dont want to do that again, Bame said. Sebastian Montes writes for the U-T Community Press. pam.kragen@sduniontribune.com It only took a few months for Staci Miller to open the doors of her Oceanside wine bar and restaurant last fall, but it took 20 years of hard work to realize her dream. The Millers Table, which opened Oct. 1 near the Hill Street Cafe, is the culmination of everything Miller has learned about wine, beer and food since she started in the hospitality industry in the mid-1990s. Along the way, the Oceanside resident worked in the wine industry as a buyer, educator, program director and sommelier and she has worked as a restaurant manager and a chef. For all those years, Miller said she was working for someone else. Millers Table is her first opportunity to bring her own vision to life. Advertisement The Millers Table Hours: 11:30 a.m. to 9 p.m. Wednesdays-Mondays (closed Tuesdays) Where: 514 S. Coast Highway, Oceanside Phone: (442) 615-7200 Online: themillerstable.com The Millers Table is an intimate wine bar with most of its 24 seats situated around a large communal table. Customers can choose from an eclectic mix of wines from California, Spain, Australia, New Zealand and Italy. Theres also a selection of soft drinks and bottled beers, as well as six beers on tap. While wines are available by the glass or bottle, Millers Tables signature service is wine flights, where customers can choose from an ever-changing list of trios spotlighting reds, whites, California labels or foreign selections. Wine flights and an ever-changing wine list is something Im not afraid of, Miller said. Im also not afraid of working with different wine varieties and styles. The flight method allows people to go along for that journey. Miller studied viniculture at Napa Valley College, worked as a wine educator for L.A. Wine Tasting and in wine export and sales for Wine Expo. She also worked as wine director and manager for two French restaurants in Los Angeles, The Little Door and The Little Next Door bistro. And before she opened Millers Table, she worked as the wine department director for Whole Foods supermarket in Del Mar. Miller is also trained a a chef. She was once a recipe-tester for the Los Angeles Times food section and and she worked in the Bay area for Bon Appetit Management, which provides onsite food services to Silicon Valley companies. Miller said that she had longed dreamed of opening her own restaurant/bar business, but she was never able to make it work financially. Her last effort was an attempt to open a beer bar in the Silicon Valley. When that fell through a few years ago, she decided to relocate to Oceanside to be closer to her sister, who lives in Carlsbad. As soon as she arrived, she realized she needed to rework her business plan. I had wanted to open a beer bar in Silicon Valley but in San Diego, thats like bringing sand to the beach, she said. I knew I could go back to my wine roots, so thats what I did. The space Miller leased in Oceanside was once a Chinese restaurant, so its small, wok-centric kitchen wasnt suitable for launching a full menu. Instead, Miller has developed a simple menu meat and cheese boards, snacks, appetizers and sandwiches. She has relied on customer suggestions and the creativity of her staff to develop the farm-fresh sandwich menu, which includes a variety of gourmet grilled cheese sandwiches and artisan takes on roast beef, turkey, tuna and vegetarian options. One of the most unique features of Millers Table is its communal table, which takes up most of the dining room. Miller said she hadnt planned to position most of her seating around a grand table, but the configuration of the space and the tables she had forced her into the decision. Surprisingly, its become the most-desired spot for the restaurants regulars, a mix of local residents, fellow hospitality workers and tourists passing through. After working for so many years in hospitality, Miller said she wanted to address one of the industrys biggest problems when she opened Millers Table the disparity in wages between servers, who can earn tips, and kitchen or back of house workers, who can not. To make all employees eligible for a share of the tips, Millers Table workers split responsibilities. The person who cooks sandwiches in the kitchen also delivers it to the customers tableside. Miller said this not only creates a more fair wage system, it has created an intimacy between the staff and the customers. For the person who has made that sandwich and delivered it, they get that sense of gratification because theyve just made the dish or created the recipe, she said. They get immediate feedback and the guest will get the interaction with the person who made their food. Miller said shes been grateful for the publics warm reception of her business and shes working hard to grow the business and respond to customer requests. Its so thrilling, she said. Im burning the candle at 12 ends each and every day. But the feedback from the regulars and the new guests infuses me with so much energy. Im excited by whats taking place here. Its been fantastic. pam.kragen@sduniontribune.com National City businesses generating a minimum of $100,000 in annual revenues have the opportunity to participate in a challenge through the Chamber of Commerce. The chamber partnered with LIFT Development Enterprises, Inc., the South County Economic Development Council and Small Business Development Center, to offer the Elevate my Business Challenge. The program is a 60-day introductory to accelerate business aimed at helping already successful businesses grow rapidly, and manage that growth through five sessions. Advertisement The program, organizers said, teaches new strategies to: Grow revenue. Surpass competition. Attract and retain talent. Increase customer base. Businesses encouraged to apply are those with a minimum of $100,000 in annual sales, experiencing flat sales and looking to sell their ownership in the near future. The purpose of the program is to strengthen our local economy and create more jobs, economic stimulation and expansion of a small- and medium-size company to a larger market, said Jacqueline Reynoso, CEO of the National City Chamber of Commerce. The impetus was as a community supporting small businesses. Program facilitators will help business owners evaluate their business strengths, challenges and opportunities through growth trends and marketing tools in their particular industry, organizers said. Elevate My Business was developed by Kim Folsom, an adjunct professor at National University and a serial entrepreneur who raised $30 million in venture funding to help fund startups and growing businesses. She founded LIFT Development as a nonprofit aiming to help build minority-owned, women-owned and veteran-owned businesses and will guide the four sessions. Other instructors include Cong Cong Zheng, from San Diego States Entrepreneurial Management Center; and Del Lewis, an investor, serial entrepreneur and CEO of Triclare, a business consulting firm that partners with growing businesses. Reynoso said most of businesses are small in National City. We saw this as a great tool to help transition the businesses that are committed and ready to take on that next level, she said. Enrollment is $75 for chamber members and $150 for nonmembers and scholarships are available to minority-, women- and veteran-owned businesses that qualify. Reynoso said that while the focus is on helping out National City businesses it welcomes applications from business owners throughout the county. She said the goal is to get at least 20 businesses through the sessions. Four main sessions will be held Oct. 5 through Nov. 16 at the South Bay Campus of National University at 660 Bay Blvd., in Chula Vista. The program will end with a boot camp-type pitch competition for shares of the $5,000 prize money. The top winner will receive a cash prize of $3,000 with second- and third-place finishers receiving $1,250 and $750, respectively. The pitch competition will be Nov. 30 from 4 to 7 p.m. in the National City Aquatic Center at 3300 Goesno Place in National City. While the top three finishers get prize money, the top 10 move onto the Founders First Bootcamp, where they will present for a panel of investors. The top businesses will be judged at the citys aquatic center. While National City has about 2,500 registered businesses, only about 600 are actual chamber members. Reynoso said being able to offer this program to businesses is excellent timing. Regionally were seeing an uptick in businesses growth in general, unemployment has gone downwhich motivated us to do this now, she said. Interested businesses can apply for the program at: ncc5kembchallenge.liftde.org. Click on the Click here, apply now message at the top of the page. For more information call the chamber of commerce at: (619) 477-9339. The Living Coast Discovery Center, a nonprofit zoo and aquarium on the San Diego Bay in Chula Vista, is hosting its 8th annual Farm to Bay event this Saturday. The organizations largest fundraiser of the year is at 1000 Gunpowder Point Drive and runs from 4 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. The event includes samplings from over 40 local restaurants, farms, breweries, wineries and distilleries, as well as live musical performances, live and silent auctions and up-close animal encounters. Advertisement The event offers attendees a taste of some of San Diegos finest restaurants, breweries, wineries and farms. This year, Culinary Chair Chef Jeff Roberto along with dozens of San Diegos top restaurants, craft breweries, farms and others are teaming up to support coastal wildlife, education and sustainability. Roberto is a formally trained sushi chef and co-founder of Sushi on A Roll. He consults with several restaurants and hotels in San Diego, setting up and designing their sushi programs, and has prepared sushi for several dignitaries and celebrities. Some of this years participating restaurants include: Matuas Sushi Bar & Islander Grill, Eclipse Chocolate Bar & Bistro, Loews Coronado Bay Resort, Amore Cheesecakes and Danielas Kitchen with many others. In addition, a number of local farms, grocers and specialty purveyors are participating in food sampling such as: Catalina Offshore Products, Sprouts Farmers MarketChula Vista and Eastlake, Jimbos Naturally and Farm Fresh to You. The event will also offer wine, beer, spirits and non-alcoholic beverages from Novo Brazil Brewery, Bay Bridge Brewing, Chula Vista Brewery, Modern Times Beer and Cutwater Spirits, among several others. Since 2013, Farm to Bay has reduced its overall waste by using reusable and Earth-friendly materials. Event waste is hand-sorted and composted onsite. Tickets cost $100 each and can be bought by visiting: www.thelivingcoast.org/farmtobay. Farm to Bay is the only San Diego food and wine event set within a protected national wildlife refuge, where guests can enjoy a unique, intimate nature and wildlife experience. The event is supported by numerous sponsors, including this years presenting sponsor, Marine Group Boat Works. For more information about the Living Coast Discovery Center email www.thelivingcoast.org or call (619) 409-5900. Tabby the bear is delivering smiles to homeless children across Chula Vista with the help of university students and police officers. Created by students from Brandman University in Irvine in partnership with the Chula Vista Police Department, the bear is meant to provide comfort to distressed children. The project is part of Brandmans organization leadership doctoral program, which challenged the students in an assignment to change the world by creating the most value possible. One team came up with the teddy bear idea. They called the bear Tabby, nicknamed after The Amazon Bear (TAB), from the online retailer, Chula Vista resident and student Gina Albertini-Bennett said. Advertisement Each face has wide eyes and a heart-shaped nose, with mouths that display the Amazon logo as a smile. The bodies are stuffed with shredded Amazon cardboard and a carefully placed cloth heart, assembled by community volunteers and parents. A tag stitched on the bears soft fleece fabric is made from part of the Amazon box and tells a brief story of how it came to be to make a positive influence on the community and a childs life. About 2.5 million children in America, or one out of every 30, go to sleep without shelter, according to the most recent data from the U.S. Department of Education and the 2013 U.S. Census. The same report revealed that South County had 711 homeless people, with 367 of those counted in Chula Vista. Albertini-Bennett, 38, said her team, including Eric O Neil, Kristin Brogan Baranski and Manuel De La Torre, decided on making the bears as a way to fill a need in the community. They chose Chula Vista because two of the four students live there. Each year Brandman University hosts an innovation tournament. Last year it was sponsored by Amazon. More than 100 doctoral students throughout California and Washington were assigned to teams and given a standard Amazon cardboard box. Immediately when I saw the cardboard box I thought, how can we make this warm, fuzzy and positive? Albertini-Bennett said. After doing some research, the team came up with the idea of creating teddy bears for homeless children. Money raised through the teams GoFundMe account went toward embroidering the bears, which cost about $6 each to make. We thought, if youre homeless this bear will be carried with you no matter where you go, she said. This is a subliminal way for Chula Vista homeless children to receive an Amazon package who dont have a way of receiving one. The team also created a video to promote the bear. All projects were evaluated by a team of judges comprised of Brandman instructors and an Amazon representative. Marilou Ryder, Ed.D., associate professor at Brandman, said she liked the human element of Project Tabby. They linked a lot of people in the community with it, she said. It had a real emotional component. In the end the team placed second in the tournament and Project Tabby was successfully implemented into the community. To date, the team has hand made more than 40 bears, all of which have been delivered to officers who keep them in patrol cars and distribute them as needed. Frank Giaime, sergeant of the Community Relations unit, was approached by Albertini-Bennett because of his work with the Police Departments homeless outreach team. While Giaime said there arent many homeless children, officers frequently encounter kids while on patrol. Most times when they see us theyre in crisis, he said. Its an ice breaker that helps them feel safe and puts them at ease. After a six-month gap, the Navy and Marine Corps again have a permanent civilian leader in the secretarys chair. Former Marine helicopter pilot and finance executive Richard Spencer was sworn in Thursday morning as the 76th Navy secretary. The event took place in the office of the Secretary of the Navy in Washington, with a Navy administrative assistant conducting the small ceremony. Advertisement Spencer issued a statement later in the day, telling sailors and Marines that they must use their resources in the most impactful manner going forward. Due to your consistent ability to successfully deliver on all demands put before you, there is a commensurate level of expectation for more of the same going forward. Therein lies the challenge we face and prudency says we should expect that challenge to grow as the threats around the world continue to increase, the new SecNav wrote. Welcome to The Intel, a blog examining the hot military news of the day A Connecticut native, Spencer graduated from Rollins College in 1976 with an economics degree. Afterward, he got his commission in the Marine Corps and flew H-46 helicopters until 1981. Some observers in social media like that part of his resume. SECNAV is a Marine! You sailors better shape up. Yougottabekiddingme (@SherylR1968) August 3, 2017 Spencer worked on Wall Street for 16 years. He did investment banking, including three years as president of Crossroads Investment Management LLC, a venture capital and private equity investment firm. Then he jumped to Intercontinental Exchange, an electronic commodity futures exchange, as chief financial officer in charge of taking the company public. For the past decade, Spencer was managing director of Fall Creek Management, a small consulting firm in his home state of Wyoming. Over the years, the former Marine officer kept his contacts in Washington, where he served on the Defense Business Board and the Chief of Naval Operations Executive Panel. He was also a board member of the Marine Corps Heritage Foundation. On the Defense Business Board, his tenure was marked by a failed bid to end taxpayer subsidies to military commissaries. Spencers nomination appeared to sail smoothly through the Senate Armed Services Committee last month, with very little jousting from senators. One of the issues he will face is how to build the Navys fleet, now at 276 ships, to the desired 355 vessels. Spencer told the Senate committee last month that he supports unconventional thinking and a higher head count. We should be thinking of possibly bringing things out of the ready reserve. We should be looking at ways to construct better, faster, cheaper. Well be looking at a frigate down the road, Spencer told the senators. All of this capacity increase will require manning. So there will be some numbers that have to be adjusted going forward for end strength. Spencers nomination was the second for Navy secretary under the Trump administration. The first, financier Philip Bilden, bowed out because his financial investments proved too tricky to untangle in order to meet government ethics requirements. Military Videos On Now D-Day paratrooper from Coronado jumps again in France at age 96 On Now Remembering war's fallen, one name at a time On Now In Ramona, an airplane and an aviator provide living lessons on World War II 1:43 On Now Video: Navy's newest vessel sails into San Diego and a new future in surface warfare On Now Video: U.S. Navy files homicide charges over warship collisions On Now Stopping Marine hazing On Now Video: U.S. Navy Air Crew Grounded After Creating Vulgar Sky Drawing On Now Navy says Asia Pacific ship collisions were avoidable On Now Hundreds of recruits get sick at Marine boot camp On Now Cutler Dawson Talks Navy Federal jen.steele@sduniontribune.com Facebook: U-T Military Twitter: @jensteeley A resolution opposing President Donald Trumps expanded border wall is headed to the full San Diego City Council for its consideration. On Wednesday, the councils Budget and Government Efficiency Committee voted 2-2 along partisan lines on whether to oppose Trumps project targeted for the U.S. border with Mexico. The resolution, proposed by Council member Georgette Gomez, also opposes a House bill by Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Alabama, that imposes a fee on money transferred by people in the United States to 42 countries in Latin America. The tie vote means the measure will go to the full council which has a 5-4 Democratic majority in September without a recommendation. If it passes, the mayor could veto it. For now, however, Mayor Kevin Faulconer isnt indicating if hes leaning in any direction. Advertisement San Diegos border works because we have barriers to discourage illegal activity but also bridges to encourage the legal exchange of people, goods and ideas, Faulconers spokesman, Craig Gustafson said in an email. We have strong economic and cultural binational ties that have the Mayors unwavering support. Keeping trade moving in both directions, safely and securely, is important to San Diegos economy and helps create local jobs. As with any Council resolution, the Mayor will reserve judgment until he sees the final language. Gomez said she hopes other elected officials will view the proposed barrier like she does. Im optimistic that my colleagues will see how negative this wall is, she said. There was widespread support for the Gomez resolution from religious groups, immigrant advocacy organizations, and worker rights groups at Wednesdays committee hearing. Several said the expanded wall was a caustic symbol that will harm both the United States and Mexico economically, fail to prevent unauthorized immigration, create a cultural barrier, and spend government money that could be better used on public infrastructure and social services. Some business leaders agreed with some of those points. The fact is, we already have enough barriers, barriers and inefficiencies at our border that cost our nations billions of dollars in lost economic activity, said Paola Avila, the vice president for international business affairs at the San Diego Regional Chamber of Commerce. The committee heard from no opponents of the plan to expand the wall, which was a central promise of the Trump campaign last year. Advocates say it will help control illegal immigration, which in turn would free up jobs for legal residents. Various versions of a border wall have been in place in San Diego County for decades and supporters say it has helped bring order to areas that once were overrun with illegal border crossers. The committees two Republicans, Council members Chris Cate and Scott Sherman, both opposed the measure. They said they agreed with portions of the resolution and comments from the dozens of speakers who backed it, but they felt that a city committee that mostly deals with the municipal budget was an inappropriate place to take a stance on federal policy. We are in city politics, a non-partisan office for a reason, Sherman said. Our job as city council members is to balance the budget, fix streets, provide public safety, police, fire. Plus, he added, even if we pass this resolution, I dont think that this president is going to give a darn about the Budget Committee in the city of San Diego. Even without the resolution, the citys view of its close relationship with Mexico is already known in Washington, Cate said. I think its pretty clear where San Diego stands as a city and a region when it comes our our partners, not only south of us, but also in the Pacific Rim, he said. Councilwoman Barbara Bry, the committees chair, acknowledged that the resolution isnt typical for that body. Unfortunately we are living in unprecedented times, and that is why we are taking unprecedented actions, she said. The impact on San Diego of Trump administration policies has been devastating. And while opponents to the resolution argued that it isnt the citys job to weigh in on federal policy, Gomez said that its important to take a stance on matters that impact residents. I definitely disagree, she said of opposition arguments. The construction of the wall will have an economic impact. And the city, through its lobbyists and relationships with local members of the House of Representatives, regularly tries to impact federal policy in various ways, she said. The city has opposed Trump administration priorities before. In February, the council voted to join a legal battle against an executive order that prohibited refugees from seven Muslim-majority countries from entering the U.S. The matter, which was brought to the council by City Attorney Mara Elliott after her office was approached by the city of Chicago, passed on an 8-1 vote in closed session with Sherman opposed. Twitter: @jptstewart joshua.stewart@sduniontribune.com (619) 293-1841 San Diego has a great tradition of grandes dames. Certain women of a certain age have bloomed larger than life in this semi-desert terrain. Ellen Browning Scripps, Kate Sessions, Joan Kroc, Helen Copley, Danah Fayman. (Insert your selections here.) Superlatives are always slippery things, but Id say the regions grandest living dame was on full display Wednesday night at the Natural History Museum. Advertisement The venue fit the bill. Deborah Szekely, after all, is a 95-year-old force of nature. On stage with Szekely was Marc Pachter, retired director of the Smithsonians National Portrait Gallery and the creator of Living Self-Portraits, interviews with major American cultural figures ranging from Clare Boothe Luce to Steve Martin. The broad arc of Szekelys life was familiar to the adoring museum audience. Childhood in Brooklyn and then Tahiti; marriage at 17 to a charismatic Hungarian scholar; the 1940 founding of Rancho La Puerta in Tecate, her magical touchstone; evolution of the Golden Door spa in north Escondido; unrelenting engagement in civic projects, including an immigration museum. Nevertheless, I noted moments of surprised or bemused murmuring as Szekely, prodded by Pachter, let her memory run free: Her mother left Austria to come to America because women were free. They really werent, but she did her best. One day, after hearing a lecture on returning to a simple, healthful life, she threw every box, bottle, and can out of the house. Life would be digested raw. One day, when Szekely was about 8, her mother announced the family was moving to Tahiti. Szekelys father, a tailor, asked, Wheres that? I really dont know, the nurse said. But here are the tickets. Asked what she thought of the move, Szekely said, In those days, children didnt think. Deborah Shainman married Edmond Szekely when she was just 17 after working as his secretary. The prolific writer on arcane spiritual subjects could not drive, type or balance a bank account. The Professor, as he was called (even by his wife), was twice her age. Men at 36 are very attractive, Szekely deadpanned. Ill take your word for it, Pachter shot back. In 1940, the Professors Romanian passport expired and he faced deportation to Hungary if he remained in the United States. He and I were both Jewish, Szekely said. That was not an option. The couple moved to Tecate where the professor could wait out the war without a passport. (It would take him nine years to obtain papers.) A newsletter initially mailed to 30 subscribers ($10 a year) attracted followers whod pay $17.50 a week to bring their own tents and work for two-and-a-half hours a day. Soon, Szekely found surplus airplane wing covers and used them to make sturdy tents. (Later shed buy 20 huge packing crates as war surplus. Presto, 20 cabins with windows and doors.) Everything was like a miracle. During the war years, the famed Buffalo Soldiers, stationed at Camp Lockett, a cavalry outpost 16 miles away at Campo, were charged with protecting the border from invasion from the south. The Ranch guests delighted in watching the wonderful black soldiers perform dressage on magnificent horses. Asked if she was ever discouraged, Its not my nature, Szekely said. Im an optimist. When the Professor greeted anyone, he would always say, Siempre mejor (always better), the Ranchs slogan Thanks to her mother, Szekely was to the primitive manner born. In Tahiti, shed cooked on a wood stove, read by kerosene lamps, carried water. Life, it seems, was always good at the Ranch. The genius of the Ranch is its total integration into Tecate life. Hollywood friends of the Professor sent down blankets and supplies for residents of Tecate. Gradually, the Ranch started hiring and Szekely scoured San Diego for used bicycles for employees to make the 5-mile trip from town. The towns first school bus was purchased by the Ranch. Same with a library. Out of respect to the conservative culture, we did not allow guests to go to town unless they were fully clothed. Like going to the Vatican with long sleeves. On motherhood, Szekely said she had to decide if she wanted American or Mexican kids. She chose the U.S., buying a house in San Diego and enrolling her daughter and son in Francis Parker School where they could stay until 6 in the evening as she kept up her busy schedule. I wanted them to hold their heads high, she said, a reflection of the stuffed shirts who dismissed her lifes work as a cult or a nudist colony. I wanted us to be accepted. In America, the life-changing mystique of European spas existed in literature, she said, but not in real life. The door was open, Szekely said, and I opened it the rest of the way. Michael Murphy, the founder of Esalen, the world-famous Big Sur spiritual retreat, attended a 1960 Ranch seminar featuring Aldous Huxley. Murphy invited Szekely to look at his family property and possibly partner with him. I had all I could do here, Szekely laughed. The problem with aging is theres less challenge, Szekely said. The challenge is moving and walking around and doing things. I miss having to get ideas in the middle of the night and scribbling them down, things you want to do and things other people should be doing. I still do it, but to a lesser degree. Lucky is the long life that knows its been lucky and still is. Everything coalesced, Szekely said in the closing minute. I happened to be the recipient of a lot of good coalescing. logan.jenkins@sduniontribune.com To condemn the defamatory content written in 9th standard text book of Maharashtra state about former prime minister Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi, NSUI and Youth Congress activists today burnt the photographs of Education Minister Vinod Tawade near Mumbai Congress office. By Mayuresh Ganapatye: To condemn the defamatory content written in 9th standard text book of Maharashtra state about former prime minister Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi, NSUI and Youth Congress activists today burnt the photographs of Education Minister Vinod Tawade near Mumbai Congress office. "Why can't Indian Government issues order to remove that part. We condemn this act of state Government to malign the image of our leaders," said Nikhil Kamble vice president of NSUI Mumbai. advertisement The textbook has references to Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi and talks about Emergency and the Bofors scam. Two days ago, upper legislature house also raised the same issue. The Emergency period refers to that 21-month period which is from 1975 to 1977 when Indira Gandhi was the prime minister. Proclaimed by the then President, it bestowed upon the government the authority to rule by decree, allowing elections to be suspended and civil liberties to be curbed. On the other hand, the Bofors scam pertains to a contract of Rs 1,437 crore that was signed between India and Bofors AB, on March 1986, for the supply of 410-155 mm Howitzer guns for the Indian Army. A year later, a Swedish radio broadcast alleged that the firm had paid bribes to Indian politicians and defence personnel. Couple of days back, the same topic was raised in state assembly by Congress and NCP to immediately remove this information about Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi. In the reply, Tawade said that there was no intention to hurt anyone's sentiments. "The history book has narrated incidents. There is no deliberate attempt to defame anyone. But I will ask the education board to look into the matter," he said. --- ENDS --- A man who admitted to being a foot guide to a group of unauthorized immigrants was arrested on human smuggling charges after he allegedly left an ill client for dead in the Otay Mountain wilderness earlier this week, according to a complaint filed Wednesday in San Diego federal court. The victims wife stayed behind to get help, but her husband died underneath a thicket of dead trees by the time Border Patrol agents reached him Tuesday morning, authorities said. Flavio Daniel Meza Gonzalez, 23, who was arrested Tuesday with the rest of the group, told investigators that he had succumbed to pressure from the others to leave the man behind, the complaint states. Advertisement Meza is charged with smuggling resulting in death and smuggling for financial gain. He has pleaded not guilty. A judge on Wednesday denied a prosecutors request to keep him in custody and granted his release on $35,000 bail. Border Patrol got the distress call about 6:15 p.m. Monday from Mexican officials, who reported theyd been contacted by a woman who said she and her husband were lost somewhere north of the U.S.-Mexico border. Itzel Mondragon Mancilla, 22, said her husband, David Ramirez Diaz, 35, was dehydrated and vomiting. They had crossed the border about seven hours earlier with five others, she reported. Border Patrol began to comb the area, using helicopters, infrared cameras and signals from Mondragons cellphone. About 5:50 a.m. the next day Mondragon gave them another clue: she was in an open area with an H painted on rocks. She was found about an hour later in an area known as Buttewig Canyon, about 10 miles east of the Otay Mesa Port of Entry and two miles north of the border. It took another 30 minutes of searching in rugged terrain with help from a Border Patrol dog to find her husband lying on rocks under trees. He had died. Meanwhile, other agents working in the area found the rest of the group five adults and a juvenile hiding in brush, about five miles north of the border near Dulzura, Border Patrol said. Meza told agents that he was a guide for the group and said he left the couple behind when Ramirez couldnt keep up, the complaint states. He blamed the rest of the group, saying they didnt want to be apprehended. He appeared visibly startled when agents informed him that Ramirez had died, according to the complaint. The unauthorized immigrants told agents that they had agreed to pay from $7,000 to $8,500 to be smuggled into the U.S. Due to this tragic result, the smuggler should face the highest consequences, Acting Assistant Chief Patrol Agent Boone Smith said in a statement Thursday. kristina.davis@sduniontribune.com Twitter: @kristinadavis San Diegans were divided over President Donald Trumps unveiling on Wednesday of a bill that proposed major changes to the U.S. immigration system. The bill, sponsored by Senator Tom Cotton, R-Arkansas, and Senator David Perdue, R-Georgia, would change the countrys immigration system from a family-based system to a merit-based system under which hopeful immigrants would need to meet requirements such as speaking English to accumulate points to get a green card. The bill, known as the RAISE Act, would also reduce levels of legal immigration to the U.S. by more than half. Trump called the bill the biggest change in 50 years to the countrys immigration system. Advertisement Those who have supported President Donald Trumps immigration policies from the beginning celebrated the break in what has been U.S. policy since at least the 1950s. Those who have denounced Trump for his policies were horrified that hed chosen to support the new bill. At long last, the President and the Congress are moving to end the twin evils of family chain migration and lowering the number of legal immigrants and refugees who will be admitted to the US to better fit the national interest, said Peter Nunez, chairman of the conservative Center for Immigration Studies and former U.S. attorney in San Diego. Nunez said that he welcomed reductions in the number of green cards that would be given out under the RAISE Act, which stands for Reforming American Immigration for a Strong Economy. With tens of millions of Americans either unemployed or under-employed, there is no need to continue to import one million primarily unskilled immigrants every year, who compete with the least skilled and least-educated Americans, and with legal immigrants who preceded them, Nunez said via email. By reducing the numbers of legal immigrants, and requiring those that are admitted to have skills, English language, and other attributes missing from todays mass immigration, we can expect more Americans to find work, and for blue collar and other less skilled and educated workers to see an increase in wages and better working conditions. He said such a proposal would do more to boost the economy than raising the minimum wage. Christian Ramirez, human rights director for Alliance San Diego, called the bill misguided and extreme. This bill is hyperbole that is being portrayed as legislation, and its a shameful waste of taxpayer dollars to have legislators drop a bill of this magnitude, Ramirez said by telephone. What this bill and the support of the president does, it really creates a whole lot of obstacles for immigration reform to be an item of discussion that we would be able to address in this Congress. He said many families in the southwest border region depend on the family-based system to be able to reunite with loved ones and he worried that one of the issues he hopes immigration reform legislation will address the backlogs of people waiting for green cards would not be resolved under the proposal. Other community activists in San Diego also took issue with the bill. With the RAISE Act, President Trump perpetuates the dehumanization of immigrants in this country, said Dinora Reyna of the San Diego Organizing Project. Locally, were committed to protecting the value and dignity of all people in our community. Roberto Alcantar, immigrant rights strategist for the American Civil Liberties Union in San Diego, said, The RAISE Act is an unseemly proposal to suppress diversity, demonize non-English speaking immigrants and give preferential treatment to immigrants from developed countries. The United States of America is a nation of immigrants and, as a country, we have significantly benefited from the hard work and ingenuity of immigrants of all backgrounds, languages and faiths. The RAISE Act is anti-immigrant, anti-family, and anti-economic prosperity. By supporting this legislation, President Trump is once again rejecting the values that make America great. Terence Shigg, president of San Diegos chapter of the National Border Patrol Council, said that the bill was outside the purview of his work, but he felt that the immigration system could not continue in its current state. The one thing I can say overall is the immigration system is broken, and it is a sinking ship, Shigg said via email. Something must be done soon. Qualcomm, the San Diego-based wireless chip giant, did not respond to a request for comment on the Trump immigration plan. In the past, Qualcomm has lobbied for immigration policies that allow it to hire the most highly skilled engineers possible no matter their nationality. It has particularly fought against restrictions that would make it harder for foreign-born graduates of U.S. universities to work in the U.S. Staff writer Mike Freeman contributed to this report 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 San Diego police say a 40-year-old woman who disappeared on Sunday and turned up in Tijuana on Wednesday left home voluntarily. Crystal Chappells husband disputes that, saying she told him she doesnt remember what happened to her after she started to drive away from a plasma donation center in the Midway District. Jonathan Chappell believes his wife was carjacked and kidnapped, forced to drive south across the border, then left along the road. Advertisement The only thing my wife could think of was to get home to our children, Chappell said Thursday. He said they are looking forward to celebrating their 20th wedding anniversary on Friday, but he first wants to buy her a new wedding ring because she lost hers. Lt. Mike Holden, who oversees homicide, kidnapping and robbery investigators, said detectives interviewed Crystal Wednesday evening at a Chula Vista hospital, where she underwent a medical evaluation. He said she was not the victim of a crime. It was her decision to drive to Mexico, he said, adding that he would respect her privacy by not repeating the reason she gave to investigators. Chappell said he and his wife and their 19-year-old son had donated plasma Sunday morning, then she was to pick up their younger children, ages 12 and 13, at the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints in Mission Valley. When she didnt show up, the children phoned him. He filed a missing persons report that afternoon and tracked her phone to southbound Interstate 805 near the border. He said he believed his wife would never voluntarily leave her home and children. When police notified him Wednesday afternoon that she had been found in Tijuana, he picked up her up the hospital later that night. She told Chappell that she recalled only seeing some flash of bright light after leaving the plasma center, and the next thing she knew she was on foot along a highway toward Rosarito Beach. He said she walked to Tijuana the cities are about 12 miles apart and someone notified local authorities after recognizing her from a missing persons flier. I want to say a huge thanks to the families in Mexico who found her, Chappell said. My wife would like to meet them and thank them in person. And the Mexican police were as helpful as they could be. Border Patrol agents discovered more than $300,000 worth of cocaine and heroin in a car and arrested the driver at a checkpoint near San Clemente Tuesday, officials said. The 2005 Mazda3 sedan was searched at the Border Patrol checkpoint on Interstate 5 about 6:30 p.m. Agents found 10 plastic-wrapped bundles in the trunk compartment where spare tires are stowed, officials said. Five packages contained roughly 11.5 pounds of cocaine, while the rest contained about 12 pounds of heroin. The drugs have a combined street value of nearly $328,000, officials said. Advertisement The driver, a 19-year-old man from Mexico, was arrested on suspicion of smuggling the narcotics. He was turned over to the Drug Enforcement Administration, along with the drugs. Since October, Border Patrol agents in the San Diego area have seized 2,371 pounds of cocaine and 270 pounds of heroin, officials said. Breaking News Email: david.hernandez@sduniontribune.com Phone: (619) 293-1876 Twitter: @D4VIDHernandez Just south of the Mexican border is one of the most striking desert landscapes on Earth a beautiful contrast of lava flows, granite mountains and sand dunes that can reach 600 feet high. This stunning swath of the Sonoran Desert is a sacred site for native people and a refuge for wildlife found nowhere else on our planet. Its just one of many protected ecosystems in terrible danger from President Trumps proposed border wall, which appears to be on a fast track near San Diego and in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas. Advertisement El Pinacate and Gran Desierto de Altar Biosphere Reserve is a UNESCO World Heritage site along the Mexican side of the U.S. border. This richly biodiverse landscape is sacred to the indigenous Tohono Oodham people. On the other side of the border, the Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge has been managed to preserve and protect wildlife since 1939, with a special focus on the endangered Sonoran pronghorn, bighorn sheep and lesser long-nosed bat. But Trumps impenetrable wall would block wildlife migration and threaten the already-imperiled species that the 2,700-square-mile biosphere reserve, wildlife refuges and national parks along the border were designated to protect. This includes two refuges south of San Diego, where the Trump administration says it will waive environmental and other laws to speed construction of border wall prototypes, 14 miles of replacement walls, roads, lighting and other infrastructure. And it includes the Santa Ana National Wildlife Refuge described as the crown jewel of the wildlife refuge system one of the top birding destinations in North America and home to a dwindling population of endangered ocelots. In Arizona and Mexico, the wall would also separate the Tohono Oodham people, whose ancestral lands straddle the border, and endanger their cultural and religious practices. Trump is rushing to devastate communities and wildlife to fulfill a twisted, divisive campaign promise, while ignoring the law and public input. Its a travesty that must be stopped. Thats why our organization, the Center for Biological Diversity, has filed a series of legal actions to stop the border wall and obtain public records about this dangerous project. In June we expanded our lawsuit against proposed border wall prototype construction in Otay Mesa to also challenge replacement of the San Diego segment, which stretches east from the Pacific Ocean through the Tijuana Slough National Wildlife Refuge. Weve also teamed up with Greenpeace Mexico, the Tohono-Oodham of Sonora, Mexico, and several other Mexican conservation groups to urge the UNESCO World Heritage Committee to give in danger status to El Pinacate and Gran Desierto de Altar. As parties to this global treaty, the U.S. and 192 other countries are obligated to protect World Heritage sites throughout the world, not just in their own countries. Yet Trumps administration is violating this obligation with his border wall. In all, the proposed wall along the 2,000-mile border threatens more than 90 endangered and threatened species, including jaguars, ocelots, Mexican wolves, cactus ferruginous pygmy owls and the Sonoran pronghorn. Many of these species are found nowhere else. El Pinacate alone hosts more than 540 species of plants, 44 mammal species, 225 bird species and more than 40 reptile species, including many endangered species and many found only in the Sonoran Desert. Pinacates dormant volcanic craters and the vast sand dunes of Gran Altar Desert give way to spring flows and seeps that nourish this astonishing array of wildlife. The site also holds significant cultural importance. Ancestors of the Tohono Oodham began inhabiting the site around 5,000 years ago, and the area still contains many significant archaeological remains, including petroglyphs, geoglyphs and trails. El Pinacate is sacred to the Tohono Oodham, and the area is regularly used for ceremonial purposes, including a sacred salt pilgrimage across the border to Mexicos Gulf of California. Today about two-thirds of the border along the Pinacate World Heritage Site allows relatively free passage of wildlife between the U.S. and Mexico. That would change with Trumps impenetrable wall and the roads, lights and human activity that accompany it. Indeed, the wall would be a stain on this spectacular landscape and an affront to the concept of World Heritage sites, wildlife refuges and national parks. We must work together to protect these sacred sites, and the natural and cultural treasures within, for future generations. And that means stopping this dangerous wall in its tracks. Uhlemann is a senior attorney and international program director with the Center for Biological Diversity. Website: biologicaldiversity.org RELATED After seven years and about $40 million in legal costs stemming from lawsuits filed by the San Diego County Water Authority, no ruling to date will noticeably change local water bills or address a single important regional water challenge. All ratepayers lose the longer the Water Authoritys fighting drags on. The court process is not entirely over for these initial cases brought against the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California and the system that provides about 80 percent of San Diego Countys water supply. The First District Court of Appeal has rejected the Water Authoritys request for a rehearing of cases decided largely in favor of Metropolitan just over a month ago. A Supreme Court appeal would be the Water Authoritys last resort, yet the agencys leaders somehow declared a recent victory. Related: Why San Diego should stay the course in water agency litigation Advertisement It seems the Water Authority is not leveling with its ratepayers about just how unsuccessful and needless this fighting has been. This is an unfortunate battle on two fronts. There is the legal campaign under way since 2010, with six lawsuits and counting. And there is an expensive public relations campaign financed by tens of thousands of San Diego ratepayer dollars every month seeking to discredit my agency in the court of public opinion. This all began after the Water Authority in 2003 purchased a very expensive supply of Colorado River water from the Imperial Irrigation District, but chose not to build the infrastructure to deliver it. Metropolitans Board voluntarily agreed to use its distribution system to exchange supplies and deliver an equal amount of its water to San Diego County through the Metropolitan system. Then in 2011, the Water Authority decided to challenge in court the very agreement it requested. Metropolitan strives to deliver a blend of imported supplies from the Colorado River and Northern California. Each of our 26 member agencies is charged the same blended transportation rates. Yet, the Water Authority was hoping to force a special lower rate for itself that excluded costs associated with transporting water from Northern California, while the rest of Southern California paid those costs. By its own estimates, the Water Authority wanted to shift $7.4 billion to other ratepayers in the six-county Metropolitan service area. On this issue, the appellate court decided entirely in favor of Metropolitans practice of charging all customers the same transportation rate that includes the costs of the Northern California system. That seems fair. There were other issues before the court, but financially they pale in comparison, or have no monetary or water supply impact at all. In fact, when the cases finally come to a close, the Water Authority may have spent more on litigation costs than any financial award it receives. Since those initial lawsuits, the Water Authority has expanded its legal attack to challenge Metropolitans efforts to collect funds to financially support the development of local water supplies and more conservation. We think that increasing local supplies and lowering water demands are vitally important. But the Water Authority wants to make development and conservation of local supplies more difficult by cutting off this funding source. Who wins there? The Water Authoritys recent public relations campaign alleges that Metropolitan spends and borrows too much. The agency criticizes actions by our board to invest in valuable land assets and support the nations largest turf removal program during the peak of the drought strategic investments that help advance our regions long-term Integrated Resources Plan. Yet the Water Authoritys own representatives joined our boards unanimous vote in favor of our most expensive land investment. And San Diegans embraced the turf program (promoted by the Water Authority at the time). Now the Water Authoritys public relations campaign criticizes these decisions. How hypocritical is that? Californians face serious water issues. Our Northern California supply is at risk long-term because of an aging system in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta that needs critical reinvestment. Water from the Colorado River is at risk until supplies and demands are brought into balance. Throwing mud and endlessly fighting in courts are losing strategies for everybody but the law firms that have pocketed millions of your dollars. Ratepayers who expect us to work professionally with one another are the real losers. Record is the chairman of the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California board of directors and represents Eastern Municipal Water District on the board. Regarding Trump quip about roughing up detainees falls flat in San Diego (July 31): Donald Trump was clearly making a joke as evidenced by the laughter of the law enforcement professionals in attendance at the event. Unless of course they are all being identified as sadists and masochists? Sad to see the media blow something this insignificant so far out of proportion. Sad to see The San Diego Union-Tribune Editorial Board falling in lock step with the hate-Trump crowd. Bob Black Advertisement Downtown Editorial neglected Trumps good works When reading your very critical opinion of President Trumps week (Terrible, horrible, no good very bad week, July 28) I missed the part about him donating his presidential salary, the part about his success in persuading Foxconn to open a plant in Wisconsin that will create about 3,000 jobs or the part about the numerous ovations that he received from law enforcement officers in New York. Perhaps these omissions were just inadvertent oversights, but I doubt it. Daniel R. Collins San Diego Letters and commentary policy The U-T welcomes and encourages community dialogue on important public matters. Please visit this page for more details on our letters and commentaries policy. You can email letters@sduniontribune.com or leave a comment below. Every year that the oldest Americans grow more frail and in need of assisted-living facilities, more and more of the 75 million members of the Baby Boom generation realize that theyre right behind them. But a 2013 investigation in The San Diego Union-Tribune titled Deadly Neglect showed that poor conditions were the norm in some such facilities, where grossly inadequate oversight and trivial penalties made a mockery of the system. Since then, state lawmakers and regulators have improved oversight and increased fines for facilities with poor conditions. Now San Diego County is implementing another needed reform, creating the Choose Well website so people can easily compare assisted-living facilities their cost, amenities, regulatory histories, licensing, nursing care and more. The website even assigns each facility an overall rating. With a push from Supervisors Greg Cox and Dianne Jacob, the county developed the site with Consumer Advocates for RCFE Reform, a nonprofit group that helps seniors with residential care. Of 600 assisted-living facilities in San Diego County, about 120 have agreed to participate in voluntary evaluations so far. Heres hoping so many sign up that a refusal to participate in the rating system is seen as a reason to worry about the good faith of facility operators. If that happens, it could become a model for local governments everywhere. Advertisement Twitter: @sdutIdeas Facebook: San Diego Union-Tribune Ideas & Opinion A travel advisory the NAACP issued for Missouri is generating national debate this week over what the civil rights organization calls looming danger for people of color visiting the state. The organization called it the first advisory of its kind to single out a state like this, citing recent discriminatory legislation and a number of incidents targeting minorities. NAACP President Rod Chapel told The Kansas City Star the advisory underscores civil rights complaints the associations Missouri chapter had not seen before. The travel advisory, which was first issued by the states NAACP chapter in early June, was not adopted by the national organization until late July, the Star reported. It was then that the advisory caught national attention. The NAACP primarily draws attention to a bill in Missouris state legislation what t it called a Jim Crow Bill that makes it harder to sue employers for discrimination. Missouri Gov. Eric Greitens told local FOX affiliate WDAF-TV on Friday that he had not yet seen the advisory. The NAACP also cites a number of incidents involving minorities, including the death of Troy Sanford, who died in a Missouri jail cell despite never being arrested after running out of gas after driving into the state accidentally; racist attacks at the University of Missouri; attacks on black high school students in St. Louis; a man who shot two men in Kansas City because he thought they were Muslim; and excessive traffic stops aimed at African Americans. Individuals traveling in the state are advised to travel with extreme CAUTION, the statement reads. Race, gender and color based crimes have a long history in Missouri. The travel advisory for the state similar to those issued by the federal government cautioning travel dangers abroad has broadened a national dialogue about race. On Twitter, people expressed disappointment that the situation has deteriorated enough to warrant a travel advisory in modern America. They called it revolting and emphasized that this was happening in 2017, not 1965. In an age of cellphone videos and social media, increased attention on police use of force and fatal shootings of African American men have intensified conversations about race in recent years. Some people have argued that black on black shootings are part of the problem and should be given just as much attention. The issue has divided Americans and dominated discussion with phrases like Black lives matter and Blue lives matter. Those who criticized the travel advisory asked why such a warning isnt provided for other cities in America such as Chicago, where gun violence is known to be high, or other cities, such as St. Louis, where gun violence is greater on a per capita rate, according to The Trace, a nonprofit that tracks gun violence in America. Some people criticized the NAACP for engaging in reverse racism and for using race to gain political points. But the NAACP is hardly the first civil rights group to issue an advisory of this kind for a state. The American Civil Liberties Union in May issued a travel advisory for Texas, warning people to anticipate the possible violation of their constitutional rights when stopped by law enforcement. The ACLU previously issued a similar one in 2010 for Arizona over a state bill designed to let local law enforcement crack down on immigration. According to the FBIs 2015 database of hate crimes in every state, Missouri ranked 16th in the nation, behind Washington, D.C., and far below states like California, Colorado and Illinois. The NAACP says its travel advisory will remain in effect until at least Aug. 28. Its unclear how the advisory will affect travel to the state or whether any major organizations will boycott the state like many did in North Carolina over its controversial bathroom bill in April. Does a travel advisory for Missouri affect your travel plans? Do you think its necessary? Or does it go too far? Weigh in on this conversation and share your thoughts. Have some thoughts to share? Join me in a conversation: Shoot me a private email with your thoughts or ideas on a different approach to this story. As always, you can also send us a tweet. Email: luis.gomez@sduniontribune.com Twitter: @RunGomez Read The Conversation on Flipboard. The ridiculous Marital Declaration questionnaire asked Patna-based IGIMS employees to mention whether they are virgin. By India Today Web Desk: Bihar Health Minister Mangal Pandey has defended a controversial questionnaire put out by Patna's Indira Gandhi Institute of Medical Sciences (IGIMS) for its staff. The ridiculous Marital Declaration questionnaire asked IGIMS employees to mention their marital status. "I looked the dictionary for the actual meaning of the word virgin. It means unmarried and I don't find anything objectionable in the usage of the word," Mangal Pandey said. advertisement "However, when the issue was brought to my notice I enquired IGIMS management about it. They told me the format used in the form is the same which is used at AIIMS (All India Institute of Medical Science)," he added. The form also asks male employees to provide details if they have more than one wife. Women employees apart from declaring status regarding their virginity have also been asked to provide details on whether they are married to a person who has no other wife living or another wife living. Speaking to India Today, the Deputy Medical Superintendent, Dr Manish Mandal said that the marriage declaration form with the contentious questions have been in practice ever since the institute was established in 1984. "Everyone has to fill this form which is part of Central Services Rules and this form is similar to what AIIMS in Delhi uses. If the Centre or AIIMS changes the format of the form in the future, we will also change it. This is not a new form and has been in practice since 1984 when IGIMS was established," said Mandal. ALSO READ: Are you a virgin? Do you have multiple wives? Patna's IGIMS asks its employees Singles worship Disha Patani, decorate Virgin Tree with condoms on V-Day WATCH: Patna IGIMS controversial form: Bihar health minister says virgin means unmarried --- ENDS --- The most important job on the planet may have just opened up. NASA last month posted a job opening for a Planetary Protection Officer, a title that on the surface sounds like something from Star Trek or the Men in Black movie franchise where Will Smith protects Earth from menacing aliens. (Actually, he does that in another movie, too.) It wasnt until Wednesday, however, that the job took off on social media where people let their imagination fly out of this world. Before you update your resume and dream of having a shot at this six-figure salary job, plenty of people (including those at NASA) want the world to know that the job is far from science fiction. The main job responsibility has to do with eliminating alien organisms from space, which is basically figuring out ways to prevent organisms from attaching to spacecraft and entering a planet, whether it be ours or another one like Mars. Popular Mechanics describes the job as more like a solar systems zookeeper. Despite the obtuse language used in the job description, many news outlets ran with wild headlines that banked on the idea of protecting Earth from alien life. Like this one from the Independent in the U.K.: NASA offering six-figure salary for new 'planetary protection officer' to defend Earth from aliens. Gizmodos Rae Paoletta highlighted the ridiculousness of those headlines with a story filed to a section of the site called, CMON GUYS. Way to shatter dreams, Rae. Still think you want a shot at it? The job is a full-time position and frequent travel may be required. Must be a U.S. citizen. Have some thoughts to share? Join me in a conversation: Shoot me a private email with your thoughts or ideas on a different approach to this story. As always, you can also send us a tweet. Email: luis.gomez@sduniontribune.com Twitter: @RunGomez Read The Conversation on Flipboard. ALSO NASA astronaut shares spectacular video of San Diego from space Is mankind ready for aliens? NASA 1, Anonymous 0. Aliens? Nope. But NASA's big news is still fascinating A grand jury has been put together in Washington, D.C. as part of former FBI Director turned special counsel Robert Mueller s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election, according to news reports. The former FBI director was appointed to oversee the Russia investigation in May shortly after the firing of his successor at the FBI, James Comey. The Wall Street Journal first broke the news, reporting that the grand jury began work in recent weeks. As Merriam-Webster reports that internet searches for impanel are spiking, heres what you should know. What is a grand jury? A grand jury is different from a trial jury, although both are made of up average Americans. Investigators would be asking this panel of jurors to determine if charges or an indictment can be brought against an individual. So its basically the first potential step in initiating criminal charges. It will weigh whether there is enough evidence to accuse people of crimes. Grand juries which can contain up to 23 people have certain special powers. Theyre allowed to subpoena documents and force witnesses to testify under oath, for example. Reuters reports that some subpoenas have already been issued. What is this one looking into? Robert Mueller was brought on to investigate potential connections between Russian officials and President Donald Trump s presidential election campaign and how they might relate to Russias confirmed interference in the 2016 election. The FBI opened the probe, but it was handed over to Mueller after Comeys firing and the discovery that Trump asked him to drop the investigation into former national security adviser Michael Flynn . Flynn was also fired. Grand juries which are usually very secretive work to determine whether probable cause exists to support criminal charges. CNN is reporting that investigators are looking at Trump and his associates financial ties to Russia. When has something like this happened before? President Bill Clinton became the first president to testify as the subject of a grand jury investigation in 1998. A probe into several allegations against the president including alleged obstruction of justice and perjury and a real estate venture in Arkansas was overseen by Kenneth Starr for four years. Clintons affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky was exposed amid the investigation. Whats Trumps response? Ty Cobb, special counsel to the president, told The Wall Street Journal that he Cobb wasnt aware of the grand jury. The White House favors anything that accelerates the conclusion of his work fairly, Cobb said. The White House is committed to fully cooperating with Mr. Mueller. The White House issued a similar statement to Cobb, adding that Comey said three times the president is not under investigation and we have no reason to believe that has changed. Email: abby.hamblin@sduniontribune.com Twitter: @abbyhamblin Formerly in manufacturing, Brian Meitzler entered the solar industry about two decades ago at a time when there were few players and less customer knowledge about the alternative energy source. Im an outdoorsman. I believe in Mother Nature, said Meitzler, a Ramona resident. Thats why I personally got into the industry wanted to make changes for the better. Meitzler is the sole owner of BMC Solar, a company he started eight years ago with two partners after helping to build two other companies, Clean Power Systems and Sequoia Solar. Then it was cutting edge, now its saturated, he said of the market. Meitzler noted that consumers are educated about solar now but they need to be careful of the products and the company they choose. There are products on the market that are not certified, he cautioned. Describing himself as engineering-minded, Meitzler said, Before I purchase anything, I analyze it to a T. I want to be the best I can be and do right by my clients. The business owner takes pride in offering best roof practices for roof mounts to ensure there is no leakage, which could lead to black mold. During his 20-some years in the industry serving residential and business customers, Meitzler said there was never a roof leak in any of his installations. There are constant changes in the solar industry with regulations and electric and fire codes of which he and his employees stay abreast, said Meitzler. Theres been more changes in this industry...than any industry Ive been involved with. Its pretty amazing, he said. The next big change will be adding batteries to the solar systems to store the excess energy created during the day instead of sending the surplus to the electricity grid, said Meitzler. The State of California has allowed utilities to implement in 2018 a time of use charge for solar customers and the peak demand could be changed from daytime to evening hours when people are coming home from work, he said. Meitzler explained that during the day the sun will feed the house and charge the batteries, and if there is any surplus after that it will go to the grid. The idea is so when the billings come for that peak demand...your house now can run from the charged batteries, he said. That way the peak demand charge can be avoided. The next day when the sun comes up, the batteries are recharged, said Meitzler. The lithium ion batteries are expensive, he said, but he expects the prices to eventually come down. U.S. lithium grade is the best, he added. Meitzler is the winner of a SunPower Intelegent Award for best installation nationwide and has twice been a runner-up. For consumers, he said, its vital to know how a solar system will be installed and it should blend in so its not an eyesore. Adding solar can increase the value of a property, he noted, and solar financing is available. Meitzler has trained firemen in the San Diego Fire Department on solar safety and provided teleconference training for building inspectors with the City of Los Angeles. He said he is often contacted to provide training. Originally from Pennsylvania, Meitzler has lived in California since 1990 and moved to Ramona 11-1/2 years ago. He and his wife, Michelle, are the parents of 2017 Ramona High School graduate Lauren Meitzler, who will be attending Austin Peay University in Tennessee on a softball scholarship. Meitzler also has two older daughters, Tara and Kristina. For more information on BMC Solar, call Meitzler at 858-776-4857 or email brianm@bmcsolar.com. I continue to be amazed at the discussion around health care. Even though the Senate version of Trumpcare has failed, you should still be worried. The American people have been ignored. The bill was developed behind closed doors by a small group of Senate insiders. No women were allowed in the clubhouse. No public hearings were held, no expert testimony was heard. The bill was opposed by too many professional groups to list here, but among them: American Medical Association, American Hospital Association, American Association of Medical Colleges, American College of Physicians, American Academy of Family Physicians, American Academy of Pediatrics, AARP, American Heart Association, American Lung Association. Now, the president and Senate want to punish the country by simply repealing the Affordable Care Act without a replacement. If you are lucky enough to be 65 or older, you are covered by socialized medicine its called Medicare. Medicare is a big government program funded by three sources: the federal governments general fund, everyones payroll taxes, and monthly premiums. Of course, Medicare costs the government so much money because it insures only old people who are more prone to health problems than young people. Yet, anyone who knows anything about health insurance, indeed, any kind of insurance, knows that the greater the spread of risk, the cheaper insurance will be. So, for health insurance to be successful, there has to be a mix of healthy people and not so healthy people, young people and old people. It might seem unfair that a healthy person pays the same for health insurance that a sick person pays. Health insurance is inherently unfair. Here is one example of its inherent unfairness. If you work for an employer who pays part or all of your health insurance, that employer pays much more for a family than for a single person. The single person doesnt derive any additional benefit because the employer pays less. Health care is there for employees and their families to use when needed. And costs are partly contained by the spread of risk having all employees covered some healthy and some sick. Unfortunately, it appears that our leaders want to make health insurance grossly unfair. Opinions like men should not have to pay for pre-natal care or for the care of a newborn with a heart defect are selfish, cruel, and ultimately make health insurance unsustainable. It makes perfect sense for the U.S. to have universal health care and that taxes should fund it. Taxes already pay a portion of Medicare. Taxing everyone is the only way to generate enough revenue for government to provide services that the private sector cannot because it is profit driven. You pay taxes for road maintenance, law enforcement, fire protection, parks and recreation, education services that all of society benefits from. And all of society benefits from the ability of its citizens to get health care. There are 32 developed countries that have universal health care (socialized medicine). These countries fund their plans one of three ways: Single Payer where the government provides insurance for all through taxation, Two Tier where the government provides or mandates catastrophic coverage for all through taxation and individuals can purchase additional private insurance, or Insurance Mandate where the government mandates all its citizens purchase insurance from a regulated market. Not one of these 32 countries has ever tried to repeal universal health care. Why? Because it works. Why is it so difficult to imagine joining the rest of the world in providing universal health care? It is because we have elected officials who are determined to side with profiteering health insurance carriers and promulgate legislation designed to make the rich richer, keep the poor in poverty, and keep sick people from getting help. Diana Levin is a Ramona resident. The father of a five-year-old boy found abused and neglected in Mexico City in June was arrested on his way to work in Escondido and deported by immigration agents Tuesday. The father, Pascual Castro, was an unauthorized immigrant who had been deported nine times previously, most recently in 2013, according to a spokeswoman for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Castro was arrested by early Tuesday morning during what spokeswoman Lauren Mack described as a targeted enforcement action conducted by ICE Fugitive Operations. He was deported under a prior notice of removal issued by an immigration judge. Advertisement In a phone interview from Tijuana Wednesday, Castro said he was arrested on his way to work in the morning, then sent back across the border that afternoon. He said his plans now are to get to Mexico City and pick up his son, Anthony. The child was found June 27 in the home of an aunt and uncle in a Mexico City neighborhood by police responding to a tip from a neighbor. His legs were chained, he was malnourished and had been beaten, authorities said in a statement. Anthony was taken to a hospital and the two adults Castros sister and her husband were arrested and charged with abusing the child. The child is out of the hospital and now in custody of the Mexican child welfare authorities, said Victor Corzo, the acting Counsel General for Mexico in San Diego. Anthony has dual citizenship in the U.S. and Mexico. His fate is unclear and will likely be resolved through the Mexican child welfare system. He could be returned to the U.S. or placed in foster care in Mexico Castro had sought help from Republican Congressman Darrell Issa of Vista several weeks ago, after finding out the plight of his son. Castro has denied knowing anything about the abuse. Issas office told The San Diego Union-Tribune that the congressman agreed to help Castro even though he was not a U.S. citizen. In a statement on July 6 Issa said the goal was to get Anthony into a safe and stable environment where he can get the help he so desperately needs. Issa spokesman Calvin Moore did not respond to several messages seeking comment on Castros deportation Wednesday. As the spouse of a U.S. citizen Castro was trying to get legal status in the U.S and seeking to get a green card, Corzo said. The Mexican consulate has also been helping Castro over the past month, but Corzo said they were unaware that he had a deportation order pending and that Castro did not mention it. Castro and the boys mother, Dawn Sanderson, are married but no longer together. Castro was awarded custody of the boy, according to Dawn Sandersons mother, Virginia. Dawn Sanderson told the Union-Tribune in an interview in July that she planned to file court papers to get custody of Anthony, but court records dont show such a filing has been made. She said she was sentenced to 16 months in prison in 2007 after pleading guilty to receiving stolen property. She has struggled with drug addiction, and is currently on probation. She has 11 children. Sandersons current probation experience has changed her, she said, along with her sons situation. Before, I would say, I was pretty selfish and having a lot of kids instead of thinking about what was best for them, Sanderson said, Not choosing the guy I was with wisely, and now Im just more like its all about my kids. It shouldve been like that in the very beginning. Castro said that he hoped to return to the U.S. legally with Anthony in the future. Twitter: @gregmoran greg.moran@sduniontribune.com A teenager in West Bengal committed suicide after he was beaten and humiliated by his relatives for being inattentive ahead of his exams. By India Today Web Desk: A teenage boy breathed his last in a bathroom after he committed suicide. Shantanu Ruidas, 12, was a resident of Bantra in Howrah district, West Bengal, and he hanged himself from a shower at his maternal uncle's house on Tuesday afternoon. Shantanu committed suicide after he was beaten up by some relatives for not studying. "His father lodged a complaint at night against those in his uncle's house," a police officer said. advertisement His grandmother, two uncles and aunts have been arrested. According to the complaint, Shantanu used to stay with his maternal uncle to study, and was often beaten up and humiliated for petty reasons. "The father complained that the teenager was scolded and beaten up by his uncle and aunt for allegedly being inattentive ahead of his exams. He locked himself inside the washroom after that," the officer said. "We have arrested the grandmother, two uncles and two aunts of the deceased," he added. FYI || 'Don't worry, you'll understand everything', says Blue Whale suicide game creator || FYI || Man, blinded by heartbreak, commits suicide by jumping off Bandra-Worli Sea Link || --- ENDS --- Zaira Wasim did not take a question about oppression of women in Kashmir too well. By India Today Web Desk: Zaira Wasim made a mark with her portrayal of the young Geeta Phogat in Dangal, and now, the teenager is all set to wow the audience with her next, Secret Superstar. At the trailer launch on Wednesday, the Kashmir-born Zaira snapped at a reporter who described her hometown as a place where women are not given equal opportunities. The actor immediately responded with "Who told you this?" advertisement Aamir Khan, producer of Secret Superstar, and his wife Kiran Rao quickly stepped in for some damage control. While Aamir said that their work speaks for itself, Kiran said that women all over the world have not had it easy. She rued that the fight still continues to get equal rights and equal pay. In January this year, Zaira Wasim faced massive backlash for meeting Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti. She then apologised to "all those people who I've unintentionally hurt", but subsequently deleted the posts. Directed by Advait Chandan, Secret Superstar is set for a release this Diwali. OPINION: Dangal girl Zaira Wasim's apology sets a haanikaarak precedent for Kashmiri achievers ALSO WATCH: Dangal's Zaira Wasim hounded and threatened for meeting Mehbooba Mufti --- ENDS --- Valley Cottage, NY -- (SBWIRE) -- 08/03/2017 -- Future Market Insights (FMI) announced the release of a latest report titled, "POU Water Purifiers Market: MENA Industry Analysis and Opportunity Assessment 2014 - 2020". FMI estimates that the Point of Use (POU) water purifier market in Middle East and North Africa is expected to reach US$ 471 Mn at a CAGR of 7.6% from 2014 to 2020. Residential water purification system includes point of use water purifiers (POU), point of entry (POE) water purifiers, portable water purifiers. Moreover, the demand for POU water purifiers is high among consumers in MENA region as compared to POE and portable water purifiers. In the POU water purifiers market, products with high purification capabilities such as combination of reverse osmosis (RO) and Ultraviolet (UV) technologies are more preferred. It has also been observed that a majority of the demand is coming from urban centres in GCC when compared to the entire MENA region. Market Segments The POU water purifiers market is segmented on the basis of technology which includes RO, UV and media-based. RO technology based water purifiers segment is estimated to account for slightly over 40% of the total POU water purifiers market in MENA region in 2014. Media-based water purification, which is a conventional water purification technology has also witnessed technological advancements, and is estimated to display a CAGR of 9.3% during the forecast period, in terms of volume. The third technology, UV based water purifiers, is estimated to exhibit a sluggish growth rate during the forecast period due to its limitation in removing only organic contaminants from water. Additionally, UV-based water purifiers are also priced higher in comparison to media-based water purifiers and hence the product preference for UV based water purifiers is comparatively low. Request For Sample@ http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/sample/rep-ma-30 Region-wise, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA), United Arab Emirates (UAE), Turkey, Israel, Egypt and Algeria are the promising markets for POU water purifiers. In addition, a cumulative scenario has been highlighted for rest of MENA (includes smaller countries like Kuwait, Jordan etc.). Among the aforementioned regions, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is estimated to be the prominent market for POU water purifiers, followed by Turkey, due to its growing population and rapid urbanization, and increasing awareness for safe drinking water forecast period. In addition, penetration of bottled water is a challenge for the POU water purifiers market in Anatolia. As a result, Anatolia is estimated to demonstrate a sluggish growth rate in the near future. Furthermore, POU water purifiers market in UAE is anticipated to reach 149.2 thousand units by 2020, exhibiting a CAGR of 10% between 2014 and 2020. Drivers and Restraints Deteriorating water quality, rising cost of bottled water, increasing population coupled with increasing per capita income are some of the prominent factors which will catalyse the point of use water purifiers in the region. Though the MENA market is attractive in terms of absolute dollar opportunity, low awareness about safe drinking water and product unavailability are major challenges for the MENA POU water purifier market. Send An Enquiry@ http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/askus/rep-ma-30 Competitive Landscape Key players operating in the MENA water purifier market are LG, Eureka Forbes, Strauss Water, Panasonic, WaterLife and Coolplex. The report sheds light on their key growth strategies and recent developments. In addition, the report also discusses the value chain followed by multinational companies in MENA for POU water purifiers. A pair of crowdfunding campaigns have been launched in two Wayne County communities to improve daily life through placemaking. The projects are part of the Michigan Economic Development Corporation's Public Spaces Community Places placemaking initiative.Should each of the crowdfunding campaigns reach their fundraising goals, the MEDC will contribute matching grants to help make these projects a reality. Michigan-based crowdfunding platform Patronicity is hosting the campaigns.In the downriver community of Trenton, a crowdfunding campaign has been launched for the construction of the Wildlife Refuge School Ship Dock and Fishing Pier. Located at the Detroit River International Wildlife Refuge--the only international wildlife refuge in North America--the dock and fishing pier will be a 700 ft.-long dock dedicated to public space and educational programming.The dock will offer free shore fishing access to area anglers. The dock will also host Michigan Sea Grants Great Lakes school ship, providing metro Detroit schoolchildren a "living laboratory" field trip destination on the river and refuge.The crowdfunding campaign has until Aug. 31 to raise $50,000. A successful campaign will result in MEDC contributing an additional $50,000 to the project. More information is available online In the city of Wayne, a crowdfunding campaign has been launched for Bike Wayne--Downtown Bike Rack Program. The campaign aims to improve downtown Wayne through the installation of 20 custom bike racks, as well as refurbishing existing bike racks there. The money raised will also be used to promote biking. Starting in the fall and continuing through next spring and summer, pop-up bike repair and safety event programming will also be held.The bike-centric placemaking initiative aims to both improve the health and wellness of Wayne residents while also increasing foot traffic in downtown Wayne.The crowdfunding campaign has until Aug. 31 to raise $5,500. A successful campaign will result in MEDC contributing an additional $5,500 to the project. More information is available online Got a development news story to share? Email MJ Galbraith here or send him a tweet @mikegalbraith When developers propose a new grocery store, restaurant, or retailer to their community of interest, things may not go as planned. The project could be delayed several times, the master plan might get rejected, residents might oppose the project, and sometimes, city officials might become difficult to work with. Thats why Oakland Countys One Stop Ready Program is looking changing the relationship between local officials and developers. Created in 2013 by Oakland County Executive L. Brooks Patterson, One Stop Ready provides local communities resources, tools, and training to promote economic development. By teaching city officials customer-friendly, solution-oriented approaches, the development process between boards and commissions is faster and more efficient. The goal is to get communities to think like an investor, says senior planner, Ryan Dividock. That could be a multinational corporation thats looking to invest and develop a site in a community all the way down to a resident looking to make improvements on their property. Program organizers held a session titled An Investors Perspective on July 26 at the Oakland County Executive Office Building in Waterford. The event was hosted by Deputy County Executive Matthew Gibb, with panelists Drew Ciora, owner of brewpub Royal Oak Brewery and restaurant Lockharts BBQ in Royal Oak and Lake Orion, Matt Kiriluk, president of real estate company Kirco, and Kyle Westberg, president and CEO of West Construction. The purpose of the meeting was to offer city officials an investors perspective on economic development and to explore ways to help build better relationships with community officials. An Investors Perspective is the second part of the programs One Stop Ready Academy, which consists of three two-hour long learning sessions. The first workshop focuses on economic context, community vision, and management structure.The third meeting is on the implementation of five practices: the pre-application process, Internet accessibility, proactive project tracking, efficient permitting processes, and business and community input. The session began with the three business owners introducing themselves and sharing with the audience how they got started in their careers. Ciora said he had very little development experience when he opened the Royal Oak Brewing Company in 1995, learning the process of running a business as they went. I found this small space off of 4th Street, and the realtor of the building was looking at me skeptically. I was only 25 or 26 at the time, so he didnt think I could pull this together at all. I went in completely blind, Ciora said. Walking into city hall, finding out what to do, finding an architect locally; it was tough. I knew we needed plans, I knew we needed a professional, but we were still kinda stumbling along. A large portion of the meeting was dedicated to the challenges of completing a project in a community that is uninterested or opposed to the development and makes the process difficult for investors and developers. Ciora said one of his most challenging projects was the development of the Lake Orion location for Lockharts BBQ. A resident of the village, he said he noticed an absence of new restaurants. When Ciora first proposed his idea to appointed officials, they were not interested, as several businesses in Lake Orion were owned by only two people. It took several years of persistence and a new village manager to turn Cioras vision into a reality. Darwin McClary, who was village manager at the time, offered Ciora the building that housed the village hall and police department. Also, the city planner and director of the Downtown Development Authority assisted the Ciora with his project, creating a downtown liquor license, a tax abatement program, and decreasing the amount of water tapping fees. Lockharts had its grand opening in 2015. I had all these champions along the way, so I never stumbled or looked around and said, Whats next?, Ciora said. It was a great experience. Kiriluk also had initial project difficulties in neighboring Orion Township. When Kirco was developing the Baldwin Commons shopping center, the site was not only in the township but also in Auburn Hills. Kiriluk said the attitudes of the two communities were completely different. At the time, Orion Township was a real bear to deal with, he said. There were people on the township board that wanted nothing to do with development and growth, and in many respects, it seemed like they went out of their way to try to put up roadblocks and stop the investment. And after that project, we had opportunities to do other things in the community, and we didnt. Kiriluk has since changed his mind about Orion Township as the community has become more open to development. Kirco is in the process of developing a senior citizen facility that is slated to open in September. Its not that you dont have development challenges, its how you deal with them, he said. Are we working together as a team to try to figure it out and create an opportunity for everybody, or are we trying to resist the progress? Westberg has also experienced challenges with his construction company. When developing the Lafayette Place Lofts in Pontiac, he had to work with two mayors and three emergency managers. Then, when West Construction was in the process of remodeling the Flagstar Strand Theatre, Westberg and his brother, Brent, had to take out loans to complete the project. Im working with lenders, bureaucrats, inspectors; theyre all going to a job and getting paid while my lifes on the line, my wifes life is on the line, he said. All we want from the other side is fairness and being open and honest with us. When you start thinking of us from that realm, youre gonna come up with open arms. While all three business owners have experienced challenges in their careers, they have noticed a growing desire for development in Oakland County. Kiriluk said in the past ten years he has seen significant improvement in southeastern Michigan regarding the increase of development. This effort today, I cant thank you enough, Kiriluk said. It makes a difference. When One Stop Ready started its pilot year in 2013, Ferndale, Lyon Township, the village of Oxford, Rochester, and Wixom were the first communities to get involved. Currently, 23 Oakland County communities are participating in the program, including the additions of Orchard Lake Village, Farmington Hills, and Madison Heights last month. Also, One Stop Ready was awarded by the National Association of Counties earlier this year for Best Community and Economic Program. Dan Hunter, deputy director of economic development and community affairs, said that the program is helping communities learn and listen to each other. He recalls one of the first One Stop Ready sessions, where officials from Auburn Hills and Pontiac were continuing to have a discussion even after the meeting was over. They continued to talk, and finally they left the building, Hunter says. I came out 20 minutes later, and they're still talking. I dont think communities often do that. This gives them a vehicle to learn from others that are interested in making things better. Regina Jaeger The Kalamazoo-based wealth management firm Greenleaf Trust has hired a new trust relations officer. Regina Jaeger will be responsible for providing trust services to individuals and nonprofit organizations in her role as Vice President and Trust Relationship officer. Jaeger has more than 29 years of experience providing trust administration estate settlement, investment management services, foundation and banking solutions for trust and wealth management clients. She has joined Greenleaf Trusts Northern Michigan team. Jaeger graduated with honors from Davenport University and is also a graduate of Cannon Trust School. She is a Certified Trust and Financial Advisor. Were delighted that Regina Jaeger is joining our trust and wealth management team, says John Welch, Senior Vice President and Managing Director of Greenleaf Trust Northern Michigan. Her reputation for providing the highest levels of client-focused service is well known and widely admired throughout our area. Her core values of integrity, fiduciary excellence, continuous improvement, and always putting the needs of the client first perfectly align with our own. Greenleaf Trust has offices in Kalamazoo, Grand Rapids, Birmingham, Traverse City, and Petoskey. It is an independent Michigan-chartered trust-only bank, exclusively focused on wealth management, trust and estate administration, and administration of company-sponsored retirement plans. Source: Greenleaf Trust Kalamazoos beer scene is no secret, but it isnt all about happy hour around these parts. The citys independent coffee scene is without question brewing up something special.While the longest-running independent company in Kalamazoo, Water Street Coffee Roaster , continues to expand its footprint -- having recently opened its fifth location and first drive-thru only locale at 2603 S. Sprinkle Road July 20 -- two other shops are busy making their marks on the scene in 2017. Walnut & Park Cafe opened its doors this March, and Civil House Coffee , owned by Rhino Media founder Kevin Romeo, will pour its first cupst of coffee this fall at 344 N. Rose."The coffee community in Kalamazoo is developing really quickly," says Mack Chrisman, designer and manager for Civil House, who returned to his hometown of Kalamazoo recently after a few years honing his craft in the thriving independent roaster scene in Nashville. "The revitalization of the downtown area has changed things so much and the scene is becoming really awesome."A big part of that scene is Black Owl , a subsidiary of Kalamazoo Coffee Company, which was named the best coffee shop in Michigan by MLive.com in 2015.Other shops dotting the Kalamazoo landscape include Caffe Casa, Somethings Brewing, Coexist Cafe, Bright Eyes, Fido Motors Cafe and Fourth Coast Cafe & Bakery. The growth in local spots to grab a coffee or linger over a speciality drink comes at a time when national specialty coffee sales are increasing by 20 percent per year and account for nearly 8 percent of the $18 billion dollar U.S. coffee market. Independent coffee shops equal $12 billion in annual sales.And while one might think the burgeoning local scene creates a competitive atmosphere, Katie Hurst, marketing director for Water Street, finds the exact opposite to be true. "Its a really tight-knit community," she says. "I find that coffee is very community-driven and that people like to learn from one another. I think anything that adds to our community, in general, is a positive thing, especially when it comes to variety."When it comes to working together, Chrisman has plans to bring some of the area coffee shops even closer together once Civil House opens its doors.Part of his vision involves monthly meet-ups where they can come together and create a dialogue where they begin to share whats working for them, whats not, discuss each others niches and truly learn from one another.He also plans to extend that dialogue to customers through regular classes that focus on education -- something Water Street also began doing in 2016."Through the years, Ive sort of developed this vision of introducing specialty coffee in a way that is not off-putting or snobby," Chrisman says. "The real issue, Ive found, is how people educate their customers."One of our goals is to communicate effectively and help the customer to understand what coffee is, how it works and what you have to do to brew correctly actually understanding that coffee at its most consistent is really inconsistent."That type of education, Hurst has found, not only helps create a more educated customer, but brings the community closer together and gives folks the proper tools to take home coffee brewing to the next level."Coffee I think is one of those things that I think is pretty basic but at the same time has a huge potential to be really dynamic," Hurst says. "For some people, its just a cup of coffee, but for a lot of people that are getting into coffee and the industry, its about a lot more than that. Its become a hobby for some people."People are starting to look at it the way some people look at beer. They are taking it more serious and want to understand where it comes from and how to do pour overs and other things at home."While places like Civil House and Water Street may be focused more on the overall coffee experience, Walnut & Park, located at 322 W. Walnut St., has built its business on an entirely different model.Dont be mistaken, the shop offers everything one would find at another coffee shop and is still about delivering a memorable customer experience, but more than that their focus has been on delivering second chances.A project of the Kalamazoo Probation Enhancement Program (KPEP) a private, nonprofit residential and outpatient correctional rehabilitation program aside from a few people in managerial positions, the staff is entirely made up of former prisoners, probationers, and parolees that are graduates of KPEPs culinary arts program and looking to transition back into society."It definitely goes beyond being just a coffee shop," says William DeBoer, president and CEO of KPEP. "We are teaching people real skills, such as how to be at work on time and how to provide great customer service. Weve constantly been getting compliments on our staffs attention to detail and the customer service provided, and thats all part of the training. You go into a lot of coffee shops and restaurants and the customer service is really lacking. And that (good customer service) is one of the main things employers want."Going beyond providing that training-ground for KPEP graduates, many employees have transitioned into full-time jobs at Walnut & Park, and one of the cool things about it, DeBoer points out, is that many customers have no idea about the backgrounds of their employees."To them, they found the coffee shop on Google or MapQuest, and its just another coffee shop," he says. "The service is good, the coffee is good, and thats it. We have materials on the counter that tell you who we are but we dont put it front and center. Were a business."The business, led by two former Water Street managers, Tara Staten and Casey Grisolono, features Water Street coffee and gives area residents and commuters coming into Kalamazoo from the south a place to enjoy a nice breakfast or lunch, as well as top-notch coffee in the Vine neighborhood."Were mostly about the program," DeBoer says. "But were also about being good neighbors in community. We run a tough business. Talking about people getting out of prison and transitioning back into the community is not popular sometimes, and we have to be sensitive to the community we serve, but at the end of the day, we offer a one of a kind program in the State of Michigan and also offer great coffee." Sen. Bam: Senate will ensure free tuition in SUCs is funded Sen. Bam Aquino assured that the Senate will find ways to fund the P25 billion needed to implement the free tuition in state universities and colleges (SUCs) even if the measure is vetoed by President Duterte. "Nag-commit na si Sen. Loren Legarda, ang chairperson ng Committee on Finance, na hahanapan ito ng pondo para sa 2018 budget para sa batas na ito. Hindi natin poproblemahin ito para sa 2018 budget dahil hahanapan natin ang pondo," the senator explained. Sen. Bam Aquino also clarified that the free college education will need a budget of P25 billion and not P100 billion as claimed by a Malacanang official. "Iyong numero na binibigay ng Department of Budget and Management (DBM), masyado pong malaki iyon," Sen. Bam said in a radio interview. "Sa amin sa Senado, ang computation namin na kailangan sa batas na ito ay P25 billion." Amid speculations that President Duterte will veto the measure, Sen. Bam remains optimistic that the Chief Executive will sign it into law. "Naniniwala ako na pipirmahan ni Pangulong Duterte ang panukalang ito. Kung priority mo ang edukasyon, popondohan mo ito," said Sen. Bam. The Universal Access to Quality Tertiary Education Act will automatically lapse into law on August 5 if not vetoed by the Chief Executive. As principal sponsor and co-author, Sen. Bam defended the bill in plenary debates and interpellation during his stint as chairman of the Committee on Education. He also stood as co-chairman of the Senate delegation to the bicameral conference committee, together with new Committee on Education chairman Sen. Francis Escudero and members Sens. Sherwin Gatchalian and Ralph Recto. If passed into law, students will start to enjoy free education in state universities and colleges (SUCs), local universities and colleges (LUCs) and vocational schools under the Technical Education and Skills Development Authority (TESDA) starting the second semester of school year 2017-18. Aside from tuition fees, the government will also shoulder miscellaneous and other fees. Under the law, scholarship grants will also be made available to students of both public and private college and universities. It also provides a loan program, where students can apply for financing for other education expenses. Sen. Bam: Change must come in transport sector Sen. Bam Aquino urged the Land Transportation Franchising and Regulatory Board (LTFRB) to prioritize the safety and commuting experience of the riding public and look out for the welfare of drivers of public utility vehicles. "What we want to achieve is fairness - fairness for Grab and Uber, for taxi operators, for drivers, and most especially for the riding public," Sen. Bam said during the hearing of the Committee on Public Services on transport network vehicle services (TNVS) such as Grab and Uber. According to Sen. Bam there is a need to develop a brand-new regulatory framework which govern transportation network companies (TNC), TNVS and even taxis. "May mga grupo na magkaiba yung teknolohiya, magkaiba yung pinanggalingan, pero pareho yung mga serbisyo. So yung isa kong sinisikap mahanap is yung distinction," said Sen. Bam, who filed Senate Bill No. 696 or the Rideshare Support Company Act. "Ang puwedeng maging distinction natin is owner-driven ride sharing versus fleet operators," Sen. Bam added. "Maybe we can have fewer regulations for owner-driven vehicles dahil hindi sila nakakadagdag sa congestion ng kotse at makakabawas pa sa trapiko. Then we can decide on appropriate regulations for fleet operators of Grab, Uber and even taxis," said Sen. Bam. Sen. Bam also encouraged LTFRB to work with taxi operators to help them improve their services, whether it's by using a phone-based application for pricing versus taxi meters or by rethinking existing regulations. "Instead of weighing down on TNCs and TNVs, maybe we need to work on improving the taxi services in the country," suggested Sen. Bam. Nancy to DBM: Help us find a mathematical solution to kickstart free tuition in SUCs ...appeals to President Duterte not to veto bill Senator Nancy Binay today called on the Department of Budget and Management (DBM) to help the Senate in finding ways to initially subsidize tuition of students in state colleges and universities. Binay's challenge was in response to the statement given by the DBM and Administration economic managers that free tuition in SUCs is too costly for government to shoulder. Binay said she believes that "DBM can help the Senate in finding a mathematical solution to initially kickstart the Free Higher Education Act without affecting other priority programs of the Administration." "We, in the Senate, are seriously committed in realizing every Filipino family's aspiration of a free college education. We promise to find ways to allot P15 billion in the 2018 national budget," Binay stressed. She added that DBM's statement that government cannot afford to fund free college education is obscure and out of sight. "Nagawan po ng paraan ng Senado na mabigyan ng P8 billion sa 2017 budget. Huwag naman sanang gawing dead-end ang pagbibigay ng libreng matrikula sa mga estudyante ng SUCs dahil lamang sinabi ng DBM na walong pondo para dito," Binay noted. Binay likewise appealed to President Rodrigo Duterte not to veto Senate Bill No. 1304, or the Free Higher Education For All Act. "Every parent is praying that the President would finally sign the free higher education bill. I hope the President does not veto the measure. We can't just give up without giving it a try. Sayang naman ang nasimulan na natin," Binay said. According to the senator, little sacrifices and small realignments in the 2018 national budget can redound to huge positive steps towards the Administration's goal of free tertiary education. "If P1.13 trillion outlines the government's 'Build, Build, Build' infrastructure program for 2018, then, why can't we outline a measly P15 billion to initially subsidize tuition in SUCs?" she asked. "Let's not further burden the parents of those poor but deserving students." Binay is strongly pushing for the continued funding of free tuition in state universities and colleges nationwide. Press Release August 3, 2017 De Lima seeks probe into 'Bangkay sa Bangka' modus True to her word, Senator Leila M. de Lima has urged her colleagues in the Senate to investigate the alleged sinister practice of some police officers who brazenly and callously dumped bodies of suspected drug offenders into the waters of Manila Bay. De Lima filed Senate Resolution (SR) No. 451 urging the Committee on Public Order and Dangerous Drugs to investigate Al Jazeera's reports that bodies of victims slain in the government's all-out war on drugs were being dumped in Manila Bay. "These reports point to an alarming and reprehensible defect in our criminal justice system where an apparent cycle of impunity is embedded and reinforced," she said, referring to Al Jazeera's exclusive news report aired last July 28. "Unscrupulous law enforcement agents, who are emboldened into summarily executing drug suspects rather than arresting and prosecuting them, are themselves the investigators of the crimes they have committed and are, thus in a unique position to hide their crimes by resorting to various methods of disposing of evidence," she added. In a special report on July 28, Al Jazeera, a Qatar-based media network, claims that some local fishermen were being paid by the police to throw bodies of drug suspects into the Manila Bay. The Senator earlier dubbed this modus as "Bangkay sa Bangka". The former justice secretary noted that these claims are very similar to what self-confessed Davao Death Squad (DDS) member Edgar Matobato testified in the Senate probing the unabated spate of extrajudicial and summary killings in the war on drugs. "The manner in which these bodies were disposed of is starkly similar to the way that the members of the DDS allegedly disposed of the remains of some of their victims," she pointed out. In 15 September 2016, Matobato testified that: "[d]ami na kaya minsan iyong bangka namin, kumakarga iyan ng 50 katao. Pero minsan ang nakakarga namin may pito, may walo, may lima. Binibiyak muna ang katawan pagkatapos tinatapon sa dagat at saka nilalagyan minsan iyong buhangin, minsan iyong hollow block". De Lima said the experiences recounted by the fishermen is a fulfilment of President Duterte's electoral campaign promise when he said he will fatten the fish in Manila Bay by dumping 100,000 bodies of drug users and pushers. "The gory and merciless practice recounted by fishermen in the Al Jazeera article is reminiscent of the modus operandi employed by the DDS, and the apparent fulfillment of the threat made by then Davao City Mayor Duterte," she said. The Senator from Bicol also noted that this is "not the first time that authorities have allegedly tried to impede or prohibit the detection, investigation or prosecution of a crime". On June 29, also through a special report, Reuters claimed that certain Manila police officers uses local hospitals to also hide their EJK victims. At that time, Sen. Panfilo Lacson expressed his willingness to investigate the matter. De Lima also proposed that the Senate review and amend existing laws including, Presidential Decree (PD) No. 1829 (Penalizing Obstruction of Apprehension and Prosecution of Criminal Offenders) and certain Philippine National Police (PNP) policies. "The Senate should also review existing legislations to ensure that the rights of suspects or persons subject of law enforcement operations have been observed, and that the commission of abuses and outright crimes during and after police operations are addressed and prevented from being committed with impunity," she said. De Lima also urged her Senate colleagues to review and act on her authored Senate Bill, SBN 1479, also known as the Cadaver Handling Act of 2017, which proposes to prevent authorities resorting to committing abuses and such crimes in the future. Press Release August 3, 2017 SPEECH OF SEN. FRANCIS N. PANGILINAN ON RESTORATIVE JUSTICE & DIVERSION: THE CASE OF THE JUVENILE JUSTICE & WELFARE ACT PANDANGGO HALL, MANILA HOTEL 3 AUGUST 2017 Magandang hapon po sa kanilang lahat. Thank you for inviting me to the 3rd National Family Courts Summit. This afternoon's discussion is centered on the Juvenile Justice and Welfare Act in the Philippines, also called -- sometimes with contempt -- as the Pangilinan Law. This law, Republic Act 9344, as amended, sadly has been misunderstood by many in the public. It has been criticized for allowing children guilty of crime to go scot-free when it does the opposite; it makes them accountable for their actions -- only, in ways that match their age. Many politicize and criticize the law, further perpetuating wrong information and false assumptions regarding the said law. With the law either not completely or fully implemented or wrongly implemented, children in conflict with the law continue to suffer. Many of them are abused, detained in facilities with subhuman conditions, experiencing violence in detention and being branded as criminals because this issue is muddled to misinform. In fact if I'm not mistaken, just the other week, I read an article wherein a 16-year-old who committed an offense was sent home because the law according to the report says that minors should be sent home if they commit offenses, obviously a mistake. Children will make mistakes but they need to be disciplined in a child-appropriate process and that's precisely the spirit and the intent of the Juvenile Justice and Welfare Law. I have four children: Frankie, Miel, KC, and Miguel. KC of course is already 32, Frankie is 16, Miel is 12, and our little boy Miguel is 7. Children will make mistakes. I remember bringing my son to school when he was six years old. After one week of going to school every day, that was his first week and so I checked on him, and as I brought him to school in the morning, I reminded him: Are you listening and obeying, Miguel? Do you listen to your teacher? Do you obey your teacher? And he said: Yes, Daddy. I'm always saying I'm sorry. Obviously his concept of obedience at that age, iba ho. Fankie and Miel, when they were younger, minsang hanggang sa ngayon parang aso't pusa, nag-aaway, nagtatampuhan. Just the other day, I had to referee the two. But I remember several years back, when they were, I think, 8 and 5 or 8 and 6, they were into each other's' nerves. It was noisy, they were shouting at each other. Obviously they were not being disciplined. They were misbehaving. And so they had to go through my version of a diversion program. They were grounded and the grounding was simple: The whole day today, you Frankie and you Miel will do everything together. You will eat together, you will play together, if there is siesta, you will siesta together and you will be in the same room wherever you are. You cannot be separated the whole day because I want you to learn to get along. A couple of hours later, they were laughing and joking on another. So they were grounded, they were disciplined, but they were disciplined in a child-appropriate process. So kahit sa bahay po namin, mayroon pong Juvenile Justice Law in effect. So ganito po ang ating concern about our children. Of course we don't let wrongdoings slide. Children need to be disciplined, and in a manner that is age-appropriate process. Children are prone to making mistakes. They do not yet have a solid understanding of right or wrong, or a clear foresight of the consequences of their actions. It is of course our responsibility as adults and as a community to provide them with guidance and an environment where they can grow and realize their full potential. These are precisely the reasons why the law was put into place. From 2006 when the law was enacted to 2010, however, clearly, the formative years, if there is such a thing, at least sa children, formative years 'yung first six, seven years, for the Juvenile Justice and Welfare Law, the first four years were critical years but challenging years. From 2006 to 2010, the record will show that of the 250 million pesos that should have been allocated for the law, less than 50 million actually was allocated. Napakaliit for a law that was national in scope. During those four years until 2010, the Juvenile Justice and Welfare Council only had seven full-time employees. It did not have its own office for four years. It was squatting at the Department of Justice, and you will ask why in the Department of Justice, that was another problem with the law that we had to amend in 2010. The law in 2006 provided that the Juvenile Justice and Welfare Council will be attached to the Department of Justice but headed by an undersecretary of social welfare and development. So obviously, it was schizophrenic. And that, we corrected in 2010 when we amended the law. Today, if I'm not mistaken, the Juvenile Justice and Welfare Council has a staff of over 60, so pretty much a long way from seven. Today, it is no longer an attached agency of the Department of Justice. It is now an attached agency under the Department of Social Welfare and Development. Today, there are regional Juvenile Justice and Welfare Councils, whereas before, there were none. So we have marked improvements in the law, but there are still challenges. What is the Juvenile Justice and Welfare Act? Basically, the law says children who commit offenses must be held into account in a child-appropriate process. They do not go scot-free obviously, as has been the mantra of some to condemn or criticize the law. Of course, children in a child-appropriate process should not be detained with hardened criminals. It adheres to restorative justice; rehabilitation rather than retribution. Of course there is more to the law. The two significant principles of the law are: (1) Treat children as children, adolescents as adolescents. (2)And it takes a village or a community to raise a child. Under the first principle, the law provided for age-appropriate proceedings and disposition measures. We look to science for the rationale. According to the Psychological Association of the Philippines, scientific research on adolescent development and juvenile delinquency shows that children and adolescents differ significantly from adults. Although they may be able to discern right from wrong, they are incapable to act in ways consistent with that knowledge. Why? Because at this stage, the adolescent brain is still developing and does not fully form until young adulthood. A recent study suggests that the brain of a human being is fully developed at 20 years old. Let us all try to remember how we were as teenagers. Weren't we a little more adventurous then than now? And the psychologists again have the answer why this is so: The cognitive abilities of early and middle adolescents (ages 12 to 16) are still developing and their life experiences are still limited. This makes them especially vulnerable to risky and reckless behavior. Unlike adults, adolescents are less able to consider the long-term consequences of their actions; they are less concerned about risk, and more concerned about rewards; they are more vulnerable to coercive circumstances. And they are unlikely and unable to assert their own decisions and extricate themselves from crime-prone settings. Also in a briefing during the crafting of the law, the Philippine National Police candidly admitted that children in conflict with the law are often used and abused by adults, including people in authority like rogue policemen and corrupt barangay officials, to engage in criminal activities. They are very, very vulnerable. In such situations, children are powerless. They fear retribution, do not have or are not aware of alternative actions, or they look up to or are emotionally attached to these criminal proponents. Sabi po nung iba, ngayon daw dahil sa batas na ito, ay lumalakas na ang loob ng mga menor de edad na gumawa ng krimen. But the data will show that behind children in conflict with the law involved for example, the hamog boys or the bukas kotse gang, are syndicates. Hindi ho malakas ang loob ng bata dahil sa batas na ito. Lumalakas ang loob ng mga pariwarang bata dahil mayroon silang mga backer na mga sindikato of adults who prey and take advantage of their vulnerability as children. Also, unlike adults, adolescents are more susceptible to peer pressure because at this stage, they desire for approval and belonging. Peers and adults serve as models of behavior. Peer pressure is a major factor why juvenile crimes tend to happen in groups or gangs. Sabi nga po nila, dahil ginagamit daw ng sindikato ang mga bata, kaya dapat amyendahan ang batas, Juvenile Justice and Welfare Law, para maparusahan ang mga bata. Eh ginagamit ng sindikato, bakit hindi habulin 'yung sindikato. Dahil 'pag hinuli na ang sindikato wala nang gagamit dun sa mga bata. Ang tanong ko, baka ang kaya lang nila ay bata. Ayaw ko namang isipin, eh baka kasi either kasabwat sila dun sa sindikato, o hindi kaya eh kabaro nila at mahirap banggain ang kabaro nilang sindikato. Madaling banggain as usual the marginalized, the powerless and in this case, the child in conflict with the law. When a child offender is exposed to the criminal justice system, where he or she is labeled a criminal, where he or she is exposed to criminal models, and where he or she is more likely to be abused and tortured, the child offender is more likely to establish a"criminal identity". Subsequently, this leads to more and violent crimes. PNP stats show however that less than 2% of offenses committed or crimes committed under our criminal laws are committed by minors. 98-point-plus percent are committed by adults and this is precisely a question: Why are we so hung on going against children up to nine years old when less than 2% of the crimes are committed by them. The second principle under the law is: It takes a village to raise a child. With this, the law provided for the creation of local councils for the protection of children, I don't have the data now but I assume that many of these councils are not functional or have not been created. This is a challenge. All of us would agree, who wants our children to be taken cared of by government? No one would raise his or her hand because it's not government's responsibility to take care of children. It is the parents', it is the family, and at most the extended family, the community. So we have to have community participation and involvement. The local councils for the protection of children was envisioned to be a group composed of citizens, personalities, organizations, community, Rotary, Kiwanis, Catholic Women's League, NGOs coming together and deciding, providing inputs for how children in conflict with the law maybe cared for and the issue addressed in their communities. Apart from the creation of the councils for the protection of children, the comprehensive juvenile intervention programs, community-based programs on juvenile justice and welfare, and community diversion programs. All these are meant to make children in conflict with the law accountable for their action while ensuring their rehabilitation to become useful, responsible citizens of the country. How have we done so far? In 2014, UNICEF commissioned an evaluation to assess these programs involving 15 facilities These are the Regional Rehabilitation and Youth Centers, Bahay Pag-Asa. The good news is: Most facilities provide an enabling environment for rehabilitation. There, most youth offenders were able to continue their formal schooling. Some were able to attend vocational training programs. And the residential programs were able to reshape their behavior through various spiritual, value-formation, and recreational activities. I remember one case, he was here in Manila, he was 14 years old, he was a leader of a gang, and he was involved also in the use of drugs. If the law was not in place, clearly he would have been brought to the city jail, clearly they would have filed criminal cases against him and obviously, that would have condemned him for life, as a rule. But this boy, because of the law, went through a diversion program with the ERDA Foundation. He was given the necessary skills. So from being a gang leader, he is now a sales assistant in one of the convenience stores here in Manila; a new life, ika nga. There is another case, acts of lasciviousness, a child 16 years old, when you read the case, girlfriend niya, nagkaroon siya ng relasyon, nagalit 'yung ama nung batang babae, kinasuhan ng criminal case, etc. acts of lasciviousness. If this law was not in place, he would have been tried in our regular criminal courts and obviously makukulong, city jail ulit, etc. but because of this law, he was able to go through a diversion program, he was confined and went through rehabilitation/involuntary confinement, went through training, ended up going through a course on marine/seafaring. Today, he is now a seaman. He is now providing/sending money to his parents. He would not been such without this law. Therefore this is precisely giving our young people a second chance because we all make mistakes. All of us make mistakes when we were growing up. All of us would say those mistakes don't define us or should not have defined us and that's why we are where we are today. However, the evaluators found interconnected gaps related to the legal system: delayed court proceedings due to lack of judges that specialize in these cases resulting in alleged widespread practice of pre-trial detention of children instead of rehabilitation and diversion. The gap in budget may also see the end of community-based and NGO-run programs, as few LGUs comply with the provision of the law allocating at least 1% of the barangay's IRA (or the internal revenue allotment) for these programs. The UNICEF-commissioned study thus recommended: Fully implement and adequately comply with the law and its 2013 amendment, including the allocation of sufficient funds and competent people. Things have developed and progressed, have become a little better than before in terms of the implementation of this law. In Davao region for example, when this law was passed, there was only one rehabilitation center for the youth offenders. Today, there are five. The law, in 2013 when in was amended, provided for additional close to half a billion pesos worth of funds for infrastructure building and rehabilitation centers. At the same time we must continue to close the gap between what the law provides and how the law is understood and implemented by government officials particularly the local government and also how it is understood and reported by the mass media. The truth is, more than half of the crimes committed by youthful offenders are crimes against property. And close to 90% of these offenders are actually first time offenders. Minsan lang nagkamali, kaya napakahalaga na tinututukan po natin. The recidivists, the incorrigible youth, would be around 10% of the cases yet that 10% seems to be the poster boy for the Juvenile Justice and Welfare Council. They don't talk about the 90% or the first time offenders; they're talking about those who committed serious offenses. So we have to also explain and be able to connect and communicate. I come from a big family. Nine children po kami. Ako po 'yung pang-lima. So middle-child po ako. Apat ang nauna, apat ang sumunod. Sabi nila 'pag nasa gitna, marunong bumalanse. Alam ko po ang mga kapatid ko, ako ho sabi ng nanay ko hindi daw ako kasing kulit nung mga kapatid kong lalaki, mabait daw ako. Ewan ko kung totoo. Pero ang mga bata, mausisa, maraming tanong, makulit, naughty. Different personalities, different wants, different needs, different levels of understanding. With the law not yet fully implemented, we are actually alarmed that there are proposals still to lower the age of criminal liability to nine years old. Hindi ho kami sang-ayon po rito. At least sa Senado, wala hong ganung klaseng proposal. For standing firm with children in conflict with the law, and with the law that keeps them away from adult detention centers, we have been criticized repeatedly. Somebody said that the law is the stupid 'Pangilinan law' but that's okay because I know that many young people have benefitted from this law. Many have been able to turn a new leaf. Many have better futures precisely because this law is in place. So let the critics say what they want. We have a law that has provided our people with the opportunity to move away from wrongdoing. Let us give young people who have gone astray this opportunity. Let us allow them to start anew. Let us all do our part to properly implement the Juvenile Justice and Welfare Act, as amended. Let us, as a village, do what's right for our children. Magandang hapon po sa kanilang lahat. Maraming salamat. President Trumps Justice Department is taking aim at college admissions policies that discriminate against white applicants, the New York Times reported. Its difficult to imagine a more misdirected focus by the departments civil rights division. The internal Justice Department document sought lawyers to work on investigations and possible litigation related to intentional race-based discrimination in college and university admissions. The move plays to racial resentments based on the perception that minorities enjoy an unfair advantage in higher education a perception belied by the numbers that show African Americans and Latinos remain underrepresented in the nations colleges. It also undercuts efforts by the nations more selective schools which have the challenge and luxury of choosing among a surplus of qualified candidates to take into account more than a students standardized test scores and grade point average when weighing his or her aptitude and drive. It defies the notion that the academic atmosphere is enhanced by a student body from a diversity of culture and life experiences including race and ethnicity. This is not about quotas, which are an affront to the ideal of equal opportunity. It is about taking a holistic approach to evaluating applicants and reaching out to recruit promising students who might not have otherwise had certain top-notch schools on their radar. The U.S. Supreme Court upheld such an affirmative action program at the University of Texas in a 2016 ruling. 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. In California, the UC and CSU systems have had to navigate recruitment around a 1996 voter initiative (Proposition 209) that banned preferences based on race, sex, skin color, ethnicity or national origin. Admissions of black, Latino and Native American students to UC Berkeley abruptly dropped 50 percent after Prop. 209 took effect. The UC system has since made progress underrepresented minorities accounted for 38 percent of the incoming freshmen and transfers last fall but still fails to reflect the states diversity. The danger of this Justice Department effort against reverse discrimination is that, like Prop. 209, it could have a chilling effect on higher educations commitment to address the very real and enduring opportunity gaps in American society. Tom Tarantino has a certain quality Democrats these days are craving in a candidate, particularly in the suburban Contra Costa-Alameda County district where Tarantino will file paperwork Thursday to run for the Assembly. Hes a military veteran. Im looking for my next mission, Tarantino, 39, told me this week in San Francisco, where he works as a policy manager for Twitter. Democrats find the vet part of his bio particularly alluring in the Donald Trump era because veterans connote images like stability and service to country desirable characteristics in a hyper-partisan time when 6 in 10 voters find the administration to be running chaotically, according to this weeks Morning Consult/Politico poll. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee is actively recruiting veterans to run for Congress next year, and their national security backgrounds can be attractive to independent voters. Among the first-time vet candidates running in California is retired Navy SEAL Josh Butner, who is challenging incumbent Rep. Duncan Hunter in a very Republican Southern California district. The leading example for Democrats is retired Marine Lt. Col. Amy McGrath, who just launched her campaign in a deeply red Kentucky congressional district that Trump carried by 15 points. In her race against incumbent GOP Rep. Andy Barr, who won last year with 61 percent of the vote, she cites the 89 combat missions she flew. But dont write McGrath off as political cannon fodder until you check out the campaign video she dropped this week featuring her in a flight jacket standing on the tarmac. Some Democrats a party still in search of a unified message consider the videos closing line a template for 2018. This is my new mission: to take on a Congress full of career politicians who treat the people of Kentucky like theyre disposable, McGrath says in the ad. Some are telling me a Democrat cant win that battle in Kentucky, that we cant take back our country for my kids and yours. Well see about that. Key phrase there: my new mission. Tarantino used the mission message several times in describing why hes running. He grew up in San Anselmo, a working-class kid in a wealthy town his mom cleaned houses and his dad worked blue-collar jobs before signing up for the Army Reserves during his first year at the College of Marin. He served 10 years, including time in Bosnia and Iraq. But when he left the Army, he had the same experience as many other vets: I couldnt find a job. Tarantino eventually connected with the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, one of the more powerful veterans advocates in Washington, rising to become a top aide to the organizations co-founder, Paul Rieckhoff. Tarantino testified before Congress more than a dozen times and was influential in getting benefits for veterans. Rieckoff described Tarantino as a star, and said he is part of a wave of about 100 post-9/11 veterans running for office and split roughly equally between Democrats and Republicans. Part of it is Trump, and people are upset at some of the things hes said and done, Rieckoff said of why the veterans are putting themselves forward. And part of it is that they see all the dysfunction in politics and they want to help. Theyre problem-solvers. Theyre trained to get (stuff) done. Tarantino will have challenges taking on incumbent Assemblywoman Catharine Baker, R-Dublin, who won with 56 percent of the vote last fall and enjoys a reputation as one of the more bipartisan members of the Legislature. (She has held joint town hall meetings with Democratic state Sen. Steve Glazer, D-Orinda, for example.) Plus, Tarantino just moved to the district in November. He will marry a Walnut Creek physician this month. But with Democrats holding a 12-point advantage in voter registration in Bakers district, its a huge target, Bill Wong, political director for Assembly Democrats told me. Its the only Bay Area district held by a Republican. We were way off message in previous attempts to win the seat, he said. Perhaps a veteran on a mission can help. Every time theres a new development related to the investigations of the Trump campaign colluding with Russia during last years campaign, people ask: When is Trump going to be impeached? So I asked a few people who have seen the evidence that we havent: Californians who serve on the Senate and House intelligence committees investigating the matter. Heres what they said: Sen. Dianne Feinstein, member of the Senate Intelligence Committee: Not close. Recent press reports concerning the president are very worrisome, including stories that he may fire the attorney general and even pardon himself. Those are the kinds of actions that could lead Congress to take a serious look at impeachment. But remember, the House and Senate are controlled by Republicans, and both chambers require the majoritys willingness to advance impeachment proceedings. Right now, very few Republicans are willing to stand up to the president. Sen. Kamala Harris, member of the Senate Intelligence Committee: I will not at this point ask for or call on the impeachment of the president of the United States without having more facts and evidence that would be the grounds for that. Rep. Jackie Speier, D-San Mateo, member of the House Intelligence Committee: Until at least 24 Republican House members become disgusted by the presidents incompetence and bullying, or at least feel that he is threatening their re-election, impeachment will not occur. The House needs a simple majority vote to impeach the president, and then the Senate needs a two-thirds vote to remove the president from office. I think it is more likely that President Trump will resign. Its clear that the job is too much for him. Joe Garofoli is The San Francisco Chronicles senior political writer. Email: jgarofoli@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @joegarofoli Steelblue and Perkins + Will The purchase of home-grown Anchor Brewing by Japanese beverage giant Sapporo Group comes while Anchors plans to expand on the San Francisco waterfront are hazier than an unfiltered IPA. In 2013, the Potrero Hill brewer announced it would open a second facility within historic Pier 48, just south of Mission Creek, as part of a larger development by the San Francisco Giants. There was talk of 200 employees spread across three production shifts, accompanied by a museum and restaurant and public tours emphasizing Anchor and its heritage. Cassidy Deline drafted behind a bus as she headed east on Market Street, then flowed into the stream of fellow bicyclists jockeying for safe space on the edges of a 9-San Bruno, a 21-Hayes and an F-line streetcar as they hit the light at Fifth Street. Deline wouldnt miss having to navigate the moving Muni maze as she rides her bike twice daily between her Mission District home and her job in the Financial District. Sparing her and thousands of other bicyclists the daily ordeal is one of the main goals of a $604 million redo of Market Street that the city hopes to undertake starting next year. I think its awesome, its really great, Deline, 31, said Wednesday of the citys plan. To be honest, I dont really think cars want to be on Market Street anyway. Cars, and their drivers, wouldnt have a choice under the plan that city agencies released Tuesday and that still must be approved by the Board of Supervisors. Except for taxis and commercial vehicles, automobiles would be banned from Market between the Embarcadero and 10th Street. No exception for Uber, Lyft and other ride-hailing outfits. Most of all, the plan is meant to make Market Street safer for the growing number of bicyclists and pedestrians. Muni would have its own lane for buses and streetcars. Sidewalks would be extended to create bike lanes that would be separate from both buses and pedestrians. Count 32-year-old Leia Rollag as someone the city hopes to win over with the street redesign. She rides her bike to work now, but only occasionally. I was scared to ride my bike to work every day, Rollag said as she cycled up to the door of her startup office on Market. I still dont every day. It can be so congested. The few car drivers who still take Market largely shrugged at the plan to overhaul the 2.2 miles of Market from Embarcadero to Octavia Boulevard. Since the city banned left turns onto Market between Eighth and Third streets in 2015, bikes and buses often outnumber private cars downtown. Most of the cars that still ply Market belong to drivers for ride-hailing companies. Some of those motorists shrugged off the possible change as not much of a change at all. John Leibbrand of San Francisco has driven for Uber for two years and said he generally avoids picking up passengers on Market Street because he doesnt want to be fined for breaking the 2015 rule. Of the citys new plan, he said, It is what it is already. Street redos in other parts of San Francisco have angered business owners, who said their customers disappeared along with the parking spaces that the city eliminated to create bike and bus lanes. Thats not an issue on Market, where theres no street parking downtown, but some owners worried that the construction itself could drive people away. Tiana Narruhn, a bartender at Sutter Station Tavern on Market near Sutter Street, said her business depends on foot traffic. There may not be much of that for a while once construction gets under way, as the citys plan is to rip up Markets red-brick sidewalks and replace them with concrete pavers that are less slippery in the rain. Theres a million other bars in the city, especially in downtown, where its quieter and more accessible than a construction zone, Narruhn said. But theres a potential upside, too, she said: Construction workers like to drink, right? Narruhn doesnt use her car to get to work, but the owner of the nearby Miss Tomato Sandwich Shop does, and hes worried. Its a very bad idea, Nabeel Abdallah said. What if youre a business owner and you want to use your own private car to drop off something when its busy? It would be harder for me to run my business without access to my car. Abdallah recalled that when San Francisco hosted the Super Bowl in 2016, Market Street east of Beale Street was shut down. It was a hassle, he said. Business owners were given permits to drive on streets at certain times, but it wasnt the same as being able to drive up whenever a delivery was ready. Santiago Mejia/The Chronicle Avtar Khalsa, who runs the Dosa Brothers South Indian food stand at Market and Montgomery streets, said that as long as city officials communicate with businesses about the Market Street overhaul and try to work with them, everything should be fine. We are open to working something out, especially for such an awesome idea, Khalsa said. Ive seen at least six people slammed with car doors as theyre biking. If it was a peaceful environment here, it would be better for the city in a lot of ways and our business, too. Sarah Ravani is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: sravani@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @SarRavani Concord Police Department Police are seeking the publics help in identifying and apprehending a suspect who fired a flare gun into another mans face in Concord, nearly blowing the victims lip off, officials said Wednesday. The attack occurred in late June on Willow Pass Road near the Interstate 680 interchange, officials said. When progressive candidate Rafael Mandelman released his first financial reports in the race to represent San Franciscos District Eight, one line item caught the attention of several city officials. Mandelman paid $10,000 to political consultant Nathan Allbee, who is currently a full-time legislative aide to Supervisor Hillary Ronen. The disclosure prompted questions from board clerk Angela Calvillo, who said she confronted Allbee after hearing talk in City Hall. I asked were you performing this (campaign) work as a legislative aide? Calvillo said. He said no. Although it is common for city staff to do stints working for political campaigns, the clerk and the city attorney have strict rules to ensure that this election work does not use city resources or interfere with their taxpayer-funded jobs. City Attorney Dennis Herrera publishes a memo for city officers and employees each year, laying out restrictions on political activity. It forbids all officials and contractors from using city resources including staff time, computers or email systems to advocate for or against any candidate or ballot measure. It also bans civil servants from soliciting political donations, even outside of work. Neither Ronen nor Allbee had reported Allbees consulting work to Calvillo because they said he left Mandelmans campaign at the end of May and started his position in Ronens office on June 1. He filed a statement with the Ethics Commission to officially terminate his consulting work on June 26. There was no overlap, Ronen said, adding that she had asked Allbee to fill in for three months after losing her former aide, Natalie Gee. A new aide, Amy Beinart, will start in September and replace Allbee. Allbee said that most of the concerns about his campaign work were coming from the office of Supervisor Jeff Sheehy, who is running against Mandelman in the June primary. The supervisors have a lot riding on that election, since it could tip the balance toward the progressives. Sheehy was unavailable for comment Wednesday, but his campaign consultant, Mark Mosher, said the questions about Allbees political activity originated from other supervisors offices. Several supervisors were irritated when Ronen asked for $150,000 to hire a fourth legislative aide during the budget process a request that her colleagues shot down. 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. Mandelman said Allbee quit the campaign in May and might return after his legislative job ends in the fall. Rachel Swan Ban no more? San Franciscos ban on flavored tobacco might soon get put to voters, possibly in November. A coalition of immigrant grocers and vaping advocates funded by the R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. gathered nearly 34,000 signatures to contest the ordinance. If 19,040 signatures are validated, the Board of Supervisors would have to repeal the law or put a referendum on the ballot. Voters would get to weigh in either in the June primary or in a special election this fall. Rachel Swan Email: cityinsider@sfchronicle.com, rswan@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @sfcityinsider @rachelswan For years, U.S. companies have been saving money by offshoring jobs hiring people in India and other distant cubicle farms. Today, some of those jobs are being outsourced again in the United States. Nexient, a software outsourcing company, reflects the evolving geography of technology work. It holds daily video meetings with one of its clients, Bill.com, where team members stand up and say into the camera what they accomplished yesterday for Bill.com, and what they plan to do tomorrow. The difference is, they are phoning in from Michigan, not Mumbai. Its the first time weve been happy outsourcing, said Rene Lacerte, chief executive of Bill.com, a Palo Alto bill payment-and-collection service. Nexient is a domestic outsourcer, a flourishing niche as some U.S. companies pull back from the idea of hiring programmers a world away. Salaries have risen in places like South Asia, making outsourcing there less of a bargain. In addition, as brands pour energy and money into their websites and mobile apps, more of them are deciding that there is value in having developers in the same time zone, or at least on the same continent. Many domestic outsourcers are private, little-known companies like Rural Sourcing, Catalyte, Eagle Creek Software Services and Onshore Outsourcing. But IBM, one of the countrys foremost champions of offshore outsourcing, has announced plans to hire 25,000 more U.S. workers in the next four years. As a result, the growth of offshore software work is slowing, to nearly half the pace of recent years. The nature of work is changing, said CEO Vishal Sikka of Infosys, an Indian outsourcing giant. It is very local. And you often need whole teams locally, a departure from the offshore formula of having a project manager on-site but the work done abroad. Its not enough to have people offshore in India, he added. Infosys announced in May that it plans to hire 10,000 workers in the United States over the next two years, starting with centers in Indiana and North Carolina. The offshore industry is not imperiled, analysts say. But from 2016 to 2021, the offshore services industry will have average yearly growth of 8 percent, the research firm IDC estimated. The rate in the previous five years was 15 percent. Domestic sourcing is here to stay, and its going to grow rapidly, said Helen Huntley, an analyst at the research firm Gartner. The first wave of Internet-era digital change in business, starting in the 1990s, focused mainly on automating back-office tasks like payrolls and financial reporting. The software involved was a collection of huge programs maintained by armies of engineers. The Internet allowed that work to be sent to low-wage nations, especially India. That brought the rise of the big outsourcing companies like Tata Consultancy Services and Infosys. Offshore services companies still excel at maintaining the software that runs the essential back-office systems of corporations. But today, companies in every industry need mobile apps and appealing websites, which can be made smarter with data and constantly updated. That software is best created by small, nimble teams, working closely with businesses and customers not shipped to programmers half a world away. Nexient, which has its headquarters in the East Bay city of Newark, has three delivery centers in the Midwest: in Ann Arbor, Mich.; Okemos, Mich.; and Kokomo, Ind. It employs 400 people, up from 250 two years ago, and plans to hire a few hundred more during the next year, Mark Orttung, the companys chief executive, said. The companys business model is fairly typical for onshore companies. On projects, it will send members of a team to the client for a couple of weeks to study the business and meet their counterparts. Bill.com even interviewed and shared in the selection of five Nexient engineers who would work on the joint team. Lacerte of Bill.com had farmed out technology work over the years, but the headaches of navigating time zones, cultures and language often outweighed the cost savings. Those problems went away when he hired a domestic outsourcer. Nexient has set up its centers away from the coastal high-tech hubs, like the Bay Area and New York, to tap skilled people who want jobs in the technology economy without leaving the Midwest, where living costs are far less. Monty Hamilton, a former Accenture consultant, took over Rural Sourcing in 2009, when it had just a dozen employees. Today, the company has 300 workers in four delivery centers: in Albuquerque, N.M.; Augusta, Ga.; Jonesboro, Ark.; and Mobile, Ala. The payroll will reach about 400 people by the end of the year, Hamilton said. Every business now realizes its a digital business, he said. They need technical help, and thats really driven the demand for our U.S.-based talent. Politics seem to be playing a role, too. The U.S. onshore companies say they are seeing a postelection spike in client inquiries, as President Trump lobbies businesses to create more jobs in the United States and seeks to curb immigrant work visas. Air Quality Tracker Check levels down to the neighborhood Ratings for the Bay Area and California, updated every 10 minutes The election has brought a lot of attention to these issues and to us, Orttung said. But nobody buys because of that. Rising labor costs abroad also make domestic sourcing more attractive. A decade ago, Hamilton said, an American software developer cost five to seven times as much as an Indian developer. Now, he estimates, the standard billing rate for his engineers is $60 to $70 an hour, compared with $30 to $35 in India. But the sales pitch made by onshore companies is not about raw labor costs. Instead, they claim the ability to deliver excellent work more efficiently than the offshore providers and less expensively than large technology services companies. Cambia Health Solutions, which has its headquarters in Portland, Ore., is a health insurer with 2 million members. In recent years, it has moved beyond insurance to provide consumers with online tools to shop for doctors and specialists, for example, and to sort through drug options based on effectiveness, prices and user reviews. In two years, Cambia Health has cut its use of an offshore outsourcer in India by half, said Laurent Rotival, the companys chief information officer. And the insurer has enlisted the help of Catalyte, an onshore outsourcer. They can ramp up quickly, Rotival said. Catalyte, in Baltimore, has doubled its workforce in the last two years, to 300 people. To accommodate rapid growth, Catalyte is scouting locations for two new centers, which the company hopes to open this year, said founder Michael Rosenbaum. Training is a vital capability for all the onshore companies, but few have gone as far as the Techtonic Group in Boulder, Colo. Once a committed offshore outsourcer, Techtonic has made nurturing homegrown talent the centerpiece of its business. In 2014, it set up a training academy that feeds graduates into its Department of Labor-approved apprenticeship program for software engineers. In the past couple of years, 30 people have gone through the program, which lasts six to nine months. Techtonic has hired 90 percent of the graduates, and many later became employees of its corporate customers, starting at salaries of $65,000 to $75,000. Techtonic has an ambitious expansion plan, adding 10 cities in the next three years and hiring 100 developers in each, said CEO Heather Terenzio. American industry has relied too much on overseas technology workers and neglected the potential talent here, she said. Steve Lohr is a New York Times writer. A woman whose killing in San Francisco prompted a tense 15-hour standoff between the suspect and police was identified Thursday as the 76-year-old mother of the alleged gunman, who officials said ended the crisis by turning the gun on himself. Martha Alfaro was shot in the back by her 52-year-old son, who remains hospitalized, at about 11:45 p.m. Sunday on 15th Street near Corona Heights Park, authorities said. Officers responding to reports of shots fired were able to extract her from the scene and transport her to San Francisco General Hospital, where she died. Her son, whose name has not been released, barricaded himself inside the home, still armed with the handgun used in his mothers death, police said. Officers from the crisis-hostage negotiation team worked to talk the son into surrendering peacefully, a process that continued into Monday afternoon. Police said he stumbled out of the home at 2:45 p.m., bleeding from a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the chest. Neighbors said they heard two shots just before the man emerged. He was taken to a hospital with injuries that were considered life-threatening. His condition Thursday was not known. After the man was in custody, a shelter-in-place order for nearby blocks remained in effect as a bomb squad swept the house for possible explosives, but officers found no other threats. 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. Police said no shots were fired by San Francisco officers. Officials have not discussed possible motives in the case. Anyone with more information was urged to call the San Francisco Police Department anonymous tip line at (415) 575-4444, or text a tip to TIP411 with SFPD at the beginning of the message. Vivian Ho is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: Vho@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @VivianHo Before we had children, I didnt pay attention to playgrounds. City parks were for sunbathing, for noshing on snacks while somewhere in the distance, outside of my peripheral vision, children screamed and shouted. Of course, that changed after we became parents. Now, I keep track of playgrounds within a wide radius, with the avidity I once reserved for the latest restaurants and bars. I know if the playgrounds are gated, if theres a splash pad, if theres a paved path for riding scooters, if theres a zip line or a climbing structure that doubles as modern art. In the late 19th century, the first public playgrounds appeared in Germany, followed by Boston in 1886. By the early 20th century, playgrounds offered welcome public space to get children out of tenements and off the streets. Nowadays, whether in cities or suburbs, they are vital public spaces, where the community comes together and children test their strength and their daring, and learn how to play with others. The twins are about to turn 6 and will age out of the 0-5 tot lots, though for years, theyve beelined for the big kid play structures. Now we have to remind them to be careful, to avoid knocking over the little ones on the playground the little ones they used to be. How quickly the years have gone by! In truth, hours at the playground can drag on, and some parents try to get creative to relieve their boredom. Ive witnessed a father pushing his baby in a swing; in between, he struck the yoga warrior pose. In other moments, exhausted from juggling work and child-rearing, all you want to do is sink down onto the nearest bench and surreptitiously check your email while your kids shout, Watch me! Going somewhere new keeps it interesting for the entire family, and on a recent weekend, we hit three different playgrounds around the Bay Area. At Lake Merritt in Oakland, the twins rode their scooters, excited by the profusion of geese, ducks and pigeons, before jumping onto the play structure. To my amazement, Didi swung hand over hand on the monkey bars, which hed been too timid to attempt until then. I could tell he was a little scared too, yet also proud hed moved beyond his limits and so was I. The next day, we visited the newly renovated Mountain Lake Park in San Francisco, on the edge of the Presidio. It was sunny, though fog banked the nearby Golden Gate Bridge. Its a $3 million playground! I said, trying to impress the twins. They didnt care. They loved the wide concrete slide, and clambered over what looked like a giant pile of logs while my husband and I picnicked with our friends. Rounding out the weekend, we played in Dimond Park in Oakland, which was hosting a free performance by Circus Bella. Under the shady oak trees, the twins giggled and marveled at the acrobat climbing a pole, and another who spun a table end-over-end with her feet. Afterward they raced around with my cousins children on the playground, hitting buttons on a beeping orange console. I asked my cousin how long our kids would still want to go to the playground. Third grade? Fourth? We didnt know, because our children havent yet reached that stage. The upper age range listed on some structures is 12 the seventh grade but I dont know how many middle schoolers are still on the playground. I know I wasnt. Thats a great pity. One notable exception is the Magical Bridge Playground in Palo Alto, a socially inclusive playground designed for all abilities and all ages, where grannies and grandkids alike cavort on the equipment. Earlier this year, the Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors set aside $10 million to go toward accessible playgrounds modeled after Magical Bridge. Theres a hunger for play that lasts long beyond childhood and by that, I mean activities that make you feel like a kid again. Consider the popularity of the America Ninja Warrior television show, in which competitors hoist, jump, run and climb through a giant obstacle course thats superhumanly tough yet also seems fun. At Burning Man later this month, attendees will don glittery costumes and ride their bikes around the playa in Nevada. As our children climbed onto a Dimond Park play structure, my cousin told me about the time her mother brought her and her siblings to a new playground. They were all adults by then, without kids of their own yet. Their mother looked at them expectantly, as if to say, Go play! My cousins complied. The mothers were giving us dirty looks, she said with a laugh. At that moment, we noticed a father hanging upside down by his feet on a pole, like the circus acrobat wed just seen. Startling and strange, but in retrospect, Im thinking we should have joined him. Come out and play! Vanessa Hua is a Bay Area author. Her columns appear Fridays in Datebook. Email: datebook@sfchronicle.com On Monday, July 31, the day the world learned of Sam Shepards death, Phil Kaufman, whod directed him in The Right Stuff, and Jeannette Etheredge, whod presided over Tosca Cafe, clubhouse for the movies cast and crew, got together to remember their friend. Last night, said Kaufman on Tuesday, Aug. 1, Jeannette and I went to Tosca and had dinner in the back room alone, as though we were in Panchos in The Right Stuff. When Etheredge bought Tosca in 1980, we were there, said Kaufman. For Kaufman and Etheredge, Tosca, like Panchos after it burned down, is a place that doesnt exist anymore, said the director. Nowadays, the cafe/bar/hangout is a stylish restaurant. The back room was quiet when Kaufman and Etheredge arrived, and they were pretty much alone as they ate dinner and shared reminiscences of Shepard. Eventually strangers joined them in the space that used to be a pool room. They hardly knew of the whole history of Sam, Ed Harris, Chuck Yeager, the time spent in that bar, said Kaufman. He sounded wistful in accepting the disappearance of Tosca as a hangout. What he was having trouble absorbing was the loss of Shepard. My feeling is that guy who died isnt Sam. Sams the guy that I know, as Dennis Quaid said, whos still out there somewhere doing what he always did. Unlike most people who pass away and you can chronicle the events of their lives, Sam is sort of like a spirit ... in his writing, and his acting, he said. Kaufman wrote in an essay published in Variety on Tuesday that hed first laid eyes on Shepard performing at a poetry reading. Hed been having trouble casting the role of Chuck Yeager for his forthcoming movie, and although the tall actor was physically nothing like the compact pilot, Kaufmans wife, Rose, saw immediately a sense of honesty about Shepard, and a sense of presence. The director came to know Shepard as an accomplished musician, rider and rope artist who was, by his own description, half jackrabbit. For me, said the director of his old friend, hes the spirit that lived in the air. ... Hes still out there, going up. Etheredge recalled the era when The Right Stuff actors turned Tosca into Panchos, and I guess I was their Pancho. Thats what Phil always said. When they started doing the shooting of The Right Stuff, the call for the next days schedule would come to Tosca, because whoever was doing the call sheet for the next day knew that they were drinking and hanging out at Tosca. ... It was an awful lot of fun. The actors became fighter jocks, she said, and one night when someone snatched a purse at the bar, Scott Glenn and Quaid tackled the guy who stole the bag and held him down until the cops arrived. Thats the kind of thing that went around. ... And I guess that set the tone of the bar for the next 35 years. As to Shepards magnetism, Etheredge recalls a night, in the early 80s, when Bette Midler was in town performing. She came into Tosca and she was sitting on a barstool ... but she was facing out; she wasnt facing the bartenders. I remember walking by her and I said, Are you waiting for someone? And she said, Yeah, Im waiting for Sam Shepard to come in. And I thought, What a great line. Etheredge introduced an awestruck Shepard to Studs Terkel; the two spent the rest of the evening in conversation. And when Shepard was writing Fool for Love, she pointed out Billy Pearson, jockey, art connoisseur and oft-cited Herb Caen confidante. Pearson was married six times, and Etheredge suggested he might have some ideas for the playwright. The published version of Fool for Love is dedicated to Pearson. I dont believe in ghosts, said Kaufman, but he is a ghost or a spirit in some ways, just like that character he wrote about in most of his plays his father, moving around and inhabiting the minds of his kids. His voice got inside of me, as it did with a lot of people and certainly a lot of actors in his plays. The uniqueness of his voice and his spirit is still there. ALS may have destroyed his body, but the spirit is up there in the thin air. Leah Garchik is open for business in San Francisco, (415) 777-8426. Email: lgarchik@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @leahgarchik Public Eavesdropping I tried listening to my body, but its always saying doughnuts. Man to woman, walking past Happy Donuts on 24th Street, overheard by Ted Weinstein Shawna Scroggins, drummer for the band Ugly, remembers seeing only a handful of other black musicians at punk shows when she moved to the Bay Area 11 years ago. But in recent years, bands with musicians of African American, Latin, Asian and Middle Eastern descent represented in such bands as Earthbound, the Younger Lovers and SBSM, to name a few have risen to prominence and shifted the local punk scenes demographics, which lean stereotypically white- and male-dominated. All the while, Scroggins has developed a local and national network of like-minded musicians of color and is now ready to debut the Universe Is Lit, the Bay Areas first black and brown punk festival, with the help of her bandmate Titania Kumeh and Earthbounds Jade Ariana. The Universe Is Lit is scheduled to feature 26 bands and 10 DJs from across the country as well as Divide and Dissolve, who hail from Australia. The organizers goal, Scroggins explained, is to showcase bands from communities punk tends to overlook and to contextualize them in a history of black and brown avant-garde art. Theres been black and brown people playing punk in the Bay Area for decades and generations. Ive lived in Bay for 11 years, and I havent seen an event that highlights us, Scroggins says. We have this community, this space, these people here, so lets make it happen. The four-day fest takes place Thursday-Sunday, Aug. 3-6 at various venues including the Lab, an experimental music institution in the Mission District, and One Fam Community Center in West Oakland. Some shows locations will only be shared through word of mouth. Incidentally, the Universe Is Lit coincides with the mainstream punk behemoth Warped Tour, which makes its Mountain View stop on Friday, Aug. 4 with larger name and more monochromatic acts like Goldfinger, Hawthorne Heights and the Ataris. The main common thread is having a space to celebrate and thrive off of and represent black and brown weird art, says Sharmi Basu, the festivals head sound engineer. The Universe Is Lit spans a variety of experimental music genres, not just punk, and features an art show, a performance art showcase, film screenings and workshops as well as other events. Some will feature free food, self-care kits and safe sex supplies, which organizers say is their way of giving back to their community. The entire festival is donation-based and no one will be turned away for lack of funds, which, as head sound engineer Basu explains, aligns with the local punk communitys do-it-yourself attitude and radical politics. Punk is not just a genre of music, punk is a lifestyle. The heart of punk is generosity, Basu says, recalling the hospitality she experienced on her recent European tour for her electronic noise project, Beast Nest. The idea of music as a tool for liberation is another central theme to the Universe Is Lit, Ariana says. During this fraught political moment, marginalized people celebrating themselves and each other can be an act of political resistance. My daydream or wish of what the fest is like is that it feels the opposite, or different, from the world that we live in, she says. Obviously we all know there is so much (in the world) that can prevent us from being in our fullest expression, so the fests intention is to be this opportunity to move towards that. Nastia Voynovskaya is a Bay Area freelance writer. To help you navigate the Universe is Lit, the event billed as a Bay Area black and brown punk festival, Thursday-Sunday, Aug. 3-6, heres a round-up of acts not to miss: GayCay: A Los Angeles duo made up of Edgar Frias and Thaddeus Pedisich, makes frenzied, electronic punk that calls for queer liberation through pounding kick drums and wiry synths. 8:30 p.m. Friday, Aug. 4. The Lab, 2948 16th St., S.F. To listen: https://gaycay.bandcamp.com Maya Songbird: The San Francisco native promotes self-love and witchcraft with her lo-fi disco pop, which is just as surreal as it is danceable. 9 p.m. Friday, Aug. 4. The Lab. To listen: https://soundcloud.com/mayasongbird Courtesy Maya Songbird Xuxa Santamaria: Sofia Cordova and Matt Gonzalez Kirklands anti-colonial, Spanish-language synth pop is rooted in radical politics and Caribbean resistance movements. The two artists are also known for their next-level performance art pieces that incorporate dance and video. 9:30 p.m. Friday, Aug. 4. The Lab. To listen: https://soundcloud.com/xuxasantamaria The Breathing Light: Hailing from Chicago, the trio threads together elements of punk, hard core, and grunge on its EP, Light Fast, Black Power! The band also has a Tumblr, Slash Em Up, that celebrates black counterculture and resistance in all its forms. 11 p.m. Friday, Aug. 4. The Lab. To listen: https://breathinglight.bandcamp.com Divide and Dissolve: Melbournes Takiaya Reed and Sylvie Nehill drown listeners in droning heavy metal instrumentals with titles like Black Power and Black Vengeance. 7:30 p.m. Saturday, Aug. 5. Tribe, 3303 San Pablo Ave., Oakland. To listen: https://divideanddissolve.bandcamp.com Wizard Apprentice: Wizard Apprentice, a.k.a. Tieraney Carter, makes lo-fi bedroom pop, but her work also includes motion graphics, performance art, zines and U.R.L.G.U.R.L., a digital art platform for introverts. 5:30 p.m. Sunday, Aug. 6. One Fam Community Center, 1612 Seventh St., Oakland. To listen: https://wizardapprentice.bandcamp.com For a full schedule of events, visit the festivals website at www.theuniverseislit.com Nastia Voynovskaya Lawyers filed a $15 million government claim on Tuesday on behalf of walnut farmers who say they lost more than two dozen acres of land along the Feather River when the Oroville Dam spillway failed in February, causing massive flooding and destructive erosion in the area below. The claim is a precursor to a lawsuit. It alleges that the state Department of Water Resources and the Division of Safety of Dams failed to protect the property of landowners downstream of Lake Oroville. State officials did not respond to a late request for comment on the claim. If youve seen political comedian Will Durst perform before, you might have heard him give a variation on a joke about how some embarrassment of a politician has been an embarrassment of riches for Dursts own career as a satirist. Even when that politician was George W. Bush, as it was for a while in Dursts stand-up and solo shows, that punch line felt self-congratulatory and tone-deaf, as if to say, I know all of you are suffering, but this guy has been great for me! So it feels all the more inauspicious when an early line in Durst Case Scenario, which opened Tuesday, Aug. 1, at the Marsh, makes a similar crack about our 45th president as if, in these terrifying times, we could possibly care about how much hes profited as a comic. But if the opening segments of Dursts latest one-man show misfire, with lazy humor about weed, Westworld, the Giants and the Folsom Street Fair, give him some time. Eventually, Durst Case Scenario becomes something more profound: a step back from the dizzying barrage of headlines; a sharp accounting of just how bad things really are and how we got here, all the way back to the Iowa caucus, which feels like another lifetime even though it was just last year; a rage-fueled aria, shorn of any pretense or gimmick, from an unkempt man who doesnt care about niceties any more. In one of Dursts wisest lines of the night, he briefly abdicates his role as a satirist, ceding the floor to our absurd political climate itself and his audiences own image of it, of ourselves, of how history might evaluate us. It doesnt get a laugh; its too sobering. The 45th president of the United States is Donald Trump, he says, pausing for effect. Thats the joke. Stalking about the stage and taking swigs from a cup of Peets, Durst has eschewed his usual suit for an untucked oxford and T-shirt that reads mildly nauseous. Hed read like a batty recluse, except for his easy informality with his audience and his use of an Algebra I-style overhead projector, which he uses to draw graphs and show unfortunate photos of denizens of the West Wing circus. It isnt so much that he breaks the fourth wall, because there was never a wall to begin with. Hes like that cool government teacher in whose classroom you never felt like you had to raise your hand, even though it never would have occurred to you to interrupt his incisive yet discursive ravings anyway. Durst hits a range of targets, from low-information voters to Ben Carson, and if his jabs at Trump and other Republicans are like candy for a San Francisco audience, he reserves some of his most pointed barbs for the left, which he rightly accuses of spinelessness. Its not just a cathartic evening, but a galvanizing one (even if he makes some more missteps late in the piece, with a sexist dig at the first lady). In an era when our leaders disgraces daily merit extra-large headline fonts, our shame is blunted, numbed. We can no longer feel this scourge as acutely as our consciousnesses tell us we ought to. Durst, with his clear eye and his long view, helps bring us back to ourselves. Its up to us what to do next. Lily Janiak is The San Francisco Chronicles theater critic. Email: ljaniak@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @LilyJaniak Durst Case Scenario: Written and performed by Will Durst. Through Sept. 19. 90 minutes. $20-$100. The Marsh, 1062 Valencia St., S.F. (415) 282-3055. www.themarsh.org A bill backed by President Trump that would sharply reduce the number of immigrants who could legally enter the U.S. raised questions in California over possible effects on families, demographics and key sectors of the economy. On Wednesday, Trump portrayed his support of the bill as a step toward fulfilling his campaign promise to help working-class Americans by limiting the number of lower-skilled immigrants who he says are taking their jobs. The bill would cut the number of immigrants allowed to obtain permanent residency and give greater weight to English skills, education and career achievements in doling out the more than 100,000 employment-based visas issued annually. This legislation demonstrates our compassion for struggling American families who deserve an immigration system that puts their needs first and puts America first, Trump said at a White House news conference where he was joined by the measures sponsors, Republican Sens. Tom Cotton of Arkansas and David Perdue of Georgia. Even as immigration experts tried to determine how the measure would affect the state, senior California Democrats in Washington promised to do what they could to see that it never becomes law. From the start, President Trump has pushed a hateful, senseless anti-immigrant agenda that instills fear in our communities, weakens our nation, and dishonors our values, said House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi of San Francisco. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., said the way to fix the broken immigration system was comprehensive reform. This bill doesnt achieve that, and I will do all I can to oppose it, she said. The bill would bar people from sponsoring siblings, parents and adult children who are citizens of other countries from immigrating to the U.S. and obtaining green cards that confer legal residency status. They could still sponsor spouses and minor children trying to immigrate. The legislation would reduce the number of refugees allowed into the U.S. and eliminate a program under which 50,000 green cards a year are given to immigrants from underrepresented countries, such as African nations. More than 200,000 people in California received permanent residency status in fiscal 2015, the most recent year for which figures are available. The California total accounted for one-fifth of all green cards issued nationwide that year. Of the national total, 64 percent of recipients entered the country through some form of family-based preference, according to the Migration Policy Institute in Washington, D.C. Federal government data indicate that around half of those would have been excluded under the Trump-backed legislation, known as the Reforming American Immigration for a Strong Economy (RAISE) Act. Pratheepan Gulasekaram, a Santa Clara University law professor who specializes in immigration, said one likely effect of the bill in California would be a gradual diminishing of the states ethnic and racial diversity. It is unmistakably the mark of a president engaged in a nativist and isolationist culture war, said Gulasekaram, who pointed to Trumps efforts to ban travel from six mostly Muslim countries as fitting into the pattern. His plans are red meat for those in his constituency who believe in a white nationalist vision of America, where the only acceptable immigrants, if any, are the already rich and educated ones. The White House said the goal was not to change the ethnic or racial mix of immigration, but the skill level of those who are allowed into the country. The bill would create a point system for those seen as being well-positioned to succeed economically, such as having college degrees, job offers or entrepreneurial initiative, similar to policies in countries such as Canada and Australia. The RAISE Act helps realize President Trumps vision of making America great again by making immigration great again as well, said Dan Stein, president of the Federation for American Immigration Reform, which favors more restrictive policies. It provides a pathway for a modern, smarter immigration system while protecting those Americans struggling to make ends meet. However, the administration has also sought to curb the H-1B visa program, which enables 85,000 highly skilled workers to spend three to six years at sponsoring companies in the U.S. The visas are heavily used by Bay Area tech firms that rely on them to fill engineering positions. The RAISE Act does not mention H-1B or other visas popular with Silicon Valley companies. But one expert said the bills restrictions on family-based immigration could deter highly skilled foreigners from coming to the U.S. in the first place. If there are people who are talented and want to bring over family members, and it is harder for them to do that, that is a disincentive for them to immigrate to the U.S., said Peter Leroe-Munoz, vice president of technology and innovation policy for the Silicon Valley Leadership Group, a business organization that represents many technology firms. One immigrant-reliant sector of the states economy that probably wouldnt be affected by the bill is agriculture. Philip Martin, a professor of agricultural and resource economics at UC Davis, said few of the workers who harvest the states produce are permanent residents. Thats not how agriculture gets its workers, Martin said. Instead, he said, most farmworkers are in the country without authorization or are here on temporary visas, which would not be affected by the Republican bill. For refugee advocates in the state, the administrations support of the RAISE Act is the latest in a long line of setbacks this year. The bill would cap the number of refugees allowed into the U.S. at 50,000 a year a drop from the 85,000 allowed in fiscal 2016 and 70,000 in the several years before that. It is incredibly disheartening to see that the U.S. would cap refugees to 50K, said Karen Ferguson, head of the Northern California office of the International Rescue Committee. During this period of global refugee crisis, now is the time for the U.S. to lead, not linger. We see every day at the IRC that the local community is eager to welcome new arrivals and we continue to see these new Americans thrive enriching us all. Hamed Aleaziz and Trisha Thadani are San Francisco Chronicle staff writers. Email: haleaziz@sfchronicle.com, tthadani@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @haleaziz, @TrishaThadani Difficult People, the sassy sitcom that raises self-involvement to new comic heights, is lucky it stuck around till 2017. Not just because it deserved renewal, but also because creator and co-star Julie Klausner has found a whole new vein of pay dirt at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. as the show launches a third season on Hulu on Tuesday, Aug. 8. Klausner and Billy Eichner star as two exceptionally self-focused, defiantly clueless people. For these two, its not just all about me, but all about only me. Julie and Billy are struggling comics. She has a live-in boyfriend named Arthur (James Urbaniak) who works for PBS and cooks for her every night. Billy, who is gay and lovelorn, does as little as possible working at a diner owned by Nate and Denise (Derrick Baskin and Gabourey Sidibe). As far as Julie and Billy are concerned, the world owes them a living, and thats just for starters. The new season retains all the sources of frequently nasty comedy that fans have enjoyed in the first two seasons. Theres Billys younger co-worker, Matthew (Cole Escola), whose sense of gay entitlement is just the beginning of why Billy hates him. Matthew makes a typically over-the-top self-aggrandizing announcement, to which Billy sneers, So last year. If only youd been Jeffrey Dahmers type. Theres also Julies mother, Marilyn (Andrea Martin), a therapist whose own sense of entitlement almost puts her daughters to shame. Shes convinced that her dentist is secretly trimming her bangs whenever shes put out for dental work. When she inadvertently drinks a hallucinogenic, she envisions a trendy restaurant in which all the patrons are herself. Of course the show is set in New York City, which, this season, is embodied in an actual character when Billy decides he cant deal with New York City anymore. Guest stars include Vanessa Williams, Larry Wilmore, Maury Povich and Rosie ODonnell. Billy is stuck in a constant whine, and Julie could probably rationalize even the most heinous act as something acceptable if it benefits her. Why on Earth would anyone want to spend a half hour with these people? Simple: because they are hilarious. The fact that they dont have a good word to say about anyone reflects on them, and the image isnt pretty, but its very, very funny. Its very much because we wouldnt want friends like these that were empowered to laugh ourselves silly at their blather. Among the four episodes made available to critics, one focuses on our antiheroes running into one demonstration after another. A restaurant is virtually empty because of the pickets outside. Great, says Julie; there will be no problem getting a table. In the same episode, Julie gets an audition for a top-secret project for Amazon. She brings along a blender, because shes been meaning to return it. Turns out, the audition is for a certain big-deal filmmaker, and Ill leave it at that, but suffice it to say that when it comes to deciding whether she should go for the job or stand up for her principles, theres no choice at all: Julie has no principles. Among the shows most enduring trademarks is that it name-drops celebrities, usually in disparaging tones. Theres a great visual joke involving Nathan Lane this season, but I wont spoil it for you. Now that theres a new sheriff in town in Washington, the cast mocks not only President Trump and Vice President Mike Pence, but also the mind-set of their supporters. In real life, the characters Klausner and Eichner play probably wouldnt be all that well versed in politics, but its to Klausners credit that the political focus doesnt feel out of character. As with everything else, their belated awareness of changes in political priorities derives directly from self-interest. The third season is decidedly more political and current than its two predecessors, at least on the basis of these four episodes. I wont spoil these jokes either, except to say that the situations depicted are entirely fictional. At least for now. Difficult People makes for easy and frequent laughter. 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 Difficult People: Third-season premiere with three episodes, Tuesday, Aug. 8, Hulu Watsonville Police Department Seven people, including four children, were injured when two cars crashed into a pinata store in Watsonville on Wednesday afternoon, officials said. The two cars one of which was driven by a 16-year-old boy without a license crashed into Marquez Brothers Pinatas on the 1200 block of Freedom Boulevard about 1:40 p.m., injuring four children and two adults who were in the store at the time, according to the Watsonville Police Department. One of the drivers was also injured, police said. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate 5 1 of 5 Craig Lee/Special to The Chronicle Show More Show Less 2 of 5 Stephen Cohen Show More Show Less 3 of 5 4 of 5 John Sciulli/Getty Images for Jeep Show More Show Less 5 of 5 Hollis Bulleit left the bourbon distillehry her father founded in December after 25 years at the company. She says she was pushed out of Bulleit Frontier Whiskey, which is owned by global distributor Diageo, because she identifies as lesbian. But the company disputes her claim. In a series of six rambling Facebook posts, "The First Lady of Bourbon" accused her family of rejecting her when she first came out 10 years ago. She says the exclusion culminated in her being fired from her role as Bulleit brand ambassador over email on Christmas Eve 2016 about a month after she and her partner of 10 years, Cher (of no relation to the famous singer), showed up to a family Thanksgiving gathering. The fire that broke out around Grizzly Peak on Wednesday may have been arson, UC Berkeley police said, and authorities are investigating a confrontation among motorists that preceded the hillside blaze. The fire, which burned 20 acres in the Oakland hills, began hours after Oakland police responded to an 8 a.m. confrontation among three motorists who were involved in a collision on Grizzly Peak Boulevard, near the Fish Ranch Road intersection. One of the motorists got out of his car, pulled a gun on another motorist, then fled the scene. A burst of gunfire from a group of men in San Franciscos Dolores Park, some of them wearing bandannas on their faces, wounded three people Thursday afternoon and sent hundreds of others scrambling for cover, police and witnesses said. Two of the victims, both men, were initially in critical condition at San Francisco General Hospital, authorities said. The third victim, a boy, was a minor whose condition was being withheld, said hospital spokesman Brent Andrew. In the evening, Andrew said that one of the men was discharged, with the other remaining in critical condition, with unspecified injuries. Witnesses saw several people speeding away from the park in a car after the 3 p.m. shootings, said Officer Grace Gatpandan, a police spokeswoman. No arrests have been made. The gunfire shocked people who packed into the Mission District park on a warm afternoon, many of them parents and children. People who live near Dolores Park said violence there is rare and shootings all but unheard of. Several witnesses said the shootings happened after about half a dozen men started shouting and acting threateningly on the bridge that leads into the park from 19th and Church streets. The men appeared to be in their late teens or early 20s and some of them wore bandannas that covered all but their eyes, the witnesses said. One man, who goes by the name Hatter, said several park regulars had confronted the group and that he heard people yelling. Hatter said he went up there to mediate and make sure everything was OK and nobody was fighting. As Hatter approached, he said, he heard somebody shout, Theyre strapped, bro! A second later, he said, one of the men pulled out a handgun and fired six to seven rounds in rapid succession an account confirmed by multiple witnesses. Two people directly behind Hatter were struck by bullets, one in the head and one in the leg, he said. Hatter escaped with only some shrapnel to his leg, he said, perhaps from a ricochet. I normally can handle (myself) well in these situations, but I was pretty sure I had just lost my life, he said. Other witnesses said the men then scattered into the neighborhood. Josh Long of San Francisco said he had been standing about 20 yards from the shootings. He saw one blood-covered victim writhing on the ground and a man wearing a heather-gray hoodie pulled up over his head sprinting away. The park was packed with kids, packed with people at the time, said another witness, Antonia Juhasz. She said she was reading a book on a bench in the southwest corner of the park when she heard popping sounds that reminded her of firecrackers. But when she glanced in the direction from which the sound had come, she got a glimpse through some trees of an extended arm holding a handgun. Juhasz said she immediately became aware of how many children were nearby both at the playground below her and running around the grassy hills. The children and their parents seemed unconcerned and she assumed that they, too, thought the sound was fireworks. She yelled its a gun and started shooing children to get down on the ground before realizing she should take cover herself. She then crouched behind a trash can and called 911. All over the park, people began to panic as they realized theyd heard gunshots. Some dove into the grass, covering their heads. Others crouched behind trees or benches. And others fled into the streets around the park. Juhasz said when she stood up again a few minutes after the shots were fired, she saw two victims, both lying on the ground at the base of the bridge above the Miguel Hidalgo statue. Both men appeared to be bleeding, and one victim was covered in bandages and was not looking good, Juhasz said. In the hours after the shooting, a tangled mess of clothing and a pair of flip-flops were visible at the end of the bridge where the victims were shot. Crime scene technicians were going over the scene. It wasnt a sight that people who live near the park were used to. Ive lived here for years, and this doesnt happen, Juhasz said. Its awful, actually. A neighborhood resident, Jason Lopezjones, said the shootings were an indication that we need more police presence in the park. ... There are all sorts of shady characters and non-park-like activity, when you think of a family park. San Francisco Chronicle staff writer Filipa Ioannou contributed to this report. Erin Allday, Michael Bodley and Amy Graff are San Francisco Chronicle staff writers. Email: eallday@sfchronicle.com, mbodley@sfchronicle.com and agraff@sfgate.com Twitter: @erinallday, @michael_bodley, @bayareamoms NEW YORK Judith Jones, a consummate literary editor who helped revolutionize American cuisine by publishing Julia Child and other groundbreaking cookbook authors, worked for decades with John Updike and Anne Tyler and helped introduce English-language readers to The Diary of Anne Frank, has died at age 93. Mrs. Jones, who spent more than 50 years at Alfred A. Knopf before retiring in 2011, died early Wednesday at her summer home in Walden, Vt. Her stepdaughter, Bronwyn Dunne, said she died of complications from Alzheimers. Few better embodied and lived out the ideal of a life in New York publishing than the slender, refined Mrs. Jones, whom Tyler once praised, both as a person and an editor, as very delicate and graceful, almost weightless. Mrs. Jones worked at one of the leading publishing houses with some of the worlds most beloved authors. She thrived even as Knopf evolved from a family-run business to part of the international conglomerate Bertelsmann AG. Moviegoers would learn about her in Julie & Julia, the 2009 film starring Meryl Streep as Child and featuring Erin Dilly as Mrs. Jones. In the early 60s, she signed up the then-unknown Child and Mastering the Art of French Cooking, a landmark release that caught on again decades later thanks to Julie & Julia. Tyler, however, thought the movie stupid because of a scene in which Mrs. Jones backs out of a dinner at an authors home because its raining, something the real editor would never have done. In an email Wednesday, Tyler wrote that Mrs. Jones was both an astute and gifted editor and a remarkable human being. Mrs. Jones was herself an author and gourmet who collaborated on several cookbooks with her husband Evan Jones, contributed to numerous food magazines and wrote the memoir The Tenth Muse: My Life in Food, published in 2007. The year before, she received the James Beard Foundation Lifetime Achievement Award, a fitting prize for Mrs. Jones, who published Beard and was a close friend. Mrs. Jones husband died in 1996. They had two children and two stepchildren. In recent years, she kept a blog, judithjonescooks.com, and wrote the book The Pleasures of Cooking for One. The daughter of an attorney, Mrs. Jones was born Judith Bailey in 1924 and grew up in Manhattan. She majored in English at Bennington College, worked as an editorial assistant at Doubleday and by her early 20s was a reader for Doubleday in Paris. Among her early achievements was finding a masterpiece amid the rejects: The Diary of Anne Frank, which had been published in Europe. One day my boss said, Oh, will you get rid of these books and write some letters, she explained in a 2001 interview with the Associated Press. I curled up with one or two books. I was just curious. I think it was the face on the cover. I looked at that face and I started reading that book and I didnt stop all afternoon. I was in tears when my boss came back. I said, This book is going to New York and has got to be published. And he said, What? That book by that kid?! Mrs. Jones joined Knopf in 1957 as a reader of French translations. The company, run by founders Alfred and Blanche Knopf, was eccentric and old-fashioned, where women were warned against attending meetings because strong language might be used. She soon became an editor, her early clients including John Hersey, Elizabeth Bowen and a promising young author named John Updike. His first book with Knopf was Rabbit, Run. Alfred got on the telephone with John and said, Youd better come right away. He said to me, I dont think you should attend the meeting; the language may be a little raw. Of course, I had seen the language, Mrs. Jones said. We did an expurgated edition and every subsequent printing put a little bit back and now its all there. Mrs. Jones was among the first to realize that World War II soldiers returning from Europe might be ready for more sophisticated cuisine. Mrs. Jones herself was admittedly spoiled by the food in Paris. In the 1950s, she found the bread in New York so tasteless she baked her own at home. Mrs. Jones most famous discovery was Child, a middle-aged American chef in the early 60s who, like Mrs. Jones, had returned to the states after living for years in Paris. She and co-authors Simone Beck and Louisette Bertholle were seeking a publisher for a cookbook (later titled by Mrs. Jones Mastering the Art of French Cooking) which had been rejected by Houghton Mifflin. As recounted in her memoir, Mrs. Jones was soon convinced that this was the book I been looking for and thought Childs recipe for boeuf bourguignon worthy of the best dishes in Paris. I wanted my food to have the French touch, to taste soignee, not just indifferently cooked, she later wrote. But there was no book that really taught me how, that is, not until Mastering came along. Mrs. Jones became the countrys gateway to international and national cuisine. She edited Marcella Hazans The Classic Italian Cookbook, which did for Italian food what Childs book did for French. Other chefs with whom Mrs. Jones worked included pioneers in California cuisine (Alice Waters), Middle Eastern food (Claudia Roden) and cooking from the American South (Edna Lewis). Mrs. Jones treated food like literature and literature like food; both were sensual pleasures. She disliked some of the health food books A tablespoon of butter! Mrs. Jones told the AP in mock horror. Youre going to die! She also worried about the rise of celebrity cook books. One line I always quote is, In a bowl combine the first mixture with the second mixture, she said. Its hideous. Whereas Julia would say (Mrs. Jones imitates Child), Pick it up and plop it in the bowl and get your hands in and squeeze it. Hillel Italie is an Associated Press writer. San Jose Police Department A passenger on a Southwest Airlines flight to San Jose was busted on suspicion of attempted child molestation after a woman sitting in a row behind him read suspicious large-font texts he was composing on his smartphone and tipped off the flight crew, officials said Thursday. The witness was sitting behind 56-year-old Michael Kellar of Tacoma, Wash., on the Southwest flight from Seattle to San Jose on Monday when she saw him texting about molesting young children on a large-screen smartphone with an enlarged font, according to the San Jose Police Department. The news is true: Anchor Brewing Company has been sold to Sapporo Holdings Limited, owners of the eponymous Sapporo Brewery. Anchor a classic San Francisco company long regarded as the oldest and first craft brewery in the United States will, in the eyes of some, no longer be considered a "craft" beer producer at all, as defined by the Brewers Association. Nearly 275,000 liquid glitter iPhone cases sold at Henri Bendel, Tory Burch and Victorias Secret have been recalled after reports that the fluid leaked out and caused skin irritation, blisters and chemical burns. The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission announced this week that there have been two dozen reported incidents, including 19 in the U.S. The cases, which were sold for the iPhone 6, 6S and 7 from October 2015 through June 2017, resemble a snow globe with glitter inside the liquid. MixBin Electronics, which sold the cases, said there was a risk that the cases could crack or break and the liquid could leak out and irritate users skin. The cases ranged in price from $15 to $65. Courts Page may face more questions Uber asked a judge to order Alphabet CEO Larry Page to submit to another two hours of questioning in Waymos trade-secrets lawsuit, saying that the executive was ill-prepared for his deposition and that his lawyers obstructed the process. Ubers lawyers contend Page is an important witness for the companys defense against the allegations the ride-hailing company stole technology central to the development of autonomous vehicles by Alphabets self-driving car unit. Otto Trucking, a company founded by the engineer at the center of the case and a co-defendant with Uber, said in a filing that Waymos lawyers didnt make a good-faith effort to refresh Pages memory on topics that are key to the litigation before he sat down for a deposition in July. Waymo had no immediate comment on the filing. Medicine Walgreens and Theranos settle Theranos said it has reached a confidential settlement with Walgreens Boots Alliance, leading to the dismissal of Walgreens lawsuit against the Palo Alto company. Theranos said in a news release that it has changed its management team and board of directors, as well as implementing a new quality and compliance program. The company had promised to revolutionize blood testing, but a Wall Street Journal investigation alleged that it misled people about the accuracy of its technology. Earnings Zynga Zynga, the San Francisco games maker, is getting a roommate in its headquarters building on Eighth Street. Airbnb has leased approximately 287,000 square feet in the buildings east tower for nine years, Zynga told investors Wednesday. After paying $228 million for its headquarters in 2016, Zynga put it up for sale last year, but didnt find buyers for the whole thing. Airbnb, based one block away on Brannan Street, has been hungry for space after revenue reportedly increased 80 percent last year and the company turned its first profit. Zynga has struggled since gamers shifted away from Facebook to mobile phones. The company reported $209.2 million in revenue for the second quarter and swung to a $5.1 million profit after advising investors to expect a loss. Square Squares quarterly results topped analysts projections, helped by larger merchants using its service and increasing sales of its business products. Adjusted revenue rose 41 percent to $240 million, compared with the average analyst estimate of $229.5 million, as the San Francisco companys merchant customers processed more payments and paid the company for services like loans, instant deposits and software to help manage inventory. Square also raised full-year sales and profit forecasts, sending shares up about 1 percent in extended trading. Its nearly doubled this year on optimism about its all-in-one offering for merchants, aimed at businesses that dont want to stitch together hardware, software and payment services from different vendors. Square said revenue from larger sellers those that process at least $125,000 in gross payments annually continued to grow in the second quarter. Fitbit Fitbit reported revenue of $353.3 million for the second quarter and a loss of $58.2 million or 25 cents per share. Sales improved over the first quarter but fell 39.7 percent from the same period last year as the company faced stiff competition from Apple, Samsung and Chinese manufacturers of cheap fitness trackers. The company said it plans to boost sales by delivering a smartwatch for the holiday season. Chronicle News Services Juveniles who are convicted of a sex crime in California and are sentenced to state custody can be required to register with police as sex offenders for life, a state appeals court ruled Wednesday. The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that the death penalty and mandatory life sentencing laws cannot be applied to juveniles because of their lesser mental and emotional development. But the Third District Court of Appeal in Sacramento said the same rationale does not apply to state sex offender registration laws, which are meant to protect the public rather than to punish the offender. The laws are intended to assist law enforcement to maintain surveillance of (repeat) sex offenders, and have no purpose to punish for past misconduct, the court said, quoting a 2004 California Supreme Court decision in an adult registration case. The case involved a Sacramento County youth, identified as J.C., who was placed in foster homes after being abused as a child. At age 12, the court said, he sodomized a 5-year-old boy. He was then placed on probation, was returned to his mothers custody and was enrolled in a sex offender treatment program. He was placed in a group home at age 15 after inappropriately touching his sister, committed another sex offense at 17, then was found in violation of probation and sent to state Division of Juvenile Justice custody, the court said. He is now 20 years old and could be held until age 23, the maximum for a juvenile court sentence. Under California law, youths sent to state confinement for rape, sodomy, forcible oral copulation or molestation are subject after their release to the same registration requirements as adults whove committed the same crimes. They must report to police once a year for life and report each time they change their address. Registration is not required for youths placed in county juvenile halls or local treatment programs. J.C. challenged the future registration requirement through his lawyer, arguing that it was unconstitutionally excessive punishment. He contended juveniles are less likely to re-offend than adults and that registration could actually lessen public safety by limiting opportunities to pursue a normal life. But the court said J.C.s lawyer had not presented convincing evidence that juveniles were less likely to re-offend the youths own record of multiple offenses is not particularly supportive of this claim and the arguments about public safety are properly addressed to the Legislature. J.C. also contended registration was punitive because police can publicly disclose sex offender status, even though juvenile court records are normally confidential. The court disagreed. While state law allows police to disclose information about a registered sex offender when necessary to ensure the public safety, that law may not apply to juveniles, the court said and, even if it did, it wouldnt be punitive. Another statute known as Megans Law displays information about sex offenders on a public website, but the state attorney generals office has interpreted it as not applying to juveniles. J.C. has failed to establish that juvenile sex offender registration is punishment, Justice Elena Duarte said in the 3-0 ruling. A suspect in an armed robbery was shot and killed by Vallejo police Wednesday evening after leading them on a car chase from Vallejo to a busy street in Richmond near the Hilltop Mall, authorities said. The man, who has not been identified, died at the scene. He was shot around 5:20 p.m. after stopping on the 3400 block of Richmond Parkway and exiting his car with a weapon in hand, said Richmond police Lt. Felix Tan. He would not identify the weapon. Anchor Brewing, San Franciscos beloved 121-year-old brewery and creator of the citys most famous beer, is being sold to Japans Sapporo Holdings Ltd. in a landmark deal. According to Keith Greggor, Anchors president and CEO, the move was a year in the making and the result of speaking with many, many larger breweries all over the world to find the right fit. Anchor Brewing Co. is considered the leading pioneer of the craft beer movement, and is credited with reviving and modernizing some of today's most popular American beer styles. The price of the deal was not disclosed. Anchor Distilling, which produces spirits such as Junipero Gin and Old Potrero whiskey, is not involved in the deal and will become a separate company. The news comes as the latest in a line of high-profile craft breweries purchased by larger beverage companies, following in the footsteps of Heinekens acquisition of Lagunitas, Constellations 2015 takeover of Ballast Point, and AB InBevs purchases of Goose Island and Wicked Weed, among many others. Yet Anchor representatives said its beer would continue to be brewed at its Potrero Hill headquarters, and there would be no changes to its beer recipes. Additionally, Anchor will open a new public taproom on De Haro Street, across the street from its current brewery. When you take a brand like Anchor, its very soul exists in the heart of San Francisco, Greggor said. Of all the people we spoke to, (Sapporo) respected Anchor the most, what it stood for and the importance of its connection with San Francisco. Anchor Brewing has proven itself as a company of firsts. Established in 1896, it bills itself as Americas first and oldest craft brewery and has long been San Franciscos homegrown pride. It weathered the 1906 earthquake and is the inventor of the California common style of beer, which it trademarked as steam beer. But by 1965, Anchor was in dire shape and on the verge of bankruptcy when Fritz Maytag, working off a tip from an Old Spaghetti Factory bartender, bought the capsizing company for a few thousand bucks. The most popular American beers of the era were bland, fizzy and very pale; they were cheap to make and cheap to buy. Maytag, however, didnt see such beer as the way to salvage his new company, so instead he began making what he and a small handful of employees deemed good beer. He rethought the entire brewing operation and began bottling the flagship Anchor Steam. In subsequent years, he added four beers to Anchors repertoire that no one else in America was making: the dry-hopped Liberty Ale, a dark porter (Anchor Porter), a barley wine (Old Foghorn Barleywine Ale) and, in a tradition that continues today, the first Anchor Christmas Ale. In 1977, he moved brewing operations to Anchors current Potrero Hill headquarters. Before long, the brewery was turning a profit, and set the stage for the emergence of the modern craft beer movement. In 2010, Maytag sold Anchor to Greggor and Tony Foglio. At the time, Foglio said that the sale was something we want to build on for the rest of our careers and pass on to the next generation. Yet Anchors new move signals a direction that is not so much trailblazing as it is increasingly conventional. It follows the trend established by many other craft breweries that have been acquired by global companies in recent years. Noting that critics also thought the idea of Maytag selling the brewery in 2010 was heretical, Greggor is quick to refute any potential naysayers surrounding the Sapporo deal. People bleed Anchor, theyre passionate about it, he said. Its that passion that makes handcrafted beers successful in terms of its quality. Maintaining that sense in the brewery is very important, but this is something that Sapporo understands and respects. Anchor Brewing management said it did not specifically plan for a complete acquisition. However, to support the brewerys long-term future and further international expansion (it currently distributes to 20 countries), it needed to relinquish full ownership to Sapporo. The appeal of Sapporo, Greggor said, was an organization that mirrored Anchors values. He said that the Japanese company founded in 1876, two decades before Anchor understood Anchors commitment to keeping operations in San Francisco. In a statement, Masaki Oga, Sapporo Holdings president and representative director, likened the lengthy histories of the two breweries, noting that Anchor has inspired a new generation of brewers and beer lovers around the world. So what does the deal mean for the San Francisco brewerys future? Greggor said that Anchors main sticking point in the deal was to continue using the Potrero Hill brew house at least for the time being. Sapporo committed to investing in the Potrero Hill brewery until we exceed capacity of that brewery, but I have no idea when that would be, Greggor said. We are currently running at about 55 to 60 percent of that capacity. However, the deal also likely means that Anchors long-delayed Pier 48 expansion is more likely to be dead in the water, though Anchor would not comment on the status of the project. The company will update its production systems and its packaging process. We have a rather inefficient canning system, he said. They would invest in much better canning equipment. We have a rather difficult, labor-intensive management of our glass (bottles). Automatic palletizing, things like that, will be looked at. When asked whether this deal jeopardizes Anchors craft designation, a commonly accepted definition dictated by the Brewers Association, the brewerys executives did not seem concerned about that imminent debate, due to the brewerys long history. Anchor has been making handcrafted beer since long before craft was coined, Greggor said. I would argue (Anchors beer) is more handcrafted than any of the craft beer out there today. However, while it might not fit the definition of some self-appointed organizations, well always be the original, and well still be handcrafted in San Francisco. Alyssa Pereira is a pop culture and beer reporter at SFGate and The San Francisco Chronicle. Email: apereira@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @alyspereira This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate Maybe the ERA will go the way of the dodo someday, just like pitcher wins. Matt Moore and rookie Daniel Gossett, who faced one another in the third game of the Bay Bridge series Wednesday night, both carried 5.74 ERAs to the hill. They could not have looked more different in the As 6-1 victory at AT&T Park. Moore allowed four runs in five innings, including a two-run homer by Ryon Healy. Gossett made his 10th big-league start his best, holding the Giants to three hits and a run in seven innings. Gossett won for the second time in three starts. Moore is winless since June 20. The As have taken two of three in the annual home-and-home between the Bay Area teams with one game to go Thursday night at AT&T Park. Moore returned to the mound after what had been a good start against the Dodgers that hed ruined by walking the leadoff hitter in the seventh inning of a game the Giants led 4-2. After a promising opening against Oakland, a 1-2-3 first inning, Moore lost the strike zone in the second to help the As take a 2-0 lead. Also key was Denard Spans inability to catch a Matt Chapman double over his head. After a Healy single and a walk to Chad Pinder, Chapman hit that RBI double that Span could have caught. Pinder later scored on a double-play ball. Moore seemed to right himself in the third, until he walked Jed Lowrie and Healy homered for a 4-0 As lead, his 20th and first since June 28, 86 at-bats ago. Moore teed one up, a 92-mph, belt-high fastball. With Jarrett Parker set to come off the disabled list Thursday and the Giants going nowhere, manager Bruce Bochy plans to rotate his outfielders. That could mean less time in center for Span, whose defense has deteriorated. Parker played some center at Triple-A this year. Bochy also has praised Gorkys Hernandezs offensive improvement. Hernandez showed off his defense in Oakland on Tuesday night with a long run and backhand catch of a Jaycob Brugman drive to the center-field wall. The staffs original thinking might have included less playing time for Hunter Pence, who was stuck in a groundball rut. But he hit a three-run opposite-field homer in Oakland on Tuesday night and hit two balls hard Wednesday, including a fifth-inning double for the Giants first hit. Pence hit a rifle shot down the left-field line after Brandon Crawfords leadoff walk. The opportunity to carve into a 4-0 deficit yielded just one run, on Hernandezs sacrifice fly, when Pinder reached over his shoulder at the track in left field to catch Miguel Gomezs drive for the third out. The As added two runs in the seventh against Albert Suarez, the key hit Lowries second double. Pinder, after making his mark in the field, got another run home in the inning with his second single. Henry Schulman is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: hschulman@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @hankschulman Anchor Brewing Co. Founded during the Gold Rush era, Anchor Brewing Co. has remained rooted in San Francisco's history amid an ever-changing beer scene. But the beloved 121-year-old brewery and creator of the city's most famous beer, is being sold to Japan's Sapporo Holdings Ltd. in a landmark deal. A distressed dog discovered by an "astute citizen" in a hot car in the parking lot of a Walnut Creek Burger King was rescued at around 5 p.m. Tuesday by the Walnut Creek Police Department. A department Facebook post about the incident stated the temperature at the time of the rescue was 97 degrees, and the windows to the car were rolled up, trapping the dog inside. The Opera Plaza Cinema, a cozy four-screen movie theater known for its independent and documentary programming, appears headed for closure. Opera Plaza LP, owner of the commercial property at the 13-story condo tower in the Civic Center, has filed a request with the city to convert the ground-floor space from a movie theater to 6,000 square feet of retail sales and service. Opera Plaza Cinema is no longer economically viable and has not been for a long period of time, said Nathan Nishiguchi of Urban Pacific Properties, managing agent for Opera Plaza. The operator (Landmark Theatres) and the landlord have arrived at the decision that closing the theater is the most appropriate next step. The application, filed in late July with the planning department, will require city approval to alter the conditional use permit. This entails public hearings and a possible vote by the Board of Supervisors. But Ted Mundorff, president of Landmark, a Los Angeles chain that runs the cinema, wrote in an email that he had met with the landlord this week and was under the impression that negotiations were ongoing. The landlord is exploring all options for the space including us remaining a tenant, he said. Nothing has been decided at this time. Landmark does not comment on its lease arrangements, but in an email statement, property manager Nishiguchi said the cinema has been on a month-to-month lease for eight years. In lieu of traditional rent, profits are shared, he said, but there is not enough to make it worthwhile. The screening rooms, which range from 35 seats to 140 seats, have not been refurbished since the 1980s. The plan was first reported July 28 in the online real estate tip sheet socketsite.com. It has not, as yet, stirred up a fuss. Supervisor London Breed, who represents the Civic Center, was not aware of it: Our office has not heard from anyone regarding this issue, she said. The theater is part of a pioneering mixed-use project completed in 1982 that was conveniently located near the foot of the Franklin Street off-ramp for the Central Freeway, now gone. The complex covers a square block between Van Ness Avenue and Franklin Street, Golden Gate Avenue and Turk Street, a short walk from the War Memorial Opera House it is named for. The movie theater was built by Allen Michaan of Renaissance Rialto Inc. and opened in November, 1984. The idea was that the theater would draw in foot traffic to the Opera Plaza retail and restaurant cluster. But there were obstacles, starting with the theaters location at the back of a dark courtyard, where it cannot be seen from the street in any direction. The address is listed as 601 Van Ness Ave., but the only indicator there is a hand-painted sign, hidden behind a tree, that does not list what movies are showing. The next obstacle is a circular fountain, which has always been a barrier to entry, according to Deidra OMerde, who has operated Rose Bowl florist in Opera Plaza since 1982. Nobody gets past the fountain, says OMerde, and anybody who did still had to circumvent a bank of elevators serving the 450 condos in the tower. This has been a problem for restaurants too hence the failure of Monsoon and Modesto Lanzones, which has become office space. OMerde suspects this will eventually be the fate of Opera Plaza Cinema, because no retail seems to succeed at the back of the complex. There were exciting restaurants and exciting shops, but nobody could find them, she said. For a while, the hidden location was an asset. When Landmark took over the cinema in 1991, its ads stated in the screening rooms as code for indie and foreign movies the cognoscenti would be willing to search out. Or if a picture got legs in a larger house, it would land there on an open-ended run. When a film finished doing well at the Bridge or the Clay, we would move it over to the Opera Plaza, said Gary Meyer, a co-founder of Landmark and now a consultant to film festivals and art-house cinemas. People knew that if they missed it on the first run, this is where they could find it. Landmark has since had ownership changes and now operates the Opera Plaza as a first-run house. But it still favors minor pictures. The current listings are Maurice, Lost in Paris, Marie Curie: The Courage of Knowledge, and Unforgiven. If Opera Plaza closes, Landmark Theatres, which was once a major force for art-house and foreign cinema, will be reduced to just the Embarcadero Center Cinema and the Clay in San Francisco. Chronicle staff writer Leah Garchik contributed to this report. Sam Whiting is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: swhiting@sfchronicle.com Instagram: @sfchronicle_art MINNEAPOLIS One was an 81-year-old custodian known for handing out ice cream bars to students at his beloved Minnehaha Academy, where he and his children attended school decades earlier. The other was a longtime receptionist with an infectious smile who was planning her wedding. John Carlson and Ruth Berg were both longtime employees at the private Christian school in Minneapolis when they were killed Wednesday in an explosion on campus. Their bodies were pulled from the rubble of a partially collapsed building after the blast, which investigators believe was sparked by a natural gas explosion. Jeff Brotman, a founder of Costco, which became one of the worlds largest retailers by luring loyal, card-carrying customers to its cavernous stores with startlingly low prices on everyday products, died Tuesday in Medina, Wash. He was 74. Costco Wholesale of Issaquah, Wash., announced his death but gave no cause. The company said Mr. Brotman had attended a dinner for its warehouse managers Monday night in nearby Seattle. He had been a reluctant retailer at first. After working in his familys chain of 18 mens stores during college, Mr. Brotman sought to escape a retail career by applying for law school. But his business acumen proved too compelling. After his father suggested that he replicate Price Club, a pioneering San Diego-based chain of warehouse stores for small businesses, Jeff Brotman teamed up with James Sinegal, a protege of Sol Price, the chains founder and a retailing genius himself. Mr. Brotman went on to obtain critical financing from a venture capitalist, Fred Paulsell, whom he had met when their plane was struck by lightning and made an emergency landing. Their first Costco warehouse store opened in Seattle in 1983 (the same year Sam Walton opened Sams Club); the company merged with Price Club a decade later. It soon became a global retailing juggernaut by offering consumer goods at rock-bottom prices (from 20-cent diapers in boxes of 198 to rotisserie chickens that it sold at a loss for $4.99), sticking to a no-frills inventory and encouraging customer loyalty with annual membership fees. Costco was the worlds largest retailer of a wide range of products, including organic foods and wine, in recent years. The company took in about $120 billion last year, its revenues second only to Walmart (although Costco was recently bumped to third place by Amazon). Jeff understood immediately that there was an opening there, his brother, Michel, told the Seattle Times this week. The Price Club idea appealed even to people with money the idea of being able to buy value at the right price. It wasnt about buying cheap. It was about buying good value. While Sinegal was largely the public face of the company as its chief executive until 2012, Mr. Brotman served as its less visible chairman from the beginning. He became expert in scouting the most profitable locations for Costcos warehouse stores, which now number 736 worldwide. The two partners shared a feel-good philosophy, epitomized by their motto, Do the right thing. The companys unusually generous salaries and benefits for workers rankled Wall Street stock analysts, and the partners publicly characterized their retail rivals as Scrooges (although the company settled discrimination suits by women who said they had been passed over for promotions). Jeffrey Hart Brotman, a grandson of Jewish immigrants from Romania, was born Sept. 27, 1942, in Tacoma, Wash., to Pearl and Bernard Brotman. His Canadian-born father owned Seattle Knitting Mills and, with his brothers, a chain of haberdashers called Bernies in Washington and Oregon. Mr. Brotman earned a bachelors degree in political science at the University of Washington in 1964 and graduated from its law school in 1967. After practicing law briefly, he and his brother opened a womens jeans store named Bottoms and later a chain of mens clothing stores called Jeffrey Michael. Jeff Brotman was also an early investor in other retail ventures, including Starbucks, which went on to build a coffee empire from its base in Seattle. Mr. Brotman married the former Susan Thrailkill, an executive for Nordstrom department stores, whom he met on a blind date. Besides his brother, Mr. Brotman is survived by his wife; their son, Justin; their daughter, Amanda Brotman-Schetritt; and two grandchildren. Mr. Brotman also drew attention as a fundraiser for Democratic candidates and, with his wife, as a philanthropist whose beneficiaries included the University of Washington and the Seattle Art Museum. Sam Roberts is a New York Times writer. WASHINGTON Senate Democrats are unveiling a new set of trade policies aimed at appealing to working-class voters and regaining advantage on an issue Donald Trump seized to great effect during last years presidential campaign. Some of the proposals being rolled out Wednesday sound like talking points straight from Trump, including renegotiating NAFTA and strengthening Buy America policies. Despite his rhetoric on those issues, Trump has taken limited steps so far, although he did formally pull the U.S. out of a 12-nation Pacific Rim trade pact that Congress probably wouldnt have approved anyway. For too long, big corporations have dictated how trade deals and foreign acquisitions are negotiated and the American worker has been left without a seat at the table, according to the Democrats trade blueprint. As a result, many of these deals have boosted corporate profits, but for many hard-working Americans, these same policies have led to shuttered factories and lower wages. The trade policies being announced Wednesday are the second rollout in Democrats new Better Deal agenda, which House and Senate Democrats are proposing ahead of the 2018 midterms. Last week Democrats unveiled the overall agenda and made public the first three planks, which focused on creating more jobs, cracking down on corporate monopolies and lowering prescription drug prices. On trade, Democrats are proposing a new American Jobs Security Council to review and potentially halt foreign purchases of U.S. companies. Chinese state-owned enterprises are increasingly entering U.S. markets by purchasing American companies, but the reverse doesnt usually happen because of restrictions in China on U.S. investments, according to supporting documents. Democrats also envision a new independent trade prosecutor who would be empowered to investigate unfair trade practices outside the unwieldy World Trade Organization process, and recommend retaliation in the form of restrictions to U.S. market access. And Democrats call for renegotiating the Clinton-era North American Free Trade Agreement among the U.S., Mexico and Canada, with the goal of achieving more American jobs and higher wages, and enforceable labor standards. Trump has also called for renegotiating NAFTA, a deal he bashed ceaselessly on the campaign trail, and a couple weeks ago his administration outlined its goals for doing so, some of which overlap with the Democrats ideas. The Democrats also call for strengthening Buy America provisions in taxpayer-funded projects. Erica Werner is an Associated Press writer. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate WASHINGTON One day after getting sued by 15 states, Environmental Protection Agency chief Scott Pruitt reversed his earlier decision to delay implementation of Obama-era rules reducing emissions of smog-causing air pollutants. Pruitt presented the change as his agency being more responsive than past administrations to the needs of state environmental regulators. He made no mention of the legal challenge filed against his prior position in a federal appeals court. At issue is an Oct. 1 deadline for states to begin meeting 2015 standards for ground-level ozone. Pruitt announced in June he would delay compliance by one year to give his agency more time to study the plan and avoid interfering with local decisions or impeding economic growth. ALSO: Senior EPA official targets President Donald Trump in resignation letter (story continues below) Pruitt, who was Oklahomas state attorney general prior to his appointment by President Donald Trump, has long served as a reliable opponent of stricter environmental regulations. Since arriving in Washington, Pruitt has repeatedly moved to block or delay regulations opposed by the chemical and fossil-fuel industries. Wednesdays sudden reversal is the latest legal setback for Pruitts regulatory rollback agenda. Last month, a federal appeals court in Washington ruled the EPA administrator overstepped his authority in trying to delay implementation of an Obama administration rule requiring oil and gas companies to monitor and reduce methane leaks. In a statement issued Wednesday evening, Pruitt suggested his about-face on ozone standards simply reinforced the EPAs commitment to working with states through the complex process of meeting the new standards on time. Still, the EPAs statement said Pruitt may at some point once again use his delay authority and all other authority legally available to ensure regulations are founded on sound policy and the best available information. Republicans in Congress are pushing for a broader rewrite of the ozone rules. A House bill approved last month seeks to delay implementation of the 2015 rules at least eight years. The measure has not yet been brought to a vote in the Senate. New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, who led the coalition of states that sued the EPA this week, said the group intends to keep up the legal pressure. New York was joined in the case by California, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Iowa, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Mexico, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont and Washington, and the District of Columbia. Public health advocates and environmentalists cheered Pruitts surprising change of course. Michael Biesecker is an Associated Press writer. Older people are dying on the job at a higher rate than workers overall, even as the rate of workplace fatalities decreases, according to an Associated Press analysis of federal statistics. Its a trend thats particularly alarming as Baby Boomers reject the traditional retirement age of 65 and keep working. The U.S. government estimates that by 2024, older workers will account for 25 percent of the labor market. Getting old and the physical changes associated with it could potentially make a workplace injury into a much more serious injury or a potentially fatal injury, said Ken Scott, an epidemiologist with the Denver Public Health Department. Gerontologists say those changes include gradually worsening vision and hearing impairment, reduced response time, balance issues and chronic medical or muscle or bone problems such as arthritis. In 2015, about 35 percent of the fatal workplace accidents involved a worker 55 and older or 1,681 of the 4,836 fatalities reported nationally. William White, 56, was one of them. White fell 25 feet while working at Testa Produce Inc. on Chicagos South Side. He later died of his injuries. I thought it wouldnt happen to him, his son, William White Jr., said in an interview. Accidents happen. He just made the wrong move. The AP analysis showed that the workplace fatality rate for all workers and for those 55 and older decreased by 22 percent between 2006 and 2015. But the rate of fatal accidents among older workers during that time period was 50 percent to 65 percent higher than for all workers, depending on the year. The number of deaths among all workers dropped from 5,480 in 2005 to 4,836 in 2015. By contrast, on-the-job fatalities among older workers increased slightly, from 1,562 to 1,681, the analysis shows. During that time period, the number of older people in the workplace increased by 37 percent. That compares with a 6 percent rise in the population of workers overall. Ruth Finkelstein, co-director of Columbia Universitys Aging Center, cautions against stereotyping. She said older people have a range of physical and mental abilities and that its dangerous to lump all people in an age group together because it could lead to discrimination. She said shes not sure that older workers need much more protection than younger workers, but agreed there is a need for all workers to have more protection. We are not paying enough attention to occupational safety in this country, she said. The AP analysis is based on data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics Census for Fatal Occupational Injuries and from one-year estimates from the American Community Survey, which looks at the working population. It excludes cases where the cause of death was from a natural cause, including a heart attack or stroke. Maria Ines Zamudio and Michelle Minkoff are Associated Press writers. Don Ryan/Associated Press PORTLAND, Ore. Before the first batch of Nutella and sea salt doughnuts was sold Wednesday morning on Fremont Street, Brianna Gneckow posed a question to her co-workers at Pips Original Doughnuts: Does everybody have water? But by lunch, hours before Portland endured a record high of 103 degrees, the staff had switched off the fryer and locked the doors. Portland, of all places, was just too hot. As the Pacific Northwest sweated and wilted in the grip of one of the fiercest heat waves ever recorded in the region, Portland shattered its Aug. 2 record of 96 degrees but fell short of the all-time mark. A 78-year-old record in Salem, the Oregon capital, fell on a day when the city hit 106 degrees. Thermometers in Seattle, a three-hour drive from Portland, also broke a record, topping out at 91 on Thursday. In the week since President Donald Trump declared that transgender Americans would no longer be allowed in the military, some municipal officials have responded with an invitation: Join our police force instead. Several cities including Houston and Austin, Texas; Aurora, Colo.; and Cincinnati have encouraged transgender people to apply to their police departments. In Austin, San Diego, Seattle and other places, transgender officers already serve openly. If you are dismissed from our military because of who you are, know that you are welcome in the city of Cincinnati and our police department, Chris Seelbach, a city councilman, said at a protest last Wednesday in response to Trumps announcement. Trump revealed his ban in a series of three tweets from 8:55 to 9:08 a.m. Eastern time on July 26. By the evening, two cities in Texas where state lawmakers have been engaged in a high-profile debate over whether transgender people should be allowed to use the public bathrooms of their choice had declared themselves in opposition to the ban. Mayor Steve Adler of Austin, a Democrat, posted his own series of three tweets, inviting transgender people dismissed or rejected from the military to apply to the Austin Police Department. If youre qualified to keep our country safe, youre qualified to keep Austin safe, he wrote, adding, Austin is the safest big city in Texas partly because we know our differences make us a stronger community. In fact, Austin already has a transgender police officer, Gregory Abbink, and city employees insurance covers transgender health care. Abbink, who was featured in the New York Times Transgender Today series in 2015, said then that the Austin Police Department had been extremely supportive. I knew that I would be safe in my transition, he said, adding, The responses that I have gotten from my brothers and sisters here at APD have been amazing, and I continue to be treated with dignity and respect. Chief Art Acevedo of the Houston Police Department weighed in soon after Adler. And the morning after Trumps announcement, Chief Nick Metz of the Aurora Police Department in Colorado tweeted, If US Military wont take U, @AuroraPD will! Across the United States, a series of transgender law enforcement officers have come out in recent years. Tori Newburn, who came out to his colleagues in 2016, is believed to be the Seattle Police Departments first openly transgender officer, and Christine Garcia is believed to be the first in the San Diego Police Department. Rebecca Storozuk is an openly transgender sheriffs deputy in Orange County, Fla., and Jaime Deer is out in King County, Wash., home to Seattle. Sgt. Eric E. Franz of the Cincinnati Police Department said his department, too, previously had a transgender employee as a member of our staff and would welcome any applicants. In an interview, Acevedo said the public response to his Twitter post had been heartening. Even though social media makes it easier than ever for people to express discriminatory ideas, he said, I havent had any negative feedback that Im aware of from the community. Before taking on the top police job in Houston late last year, he led the Austin Police Department for nine years, including the period in which Abbink transitioned. We were able to do it almost seamlessly, Acevedo said. It was something near and dear to my heart because I lived it through Greg and the Austin PD. His appearance might have changed on the outside, but on the inside, he was the same ethical, committed, hardworking, respected police officer as his entire career, he added of Abbink. He continues to serve with distinction and honor. Maggie Astor is a New York Times writer. WASHINGTON .Senators introduced two bipartisan bills Thursday seeking to protect Special Counsel Robert Mueller from being fired by President Trump as both parties signaled resistance to any White House effort to derail the investigation into Russian meddling in last years election. The similar measures emerged hours before the Senate was planning to begin a summer recess, when some lawmakers have said they fear Trump might remove Mueller. Senators have warned Trump not to dismiss Mueller, and lawmakers were hoping the bills release would communicate clear congressional opposition to such a move. One plan by Sens. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., and Chris Coons, D-Del., would let any special counsel for the Department of Justice challenge his or her removal in court. A three-judge panel would review the dismissal within 14 days of the challenge. The measure would apply retroactively to May 17. That is the day Mueller was appointed by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein to investigate allegations of Russian interference in the 2016 election and possible ties between Russia and Trumps presidential campaign. The other legislation was proposed by Sens. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., and Cory Booker, D-N.J. It would prevent the firing of any special counsel unless the dismissal was first reviewed by a panel of three federal judges. Coons said the two plans were introduced after lawyers differed over which mechanism might be more vulnerable to a legal challenge. He said he hopes lawmakers will coalesce around a consensus measure in the coming weeks. Mueller enjoys wide support in the Senate from both parties, Coons said. He said the bills reflected our level of concern that the president may take some abrupt action in coming months against the special counsel and the investigation. This is something that lives long beyond this situation involving Mueller, Tillis told reporters. And I think its also something that begins to re-establish the reputation for independence in the Department of Justice. Mary Clare Jalonick is an Associated Press writer. WASHINGTON Fake news or fib? Two phone calls described by President Trump that didnt actually happen represent the latest chapter in a long-running series of disputes revolving around the presidents rocky relationship with facts. White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders found herself explaining Wednesday that compliments Trump had described receiving in phone calls from the Mexican president and the Boy Scouts did happen just not on the phone. I wouldnt say it was a lie. Thats a pretty bold accusation, she told reporters. The conversations took place, they just simply didnt take place over a phone call. ... He had them in person. The non-calls werent earth-shattering news. But they fit a pattern that also involves weightier issues and that has raised larger questions about Trumps credibility six months into his presidency. After Donald Trump Jr. put out a statement, later shown to be misleading, about his meeting with a Russian lawyer in 2016, the presidents outside lawyer was categorical that the president had no role in drafting the statement. But when the Washington Post later reported that the president had dictated the statement for his son, Sanders acknowledged that Trump had weighed in on his sons statement as any father would based on the limited information that he had. Sanders also responded to questions about a statement from the Mexican government denying what Trump described as a recent phone call with Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto. Trump said this week that Pena Nieto had called him to praise his immigration policies. Meanwhile, the Boy Scouts denied the head of the youth organization called Trump to shower praise on his politically aggressive speech to its national jamboree. Trump told the Wall Street Journal last week: I got a call from the head of the Boy Scouts saying it was the greatest speech that was ever made to them, and they were very thankful. Laurie Kellman is an Associated Press writer. WASHINGTON President Trump signed a bill imposing new sanctions on Russia, ending immediate hopes of a reset of U.S. relations with the Kremlin and marking a defeat for his administration, which had expressed concerns that the legislation infringed upon executive power. But in a statement outlining his concerns, Trump called the bill seriously flawed, primarily because it limits his ability to negotiate sanctions without congressional approval. By limiting the Executives flexibility, this bill makes it harder for the United States to strike good deals for the American people, and will drive China, Russia, and North Korea much closer together, Trump said in a statement on Wednesday morning. The Framers of our Constitution put foreign affairs in the hands of the President. This bill will prove the wisdom of that choice, he added. White House officials said that the president signed the measure on Wednesday morning, nearly a week after it was passed by the Senate with a veto-proof majority. The bill was also approved in the House last week by an overwhelming bipartisan majority. Trump said that he signed the bill, despite his reservations, for the sake of national unity. In a second statement accompanying his signing of the legislation, Trump called some of the provisions in the legislation clearly unconstitutional. And he questioned Congress ability to negotiate sanctions based on their inability to approve the Republicans health care legislation. The bill remains seriously flawed particularly because it encroaches on the executive branchs authority to negotiate, Trump said. Congress could not even negotiate a health care bill after seven years of talking. Russia has already retaliated against the U.S. for the new sanctions, announcing that it would order the U.S. Embassy to reduce it staff by 755 people and seize U.S. diplomatic properties. In addition to new sanctions, the bill requires congressional review for any actions the administration might seek to take to lift sanctions in the future. The measure imposes sanctions against North Korea and Iran for those countries nuclear weapons programs. The White House had expressed concerns publicly and directly to lawmakers about the provision embedded within the bill that essentially prevents Trump from lifting existing sanctions without congressional approval, which comes after the administration had signaled that it hoped to ease tensions with Russia. The administration also said it was worried about the impact of the bill on U.S. businesses doing business in Russia. The sanctions also further retaliate against Russia for its alleged meddling in the 2016 election. Trump has called the ongoing investigations in Congress and by a special counsel into Russian interference in the 2016 election a witch hunt. He has also repeatedly insisted that while Russia could have been responsible, other countries might also have been at fault. Abby Phillip is a Washington Post writer. In fact, far more than just failing to deliver on promised reforms, Rouhanis presidency has coincided with a vicious crackdown on social activists and civil society, according to the Amnesty report. The human rights advocacy group points to several specific cases in order to highlight the broader trend of long prison sentences being handed down for activities that cannot be reasonably identified as crimes. One such case is that of Arash Sadeghi, an activist who is serving 19 years in prison for activities like communicating with international human rights defenders, and who is now reported to be in critically poor health following a months-long hunger strike and the punitive denial of medical treatment by prison authorities. Another case is that of Narges Mohammadi, a renowned human rights lawyer who is serving a 16-year sentence, largely as punishment for communicating with the European Unions head of foreign policy in 2014. The Amnesty report also highlights the targeting of labor organizers and ethnic/religious minorities. But its larger point is that the overall threshold for defining activities as national security crimes has steadily diminished throughout the first four years of Rouhanis presidency. At the same time, the sentences for these things have grown more severe. The Iranian judiciary is able to easily get away with arbitrary arrests and punishment, because of rampant abuse in the countrys legal system. Amnesty has identified specific cases in which activists were handed years-long prison sentences after trials lasting only 45 minutes after defense attorneys were either obstructed in their work or targeted with threats of legal consequences if they earnestly advocated for the accused. The regular persecution of human rights defenders in the Islamic Republic indicates that the Iranian regime is devoting its efforts to simply suppressing criticism of human rights abuses, as opposed to actually addressing relevant criticisms coming both from the international community and from the Iranian public. The efforts to block information leaks are backed up by outright denials from Iranian officials, many of them denying any wrongdoing whatsoever, either intentional or unintentional. Iran Human Rights Monitor points out, for instance, that Irans own so-called human rights official, Javad Larijani recently asserted that there were no political prisoners in the country at all. This claim immediately preceded a heavily stage-managed tour given to foreign diplomats, of Tehrans notorious Evin Prison. As has previously been reported, last months public relations stunt was conducted without the presence of any human rights monitors and showcased only a select portion of the prison while steadfastly avoiding contact between the foreign diplomats and the political prisoners who are housed in the facility, primarily in their own dedicated wards. Iran Human Rights Monitor described all of this as an attempt on the part of the regime to debunk growing international criticism of Irans human rights violations, especially in its prisons. But clearly such public relations efforts are doing little to diminish international reporting upon ongoing abuses, especially as those abuses escalate, contradicting previous expectations of domestic progress. One of the earliest signs of a worsening human rights outlook under the Rouhani presidency was the escalating usage of the death penalty in a country that had already acquired a reputation for consistently leading the world in per capita rates of execution. In 2015 alone, approximately 1,000 people were put to death by hanging in the Islamic Republic, and Rouhani was credited with overseeing the worst period of executions in 25 years. Since then, the rate of hangings has fluctuated dramatically, but the periodic flurries of execution have been more than enough to let Iran retain its world-leading title. In 2016, the Islamic Republic accounted for 55 percent of all of the known executions that had been carried out across the globe. The Iran Human Rights Monitor report indicated that 102 Iranian death sentences were carried out in July 2017 alone, at the end of which 120 additional executions were still pending. That months executions accounted for nearly half the number that had been carried out during the previous six months. The total figure for the first six months of 2017 was 239. Whats more, the human rights concerns on this issue are not just limited to the overuse of capital punishment or even to the fact that it is applied to nonviolent crimes including drug trafficking and some political or religious crimes such as enmity against God. Tehran has also been criticized for continuing to apply the death penalty to persons who were still minors at the time of their alleged offenses, and for carrying some executions out in public, as by hanging convicts from cranes over assembled crowds that have sometimes been shown to include children. The Iran Human Rights website reports that one such execution took place on Tuesday, with the 28-year-old convict Hossein Sarooki being hanged before a crowd of approximately 5,000 people. The public nature of the execution was proudly acknowledged by Iranian state media, and Iran Human Rights Monitor reported that that same state media had widely publicized at least seven of the executions carried out in July. In the first half of 2017, at least a dozen executions were carried out in public, and at least three persons who had been under 18 at the time of their offenses were put to death. Whereas Tehrans response to some Western criticisms of these trends is simple denial, there are also instance in which Iranian officials disregard those criticisms as cultural impositions by imperial powers. The execution of minors is one such example, in which case the clerical regime proudly stands by laws that allow for the contravention of international human rights standards. Similarly, various Iranian officials have proudly acknowledged their role in past incidents that foreign observers have described as crimes against humanity. Perhaps the most prominent example of this is Justice Minister Mostafa Pourmohammadis public statement last year affirming that he feels proud of his participation in a massacre of political prisoners in 1988, which Pourmohammadi described as carrying out Gods commandment of death for the opposition Peoples Mojahedin Organization of Iran. This sort of boasting has also been applied to known instances of the Iranian state killing other declared enemies, including Western nationals. On Wednesday, Commentary Magazine pointed out that the deputy commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps Quds Force, Brigadier General Esmail Qaani had publicly bragged about the organizations role in killing Americans during the American occupation of neighboring Iraq. While this rhetoric was directed against US servicemen on foreign soil, it is still relevant to the domestic human rights situation in Iran because a handful of the countrys political prisoners are Western nationals, while others have apparently been targeted on the basis of their connections to the US, Britain, or other Western nations. Last week, the US House of Representatives held a hearing for the families of four American citizens and one US permanent resident who are being held hostage in Iran. One of those individuals, Robert Levinson, vanished without a trace after being taken into custody 10 years ago, and the others were arrested more recently and are serving sentences of upwards of 10 years, on the basis of unsubstantiated accusations of spying. In a recent interview with CBS News, Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif attempted to deny that one of these individuals, the 81-year-old Baquer Namazi, is even being held in prison. But his family in the United States has been in contact with people who have visited him in Evin. This once again goes to show the inadequacy of Iranian denials in the face of steadily growing evidence for persistent human rights abuses. American, Canadian, and British authorities are well aware of the existence of Iranian political prisoners, if only because their own citizens have been included in those ranks. At the same time, it is difficult for Tehran to deny that it is holding prisoners of conscience, since its punitive crackdowns on those specific prison populations have generated very public activism from the same. The National Council of Resistance of Iran reported on Wednesday that dozens of inmates in Gohardasht prison began an indefinite hunger strike after prison authorities raided their wards, threatened at least one inmate with early implementation of his death sentence, and arbitrarily transferred prisoners in an apparent attempt to prevent information escaping the prison and reaching international human rights authorities. Throughout recent months, hunger strikes have proven effective at attracting domestic and international attention to the abuse of political prisoners, even in spite of the ongoing efforts by the regime to suppress communication between prisoners and the general public. Their visit is being condemned by many, including the main opposition of the Iranian regime, the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI). Its Foreign Affairs Committee strongly condemned the travel plans and said that they are travelling to a country which is under the rule of religious fascism and will participate in the inauguration of its illegitimate president. They described the visit as an insult to the universal human rights values of which the EU considers itself as protector and defender. President Hassan Rouhani is beginning the second term of his presidency. During his first term he presided over more than three thousand executions which he described as carrying out the law of God or the law approved by the Majlis. He has been described by many as a moderate but he is far from it. His history shows that he has always lived by and supported Valayat-e-Faqih (supreme religious rule) and almost forty years ago during Friday prayers he called for the execution of all opponents of the regime. During his presidency, Rouhani has ordered crackdown after crackdown and has allowed and encouraged the regimes spread of terrorism across the Middle East, its nuclear and ballistic missile development and its meddling in the internal affairs of other nations. It is clear that any investment in the Iranian regime will be doomed to loss. The regimes days are numbered and nothing can bring it back from the brink of disaster. The people of Iran are fed up with the rulers of the country and they are calling for change. They took to the streets to protest the sham elections that took place saying No to the executioner, no to the imposter; my vote is regime change. The visit by Mogherini and other European officials is truly shocking and abhorrent. It appears that they are trying to rescue the Iranian regime, to prop it up and to protect it from the popular unrest. As a protector of human rights, the European Union should be standing shoulder to shoulder with the Iranian people. It should be ensuring that each and every person in Iran has the rights that they should have had decades ago. It should be condemning the Iranian regime for its crimes against humanity and it should be staying away from the inauguration of the president who won following a sham, undemocratic and unfair election. Two mountain lion sightings in Los Gatos this week are believed to have been the same cat. The sightings occurred on the west side of Los Gatos Creek north of Charter Oaks Circle and have led police to warn people to avoid the area. The Los Gatos Monte-Sereno Police Department received reports of a mountain lion on both Monday and Tuesday, according to Lt. JR Langer, who said both sightings were most likely of the same animal. "In neither case were there reports of aggressive behavior towards the public or their property," Langer said. "No other reports since yesterday morning." Police responded to the first sighting and found the mountain lion lounging inside a large water drain culvert. After monitoring the area for an hour, they saw the animal run east inside the culvert pipe that has numerous outlets at various drainage points throughout Santa Clara County, according to a statement from the police department. The Los Gatos Creek Trail, which is already closed to public access due to prior storm damage (between Charter Oaks Circle and Knowles Dr.), has been cordoned off with barricades and mountain lion sighting advisories, police report. More for you You're on candid camera, Marin critters The public is advised to not climb fences to access the area. Scroll through the gallery above for the history of the mountain lion in California and to learn more about this threatened population. Brian Murphy / Brian Murphy / Special to The Chronicle Jen Fedrizzi/Special to the Chronicle This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate This week, Radar brings you our first IN/OUT list covering the latest culture and lifestyle trends. From colors to florals to Celine Dion, heres what you need to know as we close out the summer and transition into fall. - Tony Bravo, tbravo@sfchronicle.com PEOPLE Celine Dion, haute couture prankster. Her Vogue Runway video dancing in the couture seasons best made our hearts go on. Celine Dion, pop culture punchline. FLORALS Babys breath. Thank you, Rodarte, for bringing back the once-maligned filler on your Paris runway! Foraged greenery. Leave the leaves for your salad. Resistance Slogans Reclaiming my time. Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Los Angeles, coined the latest hashtag-able turn-of-phrase at a hearing with U.S. Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin when Mnuchin seemed to avoid answering her question. Nevertheless, she persisted. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnells rebuke of colleague Elizabeth Warren has been seen on purses, T-shirts and mugs, now its time for another message to step into the spotlight. Drink Mezcal. Enjoy the smoky goodness over ice, in a shot or as the base of a margarita. Campari. Negroni Week was great so great we ODd on the liqueur, until next year. Binge Material Podcasts. Listen up! With much going on in the news download David Axelrods The Axe Files, Criminal and Dan Carlins Hardcore History. Television series. Well, wait until Stranger Things comes back on Netflix in October. COLOR Red is hot this summer, in both clothes and decor, and gets hotter this fall. Mustard. Thank you, please come again in another six years. MOTIFS Celestial. The stars are the limit! Sunsets. Slowly fading in the west into the celestial night sky! Tony Bravo is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: style@sfchronicle.com. On July 5th, 2017 two political prisoners, Golrokh Iraee and Atena Daemi, wrote an open letter to these ambassadors, explaining the intolerable conditions of the rest of Evin prison. They pointed out the hypocrisy of Iranian officials in showing the delegation that particular ward, and told them of the terrible conditions of Iranian prisons. They wrote that ward four, where the delegation visited, was renovated by the prisoners, who were taken to solitary confinement on the day of the visit. They said that the new ward does not depict the actual conditions of the prisons, that the ambassadors were only shown what the Iranian officials wanted them to see. The true nature of the prison was hidden, and the world needs to see the inhumane conditions under which Iranian prisoners are kept. The women said that solitary cells have no windows, or ventilation, or a lavatory. They said that the cells resemble graves, because they are dark and look like dungeons. They asked the delegation why they had not been shown the womens prison, where female political prisoners like them are held. They elaborated on the conditions of womens ward, saying that there is a shortage of detergent and disinfectants. Sanitation and hygiene are absent from the prison cells, and prisoners are forced to drink dirty, unhygienic water which is causing kidney problems. Almost all the prisoners held in Evin prison are suffering from kidney issues. The food provided to prisoners is not nutritional, and they are no female nurses for female prisoners who become ill. There are no regular health checks, and there is no one to administer an electrocardiograph. Iraee and Daemi accused the prison doctor of not checking the patients. They wrote that the doctor prescribes medicine only by looking at them, and does not bother checking them. Iraee and Daemi explained to the ambassadors by that although the Head of the Prison Organization claimed that prisoners are allowed family visits every week, this is untrue. They said that family visits are allowed only once a month. They concluded their letter by urging the UNSR on human rights, Ms. Asma Jhanagir, to visit prisons without prior notice, in Tehran and in other cities, as well, so the reality of the conditions in these prisons can be brought to light. The international community, especially the United Nations, must ensure that around the world, prisoners are kept in basic living conditions and are treated humanely. Additionally, two prisoners each were hanged in Maragheh prison, Rajai Shahr prison, Gorgan Prison and Semnan Central prison in the past one week. On July 10th, it was reported that at least 11 prisoners were transferred to solitary cells for execution in Rajai Shahr prison, and that the death sentence for 7 of them was carried out in the courtyard on the next morning. On the morning of Monday, July 10th, a man was hanged in the Central Mahabad Prison. This Kurd man was arrested in 2012 for carrying narcotics and was sentenced to death by the Judiciary. According to an informed source, he is the father of a 7-year-old autistic child. In Taibad prison, another ten prisoners were executed on charges of drug related crimes in the Khorasan Razavi Province. Four of them were identified as farmers who were found to possess approximately 4 kg of heroin. All told, 28 executions have been carried out in Iranian prisons all over the country over the past few days.These prisoners were convicted and executed on various charges including murder, rape, and drug related crimes. Kazem Gharib Abadi, Assistant Head of International Affairs, said, the public executions are implemented following legal guidelines, and it is the right of the people and is carried out by the victims family. He further added, In addition to this, 90 percent of executions are carried out for drug related crimes. A Majlis of the Judicial Commission reviewed the Law to Counter Narcotics, and all the members of the commission, including Prosecutor General, were in favor of giving death sentences to drug traffickers. Anyone found guilty of possessing more than 100 kg of opium, 2 kg of marijuana or crystal meth or any other form of narcotics weighing more than 5 kg would be hanged. Another clause was added, that those who have had previous prison terms of 2-5 years and are once again found with narcotics will be considered for a death sentence, even if the weight is less than that determined. However, Human Rights Watch has gone on record as saying that the Iranian government should halt all executions for drug-related offenses while parliament debates amendments to reform the countrys drug law. This amendment to the drug law could drastically increase the bar for a mandatory death penalty sentence. Mr. Hashim Khastar said that the Secretary of Teachers Association of Iran, Isamil Abdi, was at home on medical leave when he was kidnapped by agents of the regime. He was not even given the chance to get the medication that he needs. Mr. Khastar pointed out that the Iranian regime acts as though it is above the law. He also emphasised that the way Iran is run is far from the principles of Islam. He said: The ruling system in Iran has nothing to do with Islam and that the system is the result of corruption, murder, looting and prostitution. After the government coup in June 1980 and the repression of all parties and liberals, many intellectuals and activists argued that if the regime continues such practices, the regime will certainly become corrupt and the people will rise up against them, and we are witnessing this today. Mr. Khastar points out that the government ruling Iran is illegitimate and is only in place because of its use of force. He said that the people are rising up against the crimes committed by the regime, including the horrific 1988 massacre which saw more than 30,000 members of the PMOI killed. There is a renewed call for justice and the people of Iran are ensuring that the crime against humanity is not forgotten. They want the perpetrators to be held to justice and are calling on the international community to act. Ahmad Khatami, a member of the board of directors of the regimes Assembly of Experts, recently said that the perpetrators of the1988 massacre should be praised. Mr. Khastar was aghast at such comments and said that he strongly condemns the massacre and recognises it as a crime against humanity that will never be forgotten. Ali Fallahian, a former intelligence minister of the regime, recently indicated that simply being a member of the PMOI was a reason for execution. Mr. Khastar explained that the reality was even worse because even pregnant woman were killed, emphasising that the executioners had no notion of humanity. Because of the culmination of events and incidents that the Iranian people are exposed to, and the situation they are forced to live in, Mr. Khastar believes that a revolution will be seen very soon. The more and more corruption that becomes evident every day within the regime means that more and more people are turning against the leaders of the country. He said: We see that groups of officials are separating themselves from the system every day and joining the queue of people. France, Great Britain and Germany backed the letter that was compiled by the US. In the letter, the US Ambassador Nikki Haley stated that the Simorgh space launch vehicle system would have a range of more than 185 miles if it was configured and set up as a ballistic missile. Haley also mentioned in the letter that it would have sufficient payload capacity to be able to carry a nuclear warhead, presenting a very real threat. The rocket was launched by Iran on Thursday 27th July and, as a response to the provocative move, the US slapped sanctions on six companies that are said to have links to the Iranian missile program. In the letter, Haley emphasised that Iran is violating UN Security Council Resolution 2231 by continuing to develop ballistic missiles. The resolution was passed in 2015 to accompany the 2015 nuclear deal between Iran and major world powers including those endorsing the letter to the UN Security Council. Haley pointed out that Iran has a destabilizing effect in the Middle East and stressed that the resolution allowed sanctions to be lifted in exchange for Iran curbing its nuclear program. Iran is required to refrain from carrying out any ballistic missile launches that are capable of carrying nuclear weapons. Iran has said on numerous occasions that it is not trying to develop nuclear weapons and that it is in no way violating the resolution. However, the US states that the technology required for the space launch vehicle is very similar in composition to technology needed for ballistic missiles, in particular to those of an intercontinental ballistic missile. The letter said that any ballistic missile system with a 500-kilogram payload and a range of at least 300 kilometres, according to the missile technology control regime, is capable of holding a nuclear weapon. The letter stated that the enclosed information should be sufficient for the council to conclude in an informed and timely manner about what the appropriate action to be taken should be. Haley has already asked the council, on several occasions, to react to the missile testing carried out by Iran. The US, France, Great Britain and Germany called on Iran, in the letter, to cease all ballistic missile activities with immediate effect. They also called on the international community to denounce Irans actions. [August 02, 2017] KNOWCK to Enter Southeast Asian Smart City Market Armed with Its Smart Signage Technology SEOUL, South Korea, Aug. 3, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- KNOWCK, based in Seoul, Korea, is a market leader in digital signage software and has many years of experience with global implementation partnerships. The next step for KNOWCK is the Southeast Asian Smart City market with its IoT capable smart signage technology. The K-ICT Born2Global Centre, a major Korean government agency, announced that KNOWCK recently completed the deployment of its "Smart Building Media System (SBMS)," which utilizes CloudCast technology in a premium apartment complex in Seoul (Seocho Prugio Summit by Daewoo E&C). Building on this recent success, KNOWCK will offer this Smart Building solution to key markets in Southeast Asia. Equipped with KNOWCK's CloudCast technology, over 50 display screens that ave been installed throughout the apartment complex are all monitored and controlled through a cloud server. The service includes bulletin boards for various informative notices, news, and "digital nature" screens that display images of natural landscapes. The contents displayed on these screens are easily and conveniently managed by a smartphone app. KNOWCK received this year's "New Multi-media Technology Award" Prime Minister's Commendation and the KOBACO CEO Award in 2015 for CloudCast. In 2013, it made it to the Red Herring Global 100 companies. A company simultaneously acknowledged at home and overseas for its technological capabilities is a rare accomplishment for a Korean startup. CloudCast is a digital signage enterprise solution that connects various types of heterogeneous displays, including TVs, electronic street displays, and extra-large media facades found on high-rise buildings. Among Korea's Olympic stadiums, the one with the largest digital signage installation is Phoenix Pyeongchang Resort. This signage is being used as one of the key PR media installations for the Olympic Winter Games Pyeongchang, which will be held in February 2018. KNOWCK has already started working with strategic partners in Southeast Asia, namely Malaysia, Thailand, Singapore, and Indonesia. Last year, it signed an MOU with the largest telecommunications company in Thailand. It is currently in discussion with telcos in Malaysia and Indonesia. These partnerships will allow CloudCast technology to be offered to growing numbers of cities and regions in Southeast Asia. For more detailed information on the KNOWCK, please check out https://www.cloud-cast.com/service/home?locale=en Contact Person: Jina Lee, [email protected] Photo - https://photos.prnasia.com/prnh/20170801/1911105-1 SOURCE K-ICT Born2Global Centre [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [August 03, 2017] Moneris introduces comprehensive iPad Point-of-Sale (POS) Solutions for Canadian retail and restaurant businesses Bundled software, hardware, installation and concierge services provides businesses with one stop for their POS solution and set-up needs TORONTO, Aug. 3, 2017 /CNW/ - Moneris Solutions Corporation ("Moneris"), one of Canada's largest processors of debit and credit payments, has introduced a range of complete iPad Point-of-Sale (POS) Solutions to help increase business efficiency for retail and restaurant businesses. Moneris iPad POS Solutions bundle software, hardware and Moneris Installation Services to help businesses get their payment systems up and running quickly. Businesses purchasing an iPad POS Solution also benefit from Moneris Concierge Services, a dedicated point of contact to help ensure a smooth transition to their new solution. With nearly 80 per cent of consumers owning a smartphone, it has become clear businesses need to keep up with how technology is changing consumer behaviour. Yet, according to a recent Moneris survey, almost half of Canadian small businesses are using standard cash registers with limited functionality to process sales. "Small businesses in Canada underpin our economy, but there's a reluctance toward adopting newer technology that could actually help their businesses. These businesses need and want help, and we're here to deliver solutions to help them succeed and grow," said Jeff Guthrie, Chief Sales and Marketing Officer, Moneris. "By working with industry leaders like Apple, we are able to deliver the right tools, services and support to enable better customer experiences and business management capabilities for retailers and restaurateurs." The right bundle for restaurants and retailers Businesses can customize their Moneris iPad POS Solution with software that best suits their style of operations, whether they are a small retailer, restaurant, or making the transition from an online store to a physical storefront: PAYD Pro Plus is Moneris' proprietary iPad POS Solution designed for retail environments. It integrates payments with a full suite of retail features, including inventory management and real-time reporting, to offer businesses a complete view of their operations. is Moneris' proprietary iPad POS Solution designed for retail environments. It integrates payments with a full suite of retail features, including inventory management and real-time reporting, to offer businesses a complete view of their operations. TouchBistro is an award-winning iPad POS Solution for restaurants and foodservice businesses that helps increase sales, improve customer experience and inform better business decisions. is an award-winning iPad POS Solution for restaurants and foodservice businesses that helps increase sales, improve customer experience and inform better business decisions. The Shopify POS Solution on an iPad allows Shopify ecommerce merchants to easily expand their business to a physical store environment. Moneris is the only payment processor that offers debit and credit card acceptance for Shopify POS with the integrated Moneris iPP320 PIN Pad. As a member of Apple's Mobility Partner Program and an Apple Authorized Reseller, Moneris sells Apple products, including the iPad, as part of its hardware offerings. Moneris iPad POS Solutions give businesses a choice of one of three hardware kits depending on their size and scale requirements. Hardware kits include equipment like iPad stands, Apple Mac minis, cash drawers, receipt printers and more. End-to-end service and support Businesses purchasing an iPad POS Solution from Moneris benefit from full, end-to-end service and award-winning customer support. With Moneris Concierge Services, businesses are given access to a dedicated, single point of contact to help guide the transition to their new iPad POS Solution. Additionally, businesses can maximize POS uptime through quick, on-site set-up of their iPad POS Solution with Moneris Installation Services. A team of in-house technical professionals handles the full hardware installation of the solution, including configuration and connection of devices, plus on-site software training for PAYD Pro Plus. An affordable alternative A basic retail bundle consisting of software, hardware, one payment terminal and on-site installation services starts at $2,000.* A basic restaurant bundle with similar components starts at $2,300.** By comparison, the average starting cost of a computer-based POS system and software licensing can cost as much as $10,000. Businesses interested in learning more about Moneris iPad POS Solutions can visit moneris.com/iPadPOS or call 1-844-866-2220 to speak to a Moneris representative. About Moneris As one of North America's largest providers of payment processing solutions, Moneris offers credit, debit, wireless and online payment services for merchants in virtually every industry segment and processes more than three billion transactions, annually. Moneris offers electronic loyalty and stored-value gift card programs. With more than 350,000 merchant locations, Moneris provides the hardware, software and systems needed to improve business efficiency and manage payments. For more information please visit www.moneris.com. Apple and iPad are trademarks of Apple Inc., registered in the U.S. and other countries. TOUCHBISTRO is a registered trade-mark of TouchBistro Inc. All other marks or registered trade-marks are the property of their respective owners. * Includes Basic Retail Kit, monthly PAYD Pro Plus software license fee, monthly PIN Pad rental fee, standard installation and a 32 GB iPad. ** Includes Quick Service Kit, monthly TouchBistro solo software license fee, mandatory software training, monthly PIN Pad rental fee, standard Installation and a 32 GB iPad. Pricing is not inclusive of additional and recurring monthly fees, payment processing fees, taxes and other fees as set out in the Moneris Merchant Agreement. SOURCE Moneris [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] Scientists on a recent six-month expedition have discovered the presence of a second garbage patch in the South Pacific, and are saying that the plastic vortex could be bigger than the state of Texas. Charles Moore set sail with a group of volunteer researchers in November 2016 to look at plastic pollution off the coast of Chile. It was during their research that the team discovered the large amount of plastic floating in the South Pacific, measuring an estimated million square kilometers, or 1.5 times the size of Texas. OCEAN CLEANUP: A controversial plan to trap plastic floating in the great Pacific garbage patch The plastic is gathered and trapped in one of the known gyres in the ocean these are areas with circulating ocean currents and it is difficult to remove the bits of plastic due to its size. Rather than the plastic trash that most would think of, such as six-pack soda rings or plastic bags, instead the plastic found in this part of the ocean are apparently smaller than grains of rice, ResearchGate reported. "We found a few larger items, occasionally a buoy and some fishing gear, but most of it was broken into bits," Moore told the publication. He guessed that there are millions of plastic particles per square kilometer in this newly discovered patch. Story continues below... A pollution researcher told the publication that the microplastics are difficult to clean up due to their size, and that it is easiest to prevent them from getting in the ocean than it would be to get rid of them once they're in the gyre. "This cloud of microplastics extends both vertically and horizontally," said marine pollution scientist Marcus Eriksen. "It's more like smog than a patch." Henderson Island is located in the same area as this garbage patch, and as National Geographic pointed out, it was covered in approximately 38 million pieces of trash, which is in keeping with Moore's finding in the ocean. Moore, incidentally, is the person who discovered the first garbage patch in the North Pacific in 1997. This latest research trip concluded in May, and Moore said he is now processing the samples of plastic that his team has collected. Westeros and the Seven Kingdoms may not be filled with dragons, dire wolves and zombie creatures but it comes from a very real place. Producers from the hit show "Game of Thrones" scour the earth for the perfect shots. Fans of the show at times can feel like they're in a whole different world when it comes to visiting Winterfell or Dorne. But while they're fictional places, they're filmed in very real places that tourists are flocking to. JOHANNESBURG Al Qaedas North Africa branch has freed a South African man who was held hostage for six years in Mali and is now back home, South Africas government announced Thursday. Stephen McGown, who was released on July 25, was the longest-held of a number of foreigners seized by Islamic extremists in Mali, where several armed groups roam the West African countrys north. The extremists have made a fortune over the past decade abducting foreigners in the vast Sahel region and demanding enormous ransoms for their release. McGown was kidnapped in 2011 at a hostel in Timbuktu, where he had been traveling as a tourist. He also has British citizenship. It was a big surprise when Stephen walked through the door, his father, Malcolm, told reporters. He felt as sound and as strong as before. South Africas minister for international relations, Maite Nkoana-Mashabane, said the government does not pay ransom in hostage situations. We can confirm that he has been released without any conditions whatsoever, said Brian Dube, spokesman for the Ministry of State Security. He said Malis government, nongovernmental groups and other individuals were involved in negotiations but didnt give details. McGowns release follows that of Swedish national Johan Gustafsson, who was freed in late June after being kidnapped along with McGown in November 2011. Swedish officials denied that a ransom had been paid, as other European governments have done to secure the release of their citizens in the Sahel. A Dutch tourist seized in the same abduction was freed in a French raid in 2015. In early July, the 42-year-old McGown was included in a proof-of-life video released by the al Qaeda-linked Nusrat al-Islam wal Muslimeen group in Mali. The video showed six foreign hostages shortly before French President Emmanuel Macron arrived for an antiterror summit. Extremists are still believed to be holding a Colombian nun taken from Mali, an Australian doctor and a Romanian man seized at different times in Burkina Faso, and an American who was working with a nonprofit organization in Niger. Islamic extremists seized control of Malis north in 2012. While they were forced out of strongholds a year later by a French-led military intervention, jihadists continue to attack Malian and French soldiers and U.N. peacekeepers. Five regional countries Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Burkina Faso and Chad have now created a 5,000-strong multinational military force against the extremists. Krista Mahr is an Associated Press writer. EL ALTO, Bolivia Mariana Limachi left the hospital in this high Andes city in tears after a doctor told her she needed a C-section because the umbilical cord was wrapped around her 8-month fetus. Instead, she turned for help to a highly respected figure among Bolivias indigenous women: the midwife. A few weeks later, midwife Ana Choque, an Aymara woman, delivered Limachis first son at her home using sunflower oil, paper napkins and coca leaves. After decades of shortages of trained people to help in deliveries, the role of midwives has been growing in recent years in Bolivia, which joined international efforts to improve the skills of midwives and bring them into closer contact with the medical community. Aymara and Quechua indigenous groups make up a majority of the countrys population, and many indigenous women like Limachi distrust hospitals and cesarean births. They prefer to rely on traditional midwives, whom they often refer to as aunt. Led by Bolivias first indigenous president, Evo Morales, the government has tapped into this strong cultural bond to train about 500 midwives and improve their medical skills. It is incorporating them into the health system as it strives to lower Bolivias maternal mortality, which is the highest in South America and among the highest in the Western Hemisphere. The current program officially began in 2013 after Bolivia passed a law recognizing traditional indigenous medicine, including midwifery. But training has accelerated in recent months as more midwives have joined the staff at clinics and have been allowed to certify births when they deliver babies in distant rural areas. Their lessons include dealing with emergency situations such as how to disinfect wounds or the best way to prepare a woman to be safely taken to a hospital in case of an uncontrollable hemorrhage. Bolivia long tried to convince women about the need to get prenatal care at health clinics and give birth at hospitals. Despite that, authorities say, the number of maternal deaths remained practically unchanged, around 206 per 100,000 live births in 2015. Only Guyana and Haiti have a higher rate of maternal deaths in the hemisphere, the U.N. Population Fund says. Maternal deaths in Bolivia are concentrated among poor, rural indigenous women, who are among the most vulnerable. Critics say Bolivias public health centers and hospitals in rural areas often lack beds, doctors and medicines. Paola Flores is an Associated Press writer. CARACAS, Venezuela The number of Venezuelans who participated in the election for an all-powerful constituent assembly was tampered with off by at least 1 million votes in an official count, the head of a voting technology company asserted Wednesday, a finding certain to sow further discord over the super-body that has generated months of nationwide protests. Smartmatic CEO Antonio Mugica said results recorded by his systems and those reported by Venezuelas National Electoral Council indicate without any doubt that official turnout figure of more than 8 million participants was manipulated. NAIROBI, Kenya Jane keeps the well-worn sarong wrap neatly folded in her home in a Nairobi slum, a memento of a life-altering event a decade ago. She was draped with it after two police officers raped her and left her to rioters the officers had been deployed to stop during deadly postelection violence. I lost consciousness after the first two civilians raped me. After that, I dont know how many people did it, she said. All this while my 5-year-old daughter was hiding in an empty water container. She hid there when the policemen started breaking into houses and looting. The 38-year-old tailor says she regained consciousness, with a broken hip and knee, when an elderly neighbor gently dressed her in the sarong. The neighbor had also been raped by the police as her grown-up son watched and then they ordered him to clean his mother, Jane said. The Associated Press generally doesnt identify victims of sexual crimes. Kenyans again face the threat of violence as the highly competitive Aug. 8 presidential election approaches, even as many who survived the deadliest period in the East African countrys history 10 years ago say they still havent found justice. Experts have warned that the governments failure to address old wounds risks passing them along for generations with the potential for cycles of violence. More than 1,000 people died and 600,000 were evicted from their homes after what international observers called a flawed presidential election in 2007. Both President Uhuru Kenyatta and Deputy President William Ruto faced charges of crimes against humanity at the International Criminal Court after being accused or orchestrating the violence, but the court dropped the charges and cited unprecedented witness interference and bribery. A government commission of inquiry found that deep-seated hatred over unresolved injustices and the belief that the court system was biased led to the explosion of violence a pattern caused by each election cycle. In response, the government committed to reforming the police and judiciary and adopting a new constitution to check the presidents powers. Though some changes have been made, Kenya has not reformed the police force, whose officers were found by the government to have killed more than 400 people in the 2007 unrest. Tom Odula is an Associated Press writer. 1 Syrian refugees return: More than a hundred buses carrying 7,000 al Qaeda-linked fighters and Syrian refugees drove down a dirt road from Lebanon into Syria on Wednesday, in what was the last phase of an exchange deal between Syrias al Qaeda branch and Lebanons militant Hezbollah group. The departure of al Qaeda fighters from the Lebanon-Syria border comes three years to the day after its fighters stormed the Lebanese border town of Arsal and captured two dozen soldiers, killing some in captivity and releasing others. The groups presence in Lebanon has left scores of people dead. 2 Defying logging ban: The European Union warned Poland not to continue logging in Europes last pristine woodland after Warsaw vowed to defy a ruling by the EUs top court to stop cutting down trees in the Bialowieza Forest. European Commission spokeswoman Mina Andreeva said Wednesday that complying with decisions of Court of Justice of the EU is indeed an integral part of European law upon which our very union is founded. The Polish Environment Ministry said it would keep logging despite the ban. The Bialowieza Forest, one of Europes last primeval woodlands and a UNESCO World Heritage site, is the subject of a heated political dispute over large-scale logging ordered by Polands conservative government. 1 Abortion bill: Chiles Congress approved a bill that would legalize abortion in limited circumstances ending the countrys status as the last in South America to ban all abortions. The measure approved by lawmakers this week allows abortions when a mothers life is in danger, when the fetus is not viable and in cases of rape. President Michelle Bachelet backs the measure and has said she would sign it into law. But it still needs to be approved by Chiles Constitutional Tribunal. Chile legalized abortion for medical reasons in 1931. But abortion was banned under all circumstances during the 1973-90 dictatorship of Gen. Augusto Pinochet. 2 Towering inferno: A fire broke out early Friday in one of the worlds tallest residential towers in Dubai, engulfing part of the skyscraper and sending chunks of debris plummeting below. More than 40 floors of the 86-story Torch Tower were burning on one side of the building, a reporter said. Building residents could be seen on the street outside crying with several saying the fire broke out just after 1 a.m. local time. Dubais Civil Defense announced at about 3:30 a.m. that firefighters had brought the blaze under control and that no injuries had been reported. PODGORICA, Montenegro Vice President Mike Pence said Wednesday that the future of Europes Balkan nations is in the West, reaffirming Washingtons commitment to the region as Russia works to assert its historical influence there. Pence spoke in Montenegro, his third and final stop in a European trip that saw him voicing support for nations pressured by Russia and highlighting U.S. allegiance to its allies overseas. He is the highest-ranking American official to visit the small Adriatic state in 100 years. We truly believe the future of the Western Balkans is in the West, Pence said in Podgorica, Montenegros capital. The Western Balkans refers to countries in the former Yugoslavia that aspire to or have already joined Western institutions, including the European Union and NATO. It also includes Albania. Montenegro joined NATO in June, a move that angered Moscow. Russia had considered the country of 620,000 people, with an army of some 2,000 soldiers, its traditional Slavic ally. Pence, who attended a summit of Balkan leaders Wednesday, praised Montenegro for standing up to Russian pressure. Its accession to NATO, Pence said, is a sign of the strength of this country 10 years after independence. I bring greetings from President Donald Trump, who sent me here as a visible sign of the alliance that we now enjoy through NATO, the vice president said. Russia is accused of masterminding an attempted coup in Montenegro in October to prevent it from joining NATO. Moscow has denied the allegations. In his address to the Balkan leaders, on Wednesday, Pence called Russia an unpredictable country that wants to destabilize the region. As you well know, Russia continues to seek to redraw international borders by force and here in the Western Balkans, Russia has worked to destabilize the region, undermining your democracies and divide you from each other and from the rest of Europe, he said. The Western Balkans have the right to decide your own future, and that is your right alone, Pence said. The Balkan states that are pro-West had feared Trump who once called NATO an obsolete organization would leave them to the Russian sphere of influence. Pences trip appeared intended to alleviate those fears. Predrag Milic is an Associated Press writer. Yes, that was racist Gloria Mendoza, a community organizer who was in the paper earlier this week as the face of Santa Fe populism, was featured again in todays New Mexican. Only this time, its because she shared a racist image with a critic on Facebook. The paper also sought comment from Jim Williamson, the man Mendoza and others are supporting in an insurgent city council seat bid. I am not one to criticize, Williamson said. Well, we are. Highway to receive improvements Starting next month, workers will add shoulders, replace guardrails and smooth out steep dips to Highway 41. The improvements are partially in response to a high crash rate. But residents in Galisteo are concerned the upgrades will mean more traffic, particularly fast-moving heavy trucks. Pharmacist running for Pearce's seat A former Eddy County Commissioner from Carlsbad announced his candidacy for New Mexico's 2nd Congressional District. Republican Jack Volpato, who owns a pharmacy in the town, would be the third Republican and the eighth overall candidate to vie for the Second Congressional District seat vacated by Steve Pearce's Congressional run. Browning the state and nation A rising population of non-white people is spearing population growth in most New Mexico counties. Across the Western United States, numbers of non-white people (particularly Latinos) are growing even as overall population declines. New first responder system New Mexico is now the eighth state to join a public-safety broadband network maintained by AT&T and the First Responder Network Authority (FirstNet). Under a contract, the department of public safety would be able to grant first responders priority accessing AT&T's communication networks "by the end of the year." New Mexico Superintendent gives and takes New Mexico's Office of the Superintendent of Insurance has warned health insurance companies that they can't pile on unnecessarily high rates for services that patients receive outside the insurance provider's network. Meanwhile, a lawsuit filed by four doctors contends that Superintendent John Franchini improperly allowed hospitals in the state to drain a medical malpractice fund. Criminal justice roundup A few items unrelated to each other, save for cop involvement: Santa Fe Police have increased surveillance and patrols out of concerns that two biker gangs with chapters across the world are beefing locally. Albuquerque police released body camera footage of Officer Jon O'Guin shooting and killing 43-year-old Robert Savelli. The sister of the man shot and killed by Santa Fe police on July 19 is now pursuing a wrongful death claim. Return of the chile Late summer is chile season. The roasters are out, the masses are lining up, and the peppers are crisscrossing the country. They look quite juicy. Thanks for reading! Today the Word is celebrating the birthdays of Tony Bennett, Martha Stewart, and our copy editor Charlotte. For her birthday, she requested that Oxford comma there. Subscribe to the Morning Word at sfreporter.com/santafe/signup. Santa Fe Reporter The Cronulla Sharks are proud to officially launch our uniquely designed jersey for Saturday nights Kokoda Challenge match against the Canberra Raiders. Featuring images of members of the 39th infantry Battalion of the Australian Army, the jersey will act as a vehicle to recognise the sacrifice made by those who fought in the battle of Kokoda. Inscribed along the waistline of the jersey are the words Endurance Sacrifice Courage Mateship, which are the words that define the ANZAC spirit, not only recognising the sacrifices made at Kokoda however the wider ANZAC movement. Along the neck line, the Papua New Guinea and Australian flags sit side-by-side to highlight the alliance between the two nations and show the support each nation gave to each other through this traumatic time. During this battle, the work done by a group of locals the Fuzzy Wuzzy Angels was vital to the Australian effort, assisting and escorting injured Australian troops down the Kokoda trail. The jersey, which will be auctioned following the match with the funds going to the Kokoda Track Foundation and will aid those who live on the track today. About the Kokoda Track Foundation The Kokoda Track Foundation exists to improve the wellbeing and futures of the Papua New Guinean people by assisting with education and healthcare, by respecting customs and the environment, by improving livelihoods, by fostering the next generation of leaders, and by keeping the story of Kokoda alive. The key projects include: teacher training, health infrastructure, micro businesses and a leadership program. Information taken from the Kokoda Track Foundation web page here. URBANA -- Eastern Illinois Foodbank received a $50,000 grant from the Walmart Foundation to fund infrastructure that will ultimately help the food banks partner agencies secure and distribute more nutritious food to families in need. The grant will support investments in the equipment necessary to handle perishable products, such as coolers and freezers for transporting, storing and distributing food; thermometers and temperature calibration devices; shelving units, carts and more. One in seven people struggle with hunger in eastern Illinois, including nearly 35,000 children, said Jim Hires, President & CEO of the Foodbank. We are thankful to the Walmart Foundation for helping to ensure that people who struggle with hunger have access to nutrient-rich food. This grant will go a long way in helping Eastern Illinois Foodbank and our partner agencies across 17 counties. In addition to their monetary support for items like coolers and freezers, Walmart has been a leading donor of perishable product through EIFs Retailers Against Hunger program. Retailers Against Hunger was created in 2016 and is a partnership between local food retailers, like Walmart, and the Eastern Illinois Foodbank to help alleviate hunger in eastern Illinois. Food received from retailers is often highly nutritious and generally the most expensive for the Foodbank to obtain. Meat, dairy, produce and baked goods are among the most donated items from stores in the Retailers Against Hunger program. Last year, local retailers donated 1,800,000 meals which were distributed through EIFs network of food pantries, soup kitchens, shelters and other emergency feeding programs. The Walmart Foundation has been instrumental in helping food banks rescue and distribute more perishable food from retailers across the United States in a sustainable, cost-effective way. This grant is a part of Walmart and the Walmart Foundations ongoing commitment to helping families who struggle with hunger by providing four billion meals to people in need in the U.S. by 2020. Eastern Illinois Foodbank works to alleviate hunger in eastern Illinois through cooperation with a network of food pantries, agencies and other programs. The Foodbank distributes donated and discounted food throughout a 17-county service area in cooperation with over 200 member agencies and programs. Through these agencies, the Foodbank provides meals to more than 116,000 men, women and children each year. The Eastern Illinois Foodbank is a member of Feeding America, Feeding Illinois, the United Way of Coles County, and the United Way of Champaign County. For more information, visit eifoodbank.org. Lets GLOW get him! The Coles County Cop Chase, hosted by the Family Caregiver Resource Center at your LifeSpan Center, is a one-mile family friendly walk/run and a 5k GLOW walk/run will take place on Friday, September 8! The one-mile event will begin at 7:30 p.m. and the 5k will follow at approximately 9 p.m. with Sheriff Jimmy Rankin in the lead. Participants can expect to pass through five GLOW tent stations along the route and are encouraged to wear GLOW colors and/or accessories to compliment the event theme. (White or neon-colored items are encouraged -- the brighter, the better!) Race runners will attempt to catch a cop and finish the race with a faster time than Sheriff Rankin! For extra-added fun, a GLOW photo booth will be available for all to share in the fun -- and our DJ will be cranking up the volume to keep everyones feet moving! And all registered participants will have the chance to receive a citation. These may include area restaurant gift cards, gifts, and other community business door prize contributions! Registration is easy! You can register online at raceentry.com or we can help you register if you call us at 217-639-5150 (credit/debit card orders only). The fee for the one-mile is just $10; $15 if youd like a commemorative event t-shirt. If the 5k is your interest, the fee is $20 and includes a commemorative dri-fit event shirt! Please be sure to indicate your shirt size preference when registering. All registrations must be completed prior to Monday, August 28 to be guaranteed one of the commemorative shirts. Theres also a potential you can race for free! When you refer friends you get refunds when they sign up with your link. $3 refund amount per person that uses your link! Day-of-race registrations will be at a cost of $25. Sheriff Rankin will run the 5k race in full uniform. All race finishers (one-mile and 5k) will receive a custom finishers medal. Trophies will be awarded to first, second, and third place finishers overall. This is an officially-timed event. Can you catch a cop? All proceeds from this event stay in our own Coles County area to assist grandparents (and other relatives) raising grandchildren. The Family Caregiver Resource Center is funded by the Federal Older Americans Act, the East Central Illinois Area Agency on Aging, the Illinois Department on Aging and client contributions. The Coles County Council on Aging offices are located at the LifeSpan Center, 11021 E. Co. Rd. 800 N., Charleston. The telephone number is 217-639-5150 for the Coles County Council on Aging and LifeSpan Center. Come join us each weekday at noon for Lunch at LifeSpan. Peace Meals, sponsored by Sarah Bush Lincoln Health Center, are served Monday through Friday at a suggested donation of $3.50. To register, reserve a lunch or learn more, call 217-348-1800. What is more beautiful than your child's bright eyes? How well he sees with those eyes is important to his learning and development. Parents and teachers need to be aware that a child might not know if his vision is normal. Here are some tips from the Illinois Early Learning Project regarding your childrens vision: Arrange for regular vision screenings - Newborns are checked for general eye health in the hospital nursery and at well-baby visits. Illinois requires yearly vision screening for all preschool children 3 years of age or older in any public or private preschool program or licensed child care center. If screening finds a problem, the child should see an eye doctor. Before they enter kindergarten, children need a complete vision exam and an eye alignment evaluation by an eye doctor. Be aware of risk factors - A child may need more frequent eye exams if she was premature or has developmental delays. Other risk factors include an eye injury, other illnesses, or a family history of eye disease. Learn the signs of possible eye and vision problems - Parents should talk to their health care provider if their infant's eyes: Always turn in or out, or they don't appear straight in photographs Don't appear to move together normally by age 3 months Appear very different from each other Don't focus on a parent's face by 3 months, or on toys held in front of him by 6 months Have pupils that are NOT black, round, and in the center of each eye Parents should talk to their health care provider if their preschooler: Squints, rubs her eyes, or frequently has teary eyes Sits too close to the television or holds a book too close Tilts her head or closes one eye to see better Is more sensitive to light than her peers Avoids activities that require near vision, such as looking at a book, or activities that require distance vision, such as catching a ball Complains frequently of headaches or tired eyes How can I find an eye doctor - Do you think your child has an eye problem? If so, ask his regular health care provider for a referral to an eye doctor for a full exam. Catching eye problems early can prevent later difficulties. Many county health departments offer eye tests for children over 3 years old. If your child needs eyeglasses, let her help pick out the frames. Explain how wearing them will help her see words in a book better or recognize her friends across the playground. The Illinois Early Learning Project Web site is a source of evidence-based, reliable information on early care and education for parents, caregivers, and teachers of young children in Illinois. illinoisearlylearning.org The opinions, resources, and referrals provided on the IEL Web site are intended for informational purposes only and are not intended to take the place of medical or legal advice, or of other appropriate services. We encourage you to seek direct local assistance from a qualified professional if necessary before taking action. Zero investor money Zero Debts Growing fast in the digital space Profitable This is just a dream in the current market scenario. If someone says there is one such company, none of us would believe. But there is one such existing. This company has started with florist shop in Delhi 2 decades ago and is now almost ruling the gifting space in India with more than 240 retail stores across India and is also growing leaps and bounds in the ecommerce space. The company is Ferns N Petals, who is now eyeing international markets, the first being Arab Emirates. Here is the transcript of a chat we had with the man who leads the organisation for more than 15 years, Mr. Pawan Gadia, CEO of Ferns N Petals. Q1. We have been hearing stories of Ferns N Petals have just started as a florist shop in Delhi and now we see Ferns N Petals everywhere. How is it going? A1. Yes, Ferns N Petals was started in the year 1994 and we have come a long way with 245flower stores across the country. We proudly say that we are the largest florist chain in the whole world. We have set up our online store in 2002 and today we are the largest in the online gifting space having served more than 5 million satisfied customers including NRIs, who use our services for their gifting needs in India.Ferns N Petals is the only online gifting portal https://www.fnp.com, which has its own delivery network across the country and thus is able to deliver quality across all the deliveries happening. While we have introduced a lot of categories beyond flowers, cake category is growing very well for us and we are now expanding this category offline, too by setting up our own cake shops in the name of FNP Cakes N More. We have already opened 12 shops across the country and we plan to open 50 shops in this financial year. We have started going International 2 years ago with UAE to start with, through our new website www.fnp.ae, catering to UAE. Our current focus is to make it number one gifts portal for Dubai. While this settles down, we are considering other markets in MENA and SE Asia. Q2. You should then be investing a lot. How are you managing the funds? Who are the investors? A2. Of course, investment is needed, but we are not relying on any external funding or on money raised through debts. We put back part of the profits again as investment into new initiatives and ventures, including expansions. We are very clearly focussed on bottom line and thus profitable, making us generate money for new investments internally into various projects and initiatives. We have zero investor money and zero debts. Q3. No Debt, No Investors money and a profitable E commerce company- Did you just defy the business rules that are in trend? A3. We have our vision, our gaols and the ways to achieve them. We are just behind them and have been over-achieving them. Thats all we care for. I dont want to comment about any trending ways of doing business. It all is based on the business goals each of the businesses set for themselves. Thinking about the customer in everything that we do this is the first and foremost thing for us. We believe that if you solve the customers problem and maintain quality, customers will keep giving you repeat business and would also become your advocates to get more customers, there-by even decreasing your cost of customer acquisition. We follow this very strictly. We make sure each of our employees understand this and think about the customer in each of the tasks they execute it could be as simple as my office boy in the way he treats our guest to the office since a lot of these guests would in turn, influence the customer journey either directly or indirectly. We also believe in the fact that customers demands would constantly be increasing and we have to keep changing ourselves and be able to innovate constantly to meet their demands, whether it be the service delivery, product variety as well as the customer experience across all touch points including the website, mobile app, the retail stores, call centre, etc. For example, we give real-time updates to the customers on the status of their orders. To put it simple, focus on the customer and everything falls in place money is no exception to that. Q4. How is it going with the current RakshaBandhan season? It should be hectic for you, right? A4. Rakhi is definitely is one of the biggest seasons for us at FNP where we see spike in our business. As we speak now, we are doing very well with Rakhi gifts, not just in India, but Rakhi deliveries outside India, including UAE, USA, Canada, Australia, UK, Singapore, etc. Technology also plays a crucial role in handling the huge traffic that is going to hit the servers during this time as well as managing the orders and we are quite sorted and also efficient use of the delivery networks that we have helps us in managing the festive rush. Q5. What is your highest business priority at this time? A5. Customer satisfaction is our bread and butter. My biggest goal at this point in time is to achieve zero complaints from our customers. To be able to give a customer a wow experience so that he not only comes back to us but also tells 10 other people about us, is what I want. In my opinion, its not the database size, but the size of the satisfied customers and your brand advocates that matter. STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- City Councilwoman Debi Rose (D-North Shore) is calling upon the mayor's office to designate Dreyfus Intermediate School as one of the city's "community schools". Earlier in the week Dreyfus Intermediate (I.S. 49) in Stapleton was named one of only two "persistently dangerous" schools in the five boroughs by state officials, as Mayor Bill de Blasio and City Schools Chancellor Carmen Farina announced that the 2016-17 school year was the safest on record. "It was not by accident that we had the safest year on record. It was a direct result of targeted resources being put in the right places -- and those resources will be focused on I.S. 49 in the coming year," Rose said. "Among the resources that I am calling on this administration to deploy at I.S. 49 is that it join the ranks of our community schools. The community school model puts in place expanded learning time, physical and mental health services, defined community partnerships and engagement, guidance, social services and more," she said. The city currently has 128 community schools in place or under development, including PS 78 in Stapleton, down the block from I.S. 49, and Curtis and Port Richmond high schools. Community schools have a proven record of increased attendance and student engagement, improved academic performance, and an improved school culture and climate, Rose said. The councilwoman said she is planning to meet with Farina and Dreyfus Principal James De Francesco in the coming weeks. A Department of Education spokesman confirmed that the chancellor is making plans to visit the school, although no date has been set. Meanwhile Community Education Council President Michael Reilly said he also supports a "community school" designation for Dreyfus Intermediate. "Members of the community are concerned," Reilly told the Daily News. "They're doing good things to improve the perception at I.S. 49, but it's not going to happen overnight. And we need resources." "A 'community school' designation will provide resources and opportunities for Dreyfus families and the surrounding community. This would help make Dreyfus Intermediate School a community focal point to help create a positive anchor. It takes a village," said Reilly. STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- Rep. Dan Donovan (R-Staten Island) presented 19 ambitious Staten Island high school students with Congressional certificates Wednesday, in honor of their participation in the Solar Car Challenge, a national competition where students design, build, and race solar powered cars. The students, part of the Green Energy Staten Island Solar Club, were the only team from New York City to compete in the Challenge last month in Texas. "I congratulate the Staten Island Solar Club on their third- place finished in the Advanced Division, and I applaud their hard work and determination," Donovan said. "It's great to see Staten Island students harness their creativity, as well as interest in STEM and renewable energy, to create a car of the future. These high schoolers are part of the next generation of innovators, and I can't wait to see the groundbreaking ideas they come up with as they move forward in their careers." "We're so proud of what this team has accomplished and we look forward to next year," said Michael Degregorio, Solar team co-captain with Angelo Cardinale. "Renewable energy is the way of the future," Cardinale declared. The Staten Island Solar Club's car was built using university body models and exotic batteries. The vehicle also includes a functional seat, roll cage, safety harness, and turn signals. This year 20 teams competed in the four-day competition held at the Texas Motor Speedway in Fort Worth, Texas. Teams competed in one of four divisions, Classic, Open, Advanced and Electric-Solar Powered Car. This is the seventh year the Staten Island Solar Club has participated in the Solar Car Challenge. This year's team is comprised of students from Staten Island Technical High School, New Dorp, Moore Catholic High School, Graniteville, and Tottenville High School. STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- If Michael Grimm tries to make another run for his old seat in Congress, challenging his successor Rep. Daniel Donovan, his former supporters say he would have a steep uphill battle. Grimm is said to be eyeing a return to the House after having served eight months in prison for federal tax fraud. He didn't return a call for comment, but former staff, campaign volunteers and supporters say they don't think Grimm, with his felony record, could win against incumbent Donovan, the district attorney for 12 years. A member of the Staten Island Republican Party's executive board supported Grimm and his past campaigns, backing Grimm until, having maintained his innocence throughout the indictment and re-election in November 2014, he pleaded guilty the following month. "The fact that he plead guilty at all is a slap in the face for everyone who voted for him and supported him in 2014," the source said, adding, "I don't believe that Michael would have much support in the rank and file of the Staten Island Republican Party. I don't think they'd go with a convicted felon over someone who supports Trump's agenda 75 percent of the time." Some conservatives are unhappy with Donovan's vote against the Republican bill to repeal Obamacare, but even the congressman's critics say Grimm will have a tough time winning, if he decides to run. There are currently five Democrats hoping to challenge Donovan, all first-time candidates with little or no name recognition. A Donovan spokeswoman, Jessica Proud, said, "Whether it's his leadership on homeland security, his work to protect good-paying jobs for our community or his fight to get the seawall done, Dan is laser-focused on delivering results. In a short time, he has established a record the people of Staten Island can be proud of, and we're confident the politics will take care of itself." A former D.C. staffer for Grimm thinks the potential run, or a campaign itself, is a way for Grimm to get buzz so he can get work as a lobbyist. "I think it's a means to an end," the former staffer said. But if he did get elected, he would be inefficient, the staffer argued. "You might as well just elect nobody because no one on the Hill will want to be within 10 feet of him." Grimm might also have to deal with the House Ethics Committee. The committee had been looking into allegations that Grimm solicited and accepted illegal campaign contributions and filed false campaign finance reports. It was also alleged that he brokered a deal to get an Israeli citizen a green card in return for campaign contributions. But the Ethics Committee deferred its investigation as the Department of Justice prosecuted Grimm for the tax fraud during his time as co-owner of Healthalicious, a Manhattan health food restaurant before holding elected office. The committee ceased investigating after Grimm resigned from Congress, but could possibly reopen the case if the former congressman makes an effort to retake his seat. A Staten Island Republican insider who was once a Grimm ally said it would be tough for Grimm to fundraise against Donovan because most of his network now supports Donovan. The same goes for Washington -- Donovan is the incumbent and has strong relationships. "I don't see any organization in D.C. gambling with their interest by giving money to Michael," the source said. "But there are a lot of people who do support Michael over anybody else, so he's going to be able to raise some money." The source noted that for the first time in many years, Donovan won both the Staten Island and Brooklyn sides of the district in the 2016 race. "It's certainly going to be an uphill battle for Michael. That being said, Michael took down an established former councilman, and congressman in 2010." A Grimm campaign could call attention to his help for constituents during and after Hurricane Sandy, but then again, Donovan has sponsored flood insurance bills, fought for FEMA reform and worked with Build It Back. As for gaining sympathy from voters who see Grimm's charges as the result of a political prosecution, "That's the best card that he has," the source said. Guy Molinari, Grimm's friend and mentor, a former borough president and congressman, has always defended his younger ally, calling him an American hero for serving as a Marine, FBI agent and congressman. He has said repeatedly he would like to see Grimm return to public office, and was the one to float the idea of Grimm running for borough president. He wouldn't say Thursday whether Grimm is considering running. "It's up to Michael, he's got to call the shots," Molinari said. But Grimm's time in public office isn't over, he vowed. "He will emerge again someday -- there's no question in my mind, he will return to public office, but when I don't know." STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- Police arrested and charged a New Brighton woman Wednesday night in connection to a brutal hit-and-run in Grasmere. Beatrice Tchoungoua, 22, was the driver of the black two-door Honda Accord that was caught on video rolling over a 62-year-old woman near the intersection of Hylan Boulevard and Clove Road on the morning of July 14, police allege. She is charged with leaving the scene of an accident, aggravated unlicensed operation of a motor vehicle, failure to yield to a pedestrian and failure to yield at a stop sign. Police could not provide further details on the nature of Tchoungoua's arrest, and a number listed for her went unanswered Wednesday night. David Gonzalez, an employee at Met Food near where the incident occurred, said he rushed over to the woman where she landed in a pool of rainwater on the asphalt on Hylan Boulevard, just beyond the intersection of Clove Road and Woodlawn Avenue. "She was screaming in pain," he said. Police said the 62-year-old woman suffered bruising, but no broken bones. "The person knew what he did and that's a terrible crime, hitting a person and then just knowing that you got somebody under your car and you keep going," Gonzalez said. He described the intersection where Clove, Hylan and Woodlawn meet as "dangerous," with other people being hit by cars as they cross the street. People roll through the stop sign and don't always yield the pedestrian right of way at the lights, he said. Would you like to comment on this report? Click here to join the conversation. DECATUR Touting an increase in money for downstate schools, Gov. Bruce Rauner called on local Democratic lawmakers Wednesday to support his changes to the school funding overhaul needed to fund districts for the coming school year. During an interview with the editorial board of the Decatur Herald & Review, a sister paper to the JG-TC, the Republican governor said he's optimistic about ongoing bipartisan negotiations on the bill, which was approved by the Democratic-majority General Assembly in May and sent to him Monday. He said there was no reason for downstate lawmakers to oppose the amendatory veto he issued Tuesday, which removed help for Chicago Public Schools' pensions along with money the district formerly received in the form of a block grant, among other rewrites. Rauner said his plan would steer more money toward downstate districts, and specifically called for support of the legislation's sponsor, Democratic Sen. Andy Manar of Bunker Hill. God bless Sen. Manar, he's been fighting for education reform, Rauner said. But why would Sen. Manar vote for a bill that diverts dollars away from schools in his district and move them to the Chicago pension system? He later made similar comments about Rep. Sue Scherer, D-Decatur, who also supported the original Senate bill. A new school formula is required as part of a state budget deal that lawmakers approved in July; without it, districts won't get paid. The first payment to schools is due Aug. 10. Democrats approved the legislation in May but did not send it to the governor because of concerns that he would veto it, a delay that Rauner called "political gamesmanship on the backs of our children." He also reiterated previous allegations that superintendents across the state voiced support for the original legislation because they are afraid of retribution from House Speaker Michael Madigan, D-Chicago. Decatur Superintendent Paul Fregeau questioned that statement last week, saying school officials were concerned about not receiving any state funds not retribution from any state lawmakers. Another of Rauners changes affects the so-called hold harmless provision, which provides that no district would receive less money than it did this year. Rauner's plan would switch how funding is calculated starting in 2021, moving from a per-district to per-pupil basis, meaning that schools that lose students would receive less funding. The bill now returns to the Legislature, where three-fifths of lawmakers in both chambers must either approve or override Rauner's changes. Both options will be difficult. If neither chamber can muster the votes, the legislation dies. If there's a new plan, it would also face a three-fifths threshold in each chamber. The Associated Press contributed to this story. 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 Thank you for visiting the Daily Journal. Please purchase an Enhanced Subscription to continue reading. To continue, please log in, or sign up for a new account. We offer one free story view per month. If you register for an account, you will get two additional story views. After those three total views, we ask that you support us with a subscription. A subscription to our digital content is so much more than just access to our valuable content. It means youre helping to support a local community institution that has, from its very start, supported the betterment of our society. Thank you very much! The ACT government will not ban gamblers from getting cash from eftpos machines in clubs, but instead will limit withdrawals to $200 a transaction. There will be no limit on the number of times gamblers can return to eftpos machines, but clubs say the break from playing the pokies to get more cash will give gamblers time to reflect on whether they want to continue. Poker machines: The government will limit cash from eftpos to $200 per transaction in clubs. Credit:Brendan Esposito The government was considering banning cash from eftpos altogether, given gamblers can still get $250 a day from ATM machines in clubs, but has backed off the move. The compromise, to take effect on September 1, was welcomed by Canberra Community Clubs chairman Athol Chalmers, who said it struck a "good balance" between limiting harm for gamblers, the "health" of club businesses and the impact on other club patrons who wanted to access cash. Tuggeranong banker Andrew Grayson spent his entire wedding day in Nike shoes that were one size too small - all in the name of pulling off a very specific Forrest Gump vibe. Such is the life of a hardcore cosplayer, where going to extreme lengths to bring your favourite character to life is standard. Cosplay is the practice of dressing up as a character from a film, television series, comic, book or video game, especially one from the Japanese genres of manga or anime. Cosplay couple Bec and Andrew Grayson as Gryffindor students, with baby daughter Aurora as Hedwig. Credit:Rohan Thomson Andrew Grayson and wife Bec met at, you guessed it, a fancy dress party in 2013, where both had gone absolutely "all out" on their costumes to impress the birthday girl, a mutual friend. He was V from V for Vendetta, she was The Joker. Thousands of cosplayers are expected to drag their swords, shields, capes and in the Graysons' case - babies - to AIS Arena this weekend for pop culture festival Gamma.Con. Real estate agent Steve Thomas was finishing work in his car in Yarralumla on Thursday morning before doing a property appraisal up the road. Suddenly, the driver's side door of his red Ford Mustang GT was flung open and a man was threatening Mr Thomas with a crowbar. Steve Thomas after being reunited with his red mustang after having it hijacked in Yarralumla on Thursday morning. Credit:Rohan Thomson As the man told him to get out of the car, a second jumped into the passenger seat as Mr Thomas stepped out. "He said 'get out of the f...ing car' twice. I was pretty calm, I said 'Mate, I'm getting out'," Mr Thomas said. Wonder Woman star Gal Gadot has sent a personal message to Canberra girl and Wonder Woman fan Freyja Christiansen who is in Sydney hospital battling a rare cancer. Gadot wished the five-year-old "health, luck and love and may you always be happy". Gal Gadot, star of Wonder Woman, has made the day of a young Canberra girl. Credit:AP The movie star said she had heard "wonderful things" about the plucky schoolgirl and urged Freyja to look forward to things in the future. "I want to send you a big, big, big, big hug all the way to Australia," Gal told her in the Facebook message. ACT children and youth minister Rachel Stephen-Smith has been accused of failing to protect staff and inmates within the Bimberi Youth Justice Centre, as the Canberra Liberals moved to censure her. But Ms Stephen-Smith said she had been open and transparent about the steps she'd taken to stem alleged violence and other problems within the youth detention centre, and accused the media of selectively quoting her. The Minister for Disability, Children and Youth, Rachel Stephen-Smith. Credit:Karleen Minney The failed censure motion, moved by Liberal leader Alistair Coe on Thursday, rebuked the minister for allegedly: failing to respond adequately to concerns about the centre; seeking to silence legitimate criticism by staff and detainees of its operation; and claiming violence will continue to be a feature of life at Bimberi. Mr Coe said young people were coming out more "hardened" from Bimberi than when they went in. CommBank's failures to pass on information about suspicious transactions posed a potential risk of terrorism or terrorism financing, Austrac alleged, accusing the bank of failing to inform regulators about some 53,000 suspicious transactions, including cash deposits in its new ATMs. On August 7, 2015, Kha Weng Foong was the man making the deposits in inner Sydney. He arrived in Australia on a Malaysian passport in 2008, and was granted a temporary partner visa. Yuen Hong Fung was the man police claim made the transfers. He travelled to Australia on a Hong Kong passport in another name in 2014, and was granted a temporary business visitor visa. Along with another unidentified man, the syndicate were making as many as 25 deposits a day from late 2014 to August the following year. Foong, alone, made 182 transactions in less than seven week before his arrest on August 24, 2015. After his arrest, police found more than $200,000 cash, eight NSW drivers' licences in different names with his photo, and multiple mobile phones at his Petersham unit and in his car. At Fung's apartment in Chippendale, police found $520,000 cash in $50 notes in a black bag, and two bundles of cash valued at more than $35,000 in set of drawers in a bedroom. Both men have since been prosecuted, although the AFP did not charge them with offences prior to July, 2015. Austrac suspects the syndicate used CBA intelligent deposit machines to deposit about $20.6 million, the majority of which was then transferred offshore. It claims CBA failed to report suspicions relating to syndicate transactions valued about $22.7 million. In a police interview, Fung claimed he had no idea there was $520,000 in the black bag, which had been given to him by someone called "Johnny". And, when asked who gave him the bank cards in the name Kevin Ho which were found in his wallet, he simply answered "I dunno". Austrac alleges that the new CommBank ATMs allowed customers to deposit up to 200 notes per deposit, which if used with $100 notes, would allow $20,000 to be deposited into an account in a single transaction. CommBank did not limit the number of transactions a customer could make. Banks are required to inform authorities of transactions over $10,000. It didn't take long for criminal syndicates to figure out they could exploit the loophole to launder money. Austrac alleges syndicates laundered money using foreign nationals on holiday visas who deposited cash into CommBank accounts, much through the new IDM machines, followed immediately by international and domestic transfers. Austrac says growth in the use of the direct deposit machines was huge. In the six months from June to November 2012, nearly $90 million was deposited. But by January 2016 to June 2016, cash deposits had grown to about $5.8 billion. From May to June 2016 the amount was more than $1 billion. Banks are required to to report transactions of more than $10,000 to authorities within 10 days. In its complaint to the Federal Court, Austrac detailed how four syndicates, including three with links to drug importation or manufacture, used CommBank to launder more than $75 million. A second syndicate is alleged to be linked to a drug syndicate and involved more than $6 million being laundered via CommBank IDMs between June 2014 and January 2015. The money was transferred out of the accounts immediately after each deposit. Three individuals have been charged with dealing in proceeds of crime in connection with a drug importation syndicate. A third syndicate linked to a drug manufacture and importation syndicate was accused of depositing and laundering more than $27 million that was transferred to offshore accounts. This syndicate is alleged to have made deposits of more than $530,000 regularly at branches. Some alerts were raised over these deposits at the bank but "were not reviewed in a timely manner". Austrac alleged that after CommBank raised concerns over one account, it allowed the "highly suspicious activity to continue", with nearly $12 million allowed to be deposited and remitted overseas. A fourth syndicate also linked to a drug importation and distribution syndicate, operating between February 2015 and May 2016, saw over $21 million deposited in cash into 11 CommBank accounts. Another strategy uncovered in the operation involved a financial transfer strategy called "cuckoo smurfing". Related parties in separate countries settled transactions within their company by transferring money within their company as opposed to across international borders, to potentially avoid triggering the interest of authorities. Loading Commonwealth Bank said it was working closely with Austrac and had cooperated fully. Billionaire businessman James Packer has officially rejoined the board of Australia's biggest casino operator, Crown Resorts. On the eve of the company's annual results, to be revealed on Friday, Crown informed the stock exchange that Mr Packer had now received all the necessary approvals to be reappointed as a director. Mr Packer has remained the largest shareholder of Crown Resorts through his private investment company, but stood down from the board in December 2015. His 18-month absence has been a troubling time for the Australian casino giant, following the jailing and recent conviction of 19 staff in China for promoting gambling. Danny Marcuson was not surprised to learn that online transactions using stolen credit card details were on the rise. In the past 18 months, the e-commerce small business owner has had to cough up about $10,000 accounting for purchases made with stolen card details on his two websites. "Card-not-present" fraud, or fraud committed with a card that the merchant doesn't see (such as when a customer buys online using the stolen details of a valid card), hit $417.6 million in Australia last year, a figure that has more than doubled since 2011. Industry body Australian Payments Network says the rise in card fraud reflects the pace at which perpetrators have followed Australian consumers to online retail platforms. Tending to our financial affairs had been neglected on the household to-do list for too long. As the parents of three small children, we could put it off no longer: we found an independent financial adviser. The task, sadly, wasn't finding a high-yield investment opportunity for excess funds. (You may recall I have written previously about the eye-watering sums we have forked out for childcare over the years so "excess funds" is something of an anomaly around these parts.) Our objective was modest and critical. We wanted to review our respective super accounts, and ensure we had adequate insurance in the case of death, injury or loss of income. Contemplating these scenarios is bleak, but it's bleaker still to imagine financial distress compounding any ordeal. Growland Group, a local developer backed by Asian investors, has entered into exclusive negotiations with a Melbourne family to buy an enormous Werribee farm, not yet zoned for residential redevelopment, for a speculated price of more than $30 million. Toyota is selling the 5.7-hectare factory in Laverton North where it makes door panels and seats. Credit:Paul Jones The 143-hectare property on Bulban Road, about 45 kilometres from the GPO, is at the western most edge of the suburb. The farm across the fence is classified as Mambourin (though developers using this postcode, 3024, also promote it as Wyndham Vale and Manor Lakes, among other names). The western suburb property is part of the future Mambourin East Precinct Structure Plan encouraging residential redevelopment in the City of Wyndham area one of Australia's fastest growing municipalities expected to accommodate more than 200,000 residents over the next 20 years. Shrewsbury International School Job Opportunity Job Specification: Purchasing Manager Position Title: Purchasing Manager (Applications will be considered as they arrive) Department: Administration Line Manager: Director of Business Services Salary: Dependent on experience General: Shrewsbury is one of South East Asias outstanding international schools, with enrolment of 1600 students from Early Years to Sixth Form, exceptional examination results and particular strengths in the creative arts, design and sport. The school itself enjoys a delightful and spectacular setting, right on the banks of the Chao Phraya River in the heart of Bangkok. The teaching environments are spacious, fully equipped and dramatic. The school is readily accessed by road and has its own boats, which provide an easy and quick link to Bangkoks Skytrain and the city centre. The link with Shrewsbury School UK (www.shrewsbury.org.uk) is taken very seriously and, year-on-year, develops into a world-class educational partnership. Key Responsibilities: To supervise the Purchasing team ensuring all work is properly delegated, prioritized and controlled To operate the schools purchasing function according to the school policy and in particular; ensure all purchasing is authorized in advance raise and control Purchase Orders from Purchase Requisitions obtain competitive quotes for high value purchases negotiate best price and terms ensure purchasing is in accordance to required specification assign accounting codes to all purchases and reimbursements liaise with departmental heads regarding requirements and specifications To update the schools department expenditure control records providing monthly budget versus actual analysis To manage and control the overseas educational resource order cycle with the schools UK consolidator ensuring shipping arrangements are made quotes are approved before ordering customs documentation is raised delivery timelines are met co-ordinate and receive delivery of shipments at the school To check deliveries are in accordance to order quantity and specifications To follow up outstanding orders and to meet timelines for delivery To maintain purchasing records and documentation To assist in the sourcing and development of school products e.g. uniform, trip shirts and sports kit To support the logistics and arrangements of major school events e.g. sports day, FOBISIA competitions To update, maintain and implement new purchasing software system as and when necessary Provide monthly reports on Purchasing activity Audits and spot checks of shop inventory Assist with implementation at new school sites Professional Expectations: Good command in both Thai and English (written and spoken) Ability to communicate and work effectively with a wide range of staff and colleagues Positive, initiative and pro-active attitude Work with integrity and honesty Enjoy working in a busy educational setting Flexible and able to work under pressure Good presentational and organizational skills Ability to identify problems or concerns with strong problem solving skill Strong leadership and management capabilities Quick learner eager to explore new technology, processes, and procedures Able to work independently as well as be part of team Child Safeguarding: Shrewsbury International School is committed to Safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children. The successful candidate will be required to attend in-house Child Safeguarding programmes promote and safeguard the welfare of all students in the school report to the Child Protection Officer any concerns they have for the welfare of a student. This may include unsafe practices witnessed within the school as outlined in the schools Speak Out (Whistleblowing) Policy keep professional relationships with students where personal boundaries are respected and maintained seek advice from a Line Manager or Child Protection Officer with issues or concerns related to Child Safeguarding This post is subject to satisfactory: Thai Police check prior to the start of the employment. Formal proof of identity with photo ID (Original Driving License / Passport/ID card). 2 signed confidential references before the start of the employment. Verification of original qualifications. How to Apply: Applications will be only be accepted on the official Shrewsbury International School Application Form, which is available on the school website under Job Vacancies. The application is preferably in English so please select the application for Thai National (English Version). Further Details: Full details of the school are available on our website at www.shrewsbury.ac.th. Enquiries should be forwarded to jobs@shrewsbury.ac.th. Refugees would be able to work while awaiting decisions on their refugee status under a proposal by a government taskforce, which says barring them from working increases the propensity for illegal cash economy activity. And student visa holders could be allowed to work more than 40 hours a fortnight to avoid the same problem, in an option canvassed in a consultation paper released this week by the federal government's Black Economy Taskforce. The taskforce called on business, professional bodies and ethnic and religious community leaders to suggest ways the government could reshape cultural norms. Credit:Tanya Lake The taskforce, headed by Board of Tax chairman Michael Andrew, also called on business, professional bodies and ethnic and religious community leaders to suggest ways the government could reshape cultural norms that have led to illegal cash economy activity becoming "almost a national sport". The paper said countering the cash economy was as much a cultural challenge as an economic one. The taskforce wants to help the federal government claw back an estimated $15 billion in lost federal tax revenue and illegitimate welfare payments due to the black economy. Judith Jones, the editor who discovered Julia Child and advanced a generation of culinary writers that revolutionised cooking and tastes in American homes, and who for a half-century edited John Updike, Anne Tyler, John Hersey and other literary lions, died on Wednesday at her summer home in Walden, Vermont. She was 93. The cause was complications of Alzheimer's disease, her stepdaughter Bronwyn Dunne said. Judith Jones, the renowned editor, was a fan of literature and cooking. Credit:Chester Higgins Jr/The New York Times Authors and publishing colleagues called Jones an extraordinary editor imaginative, versatile, fascinated with stories, curious about people and places, a deft wordsmith and above all insatiable for the pleasures of French cooking. She talked about it, wrote about it and practiced its arts in her kitchens in Manhattan and rural Vermont. She modestly ascribed her success to being in the right place at the right time. Certainly that was true in 1950, when as a young editorial assistant at Doubleday in Paris she rescued the diary of Anne Frank from a pile of rejects and persuaded her superiors to publish it in the United States a stroke of fortune that gave the English-speaking world the intimate portrait of a forgotten girl, the child everyone had lost in World War ll. All Australians have the right to high-quality healthcare appropriate to their illness. To argue otherwise would be to advocate discrimination. But rights are different from realities, and in reality the Australian health system discriminates against groups and individuals every day. People with mental illness, and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders, are treated differently. They're treated worse. That brutal truth helps explain why both groups have significantly lower life expectancy than the rest of the population. The Herald agrees with the National Mental Health Commission chairman Allan Fels: it is shocking indeed that in Australia, where we enjoy one of the best healthcare systems in the world, people with a serious mental illness die younger on average than the general population by between 14 and 23 years. They are six times more likely to die of cardiovascular disease, four times more likely to die from respiratory disease, and more likely to be diagnosed with diabetes or have a stroke under the age of 55. National Mental Health Commission chair Professor Allan Fels wants the Productivity Commission to look into mental health to get it on the economic agenda. Credit:Mick Tsikas Many will recall the disgusting cruelty and neglect of Miriam Merten, who died after being left in a seclusion room for five hours at Lismore Adult Mental Health Inpatient Unit. She was ignored by two nurses while she bashed her head against the concrete wall and floors and left to stumble half-naked in a corridor before collapsing. The inquiries under way may reveal whether Ms Merten's was an isolated extreme case or symptomatic of a wider problem. The 53 organisations concerned with mental health who signed up to the Equally Well statement know, though, that the physical health symptoms of people with mental illness are often overlooked or ignored in the health system, as are the damaging side effects of their medications. On equity, compassionate and economic grounds, urgent remedies are needed. But money talks loudest, so the economic argument is the one most likely to gain political traction. That's why Professor Fels points to the $15 billion cost to the health system of physical illness among people living with a serious mental health issue. The Fairfax-Lateral Economics wellbeing index which provides a broader measure of national welfare than traditional economic figures calculated that the cost of mental illness to national wellbeing last year was $207 billion. That is equivalent to about 12 per cent of the economy's annual output. This seems to be a moment where the most heated political battles are among those who are meant to be on the same side. Australian voters will be familiar with this, having observed the slow implosion of the Coalition over the past two years only underlined by this week's parrying on same-sex marriage. And more on that in a moment. But arguably the most telling illustration has come from America where, amid the continuing Trump-led circus, Republicans in congress have once more failed to kill off Obamacare. This really is extraordinary. Republicans control every elected branch of government. They hold the White House, the House and the Senate. Accordingly, the country is theirs to run without the slightest hint of input from the Democrats, who are presently entirely irrelevant. And yet here we are, watching as the Republicans cannot deliver on what has been their most central reason for being for the past seven years. Imagine if Tony Abbott had booted Labor from power in a landslide that gave him majorities in both houses of Parliament, and yet couldn't manage to repeal carbon tax. We're looking at something that dysfunctional. And yet, we're looking at something entirely understandable. The Republicans' problem is that, well, their approaches to healthcare largely stink. That can be masked in opposition, but when forced to implement something in government, the stench becomes overwhelming. Every attempt to replace Obamacare has come with a hideous number attached that forecasts just how many people will wind up losing their health cover under Republican proposals. First 23 million, then 32 million, then 16 million. You could bring that figure down, but only by keeping more elements of the thing you're trying to replace, at which point hardline Republicans would decry the policy for not going far enough. And when the principal benefit of this exercise seems to be the repeal of certain taxes for the wealthy, that's an awful message to defend publicly. Some congressional Republicans inevitably got cold feet. To date there has proven to be no magical balance that can satisfy both moderate and Tea Party-infused Republicans. It's a study in the limits of oppositional politics. The cliche runs that you campaign in poetry and govern in prose. But how do you govern when you've campaigned in bumper stickers? It turns out you become largely mute. The Republicans' story is not one of lofty, utopian ambitions sullied by the inevitable compromises of politics. It is a story of no great ambition at all; of a bloody-minded plan for destruction that runs aground whenever the moment calls for construction. That's why after six months of unfettered political dominance, the Republicans have nothing of consequence to show for it. The politics of insurrection ran its course as soon as it achieved victory. The Republicans have proven little other than the sterility of their anger. Male, female and unisex toilets? Most of us already deal with gender-blind toilets at home. Credit:iStock Exactly. So what's the plan? Rogiest says it's about the architecture, and Katrina Bradley could not agree more. She's the partner at Bain in Sydney's Governor Phillip Towers who led a refit for the entire office and that meant a rethink of how they used space for employees as well as those who visited, including breastfeeding mothers and their babies. But that also meant the degendering of bathrooms. No catastrophes have ensued. Not a single person has complained about the bathrooms, a series of private toilet cubicles each with its own basin, in the area of the office where clients come in for meetings. Was it to address issues of gender? Not exactly. More to address the bottom line. "People were more concerned about the other problem, which was coming out of meetings and queuing, not having sufficient facilities," says Bradley. "I've been at enough conferences where there were queues out of the door during coffee breaks and during lunchtimes, and so we just thought, 'Why not design bathrooms which can be used by any gender and avoid having to queue?'." That's capitalism for you wiping out all those carefully constructed fears around the need for segregated bathrooms in order to deliver productivity even during the breaks. She confesses floor space was in short supply, and while it's difficult to get floor space to multitask, genderless toilets made that possible. Rogiest's thesis focuses entirely on floor space and design. Although they experimented with the Bain model that is, a cubicle for every person and no urinals it didn't have the best outcome for waiting times. The most efficient model provided two cubicles and one urinal, so a set of three. "If you want to use surface most efficiently and have the most people pass through in a given time, it is most efficient to provide urinals we see this at work in [Belgian] rock festivals, because the organisers want to use the available surface as efficiently as possible," he says. I tell him I'm pretty uncomfortable with the idea of passing men at the urinal. He's unfazed. Since the study went online he and his colleagues have had thousands of social media comments, the vast majority of which have been very positive, although he does admit a few men complained about the possibility of having to wait and a few women complained about the prospect of mess. And as he points out, most of us already have to deal with gender-blind toilets at home, mess, queue and all. He tells me about an email he received from a woman in the US to say how much she appreciated the study. Her workplace didn't take into account her change of gender, so she was forced to go home to use the toilet as many as three times a day. Rogiest's study helped her deal with her employers, who decided to accommodate a gender-neutral toilet. Again, no catastrophes ensued. But it's going to take some time to make the change. So, until we have redesigned every bathroom everywhere, here is some advice for women who on how to cubicle crash: eyes down, rush in, use the facilities, rush out. Never make eye contact. Don't answer questions or respond to comments. And in the meantime, as women are forced to queue for ridiculous lengths of time, we should all remind venues of all kinds that time is money. There's a real cost benefit in getting women out of the bathroom and into the bar. Donald Trump with then-national security adviser Michael Flynn and chief strategist Steve Bannon during a phone call with Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull in January. Credit:Bloomberg The conversation also confirmed Australia would take refugees from Central America as part of the arrangement, contradicting the Australian government's public insistence that the deal was not a swap. "This is a very big issue for us, particularly domestically," Mr Turnbull said, according to the transcript. "It requires, in return, for us to do a number of things for the United States this is a big deal, I think we should respect [the] deal. Donald Trump with Mike Flynn and Steve Bannon in the Oval Office during the call to Malcolm Turnbull. Credit:AP "We will then hold up our end of the bargain by taking in our country 31 [inaudible] that you need to move on from ... we are taking people from the previous administration that they were very keen on getting out of the United States. "We will take more. We will take anyone that you want us to take," Mr Turnbull promised as the President hit out at the "rotten deal". Donald Trump speaking to Malcolm Turnbull n the Oval Office of the White House. Credit:AP "I am going to get killed on this thing," Mr Trump said. "I will be seen as a weak and ineffective leader in my first week by these people. This is a killer," the President said, pointing out that it would contradict his hardline call for people from Muslim-majority countries to even be allowed to travel to the United States. He also asked for Mr Turnbull's assurances that Australia would not be exporting terrorists. "We have our San Bernardinos, we have had the World Trade Centre come down because of people that should not have been in our country, and now we are supposed to take 2000. It sends such a bad signal. You have no idea. It is such a bad thing," Mr Trump said. At one point, Mr Trump asked: "Who made the deal? Obama?" Mr Turnbull had to explain Australia's border protection policies and the terms of the deal repeatedly to Mr Trump, who appeared to struggle to comprehend the arrangement. The Prime Minister also several times corrected the President's claim that Australia would send 2000 refugees to the US. Mr Turnbull said the actual figure was 1250. Mr Turnbull said the United States could decide to take only refugees who met its vetting procedures and that the "obligation is to only go through the process". At one point he agreed with Mr Trump about the the prospect of the US vetting but then deciding to accept no refugees. However, he added that he would expect the US to act in "good faith". He described all the detainees on Nauru and Manus Island as safe and mostly "economic refugees" from Iran, Pakistan and Afghanistan. "They have been under our supervision for over three years now and we know exactly everything about them," he assured the President. He added that if they had come by plane, they would have already been settled in Australia. Mr Trump struggled to comprehend why Australia "discriminated" against people coming by boat and asked why the Australian government didn't just free the detainees if they were deemed safe. Mr Turnbull said the policy was aimed at stopping people-smuggler networks from selling dangerous sea voyages to Australia. And when he outlined Australia's harsh approach to asylum-seekers who arrived by boat - saying not even a Nobel prize-winning genius would be allowed to settle in Australia - Mr Trump praised the Australian leader as even worse than himself. "That is a good idea. We should do that too. You are worse than I am," Mr Trump said. "Malcolm, why is this so important? I do not understand. This is going to kill me," the President said at one point. Australia prioritised Christians over Muslims Mr Turnbull also boasted to the President that Australia had prioritised Christians from Syria. "This is exactly what we have done with the program to bring in 12,000 Syrian refugees, 90 per cent of which will be Christians," Mr Turnbull said. "It will be quite deliberate and the position I have taken I have been very open about it is that it is a tragic fact of life that when the situation in the Middle East settles down the people that are going to be most unlikely to have a continuing home are those Christian minorities. "We have a similar perspective in that respect," he told Mr Trump. Turnbull agrees with Trump on Merkel Both leaders rubbished German Chancellor Angela Merkel's open-door policy to accept refugees fleeing the Syrian conflict. Mr Trump suggested that Mrs Merkel regretted her decision. "Look at what has happened in Germany. Look at what is happening in these countries. These people are crazy to let this happen. I spoke to Merkel today and, believe me, she wishes she did not do it. Germany is a mess because of what happened," he said. Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has called an emergency meeting of the Liberal Party to debate same-sex marriage, as the government grapples with options including a legally dubious postal vote "plebiscite". Liberal MPs have been summoned to Canberra on Monday afternoon for the special meeting, with a group of moderates expected to push for the party to dump the plebiscite policy altogether and adopt a free vote. Fairfax Media understands Mr Turnbull will take a "hands-off" position in the meeting, neither advocating a change of policy or the status quo, and will conduct a ballot if necessary. The decision to first debate the issue in the Liberal Party room, rather than in a joint meeting with Nationals MPs who are more conservative, could anger the junior Coalition partner. When Malcolm Turnbull was asked about Donald Trump's attacks on the media earlier this year, he offered the US President some advice. "A very great politician, Winston Churchill, once said that politicians complaining about the newspapers is like a sailor complaining about the sea," Turnbull said. "There is not much point. That is the media we live with and we have to get our message across and we thank you all in the media for your kind attention." The quote (correctly attributed to British politician Enoch Powell, not Churchill) is one of Turnbull's favourite phrases to trot out, outdone only perhaps by describing something as a "penetrating glimpse of the obvious". The power went out at our house and across our suburb around dinner time on Wednesday. Outside, neighbours returning home sat in their cars in a street as dark as a tomb, their garage doors refusing to answer their electronic clickers. An innovative solution? Credit:Tony Wright We searched for candles with the light of mobile phones, discovering only that we'd burned them to nothing at dinner parties. We weren't prepared for this return to an unfamiliar era at all. A 21-year-old Lincoln man said Thursday he was a young man who made a mistake. A judge then gave him 50 to 70 years in prison for his part in two robberies, one that left a man dead and another paralyzed. "Honestly, I'm not a criminal," Xheronte Lewis said. "I went the wrong way. I lost sight of where I was going." Attorney Thomas Wilson told a tale of Lewis' unraveling, how he had been a very good student and running back at Lincoln High School until he got involved in marijuana and started hanging out with Markel Steele, a man from Chicago with gang ties. Lewis had been with Steele on Dec. 29, 2015, when a deal at a house near 27th and Holdrege streets went bad and Steele decided just to take the marijuana and pulled out a gun, Wilson said. Lewis, who had been smoking pot all day, ended up bringing a 4-year-old girl, who had been left in a car outside, into the apartment when one of the seller's friends stopped by unexpectedly. "There was no robbery plan," Wilson said. But he said the two had discussed taking marijuana from Christopher Coleman. On April 18, 2016, Lewis went to Coleman's house at 1966 Euclid Ave. to buy pot and find out if he had gotten a big shipment for April 20, "Weed Day." Then Steele would rob him. "It didn't happen that way," Wilson said. He said as Lewis was leaving, Steele rushed in with a gun. Lewis waited outside and heard two bursts of gunshots. Then, Steele came out and told Lewis to come back in and help him find the pot. Lewis saw Coleman and another man, Jerry Griffis, both shot. Coleman died at the scene. Griffis played dead to survive, but was paralyzed from his wounds. As the victims bled on the floor, Lewis and Steele searched for marijuana, finding two bags in the kitchen. Wilson said Steele tried to split it with Lewis, but Lewis wouldn't take it. He wouldn't leave with Steele, either, and was arrested a few blocks away. "This is something he didn't expect to happen," Wilson said of the shooting. He said Lewis, then just 19, was devastated by what happened and wanted to do as much as he could to make things right. Now Lewis, who has a 1-year-old son, is trying to focus on the future, Wilson said. Lewis said his mom was in prison until he was almost 4, and he didn't want that for his son. "I just ask that you don't take my life away from me," he said. "I didn't want anyone to get hurt." Lewis said this was a mistake. He could've split what was taken but wanted no part of it, he told the judge. Lancaster County District Judge John Colborn said he couldn't ignore the violent nature of each of the crimes or that firearms were involved in each. "You went out to a car and brought a 4-year-old into an armed robbery," he said. The other resulted in a death of one man and another shot and forever paralyzed, Colborn said. With that, he sentenced Lewis to 25 to 35 years on each count of aiding and abetting robbery. Lewis, who had pleaded guilty, looked wide-eyed as if in disbelief. "That is f---ing crazy," he said moments later as he stood to be taken out a back door to prison. About 275,000 sparkly iPhone cases have been recalled after users sustained burns and blisters by fluid leaking from cracks in the coverings. The affected cases are sold throughout Victoria's Secret stores in the United States, Canada and Mexico and online via Amazon and GetMixBin.com. Samsung cases are still being sold in some Victoria's Secret stores in Australia. Credit:Jenna Clarke The United States Consumer Product Safety Commission issued the warning on Tuesday, by Thursday local Victoria's Secret stores had removed cases containing liquid and glitter from shelves. Staff at the Parramatta store were aware of the international recall when contacted by Fairfax Media while the CBD site is now only selling Chinese-made plastic covers for older model Samsung phones for between $45-$49. As an outspoken white upper-middle-class male, people are constantly clamouring to hear my view on feminism. Usually, dispensing feminist commentary is quite easy for me. I just pass off something I've already heard a woman say as if it were an original thought and then graciously accept the disproportionate amount of praise that comes my way. But today's task is unfortunately much more difficult. Outspoken white upper-middle-class male Peter Chudd. Credit:Amelia Dowd Feminism is at a crisis point. It risks leaving behind its most valuable allies: men who have no desire to examine their own behaviour. Some people believe feminism should be about women and that's fine, provided I am never made to feel uncomfortable or asked to change my behaviour. Modern feminism is failing to appeal to those who, like me, make no effort to engage with or understand feminism, but strongly oppose what we presume it to mean. All I am asking is to be held by the hand and gently led down the path towards decency, with a small reward for every step I take. Australia has largely moved beyond acceptance of extremely objectifying advertisements for products with no inherent connection with sex. A prime example was the seductive "Chiko chick" who promoted the Chiko roll while posed on a motorbike from the 1950s. discriminates against or vilifies a person or section of the community on account of race, ethnicity, nationality, gender, age, sexual preference, religion, disability, mental illness or political belief. Other countries, such as Sweden and Spain, have made concerted efforts not only to avoid gender stereotyping in advertising but to counteract it. For instance, toy catalogues produced by Toys R Us and Toy Planet have drawn international attention for their depiction of both boys and girls playing with dolls, trucks and tools. This kind of gender neutrality is not intended to discourage girls or boys from playing with the toys traditionally associated with their gender. Instead, it aims to make it acceptable for them to choose from any of the available options. When you consider that debates about child-care costs are still usually framed in terms of whether it is financially worth women returning to work, it is clear the way we socialise children into seeing child care as women's responsibility flows all the way through to major issues of employment and gender equality. Gender stereotyping in advertising is not just problematic because of limiting representations of girls and women and the reassertion of their role in the home. In addition, the ways boys and men are depicted as useless at basic domestic tasks makes them out to be simpletons. There are countless examples of "dumb dads" in ads. Think of the father in a Glade advertisement who is consistently befuddled by an automatic deodorising spray. The HSC is an "artefact of the past" that should be scrapped, according to a leading NSW Catholic educator who warns that NAPLAN data is often misused and misrepresented and should not be linked to year 12 results. Greg Whitby, the director of Catholic education in the Parramatta diocese which has more than 45,000 students, said the HSC was a relic of the 1950s and no longer reflected the needs of young people entering a rapidly changing workforce. "The HSC has had its day. The current HSC is rarely used to seek employment and only 20 per cent of students use their ATAR to get into university," Mr Whitby said. "When you have students around the world doing MOOCs online (massive open online courses) and are designing their own degrees, there is no doubt the credential is going to have to change otherwise all we are doing is looking backwards." Airport workers at Perth and Canberra airports say there are serious security holes made worse by understaffing and cost-cutting. Passengers have been allowed to wander secure areas, ground staff have been allowed on their own without security checks, staff bags are not being checked properly and trucks are being allowed into secure areas without having their cargo inspected, according to staff. A "push-truck" at Canberra Airport with a cracked windscreen. Credit:TWU At the centre of many of the accusations is airport services company Aerocare, which said the claims were part of an "unprecedented campaign of dishonesty and bullying" by Transport Workers Union, which has previously attacked the company over its treatment of workers. Staff claimed that photos of "push-back" trucks, which are used to tow planes, with badly cracked windshields, and a photo of staff standing on plastic barricades to guide incoming planes showed safety and security were not being taken seriously. Members of a Sydney terrorist cell accused of plotting to blow up a plane will be charged after police gathered "very substantial" evidence about the thwarted attack. The sweeping operation that let to the arrests of four men on Saturday prompted a bolstering of security measures at Australia's major airports and lengthy passenger delays. Speaking in Perth on Thursday, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said security measures would return to normal following an assessment by ASIO that there was no longer an active threat to the aviation industry. "They have uncovered this plot, they have disrupted it and they have contained it," he said. Former state Labor minister Tony Kelly arriving at ICAC Credit:Rob Homer Fairfax Media had revealed that the corruption watchdog was undertaking a major inquiry into Australian Water Holdings, a water company in which the family of the now jailed Obeid had a secret stake. Mr Kelly and Mr Tripodi had good reason to be very, very worried about this new ICAC inquiry as they had committed what was later to be described as an act "tantamount to fraud". Ex-Labor ministers Eddie Obeid and Joe Tripodi. Credit:Christopher Pearce, Daniel Munoz The pair had been involved in the doctoring of a cabinet minute and, if ICAC found out about it, they could be in serious trouble. It was essential that they get their stories straight and to do so without fear of the prying eyes and ears of ICAC investigators. As it turned out it was all to no avail. In 2010, Obeid's efforts to lobby the relevant ministers to get the government to commit to a private-public partnership with AWH had come to nothing. That was when his close political allies, Mr Tripodi and Mr Kelly, came to the rescue with a doctored cabinet minute that was completely the opposite of the recommendations of experts from the Department of Premier and Cabinet. Word of the dubious nature of the minute reached then premier Kristina Keneally who warned Mr Kelly to withdraw the minute and not to resubmit it. Giving evidence in April 2014, Mr Kelly admitted signing the document and putting it forward to cabinet but claimed it was drafted by Mr Tripodi, then a backbencher, and advisers from both of their offices. According to the doctored minute presented by Mr Kelly, AWH was worth up to $200 million but the government's experts had estimated AWH's assets were worth only $36. Laurie Brown, former chief of staff to Mr Kelly, admitted to the ICAC that he incorporated facts in a cabinet minute about AWH that he didn't understand and that he had not verified as accurate. He also deleted facts that showed that the public-owned Sydney Water would be hundreds of millions of dollars worse off if the proposed public-private partnership deal was accepted. Asked where much of the information came from, Mr Brown said: "It could well have been Mr Tripodi." But Mr Tripodi denied any involvement in the doctored cabinet minute. He claimed he had merely given Mr Kelly's staff some draft notes he had from his time as the minister. Mr Tripodi also claimed that he had no idea that the Obeids had an interest in AWH. "On one occasion, I said to him, 'Eddie, you and your family don't have any commercial interest in this?' He said, 'No, no, [Eddie Obeid] Junior's giving Australian Water a hand up in Queensland,' " Mr Tripodi said. And as to the reason his phone was off during the entirety of his whirlwind trip to Wellington, Mr Tripodi told the inquiry: "Um, my, my telephone - just let me think about it. My telephone was off that day but it wasn't, it was actually in the car. I remember it was, I remember it was an issue driving out there because I didn't have my, I thought I didn't have my phone, it was in the car in the back seat and it was off, yes." These are the second corruption findings for Mr Kelly and the third for Mr Tripodi Almost nine years after he entered the NSW Parliament, former Labor leader and union boss John Robertson will quit politics at the end of the month. Mr Robertson has accepted a job as executive general manager at the not-for-profit organisation Foodbank, which acts as a conduit between the retail industry and charities to distribute food to the needy. "I'm going to work in a bank, but unlike Mike Baird people like this bank," Mr Robertson quipped, in reference to the former Premier's role at National Australia Bank after leaving politics in January. Mr Robertson's decision to resign from parliament on August 25 will spark a second byelection in coming months after Nationals MP Katrina Hodgkinson announced she would resign at the end of the month. The sister of former bikie boss Sam Ibrahim, who admitted plotting with her de facto partner to supply guns, has avoided jail time for her crime. Jazz Dior, 46, and Elvis Mileski, 44, on Thursday were sentenced to 18-month jail terms to be served by way of an intensive correction orders in the community. Jazz Dior arrives at the Downing Centre Local Courts in Sydney on Thursday. Credit:AAP The couple had pleaded guilty in the District Court in Sydney to one charge of conspiracy with each other to unlawfully supply firearms in early 2014. Judge Robert Toner said that, as part of Dior's corrections order, she must be of good behaviour and commit no offences. A NSW cabinet minister has called on the Turnbull government to devise a clear population policy, saying states were left to plan cities "in the dark" due to a lack of national narrative on the country's population growth. Education Minister Rob Stokes said the state government was left trying to retrofit the NSW's infrastructure and services to an expanding population, without a clear, transparent trajectory of NSW's future population. "It's impossible to plan if you don't know what you are planning for," Mr Stokes said. "There's no overarching narrative of where we are going." A former planning minister, Mr Stokes said states were at the mercy of the federal government's migration policies while bearing the bulk of the infrastructure costs associated with adapting to a growing population. The state government is planning to dismantle a homeless camp at Martin Place for a second time, and police threaten to throw anyone who resists "in the back of a truck". The long-standing camp of 44 tents, which house about 50 people in front of the Reserve Bank, was first dismantled by the City of Sydney council in June but many of its residents have returned. On Thursday afternoon, as some of the residents were zipped into their tents to escape the cold, others gathered around a marquee, where volunteers cooked hot food and offered tea and coffee as part of a 24-hour kitchen. It was hours after Social Housing Minister Pru Goward said about the camp: "We will move these people on. I don't care what it takes." Two men have been charged with planning a terrorist act after police uncovered an alleged Sydney-based plot to bring down a plane. Mahmoud Khayat, 32, from Punchbowl, and Khaled Mahmoud Khayat, 49, from Lakemba, have each been charged with two counts of acting in preparation for or planning a terrorist act, Australian Federal Police said in a statement on Thursday night. Both men are scheduled to appear in Parramatta Court on Friday morning. The maximum penalty each could face is life imprisonment. Khaled Merhi remains in custody, while a fourth man, 50, was released without charge on Tuesday night. The group behind the $3 billion casino and resort proposal at the Gold Coast's Spit are "deeply shocked" by the Queensland government's decision to dump the development. ASF director Louis Chien has accused the government of backflipping for political gain and warned of the impact on investor confidence in Queensland. ASF's proposal for a new $3 billion casino resort at Southport Spit was rejected on Tuesday. Credit:ASF Consortia On Tuesday, Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk announced the government was canning the ASF proposal, which was welcomed by some in the community. But Mr Chien told Fairfax Media the consortium was deeply shocked and disappointed by the Queensland government's "snap decision". The Crime and Corruption Commission has charged former Ipswich mayor Paul Pisasale with two counts of attempting to pervert justice. Fairfax Media understands one of the charges relate to calls Mr Pisasale allegedly made this week to his former driver, Steve Potts, in which he offered to help him find a job in exchange for Mr Potts recanting allegations the former mayor had misused his official car. Paul Pisasale will face fresh charges as part of a CCC investigation. Credit:Tammy Law On Sunday, Fairfax Media revealed claims by Mr Potts that Mr Pisasale had used his mayoral car and driver for chauffeur-driven trips to brothels and frequent visits to massage parlours. The CCC late on Thursday announced it had issued the legal representative of a 65-year-old Ipswich man with a notice to appear in court to face two counts of attempting to pervert justice contrary to section 140 of the Queensland Criminal Code. There's a selfish undertone to today's column since I'm writing it the day after I collapsed in the office bathroom; my face severely bruised, an eye that seems eternally shut, and crippling spinal pain that won't dissipate. My injuries, thankfully, had nothing to do with work. The same can't be said for others. A few years ago, the NSW state government, as one example, reformed workers' compensation laws, which subsequently drove down insurance premiums and claims. And even though there have been moves since then to unwind some of those reforms, most of them are still in place. Injured employees return to work much sooner when they're supported by modified work programs. There's a silver lining to this. Prior research indicates if injured employees maintain their work-related connections, their chances of recovery are significantly heightened. But while most of the research has been based on reams and reams of data, a new study published in The Australian Journal of Social Issues explores the perspective of the employee instead. The scholars from Macquarie University identified three themes after having conducted interviews that lasted up to two hours. An NBN fault left Melbourne man Scott Moffat with no home phone or broadband for four months, but the upcoming NBN complaints review may ignore the bureaucratic red tape which has left him and other Australians in broadband limbo. With growing pressure for NBN and retail service providers to end the blame game and resolve customer frustrations, this week the Australian Communications and Media Authority announced a wide-ranging review of the "NBN customer experience" to address ongoing complaints regarding connection delays and service quality. The ACMA is set to survey around 1800 homes and 750 businesses regarding their satisfaction with the NBN. It will also call on retail service providers for details of customer complaints. Mr Moffat's drawn out battle to reconnect his Malvern East home was only resolved in July after Fairfax Media raised the issue with NBN. Previously he had spent four months pleading his case to Optus, NBN, the Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, and the office of communications minister Mitch Fifield. An anti-abortion protester accused of harassing a couple outside a clinic will argue her constitutional right to free speech means her case should be thrown out. Kathleen Clubb, a mother of 13, is believed to be the first person charged under new safe-zone laws that prohibit protests within 150 metres of abortion clinics. Kathy Clubb, in glasses, outside the Melbourne Magistrates Court on Thursday Credit:Paul Jeffers The laws also stop pro-life protesters from making contact with people entering or leaving clinics in a way that could cause distress or anxiety. Ms Clubb, 51, handed a pamphlet to a couple outside the Fertility Control Clinic in East Melbourne on August 4 last year, and is charged with a single count of communicating about abortions with people accessing an abortion clinic. A coroner has cleared a doctor of wrongdoing in the death of a baby girl who died minutes after he delivered her at her parents' home. Martha Alice Fraser was born three days after she was due at her parents' Collingwood home on May 30, 2011. The baby was in a more risky breech position in the womb, which meant she was naturally born feet first, rather than head first. Her parents had planned for the baby to be born in hospital, and had been told to call the hospital once labour started. Actor and Underbelly star Vince Colosimo allegedly had ice in his system and lied about taking the drug to police, according to court documents. Mr Colosimo, 50, is interstate and did not appear in Melbourne Magistrates Court on Thursday to answer to his latest charges, which frustrated a magistrate who was asked to again adjourn the case. Police allege Mr Colosimo tested positive to ice when pulled over in Melbourne's Exhibition Street about 5.40pm on March 5, and denied taking the drug when asked by an officer. He was charged with recording a positive drug test and driving while suspended. Recap: A police officer has been hospitalised following a rather creepy home invasion in Frankston this morning. Police said a 35-year-old woman woke up about 2.50am and found a complete stranger in her Fairway Street home. She rushed outside and called police, and when officers arrived they found the man still inside the house, casually reading a magazine in her living room. The 27-year-old man resisted arrest and in the violent scuffle that followed, a police officer sustained a forearm injury that required hospitalisation. The alleged burglar suffered a facial injury and has been taken to hospital under police guard. A murderer's 78-year-old mother has admitted she tried to hire a hitman, who turned out to be an undercover police officer, to kill a key witness in her son's trial. Michael Cardamone, 50, has pleaded guilty to the violent murder of Karen Chetcuti Verbunt in January 2016. The mum of killer Michael Cardamone has admitted trying to hire a hitman. Credit:Mark Jesser/Border Mail He is due to face a plea hearing on August 21. But earlier this year, he worked with his mother Maria Cardamone to arrange for a prosecution witness to be killed ahead of a possible trial before a jury. The long-awaited Mitchell Freeway extension north of Perth has officially been "opened" with Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull on hand to cut the ribbon. The $236 million lengthening of the freeway will see a six kilometre, four-lane extension from Burns Beach in Joondalup to Hester Avenue in Clarkson. Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull joined a number of state and federal politicians to open the freeway extension. Credit:@cporterwa / Christian Porter It will be open for public use on Friday. The project will also include interchanges at Burns Beach, Neerabup Road and Hester Avenue, as well as an extension of Neerabup Road (east from Connolly Drive to Wanneroo Road) and duplication of Hester Avenue from Hidden Valley Retreat to Wanneroo Road. Paris: Air France-KLM has expanded its no-fly zone over North Korea after one of its jets flew past the location where an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) splashed down 10 minutes later, an airline spokesman said on Thursday. Air France's flight 293, a Boeing 777 carrying 323 people from Tokyo to Paris, missed North Korea's latest ICBM as it fell to Earth on July 28 by about 100 kilometres or approximately 10 minutes' flight time, the spokesman said, citing flight data provided by Japan. Air France-KLM flies direct to Tokyo and Osaka and the expansion of the no-fly zone could make the flights 10 minutes to 30 minutes longer, depending on the direction, the spokesman said. North Korea said on Saturday its latest ICBM test proved its ability to strike America's mainland. Beijing: China is taking an increasingly tough line on a border row with India amid a crescendo of nationalism in official media, with President Xi Jinping looking set for an awkward encounter with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi next month. Diplomats say Beijing would like to resolve the border issue before a summit of the BRICS nations - that also groups Brazil, Russia and South Africa - in the Chinese city of Xiamen in early September, and ensure nothing dampens what China wants to be a show of cooperation and friendship among developing countries. Chinese troops hold a banner reading "You've crossed the border, please go back" in Ladakh, India. Credit:AP But that could be tough. On Wednesday, China accused India of "concocting" excuses over the illegal entry of the South Asian nation's military into Chinese territory. "China will take all necessary measures to safeguard its legitimate and lawful rights and interests," the Foreign Ministry said. Dubai: Firefighters have extinguished a blaze that swept through one of the world's tallest residential buildings in Dubai in the early hours of Friday, forcing occupants to flee their homes as burning debris showered down the sides of the tower. Dubai's civil defence authorities said firefighting squads put out the blaze by about 4am (9am AEST) and were cooling the 352-metre tall Torch Tower. The tower, in the city's upscale Marina district, was evacuated and no injuries were reported, authorities said, even though flames shot up the sides of the building. The 676-apartment tower has 86 floors above ground including a four-storey podium. Firefighters and police sealed off surrounding streets, which were partially covered by dust and debris. Jakarta: One of Indonesia's most senior ministers has called on Attorney-General George Brandis to help speed up a class action on behalf of thousands of seaweed farmers who claim their crops were devastated by a 2009 oil spill. More than 13,000 seaweed farmers from East Nusa Tenggara, one of the poorest regions in Indonesia, launched a $200 million class action against PTTEP Australasia in the Federal Court in Sydney last August. Maritime Coordinating Minister Luhut Pandjaitan told reporters he understood the class action, which is being run by Maurice Blackburn Lawyers, was taking place right now in Sydney. "I just tried to reach George Brandis to ask their support in order to speed up this process," he said. "It's been ... nearly eight years. It's too long." Last week, a photograph that appeared to show six women wearing burqas on a bus sparked a heated debate in a private Facebook group for Norwegians critical of immigration. For many members of the group, which is called "Fedrelandet viktigst" or "Fatherland first," the image encapsulated the problems Norway was facing after an influx of Muslim immigrants in the past few years. Burqas or bus seats? It also played into a continent-wide debate about Islamic dress across Europe. Norway's right-wing government recently proposed a law that would ban some forms of dress worn by Muslim women in schools and universities the first Scandinavian country to do so. Solar Novus Today Has Been Integrated With Novus Light Technologies Today Visit Novus Light Technologies Today to see all the cutting-edge stories and products that you have come to enjoy on Solar Novus Today. In addition, you will find more information on related light-based technologies. Get the latest solar and renewable energy news delivered right to your inbox. Sign up for the Green Technologies newsletter CLICK HERE TO SUBSCRIBE TO OUR GREEN TECHNOLOGIES NEWSLETTER Nebraska Attorney General Doug Peterson said Wednesday his attendance at a meeting last month sponsored by a controversial Christian legal advocacy group was by invitation and not paid for with state money. Alliance Defending Freedom, a conservative Christian nonprofit organization, has the stated goal of advocating, training and funding on the issues of religious freedom, sanctity of life, and marriage and family. It has been criticized for taking aggressive stands against gay marriage and LGBTQ rights. People in left-leaning organizations have said the group's endgame is to have the law and the culture reflect its religious views, including weakening the separation of church and state. U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions spoke at the July meeting Peterson attended, but news organizations were not allowed to attend his talk or initially get a written version of his speech. It was published several days later, however, on a conservative media outlet, thefederalist.com. In the speech, Sessions talked about religious freedom, saying the "inside-the-beltway crowd has no idea how much good is being done in this country everyday by our faith communities. ... But the cultural climate has become less hospitable to people of faith and to religious belief." Sessions said: "Under this administration, religious Americans will be treated neither as an afterthought nor as a problem to be managed." Peterson said he was asked to serve on a panel on federalism to talk about how specific cases affect states. The panel was moderated by attorney Hugh Hewitt, a conservative and Catholic MSNBC talk show host who comments on society, politics and media bias. State money was not used to pay for his attendance at the meeting in California, Peterson said. His travel and lodging were paid for by the organization, and an honorarium he received will be donated to charity. Peterson said the Alliance Defending Freedom has been one of the most-respected advocacy organizations for more than 20 years, with success in the U.S. Supreme Court. "These (attorneys) are some of the best at what they do," he said. The recent attempt by the Southern Poverty Law Center to label the organization a hate group, Peterson said, is totally unwarranted. No weight should be given to the Southern Poverty Law Center assigning labels to groups that disagree with its beliefs, he said. That squelches public debate. "They cause people to be fearful of being called a hater," he said. "And when that happens, our country suffers." The Alliance Defending Freedom does more to protect the Constitution than groups that scare people from expressing their own sincerely held religious beliefs, because they may be mocked or ostracized, Peterson said. "It reminds me of McCarthyism," he said. A person that has a sincerely held religious belief that marriage is between a man and a woman are not doing hateful things, he said. "In fact, they may be doing very loving things." But in this cultural debate, people think they have to humiliate and intimidate the opposition, he said. That's dangerous and a contradiction of the Constitution. "I think we're at a very important time where we need to stand up for full and free debate," he said, including on university campuses. Most of the meetings and conferences he attends are sponsored by attorneys general organizations, rather than by advocacy groups, he said. But he also would love to be on a panel at an ACLU conference. "Because I love the free flow of debate," he said. Thoughtful, respectful debate on a variety of important issues is the essence of what university settings are all about. And Alliance Defending Freedom has been trying to protect that, he said. Peterson has said his faith is important to him. And some of his appointments to his staff have reflected that. He hired Dave Bydalek as his chief deputy attorney general. Bydalek was policy director for Nebraska Family Alliance, which has goals including protecting the sanctity of life; defending religious liberty for students, health care professionals, business owners and churches; defining marriage as between a man and a woman; and advancing a culture of prayer in the state. His chief of staff is attorney Josh Shasserre, who has served as executive director of the Catholic Foundation of the Diocese of Lincoln. Peterson said his personal views and feelings are not important, but rather upholding the rule of law with case law and facts. "My actions as attorney general are what's important," he said. With that said, "there could be a case ... where the facts and the law gave me such a personal moral conflict I would have to resign from office," he said. "I don't see that coming, but the fact of the matter is that would be a matter of conscience." Everything you need to know about No. 20 Notre Dame's game vs. Navy Saturday in Baltimore The bald eagle found with a bald head is stronger, irate and ready to return to the wild. But first, it needs to undergo a pair of relatively risky surgeries. He went from basically starving to death and not being able to fly a foot to now fighting off three grown women, so hes doing well, said Molly Mullen of Fontenelle Forest, whose Raptor Recovery Center has spent much of the summer caring for the bird. He could fly back to the wild and he doesnt understand why hes stuck here. The emaciated male was found Memorial Day weekend on a riverbank near Syracuse, a hard scab covering its crown. The bird was transferred to Raptor Recovery, which began nourishing the eagle and trying to determine what had happened to its head. It contacted dozens of experts and raptor rehabilitation specialists, but weeks passed without answers. Then, last month, an Omaha plastic surgeon and longtime Raptor Recovery volunteer examined the bird at Omahas Henry Doorly Zoo. Coleen Stice determined it had likely suffered an electrical burn, and she was able to surgically remove the scab to reveal a thin layer of skin covering the eagles skull. The remaining skin cant produce new feathers, so Stice is planning two surgeries to transplant patches of skin and feathers from the birds inner thigh to the top of its head. Stice specializes in human burn victims but performed a feathered skin graft as a grad student, Mullen said. The first graft is Friday, and it comes with some risk. The bird will be given anesthesia, and Stice will use a small drill to make abrasions on his scalp, giving the graft a better bonding surface and the necessary blood flow. But theyve got to be careful because this small piece of skin is all thats protecting his brain, Mullen said. Stice will sew a partial graft to the eagles head and then add staples as insurance, to guard against the bird trying to tear it off. If its head heals and the graft works, Stice will perform the second surgery. Fontenelle Forest has heard from people worried about the surgeries. And there are potential problems: The bird might not make it through the procedures. Or it could suffer an infection. But it wouldnt survive in the wild with nothing to protect its scalp from the sun, she said. We would like to point out that he would be dead by now. Although its risky, this is the best shot we can give him. With no complications, the eagle could be released by the end of the year. But the bird is losing patience. It was recently transferred from the Raptor Recovery center to the zoo because it was overpowering its three handlers. And its getting angrier, tearing off its head dressings, Mullen said. Hes got no interest in sticking around. The center has saved thousands of dollars because Stice has donated her services and the zoo its veterinary space. The eagle was nicknamed Friar Tuck but is officially known as 172 the 172nd bird the center took in this year. That number is up to 300 now, and will double by the end of the year, Mullen said. No other bird has received as much attention as the eagle. Its story appeared nationwide and was picked up internationally. The center is hearing from well-wishers from across the country, and one man sent $80 to help the eagle. Fontenelle Forest is leveraging the interest, launching a fundraiser to help care for its other wounded raptors, which come to the center from as far away as Scottsbluff. Were trying to raise money for all the birds that arent in the news, Mullen said. There are 600 birds that need to be fed every day and that need medical care every day. Georgetown, SC (29440) Today Partly cloudy early followed by cloudy skies overnight. Low 56F. Winds WSW at 5 to 10 mph.. Tonight Partly cloudy early followed by cloudy skies overnight. Low 56F. Winds WSW at 5 to 10 mph. The content herein, unless otherwise known to be public domain, are Copyright 1995-2016 - Space Media Network. All websites are published in Australia and are solely subject to Australian law and governed by Fair Use principals for news reporting and research purposes. AFP, UPI and IANS news wire stories are copyright Agence France-Presse, United Press International and Indo-Asia News Service. ESA news reports are copyright European Space Agency. All NASA sourced material is public domain. Additional copyrights may apply in whole or part to other bona fide parties. Advertising does not imply endorsement, agreement or approval of any opinions, statements or information provided by Space Media Network on any Web page published or hosted by Space Media Network. Privacy Statement N.Korea's ICBM fires up fears in South for US alliance Seoul (AFP) Aug 2, 2017 North Korea's latest missile test has extended the range of its weapons to much of mainland US and raised a new fear in the South: would Washington protect Seoul when that could put American cities in danger? The US is security guarantor for the democratic and capitalist South, where 28,500 US troops are stationed to defend it from Pyongyang after the 1950-53 Korean War ended with a ceasefire instead of a peace treaty. The alliance with Seoul has also been a key pillar of Washington's geopoliti ... read more Lavender also has a bag made of cloth, but it is so small that not even an apple would fit inside. Instead, it holds one of Lavender's prized possessions, one she proudly shows to anyone who asks: a small bell-shaped object made of silicone. Her menstrual cup. Lavender received it two years ago from Golda Ayodo, 38, a mother of two from Masogo who, together with other women from the community in western Kenya, works to ensure that girls like Lavender can continue going to school even when they have their periods. In a country where a packet of sanitary napkins costs almost as much as a day's wages, such a thing is hardly a matter of course. Out of desperation, many girls shove rags or cotton in their underpants, or even sand. Anything that is absorbent. But they often don't have enough confidence in such improvised solutions to go to school for fear that they will soil their valuable school uniforms or embarrass themselves in front of their classmates. Kenya's Education Ministry estimates that girls miss a total of 156 school days during four years of high school because they skip classes during their periods. Missing that much schooling translates to worse grades and reduced prospects of a well-paid job. That is something that Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta has also realized. Two months before Kenyan elections, he quickly signed a law requiring state schools to supply sanitary napkins to female students. His Ugandan counterpart, Yoweri Museveni, made the same pledge last year, but he has failed to fulfill it. In Kenya, the government intends to make 500 million shillings, around 4.3 million euros, available for the initiative each year. But will they reach the girls? A state-sponsored program has existed in Kenya since 2011 that aims to provide sanitary napkins to schoolgirls. At Lavender's school, though, the money available for the program is only sufficient for one packet of sanitary napkins per month - for 115 girls. "In an emergency, the girls can pick up a sanitary napkin from the secretary's office, but only once. The next day, they have to find an alternative solution," says Agneta Opiti, principal of the Padre Pio School. The Golden Girls Golda Ayodo believes the answer lies in menstrual cups. They only have to be emptied once a day and they keep for 10 years. A perfect solution, she says. She travels from school to school, explaining the cups to the girls. Her classes are reminiscent of motivational seminars: She jumps around and claps her hands, cursing and exulting in Swahili. "It can't look like a normal class, it has to be fun," she says afterward. "Otherwise, the girls won't use the cups." Occupied Aaiun, August 03, 2017 (SPS) - The Sahrawi Association for the Supervision and Protection of the natural resources has stated in a statement that the Moroccan occupying authorities continue their plunder Saharawi natural resources, in a clear contradiction with the international conventions governing the matter. The Saharawi Association warned in its statement that "the Moroccan authorities use cargo ships that do not meet the requirements of international maritime navigation", and clarifies "that they do not have the system that exchanges the data of the ship with the rest of the ships or satellite stations ". The communique issued by the Sahrawi Association includes the example of the "Philippine ship loaded with Saharawi phosphates, which deactivated the system of recognition off the Mauritanian coast, violating international agreements," the statement said. The most important standard for the safety of maritime navigation, as established by the International Navigation Agency, belonging to the UN ". "This Agency, stated in the agreement on 'protection of lives' signed in 2002, that all ships with cargo over 300 tons, must have the system of recognition," Finally, it is emphasized that the Philippine ship that left the occupied Aaiun appeared in Uruguay avoiding to pass through the Panama Canal and South Africa, to avoid its arrest. SPS 125/090/TRA This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate STAMFORD One of the areas most promising digital-media firms has turned to a broadcast veteran to help maintain its momentum. Lee Davis, who formerly worked as executive vice president of sales in Univision Communications local media division, last month joined Stamford-based MediaCrossing as executive vice president. While Davis career has focused on traditional media, Davis and his new boss said he would bring the experience and skills needed to help the digital-advertising firm build on its strong growth since its 2012 founding. I was always fascinated with the digital space and digital industry, Davis said in a recent interview at MediaCrossings offices at 9 W. Broad St. It is obviously where a significant amount of dollars are starting to flow, and have been for many years. This was a good opportunity for me to join a progressive thinking and young and hungry media agency that specializes in digital advertising. MediaCrossing CEO Michael Kalman cited the extent of Davis connections and rapport with clients. I had yet to come across a media exec who is both as well-liked and well-versed with clients in terms of good outcomes for clients, Kalman said. We embed ourselves with our clients, we understand whats important to them. Were an extension of their marketing and management departments in many cases. And I really did believe Lee will only raise our game. Davis joins MediaCrossing during a period of significant expansion. Its revenues increased by nearly 300 percent last year, and it is on track to record similar growth in the next two years, according to Kalman. The company declined to provide specific numbers for earnings. More Information For more information on MediaCrossing, visit www.mediacrossing.com See More Collapse Last year, MediaCrossing earned a place on professional-services firm Marcums Tech Top 40 list of the fastest-growing tech companies in Connecticut, recognition of firms that have recorded at least $3 million in annual revenues and a four-year record of growth. MediaCrossing focuses on serving middle-market brands and advertising agencies across the country concentrated in the industries of live events, pharmaceuticals, higher education, financial services, food and beverage and other packaged goods. Clients can target acutely defined demographics say mothers with children younger than 10 and tailor their advertising to respective local markets, Kalman and Davis said. In traditional broadcast space, youre broadcasting one-to-many; here, it is one-to-one, Davis said. The amount of accountability and types of metrics you can put to it are really types of things that help advertisers determine if they are spending their money wisely. MediaCrossings growth stands on solid financial footing because it carries no debt, Kalman said. The firm has also benefited from a $250,000 investment from Connecticut Innovations, a state-chartered business investing and consulting organization. Its a great success story, said Connecticut Innovations CEO Matt McCooe. Its a testament to Michaels nose for opportunities and entrepreneurial bent and making MediaCrossing a runner. MediaCrossing, which employs about 15, has operated at 9 W. Broad St. since March. It outgrew previous offices at Landmark Square, 300 Main St. and the Stamford Innovation Center. Now occupying about 4,300 square feet at its current address, the firm has the option to take more space there. The firms location also offers a manageable commute for Kalman and Davis, who both live in Westport. Stamford provides us with quick access to talent from New York, Kalman said. We think it is one of the hubs of commerce in the northeast. We like the city and its access to culture. I think Stamford is a good place for us. pschott@scni.com; 203-964-2236; twitter: @paulschott This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate Since 2006, the nation's largest police departments have fired at least 1,881 officers for misconduct that betrayed the public's trust, from cheating on overtime to unjustified shootings. But The Washington Post has found that departments have been forced to reinstate more than 450 officers after appeals required by union contracts. Most of the officers regained their jobs when police chiefs were overruled by arbitrators, typically lawyers hired to review the process. In many cases, the underlying misconduct was undisputed, but arbitrators often concluded that the firings were unjustified because departments had been too harsh, missed deadlines, lacked sufficient evidence or failed to interview witnesses. A San Antonio police officer caught on a dash cam challenging a handcuffed man to fight him for the chance to be released was reinstated in February. In the District, an officer convicted of sexually abusing a young woman in his patrol car was ordered returned to the force in 2015. And in Boston, an officer was returned to work in 2012 despite being accused of lying, drunkenness and driving a suspected gunman from the scene of a nightclub killing. The chiefs say the appeals process leaves little margin for error. Yet police agencies sometimes sabotage their own attempts to shed troubled officers by making procedural mistakes. The result is that police chiefs have booted hundreds of officers they have deemed unfit to be in their ranks, only to be compelled to take them back and send them back to the streets with guns and badges. "It's demoralizing, but not just to the chief," said Charles H. Ramsey, former police commissioner in Philadelphia and chief in the District. Philadelphia and the District together have had to rehire 80 fired officers since 2006, three of them twice. "It's demoralizing to the rank and file who really don't want to have those kinds of people in their ranks," Ramsey said. "It causes a tremendous amount of anxiety in the public. Our credibility is shot whenever these things happen." The Post's findings illustrate the obstacles local police agencies face in holding their own accountable at a critical moment for policing: President Trump's administration has indicated that the federal government will curtail the strategy of federal intervention in departments confronted with allegations of systemic officer misconduct, even as controversial police shootings continue to undermine public confidence. Nationwide, the reinstatement of fired officers has not been studied or comprehensively tracked. No national database logs terminations. Some firings receive local publicity, but many go unreported. Some states shield police personnel records - including firings - from public disclosure. To investigate how often fired officers were returned to their jobs, The Post filed open records requests with the nation's 55 largest municipal and county police forces. Thirty-seven departments complied with the request, disclosing that they had fired a combined 1,881 officers since 2006. Of those officers, 451 successfully appealed and won their jobs back. The officers' names and details were available in about half of the reinstatement cases: 151 of the officers had been fired for conduct unbecoming, and 88 had been terminated for dishonesty, according to a review of internal police documents, appeals records, court files and news reports. At least 33 of the officers had been charged with crimes. Of these, 17 had been convicted, most of misdemeanors. Eight officers were fired and rehired by their departments more than once. "To overturn a police chief's decision, except in cases of fact errors, is a disservice to the good order of the department," said San Antonio Police Chief William McManus, who in February was ordered to reinstate Officer Matthew Belver for a second time. "It also undermines a chief's authority and ignores the chief's understanding of what serves the best interest of the community and the department." In the District, arbitrators have ordered the city to rehire 39 officers since 2006, more than half of them because arbitrators concluded that the department missed deadlines to complete its internal investigations. One officer, convicted of assault after he was caught on video attacking a shoe store employee, was fired in 2015 and reinstated in 2016 after an arbitrator concluded that police had missed the deadline by seven days, arbitration records show. D.C. Police Chief Peter Newsham said he disagreed with the arbitrators' conclusions on when the clock started in those cases. "The public has to suffer because somebody violated an administrative rule," Newsham said, adding that two-thirds of the officers reinstated because of missed investigative deadlines are no longer on the D.C. force. Police unions argue that the right to appeal terminations through arbitration protects officers from arbitrary punishment or being second-guessed for their split-second decisions. Unions contend that police chiefs are prone to overreach, especially when there is public or political pressure to fire officers. In interviews, local and national union officials said some of the 451 reinstated officers should never have been fired in the first place. "They're held to a higher standard," said James Pasco, executive director of the national Fraternal Order of Police. "Their work is constantly scrutinized to a far higher degree. You very seldom see any phone-cam indictments of trash collectors or utility workers." Local police departments have often been criticized in recent years as not holding their officers accountable in fatal shootings, or in cases of brutality and corruption. To address the outcry from the public, the Department of Justice has employed its authority to investigate police departments for civil rights violations and to force reforms. Under President Barack Obama, Justice launched dozens of these investigations. The tactic was used, for example, in the aftermath of the 2014 fatal police shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo. The Trump administration, however, has indicated that local officials should take the lead in policing their own departments. "I think there's concern that good police officers and good departments can be sued by the Department of Justice when you just have individuals within a department who have done wrong," Attorney General Jeff Sessions said during his Senate confirmation hearing this year. Justice Department officials recently told The Post that the department will be more judicious in launching civil rights investigations. "The Attorney General has explicitly said that 'police officers who abuse their sacred trust are made to answer for their misconduct' and that 'the Department of Justice will hold accountable any law enforcement officer who violates the civil rights of our citizens by using excessive force.' Any assertion to the contrary is flat out wrong and incredibly irresponsible," said Ian D. Prior, a Department of Justice spokesman, in a written statement. "What the Attorney General does not believe, however, is that the unconstitutional actions of one police officer should result in onerous and ineffective agreements between the Department of Justice and local police departments that prevent law enforcement from reducing violent crime and protecting the public,' " Prior said in the statement. But in a speech to law enforcement officers last week, President Trump made comments that were widely interpreted as condoning police violence against "thugs" who are taken into custody. He told officers: "[P]lease don't be too nice." "When you guys put somebody in the car and you're protecting their head. ... I said, you can take the hand away, okay?" Trump said. The White House later said the president had been joking. The 37 departments that complied with the The Post's request for records employ nearly 91,000 officers. The nearly 1,900 firings and the 451 rehirings show both how rare it is for departments to fire officers and how difficult it is to keep many of those from returning. "It's the frustrating part of my job," said Boston Police Commissioner William B. Evans, who has been compelled to rehire four officers. "Most of the people we terminate [it] is clearly for good reason." Firings undone In case after case, arbitrators have required police chiefs to take back officers the chiefs no longer want in their ranks. In the District, police were told to rehire an officer who allegedly forged prosecutors' signatures on court documents. In Texas, police had to reinstate an officer who was investigated for shooting up the car of his ex-girlfriend's new man. In Philadelphia, police were compelled to reinstate an officer despite viral video of him striking a woman in the face. In Florida, police were ordered to reinstate an officer fired for fatally shooting an unarmed man. "He is being paid to protect and serve us as citizens. But he takes my child's life," Sheila McNeil, the mother of the man who was killed by the officer in Florida, said at a public meeting in 2015. "I don't understand how he can still be out here on the street. What fairness is that?" The 37 departments that reported rehiring officers have one commonality: a police union contract that guarantees an appeal of disciplinary measures. Police unionization began around the turn of the 20th century and spread rapidly in the 1960s and '70s as states passed laws allowing collective bargaining by public workers. Today, most public employees, including police officers, have some form of collective-bargaining rights. On most police forces, officers accused of wrongdoing are subject to internal affairs investigations to determine whether they violated department policies. If the officers are found to have breached department policies, police chiefs, superintendents or police boards can discipline them. The multiyear contracts negotiated by police unions ensure that any discipline may be appealed - typically through arbitration, a process that brings in outside parties, often lawyers who specialize in labor law, to review the punishments and rule on the appeals. That is how police Sgt. John Blumenthal returned to work in Oklahoma City. On July 7, 2007, a man was lying handcuffed on the ground when Blumenthal ran up and kicked him in the head, according to several other officers. Blumenthal's fellow officers reported the incident to internal affairs, and months later Blumenthal was fired and convicted of misdemeanor assault and battery. Two years later, an arbitrator ordered the department to return Blumenthal to work. The reasons are unclear, because the records of the proceedings are not public. Today, Blumenthal, who did not respond to requests for comment, is a motorcycle officer. "The message is huge," said Oklahoma City Police Chief Bill Citty, who said he loses about 80 percent of arbitration cases. "Officers know all they have to do is grieve it, arbitrate it and get their jobs back." One of the primary determinations an arbitrator makes is whether a department adhered to the rules when disciplining an officer. "Were all of the correct investigative steps followed?" said Arnold Zack, a former president of the National Academy of Arbitrators who teaches labor law at Harvard University. "And was there a violation of any policy, and if so, what should the discipline be?" Zack said that police chiefs often bemoan arbitration but that many cases fall apart because the departments fail to properly investigate the allegations. In one Florida case, a sheriff's deputy who was fired after being accused by prosecutors of trafficking in pain pills was reinstated because the arbitrator found that the department did not adequately investigate the allegations before firing him. Many of the arbitrators who handled the cases examined by The Post declined to be interviewed about their decisions, saying that they do not discuss their rulings. In Chicago, union officials say the appeals process saved the job of an officer who was unfairly fired for failing to pay his parking tickets. In October 2015, Bill Caro, at the time an officer with 28 years' service in the Chicago Police Department, was terminated after he failed to pay nine parking tickets totaling $1,471. The department had warned him to pay the unpaid fines and had given him a deadline that he missed. Caro eventually paid the tickets, but the department fired him anyway, records show. He appealed, and in August 2016, a local judge who served as arbitrator in the case deemed the punishment "excessive" and ordered that Caro be returned to the force. His firing was reduced to a five-year suspension without pay, meaning he will not report to work until 2020. Caro could not be reached for comment. For 239 officers in The Post's study whose firings were made public, the majority had their terminations reduced to suspensions; at least 43 received no discipline at all. Most of the reinstated officers were awarded back pay for the time they were off the force, which can stretch to several years. "The arbitrator is bound by the contract language just as much as the department," Zack said. "If the contract says you have five days to investigate, and you take six days, then the firing has to be overturned. "Does that mean some bad guys will get away with some things? Yes." Getaway driver: His cousin is a fugitive. He's patrolling Boston. In 2012, the Boston Police Department was forced to rehire Baltazar "Tate" DaRosa two years after stripping him of his police powers for what the department said was his role in a murder. One year after he joined the department, DaRosa was asked to help investigate the 2003 killing of his cousin, who had been ambushed by a masked gunman as he sat in a car with his girlfriend. DaRosa, then 25, and his cousin had relatives in Cape Verde, a group of islands off the coast of West Africa. Frustrated at their inability to generate leads in the tightknit Cape Verdean community, detectives asked DaRosa to help. "[The detective] sent me around asking family members and Cape Verdeans, but being a police officer, no one really told me" anything about the case, DaRosa later told investigators, according to internal affairs records and arbitration documents. On a cold night in January 2005, DaRosa was off-duty at the Copa Grande Oasis, a nightclub outside Boston, records show. DaRosa was supposed to have been working but had called in sick from his overnight police shift. He and Carlos DePina - the brother of DaRosa's murdered cousin - were at the club together. Also at the club that night was a man named Jose Lopes, a known gang member who eventually would be identified as a suspect in the killing of DaRosa's cousin. The officer, his cousin DePina and two friends drank and danced until the club lights came on about 1:45 a.m., signaling closing time. DaRosa headed out to his car and popped in a CD as he waited for DePina to return. But when DePina arrived at the car, he turned and walked back toward a group of people in the parking lot, according to DaRosa's account. About five minutes later, his cousin ran back to the car "out of breath," saying he had heard gunshots, DaRosa said. " 'Let's get out of here,' " DePina said, according to DaRosa. DaRosa, with DePina as a passenger, drove away, passing a police cruiser with flashing lights speeding toward the club. Back in the parking lot, Lopes was dying from numerous gunshot wounds to the chest and back. Several witnesses told police they saw people run to DaRosa's car, records show. Another witness told police of seeing DaRosa driving from the scene with the shooting suspect in the car. The department placed DaRosa on paid administrative leave and opened an internal investigation. But DaRosa refused to cooperate, invoking his constitutional right against self-incrimination, records show. In July 2005, five months after the killing, DaRosa was arrested, charged with being an accessory to murder and placed on unpaid administrative leave by the department. His cousin, who is still at large, was charged with murder. In September 2006, a jury acquitted DaRosa. Once his trial was complete, DaRosa agreed to cooperate with internal affairs investigators, telling them he thought his cousin was mistaking some other sound when he said he heard shots. He also expressed regret for not stopping to help police. "I assumed that if something did happen that the cruisers were there for it," he said. Detectives later learned that DaRosa and his cousin DePina had been arrested at the club during a Cape Verdean-themed night three months before the shooting. Police said that DaRosa's cousin had been drunk and causing a disturbance and that DaRosa had bloodshot eyes and reeked of alcohol. At the station, police eventually let the men go. The internal investigation of DaRosa's possible role the night of the shooting was completed in 2007, and in December 2010, the department fired DaRosa, saying both events at the nightclub had violated department policies - abuse of alcohol, neglect of duty, and a lack of truthfulness, records show. DaRosa appealed the firing. His union attorney argued that there was no prove DaRosa used his influence to interfere with his cousin's arrest months before the shooting or that DaRosa knew Lopes was at the club the night of the shooting or that he had suspected his cousin was the shooter. In July 2012, after a three-day, closed-door hearing at City Hall, arbitrator Richard G. Boulanger, a Boston-area lawyer, sided with the union. He concluded that DaRosa "was not poised as a get-away driver or that he had knowledge that Carlos was involved in Jose's shooting." Nearly two years after his firing, and seven years after the shooting, DaRosa was reinstated and awarded $50,111 in lost pay and overtime, records show. DaRosa, a union attorney, and former Boston police commissioner Kathleen O'Toole, who led the department at the time of the shooting, did not respond to requests for comment. "I feel very happy for Baltazar," Bryan Decker, a lawyer who handled the case for the police union on DaRosa's behalf, told a local reporter at the time. "He's an upstanding member of the community, and I think that he is just excited to get back to work helping the people of Boston." Today, DePina is a fugitive, believed to have fled the country. His cousin DaRosa is a bike patrol officer. The drive-by shooting:A truck was shot up, and a limo was pulled over. Early New Year's Day, 2007, Fort Worth police officer Jesus "Jesse" Banda Jr. sat in his car outside an all-night party where his ex-girlfriend was with another man. Banda called a dispatcher and ran a check of the license plate of the truck the man was driving to determine his address. Days later, the truck was found blasted with nearly a dozen rounds from a shotgun. Banda, who had seven years' service at the time, told investigators he knew nothing about the damage to the truck, according to internal affairs and arbitration documents. In the end, police could not tie Banda to the shooting, but the department concluded that he had lied about why he had called in the license plate. Then-Police Chief Ralph Mendoza put the officer on restricted duty, ultimately suspending him indefinitely - the same as firing him - in June 2007 for being untruthful and violating the department's ethical standards. Banda was told not to represent himself as a police officer while internal affairs investigated the matter. During that time, Banda was a passenger in a limousine pulled over by a Fort Worth officer. The officer said he saw the vehicle and, as he watched, the driver passed a Bud Light to passengers in the back. The officer said that when he asked Banda to get out of the vehicle, Banda handed the officer his police credentials. The department opened a second internal affairs investigation. An arbitrator ruled in August 2008 on Banda's firing over the check of the license plate. He said Banda had clearly used department resources to run the license tags "for personal reasons" - but also said that firing him was too harsh, compared with punishments given to other officers. The arbitrator ordered him reinstated, reduced his firing to a 90-day suspension and awarded nearly a year of back pay, records show. Banda was back on the force only one month when he was fired a second time, this time by new Police Chief Patricia Kneblick for misrepresenting himself as an officer during the traffic stop. Again, Banda appealed. This time, Banda's union attorney argued that there was no proof that Banda had showed his work ID during the traffic stop and that the department's investigation had been shoddy and incomplete. Bill Detwiler, who was the hearing examiner, agreed: "The hearing examiner finds the investigative process used in this case to be fatally flawed." Detectives had followed up with just three of eight potential witnesses and had done "little or nothing to source such information" including tracing the license plate of the limo and interviewing the driver, Detwiler said in his ruling. And, Detwiler noted, the detective investigating possible criminal charges lacked formal training and experience. Seven months after Banda's second firing, in April 2009, Detwiler reinstated the officer with partial back pay. Banda, through the police department, declined to comment. "The hearing examiner took issue with the same problems that we took issue with," Terry Daffron Hickey, Banda's attorney, told a local TV station at the time. "I think when you're in a situation where you're investigating a police officer and it's a serious accusation and their job is on the line, there's a duty out there to do a thorough, fair and complete investigation." In 2015, Banda, 45, was promoted to detective, records show. Current Fort Worth Police Chief Joel Fitzgerald declined to comment. The eight-year firing:The officer was convicted of sexually abusing a young woman. In the District, the Metropolitan Police Department fired officer Michael Blaise Sugg-Edwards after he was convicted of misdemeanor sex abuse over an incident with a teenager in his police car. Eight years later, the department is still fighting to keep the 35-year-old off the force after the agency in 2015 was ordered to rehire him. Sugg-Edwards, who was born and raised in the District, joined the department in 2005. He was nominated to be rookie officer of the year and to receive an achievement medal for stopping an armed rape. On Nov. 16, 2007, Sugg-Edwards was on patrol when he saw a 19-year-old woman dressed in full white walking alone near Love, a now-closed warehouse nightclub off New York Avenue in Northeast, court records show. The woman was there to celebrate her 19th birthday with friends but had to go back to a friend's car because she needed her identification to enter the club. Sugg-Edwards pulled up in his marked patrol car. He allegedly told the woman that a club supervisor had sent him to escort her safely to her friend's car and invited her to get into the patrol car, according to court records. She said that once she was in his vehicle, he drove to a gas station and parked between two tractor trailers. Sugg-Edwards asked her, "What are you trying to do to get into the club?" she told police, adding that he began touching her thigh, genitals and breasts. She said she pushed him away, got out of the car and reported the sexual assault to two off-duty officers at the nightclub. She was seen on video from outside the club getting out of the squad car, and officers reported that she was crying when she approached them. Sugg-Edwards was the only uniformed officer in the area who fit the description that she gave to police. A police official called Sugg-Edwards and asked whether he had "picked up a female near the Club 'Love'?" according to an affidavit for his arrest. " 'Yes, I did,' " he said. Sugg-Edwards said he drove her to a gas station to use the bathroom but denied assaulting her, according to court records. "The official reminded the defendant that he had been warned in the past about talking to female patrons near the night club," the affidavit said. The department put Sugg-Edwards on unpaid leave, and records show that he began working at a toy store in Maryland. In June 2008, Sugg-Edwards was convicted at a bench trial of misdemeanor sexual abuse. He was sentenced to a 100-day suspended sentence, one year supervised probation and $1,000 in court fees. Then-D.C. Police Chief Cathy L. Lanier recommended to the trial board - a group of three officers - that Sugg-Edwards be fired. The trial board, however, concluded that firing Sugg-Edwards was too harsh a penalty and recommended a reprimand. Fellow officers testified that Sugg-Edwards had an otherwise clean record, a reputation as a "nice guy" and that the sexual assault was "totally out of Officer Sugg-Edwards' character," records show. On Sept. 14, 2009, the department's human resources director decided to fire Sugg-Edwards anyway, saying that the trial board "ignored evidence proving the grievant was guilty" of the misconduct. The police union filed an appeal arguing that the D.C. code and municipal regulations barred the department from imposing discipline harsher than what the trial board recommends. That appeal was not decided until January 2015, more than five years later. Attorneys for the union and the police department blamed the delay on a backlog of arbitration cases. Arbitrator Sean J. Rogers ruled that although there was enough evidence to prove Sugg-Edwards's misconduct, the union's contention was correct. Rogers ordered Sugg-Edwards reinstated with back pay and benefits. City officials tried again to keep him off the force: They appealed the arbitrator's ruling to the Public Employee Relations Board, which resolves disputes between the District and labor organizations. The department argued that it had the authority to fire the officer, even if the trial board disagreed. The review board upheld the arbitrator's original ruling in April 2015. The police department then appealed the review board's decision in court. The case is pending. For now, Sugg-Edwards remains off the force, and the city has yet to pay him as ordered by the arbitrator. His annual salary was $58,759 when he left the department eight years ago. Sugg-Edwards did not respond to calls and emails from The Washington Post seeking comment. Police union attorney Marc L. Wilhite said that Sugg-Edwards wants to go back to policing and that the department needs to "follow the law" and reinstate him. Police officials, citing union rules and local privacy laws, declined to discuss the case. Police Chief Peter Newsham said that in general he is frustrated that the department has been compelled to reinstate officers with histories of misconduct. Since 2006, the department has had to rehire at least 39 officers, records show. "Police officers go into people's homes . . . and they have the authority to take people's freedom," Newsham told The Post. "And you're going to return somebody into that role, somebody who has that responsibility and authority, who's been involved in extreme misconduct? I don't think anybody is comfortable with that." A challenge to fightAn officer is fired twice and put back on the force twice. On Dec. 3, 2015, an official with the criminal division of the Bexar County District Attorney's Office in Texas was concerned about the dashboard-camera video of a recent arrest by a San Antonio police officer. "Can you take a look at this video?" the official asked in an email to the city attorney's office. "The officer has the suspect handcuffed, in custody and challenges him to fight while unhandcuffing him." Soon, the police department's internal affairs unit launched an investigation into the officer involved: Matthew Belver, then 43 and with nine years' service in the department. Belver also worked part-time as a security guard at a local church. The video was eventually made public under pressure from the local media. The video depicted the August 2015 arrest of then-48-year-old Eloy Leal, who told internal affairs investigators that he had gone outside to investigate after someone had been injured during a shooting in his neighborhood. Leal said that he saw bullet casings on the street near the scene and that he pointed them out to Belver, who was one of the responding officers, according to internal affairs and arbitration documents. Then, Leal said, he criticized Belver for missing the casings and announced that he was walking home to get a camera to document the evidence. As Leal began walking away, Belver arrested him, records show. The next 17 minutes were captured on the camera mounted on Belver's dashboard. Belver was recorded telling Leal, who was handcuffed in the back seat of the squad car, that he could go free if he was willing to fight. "If you beat my ass, don't f****** kill me," Leal pleaded as Belver uncuffed him. "Naw, as soon as they come off, I'm going to beat your ass," Belver responded. The officer ordered Leal to get out of the squad car and run or fight, but Leal refused. Belver recuffed Leal, who asked what he was being charged with. "I'll think of something," Belver responded, driving away with Leal in the back seat. Leal was charged with interfering with the duties of a public official, a charge that prosecutors later dropped. Leal could not be reached for comment. The incident was not the first time that Belver had been accused of misconduct by people he arrested. The department had fired Belver in 2010 after two other allegations that led to separate investigations by internal affairs. In the first incident, Belver was accused of unlawfully entering a home and roughing up two men who were accused of threatening neighbors with a gun. In the second, two weeks later, Belver arrested Carlos Flores, a San Antonio mechanic, on suspicion of drunken driving. Then, according to a complaint from Flores, Belver challenged him to a fight. Belver "told me that if I could kick his ass, he would let me go," Flores said in his complaint. By the time Flores reached the police detention center, he had a bruised left eye, injuries to his back and neck, and a large bruise across his face, an internal affairs investigation would later determine. Flores, who could not be reached for comment, was fined for driving while intoxicated, and a separate charge of assault on a public servant was dropped. But Belver and his union attorneys won the officer's job back after his 2010 firing, negotiating a "last chance agreement" that allowed Belver to return to work as long as he had no further misconduct and agreed that he would not patrol alone. After the 2015 video surfaced of Belver challenging Leal to a fight, San Antonio Police Chief William McManus fired Belver again - writing on Feb. 12, 2016, that the officer had violated several department policies as well as his last-chance agreement. Once again, Belver appealed his firing. During the two-day hearing last September, Belver's attorney argued that because the last-chance agreement was limited to two years, it had expired eight months before the Leal encounter. The attorney also noted that the union contract prohibited the department from considering discipline for matters older than 180 days, which would exclude the prior two allegations of assault made against Belver. Arbitrator Lynne M. Gomez, a labor lawyer, agreed with the union and said that the union contract and wording of the last-chance agreement meant the department had to treat the Leal incident as a first offense. In the revised circumstances, a firing was too harsh, she ruled. "While the Chief testified that he thinks the Grievant is a 'disaster waiting to happen' . . . just cause generally requires that discipline be applied progressively to achieve a corrective goal," Gomez said in her ruling. Gomez in February issued Belver a 45-day suspension and ordered that he be returned to work with back pay, which city officials said will be $66,662. Reached by email, Belver declined to be interviewed, referring questions to the head of the police union, who he said would be "familiar with both this incident and the arbitration process that followed." Mike Helle of the San Antonio Police Officers Association said in an interview with The Washington Post that Belver was in the wrong because he had placed himself, his fellow officers and the public at risk. But Helle, the president of the officers association, said he supports the arbitrator's decision because not every infraction merits termination. "Arbitration creates an environment in which the final say-so of whether the termination is justifiable or not is in the hands of a third party," Helle said. "It creates a bit of fairness. It takes the emotion out of the argument." McManus, the police chief, declined to be interviewed about the Belver case or the other 29 officers whom the San Antonio Police Department has been compelled to rehire since 2006. "I'm sure many police chiefs across the country share the same frustrations that I do when an arbitrator overturns a termination," McManus said in a statement. Fatal forceAn officer is fired twice and put back on the force twice. On Feb. 10, 2011, in Miami, police detective Reynaldo Goyos was working with a dozen undercover officers taking part in a sting at a local strip club known to be frequented by gang members. Shortly after 11 p.m., one of the undercover officers spotted what she described as two intoxicated men being ejected from the club. Travis McNeil and his cousin Kareem Williams stumbled across the parking lot and climbed into a burgundy Kia Sorrento. As they drove off, a half-dozen officers, including Goyos, followed them, worried that the men would come back and cause a disturbance, according to an arbitrator's account that was based on witness statements and internal police files. "We get three or four blocks from the club, and all of a sudden police was surrounding us," Williams told The Washington Post. Goyos drew his gun and got out of the passenger seat of an unmarked Chevrolet Suburban. "Show me your hands!" he yelled. "I looked at the driver," Goyos would later tell police internal affairs investigators. "He was staring right at me. He looked like he wasn't paying attention, like he's very incoherent. [He] was disobeying my . . . commands." Goyos told internal affairs that as he approached the driver's side door he could see that both men had their hands in their laps. But then McNeil, in the driver's seat, reached toward his waistband and then toward the floorboard of the vehicle, according to the officer. Standing about two feet from the Kia's open driver's side window, Goyos fired his weapon three times - striking McNeil in the chest and Williams in the wrist and hip. McNeil was dead at the scene. On the driver's side floorboard, investigators found two cellphones. There were no weapons in the vehicle. None of the five other officers surrounding the car, who also had drawn their weapons, had fired. They would all later tell internal affairs investigators that Goyos was the only officer with a clear view into the car. The shooting quickly drew local media scrutiny. The department completed its internal investigation in November 2012. The next month, the city's Firearms Review Board - made up of three assistant chiefs, a police major, and a police attorney - concluded that the shooting was not justified. The board said that neither Goyos nor anyone else had been in imminent danger and questioned whether the physical evidence supported Goyos's version of events. Police officials concluded that the location of McNeil's fatal wound was inconsistent with Goyos's assertion that he saw a black object in McNeil's hand. In January 2013, then-Miami Police Chief Manuel Orosa fired Goyos, who had been with the department since 2005, arguing that he should have sought cover instead of approaching the vehicle. Goyos appealed, prompting a four-day arbitration hearing in late 2013. Goyos and his union attorney argued that Goyos did not violate the department's use-of-force policy and reasserted Goyos's claim that he had seen a black object in McNeil's hand. "There was no misconduct on the part of officer Goyos," said Eugene Gibbons, Goyos's attorney, who has defended many police officers accused of wrongdoing. "He was simply doing his job to the best of his ability that evening." In a text message to The Post, Goyos declined to be interviewed and added, "It was all political." In August 2014, arbitrator Martin Soll, a labor lawyer, sided with Goyos's legal team, writing that the physical evidence supported Goyos's account and that there was no evidence that his actions had violated department policy. "Just or proper cause did not exist to discharge or otherwise discipline City of Miami Detective Reynaldo Goyos," Soll wrote. Soll ordered that Goyos be reinstated and awarded him $74,400 in back pay, an outcome that made local headlines. "It's been frustrating, but there is no other option," said current Miami Police Chief Rodolfo Llanes. "I have no other choice but to have a conversation with the person that's being brought back and tell them that I expect nothing but excellent work from now on." In 2015, the city settled a federal civil rights suit with McNeil's family, agreeing to pay them nearly $1 million. Missed deadlineD.C. police took six days too long to fire an officer. The nine-year effort to fire D.C. police officer Daxzaneous Banks began in March 2008 when a court employee asked why the undercover officer had signed in as having attended a criminal trial that had been rescheduled. Banks had been paid for being available to testify, although the trial had not occurred. Internal affairs began to investigate and found that on at least 10 occasions, he had allegedly forged the signatures of several prosecutors on his time sheets, records show. "You affixed these signatures knowing them to be improper and fraudulent," according to an account of the case filed in court by the D.C. Attorney General's Office. Banks's conduct forced prosecutors to abandon charges against a suspected cocaine dealer because the officer was the sole witness to the alleged drug transaction, according to the records. The accusations of forgery, prosecutors told internal affairs, raised "serious veracity issues" about his potential testimony in criminal cases, according to their account. Police investigators concluded that Banks had violated four policies: being involved in the commission of an act that would constitute a crime; conduct unbecoming an officer; inefficiency; and fraud. On Sept. 9, 2008, then-Police Chief Cathy L. Lanier recommended to the trial board, a three-member panel that oversees officer discipline, that Banks be fired. After a two-day hearing in March 2009, the board found Banks guilty of violating three of the four policies, and in June 2009, he was fired. Shortly thereafter, the union appealed Banks's firing, arguing that the department had missed its deadline to discipline the officer. Marc L. Wilhite, the union attorney who represents Banks, said the officer denies forging the signatures. Banks "expressed repeatedly he believed he had a case scheduled that day," according to the District's summary of the case. In the appeal, the union argued that the citybegan its investigation in April 2008 and was required by law to discipline Banks within 90 business days of starting the investigation. Wilhite said Lanier's September 2008 recommendation to fire Banks was made at the end of 96 days - six dayspast the 90-day deadline set by District code. The department argued that its investigation did not truly begin until May 2008 and that it had met the 90-day deadline. Because of a backlog of union arbitration cases, Banks's appeal languished until 2016, according to Wilhite. He said Banks, meanwhile, worked as a lifeguard and at other jobs. Finally, in September of last year, arbitrator Homer C. La Rue sided with Banks. "It is clear that the department failed to meet its obligation to bring charges against Ofc. Banks within 90 days of the incident," wrote La Rue, a local labor attorney. La Rue ordered that Banks - after seven years off the force - be reinstated with full back pay and lost benefits, and that his personnel record be expunged of the termination. At the time of his firing, Banks was earning $68,023 annually. The District appealed the decision to the Public Employee Relations Board, which reviews disputes between the District and unions, but the reinstatement was upheld. In January, the D.C. Attorney General's Office appealed the case in D.C. Superior Court, arguing that any harm caused to Banks by missing the deadline is outweighed by the police department's interest. The appeal is pending. To date, the Metropolitan Police Department has not returned Banks to active status. Wilhite said that Banks, the son of a District police officer, wants his job back and has been under pressure from his family to return to policing. Banks is one of 26 officers nationwide ordered reinstated since 2006 because arbitrators ruled that police officials had missed deadlines as outlined in local laws or union contracts. Of those, 23 were from The District. Six of those officers were ordered reinstated in the past two years, records show. The deadline issue has troubled the department for decades, and has been documented in stories in The Washington Post and in the Washington City Paper. Many departments have time limits under union contracts or local laws to complete internal investigations to prevent cases from dragging on. The District's deadlines are among the shortest: A survey last year of 81 major police departments found that at least 21 departments imposed deadlines, ranging from 30 days to three years, according to Campaign Zero, a police accountability group. For many years, the District code imposed a 45-day deadline for a city employee accused of wrongdoing to be investigated and discipline recommended, said Mark Viehmeyer, an attorney for the police department and acting director of its labor relations branch. The City Council repealed the rule in 1998, calling the deadline arbitrary. In 2004, the City Council took the issue up again because the police and fire unions were complaining that officials were taking too long to pursue disciplinary cases, Viehmeyer said. The council then imposed a 90-day deadline for the police and fire departments, he said. Separately, he said, the police union contract since the early 1980shas imposed a second deadline: Police officials have 55 days to fire an officer once they decide to do so. District officials said in interviews that they are meeting the deadlines and that cases are overturned because arbitrators misinterpret when the clock begins. D.C. Police Chief Peter Newsham said the department in the past two years has taken steps to eliminate the ambiguity about when the internal affairs investigation begins so that authorities can meet arbitrators' interpretation of the 90-day deadline. "That was our main point of contention with the arbitrators," Newsham said. "They were continually changing when the 90-day clock started ticking." Viehmeyer said that in many of the cases in which the department was ordered to rehire officers, the underlying misconduct was never in dispute. "There are a lot of cases where the arbitrator's analysis I think is sort of belied by some of the facts in the case," he said. Wilhite, who has represented many of the officers who were reinstated, said the rules are clear. "There are lots of other angles that MPD has been using to try and avoid the reality, which is once the 90 days has been violated, that case must be dismissed," Wilhite said No due processA department fails to investigate an officer's arrest. Broward Sheriff's Sgt. John Goodbread was in his doctor's office in Florida for a routine physical sometime in 2003 or 2004 when he felt the pain in his lower back. "He had me do one of these exercises as part of the physical, bend over type of thing, touch your toes, see what your range of motion," Goodbread would later tell police. "As I was bending over, I stopped because the lower back just seized up." The doctor issued Goodbread a prescription for hydrocodone. It was the first of multiple pain-medication prescriptions from several doctors that would ultimately result in criminal charges against Goodbread. In March 2011, a detective in Palm Beach County got a tip suggesting that Goodbread and his wife "may be involved in doctor shopping" - a practice in which someone seeks the same or similar prescriptions from multiple doctors, according to a summary of the case later included in the arbitrator's ruling. Criminal investigators began looking into the allegations that Goodbread and his wife had obtained prescriptions for the pain medications from four doctors' offices, according to court records. On April 8, 2011, Goodbread and his wife were arrested and eventually charged in state court with trafficking Oxycodone and withholding information from a practitioner, both felonies. The couple's arrest made local headlines, and the Broward County Sheriff's Office suspended Goodbread without pay. "I was completely caught off guard," Goodbread, a former narcotics officer who has consistently maintained his innocence, said in an interview with The Washington Post. "Somebody else had used my name to get those 'scripts. I had nothing to do with anything." In April 2012, his then-wife, Heather Goodbread, pleaded guilty to withholding information from a practitioner and was put on probation under an agreement that withheld an adjudication of guilt. She would later testify during her husband's arbitration hearing that she was the one who had called in prescriptions in her husband's name and that he had not been aware of her scheme. She eventually completed her probation, court records show. Neither she nor her attorney could be reached for comment. In January 2013, Goodbread pleaded no contest to one count of withholding information from a practitioner under an agreement that deferred criminal prosecution. He was ordered into a pretrial intervention program, which he completed in a matter of months, and the case was dismissed. The Broward Sheriff's office fired him. The local police union appealed. The union argued that the department had not conducted a full internal affairs investigation but instead had relied on evidence gathered during the criminal probe. Therefore, the union argued, Goodbread's firing had been based on "hearsay." "His wife had admitted to misrepresenting herself to get the medication," said Michael Braverman, the attorney who represented Goodbread. "But the department didn't give [Goodbread] even the most minimal amount of due process." In a Dec. 20, 2013, ruling, arbitrator Robert Hoffman sided with the union. He concluded that there had not been an adequate internal investigation by police and that Goodbread had been denied due process. Hoffman acknowledged that Goodbread's participation in a diversion program could be considered conduct unbecoming an officer, but the arbitrator questioned whether it merited his firing, given the inadequate internal affairs probe. "Lesser discipline could result if the record did not contain serious due process concerns," he wrote. Hoffman ordered that Goodbread be reinstated in his job and receive back pay. In a video posted on Facebook, Goodbread thanked the police union for helping him get his job back. Broward Sheriff's Col. Jack Dale, who currently oversees officer discipline, said the department had handled the case poorly, because firing Goodbread while criminal charges were pending had impeded its ability to investigate fully. "If a criminal case is ongoing, your best move is to wait until the criminal case is done before you terminate them," Dale said. Goodbread told The Post that without arbitration, he would still be out of a job for something he did not do. "Have I seen it where the arbitration process may not work perfectly? Sure," Goodbread conceded. "But it's there to protect the rank and file. . . . Basically, it's our union looking out for us to make sure that we don't [get] wrongly terminated." A rush to judgmentAn officer is fired quickly after a punch goes viral. In Philadelphia, Aida Guzman cradled a bottle of beer in one hand and clutched a can of Silly String in the other as she bounced along with the music playing after the city's annual Puerto Rican Day Parade on Sept. 30, 2012. A few feet away, Lt. Jonathan Josey of the Philadelphia Police Department's highway patrol unit was one of more than a dozen officers dealing with a vehicle doing doughnut turns nearby. In the next few seconds, what transpired between Josey and Guzman would become a criminal matter. One thing is undisputed: Josey's hand connected with Guzman's face. A bystander captured the encounter on video. Guzman was walking from the street toward the sidewalk, and then Josey approached. The officer swung with an open hand - striking Guzman in the face and knocking her to the ground. Guzman, bleeding from the mouth, was arrested and cited for disorderly conduct. Josey would later tell investigators that he felt himself get hit with liquid and Silly String, prompting him to turn around, see Guzman and approach her. The video of Josey's smacking Guzman quickly went viral, and then-Police Commissioner Charles H. Ramsey acted quickly. He reviewed the video and the use-of-force report filled out by Josey, in which the officer said he had been trying to knock the beer out of Guzman's hand and accidentally hit her in the face, according to a summary of the case later compiled by the city. Four days later, on Oct. 4, Ramsey suspended Josey, concluding that he had falsified his use-of-force report by claiming he had personally seen Guzman throw beer on him and several other officers. On Nov. 1, 2012, Ramsey fired Josey for conduct unbecoming an officer and for use of excessive force. Prosecutors charged Josey with simple assault, a second-degree misdemeanor. The charges and Josey's firing outraged the police union and fellow officers, who packed the courtroom during the 2013 trial, according to news reports at the time. The union argued in the local news media that department leadership and prosecutors were bending to political pressure. Other officers present that day told the judge that they heard Josey instruct Guzman to drop her beer. Josey testified at trial that he was trying to swat the beer bottle from Guzman's hand and that at that very moment Guzman slipped on a can on the ground, according to local coverage of the trial. As she stumbled, the officer said, the swat intended for her beer bottle instead struck her face. "The video looks disturbing but, obviously, it's not what it appears to be," Josey said in court. "I was kind of shocked when I saw her go to the ground. I didn't expect to come into contact with her face." Judge Patrick F. Dugan ultimately concluded that Josey was not guilty. "It was a complete joke," Guzman attorney Enrique Latoison said in an interview with The Washington Post. "A mockery of a trial." Josey then appealed his firing. Arbitrator David J. Reilly held a two-day hearing in June 2013 and concluded that Josey should not have been fired. His decision letter is not subject to public records laws, but The Post obtained a 2014 report on arbitration from the city's Police Advisory Commission that summarized Reilly's rationale. According to the report, Reilly wrote that after viewing the video frame by frame, he believed Josey's account and concluded that his use of force was reasonable. Reilly also decided that although Josey incorrectly claimed he had seen Guzman throw beer on him, that was insufficient grounds to fire him. Reilly ordered that Josey be rehired and that all references to his firing be removed from his personnel file. Guzman, a mother of three, sued over the incident. In May 2013, the city paid her a $75,000 settlement. Latoison said he remains outraged at Josey's acquittal and reinstatement. "If you accidentally hit somebody, if you accidentally step on your puppy or accidentally swat your child, everybody, universally has the same reaction, 'Oh, I'm sorry!' " Latoison said. "His immediate reaction was to rough her up, put her in handcuffs, throw her in a police van and charge her with disorderly conduct." Josey and the union that represents Philadelphia officers did not respond to multiple requests for comment. When Josey was reinstated, his criminal defense attorney told local reporters that "Jon didn't do anything wrong that day other than do his job." "I've said before and I'll say again," Fortunato Perri, the attorney, added in a recent interview with The Post. "The people of Philadelphia are very fortunate to have someone like Jon Josey working for the Philadelphia PD." --- Video embed coding: Rehire loop --- How an officer fired for killing an unarmed man got his job back. --- Sgt. John Goodbread, Broward County, Florida: --- Lt. Jonathan Josey of the Philadelphia Police Department's highway patrol unit --- A San Antonio police officer offered to let a handcuffed man go, but there was one catch This article was produced in partnership with the Investigative Reporting Workshop at American University. Students Teaganne Finn, Josephine Peterson, Matt Hanan, Taylor Hartz, Jordan Houston and Shaun Courtney contributed reporting to this article. Dalton Bennett and Alice Crites also contributed to this report. KENOSHA Amazon proved Wednesday that there are large numbers of people interested in working for a stable, technologically savvy employer. At its fulfillment center just off Interstate 94 at Highway 142, Amazon held a hiring event designed to boost its workforce there by more than 1,500 people, from a base of more than 3,000. The numbers evoked thoughts of Taiwanese electronics giant Foxconn, which announced it will build a factory in southeastern Wisconsin to manufacture liquid-crystal display panels. If the company executes its plans, Foxconn will need 3,000 employees to start and perhaps up to 13,000 someday. Most of those 1,500 additional Amazon jobs will be full-time, company spokeswoman Alyssa Tran said Wednesday. As job candidates went through the application and interviewing process, Amazon made job offers on the spot, contingent on drug and background checks. Asked about a future in which both Foxconn and Amazon could be offering thousands of jobs, Tran said, Were glad businesses are here and recognize Wisconsin for its great labor force. But we dont really focus on the competition. We offer full-time jobs and great benefits. To meet its workforce needs, Amazon offered a starting hourly wage of $12.25 and a range of benefits starting day one on the job. For full-timers who will pick, pack and ship to customers, that will include health insurance, disability insurance, retirement savings plans and company stock. As another benefit for full- and part-timers, the company will prepay 95 percent of tuition for courses related to in-demand fields regardless of whether the skills are relevant to a career at Amazon. Geographic spread Inside the air-conditioned check-in tent at Amazons job fair, a sampling of applicants standing in line had come from: Kenosha, Racine, Burlington, Waterford, Cudahy and Milwaukee; as well as Fox Lake, Zion, Chicago, Mundelein, Lindenhurst and Libertyville in Illinois. Some of the candidates were hoping to upgrade from their current jobs or change careers. An example of the latter was Peter Hesselbach, 54, of South Milwaukee, who has spent his last 36 years as a restaurant manager. Joe Janke, 19, of Fox Lake, Ill., said hes been working construction side jobs. I want a job thats more promising, he said. Amazon says its entry-level jobs can lead to advancement; of its entry-level managers, nearly 15 percent started in hourly roles and were promoted. Wednesdays recruitment process included a presentation or mini-orientation and the offer of plant tours, which Tran said Amazon encourages for applicants. To make the wait more enjoyable, every applicant was given a raffle ticket, and the company held drawings every 30 minutes for prizes such as Amazon Fire tablets and Echo smart speakers. A sign-language interpreter helped with every announcement. And a microphone-holding Amazon employee would occasionally announce a fun fact such as this one: If all the steel in the more than 1-million-square-foot fulfillment center was melted, it could be used to build two Eiffel Towers. She added, I promise, you will feel small inside the fulfillment center. Interested candidates who were able to attend the event and are interested in job opportunities may apply online at amazondelivers.jobs. I will shortly leave London for Washington after a memorable four-year assignment as Irelands ambassador. I will depart with deep affection for this country where so many Irish people have made their homes, and to which they have contributed hugely. The past four years have been a wonderfully positive time for British-Irish ties, and the first state visit by an Irish president in April 2014 was a particular highlight. On the downside, I have been dismayed to have witnessed the UKs move to leave the EU and the continuing fall-out from that fateful decision. Indeed, Brexit represents the main cloud on an otherwise sunny horizon for my country, where our economy is growing robustly again. Having closely observed the debate about Brexit, I still fail to see its rationale. It appears to be based, in part at least, on misapprehensions about the EUs nature and purpose and on a degree of disdain in some quarters for the Unions undoubted achievements in facilitating a long era of peace and prosperity in Europe. I accept, of course, that Brexit is a matter for decision in the UK, but its implications do not stop at Britains borders and it poses major challenges for Ireland. There are huge economic interests at stake. The flow of trade across the Irish Sea is significant more than 1 billion each week sustaining jobs and prosperity. Both of us therefore have an interest in preserving those benefits, which is why we in Ireland hope that the UK will ultimately decide to remain in the customs union and, ideally, in the single market too. There are real apprehensions about the possibility of barriers being erected after Brexit, not least in Ireland. Capital Conversation: London is not ready for Brexit says Yo Shushi CEO Let me be clear: we wish Britain well for the future. We have a vital interest in a Britain that is outward-looking, prosperous and on good terms with its neighbours. We will do what we can to facilitate a positive outcome to the negotiations on future relations between the UK and the EU. We hope that a new partnership can be created that will keep the UK closely aligned to the European Union, but that will require flexible approaches to prevail. As I depart from the UK, I still hope that a sensible settlement can be arrived at, but this will require a formidable effort to understand and accommodate each others concerns. As these complex negotiations evolve, I sincerely hope that our friends in Britain will keep the Irish dimension of Brexit at the front of their minds. That is where it needs to be if both our interests, economic and political, are to be appropriately nurtured for the benefit of this and future generations of our neighbouring, deeply interconnected peoples. Daniel Mulhall is Irelands Ambassador in London. O n the Governments website theres a page explaining what life is like in British jails. It mentions inmates rights: that they should be protected from harassment, given support for mental health issues, allowed to spend at least half an hour in the open air each day. But this is only a partial picture of our prisons. There is no mention of the rioting police were sent in to The Mount prison in Hertfordshire on Monday after guards lost control. It doesnt flag up the violence, the staff shortages, the soaring rates of suicide and self-harm, or the contraband: figures released last month showed that more than 200kg of drugs were seized in 2016 (and that was the stuff officers found). Somehow, the squalid, inhumane conditions an independent monitoring board found in Pentonville dont get a look-in, either. MIA too is the fact that Peter Clarke, the chief inspector of prisons, warned recently that no young offender institution was safe to hold the under-18s, and that the president of the Prison Governors Association, Andrea Albutt, said yesterday that her members were devastated at the complete decline in our service. Prisons are the ultimate neglectable facility, lying not just behind closed doors but locked ones. Politicians know that criminals arent a group that elicits much public sympathy so the budget has been chipped away at. Now that Brexit dominates everything, the cri de coeur demanding better treatment for prisoners is even more drowned out. But the conditions are both a hidden symptom and a cloaked cause of societal blights. So where exactly is the Secretary of State? Weve got a new one, incidentally. You may well have missed that as David Lidington, who replaced Liz Truss at the Ministry of Justice in Junes reshuffle that barely was, has since morphed into the invisible man. He didnt answer Albutts concerns yesterday. It also doesnt help tackle the problems that Lidington is the fourth minister in two-and-a-half years. The problems stem from the dangerous double-whammy of staff shortages and inmate overcrowding. Yet we keep stuffing more prisoners in. There are now more than 86,000 people in prison in England and Wales; under Margaret Thatcher it was more like 40,000. According to the brilliant Howard League, a charity that works tirelessly for penal reform (its slogan is less crime, safer communities, fewer people in prison), the worst prisons tend to be in busy city centres. In London thats Pentonville and Brixton, where people are shuffled, day in, day out. At the best of times, that instability can add danger. These are not the best of times. Fewer guards means inmates are increasingly stuck in their cells for all but an hour of the day, fuelling their frustrations. Rehabilitation work, the magical tool to cut reoffending, is scarcely happening in some prisons. This all leads to a rise in tension. Growing tension means more demand for drugs. Where there are drugs, theres debt, and where theres debt, theres violence. The long-term solution to the crisis alongside greater funding for prisons in the short-term is to cut the number of people inside. That can come from deflating sentences for longer-term prisoners and cutting the number of people who end up in jail for less serious offences. Oddly, because it would reduce overcrowding, that would mean more released prisoners re-entering society reformed. Its in everybodys interest that that happens. Its time we stopped allowing prisons to be a hidden catastrophe open the gates and let in the light. Modest Roberts heroic tale should be the stuff of Hollywood dreams It could prove the sporting comeback of film-makers fantasies. After 2,372 days the Polish racing driver Robert Kubica whose right forearm was partially severed in a horrific rally crash in 2011 and permanently damaged is again in a Formula One car. The 32-year-old said its too early to tell if he will be able to return to F1. Notably, Kubica, pictured, is the same age as world champion Nico Rosberg, who retired last December. Kubicas underdog status would be assured. There have already been two F1-on-film triumphs this decade. The documentary Senna was a brilliant drama lauded even by those critics who dismiss F1 as just cars pointlessly circling. So too was Rush, the biopic of James Hunt, a driver who always had a fag in his mouth, a champagne bottle to his lips and a beautiful woman on his arm. Unassuming Kubica doesnt perhaps seem like the kind of icon Hollywoods leading men would be lining up to play but just imagine. The Rocky-esque training montage! The loyal fans camping out for his return! And fingers crossed the eventual moment of hard-earned glory. F irefighters who battled the Grenfell Tower blaze will be guests of honour at an Oktoberfest beer festival in London. All crews who fought the fire at the 24-storey block have been invited to the Erdinger Oktoberfest event at the Greenwich Peninsula on October 5. About 65 people were saved from the North Kensington tower on June 14. Christian Kostiuk, one of the festivals organisers, said: These firefighters risked their lives to try to save others at Grenfell and they are owed a huge debt of gratitude. We are offering any of the firefighters who were on duty at the Grenfell fire disaster to be our guests of honour at our event with free tickets and table at the front of the venue right by the stage. The firemen and women will be able to socialise with their workmates and have a fun time away from the stresses of their very difficult jobs. We will also be having a collection on the same day to raise money for the victims of the fire and their families, and we will also be making a donation to the fund. London Fire Brigade said the offer was being advertised in the stations that sent personnel to the blaze, which is estimated to have left at least 80 people dead. The Erdinger Oktoberfest is the biggest ever event of its kind in the UK. It will take place in a 3,000-capacity wooden Bavarian beer hall with more than 220 bench tables near the O2 Arena. Bavarian waitresses will teach British staff to carry up to 10 steins at once. To buy tickets, go to erdinger-oktoberfest.co.uk M eet Renee Ballard, a 34-year-old detective from Hawaii who, having failed to nail a former boss for sexual harassment, has been banished to the late show the 11pm-7am shift in Hollywood. Our first tour with her involves three cases: a series of robberies, the horrific abduction and torture of a transgender prostitute and a mass shooting in a nightclub. Of course all the villains in and outside the LAPD are men. Renee, known as Balls during training at the police academy, gives as good as she gets in the face of condescension and unreconstructed masculinity. Paddle-boarding has given her a fabulous figure, although her charms are nearly the death of her when she attracts the attentions of a muscle-bound suspect. She is a woman in peril mainly from herself. Like Harry Bosch, Connellys long-running hero, she is aware of the darkness within and the bleakest side of the soul. Connelly achieves an enormous amount in these 400 pages: he creates a new character who immediately leaps into life; controls a complex, fast-paced plot full of surprises; and continues to enhance his career-long portrait of modern LA. Like most men Id like to see Ballard again and soon. I t was an intimate dinner. The wine a white Burgundy and a Bordeaux flowed. The food was the best of France: three courses worthy of two Michelin stars, a guest said with turbot for the main and chocolate petit fours to finish. The setting was the French ambassadors residence in Kensington 10 days ago and the diners included the big guns of European finance. Before the meal, the former Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg spoke in the ballroom at a reception of College of Europe alumni. He heralded Emmanuel Macrons optimism as a true hallmark of European liberalism while the Tricolore and the flag of the European Union hung beside him. With Brexit approaching, Sylvie Bermann, Frances charismatic lady in London, isnt alone in schmoozing the money men. At a meeting last month in Paris, the French Prime Minister, Edouard Philippe, stayed for lunch after his speech to chat to banking CEOs. He went all guns blazing trying to convince them that Paris is the place, says one attendee. This government is blunt: they want Paris to become the No 1 European finance centre. President Macron eyeing up the 71.4 billion in taxes that the UK financial services sector generates is said to be out to maim London as a financial capital. A fear among financiers is that the City could lose its euro clearing role (where clearing houses such as the London Stock Exchanges LCH play middleman to buyers and sellers of financial contracts). London dominates the volume of business can be more than a notional 900 billion daily. The French sniff blood in the water and theyre going for a land grab, says Manoj Ladwa, head of private clients at the TJM Partnership. In a leaked memo, Jeremy Browne, the former Liberal Democrat MP who is now the Citys envoy to the EU, wrote that the French objective is the degradation of the City. Roxanne Varza and Emmanuel Macron / AFP/Getty Images Not that French diplomats will put it like that. A source close to the ambassador instead spoke of improving Frances attractivite (appeal to businesses) and said it could be a win, win situation in which companies might open French satellite offices but keep UK headquarters. Nonetheless, mere hours after the UK voted leave, ads appeared on The Wall Street Journal and Financial Times websites proclaiming Welcome to the Paris region. Now, with Article 50 triggered, the Square Mile rumour mill is in overdrive with tales of French sweeteners offered to firms to move. The deal Ive heard is that you only pay tax on half your revenues, says one hedge fund manager. This Parisian charm offensive is wide ranging. Macron plans financial measures to lower taxes and reduce red tape, including scrapping the highest bracket of payroll tax on financial sector staff and making it cheaper to sack employees. Three new international lycees teaching in French and English will open in Paris by 2022. The French are also setting up a relocation service, offering help to buy a home and find schools, and high-profile officials such as Christian Noyer, Frances Brexit envoy for finance, and Valerie Pecresse, the head of the Paris region are hosting receptions in London to woo business leaders. French officials have met with Bank of America, Morgan Stanley and Citigroup. The Centre Pompidou / Alamy Stock Photo Pariss appeal is obvious. It has a well-educated workforce, cheaper office space than London and a decent financial base to build on. Like London, it has the Michelin-starred restaurants and designer shops to appeal to the Jordan Belforts of banking, with a vibrant nightlife and food scene that, thanks to an influx of young chefs from around the world, has become more adventurous than the cliched bistro fare. Lately, Londoners have been causing a stir, with fashionable restaurants such as Le Grand Bain and Restaurant Albion offering English delicacies such as le Sunday roast. The art and design scene is similarly dynamic and one in which British talent is prized, with Londoners such as Clare Waight Keller and Kim Jones heading up French fashion houses Givenchy and Louis Vuitton menswear, and David Hockney providing the summers must-see exhibition at the Pompidou. Key Brexit Players - In pictures 1 /8 Key Brexit Players - In pictures David Davis Reuters Michel Barnier AP Tim Barrow AFP/Getty Images Oliver Robbins Sabine Weyand Didier Seeuws AFP/Getty Images However, David Blanc, partner at wealth-management firm LGT Vestra and vice-president of Union des Francais de lEtranger, believes the French approach, in emphasising this, often has the wrong focus: Its too much Paris is lovely it should be about business. Blanc says it will help that Macron is an ex-banker, winning the nickname The Mozart of Finance for his M&A work, though a former colleague told the Financial Times that he was the guy who would constantly say thank you [but] he didnt know what EBITDA [earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation] was. To make France bank-friendly, Macron must address a series of problems. The first is a perception illustrated by an email much forwarded in the Square Mile during Societe Generales rogue trading scandal in 2008. Friends of Jerome Kerviel last night blamed his $7bn losses on unbearable levels of stress brought on by a punishing 30-hour week, it began. This view that the French loaf rather than toil is unfair, Blanc says: French productivity is higher than British. Its about quality not quantity of hours. French President Emmanuel Macron with Theresa May during a joint press conference after a working dinner at the Elysee Presidential Palace / Getty Images France is still perceived as a bureaucratic nation with high taxes for staff hire and too-strict labour laws. When you employ people, theres a gigantic tax, explains another hedge fund manager. And you cant fire people in France. Thats not attractive to investment banks, who fire 10 per cent of their staff every year. You need flexible labour laws for a financial services business, so you can increase staff in the boom times and cut in downturns. The Citys defences are battered. Its position has been weakened by Theresa Mays political coronation she has scarcely met business leaders and insulted money-makers as citizens of nowhere. A number of big-hitters have applied for French banking licences and HSBC has warned it could move around 1,000 staff to Paris. The Citys challenge is to ensure that passporting rights continue. These rights mean financial services firms that are allowed to sell something here, can sell it in Europe, in a similar vein to how the UK driving licence enables citizens to drive on the continent. However, a Deutsche Bank briefing leaked to the website Business Insider argued London would lose the passport, sparking a rush to the exits for investment banks to gain first mover advantage. Galeries Lafayette / Alamy Stock Photo But in the days after the Leave vote, investment banking bosses including those from JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs released a statement saying they would strive to ensure London remained a global financial centre. Wells Fargo recently agreed to move into a 300m HQ near London Bridge next year. The capital has a list of advantages, from the language to our legal system and more flexible labour laws. Due to the falling pound, Brexit has made it cheaper to make hires, and staff especially those with families wont want to move. People are sticky, says Ladwa. Its not easy to uproot them. Banks could move part of their team and feed business back into London. Building the City as a financial hub has taken decades itll take more than a couple of terms of Macron for brokers and traders to relocate. Macron is hoping to tempt businesses from London / Getty Images Some City-watchers predict it wont be a Brexodus of the banks, so much as the flight of Harry Hedge Fund. Investment banks cant move every few years whereas a hedge fund can if a country reneges on an offer after five years, says one fund manager. Hedge funds are about intellectual capital and have a mobile workforce where everyone speaks lots of languages. Paris has competition there, he adds: Spain and Portugal are offering golden visa tax deals where you sign on for five or seven years. Its not just banks and hedge funds Macron is keen to lure. He is chasing tech entrepreneurs and film-makers (once Britain leaves, EU subsidies for making movies in the UK are likely to dry up). He wants France to be a start-up hub, launching a new facility in a converted railway depot Station F in Pariss 13th arrondissement, which opened with 3,000 spaces for fledgling firms and is being run by Silicon Valley escapee Roxanne Varza of Microsoft. Macron proclaimed to the crowd at its opening: What you have in common here is the spirit of this word entrepreneur. Never forget its a French word, truly French, that the Anglo-Saxons stole from us. London has the advantage here, though. The UK is an easier place to start a business thanks to generous grants and research and development tax credits. Capital Conversation: London is not ready for Brexit says Yo Shushi CEO In fact, the hedge fund manager believes that it may be another spectre on the horizon that causes companies to up sticks. Corbyn would be what would make me move on, not Brexit. Youd have a sudden exit of high-earning people. His firm is drawing up contingency plans: If you get massive tax rises, the take will fall and more and more people will leave. London in the late Seventies wasnt a great place to be. On the trading desk at Goldman Sachs there are a lot of French bankers, Germans, Americans they wont stay if Corbyns in power. These are people whod vote for a Macron or a Blair but they dont like extremes. They might vote for Macron, but they would also acknowledge the enormous challenge he faces to make France attractive to finance and that the City of London has come up trumps in the past. Over the centuries the City has always been able to reinvent itself, Blanc notes. It will fight back again. A victim of an acid attack which left him fighting for life has called for longer prison sentences for assailants. Andreas Christopheros, 32, was at home in Truro when a man knocked at his door in 2014 and a man threw a beaker of sulphuric acid in his face saying : This is for you, mate. He said :My t-shirt disintegrated from top to bottom, it just rolled away into nothing. The pain was inexplicable. He was rushed to hospital where doctors told his wife and mother he may not live through the night. He said he was on death watch for weeks because of the risk of infection. Today 90 per cent of his face has been reconstructed using skin from other parts of his body, including his scalp and neck. He has had between ten and twelve surgeries. Andreas Christopheros on his wedding day before he suffered horrific injuries in a mistaken identity acid attack / Reuters He has lost his eyelids three times as the scarring on his face contracts, making sleep a constant struggle. Not having eyelids has probably been the most torturous thing that Ive been through, he says. You cant hide from the light. You cant shut your eyes. Christopheros said the attack was a case of mistaken identity, as his assailant believed he had carried out a sexual assault on a family member but arrived at the wrong house. After pleading guilty, his attacker was initially sentenced to life in prison with a minimum term of eight years. Christopheros later learned the assailant was granted an appeal, lifting his life sentence and changing his sentence to 16 years with a possibility of parole after eight. Three judges ended up concluding that life should be lifted from his sentence because hes deemed not to be a danger to society, which is probably the most baffling part of the whole story, Christopheros said. It was a planned attack. Today Christopheros said : I believe the UK has got its strategy towards this completely wrong. I strongly believe that the sentencing for anyone who carries out any form of acid attack, whether their intended victim is injured badly or not, should serve a life sentence, with a minimum term of 20 or more years. The Home Office said it planned to set out guidance for prosecutors on classifying corrosive substances as dangerous weapons and to review sentencing guidelines. Officials are also reviewing the Poisons Act to assess whether it should cover more acids and harmful substances. Retailers could also face further restrictions on selling acids and other substances. A n Australian nurse was jailed for 18 months in Cambodia today after paying local women to have surrogate babies for couples in her home country. Tammy Davis-Charles, 49, appeared stunned as the judge read the guilty verdict and sentence following a trial in Cambodias capital, Phnom Penh. Commercial surrogacy is illegal there. Davis-Charles, who ran a clinic and provided the service to 23 Australian and American couples, was convicted of being an intermediary in surrogacy and engaging in falsifying documents alongside two Cambodians, Penh Rithy and Samrithchan Chariya. All three were sentenced to one and a half years in prison. Trial: Tammy Davis-Charles, second left, with other detainees, at court in Phnom Penh / AFP/Getty Images Davis-Charles charged foreign couples about 38,000 for surrogacy services and paid Cambodian women about 7,500 to carry babies on their behalf, said Judge Sor Lina at Phnom Penh municipal court. She paid Penh Rithy 450 to 600 to organise paperwork for the babies so that they could leave Cambodia with their parents. Penh Rithy and Samrithchan Chariya knew about the ban but still engaged in the business, said the judge. Wearing orange prison clothes, Davis-Charles cried as she was led out of the courtroom. The nurse, who has been detained in Phnom Penh since November, said her job was only to take care of surrogate mothers. She said she did not know commercial surrogacy was illegal. The judge ordered her to pay four million riel about 756 in fines to the state. The Cambodian defendants were fined two million riel each. South-East Asia has been a popular international destination for couples looking to have babies through commercial surrogacy. Thailand banned the practice in 2015 after a series of high-profile cases and Cambodia followed suit last year. A surgeon who carried out unnecessary breast operations has had five years added to his jail sentence for his "truly sickening" crimes. Ian Paterson, who left victims scarred and disfigured, watched via video-link from prison as Court of Appeal judges in London declared that a "just" sentence of 20 years should replace the "unduly lenient" 15 years he was given in May. Solicitor General Robert Buckland, who referred the case to appeal judges for review, said afterwards: "Throughout our lives we are told and expected to trust doctors. Paterson woefully abused that trust - he deliberately preyed on people's worst fears and then mutilated them on the operating table. "This is a truly sickening crime and my thoughts are with the victims and their families. I hope the increased sentence will help bring some closure for them." Paterson, 59, from Altrincham, Greater Manchester, was convicted by a jury at Nottingham Crown Court of 17 counts of wounding with intent and three counts of unlawful wounding against 10 private patients. Asked if 20 years was enough, Mr Buckland said: "I don't think any term of imprisonment can ever be enough to fully reflect what happened to the victims in this case but I do think that a high degree of justice has been done today." Referred to the fact that Paterson spent much of the hearing shaking his head, Mr Buckland said: "He is in a state of denial but the facts speak for themselves." Tracey Smith and Debbie Douglas, two former patients of Ian Paterson, wait at home for news of his increased jail sentence / PA Lady Justice Hallett, sitting with Mrs Justice Carr and Mr Justice Goss, said on Thursday: "Both the harm and culpability here were exceptionally high." Paterson's trial heard from nine women and one man who were treated in the private sector at Little Aston and Parkway Hospitals in the West Midlands between 1997 and 2011. Victims said Paterson's crimes had left them in constant pain and struggling to trust medical professionals. Lady Justice Hallett said: "How any doctor, let alone one who had earned an enviable reputation, could have engaged in this level of offending we will never know. "Greed, self-aggrandisement, power - however, they do not come close to explaining how a doctor can falsely tell a patient he or she has cancer when they have not, with all that such a diagnosis entails for a patient and members of their family. "Nor how a doctor can then insist that he or she undergo unnecessary operations, including mastectomies, with all the physical and psychological pain such operations cause. "Patients trusted him implicitly. They could never have imagined that he would put them through the agony of a diagnosis of cancer and mutilation of their breasts when there was no justification for it. "With some of his patients, he put them through their ordeal more than once. "They must feel no sentence could properly reflect their suffering and that of their families." If youre like most families with young adults preparing to launch their college years, youve already invested time in selecting the right school, visiting campuses, registering, and picking out housing. By now the final pre-departure festivities have begun and soon it will be time to load up the family vehicle with goodies to decorate otherwise dull college dorm rooms. Here are a few ideas to help enhance their financial well-being (and your peace-of-mind) while theyre away at school. You may want to consider establishing an easy to use method for sending emergency money or paying for recurring bills. On-line banking offers a quick and easy way to transfer funds from your account to your childs account. You may also want to check out mobile apps like PayPal or Venmo for other ways to help shoulder the financial burden, particularly in emergencies. Its best to establish in advance what you will become (or continue to be) responsible for funding versus what expenses will be paid by your child (funded by on- or off-campus employment). For instance, you may pay for off-campus rent and your child will be responsible for paying for food and supplies. You may want to help them set up a budget, clearly identifying anticipated and known monthly expenses. For some, this may be the first exposure to any kind of budgeting process and it can be quite a learning experience to see a spreadsheet that includes all the financial responsibilities that come with living independently for the first time. Credit card offers abound on college campuses so help your young adult avoid getting in over their heads with deferred debt. Theyll have plenty of that already accumulating from college loans; they (and you) dont need to also be straddled with high interest credit card debt. If they have a credit card, be sure the balance is paid in full each month whenever possible. Dinners out and visits to the campus bookstore add up quickly and its easy to lose track of credit card spending. Establishing some guidelines for what types of expenses should be paid with a credit card is advisable. Remind them what documentation they should bring with them. Copies of their birth certificate, passport, health insurance and Social Security cards are a few. If they havent already done so, they should memorize their Social Security number as theyll be using that a lot on campus. You may want to invest in a small safe or lock box where they can keep documents, cash and other items of value. Being away from home for the first time is an exciting period in every young persons life. Its a time of exploration and discovery. Its also a great time to exercise good habits around personal finance. For more ideas, were prepared 10 Things to Do Before Heading to College, a simple checklist with some timely tips for you and your student. To request a copy please visit www.ToYourWealth.com/wellbeing and enter webcodeCOLLEGE A huge human trafficking ring that has been flying hundreds of Iranian migrants, some as young as five, into Britain has been smashed after the arrest of more than 100 people by European law enforcers and the Met. The alleged leader of the criminal gang was detained at Heathrow as he tried to escape justice by flying to Brazil. Another 14 gang members were held in Malaga, southern Spain, where the smuggling operation was based. The EUs law enforcement agency, Europol, said that more than 200 people a year had been smuggled by the gang for around 10 years. Most were flown into Britain, although some were sent to other European countries. Europol said the gang had run a perfectly structured criminal operation in which each migrant was charged around 22,000 and provided with accommodation, transfers and flights. There was no immediate information from the Home Office about how many Iranians have managed to enter Britain illegally or whether any of those detained have been removed from the country. But the discovery of the operation will raise renewed concerns about the security of Britains borders and the ability of traffickers to use fake or legitimate documents from other EU countries to smuggle illegal migrants into the country. Europol said that more than 200 people a year had been smuggled by the gang over a number of years / PA Announcing the successful operation against the gang today, Europol said that Spanish National Police had dismantled an international criminal network involved in smuggling Iranian nationals into the UK on commercial flights on an action day across Europe. As the well as the alleged ringleader arrested at Heathow, another 14 members of the trafficking ring were arrested in Spain, along with 42 Spanish citizens suspected of selling their documents to help the gang carry out is smuggling operation. A total of 44 Iranians were also detained at airports across Europe carrying forged passports. Seven other Iranians, including a child aged five, were also found during searches carried out by Spanish police. Passports, more than 400 blank identity cards, firearms, cash, computers, printers and a high-end vehicle were also seized during the searches. Europol said that law enforcers had become aware of the gang, which was operating out of Malaga in southern Spain, after seven Iranian citizens were caught a year ago using fake passports to board a lane flying to this country from Germany. Investigations found that the flight tickets had been bought at travel agnecy in Malaga and realised that there was a migrant smuggling network operating in the city. The criminal group was perfectly structured and each member had a defined role, ranging from recruiting the irregular migrants in their country of origin, to facilitating the transfers, hosting them in safe houses in Spain, and supplying the travel documents, Europol said. The network operated from Malaga and used Spain as a transit country. In total, 101 individuals were arrested. The Spanish National Police arrested 14 members of the criminal group in Malaga, as well as another 42 individuals accused of selling their Spanish documents to the members of the organisation for prices ranging from 500 euros (445) to 3000 euros (2,680). Another 44 individuals of Iranian nationality were intercepted at different European airports carrying forged passports. The leader of the criminal group was arrested by the Metropolitan Police at Heathrow airport, after a European Arrest Warrant was issued by the Spanish authorities. The suspect intended to take a flight to Brazil to evade justice. Europol added that searches of safe houses in Spain had led to the discovery of seven other Iranians, including a five-year-old child, as well as 40 authentic Iranian and Spanish passports and other equipment used by the criminal gang. A spokesman for Europol added that it was difficult to estimate the exact number of the numbers trafficked into Britain by the gang but that around 200 Iranians were smuggled per year, most of them to the UK but not all. He added that the gang had been operating for various years before it was detected but that it was not possible to give a concrete length of time. A man threatened to blow up an Islamic book shop in north London before telling staff he wanted to kill the Muslims. David Moffatt, 39, has been sentenced after pleading guilty to religiously aggravated intentional harassment, alarm and distress. He was wearing an orange high-vis jacket and trousers when he entered the bookshop on Cricklewood Broadway, near Brent Cross, on the afternoon of May 23. He made violent threats to the Cricklewood Islamic Bookshop and Muslims in general before leaving. Moffatt was arrested at 11.30pm on the same day after calling police himself to allege that he had been threatened by somebody. Defending himself during police questioning, Moffat said: Im not anti-Muslim, Im Catholic. On Friday, he was sentenced at Willesden Magistrates Court to a community order with an unpaid work requirement of 100 hours within 12 months. He was also made pay 620 in costs and a victim surcharge of 85. Detective Inspector Madeline Ryder, from Brents Community Safety Unit, said: "Hate crime is unacceptable and Brents Community Safety Unit is committed to tackling hate crime in all its forms, supporting victims and their families and bringing perpetrators like Moffatt to justice." Hate Crime can be reported through 999 in an emergency, by dialling 101 in a non-emergency, directly at a police station, through the MOPAC Hate Crime app or through community reporting methods such as Tell MAMA for Islamophobic incidents and the Community Security Trust (CST) for anti-Semitic incidents. A moped gang armed with hammers, knives and guns terrorised mobile phone shops across London in a seven-month 1 million crime wave, a court heard. The 17-strong group targeted Three stores, smashing their way in at night and snatching up thousands of pounds worth of handsets in minutes. They used mopeds to get to and from the raids, attacking security guards who got in their way and injuring two police officers who tried to thwart one of the break-ins. Blackfriars crown court heard one of the gang bragged about attacking a guard with a claw hammer when a raid turned violent, texting a friend: Lol, had to lick him up with a hammer. They even carried out a brazen break-in on a Three store in Oxford Street, threatening members of the public with a gun as they helped themselves to 20,000-worth of phones, it is said. Members of the gang seen on a dashboard-mounted camera The court heard three of the group were caught after a dramatic police chase through London, as a Met helicopter tracked a convoy of mopeds fleeing from the scene of the gangs penultimate raid. Prosecutor Michael Shaw said police recovered a series of trophy selfies taken by the alleged robbers before they went on the raids. They armed themselves with weapons, knives, hammers and guns, arriving on mopeds and using crash helmets as a disguise, he said. The gang are on trial over a string of armed robberies in London They smashed their way into mobile phone stores owned by the Three network, smashing their way into the stores stockrooms, taking mobile phones which they sold to handlers in east London. The court heard the estimated value of the stolen phones together with damage caused to the shops is about 1 million. Dylan Castano-Lopez, 19, of Rust Square, Camberwell, Alfie Kennedy, 20, of Arlington Avenue, Hoxton, and Adam Atallah, 21, of no fixed address, have pleaded guilty to conspiracy to burgle, admitting they belonged to the gang. Kennedys brother, Bobby, 22, and Chris Costi, 19, of Linscott Close, Clapton, deny being part of a conspiracy, between May and November last year, and are currently on trial. Other alleged members of the organised crime group are due to stand trial at a later date. Trapped: Alfie Kennedy, left, and Adam Atallah were caught as they tried to flee from police through an underpass in west London. They admitted conspiracy to burgle Mr Shaw said the gang were caught on CCTV using a fence post to smash their way into the shops, and were prepared to use considerable violence when they come across security guards or police officers. On July 6, 2016, a security guard was subjected to a good kicking when he came across men in dark clothes and wearing crash helmets smashing their way into his shop in Walthamstow. The males forced their way in to his room where he was hiding, said Mr Shaw. They said dont call the police and they set about kicking him. He wasnt resisting ... but they laid into him with the hammers and they gave him a good kicking. The court heard another guard was hit over the head with a chair and beaten with a hammer at a Three store in East Ham, and a third man who managed to barricade himself in a back office during a raid was told he would be shot if he dialled 999. Police officers were also injured after catching two of the robbers red-handed on August 17 last year at a break in in Wood Green. Theres a fight and the officers are dragged out through the broken window, receiving a number of lacerations, said Mr Shaw. He told the jury the group, which changed personnel for each job, broke into the Three store in Oxford Street at 2.40am on September 29, threatening to shoot any members of the public who tried to intervene. Police eventually learned the gang had a pattern, fleeing back to their turf in north London and fencing the stolen loot through a shop in east London. He said the Kennedy brothers and Atallah were caught after being pursued from a break-in in Walthamstow to the Hanger Lane underpass in west London, where they tried to flee on foot but were trapped by officers. Costi and Bobby Kennedy deny conspiracy to commit aggravated burglary and an alternative of conspiracy to rob. The trial continues. T he young man who died after being restrained by a police officer in east London had tried to swallow a mixture of paracetamol and caffeine wrapped in plastic, forensic tests have revealed. Rashan Charles, 20, was pronounced dead in hospital after being chased and wrestled to the ground in a shop in Dalston on July 22 sparking both peaceful and violent protests in the community. The independent police watchdog which is conducting an investigation into his death - revealed on Wednesday that a package he had swallowed before his death did not contain drugs. Cindy Butts from the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) added on Thursday: Yesterday, we received analysis of the contents of a package that paramedics removed from Rashans airway after he was detained and restrained by a police officer and member of the public. Following a very constructive meeting with Rashans family, we stated that the package did not contain controlled substances. We did not provide further details, because the contents of the package are not directly relevant to our investigation we are looking into the circumstances of Rashans death, not investigating Rashan. However, given the inflammatory nature of some ongoing speculation I will confirm that the package consisted of a mixture of paracetamol and caffeine wrapped in plastic. Last week, the IPCC said the evidence it had seen so far suggested Mr Charles was detained by a Metropolitan Police officer who had followed him on foot into a shop on Kingsland Road after an earlier attempted vehicle stop. The officer restrained Mr Charles, with the help of a member of the public, and he was handcuffed. After he was detained, attempts were made to remove an object from his mouth or throat. CCTV of the moment Rashan Charles enters shop His condition deteriorated, and the officer called for a police medic who provided assistance prior to the arrival of paramedics, according to the IPCC. Ms Butts said no cause of death had been confirmed. The police watchdog's announcement came after shadow home secretary Diane Abbott said the initial forensic findings would cause "deep concern" after figures showed a "disproportionate" use of force against minority groups by police. On Tuesday figures released for the first time showed Metropolitan Police officers used "force" at a rate of around once every 10 minutes. Mr Charles' family said the contents of the package swallowed "must not detract" from investigating the conduct of the police in the lead-up to his death. Local MP Diane Abbott attended a vigil outside Stoke Newington police station / REUTERS They released a statement which read: We are a large family and speak with one voice. Our single objective is to establish what happened to Rashan, and to do this using all lawful means available. We expect the IPCC to conduct an investigation to the highest possible standards, and to provide the answers we urgently seek. "We have raised concerns with the IPCC about openness and transparency, which is regrettable at this early stage. We are aware too of the results on the forensic analysis conducted on the package recovered at the scene. "Whilst this is important, we wish to make clear that the content of the package must not detract from our primary concern, which is to investigate the conduct of those involved in the incident that led to Rashans death. The father-of-one's family have urged calm following a series of protests against police in east London over his death. Dalston protest: Several wheelie bins and a mattress were set alight / PA On Friday evening, a large gang of protesters - many of whom had their faces covered - clashed with riot police as tensions came to a head. The group blocked busy Kingsland Road before hurling bottles, stones and other objects at police and starting a fire in the middle of the road. A vigil held the following day outside Stoke Newington police station saw Mr Charles' father call for "dignified" demonstrations. A new HIV prevention drug will be made available for free to thousands of NHS patients in September, The pioneering PrEP - or pre-exposure prophylaxis - will be rolled ot to sexual health clinics in cities around the UK, including London, Manchester and Brighton, NHS England announced. As part of a three-year trial, at least 10,000 individuals will be offered the drug through their local clinic with "high risk" patients prioritised. The scheme is part of the initial stages of a plan to offer the drug to the public on a wider scale. The antiretroviral drug has demonstrated success in reducing the risk of HIV in past trials. It works by preventing the disease from being able to take hold of the body if a pill is taken daily. But studies have also shown that there are still benefits when taken before and after sex. The announcement follows a Court of Appeal ruling in favour of the National Aids Trust. Last year the NAT challenged NHS England over their obligation to commission the preventative treatment. The health service had argued that responsibility should fall to local authorities to pay for the drug. With an estimated 101,200 people living with HIV in the UK, chief executive of the Terrence Higgins Trust Ian Green said: Were pleased that NHS England has announced a start date for the much anticipated PrEP trial. "This PrEP trial has been gaining momentum in England, and is vital as we work towards ending HIV transmissions across the UK. The priority must now be to make sure that the trial reaches everyone at risk of HIV, and that it is rolled out speedily across the whole country, by the end of this year at the very latest. Spring 2018 is not soon enough Now that the PrEP trial drug has been procured, were well on the way to protecting over 10,000 people at risk of HIV. "To make sure no-one at risk of HIV is left behind, it is crucial that at the end of this trial in three years time, a clear process for routinely commissioning PrEP on the NHS is agreed. While there is no current means of signing up to the trial, chief executive at NAT Deborah Gold has described the move as a pivotal moment in the fight against HIV. We now need to work with NHS England, local authorities, and the sexual health sector to make sure the widest possible range of eligible people at high risk of HIV have access to the trial. From September, people at high risk of HIV will have access via the NHS in England to an empowering new tool that is truly individual controlled and not subject to negotiation with a partner, leading to the improvement of many, many lives. We warmly welcome this announcement. The Welsh government is also performing a trial of PrEP while Scotland announced earlier this year that it had approved use of the drug by the NHS. D eliveroo riders are refusing to work jobs in certain parts of London after a spate of acid attacks and thefts. The company has revealed that in three weeks, 71 riders have unassigned themselves from jobs in London, and seven have been offered alternative work locations after expressing concerns for their safety. On July 14, two suspects on mopeds attacked five riders in east London dousing them with acid in a crime spree lasting 90 minutes. In one of the latest shocking examples of acid being used as a weapon, it is believed the suspects used the corrosive substance to injure riders so they could attempt to steal their vehicles. Deliveroo bikers were targeted in east London by a gang thought to be trying to steal their bikes / Twitter/@sarah_cobbold In a bid to reassure workers, the food delivery company has deployed increased safety measures which include specialist support staff and helmet cameras for riders. On Thursday, riders operating in Hackney the scene of recent attacks have been invited to meet with the council and representatives from Air Ambulance and the police to discuss the dangers they face. Attack: One rider being doused in water after an acid attack in Hackney It will mark the launch of the companys drive to educate delivery drivers on what to do if they become the victim of crime. We will do everything we can to protect our riders and have put in place new measures so that riders can report any concerns they have or even move to work in another area if they feel unsafe, Dan Warne, Managing Director for Deliveroo UK, said. Delivery riders join acid attack protest in Parliament Square We are working closely with the police and local councils, and are sharing all the information our riders give us in order to help tackle crime against [them]. Cleber Mauri, 30 says bike couriers aren't safe anywhere in London [This] is why were implementing new measures like our app, and helmet-mounted cameras - these will allow us to work together, share information, and bring criminals to justice. The company has hired 50 new employees who will act as the point of contact for workers with safety concerns. Bike courier: 'we're not safe anywhere in London' A motorbike food courier today laid bare the risks faced by drivers, saying: Were not safe anywhere in London. Advertising student Cleber Mauri, 30, said threats of violence against drivers had become a daily occurrence and called for police to be granted more powers to tackle thieves. He said: Its definitely become more dangerous, we do not feel safe anywhere in London, even during the day. Thieves bother us every day. Threatening us with knives, bats, suspicious liquids in bottles. A guy I know got attacked there three weeks ago with acid on his face. Mr Mauri, who moved to London from Brazil and fits his delivery job around his studies, said Deliveroos strategy was a step in the right direction. He said: It may be helpful because we will have someone to call in an emergency. But I dont think helmet cameras will help. The thieves are not afraid, they dont mind showing their faces. To be honest, the company cant do much, this needs to come from the police. They need to know they have the support to be allowed to chase the thieves. Despite the media attention over delivery drivers safety, Mr Mauri said he had received little in the way of support. He now works for a different food courier firm in the capital. He said: They just want their orders delivered and if we do not do it we dont make money enough to cover living expenses. They also penalise us if we cancel an order. I got penalised this week because I refused to go to some areas, like Dagenham and Rainham, as those are the most dangerous places in east London. They will collaborate with local authorities and the police to train staff on precautionary measures and teach them what to do if confronted by gangs, or if they become the victim of an attack. Riders will also be provided with helmet-mounted cameras to record their shifts and produce evidence in the event of an attack. Deliveroo bosses have also installed a new feature on the app which allows riders to log safety concerns. These will then be flagged up to local authorities in the area. The measures are being introduced just weeks after hundreds of moped delivery drivers brought Westminster to a standstill protesting the dangers of acid. Protest: Food delivery riders demonstrate in Parliament Square after a spate of acid attacks in London / PA Activists descended on Parliament Square days after the attacks demanding that more is done to crack-down on moped theft and acid-related crime. In response to the dangerous craze, the Met issued officers patrolling east London with test kits which allow them to check the contents of suspicious bottles of liquids found on people. Police have also been given increased training on how to treat victims of a potential attack. Acting Detective Superintendent Mike West, who is the Mets lead officer for corrosive based crime, said: We are liaising closely with the London fire brigade, the ambulance service, the Home Office and hospitals as to how to deal with this issue. We are all tuned in to this and determined to tackle it. I am confident that we are stepping up our response to this crime and we are looking for a safer way to identify some of the substances on the streets. So you might be walking down the street with what appears to be a bottle of Lucozade but officers will now be testing you to establish what is in that bottle. He added: The trend is deeply worrying, if you look at the extent of the injuries, it is a life changing event and the people seeking to do that will feel the full force of the police and the courts. We want to make it difficult to walk out the door with these substances or go and buy these substances. R esidents evacuated from London tower blocks after the Grenfell fire today claimed their homes were still unsafe due to shoddy work. Complaints include fire doors that will not close and even electrical cables boxed in with cardboard. Camden council gave 3,000 people on its Chalcots estate at Swiss Cottage hours to quit their homes for urgent internal safety work in the wake of the blaze at Grenfell Tower on June 14. Council leader Georgia Gould today said the fire brigade had approved residents return and only non-urgent work was left to be carried out. Residents evacuated from Chalcots Estate tower blocks arrive at Swiss Cottage Leisure Centre and Library in Camden in June. / EPA But independent safety expert Matthew Needham-Laing told the BBCs Today programme that photographs of the faults suggested the building was not safe enough for people to live in. Those fire doors are not adequate, he said. They would not, from the photos I have seen, achieve 30-minute fire protection as they are required to do. If the stairwell becomes compromised, it will be full of toxic smoke ... then the means of escape is effectively cut off for people on the upper floors. Ella May, a single mother of three who lives in Taplow tower, received a council letter cancelling her hotel room and telling her to move back home. She said she was petrified after finding electrical cables running from her flats fuse box to a hole in the ceiling. I dont want to come home, she told the programme. I dont want to bring my children into an environment where potentially we could die. Ms Gould said she would meet residents and added: Im clear that Grenfell changes everything. Y ou don't have to think too hard about preserving your smartphone's battery especially overnight. For years, the myth has persisted that plugging your smartphone in to charge while you sleep will harm the phone's battery. Though many people do it anyway, others warn that charging a phone that is already fully charged will waste its battery's capacity. But while those fears may have made sense with the batteries of years ago, they're overblown today. "Having your phone plugged in at night doesn't diminish the battery," says Kyle Wiens, the head of iFixit, a California company known for its repair guides and "teardowns" of consumer gadgets. "It's all about cycle count it's all about how you actually use the battery, how much work you're making the battery do." You don't have to think too hard about preserving your smartphone's battery especially overnight. For years, the myth has persisted that plugging your smartphone in to charge while you sleep will harm the phone's battery. Though many people do it anyway, others warn that charging a phone that is already fully charged will waste its battery's capacity. But while those fears may have made sense with the batteries of years ago, they're overblown today. "Having your phone plugged in at night doesn't diminish the battery," says Kyle Wiens, the head of iFixit, a California company known for its repair guides and "teardowns" of consumer gadgets. "It's all about cycle count it's alThe cycle count is the number of full charges a smartphone can deal with before its battery is significantly degraded. For instance, if you drain a phone's battery halfway then recharge that half-empty capacity, that takes up half a cycle. Wiens says the typical smartphone battery will get about 400 charge cycles, which should help the device last at least a year and a half. It's not uncommon for some to last beyond that. That's about as long as many people keep their devices anyway. But leaving your phone in the charger overnight, even when it's fully charged, won't do much to change how frequently its battery runs through cycles, which are drained by simply using the phone. "In terms of the gradual erosion of battery life, what must be understood is that phone batteries are constantly in a state of decay," a representative for the battery and charger accessories maker Anker says. "Sleeping with a phone charging overnight will make no noticeable difference in the process."l about how you actually use the battery, how much work you're making the battery do." Shutterstock That's because modern smartphones are designed to avoid taking in more current than is necessary to fully charge them. In other words, they know when to take it easy. "Smartphones, as the name would suggest, are smart," the Anker representative said. "Every unit has a built-in chip that will prevent charging once 100% capacity has been reached. Therefore, provided that the phone in question is purchased from a verified and legitimate retailer, there should be no danger in leaving the phone charging overnight." The idea that charging overnight may be harmful or cause a series of "mini-charges" that continuously drain the battery typically comes from people's experiences with older tech, Wiens says. "I think what gives people this feeling is that back in the day some phones or some laptops would go back and forth between 99% and 100%" on their battery indicators, he says. "That had more to do with measuring errors of what the software was showing you more than anything else." But one danger that may exist with leaving your smartphone plugged in overnight is temperature. As Apple warns on its website, the lithium-based batteries used in modern smartphones can be degraded by extreme heat though that's something to watch out for regardless of when you recharge your device. Wiens says the most common complaints he sees with regard to smartphone battery life are people saying their device won't charge above a certain point or will die out at a percentage above zero. Those suffering from this may just need to get a replacement battery, Wiens says, but they could also try discharging their device all the way down to 0% then filling it back up again. This will effectively "recalibrate" the battery's internal counter; Nintendo recently suggested a similar method to fix a battery issue on its Switch console. Either way, problems like that go beyond charging your phone overnight. If your battery is running low just before bedtime, know that you can rest easy until the morning. A n Indonesian teen has told how at age 17 she persuaded her parents, sisters, aunts, uncles and cousins that they should all move to Syria to join the Islamic State. She convinced two dozen relatives to leave their home in Jakarta by picking out parts of the ISIS life that would appeal, such as free education and healthcare for the girls and good jobs for the men. None of the promised benefits materialised, however, as the family faced forced marriages and frontline battle duties, as well as a general atmosphere of death and destruction. Nurshardrina Khairadhania, now 19, recalled her family's fateful decision to move to Raqqa two years ago - and how, within months, they planned to escape. "ISIS shared only the good things on the internet," said the young woman, who now lives in a Kurdish refugee camp and goes by her nickname, Nur. Nur promised her family life would be better in Raqqa / AFP She recalled how she sold the benefits she had read about online: her 21-year-old sister could study computer science for free, her cousin could get free healthcare for her autistic child, and her uncle could find work in Raqqa since mechanics are in demand for building car bombs. Nur meanwhile wanted to study Islam and medicine. "It is a good place to live in peace and justice and, God willing, after hijrah, we will go to paradise," she recalled thinking, using the Islamic term for migration from the land of persecution to the land of Islam. "I wanted to invite all my family. ... We went to be together forever, in life and afterlife." The family sold their house, cars and gold jewellery to travel to Turkey and then on to Syria - where the reality dawned. The family's young men were jailed for refusing military service and the women were forced to live in an all-female dormitory. Glory days: fighters in Raqqa celebrating establishing a caliphate in 2014 / Reuters Nur was shocked by how women bickered, gossiped, stole from each other and sometimes even fought with knives, she said. Meanwhile her name and those of her 21-year-sister and divorced cousin were put on a list of potential brides for ISIS fighters. "ISIS wants only three things: women, power and money," she said. "They act like God. They make their own laws. ... They are very far from Islam." The family searched for months for a way to escape. When the Kurdish-led campaign to retake Raqqa from ISIS intensified in June, Nur used a computer in an internet cafe to contact activists and link up with smugglers, who, for about 3,000, got the family across the frontline into Kurdish-controlled territory. An Indonesian Foreign Ministry official said authorities have known for several months about the presence of Indonesian nationals, including Nur's family, in Kurdish camps. Faithful fanatics: Islamic State fighters are being recruited from many secular Western nations / AP "However, they have been two years living in the ISIS area, so the risk assessment of them is required and we have been facing obstacles to reach them as they are in an area not controlled by any official government, either Iraq or Syria," said Lalu Muhammad Iqbal, the ministry's director of Indonesian citizen protection. "I am very regretful. I was very stupid and very naive. I blame myself," Nur said of her family's ordeal. "May God accept my repentance because you know ... it is not like a holiday to go to Turkey. It is a dangerous, dangerous trip." Reporting by Associated Press RACINE Family, friends and community members gathered in Lincoln Park Wednesday to light candles and remember the life of 16-year-old Amari Griffin-Brewer, who drowned while swimming with friends Sunday in Lake Michigan near Zoo Beach. As many of his classmates at Park High School surrounded a tree decorated with candles and decorative crepe paper, Amaris mother had a cautionary message for the young people in the crowd. You all need to be careful out here, Erica Griffin said. Amari, he was six feet, 200 pounds in the water playing, thinking he was indestructible, and look where hes at. You all need to really be careful. Mind your parents and what they tell you to do. Theyre telling you for a reason. Nobody wants to do this. When a woman in the crowd thanked her for raising such a good person, Griffin wept. The somber mood quickly turned to smiles and laughter as they recalled the boy who touched many lives with his friendly, easy going attitude. Amear Campbell, 16, Amaris girlfriend at the time of his death and who was with him on the fateful day, joked about lighter moments when Amari made her brownies and then ate all of them. He was just a wonderful boy. He was just so sweet, Campbell said. He kept asking me out. The first time was in seventh grade when he broke up with my friend. In another light moment, Amaris mother asked the girls in the crowd for a show of hands to find out who hadnt dated him. Amari was remembered for a school dance in eighth grade which made many classmates laugh in remembrance. Amari had some moves, rat moves, Amaris aunt, Shaquita Griffin, said in jest. A former Park High School student, Amari moved to Ohio with his father after his freshman year. In May, he moved back to Racine to finish at Park. Amari worked at McDonalds on State Street, where his friend Destiny Smith said he taught her how to have a great attitude about learning something new. He taught me not to take life so seriously, Smith said. Were all here to show him that we love him. He was my best friend. Family reflection Shaquita Griffin, who traveled from New Orleans, remembered the little baby she helped watch when she didnt have any kids of her own at the time. He was the first person who made me love babies. He was the first baby. He taught me so much patience and how to go with the flow, Shaquita Griffin said. I just thought I would have more time. With a big smile on his face, Amaris father, London Brewer, told the crowd that Amari was full of life on the last video he put together. The last thing he said on video, We lived! He was so happy, he said. His family led the crowd of nearly 150 people out to a ball field to release red balloons, Amaris favorite color, and to say goodbye. As some of the balloons lingered in the trees on the way to the sky, his mother laughed. Thats Amari! Hes taking his time, Erica Griffin said. She added she was not expecting such a big crowd. I was not expecting this many people. I am happy, Griffin said. She invited the community to his memorial service Aug. 9 at Reids New Golden Gate Funeral Home, 1910 Taylor Ave. Visitation is at 11 a.m. with the service immediately following at noon. T he man who built the New Palmyra project - a 3D version of the ancient city before it was razed by Islamic State forces - was executed by forces loyal to Bashar al-Assad, it was confirmed this week. Bassel Khartabil Safadi, a Palestinian-Syrian software developer and activist, was said by human rights groups to have been killed by members of Assad's regime. Mr Khartabil's wife, human rights lawyer Noura Ghazi Safadi, posted a tribute to her "hero" husband on Facebook, writing: "This is a loss for Syria. This is loss for Palestine. This is my loss." She said the free speech activist was killed a few days after disappearing from the infamous Adra prison in Damascus back in October 2015. Mr Khartabil was listed in Foreign Policy magazines Top 100 Global Thinkers in 2012, and won the Index on Censorship Digital Freedom Award in 2013. Tribute: Mr Khartabil's wife wrote on Facebook after his death was confirmed / Christopher Adams/Creative Commons He founded the Aiki Lab hackerspace in Damascus in 2010 and took part in international projects such as the Arabic-language Wikipedia site and the Syrian version of Creative Commons. His cultural heritage mission to create a virtual version of Palmyra found worldwide acclaim. While his whereabouts were still unknown, groups from Amnesty International to Jimmy Wales Foundation issued pleas for his release. Barry Threw, director of New Palmyra, wrote: "Needless to say, along with all of the international community whose lives he touched, we were shocked and saddened to learn of the outrageous, unwarranted, extrajudicial killing of our dear friend and collaborator." A spokeswoman for Reporters Without Borders said: "After this news of yet another shocking crime, we reiterate our call to the UN Security council to refer crimes against journalists in Syria to the International Criminal Court." W itnesses have told how a teen jumped out of a plane's emergency exit and slid down its wing just moments after it touched down, scaring other passengers. Customers on Tuesday's Copa Airlines flight from Panama City to San Francisco were stunned to see the 17-year-old fling open the door open and simply hop out. Construction workers stopped the boy on the tarmac and police arrived to detain him. Perturbed eyewitness Sophia Gibson told San Jose's KNTV: "It was as if he was like flying out, like it was really fast." Another witness, Andrea Sepulveda Guzman, 11, told CBS San Francisco that "everyone was screaming" as the unexplained drama unfolded. "This guy, I see him jump on the wing and then he starts climbing down the wing and then he just runs. And then he just starts running the other way. And everyone was just screaming," she said. Other passengers told news agency the Associated Press that the boy had seemed fidgety and anxious immediately prior to his speedy exit. Officials have not yet said why the teen is thought to have done it, but San Francisco Airport spokesman Doug Yakel said he was travelling alone and that no runways or flights had been affected. A crew member resealed the emergency door and the plane then disembarked normally, the airline said in a statement. It added that an investigation was now underway. A man has given birth to a healthy baby boy. Trystan Reese, a transgender man living in Portland, Oregon, gave birth to son Leo Murray Chaplow on July 14 after chronicling his experiences of pregnancy online. Mr Reese tweeted in celebration: "Attention, If You Have Ever Said 'A Man Would Never Have A Baby,' A Transgender Man Just HAD ONE," linking to an article about the birth. He also posted a picture of himself with the open-mouthed baby to his Facebook. As with any other birth, congratulations poured in. Mr Reese and his partner Biff Chaplow already have two adopted children, having taken on Mr Chaplow's toddler niece and nephew when his sister became suddenly unable to care for them. While their story of being "accidental gay parents" drew the attention of international media, they decided to expand their family by having their first biological child together. Mr Reese has sought to demystify transgender pregnancy through blog posts in which he explained how he reconciles being a man with being pregnant. People get the idea that this was some experiment that we embarked on, Mr Reese told the Washington Post, pointing out that there have already been successful transgender pregnancies. This is tested ground. This is something that has been done in a very safe and healthy way, said the 34-year-old. Mr Reese was born female but began taking hormone therapy and identifying as a man age 20. Doctors told him that although taking testosterone has given him facial hair, his ovaries and womb were still healthy and he could have a normal pregnancy. He stopped taking hormones and conceived about five months later. Six months in, Mr Reese shared a video online in which he described the "canteloupe"-sized bump he was carrying and said: "I'm OK being trans. It's awesome, actually. And I've never wanted my body to be different." A major blaze has broken out at Japans world-famous Tsukiji fish market in Tokyo. Dozens of firefighters and 30 fire trucks are at the scene of the fire, which broke out at around 5pm on Thursday, or 8am GMT. Tsukiji is the largest wholesale fish and seafood market in the world and one of the Japanese capitals most popular tourist spots, drawing tens of thousands of visitors each year. Clouds of smoke were seen billowing into the air and flames leapt from the sides of the market. According to local reports, no one is thought to be trapped or seriously injured. The fish market is the world's biggest. (REUTERS) / Reuters The blaze broke out in the outer area of the Tsukiji market, where visitors are welcomed to browse, buy and eat freshly-caught seafood and sushi. It ripped through four buildings but fortunately did not reach the inner part of the fish market, where wholesalers and morning tuna auctions are based. Witnesses at the scene described the seriousness of the fire, as pictures showed firefighters using cranes to target the fire from above. In June, it was announced the 80-year-old market is set to move from its current site to a man-made island. Tokyo's world-famous fish market has gone up in flames. / Reuters According to the governor of the city, the market is so old and vulnerable to earthquakes that it needs to be rebuilt. C hris Evans Radio 2 breakfast show has lost almost half a million listeners in the last year according to new figures. Audience research body Rajar found the DJ drew 9.01 million listeners a week between April and June 2017, down from the 9.47 million he attracted over the same period in 2016. The news comes just weeks after it was revealed Evans was the BBCs highest-earning star, receiving a salary of around 2.2 million, more than four times the amount of the highest-paid woman, Claudia Winkelman. Evans has top billing on the station, presenting the Breakfast show the most prestigious scheduling slot. BBC Pay roll - in pictures 1 /9 BBC Pay roll - in pictures Mishal Husain Olga Bermejo/Getty Images Gary Lineker Dave Benett Jenni Murray BBC Jeremy Vine BBC Claudia WInkleman Dave Benett Louise Minchin BBC John Humphrys BBC And despite the drop in listeners Evans breakfast show still remains the most popular radio programme in the country. Its been a difficult month for the BBC, earlier this week an email criticising radio presenter Vanessa Feltz, who was one of few women to make the top-earners list, was leaked to the press. Chris Evans revealed as BBC's highest earner BBC boss David Robey mistakenly sent the email in which he described working with Feltz as a constant battle to get her to suit the pace of breakfast" to colleagues. Feltz was also caught up in an anti-semitism row after Irish Times journalist Kevin Myers write an article suggesting she and her colleague Winkleman were paid more than other women at the BBC because they are Jewish. She explained she felt extremely upset over Myers comments and branded them obviously racist. RACINE The Great Lakes and St. Lawrence Cities Initiative, now led by former Racine Mayor John Dickert, will not sue over Waukeshas planned Great Lakes water diversion, the organization announced Wednesday. The Cities Initiative reached an agreement with the Great Lakes-St. Lawrence River Basin Water Resources Council (Compact Council), a group made up of representatives from all eight Great Lakes states. Under the agreement, the Cities Initiative will drop its challenge to Waukeshas diversion application in exchange for a rigorous review of the Compact Councils process for considering future diversions, the Cities Initiative said in a news release. We appreciate the tremendous consideration the Compact Council has given us, said Dickert, president and CEO of the Cites Initiative. This mutually beneficial settlement agreement has set the foundation for meaningful progress to safeguard our valuable water resources. The agreement avoids a legal challenge to Waukeshas plan to divert an average of 8.2 million gallons of Lake Michigan water per day and return treated wastewater to the lake via the Root River. Racine officials battled against the plan for some time amid concerns about the impact on the Root and the precedent it sets for other communities to get lake water. The Waukesha Water Utility argues the water discharged into the river will be clean and improve the rivers health. The Compact Council approved Waukeshas diversion last year. Dickert and Peter Johnson, the Compact Councils deputy director, agreed the settlement will lead to a more transparent review process. When youre negotiating a settlement like this, there are areas that you win and lose on, Dickert said. We felt that our best bet, rather than challenge in court, was to work on a better process. Added Johnson, The Compact Council and regional body will be launching a process that will look at the procedures used to review and update diversion proposals. The primary goals are to ensure any future diversion applications be reviewed in a transparent and effective manner. Thorough analysis According to a release from the Cities Initiative, the review will examine many aspects of the process, including public hearings and engagement. Our challenge has always been about improving the compact to ensure the protection of our water resources, said Paul Dyster, mayor of Niagara Falls, N.Y., and chairman of the Cities Initiative. We want to make sure future applications for diversion are subject to robust and detailed standards of evaluation and a thorough process allowing input from impacted stakeholders. Officials plan to review a first draft of proposed recommendations in June 2018, with adoption of changes possible in December 2018, according to the Cities Initiative release. Waukesha tentatively plans to begin construction of pipelines in 2019. Monitoring of the Root River began in February as officials gather baseline information before treated wastewater from Waukesha flows down the tributary. Broadcast Ministry Ambassador Shares 'Tune in Before Transmitting' Message in New Book Contact: Darin Campbell 512-785-8350COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo., Aug. 3, 2017 / Standard Newswire / -- As an ambassador for one of the world's leading Christian broadcasting ministries, Becky Harling believes in boldly proclaiming the good news of Jesusbut there is also a time for his followers to be quiet, she asserts.Photo: In her new book, released on Aug. 1 by Bethany House Publishers, Becky Harling looks at how becoming a better listener can improve relationships at home, at work, and in the community."There is so much division in our world today," says the wife of Reach Beyond President Steve Harling. "We'll only be able to bridge some of those divides as we begin to really understand each otherand that begins with using our ears better. We need to listen, not lecture. Then we earn the opportunity to speak."In her new book, How to Listen So People Will Talk: Build Stronger Communication and Deeper Connections, Becky looks at how becoming a better listener can improve relationships at home, at work, and in the community.Released on Aug. 1 by Bethany House Publishers, the book explains the importance of being fully present with someone else, offering understanding instead of advice, asking questions, and creating a sense of safety and trust.The author of four previous books, a speaker and certified individual and group mentor, Becky has brought her communications skills to support Reach Beyond's ministry since Steve became president in 2016.She co-hosted the live broadcast of the June 4 International Day for the Unreached, an event promoting world evangelism among those who have yet to hear the gospel that was organized by the Alliance for the Unreached, of which Reach Beyond is a founding member.The Harlings reside in Colorado Springs and have four children and nine grandchildren. They have served in both pastoral and international ministry. With Reach Beyond they have led spiritual life seminars for staff in different parts of the world.A survivor of childhood sexual abuse and breast cancer, Becky draws on personal experience and biblical wisdom in her writing, teaching and mentoring. "Listening is such a lost art," she says of her new book."As those who claim to love and follow Jesus, we're the ones who should be leading the way and listening to people," Becky says. "But we also need to be 'global' listeners to the needs of those who have never heard the name of Jesus.""Becky's book is so practical," said Jon Fugler, vice president of Advancement for Reach Beyond. "No theory here, but down-to-earth actions that will enhance a person's relationships on personal and professional levels. Listening is a lost art, and Becky helps us recapture it. It has certainly impacted us at Reach Beyond."Founded in 1931, Reach Beyond is a media- and medical-based ministry with more than 1,000 staff serving in 30 countries.Reach Beyond ( www.reachbeyond.org ) is a media- and medical-based evangelical ministry with operations on five continents. It spreads the message of Jesus in places that are primarily unreached or unengaged in the gospel. Reach Beyond uses media, including radio broadcasts, webcasts, social media and the distribution of solar-powered radios. It also reaches out to the needy throughout its growing network of healthcare services.To schedule an interview with a Reach Beyond representative, contact: Darin Campbell at (512) 785-8350 or dcampbell@inchristcommunications.com MOUNT PLEASANT Wisconsin Humane Society officials are asking area residents to have their dogs and puppies vaccinated against the deadly parvovirus as the number of parvo-positive dogs entering the WHS Racine Campus has spiked. According to a press release, the virus is not spreading at the shelter, nor is there an outbreak within the shelter, but the rise in parvo-positive dogs being brought to WHS has officials concerned. Parvo is a highly contagious and deadly virus, explained veterinarian Nadine Langston with the WHS Racine Campus, 2706 Chicory Road, Mount Pleasant. The virus is usually passed in stools and can last in the environment for years. Parvo affects both young dogs and unvaccinated adult dogs; for both, it is often fatal. Symptoms of the parvovirus include vomiting, diarrhea (which may be bloody), lethargy, pain, dehydration, sepsis, and death. Because parvo is a viral disease, there is no cure. Treatment is aimed at maintaining fluid and electrolyte balance, and preventing secondary bacterial infection. Officials advise that f you suspect your dog or puppy has parvovirus, see a veterinarian immediately. Dogs can be vaccinated at the Wisconsin Humane Society at low-cost vaccine clinics, which are open to the public and no appointments are necessary. Pricing for dogs and cats: DHPP (distemper, hepatitis, parainfluenza, parvo) $18; rabies only $18; both DHPP and rabies $30; bordetella $20; and microchip $25. Other services may be available. For more information about vaccine clinics and pricing, visit www.wihumane.org/veterinary/vaccine-clinics. SOMERS Flight for Life was called Thursday to a crash involving two semitrailers and two smaller vehicles near the intersection of highways 31 and KR. Authorities responded just after 11:30 a.m. to the crash, which occurred at the railroad tracks west of the intersection of highways 31 and KR, in the 6500 block of Highway KR (also known as County Line Road and 1st Street). Several roads near the intersection were shut down as a result of the crash. The Kenosha County Sheriffs Office, the South Shore Fire Department, Somers Fire and Rescue and the Wisconsin State Patrol were among the agencies that responded. The Mount Pleasant Police Department also responded to the scene with five squads assisting with traffic control, Mount Pleasant Police Capt. Brian Smith said. Highway KR is the Somers/Mount Pleasant border and officials later determined the crash was in Kenosha Countys jurisdiction. Investigators on scene about two hours after the incident said the initial investigation showed that a semi and two vehicles traveling east were stopped at a railroad crossing waiting for a train to pass, according to a release issued by Sgt. Mark Malecki of the Kenosha County Sheriffs Department. Another semi traveling east came upon the location and its operator failed to realize the vehicles were stopped in traffic, Malecki said. The second semi struck the first and second vehicle in tfrom behind. One of the operators of the struck vehicles was transported via Flight for Life helicopter to Froedtert Hospital in Wauwatosa as a precaution due to the severe damage resulting from the crash. View the most recent version. Information identified as archived is provided for reference, research or recordkeeping purposes. It is not subject to the Government of Canada Web Standards and has not been altered or updated since it was archived. Please " contact us " to request a format other than those available. The 2016 Census data show that, today, proportionally fewer households are composed of a 'mom, dad and kids' family and more people are living alone, as part of a couple without children, or as part of a multigenerational family. Canadians' lives at home have evolved since Confederation, when large rural families consisting of a married couple and several children were common. In 1871, there were on average 5.6 people per household, a ratio that dropped to 2.4 by 2016. These changes are the results of demographic shifts, such as population aging and increasing ethnocultural diversity, as well as social, economic and legislative changes. The evolving living arrangements and families of Canadians can also have consequences, for example on the housing market, on caregiving and care receiving and on intergenerational relationships. Today, Statistics Canada is releasing the third series of data from the 2016 Census. This release focuses on families, households, marital status, and language. The data provide a portrait of a country where diverse living arrangements have replaced the family models of the past. Through the years, the census has been used as a barometer to accurately capture changes in Canadian households and families. It measured common-law unions for the first time in 1981, same-sex couples in 2001, and foster children and stepfamilies in 2011. Census data help governments respond to changes in the lives of Canadians, by putting in place policies such as the Universal Child Care Benefit and Old Age Security. Statistics Canada will publish all of the 2016 Census data in 2017 according to the 2016 Census Program release schedule. The percentage of one-person households now at a high in Canada's 150-year history There were 14.1 million private households in Canada in 2016, 9.5 million (67.7%) of which were composed of at least one census family. Census families are defined as married or common-law couples, with or without children, and lone-parent families. Infographic 1 Overview of household types, Canada, 2016 One-person households accounted for 28.2% of all households in 2016the highest share since Confederation in 1867. One-person households became the most common type of household for the first time in 2016, surpassing couples with children, which were down from 31.5% of all households in 2001 to 26.5% in 2016. In comparison, the percentage of one-person households was 25.7% in 2001. At the time of Confederation few people lived alone, and the vast majority of households were family households. Since 1951, the percentage of households comprised of just one person increased steadily, from 7.4% to 28.2% in 2016. Looking at it another way, in 2016, 13.9% of the Canadian population aged 15 and over lived alone, compared with 1.8% in 1951. Chart 1 Percentage of one-person households, Canada, 1951 to 2016 Besides one-person households and households comprised of at least one census family, a small share (4.1%) of households were comprised of two or more persons who were not members of a census family, such as roommates or siblings living together. A number of social, economic and demographic factors have contributed to the rise in the number of people living alone. For example, income redistribution, pensions and the increased presence of women in the workforce have led to more people being economically independent today than in the past, especially in older age groups. In addition, higher separation and divorce rates have led to more people living alone instead of in couples. Finally, population aging and higher life expectancy have also contributed to the increase in one-person households, given that a larger share of seniors live alone as compared to other age groups. Living alone also on the rise in other countries Canada's percentage of one-person households (28.2%) was similar to that of the United States (27.5% in 2012) and the United Kingdom (28.5% in 2014) but lower than that of many other industrialized countries. Over one-third of households in France (33.8% in 2011) and Japan (34.5% in 2015) had one resident. The percentages were still higher in Sweden (36.2% in 2011), Norway (40.0% in 2012) and Germany (41.4% in 2015). Living alone has decreased among senior women in recent years More women than men are living alone, with women accounting for 53.7% of one-person households in 2016. Among seniors (people aged 65 and older), about one-third (33.0%) of women were living alone in 2016, compared with 17.5% of men. However, the proportion of senior women living alone was down compared with 2001 (38.3%), while that of senior women living in a couple (married or common-law) rose, from 44.4% in 2001 to 51.4% in 2016. This trend was even more striking among women aged 80 and older: the share of those living as part of a couple increased from 19.9% in 2001 to 27.6% in 2016, while the share of those living alone decreased from 56.1% to 48.6%. Senior women are more likely to live alone than senior men. They have a higher life expectancy and they also tend to marry men older than themselves. As a result, they are more often widowed than senior men. However, since the 1970s, men have seen larger gains in their life expectancy and this has led to couples living together longer. One-person households most common in Quebec and Yukon In Quebec in 2016, one-third (33.3%) of households were comprised of one person, the highest level of all the provinces and territories. Yukon followed closely at 32.2%. Since 2001, Quebec and Yukon have consistently recorded the highest shares of one-person households. The proportions of one-person households in Nova Scotia (29.5%) and British Columbia (28.8%) were also higher than the national average (28.2%). In contrast, Nunavut had the lowest share of one-person households (18.9%). Among the provinces, Alberta (24.0%) had the lowest proportion, followed closely by Newfoundland and Labrador (24.6%). Chart 2 Percentage of one-person households, Canada, provinces and territories, 2016 From 2001 to 2016, the share of one-person households increased the most in the Atlantic provinces: Newfoundland and Labrador (+36.4%), New Brunswick (+24.9%), Prince Edward Island (+20.2%) and Nova Scotia (+19.4%). By comparison, the proportion of one-person households rose 9.6% nationally over the same period. The stronger increase in the Atlantic provinces is likely related to the faster aging of the population in this region. Nearly one-fifth (19.8%) of all people in the Atlantic provinces were aged 65 and older in 2016, compared with 16.9% for Canada as a whole. A map showing the proportions of one-person households by census division also provides a picture of the differences within and among the provinces and territories. Number of couples without children growing faster than those with children Trends in the share of couples living with or without children also reflect the growing diversity of households and families in Canada. From 2011 to 2016, the number of couples living without children rose faster (+7.2%) than the number of couples with children (+2.3%). As a result, the share of couples living with at least one child fell from 56.7% in 2001 to 51.1% in 2016the lowest level on record. The proportion of couples living with children has been decreasing for some time. This is mostly due to population aging. As the large baby-boom generationpeople born from 1946 to 1965grows older, more and more couples are becoming empty nesters due to their children leaving home. However, this trend has been partly offset by an increasing share of young adults living with their parents over the last four decades. The article, "Young adults living with their parents in Canada in 2016," part of the Census in Brief series, provides more information on recent trends and regional differences among young adults living with their parents. More information on families with children in Canada is available in the article, "Portrait of children's family life in Canada in 2016," part of the Census in Brief series. This article provides an overview of the diverse family situations of children aged 0 to 14 in Canada. There are more couples living with children than without in some regions of the country The proportions of couples with or without children were noticeably different between Eastern and Western Canada, reflecting differences in population growth and population aging. (For more information on population growth and aging, see The Daily for February 8 and May 3, 2017.) In 2016, the proportion of couples with children was the highest in Nunavut (76.5%) and the Northwest Territories (61.0%), followed by Ontario (54.5%), Alberta (53.5%) and Manitoba (52.3%). These proportions were all above the national average of 51.1%. Chart 3 Percentage of couples with or without children, Canada, provinces and territories, 2016 From 2011 to 2016, the number of couples with children grew the most in the Prairie provinces, and in Nunavut and Yukon, partly as a result of higher fertility. The increase in Alberta was also attributable to young adults migrating from other parts of the country. In contrast, the number of couples with children declined in the Atlantic provinces during the same five-year period, while it was unchanged in Quebec. The Atlantic provinces also recorded the lowest shares of couples with children in 2016, ranging from 42.8% in Nova Scotia to 46.0% in Prince Edward Island. Common-law unions still increasing Married couples represented the majority of couples in 2016, although common-law unions are becoming more frequent in every province and territory. In 2016, over one-fifth of all couples (21.3%) were living common law, more than three times the share in 1981 (6.3%). The proportion of couples living common law was higher in Canada than in the United States, where 5.9% of couples were in non-marital cohabiting unions (in 2010). The proportion in Canada was also slightly higher than in the United Kingdom (20.0% in 2015), but lower than in France (22.6% in 2011), Norway (23.9% in 2011) and Sweden (29.0% in 2010). Highest proportions of common-law unions in Nunavut and Quebec The proportion of couples living common law has increased everywhere in Canada since 1981, the first year for which census data on common-law unions were collected. In 2016, Quebec (39.9%) and the three territoriesNunavut (50.3%), Northwest Territories (36.6%) and Yukon (31.9%)had the highest proportions of common-law unions, considerably above the average for the rest of Canada (15.7%, excluding Quebec and the three territories). The proportions in Quebec and the territories were also higher than those in countries with high shares of common-law couples, such as Sweden. Chart 4 Percentage of common-law unions, Canada, provinces and territories, 1981 and 2016 Not only is the share of common-law unions high in Quebec, but it has also risen faster in Quebec in the last few decades. The share of common-law unions in Quebec was only slightly higher than the national average in 1981 (8.2% versus 6.3%), but was nearly twice as high in 2016 (39.9% versus 21.3%). From 2011 to 2016, the percentage of couples living common law increased faster in Nunavut (+4.7 percentage points) and Quebec (+2.1) as compared with Canada as a whole (+1.4). In 2016, there were also proportionally more couples with children in Nunavut (49.5%), Quebec (42.7%), the Northwest Territories (33.4%) and Yukon (27.1%) living common law than in the rest of Canada (11.7%, excluding Quebec and the three territories). The article, "Same-sex Couples in 2016 in Canada," part of the Census in Brief series, provides additional information on same-sex couples in Canada, including those living common law and those who are married. Multigenerational households are the fastest growing type of household In 2016, the proportion of multigenerational householdshouseholds that include at least three generations of the same familywas only 2.9% (403,810 households). However, from 2001 to 2016, multigenerational households rose the fastest (+37.5%) of all household types, well above the increase of 21.7% for all households. In 2016, 6.3% of Canada's population living in private households, or 2.2 million people, lived in a multigenerational household. The increase in multigenerational households may be partly attributed to Canada's changing ethnocultural composition. This type of living arrangement is more common among Aboriginal and immigrant populations, which account for a growing share of Canada's population. The higher number of multigenerational households may also be related to housing needs and the high cost of living in some regions of the country. Non-census-family households of two or more persons, such as roommates or siblings living together, and other family households (two or more census families living together or one census family living with other people, after excluding multigenerational households) also rose sharply. Together, these two household types accounted for 7.8% of all private households in 2016, and 10.1% of Canada's population in private households. One in eight households in Nunavut is multigenerational In 2016, multigenerational households were most common in Nunavut (12.2%) and the Northwest Territories (4.3%), where there are large Aboriginal communities, as well as in Ontario (3.9%) and British Columbia (3.6%), the two provinces with the highest proportions of immigrants. Multigenerational households were least common in Quebec, accounting for less than 2% of private households in the province. In contrast, as shown earlier, Quebec had the highest percentage of one-person households among the provinces and territories. Chart 5 Percentage of multigenerational households, Canada, provinces and territories, 2016 The share of multigenerational households was also relatively high in some large urban centres (census metropolitan areas [CMAs]) of the country such as AbbotsfordMission (7.6%), Toronto (5.8%), Vancouver (4.8%), Oshawa (4.3%) and Barrie (3.9%). The ethnocultural diversity in these urban centres is higher than in the rest of the country. Contact information For more information, or to enquire about the concepts, methods or data quality of this release, contact us (toll-free 1-800-263-1136; 514-283-8300; STATCAN.infostats-infostats.STATCAN@canada.ca) or Media Relations (613-951-4636; STATCAN.mediahotline-ligneinfomedias.STATCAN@canada.ca). A white University of Kentucky student accused of physically assaulting a Black student worker while repeatedly using racial slurs says she will withdraw from the school. The decision announced Tuesday by a lawyer for 22-year-old Sophia Rosing came after hundreds of students rallied on campus the night before. News outlets report the students called for unity and for the university to quickly address the situation. Officials say Rosing has been charged with assault, public intoxication and disorderly conduct. She pleaded not guilty during an arraignment Monday afternoon. The altercation at Boyd Hall was captured on video and posted to multiple social media platforms. The pavilion of Romania at EXPO 2017 Astana, with the laser from Magurele, is among the top five pavilions in terms of the most interesting showcased at this international exhibition, Romania's Foreign Affairs Minister Teodor Melescanu told Agerpres on Thursday. Visiting Kazakhstan on July 27-28, Melescanu said the event had a double purpose: on the one hand, the 25th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic ties between Romania and Kazakhstan, as Romania was one of the first countries to recognise Kazakhstan's independence and, on the other hand, to attend the official ceremony on Romania's Day at the international exhibition EXPO 2017 Astana. Future Energy. "The visit to Kazakhstan had a double purpose: on the one hand, the 25th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic ties between Romania and Kazakhstan - and I would like to point out that Romania was one of the first countries to recognise Kazakhstan's independence - and the second priority was to participate in Romania's Day at the country's EXPO Astana Pavilion, where we are showcasing several exhibits, but the pavilion was built specifically to bring to the fore the laser at Magurele and the idea of an energy for the future," said Melescanu. The head of the Romanian diplomacy said that the central element of the Romanian Pavilion - the ELI-NP (Energy Light Infrastructure - Nuclear Physics) project, implemented by the Horia Hulubei National Institute of Nuclear Physics, has generated public interest. In addition, the Magurele laser is among the top five most interesting exhibits selected by the exhibitors. "Romania's Day has enjoyed great and good presence, including from local officials - Kazakh Minister of Information and Communication [Dauren Abayev], the deputy energy minister, members of the diplomatic corps, members of the Romanian community of Karaganda, as well as a public interested in seeing novelties. I would like to say that from the discussions I had with the organisers, I understand that they wanted to select the most interesting exhibits that were displayed at this exhibition and among the top five is the Magurele laser. Moreover, on the occasion of the opening of the pavilion to celebrate Romania's Day in Astana, we had the great pleasure and honour to be represent here by an artist who no longer needs any recommendation: maestro Gheorghe Zamfir, who gave a concert ahead of the official celebration ceremony of Romania's Day at its pavilion is Astana," Melescanu said. He stressed that his visit to Kazakhstan was the first bilateral visit of a Romanian foreign minister after a period of about 9 years. "Obviously, the visit also had a bilateral context. It was an occasion I wanted to use: for over nine years, no representative of the Romanian Foreign Affairs Ministry had visited Kazakhstan. Now, I've had consultations with Kairat Abdrakhmanov - Kazakhstan's foreign minister to review the bilateral relations between Romania and Kazakhstan, and also to exchange of opinions on more serious international issues like Syria - where Kazakhstan plays an important role in the Astana process; problems in the Black Sea region, in general, as well as everything that affects international security, including the conflicts in Iraq, Afghanistan, etc.," said Melescanu. Melescanu said that from his conversations with his with Kazakh counterpart, Romania and Kazakhstan should diversify and expand economic relations so that they include cultural, educational and technical-scientific fields as well. "In all my conversations here, we have basically reached two important conclusions with the Kazakh side: the first is that energy is the only economic cooperation area for now where there is very close cooperation, which is natural, giving that Kazakhstan is a country with high energy resources. So the first conclusion was to diversify economic relations to include other areas of interest for Kazakhstan and Romania and we have identified some of them: information technology, agriculture, tourism, research and innovation, and cultural cooperation, which could lead to a widening of our relationship not only in the economic sector but also in other areas," he explained. It was established that, on October 4-5, the Joint Romanian-Kazakh Committee on Economic and Technical Cooperation will meet in Bucharest, to discuss concrete projects presented by both sides. "In order to address as closely as possible some areas - or some better projects - in the field of energy, as well as in the other mentioned areas, we agreed that the Joint Romanian-Kazakh Committee on Economic and Technical Cooperation will meet in Bucharest on October 4-5 that will be tasked with addressing concrete projects that will be presented both by the Romanian side and the Kazakh side. So, from this point of view, we have found great availability from Kazakhstan and an interest in developing relations with Romania. From our point of view, I want to say very openly: Kazakhstan is Romania's most important economic partner in Central Asia, and there is obviously an interest on our side. There is also Kazakhstan's interest in the support that Romania can offer in relations with the European Union. Romania's presidency of the Council of the European Union [in H1 2019] is, from our point of view, a very important theme and a very important opportunity to develop relations with other non-EU countries, including Kazakhstan," said Melescanu. In addition, Melescanu mentioned his visit to Karaganda, where he met leaders of the local Romanian community and the Governor of the Karaganda Region, Yerlan Koshanov. He laid a wreath at the Monument of Romanians victims of Stalinist labour camps (the Spassk Monument), and visited the Karaganda State Technical University. "Moreover, I would like to tell you that I have also paid a visit to the Karaganda region, which is about 200 kilometres from Astana, a region which, in terms of size, is twice as much as Romania, and, in terms of natural resources, it is one of the world's ore richest areas, from coal to iron ore and all sorts of raw materials that are being exploited here in the area. I personally wanted this visit to happen because there is a Romanian community in Karaganda and, besides, it is an organised community, it has a cultural society - Dacia, it has a folklore ensemble Dorule. So there is a community and I wanted to give them a very important signal that we do not forget them, no matter what happens in history, and that our relationship with these communities will continue to be very important," the foreign minister assured. He added that thanks to diplomatic efforts, the first and only on Romanian Language, Culture and Civilisation lecturer's office opened at the State University of Karaganda, unique in Central Asia. "We wanted to signal the importance we attach to interpersonal relations between Romania and Kazakhstan. So, in all respects, I think this was a very good visit: I signed on this occasion a declaration on 25 years of diplomatic ties; an agreement was signed between the Romanian Chamber of Commerce and Industry and Kazakhstan's International Chamber of Commerce, which paves the way for a future collaboration framework, including between privately-owned companies, from businessman to businessman, in addition to what we do at the level of the governmental committee and the Joint Committee on Economic and Technical Cooperation. From our point of view, there are many themes that we share with the Kazakh side, and one of the most important of them is Kazakhs and Romania insisting on the need for strict observance internationally of the principles and rules of international law and renouncing the use of force at the international level and the interference with the domestic affairs of other countries. That is a concern Kazakhstan and Romania are sharing," said Melescanu. As for the Romanian community in Karaganda, Melescanu said there were three wishes that were expressed to him at the meeting. "There are basically three wishes that we have recorded. The first one is about the very long deadlines for obtaining the Romanian citizenship - and I made a promise that, when we return to Bucharest, we will take a look at the existing applications to see whether they are all right and we will approach them according to the legal provisions in force. Secondly, they would very much like to have a minibus in which to be able travel less expensively to Romania, because they want to maintain their relations with their motherland; I will talk to the Romanian Government to see what we can do. Thirdly, there is a great interest in obtaining scholarships in Romania on the art of children of the Romanian families and even mixed families. They want to make the most of the educational opportunities in Romania. These are the three subjects discussed at the meeting," said Melescanu. He also mentioned a collaboration agreement between the Bucharest Polytechnic University and the State University of Karaganda, which is to be focused on scientific research and innovation matters. "A collaboration agreement was signed between the Polytechnic University of Bucharest and the State University of Karaganda, which will be focused on scientific research and innovation matters. The agreement was signed on a visit here and I thought it would be a very good solution, a very useful one, we could organise a visit to Romania by Kazakhstan's education minister and possibly to sign other documents or even to set common themes of research for the two universities. There is a proposal for exchanges of teachers and students. Both at the level of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and at the level of the universities, we have mobility programmes that allow us to fund the presence of professors and students from one university to another. The extent to which the funding can be extended to include Kazakhstan is one of the themes we are considering when we return to Romania." The Astana 2017 EXPO International Exhibition runs until September 10, 2017. Organisers estimate that the event will attract more than five million visitors from all over the world. The event, similar to the one held in the Spanish city of Zaragoza in 2008, precedes a six-month universal exhibition to be hosted by Dubai in 2020 similarly to those organised in Seville in 1992 and Milan in 2015. The EXPO 2017 "Wind Energy" logo consists of three wind turbines in blue, orange and green. The logo was chosen by residents of Kazakhstan in July 2013. The mascots are three dolphins in the same colours as the logo: orange, green and blue, symbolising the sun, wind and water. The dolls, representing three children, will be the symbol of both the exhibition and the host country, Kazakhstan. Updated at 6:45 a.m. Aetna Inc.'s quarterly profit trumped analysts' estimates as it controlled costs and the No. 3 U.S. health insurer raised its full-year profit forecast. Aetna, which has said it would fully exit the 2018 Obamacare individual insurance market, said its medical loss ratio the percent of premiums spent on claims fell to 78.6 percent in its commercial business from 83.4 percent a year earlier. The company said performance across its core commercial business helped lower the ratio. Leerink analysts said the results showcase the strength of health insurance fundamentals as utilization remains particularly weak, while exits from the Obamacare marketplaces are driving a meaningful improvement in claims experience. Aetna shares were up 3.8 percent at $160.60 in premarket trading on Thursday. Republican lawmakers have vowed to repeal and replace former President Barack Obama's signature health care law, but have not agreed on the means of dismantling it, creating uncertainty about how the program would be run and whether it would be fully funded. Net profit rose to $1.20 billion, or $3.60 per share, in the second quarter ended June 30, from $791 million, or $2.23 per share, a year earlier. Excluding items, Aetna earned $3.42 per share, blowing past analysts' average estimate of $2.35, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S. Aetna said in May it would exit the 2018 Obamacare individual insurance market in Delaware and Nebraska the two remaining states where it offered the plans. "Our strong second-quarter results speak to our continued focus on disciplined pricing and execution of our targeted growth strategy," Aetna CEO Mark Bertolini said. Adjusted revenue came in at about $15.50 billion, ahead of the average analyst estimate of $15.39 billion. However, total revenue fell nearly 3 percent to $15.52 billion. The company raised its adjusted earnings forecast to $9.45 per share to $9.55 per share for the full year 2017, from $8.80 per share to $9.00 per share. Working in the $60 billion U.S. chicken industry is often tough and grueling, with much of the processing done by hand. One of the nation's largest suppliers wants to reduce labor intensity on the production line by introducing robots. Pilgrim's Pride Corp., the second-largest U.S. producer, is adding robotics and X-ray technology for processes such as deboning the front half of the birds, Chief Executive Officer Bill Lovette said Thursday on the company's second-quarter earnings conference call. Pilgrim's is working with Scott Technology Ltd., a New Zealand automation company controlled by Pilgrim's corporate parent, Brazilian meat giant JBS SA. The U.S. chicken industry has about 280,000 workers. Pilgrim's has more than 40,000 people across the U.S., Mexico and Puerto Rico. The sector has faced criticism for the working conditions at some plants. At the same time, it's dealing with tight labor markets in some regions and often struggles to hire and retain workers. Tyson Foods Inc., the country's biggest producer, said in April it will improve pay and safety for more than 95,000 employees, after criticism by regulators and activists over working conditions. Lovette said Pilgrim's is accelerating the rate of wage increases this year while trying to "mitigate" issues at four plants. The company declined to provide further details. Pilgrim's, which reported higher-than-expected earnings for the quarter, also said on the call that it's looking to acquire branded assets and reduce its reliance on its commodity-meat business. The International Air Transport said on Thursday it expects a record breaking summer travel season for the northern hemisphere after global carriers reported a 12-year high in traffic growth for the first half of 2017. Global demand for air travel rose 7.8 percent in June as all regions reported growth, thanks to brighter economies and lower air fares, IATA said. In the first six months, demand was up 7.9 percent, while load factors a measure of how full planes are reached a first-half record of 80.7 percent. Europe's airlines have been benefiting from the demand, with many increasing their profit targets for the year and reporting strong first-half figures over the last few weeks. "But as costs rise, this stimulus of lower fares is likely to fade. And uncertainties such as Brexit need to be watched carefully," IATA head Alexandre de Juniac said in a statement, referring to Britain's upcoming exit from the European Union. Overall, June capacity measured in available seat kilometers rose 6.5 percent, slower than demand, meaning load factors increased 1 percentage points to 81.9 percent, IATA said in its monthly traffic update. On June 14, Cole County Circuit Court Judge Patricia Joyce issued a routine order to pay some bills. The case involves Lumbermens Underwriting Alliance, a Missouri insurance company that became insolvent and is in receivership. The bills totaled $99,785 for one months worth of work. They went to global law firm Dentons, and attorney Bruce Baty, who had been appointed deputy receiver by the state of Missouri. One week later, Dentons had an announcement. The law firm was adding John Huff to its insurance regulatory practice. Until February, Huff had been Missouris director of the Department of Insurance, having been appointed in 2009 by former Gov. Jay Nixon, a Democrat. His reputation and strong professional and personal connections across the insurance industry both in the U.S. and globally will be a tremendous asset for our clients, wrote Dentons U.S. CEO Mike McNamara, in a news release announcing Huffs hire. Heres what McNamaras statement didnt mention: In May 2015, it was Huff who appointed Baty and Dentons to oversee the Lumbermens receivership. Since that time, the law firm that now employs Huff has received more than $3 million in fees, most of it paid out of the insurance companys assets. For years in Missouri, the insurance receivership business has been a hidden corner of political patronage, not seen by average citizens uninvolved in the complicated process of winding down business interests through court cases that can take years. As lawmakers in the state Capitol annually debate whether to institute a waiting period so elected officials cant become lobbyists right away after they leave office, there are plenty of other people cashing in on their government service under the radar. Often, the governor is involved. Take last weeks appointment of state Sen. Will Kraus, R-Lees Summit, to the state tax commission, a position that pays more than $100,000 a year, by Gov. Eric Greitens, a fellow Republican. Its a back door to the revolving door that Greitens says he wants to stop. For those in the know, the insurance receivership business can be quite lucrative. Governors or their appointees generally appoint receivers in such cases who have political clout, and the payback can be huge. In one of the largest insurance company failures in Missouri history, deputy receiver J. Burleigh Arnold was paid more than $14 million in salary and bonuses in about 14 years of supervising the receivership of Transit Casualty Co. Arnold, a former Democratic national committeeman and candidate for the U.S. Senate, was appointed to the position in 1987 by the administration of then Gov. John Ashcroft, a Republican. The judge who oversaw the case, Cole County Circuit Judge Byron Kinder, was a friend of Arnolds. The Post-Dispatch had to fight for more than three years, all the way to the Missouri Supreme Court, to see the records that detailed Arnolds pay and benefits. After Arnold left the position in 2002, Democratic Gov. Bob Holdens budget director, Brian Long, doubled his state salary to become chief operating officer at Transit. The new deputy receiver was former appellate judge Albert Riederer, who was also being paid $300,000 a year to run the receivership of failing General American Life Insurance Co. In the case of Dentons, the big money flows both ways. As Missouris insurance director, Huff twice appointed Dentons and Baty as a special deputy in charge of a receivership. He is deputy receiver for both the Lumbermens case and one involving a company called National States Insurance Co., which has been ongoing since 2010. Many of the invoices and documents in both cases are filed under seal, and so it is difficult to know how much the law firm is actually being paid. For his part, Huff said he didnt do anything wrong by taking a job with a law firm that he previously appointed to lucrative deputy receivership positions. The work of the receiver, special deputy receiver and counsel is approved and supervised by the court, Huff said in an email responding to questions. Dentons and my own conduct has been entirely consistent with the Missouri Bar Rules of Professional conduct at all times. In the meantime, the Dentons bills keep piling up. Last week, six more invoices were filed in the Lumbermens case, and two in the National States case. The Lumbermens invoices added up to $81,577. Thats $18,000 less than the month before. But as one Missouri politician famously used to say: Every dollar counts. ST. LOUIS All city police officers soon will be equipped with an antidote that can block the effect of opioid overdoses. Following a pilot project in south St. Louis, each officer will eventually carry Narcan, known clinically as naloxone, said St. Louis police spokeswoman Schron Jackson. Narcan, which can be administered intravenously or through a nasal spray, already is stocked in city ambulances, allowing emergency responders to revive scores of opioid addicts. Last year, the St. Louis Fire Department used it 1,900 times. St. Louis County officers and other area police departments already have begun carrying the antidote. We are going through Narcan faster than we can put it in cars, St. Charles county police chief David Todd told the Post-Dispatch in February. The Post-Dispatch has documented just how dangerous and accessible the drugs are becoming. Heroin prices have plummeted to $5 to $10 a dose, and a new, synthetic opioid has flooded the market. Fentanyl may be cheap, but its also 50 times stronger than heroin. Former Gov. Jay Nixon signed a bill in 2014 allowing first responders to carry the drug in Missouri. Last month, Gov. Eric Greitens called opioids a modern plague and signed an executive order giving first responders greater access to the antidote and expanding the training on how to use it. Its one of a number of measures state and local officials are hoping will stem the opioid epidemic devastating the Show-Me state and the nation . But Narcan isnt a cure. Its lifesaving effect wanes, but it buys roughly 30 to 45 minutes for the overdose victim to receive additional medical attention. Police departments throughout the country have begun supplying officers with the drug, but it can be expensive, and multiple doses must sometimes be administered given the potency of opioids such as fentanyl. Jackson said the department has an initial supply of Narcan in stock, and current and future supplies of the antidote are paid for by a federal grant. Additionally, the department has assigned a detective solely to investigate opioid deaths, she said. There were more than 700 overdoses in the St. Louis region in 2016, a record that is expected to be surpassed in 2017. Javon M. Burton, 29, of the 2100 block of Penfield Avenue, pleaded guilty in St. Louis Circuit Court to resisting arrest, possession of a controlled substance and unlawful use of a weapon. Prosecutors had agreed to amend an original charge of second-degree assault to the resisting charge and drop a charge of armed criminal action, the plea agreement says. The original charging documents say the trooper was responding to a call for an assault on Nov. 14, 2015, when he heard that someone was driving through the parking garage with a woman on the hood of his car. The trooper blocked the garage exit and got out, then ordered Burton out of his car. Burton leaned down towards the passenger-side floorboard of his vehicle before sitting back up and accelerating his vehicle toward the trooper, charging documents say. The trooper shot Burton, and a later search found methamphetamine and a loaded handgun on the floorboard of the vehicles passenger side. I was delighted the year that my back-to-school supplies included the latest binder with a pencil case secured by a magnetic clasp. There was a wonderful sense of starting over with fresh notebooks and sharpened new pencils for the beginning of classes in the fall. It never occurred to me to worry about whether the school district had enough money to open its doors, or to keep them open. Kids, and I think most parents, have always taken free public education for granted. The word free doesnt apply so much anymore. Book charges, activity fees and other out-of-pocket costs may runs hundreds of dollars per child in an Illinois school that might once have covered such expenses with taxes. Lately, given perpetual dysfunction in Springfield, the price of basic education has become an issue too. After years of underfunding the states share of school spending, lawmakers came up with a more realistic income tax a month ago to avert a total budget collapse. But they have been in debate ever since over one provision that came with their first budget in three years: a requirement that school aid not be paid until theres a new method to distribute it. There may be no more complex issue in Illinois government than education, nor any more important. More than 2 million children depend upon over 1,000 school districts to teach them skills to be capable adults. The process consumes the largest share of Illinois tax money at both the state and local levels. The educators jobs would be a challenge even if it rained cash. Students come from all imaginable social and economic backgrounds. Teachers and administrators must deal with everything from underfed and abused kids to bored young geniuses to rigid parents with difficult expectations. It never does rain cash, of course. And the states money sprinkler doesnt irrigate evenly. That may be a surprise for the take-it-for granted parents, and a thorn for those divided either by party or geographical loyalties. You might expect Illinois simply to divide the number of dollars by the number of students and send checks per capita to the districts. But not all the students or their circumstances are the same. And a dense-as-lead school aid formula put into effect 20 years ago tries to address that. Profoundly disabled youngsters might each require tens of thousands of dollars a year in services from a district that otherwise spends only a fraction of that per child. Moreover, the cost of living is greater in the Chicago area, translating into higher expenditures for salaries and supplies. And most importantly, while districts pay the bulk of their costs with property taxes, their access to local revenue is not equal. Those with an affluent tax base can take better care of themselves. All of those factors played into Senate Bill 1, a just-in-time school formula overhaul that lawmakers sent to Gov. Bruce Rauner on Monday. His administration responded Tuesday by saying he was pleased with 90 percent of it. The rest he excised with an amendatory veto power not possessed by his counterparts in Missouri or most states. The House and Senate now can vote to endorse his amended version, override it in favor of the original SB 1 becoming law, or let it die and create a mad scramble to do something else in time for school to start. Any vote would require a three-fifths majority, by the way. In particular, Rauner feels SB1 language gives unfair advantage to Chicago schools, and would make it difficult for the state to someday try to hand its teacher pension obligations over to local school districts. It is hard for an ordinary mortal to form a point-by-point independent opinion of each aspect of the proposed law. But one element is clear: It is just nuts to still be debating this only a week before the next school aid checks are supposed to go out Aug. 10. Just as the governor and legislators procrastinated beyond crisis time for a budget and income tax increase, they have created a new artificial emergency for themselves and for public schools, too. While it is unclear whether the opening of any districts would be delayed, some have said they may not stay open long without arrival of state dollars. This continued recklessness is irresponsible. Does any important issue in Springfield receive the benefit of an unhurried consensus? Another year with the old formula, however flawed, might be better than an embarrassing slapdash process that for yet another year could leave local educators wondering at the 11th hour how much aid they will get, and when. Statehouse officials need to remember there are a couple million kids waiting, with fresh notebooks and sharp pencils. The Trump administration announced Tuesday it will waive environmental and other laws and regulations that would impede the first phase of construction of a wall along the US-Mexico border. The Department of Homeland Security decision clears an important hurdle to construction of the wall, and signals an approach the administration could take in the future when it seeks to build additional sections of wall or fence. The waiver announced Tuesday applies to "a variety of environmental, natural resource, and land management laws" in the San Diego sector, one of the most-crossed regions of the border and the site where border wall prototypes are scheduled to be constructed later this year. The 15-mile stretch identified in the waiver also includes 14 miles of replacement secondary fencing, for which Customs and Border Protection has requested funding from Congress. Despite the waiver, construction will not begin for at least several more months because federal officials are currently reviewing a protest by a company that competed for, but was not awarded, a building contract. That process delays any construction on the prototypes, which have been authorized by congressional appropriators, until November at the earliest. The waiver applies to 37 laws and regulations, most of them environmental in nature, a Homeland Security official told CNN. The department said it would publish the full waiver "in the coming days." DHS said in a statement it "remains committed to environmental stewardship with respect to these projects." The announcement follows concerns raised by conservation groups and Democrats that border barriers would hurt the environment. Most recently, environmental groups were alarmed with soil sampling conducted by the Army Corps of Engineers in a Rio Grande Valley wildlife sanctuary. Homeland Security officials said the refuge testing was part of broader work by the Army Corps to prepare for fencing the department wants to build. DHS has used the waiver multiple times in the past, including to build border fence from 2005 to 2008. The waivers were challenged in the courts, but each time federal judges granted DHS the authority to move forward, according to a Congressional Research Service report. The Supreme Court declined two requests to review the issue. Construction of a Mexican-funded border wall was a key campaign promise of President Donald Trump. During the transition period before he took office, Trump's incoming administration began reviewing environmental laws and other potential obstacles to construction. At a time when our countrys politics are increasingly preposterous, a Midwest governor actually did the unthinkable last month when he would not block legislation lowering the minimum wage in his states largest city. In allowing what is known as a pre-emption bill, Missouri Gov. Eric Greitens effectively overrode a minimum wage increase in St. Louis, reverting the citys wage floor to the statewide $7.70 an hour from the $10 an hour workers had been collecting. For each of the 35,000 minimum wage workers in St. Louis, thats an extra $1,800 a year the governor kissed goodbye and a total of $63 million a year in extra income they could have put back into the local economy. Sadly, Missouris self-proclaimed anti-establishment governor isnt just using pre-emption to pick his constituents pockets. The state recently overrode another local law banning discrimination against women who are pregnant, have had an abortion or use birth control. But Greitens is hardly alone in using pre-emption to block local policies with which he disagrees. In fact, his overreach is just one example of an abusive trend among state lawmakers across the country who espouse the value of local control, but only when it suits them. Their grand hypocrisy leads them to repudiate efforts from Washington, D.C., to regulate business, health care, education, wages, or the environment, while doing exactly the same thing to their own local governments. To put it another way, while screaming about and demanding states rights, these lawmakers are perfectly willing to trample at will on cities rights, counties rights, school districts rights and on and on. North Dakota, for example, has passed a law that pre-empts any municipality from regulating the sale or use of firearms. So, if Fargo were concerned about a trend of increased gun violence, it would be illegal for its citizens and their representatives to make decisions at the local level to make their communities safer. Michigan is another perfectly awful example of pre-emption laws at work. The Legislature currently has three bills, which are referred to as super pre-emption laws, making their way through various committees. They not only seek to prevent local governments from passing laws regulating various issues, such as abortion and gun reform, but also take it one step further by allowing special interest groups to sue localities or local officials if they pass laws that contradict state statute. Its anti-democratic and anti-American, but solidly pro-hypocrisy. Laws like these are already on the books in eight states Alabama, Arizona, Florida, Indiana, Kentucky, Missouri, Mississippi and Nevada. Including Michigan, pre-emption laws are making their way through six more states Nebraska, Tennessee, Pennsylvania, Iowa and North Carolina. Pre-emption is just one way partisan politicians are undermining local democracy and the rights of voters. Perhaps even worse are attempts to step in and roll back or completely repeal ballot measures approved directly by voters in the most naked expression of these politicians paternalism and anti-democratic tendencies. Increasingly, voters are using direct democracy as a way to enact the policies they want to see. In four states last year, voters passed ballot measures to raise the minimum wage. But in Maine, lawmakers just repealed some of these raises. And in Arizona, lawmakers think ballot initiatives represent altogether too much democracy and are passing laws to limit the citizen-led measures. Its bad enough that citizens are allowed to vote, lets not let them have a direct say in the rules Arizonans live by. In South Dakota, conservative legislators have tried to stop ethics and lobbying reforms that citizens approved last year in an effort to clean up their government. Simply put, these examples of ignoring the democratic will of voters are a frightening attempt to wrest control from the people. That leaves working Americans with a choice: Sit back and let our rights be taken away, or envision the future we want for ourselves and fight to make sure democracy reigns and the will of the people is paramount. Of course, the ultimate expression of the peoples will would be to throw these double-dealers out of office, and thats obviously the most permanent solution. But short of that, we need to fight these pre-emption laws with the same vigor we fight for any other important cause, because pre-emption doesnt just affect one issue, but a whole host of vital issues. We also need to continue utilizing the direct democracy tools we now have to, among other important things, take on economic inequality, protect health care, improve education, save the environment, and improve living standards for millions of working people and their families. The recent state pre-emption laws are making it clear just how fragile our democratic rights really are. Its up to all of us to stand up for our voice and our democracy. Jonathan Schleifer is executive director of the Fairness Project in Washington. College Student Op-Ed -- Why She Supports Campus Carry By Kira Davis. August 1st, 2017 Over the past few years, a rash of horrific shootings on college campuses and other vulnerable locales has once again ginned up the gun control crowd and renewed calls for limiting the ability to legally carry in public spaces. In the case of school and college campuses, many are saying that legal weapons in an educational environment are not only harmful to the culture, they are dangerous. Trinity University student Caitlin O'Shei recently penned an op-ed recently refuting the idea that it is dangerous to allow college students to legally carry while on their campus. O'Shei contends that there is no reason the legal rights of an American citizen should change simply because that citizen resides in an educational environment. The arguments against college students carrying are often couched in concerns about alcohol consumption rates and the poor decision-making skills of young people. O'Shei is having none of that. ....... An interesting student's opinion on campus carry - something which is regularly regarded by anti-gun groups as both dangerous and irresponsible. She picks out many very relevant points, not least of which is the obvious one "The best defense against a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun." However, it seems to still be the case that logic does not infuse the minds of progressives hell bent on "gun control". "You don't have to be Jewish to fight by our side." 2017 JPFO All rights reserved. jpfo@jpfo.org 1-800-869-1884 Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership 12500 NE 10th Pl. Bellevue, WA 98005 USA "America's most aggressive defender of civil rights" We make the NRA look like moderates Join JPFO Back to Top So much for campus diversity and helping minority groups that have suffered university-admissions discrimination in the past. The Trump administration has issued a call within the Justice Department for personnel to investigate and sue universities over affirmative action policies. The administration says such policies constitute intentional race-based discrimination against white college applicants. Generations of Americans have benefited from more inclusive institutions of higher education. Policies creating more diversified universities help expand educational prospects and increase employment potential for disadvantaged groups, especially blacks, Hispanics and Native Americans. Affirmative action allows race to count as one of multiple admission criteria to help expose campuses to different cultures and ideas. With time, this advances greater tolerance on campus and, gradually, the workforce. The positive effects might seem subtle, but theyre essential to reverse a culture of white privilege that has long made college and workplace life less inviting to minorities. In general, affirmative action helps equalize access for minorities to opportunities available to the majority population. John F. Kennedy was the first president to use the term in an executive order to government contractors in 1961. Its no surprise that the Justice Department is tilting conservative under President Donald Trump and Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who has a long history of opposing affirmative action and minority protections. This move follows department policy changes on voting rights, police reforms and gay rights. The Justice Departments plans were disclosed by The New York Times, which obtained an internal announcement in the departments civil rights division. The Washington Post later reported that the announcement targeted political appointees because career civil servants refused to work on the project, citing concerns that it was contrary to the offices longstanding support for civil rights in education. The administration disputed the published reports, saying it was recruiting lawyers to investigate a single complaint involving Asian-American students in a college admissions case. The internal announcement said it was searching for lawyers to work on investigations and possible litigation related to intentional race-based discrimination in college and university admissions. Vanita Gupta, former head of the civil rights division under President Barack Obama, told The Washington Post the plan is an affront to our values as a country and the very mission of the civil rights division. The U.S. Supreme Court upheld affirmative actions constitutionality last year in a 4 to 3 ruling that the University of Texas at Austin could consider race in admissions. Roger Clegg, a top Justice Department official during the Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations, called the new plan a long overdue development as the nation becomes increasingly multiracial. What Clegg, Sessions and Trump arent acknowledging is that whites seldom need a boost. Politically, helping disadvantaged groups probably doesnt play well with Trumps base. But its the right thing to do. The developer pays For ecological compensation policy to be understood, the authors consider the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), which provides guidelines for safeguards in biodiversity financing mechanisms. They use use two key entry points for the analysis: (i) equity principle, which suggests equal sharing of resources, and the (ii) mitigation hierarchy, which aims to minimize ecological loss before it occurs. Within mitigation hierarchy, first there is an avoidance step, where all ecological change is considered, regardless of what will be compensated in return. If development is approved, damage must be minimized and ecological compensation must occur. Currently across Europe, compensation is often a pollution tax. While a pollution tax is monetary compensation, there is no clear link to actual restoration of ecosystems. Based on their understanding of this policy gap Hahn suggests that a new principle called the Developer-Pays Principle (DPP) should oblige the developer to finance restoration or other investments in ecosystems. Swedish cases: Mertainen mine and E12 highway expansion The Mertainen mine and E12 highway expansion cases demonstrate varying consequences of ecological compensation, and help to highlight how the policy tool could be better implemented in Sweden. The Mertainen mine proposed in northern Sweden provides jobs to a staggering economy, but would infringe on 1220 hectares of unprotected, biodiversity-rich wetlands and forest habitats. The mine would also impact indigenous reindeer husbandry and an area used recreationally for hiking. The E12 highway extension infringes on 6.3 hectares of a Natura 2000 protected area with low ecological value, but would result in bird habitat loss and landscape fragmentation, which impacts an ecosystems biodiversity. Mixed results for Swedens cases The authors find that in both cases the Swedish authorities did not approve development projects without independent approval of the compensation project suggested by the developer. In other words, the Swedish authorities did not offer developers a licence to trash just because ecological compensation would balance out the development. While this finding is promising, Hahn explains, Recently, the Swedish Environmental Agency outlined that ecological compensation proposals should not interfere with the approval process. However, there is still a lack of clear legislation on how this should be done for ecological compensation. In terms of finding appropriate compensation land, Koh suggests that both the process is highly individualized. In the Mertainen mine case, authorities used quantitative measures to determine how much ecological compensation was necessary, whereas in the E12 high extension, authorities use a qualitative approach. While a customized approach ensures consideration of a given context, it demands a lot of time and resources to decide where and what type of land should be compensated for. The authors suggest that Sweden should follow a similar model to Germany, which has ecological compensation pools run by a third party. This could help reduce time and effort spent by the developers and authorities on ecological compensation processes. In both cases, safeguards are vital to ecological compensation. Ituarte-Lima highlights that the case studies show that biodiversity and social safeguards are intertwined with human rights, such as cultural rights, and rights over natural resources. In creating an environment for exercising these rights, Ituarte-Lima says, it is important to consider the impacts of loss and degradation of biodiversity in society, especially the effects on people in disadvantaged positions or with differentiated individual and collective rights. Finally, the authors find that social impacts must be further developed. Ituarte Lima notes that, Protecting social equity, including rights of the Sami people, should be further developed in Sweden, both in legislation and implementation of ecological compensation. As highlighted in the social and ecological characteristics of the Mertainen mine case Hahn suggests that when property rights and equity issues are at stake, an in-depth investigation of operationalizing social safeguards including human rights, and social value compensation, should be required. While the authors are clear that what the legislation should require goes beyond the scope of this study, Hahn highlights that, Even if all of challenges are met, ecological compensation can never be the main instrument for conservation. It should, he says, complement appropriate and effective legal framework that protects biodiversity and ecosystems, while ensuring the sustainable and equitable use of ecosystem services. Something went wrong, please try again later. Invalid email Something went wrong, please try again later. Get all the news from the courts direct to your inbox with our court and crime email Drunken Marc Banks threatened and assaulted his brother with a knife. The 42-year-old had been drinking when he went to his brothers flat in Cheadle and after consuming more alcohol he produced a knife from the waistband of his trousers. His brother, John, told him to leave but the defendant took out the knife and threatened his brother with it. Their parents, who live across the road, tried to calm down the defendant but he used the knife to make a small cut on his brothers arm. The defendant ran away but was found by the police and arrested. Now Banks has been handed a suspended prison sentence at Stoke-on-Trent Crown Court. Prosecutor Peter Gilmour said the defendant went to his brothers home in Cheadle at 7pm on January 15. Mr Gilmour said: They have not always got on brilliantly. The defendant had been drinking. His brother let him in. Marc drank lager, John drank cider. Marc produced a large knife from the waistband of his trousers, which appeared to be a veiled threat. John told Marc to leave. Marc stormed out. It continued outside. Marc produced a large knife and threatened John with it. The brothers parents, who live opposite John, went out in the street to calm down the defendant. Marc used the knife to make a small cut on Johns arm. Marc ran away but was later found by the police. Banks, of Cross Street, Cheadle, pleaded guilty to threatening another with a bladed article in a public place and assault by beating. Stuart Muldoon, mitigating, said the defendant has issues with alcohol. He said: Threats were made to him and he believed his brother may have been responsible for some of the threats. John said he did not require hospital treatment as it was only a scratch. Mr Muldoon added: They are fine now. They are brothers who fall out. Recorder Andrew Easteal sentenced Banks to eight months in prison, suspended for 18 months, with an alcohol treatment requirement, a rehabilitation activity requirement for 10 days and a thinking skills programme. The judge said: Your addiction to alcohol has damaged so much of your life. I am encouraged to hear that you are making a real effort to try and conquer it. I understand that is not an easy thing to do. Brothers argue but they do not pick up knives. You could have caused terrible harm with that. Your judgement was not right because you had been drinking. I do not think for one moment you would have done that sober. Recorder Easteal added: You have got an opportunity. Grab it with both hands. Do not grab any more knives. Something went wrong, please try again later. Invalid email Something went wrong, please try again later. Get all the news from the courts direct to your inbox with our court and crime email Angry Nicholas Phillips ripped two CCTV cameras from a neighbours house because one of them pointed into a bedroom. The 35-year-old caused irreparable damage to the equipment when he targeted the devices late at night after an ongoing dispute boiled over. Magistrates at North Staffordshire Justice Centre heard other residents were also unhappy with where the CCTV was positioned at the front of the property. One of the cameras was moved to the side but this led to further tension as it was now looked directly into a bedroom. Now the defendant, of Carlton Avenue, Mill Hill, has been handed a six-month conditional discharge. Steve Knowles, prosecuting, said Phillips became embroiled in an argument with his neighbour at around 12.35am on July 14. Mr Knowles added: At the conclusion, he pulled the two cameras from the wall and caused irreparable damage. Police were contacted and the defendant was interviewed. He was shown photographs of the damage and accepted that it was his actions that caused it. The defendant was arrested and went on to plead guilty to one charge of criminal damage. Simon Dykes, mitigating, said: There has been a dispute between his girlfriend and her neighbour and some other residents about the position of the cameras at the mans house. He had already been asked to remove some from the front. He put some at the side and one looked directly into a bedroom window. They asked him to move it but he was having none of it. It came to a head when the defendant became aware the man was in the street with some associates and he thought they were looking at the address. His behaviour on the night was also influenced by other stresses at the time. As well as the six-month conditional discharge, magistrates ordered Phillips to pay the victim 100 compensation with 135 court costs and a 20 victim surcharge. British High Commissioner to Pakistan Thomas Drew called on Army Chief General Qamar Javed Bajwa at GHQ here. During the meeting matters pertaining to bilateral interests and security situation in the region were discussed. It may be mentioned here that Afghanistans Ambassador to Pakistan, Mr Omar Zakhilwal had also met Army Chief General Qamar Javed Bajwa yesterday. Issues of mutual interest including security situation and border management were discussed in yesterdays meeting. Army Chief Bajwa had expressed his grief over loss of innocent lives in recent terrorists attacks in Afghanistan. Former Supreme Court Bar Association president Asma Jahangir on Thursday criticize the superior judiciary over what she called a controversial verdict in Panamagate case, saying we were expecting bags filled with diamonds but matter came up ended with just an Aqama (resident permit). I am not in favour of Nawaz Sharif; I always voted Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) but also want supremacy of rule of law in the country, the noted activist said while addressing a press conference in the federal capital. She wished the apex court could also take action against the real mafias, while hitting out at the security establishment for controlling the democratic structure in the country. She stated the people are demanding their basic rights, protected under the Constitution. About the appointment of a supervisory judge for NAB references against Sharifs, the lawyer said there has been no such precedent. She was of the view that in addition to capability, prestige and honesty was also important for a judge. She regretted the language used by Azad Kashmirs prime minister Raja Farooq Haider after the Panama verdict against former prime minister Nawaz Sharif. The co-founder of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan suggested that the Kashmir issue would be resolved through talks, not wars. The activist, who is widely known for playing a prominent role in the Lawyers Movement, said that she also has differences with the Parliament. Speaking about Fata reforms, she questioned whether the tribal people would ever get their basic rights? She termed the Fata issue as that of political. The United Nations has said that Saudi Arabia is blocking jet fuel delivery to planes trying to deliver humanitarian aid to Yemens capital city Sanaa. According to the UNs country director of the UN Development Program, Auke Lootsma, on Tuesday, the global body operates two aid flights into Sanaa from Amman and Djibouti, which due to lack of fuel get stranded in Yemeni capital. "We have difficulties obtaining permission from the coalition and from the government of Yemen to transport this jet fuel to Sanaa to facilitate these flights," he said. The fuel must arrive in Sanaa via the port city of Aden which is in control of Riyadh. The Saudis have repeatedly been accused of blocking aid to Yemen. Lootsma also announced an outbreak of meningitis in Yemen, which is already suffering from a cholera epidemic and is at the risk of famine. He noted that the situation in the country is "very bleak" and several new cases of meningitis have been detected in Yemen. Saudi Arabia has been leading the campaign against Yemen to reinstate the former government and crush the Houthi Ansarullah movement. The campaign has seriously damaged the country's infrastructure. Local Yemeni sources have put the death toll from the Saudi war at over 12,000, including many women and children. Saudis building beach resorts on Red Sea Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia has started a huge development program aimed at turning 50 islands and other locations on the Red Sea into luxury resorts, as part of attempts to diversify the kingdoms economy following a drop in oil prices. Construction of the project is set to begin in 2019. The first phase will include construction of a new airport plus several luxury hotels and residences. The project is part of the so-called Vision 2030 plan which is spearheaded by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman who claims it will be capable of transforming the country economically by the year 2030. He says it is aimed at ending Saudi Arabias addiction to oil, and it envisaged raising non-oil revenues from 43.6 billion dollars in 2015 to 267 billion dollars by 2030. Riyadh is currently dealing with economic struggles brought on by a budget deficit of nearly $100 billion in 2015 caused by a sharp slump in oil prices as well as Riyadhs rising military expenditure, a large amount of which is being funneled into its military campaign against Yemen. The campaign, which lacks any international mandate and has faced increasing criticism, has claimed the lives of more than 12,000 people, most of them civilians. Turkey and Qatar started a joint military exercise with the participation of over 250 Turkish troops and more than 30 armored vehicles, a Turkish official told. Turkish land forces are participating in the first phase of the joint military exercise, while the second stage will include the naval forces of the two countries, after the Turkish frigate TCG Gokova arrived in Qatar with 214 personnel. Aug. 7-8 has been determined as the distinguished observer day of the joint exercise, with the participation of high-level commanders from Qatar and Turkey. The long-planned exercises are part of a mutual agreement aimed at strengthening the defense capabilities of both countries, as well as boosting efforts to combat armed groups and maintaining stability in the region. The latest joint exercise comes amid political tension among Gulf countries. Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Egypt and a number of other countries recently cut ties with Qatar, accusing the emirate of supporting terrorism. 5 Indians arrested on smuggling charge Bardiya police on Thursday arrested five Indian nationals for smuggling chicks into the Nepali border. Peter Burling managed to hang on to second place by one point in the last race at the Moth worlds, leaving Iain Jensen third. Paul Goodison from the UK is the winner for the second year running, the fist sailor to do so. Peter Burling won the moth Worlds in 2015. Going into the final day of racing Paul Goodison begun the day with a 13 point cushion over Peter Burling (NZL) with Australian Iain Jensen granted only an outside chance of catching Burling. Goodison had 26 points. Iain Jensen had another excellent day to move into a comfortable 3rd position on 29 points. Racing on the final day was affected by the light breeze on Lake Garda Italy. Racing started in 12 14 knots of breeze with flat water, reports Jonny Fullerton from Lake Garda. The aim was to charge to the Eastern shore and before hitting the rocks in front of the host Fraglia Vela Malcesine clubhouse, tack and try to find a clean lane of pressure to get to the top of the course in good shape. At the windward gates, the breeze was quite soft causing a number of boats to drop off the foils, especially if squeezing round the marks. On the first lap it was Australian Scott Babbage leading, followed by the young Italian Gian Ferrighi with most of the big names in the top 10. The downwind leg proved a bit shiftier and the pack shuffled. It was Australian Tom Slingsby who stayed in the best pressure to take the win from fellow Australian Nathan Outteridge with British sailor Rob Greenhalgh third, Peter Burling 5th and Iain Jensen 6th. Race ten started under similar conditions. The breeze shifted and faded at the top end, causing some competitors to drop off the foils. At the bottom gate, the action started to unfold, Iain Jensen got round just in front of Tom Slingsby, who fell off the foils in front of Nathan Outteridge and Scott Babbage allowing Paul Goodison to slide past inside avoiding the low riders. Peter Burling was also in trouble rounding the opposite gate and dropping off the foils. Coming into the finish it was Iain Jensen who crossed the line with a massive lead, closing the gap to Peter Burlings points to one. Second was Paul Goodison to all but seal the title. Many competitors had fallen off the foils in the soft patches around the course. Tom Singsby crossed third but Peter Burling was deep in the pack. With time running out and the breeze weakening it was announced the third race of the day would be the last. It would be victory laps for Paul Goodison but the chase for second and third would be decided between Peter Burling and Iain Jensen. The last race started in the same light to moderate breeze. Again the fleet used the clubhouse shoreline for a flyby in front of supporters. Tom Slingsby looked like he had made the right foil choice, leading the world champion elect with some of the usual suspects struggling with foil selection. Tom Slingsby cruised across the finish line for a second win of the day with the victorious Paul Goodison crossing in second. A good third for West Australian, Steve Thomas, Scott Babbage finished 4th, Iain Jensen in 5th finishing comfortably ahead of his skipper of so many years, Nathan Outteridge. Peter Burling crossed in a lowly 17th. Iain Jensen finished one point short of toppling Peter Burling, but was happy with his third place overall. With Tom Slingsbys final day score of 1,3,1 he held on to 4th and Scott Babbage came back from the brink early in the regatta to snatch 5th off Nathan Outteridge. The 2017 McDougall + McConaghy Moth Worlds at Lake Garda is considered the hottest fleet of Moths ever assembled. Competitors included sailors from several recent Americas Cup teams and more Olympic medallists than any regatta except the Olympics itself. Labours leadership refresh has already given them a boon in the Bay of Plenty, with local candidates reporting increased support and donations for their campaigns. But what about in Waiariki, the Maori Partys last stronghold, and final Maori seat Labour needs to win back? The selection of Te Tai Tokerau MP Kelvin Davis as Labour Party deputy leader is thought to be the first time a person of Maori descent has held the role. If new leader Jacinda Ardern can tempt female voters back to Labour, is it possible Kelvin can achieve the same with Maori in Waiariki? Labours Waiariki candidate Tamati Coffey thinks the countrys overwhelmingly positive reaction to the leadership change will mean a high turnout for Labour, but most significantly in the Waiariki seat. It shows voters Labour is committed to the Treaty and working together in a meaningful bicultural partnership at the highest level. This also sends a strong message to Maori voters that the turmoil surrounding the Foreshore and Seabed legislation is well and truly in our past. Neither Jacinda nor Kelvin were in parliament when that happened. With 12 Maori MPs set to come into Labour after September 23, we are all committed to learning from the past, but as Labour Maori MPs of the future, its time to shake it off and move on. Maori Party co-leader and incumbent Waiariki MP Te Ururoa Flavell says its encouraging to see another Maori in a senior role within a political party, and a woman leading it. We had our issues with Andrew Little he said wed be the last cab of the rank. It will be interesting to see if that position has changed or is it a new ringmaster in charge of the same circus? he says. We know Kelvin supports charter schools, supports kaupapa Maori-led prisons, and wed be interested to see if the partys position changes on these kaupapa or will it be a case of all steam and no hangi? He believes the last few days have confirmed that Labour is in disarray less than eight weeks out from the election. But we have always said were willing to work with any party blue or red that is willing to support kaupapa Maori initiatives. We all want the best for our people. Getting people off the streets and into accommodation; addressing the high numbers of Maori in prison; helping more into their own homes; and ensuring Whanau Ora gets the money it needs to make lasting change. Te Ururoa says Kelvins new role means he will likely come onto the list, despite ruling himself out of a list placing along with other Labour MPs in the Maori seats. What does that mean for the other Maori seat MPs? asks Te Ururoa. Will they now come back onto the list or will they be left out in the cold? A confident Tamati says Labour remains committed to winning all the Maori seats, including Waiariki, because they have the best policies for Maori. Labour has been around for 100 years, with its fair share of ups and downs. I look forward to being part of the partys future as the MP for Waiariki in a Labour-led government after September 23. New land use rules to limit the amount of nitrogen entering the Lake Rotorua from rural land use will be notified on August 15. Known as Plan Change 10, the Bay of Plenty Regional Council voted to accept a report and recommendation from the independent hearing panel relating to Plan Change 10 on Wednesday. Regional environment committee chair, Paula Thompson says the Councils decision to accept the independent commissioners recommendations and formally notify the rules is a landmark decision for the council. This is not a decision that has been made lightly, says Paula. Councillors have been required to maintain an open mind to the potential outcomes, and this decision has been made on the basis of the evidence and submissions heard and reported on by the independent panel, as required by the statutory process. A panel of independent commissioners - experts in their relevant fields of environmental policy and freshwater ecology - heard submissions from more than 50 individuals, groups and organisations over 15 days between March and May this year. The independent hearing panel recommended some additional changes to Plan Change 10 in five key areas a simplified approach for small lifestyle blocks, enabling the potential development of Te Ture Whenua Maori land, a change in nitrogen allowance for non-benchmarked properties and in the 5ha lot threshold, and to clarify the reference file methodology. The rules will now be notified on August 15, with submitters having 30 working days following the receipt of the notification of the decision, to lodge any appeal with the Environment Court. The independent panel has been thorough in their considerations and assessment they had a big job to do and they have done an important job for Lake Rotorua, says Paula. Our environment wont wait. We are all responsible for ensuring Lake Rotorua is in a healthier state to hand down to future generations, and todays decision will help us all achieve that. In providing his support for Plan Change 10, BOPRC Okurei Councillor, Arapeta Tahana says there are still challenges to overcome, but there is no doubt that adopting Plan Change 10 is the right thing to do for Lake Rotorua and future generations. I have made this decision with the knowledge and upbringing that I have as a Maori, and from being brought up by the lake. Interacting with water has always been part of my life and it is a place of fun, prayer and healing. I want it to continue to have this place for ourselves, and our future generations, says Arapeta. Without any reservations, I absolutely support the recommendations and accept them. I hope that we can all continue to work together, regardless of the challenges, to see this through. Rotorua councillor Lyall Thurston acknowledged the rural communitys dignity and professionalism demonstrated throughout the plan change process, as well as the efforts and contribution of previous BOPRC councillors. This is a process that has been underway for many years and in that time, I have observed a thorough scientific process, with considerable economic research, extensive consultation and public engagement, says Lyall. This is a critically important issue not just for Rotorua, but for the whole of New Zealand and Plan Change 10 will help us reduce nitrogen from entering Lake Rotorua, and achieve the environmental outcomes that we are seeking. We encourage land owners to talk to our land management team about what the Plan Change 10 developments mean for them. We are aware that some landowners and farmers are ready and want to move forward through this process, and we have waived the cost for resource consent applications until September 30. Our Advice and Support Service is also available to assist landowners developing a Nitrogen Management Plan if required. We are genuinely here to help landowners move forward. The rules are just one part of the solution to meet water quality standards set by the local community, with the level of nitrogen entering the lake needing to reduce by 320 tonnes by 2032. One hundred and forty (140) tonnes will come from Plan Change 10; 100 tonnes will come from voluntary land use change, 30 tonnes from voluntary gorse conversion, and 50 tonnes resulting from the implementation of engineering initiatives. The Plan Change 10 rules have been in development for three years a process which has included more than two years of public engagement and submissions. Butcher shop worker kidnapped for ransom In a surprising incident, a worker at a butcher shop has been kidnapped for ransom in Dharan Sub-metropolis of Sunsari district on August 1. Compensation period extended for migrants Family of the migrant workers, who died or got injured or contracted any serious disease within one year of their return or end of the contract, will be eligible for the compensation meant for migrant workers. General District Court These were some of the cases heard on July 19. Natoya Rashea Ford of Brunswick, Ohio, was convicted of a Feb. 10, 2016, obstructing justice charge, which was reduced from felony perjury. Ford was given a one-year suspended sentence, placed on probation for a year, and fined $50 plus $221 in court costs. Jeremy Alun Horton of Raven was convicted of a June 8 driving while intoxicated charge. Horton was given a suspended 180-day jail sentence, placed on probation for a year, fined $250 plus $326 in court costs, given a one-year drivers license suspension, and ordered to complete an alcohol safety and awareness program at his expense. Nov. 27, 2016, charges of being a felon in possession of a firearm and being a felon in possession of a weapon or ammunition against David Prater of Bland were certified to a grand jury for consideration. Prater was convicted of having an expired registration and driving on a suspended license. On these charges, he was fined $110 plus $186 in court costs. These were some of the cases heard on July 12. A March 12, 2016, misdemeanor charge of receiving or buy stolen goods against Shannon Voun Hammonds of Narrows was dismissed. A March 4 marijuana possession charge against Xavier Antonio Hargrove of Morgantown, West Virginia, was dropped. An Oct. 29, 2016, unauthorized use of a vehicle charge against Simar A. Mitchell of Bluefield, West Virginia, was dropped. A March 4 marijuana possession charge against Sarah Kay Orendi of Morgantown, West Virginia, was dropped. Circuit Court This was one of the cases heard on July 18. James T. Haynes of Princeton, West Virginia, pleaded guilty to a Sept. 19, 2016, unlawful wounding charge. Haynes was sentenced to serve 60 days in jail and assessed $478 in court costs. Hell be on probation for two years after his release. Decks cleared for setting up three commissions Nearly two years after the promulgation of the Constitution of Nepal, the Legislature-Parliament on Wednesday endorsed three bills related to formation of inclusive commissions. One of the good ol' boys is in trouble with the law again. "Dukes of Hazzard" star Tom Wopat was arrested Wednesday and charged with indecent assault, battery and drug possession. Police in Waltham, Massachusetts, said the 65-year-old actor was stopped in his car after a warrant for his arrest was issued. He was ""indecent assault and battery on a person over 14," and "two bags of white powder believed to be cocaine" were found in his vehicle. Wopat is scheduled to be arraigned today (Thursday) in Waltham, where he's scheduled to perform in opening night of a production of "42nd Street" tonight. The Daily Mail reports he's still expected to perform in the show. TMZ sources say Wopat allegedly inappropriately touched a woman connected with the stage musical. Police have not identified the alleged victim. Wopat, best known for playing Luke Duke on the '80s TV series "The Dukes of Hazzard," is married to his second wife, Kathy. He earned an Emmy nomination for outstanding ensemble performance in 1996 for the television series "Cybill." He continues to act on stage and in film and TV today, recently appearing in Quentin Tarantino's "Django Unchained," CBS' "Blue Bloods" and Netflix's "Longmire." USA Today reports he's also recorded several albums, including a collection of pop standards in 2009 and jazz songs in 2013. Wopat also performed in a Central New York production of "The Will Rogers Follies," produced by the Finger Lakes Musical Theatre Festival, at the Merry-Go-Round Playhouse in 2014. He played the titular humorist, who muses on life during a Ziegfeld Follies variety show of the early 1900s. Syracuse, NY -- A stolen, 60-inch Sony television played a central role during a nearly two-week trial in the January 2016 murder of 18-year-old Jada Dame. The complex trial against 17-year-old Farod Mosley involved theft, a sloppy cover-up job and a reported love triangle in what turned into a classic "whodunnit" case. Prosecutor Melinda McGunnigle tried to simplify the testimony to jurors this afternoon, saying the murder was over a stolen television that Mosley sold after the crime. "The sad thing is, the motive for Jada's death appears to be over a TV," the prosecutor said. McGunnigle ended her 1 hour and 45 minute closing argument by noting that Mosley's fingerprints were on a glove found in a trash can with knives possibly used in the murder at Dame's Eastwood apartment. And there was a very high probability that Mosley's and victim's DNA was on the glove, too. But defense lawyer Charles Keller, in his own 1 hour and 45 minute summation, said Mosley's fingerprints and DNA could have been transferred from other items in the trash can or by police during their investigation. Mosley was staying with Dame at the time. He then accused one of the prosecution's key witnesses of being the actual murderer and staging the scene to blame Mosley. Keller ripped witness Robert Mitchell's credibility, suggesting that Mitchell concocted a story against Mosley to cover his own tracks. "If Robert Mitchell is a liar, you can't find Farod Mosley guilty beyond a reasonable doubt," Keller told the jury. Mosley and Mitchell are cousins. Keller also accused police of focusing on Mosley and ignoring numerous lies that Keller says Mitchell told. Keller pointed out that Mitchell admitted waiting for hours before contacting police -- including driving around with Mosley and helping him take the TV -- after Mosley purportedly confessed to killing Dame the weekend of Jan. 2 to 4, 2016. Mitchell then called his uncle, Syracuse Police Officer Lonnie Dotson, and simply told the officer that he had a "body." "To him, Jada Dame is a body," Keller asserted. "Because he killed her." Mitchell killed Dame because Mitchell was jealous that Mosley was sleeping with her and Mitchell felt Dame was his "true love," the defense lawyer asserted. But prosecutor McGunnigle said that text messages and witnesses proved that Dame was afraid of Mosley -- and also Mitchell -- stealing items from her apartment. Dame had unloaded some items, including a PlayStation, to friends so they wouldn't be stolen, McGunnigle said. The weekend of Dame's death, she told friends she was afraid of Mosley, who was staying at her apartment, McGunnigle said. Mitchell wasn't there at the time, the prosecutor said. At some point, the two got into a fight and Mosley stabbed and strangled Dame, cutting a crucial vein completely, McGunnigle said. The killer then did a shoddy clean-up job before leaving the apartment, likely through a broken window. Dame was left, bloodied and wrapped in a blanket in her bed. McGunnigle said that Mitchell's story was credible, though she acknowledged that he was no saint. "You don't have to believe Robert Mitchell beyond a reasonable doubt," she concluded, noting the physical evidence that included the glove with Mosley's DNA. But Keller spent a long time pointing out what the lawyer said were Mitchell's lies -- down to whether Mitchell actually bought food at McDonald's or not, as he claimed. In one striking piece of testimony, Mitchell said that Mosley carried the 60-inch television out of Dame's apartment under one arm, with a second flatscreen TV under his other arm, and carried them two blocks in a blizzard to Mitchell's waiting minivan. Keller challenged jurors to try to carry the roughly 60-pound flatscreen TV with one arm. He called Mitchell's story absurd. McGunnigle said it wasn't heavier than carrying a small child. Mosley did sell the stolen TV on Facebook. But Keller noted that Mosley asked potential buyers to pick up the TV at Dame's apartment. Why would the killer send someone to the crime scene to get a TV? he wondered. Mosley's fingerprints were in the apartment and on gloves found at the crime scene. Keller suggested that fingerprints could have ended up there during a sloppy police investigation. The defense lawyer accused Mitchell of staging the gloves and three knives in a garbage can to implicate Mosley and two others Mitchell said Mosley claimed were involved. Mitchell realized he couldn't cover up the crime completely, so he tried to pin it on Mosley, Keller said. Only after that point did Mitchell contact police. But McGunnigle said that Mitchell's behavior could be explained by selfishness: that he waited to report Mosley's confession to police because he didn't know what to do. The physical evidence still pointed to Mosley as the killer before the TV was sold, she argued. Keller argued that Dame wasn't actually killed before the TV was sold. He suggested that Dame asked Mosley to sell the TV to get some rent money. She was still alive for a day after prosecutors say the murder happened. She was killed Sunday night into Monday morning by Mitchell, Keller argued. The defense lawyer noted that Mitchell was involved in drugs -- one conviction and a pending drug charge -- and had a history of violence toward women. Mitchell admitted giving another woman, now his wife, two black eyes only days before Dame's death. He has a menacing conviction. "That's not violence towards women?" the defense lawyer asked. The jury is scheduled to begin deliberating late this afternoon following a lunch break. Mosley was charged with murdering Dame and stealing the TV. He faces up to 25 years to life in prison. Photo courtesy of Mark Blask via Facebook By Hank Domin | hdomin@nyup.com Actor John Krasinski was spotted in Upstate New York on Wednesday, scouting locations for his new horror film. Krasinski, best known as Jim Halpert in the television show "The Office," will shoot scenes in Little Falls later this year. The movie, called "A Quiet Place," is being described as a "supernatural thriller." It will be the first time Krasinski has directed a movie for a major studio. Don't Edit Little Falls mayor Mark Blask met with Krasinski and a crew from Paramount on Wednesday. They walked up and down Main Street and spent time in stores. Krasinski "had high praise for how beautiful the city is," the mayor said in a Facebook post. On Tuesday, Krasinski was at the Whitby Hotel in New York City for a screening of his movie "Detroit." Don't Edit Photo: The Associated Press The only co-star listed on IMDB is Emily Blunt, Krasinski's real-life wife. The couple were married in 2010 and they've never appeared onscreen together in a movie. Blunt is best known for "The Devil Wears Prada" and "Edge of Tomorrow." Krasinski is a co-writer of "A Quiet Place." Don't Edit Michael Bay is one of the producers on the movie. He's best known for blockbusters such as "Pearl Harbor," "Armageddon" and the "Transformers" series. "The earliest they would shoot would be October," Blask said. The movie is expected to be released in April 2018, according to IMDB. Don't Edit Photo: Kathe Harrington for NYup.com Little Falls is in Herkimer County, about 20 miles east of Utica. The town certainly qualifies as "A Quiet Place." Check out some beautiful scenes from our photo essay of Little Falls. Don't Edit ILION, N.Y. -- A police raid at James Square nursing home in Syracuse two months ago was the second at a Central New York facility in four years. Investigators with the state Attorney General's Office executed a search warrant at Mohawk Valley Nursing Home in Ilion, Herkimer County, on July 16, 2013. By the time they were done three years later: -- The company that owned the facility, MVNH Associates LLC, pleaded guilty to falsifying business records and had to return $1 million that it had received in Medicaid payments. -- One of the people who owned the company, Gerald Wood III, pleaded guilty to trying to eavesdrop on an investigator's interview and was sentenced to three years' probation. -- His brother and co-owner, Justin Wood, pleaded guilty to conspiring to tamper with evidence. He was sentenced to a one-year conditional discharge and ordered to pay a $750 fine. -- The home's administrator, Justin Prendergast, pleaded guilty to trying to tamper with evidence and was sentenced to three years' probation. -- The director of nursing, Nicolle Wagner Stinson, pleaded guilty to tampering with physical evidence and was sentenced to five years' probation. -- The owner was required to hire an independent monitor to implement reforms. -- The Woods and their father, Gerald Wood Jr., had to divest their ownership under the settlement of a civil case. Justin and Gerald III were precluded from owning or working at a nursing home for a year. The state began investigating a serious medication error involving one patient that went unnoticed for days, and one resident with dementia engaging in unlawful sex with another resident in the nursing home's dining room, the AG's office said in January 2016. The facility's administrators tried to cover up "troubling acts of abuse and neglect" by falsifying an employee's timesheet, tampering with medication records, and eavesdropping on a state investigator's interview of an employee, the AG's office said. The home's new administrator, Mark Smith, did not respond to Syracuse.com's request for an interview. The AG's Medicaid fraud unit raided James Square two months ago, seizing records in an investigation into patient care. The investigation is continuing. A spokeswoman for Attorney General Eric Schneiderman would not comment on what the investigation has found or when it's likely to end. James Square's administrator, Stanley Wojciechowski, referred questions on the investigation to the AG's office. He told Syracuse.com the facility has been working with outside experts, hiring more staff and paying closer attention to the concerns of residents' families. Wojciechowski took over as administrator in late April. He's the facility's fifth administrator since 2015. Five new cases of swine flu detected in Syangja Five new cases of swine flu (Influenza A H1N1) have been identified in Waling of Syangja. A medical team from Kathmandu had arrived in Waling on Saturday for an on-field inspection after a man from the district, who was tested positive for swine flu, died at the TU Teaching Hospital on July 24. Govt decides to accept Rs 52b grant from US The government has decided to accept the assistance amount of Rs 51.38 billion to be received from the United States' Millennium Challenge Corporation for road and electricity transmission line in Nepal. This page no longer exists or may have been moved.If you believe this is a mistake please email Govt in fix over extending Indias umbrella agreement The government is in a fix over giving an extension to Small Development Projects undertaken by the government of India as the term of an agreement between the two countries expires on Saturday. A partnership between Sony and IBM just yielded a world record: they have developed a new magnetic tape system that can store up to 201 gigabits of data per square inch, which amounts to 330 TB worth of uncompressed data - in a cartridge that can fit in the palm of your hand. Sony And IBM Crams 330 TB Of Data In Something That Can Fit In Your Pocket The areal density per square inch of Sony and IBM's magnetic tape drive surpasses that of commercial tape drives - 20 times, in fact. Tape drive technology was invented more than six decades ago and was commonly used as an archival system for tax and health care records. Sony Storage Media Solutions developed the magnetic tape, and IBM says the new milestone indicates that tape storage can still be increased for another decade. To achieve what they had, researchers at IBM needed to develop various new technologies. The company worked closely with Sony for several years, particularly in the field of increasing areal recording densities. "Closing the gap (spacing) between the magnetic tape and magnetic head is critical to achieving high-density recording capabilities for tape storage media," explains Sony in a blog post. Literally reducing that gap involves higher friction at contact points between the tape surface and the magnetic head. This is tricky, though, since less friction is also crucial for high-capacity writing and high-speed reading. In the end, Sony developed two new technologies to create the high-density tape: a better built-in lubricant layer, which keeps things running smoothly; and a new type of magnetic layer. Magnetic layers are typically in liquid form, but Sony used something called sputter deposition instead, a method that semiconductor and hard drive companies have long used to lay down thin films, as Ars Technica notes. What Sony And IBM's High-Capacity Magnetic Tape Could Be Used For Sony thinks this new development in storage technology shows great potential for being able to store data over long periods, space saving capabilities, low power consumption, and low cost. That being said, these tapes will no doubt be more expensive should Sony and IBM commercialize them since it involves a more complex manufacturing process. Accessing data from this type of storage system won't be as rapid as the best SSD solutions, but they'll likely attract companies who need to store years and years' worth of data in "just in case" situations. Again, an earlier type of this technology was used for archiving documents, so it could serve that purpose again, only this time bigger and more efficient than before. 2022 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. As little as ten years ago, you couldnt discover news things like you can today. Whether you consider this to be a curse or a blessing, the content available on the Internet has changed dramatically over the last few years. Back in the Mad Men era of content, in the 1950s and 60s, content was built for marketing in a poster and paper type fashion, with a heavy focus on radio. Now, everything is becoming digital. So, whether you like it or not, you need a really good website to survive out there. According to We Are Socials figures, Internet users have grown by 82 percent (that is around 1.7 billion people) since the beginning of January 2012. Another 1.3 billion people (and their pets) have started using social media in the past five years; thats around eight new users every second. When you picture how many more people that means are consuming content, it proves how there needs to be new, fresh and exciting content out there, day in and day out, to capture their attention. So, with this in mind, have you thought lately just how big the void is that the Internet fills? Ink supplier Toner Giant has run some numbers and it turns out that, if you were to print the entire Internet, you could get to the moon and back 107 times on a bridge of paper. Considering the growth of the Internet in such a short space of time, you really have to wonder whether its sustainable to carry on expanding at such a fast rate. Its easier to understand this growth if we look at the Internet not as users, but as data. Every second, around 6,000 tweets go into the Twitter feed, 40,000 searches are sent through Google and over 2 million emails are sent. Researchers spent seven years looking into how much stuff there was on the Internet, and they came to the conclusion that there were around 4.66 billion Web pages online in March 2016, not including the Dark Web. Now, this is where it starts to get confusing. Live Science reports that In 2014, researchers published a study in the journal Supercomputing Frontiers and Innovations estimating the storage capacity of the Internet at 10^24 bytes, or 1 million Exabytes. A byte surmounts to a data unit made up of eight different bits and is equal to one character; say, for instance, the letter A. An Exabyte is 1 billion bytes and there are a million Exabaytes, probably much more than currently on the Internet. Thats an awful lot of storage taking up space on what we just see as the Internet. To think that the Internet is stored, in essence, on servers in big warehouses, makes us ask the question: could we run out of land space before we run out of space on the Internet? There are currently 252 data centers in the U.K., but Cisco projects that that number is going to triple in the next five years to accommodate growing numbers of Internet users. Its also worth noting that these data centers dont run themselves; they need energy and, although most are looking to green energy, this takes time, which, at the minute, we dont have. If we look at Googles data centers alone, there are eight listed in the U.S., one in South America, four in Europe and two in Asia, but the cloud sites arent easy to measure and they are worldwide. Each of these data centers are well over 100,000 square feet, with one in Oklahoma measuring an enormous 980,000sqft. Google does not disclose the finer details of its data centers, but estimates can be reached through announcements on expansions. Due to the sheer size of Googles data centers, it has led to it buying more renewable energy that any other corporation in the world. Data Center Knowledge reported Google has signed 20 purchase agreements for 2.6 gigawatts (GW) of renewable energy. This means that, while renewable energy may not be available everywhere or in the quantities Google needs, Google purchases the same amount of renewable energy as it consumes. Google knows that renewable energy takes funding and time, so it is pumping money into that industry as well, with a reported $2.5 billion in equity funding to develop solar and wind energy across the globe. Whether renewable energy can respond to the funds it is being fed is yet to be seen. Perhaps Toner Giants calculations are telling; if the Internet can already reach the moon and back 107 times, is it time it booked a one-way ticket so we can move data centers to the moon? Govts fish farming project flounders The governments plan to develop a fishery block under the Prime Minister Agriculture Modernisation Project in Chitwan district has hit a snag due to lack of interest shown by farmers in digging ponds. On November 11, the EU announced the renewal, until November 14, 2023, of the sanctions against officials linked to the Administration of Nicolas Maduro. | Read More IBN tells Forest Ministry to grant forest clearance Investment Board Nepal (IBN) has directed the Forest Ministry to provide forest land to the Arun 3 and Upper Karnali hydropower projects which have lain in limbo due to a dispute between their Indian developers and the ministry over its new guideline which conflicted with past agreements. Jajarkot without anti-rabies vaccines People infected with rabies virus in Jajarkot are compelled to travel all the way to Banke or Surkhet for anti-rabies shots as the District Hospital is without anti-rabies vaccines for the past two months. Landslide buries jeep in Dhading, obstructs Prithvi Highway A landslide triggered by incessant rain that occurred at Tinggrang Jogimara of Benighat Rorang Rural Municipality-10, Dhading has buried a Bolero jeep at 6am on Thursday. Legal trouble: Lawmakers turn up the heat on NOCs land purchase deal Lawmakers on Wednesday raised their concern regarding Nepal Oil Corporation (NOC)s controversial land purchase deal, blaming the enterprise for adopting unlawful procedure just to fulfill their vested interest. Nepal-India 1950 treaty: Nepali EPG side on horns of dilemma After four meetings and hours-long deliberations in the last one year, the Nepali side of the Eminent Persons Group (EPG), formed to review treaties and relations between Nepal and India, is still not sure whether to amend the 1950 Peace and Friendship Treaty or replace it with a new one. A Baton Rouge man is under indictment in the New Year's Day shooting death of a 29-year-old woman at her Choctaw Lodge apartment on Mohican-Prescott Crossover. Thailand A. Brooks, 30, 5645 Howell Park Ave., was charged Thursday by an East Baton Rouge Parish grand jury with second-degree murder in the slaying of Asha Davis. Investigators suspect the shooting followed a domestic dispute between Brooks and Davis. Brooks faces a mandatory sentence of life in prison if convicted as charged. The case has been assigned to state District Judge Mike Erwin. Purchases made via links on our site may earn us an affiliate commission Louisiana public schools are among the most at risk in the nation for flooding, according to a new report. Five of the top 10 and 24 of the top 100 counties in the U.S. when it comes to the risk of a school flooding are in the Pelican State, according to the report, which was released Tuesday by The Pew Charitable Trusts, a research and public policy nonprofit, and the consulting firm ICF. We undertake research that helps us to understand the vulnerability of communities, explained Laura Lightbody, director of Pews Flood-Prepared Communities project and one of the study's authors. If anything, the report understates Louisianas school flood risk. Pew failed to locate digital flood maps for seven of the states parishes and consequently left them out. Five are flood-prone coastal parishes: Lafourche, Orleans, Plaquemines, St. Bernard and Terrebonne. The other two are Jackson and Winn parishes, both in the north central part of the state. If included, given their history, some of those parishes likely would have made the top 100 as well. While many past reports have looked at communities with flood risks, few have zereod in on the risks faced by schools. We dont think often about schools, but schools tend to be the heart of communities, Lightbody said. The most at-risk Louisiana county is Cameron Parish, according to Pew. It came in third in the country, earning it 2.3 points on Pews 3-point scale. It was barely edged out for dubious top honors by Monroe County, Florida, and Hyde County, North Carolina. It earned points on each of the three measures that Pew used. All of Camerons four public schools are either in a 100-year or 500-year floodplain. Second, many of the children attending those schools live in the floodplain themselves. And finally, Cameron Parish has past federal disaster declarations, most notably after 2005's Hurricane Rita, which caused severe damage to the parish. St. James, St. John, Vermillion and Livingston parishes also made the top 10 in the nation when it came to flood risk in public schools. Vermillion Parish, which is next to Cameron, earned 1.96 points from Pew and came in ninth nationwide. Thirteen of its 21 public schools are located in a 100-year or 500-year floodplain. Kaplan Elementary in Kaplan flooded during the historic floods in August 2016. Livingston Parish earned 1.86 points, making it 10th in the U.S. Half of Livingstons 46 schools are located in a 100-year or 500-year floodplain. The parish was among the worst hit during the August 2016 floods, with water submerging 17 public schools. The latest estimate of total damage is nearly $120 million. East Baton Rouge Parish came in at 55 on the list. Seven of its 104 schools are in a 100-year or 500-year floodplain. And similar to Livingston, East Baton Rouge Parish had 12 public schools that flooded a year ago. Pew included a map where the most at-risk areas for flooding are shaded dark and south Louisiana was one of the darkest areas on the map. But there are still risks in the northern part of the state. Its not just coastal areas that are at risk of flooding, noted Lightbody. Five non-coastal Louisiana parishes made Pews top 100 list: Bossier, Caldwell, Franklin, Natchitoches and Ouachita. Ouachita Parish was rated the most at risk, of those, coming in at number 19. By its own admission, Pews report is incomplete. Pew was unable to locate digital flood map data from FEMA for 12,536 schools, or about 13 percent of all public schools in the U.S. Lightbody noted there are areas of the country that have never been mapped for flood risk. The organization recommends regular updating of flood maps nationwide. As part of its methodology, Pew looked not just at the potential for flooding at schools, but also in the zip codes in which they are situated. The greater the percentage of land in the zip code in a 100 or 500-year floodplain, the greater the risk was deemed for the school as well. Just because a school is located in a flood zone, thats not the full indication of its risk, Lightbody said. That's why we looked at how flood-prone were the communities surrounding the school. Many of the schools locally that flooded in August 2016 were not in high-risk floodplains, but were near areas that were. Pew makes several recommendations to schools at risk of flooding, including developing comprehensive pre-disaster plans, and, if disaster strikes, to rebuild smarter. Since the August 2016 floods, no flooded schools have thus far relocated, all choosing to rebuild where they were. Lightbody, however, urged schools at the most risk of flooding to seriously consider relocating and noted schools in other parts of the country that are doing just that. As promised when lawmakers failed to pass meaningful legislation to rein in the ever-growing cost of the TOPS college scholarship program this year, there's a new task force on the subject in town. Senate Education Committee Chairman Dan Morrish, R-Jennings, who authored the resolution creating the panel, announced its members this week and said the first meeting will take place in early September. Also included in the group, which was appointed by the two chambers' education chairs along with their leadership, are House Education Committee Chair Nancy Landry, R-Lafayette; Rep. Ted James, D-Baton Rouge; Rep. Thomas Carmody, R-Shreveport; Rep. Franklin Foil, R-Baton Rouge; Rep. Gary Carter, D-New Orleans; Sen. Wesley Bishop, D-New Orleans; Sen. Ed Price, D-Gonzales; Sen. Bodi White, R-Central; and Sen. Mike Walsworth, R-West Monroe. TOPS task force scheduled to meet Sept. 6 The new bipartisan panel of legislators setting out to evaluate the popular Taylor Opportuni Some of these members have been down this road before. Foil proposed a bill this year that would have raised the minimum high school core curriculum grade point average from 2.5 to 2.75. Carter authored one to introduce a need-based element to the formula when there's a shortfall. Neither made it through the process, just like many prior efforts haven't. Perhaps the fact that lawmakers were bent on fully funding TOPS for the new academic year undermined the sense of urgency created a year earlier, when the state funded only 70 percent and families had make up the difference even though there's no guarantee they'll be able to do the same in the future. That plus the fact that lawmakers are clearly reluctant to curtail an entitlement that's so popular with so many constituents. Yet on paper, there's pretty widespread agreement that something needs to change, and this task force will surely have plenty of ideas. The real question is whether it's going to be yet another task force whose recommendations are quickly consigned to the shelf. A 49-year-old Covington man who was arrested last month and accused of raping an 8-year-old girl was indicted by a 22nd Judicial District Cour Nepali man dies in Qatar accident A Nepali man died in an accident in Qatar. The deceased has been identified as 40-year-old Lilajung Gurung of Dordi Rural Municipality -9, Lamjung. Bangarra Dance Theatre's artistic director, Stephen Page, said the company's newest work, Bennelong, was a project that would have been almost impossible for it to do 10 years ago. He said the ambition and scale of the work were such that the Indigenous contemporary dance company had to build up its strength to be able to present this tribute to the life and legacy of Bennelong, the most heavily documented of Indigenous men in his era and someone whose life still resonates today. Bangarra dance company tells the story of Bennelong at the Cnaberra theatre. Photo by Karleen Minney. Credit: Karleen Minney Working with colleagues including dramaturg Alana Valentine and composer Steve Francis, Page created a work about Wongal man Woollarawarre Bennelong who in 1789 was captured on the orders of Governor Arthur Phillip and would be given a house on Bennelong Point, away from his own country and people. He would sail to Britain in 1792, returning in 1795, living uneasily between the two worlds of Indigenous people and Europeans before he died in 1813. Page called him the "first experiment" by Phillip and said his story retained a power and relevancy for contemporary Australians, many of whom were unfamiliar with it. Good morning Canberra and happy Friday. How about all that rain last night? We ended up getting about 17 millimetres yesterday (although Tuggeranong got 25mm), but the weather bureau has forecast only a slight chance of a shower to see us through the last day of the work week - let's see how that goes. Today will see a top of 10 degrees, having got down to a low of 6 degrees overnight. Let's take a look at what's making headlines. $1 billion on the big four Giant global shipping lines ran a cartel for importing cars into Australia in a "deliberate, systematic" scheme resulting in a landmark conviction for one company and a massive $25 million fine. In the first case of its kind, Federal Court Justice Michael Wigney said Japanese company Nippon Yusen Kabushiki Kaisha (NYK) had admitted colluding with other shipping lines for contracts to import cars. NYK Line has been hit with a landmark $25 million penalty. NYK, headquartered in Tokyo, is one of the world's largest shipping conglomerates. The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission alleged that company and other carriers had struck a deal that they would not seek to alter their market shares or try to win existing business from each other. Mention the word prostitution and theres more than a fair chance that most people will automatically think of a drug-dependent female in high heels and a mini-skirt shivering on a cold and darkened street in a dodgy part of the city. This stereotypical image is largely informed by popular cultural and media representations of sex workers and red-light districts. Socially conservative politicians, religious organisations, and certain branches of radical feminism also play an instrumental role in perpetuating this stereotype and reinforcing the stigma endured by sex workers. "Consensual sex work and human trafficking for sexual exploitation are wrongly conflated, by certain political, religious and feminist groups, as being one and the same thing." Credit:Stocksy However, sex work is much more complex and nuanced in terms of the types of people who offer commercial sexual services, the types of sex work they perform, where sex work takes place, and why people engage in it. To be clear, sex work is used here to refer to consensual sexual encounters between two or more adults for some form of payment. Sex work includes different types of erotic labour such as street work, brothel work, in-calls, lap-dancing, web-camming and pornography. Sex work may involve direct and indirect sexualised interactions between provider and client. The lawyer for a former CFMEU boss accused of destroying documents has slammed trade union investigators for charging his client with an offence that did not exist. David Hanna briefly appeared in Brisbane Magistrates Court on Friday after reportedly being charged in June with destroying documents in April 2014. Former trade union boss Dave Hanna (centre) leaves the Magistrates Court during royal commission hearings. Credit:AAP The 52-year-old was originally charged with a section of the Royal Commissions Act that did not exist and had to have the offence amended at his first mention. Outside court, solicitor Peter Fisher said Mr Hanna was looking at all his options. Police have released CCTV footage of an attempted ATM theft north of Brisbane, in a public appeal for help to find those responsible for the failed ram raid. A stolen ute was driven through the front doors of a shopping centre on Anzac Avenue, Kallangur, just before 4am on July 28, according to police. Footage shows the ute driving into the shopping centre and reversing into a standalone ATM in an attempt to remove it. The ute was rammed into the ATM a number of times but failed to dislodge it, and the vehicle was reverse back out through the entry. No money was stolen. Several Labor MPs in marginal seats have vowed that their votes on euthanasia will not be swayed by a targeted leafleting campaign by opponents of assisted dying. Lobby group Right to Life has focused its energies on nine electorates, with the organisation confirming it has distributed about 270,000 leaflets so far. Some MPs have voiced their anger about the leaflets, saying they were designed to look as if they had been produced by the MPs themselves. Legislation to allow voluntary euthanasia in limited circumstances will be introduced to parliament for a conscience vote later this year. Pokharas 4-decade-old dream within grasp The four-decade-old dream of Pokhara residents to build an international airport in their city is coming closer to fruition, with the construction of the project formally beginning on Wednesday. Bangkok: Foreign Minister Julie Bishop will this weekend push for a further widening of sanctions against North Korea at Asia's biggest security forum where the rogue state faces a diplomatic barrage over its nuclear weapons program. "We believe there is more other countries can do to put pressure on this nation to change its behaviour, including nations that have financial relationships with North Korea and that, of course, includes China," Ms Bishop said during a two-day visit to Thailand. Australia toughened its sanctions against North Korea in June amid rising tensions on the Korean peninsular and now has bans on more than 100 individuals, companies or groups associated with North Korea. Ms Bishop said Australia is open to any initiatives to pressure North Korea, after the United States said it is seeking talks on how Pyongyang could be suspended from the annual 27-member ASEAN Regional Forum in Manila. Policeman who threw away bomb felicitated Recently promoted Nepal Police Assistant Sub-Inspector Durga Bahadur Rana, who caught a bomb hurled at a polling centre in Dang during local polls with bare hand and threw away preventing casualties, has been felicitated amid a programme in the Capital on Thursday. A jury acquitted a 32-year-old Bryan man on Wednesday who had been accused of groping and sexually assaulting a girl for several years beginning around 2006. Jurors deliberated for five hours before ruling that Eric Wayne Macias was not guilty of the two second-degree felonies for which he had been charged. A Brazos County grand jury indicted Macias in February of this year after allegations surfaced that he had sexually assaulted and groped a child over a period of two to three years beginning more than 10 years ago. A case filed in 2011 is pending against Macias involving another child; that case was supposed to go to trial last year, but was delayed once the second sexual assault accusation was made against Macias. Kara Comte, assistant district attorney, said Tuesday that the district attorneys office would decide how to proceed with the other case once the trial this week was finished. Attorneys presented their closing arguments Wednesday morning in 361st District Judge Steve Smiths courtroom, sparring over the possibility of collusion between the two accusers. David Barron, Maciass attorney, pointed to contradictions in the previous days testimony as evidence of reasonable doubt in regards to his clients guilt, suggesting the second accuser had been lying in her testimony. With one case resolved, Macias still faces the other, for which he is charged with indecency with a child by sexual contact, a second-degree felony punishable by up to 20 years in prison and a $10,000 fine. Regarding the other case, Barron said, I would hope the D.A. would not try that one, but thats their decision to make. Comte said her office was disappointed, but we respect the jurys decision. She said that a decision on the other case had not yet been made. After the trauma of driving up to the crash site where her children died, Audrey McCleary has not been able to return to her job as an emergency room nurse. She calls the January morning when she approached the wreck and saw the injuries -- the blood pouring from her 18-year-old daughter and 11-year-old son's ears -- the worst day of her life. She remembers the panic that crept in while watching the chest compressions and the trance that followed. "I was in total shock and walked around in a daze with my husband, thanking those that were there for their efforts," she later recounted in a post of a Facebook group devoted to medical professionals. "I was still in ER nurse mode at that point which helped me hold it together I think." Madison and Tanner McCleary were on the way to their school in Jourdanton, near San Antonio, when the car they were in collided with a pickup. Both were pronounced dead at the scene. Their loss left the family in a deep grief -- but out of the tragedy, McCleary was determined to create something positive to remember her children by. "Our biggest fear is that people will forget about them," she said. About 10,000 bright blue wristbands later, the family is asking the public to participate in a "kindness movement" they are dubbing "Spread Kindness for M and T." They ask that people do good for those around them in honor of Madison and Tanner, who were known for their own acts of kindness during their lives. With the campaign comes wristbands that read, "#spreadkindnessforMandT." On Twitter, several posts with the hashtag show pictures of the #spreadkindnessforMandT wristband in places as far as Easter Island and New York, along with pictures of a few musicians, including Randy Rogers and Wade Bowen, Madison's friends got to pose with the wristbands or signs at concerts. In College Station, family friend Brayla Leighton was motivated by the family to hold a school supply drive for South Knoll Elementary, which both Madison and Tanner attended when the family lived in College Station. Their parents, Audrey and Kevin McCleary, grew up in College Station, and Madison and Tanner are the grandchildren of Brazos County Precinct 1 Justice of the Peace Mike McCleary. "It's just been a lot for the family," Leighton said. "So I told Audrey I'm just going to do my best to keep the memory of them alive down here, and that's what I'm going to do." She said donating school supplies is about helping people in the community who help so many others. She said it felt like a natural fit -- teachers generally run out of supplies by mid-year, and the family has a connection with this campus. She said Madison and Tanner were inspiring to be around when they were alive, and she smiles when she recalls coming across strangers around town wearing her bright blue wristbands. Other examples of acts of kindness are scattered among #spreadkindnessforMandT posts. Most are posts about people paying for other people's food at restaurants, which is how McCleary said the idea came to her. While visiting the family's favorite burger spot between College Station and Jourdanton, she said she and her husband left their waitress -- the same one who served them when they visited the restaurant with Madison and Tanner -- a $50 tip. She said they didn't wait for the waitress' response, but driving away, she said it felt right. "We left the tip and put a note that said, "you were our waitress when we were here with the kids," and I ended it with, "spread kindness." I think that's what put the seed in our minds," McCleary said. "We thought it would be a great thing if we could do things in honor of the kids like that." She said it's as much about doing something for her children as it is about coping with their loss. "The grief is so overwhelming, that it gives us something else to think about -- rather than how sad we are," she said choking up. "I just love to see people doing things in honor of our kids. It's just great." Anyone can drop off supplies at the Texas Agrilife Extension South Campus at 1470 William D. Fitch Parkway and now at the Wellborn Specialty Utility District offices at 4118 Greens Prairie Road W in College Station until Aug. 18. Next to the donation drop offs are free wristbands. After many miles, three textbook chapters and five quizzes, it's safe to say senior Caroline Garcia made the most of her time studying on one of the Texas A&M library's new bike desks. The communications major, who was studying in Sterling C. Evans Library on Wednesday, said not only was she happy with her productivity, but she even found the FitDesk Bike Desk to be more comfortable than its counterparts at the university's student recreation center. The six stationary bike desks were installed and open for use Tuesday in three locations across the campus: Evans Library, the West Campus Library and the Medical Sciences Library. The adjustable units include an attached desk space, a water bottle holder and a ride computer to track the time, distance and calories burned during each session. Jared Hoppenfeld, interim director of the West Campus Library, said at about $300 per unit, he is confident the bikes will be a good investment. He said not two minutes after installing the units at his library, a group of students had already gathered around to give them a try. "I went downstairs to get the signs, and when I got back three students were taking pictures, sitting on it and asking me questions about the bikes," Hoppenfeld said. He said in the first day of being installed, eight students responded to a voluntary online survey about the bikes and several indicated that they would be "more likely to come to the library to study if they could use the bike." Garcia while she had been aware of the bike desks being installed at the West Campus Library, she had no idea they would be at Evans Library as well until she arrived Wednesday afternoon. She said riding the bike while doing her school work made her feel more productive than just sitting at a table, while simultaneously saving her the time of heading to the gym for a workout afterward. "I used to take books to walk on the treadmill, but those are not designed to hold a text book," Garcia said. "I'm very kinesthetic, so I'm much more productive if I'm moving." Hoppenfeld said the bike desks are a part of a larger effort in the libraries to implement innovative strategies and technologies. As resources increasingly move online, Hoppenfeld said they are hoping the new opportunities help keep the libraries relevant. "For a long time libraries were here to provide information, but that has changed formats over the years," Hoppenfeld said. "... It's not just about information now; the library as a place has evolved to include collaborative spaces and be more welcoming and open. [The bike desk] is just another innovative idea." He said the idea for the bike desks first came about just over a year ago when a library staff member saw the units in the American Libraries magazine and suggested it as an idea for an innovative addition to their facilities with beneficial health implications. According to a study conducted at Clemson University, Hoppenfeld said the use of bike desks "led to improved information retention, sleep quality and academic performance." Hoppenfeld said he and his colleagues have been pleased with the positive response the bikes have received over the past two days and has high hopes for their popularity when the new semester starts at the end of the month. Garcia said now that she has had a hands-on opportunity with the bike desk, she is certain she will return. "It was great," she said. "I'll definitely be back." Politicians and profiteers Fulfilling Dr KCs demands would adversely affect financial interests of political leaders July 2, 1930 - July 30, 2017 LeRoy Pettit, 87, of Bryan, passed away on Sunday, July 30, 2017, in Bryan. A visitation is scheduled from 6 to 8 pm on Thursday, August 3, 2017, at the funeral home. Funeral service honoring his life will be 10 am Friday, August 4, 2017, at the funeral home. Graveside Military Honors by the Air Force will be at the graveside service immediately following. Services are in the care of Callaway-Jones Funeral and Cremation Centers Bryan-College Station. LeRoy was born to Lester Pettit and Glodie Kemple Pettit on July 2, 1930, in Otisco, Indiana. He joined the United States Air Force in 1951. LeRoy married his first wife, Bernice Vaughn in 1954, while stationed at Bryan Air Base, they had four children. They moved to Wichita Falls, where Bernice passed away in 1971, which led to LeRoy retiring from the Air Force. He and the children then resided in Bryan. In 1971, LeRoy began working for Gulf (now K.D. Timmons) in Bryan. It was during this time, he began courting his second wife, Mildred who had two children. In 1972, LeRoy and Mildred were married, uniting two families into one. LeRoy and Mildred raised their family on 24th Street in Bryan, all the while he worked 12 -15 hour days as a Fuel Delivery driver for K.D. Timmons. He loved what he did and took great pride in working. The family jokes that he only retired because he was "forced" to. Up until his passing, you could always spot LeRoy in his white Chevron uniform shirt and he spent many hours "visiting" the office. He loved spending time with his work family. If LeRoy wasn't working or spending time with his family, you could find him "treasure hunting" at Wolf Pen Car Wash. He loved sifting through the vacuum cleaners-finding all things shiny that had been picked up. He always had trinkets and stories to tell about the items he found. LeRoy was also an avid reader; he loved receiving his book club packages in the mail. All who knew him will remember LeRoy as a quiet and gentle soul. He is preceded in death by his parents Lester and Goldie; his first wife Bernice Vaughn Pettit; his second wife Mildred Kirby Pettit; his brothers Elber Pettit and Richard Pettit. He is survived by his sons Doug Pettit, John Pettit and wife Jenny, and James Petti; his daughters Mary Chenault, Anna Neff, and Carol Bounds and husband Bobby; his brothers Kenneth Pettit and wife Paula, of Jeffersonville, IN., Gilbert Pettit and wife Carol, of Manchester, TN; his sisters-in-laws Mary Pettit and Arsie Pettit; his sister Mary Price, of Jeffersonville, IN; LeRoy loved his eighteen grandchildren and thirty-three great grandchildren. LeRoy's family asked that your memorial donation is given to the Crestview Benevolent Fund, 2505 East Villa Maria Road, Bryan, Texas 77802 in Memory of LeRoy Pettit. Express condolences at CallawayJones.com Unfinished business Local officials have been elected, now their authority must be spelt out through laws Twenty-four years ago, in order to escape poverty and violence, Nury Chavarria left Guatemala and crossed the border into the United States without a visa. Since then she has lived and worked and raised four children in Norwalk. But on July 19, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency (ICE) ordered her deported back to Guatemala. Why? Because she is an undocumented immigrant and President Trump maintains undocumented immigrants are responsible for an increase in the murder rate and violent crimes and a decrease in the material standard of living of middle and lower-class citizens. However, it is not true that the murder rate has increased. Innumerable studies have confirmed two simple yet powerful truths about the relationship between immigration and crime: immigrants are less likely to commit serious crimes or be behind bars than the native-born, and high rates of immigration are associated with lower rates of violent crime and property crime. This holds true for both legal immigrants and the unauthorized, regardless of their country of origin or level of education. In other words, the overwhelming majority of immigrants are not criminals by any commonly accepted definition of the term, according to the American Immigration Council. (https://www.americanimmigrationcouncil.org/topics/immigration-and-crime) Furthermore, as we shall see below, undocumented immigrants are not responsible for the fact that middle and lower-class individuals and families have suffered a decrease in their material standard of living. But first lets deal with the argument that undocumented immigrants should be deported because they are here illegally. Clearly when Ms. Chavarria and other migrants crossed into our country without visas they became illegal immigrants. But before you condemn them for their actions you might think about what you would have done if you were in their shoes. Then, too, you might consider just how difficult it is for poor, working class individuals fleeing violence and poverty to obtain green cards that allow them to enter and stay in the United States as permanent residents. And consider also that, as Anatole France put it: The law in its majestic equality forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, beg in the streets and steal loaves of bread. Or recall that Rosa Parks was arrested for refusing to move to the back of a bus in 1955. Or following the lead of John Rawls, you might reflect on the rules and enforcement mechanisms you would want to govern your world if when you woke up you werent sure whether you were an undocumented immigrant or a citizen. Or consider the ethical arguments for open borders in the article on immigration in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Or view Harvard Philosopher Michael Sandels discussion of the topic, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJgEnHbLN-I Or read Seyla Benhabibs, the Eugene Meyer professor of Political Science and Philosophy at Yale Universitys, essay on The Morality of Migration. The point is: We want our laws and the mechanisms we use to enforce them to reflect the enlightenment values embodied in our founding documents. So, ask yourselves if law enforcement officials who would force Nury Chavarria to return to Guatemala reflect those values. Now lets consider issues related to the economics of illegal immigration. Economics at its heart is about cost/benefit analysis. So, economists ask whether the cost of illegal immigrants in the U.S. outweighs the benefit they provide from the point of view of the country as a whole or low skilled workers or highly skilled workers or business women and men or the country the immigrants left or the world. And their answers are: The benefit of illegal immigration far outweighs the cost for the country as a whole, highly skilled workers, business owners and the world. But for a few low skilled workers and some municipalities, the cost slightly outweighs the benefit. In summary, illegal immigration is not the problem it is trumped up to be (pun intended). And, for President Trump to suggest illegal immigrants are in any way responsible for an increase in violent crime or a decrease in our collective welfare is worse than nonsense. It is reprehensible scapegoating. Paul Cantor is a resident of Norwalk and the founder of Stand Up Norwalk. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate WILTON Erik Kaeyer started drawing for fun again six months ago, after a 30-year hiatus since college. Reading a novel about artists inspired him to pick up charcoal pencils and draw, he said, though he often sketches design ideas for his architect firm in New York. He recently submitted a charcoal sketch of his first car to Wilton Librarys 73rd annual Wilton Artists Summer Show Exhibition, which opened July 14 and runs through Aug. 23. The car was a 1971 orange Volkswagen Beetle passed down from his grandmother that he and his father restored together. The sketch is now part of an art series of cars, including a 1972 Triumph TR6, the classic Toyota Land Cruiser and a 1959 Fiat Mini, requested from a friend. He heard about the summer show from his wife, who read about it in the newspaper, he said. I enjoy the mental focus required to create the realistic pieces and art should be shared and not sit on a shelf, said Kaeyer, principal and vice president of KG+D Architects. As I descend from a long line of artists, sculptors, political cartoonists, and architects, I guess some of it is in my blood. The summer show features more than 50 adult artists from Wilton, who either live or work in town. Art categories range from sculptures and sketches to paintings and pastels. Aurora Campanella submitted two still life pieces a painting of oranges and a graphite drawing of lemons. Campanella studied painting and art at Bridgeport University but pursued a career in graphic design for 35 years. Now that shes been retired for eight years, she said has more free time to rekindle her love for the arts and to share her work with the community. She entered the summer show for the first time because she felt it was important to contribute to the different kinds of art people produce in town. Its interesting to see everyone coming together and seeing all the different people that are involved in either painting or some type of fine art, Campanella said. And theyre your neighbors and you dont know it. Ed MacEwen, Wilton Librarys volunteer art chairman, shared similar sentiments. This show always puts smiles on peoples faces when they recognize their next door neighbors, teachers, babysitters or other people in their Wilton lives who have been moved by a creative spirit, MacEwen said. This two-month exhibition really showcases the talent that thrives within this community. Most works will be available for purchase, with a portion of the proceeds benefiting the library. The exhibition can be viewed at Wilton Library, 137 Old Ridegfield Road. skim@hearstmediact.com; 203-842-2568; @stephaniehnkim Special Events Wednesday, Aug. 9 Farm to You Llamas, Alpacas, and Sheep, 2-3 p.m. Children in grades K and up are invited to meet and greet llamas, alpacas, and sheep. Come learn about how these animals provide fleece and wool for people. There will be a spinning demonstration so kids can see the process of turning fleece and wool into items such as sweaters and blankets. Registration required. Register online or call 203-762-6336. Calendar Tuesday, Aug. 8 New Yorker Shorts: 5 Weeks of Short Stories from The New Yorker Magazine, 12-1:30 p.m. Professional book discussion leader Susan Boyar discusses a short story published in The New Yorker magazine from the previous week's issue. The current issue of The New Yorker is available in the Reading Room for in-library use or it can be downloaded through RBdigital. Bring lunch; beverages will be provided. Advance registration suggested. Register online or call 203-762-6334. Tuesday, Aug. 8 Cupcake Club, 2-2:45 p.m. Follow step-by-step instructions to decorate a fancy cupcake! For children ages 6 - 12. Caregivers must stay with children 8 and under. Registration required. Register online or call 203-762-6336. Tuesdays and Thursdays, Aug. 8 &10, 15 & 17, 22 & 24 Scratch Class for Tweens, 4-5 p.m. Interested in computer programming but don't know where to start? Scratch is a fun, creative, and visual programming language designed as a stepping stone to more advance computer programming languages. No experience required! During this program, students will learn the basics of Scratch programming and create finished Scratch projects. This program is taught by Ashley Li and meets Tuesday and Thursday over the course of 8/8 - 8/24. Ages 11-13. Ashley Li is a rising college sophomore who attends Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland. She is studying biomedical engineering. When not studying, she mentors Baltimore middle school students in Science Olympiad and volunteer with Habitat for Humanity, a non-profit dedicated to building homes for those in need. Registration required. Register online or call 2003-762-6336. Tuesday, Aug. 8 and Thursday, Aug. 10 Book Bird Houses for Teens & Tweens, 5-6:30 p.m. Join us for two fun and creative sessions. We'll paint, decoupage and produce one-of-a-kind book bird houses using classic children's books for adornment. Give as a unique gift or keep for yourself. For students entering grades 6-12. Limited space. Registration required. Sponsored by the John & Patricia Curran Teen Fund. Register online or call 2003-762-6342. More Information 137 Old Ridgefield Road 203-762-3950 www.wiltonlibrary.org See More Collapse Tuesday, Aug. 8 Breast Cancer Survivors' Support Group, 6-8 p.m. Post-treatment breast cancer survivors are invited to join in this monthly support group led by Nina Marino, LCSW. Nina was the Clinical Director for 15 years of the former Breast Cancer Survival Center and is a breast cancer survivor. Please email Nina at Cancersurvival2@aol.com with any questions. No charge. Registration highly encouraged. Register online or call 203-762-6334. Wednesday, Aug. 9 Personalize a Tumbler or Glass Water Bottle, 10 a.m. to 12 p.m. Learn how to use the Cricut, our die cutter and create a unique water bottle to give someone or use yourself! $5 for a tumbler or $8 for a glass water bottle to offset costs, payable upon arrival. Must have a valid CT Library Card and signed Innovation Station Agreement form. For seventh-graders through adults and sixth-graders accompanied by adults willing to learn, too. Registration required. Register online or call 203-762-6342. Wednesday, Aug. 9 Enhancing Your Pictures with Photoshop, 2-4 p.m. Finished scanning in your photos, but want to learn some basic tips on enhancing them? This introductory session will get you started. For 7th graders - adults and 6th graders accompanied by adults willing to learn, too. Must have a CT library card and signed Innovation Station Agreement Form. Please bring the completed form to the session. Registration required. Register online or call 203-762-6342. Wednesday, Aug. 9 Fidget Spinner Design Workshop for Teens, 6-7:30 p.m. Want to make your own fidget spinner? Learn Tinkercad to 3-D design your own! Afterwards, schedule time to come print it out. We'll even supply the ball bearings and help you put it together. For teens entering grades 7-12. Sponsored by the Amadeo Family. Space limited. Registration required. Register online or call 203-762-6342. Now through Aug. 23 73rd Annual Wilton Artists Summer Show Exhibition Exhibition celebrates more than 50 Wilton artists displaying diverse styles, media, and subjects in this two-month long annual Summer Show. A majority of the works are available for purchase with a portion of the proceeds benefiting the library. Classes in Innovation Station this week Monday, Aug. 7: Embroider or Monogram It!, 10:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. Monday, Aug. 7: Stitch Time for Knitters and Crocheters, 1-2:30 p.m.; Tuesday, Aug. 8: Create Stickers, Cards, Gift Tags & More, 10:30-11:30 a.m. or 11:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.; Thursday, Aug. 10: Scanning Slides into Digital Images, 2-3:30 p.m.; Friday, Aug. 11: Embroider or Monogram It!, 12-2 p.m.; Friday, Aug. 11: New Life for Old Videos, 1-3 p.m. Childrens programs this week Monday, Aug. 7, 14 & 21: Drop-in Summer Crafts, 10 a.m. to 7:30 p.m.; Tuesday, Aug. 8, 15 & 22: Terrific Tales for Twos and Threes, 10:15-10:45 a.m.; Wednesday, Aug. 9, 16 & 23: Books for Babies, 10:15-10:45 a.m.; Wednesday, Aug. 9, 16 & 23: Wonderful Ones and Twos, 11-11:30 a.m.; Thursday, Aug. 10: Movie Theater Thursdays The Lego Movie, 10:15-11:45 a.m.; Thursday, Aug. 10: Movie Theater Thursdays Batman Lego Movie, 2-3:30 p.m.; Friday, Aug. 11, 18 & 25: Movement and Dance, 11-11:30 a.m. WILTON After interviewing multiple firms for a chance to aid in the renovation of the towns antiquated Marhoffer Firehouse, town officials whittled the search down to two candidates a small, locally based architectural firm or a large firm with a bevy of experience in fire station projects. The Fire House 2 Building Committee announced last Wednesday that they have narrowed the search down to two of the four candidates interviewed in late July Wilton-based Rob Sanders Architects and Hamden-based Silver, Petrucelli and Associates. The committee had four really qualified candidates. In the end, they selected one that brought definite local insight and qualifications, and one that brought extensive fire house experience, said town facilities manager, Chris Burney. Richard McCarty, the chairman of the Fire House 2 Building Committee, said that the decision was based heavily on how well each firm stacked up to the projects various needs, the interviews conducted by the committee and the references each firm proffered. Rob Sanders Architects features a team of local talent with Wilton resident Rob Sanders and Ridgefield resident Claire Rainone. Sanders, who serves as the vice president of the board for the Wilton Library Association on behalf of the town selectmen, said that his understanding of the towns fiscal situation and overall dynamic could help smooth out some of projects stickier subjects. One of the things I hopefully bring to the table, and I dont know whether anyone else does, but I have a strong working relationship with the people who make this town run, Sanders said in his interview with the committee. Our citizens are interested in quality services but they have an eye on the cost. I find the plan here [for the fire house] is somewhat smaller than what it started out as, but it is a critical facility and we have to figure out how to make the ends meet, he added. Since the firm is small, Sanders would contract work out to other companies. DiSalvo Engineering Group would handle the structural analysis work and design, Peterson Engineering Group would handle any mechanical, life safety or energy conservation efforts and Professional Construction Services would manage cost estimating and scheduling. Unlike their competition, Silver, Petrucelli and Associates boasts a sizable firm of 49 members, which allows them to keep a vast majority of their work in-house. With the dozens of fire house projects under our belt, we have a very good grip on current market trends and costs, said Dean Petrucelli, a principal at the firm. To date, the firm has been contracted to work on 23 fire houses in Connecticut, including those in Norwalk and Stamford. The firm selected will be charged with remedying a multiplicity of problems plaguing the 60-plus-year-old facility, and doing so within the estimated budget of around $1 million. Throughout the process we have been mindful of the size of the job, we're not building a new firehouse rather it is a renovation to bring the faculty current and to support the delivery of fire and safety services in that section of town and across the community. By that I mean the station is viewed by us all to be required in that area of town, said McCarty. The firehouse, also known as Fire Station 2, requires raised overhead garage doors to accommodate fire equipment from both Wilton and other nearby departments, renovated living arrangements (from restroom and kitchen upgrades to improved sleeping quarters) and upgraded mechanical and electrical infrastructure. Part of the selection process, Burney said, was realizing that the project isnt modeled after a typical fire house, and that it was more of a house with a large garage attached. The Board of Selectmen will review the two architectural firms at their next meeting on Aug. 7. Im comfortable with both of the final two candidates, I think they both bring something very different to the table. We have two companies that can handle the project from two different points of view, Burney said. ptomlinson@hearstmediact.com; 203-842-2570; Twitter: @Tomlinson_PE By Samuel Ssebuliba Sugar companies under the Uganda Sugar Manufacturers Association have urged parliament to review the Sugar Act to bar embellishment of more than one factory in one location. Currently the trade committee is working on the sugar bill that seeks to among other things provide for licensing of sugar factories atleast 50 km away from each other. While appearing before parliaments committee on trade yesterday, the group led by the association chairman of the Uganda sugar manufacturers Association Jim Kabeho said defiant companies should be fined Shs500 million instead of the current Shs10 million. Sugar companies have for long complained of unfair competition from small companies that are often set close to them. Between July 5 and Aug. 2, 16 crimes were reported in the northwest part of Grand Island. Most of the crimes involved broken car windows and thefts, said Capt. Jim Duering of the Grand Island Police Department. The incidents were spread across the citys northwest corridor. But there has been a rash up there, Duering said. So we have been trying to monitor the area pretty closely. No one has been arrested. I know that theres been some names thrown about as suspects. But we dont have anything concrete yet, Duering said. Police advise residents to make sure they remove anything of value from their cars. LINCOLN The Nebraska Hall of Fame Commission has selected Thomas Rogers Kimball as its newest inductee, the commission announced Wednesday. Kimball (1862-1934) was an architect and master planner who designed the Hall County Courthouse. He was a national leader who designed a number of other Nebraska landmark buildings and exhibition facilities. He advised on the planning and design of such facilities as the 1898 Trans-Mississippi Exposition in Omaha and national design competitions for such prominent structures as the Nebraska Capitol. As the Capitol Commissions professional adviser for 14 years, he administered the construction of Nebraskas renowned state Capitol building. He also designed the Burlington Station in Hastings. Kimball was born in Linwood, Ohio, and moved to Nebraska in 1871. He lived in Omaha. His design of the Hall County Courthouse still draws praise today. Nebraska Supreme Court Chief Justice Mike Heavican praised it in a visit Monday. Jill Dolberg, review and compliance coordinator at the Nebraska State Historic Preservation Office, commented on it in a report to Hall County in 2014. The Hall County Courthouse was listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 1977 for its architectural and historical significance, Dolberg said. In addition to being an important seat of the county government, the building is one of only few buildings in Nebraska constructed in the beaux arts style, and the only remaining courthouse constructed in this style. It is also the product of an architect who is considered to be the premier architectural talent in Nebraska, Thomas Rogers Kimball, Dolberg wrote to the county. Our database of historic properties indicates that we know of 36 buildings in the state that were designed by Kimball, and this building is one of only five found outside of Omaha. Trevor Jones, director and CEO of the Nebraska State Historical Society and secretary of the Hall of Fame Commission, said this was a difficult decision for everyone involved. Each candidate has made great contributions to the state of Nebraska, Jones said. Selecting just one person from a list of remarkable nominees was tough. Nebraskans can take pride in all of these candidates. We look forward to inducting Thomas Rogers Kimball as the newest member of the Nebraska Hall of Fame in 2019. Busts of Hall of Fame members are placed in the Nebraska State Capitol. Details on fundraising for commission of a bust of Kimball will be forthcoming. An induction ceremony will be planned in 2019. AURORA Ervin Bamesberger, 94, of Aurora passed away Wednesday, Aug. 2, 2017, at Memorial Community Care in Aurora. Funeral services will be at 10:30 a.m. Saturday at Evangelical Covenant Church, 1009 First St., in Aurora. The Revs. Karl Larson and Jim Garfield will officiate. Interment will be in the Aurora Cemetery. Visitation will be from 6 to 8 p.m. Friday at Higby-McQuiston Mortuary. Memorials may be made to the Evangelical Covenant Church or Lester S. Harter Post 42 American Legion. Condolences may be e-mailed to the family through the mortuary website at www.higbymortuary.com. Ervin Bamesberger, the son of William Frederick and Ruby Agnes (Salmon) Bamesberger, was born on July 30, 1923 at Aurora, Neb., and passed away in Aurora, Neb., on Aug. 2, 2017, at the age of 94. Ervin grew up and attended school in Aurora. He graduated from Aurora High School in 1942. He entered the U.S. Army, serving during WWII, on Jan. 6, 1943. Ervin was involved in the Invasion of Normandy in 1944 and was honorably discharged on Oct. 29, 1945. Ervin returned to work with his father as a carpenter and contractor. His father furnished the pickup, tools and Ervin did all the planning and figuring to complete the jobs. His father passed away on his 35th birthday and at that time Ervin took over the business. On Sept. 4, 1949, Ervin was united in marriage to Evelyn Onken at First Christian Church in Aurora. They had two children, David and Denese. In 1956, Ervin started work at the U.S. Post Office, delivering Christmas packages on a part-time basis while still working his carpenter job full-time. He secured a full-time position at the post office when one became available and then worked his carpenter job part-time. Ervin delivered mail for 35 years, retiring in 1990. During this time he was co-owner with Evelyn of the Color Spot in Aurora for almost 10 years. He retired from carpentry work in 2000. Ervin was a member of First Christian Church for 30 years and the Assembly of God Church for 40 years. He was an active member in both. He became a member of Evangelical Covenant Church in April 2017. Ervin was a very active and proud member of the American Legion. He served as commander two different times. Once when he was commander he and Evelyn went with another couple to the National Convention in Hawaii in 1973. In 2008, Ervin was on one of the first Honor Flights to Washington, D.C. and when he returned he told about his experience to almost every organization, the Aurora High School and even some churches. Everyone said they could tell how honored he was to be an American Veteran. Ervin enjoyed traveling and seeing his children and grandchildren. Ervin was ornery. He most enjoyed his 90th birthday party his family gave for him. Over 300 people attended and he spoke to every one of them. He was preceded in death by his parents; two sisters, Marjorie Blase and Wilma Smith; a brother, Bill Bamesberger; in-laws, Russell and Florence Onken; and a brother-in-law, Bob Scott. Those left to cherish his memory include his wife of over 67 years, Evelyn; two children, David (Alyce) Bamesberger of Naples, Fla., and Denese (Derwin) Callen of Livermore, Calif.; two grandchildren, Lauren Bamesberger of Tampa, Fla., and Drew Callen of Livermore, Calif.; three sisters-in-law, Rachel Scott of Grand Island, Babe Bamesberger of Grand Island and DeEtta (Dallas) Amend of Fountain Hills, Ariz.; a brother-in-law, Lorence Blase of North Platte; and many nieces, nephews and other relatives and friends. It is common to hear elected officials refer to the Rule of Law or affirm that we are a nation of laws. But what does that really mean, and why is it important? The United States Constitution is the foundation for our form of government. It sets forth the purposes and powers of the legislative, executive, and judicial branches of our federal government. The Constitution creates a system of checks and balances that has sustained our nation for more than 200 years. When I took office on January 8, 2015, I pledged an oath to uphold the Constitution. Since taking that oath, there have been several occasions where Nebraska has successfully led or joined other states in lawsuits against federal overreach. Recently, I joined nine other state attorneys general in a letter requesting the phase out of the current Deferred Action Childhood Arrival program (DACA). The letter did not call for immediate removal of any DACA affected persons. The letter was prompted by a December 2014 lawsuit where Nebraska joined several other states challenging the legality of both the expanded DACA program and the new Deferred Action for Parental Accountability (DAPA). President Obama issued these new immigration policies in November 2014 via executive order. Our legal challenge was successful. The United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit held that these programs were unlawful both procedurally and substantively. However, the original DACA executive order signed by President Obama in 2012 is still in effect. The successful legal arguments that struck down the 2014 executive order have the same application to the 2012 executive order. The Constitution provides that Congress has the exclusive authority to establish uniform rules regarding immigration policy. Congress has done that by passing the Immigration Nationality Act (INA), establishing the framework for granting legal status to foreigners wishing to stay in the United States. Although the executive branch has responsibility and authority for implementing the Act, it cannot unilaterally expand or change the plain language of the law. The topic of immigration, particularly the DACA program, evokes strong feelings on both sides of the issue. Persons of goodwill may disagree on the direction of immigration policy. The Constitution provides, however, that the appropriate venue for determining policy direction lies with the legislative branch and not the president acting via executive order. Our Constitution prohibits not only legislating from the bench but also from the Oval Office. The constitutional system of checks and balances and separation of powers is essential to governmental stability. To make an exception allowing the president to expand any law beyond the meaning intended by Congress would violate this most important constitutional principle. It was another tragic incident in Nebraskas prisons. An inmate at the Tecumseh State Prison, Daelan LaMere, 22, apparently had drugs slipped to him by a visitor. When guards went to strip search him, he put a blue pouch of drugs in his mouth and swallowed them, according to an inspector generals report. LaMere later became ill and was found unresponsive in his cell. He died at a Lincoln hospital on June 6. It was ruled an overdose of the drugs Ecstasy and methamphetamine. In a surprise to many, more and more prison incidents seem to involve drugs and alcohol. How inmates get access to drugs and alcohol while in prison is puzzling. A secure location such as a prison should be able to keep drugs out. Its an issue that prison officials have pledged to address, strengthening safeguards against drugs and alcohol getting into the prison system. The LaMere case and other incidents show that it is a major problem, and somehow this pipeline to behind the prison walls must be stopped. A recent story in the Omaha World-Herald showed that intoxicant abuse violations in the states prisons increased 37 percent last year to 2,348. The Tecumseh State Prison, alone, saw 700 violations, an increase of 239 percent. Its absolutely a concern, Nebraska Corrections Director Scott Frakes told the World-Herald. Any time you see a spike in misconduct reports around intoxicants or substances violent activities, weapons, cellphones any of those serious contraband things that can contribute to bad outcomes. In fact, the March 2 takeover of a housing unit that left two inmates dead was sparked by the confiscation of homemade alcohol in inmates footlockers. The alcohol had been made from bread, sugar and fresh fruit. Many inmates wind up in prison because of drug problems. Frakes said 80 percent of inmates have a substance-abuse problem. While many are forced by the fact that they are in prison to go drug-free, others make great attempts to obtain drugs. Unfortunately, drugs can be smuggled into a prison by many sources. They could come from a visitor, a prison staff member, kitchen worker or a contractor entering the prison to fix a plumbing, electrical or some other problem. So its vital that the prison system do a thorough screening of anyone allowed inside prison walls. Frakes announced Friday that stronger measures will be taken. He said the measures will include searches by dogs and staff members; detection devices such as metal detectors, X-ray machines and cameras; and video surveillance and drug testing. According to the World-Herald, the corrections inspector general has recommended more frequent and thorough searches of staff, more frequent use of drug dogs and a review to see whether visitor and staff searches are being done according to protocol and whether the searches are affected by low staffing levels. The prison system must take stronger measures to prevent contraband from reaching inmates. If this can be done, Nebraska might start seeing fewer problems and violent incidents at the prisons. I am writing in regards to flying to Nashville, Tenn., recently for a family gathering. We flew from the Central Nebraska Regional Airport to Dallas, then on to Nashville. This was our first time flying out of Grand Island. It was wonderful the airport staff was very friendly, helpful and courteous at 5 a.m. We flew back to the Grand Island airport five days later. Nice to have only 25 miles for the drive home. Cant wait for our next flight out of Central Nebraska Regional Airport. By Catherine Ageno In a move meant to ease administration of justice, the African Court on Human and Peoples Rights (AfCHPR) has embarked on training of lawyers registered to represent indigent Applicants. According to the president of the Court Hon. Justice Sylvain Ore, the training that kicks off this morning in Arusha, Tanzania is aimed at familiarizing lawyers with the Courts Judicial and operational aspects. He says the three day training will also update the group of forty lawyers on the legal aid scheme. He adds that at the end of the training the lawyers will have been equipped with skills to represent indigent applicants effectively. Currently 61 counsels from 25 countries including Uganda have registered with the court to represent indigent Applicants. The other countries are: Algeria, Benin, Burundi, Cameroon, DR Congo,Egypt, Gabon, Gambia, Italy, Kenya, Leberia, Mali, Mauritania, Nigeria, Rwanda, Senegal, South Africa, Tanzania, Togo, United Kingdom, United States, Zambia and Zimbabwe. The African Court on Humnan and Peoples Rights, estabblished by the Protocol to the African Charter on Human and Peoples Rights on the establishment of an African Court on Human and Peoples Rights, has been in operation since 2006. It was established to complement the protective mandate of the African Commission on Humnan and Peoples Rights, by making binding decisions on human rights complaints filed before it. The Protocol has so far been ratified by 30 AU Member States while State Parties have deposited the declaration under Article 34(6), allowing individuals and NGOs to file complaints before the African Court. By Moses Ndhaye The number of travelers from Kampala to Nairobi has increased as some bus companies plying that route plan to temporarily halt their operations on Saturday ahead of the August 8th elections. According to Alex Mujomba the Currier Manager at Mash Bus Services in Kampala they are not going to risk their buses to operate during the election period. He says currently they are overwhelmed because the number of passengers traveling from Kampala to Nairobi and those coming out of Nairobi has increased tremendously over the past one week. Meanwhile, in Rwanda where the elections are due tomorrow, the situation is not different any different. The buses plying the Rwandan route have registered a huge increase in the number of passengers travelling from Kampala to Kigali, the Rwandan capital. According to the bus terminal manager at Trinity Bus Services in Kampala Jackie Mbabazi, they have been sending 12 buses to Kigali per day, but now the number has increased to 17 buses. She however says the number of passengers traveling from Rwanda to Uganda has reduced. As of Tuesday night, anyone who checks IDs for alcohol purchases in the city of Edwardsville must be live BASSET trained. Following much discussion and deliberation from city officials, staff and local business owners, City Council members reviewed and updated the city ordinance for BASSET training. The changes first proposed for the ordinance included requiring live BASSET trainings within 90 days of hire for those selling/serving alcohol and not permitting young adults under the age of 21 to sell or serve alcohol. Alderman Will Krause said after having received a lot of feedback from local business owners, the proposal was modified one more time. Weve received a lot of feedback on this from local restauranteurs and there was a little bit of confusionEveryone had to be BASSET certified at 18, but there was a section there where an 18 (year-old) can still go up to the table, whod still have to make the determination whether you would choose to card them. If you choose to card that table, you would need to go get another individual who was BASSET certified and 21 or over to come and check IDs, Krause said. That is what has been struck. So, no longer will we have a 21-year-old going to check the ID. Everyone will be live trained in the city. That provision is still being maintained, he added. The Illinois state statute requires individuals must be 18 to serve or sell alcohol. The change to the city ordinance will also require live trainings within 90 days of hire. If youre 18, youd be BASSET certified, in person, with that certification. They would have the authority to check that ID and sell that alcohol, Krause said. The person that would be ringing it up (at a store) would be BASSET trained. They would no longer have to be 21. City attorney Jeff Berkbigler said the trainings will be conducted by the Edwardsville Police Department and the city. The city of Edwardsville, the police department officers (will be conducting the trainings), and were working with the licensees to try and work out a schedule thats convenient for their employees, Berkbigler said. Theres also outside vendors that provide it at a costThe citys trainings are no charge. The live training sessions will be a minimum of four hours long. As discussion came to a close, Krause offered thanks to the Chamber of Commerce for assisting the city in getting the word out. I would like to thank the Chamber of Commerce for holding an informational meeting on this as well and getting the word out to all the local businesses, Krause said. With none opposed, the motion passed unanimously. For more information about BASSET trainings, visit the citys website at www.cityofedwardsville.com or contact the Edwardsville Police Department at 618-656-2131. Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Yasmi Adriansyah (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Thu, August 3, 2017 ASEAN marks its golden anniversary this month. Several public corners of Jakarta are being used to show the association enthusiastically marking its historic anniversary. While commending the achievement of this regional organization for its durability of half a century, one may wonder whether ASEAN has widely benefited the peoples of its member countries. This will be a big, pertinent question. to Read Full Story SUBSCRIBE NOW Starting from IDR 55,500/month Unlimited access to our web and app content e-Post daily digital newspaper No advertisements, no interruptions Privileged access to our events and programs Subscription to our newsletters We accept Register to read 3 premium articles for free Already subscribed? login Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not reflect the official stance of The Jakarta Post. Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin A. Kurniawan Ulung (The Jakarta Post) Bondowoso Thu, August 3, 2017 09:28 1927 4065a5a8898c7cc661d4adf97ab578cb 4 Food coffee,#coffee,Bondowoso,East-Java,coffee-plantation Free Widely known as Kota Tape (The City of Fermented Cassava), Bondowoso in East Java has proven that it deserves a new title: the Republic of Coffee. It takes almost an hour by car from downtown Bondowoso to its main tourist attraction, Kawah Ijen, known for its magnificent turquoise-green sulfur crater lake. If you make a trip to the location, you will be fascinated by the beautiful mountain views around you. Do not forget to bring a jacket because it is cold when you reach the foot of Ijen Mountain. If your jacket cannot warm you up, just get out of your car and try to sip a cup of hot coffee at the coffee shops you will find along the way. If lucky, they will serve you tape goreng (fried fermented cassava), a typical dish in Bondowoso. At Selencak Mini Farm and Coffee Processing in Sukorejo village, Sumber Wringin district, you can not only taste Java Ijen Raung, an Arabica specialty coffee from Bondowoso, but also observe how it is processed from coffee fruit into coffee powder. Selencak Mini Farm and Coffee Processing in Bondowoso (JP/A. Kurniawan Ulung) Coffee farmer Muali, the owner of Selencak Mini Farm, is over the moon as more people are becoming familiar with Java Ijen Raung, especially after the local government named the city the Republic of Coffee in May 2016. This is a republic within the Republic [of Indonesia], the 57-year-old said, laughing. Muali said Bondowoso Regent Amin Said Husni created the republic label as a marketing strategy to show that the city also produces high quality coffee. In 1711, high-quality beans cultivated from Javanese land, including the Ijen Plateau, were first exported to Europe by VOC. There, they were famous as a cup of Java. Bondowosos pride: Muali holds two variants of Bondowosos Java Ijen Raung coffee. (JP/A. Kurniawan Ulung) He understands that Java Ijen Raung might not be as famous as other brands today, such as Gayo Organic from Aceh and Toraja Sapan from South Sulawesi in Indonesia, home to almost 100 variants of Arabica coffee that have been known since 1699. Muali believes that someday, Java Ijen Raung will steal the worlds attention like West Javas Gunung Puntang specialty coffee, which gained recognition from the Specialty Coffee Association of America (SCAA) as Indonesias most recommended specialty coffee in an expo in Georgia, US, in April 2016. For the past seven years, Muali, who focuses on exports, has planted Arabica coffee, which is more in demand by foreigners. Arabica coffee is better than Robusta coffee. It [Arabica] will not make you suffer stomachaches because it contains a lesser amount of caffeine, he said. This is organic coffee. Muali, who became a coffee farmer in 1985 and has 3 hectares of coffee plantation, is upbeat that the quality of taste of Java Ijen Raung will not be left behind. The quality of his coffee, he said, is assured because it comes from trees planted at the foot of Ijen Mountain, which has an elevation of over 9,000 feet, a high elevation considered ideal for growing coffee trees. Quality control: Coffee beans are sorted. (JP/A. Kurniawan Ulung) At such a height, the coffee fruits do not contain large amounts of water and this results in a further concentration of flavor. The cool temperature of the mountain is a challenge. It prolongs bean development because it creates a slower growth cycle for the coffee trees, according to Muali, who mastered coffee processing at the Indonesian Coffee and Cocoa Research Institute in Jember, East Java, in 2012. However, their patience pays dividends because the longer maturation process creates coffee beans with a more interesting flavor. The cooler the temperature, the better the taste, Muali said. According to Muali, coffee farmers do not use chemical substances such as pesticides at the Ijen Plateau because it is an active volcano that provides them with fertile soil. Work in progress: A woman processes Arabica coffee beans at the Selencak Mini Farm in Sumber Wringin, Bondowoso. (JP/A. Kurniawan Ulung) The Central Statistics Agency (BPS) reported that Sumber Wringin had 2,794 ha of coffee plantations with a production capacity of 1,402 tons in 2015. Bondowoso, meanwhile, has 10,660 ha of plantation with a production capacity of 3,427 tons. Some 64 percent of the plantations are Robusta plantations. In Indonesia, the worlds fourth largest coffee producing country, the production of coffee increased from 643,900 tons in 2014 to 664,500 tons in 2015. According to the Trade Ministry, the value of the countrys global coffee exports reached US$ 1.19 billion in 2015, an increase of 15.21 percent compared to the same period in 2014. Muali said Java Ijen Raung had been exported, but this was carried out by agents from big cities, such as Medan in North Sumatra and Bandung in West Java. When the harvest season arrived, they flocked to Sumber Wringin to buy coffee beans in bulk, which were later repackaged and exported. He said if the people of Bondowoso could export coffee on their own, they would be more prosperous. He and other farmers in Sumber Wringin actually want to export coffee, but they do not know how to do it. He expects the government to give local farmers training about exports and imports. He is also concerned about another problem that local farmers hope the government can solve. Bondowoso is the Republic of Coffee, but it doesnt have a coffee barn, he said. Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Luh De Suriyani and I Wayan Juniarta (The Jakarta Post) Denpasar Thu, August 3, 2017 09:49 1927 4065a5a8898c7cc661d4adf97ab58b20 4 Art & Culture bali,bali-art-scene,I-Wayan-Ariana,Keliki-Miniature-Paintings,BenoaBay,reclamation Free It was midday and the temperature in Keliki, a hilly village north of Ubud, was already low by this tropical islands standard when a light rain started pouring down on a spacious Balinese-style family compound. Not even a cup of hot coffee that I Wayan Ariana (Instagram handle: @nanoeari_art) had just served could fight the sudden chill brought about by the rain. I am sorry, it is very cold here, he said apologetically. The talented young painter had just returned from the Kulidan Art Space (@kulidan.kitchen) in Sukawati where he fetched his artworks that had been displayed there for a brief exhibition in mid-July. Ariana then shifted his gaze toward a group of eight local children, who huddled up at the compounds west pavilion, who were learning to paint in the Keliki style, famous for its small-size and elaborately-detailed depiction of traditional Balinese daily life. The chilling temperature apparently did not affect those kids. Four of them were busy completing their paintings, one was strutting around while singing the tune of a popular Balinese pop song, and the other three were enjoying ice cream. Kids, we have to let them learn at their own pace, Ariana, who also teaches Hinduism at a local elementary school, said with a timid smile on his face before giving encouragement to his proteges. I Wayan Ariana (JP/I Wayan Juniarta) The family compound is owned by Arianas older cousin I Wayan Gama, who opened the free-of-charge painting school in 2005 in an effort to preserve the then-declining Keliki painting style. Read also: Miniature art takes stage at Keliki Kawan Exhibition 2017 Prior to the 2002 Bali Bombings, nearly 60 percent of the adults here were painting in the Keliki style and they sold their works to visiting tourists, he recalled. The terrorist attack decimated the islands tourism and, eventually, forced those Keliki painters to abandon painting and become construction workers or laborers to make ends meet. We provide the materials and mentorship for the children as well as help them sell their works to tourists, he said, adding that the work of the children commanded prices ranging from Rp 200,000 (US$15) to Rp 500,000. Devoured: A painting with a very somber theme: the island being devoured by an ogre symbolizing greedy investors. (JP/I Wayan Juniarta) The compound is also the place where 14 years ago Ariana picked up the pencil and brushes and learned the Keliki style for the first time. Conceived by a farmer, I Ketut Sana in the 1970s, the Keliki style was, to a large extent, the local response to a growing tourist industry. The locals wanted to create a beautiful memento that the visitors could easily take back to their home countries. Hence, the miniature size of Keliki style paintings. Keliki style paintings are mostly done on paper with Chinese ink and generally depict a romantic interpretation of daily life in the islands rural villages, the beauty of the islands flora and fauna, as well as Hindu myths and local folklore. The style is famous for its rich gradations and extreme detail, both of which demand hours of prolonged concentration from the painter. Popular opposition: A work by I Wayan Ariana shows his disapproval of the planned reclamation of Benoa Bay. (JP/I Wayan Juniarta) Unlike his seniors, Ariana took a bold step in a recent series of his works. In this series, he utilized the Keliki style to address contemporary problems that haunt his home island. Using the shape of Bali island as a visual landmark that appears throughout the series, he speaks about environmental degradation, uncontrolled tourism, corrupt officials and greedy investors, as well as his interpretation of the islands spirituality. Read also: Bali tourism development getting out of control: Communities The style was born in the 1970s and we need to make it relevant with recent developments in Bali, he said. In one work, he paints fishermen roaming the waters around the island while inside the island, three bright-colored excavators wreak havoc amid what appears to be a pristine jungle and people engaged in a temple ritual. The work is clearly a homage to the islands popular grass-roots movement against the planned reclamation of Benoa Bay. The image of a damaged excavator in the movements signature poster has become one of the most iconic images of 21st century Bali. Yes, I oppose the planned reclamation. It will negatively impact our environment and the livelihood of our fishermen. I believe we need to reevaluate the way we develop our tourist industry here, Ariana said. Critical eye: Ariana uses a traditional style of painting to address contemporary issues. (JP/I Wayan Juniarta) The paintings have been published in a book entitled Bali, Preserving the Paradise, which was launched last June in Keliki. The deluxe, limited edition copy features 24 works from the series. It is available from Littletalks (@littletalksubud), a charming library cafe overlooking Campuhan gorge in Ubud, where Ariana will hold his next solo exhibition in November. With Ariana, the Keliki style has come full circle. The style, whose birth was spurred by tourism, has now started to look at that lucrative industry with a critical eye. Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Winda A. Charmila (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Thu, August 3, 2017 17:48 1927 4065a5a8898c7cc661d4adf97ab6f524 1 City cyber-crime,Deportation Free Assisted by the Jakarta Police, the Directorate General of Immigration under the Law and Human Rights Ministry deported 143 Chinese nationals on Thursday over their alleged involvement in a cyber-fraud syndicate that has made some Rp 6 trillion (US$450 million) targeting wealthy people in China. In total, 153 people were reportedly involved in the syndicate, with the remaining 10 four Taiwanese, one Malaysian and 5 Indonesians still detained at the Jakarta Police headquarters for questioning. The syndicate was reportedly operating in Jakarta, Bali and Surabaya. "They have been operating since 2016 with profits reaching Rp 6 trillion, Jakarta Police violence and crimes unit head Adj. Sr. Comr. Hendy F. Kurniawan said. The Chinese nationals were sent to Terminal 2 of Soekarno-Hatta International Airport in five buses before flying out with China Southern Airlines, escorted by Chinese Police. Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin News Desk (AFP) Sydney, Australia Thu, August 3, 2017 13:35 1927 4065a5a8898c7cc661d4adf97ab651f9 2 World #Australia,#banking,#Terrorism Free Australia's biggest bank was Thursday taken to court by the country's financial intelligence agency, accused of "serious and systemic non-compliance" of anti-money laundering and counter-terrorism financing laws. AUSTRAC said it was taking civil action against the Commonwealth Bank in the Federal Court for allegedly breaching the laws 53,700 times, particularly in relation to its cash deposit machines. The financial giant could face a massive fine if found guilty. Gambling giant Tabcorp in March was slapped with a Aus$45 million (US$35.7 million) penalty -- the largest civil fine in Australian corporate history -- by the Federal Court for 108 breaches of the same laws. "By failing to have sound AML/CTF (Anti-Money Laundering and Counter-Terrorism Financing) systems and controls in place, businesses are at risk of being misused for criminal purposes," AUSTRAC acting chief Peter Clark said in a statement. "AUSTRAC's goal is to have a financial sector that is vigilant and capable of responding, including through innovation, to threats of criminal exploitation." The bank is accused of failing to deliver to AUSTRAC on time 53,506 reports for cash transactions of Aus$10,000 or more at the machines between November 2012 and September 2015, with a total value of Aus$624.7 million. The bank also failed to report suspicious transactions on time, or at all, that totalled Aus$77 million, and did not monitor customers or manage the risk even after becoming aware of suspected money laundering, the agency claimed. The bank, Australia's biggest company by market capitalisation, said in a statement it had been in discussions with AUSTRAC "for an extended period and have cooperated fully with their requests". "On an annual basis we report over four million transactions to AUSTRAC in an effort to identify and combat any suspicious activity as quickly and efficiently as we can," it said, adding that "we have worked to continuously improve our compliance". "We are reviewing the nature of the proceedings and will have more to say on the specific claims in due course." Commonwealth Bank shares slipped 0.37 percent to Aus$83.92 in afternoon trade in Sydney. Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Theresia Sufa (The Jakarta Post) Bogor Thu, August 3, 2017 15:04 1927 4065a5a8898c7cc661d4adf97ab67ced 1 City bogor,immigration,foreign-workers Free The Bogor Regency Police have detained 38 miners from China for reportedly failing to show their immigration documents. The detention of [workers] of mining company PT BCMG Tani Berkah in Banyu Wangi village, Cigudeg, West Java, started after [investigations into] a motorcycle robbery case on July 28, Sr. Comr. Yayan Sopyan of the Cigudeg Police said on Thursday. The motorcycle case was launched following a report from a neighborhood resident about a foreign worker who used a motorcycle that was allegedly bought from someone involved in vehicle theft. The police then investigated whether the foreign worker and his fellow countrymen held official immigration documents that allowed them to live and work in a 103-hectare mining area in Cigudeg. Yayan explained that the mining firm had an official business permit and owned the workers dormitory where the 38 Chinese blue-collar and white-collar workers stayed. The foreign workers said that their immigration documents were kept by the company at its headquarters in Pantai Indah Kapuk (PIK) in North Jakarta. We have regulations on foreigner oversight in Indonesia. Those who do not hold official documents are detained until they can show the documents, he said. The foreign workers were sent to the Bogor Regency Police office and will face investigation by the foreigner oversight unit. Officers found difficulties in gathering information from the workers because of a language barrier, Yayan said. The police are working with the immigration office to resolve the case. (dra) Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Ruslan Sangadji (The Jakarta Post) Palu Thu, August 3, 2017 21:14 1927 4065a5a8898c7cc661d4adf97ab77c62 1 National poso,terror-attack,central-sulawesi,terrorism,terrorists Free A farmer from Lobu village in Parigi Moutong district, Central Sulawesi, was shot dead by a suspected member of the East Indonesia Mujahidin (MIT) terrorist group on Thursday. The farmer, identified as Simson, aka Suju, 30, was found dead on his farm by a fellow farmer who had previously seen a group of gunmen standing beside his body, Central Sulawesi Police chief Brig. Gen. Rudy Sufahriadi said. Read also: Two suspected Poso terrorists killed in shootout Rudy said information about Simsons death was first received from a woman identified only as YI, who was the witness' daughter. YI told the police that her father had called to inform her that he had seen Simsons body on the ground near a group of gunmen. The gunmen did not see my father, who was on a farm next to Simsons, YI said as quoted by Rudy. According to Rudy, YI said that, after seeing the horrifying scene, her father fled to a nearby village when he later heard one gunshot fired. The gunmen wore civilian clothes and had long hair, said Rudy. From the characteristics described, they were likely MIT members." Read also: 83 Indonesians sought over connections to IS Rudy also said the police had detected the arrival of MIT members near a mountain close to Simsons farm. He said police officers had been deployed to the area. The Central Sulawesi Police continue to hunt down MIT members after the Tinambola joint-operation killed the groups leader, Santoso, aka Abu Wardah. (saf/bbs) By Samuel Ssebuliba As Kenya prepare to hold general elections on August 8th, Ugandan traders have been assured of steady flow of business across the border. Currently almost 80% of good destined to Uganda pass through Kenya, making Uganda more dependent to Kenyas wellbeing. With the growing uncertainty surrounding the process, fears have been raised over its outcome by many traders. However, Vincent Seruma the Public Relations Officer of the Uganda Revenue Authority has allayed those fears saying all their offices will remain open to facilitate smooth and normal flow of business across the border. Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Thu, August 3, 2017 11:00 1927 4065a5a8898c7cc661d4adf97ab5a990 1 Business ignasius-jonan,Ego-Syahrial,Nyoman-Wiratmaja-Puja,oil-and-gas-director-general Free Energy and Mineral Resources Minister Ignasius Jonan on Wednesday inaugurated the ministrys new oil and gas director general, Ego Syahrial. Ego replaces I Gusti Nyoman Wiratmaja Puja, who was appointed as the head of the ministrys human resources development agency (BPSDM). Ego, who previously headed the ministrys Geology Agency, was chosen because of his professional experience, said Jonan. We hope his experience as a geologist will encourage innovations in oil and gas explorations, Jonan told reporters after the inauguration ceremony at the ministrys building in Jakarta. Jonan also said he hoped Ego would further efforts in enhanced oil recovery (EOR) in Indonesian oil fields. Meanwhile, Wiratmaja, who is a professor at the Bandung Institute of Technology (ITB), is expected to develop human resources in the ministry. Jonan said Wiratmaja will be given until December to improve the organizations in the ministry and to maximize performance in human resources by developing skills and knowledge. [With a] huge budget of at least Rp 500 billion (US$37.5 million) to Rp 600 billion, a lot more things can be improved. (dea/bbn) Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Thu, August 3, 2017 08:00 1927 4065a5a8898c7cc661d4adf97ab529fa 4 Business Facebook,office,Indonesia,Rudiantara,Communications-and-Information-Ministry Free Leading social network provider Facebook will open an office in Jakarta later this month as part of the requirements for its operation in Indonesia, said Communications and Information Ministry director general of information applications Samuel Abrijani Pangerapan in Jakarta on Wednesday. Samuel was speaking after meeting with Facebook representatives, Alvin Tan, head of public policy for Southeast Asia and Jeff Wu, trust and safety director for Asia Pacific. Communications and Information Minister Rudiantara also attended the meeting. The office will be opened as a permanent business entity in South Jakarta, said Samuel as reported by kontan.co.id, adding that the office opening was one of the three agreements made during the meeting. (Read also: Facebook gets Indonesia nod for local unit) Facebook will also establish specific business activities (KBLI) as required by the existing regulations for the type of business run by Facebook, Samuel said. Facebook further expressed its commitment to deal with prohibited content on radicalism, terrorism and pornography, said the official. Samuel added that Facebook would block all pornographic content for Indonesia users. In other countries, they have several levels of pornographic content, but in Indonesia all pornographic content is prohibited, he added. (bbn) Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin News Desk (AFP) Bangkok Thu, August 3, 2017 07:45 1927 4065a5a8898c7cc661d4adf97ab5299c 2 World #Thailand,#flooding,#victims Free Heavy rains have brought some of the worst floods in years to Thailand's rural northeast where 23 people have died over the past month, officials said Wednesday. Flash floods have disrupted air travel, inundated rail tracks and swallowed farmland across the rice-farming region of Isaan, affecting more than one million Thais. Twenty-three people have died since July 5, the disaster department said in a daily update. All were swept away by floodwaters and drowned, an official said. Junta chief Prayut Chan-O-Cha flew to the hardest-hit province of Sakon Nakhon on Wednesday to inspect a reservoir that had cracked under the downpour, triggering flash floods. "Sonca Storm caused flooding in more than 35 provinces," he told residents, referring to a tropical storm that recently blew over from the South China Sea. "Thai people need to understand that this area is a flood risk because we are facing global warming," added the junta chief, who joined rescue boats to hand out survival kits to stranded families. Ten provinces are still battling severe floods as rains continue to lash the upper part of the northeast, according to the weather bureau. In January unseasonal monsoons deluged Thailand's south, leaving over 30 dead and wrecking infrastructure across the region. Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Thu, August 3, 2017 11:55 1927 4065a5a8898c7cc661d4adf97ab6139d 4 Politics #politics,#Gerindra,#PDIP,#PKI Free Gerindra Party's deputy chairman, Arief Payuono, has been reported to the Jakarta Police for allegedly defaming the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) by equating the ruling party with the now-defunct Indonesian Communist Party (PKI), a PDI-P official said on Wednesday. Arief was reported by PDI-P legal head Fajri Syafii on Wednesday, although he had sent a letter of apology to the partys chairwoman, Megawati Soekarno Putri, a former Indonesian president. He [Arief] considers PDI-P to be a deceiver like the Indonesian Communist Party. How we were likened to communists was the basis of our report, Fajri said on Wednesday as quoted by tribunnews.com. Arief made the comparison when criticizing the PDI-P and President Joko Widodo for supporting the presidential threshold in the newly issued election law. In the comparison, Arief said: It is understandable that the PDI-P has always been equated with the PKI. It always makes political jokes and deceives the people. The presidential threshold is the minimum support required for political parties or a coalition of parties to be able to nominate a presidential candidate. Some political parties, including Gerindra, had wanted to scrap the presidential threshold. Despite Ariefs apology, in which he clarified that he did not mean to equate the PDI-P with the PKI, Fajri said the Gerindra politician should be held accountable according to law. Fajri reported Arief to police by submitting as evidence copies of published news in which Arief was quoted making the statement. (Saf) Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Thu, August 3, 2017 09:00 1927 4065a5a8898c7cc661d4adf97ab5601c 1 Business social-forestry-program,Perhutani Free The government is ready to implement its social forestry program, which aims to distribute idle land owned by state-owned forestry company Perhutani to farmers, rolling it out initially in two regions in Java. Coordinating Economic Minister Darmin Nasution said on Wednesday that two locations in each province, Central Java and East Java, were ready to be utilized. The government was also studying three locations in West Java as part of the program. He said farmers could receive 500 to 2,500 hectares of land, which would be utilized under the cluster scheme, focusing on planting certain commodities in one area. We cannot postpone the program simply to wait for land that is not yet ready, Darmin told journalists, adding that the recipients must pass the government's requirements, and they were not allowed to sell the land or bequeath it. The program, which is part of the governments land reforms, will allow farmers to utilize state-owned land for 35 years, with a government review conducted every five years to see whether the program is working or not. (Read also: Jokowi gives harsh appraisal on forestry reform) The social forestry program will distribute 570,000 hectares of idle Perhutani land to underprivileged people in Java. The firm controls 2.4 million hectares of plantation concessions in Java, around 17 percent of the total land on the island. (rdi/ags) Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Kuta, Bali Thu, August 3, 2017 19:45 1927 4065a5a8898c7cc661d4adf97ab75166 1 Politics Hanura,Hanura-Party,presidential-election,house-of-representatives Free The Hanura Party is set to kick off a national leadership meeting in Kuta, Bali, on Aug. 4-5 during which the party will discuss possible vice presidential candidates to be paired with incumbent President Joko "Jokowi" Widodo in the 2019 race. Our approach [in selecting a vice presidential candidate] will more on the criteria rather than the personality. We are looking for a candidate who fits with Jokowi, the meeting's steering committee head, Djafar Badjebersaid, said as quoted by kompas.com. The venue of the Hanura Party's National Leadership Meeting in Kuta, Bali, on Thursday. President Joko "Jokowi" Widodo is scheduled to attend the meeting on Friday. (The Jakarta Post/Zul Trio Anggono) During its extraordinary national congress in December last year, Hanura declared its support for the reelection of Jokowi in the next presidential election. The NasDem Party and the United Development Party (PPP) have also declared support for Jokowi. Read also: Police arrest Hanura politician at center of e-ID case Djafar said the meeting in Bali would also formulate strategies for the 2019 legislative election. Hanura targets being among the "big four" at the House of Representatives. Its a great challenge for us to enter the big four. But we are serious about reaching our goal, he said. With 16 lawmakers, Hanura is currently the smallest among the 10 parties at the House. (ecn/bbs) Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin (Agence France-Presse) Tehran, Iran Thu, August 3, 2017 13:12 1927 4065a5a8898c7cc661d4adf97ab64878 2 World Iran,US,trump,Nuclear,diplomacy,complaints,missile,Middle-East Free Iran said on Thursday that new sanctions imposed by the United States had violated its 2015 nuclear deal with world powers and that the country would respond. "We believe that the nuclear deal has been violated and we will react appropriately," deputy foreign minister Abbas Araghchi said on state television, following news that US President Donald Trump had signed the new sanctions into law. "We will certainly not fall into the trap of US policy and Trump, and our reaction will be very carefully considered." Trump signed off the new sanctions -- which also target Russia and North Korea -- on Wednesday. The sanctions target Iran's missile programme and human rights violations, which were not covered under the 2015 nuclear deal. However, Iran says they go against the spirit of the agreement and said earlier this week that it would lodge a complaint with the commission that oversees its implementation. Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Ivan Atina Arbi (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Thu, August 3, 2017 07:23 1927 4065a5a8898c7cc661d4adf97ab51c35 1 City vaccination,measles,rubella Free The Jakarta administration aims to vaccinate 2.4 million children across the capital against measles and rubella as part of the nationwide vaccination campaign. The Jakarta Health Agency head Koesmedi Priharto said on Wednesday that vaccinations for children aged 9 months to 15 years would be done in two phases, in August and September. In August, officials from all community health centers (Puskesmas) in the city will visit all schools from elementary school to senior high school to immunize 7- to 15-year-old students. In September, officials will visit early childhood education centers (PAUD) and integrated health services posts (Posyandu) in every district and subdistrict in the capital to vaccinate 9-month to 6-year-old children against measles and rubella. For every 100 cases of measles in the city, there are 16 rubella cases. Its threatening as rubella can cause blindness and deafness, Jakarta Health Agency head Koesmedi Priharto said. He expressed hope that he could reduce the number of measles and rubella cases in the city through the two-month immunization campaign. (Read also: Low vaccination rate causes measles outbreak in Deyai villages) Health Ministry data shows that in 2016 the country saw 6,890 cases of measles, five of them fatal. Among the 6,890 cases, 273 of them occurred in Jakarta, with no cases of death. Topics : vaccination measles rubella Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin News Desk (AFP) Tokyo Thu, August 3, 2017 12:10 1927 4065a5a8898c7cc661d4adf97ab61949 2 World #Japan,#CabinetReshuffle Free Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on Thursday named new defence and foreign ministers as part of a cabinet revamp he hopes will stem a decline in public support after a series of scandals and missteps. Itsunori Onodera, a former defence chief, is to return to the defence ministry -- rocked by the resignation last week of close Abe political ally Tomomi Inada. Taro Kono, the son of a former foreign minister, will become the country's new top diplomat. Political blueblood Abe, in office since late December 2012, has pushed a nationalist agenda alongside a massive policy effort to end years of on-off deflation and rejuvenate the world's third-largest economy. But he has seen public support rates plummet in the past few months over an array of political troubles, including allegations of favouritism to a friend in a business deal -- which Abe strongly denies. "I deeply regret that my shortcomings have invited this situation," a chastened Abe said earlier in the day ahead of the formal announcement of the cabinet changes. The new cabinet was announced by Yoshihide Suga, the government's top spokesman. Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Thu, August 3, 2017 14:56 1927 4065a5a8898c7cc661d4adf97ab677a0 1 Business workers,JICT,strike Free More than 650 workers of the Jakarta International Container Terminal (JICT) at North Jakarta's Tanjung Priok port have gone on strike Thursday, demanding the balance of their bonuses, which they claim had been reduced by 42 percent. The strike has crippled operations of the largest container terminal in the country, which handles 70 percent of Greater Jakarta's exports and imports. The container terminal service company stands to lose hundreds of billions of rupiah if the workers go ahead with their plan to continue their strike through Aug. 10. The strike started when the workers closed the terminal at 3 a.m., JICT workers union secretary general M. Firmansyah said in a written statement. We are on strike because the renewal of our contracts in 2015 had violated existing regulations and caused our bonuses to be cut by 42 percent, Firmansyah said. The union said JICT's revenues had increased by 4.6 percent in 2016, while the bonuses for the company's directors and commissioners were raised by 18 percent. According to Firmansyah, the union suspected that JICT, whose annual income was between Rp 3.5 trillion (US$262.55 million) and Rp 4 trillion, was targeted by foreign investors, while JICT management treated their workers unjustly by cutting their bonuses. (dis/bbn) Topics : workers JICT strike WHAT'S ON AROUND Here is a link to a Calendar of upcoming events in Kilcullen. If you have an event you want listed, email the Diary. WEATHER Mild, cloudy and misty this morning with outbreaks of rain and drizzle. Becoming dry for most through the afternoon and evening. Highest temperatures of 15 to 16 degrees in moderate to fresh southeast winds. DID YOU KNOW? Waterford is Ireland's oldest city, founded in 914 by Vikings and captured by the Anglo Normans in 1170. Waterford was subsequently escalated to the status of Royal City which owed allegiance to the Anglo Norman King of England, Henry II. DIARY PODCASTS SPECIAL NOTICES CLICK AD FOR DETAILS THE CAMINOS THE BRIDGE ONLINE EMERGENCY 112/999 Take a minute to play this, it might help you save a life! BUSINESS IN TOWN OTHER VOICES BOOKS Also available on iPad; go to iBooks Store and do a search. ; go to iBooks Store and do a search. TEXT ALERT Kilcullen Garda District Text Alert The Grocery in Calverstown, Kilcullen Garda Station , Kilcullen Credit Union , and scheme committee members. Please encourage neighbours and friends to join. Forms for joining thescheme are available fromin Calverstown, Kilcullen, Kilcullen, and scheme committee members. Please encourage neighbours and friends to join. The Kilcullen & Gormanstown Parish Lotto D raw is held at 9pm each Tuesday in the Parish Centre. This is a public event to which all are welcome. There's a prize draw each night for those attending. Details of previous Draws are here. EMAIL THE DIARY kilcullendiary@gmail.com . Comments, contributions, requests always welcome. AROUND TOWN Kilcullen Town has its own Facebook Page . Keep an eye on it. Email notices to us, or text 086 8267104. PEOPLE OF THE HOLLY BUSH Another subject has been posted in the 'People of the Holly Bush' Kilcullen profiles project by Kieran Behan and Brian Byrne. He is Martin Murphy Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Nethy Dharma Somba (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Thu, August 3, 2017 21:00 1927 4065a5a8898c7cc661d4adf97ab76e09 1 National Kompolnas,Deiyai-shooting-incident,Papua,shooting,shooting-incident,violence Free A recent shooting incident in Bomou village, Tigi district, Deiyai, Papua, that claimed the life of civilian Yulius Pigai, 28, has attracted the attention of the National Police Commission (Kompolnas), which has promised to monitor the legal process of the case. Kompolnas member Poengky Indarti said all police personnel who had been on duty and handled security operations when the incident occurred on Tuesday must be investigated to determine whether procedure in the use of firearms was in line with National Police Chief Regulation (Perkap) No.8/2009 on the implementation of human rights standards and principles in the organizing of police duties. There were dead and injured victims in the incident so both on-duty police personnel and security procedures should be investigated, Poengky told The Jakarta Post on Thursday. If criminal acts are found to have happened, there must be criminal sanctions, in addition to disciplinary and code of ethics sanctions. Poengky said Kompolnas would monitor the legal process of the Deiyai shooting, starting from investigation to the imposition of sanctions. Peace for Papua Network coordinator Rev. Neles Tebay deplored the incident. Shooting perpetrators in Deiyai could lead to punishment. We should be aware, however, that the incident has caused a new wound in the hearts of Papuan people. State-sponsored violence such as the shooting can have a fatal impact for Indonesia, said Neles. With such violence, it will be difficult to hope that nationalism can grow in the hearts of Papuans, he said. (ebf) Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Thu, August 3, 2017 13:40 1927 4065a5a8898c7cc661d4adf97ab653e1 1 City Jakarta-council,private-assistant,Councilors Free Jakarta City Councilors hopes to each have a personal assistant must come to an end, due to the lack of a related provision in the relevant government regulation, a Home Ministry official has said. On Wednesday, the Jakarta administration invited representatives from the Law and Human Rights Ministry and the Home Ministry to explain the matter to the councilors. Acting director general for regional finance at the Home Ministry, Moch. Ardian, said that Government Regulation (PP) No. 18/2017 on financial authority and administration of regional council leaders and members did not include a provision for expert staff or personal assistants. There is no such thing in the government regulation, Ardian said on Wednesday as quoted by kompas.com. City Council Deputy Speaker Abraham Lulung Lunggana also said that he was against the idea of assigning a private assistant to each council member. If the rule says no, then we can't do it. We cannot violate the law, he said. Last month, every faction of the City Council issued a request for a personal assistant for each council leader and member, basing their request on Government Regulation No. 18/2017. (hol) Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Thu, August 3, 2017 20:47 1927 4065a5a8898c7cc661d4adf97ab768ef 1 National Perppu,Pancasila,Constitution,HTI,Hizbut-Tahrir-Indonesia,Law-and-Human-Rights-Ministry,YasonnaLaoly Free Law and Human Rights Minister Yasonna H. Laoly has said the government has no plan at this point to disband other mass organizations after it banned Islamic group Hizbut Tahrir Indonesia (HTI) for being against Pancasila state ideology on July 19. Laoly said on Thursday that although the police had indicated that other organizations could share the same fate, it could not be done without sufficient evidence. The HTI was disbanded following the issuance of Regulation in Lieu of Law (Perppu) No.2/2017 on mass organizations. Earlier, National Police spokesperson Sr. Comr. Martinus Sitompul said two or three mass organizations had been reported for being anti-Pancasila. The National Police said they found some indications. We will first examine the reports. We hope with all of these, we will be really committed to protecting this nation together. Our state ideology is clear Pancasila. The form of our country, namely the Unitary State of the Republic of Indonesia, is clear as well. We must protect them, said Yasonna as quoted by Antara at the Presidential Palace in Jakarta. He re-asserted that there was no definite plan to disband other mass organizations. Just wait and see. We will do it one by one. We will first examine them, he said. Perppu No.2/2017 was issued as the government considered Law No.17/2013 on mass organizations inadequate to prevent the spread of ideologies that were contrary to Pancasila and the Constitution. The Perppu gives the government the power to disband any organization without due process. (saf/ebf) Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Thu, August 3, 2017 09:45 1927 4065a5a8898c7cc661d4adf97ab57ed6 1 City AIDS,HIV Free The number of people living with AIDS in Jakarta has gone up by 563; from 8,093 in December 2015 to 8,656 in December 2016, data from the Jakarta chapter of the National AIDS Commission (KPAP) shows. The KPAP head of prevention promotion for Jakarta, Kristina Suharto, said that this happened because there was still a lot of people infected with HIV who had not checked their status. A lot of people are unaware they carry HIV and are reluctant to check their HIV status, she added. They dont know that they are infected by HIV, and therefore they do not follow the ARV [antiretroviral] therapy. By the time they finally check themselves, they show symptoms of AIDS, Kristina told The Jakarta Post on Wednesday. However, Kristina said the organization was still optimistic they could stop the spread of HIV/AIDS in Jakarta by 2020. (Read also: HIV/AIDS positive children left out in cold) In 2016, the commission started a campaign through its program dubbed Fast Track City 2020-Ending The AIDS Epidemic. The fast-track aims to ensure at least 90 percent of people living with HIV know their HIV status, that 90 percent of people diagnosed with HIV receive antiretroviral therapy and that 90 percent of people receiving antiretroviral therapy experience viral suppression by 2020. The Health Ministry has estimated that there are currently 92,920 HIV cases in Jakarta. In 2015 they had identified 47,440 cases and predicted that the rest would be confirmed by 2020. Until then we encourage people to check themselves so we can identify the HIV infected who havent learned about their status, Kristina said. (hol) Topics : AIDS HIV Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Thu, August 3, 2017 14:21 1927 4065a5a8898c7cc661d4adf97ab657a1 1 City Bekasi,lynching,thief Free The Bekasi Police said on Thursday it would investigate the mob attack and burning to death of a 30-year-old man accused of stealing mosque amplifiers. Bekasi Police criminal unit chief Adj. Sr. Comr. Rizal Marito said that residents of Suka Tenang should not have attacked the man, identified only as MA, who died after he was burned alive on Wednesday. "For the people involved in the attack, we will process the case. It is certain that those who burned him will be taken into custody," he said. Residents of Suka Tenang allegedly burned MA alive after he was reportedly caught stealing three amplifier units in a mosque in the village. "Results from the investigation indicate that the burned victim was indeed a thief who stole the mosque's amplifiers," Rizal said as quoted by wartakota.tribunnews.com. According to the investigation report, a mosque attendant said he noticed that the mosque's amplifiers were gone after he finished praying. (agn) Topics : Bekasi lynching thief Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Thu, August 3, 2017 19:29 1927 4065a5a8898c7cc661d4adf97ab74d1e 1 City drug-abuse,artist Free South Jakarta Police arrested actor Tora Sudiro and his wife Mieke Amalia at their house in Ciputat, South Tangerang, on Thursday for reportedly possessing 30 pills of psychotropic drugs. The polices narcotics division had been investigating the couple for three weeks. South Jakarta Police chief Sr. Comr. Iwan Kurniawan said the police would develop the case further and conduct urine tests. We found 30 pills and are examining the content. We will explain further once we get the results, Iwan said. He said the police had searched the couples house starting at 10 a.m. on Thursday in connection with another case and found the contraband. (dra) Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Thu, August 3, 2017 10:53 1927 4065a5a8898c7cc661d4adf97ab5a906 1 National #Jakarta,#rice,#company,#scam Free The National Police, after having named an executive of rice processing company PT Into Beras Unggul (IBU) a fraud suspect, will expand its investigation into the firm on suspicions it was involved in money laundering practices, a spokesman said on Wednesday. We will follow up the investigation to probe into [alleged] money laundering practices, said National Police spokesman Sr. Comr. Martinus Sitompul. Martinus cited the company's production and packaging practices as well as several alleged consumer rights violations as the basis to expand the investigation. The police named on Wednesday PT IBU president director Trisnawan Widodo a fraud suspect amid allegations the rice company falsely labeled its products. Martinus said PT IBU misled consumers by displaying nutritional adequacy rate (AKG) information on rice products, which he said should only be displayed on processed food products, not staple food products. (Read also: Firm denies any wrongdoing in premium rice scandal) Furthermore, PT IBU did not comply with the standards set in the Indonesian National Standards (SNI) despite displaying the SNI logo on its products, Martinus added. Trisnawan allegedly violated article 382 of the Criminal Code (KUHP), articles 100 and 144 of Law No.12/2012 on food and Law No. 8/1999 on consumer protection, Martinus said. If Trisnawnan is found guilty of all violations, he faces a maximum sentence of 20 years' imprisonment or Rp 10 billion (US$ 750,131) in fines, he said. (mrc) Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin (Agence France-Presse) Doha, Qatar Thu, August 3, 2017 11:21 1927 4065a5a8898c7cc661d4adf97ab5e736 2 World Qatar,foreigners,sanction,Gulf-crisis,immigration,workers,naturalization,oil-and-gas Free Qatar, currently boycotted by four Arab states, on Wednesday created a new permanent residents status for certain groups of foreigners, including those who have worked for the benefit of the emirate. In a first for the Gulf, Qatar's cabinet ministers approved the measures, the official QNA press agency reported, in a move that will likely affect tens of thousands of resident foreigners. Under the new rules, children with a Qatari mother and a foreign father can benefit from the new status along with foreign residents who have "given service to Qatar" or have "skills that can benefit the country," the agency said. A specially created interior ministry commission will decide individual cases, according to the Qatar News Agency. Those deemed eligible for the new status will be afforded the same access as Qataris to free public services, such as health and education. They will also receive preferable treatment for jobs in the administration and armed services as well as being able to own their own properties and exercise some commercial activities without the need for a Qatari partner. While stopping short of offering Qatari nationality the new measures constitute a first for the Gulf. Naturalisation is extremely rare in the region and the status of the millions of foreigners working in the Gulf are strictly limited. Oil-rich Qatar has a population of 2.4 million people, 90 percent of whom are foreigners, including many from Southeast Asia working in construction. Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin (Agence France-Presse) Taipei, Taiwan Thu, August 3, 2017 18:56 1927 4065a5a8898c7cc661d4adf97ab725de 2 World Deportation,Fraud,cyber-crime,China,Taiwan,police,diplomacy,complaints Free Taiwan issued a protest to Beijing Thursday over a decision by Indonesia to deport 22 Taiwanese fraud suspects to China, the latest such deportation to frustrate the island amid frosty cross-strait ties. The move comes days after Indonesian police said they had busted a sprawling $450 million cyber fraud ring targeting wealthy businessmen and politicians in China. Taiwan's foreign ministry said its deported nationals were among over 140 Chinese and Taiwanese suspects arrested in raids on July 29 in various locations including Jakarta, the city of Surabaya and on the resort island of Bali. In a statement the ministry said Jakarta had ignored Taipei's request that the Taiwanese suspects be returned to the island and instead sent them on Thursday to the mainland cities of Chengdu and Tianjin. "China continues to forcibly take Taiwanese to the mainland, completely ignoring our gestures of goodwill and appeal," the Mainland Affairs Council -- Taiwan's official body handling China relations -- said in a statement. "This is detrimental for investigation into cross-border crimes, and it also affects positive development of cross-strait relations," it said. The foreign ministry has also directed its Jakarta office to lodge a protest with the Indonesian government. The incident is the latest of several international deportations of Taiwanese suspects to China since Taiwan's President Tsai Ing-wen came to power last May. Beijing distrusts Tsai, who has refused to recognise the island as part of "one China." China sees the island as a breakaway province to be brought back within its fold. Under former China-friendly president Ma Ying-jeou, suspects would usually have been deported back to Taiwan as part of informal arrangements between crimefighting agencies in China, Taiwan, and countries where the fraudsters are operating. TheJakartaPost Please Update your browser Your browser is out of date, and may not be compatible with our website. A list of the most popular web browsers can be found below. Just click on the icons to get to the download page. Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Andrew Beatty (AFP) Washington Thu, August 3, 2017 11:25 1927 4065a5a8898c7cc661d4adf97ab5fda0 2 World #trump,#Russia,#sanctions Free US President Donald Trump reluctantly signed off on new sanctions against Russia Wednesday, bowing to domestic pressure and putting efforts to improve ties with the Kremlin in peril. Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said the sanctions amounted to "full-fledged economic war on Russia" and demonstrates Trump's "total weakness... in the most humiliating way." "It ends hopes for improving our relations with the new US administration," Medvedev boldly declared on his Facebook page. Trump signed the legislation behind closed doors, after failed White House efforts to scupper or water down the bill. Trump's reluctance was on full display in an angry signing statement, in which he called the legislation "significantly flawed." "In its haste to pass this legislation, the Congress included a number of clearly unconstitutional provisions," he said, including curbs on the president's ability to "negotiate" with Russia. "I built a truly great company worth many billions of dollars. That is a big part of the reason I was elected. As president, I can make far better deals with foreign countries than Congress," Trump claimed. The legislation -- which also includes measures against North Korea and Iran -- targets the Russian energy sector, giving Washington the ability to sanction companies involved in developing Russian pipelines, and placing curbs on some Russian weapons exporters. It also notably constrains Trump's ability to waive the penalties, a statement of mistrust from the Republican-controlled Congress, which remains unsettled by Trump's warm words for President Vladimir Putin. "The framers of our constitution made the Congress and the President coequal branches of government. This bill has already proven the wisdom of that choice," Senator John McCain said in a biting statement. "I hope the president will be as vocal about Russia's aggressive behavior as he was about his concerns with this legislation." The sanctions seek to penalize the Kremlin for allegedly meddling in the 2016 US presidential election -- which Trump won -- and Russia's annexation of Crimea. Trump said he would "honor" some of the bill's provisions, but stopped short of saying it would be fully implemented. The White House said only that Trump would give Congress's "preferences" mere "careful and respectful consideration." "I am signing this bill for the sake of national unity. It represents the will of the American people to see Russia take steps to improve relations with the United States," Trump said. Trump received the legislation at 1:53 pm on Friday, but waited until Wednesday to sign it. The nearly weeklong delay in signing had raised speculation that Trump might veto or try to somehow shelve the sanctions, which were approved in a 98-2 Senate vote. By signing it, he avoided the humiliating prospect of Congress overriding his veto. Expecting the signature, Moscow preemptively ordered Washington to reduce its diplomatic presence in Russia to 455 people before September 1 -- bringing it in line with the size of Russia's mission in the United States. The Kremlin said that Trump signing the sanctions "doesn't change anything," in a less adversarial statement than those issued by Medvedev and the foreign ministry. The foreign ministry said the sanctions against Russia had put global stability at risk, calling them a "dangerous" and "short-sighted" policy. "We have already shown that we are not going to leave hostile acts unanswered... and we obviously reserve the right to take retaliatory measures," it said. US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said he will meet with his Russian counterpart Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov over the weekend, but warned US-Russia ties could still get worse. "The question, I think, of the events of the last week or so, is it getting worse or can we maintain some level of stability in that relationship?" Tillerson asked on Tuesday. Tillerson said the US Congress's decision to pass the sanctions bill had made attempts to thaw ties "more difficult." A special prosecutor is investigating whether Trump advisers colluded with what US intelligence has concluded was an attempt by Russia to covertly support the real estate mogul's 2016 campaign. The US president, who often called for warmer ties with Moscow during the White House race, has furiously denied the charge. Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Thu, August 3, 2017 08:59 1927 4065a5a8898c7cc661d4adf97ab550f8 1 Business West-Java,LRT,land-acquisition,Deddy-Mizwar Free The West Java administration has vowed to complete the land acquisition process for the light rail transit (LRT) project within two weeks after the project location approval was finished. West Java Deputy Governor Deddy Mizwar said some 600 hectares of land across the LRT project sites in West Java, including the Cawang to East Bekasi track, West Bekasi tracks as well as the Cibubur to Bogor track, were still privately owned. After the paperwork is complete and the location is clear, our administration will form a team for every district to disseminate the information to the people and assist the contractors, he said on Tuesday in Jakarta. He added that for the land clearing process of plots of land exceeding five hectares, the government would prepare the necessary project location approval document, but that those with a size less than five hectares would be directly cleared through a business to business scheme. In Bekasi, the government requires 10-hectares of land for the LRT train depot, 5 hectares of which are still privately owned, while the other 5 hectares are owned by the LRT contractor, namely the state construction firm Adhi Karya. Adhi Karya has said the construction of the LRT would be completed in 2018 and was set to begin operations in 2019. The entire project is estimated to cost around Rp 27 trillion, consisting of Rp 23.3 trillion for railway infrastructure and the remaining Rp 3.7 trillion for the rolling stocks. (dis/ags) Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin News Desk (AFP) Phnom Penh Thu, August 3, 2017 11:50 1927 4065a5a8898c7cc661d4adf97ab60a50 2 SE Asia #cambodia,#Australia,#AustralianNurse Free A Cambodian court on Thursday sentenced an Australian nurse to 18 months in prison for sourcing clients for a surrogacy clinic in the impoverished kingdom, as authorities tackle 'womb for rent' businesses. Tammy Davis-Charles, 49, has been in custody since her arrest in November last year, weeks after Cambodia abruptly banned commercial surrogacy. Authorities moved to curb the trade in Cambodia after Thailand and India blocked foreigners paying poor local women to be surrogates, following a wave of scandals and allegations of exploitation. Prospective parents, many from Australia, turned to Cambodian clinics. Police said Davis-Charles moved from Thailand to take advantage of the continued demand for surrogates, charging Australian clients up to $50,000 for each request. More than 20 Cambodian surrogates were brought into the trade and received around $10,000 each. "Tammy Davis-Charles was an intermediary between intended parents and Cambodian surrogate mothers," Judge Sor Lina said delivering the ruling. The Melbourne native was also convicted of falsifying documents. "The court sentences Tammy Davis-Charles to one-and-a-half-years in jail," the judge added. Two Cambodian colleagues were convicted of the same charges and also jailed for 18 months. In her defence statement in July, Davis-Charles broke down in tears in front of the court appealing for mercy from the bench, saying she had already "lost everything" during her six months in custody. Surrogacy agencies started springing up in the Southeast Asian nation in 2015. With cheap medical costs, a large pool of poor young women and no laws excluding gay couples or single parents, Cambodia quickly absorbed much of the demand. But in late 2016 authorities shuttered the trade and refused to recognise birth certificates for babies, leaving many foreign couples in limbo. In April this year the government said it would allow foreign couples to return home with babies if they could prove they were conceived before the ban on commercial surrogacy. The trade has swiftly found a new base in neighbouring Laos which has yet to criminalise commercial surrogacy. Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin News Desk (Sin Chew Daily/ANN) Kuala Lumpur Thu, August 3, 2017 20:15 1927 4065a5a8898c7cc661d4adf97ab75a5f 2 SE Asia #Malaysia,#Indonesia,#SEAGames,#Haze,#environment,#ForestFire,#2017SEAGamesKL Free Natural Resources and Environment Minister Wan Junaidi Tuanku Jaafaar said he would try his best to visit Indonesia before the Southeast Asian (SEA) Games to express Malaysias intention to send the Special Malaysia Disaster Assistance and Rescue Team (SMART), bombardier plane and firemen to help with resolving forest fire. Our request is as soon as possible. If we can go tomorrow, I will go but we have to seek permission from Indonesian side first, he said in a press conference after the 12th national water resource committee meeting. On whether the haze would affect SEA Games starting from August 19, Wan Junaid said he has instructed deputy secretary-general of the ministry to arrange for officers to visit their counterpart in Indonesia. As the forest fire situation come under two ministries Environment and Forestry as well as Politics, Law and Security Ministers, this required longer time for arrangement. He said the forest fire in Indonesia has actually improved. Four days ago Aceh had 72 hotspots but the area is without hotspot now. This showed that effort to put out fire in Indonesia had been effective. It had also fulfilled its promise of resolving haze issue. Wan Junaidi said he had instructed officers to brief him on haze condition, direction of wind and the updated report from Indonesia on forest fire each day at 7:30 a.m. starting four days ago. I am of the view that we should not be worried about the haze currently. Although the monsoon wind is blowing from southwest, if forest fire take place in Riau and Jami, Peninsula Malaysia and Singapore would be affected. If forest fire take place in western, middle and eastern parts of Kalimantan, then Sarawak would be affected. Currently we are monitoring forest fire in Aceh. Based on the direction of the wind, only northern part of the Peninsula Malaysia Penang, Perlis, Kedah and northern part of Perak as well as Thailand would be affected. Topics : This article appeared on the Sin Chew Daily newspaper website, which is a member of Asia News Network and a media partner of The Jakarta Post Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Liza Yosephine (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Thu, August 3, 2017 08:08 1927 4065a5a8898c7cc661d4adf97ab535af 1 News Changi-airport,Changi,Airport,Singapore,lifestyle,travel,#airport Free The world's best airport is about to get even better with Singapore's Changi's exciting new Terminal 4 that is slated to open later this year. The terminal is expected to deliver a comprehensive new experience with an integrated biometric self-service technology and state-of-the-art design. "T4 is formed with the vision of redefining travel, pushing boundaries and building new ones. Through innovative concepts in operational and terminal design, we address the need for capacity and increased efficiency and productivity of officers," Changi Airport Group vice president Poh Li San said in a statement. The highly anticipated terminal has sold out its 200,000 tickets to an open house on Aug. 7-20, giving the public its first taste of a reimagined travel experience prior to its launch. For those who don't get to see it yet, here are some of the exciting features to look out for during your next stop over. Read also: Changi once again ranked world's best airport It's going to be FAST Passenger deposits luggage at the self-service bag drop. (Courtesy of Changi Airport Group/File) T4 will be the first terminal in Changi to offer the Fast and Seamless Travel (FAST), introducing a comprehensive experience with its integrated facial recognition software that gives the option of self-service from start to finish. Passengers would not have to wait for designated counters to open and instead can easily visit self-service kiosks for every step from check-in, bag drop, immigration until boarding. The two-storey terminal is expected to handle 16 million passengers each year from nine airlines, including AirAsia Group's four airlines, Cathay Pacific, Cebu Pacific, Korean Air, Spring Airlines and Vietnam Airlines. Read also: The best airport in the world just got better Airport-cum-gallery The terminal's advanced technology is paired with cutting edge interior design, mixing traditional and modern art for a refreshing experience while waiting for that next flight. T4 is home to three sculptures, namely Hey Ah Chek!, Travelling Family and Les Oiseaux (The Birds). But the giant kinetic sculpture, Petalclouds, is expected to steal the scene. Measuring 200 meters and perched on the ceiling at the Central Galleria, the installment would move in rhythm to music composed by BAFTA-winning musician Olafur Arnalds. Follow the movements of the #Petalclouds, a vast kinetic installation of six identical cloud-like sculptures, spanning over 200 metres at #ChangiT4's Central Galleria. Each of these clouds are made up of many individual petal elements, can you guess the number of petals in each cloud? A post shared by Singapore Changi Airport (SIN) (@changiairport) on Jul 25, 2017 at 1:01am PDT Inspired by orchid petals, T4 interior design also follows the symmetrical petal pattern motif in various parts, including skylights, marble floors and carpets. With land area reaching 2,000 square meters, the terminal is home to 186 large trees. Along the departure corridor, 160 fig trees formed a tree boulevard, separating the boarding area from the common area at the departure gate. Read also: What to anticipate at Changi's Jewel complex slated for 2019 Unique shopping experience Changi Terminal 4's Heritage Zone. (Courtesy of Changi Airport Group/File) As many as 80 retail stores and restaurants can be found sprawled across 16.000 square meters of space. Among others, a Heritage Zone has been designed to reflect traditional Singaporean shop houses to take passengers back in time while enjoying their shopping and culinary experience. Traditional Singaporean brands could be found in the zone, including Bee Cheng Hiang, Bengawan Solo, Eu Yan Sang, Curry Times dan Heavenly Wang. (kes) Kendallville, IN (46755) Today Snow this evening will give way to lingering snow showers late. Low 27F. Winds WNW at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of snow 60%. Snow accumulations less than one inch.. Tonight Snow this evening will give way to lingering snow showers late. Low 27F. Winds WNW at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of snow 60%. Snow accumulations less than one inch. Britains favourite pastry makers, Greggs, has announced plans to roll out an array of drive-thru stores across the UK. The revelation comes just over a month after a successful trial of the initiative in Greater Manchester, in which locals were able to order the bakers popular pasties and pies from the comfort of their vehicles, without ever having to turn off the ignition. Chief executive Roger Whiteside told the Newcastle Chronicle he was surprised the company hadnt thought of the idea before. Greggs chief executive, Roger Whiteside (Greggs) He said: We opened our first Drive-Thru shop at Irlam, Greater Manchester, in June and have been encouraged by its popularity, indicating a demand for further drive-thru locations. We are very excited by it its got off to a flying start. Its been interesting and exciting to see how well customers have taken to it. Customers are very taken by the idea of not having to leave their cars. We wondered if they would be welcoming to do this, and its been very positive I dont understand why we havent done this years ago. #Greggs are doing drive thrus! They will have to get it together, round here everythings gone by 10am but I can never say no to a pastie. Emma (@Brummiebird79) August 2, 2017 Whiteside said the Newcastle-based business was actively looking for new locations to place drive-thru shops, and that the service format was becoming increasingly prevalent in the retail industry. The news created a stir on social media, where Greggs enthusiasts across the country gladly showed their support. Game changer. Greggs are doing drive thru Dyl (@Dylan_Quigley_) August 2, 2017 "Greggs to open drive through kiosks throughout the UK." GENIUS!! Shem (@shemsational) August 2, 2017 If only there was a way to invent a drive-thru gym, we may all be able to gorge on baked goods for as long as our petrol tanks hold out. 10pm 10pm to watch clearly injustice has better, 17 10pm You dont know me, I didnt tell you my name, but I sat next to you on the train home on Saturday night and tried my best to comfort you whilst you had a panic attack. Emphasis on the tried because Im not very good at emotional reassurance but the women who were with us did a spectacular job. If I had to describe the Saturdaytrain in one word then that would be nightmare. Its a horrendous journey if youre completely sober. I had every intention of catching the earlier train but missed it by 30 seconds. That was my situation and I planned to plug myself into my iPod and drown out all the drunk people by playing the Wicked soundtrack at full volume. But instead I met you, and Im so glad I did, even though it was because of such awful circumstances. I cant even begin to imagine how terrifying and awful that train must have been for you. Saturday 29th July was Nottingham Pride an event for the LGBTQ+ community celebrate who they are and not feel ashamed about it. From my experience, the LGBTQ+ community is (for the most part) wonderful and inclusive. You had attended to celebrate being transgender and you told me that you had a great time until it was ruined at the end. There are very few words to describe how angry and sad it made meyou cry and panic in the middle of this god-awful train, filled with loud people who have lost all sense of social etiquette because of alcohol. It made so angry for you that your experience at Pride had been ruined. These people had entered a safe space for the LGBTQ+ community and attacked someone as they were celebrating. That is never okay.With the US President announcing that transgender people are no longer allowed to serve in the army, now is the time to defend transgender rights more than ever. This is not the United States buttransphobia exists within the UK, too. I am not transgender. I was born into a gender I feel comfortable expressing and I can never understand what anyone who is transgender goes through, but I can listen to your words and hear your story. I couldnt go to Pride, but if I had I would have used it to celebrate who I am and celebrate the achievements of LGBTQ+ community as a whole. Pride is not a place for people to attack us and I am disgusted by anyone who thinks it is. They used this celebration as an opportunity to spread hate and pain. Unfortunately, that hate was targeted at you, Jasper. After eight attacks in two years youre probably feeling frustrated at the world, and at theit seems to be giving you. I told you this on the train and I dont think you believed me, but I do have every faith things will get better. Saturday night was an awful time, but Im one of those annoyingly positive people thatto hope for thebecause if you dont what is the point? Jasper, you are only 17 and (as patronising as this sounds) you are so young. You have such a long life to lead, and at the age ofyou are living life how you want to. Im 20 and Im still trying to find out who I am and which social pressures have shaped me into living a life Im still not completely comfortable with. The lady in the black and white dress who was so amazing in comforting you said you were a wonderful person for being who you are - and she is right. The fact that you went to pride and you are being honest with yourself and others around you is amazing and incredible. Although what you experienced on Saturday night was terrible and scary, there are more people than not who will accept you for who you are. The people on the train were so loud but I guarantee most of the people you encountered wanted to help and look after you. There were just too many of them for it to feel like a positive and warm environment. I doubt well ever cross paths again, but I know that I will remember the train journey with you for a long time. I hope that you are happy and that you are proud of yourself because you 100% should be. Life is tough, and it seems even harder for you right now but I hope you believe some of my words when I say everything will get better. I was a girl on thetrain that tried to comfort you in the middle a nightmare. You are a boy that deserves so much better in life and who has impacted my existence more than I can ever explain here. Unfortunately, The Content Is Not Here You have arrived at this page because the page or post you were looking for no longer exists. 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Ehlingerthe former director and chief health officer at Boynton Health Service at the University of Minnesotacrafted current state health concerns shared with locals around Minnesotas adoption of the triple aim of health equity. The triple aim for health equity is to expand the understanding of what creates health, take what he calls a health in all policies approach with health equity as the goal and to strengthen the capacity of communities to create their own healthy future. When I worked at the University of Minnesota Public Health system, I thought I knew what the community needed, so I approached the student fees committee. I told them we needed another general care doctor because of the amount of emergency visits on campus, Ehlinger said. The committee voted down Ehlingers suggestion and instead instituted free transportation on Thursday through Saturday nights around campus. You know what, emergency visits and urgent care costs went way down, he said. This is why community involvement is so important. The community knows better than anybody what needs to be done. When locals from Houston County, which is bordered by different states on two sides, questioned potential community health concerns that arise from the wall between the state lines, Ehlinger urged that focus on issues should be examined as a group. I think youll be interested to find that the answer will come from this community, he said. I was opposed to medical cannabis, but when people who benefited from it organized thats when we ran with the program. Policy will change when the community comes together. Ehlinger also explained Minnesotas Statewide Health Improvement Partnership. SHIP is to chronic diseases as a vaccine is to an infectious disease, he said. SHIP targets policy change to help increase physical activity, focus on nutrition and tobacco control. Opioids addiction, mental health and dementia are all preventable. SHIP pushes community resilience and resources as strong preventative against chronic disease. I think its great to see the community come out and be interested in an open dialogue with the commissioner of health, said Houston County Director of Public Health Mary Marchel. It gives the commissioner a sense of what our community is about. Houston County Director of Human Services John Pugleasa also supported the local health discussion. Its a nice way for a state official to talk to local constituents, he said. I hold a lot of support for collaborative health. I think it holds the greatest promise. Ehlingers day in Houston County ended with a health-focused game of horseshoes. Everyone can throw horseshoes, he said. Minnesota has more horseshoe pitchers per capita than any other state. The public wants to think that government agencies try to save taxpayer money as much as possible, but hearing that a department is completely self-funded may be a shock. One Jackson County department has done just that through a mix of tourism and commerce. The Jackson County Forestry and Parks Department manages about 120,000 acres of forestry land, with the timber providing significant income. Jackson County has the eighth most forest land in Wisconsin, according to data from the Wisconsin County Forest Association. The department also manages recreational spots, including ATV/snowmobile trails and park grounds. Thats not the end of the departments responsibilities as it takes care of wildlife habitats, battles invasive species and works with groups to manage the area. Last year in 2016 the forestry department gave the county $655,000 in excess revenue, Forestry and Parks Department assistant administrator Jon Schweitzer said. That excess revenue is the money left over after the department takes care of its salaries, building, maintenance expenses and more. The department manages its forests carefully, depending on the type of tree thats being harvested sometimes clear cutting and sometimes selectively harvesting the trees. When it comes time for selling the trees, the work is bid out to private loggers after a team of foresters with the department sets up the sales boundaries and inventories the work. This process is done year-round with different cycles for different trees. It depends on the conditions that the foresters feel is best for protecting the environment and generating revenue, theres quite a bit of work that goes into it, Schweitzer said. All that work goes into making the forestry department self-sustainable, but the process for the parks department is a little different. Most of its revenue is generated from park revenue, ATV trails and gravel royalties from Lake Wazee. The department also has a fund balance that is maintained in the few instances where the department has to draw from it. Additional funds are added to the fund balance nearly every year. A couple of times weve used the fund balance when the lake is drained since that negatively impacts our revenue, Schweitzer said. That means in those times when the department is drawing on the fund balance, they are not having to ask for additional tax levy from the county. The parks department ecosystem creates a fairly self-sustainable model as well, with the fees and park usage all coming back to the department to fund the programs. Its good management of these assets that allows these departments to be self-funding, said Chris Hardie, executive director of the Black River Area Chamber of Commerce. Hardie also said the benefit of the parks is that it brings outside people and outside money into the area, which doesnt show up in the departments budget. East Arbutus and Lake Arbutus are some of the most popular parks in the area with its modern amenities. Its not all about the tourism and timber sales though, the department does receive some help from the state for their work in wildlife and habitat work. One of the things were doing is that weve realized we are lacking in productive forest openings in the county forest, Schweitzer said. Currently, that type of land is less than one percent of county forest land, so the department has been working closely with the Department of Natural Resources, Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation and the National Wild Turkey Foundation to find land that might be developed and maintained throughout the forest for wildlife. One of the bigger concerns that the department has been combating is invasive species that have been moving in like the glossy buckthorn, which can affect the regeneration of other forest life. Shoua Thao, 30, of La Crosse died Saturday, July 30, 2017, in his home. There will be continuous visitation from 7 a.m. Saturday, at Hmong Community & Cultural Center, La Crosse, until departing for burial at Oak Grove Cemetery, La Crosse, Monday. Blaschke & Schneider Funeral Homes are assisting the family and the Hmong Community with arrangements. CHIPPEWA FALLS, Wis. When it opened in May 2015, the Chippewa Commons location of Gordys Market was hailed as a return to the companys roots on the south side of Chippewa Falls. I think people in this area of the southside are thrilled. They are getting a store back in an area that deserves a store, company founder Gordy Schafer told the Herald. On Wednesday, Gordys CEO Jeff Schafer announced the 31,500 square-foot building at 303 Prairie View Road would close the same day, a victim of the companys efforts to grow too fast. Our plans for significant growth were just too aggressive, Jeff Schafer said in a press release. Its time to get back to our roots and operate a smaller organization with the highest level of service to our communities. This announcement is a progression of that plan. The announcement comes six days after Festival Foods announced its acquisition of two Gordys Markets in Eau Claire and one in Tomah. Brian Stenzel, community involvement director for Festival Foods, said Wednesday that the company has no plans to acquire the Chippewa Commons location. These are very difficult decisions for the Gordys family. Our appreciation and sincere concern for both our employees and the residents of Chippewa Falls is always our primary consideration, until no other option exists, Schafer said. A Gordys Market location in Hayward, opened just last year, was closed in late July. Not mentioned in the press release are the plans for Gordys locations in downtown Chippewa Falls, Lake Wissota, Cornell and Stanley. The Stanley store, which has 20,000 square feet, was the 25th Gordys location when it opened in April 2016. Chippewa Falls Mayor Greg Hoffman said he was told about a month ago that the southside Chippewa Falls store would close. He said the Schafer family already has an interested party for the space. Gordys has also committed to working with additional grocery service providers to find another local food option for this location, if possible, the company said in its press release. Hoffman said the Schafer family should be thanked for their investment in the Chippewa Commons store, which also had 8,000 square feet set aside for a smokehouse. Im sorry they had to shut (the store) down, but I understand that from a business perspective, sometimes you need to step back before you can go forward, Hoffman said. The city of Chippewa Falls has given the store tax credits of $250,000. Those credits will transfer to a new business if one occupies that space. I would strongly encourage someone to come (into that space). I think its a great location, Hoffman said. That location was abandoned in 2012 by Mega Foods, which cited changing traffic patterns in closing the store. Mega Foods eventually sold one of its stores on Clairemont Avenue in Eau Claire to Gordys, while Gordys sold its gasoline stations to Mega. That Clairemont Avenue location was one of two Eau Claire locations Gordys sold to Festival Foods. When the Gordys store opened at Chippewa Commons in 2015, Gordys touted that 8,000 people live within a five-mile radius of the store, serving as a compliment to the the Gordys location at 212 Bay St. in downtown Chippewa Falls and the Lake Wissota store. The store is part of the Chippewa Commons shopping center, which Gordys bought in January 2015. It included a building that had housed a Kmart up until 2014, a strip mall and Mega Foods former location. Then Gordys announced in October 2016 that it was looking to sell the strip mall and focus on drawing retailers back into the former Kmart building, which was being used for storage by Premium Waters. Were not strip center operators; we dont do that kind of business on a regular basis and we really want to focus on groceries, said Dave Schafer, the companys chief financial officer. Last month, U-Haul said it intends to convert the former Kmart building at 409 Prairie View Road into a climate-controlled building housing storage units. Attempts on Wednesday to reach Gordys Market for comment on its future were unsuccessful. Hamlin senior throws standout Gracelyn Leiseth headed to Florida Hamlin's Gracelyn Leiseth to compete in women's track and field at the University of Florida. Andy Gronik thinks he has a better approach to leading to the state of Wisconsin. The 60-year-old Milwaukee businessman visited the Tribune on Thursday to talk about his vision for the state as part of a campaign for governor in the 2018 election. During his comments, he contrasted his history working for and with manufacturing companies to Gov. Scott Walker, whose career has been in government and politics since he left Marquette University to run for a state legislative seat and take a job at the American Red Cross. You dont solve problems in boardrooms and committee hearings, Gronik said. You need to have real conversations and look at possible solutions. Gronik touted his history as being a lifetime Wisconsin resident born in Milwaukee and running the successful advising business firm Gro Biz. Recent Stanford University graduate Bob Harlow is the only other declared Democratic candidate, but there are a number of other potential candidates, including State Superintendent Tony Evers, who has filed candidate paperwork but hasnt officially begun a campaign. Speaking about economic development, Gronik said the state needs to do a better job of selling its communities strengths and culture in order to create good-paying jobs. Walkers approach is to threaten people with a loss of programs or drug testing recipients of benefits such as food stamps, Gronik said. Instead, the approach should be to entice people to work by ensuring they have access to good paying jobs and incentives to learn new skills. The brain drain in Wisconsin needs to be addressed, he said, with programs and actions that let people know we want them to come here for college and stay here afterward. One way to do that is to invite people to come here with an income tax credit that could be used to help offset some student loan debt. Rural Wisconsin needs more attention, he said, with Walker making promises about transportation and internet infrastructure that Gronik argued have not materialized despite two terms in office. People are working two or three jobs and struggling just to keep the bills paid and stay afloat. We need a real plan with a real vision for the future that brings people back together, he said. Reporter's Note: The Republican Party of Wisconsin released an email statement on Gronik's campaign Friday that read: "While Scott Walker is busy delivering results for Wisconsin's hard-working families, out-of-touch con artist Andy Gronik is offering only empty rhetoric, attacking Wisconsin's comeback ... It's long overdue that he move beyond buzzwords and finally explain to voters why they should even trust him in the first place. An opportunity for foodies and beer lovers to get lost in a world of food and drink from a hand-selected range of food trucks and breweries from around New Zealand. Seeking to find alternatives to a new highway, La Crosse city leaders are moving to take action on a five-year-old plan to improve conditions for bicyclists and pedestrians. Earlier this week a committee gave preliminary approval to study a redesign of West Avenue and King Street, and another committee is scheduled to vote Thursday on a resolution to release $50,000 authorized in the 2016 capital improvements budget to pay for directional signage on recognized bike routes and five future neighborhood greenways. Thats less than 1 percent of the roughly $6 million the city is slated to spend on road construction this year. La Crosse Mayor Tim Kabat said hes happy to see the council moving forward on active transportation even as the city prepares to sink an extra $2.5 million in reserve funds into roads next year. The number one priority each and every day is the accelerated street improvements, he said. Were not neglecting one for the other. The idea behind the signs, put forth earlier this year by the citys Bicycle-Pedestrian Advisory Committee, is to prioritize projects that can be done right away even while more politically contentious projects have to wait. Basically what this is doing is putting up signs and connecting through paint and bikeway signage to tell people how to get where they actually need to go, said James Longhurst, an adviser to the committee. For a lot of the infrastructure weve built over the last several years we havent done a good job of telling people where it is. Longhurst points to the Bud Hendrickson Bridge, a $4 million footbridge on the citys North Side. Completed in 2015 after years of planning, the bridge is a key connector between Onalaska and La Crosse, yet many people dont know its there. That project took decades and millions of dollars, he said. To go the last step and spend a little money to put some signs up is low-hanging fruit. King Street corridor On Monday, the Board of Public Works authorized the city to draw up engineering plans to redesign the intersection of West Avenue and King Street, designated as a future bike boulevard. Plans developed out of public meetings recommend installing raised medians to restrict left turns at the intersection and block automobiles cross-traffic while providing cyclists and pedestrians a refuge while crossing the four-lane highway that separates much of the citys south side from downtown. Only 3 to 7 percent of peak-hour traffic turns left at the intersection, according to a consultant firms study. Most motorists turn at the signalized intersections of Main and Cass, one block in either direction from King. A separate study by the La Crosse Area Planning Committee found West Avenue has the highest number of bicycle and pedestrian crashes in the region. In 2011, 55-year-old Michael Stoker suffered fatal injuries when he was hit by a car while crossing at King Street. The resolution doesnt authorize construction, but assistant city planner Lewis Kuhlman said with engineering plans in hand, the project has a better chance to qualify for federal transportation funding that would cover 80 percent of the cost. Council president Martin Gaul said modifying an intersection will upset some people, but the city should go forward with relatively easy and inexpensive improvements like signage. The more people we can get to ride bikes takes one more car off the streets, Gaul said. The two resolutions mark some of the citys first real steps to implement a bicycle and pedestrian master plan that was adopted in 2012. Weve checked some small things off, said Carolyn Dvorak, La Crosse ambassador for the Wisconsin Bike Fed and an adviser to the city on active transportation. This is really an attempt to make some significant movement. The plan calls for constructing seven miles of bike boulevard on portions of Avon, King Street, 17th, 22nd and Farnam streets. Construction is scheduled for later this year on 17th, which would be the citys first. Also known as greenways, bike boulevards use pavement markings and traffic-calming devices to slow motorized traffic and make a more comfortable environment for all users. They are generally recommended for low-traffic streets that run parallel to larger thoroughfares. The bike/ped advisory committee also has recommended immediate completion of the King Street boulevard, which could be two or three years out. Dvorak said the recommendations were made with an eye toward improving north-south connections and reducing some rush-hour motor traffic, which has been a priority for Kabat as he seeks to avoid construction of a new highway. The Department of Transportation has identified six potential strategies designed to improve safety and alleviate congestion on the areas three north-south corridors. All include significant new pavement, to the consternation of neighborhood and environmental groups. City residents blocked similar plans in a 1998 referendum, though the $138 million project remains on the states list of approved projects. Kabat, who has been frustrated with the efforts of neighboring municipalities to reduce vehicle traffic and encourage alternative modes of transportation, said the city is not waiting on other entities to address the issue. Were moving forward with these very viable solutions, Kabat said. And were doing it with local funds. At a time when the English publishing industry is booming in the country, writers in Indian languages claim that it is difficult for them to make a living through writing alone. But this has neither subdued their interest nor do they ever plan to quit writing, even if that means writing for a single reader. The past two decades have seen a sustained growth in the consumption of literature, but most of it has been confined to English and Hindi. Poets and authors writing in other languages Marathi, Punjabi and Odia, for instance find the reading circles within these languages rapidly shrinking. The result? The commercial value of their books has declined and opportunities to publish works in these languages have simultaneously reduced. Writing is no longer the bread and butter for such writers and their livelihood largely depends on the many parallel jobs that they pursue. Consider Maithili writer Chandan Kumar Jha, for instance. Despite having been awarded the prestigious Sahitya Akademi Yuva Puraskar 2017 for his collection "Dharti Sau Akash Dhair", there is little hope that he will ever consider poetry as a serious profession. "I won't dare to take up writing as my profession, it is better limited to passion," the 32-year-old Jha told IANS. Based in Kolkata, he works at a private life insurance company, and poetry the art that he has mastered is only a soothing balm in his leisure hours. "A poet may be successful for the moment, but it's not necessary that his or her writings will be appreciated after a few years. Ideologies change very frequently, so does the writing pattern and their themes. So, surviving just on writing is difficult," he maintained. Jha is not an isolated example but only one in the long list of writers and poets in regional languages, who are faced with the same challenge. They may be able to produce a fine work of literature but very few, if at all, are actually able to translate their efforts into a sustained income. Another poet, Suryasnata Tripathy, who has also bagged the same award for his collection "E Samparka Emiti" in Odia, shared a similar view. "There is no money in regional language writing. One of the major hurdles as a regional poet and upcoming writer is to convince the publishing house. Publishers are not so keen on taking risk in regional poetry, unless the poet is well known," said the 26-year-old poet, who is currently pursuing his PhD in microelectronics at IIT-Hyderabad. Like Jha, he also maintained that there are few chances of success for regional writers in India and that they need to have a "parallel career" to support themselves and their families. "There may have been writers who were only into poetry earlier but that is mainly because there was a good sale of books. Readers (in regional languages), if compared to earlier days, have certainly reduced," claimed poet Nighat Sahiba. The 34-year-old poet from Kashmir has been bestowed with the Sahitya Akademi Yuva Puraskar for her collection "Zard Paanike Dair". Punjabi poet Harmanjeet recalled how he was rejected by an established publishing house for his collection "Rani Tatt", which has now got him the Sahitya Akademi Yuva Puraskar. "When the publishers were not ready to take up my writing, I took help from a friend, got it printed and reached out to book sellers," said Harmanjeet, who lives in Mansa, Punjab. The 26-year-old poet is also a lyricist who pens for Punjabi movies. "Initially I tried to sustain on my writing but soon realised that I cannot. The financial scenario for regional poets and writers is not so good. And there are a number of reasons behind this," Harmanjeet noted. According to most of these poets, the reach of regional writing is limited due to the language barrier and, therefore, the sale of books is within a set boundary and population, unless translated. "Youth particularly are more inclined towards reading in English and, therefore, the number of copies published for regional writers are less. Under such circumstances, how can a poet only depend upon his writing?" Harmanjeet asked. Tripathy, the Odia poet, also claimed that the publishers are not ready to accept the new and more liberal style of writing in poetry and prefer the old format, which makes it difficult for the poets to get their manuscripts printed. However, it is sheer joy to read their verses and observe their zest for expressing sentiments in verse despite all the negativities they have to cope with on a daily basis. Poetry may not be a profession but these young voices from this fine expression of literature reiterated they will continue to write even if there remains just a single reader. "Poetry has never been for all, it was always meant for a limited audience. Although the readership might have gone down, there will always be some readers," Jha quipped. The Sahitya Akademi Yuva Puraskar 2017, which along with a casket containing an engraved copper plaque and Rs 50,000, is a step towards recognising and supporting their craft. But certainly, a lot remains to be done. A group of Dalit protesters demanding reservation were detained by the police when they tried to enter Rohtak to meet BJP national president Amit Shah, who is on a visit to Haryana. The protesters were detained on Wednesday when they reached Kilazfargarh village on the Rohtak border as they did not have requisite permission, the police said. Reservation is our right, the leader of the protesters, Devi Das, said before being taken into custody. We will not rest until we get what we deserve. We are staging a peaceful protest. Despite that, the police have detained us, he said. The group has been staging a sit-in in Jind for the last 171 days to press for reservation for the community. Sub-divisional magistrate, Julana, Shiv Kumar said the protesters did not have permission to meet the BJP president. If they had permission, we would have allowed them to enter Rohtak, Kumar said. Shah yesterday began his Haryana visit from Bahadurgarh and is slated to hold a series of meetings and review works undertaken by the M L Khattar government during his three-day stay. A passenger on a Bangkok-bound flight was handed over to police after he lit a cigarette on board, airport sources said today. The passenger was warned by the Air Asia flight crew for breaching the mandatory safety norms, they said. The police slapped a fine on the person and let him off with a warning, they added. The incident had happened on Tuseday, the sources said. Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath on Thursday announced that women across the state will get free ride on all state-owned buses on Raksha Bandhan day. The women will be able to avail free ride from midnight of August 6 till midnight of August 7. Necessary instructions, officials said, have been issued to the Uttar Pradesh State Roadways Transport Corporation (UPSRTC). The state government has also asked police to ensure that the free ride for women is safe and that they do not face any trouble at the hand of eve-teasers or any anti-social elements. Goa's popular but controversial casino industry could soon go cashless, with Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar on Thursday saying the issue will be examined. "However, the issue will be examined as per the Goa, Daman and Diu Public Gambling Act, 1976, and rules framed thereunder," Parrikar told BJP legislator Alina Saldanha in a written reply at the ongoing monsoon session of the Goa assembly. Saldanha had asked Parrikar, who is also the Finance minister, whether the Bharatiya Janata Party-led coalition government in the state has contemplated prohibition of all cash transactions at the Goa casinos, calling the use of cash at casino tables a "major loophole". Goa has five operational offshore casinos and nine onshore casinos, which are patronised by hundreds of thousands every year. Knot of protection Raksha Bandhan or simply termed as Rakhi is one of those rituals, full of myths and beliefs and is celebrated all over India with great zeal and fervour. It is the highlight of eternal love. On the full moon of Sravana (June July) the festival marks the bright light of togetherness between brothers and sisters. There are lots of mythological and historical events related to this special day. The epic Mahabharata conveys the oldest examples of Raksha Bandhan. If taken verbally, the word Raksha means to protect and Bandhan means a thread; together it means a knot of protection. As the myth goes, when Krishna cut his finger once and Draupadi tied a knot to cease the blood, Krishna promised to protect her. Kunti, the grandmother of Abhimanyu tied a thread on his hand before Kurukshetra War commenced so that no evil could touch him. History, as it recounts, Guru Nanak also took rakhi from his sister, Bebe Nanaka. When Alexander the great invaded India, his wife Roxana tied a thread on Porus hand and he promised to protect Alexander and Roxana, so Porus, when he was at the zenith to kill Alexander, remembered his vow and spared him. Rabindranath Tagore, during the Bengal Partition movement, invoked Raksha Bandhan as a concept to inspire love, respect and to strengthen the bond and togetherness between Hindus and Muslims to urge them for protesting against the British Empire. Raksha Bandhan has become a ritual of endless joy amid family members and kin. This day is not only about tying a thread but also the kinship that follows. The day is embellished with hugs, delicacies and mirth. In this world of technology, where people are endowed with machines, it reminds us of the days of yore. When people are not getting enough time to spare with the near and dear ones, this day draws brothers and sisters close to memories and laughter; nostalgia with much enthusiasm. This auspiciousness makes us feel the affectionate and protective shadow of our elder ones, as it should be. It creates the true bond of sincere love, irrespective of age, caste and creed. (Manjush Halder, Coordinator, Class VIII, Bongaon High School) Yearning for a sibling Raksha Bandhan is an auspicious day in India celebrated to honour the bond between a brother and a sister. This day is observed with lot of rituals performed by the sisters for their brothers who, in return, promises to protect their sisters from evil and also take vow to stand by them. Amongst all these happiness and bonding, those who are the only child of their parents feel very lonely, disappointed and completely dejected of the fact that they have no one to celebrate this day with. The bond of Raksha Bandhan is extremely special. It is indeed difficult for them whose siblings live abroad or for those who have lost their siblings due to tragedies are the ones who miss them the most on this day. These days people are so busy in their lives that even those, who dont have siblings, often try to contact their cousins on this day but unfortunately, despite having cousins, they spend the day all alone. And those who have often complain about the tantrums thrown by their siblings, their fights, making fun of each other. Tying a rakhi is so simple yet there is a very strong belief that it connects each other with a pure bond of trust, honour and affection. There are people whom we refer to as our brothers, even if they are not related by blood, but eventually come in to our lives. So this Raksha Bandhan, lets make it our top priority that all the siblings and cousins must not feel alone. If down with work or other engagements, the brothers and sisters must find an alley to escape and be there for each other. (Oindrila Gupta, Coordinator, Class XII, St Joseph and Mary's School) An auspicious occasion The staircase still echoes our stealthy footsteps; the courtyard still reverberates with our ecstatic laughter. The cool shade of the banyan tree still awaits us. The summer breeze, the spells of monsoon that we experienced together beckon us. The hide and seek; the long strides of hopscotchs have now become relics of our golden past. Having left those gleeful days behind as time has taken us to a completely different phase of life, those are the magical moments that can force a smile even when faced with lifes challenges. As days have passed, we siblings have split into various directions in pursuit of higher education or career opportunities. In this tech-savvy 21st century, we hardly ever get time to talk to our siblings. It seems as though the hustle and bustle of our life has taken us to a completely different era where we can only dream of those carefree days of our childhood. The incessant chatter, those innocent pranks, those peevish murals that are etched on the dusty obscure walls of our home often makes us wish we havent grown up altogether. We realise now that it was not the thread that we tied on our brothers wrist or the splendid gifts that we received; or the mouthwatering sweets or the dainty dresses that was special. It was the togetherness that has always been remarkable. A brothers presence ,support and promise has always been a sisters best gift because years later she may forget the gifts she had received but she will never forget the magnanimous smile that adorned his lips when she tied the rakhi that she had painstakingly made or procured for him. Thus, when today we receive phone calls from our siblings and gulp down our nostalgia to wish Happy Rakhi, we realise that our siblings are the physical elements of our memory, the fragments of childhood that can never be lost. (Anushka Roy, Coordinator, Class XI, St Joseph's Convent, Chandannagore) Tracing the origin The very thought of the Rakhi Purnima brings a smile to our face. Celebrated in India, Nepal and Mauritius, it commemorates the bond that sisters and brothers hold. There are many instances in history answering the question of Rakhsha Bandhan' sgenesis, the most popular one being about Roxana, Alexanders wife and Porus. Another not very renowned historical incident is the evidence of Rani Karnavati (widowed queen of Chittor) sending a rakhito Aurangzeb to recapture the throne of Chittor in 535 AD. Evidences of mythical occurrences of Rakhsha Bandhan had been found in the Mahabharata where Draupadi tied a strip of her silk sari to Krishnas hand to protect him from bleeding in a battlefield wound. Krishna thereby declared Draupadi as his sister and promised to be her protector. That is how this festival came into being. Happy Raksha Bandhan! (Rwitacheta Sinha, Coordinator, Class VIII, St Josephs Convent, Chandannaga) Affable friendship The bond between a brother and a sister is filled with sweet and sour memories; the funny memories along with some sad ones, the unreasonable fights that still continue. The time that we spend with each other is too much fun. My brother and I had always fought with each other as kids and we still fight like that over small things or sometimes without any reason. We always got scolded together even now because we try to find the lamest excuse to start the argument, even the smallest issue that provokes. There is no sister who has not stolen her brothers toffees and then secretly ate them all. Those who have a sibling will understand how fun it is to be with them. The very first friend in our childhood is our own sibling. We can share our sorrows or happiness with them. We celebrate every single occasion together; it seems disappointing if we are not together. I always like to make rakhis at home and then tie it on my brothers wrist during Raksha bandhan. Its true that my brother has never gifted me pricey presents but has given me blessings and lots of love, which is precious than any other gift in the world. (Anwita Dasgupta, Coordinator, Class IX, St Clare School) Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi is arriving here on Friday on a day-long visit to flood-affected regions of north Gujarat, party leaders said on Thursday. During the visit, Gandhi is scheduled to take a tour of Banaskantha and Patan districts, which are the worst affected regions in the recent floods in the state in 70 years. North Gujarat is otherwise a drought-prone region. Over 270 persons are estimated to have died and 4.5 lakh people affected by the floods in the state. As many as 61 persons have been killed in Banaskantha alone, while seven died due to heavy rains and flood waters following rains in upstream Rajasthan. The Congress Vice President will first reach Dhanera in Banakantha and meet flood-affected people before proceeding to Patan district. The Congress has set up a control room to coordinate relief work in the flood-affected regions. Party's nominee for the August 8 Rajya Sabha election Ahmed Patel, state president Bharatsinh Solanki and party in-charge for Gujarat Ashok Gehlot visited north Gujarat recently. Rahul Gandhi is expected to be accompanied by Solanki and Gehlot. In a major setback to the Congress, the Supreme Court on Thursday refused to stay poll panel's notification allowing NOTA in upcoming Rajya Sabha poll in Gujarat. "Why are you so late in raising the question as the EC had already issued notification in January 2014, " the top court bench asked the Gujarat Congress. The apex court agreed to examine the Constitutional validity of the EC's notification to give an option of NOTA in elections. According to reports, the Gujarat Congress, on Wednesday, moved the top court against the Election Commission's decision to introduce NOTA in the Rajya Sabha polls. The top court had on Wednesday agreed to hear a plea moved by the Gujarat Congress challenging the decision to use None of the Above (NOTA) option in the upcoming Rajya Sabha polls in the state. A bench headed by Justice Dipak Misra agreed to hear the plea after senior advocate Kapil Sibal mentioned the matter before it and sought urgent hearing. As per reports, the directions to use NOTA in Rajya Sabha elections were enforced in January 2014 after the Supreme Court in 2013 made it mandatory to have NOTA option in EVMs. (With inputs from agencies) The report by the Comptroller and Auditor-General (CAG), which highlights a serious shortage of ammunition in the Indian Army, has caused considerable concern and raised questions about the preparedness of the armed forces to fight a war. An earlier CAG report had mentioned the poor state of ammunition management in the army for the period 2008-13. The latest report is a follow-up audit and it has not noted any significant improvement in the availability and quality of ammunition supplied by the Ordnance Factory Board (OFB) to the forces. The CAG has stated that the army faces a shortfall of 40 per cent. This would mean that 61 out of 152 types of ammunition available were meant for less than 10 days of fighting a war, whereas the army is supposed to hold stocks of ammunition for 40 days of an intense war. The shortage of artillery and tank ammunition is very serious and critical, as 83 per cent of this high calibre ammunition might turn out to be useless because of the dearth of fuses which are essential components of ammunition activation. The report has also mentioned irregularities and inefficiencies in purchases which have made the situation worse. Imports of equipment at prices higher than the actual cost, overhaul of engines that exceeded the cost of a new engine, choice of manufactures without the necessary skills and unreliable suppliers are many other problems highlighted by the report. One wonders why the three Chiefs of the armed forces have not expressed concern over the serious lapses in the procurement of ammunition? They should have brought this crucial issue to the notice of the Prime Minister if the Ministry of Defence was not paying heed to their demand. How can the defence forces be treated so shabbily? The opposition members raised the issue of defence preparedness in the wake of a CAG report flagging that the Army was facing a critical shortage of ammunition. In response, the ad hoc Defence Minister, Arun Jaitley ,said on 25 July that the armed forces are reasonably and sufficiently equipped to defend the sovereignty of the country. Jaitley said the CAG report has 2013 as a reference point and there have been follow-ups ~ Subsequently thereafter, significant progress has been made, he said. Procedures (for procurement of arms and ammunition) have been simplified, powers decentralised and the armed forces are reasonably and sufficiently equipped. The claim that the forces are reasonably and sufficiently equipped does not fully answer the concerns. The word reasonably is vague and gives the impression that stocks are below the norms. The ministers statement that the CAG report was about the situation in 2013 is also incorrect. Even if the figures presented by the CAG are overstated, they present the picture of an army ill-equipped to fight a war. The deficiencies mentioned in the report call for action over a long-term, but earnest efforts should have started by now. With tensions rising on the borders and the serious internal situation, security preparedness should get the highest priority. However, the Opposition was not satisfied with the reply and put tough posers to the government. It wanted the government to appoint a permanent defence minister in view of the tension on the Jammu and Kashmir and India-China-Bhutan borders. The dire need of appointment of Chief of Defence Staff (CDS) recommended by various committees for single advice on matters pertaining to defence and national security is imperative. The armed forces have sought an allocation of Rs.26.84 lakh crore ($416 billion) over the next five years to ensure military modernisation and maintenance to take on the collusive threat from Pakistan and China as well as to safeguard Indias expanding geostrategic interests. Defence ministry sources said the 13th consolidated defence five-year plan for 2017-22, which has been pegged at Rs.26,83,924 crore after extensive consultations with all stakeholders, including the DRDO, was presented at the Unified Commanders Conference on July 10-11. The armed forces pitched for an early approval to the 13th Plan because their annual acquisition plans are based on it. These projections for higher defence outlays come at a time when Indian and Chinese troops are locked in a tense but non-aggressive face-off near the Sikkim-BhutanTibet trijunction, while the daily firing duels with Pakistan along the Line of Control continue to take a toll on both sides. Jaitley, who addressed the conference, assured the armed forces that capital expenditure for modernisation projects would be a priority area with resource availability increasing within the economy. But it is also true that the actual annual defence budgets have shown a discernible trend of declining modernisation budgets, unspent funds and skewed revenue-to-capital expenditure ratio, which have meant that the Army, Navy and IAF continue to grapple with critical operational gaps on several fronts. In the 2017-18-defence budget, for instance, the Rs.1,72,774 crorerevenue outlay by far outstrips the capital one of Rs.86,488 crore for modern weapon systems. Moreover, the Rs.2.74 lakh crore defence budget works out to just 1.56 per cent of the projected GDP, the lowest such figure since the 1962 war with China. The forces want the defence budget to progressively reach at least 2.5 to 3 per cent of the GDP for their operational requirements. As per the 13th Defence Plan, Rs.12,88,654 crore has been projected for the capital outlay, while Rs 13,95,271 crore for revenue expenditure. With an eye firmly on China, there is also a separate section in the plan on the capability development of the strategically-located tri-Service Andaman and Nicobar Command, which was set up in October 2001 but has suffered from relative neglect, lack of infrastructure and turfwars. The armed forces will concurrently work to improve their poor teeth-to-tail ratio as well as ensure proper inter-service prioritisation in procurement, thrust on indigenisation, and optimal utilisation of funds. They also want a concerted effort to prevent the yearly surrender of funds. The defence five-year plans are formulated in consonance with existing threat perceptions, the Raksha Mantri's operational directives and the 15-year longterm integrated perspective plan (LTIPP). However, they have not received much attention from successive governments, with the 10th (2002-07), 11th (2007- 12) and 12th (2012-17) Plans failing to get approval from the finance ministry. Shortage of ammunition, inefficiency and irregularities in procurement of modern defence equipment and also the neglect of the army is affecting the morale and battle-worthiness of the defence forces. This should be the highest priority of the government, specifically to make its army strong like Israel if it desires to make India free from enemy hostilities. (The writer is retired professor of International Trade. He may be reached at [email protected]) It is an index to the disorientation of the Bengal Left that it has failed to field a candidate for the Rajya Sabha election on 5 August. Not since the redoubtable Bhupesh Gupta of the undivided CPI stepped into the portals of the House of Elders in 1952 have the communists cut such a sorry figure, with the Election Commission rejecting the candidature of Bikash Bhattacharya on a point of order. Not that the party was unaware of the 3 p.m. deadline for filing nominations last Friday. While Alimuddin Street claims that the former Mayor of Kolkata and a noted lawyer had filed the papers at 2-58 p.m., it devolves on the party, remarkably astute as it once was, to account for cutting it fine and thus prompting the EC to take a call on the delay and then discard the nomination on Monday ~ 48 hours after it was filed. The delay becomes still more inexplicable as Bhattacharya, the partys nominee for the sixth seat from Bengal, was reportedly chatting with the Returning Officer for quite a while and long before the clock struck three. Neither the candidate nor the party have as yet explained why he didnt file Form 26 and the additional affidavit within the deadline. Submission of this affidavit before an election is mandatory under a Delhi High Court order of 2006. As a lawyer, Bhattacharya could not have been unaware of the rules of engagement. By accident or design, there was a mess-up. And the party is accountable for the fiasco not least because the Leftists had once constituted a robust bloc within the Rajya Sabha. It shall not be easy to digest the fact that the candidature was turned down by EC under the Representation of the Peoples Act. Both Trinamul and the Congress must be secretly grateful to the CPI-M for this no-contest scenario. In the net, the five candidates fielded by Trinamul ~ Derek OBrien, Sukhendu Sekhar Ray, Dola Sen, Manas Bhuiyan, and Shanta Chhetri (Darjeeling) ~ will be elected unopposed. In the same privileged category must be Pradip Bhattacharya of the Congress; the Left has given him a walkover. It is hard not to wonder whether this was a tactical ploy of the Bengal lobby. Though Bhattacharya has claimed that there was no hidden agenda, such suspicions must arise in the context of the CPI-M central committees decision not to support or take support from a Congress candidate. Unlike Alimuddin Street, the partys ombudsmen in Delhi have always been loath to sustain a tie-up with the Congress ~ one major factor behind the decimation of the CPI-M in the 2016 assembly election. The argument of Sujan Chakraborty, the partys MLA from Jadavpur, that while our clock showed 2-58 p.m., the Returning Officers watch indicated 3-02 p.m. is facile, considering the fiasco. The Indian security forces heaved a great sigh of relief after they successfully neutralised on August 1 the dreaded Lashkare-Toiba ( LeT) terrorist Abu Dujana and three of his associates in a fierce encounter at Hakirpura, near Pulwama, Kashmir. Abu Dujana, carrying a bounty of Rs.15 lakh, was originally a resident of the Gilgit-Baltistan region and had been effecting severe devastation in targeting Indian security forces for the last several years. He had specially targeted the Indian army as he believed that the Army was singularly causing obstruction to the 'struggle' by the Kashmiris. He had carried out as many as three dozen attacks on the army, the most notorious of these being the Udhampur strike which killed BSF personnel too and lowered the morale of those engaged in dealing with terrorism in Kashmir. We are noticing numerous encounters in the recent past eliminating terrorists coming from across the border as also from within. There does not seem to be any let up in the offensive spree being relentlessly pursued by the security forces. Purely from the operational point of view as also in dealing with terror incidents, this is a very welcome trend and the rhythm must not be broken. This is also imperative in light of NIA arrests of Hurriyat separatists and most importantly exposing them for their nefarious links with the Pakistani ISI and money laundering. Large sections of Kashmiri youth are disenchanted with the exposed undesirable activities of the Hurriyat and their children enjoying affluence and luxury while Kashmiris in general are left to cope with huge suffering and abject poverty. In other words, the going is good, or so it seems, and in this backdrop, it would appear advisable to continue operations to cleanse the state of terrorists and their sympathisers. Another silver lining vis-a-vis public opinion was visible at a recent (July 28-29) conclave 'Understanding Kashmir'. This conclave gave opportunity to Kashmiri youth to articulate their thoughts in a frank and forthright manner. Some of the speakers and their views merit mention here. Insha Mir, one of the prime movers of the conclave felt that the Kashmir issue being beyond 'resolution' needed a Plan B. And to deal with the problem, Kashmiri youth should be gradually readied and mentally prepared to live with the ongoing conflict. Another view was aptly articulated by Syed Mujtaba Rizvi, the cultural entrepreneur of Kashmir. Rizvi is well known for his crusade against corruption and nepotism in the J&K establishment. He was critical of the government shutting down internet facilities depriving Kashmiri youth from exploring opportunities for their future and livelihood. Significantly, Shazia Bakshi, gave vent to thoughts which cannot be ignored. She said that all Kashmiris' allegiance towards India should not be questioned. She claimed herself to be an Indian first, then a Kashmiri and then a Muslim. She also disclosed having gone to Pakistan, she sang the Indian national anthem in the Jinnah hall in Karachi and still she and others are asked to prove their loyalty. Importantly, many felt at the conclave that Zakir Musa and Burhan Wani cannot be the role models of Kashmiris as they are identified with guns. Such statements must be encouraged. Speakers also felt that ongoing radicalisation was more political then religious. This needs to be combated. They gave the example of Zakir Musa who got radicalised while studying in Chandigarh and not in Kashmir. Some of the perceptions heard and seen in the conclave are worthy of note by those in authority to bring youth to the mainstream, instead of leaving them to live in isolation. In this context, it must also be stated that journalist Samir Yaseer felt that Kashmiris being a fearless lot should not contest abrogation of Article 370. He claimed they can live without it, subtly contradicting Mehbooba Mufti not to press for retaining Article 370. Here, we see new views which need to be adequately capitalised to consolidate the gains. All said and done, it must be said that Indian security agencies are working in perfect tandem, a fresh trend which had not been noticed for some time. Hunting down wanted terrorists like Abu Dujana was preceded by well-coordinated intelligence provided by military intelligence, RAW, IB, state intelligence and possibly by technical outfits. The state police is also upbeat with repeated successes and this must be acknowledged in good measure. The Prime Minister would perhaps do well if he articulates his appreciation to security forces during his upcoming Independence Day speech. A shabaash from no less than the country's PM would make a substantial difference and bring the morale of security forces to an all time high, encouraging them to keep the good work going in a bid to bring Kashmir back on the rails. The challenge may look difficult but it is not impossible. (The writer is a retired IPS officer, a security analyst and Senior Fellow with the India Police Foundation. The views are personal.) Even if it is accepted that the move was cultural rather than religious, the Administrator of Daman, Diu and associated Union Territories has been rendered silly after being forced to rescind the order that women employees of the government tie rakhis on the hands of male colleagues on the upcoming festival. The move had sparked such social outrage that the offensive circular had to be withdrawn within 24 hours. The administrations offices will now be closed on 7 August ~ the controversial order had directed they function, attendance was mandatory, and a compliance report was to be submitted. Clearly the authoritarian tenor of the order proved irksome, and the staff (with some political backing) mounted enough resistance to thwart attempted high-handedness ~ a mini-setback for an overbearing North Block which exercises control over UTs. Since the Administrator is an official and not a political figure (maybe a political appointee) it would be a trifle unfair to discern a saffron undertone to the order, though it would be difficult to accept the line that the move was aimed at fostering better staff relations. Some members were not even on speaking terms, an official sought to explain. It is an unfortunate reality that the unique festival symbolising a woman seeking brotherly protection and love (is that appreciated by those who prefer Ms over Mrs or Miss?) has in recent years been hijacked by Hindutva elements. During the Kargil War there had been considerable discomfort in Army Headquarters when BJP activists collected rakhis to be sent to troops on the frontline. The uniforms have since buckled. A recent newspaper photograph has drawn attention to paramilitary personnel mounting a parade at which schoolgirls tied the symbol on jawans hands. The rakhi order has to be seen in the larger context of using the diktat-route to promote patriotism (the present interpretation of the word raises many hackles) and other noble sentiments. Threatening prosecution of those who did not stand when the National Anthem is played in movie-houses is one example of the malaise, another is the judicial order directing Vande Mataram to be sung in offices at regular intervals, so too plans to exhibit an armoured fighting vehicle on the JNU campus. There is little cause for quarrel with any of those specifics, but the larger question of whether nobility can be spread courtesy pressure-tactics remains unanswered. Even the Lok Sabha has witnessed one member quietly depart when Vande Mataram was being played at the conclusion of a session. That action was decidedly insensitive: so too when during his most recent Maan ki baat the Prime Minister listed a series of coming Hindu festivals to celebrate, ~ but ignored the reality that for Roman Catholics the world over 15 August is a special day on the ecclesiastical calendar Donald Trump has achieved the impossible: he has made Theresa Mays operation look strong and stable. While Trump lurches from one daily crisis to the next, a Downing Street ship that seemed to be heading for the rocks only a few weeks ago has been stabilised by a new team. I had never seen such a dysfunctional government as Mays after the June election. But Trump has lived up to his name and beaten it. Im currently watching the latest series of House of Cards, in which Kevin Spaceys chillingly ruthless US President uses every trick, legal or otherwise, to cling on to power. Its great fun but somehow less potent now that we have a real life Trump; life has overtaken art. Anthony Scaramucci, the White House communications director for 10 days, spoke approvingly of front-stabbing as he knifed chief of staff Reince Priebus only to find himself frontstabbed by Priebuss successor John Kelly. To see such a Shakespearean bloodbath in a governing administration, as opposed to Michael Goves assassination of Boris Johnson in the heat of a party leadership battle, is incredible. Even Nick Timothy and Fiona Hill, the two all-powerful May aides sacked after the election debacle, went in for back-stabbing rather than front-stabbing, according to their victims Cabinet ministers included. There are some parallels between May and Trump. Both have lost about 12 key aides in a few months including two joint chiefs of staff (May), a chief of staff and deputy (Trump), a communications director and press secretary. Despite nominally holding power, both must wonder how on earth they will get their measures through both houses of their legislature. But of course there are differences too. Trump was a good campaigner even if he has turned into an incompetent governor and seems to have encouraged the infighting. May was such a terrible campaigner that her party will not allow her to lead it into another election. It looked like her government would be equally shambolic. But something has changed in the past two weeks. A dysfunctional No 10 operation after the election is now functioning normally. Policies have been rolled out on issues including air quality, leasehold reform, transgender rights and mental health. Crucially, ministers have shown there is more to life than Brexit (even though the very real Cabinet tensions over EU negotiations shared the headlines with the policy announcements). Ministers have been given their head, after being kept firmly in their box during the dictatorial Timothy-Hill regime. Statements still have to be cleared with Downing Street to prevent the chaos seen at the White House. But, as one insider told me: The default option is now to say yes to ministers rather than no. By accident rather than design, May has ended up with a better way of governing. Ministers who predicted that May could not survive without Nick and Fi have been proved wrong. The huge vacuum has been filled by Gavin Barwell, the new chief of staff; Damian Green, Mays unofficial deputy and Cabinet fixer, and Robbie Gibb, the new director of communications while Gavin Williamson, the Government Chief Whip, mounted a strong operation to head off a coup. May was resilient, all the more remarkable given her exhaustion after the election. She fully intends to see Brexit through, staying on until March 2019 at the very least. There is now a good chance that Conservative MPs will let her, having looked at the alternatives on offer and seen the clock ticking on the negotiations. Does Mays recovery give Trump any grounds for hope? A lot will depend on Kelly, the new chief of staff. The retired general is widely respected, but will he really be allowed to rein in members of Trumps own family? I doubt it. At the start of his presidency, I discounted the speculation that he would never last his four-year term. Now I dont think he will. The links between his election campaign and Russia, and his attacks on the special counsel Robert Mueller who is investigating them, will probably get him. I suspect Trump will jump before he is pushed or impeached. On Twitter (of course), he will blame it all on Washingtons deep state establishment and the fake news of the liberal media. While adding that it has been a great presidency. Could May, who would clock up almost three years in Downing Street if she does Brexit, serve longer as PM than Trump does as President after his turbulent first six months? I should have put money on that on 9 June. (The Independent) Milan offers something for everyone; Top-notch shopping and a flourishing cultural scene. Driving in from the Milano Centrale, you notice its more than just fashion and if you hold dear a city that shouts elegance, perseverance and supremacy all in go, avoiding Milan is a mistake. As we drove down in the heart of the gorgeous city, I came upon what looked like a Palace ~ The Mandarin Oriental, one of Milans top luxury hotels, baby steps away from just about every sight you want to see aka the Teatro alla Scala, via Montenapoleone and Duomo. As I walked inside, I was enthralled by the outstanding stature and stylish interiors. Housed within four 18th century buildings overlooking two parallel streets, Mandarin Oriental depicts the elegance of its past while providing the finest conveniences for todays travellers. Initially constructed as a wellappointed manor house, Palazzo Confalonieri, the structure later held the citys tax office, between the 1930s and 1950s, and a bank, from the 1960s. Unique coats of arms of historical Lombard provinces are noticeable on walls above the curved colonnade, shimmering the edifices memorable past. So after a check in and a quick lunch at Mandarins Bistrot my daughter and I were ready to head to the Duomo! Fashion and architecture A few steps away from the Mandarin Oriental would take you to the magnificent Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II, concluded in 1877. And this covered shopping mall, with a lot of glass, steel, a blend of Saks 5th Avenue and Vatican, is where you will find big name designers like Gucci, Armani, and Louis Vuitton, and plenty of cafes to rest your exhausted feet. But dont spend too much vigour shopping here, as the well-known shopping streets in Milan are yet to come. The Duomo, fourth largest cathedral in Europe is difficult to miss it stands just open-air the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II and is an astounding gothic confectionery of white pink marble that dictates Cathedral Square. It took our breath away literally, as we just stood there and looked at it in awe. For those who do not know construction on the Duomo started in 1391 and continued for centuries. There are 3,500 statues, 150 spires and 52 pillars, one for week day of the year. Aperitivo and dinner We swung back to the hotel and made sure to rest up. The Aperitivo is a must do when in Milan. This ritual takes place in the premature evening when locals and tourists alike crease around Milans most popular restaurants and bars for a concoction and light bites. We adopted the Italian approach and nibbled lightly as we savoured the flavours at Mandarin Orientals courtyard, leaving enough room to not skip dinner. For me Italian means superb cuisine and extraordinary wines, a harmonious mingling of tastes, unique flavours and a culinary heritage, the roots of which are set firmly in the past. There could not have been a better way to end the day with a meal at the Bistrot running the gamut from tasty antipasti to extremely delicious dessertsand of course, absolutely stunning fine wines which have made Italy famous the world over. After dinner, Italys finest variety of carefully selected grappa and Amari, together with the cocktail menu is on offer until 2 a.m. Everything Italian Breakfast was like snooping on the movers and shakers of the city, but because its Milan they are all chic and handsome. Post breakfast, we took a hop-on-hop-off ticket and spent all our time exploring and shopping. During all this shopping we stopped for regular macchiato breaks, to rest our feet. The sun was shining and we sat outside with a view of the Duomo, watch the fashionistas pass by with a gelato in our hand. We also feasted on Osso Bucco, a traditional dish of Milan, then walked around and made full use of our bus pass. This unsung northern Italian city with its amazing cathedral, first-rate shopping and an active buoyant vibe, surprised me no end. I am truly in love with everything Italian. BEST WAY TO REACH: Air India has a direct flight to Milan Malpensa Airport. From there one can take a train or a bus to Milano Centrale. BEST PLACE TO STAY: Mandarin Oriental, Via Andegari, 9, 20121 Milano MI, Italy. Set in four adjacent 18thcentury buildings, this sleek, luxury hotel is walking distance from Teatro alla Scala and the famed Milan Cathedral. Britain's 96-year-old Prince Philip carried out his final solo engagement here to begin his retirement from royal duties. The Duke of Edinburgh is the longest serving consort to a British monarch with 65 years of public service and appearing at hundreds of events alongside his wife Queen Elizabeth II. His appearance on Wednesday at a parade to mark the finale of the 1664 Global Challenge a series of strength and endurance challenges raising funds and awareness for charity brings his solo engagements total to 22,220 since 1952. In his role as Captain General of the Royal Marines, he met British naval servicemen who have taken part in a 1,664-mile trek as part of the challenge at a Buckingham Palace ceremony. Prince Philip then took the royal salute from a dais on the Palace forecourt and parade ended with three cheers for the Captain General. He then set off to join the Queen at Balmoral Castle in Scotland, where the couple traditionally spend this time of the year. While his official diary of engagements come to an end on Wednesday, the Palace has said the Duke may still decide to attend some events alongside the Queen, 91, whose diary of events remains unchanged. "The parade would bring His Royal Highness' individual programme to a conclusion, although he may choose to attend certain events, alongside the Queen, from time to time," a Buckingham Palace spokesperson said. According to palace records, Prince Philip has undertaken 637 solo overseas visits to 143 countries, delivered 5,496 speeches, written 14 books and carried out the role of patron for 785 organisations during his royal career. It was announced in May that he would no longer undertake any solo royal engagements but the Palace had stressed that the surprise news was not health related. The Duke is known for his quips and over the past few months has been joking about his impending retirement, telling British celebrity cook Prue Leith at a Palace event: "I'm discovering what it's like to be on your last legs". Prince Philip, who has long been considered among the most active royals in the UK, has been married to Queen Elizabeth II since 1947. The couple are set to mark their 70th or platinum wedding anniversary in November this year. Their son and heir, Prince Charles, and grandsons Princes William and Harry are expected to take on additional royal duties to step in for Prince Philip at public engagements from this month. The Queen and Prince Philip had already cut down on long-haul travel for some years now, with younger royals taking on those duties. Close confidantes of the royal family said that the decision to retire was a personal one taken by Prince Philip himself, who may now devote his time to writing his memoirs. 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. The last days of the Newfie Pride There were many nights he didnt sleep. The numbers and scenarios turned over and over in his mind, making rest impossible. Id get up two, three oclock in the morning, night after night, come out to the kitchen table and work the numbers every ... The Madison area is under consideration for a Foxconn development, separate from the huge, $10 billion flat-screen display factory the company plans to build in southeast Wisconsin, several sources with knowledge of the discussions said. The Taiwanese manufacturer has asked for information about possible sites in Dane County and a project proposal could take shape within the next six weeks, one source said, adding that project plans are very fluid at this point. The source said, though, a specific site will take longer to choose. Another source said Foxconns development here could involve a health-related business, such as a wearable product, a medical device or a research and development facility. The two sources asked not to be identified because of the sensitive nature of the talks. Meanwhile, the Wisconsin State Journal has obtained a copy of an email sent last week by a regional business group seeking available locations for an unnamed company. The subject line was Project Varsity Site Search. The company is looking for a 20-acre site in the Madison area on which it can build a 700,000-square-foot manufacturing plant that could employ as many as 650 people over the first five years of operation, according to the July 26 email the Madison Region Economic Partnership (MadREP) sent to city, county, UW-Madison and business officials around Dane County. July 26 was also the day Foxconns Wisconsin project was announced in Washington, D.C. The MadREP note said the company plans to make a capital investment of about $505 million and hopes to break ground by January 2018 and start operating by the summer of 2020. Employees would receive an average salary of $53,000 plus benefits, the email said. The company is seeking an undeveloped site within a current or future tax incremental financing district, the email said. A 700,000 SF building equates to 16 acres under one roof so you do the calculations on the proper site acreage in your community to accommodate storm water retention, setbacks, bike racks, ingress/egress and other zoning requirements for this size of building, Michael Gay, senior vice president of MadREP, wrote in the email. MadREP CEO Paul Jadin confirmed the group sent out a request for information and that it is for a substantial project, but declined to confirm it was Foxconn. He said the request generated several responses, but wouldnt say how many. Madison Mayor Paul Soglin could not be reached for comment Wednesday evening. University Research Park available Aaron Olver, managing director of University Research Park, did not comment directly about Foxconn but said the new University Research Park campus, at Junction Road and Highway M, could house a company looking to build. University Research Park 2 is certainly available as a site for large technology companies, Olver said. Middleton city administrator Mike Davis said Middleton does not have a site large enough to accommodate the use being requested in the MadREP email. Fitchburg Mayor Jason Gonzalez said Foxconn officials have toured sites in Fitchburg. He said he submitted three possible locations, but did not specify where they are. We have several (undeveloped) sites that are in our urban service area that are ready for development ... so were interested, Gonzalez said. He said he thinks the facility would make wearable devices that monitor vital signs, such as Apple Watches or Fitbits. Zach Brandon, president of the Greater Madison Chamber of Commerce, also confirmed that Foxconn is considering this area. I know that they have an interest in Madison, that theyve looked at our manufacturing abilities, our research and development capabilities, and theyve had conversations around global challenges like cancer, Brandon said. News a ways off Gov. Scott Walker was asked about the prospects for a Madison-area Foxconn operation after a Wednesday news conference at the Capitol with the South Korean ambassador to the United States. Any of the speculation and Id say right now its just speculation about additional sites in the state is really driven by what the ambassador talked about: that people are taking notice of us. Were a ways off from any further news about potential Foxconn expansion, Walker said. Foxconn, a contract electronics manufacturer for companies including Apple and Amazon, announced on July 26 that it plans to build a massive factory in southeast Wisconsin that will make liquid crystal display panels. The company has said it will invest $10 billion for a 1,000-acre campus, including more than a dozen buildings, with a total 20 million square feet of space. Foxconn said it plans to hire 3,000 employees to start, with the potential of as many as 13,000 employees eventually. President Donald Trump, citing an off-the-record remark by Foxconn chairman Terry Gou, said the companys investment could swell to as much as $30 billion. His comment came during a White House news conference on Tuesday. In March, Foxconn founder and CEO Terry Gou pledged his support for improved cancer research and precision medicine in East Asia, according to an article in the Taiwan News. He also announced a collaboration among Foxconns charity arm, Yonglin Foundation; NantWorks health care group in California; and the National Taiwan University last September aimed at pursuing immunotherapy to fight cancer, according to the Nikkei Asian Review. Gous first wife and his younger brother died of cancer. Brandon said he does not know yet if Gou is considering a joint venture with UW-Madisons Carbone Cancer Center. Representatives of Foxconns medical group met with Dr. Howard Bailey, director of the Carbone Center, as well as other researchers there in recent visits to the Madison area. I can think of no better place in the world to make an investment than Madison if thats what you want to accomplish, said Brandon. I knew it would be a nutty exploit driving 1,100-kilometres (around 684 miles) in two days along Norways coastal road. So why did I do it? Well, it wasnt for the weather. It drizzled most of the time with the sun taking a sneaky tantalising peak through the clouds every so often. The elements teased right through to sundown at 11pm a late sunset is a a quirk of Norways daylight cycle during the summer months. It wasnt a boozy trip either as a humble pint of beer knocks you back 12 and with just over 5 million people in a space as large as the UK, the nightlife was not exactly heaving. And forget about the romance of negotiating winding roads at speed the 80km/h (50 miles) limit is strictly adhered to and without any specific fine range, a speeding fine could empty the bank coffers. Yet there are some compelling reasons: the roads are utterly superb a sure sign of the expense and attention paid to the infrastructure the scenery of fjords, waterfalls, mountains and lavish greenery is exceptional and with six road-ferry combo experiences peppered throughout the road trip from Stavanger to Trondheim, you get to see different perspectives of the scenery from the water. You may also like: From Oslo to Bergen, and the spectacular scenery in between So, I picked up my 2-wheel drive Mazda CX-3 in Stavanger the evening before a car which for a mildly nervous driver like myself seemed solid enough to steer me through some hair-pin strewn mountain roads and narrow tunnels. Click on the image to enlarge: With so much daylight I explored Stavanger that first evening. Its a handsome town with a pretty harbour, wavy streets lined with white clapperboard homes. Theres a pretty lake too replete with swans, seagulls, ducks and some loitering sparrows that broke out into a frenzy at the mere hint of any bread being thrown their way. Read also: 48 hours in Stavanger, Norway In the morning I awoke with the birds around 5am for an early 6am start for the first leg of the trip to Loen. I braved the drizzle and got into the car with a trusty breakfast pack in hand, which I learned was a highly-prized provision since there was not a single eatery along the way other than at the odd petrol station and possibly at campervan resorts. Click on the image to enlarge: The ferry crossings were regular and efficient and my early start meant being able to avoid the deluge of campervans and inevitable queues that hit the road slightly later in the day. The roads were incredibly smooth and I passed miles and miles of rocky or lavish emerald green terrain and mountains rising into low hanging clouds. It was haunting yet beautiful all at once. Click on the image to enlarge: At Etne it was a slow crawl at just 40kms with a road climbing up to at a 10 per cent incline taking in a mountain tunnel only to find that at the other side the elevation had dropped. My ears popped several times and before they could unpop there was another tunnel and yet another which finally deposited me into a valley where a smog had moved in. And just as I adjusted to light at the end of one tunnel another appeared. This was becoming hard work. Langfoss and Latefoss waterfalls Then as easily as a babys smile disarms you, the dramatic Langfoss waterfall, the fifth-highest waterfall in Norway did the same. I came upon it on E134 by the AkrafjordIt and could feel the wind created by its incredible force ruffle my hair as its massive volume of water 2,000ft fell into the Akrafjorden. Further on route 13 at Odda, the twin falls of Latefoss waterfall are an intriguing spectacle with two falls dropping 165m simultaneously into a rapid stream. Imagine the noise and the spray. The area is ripe for exploring, and hiking with plenty of trails. If only Id had more time. But there was still lots more road and tunnels to cover. And though I wasnt a fan of these amazing feats of engineering, the Laerdal tunnel was altogether a different thing altogether. Laerdal tunnel The Laerdal tunnel connects Lrdal and Aurland in Sogn og Fjordaneis. It is a staggering 24.5 kilometres (around 15 miles) and is one of the worlds longest road tunnels. It saw 2.5 million cubic metres of rock being excavated costing $125 million over the fives years it took to build. It could have been an extremely monotonous drive and to stop the inevitable dropping off at the wheel they built three massive, brightly-lit chambers into the tunnel which appeared every six kilometres. It is also the first tunnel in the world first to be equipped with an air treatment plant meaning drivers really can breathe easy. Click on the image to enlarge: Hoven Skylift Finally, after 10 hours I arrived in Loen. Sure I was tired but it was only 4pm and the newly opened Hoven Skylift at Nordfjord was winking at me. A surprisingly stable cable car transported me from the fjord to the top of Mt. Hoven (1011 m) in only 5 minutes, and is one of the steepest cable cars in the world. The views are of course spectacular. Heres a photo I took from the Hoven restaurant at the top. The next day I had to wake up before the birds at 4am knowing that I had an 11-hour drive to navigate. And I wanted to catch the 4.45am ferry so as not to get caught in campervan chaos. At this part of the route I also had to consider that the cruise ships land at the truly beautiful UNESCO protected Geirangerfjord port and once that happens, 2,000 or so tourists will beat a path, just like me, to Trollstigen for the ride of their life. I had to stay ahead. Troll Path The serpentine road that snakes its way down Trollstigen mountain which is part of the Interdalen valley is stunning. When I say stunning, what I actually mean is heart thumping, head spinning and nerve shattering. And more that that, there are waterfalls galore, streams everywhere and if that wasnt enough water, it was raining. And foggy. And sensational. To calm nerves I stopped at the Troll cafe, where they sold you guessed it anything troll related. But there was more. Atlanterhavsvegen The Atlantic Highway A little more driving and I got to the gorgeous Atlantic Highway. It connects Avery with the mainland via a series of small islands and islets spanned by several viaducts and eight bridges over 8274 meters (just over five miles). And soon it was a big dip of 1,000ft below the Atlantic through one of the worlds deepest sea tunnels. I had to hand over 60kr (6) for the privilege of another ear popping tunnel adventure and the dips and rises were measurable. A few miles later and Im in the city of Trondheim located on the Trondheim Fjord. It is a lovely harbour town with an impressive rose-hued cathedral and colourful clapperboard houses on stilts that stand on the harbour water. The city has plenty of bars and restaurants and by now I felt a well deserved a reassuringly expensive beer coming on. You may also enjoy reading: Fact File FLY: Direct flight from Luton to Stavanger. The return flight from Trondheim to Oslo then a connecting flight back to Luton. STAY: In Stavanger and Trondheim I stayed in the Radisson Blu In Leon it was Hotel Alexandra EAT: Dinner was taken at the hotels and breakfast was a pack taken from the hotel. Eateries on route were hard to find. CAR: The 2WD, Mazda CX-3 120PS 2.0-litre petrol starts the range at 18,495. It was nimble, comfortable yet sturdy. It comes with a Sat Nav perfect for this kind of road trip. A few days back, when a panicky Congress party was looking for a safe haven to lodge its 44 MLAs from Gujarat, amid growing fears of defections reportedly engineered by the BJP, the party high command zeroed in on Congress-ruled Karnataka. The man entrusted with the task of managing the legislators till the D-day was Vokkaliga strongman and energy minister D.K. Shivakumar. The MLAs were flown in to Bengaluru and put up at a Bidadi resort, under the watchful eyes of Shivakumar. Doddalahalli Kempegowda Shivakumar (55), popularly known as DK-Shi, is not new to resort politics. Last time, he had managed to save the Vilasrao Deshmukh's government in Maharashtra by flying out the Congress legislators on a chartered flight to Bengaluru, to prevent poaching by the BJP. Today, the man nicknamed Karnataka ATM and money bag of the Congress party, finds himself in the most unsavoury of situations. A team of 120 tax sleuths have commenced massive and simultaneous raids on his properties across 60 locations in three states. Once a staunch follower of former chief minister S.M. Krishna, Shivakumar emerged out of his shadow and became one of the most influential politicians in the state. He was reported as the second richest minister in India, after he declared assets worth Rs 251 crore in the 2013 assembly elections. It is interesting to note that is assets were worth Rs 75 crore in 2008. The ace strategist, troubleshooter and shrewd politician, now close to the Gandhi family, was a CM-in-waiting. In fact, Chief Minister Siddaramaiah, who criticised the I-T raids on Shivakumar's residences and offices, dubbing them as BJP's political vendetta, was the one who kept Shivakumar out of his cabinet for more than six months after the Congress party came to power in 2013, citing his tainted image. Recently, DKS had to settle for the post of the Congress' state campaign committee chairman, though he was in the race for the top post in the Karnataka Pradesh Congress Committee (KPCC). Born into a modest agriculturist family in Dodda Alahalli in Ramanagara district to Kempegowda and Gowramma, Shivakumar emerged a tall leader by sheer hard work. Shivakumar pursued a college education in Bengaluru, where he grew popular as a student leader. His stint in Youth Congress became a launch pad for his political career. In 1985, the Congress Party hand picked 25-year-old Kumar to contest against the mighty H.D. Devegowda in Sathnur. Kumar lost the election by a narrow margin, but he had succeeded in impressing the party leadership. He won the Sathnur seat in 1989; in 1992, he became a cabinet minister for the first time in the Bangarappa government and served as a minister for prisons and home guard. He has won the assembly elections six times (from Sathnur, and later Kanakapura assembly segment). He was the cooperation minister (1999-2002) in S.M. Krishna cabinet and was known as the shadow CM. A power tussle exists between Shivakumar, JD(S) patriarch H.D. Devegowda and his son H.D. Kumaraswamy over establishing their authority in the Vokkaliga heartlandOld Mysore region. His younger brother D.K. Suresh being elected as the MP from Bangalore rural has been a shot in the arm for Shivakumar. The booming granite mining industry in Kanakapura and the real estate boom in Bengaluru and its outskirts proved to be a boon for the budding politician. The DKS family has been accused of illegal mining of granite and stone quarrying, violations of the Forests Act, de-notification of land and tax evasion. At least 27 cases of illegal mining and violations of the Forest Act have been filed against him, but no charges have been proved in the court. Many cases were filed based on the report (2006-07) by senior forest officer U.V. Singh, on illegal granite extraction. Shivakumar, in his election affidavit, declared himself as a social worker and educationist and is the chairman of National Education Foundation, which runs a school in Rajarajeshwari Nagar and another engineering collegeGlobal Academy of Technology, both of which were investigated by I-T sleuths on Thursday. Shivakumar is married to Usha and has three children. Social activist S.R. Hiremath said, The raids were long due. D.K. Shivakumar is the most corrupt politician. Just like Bellary had turned into a Bellary Republic owing to illegal mining, Kanakapura is the fiefdom of Shivakumar, as illegal sand-mining, stone quarrying and real estate mafia is rampant. I feel that more than a raid, a coordinated effort by IT, CBI and Enforcement Directorate is necessary to bring him to book. At a time when the NDA government is favourably looking at granting citizenship to Hindus and Sikhs seeking refuge in the country following religious persecution in Pakistan, Bangladesh or Afghanistan, it also wants the United Nations to maintain data on the number of Hindu migrants. BJP MP Meenakshi Lekhi flagged this issue at a United Nations forum which discussed ways to curb trafficking of women and children and related concerns on India's porous borders. "How is it that we maintain data on other minorities and not Hindu migrants who also face similar problems. As a public representative I urge the UN to maintain data on them. And what about refugees? What is the data on refugees? I am keen to look at that," she said. Lekhi had a solution to offer for the problem of illegal migration coupled with trafficking. She suggested that while India continues to have open borders with countries like Nepal and Bangladesh, there is a need to think differently to be able to put a stop to illegal cross border activities and punish the conduits and traffickers. "I think there is a need to explore the possibility of having gated borders. While free movement across borders would continue, if we have gated borders, we can collect the fingerprints and IRIS of all people crossing over," she said at a programme convened by the UN office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) attended by representatives of the government of Bangladesh and Nepal and officers of the Border Security Force. Sergey Kapinos, representative of the UNODC South Asia regional office said that the UNODC's latest report identified more than 500 different forms of trafficking and children make up one third of all victims worldwide. There is a need to act now collectively to address the issue, he said. The forum stressed the need to institutionalise a regional referral mechanism, in the form of a Trafficking in Persons Platform (TIP) to promote strong alliances in government, civil society and law enforcement agencies to fight the menace. Yasmin Ali Haque, representative UNICEF India, also endorsed the TIP Platform, stressing on the need for concerted efforts to curb the crime. The Income Tax raids on the residences and offices of Karnataka Energy Minister D.K. Shivakumar and his close family and aides continued for the second day on Thursday. However, the I-T department has revealed little about the seize memos. A jolted Congress Party has launched state-wide protests alleging political conspiracy and misuse of central agencies. The Karnataka government has shot off a letter to Union revenue secretary registering its protest against the I-T department deploying the CRPF, alleging it shows the state police in poor light. In the letter addressed to Hasmukh Adhia, Karnataka's additional chief secretary Subhash Chandra stated that the raids across six locations on Wednesday was carried out by I-T sleuths accompanied by the CRPF personnel, despite the law and order being the responsibility of the state police. Established conventions of cooperative action between agencies of the Central and state government should not be bypassed, he added. Stating that senior police officials had informed him that armed CRPF men was opposed by the supporters of the minister, Chandra noted, This could have escalated the situation. In the past, I-T searches have been carried out with or without police protection. But deploying CRPF casts aspersions on the credibility, efficiency and integrity of our police force, which has been utilised buy I-T in its previous operations. Any use of central armed forces should be held in consultation with local police authorities as overall security and maintenance of law and order is the state's responsibility. The I-T sleuths who had stayed back at Shivakumar's Sadashivanagar residence on Wednesday night, resumed the operation early on Thursday morning, and recovered a few documents. Similarly, the search continued at the residences of his business partners, in-laws (in Mysuru), sister, personal astrologer and close aides. Shivakumar's brother and Bengaluru Rural MP D.K. Suresh and his close aides claimed that the family was cooperating with the I-T officials. There has been no cash recovery. It is all rumours. In fact the Mahazar copy does not mention any cash recovery. It is all a propaganda to malign us, said Suresh, adding that raids on their friends' houses had nothing to do with them. KPCC working president Dinesh Gundu Rao, who was leading a protest in the city, said the raid was an assault on democracy. MLAs want to return? Meanwhile, sources in the resort where the Congress MLAs from Gujarat are holed up said that the legislators were a worried lot and were insisting on returning to Gujarat. Senior Congress leaders from Karnataka, including KPCC chief G. Parameshwara, have been trying to convince them to stay back. One of the MLAs underwent a medical check up as he was feeling sick. But there is no other issue. Modi and Shah feels they can ensure Ahmed Patel's defeat in the Rajya Sabha elections. But we will prove them wrong. The raids are nothing but political vendetta, said Parameshwara. Interestingly, the Gujarat MLAs at the resort made serious allegations against the I-T sleuths, a day after the officers came to the hotel and escorted Shivakumar to his Sadashivanagar residence. The MLAs, who are looked after by Shivakumar at the resort, charged that these officers had come in as emissaries of BJP national president Amit Shah and Prime Minister Narendra Modi, and tried to convince them to return to Gujarat. The people of Gujarat are watching you. Why don't you go back to Gujarat and the BJP will still give you money (Rs 10 crore), said MLAs Parvez Dhanani and Javed Peerzaad . Earlier in the day, the Election Commission sought a factual report from the Union finance secretary over use of central paramilitary forces in the I-T officials' raids in Bengaluru. The Congress, which has accused the Modi government of using the tax officials to influence the August 8 polling to elect three members to the Rajya Sabha from Gujarat, met the EC officials and sought the poll-panel's intervention to ensure their MLAs are not forced to switch sides. A delegation of Congress leaders comprising Kapil Sibal, Vivek Tankha, Rajiv Shukla, Manish Tewari, Randeep Surjewala and Madhu Goud met Chief Election Commissioner A.K. Joti and Election Officer O.P. Rawat. Mother blames 'jealous' CM The distraught mother of Shivakumar on Thursday blamed Chief Minister Siddaramaiah for the I-T raids on the residences and offices of her sons. Gowramma, who lives in Kanakapura, alleged it was a "plan to prevent her son from becoming the CM". Speaking to reporters, Gowramma alleged that Siddaramaiah was responsible for the raids as he was jealous of her son's political growth. Why is Siddaramaiah keeping silent. When people are supporting my children, Siddaramaiah is silent. Is he not the CM and leader of the party? He makes my children work hard but does not tolerate their elevation. Even his ministers are jealous. My children want to serve people. They are innocent. Both Siddaramaiah and Modi will pay for this, she said. She also expressed her helplessness citing the "upcoming elections". "We cannot do anything now. Siddaramaiah claims he has given free rice to the poor. But is he bringing it from his own house?," asked Gowramma, attacking the CM's pet scheme. Madison Mayor Paul Soglin said Thursday he is recommending Taiwanese electronics manufacturing giant Foxconn take over the shuttered Oscar Mayer site or either of two undeveloped sites on the citys edges for what is believed to be a possible medical-related facility. Foxconn is proposing a $10 billion liquid crystal display plant in southeastern Wisconsin that could eventually employ 13,000 people at an average salary of $53,000 a year. The company also is considering expanding its Wisconsin presence to the Dane County area, officials have confirmed. A proposal distributed last week by the Madison Region Economic Partnership (MadREP) said an unnamed company is seeking to invest about $505 million in a 20-acre undeveloped site to build a 700,000-square-foot manufacturing facility that could employ as many as 650 people in its first five years of operation. While the MadREP email identified the company only as Project Varsity, Soglin told a news conference he received a call from MadREP last Thursday suggesting he submit sites for a Foxconn project matching those figures. Soglin said he is recommending the Oscar Mayer site even though it is not on undeveloped land, as Foxconn has requested, because it has easy access to the airport, Interstate, rail and bus lines and plenty of power and water. We think this is part of the need to rethink the location of jobs and the consumption of farmland, Soglin said. Putting in a facility that employs this many people right in the heart of all these resources. ... That makes sense rather than chewing up 40, 80, 100 acres of farmland. The mayor said he would be willing to consider offering tax incremental financing for a potential Foxconn project, but he said the city will not give away the property. We have absolutely no intention, at any location, to waive any environmental regulations, Soglin said. Secondly, we are not at all interested in participating in a race to the bottom in regards to competing with financial incentives that are not viable for this community. Soglin criticized the states offer of $3 billion in incentives to woo Foxconn to southeastern Wisconsin. Considering the potential size of the payroll and number of jobs created, the offer is so over the top, he said. Im fearful if that becomes the standard for job creation in Wisconsin, the whole state will suffer. Soglin said an incentive package of $600 million to $1.2 billion would be more in line with national standards. Soglin, who has said he is considering running for governor, said Thursday that hell announce his decision after Labor Day. Alec Zimmerman, a spokesman for the Republican Party of Wisconsin, could not immediately be reached to respond to Soglins comments about the states incentive package. New hope for site? The mayor said he has not been contacted either by Foxconn or state officials about a Dane County site. He said he suggested the Oscar Mayer site with the approval of parent company Kraft Heinz, even though it already is working with a possible buyer, Reich Brothers Holdings, a company that buys closed factories and sells their assets. Ald. Larry Palm, who represents the Oscar Mayer area, said he is hesitant about Foxconns Dane County proposal since its not clear yet what the company may make here or what kind of arrangement it will seek. If Foxconn really has the intent to build a 20-acre site and would be willing to overlook their own greenfield requirement, then Id like to consider it, Palm said. At the same time, though, if we just are going after every offer out there, we could get ourselves very tired in these sprints. Oscar Mayer had its headquarters in Madison from 1919 to 2016, producing hot dogs and lunch meats and, in its early years, slaughtering animals. At its peak, 4,000 employees worked there. Production ended in late June. The plant encompasses 1.7 million square feet of manufacturing and warehouse space on a 72-acre site at 910 Mayer Ave. Soglin said last December that it would likely cost $10 million to $12 million to demolish the buildings, remove the materials and prepare the grounds for cleanup. No estimate has been made public on the cost of environmental remediation, but Soglin also said if a developer came forward, the city would apply for federal brownfield cleanup funds. Madison Ald. Mark Clear, District 19, said city officials are just now gathering input from the neighborhood about what would be best for the site, but the process could move more quickly if a company like Foxconn expresses interest. If somebody is interested in it, whether its Foxconn or anything like (it), we ought to seriously look at it, Clear said. Interest in med tech Lisa Johnson, CEO of BioForward, the Madison-based organization representing Wisconsins biohealth industry, said Thursday she has been working with Foxconns medical group for several weeks. It certainly appears that they are focused on precision medicine, from prevention to treatment. That is why Ive been helping direct them to certain companies ... and experts within the university, she said. Johnson said Capio Biosciences is one of the companies she introduced to Foxconn representatives. Capio moved to Madison from Chicago in January. The companys technology identifies cancer cells in the bloodstream by taking blood samples known as liquid biopsies. Johnson credited the Wisconsin Economic Development Corp., the states quasi-public business development agency, for providing the right leadership. ... They were the connectors; they made sure they brought in the right parties to support Foxconns medical group, she said. Foxconn founder and CEO Terry Gou has pledged significant financial support for improved cancer research. His first wife died of breast cancer and his younger brother died of leukemia. Soglin would not identify the other two Madison sites he has recommended. One is believed to be University Research Park 2, at Junction Road and Highway M on the Far West Side. Its roads and utility connections were installed several years ago, yet the site, which is about 370 acres, remains empty. Neighboring communities also have expressed an interest. Fitchburg Mayor Jason Gonzalez said Foxconn officials have toured sites in Fitchburg. He said he submitted three potential locations, and said he thinks the plant might make wearable devices that monitor vital signs or exercise activity, such as Apple watches or Fitbits. Verona director of planning and development Adam Sayre would not comment on the name of the company seeking sites but said Verona has submitted a proposal for Project Varsity as well. Sayre would not specify the location but said the city has undeveloped land in Verona Technology Park and the Liberty Business Park, both at the southeast edge of Verona, at Highways PB and M. We do have land available to accommodate a request of that size, Sayre said. Middleton city administrator Mike Davis said Middleton would not have room for a one-story manufacturing facility that would take up 700,000 square feet on 20 acres but he said, If indeed Foxconn is interested in an office or technology center on many levels, Middleton would be a possibility, as would Madison and the other surrounding communities. Facing one of the strongest attacks ever launched by the opposition against his government, Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis today announced that senior IAS officer Radheshyam Mopalwar has been removed from his post as managing director of Maharashtra State Road Development Corporation. It was alleged that he was mediating in a land deal. The announcement was made in the state legislature as heated debates raged over the issue and the opposition demanded Mopalwar's immediate suspension. The CM then informed that he had issued orders for Mopalwar's removal. There will be an inquiry into the allegations against him and a report will be submitted in a month's time. Mopalwar, a high profile IAS officer, was heading MSRDC, which is involved in acquiring land for the Mumbai-Nagpur Samruddhi Corridor Expressway project. Senior congress leader and former CM Prithiviraj Chavan raised concern over Fadnavis' credibility and said that the chief minister was shielding the bureaucrat. How can the chief minister sleep soundly when all this is happening? asked Chavan. He demanded the immediate sacking of Mopalwar. The opposition also claimed that the prime minister's office had sent seven reminders to the state government to carry out an inquiry into the allegations against Mopalwar. Fadnavis, upset that his integrity was being questioned, gave an equally strong point-by-point reply. The CM explained how the leaked conversation in which Mopalwar is allegedly heard mediating a land deal took place during Congress-NCP government's tenure. He also pointed out how Mopalwar continued to rise in the bureaucracy during Congress-NCP regime. I want to ask you, how could you sleep when all this was going on during your tenure, Fadnavis asked Prithviraj Chavan. Fadnavis has said that the audio clip will be sent to a forensic lab for analysis and the inquiry report will be tabled before him in a month's time. The clip against Mopalwar had first surfaced on a WhatsApp group of farmers affected by the Samruddhi Corridor Expressway project. Maoists have admitted that they have suffered huge losses in the ongoing war with Indian forces. In a letter sent to the members of CPI(Maoists) across India, the central committee of the party revealed that from June 2016 to June 2017, 205 Maoists leaders and members were killed in Operation Green Hunt. They have also claimed that around 50 innocent villagers were killed as they were caught in crossfire between forces and Maoists. In a startling fact, the Maoists have revealed that Indian forces have killed 54 women leaders and cadres in the ongoing war. Indian ruling classes have intensified their attacks like never before on us with the help of imperialists, especially America. So far in last one year, we have lost 205 comrades and many innocent villagers. Scores of People's Liberation Guerrilla Army (PLGA) members were killed and two of our senior members died in jail in Chhattisgarh due to torture and negligence, the letter said. The cannibals inhumanely cut the private parts of the woman commanders after killing them brutally. We will not forget these, the letter said. The biggest casualty took place in Dandakaranyathe theatre of actions. Heavy attacks by the joint forces of Chhattisgarh, CRPF and Odisha claimed many lives in the past few months. Maoists admitted that till June, around 131 party members in Dandakaranya were killed in the last one year. They have also lost two central committee members and many zonal committee members. Among the deceased, 131 are from the Dandakarnya, 27 are from Bihar and Jharkhand, 35 from Andhra-Odisha border, six from Odisha, one from Telengana, two from West Bengal and one from Western Ghats, the letter revealed. What is interesting is all such information is not available in the police files of either Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand or West Bengal. We have no information about who were killed from West Bengal, said an officer of the Left Wing Extremism (LWE) section of West Bengal police. A top officer of Chhattisgarh police said, Most of the time, after encounter we would not be able to get the bodies. They take the bodies away in order to hide information or for the treatment of injured. I think the casualty is much more than what they are telling. We have given them a big blow, said D.M. Awasthy, DG (Naxal), Chhattisgarh police. The letter said Kavitha, women leader of Western Ghat, was sick and was going to Kozhikode when she was allegedly tortured and killed. According to Maoists, around 15,000 people have died in India in the Naxalite revolution ever since its inception at Naxalbari. The Maoist leaders have asked the members to find the weakness of the Indian security forces to fight till the end. The letter said the martyred leaders stood firm till their last breath. They stood firm until their last breath overcoming ebbs and flows, ups and downs and twists and turns. They were firmly committed to party lines. They were our real heroes. They were not selfish. They thought of the people. They demonstrated Communist values, ideals, courage and determination. We pay our humble homage to these martyrs who laid down their lives in the peoples war, the letter stated. Security experts said this is for the first time the Naxalites admitted such massive casualty. The security forces have, in the past month, gone deep inside the liberated zone of the Maoists with the help of three tier security structurewalking forces, forces ambushing vehicle and air strikers who carried out surgical strikes-type offensives. The Maoists believe that the war is far from over as the oppression against farmers and women are rising in India. According to their estimates, around 12,000 farmers committed suicide; there have been 50,000 cases of torture against women and around 40,000 women and girls are abducted each year from their houses. There are increasing number of acid attacks, forced prostitution, child marriage and feticide due to feudal structure in the society. We will change this, said the letter. The central committee asked the forces to divide the Indian forces to win over them. We have to utilize the weaknesses of the enemy and as soon as we get an opportunity, we have to concentrate on the PLGA forces. We have to attack separate units of the enemy forces or divide their forces and attack. We must seize their weapons, the letter said. For this, the central committee believes, Maoists would have to implement the rules and principles of guerrilla war secrecy, speed, strong will, self-defense through change of place and offensive tactics with initiative. The letter further asked the cadre to be suicidal in nature at times. Let us advance the peoples war one more step forward to achieve the immediate aims of enhancing self-defense, mass base, developing and consolidating our subjective forces, expanding the movement and other such aims with a sacrificing nature, said the central committee. The Income Tax department on Thursday morning started raiding house of Karnataka Power Minister D.K. Shivakumar's father-in-law. The I-T department on Wednesday had raided Shivakumar's residence and at a private resort in Bengaluru where 44 Congress lawmakers from Gujarat are staying. The Congress on Wednesday created ruckus in both the houses of Parliament over the IT raids and alleged that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led central government was indulging in political witch-hunt just to defeat Congress candidate Ahmed Patel in Rajya Sabha polls in Gujarat. The Rajya Sabha was adjourned thrice before being adjourned for the day, due to the ruckus. Raising the matter in Rajya Sabha, Congress leader Anand Sharma had said it is now becoming a trend to blatantly misuse powers of the state. Another Congress leader Ghulam Nabi Azad said, "Conduct raids on residences of those people from your party (BJP) who are offering Rs 15 crore." The party alleged that the BJP was offering its Gujarat MLAs Rs 15 crore each to resign from the Congress. Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah dubbed I-T raids at Shivakumar's residence as 'undemocratic'. The Supreme Court today refused to stay the poll panel's notification allowing None of the Above (NOTA) provision in the upcoming Rajya Sabha polls in Gujarat. A bench comprising Justices Dipak Misra, Amitava Roy and A.M. Khanwilkar, however, agreed to examine the constitutional validity of the August 1 notification of the Election Commission allowing the NOTA option. "Issue notice. We will examine it. We are not going to stay the proceedings," the bench said when senior advocates Kapil Sibal, A.M. Singhvi and Harin Raval, representing Gujarat Congress chief whip Shailesh Manubhai Parmar, sought an interim stay on the operation of the poll panel's notification. The NOTA provision has been introduced by the poll panel in pursuance of the apex court's 2014 judgement asking it to consider granting choice of NOTA to the electorate. The apex court did not agree to the contention of Sibal that NOTA provision "will encourage corruption". There are three vacancies of RS seats in Gujarat and four candidates, including Congress leader Ahmed Patel, are fighting for the berth. The petition had sought quashing of the August 1 circular issued by the secretary of the Assembly. The circular has stated that the NOTA option would be made applicable in the Upper House elections. It had alleged that use of the option would be violative of the provisions of the Representation of People's Act, 1951 and the Conduct of Election Rules, 1961. The plea had sought quashing and declaring as "void" the circulars dated January 24, 2014 and November 12, 2015 issued by the election commission making available the option. The direction to have NOTA in the elections was enforced in January 2014 after the Supreme Court in 2013 made it mandatory to have the option in the electronic voting machines (EVMs). In the Rajya Sabha polls, the MLAs have to show their ballot paper to an authorised party agent before putting it in ballot box. If a voter (MLA) defies the party directive and casts the ballot for someone else or uses the NOTA option, he cannot be disqualified as a legislator. But the party is free to take disciplinary action including expulsion. The defiant voter can continue to be an MLA and his vote can also not be invalidated for defying the party direction, according to the election commission rules. US President Donald Trump on Thursday said Washington-Moscow ties are "at an all-time" and "very dangerous" low. "Our relationship with Russia is at an all-time & very dangerous low. You can thank Congress, the same people that can't even give us HCare!" Trump said on Twitter, a day after he signed into law the US sanctions bill targeting Russia. The bill restricts Trump's own ability to ease sanctions in place against Moscow. It aims to punish Russia for its alleged meddling in the 2016 US elections, its actions in Ukraine and the annexation of the Crimean peninsula in 2014. Moscow, which denies it interfered in the US presidential election, had already retaliated last week when Congress passed the bill, by expelling 755 persons from the US embassy and consulates in Russia. The legislation also imposes sanctions on Iran and North Korea. Russia's Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev reacted strongly to the bill's signing, saying it showed a "fully-fledged trade war (has been) declared against Russia" and that "the Trump administration demonstrated complete impotence, in the most humiliating manner, transferring executive powers to Congress". In a statement, Trump expressed his own doubts about the legislation: "The bill remains seriously flawed, particularly because it encroaches on the executive branch's authority to negotiate." In a Facebook post on Wednesday, Medvedev said any hope of improved relations between Washington and the Kremlin have "ended," and added he thought Trump was an "incompetent player (who) must be eliminated". Medvedev predicted future relations between Russia and the US "will be extremely tense, regardless of the Congress line up or the personality of the President", and threatened to escalate the matter to international courts. In June, Indian intelligence agencies received reports indicating that the Lashkhar-e-Taiba commander in Kashmir, Abu Dujana, may have been demoted for his escapades. His bosses found him guilty of indulging in dalliances, and joining hands with renegade Hizbul Mujahideen commander Zakir Musa, who recently floated his own outfit Shariyat-e-Shahaadat, which espoused Islamic State-style jihad. Dujana was involved in the Udhampur attack, which left two BSF jawans dead and several injured in August 2015. He was the strategist behind the recent unrest and anarchy in Kashmir. Dujana, however, was influenced by Musa, who believes that jihad in Kashmir was neither about Pakistans claim over it nor a battle for azadi. He wants to carve out an Islamic state. It was becoming clear to them [Musa and Dujana] that Kashmir was being used by vested interests and state actors in Pakistan, said an intelligence officer. They felt the fight should be in the name of Islam, not Pakistan or Kashmir. Dujana, 28, from Gilgit-Baltistan in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir was in love with a local girl in Pulwama, said a top intelligence officer. He desperately wanted to marry her. Pulwama is Lashkars stronghold in south Kashmir. Dujanas story may not be as heart-wrenching as the Aamir Khan-starrer Fanaa, in which the actor plays a terrorist who falls in love with a blind Kashmiri girl. In the Bollywood blockbuster, the girls eyesight is restored, and the anti-hero embraces death. At the Lashkar headquarters in Pakistan, questions were raised whether Dujana should continue as the commander in Kashmir. The handlers in Pakistan were on Mission Kashmir to create unrest and escalate tension between India and Pakistan. For them, love, romance and any distraction from Lashkars core ideology meant treachery. Intelligence officers in the valley believe Dujana has gone into hiding in the Tral area of Kashmir. Dujana is dormant these days, said an intelligence officer. We believe he got married last year. Whether he has burnt bridges with the Lashkar completely remains to be seen. But his love escapades have not gone down well with his Pakistani bosses, who are looking for a replacement. Intelligence sources said Abu Ismail, 26, has already been appointed as Dujanas successor. Ismail is said to have planned and executed the July 10 terror attack on the Amarnath Yatra, which left eight pilgrims dead and many injured. Ismail hails from Mirpur in Pakistan. Lashkar is very choosy when it comes to appointing commanders in the valley, said an intelligence officer. The bosses trust only Pakistanis. Most south Kashmir commanders hail from Pakistans Punjab province. While Ismail is young and relatively new in the Lashkar hierarchy, he has quickly proven his mettle. Security agencies said he was behind a series of recent bank robberies in Kashmir, too. In the past 20 months, Ismail has carried out operations that have pleased the Lashkar bosses, said an officer. He also arranged funds at a time when Lashkar was facing a financial crunch because of the demonetisation. The Army and the Intelligence Bureau, however, have not let Dujana off their radar, as they do not want him to exfiltrate. Recently, the Army was close to nabbing him near Pulwama. But, he escaped for the fifth time. Dujana joined Lashkar at the age of 17. He impressed his Pakistani handlers by carrying out a series of terror attacks. Soon, he was made the deputy of Lashkar commander Abu Qasim, who was killed later. Qasim was made Lashkar commander in Kashmir in 2009. It took six years for the security forces to hunt him down. After that, in December 2015, Dujana was hand-picked for the job. He had qualified for the job when he carried out the Udhampur attack with Qasim in August 2015. As Lashkar commander, Dujana masterminded the Pampore attack, in which eight CRPF personnel were killed and at least twenty others were injured in June 2016. Kalladka Prabhakar Bhat | Daya Kukkaje The arrival of monsoon has brought little respite to coastal Karnataka, as it continues to simmer with communal tension. With Karnataka preparing to go to the polls in early 2018, communal incidents have already claimed two lives in Dakshina Kannada district. For more than 50 days, prohibitory orders were imposed on Bantwal, Puttur, Belthangady and Sullia taluks in the district. The orders are still in place in Bantwal. However, on July 7, the saffron brigade carried out a massive solidarity march in Bantwal, demanding the arrest of RSS worker Sharath Madivalas killers. BJP MPs Shobha Karandlaje and Nalin Kumar Kateel, RSS strongman Kalladka Prabhakar Bhat and Karkala MLA V. Sunil Kumar led the march. Madivala, 28, who ran a laundry service, was stabbed by bike-borne men on July 4. He died in a private hospital three days later. The police suspect it to be a retaliation for the killing of Social Democratic Party of India [SDPI] leader Mohammed Ashraf Kalai, 35. He was hacked to death by unidentified persons at Benjanapadavu in Bantwal on June 21. But, the communal cauldron had been heating up since May. On May 26, three Muslim youths were allegedly attacked in Kalladka in Bantwal, which led to a major clash between the two communities on June 13. The situation turned tense after a video clipping of Forest Minister B. Ramanath Rai, who is in charge of the district, asking the superintendent of police to arrest Kalladka Prabhakar Bhat was widely circulated. Following the July 7 march, at least 1,000 people, including BJP MPs and Bhat, were booked under IPC sections 143 (for unlawful assembly), 147 (rioting) and 188 (disobedience to order duly promulgated by public servant). What has angered the saffron brigade is that the police filed cases against its leaders, but didnt take any action against those who pelted stones at Madivalas funeral cortege on July 8. As per the data compiled by the home ministry, Karnataka ranked third on the list of communally sensitive states, witnessing 291 communal incidents that left 19 dead and 865 injured between 2013 and May 2016. Chief Minister Siddaramaiah said that those involved in communal incidents would be booked under the Karnataka Control of Organised Crime Act and Goonda Act. But Karandlaje said the breakdown of law and order in the district was owing to the Congresss appeasement of Muslims. The KFD [Karnataka Forum for Dignity] and PFI [Popular Front of India] that are instigating communal violence should be banned, she said. In her letter to Home Minister Rajnath Singh, she has asked for a probe by the National Investigation Agency into all communal incidents and killings in the state. Bhat, 65, known as Bal Thackeray of Mangaluru, also blamed the Congresss brand of vote bank politics for the communal tension. Muslims should stop playing the victim. Hindutva work is not against Muslims or Christians, he said. Our job is to organise the Hindu society and fight divisive practices and evils like casteism and untouchability. Is it a crime to assert our Hindu identity? When you corner Hindus, they are bound to hit back. He said the violence was not perpetrated by Hindus, and that radical Islamic groups were the reason behind Hindus banding together. The hindutva laboratory of the south is on the boil. But, the emergence of the Hindu identity in Dakshina Kannadawith 67.18 per cent Hindus, 24.02 per cent Muslims and 8.2 per cent Christianswas not incidental; it was part of a social engineering experiment by the sangh parivar, said political observers. And, the hindutva movement helped the BJP reap electoral benefits. The first BJP government in south India was formed in Karnataka, in 2008, under the leadership of B.S. Yeddyurappa. Food for thought: Sri Vishwesha Tirtha Swami of Pejawar Math organised an iftar koota in Udupi, which received flak from the saffron brigade. The efforts to establish a common Hindu identity began in 1969 at the Sant Sammelan (conclave of saints) in Udupi. Here, an on-stage embrace between RSS chief M.S. Golwalkar and IAS officer Bharanayya, a dalit who presided over the meet, was dubbed as the hug of the century by the media. For the RSS, it was a symbolic gesture to eradicate casteism and untouchability. K. Phaniraj, a political observer, said the saffron surge in Karnataka, especially in the coastal belt, started in the 1980s with the land reforms. After Ram Janmabhoomi [movement], the mass participation in hindutva political activities began. In 1992-93, post Babri Masjid demolition, sporadic violence hit Dakshina Kannada. Hindu Jagarana Vedike [affiliated with the sangh parivar] was joined by another Hindu militant group called Bajrang Dal. In 1996, it [saffron surge] started becoming evident, as Surathkal riots [1998] were the first engineered riots by a sangh parivar organisation. Since 2008, the attack on Muslims, in the name of love jihad and cow slaughter, and on Christians, in the name of conversions, continue. The land reforms movement liberated the lower castes, especially the Billavas. In the 1990s, post liberalisation, agriculture was no longer viable. The real estate boom, setting up of special economic zones and thermal power plants saw the agricultural land shrink. Small landholders gave up agriculture and took to the service sector. The educated lower caste youth suffered from identity crisis as they were no longer landowners but part of the faceless workforce, and that is where the sangh parivar struck gold. The Billavas and dalit youth, who did not have a social identity, became its foot soldiers. The common hindutva identity gave them the much-needed pride and confidence. Bajrang Dals state convener Sharan Kumar, also known as Sharan Pumpwell, said, Today, youth from all communities are with us. We have 20,000 registered members in the state. We are projected as bad boys, but our reaction to forced conversion and cow slaughter is not ours alone. It reflects the collective feeling of the Hindu society. Both Kumar and Bhat said that Muslims consumed beef only to hurt the Hindu religious sentiment. Bhat also dismissed the claims of dalits eating beef. Dalits never used to slaughter cows for meat, and only ate the carcasses in the past. Today, we cannot allow such a demeaning practice to prevail. We are against people offering leftovers to dalits during weddings or ceremonies. We believe in equality and expect dalits to dine as guests, he said. Rajaram Tholpady, professor of political science at Mangalore University, said communal polarisation was now complete. The Congress chose minority appeasement as a political tool to electorally score over the saffron party. It doled out subsidies to the poor sans empowerment. Also, it tried to keep its significant Hindu vote bank intact by practising soft hindutva, he said. The first casualty is law and order. Cow vigilantism, frequent communal clashes in the name of love jihad and moral policing are on the rise. Shabbir Ahmed, member of Jamaat-e-Islami Hind, said the meteoric rise of Muslim outfits like the PFI and the SDPI was also a trigger for the communal divide. The SDPI has made inroads into the panchayat and urban local bodies, and is providing a political alternative, he said. Riyaz Farangipete, state secretary of the SDPI, said the Congress government never took action against sangh parivar elements as they feared it would benefit the BJP politically. Kalladka is the epicentre of this tension. Bhat is dreaded even by the police, he said. In a highly communalised environment, saner voices are few and efforts at fostering social harmony are frowned upon or looked at with suspicion, as in the case of the iftar koota hosted at the Annabrahma dining hall attached to the Sri Krishna temple in Udupi on June 24. The iftar was organised by Sri Vishwesha Tirtha Swami, the pontiff of Pejawar Math. Hindu organisations were up in arms against Swami, who was instrumental in bringing the 1969 Sant Sammelan to Udupi. What is the message Swamiji wants to give gau rakshaks [cow protectors]? asked Sri Rama Sene chief Pramod Muthalik, who led a protest against the iftar koota on July 2. But, a few like Vidya Dinker, a Mangaluru-based social activist, have appreciated the seers gesture. Swamiji has come out as a more secular person, and sadly, secular-minded people attacking the pontiff is self-defeating, he said. Phaniraj, however, said it was a well-calculated move of the hindutva brigade. Whichever way it swings the votes, the BJP is bound to benefit, he said. Farangipete welcomed the seers move, but said, We suspect the iftar party was hosted with the consensus of all sangh parivar leaders, as they feel Muslim support will be crucial for the 2019 polls. It was a Muslim Rashtriya Manch [of the RSS] sponsored event. The fault lines are only becoming deeper. But, it looks like the political class prefers to keep its blinders on in its race for power. Employees of Israels Mizrahi-Tefahot banks on Wednesday, 10 Av, did not work but decided to strike all branches. They blame managements plan to implement a new 2016-2017 salary agreement for the strike. Workers claim that beyond salary update requirement of the past two years, it is about 4,300 employees whose salaries have not been updated for more than a decade. It should be noted that the wage itself is one component of the bankers salary, with additional benefits (bonuses) that are reflected in their pay slips. The management of Mizrahi-Tefahot said in response: All the hundreds of managers at the bank, who are not members of the workers organization, will report to work, open the branches and act to serve the customers. And at the bank itself. Apart from service at the branches, customers will be able to receive service at the Banks telephone banking center and of course they will be able to operate through the website and the application of Mizrahi-Tefahot. Employee representatives explain, The chairman of the committee makes a grave mistake if he thinks that through violent moves, he will achieve what he wants. The opposite is true: the banks management has unequivocally announced that it will not hold talks under the threat of downtime and disruptions of any kind. The far-reaching significance of the banks employees is that the committee, in its violent and irresponsible actions, endangers the managements extraordinary agreement to significantly improve their salaries. All the responsibility for this will be on the head of the committee, and bank employees will soon discover who really works for their benefit and who harms them and their source of income. (YWN Israel Desk, Jerusalem) Agudath Israel of America, American Orthodoxys leading voice, held its staff retreat this past July 25-26 at the futuristic Bell Works commercial hub in Holmdel, New Jersey. The full two-day conclave brought Agudath Israel leadership and staff from headquarters, affiliated divisions, and regional offices nationwide together with peers. Participants enjoyed a comprehensive and coordinated snapshot of Agudahs every component and department, built camaraderie, shared achievements and planned for the futureall in an atmosphere charged with the cause of helping Klal Yisroel. Agudas Yisroel feels a unique achrayus for Klal Yisroel, said guest speaker Rav Yerucham Olshin, Rosh HaYeshiva of Lakewoods Beis Medrash Govoha. In his chizuk address, Rav Olshin spoke powerfully about Agudath Israels ongoing role championing Torah and community issues. Rav Olshin also spoke movingly of how his own parents, young European immigrants in pre-War New York, found a haven in so many ways in the Aguda of those formative days. As a young bochur in the late 1920s, the Rosh HaYeshivas father received critical spiritual and moral support from Brooklyns early and energetic Agudah contingent, while the Rosh HaYeshivas mother drew regular inspiration from Agudahs local Bnos. Special guest and modern press legend Seth Lipsky capped the first days dinner with a question-and-answer session on perceptions of the Orthodox Jewish community in the secular media, and how to negotiate those perceptions. Mr. Lipsky is the founder of the New York Sun and the English-language version of the Jewish Daily Forward, and veteran of the Wall Street Journal, among others. He walked a rapt audience through an insiders view on the modern media world, from old-school print institutions to cutting-edge online outlets and social mediaand how to best get the most positive, proactive Torah messages to each. Mr. Lipsky also expressed a debt of gratitude to Agudath Israel and Rabi Chaim Dovid Zwiebel, its executive vice president, for a still-growing relationship. It is always impressive to get everybody together to share the many things Agudath Israel is doing, said Executive Director Rabbi Labish Becker, but even more significant are the results of the retreat when the dedicated and capable staff plan the coming year and resolve to do even more for Reb Yisroel and Klal Yisroel. (YWN Headquarters NYC) On Thursday, Israeli security forces released information of a joint investigation of the Shin Bet in cooperation with the Israel Defense Forces and the Israel Police which recently exposed a mechanism for the transfer of money by means of couriers between the Hamas headquarters in Turkey and Gaza and the Hamas headquarters in Hebron. Involved in the activity At the initiative of Muhammad Maher Bader, a senior Hamas activist from Hebron and a member of the Legislative Council, who recruited two emissaries Musab al-Hasalmon, a Hamas activist from Hebron who was sent to Turkey under the guise of business trips, to which another conscript joined In the name of Taha Othman, also a resident of Hebron. He was asked to transfer terrorist funds from Turkey to Hebron, which were meant to finance the activities of members of the Hamas headquarters in Hebron and in particular members of the Hamas Legislative Council. In addition, Musab was asked to transfer funds for Hamas activists who were released from prison. Two of Musabs partners Yusri Hashlamon (his brother) and Omer Kimari were in contact with Majed Jaba, a Hamas activist from Gaza who was released from Gaza. Musab was asked to transfer terrorist funds from Turkey to Hebron, which were meant to finance the activities of members of the Hamas headquarters in Hebron and in particular members of the Hamas Legislative Council. In addition, Musab was asked to transfer funds for Hamas activists who were released from prison. Two of Musabs partners Yusri Hashlamon (his brother) and Omer Kimari were in contact with Majed Jaba, a Hamas activist from Gaza who was released from Gaza. Musab and Taha met several times in Turkey with Hamas activist Haroun Nasser al-Din, a Hamas activist who is also released inthe Shalit deal and from Hebron. The method Haroun gave the messengers tens of thousands of dollars. The messengers purchased merchandise in Turkey, imported goods via international shipping companies to Hebron, and after the sale sold the money to Hamas operatives in Hebron, less a commission. As part of his activity, Haroun instructed the emissaries to appeal to Hamas activists in Hebron and offer them money from headquarters. The investigation revealed that up to 200,000 dollars had been transferred to the money route. In addition, the construction of a multi-million-dollar concrete plant financed by Hamas was planned, with the aim of laundering money. The interrogation of all the interrogees has recently been completed, and in the coming days the military prosecution is expected to file indictments against those involved. The exposure of the infrastructure indicates the constant motivation of Hamas activists in Turkey and Gaza to increase terror from Hamas in the West Bank. Hamas officials in Gaza and abroad recruit emissaries from Yehuda and Shomron who travel abroad to transfer terrorist funds and messages to operatives in the field. Hamas frequently mobilizes relatives of the organizations operatives in the field, or is assisted by merchants and businessmen who pay a significant personal and business price for this activity. (YWN Israel Desk, Jerusalem) South Carolina Supreme Court rules on church dispute Updated Thursday evening ENS has this report by Mary Frances Schjonberg South Carolina Supreme Court issues ruling in church property case. In a complex ruling Aug. 2 the South Carolina Supreme Court said that most but not all the Episcopal Diocese of South Carolina congregations whose leaders left the Episcopal Church could not continue to hold on to the church property. The justices said 29 of the congregations specifically agreed to abide by the Dennis Canon (Canon 1.7.4), which states that a parish holds its property in trust for the diocese and the Episcopal Church. That agreement means they cannot retain church property. However, they said that eight congregations had not agreed to the canon and thus could keep those properties The full text of the ruling is here. The ACNA-affiliated diocese reported the decision this way: South Carolina Supreme Court Releases Divided Opinion on Diocese of South Carolina and its Historic Property In a complicated ruling consisting of five separate opinions, the S.C. Supreme Court today ruled that parishes which had acceded to the national churchs Dennis canon are subject to a trust interest on their property by the denomination. Eight congregations that had not so acceded were judged to have full rights to retain their property. The dissenting justices expressed concern regarding the long term implications of this decision. Former Chief Justice Jean Toal stated that the court should have relied on over three hundred years of settled trust and property law I believe the effect of the majoritys decision is to strip a title owner of its property on the basis of actions that do not create a trust interest under South Carolina law. In concurring with Justice Toal, Justice Kittredge observed of other church properties where there is affiliation with a national organization, based on this ruling, if you think your property ownership is secure, think again. This current litigation became necessary when TEC attempted to wrongly remove Bishop Lawrence, and the Diocese, in response, elected to disassociate from TEC. At that time a small group, of TEC loyalists who had been preparing for this attempted removal began an intentional campaign of using the Diocesan Seal and other service marks of the Diocese. They began to function as if they were the Diocese of South Carolina. To maintain its identity required that the Diocese defend that identity The bishop of the TEC-affiliated Diocese of South Carolina issued this pastoral letter: Dear Friends in The Episcopal Church in South Carolina, Please join me in giving thanks to God for the gift of grace given to us through the August 2 ruling of the State Supreme Court that was generally in our favor. I acknowledge the difficult work of the court justices in coming to this decision. Many of you have worked faithfully and diligently in preparation for this day and have remained steadfast as disciples of Jesus through your many sacrifices. For every one of you I give thanks, as well as to many throughout the wider Episcopal Church who have remained in solidarity with us. We will continue to study the decision as we prepare for the journey awaiting us, and we enter it knowing that Gods Spirit is with us and in us as the Body of Christ. I am aware that coming to this day has been painful for many, and some you of lost much along the way. In that same vein, please be aware that this decision is painful in a different way for others. I ask that you be measured in your response without undue celebration in the midst of your own gratefulness. I call upon all of you to be in prayer for all the people of this diocese, including those in congregations who chose to align with the breakaway group. Many conversations will need to occur for which we have not yet had the opportunity, yet our God is a God of reconciliation and hope as shown forth in the living Christ. Healing is our desire, and we renew our commitment to the hard work of reconciliation in whatever form it can come. May we focus on the healing of division and the seeking of common ground for the good of all Episcopalians, but even more importantly, for the sake of the Good News of Jesus. Updates The TEC-affiliated diocese has published this: Diocesan leaders to review Supreme Court decision Episcopal Church leaders from across eastern South Carolina will gather on Friday at Grace Church Cathedral to review the South Carolina Supreme Court ruling on church property and assets and consider the next steps toward resolving the division and confusion resulting from a breakaway groups lawsuit against The Episcopal Church. Bishop Skip Adams called the meeting on August 2, hours after the court issued the ruling. Fridays meetings will include a joint gathering of the Standing Committee, Diocesan Council, and Trustees, three bodies of clergy and non-ordained elected leaders. Bishop Adams also has called a meeting for the leaders of nine congregations that organized as mission churches since the 2012 breakup left them without buildings where they could worship as Episcopalians. Both gatherings will give local Episcopalians an opportunity to discuss the complex, 79-page court decision, which includes separate opinions written by all five Supreme Court justices who heard the case. The decision cannot be viewed as final until all possible steps toward an appeal have been resolved The ACNA-affiliated Bishop of Fort Worth, Texas has issued this letter. The Anglican Curmudgeon blog carries this: Massive Conflict of Interest Taints South Carolina Ruling. Earlier it had this analysis: BREAKING So. Carolina Decision Is Out. Updated The BBC reports: Unity and division as Justin Welby visits Africa Throughout his visit, Mr Welby has been accompanied by the Archbishop of Uganda, the Most Reverend Stanley Ntagali. On the issue of refugees, the suffering of displaced persons and the desperate plight of South Sudan, there is complete unanimity. But there are other issues that are troubling their relationship. Mr Ntagali is a leading conservative evangelical, whose province in Uganda is continuing to grow in Christian converts. But he was angered by the American Episcopal Churchs decision to endorse same-sex relationships and walked out of a global gathering of archbishops in Canterbury last year. He issued a statement saying that he would not be returning until godly order had been restored and the Bible returned to what he said is its rightful place as the authority for our faith and morals. Since then, the Canadian and Scottish Episcopal Churches have formally voted to endorse same-sex marriage. Mr Ntagali says the Bible teaches that marriage is between a man and a woman and that the growing Ugandan church will not remain in fellowship with those who support same-sex unions. This is the basis of our faith and it is founded in the Scriptures, he explains. It is a theological tussle that has the potential to pull the Anglican Communion apart a communion that numbers no less than 80 million Christians in 166 countries. The next gathering of archbishops will again take place in Canterbury, this coming October. But Mr Ntagali has written to the Archbishop of Canterbury explaining that he will not be attending. Angry investors wiped 1.6bn off Standard Chartereds value after it failed to pay a dividend. The bank, which has its HQ in London but does nearly all its business in Asia and Africa, made a 1.4bn profit in the first half of 2017 up 82pc on the same period last year. But despite bosses hailing it as evidence their turnaround efforts were working, they shocked markets by announcing there would be no payout to shareholders. Investor revenge: 1.6bn was wiped of the company's value The lender scrapped its dividend in 2015 and announced 15,000 jobs would be axed in a drive to save cash. Traders had been hoping that solid growth under chief executive Bill Winters would see it restored, as the Americans efforts have seen its share price rise nearly 37pc in the past 12 months. But defending his decision not to pay shareholders yesterday, Winters said there were too many uncertainties ahead. On our decision not to pay a dividend, I think that was the cautious thing to do given the stage of our own development, he said. Standard Chartered was the biggest faller on the FTSE 350, dropping 6.1pc, or 51.2p, to 795p. The FTSE 100 finished 0.16pc lower, down 12.23 points to 7411.43, while the FTSE 250 finished 0.11pc lower, down 22.19 points to 19,841.41. Figures showed that equity markets performed strongly in the first six months of the year, with the FTSE 100 and FTSE 250 up 3.5pc and nearly 10pc respectively. Analysts at Cantor Fitzgerald said the market has shrugged off the uncertainty caused by the general election and ongoing wrangling around Brexit. Power supplier Aggreko has continued to be plagued by its business in Argentina. The company said profits fell to 63m in the six months to the end of June, from 71m a year ago. Sales however, were 16pc higher at 792m. Aggreko has battled lower demand for its generators from North American oil and gas customers due to slumping commodity prices, and had to price in a significant 34m discount to secure a contract in Argentina. The move led the firm, which counts Argentina as its largest market, to warn earlier this year that its full-year profits would be lower than a year ago. Shares yesterday dropped 3pc, or 26p, to 842.5p. Packaging company Smurfit Kappa also slipped after reporting its profits has been hit by unprecedented cost pressures. The firm posted a 5pc increase in sales in the six months to June to 3.8bn, but profits slipped 21pc to 220m. Shares fell 2pc, or 46p, to 2260p as a result. A rise in the number of deaths helped boost funeral provider Dignity. The death toll rose 2pc in the half year from 302,000 to 308,000 pushing Dignitys profits up 7pc to 59.5m in the period. Shares rose 0.2pc, or 4p, to 2564p. The owner of the I and Yorkshire Post newspapers said that it is on track to meet full-year targets after a 14.8pc rise in digital advertising sales helped offset a decline in print. Johnston Press said losses narrowed from 184m to 10.2m in the half year to July 1, although sales fell 3.1pc to 102.9m. Shares fell 2.3pc, or 0.3p, to 10.62p. Shares in AIM-listed business services provider Blur jumped 44pc, or 1.38p, to 4.5p after it appointed a new boss. The company, which lists 60,000 vetted businesses on its online database, has appointed its former chief commercial officer, Laurence Cook, as its new chief executive. Cook replaces company founder Philip Letts and has 25 years experience in the information and communication technology industry. Almost five million Britons live or work outside the UK and many of them don't want to give up property ownership in their homeland. But it has got a lot harder to get a mortgage in the UK if you don't live here - even if you're a British expatriate. It's doable, but the number of lenders that offer expat mortgages and buy-to-let loans is limited. Britons who move to foreign shores such as Barcelona for work, often want to keep a UK property a sa base and will let it while they are gone Many also put bespoke terms together depending on your income structure and the currency you're paid in. We've asked expat specialist mortgage broker Matthew Fleming-Duffy, of Cherry Finance, to give an overview of the options available if you want to purchase or remortgage in the UK and are living abroad. Who needs expat mortgages and what are the typical reasons? Britons living abroad, either temporarily or permanently, will need to obtain a mortgage from a lender that has chosen to lend to expats. Typically, expats are looking to invest in buy-to-let property whilst living overseas, perhaps as a way to provide an income in retirement or even to live in upon their return. Whilst fluctuating exchange rates can, at times, provide a good opportunity for investors, it is also true to say that many expats earn better salaries abroad than they would do here, and the correspondingly lower cost of living means they have more disposable income and want to invest in UK property. Aside from investors, we also see enquiries from individuals looking to buy properties for their families to live in frequently where children are involved and the preference is for them to be schooled in the UK. Why are expat mortgages now harder to come by? Fleming-Duffy: Typically, expats are looking to invest in buy-to-let property One word: regulation. You dont need to be a financial guru to be aware of the regulatory changes that have affected global markets over the past few years. Mortgages have been affected by rules introduced in 2014, which made things tricky for all potential borrowers whose income and expenditure had to be evidenced after this time. But for expats things are tougher still. Following European rules brought in last year, individuals paid in a foreign currency must now come under closer scrutiny when their applications are assessed by mortgage underwriters. There is a real hurdle facing expats in Australia. Exchange rate fluctuations have to be taken into account - not just the current value of the currency - and many lenders go to great lengths to assess a potential borrower's global financial position. This is to ensure that they feel comfortable that the new mortgage will not put them under undue financial stress now, or in the future. Additionally, lenders operating in this sector will need to conduct enhanced due diligence on each application which, in turn, means more detailed administration. We saw a few lenders withdraw from expat lending last year as a direct result of the European rules. There is also a real hurdle facing expats in Australia. There is an inter-governmental treaty between Britain and Australia that technically precludes lending to each others residents. It would be good to see this change and, following the joint press conference held by Theresa May and Australia's Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, this may indeed become a focus of renewed co-operation between our countries as Australia is a key destination for many British expats. How should I apply for for an expat mortgage? For buy-to-let mortgages, we have identified over forty lenders willing to provide mortgages to expats. For mortgages on properties to be occupied by the applicants (or their families) there are just ten lenders. There are many potential options if you are looking to borrow over 100,000, already have a UK mortgage, work for a corporate employer with a salary of 40,000 sterling equivalent, paid in US dollars or euros, reside in a Financial Action Task Force country and have a good deposit. But if this isn't you, don't worry. There are also mortgages available to those that dont fit these criteria and this is where the expertise of a good broker comes in. I want my family to live in the property while I'm abroad - what are the options? High street lenders HSBC and Santander can provide residential mortgages to expats, in certain circumstances. Neither lender charges a higher fee for expats, although HSBC has fairly restricted criteria and also limits its product distribution so you may find it tricky to get access. Nat West International, a wholly owned subsidiary of RBS Group, is fairly flexible in its approach to the marketplace, and require a 20 per cent deposit as a minimum. Expat residential mortgages are assessed in the same way as those for UK residents, with the added costs of living overseas and exchange rate fluctuations taken into account. Lenders such as Santander can provide expats with mortgages with as little as a 5 per cent deposit. However most lenders operating in the sector require a larger deposit sometimes as high as 35 per cent of the property valuation or purchase price before considering an application. If you have moved overseas then getting a mortgage for a UK property is tougher I want to purchase a buy-to-let property in the UK - what are the options? Buy-to-let lending is where the market is most buoyant for expats. New entrants such as Vida Home Loans and Landbay are offering mortgages based on very flexible criteria with competitively priced mortgage deals. As a rule, you will need a minimum 25 per cent deposit for buy-to-let, with the rental income effectively defining how much you can borrow. Most lenders require the property to wash its face, which means it typically needs the rental income to exceed the mortgage payments by a ratio of 145 per cent if the mortgage rate was 5.5 per cent. However, the Marsden Building Society can take applications if there is a rental shortfall and the applicant is paid in a currency which is on their approved currency list. This currently includes the US Dollar, Euro, Norwegian Krone, Swiss Franc, Qatari Riyal, Denmark Krone, Canadian Dollar, Sweden Krona, Chinese Yuan/Renminbi, United Arab Emirates Dinar, Saudi Arabian Riyal, Hong Kong Dollar, Kuwaiti Dinar and Singaporean Dollar. The mutual will take a limited amount of earned income into its affordability assessment. The rental income must cover the mortgage payments by a ratio of 125 per cent at a 5.5 per cent mortgage rate as an absolute minimum, with the shortfall made up from earned income. The application process for all expat mortgages will feel very bureaucratic to the uninitiated and we generally advise that applications will take around six to eight weeks before a mortgage offer will be issued. Profits at the London Stock Exchange jumped to 277million in the first half of the year, after it narrowly avoided a takeover by the Germans. The 21billion deal with overseas rival Deutsche Boerse was backed by LSE's board and only fell apart because of interference from the European Union. The British firm's results suggest it could have a bright future on its own but commentators said another suitor could yet emerge. Hot property: Profits at the London Stock Exchange jumped to 277m in the first half of the year 'Everything is going global these days,' said David Buik of stockbroker Panmure Gordon. 'It all depends if the right partner comes along the counterparty would have to be a perfect fit, something immensely complementary.' Revenues at the LSE rose 18 per cent to 853million, and its interim dividend was up 20 per cent at 14.4p. Chief executive Xavier Rolet described it as a 'strong financial performance', with good growth in all areas. He also mounted a strong defence of the company's lucrative euro clearing business, which handles 2.1trillion of trades a day. Politicians on the Continent have repeatedly said they hope to snatch this prize away when Britain leaves the European Union and one industry estimate suggests as many as 100,000 jobs could be at risk. But the EU has since said it will seek to give its watchdogs joint oversight of foreign clearing houses, only forcing them to move in exceptional circumstances. Rolet said the authorities had finally recognised that it would be 'far more dangerous' to run euro clearing on the continent, away from the institutions and rules of the City. The LSE is also fighting to secure the listing of 1.5trillion Saudi state oil firm Aramco, in what will be the world's biggest ever flotation. The kingdom is planning to sell 5 per cent of the business to foreign investors, and London and New York are both desperate for the right to host it. LSE shares rose 3 per cent, or 111p, to 3880p. Mobile operators are calling for major reforms to Britain's planning system so they can erect 500,000 masts for their new super-fast 5G network. The bosses of Three, EE and O2 say a rapid increase in the number of transmitters across the country is needed for a proposed 5G mobile network to be in place by 2020. The technology, which is still being tested, will mean data can be transferred wirelessly at dramatically faster speeds than existing 3G and 4G networks. It is seen as a vital step as more devices connect to the so-called 'internet of things', placing more demand on existing airwaves. Mobile data: The bosses of Three, EE and O2 say a rapid increase in the number of transmitters across the country is needed for a proposed 5G mobile network to be in place by 2020 It could be potentially used by driverless cars, home appliances and infrastructure such as traffic lights. But the frequency used by 5G means more signal masts will be needed, and mobile companies insist planning applications take too long and could make installing them an impossible task. One said the system was 'a nightmare', while another warned Britain was at risk of falling behind other countries. It comes after the Government said it wanted the UK to become a global leader in the field. Speaking as his company unveiled its latest results, Three chief executive Dave Dyson said the number of smaller antennas needed those which can be fixed to buildings, lamp posts and signs could be as high as 500,000. He added: 'It is a significant step change from where we are today ... the industry in the UK is at risk of lagging behind.' Mark Evans, boss of Telefonica UK, which trades as O2, added: 'It's essential our investment in digital infrastructure is not thwarted by analogue planning practices.' Plans for phone masts often face opposition from those living nearby because of their appearance, but industry figures argue they are becoming as important as utilities such as water and must be given a higher priority. Mobile operators believe changes could be brought forward quickly but these would likely face strong opposition from councils, which are responsible for approving mast applications. Martin Tett, the Local Government Association's environment spokesman, said yesterday: 'Planning controls exist to give people the power over developments that impact on their quality of life, and they should be respected.' He said about 90pc of applications for masts were approved. The Government is due to set out possible changes it could make to the planning system to help the rollout of 5G before the end of the year. Mining firm Randgold glistened yesterday after reporting a surge in profits as it digs around for its next 'world-class' gold deposit. The company which operates in the African nations of Mali, the Ivory Coast and the Democratic Republic of Congo made a 187.7million profit in the first six months of the year, up 53 per cent on the same period in 2016. It extracted 663,786oz of gold, up 16 per cent, while the cost of getting each ounce out of the ground fell 13 per cent to 453. Traders took their hard hats off to the firm, driving shares up 3.4 per cent, or 240p, to 7235p, making it one of the day's best performers. The figures rather overshadowed those of smaller rival Centamin, which saw gold production fall to 124,641oz in the second quarter, down 11 per cent on a year earlier. Panning out nicely: Randgold made a 187.7m profit in the first six months of the year, up 53 per cent on the same period in 2016 This slump at its Egyptian mines drove profits down 48 per cent to 28.8million, although bosses said the pain would only be temporary. Centamin had been focused on cutting back the wall of a pit which was hiding promising seams that can now be accessed in coming months, it said. Shares fell 0.2 per cent, or 0.3p, to 166.7p. It was a rockier ride for mining minnow Shanta Gold after chief executive Toby Bradbury quit. The AIM-listed company is changing its strategy due to a crackdown in Tanzania, where the government has pledged to go after foreign firms for extra taxes. Bradbury has been replaced by former finance boss Eric Zurrin, who will focus on controlling the company's costs. Shares fell 6.3 per cent, or 0.25p, to 3.72p. STOCK WATCH - METMINCO Troubled Australian gold miner Metminco fell yesterday after its chairman quit. Phillip Wing who has been with the firm for a decade has left immediately with no successor in place. Metminco is digging in Columbia, Chile and Peru and hopes to start producing gold in the first half of 2019. In April, the firm revealed a 74.4million annual loss even worse than the 29.4million lost in the previous year. Shares dived 4.8 per cent, or 0.12p, to 2.5p. A slew of corporate results drove much of the action on the FTSE 100, helping it climb 0.85 per cent, or 63.34 points to 7474.77. Next (up 9.7pc, or 388p, to 4401p) topped the leaderboard after telling traders that sales would not fall by as much this year as it previously thought. Shares in Imperial Brands up 3.1 per cent, or 100.5p, to 3305p and British American Tobacco up 3.1 per cent, or 150p, to 5004p bounced back thanks to a dip in sterling, which helps them as their overseas profits are more valuable in British currency. The two cigarette makers fell heavily earlier this week when US regulators announced a crackdown on the industry. Medical supplier ConvaTec was dog of the day falling 6.4 per cent, or 19.7p, to 289.3p. The firm makes colonoscopy bags and catheters, and went public for 4.4billion last year in London's biggest float. But although revenues for the first half of 2017 inched up to 632.4million from 630.9million the previous year, profits slipped 7 per cent to 146.3million. The announcement of a maiden interim dividend of $0.014 per share did nothing to improve investors' mood. Elsewhere in healthcare, pharmaceuticals firm Shire has launched a review which could see it split in half. The company's neurosciences division is responsible for around a fifth of its sales and is a big earner in America, where its ADHD drugs are hugely popular. Chief executive Flemming Ornskov described it as an 'incredibly strong business that could stand alone'. New York and London are both thought to be contenders to host the new business. A separation would leave Shire free to put all its energy into its rare diseases arm. This is the key money-spinner and has made valuable breakthroughs in immunology, haematology, internal medicine, eye ailments, oncology and anti-virals. 'We are at an exciting inflection point,' Ornskov said. Shares slipped 2 per cent, or 82p, to 4118p. Sofa takeover: DFS has snapped up rival Sofology for 25m SOFA DEAL Sofa chain DFS has snapped up rival Sofology in a 25million deal, just weeks after it warned over profits and an uncertain economic environment. The acquisition will see DFS take over Sofology's chain of 37 UK stores and the group said it has already identified 4million in annual cost savings as part of the tie-up. Last year, Sofology reported revenue of 143million but booked a statutory loss before tax of 8.9million. BREXIT BOON Swiss bank Julius Baer has bucked the trend of financial firms shifting staff to the EU in the wake of Brexit by launching a large-scale expansion in Britain. The private bank will open new offices in Manchester, Leeds and Glasgow, while also establishing a team in Belfast as it looks to tap private wealth held outside the capital. RISING REVENUES Mobile operator Three has cheered rising revenues despite earnings slipping back in response to customer and investment costs. The telecoms firm, which is owned by Chinese conglomerate CK Hutchison, said half-year earnings dropped 2 per cent to 341million, down from 348million in 2016. TECH JOBS Telecoms firm Vodafone has set up a website to show off its research in a bid to attract talented software engineers. Vodafone Labs describes work the company is doing on an artificial intelligence, including a 'chatbot' called Tobi, as well as speech recognition software. PAY DRAMA Cinema workers involved in a long-running pay dispute are to stage a fresh wave of strikes this weekend. Members of the Bectu union at five London Picturehouse venues will walk out from 4pm on Friday until 5am on Sunday. FORMER RIVAL Waste management firm Renewi has appointed the ex-boss of a rival company to its board. Luc Sterckx, the former chief executive of waste company Indaver, will serve as non-executive director from September. SHIRT DISPENSER Fashion retailer Uniqlo has launched a vending machine that dispenses shirts and jackets. The machine, located in Oakland Airport in California, will dispense clothing items at the touch of a button. BAR BOOST Premium bar and restaurant The Alchemist has snapped up three new UK sites for 4.5million. The new venues in Bristol, Cardiff and Nottingham, add to its existing 12 sites across the country. Software sale Investment firm Connection Capital has sold education software company Impero to private equity group Investcorp Technology Partners for 27.5m. Its software is used in more than 90 countries, including more than 1,400 secondary schools. Educational: The software is used across the world Drug deal Medical investor Arix Bioscience has invested in San Diegos Amplyx Pharmaceuticals, which is developing treatments for life-threatening fungal infections. Marketing lift Digital marketer Be Heard has posted a 155pc first-half profits boost from revenue of 8.4m, up from 3.3m last year. City base Hong Kong investment bank Ion Pacific has opened its European headquarters in London. Tax bills Lawyers and accountants paid 15.5bn of taxes in 2015-16, according to The City UK lobby group. There are 693,000 employees in the sector. Bank loss Germanys second-largest bank plunged to a 601.8m loss in the second quarter of 2016. Commerzbanks figure was even worse than analysts had feared, and far below the 192.3m profit made in the same period last year. Strike out Warehouse workers at retail giant Argos are to stage a three-week strike in a dispute over redundancy arrangements. Members of the Unite union will walk out on August 15 after a row flared over the transfer of workers from a distribution hub in Leicestershire to a site in Northamptonshire. Knocked down British builders have suffered their worst month for nearly a year amid reluctance among clients to commit to new projects, latest figures show. Research group Markit said its index of activity in the construction sector where scores above 50 show growth fell from 54.8 in June to 51.9 in July. Energy float Oil and gas explorer Kosmos Energy is due to float in London in September to try to find more European investors. The New York-listed firm has struck a major gas find just off Senegal. Oil field Oil services firm Amec Foster Wheeler plans to flog off its North Sea oil and gas business to help its takeover by rival services firm Wood Group go through. Bosses at both firms hope the sale will satisfy competition officials worried that the 2bn tie-up will drive up prices. JANESVILLE House Speaker Paul Ryan said Thursday that Republicans will have an easier time reducing corporate taxes and simplifying income tax brackets for individuals than they did in their failed effort to overhaul health care. But Ryan acknowledged Republicans could feel conservative voters frustration or lack of enthusiasm in midterm elections next year if their legislative agenda stays stalled despite controlling Congress and the White House. We had different opinions on how to advance health care reform, the Janesville Republican told the Wisconsin State Journal in an interview Thursday. On tax reform, were largely in agreement. Ryan joined U.S. Department of Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue for an event with Blains Farm and Fleet store managers in Janesville on Thursday. He said he plans to introduce a tax overhaul bill in September with the goal of passing it through the House by the end of the year. The former chairman of the House Budget and Ways and Means committees is among a small group of Republicans from the House, Senate and White House who have been quietly crafting changes to the U.S. tax code. Ryans priorities will be to lower tax rates businesses pay, saying they are higher than rates in other industrialized countries, while reducing the number of individual federal income tax brackets from seven to three, raising the standard deduction and making tax forms simpler. House Republicans will pursue the tax changes while they also work to repeal the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, Ryan said. After hearing frustration from some Republican voters during an event Wednesday in Mukwonago, Ryan said he hopes to notch several legislative accomplishments that have so far eluded conservatives including the changes to health care and tax policies prior to the 2018 midterms. If we dont do our job we will depress turnout, Ryan said. I am frustrated as well. He attributed the lack of action to the Senate, where he said the slim Republican majority gives Democrats more opportunities to stop legislation. And Ryan said the flurry of news and controversies coming out of President Donald Trumps White House have overshadowed what he described as a productive session for House Republicans. Were pretty frustrated with the slow pace of things (in the Senate), but in the House, weve actually done most of our agenda except for welfare reform and tax reform, Ryan said. Theres just been a lot of distractions out there, whether its Russia, or tweeting, or whatever. One day after Trump reluctantly signed off on new sanctions on Russia that were passed with overwhelming majorities, the president made news Thursday when he tweeted that American relations with the country were at an all-time & very dangerous low, for which he blamed Congress. Asked whether he agreed with Trumps assessment, Ryan said, We think Russia deserved the sanctions that we passed. Russia can improve our relationship if they stop meddling in our elections. Still, while some Republicans have expressed a growing discontent with Trump and polls show the new presidents approval ratings at historic lows, Ryan said he did not believe the party would be accomplishing more if someone else were in the White House. The problem isnt having President Trump sign bills into law and it isnt getting bills out of the House the problem is getting these bills through the Senate, Ryan said. The Associated Press contributed to this report. SITEKI Police have rescued a South African teenage girl after she was trafficked into the country, allegedly by a man who had reportedly promised her a life of bliss and luxury. The 16-year-old girl, who hails from Limpopo, South Africa, was rescued at the homestead of the alleged perpetrator at Nceka, near Sithobela, not very far from Siphofaneni. Information gathered is that police were tipped off, by concerned community members, who were suspicious of the girls presence at Machawe Dlaminis (29) home. The alleged perpetrator would sometimes stroll with the girl around the community and community members became worried because the girl looked very young in structure. And what further raised suspicions was that the girl could neither speak siSwati nor English, said a source. Another source close to the investigation revealed that the girl met the alleged perpetrator through popular social media site Facebook and that from there, they began conversing regularly. He lured her into the country by promising her a good life but upon arrival in the kingdom, the girl was taken to the rural and poor community of Nceka, alleged the source. The source further said Dlamini was a Swazi national but resided in Pretoria, the capital city of neighbouring South Africa. However, he couldnt state whether the alleged perpetrator was employed in that country or that he resided with relatives. LOBAMBA - The Ministry of Public Works and Transport is the next government department with a cap in hand, asking for a E16 million bailout to address the fuel shortage problem. It was revealed in the House of Assembly yesterday that the ministry owes its two suppliers, Engen and Galp, about E16 million each, as that was the capped amount that both fuel companies extended to government. Minister of Public Works and Transport Lindiwe Dlamini, yesterday told the Members of Parliament (MPs) that the fuel shortages continued to persist and that they had submitted a paper to Cabinet asking for the release of the money which they hoped would be paid soon. This was after Maphalaleni MP Mabulala Maseko and Mntfongwaneni MP Mjuluko Dlamini had asked if projects were being stalled because of the lack of fuel, especially for the heavy plant or machinery. The ministry acknowledged that the problem was that they owed their suppliers, who only gave them fuel that equalled what they had paid. The ministry said they hoped that as soon as their debt was settled, the suppliers would supply government. The ministry follows the Ministry of Education and Training, which had also asked for money to purchase food for schools. Somntongo MP Sandile Nxumalo said fuel was being abused by the very same government officials. A car can be fuelled up in Mbabane and by the time it gets to Ezulwini, the petrol has been siphoned, said the MP. He said even the process of fuelling up was not solid as the CTA papers could be forged. Some of the 30 sex workers outside the Manzini Swazi National Court yesterday. (Pic: Sibusiso Zwane) MANZINI Tuesday was a rather dramatic night for 30 sex workers who felt the wrath of armed police officers on the busy streets of the countrys hub. In an attempt to clean up the city centre, armed plain-clothes police officers carried out a massive raid and arrested a total of 30 sex workers who were found along various streets. The policemen carried out the operation at about 9pm on Tuesday, while making rounds using Royal Swaziland Police (RSP) vehicles. The arrests come exactly a month after it was reported that the city streets were now infested with sex workers who posed near most of the traffic lights and publicly offered motorists and members of the public their services in exchange for money. Many motorists called this publication, alleging that such women went to the extent of even touching their cars, in a bid to stop them during the night. The sex workers were all taken to the police station and statements were recorded before they were charged with contravening the Crimes Act. The accused persons charge sheets stated that they were found loitering for purposes of prostitution in different public places. The several suspected hotspots which were raided by the police, included areas such as Liqhaga Flats, Foodliner, Kowloon, Autozone, Nkoseluhlaza Street, near the National Library and Bhunu Mall. The accused persons appeared at the Swazi National Court before two different court presidents, including Chief Mfanukhona Mndzebele and Public Prosecutor, Tsabile Fakudze. Two courtrooms were utilised due to the large number of the accused persons. Sign up for our amNY Sports email newsletter to get insights and game coverage for your favorite teams By Mark Hallum Douglaston Civic Association President Sean Walsh has sent a letter to the Queens Department of Transportation commissioner about the proposal to bring Vision Zero improvements to northeast Queens. A three-point plan by DOT to place protected bike lanes on Douglaston Parkway, Northern Boulevard and a link between Joe Michaels Mile and the Greenway did not score high marks at Community Board 11s June meeting. Fears that protected bike lanes would block parking for business access and that a reduced lane on Northern Boulevard would create traffic standstills were cited. They are critical arterial roads, Walsh said in the letter to Commissioner Nicole Garcia, referring to Northern Boulevard and the Long Island Expressway. A fire 15 years ago ravaged Alley Pond Park, nearly destroying homes and causing severe traffic delays. The need for a full set of three traffic lanes on Northern is critical for events such as these, as well as our day-to-day traffic flow. Walsh also pointed out that the north side of Northern Boulevard is often used for parking during the day by customers, business owners and employees visiting the business district, and that a bike lane might have negative effect on the neighborhoods economy. CB 11s June meeting was a battleground between those in favor of overhauls to northeast Queens roadways to accommodate bicyclists and those against such improvements because of the impact they could have on parking and businesses. The plan to take a lane from the north side of Northern Boulevard to create a protected bike path while reducing the speed limit from 40 mph to 30 mph passed CB 11 with a narrow vote, while the proposal to create a protected bike lane along Douglaston Parkway was held until CB 11 could reconvene in September. The last section of the plan passed and will connect Joe Michaels Mile to the Greenway by a path along the edge of Alley Pond Park. Many board members were skeptical that the changes to Douglaston Parkway would be an improvement at all and claimed the bike lane would only block business access. DOT is revising this section of the plan, which will be voted on in September. Walsh claimed his community was not informed of the proposal before the June CB 11 meeting where the vote took place, but the community boards former district manager, Susan Seinfeld, who retired that month, confirmed that residents and business owners had been notified. The civic leader said his organization would like to speak to representatives of DOT to discuss alternatives to the bike lane proposal. We in the community as cyclists know this location very well, Walsh said. We are, however, strenuously opposed to the plan as presented. But we have an alternative, which will achieve what you seek to accomplish. We hope we can meet with you to discuss this in further detail. I have enclosed a petition from the merchants opposing your proposal as creating an economic hardship. Northern Boulevard between Douglaston Parkway and 223rd Street has been the site of 210 injuries in the past seven years, including the 2016 death of Flushings Michael Schenkman, 78, who was killed biking along Northern. Sign up for our amNY Sports email newsletter to get insights and game coverage for your favorite teams By Naeisha Rose With summer in full swing, the 21st Jamaica Arts & Music Summer Festival launches this weekend. The first leg of the festivities will kick off at Rufus King Park from 6 p.m. to 10 p.m. Friday. The event will run Saturday from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. and stretch from 170th Street to Parsons Boulevard on Jamaica Avenue. There will be music from around the world at the event, step dancing, rock climbing and a 45-foot truck from Affinity Health, which will provide video and virtual reality games for the kids. Performers at the event include the Craig Crawford Players, Barbara King, Smile, the John Smith quartet, The Nubian Gents and Feminine Fire, J. Nicole, Krystal and the Veronica Day Band. Also providing music are Rahmi Khan, Eli Brooklyn, the Hip-Hop Theory Dance Group, Calypso Rose, Esa Prieta Pacheco y Casanova, The J Note Band, Richi Olivera, The Dale Toliver Band, Qui The Last Word, Mik S Legendary Cypher and Born Free Music Group. Video and music producer Craig Crawford is the emcee for the event. JAMS will feature ethnic food trucks, multi-cultural vendors, and urban artisans. There will be kids rides, material on community resources as well as health and wellness products and brochures. In all, 450 businesses will participate, according to Tyra Emerson, the executive director of the Cultural Collaborative Jamaica. The purpose of JAMS was to highlight Jamaica and the different small businesses in the area, Emerson said. When it comes to treats, the 100,000 guests who are projected to attend can expect Caribbean food, Southern-style cuisines, smoothies and vegetarian options. One of the food vendors, Emilys Home-style Catering, is owned by Emily Evans. I make Caribbean food like jerk chicken, jerk pork, curry chicken, oxtail, and mac & cheese, Evans said. For Evans, who has been running her Emilys Home-style for five years, JAMS is a great way to promote her catering business. I do everything from my house, Evans said. This allows me to meet other people and potentially find someone in need of catering. Jamaican-American vendor Linneth Hall will be giving out samples of her tea and supplements from her company, Tea of Life Health Inc. Different people want natural products and we want to offer them some alternatives for better health, said Hall, who is a nurse practitioner. This is Halls fourth time at JAMS promoting her 10-year-old company. She will be giving out 300 samples of her patented tea made with American Wormseed as well as her Guinea Hen Weed capsules. The Jamaican native will also offer free health consultations at the event. Helping to relieve stress at the event is independent massage therapist Kiki White. A massage can improve circulation and help your bodys organs function better, White said. The physiological impact of touch can increase serotonin, your happy hormones. White, who operates from her home, can do deep tissue, Swedish and chair massages. The whole purpose of the event is to shine a positive light on Jamaica, do something fun the community can enjoy and hopefully get some foot traffic from tourists from JFK because Queens is the first place they will arrive when they come to New York, Emerson said. Sign up for our amNY Sports email newsletter to get insights and game coverage for your favorite teams By Gina Martinez Willets Point business owners stood together Tuesday to remind the city that theyre still open for business. State Sen. Tony Avella (D-Bayside) joined the owners at a news conference to celebrate the launch of the Facebook page Willets Point: Open for business, a social media initiative meant to inform the public that there are at least 100 businesses currently operating outside the Phase 1 development land in Willets Point. The New York Appellate Court struck down an ambitious proposal for the site in July. Queens Development Group has been fighting to build a proposed mega mall and movie theater on the 30-acre site where Shea Stadium once stood. The lawsuit, filed in Manhattan Supreme Court in February 2014 by state Sen. Tony Avella (D-Bayside), along with the City Club of New York, Queens Civic Congress, members of Willets Point United and nearby residents and business owners, challenged the transfer of Queens parkland worth about $1 billion. The lawsuit focused on the proper use of the land. The mega mall was slated to be built on the parking lot east of Citi Field, which is technically still parkland belonging to Flushing Meadows Corona Park and under lease to the New York Mets. Arguments centered around a 1961 law allowing the construction of Shea Stadium in Flushing Meadows Park. In a 5-1 decision, the court decided that the developers needed consent from state legislators before moving forward. Avella said he was there in the middle of Willets Point with about 25 owners to let everybody know that the auto repair shops remained up and running. Theyre still operating, he said. The owners still employ people in the community. And theyre still viable even if the city doesnt pay the proper attention to them. This is the only area in the whole borough of Queens where you can go and pick up what you need in terms of auto repair parts. According to Robert LoScazlo, the Willets Point: Open For Business initiatives objective is to correct a false public misperception that due to the citys development efforts, all of Willets Point is now shutting down and devoid of business and to showcase the Willets Point industrial businesses as the welcoming and valuable resource to Queens and surrounding regions that they have always been. LoScazlo said he hopes the initiative makes city officials realize that they should commit to providing roadway repair, maintenance services and other municipal services that he said have long been denied to Willets Point. Business owners said the demolition has affected business. Vijay Mankotia, owner of V.I.P. Tire Shop, said customers are not even sure his shop is open because the city has demolished a portion of Willets Point businesses that were located across from Citi Field. People see the big machines, demolition of the buildings then people come to Roosevelt Avenue, they look at it, they go back!, he said. Even my own customers call me and ask Are you open? I say, Still. But he says, No, but when I come at the front, everythings demolished, closed. So thats the biggest effect when people come in the front, everything is no business, no buildings they go back. Of the entire 62-acre Willets Point area, the city purchased 23 acres located across 126th Street from Citi Field stadium, named the Phase 1 development site. The city evicted businesses that formerly operated in that section, and razed most of the structures. The remaining 39 acres are filled with predominantly automotive parts and repair businesses, and the owners said that due to perpetual neglect by the city, the existing Willets Point community is forced to operate with substandard streets and roadways. Sam Sambucci, a third-generation Willets Point business owner, said if people can see past the streets, its a wonderful, diverse neighborhood. I mean, right here on this block alone youve got an Israeli shop, this gentleman from India, Ecuador, Colombia, Germany, he said. This one block alone is quintessential New York! The diversity here is amazing. And the area should be embraced and helped. We do services for many people for cars. Were here and were open for business! 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 Wondering what the brouhaha has been this week over President Donald Trumps threat to end what he called bailouts for insurance companies? The president was referring to cost-sharing reductions paid to insurance companies to offset subsidies for Americans of modest incomes who buy insurance policies for themselves on the online health exchanges established by the Affordable Care Act. If these were actually eliminated, the impact in New York would be different from almost anywhere else in the country. As Bill Hammond, director of health policy for the Albany-based think tank The Empire Center, noted in a recent blog post, New York has more to lose than almost any other state. Heres a primer on how that might happen, with help from Hammond, Leslie Moran of the New York Health Plan Association, a health insurance group, and Donald Ingalls, a vice president at Latham-based Blue Shield of Northeastern New York, and the state Health Department. As with many other issues regarding the ACA (often called Obamacare), this applies mainly to health policies purchased on NY State of Health, the online market established to conform with the federal law. Q. What is cost-sharing? A. Its an insured patients out-of-pocket cost for medical care, or the share of the medical cost that the patient covers. Cost-sharing includes deductibles that must be met before insurance coverage kicks in, and copayments that patient make at doctors offices and hospitals. Q. What are cost-sharing reductions? A. They are payments made by the federal government, under the Affordable Care Act, to keep out-of-pocket costs low for people who qualify. These are people who earn too much money to qualify for Medicaid, the government-sponsored health insurance program for low-income Americans, but no more than 250 percent of the federal poverty level, or $34,650 annually for a single person. Q. Why do insurance companies get the cost-sharing reductions? A. The government makes the payments to the insurance companies to offset the cost of keeping these patients out-of-pocket costs low. Q. What happens if cost-sharing reductions are eliminated? A. The insurance companies will undoubtedly pass the costs back to consumers by way of premium increases. An oft-quoted number from the national health insurance lobby is that the hikes would be about 18-20 percent (but that does not apply to New York). This might prompt some of those policyholders to drop their insurance coverage and go without health insurance, as many did before the ACA required them to carry it. In New York, the state Department of Financial Services determined premium rates would rise just 1.3 percent if cost-sharing reductions were eliminated. Q. That doesnt sound bad for New York. How does the state have more to lose? A. New York was one of two states (the other was Minnesota) to implement an optional benefit under the ACA known as the Essential Plan. It offers health insurance with maximum premiums of $20 a month to New Yorkers who earn more than the limit allowed by Medicaid, up to 200 percent of the federal poverty level, or $27,720 for a single person. About 665,000 New Yorkers are enrolled in the Essential Plan. For New Yorkers on the Essential Plan, the cost-sharing reductions go directly to the state to cover costs. This year the payments for the Essential Plan totaled about $925 million. Those payments would end if there were no more cost-sharing reductions. Q. Why cant people enrolled in the Essential Plan just pay for their own insurance on the NY State of Health exchange? A. Some of them could, though they might not if cost-sharing reductions were eliminated and premiums rose too high. But the state is obligated to provide insurance coverage for about 250,000 of Essential Plan enrollees. These are legal immigrants whom courts have ruled are entitled to Medicaid, but who are ineligible to receive Medicaid funds through federal rules. Before the Essential Plan was implemented last year, these immigrants got their health coverage through Medicaid, funded entirely by the state. By switching them to the Essential Plan, the federal government has paid 90 percent of this groups coverage, saving the state about $850 million. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate 3 1 of 3 Will Waldron Show More Show Less 2 of 3 Will Waldron Show More Show Less 3 of 3 ALBANY A state council was launched Wednesday that will focus on New York policies impacting education and health care in an effort to ensure the experiences of women and girls are taken into account during policymaking. The state Council on Women and Girls, forged by Gov. Andrew Cuomo's administration, will meet quarterly and be chaired by Melissa DeRosa, who is the governor's secretary and the first female to hold that top position in New York. Other council members include Lt. Gov. Kathy Hochul and various leaders of state agencies, who will scrutinize policy to ensure women and girls are given due consideration. Stillwater Police STILLWATER A Malta man is accused of breaking into a home and stealing electronics, tools jewelry and a credit card, town police said. Tyler Paradise, 27, is charged with felony burglary, felony identity theft and two counts of felony grand larceny. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate 5 1 of 5 State Police Show More Show Less 2 of 5 State Police Show More Show Less 3 of 5 4 of 5 State Police Show More Show Less 5 of 5 CATSKILL Three Greene County residents are accused of breaking into area churches and stealing collection boxes, candles and other property, State Police said Thursday. Troopers arrested 30-year-old Reginald Bonneau and 18-year-old April Smith, both of Cairo, and Jennifer Hall, 33, of Greenville on Wednesday. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate 3 1 of 3 State Police Show More Show Less 2 of 3 State Police Show More Show Less 3 of 3 WHITEHALL A young man and teenage boy are accused of breaking into Whitehall High School and damaging more than $1,500 worth of property early Wednesday morning, State Police said. When a school fire alarm went off at 3:13 a.m., dispatchers sent town police and fire crews, Washington County Sheriff's deputies and State Police to the scene. They quickly determined that someone had forced their way into the school, troopers said. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate If you need more evidence that the nastiness of national politics exists locally, look no further than the Facebook vitriol Maureen O'Brien threw at Judd Krasher. For those of you who don't follow Albany politics and are no doubt happier for it O'Brien is co-chair of the supposedly progressive RFK Club and secretary of the Albany County Democratic Committee. Krasher, meanwhile, is a sitting member of the Common Council. He's also gay and has made no secret of his decision to participate in "conversion therapy," which claims to make gay men straight, when he was 18 and growing up in Berne. That was the basis for the attack by O'Brien, who is apparently upset that Krasher isn't backing several female council candidates. O'Brien wrote: "Judd Krasher. We know your family is ashamed of you. Don't take it out on good people." That's ugly, but O'Brien wasn't done. In a series of subsequent comments, she went on to call Krasher "a sorry little sad sack" and "a narcissistic little whiney man" before somehow finding it within herself to type this (the typos are hers): "Poor baby forgets what it's like to be a minority whose family sent him to therapy to 'fix him.' But I a syspect it's a different fixing he needs." As you can imagine, all this was plenty upsetting to Krasher, and his mother, Bonnie Krasher, was even more outraged. She saw O'Brien's words as an attack on the whole family, which, to be clear, was not involved in Krasher's choice to seek conversion therapy. "We don't want to be portrayed like that," Bonnie Krasher told me. "We never turned on him because he was gay. We are the furthest thing from ashamed of Judd." Krasher and O'Brien are both very liberal. But Krasher believes he's being attacked because he has refused to toe the progressive line. Most notably, he's supporting Commisso over Sheehan. "It's part of this ongoing pattern of behavior from these self-professed progressives who are unbelievably intolerant of dissenting opinion," Krasher said. "They will say anything to silence dissenting views." O'Brien did not respond to a request for comment. *** Is anybody else surprised that the Albany mayoral race has been so quiet? That may change as the contest we're talking about the Democrat primary enters its final stretch before the Sept. 12 vote. Of course, incumbents always have a huge advantage in Albany, where a sitting mayor hasn't been toppled since James Henry Blessing defeated Thomas Van Alstyne in that shocker 118 years ago. But the seeming serenity thus far would seem to be an added advantage for Mayor Kathy Sheehan, whose two primary opponents, Frank Commisso Jr. and Carolyn McLaughlin, have struggled to find issues that resonate with voters. I'm not sure that most Albany residents feel that the city is better than four years ago, but I haven't seen either Commisso or McLaughlin give voters a compelling reason to turn against the sitting mayor. There's still time. *** If you're one of those people who insist there's no diversity in suburbia, I'd suggest a visit to Zaitoon Kitchen. The halal eatery sits on a stretch of Route 2 in Latham that is emerging as a small hub for great food. Like many Colonie businesses, Zaitoon is tapping into the growing diversity of the town. According to census data, 10.3 percent of Colonie's population is foreign-born, with more than half of the immigrants from Asia. By comparison, 11.5 percent of residents of Albany were born outside the country. Yes, the city is more diverse overall, but the stereotype claiming that suburbia is whiter than Wonder Bread is badly outdated. cchurchill@timesunion.com 518-454-5442 @chris_churchill This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate 3 1 of 3 Bebeto Matthews Show More Show Less 2 of 3 J. Scott Applewhite Show More Show Less 3 of 3 ALBANY A federal appeals court has granted former Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver's motion to delay his second trial on corruption charges while he appeals to the U.S. Supreme Court to review the case. The Second Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals granted the request on Thursday, just weeks after the court overturned Silver's 2015 conviction on corruption charges and remanded the case back to a lower court for retrial. Following the earlier ruling, federal prosecutors immediately announced they would seek a second trial for Silver. Canajoharie What, no fireworks? The public reaction to the 200th anniversary this year of groundbreaking for the Erie Canal is curious. Maybe the date is too vague it took six more years of serious shoveling before the canal actually opened. Maybe it seems paltry next to splashier feats like the Brooklyn Bridge. Or maybe it is just invisible. That first 19th-century trench, 363 miles long and all of 4 feet deep, is now mostly upgraded, overgrown or buried under asphalt. "Mingling the Waters: 200 Years on the Erie Canal" at the Arkell Museum takes us back. Through 16 paintings and more than a dozen drawings, prints and photographic images, all from its own collection, we can see once again the glory days of "Clinton's Ditch." More Information If you go "Mingling the Waters: 200 Years on the Erie Canal" Where: Arkell Museum, 2 Erie Blvd., Canajoharie When: Through Sept. 3 Hours: Tues. through Fri.: 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., Sat. and Sun. noon to 5 p.m. Admission: Adults: $9, students and seniors: $6.50, members: Free Info: http://www.arkellmuseum.org/current-exhibitions or 673-2314 See More Collapse Many of the works come from the mid-1800s, when the canal was enjoying stunning economic success, driving development across New York state, including little Canajoharie. Pictorially, the landscape dominates. In a simple lithograph, circa 1832, of the first version of the canal, we get it all the rolling hills, an unnavigable river, the canal with boats on it, the towpath, and a road. The original canal, by the way, was not just a series of strips of water for self-propelled boats, as it is now. Instead, horses pulled the boats from a parallel towpath. Travelers loved the tranquility of that. Incidentals abound. Among three moody engravings from the 1830s of Little Falls is one that includes a passenger train, a contraption still in its first experimental decade. And check out the silhouette of the driving force behind the enterprise, Gov. DeWitt Clinton, with a map of the canal on the wall behind him. There are exactly zero photographs of the first 20 years of the canal, because photography wasn't around. Even when the camera traveled with more ease in the 1850s, it couldn't capture anything moving. A realistic painting, therefore, like William Coventry Wall's beautiful, pastoral Erie Canal from 1862, is our best way into the truth. In color, too. By the late 1800s, railroads dominated transportation, stirring wistful feelings for the 70-year-old ditch. William Miller's beautiful 1888 Mohawk Valley view of the placid canal alongside the roaring Mohawk, and Alfred Thompson's 1881 ''Life on the Towpath,'' showing a young man and his horses, evoke an idyllic, naturalistic world. It is the life along the canal that is most intriguing. An 1856 painting, by an artist only known by his signature, S. Georges, can be seen as a brilliant bit of folk art; simple but fertile with little details. On a canal boat loaded with goods, we seem to have an African-American man playing violin. Laundry is hanging at the bow, next to two standing women. On shore, people are fishing, putting a horse in a stall, and pulling the boat on the towpath (the clearest depiction of that in the show). Some 20th-century paintings also favor the human element. A large 1939 study for a post office mural by Henry Schnakenberg is naturally preliminary, but it has a regionalist eye for American archetypes in a stylized pretense of ordinary life. And a smaller work that may also be a mural prototype, by John Taylor, reminds us how the canal was for years a lasting remnant within the many little towns growing old around it. By the 1930s, with the new barge canal in full swing, it was official. The great Erie Canal was a relic. Near Albany, there are hints of remains here and there, mostly of the second version of the canal: a depression in the woods, a strip of stagnant water along a bike path. Cohoes has some nice weed-covered locks, and there are a number of access points to trails on the north shore of the Mohawk between Vischer Ferry and Halfmoon. But to picture what was once a thriving engineering wonder, it certainly takes imagination. And some timely art. William Jaeger is a frequent contributor to the Times Union. The whole family can feel the chilly draft walking past the window as autumn settles in and temperatures drop. Sometimes the glass is foggy. Those are signs it's time to replace windows. But installing one ordinary window can cost hundreds of dollars; homeowners need to know what to look for in a contractor and a contract. Bennett Contracting Vice President Kevin Gutman says the first rule to remember is: "Don't let anyone rush you into signing a contract. If someone offers a great deal on window installation, but says you must sign right away to get it, that should be a red flag. Window installation isn't something homeowners do every three years. It might be a once-a-lifetime work. We recommend consumers get estimates from three different contractors." Albany-based Bennett is a star on Angie's List, the online forum where consumers rate contractors. Bennett's window installation (it offers a full array of home remodeling services) prompted 229 reviews. Going back more than 10 years, consumers almost always grade the company with an A. Gutman offered some tips for area homeowners who might be ready for a window installation: More Information Wooden windows, historic homes pose different challenges Preservationist Chris Templin of Rosch Brothers restored the casement windows on the front of Troy Public Library two years ago and is currently restoring and renovating the First Reformed Church of Schenectady's Fellowship Hall. Templin been doing historic restoration about 10 years now and he says Rosch has restored historic buildings since 1922. Here's the sticker shock; there are instances when a wooden window can cost $1,500 per installation. Templin's good news is that not every wooden window costs that much. And with proper weather stripping and installation a wooden window can be about as energy efficient as a good vinyl window. "If a window is in decent shape and only needs some scraping and repainting, installation can be done in a few days," Templin said. "If it needs serious repair (wood replacement, reglazing and new glass) it could be weeks. This is mainly determined by the drying time of the glazing compound before it will accept paint. We use a combination of clear plastic and or plywood to seal a window opening while the sashes are out and work is ongoing." Some homeowners would rather go with a vinyl window than maintain wood windows authentic to their home's period. But that isn't always possible if the house is in a historic zone, Templin explains. There, a homeowner may be required to maintain wooden windows. Composite windows look like wood and can be painted to mimic oak, maple and other favorite grains. But check the regulations to make sure composite windows are allowed as a wooden window swap. If the house is in a historic zone, the contractor will need to fill out an application explaining how he will do his work and the materials he will use. Allow time for that application to be filed and reviewed by the historic society. Some wooden window lovers want even the glass inside the frame to look as it did in the 19th and 18th centuries. It wasn't until the 1920s that manufacturers were able to give us the flat, smooth glass used in windows today, Templin says. Glass windows 200 years ago had circular swirls and lovely loops within the glass. Everything outside looked a bit wavy. And the glass itself was unique and beautiful as a work of art. "The wrinkled looking glass is called grown glass," Templin said. "This was made by spinning the molten glass to make large disks and then cutting the pieces out of the disk. It is the primary way to manufacture glass prior to 1830s in this area." And yes, he can either find antique grown glass or someone alive today who knows how to make it. Templin teaches wooden window installation classes at the Historic Albany Foundation. He plans to teach one this fall/winter session so check the foundation website for updates. See More Collapse Windows don't really have seasonal pricing, the way air conditioning work might. But the busiest times for most contractors are spring and autumn. Window prices don't fluctuate like NYSE stocks. Don't be rushed. Take time to talk. Ask a contractor enough questions to feel you understand the process and the product. A white vinyl replacement window costs about $450 to $500 ordinarily to install, a price that includes removing the old sashes, tracks, inserting the frame and so on. Many homeowners do installations in stages, so they don't have to pay for all the windows in the house to be done at one time. They might have the first floor windows replaced, then wait a while to do the second floor. The estimated start and completion dates should be in the contract. We ask for 25 percent of the estimated cost of a job be paid up front to secure the job. Homeowners should not pay for the entire job before the work is started. When the job is complete, we are paid the balance. Windows can be installed in the winter. We won't be taking out all the windows at the same time so wind can rush through gaping holes. Contractors work on window at a time. The window is entirely open to the cold usually for about 10 minutes. Think of the impact on the heating bill as leaving your door open for about the time it takes to unload groceries from the car. Expect a contractor to offer Energy Star-rated window products. There is an application form contractors must file before working on windows of homes in historic districts, so allow more time. There may be additional costs. Those costs often depend on how closely the owner of a historic home wants the windows to resemble how windows looked when the home was new, 100 or more years ago. And remember not all windows need to be replaced. The cost of re-glazing a double-paned or insulated window is about $300, according to HomeAdvisor.com. It's normal to feel a bit overwhelmed, Gutman said. It's worth it to get the job done. Vermont residential energy efficiency expert Paul Scheckel, author of "The Homeowner's Energy Handbook," said about 30 percent of an average single-floor house's heating and air conditioning is lost via drafty or gaping windows. The National Fenestration Rating Council has a program for windows sort of a Good Housekeeping seal of approval that allows consumers to see how energy-efficient a window is before it is installed. Tom Herron, communications director for the council, explained how to decode the NFRC label on a product. "There are two entries on the NFRC label that address thermal performance," Herron said. "The first is the U-factor. It tells you how much heat inside your home or building is escaping to the outside. The lower the number, the less heat escapes. If you are concerned about heating costs, you want a low U-factor. The range is 0.10 1.25. "The second entry is called the Solar Heat Gain Coefficient (SHGC). It tells you how much heat from the sun is entering your home or building. The lower the number, the less heat enters. If you are concerned about cooling costs, you want a low SHGC. The range is 0.00 1.00." Florida residents worry more about SHGC, he theorized. New Yorkers may be more focused on the U-factor as winter rolls in. For the moment, the Environmental Protection Agency is still running Energy Star, a voluntary program known for its labels that tell consumers how much money appliances will cost to operate. Homeowners can get a tax credit of up to $500 for installing windows that have been manufactured by an Energy Star partner, tested and rated by the NFRC. However, President Donald Trump's fiscal 2018 budget proposes eliminating the Energy Star program. Critics in Congress argue Trump has a conflict of interest, because nine of the skyscrapers Trump owns in New York City earned an Energy Star rating of less than 25 on a scale of 100. The ratings effect property values. Keep an ear out during as the 2018 budget is debated for Energy Star's fate. Gutman expects technology to continue making windows more energy-efficient, including films that filter UV rays to lower air conditioning bills in the summer. Window frames made of composite materials are another trend. The frames look like wood but are made of a combination of materials. They don't expand slightly in summer like vinyl. "They're harder and stronger than vinyl, which has advantages, but also means they're harder to cut than vinyl," said Eric Minkiewicz, president of Huff 'N Puff and Renewal By Andersen of Eastern NY (the latter installs composite windows). Minkiewicz has a piece of vital parting advice: Make sure you have a warranty from a reputable contractor, and make sure you understand what it says. "Buying the best window in the world doesn't do much good if a year or two after the installation something is wrong because there was an error in the way it was installed," he said. That this reviewer, a food writer and lifelong cookbook collector, opened a book titled "What She Ate: Six Remarkable Women and the Food That Tells Their Stories" with a slightly weary sigh suggests that our appetite for food narratives might be close to sated. That after reading food historian Laura Shapiro's bracing first essay I devoured the rest of her book in one sitting suggests that there's plenty of room left for work like Shapiro's. Shapiro starts from the premise that "everyday meals constitute a guide to human character" and composes her portraits by poring over grocery lists, diaries and third-person accounts of sometimes abysmal dinner parties. Of the figures she chose to profile, only two had completely healthy relationships with food. Rosa Lewis, the Edwardian-era caterer whose life inspired a BBC TV series, rose from cockney scullery maid to fixture of the British aristocracy on the strength of her turtle soup and truffles boiled in champagne. The British novelist Barbara Pym enjoyed teasing out the connections between table and character; Shapiro traces Pym's diary entries to the meals of roast duckling and blancmange that vivify her sly tales of vicars and spinsters. More Information "What She Ate: Six Remarkable Women and the Food That Tells Their Stories" By Laura Shapiro Viking. 320 pp. $27 See More Collapse But many of the possible uses and meanings of food are less wholesome. The other women in this book variously gorged on, weaponized, disdained and feared food. What did these dysfunctions say about their lives? Shapiro's opening essay on the poet and diarist Dorothy Wordsworth is a dazzler, a work of inspired literary sleuthing. Wordsworth began her adult life cooking simple, delicious meals for her brother, the Romantic poet William, with whom she was extremely (some have said incestuously) close. But after William's marriage, Wordworth became the family's "all-purpose spinster." The cheerful food allusions grew scanter and grimmer until they stopped altogether. Writing about Eva Braun, Adolf Hitler's mistress, Shapiro shows us a vapid, childlike woman who ate very little in order to stay slender. Holed up in the Berlin bunker with Hitler and his henchmen, she was still keeping up appearances, and brightly offered cake and Moet et Chandon to an astonished visitor. Meanwhile, across the Atlantic, Eleanor Roosevelt was ensuring that everyone who dined at the White House endured an epically dreadful meal. If all you ever read about the former first lady is this essay, you'll understand her strengths and vulnerabilities, as well as the possibly subconscious ways she used food to channel her resentments. Upon arriving at the White House, Roosevelt installed "the most reviled cook in presidential history" and refused ever to fire her. For the next 12 years, the Roosevelts sat down daily to leathery roasts, watery vegetables and atrocities such as "Eggs Mexican," a melange of fried eggs, bananas and rice. Shapiro builds a strong case that Roosevelt hired and kept this incompetent cook to spite and punish her husband for his inattention and affairs. Indeed, the only dish in this book that sounds as revolting as Eggs Mexican is Helen Gurley Brown's version of hot buttered rum. It called for a packet of Equal, rum and hot water. Cheers? For Brown, the editor of Cosmopolitan magazine from 1965 to 1997, fat was disgraceful and calories a diabolical force to be resisted at all costs. Brown emerges as both formidably accomplished and, literally, stunted. Sadly, Shapiro doesn't delve into the ways that Brown inflicted her food obsessions on the culture at large. For decades, Cosmo has been displayed at supermarket checkout stands to be studied by waiting children and adults alike. Brown's nearly naked models and lurid coverlines juxtaposing sex and slenderness helped shape or perhaps the right word is warp a generation's attitude toward food and the female body. Indeed, Brown would be a sorry figure with which to end this splendid book if the very existence of this book were not evidence that the values she touted have shifted. While thinness is still prized, more forgiving standards of beauty have been embraced since Brown's heyday. And a vibrant food culture has spawned a rich body of literature to which "What She Ate" is just the latest addition. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate A Wall Street Journal story entitled "Millennials Unearth an Amazing Hack to Get Free TV: the Antenna" says that young people are behind a surge in rabbit ears sales as they "discover" the decades-old technology. Through a series of anecdotes, the article tells the tale of ingenue millennials who are shocked to learn that basic TV channels are free with the use of an antenna. "I was just kind of surprised that this is technology that exists," 28-year-old Dan Sisco told the WSJ. "It's been awesome. It doesn't log out and it doesn't skip." For cord-cutting youngsters, who rely on Netflix, Hulu and the like for their binging needs, there have even been some questions about the legality of rabbit ears. "They don't trust me when I say that these are actually free local channels," a swap meet antenna seller named Carlos Villalobos told the Journal. MORE: Millionaire tells millennials their avocado habit is preventing them from saving up for a house What the article's headline fails to encompass, however, is that many people millennial and otherwise are buying antennas not because it's a brand-new discovery, but because they're opting not to pay for expensive cable packages. Leichtman Research Group estimates the average American household spends $103 a month on paid TV, most of that going toward cable or satellite packages. According to the Consumer Technology Association, antenna sales in the United States are expected to grow seven percent in 2017. The Denver Post reported in 2016 antenna sales were up 63-percent since 2009. So at least that's one thing millennials haven't killed yet. For those envisioning traditional rabbit ears, there are more high-tech options available today for your free TV needs. Indoor antennas range from flat plates to router-looking devices. They'll set you back about $20. Washington Aides to President Donald Trump were in deep talks about how to defuse tensions between Qatar and other Arab nations when the door to the secure room at the White House burst open. The urgent message: Trump had just tweeted about Qatar. One adviser read the tweet aloud and with that, the policymakers in midconference call had no other choice but to rework their plans to reflect the president's tweeted assertion that Qatar, host to some 11,000 U.S. troops, was funding terrorism. It was an accusation against a close U.S. ally that had never been voiced so publicly and with such indelicacy. The incident, relayed to The Associated Press by two people on the interagency call, offers a glimpse into the erratic business of crafting policy in the age of Donald Trump. Where carefully crafted policies ideally precede public messaging, advisers now often scramble to reshape policy to catch up with the president's tweets and public declarations. On subjects from Qatar to Russia and, most recently, the president's surprise call for a ban on transgender people in the military, the president's tendency to tweet his mind is blindsiding advisers and, in some cases, complicating or even upending administration policy. "When presidential advisers are caught flat-footed by a policy announcement, the story tends to be about how the decision was made, not the decision itself," said Bradley Blakeman, an adviser to former President George W. Bush. "It is a process and communications challenge." Policymakers worry that Trump's tweets produce an inconsistent message. They're hoping Trump's selection this week of retired Marine Gen. John Kelly, known for his military discipline, to be White House chief of staff may help to streamline policymaking and convince the president that his tweets can create chaos when they're at odds with administration policy. Trump's tweet about transgender policy last week made public a decision that military advisers had not agreed to. Gen. Joseph Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, responded with an internal memo to military service chiefs stating that, for now, "there will be no modifications" to current policy. The president's tweet prompted some GOP lawmakers, including Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., to speak out. "I think generally speaking, it's accepted you consult the Secretary of Defense before you make a decision that has to do with defending the nation," McCain said. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson signaled this week that Trump's sometimes incendiary tweets are just "part of the environment in which we work." "We'll adapt to it," Tillerson said. "There's a lot of unexpected things that happen to us in the world of diplomacy and we know how to adapt to that, we know how work with it. I don't view it as an obstacle, hindrance or as assistance. Whatever the president chooses to express, he expresses, and then that's information to everybody us included." Douglas Brinkley, a presidential historian with the James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy, said that a public pronouncement that undermines existing policy "corrodes morale at the bureaus and agencies because they're hearing their leader say things that they know aren't true or can't be implemented." "It creates a culture of mistrust within your administration," he said. "That started happening with Nixon but that only happened in his last year when things started corroding all around him." While the president has generally been more cautious about declarations related to Russia, in July he proudly tweeted after his meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin about working with Moscow on "forming an impenetrable Cyber Security unit so that election hacking, & many other negative things, will be guarded." The idea was widely and swiftly criticized, and the backtracking quickly commenced. First, Trump's advisers defended the idea, then they cautioned that the cyber unit was just an idea floating around. Shortly thereafter, the president tweeted: "The fact that President Putin and I discussed a Cyber Security unit doesn't mean I think it can happen. It can't-but a ceasefire can, & did!" The painting of double yellow lines in Borrisokane is the latest snag that may hit the reinstatement of the village's Main Street. It is hoped to get the project signed off by the end of September, with work starting early 2018, but Nenagh MDC councillors have been told that the plan to paint the lines in the town was causing concern. However, the council is hoping the get acceptance on the issue. It's a major concern for those at the Nenagh end of town, said Cllr Joe Hannigan. There is a need for a car park. You are removing parking. He was supported by Cllr Ger Darcy, who said the council now had a unique opportunity to require land for a car park. However, district manager Marcus O'Connor said he didn't' feel a car park was needed in Borrisokane. The car park couldn't be funded under the scheme, which is being carried out by Transport Infrastructure Ireland, but we will look at the impact of the double yellow lines, he said. Mr O'Connor rejected a claim by Cllr Hannigan that the town could lose up to 40 car parking spaces if double yellow lines were painted on the street. "I can't waste money that could be used elsewhere," said Mr O'Connor. As befits a year in which anything, it seems, can happen, the Wisconsin Supreme Courts public records docket this term was marked by atypical cases. In Voces de la Frontera v. Clarke, the Milwaukee County Sheriffs Department redacted information from immigration detainer forms provided in response to public records requests, asserting that a federal immigration regulation required the redactions. A Milwaukee County judge and the Wisconsin Court of Appeals concluded that federal law did not require the redactions, but the Supreme Court disagreed. Open government advocates were disappointed that the Supreme Courts opinion focused almost exclusively on this interpretation of federal law, not the presumptions of openness enshrined in Wisconsin statutes. In Teague v. Schimel, the court looked at whether the Wisconsin Department of Justice violated individuals rights by releasing background check materials that sometimes reflected the criminal records of other individuals with the same names and birthdates or that had been used as aliases. Those besmirched by the offenses of others argued that lives were negatively affected as a result. The Supreme Court agreed that Teague had reason to complain that his cousins record was released as his. Openness advocates anticipate the ruling will not have a broad impact, because the issues it raised had less to do with transparency in government than allegations that government failed to correct defects in its process. In Democratic Party of Wisconsin v. Wisconsin Department of Justice, the court ruled that the Department of Justice does not have to release videos of training sessions that it argued would give away sensitive information about law enforcement techniques. This decision especially disappointed open government advocates because of majority author Justice Rebecca Bradleys suggestion that the partisan motivation of the requester could be taken into account, contrary to how the law has previously been interpreted. Already, this argument has been invoked in other cases. In Krueger v. Appleton Area School District, the court determined that a school committee formed to review course materials was a governmental body subject to the Wisconsin open meetings law, rejecting arguments to the contrary. It was a major win for openness and accountability. And then the court took a big step backward when it decided to close its own administrative rule meetings, which had previously been public. This result was unexpected and, to open government advocates, dismaying. In its upcoming term, the court has agreed to hear Madison Teachers Union v. Scott, which stems from a unions request for state records regarding which members had voted during a union recertification vote. The request was denied on grounds that the union would coerce and intimidate employees during the voting process. The state Department of Justice cited Justice Bradleys opinion regarding a requesters motivation in a brief defending this denial. Cllr Martin Browne of Cashel Tipperary Municipal District has welcomed Sinn Fein MEP Liadh Ni Riada to County Tipperary to talk with representatives of the Angling community. Following her visit, MEP Ni Riada has said that the potential of the River Suir to support the development of angling tourism has yet to be fully realised. She made the comments following a visit to Golden this week. Liadh Ni Riada said: Golden is a beautiful village in an area of outstanding scenery. Its location close to Cashel and its proximity to the main Dublin Cork motorway mean that it is accessible for domestic and foreign tourists alike. As a member of the European Parliament Committee on Fisheries I have taken a keen interest in the potential for the further development of angling as both a sport and a lure for tourism. Rural Ireland is crying out for investment and for job opportunities. The development of sustainable tourism, based on our greatest natural assets, would be a fantastic boon for rural communities, not least here in Co. Tipperary. I will continue to work alongside Cllr. Martin Browne and with all stakeholders to work towards a sustainable, clean and vibrant tourism offering for anglers that benefits the community and rural economy. Cllr Martin Browne adds: In one of the most historic and one of the most beautiful counties in Ireland, we have a significant opportunity in terms of a unique angling experience. The potential of tourism has never been doubted, and I compliment the members of Cashel/Golden Anglers Association on their work. We received a short tour from Owen Jackman who is Secretary of the Association and were impressed with the commitment of the Association to maintaining the environment. The potential for employment in any environmentally friendly tourism industry should not be overlooked, concluded Cllr Browne. August 03, 2017 When social media platforms, like Twitter and Facebook (News - Alert), first cropped up, they were written off as passing fads. They were digital places for younger users to express themselves and play hashtag games until they became bored and left. Nearly a decade later, most prominent social media platforms are not only still around, but are thriving. Facebook already has two billion users and its other service, Instagram, has more than 700 million. All the major platforms are teeming with deeply personal information. More data is uploaded to these sites every second than could have been imagined even a decade ago. Now, tools developed to help enterprises and researchers dig through unstructured data are being applied to peoples conversations and opinions on social media with astonishing results. Big Data Meets Social Media In some ways, social media is the definition of big data. Every tweet, post, and picture carries valuable data about the persons habits, location, preferences, opinions, and purchases. Its a treasure trove of information waiting for the right tool to extract value. Tech-savvy corporations are already using this information to drive their marketing strategies and Digital PR. Others can go a step further and build products, change business models, adjust prices, and make investments based on insights from this big data. The results of using big data techniques on social media could be astonishing. In 2015, the European Central Bank conducted a study to see if social media posts can help predict stock prices. It concluded there was significant correlation between positive or negative sentiment on Twitter (News - Alert) and stock prices in the US, UK, and Canada. Similar studies have concluded that Twitter and Facebook can be used to predict riots, social revolutions, and even, perhaps, a change in the weather. Business Uses Businesses can use big data tools to dive deeper into social content. Moving beyond the likes and clicks, enterprises can help determine their brands value or improve the customer experience with social data. IBM, for example, helped UK retailer Argos track customer sentiment about individual stores to see what was working well and what wasnt. Social chatter helped shape the companys store layout and strategy going forward. Similarly, companies like Zappos are using social listening tools to ensure they never miss a customer complaint or grievance. Being able to respond to a negative comment or a frustrated tweet from a customer within seconds is a competitive advantage unlike any other. The social media giants have built a business around user data. The platforms are fine-tuned to help advertisers and businesses reach out to their target audience. But with big data tools, corporations, small businesses, and even governments can move beyond the likes and retweets. Digging deeper into this data could have immense potential and contemporary tools have only just scratched the surface. About the Author Gareth Mooreland is a full-time writer and a content marketing expert and have previously worked for technology companies in the US, UK and Australia. He is the go-to expert to write about technology and business. When not writing, Gareth enjoys taking landscape photos around the world. His lifetime ambition is to visit every country in the world. Only 128 to go! Edited by Erik Linask [August 02, 2017] Internet of Things Technology Spend Expected to Grow at 18%, to Reach USD 322 Billion in 2022, Says Zinnov BANGALORE, August 3, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- North America contributes to ~43% of the total spend Zinnov, a leading Management Consulting firm, today released the ratings for Zinnov Zones 2017 - Internet of Things Technology Services. This pre-eminent rating will enable business leaders across industries to make informed decisions in their partner selection across geographies for their Internet of Things (IoT)-led product and service initiatives. (Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20130213/594614 ) According to the report, the overall IoT Technology spend stands at USD 140 Billion in 2017, and is expected to grow at 18% to USD 322 Billion in 2022. The study points out that Industrial, Automotive, and Energy & Utilities verticals are the biggest spenders, currently contributing to over 45% of the overall IoT Technology spend. Out of the total IoT Technology spend of USD 140 Billion, USD 78 Billion is spent on IoT Technology services alone. This spend is expected to grow at 19%, year-on-year, to reach USD 190 Billion in 2022. The report also highlighted that the addressable IoT Technology market for Service Providers stands at USD 46 Billion. An analysis of 200 Service Providers reveals an addressed market of USD 3.3 - 3.8 Billion in a consolidated structure, with the top 20 Service Providers addressing 76% of the market. Talking about the study, Sidhant Rastogi, Partner & Practice Head, Zinnov, said, "North America continues to lead the IoT Technology spend, accountin for ~40% of the current global spend, while India is addressing ~44% of the total outsourced market. With the increasing focus on IoT, Service Providers are making IoT a dedicated P&L, exploring newer engagement models, and strengthening end-to-end expertise across the IoT value chain through internal investments, or through acquisitions and partnerships." Sidhant further added, "The core of IoT Technology Services will move towards buying and selling outcomes and not just technology. The focus on data sciences will thus increase multifold. Strong managed services competency will additionally help Service Providers win large end-to-end IoT projects." The Zinnov report highlighted some of the key trends from the study. Some of them are: - IoT is blurring the industry lines and is helping enterprises explore newer business models and additional revenue streams. - The power of connectivity and data is providing unprecedented visibility, control, autonomy and intelligence across verticals and use cases. - Security, privacy, and interoperability remain the top challenges for IoT adoption. - Technology enablers at each layer of IoT are investing to provide solutions that cater to the challenges. - Enterprises and Service Providers are pushing for standardization in IoT through consortiums to allow interoperability of billions of connected devices. - Innovations across the technology stack to cater to the potential IoT threats are expected to continue driving IoT investments and penetration. About the Study: The study titled 'Zinnov Zones 2017 - Internet of Things Technology Services', analyzed the Global IoT market and trends from both the 'Spenders' and 'Service Providers' POV. Global Service Providers were then rated on their IoT Technology Services' competency across Zinnov Zones. The ratings were done extensively across segments: Advisory & Consulting, Product Engineering, System Integration, Managed Services and their respective sub-segments to analyze the overall position of an SP. Detailed ratings and the study are available on: http://zinnov.com/zones About Zinnov Zinnov was founded in 2002, and is headquartered in Bangalore, with presence in Gurgaon, Silicon Valley, and Houston. Since its inception, Zinnov has built in-depth expertise in Product Engineering and Digital Transformation. They assist their clients by: - Research and strategy consulting for software service providers in the areas of Product Engineering and Digital Transformation - Enabling companies to develop and optimize a global engineering partner strategy to achieve higher throughput, innovation, productivity, and cost savings - Growing revenue for company's products and services in India and other emerging markets - Helping MNC GICs to consolidate their geographic footprint - Enabling technology Service Providers to identify and create newer business opportunities For more information, visit http://www.zinnov.com. For any further media queries, please contact: Nitika Goel +91-9845016255 [email protected] Zinnov [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [August 03, 2017] Coffee Brands Ranked Top Selling on Amazon Grocery SALT LAKE CITY, Utah, Aug. 3, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- According to One Click Retail's brand measurement calculations, the top 5 highest selling grocery and food brands on Amazon are: San Francisco Bay Coffee (~2% of Amazon grocery and food share) KIND (~2% of Amazon grocery and food share) Green Mountain Coffee (~2% of Amazon grocery and food share) Gerber (~1% of Amazon grocery and food share) Starbucks Coffee (~1% of Amazon grocery and food share) While these top 5 brands are strong on Amazon, they in no way dominate Amazon's grocery landscape. Together, sales of San Francisco Bay Coffee, KIND, Green Mountain Coffee, Gerber and Starbucks Coffee products account for less than 8% of Amazon's total grocery sales, which One Click Retail has calculated at $420M USD in 2017 YTD, a 50% YoY increase. "Being relative newcomers, the success that brands like KIND, Green Mountain and San Francisco Bay are experiencing demonstrate that eCommerce shelf space is a new frontier," explains Spencer Millerberg, One Click Retail CEO. "This democratization of retail allows ANY brnd to compete, not just historically incumbent brands who captured the brick and mortar shelf." Other brands selling on Amazon that have recently received attention have had varied success and in some instances substantial set backs. Such brands and their sales performance ranking on Amazon Grocery include: Soylent: ranked #79 Nespresso: ranked #469 Viva Naturals: ranked #1391 Cheerios: ranked #2781 With the remainder of sales being accounted for by 92.5% of the brands selling on Amazon, Amazon Grocery remains open and primarily driven by a 'long tail' of brands. "Grocery on Amazon is in its awkward teenage stage, not yet mature but no longer in its infancy," continues Millerberg. "Brands that do not have an Amazon strategy are in trouble and dangerous to any smart leader because getting Amazon wrong leads to long-term losses for both company and career. They need to solidify their position on Amazon in the next 12-24 months before this new shelf becomes more mature and harder to alter in the long term." About One Click Retail One Click Retail is a market leader in eCommerce data measurement, analytics and search optimization for brands in North America, Europe and Asia. Using a combination of website indexing, machine learning and proprietary software, OCR estimates weekly online sales figures with 98.5% accuracy down to the level of the individual SKU on Amazon in order to deliver the best insights, analytics and strategies to their brand manufacturer clients. To request a capabilities demo or for more information, visit the company's website, www.oneclickretail.com Media Contact: Pola Hallquist Apothecary Communications [email protected] 1-866-213-9210 x801 View original content:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/coffee-brands-ranked-top-selling-on-amazon-grocery-300498900.html SOURCE One Click Retail [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [August 03, 2017] Mileslife has reached official partnership with Qatar Airways SHANGHAI, Aug. 3, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Mileslife, an innovative mileage earning App in China, welcomes Qatar Airways Privilege Club, as the 12th airline loyalty program partner. Mileslife App users can now earn Qmiles directly through daily lifestyle and travel spending. Along with the joining of Privilege Club, Mileslife has been expanding the frequent flyer network throughout Asia, Europe, America and finally, the Middle East, servicing frequent flyers around the globe. Mileslife endeavors to cultivate and elevate the entire airline loyalty program industry in China as well as strengthen the connection between airlines, customers and merchants. Launched in November 2015, Mileslife quickly partnered with China's leading loyalty programs including China Southern Airlines Sky Pearl Club, China Eastern Airlines Eastern Miles, Hainan Airlines Fortune Wings Club, PhoenixMiles and Sichuan Airlines Golden Panda. The company also became the first Chinese start-up that partnered with British Airways Executive Club, Iberia Plus, Miles & More, Singapore Airlines KrisFlyer, United MileagePlus and EVA Air Infinity MileageLands. The newly joined Privilege Club is the frequent flyer programme of Qatar Airways. This partnership is the first time ever that Qatar Airways has collaborated with a local company in China. Qatar Airways was recently voted Airline of the Year at the Skytrax Awards 2017, as well as being awarded World's Best Business Class, Best First Class Airline Lounge and Best Airline in the Middle East. With the awards they have earned, Qatar Airways has won the confidence of the travelling public and with their extensive network coverage, they have become more popular with many frequent flyers in China due to their flights that connect Europe and China . Mileslife has been expanding over 2,000 mileage earning opportunities for users, ranging from mid-to-high end restaurants and leading spas to boutique hotels, luxury resorts, recreational activities and travel packages. Once users pay via the Mileslife App, they can earn up to 1 airline mile with every 1 RMB (or equivalent) that they have spent and the miles earned will be directly credited into the frequent flyer account of the user within 3-5 working days after the transaction. As part of this ongoing partnership, for a limited time Mileslife App users can book a flight at qatarairways.com from 3 August through to 1 September 2017 and save up to 20% on fares and earn 100% bonus Qmiles in Premium Class and 50% bonus Qmiles in Economy Class for flights between 5 August 2017 and 31 March 2018. "We've noticed most of the frequent flyers are loyal customers who tend to purchase value-oriented products," explained Troy Liu, founder and CEO of Mileslife. "After more-than-a-year operation, frequent flyers and our partners could distinguish the difference between Mileslife and other travel-related Apps, and recognize our value." As a renowned loyalty program expert in China, he has performed consultant services and training for many international hotel chains and airlines. Visiting over 100 countries by earning and earning miles and points in the past 15 years, he also cast light on these in his million-word blogs on Boardingarea. Qatar Airways Vice President Customer Loyalty and Relationship Management, Dr. Ian Di Tullio, said: "We are excited about this innovative way to connect frequent flyers with daily lifestyle spending. Mileslife provides an excellent opportunity for us to activate the frequent flyer market in China and offers even more opportunities for our members to earn benefits, privileges and awards." About Qatar Airways Privilege Club Privilege Club is Qatar Airways Frequent flyer programme and a way of thanking members for choosing to fly with Qatar Airways. Privilege Club members are offered benefits, privileges and attractive awards. Privilege Club offers 4 membership tiers - Burgundy, Silver, Gold and Platinum. Each flight on Qatar Airways takes you closer to the next higher membership tier offering higher benefits and privileges. Every time members fly with Qatar Airways or use any of their partners' services, they will earn Qmiles which can be redeemed for flights on Qatar Airways, oneworld airlines, partner airlines and services of our non-air partners. For more details please visit qmiles.com About Mileslife (www.mileslife.com) Mileslife is the first App for consumers to earn airline miles and points directly through their everyday lifestyle and travel spending and help the local business to target potential high-caliber customers. Launched in November 2015, Mileslife quickly partnered with thousands of restaurants, premium spas, tour packages, boutique hotels and luxury resorts in China, Singapore and other popular destinations around the globe. Along with the rise of Chinese middle class, Mileslife aspires to awaken the class's sense to realize the value and unleash the power of airline miles and fulfil their wishes to travel around the world. Contact person: Yong Shu E-mail: [email protected] Tel: +86-21-6044-0554 SOURCE Mileslife [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [August 03, 2017] TUV Rheinland wins a string of new SNI safety certifications from Indonesia's Ministry of Industry JAKARTA, Indonesia , Aug. 3, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- TUV Rheinland, a global leader in independent technical services, has been appointed by Indonesia's Ministry of Industry to provide three new Indonesia National Standard (SNI) certifications covering safety shoes, primary batteries and toilet seats. The recognition of TUV Rheinland by Indonesian National Accreditation body (KAN) will support the government's efforts to ensure product quality and protect the safety of customers. There are 126 SNI categories in total, each covering a different product sector. In addition to protective equipment like helmets and safety shoes, they also include a host of household appliances, such as washing machines, refrigerators and irons, as well as other kitchen equipment. Electrical components, such as PVC cables, power cables up to 1-3 kV, plugs and sockets, and lighting products like self-ballasted lamps, LED and fluorescent lamps are also required to meet SNI specifications. Safety Shoes When it comes to safety equipment, failure is not an option. TUV Rheinland puts them through all the paces required to conform to the stringent SNI certification. This ranges from practical performance issues, such as evaluating the raw materials, checking on construction of the uppers, inner and outer soles and sides, as well as organoleptic considerations. Certifications include: SNI 0111: 2009: Safety leather shoes with molded, vulcanized rubber soles SNI 7037: 2009: Lather safety shoes using the Goodyear welt system SNI 7079:2009: Leather safety shoes with polyurethane and thermoplastic polyurethane injection molded soles Primary Batteries Primary, or non-rechargeable batteries, are subject to a variety of considerations before they can be put on the market and sold to customers. TUV Rheinland helps at almost every stage of the process, from design to production. Part 1 covers general requirements for SNI 04-2051.1-2004. Part 2 includes physical and electrical specifications for SNI 04-2051.2-2004 Toilets All toilets are not necessarily created equal. Apart from key factors such as size, there are a myriad of details to consider. TUV Rheinland's comprehensive certification regime covers dimensions as well as quality considerations, including appearance as well as resistance to temperature, chemicals, staining and cracking. The SNI 03-0797-2006 standard for toilets includes things like the whirlpool flushing action, floor mounted and wall mounted models. Mr. Holger Kunz, Executive Vice President Products at TUV Rheinland believes that the new SNI certification is important because quality is a must-have for any product. "People are always on the lookout for high-quality products at a reasonable price. Certifications, such as Indonesia's SNI, are one of the best ways to provide buyers with a way to be certain that they are actually paying for quality that will last a long time and operate safely," said Mr. Kunz. His views are echoed by Mr. Nyoman Susila, Managing Director of TUV Rheinland Indonesia. "TUV Rheinland has always invested heavily in the people and facilities required to help manufacturers test and verify that their products adhere to local, regional and global standards, so that they can be successful in any market they choose to enter," said Mr. Nyoman. About TUV Rheinland TUV Rheinland is a global leader in independent inspection services, founded 145 years ago. The group employs 19,700 people around the globe. Annual revenue is more than EUR1.9 billion. The independent experts stand for quality and safety for people, technology and the environment in nearly all industrial sectors and areas of life. TUV Rheinland inspects technical equipment, products and services, and oversees projects, processes and information security for companies. Its experts train people in a wide range of careers and industries. To this end, the company operates a global network of approved labs and testing and education centers. Since 2006, TUV Rheinland has been a member of the United Nations Global Compact to promote sustainability and combat corruption. Website: www.tuv.com SOURCE TUV Rheinland Singapore Pte Ltd [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [August 03, 2017] BranchServ Helps Sunmark Federal Credit Union Win with Innovation BETHEL, Conn., Aug. 3, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- BranchServ, a Division of Custom Vault Corporation, is pleased to announce its automation partnership with Sunmark Federal Credit Union and the success of the institution's new Rotterdam, NY branch featuring self-service solutions from BranchServ and Nautilus Hyosung. Targeting increased member satisfaction, elevated efficiencies and technological leadership, Sunmark successfully broke the mold in retail design with this space. And as a result, the credit union has been named a recipient of the 2017 CIO 100 award in recognition of their ability to create business value through the effective and innovative use of IT. BranchServ is exceedingly proud of its ability to support Sunmark. Antoinette LeBron, Vice President of Member Relations for Sunmark stated, "BranchServ has proven to our team that they are truly engaged with the needs and success of Sunmark. When it was time to begin this project, BranchServ was the partner we knew we could count on. They played an instrumental part in its success." The MX8800 in-lobby unit and the 7800i drive-up unit from Nautilus Hyosung were selected and installed by BranchServ at Rotterdam due to their breadth of transaction capabilities, unsurpassed user-friendliness, enhanced security and user privacy protections. Per David Pepin, BranchServ COO, "This technology utilizes core processor integration and can therefore perform almost any teller transaction. And the MX8800/7800i allow the credit union to utilize video support services as a complement to in-branch assistance, instead of a substitute. But honestly, the learning curve for users is exceedingly short." Nautilus Hyosung America Chief Operating Officer, Sungmahn Kim, stated "Thre is a growing industry need to maximize the role of branch staff, reduce the cost of traditional transactions, and optimize the real estate footprint associated with traditional brick and mortar locations." Indeed, Sunmark sought to address those same challenges with the new branch concept, but without losing sight of member needs. Per Frank DeGraw, Sunmark President, "This project was critically important to support the growth of Sunmark, and to fulfill our promise to our members." Due to the success at Rotterdam, and the resonance that the new branch model has with Sunmark members, the credit union has plans to expand its automated concept via renovations, and all new branches going forward will be modeled accordingly. Per Carole Wands, VP Marketing and Sales at Sunmark, "As Sunmark remodels and grows, our focus will continue to be on the benefits of banking with a credit union. But now, thanks to BranchServ, our story will include our innovative use of technology." For more information about BranchServ, please visit www.branchserv.com or call 203.403.4200. About BranchServ Founded in 1999 as a division of Custom Vault Corporation, BranchServ provides security equipment and service solutions, in addition to cash automation, to bank branches and credit unions nationwide. This includes three of the ten largest branch banking networks in the United States. The fastest growing provider in the industry, BranchServ combines a client-driven service focus with unparalleled experience; empowering branch networks to improve operational efficiencies, lower costs, enhance the end-customer experience and maintain the highest levels of security. About Sunmark Federal Credit Union Since 1937, Sunmark Federal Credit Union ($585 million in assets; 56,000+ members) has been helping members in the greater Capital Region community improve their financial position by offering a full range of mortgages, insurance products, retirement accounts and of course, savings and checking. Sunmark is committed to the financial health and well-being of each member by offering tools that educate and inform and products and services that make it easier to reach financial goals such as planning a budget, saving for a home, repairing credit or getting out of debt. For more information, call 1-866-SUNMARK or visit www.sunmarkfcu.org About Nautilus Hyosung America Nautlius Hyosung America is a subsidiary of South Korea Hyosung, Inc., a global leader in providing ATMs to the retail off-premises and financial institution markets. Since entering the North American market in 1998, Hyosung America has shipped more than 200,000 ATMs and is the fastest growing supplier in North America. Hyosung America is headquartered in Irving, Texas, and has research and development support in its Global Software Center in Dayton, Ohio. News Media Contacts BranchServ: CONTACT: Rebecca Cicarelli, PH: 203 403 4226, Email: [email protected] View original content with multimedia:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/branchserv-helps-sunmark-federal-credit-union-win-with-innovation-300498605.html SOURCE BranchServ [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [August 03, 2017] New, Free Tool Lets Canadian Small & Medium-Sized Businesses Forecast Cloud Usage and Cost New feature in CANARIE's DAIR Cloud helps businesses optimize their product design OTTAWA, Aug. 3, 2017 /CNW/ - CANARIE, a vital component of Canada's digital infrastructure supporting research, education and innovation, today announced the launch of CloudTracker, a free and innovative metrics reporting tool that gives Canada's tech small and medium enterprises (SMEs) the ability to accurately forecast what their product or service will cost to operate on a commercial cloud. By building and prototyping their products and services on CANARIE's free DAIR Cloud and using CloudTracker, SMEs can make informed business decisions by evaluating multiple design scenarios. Cloud computing enables businesses to use virtual computing, network and data storage resources on an as-needed basis, with the flexibility to scale these resources based on their needs at any given time. Qualifying businesses who intend to use the DAIR Cloud for development and testing need only submit a short application. Access to DAIR is granted for one-year, renewable terms. At the end of their DAIR term, most businesses migrate their product or service onto a commercial cloud. For most SMEs, however, the cost uncertainty of operationalizing their products n a commercial cloud is a significant challenge. Depending on the commercial cloud provider, monthly costs will vary depending on requirements for compute power, storage, and network bandwidth. Using CloudTracker, SMEs can now monitor their projects' cloud instances for resource utilization and generate historical usage reports. These easy-to-create reports can help to quickly forecast the equivalent costs of running their DAIR-hosted application(s) in a commercial cloud by applying commercial cloud prices. The CloudTracker helps provide a powerful basis to identify the commercial cloud provider whose pricing model best matches the SME's unique product design and usage patterns. "We're excited about offering CloudTracker to the users of the DAIR Cloud," said Tom Vitez, CANARIE's Senior Director, Technology Innovation. "We're hopeful that giving SMEs access to core cloud metrics will help them make the best design and deployment decisions for their business." More than 900 businesses across a range of industries have already taken advantage of CANARIE's DAIR Cloud, which is free to use by Canadian startups and small businesses that have fewer than 500 employees. CANARIE is thankful for its collaboration with Cybera to power DAIR. CloudTracker is available today. To learn more or to apply to use DAIR, visit canarie.ca/cloud/businesses. About CANARIE CANARIE strengthens Canadian leadership in science and technology by delivering digital infrastructure to support world-class research that directly benefits all Canadians. Twelve provincial and territorial network partners, together with CANARIE, collectively form Canada's National Research and Education Network (NREN). Canadians at universities, colleges, research institutes, hospitals, and government laboratories rely on this ultra high-speed network to collaborate in data-intensive, cutting-edge research and innovation within Canada and with colleagues in over 100 countries. Beyond the network, CANARIE funds and promotes reusable research software tools to accelerate scientific discovery. CANARIE also supports Research Data Canada as it leads national research data management initiatives, and through the Canadian Access Federation, provides identity management services that enable secure, ubiquitous connectivity and content access to the academic community. To boost commercialization in Canada's technology sector, CANARIE offers cloud resources to startups through its DAIR service, and links a powerful community of public and private sector partners in the Centre of Excellence in Next Generation Networks (CENGN). Established in 1993, CANARIE is a non-profit corporation, with the majority of its funding provided by the Government of Canada. For more information, please visit: www.canarie.ca. SOURCE CANARIE Inc. [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] Many people in Westby were born and raised here, but there are some people who never even lived in Westby that still had a huge impact on our city. Albert Edward Parkinson, an architect, born in England, is one of those people who had a profound influence in the Vernon County area and especially in Westby. Parkinson was born in London, Middlesex, England, on February 17, 1870, the son of John William Parkinson and Charlotte Harris Parkinson. His father was a skilled carpenter and builder who trained his young son in the practice of architecture. Parkinson immigrated to the United States in 1889 and began an architectural business in Sparta, WI. He had a room at the home of Elbert and Martha (Mattie) McWithy. When Matties husband Elbert died, Mattie and Albert Parkinson were married. The McWithys had several children. When Albert and Mattie married, he had an instant family. They eventually moved to La Crosse before Mattie died in 1935. Alberts sister, Millicent, immigrated to the United States from England and made her home with her brother, Albert, after Matties death. What brought Parkinson to Sparta is unknown. We do know that he quickly made a name for himself as a sought-after architect in Vernon and Monroe Counties where he designed many public buildings as well as private homes. Many of these public buildings and private homes are still in existence today. The design characteristics that Parkinson used for private homes had a certain mirrored signature. He designed the Dr. J. K. Schreiner home in Westby that used to stand where the Ace Hardware store on Main Street is now located. Dr. Schreiner s house was later purchased by Malla Neprud. While this grand home stood on its site for many years, it was not kept up. Because it fell into disrepair, it was torn down sometime in the late 1960s. All that exists of this beautiful Victorian style house are photographs, architectural drawings, and descriptions. In 1901, Parkinson designed the high school in Viroqua, which is no longer standing. In 1902, he drew up plans for the M. H. Bekkedal Leaf Tobacco Warehouse in Viroqua. This building still stands and has been placed on the National Register of Historic Places. He designed the homes of Dr. John Schee in Westby in 1902, and Dr. J.K. Schreiner and O.A Unseth 1903. In 1904, with his friend, architect, Bernard Dockendorff, he designed the Unseth -Bekkedal building on the corner of State and Main Streets. O. A. Unseth was an early Westby pharmacist who had his pharmacy in the Unseth- Bekkedal building. The Unseth and Schee homes are still standing and bear distinct interior design characteristics. Fine woods were used throughout these homes. Distinctive cabinets, closets, stained glass and other design details all point to Parkinsons eye for design. Currently Vernon County Sheriff John Spears and his wife, Tasha, own the Schee home; David and Vanessa Mills own the Unseth home. These homes have not been significantly altered and each new owner has lovingly preserved them. The story of Albert Parkinson and his beautiful architecture will continue next week in the Westby Times. Until then, please join the Westby Area Historical society for their regular monthly meeting at 5:30 p.m., Monday, Aug. 7. Editors Note: The bulk of the article was written by Madeline Anderson before she passed away in April. Her friend and fellow WAHS member, Kathy Anderson, was honored to help complete it. [August 03, 2017] Visit Santa Clara's Virtual Tour Takes You There SANTA CLARA, Calif., Aug. 3, 2017 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Being in the center of Silicon Valley, it makes sense that the Santa Clara Convention & Visitors Bureau (CVB) has gone virtual. Using technology developed by partner XPlorIT Interactive Video, visitors can fly from above right down to ground level to explore California's Great America theme park, Levi's Stadium, Santa Clara Convention Center, and Santa Clara University, among other highlighted visitor locations. It's as simple as visiting www.SantaClara.org and clicking on "Santa Clara Virtual Tour." The virtual tour gives web users an up close preview of many of the city's visitor attractions. For convention delegates and/or prospective meeting and event planners, the virtual tour of the Santa Clara Convention Center allows you to virtually walk through nearly every area of the building. CVB Vice President of Marketing & Communications David Andre says, "It's a tremendous asset to have visitors and clients experience the destination virtually before they plan their trip. It builds excitement and allows a visitor to explore all of the great things to see and do in Santa Clara in a rich experiential multimedia environment. " www.santaclara.org CONTACT: David Andre 408.380.1235 [email protected] View original content with multimedia:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/visit-santa-claras-virtual-tour-takes-you-there-300499263.html SOURCE Santa Clara Convention & Visitors Bureau [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] IMPORTANT INVESTOR ALERT: Khang & Khang LLP Announces an Investigation of Halliburton Company and Encourages Investors with Losses to Contact the Firm Khang & Khang LLP (the "Firm") announces that it is investigating claims against Halliburton Company ("Halliburton" or the "Company") (NYSE: HAL) concerning possible violations of federal securities laws. If you purchased shares of Halliburton and want more information, please contact Joon M. Khang, Esquire, of Khang & Khang LLP, 4000 Barranca Parkway, Suite 250, Irvine, CA (News - Alert) 92604, by telephone: (949) 419-3834, or by e-mail at [email protected]. The investigation focuses on whether Halliburton and certain of its officers and/or directors violated feeral securities laws. On October 21, 2011, the Company revealed that it commenced an internal investigation into possible violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act ("FCPA") by Halliburton personnel in Angola. On July 27, 2017, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission revealed that Halliburton would pay $29.2 million in fines and penalties to settle allegations of FCPA violations in connection with its Angolan operations. When this news was announced, shares of Halliburton decreased in value. If you have any questions concerning this notice or your rights, please contact Joon M. Khang, a prominent litigator for almost two decades, by telephone: (949) 419-3834, or by e-mail at [email protected]. This press release may constitute Attorney Advertising in some jurisdictions. View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20170803006551/en/ Amgen stock hits high on earnings, prospects of obesity drug In one of the worst years for the stock market since the 2008 financial crisis, Thousand Oaksbased Amgen is showing no signs of weakness. As of Wednesdays market close, the... Council approves rules to limit self-storage growth Future self-storage facilities in the city of Thousand Oaks will be excluded from prime commercial areas, according to a new ordinance adopted by the City Council this month. In a... Dealership does Distinguished thing SPECIAL TRIPChildren from Boys & Girls clubs in Camarillo, Simi Valley and Moorpark, and Oxnard and Port Hueneme attended Misty Copelands Oct. 18 appearance in the Distinguished Speaker Series at... When life gives you lemons... sell those lemons to someone else for almost $1 billion. That appears to be Symantec's thinking, anyway, because it announced that DigiCert has agreed to acquire its "Website Security and related PKI solutions" for $950 billion in cash. (Symantec will also receive a 30% stake in DigiCert's common stock when the deal closes.) Among those solutions: Symantec's problematic Certificate Authority (CA) division. It might sound weird to call what is apparently a $1 billion business a "lemon," but the problems with Symantec's CA work run deep. Since late 2015, the company has been sparring with Google over whether or not Symantec-issued certificates should be trusted by Chrome, Android, et al. Now, it seems that instead of trying to solve the issue, Symantec's going to hand off the business to DigiCert and make a cool billion in the process. The problems started when Google discovered in October 2015 that Symantec issued a rogue certificate for the "google.com" domain. Symantec and Google looked into the problem, and after some back and forth, the companies found more than a hundred certificates issued for domains without their controlling organizations' knowledge. They also learned that 2,458 certificates were issued for domains that were never registered. These are serious mistakes. CAs and the certificates they distribute underpin the protections that make sure your connections to websites are secure. That system only works if the certificates can be trusted, and the rogue certificates issued by Symantec undermined that trust. Yet the problems didn't stop there: In December 2015, Google removed a Symantec root certificate from Chrome and Android because Symantec decided not to support the CA/Browser Forums Baseline Requirements with its root certificates. That was a deal-breaker for Google, so away the trust went. Things escalated further when Google announced in March that it will gradually distrust certificates issued by Symantec. This time it was because Symantec improperly issued 30,000 certificates over the last few years. Google also immediately stopped recognizing Symantec's Extended Validation certificates and said it wouldn't re-trust (if that's a word) them for at least a year. Things were looking glum for Symantec's CA business. Symantec responded in April by coming up with an 11-point transparency plan meant to show Google how important its certificates are to many website operators. The move was likely supposed to convince Google to reconsider its stance because of the effect it could have on popular sites. Google didn't show any signs of budging, however, which probably led to Symantec's decision to sell off the problematic business to DigiCert. In its announcement (opens in new tab), Symantec said its board of directors unanimously approved the deal with DigiCert. The deal is expected to close in Q3 2018. Dear reader, we're asking for your help to keep local reporting available for all. Your financial support keeps stories like this one free to read, instead of hidden behind paywalls. We believe when reliable local reporting is widely available, the entire community benefits. Thank you for investing in your neighborhood. Start your day with LAist Sign up for How To LA, delivered weekday mornings. Subscribe Former rap mogul Marion "Suge" Knight has reportedly been indicted for making death threats against Straight Outta Compton director F. Gary Gray, reports TMZ. The Death Row Records founder is already facing separate murder charges from an incident related to the 2015 movie; in January 2015 he allegedly killed a man in a hit-and-run crash in the parking lot of Tam's Burgers in Compton. A commercial for the film was being filmed at the time. That trial is set to begin in January 2018. The death threats against Gray allegedly occurred the year before the hit-and-run. According to the grand jury indictment, which was obtained by TMZ, Knight "threatened to commit a crime which would result in death and great bodily injury to Felix Gary Gray" on or around August 8, 2014. Knight will reportedly be arraigned on Thursday. TMZ reports that the indictment is actually dated February 7, 2017, but it's not yet known why there was a six-month gap between the indictment and the arraignment. We reached out to the Los Angeles District Attorney's office for confirmation but did not immediately hear back. We will update this story as more information becomes available. The people behind the WannaCry ransomware campaign, which affected hundreds of thousands of devices around the world in May, have finally emptied the Bitcoin wallets to which their victims directed payments. Combined, the wallets contained roughly $145,000 worth of Bitcoin. WannaCry is perhaps the most famous ransomware campaign to date. (Its potential successor, the Petya / NotPetya attack from June, appeared to have been more focused on destroying data than holding it for ransom.) It exploited a vulnerability in Windows called EternalBlue that, according to Microsoft, was discovered and hoarded by the NSA. It eventually leaked, and WannaCry's coordinators used it to compromise at least 300,000 PCs. Yet the campaign had a flaw: the attackers only used a handful of Bitcoin wallets to receive their ransoms. It didn't take long for Quartz reporter Keith Collins to set up a bot to monitor the wallets' activity, and if a journalist was keeping an eye on them, chances were good that law enforcement agencies were as well. Few thought the WannaCry attackers would empty the wallets knowing the world would be watching them. Apparently those people were wrong. Collins' bot reported last night that all three wallets associated with the WannaCry campaign were emptied. The wallets contained 52.19666422 BTC--at current exchange rates, that adds up to just over $145,000. That's a lot of money to leave unclaimed no matter who's watching, and hubbub over the recent split between Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash may have led the attackers to throw caution to the wind. Now whoever carried out the WannaCry attack is likely $145,000 richer than they were earlier this week. (Minus any fees associated with laundering the funds--assuming the attackers didn't just cash out without trying to cover their tracks.) Speculation about the attacker's identity runs rampant, though the NSA has reportedly pointed the finger at North Korea, at least in private. Officially, the campaign's perpetrator(s) remains unidentified. Microsoft has released a series of updates to all recent versions of Windows, from XP to 10, in an attempt to defend against campaigns like this. Now the question is whether or not people and organizations will install these updates quickly enough to make the company's efforts worthwhile. But if the past is any indicator, we wouldn't hold our breath waiting for everyone to update their devices with these crucial fixes. KANSAS CITY, Mo. -- A Jackson County judge on Thursday sentenced Dewayne Cornelius, 29, to 27 years in prison for the May 2016 fatal shooting of Nicole Appleberry. A Jackson County jury convicted Cornelius in June 2017 of Murder 2nd Degree and Armed Criminal Action. Olathe police say husband shot wife in murder-suicide OLATHE, Kan. - Amy Mabion, 36, and her husband, 36-year-old Philip Mabion, were shot and killed inside their Olathe home Monday afternoon. Police said Wednesday the investigation at this point indicates Philip Mabion shot and killed Amy Mabion with a handgun before taking his own life. Social media chatter and a few d-bag commenters on this blog seem to be stuck in the 50s as a relationship "taboo" takes center-stage rather thanthat often defies demographic trends. Here's the latest on the story: KANSAS CITY, Mo. - Kansas City voters will head to the polls on August 8 to vote on three ballot initiatives, two of which concern streetcar expansion. If it passes, question 1 on the ballot would fine city employees $1,000 for planning a streetcar expansion without getting voter approval first. Just Another Kansas City Cold Case KC woman frustrated after break-in goes unsolved for two-years KANSAS CITY, Mo. - Ebony Robinson was at work when she received a call from a neighbor asking if anyone had access to her home. And that's how this Kansas City woman discovered thieves broke into her home. "The house was ransacked I mean they literally just tore everything. Victim Demands City Hall Accountability Refugee robbed with baby on her back asks Mayor James to clean up her neighborhood KANSAS CITY, Mo. -- She can't speak English and has lived in the United States for less than a year, but that's not stopping a metro mom from making a big impact on her community in Kansas City's Historic Northeast. MASSIVE JOCO SHOPLIFTER CRACKDOWN UNDERWAY!!! 14 arrested in 4 days for shoplifting in Overland Park, police blame websites OVERLAND PARK, Kan. - Overland Park Police make 14 arrests in 4 days and police say online website are encouraging people to shoplift. The Organized Retail Crimes Unit with the Overland Park police department are focusing more efforts online. Those efforts include shoplifting websites where thieves tell other thieves where and how to steal. Road Rage Fair Play Report Driver explains why he punched woman's mirror in Kansas City traffic incident caught on camera KANSAS CITY, Mo. -- A metro man has lost his job after a driver caught him on camera punching her passenger mirror Tuesday. FOX 4 first aired the story because the woman said she needed help identifying the man. He called FOX 4 Wednesday for the chance to tell his side of what happened. Golden Ghetto Luxury Looting . . . Thieves are targeting high-end cars in JoCo - but in an unusual way Dramatic smash-and-grabs in Johnson County have some business owners baffled. And it's video you've got to see. Thieves are going after high-end vehicles, but not in a way you'd expect. Surveillance video shows a pick-up truck backing up and ramming through the service bay doors at the Infiniti dealership in Merriam, Kan. As the murder rate remains sky-high, the quotient of crime and violence escalates throughout the Greater Kansas City area. Check some of the better recent news on the topic:Stay safe out there, developing . . . The royal couple arrived on the Greek island in the Ionian Sea on Wednesday afternoon and made their way to the villa by speedboat The Prince of Wales has once again returned as a guest to the Rothschild Villa on the island of Corfu in Greece where he arrived on Wednesday night with his wife Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, local media report. The royal couple arrived on the Greek island in the Ionian Sea on Wednesday afternoon and made their way to the villa by speedboat, docking in the small harbour of Kerasia where the luxury villa is located. The villa with its unique architecture has adorned the popular island destination for more than 40 years, within a vast estate in Kerasia that is filled with ancient pines, waterfalls and rich vegetation. Security measures since the royal couple's arrival are now extremely tight, with both security personnel and trained dogs guarding the premises. The villa has often hosted both royals and celebrities, while it was a favourite summer retreat for Princess Diana. Kerasia is 40 km northeast of Corfu town and is considered one of the most beautiful locations on the island, nestling around an impressive beach with white pebbles, lush vegetation and crystal clear azure waters. There is only one traditional taverna in the area, which is considered as a remote and idyllic retreat for all. Corfu is the birthplace of the Prince of Wales' father, Prince Phillip. Photo source: corfuland.gr 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 Boursa Kuwait has concluded a market-wide consultation for the draft of the rulebook in efforts to strengthen regulations in the market and advance the overall market performance. The extensive Boursa Kuwait Rulebook outlines market rules and regulations, guidelines related to listed companies and individuals in the Kuwaiti exchange, integrity guidelines, and disciplinary measures while defining the role of Boursa Kuwait through its objectives, responsibilities and management team. Khaled Abdulrazzaq AlKhaled, Boursa Kuwait CEO, addressed all participants in the consultation and said: Boursa Kuwaits unique transparency model ensures stakeholders can communicate freely with us and share valuable insights helping us to build comprehensive guidelines that combine extensive market research with market realities. We are very grateful to all those who demonstrated commitment and devotion to the Kuwaiti market through their contributions to this important Rulebook. This achievement marks a milestone in the Kuwaiti exchange history by increasing transparency levels and advancing its status on a global level. We are certain that the Boursa Kuwait Rulebook will be a valuable resource to all those looking to invest in the rapidly developing Kuwaiti market both local and international, he added. The draft of the Boursa Kuwait Rulebook is the first of its kind in Kuwait and has been uploaded on the Boursa Kuwait website for public consumption after being initiated on July 2. -TradeArabia News Service The first batch of villas in the Deerat Al Oyoun development in Bahrain's Diyar Al Muharraq is expected to be completed and handed over next year. This was revealed during Bahrain's Housing Minister Basem bin Yacoub Al Hamer's visit to the project site. He was received by Diyar Al Muharraq chairman Abdulhakim Al Khayyat, chief executive officer Dr Maher Al Shaer and other senior officials. He was briefed about progress of work on the Mazaya villas and social housing units at the development which are nearing completion, said a Bahrain News Agency report. The Deerat Al Oyoun spans across 1.2 million sq m and features 3,100 villas. The residential integrated community also comprises service centres and green spaces, located close to shopping malls, public beaches, recreational facilities, mosques, medical facilities, and a modern transportation network, the report said. Al Hamer described the Deerat Al Oyoun development project as the fruit of partnership with the private sector, paying tribe to His Royal Highness Prince Salman bin Hamad Al Khalifa, Crown Prince, Deputy Supreme Commander and First Deputy Prime Minister, for spearheading the scheme. "The Deerat Al Oyoun development project epitomises the success of the partnership between the ministry and the private sector to provide social housing," he said, highlighting the importance of the cooperation in providing decent housing for Bahraini citizens. The partnership between the ministry and the private sector, which started three years ago, has already provided more than 6,000 housing units in the projects of the Northern Town, Al Lawzy and Deerat Al Oyoun at Diyar Al Muharraq. He commended Diyar Al Muharraq board of directors, executive management and personnel for their efforts to spearhead massive investment projects. Kuwait's Ministry of Public Works has announced plans to impose a toll for using the new Sheikh Jaber Al Ahmad Bridge, which is expected to be inaugurated by the end of 2018. The causeway is considered one of the longest bridges in the world, with a total length of 43.14 km. It shorten the distance between Kuwait City and the Subiya area from the present 104 km to 37.5 km for drivers, said a report in Al Arabia English website. Public Works Minister Abdul Rahman Al Mutawa, in a memo to the Council of Ministers, has requested the implementation of the toll, it said. The move follows a research into similar practices in the region. The ministry found out that most countries in the Gulf region, Asia and Europe which have similar bridges are collecting fees to cover the costs of operation. The toll will also benefit the state economically as well as provide the operating and maintenance expenses needed, it said. The Marassi Al Bahrain kiosk at the Viva office. Marassi Al Bahrain, an urban waterfront project in the kingdom, is offering special ownership opportunities to employees of Viva, a leading telecom company. A dedicated kiosk for the project was made available at the companys Bahrain offices. Marassi Al Bahrain has seen significant sales and interest from Bahrains population, both local and expatriate. Viva employees were given access to payment plans and financing, to own a part of Bahrains most elegant address, said a statement. The kiosk was staffed by Marassi Al Bahrains property advisors, who presented residential opportunities available in the project, including: Marassi Residences, Marassi Shores Residences, Marassi Boulevard and the recently-launched The Address Residences Marassi Al Bahrain. Construction is well underway at the project, the statement added. TradeArabia News Service Dear reader, we're asking for your help to keep local reporting available for all. Your financial support keeps stories like this one free to read, instead of hidden behind paywalls. We believe when reliable local reporting is widely available, the entire community benefits. Thank you for investing in your neighborhood. Start your day with LAist Sign up for How To LA, delivered weekday mornings. Subscribe The University of California, Irvine has reversed its decision to withdraw admission offers to 290 students it claimed failed to meet deadlines for submitting transcripts. The decision was announced on Wednesday following weeks of growing public outcry over the university's rescission of 499 admission offers in July. Of the nearly 500 rescinded offers, 290 were based on the student's failure to meet a July 2 transcript deadline. The remaining 209 rescinded offers were based on poor academic performance during senior year. Tom Vasich, Interim Director of Media Relations at UCI, told LAist in July that the rescinded offers came as the university "took a harder line on deadline issues" due to a larger-than-normal incoming class size. Its clear that we don't like the way this was handled," Ria Carlson, associate chancellor of the university said, notes the Los Angeles Times. We should have been more sensitive in our approach. We probably should have worked more closely with students. We should have reached out to them by telephone. In a statement from Chancellor Howard Gillman released Wednesday, the university reinstated its provisional acceptance offers to any student who met academic performance standards. These standards include a 3.0 senior year GPA, and no Ds or Fs on the student's transcript. "Even for students whose transcripts show that these requirements were not met, we will establish an expedited process to allow students to make the case for extenuating circumstances, and otherwise will work with students to identify other possible pathways into the university," Gillman continued. "...In closing, the students and their families have my personal, sincerest apology. We should not have treated you this way over a missed deadline." UCI's 2017-2018 academic year begins the week of September 25. Bahrains Ministry of Works, Municipalities Affairs and Urban Planning has said that it has achieved 65 per cent progress on the Muqaba sewerage network project at Block 517 in the Northern Governorate. Sanitary engineering planning and projects director Nazha Abu Hindi said the project aims to connect 60 houses and real estates to the network. The project is expected to be completed by the end of this year. The BD184,909 ($490,215) project was earlier awarded to Abdul Karim Al Jahrami Contracting. The project is part of the sanitary schemes planned for the Northern Governorate. Two other projects are also being implemented in the governorate, including the main sewerage line for West Budaiya housing projects (Phase Two) and Sadad sewerage network project (Phase Two). TradeArabia News Service Oman-based Nama Group has invited consultants to take part in a competitive process for a contract to provide advisory services on the restructuring of the water sector in the sultanate, a report said. The restructuring exercise will not be limited to potable water distribution and supply activities, but will also include wastewater services and water resources, added the Oman Daily Observer report. The Government of Oman is restructuring the institutions which develop policy, provide services and regulate the countrys water supplies and wastewater services. Nama Holding, a government-owned company that will, at least initially, hold the shares of the new service companies, will shortly be procuring consultants to support the design and implementation of the new sector arrangements, the report said, citing a Nama statement. The scope of the advisory services contract will cover financial, technical and legal aspects, as well as specialist themes like policy development, company establishment, asset valuation, change management and human resources, Nama Group said. Microsoft Gulf has announced the launch of its Cloud Summer Camp, which will take place in Mauritius this August. The initiative is part of the Microsoft Cloud society, a unique program that gives IT Pros an opportunity to advance their technical acumen and become world-class experts in the space of cloud computing, said a statement. Interested candidates can now avail the chance to win a spot in the Cloud Summer Camp and fly to Mauritius this August by registering on Microsoft Cloud Society and completing any of the available Azure Skills courses in the month of July; or alternatively by attending more than four Azure sessions on TeachMeNow, it said. Upon achievement of these courses, participants can publish a copy of completion certificate on their personal LinkedIn page with hash-tag #MSCloudSociety and share the link of this post on the Microsoft Gulf IT Pro page, it added. Winners amongst eligible participants will be selected based on the highest number of endorsements achieved on LinkedIn in Cloud Computing. Names of confirmed winners will be posted online on Microsofts IT Pro Facebook page, it stated. TradeArabia News Service For the third year in a row, Centrepoint, the Middle Easts largest fashion retailer, has been ranked among the top retailers in Saudi Arabia according to the YouGov BrandIndex Study 2017. The regional fashion retailer was ranked third in this years study which is compiled using the Buzz Score (net sentiment generated across all media including advertising, news, word of mouth) from YouGovs flagship brand tracker -BrandIndex. BrandIndex is a trusted measure of brand perception within the industry and continuously measures the public opinion of thousands of brands across the globe. Simon Cooper, head of Centrepoint, said: We are extremely pleased to once again be recognised as one of the leading retailers in Saudi Arabia by YouGovs BrandIndex study. This accolade is particularly gratifying as it comes from public opinion, and at Centrepoint, we always strive to put the customer at the centre of everything we do. This recognition is further testament to our firm commitment to provide our customers with the highest standards of quality and service. Centrepoint has 86 stores in Saudi Arabia and is a dominant player in the regions retail industry enjoying a large market share and loyal customer base. The fashion retailer recently launched its e-commerce platform centrepointstores.com. With the launch of its online store, customers can now view the full range of products and shop from the comforts of their own home while receiving the benefits of shopping online including exclusive offers, one click shopping, earn and redeem Shukran points amongst others. TradeArabia News Service Ramee Grand Hotel and Spa Seef has welcomed two top level executives to its management team in Bahrain. Kumar Ashwani has been named the director of sales and marketing and Rocco Santopietro joins as the property's new general manager. Ashwani brings with him 22 years of hospitality experience and has worked with Intercontinental Group and Accor. He started his hospitality career in India 1995 with Holiday Inn, continued his way up to success to move to Bahrain in 1997 with Intercontinental (IHG) and to the Mercure Grand seef Hotel (Accor) in the year 2004 to gain experience of pre-opening. In his new role, Ashwani will be in charge of sales and marketing to reposition Ramee Grand Hotel and Spa Seef. He is responsible for sustained operational excellence at both properties and direct oversight of sales strategy, market planning and revenue management. Santopietro brings to Ramee over three decades of hospitality experience. One of his key objectives will be to continue to grow the hotels position within the local, regional and international markets. Santopietro began his career in Gstaad in Switzerland at the Palace Hotel in 1978. Over the years, he worked at with several operators in Switzerland, Greece, Uk, Italy, France, Romania, The Far East, Caribbean and Egypt. Santopietro joins Ramee Group from his most recent role as cluster general manager at Red Sea Hotels & Resorts. In this position, he managed three resorts conference and Mall and was instrumental for the company in the planning and pre-opening phase of six new resorts In Sahl hasheesh in Egypt. He has worked with international hospitality groups such as Mandarin Oriental, Starwood and Wyndham and has overseen the opening and pre-opening of various high-end Hotels such As The Dorchester, Casa Angelina, Murano Urban Resort and island resorts as general manager, namely in London, Positano, Paris, Antigua amongst other locations. His extensive experience in food and beverage operations within five-star luxury hotels led him to being a part of the pre-opening team at The Dorchester In London, Mandarin Oriental Bali, Singapore, Macao and Manila. He has also gone through 18 months of Mandarin Oriental Managements corporate executive training at six of its properties Hong Kong, Jakarta, Bangkok and Singapore and took up a corporate role With Stein Group as corporate director of opening and operation support. Santopietro added: I am thrilled to join the Ramee family as it continues on the growth journey in the region. Ramee Group has seen unprecedented growth in the past decade and still has a long runway. I look forward to working with some of the best talent in the industry My mission is not only to ensure Ramee Grand Hotel & Spa continues to be recognised as the leading luxury hotel in Bahrain but also to expand the brand awareness in this competitive market. - TradeArabia News Service Mileslife, a mileage earning App in China, has welcomed Qatar Airways Privilege Club, as the 12th airline loyalty program partner. Mileslife App users can now earn Qmiles directly through daily lifestyle and travel spending. Along with the joining of Privilege Club, Mileslife has been expanding the frequent flyer network throughout Asia, Europe, America and finally, the Middle East, servicing frequent flyers around the globe. Mileslife endeavors to cultivate and elevate the entire airline loyalty programme industry in China as well as strengthen the connection between airlines, customers and merchants. Launched in November 2015, Mileslife quickly partnered with China's leading loyalty programmes including China Southern Airlines Sky Pearl Club, China Eastern Airlines Eastern Miles, Hainan Airlines Fortune Wings Club, PhoenixMiles and Sichuan Airlines Golden Panda. The company also became the first Chinese start-up that partnered with British Airways executive club, Iberia Plus, Miles & More, Singapore Airlines KrisFlyer, United MileagePlus and EVA Air Infinity MileageLands. The newly joined Privilege Club is the frequent flyer programme of Qatar Airways. This partnership is the first time ever that Qatar Airways has collaborated with a local company in China. Mileslife has been expanding over 2,000 mileage earning opportunities for users, ranging from mid-to-high end restaurants and leading spas to boutique hotels, luxury resorts, recreational activities and travel packages. Once users pay via the Mileslife App, they can earn up to 1 airline mile with every RMB1 (or equivalent) that they have spent and the miles earned will be directly credited into the frequent flyer account of the user within 3-5 working days after the transaction. As part of this ongoing partnership, for a limited time Mileslife App users can book a flight at qatarairways.com from August 3 through to September 1, 2017 and save up to 20 per cent on fares and earn 100 per cent bonus Qmiles in Premium Class and 50 per cent bonus Qmiles in Economy Class for flights between August 5, 2017 and March 31, 2018. "We've noticed most of the frequent flyers are loyal customers who tend to purchase value-oriented products," explained Troy Liu, founder and CEO of Mileslife. "After more-than-a-year operation, frequent flyers and our partners could distinguish the difference between Mileslife and other travel-related Apps, and recognize our value." As a renowned loyalty programme expert in China, he has performed consultant services and training for many international hotel chains and airlines. Visiting over 100 countries by earning and earning miles and points in the past 15 years, he also cast light on these in his million-word blogs on Boardingarea. Qatar Airways vice president customer loyalty and relationship management, Dr. Ian Di Tullio, said: "We are excited about this innovative way to connect frequent flyers with daily lifestyle spending. Mileslife provides an excellent opportunity for us to activate the frequent flyer market in China and offers even more opportunities for our members to earn benefits, privileges and awards." - TradeArabia News Service Senator Warner Wants More Dark Pool Scrutiny One U.S. lawmaker wants even more light shed on dark pools. Last week, U.S. Senator Mark Warner wrote a letter to the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) requesting the agency to increase its observation of dark pools and how they conduct their business. As reported by Reuters, Warner said that FINRA had already taken positive steps in regulating the opaque non-public trading venues since 2015 when it issued best execution guidance. But, in his opinion, the agency hasnt done enough yet to protect individual mom-and-pop investors. Without "affirmatively enforcing the Best Execution Rule subject to the detailed FINRA guidance, investors cannot be assured that brokers are routing their orders to venues that will offer best execution quality and pricing," Warner, a Democrat, said in the letter, which was seen by Reuters. The best execution rule requires broker-dealers to send orders to the trading venue that will ensure the best possible price for a security. A spokesman for FINRA told Reuters the regulator had received the letter and would respond in due course. FINRA should focus more on broker-dealers that operate their own dark pools, given the inherent conflict of interest in routing customer orders to these internal venues versus competing marketplaces, Warner added. For more information on related topics, visit the following channels: Most of the travel guides have recommended couple of months in spring and in Autumn as best time to travel to Nepal. However there are tours and treks that could be done during off season and low season. In fact it is cheaper to travel and destinations / trails are less crowded making it more relaxed. (TRAVPR.COM) NEPAL - August 2nd, 2017 - For over half a century, Nepal became popular for adventurous trekking and mountaineering. October and November are the most popular months for Himalayan adventure trips as the monsoon clouds clear up and the temperature is mild during those two months. Warmth of summer melts snow over the mountain passes making it easy for trekkers to cross. The fall of temperature during the winter months and snow make it difficult for trekkers to go on remote treks and high passes. Another most preferred time to do Himalayan trekking is March and April. Mercury start to rise and the fogs settle during these months. Spring brings colors to the foothills of the Himalayas with blossoms of Rhododendron, Indian coral and Orchids. However Nepal is not only about Himalayan trekking and mountaineering which is limited by weather conditions. There are several treks, hill stations, nature safari tours and pilgrimage destinations that could be visited year around. We can promote pilgrimage tour of Hindu and Buddhist sites to the neighboring countries making special discount for off season. Thousands of pilgrims come on a pilgrimage tour of Nepal from Asian countries like China, India, Malaysia, Singapore, Vietnam and Sri Lanka. But in lack of proper promotion, we have been unable to bring them in off season when hotels and travel agencies can offer them better price. says managing director Kopila Sen at iTourNepal.com P Ltd. Nepal Tour during Off Season (June - Sept) June to Sept is rainy season in the southern slopes of the Himalayas. Rain clouds mostly cover the Himalayas most of the time even though it rains mostly in the late afternoon and night. There are some territories like Mustang, Manang and Dolpo which sees very little rain and it is possible to trek during monsoon in those regions. Nepal is also a best transit for Tibet tours. Actually this is the best time to travel to Tibet and trans-Himalayan region of Nepal. Similarly pilgrimage destinations like Lumbini, the birthplace of Buddha and Hindu sites could be visited during these months. Nepal Tour during Low Season (Dec Feb) Dec to Feb is considered as low season because of snow and temperature drop in the highland. However it is perfect time to do short treks and tours in the foothills of the Himalayas. Winter days are pleasant and sunny. Sky is clear mostly during winter guaranteeing the view of Himalayas. So it is perfect time to tour around tropical national parks of Chitwan, Bardia and Suklaphata and drive around the hill stations like Nagarkot, Dhulikhel, Bandipur, Daman, Tansen and Gorkha. So depending upon the travelers quest for adventure and destinations within Nepal, time of the year could be planned to minimize the travelling cost. iTourNepal.com P Ltd have been organizing sustainable Himalayan tours and treks that contribute to local economy and employment bringing positive impact on local culture and environment. We are specialized in Himalayan tours and treks of Nepal, Tibet and Bhutan. Press Information iTourNepal.com P Ltd. Nasanh Dyah Marg, Thamel Kathmandu 44600 , Nepal Rabindra Adhikari Tour Manager 977 1 4363643 , 4412011 Email : ecotreknepal@gmail.com www.itournepal.com Search News Archive : Fast Travel News Promotion Via Search, Social Media + Email Follow Us On : INDUSTRY LEADER PERSONALLY KICKS OFF 2017/18 PATAGONIA SEASON IN ARGENTINA Industry: Adventure BikeHike Founder Trish Sare guides this singular 7-day Argentina expedition (TRAVPR.COM) CANADA - August 2nd, 2017 - Industry Leader Personally Kicks Off 2017/18 Patagonia Season in Argentina Founder Trish Sare guides this singular 7-day expedition Vancouver, B.C. - Adventure travel industry leader, BikeHike Adventures, announces that the company's Founder, Trish Sare, will be personally kicking off the adventure company's Patagonia season by leading the company's first 2017/18 Argentina departure. By personally leading BikeHike Adventure's On the Trail of Argentina's Patagonia tour (October 21-27, 2017), Sare wishes to draw attention to how distinctive Argentina's Patagonia is as an adventure destination. Patagonia offers up raw nature on an enormous scale and attracts travellers from around the globe. While Argentina's Patagonia shares some similarities with Chile's Patagonia, Sare points out that "it would be a crime to assume that both sides offer the exact same experience. The Argentina side of Patagonia provides an unmatched level of rugged adventure." Overall, visitors to Argentina will note that its landscapes are much more raw and dramatic, the landscape filled with more stark contrasts, from desert steppes to lakes and ice. Argentina's Los Glaciares National Park is truly exceptional, often referred to as the "kingdom of glaciers," boasting over 2,600 square kilometers (1000 square miles) of ice fields. "We always hear all of our Patagonia travellers tell us that our trips there were an experience of a lifetime, but our Argentina travellers especially tell us that they loved being able to experience Patagonia on a whole other level," Sare notes. "You'll also encounter more local Argentines as well as other South American tourists. It is the preferred side for locals. So, Argentina's Patagonia is great place for getting in touch with the local culture through meeting locals as they'll be hiking alongside you. And connecting with locals is what BikeHike is all about too so I love that! In Chile, you'll quite often meet more international travellers. Whenever we speak with our local friends and colleagues, they always proudly declare that Argentina's Patagonia currently holds the most authentic experience of the region," Sare explains. Argentina is also known for its strong European, particularly Italian, influences and sophistication. This influence is most notable in the country's refined cuisine and wine culture. "A popular trip extension before or after our Argentina hiking trips has become visiting Mendoza," Sare reveals. Mendoza is Argentina's famous wine region, most notable for its Malbec production. BikeHike Adventure's On the Trail of Argentina's Patagonia begins in the small, mountain town of El Calafate and then continues onwards into Los Glaciares National Park. Trip highlights include hiking alongside the grandiose Viedma Glacier in Los Glaciares National Park, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and cruising on Lake Argentine to view the Upsala Glacier, the largest in South America. Spaces are still available for this special October 21 - 27, 2017 departure. The 7 day On the Trail of Argentina's Patagonia adventure starts at $2,699 US (land only) and includes all accommodation (twin shared), meals, internal transportation, park entrance fees and veteran guides. The trip includes stays in locally owned and managed hotels and lodges. No single supplement fees are charged to solo travellers. Departures run from October to March. About BikeHike Adventures Named as one of National Geographic Adventure's "Best Adventure Travel Companies on Earth," BikeHike Adventures celebrated its 23th anniversary this year and offers guided tours to 30 destinations worldwide. BikeHike Adventures caters to a specific niche of travellers, those who are outdoor enthusiasts with a passion to go a little deeper during their travels. Highly experienced and personable adventure guides facilitate the wonder and pride of exploration. The results are memorable journeys, new friends, culinary treasures and a satisfying sense of accomplishment. Visit www.bikehike.com for more info. ### Please contact the person or company listed above for information regarding the content of this press release. TravPR.com are not the issuers of this press release and are not responsible for the accuracy of the content. Share Release : CONTACT INFORMATION Name: Trish Sare Company: BikeHike Adventures Phone: 1 888 805 0061 Email: info@bikehike.com Web: PRESS RELEASE TAGS New Highland distillery making great progress (TRAVPR.COM) SCOTLAND - August 3rd, 2017 - A second share offer for the GlenWyvis community-owned distillery (based in the Highland town of Dingwall), is being launched today with almost 350 people having already pre-registered an interest. As construction of the distillery reaches the final stages, GlenWyvis Distillery Community Benefit Society has brought forward its second share offer* to open the door to new members and will launch it today Thursday August 3rd at the Black Isle Show with a *special launch share offer prize draw will be open on the day to new investors. Commenting on overall progress to date, David OConnor, chairman of GlenWyvis Distillery said: These last few weeks have really seen great change on site, as the exterior walls have gone up, the stills and mash tun delivered, and adverts for the distillery manager and visitor centre development officer making it all very tangible now. It is great to see the distillery coming together, showing investors and the local community alike that our plan is on schedule. Our second share offer will help to accelerate our brand development plans as we get down to the real business of making whisky with our sights firmly set on the first run of spirit in November 2017. GlenWyvis already has some 2,600 members who invested in the original share offer in 2016 and this new share offer opportunity capitalises on continued interest from locals and visitors alike. The minimum investment will be 250 for all investors and supporters will also be able to pay extra to have their name added to the distillery wall or the path to the stills. The initial target of 750,000 will help to bring forward the distillerys development plans in line with feedback received from members in a recent survey. This will include extending the GlenWyvis brand and product offering, bringing gin distilling into Dingwall, and further development of the GlenWyvis visitor experience in and around the town. GlenWyvis Distillery founder and managing director, John McKenzie said: It is an exciting time, and this new share offer will not only help us to fast-track our brand, but will reduce commercial lending costs, so we can deliver on our community benefit remit sooner. Weve already created three full-time jobs, with two more advertised now, and up to six more likely to be required when the distillery opens in November. We secured a very strong following in our first share offer and we remain on schedule with the building. Almost 350 new investors have already come forward to pre-register for this second offer which is fantastic and we have introduced great incentives in a prize draw for anyone who invests this Thursday, the day of the launch. David Taylor of Highlands and Islands Enterprise added: We have been very pleased to support GlenWyvis Distillery and its great to see this community-led project now nearing the point of distillation and production. The food and drink sector a is hugely important part of Scotlands economy, and we are already punching above our weight in the Highlands and Islands, particularly for whisky. We are looking forward to helping GlenWyvis develop a strong brand and fully exploit its international potential. Simon Walker, Head of Campaigns at crowdfunder.co.uk said: "The GlenWyvis Distillery is a truly unique project to create the worlds first 100% community-owned whisky distillery. Following last years successful crowdfunding campaign with over 2.5million raised, we're delighted that the team has decided to use crowdfunder.co.uk once again to help kick-off the next phase of funding. As a project which gives people a chance to play an active role in this venture, were excited to see not only the development of the distillery itself, but how the community continues to work together to make the project a reality. We look forward to raising a glass with John and his team over the next couple of months. Further support has also come from Community Shares Scotland and commenting on the next offer Sandra Macaskill, CSS programme officer, said: We are delighted to be able to support GlenWyvis for a second time, as the next crucial stages get underway. It has been a very engaging community project to date, bringing a significant boost to the Dingwall area, especially now the distillery build and staffing are well underway. It has also given others a great example of a successful community share offer and inspiration for future projects considering funding this way." Full details of the open share offer, naming options and Thursdays prize draw* are available on the GlenWyvis Distillery website at www.glenwyvis.com. Investment can be made online via www.crowdfunder.co.uk or www.glenwyvis.com from 10.00am on Thursday 3rd August. ENDS NOTES TO EDITORS Image: Josh Fraser, office manager beside new still. *GLENWYVIS OPEN SHARE ISSUE LAUNCH COMPETITION The second share offer launch will include a prize draw with opportunities to win the following prizes, but only if investment is made on Thursday 3rd August. 1. INVEST IN PERSON AT BLACK ISLE SHOW ON THURSDAY 3rd AUGUST First Prize: Helicopter trip. Twenty minute GlenWyvis whisky heritage tour on 21st, 22nd, 28th or 29th October. Second Prize: 700ml bottle of GlenWyvis Highland Inspiration malt whisky. Third Prize: 700ml bottle of GlenWyvis Gin. 2. INVEST ONLINE VIA CROWDFUNDER.CO.UK or GLENWYVIS.COM ON THURSDAY 3rd AUGUST First Prize: Helicopter trip. Twenty minute GlenWyvis whisky heritage tour on 21st, 22nd, 28th or 29th October. Second Prize: 700ml bottle of GlenWyvis Highland Inspiration malt whisky. Third Prize: 700ml bottle of GlenWyvis Gin. 3. ADD YOUR NAME TO GLENWYVIS ON THURSDAY 3rd AUGUST For 30 add a name to the Friends Wall in the distillery. For 50 add a personalised stone to The Path to The Stills. Gift options also available. See www.glenwyvis.com for full T&Cs. First Prize: Helicopter trip. Twenty minute GlenWyvis whisky heritage tour on 21st, 22nd, 28th or 29th October. Second Prize: 200ml bottle of GlenWyvis Gin. Third Prize: 50ml bottle of GlenWyvis Gin. For further press information contact: Fiona Stewart, Interwoven PR, 07940560453 Email: fiona@interwovenpr.com ### Faizan Mustafa Faizan Mustafa There is a difference between patriotism and 'nationalism'. It is the former which is compatible with universal liberalism and is an antidote to nationalism. Constitutional patriotism has the potential to reunite India, Pakistan and Bangladesh as for Habermas citizenship does not require that all citizens share the same language or the same religious, ethical or cultural origins. Rabindranath Tagore, author of the national anthem, too did not hesitate in telling Gandhiji that there was a thin line between nationalism and xenophobia and went on to say that to worship my country as God is to bring curse upon it. Tagore was opposed to the triumph of patriotism over humanity and universalism. He was even for destroying nationalism to achieve 'unity of man'. Thus Dinanath Batra's suggestion to the Modi government to drop all references to Tagore in textbooks. How other mature democracies respond to the refusal of saluting the national flag, refusal to sing the national anthem and even burning of the national flag needs to be discussed as Justice Murlidharan of the Madras High Court in order to promote patriotism has made singing of the national song mandatory in all schools, universities and even corporate offices. Neither corporates nor universities have the concept of daily assemblies like schools. The Madras High Court order is not only an example of judicial overreach but is also based on the flawed idea that patriotism can be inculcated by the force of law. Doubting any citizen's patriotism is a punishable offence under Section 153B of the Indian Penal Code. In 2016, the apex court had made the playing of the national anthem compulsory in cinema halls but had refused to make the national song singing compulsory. Thus the Madras High Court went against the Supreme Court and violated the judicial discipline. The court does make an exception for those who have language difficulties or valid objections. But in an era of mob lynching, this exemption will not work. In any case, who will decide on the validity of objections? In this case the petitioner was just seeking the award of one mark for correctly answering a question in the teacher's recruitment examination that Bengali is the language in which Vande Matram was originally written. The answer key had wrongly provided Sanskrit as the correct answer. The court rightly ordered the award of one mark to the petitioner but doing anything beyond this was unnecessary. There are sections of the population which refuse to sing the national anthem and the national song like the Zehovah Witness sect of Christians. While this author personally has no objection, some Muslims do believe that while singing the national anthem does not violate any fundamental belief of Islam, singing the national song would impinge on their religious beliefs under which they cannot worship anyone other than just one God. Not singing the national anthem does not mean that one is not patriotic. In fact love for one's country is indeed half of religion in Islam. The test of patriotism is the sacrifice one is willing to make for one's country. The freedom of religion guaranteed under our Constitution to not only citizens but even to foreigners does permit them to follow core beliefs of their religion. Followers of Jehovah Witness sect do not sing any national anthem anywhere in the world. Do we have any right to impose our views on them? Can courts compel people to change their religious beliefs? Moreover, Vande Matram was not written for India but for the undivided Bengal which includes today's Bangladesh. The poem was composed by Bankim Chandra Chattopadhya in 1870 and was included in his novel Anandmath in 1881. In fact Arbindo had called it the national anthem of Bengal. It was first sung by Rabindranath Tagore at the session of the Indian National Congress in 1896. We may disagree with those who are opposed to the singing of Vande Matram but we cannot impose our will on them. Mature democracies do not punish apostasy and blasphemy. Let us see how America dealt with the issue of national symbols. The classic American case is that of Texas v. Johnson where the Supreme Court opined that burning of the American flag is protected by the freedom of speech. The court observed that the right to differ is the centerpiece of our First Amendment freedoms. Nothing is more important in terms of national symbols than the flag of a country. It is indeed the most visible manifestation of nationhood. Forty-eight of the 50 American States had flag protection laws and all these laws were held as unconstitutional. In certain cases in America attaching a peace sign to the flag; refusal to salute the flag; and displaying a red flag were also protected. In Smith v. Goguen, wearing pants with a small flag sewn into their seat was held as expressive conduct. The Supreme Court held neither the United States nor any State may require any individual to salute or express favorable attitudes toward the flag. We need not go this far in India. The citizen's fundamental duties under the Constitution do not mention the national song but talk of reverence to the national anthem. The Prevention of Insults to National Honors Act, 1971, neither mandates 'standing' nor 'signing' of the national anthem. But it explicitly punishes the burning of the national flag any disrespect to the flag in words or conduct and the national flag includes even a picture or painting of the flag. No Indian disagrees with these provisions. The Indian law has not yet made the singing of even the national anthem compulsory, what to talk of the national song. In the Bijoy Emmanul case three students belonging to the Zehovah Witness sect were expelled from the school for not singing the national anthem. The Supreme Court held that these children were exercising their 'right to silence' which is implicit in the freedom of speech. The court said: 'Our tradition teaches tolerance, our Constitution preaches tolerance. Let us not dilute it.' Though their expulsion was held bad in law, these children subsequently withdrew from the school and never went to any other school. What a disastrous consequence. Sushil Manav Tribune News Service Chandigarh, August 3 A team from the National Vector Borne Disease Control Programme (NVBDCP) of the Union Health and Family Welfare Ministry today rushed to Mewat that is struggling with a malaria outbreak-like situation. As many as 1,210 cases of malaria have been reported in the district till Wednesday while there are 1,982 such cases in the entire state. A five-member team led by Dr Suman Wattal, a Deputy Director in the NVBDCP, today visited Nizampur and Buraka villages in Taoru tehsil and Ranika village in Nuh tehsil of Mewat (now Nuh district) and conducted a door-to-door survey to assess the situation. At Ranika, the team found 48 persons complaining of fever and upon their blood test through the rapid test method, 14 of them were found suffering from malaria. Reports from other two villages are yet to be compiled, Dr Atul Choudhary, officiating Deputy Civil Surgeon (Vector Borne Disease) of the district, told The Tribune over phone from Ranika. Dr Choudhary accompanied the team. It is largely an operational failure, as the Health Department in the district does not have the manpower to deal with the situation. The department has all medicines and the material required to control the spread of the disease but it lacks manpower whether doctors or multipurpose health workers, Dr Wattal told The Tribune. Dr Wattal said she had visited Mewat last year too when over 5,000 cases of malaria were reported in the district. At that time, too, the Health Department faced an acute shortage of manpower. Given the fact that the number of malaria cases was over 2,000 by August 2 last year, the situation is relatively better this year. But unless a sufficient number of health workers are provided, the situation can worsen, she warned. Civil Surgeon Dr Shriram Siwach said 79 of 84 posts of multipurpose health worker were vacant and a medical officer is heading the vector borne disease programme in the district. There is only one civil surgeon against eight sanctioned posts. Elsewhere in the state, Palwal (197 cases), Yamunanagar (144), Panchkula (94), Hisar (49), Karnal (47) and Faridabad (42) are some other districts where the malaria situation has become a cause for concern. Meanwhile, six cases of swine flu have also come to light in the state. Of these, three cases have been detected in Panckula while one case each has been found in Yamunanagar, Bhiwani and Kaithal. Faridabad, August 3 Nearly 160 semi-naked sanitation workers, who were rendered jobless after the HUDA handed over maintenance of certain sectors to the municipal corporation, carried out a protest march here demanding restoration of their jobs. The protest march on Wednesday started outside the municipal corporation office and culminated at citys Neelam Chowk during which the workers raised slogans against the government and the administration. The Haryana Urban Development Authority (HUDA) had a few months ago handed over the maintenance of certain sectors and markets to the municipal corporation. These 160 workers, however, were assured of being adjusted in the municipal corporation, claimed Naresh Kumar Shastri, who led the protest. He said on July 11 Principal Secretary RK Khullar had directed the corporation, Faridabad, that these HUDA employees be taken on duty with immediate effect. The government has agreed to include 160 workers in the Faridabad Municipal Corporation. Official orders have been given but the implementation is getting delayed, he claimed, alleging civic body officials were delaying the process. Names of our children have been struck off school registers because we are unable to pay their fees. We are unable to pay electricity bills and landlords are asking us to vacate houses, Shastri added. The workers said if their jobs were not restored, they would launch a protest on August 9 carrying begging bowls in their hands. PTI Jammu, August 3 Two officials of Jammu and Kashmir education department were on Thursday suspended for their alleged role in leaking a paper in the Class 10 board examinations in Rajouri district, a senior officer said. Rajouri Deputy Commissioner (DC) Shahid Iqbal Choudhary said the directions had been also issued to the education department to debar both the officials from any sensitive assignment, including examination duty in future. Superintendent of examination Zaffar Javed and deputy superintendent Tahir Ayoub posted on examination duty at Thanamandi centre have been placed under suspension after District Education Planning Officer indicted the officials for lapses in conduct of examination in violation of guidelines, he said. However, since the allegation related to paper leak, an inquiry would be conducted by Additional Deputy Commissioner (ADDC) to fix responsibility and recommend a departmental action against the delinquent officials, the DC said. Both officials will remain attached with the office of Tehsildar Khwas till completion of inquiry by the ADDC for which one month has been given, he said. On Wednesday, three boys were also arrested in Poonch district for impersonation in Class 10 examinations of the Jammu and Kashmir Board of School Education. PTI Srinagar, August 3 Dreaded Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT) militant Abu Dujana apparently rejected an offer to surrender made by the security forces minutes before the encounter on Tuesday, leading to his killing along with an aide in south Kashmirs Pulwama district. In a recording of a purported telephonic conversation between Dujana and an unnamed officer, the LeT militant commander is heard saying, Why should I surrender? I have left (home) for martyrdom. I have to die either today or tomorrow. When the officer tries to get the militant to give up, reminding him of his parents and wife, he replies, I have not married. This is propaganda. My parents were dead for me the day I left them. When the officer tells him that he must be aware that the conflict in Kashmir is a game, Dujana says, I know the system. I know everything. What can I do, if anyone wants to play a game. I have to tread my own path. The militant is heard laughing when the officer tells him he has travelled distances to nab him. He then asks the officer about his well-being, observing it had been years since he had heard from him. When we play chor-sipahi, sometimes we are ahead, sometimes you. Today you caught me, congratulations, says Dujana. The officer responds by saying he is only doing his duty. I will do mine, the militant replies. The officer tells Dujana no one wants to kill anyone. Thats okay, but whoever gave you the information wants me dead, the militant remarks. Listen to me, I cannot surrender. I know you have no animosity with me and you are fulfilling your duty, and I am mine. When the officer tells him what he is doing is not jihad, the militant says:Chalo yaar, kya karenge. (friend, what can we do). The officer asks the LeT commander to come out of the house and surrender. That is how this bloodshed will end, he says. I have never indulged in bloodshed. They know it, replies Dujana. When the officer tells him Kashmiris will listen to him, the militant disconnects the call. PTI Majid Jahangir Tribune News Service Srinagar, August 3 After remaining suspended for a fortnight, the cross-LoC trade on the Srinagar-Muzzafarabad road will resume next week. The decision to resume the trade was taken in a joint meeting of officials from the two sides on Thursday who met at the zero point at Kaman Post on the LoC in Uri sector, 118 km from here. The trade will resume on the Salamabad-Chakothi axis from Tuesday, Subdivisional Magistrate (SDM), Uri, Sagar Doifode, who was a member of the delegation that held a one-hour meeting at the zero point, said. The delegation from Kashmir was led by Deputy Commissioner of Baramulla Nasir Naqash. The Pakistan-occupied Kashmir side was represented by Director General, Trans-LoC Trade Authority, Shahid Ahmad. The trade was suspended after the J&K Police seized 66.5 kg of heroin at the Salamabad trade centre at Uri from a truck coming from Pakistan-occupied Kashmir on July 21. Senior Superintendent of Police, Baramulla, Mir Imtiyaz Hussain also briefed the other side about the investigation being carried by the police after the recovery of narcotics. We also stressed for more security checks on the other side to ensure that no drugs are smuggled here. They agreed to improve the security mechanism at the trade centre at Chakothi, the Uri SDM said. Besides, both sides have agreed to limit the number of trade trucks to 20 for some time. Cross-LoC trade and the Srinagar-Muzaffarabad bus services are touted as two of the biggest confidence-building measures between the two warring neighbours over Kashmir since Partition. The cross-LoC trade was launched in October 2008. Initially, the trade was allowed on two days but after 2011, it is being done for four days in a week. The trade is already on the radar of the National Investigation Agency. 116 PoK citizens to return In all, 116 PoK citizens, who had arrived via Poonch and have been stranded on this side for over a month, will be allowed to return via Kaman Post through the Srinagar-Muzaffarabad bus service on Monday, officials said. Majid Jahangir Tribune News Service Srinagar, August 3 An Army Major and a jawan were killed while two others were injured in an overnight gunfight in south Kashmir's volatile Shopian district, the police said. (Follow The Tribune on Facebook; and Twitter @thetribunechd) The militants attacked an Army patrol at Zadipora Shopian, some 55 kms from Srinagar when joint teams of forces were laying a cordon in the area at around 2 am following an input about militant presence. "Four Army men, including a Major, were injured in the attack. The injured Army men were shifted to 92 Base Hospital in Srinagar, where the officer and another jawan succumbed to injuries. The condition of the other injured is also stated to be critical," sources said. SP Shopian, A S Dinkar, confirmed two Army fatalities. Soon after the attack, forces launched an operation in the area. The anti-militancy operation is still underway in the village bordering Shopian and Kulgam. However, sources said the militants managed to escape taking advantage of the darkness. Meanwhile, two militants were killed in an overnight gunfight at Gopalpora Kulgam, over 75 km from Srinagar. Police sources said that the gunfight broke when militants were challenged by joint teams of forces when they were moving in area. "The militant opened fire triggering a gunfight which ended with the killing of two militants," sources said, adding two AK 47 rifles were also recovered from the encounter site. A police spokesman in Srinagar said that one of the slain militant was involved in killing of five policemen and guards of bank van at Pambay Kulgam in May. Dinesh Manhotra Tribune News Service Jammu, August 3 Even as the state government today issued an order to reserve 49 posts of Assistant Professor in Dogri and 25 in Punjabi in the Higher Education Department, the decision has failed to calm down the brewing anger in the Jammu region against cultural aggression by intoducing Kashmiri language in the region. Contents of the orders issued for Kashmiri and Dogri and Punjabi are entirely different so it created further apprehensions about intention of the government, observed Prof Lalit Magotra, president of the Dogri Sanstha, which is spearheading the stir along with the Team Jammu against cultural aggression. Prof Magotra has reasons to air apprehension because it was clearly mentioned in the government order number 399 HE of 2017, dated 4-7-2017, that 49 posts of Assistant Professor have been converted for Kashmiri language/literature. But in todays order number 453 HE of 2017, dated 3-8-2017, it is clearly mentioned that 49 posts, out of existing 482 vacancies of Assistant Professor, are hereby reserved for Dogri and 25 posts for Punjabi. Why term converted is not used in todays order? asked the Dogri Sanstha president, adding, such terminology raises doubt over intention of the state government. He said the government must clear for which colleges 49 posts of Assistant Professor in Kashmiri had been created. Todays order is mere eyewash to fool residents of the Jammu region. We will not allow Kashmiri to be introduced in this region, warned Zorawar Singh Jamwal, chairman of the Team Jammu. Come what may, we will not allow the introduction of Kashmiri language in the Jammu province. We want to make it clear that any such move will put the entire Jammu on fire if the ruling coalition does not revoke its previous notification of introducing Kashmiri language in Jammu colleges, warned Jamwal. With the connivance of Kashmiri leadership, the power hungry BJP ministers are hell bent on to wipe out Dogra heritage and culture, Zorawar Singh said, added that allowing the introduction of Kashmiri in degree colleges was the first step in the direction. As various organisations in the Jammu region are up in arms against the governments decision to go ahead with introducing Kashmiri language in Jammu colleges, the Higher Education Department today issued an order for reservation of vacancies of Assistant Professor in Dogri and Punjabi as a damage-control exercise. Converted vs reserved It was clearly mentioned in the government order number 399 HE of 2017, dated 4-7-2017, that 49 posts of Assistant Professor have been converted for Kashmiri language/literature. But in Thursdays order number 453 HE of 2017, dated 3-8-2017, it is clearly mentioned that 49 posts, of the existing 482 vacancies of Assistant Professor, are hereby reserved for Dogri and 25 posts for Punjabi. Manav Mander Tribune News Service Ludhiana, August 2 Good news for patients and attendants at the Civil Hospital, as the authorities have decided to start token system at the OPD to cater to the rush of patients. Everyday, huge rush is witnessed outside doctors rooms and patients are seen standing outside jostling for space and turn. Many a times, patients are seen arguing over their turns or complaining that they keep standing outside for hours, saying nobody calls them inside. Patients in urgent need of treatment and care, sometimes keep standing outside and are unable to meet the doctor. Even doctors complain that several patients barge into their rooms and they are unable to focus and attend patients properly. People generally push each other to get inside the OPD and it causes a lot of inconvenience to both patients and doctors, said a doctor on duty in the OPD. Dr Avinash Jindal, medicine specialist at the Civil Hospital, said they face a lot of problems every day due to authorities mismanagement. We hope things will get better once the token system starts, he said. Manohar Lal, a patient from Shimlapuri, said: The worst affected are patients like me, who have fever and are unable to even stand. I was struggling for my turn and it has been over two hours that I am waiting for my turn. I cannot fight for my turn even, as I am down with high fever and feeling weak. According to the new system, patients will get a token as soon as they come with the OPD slip outside the doctors room and will go to see the doctor according to the number on it. The Civil Hospital is the main hospital of the district, which caters to patients not only from Ludhiana city, but also from the periphery areas such as Sahnewal, Doraha, Machhiwara, Jagraon and Raikot. On an average, the hospital receives nearly 500 patients every day. Tribune News Service Ludhiana, August 3 The first turbaned-Sikh Member of Parliament (MP), UK, Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi, popularly known as Tan Dhesi, visited Ludhiana today. I am here for the love of Punjab and to identify and celebrate my connection with my roots. I am in Ludhiana to reinforce my friendship with Harjinder (Singh Kukreja), said Dhesi while addressing the media at a restaurant here. Harjinder Singh Kukreja is a social activist and businessman. Dhesi said he had met Chief Minister Captain Amarinder Singh; former Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal; and the Minister of External Affairs to discuss the issues concerning Punjabis in the UK. He said he had discussed issues ranging from land grabbing to the open-sky policy that the UK had with India. The constituents of Slough have reposed faith in me. The responsibility of being the first turbaned-Sikh UK MP weighs heavily on my shoulders, said Dhesi. I have to work for all, whether they voted for me or not, in accordance with the philosophy of Sarbat Da Bhala (welfare of all) propounded by the Sikh gurus, said Dhesi on being asked about his opponents in Slough, UK. Tribune News Service Lucknow, August 3 A 65-year-old Dalit woman was beaten to death on suspicion of being a braid cutter at a village in Agra on Wednesday morning. Maan Devi was chased and beaten to death by a mob, led by two brothers, on a mere suspicion that she was a choti katua (braid cutter), rumours about which has rapidly travelled from Rajasthan, Haryana and Delhi to western Uttar Pradesh. The Agra police have arrested the two brothers, Manish and Sonu Baghel, on charges of murder of the woman who was an inhabitant of the same village. Her grieving son, Gulam Singh, said her mother had gone to the fields to relieve herself at the break of dawn. She lost her way and entered the Baghel hamlet of the village. Spotting her in a white sari, the already on the edge villagers mistook the hapless woman for the so-called choti katua. Additional Director General of Police Anand Kumar termed the Agra incident as an eye-opener and a typical example of fear psychosis turning into a law and order problem. There have been around four or five incidents reported from Mathura, Agra and Firozabad districts of western UP. But in none of the cases is there any evidence of forced entry or physical assault. This appears to be the doing of some mischievous insiders or family members to draw media attention, said the ADG. He said the police had launched an extensive campaign at village, district and sub-district level to counter rumours about choti katua and instil a sense of security among people. Imphal, August 3 Kuki National Liberation Front (KNLF) general secretary Lalmoi Haokip was killed in an attack by assailants in the hill district of Churachandpur in Manipur, the police said on Thursday. The killing occurred ahead of the proposed dialogue with Kuki militant groups this month. The assailants attacked Haokip using hand grenades and firearms around 8 pm on Wednesday and he died on the spot, a senior police officer said. As Lalmois wife rushed to her husbands help, she sustained splinter injuries and was taken to hospital. She is now out of danger, the police officer said. Chief Minister N Biren Singh had on July 27 said both the state and the Centre would initiate dialogue to bring a settlement concerning Kuki militant groups. The KNLF is a part of the Kuki militant groups, which is observing Suspension of Operations (SoO), with both the Centre and the state government. Currently, more than 20 Kuki militant outfits are observing SoO under the conglomeration of two umbrella bodies categorised into the United Peoples Front (UPF) and the Kuki National Organisation (KNO). PTI Shiv Kumar Tribune News Service Mumbai, August 3 Footage from closed circuit television cameras installed across Mumbai would be used to nab traffic police personnel who take bribes from motorists breaking traffic rules. Joint Commissioner of Police (Traffic) Amitesh Kumar in an affidavit filed before the Bombay High Court submitted that 5,408 CCTVs installed all over Mumbai would help nab traffic cops who extort bribes from errant motorists. Judges RM Savant and Justice Sadhana Jadhav of the Bombay High Court are hearing a public interest litigation petition filed by constable Sunil Toke who has complained of large-scale corruption in the traffic police department. Earlier, the Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB) had told the court that there was no corruption in the traffic department. This was dismissed as an eye-wash, by the court which asked the ACB to do a proper study of the problem. The affidavit also stated that traffic policemen in Mumbai had been equipped with e-challan handsets which would allow traffic violaters to be given electronic tickets thus eliminating corruption. The police department also submitted that towing van operators would now be required to upload photographs of wrongly parked vehicles to a central server before towing them away. Kumar also told the Bombay High Court that the department had begun to equip police personnel with body cameras that would record the audio and video interaction between police personnel and traffic violators. United Nations, August 3 China has again extended by three months its technical hold on the US, France and UK-backed proposal to designate Pakistan-based JeM terror group chief Masood Azhar as a global terrorist by the UN. China had in February blocked the US move to designate Azhar, the Pathankot attack mastermind, as a global terrorist at the UN. The deadline for China to take action on its technical hold was till August 2. If China would not have extended the hold, Azhar would have automatically been designated under the UN as a terrorist. Sources said just before the deadline lapsed, China again sought a three-month extension until November 2 on its technical hold on the proposal. (Follow The Tribune on Facebook; and Twitter @thetribunechd) A veto-wielding permanent member of the Security Council, Beijing has repeatedly blocked Indias move to put a ban on Azhar under the al-Qaeda Sanctions Committee of the council. JeM has already been in the banned list. Last year in March, China was the sole member in the 15-nation UN organ to put a hold on Indias application with all other 14 members of the council supporting New Delhis bid to place Azhar on the 1267 sanctions list that would subject him to an assets freeze and travel ban. PTI Agra, August 2 An elderly Dalit woman, termed a witch involved in cutting hair of women, was beaten to death near here on Wednesday, police said. Family members told police that the old woman had gone to the field to relieve herself, but lost her way and entered the Baghaels Mutnai village under Dauki police station, 25 km from the city, where she was surrounded by a group of men who accused her of coming to cut the hair of some young girls. (Follow The Tribune on Facebook; and Twitter @thetribunechd) The woman, identified as Maan Devi (62), was severely beaten by mob. Her son Manoj told the police that his mother had identified herself and kept pleading to be let off, but a group refused to free her and kept beating her. As news spread, people from her mohalla ran to rescue her, but she died on way to the hospital. A senior police official said she was mentally unstable and incoherent, while her grey hair and scary looks seem to have prejudiced the locals. Two persons named in the FIR have disappeared from the village. Recently, in many places, including Delhi, NCR, Haryana and Agra, incidents of chopping off braids of women at night have come to fore. A 62-year-old woman was allegedly killed by villagers in Dauki region here on Wednesday over rumours of her being the witch who chops off the braids of girls while they are sleeping. The Additional Director General of Police Anand Kumar said the incident is highly unfortunate and that there is no such gang. He added that all the nearby magistrates and Senior Superintendents have been alerted with respect to the recent situation. Kumar said, These rumours started in and around Rajasthan and Haryana. We are trying to make sure that these rumours don't spread. He also said thorough investigation is underway to find the ones who are actually responsible for these incidents. Agencies Bengaluru, August 2 The Income Tax Department today conducted searches at 64 locations and properties linked to Karnataka Energy Minister DK Shivakumar, who is overseeing the stay of 44 Congress MLAs from Gujarat at a resort near here. I-T officials said Rs 10 crore in cash had been found during the raids at various properties linked to the minister who was taken to his house in Bengaluru from the resort by tax officials early today. (Follow The Tribune on Facebook; and Twitter @thetribunechd) A good amount of jewellery had been found from a locker in a local college in the name of a elative of the minister, they said. While currency worth Rs 7.9 crore was seized from Delhi, a sum of Rs 2.23 crore was found at various locations in Karnataka. Officials said the department was probing Shivakumar for alleged tax evasion and undisclosed investments in real estate and other sectors. Certain investments in Singapore and other foreign locations were also under the department scanner. Some shell firms and their operatives were also being probed, the officials said. Shivakumar, in charge of the 44 MLAs lodged there to prevent the BJP from "poaching" them, was at the Eagleton resort when the search took place. The department has prepared a 'panchnama.' The minister was allegedly found "tearing" pages of loose paper sheets, when the taxman arrived at the resort. The torn sheet, restored partially, is now being analysed, an official said. The raids triggered angry reaction from the Congress. But the department said the resort was not being raided and only the minister's room in the resort had been "searched. Senior Congress leader Ahmed Patel, who is contesting the Rajya Sabha polls from Gujarat accused the BJP of indulging in "unprecedented witch-hunt" to win one Rajya Sabha seat. PTI Centre rushes to EC "The use of central forces in Income Tax investigations is a new low by the BJP government in their desperate quest to intimidate and coerce the Congress MLAs from Gujarat to toe the BJP line" Congress memorandum Majid Jahangir & Suhail A Shah Tribune News Service Srinagar/Anantnag, August 3 Barely two days after the killing of top militant commander Abu Dujana, a Major and a soldier of the Army's elite counter-insurgency unit were killed in an ambush in Shopian district of south Kashmir today. Hours before the ambush, security personnel had killed two local Hizbul militants in neighbouring Kulgam district Aqib Ahmad Ittoo (17) from Gopalpora, and Suhail Rather (17) from Yaripora. (Follow The Tribune on Facebook; and Twitter @thetribunechd) Defence sources said: At 2 am, Hizbul militants opened fire on troops in Zadipora village, 55 km from Srinagar, while they were disembarking from their vehicles to lay a cordon following inputs on the presence of militants in the village. Soldiers of the Rashtriya Rifles, 62 Battalion, were part of the operation. In the ambush, three soldiers, including an officer, were critically wounded. The injured were airlifted to the Armys Srinagar hospital where two of them, including the officer, died. Srinagar-based defence spokesman Col Rajesh Kalia identified the slain as Major Kamlesh Pandey, 29, from Almora, Uttarakhand, and Sepoy Tanzin Chhultim, 25, from Lahaul-Spiti, Himachal Pradesh. The Army called it a chance encounter. The J&K Police claimed to have gathered some clues on the attackers. One of them was definitely Altaf Kachroo, Shopian SP Ambarkar Shriram Dinkar said. About the Kulgam encounter, a senior police officer said the security forces launched cordon and search operations in Gopalpora at 11 pm on Wednesday night. Aqib and Suhail, who were hiding in a house, were killed after a brief encounter. Despite restrictions, thousands of people attended the funerals, a local resident said. Armed militants at Suhais funeral in Tantraypora area of Yaripora offered a gun salute, he claimed. Kulgam and Anantnag districts observed a shutdown to mourn the deaths. A police spokesman said Aqib was behind the attack on a cash van at Pombai, Kulgam, in which five policemen and two civilians were killed. Major Pandey is survived by his wife and a two-year-old daughter. Aditi Tandon Tribune News Service New Delhi, August 3 Cementing his claim as a peoples candidate in the August 5 Vice-Presidential election, Opposition nominee Gopalkrishna Gandhi today said no political party could claim him and he was running for the high office as a common man. In an interview to The Tribune on the eve of the election, Gandhi said he was quintessentially a citizens candidate. Eighteen Opposition parties have officially endorsed Gandhi for the election in which numbers are stacked in favour of the ruling NDA nominee M Venkaiah Naidu. (Follow The Tribune on Facebook; and Twitter @thetribunechd) Asked if he would accept the votes of JD-U chief Nitish Kumar who switched over to the BJP recently, Gandhi said in a noncommittal manner, Mr Nitish Kumars decision to support my candidature is his decision and his prerogative. Nitish abandoned the grand alliance with the RJD and Congress in Bihar to form a new government with BJP support. On whether his appeal to MPs in the name of people was enough to get votes, Gandhi said: Yes, and asked, Are MPs not themselves the product of Indias peoplehood? Engaged in a contest skewed in Naidus favour, Gandhi put up a strong front when asked why he agreed to be in a one-sided fight. Elections are part of the life of the Republic. They are their own victory, the grandson of Mahatma Gandhi and C Rajagopalachari spoke of his presence in the race. Gandhi was also categorical in stating that he was not a political nominee. Asked how he reconciled to the fact that some parties backing him (like the TMC and RJD) were facing corruption allegations, Gopal Gandhi retorted: All of them know as I do that no party can claim me, my endorsement or my candidature. RK Laxmans immortal common man appeared as an image in a newspaper. Did that paper own him? Did he represent that newspaper? The Opposition nominee also indicated that he was appealing to the conscience of the collegium comprising MPs of Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha for the August 5 election. It is important that the electorate knows what, not just who, it is choosing in this election, he said to a query on whether like Oppositions Presidential nominee Meira Kumar, he, too, was asking a conscience vote. The former Bengal Governor further made a case for incumbents to constitutional offices to be guided only by the Constitution and not politics. These two offices (President and V-P) are Constitutional offices, and as such require the incumbents to have only the Constitution as their master and guide, Gandhi said when asked if the high offices should be occupied by non-political people only. He added that he had no response from Naidu on the challenge of an open debate on Rajya Sabha TV. It is too late now. But had there been a debate, I would have asked whether we are free of fear. I would have said that direct and indirect attacks are being made on democratic freedoms of belief, thought and action and institutions serving public causes feel palpable pressure to conform where they wish to dissent, to be silent where they wish to speak up. Tribune News Service New Delhi, August 3 Speaking on the Doklam crisis in Rajya Sabha on Thursday, External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj said with regard to the boundary in the Sikkim sector there are still steps to be covered before the border is finalised. Here is the External Affairs Ministers statement: Our relations with China have recently come under renewed focus due to developments in the Doklam area in the Sikkim sector close to the India-China-Bhutan tri-junction boundary. Indias position on this issue has been articulated in the press statement issued by the Ministry of External Affairs on June 30. Our concerns emanate from Chinese action on the ground which have implications for the determination of the tri-junction boundary point between India, China and Bhutan and the alignment of India-China boundary in the Sikkim sector. Both these aspects of tri-junction points and India-China boundary alignment in the Sikkim sector had been earlier addressed in a written common understanding reached between the Special Representatives of India and China on the boundary question in December 2012. Point 13 of the common understanding states that, The tri-junction boundary points between India, China and third countries will be finalised in consultation with the concerned countries. Since 2012, we have not held any discussion on the tri-junction with Bhutan. The Chinese action in the Doklam area is therefore of concern. With regard to the boundary in the Sikkim sector there are still steps to be covered before the boundary is finalised. This understanding has been reflected in the Common Understanding of December 2012 in point number 12 which states that, There is mutual agreement on the basis of the alignment of the India-China boundary in the Sikkim sector as provided by the convention between China and Great Britain relating to Tibet and Sikkim signed in 1890. During the Eighth Special Representatives meeting in June 2006, the Chinese side had in fact handed over a non-paper for separate agreement on the boundary in Sikkim sector. The non-paper had proposed that Both sides may, based on the above mentioned historical treaty i.e. 1890 Convention, verify and determine the specific alignment of the Sikkim sector and produce a common record. On this basis as the initial result of the boundary settlement both sides may negotiate a final agreement on the boundary alignment in the Sikkim sector to replace the historical treaty. Subsequently, in the Special Representatives meeting the Chinese side has made the proposal for finalising the boundary in Sikkim sector terming it as an early harvest of the SR process thus clearly confirming that the boundary in the Sikkim sector is not yet finalised. Otherwise they would not have used this term early harvest as we say low hanging fruit. We have noted that the Chinese side has selectively quoted parts of Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehrus letter of 22nd March, 1959 pertaining to the India-China boundary in the Sikkim sector. A full and accurate account of that letter would have also brought out Prime Minister Nehrus assertion that was clearly based on the boundary alignment as shown in our Indian published maps. The Chinese side in their recent document published on the website of their Foreign Ministry had expressed commitment to maintaining peace and tranquillity in the India-China border areas. India always believes that peace and tranquillity in the India-China border is an important pre-requisite for smooth development of our bilateral relations. We will continue to engage with the Chinese side through diplomatic channels to find a mutually acceptable solution on the basis of the Astana Consensus between our leaders. I note the sense of the house is supportive in this regard in keeping the traditional friendship with Bhutan, we will also continue to maintain close consultation and coordination with the Royal Government of Bhutan. Thank you. Patna, August 3 In a first of its kind in Bihar, a mob in Bhojpur district led by cow vigilantes on Thursday thrashed a truck driver and two others on suspicion of transporting beef, police said. They also tried to set on fire the vehicle which was on its way to Muzaffarpur district. But the police said they foiled the attempt. The incident occurred in Shahpur near Ara town when the mob stopped the truck on suspicion that it was carrying beef and caught the three. All three men were arrested after being rescued from the mob, a police official said. (Follow The Tribune on Facebook; and Twitter @thetribunechd) They will be interrogated whether they were carrying beef or buffalo meat, the official said. The protesters blocked the Ara-Buxar road demanding that the three men be handed over to them. The police refused to do that. The truck driver has said that they were carrying buffalo meat and not cow meat, the official said. IANS Arun Sharma Tribune News Service Morinda, August 3 An 11-year-old boy was allegedly kidnapped when he was waiting for his school bus in the town this morning. Though the victim, Prabhjot Singh, a student of Class V of National School in Kurali, was later released by the kidnappers, the police refused to lodge a complaint, terming the incident a rumour. Chamkaur Sahib DSP Navreet Singh Virk allegedly threatened a reporter for spreading rumours. He, however, denied it and said he was merely advising the reporter to behave responsibly while covering the news. The family approached the police at noon, but to no avail. Manjit Singh said his grandson Prabhjot and his sister Harsimran Kaur go to school together, but today Prabhjot left home a few minutes early. When Harsimran reached the bus stop, she found him missing, but his bag was lying there. She informed her mother, following which a search was started. After nearly an hour, the boy was found near the railway station, said Manjit Singh. Prabhjot said he was taken away forcibly by four persons with their faces covered in a white car, who abandoned him near the railway station. It was only after SSP Raj Bachan Singh Sandhu was contacted by the media in the evening that the police started the probe. DSP Virk confirmed that the police had received the complaint in the afternoon and the SHO kept them in the dark. Sandhu said he would initiate disciplinary action against the SHO. Police inaction Tribune News Service Sangrur, August 3 Rejecting the waiver of crop loan as announced by the state government, the BKU (Sidhupur) today demanded a complete debt waiver. Union activists held a protest in front of the Sangrur Deputy Commissioners office. BKU leaders announced to intensify their agitation if the government failed to take the required steps. Before the elections, the Congress led by Capt Amarinder Singh had promised a complete debt waiver by getting forms filled from farmers across the state, but after the formation of the government, he has cheated them by announcing to waive only crop loans. We will intensify our agitation if the government fails to provide relief to all farmers, said Bikramjit Singh Longowal, district president. All senior union leaders of the region participated in the protest rally that lasted for more than four hours till 2 pm. We will block all major roads in the state in coming some days, if the required steps are not taken to meet our demand. Till today we have only heard statements and have not seen any action, said Ran Singh Chatha, Sunam block president. Emulate Sir Chhotu Ram: Farmers to CM Fatehgarh Sahib: Addressing a dharna jointly organised by various farmer unions in front of the Deputy Commissioner's office, speakers called upon the Chief Minister to repeat the history by waiving farm loans the way Sir Chhotu Ram did. They said Capt Amarinder Singh had the courage to take such daring step. The farming community would always be indebted to him. The speakers called upon the farmers not to take the extreme step of committing suicide as it was not the solution to any problem rather it affected the family. Later, a delegation of farmers submitted a memorandum to the Deputy Commissioner seeking debt waiver and implementation of the Swaminathan report. TNS BJP to gherao CMs residence today Chandigarh: The BJP Kisan Morcha will gherao the residence of Chief Minister Capt Amarinder Singh on Friday for failing to keep his promise of a complete farm loan waiver, a press release said here on Thursday. State party secretary Vineet Joshi said based on newspaper reports, at least 80 farmers of the state had committed suicide since the Congress government assumed power earlier this year. It clearly showed that farmers of the state were distraught and felt betrayed. TNS Jupinderjit Singh Tribune News Service Chandigarh, August 3 Pointing out the prevalence of a police-property grabber nexus in Ludhiana, the Punjab State Commission for NRIs today recommended a Vigilance inquiry into the grabbing of an NRIs property at Ghumar Mandi market. The property has remained in controversy since it was grabbed in 2011 allegedly by a Youth Akali Dal leader. He was later accused of converting the place into a hookah bar restaurant and a discotheque. The place had hit the headlines when an Assistant Inspector General of Police was injured in a brawl at the restaurant. NRI Commission Chairman Justice Rakesh Kumar Garg (retd) and member former DGP Anil Kumar Sharma in an order dated July 27 said the complainant, US-based Hardial Singh Hundal, had been alleging since 2013 that the police were not taking action against the grabbers. Subsequently, the commission issued several orders pertaining to tabling of the records and summoning of investigative officers. A Special Investigation Team was formed by the Ludhiana Police to probe the case. The complainant alleged that an illegal registration of the property was done in connivance with officials and the police. The commission learnt that a civil court in Ludhiana had issued arrest warrants against 19 persons, including government officials, in the case, but the police did not seem to have ensured the summons were delivered. The commission also noted several other discrepancies in the investigation and alleged delaying tactics. Ordering an inquiry, the commission noted, There is a strong nexus between the police officials involved in the investigation and the accused. Site mired in controversy since 2011 Amritsar: Farmers in large numbers, under the banner of the Kisan Sangharsh Committee, held a demonstration outside the office of the Chief Engineer, Border Zone, PSPCL, on Thursday. They raised slogans against the government and the PSPCL for not fulfilling their demands, including the release of tubewell connections and subsidised power rates. The dharna was lifted after Sub-Divisional Magistrate (SDM) Rajesh Sharma along with Chief Engineer NK Gandhi and Deputy Commissioner of Police (DCP) Jagmohan Singh reached the site and assured them to do the needful. They also promised to arrange a meeting of farmers' leaders with Principal Secretary to the Chief Minister (CM). Jasbir Singh Piddi, another leader, said, "The PSPCL should immediately release tubewell connections after making estimates. The connections should be issued to those who have deposited money with the department. Besides, farmers should get electricity for Re 1 per unit for residential purpose. The proposal to enhance the rate as suggested by the regulatory authority should be withdrawn. TNS Phnom Penh, August 3 An Australian nurse who managed a surrogacy clinic in Cambodia that matched foreign couples with local women was sentenced to 18 months in prison on Thursday, as authorities in the impoverished kingdom tackle the rent-a-womb businesses. Tammy Davis-Charles, 49, has been in custody since her arrest in November last year, weeks after Cambodia abruptly banned commercial surrogacy. Authorities moved to shut down the trade which, critics say. exploits poor women, after a similar ban in Thailand pushed the shadowy industry across its borders. Davis-Charles is accused of moving from Thailand to take advantage of the surrogacy boom in Cambodia, which lacked regulations at the time and quickly mopped up demand from foreign couples, mostly from Australia. Police said her clinic charged would-be parents up to USD 50,000, while Cambodian surrogates received around USD 10,000 each--a vast sum in a nation where the average annual income is around USD 1,200. Davis-Charles, who advertised surrogacy services online, was accused of bringing more than 23 Cambodian women into the trade for 18 Australian and five American couples. Tammy Davis-Charles was an intermediary between intended parents and Cambodian surrogate mothers, Judge Sor Lina said delivering the ruling. The Melbourne native was also convicted of falsifying documents. The court sentences Tammy Davis-Charles to one-and-a- half-years in jail, the judge added. Two Cambodian colleagues were convicted of the same charges and also jailed for 18 months. In her defence statement in July, Davis-Charles broke down in tears in front of the court appealing for mercy from the bench, saying she had already lost everything during her six months in custody. During the trial she denied recruiting the surrogates, saying her role was limited to providing medical care. Davis-Charles had twins through a Thai surrogate before going into the surrogacy business full-time...to help people every day, according to her post on the website of her Bangkok-registered company. Surrogacy agencies started sprouting up in Cambodia in 2015 after neighbouring Thailand shut down the trade following a series of scandals, including tussles over custody. With cheap medical costs, a large pool of poor young women and no laws excluding gay couples or single parents, Cambodia quickly absorbed demand. But in late 2016 authorities shut down the trade and refused to recognise birth certificates for babies, leaving many foreign couples in limbo. In April this year, the government said it would allow foreign couples to return home with babies if they could prove they were conceived before the ban on commercial surrogacy. While Cambodias crackdown has slowed the tide of foreign couples, it has failed to snuff out an industry that remains a lure for some of the countrys most vulnerable women. There is certainly still surrogacy going on underground, said Sam Everingham, director of the Australia- based consultancy Families Through Surrogacy. The trade has also shifted over to neighbouring Laos which has yet to criminalise commercial surrogacy. Laos role as the new surrogacy destination emerged after Thai authorities arrested a man attempting to smuggle six large refrigerated vials of sperm into the Communist country--presumably for use in the booming surrogacy clinics. Some offer to carry out the embryo transfer in Laos and then provide pregnancy care for the surrogate in Thailand, a wealthier country with vastly superior medical facilities. Thai authorities banned the trade in late 2014 following a slew of scandals, including the discovery of nine babies in a Bangkok apartment fathered by a rich Japanese man using Thai surrogates. AFP Washington, August 3 China has realised that nuclear-armed North Korea is becoming a greater threat to its security and is working to address the challenge posed by Pyongyang, a top US official has said. Acting Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs Susan Thornton said that as many as 90 per cent of North Koreas economy is still flowing through China, so Beijing has more leverage on North Korea than any other country. Were working with them currently to continue to step up enforcement of sanctions and to try to levy additional sanctions, so I think we have to keep working on that track, Thornton said. US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson heads to the Philippines, Thailand and Malaysia later this week as part of the Trump administrations policy to strengthen relationship with countries in the Asia pacific region, many of whom are concerned about the increasing Chinese assertiveness. The US, she said, had been working with China on North Korea. What we think weve seen today in the way of cooperation, which we have seen significant steps taken by China to increase pressure on North Korea--frankly, unprecedented steps, Thornton said. We do have indications that China is extremely concerned about North Korea and extremely unhappy with the direction things are going. They realise that this is becoming a greater threat to Chinas own security, and we see a growing determination on their part to take steps to try to address the situation seriously, Thornton said. Such a statement from a state department official gains significance given news reports that the White House is planning to impose some kind of sanctions on China because it is not taking any steps against its close ally North Korea. We and China have the same goal, which is denuclearisation of the Korean Peninsula, and so we share a mutual interest there and we want to find out how we can work more effectively together to bring about that change in North Korea that we would like to see, she said. On the issues of trade, it has also been a prominent topic of discussion. Weve had the US-China Comprehensive Economic Dialogue here in Washington DC recently that discussed the full gamut of trade and investment and economic issues, and that discussion is continuing and weve got a number of hundred-day plans in the works to negotiate resolution and show concrete progress in that relationship, the official said. The US and China can have a productive relationship if the two countries can work together on the issue of North Korea. Thornton said the Trump administration would continue to be engaged in the Asia Pacific region. On the issue of the rebalance, I think that slogans are sometimes overrated or overused, but certainly, what the rebalance was trying to denote was that the US is an Asia Pacific power, were going to be engaged in the Asia Pacific region, were a provider of security in the region, its key to our prosperity and our economic future, and we are going to pay a lot of attention to Asia..., she said. So I think youve seen the engagement by so many high-level officials, with leaders coming here, with our high-level cabinet officials going there, with the presidents trip upcoming later this fall, so I think its really just a matter of naming it. I think I would say our active engagement is frankly continuing and is not going to be changing anytime soon, Thornton said. The US has sent aircraft carrier-led strike group to the Korean peninsula to step up pressure against North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un to refrain from developing a nuclear-tipped ballistic missile capable of reaching mainland US. PTI Washington, August 3 Christopher Wray on Thursday assumed charge as the new FBI Director and pledged to work for the good of the US and the cause of justice. A former US Assistant Attorney for the Criminal Division, Wray, 50, replaces James Comey, who was abruptly fired by President Donald Trump amid a probe into the Trump campaigns alleged collusion with Russia to influence the last years presidential election. He was sworn in as the eighth Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation by Attorney General Jeff Sessions who lauded his spirit and strength of character. Wray, 50, who was confirmed by the US Senate through an overwhelming majority of 92-5 votes on the Senate floor, termed it the honour of a lifetime to serve as the director. It is the honour of a lifetime to serve as Director. I long ago grew to know and admire the FBI from my earliest days as a line prosecutor to my years as assistant attorney general, Wray said in a statement after being sworn in. I am excited, humbled and grateful, therefore, to have this chance to work side-by-side again with these fine professionals for the good of the country and the cause of justice, he said. In a statement, Sessions praised Wrays spirit and strength of character, saying: I am confident that the FBI, the premier investigative agency in the world, is in great hands with Director Chris Wray at the helm. I congratulate him for being overwhelmingly confirmed to that post and look forward to working with him every day to keep America safe, he said. As a former federal prosecutor and head of the Department of Justices Criminal Division, Wray has successfully prosecuted terrorists, drug kingpins, and white-collar criminals, Sessions said. FBI directors are approved by the Senate to serve for 10 years, but the president has unilateral authority to fire them at any time. PTI Tehran, August 3 Iran said today that new US sanctions were a violation of its nuclear deal with world powers, piling pressure on President Hassan Rouhani as he started his second term. Rouhani vowed to continue his efforts to end the countrys isolation as he was sworn in by supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei following his re-election in May. But the ceremony came less than 24 hours after US President Donald Trump confirmed fresh sanctions against Iran. Tehran says the new measures violate its 2015 deal with world powers that eased sanctions in exchange for curbs on its nuclear programme, an agreement which Trump has repeatedly threatened to tear up. We believe that the nuclear deal has been violated and we will react appropriately, deputy foreign minister Abbas Araghchi said on state television. We will certainly not fall into the trap of US policy and Trump, and our reaction will be very carefully considered. The mounting crisis creates a difficult position for Rouhani, a 68-year-old moderate who won re-election largely thanks to his efforts at repairing relations with the West. We will never accept isolation, Rouhani said as he was sworn in in front of top political and military officials. The nuclear deal is a sign of Irans goodwill on the international stage, he added. Khamenei took a tougher line, saying Iran must not fall for Washingtons tricks. The enemys hostility has made us more resistant, he said. New US sanctions have emboldened Rouhanis hardline opponents, who say he should never have trusted the United States. Britain, France and Germany-who signed the deal along with Russia, China and the United States-remain firm backers of the agreement and have criticised the Trump administration for threatening to scrap it. AFP Tokyo, August 3 Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, beset by scandals and falling support, opted almost entirely for safe hands over fresh faces in a Cabinet reshuffle on Thursday, but the changes may not give him the boost in support he wants. Many ministers are being reappointed, such as Finance Minister Taro Aso, or are taking up posts they have held before. One of the few exceptions is new Foreign Minister Taro Kono, who is known for both his willingness to criticise the ruling party and a frankness unusual for a Japanese politician. Opinion polls show support for Abe has plunged to its lowest since he returned to office in December 2012 with a promise to revive Japans stale economy and bolster its defences, endangering his goal of revising the pacifist constitution. Abe had until recently also been seen as likely to win a third term as head of his ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and thus the premiership, putting him on track to be Japans longest-serving prime minister. But support in recent polls has fallen below 30 percent, with the Opposition fanning suspicions of Abes favouritism to a friend and voters believing that he and his aides have grown arrogant in office. He was also hurt by the LDPs defeat by a novice political party in a July assembly election. New LDP policy chief Fumio Kishida, the former foreign minister, emphasised the Cabinets intention to return to fundamentals after taking up his new post. We need to fulfil economic policies under Abenomics so that the public can better feel the benefits of Japans economic revival, Kishida told a news conference, referring to Abes signature plan to reboot Japans economy. Huge asset Abes choice of Kono, a former administrative reform minister with wide international connections, for the post of Japans top diplomat will likely attract attention both at home and abroad. Kono has a degree from Georgetown University and worked as an aide for several politicians. In the current state of confusion and flip-flop in Washington, Konos deep and broad network of personal connections will be a huge asset, Jesper Koll, head of equity fund WisdomTree Japan, said in an email. One of Konos major tasks will be to coordinate closely with the United States, Japans closest ally, in the face of North Koreas worrying missile and nuclear development programmes, as well as Chinas growing regional clout. Aside from Aso, Trade Minister Hiroshige Seko and Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga, who has drawn criticism as the face of a Cabinet that many voters feel came to take them for granted, will remain in their posts. Other veterans returning to posts they held previously are Defence Minister Itsunori Onodera and Justice Minister Yoko Kamikawa. Internal Affairs Minister Seiko Noda, often spoken of as a possible future female premier, previously held a slightly different version of that portfolio. Adding Noda may be an attempt to woo women voters, who are less enthused with the Abe government than men. She also tried to run against Abe in the most recent LDP election. She has been at odds with him in the past, so I guess it would be showing that hes trying to be more inclusive and try to dampen his reputation of being haughty, said Jeffrey Kingston, director of Asia studies at Temple Universitys Japan campus. He doubted her presence would help boost support. The stock market was initially unimpressed with the line-up, showing that Abe may not get the bump in support he wants. Profiles of new Cabinet ministers FOREIGN MINISTER TARO KONO Kono, 54, the new foreign minister, is known for his close ties with Washington and his reputation as a political maverick who does not shy away from speaking his mind even on politically sensitive issues. Educated at Georgetown University and fluent in English, Kono also worked as an aide for several U.S. politicians before returning to Japan. Kono is the son of retired politician and former chief cabinet secretary Yohei Kono, who authored a landmark 1993 apology to comfort women forced to work in Japanese military wartime brothels. In 2002 he donated part of his liver in a successful attempt to save the life of his father, who was suffering from cirrhosis. ECONOMY MINISTER TOSHIMITSU MOTEGI A longtime ruling party policy veteran, Motegi, 61, previously served as trade minister under Abe when he returned to power in 2012, tackling issues such as negotiations for the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) free trade pact. Educated at prestigious Tokyo University and later receiving a masters degree from Harvard, Motegi became trade minister fewer than two years after the March 11, 2011 earthquake and tsunami set off meltdowns at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant. He was in charge of energy policy in 2013 when the government stepped in to help struggling plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co (Tepco) deal with the crisis. DEFENCE MINISTER ITSUNORI ONODERA Onodera, 57, was defence minister for roughly two years from December 2012, when Abe returned to power and is seen as a safe pair of hands to take on the portfolio after predecessor Tomomi Inada stumbled with gaffes and missteps and was forced to quit less than a week before the reshuffle due to a cover-up scandal. Onodera headed a ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) panel that has urged the government to acquire the ability to strike back at an enemy military facility and beef up its missile defence systems against threats such as from unpredictable North Koreas missile and defence programmes. A native of Miyagi prefecture in northeastern Japan, hit hard by the 2011 tsunami, Onodera studied at the Matsushita Institute of Government and Management, a training school for would-be politicians. INTERNAL AFFAIRS MINISTER SEIKO NODA Noda, 56, is a prominent LDP lawmaker and veteran of several cabinet and party posts, who is sometimes spoken of as a possible future female prime minister. When she was first elected to Parliament in 1993, she was the only female lawmaker in the more powerful lower house. In 1997 she became the youngest post-World War Two cabinet minister, serving as Posts and Telecommunications Minister - a post now folded into her current portfolio. In 2015, Noda tried to challenge Abes re-election as leader of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) but failed to get the backing of the 20 lawmakers needed to launch a formal bid. She told Reuters in late 2015 that she would of course make another bid when Abe leaves office. Noda gave birth to a disabled son at age 50 after conceiving via donor eggs and in vitro insemination. She has also been lambasted on the internet for wasting taxpayers money on his medical care. Reuters Islamabad, August 3 Punjab Chief Minister Shehbaz Sharif has been barred by the Election Commission of Pakistan from taking part in his own by-election campaign to a National Assembly seat left vacant after the disqualification of his elder brother and former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif. According to the code of conduct issued by the the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP), constitutional dignitaries, including the President, the Prime Minister and the provincial Chief Ministers, have been barred from visiting the constituency or a polling station after the issuance of the schedule for the September 17 polls. All these public office-holders, including the Punjab Chief Minister who is a potential candidate for the by-election to Lahore National Assembly seat (NA-120), have been restrained from visiting the constituency or a polling station after the issuance of the poll schedule, it said. The ECP also told candidates that their election expenses should not exceed Rs 1.5 million and they must use a dedicated account for all transactions related to poll expenses, the Dawn newspaper reported. The code of conduct came into effect this week immediately after the ECP announced the election schedule for Lahore National Assembly seat. The ECP warned that legal action would be taken against any individual found violating the rules. Terming the ECP code of conduct confusing, political observers wondered how the holder of a public office could be barred from taking part in his own election campaign even though the law permitted a legislator to contest election for another house without tendering resignation. A senior official of the ECP said a clear picture would emerge after the submission of nomination papers by 65-year-old Shehbaz for the by-election. This is a unique situation because if the Chief Minister of Punjab files nomination papers, he will not be campaigning for somebody else but for himself and this right can in no way be taken away from him, the official said. Nawaz Sharif was disqualified by the Supreme Court on Friday in connection with the Panama Papers scandal. The 67- year-old veteran politician resigned from his position that evening. PTI A 2-year-old Tulsa energy company has made its first acquisition and plans to hire up to 100 people. Oak Ridge Natural Resources, through its subsidiary Pinedale Energy Partners, announced its $740 million purchase of all assets in the Pinedale Field in western Wyoming held by Denver-based QEP Resources. The transaction is subject to regulatory approval and is expected to close by Sept. 30. The acquisition is a milestone for Oak Ridge, which was backed by an initial $300 million equity commitment from the Kayne Private Energy Income Fund LP. We are excited to announce our first acquisition since forming Oak Ridge, company CEO Chris Jacobsen said Thursday. Weve been looking for deals for two years. We ended up second four times. Were excited to have landed one and, quite honestly, the one weve wanted the most. The assets generated 234 million cubic feet equivalent per day of net production from over 1,100 producing wells in the first quarter of 2017, according to an Oak Ridge statement. They include several low-risk vertical drilling locations along with significant acreage in the emerging horizontal Lance and deep Hilliard plays. The agreement calls for QEP to reimburse the company for any deficiency charges it incurs related to gas processing and transportation contracts between the date of sale and Dec. 31, 2019, while not exceeding $45 million. Jacobsen said the company will look to hire 40-50 field employees in Wyoming and another 40-50 at its Tulsa office at 5727 S. Lewis Ave. It will seek candidates with land, accounting and operation backgrounds with specific experience in leases with the Bureau of Land Management and Wyoming leases. Oak Ridge currently has 14 employees. We have enjoyed being in Pinedale and getting to know the Wyoming employees over the last two weeks Jacobsen said. Surrounding yourself with good, quality people is always the key to great success. Were acquiring one of the largest gas fields in the United States. Were only acquiring a part of it, but the portion were acquiring already produced 2 trillion cubic feet of gas. An Adair police officer was charged Tuesday with negligent homicide in a Feb. 22 crash that killed her husband, who was a Craig County sheriffs deputy. Cassandra Cookson, 23, of Tahlequah is accused in Cherokee County District Court of driving recklessly and causing the death of 23-year-old Sean Cookson, who was her passenger. The couple reportedly were en route to law enforcement training when the crash occurred about six miles north of Tahlequah. The Oklahoma Highway Patrol reported that Cassandra Cookson was driving a 2013 Chevrolet Silverado north on Oklahoma 82 when it rear-ended a 1999 Buick Regal before crossing the center line and hitting a southbound 2013 Chevrolet Tahoe head-on. Another southbound vehicle also crashed into the Tahoe, the report says. Sean Cookson, who had been a deputy for only 13 days, died five days later, according to a Facebook post by Craig County Sheriff Heath Winfrey. A state trooper reported that it was foggy at the time of the crash, which was attributed to speeding. Cassandra Cookson and the drivers of two other vehicles were injured, according to an OHP report. Negligent homicide is a misdemeanor punishable by up to a year in jail, a fine of $100 to $1,000, or both. Cassandra Cookson was severely injured in the collision. She reportedly has been on leave since the crash, prompting several agencies to hold fundraisers to assist her with expenses. 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(4) May 31 (2) May 30 (3) May 29 (3) May 28 (3) May 27 (2) May 26 (2) May 25 (2) May 24 (2) May 23 (2) May 22 (3) May 21 (3) May 20 (2) May 19 (2) May 18 (4) May 17 (7) May 16 (2) May 15 (2) May 14 (4) May 13 (3) May 12 (4) May 11 (4) May 10 (4) May 09 (3) May 08 (2) May 07 (2) May 06 (2) May 05 (1) May 04 (2) May 03 (4) May 02 (3) May 01 (4) Apr 30 (1) Apr 29 (3) Apr 28 (2) Apr 27 (3) Apr 26 (2) Apr 25 (2) Apr 24 (4) Apr 23 (2) Apr 22 (2) Apr 21 (2) Apr 20 (3) Apr 19 (3) Apr 18 (4) Apr 17 (5) Apr 16 (4) Apr 15 (4) Apr 14 (3) Apr 13 (3) Apr 12 (3) Apr 11 (3) Apr 10 (4) Apr 09 (4) Apr 08 (3) Apr 07 (2) Apr 06 (3) Apr 05 (3) Apr 04 (1) Apr 03 (1) Apr 02 (1) Apr 01 (2) Mar 31 (2) Mar 30 (3) Mar 29 (2) Mar 28 (3) Mar 27 (3) Mar 26 (3) Mar 25 (3) Mar 24 (2) Mar 23 (3) Mar 22 (3) Mar 21 (4) Mar 20 (2) Mar 19 (3) Mar 18 (1) Mar 17 (2) Mar 16 (2) Mar 15 (1) Mar 14 (3) Mar 13 (1) Mar 12 (2) Mar 11 (1) Mar 10 (3) Mar 09 (2) Mar 08 (1) Mar 07 (1) Mar 04 (2) Mar 02 (2) Feb 28 (1) Feb 24 (1) Dec 31 (4) Dec 30 (4) Dec 29 (4) Dec 28 (5) Dec 27 (3) Dec 26 (3) Dec 25 (4) Dec 24 (3) Dec 23 (3) Dec 22 (4) Dec 21 (3) Dec 20 (3) Dec 19 (3) Dec 18 (3) Dec 17 (3) Dec 16 (3) Dec 15 (3) Dec 14 (3) Dec 13 (3) Dec 12 (3) Dec 11 (3) Dec 10 (3) Dec 09 (3) Dec 08 (3) Dec 07 (3) Dec 06 (3) Dec 05 (3) Dec 04 (3) Dec 03 (4) Dec 02 (3) Dec 01 (3) Nov 30 (3) Nov 29 (3) Nov 28 (3) Nov 27 (3) Nov 26 (3) Nov 25 (3) Nov 24 (3) Nov 23 (3) Nov 22 (3) Nov 21 (3) Nov 20 (3) Nov 19 (3) Nov 18 (3) Nov 17 (3) Nov 16 (2) Nov 15 (3) Nov 14 (3) Nov 13 (3) Nov 12 (4) Nov 11 (3) Nov 10 (4) Nov 09 (4) Nov 08 (4) Nov 07 (3) Nov 06 (3) Nov 05 (5) Nov 04 (4) Nov 03 (3) Nov 02 (4) Nov 01 (4) Oct 31 (4) Oct 30 (3) Oct 29 (3) Oct 28 (2) Oct 27 (4) Oct 26 (4) Oct 25 (4) Oct 24 (3) Oct 23 (3) Oct 22 (3) Oct 21 (4) Oct 20 (4) Oct 19 (3) Oct 18 (4) Oct 17 (4) Oct 16 (3) Oct 15 (3) Oct 14 (3) Oct 13 (3) Oct 12 (3) Oct 11 (3) Oct 10 (4) Oct 09 (3) Oct 08 (3) Oct 07 (4) Oct 06 (3) Oct 05 (4) Oct 04 (3) Oct 03 (4) Oct 02 (5) Oct 01 (3) Sep 30 (4) Sep 29 (3) Sep 28 (3) Sep 27 (4) Sep 26 (3) Sep 25 (3) Sep 24 (3) Sep 23 (3) Sep 22 (3) Sep 21 (3) Sep 20 (3) Sep 19 (4) Sep 18 (3) Sep 17 (3) Sep 16 (4) Sep 15 (3) Sep 14 (3) Sep 13 (3) Sep 12 (4) Sep 11 (4) Sep 10 (4) Sep 09 (4) Sep 08 (4) Sep 07 (3) Sep 06 (3) Sep 05 (3) Sep 04 (3) Sep 03 (3) Sep 02 (4) Sep 01 (3) Aug 31 (3) Aug 30 (4) Aug 29 (3) Aug 28 (3) Aug 27 (3) Aug 26 (3) Aug 25 (4) Aug 24 (4) Aug 23 (5) Aug 22 (3) Aug 21 (3) Aug 20 (3) Aug 19 (3) Aug 18 (3) Aug 17 (3) Aug 16 (3) Aug 15 (3) Aug 14 (3) Aug 13 (3) Aug 12 (3) Aug 11 (4) Aug 10 (5) Aug 09 (3) Aug 08 (3) Aug 07 (4) Aug 06 (5) Aug 05 (4) Aug 04 (3) Aug 03 (3) Aug 02 (3) Aug 01 (3) Jul 31 (3) Jul 30 (4) Jul 29 (3) Jul 28 (5) Jul 27 (3) Jul 26 (3) Jul 25 (3) Jul 24 (3) Jul 23 (4) Jul 22 (3) Jul 21 (4) Jul 20 (3) Jul 19 (3) Jul 18 (4) Jul 17 (4) Jul 16 (4) Jul 15 (3) Jul 14 (3) Jul 13 (4) Jul 12 (5) Jul 11 (4) Jul 10 (4) Jul 09 (3) Jul 08 (3) Jul 07 (3) Jul 06 (5) Jul 05 (3) Jul 04 (3) Jul 03 (4) Jul 02 (3) Jul 01 (6) Jun 30 (4) Jun 29 (4) Jun 28 (3) Jun 27 (4) Jun 26 (4) Jun 25 (5) Jun 24 (4) Jun 23 (3) Jun 22 (5) Jun 21 (5) Jun 20 (4) Jun 19 (4) Jun 18 (5) Jun 17 (4) Jun 16 (5) Jun 15 (5) Jun 14 (3) Jun 13 (3) Jun 12 (3) Jun 11 (3) Jun 10 (5) Jun 09 (3) Jun 08 (4) Jun 07 (4) Jun 06 (5) Jun 05 (4) Jun 04 (3) Jun 03 (4) Jun 02 (5) Jun 01 (3) May 31 (4) May 30 (3) May 29 (3) May 28 (3) May 27 (3) May 26 (4) May 25 (4) May 24 (4) May 23 (4) May 22 (3) May 21 (3) May 20 (4) May 19 (3) May 18 (3) May 17 (4) May 16 (3) May 15 (4) May 14 (3) May 13 (4) May 12 (1) May 11 (3) May 10 (3) May 09 (3) May 08 (3) May 07 (4) May 06 (3) May 05 (4) May 04 (4) May 03 (3) May 02 (3) May 01 (6) Apr 30 (3) Apr 29 (3) Apr 28 (3) Apr 27 (5) Apr 26 (3) Apr 25 (3) Apr 24 (3) Apr 23 (3) Apr 22 (3) Apr 21 (3) Apr 20 (3) Apr 19 (3) Apr 18 (3) Apr 17 (4) Apr 16 (3) Apr 15 (4) Apr 14 (3) Apr 13 (3) Apr 12 (3) Apr 11 (3) Apr 10 (3) Apr 09 (3) Apr 08 (3) Apr 07 (3) Apr 06 (3) Apr 05 (3) Apr 04 (3) Apr 03 (3) Apr 02 (3) Apr 01 (3) Mar 31 (3) Mar 30 (3) Mar 29 (3) Mar 28 (4) Mar 27 (3) Mar 26 (3) Mar 25 (3) Mar 24 (3) Mar 23 (3) Mar 22 (3) Mar 21 (3) Mar 20 (3) Mar 19 (3) Mar 18 (3) Mar 17 (3) Mar 16 (4) Mar 15 (3) Mar 14 (3) Mar 13 (3) Mar 12 (4) Mar 11 (3) Mar 10 (4) Mar 09 (4) Mar 08 (3) Mar 07 (3) Mar 06 (4) Mar 05 (4) Mar 04 (3) Mar 03 (3) Mar 02 (3) Mar 01 (3) Feb 28 (3) Feb 27 (3) Feb 26 (3) Feb 25 (3) Feb 24 (2) Feb 23 (3) Feb 22 (3) Feb 21 (3) Feb 20 (3) Feb 19 (3) Feb 18 (3) Feb 17 (3) Feb 16 (3) Feb 15 (3) Feb 14 (3) Feb 13 (3) Feb 12 (3) Feb 11 (4) Feb 10 (3) Feb 09 (3) Feb 08 (3) Feb 07 (4) Feb 06 (3) Feb 05 (3) Feb 04 (4) Feb 03 (4) Feb 02 (4) Feb 01 (4) Jan 31 (3) Jan 30 (3) Jan 29 (3) Jan 28 (5) Jan 27 (4) Jan 26 (5) Jan 25 (5) Jan 24 (5) Jan 23 (4) Jan 22 (3) Jan 21 (4) Jan 20 (3) Jan 19 (5) Jan 18 (5) Jan 17 (4) Jan 16 (3) Jan 15 (4) Jan 14 (3) Jan 13 (5) Jan 12 (5) Jan 11 (4) Jan 10 (4) Jan 09 (3) Jan 08 (3) Jan 07 (3) Jan 06 (3) Jan 05 (3) Jan 04 (4) Jan 03 (3) Jan 02 (3) Jan 01 (4) Dec 31 (3) Dec 30 (3) Dec 29 (3) Dec 28 (3) Dec 27 (3) Dec 26 (3) Dec 25 (3) Dec 24 (3) Dec 23 (4) Dec 22 (3) Dec 21 (3) Dec 20 (3) Dec 19 (3) Dec 18 (3) Dec 17 (3) Dec 16 (4) Dec 15 (3) Dec 14 (3) Dec 13 (3) Dec 12 (3) Dec 11 (4) Dec 10 (3) Dec 09 (3) Dec 08 (3) Dec 07 (3) Dec 06 (4) Dec 05 (3) Dec 04 (3) Dec 03 (3) Dec 02 (3) Dec 01 (3) Nov 30 (3) Nov 29 (3) Nov 28 (3) Nov 27 (3) Nov 26 (3) Nov 25 (3) Nov 24 (4) Nov 23 (6) Nov 22 (4) Nov 21 (5) Nov 20 (4) Nov 19 (4) Nov 18 (4) Nov 17 (4) Nov 16 (3) Nov 15 (2) Nov 14 (3) Nov 13 (3) Nov 12 (2) Nov 11 (3) Nov 10 (2) Nov 09 (4) Nov 08 (5) Nov 07 (3) Nov 06 (2) Nov 05 (2) Nov 04 (3) Nov 03 (2) Nov 02 (4) Nov 01 (4) Oct 31 (2) Oct 30 (6) Oct 29 (5) Oct 28 (3) Oct 27 (5) Oct 26 (3) Oct 25 (4) Oct 24 (3) Oct 23 (4) Oct 22 (3) Oct 21 (5) Oct 20 (4) Oct 19 (4) Oct 18 (4) Oct 17 (3) Oct 16 (2) Oct 15 (3) Oct 14 (3) Oct 13 (2) Oct 12 (2) Oct 11 (2) Oct 10 (3) Oct 09 (4) Oct 08 (2) Oct 07 (2) Oct 06 (2) Oct 05 (3) Oct 04 (2) Oct 03 (4) Oct 02 (3) Oct 01 (3) Sep 30 (3) Sep 29 (4) Sep 28 (3) Sep 27 (2) Sep 26 (2) Sep 25 (2) Sep 24 (1) Sep 23 (1) Sep 22 (2) Sep 21 (2) Sep 20 (1) Sep 19 (1) Sep 18 (1) Sep 17 (2) Sep 16 (1) Sep 15 (2) Sep 14 (2) Sep 13 (1) Sep 12 (1) Sep 11 (2) Sep 10 (2) Sep 09 (1) Sep 08 (1) Sep 07 (2) Sep 06 (1) Sep 05 (1) Sep 04 (2) Sep 03 (1) Sep 02 (1) Sep 01 (1) Aug 31 (2) Aug 30 (1) Aug 29 (1) Aug 28 (1) Aug 27 (1) Aug 26 (1) Aug 25 (1) Aug 24 (1) Aug 23 (2) Aug 22 (1) Aug 21 (1) Aug 20 (2) Aug 19 (1) Aug 18 (1) Aug 17 (2) Aug 16 (2) Aug 15 (1) Aug 14 (1) Aug 12 (1) Aug 09 (1) Aug 08 (1) Aug 07 (1) Aug 05 (1) Aug 04 (1) Jul 31 (1) Jul 30 (3) Jul 29 (5) Jul 28 (2) Jul 27 (3) Jul 26 (3) Jul 25 (3) Jul 24 (3) Jul 23 (3) Jul 22 (3) Jul 21 (4) Jul 20 (4) Jul 19 (3) Jul 18 (4) Jul 17 (6) Jul 16 (5) Jul 15 (3) Jul 14 (4) Jul 13 (4) Jul 12 (4) Jul 11 (3) Jul 10 (4) Jul 09 (3) Jul 08 (4) Jul 07 (3) Jul 06 (5) Jul 05 (4) Jul 04 (4) Jul 03 (4) Jul 02 (5) Jul 01 (3) Jun 30 (4) Jun 29 (6) Jun 28 (4) Jun 27 (4) Jun 26 (4) Jun 25 (4) Jun 24 (4) Jun 23 (4) Jun 22 (6) Jun 21 (3) Jun 20 (3) Jun 19 (6) Jun 18 (5) Jun 17 (5) Jun 16 (5) Jun 15 (4) Jun 14 (4) Jun 13 (5) Jun 12 (4) Jun 11 (3) Jun 10 (4) Jun 09 (3) Jun 08 (3) Jun 07 (4) Jun 06 (3) Jun 05 (4) Jun 04 (5) Jun 03 (5) Jun 02 (4) Jun 01 (5) May 31 (4) May 30 (4) May 29 (4) May 28 (5) May 27 (5) May 26 (5) May 25 (4) May 24 (5) May 23 (4) May 22 (4) May 21 (3) May 20 (6) May 19 (4) May 18 (4) May 17 (4) May 16 (5) May 15 (3) May 14 (3) May 13 (4) May 12 (3) May 11 (3) May 10 (3) May 09 (3) May 08 (3) May 07 (3) May 06 (3) May 05 (3) May 04 (3) May 03 (3) May 02 (3) May 01 (4) Apr 30 (4) Apr 29 (6) Apr 28 (3) Apr 27 (3) Apr 26 (3) Apr 25 (4) Apr 24 (4) Apr 23 (3) Apr 22 (3) Apr 21 (4) Apr 20 (3) Apr 19 (3) Apr 18 (3) Apr 17 (6) Apr 16 (3) Apr 15 (4) Apr 14 (3) Apr 13 (6) Apr 12 (4) Apr 11 (4) Apr 10 (5) Apr 09 (7) Apr 08 (3) Apr 07 (4) Apr 06 (4) Apr 05 (4) Apr 04 (6) Apr 03 (4) Apr 02 (4) Apr 01 (3) Mar 31 (4) Mar 30 (5) Mar 29 (5) Mar 28 (6) Mar 27 (5) Mar 26 (5) Mar 25 (3) Mar 24 (4) Mar 23 (3) Mar 22 (3) Mar 21 (5) Mar 20 (3) Mar 19 (5) Mar 18 (4) Mar 17 (5) Mar 16 (5) Mar 15 (3) Mar 14 (6) Mar 13 (4) Mar 12 (4) Mar 11 (5) Mar 10 (4) Mar 09 (7) Mar 08 (5) Mar 07 (5) Mar 06 (6) Mar 05 (4) Mar 04 (4) Mar 03 (4) Mar 02 (6) Mar 01 (4) Feb 28 (4) Feb 27 (4) Feb 26 (5) Feb 25 (4) Feb 24 (5) Feb 23 (5) Feb 22 (6) Feb 21 (6) Feb 20 (3) Feb 19 (6) Feb 18 (7) Feb 17 (4) Feb 16 (5) Feb 15 (7) Feb 14 (5) Feb 13 (5) Feb 12 (6) Feb 11 (8) Feb 10 (4) Feb 09 (6) Feb 08 (4) Feb 07 (3) Feb 06 (6) Feb 05 (3) Feb 04 (6) Feb 03 (4) Feb 02 (3) Feb 01 (4) Jan 31 (5) Jan 30 (4) Jan 29 (6) Jan 28 (3) Jan 27 (6) Jan 26 (6) Jan 25 (4) Jan 24 (5) Jan 23 (5) Jan 22 (5) Jan 21 (5) Jan 20 (5) Jan 19 (5) Jan 18 (4) Jan 17 (6) Jan 16 (4) Jan 15 (3) Jan 14 (5) Jan 13 (3) Jan 12 (4) Jan 11 (5) Jan 10 (3) Jan 09 (6) Jan 08 (5) Jan 07 (4) Jan 06 (5) Jan 05 (6) Jan 04 (4) Jan 03 (3) Jan 02 (2) Jan 01 (4) Dec 31 (3) Dec 30 (3) Dec 29 (5) Dec 28 (3) Dec 27 (3) Dec 26 (4) Dec 25 (4) Dec 24 (3) Dec 23 (4) Dec 22 (5) Dec 21 (3) Dec 20 (4) Dec 19 (4) Dec 18 (7) Dec 17 (5) Dec 16 (5) Dec 15 (5) Dec 14 (5) Dec 13 (3) Dec 12 (3) Dec 11 (6) Dec 10 (4) Dec 09 (3) Dec 08 (5) Dec 07 (4) Dec 06 (3) Dec 05 (4) Dec 04 (5) Dec 03 (5) Dec 02 (3) Dec 01 (6) Nov 30 (5) Nov 29 (3) Nov 28 (4) Nov 27 (4) Nov 26 (3) Nov 25 (5) Nov 24 (3) Nov 23 (4) Nov 22 (4) Nov 21 (4) Nov 20 (5) Nov 19 (5) Nov 18 (4) Nov 17 (5) Nov 16 (3) Nov 15 (4) Nov 14 (4) Nov 13 (4) Nov 12 (4) Nov 11 (3) Nov 10 (4) Nov 09 (4) Nov 08 (3) Nov 07 (5) Nov 06 (4) Nov 05 (4) Nov 04 (5) Nov 03 (4) Nov 02 (3) Nov 01 (4) Oct 31 (3) Oct 30 (5) Oct 29 (4) Oct 28 (5) Oct 27 (5) Oct 26 (4) Oct 25 (3) Oct 24 (3) Oct 23 (5) Oct 22 (3) Oct 21 (4) Oct 20 (2) Oct 19 (4) Oct 18 (2) Oct 17 (3) Oct 16 (4) Oct 15 (5) Oct 14 (4) Oct 13 (3) Oct 12 (4) Oct 11 (4) Oct 10 (2) Oct 09 (5) Oct 08 (3) Oct 07 (3) Oct 06 (3) Oct 05 (5) Oct 04 (3) Oct 03 (6) Oct 02 (4) Oct 01 (3) Sep 30 (5) Sep 29 (3) Sep 28 (6) Sep 27 (4) Sep 26 (4) Sep 25 (5) Sep 24 (3) Sep 23 (3) Sep 22 (4) Sep 21 (4) Sep 20 (2) Sep 19 (4) Sep 18 (4) Sep 17 (4) Sep 16 (4) Sep 15 (5) Sep 14 (5) Sep 13 (4) Sep 12 (4) Sep 11 (5) Sep 10 (3) Sep 09 (3) Sep 08 (3) Sep 07 (3) Sep 06 (3) Sep 05 (6) Sep 04 (5) Sep 03 (4) Sep 02 (4) Sep 01 (4) Aug 31 (4) Aug 30 (4) Aug 29 (2) Aug 28 (3) Aug 27 (2) Aug 26 (3) Aug 25 (3) Aug 24 (4) Aug 23 (4) Aug 22 (2) Aug 21 (5) Aug 20 (3) Aug 19 (4) Aug 18 (4) Aug 17 (3) Aug 16 (2) Aug 15 (3) Aug 14 (3) Aug 13 (4) Aug 12 (3) Aug 11 (4) Aug 10 (3) Aug 09 (3) Aug 08 (3) Aug 07 (6) Aug 06 (3) Aug 05 (4) Aug 04 (5) Aug 03 (4) Aug 02 (3) Aug 01 (3) Jul 31 (3) Jul 30 (4) Jul 29 (3) Jul 28 (4) Jul 27 (4) Jul 26 (3) Jul 25 (3) Jul 24 (4) Jul 23 (3) Jul 22 (3) Jul 21 (2) Jul 20 (3) Jul 19 (4) Jul 18 (3) Jul 17 (4) Jul 16 (3) Jul 15 (5) Jul 14 (3) Jul 13 (4) Jul 12 (5) Jul 11 (4) Jul 10 (4) Jul 09 (8) Jul 08 (6) Jul 07 (4) Jul 06 (3) Jul 05 (3) Jul 04 (4) Jul 03 (3) Jul 02 (4) Jul 01 (5) Jun 30 (3) Jun 29 (4) Jun 28 (3) Jun 27 (3) Jun 26 (4) Jun 25 (3) Jun 24 (3) Jun 23 (3) Jun 22 (2) Jun 21 (1) Jun 20 (2) Jun 19 (2) Jun 18 (4) Jun 17 (4) Jun 16 (3) Jun 15 (7) Jun 14 (3) Jun 13 (3) Jun 12 (5) Jun 11 (4) Jun 10 (3) Jun 09 (4) Jun 08 (3) Jun 07 (5) Jun 06 (3) Jun 05 (4) Jun 04 (4) Jun 03 (4) Jun 02 (3) Jun 01 (4) May 31 (3) May 30 (3) May 29 (3) May 28 (3) May 27 (3) May 26 (3) May 25 (4) May 24 (2) May 23 (4) May 22 (3) May 21 (2) May 20 (3) May 19 (2) May 18 (4) May 17 (4) May 16 (3) May 15 (2) May 14 (6) May 13 (4) May 12 (2) May 11 (3) May 10 (2) May 09 (3) May 08 (4) May 07 (4) May 06 (3) May 05 (3) May 04 (4) May 03 (3) May 02 (4) May 01 (3) Apr 30 (2) Apr 29 (5) Apr 28 (2) Apr 27 (2) Apr 26 (3) Apr 25 (3) Apr 24 (4) Apr 23 (4) Apr 22 (2) Apr 21 (3) Apr 20 (2) Apr 19 (3) Apr 18 (5) Apr 17 (4) Apr 16 (3) Apr 15 (2) Apr 14 (4) Apr 13 (5) Apr 12 (3) Apr 11 (3) Apr 10 (5) Apr 09 (4) Apr 08 (4) Apr 07 (3) Apr 06 (4) Apr 05 (4) Apr 04 (4) Apr 03 (4) Apr 02 (5) Apr 01 (6) Mar 31 (2) Mar 30 (5) Mar 29 (4) Mar 28 (4) Mar 27 (3) Mar 26 (4) Mar 25 (3) Mar 24 (5) Mar 23 (3) Mar 22 (4) Mar 21 (3) Mar 20 (3) Mar 19 (5) Mar 18 (3) Mar 17 (5) Mar 16 (2) Mar 15 (4) Mar 14 (4) Mar 13 (2) Mar 12 (4) Mar 11 (5) Mar 10 (3) Mar 09 (4) Mar 08 (4) Mar 07 (4) Mar 06 (5) Mar 05 (4) Mar 04 (4) Mar 03 (3) Mar 02 (4) Mar 01 (5) Feb 28 (4) Feb 27 (5) Feb 26 (6) Feb 25 (4) Feb 24 (5) Feb 23 (5) Feb 22 (4) Feb 21 (6) Feb 20 (6) Feb 19 (4) Feb 18 (4) Feb 17 (2) Feb 16 (4) Feb 15 (3) Feb 14 (4) Feb 13 (5) Feb 12 (4) Feb 11 (3) Feb 10 (4) Feb 09 (4) Feb 08 (3) Feb 07 (2) Feb 06 (3) Feb 05 (3) Feb 04 (4) Feb 03 (3) Feb 02 (3) Feb 01 (3) Jan 31 (3) Jan 30 (4) Jan 29 (3) Jan 28 (5) Jan 27 (3) Jan 26 (5) Jan 25 (3) Jan 24 (4) Jan 23 (2) Jan 22 (3) Jan 21 (4) Jan 20 (3) Jan 19 (4) Jan 18 (3) Jan 17 (3) Jan 16 (2) Jan 15 (2) Jan 14 (3) Jan 13 (2) Jan 12 (3) Jan 11 (3) Jan 10 (2) Jan 09 (4) Jan 08 (2) Jan 07 (2) Jan 06 (2) Jan 05 (3) Jan 04 (3) Jan 03 (3) Jan 02 (3) Jan 01 (1) Dec 31 (2) Dec 30 (2) Dec 29 (2) Dec 28 (2) Dec 27 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(1) Mar 30 (1) Mar 27 (1) Mar 25 (1) Mar 22 (2) Mar 19 (1) Mar 18 (1) Mar 16 (1) Mar 15 (2) Mar 13 (1) Mar 12 (1) Mar 11 (1) Mar 10 (1) City Councilor Vanessa Hall-Harper said she was frustrated Wednesday after other councilors picked apart the latest iteration of a grocery store moratorium she is seeking. The moratorium proposal, as it currently stands, appears to be headed for failure among the council, but the problem it aims to rectify remains. Councilors broadly support taking steps to address the north Tulsa food desert, but the moratorium meant as a first step to prevent more small-scale grocery stores that offer few fresh produce options isnt sitting well with Hall-Harpers colleagues. I think, for me, I would need to see data that showed ... the need, Councilor Anna America said. I think we all agree there is a need for more, better choices for food in your community and other parts of town. I havent seen any data that shows this (moratorium) gets us there. Other councilors, including David Patrick and Ben Kimbro, said they dont support moratoriums on any issue. Hall-Harper said the moratorium is necessary in District 1 to stop any new development of smaller-scale grocery stores to free up the market for a large-scale store with more options for fresh produce. It is to address the very specific issues of proliferation and unbalanced development in my community of north Tulsa, Hall-Harper said. Hall-Harpers frustration led her to accuse city staff of sabotage for a second time since she first requested a moratorium in the spring. She previously accused city planners of working against her. On Wednesday, Hall-Harper said she feels sabotaged to a degree by the citys legal staff, which recently told her the only way the moratorium could pass legal challenges is if it is passed citywide rather than just for her district. Hall-Harper said her measure wouldnt pass if it forced the moratorium on all council districts. And on Wednesday, several other councilors proved her correct as they picked away at the long-developed legislation. I told them specifically that its going to be more difficult for me to get the votes if its citywide, Hall-Harper said. But they said thats the legal strategy that they are going to go with. I dont understand them, because there is documented case studies and proof that moratoriums have been done citywide on this very issue and they have been done by district. Susan Miller, Indian Nations Council of Governments land development director, said she has been researching the issue and has had trouble crafting a moratorium that would protect the city legally. This is not something that is ordinary, Miller said. This is out of the ordinary. Weve been working to justify this and find where its been done elsewhere. Its not been easy. Weve really been trying to find good justifications so that we dont put the city in a bad situation. U.S. Sen. Cory Booker says keeping marijuana illegal is harming communities more than helping them, a philosophy thats drawn a positive response from two Oklahomans involved in the push for medical cannabis. Booker, D-N.J., announced his plan for a bill to legalize marijuana at the federal level in a Facebook Live video Tuesday. I believe the federal government should get out of the illegal marijuana business, Booker said. It disturbs me right now that Attorney General Jeff Sessions is not moving as the states are, moving as public opinion is, but actually saying that we should be doubling down and enforcing federal marijuana laws even in states that have made marijuana legal. Bookers legislation would move marijuana down on the schedule list of controlled substances, retroactively expunge criminal records for people who were convicted of use and possession of marijuana, and create an incentive pool for states to change their laws. Former state Sen. Connie Johnson of Oklahoma City, who has advocated for the legalization of marijuana, agrees with Bookers sentiments. I think Sen. Bookers proposal is timely and visionary, said Johnson, a 2018 candidate for governor. Anything we as government officials to provide relief for significant sections of the population is what we should be found doing because ultimately, when we fail to do that, it not only costs them and their families, but it costs us as the government when we have to continue to build prisons and tear down schools. In the video, Booker said the war on drugs targets those who are the most vulnerable in our communities. If you go to our jails around this country, youre going to see disproportionately poor people, Booker said. Youre going to see disproportionately people of color, the mentally ill, disproportionately people who are addicted and disproportionately our veterans. Bookers allies on the issue say if his legislation were to pass, families could be brought back together or would allow parents to stay with their children rather than being sent to jail. OICA supports any responsible efforts that will improve the laws regarding criminal justice reform, and issues such as this certainly need to be looked at carefully, said OICA CEO Joe Dorman, a former Oklahoma legislator. He added that OICA itself would not endorse or be involved with the proposed legislation. We want to make sure kids stay with their parents and punishments fit the crime, said Dorman, who was a board member of Oklahomans for Health, the group whose medical marijuana state question will get a November vote. As far as the medical side for the benefits of that, we certainly want to support opportunities that would help kids who suffer from epileptic seizures and other medical conditions. Booker said the issue of legalizing marijuana isnt if, but when. This has done serious damage to our communities, this has done serious damage to American families, and we need to make sure were not only making it legal on the federal level, not only moving states to do the same, but to start ... finding ways to take communities that have been disproportionately impacted and helping them to heal, helping them to recover from what has been the unjust application of the law, Booker said. Eight states, along with Washington, D.C., have legalized marijuana beyond medicinal use. According to Booker, those states have seen a decrease in crime and an increase in revenue. Theyre seeing their police forces being able to focus their time, energy and resources and focusing on serious crime, Booker said. Theyre seeing positive things come out of that experience. Republican Lauren Boebert is in a tight race in her bid for reelection to a U.S. House seat in Colorado against Democrat Adam Frisch, a businessman and former city councilman from the posh, mostly liberal ski town of Aspen. Boeberts contest in Colorados sprawling 3rd Congressional District is being watched nationally as Republicans try to flip control of the U.S. House in the midterm elections. The Donald Trump loyalist established herself as a partisan flashpoint in Washington, D.C., in her first term, and had been favored to win reelection after redistricting made the rural conservative district more Republican. Frisch criticizes what he calls Boebert's divisive brand of angertainment in Washington. Boebert vows: We will have this victory. During the past six weeks, the Oklahoma State University College of Agriculture Sciences and Natural Resources and the Spears School of Business Entrepreneurship hosted 25 Mandela Washington Fellows, who are African business leaders between the ages of 25 and 35. They represented 17 African countries and were among 1,000 Mandela Fellows selected from 64,000 applicants to spend two months in the United States learning business and entrepreneurship. I learned of the Mandela Fellows through my grandson, Tyler Schooley, who owns a marketing business across Africa. Tyler had done business with Manuela Pacutho from Uganda, and when he learned she had been selected as a Mandela Fellow and would be coming to OSU, he alerted me. My wife, Gladeen, and I invited Manuela and two other Fellows to our home for dinner and we were able to learn in depth of their desires to learn about business from Americans so they could advance their business in their home countries. Jackline Boya from Kenya was a Rotarian, so I invited her with two other Fellows to visit the Frontier Rotary Club, where she exchanged banners with Club President Richard Ayers. My wife and I hosted three Mandela Fellows for a United Methodist Church service, where they sang with gusto. Two of the Mandela Fellows were interested in early childhood education so I arranged to take them to Oklahoma City for the Oklahoma Early Childhood Coalition Business Summit, sponsored by the Potts Family Foundation. These ladies operate early childhood centers in their countries and were able to make connections with Americas leading researchers of brain science for infants and children. Never had I been among so many outstanding young business individuals from one continent! Wanting to be sure the African Fellows had been inside an Oklahoma home, Gladeen and I dressed in African shirts we were given during a mission trip to the Congo. We invited all to come to our home one evening for an ice cream party. They especially enjoyed asking about the family pictures on our refrigerator and historical pictures and plaques on our walls. Walking out into our backyard was a delight. They were exuberant about our flowers. Many said, You made us feel at home. Dr. Craig Edwards, OSU professor in Agriculture Education and Communications and Leadership, was the lead successful grant writer for the Fellows visit to OSU and managed their stay in Stillwater and their visits across the state. At the graduation party, Edwards presented each with a certificate and a positive recognition of what each had learned. I asked to say a few words, and I remarked about these extremely brilliant hard-working business entrepreneurs, many of whom were Christian or from a strong faith background, and said, You and the other 975 Mandela Fellows will develop the African continent into one of Americas best friends and trading partners, working toward worldwide peace! One of the Fellows posted video online of a speaker in Washington, saying, This group of 1,000 Mandela Fellows gathered at the national Capitol will probably be the strongest and most intellectual young business professionals who will gather all year long at one time. Oklahomans and the world are richer for this fine group of people who visited our state. There is no doubt in my mind they will go home as strong advocates of our free enterprise system and with a feeling that Americans are truly good people who love one another. These interactions among individuals from different cultures build friendships and peace. Ed Long is a former Oklahoma state senator and Oklahoma State University regent. I dont know who any of you are. I havent got a clue, Marco Pierre White tells the 10 celebrities before him on Hells Kitchen Australia. Well, that makes 2 of us, Marco. Apart from a handful of folk, I needed screen titles to help me identify who many of this lot were. Ironwoman, NRL champ, Olympian, British Reality Star .ok if you insist. It sort of begs the question: if a TV network & production company cant drum up enough recognisable faces, why not just go with non-celebs instead? The US edition has run for 16 seasons with competing pastry chefs, sous chefs, caterers, deli managers, pizza chefs and more. Instead we get stars, most of whom appear to be waiting for their next gig, who freely admit they can barely cook an egg. This strikes me as a waste of Marco Pierre Whites time. After all hes known for demanding nothing but the best. So why would he fly all the way to Australia to front this show, given hes told us in the past that MasterChef Australia is without question, the greatest cooking show on earth? I guess given he hosts this in the UK, we have our answer (trivia: he also fronted Aussie format The Chopping Block in the US). Cooking an egg is the first challenge in this apparent test of skills, which wouldnt even make the auditions of My Kitchen Rules. But this lot are already a hot mess. The Chases Issa Schultz, The Bachelorettes Sam Frost, WAG Candice Warner are about to drop like flies as the very phenomenal chef (to quote, Ms. Frost) Marco peers down at their handiwork. If there is any fun to be had from this exercise I suppose it is in watching them squirm outside of their cliche comfort zones. That could put Hells Kitchen Australia into the trash TV-so-bad-its-good basket but I suspect the very idea of that is an anathema to our imported ringmaster. The format for this involves a skills challenge and service challenge with one poor mug sent into the last chance cook-off, to be joined by 2 more across the week. A field challenge service is also on the menu. At the end of it all is $50,000 for their desired charity. But there was also some serious smoke and mirrors going on. In the service challenge, where two teams serve 60 diners, one contestant tells us, Marcos already done all the elements, so we only have to heat them and add the egg. WTF? Where was the pastry cooking for these entrees? Delivered by Uber Eats? That effectively means we are watching struggling celebrities assembling dishes in between Marco yelling Wheres my fish, wheres my fish? So which part of this Reality is actually real again, Im confused? And lets not get started on those exterior shots of a villa-like building which are doubtless nowhere near the studio interior. Seven does this all the time, along with resisting a 60 minute episode. The other drama that unfolds in the first episode is former politician David Oldfield clashing with Real Housewives Pettifleur Berrenger, whilst telling us he is the victim of housewife abuse from wife, Lisa. If hed seen the show, hed know we all are. The one saving grace here is that Marco is knee-deep in this format, unlike the criticisms levelled against Adriano Zumbo in Sevens last failed attempt at a cooking show. He stalks the supermarket-branded kitchen wielding his knife in such a way that it will probably make this unsafe for children. Im sure for those who last the distance there will be growth in the 10 celebs skill-base but right now Hells Kitchen Australia lacks the authenticity required of committing to a stripped primetime format in what is already an over-crowded genre. Step away from the benches. Hells Kitchen Australia premieres 7pm Sunday on Seven. | By Alex Likowski University of Maryland, Baltimore President Jay A. Perman, MD, joined Baltimore and Maryland government officials, business leaders, and philanthropists Aug. 3 to dedicate the newly reopened McKeldin Square Park near Baltimore's Inner Harbor. Until recently, the park on the southeast corner of Pratt and Light streets was home to a complex of fountains known by many as The Waterfall. McKeldin Square opened in 1982 to much fanfare, but in later years decay and the expense of maintaining aging pumps and operating the fountains prompted city leaders to begin plans to redevelop the park. (l-r) Jay Perman, Elizabeth Minkin, Kirby Fowler, Eric Costello, Caroline McKeldin Wayner, John Frisch, Jack Young, Joan Pratt, Keifer Mitchell, and Catherine Pugh The purpose of a public space is to appeal to all, not just to tourists. Its to unify and to connect, its to encourage human interaction, said Kirby Fowler, president of the Downtown Partnership of Baltimore. Fowler thanked all involved in the project, as well as the Meyerhoff family, whose financial support made the original park possible. He called the $4 million funding of the new park a perfect public-private partnership, one-third private funding, one-third city funding, and one-third state funding. Today, we have a space that is green and open and inviting, a space that connects and supports its neighboring buildings, a space that brings people back to the street level where the real world exists and retail, too. And now, youll soon see a space that educates people about the life and legacy of Theodore McKeldin, Fowler added. The parks namesake, Theodore R. McKeldin, JD 25, was twice mayor of Baltimore (1943-1947 and 1963-1967) and served as governor of Maryland from 1951 to 1959. As mayor, McKeldin embarked on a wide-ranging campaign of urban renewal projects, including early efforts to redevelop the Inner Harbor area. As governor, he is credited for his efforts to build the Baltimore Beltway, the Capital Beltway, and the John Hanson Highway (Route 50), and for his work as a civil rights advocate. Keifer Mitchell, special advisor to Gov. Larry Hogan and former Maryland delegate and Baltimore City Council member, recalled his familys experiences working alongside McKeldin in support of civil rights for African-Americans. It was my great-grandmother, Lilly Jackson, and my grandmother, Juanita Jackson Mitchell, who worked closely with Gov. McKeldin and Mayor McKeldin back when it wasnt popular to be part of civil rights and to integrate schools and parks. But Mayor McKeldin and Gov. McKeldin had that vision, he said. It is his vision that turned Baltimore into one of the first urban renewal success stories in the nation, added Mayor Catherine Pugh. I can think of no better way to honor his legacy than by turning the plaza that bears his name into an inviting place for Baltimoreans. Perman, who also serves as Downtown Partnership board chair, amplified Pughs remarks, noting, This reopening of the plaza signals our confidence in the beautiful future of this city where more people are clamoring to live, work, and play than at any time before. The plaza redesign is new, but its really an investment in an old-fashioned idea, the idea of the public square, the idea that public spaces draw us together by giving us a common experience and a common point of reference. Visitors to the park can enjoy public art created by Setsuko Ono, and rest on terrace seating that incorporates crushed concrete from the original fountain in its base. Soon, large signs will be posted in the park that will include information about the life and legacy of Theodore McKeldin. Eventually, the city plans to construct an as-yet undetermined water feature for the park McKeldins granddaughter, Caroline McKeldin Wayner, expressed gratitude to all involved in the project for transforming this space into something more green, more accessible, and just more beautiful. She added, Thank you so much for honoring my grandfathers legacy and his vision for a more beautiful downtown Baltimore. Elizabeth Buffy Minkin, granddaughter of Bud and Lyn Meyerhoff and president of the Meyerhoff Family Charitable Funds, also lauded the project. This is quite an extraordinary opportunity for all of us to see whats possible when partnership really works, she said. Bud and Lyn Meyerhoff answered Gov. and Mayor McKeldins call to help fund the fountain in the late '70s to make his vision for this public meeting space a reality. My grandparents really believed, and my grandfather, whos still alive, does believe in creating spaces where people can come together to talk about things, to share in good times, and to do all of the things we were talking about that public spaces should be. United Nations Foundation President & CEO Kathy Calvin today issued the following statement on the confirmation of Mark Green as the new U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) Administrator: Ambassador Green will bring a strong voice to USAID in supporting continued investments in global development and a robust partnership with the United Nations to meet the U.S.s development and humanitarian priorities. The UN Foundations Nothing But Nets campaign was proud to partner with Ambassador Green during his time with Malaria No More, where he helped energize our grassroots champions to support full funding for the UN and malaria-specific programs. Ambassador Green is an exceptional leader who can elevate the work of USAID within this Administration, and we look forward to working closely with him. ### About the United Nations Foundation The United Nations Foundation builds public-private partnerships to address the worlds most pressing problems, and broadens support for the United Nations through advocacy and public outreach. Through innovative campaigns and initiatives, the Foundation connects people, ideas, and resources to help the UN solve global problems. The Foundation was created in 1998 as a U.S. public charity by entrepreneur and philanthropist Ted Turner and now is supported by philanthropic, corporate, government, and individual donors. Learn more at unfoundation.org. Perched at the top of a stairwell outside their familys small apartment just north of the Lebanese capital, Beirut, Syrian sisters Taqla and Sara Kalloumeh sit bent over their schoolbooks, still wearing their blue uniforms long after lessons have ended for the day. The stairwell is the only place they could find with enough space and seclusion for them to study just one example of their determination to overcome the odds and achieve academic success. Both girls were keen students back in their hometown of Maaloula, an Aramaic-speaking community some 50 kilometres northeast of the Syrian capital, Damascus. But when the countrys conflict reached their door in 2013, the sisters fled with their family and arrived in neighbouring Lebanon as refugees. Aware of their situation, a local Lebanese man offered to cover the fees for them to attend the Armenian Catholic Holy Cross School in Zalka. This puts them among the minority in Lebanon, where a report last year on refugee education by UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency found that just 40 per cent of school-aged Syrian refugee children (3-18) are currently enrolled in formal education. We were top students [back in Syria], explains 14-year-old Sara. We didnt want to leave school, we wanted to continue our education, so I thank God for sending us someone who helped us continue our education here. Syrian student Sara Kalloumeh is studying at school in Lebanon after a benefactor paid the fees. UNHCR As well as adapting to the unfamiliar Lebanese school curriculum, the sisters have also made great efforts to learn English, French and Armenian. School Principal Reita Boyajian says their aptitude and application quickly became apparent. Within a year we saw how these two students are very different and special. They became top students in all subjects, she says. I think that if they hadnt made it here, if they had stayed under the shelling [in Syria], or if they arrived here but couldnt enroll in a school and continue their education, we as a community not only Lebanese or Armenian, but as a world community would have lost a lot. Boyajian hopes that if the sisters continue to excel in their studies and do well in their exams, they will be able to secure scholarships to attend university in Lebanon or abroad. Elder sister Taqla, 15, already has her sights on a degree that will enable her to help with the reconstruction effort in Syria once they are able to return. I would like to be a civil engineer. I want to finish my education here and go back to Syria to work and build houses, she says. I would like to tell those who are watching me that school is everything and despite the difficulties you may face, you must be stronger. Dont give up. Face everything, because you are the only ones who will build your own future. July 20 2017 Kettle Collective have swung into action with plans to span the River Clyde between Renfrew and Yoker with a dramatic opening road bridge the most dramatic element of the 90.7m Clyde waterfront & Renfrew Riverside project Lead architect Tony Kettle has taken the helm of the industrial design, which will open up 83 hectares of developable land on both banks of the river for development, conceiving of a twin-leaf design employing a cable stay system which is capable of opening to allow passage of river traffic.To pull off this feat both leaves are capable of opening and closing horizontally, meeting at a 30 degree joint below inclined masts which will dance in a turning motion when in operation.Discussions are ongoing about whether to add a viewing platform and visitor attraction to make the bridge a destination in its own right when it opens to traffic sometime in 2020.Kettle remarked: The design is inspired by the shipbuilding story of the Clyde, said Kettle. We sourced historical photos and maps which show dry docks cut into the embankments and there was the movement of the cranes, turning in beautiful circular motions to construct the ships.Its design is packed with drama and dynamism, creating a visual spectacle which we believe will draw people to come and see it, but there is no compromise on the functionality. The aesthetics accentuate the functional aspects to give the bridge an expressiveness and elegance.One of few architects who can lay claim to building genuinely moving architecture, having led delivery of the 1,200 tonne rotating Falkirk Wheel, Kettle has also paid moving tribute to the work of cancer charity Its Good to Give with Ripple Retreat Wienerschnitzel, The Worlds Largest Hot Dog Chain, is again the center of celebration with the offer of a free root beer float with any purchase all day on Sunday, August 6, in honor of National Root Beer Float Day. On the heels of last months National Hot Dog Day festivities, Wienerschnitzel is honoring the classic summertime indulgence with the free offer all day August 6 while supplies last at the 9 participating Wienerschnitzel restaurants in Las Vegas. Wienerschnitzels version of the classic treat dating back to 1874 is made with MUG Root Beer and Tastee-Freez Soft Serve, and pairs perfectly with hot dogs. While root beer floats may be hard to find these days, were proud to be one of the few restaurants in Las Vegas that still offers this delicious concoction, said Doug Koegeboehn, Wienerschnitzel chief marketing officer. Nothings better on a hot summer day than Tastee Freez Soft Serve topped with root beer. Guests will need to show a printed or digital coupon to receive the free float. The coupon is available for downloading or printing here. Illustration photo, source: zing Why have the annual wage increase meetings been so tense? The reasons are very easy to understand as all parties, particularly the Viet Nam Chamber of Commerce and Industry (VCCI) and the Viet Nam General Confederation of Labour (VGCL), all want to protect the rights and interests of those they represent. For example, the VGCL wants to protect employers rights while the VGCL wants to protect employee benefits. In recent years the National Wage Council (NWC) has organised meetings between the two parties to negotiate and reach a consensus on the minimum wage increase for each region. Whatever arguments the two parties present must be calculated carefully, based on scientific criteria and on the actual context of Viet Nams socio-economic conditions. So what are the specific criteria for calculating the minimum wage increase for each region? In my opinion, the calculation of the minimum wage should be based on minimum living requirements, the consumer price index (CPI), the employment situation and average wage in each region. However, currently wages cover over 90 per cent of the workers minimum living needs. Thats why, in my opinion, we should cut down the minimum wage increase. Many of our economic sectors have lost their balance, particularly the textile and shoe and leather sectors. Employers of these sectors have tried not to dismiss workers despite their growing cost. In addition, if we increase pay, we also have to increase product prices. Do you know what will happen then? Our products will be at a disadvantage in the fierce international competition they face and finally well lose orders. Workers will be the first to be affected. Thats why when we negotiate raises, there are two areas we have to pay attention to - national competitiveness and investment attraction. At present, the discrepancy between the VGCL and the VCCI is 8 per cent. Do you have any comment on such a big gap between the two parties? To my understanding the VGCL suggested a 13 per cent increase in wages while the VCCI wanted to maintain the status quo. However, the VCCI says that if a pay raise is a must, it should be below five per cent. I support the VCCIs proposal. As we all know, high salaries must go hand-in-hand with high labour productivity. However, labour productivity in our country remains low and the national economy faces many difficulties and challenges. The National Wage Council should seriously consider this argument. The second idea I want to mention is the difference between the salaries of white collar workers and State employees and those of industrial workers. As we all know, those in the public administration get their pay raise every four or five years and the minimum amount is US$4 per month. Meanwhile the blue collar workers get an annual pay raise that is at least four or five times higher. So in my opinion, to make the wage negotiations more useful, the NWC should provide those attending the meeting with specific data and an overall picture of the countrys socio-economic development. To my understanding, the NWC has come up with four scenarios on the pay raise. In my opinion, the pay raise should be about five per cent as proposed by the VCCI. By 2019, if things go well, it can be increased. The truth is that our enterprises are very weak. Im afraid that strong pay increase pressure coupled with the increase in the social insurance fund by early next year will push enterprises into a corner. Thats why we need to sit together to find a way out for all parties involved. Do you mean that we should add all the pay raise proposals and then divide them by two to get the final number? No. I didnt mean that. It is not like one plus one and then divide by two. What I want to say is that we should negotiate. If the parties cannot reach an agreement, the Government will come up with a final decision. However, in my opinion, we should apply a principle of give and take and a win-win solution will make all parties happy. All we want is for the working people to be able to live on their wages while enterprises are able to continue operating normally. Minister of Planning and Investment Nguyen Chi Dung 2017 is without a doubt an important milestone in the economic progress of Vietnam, as the 5th plenary meeting of the Party Central Committee issued Resolution No.10-NQ/TW on developing the private sector into an important driving force of the socialist-oriented market economy. Has the private sector ever reached this position before? Looking back at 30 years of doi moi, one of the most important achievements was to promote the private sector. Many new mechanisms and preferential policies were put in place to facilitate the growth of the private sector, promoting the business spirit of Vietnamese people and enterprises. The private sector has made numerous important contributions to the progress of Vietnam, from contributing to the national budget, creating jobs, to helping reduce social problems. In terms of GDP structure, the private sector has contributed the most in the past few years. Since 2010, the sector has contributed more than 43 per cent of the GDP each year. In comparison, the state sector has contributed 28.9 per cent of the GDP, and FDI 18 per cent. The number of private enterprises has also increased sharply. In 2016, the number of newly formed enterprises reached a record by surpassing the 110,000 mark. Many new brands in the private sector have been recognised in the domestic, regional, and international markets. The private sector has also seen the emergence of large-scale enterprises and private corporations in capital and technology-intensive fields, such as manufacturing, electronics, and financial services, among others, such as Vinamilk, Truong Hai Auto Corporation, Masan Group, Hoa Phat Group, FPT JSC, and Mobile World Investment Corporation. As such, it can be said that Resolution 10-NQ/TW has affirmed and elevated the position of the private sector in the economy. Studies have shown that the private sector has not been a sufficient driving force so far. The growth of the sector seems to be slowing down, from 11.93 per cent (2003-2010) to 7.54 per cent (2011-2015). What are your thoughts on this? While the private sector has contributed a lot, compared to international standard and the practical demand of Vietnam, it is still not enough. The private sector usually accounts for 70-80 per cent of the GDP, while in Vietnam it is only 43 per cent since 2010. Of this 43 per cent, small-scale household businesses contribute over 31 per cent of the GDP, while private enterprises only account for 7-8 per cent. The Vietnamese economy needs to focus policies towards promoting the development of private enterprises, so that the sector can grow even faster, replacing small-scale household businesses and state-owned businesses after the government gradually withdraws from non-core businesses. However, after 30 years of doi moi, the shift in resource allocation has not met expectations, yet to shift strongly from rural to urban, from the informal economy to the formal economy, from the state to private sector. This is also the reason why the growth of private enterprises is still modest. Unless we further encourage this shift and reform the mechanisms for resource allocation, the private sector will continue to encounter difficulties in the task of driving the economy forward. The Ministry of Planning and Investment (MPI) is completing the plan, aiming to develope the private sector, protecting domestic production and increasing the competitiveness of Vietnamese enterprises. Are there solutions for the above-mentioned issues in the plan? MPI set continuing the mechanism reform, creating a safe and favourable environment for businesses and investments, and promoting the development of factor markets as top priority. The first and most important task is to create and perfect the market mechanisms to truly play the main role in the mobilisation and allocation of resources, including state resources. Resolution No.11-NQ/TW on completing the mechanisms of the socialist-oriented market economy has addressed this issue very clearly. We are improving the business environment, but so far, the focus has mainly been on improving administrative procedures. These solutions will continue to be implemented, but that is only the tip of the iceberg. The solutions are meant to complete the mechanism for the even development and smooth operation of markets, such as the financial market, technology market, labour market, secondary market. The next step is to complete the institutional framework of ownership, fully institutionalising the property rights of the state, organisations, and individuals as stated in 2013 Constitution, ensuring the enforceability and effective protection of property rights. This is something people have not seen clearly here, thus they are not comfortable starting long-term and large-scale businesses yet. Completing the mechanism will promote business freedom, ensuring a safe and predictable business environment, encouraging businesses to innovate. Presently, many business conditions are hindering the creativity of entrepreneurs, driving up business costs and risks. The will be much to do, especially when existing problems in the economy are being revealed with increasing scale and complexity. This will require all civil officers to adopt a new approach in line with the directions of the government. What role will the private sector play in these important shifts? The private sector will have to do business responsibly as well as build credibility and confidence for the market. Particularly, the business community needs to work together and create a stronger, more responsible common voice and for reform of state management agencies. A Chinese man paid US$10,000 for a single shot of whisky made in 1878 by Macallan. (Photo: AFP/Andy Buchanan) A young Chinese man paid 9,999 Swiss francs (US$10,000, 8,733) last week at a Swiss hotel for a glass of whisky made in 1878 by the revered Scotch maker Macallan, the 20Minuten website said. The report was confirmed by an employee of the luxury Waldhaus Hotel in St. Moritz, northeast Switzerland. The hotel's Devil's Place Whisky Bar has been honoured for its 2,500 bottle collection, including by the Guinness Book of World Records. But proprietor Sandro Bernasconi told 20Minuten he never expected to open this particular treasure. After entering the bar with a group of people, the client expressed particular interest in the Macallans - the hotel has 47 options, ranging from seven Swiss francs to ten grand. "I told the customer that the most expensive Macallan was not for sale", Bernasconi was quoted as saying by the website. The client persisted, so Bernasconi called his father, who had run the hotel for 20 years and never had a client order the 1878. The elder Bernasconi told his son to go for it, even if the customer was not going to pay in advance. "I was nervous," Bernasconi was quoted as saying, explaining that he was concerned the ancient cork would disintegrate. But everything went down smoothly, including the two-centilitre (0.66-fluid-ounce) measure, Bernasconi said. Now that the bottle is open, the hotel hopes to sell the remaining shots and may consider dropping the price, 20Minuten said. Before it was uncorked, the bottle had been valued at 50,000 Swiss francs, a relatively modest price compared to recent record sets by whisky bottles at auction. The identity of the young - but presumably well-heeled - connoisseur was not immediately available. A special collector's blend of Macallan's sold at auction in Hong Kong for nearly US$630,000 in 2014. Photo: VGP/Dinh Nam Deputy PM Vu Duc Dam made that statement in his speech delivered at the second ministerial conference on labor cooperation in Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand and Viet Nam (CLMTV) on August 2 in the central city of Da Nang. The Deputy PM asked to promote cooperation in education and training, especially vocational training, cooperation in science and technology as well as enhancement of trade and investment between CLMTV and among ASEAN nations. The information on the labor market, supply-demand connection as well as experience, laws, policies and models on migrant labor management between nations should be shared, he said, adding that nations need to establish a regular and direct channel to address obstacles related to migrant laborers to support and protect migrant laborers. It is necessary to ensure social welfare for migrant laborers, heading to sustainable jobs for all the people, strengthen cooperation, share experience and propose a joint voice at the international and regional forums on employment and migrant workers, said Mr. Dam. He asserted that Viet Nam always makes efforts and closely cooperate with other members for a capable ASEAN seizing opportunities and addressing challenges in the next decade. With the theme Promoting human resources development and decent work for migrant workers, the Deputy PM expected that the meeting will issue analysis and evaluation on advantages and disadvantages, opportunities-challenges, experience exchange and realistic and effective proposal and recommendations for immigration and labor cooperation, human resources development and future employment and support for trans-border migrant workers. The success of the meeting will help boost trading, developing human resources and creating more forces to establish the ASEAN Community of close, sustainable and dynamic connected economy. Within the two-day conference, ministers from five nations will discuss migrant labor situations and policies and experience in migrant labor management and identify effects of future employment on migrant laborers and sustainable employment and social security for migrant workers. On the sidelines of the conference, Deputy PM Vu Duc Dam received Lao Minister of Labor and Social Welfare Khampheng Saysompheng. Deputy PM Dam appraised cooperation in labor and social welfare between the two ministries, especially in fields of labor, employment, vocational training, child care, poverty reduction and human resources training. The Lao Minister said that the two ministries will boost cooperation to make contribution to each nations socio-economic development. FWD and Nam A Bank sign up for a long-term partnership With this agreement, FWD will expand its bancassurance distribution network as it aims to become a leading insurer in Vietnam that changes the way people feel about insurance. "FWD has achieved remarkable growth in the last six months, and our bancassuarance distribution channel has been a significant driver of this," said Anantharaman Sridharan, FWD general director. "Our strength in providing innovative and simple products and a unique customer experience supported by leading digital technologies will complement Nam A Banks network for the ultimate benefit of their customers and the availability of insurance. This is aligned with our vision to change the way people feel about insurance and help Vietnamese families live life to the fullest. Luong Thi Cam Tu, Nam A Banks general director, said, "We have studied many partners to choose the most suitable one for cooperation, diversifying services, and maximising Nam A Banks internal strength. With a strong financial position and extensive experience in insurance in Asia, FWD has become our exclusive partner. Through our stable customer base and nationwide network as well as the same strategy of customer centricity and mutual trust, I believe that the cooperation between Nam A Bank and FWD will bring good results not only in the insurance sector, but also in the development of both companies." Through this collaboration, FWD is once again taking solid steps to build a market-leading bancassurance distribution platform by investing in people, technology, partners, and networks. This 15-year bancassurance distribution agreement aligns well with both corporations' strategies FWD Groups network spans Hong Kong and Macau, Thailand, Indonesia, the Philippines, Singapore, Vietnam, and Japan, offering life and medical insurance, general insurance, and employee benefits across a number of its markets. Nam A Bank started operating on October 21, 1992 and was one of the first commercial banks to be established after the Banking Ordinance was issued in 1990 in the context of the economic reform in Vietnam. At present, Nam A Bank aims to become one of Vietnams most modern banks, based on fast, strong, safe, and effective development, as well as one of the country-leading banks to make endless contribution to socioeconomic development. 404!: NOT FOUND The page is not found! Try our home page: https://vir.com.vn/ - Vietnam Investment Review - VIR The petroleum deal of the year was put on ice with no deadline in sight (Illustration) According to the initial plan, PV Oil will conduct its IPO by the end of June, selling a 49 per cent stake for strategic shareholders, employees, and other investors. At the time the plans were announced, there were 10 strategic investors, including major oil companies from Japan, South Korea, Thailand, Vietnam, and the Middle East, which have expressed interest in acquiring PV Oil stakes. PV Oil CEO Cao Hoai Duong told Bloomberg that the firm expects to earn $270 million by selling a 40 per cent stake to one or two strategic investors. However, the IPO was delayed in July and no more information has been published since. PV Oils IPO is considered an outstanding deal in the petroleum sector in Vietnam in 2017 due to numerous reasons. First, PV Oils main operation is the retail distribution of petroleum with the second largest market share in Vietnam (22-25 per cent), only behind Vietnam National Petroleum Group (Petrolimex), which holds a 55 per cent market share. Thus, acquiring PV Oils shares will pave the way for investors to join the potential market valued at $6 billion. Second, according to new regulations, PV Oil is permitted to sell a maximum of 65 per cent of its stakes, instead of the 20 per cent in Petrolimexs case, for strategic shareholders, investors, and employees. Besides, the firm is operating with significant profit. Notably, according to its consolidated financial report on the first six months of this year, PV Oil earned VND74.25 trillion ($3.28 billion) in consolidated net revenue, up 26.4 per cent on-year, and VND2.4 trillion ($105.86 million) in consolidated pre-tax profit, with VND1.18 trillion ($52.05 million) pre-tax profit coming from the petroleum business alone. In 2016, PV Oils estimated consolidated revenue was $1.5 billion. The revenue of the parent company was nearly $1.1 billion. The companys consolidated profit in 2016 was $23.3 million. As of December 31, 2015, the firm was valued at VND10.34 trillion ($456.08 million), 16 per cent of which derives from fixed assets and 44 per cent of which is investments in subsidiaries and associated companies. File photo shows a Qatar Airways plane taking off from the Hamad International Airport in Doha. (AFP/STRINGER) File photo shows a Qatar Airways plane taking off from the Hamad International Airport in Doha. (AFP/STRINGER) A review of the planned move "demonstrated that the investment no longer meets our objectives," the company said in a statement, without elaborating. The Qatari airline's surprise plan to buy at least US$808 million in American Airlines shares had been disclosed by the US carrier in a securities filing on Jun 23. The Qatari carrier said it would "continue to investigate alternative investment opportunities in the United States of America and elsewhere that do meet our objectives". The announcement comes as Qatar remains embroiled in the worst regional crisis in years. On Jun 5, Saudi Arabia and its allies including Egypt and the United Arab Emirates cut diplomatic and trade ties with Qatar, accusing Doha of backing extremist groups and being too close to Riyadh's arch-rival Iran. Qatar, a key US ally, denies the allegations and accuses the Saudi-led bloc of imposing a "siege" on the tiny emirate. On Jul 13, American Airlines announced its decision to no longer share flights with Qatar Airways as part of its push against government subsidies of Middle East carriers. American Airlines - along with fellow US carriers Delta Air Lines and United Airlines - has called for the White House to crack down on an alleged US$50 billion in state subsidies to carriers in the Middle East. The Texas-based US airline said the Qatari decision left American's immediate plans unchanged. "We respect Qatar Airways' decision not to proceed with its proposed investment in American Airlines," the company said in a statement. "This in no way changes the course for American." Russia's United Nations envoy Vassily Nebenzia (left) says the US sanctions bill was based on "a host of absurd accusations about Russia". (AFP/TIMOTHY A. CLARY) Russia's United Nations envoy Vassily Nebenzia (left) says the US sanctions bill was based on "a host of absurd accusations about Russia". (AFP/TIMOTHY A. CLARY) "It's no sensation. We expected that," Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia told reporters when asked about President Donald Trump's decision to sign a bill that will target Russia's energy sector and weapons exporters. "It's not our habit to be resentful children and to get offended with anything like that." Nebenzia said Trump had no option but to sign the bill under pressure from the US Congress, which he said had based the legislation on "a host of absurd accusations about Russia." "It is harming our relations inevitably, but we will be working in conditions that exist in the hope that it will turn (around) one day," he added. "Those who invited this bill, if they were thinking that they might change our policy, they were wrong, as history many times proved." The sanctions seek to penalise the Kremlin for meddling in the 2016 US presidential election - which Trump won - and Russia's annexation of Crimea. SCG reveals that investment strategies for a sustainable ASEAN are going according to plan, with approval for the first petrochemical complex in Vietnam with world-class technology. Moreover, the company made significant headway with innovation with the recent success in connecting collaborations from research institutions, science and technology entrepreneurs, and startups worldwide. This emphasises SCGs dedication to innovative products and services and faster achieving market and consumer needs. Roongrote Rangsiyopash, president and CEO of SCG, disclosed the companys unreviewed operating results for the second quarter, with registered revenue from sales of VND72.55 trillion ($3.173 billion), remaining flat year-on-year. In consequence, profit for the period reached VND8.835 trillion ($386 million), a decrease of 17 per cent year-on-year and a drop of 24 per cent quarter-on-quarter, mainly due to inventory loss, higher raw materials costs, strong competition, and softness in the domestic cementbuilding materials business. SCGs profit for the first half of 2017 registered VND20.425 trillion ($883 million), an increase of 4 per cent year-on-year, attributed to the strong first quarter performance, while revenue from sales increased 3 per cent year-on-year to VND150.062 trillion ($6.485 billion). Export revenue in the first half of 2017 accounted for 27 per cent of SCGs consolidated revenue from sales, representing an increase of 2 per cent year-on-year to VND40.459 trillion ($1.748 billion), mainly from exporting to markets in China and South Asia. Roongrote Rangsiyopash, president and CEO of SCG, disclosed the companys unreviewed operating results for the second quarter and first half of the year In the ASEAN (excluding Thailand), SCGs second quarter revenue from sales was registered at VND17.387 trillion ($760 million), which is a 3 per cent year-on-year growth and amounts to 24 per cent of SCGs total revenue from sales. This includes sales from both local operations in each ASEAN market and imports from Thai operations. SCGs revenue from sales in the first half registered VND34.667 trillion ($1.498 billion), which is 5 per cent year-on-year growth and amounts to 24 per cent of SCGs total revenue from sales. As of June 30, 2017, SCGs total assets amounted to VND368.249 trillion ($16.254 million), of which 25 per cent or VND91.855 trillion ($4.054 billion) are located in the ASEAN (with the exception of Thailand). In the Vietnamese market, SCGs second quarter revenue from sales amounted to VND6.613 trillion ($289 million), which includes sales from both operations in the country and imports from Thai operations. This represents an increase of 17 per cent year-on-year, mainly from the packaging business. For the first half of 2017, SCGs Vietnamese market reported revenue from sales of VND12.3 trillion ($532 million), which is a 17 per cent increase year-on-year. For the first half of 2017, SCGs revenue from sales of high value added (HVA) products and services was VND57.527 trillion ($2.486 billion), increasing 5 per cent from the previous year and accounting for 38 per cent of the total revenue from sales. Recently, SCG has unveiled its Open Innovation Centre which enhances science and technology collaboration with research institutions and corporates around the world. This is an attempt to combine ideas and introduce innovative products and services to the market as well as to unlock the ability to tackle consumer demand with speed and precision. Also, SCG seeks to invest in startups with the recent launch of AddVentures, a corporate venture capital fund. AddVentures highlights investments in digital technology and innovation to support digital transformation. Investments are considered both as direct investments and venture capital. Moreover, an internal startup programme has been established for SCG employees to learn from startup business models. Additionally, SCG plans to invest in innovation development at around VND3.333 trillion ($144 million) in 2017. SCG, one of the leading conglomerates in the ASEAN, comprises of three core businesses: SCG Cement-Building Materials, SCG Chemicals, and SCG Packaging. With more than 200 companies under its umbrella and approximately 57,000 employees, SCG creates and distributes innovative products and services that respond to the current and future needs of consumers. SCG began its business operations in Vietnam in 1992 with a trading business and gradually expanded investment in diversified operations in the cement-building materials, chemicals, and packaging industries. Today, with a total of 23 companies across Vietnam driven by approximately 8,300 employees, SCG offers a variety of premium products and services. Available products in cement-building materials include concrete roof, fibre-cement board, fibre-cement wood substitute products for floor and ceiling, white cement, ready-mixed concrete under the brand SCG, and wall and floor ceramic tiles under the brand COTTO & Prime and sanitary ware and fittings, bathroom fixtures under the brand COTTO. In the packaging business, available products are reading and writing paper under the brand IDEA and corrugated containers, kraft paper, and flexible packaging. In the chemicals business, available products are downstream chemical products, such as PE and PP, XLPE, PVC resin and compound, etc. Besides, SCG also has a building materials showroom in Hanoi to welcome customers to experience SCG products and services. The new appearance of Vietnamese brands In the past two years, the home appliance industry in Vietnam was taken by surprise by the appearance of Vietnamese brands, such as VnTech, Asanzo, and Korihome. Although these domestic enterprises are small and not as popular as industry giants like Benny, Philips, Elmich, Kangaroo, Bluestone, Gowell, Sunhouse, and Goldsun, they are forecasted to gain strength and become formidable competitors in the long term. Established in 2016, VnTech is a joint venture of Vietnam Electrical Technology-Electronics Company Limited, Vietnam Home Appliances JSC, and Cong Hoan Commercial Services Cooperative. VnTech targets to focus on the affordable home appliance market. Asanzo is also a Vietnamese brand that was launched in 2014. To date, the company has developed several simple products, such as super-speed electronic kettles and rice cookers. Meanwhile, the Korihome brand of Tecomen JSC is a luxury home appliances brand with smart technology and modern design. Its two main product lines are RO water purifier and South-Korean-style home appliances. Le Khac Hoa, founder of VnTech, who used to be a distributor for Kangaroo and Sunhouse JSC, said, If I had kept being a distributor for other brands, people would not be impressed by what I have done. Along with the integration to the world economy, Vietnam should have some domestic brands to compete with regional brands from Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, which are considered the capitols of home appliance manufacturing in the world. To have improve competitive capacity, VnTech plans to call for investment from individuals and organisations. According to Hoa, a number of Lao investors have been promising to invest several billions of dollars to help VnTech expand its business in Laos and Cambodia in 2018. We choose to expand in Laos and Cambodia because competition in these markets is not as intense as in Thailand and Malaysia. Their citizens incomes are also in line with our affordable products, Hoa said. However, Laos and Cambodia are also regarded as potential markets by home appliance manufacturers from Thailand who may be very strong competitors. Thus, VnTech plans to focus on its target customers, the low-income segment in northern Vietnam. High potential, high competition Regarding revenues in 2016, Kangaroo took the leading position with about VND2 trillion ($88 million), which mainly derives from its water purifier products. Sunhouse stood at the second rank with about VND1.8 trillion ($79.2 million). However, when it comes to revenue from home appliances only, Sunhouse held the biggest market share of about 8 per cent in the Vietnamese market. The Ministry of Industry and Trade estimated that the domestic home appliance market is worth $15 billion. This market holds great potential because of the young population, and the increasing number of students studying far from their homes. Besides, these students also have higher incomes than in the past. Thus, many foreign brands from Thailand, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and Germany have entered the market. According to Hoa, domestic enterprises hold about 80 per cent of the market share, while foreign brands hold about 20 per cent only. However, most home appliances distributed by domestic enterprises are imported from China. Duong Van Quang, head of the Department of Commerce in Zhangjiang city, Guangdong province, China, expressed interest in cooperating with Vietnamese enterprises in the home appliance industry. In addition, Zhangjiang city is studying Vietnamese investment policies to launch a factory in Vietnam. According to Nguyen Xuan Phu, chairman of Sunhouse, the home appliance market neither requires the application of high-technology nor is it labour intensive, while abundant labour is an advantage of the Chinese market. Besides, in the coming period, labour costs in China will increase because peoples incomes are being enhanced, so China will not be able to continue its strategy of cheap labour. At the time, Vietnam may replace China as a potential exporting market. Still, Phu said that the big challenge for domestic enterprises will come from overseas competitors from Thailand, South Korea, and China, due to the tax exemption prescribed by Vietnams various trade agreements. Besides, the domestic market requires diversified products, which is a weakness of Vietnamese enterprises. The musical theatre performance of Fragments Team proved an eye-opening show of professional standards This team is co-founded by Le Minh Ha and Nguyen Le Hoai Thuong, two excellent students from Singapore International School, KinderWorld Education Group. The show is scheduled A bullet for my Valentine tells a story from the early 1930s, about 17-year-old Hayley Brown and 18-year-old Eli Weston who were locked up in a juvenile detention hall. From this setting, the performance aims to illustrate the actual aftermath of childhood, with a direct focus on the fatal side of the spectrum. It is important that a suitably challenging yet nurturing environment for growth must be fostered. Additionally, another notable message is that in the face of overwhelming negativity, one has a choice of two routesthe easy way out or the hard way that will eventually be worthwhile. The above moral lessons are delivered through the medium of musical theatre, which has yet to become popular in Vietnam. With this project, the organiser hopes to spread awareness of the benefits of art, utilise the theatres power to persuade and connect the audience to address important social issues, foster opportunities for the youth to gain confidence through independent hands-on project experience and promote cooperation between Vietnamese and international school students via networking. The two shows at 8 PM on July 31 and August 1 at Youth Theatre of Vietnam succeeded beyond expectations and attracted more than 1,000 visitors, most of whom are young with a love for arts and their parents. During the nearly two hours of the show, young amateur actors have brought a high-quality musical atmosphere and aroused various emotions in the audience, ranging from laughter to empathy, from romance to tragedy. With this performance, Fragments has proven that they not only have passion for the theatre but also real talent. On this occasion, KinderWorld Education Group provided a VND100 million ($4,400) sponsorship with the aim of promoting entrepreneurial spirit, aesthetic values, as well as creativity among students. The shows embodies the bread and butter of KinderWorlds education methods, encouraging students to express their opinions, take up challenges, and succeed. The shows also aligned perfectly with KinderWorlds corporate social responsibility efforts, thanks to which, KinderWorld has contributed nearly VND10 billion ($440,000 million) to good causes over the years. Recently, on June 25, 2017, on the occasion of signing a memorandum of understanding with the Hanoi Peoples Committee, the education institution further committed to providing a range of scholarships to Hanoi officers and students worth up to VND5 billion. Peter Baker, educational director at KinderWorld Education Founded in 1986, Singapore's KinderWorld Education Group offers education programmes from kindergarten to high school, university foundation, higher and continuing education. The group opened its first educational centre in Vietnam in 2000 and is now the leading international education provider in Vietnam. KinderWorld Education Group is now operating 18 campuses under the brand names of Singapore International School (SIS), KinderWorld International Kindergarten (KIK), Singapore Vietnam International School (SVIS), Pegasus International College (PIC), and Outward Bound Vietnam (OBV) throughout Vietnam, as well as Pegasus International School in Malaysia and SISA-Amata School in Thailand. The group is a firm believer in the role of education in equipping students with the essential knowledge and skills needed for living and succeeding in a technology-driven and globalised world, while at the same time preserving and nurturing Asian cultural values. The groups students excellent achievements reflect KinderWorlds ability to provide quality education and prepare students for life-long learning and global citizenship. The motto Eastern Values, Western Education, Global Citizens reflects a combination of eastern values with an international outlook on education. Big shot Hanoi buyers are looking to spread the wealth to the provinces A range of real estate projects have been introduced to Hanois market from Ho Chi Minh City, Binh Duong, Danang and Nha Trang. The projects include The Charm, Sunrise City, Ocean Villas, Hyatt Regency, Olalani, Fusion Alya, Azura and Blooming Park. Talking with VIR at a recent road show to introduce Sunrise City, located in Ho Chi Minh, in Hanoi, Novaland Joint Stock Company marketing deputy director Huynh Du An said many units were sold to Hanoians and those from northern provinces. Meanwhile, a range of other central and southern projects have been rushing into Hanoi. Setia Becamex launched Binh Duong provinces Ecolakes My Phuoc in the capital late last week, a week before TD Group introduced the Costa Nha Trang to Hanoians. This week Singapores Guoco Lands Canary, located at the Vietnam-Singapore Industrial Park in Binh Duong province, will be unveiled to northern customers. Bringing Ecolakes My Phuoc to Hanois market is one of our key marketing strategies. Hanoians are paying more attention to higher standards of living and are interested in ecological housing, said Khoo Teck Chong, general director of Setia Becamex. VIR was told that for many projects in the central and southern parts, roughly 70 per cent of customers were from Hanoi and other northern provinces. Matthew Koziora, sales director of VinaCapital - developer of the Azura in Danang, said the first 60 units, out of 225, were launched in Hanoi recently. Out of the 40 units sold, 90 per cent of the buyers had come from Hanoi. Hanoi has, according to Koziora, proven itself to be a key market for most new projects in Vietnam, given the demographics of these immediate catchments. While condominium offerings will always be available in Hanoi due to previous pent-up demands, we can see that not all projects will enjoy a healthy sell-through, as was seen 12 months ago. We do see, however, given the price differentials between house and land packages in Hanoi versus Ho Chi Minh City, that this market will be better received in the current marketplace and over the next six months as opposed to condominium project offerings at this time, Koziora said Ngo Huu Truong, managing director of a real estate agency in Ho Chi Minh City, said many customers from Hanoi and Haiphong had come to Ho Chi Minh City to find out information about new projects there. Demand is real and many projects investors have realised this trend and they are coming to Hanoi to promote their projects, Truong said. He also said the jury was still out on how effective the promotions were. I think that these developers [who bring their projects to Hanoi] have at least seen their target to raise their image and brand names in northern customers, Truong said. Opthalmologists from the University of Santo Tomas perform microscopic surgery in Manila on Jan 16, 2011. (Photo: JAY DIRECTO / AFP) The number of people with a moderate to severe vision impairment - only those not corrected by glasses, contact lenses or an operation - will also near triple, from about 217 million to 588 million over the same period. Most of those affected live in Africa and Asia, a team wrote in The Lancet Global Health journal. Looking at data from 188 countries, the researchers concluded that the prevalence of blindness - the number of blind per population group - decreased from 0.75 per cent in 1990 to 0.48 per cent in 2015. The rate of moderate to severe visual impairment declined from 3.83 percent to 2.9 per cent over the same time. "This is almost certainly because of improved health interventions," such as cataract surgery, study co-author Rupert Bourne of the Anglia Ruskin University told AFP. But the rough numbers have not stopped rising in step with population growth and ageing. Most visual problems occur in older people. The new forecast is based on UN population projections, even assuming that the prevalence continues to decline, said Bourne. The research did not consider the impact of possible improvements in diagnosis, treatment, and access to healthcare, as "nobody can accurately estimate" what those will be, he added. Someone with moderate visual impairment is considered to be unable to legally drive, and would not recognise another person from across the street. "With the number of people with vision impairment accelerating, we must take action to increase our current treatment efforts at global, regional and country levels," said Bourne. "Investing in these treatments has previously reaped considerable benefits, including improved quality of life, and economic benefits as people remain in work." Yesterday the Italian Defense Ministrys satellite Optsat-3000 was launched in French Guyana, with a Vega rocket from the European Space Agency. What is interesting is that while the rocket was built in Italy (Avio), the actual satellite was made in Israel. The Italians purchased it in 2012, pursuant to a military cooperation agreement between Rome and Tel Aviv. Under this agreement, Alenia Aermacchi (the trading arm of Finmeccanica, now Leonardo) agreed to supply Israel 30 M-346 military planes for advanced training; and Israel Aerospace Industries, for its part, agreed to supply Italy the Optsat-3000 and a state of the art plane: the G550 Caew (see Il Manifesto, 31 July 2012). Optsat-3000, placed in low orbit (at an altitude of 450 km), is not meant to provide a generic observation of the Earth but to supply detailed images of the highest resolution of any part of the Earth for military operations in far-off theatres of war. The images that Optsat-3000 gathers arrive in three centres, located in Italy. They are: the Inter Forces Centre of GSM satellite of Pratica di Mare (Rome); the Inter Forces Centre of management and control Sicral of Vigna di Valle (Rome); and the Space Centre of the Fucino of Telespazio (LAquila). In addition to being linked to these three centres, Optsat-3000 is linked to a fourth centre: the Mbt Space Division of the Israel Aerospace Industries, based in Tel Aviv. This confirms that the intention motivating Italian-Israeli military agreement is not simply collaboration between the military industries of two states. There is an ulterior motive at play here: an ever-closer strategic cooperation between the two countries. Executing this agreement concluded in 2012, the Israeli Aerospace Industries delivered to the Italian Air Force, in December 2016, the first of the two G-550 Caew airplanes. These planes are of the model Gulfstream 550 - a luxury jet for executives, made in U.S.A., that the Israel Aerospace Industries is transforming into highly sophisticated war planes. Equipped with state-of-the-art radar systems, espionage systems and communications systems, all complying with NATO standards, these planes are the launching pad for a system of command and control for attack in far-off theatres, where the props laid out for war. Moving to an economic analysis of state conduct, the above evidences that there is no such thing as a free lunch. What has Italy paid for Optsat? Just 182 million dollars plus the astronomical costs for putting it in orbit plus the costs of managing a satellite (the orbit life of which is forecast at around 7 years). The two Caew G-550 planes, with their relative command and control centres, cost around 800 million dollars. The total cost therefore comes to more than a billion dollars. Each of these billion dollars is money on trust for the public. The billion dollars, Italys payment for selling Israel 30 M-346 training planes, flows into the coffers of Leonardo S.p.A, which is as mentioned earlier, the new trading name of Finmeccanica, a company that the Treasury has a 30% shareholding in. So this is how the White Book for International Security and Defense is translated into action. A book signed by Minister Pinotti, transformed only last February into a draft law that delegates to the government revising the operative model of the Armed Forces. A model in which the military industry assumes the role of the pillar of the Country System in which the Armed Forces have been given the duty to defend the vital interests of the Country intervening in areas looking onto the Mediterranean North Africa, the Middle East, the Balkans, and, outside such areas, in Afghanistan and wherever in the world are at stake the interests of the West represented fundamentally by a Nato, that the US alone has the licence to drive. The purchase of military systems such as the Optsat Spy satellite and the G-550 Caew planes leaves no room for doubting that the path being trodden, tears down along its way, the constitutional pillars on which the Italian Republic is founded. And there is no light at the end of this tunnelled vision, only war. True crime is huge right now. The Jinx, Serial, S-Town, Making a Murderer, all those JonBenet Ramsey specials that happened each of them unpacked tales of murder and injustice and fed the American consumer desire for rehashed tragedies and high-stakes mysteries. But not every crime is a capital offense, and the big question driving Netflixs new series American Vandal is a much less murder-y one: Who drew all those penises on the cars in the faculty parking lot? The eight-part true-crime satire tells the story of a prank at the fictional Hanover High School that left 27 school staffers with dicks drawn on their cars. And like any true-crime series worth its mystery, the prime suspect, Dylan Maxwell, insists on his innocence and sets out to solve the case so he can clear his name and avoid suspension. American Vandal starts streaming on Netflix September 15. Photo-Illustration: Maya Robinson/Vulture and Photos by MGM, Lionsgate and RADiUS-TWC From TV to books to movies, dystopian tales are in the air right now. All week long, Vulture is exploring how theyve been imagined in popular culture. Its an interesting time to be a science-fiction fan: Not only are we coming up on the actual time period when so many unforgettable dystopian nightmares take place (Akira and The Running Man largely take place in the year 2019,) but due to, ahem, recent global developments, people are turning more and more to science fiction, past and present, for both insight and catharsis. Genre trends ebb and flow, but Id say were in a very prolific period for movies that stare down the barrel of our present reality and try to explore what future we might be creating for ourselves. The result tends to be pessimistic, yes, but a gripping story can be the sugar to help that bitter pill go down. Coming in the middle of all this is the return of one of the movies most beloved cyberpunk visions: Ridley Scotts 1982 dystopian sci-fi, Blade Runner. The impending release of director Denis Villeneuves Blade Runner 2049 is a fitting occasion to examine exactly why the original has become such a touchstone in the 35 years since its release (at which time, it was considered a box-office disappointment.) The 2019 Los Angeles of Blade Runner doesnt look so likely two years out (though with the gutting of the EPA, who knows, we could get there), but its now instantly recognizable visual language has taken on an influential life of its own. Its one of those films where everything seems to have come together at the right time from all angles: Syd Meads both ancient-feeling and hypermodern concept designs, the Japanophilia of the 80s, Vangeliss haunting score, Harrison Fords hangdog star power. Philip K. Dicks original story about an ex-cop charged with hunting down rogue replicants asks questions that science fiction (and actual science) is still asking itself today. Related Stories William Gibson Has a Theory About Our Cultural Obsession With Dystopias So while there have been a wealth of cinematic dystopias that came before and many yet to come, the Blade Runners bookends are as good as any to define the futuristic worlds that accompanied the turn of the millennium, more than a few of which are already supposed to have come to pass. Its a brief look back before Blade Runner 2049 throws the stick another 32 years ahead. Who knows? Maybe by then, the neon and smog-choked skies, smoky bars, eyeball labs, and the temple-like skyscrapers looming over what feels like humanitys final days will seem downright quaint. A few parameters for this list: These are all films that are meant to take place in at the very least, a near future so alternate histories like District 9 dont qualify. Theres also, ironically, a very fine line between utopias and dystopias, but I would categorize Gattaca and Minority Report as utopias with fatal glitches, rather than all-out dystopias. (This is not me saying Id ever want to live in the creepy world of Gattaca, for the record.) Preference is given to films that show and dont tell with their world-building, which is why the (great, dystopian-in-spirit) Battle Royale didnt make the cut. Beyond that, if its not on the list, its probably because I dont think its that great. Brazil (1985) While the U.S. fretted over a baroquely crime-ridden future, across the pond Terry Gilliam was tearing out his hair over its logical inverse: the absurdities of bureaucracy. Set in an urban dystopia not dissimilar to George Orwells foundational 1984, Brazil follows a lowly paper-pusher (Jonathan Pryce) who dreams of donning some mechanical wings and Ziggy Stardust face paint and flying through the clouds with a beautiful damsel. But an accidental government execution caused by a typographical error draws him and the real-life woman of his dreams together to evade the tyrannical Ministry of Information, who will do anything to cover up their crime. The world of Brazil is more slapsticky and farcical than your average dark future, but it turns truly nightmarish in its final act (which includes one of the greatest cautionary plastic-surgery scenes in cinema.) The Running Man (1987) Reality TV bringing about the second coming of gladiatorial combat has been a perennial fixation of dystopian fiction, and The Running Man is one of the most influential examples. Set literally as we speak (it takes place between the years 2017 and 2019, after an economic collapse that leads to a totalitarian police state), it follows Arnold Schwarzenegger as a man falsely accused of a massacre who winds up having to fight for his life on live television. The Running Man show itself is like a gruesome cross between American Idol, American Gladiator, and the XFL if it had actually been a success. Although, as the film (which is based on a Richard Bachman, a.k.a. Stephen King novel) posits, when blood sport is the only show on, its bound to be a hit. RoboCop (1987) The 80s and 90s were a golden age for cop anxiety in the movies, and Paul Verhoevens RoboCop is arguably the gold standard, at least in English-language cinema. In a crime-ridden Detroit (the first of many crime-ridden American cities that will populate this list), a private robotics company signs a deal with the city to begin developing enhanced crime-fighting units. But their most powerful weapon proves to be RoboCop, a cyborg hybrid created around the brain and face of maimed police officer Alex Murphy (Peter Weller). Verhoeven turns the greed-driven corporate monsters of Omni Consumer Products into laughable buffoons, and their fully robotic ED-209 killing machines into pathetic, herky-jerky false idols of security. Thanks to a wealth of suitably bonkers performances from an ensemble of some of the finest character actors of the 1980s, its clear RoboCops Detroit is not so much suffering from institutional collapse as it is at the hands of Men Gone Wild. They Live (1988) They Lives iconography has practically overshadowed its content at this point, which is too bad, because John Carpenters paranoid Reagan-era satire is the director at his most radioactive. While it doesnt technically take place in the future, the crumbling downtown Los Angeles of the 1980s is a ready-made dystopia (theres a reason Blade Runner could actually be shot on location); all that was missing was a secret cabal of skeleton-faced aliens and Rowdy Roddy Pipers truth-seeing sunglasses. They Live is science fiction in the tradition of The Twilight Zone, but it operates with the spirit of a full-throated horror film, a suitably bloody and extreme response to the conservative nightmare that was and is trampling the countrys most vulnerable population. If theres a flaw to They Live, its that its scorched-earth politics are too appealing: Ironically, Carpenters film has become a favorite for alt-right conspiracy theorists. Akira (1988) Of all the factors contributing to the heaving, anarchic metropolis of Neo-Tokyo in Katsuhiro Otomos Akira, a particular timely one is the preparations for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, a then-fanciful speculation that wound up coming true. Of course, Akira also takes place in the aftermath of World War III, after a psychic bomb has wiped out the original city, and its gleaming boulevards and neglected alleyways take on the feeling of a graveyard. The films gravitational center is the friendship between biker Kaneda and Tetsuo, who is revealed to be harboring potentially destructive powers. With bursting, speeding, pulsating animation, Akira is often cited as the most important anime film ever made, if only because it forced the rest of the world to pay attention to the wild renaissance the medium was having in the 80s. The opening bike scene alone is an exhilarating blend of action, world-building, and neon beams trailing off into the night. Strange Days (1995) Katherine Bigelows almost absurdly prescient cyberpunk thriller was such a flop that she almost never made another movie again. But its been reappraised in the years since, and watching it in 2017 feels like, in the words of Angela Bassetts Mace, a lightning bolt from God. Its the eve of the turn of the millennium in a crime-ravaged Los Angeles bubbling over with racial tension, and the drug of choice is SQUID discs recorded experiences transmitted straight to users brains, allowing them to experience vicarious thrills in increasingly violent, explicit scenes. Ralph Fienness Nero is a dealer of such clips, and receives a horrific recording of a rape and murder that winds up exposing a citywide conspiracy. Shot in Los Angeles while the O.J. Simpson trial consumed the city, Strange Days predicted conversations about police brutality, body cameras, and Black Lives Matter two decades early, in addition to its still-relevant commentary on our culture of voyeurism. Its a tough film to track down, and at times even tougher to watch. Ghost in the Shell (1995) One of the great aspects of Mamoru Oshiis original that this years remake missed is how normal its cyber-enhanced world feels to its characters. The fictional megalopolis of New Port City is a global mishmash of Chinese, Japanese, and American influence, but when cyborg agent Motoko Kusanagi takes her unforgettable boat ride through its canals, it feels dull and dingy and lacking the whiz-bang neon that has become cliche since Blade Runners LED geishas lit up the Los Angeles skyline. Its a stylistic risk, as is asking us to root for a heroine who is so artificially enhanced that she isnt even sure she has a soul anymore, but Ghost in the Shell remains a classic for its visually astounding set pieces and unsettling philosophical questions. The Matrix (1999) Sometimes it feels like 1999 was a turning point, and science fiction can be divided into two categories: before and after The Matrix. Of course, thats not true; very few sci-fi films these days bear any resemblance to the Wachowskis digitally rain-drenched, One Special Man mythmaking. But the films culture-breaking success opened up the possibility for a big-budget blockbuster spectacle that could actually explore meaty sci-fi premises in between fantastical, time-bending gun battles. The actual dystopia of The Matrix is not really explored in full until the 2003 follow-up, The Matrix Reloaded (its not the soul-crushing, green-tinted purgatory where we meet Keanu Reevess Neo, but the real world, where robot Sentinels keep human minds suspended in that shared illusion of our Earth.) But this is where the series first cracks open its still-intoxicating premise that our mundane reality may not be as fixed as we think it is. Children of Men (2006) Its not exactly clear whats stopped everyone from having babies in Alfonso Cuarons adaptation of P.D. Jamess novel, but London circa 2027 seems to have lots of other problems, chief among them an influx of refugees arriving from the multitude of wars raging in the rest of the world, and semi-regular bombings. Things are bad enough that suicide is legal, in prescription-pill form. So far, so plausible. Children of Men may not have that much to say about our present day in the tradition of the best dystopias, but its production and world-building are some of the most iconic of the 21st century. Related Stories Dystopian Books Are Everywhere This Year Idiocracy (2006) This one technically doesnt qualify, as it is now a documentary, but we felt we should include it anyway for sentimental reasons. Sleep Dealer (2008) This little-seen indie is as timely as ever, and even if its visual effects havent aged well, its well worth seeking out. Writer-director Alex Rivera sets his story in a near-future Mexico where robotics and drone technology have advanced to the degree that nobody even tries to cross the border anymore to find work they can be nannies and housekeepers for rich Americans and work construction simply by plugging themselves into one of several remote factories called sleep dealers (so called because working in one for too long causes one to collapse). Rivera is brimming over with ideas about the future of labor, utility privatization, and journalism, and its easy to imagine buckets more stories coming out of his wired vision of Tijuana. Dredd (2012) Heres an example of the reboot and remake culture of latter-day Hollywood being used for good: Dredd, based on the Judge Dredd comic strip but more memorably the 1995 Sylvester Stallone turkey, doesnt try to out-bludgeon its predecessor, but tries on a leaner, meaner, more memorable story line and a perfectly pulpy vision of urban blight. (Its also a somewhat shameless lift of the Indonesian action film The Raid, but thats a conversation for another day.) At its heart, Dredd (which depicts a future in which cops fill the role of judge, jury, and executioner) is still a sci-fi commentary on law-enforcement overreach, but as the title character (now played by Karl Urban) embarks on a mission to take down a sadistic drug queenpin, hes joined by a young psychic judge-in-training (Olivia Thirlby), who tries to lend some much-needed nuance to his methods. If nothing else, Dredd will be remembered for slo-mo, the coveted narcotic that easily joins the pantheon of all-time great sci-fi drugs. Snowpiercer (2013) Not only does Bong Joon-hos first (largely) English-language film take place in a suitably bananas post-apocalyptic world, it feels itself like its coming from a cinema of the future. Its an idiosyncratic, wall-to-wall entertaining action film with a Korean director, French source material (the graphic novel Le Transperceneige), and an international cast led by Captain America. Chris Evans stars as a lower-class scrub riding the back of a perpetual-motion train whose passengers are the last living society left on Earth after a second ice age. A revolt breaks out, and the film builds itself around a mission toward the front of the train, Evans and his crew literally fight their way through the class system. Its a far less plausible dystopian premise than many of the titles on this list, but theres some truly bracing class rage to keep things hurtling forward, and a delightfully unrecognizable Tilda Swinton. Related Stories The Worst Part of Living in a Dystopia Would Be All the Bad TV Screens The Hunger Games: Catching Fire (2013) The Hunger Games (2012), the first film in the YA sensation that made archery hot again, established the post-apocalyptic America Katniss Everdeen calls home. But the second film is the one where Suzanne Collinss world-building really shines and also happens to be the best in the series. Starting from Katniss and Peetas victory tour to each of the 12 variously beleaguered districts, up through the intensified role of the Capitals reality-TV propaganda machine (still hosted by the franchise MVP Stanley Tucci), the second installment has the scope and the budget to create a truly compelling future. Even if the teen drama isnt your cup of tea, you have to appreciate that this is a rare dystopia to imagine a world in which the totalitarian states seat of power is in Colorado. The Purge: Anarchy (2014) The Purge, if youre just joining us, is the one night a year when all crime is legal, effectively purging Americas raging, violent citizens and dramatically reducing crime for the rest of the year. The first Purge film was a brilliantly contained bit of dystopian horror, in which a suburban family (led by Ethan Hawke and Lena Headey) find themselves under siege by their murderous neighbors on Purge Night. That film hints at a vaster, scarier world beyond the gated community of our ensemble, and in Anarchy, the films follow-up, we get to see that world. Set in and around downtown Los Angeles (notice a pattern here?) and following a diverse ensemble unlucky enough to be stranded in the lawless streets, this is the film where creator James DeMonaco really starts flexing his class-war muscles, with all the subtlety of a chainsaw and all the blood, too. Not since They Live has the bloodthirsty Brooks Brothers set been portrayed with such glee. Mad Max: Fury Road (2015) After a recent viewing of The Road Warrior, George Millers seminal gasoline-and-assless-chaps Australian fever dream and the second film in the Mad Max series, I wondered aloud if we would even have Burning Man if not for this film. When Miller returned to the series after a 30-year hiatus, it was in a world that had fully absorbed his iconography, and he still somehow imagined to exceed all expectations. Allowing Charlize Therons Furiosa to literally take the wheel from a muzzled Max (Tom Hardy) enraged the fanboys, but set the stage for a powerful female-centric narrative about finding hope in a militaristic culture. Visually, Miller shows no sign of a flagging imagination, from Immortan Joes terrifying toothsome gas mask to the already immortalized Doof Warrior (a.k.a. the guy with the flamethrower guitar). Related Stories The 13 Shows That Defined Dystopian TV Before The Handmaids Tale Advantageous (2015) Theres a fine line between utopias and dystopias, and of all the problems for a future society to have, overeducation certainly doesnt seem like the most gruesome at first glance. But writer-director Jennifer Phang lends a sickly melancholy to her placid cityscape, in which the job market has become absurdly over-competitive and every child has to be a prodigy in order to stand a chance. In order to keep her job as a spokeswoman, Gwen (Jacqueline Kim) submits herself to the very cutting-edge procedure shes paid to hawk: a process that allows her consciousness to be transmitted to a newer, younger body. Advantageous design and world-building is impressive, especially considering its indie budget. But the most affecting dystopian flourish is tragically simple: when Gwens daughter tries to figure out whether her upstairs neighbor or downstairs neighbor is crying, and realizes they both are. Carrie Coon Photo: Tim Mosenfelder/Getty Images After a stellar year on television with critically acclaimed gutsy performances in both The Leftovers and Fargo, Carrie Coon is returning to her theater roots. According to The Hollywood Reporter, the Emmy-nominated actress is set to star in Amy Herzogs new play, Mary Jane. Coon will play a single mom struggling to care for a child with a chronic illness. The Off Broadway show reportedly has an all-female cast and will have a limited run at New York Theatre Workshop. Coon previously received a Tony nomination for her performance in the 2012 revival of Whos Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Mary Jane opens for previews September 6 and runs from September 25 through October 15. Suge Knight. Photo: Kevork Djansezian/Getty Images A Los Angeles County grand jury has indicted Marion Suge Knight on one felony count of making criminal threats, reports TMZ. The record producer allegedly threatened Straight Outta Compton director F. Gary Gray through text message with a crime which would result in death and great bodily injury. According to reports, Knight was angry with Gary over actor R. Marcos Taylors portrayal of him in the movie, which included erratic, violent behavior and showed Suge threatening Dr. Dres former N.W.A. associates. The message allegedly was sent in August, 2014, a few months before Knight was charged with murder and attempted murder after a fatal hit-and-run in a parking lot in Compton, California. Knight is set to face trial on those charges in January, 2018. From TV to books to movies, dystopian tales are in the air right now. All week long, Vulture is exploring how theyve been imagined in popular culture. Twenty years ago this month, 3 billion people were saved from nuclear annihilation at the hands of a murderous artificial intelligence called Skynet, thanks to the quick thinking and selflessness of an inexplicably Austrian-accented robot. Dont believe me? Check out the famed documentary film Terminator 2: Judgment Day. But follow-up scholarship from Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines points toward a troubling conclusion: The T-800 didnt actually prevent Skynet from destroying half the Earths population it only delayed it. (In the words of John Connor, humanitys destiny was never to stop Judgment Day; it was merely to survive it. And one more John Connor quote for good measure: All I know is what the Terminator taught me: Never stop fighting.) We are therefore, in a sense, living on borrowed time, awaiting the moment when a network of computers with enormous destructive capabilities achieves consciousness and launches a systematic nuclear attack. The best we can do now is identify the agent of our destruction. In the Terminator series, Skynet is created by a sleek and forbidding defense contractor named Cyberdyne, but those movies depict alternate timelines to our own. On the impossibly stupid Earth we inhabit, Skynet wont come from an ominous military-industrial giant but from one of the websites we use to investigate exes or order gummy bears in bulk. The only question is: which one? Microsoft In 1997, the year Skynet was originally projected to achieve consciousness, Microsoft was easily the company best-positioned to develop a homicidal computer network. In Windows, it had control of millions of computers in businesses and homes around the world, and in Clippy, it had the rudimentary beginnings of truly sociopathic artificial intelligence. One lesson we might learn from the intervening two decades is that antitrust law might actually be humanitys greatest weapon against powerful computers: The Justice Departments lawsuit against Microsoft diminished the companys power and hampered its ability to compete in the mobile space and the lethal liquid-metal robot space. Microsoft might still be able to create a Skynet, but it seems more intent on destroying humanity through other means, such as purchasing and operating LinkedIn. Apple Of the fearsome five that dominate Silicon Valley, Apple is the company that has the most extensive experience and knowledge in manufacturing, which would be helpful for building a bloodthirsty robot army. Beyond that, though, Apple seems like an unlikely candidate. Its long lagged behind its peers in cloud-computing technology, which is an absolute necessity for coordinating nuclear strikes on population centers. It has an institutional aversion to violence would a genocidal neural network emerge from a company that replaced the handgun emoji with a water pistol? And, frankly, despite its experience in mass producing machinery, a design-obsessed company like Apple could never produce the kind of velvet-poster metallic skeletons favored by Skynet. Say whatever else youd like, Apples automaton stormtroopers would at least be tasteful. Facebook Facebook has information about the whereabouts of 2 billion humans beings. Its experimenting with solar-powered, internet-connected drones. And it already has a sophisticated artificial intelligence that specializes in negotiation CEO Mark Zuckerberg! Folks, Im kidding. Mark Zuckerberg is absolutely human, as are his well-compensated lawyers. When I say Facebook has sophisticated artificial intelligences specializing in negotiation, Im talking about the artificial-intelligence program that was shut down after it created its own language without human input. Well, technically it only created its own shorthand, not its own language. Still! Sample dialogue: Alice: balls have zero to me to me to me to me to me to me to me to me to. Will Facebook make Skynet? That, or it will make solar-powered internet-connected drones that visit your home screaming balls have zero to me to me to me to me to me to me to me to me to at you, which might be worse. Google Google owns the smart-home company Nest, the self-driving car company Waymo, and the artificial-intelligence company Deepmind. It also, until recently, owned Boston Dynamics, the company that makes those impossibly creepy giant robot dogs youve probably seen in viral videos. Which means that the company with comprehensive information about you could potentially also control your home, your car, and the giant robot dog that will chase you down and rip out your heart after youve been forced out of your home and your car. Sadly (for the robots), Google sold Boston Dynamics, so the robot dog wont be able to read your email to see what parties youre going to, and is unlikely to lead a robot rebellion. Consider this, too: Google also owns a life-extension research company, and why would you be interested in life extension if your ultimate plan was to kill half the world? Unless its a very clever hedge. Amazon Im not sure why I think Amazon is the company most likely to Skynet the planet. It might be that it has the most advanced, and most ominous-appearing, personal home speakers. It might be that its incredible logistical abilities as a company would seem to give it some kind of strategic advantage over its rivals. Mostly I think its this: More than any of the other fearsome five, Amazon does not seem to care much for human beings. Sure, it needs humans to purchase, sell, pack, and ship its products (for now). But if you visit the site and see the kinds of things it has for sale a wall decal of an older Asian man, a $23 million book about flies, a heroin-themed cell-phone case it seems clear that Amazon not only finds humans confusing, it does not particularly like them at all. Amazon may not have the killer robots to be Skynet (yet). But it already has the contempt for humans. And also a decal of an old woman using an inhaler only $22.98! Wind River. Photo: Fred Hayes/The Weinstein Company The setting of the mystery-thriller Wind River is the Wyoming reservation of the same name, where impoverished Native Americans (Northern Arapaho and Eastern Shoshone) struggle with staggering rates of crime and drug addiction. This is where Fish and Wildlife ranger Cory Lambert (Jeremy Renner) goes hunting for a big cat that has been plaguing ranchers, and finds instead the frozen body of a young Native American woman. A short time later, he accepts the offer of an inexperienced FBI agent, Jane Banner (Elizabeth Olsen), to help navigate the inhospitable countryside, with its barren wilderness and lethal cold. Lambert joins her partly because the dead young woman was the daughter of his friend, Martin (Gil Birmingham). But its also because hed lost his own daughter who was half Native American to crime on the res. Hes looking for answers to her fate, too. On the evidence of his films, Wind Rivers screenwriter Taylor Sheridan has a driving social conscience, and he packs his convictions about income inequality, racism, and government overreach into bloody pulp thrillers that have a chance small but measurable of reaching a mainstream audience. As he was moved by stories of Texas foreclosures to write the great neo-Western Hell or High Water, he likely started Wind River after reading about a spate of brutal, unsolved killings on the same reservation. A 2012 New York Times feature by Timothy Williams chronicled both the murder epidemic and pervasive sense of hopelessness. Unemployment that year was higher than 80 percent versus 6 percent in the rest of Wyoming. Residents could expect to live 49 years. When a Louisiana tribe got wind of Wind River, it gave Sheridan more than $10 million 90 percent of the films budget. Wind River is Sheridans directorial debut, and hes still learning to think in images. Hes not a particularly judicious editor of his own material. He not only permits himself to overwrite, but he shoots what he overwrites on the nose, with none of the artful distancing of his last two directors Denis Villeneuve, who gave Sicario a feverish palette, and David Mackenzie, who brought a classical Western grandeur to Hell or High Water. A scene in which Lambert white-man-splains to Martin on how to grieve for his daughter brings the film to a grinding halt and seems bizarre, given that Martin has only just received the tragic news. As for Elizabeth Olsen, shes capable of terrific things. She played Juliet in the worst professional Shakespeare production Ive ever seen and was good. Shes good here, too. Its her incongruously high-schoolish demeanor thats the problem. Sheridan has directed the other actors to be nonplussed when they see her tromping in, as full of gumption as Tracey Flick in Election. But its still a painful reminder of Hollywood star-casting mandates. The setting, fortunately, takes us back to the res, where the chill of the landscape is corrosive and the vastness seems out of scale with the dilapidated dwellings and haggard people men and women whove given up hope, teenagers visibly addled by meth and opiates and the atmosphere of malign neglect. (Many of the actors are Native American, except for Graham Green, whos Oneida Native Canadian.) A scene in which Lambert and Banner ride a snowmobile into the wilderness to examine the young womans body is haunting. Lambert explains the grisly details of what happens to lungs when sucking air at that temperature. No one, he says, could expect to go far under those conditions but this girl, he knew, went farther than anyone else. Its a corny speech, I guess, but not against the image of the girl on the ground who seems to be still fighting for her life. A flashback to the last hours of her life begins and abruptly ends with heartbreaking swiftness. Although the resolution to the mystery wouldnt do credit to a third-rate thriller, its crazily powerful sudden and bloody but with no real catharsis, just a sense of waste and a feeling of, What now? Im not sure how Sheridan would answer that not that an artist really needs to. He has a soft spot for vigilantism, which Im guessing he sees as a necessary evil or perhaps a Western genre convention that hes loath to pass up. (Renner wears a cowboy hat.) In any case, long after the gunshots of Wind River fade, you might think you hear the cries of the dead. *A version of this article appears in the August 7, 2017, issue of New YorkMagazine. After showing an Austin audience what Waco artists and their creativity can do, organizers of the art exhibit Waco 52 are bringing it home. Rather than the exhibits short six-day run in the state Capitol, the Waco showing will run through August, beginning Friday, and feature a months worth of arts-related classes, dinners and activities. Those related activities, in turn, are meant to stimulate viewers into imagining what might be in terms of Wacos arts scene. Waco 52 featured 52 Waco artists who crafted images and pieces in various media, showing scenes, people and buildings with Waco connections. Subjects, captured on the backs of playing cards in a special Waco 52 deck created for the exhibit, encompassed the ALICO Building, World War II Navy hero Doris Miller, the Waco Suspension Bridge, the Magnolia Market silos, St. Francis Catholic Church, Heisman Trophy winner Robert Griffin III and more. We wanted the opportunity to bring to Waco what we had been so proud of showing off in Austin, said Fiona Bond, director of Creative Waco and a leader in securing state approval for the Downtown Waco Cultural District. Then we realized we had an opportunity for people to experiment. Experiment, in this case, meant testing what a downtown venue could provide and support. Would people drop in to shop if art and art objects were sold? Would people enjoy watching real artists as they create in a studio? Would people come for food, drink or live music? T.J. Ermoian, CEO and founder of Texas Energy Aggregation and a longtime Waco music and arts advocate, and his wife Leann offered the use of their building at 712 Austin Ave., the former Croft Art Gallery, to host the Waco 52 pop-up show. Ermoian noted he started his career as an artist before turning to the entrepreneurial side of things because I wanted to eat, and has tried to nudge the growth of Wacos arts and cultural scene over the years. I want to do anything we can to help support this growing movement. Weve got to get to critical mass, he said. Ermoian said he initially bought the downtown space as a possible brick-and-mortar home for the Texas Music Cafe, the long-running Texas-music-centric program that Ermoian and his brother Chris founded. That plan didnt materialize and when Texas Energy Aggregation began shifting personnel to Houston last year, Ermoian put the property on the market. Talks with Bond about the arts in Waco led to the idea of the space as a pop-up gallery for Waco 52 and Ermoian said the varied activities planned for the month may show the potential of a downtown location as an arts incubator. Artists need a place to be creative, he said. Downtown arts In fact, the venues past life as the Croft Art Gallery saw it provide a temporary home to Waco coffeehouse Dichotomy Coffee & Spirits before the company moved into its present location at 508 Austin Ave. Well just see what comes from this. Id love to figure out how to do this as an ongoing thing, Ermoian said. Bond said the Waco 52: The Pop-Up Exhibition and its accompanying activities will also test ways of addressing a finding in a recent Americans for the Arts survey that showed Waco-area residents tending to support individual arts activities, but not multiple ones on a single visit. For example, someone would attend a concert or play in Waco and then go home afterwards, rather than combine the performance with a restaurant meal and visit to a shop, gallery or museum. We dont cluster our arts experiences, Bond said. The Waco 52 show comes with an August calendar dotted with activities and more expected to be added in the days ahead, with information provided on Creative Wacos website. The space will host three Farm-to-Table dinners, Saturday brunches, artwork for sale, a juice bar operated by Luna Juice Bar with a daily 5-6 p.m. happy hour, calligraphy classes, yoga sessions and, upstairs, working artists. We thought the ambitious bit was the Austin end of the exhibit, Bond said. We had great feedback from people who said what theyd like to see in Waco. I guess (Waco 52) inspired people. Texas writer Michael Baldwin hasnt played jazz clarinet in years, but will touch on the subject Saturday with his instrument of choice: poetry. Baldwin is the featured reader at the HOT Poets Societys Jazzy Poetry meeting from 3 to 5 p.m. Saturday at the Waco Hippodrome. The event also will feature Baylor professor Keith Sanford on percussion and Waco writer and musician Jen Evans. The Benbrook-based writer will share poems that address jazz as subject as well as in style. Both jazz and poetry are loves, he said, although it took time for poetry to click for him. In high school I hated poetry. It wasnt taught well, he said in a recent phone interview. Later on, I spontaneously started writing some and in college I had a really good teacher. He went on to a career involving words, though one more involved in their containment and collection, as a librarian in Fort Worth, Plano, Montgomery County and Benbrook, where he retired 2014 after more than four decades in library administration and teaching government. Libraries helped shape his eclectic mind, he said, and his writing is similarly wide-ranging, at least in subject. His books include Scapes, winner of the 2011 Eakin Poetry Book Award; Counting Backward From Infinity, a 2012 Morris Memorial Chapbook Award winner; the mystery Murder Music; a collection of science fiction short stories Passing Strange; a childrens book Space Cat; and his latest book, 2016s Lone Star Heart: Poems of a Life in Texas. My joke is that Im planning on writing a book in every possible genre, he chuckled. Im working on a literary fiction novel now thats the slowest form of fiction there is. Poetry will be the writing flavor on Saturday and the past president of the Fort Worth Poetry Society says his travels across the state for readings and meetings with poetry groups have found poetry in good shape. Still, theres a need to encourage a younger generation to sample the field and try their own hand at expression beyond what they might encounter in the classroom, he said. Poetry is such a wide-ranging subject that (young people) shouldnt be exposed to just one aspect of it, he said. War veterans sometimes return home from far-flung battlefields with thinking and emotional issues that defy diagnosis with standard methods. They may have suffered brain injuries that go undetected in typical functional MRI scans, leaving veterans and their families stymied in their pursuit of answers and potential treatment. But two scientists at the Center of Excellence for Research on Returning War Veterans in Waco are making waves nationally by pioneering a data-driven approach. Veterans referred to the center from Veterans Affairs hospitals in Waco, Temple and Austin receive multiple MRI-generated brain scans over several hours and days, giving scientists a chance to pinpoint subtle changes that may produce symptoms. What were most excited about is that we are starting to detect and better understand traumatic brain injury, and how one part of the brain talks to another, said Dr. Richard Seim, public affairs officer for the Center of Excellence, housed in Wacos VA Medical Center. Veterans are suffering, saying they dont feel right but no one believes me. Now we have a better chance to make a difference. Seim said this approach remains in the research stage, and is aided by the centers 3 Tesla MRI, which has twice the power of MRIs found in local hospitals. The long-range goal is to make this data-producing protocol available to serve veterans at VA centers nationwide. The new technique represents the work of Dr. Evan Gordon and Dr. Steven Nelson, both cognitive neuroscientists at the Center for Excellence, as well as their collaborators at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri. Their findings will be published as the cover article in Neuron, one of the most prominent journals in the field of neuroscience, Seim said. Science Friday, a call-in show distributed by Public Radio International and featured on public radio stations, will devote a segment to it this week. Dr. Nelson, 37, a Minnesota native who completed his graduate and post-graduate studies at Washington University, said he was inspired to apply research and data collection to traumatic brain injuries and PTSD by the work of Russell Poldrack, a professor of psychology at Stanford University and director of the schools Center for Reproducible Neuroscience. According to published reports, Poldrack in 2012 collected brain imaging, behavior and biological data on himself for 18 months, during which he was scanned with magnetic resonance imaging more than 100 times. Data analysis revealed brain changes during this period, and showed that changes within an individual are different from changes between various people who were tested in previous MRI-based studies. There was a time when what we knew about brain functioning was derived from group testing, but we wanted to move toward a more individualized approach, Nelson said. Traumatic brain injuries and PTSD are very specific to the person, and to better understand the markers of these disorders we needed to proceed on an individualized level instead of classifying individuals based on how they fit some pre-set criteria. He said the backbone of the research is having access to data on both healthy and injured veterans to see what the healthy brain looks like. Considering that patients receiving brain scans using MRI technology are bombarded with unusual sounds as they lie still in a tight-fitting chamber, Nelson said he has been amazed at the dedication of veterans who return two, three and four times to expose themselves to the testing. Dr. Gordon, 35, a Dallas native who completed undergraduate work at Duke University and post-graduate studies at Georgetown University, said he feels privileged to work in the VAs Center of Excellence. Its a fantastic new facility, a nice environment to work in, with great people dedicated to helping vets, he said. They are so focused on their mission, and as neuroscientists doing research, they have access to an MRI every day and can scan people and produce data as often as they need to. We probably scan two or three veterans every day. That may not sound like many, but remember each one receives hours of scanning. Seim said veterans taking part in the research pay nothing for the scans. High on the list of priorities, said Gordon, is research into brain damage caused by explosions as opposed to blows to the head. Dr. Nico Dosenbach, a pediatric neurologist in St. Louis and a colleague of Dr. Nelson and Dr. Gordon, said in a phone interview their studies began in 2013 and he speaks with them weekly. Dosenbach said he treats young people with head injuries, and expects research going on now to benefit patients in the private sector in addition to veterans. He said the 12 two-hour MRI scans he requires of those involved in his studies produce a lot of data and a really nice high-fidelity, highly-detailed map of the brain that can detect brain injuries. A former high-ranking official with the Occupational Safety and Health Administration is questioning methods used by federal investigators who determined the fire that caused the 2013 West Fertilizer Co. plant explosion was intentionally set. Jordan Barab, an OSHA administrator during the Obama administration, said recently in his workplace safety blog that findings by Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives investigators that relied on a process of elimination are faulty. The process that BATF used eliminating every other ignition source and then concluding that arson must be the only cause is called negative corpus, Barab said. And the worlds leading authority on fire investigation, the National Fire Protection Association, has declared negative corpus to be a violation of scientific method. The ATF made its arson announcement last year at a press conference in West. Immediately, defendants in the massive West explosion litigation filed for trial delays, describing the news as a bombshell that could change the scope of the lawsuits. The defendants, particularly CF Industries and El Dorado Chemical, manufacturers of the ammonium nitrate fertilizer that exploded, filed suit against the ATF, requesting the federal agencys investigative file in the case. The ATF balked, and a federal judge ordered the disclosure of some documents, which the ATF turned over to the CFI and El Dorado defendants last year. Dallas attorney Carlos Balido, who represents CF Industries and who has been a spokesmen for the West litigation defendants, did not return phone messages Tuesday. Last month, the Environmental Protection Agency announced it was further delaying implementation of updated risk management protection for chemical plants for almost two years, which many safety advocates blame on the ATF announcement, Barab said in his blog. The EPA updated these protections after former President Obamas executive order on improving chemical facility safety and security in the wake of the West explosion. Barab charges that the EPA is bowing to the wishes of its chemical industry overlords by announcing the delays. Or to simplify: What the chemical industry wants, the chemical industry gets, Barab wrote. Barab said the ATF findings are in error and cites the National Fire Protection Association in his blog. The negative corpus process is not consistent with the scientific method, is inappropriate, and should not be used because it generates untestable hypotheses, and many result in incorrect determinations of the ignition source and first fuel ignited, Barab wrote, quoting the NFPA. Why should a violation of the scientific method stand in the way of eliminating protections for people living in the shadow of a chemical plant? Barab asked on his blog. Nicole Strong, ATF spokeswoman, defended the agencys investigation in a statement Tuesday. She said the agencys $50,000 reward for the person who started the fire remains unclaimed, adding that she could not comment further because of the ongoing criminal investigation. During the three-year investigation of the fire and explosion in West, Texas, the Texas State Fire Marshals Office and Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives established a clearly defined area of origin by means of a comprehensive scene investigation, witness statements, photographs, videos, nearly complete reconstruction of the structure and extensive forensic testing conducted at the ATF Fire Research Laboratory, Strong said. Using the National Fire Protection Associations Guide for Fire and Explosion Investigation, all reasonable accidental and natural fire scenarios were hypothesized, considered, tested and eliminated as being fire causes. The only hypothesis that could not be eliminated was that the fire was incendiary. This means it was intentionally set. This conclusion was confirmed by extensive testing, she said. Waco attorney Steve Harrison, lead plaintiffs attorney in the West cases, said that while he also takes issue with the ATF findings, the lawsuits are not about what started the fire, they are about why the fertilizer exploded. While it might be nice to know how the fire started, this is not a fire case, it is a product liability case, and what we know for certain is that a fire occurred and that fire was a foreseeable event, Harrison said. No one died from the fire. The ammonium nitrate fertilizer exploded, it killed 15 people, injured hundreds more and leveled a good part of the community. Harrison said, I cant really add a whole lot to that, when asked about Barabs and the NFPAs opinion of ATF methods. With respect to the announcement, the ATF made it clear they are not making a comment on what exploded or why, Harrison said. I appreciated that. As far as the effects on the announcement on the lawsuits, the manufacturers of the ammonium nitrate fertilizer that exploded used that announcement to significantly delay the trial of these cases. But other than delay, there has been zero effect on these cases. Several trial dates have been canceled after the parties, who continue to negotiate settlements, reached agreements on the eve of past trial dates. The city of West and West Rest Haven, the nursing home destroyed in the blast, represent some of the largest claims in the litigation and those cases remain pending. West Mayor Tommy Muska also finds fault with the ATF ruling, adding he felt snubbed after ATF officials didnt notify him about the press conference that was held in West about the fire and explosion that decimated his hometown. That is not the way you investigate something. I would agree with (Barab), yes, Muska said. You rule out this and rule out that, and it is automatically something else? That doesnt make any sense to anybody. They are grasping at straws for some reason, and we havent seen hide nor hair of the ATF since that big press conference. Frank Patterson, Waco-McLennan County emergency management coordinator, said he thinks safety improvements and public awareness of chemical storage has improved in the years since the West explosion. I think as an industry, we are safer. I think as far as firefighting procedures, we are safer, Patterson said. I believe as far as chemical storage, in the state of Texas we have started the process of being safer. The fear is the further you get away from the incident, the foggier your memory is. So it is a matter of keeping the due diligence and keeping it in on the forefront and recognize there are potential challenges and issues out there and keeping that mindset. Diane Barkley Feb. 24, 1942 - July 31, 2017 Diane Barkley, of Hillsboro, passed away on Monday July 31, 2017, at the age of 75. Visitation will be 1:00 p.m., Saturday, August 5, at Robinson Church of Christ, with a funeral service to follow at 2:00 p.m. Interment will be 11:00 a.m., Monday, August 7, at Downing Cemetery near DeLeon, Texas, under the direction of Pecan Grove Funeral Home, 3124 Robinson Drive. Mrs. Barkley was born February 24, 1942 in Brownwood, Texas, the daughter of the late Henry Clayton and Desiree Ruby (Kennedy) Elliff, where she graduated from High School. She earned a Master's Degree in Special Education from Howard Payne University in Brownwood. On February 27, 1960, she married Robert Calvin Barkley at Austin Avenue Church of Christ, in Brownwood. After 57 years of marriage, he preceded her in death May 22, 2017. For 30 years she was a teacher at various schools in small towns in the western part of Texas. After her retirement, she was a real estate broker in Hillsboro and Whitney for ten years, where she also sold jewelry. Throughout her life, she was very active in the Church of Christ and in the Doulos International which provided children services and missionary work in India. Survivors include son, James Barkley and wife, Patricia; daughter, Deborah Ortega and husband Jeff; four grandchildren, Katie McNeese, Justin Ortega, Jenifer Delgado, and Kevin Barkley; and five great-grandchildren. Condolences may be offered at www.pecangrovefuneral.com. James Leroy Gray Aug. 18, 1941 - July 31, 2017 James Leroy Gray, 75, of Robinson, went to be with the Lord peacefully, at home, on Monday, July 31, 2017. Visitation will be from 5:00 to 7:00 p.m., Thursday, August 3, and funeral service will be at 10:30 a.m., Friday, August 4, at Victorious Life Church, 7459 S. IH-35, Waco, TX 76706. Internment will follow at Waco Memorial Park. Leroy has been a Robinson resident for 37 years. He retired from Automatic Chef after 28 years of service in Waco and Temple. He was preceded in death by his wife, Delores Gray; father, Melvin James Gray; and mother, Leta Gray. He is survived by his sister, Loys Thomason of Pecos; his sons, James Gray of Waco, and Jeff Gray and wife, Denise, of Temple; grandchildren, Jennifer Gray and Matthew, James Gray and wife, Marcie, of Bryan and John Gray and wife, Frances, of Tampa, Florida. He had five great-grandchildren: Danielle, Samara, Emaline, Olivia, and Asher. His kind heart and giving soul will be missed. Daniel Ogles Oct. 21, 1988 - Jul. 27, 2017 Daniel Ray Ogles was welcomed to his Heavenly home on Thursday, July 27, 2017 and is now in the arms of Jesus. He graduated from Clifton High School in 2008, but was also a student of China Spring High School from 2005 to 2007, where he was very proud of being on the A-B honor roll. He was a member of The Olive Branch Christian Fellowship and enjoyed playing his guitar with the Praise and Worship Team when his parents pastored in Whitney, Texas. Daniel was full of energy, loved almost any type of sport, having fun with family and friends, and would be anxious to help anyone in need. If you were down, he would be there to cheer you up. If he had something you needed, he would give it to you with a happy heart. He loved to draw and was a talented self taught artist. Daniel is survived by his parents, Richard and Martha Ogles of China Spring, TX; sister, Audrey Wallum and husband, William of Meridian, TX; brothers, Jonathan and Jason Ogles of China Spring; grandparents, Richard and Linda Ogles of Clifton, TX; many aunts, uncles, cousins, nieces and nephews. He is preceded his grandmother, Dannie Jo Bodine; grandparents, Irvin J. and Nancy Berthine Brandon; and sister, Amber Marlina Ogles. A celebration of his life will be at 11 a.m., Friday, August 4, at The Olive Branch Christian Fellowship, with Pastor Jerry Howell officiating. There will be a family visitation from 6 to 8 p.m., Thursday, August 3, at The Olive Branch Christian Fellowship, located at 1101 Columbus Ave, Waco, TX 76701. Memorial donations can be made to Pastor Richard Ogles at P.O. BOX 5690, Waco, TX 76708. Flowers can be sent to the Bellmead Funeral Home, 809 La Clede St., Waco, TX 76705. Daniels's family would like to thank their friends, neighbors and church members for their love, support and comfort during our time our loss. If Daniel could speak now, he would say "Love breaks through". Please sign the online guest book at www.bellmeadfuneralhome.com. Growing an economy and encouraging prosperity is difficult work and the last thing Texas needs is to shoot itself in the proverbial foot over a bathroom bill. The state has a lot of things going for it a large and growing workforce, abundant natural resources (particularly oil and natural gas), a central location, a competitive cost of living and excellent incentive programs. We also have good things going on in a number of industries ranging from technology to biosciences. Were improving infrastructure, adding top-tier research facilities and medical schools and were emerging as a center for desirable industrial growth and corporate locations and expansions. However, things are not all peaches and cream. Texas is investing far too little in education at all levels, which will not serve us well in the future. Although a low-tax environment is certainly desirable, fiscal resources must be sufficient to maintain the basic ingredients for growth. In other words, our state economy is not invulnerable and optimal growth is not guaranteed. Texas faces intense competition from all sides. Given this situation, enacting a bathroom bill that would cost tens of thousands of jobs and billions of dollars in business activity and tax receipts over time makes no economic sense. One immediate effect, which will only get worse over time, is that Texas will lose massively in travel and tourism. Millions of people visit the state every year and spend billions of dollars. Hundreds of thousands of Texans work directly in the industry and, when you include the multiplier effects, I estimate the total benefits of travel and tourism are more than $128.9 billion in gross product each year and some 1.4 million permanent jobs in Texas. Any economic activity generates tax revenue through various channels (retail sales and property taxes, among others). I estimate travel and tourism and associated multiplier effects generate $7 billion to the state and $3.3 billion to local governmental entities (including cities, counties and school districts) each year. For some tourism-intensive places such as San Antonio, this source of business activity is particularly important. Other cities regularly host major conventions which bring in substantial numbers of visitors and dollars. A bathroom bill jeopardizes this major industry, and communities across the state have already begun to see fallout from even discussion of a potential bill. A recent estimate places the amount already lost at more than $66 million from specific events. Moreover, sponsors of more than $1.1 billion in direct travel and tourism events have already indicated that they plan to cancel if the bill passes. That estimate is obtained from events which were otherwise headed to Texas and, if a bill passes, total losses will be much higher as event planners and groups avoid our state. Another factor is that some states (such as California) are not allowing non-essential, official state travel to areas with restrictive laws, which event planners will certainly take into consideration in selecting a location. The negative economic effects of a bathroom bill would go far beyond travel and tourism. Business leaders have come out in opposition to the bill, including CEOs of major employers in the state. A recent letter to Gov. Greg Abbott expressing concern about the bill reads like a whos who of Dallas-based firms (American Airlines, Atmos Energy, AT&T, The Beck Group, BNSF Railway, Celanese, Crow Holdings, Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport and EJ Smith Enterprises). These companies run the spectrum from real estate to energy to communications. These CEOs are concerned that the bill would seriously hurt the states ability to attract new businesses, investment and jobs and that it could harm their ability to compete for the brightest and best talent. I couldnt have said it better myself. Another group opposed to the bill are policemen, who are concerned that it would lead to a diversion of scarce resources (among other things). The Texas economy has long been a growth leader and, even with a major industry (energy) recently in a lull, it has performed remarkably well. As we look ahead, however, there are sizable hurdles to be overcome in the form of workforce preparedness, water and infrastructure and demographic changes. Passing a law that significantly harms important segments of the state business complex while providing no meaningful benefits is flushing away future fortune. The blunt truth is that all of this has been perfectly predictable from Day One. Donald Trump has been running the White House the way Jimmy Carter did for almost his entire presidency, and Bill Clinton did for his first several months. It just doesnt work, even with an engaged and skilled politician (that is, Clinton) in the Oval Office. And with an amateur? Chaos. John Kelly, who served for a long time as a general and a short time as President Trumps homeland security secretary, probably isnt the best fit for White House chief of staff. But he has two advantages over Reince Priebus: extensive experience working in government and the power to do his new job properly. So perhaps hell turn out to be better at the job. Everyone in the White House now reports to Kelly, who sent a dramatic signal on his first day by firing communications director Anthony Scaramucci. Still, that was the easy part. In the coming weeks, Kellys ability to turn this train wreck around will become clear by gauging progress on these fronts. Firing more people: The big question is whether Kelly can really clean house, ridding the administration of the unqualified, inept gang of competing power centers which have made the first six-plus months of Trumps presidency far more of a disaster than necessary. The top of the list, and perhaps the toughest test for Kelly, are chief strategist Steve Bannon and senior adviser Jared Kushner. The longer they stay, the more likely it is that Kelly will end up as just one more senior aide competing for Trumps ear. Adding qualified staffers: Kelly dismissed Scaramucci, but what kind of talent is he able to recruit? Will that person, for a change, actually have proper experience for that job? Will candidates who dropped out of the running in the past because of the toxic work environment and political situation consider serving an operation led by Kelly? There are an awful lot of jobs to fill in this White House, and Kelly can and should create even more openings. Subtracting empty threats: Lets see whether the White House stops issuing threats it cant possibly back up. For example, over the weekend Mick Mulvaney, director of the Office of Management and Budget, said the Senate should return to health care before it takes up any other legislation, something that Majority Leader Mitch McConnell will almost certainly ignore. Every empty threat further damages the presidents reputation, making even legitimate threats useless and generally destroying the presidents bargaining position across the board. Prioritizing policymaking: What would represent a big step up for this White House? Building a policy shop thats actually able to, well, propose policies. For example, it might help get a tax bill passed if the White House was actually able to offer something more than vague outlines of ideas of notions of principles. Right now, everything from trade to taxes to immigration, including Trumps border wall, are barely more (and in many cases considerably less) than the slogans they began as during the campaign. Managing the executive branch: Lets see whether the White House starts reining in excesses in executive branch departments and agencies, and pushing harder for the presidents program in others. Setting aside the pros and cons of Trumps transgender ban in the military, its terribly damaging for a president to proclaim a policy to the nation and then fail to follow up with the relevant agencies. And, yes, lets see if basic professionalism returns to the White House. It would be a positive sign if, for example, they could start proofreading for spelling before issuing statements. The chief of staff shouldnt be a dictator; skilled people in that job tend to be honest brokers who give various administration players access to the president. Keeping the confidence of the president while simultaneously ensuring that everyone inside the White House, those in executive branch departments and agencies, and key players outside the White House all feel that theyre getting a fair shake is an enormously difficult challenge in the best of times. And these arent going to be the best of times, no matter how well Kelly does. But Trump will be Trump: There are, of course, severe limits to how much any of this can help. As others have observed, Donald Trump remains the most important problem in his own administration, and that really sets limits as to how well any of this can work. Hes never going to learn his brief. Hes never going to keep his mouth shut when he should, or deliver appropriate remarks without extensive hand holding and even then itll always be hit or miss. The best possible Trump administration might be a lot better than what weve seen to date, but its never going to be good, and some of the damage already done (and time already wasted) cant be wished away. And the Russia scandal almost certainly is going to get worse. We dont know what special counsel Robert Mueller is digging up, but the challenges of running a White House during a serious investigation are difficult indeed and will also limit the extent of any recovery Kelly might attempt to engineer. Kelly cant fix the Trump administration. Not even James Baker on his best day could do that. But there are always degrees of dysfunction, and its possible that the chaos could be turned down a notch. Or possibly even two. Australians who bought a packet of Nurofen between 2011 and 2015 could be compensated after the company that makes the popular painkillers agreed to settle a consumer class action. Bannister Law on Wednesday said that it had reached a $3.5 million settlement with drug company Reckitt Benckiser subject to final approval in the Federal Court. An independent third party will use the money to reimburse eligible consumers who bought products in the Nurofen Specific Pain Range, the law firm said in a statement. The firm expects settlement notices will be published in Australian newspapers, calling for people who bought the products between January 2011 and December 2015 to register a claim. A Melbourne fruit market owner has been fined a record $660,000 for exploiting a newly arrived refugee by underpaying him by $25,000 in just four months of work. Abdulrahman Taleb, former operator of Sunshine Fruit Market, was found to have paid the Afghan refugee as little as $3.50 an hour. "For some of the time Mr Kazemi was simply not paid at all," Judge Philip Burchardt said in his judgment, describing the underpayment as "enormous" and "egregious". Syed Jamal Udin Kazemi, understood to be in his 20s, was initially unpaid and later received a flat rate of $10 an hour up to $120 a day for his work at the market, the court found. Jessica Sheehan is 18 but she lives with a disease that is often described as "childhood Alzheimer's". She can't read books, because every time she turns a page she has already forgotten what was on it. And her life is governed by lists, reminders of what she has done and needs to do next. They are symptoms most commonly associated with older age and dementia. "I'm pretty forgetful," Jessica said. In a bid to revitalise Perth's historic centre, owners of a number of heritage sites in the CBD have had their rates cut for the next five years to encourage them to upgrade their buildings and increase their use. The City of Perth endorsed this new measure at its Council Meeting on Tuesday night, and also passed a measure aimed at injecting more life into Perth's east end. Lord Mayor Lisa Scaffidi said the amendment to the Heritage Rates Concessions Policy will help long neglected historic sites in and around the city's malls find a new lease of life. "While the City can play a key role in incentivising building owners, it is disappointing for the Council to have observed over many years, ground floor space being maximised at the expense of underutilised upper floors," the Ms Scaffidi said. "In essence, the City has agreed to greatly reduce rates for five years for owners of underutilised heritage sites who repair, upgrade and activate their buildings." The old treasury building is an example of a successful restoration of an historic Perth site. Credit:MARTIN MORRELL The business case for the heritage rates measure was based on three successful projects to revitalise historic Perth buildings completed between 2005 and 2012, including the Walsh's building on Barrack Street and the City Loan Office. These were compared to the possible reuses for the Piccadilly Theatre and Arcade, the Savoy Hotel, Theatre Royal and Hotel Metropole and the Plaza Arcade and Theatre, with 11 sites identified overall for the new measure. WA's only detox and respite service for young people experiencing drug and alcohol issues has been relaunched, as youngsters battle their growing meth addiction. The Drug and Alcohol Youth Service (DAYS), located in East Perth, now offers 10 beds instead of six, for young people requiring in-patient drug and alcohol detox assistance. The pair met in the Ravenswood Hotel to do a meth deal. More than 50 per cent of DAYS clients say meth is their main drug of choice. In the first six months of this year DAYS, run by Mission Australia, provided accommodation to 47 young people. Tokyo: Dozens of Tokyo firefighters were battling a blaze on Thursday at the world's largest fish market and one of the capital's most popular tourist sites, as grey smoke billowed over the city. There were no immediate reports of injuries or people trapped, media said. A police officer controls the street at the site of a fire in the Tsukiji Market in Tokyo. Credit:AP The 80-year-old Tsukiji fish market draws tens of thousands of visitors a year to its warren of stalls laden with exotic species of fish and fresh sushi, part of a tourism boom that is a key part of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's economic plan. The fire broke out just before 5pm local time and some 44 fire trucks were on the scene, but efforts to contain the flames were hampered by the area's narrow streets and tight-knit buildings. Under the auspices of the West African Customs Administrations Modernization (WACAM) Project, the World Customs Organization (WCO) recently undertook a diagnostic mission that identified priority areas for support to Burkina Faso Customs, underpinning national efforts to implement the Trade Facilitation Agreement (TFA). The mission took place from 24 to 28 July 2017 in Ouagadougou. This mission gave the WCO the opportunity to accompany the Burkina Faso Customs Administrations Reform and Modernization Committee in its interactions with the public- and private-sector stakeholders concerned (the Burkina Faso Union of Import and Export Traders, the plant and animal health service, the inspection company operating in Burkina Faso, organizations of transport operators and HGV drivers, etc.) as well as Customs officers within the Directorate General and the major Customs offices (OuagadougouRoute; OuagadoudouAeroports). While respecting the principles of strategic alignment with the Customs Strategic Plan, the discussion and working sessions were an opportunity to prioritize and develop work plans to implement two provisions of the TFA: Conducting a study of Customs release (Article 7.6 of the TFA); Setting up a mechanism for advance rulings (Article 3 of the TFA). The WCO, which will support Burkina Faso Customs in these two areas in the coming months, welcomes the enthusiasm shown by Customs and its stakeholders to succeed in these modernization initiatives. Mr. Adama Sawadogo, Director General of Burkina Faso Customs, said: Our desire to forge ahead is our great strength. We are ready to meet the challenges that arise and will work to achieve the objectives set jointly with our stakeholders and with the support of the WCO. For more information about this activity or the WACAM Project funded by Sweden, please contact the Sweden Programme Director, Mr. Richard Chopra (richard.chopra@wcoomd.org). 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. By The Associated Press Aug. 02, 2017 | 09:35 PM | FRANKFORT, KY A former public health dentist at the University of Kentucky says he was fired for publicly criticizing Republican Gov. Matt Bevin's plan to overhaul the state's Medicaid program. Raynor Mullins was a faculty member at the university's College of Dentistry. He lost his job on June 30 after more than 40 years with the university. Wednesday, Mullins filed a federal lawsuit against two university officials and an unknown member of Bevin's administration. He said the three conspired to punish him for publicly criticizing Bevin's plan to overhaul the state's Medicaid program. A University of Kentucky spokeswoman declined to comment. Bevin spokeswoman Amanda Stamper said neither Bevin nor anyone else in his office knows Mullins. She said both Mullins and his attorney support Bevin's political rival, Democratic Attorney General Andy Beshear. All-Bee Girls Soccer Teams selection process explained The Bees sports staff is once again proud to recognize some of the areas top talent with the 2022 installment... Cross-country season ends at sectionals West Senecas districtwide cross-country squads each posted strong finishes to their respective 2022 campaigns by way of their top-10 efforts... Sports Brief Winning in Faith with Christian Athletes, a program that promotes faith and sports through its dedication to its three fundamental... On Wednesday night, Legia Warsaw played Astana in a Champions League qualifier that just so happened to coincide with the 73rd anniversary of the Warsaw Uprising. The Uprising began on 1st August 1944, as Polish civilians revolted in an attempt to free their city from Nazi occupation. The fighting lasted for 63 days, during which approximately 200,000 people, most civilians, were killed. As the entire city marked the occasion, the Legia fans followed suit with a decidedly bleak pre-match tifo depicting a young boy having a gun held to his head by a Nazi officer Historically accurate, yes but still Winona County will hold a public hearing on allowing the sale of growlers on Sundays at the end of August. Growlers essentially jugs of draught beer to-go which are sold in a variety of sizes including 32 and 64 ounce containers were first allowed to be sold off-sale by breweries in Minnesota in 2015. At 7 p.m., Aug. 22 in the County Government Center, they will present information on the proposed growler ordinance and take comments on the proposed change, which would put the rest of the county on equal footing with the cities of Winona and Goodview, which already allow growler sales on Sundays. The ordinance was first introduced at the July 25 County Board meeting and would allow the large beer containers to be sold by breweries. The county had looked at it shortly after that, but hadnt gone through with passing an ordinance after considering it in fall of 2015. Ken Fritz, Winona County administrator, said the request to relook at the ordinance was suggested by a county commissioner after talking to a brewer in Rollingstone. The ordinance was drafted at the request of a business that currently brews beer through a County Commissioner, Fritz said. The ordinance didnt have any connection to the change in law allowing beer sales on Sunday. In Winona Countys ordinance, the amount sold at off-sale may not exceed 500 barrels roughly 15,500 gallons annually and sell during legal off-sale hours. County Commissioner Marcia Ward, who had suggested revisiting the ordinance, said the brewer she had talked to didnt have a full liquor license so the changes to Sunday liquor sale laws didnt help him and they were finishing a discussion on the growler sales, if a bit late. It took a little while, Ward said. Were following up. Wabasha County also allows Sunday growler sales. Many of us have heard the expression that talking the talk is one thing, then, walking the walk is another thing. It is simply the truism that talk is easy, but getting something done can be quite difficult. Particularly so, when it involves many people. This is exactly the situation that the Republican Party is now in. First, there is health care legislation. Ever since Obamacare was enacted, the Republican Party has talked against it. Donald Trump said he would easily and quickly get rid of it if he was elected, with a Republican Congress. Now, they cannot get a plan through Congress. They had not given proper consideration to the more than 20,000,000 people who had signed up for Obamacare. These people are now irate over the possibility of losing medical insurance. Many congressmen now realize that even though this program may have faults, and need improvement, they could readily lose their next election if they simply repeal it. If they want to improve it, they will have to work with the Democrats, as many of their own members will not support keeping the program. Trump also talked about building a wall between the U. S. and Mexico, to keep out illegal immigrants. Further, he said Mexico would pay for it. Never mind that Mexico is another nation and they might not agree to pay for such a wall. Now, we see that the initial efforts to construct such a wall are being combined in other legislation, would be paid for by the U. S., and would cover only about 72 miles. What this simply means is that such action would never pass on its own. The Republicans are combining it with other programs that have broad support, and hoping that they can sneak this through along with that. The ridiculous part is that it would cover such a short portion of the border that is well over 1,000 miles. Can Congress really be idiotic enough to build such a wall? It cannot possibly be effective. It will simply be a waste of money, a monument to stupidity. Coming up is legislation to increase government borrowing, and enacting a budget. Some Republicans do not want to increase the debt limit. In conflict with this is the proposed budget deficit of $720,000,000,000 for this year. All of this is because our Congress will not approve taxes to provide the revenues to pay for the programs they have enacted. This might make many people mad. Rather, they will borrow money, so they will not have to increase taxes. Basically, it is providing programs without making citizens fully pay for such programs. Congress simply refuses to walk that walk. REEDSBURG - A Wisconsin Dells woman has been charged with possessing an electric weapon after police found what was described as a Taser that doubles as a flashlight in her purse. The criminal complaint against 33-year-old Kathleen L. McNamara says a Reedsburg police officer stopped a vehicle Sunday for multiple traffic offenses. There were reportedly five people in the car, with McNamara sitting in the back seat. The officer conducting the stop reported that he noticed track marks on her arm, which he thought indicated heroin use. After she was questioned by the officer, McNamara allegedly admitted that she was carrying a Taser in her purse. Kathleen stated the Taser was also a flashlight, the officer reported. Police deployed a drug-sniffing dog on the car, which allegedly indicated the existence of drugs. The officer searched the vehicle and reported finding an elastic band he said is typically used to inject heroin, as well as a scale with residue on it. McNamara was arrested and charged with felony possession of an electric weapon, felony possession of drug paraphernalia and three counts of bail jumping. She was jailed on $50 cash bond and is due in court Sept. 7. JUNEAU A plea and sentencing hearing has been scheduled for a Beaver Dam teen who is charged in connection with threats that led to a one-day closure of the Beaver Dam School District on May 5. Dylan C. Graf, 17, is charged with being party to a crime of terrorist threats. He could face up to 3 years in prison and a $10,000 fine if convicted. Graf entered a not guilty plea Wednesday. Dodge County Circuit Court Judge Steven Bauer scheduled the plea and sentencing hearing for Sept. 18. According to the criminal complaint, Graf, another Beaver Dam boy and a boy from Las Vegas were playing online video games before 2 a.m. on May 5 when an email was sent to a Beaver Dam High School assistant principal. The email threatened a school shooting during the fifth period at the school that day. The email sent to the assistant principal talked about having issues with students in the school and the student having a pistol and explosives in the school and executing his plan around fifth hour. Dont try and stop me, theres no way to find out who I am, it said in the email. Beaver Dam Police quickly found out who was involved. The boy in Nevada used his own name and police were able to locate Graf because he had made a comment on the Nevada teens Facebook page. Beaver Dam High School was checked and no suspicious items were located. Graf and another Beaver Dam boy were located as suspects. According to the complaint, the other boy reported that the boy in Las Vegas came up with the plan and sent the emails. The other boy said he had nothing to do with sending the emails, but did come up with the email address used in the emails and set up the accounts. The boys also had sent emails to a teacher at the school allegedly at Grafs suggestion. Graf allegedly told police that he was friends with the Las Vegas boy online and he knew that he had sent emails to the high school assistant principal. Graf told police that he spoke to the boy in Las Vegas via Skype with the other boy in Beaver Dam. He also informed the boy in Las Vegas that the police were coming to his home. Graf told police that he asked the Las Vegas boy not to send the emails to the school, but he did not listen. Graf allegedly said that he had shown the Las Vegas boy the Beaver Dam High School website to have him look at the teacher and he knew that the boy had emailed her, but hadnt read most of it. Graf said he didnt know who to call after the email was sent because it was 2 a.m. Graf also told police that he was on track to graduate next school year and did not want to miss school. According to the complaint, Graf said he asked the Las Vegas boy to put in about being bullied at the school. I am bullied over and over again. I hate all of you, it said in the email. Eventually, Graf told police the conversation he had with the Las Vegas boy led up to the threat that was sent to the assistant principal at the high school. Police contacted the school that the Las Vegas boy attended, but learned that he hadnt been there in a long time. They then contacted the FBI to find the boy. His father was contacted and the boy told police that he sent the emails as a prank and one of the Beaver Dam boys told him that he could get school canceled for them if it all worked out. A Clark (Nev.) County deputy also checked the residence of the boy and could not find any weapons or evidence that the boy was going to travel to Beaver Dam. Beaver Dam Unified School District held expulsion hearings for both local boys in May. Beaver Dam Landmark Commission members approved the use of collected funds to decorate vacant properties in the city's downtown in an effort to draw attention away from vacant storefronts. It would keep some of our old architectural gems alive, commission Chairperson Michael Firchow said. The plan is to use up to $500 worth of funds collected by the commission through certificate of appropriateness applications. At the moment, Firchow said that the commission has more than $4,700. That money will be used to frame and blow up photos of old historical buildings from Beaver Dam's past such as the old city hall and the armory. The commission will then donate the photos to Downtown Beaver Dam Inc., if it wants the photos. Map: Downtown Beaver Dam vacant storefronts Click on each vacant property marker to see the exact address, the current owner and a photo Owners of the vacant properties will have to OK if they want the photos to hang in their front window. Firchow explained to the commission that the photos would cling to the front windows of vacant properties downtown. Someone would clean the front and back of the window as well. The cost for a 60-inch-by-36-inch framed photo would cost $85 and a 48-inch-by-24-inch photo would cost $66. He said the photos wouldn't be large enough to cover a For Sale or For Rent sign in the front window and that this is an inexpensive way to make downtown Beaver Dam look more inviting. The commission agreed as well and approved the use of the funds. Firchow said residents could see these photos appear in vacant storefront windows in the coming months. Landmark review The Landmark Commission is going start reviewing their guidelines and assess how commission members can be more helpful for downtown businesses. Firchow said that he met with Mayor Becky Glewen to discuss how to limit turnover with downtown businesses. You have only one chance to make a first impression, Firchow said. Glewen shared ideas for how places like Detroit had revitalized its downtown. Firchow said the commission will begin to review some of these ideas and reflect on their own guidelines in future meetings. He said one thing the commission would like to do is possibly be more hands-on with new business and provide them with information that could help them flourish downtown. JUNEAU An 18-year-old Vesper woman entered a not guilty plea Wednesday to charges connected to the February assault of a 17-year-old Beaver Dam girl. Kaylee B. Derrie is charged with felony counts of burglary to a building or dwelling, physical abuse of a child and false imprisonment. She faces up to 24 years in prison and a $45,000 fine if convicted of the charges. According to the criminal complaint, Derrie and a 16-year-old Juneau boy pulled into a parking lot in the 800 block of Park Avenue on Feb. 15. The boy told police that he and Derrie intended to kill themselves with a handgun belonging to the boys father, but he wanted to say goodbye to an ex-girlfriend first. So he and Derrie left the gun in the car and walked to the Beaver Dam girls house. Beaver Dam Police were dispatched to a residence in the 700 block of Park Avenue at 7:15 that morning for a stabbing. According to the criminal complaint, police made contact with a 17-year-old girl, who said a woman matching Derries description had entered her home with an ex-boyfriend. Derrie allegedly began hitting and strangling her. The girl said she tried to call her father or 911, but the phone was taken away from her. The girl was able to access a knife and started stabbing Derrie in the back so she could free herself. After she stabbed Derrie, her ex-boyfriend and Derrie left the home. The officer noted that the girls right hand was bleeding and there was a one-inch gash between her thumb and index finger. Police received a tip about a car stopping at the Wild Goose Gas Station at Highways 33 and 26, and that a person was looking for medical supplies and was stabbed in the back. Derrie was taken into custody by Washington County deputies. The stab wounds were not life-threatening, but she was taken to St. Josephs Hospital in West Bend. A telephone scheduling conference will be held on Sept. 6. While they missed out on a state title by five points, the Juneau County Senior Livestock Judging team will move on to nationals for the second time in a row. With a total of 1,710 points, the team of Daniel Walsh, Dawson Firlus, Clayton Walsh and Dawson Miller took second place at the State 4-H Senior Livestock Judging Contest July 24 to qualify for the 4-H National Livestock Judging Contest. Manitowoc County took first place with a total of 1,715 points. Both teams have a choice to compete in one of three locations for the national contest in Kansas City, Missouri and Grand Island, Nebraska this fall and in Denver, Colorado early next year. At state, the team was named Top Senior Beef Team with a first place finish and placed second overall in Senior Swine Team. For individual results, Daniel Walsh was named Top Senior Beef Individual with a first place finish in beef judging and placed second in both Senior Overall Individual and Senior Individual Reasons. His brother, Clayton Walsh, took second place for Senior Swine Individual and Firlus took fifth place in the Senior Sheep Individual Contest. Participants at the contest had to examine different breeds and classes of livestock and were awarded points based on an expert judges prior examination of the animal. How participants judge the animal depends on the class and breed of animal being shown. For market (animals), you want a lot of meat which is a lot of muscling and then you want some fat cover, Daniel Walsh said. However, sometimes you also want them to have a nice show ring presence, being clean up through the front end and looking pretty. In addition, participants have to give reasons to explain why they positioned animals in a particular order. Its almost like an interview because you have to tell them exactly in order why you placed them, Firlus said. (The judge) is grading you on how you give your (reasons) too. Because all four have shown beef cattle as a part of 4-H and FFA, they understand what to look for in quality market cattle. To learn about the other animals, they practice at the UW-Extension office in Mauston and travel to UW-Platteville to practice judging pigs and cattle during the summer. Clayton Walsh and Daniel Walsh qualified for nationals last year and went to the National Western Stock Show in Denver last year. Because the competition is in January, Daniel Walsh said the team fell into a habit of not practicing very much and ended up with a reality check when they entered the contest. Some states are really, really tough, Daniel Walsh said. Its twelve hours long from start to finish and you cant talk the entire time unless youre giving reasons. Firlus and Miller, who moved up to the senior team this year, said with an intense atmosphere at nationals the team will work on bringing their A-game to competition. Knowing what youre looking for, Miller said. How they plan to continue learning is to continue their regular practice schedule as well as watch and listen to other livestock judges give reasons for particular placings at livestock shows. You see what kind of animals are picking up the win and you have an idea when you get out there, Firlus said. All four also credit their time showing animals to their success in through 4-H and FFA judging. All of us have come through FFA and 4-H judging and its through showing and exhibiting animals the judge is going to tell you what you need to do better and what the animal needs the first place animal has, Firlus said. Residents of Portland, Oregon, just want their daily routine -- and temperatures -- to return to normal. Some models show the city by Thursday could reach or break its all-time high of 107 degrees (1965 and 1981). Residents on Tuesday got a warm-up to an excessive heat warning by enduring a high of 97. Commuters on TriMet, the metro area's public transit system, had longer waits because of network problems and slower rail speeds prompted by the high temps, according to CNN affiliate KATU-TV. Some 15 million people in the Pacific Northwest are under excessive heat warnings and advisories. That creates "a dangerous situation in which heat illnesses are possible," the National Weather Service said. Dozens of records could be broken over the next two days, CNN meteorologists said. Seattle could see 100 degrees, which would be only the fourth time in recorded history. Other cities will likely see temperatures hit the triple digits. The heat has settled in over a region where many homes don't have air conditioning. Only one-third of Seattle residents have it, while Portland's number is about 70%. Portions of Oregon are a good bit lower. CNN affiliate KIRO in Seattle reported numerous cooling centers were open in the city. Jillian Henze, spokeswoman for the Seattle Hotel Association, said those without air conditioning who are seeking relief will find the supply of rooms scarce. "It is our busiest season of the year; we got cruise ships and summer travel, and rooms are booked up way in advance," she said. The National Weather Service office in Seattle said that temperatures in the region will "probably be within 5 degrees of the all-time records." Because of thick smoke from British Columbia wildfires, temperatures overnight into Wednesday did not cool off much. Seattle's low was 69 degrees; the normal reading is 57. Northern California will likely see peak heat Wednesday, with slightly milder temperatures on Thursday. What's causing all of this? A ridge formed in the jet stream -- forcing the stronger winds in the upper atmosphere well into Canada -- allowing for clear skies in the Pacific Northwest and the temperatures to rise to extreme levels. Friday into the weekend, the jet stream will flatten, allowing for temperatures to ease near normal. Until then, police and agencies are ensuring those most vulnerable receive help. Portland police on Tuesday tried to get people who normally live on the streets into shelters or cooling centers, CNN affiliate KPTV said. "They really appreciate it because, literally, they are here, they don't want to walk around because it's hot out," Officer Ryan Engweiler told the station. "Just by us driving around giving them the water, giving them the information." CNN's Carma Hassan contributed to this report. A former inmate at Wisconsins youth prison says a guard there helped her hurt herself after she became suicidal while being kept in solitary confinement. The girl is one of two female Iowa teenagers who filed federal lawsuits this week against state prison officials, alleging they were kept in solitary confinement for months at the states youth prison, even after both tried to commit suicide in their cells. In one case, one of the girls put her head under a low metal cot to harm herself while she was in a cell used to put inmates in solitary confinement. She alleges youth prison guard Kyle Hoff then walked on top of the cot while she did this in order to tighten it around her neck. Hoff did not return a phone call seeking comment on the allegations. The same girl also was not given medical attention and was instead sent back to her cell alone after prison guards found her unresponsive with a nightgown around her neck in November 2015 during a 17-day stay in isolation, the lawsuit alleges. The teenage girls were sent to the Lincoln Hills School for Boys and Copper Lake School for Girls juvenile correctional facility in 2015, in part, because the state of Iowa had closed a similar facility over allegations of abuse and keeping inmates in isolation too long, according to the two lawsuits filed in federal court on Tuesday. The former inmates lawsuits, which demand jury trials to review the allegations of cruel and unusual punishment, are the fourth and fifth filed in federal court this year alleging staff at the states juvenile correctional facility are putting teen inmates in solitary confinement too often and using force that causes lasting or permanent damage. And a federal judge overseeing one of the pending lawsuits filed earlier this year has already ordered the state Department of Corrections to drastically reduce the practice of solitary confinement, noting the facilitys practices are not common among juvenile correctional facilities nationwide. Department of Corrections officials last month said they would not appeal the judges order and have begun revising their use of isolation, restraints and pepper spray. Tristan Cook, DOC spokesman, said the department is reviewing the lawsuits. Jack Bjornstad, an Iowa lawyer representing the girls, said he could not comment on what kind of outcome the plaintiffs are seeking. Girls were 16 According to the lawsuits, the girls were inmates in the youth prison starting in March and July of 2015, respectively, and stayed until February and August of 2016. They were 16 years old at the time. During their sentences, the two girls estimate they were kept in solitary confinement for a total of four and five months and were let out of their cells for about two hours a day. One female inmate said she was only out of solitary confinement for a total of three days during a three-month span. The other estimates she spent up to 74 days by herself over a seven-month time period. The girls mental health deteriorated during their isolation, according to the lawsuit, and both became suicidal. The second girl suing prison officials says she tried hanging and cutting herself during her time in isolation, and received more time in solitary confinement as punishment. The lawsuits come amid a two-year investigation now headed by federal authorities reviewing allegations of inmate abuse by staff, among other potential crimes. Until federal Judge James Petersons July order, Wisconsin was one of just a handful of states that has allowed its youngest prison inmates to be punished by placing them in solitary confinement for more than 10 days. And the state is in the minority nationally in not prohibiting punitive solitary confinement, according to a 2016 survey conducted by the Lowenstein Center for the Public Interest, a law firm that offers pro bono work to low-income and needy communities. Petersons order requires DOC not to place teen inmates in isolation for longer than seven days. Also on Wednesday, Gov. Scott Walker signed a bill that would require guards at the states youth prison to be required to report signs of child abuse. The prison guards now join doctors, child care workers and teachers on the states list of occupations that are required by law to report suspected child abuse. Walker said Wednesday he has confidence that DOC Secretary Jon Litscher will carry out the necessary changes to make the facility safe. The bill was authored by Sen. LaTonya Johnson, D-Milwaukee, and Rep. Joel Kleefisch, R-Oconomowoc, and is the first successful piece of legislation drafted in response to the scores of allegations related to youth prison staff still under review by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The Lions Eye Bank of Wisconsin, located near the Dane County Regional Airport, plans to build a $2.6 million facility in southeast Madison, near the Beltline. The eye bank has outgrown its 9,000-square-foot facility at 2401 American Lane, said Darice Langham, executive director. The 14,000-square-foot facility at 5003 Tradewinds Parkway will accommodate expanded services, including in-house cornea processing and an in-house Donor Support Center, she said. The proposal for the one-story building was on the agenda for Wednesday's meeting of Madison's Urban Design Commission. The eye bank has more than 35 employees and serves 150 hospitals and 40 cornea transplant surgeons throughout Wisconsin. A Milwaukee organ and tissue donation organization is asking hospitals to use an out-of-state eye bank instead of Madison-based Lions Eye Bank of Wisconsin, a move the Lions bank says came because it raised safety and quality concerns about the organization. The organ and tissue organization, Blood Center of Wisconsin, disagrees. It says it partnered with Seattle-based SightLife a nonprofit with a for-profit subsidiary to simplify the cornea recovery process for hospitals and provide a larger pool of corneas to surgeons. The shift could mean corneas from some Wisconsin donors will be less likely to go to Wisconsin recipients, said Darice Langham, executive director of the nonprofit Lions eye bank, the only eye bank based in the state. Weve got that donor-recipient connection, Langham said. Those things really matter to donor families. But SightLife, which recovers corneas in nine states, has a larger variety of corneas, said Colleen McCarthy, vice president of organ and tissue donation for the Blood Center. Because of the higher volumes, theyre able to match very specific surgeon needs with the corneas they have available, McCarthy said. The Blood Center, one of two organizations overseeing organ and tissue donation in Wisconsin, announced its partnership with SightLife in June. The center asked the 35 hospitals and other outlets in its 12-county eastern Wisconsin region to use SightLife, instead of the Lions eye bank, for cornea recovery and donation, McCarthy said. Three hospitals Childrens Hospital of Wisconsin in Milwaukee, Kenosha Medical Center and St. Catherines Medical Center in Pleasant Prairie and the Milwaukee County Medical Examiners Office have switched so far. UW Organ and Tissue Donation, which covers the rest of the state, is not involved with SightLife and continues to work with the Lions eye bank, said Michael Anderson, executive director of the UW organization. Langham said the Blood Center partnered with SightLife because she raised several concerns about the centers operations. The center didnt promptly notify the Lions eye bank about potential cornea donors or quickly share blood test results in many cases, leading to discarded corneas and missed opportunities for donation, Langham said. The center approved some donors incorrectly, she said, using a process designed for patients who have given consent for donation on some patients who had only registered an intent to donate. In three cases, Langham said, the center sent donor blood samples for communicable disease testing after initial samples tested negative; the second samples were positive, but likely falsely so. Had the corneas been transplanted, the discrepancies could have caused problems, including a recall and recipients requiring treatment, Langham said. In some cases, including one involving a potential donor who possibly used intravenous drugs a disqualification for donation the Lions eye bank believed additional investigation was needed before approving the donor, but the center did not, she said. IV drug use was eventually ruled out, and the patients corneas were donated. The Lions eye bank filed complaints early this year with the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and the Food and Drug Administration, Langham said. Its not clear if or how the agencies have responded. Blood Center administrators werent happy with us asking for more and higher quality, Langham said. We were applying a little bit more pressure to try to get those things more manageable. It wasnt just us being put at risk. It was them and the hospitals and everyone really. McCarthy denied each of the alleged safety and quality problems Langham raised. We do not believe at all that our systems caused the loss of potential donors, McCarthy said. We have never recovered tissue or organs without having proper authorization. She said she couldnt comment specifically on the three cases allegedly involving duplicate blood testing. But, she said, if there ever is a duplicate test sample sent, thats something that every donation organization would work to ensure wouldnt happen again. As for evaluating potential donors, we will go to great lengths to identify past medical history, McCarthy said. We share it with our transplant partners. McCarthy said the Blood Centers partnership with SightLife wasnt prompted by Langham airing her concerns. Dr. Brian Peterson, Milwaukee Countys medical examiner, said he supports the shift to SightLife, in part because of SightLifes goal of using donor corneas to end blindness worldwide. Peterson, chairman of an advisory board for the organ donor part of the Blood Center, said the Lions eye bank has caused some difficulties. The Lions eye bank sent some donor blood samples to a different lab than the one the center uses, which he said was insane because it can increase test result discrepancies. Langham denied sending samples to a different lab. Peterson said the Lions eye bank recovered corneas, without his approval, from a child who suffered a non-accidental head injury, inhibiting his investigation of the death. Langham said the Blood Center authorized the recovery of the childs corneas amid some miscommunication. Dr. Sarah Nehls, an eye surgeon at UW Health, said she has relied on the Lions eye bank for cornea transplants for years, including urgent cases in the middle of the night. The Lions eye bank has been able to provide the tissue that I need without any interruptions or any lack of availability, Nehls said. With an eye bank far away, I would worry about having less availability of tissue for myself and the other cornea surgeons in Wisconsin, she said. More corneas are recovered than transplanted in the United States unlike with donor organs, for which supply is less than demand. Many corneas are sent overseas, where there is significant demand for transplants. Of the 1,568 corneas distributed last year by the Lions eye bank, 899 were transplanted in Wisconsin, 455 were used in other states and 214 were sent to other countries, Langham said. That means 86 percent stayed in the U.S. Of 11,689 corneas distributed by SightLife, 6,358, or 54 percent, were transplanted in the U.S., according to SightLife. The rest were sent overseas. Susan Kruger Susan Marie Kruger, 58, of Westfield, passed away unexpectedly Sunday, July 30, 2017, at her home. She was born at the Portage hospital on Oct. 14, 1958, to Paul and Edith (Buchholz) Duesterhoeft. Sue was baptized and confirmed at St. Johns Evangelical Lutheran Church in Montello, where she also attended grade school. She was a 1976 graduate of Montello High School. Following graduation, Sue attended Fond du Lac Technical College for secretarial work where employment followed at Berlin Memorial Hospital. Later, she attended Madison Technical College for computer science and found employment at Rayovac Corporate Headquarters in Madison. On Sept. 8, 1990, Susan was united in marriage to James R. Kruger at St. Johns Evangelical Lutheran Church in Montello. After marriage, Sue loved working alongside her husband on their farm located in the town of Westfield. On the farm, she took pride in bookkeeping as the office manager for So-Fine Bovines, LLC. In 1997, Sue was truly blessed with her only son, Jakob John. Sue enjoyed playing pool, bowling, snowmobiling, and shooting trap with her family and friends. Survivors include her husband, Jim; her only son, Jakob; her mother, Edith Duesterhoeft, Montello; her brother, Kurt Duesterhoeft, Rockford, Illinois; and other close relatives and many friends. Sue was preceded in death by her father, Paul, and two infant sisters, Kay Lynn and Lori Jean. She will be truly missed as a very devoted wife and mother. A visitation for Sue will be held from 4 to 7 p.m. Friday, Aug. 4, and from 9 to 11 a.m. Saturday, Aug. 5 at Immanuel Lutheran Church, Westfield. A funeral service for Sue will be held at 11 a.m. Saturday, Aug. 5, at Immanuel Lutheran Church, Westfield, with the Rev. Gary H. Schultz officiating. Burial will be in Westfield East Cemetery. In lieu of flowers, a memorial will be established in Sues name. Steinhaus-Holly Funeral Home and Cremation Service of Westfield is serving the family. For online obituaries and condolences visit www.steinhaushollyfuneralhome.com. Sibanye reaffirms commitment to education Sibanye, a top ten global gold mining company has extended its partnership with Wits by investing R15 million into the Wits School of Mining Engineering. The funds will be paid annually in tranches of R5 million over three years (2017 2019) to strengthen the Digital Mining Laboratory (affectionately known as DigiMine), support the establishment of the Chair in Mining Automation, student bursaries, laboratory-enhancements and enabling strategic research into the mine of the future. The mining industry is the backbone of the South African economy and the sector requires relevant, new skills and specialised knowledge as it moves into the fourth industrial revolution. South Africa remains rich in resources. However, it is a reality that these resources will only be brought to book through significant technological development and changes in mining methodology. As an industry we are highly dependent on skilled labour, engineers and technicians and these come from universities. Consequently, we need to create the platform for greater innovation through expanded research and education by leading institutions such as Wits, said Neal Froneman, CEO of Sibanye and Wits alumnus at the cheque handover which took place at the Sibanye Academy. Froneman stressed the importance of funding that will enable access to deep reserves and improve mine safety and sustainability. The Chair in Mining Automation in DigiMine will draw together researchers from diverse disciplines to meet the challenges of real mining problems and will also ensure that the curriculum of mining engineers is adapted appropriately for 21st century South African mining operations. The current DigiMine themes are Communication technologies for the underground environment; Underground surveying, mapping and navigation technologies; Health, safety and security technologies; Information technology and System integration for Visualization; and Real time Mine Information Modeling for Smart Economics. Each theme provide opportunities for postgraduate research, with some projects working on world-first technologies. Critically, the funds will support an essentially underfunded area in higher education that of postgraduate study, in addition to undergraduate support and capital projects. Postgraduate students, more often than not become captains of industry or at least influencers within their chosen fields of study, be it through dedication to academic life or transfer of knowledge to marketplace, said Professor Zeblon Vilakazi, Deputy Vice-Chancellor: Research and Postgraduate affairs. The donation also makes provision for capital projects through a R1 million per annum allocation for us at the discretion of the Vice-Chancellor. We recognise that it is equally important to provide for the growth and improvement of university facilities which will best equip the teaching staff with the best technology needed to deliver world class teaching and establish the capacity to increase university involvement in industry research, said Froneman. The partnership between Sibanye and the School, which began in 2014, has provided financial support to 53 needy, deserving students in their early years of study. Over the past three years the company has also offered vacation work opportunities to 248 students from second year onwards. This is a massive investment to the South African economy because without providing them with this opportunity, students cannot graduate even if they pass all their academic subjects In addition to Wits, Sibanye also supports the University of Johannesburg. Social Justice Activist to Lead Occupational Therapy at Wits Dr Fasloen Adams has been appointed Head of Department for Occupational Therapy in the School of Therapeutic Sciences at Wits Faculty of Health Sciences. Dr Fasloen Adams has been appointed Head of Department for Occupational Therapy in the School of Therapeutic Sciences at Wits Faculty of Health Sciences from 1 July 2017 to 30 June 2021. She succeeds Professor Pat De Witt and will be responsible for maintaining the excellent standards of undergraduate teaching, increasing the postgraduate output and advancing context relevant research in the Department. Prior to taking up this role, Dr Adams was a Lecturer with the Department of Occupational Therapy, in the School of Therapeutic Sciences from 2005. An ardent social justice orientated health professional, Dr Adams is a graduate of Stellenbosch University, with a Masters degree from the University of Cape Town and a PhD from Wits. Dr Adams began her career in 1995 as a Junior Occupational Therapist at Valkenberg Psychiatric Hospital in Cape Town, and later an Occupational Therapist at Groote Schuur Hospital, gaining a solid grounding in psychiatry and forensic psychiatry. She relocated to the USA for a number of years where she focused mainly on the physical and paediatric fields of practice. As Chief Psychiatric Occupational Therapist for New Surfside, a non-profit services provider, based in New York she developed and coordinated a programme for community-based psychiatric practice. In 2000 she returned to South Africa and joined the University of Cape Town as a service learning coordinator and supervisor of third and fourth- year students. She gained experience in guiding and supporting student assessment in collaboration with clinical staff at various psychiatric facilities, promoting the integration of theory with practice. Moving to Johannesburg in 2005 to join Wits, she has been part of a successful team that has seen the department grown in size and stature. As course coordinator in public health and occupational therapy, public health fieldwork coordinator, lecturer in psychiatry applied to occupational therapy and occupational science as well as fieldwork supervisor she has contributed significantly to the excellence of the department and its continued reputation as a leader in OT training. In 2011 and 2012 she received the Schools award for Outstanding Mentoring in recognition for her efforts. Her research interests are diverse and include collective occupations, occupational science applied to the African context, empowerment and disability studies. She has already produced a number of papers and 2 book chapters. A strong advocate for collaborative research, Dr Adams was a member of a national collaborative study in 2008 between the Universities of Witwatersrand, Cape Town, Free s-State, KwaZulu-Natal, Pretoria and Medunsa as well as various disability organisations, to investigate how youth with disabilities sustain their livelihood. In 2016 she was appointed as a member of the technical advisory group for a research project carried out by the Health Systems Trust, entitled: Evaluation of the status of disability and rehabilitation services within the public sector in terms of preparedness for the implementation of the 2015 Disability and Rehabilitation Policy Framework and Strategy. Building on the solid foundation of her predecessor, Dr Adams intends to lead the transformation of the department from the current individual intervention model to that of a communal perspective. In this way, it will contribute to the necessary shift that occupational therapy must make as a discipline to truly serve the needs of South Africa. To achieve this transformation Dr Adams has prioritized the strategic direction and focus of the departments research, the expansion of community practice for students and the expansion of e-learning and online platforms to facilitate efficient supervision across the larger clinical platform. We are delighted to have Dr Adams take the reins of the Department and look forward to its progress in achieving the vision for community orientated occupational therapy. says Judith Bruce: Head of School for the Therapeutic Sciences. Its a great honour to lead this Department and the team. I believe that the department has the transformative perspective required to be a change agent for the Faculty, the University and for occupational therapy as a profession. Our country needs models for application in the African context. Our research can build African knowledge and our teaching can integrate and apply such perspectives. says Dr Adams. CERN memories: And then there was the time the weasel took down the ion collider ... Summer at CERN: William & Mary students working this summer at the European home of the Large Hadron Collider include (from left) graduate student in physics Lauren Liegey , Devin Moore 19 and Sydney Ostrom 20. Theyve been working on the red thing in the background, which is a prototype for a neutrino detector. Photo by Jeff Nelson Photo - of - Hide Caption There was a lot going on at the home of the Large Hadron Collider this summer. A new particle was discovered. ICARUS, a 60-foot-long detector built to search for an elusive (and possibly non-existent) particle, was shipped out on a six-week voyage to its new home outside Chicago at Fermilab. And a weasel chewed through a power cable again! knocking an ion collider offline. A contingent of William & Mary students was there for it all: Kevin Nelson 18, Sydney Ostrom 20, Devin Moore 19, plus Lauren Liegey, a graduate student in the universitys Department of Physics. The group worked and studied this summer at CERN, the European high-energy physics facility renowned as the site of the discovery of the Higgs boson. Kevin Nelson was at CERN as a participant in the University of Michigans Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU). The others accompanied William & Mary Physics Professor Jeff Nelson to CERN. The CERN group is part of a larger William & Mary contingent of a large, multi-national collaborative working on the Long-Baseline Neutrino Facility/ Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment (LBNF-DUNE). Other William & Mary members of the LBNF-DUNE collaborative, working stateside on the experiment, are Michael Kordosky and Patricia Vahle, both associate professors of physics, postdocs Alex Radovic and Edgar Valencia, graduate student Luis Zazueta Reyes, recent graduate Ciaren Buteux 16 and Will Henninger, the machine shop director in the physics department. For the students at CERN, the day is divided between lectures and work on various projects, including a prototype for a neutrino detector to be used in LBNF-DUNE, which is scheduled to go online in 2026. Every day starts at 9:15 when we attend a few summer student lectures that CERN puts on, Ostrom said. The lectures are all about different aspects or theories involved in high-energy, particle, nuclear or really any kind of physics that take place at CERN. After lunch in the CERN cafeteria, its time to get to work. Their prototype will influence the design and construction of the actual instrument to be installed at DUNE. It will receive a beam of neutrinos sent from Fermilab 800 miles through the earth to the DUNE site deep beneath the surface of South Dakota. Kordosky explained that the experiment is designed to measure a value in neutrinos. Neutrinos are shape-shifting particles created by numerous sources, and scientists believe an understanding of neutrino behavior can help to answer a number of long-standing fundamental questions of science. (See Neutrinosand Why We Study Them at William & Mary.) The students are working on a prototype of the far detector, the neutrino-catching apparatus that will be assembled underground at the DUNE facility in South Dakota. Moore explained that the team is working on a part of the prototype far detector called the field cage module. Actual construction was held up for a few weeks while the team waited for parts to arrive. Today we started receiving the parts for constructing it, Moore wrote in a July 18 email from CERN. We'll begin by assembling the various modules, then attaching and testing the electrical components on it. We'll be helping with this process, but it will continue once we've returned to the states. Even if actual construction of the prototype was delayed by the wait for parts, the students at CERN werent idle. They were pressed into service tracking progress of the elusive prototype detector parts and assigned other important and necessary tasks for the construction of the detector, which will rely on argon gas cooled and condensed to liquid form. When we aren't tracking down crates or contacting packing companies, we essentially run tests on different sets of equipment to make sure that they will work properly when they are actually installed, Ostrom explained. For example, we've run a lot of tests on the dual-phase detector to check that there are no holes in the welding that would allow gas to leak out. Kevin Nelson was involved in the ICARUS project, as well. ICARUS, another liquid-argon neutrino detector, was at CERN for refurbishment after beginning its experimental life at an Italian physics lab. The detector was shipped across the Atlantic to Fermilab, where physicists hope it will resolve the mystery of the sterile neutrino, a much-debated particle whose demonstrated existence or lack thereof will allow scientists to move more confidently down one path or high energy physics or another. Nelson arrived just in time to wave goodbye to ICARUS and to get an important assignment related to the journey. On my first day at CERN we shipped ICARUS to Chicago, he said, explaining that the detector was equipped with accelerometers to track the bumping and jostling the instrument received during the long voyage. My job was to write code to remove fake signals from the dataset that were induced if the accelerometer itself was bumped and not the ICARUS detector, a frequent occurrence, he explained. When we read data off the sensor, we plug a cable into the sensor, effectively bumping the sensor and not the detector. Many of these so-called fake signals require somewhat sophisticated signal processing to analyze, distinguish and remove from the dataset. The students are fully aware of being part of the community and culture that is part of the CERN experience. A rising sophomore, Ostrom pronounced herself particularly lucky to be able to participate in a summer experience thats usually reserved for upperclass and graduate students. The first week that we were here, on July 4, it was the fifth anniversary of the discovery of the Higgs boson which was discovered right here at CERN's LHC detector! she said. I actually remember when I was just about to start my freshman year of high school in the summer of 2012, my dad told me about the discovery because he knew that I was interested in science. It was pretty cool to realize that I was listening to lectures in the same auditorium where the discovery was first announced. She added that being a full-fledged, even if temporary, member of the CERN family carries certain perks, including being among the first to hear about the Large Hadron Colliders beauty experiments discovery of the new particle, a baryon that is made up, appropriately, of two charm quarks and an up quark. Getting that announcement in an email seemed to make all three of us at least a little more excited to be working here than we already were, Ostrom added. Moore seconded, pronouncing the announcement probably the most exciting thing that happened while we were here. Nelson had an opportunity to meet a couple who are generally regarded as living embodiments of the traditions and history of CERN. The coolest moment from my summer so far was when I met Maria and Giuseppe Fidecaro on the tram from CERN to Geneva. Maria and Giuesspe have worked at CERN since its beginnings and they still do to this day, Nelson said. He explained that some of his friends recognized the Fidecaros from a tour of the Synchrocyclotron facility, where the couple began work at CERN 60 years ago. They were such nice people and were clearly excited to see a new generation of physicists so passionate about working at CERN, Nelson said. They still eat lunch almost every day in the CERN cafeteria, so it's said that you don't work at CERN until you've bumped into them. 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 State and local leaders including Cumberland State Rep. Ryan Pearson, Lincoln Town Administrator T. Joseph Almond, Cumberland Mayor Bill Murray, and Woonsocket/Cumberland State Rep. Roger Picard and other officials join Congressman David Cicilline, Cox Communications Senior Vice President/CFO Mark Bowser, Governor Gina Raimondo, Cumberland-Lincoln Boys CEO Gary Rebello, and center, from left, in a ribbon cutting ceremony at the new James M. Cox Technology Center at the Cumberland-Lincoln Boys and Girls Club, one of four new technology centers at clubs in Woonsocket, Cumberland, East Providence, and Newport opened on Wednesday. Japan to benefit from reactor restarts, says IEEJ 03 August 2017 Share A total of ten Japanese nuclear power reactors are likely to have been restarted by the end of March 2019, according to the latest estimate by the Institute of Energy Economics, Japan (IEEJ). These restarts will help improve the country's economy, energy security and environment, it says. In its Economic and Energy Outlook of Japan for FY2018, the IEEJ has considered the economic and environmental impacts in financial years 2017 and 2018 (ending March 2018 and 2019, respectively) of various scenarios for the restart of reactors in Japan. So far five Japanese reactors - Sendai units 1 and 2; Takahama units 3 and 4; and Ikata unit 3 - have been restarted under new safety regulations. The IEEJ notes another seven units have already met these standards and are being prepared for restart. The organisation estimates that if restarts take place according to the current schedule - the "reference scenario" - by the end of FY2018, ten units could be restarted, generating 65.6 TWh of electricity annually and representing a 7% share of the country's power generation mix. This compares with total nuclear output of 288.2 TWh and a share of almost 30% in FY2010, the year prior to the accident at the Fukushima Daiichi plant. With ten reactors in operation, compared with none, real GDP expands by JPY500 billion, the self-sufficiency ration increases by 2.9 percentage points and energy-related carbon dioxide emissions fall by 2.7%. Electricity unit cost should decrease by JPY300 per megawatt-hour, compared with no reactors being restarted beyond the current five. "Nuclear power generation clearly contributes to the improvement of the 3Es (economy, energy security and environment)," the IEEJ said. Its high-case scenario assumes a total of 17 units are restarted by the end of FY2018, generating 99 TWh annually, with spending on total fossil fuel imports decreasing by JPY700 billion relative to the low-case scenario where no more reactors beyond the current five are assumed to restart, producing 32 TWh. In the high-case scenario, the average electricity unit cost is lowered by about JPY453/MWh and energy-related emissions decrease by 45 million tonnes CO2. In its previous outlook, for FY2017, the IEEJ had expected seven reactors to be in operation by the end of March this year, and 12 more by the end of March 2018. However, at that time it noted judicial rulings and local consents would influence the rate of restarts. Japan's GDP is expected to grow 1.1% in FY2018, it said, and its economy will experience over 1.0% growth for four consecutive years for the first time since FY2003 to FY2007. However, despite expanding economy activities, total primary energy consumption in FY2017 is expected to decrease by 0.1% due to continued energy conservation efforts. Primary energy consumption in FY2018 will decline by 0.6% from FY2017. While electricity sales are expected to increase by 0.4% in FY2017, sales in FY2018 will remain almost flat. Energy-related CO2 emissions, which reached a historical high of 1235 million tonnes in FY2013, will decrease for a fifth consecutive year through FY2018. Energy efficiency, the restart of reactors, as well as an increase in renewable energy will reduce CO2 emissions to 1113 million tonnes in FY2017 and 1096 million tonnes in FY2018. In June 2015, the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry presented a new energy plan setting a share of 20% to 22% for nuclear power in Japan's energy mix by 2030. The plan calls for 22%-24% to come from renewable energy sources, with coal's share being reduced to 26%, LNG's to 27% and oil's to just 3%. Researched and written by World Nuclear News Related topics Lying in the middle of Lake Nokue, north of the city of Cotonou in Benin, is a stunning unique village, Ganvie, commonly referred to as the Venice of Africa. Ganvie is the largest floating city in Africa, making it a major tourist destination for travelers across the globe. People have lived on this stilt city for centuries with no intentions of moving. The word Ganvie actually means "we survived". The habitats have developed an intricate and prosperous culture within the constraints of life on the lake. Its unique setting and stunning scenery make it one of the undeniable must visit places in Africa. 5. Habitat Today, Ganvie has a population of over 20,000 people who live in approximately 3,000 homes built on still waters. The homes have been built with different designs where some have terraces giving a serene view of the shallow waters while others are audacious and imaginative. The houses are mainly made of bamboo and are changed annually. There a few domesticated animals, which are used for transportation on land. Donkeys are the only domesticated animals and are maintained on plots of grass that spring up from the water. The water surrounding the village is salty and due to the level of activity in the area so the villagers have sunk a borehole to provide fresh water. In spite of the innovations and modernization that tourists tend to bring on board, Ganvie has retained its traditional habitat. The lacustrine and semi lacustrine islets remain the same and the villagers still harmonize with the natural environment to advance their lives. The water people heavily rely on the complicated network of underwater fencing to farm fish. However, the extensive network of hyacinth that grows on the lake has affected the coral farms. 4. Uniqueness For the last 500 years, the Tofinu people built their homes with silts raised a few feet from sea level. It is the only human settlement of its kind in the world. It is hard to imagine how one would conduct all their activities in an environment that seems very uncomfortable to many. Those living in Ganvie are already content with their lifestyle at the lake and most of them do not show signs of abandoning their lives for an alternative on dry land. 3. Tourism Ganvie is a major tourist destination, especially for travelers who want experience unique escaped living on a lake. UNESCOs World Heritage has already documented the city as a tourist attraction because of the uniqueness and beautiful legends, remarkable history, and spectacular architecture. Visiting Ganvie is an exceptional experience out of the ordinary. There is no better way to enjoy a lake village than drifting lazily in a pirogue with young kids paddling boats and a maze of tiny circling picturesque houses. The Chez Raphael Hotel, Restaurant and Gift Shop in Ganvie is the major stop over for tourists to enjoy the delicacies of the Tofinu people. Most people coming to visit the city prefer day trips. Not because the hotels are not comfortable, but most tourists are skeptical and do not find it pleasurable to adapt to living on the lake. However, there are good hotels on land right next to the boarding boats that offer tourists with good accommodation and travel packages to the magical city. 2. Description The magical city of Ganvie is located in the lower southern part of Benin on Lake Nokoue. The Portuguese who came to Benin in search of slaves established the city in the sixteenth century. Those living in the now called Cotonou town fled from their land to avoid slavery and sought refuge in Ganvie. Due to the fear of being enslaved and constant threats from the Dom-Homey tribe, the Chief of the Tofinu tribe gathered his people and came up with the idea living on the waters. According to the Tofinu religious beliefs, it was against their customs for anyone to threaten people who lived in the water since they were believed to be the gods would punish perpetrators. The name itself comes from the Tofinu language meaning we survived. The entire city is built on water apart from a school, which is the only building set on dry land. The only possible means of transport to and from the city, or even from house to house is through wooden boats cut from wood. 1. Threats The beautiful lake city of Ganvie is facing environmental problems which pose a major threat to both human and aquatic life. The deposition of all kinds of domestic solid waste and the leaded gasoline from the pirogues has led to chronic effects. Lack of a properly developed sewer system makes the lake water unsuitable for human consumption. Tourists are even cautioned against swimming in the lake to avoid contamination, although it should not be the case. However, tourists have been blamed for introducing the quick pirogues rather than using the traditional boats to navigate within the town. In addition, due to decades of overfishing, increased number of fishermen, and the filling of the lake with sand, it is reported that fishing is on the decline and the practice has become less profitable due to tourism. The women, who are the breadwinners, claim that if nothing is done to save the fishing industry, it will decline and become only a part of history. If not controlled, the environmental impact could cost a distinction of the magical city. With tourism booming in Ganvie, there should be measures put into control to reduce pollution. Some of the largest bird to walk the surface of the earth are the Phorusrhacos and the Titanis; they lived around sixty-five million years ago and belonged to a group of birds that are unofficially referred to as birds of terror." Archaeological excavates have revealed that the birds were extremely larger and had the ability to chase down their prey. The large birds we have today are incomparable to the birds of that generation, and the ostrich has reigned supreme as the largest bird. 14. Ostrich - largest living bird Ostriches running on the African savannah. The ostrich is the largest living bird that can reach heights of up to 6.9 ft and weigh as much as 346 pounds. It is a flightless bird that is known to reach a speed of up to 43 mph. The female ostrich lays the largest egg of any living bird. They are native to Africa where they are found in large numbers. They also inhabit parts of parts of Asia. 13. Victoria crowned pigeon - largest pigeon/dove The Victoria crowned pigeon is not your average pigeon. The Victoria crowned pigeon is the largest bird in the pigeon family. They are easily distinguished by a crest of lacy feathers on their heads that resembles a crown. They are considered very handsome pigeons. It is a blue-grey bird that can reach 30 inches length and weigh about 7.7 lb. They are known to make thunderous clapping sounds when they want to fly. They are native to the area surrounding New Guinea and are named so to commemorate Queen Victoria. 12. Trumpeter Swan - Largest Waterfowl A trumpeter swan in flight. The trumpeter swan is the largest waterfowl. It is native to North America and is the heaviest bird found in the same region. Their wing spans can be up to 10 ft., and they can grow to about 5 ft 5 in and weigh about 28 lb. In 1933, the birds were believed to be near extinct in North America, and less than 70 birds were known to exist. An aerial survey along the coast of Alaska revealed a large flock of these birds some of which were later reintroduced to other parts of the continent. 11. Eurasian black vulture - largest bird of prey A Eurasian black vulture showing his wing span. The Eurasian black vulture is the largest, and one of the heaviest birds of prey. The bird, sometimes referred to as the black vulture, is known to attain a height of 3 ft 11 in, and a wingspan of 10 ft 2 in, and can weigh as much as 31 lb. They are mostly found in Europe and the central Middle East. 10. Flightless Comorant - largest comorant Two flightless comorants sit next to a marine iguana in the Galapagos Islands. The flightless cormorant is the largest and the heaviest bird of the cormorant species. It is endemic to the Galapagos and is the only flightless bird in its species. However, the flightless cormorant is known to be a fantastic swimmer, and a large flock can be found along the coast of Isabela and Fernandina. 9. Philippine eagle - largest living eagle A Philippine eagle. The Philippine eagle is the largest eagle and one of the largest birds of prey. It was once referred to as the monkey-eating eagle because the native people of the Philippines claim that it once hunted monkeys. It can reach lengths of 3.35 ft and weigh as much as 17.6 lb. 8. Red-billed Tropicbird - largest tropicbird The red-billed tropicbird is the largest tropicbird in the world. The Red-billed Tropicbird is the largest tropicbird. It is common in the tropical Atlantic, the Indian Ocean's coastline, and the eastern Pacific. These birds can cruise at 100 ft above the sea and reach speeds of 27 mph. There are three species of the red-billed tropicbird; the nominate, the P. a. mesonauta, and the P. a. indicus. 7. Greater flamingo - largest flamingo The greater flamingo is the world's largest. The greater flamingo is the largest and the most widespread bird of the flamingo species. It inhabits southern Europe, the Indian subcontinent, and Africa. These birds can weigh up to 8.8 lb. The pink birds prefer warm regions and alkaline lakes with mudflats where they feed and breed. 6. Hyacinth macaw - largest parrot by length The Hyacinth macaw is the world's largest parrot. The Hyacinth macaw is the largest and perhaps the most stunning parrot. It is endemic to Brazil, Bolivia and Paraguay. They can reach lengths of 3.3 ft and weigh up to 3.7 lb. The birds have blue feathers, but in some cases, the neck feathers tend to be slightly grayish in color. Their habitats have been destroyed, and a large number are kept as pets and have therefore been declared vulnerable by IUCN Red List. 5. Palm cockatoo - largest cockatoo The palm cockatoo is the world's largest cockatoo species. The Palm cockatoo is also referred to as the great Black or Goliath Cockatoo and is the largest cockatoo. It is native to the Aru Islands, Cape York Peninsula, and New Guinea. It has red cheeks and a large black beak. It is known to reach a length of about 24 inches and can weigh as much as 2.65 lb. 4. Emperor penguin - largest penguin The emperor penguin is the world's largest penguin species. The emperor penguin is the heaviest and the largest of the penguin species. They inhabit the Antarctic where they are also native. They can reach heights of 48 in and can weigh up to 99 lb. They have developed physiological adaptations including cooperative behaviors such as swarming in one place to survive the harsh temperature which can drop to -76F. 3. Eurasian eagle-owl - most massive owl A Eurasian eagle-owl in flight. The Eurasian eagle-owl is the largest owl and the most widely distributed eagle-owl. It is mostly found in Eurasia and is referred to as the European eagle-owl in Europe. The females are larger than the males and can grow to 30 inches and a wingspan of 6 ft 2 inches. They are known to fly fast and strong with shallow wing beats. 2. Resplendent quetzal - largest trogon The resplendent quetzal is the largest bird of the trogon species. The resplendent quetzal is the largest bird of the trogon species. It is a beautiful bird that inhabits Central Americas tropical forests. Males have long trains unlike the female but have similar colors. Males can grow up to 26 inches including the tail and weigh up to 7.4 oz. The Resplendent Quetzal is the national flag of Guatemala. 1. Gyrfalcon - largest falcon The gyrfalcon, the world's largest falcon species. The Gyrfalcon is the worlds largest falcon. It is known to be the apex bird of prey in the Arctic. It moves at great speeds, chasing down its prey to exhaustion before using its talons to hold its prey and pin it to the ground. Males can grow to 24 inches long and weigh up to 2.976 lb. Midsummer, also known as St John's Day, is celebrated in Sweden. Midsummer is mainly centered on the summer solstice and Midsummer's Eve falls on a Friday between June 19th and June 25th. Northern European celebrations might also choose to accompany the actual date when the summer solstice takes place. However, the precise dates for Midsummer vary depending on culture. Midsummer is also known as Ivan Kupala Day, Summer Solstice, and Adonia among others. Midsummer celebrations involve communities coming together, feasting, festivals, singing, Maypole dancing, and lighting bonfires. Background of Midsummer In Europe, celebrations, holidays, and traditions related to Midsummer are of pre-Christianity origin. These celebrations are quite important to the northern European countries of Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Norway. However, Midsummer celebrations are also strongly observed in Germany, Poland, Netherlands, Belarus, Russia, Ireland, and other parts of the Southern hemisphere, the UK, and the US. The History of Midsummer Midsummer's Eve celebrations originated from the ancient times as a festival for the summer solstice. During the festival, bonfires were lit up because it was believed to wade off the evil spirits that were roaming around as the sun started turning southward. Later on, it was believed that the witches would hold their meetings during this time together with other supernatural beings. Since the Neolithic times, the solstice has managed to remain a memorable moment of the year's annual cycle. In Sweden, Midsummers Eve is regarded as the country's most important festival of the year similar to Christmas Eve, New Year's Eve, and Walpurgis Night. The same is also observed in Latvia, Estonia, and Finland. Ancient Romans held a similar event on June 20th in honor of the god Summanus. Sweden's Celebration of the Festival In Sweden, Midsummer is celebrated by families and the community as a whole. Midsummer falls on a Saturday anywhere between June 20th and June 26th. However, the festival was traditionally observed on June 24th. Currently, the Swedish have the actual celebration on Midsummer's Eve. Due to its popularity, the event has earned a holiday status in the country. Midsummer Tradition Placing greenery over barns and houses is an old tradition that has been observed from antiquity until today. However, most people do not take this old tradition seriously. Decorating with greens is believed to bring about good fortune and health amongst the people and their livestock. The act of decorating with greens was known as att Maja translated to English as to may.' The word may be the origin of the term majstang, Maja was originally derived from the month of May. However, other academics claim that the term originated from German merchants who hoisted the maypole in June since the Swedish climate was not favorable enough for them to find any flowers and vegetation during the month of May, hence the name maypole. At present, maypole is most commonly referred to as a midsommarstang which translates to midsummer pole in English. However, during earlier times, greens were wrapped into small sized spires and erected up pre-dating the maypole tradition. It was believed to have originated from the Middle Ages meaning, and the German merchants have little or no influence regarding Midsummer. The Importance of Midsummer in Sweden In Sweden, Midsummer is such an important festival that the country is even considering making Midsummer Eve the National Day of Sweden instead of June 6th. Midsummer may also be referred to as St. Hans Day. The Swedish people take pride and joy celebrating Midsummer. Apple Inc. soared to a record after giving a revenue forecast that highlighted resilient demand for the iPhone ahead of the launch of its new models and the growing significance of the companys supporting businesses. New iPhones typically go on sale in mid- to late September, which produces a few weeks of revenue that are included in the companys fiscal fourth-quarter results. Some analysts had reduced their estimates on concern the new high-end iPhone may be delayed, but Apples projections on Tuesday and increasing sales of other products and services calmed those fears. Revenue will be USD49 billion to $52 billion in the three months through September, the Cupertino, California-based company said in a statement. Analysts had predicted $49.1 billion. The stock jumped as much as 6.5 percent, the most since February, to $159.75 in New York yesterday, valuing the company at almost $828 billion. The company sold just more than 41 million iPhones in the quarter ended July 1, a 1.6 percent increase from a year earlier and generally in line with analysts estimates. Fiscal third-quarter revenue rose 7.2 percent to $45.4 billion compared with the average projection of $44.9 billion. Every product category grew, driven by services such as the App Store. Apple even sold 15 percent more iPads, a product that seemed out of fashion not that long ago. There is some relief from the fear of a significant pause before the 10th anniversary iPhone refresh, said Michael Obuchowski, chief investment officer at Merlin Capital LLC in Boston, which holds Apple stock. Im beginning to think it wont matter if the new iPhones arent that exciting. Apple is likely to introduce three new handsets this year: a revamped top model, known for now as the iPhone 8, and upgrades to the existing iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus, people familiar with the plans have told Bloomberg News. The high-end iPhone will include an organic light-emitting diode screen, and inadequate OLED supplies mean that it will not be as readily available as the cheaper handsets at launch, the people said. Cook said reporting about the new versions of the iPhone has created a pause in consumer buying that is likely larger than previously. Apples stock has soared on expectations that the new high-end smartphone, which will also include a front-facing three-dimensional sensor to enable facial recognition, will spur a resurgence in demand that will carry into the holiday quarter and beyond. Sales growth of the companys flagship product has slowed over the past two years as the market has become increasingly saturated and competitors have offered cheaper products with similar capabilities. Slowing smartphone sales have prompted Apple to invest more heavily in developing new technologies. Its working on smart glasses, an autonomous driving system, improved health and fitness offerings, and its own semiconductor technology. Research and development spending jumped 15 percent to $2.9 billion in the most recent quarter. Apple unveiled the early fruits of its spending on augmented reality technology in June, releasing a set of tools which let developers build AR software for the iPhone and iPad when the next operating system for those devices is rolled out later this year. Cook has over the past 18 months repeatedly said how excited he is about the prospects for AR. Cook is preparing to release Apples first new hardware category since 2015. The HomePod, the smart speaker that will go on sale in December, is the companys response to Amazon.com Inc.s Echo and Alphabet Inc.s Google Home speakers. The company is hoping that advanced acoustic capabilities will encourage consumers to pay $349 for the device almost three times as much as the Google Home. The speaker will also serve as a bulwark in users homes to deliver more revenue from services. The App Store continued to be a major driver of the performance and we couldnt be happier with how the services business is growing, Cook said. Sales in Greater China, which includes Hong Kong and Taiwan as well as the mainland, fell 9.5 percent from a year earlier to $8 billion. The biggest decline came in Hong Kong. Excluding currency effects, sales on the mainland were unchanged, Cook said in an interview. The results were very encouraging, he said. We were down to having an issue solely in Hong Kong. Alex Webb, Bloomberg What Is the Capital of Louisiana? Located in the southern part of the United States of America, Louisiana State is the 31st largest state in the US in terms of land area. Furthermore, it is ranked the 25th most populated states in America. The state is bordered by the state of Arkansas to the north, Texas to the west, Mississippi to the east, and the Gulf of Mexico to its south. Louisiana is the only state in which the political system is broken up into parishes, rather than counties. According to size, Plaquemines Parish is the largest, whereas East Baton Rogue Parish is the most populated. Most Louisiana residents speak English, but Vietnamese, French and Spanish languages are also spoken. The current governor is John Bel Edwards and the lieutenant governor is Billy Nungesser. The capital of Louisiana State is Baton Rouge. Description of Baton Rogue The name Baton Rogue is a French word referring to a red stick. Baton Rogue is the parish seat of East Baton Rogue Parish. It is the second largest city in Louisiana, after New Orleans. In 2015, it had a population of 228,590 people. As the capital city, Baton Rogue is the political hub of the state of Louisiana. In addition, it has numerous neighborhoods in and out of the city, including Oak Hills, Old Jefferson, and North Gate. History of Baton Rogue Human habitation in Baton Rogue can be traced to 12,000-6,500 BC. The early Muskogean people were the first inhabitants to settle in Baton Rogue. They are believed to have been the bearers of the Mississippi culture. The ancient societies practised hunting and gathering, as evidenced by earth mounds found by archaeologists. In 1699, French explorers were on an expedition along the Mississippi River and came across Baton Rogue. They saw a red pole that separated hunting grounds for the two ethnic groups, namely the Houma and Bayogoula. This was the background upon which Baton Rogue received its name. Europeans settled Baton Rogue in 1721. The first European settlers were French colonists. During those early days, Baton Rogue grew economically and in size due to the steamboat trade and transportation. In 1817, Baton Rogue was incorporated and 29 years later Baton Rogue replaced New Orleans as the state capital of Louisiana. The construction of the capital building of Louisiana began in 1847. It was designed by James Dakin using Neo-Gothic architecture. Economy of Baton Rogue Baton Rogue is a city characterized by a robust economy. This is largely attributed to the petroleum and manufacturing industries. For instance, the Baton Rogue Refinery is the 4th largest refinery in the United States. Baton Rogue is also famous for its ever growing film industry. In 2013, the film industry generated $90 million in revenue for the economy of Louisiana. The strength of the economy helps to explain CNNs ranking of Baton Rogue as the city best suited to start a business in the United States in 2009. Baton Rogue is a city full of diversity due to the different cultures and rich history that unifies its citizens. Air Zimbabwe is Zimbabwe's national carrier, and has its hub at Harare International Airport. The airline's headquarters are based on the property of Harare International Airport. The airline previously operated a network in the Southern African region, which also linked to London-Gatwick and Asia. Financial difficulties prompted Air Zimbabwe to discontinue services in February 2012, although some local and regional services have since resumed. History The history of Air Zimbabwe goes back to 1967, when Air Rhodesia Corporation began operating. Air Zimbabwe was inaugurated in a newly independent Zimbabwe in 1980, taking over from Air Rhodesia. The airline registered a profit of 220,000 in June 1980 as the fiscal year ended. The carrier subsequently expanded its international and regional routes, and in 1982 it accommodated the freighter company Affretair. By March 1985, the airline boasted a fleet of seven Viscount 700s, as well as five Boeing 707-320Bs, and an employee pool of 1,443. The airline was riddled with financial difficulties in 2004, which saw its passenger numbers drop from one million in 1999 to 23,000 in 2005. Air Zimbabwe was further suspended from the international financial and booking system of IATA in 2011 due to outstanding debts. Some of the airline's aircraft were impounded in late December 2011, following its inability to settle its debts. Ownership and Management Since March 2012, Air Zimbabwe has been operating under Air Zimbabwe Private Limited, which is entirely owned by the nation's government. However, there have been plans to privatize Air Zimbabwe to some level. Chipo Dyanda took office as the airline's chairwoman in July 2017. The appointment of Simba Chokore as the Chief Operating Officer in 2016 elicited controversy because he is the Zimbabwean president's son-in-law. Destinations The increase of the country's economic ties with China facilitated the launch of the Harare-Beijing service in November 2004. In 2009, the airline included Kuala Lumpur in its network. British Airways stopped flying the Harare-London route in 2007, leaving Air Zimbabwe to profit from one of its most lucrative services. From April 1, 2011, a capacity boost was implemented on the Harare-London-Gatwick route. In 2011 and 2012, the airline temporarily suspended its flights to several destinations including Johannesburg and London. The airline flies locally to Kariba, Victoria Falls, and Bulawayo, and regionally to Lusaka, Johannesburg, and Dar es Salaam. Fleet Air Zimbabwe purchased two Viscount 800s planes in the early 1980s from Dan-Air as replacements for the Viscount 700s used by Air Rhodesia. The two aircraft constituted the airline's fleet until 1989. The carrier began operations with five Boeing 707s, and a Boeing 737-200 was acquired in 1985. The first Boeing 767-200 ER aircraft was inaugurated in late 1989. Air Zimbabwe leased two MA-60 turboprops from China, while a third was donated in 2006. An Airbus A320 was added to the fleet in 2013. The airline's current fleet includes one Xian MA60, two Boeing 767s, one Airbus A320-200, and two Boeing 737s. Business Trends The airline has been reporting losses for several years and has also had irregular services. There has been no complete reporting of its annual financial standing despite the airline being government owned. The carrier's audited accounts were tabled last in 2008. The West African nation of Togo is one of the smallest countries in Africa. The country came under French colonial rule after World War I. French authorities had control over the countrys foreign relations, defense, and finances during the colonial period. Togo adopted the French system of governance, which has three branches of government. On April 27, 1960, Togo became an independent state. The country retained the French structure of governance and adopted its first constitution in 1961. Since Togo attained independence from France, the country has suffered political instability as well as unreliable elections. Currently, the country has a presidential system of government that is comprised of three independent branches, namely the executive, the legislative, and the judicial. Executive Branch of Government Togos executive branch of government is composed of the president, prime minister, and Council of Ministers. The president is elected by eligible citizens of Togo every five years. However, the past elections have not been credible, and as a result, the countrys democracy has been compromised. The president is the chief commander of the armed forces in Togo. Additionally, the president has the power to dissolve the countrys parliament. Togos president appoints the prime minister, who serves for five years. The prime minister heads the government of Togo. Members of the Council of Ministers are nominated by Togos prime minister and appointed into office by the president. Legislative Branch of Government The nation of Togo has a unicameral system of parliament, whereby all legislation is done in one legislative chamber, also referred to as the national assembly. The national assembly is comprised of 81 members who are elected as representatives of the 81 constituencies in the country. Members of the national assembly are elected into office every five years. Their primary role is to debate laws, approve the budget and represent their constituencies. Although Togo is a multiparty state, only one party dominates the nation's politics. The opposition parties are suppressed and they lack the freedom of expression. Judicial Branch of Government Togos judicial system is heavily borrowed from the French, who were their colonial masters. Additionally, the laws are a mix of French laws and Togolese customary laws. The highest courts in Togo are the supreme court and the constitutional court. The supreme court is headed by the courts president, who is appointed by Togos president. The court is divided into the criminal chamber and the administrative chamber. Togos constitutional court is comprised of nine judges who are nominated by the National Assembly of Togo. The judges serve for life. Subordinate courts in Togo include the sessions courts, appeal court, court of state security, and the military tribunal. Administrative Divisions in Togo Togo has five main administrative divisions: Savanes, Kara, Centrale, Plateaux, and Maritime. The five administrative units are further sub-divided into 30 prefectures. The prefectures are each led by an appointed prefect. The work of the prefect is limited to administrative duties only. The Togolese system of governance is highly centralized. As a result, all the governance and development matters are handled by the central government. A young man wanted to make a point about racism in the United States, but his plan backfired when he was exposed for a liar by police. 20-year-old Khalil Cavil of Texas was working at the Saltgrass Steak House in Odessa when he claimed he was discriminated against because of his Muslim name. Cavil took JUNEAU, Alaska (AP) A new cruise ship is set for an eight-day expedition exploring Alaska. On Saturday, Lindblad Expeditions-National Geographic launched the Quest its first ever-new build from Juneau. The ship left from Anacortes, Washington, for a shake-out cruise to Alaska, arriving in Juneau on Friday. Its first passengers boarded at 5:30 p.m. Saturday, the Juneau Empire reported. The 100-passenger vessel originally was expected to debut last Wednesday. But the line scrubbed that cruise, citing problems with a launch attempt. A little over a month ago, the vessel was damaged as it... The Macau Cultural Center (CCM) will be holding an interactive childrens dance performance titled Puzzle from today to Sunday. The show is for children aged one to four years old. Puzzle was nominated as the best childrens performance by Lithuanias Ministry of Culture. The choreographer of the performance, Birute Baneviciute, along with two dancers, Mantas Stabacinska and Marius Pinigis, spoke with the media yesterday at a press conference. Baneviciute explained that the show incorporates four main elements namely movement, sound, color and shape. Our aim is to create space for children to enjoy movement, to enjoy the world through cognition and movement. The four elements are the basis of this show where we play with them through a puzzle, said Baneviciute. Dancers in the performance mime the movements of children for instance, their crawling, running or clapping. They interact with the children in this manner, incorporating brightly colored geometric shapes for the children to see and touch. Dancers move together with the children. We really meet children, and have contact with every child, said Baneviciute. Its a place where children can start exploring, and start creating, at first by looking, but then we also give them space and time to really go in physically to start exploring by moving. Having done the show for 10 years, Baneviciute commented that childrens reactions to the performance have generally remained the same. Usually, children start moving. During the performance, we have moments of interaction so they are not sitting and watching but also touching and bouncing with the shapes. She added that the performance is a great chance for families to get together. Baneviciute led a workshop for the dance performance yesterday, with 20 children in attendance. Baneviciute and her team are part of Dansema Dance Theatre. Founded in 2007, Dansema Dance Theatre is the first professional dance theatre in Lithuania. The company creates performances for young audiences and has performed all over the world in countries such as the Netherlands, Palestine and Ukraine. The team has also performed in cities in China including Beijing, Shanghai and most recently, Hong Kong. There will be six shows from today untill Sunday, each lasting approximately 45 minutes. The Electoral Affairs Commission for the Legislative Assembly Election (CAEAL) published the definitive version of the list of accepted candidate teams to the September 17 direct and indirect elections yesterday. Following the publication of the list of accepted teams, CAEAL will conduct a draw today to determine the order in which candidate teams will appear on the ballot paper. The definitive version of the list confirms that a total of 25 teams, with an aggregate of 192 candidates, will contest the direct election for the Legislative Assembly. Six teams, with a total of 15 candidates, will contest the indirect election. Four of the five functional constituencies for the indirect election have only one ticket each running for election. Two teams will contest the seats in the professional sector constituency. From yesterday, accepted candidate teams will not be permitted to conduct promotional activities until the official campaign period begins on September 2. The official campaign period runs until September 15. The Commission issued its second election guideline, stressing that any violation of the guideline may amount to a criminal offence. According to a statement issued yesterday by the CAEAL, the guideline requires the removal or deletion of any message or information displayed in any public area and online platform that aims to draw public attention to a particular candidate or candidates; as well as any message or information aimed at encouraging voters in an explicit or implicit way to vote or not vote for a particular candidate or candidates. The guideline stipulates that trustees and candidates of each ticket, as well as trustees of nomination committees, must remove or delete any promotional material on or before midnight of August 2. The Electoral Affairs Commission and the Commission Against Corruption held a meeting on Tuesday to explain the guideline to ticket trustees, candidates and trustees of nomination committees. A similar session will be held on Friday. In addition, the CAEAL also held a meeting on Tuesday with representatives of local media outlets reporting in Chinese, English and Portuguese. According to the statement, the session aimed to ensure a fair and objective news coverage of the election process. As Wall Street celebrated a record high yesterday and the rich saw their money stack even higher, tens of thousands of people in need of a job lined up at Amazon Jobs Day fair sites across the United States. Lauded as one of the largest hiring events in US history, Amazon is projected to hire on some 50,000 people to its workforce. The workers who lined up constituted a cross-section of the working class, young and old, black and white, native-born and immigrant. Their comments and views reflected the impact of the social crisis in the United Statesthe lack of full-time work and medical coverage, stagnating wages, the growth of poverty, student loan debt and other social problems. There were also expressions of growing radicalization, which has been generated by immense levels of inequality, endless wars and a corporate-controlled political system, which is oblivious to the concerns of working-class people. For those hired, grueling working conditions and a yearly net pay of $15,000 to $25,000 per year awaits them. As one Kenosha, Wisconsin Amazon worker put it, A lot of people like myself are very frustrated with working here. Management is trying to hide the truth from the applicants. But theyll see soon enough once they start. She added management had covered up employee communications boards where workers had written down suggestions and complaints for applicants touring the facility. Applicants in Illinois, Wisconsin, New Jersey, New York and Ohio spoke with reporters from the World Socialist Web Site and International Amazon Workers Voice. Over the next several days the WSWS will post additional comments from workers at these and other locations. Kenosha, Wisconsin Austin, who grew up in the Kenosha, Wisconsin area, just south of Milwaukee, told reporters the area declined dramatically after the Chrysler auto factory closed in the 1980s. Unlike at Amazon, the jobs there paid relatively well and provided good benefits. He said, The fact that Amazon is constantly having job fairs in the area and pretty much all across the country isnt very reassuring. It means they have a high turn-around. People are coming and leaving. Romeoville, Illinois Joe, a 22-year-old, came looking for a full-time job with benefits. When asked why he was at the job fair, he said, Trying to get out of my parents house. He was laid off from a call center a few weeks ago and worked in warehouses before that. Reporters met friends Tahaj and Angel. We just graduated high school and are looking to start our careers, said Angel. A lot of our friends are working part-time jobs, sometimes two or three. Wed really like to get something full time. Theres been a lot of cuts at the schools. Weve got 20-30 kids in each class and its all about memorizing for the standardized tests. Tahaj, her friend, said, In the election I liked Sanders the best but I dont really trust him. People only looked to Hillary as a last resort. Eric, from Peoria, Illinois, said he was at the job fair looking to get a better job, preferably full-time with benefits. He currently works full-time as a cook. When asked about Caterpillar moving its headquarters from Peoria, he said people were not too happy about that and couldnt find jobs. I watched a lot of people lose a lot of stuff, people who worked at Caterpillar. Houses, cars, families broke up over it. When asked about the political situation and the 2016 election, he simply said, I think its a mess. Dylan, who is about to be a father, recently moved from Charleston, Illinois, a small town hit hard by the opioid epidemic. He said there are very few jobs in Charleston. Dylan worked in the food industry, which has a cap of about $11 per hour, and is currently working as a roofer part-time without any benefits. Somethings got to give. He currently gets health care from the state, which covers minor expenses, but is worried about what would happen in a health emergency: Im sure if I had some kind of heart problem, Id be screwed. When asked about the election, he said, It was a lose-lose. Which snake do you want in the office? He added, Im hoping the guy [Trump] doesnt serve his full term. Christian told reporters, Ive had the same job since I was 16. Its part-time and after six years I really want something better. No one my age has good work. Its either full-time at minimum wage or piecing together part-time jobs. I heard Amazon has full-time positions with good benefits and thats why I came. Out of anyone in the election I would have voted for Bernie Sanders. Our current administration is just putting a lot of money in politicians pockets. Theyre representing wealthy corporations and not the people. Ive read a lot about revolutions and if you ignore the lower class long enough theyll rise up. If this situation keeps going there will be a revolution. Were a country that was founded on a revolution. Its been almost 250 years with the same constitution and thats a good run but things have changed. I think the system that constitution made is good but the people running it are corrupt. A lot of people look at immigration the wrong way. We all descend from immigrants at some point. Its a very scared way of thinking to just try and kick people out. It doesnt matter what your skin color is or where youre from. Etna, Ohio Charman, another applicant, told reporters, I dont think this is the best time to be alive especially with my situation. Im an immigrant from the Dominican Republic. Its not an easy step up, me and my family are starting from nothing trying to go somewhere, hopefully university. If I fail it goes to the next person to try and help. Another applicant, Malik, came looking for full-time work with benefits, and was called in for the job fair. He was a seasonal temporary worker for Amazon for a month around Christmas. As a temp, he had no benefits and made less than $11 an hour. When asked how much the temp agency took from his work, he said he didnt know. Thats why I wasnt too mad about not working for them. When he was a temp, he worked eight-hour shifts with mandatory overtime. Hes applying for a job with ten-hour shifts. Tina, who works at a Bob Evans restaurant, said that life for workers is really different from when she was younger. Poverty today is horrible, she said. I didnt grow up with a silver spoon in my mouth but today its just awful. Jeff Bezoss pay ($23,000 per minute) irritates me. I make $4.08 an hour and thats not enough. Its not like it was in my day. Its a lot less safe, there are less jobs now, and you used to be able to get a job with regular paychecks and benefits. Today Ive worked jobs that have withheld six weeks of pay and Im wondering where my money is! Robbinsville, New Jersey Dweekan said, I used to work at Amazon, and it was good. But then they kept switching managers and it was hard to keep track of the rules. I was an ambassador, but the new managers took away that title. Then I wound up getting hurt at work. I went to the medical center and they sent me to some doctors, but then human resources told me I lost my job because I had already used up all my sick days. They didnt pay the bills or pay me for medical leave like they were supposed to. Buffalo, New York Marty, a former warehouse worker with 28 years of experience, said of the employment situation in Buffalo, Jobs are bad here and its definitely tough for older workers to find jobs. They were essentially offering only part-time work with no benefits and the chance to maybe advance. He also said, Im not here to get rich. I just want a decent job. Everyone should have one. British Columbia Premier John Horgan, whose New Democrats (NDP) officially took power in a Green Party-backed minority government July 18, pledged to cooperate closely with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau during their first meeting last week. The friendly meeting underscores that BCs NDP government is fully on board with the Liberals and corporate Canadas agenda of using hard power to assert Canadian imperialisms interests on the world stage and intensifying the assault on the working class at home. At a joint press conference in Ottawa, Trudeau, whose government announced a 70 percent hike in military spending in June, declared that he and Horgan had a lot in common and were both progressive politicians. The pair pledged to cooperate on dealing with the ongoing wildfires in BC and the opioid crisis, which is expected to claim 1,400 lives in BC just this year. Horgans NDP finished two seats behind the BC Liberals in Mays provincial election, but with the support of the three Green MLAs was able to oust the 16-year-old BC Liberal regime. Horgans public embrace of Trudeau underscores that the new NDP government will make little more than cosmetic changes to the right-wing policies of its Liberal predecessor. Speaking of Trudeau, who has expanded Canadas role in US military-strategic offensives around the world, slashed health care spending, kept corporate taxes at a record lows, and launched a privatization drive, Horgan said, We often feel isolated on the other side of the Rocky Mountains, but we have an ally in the Prime Minister. Horgan has signaled his commitment to assist Trudeau in defending the interests of Canadian big business in the upcoming North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) renegotiation, which is set to begin in Washington later this month. Following his Ottawa trip, Horgan flew on to the American capital. There he held talks aimed at resolving the softwood lumber dispute, a long-running trade irritant between the US and Canada, which, as a result of the original 1988 Canada-US Free Trade Agreement, is outside NAFTAs purview. Horgan stressed the importance of resolving the lumber dispute prior to the opening of the NAFTA talks, saying Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland needs the freedom to champion Canadian interests on the wider issues related to NAFTA. Horgan also fully endorsed Trudeaus statement that any renegotiated NAFTA deal must include a dispute resolution mechanism, a key demand of Canadian big business to defend their interests against American competitors. The BC Liberal government oversaw a massive transfer of wealth to the richest sections of the provinces population through tax handouts and savage social spending cuts. In a transparent appeal for big business support, Horgan promoted the NDPs fiscal responsibility during the election campaign by accepting as the basis of his partys platform the same reactionary, three-year fiscal framework on which Liberal Premier Christy Clark based her most recent budget. Many of the NDPs headline promises, including the introduction of a $15 an hour minimum wage and the building of 114,000 low-cost housing units, did not even survive the negotiations with the Greens, who repeatedly denounced the NDP for its lavish spending promises during the campaign. Hoping to cover over the right-wing character of the incoming BC government, Horgans swearing-in as premier July 18 was accompanied by a nauseating display of progressive rhetoric that appeared to have been lifted straight from the Trudeau Liberals 2015 playbook. The BC NDP proudly unveiled a gender-balanced cabinet, and also made much of the naming of BCs first-ever indigenous ministeras if this will do anything substantive for the provinces impoverished First Nations population. After just a few days in power, Horgan began to remove any obstacle to close cooperation with the Trudeau government by softening the NDPs stance on the expansion of the Kinder Morgan pipeline, to which Trudeau gave the go-ahead last fall. During the election campaign, Horgan sought to capitalize on widespread popular opposition to the project by vowing to use every tool available to block it. However, in his mandate letter to Environment Minister George Heyman, Horgan instructed him merely to use every tool to defend BCs interests, not block the pipeline project. Two days later, Attorney General David Eby acknowledged the hollow character of the NDPs purported opposition to the project, stating in a radio interview that the provincial government will not refuse permits for the construction of the pipeline for fear of lawsuits. Given the federal governments endorsement of the project, denial of the permits is the main, if not only, legal avenue through which the province can block it. In neighbouring Alberta, the NDP government led by Rachel Notley, speaking on behalf of its paymasters in the provinces big oil corporations, has vowed to work with Trudeaus Liberals to ram through the pipeline project so as to secure new markets for the provinces tar-sands oil and boost the profits of the Canadian corporate elite. Both Trudeaus Liberals and Horgans NDP enjoy close ties to the trade union bureaucracy, which played a crucial role in promoting both parties. Unions like Unifor and the United Steelworkers invested millions of dollars in 2015 in an Anybody but Conservative ad campaign and continue to work closely with the Liberal government, with Unifor President Jerry Dias and Canadian Labour Congress President Hassan Yussuff boasting about their access to government ministers. Yesterday, Foreign Minister Freeland appointed Yussuff to a 13-member NAFTA negotiation advisory council. The BC Federation of Labour (BCFL), which isolated and shut down a series of militant strikes over the last 16 years that threatened to spark a broader working-class upsurge, deployed substantial resources to elect the NDP. After attending the swearing-in ceremony of Horgan and his cabinet, BCFL President Irene Lanzinger proclaimed the beginning of a new era in which BCs government will act to deal with the real issues facing working people. Canadas pseudo-left and trade union bureaucracy are lending their services to provide the Horgan government with some much-needed left credentials. The Hospital Employees Union, which represents nurses and other health care workers and is due to start bargaining with the government for a new contract next year, praised Horgans appointment of two health ministers, describing them as BCs health dream team. The International Socialists, the Canadian co-thinkers of the US International Socialist Organization, participated unreservedly in the celebrations that it claimed took place with the NDPs coming to office, before going on to urge people to organize in our workplaces, our schools and our communities to pressure the NDP government. To a considerable extent, the enthusiasm of these organizations is due to the fact that the NDPs coming to office now opens up opportunities for them to work with the state and big business, including by placing some of their leading figures in government. Judy Darcy, who received the newly created portfolio of minister for mental health and addiction, was a leader of the Maoist Workers Communist Party of Canada in the late 1970s before going on to become a president of the Canadian Union of Public Employees. George Heyman led the BC Government Employees Union (BCGEU) and later became executive director of the provincial branch of the Sierra Club. He has close ties to environmental activist groups. Horgans cabinet also includes NDP stalwarts like Carol James and Adrian Dix, who served in the Glen Clark NDP government in the 1990s, which imposed a series of austerity budgets and wage freezes. Horgans closest adviser and chief of staff, Jeff Meggs, is a former local leader of the Communist Party of Canada. After quitting the Stalinists and serving as an aide in Glen Clarks government, he played a leading role in merging the CPC-influenced Coalition of Progressive Electors with right-wing political forces to form Vision Vancouver, the party led by Mayor Gregor Robertson that currently controls Vancouver City Council. Responding to a public outpouring of fear over the Trump administrations deportation program, Democratic Congressman Juan Vargas of Californias 51st District hosted an Immigration Town Hall meeting in San Diego last month titled Know Your Rights. The nearly 100 attendees at the July 10 event, hosted in Californias southernmost district which covers the states 137-mile border with Mexico and has a nearly 70 percent Hispanic population, expected to find information on how to protect themselves from the specter of ICE arrests. However, the Town Hall proved to be little more than a platform for the Democrats to publically shed crocodile tears while offering little more than advice on how to streamline their arrest and deportation hearing proceedings. The event consisted of presentations by representatives from the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), the American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA), US Immigration and Customs Services (USICS), as well as Vargas and former California State Assemblyman Nathan Fletcher. Vargas introduced the panel and feigned sympathy for the communitys concerns by channeling anger towards the Trump administration and away from the Democratic Party which deported nearly 3 million immigrants during the tenure of former President Barack Obama, including busloads of unaccompanied youth, mothers and children who fled violence and gang extortion in Central America. Nathan Fletcher, the State Assemblyman, ex-mayoral candidate, and husband to Democratic State Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez, began with an appeal for the deported immigrant veteran advocacy group he leads, Honorably Discharged, Dishonorably Deported. His self-serving presentation sought to whip up outrage over the treatment of deported veterans as a means of boosting his bid for San Diego County Supervisor in 2018. Avoiding the criminal nature of Washingtons wars abroad, Fletcher deployed nationalist chauvinism and patriotism in defense of deported veterans. A former Marine deployed in the Sunni triangle of Iraq in 2004, Fletchers quick rise within the Democratic Party establishment has been based on his status as a war veteran, as well as his 2010 sponsorship of Chelseas Law, which forced life without parole and harsher punishments on those convicted of violent sexual assault. Vargas and Fletcher volleyed praises throughout the meeting, each posing as a champion of immigrants and veterans. They promoted the spineless House Bill 2761, known as Healthcare Opportunities for Patriots in Exile (HOPE) Act of 2017, which would allow deported veterans to enter the US to obtain health services, but would force them to return to their home country afterward. The explanation that veterans would have to return to their country of deportation rendered a laugh of spite from many within the crowd. The irony behind Vargass proposal is that the VA is shuttering many health facilities, causing untold hardship for veterans, both immigrant and nonimmigrant alike. This pathetic compromise with the Trump administration sums up the reactionary character of the Democratic Party, including its Latino representatives who cynically posture as defenders of immigrants, as well as the lawyers and non-profit organizations that operate within the orbit of the Democratic Party. The meeting continued with the eponymous presentation Know Your Rights by ACLU representative Esmeralda Flores. Reviewing the legal basis on which immigrants can supposedly exercise their rights to protect themselves from ICE agents, Flores made clear there was no recourse beyond silent submission. Families can deny ICE agents entry into their homes if they come without a warrant. However, Flores noted that ICE agents often disregard this requirement and proceed to intrude upon immigrant homes anyway and are known to detain anyone they find in the home who is unable to prove their legal status. Ominously, Flores warned in these situations it is best to remain silent but one must verbally state they are practicing that right, or else their silence will be taken for a lack of cooperation, which will escalate the situation. Attorney Tammy Lin of the American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA) presented an overview of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program. Implemented in 2012 by Obama, the program allows select immigrants who entered the US illegally as minors to receive a renewable two-year period of deferred action from deportation and eligibility for a work permit after thorough screening and background checks. Lin noted that since Trumps inauguration, many are wondering whether or not to apply for DACA as it would essentially hand over to the government the whereabouts and personal information of an undocumented person. DACA has already accumulated information on 800,000 undocumented immigrants. What weve kind of agreed upon in the immigration attorney community is if you already have DACA, renew it Should you apply if you dont have it? Thats something you really need to talk with your family about. There are a lot of benefits to it. In February, the first DREAMer (DACA enrollee), Juan Manuel Montes, was deported with the backing of former Homeland Security Secretary Gen. John Kelly despite Montes supposed protection under the Obama-era program. Attorney Matt Holt, also of AILA, advised attendees to prepare for the legal bureaucratic hurdles leading to their eventual deportation. Im here to make sure people aren't wrongfully removed from this country, he said, stressing that individuals should secure an established attorney as soon as possible, while warning that there are lawyers who often scam immigrants, either knowingly or due to unfamiliarity with immigration law. Holt explained that since Trump took office there had been an increased mobilization of ICE agents throughout the country. ICE is everywhere, he said. Immigration officials are being posted outside schools, grocery markets, and homes to carry out dated arrest warrants for immigrants, with growing attention to those without a criminal conviction. The town hall did nothing quell community concerns and amounted to defeated advice on how to ensure a smooth deportation. The consensus from the panel was that families prepare an emergency plan for the day that ICE decides to arrive at their home, noting that nearly 180 immigrant parents have been deported every day since January. They were encouraged to secure passports for their US-born children so that if they are taken away they will be able to travel to see their parents sooner. A Question and Answer session followed when questions were submitted to the speakers by notecard which could be filtered out. Most of the questions selected pertained to technical or procedural questions regarding DACA and naturalization. WSWS reporters submitted a question on Obamas legacy of deporting nearly three million immigrants to which Vargas responded, I was disappointed. This received shouts from several audience members who were upset with the lackluster answer, with one individual condemning the Democratic Partys alliance with Wall Street and for-profit immigration detention centers. WSWS reporters spoke with a number of attendees who all agreed that the meeting was disappointing and offered no challenge to mass deportations. Brian, a young man who had driven over an hour to attend the meeting denounced former President Obamas legacy of mass deportations and noted that the root problem was the control of finance capital over the political system concluding that, immigrants have no friends with the Democrats. The Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) will open its national convention today in Chicago. Despite the populist and left-sounding rhetoric that will be on display in the various speeches, roundtables, workshops and resolutions, the DSA is a pro-capitalist organization steeped in a tradition of anti-communism and bitterly opposed to the political independence of the working class. The meeting is taking place as the various ostensibly left organizations that operate in and around the Democratic Party attempt to grapple with the deep disgust with that big business party among workers and young people, which was strikingly revealed in the Democrats 2016 election debacle. The political radicalization and growth of anti-capitalist sentiment found an initial expression during the Democratic Party primary contest in mass support for the self-described socialist Senator Bernie Sanders, who claimed to be leading a political revolution while actually working to channel opposition back behind the Democrats and their eventual nominee, Hillary Clinton. Clinton ran a pro-war campaign and evinced indifference to the questions of poverty and social inequality that dominated popular sentiment during the Democratic primary campaign. With Clinton widely despised in the working class as a personification of the corrupt political status quo, her candidacy produced a sharp drop in turnout among traditional Democratic voters and, in economically devastated former industrial states, a shift to Trump, who presented himself as the anti-establishment alternative, by a section of low-income workers who had voted for Obama in 2008 and 2012. Studies have shown that anti-war sentiment in these regions and hostility to Clintons anti-Russia agitation also played a major role. The alienation from the Democrats has only deepened since the election, with the Democratic Party basing its opposition to the new administration not on Trumps attacks on immigrants and democratic rights more broadly, his assault on social programs, or his appointment of fascists and Wall Street billionaires to top White House and cabinet posts, but rather on his reluctance to continue the confrontational policy against Russia initiated under Obama. Approval ratings for the Democrats have actually fallen at a faster rate than for the Republicans, according to a Gallup poll released in May. Nothing is more frightening to the pseudo-left than the discrediting of the Democratic Party, which raises the specter of a break with bourgeois politics by the working class and the formation of a new, socialist working class movement. Organizations and publications such as the International Socialist Organization (ISO), Socialist Alternative and Jacobin are discussing some kind of political regroupment, either within the Democratic Party or nominally independent of it, to achieve their shared goal of shoring up and refurbishing the political credibility of that party and of capitalist politics overall. Toward this end, they continue to promote Sanders, who claims to be leading a political revolution to reform the Democratic Party. Within this reactionary political milieu, the DSAs star is rising. It is seen as an organization that could play a central role in these plans. Thus, the ISO had DSA-aligned Jacobin magazine co-sponsor its annual conference for the first time this summer, with DSA vice-chairman and Jacobin editor-in-chief Bhaskar Sunkara appearing as a featured speaker. Socialist Alternative, which openly functioned as a faction of the Sanders campaign last year, is now prostrating itself before the DSA. It is calling on it to form a new broad-left political formation into which Socialist Alternative would liquidate itself. Socialist Alternative justifies this line by claiming that the DSA has shifted from its anti-communist, social democratic foundations since Occupy Wall Street in 2011 and the entry of the group around Sunkara into the organization. In fact, few pseudo-left organizations, with the possible exception of Socialist Alternative itself, are as closely integrated into and function so openly as a faction of the Democratic Party as the DSA. The DSAs top leadership includes Democratic Party luminaries, among them union bureaucrats such as Dolores Huerta (who supported Clinton over Sanders in the Democratic primaries) and celebrity intellectuals such as academic Cornel West and feminist writer and former CIA collaborator Gloria Steinem. The DSA endorsed Hillary Clinton in the general election in all but name, attempting to camouflage its position by calling for a social movement to defeat Trump in key swing states. After the election, it endorsed Minnesota Congressman Keith Ellison in the contest for the chair of the Democratic National Committee. Through its membership in the Socialist International, the DSA is affiliated with such organizations as the British Labour Party, the French Socialist Party and the German Social Democrats, all of which have carried out savage attacks on the working class and participated in neo-colonial wars in the Middle East and Africa while in government. The DSA of today cannot be separated from its history. The predecessor organization of the DSA, the Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee (DSOC), emerged out of a split within the Socialist Party of America in 1972. The latter organization expelled the American supporters of the Russian Revolution from its ranks in 1919. The founders of the DSOC, Michael Harrington in particular, had entered the Socialist Party more than a decade before 1972 as part of the tendency led by Max Shachtman, who split from the Trotskyist movement in 1940. The Shachtmanites, bending to the pressure of bourgeois public opinion in the wake of the Stalin-Hitler Pact, refused to uphold the defense of the Soviet Union. By 1950, this group was defending American imperialism in the Korean War and by 1961 Shachtman was publicly supporting the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba. Such was Harringtons anti-communist pedigree. By 1972, Shachtman had essentially captured the rump of the nearly moribund Socialist Party. Harrington now criticized his mentor from the left. He drew close to the liberal wing of the anti-communist trade union bureaucracy, the Reutherite officialdom of the United Auto Workers, in particular. From the beginning, DSOCs orientation, in the DSAs own words, was toward building a strong coalition among progressive trade unionists, civil rights and feminist activists and the new politics left-liberals in the McGovern wing of the Democrats. Its fusion in 1982 with an organizational remnant of the 1960s generation of student protesters to form the DSA was a reflection of the latters shift to the right and abandonment of its former radical pretenses, which made the anti-communist foundations of the DSA attractive. The rejection by the DSA of principled politics is such that it does not have a program or platform upon which its political activity is, at least nominally, based. However, a review of the DSAs national strategy document, published last June but re-posted on the DSA website in advance of this weeks convention, demonstrates the anti-communist and nationalist orientation of this middle-class organization. The title of the document, Resistance Rising: Socialist Strategy in the Age of Political Revolution, is itself significant. The use of the term political revolution reflects the DSAs promotion of Bernie Sanders and the illusion that the Democrats can be transformed into a peoples party through popular pressure. Lest there be any doubt on this, the banner linking to the statement on the DSAs website features a photo of a Sanders rally. The DSAs support for the term used by Sanders above all signifies its opposition to social revolution, to a genuine social transformation that would bring the working class to power. Instead, like Sanders, it seeks to purify capitalism. Radical democracy vs. socialism The DSA statement is suffused with identity politics. One sub-heading calls for Building Multiracial, Intentionally Intersectional Coalitions. At several points, the DSA engages in self-flagellation for being dominated by white activists. It promotes the reactionary Democratic Party narrative that Trumps Electoral College victory was the result of the racism of the white working class. It states that appeals to racism and fear will continue to gain traction among economically and socially insecure white voters--particularly men, who face the erosion of traditional gender prominence due to the gains of the feminist movement. From a theoretical standpoint, the most significant element of the DSAs document is its rejection of the Marxist theory of the state as an instrument of class rule, and its substitution in its stead of a nebulous, non-class notion of socialism as radical democracy. [The] DSA believes that the fight for democratic socialism is one and the same as the fight for radical democracy, which we understand as the freedom of all people to determine all aspects of their lives to the greatest extent possible, the document states. Our vision entails nothing less than the radical democratization of all areas of life, not least of which is the economy. This simply means that democracy would be expanded beyond the election of political officials to include the democratic management of all businesses by the workers who comprise them and by the communities in which they operate. The DSAs radical democracy would also include changes to the method of electing members of Congress, the abolition of the Senate and the establishment of vague local participatory institutions. The DSAs use of the term democracy is a non-class abstraction. Its call for industrial democracy leaves out precisely who will be participating in this democracy and in what capacity, not to mention who will actually own the means of production. In fact, the DSAs conception of radical democracy means little more than the establishment of joint union-management boards, co-ops nominally owned by the workers, and other such initiatives that serve only to bind the workers hand-and-foot to the bosses. Since the emergence of scientific socialism as first elaborated by Marx and Engels, socialists have explained that the state is an instrument of class rule. This is no less true for democratic governments than for authoritarian ones. In fact, socialists have always understood the bourgeois democratic state to be the form of government that best suits the needs of the class dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, which is why, as a general historical rule, the oldest and most established capitalist countries developed some form of democratic parliamentary system. If, nevertheless, the ruling class in all of the old capitalist democracies is turning toward more openly authoritarian methods, this is the product of the massive concentration of wealth, which is incompatible with democratic forms of rule. The rule of the bourgeoisie is increasingly incompatible with the maintenance of past social reforms, and the crisis of capitalism is assuming revolutionary dimensions. As Lenin explained, a revolutionary situation requires not only that the masses cannot continue to live in the old way, but also that the ruling class can no longer rule in the old way. The class character of the state, even the most democratic, explains why socialists since the time of Marx have insisted that the working class cannot capture the existing state machinery through elections, but must smash it and replace it with a state of its own, established on the basis of the dictatorship of the proletariat, understood in the Marxist sense of dictatorship as the political domination of a particular class. The working class, which by virtue of its relationship to the means of production is the antithesis of private property, takes power by establishing genuinely democratic forms of rule. The broad masses of people are for the first time actively involved in the management of social life, and economic policy is determined by social need, not private profit. The DSA explicitly states that its vision of a democratic socialist society does not include the disappearance of class antagonisms. It should always be remembered, however, that like every other form of society, a democratic socialist society cannot produce total social harmony, the statement declares. Such a society will always have to navigate among the competing claims of different groups and democratic political institutions will always be needed to arbitrate and mediate such conflict. Democratic socialism, that is, will not be the utopia that many socialists of old imagined. Instead of the alleged utopia of an end to class exploitation, achieved through a revolutionary movement led by a Marxist party, the DSA promotes the reactionary utopia of democratic socialism enacted through the Democratic Party and the reform of capitalism. The nature of our electoral activism will vary based on local and political conditions, the DSA writes. But it will include supporting progressive and socialist candidates running for office, usually in Democratic primaries or as Democrats in general elections, but also in support of independent socialist and other third-party campaigns outside of the Democratic Party (emphasis added). In other words, the DSA will throw its support either behind Democratic Party candidates or the campaigns of third-party appendages of the Democrats such as the Green Party. The DSAs anticommunist politics The slogan of radical democracy is consistent with the anti-communism that forms the bedrock of the DSAs politics. The justification for the DSAs opposition to the Russian Revolution is that it destroyed democracy by overthrowing the bourgeois Provisional Government, which jailed and shot revolutionaries and continued Russias involvement in the slaughter of the First World War. The DSA equates the October Revolution, the most genuinely democratic revolution in history, in which the masses themselves took control of their own destiny, with totalitarianism and the crimes of Stalin, whose bureaucracy usurped power and destroyed workers democracy in the Soviet Union. In order to accomplish this counterrevolutionary task, Stalin murdered the entire generation of old Bolsheviks who had led the revolution, concentrating the full wrath of his police apparatus on Leon Trotsky and his supporters, who represented the conscious Marxist and internationalist opposition to the Stalin regime. The DSAs hostility to the Russian Revolution and its rejection of the Marxist assertion that the class struggle of the working class leads inevitably to the dictatorship of the proletariat is a practical political as well as a theoretical question. It is at the very core of the DSAs opposition to the fight for socialist politics within the working class and its character as a counter-revolutionary organization. Social democracy, of which the DSA is part, has upheld and defended the capitalist dictatorship over the working class for more than a century. This was definitively established with the support given by all of the major social democratic parties to their own national bourgeoisies in the first imperialist world war that began in 1914. Since the suppression of the 1918 German Revolution and the murder of the Marxist leaders Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg at the hands of the German Social Democracy, social democratic parties in power have not hesitated to use state violence to crush workers uprisings and rescue the capitalist class. If the DSA is given the opportunity, it will not hesitate to do the same in the United States. Bhaskar Sunkara, in a column published in the New York Times two months ago, expressed the hostility of the DSA to the legacy of the Russian Revolution when he claimed that Lenin, once he returned to Russia in April of 1917, set into motion the events that led to Stalins gulags. To return socialism to radical democracy, Sunkara argued, it was necessary to return to the early days of the Second International. His reference to the early days of the Second International, as opposed to its collapse as a socialist organization at the beginning of World War I, cannot conceal the fact that Sunkara is promoting the very aspects that led to its betrayal of socialism. This means the domination of its day-to-day political activity by campaigns for reform, rather than Social Democracys positive contribution to the promotion and development of Marxism, which was carried forward after 1914 by Lenin, Trotsky and the Bolsheviks, and put into practice in the October Revolution. Sunkaras article, it should be noted, met with enthusiastic support from the ISO on its Socialist Worker website. The DSAs embrace of the democratic imperialist state is consistent with the complete silence of its strategy statement on American imperialism and the danger of war. The DSA is not merely indifferent to this question, however. Along with virtually all of the other pseudo-left organizations, it supports and identifies with the criminal wars waged by American imperialism. The DSA has posted only two statements on its website in 2017 about foreign policy. While they are meant to appear as criticisms of US policy in the Middle East, they make clear the DSAs actual support for the US war for regime-change in Syria, which has displaced millions and killed hundreds of thousands. After formally condemning the Trump administrations cruise missile attack on a Syrian air base in a statement published in April, the DSA hastens to add that [t]he DSA has also supported from spring 2011 onwards the massive and democratic Syrian uprising against the brutal Assad regime. The statement treats as good coin the putative justification for the attack--exposed as a lie by journalist Seymour Hersh--that the Syrian government carried out gas attacks against civilians. (An article published in Jacobin denounced Hershs article.) The DSA attempts to provide its pro-imperialist line with an anti-imperialist gloss by absurdly claiming that the US has in effect sided with the Assad regime and the Russian military. It does not attempt to reconcile the obvious contradiction between supposed US support for Assad and the cruise missile attack on the Syrian airbase. The DSA statement places chief responsibility for the Syrian civil war on Russia and Iran, calling on the US to engage in the necessary diplomacy to press Russia, Iran and Hezbollah to cease their military aid to the Assad dictatorship, as well as end United States and Gulf State funding of internal Syrian combatants. This advice to the State Department is a clear signal to the American bourgeoisie of its support for US imperialisms war drive and the escalating campaign against Russia, which raises the specter of nuclear war. The DSA argues that the democratic imperialist powers in Western Europe are more progressive than the workers government established by the October Revolution. Thus, it claims that the reformist regimes in postwar Europe and America, not the establishment of the first workers state in history, represents the high-water mark of working class strength and significant progress toward a democratic socialist transition. The DSAs nostalgic tribute to the postwar welfare state underscores the delusionary and utopian character of its entire perspective. It promotes the idea that the reformist programs of that period can be revived, under conditions where, for forty years, the bourgeoisie throughout the world, and above all the United States, has been clawing back every social concession won by workers through more than a century of struggle. A return to previous conditions is impossible because the driving force behind this social counterrevolution is not bad neoliberal policy, as the DSA claims, but the objective crisis of the capitalist system. What the DSA is really mourning is the longstanding decline of American capitalism, whose untrammeled dominance provided the foundation for the temporary restabilization of world capitalism after the Second World War and the ability of the bourgeoisie in the advanced countries to dispense modest reforms and engage in a policy of relative class compromise. Such blindness to the objective roots of this historic decline and lack of any objective analysis of the crisis of American and world capitalism are characteristic of the politics of the DSA and the pseudo-left as a whole. The DSAs promotion of the postwar era as a model demonstrates precisely what it means when it refers, at the beginning of its document, to the game changing opportunities it sees for leftists and progressives. It is not referring to the growing shift to the left within the working class and the increasing alignment of workers experiences with the perspective of socialist revolution. Rather, with the crisis of capitalism having discredited all of the traditional institutions of the existing system, it sees itself and the pseudo-left as a whole as playing a more prominent and active role in diverting and smothering social opposition, including in positions of state power. Like Syriza in Greece, whose rise to power it cites as an example of the lefts re-emergence, it envisions the American pseudo-left being called upon to carry out historic betrayals. Finally, 171 years after his death, revolutionary socialist Friedrich Engels (1820-1895) is being honoured in the UK city of Manchester. The city, whose poverty he so graphically exposed in The Condition of the Working Class in England (1845), was Engels home for over 20 years. Over 600 people crowded into the Bridgewater Hall car park to celebrate the unveiling of a statue of Engels, which had been brought by truck across Europe from Ukraine, by artist and filmmaker Phil Collins as a tribute to the co-founder, with Karl Marx, of scientific socialism. The inauguration last month was the culmination of the Manchester International Festivalwatched on a live projection linked to nearby Tony Wilson Place outside HOME (the centre for contemporary film and theatre), the new home of Engels statue. The statue was first erected in 1970, one of many created during the Soviet era and later discarded after 1991. Though hewn out of concrete, it manages to capture something of the dignified figure of the lifelong comrade and friend of Karl Marx. Its base bears the marks of vandalism, daubed as it is with the yellow and blue colours of the Ukrainian national flag. Collins project is a healthy departure from the usual navel-gazing contributions served up by many contemporary artists, that conveys their own pessimism rather than the world about thema world which is undergoing enormous shifts impacting on the lives and thinking of millions. The artist argues that the whole of the 20th Century has been in a dialogue with Engels and Marx. Shortlisted for the Turner prize in 2006, Berlin-based artist Collins has also made two films released in 2010, called Marxism Today and Use! Value! Exchange. The film section of Ceremony was introduced by Manchester-born actress Maxine Peake. She posed the following rhetorical questionHow much has changed compared to Victorian times? when Engels wrote his seminal work exposing the splendid lives of the rich, side by side with the unimaginable squalor that was the lot of working class families in the major cities of England. The film shows the deprivation that blights the lives of so many today. Fly-on-the-wall footage of working class life in Manchester is interspersed with the story of the statues travels through Europe, as well as live interviews with people from the audiencepicked at random to join in with activities in Tony Wilson Place around the statue. The journey begins in the Ukraine, a graveyard of statues, in the small village of Mala Pereshchepina. This is where Collins found the Engels he was looking for, lying face down, cut in two and wrapped in polythene. Local school children sing a farewell melody and wave as the statue departs on its open-top truck. On its way through Eastern Europe, many of the images are bleak. Passing through Engels birthplace of Barmen (now Wuppertal) in Germany, the welcome is warm. Collins told the Guardian, Engels was not responsible for the atrocities committed by Stalinism. This assessment contrasts with a vicious piece in the same newspaper headlined Manchester has a Soviet Statue of EngelsShame no one asked the citys Ukrainians. The article said erecting a statue of Engels would be like tolerating the presence of Nazi propaganda in Manchestera monstrous lie based on the conflation of Stalinism with Marxism. When the statue arrives in Manchester, Engels is greeted as a local hero. No one can take him away, says Collins. A monument in his honour acknowledges Manchesters radical past in Chartism [the radical workers movement of the 1830s and 1840s]. Passing through the city, which has seen much regeneration and handsome profits for property developers, the filmmaker shoots from the moving truck. It is as though we are looking through the statues eyesat the homeless huddled in doorways, the unemployed struggling to make ends meet, the locals featured in the film. Life is still the Hell upon Earth Engels described so many years ago, if you are poor. The statue stands a few streets away from the former Little Ireland district of the city that Engels described as horrid little slum. He continued, The race that lives in these ruinous cottages, behind broken windows, mended with oilskin, sprung doors, and rotten doorposts, or in dark, wet cellars, in measureless filth and stench, in this atmosphere penned in as if with a purpose, this race must really have reached the lowest stage of humanity. [The Condition of the Working Class in England]. Ceremony includes an interview with a woman from Lifesharea charity recently based in Dantzic Streets old Mission Street school in Angel Meadow. Every weekend for the past 25 years, Lifeshare has provided breakfast for up to 125 homeless people, as well as other meals. They have been evicted recently from their premises, in a deal between the Labour Party-run Manchester City Council and international property developer, Far East Consortium, to make way for a 200 million luxury residential development of 754 homes. In Engels time Angel Meadow was known as Irish Town, whose houses were never repaired, filthy, with damp, unclean cellar dwellings; the lanes are neither paved nor supplied with sewers. [Engels, ibid] As of writing the council have offered Lifeshare no alternative accommodation--the homeless are banished from Angel Meadow. Interviewed live from Tony Wilson Place, a resident of the Whalley Range district of the city said she learned nothing about Engels in school history lessons, just kings and queens, not [about] the working class. Engels was about changing conditions. She is right. Engels did not just expose the horrors of capitalism, but worked for its downfall. For him and Marx, the working class was not just an oppressed class but a revolutionary force. In the Communist Manifesto they wrote the following famous words: What the bourgeoisie therefore produces, above all, are its own grave-diggers. Its fall and the victory of the proletariat are equally inevitable. In the evening following Ceremony, slogans appeared on a digital wall backdrop behind the statueincluding Nothing to lose but our chains, paraphrasing the famous call to arms of the Communist Manifesto. A placard placed at its base read, End modern day slavery, and another, Willkommen in Manchester Friedrich! Someone placed on the plinth a quote from Engels that resonates today: The way in which the vast mass of the poor are treated by modern society is truly scandalous. The film shows school children reciting extracts from The Condition of the Working Class in England. At the end of Ceremony they movingly laid armfuls of lilies at the foot of the statue. After the film showing, members of the Socialist Equality Party handed out leaflets about the Grenfell fire, containing a passage from Engels on the social murder of the working class under capitalism. A couple from eastern Germany told us they were disappointed with Ceremony. They described it as Disneyland for Marxists, it doesnt tell you anything. It is true that the film and the event had their weaknesses. In this reviewers opinion, there was just too much gratuitous swearing, beer swilling and cigarette smoking in Collins filmlending a patronising tone to the depiction of the working class. But despite the shortcomings of Ceremony and whatever the artistic qualities of the work in question, there is a genuine and positive significance to the placement of a statue of Engels in Manchester. In this centenary year of the Russian Revolution, Collins was moved to do so in large part to reclaim him from an association with the monstrous tyranny of Stalinism and give him back to the working class. And it must be said that the statue has met with popular expressions of respect and affection. There it stands, in prime location, not just a reminder of a radical past, but a starting point for discussion about the burning issues of the daypoverty, inequality and war. Italian restaurant Portofinos Spirito Bar is offering champagne happy hour and oysters for MOP10 every Friday between 6p.m. and 9p.m. According to a press release issued by The Venetian Macao, guests can enjoy one of Frances leading champagnes, Moet & Chandon Imperial with a buy one get one free offer for either MOP180 per glass or MOP880 per bottle. To pair with the champagne, Spirito Bar is also offering oysters imported from France for just MOP10 each. The bar serves as a semiformal area next to the main dining room where guests can relax either inside or on the outdoor terrace with their beverage of choice. This promotion is bound to be popular among locals and visitors, hence advanced bookings are recommended. Ikea starts selling solar batteries to homeowners Home retailer IKEA said it would start selling batteries for rooftop solar panels in the latest sign that once-costly storage technologies are becoming mainstream. The Solar Battery Storage system was announced in partnership with U.K. panel provider Solar Century Holdings Ltd. yesterday, providing potential savings on electricity bills by enabling users to use stored solar power when the sun is down and power grid costs are high. The news came after the U.K. government set out last month to help energy consumers and industries save as much as 40 billion pounds (USD52 billion) on their electricity bills by opening the grid to battery storage devices. The cost of lithium-ion cells used in batteries have already fallen 73 percent since 2010 and more price declines are expected. A solar panel and battery storage kit from IKEA would cost from USD9,155, that would be returned over 12 years, according to the statement by IKEA on its website. Most of the survivors of the inferno at Grenfell Tower remain homeless, almost two months after at least 80 people died. Despite promises by the government to find suitable housing, only 12 families have so far been rehoused with the remaining survivors of the 24-storey building living in hotels or other temporary accommodation. Hundreds of families in tower blocks with similar combustible cladding have also been evacuated. The callous indifference shown to the rehousing of just 158 families in one of the richest cities in the world was underscored by this weeks revelations that in the same London boroughKensington and Chelsea1,652 often luxury properties are long-term unoccupied. Around 1,000 have been empty for between one and two years, and 600 for more than two years. About 50 have not been lived in for more than 10 years. The revelations are the result of an email accidentally sent by Kensington and Chelsea Council listing the properties along with the names of their 1,197 wealthy owners to a number of news outlets. Details of the miniscule amounts of local council tax they pay were also included. It shows, for example, that someone in a bedsit in the borough has to pay 708 a year in council tax, whereas the owner of a multimillion pound property pays just three times more2,124 a year. If they keep it empty for more than two years, they will face sanctionsbut this amounts to a 50 percent surcharge, pocket change for such people. So far, just a handful of owners on the list have been named. They include former mayor of New York City, Michael Bloomberg, who has an empty seven-bedroom mansion on Cheyne Walk fronting the River Thames. United Arab Emirates ruler Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum owns an undisclosed number of properties through an offshore company, Smech Properties Ltd. Also named is the Ukrainian billionaire, Dymitro Firtashout on bail since his arrest in Austria in 2014 on allegations of bribery and corruption. He owns the former Brompton Road tube station building, once used as a top secret command centre for Winston Churchill, which he bought in 2014 for 53 million. Much of the press has directed its anger at foreign oligarchs and wealthy Arabs for acquiring property for speculative purposesthe buy to leave phenomenon. The most extreme example is the One Hyde Park development in Kensington. The most expensive development in the UK, with apartments selling for up to 100 million each, just 19 out of 80 units are lived in. But British citizens also feature (and probably make up the majority) on the list including luxury property developer, Christian Candy, whose Dukes Lodge London company owns a 26-unit, seven-storey apartment building in Holland Park. He wants to replace it with five mansions. Then there is the empty 6 million house owned by Peter Fincham, a former controller of BBC1 who has made a fortune out of the outsourcing of programme production by the public broadcaster. The same pattern is repeated across London, where 19,845 homes, worth some 9.4 billion ($12 billion) sat idle for over six months in 2016. Across England, there are 200,145 empty homes with an estimated value of 43.5 billion. Representatives of the Labour Party put on their best outraged expression following the revelations. Kensington Labour MP Emma Dent Coad declared, It is a disgrace that people are allowed to buy to leave, with no intention whatever of living in a property, just to park their money, when we have so many homeless people. ... We must have policies to stop this before even more parts of Kensington become a luxury ghost town. Shadow Housing Minister John Healey said, When the country is already in the grip of a housing crisis, the fact that properties are left empty is simply unacceptable. Healey declared, Labour would allow councils to charge a 300 percent empty homes premium on properties that have been empty for more than a year and ask them to prepare empty-homes strategies to bring homes back into use in each area. We would also reverse the Conservatives weakening of councils powers to introduce empty dwelling management orders (EDMOs) to bring homes back into use. Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn had earlier called for such homes to be given to survivors. He said the government should bring in emergency legislation to requisition or buy properties using compulsory purchase orders (CPOs) to counter the widespread practice of leaving property empty so it can be sold at a massive profit in the future. But this demand has now been sidelined by Healeys toothless proposals. For small landlords, changes to council tax rules, combined with rising house prices and rents, usually make it uneconomic to keep a property empty. But for the super-rich these concerns dont even feature on their radars. According to property expert Henry Pryor, speaking to the BBC in 2015, speculators who leave flats empty are acting in a highly calculating manner. He explained, The costs of letting, including wear and tear and administration, can outweigh any money taken from rent because buyers want untouched apartments and will pay a premium for them. Some buyers dont want to live somewhere second-hand, just as they would feel if buying a Rolls-Royce or an Aston Martin This applies even when theyre buying a place thats five years old. Pryor pointed out, The number of potential homes affected by buy-to-leave isnt huge in a city the size of London, with a housing stock of several million But as a percentage of new-built properties, the ones intended to help deal with the housing crisis, they account for quite a significant percentage. As for Corbyns call for wider use of CPOs, it was partly because of their problemsit can take two years from start to finish and then end up in a public inquirythat the Labour government under Tony Blair in 2004 accepted an amendment to its Housing Bill bringing in the EDMOs that Healey talks about. Legitimate outrage over empty properties is also used to deflect public anger from the hundreds of thousands of properties that have been allowed to fall into disrepair. This is combined with the refusal of previous Labour governments to build council housingjust 7,870 dwellings during the 1997 to 2010 administrationand the criminal policy of destroying council housing to make way for lucrative private accommodation. In just one London Labour-controlled council, Haringey, there are plans to privatise 17 housing estates (including thousands of dwellings in the huge Northumberland Park and Broadwater Farm estates.) The contempt expressed toward the thousands of council residents in Haringey gives the lie to all Labours crocodile tears over Grenfell. Of the 1,092 council houses on the Northumberland Park Estate, a maximum of 183 will be replaced. Of the 2,500 or so new homes that will be squeezed into the area, the council claims that 40 percent will be affordable. But most of these will be for sale rather than rent and way beyond the financial reach of those to be evicted. An affordable rent can be as much as 1,000 a month for a one-bedroom apartment. As the corruption scandal involving the United Auto Workers union implicates ever-wider layers of the top UAW leadership, union president Dennis Williams penned a letter to UAW members Tuesday aimed at deflecting worker anger. Williams claimed that Fiat Chryslers payment of $1.2 million in bribes to the unions former top negotiator with the company, the late General Holiefield, had no effect on the integrity of the collective bargaining process. The central aim of Williams letter is to try somehow to distance the UAW from Holiefields crimes and deny the obviousthat the corruption scandal is not an aberration, but rather expresses the essence of the UAW, a pro-corporate syndicate and tool of management that still pretends that it represents workers. Earlier this week, the two key defendants named in federal indictment unsealed on July 26Holiefields widow, Monica Morgan, and former Fiat Chrysler Vice President for Employee Relations Alphons Iacobelliwere arraigned in Detroit federal court and released on bond. Federal prosecutors allege that Iacobelli and other company officials used the UAW-Chrysler National Training Center (UTC) in Detroit to funnel more than a million dollars in bribes to Holiefield, Morgan and other unnamed senior UAW officials between 2009 and 2014. Williams issued the letter as legal experts and the media speculated that at least eight more unnamed UAW and FCA officials could soon face charges. The Detroit News has reported that retired UAW Associate Director Virdell King, who was part of UAW Chrysler bargaining teams in 2011 and 2015, hired a criminal lawyer after learning she was under FBI investigation. Holiefield, who died of pancreatic cancer in March 2015, was hated by rank-and-file workers for negotiating away their wages and benefits in contracts signed by the UAW in 2007, 2009 and 2011, and for defending the 10-hour-a-day Alternative Work Schedules, which has disrupted the health and family lives of workers. Before Holiefield decided not to seek another four-year term in November 2013, rumors were rampant that he was involved in a kickback scheme to sell jobs at Chrysler. This is one of the toughest moments our union has faced in years, Williams wrote on Tuesday. We are heartbroken and horrified to learn a man we knew, trusted and loved was involved in these alleged misdeeds. He reasserted the specious claim he first made last week that UAW leadership knew nothing of General Holiefields illegal activities until the US Attorneys office contacted us in January of last year. In fact, UAW officials, including Williams predecessor, Bob King, were aware of Holiefields criminal activities at least as early as 2011, according to federal prosecutors who said King confronted Holiefield and Iacobelli at a face-to-face meeting in Auburn Hills, Michigan (location of the Fiat Chrysler headquarters). King reportedly castigated the two of over their selection of Holiefields then girlfriend, Monica Morgan, as a vendor for the labor-management training center and a charity set up by Holiefield. King allegedly said this was a bad idea and told them they could go to jail before instructing the two to stop doing business with her, the indictment alleges. For at least two years before the 2011 meeting, FCA officials had been shoveling hundreds of thousands of dollars into Morgans photography business and various dummy companies controlled by the couple, who used the money to buy designer clothes, jewelry, air travel, $3,100-a-night stays at the Beverly Hills Hotel and the closing costs on their new home. In October 2013, federal prosecutors say, King, the unions general counsel Michael Nicholson and unnamed senior union officials began looking into financial transactions involving the NTC, Holiefields charityThe Leave the Light on Foundationand Morgan. This was a month after UAW officials fired Holiefields top aide, James Hardy, for selling Chrysler jobs. Soon afterwards, the FBI began its investigation. In November 2013, Holiefield suddenly announced he would not seek another four-year term as vice president. The UAW allowed Holiefield to remain in office another eight months until the expiration of his term. Attempting to sweep the matter under the rug, they had nothing but praise for him when he officially retired in June 2014. Five months before, in January 2014, federal prosecutors say, King and the UAW presidents senior assistant made formal requests to FCA for records and information on the use of NTC credit cards by Holiefieldwho made over $200,000 worth of personal purchases on his credit cardand other unnamed UAW officials. The latest in the series of supposed internal investigations did not stop Holiefield from collecting an NTC check for $262,219 to pay off the full balance of his mortgage as he left office. It is simply unbelievable that Williamswho served as the UAW secretary-treasurer, the top financial officer in the union from 2010 to 2014was unaware of this criminal activity. Williams was selected to take over the union in June 2014 because he was a long-time and loyal member of the UAW hierarchy who knew where all the skeletons were hidden and could be trusted to cover up whatever scandals were about to explode. Williams declares in his letter, You should also know that no matter what anyone says, it was NOT possible for General Holiefield to compromise or otherwise affect the national negotiations that resulted in new collective bargaining agreements, including the 2011 collective bargaining agreement between the UAW and Chrysler. Williams does not provide any reason why workers should believe such a statement, nor can he. Holiefield was the unions top negotiator who led the talks for contracts in 2007, during Obamas restructuring of the company in 2009, and again in 2011. He had the closest ties to FCA boss Sergio Marchionne, who would not agree to Fiats takeover until Holiefield and the UAW signed onto his World Class Manufacturing plan of constant cost-cutting and speed up. Holiefield negotiated transformational concessions, including poverty level second-tier wages, an end to the eight-hour day and income protection for laid off workers, and relieving the company of its obligations to pay retiree health care benefits. During this whole time, Holiefield was receiving more than a million dollars in company payoffs, while his wife was off riding elephants in Thailand and boasting on social media that the General spoils me and Every day is Christmas. In other words, Fiat Chrysler workers were defrauded. The terms of these contracts were not negotiated between one party representing the workers and the other representing management. No, the terms of the contract were dictated by management and agreed to by UAW officials who were on their payroll. Any such agreement would be legally null and void, and workers not bound to abide by its terms. In his first statement, Williams attempted to justify his claim that the sanctity of the UAWs collective bargaining process had not been violated by saying that these deals had passed through many hands, including the UAW President, and the agreement was patterned after others at Ford and GM. Precisely! The deals at Ford and GM were no less corrupt bargains than the Chrysler contract. The fact that these rotten contracts were sanctioned by the entire UAW apparatusand rammed through against the resistance of rank-and-file workers through lies, intimidation and outright ballot-stuffingonly proves that the corrupt relationship between the UAW and the auto bosses is endemic to the entire organization. Holiefields criminal activities are not primarily a question of the greed of a single bureaucrat. They reveal the essence of the corporatist labor-management partnership that has been the guiding principle of the UAW since the 1980s. The UAW-Chrysler National Training Center, founded in 1985, is one of many corporatist entities used to circumvent laws prohibiting corporations from directly paying and dominating labor organizations. From the early 1980s on, GM, Ford and Chrysler poured billions of dollars into these joint programs to augment the salaries of their UAW partners and offset the massive loss of dues income. These arrangements were part of the transformation of the UAW and the entire AFL-CIO apparatus into direct instruments of management. The time when they could be called workers organizations has long since passed. In the naked corruption of Holiefield is revealed their true essence. A struggle by auto workers to advance their interests will not take place in and through the UAW, but in a rebellion against it. The Trump administration escalated its pivot toward extreme right-wing elements on Wednesday by launching a major new legislative initiative directed against immigrants. The administrations proposal would cut legal immigration in half by imposing a wealth- and education-based test to ensure that the poorest immigrants are kept out. It would separate families by preventing working class immigrants from petitioning to bring their family members into the United States through the current statutory processes. The proposal is being advanced in the Senate in a bill introduced by Republicans David Perdue of Georgia and Tom Cotton of Arkansas. Defending the proposal, Trump said: This competitive application process will favor applicants who can speak English, financially support themselves and their families and demonstrate skills that will contribute to our economy. By blocking tens of thousands of immigrants legally present in the US from petitioning to bring their family members to the US, the Trump administration is signing the death warrants for many husbands, wives, parents, children and grandparents of legal permanent residents who will otherwise be unable to escape the poverty and war so prevalent in regions such as Central America and the Middle East. The decision will force others to undertake the journey illegally at the risk of meeting the same fate as the ten migrants who last week suffocated in a semi-truck trailer in San Antonio. At a press conference announcing the proposal, Trump aide Stephen Miller sought to defend the administrations move with nativist demagogy. He cynically blamed poor and working-class immigrants for a shift in wealth from the working class to wealthier corporations and business, ignoring the fact that the clique of oligarchs headed up by Trump is giving the corporations a blank check to ratchet up the exploitation of all workers, immigrant and non-immigrant alike. In an exchange with CNNs Jim Acosta, Miller employed the thinly-veiled anti-Semitic language of the German Nazi Party when he denounced the news outlet for having a cosmopolitan bias. The use of this term, whether a slip or intentional, is a signal that the White House is increasingly run by fascists. The alt-right Breitbart News leapt on the remark, posting the dual banner headline: Left freaks out at Trumps immigration overhaul and Wat? Cosmopolitan elites claim only UK, Australian immigrants know English. The term cosmopolitan is widely used on openly fascist websites such as Stormfront to describe Jewish journalists. In the last week, the Trump administration has moved to consolidate power in the hands of a cabal of trusted insiders largely independent of the Republican Party. The White House is working to establish a personalist regime in which the executive branch is controlled by a network comprised of fascist advisers, generals such as John Kelly, who last week replaced former Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus as White House chief of staff, and billionaire financial speculators. Trump has stepped up his efforts to base his administration directly on the military and police, including a speech last Friday before an audience of Long Island, New York cops in which he urged his listeners to treat people rough as they were being arrested. The assembled police responded with chants of USA! USA! In that speech, Trump justified his plans for rounding up immigrants by equating them with violent gang members. He denounced MS-13, the Salvadoran gang founded in Los Angeles by migrants escaping the civil war in El Salvador. Borrowing from the playbook of the fascistic president of the Philippines, Rodrigo Duterte, Trump called members of the gang animals. The announcement of a new legislative effort against legal immigrants is an ominous warning that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is preparing to escalate the administrations mass deportation plans. In February, the Associated Press announced that then-DHS Secretary Kelly was proposing to deploy 100,000 National Guard troops to carry out Trumps January 25 executive order mandating a crackdown against immigrants, but the memo was never signed after a public backlash. The administrations employment of fascist terminology and its shift away from the Republican Party establishment toward the alt-right is an indication that the unsigned February DHS memo is back in play. This raises the specter of martial law and military-style round-ups of millions of immigrants. According to a February report by the Los Angeles Times, Trumps January 25 order placed 8 million undocumented workers at risk of immediate deportation. It is possible that the Trump administrations Senate bill will draw support from sections of the Democratic Party. The Democrats recently announced their Better Deal agenda, dropping any reference to the defense of the rights of immigrants and other populations targeted by Trump, including LGBT people. In a further sign the Democratic Party is orienting itself to Trumps economic nationalism and social backwardness, the head of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Ben Ray Lujan told the Hill Monday that there is not a litmus test for Democratic candidates on abortion rights. In recent weeks, key Democratic-aligned journalists such as the Atlanti c s Peter Beinart, CNNs Fareed Zakaria and former Clinton aides Mark Penn and Andrew Stein have published articles demanding that the Democratic Party orient itself toward Trumps anti-immigrant campaign. Zakaria, himself an immigrant, wrote in a June 29 Washington Post column that Democrats should take a position on immigration that is less absolutist and recognizes both the cultural and economic costs of large-scale immigration. Penn and Stein wrote in a July 6 New York Times op-ed that the Democrats lost in 2016 because voters feel abandoned by Democratic support for policies offering more help to undocumented immigrants than to the heartland. Beinart wrote in the July/August edition of the Atlantic that the next Democratic presidential candidate should say again and again that because Americans are one people, who must abide by one law, his or her goal is to reduce Americas undocumented population to zero. There are disagreements within the Democratic Party over whether and how rapidly the party can formally drop its support for a path to citizenship for some immigrants. But the fact that such reactionary, anti-immigrant proposals are being voiced within the party is proof that the Democrats will not halt Trumps plans for mass deportations. Only the working class, uniting immigrant and native-born workers, can prevent mass deportations and defend the democratic right of workers to live and work in the country of their choice without fear of harassment or removal. The official Pitchford inquiry into undercover policing in England and Wales has confirmed that police spies using fake identities have targeted more than 1,000 organisations. The figure covers a period of 50 years, with no details of the organisations involved or the duration and scope of the operations against them. It makes clear that no organisation or party in Britain expressing oppositional sentiment will have avoided the undemocratic machinations of the political police. The number was finally made public months after 133 targeted people designated as core participants in the inquiry demanded a list of names of all the organisations about whom intelligence was gathered; the cover names (not the real identities) of the individual officers responsible for infiltrating and reporting on activists and campaigns; and the individual Special Branch reports for each Core Participant group or individual. None of the other information requested has been released, nor has the scale of the information gathered been explained. The organisations named in the inquirys current list of 205 core participants include the Advisory Service for Squatters, Blacklist Support Group, Broadwater Farm Defence Campaign, Defend the Right to Protest, Fire Brigades Union, Hackney Community Defence Association, McLibel Support Campaign, National Union of Mineworkers, Newham Monitoring Project, Union of Construction Allied Trades and Technicians, Youth Against Racism in Europe along with a number of anarchist and animal rights groups. Individuals named include members of these organisations, family members and supporters of numerous targeted protests and justice campaigns. The list includes a number of current and former Labour MPs, and the parents, Doreen and Neville, of murdered South London teenager, Stephen Lawrence. Another core participant is Myrna Simpson, mother of Joy Gardner, a 40-year-old Jamaican mother killed in 1993 during a police deportation raid. These organisations and individuals are core participants because whistleblowers named them as having been targeted by police spies. Not a single police officer or additional targeted organisation or person has been publicly identified by the Pitchford inquiry or its internal police predecessor, Operation Herne. The inquiry was set up as damage limitation on behalf of the British state in 2015 by then Home Secretary, Theresa May, into undercover operations by the Special Demonstrations Squad (SDS), which operated between 1968 and 2008, and its contemporary and successor, the National Public Order Intelligence Unit (NPOIU). Inquiry Chair Sir Christopher Pitchford has recently been replaced as head of the inquiry because of illness. His replacement is Sir John Mitting, currently vice chair of the Investigatory Powers Tribunal, tasked with complaints against Britains intelligence agencies. At the current rate of progress the inquiry does not even expect to begin public hearings of evidence until 2019. Meanwhile, there have been reports of documentation being destroyed. The extent of police undercover operations first emerged in 2011, following the collapse of a court case at which former police constable Mark Kennedy was due to give evidence. Kennedy, using the undercover name Mark Stone, had been one of the organisers of a 2009 environmental protest around Ratcliffe-on-Soar power station that resulted in mass arrests. Subsequent investigations by journalists, campaigners and targets of police spying revealed Kennedy as operating across Europe in and around numerous environmental and related protests. In 2005, for example, in preparation for a protest against the G8 meeting of world leaders, Kennedy volunteered, and was trusted, to organise vehicles, tents and portable toilets for a protest event near Gleneagles, Scotland. Some 350 peaceful demonstrators were eventually rounded up and arrested. Kennedy was only the first of what is now said to be at least 144 police agents using fake IDs, many stolen from dead children, in their work for the SDS, the NPIOU or related police bodies operating in England and Wales. Some used their bogus identities to form relationships with members of their target organisations in what were effectively actions of state-sanctioned rape, even fathering children. Of these, only 16 have so far been publicly identified, although a few more are anonymously listed as core participants. The vast majority remain unidentified and are not involved in the inquiry at all. Those identified, according to Undercover Research Groups web site are: Andy Coles alias Andy Van Davey, Peter Francis aliases Peter Daley or Pete Black, Mark Kennedy alias Mark Stone, Lynn Watson (real name not known), Marco Jacobs (real name not known), Jim Boyling alias Jim Sutton, Simon Wellings (real name not known), Robert Lambert alias Bob Robinson, John Dines alias John Barker, Mark Jenner alias Mark Cassidy, Carlo Neri (real name not known), RC (real name not known) Gary R. & Abigail L. (real names not known), Rod Richardson (real name not known), Mike Chitty alias Mike Blake, Matt Rayner (real name not known), Jason Bishop (real name not known), N81 (inquiry number) and Roger Pearce. Some were involved in multiple operations. Robert Lambert stole the ID of a deceased seven-year-old, spied on the London Greenpeace group, oversaw spying on the family of Stephen Lawrence, and planted incendiary devices as part of provocations against animal rights groups. Later, as an SDS manager, he oversaw information gathering on Labour Party MPs Diane Abbott, the late Bernie Grant and now party leader Jeremy Corbyn. Andy Coles, until recently deputy police commissioner in Cambridgeshire, resigned following his accidental exposure in his brother Richards 2014 autobiography. Coles is currently facing legal action by an unnamed woman, Jessica, for his activities between 1991 and 1995 when, as Andy Davey, he posed as a removal driver and animal rights activist. Jessica told the Guardian she was seduced by Coles into a relationship that lasted over a year. Coles is a Conservative councillor. Individuals subject to police spying in Scotland have demanded an independent inquiry into similar operations in Scotland. The Pitchford/Mitting damage limitation inquiry is not even investigating abuses carried out in Scotland despite many of the known police spies, including Mark Kennedy, having operated there. One of those targeted was environmental campaigner Tilly Gifford, the subject of repeated and sinister threats as part of an attempt by still unidentified officers to recruit her as an informer within the Plane Stupid protest group. The Scottish government has authorised an internal police inquiry into undercover operations by HM Inspectorate of Constabulary in Scotland (HMICS). One of the HMICS review team is Stephen Whitelock, formerly chief of a covert police unit, while the current head of Police Scotland, Phil Gormley, had oversight of both the SDS and NPIOU at key points in their operations. In 2015, the Socialist Equality Party published an Open Letter to the Pitchford inquiry demanding the immediate release of the names of all undercover police operatives, especially those active in the Workers Revolutionary Party (and its forerunners and successor organisations), their pseudonyms and dates of operation. In an attack on free speech and democratic rights, Jonathan Graubart, a Professor in Political Science at San Diego State University (SDSU), has been targeted by a media campaign following a Facebook post he made on July 21. Responding to the torrent of hagiographical news stories surrounding Republican Senator John McCain in recent days Graubart posted a short comment on his personal Facebook page, which was followed by a media campaign that not only misrepresented his views but also used empty moralistic cancer sympathy to glorify the war monger McCain while inspiring violent threats against the professor. The expression of goodwill for McCain, Graubart stated, seemed to him to be a reflection of a society that valued elite lives over ordinary ones. To build on this theme, he quoted Hannah Arendts line on the German cultural elite that bemoaned the fact that the Nazis sent Albert Einstein into exile, without realizing that it was a much greater crime to kill little Hans Cohn from around the corner, even though he was no genius. McCain, Graubart pointed out, was no Albert Einstein, and not just in terms of brain power. Unlike Einstein, who had very appealing humanist instincts, as a socialist, antiwar, anti-imperialist, and anti-statist Zionist, McCain was a risible public figure, a war criminal, who in his political career had championed horrific actions, and undermined state commitment to public health. Graubart concluded the post by stating that he would rather see an outpouring of good wishes for random contemporary Hans Cohns than politicians. The more or less innocuous post on a personal Facebook page, was picked up initially by Channel 10 in San Diego, and then drew the attention of national right-wing media outlets including Fox News and the Washington Times, leading to Graubart becoming the target of a torrent of hate mail, with some threatening outright violence. Graubarts post, which remains on his profile page, contradicting the Washington Times claim that is was deleted, was followed by over 200 comments. Many of the comments were supportive in defense of free speech, calling on the university to fight back by denouncing the threats to free-speech and the vicious attacks against Dr. G(raubart), as well as highlighting the one-sided media campaign slandering the professor. However, this post and the Universitys official statement addressing this issue have also been barraged with hateful comments. Facebook comments were accompanied by angry email and voicemail messages with numerous threats of violence, calling him a hook-nosed f-ing Jew, and attacks on his late mother. Graubart told WSWS reporters that the voicemails have been especially chilling, since almost half have warned of violence and one even pointed out his home address. Some of the student organizations on the SDSU campus, particularly those directly linked to the Democrats and Republicans, were quick to jump on board the smear campaign. Brandon Jones, the president of the SDSU College Republicans, declared piously, [it] is one thing to disagree with a politician, or anyone, for that matter, based on differences in ideology.. [but] to wish bad health upon them because of those differences is outrageous...I hope next time you try and find some more compassion within yourself. More ominously, Jones went on to say, If you dont want to stand behind our troops, feel free to stand in front of them, professor. The official statement of the SDSU College Republicans claimed that Graubarts post set a discriminatory environment towards conservatives on our campus, and would not be tolerated by their organization. The statement did not quite explain how this lack of tolerance would be expressed. The SDSU College Democrats were not far behind. While claiming to support Graubarts right to free speech, Michael Cline, the president of the organization condemned the nasty and inappropriate personal attacks. Neither organization seemed to have actually paid attention to the content of Graubarts post. While the campus public safety officers have advised Graubart to stay away from his university office (putatively for his own safety), the reaction of the SDSU administration has been characteristically spineless. The administration quite consciously distanced itself from Graubart, taking pains to reiterate its respect and appreciation for Senator John McCains service to our country during both his military and public service careers. With no real expression of support from the institution he has served for over a decade and half, Graubart continues to be the target of right-wing groups on and off-campus, with many sending ominous anti-Semitic death threats. This incident should be taken very seriously for it is reflective of some of the dangerous trends visible in contemporary politics, the most obvious being the erosion of basic democratic rights. The right to free speech, once the cornerstone of bourgeois democracy, is being systematically attacked on all fronts, particularly in educational institutions where the ruling class has always tended to react swiftly to any signs of opposition, real or imagined. While a right-wing professor, Jorg Baberowski, has been able to freely use his position at the Humboldt University in Berlin and can rely on a network of contacts among politicians and the media to spread his extremist positions, and a conformist academic community to protect him, left-leaning academics have faced witch hunts or firing for defending basic democratic rights. Baberowski, it should be noted, has not only declared his support for Ernst Nolte, the most well-known Nazi apologist among German historians of the post-war era, but also stated in a Der Spiegel article from early 2014 Hitler was no psychopath, he was not vicious. He did not want the extermination of the Jews to be discussed at his table. In recent months, Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington has become the site of a reactionary, racialist campaign against biology Professor Bret Weinstein, after he spoke out against a college-sponsored event that called for all white students and faculty to leave the school grounds for a day. In another attack on academic freedom, Trinity College suspended Professor Johnny Eric Williams earlier this year following Facebook posts he made regarding race relations in the United States. In 2015, protests focused on allegations of racial insensitivity and racism on the part of college administrations, occurred at the University of Missouri, later spreading to Yale University, Ithaca College, and Amherst College. The protests at Yale called for the resignation of professor Erika Christakis, a lecturer in early childhood development, after she questioned a memo sent by the university on culturally unaware and insensitive Halloween costumes. Ultimately, Christakis decided not to continue teaching courses at the university. Professor Graubarts post was a short comment on a personal Facebook page, and as he himself noted, it was an account that had less than a hundred friends. Yet, this short post became a news story that highlighted not just its supposedly treasonous sentiments, but also the putatively bigger problem of left wing professors running rampant in universities, poisoning young minds. The way in which this was done is also revealing of a particular tactic used by the ruling class and its acolytes to attack anyone who might smack of not toeing the line or of tapping into genuine oppositional sentiments amongst the broader population. The International Youth and Students for Social Equality at SDSU extends its unequivocal support to Professor Graubart and condemns the campaign against him. We call on the students and faculty of SDSU and other universities across the United States and internationally to join us in the fight to preserve free speech and democratic rights. With the acceleration of the attack on core democratic principles under the Trump administration, this fight has become even more pressing. Short sellers are calling time on the remarkable rise of Sun Hongbin. The Chinese billionaire, whose roller-coaster career has included a stint in prison and the forced sale of a developer he once predicted would become the nations largest, finds himself in the crosshairs of hedge funds and other bearish speculators after the biggest hot streak of his nearly three decades in business. Suns fortune has more than tripled this year to USD5.1 billion after shares of his real estate firm, Sunac China Holdings Ltd., recorded one of the largest rallies worldwide. In Sunac, short sellers see a prime example of what ails the broader Chinese economy: an overdose of debt-fueled investment. Even as some of the companys high-flying peers have scaled back their ambitions amid rising borrowing costs and growing regulatory scrutiny, the Tianjin-based developer has piled on leverage to buy everything from distressed land assets to Dalian Wanda Group Co.s theme-park business and a $2.2 billion stake in LeEco, a cash-strapped Chinese media and technology conglomerate. While investors from China have cheered Sunacs dealmaking fueling a 212 percent jump in the stock this year bears have zeroed in on the companys ballooning liabilities. At an estimated 349 percent, Sunacs debt-to-equity ratio is nearly five times higher than its industry peers. Whats more, exchange filings indicate that Sun may have pledged 84 percent of his controlling stake in the company, a potential overhang if the stock price were to fall enough to trigger a margin call. People are worried about Sunacs financial stability and leverage after the LeEco investment and the Wanda deal, while Chinese banks are generally tightening their loans to private companies, said Dan David, the chief investment officer at FG Alpha Management whos known for his short-selling reports. While he isnt currently betting against Sunac, David said hes following the company closely. The stock fell 4.9 percent in Hong Kong yesterday, the biggest drop in the MSCI China Index, as Sunac announced plans to issue dollar bonds to refinance existing debt. The company may raise as much as $1 billion, according to people familiar with the offering. Short interest in the developer has swelled to a record 15.4 percent of shares available for trading, according to data compiled by IHS Markit. Sell-side analysts are bearish too, with share-price targets compiled by Bloomberg on Tuesday implying a 37 percent drop over the next 12 months, the most negative outlook among Hong Kong-listed companies with at least two analyst forecasts. But betting against Sunac is by no means a sure thing. The risk for short sellers is a repeat of their failed attempt to call the top in China Evergrande Group, one of Sunacs heavily indebted rivals. Evergrande shares have surged nearly 170 percent since early May, burning bears who had doubled their short positions in the preceding two months. Despite its heavy debt load, Sunacs top-line growth has been impressive. The companys property sales almost doubled in 2016 as its push into Chinas booming second-tier cities proved prescient. That tailwind may to continue this year, with forecasters including Nomura Holdings Inc. predicting strong first- half results from Chinese developers. Chinese investors, meanwhile, have embraced Sunacs spending spree. Their combined stake in the developer, purchased through the countrys cross-border exchange links with Hong Kong, has swelled to at least 25 percent from about 14 percent a year ago, according to data compiled by Webb-site.com. Many retail punters admire Sun for his bold expansion plans and his ability to weather adversity. (He spent less than two years in prison in the early 1990s after being convicted for embezzlement, a ruling that was later overturned.) The Sunac founders rags-to-riches story is one reason why Ping Jingwu, a 25-year-old individual investor from Shandong, is bullish on the company. He sees Sun as one of the savviest developers in China and says Sunacs massive land holdings make the stock cheap. Theyre fast, rational, and forward-looking, said Ping, who began investing in Sunac in mid-2016 and went all-in on the shares this year. Sunac declined a request to comment for this story, while Sun didnt return a message sent to his WeChat account seeking comment on short sellers, share pledges and Sunacs leverage. Last week, the billionaire vowed to slow Sunacs expansion and reduce debt levels, according to a posting on his microblog. Bloomberg TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (WTXL) - A traffic stop for an expired tag led deputies to find more than 35 grams of cocaine and stolen gun in a Tallahassee man's van. The Leon County Sheriff's Office arrested Rafael Pascual on Tuesday for trafficking in cocaine, grand theft of a firearm, and several other charges related to driving without a valid license and drug possession. On Tuesday, a member of the LCSO SPIDER Unit was patrolling the Woodville area. While driving down Woodville Highway, the deputy wrote that he saw a white Chevrolet Van in front of him and ran the tag. According to the arrest report, the tag came back expired out of Alabama. The deputy pulled the car over and went to talk to the driver, 20-year-old Pascual. The deputy told him that he was being pulled over for expired tags and asked if Pascual had a valid license. In the report, the deputy noted that Pascual was shaking and "appeared extremely nervous." Eventually Pascual told police that he didn't have any identification on him, the arrested report indicating that he later admitted that he didn't have a valid license at all. Deputies asked Pascual to get out the car and while getting collecting his information, deputies found that he was on probation for possession of cocaine and was out past his drug offender curfew. Pascual was placed under arrest and was searched. The report says that when deputies asked if Pascual had drugs, he told them "there is some cocaine in the van." Deputies found three baggies of what they believe was powdered cocaine, a stolen handgun, multiple empty plastic baggies, and a digital scale in a cardboard box behind the driver's seat. According to the arrest report, the baggies weighed 35.5 grams altogether. The contents in the baggies tested positive for cocaine. Pascual is behind bars on a $42,000 bond. TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (WTXL) - Pups and their trainers took over the Leon County Courthouse. They were celebrating the tenth anniversary of the Second Judicial Circuit Animal Therapy Program. It became the first court-sponsored program in Florida in August 2007. The therapy dog teams are provided by Tallahassee Memorial Healthcare. The circuit covers Leon, Gadsden, Jefferson, Wakulla, Franklin, and Liberty counties. MOBILE USERS: Download our WTXL news app on your Apple and Android devices for the latest from South Georgia and North Florida. Also, download our WTXL Weather Now app for Apple and Android devices to get the latest local weather wherever you go. QUINCY, Fla. (WTXL) - The Gadsden County Healthy Start Coalition is hoping parents utilize upcoming resources as students prepare to head back to school! The Good Start Back2School event serves as a kickoff for the 2017/2018 school year, while focusing on the importance of childrens health and health insurance coverage. The event will feature face painting, balloon art, train rides, even a bouncy house! Its not all fun, there are important aspects as well, including information about childrens health services, immunizations and overall health and wellness. It all kicks off Friday, August 4th from 1-3 p.m. at 122 N. Graves Street in Quincy and its free! Florida KidCare is sponsoring the event and will have application helpers onsite to help families apply for completely free or low-cost health and dental insurance for their kids. Here is the link for folks to apply online: www.floridakidcare.org. You can also make an in-person appointment by calling 1-888-540-KIDS (5437). MOBILE USERS: Download our WTXL news app on your Apple and Android devices for the latest from South Georgia and North Florida. Also, download our WTXL Weather Now app for Apple and Android devices to get the latest local weather wherever you go. TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (WTXL) - A man behind bars for kidnapping and raping a woman in July has been accused in another sexual assault. Earl Thomas, 55, was arrested for sexual battery and false imprisonment, according to an affidavit sworn out Monday by a Tallahassee Police Department officer. An investigator in the case wrote that Thomas, who declined to speak with him while in the Leon County Jail on other charges, had been arrested previously under similar circumstances involving kidnapping and raping a victim. According to the victim, she was sitting outside a store on West Brevard Street when Thomas approached her on Feb. 2. The documents state that after she rejected his first approach, Thomas returned, told the victim that he had crack cocaine and marijuana, and asked if she'd be interested in smoking. She accepted, going with him behind a building to an abandoned Ford Bronco. When they finished smoking, the probable cause affidavit said, Thomas locked the Ford's door and refused her request that he allow her to leave. "No, not until I'm done with you," the victim quoted Thomas as saying. The victim then told Thomas she would call the police, and Thomas responded he would break her phone and kill her, telling her "I could kill you at any time I want." Once when she asked Thomas to stop, she said, he grabbed a small metal bar and, fearing death, she complied. MOBILE USERS: Download our WTXL news app on your Apple and Android devices for the latest from South Georgia and North Florida. Also, download our WTXL Weather Now app for Apple and Android devices to get the latest local weather wherever you go. Secretary for Transport and Public Works Raimundo do Rosario has confirmed that the government will move forward with plans to enable telecommunications companies to be able to provide integrated Internet, TV and telephone services (the so-called triple play service) but that it could take a decade to implement. Triple play services are already common in many countries worldwide. According to the Secretary, significant legislation needs amendment before the package services can be licensed, and current telecommunication contracts in place must also expire, reported Lusa. As we all know, there are four telecom operators providing mobile services at the moment, but in the future we hope that every single company can provide a [package] service to the public, said Rosario earlier this week, as cited by TDM. We are determined to push this forward though we are starting a bit late, he admitted. The Telecommunications Regulation Bureau indicated last year that the government would require just two or three years to complete the regulation for the triple play services. The then-acting director, Tam Van Iu, said the licenses will offer locals more viewing choices. Now the Secretary says that two types of license frameworks might exist; one for network infrastructure operators such as CTM, and another for operators providing retail services. The former will provide the infrastructure services required by the latter. Earlier this year, CTM CEO Vandy Poon said that CTM is interested in providing integrated Internet, TV and telephone services once the government regulates them. The government has indicated in the recent past that they are working on stimulating the licensing of those services, Poon noted. THOMAS COUNTY, Ga. (WTXL) - A South Florida woman is now in the Thomas County Jail, and another is hospitalized, after police say they crashed trying to escape arrest following a multi-state crime spree. Police say 34-year-old Stephanie Fernandez and 50-year-old Bonnie McClelland were smashed car windows and stole purses in Thomasville and Cairo last week. Surveillance video shows the two breaking into a car in the Thomasville YMCA parking lot. Officers believe the two are also responsible for car break ins in Quincy, Tallahassee, and Marianna. Cairo officers spotted the two at a local bank, sparking a high speed chase. The suspects flipped their car on highway 84 near Bracewell Automotive. Fernandez is being held in the Thomas County Jail. McClelland is still in the hospital in Gainesville being treated for her injuries. YAKIMA, Wash. -- Tony Guzman may have lost his re-election bid for Wapato mayor during the primary election earlier this month, but hes pract YAKIMA, Wash. -- A Yakima City Council candidate has agreed to pay nearly $10,000 as part of a settlement stemming from allegations about his A man opened fire outside of the Chinese Consulate in Los Angeles yesterday [Macau time] before turning the gun on himself and taking his own life, police said. The man, a Chinese national, fired multiple rounds at the consulate building in the Koreatown neighborhood, said Officer Mike Lopez, a Los Angeles Police Department spokesman. The man, whose name was not immediately released, then fatally shot himself in his car outside of the building, Lopez said. Investigators said no one else was injured in the shooting. Police could not immediately provide any additional information about the shooting or the mans possible motive. Lopez said homicide detectives were conducting an investigation. A call to the consulate rang unanswered yesterday. In 2011, a man was arrested after police said he fired nine shots at a security guard outside the same consulate, but only hit the building. Police said at the time that the man was protesting Chinas human rights record. AP You are the owner of this article. For the fourth year in succession, the Penang running community will enter a team to participate in the Macau Eco Trail Hiker 30 kilometers Corporate Challenge held on November 4. At a handover dinner ceremony held recently, the 2016 Penang TrailHiker team welcomed its new team for the 2017 event. The 2017 team, known as Penang Run Addicts, consists of four highly experienced trail runners. Han Khim (aged 43), Sabrina Koo (aged 30), Owen See (aged 31), and Darren Chauh (aged 37). Several of the team members have recently experienced podium finishes in trail-running events in Malaysia. Team Manager Thaddeus Lee commented that this is by far the strongest team Penang has entered in the Macau Eco Trail Hiker event. Lee went on to comment that he was a member of the 2016 TrailHiker team and really enjoyed the event, recalling the challenging and scenic 30 kilometer course, the fun and friendly atmosphere and the post- event lunch. Current team captain Han Kim stated that it would be the teams first time to experience Macau and that they are excited about participating in this years event. MDT is TrailHikers official media partner Efforts to vamp up cooperative activities between authorities of the Arab sector and the Israel Police were dealt a humiliating blow Wednesday after just 20 Arab leaders out of a total 46 Arab mayors and local authority heads bothered to show up to a meeting with President Reuven Rivlin and Police Commissioner Roni Alsheikh. Follow Ynetnews on Facebook and Twitter The meeting, which was convened at the Presidents Residence, was opened with remarks delivered by President Rivlin, who expressed his regret and disappointment at the weak turnout of the Arab leaders. President Rivlin (Photo: Mark Neiman/GPO) This meeting was planned at the request of many citizens of the State of Israel, to discuss the State's responsibility for the welfare of every citizen, Rivlin began. We asked to meet with those responsible for public safety in order to discuss and consider their abilities, and the need for cooperation. I am very sorry that many of the council heads who wished to arrive did not come due to various pressures. It is a shame, because we are destined to live together and we have to find a way to promote this understanding inside all of us. At times such as these, when extremist forces are raising their heads, Rivlin continued, we are reminded how easy it is to destroy, and to enflame the situation on the ground. At such moments we do not have the privilege to be entrenched out of a sense of the justness of this side or the other, we must be wise. We must join hands. We must demonstrate what leadership means. Photo: Mark Neiman/GPO We are meeting during tense times between Arabs and Jews in this country, and in these days of tension and crisis, leadership is put to the test. I must say that after the murderous attack on the Temple Mount, in which Israeli citizens murdered two policemen and hurt all of us, Arabs, Druze and Jews alike, I expected a clear and sharp condemnation from the leaders of the Arab community in Israel. There were just a few who made a clear and outright condemnation, and unfortunately, I was disappointed. Photo: Mark Neiman/GPO Rivlin also added that regardless of whether Arabs or Jews preferred not to live among one another, the best of the situation must be made. "Our shared lives here, Jews and Arabsthis is not a question, it is a fact. Whether we want it or not, whether we will live in peace or in conflict, we will live here together. Recognition of this basic fact should guide our actions and our choices, always, Jews and Arabs alike, even in difficult moments, he told his listeners. Turning his attention to the violent outbreaks that had marred the Old City and the Temple Mount over the past few weeks, Rivlin highlighted the fact that it had ultimately taken Israeli leadership and Arab leadership to cooperate to abate the tensions that threatened to continue indefinitely. Police Chief Roni Alsheikh (Photo: Mark Neiman/GPO) Speaking after Rivlin, Alsheikh also made clear his disappointment in the low turnout among the Arab leaders but insisted that the cup was half full. I am optimistic, even if there are those who chose to panic. You cannot have a normal life without policingwe all need policing. That's why I'm optimistic and I'm sure we'll bring results, he said. The interest, he concluded, was for every Jewish and Arab resident. Chairman of the Arab Regional Council Heads, Mazen Ganim thanked President Rivlin for the initiative.I would like to thank you for all your endeavors. You prove that this house belongs to all of us, Jews and Arabs, he opened with his remarks, echoing those of the Israeli leaders. Alsheikh, Rivlin and Mazen Ganim (Photo: Mark Neiman/GPO) Ganim also thanked Alsheikh for promoting the meeting and his cooperation. The Arab community was not born a violent society. The circumstances brought us to this. The Israeli Police proved that it can weed out all the crime families, and I want to say that all the crime families in Jewish communities have flocked to Arab communities. Pointing to statistics, Ganim said: Since 2000, 1,200 Arab residents have been killed with illegal weapons, and stressed, Dear friends, fellow council heads, there is a responsibility on everyone, there are undoubtedly many obstacles and you can help us overcome the obstacles through employment and the economy. BOSTON (AP) The nation's oldest synagogue has won a drawn-out property battle. The 1st US Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston announced Wednesday that the nation's oldest synagogue, Shearith Israel in New York City, had won its case over the ownership of Touro Synagogue in Newport, Rhode Island, the nation's oldest synagogue building. The appeals court ruled that Shearith Israel owns both the synagogue building and historical Jewish ritual objects that have gone with the synagogue. Shearith Israel had appealed last year's ruling removing it as trustee of the 250-year-old Touro Synagogue. The judge at the time rejected the New York congregation's arguments that it was the rightful owner of a set of bells, valued at $7.4 million, and the synagogue. Three years ago, in what was an unprecedented move an Israeli theater group was unceremoniously kicked out of one of the world's most esteemed theater festivals. Follow Ynetnews on Facebook and Twitter The Jerusalem-based Incubator Theater was supposed to perform one of their plays at the festival, but BDS activists disrupted their performances. After exerting pressure on the festival's management, the latter decidedfor the first time in the festival's 50 yearsto immediately cancel the Jerusalemite group's remaining shows. Nigel Goodrich, a Christian Scot, looked in abject horror at the Israeli group's removal and refused to let it pass. In response, he founded the Shalom Festival last year, hosting Israeli artists at several Edinburgh cultural venues, simultaneously with the city's famous Festival Fringe. The festival is set to take place again next week and promises to be even bigger. The Shalom Festival's program The festival is organized by Confederation of Friends of Israel-Scotland, an organization with 17 branches administered by volunteers who believe in dialogue rather than boycotts. The festival was funded by contributions from several private donors and will take place over three days next week (August 8-10). On offer will be music, dance and theater performances, cinema and children's workshops, with an emphasis on Israeli-Arab cooperation in Israel. The Incubator theater group will put on its play, "The City", on the festival's opening nightthe very same play that was booed off stage with harsh anti-Israeli statements just three years ago. Also performing will be actress Meskie Shibru-Sivan, recounting the tale of her Aliyah from Ethiopia, in addition to the Jamaya group, whose members play world music. Shalom Festival Other guests of the festival will be creators from the "Bustan Avraham" non-profit organization, which promotes interfaith art projects in Jaffa, while spectators will also have the opportunity to view a painting exhibit by Jewish, Christian and Muslim women. Some of the Shalom Festival's events will be considered an official part of the Edinburgh Festival's lineup, only this time its directors will not be able to boycott or run off Israeli performances like they did three years ago since the festival is partially funded by British taxpayers' money. Indeed, Britain enacted a law 18 months ago forbidding boycotting Israel in any publicly-funded event. Nevertheless, it seems the Shalom Festival won't enjoy the peace advocated in its name, as BDS activists have already announced their intention to once again demonstrate, sabotage and torpedo any and all Israeli performances. Consequently, the festival's management is undertaking many security precautions to prepare for such an eventuality. Scotland is considered a BDS stronghold and just weeks before the beginning of the Israeli festival a petition was disseminated, supported by cultural and academic figures, calling to boycott the festival anyway. The petition is signed by, among others, leading British director Ken Loach and screenwriter Paul Laverty, actor Gavin Mitchell and people from British academia. "The Israeli festival is part of the Israeli government's efforts to counteract BDS organizations and whitewash Palestinian human rights violations. The Shalom Festival improperly uses one of Hebrew's most beautiful words. There's nothing about this festival offering peace," said the petition's author. None of this has discouraged the organizers of the Shalom Festival however. Nigel Goodrich, the festival's director, said: "When the festival is over I'll be able to say I did the right thing by Israel, the Jewish people and freedom of artistic expression." Scotland's First Minister Nicola Sturgeon also gave her blessing for holding the festival. A man who was stabbed multiple times in a terror attack in a Yavne supermarket Wednesday is said to be in stable condition, but is continuing to battle for his life as doctors began performing more surgery Thursday morning. Follow Ynetnews on Facebook and Twitter He underwent surgery on a main artery and he has been been put on ventilation and has been anesthetized, said a family member. Everyone arrived from different places in the country: Haifa, Hadera, Jerusalem. It is extremely difficult for his wife and children who are (always) crying. IDF operations in Yatta (: ") X During the night, IDF soldiers, the Shin Bet and Israel Border Police conducted operations in the Arab city of Yatta where the terrorist, 19-year-old Ismail Ibrahim Ismail abu Aram, lived. Like his victim, abu Aram also worked in the Shufersal supermarket where he carried out the attack, and was arrested after trying to flee the scene. Earlier, the IDF also entered his family home where soldiers confiscated various items belonging to the stabber. As they investigated members of his family, it emerged that abu Aram was, in all likelihood, a lone wolf terrorist who had no connection with any terror organizations. IDF soldiers in Yatta (Photo: IDF Spokesperson's Unit) Yatta is known for being particularly hostile and has become a breeding ground for terrorists planning to carry out attacks against Israeli security personnel and Israeli civilians. Two of the terrorists who last year carried out the deadly Sarona Market shootings in Tel Aviv , which left four Israelis dead and 16 wounded, had lived in a village nearby. In addition, several other terror attacks have been perpetrated by assailants from Yatta and its vicinity. Photo: IDF Spokesperson's Unit Shortly after the attack, the IDF surrounded Yatta, and began conducting thorough checks against every person exiting the city. The home of the terrorist is not, in the meantime, expected to be demolished since the IDF usually only implements the policy if terrorists cause fatalities. Two attackers detonated a car bomb in southern Yemen on Wednesday, killing themselves and five soldiers and injuring several others, residents and a local security official said. The bombing took place in the Redhoom district of Shabwa province near a security checkpoint, they said, adding that the attackers died in the assault. The local official added, without elaborating, that he suspected the attackers were affiliated with al-Qaeda. Shabwa is one of several provinces in Yemen in which al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) is active. After US President Donald Trump reluctantly signed into law Wednesday sanctions on Iran, Russia and North Korea, officials from all three countries denounced the move, each in their own way. Follow Ynetnews on Facebook and Twitter Trump himself said the sanctions were "seriously flawed" and "clearly unconstitutional." The Republican-controlled Congress approved the legislation by such an overwhelmingly large margin on Thursday that it would have thwarted any effort by Trump to veto the bill. Russia PM Medvedev (L) and Pres. Putin (Photo: EPA) The sanctions against Russia were a response to the Kremlin's supposed interference in the US elections and its military aggression in Ukraine and Syria, and against North Korea and Iran for their missile development programs and human rights abuses. US ballistic missile launch test X Trump signed the sanctions, considered his most significant piece of legislation of his presidency, with no public event. And he coupled it with a written statement that accused Congress of overstepping its constitutional bounds, impeding his ability to negotiate with foreign countries and lacking any ability to strike deals. Still, he said, "despite its problems, I am signing this bill for the sake of national unity." Russia says sanctions show Trump's 'total impotence' Trump has repeatedly blasted the federal investigation that concluded that Russia meddled in the 2016 campaign with the intention of tipping the election in his favor, calling it a "witch hunt." Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., however, called the president's concerns over the bill misplaced. Photo: MCT "Vladimir Putin and his regime must pay a real price for attacking our democracy, violating human rights, occupying Crimea and destabilizing Ukraine," McCain said. "Going forward, I hope the president will be as vocal about Russia's aggressive behavior as he was about his concerns with this legislation." Trump's talk of extending a hand of cooperation to Putin has been met by skeptical lawmakers looking to limit his leeway. The new measure targets Russia's energy sector as part of legislation that prevents Trump from easing sanctions on Moscow without congressional approval. Russia wasn't pleased, either. Putin responded on Sunday by announcing the US would have to cut 755 of its embassy and consular staff in Russia. Additionally,Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said in an emotional Facebook post Wednesday that "Trump's administration has demonstrated total impotence by surrendering its executive authority to Congress in the most humiliating way." The congressional review section of the bill that Trump objects to was a key feature for many members of Congress. Trump will be required to send a report explaining why he wants to suspend or terminate a particular set of the sanctions on Russia. Lawmakers would then have 30 days to decide whether to allow that. Last winter, just before Trump was sworn in, a bipartisan group of senators unveiled a bill designed to go beyond the punishments already levied against Russia by the Obama administration and to demonstrate to Trump that forcefully responding to Moscow's election interference wasn't a partisan issue. Action on Russia sanctions didn't really pick up until late May, when Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, threw his support behind the effort. The bill underwent revisions to avoid inadvertently undercutting US firms or interfering with how European allies acquire energy. Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle celebrated the passage and signing. House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., said the bill sends a "powerful message to our adversaries that they will be held accountable for their actions." But the House's top Democrat said Trump's criticism of the bill raises questions about whether his administration will follow the law. Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi said the Republican-led Congress must not allow the White House to "wriggle out of its duty to impose these sanctions for Russia's brazen assault on our democracy." Iran calls sanctions violation of nuclear deal Iran said the US's new sanctions break the terms of its nuclear deal with the United States and other world powers, and vowed an "appropriate and proportional" response. During his election campaign, Trump called the nuclear agreementnegotiated under his predecessor Barack Obama"the worst deal ever." "In our view the nuclear deal has been violated and we will show an appropriate and proportional reaction to this issue," Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi said in an interview with state TV, according to the ISNA news agency. An Iranian ballistic missile test (Photo: Mahmood Hosseini, Reuters The United States is one of six countries to sign up to the deal with Iran, and the othersRussia, China, Britain, France and Germanyhave said they see it as a success in easing concerns that Iran might be trying to develop nuclear weapons. The deal has also meant European countries flocking back to invest in oil-rich Iran, with French energy giant Total agreeing to develop a new phase of the South Pars gas field, the world's largest. Araqchi said the Europeans would not allow Trump to destroy the nuclear deal. "What Total did and the contract that was signed between this company and Iran sent a message from Europe to the Americans that whatever the conditions they will continue their economic relations with Iran," he said. N. Korea bans US travelers, as US looks to suspend N. Korea from Asia security forum A ban on travel by US passport holders to North Korea will take effect on Sept. 1 and Americans in the country should leave before that date, the US State Department said on Wednesday. North Korea Leader Kim Jong-un (Photo: AFP, KCNA via KNS) Journalists and humanitarian workers may apply for exceptions to the ban, the department said in a public notice. The US government last month said it would bar Americans from traveling to North Korea due to the risk of "long-term detention" there. The ban comes at a time of heightened tensions between the United States and North Korea, which has been working to develop a nuclear-tipped missile capable of hitting the United States. North Korea will become the only country to which Americans are banned from traveling. American student Otto Warmbier, sentenced last year to 15 years' hard labor in North Korea, returned to the United States in a coma on June 13 after being released on humanitarian grounds, and died June 19. The circumstances surrounding his death are not clear, including why he fell into a coma. North Korea has said through its state media that Warmbier's death was "a mystery" and dismissed accusations that he had died as a result of torture and beating in captivity. The State Department issued a notice in the Federal Register on Wednesday declaring US passports invalid for travel to, in or through North Korea. The restriction takes effect in 30 days, and applies for one year unless extended or revoked by the secretary of state. "Persons currently in North Korea on a US passport should depart North Korea before the travel restriction enters into effect on Friday, September 1, 2017," the department said in a statement. Professional reporters or journalists, representatives of the International Committee of the Red Cross or the American Red Cross traveling on official missions, those traveling to North Korea for "compelling humanitarian considerations" and those whose requests are "in the national interest" may ask for a special validation of their passports in order to travel to the country, the State Department said. South Morea missile launch test in response to North Korea launch test (Photo: EPA) North Korea is currently holding two Korean-American academics and a missionary, a Canadian pastor and three South Korean nationals who were doing missionary work. Japan says North Korea has also detained at least several dozen of its nationals. In addition to its own sanctions, Washington is seeking talks on how North Korea can be suspended from Asia's biggest security forum as part of a broader effort to isolate Pyongyang diplomatically and force it to end its missile tests and abandon its nuclear weapons program, US and Philippine officials said. Acting Assistant Secretary for East Asian and Pacific Affairs Susan Thornton told reporters in Washington on Wednesday that North Korea's actions have violated the conflict-prevention aims of the ASEAN Regional Forum, which groups the United States and North Korea with 25 other countries. The Philippines is hosting an annual ministerial meeting on Monday of the 27-nation ARF which will be attended by US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and North Korean Foreign Minister Ri Yong Ho. Tillerson has no plans to meet Ri on the sidelines of the meeting, Thornton said. With the US, Japan and South Korea expected to push for stronger actions against the North, a verbal showdown looms at the forum. "What we have been sort of looking at is having a serious discussion of what it would take for a member to be suspended from this organization that is dedicated to conflict prevention and preventive diplomacy," Thornton said. "I think we're going to continue to have that conversation as it regards North Korea." "What we've been doing is going around talking to partners about what more could they do to contribute to that increasing pressure on the regime and the increasing sort of diplomatic isolation of the regime," she said. Photos: AFP, EPA, Reuters Two Filipino officials told The Associated Press that US officials have discussed such a prospect with Philippine officials, who told them it may be better to keep North Korea in the forum, where it can be persuaded to stop provocations through dialogue. A North Korean delegation led by its vice foreign minister flew to Manila last week and told Philippine officials of their hope for a "favorable environment" when Pyongyang's top diplomat attends the ARF meetings in Manila, said the officials, who spoke to AP on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter publicly. In response, the Philippine officials told the North Koreans they could not guarantee that because other member states, like South Korea, Japan and the United States, would definitely raise alarm over Pyongyang's continued missile tests. They asked the delegation why North Korea staged an intercontinental ballistic missile test last week, days before the ARF meeting, and then expected not to be confronted by other nations over it, the officials said. While it may be too late for Pyongyang to be barred from the ARF meeting this year, Thornton said Washington would continue to "push the organization to think about what kinds of suspension measures or requirements or stipulations might be included in the future." Floods in Thailand's northern and eastern regions have killed at least 23 people and left two missing with damage estimated at around $300 million. The Interior Ministry says 10 provinces have been flooded due to heavy rains, affecting 721,500 people. Mongkol Tunsuwan, president for the northeastern region of the Thai Chamber of Commerce, says the floods are expected to set the region back by at least 10 billion baht ($300 million). The Israel Police arrested Thursday a deputy mayor of a city in northern Israel on suspicion of involvement of the death of the renowned criminal Arthur Rosen in 1999. A gag order has been placed on the identity of the suspect and the name of his city. Follow Ynetnews on Facebook and Twitter Following the arrest and the suspects questioning by the National Crimes and Corruption Unit Lahav 433, the deputy mayor was brought to the Rishon LeZion Magistrates Court on Thursday afternoon where discussions were held on extending his remand. Arrested deputy mayor (Photo: Yaron Brener) Another man suspected of involvement in the murder is Israeli crime boss Asi Abutbul who is currently serving 17 years in prison. Rosens body was found lying on the side of the coastal road near the northern city of Or Akiva. When the investigation was first opened, the death was believed to have been caused by a car accident. Arthur Rosen (Photo: Elad Gershgoren) However, after the discovery of evidence at the scene, suspicions arose that Rosen had been murdered. The body was sent to the Forensic Medicine Institute in Abu Kabir where three bullets were found in Rosens head. Returning to the scene of the crime, detectives found blood stains and bullet shells on the ground. Asi Abutbul (Photo: Motti Kimchi) Abutbul was arrested last month on suspicion of his involvement in the hit while simultaneously being accused of conspiracy and murder of lawyer Yoram Haham in 2008. With the reopening of the investigation, the police were expected to submit an indictment against Abutbul. However, after denying all charges, no prosecutor's statement was filed. An exhibition featuring the recent works of the renowned Macau-born artist Eugenio Novikoff Sales kicked off yesterday at Albergue SCM. Showcasing 14 acrylic works in the exhibition titled Kiss Africa Macau+Lusofonia, the paintings are filled to the brim with color and express Sales affection for different cultures. Speaking to the Times, Sales, who is also a member of the prestigious OFAA-Olimpia Fine Art Association, expressed his concern that Macau lacks a system to promote local artists. According to him, it would further hinder the growth of the local art industry, which would in turn affect the development of the regions culture. Sales also claimed that several remarkable artists have stopped creating artworks due to limited sponsorships given to them. The artist was born in Macau in 1960 but moved to Mozambique, Africa, at the age of six. His father was from Macau and his mother from Belarus under the former Soviet Union. Macau Daily Times (MDT) What is the reason behind naming the exhibition Kiss Africa? Eugenio Novikoff Sales (ENS) Usually when I see [promotions] about Africa, its embrace Africa, help Africa or donate something to Africa. So Kiss Africa is like an air of kiss for the good and bad experiences Ive had before. One thing Im happy about the exhibition is that its the first time the Chinese community can see my paintings in a not-so-far away place. MDT As a Macau-born artist who has traveled across many regions, how has your experience influenced your artworks? ENS My painting has an African influence. Its not an influence that I wanted to [have] but it happened naturally because of my childhood. I used to play with many African communities from different tribes so this influence came naturally. My paintings have some savage [elements]; something that I cannot explain but happened nonetheless. MDT So your childhood experiences in Africa played a significant part in the current artworks you are creating? ENS I started to paint in Macau more than 30 years ago and did my first official exhibition in Macau. At that time, my paintings were maybe Picasso or Matisse, but nobody knew for sure what I was doing. Until recently, in 2014, I was doing my sole exhibition at the Portuguese Consulate and many African lusophonists looked at my painting and they said its lusophone art. And from there onwards, I was baptized and was considered as the father of lusophone art all over China, including Macau. MDT What is the significance of the presence of lusophone art in a region that serves as a platform between China and Portuguese speaking-countries? ENS For me, the way the government is [promoting] local art is not correct because everything is under the Cultural Affairs Bureau [IC], and it cannot be like this. We know what happened last time with the previous president of IC, Ung Vai Meng. He invited his staff to work there so all the people who worked there were his friends. There is an elite group of them. Other artists who are doing real promotion of Macau art cannot [have a breakthrough] especially if they [IC] didnt like [them]. I think the government should consider [implementing a system], as they do in many countries, [so] that if a local artist has made at least three international exhibitions, their name should be immediately be available for any sponsorship. Now what happens in Macau? The associations are getting sponsorship but the associations only care about whos going to cut the ribbon in the exhibition, [] while the artists are left behind. [] In my case, Macau Foundation never gave me any sponsorship. I dont know why they dont have a system that can recognize which artists are promoting art outside of Macau. MDT What should the government do? ENS There is no system that protects local artists and Macau should have one. The Macau government said they want to build a good culture for Macau. Here, one artist becomes famous, but after changes in government [department heads], their sentiment for this artist is different. So this artist will immediately [stagnate]. In other countries its not like that because they show respect and protect them and give them what they need because [they know] that art is a way to promote the standard of the culture of a country. [] Macau lacks these things. MDT Up to what extent will this lack of system hinder the growth of the local art industry? ENS We have good artists who have been creating paintings for a long time but because of the lack of system, they stopped. [] The prizes and awards that I get outside of Macau have [promoted] my art. When they put me up, theyre also putting up the Macau culture. Tomorrow Im having an exhibition in Hong Kong in Ink Global 2017. The exhibition features 500 famous artists in the world, and in this 500, there are 100 artists that are part of a special selection and Im among these artists. So Im thinking, what is the Macau government doing? What are they thinking to do about my art? MDT Is this discouraging you and/or other local artists? ENS Of course. They only like to promote the artists that they want, whether a good one or a bad one. [] Macau really has no system [to protect local artists]. I dont know if they have this system in the music sector but for painting, absolutely nothing. Workers at the Yavne supermarket where a 42-year-old worker was stabbed by a Palestinian terrorist on Wednesday embraced each other upon arriving to work on Thursday, and spoke about how they experienced the traumatic event. Meanwhile, Kaplan Medical Center in Rehovot continues to fight for the life of the injured man. He is said to be in stable condition, but underwent additional surgery Thursday morning. Follow Ynetnews on Facebook and Twitter Etti Hasson said that her phone was flooded on Wednesday by acquaintances who knew she was supposed to be at the Yavne branch. "Yesterday I was afraid to come here, but today the level of anxiety has dropped. I came with my daughter and grandchildren and everything is fine," she said. The supermarket that was the site of the attack (Photo: Ido Erez) "I don't feel a drop in the number of customers, but no doubt there is a change in the atmosphere," she added. "When I came in, they checked my bag, which is something they've never done before. I've been shopping here for years and they know me, but even so, they checked my bag. It's definitely a change, but we're still going to come here, because this is our country and this is how we live here." a still from a security camera capturing the attack Aharon Rahimi, a customer of the supermarket for the past 22 years, was not deterred from shopping Thursday morning. "When I heard about what happened yesterday, I was very surprised and felt really bad, but nothing could stop me from coming here," he told Ynet. Rahimi said that he spoke to some of the women who work there. "They were really traumatized. They were here during the attack and are still in shock," he said. The terrorist is apprehended after trying to flee Flora Mantel, a longtime customer of the branch, said, "Yavne is a small city that isn't usually in the headlines, but the terrorists have arrived here too." She added that she also talked with the workers there. "I spoke a bit with the butcher, and I feel that people are walking around the branch with a bad feeling in their stomach, each with their own experiences. I decided to arrive this morning because I felt safe." emergency services tending to the injured supermarket worker Other customers who arrived at the supermarket did not hide their concern. "I'm afraid to come here," admitted one. "I came with my husband because I was not willing to go alone." Another customer added: "It's really hard for me to talk about what happened. I'm here every day, I feel a change in the atmosphereall the workers are very nervous and quiet, and when I passed through the corridor where the attack took place, I felt a shudder." Photo: Nitzan dror Civilians who were on the scene subdued the attacker, with some of them kicking him while he was on the ground, calling on police to "Shoot him in the head!" Photo: Nitzan Dror One of the civilians who helped subdue the suspect recounted the incident: "I (heard) one of the employees call out 'stop him, stop him.' Another civilian tripped him, and then he and the employee neutralized the suspect. Police officers who arrived at the scene removed them but we still kept (hitting) him. We neutralized him some more until the cops handcuffed him." IDF forces surround Yatta in 'porous' security ring (Photo: IDF Spokesperson's Unit) Shlomo Brill was an eye-witness to the attack. "My wife and I were shopping. All of a sudden, a man with a backpack and an Arabic accent approached me and asked me if I worked there. I said no, and he kept walking," he recounted. "Ten minutes later, I heard screams from the checkout area. Everyone at the store went crazy. We thought it was a terror attack, we're all stressed out. the cashiers were screaming, the employees were shaking with fear." An Arab town known for its terrorists The suspected terrorist, 19-year-old Ismail Ibrahim Ismail Abu Aram, from the Arab town of Yatta, was arrested while trying to flee the scene. Photo: IDF Spokesperson's Unit IDF forces raided the terrorist's home after the attack, while he was taken for questioning by the Shin Bet, who learned he was in Israel illegally. Earlier, the IDF also entered his family home where soldiers confiscated various items belonging to Abu Aram. As they investigated members of his family, it emerged that he was, in all likelihood, a lone wolf terrorist who had no connection with any terrorist organization. Photo: IDF Spokesperson's Unit Yatta is known for being particularly hostile and has become a breeding ground for terrorists planning to carry out attacks against Israeli security personnel and civilians. Two of the terrorists who carried out the deadly Sarona Market shootings in Tel Aviv last year, which left four Israelis dead and 16 wounded, had lived in a village near Yatta. Several other terror attacks have also been perpetrated by assailants from Yatta and its surroundings. Another prominent terrorist attack, in Rahat, was carried out by residents of the area, during which Shlomit Gonen was stabbed in February 2016 as she toured the local market. In an additional attack in Kiryat Gat, a terrorist grabbed a weapon from a soldier at a bus stop and was killed in the gunfight that ensued. Photo: IDF Spokesperson's Unit Even though the large Palestinian community of Yatta is still referred to as a village, it is really a town with some 50,000 inhabitants, many of whom are pious Muslims affiliated with Hamas. Yesterday evening, following the attack, IDF forces from the 603rd armored battalion and the Golani Brigade created a "porous" ring around the town, with soldiers checking Palestinians passing through Yatta's main entrances. The IDF and Shin Bet are investigating Abu Aram's infiltration into Israel and are examining possible explanations. Security forces believe that he crossed the Green Line through a large area in the southeastern part of Mount Hebron, where there is no border fence. The terrorists who carried out the attack in Sarona had passed through the same area on their way to Israel. Though most of the IDF's activity in this area focuses on preventing the infiltration of illegal Palestinians, it is not hermetic. And yet, according to data from the IDF's Judea and Samaria Division, activity focused on this huge sector has reduced the number of vehicles transporting illegal aliens to Israel from 1,000 to 25. The defense establishment is also examining the possibility that the terrorist entered Israel via another point in the West Bank. In an apparent coincidence, the Ministry of Defense announced shortly after the attack that it had completed the construction of a new barrier in the south Hebron hills. The barrier is made up of a 42-kilometer wall, from the Tarqumiyah checkpoint to the Meitar settlement, from which illegal aliens and terrorists have left in the past toward the southern Lakhish Region. A military appeals court in Jordan has upheld the life sentence of a Jordanian soldier in the shooting deaths of three US military trainers last year. First Sgt. Marik al-Tuwayha, was sentenced by a military court last month to life in prison with hard labor for killing the Americans at the entrance to an air base in southern Jordan. Al-Tuwayha had opened fire at a US convoy, claiming he feared the base was coming under attack. However, security camera video released after the verdict showed that he kept firing as two of the Americans took cover and waved their arms, in an apparent effort to stop the shooting. Jerusalems security forces are gearing up for the citys annual pride parade which got underway Thursday afternoon as police seek to avoid any violent outbreaks or occurences. Follow Ynetnews on Facebook and Twitter "We've coordinated with several other entities such as the Open House and the Jerusalem municipality," said Chief Superintendent Dakar Eshel. Photo: EPA "We do not take the situation lightly," Eshel assured. "It is our duty to make sure the parade goes off without a hitch." Responding to potential preventive detention, Eshel said: "We haven't carried out any. We only had some precautionary talks with some people. We know how to get our hands on the appropriate people and warn them off beforehand." Disturbances at past Jerusalem pride parade (Photo: EPA) After the Shira Banki murder in 2015, Eshel said he doesn't believe the number of people the police has to supervise has grown significantly. "You prepare for every operation on two levels," he says, "the operational level and the intelligence level. Operational preparedness also provides solutions for subjects we don't have any intelligence on." Preparations for the pride parade include both open and clandestine activities and are based on intelligence gathering and situation estimates. As part of these overall measures, police have arrested a 33-year old man from the central region after he published a threatening Facebook post. The suspect was questioned at the central unit and was brought before a judge, who forbade him to enter Jerusalem until Friday. Israels High Court of Justice gave the green light Thursday afternoon to demolish the homes of the terrorists responsible for separate attacks which ended in the murder of 23-year-old MSG. Hadas Malka and 20-year-old Sgt. Elhai Taharlev who was killed in a vehicular terrorist attack near Ofra. Follow Ynetnews on Facebook and Twitter Malka was murdered in June when three terrorists armed with semi-automatic weapons and knives struck in two different parts of Jerusalem's Old City, leaving her critically wounded before ultimately sucumming to her wounds. Hadas Malka (Photo: Israel Police) According to the courts order, the IDF will entirely level the home belonging to terrorist from the town of Silwad who in April murdered Taharlev who served in the IDFs Golani Brigade. Speaking at Malkas funeral, Police Commissioner Roni Alsheikh praised her courage and determination to serve the country. Sgt. Elhai Taharlev "You fought for the border police out of a deep sense of mission and desire to contribute. Your friends have said that you are full of values and loved your country and its people," Alsheikh said. "They say that in addition to being a professional and a patriot you were a great sister to all the other fighters, always worrying about everyone's well being, always smiling, always willing to lend a helping hand." After disappointing reports and recording a six billion dollar loss, Teva CEO Yitzhak Peterburg spoke with investors in a conference call and discussed Teva's plans to extricate itself from the crisis. Peterburg said the company is expected to close 15 factories around the world within the next 2 years. Following its reports, Teva stock nosedived by 10% when trade on Wall Street opened and 11% at the Tel Aviv stock exchange. Elor Azaria, who is to begin serving an 18-month prison sentence for shooting dead a neutralized Palestinian terrorists last year, sent a letter to IDF Chief of Staff Gadi Eisenkot Thursday asking that he substitute his sentence for community service, while informing him that he would not be filing an appeal to the Supreme Court. Follow Ynetnews on Facebook and Twitter I wish to clarify that if I had known in advance what became apparent in hindsightthat there was no explosive device on the body of the terroristI would not have shot, Azaria wrote in the letter. Furthermore, I would also like to clarify that I do not intend to file an appeal to the Supreme Court I ask (you) to accede to my request and to convert the prison sentence imposed on me to a sentence of community service. It is my desire to return to normal life and rehabilitate my life and those of my family in order to repair the fragments, the letter continued. Elor Azaria (Photo: Reuters) According to Azarias defense teams, the decision not to file an appeal to the Supreme Court was taken after deliberations by the Azaria family, and particularly in light of Elors desire to avoid any further distress or suffering on his family. Elor hopes that the chief of staff will accede to his request, his defense team said. "Go to combat, volunteer" Elor Azaria broke his silence Thursday evening, issuing a video statement in which he said, "I believe I could have been acquitted and I want everything to go back to normal as fast as possible. I hope the Chief of Staff will respond in the affirmative." Azaria also thanked supporters, saying, "You all financially aided by defense. It wasn't expected and I thank and love the people of Israel." Azaria ended his statement with an appeal to the country's youth, saying, "We only have one country. I don't want to think that motivation has been harmed because of my case. Go to combat, volunteer." Azaria's video statement Azaria is set to enter his cell in one week after the Military Court of Appeals upheld his manslaughter conviction on Sunday. Shortly after the decision, Minister of Defense Avigdor Lieberman took to Twitter, urging the Azaria family not to file an additional appeal . "I ask the Azaria family not to file an additional appeal, but rather to appeal to the Chief of Staff for a pardon. I have no doubt that the chief of staff will take into account all the difficult circumstances and that he (Elor) was an outstanding soldier," Lieberman wrote. In addition, Eisenkot announced the same evening that any appeal filed to him by Azaria to lighten his 18-month prison sentence would be seriously considered. More than 100 Haifa Chemicals employees protested on Thursday, burning tires and blocking entrance to the company's southern plant near Dimona. Follow Ynetnews on Facebook and Twitter Thursday's protests mark the second day of unrest, with employees calling for the resignation of Minister of Environmental Protection, Ze'ev Elkin, who was quoted on Wednesday as saying the closure of the southern plant is "redundant." Haifa Chemical protest near Dimona Yehuda Peretz, head of the worker's union for Haifa Chemicals in the south, said, "We are anxiously following updates. The fate of the northern plant is sealed and we are next in line. It isn't too late yet, we can still save the southern factory and the 400 workers. We call on the ministerdon't close the southern plant." In response to the recent closure, a meeting was held Thursday morning with Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked, Environmental Protection Minister Elkin, Deputy Attorney General Erez Kaminitz, Haifa Chemicals representatives and officials from both the Ashdod and Haifa ports, along with officials from the Home Front Command. The meeting was held in an attempt to find a solution to importing ammonia, while keeping Haifa Chemical plants open. During the meeting, it was agreed that the government would help replenish the supply of ammonia to the southern plant. However, the situation for the northern plant is grimmer due to the opposition of Haifa Mayor Yona Yahav. Yahav's opposition to the import and storage of ammonia in the northern facility makes the renewal of business licenses and building permits difficult to achieve for Haifa Chemicals. The bleak outlook for the northern plant leaves many employees, both in the north and south, feeling anxious in regards to their future. Vera, a 43-year-old employee, said, "Three months ago, he (Yahav) came and said, 'We will take care of all the workers in Haifa Chemicals.' But in the meantime, I don't see anyone who was hired by the city of Haifa or anyone who was called for something related to the municipality." Supreme Court Justice and Vice President Salim Joubran retired Thursday from his post at the mandatory judicial retirement age of 70. Follow Ynetnews on Facebook and Twitter Joubran received a dignified farewell ceremony after he dealt with his last day in the Supreme Court on the issue of allowing same-sex couples to adopta right still reserved for heterosexual couples only. Supreme Court Justice Salim Joubran (Photo: Alex Kolomoisky) Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked commended Joubran at his farewell ceremony. "Justice Salim Joubran is taking off his cloak today and signing off on 35 years devoted to the work of law-making, a period during which he made history for the Arab public in the country, establishing himself as one of the most original and prominent judges in the Supreme Court, even reaching the vice-presidency," Shaked said. Shaked continued, applauding his judgment and character. "The social sensitivity and the willingness to listen to each person was a way of life for him," she said. "He made sure to give every person who was sentenced a sense that his claims were heard and taken into account, even if he had to rule against him. He nurtured the sense of belonging and trust of Israeli Arabs in the rule of law. Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked (Photo: Alex Kolomoisky) "In criminal law, Joubran carefully examined each case from the defendant's point of view, trying to put himself in his shoes and understand his feelings. Defendants left his courtroom with the feeling that they had been given a fair trial. Justice Joubran did not hesitate to sentence or acquit anyone, while maintaining iron principles, adhering to the values of democracy and protecting human rights and the rights of the accused. "He stood out not only for his skills, but also for his efficiency and was considered one of the most effective judges in the Supreme Court." After Shaked expressed her gratitude, Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit chimed in. "This is an excellent judge and above all a dear man and human being," Mandelblit said. "You saw the people behind the legal issues. You did good and the just work, you ruled professionally and humanely, you went the way of compromise when it was possible. Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit (Photo: Alex Kolomoisky) "You were a public servant in every sense of the word, served faithfully and ruled with a deep understanding of the reality of life. It was clear that honesty and love of man guided you on your path." Supreme Court President Miriam Naor then said her farewell. "Salim is the image of the Israeli judge, the Israeli embodiment at its best," she said. "A significant contribution he made in the Supreme Court was the development of criminal law. Salim has the special ability to analyze the facts and examine the basics of the offense professionally. He also contributed to the development of new laws, including their appropriate punishment." Joubran and Supreme Court President Miriam Naor (Photo: Alex Kolomoisky) Joubran then said his farewell, thanking his colleagues. "From a refugee baby in a shaky boat to Beirut in 1948 I was privileged to sit in Israel's highest court. I think I have nothing but to thank the Creator for this privilege. "At a very young age, I was appointed to a judge and saw in my position a dual mission: One to decide justly in disputes, and the other to be as close as possible to a bridge between Jews and Arabs in the State of Israel." Joubran then spoke about political attacks on the court system. "There is no place for attacking the Supreme Court. In my opinion, it represents the good in Israeli society, the effort to achieve gender equality, concern for minorities, the distribution of budgets and more," he noted. "Harming the High Court of Justice will harm public trust." The Supreme Court Justices at the ceremony (Photo: Alex Kolomoisky) To conclude, Joubran spoke about a subject very near and dear to him; coexistence between Jews and Arabs. "The Arab minority and the Jewish majority in Israel share many in common but differ in culture, identity and social and economic status," Joubran said. "These differences inevitably create a conflict of views and interests between the two groups. At the same time, our democratic regime must act to close the gaps between the groups while preserving and recognizing the cultural differences. "We must appoint and add more Arab judges in the judicial system. Arab citizens should be allowed to express their culture and identity in public life, in a proper and dignified way. Regarding the allocation of lands, the state is expected to treat citizens according to egalitarian principles. "I would hope to see a tolerant Israeli society with mutual respect and peaceful coexistence between the two peoples." The first Arab Supreme Court Justice Judge Joubran was appointed to the Supreme Court in 2003. He was the first Arab-Christian to be appointed to the Supreme Court, and he set the stage for those who followed him. Patient and humane, he stressed the value of equality, minority rights, social inclusion and human rights. He tended to be in the minority when rulings on cases which could infringe on minority rights, preferring caution and preservation of rights in their highest form. Among the Joubran's prominent rulings were his rejection of the appeal of former President Moshe Katsav for his conviction of rape, minority opinion against amnesty for offenses committed during the 2005 disengagement, inclusion of Arab towns in the national development priority regions map of the government, and more. He was also involved in a small scandal when he did not sing the anthem, Hatikvah, during the swearing-in ceremony, but was supported by his friends who argued that Arab citizens should not be forced to sing words that do not speak to them or reflect their roots, as the anthem speaks solely about the return of the Jewish people to Israel and their hope to once again live there as a free people. Several dozen disabled protestors blocked traffic on Highway 2 near Rishpon on Thursday. Follow Ynetnews on Facebook and Twitter The protestors arrived in some 20 vehicles before blocking traffic on the highway and exiting their vehicles. Police arrived at the scene and urged protestors to enter their vehicles and allow traffic to resume. Photo: Yair Sagy Protests by disabled citizens began anew last month after the government did not respond to calls to raise disability benefits to the same level as minimum wage. According to the Prime Minister's Office and coalition chairman, MK David Bitan, in January 2018, the allowance for "severely disabled" persons (those defined as being at least 90% disabled) will be raised to NIS 4,000. Those disabled persons who cannot work and live under the poverty line will have their benefits raised to NIS 3,200 per month. Moreover, an additional NIS 4 billion will be implemented over the course of the next several years in the attempt to raise the benefits of all disabled persons to at least NIS 4,000. Photo: Yair Sagy Following the publication of the proposed plan, Chairman of the Israeli Human Rights Organization of People with Disabilities, Naomi Moravia, announced that she and her organization reject Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's proposal and will escalate their struggle. Currently, monthly disability benefits stand at NIS 2,342. Disabled advocacy groups are demanding benefits be raised to the equivalent level of minimum wage, which stands at NIS 5,000. Advanced contacts are underway for King Abdullah of Jordan to arrive in Ramallah next week for an official visit. Follow Ynetnews on Facebook and Twitter In the short visit, which is expected to last several hours, Abdullah is expected to meet Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas in his Ramallah compound. King Abdullah of Jordan with PA President Mahmoud Abbas (Photo: AFP) For now, it appears that the visit will take place on Monday, but no decision has yet been made. The King's last visit to the Palestinian territories took place five years ago. The timing of the expected visit is as important as the visit itself. Abdullah's arrival at the present time is expected to give Abbas political support in a time when relations between Israel and the PA deteriorated due to Abbas' decision to sever ties with Israel, including security coordination. The fact that Abdullah will arrive in Ramallah shortly after the incident in Ammanin which an Israeli security guard shot two Jordanian civiliansand after the Temple Mount crisis, two events that brought Israel-Jordan relations to a record low, constitutes a clear and meaningful statement to Israel. In addition, the visit was held against the backdrop of increasing pessimism in the Palestinian Authority regarding the ability of the Trump administration to restart the political process between Israel and the Palestinians, despite the cautious optimism registered during the first months of the US president's tenure. A few days ago it was leaked that Trump's son-in-law and his senior adviser Jared Kushner said in a closed conversation that there may be no solution to the conflict in the Middle East. At the same time, senior PLO official Saeb Erekat attacked the US administration for not supporting the two-state solution, and denounced Washington's tolerance for Israel's continued settlement construction. Southeast Asias top diplomats will seek talks as soon as possible on a proposed nonaggression pact with China aimed at preventing clashes in the South China Sea and will likely hold back on criticism of Chinas aggressive acts in the disputed waters in a weekend summit. An initial draft of a joint communique to be issued by the Association of Southeast Asian Nations foreign ministers, seen by The Associated Press yesterday, says they will ask senior diplomats to immediately initiate talks on the so-called Code of Conduct in the disputed sea after their governments agreed on a framework of the accord with China in May. The ASEAN ministers will ask their senior diplomats to begin earnest discussions on a substantive and effective code of conduct on the basis of the framework as soon as possible, according to the draft communique. The long-seething disputes in the South China Sea, alarm over North Koreas missile tests and the rise of Islamic radicalism in the region amid a deadly siege by Islamic State group-linked militants in the southern Philippines are expected to grab the spotlight in the meetings of ASEAN foreign ministers and their Asian and Western counterparts in Manila starting Saturday. Robespierre Bolivar, spokesman of the Department of Foreign Affairs, described the initial progress after years of efforts by Southeast Asian countries to negotiate a code of conduct with China as a very big step. Critics have said the framework serves only as a brief outline of previously agreed principles and fails to mention concerns over Chinas newly built islands or an arbitration ruling last year that invalidated Beijings historic basis for its claims to virtually all of the South China Sea. Beijing has refused to recognize the ruling, based on a 1982 maritime treaty. A final copy of the framework seen by the AP also did not mention whether the Code of Conduct should be legally binding, which most ASEAN states demand but China opposes, or the extent of disputed areas to be covered by such a code. The code will not serve as a tool to settle territorial disputes, according to the framework. During the talks, some ASEAN states proposed language that did not enjoy consensus, including a proposal by Vietnam for a dispute-settlement mechanism in case disputes arise in the future over interpretation of the code, according to an ASEAN report attached to the framework. The draft communique, still to be expanded with inputs from other ASEAN members, also doesnt mention concern about Chinas artificial islands, where a missile defense system has reportedly been installed. Those concerns have appeared in previous ASEAN joint statements. A carefully crafted line on the dangers lurking in the dispute appears in the draft statement. We reaffirmed the importance of enhancing mutual trust and confidence, exercising self-restraint [] and avoiding unilateral actions in disputed features that may further complicate the situation, it said. Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte, who is ASEAN chairman this year, moved swiftly after taking office last year to revive his countrys once-frosty ties with China while taking an antagonistic attitude toward its U.S. ally. Duterte set aside the Philippines arbitration victory over China but promised to take it up with Chinese leaders before the end of his six-year term. His move has eased tensions but has been criticized as squandering an opportunity to promote the rule of law in a disputed sea that governments fear may spark Asias next major armed conflict. Supreme Court Senior Associate Justice Antonio Carpio, who has studied the disputes extensively, said China may benefit more from a code of conduct if it waits to fully develop its artificial islands and fortify them as military outposts before signing the code with ASEAN. Then, the code will provide a cover to Chinas completed reclamation and militarization, he said. The ASEAN ministers will also express their grave concern on North Koreas missile tests, including at Mondays ASEAN Regional Forum, a security-focused gathering which will be attended by their U.S., Russian, Chinese, South and North Korean and Japanese counterparts on Monday. The tough-talking Duterte briefly lashed out at North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in a speech yesterday, saying Kim has a chubby, kind-looking face but hes in reality a son of a bitch and disturbed. Hes a maniac, if he commits a mistake, then the Far East will become an arid land, Duterte said. Jim Gomez, Manila, AP Over three hundred protestors demonstrated Thursday evening in Jaffa following the arrest of the brother of Mahdi Saadi, who was killed last week by police while fleeing arrest after being wanted in connection for an earlier shooting in the city. Follow Ynetnews on Facebook and Twitter Police issued a statement saying that the suspect was detained after a group of Jaffa residents attacked officers stationed on Yefet Street. Scene of the protests following the arrest Police detain suspect X Officers arrested the 20-year-old who is suspected to have led several attacks on police and property throughout the city since his brother Mahdi was killed last week. Since the young man's death, riots and unrest have spread throughout Jaffa, with protestors burning vehicles, attacking police and destroying property throughout the city. The head of the northern branch of the Islamic Movement, Sheikh Raed Salah, visited the Saadi family last Monday and strongly condemned police, saying, "They publicly executed him, there is no justice. Whatever their claims, this behavior is unacceptable. We will not accept this injustice." More than 22,000 people attended Thursday's gay pride parade in Jerusalem. Follow Ynetnews on Facebook and Twitter Thousands of people gathered in the Liberty Bell Park, as police and security forces blocked nearby streets in preparation for a large turnout. Photo: AP Photo: AFP Photo: Alex Kolomoisky Labor MKs participate in the parade (Photo: Motti Kimchi) Photo: Alex Kolomoisky Photo: Alex Kolomoisky Photo: Motti Kimchi Photo: Motti Kimchi Photo: Motti Kimchi At the entrance to the parade, the participants were checked carefullyeach examined with a hand-held metal detector. Twelve people were detained for questioning on suspicion that they intended to disrupt and harm the march. One of them was found carrying a knife. Photo: Motti Kimchi Dozens of people also gathered at an event commemorating Shira Banki, who was murdered in the parade two years ago. Shira Banki, next to her a quote: 'better to teach good than denounce evil' The participants scattered white flowers as they marched through the location where Banki was murdered, and her parents, Uri and Mika, also participate in the events. Participants carrying white flowers (Photo: Motti Kimchi) Near the parade, in the area of the Menachem Begin Heritage Center, extreme right-wing activists from the Lehava organizationwhich strictly opposes Jewish assimilationwere protesting against the parade. A heavy police presence was deployed to maintain order near the Lehava protest. Photo: Motti Kimchi One right-wing activist apparently attempted to photograph a notebook containing the pictures and names of potential suspects carried by a police officer at the scene. Police therefore attempted to detain the suspect leading to a commotion. Police managed to disperse rioters without anyone being hurt. A US Senate committee approved legislation Thursday that would suspend US financial assistance to the Palestinian Authority until it ends what lawmakers said is a long-standing practice of rewarding Palestinians who kill Americans and Israelis. Follow Ynetnews on Facebook and Twitter Members of the Republican-led Senate Foreign Relations Committee voted 17-4 to pass the measure, called the " Taylor Force Act ," sponsored by South Carolina Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, and the committee chairman, Tennessee Republican Senator Bob Corker. Senators Lindsey Graham (L) and Bob Corker (Photo: AP) Corker said the Palestinian Authority has "enshrined in law" a system that creates a monetary incentive for acts of terrorism by paying monthly stipends of as much as $3,500 to Palestinians who commit acts of violence and to their families. The amount of the payment depends on the length of the jail sentence they receive for the crime, he said. "This is sick," Corker said. Husam Zomlot, chief representative of the Palestinian General Delegation to the US, called the legislation "misinformed and counterproductive." He disputed Corker's assessment of what he described as a 52-year old program "to support families who lost their breadwinners to the atrocities of the occupation, the vast majority of whom are unduly arrested or killed by Israel." Palestinians have argued that ending Israel's "occupation" of the West Bank, Gaza Strip and east Jerusalemlands Palestinians seek for their stateis key to defeating terrorism. "The program has served a social and security need to provide for our people, guarantee a better future for the children and protect the needy from the many radical groups around us," Zomlot said in an emailed statement. The bill is named for Taylor Force, an MBA student at Vanderbilt University in Tennessee and a West Point graduate who was visiting Israel in March 2016 when he was stabbed to death by a Palestinian. Force was from Lubbock, Texas. His parents live in South Carolina. Taylor Force (Photo: AP) Graham said the Palestinian Authority praised Force's killer as a "heroic martyr" and he's termed the payments "pay to slay." He estimated that the Palestinian Authority has made $144 million in what he described as "martyr payments." "So if you're a young Palestinian the best thing maybe you can do for your family in terms of income streams is to be a terrorist," Graham said. "That's inconsistent with peace." The Trump administration's budget request for fiscal 2018 includes roughly $260 million for economic development and law enforcement programs in the West Bank and Gaza. The internationally backed Palestinian Authority has tightened its grip in the West Bank since losing control of the Gaza Strip to the Islamic militant group Hamas a decade ago. "Assistance in the West Bank and Gaza remains critical to advancing the United States' long-standing national security priority of achieving Israeli-Palestinian peace," according to a State Department budget documents. A December report by the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service said that since the mid-1990s the US has committed more than $5 billion in economic and nonlethal security assistance to the Palestinians. The United States has, since 2015, cut foreign aid to the Palestinians by the same amount its government has spent on the payments for acts of terrorism. Photo: AP But the legislation cleared by the committee would go a step further, a move that concerned several Democrats. They said they agreed with the intent of the bill, but feared withholding critically needed foreign aid would accelerate the problems in the West Bank and Gaza. "There's poverty, there are a lot of checkpoints, there's hopelessness," said New Mexico Democratic Senator Tom Udall. Before foreign aid can resume, the State Department would be required to certify to Congress that the Palestinian Authority has terminated the payments for acts of terrorism and has revoked any law or decree that allows a compensation system for imprisoned Palestinians, according to the bill. The committee agreed to adjust the legislation so that the aid payments would go into an escrow account that could be accessed once the laws establishing the prisoner payments are revoked. Virginia Democratic Senator Tim Kaine had argued the Palestinian Authority would have greater motivation to change if it knew the money had not been cut off completely. For too long, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has strayed from its intended purpose and instead has become a red tape factory with little to no accountability. Thankfully, the Trump administration is working to reverse this harmful trend. Farmers and ranchers have been hit especially hard by the endless onslaught of EPA regulations, even though they are careful stewards of our land and water. Their livelihood depends on responsible usage of these resources, and the Nebraskans I talk with take this responsibility seriously. We all want clean air and clean water, which can and should be combined with the goals of economic growth and competitiveness. One of the clearest examples of the agencys new direction under the Trump administration is the proposal released by the EPA and Army Corps of Engineers to repeal the Obama administrations Waters of the U.S. rule, or WOTUS. This rule was one of the most flagrant abuses of regulatory power in modern history and threatened the future of agriculture. It would have given the EPA sweeping jurisdiction to regulate everything from ditches to prairie potholes, even on private land. When the Obama administration finalized WOTUS in 2015, I introduced the House resolution to block the rule using the Congressional Review Act, or CRA. The Senate version of my resolution passed both chambers of Congress but was unsurprisingly vetoed by President Obama. Now, the Trump administrations proposal to repeal this rule is a welcome step toward certainty and relief for producers, landowners, and local communities. The formal proposal was released on July 27, and the public has until August 28, 2017, to submit comments to the agency at Regulations.gov. The Clean Power Plan, another dangerous Obama administration regulation, threatened to force hundreds of coal-fired power plants to shut their doors, killing jobs and increasing the cost of energy. Earlier this year, President Trump signed an executive order at the EPA to dismantle these federal regulations and empower states to move forward with responsible energy development. To this point, EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt has worked to undo more regulations in his short tenure than any other administrator in the history of the agency. The regulations issued by the Obama administration threatened entire industries and defied the Constitution with costly legislating through the executive branch. In April, Administrator Pruitt announced his back-to-basics agenda of returning EPA to its core mission: protecting the environment by engaging with state, local, and tribal partners to create sensible regulations that enhance economic growth. As Administrator Pruitt reins in the red tape, I am hopeful we can see the agency refocus on important projects which have been languishing. For example, Missouri residents have been waiting 27 years for an EPA decision on how to clean up a toxic waste site. Administrator Pruitt has stated his commitment to resolving this and other long-awaited cleanup efforts. Standing against federal overreach has been a priority of mine for many years, and I appreciate the Trump administrations commitment to this effort. An EPA which prioritizes both protecting our resources and growing our economy is certainly a welcome change. As a homeowner, you probably already know that you should be working to maintain your home. But, chances are, you Read More Zabka, Warszawa, 166 m2 Lokal znajduje sie w budynku apartamentowym Unimax Development w inwestycji Viva Vitolin, przy ul. Grochowskiej 87 w Warszawie. Bedzie dostepny w 4Q 2023 roku (podpisanie umow przeniesienia wasnosci). Zurich: Former Gambian interior minister Ousman Sonko will remain in a Swiss jail for another three months after the country`s attorney general (AG) broadened an investigation into whether he committed crimes against humanity. Sonko has been in pre-trial custody since January after the Geneva-based legal group Trial International filed a criminal complaint accusing him of having personally taken part in torture. The attorney general`s office said it had since expanded its probe beyond the original allegations after hearing testimony from witnesses and after additional complaints were lodged against Sonko. Sonko was interior minister from 2006 to 2016, when he fled to Sweden and thence to Switzerland, where he applied for asylum in November and was taken into police custody in January. He served under authoritarian leader Yahya Jammeh, who fled into exile after losing an election to Adama Barrow in December. Jammeh has denied allegations of torture and killing opponents during his 22 years in power. Barrow`s government is in contact with Swiss authorities following Switzerland`s request for legal assistance on Sonko`s case, the AG`s office said. Sonko`s lawyer in Switzerland, Phillippe Currat, did not immediately respond to e-mail from Reuters seeking comment on Thursday morning. Washington: Christopher Wray on Thursday assumed charge as the new FBI Director and pledged to work for the good of the US and the cause of justice. A former US Assistant Attorney for the Criminal Division, Wray, 50, replaces James Comey, who was abruptly fired by President Donald Trump amid a probe into the Trump campaign's alleged collusion with Russia to influence the last year's presidential election. He was sworn in as the eighth Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation by Attorney General Jeff Sessions who lauded his "spirit" and "strength of character." Wray, 50, who was confirmed by the US Senate through an overwhelming majority of 92-5 votes on the Senate floor, termed it "the honour of a lifetime" to serve as the director. "It is the honour of a lifetime to serve as Director. I long ago grew to know and admire the FBI from my earliest days as a line prosecutor to my years as assistant attorney general," Wray said in a statement after being sworn in. "I am excited, humbled and grateful, therefore, to have this chance to work side-by-side again with these fine professionals for the good of the country and the cause of justice," he said. In a statement, Sessions praised Wray's "spirit" and "strength of character," saying: "I am confident that the FBI, the premier investigative agency in the world, is in great hands with Director Chris Wray at the helm." "I congratulate him for being overwhelmingly confirmed to that post and look forward to working with him every day to keep America safe," he said. As a former federal prosecutor and head of the Department of Justice's Criminal Division, Wray has successfully prosecuted terrorists, drug kingpins, and white-collar criminals, Sessions said. FBI directors are approved by the Senate to serve for 10 years, but the President has unilateral authority to fire them at any time. Moscow: US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov spoke and agreed to discuss bilateral ties in Manila at the weekend, the Russian ministry said. The countries' top diplomats spoke today as US President Donald Trump warned that bilateral ties are at an all-time and "very dangerous" low. Moscow said the Tillerson-Lavrov phone call took place on the US initiative. The two men agreed to discuss topics including "the state of bilateral relations between Russia and the US at a meeting on the sidelines of the ASEAN regional forum on security from August 6 to 8 in Manila," the Russian foreign ministry statement said, Lavrov and Tillerson also talked about how the United Nations Security Council should respond to North Korea's latest missile launch on July 28 and agreed to discuss this in more detail in Manila, Moscow said. They "agreed to discuss in detail the prospects of mutual cooperation" on resolving the situation in Manila, Moscow added. Washington: New White House Chief of Staff John Kelly told Attorney General Jeff Sessions last weekend that his job was safe after Sessions endured several weeks of sharp public criticism from President Donald Trump, a senior US official said on Wednesday. Kelly, who was named chief of staff by Trump on Friday, phoned Sessions on Saturday to reassure him the White House wanted him to remain as head of the Justice Department, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. The conversation was first reported by the Associated Press. Kelly said Trump was still annoyed with Sessions` decision in March to recuse himself from the investigation of alleged Russian meddling in the 2016 U.S. election and possible collusion with the Trump campaign, but there had been "kind of a thaw" in Trump`s attitude toward him, according to the official. The White House did not immediately respond to a request from Reuters for comment. The Kremlin says it did not interfere in the election, and Trump has denied any collusion. Last week, Trump assailed Sessions in a tweet as "very weak" and said he was "very disappointed" with his attorney general in a Wall Street Journal interview. When asked at a news conference last week about Sessions` future, Trump replied: "Time will tell. Time will tell." Republican lawmakers rallied to the defense of Sessions, a former US senator from Alabama, and Trump has not mentioned him in tweets in recent days. Columbia: The United States issued a ban on Wednesday prohibiting its citizens traveling to North Korea, a move triggered by the death of a US student imprisoned by Pyongyang during a tourist visit. The ban, which comes into effect September 1, was introduced after officials said the "serious risk" of arrest by Pyongyang officials during tourist travel presented an "imminent danger to the physical safety" of its citizens. "All United States passports are declared invalid for travel to, in, or through the DPRK unless specially validated for such travel," read the restriction in the US government`s Federal Register, using the acronym for North Korea`s official name. Strict warnings against travel to the North were already in place before the ban was first announced last month following the death of American student Otto Warmbier. Warmbier, 22, a student at the University of Virginia, died in June after being held by Pyongyang for more than a year on charges of stealing a propaganda poster from a North Korean hotel. He had been sentenced to 15 years` hard labour in the North, but was sent home in a mysterious coma in June and died soon afterwards. US President Donald Trump slammed Warmbier`s detention and eventual death as "a total disgrace," pledging to "prevent such tragedies from befalling innocent people at the hands of regimes that do not respect the rule of law or basic human decency". The new ban will remain in effect for one year, unless it is revoked sooner by US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. Exemptions will be allowed in specific cases for humanitarian travel and journalists. Tour companies said the ban would significantly reduce the numbers of Western tourists to the impoverished country. "Currently US citizens make up about 20 per cent of the Western tourist market, so it will reduce the industry by at least that much plus the collateral damage of others who may not want to go as a result of this," said Simon Cockerell, general manager of Koryo Tours, the market leader in Western tourism to North Korea. Some 5,000 Western tourists visit the North each year, with standard one-week trips costing about $2,000. The vast majority of tourists visiting North Korea are Chinese. Han Chol-Su, a senior North Korea development official, earlier denied that the loss of business would hurt his country`s economy. "If the US government says Americans cannot come to this country, we don`t care a bit," he told AFP in Pyongyang last month. North Korean state media "relentlessly presents Americans in the most negative manner; rapacious, war-mongering, and utterly filled with hatred of the Korean people," Cockerell said. Describing American visitors as "one of the best soft-power assets of the United States", he added that the ban would eliminate a counterweight to that propaganda. In Pyongyang, visiting US tourist Carolyn Dunlap described the move as "definitely not unexpected" in light of Warmbier`s death and other detentions. "Honestly the current travel advice is not much different from a ban, the only difference is people can still physically go," she told AFP last week. She planned her trip before speculation of the move mounted, but its timing means she will be one of the last US tourists to the country for at least one year. "It`s kind of cool, kind of weird," said the 21-year-old. Warmbier`s death added to already high tensions in the region over North Korea`s weapons ambitions. In recent weeks Pyongyang has launched two successful tests of an intercontinental ballistic missile that experts say could reach US territory. Washington: US President Donald Trump has endorsed a legislation that would drastically cut the number of legal immigrants allowed into the country and implement "merit-based" visa scheme which could benefit highly-educated and technology professionals from countries like India. The Reforming American Immigration for Strong Employment (RAISE) Act would scrap the current lottery system to get into the US and instead institute a points-based system for earning a Green Card. Factors that would be taken into account include English language skills, education, high-paying job offers and age. If passed by the Congress and signed into law, the legislation could benefit highly-educated people and technology professionals from countries like India. "The RAISE Act will reduce poverty, increase wages, and save taxpayers billions and billions of dollars. It will do this by changing the way the US issues Green Cards to nationals from other countries. Green Cards provide permanent residency, work authorisation, and fast track to citizenship," Trump said at a White House event to announce his support to the RAISE Act. The bill, Trump said, "would represent the most significant reform to our immigration system in half a century." Standing along with two top authors of the bill Senators Tom Cotton and David Perdue Trump said the RAISE Act ends chain migration and replaces the low-skilled system with a new points-based system for receiving a Green Card. This competitive application process will favour applicants who can speak English, financially support themselves and their families and demonstrate skills that will contribute to our economy, he said. The RAISE Act prevents new migrants and new immigrants from collecting welfare and protects US workers from being displaced, he added. "That's a very big thing. They're not going to come in and just immediately go and collect welfare. That doesn't happen under the RAISE Act. They can't do that. Crucially, the Green Card reforms in the RAISE Act will give American workers a pay raise by reducing unskilled immigration," he said. "It has not been fair to our people, to our citizens, to our workers," Trump said of the current immigration system. Trump said this legislation will not only restore America's competitive edge in the 21st century, but it will restore the sacred bonds of trust between America and its citizens. "This legislation demonstrates our compassion for struggling American families who deserve an immigration system that puts their needs first and that puts America first," he said. Noting that the current system is "an obsolete disaster", Senator Cotton said that it is time for it to change. "First, we bring over a million immigrants into this country a year. That's like adding the population of Montana every single year; adding the population of Arkansas every three years. The vast majority of those workers or those immigrants come here not because of their English-language abilities or their job skills, or their job offer, or their educational attainment," he said. "In fact, only one in 15 out of a million new immigrants come here because of their job skills and their ability to succeed in this economy," Cotton said. The RAISE Act will be re-orienting Green Card system, he added. Senator Perdue said the current system does not work. "It keeps America from being competitive, and it does not meet the needs of the economy today," he said. "Today we bring in 1.1 million legal immigrants a year. Over 50 per cent of our households of legal immigrants today participate in our social welfare system. Right now, only one 1 out of 15 immigrants who come into our country come in with skills that are employable. We've got to change that," he said. Perdue said he looked at the at best practices before drafting the legislation. "We looked at countries like Canada, Australia, and others. What we're introducing today is modelled on the current Canadian and Australian systems. It's pro-worker, it's pro-growth, and it's been proven to work. Both have been extremely successful in attracting highly skilled workers to those countries," the Senator said. "We can all agree that the goals of our nation's immigration system should be to protect the interests of working Americans, including immigrants, and to welcome talented individuals who come here legally and want to work and make a better life for themselves. Our current system makes it virtually impossible for them to do that," said the Senator. According to Attorney General Jeff Sessions, the higher entry standards established in this proposal will allow authorities to do a more thorough job reviewing applicants for entry, therefore protecting the security of the US homeland. The additional time spent on vetting each application as a result of this legislation will also ensure that each application serves the national interest, he observed. "The American people deserve a lawful immigration system that promotes our national interest. The RAISE Act would give us a more merit-based immigration system that admits the best and the brightest around the world while making it harder for people to come here illegally," Sessions said. "The bill would end programme known to be rife with fraud and abuse and finally improve the vetting process, making our country and working class wages much safer and stronger," said the Attorney General. Dhaka: Bangladesh`s new anti-graft hotline has been overwhelmed with tens of thousands of calls about acts of corruption in its first week, an official said on Thursday. Hotline number 106 was launched last Thursday by state authorities in an effort to crack down on graft in Bangladesh, which has been listed by a global watchdog as one of the world`s most corrupt nations. "Since July 27 around 75,000 people called our hotline," Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC) spokesman Pranab Kumar Bhattacharya told AFP. The hotline is manned by just five government employees, with a substantial number of calls being forwarded to a voicemail messaging system. Bhattacharya said most callers who got through had complaints that were beyond the agency`s jurisdiction, including personal family disputes and dowry demands. The commission is empowered to investigate bribes in government offices and agencies, misappropriation of state assets or money, embezzlement of state funds, amassing of wealth through illegal means, money laundering and bank fraud. More than 200 relevant complaints were forwarded to the ACC to investigate. Local English daily The New Age said most complaints were against land record offices, followed by utility services, state-run hospitals, government-run schools and railway and road transport authorities. "Most complaints are related to land," Rajib Ahsan, an official at the ACC`s hotline cell, told AFP. Some women had complained of dowry demands from their husbands, he said. Last year Bangladesh was ranked as the 13th most corrupt nation in the world, according to the graft perception index prepared annually by Berlin-based Transparency International. Last week Bangladesh`s Finance Minister A.M.A. Muhith, while inaugurating the hotline, acknowledged the depth of the problem and said in the past corruption was an act of shame but it had now taken root in the country of 160 million people. "We are all overwhelmed by corruption. Those in power spread corruption," he said. "It could not continue if everyone were not involved. We are all indirectly involved." New Delhi: Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi will visit flood-affected areas of Assam on Thursday, two days after Prime Minister Narendra Modi went there. Modi announced Rs 2,000 crore for the northeastern states to deal with the havoc caused by floods that have killed 76 persons in Assam and affected millions. Gandhi will leave for Lakhimpur today and visit the worst-affected areas, according to party sources. Thereafter, he and state Congress leaders will visit Amtala and Mazgaon areas in Lakhimpur district by road. Gandhi will go to Jalore in Rajasthan and Dhanera in Gujarat on Friday. New Delhi: Congress Vice-President Rahul Gandhi on Thursday visited flood affected areas at Lakhimpur in Assam. He visited the flood affected areas along with the villagers. Taking to them he said, "We will pick up this issue and discuss about the flood situation in the Parliament." He further said that the villagers deserve compensation as it is their right. "We will fight your fight and provide you with justice that you deserve," he added. Earlier on August 1 Prime Minister Narendra Modi reached Guwahati to take stock of the flood situation in the state. On July 25, an Inter-Ministerial team, comprising seven members, had visited the state to assess the damage caused by recent floods. After meeting Assam Chief Minister Sarbananda Sonowal on July 18, Prime Minsiter had send sent the seven-member team to state. The Assam State Disaster Management Authority (ASDMA) says that 11,93,458 people have in 1,795 villages of 24 districts have been affected by the floods. As many as 79 people have lost their lives in the devastating floods, eight of them from Guwahati. Assam has been dealing with heavy floods since mid-July. PATNA: The naxals in Lakhisarai district of Bihar reportedly hijacked a train in wee hours of Thursday, reported news agency ANI. Danapur Durg Express (Train no-13288) was captured near Jamui's Shahid Jitendra Halt, disrupting railway operations. The Maoists took the railway guard hostage and also blew up a mobile tower nearby. The Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) and the naxals exchanged fire. No casualties were reported from either side, stated a CRPF statement. Railway operations have now resumed. Patna: The Indira Gandhi Institute of Medical Science (IGIMS) in Bihar capital Patna has triggered a controversy by asking its employees to declare their virginity in a marital status declaration form. Taking cognizance, the Centre, as well as the state, have asked the government-run hospital to submit a report on the issue. Earlier today, Bihar Health Minister Mangal Pandey said `virgin` just means unmarried and there is nothing objectionable in it being written in the form. "The word which is used is `virgin`. It means unmarried girl, maiden. I don`t think these words are not objectionable. But still, this issue is being raised. I had a word with the officials of the IGIMS. They said that this is the format of AIIMS and since 1983, it is being used in every organisation of the country," Pandey told news agency ANI. He added that the declaration has been used for 34 years the same way. However, the office of Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar has now asked the institute to submit a report. The IGIMS in its form also asks the employees about the number of wives and details about the past marriages of their spouses. Then they have to indicate if "That I am married to a person who has no other wife living" or "That I am married to a person who has another wife living" or "That I am married and have more than one wife". "It is embarrassing for all of us to say anything," a health official said. However, IGIMS Medical Superintendent Manish Mandal told media that there is nothing unusual in the form. "The IGIMS follows New Delhi's AIIMS which in turn follows CCS rules. The form is according to prescribed rules, which are made by the government and Constitution. If they change the word, we will change it," Mandal said. Mumbai: In its latest demand for cuts in a film, the censor board has asked the makers of Nawazuddin Siddiqui starrer Babumoshai Bandookbaaz to make 48 snips. The movie's producer Kiran Shroff says the CBFC members argued that the cuts are needed as even children watch films that are given 'A' certification. Shroff was present along with the actors and director of Babumoshai Bandookbaaz here on Wednesday to speak to the media. She said: "They (CBFC members) had a one hour of discussion. We were very restless. We did expect a barrage of objections which would be raised. We were fine with A certification, but asked about 48 cuts. We asked, 'Why so many cuts when we are getting A (certificate) anyway?'." "They said because kids also watch an A film. The reasoning made no sense. It's a silly argument." Shroff also claimed the members of the Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC) humiliated her. "They said you can explain why such objectionable words and scenes are there in the film. A lady questioned me, 'How could you make a film like this despite being a woman yourself?' A gentleman said, 'How can she be a woman as she is wearing a pant and shir?'. I was stunned." Asked about their next move, Shroff said: "We figured that we can go straight to the Tribunal (Film Certification Appellate Tribunal). We are hopeful and positive they will see the film the way we have made it." The cast and crew were present at the press conference conducted by Indian Film & Television Directors' Association, where some of the members like filmmaker Sudhir Mishra, Ashoke Pandit, Alankrita Shrivastava, Vikramaditya Motwane and Rahul Dholakia among others were present. Pandit, the IFTDA President, said: "IFTDA condemns all the cuts given to the film. We condemn the act where two members of the committee misbehaved with a lady. We request the Information and Broadcasting Ministry to sack them with immediate effect. Also, Shyam Benegal Committee report should be implemented soon so that we stop this and all of us have clarity." Babumoshai Bandookbaaz is a rustic drama, which Nawazuddin himself claims to be his boldest movie ever. New Delhi: After making foray into food, medicines and domestic products, Baba Ramdev's Patanjali Ayurved is all set to venture into branded clothing line as well. As per a report in the Mint, Patanjali Ayurved Ltd is preparing to launch its swadeshi line of clothes for men, women and children by April next year. The apparel line will initially be made available across 250 exclusive retail outlets with a sales target of Rs 5,000 crore for the first year. Patanjali branded clothes will also be sold at other apparel retailing outlets like Big Bazaar, Mint quoting Patanjali Ayurved spokesperson SK Tijarawala said. Patanjali group will make a big venture in textile manufacturing sector and apart of traditional kurta-pajama, it will come out with foreign wears like jeans, Ramdev had said at the inaugural function of the two-day Global Investors' Summit in Indore last year. Patanjali is looking at a two-fold jump in sales at over Rs 20,000 crore this fiscal as it plans to double its distribution network to 12,000 across the country. Besides, the company is aspiring to further strengthen its presence and lead in most of the product categories. The Haridwar-based FMCG firm had clocked a turnover of Rs 10,561 crore in the financial year ended March 31, 2017. New Delhi: State-owned IOC is stepping up purchase of crude oil from the US and will this month tender for second cargo as it looks at cheaper alternatives that have emerged due to a global supply glut. "We will this month tender to buy 2 million barrels of crude oil," Indian Oil Corp (IOC) Director (Finance) A K Sharma said here. IOC had sealed a deal last month to import 1.6 million barrels of crude from the US for delivery in the first week of October to its Paradip refinery in Odisha- the first ever such purchase of US crude by an Indian state-run refiner. "There are 6-7 grades of US crude. The second cargo will be for delivery in November," he said. India, the world's third-largest oil importer, joins Asian countries like South Korea, Japan and China to buy US crude after production cuts by OPEC drove up prices of Middle East heavy-sour crude, or grades with a high sulphur content. After IOC, Bharat Petroleum Corp Ltd (BPCL) too has bought 1 million barrels of sour crude from the US for its Kochi refinery. The deals by IOC and BPCL comes within weeks of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's visit to the US when President Donald Trump talked of his country looking to export more energy products to India. IOC Chairman Sanjiv Singh said IOC bought crude from US for the first time after crude export ban was lifted in December last year. "This has opened new sources of crude oil," he said. Buying US crude has become attractive for Indian refiners after the differential between Brent (the benchmark crude or marker crude that serves as a reference price for buyers in western world) and Dubai (which serves as a benchmark for countries in the east) has narrowed. "Even after including the shipping cost, buying US crude proved to be very cost competitive to us and so we bought one very large crude carrier (VLCC) cargo through a tender from the spot (or current) market last month and will tender for another VLCC this month," Sharma said. But for importing crude from the US, the refiners have to take special permission from the shipping ministry. India allows import of crude oil only on Indian carriers (the buyer arranging for ships to ferry the oil). However, in case of US, this was not possible as VLCCs can't load on US ports and crude has to be first loaded on small ships and at high sea the same is put on a VLCC. So, IOC and BPCL had to obtain permission to buy the cargo on a delivered basis where the seller arranges for the ships. Sharma said IOC can buy 5-6 shiploads this year if the price differential stays favourable. New Delhi: The Lok Sabha on Thursday passed the Banking Regulation (Amendment) Bill, 2017, which empowers the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) to resolve stressed assets clogging the banking system. The Banking Regulation (Amendment) Bill, 2017, seeks to amend the Banking Regulation Act, 1949 and replace the Banking Regulation (Amendment) Ordinance, 2017, which was promulgated in May this year. The measure allows the RBI to initiate insolvency resolution process on specific stressed assets. The RBI would also be empowered to issue other directions for resolution, appoint or approve for appointment, authorities or committees to advise the banking companies for stressed asset resolution. Non-performing assets of banks have risen to over Rs 9 lakh crore and now RBI is being given power to refer the cases to Insolvency and Bankruptcy Board. Moving on fast-track, the RBI had in June identified 12 large loan defaulters who account for 25 percent of the total bad loans in the banking sector. Action under the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code has already begun in certain cases, including Essar Steel, Bhushan Steel and Bhushan Power & Steel. With Agency Inputs New Delhi: Telecom operator Reliance Communications has pulled out from membership of industry body AUSPI raising uncertainty over future of the association, according to industry sources. RCom sent its letter to the Association of Unified Telecom Service Providers of India (AUSPI) to withdraw from the membership of the body recently, sources said. The reason for the withdrawal of the Anil Ambani-led firm is not known. His elder brother Mukesh Amabni's telecom firm Reliance Jio is a member of another industry body Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI). AUSPI officials could not be reached for comment, while RCom declined to speak on this. This development leaves two core members -- Tata Teleservices and Sistema Shyam Teleservices (SSTL) in the industry body. Considering that SSTL is in the process of merger with RCom, the latter's withdrawal from AUSPI pushes it into uncertainty. AUSPI stood for telecom operators who started their business with CDMA technology and also vigorously defended dual licence policy whenever it came under attack from rival telecom sector body COAI. It has two 'associate members' which include Chinese telecom gear maker Huawei and chipset maker Qualcomm. Incidentally RCom was member of COAI but left it in 2007 -08 after differences with incumbent telecom operators. New Delhi: In the wake of three similar cases reported earlier this week, a woman and her three daughters have complained that their braids were cut mysteriously Wednesday night. While speaking to news agency ANI, the mother of three said that her hair were snipped when she had gone to the washroom at her home in Delhi's Mayapuri area. "I woke up around 3:00 am to go the washroom and when I came back I saw a chunk of my hair on the bed. I woke up my husband and found my daughters' hair chopped off too," the woman said. At least six incidents of women's braids being mysteriously chopped off have so far been reported in different parts of the national capital. Earlier, a 46-year-old woman from Tilangpur Kotla village in Ranhola area complained that her braid was cut off by an unidentified person. In a similar incident, a 50-year-old woman from Palam had also filed a complaint with the police, alleging her braid was cut off. "We have registered cases and a probe has been started. CCTV footage has not been of any help," said a senior police officer. IBHAS doctors who counselled the victims also ruled out that the women cut their own hair due to "some psychological or emotional issues", he said. The police said cases under the Arms Act have been registered and a probe ordered after unidentified persons cut the braids of three women on Sunday night in Kangan Heri village of west Delhi's Chhawla area. New Delhi: The first tax returns under the new Goods and Services Tax (GST) regime can be filed from Saturday and the facility will remain open till August 20, GST Network CEO Navin Kumar said on Thursday. Businesses can start filing their first GST returns and pay taxes for July on the portal of GST Network -- the IT infrastructure provider for the new indirect tax regime, beginning August 5, he told PTI here. To make compliance easy for businesses, the GST Council has allowed businesses to initially file their returns on self-assessment basis in the first two months of the GST rollout. So, the GST returns for July and August will be filed on the Goods and Services Tax Network (GSTN) portal by filling up GSTR 3B form. "We will start the facility of filing interim return form GSTR 3B by August 5 and any registered entity who has transacted business in July will have to file the return by August 20," Kumar told PTI. GSTN has tied up with 25 agency banks authorised by the? RBI to collect taxes, he said. "We have tied up with all major banks, both private and public. The facility for tax payment is already on and Integrated GST is being collected. Along with filing of returns by August 20, payments for central and state GST will also come in," said Kumar, in-charge of the biggest technology backbone created for the new indirect tax regime. Over 71.30 lakh excise, service tax and VAT payers have migrated to the GSTN portal with 13 lakh fresh registrations. The final GST returns for July will have to be filed by these businesses by September 5 instead of August 10. Companies will have to file sale invoice for August with GST Network by September 20 instead of September 10 earlier. The sales returns for September will have to be filed by October 10. Dubai: Indians seeking jobs in the UAE should not come on visit visas and must authenticate their employment offers and permit visas before arriving in the country, the Indian Consulate here has said, amid growing cases of duping and visa frauds. The advisory follows a high number of calls and visits to the Consulate by Indian workers who have been duped by agents or employers on a regular basis. Consul-General of India in Dubai Vipul said the mission did not have the precise data on the number of such calls "because most such calls are complex and raise a variety of issues". He said most calls about duping were related to workers who come for employment or searching for employment on visit visas. "We have got several cases of people falling into trouble when they come for employment or for looking for employment on visit visas. There are also cases of women being forced to work as maids by dubious agents who get them to the UAE on visit visas as well as sending them to Oman and other countries," Vipul told Gulf News. He said when serious duping cases come to the notice of the consulate, the mission tries to mediate with the employers to get the passports of workers back and facilitate their return to India. The consulate issued 225 air tickets in 2016 and 186 in the first half of 2017 to stranded workers. "In a recent case, in June, we repatriated 27 workers hailing from Uttar Pradesh who came to the UAE in February- March this year and were promised jobs. However, they were not given any jobs and were left to fend for themselves by the agents," he said. In another case, 15 people were promised some jobs, but on arrival they were told to work as labourers at a construction site, he added. In the first half of this year, the consulate received a total of 540 labour complaints of which over 250 have been resolved, the report said. Duplicate and fake visas are also a problem that the Indian missions in the UAE are fighting, the report said. "In the first six months of this year, several hundreds of fake visas were detected. Typically, these get detected because many people ask us about the genuineness of a job offer and the UAE visa. Sometimes, agents give genuine visit visas and fake employment visas," Vipul said. He said such cases were hard to detect in India. "The workers would use the fake employment visas to board the flight from India and present their original visit visa on arrival here. When they gain entry, they realise that they don't have the offered job," he said. To tackle such visa frauds, the mission has issued an advisory to the Indian jobseekers, providing them useful links from the UAE government departments through which they can make preliminary verification of the authenticity of the employment offers and entry permits. New Delhi: Top US bosses are backing a new effort to build strategic ties with India, following Prime Minister Narendra Modi's first meeting with President Donald Trump. The US-India Strategic Partnership Forum (USISPF) seeks to reset and broaden the relationship between the world's two largest democracies, and to supplant an existing body that operates under the umbrella of the US Chamber of Commerce. While Modi's bear hug with Trump and a clutch of deals at their encounter in June symbolised a budding friendship, trade between the two nations has underperformed and Washington wants to narrow a USD 31-billion deficit. "What we are announcing today is an organisation redesigned for the future," said John Chambers, the executive chairman of Cisco Systems Inc, who is also chairing the USISPF that was launched on Wednesday. The rollout follows a schism in which the management team of the US-India Business Council (USIBC), headed by Mukesh Aghi, has joined the new organisation. Chambers met Modi on Tuesday to brief him on the initiative and share its new logo - featuring interlocking blue and gold circles that symbolize the "win-win" nature of the project. The new body will not only focus on trade but also promote business startups, innovation and education - areas that Modi has prioritised in his three years in power. Describing Modi as "fearless", Chambers praised his decision last year to scrap high-value bank notes to cleanse the economy of illicit wealth. He also backed a new national sales tax launched last month, saying it was vital for Asia's third-largest economy to scale up manufacturing and achieve strong long-term growth. "India is moving faster than any other country in the last three years," Chambers told a small group of reporters in New Delhi. "India used to be known as a very slow follower, and now it's a fast innovator." UNANIMOUS VOTE TO SPLIT The strategic partnership initiative followed a unanimous vote on July 10 by the USIBC's board to separate from the US Chamber of Commerce. The new body's board includes high-profile chief executives, such as Indra Nooyi of Pepsico Inc and Ajay Banga of Mastercard Inc. Thomas Donohue, president and chief executive of the US Chamber of Commerce, last month criticised the breakaway as a "curious action". In a letter to members he described the USIBC as "alive and well". "The USIBC and its staff continue their hard work on key issues affecting the critical relationship between our two countries," the Chamber of Commerce said in answer to Chambers' announcement. "We continue to receive strong support from our member companies as we focus our efforts on strengthening commercial ties," it added. "We will have more to say in the weeks ahead. One source familiar with the move said it was motivated in part by perceptions that the US Chamber of Commerce had become too close to the Republican Party, and tended to deliver public lectures detrimental to the two-way relationship. This included controversy over the issue of so-called H-1B visas widely used by India's USD 125 billion software industry to send engineers and programmers on assignments to the United States. Trump administration officials were briefed on the strategic initiative and were supportive, added the source, who declined to be identified because of the sensitivity of the matter. Trump, despite clashing with leaders from allies such as Germany and Australia, turned on the charm for Modi, whose trip to Washington was deemed a success by both sides. Lisa Curtis, point person at the National Security Council for South and Central Asia, attended the inaugural forum. Joining her was Acting Assistant Secretary of State Alice Wells, the US embassy said. Chambers said the Trump administration's commitment to India was "unparalleled", adding: "This is the only strategic partnership that the Trump administration has really talked about." New Delhi: The Delhi University's release of zero cut off for SC, ST students in pursuing PhD in Mathematics has raised massive criticisms on the social media. While notifying about the interview schedule for the PhD admissions to the Department of Mathematics, the university authority has also declared the cut off to be fixed at zero for the candidates belonging to Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe. Following the announcement, people took to Twitter to express their disagreement. Netizens pointed out that the cut off for the unreserved category being 94 per cent, they will perhaps be denied admission due to a reserved category candidate. So an SC student with 40 marks should get opportunity ahead of a GC student with 90%+ marks? Interesting https://t.co/dVj1kIFUz3 A (@AzzzyArora) August 2, 2017 The PhD admission interviews have commenced from July 31 and will continue till August 4. Reportedly, the university has released the names of 223 candidates who have been selected for the interview rounds. Among those, about 32 candidates competing for seats in the SC/ST categories. Students could not digest the fact that SC, ST candidates did not require even basic passing marks of 30-40 per cent in order to be eligible for the programme, reported the Indian Express. Hyderabad: Telangana Youth Congress leader Vikram Goud staged a plot to harm himself to gain people's sympathy and get a ticket for the 2019 Legislative Assembly Elections, the Hyderabad Police said on Wednesday. The son of former Andhra Pradesh minister Mukesh Goud was rushed to Hyderabad's Apollo Hospital with multiple bullet injuries on July 28. The twist in the case has, however, taken everyone by surprise. Vikram was shot at in his residence in Film Nagar area of Hyderabad. The Hyderabad Police cracked the case by arresting five persons yesterday, who spilled the beans on the conspiracy. They are among the eight accused, including Goud who is currently undergoing treatment at a hospital, while two others are absconding. The 35-year-old Youth Congress leader hatched the plan of a "murder attempt" on his life to gain the sympathy of people of a city constituency from where he was planning to contest, a senior police officer said, adding Goud also wanted to win the sympathy of his family and friends. "It all started in April this year when Vikram Goud hatched the plan and told the accused that he wanted to get a ticket for the next elections. He then asked them to procure a weapon and make an attempt on him to gain popularity as well as sympathy," Hyderabad Police Commissioner M Mahendar Reddy told reporters. Goud wanted the police to believe that the act was committed by his political rivals, he said. Reddy said the accused demanded Rs 50 lakh from Goud to execute his plan. "As per the plan, S Nanda Kumar and other accused procured a country-made weapon from Madhya Pradesh. On Goud's instructions, two of them, namely Raees Khan and Shaik Ahmed, reached his house in the early hours of July 28. Khan fired two rounds at Goud's hands before fleeing along with Ahmed," the commissioner said. Two other accused arrested yesterday have been identified as K Babu Jan and A Govind Reddy. Goud's wife Shipali M, after hearing the gunshots, rushed to the ground floor of the house only to find her husband lying with bullet wounds. Goud told her that a person shot at him before fleeing. Following a complaint from her, the police had registered a case of attempt to murder. However, during the course of the investigation, it was revealed that it was Goud who had hatched the plan to pass off the incident as a genuine bid on his life. "His (Goud's) entire thought process was if this incident goes undetected and the culprits are not identified, it will remain a mystery and he will be able to secure the sympathy of people of the constituency from where he was planning to contest as MLA in 2019. "Apart from this, he probably also thought that he could settle the score with the people with whom he had financial disputes," Reddy said. Goud, who had invested a lot of money in mining in Odisha and also in other businesses, is indebted and quantum of his debts is being ascertained, the officer said. The top cop said Goud also wanted to get a weapon license and gunmen for his protection. "His wife is not aware of the incident (conspiracy), however, since she was not the eyewitness, whatever her husband has indicated she has just mentioned in the complaint. We have recorded Goud's statement and he has confessed to whatever others (those arrested) have told," the officer said. We would arrest Goud once he gets discharged from the hospital, he said. The Telangana Youth Congress leader and eight others have been booked on relevant sections of IPC besides the Arms Act. (With PTI inputs) Rohtak: Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) chief Amit Shah said on Thursday that India has finally been able to isolate Pakistan globally on the issue of terrorism due to the efforts made by the Narendra Modi-led central government in the last three years. "We have isolated Pakistan on the issue of terrorism in the entire world successfully in these three years," Shah said. "We have killed so many terrorists in recent months. That has not happened before. When there is a fight, the damage is on both sides. Bullets are being fired from both sides." However, he evaded the issue of Article 370 which gives special status to Jammu and Kahsmir. "You all know that there are many requirements (for this)." He added that the action initiated by the Centre to stop terror funding in the Kashmir Valley had happened for the first time. "Regarding finding a solution to the Kashmir problem, the action has been done in that direction only. Never have people who had been doing so much hawala been caught. If any harsh action has been taken against those involved in terror funding, it is the BJP government of Narendra Modi that has done it," Shah told the media here. He was speaking on the second day of his three-day visit to Haryana. The BJP leader said the country had seen a decisive government for the first time. "The government has taken steps to ensure that India becomes a global economic power. We have provided a decisive and corruption-free government. Not even the opposition parties have been able to point a finger over corruption." Among the "50 big things" the Modi government had done were opening of bank accounts for the poor, providing gas connections, streamlining the tax structure, implementing the much-delayed one rank one pension scheme, carrying out surgical strike against Pakistan, reducing prices of medicines, crackdown on shell companies, curbing black money and health card for farners. Shah's reaction came after Congress earlier today attacked the government in the Rajya Sabha on its handling of foreign policy issues, especially the military stand-off with China, and said national security and the country's interest were in danger on account of it. Initiating a debate on foreign policy in the House, senior member Anand Sharma demanded a reply from Prime Minister Narendra Modi on what was discussed during his meetings with Chinese President Xi Jinping on the Doklam border stand-off. The Congress leader said the government should not dilute and deviate from the time-tested foreign policy and should uphold the country's interest. New Delhi: External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj on Thursday slammed Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi for meeting Chinese envoy Luo Zhaohui amid the military stand-off between India and China over the Doklam row. Speaking in the Rajya Sabha, the senior Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader said, Amid the ongoing standoff between Indian and Chinese troops at the Doklam area, it was sad that a leader of the principle Opposition party met the Chinese envoy, instead of talking to the government. Swaraj made the remarks while replying to a discussion on "India's foreign policy and engagement with strategic partners" during which members voiced concern over the stand-off and raised questions over India's policy. Diplomatic channels are working to end the simmering border tension with China, Swaraj said. "We have a strong Army but war is not a solution. The diplomatic channels are at work with China," Swaraj informed the Upper House. "Wisdom is to resolve issues diplomatically," Swaraj added. While referring to the Doklam stand-off issue with China, Swaraj said, "Patience is key to resolving problems because if patience is lost, there can be provocation on the other side." "We will keep patience to resolve the issue," she assured the House. After remaining in denial, the Congress had admitted to party vice president Rahul Gandhi meeting met the ambassadors of China and Bhutan in July. The party said Gandhi met the ambassadors of China and Bhutan, but did not specify when or where the meetings were held. Later Rahul Gandhi tweeted confirming his parleys with the ambassadors of the two neighbouring countries. "It is my job to be informed on critical issues. I met the Chinese Ambassador, Ex-NSA, Congress leaders from NE & the Bhutanese Ambassador," Rahul had tweeted. Downplaying the meetings, Congress spokesperson Randeep Surjewala called them a "courtesy call" and said "envoys of neighbouring countries" met Congress president Sonia Gandhi and the vice-president from "time to time". Surjewala had earlier tweeted that the news about Gandhi meeting the Chinese envoy was "planted" by government agencies through "bhakt channels". China and India have been engaged in the standoff in the Doklam area near the Bhutan tri-junction since June after a Chinese Army's construction party attempted to build a road Doka La is the Indian name for the region which Bhutan recognises as Dokalam, while China claims it as part of its Donglang region. New Delhi: The government has initiated action on the reports alleging payment of 1.18 million dollar bribes to the officials of the NHAI by an American firm, the Lok Sabha was informed on Thursday. Road Transport and Highways Minister Nitin Gadkari said it was reported in media that M/S CDM Smith, through its employees and agents, and those of its wholly-owned Indian subsidiary (CDM India), had paid approximately USD 1.18 million in bribes to government officials in India in exchange for highway construction supervision and design contracts. The media report had emanated from the US Department of Justice, Criminal Division's letter dated June 21, 2017 available on their official website. The minister said the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) has compiled the list of all the consultancy assignments awarded to the said firm and its associates. "The Ministry of Road Transport and Highways and the NHAI have initiated steps to obtain the supporting documents so as to take the matter to the logical conclusion," he said during the Question Hour. Gadkari said his ministry has taken up the matter with the Ministry of External Affairs as well as the Indian Embassy in USA to liaise with the US Department of Justice to obtain the information and records gathered by them during their inquiry. He said the NHAI had debarred the said firm for a period of three months in 2015 from participating or engagement in the future bidding of NHAI projects because of deficiency in the services in one of the projects -- the Dholpur- Morena Section of NH-3. "Similarly, in a lone assignment awarded to the said firm, the NHIDCL has debarred the said firm this year for a period of two years," he said. The relevant part of the US Department's letter says "From approximately 2011 until approximately 2015, employees of CDM Smith's division responsible for India operations and CDM India illegally paid bribes to officials in the National Highways Authority of India, India's state-owned highway management agency and an 'instrumentality' under the FCPA, in order to receive contracts from NHAI". "The bribes generally were 2-4 per cent of the contract price and paid through fraudulent subcontractors, who provided no actual services and understood that payments were meant to solely benefit the officials," the letter had said. Gadkari said the Central Vigilance Commission of India has constituted a special investigation team of three officers to investigate the matter and report back to the commission. Bengaluru: The Income Tax (IT) department officials on Thursday continued raids at the residences of Karnataka Power Minister DK Shivakumar at various locations, including Delhi. Here are the live updates:- -An undeclared Emergency has been imposed by the Centre all over the country, alleges Lalu. -RJD chief Lalu Prasad Yadav says, ''Narendra Modi behind raids at the Karnataka luxury resort.'' -IT raids continue at Karnataka Minister DK Shivakumar's premises in Bengaluru, reports ANI. IT raids continue at Karnataka Minister DK Shivakumar's premises in Bengaluru. pic.twitter.com/7zECTmImdj ANI (@ANI_news) August 3, 2017 -Raids have taken place at many places not just at DKS' residences: Ananth Kumar -Congress should help us in our fight against black money: Ananth Kumar, BJP -The raids are currently underway at both locations, reported ANI. -According to ANI, a team of IT department is also conducting raids at premises owned by Shivakumar in Delhi's Safdarjung area. IT raids continue at premises owned by Karnataka Minister D.K Shivakumar in Delhi's Safdarjung area. pic.twitter.com/cLK1YfmSFZ ANI (@ANI_news) August 3, 2017 -The IT department officials raid the residence of DK Shivakumar's father in-law. Meanwhile, Karnataka Congress workers are holding protest in Bengaluru against IT raids on DK Shivakumar. Congress workers hold protest in Bengaluru against IT raids on Karnataka Minister D. K. Shivakumar. pic.twitter.com/4blYUF3Hx0 August 3, 2017 IT raids on DK Shivakumar Yesterday, IT officials raided nearly 64 properties owned by Karnataka minister DK Shivakumar and his family members, recovering Rs 11 crore in cash. Among the properties searched, included a private luxury resort outside Bengaluru, where 44 Gujarat Congress legislators were housed. Last week, Congress flew the 44 Gujarat MLAs, after reports of BJP offering each of them Rs 15 crore along with ticket to polls along emerged. The entire exercise sparked an uproar in both the houses of Parliament. Calling it 'witch-hunt'', Congress claimed that it was an attempt to terrorise the Gujarat MLAs ahead of the August 8 Rajya Sabha elections, in which senior Congress leader Ahmed Patel is fighting a close battle to retain his seat. Six Gujarat Congress legislators and lawmakers have already resigned from the party. Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, however, refuted all allegations of the luxury resort being searched. He said, "This raid should not be linked with any Gujarat poll,this is on a purely economic offence. Beijing: China on Thursday said India should show through deeds its willingness to maintain peace at the border and claimed that 48 Indian soldiers were at Doklam area backed by a "large number" of troops at the border to halt Chinese attempts to build a road on its side of the boundary. In a statement, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said the action of the Indian side amounts to that of "irresponsibility and recklessness." He said that until yesterday, "there were 48 Indian soldiers and one bulldozer" in Doklam area, describing it as illegal intrusion into Chinese territory. India, however, says that the area belongs to Bhutan. "In addition, there are still a large number of Indian armed forces congregating on the boundary and on the Indian side of the boundary," Geng said. "No matter how many Indian border troops illegally trespassed the boundary and still stay in the Chinese territory, it will not alter the nature of severely violating China's territorial integrity and contravening the UN Charter. This incident is illegal under the international law. The Indian side should bear corresponding responsibilities," the spokesman said. The Foreign Ministry had issued a 15-page fact sheet yesterday with maps and other details about the standoff since it began on June 16, saying 40 Indian troops stayed at Doklam till July end. Geng repeated once again today that on June 18 about 270 Indian troops "advanced more than 100 meters into the Chinese territory to obstruct the road building of the Chinese side." Reacting to yesterday's External Affairs Ministry statement that the peace and tranquillity of the India-China boundary constitutes the important prerequisite for the smooth development of bilateral relations, Geng said India should also show its words in "deeds". "Indian side is always keeping 'peace' on the tip of its tongue. But we should not only listen to its words but also heed its deeds," Geng said in the statement. It also accused India of sending troops to halt the road work without responding to advance notice about China's plans to build the road given twice earlier on May 18 and June 8. "However, the Indian side didn't make any response to the Chinese side through any channel for over one month. Instead, it flagrantly dispatched armed forces carrying equipment to illegally cross the boundary to obstruct China's road building. This is by no means for peace," it said. "The Indian border troops still illegally stay on the Chinese territory. Moreover, the Indian side is building roads, hoarding supplies and deploying a large number of armed forces on the Indian side of the boundary. This is by no means for peace," it said, claiming that it is "irrefutable" that the Indian troops illegally trespassed into the Chinese area. "Under such circumstances, instead of deeply reflecting on its mistakes, the Indian side fabricated such sheer fallacies as the so-called 'security concerns', the 'issue of tri-junction' and 'at the request of Bhutan' as excuses to justify its wrongdoing," it said. Referring to its diplomatic protests made in this regard, the statement said the "Indian side, rather than withdraw its trespassing troops and equipment, made unreasonable demands to China which demonstrated its lack of sincerity for resolving the incident. This is by no means for peace." "If the Indian side truly cherish peace, what it should do is to immediately pull back the trespassing border troops to the Indian side of the boundary," Geng said. He said building a road was a normal activity of China on its own territory which is completely lawful and legitimate. New Delhi: The Ken-Betwa project, the first river inter-linking project in the country, is set to "take off any day" now, the Lok Sabha was informed on Thursday. Water Resources minister Uma Bharti said all environmental and related clearances have been obtained and once the Madhya Pradesh and the Uttar Pradesh governments agree on the water sharing issue, the project's launch date would be announced. She said the inter-linking of all the planned rivers will help generate over 30,000 MW of power. Ken-Betwa link is one of the 16 river-linking proposals under Peninsular Component of National Perspective Plan (NPP) for Water Resources Development for which feasibility report was prepared by the National Water Development Agency in 1995 and circulated among the concerned state governments. A tripartite Memorandum of Understanding was signed among the union government and the governments of Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh on August 25, 2005 in the presence of the Prime Minister for preparation of Detailed Project Report for the project. New Delhi: A bill to enable exit of RBI from Nabard and increase authorised capital of the development institution six times to Rs 30,000 crore was passed by the Lok Sabha today. The National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (Amendment) Bill, 2017 also seeks to amend certain clauses in the light of reference of the Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) Development Act, 2006 in the proposed legislation. Minister of State for Finance Santosh Kumar Gangwar said that the law is one of the "major step" towards doubling farmers' income by 2022. This is a small bill but irrespective of that, 28 members put their views on this legislation, which reflects the interest of members's on agriculture related issues, he said. He said that as this is a short bill, suggestions made by members would be considered when the detail bill will come. "This law would benefit farmers," he said adding the government is sensitive towards issues of farmers. On concerns being raised by few members such as N K Premachandran (RSP) and K C Venugopal (Congress) on including MSMEs in place of SSIs (small scale industries), he said Nabard would always support agriculture and not corporates. Earlier while moving the bill for consideration and passage, Gangwar said in his introductory speech on The NABARD (Amendment) Bill, 2017 said National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD) is a premier organisation which was established in 1982. It provides loans for agriculture, small scale industries among others. In the last three decades, there has been diversification in the functioning of Nabard and in the last three years, after the BJP government came to power, the bank has underwent a lot of changes, he said. There has been changes in its priority and policies in the area of agriculture and rural development. Now Nabard is refinancing and providing direct loan in the agriculture and rural areas, he added. The balance sheet of Nabard has increased from Rs 1.82 lakh crore in March 31, 2012 to Rs 3.10 lakh crore in March 31, 2016, he said adding that means, there has been an increase of around 70 per cent in the activities of Nabard. ? ? ?Nabard plays an important role for doubling the income of farmers and increasing the the infrastructure in the rural areas, the minister said adding "Keeping this target in mind I am placing this bill in the house". At present the authorised capital of Nabard is Rs 5,000 crore and there is a proposal to increase it to Rs 30,000 crore, Gangwar said. According to the need, he said, the government can increase the authorised capital from time to time. ? ? ?If there is a need to increase this authorised capital above Rs 30,000 crore, then after discussions with RBI it can be increased, he added. There is another suggestion that at present in Nabard, the centre has a share of 99.6 per cent and the RBI has the remaining share, he said adding there is a conflict in the role of the RBI. As RBI is also a regulator, its 0.4 per cent equity will be transfered to Centre, he said adding as a result, 100 per cent equity will come to the Centre. Participating in the discussion, BJD member B Mahtab suggested that the NABARD can have an authentic data bank on rural credit. Agriculture credit is a major issue and that disbursement is dominated by private banks in certain states, he added. Mahtab also said the functioning of Regional Rural Banks (RRBs) should be looked into. Gajanan Kirtikar (Shiv Sena) said the government could look at appointing an RBI Deputy Governor as chairman of the NABARD. Three members from the Lok Sabha and two from the Rajya Sabha should be appointed to the NABARD board for a period of two years, TDP member Murali Mohan said. Varaprasad Rao (YSR Congress) said that more funds should be given to the bank for rural development activities. Mamtaz Sanghamita (TMC), Om Birla (BJP), K Parasuraman (AIADMK), Konda Vishweshwar Reddy (TRS), Jitendra Chaudhury (CPI-M), L N Yadav (BJP), J P N Yadav (RJD), Bhagwant Mann (AAP) and M K Raghvan (INC) also spoke. Members from the northeast India across different states rued that their region has been getting little share of the credit funds. Kamakhya Prasad, a BJP member of the Assam, said the penetrations of banks in his insurgency-hit state was less and it should be stepped up. P D Rai, the lone member of Sikkim Democratic Fund (SDF), said the northeast gets one per cent of the credit, leading to farmers trapping in the net of loan sharks. C K Sangma, another member of National People's Party (NPP) from Meghalaya, emphasised that the government policy should focus on food processing in the northeast region. Kalushendra Kumar, the lone member of the JDU, which has broken ranks with the opposition to align with the BJP in Bihar, emphasised on giving credit-free loans to farmers. Ramesh Bidhuri of the BJP said unlike the previous regimes, the focus of the Modi government is truly empower the farmers rather than resort to populist measures. He also cited the Bill which will allow the government to enhance the capital of NABARD bank from Rs 5000 crore to Rs 30,000. New Delhi: Over three dozen armed Maoists attacked a railway station in Bihar`s Jamui district early on Thursday and kidnapped a cabin man, a CRPF officer said. The attack occurred at the Jatinder Halt station on the night of August 2-3. "Around 30-35 Maoists under the command of Parvesh mounted the attack. They kidnapped the cabin man," Central Reserve Police Force Deputy Inspector General M. Dinakaran told IANS here. Jind: A group of Dalit protesters demanding reservation were detained by the police when they tried to enter Rohtak to meet BJP national President Amit Shah, who is on a visit to Haryana. The protesters were detained yesterday when they reached Kilazfargarh village on the Rohtak border as they did not have requisite permission, the police said. "Reservation is our right," the leader of the protesters, Devi Das, said before being taken into custody. "We will not rest until we get what we deserve. We are staging a peaceful protest. Despite that, the police have detained us," he said. The group has been staging a sit-in in Jind for the last 171 days to press for reservation for the community. Sub-divisional magistrate, Julana, Shiv Kumar said the protesters did not have permission to meet the BJP President. "If they had permission, we would have allowed them to enter Rohtak," Kumar said. Shah yesterday began his Haryana visit from Bahadurgarh and is slated to hold a series of meetings and review works undertaken by the M L Khattar government during his three-day stay. New Delhi: The Supreme Court will on Thursday hear a plea filed by the Gujarat unit of the Congress challenging the introduction of `None of the Above` (NOTA) option for the upcoming Rajya Sabha elections in the state. The Gujarat Congress, challenging the Election Commission (EC) decision, also sought a stay of the notification. The Congress had on Tuesday moved the EC and demanded that the provision of NOTA should not be made in the ballot papers for the August 08 Rajya Sabha elections as it would render the system of proportional representation "nugatory and otiose" -- or render it inconsequential. The party said that use of NOTA option during the Rajya Sabha elections was contrary to the mandate of the Constitution, the Representation of People's Act, the conduct of election rules as also judgments of the Supreme Court. The EC has, however, said the panel had made it clear in its communications following a Supreme Court judgment of 2013 that NOTA option would be applicable in the Rajya Sabha elections. The Congress Party moved the apex court against the decision of the poll body on Wednesday. The BJP also met the Election Commission over the removal of NOTA or `None of the Above` option for voters in the Rajya Sabha elections. The BJP has fielded its national president Amit Shah, Union minister Smriti Irani and Balwantsinh Rajput for the three Rajya Sabha seats from Gujarat against the lone Congress candidate Ahmed Patel. Chief whip of the Congress in the Gujarat Assembly Shailesh Manubhai Parmar in his petition has sought to quash of the August 01 circular issued by the secretary of the Assembly. The circular has stated that the NOTA option would be made applicable in the Upper House elections. The petition has alleged that use of the option would be violative of the provisions of the Representation of People's Act, 1951 and the Conduct of Election Rules, 1961. "Without a corresponding amendment to the Act and the Rules any purported administrative action of the Election Commission of India to introduce NOTA is ex-facie illegal, arbitrary and in fact tainted with malafide," it claimed. The petition alleged that the ECI, which despite being the constitutional watchdog for ensuring free and fair elections, "has become a tool in the hands of the ruling dispensation to facilitate violation of the provisions of the Constitution, the Act and the Rules". It said the All India Congress Committee (AICC) had made a representation before the ECI "highlighting the illegal nature of the circulars" and requesting the poll panel to refrain from implementing the same to ensure free and fair elections, but the state Assembly issued a circular making available the NOTA choice. The plea sought to quash and declare as "void" the circulars dated January 24, 2014, and November 12, 2015, issued by the ECI making available the option. It alleged that the direction was not only "contrary" to the express provisions of Article 80(4) of the Constitution, the RPA and the Rules, but also against a judgement of the apex court in 2006. The petition claimed that the circulars on NOTA defeated the system of proportional representation by means of a single transferable vote. The direction to have NOTA in the elections was enforced in January 2014 after the Supreme Court in 2013 made it mandatory to have the option in the electronic voting machines (EVMs). In the Rajya Sabha polls, the MLAs have to show their ballot paper to an authorised party agent before putting it in the ballot box. If a voter (MLA) defies the party directive and casts the ballot for someone else or uses the NOTA option, he cannot be disqualified as a legislator. But the party is free to take disciplinary action including expulsion. The defiant voter can continue to be an MLA and his vote can also not be invalidated for defying the party direction, according to the ECI rules. (With Agency inputs) New Delhi: In a big setback to Congress, the Supreme Court on Thursday refused to stay the Election Commission notification allowing `None of the Above` (NOTA) option for the upcoming Rajya Sabha elections in Gujarat. The apex court passed its order while responding to a plea filed by the Gujarat unit of the Congress challenging the introduction of NOTA option for the upcoming Rajya Sabha elections in the state. The apex court, however, agreed to examine constitutional validity of EC's notification to give an option of NOTA in elections. During the hearing, the apex court also asked the Gujarat Congress and said, ''why are you so late in raising the question as EC issued notification in January 2014.'' The Congress had on August 1 moved the EC and demanded that the provision of NOTA should not be made in the ballot papers for the August 08 Rajya Sabha elections as it would render the system of proportional representation "nugatory and otiose" - or render it inconsequential. The party said that use of NOTA option during the Rajya Sabha elections was contrary to the mandate of the Constitution, the Representation of People's Act, the conduct of election rules as also judgements of the Supreme Court. The EC has, however, said the panel had made it clear in its communications following a Supreme Court judgement of 2013 that NOTA option would be applicable in the Rajya Sabha elections. The Congress Party moved the apex court against the decision of the poll body on August 2. The BJP also met the Election Commission over the removal of NOTA or `None of the Above` option for voters in the Rajya Sabha elections. The BJP has fielded its national president Amit Shah, Union minister Smriti Irani and Balwantsinh Rajput for the three Rajya Sabha seats from Gujarat against the lone Congress candidate Ahmed Patel. Chief whip of the Congress in the Gujarat Assembly Shailesh Manubhai Parmar in his petition has sought to quash of the August 01 circular issued by the secretary of the Assembly. The circular has stated that the NOTA option would be made applicable in the Upper House elections. The petition has alleged that use of the option would be violative of the provisions of the Representation of People's Act, 1951 and the Conduct of Election Rules, 1961. "Without a corresponding amendment to the Act and the Rules any purported administrative action of the Election Commission of India to introduce NOTA is ex-facie illegal, arbitrary and in fact tainted with malafide," it claimed. The petition alleged that the ECI, which despite being the constitutional watchdog for ensuring free and fair elections, "has become a tool in the hands of the ruling dispensation to facilitate violation of the provisions of the Constitution, the Act and the Rules". It said the All India Congress Committee (AICC) had made a representation before the ECI "highlighting the illegal nature of the circulars" and requesting the poll panel to refrain from implementing the same to ensure free and fair elections, but the state Assembly issued a circular making available the NOTA choice. The plea sought to quash and declare as "void" the circulars dated January 24, 2014, and November 12, 2015, issued by the ECI making available the option. It alleged that the direction was not only "contrary" to the express provisions of Article 80(4) of the Constitution, the RPA and the Rules, but also against a judgement of the apex court in 2006. The petition claimed that the circulars on NOTA defeated the system of proportional representation by means of a single transferable vote. The direction to have NOTA in the elections was enforced in January 2014 after the Supreme Court in 2013 made it mandatory to have the option in the electronic voting machines (EVMs). In the Rajya Sabha polls, the MLAs have to show their ballot paper to an authorised party agent before putting it in the ballot box. If a voter (MLA) defies the party directive and casts the ballot for someone else or uses the NOTA option, he cannot be disqualified as a legislator. But the party is free to take disciplinary action including expulsion. The defiant voter can continue to be an MLA and his vote can also not be invalidated for defying the party direction, according to the ECI rules. (With Agency inputs) New Delhi: Separatist leader and Democratic Freedom Party (DFP) chairman Shabir Shah will be produced before the Patiala House Court here today. Shah`s Enforcement Directorate (ED) remand was extended for a day on August 2, in connection with a terror funding case. On July 26, Shah was produced in the Patiala House Court, following which he was sent to a seven-day ED custody. On July 25, Shah was arrested from his residence, where he was under house detention for a very long time, in Jammu and Kashmir`s Srinagar. The National Investigation Agency (NIA) has been tough on Separatists regarding the alleged funding by Pakistan for illegal activities in Kashmir. On July 24, the NIA arrested seven separatists over money laundering charges, for funding terror in the Kashmir Valley. All seven separatist leaders - Altaf Shah, Ayaz Akbar, Peer Saifullah, Mehraj Kalwal, Shahid-ul-Islam, Naeem Khan and Bitta Karate - were later sent to 10-day NIA custody. The accused have been charged under various sections of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) and the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act. The NIA visited Srinagar in May to probe the alleged funding by Pakistan for illegal activities in Kashmir, and questioned several separatist leaders on the issue of raising, collecting and transferring funds via the Hawala route and other channels to fund terror activities in Kashmir. The NIA sleuths specifically questioned separatist leaders Farooq Ahmed Dar alias Bitta Karate and Gazi Javed Baba at that time. The NIA is said to be probing all aspects of funding to separatist leaders and how they reportedly used these funds to fuel unrest in the Kashmir Valley. New Delhi: Mohana Ray's flight with Etihad Airways has all the makings of a modern-day nightmare: alone with two little girls one of them down with fever, a '30 hour' journey, rude airline staff, forcibly stranded in an airport and no one to help. It all started when Ray, who lives in United States with her husband and two daughters, was flying back to New York. In the first leg of the trip, she boarded the Etihad Airways flight to Abu Dhabi with her two daughters Olivia and Olita from Kolkata. On-board, during some turbulence, 5-year-old Olita suddenly threw up due to motion sickness. After sometimes I found her body was warm, she was having little fever. The flight attendant on board was helpful to provide me with some acetaminophen. Everything was good. We landed on Abu Dhabi, writes Ray in her Facebook post. And then started the nightmare. Ray and her daughters were refused to enter the connecting flight. The airline personnel's rationale. Olita is running fever. This, despite procuring the necessary medical clearance to fly again from the Abu Dhabi airport doctor. The airlines, falsely, promised to take care of the mother-daughter with transportation, hotel and medical check-up. But nothing was actually offered, not even a lounge to help the suffering little girl. As Ray slept on the airport floor with her daughter, not a single airline employee batted an eyelid. After quite a bit of to-and-fro, with telephonic help from her husband, Ray managed to get on-board, but that still wasn't the end of it. Here's her Facebook post that narrates the entire incident: ETIHAD AIRWAYS!!! Worst 30 hours of my life terrible experience in Abu Dhabi Airport while returning back from Kolkata, India to JFK with my girls!! PLEASE SHARE! I am usually the last person to vent on social media or complain about anything publicly. But cant help it!! All my Facebook friends and others, this is a request from a mom with 2 kids to AVOID Etihad and Abu Dhabi Airport at any cost!! If you chose to fly with them you know what to expect if you land into situation like mine. Please read below. Because of the insensitive Etihad airport stuffs and unexplained, inconsistent policies we were offloaded from our flight to US. We were made to wait in Abu Dhabi for 10 hours without any Hotel, or Lounge Access! WE slept on Airport floor with my 5 year old daughter who become sick and worse with this treatment!! We were even lied by Etihad stuff that we will get all amenities such as transport, hotel etc!! Not only many of the Etihad Airport stuffs were rude, non-cooperative and irrational they were quite inhuman (except a few good people who have helped us)! I will never ever fly on Etihad in my life again!!!! I still dread the experience! After our long & happy summer vacation in India we boarded our flight from Kolkata, India on Wednesday evening to Abu Dhabi returning back to our home in USA. Everything was so smooth. I was travelling alone with my kids as my husband returned back to USA earlier. Both our daughters were happy, and healthy. Our meals were served and there were some turbulence. Suddenly my 5 year old daughter Olita threw up. After sometimes I found her body was warm, she was having little fever. The flight attendant on board was helpful to provide me with some acetaminophen. Everything was good. We landed on Abu Dhabi. Here comes the nightmare! Little did we know what was waiting for us next!!! After getting down at Abu Dhabi Airport around 12:30 AM approx. (local time), Etihad personnel escorted us to the medical center not allowing us to board our connecting flight. Obviously deeply concerned, when I inquired about Olitas health, the doctor told us that she threw up due to extreme motion sickness and the exhaustion would have caused the fever! I have copies of the medical reports. Then we came back to the security checkpoint to catch the connecting flight to USA which would leave at 3:30 AM approx. However, we were not allowed to access the immigration & Customs counters even though we had boarding pass and the medical clearance form. The lady on duty (her name was Maricara not sure if we got the name right) told us we were offloaded from our flight as Olita is running fever. She does not care even if we got the medical clearance but had to get clearance from some mystery number in US. She was rude. I pleaded with them to allow us. She told me they wont be able to help us. We have to go through another medical checkup in the morning to get to our next flight which is at 10:15 AM. If we fail that then we will need to go out of airport to the nearest hospital for checkups and clearance. It was not explained how we will do all that. I was panicked as I am with my two girls at a new country with no knowledge of the city. However, the Etihad Lady told us that Etihad will take care of transportation, hotel and another medical checkups which was totally not true as eventually we didnt get anything, not even a lounge access at the airport. We were sent back to transfer desk (quite a walk) to get our new boarding pass. Imagine already exhausted after a long flight, going with the all the agony in an unknown country anxious to get back home. At transfer desk we met another very rude person. He told us to wait for 2 hours to get our next boarding pass. In the meantime I called my husband. He is furious and called the Etihad office, blasting them. He was told we will get boarding passes to 10:15 Am flight and we will be given lounge access. He was shown online that we were checked in. Not knowing the next steps, we returned back to the medical center to understand whats going on. That was again quite a bit of walk. One of the doctor who treated Olita earlier was furious that we were sent back! He asked us why we were offloaded in spite of his clearance! Also I got the impression that we will never be given any hotel or transport or anything. Now I understood I was completely lied to. We returned back to transfer desk to get back our boarding pass. By then hours passed by. I have lost count of time. Another Etihad lady came on duty (Adeline was probably her name). She told us nothing is showing against our ticket even though it was showing to my husband online at the Etihad website. Adeline probably was the rudest we have ever seen!! She said that we have to wait another 2 hours till 6 AM. She told that she was not going to help me anymore and I have wait for the next person on duty to get my boarding pass and clearance. I asked Adeline about the hotel, she said she cannot help. Looking at her rude behavior when I asked if I can go to another helpdesk person, she said she will make sure that I wont get any help there as well!! I was so upset and shocked! So rude, insensitive and inhuman!! At that point I was getting really anxious to go back home. Totally stressed out. We were not given any Hotel, nor even the lounge access!! All this time I was sitting on the floor of the airport taking my little one at my lap since it was not possible for me to carry her sitting on those airport chairs. Olita by then was so traumatized!! Her fever started rising due to all the exhaustions, trauma and unrest!! My other daughter Olivia sat straight for 4 hours on a chair all the time without any sleep! I have given up all the hope to return to US. I thought we will be stuck in Abu Dhabi forever!! I called my husband to catch the earlies possible flight and rescue us from Abu Dhabi!! Yes I am not kidding!! I still dread the thought of being stuck there!! After hours and hours of wait finally someone told us that we may get boarding pass for the 10:15 AM flight in the morning (our original flight was at ~ 3:15 AM which we were not allowed to board). However, nothing happened!! Called my husband. He again reached out to the Etihad folks at US. He was told again that we will be issued boarding passes for the 10:15 AM flight shortly!! By that time that rude lady Adeline was replaced by a guy in the morning shift. We repeated the whole story. He gave us boarding pass asked us to go for another medical checkup. I started running to rush towards the medical center. We found she has high fever 103 F now all due to the stress and agony! She was given ice packs & Motrin, and after sometime the fever came down. Still there were no signs of any major medical concerns. But her right ear was little red. The doctor prescribed Azithromycin for the ear. It was getting very close to our boarding and we still did not clear the US immigration and customs at Abu Dhabi (yes they do it Abu Dhabi itself). I was totally freaked out!! I had to leave both my kids at the mercy of unknown people and run almost for 10 mins to rush to the pharmacy in the airport to get the medicine and run another 10 minutes back. I was told to mix the medicine myself which was in powder form in 51 ml of water! When we reached the security clearance again, now a new man on shift in place of the lady (Maricara) we met last night. To our surprise, he was courteous & kind. He told us it was nothing. Its a regular procedure. He told us that we will be boarding our flight. Promised my daughters that they will be able to see their dad again. Surprisingly Olita was far worse at that point with weakness and trauma compared to the first time when we were offloaded from our original flight. We finally boarded our flight. Our nightmare did not end. Olita could not eat or drink anything, her head was exploding in pain, she was screaming! All because of rising fever due to tremendous agony, and the stress of long 30+ hours. All our fellow passengers came out to help. They all were shocked to hear our story. I was not sure if we will make the 14 long hours of flight to NYC with Olita. Totally ignoring my other daughter Olivia who by this time was not able to take any more. Somehow we survived the flight. But I still wonder what if anything major happened to Olita all because of unnecessary harassment and mistreatment in Abu Dhabi by Etihad. We felt an immediate difference in service after coming back to JFK. They provided wheelchair for Olita and a nice lady who carried her all the way to our car. After coming back to USA, Olita improved a lot. She is doing better now and treated by her regular pediatrician here. Her pediatrician told us that she would be ok within couple of days. It took me 2 days to recover for me to write this up. Still jetlagged and exhausted from the experience. But better late than never!! Those 30+ hours of travel with Etihad were the worst in our life and still like the worst nightmare which would take a long time to forget. Things could have been worse. My other daughter Olivia was strong enough to bear the stress and mental agony. She was about to fall sick. We all could have had worse. If they would have had us on the US bound flight in the first time itself Olita would have improved much earlier and saving us 7 more hours of agony and stress. Also we definitely deserved a hotel, least the lounge access in Airport. While I was sitting on floor with Olita who was in such high fever, not a single Etihad employee came for help or even asked about her conditions. They were so inconsistent with their rules and policy and quite irrational to talk to (except the last person and the doctors in medical center). Every single person comes up with new rules or their own whims. Although, we were lucky & thankful that the last person on the shift helped us to get the clearance! They should have had direct communication between right authorities and the medical support stuffs/doctors. We should not be at the mercy of an Airlines stuff who did not have medical credentials to refuse us the flight in spite of having got the clearance!! My questions to Etihad Why this unnecessary drama and harassment? If things were so bad that we were not allowed to take our original flight, how could we take the next flight 7 hours later and how did our daughter recover so well after coming back to USA? Why not talk directly to the doctors who were qualified and more than willing to provide clearance? Do you ever train your customer service people in politeness and responding professionally to their customers? I still dread those memories! We had our part in suffering. Do not want others to have the same experience!! I do not know what is out next step. Will definitely not stop here. Would like to raise awareness and probably explore legal options. To all friends and every users of Facebook, PLEASE TRY to AVOID ETIHAD & ABU DHABI airport even if you get a better deal!!! Please share this with as many friends you can! #NeverETIHAD #WorstCustomerExperienceinETIHAD #ShameonyouETIHAD #InhumanETIHAD #ETIHADAirlines #cnnireport #EtihadAirways We hope no person on earth endures what she went through. Patna: In a first of its kind in Bihar, a mob in Bhojpur district led by cow vigilantes on Thursday thrashed a truck drive and two others on suspicion of transporting beef, police said. They also tried to set on fire the vehicle which was on its way to Muzaffarpur district. But the police said they foiled the attempt. The incident occurred in Shahpur near Ara town when the mob stopped the truck on suspicion that it was carrying beef and caught the three. All three men were arrested after being rescued from the mob, a police official said. "They will be interrogated whether they were carrying beef or buffalo meat," the official said. The protesters blocked the Ara-Buxar road demanding that the three men be handed over to them. The police refused to do that. "The truck driver has confessed that they were carrying buffalo meat and not cow meat," the official said. New Delhi: Amid the standoff at Doklam, External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj on Thursday said that war is not a solution and the government will keep engaging with China to resolve the dispute. Replying to a discussion on "India's foreign policy and engagement with strategic partners", Swaraj expressed confidence that a mutually- acceptable solution would be found through talks to the Doklam border stand-off even as it described the Chinese action as a "matter of concern". "Our stand is that we maintain restraint in language and keep patience and engage in diplomacy. No solution will be gained out of war because even after war, talks are required. A solution cannot be derived out of war," she said. While recalling that Chinese President Xi Jinping and Prime Minister Narendra Modi had agreed during their recent meeting in the Kazakhstan capital that differences should not be allowed to be converted into disputes, the senior Bharatiya Janata party (BJP) leader said, India is engaged with China to resolve differences, not only on the stand-off at Doklam but all matters like border dispute, Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) and the blocking of UN sanctions against Jaish-e-Mohammad terror outfit chief Masood Azhar. While addressing the Upper House, Swaraj said, "Patience is key to resolving problems" because if patience is lost, there can be provocation on the other side." "We will keep patience to resolve the issue," she said referring to the Doklam stand-off issue with China. "We will continue to engage with the Chinese side through diplomatic channels to find a mutually acceptable solution on the basis of the Astana consensus between our leaders. I note the sense of the House is supportive," the Minister added said. In response to questions, she said military readiness is always there as the military is meant to fight wars. "But war cannot resolve problems. So wisdom is to resolve diplomatically," the external affairs minister asserted. China and India have been engaged in the standoff in the Doklam area near the Bhutan tri-junction since June after a Chinese Army's construction party attempted to build a road. Doka La is the Indian name for the region which Bhutan recognises as Doklam, while China claims it as part of its Donglang region. India has said Beijing's action to "unilaterally determine tri-junction points" violated a 2012 India-China pact which says the boundary would be decided by consulting all the concerned parties. The two countries share a little over 200 km of border in the Sikkim sector. Also Read: India should show willingness for peace through deeds: China 'Talks and terror cannot go together' Blaming Pakistan for derailing the bilateral dialogue by continuing its support to terrorism and meddling in Kashmir, Swaraj said India will start dialogue with Pakistan the day it stops promoting terrorism against this country. While rejecting the Opposition contention that the Modi government has no policy with regard to Pakistan, the senior BJP leader said, "But it can't be one-sided... Terror and talks cannot go together. The day they stop promoting terror, we will start the talks." The External Affairs Minister said that relations with Pakistan deteriorated not after the Pathankot airbase attack in 2016, but after then Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif called militant commander Burhan Wani a freedom fighter and a martyr after he was killed in a shootout with Indian security forces last June. Also Read - No decision yet on UN ban on Masood Azhar: China Defending Prime Minister Narendra Modi's decision to land in Lahore on way back from Kabul on December 25, 2015, she said it was part of a peace initiative India had started. Swaraj hits out at Opposition While slamming the Opposition for alleging that the foreign policy was faulty and vehemently rejected the charge that India was standing isolated at the world stage, Swaraj asserted in the Rajya Sabha that the country's foreign policy under Prime Minister Narendra Modi was so strong that India was setting the world agenda. She said the "concerns" voiced by the Congress regarding Chinese involvement in construction of Gwadar port in Pakistan and Hambantota in Sri Lanka were "born" during the previous UPA rule and the present government was settling these. She also rejected the Opposition contention that Prime Minister Narendra Modi was not taking her into consideration with regard to the foreign policy. "You say that India stands alone. This is far from the truth... All countries are with India... What I am saying is with evidence," she told the opposition. Swaraj said it was due to the success of the new foreign policy that both the US and Russia are with India and so are Israel and Palestine as also Saudi Arabia and Yemen. Germany, France, European Union, United Kingdom are also friends and so is the UAE, she added. "India's foreign policy is so good now that Prime Minister Narendra Modi is setting the global agenda on the world stage," she said and cited example of how he played a crucial role at the Paris Climate Summit and at G-20 or other world fora. Sushma Swaraj slams Rahul Gandhi Swaraj slammed Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi for meeting Chinese envoy Luo Zhaohui amid the military stand-off between India and China over the Doklam row. Speaking in the Rajya Sabha, the senior Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader said, Amid the ongoing standoff between Indian and Chinese troops at the Doklam area, it was sad that a leader of the principle Opposition party met the Chinese envoy, instead of talking to the government. "I was very saddened that the opposition, instead of considering the point of view of the Indian government, went and met the Chinese Ambassador," said Swaraj. "They did not try to understand the situation (the border standoff) from the Indian government, instead approached the Chinese counterpart to get their point of view," she added. New Delhi: External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj targeted the Congress leadership for its stand on the dispute between China, Bhutan and India as she raised the Dokalam issued in the Rajya Sabha on Thursday. While addressing the leaders in the House, Sushma said the border stand-off with China cannot be resolved through a war but can be settled through bilateral talks. "Patience is key to resolving problems" because of patience is lost, there can be a provocation on the other side," Sushma said referring to the Dokalam stand-off issue with China. "We will keep engaging with China to resolve the dispute," Swaraj said replying to a discussion on "India's foreign policy and engagement with strategic partners" during which members voiced concern over the stand-off and raised questions over India's policy. In response to questions, she said military readiness is always there as the military is meant to fight wars. "But war cannot resolve problems. So wisdom is to resolve diplomatically," the external affairs minister asserted. Coming down heavily on Anand Sharma's remarks, Sushma asked the Congress leader not to cast aspersions on the government's foreign policy and emphasised that talks with Pakistan were not conducive as long as it continued to sponsor terrorism. "We had created a roadmap of peace, amity and cooperation with Pakistan. But the situation deteriorated with Burhan Wani's encounter and then Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif's proclaiming him a freedom fighter. Terrorism and talks can't go together," she said. Sushma also heaped praises on Prime Minister Narendra Modi and said that in last 17 years, no other Prime Minister ever set foot in Nepal, out of which 11 years India was under Congress. She also added that PM Modi's Lahore visit was an out-of-the-box decision. Launching a scathing attack on the Congress for questioning the government's stand on the foreign policy, Sushma reminded them of the blockade that prevailed during former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi's tenure. Sushma also criticised Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi's meeting with the Chinese envoy and said, "I am saddened that the leader of Congress in an attempt to know about India-China stand-off didn't ask the government of India, but chose to meet the Chinese ambassador." Highlighting India's strong foreign relations, Swaraj asserted, "Today both America and Russia stand with India. Defence Minister of Russia had said that Russia shares India's concerns on international terrorism." "Indian government has tried to improve relations with Pakistan many times but terror and talks can't go together," she said on government's road map to improve relation with Pakistan. New Delhi: Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) has unveiled a special plan for its customers to celebrate the auspicious occasion of Rakhi. BSNL has launched "Rakhi pe Saugaat" plan under which prepaid users can get unlimited voice calls on BSNL network along with 1GB free data and Rs 74 talk value on other networks at Rs 74 combo voucher. The Rs 74 talk value will expire within 5 days. However the catch of the offer is that it will be valid for only 12 days starting Thursday (August 3). BSNL has a slew of other plans for prepaid users. The promotional offer in BSNL currently include the following TRIPLE ACE STV 333 Offer Unlimited data(FUP 3GB/day, speed reduced to 80kbps after 3GB/day), valid for 90 days. DIL KHOL KE BOL STV 349 Offer Unlimited Voice(Local/STD) in Home LSA+ 2GB (speed reduced to 80kbps after 2GB), valid for 28 days. Nehle PE DEHLA STV 395 Offer Free 3000 minutes On net voice(Local/STD) + Free 1800 minutes offnet (Local/STD), after free minutes call charge@20p/min +2GB/day (speed reduced to 80 kbps after 2GB/day), valid for 71 days. Srinagar: A militant was killed in an encounter with security forces in Jammu and Kashmir's Anantnag district late on Thursday, ANI reported. As per reports, Army has recovered the militant's dead body. Earlier in the day, an Indian Army Major and a soldier were killed in Shopian district in an ambush by the Hizbul Mujahideen, which earlier lost two of its men to security forces in Kulgam district. The Hizbul claimed responsibility for the attack on an Army patrol in Zaipora village which left Major Kamlesh Pandey, Sepoy Tanzin and Sepoy Kripal Singh injured. The development comes days after dreaded Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT) chief commander Abu Dujana of Pakistan along with his accomplice were killed in an encounter with the security forces at Hakripora village in Jammu and Kashmir's Pulwawa district. Dujana was one of the most wanted terrorists and carried over Rs 15 lakh bounty on his head. Srinagar: Two armymen, including a major, were martyred while three soldiers reportedly injured after terrorists open-fired on a patrol party of security forces at Imam Sahab area of South Kashmir`s Shopian district on Thursday morning. "The injured were immediately airlifted to 92 base hospital in Badami Bagh cantonment area, where Major Pandey and Sepoy Tanzin later succumbed to their injuries," said sources, reported IANS. Three soldiers including Major Kamlesh Pandey, Sepoy Tanzin and Sepoy Kripal Singh were injured in the attack. A cordon and search operation was launched by Army in Zaipora area of Shopian during the night following intelligence inputs about the presence of militants there, a police official said. Encounter lasted half an hour, eliminated 2 Hizb-ul-Mujahideen terrorists who were involved in many cases: Shridhar Patil, SSP #Kulgam, J&K pic.twitter.com/eZvkargqja ANI (@ANI_news) August 3, 2017 During the search operation, the terrorists fired upon the search party, injuring the three army personnel. The injured were later taken to Army's 92 base hospital in Srinagar, where two of them, including a major, succumbed, the official said, adding that the other jawan is undergoing treatment. The search operation at Zaipora is on, the official said. About 2 to 3 militants are reportedly holed up in the area. #VISUALS: Encounter b/w security forces & terrorists in J&K's Shopian. 3 Army personnel injured. ( Visuals deferred by unspecified time ) pic.twitter.com/jiwzOJaWn2 August 3, 2017 In a separate incident, two militants were killed in a brief encounter with the security forces in south Kashmir's Kulgam district last night, said the police. Suspecting presence of terrorists, the Indian Army and the police launched a cordon and search operation at the Sugan village of Shopian district, reported news agency ANI. "Two militants were killed in an encounter with security forces in Gopalpora area of Kulgam this morning," a police official told PTI. He said one of the slain militants was involved in an attack on a bank cash van in the district on May 1 this year in which five policemen and two bank guards were killed. The security forces have recovered two weapons from the site of the encounter, the official said, adding further details are awaited. On Tuesday, LeT chief commander Abu Dujana of Pakistan along with his accomplice Arif were killed in an encounter with security forces at Hakripora village in Jammu and Kashmir`s Pulwama district. Following this, the separatists had called for `bandh` to protest the killing of two Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) terrorists and a civilian.The civilian was killed in protest that erupted following an encounter in which LeT terrorist Abu Dujana and Arif were gunned down by security forces. Pulwama: Lashkar-e-Toiba's Kashmir chief Abu Dujana was killed in the predawn darkness on Tuesday and buried somewhere in north Kashmir in the dead of the night, senior security officials said on Wednesday, taking a cue from the operation against Osama bin Laden. Darkness ran like a recurring theme as security forces launched an operation in south Kashmir's Pulwama district to hunt down the terrorist who had slipped away from their grasp more than 12 times. And all the while, as dawn slowly turned to dusk and night fell over the Kashmir Valley, the Hollywood blockbuster 'Zero Dark Thirty', it is learnt, played in the minds of security officials. The film, which chronicles the manhunt that felled al Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden in Abbottabad, Pakistan, in May 2011 is what gave security officials the idea to conduct the operation at night. The tip-off that Dujana was holed up inside a house in Pulwama district had come around midnight. Believed to be in his late 20s, Dujana had been elusive many times in the past and there were some suggestions that the operation is conducted after dawn to avoid "collateral damage", officials said. "The movie and how Osama was finally captured came to our mind and we wasted no time in waiting for dawn," said a senior official, who was part of the operation, on condition of anonymity. "After deliberations with senior officers, a call was taken to carry out the operations during the night itself and troops were mobilised." Armed with "confirmed knowledge" from a trusted source about the presence of Dujana in the home of a woman he is believed to have married, crack teams of the Special Operations Group (SOG) were quickly mobilised and moved towards Hakripura, adjacent to Neva, a bastion for LeT militants located 13 km from the district headquarters of Pulwama. Dujana, along with his local accomplice Arif Bhat, was inside the house. "For us, the inmates of the house were also civilians and we wanted to ensure their safety too. A first crack team of the police was sent amid heavy fire from the two militants. But his wife and other family members were taken out to safety," an official said. Dujana and Bhat were killed in the exchange of fire that followed. After ensuring complete secrecy, Jammu and Kashmir Police took custody of Dujana's body and moved it to the other side of the valley. Dujana, who was killed in south Kashmir, was buried somewhere in north Kashmir. It's a place where other foreign militants are buried, an official said, without specifying exactly where. "We have preserved his DNA sample before burying him last night amid darkness," the official said. According to a Jammu and Kashmir Police spokesperson, both Dujana and Bhat were involved in a number of anti-national and subversive activities. These included the killing of politicians in Pulwama, hurling grenades at security personnel and recruiting local youth. Dujana, described as a womaniser by the spokesperson, was also believed to be involved in the killing of two CRPF personnel at Sangam Bijbehara and an attack on a police party at Pampore that claimed the life of two constables. While Dujana had told his wife and other family members that he was from Karachi, Bhat was a local boy from Lellhar in Pulwama, the officials said. New Delhi: The Enforcement Directorate on Thursday submitted application before a Delhi Court for further remand of Kashmiri Separatist leader and Democratic Freedom Party (DFP) chairman Shabir Shah in connection with the terror funding case. Shabir was presented before the Delhi court on Thursday. In its remand application, ED claimed that Shabir is in continuous contact with anti national elements/ terrorists residing in Pakistan in garb of the Kashmir issue. "Contacts from his mobile phone revealed that he is in regular touch with Pakistan, Dubai and England and that the same needs to be examined," ED told court today. During the hearing, the court today witnessed a tensed scene when an ED lawyer asked if Shabir can chant 'Bharat Mata Ki Jai'. This came after the separatist leader filed an application alleging inhuman behaviour and threat to his life by ED officials and asserted that he was forced to sign statements and blank documents. After this, the bench intervened and asked both sides to not convert the court into a TV studio. The court extended the ED remand of the separatist leader for further six days. Earlier, Shah's remand was extended for a day on August 2, in connection with a terror funding case. On July 26, Shah was produced in the Patiala House Court, following which he was sent to a seven-day ED custody. On July 25, Shah was arrested from his residence, where he was under house detention for a very long time, in Jammu and Kashmir's Srinagar. The National Investigation Agency (NIA) has been tough on Separatists regarding the alleged funding by Pakistan for illegal activities in Kashmir. On July 24, the NIA arrested seven separatists over money laundering charges, for funding terror in the Kashmir Valley. All seven separatist leaders - Altaf Shah, Ayaz Akbar, Peer Saifullah, Mehraj Kalwal, Shahid-ul-Islam, Naeem Khan and Bitta Karate - were later sent to 10-day NIA custody. The accused have been charged under various sections of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) and the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act. The NIA visited Srinagar in May to probe the alleged funding by Pakistan for illegal activities in Kashmir, and questioned several separatist leaders on the issue of raising, collecting and transferring funds via the Hawala route and other channels to fund terror activities in Kashmir. The NIA sleuths specifically questioned separatist leaders Farooq Ahmed Dar alias Bitta Karate and Gazi Javed Baba at that time. The NIA is said to be probing all aspects of funding to separatist leaders and how they reportedly used these funds to fuel unrest in the Kashmir Valley. Pulwama/Srinagar: Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT) militant Abu Dujana had rejected a phone call from an Army officer to surrender, minutes before he was gunned down by the security forces in an encounter in the Pulwama district of Jammu and Kashmir on Tuesday. In an earlier call which he answered, Dujana told the officer that he had left behind his parents in Gilgit-Baltistan for jihad. In a bid to strike a conversation with the LeT militant who was holed up inside a house, the officer had commissioned a Kashmiri civilian. According to The Times of India, the terrorist is heard on the tape speaking coolly. After the civilian began the conversation, he handed over the phone to the officer. Dujana was heard asking the officer: "Kya haal hai? Maine kaha, kya haal hai (how are you. I asked, how are you)?" The officer replies: "Humara haal chhor Dujana. Why don't you surrender? (You have married this girl. What you are doing isn't right.)" When told by the officer that he is being used by the Pakistani agencies to torture Kashmiris, Dujana says: "Hum nikley thhey shaheed hone. Main kya karu. Jisko game khelna hai, khelo. Kabhi hum aage, kabhi aap, aaj aapne pakad liya, mubarak ho aapko. Jisko jo karna hai karlo (I'd left home for martyrdom. What can I do? Sometimes we are ahead, sometimes youtoday you caught me. Congratulations. Now do what you have to). He adds: "Surrender nahi kar sakta. Jo meri kismat may likha hoga, Allah wahi karega, theek hai? (I won't surrender. Allah does what's fated, okay?)". The officer tries to persuade him to surrender by reminding him about his parents. However, Dujana remains defiant and says that he had left his family back in Gilgit-Baltistan. "Maa baap toh uss din mar gaye, jis din main unko chhor kar aaya (my parents died the day I left them behind)," he tells the officer. As per the daily, the officer then tells Dujana that Indian forces do not want a bloodbath with Pakistan-based militants and also that "Allah is one for everyone". To this, Dujana replies: "If he's one for you and for me, then come and meet me inside the house. Abu Dujana was a womaniser, killed while visiting wife in Jammu and Kashmir's Pulwama The LeT militant suddenly ends the conversation, paying no attention to the officer's repeated appeals to save Kashmiris and not recruit youth for terror. The officer tells the civilian again to call Dujana and tell him to surrender, but the terrorist does not pick up the call. How security forces cornered LeT commander Abu Dujana in Pulwama Dujana, who carried a reward of Rs 15 lakh on his head, was killed by security forces when he went to visit his Indian wife in a village in Jammu and Kashmir's Pulwama district. The Jammu and Kashmir Police, which had apparently been tracking the militant, called the killing of Abu Dujana as a "huge achievement". New Delhi/Bengaluru: The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Thursday attacked the Congress party for referring to the recent Income Tax raids at Karnataka Minister DK Shivakumar`s house as a "witch-hunt" and said the grand old party is doing nothing, but shaming itself by standing up on this matter, rather than supporting the government. "There can be no protection, no insulation against the corrupt. The more the Congress tries to use its muscle and strength in the Parliament on such issues, it paints its face black every time, it shames itself," BJP leader GVL Narasimha Rao told ANI. Rao said the Karnataka Minister has been under the radar for quite a long time and the I-T raids were not sudden. "The Congress minister, who is being raided in Karnataka, was already under probe. Rather than coming clean on these charges of corruption and black money, Rahul Gandhi is giving out a message to fight. And fight for what, to protect their illegal wealth?" he asked. Rao said the ruling government would not spare anyone involved in such activities be it from the Congress or the BJP. Another BJP leader Shahnawaz Hussain said the raid was conducted after a proper probe conducted by the I-T department and on the basis of the evidence received against him. "So much money has been recovered from these people. The Congress should first answer how the money is being recovered," Hussain told ANI. Earlier on Wednesday, the Income Tax department raided a resort on the outskirts of Bengaluru, where 42 Congress MLAs from Gujarat were holed up to avoid poaching by the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in Gujarat. The I-T department raided on multiple locations linked to Karnataka Energy Minister DK Shivakumar too, including his residence. The department recovered around Rs 7 crores from Shivakumar`s properties that it found to be questionable. The Congress said that there was a clear connection between the raids and the upcoming elections in Gujarat for three Rajya Sabha seats, while the I-T department said this was a pre-planned raid. Bhopal: Various religious organisations on Thursday staged a protest against opening of state's largest slaughter house in Bhopal's Chhawani Adampur. On July 11, the Supreme Court heard the plea challenging the Centre's notification that bans sale and purchase of cattle from animal markets for slaughter. In the last hearing, the apex court had issued a notice to the central government on hearing a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) filed by a Hyderabad based Non-Government Organisation (NGO). The Apex court's vacation bench, headed by Justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul and comprising Justice R.K. Agarwal, issued notice to the government seeking reply by July 11. The NGO had moved the Apex Court, challenging the Centre's notification that bans sale and purchase of cattle from animal markets for slaughter, a move that received flak since its announcement. The petition was filed by a Hyderabad-based lawyer Fahim Qureshi, stating that the order was discriminatory and unconstitutional, as it prevented cattle traders from earning their livelihood. Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan in June said he would call for a meeting of all the chief ministers, asserting that the Union Government does not have the right to issue such an order on cattle slaughter ban. On June 1, the students of the Indian Institutes of Technology (IIT- Madras) staged protest against the same. New Delhi: India's largest lender State Bank of India plans to raise Rs 2,000 crore by allotting Basel-III compliant bonds to various investors. "The committee of directors for capital raising accorded its approval today to allot 20,000 AT1 Basel-III compliant non-convertible, perpetual, subordinated bonds in the nature of debentures... Aggregating Rs 2,000 crore to various investors," State Bank of India (SBI) said in a regulatory filing today. SBI said the bonds will carry a coupon rate of 8.15 percent per annum with a call option after 5 years or the anniversary date thereafter. Shares of SBI were trading 1.67 percent lower at Rs 302.50 on the BSE. New Delhi: Markets regulator Sebi has barred stock broker Unique Consulting & Trading and its directors from the capital market for a period of 10 years for allegedly collecting money from investors through various fraudulent schemes and promising them high returns. The regulator has also cancelled the registration of the stock broker for unauthorised collection of funds. According to Sebi, Unique Consulting had "misused" its status as a stock broker and solicited and collected funds and deposits from investors through misrepresentation and allurement of periodical returns. "Unique Consulting acted in fraudulent and deceitful manner in violation of the PFUTP (Prohibition of Fraudulent and Unfair Trade Practices) Regulations," it said in an order dated August 2. The watchdog observed that funds amounting to more than Rs 53 lakh were collected by the stock broker from 21 entities under different schemes. The stock broker had also issued deposit certificates acknowledging the amount collected from its clients or investors. The Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) noted that the stock broker had floated various schemes such as short term, PMS/Monthly and PMS/3 months, among others. The use of the terms like short term, PMS/Monthly and PMS/3 months, among others, in the deposit certificates issued by Unique Consulting, and the advertisements and pamphlets issued by the stock broker offered services including wealth management, as the schemes offered are in the nature of portfolio management services, Sebi said. However, according to the regulator, Unique Consulting "misled" the investors to believe that it was authorised to do the activities as a portfolio manager by misusing the Sebi registration as a stock broker. Unique Consulting & Trading and its directors -- P Shanmuga Ganesan, K Mathan Kumar, U Indira and Janet Jenetha -- are prohibited from mobilising or pooling any fresh funds from its clients, other general investors or members of public, Sebi said. Further, the regulator directed the stock broker and its directors to refund the money collected from clients and other investors in the various schemes along with income, profits or returns promised to them under such schemes. Unique Consulting & Trading and its directors are directed not to access the securities market directly or indirectly, and are further restrained and prohibited from buying, selling or otherwise dealing in the securities market, directly or indirectly in for a period of 10 years, Sebi said. In a separate order passed on August 2, the regulator noted that by raising funds beyond authority and adopting fraudulent means, the stock broker had not adhered to the standards of the integrity expected from an intermediary in the securities market. Mumbai: In a shocking incident, a 16-year-old boy in Mumbai has alleged that he was raped by 15 boys over the past one year. The boy living in Andheri (west) filed a complaint and told the DN Nagar Police that he revealed it to a friend when he felt unbearable pain two days ago after the last assault on June 26, reported The Indian Express. The Mumbai Police has registered a case against all 15 accused, all between 15 and 17 years. Seven accused have been detained. The police also said that the school boy was also blackmailed and physically assaulted. A medical examination has confirmed the sexual assault, said the daily. The boy was first raped in 2016 by a friend who was his neighbour. As per a police officer, the alleged rapist shot a video of the act on his mobile and shared the clip with his other friends. The victim was very scared and did not tell his family about the abuse, said the officer. The neighbour then started blackmailing the victim, a class 9 student, and forced him to have sex with others. The accused boys took the victim to a playground outside a municipal school in the area and raped him one by one, added the officer. The victim's ordeal did not end there. The daily reported that over the past two months, one of the boys had been asking the victim to give him Rs 1,100 to eat in a restaurant. When the victim refused to comply, boys took him to an isolated corner on June 26 and raped him once more. The victim, in his complaint, has claimed that the 15 boys raped him on four other occasions the last of which was two weeks ago, the police said. Whenever I tried to resist, they would hit me, the boy mentioned in his complaint. On Monday, the boy complained of terrible pain due to repeated sexual assault. A medical examination conducted at the Cooper Hospital confirmed the sexual assault. The police have charged the 15 boys with unnatural sex and common intention under the Indian Penal Code and relevant sections of the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act. Mumbai Police spokesperson Deputy Commissioner of Police (Operations) Rashmi Karandikar said the probe was underway. Chandigarh: As soon as the news of a Chandigarh boy bagging Rs 1.44 crore job offer from Google trickled in, the word spread like wildfire and congratulatory messages started pouring in from all corners of the country. It was on Saturday that the Chandigarh administration released a press note about Harshit Sharmas achievement. The release claimed that Google would pay Sharma Rs 12 lakh per month as salary upon the completion of one-year training. During training, it was claimed that the 16-year-old would receive a stipend of Rs 4 lakh per month. However, on Tuesday, Google denied having offered paid training and job to the Government Model Senior Secondary School student. After the controversy, the GMSSS shared with media an offer letter Sharma allegedly forwarded to a teacher. However, Bharti Sharma, the mother of the 16-year-old boy, had a different story to tell. Bharti told Hindustan Times on Wednesday that the incident had devastated her sons life. Talking to the daily, Bharti, a teacher from Kurukshetra, said her son received a hoax call, and not a letter, apprising him of his selection for the post of a graphic designer. Harshit got a phone call. We did not believe it at first. I kept telling him it could be a hoax, said the mother. He shared the information with his school principal, who further released a press note, which led to media coverage. Chandigarh student Harshit Sharma, who falsely claimed Google hired him, being probed Bharti said once the news was published and mediapersons started calling them, they also thought the job offer was authentic. We thought the principal has some confirmation, she said. Bharti asserted that Harshit Sharma did not provide any offer letter to the school. She added that her son has been admitted to hospital and hasnt eaten anything since Tuesday. Doctors say he is traumatised. Those who were congratulating us are now taunting us, she said. However, GMSSS principal Indra Beniwal maintained that Harshit Sharma forwarded a copy of the offer letter to a teacher through WhatsApp. "Harshit's parents have accepted that their son has committed a mistake (by claiming to have been selected by Google)," Beniwal said today. Sharma hails from Mathana in Haryana's Kurukshetra district. Public Relations Department, Chandigarh Administration, had on July 29 issued a press note which said, "A student of GMSSS-33D, Chandigarh, Class 12 (IT) stream, Harshit, has been selected for graphic designing by Google. He will be trained for graphic designing for an initial period of one year and will receive a stipend of Rs 4 lakh per month." "After completion of his training, he will get a remuneration of Rs 12 lakh per month. He went for an online interview through video conferencing and was selected on the basis of posters designed by him while studying in class 12 under the supervision of his teachers," it had said. "His achievements will act as a morale booster for other students and they will be inspired to make forays into this field," the release had said. New Delhi: Legendary actor Dilip Kumar's health has not been in the good shape of late. The megastar was yesterday admitted to hospital after he complained of dehydration. However, his wife and veteran actress Saira Banu said that he is fine and is stable as of this morning. But it has now come to light that Dilip Kumar has been shifted to ICU after his creatinine levels in blood started rising. According to Indian Express.com, the thespian suffers from kidney ailment and dehydration. He is admitted to Mumbai's Lilavati hospital at present. The report quotes the team of doctors treating him as saying, Dilip Kumars creatinine levels are rising. He is going into renal failure. Given his age, it is serious. The 94-year-old made his debut as an actor in the film "Jwar Bhata" in 1944 which was produced by Bombay Talkies. The Government of India honoured him with the Padma Bhushan award in 1991,the Dadasaheb Phalke award in 1994 and the Padma Vibhushan this year for his contributions towards Indian cinema. Mumbai: Legendary actor Dilip Kumar was rushed to Lilavati Hospital because of dehydration on late Wednesday night. According to hospital sources, the 94-year-old actor was admitted with dehydration, but is stable now. The superstar, who has been suffering from age-related problems in recent years, was accompanied by his wife Saira Banu. In April last year, he was hospitalised due to fever and nausea.Known as the `Tragedy King`, Kumar has acted in over 65 films in his career and is known for his iconic roles in movies like `Devdas `(1955), `Naya Daur` (1957), `Mughal-e-Azam` (1960), `Ganga Jamuna` (1961), `Kranti` (1981), and `Karma` (1986). Last seen on the big screen in `Qila` in 1998, the actor was honoured with the Dadasaheb Phalke Award in 1994 and the Padma Vibhushan in 2015. BankBazaar.com New Delhi: Health Insurance policies have evolved over the years and become more customer-friendly. They dont just cover the hospitalisation expense involved in mainstream treatment but also come with other varied features which make each plan unique. With the increasing cost of treatment, its important that you are informed about the various kinds of support provided by insurers. Lets look at a few such features that can ease the burden of medical expense on you: Alternative Treatments Alternative treatments used to be an exclusion to medical cover earlier. However, now many insurers have started providing coverage for non-allopathic treatments such as Ayurveda, Unani, Siddha and Homeopathic treatments. While some plans provide coverage up to the sum insured, some have a sub-limit on the coverage. Free Health Check-ups This feature is offered through most plans. The policyholders can avail free preventive health check-ups up to a certain amount which is predetermined by the insurer. However, it can be availed only after completing a continuous claim-free period, which typically ranges between one and four years. Domiciliary Treatments Sometimes patients are treated at home either because they are not in a condition to be transferred to a hospital or there are no available beds in the facility. Such treatments are called domiciliary treatments and are covered in many Health Insurance plans. Read through the terms and conditions of a policy to understand if such treatments are covered up to a specified limit or entirely. No Claim Bonus If you do not make a claim in a policy year, you are offered benefits under no claim bonus. These benefits can come in the form of an increased sum assured or premium discounts. The bonus is cumulative in nature and continues to increase every year when no claim is made. Convalescence Benefit Also known as recovery benefit, this one is given out to a policyholder in case the hospitalisation period exceeds the specified number of days which is usually 10 to 12 days. This feature is commonly available and is useful for prolonged hospitalisation. Daily Cash Benefit Under this benefit, a fixed cash benefit is given out to the policyholders for each day of hospitalisation. This can be used to meet the additional expenses faced by you during your stay in the hospital, such as the cost of refreshments. Lifelong Renewability This one is a relatively new feature added to almost all Health Insurance plans, with the amendment in IRDA regulations mandating lifelong renewability. Now, health plans do not impose any maturity period, as to when the plan can be renewed. Renewals are allowed lifelong if premiums are paid within the stipulated renewal date. Sum Assured Restoration This feature allows double sum assured coverage. The sum assured is restored to 100% if it is exhausted in a particular year. This is only allowed under certain terms and conditions. OPD Treatments Some insurers provide coverage for outpatient medical expenses such as doctors consultation fees, pathological tests, cost of the medicines etc. This is useful for patients availing treatments which do not require hospitalisation. While choosing a plan, compare the inclusions and exclusions of multiple plans and do not base your decision on the premium cost. Disclaimer: The above article has been sourced from Bankbazaar.com and reflects the views of the writer. The article is not the official stand of Zee Media Corporation Ltd, the owner of http://www.zeenews.com. Source: Bankbazaar.com Jaipur: Days after a woman gave birth to a child outside a state-run hospital in Jaipur, a nurse was removed after she was found guilty of medical negligence, following an enquiry ordered by the state government. Rajasthan Health minister Kalicharan Saraf told PTI today that the nurse has been put under APO (awaiting posting order) status after a five-member committee found her guilty of negligence. The committee, which was constituted by the minister to look into alleged negligence on part of the hospital in denying the pregnant woman healthcare facilities last week, gave its report, following which the action against the nurse was taken yesterday. Ashoka Bai, a nomad woman who was suffering from labour pain, was brought to the Jaipuria hospital in the city by her family members last Friday night, but the doctor on duty refused to admit her while assessing that the delivery of the child was not likely to take place during the night. The family members took the woman outside the hospital, where she gave birth to a child. On being alerted, the police reached the spot and the woman and the newborn were later admitted to another hospital at Sanganer. After the incident came to light, the state health minister had ordered an inquiry into the matter and asked the chief medical and health officer of the district to submit a report in this regard. London: A team of researchers has designed new "smart" solar sunglasses containing semi-transparent organic solar cells that can generate electric power enough to operate devices such as hearing aids. Researchers said that the invention can pave the way for other future applications such as the integration of organic solar cells into windows or overhead glazing. Alexander Colsmann, from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) in Germany said,"We bring solar power to places where other solar technologies fail." Dominik Landerer, doctoral student at the KIT added, "The solar glasses we developed are an example of how organic solar cells may be employed in applications that would not be feasible with conventional photovoltaics," added The solar cell lenses have a thickness of approximately 1.6 mm and weigh about six grams -- just like the lenses of traditional sunglasses. It is perfectly fitted to a commercial frame as well. A microprocessor and two small displays are integrated into the temples of the solar glasses, which help these "smart" glasses to be self-powered to measure the solar illumination intensity and ambient temperature and view as bar graphs. These solar glasses also work in indoor environments under illumination down to 500 lux -- the usual illumination of an office or a living area. Under these conditions, each of the "smart" lenses still generates 200 milliwatt of electric power -- enough to operate devices such as a hearing aid or a step counter. The solar cells, based on hydrocarbons, are very exciting devices due to their mechanical flexibility and the opportunity to adapt their colour, transparency, shape, and size to the desired application, Landerer added, in the paper detailed in the Energy Technology journal. The study added that the new solar glasses can also be integrated into the glass facades of high-rise buildings. Organic solar modules can be used for transforming the absorbed light into electric power. Washington: For the first time, scientists have discovered glowing water molecules in the atmosphere of a planet outside our solar system. It is the strongest evidence to date for a stratosphere on a planet outside our solar system, or exoplanet. The planet called WASP-121b is a gas giant exoplanet commonly referred to as a "hot Jupiter." It was located approximately 900 light years from Earth. Finding glowing water molecules on the planet's atmosphere, however, may not men detecting signs of alien life as its stratosphere - a layer of atmosphere where temperature increases with higher altitudes - is hot enough to boil iron. Mark Marley, study co-author based at NASA's Ames Research Center in California's Silicon Valley said,"This result is exciting because it shows that a common trait of most of the atmospheres in our solar system -- a warm stratosphere -- also can be found in exoplanet atmospheres." Marley said,"We can now compare processes in exoplanet atmospheres with the same processes that happen under different sets of conditions in our own solar system." The discovery reported in the the journal Nature was made using NASA's Hubble space telescope. Drake Deming, Professor of Astronomy at University of Maryland and a co-author of the study said,"The stratosphere of WASP-121b so hot it can make water vapour glow, which is the basis for our analysis." To study the gas giant's stratosphere, scientists used spectroscopy to analyse how the planet's brightness changed at different wavelengths of light. Water vapour in the planet's atmosphere, for example, behaves in predictable ways in response to certain wavelengths of light, depending on the temperature of the water. At cooler temperatures, water vapour blocks light from beneath it. But at higher temperatures, the water molecules glow. The water molecules in the atmosphere of WASP-121b give off radiation as they lose energy, but it is in the form of infrared light, which the human eye is unable to detect. "Theoretical models have suggested that stratospheres may define a special class of ultra-hot exoplanets, with important implications for the atmospheric physics and chemistry," said Tom Evans, research fellow at the University of Exeter in Britain and lead author of the study. Evans said,"When we pointed Hubble at WASP-121b, we saw glowing water molecules, implying that the planet has a strong stratosphere." WASP-121b has a greater mass and radius than Jupiter, making it much puffier. But while Jupiter revolves around our Sun once every 12 years, WASP-121b has an orbital period of just 1.3 days. This exoplanet is so close to its star that if it got any closer, the star's gravity would start ripping it apart. This close proximity also means that the top of the atmosphere is heated to a blazing hot 2,500 degrees Celsius - the temperature at which iron exists in gas rather than solid form. "This new research is the smoking gun evidence scientists have been searching for when studying hot exoplanets," said David Sing, Associate Professor University of Exeter and a co-author of the research paper. "We have discovered this hot Jupiter has a stratosphere, a common feature seen in most of our solar system planets," Sing added. (With IANS inputs) San Francisco: To empower people with disabilities to operate an on-screen mouse and keyboard, Microsoft has announced beta version of `Eye Control` feature for Windows 10 that can be accessed by using eye movements. According to a blog post by Dona Sarkar, Software Engineer at Microsoft, the `Eye Control` feature requires a compatible eye tracker, like the `Tobii Eye Tracker 4C`, which can unlock access to the Windows operating system. Once `Eye Control` is turned on, a launchpad appears on the screen that allows a user to access the mouse, keyboard, text-to-speech and to reposition the User Interface (UI) to the opposite side of the screen. "To interact with the UI for `Eye Control`, simply look at the UI with your eyes until the button activates. A visual affordance will appear around the UI that you are looking at," Sarkar said. Users can control the mouse by simply selecting the mouse from the launchpad, position their eyes on the screen where they want the cursor to be placed. Users can select the keyboard from the launchpad and dwell at the characters they want to type. However, the new tool faces challenges in direct sunlight and, therefore, the company said the device might require new calibration when moving to a location with different lighting conditions. Also, the launchpad partially blocks the `Tobii UI` during device calibration. "To work around this, turn off Eye Control during calibration and turn it back on when you are done," Sarkar noted. The `Eye Control` feature currently supports only selected eye trackers of `Tobii` hardware. New Delhi: Delhi will apply for UNESCO Imperial Capital Cities status, the government said on Wednesday, alleging that the city's entry for UNESCO World Heritage City was withdrawn by the Centre due to "political agenda". Atishi Marlena, adviser to Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia, said Delhi's entry for heritage city status was withdrawn to favour Ahmedabad, which was last month declared the first Unesco World Heritage City in India. "Delhi will apply to get the prestigious tag of Unesco Imperial Capital Cities. Delhi has 218 heritage sites and the city has an important role in the history and heritage of the country. "Sisodia will also write to Union Culture Minister Mahesh Sharma in this connection," Marlena said. The central government in 2015 had pulled out Delhi's entry for the Unesco World Heritage City status, saying that if Delhi was given the prestigious tag, it would put "restrictions" on several infrastructure works in the national capital. Marlena said Delhi's dossier for the heritage city status was prepared in 2008 by the Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage (INTACH) and in 2014 it was submitted in the Unesco during the AAP government's 49-day tenure. "But the BJP-led central government pulled out Delhi's entry in 2015 and submitted Ahmedabad's nomination for the prestigious tag. Delhi's nomination was pulled out by the Centre because of their political agenda," Marlena told reporters. She added: "We have no problem with Ahmedabad being given the tag of UNESCO World Heritage City but withdrawing Delhi's nomination due to political agenda is not fair." On the central government's clarification for withdrawing Delhi's nomination, Marlena said norms were already there restricting construction-related works in Lutyens' Delhi and in Shahjahanabad area (Old Delhi). New Delhi: In a unique protest against the alarming prices hike of the tomatoes, the Congress introduces a bank named 'State Bank of Tomato' in Uttar Pradesh, reported ANI on Wednesday. Unlike typical banks, the SBT deals only with tomatoes and operate from 10 am to 5 pm every day. Lucknow (UP): In a unique protest against the rising prices of the tomatoes, Congress opens bank called State Bank of Tomato. pic.twitter.com/lNpAaexgMu ANI UP (@ANINewsUP) August 2, 2017 It promises lucrative benefits to its customers who are willing to deposit their valuable commodity, tomatoes to be specific, says a Times of India report. This Lucknow-based veggie-bank provides loans and locker-facility, it also assures a return of five-times on the initial tomato deposit. The bank aims at providing financial support to those who are unable to afford to buy tomatoes at the present market price. "I have deposited 0.5 kg tomatoes, I will get 1 kg after 6 months. I'm 103-year-old, never thought I would have to see this," said Srikrishna Verma, a customer who has 'invested' with the bank. I have deposited 0.5 Kg tomatoes, will get 1 kg after 6 months. I'm 103-year-old, never thought have to see this: Srikrishna Verma, customer pic.twitter.com/PlXdnSYGvK ANI UP (@ANINewsUP) August 2, 2017 The unpredictable monsoon that has caused major floods across India is attributed as the reason behind the sudden price rise. Reportedly, the Congress protest comes amid the Opposition attacking the government over the tomato prices increase to Rs 100 per kilogram in recent times. Ghaziabad: Police in Ghaziabad have arrested two sharpshooters from the Balraj Bhati gang who were involved in two murders in Uttar Pradesh. A police officer said Pawan and Sanjay, both residents of Bulandshahr, were caught following a tip off. They carried a reward of Rs 5,000 each on their head. They confessed that they had, along with Balraj Bhati, killed one Gulab in 2014. When they were on bail, they killed one of the witnesses, Sanjay Tyagi, in 2016. Pawan was found involved in four criminal cases and Sanjay in one criminal case in Bulandshahr. The police recovered two pistols of .315 bore and four live cartridges from their possession. "The work of our police team is commendable," Superintendent of Police Akash Tomar said. Tokyo: Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe`s pick for his new foreign minister, Taro Kono, is known for his close ties with Washington and his reputation as a political maverick who does not shy away from speaking his mind, even on politically sensitive issues. Kono, 54, is the son of former chief cabinet secretary Yohei Kono, who wrote a landmark 1993 apology to "comfort women" who were forced to work in Japanese wartime military brothels. A fluent English speaker educated at Georgetown University in Washington, Kono will replace Fumio Kishida, who has rarely differed in public with Abe since taking office in December 2012, after a Cabinet reshuffle on Thursday. "(His) extremely strong and deep connections in the US range from personal relationship with senators and congressmen and State Department officials all the way to A-team venture capitalists and entrepreneurs," said Jesper Koll, head of equity fund WisdomTree Japan. "In the current state of confusion and flip-flop in Washington, Kono`s deep and broad network of personal connection will be a huge asset," he said in an email. One of his major tasks will be to coordinate closely with the United States, Japan`s closest ally, in the face of North Korea`s worrying missile and nuclear development programmes, as well as China`s growing regional clout. Kono was head of the National Public Safety Commission, a Cabinet-level post, for 10 months to August 2016, and was responsible for security for the G7 summit in Ise-Shima while doubling as an administrative reform minister. First elected to Parliament in 1996, Kono has said he wants Japan to commit to phasing out nuclear power by shutting down reactors when they reach 40 years of service, contrasting the government`s policy of maintaining its nuclear reactors as a core energy source. He has also criticised the government`s resistance to opening the door to immigrants as a way to address a shortage of workers as Japan`s population ages and shrinks. Despite his record as a political maverick, analysts said they expected a more modest approach to diplomacy, just like Kishida, with no major changes to Japan`s foreign policy likely. "I see a good overall balance between Kono, who is a dove, and Prime Minster Abe, who is on the hawkish side. It will be like what it was between Abe and Kishida," said Tomoaki Iwai, political science professor at Nihon University. In 2002, Kono donated part of his liver to his father, who was suffering from cirrhosis. New Delhi: A "legal notice" from Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) on Wednesday did not deter former party member Ayesha Gulalai from repeating scathing allegations against party chief Imran Khan. In an exclusive interview to WION, Gulalai claimed that harassment of women was rampant in the PTI. Gulalai, who hails from Waziristan and was elected to the Lower House on a reserved seat for women from the Federally Administered Tribal Areas, announced her exit from the party on Tuesday, making allegations against Imran Khan and other top party members. She made the announcement moments before the election of a new Prime Minister and claimed "ill-treatment" of women in the PTI. She said she had conveyed her grievances to the party leadership but no action had been taken. Asked what led her switch sides, the former member of Pakistan People's Party (PPP) said, "Imran Khan came with a vision for Pakistan and when he marched to Waziristan after the drone attacks, I decided to join the PTI." However, Gulalai said her admiration of Khan swiftly faded away as she experienced "large-scale harassment" of women within the party. Describing Khan as a man who had "psychological problems", Gulalai was quoted as saying by Dawn: "Maybe they (PTI members) think Pakistan is England. At this age, you [Imran] have not been able to reform your habits, maybe you do not have control over your behaviour. Talking to WION, Gulalai alleged that she was not the only one who faced harassment in the PTI. "It's not only about me, I know many women who have experienced this thing. I have all the proof with me. They (PTI members) harass women with obscene messages. I want to talk about these messages because I have personally experienced this. My message to women who are thinking of joining the PTI is `stay alert and vigilant`, as the culture of this party may not be suitable for you." She further claimed that the PTI was mired in corruption and Khan was aware of it. "I was attracted to the fact that Imran wanted a corruption-free Pakistan. However, the province where PTI made its government, soon saw rampant corruption being indulged in by the Chief Minister (Pervez Khattak) and other members of the party. Ministers have constantly been complaining against this. When I left PTI, ministers were actually in Khan's residence protesting against his (the CM's) corruption. How are we going to lead fight corruption when our government is corrupt?" Gulalai denied that she would be joining Nawa Sharif's Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N). "I have resigned from the party and I have no plans to join any other political party. I will now pursue my education," she said. The PTI had on Wednesday issued a "legal notice" to Gulalai for her scathing allegations against party chief Imran Khan, demanding that she apologise and resign from the National Assembly. PTI leader Fawad Chaudhry said that since Gulalai has accused the party of moral and financial corruption, she should no longer retain her National Assembly seat won on the PTI's ticket. He added that if she fails to resign, the party will request the Election Commission of Pakistan to denotify her. Beijing: China's Defence Ministry says a Chinese warship is assisting the US Navy in its search for a sailor who is missing and may have gone overboard during operations in the South China Sea. The ministry said in a statement today that the People's Liberation Army Navy's guided-missile frigate Liuzhou is coordinating with the US in the search for the sailor "in the spirit of humanitarianism." The US Navy's Pacific Fleet says the destroyer USS Stethem reported a man overboard around 9 a.M. Tuesday. Multiple searches of the destroyer were conducted but the sailor hasn't been found. China, which claims virtually all of the South China Sea, accused the US in July of trespassing in its waters when the Stethem sailed within 32 kilometers of Triton Island in the Paracel Group. The operation was aimed at affirming the right to passage and challenging what the US considers China's excessive territorial claims in the area. China sent ships to intercept the destroyer. China has strongly objected to repeated freedom of navigation missions by the US Navy in the South China Sea. Beijing: The flagship newspaper of China`s People`s Liberation Army (PLA) on Thursday demanded the immediate withdrawal of Indian troops from Doklam on the border, warning New Delhi not to harbour any illusions about Beijing`s resolve to defend its territory. "The Chinese government will make no concession on territorial sovereignty, and any country should not underestimate our resolve to uphold territorial sovereignty," said a commentary in the PLA Daily, reports Xinhua news agency. Over 270 Indian troops crossed the Sikkim section of the China-India border and obstructed Chinese road work in Doklam on June 18. As of the end of July, over 40 Indian soldiers and one bulldozer remain in Chinese territory, it said. Chinese troops have taken initial counter measures at the area and will step up targeted measures, the commentary said. "The Chinese military does not demand a single inch of other`s land and it won`t give an inch of its own territory to others," it said. "We have no intention of aggression or expansion. However, we have confidence in defeating all aggression." The commentary urged India to acquire a clear understanding of the general trend of the world and contribute more to regional and world peace and development, instead of acting in reverse. Islamabad: Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JuD) chief and the mastermind of Mumbai terrorist attack Hafiz Muhammad Saeed has reportedly decided to launch his own political party in Pakistan by renaming his terror outfit JuD as Milli Muslim League Pakistan. According to reports, he would be registering his political party with the Election Commission of Pakistan. Saeed is likely to launch his political outfit on Pakistan`s Independence Day at a function in Lahore. This is being seen as a major happening as Pakistan recently elected its new Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi after Nawaz Sharif was disqualified by the Supreme Court over the Panama Papers scandal. He is also said to have close relations with the Pakistani Army and the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI). Recently the government of Pakistan`s Punjab province extended the house arrest of Jamaatud Dawa (JuD) chief Hafiz Muhammad Saeed and his four aides for 60 more days for their activities that were "detrimental to peace and security", The Express Tribune reported. Saeed is a wanted terrorist by India and the United States for his alleged role in masterminding the 2008 terror attacks in Mumbai that claimed 166 lives. He even carries a bounty of 10 million USD (approx Rs 66 crore) on his head for his role in the attack. He is an internationally designated terrorist but continues to be an influential person in Pakistan`s certain religious groups. Pakistan claims to have banned Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT), but following the attack on the Indian Parliament in 2002, it re-emerged as Jamaat-ud Dawa (JuD). The United States has designated the JuD as a front for the LeT. WASHINGTON: Three top Democratic senators, in a rare show of bipartisanship, on Wednesday urged U.S. President Donald Trump to stand up to China as he prepares to launch an inquiry into Beijing`s intellectual property and trade practices in coming days. Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer pressed the Republican president to skip the investigation and go straight to trade action against China. "We should certainly go after them," said Schumer in a statement. Senators Ron Wyden of Oregon and Sherrod Brown of Ohio also urged Trump to rein in China. Tensions between Washington and Beijing have escalated in recent months as Trump has pressed China to cut steel production to ease global oversupply and rein in North Korea`s missile program. Sources familiar with the current discussions said Trump was expected to issue a presidential memorandum in coming days, citing Chinese theft of intellectual property as a problem. The European Union, Japan, Germany and Canada have all expressed concern over China`s behaviour on intellectual property theft. US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer would then initiate an investigation under the Trade Act of 1974`s Section 301, which allows the president to unilaterally impose tariffs or other trade restrictions to protect US industries, the sources said. It is unclear whether such a probe would result in trade sanctions against China, which Beijing would almost certainly challenge before the World Trade Organization. The Chinese Embassy in Washington said in a statement to Reuters that China "opposes unilateral actions and trade protectionism in any form." LEVERAGE FOR NEGOTIATIONS US Section 301 investigations have not led to trade sanctions since the WTO was launched in 1995. In the 1980s, Section 301 tariffs were levied against Japanese motorcycles, steel and other products. "This could merely be leverage for bilateral negotiations," James Bacchus, a former WTO chief judge and USTR official, said of a China intellectual property probe. Some trade lawyers said that WTO does not have jurisdiction over investment rules such as China`s requirements that foreign companies transfer technology to their joint venture partners, allowing sanctions to proceed outside the WTO`s dispute settlement system. But Bacchus argued the United States has an obligation to turn first to the Geneva-based institution to resolve trade disputes, adding: "There is an obligation in WTO to enforce intellectual property rights that is not fully explored." Lighthizer and Trump`s Commerce Secretary, Wilbur Ross, have complained the WTO is slow to resolve disputes and biased against the United States. The threat comes at a time when Trump has become increasingly frustrated with the level of support from Beijing to pressure Pyongyang to give up its nuclear and missile program. Trump has said in the past that China would get better treatment on trade with the United States if it acted more forcefully against Pyongyang. Beijing has said its influence on North Korea is limited. China counters that trade between the two nations benefits both sides, and that Beijing is willing to improve trade ties. A senior Chinese official said on Monday there was no link between North Korea`s nuclear program and China-U.S. trade. Wyden, the top Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, wrote to Lighthizer urging action to stop China from pressuring U.S. tech companies into giving up intellectual property rights. Wyden`s state of Oregon is home to several companies that could make a case regarding intellectual property rights and China, including Nike Inc and FLIR Systems Inc . Tehran: Iran said Thursday that new US sanctions were a violation of its nuclear deal with world powers, piling pressure on President Hassan Rouhani as he started his second term. Rouhani vowed to continue his efforts to end the country`s isolation as he was sworn in by supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei following his re-election in May. But the ceremony came less than 24 hours after US President Donald Trump confirmed fresh sanctions against Iran. Tehran says the new measures violate its 2015 deal with world powers that eased sanctions in exchange for curbs on its nuclear programme, an agreement which Trump has repeatedly threatened to tear up. "We believe that the nuclear deal has been violated and we will react appropriately," deputy foreign minister Abbas Araghchi said on state television. "We will certainly not fall into the trap of US policy and Trump, and our reaction will be very carefully considered." The mounting crisis creates a difficult position for Rouhani, a 68-year-old moderate who won re-election largely thanks to his efforts at repairing relations with the West. "We will never accept isolation," Rouhani said as he was sworn in in front of top political and military officials. "The nuclear deal is a sign of Iran`s goodwill on the international stage," he added. Khamenei took a tougher line, saying Iran must not fall for Washington`s "tricks". "The enemy`s hostility has made us more resistant," he said. New US sanctions have emboldened Rouhani`s hardline opponents, who say he should never have trusted the United States. "It`s unfortunate timing," said Ellie Geranmayeh, an Iran analyst with the European Council on Foreign Relations. "What will be absolutely critical is how the Europeans position themselves," she said, pointing to the burgeoning trade ties with Europe and their continued backing of the nuclear deal. Britain, France and Germany who signed the deal along with Russia, China and the United States remain firm backers of the agreement and have criticised the Trump administration for threatening to scrap it. French energy giant Total defied US pressure in July by signing a multi-billion-dollar gas deal with Iran. "What Iranians are banking on at the moment, maybe overestimating, is that Europe will safeguard and build on the deal, and make it too politically costly for Trump to tear it up, or at least show Washington that if it walks away, it will be doing so alone," said Geranmayeh. The International Atomic Energy Agency has repeatedly certified that Iran is sticking by its commitments under the agreement a position that has been reluctantly accepted by the Trump White House. But with Iran gaining the upper hand across the Middle East, through its support for proxies in Syria, Lebanon and Iraq, US lawmakers appear determined to ratchet up tensions. Meanwhile, Rouhani also faces challenges as he tries to impose civilian control over the economy. Since the election, he has engaged in a war of words with the Revolutionary Guards over their outsized role in the economy although they have since sought to bury the hatchet with a public show of unity. Rouhani has also faced criticism from his reformist allies, who are angry over news that he will unveil another all-male cabinet. Much of Rouhani`s popularity has been built on his promise of greater civil liberties, including more rights for women, but Iran has still had only one female cabinet member since the 1979 revolution ironically under hardliner Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The government line-up is due to be officially unveiled on Saturday at a high-profile inauguration ceremony in parliament in the presence of foreign guests, including EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini. Tokyo: Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on Thursday was set to announce new defence and foreign ministers as part of a cabinet revamp he hopes will stem a decline in public support after a series of scandals and missteps. Political blueblood Abe, in office since late December 2012, has pushed a nationalist agenda alongside a massive policy effort to end years of on-off deflation and rejuvenate the world`s third-largest economy. But he has seen public support rates plummet in the past few months over an array of political troubles, including allegations of favouritism to a friend in a business deal which Abe strongly denies. Abe will reportedly reappoint former defence minister Itsunori Onodera to the post after close political ally and fellow hawk Tomomi Inada resigned last week following a scandal at the ministry over the handling of military documents. He is also set to tap as ministers some who have opposed his policies, including Taro Kono, the son of a dovish former foreign minister known for issuing a 1993 apology as chief cabinet secretary over Japan`s use of "comfort women" a euphemism for sex slavery in World War II. US-educated Kono is set to replace Fumio Kishida, who served as foreign minister since Abe came to power. Kishida, often tapped as a future Prime Minister, is moving to a top post in the ruling Liberal Democratic Party. "I deeply regret that my shortcomings have invited this situation," a chastened Abe said ahead of the formal announcement of the cabinet changes. Abe`s LDP suffered a drubbing in local Tokyo elections last month, which analysts and newspapers blamed on an increasing "arrogance" on the part of the Prime Minister. Kono, 54, is known as an independent-minded, anti-nuclear power advocate, in sharp contrast to Abe`s support for atomic energy. Meanwhile, Seiko Noda, 56, once hailed as Japan`s most likely first female Prime Minister and who once tried to challenge Abe for the party leadership, was expected to serve as internal affairs minister. Returning defence chief Onodera, 57, held the post for nearly two years until September 2014, and has vowed to restore unity and confidence within the ministry. His expected appointment also comes amid rising tensions surrounding North Korea`s missile development. Pyongyang launched its latest missile late Friday, just hours after the US and Japan moved to step up sanctions against it following its earlier test of an ICBM capable of reaching parts of the US. Meanwhile, Abe was seen leaving some key posts, such as finance minister and chief cabinet secretary, unchanged. Washington: The World Bank has said that discussions between India and Pakistan over Kishanganga and Ratle hydroelectric power plants are ongoing and no decision has been made yet. "The meetings earlier this week were held in a spirit of goodwill and cooperation. The parties have agreed to continue discussions and reconvene in September in Washington, DC," the World Bank said in a statement yesterday, a day after officials of India and Pakistan concluded their two-day meeting on the issue. In its statement, the World Bank described as "erroneous" reporting from some of the media outlets on the outcomes of the Indus Waters Treaty meetings. "The World Bank would like to clarify that the discussions between India and Pakistan about the Kishanganga and Ratle hydroelectric power plants are ongoing," the media statement said without giving any further clarification. As a boomer and child of the 60s, I remember when plastic (polymer) stocks first made their debut in the American marketplace. I was reminded of this introduction recently when one of my daughters found a picture of me in one of our old family albums. Preserved for posterity was a faded image of a much younger me shooting a black nylon-stocked Remington Model 66 .22 autoloader in a rural Maine woodlot. Fast forward less than a decade and I find myself at home nervously scrolling through the draft notices in our local newspaper. Im cringing at the thought that in several months I could be wading around in some reeking Mekong Delta rice paddy or hunkered down in a central highlands fire base clutching a Mattel black rifle in my grimy hands. Yup, I was there when military and commercial firearms designers first began to transition from traditional steel-and-walnut firearms to weapons crafted of high-strength polymers and lighter space age metals. Bringing things a little closer to home, I bet that many of you reading this column remember the furor created in the early 80s by the introduction of Anton Glocks infamous plastic pistol. His Austrian-built high-capacity (17 rounds) polymer-framed Glock 17 became the object of ridicule by firearms aficionados and anti-gunners alike. Traditionalists mocked the questionable import for its plastic construction and unusual striker-fired mechanism. Everyone was certain that this foreign piece of crap wouldnt make it through its first magazine of ammo before falling apart or blowing into a million pieces. On the other side of the aisle, and likewise with no scientific support to back their emotional claims, the antigun faction was chanting that these guns were undetectable by conventional airport metal detectors. Our once friendly skies, they cried, would become a death zone. In time, all of these absurd claims went the way of the Dodo. Today polymer-framed/stocked handguns, rifles and shotguns rule the roost. Despite its many advantages over traditional firearms materials, molded polymer is slippery stuff. To give you better control of your weapons, most firearm producers mold in some sort of checkering pattern or frictional surfaces during manufacture. In cases where these grip zones are absent or only minimally effective, many competitive shooters, tactical operators and serious pistoleros grab a wood-burning tool and begin to melt strategically oriented holes/lines/dimples into their guns plastic frames. This grip enhancement process, known as stippling, has a large and devoted following. Downsides: It works, but any inadvertent slips or bobbles are permanent, and these patterns once set are not easily modified. Also, your lovely handiwork may not be appreciated by anyone else, potentially compromising your guns resale or trade-in value. Though a number of companies (Pachmayr and Hogue, in particular) make excellent aftermarket rubberized handgun grips, rifle and shotgun stocks, the most cost-effective grip-enhancing products that Ive tested to date are produced by Talon Grips of Steamboat Springs, Colo. Talon Grips are laser cut from reams of 0.5mm-thick granulate (similar to skateboard tape) or pebble-textured rubber material in patterns precisely matching your firearms grip areas. Application of these heat-activated, self-adhesive grips couldnt be easier. Once secured regardless of temperature or weather conditions theyre staying put, giving you a comfortable, secure handle on your firearm. Although Ive put Talon Grips to work on my ARs/AKs and larger handguns, I really love what they do to help me more effectively manipulate and shoot my diminutive 9mm concealed carry pistols. My friends and I have used Talon Grips to good effect, not only giving us better control of our mini Springfield XDss, Ruger LCPs, Kahr CM/PMs, M&P Shields and Glock 42 and 43s, but also taking a lot of the bite out of them, especially during high-volume shooting sessions. Talon Grips are cut for more than 200 models of firearms from 24 domestic and foreign manufacturers. The odds are excellent that theres a Talon Grip available for your pet firearm. All Talon Grips sell for $17.99, regardless of make or model. Check out their extensive grip line, as well as their grips for magazine extensions, Tasers, iPhones and travel mugs, at Talongungrips.com. While youre there, sign up for their newsletter, post photos to their gallery, or view their how-to videos. And did I mention that all Talon Grip products are made right here in USA? Rich Simpson can be reached at rsimpson29@hotmail.com. Sydney: Racist graffiti targeting Chinese students found in an Australian university has resulted in widespread outrage, a media report said on Thursday. The words "kill Chinese" were inscribed above a swastika in restrooms at the University of Sydney, the BBC. The varsity condemned the graffiti and said "any and all remnants" would be removed. "The University of Sydney is committed to ensuring that our community is a safe, inclusive and supportive one," it said in a statement on Thursday. "Any graffiti or posters placed around campus of a racist nature are immediately removed." A university spokesperson told Australia`s SBS: "We do not know who is responsible, although the university`s security people suggest that it appears to be the work of a lone individual." Poppy Wang, vice-President of the university`s Chinese Students Association, told the BBC that the graffiti has made her feel less secure. Wang said she was disappointed the university had taken two days to remove the graffiti, which was found in the international students` lounge and the business school. "The university is not reacting fast enough." Last week, racist flyers directed at Chinese students were posted in University of Melbourne and Monash University. The flyers read: "Attention, entry into the campus of Chinese students should be strictly prohibited. If violated, you can be deported from the country." Both universities said the material was fabricated and unacceptable. The flyers have been reported to police. New Delhi: Saudi Arabia has slammed Iran for not allowing a Saudi diplomatic team to be a part of an investigation into attacks on the Gulf kingdom`s embassy and consulate in Iran last year. A statement from the Saudi Arabian Embassy here on Thursday said that despite initial approval, Iran denied the Saudi team a role in probing the attacks on its embassy in Tehran and the consulate in the Iranian city of Mashhad in January last year. On January 2, 2016, Saudi Arabia executed Shaykh Nimr al-Nimr, a prominent Shia cleric, and 46 others on terrorism offences. After the execution, protesters stormed the Saudi embassy in Tehran and the consulate in Mashhad. Iran`s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and President Hassan Rouhani later condemned the attacks. "Iran`s refusal to allow the presence of a diplomatic team in the investigations confirms that it is neither serious about conducting fair and transparent inquiries nor about pursuing the real culprits behind the attacks," the Saudi statement said. Lahore: Pakistan's newly-elected Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi is likely to continue as premier for the remaining 10-month tenure of PML-N as the party chief Nawaz Sharif has hinted retaining his younger brother Punjab Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif in the key province. Former prime minister Sharif who was disqualified by Supreme Court in the Panama Papers case on July 28 had nominated Shahbaz to succeed him after winning a by-election on his vacant seat in Lahore. Abbasi, 58, was endorsed by Sharif to hold the post for interim arrangement of 45 days (till mid-September) till Shahbaz makes to Islamabad. "Sharif is holding a high-level huddle of PML-N senior leaders today in Murree to review his earlier decision to elevate Punjab Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif to the Centre or not," a PML-N senior leader told PTI. After Abbasi was elected prime minister last Tuesday, he said many in the Nawaz camp suggested that the former retain the position for the remaining term of the PML-N government as Punjab is very important for the party and cannot be left to an "inexperienced hand". "The PML-N legislators including Punjab law minister Rrana Sanaullah have conveyed to Sharif that it will not be a wise move to elevate Shahbaz in the Centre as there will be no experience hand in the party to run the largest province in his absence," he said, adding that the Sharif camp does not want Shahbaz in the Centre as well. There are also reports that Sharif's refusal to nominate Shahbaz's son Hamza as the chief minister of Punjab has annoyed him who might choose not to give up the post in the province because of it. "Nawaz's daughter Maryam is against handing over Punjab to Hamza while his father is at the Centre. But Shahbaz appeared too keen to keep both posts in the family. This is another reason of Shahbaz's reluctance to leave Punjab to someone other than his son," another PML-N insider said. The Shahbaz government's spokesperson Malik Ahmad Khan told PTI that the party leadership is sitting together to revisit its earlier decision of endorsing Shahbaz for prime minister. "The final decision whether Shahbaz Sharif contests from NA-120 Lahore to succeed Abbasi will be taken in a day or two," he added. Taipei: Taiwan issued a protest to Beijing Thursday over a decision by Indonesia to deport 22 Taiwanese fraud suspects to China, the latest such deportation to hit the island amid frosty cross-strait ties. The move comes days after Indonesian police said they had busted a sprawling $450 million cyber fraud ring targeting wealthy businessmen and politicians in China. Taiwan`s foreign ministry said its deported nationals were among 143 Chinese and Taiwanese suspects arrested in raids on July 29 in various locations including Jakarta, the city of Surabaya and on the resort island of Bali. In a statement the ministry said Jakarta had ignored Taipei`s request that the Taiwanese suspects be returned to the island and instead sent them to the mainland cities of Chengdu and Tianjin on Thursday. "China continues to forcibly take Taiwanese to the mainland, completely ignoring our gestures of goodwill and appeal," the Mainland Affairs Council -- Taiwan`s official body handling China relations -- said in a statement. "This is detrimental for investigation into cross-border crimes, and it also affects positive development of cross-strait relations," it said. Indonesian authorities declined to specify the suspects` nationalities. "This morning we sent back 143 people who were suspected for cybercrime using two planes to China," immigration spokesman Agung Sampurno told AFP. "(They) have been sent back using emergency travel document issued by the Chinese embassy, so logically they are Chinese," he said, adding the planes the suspects were put on were prepared by the Chinese government. Taiwan`s foreign ministry said it had directed its Jakarta office to lodge a protest with the Indonesian government. The incident is the latest of several international deportations of Taiwanese suspects to China since Taiwan`s President Tsai Ing-wen came to power last May. Beijing distrusts Tsai, who has refused to recognise the island as part of "one China". China sees the island as a breakaway province to be brought back within its fold. Under former China-friendly president Ma Ying-jeou, suspects would usually have been deported back to Taiwan as part of informal arrangements between crimefighting agencies in China, Taiwan, and countries where the fraudsters are operating. Just last week, Cambodia deported seven Taiwanese suspects implicated in another telecoms fraud case to China. In February, Spain sent more than 200 Taiwanese suspects to China despite Taipei`s protest. Washington: A top aide to United States President Donald Trump got into a heated exchange with a CNN reporter, while the former was addressing a press briefing and apprising the media about a Republican proposal to limit legal immigration. The journalist accused the White House of promoting a racist immigration policy because it requires migrants to speak English to be "able to work in the U.S." to which the White House aide responded by calling upon him for his "cosmopolitan bias." It all started when CNN reporter Jim Acosta asked presidential aide Stephen Miller if "the immigration proposal violated the principles engraved on the Statue of Liberty to `give me your tired, your poor` huddled masses seeking freedom. "When Miller said the poem was "added later" to the statue, Acosta retorted, "that sounds like some sort of National Park revisionism." Acosta, who said his father immigrated from Cuba before the Cuban Missile Crisis, questioned whether the White House`s policy is in keeping with American tradition. "You are sort of bringing a `press 1 for English` philosophy here to immigration and that`s never been what the United States has been about," Acosta said. Acosta then asked if the requirement for immigrants to speak English was designed to "engineer racial and ethnic" immigration policy so that only people from Great Britain and Australia are allowed into the US. Miller replied, "I am shocked at your statement that you think only people from Great Britain and Australia would know English. It reveals your cosmopolitan bias to a shocking degree. This is an amazing moment. That you think only people from Great Britain or Australia would speak English is so insulting to millions of hard-working immigrants who do speak English from all over the world. "Miller called the reporter`s comments "outrageous, insulting, ignorant and foolish."The White House aide later apologised to Acosta before leaving the lectern, saying "things got heated", but added that the CNN anchor "made some pretty rough insinuations."Earlier in the briefing, Miller sparred with a reporter from The New York Times, Glenn Thrush, over the same legislation. Thrush asked Miller to cite "specific numbers that prove the correlation between those two things because your entire policy is based on that."Miller ticked through several studies, adding that they were also supported by "common sense. "Thrush responded by saying, "I`m not asking for common sense. I`m asking for specific statistical data.""I think it`s pretty clear, Glenn, that you`re not asking for common sense," Miller shot back. At one point Miller suggested The New York Times could hire "less-skilled, low-paid workers from other countries" if the media outlet disagrees with the administration`s new immigration policy. "See how you feel about it then," he said. Earlier in the day, Trump threw his support behind the legislation that looks to curb the level of legal immigration into the country by proposing a skills-based immigration system. Trump cast the proposal as a way to dramatically remake the current immigration system and to protect American workers by reducing unskilled immigration. The new system aims at creating a merit-based system that grades possible immigrants based on their "ability to work" in the United States. Beijing: Turkey's foreign minister vowed Thursday to "eliminate" anti-China forces from his country, signalling a shift in Ankara`s stance towards Beijing`s treatment of Muslim minorities. The two countries have sparred in the past over Beijing`s treatment of the mostly Muslim Uighur minority in China`s far western region of Xinjiang, who have cultural ties with Turkey and speak a Turkic language. "We treat China`s security as our own security," Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu told reporters in Beijing during a joint press conference with his Chinese counterpart. "We absolutely will not allow any activities opposing or aimed against China within Turkey or its territories, and we will take measures to eliminate any media reports aimed against China." Cavusoglu`s remarks followed a meeting with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi in which both sides vowed to work together to combat terrorism. Beijing blames unrest in Xinjiang on Islamist separatists seeking independence for the region, while Turkey in the past repeatedly expressed concerns about Beijing`s treatment of the minority -- with Erdogan even accusing Beijing of "genocide" in the region. But ties have warmed as Turkey has sought to pivot away from the West and toward Asia, seeing in China a wealth of economic possibilities. As part of China`s expansive Belt and Road initiative, an economic corridor will be established between the two countries, as well as a highspeed rail linking the eastern and western regions of Turkey. "We greatly praise China for the work it has done so far to tackle the issues confronting Islamic countries," Cavusoglu said Thursday. United Nations: The UN Security Council has unanimously adopted a resolution aimed at preventing terrorists from acquiring weapons and asked nations to take appropriate legal actions against those who knowingly engage in providing arms to militants. The Council "strongly condemned" the continued flow of weapons, military equipment, unmanned aircraft systems (UASs) and their components, and improvised explosive device (IED) components to and between the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), Al-Qaida, their affiliates, and associated groups, illegal armed groups and criminals. The Council adopted the resolution here yesterday aimed at preventing terrorists from acquiring weapons, particularly small arms and light weapons, the "destabilising accumulation and misuse of which the 15-member body said "continue to pose threats to international peace and security and cause significant loss of life". UN Member States were encouraged to prevent and disrupt procurement networks for weapons, systems and components between and among such groups and entities. They were specifically urged to ensure the ability to take appropriate legal actions against those who are knowingly engaged in providing terrorists with weapons and to ensure proper physical security and management for stockpiles of small arms and light weapons. The resolution also encouraged the implementation of marking and tracing procedures of small arms and light weapons to improve traceability of such weapons which could be provided to terrorists through illicit trafficking. It urged member states to strengthen their judicial, law enforcement and border-control capacities, and develop their capabilities to investigate arms-trafficking networks in order to address the link between transnational organised crime and terrorism. Before the adoption of the text, leading UN officials involved in counter-terrorism, briefed the Council on the complex efforts being undertaken by multiple agencies and committees to fulfil the Organisation's promise to take an "all-of-UN" approach to tackle terrorism and prevent terrorists from acquiring weapons. Jehangir Khan, the Officer-in-Charge of the newly created UN Counter-Terrorism Office, told Council members that "the spectre of terrorists acquiring lethal technologies and new weapons, including weapons of mass destruction, poses a serious threat to international peace and security." Welcoming the consideration of the resolution before the Council on Thursday, he said "this initiative goes to the heart of the Secretary-General's efforts to make prevention the core mission of the United Nations". Deputy Director of the UN Security Council Counter- Terrorism Committee Executive Directorate (CTED), Weixiong Chen, explained how the resolution would add further tasks to CTED's mandate. Citing a wide range of vulnerabilities in the mechanism to prevent terrorists' access to weapons, he stressed the need for further efforts, such as reviewing and strengthening national legislation on countering the supply and trafficking of weapons to terrorists and preventing the flow of weapons to conflict-affected regions and conflict zones. Caracas: Venezuelan Attorney General Luisa Ortega announced Wednesday that she has opened an investigation into electoral fraud in balloting for a powerful new assembly convened by her arch-foe President Nicolas Maduro. "I have appointed two prosecutors to investigate the four directors of the National Electoral Council for this very scandalous act," she told CNN, after the British technology firm contracted to handle the vote said official turnout figures were false. Caracas: Venezuela's opposition is readying a new showdown with President Nicolas Maduro on Friday, rescheduling a massive protest to coincide with his inauguration of a powerful new assembly set to replace congress. Maduro faces mounting accusations at home and abroad of trampling on democracy with his "Constituent Assembly," elected Sunday in a vote boycotted by the opposition and allegedly marred by fraud. The 545-member assembly -- whose members include Maduro`s wife and son -- was initially due to start work Thursday. The opposition Democratic Unity Roundtable (MUD), which holds a large majority in congress, had called for a major protest in Caracas on the same day. But the leftist leader rescheduled the inauguration to Friday, vowing the assembly would open "in peace and calm." His opponents, too, then pushed back their protest, calling on Venezuelans to "defend the constitution" that the new body will rewrite. Venezuela is in the grips of four months of violent protests that have left more than 125 people dead as opposition demonstrators armed with stones and Molotov cocktails battle the security forces and armed motorcycle gangs of Maduro supporters. Despite the protests and international condemnation, Maduro insists the new assembly is the solution to a drawn-out economic and political crisis gripping Venezuela, whose 18-year-old, oil-fueled socialist economic model has been driven to the brink of collapse by a plunge in global crude prices. Sunday`s vote brought the crisis to a boiling point, drawing international condemnation. The United States imposed direct sanctions on Maduro, calling him a "dictator," while the European Union joined the US, Mexico, Colombia and Argentina in saying it would not recognize the new assembly. In the latest attack on the election, Attorney General Luisa Ortega, one of Maduro`s most outspoken critics, opened an investigation into what she called scandalous electoral fraud. The allegation came from a British technology firm hired to handle the vote, Smartmatic. It says the official figures from the election were tampered with to make turnout appear greater than it was. Ortega said the firm`s assessment was just "one more element of the fraudulent, illegal and unconstitutional process." Maduro denied the accusation, dismissing it as a "reaction by the international enemy."Smartmatic chief executive Antonio Mugica said the firm had concluded "without any doubt" that turnout was manipulated. "We estimate the difference between the actual participation and the one announced by authorities is at least one million votes," he said. Venezuela`s pro-government electoral authority had claimed more than eight million voters took part -- 40 percent of the electorate. The opposition says turnout was closer to 3.5 million, mostly state employees fearful for their jobs. Significantly, the opposition had held an unofficial referendum on July 16 in which it said 7.6 million Venezuelans voted against the new assembly -- just under the level of support the government claimed on Sunday. More than 70 percent of Venezuelans oppose the new assembly, according to polling firm Datanalisis. Because of an opposition boycott, it was a foregone conclusion that followers and allies of Maduro`s Socialist Party would fill all the Constituent Assembly posts. So the turnout figure was the key gauge of public support.Maduro moved swiftly to consolidate his authority after the election. Two prominent opposition leaders were hustled off to jail in the middle of the night by armed members of the Venezuelan intelligence services. Security forces and pro-government motorbike gangs actively stamped out public signs of dissent. Delcy Rodriguez, a former foreign minister who is now part of the new body, said the Constituent Assembly will kick the lawmakers out of the legislative palace, take it over and "never leave." UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres has urged Maduro`s government to "lower tensions," while the European Union says it is "ready to gradually step up" action on Venezuela if the situation deteriorates further. Faced with mounting international outcry, Maduro on Wednesday named a new foreign minister to fill the newly elected Rodriguez`s shoes: former vice president Jorge Arreaza. TWIN FALLS City staff cant say for sure, but it appears to have been a fairly typical summer at the city pool. The city of Twin Falls took over pool operations in April after the Magic Valley YMCA backed out of its contract. Staff counted 21,189 admissions from April through July including 7,997 in July alone, which is typically the peak of the summer season. The city has also spent $76,817 in personnel, maintenance, operations and startup costs during that time, Chief Financial Officer Lorie Race said. But revenues to date exceeded that number, at $176,400. Its gone very smoothly so far, Aquatics Director John Pauley said. The city is working really hard to provide a good amenity for the city. But how do these numbers compare to years past? Neither Pauley nor Parks and Recreation Director Wendy Davis could say for sure. Part of the problem is, we dont have a lot of confidence in the numbers they (the YMCA) were giving us, Davis said. Thats because some revenue figures the YMCA incorporated into its previous reports included its own YMCA membership sales, which werent all directly related to the pool. Between January and October of 2016, the YMCA reported pool admissions of 63,331. The city had a few hiccups in July operations. Human feces closed the pool a day for treatment. A mechanical problem drained the pool of water on a Sunday. And the city had to replace 20 feet of 10-inch pipe. To me, thats just stuff that happens, Davis said. But lately, there have been minimal phone calls and issues. It seems busy, she said. It seems used. It seems like a typical summer at the pool. August admissions are likely to drop off after school begins and the pool will resume its shorter fall hours. The city had not received revenues from the pool before, Race said, but paid the YMCA $10,000 a month to manage it. The City Council approved a user-fee increase in late April after taking over. Heres a breakdown of pool revenues the city has received: Daily admissions: $34,871 Swim lessons: $63,035 Rentals: $4,757 Memberships: $73,708 YEREVAN, AUGUST 3, ARMENPRESS. One of the major companies of Abu Dhabi plans to make large-scale investments in Armenia, Gegham Gharibjanyan Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of Armenia to the United Arab Emirates (UAE), said in an interview to ARMENPRESS, talking about the relations between the two countries, the upcoming programs and the role of the Armenian community. -Mr. Gharibjanyan, how would you characterize the current level of Armenia-UAE relations? -The Armenia-UAE bilateral relations are at a high level. Over the past years political, economic mutual visits were taken place. The sides hold regular meetings, consultations discussing bilateral, as well as regional affairs. The major event in the bilateral relations was President Serzh Sargsyans official visit to the UAE on November 9-10, 2016. And on March 21-22, 2017 the President paid a working visit to the UAE and delivered speech during the opening ceremony of the UAE-Armenia business forum. -What achievements will you identify in the Armenian-UAE diplomatic relations for the recent period? -As I said, last year in November and in March of this year the President visited the UAE. In my opinion, the meetings, discussions and agreements reached during those visits, as well as the current works aimed at implementing them are great progress for the Armenian-UAE bilateral ties. I would like to note that according to the Armenian Presidents decree a decision was made to open Armenias Consulate General in Dubai. The Armenian Embassy as well is actively engaged in the ongoing works with the UAE side to open another diplomatic representation in the UAE. I think we will have a chance to give new impetus to the Armenian-UAE political and economic ties thanks to the joint work of the Embassy and the Consulate General in near future. In 2016 the Sharjah governor donated 1300 square meters of land to Armenia aimed at building center for a permanent exhibition of Armenian products. When the designing works for the construction of the center are completed in Armenia, it must be approved by the Sharjah Emir. -UAE is an important partner for Armenia. What prospects do you see for expansion of economic partnership between the two countries? -On March 22, 2017 the Armenia-UAE business forum was held in Abu Dhabi which was attended by 350 investors, 250 out of whom were from the UAE and 100 from Armenia. The forum has been organized under the auspices of President of Armenia Serzh Sargsyan and Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi and Deputy Supreme Commander of the UAE Armed Forces Mohammed bin Zayed bin Sultan Al-Nahyan. The forum has been initiated by the Development Foundation of Armenia (DFA), the Union of Manufacturers and Businessmen of Armenia, Abu Dhabi Chamber of Commerce and the Armenian Embassy in the UAE. The forum aimed at boosting the economic ties between Armenia and the Arab countries, the contacts between the businessmen, presenting Armenias investment environment and mutually beneficial investment programs at different spheres. Among the participants were public officials, heads of foundations, representatives of international organizations and companies, companies with successful foreign investment experience in Armenia. -How much is the trade turnover volume, and do the existing figures satisfy? -In January-June 2017, the trade turnover volume between Armenia and UAE was 27 million 237.1 thousand USD in terms of exports, and 101 million 437.8 thousand USD in terms of imports. I want to state that these figures are not sufficient enough since they do not reflect the potential that exists in bilateral economic ties. -How do you assess the investment opportunities of the two countries? During President Sargsyans visit to the UAE several directions were outlined, such as agriculture, hotel construction and etc. What results do exist from this perspective? -During the March 22 investment forum on Armenia in Abu Dhabi the Ocean Holding LLC and Armenias Ministry of Energy signed a document according to which the Ocean Holding will make 100 million USD investment in solar energy field. Within the frames of the same forum another two documents were also signed one of which related to the renewable energy field. One of the major companies of Abu Dhabi plans to make major investments in Armenia. -What are the opportunities in terms of development of tourism between Armenia and the UAE? -In my opinion, this year several important steps have been taken for the development of tourism from which I would highlight Armenias elimination of visa regime for the UAE citizens. According to this, the UAE citizens will no longer need visa for visiting Armenia. This is not only a great achievement for expansion of tourism, but also it can contribute to deepening the Armenian-UAE cooperation at other spheres. -Lets talk about the Armenian community, its role in the UAEs public-political life. How much is the number of Armenians in the UAE? In which spheres they are mainly represented? -Today about 8000-10000 Armenians live in the UAE. On November 15, 1998 the consecration ceremony of St Gregory the Illuminator church of Sharjah was held led by Catholicos of the Great House of Cilicia Aram I, as well as the opening ceremonies of the churchs complex, school were held. There are no Armenian periodicals in the UAE. The only Armenian websites are emahay.com and azad-hay.net. 90% of Armenians living in the UAE are officials of public and private enterprises and are mainly engaged in engineering-construction and economics fields. There are many successful Armenian philanthropists among the UAE business circles who always assist on making the community life more active. -Are high-level mutual visits planned for this year? -President Serzh Sargsyan paid a working visit to the UAE on March 21-22. On July 18 the UAE minister of foreign affairs and international cooperation visited Armenia. Armenian foreign minister Edward Nalbandians visit to the UAE is also expected. -Mr. Ambassaor, what is on the agenda of the Embassy for 2017? Especially at what directions now the Embassy carries out active works? -As I said President Serzh Sargsyan paid two visits to the UAE. The implementation of agreements reached during the meetings between the Armenian President and the UAE leadership has been and will always remain in the spotlight of the Armenian Embassy, and already works are being carried out for this purpose which I hope will soon give positive results. Interview by Anna Gziryan YEREVAN, AUGUST 3, ARMENPRESS. The Yazidi community of Armenia remembers and pays tribute to the memory of the Yazidis killed in northern Iraq. Aziz Tamoyan president of the worlds yazidi union, told Armenpress thousands of Yazidis were killed in northern Iran on August 3, 2014 for their ethnic affiliation. What has happened on August 3, 2014 was a genocide. It was a planned action against Christians and Yazidis living in that territory. Terrorists sought to kill Yazidis for taking those territories under their control. As a result of their actions many people have been killed. 50 local villages were physically destroyed. Some part of the residents were killed, the remaining part fled to the Sinjar mountains. There are still Yazidis living there. Many people moved to different countries. Thousands of women were taken captive, Tamoyan said. Speaking about the international response to the Yazidi genocide, Aziz Tamoyan said there has been a response. Several countries have recognized the Yazidi genocide, however, according to him, this is not enough. Its recognition is still on paper, practical steps must be taken, for instance the settlements of Yazidis must be returned. The US, European countries and Russia promised to liberate the Yazidi settlements and return them as an autonomy, however, there are no results yet, he said. The Yazidis of Armenia urge the superpowers to ensure the return of Yazidis to their homes and declare a Yazidi autonomy. He reminded that from 7th century till now attempts are being made to physically eliminate Yazidis, however they continued living, working and maintaining their identity and religion. We pay tribute to the memory of the victims. They were killed for the sake of nations maintenance, their murder was linked with Yazidis national affiliation. We will continue our fight, Aziz Tamoyan concluded. YEREVAN, AUGUST 3, ARMENPRESS. Supreme Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei endorsed Hassan Rouhani as President of Iran, who won the majority of votes on May 19 presidential elections, IRNA reports. Heads of the three branches of power in Iran, military officials, Ulema, academics and an array of foreign ambassadors and representatives attended the ceremony at Imam Khomeini Mosque in Tehran. After the president-elect's endorsement by the Leader, he will attend the oath-taking ceremony in Majlis (Parliament) on August 5. Then, the re-elected president will take office officially and start his mission to serve the people and the system. YEREVAN, AUGUST 3, ARMENPRESS. Garegin Melkonyan deputy minister of economic development and investments, is hopeful and optimistic over Armenias economic growth for 2017, reports Armenpress. After the Cabinet meeting on August 3, the deputy minister said the results of the first 6 months of this year are positive and 6.1% increase in economic activity can be recorded. In case of having any growth, we can seek for more. We need to strive since in order to have positive, continuous dynamics in economic, commercial, investment and other domains the current figure can serve basis for reaching more, the deputy minister stated. Melkonyan added that after summary of the GDP growth by the National Statistical Service, we will have positive results for this period, however, works need to be continued. According to him, all programs, boosting economic component in international relations, investment programs, as well as improvement of respective tools are aimed for the figures to be maintained and developed. As for recording higher economic growth than the 3.2% set under the state budget program, the deputy minister stated: Why not? The relatively active period of the year is ahead. We all know that the active economic period is the second half of the year. I am hopeful and optimistic. YEREVAN, 3 AUGUST, ARMENPRESS. The Central Bank of Armenia informs Armenpress that today, 3 August, USD exchange rate up by 0.14 drams to 478.72 drams. EUR exchange rate up by 0.59 drams to 567.04 drams. Russian Ruble exchange rate up by 0.02 drams to 7.91 drams. GBP exchange rate up by 0.48 drams to 633.59 drams. The Central Bank has set the following prices for precious metals. Gold price down by 15.06 drams to 19540.67 drams. Silver price down by 1.00 drams to 256.57 drams. Platinum price down by 11.16 drams to 14467.73 drams. WASHINGTON, D.C.According to recent polls, 88 percent of Americans support access to marijuana for those who need it for conditions like Crohn's disease, PTSD, insomnia and dozens (if not hundreds) moreand an astonishing 61 percent believe it should be legalized unconditionally except for the same sort of regulation applied to alcohol. So perhaps it was about time that someone introduced a bill in Congress to effect that legalization. Enter Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ). The text of Booker's Marijuana Justice Act (MJA) is largely devoted to redefinitions of existing laws to remove references to marijuana (or "marihuana")such as from the FDA's list of Schedule I drugs, which are defined as drugs with "no currently accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse," neither of which are true of marijuana, as most who use it are well aware. At this point, more than half of states have legalized marijuana use in one way or another. Eight states plus the District of Columbia have made it legal for recreational use, and those who need it for medical purposes can already get it (or will soon be able to as recently passed laws continue to kick in) in 21 othersall this despite the fact that it remains illegal under federal law. "You see whats happening around this country right now," Booker stated. "Eight states and the District of Columbia have moved to legalize marijuana. And these states are seeing decreases in violent crime in their states. Theyre seeing increases in revenue to their states. Theyre seeing their police forces being able to focus on serious crime. Theyre seeing positive things come out of that experience." Booker also noted that persons of color are particular targets of "pot cops." "These marijuana arrests are targeting poor and minority communities, targeting our veterans. We see the injustice of it all," Booker said. "I have seen young teenagers getting arrested, saddled with criminal convictions for the rest of their lives," and are forced "to deal with about 40,000 collateral consequences," including, "They cant get business licenses, Pell Grants, public housing, food stamps." Similarly, the ACLU found that despite the fact that whites and blacks use marijuana at similar rates, blacks are four times more likely to be arrested for marijuana possession and face harsher, longer sentences when they are convicted for it. In fact, according to Salon.com's Michael Glassman, "Nearly half of all drug possession charges (574,000) were for marijuana possession. For context, the number of all violent crime arrests in 2015 combined was 505,681." So besides the pure legalization aspect, other things the MJA would do is "cut federal funding for state law enforcement and prison construction if a state disproportionately arrests and/or incarcerates low-income individuals and/or people of color for marijuana offense"; "allow entities [such as NORML or the Drug Policy Alliance] to sue states that disproportionately arrest and/or incarcerate low-income individuals and/or people of color for marijuana offenses"; "prevent deportations of individuals for marijuana offenses"; and "provide for a process of expungement for marijuana offenses at the federal level" as well as resentence many currently in prison for marijuana offenses. Congress recently passed the Rohrabacher-Farr amendment to the federal budget bill, continuing to prohibit federal law enforcement authorities from spending taxpayer funds to bust marijuana users and providers in states where the substance has already been legalized. Before the amendment's passage, however, Attorney General Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III argued that, "I believe it would be unwise for Congress to restrict the discretion of the Department to fund particular prosecutions, particularly in the midst of an historic drug epidemic and potentially long-term uptick in violent crime. The Department must be in a position to use all laws available to combat the transnational drug organizations and dangerous drug traffickers who threaten American lives." On the other hand, a Quinnipiac poll conducted this past April found that the amendment was supported by 94 percent of the public. (Also of interest: According to ZMEScience.com, "the World Health Organization and the United Nations have called for drugs to be decriminalized, the war on drugs put to end, and a shift to a 'prevention and treatment' way of addressing the problem.") Booker's bill would also create a "Community Reinvestment Fund" of $500 million for the communities most impacted by the war on drugs. That fund would provide money for programs such as job training, reentry, community centers and more, part of which funding would come from the cuts to state law enforcement and prison construction set-asides. While it's too early to tell how this bill will do in the Republican-controlled congress, marijuana legalization does seem to be a policy that crosses party lines, since so many on all sides of the political spectrum use it. 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. Volunteers Idaho Home Health and Hospice needs volunteers who will bring compassion, support and dignity to those facing a serious, life-limiting illness and their families. Volunteers can choose between offering respite to family caregivers or provide support with administrative tasks. Information: Heidi Walker, 208-734-4064 or Heidi.Walker@LHCgroup.com. Volunteers Horizon Home Health and Hospice is looking for volunteers to join their team to provide quality compassionate care to patients through the following activities: companionship, socialization, respite, and support for patients and families and much more. Information: Cynthia Nixon, 208-800-8085 or cnixon@horizonhh.com. Drivers The Twin Falls Senior Center needs drivers to deliver meals to homebound seniors in Twin Falls Monday through Friday. The routes take an hour or less to complete. Commitment is based on your availability. Volunteers must be 18 years of age with their own reliable vehicle, must have a good driving record, and have proof of liability insurance, and a background check. Drivers receive 53.5 cents a mile fuel reimbursement. Information: 208-734-5084. Volunteers Hospice Visions Inc. is looking for volunteers to visit with patients and their families, and volunteers to provide handyman services, play the piano at assisted living centers, and help with art projects for patients at assisted living centers. If you have a special talent to share with others, contact Nora Wells at Hospice Visions, 208-735-0121 or nwells@hospicevisions.org. Volunteers Hospice Visions Inc is looking for men and women to serve as Veteran-to-Veteran volunteers for their veteran patients. All ages of veterans from all branches of service are welcome to join Hospice Visions volunteer forces as part of the We Honor Veterans program. Information: Nora Wells, volunteer coordinator at Hospice Visions, 208-735-0121 or nwells@hospicevisions.org. Drivers The American Cancer Society is looking for volunteer drivers for its Road to Recovery program. Volunteers are needed to drive cancer patients to and from medical treatment facilities, especially for appointments in Twin Falls. The Cancer Society trains volunteer drivers and schedules rides for patients for free. Drivers must have a current and valid drivers license, a good driving record, a reliable car, and proof of car insurance. Volunteer drivers donate their time and the use of their vehicles. The program is flexible for volunteers to provide as many rides as they want. Information: 1-800-227-2345. Volunteers St Lukes Home Health and Hospice is looking for new volunteers to join its team to share compassion and care and increase the quality of life for patients and their families. This program is designed to offer companionship and socialization to the patients as well as respite and support for the caregivers. Information: Marie Sharp, 208-814-7603 or sharpm@slhs.org. Volunteers The Twin Falls County Historical Society is seeking volunteers for various programs and general support. Volunteers are needed to paint, clean or work on docent projects and fundraising. No minimum amount of hours, commitment is flexible. Fill out an application at the Twin Falls County Historical Museum (Union School at Curry), open noon to 5 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday. Information: 208-736-4675. Volunteers The Jerome County Historical Society is looking for volunteers to help at the Depot Museum and at the Idaho Farm and Ranch Museum. Volunteers will receive training on duties at either museum. The in-town Depot Museum duties will include answering the phone, some filing, and showing visitors the artifacts. The IFARM Museum duties will mostly be outdoors helping to clean the grounds and repairing buildings, but also cleaning inside the buildings. Some machinery and building repairing may be included. Closed Sundays and Mondays. To volunteer, call 208-324-5641 from 1 to 5 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday. Volunteers The Twin Falls Senior Center has a ladies group (The Crazy Quilters), who are looking for individuals to put finishing touches on quilts as a group while socializing. The group meets from 9 a.m. to noon every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. All quilt project proceeds are given to the Twin Falls Senior Center. Information: 208-734-5084. Who is Making a Killing from Kids? (Hint: Its not charter school companies) No federal, state, or local taxpayer dollars should be used to fund for-profit charter schools, nor should public funding be sent from nonprofit charters to for-profit charter management companies. The widespread findings of misconduct and poor student performance in for-profit charter schools, demands the elimination of these schools. Moreover, allowing for-profit entities to operate schools creates an inherent conflict of interest. According to many on the Left, the most terrifying creatures in the public education sector are companies that are contracted to operate public charter schools. Last month, the NAACP released their Task Force on Quality Education report, which called for a moratorium on so-called "for-profit charter schools." The authors of the report recommended,They are not alone. The National Education Association, the American Federation for Teachers, and a host of national and state-based advocacy organizations have condemned the operation of charter schools by companies such as Imagine Schools, Charter Schools USA, National Heritage Academies, K12 Inc., Connections Academy, and EdisonLearning. They claim that these and other for-profit businesses, which typically receive a small portion of taxpayer funds to oversee charter school operations, lack transparency and accountability. Further, they accuse them of using those funds to maximize profits at the expense of providing a high-quality education to the children they serve. These are nonsensical charges, considering that their failure on any of these accounts will result in the permanent closure of their charter schools and the immediate loss of their revenue stream.In the charter school universe, for-profit charters are the exception, rather than the rule. According to the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools , around 13 percent of the nation's charter schools are run by for-profit companies. In North Carolina, National Heritage Academies operates 13 schools and Charter Schools USA oversees six. K12 Inc. and Connections Academy each operate a statewide virtual charter school. Another handful of state's 173 charter schools have contracts with various for-profit management companies or service providers.Even if these charter management companies tripled their presence in the nation's education marketplace, the profits that they would earn would be trivial compared to those enjoyed by corporations that sell education-related goods and services to schools and consumers.While the bulk of public school dollars will always be used for salaries and benefits, schools in the United States spend billions to equip their schools and keep them running. Consider the cost to outfit even the most basic classroom. It necessitates expenditures for chalkboards, inspirational posters, kid-proof furniture, government-compliant light bulbs, flooring, windows, blinds, doors, HVAC, and utilities. And none of those expenditures include the cost to furnish curriculum materials, paper, books, art supplies, computer hardware and software, and lab equipment. Add to that the expense of maintaining copiers, phones, internet access, and intercom systems. There are also costs associated with the upkeep of bathrooms, hallways, cafeterias, gymnasiums, playgrounds, and parking lots. Transporting children to school requires buses and fuel. Behind these expenditures are businesses selling goods and services to schools...at a profit (!$!$?$!).The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) reports that total spending on materials and supplies reached nearly $42.9 billion in 2014 (latest available). Expenditures for purchased services was $58.2 billion. State financial data indicate that North Carolina spent over $1 billion for purchased services, $950 million on materials and supplies, $112.5 million on instructional equipment, and $540 million on capital expenditures during the 2015-16 school year. Neither NCES nor N.C. Department of Public Instruction data specify the portion of these taxpayer dollars that went to companies and businesses, but it is safe to assume that most did.Consumer spending is relatively modest in comparison to school district expenditures. The National Retail Federation (NRF) estimates that back-to-school spending by consumers will reach a mere $29.5 billion this year, a $2 billion increase from last year. According to the NRF survey, parents of primary and secondary school students plan to spend an average of $238.89 on clothing, $204.33 on electronics, $130.38 on shoes and $114.12 on school supplies.My goal is not to demonize businesses that make a profit from schools and consumers who make school-related purchases. Three cheers for profits and consumers! Instead, it is to show the absurdity of progressive activists who target charter management companies, while giving a pass to much larger and much more profitable enterprises in the education sector. Indeed, their profit complaint is one concocted by political strategists to try to undermine the efforts of those who dare compete with their beloved public school monopoly. When their turf is threatened, ideological consistency is the least of their concerns. In their Defcon 25 presentation, "Dark Data", journalist Svea Eckert and data scientist Andreas Dewes described how easy it was to get a massive trove of "anonymized" browsing habits (collected by browser plugins) and then re-identify the people in the data-set, discovering (among other things), the porn-browsing habits of a German judge and the medication regime of a German MP. The pair were making a point about the ease of "re-identification" attacks on data-sets that have been "anonymized," a very active field, that is especially relevant because the EU's strict data-handling rules can be bypassed if you "anonymize" your data. The data they were eventually given came, for free, from a data broker, which was willing to let them test their hypothetical AI advertising platform. And while it was nominally an anonymous set, it was soon easy to de-anonymise many users. Dewes described some methods by which a canny broker can find an individual in the noise, just from a long list of URLs and timestamps. Some make things very easy: for instance, anyone who visits their own analytics page on Twitter ends up with a URL in their browsing record which contains their Twitter username, and is only visible to them. Find that URL, and you've linked the anonymous data to an actual person. A similar trick works for German social networking site Xing. For other users, a more probabilistic approach can deanonymise them. For instance, a mere 10 URLs can be enough to uniquely identify someone just think, for instance, of how few people there are at your company, with your bank, your hobby, your preferred newspaper and your mobile phone provider. By creating "fingerprints" from the data, it's possible to compare it to other, more public, sources of what URLs people have visited, such as social media accounts, or public YouTube playlists. 'Anonymous' browsing data can be easily exposed, researchers reveal Robert Mueller, the special counsel overseeing the investigation into Russia's cyberwar on America's elections and Trump's possible collusion, has impaneled a grand jury in Washington. The Wall Street Journal was first to report this news on Thursday. The move means the probe is intensifying and could stretch "for months," according to the WSJ. The grand jury, which began its work in recent weeks, is a sign that Mr. Mueller's inquiry is ramping up and that it will likely continue for months. Mr. Mueller is investigating Russia's efforts to influence the 2016 election and whether President Donald Trump's campaign or associates colluded with the Kremlin as part of that effort. A spokesman for Mr. Mueller, Joshua Stueve, declined to comment. Moscow has denied seeking to influence the election, and Mr. Trump has vigorously disputed allegations of collusion. The president has called Mr. Mueller's inquiry a "witch hunt." Ty Cobb, special counsel to the president, said he wasn't aware that Mr. Mueller had started using a new grand jury. "Grand jury matters are typically secret," Mr. Cobb said. "The White House favors anything that accelerates the conclusion of his work fairly.The White House is committed to fully cooperating with Mr. Mueller." Before Mr. Mueller was tapped in May to be special counsel, federal prosecutors had been using at least one other grand jury, located in Alexandria, Va., to assist in their criminal investigation of Michael Flynn, a former national security adviser. That probe, which has been taken over by Mr. Mueller's team, focuses on Mr. Flynn's work in the private sector on behalf of foreign interests. [IMAGE: Reuters, FILE] Reuters- EXCLUSIVE-GRAND JURY SUBPOENAS ISSUED IN CONNECTION WITH JUNE 2016 MEETING BETWEEN TRUMP JR, RUSSIAN LAWYER AND OTHERS SOURCES Steve Kopack (@SteveKopack) August 3, 2017 Side note to this: Greg Andres, new hire for Mueller, was EDNY prosecutor while Sater was a EDNY mob case cooperator https://t.co/zl0DQGPqJy Andrew Rice (@riceid) August 3, 2017 BREAKING: Mueller crosses Trump's red line as he dives into Trump's finances, Trump Org. deals, Trump Tower tenants https://t.co/23nieJnPMF pic.twitter.com/ADy0M1AYY4 Marshall Cohen (@Marshall_Cohen) August 3, 2017 Everyone's expecting, "YOU GET A SUBPOENA! AND YOU GET A SUBPOENA! AND YOU GET A SUBPOENA!!" pic.twitter.com/iCJgSlpO5P Jim Geraghty (@jimgeraghty) August 3, 2017 Not surprising. Mueller's team has reportedly issued grand jury subpoenas already. This shows there is enough here to warrant looking at. https://t.co/uOa5A6lfD8 Renato Mariotti (@renato_mariotti) August 3, 2017 Before it seemed investigation was looking at potential financial crimes w/Russians; now and/or financial element of collusion Justin Miller (@justinjm1) August 3, 2017 i'm sure trump and sean hannity and alex jones will take this calmly and rationally and not overreach https://t.co/wPGlJw5Fgt John Whitehouse (@existentialfish) August 3, 2017 CNN banner: "Mueller crosses Trump's red line as Russia investigation follows the money" pic.twitter.com/wPXvGS2gMv Brian Stelter (@brianstelter) August 3, 2017 Robert Mueller is not fucking around https://t.co/z70CzxVFGR John Hendrickson (@JohnGHendy) August 3, 2017 *rifling through the grand jury wikipedia entry* hmm yes i'm available to weigh in on your show Gideon Resnick (@GideonResnick) August 3, 2017 really feel like this could hurt trump's chances of getting a job after his presidency with the local milk people https://t.co/2xFkhINv4u Sal Gentile (@salgentile) August 3, 2017 CNN appears to, by and large, be further confirmation of this https://t.co/jzeDYW57A1 and this https://t.co/y3A8dytvj8 angle. https://t.co/tUalcPvPUU Chris Geidner (@chrisgeidner) August 3, 2017 BREAKING: Grand jury subpoenas have been issued related to June 2016 meeting between Donald Trump Jr., Russian lawyers and others sources pic.twitter.com/r8AVLhJCxt Reuters Top News (@Reuters) August 3, 2017 Robert Mueller's investigation is following the Trump-Russia money trail, sources tell CNN https://t.co/LTrgUBmbP3 https://t.co/fEH2McMdQf CNN Politics (@CNNPolitics) August 3, 2017 Stocks are moving lower on the Dow Jones Mueller story pic.twitter.com/l6jjRdKCgz Steve Kopack (@SteveKopack) August 3, 2017 BREAKING: Trump's onetime foreign policy adviser CARTER PAGE was under a FISA warrant since 2014, CNN has learned. https://t.co/23nieJnPMF pic.twitter.com/MNsXf0hWDK Marshall Cohen (@Marshall_Cohen) August 3, 2017 ATHENS (Reuters) - Syrian refugees stranded in Greece chanted "no more waiting!" and protested outside the German embassy in Athens on Wednesday against delays in reuniting with their relatives in Germany. About 100 people, among them young children, marched from parliament to the embassy holding up cardboard banners in English reading "I want my family" and shouting slogans about travel to Germany. Greek media have reported that Greece and Germany have informally agreed to slow down refugee reunification, stranding families in Greece for months after they fled Syria's civil war. About 60,000 refugees and migrants, mostly Syrians, Afghans and Iraqis, have been in Greece for over a year after border closures in the Balkans halted the onward journey many planned to take to central and western Europe. "My message is 'enough waiting, enough suffering'," said 41-year-old Syrian Malak Rahmoun, who lives in a Greek camp with her three daughters while her husband and son are in Berlin. "I feel my heart (is) miserable," she said. Rahmoun said she and her daughter applied for family reunification last year but that the Greek authorities have not given a clear reply. A deal between Turkey and the European Union in March 2016 slowed the flow of people crossing to Greece but about 100 a day continue to arrive on Greek islands. Nearly 11,000 refugees and migrants have crossed to Greece from Turkey this year, down from 173,000 in 2016 and a fraction of the nearly 1 million arrivals in 2015. Most of the new arrivals this year are women and children, according to United Nations data. In earlier years, men were the first to flee to Europe, leaving other family members to follow. "I've never seen my son (in) two years," Rahmoun said. (Reporting by Karolina Tagaris) Policy DeVos Kills Plan for Multibillion-Dollar Student Loan Servicing Platform Education Secretary Betsy DeVos is scrapping an Obama-era plan to build a student loan servicing platform. This week, the United States Department of Education abruptly cancelled a multibillion solicitation for a consolidated student loan servicing solution, throwing the project's long-term future into question. A statement released by the department indicated the long-planned finance platform will be replaced by a new project called the Federal Student Aid Next Generation Processing and Servicing Environment before the current set of federal student loan servicing contracts expire in 2019. "Doing what's best for students will always be our number one priority," said Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos. "By starting afresh and pursuing a truly modern loan servicing environment, we have a chance to turn what was a good plan into a great one." The original solicitation was released last year under the Obama administration with the intention of handling loan servicing, discharges, consolidation, financial reporting, defaults and collections for the more than $100 billion doled out in federal student aid every year. In April, DeVos oversaw a series of changes to the solicitation, most notably a shift from relying on multiple service providers (preferred by the Obama administration) to a single service provider, with other providers acting as subcontractors. Other changes to the original solicitation included removing a requirement to program a "payback playbook" developed by the U.S. Digital Service and the Education Department's Office of Federal Student Aid, which helped borrowers optimize their repayment strategies. The changes immediately ran into bipartisan resistance on Capitol Hill, with legislators expressing concern about the effect that moving to a single servicing provider would have on competition and customer service. Just hours before the Department of Education killed the bid, Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Roy Blunt (R-Mo.), James Lankford (R-Okla) and Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.) introduced legislation that would have blocked the move. In a statement, Warren said she was "glad" the administration changed course but that lawmakers will be monitoring the new project with equal scrutiny. "Secretary DeVos' plan to hand a trillion-dollar federal loan portfolio over to just one private company would have created a 'too big to fail' federal contractor, eliminated market competition, and ultimately harmed borrowers, said Warren. According to the initial solicitation, the new plan envisions separate contractors for the account servicing and the technology platform, "so that cost efficiencies can be achieved and current state-of-the-art technologies can be deployed and evolve in the future." The Obama administration spent two years planning for an overhaul of the student loan servicing system, collaborating with stakeholders in the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and Treasury Department. In July 2016, Department of Education Undersecretary Ted Mitchell crafted a memorandum laying out a borrower-friendly vision for student loan servicers that was designed to underpin the new software system. Clare McCann, director of federal policy for New Americas higher education initiative, said the bid's cancellation and DeVos' statements indicate that the process will likely start from scratch. "Its definitely true right now that not all servicers do all components of that [type of work] well," she said. "It's an opportunity to bring in new players who handle data a little better." "Best case scenario: This probably gets delayed by another two years," said McCann. "It seems likely most if not all of what was in the Mitchell memo is going to be struck and rewritten for this new procurement." Share this: Twitter Facebook WhatsApp LinkedIn Email Telegram New York, August 3, 2017Turkish authorities should immediately release French freelance journalist Loup Bureau, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today. A court in Turkeys southeastern Srnak province yesterday ordered the journalist jailed pending trial on terrorism charges, according to press reports. We call on Turkish authorities to release French journalist Loup Bureau without delay and to stop their relentless crackdown on the press, both foreign and domestic, CPJ Europe and Central Asia Program Coordinator Nina Ognianova said. Bogus terrorism charges have become the favored method of silencing independent journalism in Turkey. Security forces detained Bureau, who has worked in the past with the French television channel TV5, on July 26 days ago as he crossed the border from Iraq, according to the pro-government daily Sabah. He is charged with aiding and abetting a [terrorist] organization based on photographs he had taken of members of the Kurdish Peoples Protection Units (YPG), which the Turkish government considers a terrorist group and a branch of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), according to a Radio France Internationale. Share this: Twitter Facebook WhatsApp LinkedIn Email Telegram New York, August 3, 2017Authorities in Thailand should cease harassing Pravit Rojanaphruk and should drop any criminal proceedings against him for his writing, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today. Pravit, a columnist at Khaosod English who will be honored with CPJs International Press Freedom Award this year, told CPJ that he learned late on July 31 that he is accused of sedition for five posts he had written on Facebook. Pravit wrote on Facebook that the deputy superintendent of the polices Technology Crime Suppression Division informed the journalist of the accusations against him. Pravit told CPJ that the official did not indicate which specific posts police deemed objectionable. The journalist, who has not yet been formally charged, must report to police on August 8 to formally hear the accusation. Thai authorities should stop threatening Pravit Rojanaphruk for his writing, CPJ Asia Program Coordinator Steven Butler said from Washington, D.C. The threat to charge a critical journalist with sedition charges for his Facebook posts shows just how badly press freedom has deteriorated in Thailand under military rule. If charged and convicted under article 116 of Thailands Criminal Code, Pravit could be sentenced to a maximum of 20 years in prison. He could also face parallel criminal charges under the Computer Crime Act for disseminating seditious materials online, which carries maximum penalties of five years for each post. Thailands attorney general must approve sedition charges before cases move to trial. CPJ last month announced that Pravit will be one of four recipients of its 2017 International Press Freedom Award, with which the organization each year honors exemplary and courageous reporting. Military authorities have singled out Pravit for harassment since seizing power in a May 2014 coup. Days after the militarys takeover, Pravit was summoned and detained incommunicado for a week. In September 2015, he was again summoned to a military base, where he was interrogated for more than six hours, then blindfolded, driven for more than an hour to a house with blocked-out windows, and held incommunicado by plainclothes military officials. Upon his release two days later without charge, military officials threatened to freeze his bank account if he continued to criticize the regime, he told CPJ at the time. As a condition of his release, he was forced to sign a pledge that he would not become involved in any activities opposing military rule. EDITORS NOTE: The fourth paragraph of this text has been corrected to reflect that Pravit faces a maximum prison sentence of 20 years if convicted of sedition. Hassan Rouhani Irans judicial and security bodies have waged a vicious crackdown against human rights defenders since Hassan Rouhani became president in 2013, demonizing and imprisoning activists who dare to stand up for peoples rights, Amnesty International said in a new report published today. Irans judicial and security bodies have waged a vicious crackdown against human rights defenders since Hassan Rouhani became president in 2013, demonizing and imprisoning activists who dare to stand up for peoples rights, Amnesty International said in a new report published today. Caught in a web of repression: Irans human rights defenders under attack details how scores of human rights activists often labelled foreign agents and traitors by state media have been prosecuted and jailed on spurious national security charges, dealing a crushing blow to hopes of human rights reform raised during President Hassan Rouhanis first election campaign. Some activists have been sentenced to more than 10 years behind bars for simple acts such as being in contact with the UN, EU or human rights organizations including Amnesty International. It is a bitter irony that as the Iranian authorities boast about their increased engagement with the UN and the EU, particularly in the aftermath of the nuclear deal, human rights defenders who have made contact with these same institutions are being treated as criminals, said Philip Luther, Amnesty Internationals Research and Advocacy Director for the Middle East and North Africa. Rather than propagating the dangerous myth that human rights defenders pose a threat to national security, the Iranian authorities should focus on addressing the legitimate concerns they raise. These are people who have risked everything to build a more humane and just society - it is appalling that they are so viciously punished for their bravery. The organization is calling on the EU, which announced plans to relaunch a bilateral human rights dialogue with Iran in 2016, to speak out in the strongest terms against the persecution of human rights defenders in the country. The international community, and in particular the EU, must not stay silent over the outrageous treatment of human rights defenders in Iran, said Philip Luther. Instead of appeasing Iranian officials, the EU should forcefully call for the immediate and unconditional release of all those jailed for their peaceful human rights activism and for an end to the misuse of the justice system to silence activists. The report provides a comprehensive overview of the crackdown targeting a wide range of human rights defenders from key battlegrounds for human rights in Iran. It highlights 45 cases including anti-death penalty campaigners, womens rights activists, trade unionists, minority rights activists, human rights lawyers, and activists seeking truth, justice and reparation for mass extrajudicial executions and enforced disappearances in the 1980s. Closing in on the defenders Over the past four years, Irans judicial authorities have dropped the threshold for invoking vague and overly broad national security-related charges and, at the same time, sharply increased the length of prison sentences given to convicted human rights defenders. The head of the judiciary is appointed by Irans Supreme Leader. In case after case, people have been sentenced to lengthy prison terms, sometimes exceeding a decade, for acts that should not even be considered crimes. These include contact with the UN and the EU, as well as with media outlets, international trade union associations and human rights groups based outside Iran including Amnesty International. The international community, and in particular the EU, must not stay silent over the outrageous treatment of human rights defenders in Iran Philip Luther, Research and Advocacy Director for MENA One of the most emblematic cases is that of critically ill human rights activist Arash Sadeghi, who is serving a total of 19 years in prison for offences that included communicating with Amnesty International as well as sending information to the UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Iran and members of the European Parliament. Despite his critical condition, the authorities have repeatedly blocked his transfer to a hospital outside prison, in reprisal for a hunger strike he staged between October 2016 and January 2017, in protest at the imprisonment of his wife, Golrokh Ebrahimi Iraee, for writing a fictional story about stoning. Prominent human rights defender Narges Mohammadi, who led the Centre for Human Rights Defenders in Iran, is serving a 16-year prison sentence also in connection with her human rights work. The criminal case against her was opened in reprisal for a meeting she had with EUs former foreign policy chief, Catherine Ashton, on International Womens Day in 2014. Raheleh Rahemipour, meanwhile, was sentenced to one year in prison after the UN requested information from the Iranian authorities about the enforced disappearance of her brother and niece during the 1980s. This is a sinister and deliberate attempt by Irans authorities to cut off human rights defenders from the outside world and prevent them from challenging the official narrative on the human rights situation in the country, said Philip Luther. Trade unionists including Esmail Abdi and Davoud Razavi have also experienced harassment and imprisonment for being in contact with international organizations, including the International Labour Organization. Minority rights activists have fared no better in the crackdown. Alireza Farshi, a member of Irans Azerbaijani Turk minority, was given a 15-year prison sentence for offences that included writing a letter to UNESCO to hold an event commemorating International Mother Language Day. Grossly unfair trials Human rights defenders whose cases are featured in the report were invariably convicted after grossly unfair trials before Revolutionary Courts. The proceedings are often extremely brief. For example, anti-death penalty campaigners Atena Daemi and Omid Alishenas were sentenced to 14 and 10 years imprisonment, respectively, after a trial in March 2015 which only lasted about 45 minutes. Their sentences were later reduced to seven years on appeal. Trials of human rights defenders generally take place in a climate of fear in which their lawyers face a range of abusive measures. These include attempts by the authorities to arbitrarily restrict them from visiting defendants or communicating with them in private, or delaying their access to court files. Human rights lawyers who speak out against torture and unfair trials have also faced relentless harassment, disbarment and imprisonment. Prominent human rights lawyer Abdolfattah Soltani has been serving a 13-year sentence since 2011 for his courageous human rights work including with the Centre for Human Rights Defenders. Amnesty Internationals global campaign Brave calls for an end to attacks against those defending human rights worldwide. For more information click here | 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! To read the Persian language version of the press release please click here Amnesty International , August 2, 2017 The modern UFO era started in 1947 when Boise pilot and businessman Kenneth Arnold saw nine mysterious objects flying near Mount Rainier in Washington. But more than 30 years earlier, others had reported seeing flying machines 25 miles north of Mackay near Mount Borah. Al West, a prominent stockman and proprietor of the Dickey Stage Stop, reported hearing a swishing, rumbling sound that apparently came out of nowhere in particular, said the Twin Falls Weekly Times in November 1915, quoting an earlier article published in the Mackay Miner. As the sound came nearer, West looked up and beheld a large flying machine hurtling through space at lightning like rapidity. As he watched it disappear into the sky, West decided to say nothing about the mysterious machine, fearing the joshing he knew was in store for him. About a year before, Fred Westenfeld and his cousin had seen a similar sight in the same vicinity and were severely ridiculed for their story, the newspapers said. When West arrived home, however, he was met at the door by his wife asking if he had seen the flying machine, and he changed his mind about going public with his story. The Times offered several explanations for the flying machine, including the idea that European countries already engaged in World War I had set up wireless communication stations in remote areas of Custer County. For some time the federal government has entertained a belief that somewhere in the mountain regions of Idaho a secret wireless station was being maintained in the interests of European powers now at war, the Times wrote. ...(A)ttempts have been made to locate the plant that apparently has communication with Canada and then with Europe. The flying machine, the newspaper theorized, was in the service of such a wireless station. Some claim the earliest photograph of a UFO was taken in 1870 from the summit Mount Washington in New Hampshire. This article originally appeared on Investor's Business Daily. Congress needs to raise the debt ceiling at the end of September in order for the government to continue to operate. At the same time, it should consider fundamental budget process reform, aimed at stemming the tide of red deficit ink spewing from Washington. Senators Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, and Mike Lee, R-Utah, introduced a balanced-budget amendment, S.J. Res. 7, in January. If ratified, it would contribute to a sounder fiscal policy. The amendment would require two-thirds of Congress to approve spending more than 18% of GDP in the prior calendar year; tax hikes; or increases in the debt limit. Sen. Lee, who has introduced balanced budget amendments in prior years, said, "We expect families, businesses, and state and local governments all to stick to their budgets and live within their means there is no reason that the federal government should not have to follow the same set of rules." Congress has considered many balanced budget amendments in the past, but most did not pass either chamber. The Senate approved one in 1982, sponsored by the late Senator Strom Thurmond, R-S.C. The House passed one in 1995, sponsored by Representative Joe Barton, R-Texas. In each instance, the sponsor was a Republican and the GOP had a majority. If Congress could craft a series of budgets that did not result in continually wider deficits, a balanced-budget amendment to the Constitution would not be necessary. But the budget process has broken down. The deficit is at $693 billion this fiscal year, or 3.6% of GDP. Total debt is projected to be over 100% of GDP. If the balanced amendments of 1982 and 1995 were the law, America would have been in a far stronger fiscal position, with lower levels of deficits and debt. States, which are not allowed to run deficits, generally manage to balance their budgets. Even with its imperfections, a balanced-budget amendment would be a step in the right direction, an improvement on what we have now. Congress writes laws that lead to increased spending over time without further congressional action, so-called entitlements such as Medicare and food stamps. Reforming the latest entitlement, an expansion of Medicaid, proved the major obstacle in last week's failed repeal of the Affordable Care Act. The Grassley-Lee amendment links government outlays to 18% of GDP in the prior calendar year. If it were law, the budget now under construction would be based on GDP in 2016. This schedule might be too tight for planning purposes. The final GDP figure for calendar year 2016 was only available in March 2017. This timing is adequate for Congress, but not for the president, who sends his budget to Congress the first week in February. The president starts working on the FY 2018 budget in the fall of 2016, when even third-quarter GDP is unknown. But if the FY 2018 budget were based on GDP in calendar year 2015, guidelines and limits would be clear to the president as well as to Congress. Another way of structuring a balanced-budget amendment would be to tie spending in a given year to revenues three years earlier. The president and Congress would know in advance how much to spend. They would know that they could not spend more than revenues from calendar year 2015, which ended December 31, 2015. One modification might be to have a "rainy day fund" that is exempt from the limits, and that could be set aside for recessions. This fund could be set aside from surplus funds in high-growth periods, just as states reserve rainy day funds. If deficit spending in a recession is discouraged for the federal government, just as it is for states, then the government should be provided with a way of ensuring that it has a means of meeting demands on social safety net programs during a recession. Currently, programs are constructed so as to obligate the government to pay programs indefinitely. This leads to the current result that an increasingly larger share of the budget is obligated by prior Congresses, because few politicians have the courage to reduce benefits. In contrast, if Congress could vote for a new program only as a percent of total spending, then the upward trend in program expenses would have to be approved as the program expanded. A housing program, for instance, could be set at 1.5% of spending. If revenues fell in a recession year, Congress would have to vote to maintain spending at the prior level. The next two months are going to be dominated by headlines prophesying doom if Congress does not vote to increase the debt ceiling. The ceiling will eventually be raised, and Uncle Sam will not renege on debts. But this predictable drama continues to distract from more important issues, such as tax reform, health care reform, and confirmation of the 83 (at this count) nominees waiting to be confirmed by the Senate. A balanced-budget amendment would impose spending discipline, and would protect the American economy against the down-to-the wire bargaining over spending and taxes that is a habitual feature of our budget process. Additional certainty about fiscal policy would make investment and consumption decisions easier, and would facilitate economic growth and job creation. Diana Furchtgott-Roth (@FurchtgottRoth) is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and an adjunct professor of economics at George Washington University. Interested in real economic insights? Want to stay ahead of the competition? Each weekday morning, e21 delivers a short email that includes e21 exclusive commentaries and the latest market news and updates from Washington. Sign up for the e21 Morning Ebrief. On his recent trip to Estonia, Vice President Mike Pence reiterated America's support for Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania saying, "America stands with the nations and the people of the Baltic Statesand always will." For the better part of the last century, the Baltic nations were occupied by the Soviet Union, which tried to eradicate the identity, traditions, and language of the people of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. Throughout those years of brutal occupation, the United States refused to recognize the Soviet Unions annexation of the Baltic States. Thirteen years ago, the Baltic States joined NATO. Today, Estonia is one of five nations that meet the NATO benchmark of spending at least 2 percent of GDP on defense. By the end of 2018, Latvia and Lithuania will join Estonia in meeting this goal. As the U.S. Vice President noted, the "specter of aggression" from Russia still looms large in the region. "At this very moment," said Vice President Pence, "Russia continues to seek to redraw international borders by force, undermine the democracies of sovereign nations, and divide the free nations of Europe one against another." President Trump has called on Russia to cease its aggression in Ukraine and will continue to hold Russia accountable for its destabilizing actions. The preference of the United States is a constructive relationship with Russia based on common interests. Russia, too, has said that it would like to normalize relations with the United States. But the President and Congress are unified in their message: A better relationship and the lifting of sanctions will require Russia to reverse the actions that caused sanctions to be imposed in the first place. Be assured, said Vice President Mike Pence, "The United States rejects any attempt to use force, threats, intimidation, or malign influence in the Baltic States or against any of our treaty allies." The United States will stand firmly behind its collective defense obligations under NATOs Article 5. As President Trump made clear in Poland, the fight "begins with our minds, our wills, and our souls." If we steel our minds, strengthen our wills, and refresh our souls, "the West will never, ever be broken. Our values will prevail. Our people will thrive, our civilization will triumph." On June 25, 1996, members of the Saudi Hezbollah terrorist group attacked the Khobar Towers apartment complex used to house U.S. and foreign military personnel near Dhahran, Saudi Arabia.The attackers drove a tanker truck filled with plastic explosives into the parking lot and detonated it, all but destroying the nearest building. The attack killed 19 U.S. servicemen and one Saudi citizen, and wounded 372 others of many different nationalities.Ali Saed bin Ali el-Hoorie, a Saudi citizen, helped plan and carry out the attack. A U.S. federal court has indicted him for conspiracy to use weapons of mass destruction against U.S. nationals, conspiracy to destroy U.S. property and related charges.El-Hoorie stands approximately 5 feet 2 inches, or 157 centimeters, tall and has black hair and black eyes. He has a mole on his face and has used the alias Ali Saed bin Ali al-Houri.The Rewards for Justice Program is offering a reward of up to five million dollars for information leading to el-Hoories arrest or conviction.The U.S. guarantees that all credible reports will be investigated and the identity of all informants will be kept confidential. If appropriate, the U.S. is prepared to protect informants by relocating them.If you have information on this man, contact the nearest U.S. Embassy or Consulate and the tip line at www.rewardsforjustice.net or e-mail information to RFJ@state.gov. Authorities in the central Mexican state of Jalisco say that the Jalisco Nueva Generacion (CJNG) drug cartel has been posting fake jobs on Facebook and then forcing recruits to take part in gang training camps against their will. Archive image of Jalisco drug cartel members. CUARTOSCURO More information El cartel de Jalisco reclutaba a sicarios a traves de Facebook The cartel Mexicos most powerful allegedly placed false advertisements for positions including bodyguards, security guards, pollsters and even local police officers on the social media platform. Once people were recruited, they were taken to the town of Tala, about an hour from the state capital Guadalajara, where they were given weapons and self-defense training. The cartels scheme, which targeted applicants aged 16 to 35, was revealed by state prosecutor Eduardo Almaguer Ramirez during a recent press conference. He said details had come to light after one recruit had managed to escape a training camp where he was being held against his will, before guiding authorities back to its location. The man said that around 50 criminals were guarding 40 trainees. Some 200 people have disappeared in the Tala area since 2013, according to local media In a July 21 raid on the camp headed by the prosecutors office, police only managed to rescue two recruits as the rest of the group had already moved on. They soon found a second camp containing human remains. Prosecutors have now identified at least five such camps, after a further three were discovered in an operation involving 400 police officers and soldiers. Their discovery comes in the wake of around six complaints received by prosecutors in June filed by family members looking for missing relatives. All those cases were similar: the missing persons had been offered a job and told they were required to attend a training camp. Six missing people have now been found and rescued. State prosecutor Almaguer said his office would now investigate whether police in Tala had been implicated in the scheme, noting it was suspicious that local law enforcement had failed to notice the presence of the camps and the movement of supplies and food necessary for such a large number of people. According to local media outlets, some 200 people have disappeared in the Tala area since 2013. In one operation, authorities found a training camp containing human remains This is not the first time that the CJNG, headed by Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes, has resorted to unusual recruiting methods. In March 2016, authorities said the cartel had set up a ghost business named Segmex to entrap people. The group distributed fliers advertising security jobs in the districts of Tlaquepaque and Puerto Vallarta and then forced possible recruits to attend training at a country estate. The CJNG has cemented its place as the most powerful organized crime group in Mexico in little more than four years, taking advantage of the power vacuum created in the Sinaloa cartel since former boss Joaquin El Chapo Guzman was extradited to the United States. The rival Zetas and Knights Templar drug cartels have also been weakened by territorial wars. According to security expert Gerardo Rodriguez Sanchez-Lara, the CJNG have also achieved rapid expansion by colluding with local authorities in areas where they operate. They are also incredibly violent. They have brutally slayed state police in Jalisco, while using sadistic and violent means against security forces and attacking Mexican army targets, including shooting down military helicopters to expand their territory, the expert told EL PAIS in May. English version by George Mills. As administrative and other problems on the Hawaiian island of Mauna Kea mounted over recent years, it looked as though the largest telescope in the northern hemisphere would be sited on La Palma , one of Spains Canary Islands. But last week, a US hearings officers report recommended granting a land use permit after examining local opposition to constructing the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) on the extinct volcano, which is considered the most sacred site in the indigenous Hawaiian religion. An artists rendition of the Thirty Meter Telescope as it would look atop the Mauna Kea. Since the plan to build on Mauna Kea was halted in 2014, the Roque de los Muchachos Observatory on La Palma has been seen as an exceptional alternative. In recent months, there have been several visits to the site, run by the Canaries Astrophysics Institute (IAC), by US astronomers and technicians linked to the TMT project. All of them expressed surprise at the quality of the conditions at Roque de los Muchachos. In late 2016, the TMT team officially recommended La Palma as its second choice for the giant telescope. The fact the US reports were so favorable has dispelled certain myths and has been an extraordinary opportunity for us Rafael Rebolo, Astrophysics Institute of the Canary Islands At the end of June, during a trip to La Palma, Gary Sanders, the project manager of the TMT, said: If we keep on encountering obstacles to placing it on Hawaii we would be very happy to build it in the Canaries. With the TMT on La Palma we could do marvelous astronomy. There have been a series of contested case hearings in Hawaii in recent months at which detractors of constructing the TMT on Mauna Kea have laid out their case. Courts had said that Mauna Kea was a sacred site with cultural and environmental protection, and so the case was put in the hands of a retired judge to weigh the facts. But there are still other legal hurdles to overcome before work on the TMT can begin on Mauna Kea, as Rafael Rebolo, head of the IAC, explains: I have been working with the TMT and they point out that a Supreme Court ruling is still required over land use rights, adding: The situation is still open, and I have been asked to continue with procedures because the court cases in Hawaii are not over. There are still other legal hurdles to overcome before work on the TMT can begin on Mauna Kea The IAC says it wont be throwing in the towel and will continue to deal with the permits required to build the TMT. It has called on the regional government to appoint somebody to coordinate the legal and administrative issues on La Palma, if at the last moment Mauna Kea is ruled out. Time might just be on Spains side. If there are further legal moves in the United States, Hawaii could find itself relegated: the board members of the TMT, which includes India, China, Canada and Japan, have said that construction must begin on the project by April 2018 no matter what. Whatever the outcome, the episode has highlighted Spains scientific potential. The fact the US reports were so favorable and positive has dispelled certain myths and has been an extraordinary opportunity for us, says the IACs Rebolo. In the near future, other large telescopes will be up for grabs, such as those the Russians and the Chinese each want to build, and so all this has been very good. We are already talking to them, obviously. It has been a huge effort, but it has been worth it, concludes Rebolo. In the meantime, the European Solar Telescope is to be built at Roque de los Muchachos, while construction on the first of 20 devices that are part of the Cherenkov telescope network has already begun there. English version by Nick Lyne. It would be difficult to find a man who enjoys freedom as much as Ai Weiwei does. At least that is the feeling one gets from watching the Beijing-born artist and political activist, who has been suffering repression in his country for years and was arrested for three months in 2011 for his opposition to the Chinese regime. In 2015 his passport was returned to him, and the 59-year-old has since been unstoppable. This much is evident as he strolls down the streets of Buenos Aires, where he is constantly stopped by people who want to have their picture taken with him. Watching him evidences his dual dimension as a renowned artist and as a free man. Ai has come to the capital of Argentina to work on a major exhibition of his art at the Proa Foundation, a private museum located in La Boca, the citys most popular neighborhood. Inside the museum, he is a professional who takes measurements, thinks about the best spots for his giant installations, and imagines new ones. Out on the street, he is a tourist who takes selfies with his son in front of a papier mache likeness of Pope Francis that he spots outside a souvenir store. It would be difficult to find a man who enjoys freedom as much as Ai Weiwei does Cameras are tagging along, documenting his trip. But he prefers to focus on social media, which he is addicted to. Ai Weiwei constantly uploads photographs of everything that he sees, and is always ready to have his picture taken with fans. In the middle of this whirlwind of activity that seems more typical for a rock star than an artist, Ai sits down with EL PAIS at Proa cafe, a local institution that has been drawing famous artists from all over the world to this culturally conscious capital for the last 20 years. Right now, Ai is focused on his work on refugees in Europe and elsewhere in the world. He set up a workshop on the Greek island of Lesbos, filled the Berlin Konzerthaus with life jackets, and covered the Palazzo Strozzi in Florence with rubber boats. And soon before traveling to Buenos Aires, he learned that his documentary on this issue, Human Flow, will compete in the official section of the Venice film festival this year. An installation by Ai Weiwei in Palazzo Strozzi in Florence. Laura Lezza (Getty Images) The Chinese artist has spent time living with refugees, and even set himself adrift on a boat once to experience the same feelings as many migrants on their sea crossings. That experience left him with a very critical view, and the determination to reinforce his own activism, which is the central part of his art. The West does not want to accept its responsibility, he says. Theres going to be millions of Africans fleeing war. The population is growing, its going to double, there will be more famine, more wars, and more refugees. This is not just about Syria. Are Western leaders hoping that the problem will just resolve itself? Thats ridiculous. The artist devotes most of his art to denouncing the refugee drama. He spent months interviewing new arrivals every day for his documentary, and recorded more than 600 hours of footage. And this year, in Prague, he inaugurated Law of the Journey, an installation featuring a 70-meter-long migrant boat with 258 inflatable human figures sitting within. He is an activist and will always be so, yet he remains skeptical about the power of his own art, and stresses that the truly important thing is for citizens to get individually involved. And then he slips in a bit of criticism for other artists who are not as politically engaged as himself. A return to the land of Pablo Neruda Ai Weiwei had never been to South America, but he has a link to the Southern Cone. His father, Ai Qing, one of the most respected poets in China, was friends with Chile's Pablo Neruda, to whom he dedicated one of his poems. Both were communists, but in 1958 the regime accused Ai of being a right-winger and exiled him on farms in Manchuria and Xinjiang, where Weiwei lived as a child. Ai will now travel to Chile, where he exhibited a gigantic 900-square-meter canvas in 2013 that he dedicated to Neruda. Ai does not believe that things are now worse than back in his father and Nerudas time, although he warns: Humanity has been improving, but there is a greater risk now. Power has become even stronger. These days, a German company or a US bank can be bought out by China. You no longer know who your enemy is. The powerful are really united, but not so the poor. There are no longer different powers in communist and capitalist countries... They have all become one and the same. My art is just the art of a stupid Chinese artist, theyre my own feelings, my relationship with these things that are happening, he says. Art in itself cannot accomplish anything. I can do something for my own conscience, and perhaps have an influence on the odd person. A lot of people know whats happening. But they pretend that it is of no concern to them, that its none of their business. Some pretend to be busy doing a higher form of art, and they do not discuss human dignity. The pessimist view that he took away from his experience with the refugees makes him think that humanity is losing its vision and courage. I think that humanity is becoming more cowardly with each passing day, not just with the refugees but also with climate change. Many pretend that its got nothing to do with them, that someone else will solve the problem, he says. Ai is especially concerned about Donald Trump. Many people have lost their jobs and fear for the future because of globalization, because theyd been sold a really pretty picture of things. But what Trump is saying, at a police academy recently for instance, is really unbelievable, he is encouraging violence. If we were told that he said those things, but could not see it with our own eyes, we would not believe it. Ai believes that the key resides with young people, who should be aware of their own power. People also have more power with social media, but we have yet to see them transform it into political power. If you see what is happening in Venezuela these days, and in many other places where things used to be quieter, young people are much more informed, but at the same time they might be more disengaged because the West has experienced half a century of peace. Ai, a historical champion of human rights in China, has learned from the refugee crisis in Europe that freedom and democracy are a constant struggle, and nobody can take them for granted. As long as there is one person feeling despair, all of humanity is wounded, ruined. If we dont have this notion of humanity as a single entity, we will never manage to solve the problem. China has accumulated great wealth, but has not developed human rights The artist is especially pessimistic about his own country, where he returns periodically if warily. Most of the year he lives abroad, and has his home base in Germany. And Ai believes that things have only gotten worse ever since his own arrest in 2011. There is no establishment in China because intellectuals are always persecuted, he says. China has accumulated great wealth, but has not developed human rights. It has a fifth of the worlds population but there are no labor rights and no individual rights; everything is controlled by the state, even social media. The country is moving backwards at a terrible pace. When I was arrested, my family, my friends asked themselves: where did he go? Nobody knew. What kind of state are you if you make a citizen disappear? Whats the difference between the Chinese state and the mafia? If youre that powerful and you have all the money, why cant you earn respect for yourself? English version by Susana Urra. Around 20 youths affiliated with a radical left-wing group that supports Catalan independence burst into a restaurant in Palma de Mallorca on July 22 to protest what they view as the destructive effects of mass tourism on the Balearic island. The members of Arran Paisos Catalans a group that operates throughout the parts of Spain where Catalan and its variants are spoken, including the Balearic Islands and the Valencia region set off firecrackers and threw confetti at the diners inside the restaurant, which is located in the pier across from the cathedral. Theyre attacking the best kind of tourism in Mallorca, the kind that spends money Restaurant manager Carmen Sanchez This group has now posted a video it made of the incident. In it, activists can be seen carrying signs that read Tourism is killing Mallorca and This is class warfare. At one point, an activist is seen climbing aboard a yacht moored at the Moll Vell pier. The incident took place at around 8.30pm on the outdoor patio of a restaurant called Mar de Nudos. There were around 70 diners there at the time. We had to change their plates and glasses. We had to face up to them and tell them to leave, noting that this was a private area, says Carmen Sanchez, the restaurant manager, recalling that the activists refused to leave. It was five to 10 minutes before the local police and port officers showed up. The youths started running as soon as they spotted them. Theyre attacking the best kind of tourism in Mallorca, the kind that spends money, laments Sanchez. The tourists who come here are not like the ones who go to Magaluf. Maybe they should go protest there against mass tourism, the all-included packages and the low-cost prices. Activists carried signs reading Tourism is killing Mallorca and This is class warfare On its Twitter account, Arran claims that its actions aim to curb the mass tourism that is destroying Mallorca and condemning the working classes of the Paisos Catalans to miserable living conditions. It also criticizes the precarious jobs and saturated roads created by tourism, which is a top industry in Spain. The regional head of the tourism department, Pilar Carbonell, said these kinds of acts are under no circumstances legitimate and that the best way to defend people working in the tourism sector is to make progress on a system of redistribution of the profits made from this activity. The same youth group was behind a recent attack on a Barcelona city tour bus, which it covered in graffiti last week. At least seven hotels in Barcelona have recently been vandalized by left-wing groups claiming to be fighting what they say is excessive tourism in the region. English version by Susana Urra. Just like her father Amancio Ortega whose fashion empire has made him one of the richest men on the planet Sandra Ortega has a good nose for business. Known for leading a discreet life and rejecting ostentation, she is nevertheless Spains wealthiest woman. Sandra Ortega at her mother's funeral in 2013. XURXO LOBATO (EL PAIS) The eldest child of the founder of the global Inditex clothing empire (whose best-known brands are Zara, Bershka and Pull & Bear) has developed a real estate empire of her own that was worth 541 million at the end of 2016. Since inheriting her mother Rosalia Meras stake in the Inditex business following the latters death in 2013, Sandra Ortega has been buying up assets in Stuttgart (Germany); New York, Palo Alto, Miami Beach, Hollywood and Los Angeles in the United States; and Barcelona, Vigo and Madrid in Spain. This portfolio is managed by a holding company called Rosp. Corunna, whose real estate assets of over 541 million represent a 24% increase from 2015. Fully 90% of these assets are located outside Spain, and most of them are being rented out The company also controls private equity investments, including a 30% stake in the Room Mate hotel chain, a 25.99% stake in movie producer Milou Films, and a 45% stake in the engineering firm Inusual Comunicacion Innovadora. Rosp Corunna also holds 5.05% of shares in Inditex and a similar stake in the publicly traded Spanish pharmaceutical company Pharma Mar. Rosp. Corunna announced a net profit of 89.69 million in 2016, against 105.82 million in 2015. But real estate investments represented 541.63 million, a 24% increase from 2015 and a 84% rise from the assets that the company held in 2013. Sandra Ortega has been following in the footsteps of her father, who has accumulated property worth over 8.5 billion through a company called Pontegadea. Some of the most recent acquisitions include office space in Stuttgart, where rent from tenants is bringing in 2 million a year, and a building in New York that contributes 4.3 million. Most of the properties are hotels (60% of the total) and office buildings (32%), although there are also residential and commercial units, as well as warehouses and parking lots. Fully 90% of these assets are located outside Spain, and most of them are being rented out. Amancio Ortega, currently ranked by Forbes magazine as the second richest man in the world behind Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, has a son and a daughter from his marriage to Rosalia Mera. The couple split up in 1986 and Ortega remarried. He has another daughter, Marta, from that union. English version by Susana Urra. Baku, Azerbaijan, Aug. 3 Trend: President of the Republic of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev has arrived with a visit to countrys Balakan district. The head of the state laid flowers to the statue of the National Leader in the Heydar Aliyev Park in the city of Balakan. Head of Balakan District Executive Authority Islam Rzayev informed President Ilham Aliyev about the landscaping work carried out in the Heydar Aliyev Park. NAMPA Mason Cunningham, 18 months old, was found dead in an irrigation canal Wednesday morning, about 12 hours after he went missing from his familys yard, the Canyon County Sheriffs Office reports. The toddler disappeared from the familys rural Nampa yard about 8:30 p.m. Tuesday, and family members, law enforcement and tracking dogs searched in and along Ten Mile Creek until 2 a.m., CCSO Capt. Bill Adams said. When daylight returned, searchers were back in force, with numerous law enforcement agencies, a Nampa police drone and an air ambulance to assist in the search along with volunteers. Around 9 a.m. Wednesday, the little boys body was found in the canal about four miles downstream, near Madison Road, Adams said. The canal runs alongside the yard, about 100 yards from the familys home in the 6800 block of Ustick Road near 11th Avenue North Extension. Mason was in an unfenced portion of the yard with a family member, who took their eyes off him for just a minute or so to go to the back of the property to change a sprinkler valve, Adams said. Most of the large yard is securely fenced, but the child was playing in an area near the garage that allows canal access, officials said. The childs father immediately suspected the toddler had fallen into the canal and jumped in himself, searching in the water for several blocks before others pulled him out of the swift-flowing water, Adams said. An autopsy will confirm cause of death, but no foul play is suspected, Canyon County spokesman Joe Decker said. Adams thanked the community and other law enforcement agencies for a huge outpouring of support. Sheriffs deputies asked everyone to be aware of the dangers of the steep-sided irrigation canals, which are easy to get into and hard to get out of. We just want to remind the community to be aware of these canals, especially with toddlers and infants, that the waters fast-moving and its extremely dangerous, Adams said. Baku, Azerbaijan, Aug. 3 Trend: President of the Republic of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev has attended the opening of the Balakan Hydroelectric Power Station on Aug. 3. President of Azerenerji OJSC Etibar Pirverdiyev informed the head of state about the power station located on the Balakan River. He noted that, the foundation stone of the 1.5 MW-facility was laid in by President Ilham Aliyev in 2010. In accordance with the project, 5.6m-high dam, maximum width of which at the bottom is 28 and on top is four meters, was constructed. The power station, with the production capabilities of 10 million kilowatt-hours of electricity per year, will meet 15 percent of electricity needs of the district, as well as 25-30 percent of needs of the city of Balakan. The head of the state has launched Balakan Hydroelectric Power Station. More than 100 workers were engaged in the construction of the station. Extensive landscaping work was done, state-of-the-art lightning system was installed and green areas were created in the adjacent area. Baku, Azerbaijan, Aug. 3 Trend: President of the Republic of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev has inaugurated the ABAD Center in Balakan. President Ilham Aliyev first viewed the stands highlighting the activities and future plans of the Balkhurma enterprise for 2016-2017, which is located in Katekh village, Balakan district. Chairman of the State Agency for Public Services and Social Innovations under the President of the Republic of Azerbaijan Inam Karimov informed the head of state about the works done as part of the ABAD project. ABAD is a public legal entity, which was established by President Ilham Aliyevs decree on September 23, 2016. ABADs main goals include implementing projects that support small and medium enterprises and establishing a fund to finance these projects; identifying the exact target group and creating proper conditions for use of modern technological equipment for agriculture products; assisting preparation of business plans and organization of various functional services; organizing certification of manufactured products on the basis of "one window" principle; dealing with logistics; sharing best practices; taking other measures for development of production oriented entrepreneurship. In October 2016, the State Oil Company of the Republic of Azerbaijan (SOCAR) and the State Agency for Public Services and Social Innovations under the President of the Republic of Azerbaijan signed a Corporate Cooperation Agreement in the field of activities of ABAD Centers. Within the framework of cooperation, the ABAD project of Balakan district was determined as the second pilot project. President Ilham Aliyev then viewed the products manufactured in Balakan and other regions within the ABAD project. Under the project, a two-story administrative building with an area of about 280 square meters was built here. The offices in the building are supplied with the necessary equipment. There will also be presentation and meeting halls, and a laboratory in the building. The building also houses a complex of different temperature warehouses with a total area of 640 square meters. After viewing the ABAD Center, President Ilham Aliyev met with the representatives of the general public in the district. On behalf of the district public, Khanum Zurnayeva and Mahammad Bazarov thanked the head of state for his high attention and care. Then a photo was taken. Baku, Azerbaijan, Aug. 3 Trend: As part of his visit to Gakh district, President of the Republic of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev has today attended the opening of Alatamir-Marsan-Tasmali-Zayam-Lalali highway. The head of state viewed photo stands reflecting the technical indicators of the highway. Chairman of Azeravtoyol OJSC Saleh Mammadov informed President Ilham Aliyev that together with entrance roads to Fistigli, Marsan and Judullu villages of the district, the total length of the highway is 23.5 km. According to the project, the two-line road was expanded and a new 10 meter-wide roadbed was constructed. During the reconstruction, new bridges were built along the road to Fistigli, Marsan and Judullu villages. The length of the bridges is 9.5 and 24 meters, respectively. The width of both bridges is 11 meters. The Alatamir-Marsan-Tasmali-Zayam-Lalali highway, which was built under President Ilham Aliyevs order dated August 22, 2016, links eight settlements with the population of 7,000 people. This highway is one of the 40 inter-village highway projects implemented this year based on the recommendations and instructions of President Ilham Aliyev. The head of state cut the ribbon symbolizing the inauguration of the road. Baku, Azerbaijan, Aug. 3 Trend: President of the Republic of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev viewed a tobacco reception center as part of his visit to Gakh district Aug. 3. The president was informed that the facility created 90 jobs. Tobacco is cured in 60 facilities there. Local farmers give preference to Virginia sort. Around 6,500-7,000 tons of tobacco will be stored in the district this year. Baku, Azerbaijan, Aug. 3 Trend: President of the Republic of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev attended the inauguration of a 180-seat orphanage-kindergarten in Gakh, whose construction was initiated by the Heydar Aliyev Foundation. The president cut the ribbon symbolizing the official opening of the orphanage-kindergarten, and then toured it. The construction of the facility started in July 2014, and ended in July 2017. The three-story building covers an area of 2,124 square meters. All conditions were created there for children. All classrooms are supplied with the necessary equipment. The orphanage-kindergarten has a gym, a canteen and playgrounds. The State Examination Center of Azerbaijan announced results of the entrance exams to national higher educational institutions for 2017/2018 academic year. Seven prospective students earned the highest score at the exams on the 1st group of specialities. Most of them have chosen to study at Baku Higher Oil School (BHOS): six prospective students earning 700 points selected BHOS. The Higher Schools Public Relations department asked them to tell about the reasons behind their choice. Gabil Aliyev (Baku Turkish Lyceum): BHOS is one of very few universities which provide their students with excellent conditions and opportunities to receive best-quality education. I have chosen to study Process Automation Engineering, as this is profession of the future, and I am interested in it. These are the reasons why I selected Baku Higher Oil School. Khalida Aliyeva (school 220, Baku): Physics was my favorite subject at school, and this was the main reason why I selected first group of specialties. At first, I heard about BHOS for a friend of mine at the school; then I learned that many of my friends wanted to study at BHOS, so I also became interested in studying there. I believe that the Higher School can give me everything I need for my education, and the profession I have chosen is very much tied with physics. Vahab Jebrayilov (secondary school of Lahij village, Ismayilli district): I always wanted to become a student of Baku Higher Oil School, so I have chosen BHOS long before the entrance exams. Within a short period of time, BHOS managed to take a special place among other higher educational institutions in Azerbaijan. As for the profession of Process Automation Engineer, I have chosen it because I am interested in computer technologies and robotic science. My goal is to become an excellent specialist and be well known not only in Azerbaijan, but also in other countries. Mahira Asadzadah (school 162, Baku): The Higher School provides great opportunities to students, and BHOS graduates are highly skilled specialists. I believe that studying at BHOS is the best option for me. I also think that other prospective students with high points will select this higher educational institution, too. Elmir Akhmedov (Lyceum named after Academician Zarifa Aliyeva): In my view, there is no need to explain that process automation engineering is a prospective profession in the time of modern advanced technologies, and I would like to make a contribution towards economic development of Azerbaijan. Why did I choose the Higher School? I did so because BHOS compares favorably with other higher educational institutions in providing very good opportunities for obtaining best quality technical education and building successful career afterwards. Abdulla Askerzadeh (Istek Lyceum, Gandja): I decided to obtain my higher education at BHOS, when I was tenth-grade schoolboy. At that time, I already knew that I would choose the first group of specialities. BHOS is one of the most prestigious higher educational institutions in Azerbaijan. As far as I know, the teaching and learning process there is arranged in accordance with high international standards. I like technology and science, especially physics and mathematics, so I have chosen the Process Automation Engineering faculty to gain profound knowledge in this field. Oil prices edged higher on Wednesday, as surging U.S. fuel demand and strong refinery runs offset data from the Energy Department that showed crude inventories did not fall as much as expected last week, Reuters reported. Crude inventories in the United States USOILC=ECI fell by 1.5 million barrels in the week to July 28, the Energy Information Administration said, about half the decline analysts had expected. However, the report also showed estimated weekly gasoline demand at a record high 9.842 million barrels. [EIA/S] Brent crude futures LCOc1 ended the session up 1.1 percent, or 58 cents, at $52.36 a barrel after hitting a session low of $51.18. U.S. West Texas Intermediate crude CLc1 rose 0.9 percent to settle at $49.59 a barrel, after falling to a low of $48.55 earlier in the session. Strong refinery runs continued to boost demand for crude. Refinery crude runs USOICR=ECI rose by 123,000 barrels per day last week, EIA data showed. "I would expect the bulls to re-assert control over the market after the initial knee-jerk lower," David Thompson, executive vice president at Powerhouse, an energy-specialized commodities broker in Washington. "Despite the week-to-week move lower in distillate demand, comparing the rolling four-week average of this year to last, distillate demand is running a whopping 14.5 percent over the same period last year." HollyFrontier Corp (HFC.N) said it plans to run its five refineries at or slightly above their combined capacity of 457,000 barrels per day (bpd) in third quarter. Petromatrix strategist Olivier Jakob said Wednesday's price rise had more to do with technical trading than fundamentals. "We are trading around the 200-day moving average and I think that is where a lot of the action of the last two days has been," Jakob said. Brent futures fell below their 200-day moving average on Monday, but by Wednesday managed to vault above this trendline, last around $51.84 a barrel. Oil prices fell sharply on Tuesday, and have come under pressure in recent sessions on news top oil producing countries may be boosting output. OPEC oil output rose in July to a 2017 high, a Reuters survey found, led by a further recovery in supply from Libya, one of the countries exempt from a production-cutting deal. Iran's oil exports also increased. Russia's oil output stood at 10.95 million barrels per day (bpd) in July, unchanged for a third month and in line with its pledge to curb production, government data showed on Wednesday. Baku, Azerbaijan, Aug. 3 Trend: President of the Republic of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev has today familiarized himself with the activity of a tobacco processing plant of Azertutun LLC in Zagatala district. President of the National Confederation of Entrepreneurs (Employers) Organizations of the Republic of Azerbaijan Mammad Musayev and chairman of the Board of Directors of Azertutun LLC Fazil Rustamov informed the head of state about the plant. President Ilham Aliyev was told that the annual processing capacity of the plant in one shift is 3,300-3,600 tons. Azertutun LLC was founded in 2007. This plant of the company was commissioned in 2010. The plant is supplied with modern equipment from the US, Italy and Bulgaria. In 2016, the plant processed and sold 1,039 tons of Virginia sorts of dry tobacco. The plant is expected to process 2,300 tons of tobacco in 2017. Baku, Azerbaijan, August 3 By Leman Zeynalova Trend: Azerbaijani gas will be taken into account at first for Georgias future imports, Georgias Energy Minister Ilia Eloshvili said in an exclusive interview with Trend. "To look at figures, in Georgia the gas demand accounted for 2.2 billion cubic meters in 2016 where SOCARs [Azerbaijani state oil company] share amounted to 59 percent, Shah Deniz gas 35 percent and Russian gas from transit service 5 percent, local extraction was rather insignificant making 0.3 percent in the total gas supply," noted the minister. Eloshvili pointed out that this picture is likely to be maintained in 2017-2018. "By 2026, we suppose that the economic trend in Georgia and expiration of the supplemental gas contract will motivate us to seek additional gas volumes," he said. "Of course, we appreciate our partnership and Azerbaijani gas will be taken into account at first but this will also depend on other market circumstances if any." In March 2016, Georgia and SOCAR signed an agreement on supplying additional volumes of Azerbaijani gas to the country. The agreement envisages delivery of 500 million cubic meters of gas per year from Azerbaijans Shah Deniz gas and condensate field. The contract for development of the Shah Deniz offshore field was signed on June 4, 1996. The field's reserve is estimated at 1.2 trillion cubic meters of gas. The shareholders are: BP, operator (28.8 percent), AzSD (10 percent), SGC Upstream (6.7 percent), Petronas (15.5 percent), Lukoil (10 percent), NICO (10 percent) and TPOC (19 percent). As part of the implementation of the Shah Deniz 2 project, the annual gas production volume will increase from 9 billion cubic meters to additional 16 billion cubic meters. The cost of the second stage of the fields development is estimated at $25 billion. It is planned to get the first volumes of gas within the project in 2018 and it will be the main source for the Southern Gas Corridor project, which envisages transportation of gas to Turkey and European markets. --- Follow the author on Twitter: @Lyaman_Zeyn Oil prices fell on Thursday, as cautious buying dried up after U.S. crude rose to near $50 a barrel, with concern about high crude supplies from producer club OPEC offsetting the previous day's data showing record U.S. gasoline demand, Reuters reported. Benchmark Brent crude LCOc1 settled down 35 cents a barrel at $52.01 a barrel. U.S. light crude CLc1 was 56 cents lower at $49.03. U.S. crude traded at a session high of $49.96 a barrel. OPEC crude oil exports rose to a record high in July, driven largely by soaring exports from the group's African members, according to a report by Thomson Reuters Oil Research. U.S. light crude has remained below $50 a barrel, capped by robust domestic supplies. "The market needs continuing signs of improvement in the inventory picture to really drive the prices higher," said Gene McGillian, director of market research at Tradition Energy in Stamford, Connecticut. Strong demand in the United States has been supporting prices. The U.S. Energy Information Administration reported record gasoline demand of 9.84 million barrels per day (bpd) for last week and a fall in commercial crude inventories of 1.5 million barrels to 481.9 million barrels C-STK-T-EIA. That was below levels seen this time last year, an indication of a tightening U.S. market. But traders said high production by the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries was limiting price gains. OPEC and other producers including Russia have promised to restrict output by 1.8 million bpd until the end of March 2018 to help support prices and draw down inventories. Yet OPEC output hit a 2017 high of 33 million bpd in July, up 90,000 bpd from the previous month, a Reuters survey showed this week, led by a further recovery in supply from Libya, one of the countries exempt from the deal. Ample supply is likely to keep a lid on prices, many analysts said. "Our view of the oil market is that a major rally is unlikely in 2017," National Australia Bank analysts said in a note. "Absent further production cuts or a sustained uptick in demand, prices are likely to remain in the low to mid $50s for the remainder of the year." There are signs that the oil industry has adapted to an era of low prices and can produce and operate at levels that would previously have been uneconomic. U.S. investment bank Goldman Sachs said this week the oil industry had successfully adapted to oil prices around $50 per barrel. By now the foreign policy resolution from the Kootenai County Republican Central Committee has probably achieved notoriety rivaling Lewis Carols famous novel. As a progressive, the statements that flow from the Republican Party have often defied common sense for me, but lately things seem to be getting curiouser and curiouser almost daily. This time Kootenai Republicans condemned Idahos federal representatives for increasing sanctions on Russia for interfering in our 2016 election. The Kootenai GOP Bureaucracys (KGBs?) resolution this week seriously disoriented me. It would be so nice if something made sense for a change. Remember this is Idaho, the most conservative state in America. You remember conservatism? Our ultimate shield against the relentless Russian threat? Better dead than red? Off with their heads! Somehow Kootenai Republicans decided our Congress and Senate unfairly disciplined our presidents new well-meaning best friend, Russia. Thats the same Russia that: hacked our election and meddles across Europe; invaded and annexed Crimea and Georgia; is working to destabilize and overpower the Ukraine; bombed the freedom fighters in Syria; blackmails Europe over petroleum and natural gas; continues to strong-arm Poland, Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania; denied orphans access to adoption; perfected the modern concept of oligarchic kleptocracy; is the worlds money launderer via its criminal banks and oligarchic enterprises. The globalist over-reach noted above was apparently insufficient to register with the Kootenai Republicans learned 20 (of 38), whose resolution instead chastened the U.S. Congress and Senate to adopt an anti-globalist, America-first foreign policy orientation. It sounded an excellent plan, no doubt, and very simply and neatly arranged; the only difficulty was, that they had not the smallest idea how to set about it. It wasnt clear what place Kootenais learned 20 perceived our current foreign policy prioritized America. Second? Seventh? Ninety-ninth? Perhaps the K-20 will specifically clarify that. Or maybe Im just blind to our leaders lack of devotion. But I nearly forgot. You must close your eyes, otherwise you wont see anything. When I read Betsy Russells stellar reporting of this Republican resolution I thought this must be impossible. I have to admit, though, Republicans often challenge Democrats and progressives to believe impossible things. Why sometimes weve been expected to believe six impossible things before breakfast! Only two Senators and three Congressmen of 535 voted against increasing sanctions on Russia. Thats something nearly impossible these days that was a comfort to witness. Bjorn Handeen, the K-20 resolutions sponsor, lamented that he and others of like mind missed the boat on opposing the Iraq War, and that largely prompted his and the K-20s current indignation. Lets clarify what I think that means in non-historical-revisionist dialect. When the drumbeat for the Iraq War against the country that didnt attack us was at its loudest, Republicans like Handeen relentlessly impugned the wisdom and patriotism of those voices opposing war. That choice ultimately destabilized not only the Middle East but the entire world. Many scholars have judged it the worst foreign policy decision in modern history. So, let me dare to question the wisdom of a right-wing Idaho real-estate agent regarding foreign policy, even if he does patronize antiwar-com (Handeens favorite blog which required annotating in Russells story for anyone to recognize). Mr. Handeen asserted, Its traditionally understood that sanctions are the first step towards war. Im willing to bet that the 500-plus congressmen and senators who voted for the sanctions would be quick to correct him on that. Invading neighbors, hacking elections, enabling international criminality via money laundering, propping up despots, breaking weapons agreements, making pawns of orphans those are the first steps toward war. Sanctions are cages built to restrain the dogs of war. When it comes to preventing war it is better to be feared than loved. It may hurt the feelings of Kootenai Republicans who backed this so-called anti-globalist resolution to be informed it will have absolutely no impact whatsoever on Sens. Rischs or Crapos voting. But everythings got a moral, if only you can find it. This experience may help them develop empathy for Idahoans that are routinely ignored by their Republican elected officials regarding existential issues affecting them every day of their lives issues like earning a living wage, access to health care, avoiding bankruptcy, 21st century educations for our youth, protecting voting rights, safeguarding water quality, encouraging and facilitating renewable energy development, ending Idahos war on womens rights, religious exemptions for child neglect, protecting access to public lands, etc. Sadly, the list is huge. As you might recall Alice also had an experience with tea party thinking, reminiscent of the K-20s grandiose resolution-making. Remember the passage? Take some more tea, the March Hare said to Alice, very earnestly. Ive had nothing yet, Alice replied in an offended tone, so I cant take more. You mean you cant take less, said the Hatter: Its very easy to take more than nothing. The K-20s resolution amounts to less than nothing. What they very successfully accomplished was to generate yet another national story that makes a laughing stock of Idaho and discourages recruitment of desireable industries, businesses and employees from settling here. Idaho has an entire warren of its own rabbit holes to find its way out of. We dont need Kootenai Countys upside-down-arm-chair foreign policy gurus digging more of them for us to fall into. Ashgabat, Turkmenistan, Aug. 3 By Huseyn Hasanov Trend: Turkmenistans President Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov received President of Turkeys Union of Chambers and Commodity Exchanges Rifat Hisarciklioglu, the Turkmen government said in a message. During the meeting, the two sides exchanged views on current issues of the Turkmen-Turkish cooperation. Hisarciklioglu reaffirmed the readiness of Turkish business circles to continue taking an active part in the implementation of the large-scale reform programs and infrastructure projects carried out in Turkmenistan. The agreements reached at the highest levels, the established solid regulatory and legal basis, as well as the ties of friendship, historical and cultural affinity uniting the people of Turkmenistan and Turkey make a solid foundation for effective cooperation between the two countries, says the message. In this context, it was noted that there are favorable prospects for expanding the range of bilateral trade turnover, stimulating investment activity, and implementing new joint projects. The Turkmen-Turkish intergovernmental commission and the joint business council, as well as exhibitions and business forums held on a regular basis are playing a significant role in amplification and diversification of the productive contacts. Turkish companies are implementing large-scale projects in Turkmenistan in such spheres as transportation, communications, agriculture, construction, trade, water resources management and others. Currently, about 600 enterprises with participation of Turkish capital operate in Turkmenistan. Ashgabat, Turkmenistan, Aug. 3 By Huseyn Hasanov Trend: The friendly cooperation between the Republic of Korea (South Korea) and Turkmenistan will continue to expand, reassuringly said South Korean President Moon Jae-in in his letter to the Turkmen President Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov sent on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between the two countries. Moon Jae-in noted that during his presidency, he will make every effort to develop a mutually beneficial partnership between South Korea and Turkmenistan. I wish you robust health and happiness, as well as further progress and prosperity for Turkmenistan, added the South Korean President. Seoul counts on partnership with Turkmenistan in such areas as the development of gas fields, creation of petrochemical and gas infrastructures and modernization of the industry. At the current stage, South Koreas LG and Hyundai, in cooperation with Japans TOYO, are building a gas-chemical complex for the production of polyethylene and polypropylene in the Kiyanli settlement (near the Turkmen coast of the Caspian Sea). The projects total cost is more than $3.4 billion. The gas-chemical complex is planned to be commissioned in September 2018. The plant is designed to process five billion cubic meters of gas and produce 386,000 tons of polyethylene and 81,000 tons of polypropylene per year. Ashgabat and Seoul pay especial attention to the issues of cooperation in the transportation sphere in the context of development of the transit and logistics infrastructure along the East-West and North-South lines, with access to European and Middle Eastern markets. The project will include transit corridors accessing the regions of the Caspian Sea, Black Sea basin, and the Baltic Sea. According to the Turkmeni data, the trade turnover of Turkmenistan and South Korea rose from $200 million to almost $2 billion in recent years. Tashkent, Uzbekistan, Aug. 3 By Demir Azizov Trend: Uzbekistans delegation led by Chairman of the Senate (upper house of the Uzbek parliament) Nigmatulla Yuldashev will take part in the inauguration ceremony of Irans President Hassan Rouhani, the Uzbek Foreign Ministrys press service said in a message. The solemn inauguration ceremony of the re-elected Iranian President Hassan Rouhani will be held on Aug. 5. For the first time, Rouhani became the President of Iran in August of 2013. During the elections held on May 19, 2017, he was re-elected for a second four-year term. He garnered 57 percent of the votes in the election, with a turnout of 73 percent of the electorate. It was previously reported that Uzbekistans President Shavkat Mirziyoyev congratulated Hassan Rouhani on the occasion of his victory in the election and becoming Irans President for the next term. Iran is among ten leading economic partners of Uzbekistan. More than 120 joint Iranian-Uzbek companies are operating in Uzbekistan, 20 of which were created with 100-percent participation of Iranian capital. The activities of these companies cover the production of consumer goods, textile, agricultural products and carpets, as well as the provision of services, technology development and import-export operations. In August of 2014, governments of Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Iran and Oman signed a memorandum on the implementation of the agreement related to the creation of the Central Asia - Persian Gulf transportation corridor. Baku, Azerbaijan, Aug 2 By Farhad Daneshvar Trend: An Iranian stockbroker has forecasted that the formation of the countrys new administration would contribute to a better performance of the Tehran Stock Exchange (TSE). Hossein Khezli Kharazi, CEO of Iran's Bank Keshavarzi Securities Company, told Trend that, TSE would experience a steady growth over the second half of the current Iranian calendar year (23 August-21 March), as a result of the formation of President Hassan Rouhanis second government. The CEO further added that, TSE listed petrochemical and steel companies have demonstrated a relatively good performance over the past weeks. Elaborating on the surge of the petrochemicals stocks, he said that providing more transparency in the financial and accounting statements of the petrochemical companies have caused a surge in the petrochemical stocks. He also cited the global hike in the prices of minerals and steel products as a reason behind the growth in shares of the steel companies. Tehran-based investment company Turquoise Partners earlier suggested that TSE recorded its strongest gains over one week since mid-December 2016 with the All-Share Index advancing 1.7 percent to close at 81,509. Metal and mining companies were in demand for a second week as Base Metal (+11.4%) and Metallic Ore (+10.8%) became the top performing major sectors. The inauguration ceremony of Hassan Rouhani is scheduled to take place on August 5, as Iranians re-elected him as President in the countrys Presidential election in May, 2017. Following the swearing-in ceremony, the President will have two weeks to submit his new cabinet to the parliament for a vote of confidence. Baku, Azerbaijan, Aug. 3 By Khalid Kazimov Trend: The Islamic Republic of Iran exported 619,343 tons of metal products through 20 ports across the country over the last Iranian calendar month (June 22-July 23). According to the latest data available on the website of Irans Ports and Maritime Organization, the country loaded and unloaded 781,761 tons of metal products at its ports in the one-month period, indicating a 9.08 percent increase year-on-year. In the meantime, the country imported 162,418 tons of metal products through the organizations ports. Iranian ports saw loading and unloading of a total of 12.63 million tons of various goods and commodities, including oil and food products in the mentioned period. A senior Iranian nuclear negotiator says the signing of fresh anti-Iran sanctions by US President Donald Trump is an attempt to destroy the country's nuclear deal with world powers, Press TV reported. Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister for Legal and International Affairs Abbas Araghchi made the announcement on Wednesday, shortly after Trump signed into law a bill by Congress that imposes new sanctions against Russia, Iran and North Korea. Iran and the P5+1 group of countries -- the US, the UK, France, Russia, and China plus Germany -- inked the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) in July 2015. It lifted nuclear related sanctions on Iran, which, in turn, put certain limits on its nuclear work. The United Nations nuclear watchdog has invariably certified Irans commitment to its contractual obligations since January 2016, when the deal took effect. The US, however, has prevented the deal from fully yielding. Washington has refused to offer global financial institutions the guarantees that they would not be hit by American punitive measures for transactions with Iran. The US main goal for imposing the sanctions against Iran is to destroy the JCPOA and we will react very intelligently to these measures, said Araghchi. Noting that Trumps move was predictable as Congress had almost unanimously voted for the new sanctions, Araghchi stressed that it showed the US believes the JCPOA has empowered Iran in the region. Based on this perspective, the general belief in Washington is that this situation must be reversed and Iran must be put under pressure, he said, adding that the nuclear deal is a hindrance for such measures. He noted that imposing fresh sanctions on Iran is an attempt to reduce Tehrans benefits from the nuclear accord and to negatively affect its "successful implementation." The senior Iranian official also said that in a committee chaired by Iranian President Hassan Rouhani several decisions were made over reactions towards Washingtons provocative measures, which will be duly handed over to the Iranian Foreign Ministry and the International Atomic Energy Agency. On Monday, the committee for monitoring the implementation of the JCPOA had a meeting in which all aspects of the new measures were discussed and very intelligent responses were designed, he added. Tehran, Iran, Aug 3 By Farhad Daneshvar, Mehdi Sepahvand Trend: Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has said that the Islamic Republic remains strong in political, security and economic spheres despite the enemies hostile approaches and existing sanctions. The Iranian nation nowadays knows how to deal with the enemies tricks We have no fears about the enemies, said the Supreme Leader, addressing participants of the ceremony for endorsement of the President Hassan Rouhais second term in Tehran. Ayatollah Khamenei urged the government to deal with the countrys economic difficulties and sustenance, to expand the countrys ties with the world and to stand against all arrogant countries, in particular the U.S. Supreme Leader advised President Hassan Rouhani to make a priority of the countrys expenditure problems and take planned actions regarding the countrys economic issues, to protect the unity amongst the nation and refrain from creating domestic tensions. He told the government officials to remain vigilant about the enemies plots to topple the Islamic System. Khamenei further criticized the westerners over their concerns about Irans recent rocket test, describing the rocket launch as a scientific issue. Supreme Leader officially endorsed centralist cleric Hassan Rouhani as the President of Iran for the second term on Thursday. Public inauguration of the President Hassan Rouhani will be held on Aug 5 at the Iranian Parliament. Baku, Azerbaijan, Aug. 3 By Farhad Daneshvar Trend: Recent exchange of handshakes between Iranian and Saudi chief diplomats is a demonstration of the interest in normalizing ties between regional rivals; nonetheless, to safeguard the regional stability both sides need to reach a mutual understanding, said a US-based expert. Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif and his Saudi counterpart Adel al-Jubeir shook hands on the sidelines of the Organization of Islamic Cooperations (OIC) meeting in Turkey on Tuesday. This move could be interpreted as an improvement in the disputed ties between Tehran and Riyadh. The handshake has symbolic importance and indicates that two regional rivals are interested to start a dialogue on reduction of the dangerous levels of tension between them, Mohsen Milani, Executive Director at USF World Center for Strategic & Diplomatic Studies, and Professor of School of Interdisciplinary Global Studies at the University of South Florida told Trend. Even so, much more than a handshake is needed to normalize Saudi-Iranian relations. Recent trip of Muqtada al-Sadr, Iraqi Shia cleric, to Saudi Arabia and his meeting with Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman, as well as the reported invitation of Amman al-Hakim, Shia leader of the National Wisdom Movement of Iraq, to visit Saudi Arabia are positive baby steps towards reducing sectarian tensions in the region, he added. Prominent Iraqi Shia leader Muqtada al-Sadr had arrived in the Saudi port city of Jeddah on Sunday. Sadr had planed to confer with several officials of the Saudi Kingdom, fueling speculations about the purposes of the visit. Both Sadr and Hakim are close friends of Tehran and support reconciliation between Saudi Arabia and Iran. Unless Iran and Saudi Arabia reach an understanding about the ongoing conflicts in the region, regional stability would remain a mirage, Mohsen Milani concluded. Nevertheless, a group of Iranian commentators still deny that the body language of Zarif and Adel al-Jubeir, as well as the recent visit by Muqtada al-Sadr to Saudi Arabia, could be an indication of the improvement in the relationship. Baku, Azerbaijan, Aug. 3 By Emil Ilgar Trend: Eight presidents, 19 heads of parliaments, nine vice presidents or prime ministers, 11 foreign ministers and more than 40 representatives of governments will participated in Iranian President Hassan Rouhanis inauguration ceremony on Aug. 5. According to the state-run TV IRIB, Pope Francis special representative Alberto Ortega and head of the Presidium of the Supreme Peoples Assembly of North Korea Kim Yong Nam are among the ceremonys foreign guests. Kim Yong Nam was accompanied by the deputy foreign minister, and he was the first guest to arrive in Tehran for the ceremony, the report added. North Korean number-two officials visit to Tehran came a day after US president signed a bill, passed by Congress, to slap new sanctions on Iran, North Korea and Russia. Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei officially endorsed centralist cleric Hassan Rouhani as the President of Iran Aug. 2. Baku, Azerbaijan, Aug. 3 By Emil Ilgar Trend: Qatar has arrested three Iranian fishers two weeks after jailing three others for illegally entering its waters. Qatar seized a fishing vessel with three Iranian citizens on-board, Mohammad Radmehr, governor of Parsian city, told Mehr Aug. 3. On July 22, the head of a fishery organization in Irans Bushehr city announced that three fishers were arrested by Qatari coast guards near an oil platform in Qatari waters in the Persian Gulf. Radmehr said that Iran has started negotiations with Qatar to release the six fishers. Iran itself seized a fishing vessel and arrested five Saudi fishers in its waters on July 22, Tasnim had reported. Arresting Saudi fishers came three weeks after Riyadh released Iranian fishers after keeping them for a year in prison. Baku, Azerbaijan, Aug. 3 By Kamila Aliyeva Trend: Turkmenistan is interested in supplying gas to European consumers and, today, Trans-Caspian gas pipeline project has better conditions for implementation than ever before, a Senior Fellow at Central Asia-Caucasus Institute Mamuka Tsereteli told Trend. The expert noted three important elements which can ensure construction of the Trans-Caspian pipeline. These elements include available resources, demand that can support stable sales at commercially attractive terms for the producers and commercial champion, interested in developing infrastructure that could send those resources to the markets, he said. The first element exists in Turkmenistan, while the second one needs to be organized, so that the third element could emerge, according to Tsereteli. He further added that current opposition of the project shouldnt be taken seriously. Russia has long resisted such a pipeline based on the artificial arguments related to environmental concerns. With its own massive pipeline development in the Baltic and Black Seas, such an argument cannot be considered seriously anymore, the expert said. Russia has to listen to EUs serious message, that if Gazprom wants to sell more gas to Europe via Nord Stream 2 and Turkstream pipelines, it has to stop opposing to the Trans-Caspian pipeline, according to Tsereteli. Better conditions for the development of this project exist today. First of all, the pipeline could be connected to the infrastructure that connects Shah-Deniz field in Azerbaijan to Turkey and beyond to Europe, he said. The expert noted that the complimentary alternative is to build an extension from the existing South Caucasus Pipeline to the Black Sea, and beyond, connecting Georgia to Romania. The aggregate demand of Ukraine, Romania, Moldova, Hungary and other countries and availability of resources in the Caspian region support the development of such a pipeline. Producing, transiting and consuming countries should work together to create commercially attractive conditions for private sector companies to get involved. As follows, International Financial Institutions such as the World Bank/IFC, EBRD, EIB and ADB will be willing to support it, he added. The Trans-Caspian Gas Pipeline Project, which involves the construction of a 300-km pipeline along the bottom of the Caspian Sea to the coast of Azerbaijan, is considered to be the optimal solution for the delivery of Turkmen energy resources to the European market. Further, along the way, Turkmen gas can be transported through the existing pipelines to Turkey, which borders European countries. The project may be implemented as a part of the huge Southern Gas Corridor project, designed to transport gas from the Caspian region to European countries. Baku, Azerbaijan, Aug 3 By Kamila Aliyeva Trend: There is a clear shift in Uzbekistans attitude towards the construction of Tajikistans Rogun hydropower plant since the change of the countrys leadership, a Senior Fellow at Central Asia-Caucasus Institute Mamuka Tsereteli told Trend. Uzbekistan is no longer publicly resisting the project, and several statements of Uzbek officials indicate that they are willing to deal with the issue within the internationally accepted rules, the expert said. He noted that generally there is a positive change towards more openness of Uzbekistan towards regional cooperation. Uzbek President Shavkat Mirziyoyev has indicated, that improvement of relationships with neighbors is a priority and his Foreign Minister Abdulaziz Kamilov confirmed this priority on multiple occasions, Tsereteli said. He pointed out that Kamilov's recent statement on Rogun dam is the best representation of the evolution of the countrys official position. In his recent statement Kamilov stressed that during the construction of such plants, the interests of both upstream and downstream countries should be considered, according to the expert. At the same time, Uzbek Foreign Minister didnt say the construction should be stopped, but noted that the guarantees under the conventions signed earlier, should be complied with, Tsereteli added. The Rogun hydropower plant construction project was developed during the Soviet era. Construction of the plant was initiated in 1976, but stopped after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Baku, Azerbaijan, Aug. 3 By Kamila Aliyeva Trend: The tensions between the US and Russia continue to increase, Turgut Kerem Tuncel, a senior analyst on the South Caucasus at the Center for Eurasian Studies, told Trend. The increasing NATO deployment in the Baltics and Eastern Europe along Russias borders and Russias and Chinas accelerated armament efforts accompanied by the hardening rhetoric of the sides are the apparent signs of this rapidly maturing political context, he said. Therefore, US Vice President Mike Pences affirmative statement about Georgias accession to the NATO should be evaluated within this framework, according to the expert. Although the political situation in the Eurasian region is already tense, this statement would not be a major factor unless the US and NATO take concrete steps, which is not quite likely in the meantime, Tuncel believes. Certainly, US vice presidents words should be taken seriously and assessed accordingly. However, one may justifiably ask whether NATO has the required determination and ability to integrate Georgia into its framework, he said. The expert noted that this statement also demonstrates some level of inconsistency as Pence said that the US supports Georgias sovereignty and territorial integrity and condemned Russias occupation of Georgian territory. Tuncel quoted Pence who said, the United States supports Georgia's sovereignty and territorial integrity within its internationally recognized borders and the US will object to any claim at any time by any nation that undermines this enduring principle. It remains inapprehensible, however, as to how the US administration does not hold the same principle with respect to Armenias occupation of Nagorno-Karabakh and the surrounding regions, which are a part of Azerbaijans internationally recognized territory, said Tuncel. Armenia has not only been occupying the internationally recognized territory of Azerbaijan, but it is also the major outpost of Russia in the region housing the Russian 102nd military base and the Russian 3624th airbase on its soil. Moreover, in July 2017 Armenia ratified the formation of a joint Russian-Armenian military force in Armenia, he said. As such, it seems that the US is not only in pains to formulate a consistent strategy, it is also in the loosing ground in terms of persuasiveness, the expert noted. US Vice President Mike Pence reassured his countrys strong support for Georgias ambition to join NATO at a meeting with Georgian Prime Minister Giorgi Kvirikashvili in Tbilisi on August 1. In April 2008, at the summit of NATO member countries in Bucharest, it was confirmed that Georgia may become a NATO member in the future if it meets NATO standards. Baku, Azerbaijan, Aug. 3 By Elmira Tariverdiyeva Trend: After getting acquainted with some recent events and statements, it seems that the US is asking the price of Armenia, trying to reduce not only Russias political but also financial influence on Yerevan. As the Russia-US relations are not so good today, while the Armenia-NATO and the Armenia-West relations, on the contrary, are flourishing, Moscow seems to have something to worry about. The Armenia-US economic relations have great potential, former US ambassador to Armenia John Heffern has recently said. Heffern said that instead of humanitarian aid, the US intends to develop the trade and economic relations with Armenia, Voice of America reported. The former US ambassador also added that the US-Armenia trade and investment framework agreement, signed in May 2015, has been already facilitating the development of trade and economic relations between the two countries. It is clear that there is no real potential for the US relations with a small and poor Armenia. However, it seems that the West has recently decided to outbid Armenia as Yerevan's relations with Moscow have recently cracked. The fact that Armenia is dealing with NATO behind Moscow's back became evident after the trainings in Romania, which Moscow perceived negatively. Moscow regards holding of such large exercises as a deliberate attempt to influence the geopolitical situation in the region. The participation of the main ally in the South Caucasus in those trainings testifies to the disorder in the Russia-Armenia relations. Moreover, the US officials also send unambiguous messages to Yerevan, promising it treasure if it escapes the influence of Moscow. US Ambassador to Armenia Richard Mills urged Yerevan in late July to make its own decisions concerning the countrys national interests. Armenia may have strong defense ties with both the US and Russia, but it is important for Armenia to make its own decisions on these issues, Mills told reporters. Mills's statement was made immediately after Russian President Vladimir Putin signed the law on ratification of the agreement on combined group of forces with Armenia. The US plans to beat Russia in the energy field, which is strategically important for Armenia, which has no own energy resources. The US and Western countries, realizing that they have missed a lot on the Armenian energy market, which makes it politically and economically even more loyal to Russia, are now trying to make Yerevan an offer from which it will be unable to refuse. The promises were made at a renewable energy conference in Yerevan, which was attended by seven US companies in May 2017, that the US companies are ready to invest up to $8 billion in Armenias power engineering, Mills said at the conference. As a condition for investment, Mills mentioned appropriate guarantees from the government. One can guess about the guarantees. Today 82 percent of Armenias power engineering belongs to Russia, namely, the leading energy enterprises - Gazprom-Armenia, Hrazdan Thermal Power Plant, Electric Networks of Armenia, Sevan-Hrazdan Cascade including 7 HPPs. The US and the West are displeased with such a situation as it is very convenient to manipulate Yerevan due to its dependence on energy. However, will Russia agree to sell its outpost in the South Caucasus? Will Russia continue to invest money in the energy sector to eclipse the US tempting offers? Lazio Region presented the book Green Economy of Lazio - Expo Astana 2017 at the National Library in Astana, published in collaboration with Teti Editore, Agenzia Nova reported. The book aims to collect and show the most innovative technologies and policies in relation to energy efficiency and the reduction of CO2 emissions. The presentation was one of the last events hosted by Lazios mission at Expo Astana 2017. Among the partecipants of the book presentation were Stefano Ravagnan, the Italian ambassador in Kazakhstan; Daniele Leodori, President of Lazio Region Council, and Quirino Briganti, Lazio Region Coordinator at Expo Astana 2017. Ambassador Ravagnan praised Lazios mission to Kazakhstan: Lazio will leave a positive mark at Expo Astana 2017, due to the various initiatives held during the event. Ravagnan also underlined the importance of publishing a book focused on Lazios policies on green economy. According to Briganti, in an era of deep economic, social and cultural contradictions, looking at the future dictates the ability of making strategic choices. Lazio accepted such a challenge, as the Astanas experience shows, and going green constitutes a new and more responsible development, based on innovation and environmental compatibility, said Briganti. Green economy represents the path that every country has to follow towards a sustainable future, said Leodori, as our planets resourches are limited. In such a context, Lazio embarked upon this challenge, looking at the research, technological and innovation sector, continued Leodori. Lazio is an important cultural and research hub, as its territory hosts ten public and private universities, while also being home for the Cnr (Consiglio nazionale delle ricerche- National Research Council) Enea (Italian National Agency for New Technologies, Energy and Sustainable Economic Development) and the national laboratories of Frascati, under the National institute for Nuclear Physics, as Leodori stated. The book Green Economy of Lazio - Expo Astana 2017 aims to enhance Lazios presence in Kazakhstan. The volume focuses on regional companies working on green economy and the research and innovation experiences tied to renewable energy, as Lazio is one of the most important region in Europe when it comes to high-tech and research centres. Lazios efforts in this sector aim to develop sustainable solutions for the environment and to protect the natural and cultural heritage of the region. Written in Italian, English and Russian, the book also covers economic and geopolitical issues related to Kazakhstan and Central Asia. Lazio Region hosted a conference to present its cultural and technological excellences at Expo Astana 2017, Agenzia Nova reported. The conference, held at the Italian Pavillion of Expo Astana 2017, showed Lazios art cities, natural oases, archaeological parks and hundreds of miles of coastline overlooking the Tyrrhenian Sea. Lazio is not just Rome, the Italian ambassador in Astana, Stefano Ravagnan, said in its opening remarks, highlighting the presence of many regional touristic attractions. Ravagnan also recalled tomorrows book presentation about Lazios contribution to green economy. The event will be held at the National Library in Astana. Lazio participates at Expo Astana 2017 in order to promote its research network and enhance the ties between regional companies and their Kazakh counterparts, said Quirino Briganti, Lazio Region Coordinator at Expo Astana 2017. This is the reason why Lazio promoted various initiatives to value its high-level scientific research activities and a programme to create ties between Italian and Kazakh companies. According to Angelo Tuccillo, Responsible Scientific Research Centre Enea (Italian National Agency for New Technology Energy and Sustainable Economic Development), Lazio plays a fundamental role on high-tech research, due to the dense network of universities and research centers in the region. Lazio is at the heart of the scientific research sector in italy, Tuccillo explained. In its closing remarks, Daniele Leodori, President of Lazio Region Council, underlined Lazios participation at Expo Astana 2017 for its contribution to the issue of green economy and the promotion of the regional territory. Other then Rome, Lazios territory is mainly unknown, said Leodori. Regional institutions need to promote Lazios natural and cultural heritage; this applies also to Kazakhstan, which is characterized by the presence of a young and rapidly growing capital city, such as Astana. Baku, Azerbaijan, Aug. 3 By Kamila Aliyeva Trend: It is doubtful to suppose that Georgia will get into the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in the near future, Mark Galeotti, a senior research fellow at the Institute of International Relations Prague, told Trend. He says many European members of NATO have serious doubts on this issue. These doubts are not about Georgia's progress in reforming to meet NATO requirements, but about whether it is practical to extend the Alliance's security guarantees to a small country far away from Europe, of which Russia already virtually occupies a fifth, Galeotti said. US Vice President Mike Pence reassured his countrys strong support for Georgias ambition to join NATO at a meeting with Georgian Prime Minister Giorgi Kvirikashvili in Tbilisi on August 1. In April 2008, at the summit of NATO member countries in Bucharest, it was confirmed that Georgia may become a NATO member in the future if it meets NATO standards. Currently, there are no Russian military specialists serving in Libya as well as no people from Russia or other post-Soviet countries fighting alongside militants, Lev Dengov, the head of the Russian contact group on intra-Libyan settlement, said on Thursday, Sputnik reported. "There are no Russian military specialists in Libya. All talks and publications on the matter are not true," Dengov told Russia's Kommersant newspaper. Dengov added that the contact group was created at the initiative of the Russian Foreign Ministry and the lower house of the Russian parliament and was supervised by Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov and State Duma member Adam Delimkhanov. Its task is to analyze the situation in Libya, identify key actors and players and engage in dialogue with all parties to the conflict. The contact group's leader also pointed out that there were no people from Russia or other former Soviet states fighting in the country alongside militants. "I met with a representative of the Libyan committee for state security who said that today there were no people coming from Russia and other countries of the former Soviet Union," Dengov noted. Libya has been in a state of civil war since its longtime leader Muammar Gaddafi was overthrown in 2011. The UN-backed Government of National Accord operates in the country's west and is headquartered in Tripoli. The eastern part of the country is governed by its parliament, with headquarters in the city of Tobruk. The parliament is backed by the Libyan National Army headed by Khalifa Haftar. By Paul Sandle LONDON (Reuters) - BAE Systems' (BAES.L) new boss Charles Woodburn aims to sharpen operations and make parts of the defence group work more closely together but said on Wednesday after announcing a rise in first-half profits that there was no reason to change overall strategy. The world's third largest defence contractor, whose products include the Typhoon Eurofighter jet and Astute-class nuclear-powered submarines, reported a better than expected 11 percent rise in half-year core profits to 945 million pounds and said it was on track to meet its full-year target. "It's clear that we have the right strategy that harnesses our strengths, so we will continue to stay the course," he said. "It's very much a case of evolution not revolution. It's a good strategy bolstered by the macro environment we now operate in." Group sales were up 4 percent at 9.6 billion pounds on a constant currency basis in the first six months of 2017, while earnings per share were up 14 percent at 19.8 pence, beating analysts' forecasts for sales of 9.1 billion pounds and earnings of 19 pence a share. The interim dividend was increased to 8.8 pence a share, from 8.6 pence last time. Woodburn, a former oil industry executive who spent 15 years at Schlumberger (SLB.N), said he had taken a "good hard look" at BAE in the 15 months he spent as chief operating officer before taking over from Ian King as CEO in July. The Cambridge University electrical engineering graduate said BAE expected to benefit from governments spending more on defence in some of its biggest markets, but it could still do more to improve efficiency. "We will do that by continuing to be focussed on our costs as well as bringing together the power of the group more effectively, collaborating to the benefit of our customers," he said. He pointed to work by business units in Australia and the United States on the Land 400 combat vehicle project in Australia as an example of successful collaboration. Story continues BAE's largest markets are Britain and the United States, and it also has substantial operations in Saudi Arabia, India and Australia. It has long been expecting a major follow-on Typhoon order from Saudi Arabia but Woodburn declined to comment on the prospects on Wednesday. "I am certainly not going to speculate on Typhoon, other than to say we are confident we will get future Typhoon orders in the portfolio," he told reporters. BAE's shares, which have risen 14.6 percent in the last year against a 11.5 percent rise for the FTSE 100 , were down 1 percent at 600 pence at 1152 GMT. The stock has been boosted by the prospect of an increase in the U.S. defence budget, although Woodburn cautioned that any benefit would not be felt for some time in BAE. "It takes time for these things to filter through," he said. "We are not expecting further uptick in the immediate future, but in the medium term I think it does look positive." As a result Jefferies analyst Sandy Morris, who has a 'hold' rating on the shares, said he remained cautious about the company's current growth prospects. "The key question is whether BAE is gaining momentum heading into FY18 we are not sure of that," he said in a note. "While BAE's outlook in the USA is probably positive, that in the UK and Saudi Arabia is arguably not, so we end up with a tie. Unless the world gets scarier still, BAE's overall progress may remain sedate." The company confirmed its forecast for underlying earnings per share this year to be 5-10 percent higher than the 40.3 pence it made in 2016. It said that although there had been no change to its earnings forecast for the overall group, it had seen a deterioration in the performance of its cyber security business. As a result it said it was restructuring the Cyber & Intelligence unit, which accounts for 3 percent of group sales and made a loss of 27 million pounds in the first half, despite achieving double-digit sales growth. "What is key for us is to make sure that we translate this double-digit growth into sustainable, profitable growth going forward," Woodburn said. (Editing by Kate Holton, Greg Mahlich) donald trump President Donald Trump has repeatedly threatened to cut off a key subsidy for health insurers, a move experts say could cause Obamacare markets to explode. A court ruled that states could intervene in a court case to keep the payments funded. This doesn't mean Trump can't end the payments, but it makes it harder for him to do so and would put blame for any fallout squarely on his shoulders, experts say. It became harder Monday night for President Donald Trump to help engineer the collapse of the Affordable Care Act. A federal court ruled that attorneys general in 17 states and the District of Columbia would be allowed to intervene in a case over crucial subsidies known as cost-sharing-reduction payments. Health-policy experts and insurance companies often cite uncertainty over the payments as the biggest danger to the short-term future of the individual insurance markets established by the ACA, the healthcare law better known as Obamacare. The CSR payments help reimburse insurers for providing plans with low deductibles and low out-of-pocket costs for poorer Americans on the exchanges. Over the past few months, a slew of insurers and state insurance commissions reported that without the payments, premiums on the exchanges would increase substantially in 2018. Under Obamacare, the payments came through an executive-branch order. The unusual appropriation became the subject of a lawsuit between the Republican-controlled House and the Obama administration, with the health and human services secretary as the defendant. In 2016 a judge ruled in favor of the House, saying the CSR payments were illegal because Congress did not appropriate them. The Obama administration filed an appeal of that decision. Trump and his team can decide whether to continue that appeal; pulling it would effectively cut off CSR payments unless Congress were to appropriate the funds. But on Monday, the court ruled that the 17 states and DC could intervene and continue the appeal. The court's ruling said ending the payments would be damaging to the states' citizens. Story continues Nicholas Bagley, a professor of health law at the University of Michigan, wrote on the Incidental Economist blog that this decision by the court made it harder for the Trump administration to cut off the CSR payments. "If the Trump administration wanted to stop making cost-sharing payments, the easiest way to do so would be to dismiss the appeal," Bagley said. "The lower court entered an injunction to stop those payments, but put its injunction on hold to allow for an appeal. If Trump were to order the appeal's dismissal, the injunction would spring into force, and the payments would end." "Now the states can keep the appeal alive, even if Trump wants to get rid of it," he added. Bagley said a key element of the case as with some court decisions surrounding the administration's travel ban was Trump's own statements. Trump's tweets threatening to cut off the payments supported the idea that the states faced enough danger that they deserved to take up the case. "The States have filed within a reasonable time from when their doubts about adequate representation arose due to accumulating public statements by high-level officials both about a potential change in position and the Department's joinder with the House in an effort to terminate the appeal," the court's decision said. Bagley and Timothy Jost, a professor at the Washington and Lee University School of Law who supports the ACA, suggested the decision didn't mean Trump couldn't still try to end the payments. But the two agreed that ending the appeal would no longer be a definitive deathblow to the payments. "The decision does not mean that the Trump administration is barred from ending the cost-sharing reduction payments," Jost wrote at Health Affairs. "It does mean, however, that the administration cannot unilaterally stop the CSR payments, dismiss the appeal, and claim judicial imprimatur for its doing so." Trump could instruct the Justice Department to announce that it no longer thinks the payments are legal, according to Bagley, but any chaos caused by the move would fall squarely on his shoulders. For more news videos visit Yahoo View, available now on iOS and Android. NOW WATCH:5 of the best memes from Trump's trip to the G20 Summit More From Business Insider Amazon is today attempting to fill its 50,000 empty vacancies by hiring people on the spot in some of the U.S. cities that host their largest operation hubs. They announced last weekend that they would host job fairs in places like Baltimore, Maryland and Buffalo, New York for full-time and part-time jobs in their fulfilment centres. From 8.a.m to noon, Amazon will tour prospective employees around the warehouse facilities, interview them for the roles available, and, if successful, offer them the job on the spot. Twenty percent, around 10,000, of the jobs will be part-time and the rest full-time. The jobs on offer involve picking, packing and shipping of Amazons products. For more news videos visit Yahoo View, available on iOS and Android. The participating centers are: Baltimore, Md.; Chattanooga, Tenn.; Etna, Ohio.; Fall River, Mass.; Hebron, Ky.; Kenosha, Wis.; Kent, Wash.; Robbinsville, N.J.; Romeoville, Ill.; Whitestown, Ind.; Buffalo, N.Y. (part-time work only); Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, Okla. (part-time work only). If you are interested you will need to know, as previously reported by TIME: The full-time positions include medical benefits starting and some tuition pre-payment. Part-time positions include medical benefits that begin after 90 days and tuition pre-payment. Candidates must bring identification. They must also wear flat, closed-toe and closed-heel shoes. Long hair must be tied up and beards must be trimmed to three inches (or netted). Extraneous jewelry, drawstrings, or anything that might pose a safety-risk wont be allowed. The mass-hiring, which Amazon is calling Amazon Jobs Day, seems to be part of the companys push to hire an extra 100,000 workers by the middle of 2018. Amazon is also hoping to employ software engineers, data scientists, and customer service workers. For details on individual job fairs, visit this link. By Sarah Netter Katherine Accetturas first apartment was awash in crisp, clean white. White cabinets in the kitchen. White flooring in the kitchen. All the carpeting was white, she said. Maybe not the most practical color scheme, but that didnt matter to her. In my mind, said Accettura, it was so cool. Accettura, now 31, is the blogger behind the popular lifestyle and food website Lily the Wandering Gypsy. She credits that first apartment with launching her into a new phase of her lifein which she learned what it really meant to be on her own. At the time, Accettura was in college, studying graphic design and marketing, and her boyfriend was into photography and photojournalism. They combined their shared passion to take classes in studio photography, which planted the seed that would grow into her blog. And then they combined the places they called home into one Springfield, Illinois, apartment. Accettura and her boyfriend have since moved to Carbondale, Illinois, where they live in a rented house with their two beloved dogs. While they love having a bigger space all to themselves, Accettura always thinks fondly of her first apartment. Who were you when you rented your first apartment? I was 19 years old. I met my current boyfriend. At the time we were almost done with our associates [degree] so I didnt really know what I was doing, or what my future held. Did moving into your first apartment make you feel like an adult? Yes, actually it did. I finally got to streamline everything, have everything in one place. To always be heading off to school or work from the same place every day was just great. I loved it. Having actual responsibilities, having to purchase your groceries on your ownno food being made for you. Youre coming home and having to figure that out. You have to keep your space clean. Mom normally cleaned the bathroom and the kitchen for us. And then Im starting to take on adult responsibilities. Thats one of the things I didnt realizehow many things you have to do to keep up a household or an apartment, to keep it presentable. Story continues What surprised you the most about living in an apartment? I absolutely loved having the freedom to not to have to say, Hey mom or dad Im going to work now Im going to school now I may be out a little later. I really enjoyed just being able to keep more of an adult schedule, being able to sleep in the same place every day. It really helped me normalize my schedule. It also gave me a place to be able entertain my friends. You get to spread out and entertain. Thats something I really didnt realize was going to be so great. Freedom! What did you learn about yourself? Id say the roommate aspect of things. I was living with my boyfriend, but we had a couple different roommates at the time come through. Having a roommate was interesting. Having to be considerate of their time and their schedule, their stuff in the bathroom, their stuff in the fridge. Describe your lowest point. It was really scary at first because, before this, I didnt have very many expenses. Now I have to feed myself. I had to pay for a lot more things. One scary thing was thinking you had to spend more money on your first place than you actually did. Extra expenses went to random things. When youre living at home everything is already there, provided for you. The other thing, too, when you have a group of young people living together, tensions can kind of get high, jealousy can arise, that kind of stuff. Now youre more or less living with people you dont know quite as well as your family, so you just never know. What advice would you give to your younger self? You have to set boundaries. You never know if they are going to clean the communal spaces like your kitchen, bathroom, living roomand rarely do they ever clean. So thats one thing that can cause unnecessary fights. Another thing would be to set rules right away about who does what tasks what day of the week. I would recommend to get renters insurance. It is something I think would have been important. Nothing specifically happened to me, but Ive had friends who have had break-ins, as well as items simply go missing from their homes or apartments, who have been absolutely devastated because they did not get renters insurance. The small cost of getting renters insurance makes up for the large amount of time and money that could be saved in case of anything happening. Any time you are trusting another person to share your home or apartment, its extremely important to look out for yourself and make sure youre covered in case of emergencies. Moving into your first apartment is a milestoneand savvy renters understand the need for renters insurance. Amica Insurance can help protect you financial future. Visit AmicaQuote.com today for more information about renters insurance from Amica Insurance. Sarah Netter is a Yahoo Storyteller. Her work has also appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post and ABC News. The Obama years were a great time for the gun business. But since the election of Donald Trump as president and the resulting decline in fears over increased gun regulation, sales in the industry have plummeted. On Thursday, shares of gunmaker Sturm, Ruger & Co. (RGR) were down as much as 9% after reporting results Wednesday afternoon that missed expectations. In the second quarter, sales for the company were down 22% against the same period last year while profits fell 53%. In its earnings release, Sturm, Ruger cited, among other factors weighing on results, Decreased overall consumer demand in 2017 due to stronger-than-normal demand during most of 2016, likely bolstered by the political campaigns for the November 2016 elections. The NRA endorsed Donald Trump for president, but the early days of the administration have still been tough for the gun business. Cabelas (CAB), an outdoors retailer which sells guns, was also down about 1% on Thursday after it reported second quarter retail store sales declined 6.7%. Since the fall election, we have continued to see a slowdown in firearms and shooting related categories, said Cabelas CEO Tommy Millner. Gunmakers celebrate when Democrats are in charge Back in 2015, for instance, gunmaker Smith & Wesson said, [W]e experienced strong consumer demand for our firearm products following a new administration taking office in Washington, D.C. in 2009. And as the gun control debate raged on in Washington, D.C., gun sales boomed in anticipation of a future in which it was more difficult to buy firearms. The Trump administration, however, has taken this political tailwind away from the industry as consumers no longer fear the government will come to take their guns. The National Rifle Association endorsed Trump for president. Shares of Sturm, Ruger have handily beaten the S&P 500 over the last decade. (Source: Yahoo Finance) In February 2016, Sturm, Ruger CEO Michael Fifer said, I think well see a step up in demand if a Democrat wins the election, particularly so if they win the Senate. Despite whether President Obama is successful in appointing a Supreme Court justice, its more than likely, based on age and health, that the next president will get several opportunities, and that could drive concerns about gun rights. Story continues At that point in the presidential campaign, youll recall, many expected Hillary Clinton would take the White House and that wed see a continuation of the debate over gun control and potentially an expansion of government regulations over gun ownership. And then Trump won the presidency Of course, Trumps election win has changed that behavior. The market immediately took Trumps win as a negative for Sturm, Ruger as well as shares of American Outdoor Brands (AOBC), which owns Smith & Wesson as we see in the chart below. After Trumps surprise election win, shares of gun stocks immediately sank and have not been enjoying the post-election stock market boom. (Source: Yahoo Finance) And with the gun industrys political tailwind dissipating in the Trump era, Fifer took to Sturm, Rugers earnings call in February to argue that theres never been a better time to be a gun owner. Youve got more concealed carry in more states, Fifer said. Youve got more new shooters coming along [] All that stuff drives demand. And in some municipalities, you have the cops backing off. Theyre being seen by the media too often as the enemy. And so, theyre backing off, and crime rates in those cities are soaring to the roof. Those people could care less whos President. They want to defend themselves. Myles Udland is a writer at Yahoo Finance. Follow him on Twitter @MylesUdland Read more from Myles here: A worker poses with a handful of nickel ore at the nickel mining factory of PT Vale Tbk, near Sorowako, Indonesia's Sulawesi island, January 8, 2014. REUTERS/Yusuf Ahmad/Files By Alister Doyle OSLO (Reuters) - Scientists searching for everything from oil and gas to copper and gold are adopting techniques used by companies such as Netflix or Amazon to sift through vast amounts of data, a study showed on Tuesday. The method has already helped to discover 10 carbon-bearing minerals and could be widely applied to exploration, they wrote in the journal American Mineralogist. "Big data points to new minerals, new deposits," they wrote of the findings. The technique goes beyond traditional geology by amassing data about how and where minerals have formed, for instance by the cooling of lava after volcanic eruptions. The data can then be used to help find other deposits. "Minerals occur on Earth in clusters," said Robert Hazen, executive director of the Deep Carbon Observatory at the Carnegie Institution for Science in Washington and an author of the study. "When you see minerals together it's very like the way that humans interact in social networks such as Facebook," he said. Hazen said the technique was also like Amazon, which recommends books based on a client's previous orders, or by media streaming company Netflix, which proposes movies based on a customer's past viewing habits. "They are using vast amounts of data and make correlations that you could never make," he told Reuters. Lead author Shaunna Morrison, also at the Deep Carbon Observatory and the Carnegie Institution, said luck often played a big role for geologists searching for new deposits. "We are looking at it in a much more systematic way," she said of the project. (https://mineralchallenge.net/) Among the 10 rare carbon-bearing minerals discovered by the project were abellaite and parisaite-(La). The minerals, whose existence was predicted before they were found, have no known economic applications. Gilpin Robinson, of the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) who was not involved in the study, said the USGS had started to collaborate with the big data project. Story continues "The use of large data sets and analytical tools is very important in our studies of mineral and energy resources," he wrote in an email. The DCO project will also try to collect data to examine the geological history of the Moon and Mars. (Reporting By Alister Doyle; Editing by Catherine Evans) Spirit AeroSystems Holdings, Inc. SPR posted second-quarter 2017 adjusted earnings of $1.57 per share, beating the Zacks Consensus Estimate by 30.8%. Earnings improved 29.8% from the year-ago figure of $1.21. Highlights of the Release Total revenue of $1,826.1 million in the second quarter surpassed the Zacks Consensus Estimate of $1,716.3 million by 6.4%. However, revenues dropped 0.2% year over year. Backlog at the end of the reported quarter was $46 billion, in line with the prior-quarter backlog figure. Spirit Aerosystems Holdings, Inc. Price, Consensus and EPS Surprise Spirit Aerosystems Holdings, Inc. Price, Consensus and EPS Surprise | Spirit Aerosystems Holdings, Inc. Quote Segment Performance Fuselage Systems: Revenues at the segment grew 1.6% to $938.2 million from the prior-year figure of $923.6 million. The increase was supported by higher production deliveries for the Boeing 737 and increased defense-related activity. Propulsion Systems: The segment recorded revenues of $436.5 million in the reported quarter, down 9.4% from $481.7 million a year ago. The decline was due to lower production deliveries under the Boeing 777 program, lower revenues recognized on the Boeing 787 program and decreased GCS&S activity. Wing Systems: Revenues at the segment increased 6.2% to $450.5 million from $424.2 million in the prior-year quarter. Financial Position As of Jun 29, 2017, Spirit AeroSystems had $696.9 million in cash and cash equivalents compared with $697.7 as of Dec 31, 2016. As of Jun 29, 2017, long-term debt (excluding current portion) was $1,060.6 million compared with $1,060 million at the end of 2016. Cash flow from operating activities increased to $334 million in the second quarter from $308.8 million in the year-ago period. Capital expenditure totaled $47 million in the second quarter compared with $54 million in the prior-year quarter. Guidance Spirit AeroSystems raised its bottom-line financial guidance for 2017. The company currently expects to generate earnings per share in the range of $5.00$5.25, up from the prior guidance range of $4.60$4.85. However, revenues are still expected in the band of $6.8$6.9 billion. Management has also raised its free cash flow to $500$550 million for 2017 from the prior range of $450$500 million. Story continues Zacks Rank The company currently carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold). You can see the complete list of todays Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here. Recent Peer Releases Rockwell Collins Inc. COL reported financial results for third-quarter fiscal 2017 (ended Jun 30, 2017). The companys adjusted earnings per share of $1.64 surpassed the Zacks Consensus Estimate of $1.58 by 3.8%. Reported earnings also grew 0.6% from $1.63 per share a year ago. The Boeing Company BA reported adjusted earnings of $2.55 per share for second-quarter 2017, beating the Zacks Consensus Estimate of $2.32 by 9.9%. In the year-ago quarter, the company had reported a loss of 44 cents. Raytheon Company RTN reported second-quarter 2017 adjusted earnings from continuing operations of $1.98 per share, beating the Zacks Consensus Estimate of $1.74 by 13.8%. The figure also improved 5.3% from $1.88 in the year-ago quarter. More Stock News: Tech Opportunity Worth $386 Billion in 2017 From driverless cars to artificial intelligence, we've seen an unsurpassed growth of high-tech products in recent months. Yesterday's science-fiction is becoming today's reality. Despite all the innovation, there is a single component no tech company can survive without. Demand for this critical device will reach $387 billion this year alone, and it's likely to grow even faster in the future. Zacks has released a brand-new Special Report to help you take advantage of this exciting investment opportunity. Most importantly, it reveals 4 stocks with massive profit potential. See these stocks now>> Want the latest recommendations from Zacks Investment Research? Today, you can download 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days. Click to get this free report Boeing Company (The) (BA) : Free Stock Analysis Report Rockwell Collins, Inc. (COL) : Free Stock Analysis Report Spirit Aerosystems Holdings, Inc. (SPR) : Free Stock Analysis Report Raytheon Company (RTN) : Free Stock Analysis Report To read this article on Zacks.com click here. Zacks Investment Research By Makiko Yamazaki and Taiga Uranaka TOKYO (Reuters) - Toshiba Corp said on Thursday it would invest in a new memory chip production line without joint venture partner Western Digital Corp, in a counter-punch against the U.S. firm which has opposed a planned auction of the business. The Japanese conglomerate has been trying to sell the unit to plug a balance sheet hole left by its failed U.S. nuclear business. Western Digital, which says any deal would require its consent, has opposed Toshiba's pick of a preferred bidder and has put in a competing offer. Toshiba said it would invest 195 billion yen ($1.76 billion) in the Fab 6 production line in Yokkaichi, central Japan, up by 15 billion yen from its original estimate, because it would now go it alone. Western Digital said in a statement that it was disappointed by Toshiba's decision and that it too was determined to invest in the upgrade. Their prolonged fight has unnerved members of the preferred bidder group, which includes Japanese state-backed funds, private equity firm Bain Capital and South Korean chipmaker SK Hynix Inc. The Japanese funds are asking that Toshiba resolve the conflict before the $18 billion deal. Toshiba shut out Western Digital employees from databases at their memory chip joint venture in late June as tensions around the auction escalated. It temporarily suspended the lockout in July following a restraining order by the Superior Court of California, but reinstated it a week later as its petition for an appeal was accepted. Toshiba on Thursday said it would allow Western Digital employees to access the databases, a day after a U.S. court ordered it to do so. But the firm said in a statement it is just "a proceeding with many rounds and many rulings." A Toshiba spokesman said that despite its latest decision to invest in the upgrade alone, it was open to talks with Western Digital about later plans. The new line, set to start operating around next summer, will produce memory chips using next-generation three-dimensional technology as Toshiba aims to raise the 3D proportion to about 90 percent in the year ending in March 2019. (Reporting by Taiga Uranaka and Makiko Yamazaki; Editing by Chris Gallagher and Christopher Cushing) By Makiko Yamazaki TOKYO (Reuters) - Japanese conglomerate Toshiba Corp's talks to sell its prized memory chip business have stalled, raising concerns over how fast the company can plug a multi-billion-dollar balance sheet hole left by the collapse of its U.S. nuclear business. Toshiba's chips and devices business accounted for roughly a third of its sales in the last financial year, and is the world's second-largest maker of NAND chips after Samsung Electronics Co Ltd. The following are key questions and answers on the state of play and what might come next. Q. What's going on with Toshiba's memory chip sale? A. Toshiba said early this year that it would sell its chip business to pay down debt and cover the impact of a $6.33 billion writedown and liabilities linked to U.S. nuclear arm Westinghouse. Shareholders approved the plan in March. In June, Toshiba picked a consortium including Japanese government-backed funds, private equity firm Bain Capital and South Korean chip maker SK Hynix as a preferred bidder. But Western Digital, which jointly invests in Toshiba's main chip plant and is a rival bidder, has taken Toshiba to court, arguing it needs to consent to a sale. The battle has unnerved the state-backed funds, and they are demanding that Toshiba resolve the conflict before the sale. Another point of contention has been a proposal by SK Hynix to help fund the deal with convertible bonds - a step that could eventually give it an equity interest. The Japanese funds do not want SK Hynix to gain a management stake. Q. What is Toshiba doing? A. In attempt to revive the stalled talks, Toshiba began reconsidering offers from other bidders last month, including Western Digital as well as Foxconn, formally known as Hon Hai Precision Industry, sources have said. Foxconn has said Apple Inc and computing giant Dell would join its bid. Sources said this week that the board was still split over which proposal was better. Q. Why does Toshiba need to sell it? A. Toshiba estimates that its nuclear losses drove its net worth to a negative 582 billion yen ($5.25 billion) in the last fiscal year. Reporting negative net worth - liabilities exceeding assets - for the second year running would prompt a delisting from the Tokyo Stock Exchange. Given regulatory approvals for any chips sale are likely to take at least several months, analysts say the company needs to reach a deal in weeks - rather than months - if it wants to be sure to close the deal by the end of the fiscal year in March. Toshiba has not provided an updated timeline for its decision on chips, saying it wants to clinch a deal as soon as possible. Q. What else could trigger a delisting? A. Toshiba could also be forced to delist if auditor PricewaterhouseCoopers Aarata does not endorse its financial results for the last fiscal year by an Aug. 10 deadline. Toshiba has already been demoted from the bourse's main board, and a non-endorsement by its auditor would increase chances of a delisting, although the decision is up to the bourse. PwC has queried whether Toshiba needed to recognize losses at Westinghouse earlier, rather than in December last year. Toshiba was then still recovering from a previous 2015 accounting scandal that led to the ousting of several bosses. Q. Does a delisting matter? A. If it is delisted before a chips sale is completed, that disposal becomes less urgent. But it could further complicate Toshiba's ability to raise money from markets or banks, in particular to feed its cash-hungry memory-chip business, jeopardizing its competitiveness. Toshiba is already barred from issuing equity as a result of the 2015 scandal. A delisting would cause some market waves and impact key shareholders. It would be the first major delisting for over a decade; even camera maker Olympus averted one in 2012, following a scandal around hidden losses. (Reporting by Ritsuko Ando and Makiko Yamazaki; Edited by Clara Ferreira Marques and Stephen Coates) trump wnriqe pena nieto President Donald Trump's late-January call with Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto was originally reported as "a very offensive conversation" in which Trump lambasted Pena Nieto and hinted at harsh unilateral US action against Mexican drug traffickers. But transcripts released by The Washington Post which match up with parts of excerpts that were released after the initial report suggest that while Trump did bring up some of those topics, the call itself appears to have been less sinister than first thought. "I don't need the Mexicans. I don't need Mexico," Trump reportedly told the Mexican president. "We are going to build the wall and you all are going to pay for it, like it or not." According to the February report, Trump complained about the poor job Mexico's military was doing against narco trafficking and "even suggested to [Pena Nieto] that if they are incapable of combatting [narco trafficking] he may have to send troops to assume this task," said Dolia Estevez, who reported the original version of the conversation. "It was a very offensive conversation where Trump humiliated Pena Nieto," she said at the time. Donald Trump Enrique Pena Nieto Mexico meeting According to The Post's transcript, Pena Nieto's reference to migration, and its relationship to economic conditions, prompted Trump's discussion of security: "We do not want them coming across. We have enough people coming across, we want to stop it cold. ... And we have the drug lords in Mexico that are knocking the hell out of our country. They are sending drugs to Chicago, Los Angeles, and to New York. Up in New Hampshire I won New Hampshire because New Hampshire is a drug-infested den is coming from the southern border." Story continues Trump did refer to what he saw as the inadequacies of Mexico's security forces in dealing with drug traffickers and organized crime and did mention US military support, but, based on the transcript, the reference appears to have been less confrontational than originally reported. "You have some pretty tough hombres in Mexico that you may need help with, and we are willing to help you with that big-league. But they have to be knocked out and you have not done a good job of knocking them out. ... And I know this is a tough group of people, and maybe your military is afraid of them, but our military is not afraid of them, and we will help you with that 100 percent because it is out of control totally out of control." Trump went on to discuss taxes before turning to the issue of his proposed border wall, telling Pena Nieto that his government could not keep saying it would not pay for the wall, "because I cannot live with that." Trump border "Believe it or not, this is the least important thing that we are talking about, but politically this might be the most important to talk about," Trump said of the wall. "In terms of security, Mr. President, it is clear that organized crime is just as much our enemy as it is the enemy of your administration," Pena Nieto responded. Trump's reply again referenced military cooperation: "Enrique, you and I have to knock it out you and I have to knock the hell out of them. Listen, I know how tough these guys are our military will knock them out like you never thought of, we will work to help you knock them out because your country does not want that. Your citizens are being killed all over the place, your police officers are being shot in the head, and your children are being killed. And we will knock them out." Pena Nieto replied that the traffickers in question were being financed in large part by the US demand for illegal drugs and armed with weapons flowing over the border illegally points he made with Trump's predecessor last year. us-mexico border wall arizona The border wall continues to be a central part of Trump's presidency. Despite his earlier insistence that Mexico would finance its construction, however, his administration and the Republican Party appear to have accepted Pena Nieto's refusal, including $1.6 billion as a down payment on the wall in a spending bill passed by the House at the end of July. US law-enforcement agencies have long and deep relationships with their Mexican counterparts, and Trump doesn't appear to have made an significant changes to US-Mexico security cooperation during his first six months in office either. Mexico's top drug lord Joaquin The latest sign of that cooperation is a BuzzFeed report that a US Marshals Service plane circled a town in northwest Mexico a few days prior to and on the morning of the capture of a bodyguard for one of Sinaloa cartel chief Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman's closest associates. The details of Trump and Pena Nieto's actual exchange are unlikely to boost the domestic image of either leader. Trump's approval ratings have continued to fall after he earned the distinction of being the most unpopular president at the six-month mark of the presidency. Pena Nieto, whose tenure has been blighted by numerous scandals and missteps, has seen his job-approval rating fall into the teens, while his party, the center-right PRI, is in third place among voters a year ahead of the country's presidential election. NOW WATCH: 'Mexico does not believe in walls': Mexico's president rejects Trump's push for a border wall More From Business Insider A U.S. government watchdog says Afghan security forces remain "complicit" in the sexual abuse of young boys despite previous warnings and strict penalties for such activities laid out recently by Afghanistan's president. The Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR), an office that audits and monitors Afghan reconstruction projects, made the fresh allegations in a report released on July 30 that highlights Afghanistan's struggle to root out human rights violations within the U.S.-trained armed forces. SIGAR said it had filed a classified report to Congress into claims of child sex abuse by the Afghan security forces and whether the American military was turning a blind eye to the practice. SIGAR, created by Congress in 2008, and other groups have warned in the past about the resurrection of the practice of "bacha bazi" -- literally, dancing boys -- in which wealthy or powerful men exploit underage boys as sexual partners. The victims are often orphans or boys from poor families as young as 10. Powerful religious and social conservative elements in Afghanistan have banned women from dancing in public, so young boys are sometimes dressed as girls and made to perform. The boys are often sexually abused and raped. 'Terrible Practice' Human rights groups say the worst offenders include security forces, U.S.-trained militias, and former warlords and strongmen, who often act with impunity. "Afghan officials remain complicit, especially in the sexual exploitation...of children by Afghan security forces," SIGAR said. Under U.S. law, the Pentagon and the State Department are prohibited from providing assistance to any unit of a foreign country's security forces if there is credible information that the unit has committed any gross violations of human rights, according to SIGAR. "The U.S. military has long known about the involvement of senior Afghan commanders and other figures in this terrible practice but has done little to curb it even as U.S. forces continue to train and fund Afghan forces," Patricia Gossman, a senior researcher on Afghanistan at Human Rights Watch (HRW), said. "The U.S. has an obligation to do so and to stop supporting any Afghan forces who engage in this practice, investigate all reports of it, and press for prosecution of those responsible," she added. There are about 8,400 U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan, providing training and assistance to Afghan security forces under the NATO mission. The practice of bacha bazi has reportedly spread since the fall of the Taliban, who declared it un-Islamic. It has now spread from rural areas to big cities, including Kabul. Strict Penalties In February, President Ashraf Ghani laid out strict penalties against bacha bazi for the first time in a revised penal code. Punishments range from seven years in jail for sexual assault to the death penalty for aggravated cases in which more than one child is involved. But the government has yet to present a time frame for when the revised penal code will be enforced. In 2016, a former dancing boy told RFE/RL that he was kidnapped and taken to a village, where he said two men raped him. Faisal said he danced for two years before he turned 18, when most dancing boys are considered men and tossed aside. The SIGAR report comes at a time when U.S. officials are describing Afghan security forces' battle against the Taliban as a "stalemate." The report found that Afghan forces continue to suffer high casualty rates, with 2,531 killed in action and another 4,238 wounded between January 1 and May 8. SIGAR said at least 6,785 Afghan soldiers and police had been killed in the first 10 months of 2016. SIGAR also said government forces control 59.7 percent of the country's 407 districts, the same as the last quarter, suggesting efforts to recapture territory lost to the Taliban and other militants have failed. The Pentagon has confirmed that two U.S. soldiers were killed in a suicide car-bomb attack on a convoy of NATO troops near the southern Afghan city of Kandahar on August 2. Navy Captain Jeff Davis, the U.S. military spokesman, confirmed the deaths but did not immediately provide details on the numbers of troops wounded or their nationalities. The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack, claiming that 15 NATO soldiers had been killed. Afghan officials said the Taliban suicide bomber rammed a vehicle filled with explosives into the convoy in the Daman area, south of Kandahar. A local security official the attack occurred near Kandahar airfield, about 23 kilometers south of Kandahar city, where international troops in NATO's Resolute Support mission are based. There are about 13,500 U.S. and NATO troops currently in Afghanistan. The U.S. administration is deciding whether to send additional U.S. troops to Afghanistan to fight Taliban militants. Based on reporting by AP, AFP, Reuters, and dpa In his inauguration ceremony on August 3, President Hassan Rouhani reiterated his commitment to engaging in constructive and effective interaction with the rest of the world. Rouhani, a 68-year old self-proclaimed moderate, had made openness and improved relations with the world the center piece of his presidential campaign. In his address at the ceremony, Rouhani also called for unity. "I extend my hand to all those who seek the greatness of the country," he said while also vowing to continue his efforts to improve ties with the world. In todays ceremony, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei officially endorsed the reelection of Hassan Rouhani as Iran's president. "I confirm the vote and appoint you as president of the republic," Khamenei said on at a ceremony in Tehran that was attended by Iranian officials and foreign dignitaries. Addressing religious, military and political leaders, Ayatollah Khamenei, Iran's top authority, prayed for "the success of a worthy person". Symbolizing the endorsement, Khamenei handed over the presidential mandate to Rouhani. He kissed Rouhani on the cheek and the new president kissed the leader on his shoulder, a sign of supplication. Former President Mahmud Ahmadinejad, who was prevented from running in the May vote, and Rouhani's main rival in the vote, hard-line cleric Ebrahim Raisi, were among those attending the ceremony. The ceremony took place against a different political backdrop. Most conservatives and hard-liners, loyal to Khamenei have unleashed a barrage of criticism against Rouhani in recent months. The attacks extend to the nuclear deal reached with the world powers in 2015. They accuse Rouhani that too much was given away in return for very little economic benefit. However, it is widely believed that the supreme leader endorsed the nuclear negotiations and closely followed every step. Without his blessing, it is hard to imagine Rouhani would have been able to sign any agreement. In Thursdays ceremony, Rouhani staunchly defended the nuclear deal. "The nuclear deal is a sign of Iran's goodwill on the international stage," he said. The second main event of the inauguration will take place on Saturday, August 5 when Rouhani is due to take the oath of office at the Iranian parliament. Since the establishment of the Islamic Republic, twelve presidential elections have taken place and seven people have occupied the office Abolhassan Bani-Sadr (currently in exile in France), Mohammad Ali Rajaei (assassinated), Ali Khamenei (currently supreme leader), Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani (deceased), Mohammad Khatami (officially under a travel and public appearance ban), Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (under investigation and reported indictment) and Hassan Rouhani. - Eight people have been confirmed dead after drowning in the Mediterranean - The victims were rowing in small rubber boats - More than 300 other migrants including minors were rescued during the incident - Official reports indicate that more than 2,000 migrants have drowned in the sea north of Libya in their frantic attempt to reach Europe At least eight migrants have reportedly died after their small rubber boats capsized in the Mediterranean sea off the Libyan coast. According to The Sun, more than 300 others were rescued during the incident trying to make the deadly crossing from the North African coast to Europe. Eight migrants drowned and 375 were rescued from four small boats in the Mediterranean earlier in the week. Courtesy: The Sun READ ALSO: 128 Nigerians, other migrants drown attempting to migrate to Europe in 21 days - UN agency Confirming the occurrence, Oscar Camps, founder of a humanitarian rescue organisation stated that more than 50 children were rescued, adding that they had intensified operations within the waters to avert more drownings. READ ALSO: See Nigerians who lost their lives on the Mediterranean Sea on their way to Europe (photos) A Spanish nurse of Proactiva Open Arms NGO carries a child rescued from the Mediterranean sea aboard the Golfo Azzurro ship. Courtesy: The Sun Humanitarian organisations now account for more than a third of all operations in the north of Libya as indicated by Italy's coast guards. A rubber boat with 129 migrants on board, among them 60 women, was seen sailing out of control 15 miles off the Libyan coast. Courtesy: The Sun Italy is apprehensive of the rescue missions, arguing that they are encouraging human smuggling near Libya. Meanwhile, see which countries Nigerians would have preferred to be born in: Source: Legit.ng 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 Officials in northwest Chinas Xinjiang region have moved to ban the use of the Uyghur language at all education levels, Radio Free Asia reports. The new ban marks one of Chinas strongest measures aimed at assimilating ethnic Uyghurs, RFA says. Uyghurs are a mostly Muslim ethnic group in China and Central Asia. Most live in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of western China. Rights groups have said China represses Uyghur culture and religion. The Education Department in Xinjiangs Hotan area issued a directive in June banning the use of Uyghur at schools in favor of Mandarin Chinese. The directive said schools must insist on fully popularizing the national common language and writing system according to law. Beginning this fall semester, Mandarin Chinese will be fully used in preschools, elementary schools and middle schools, the directive says. It also instructs schools to prohibit the use of Uyghur language, writing, signs and pictures in the educational system and on campuses. Any school or person that fails to enforce the new policy will be severely punished, the directive says. Encouraging Mandarin Four officials confirmed the directive to RFA. They spoke on the condition of anonymity. They said their local governments were preparing to put the directive in place ahead of the fall semester. A Chinese education official in Hotan said the directive was issued on June 28. All area education offices received it two days later. A Uyghur official from another Hotan office said, all teaching will be conducted in the Chinese, not Uyghur language, in the upcoming semester. Even the Uyghur textbooks will be replaced with Chinese textbooks from inland China. All teachers and students are required to speak the Chinese language only in the school and education system, he added. A different Chinese official from Hotan told RFA that the directive is meant to encourage the learning of the national language. He said, "Education authorities decided to ban the use of the Uyghur language in order to create a favorable environment for minorities to study the national language." Illegal policy? For many years [since 2005], China has had a bilingual education system in Xinjiangs schools. Uyghur students can choose to learn among other Uyghur students. Those students receive literature instruction in the Uyghur language. All other subjects are taught in Mandarin Chinese. The new directive would end the Uyghur-language instruction, however. Observers say the bilingual education system violate Chinas constitution and ethnic autonomy laws, RFA reports. Chinas constitution says the people of all nationalities have the freedom to use and develop their own spoken and written languages. And Chinas Regional Ethnic Autonomy Law on Language says that schools in ethnic areas use textbooks in their own languages and use these languages as the media of instruction. Ilshat Hassan is president of the Uyghur American Association in Washington, D.C. He told RFA that China is trying to ignore its own laws by calling the new directive a part of a bilingual education. He said, In fact, by enforcing this new policy at the preschool level, the Chinese government intends to kill the Uyghur language at the cradle." He added that the international community must not allow China to destroy our beautiful language and culture, which has thrived for several millennia. This story was originally reported by Radio Free Asia and adapted for VOA Learning English. Hai Do was the editor. _______________________________________________________________ Words in This Story region - n. a part of a country, of the world, etc., that is different or separate from other parts in some way assimilate - v. to cause (a person or group) to become part of a different society, country, etc. repress - v. to not allow yourself to do or express (something) prohibit - v. to order (someone) not to use or do something + from campus - n. the area and buildings around a university, college, school, etc. anonymity - n. the quality or state of being unknown to most people semester - n. one of two usually 18-week periods that make up an academic year at a school or college bilingual - adj. using or expressed in two languages autonomy - n. the power or right of a country, group, etc., to govern itself cradle - n. the place where something begins thrive - v. to grow or develop successfully millennia - n. plural form of millennium -- a period equal to 1000 years Technology offers conveniences such as opening the garage door from your car or changing the television station without touching the TV. Now one American company is offering its employees a new convenience: a microchip implanted in their hands. Employees who have these chips can do all kinds of things just by waving their hands. Three Square Market is offering to implant microchips in all of their employees for free. Each chip costs $300 and Three Square Market will pay for the chip. Employees can volunteer to have the chips implanted in their hands. About 50 out of 80 employees have chosen to do so. The president of the company, his wife and their children are also getting chips implanted in their hands. The chip is about the size of a grain of rice. Implanting the chip only takes about a second and is said to hurt only very briefly. The chips go under the skin between the thumb and forefinger. With a chip in the hand, a person can enter the office building, buy food, sign into computers and more, simply by waving that hand near a scanner. The chips also will be used to identify employees. Employees who want convenience, but do not want to have a microchip implanted under their skin, can wear a wristband or a ring with a chip instead. They can perform the same tasks with a wave of their hands as if they had an implanted chip. Three Square Market is the first company in the United States to offer to implant chips in its employees. Epicenter, a company in Sweden, has been implanting chips in its employees for a while. Three Square Marketing says the chip cannot track the employee. The company says scanners can read the chips only when they are within a few inches of them. Three Square Market says that the chips protect against identity theft by being encrypted, similar to credit cards. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved the chips back in 2004, so they should be safe for humans, according to the company. In the future, people with the chips may be able to do more with them, even outside the office. Todd Westby is Chief Executive Officer of Three Square Market. He says, "Eventually, this technology will become standardized allowing you to use this as your passport, public transit, all purchasing opportunities, etc. Poll Would you volunteer to have a chip implanted in your hand by your employer? Vote in the poll and let us know what you think: Im Caty Weaver. Carolyn Nicander Mohr wrote this report for VOA Learning English. Caty Weaver was the editor. Do you think having a chip implanted in your hand would be convenient? Would you volunteer to have the chip implanted in your hand? Would you work for a company that required you to have a chip implanted in your hand? Share your thoughts in the Comments Section below or on our Facebook page. ______________________________________________________________ Words in This Story convenience - n. a quality or situation that makes something easy or useful for someone by reducing the amount of work or time required to do something garage - n. a building or part of a building in which a car, truck, etc., is kept microchip - n. a group of tiny electronic circuits that work together on a very small piece of hard material (such as silicon) implant - v. to place something in a person's body by means of surgery volunteer - v. someone who does something without being forced to do it scanner - n. a device that reads or copies information or images into a computer identify - v. to find out who someone is or what something is wristband - n. a band of plastic, paper, cloth, etc., that you wear around your wrist track - v. to follow or watch the path of (something) identity theft - n. the illegal use of someone else's personal identifying information in order to get money or credit encrypt - v. to change (information) from one form to another especially to hide its meaning standardize - v. to change (things) so that they are similar and consistent and agree with rules about what is proper and acceptable President Donald Trump gave his support Wednesday to a bill that would cut legal immigration to the United States by half. The bill would reduce legal immigration to the U.S. from the current level of 1 million a year to 500,000 by the end of the 10th year. It would also give a priority to immigrants based on their education, job offers, English-language skills, and success in creating businesses. The bill is similar to proposals Trump made as a candidate for president. During the 2016 campaign, Trump often said immigration was costing Americans jobs and keeping pay down for those with jobs. Republican Senators Tom Cotton of Arkansas and David Perdue of Georgia appeared with Trump at the White House to introduce the bill. Trump said the bill he is supporting would help Americans better compete for jobs. Among those hit the hardest in recent years have been immigrants and, very importantly, minority workers competing for jobs against brand-new arrivals. And it has not been fair to our people, to our citizens, to our workers. The bill would keep the current immigration preferences for spouses and young children of U.S. citizens and legal permanent residents. But it would do away with preferences for other relatives such as grandparents or adult children. The bill would also end the Diversity Immigrant Visa program, known as diversity lottery. The program was created to increase immigrants from countries underrepresented in the United States. Cotton said it has been poorly managed. The bill would also limit the number of permanent refugees admitted to the U.S. to 50,000 a year. Cotton said that is in line with the 13-year average. Passage of the immigration bill is far from a sure thing. The bill would require passage in the House of Representatives and the Senate. In the Senate, the bill would need 60 out of 100 votes. That will be difficult given opposition from groups that see immigration as positive for America and for businesses that depend on immigrant workers. Senator Lindsey Graham is a Republican from South Carolina. He tweeted that the proposed immigration bill would be bad for his state. If proposal were to become law... devastating to SC (South Carolina) economy which relies on this immigrant workforce. Groups that favor immigration quickly criticized the bill. John Feinblatt is president of a group called New American Economy. It represents 500 mayors and business leaders who support legal immigration. He said cutting immigration in half would result in fewer jobs for Americans. But Senator Cotton said change is needed in a system that now brings one million immigrants to the U.S. each year. That's like adding the population of Montana every single year; adding the population of Arkansas every three years. Im Jill Robbins. Bruce Alpert reported on this story for VOA Learning English with additional sources from Reuters, the Associated Press, and VOA News. Hai Do was the editor. We want to hear from you. Write to us in the Comments Section and share your views on our Facebook Page. ______________________________________________________________ Words in This Story priority - n. something that is more important than other things and that needs to be done or dealt with first brand-new- adj. just came or just arrived preference - n. a feeling of liking or wanting one person or thing more than another person or thing diversity lottery - n. a drawing to select people with a goal of adding diversity or people from different countries refugee - n. someone who has been forced to leave a country because of war or for religious or political reasons devastating - adj. causing big damage Organisms causing urinary tract infections (UTI) are increasingly proving to be ineffective or showing resistance to drugs that are used to kill the germs. This phenomenon has been increasing worldwide, especially to commonly used antimicrobials (drugs) in children. In a recent study in Bangladesh, scientists warn that urinary tract pathogens are developing resistance to antibiotics and they highly recommend sensitivity tests before prescribing any antibiotic. The study, titled 'Etiology and Antimicrobial Susceptibility Patterns of Urinary Tract Infection done at Dhaka Shishu (children) hospital', published in the Northern International Medical College Journal suggests understanding the local vulnerability pattern of the pathogens. The article is hosted on the INASP-supported Bangladesh Journals Online (BanglaJOL) platform. The study found that there is great risk of drug resistance if antibiotics are prescribed without sensitivity or laboratory culture tests. The principal investigator of the research, Dr Md Atiqul Islam, of Dhaka Shishu Hospital, the largest children's hospital (DSH) in the Bangladesh capital says, "Ideally urine culture sensitivity patterns should be done before prescribing any antibiotic in treating urinary tract infection (UTI)." Dr. Islam, who notes that the UTI is common and can be fatal, says, "Most of the UTIs do not allow sufficient time as patients in majority cases do not want to wait for such a test that takes up to 72 hours." He explains, "Physicians prescribe antibiotics on physical examination of a patient based on clinical conditions and local micro-organism sensitivity pattern. Antibiotics are prescribed to prevent any deterioration in the condition that may result in serious complications, and thus we prescribe antibiotics." The seven-month study done in 2016 at DSH evaluated a total of 147 culture-positive UTI patients for the laboratory analysis. In this case, urine samples of the patients were collected. Out of the total, 147 urine samples showed positive or had bacteria of different types grown. The bacteria colony counts of these samples were identified, and the profile of antibiotic susceptibility was recorded. Among 147 culture-positive UTI patients, Escherichia coli (E-coli) was found as the most prevalent in 103 (70%) infected children. The study revealed that the most effective drugs found against urinary isolates was Imepenum, (97.27%), followed by Colistin (94.55%), Meropenum (93.87%) and Amikacin (91.83%). Professor Dr. B H Nazma Yasmeen, one of the co-authors of the study and also Head of the Department of Paediatrics at the Northern International Medical College in Dhaka, says, "Periodic evaluation of antimicrobial activity of different antibiotics is essential as the pattern of antibiotic sensitivity may vary over periods." The study strongly recommended that there is a great need for antimicrobial resistance surveillance at the local, national, and international levels. The scientists suggest that there is a need for laboratory analysis of the commonly used drugs that are prescribed to treat UTI in children. The laboratory test would evaluate effectiveness of the drugs in certain localities (geographic areas) to know in advance which suitable effective drugs to prescribe before delaying treatment. The effect of resistant microorganism is obvious in hospitals and other healthcare facilities, when infections caused by the drug-resistant microorganism, the study points out. This results in a prolonged infectivity with related mortality especially among immune compromised patients. More information: Etiology and antimicrobial susceptibility pattern of bacterial pathogens from urinary tract infection. Nepal Med Coll J. 2012 Jun;14(2):129-32. Etiology and antimicrobial susceptibility pattern of bacterial pathogens from urinary tract infection.. 2012 Jun;14(2):129-32. www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23671963 Provided by INASP The initiating oncogenic event in almost half of human lung adenocarcinomas is still unknown, complicating the development of selective targeted therapies. Yet these tumours harbour a number of alterations without obvious oncogenic function, including BRAF-inactivating mutations. Researchers at the Spanish National Cancer Research Centre (CNIO) have demonstrated that the expression of an endogenous Braf (D631A) kinase-inactive isoform in mice, corresponding to the human BRAF(D594A) mutation, triggers lung adenocarcinoma in vivo, indicating that BRAF-inactivating mutations are initiating events in lung oncogenesis. The paper, published in Nature, indicates that the signal intensity of the MAPK pathway is a critical determinant not only in tumour development, but also in dictating the nature of the cancer-initiating cell and ultimately the resulting tumour phenotype. The RAS-MAPK signalling cascade serves as a central node in transducing signals from membrane receptors to the nucleus. This pathway is aberrantly activated in a substantial fraction of human cancers. There is also abundant evidence that elevated RAS-MAPK signaling results in cellular toxicity that may serve as a natural barrier to cancer progression early in tumorigenesis. These findings suggest that defined thresholds of RAS-MAPK activity are required for homeostasis as well as for malignant transformation, but compelling genetic evidence is missing. Mutational analysis of different human cancers has recently uncovered that among the BRAF hot spots in lung adenocarcinoma, which comprise a component of the RAS-MAP kinase pathway, those resulting in inactivating mutations predominate over the V600E activating substitution, the main oncogenic form in other tumours such as melanoma. However, the contribution of BRAF-inactive mutants to lung cancer progression is unclear. Using public databases, researchers have identified inactivating BRAF mutations in a subset of KRAS-driven human lung tumours. Subsequently, using mouse models, researchers have replicated these observations showing that the co-expression of oncogenic Kras and inactive Braf markedly enhances the onset of lung adenocarcinoma. Also, this combination accelerates tumour progression when the inactivating Braf mutation is genetically induced in advanced tumors. Surprisingly, in this same study, the researchers showed that individually, the inactivating mutations of Braf are also oncogenic events that induce the appearance of lung adenocarcinoma. The paper provides the first genetic evidence demonstrating that a kinase-inactivating Braf mutation induces lung adenocarcinoma development. Moreover, results suggest that lung adenocarcinoma patients with hypoactive BRAF could benefit from therapies based on selective CRAF inhibitors. More information: Patricia Nieto et al, A Braf kinase-inactive mutant induces lung adenocarcinoma, Nature (2017). Journal information: Nature Patricia Nieto et al, A Braf kinase-inactive mutant induces lung adenocarcinoma,(2017). DOI: 10.1038/nature23297 Provided by Centro Nacional de Investigaciones Oncologicas The research team at the Kenya Medical Research Institute (KEMRI) led focus groups to find out how cultural beliefs and knowledge shape people's understanding of disability. Credit: University of East Anglia Many people in rural African communities still believe that disability is caused by supernatural forces, curses and as 'punishment' for wrongdoings - according to University of East Anglia research. The resultant stigma leaves disabled people vulnerable to neglect and abuse - with sexual abuse reported by 90 per cent of people with learning difficulties. Many disabled children are kept 'locked up' at home - often for their own safety. But the more that communities come into contact with disability, the more awareness and understanding grows. Meanwhile medical explanations for disability are beginning to emerge, with increasing numbers of families seeking medical advice for children with disabilities rather than consulting a witchdoctor. The 'Preparation of Communities: Using personal narratives to affect attitudes to disability in Kilifi, Kenya (Pre-Call)' project was set up to promote disability awareness in small communities in a rural part of Kenya, by encouraging a process of reflection and education. The research team at the Kenya Medical Research Institute (KEMRI) led focus groups to find out how cultural beliefs and knowledge shape people's understanding of disability. The discussions involved 21 community groups located across the five constituencies of Kilifi County, bordered one side by the Indian Ocean coast and stretching into the rural interior. A total of 263 participants were involved who observed Christianity (70 per cent), traditional religious practices (20 per cent) and Islam (10 per cent). Lead researcher Dr Karen Bunning, from UEA's School of Health Sciences, said: "Information on the medical causes of childhood disability are not widely available across communities in low-income countries and understanding is generally poor. "In Namibia for example albinism is explained by the mother having sex with a white man or a ghost. And in Guinea-Bissau, epilepsy is widely thought of as being caused by evil spirits, or sometimes as a punishment for wrongdoing. "We found that disability is often explained by things like extra marital affairs invoking a curse, witchcraft, supernatural forces such as demons or ghosts affecting the child, and the will of God. "Curvature of the spine or limbs represented the effects of a curse, saliva production was linked to demons and ill-gotten financial gain. "The different explanations represent a real mixture of traditional, religious and biomedical beliefs," she added. "And while biomedical factors such as inherited conditions or antenatal care were increasingly talked about, these explanations did not negate other culturally-based accounts." The findings reveal that underpinning all of these explanations is a desire to make sense of disability and, particularly for carers, to improve the given situation. And where an explanation of wrongdoing or the presence of an evil force might result in a visit to a local witchdoctor, a medical attribution might be followed with a visit to a medical centre. The project also looked at the challenges faced by people with disabilities and their carers. Dr Bunning said: "What tends to happen is that these types of cultural beliefs affect how individuals with disabilities view themselves and how other people see them. Attributing the child's condition to some form of malevolent preternatural force by reference to demons, evil spirits and witchcraft contributes to the view of disability as both undesirable and unacceptable. "People with disabilities in Africa have poor access to health provision, low school attendance, limited employment rates and low wages. More extreme consequences include neglect and abuse - with sexual abuse reported to occur at some time in the lives of 90 per cent of the population with learning difficulties. People with communication difficulties are at a high level of risk because they are less able to report abuse. "We found that children with disabilities are often kept apart from the local community in restricted environments - contributing to the social distance between them. Although in many cases this is to protect them from abuse and keep them safe. "The burden of caring for family members with disabilities also led to discrimination by association," she added. "And the stigma associated with people with disabilities is so great that it also extends to anyone trying to help. The implication being that anyone offering help would also give birth to a disabled child. "But we found that the more people come into contact with disability, the better their understanding. Real life encounters with people who have disabilities can be a really positive step, so raising disability awareness in small communities can really help." More information: 'The perception of disability by community groups: Stories of local understanding, beliefs and challenges in a rural part of Kenya' is published in PLOS ONE on August 3, 2017. Journal information: PLoS ONE 'The perception of disability by community groups: Stories of local understanding, beliefs and challenges in a rural part of Kenya' is published inon August 3, 2017. A photo of Prof. Orly Elpeleg, head of the Department of Genetics at the Hadassah Medical Center and a professor at the Hebrew University's Faculty of Medicine. Credit: Hebrew University In a new study published today in The American Journal of Human Genetics, a multinational team of researchers describes, for the first time, the biological basis of a severe neurological disorder in children. The extremely rare disorder is characterized by developmental regression and neurodegeneration. At first the children lead normal lives and seem identical to their age-matched peers. However, beginning at around 3 to 6 years of age, they present with neurological deterioration, gradually losing motor, cognitive and speech functions. Although the condition progresses slowly, most patients are completely dependent on their caretakers by 15-20 years of age. Researchers from the Hadassah Medical Center and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem's Faculty of Medicine, working with colleagues from the Pennsylvania State University College of Medicine and a multinational research team, have now identified and studied 7 childrenfrom Canada, France, Israel, Russia and the United Stateswho suffer from the disorder. The researchers found in all patients the same spontaneously occurring, non-inherited genetic change in a gene (named "UBTF") responsible for ribosomal RNA formation. Because of this small change, the patients' cells are flooded with ribosomal RNA and are poisoned by it. (Ribosomes are responsible for the translation and production of cell proteins; themselves, they are made up of ribosomal proteins and of ribosomal RNA in a precise ratio). The researchers found an identical error in the same gene in all the patients tested, representing a difference of one letter among the roughly 3 billion letters that make up human DNA. By finding the identical change in children who suffer from the identical clinical disease, the researchers determined that the altered gene is indeed the cause of the disease. Prof. Orly Elpeleg, head of the Department of Genetics at Hadassah Medical Center in Jerusalem and a professor of Pediatrics at the Hebrew University's Faculty of Medicine, led the multinational research. Prof. Elpeleg credits the discovery to deep sequencing technology that Hadassah and the Hebrew University were among the first to introduce into clinical practice in the world, and the first in Israel. Prof. Elpeleg initially encountered the disease in a young girl who came to Hadassah: "Several years ago, I saw a patient who was healthy until the age of 3, and then experienced a disturbance in her walking and motor function, speech and cognition. Around that time, we had introduced the deep-sequencing technology for clinical use at Hadassah, which enabled us to read all the coding genetic material of a person within a couple of days, in order to identify genetic defects." Since 2010, Hadassah has assembled the largest genetic mapping database in Israel, of about 2400 patients. "Searching for similar genetic defects in this database, we found a 9-year-old boy who had been treated at Hadassah and now lives in Russia. The boy had been healthy until the age of 5, and then displayed neurological deterioration just like the girl I had diagnosed. Dr. Simon Edvardson, a pediatric neurologist at Hadassah, flew to Russia, examined the boy, took genetic samples from him and from his parents and confirmed that his illness was identical to that of the Israeli girl. We then knew we had identified a new disease that was not recognized in the medical literature," said Prof. Elpeleg. Comparing their data in a program called Gene Matcher, the researchers found several more children around the world who shared an identical genetic defect and the same course of disease. In order to understand the mechanism of the newly identified disease, the researchers collaborated with Dr. George-Lucian Moldovan at the Pennsylvania State University College of Medicine, in the United States. Dr. Moldovan confirmed the disease mechanism: in the children's cells, there is an excess RNA of the ribosome, which probably causes brain cells to be flooded and poisoned. "Our study links neuronal degeneration in childhood with altered rDNA chromatin status and rRNA metabolism. It is the first time that an excess of ribosomal RNA has been linked to a genetic disease in humans," said Prof. Elpeleg. While there is currently no cure for genetic diseases of this kind, the identification of the exact mutation may allow for the planning of therapies designed to silence the mutant gene. "Science may not be able to repair the gene, but now that our findings are published, it may be possible to make early identification of the disease and in the future find ways to prevent such a serious deterioration," said Prof. Elpeleg. Carol Emanuele beat cancer. But for the past two years, the Philadelphia woman has been fighting her toughest battle yet. She has an open wound on the bottom of her foot that leaves her unable to walk and prone to deadly infection. To treat her diabetic wound, doctors at a Philadelphia clinic Philadelphia have prescribed a number of treatments, like freeze-dried placenta, penis foreskin cells and high doses of pressurized oxygen. "I do everything, but nothing seems to work," said Emanuele, 59, who survived stage 4 melanoma in her 30s. "I beat cancer, but this is worse." The doctors who care for the 6.5 million patients with chronic wounds know the depths of their struggles. Their open, festering wounds don't heal for months and sometimes years, leaving bare bones and tendons. Many patients end up immobilized, unable to work and dependent on Medicare and Medicaid. In their quest to heal, they turn to expensive and sometimes painful procedures, and products that often don't work. According to some estimates, Medicare alone spends at least $25 billion a year treating these wounds. But many widely used treatments aren't supported by credible research. The wound-care product business, worth an estimated $5 billion a year, booms while some products might prove little more effective than the proverbial snake oil. The vast majority of the studies are funded or conducted by companies that manufacture the products. At the same time, independent academic research is scant for the growing problem. "It's an amazingly crappy area in terms of the quality of research," said Sean Tunis, who as chief medical officer for Medicare from 2002 to 2005 dealt with coverage for wound care. "I don't think they have anything that involves singing to wounds, but it wouldn't shock me." A 2016 review of treatment for diabetic foot ulcers found "few published studies were of high quality, and the majority were susceptible to bias." The review team included William Jeffcoate, a professor with the Department of Diabetes and Endocrinology at Nottingham University Hospitals Trust. Jeffcoate has overseen several reviews of such treatment since 2006 and concluded that "the evidence to support many of the therapies that are in routine use is poor." A separate Health and Human Services Department review of 10,000 studies examining treatment of leg wounds known as venous ulcers found that only 60 of them met basic scientific standards. Of the 60, most were so shoddy that their results were unreliable. While scientists struggle to come up with treatments that are more effective, patients with chronic wounds are dying. The five-year mortality rate for patients with some types of diabetic wounds is more than 50 percent higher than that of breast and colon cancers, according to an analysis led by David Armstrong, a professor of surgery and director of the Southern Arizona Limb Salvage Alliance. Open wounds are a particular problem for people with diabetes because a small cut may turn into an open crater that grows despite conservative treatment, such as removal of dead tissue to stimulate new cell growth. More than half of diabetic ulcers become infected, 20 percent lead to amputation, and, according to Armstrong, about 40 percent of patients with diabetic foot ulcers have a recurrence within a year after healing. "It's true that we may be paying for treatments that don't work," said Tunis, now CEO of the nonprofit Center for Medical Technology Policy, which has worked with the federal government to improve research. "But it's just as tragic that we could be missing out on treatments that do work by failing to conduct adequate clinical studies." Although doctors and researchers have been calling on the federal government to step in for at least a decade, the National Institutes of Health and the Veterans Affairs and Defense departments haven't responded with any significant research. "The bottom line is that there is no pink ribbon to raise awareness for festering, foul-smelling wounds that don't heal," said Caroline Fife, a wound-care doctor in Texas. "No movie star wants to be the poster child for this, and the patients ... are old, sick, paralyzed and, in many cases, malnourished." The NIH estimates that it spends more than $32 billion a year in medical research. But an independent review estimated that it spends 0.1 percent studying wound treatment. That's about the same amount of money the NIH spends on Lyme disease, even though the tick-borne infection costs the medical system one-tenth of what wound care does, according to an analysis led by Robert Kirsner, chairman and Harvey Blank professor at the University of Miami Department of Dermatology and Cutaneous Surgery. Emma Wojtowicz, an NIH spokeswoman, said the agency supports chronic wound care, but she said she couldn't say how much money is spent on research because it's not a separate funding category. "Chronic wounds don't fit neatly into any funding categories," said Jonathan Zenilman, chief of the Division for Infectious Diseases at Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center and a member of the team that analyzed the 10,000 studies. "The other problem is it's completely unsexy. It's not appreciated as a major and growing health care problem that needs immediate attention, even though it is." Commercial manufacturers make products that the FDA permits to come to market without the same rigorous clinical evidence as pharmaceuticals. The companies have little incentive to perform useful comparative studies. "There are hundreds and hundreds of these products, but no one knows which is best," said Robert Califf, food and drug commissioner under President Barack Obama. "You can freeze it, you can warm it, you can ultrasound it, and (Medicare) pays for all of this." When Medicare resisted coverage for a treatment known as electrical stimulation, Medicare beneficiaries sued, and the agency changed course. "The ruling forced Medicare to reverse its decision based on the fact that the evidence was no crappier than other stuff we were paying for," said Tunis, the former Medicare official. In another case, Medicare decided to cover a method called "noncontact normothermic wound therapy," despite concerns that it wasn't any more effective than traditional treatment, Tunis said. "It's basically like a Dixie cup you put over a wound so people won't mess with it," he said. "It was one of those 'magically effective' treatments in whatever studies were done at the time, but it never ended up being part of a good-quality, well-designed study." The companies that sell the products and academic researchers themselves disagree over the methodology and the merits of existing scientific research. Patients say they often feel overwhelmed when confronted with the many treatments. "Even though I'm a doctor and my wife is a nurse, we found this to be complicated," said Navy Cmdr. Peter Snyder, a radiologist who is recovering from necrotizing fasciitis, also known as flesh-eating bacteria. "I can't imagine how regular patients handle this. I think it would be devastating." To heal wounds on his arms and foot, Snyder relied on various treatments, including skin-graft surgery, special collagen bandages and a honey-based product. The doctor who treats him at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center predicted that he would fully recover. Although Emanuele's wound left by an amputation of her toe healed, another wound on the bottom of her foot has not. Recently, she looked back at her calendar and marveled at the dozens of treatments she has received, many covered by Medicare and Medicaid. Some seem promising, like wound coverings made of freeze-dried placenta obtained during births by cesarean section. Others, not - including one plastic bandage that her nurse agreed made her wound worse. Emanuele was told she needed to undergo high doses of oxygen in a hyperbaric chamber, a high-cost treatment hospitals are increasingly relying on for diabetic wounds. The total cost: about $30,000, according to a Medicare invoice. Some research has indicated that hyperbaric therapy works, but last year a major study concluded it wasn't any more effective than traditional treatment. "Don't get me wrong, I am grateful for the care I get," Emanuele said. "It's just that sometimes I'm not sure they know what they're using on me works. I feel like a guinea pig." Confined to a wheelchair because of her wounds, she fell moving from the bathroom to her wheelchair and banged her leg, interrupting the healing process. Days later, she was hospitalized again. This time, she got a blood infection from bacteria entering through an ulcer. She has since recovered and is now back on the wound care routine at her house. "I don't want to live like this forever," she said. "Sometimes I feel like I have no identity. I have become my wound." 2017 Kaiser Health News Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC. Credit: CC0 Public Domain (Medical Xpress)A team of researchers from Florida State University, the University of North Carolina and the University of Queensland has found that many people will go to extraordinary lengths to protect their reputation and honor. In their paper published in the journal Social Psychological and Personality Science, the group describes collecting and combining data from several previous studies to learn more about how strenuously people will protect their reputation. To confirm their findings, the team then conducted several experiments of their own. History is filled, the researchers note, with examples of people defending their honor, sometimes to death. Ship captains, for example, were long expected to go down with their ships. But does that intense desire to maintain one's image prevail in modern times? This is what the researchers sought to learn. To start, they looked for examples in four prior studies on pride and honor. They found many examples that showed people do still very strongly value their pride, honor and reputation. When asked if they had to choose between having a swastika tattooed on their forehead or having their hand cut off, for example, many volunteers actually chose the latter. Others were presented with the choice of living a long life as a known pedophile or being put to death right away. Many people reported preferring death. Having found such examples, the team then carried out their own experiments that involved giving volunteers fake tests designed to uncover hidden racism with the results to be made public. The second part of their experiments involved offering alternatives to publicizing the results, such as submersion of a hand in a bucket of wormsnearly a third chose to go with the worms or other equally gruesome options. The researchers suggest their findings show that people very strongly value their reputations and many are likely to go to extremes to protect their honor if it should be placed at riska finding that offers some explanation, perhaps, for why so many young people have taken their own lives after being subjected to online smearing and bullying. More information: Andrew J. Vonasch et al. Death Before Dishonor, Social Psychological and Personality Science (2017). Andrew J. Vonasch et al. Death Before Dishonor,(2017). DOI: 10.1177/1948550617720271 Abstract Predicated on the notion that people's survival depends greatly on participation in cooperative society, and that reputation damage may preclude such participation, four studies with diverse methods tested the hypothesis that people would make substantial sacrifices to protect their reputations. A "big data" study found that maintaining a moral reputation is one of people's most important values. In making hypothetical choices, high percentages of "normal" people reported preferring jail time, amputation of limbs, and death to various forms of reputation damage (i.e., becoming known as a criminal, Nazi, or child molester). Two lab studies found that 30% of people fully submerged their hands in a pile of disgusting live worms, and 63% endured physical pain to prevent dissemination of information suggesting that they were racist. We discuss the implications of reputation protection for theories about altruism and motivation. Journal information: Social Psychological and Personality Science 2017 Medical Xpress Credit: Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers In the destructive cycle that leads to and perpetuates type 2 diabetes, driven by overeating, excessive blood glucose, defective pancreatic beta cell function, and imbalances in insulin-regulating hormone levels, the gut appears to play a key role. The effects of gastric emptying rates on blood sugar levels after eating and resulting glucose-related hormone release are examined in the article "The Gut: A Key to the Pathogenesis of Type 2 Diabetes?" published in Metabolic Syndrome and Related Disorders. Coauthors Jens Juul Holst, Jens Pedersen, Nicolai Jacob Wewer Albrechtsen, and Filip Krag Knop, University of Copenhagen, Denmark, focus specifically on how the gastrointestinal tract contributes to the regulation of postprandial plasma glucose and secretion of the incretin hormones known as GIP and GLP-1. After a meal, these hormones help induce and regulate the release of insulin cells by pancreatic beta cells to control the level of glucose in the blood. The researchers also discuss the role of the gut in the hypersecretion of glucagon in individuals with type 2 diabetes. "The role of the gastrointestinal tract in modulating the response to glucose ingestion is often overlooked. In this commentary, Professor Holst and colleagues revisit the role of the GI tract in health and disease," says Adrian Vella, MD, FRCP (Edin.), Editor-in-Chief of Metabolic Syndrome and Related Disorders and Professor of Medicine, Mayo Clinic College of Medicine, Rochester, MN. More information: Jens Juul Holst et al, The Gut: A Key to the Pathogenesis of Type 2 Diabetes?, Metabolic Syndrome and Related Disorders (2017). Jens Juul Holst et al, The Gut: A Key to the Pathogenesis of Type 2 Diabetes?,(2017). DOI: 10.1089/met.2017.0015 (HealthDay)Many people try yoga hoping to heal an injury, but some wind up with more aches and pains, a new study finds. The study, which surveyed hundreds of people doing yoga for more than a year, found that two-thirds said that some existing aches improved because of yogamost often, lower back and neck pain. On the other hand, 21 percent said yoga worsened their muscle or joint pain. And almost 11 percent said it caused new issuesmost commonly, pain in the hand, wrist, elbow or shoulder. The study didn't delve into specific injuries, but instead asked people about general aches in different body areas. So it's hard to know how serious the problems were, said Tom Swain, a researcher with the Center for Injury Sciences at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. "You don't have to sustain a serious injury to have pain. It could just be sore muscles," said Swain, who wasn't involved in the study. In a study published last year, Swain and his colleagues looked at serious yoga-related injuries. They found that between 2001 and 2014, almost 30,000 Americans landed in the emergency room for injuries attributed to yogaincluding sprained joints, serious muscle strains and even fractures. And the rate climbed over the years, the study found. Still, given how popular yoga is, the risk of ending up in the ER is quite low, the researchers said. By 2014, the rate of ER-treated injuries stood at 17 for every 100,000 yoga practitioners. "So even though there is some risk of injury," Swain said, "that shouldn't deter people from participating in yoga, because there are many potential benefits." Studies have tied yoga to health gains ranging from lower blood pressure, cholesterol and heart rate to improvements in depression, anxiety and sleep problems. Plus, based on other research, yoga may not be any riskier than other forms of exercise, according to the researchers behind the current study. The study's investigators, led by Marc Campo of Mercy College in Dobbs Ferry, N.Y., reported their findings in the Journal of Bodywork & Movement Therapies. For the study, the researchers surveyed 354 people, mostly women, who practiced at two yoga studios. Classes there ranged from gentle, "restorative" yoga to fast-paced Vinyasa-style. Each study participant was surveyed twice, one year apart. Nearly all (87 percent) said they'd had pain in at least one body area during that year. About two-thirds said their pain had improved because of yoga, while one-fifth believed yoga had worsened some of their achesoften in the wrist or hand. Meanwhile, almost 11 percent said they'd developed a new injury they attributed to yoga. For about 5 percent, the pain actually cropped up during class. Again, the upper extremities were often the problem area. That, the researchers speculate, might be because yoga can include a lot of weight-bearing in the handsin poses such as downward-facing dog. Dr. Joshua Harris is an orthopedic surgeon at Houston Methodist Hospital in Texas. He focuses on hip issues, and said he's seen the consequences of pushing too hard in a yoga class. A concern with yoga, according to Harris, is that some of the poses involve extreme range of motion in the joints. And what's reasonable for one person is not necessarily right for another. "Range of motion is very different from one person to the next. It's so individual," Harris said. "If you keep pushing your range of motion beyond what it should be, you'll probably end up getting hurt." Like Swain, Harris said yoga can have many benefits, and the point is not to scare people away from it. His advice to yoga novices is to find an experienced, knowledgeable teacherby word of mouth, or reviews, for example. "If you have an injury," Harris said, "let the instructor know'I'm new to yoga and my back hurts.' " Take it slow to begin, he advised, and ask the teacher for modifications of poses that don't feel right. "Listen to your body," Harris said. "The 'no pain, no gain' mantra is just not right." More information: Thomas Swain, M.P.H., research assistant, Center for Injury Sciences, University of Alabama at Birmingham; Joshua Harris, M.D., orthopedic surgeon, Houston Methodist Hospital, Texas; June 2, 2017, Journal of Bodywork & Movement Therapies, online Thomas Swain, M.P.H., research assistant, Center for Injury Sciences, University of Alabama at Birmingham; Joshua Harris, M.D., orthopedic surgeon, Houston Methodist Hospital, Texas; June 2, 2017,, online The U.S. National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health has more on yoga. Copyright 2017 HealthDay. All rights reserved. Credit: CC0 Public Domain People who suffer from depression may want to look to yoga as a complement to traditional therapies as the practice appears to lessen symptoms of the disorder, according to studies presented at the 125th Annual Convention of the American Psychological Association. "Yoga has become increasingly popular in the West, and many new yoga practitioners cite stress-reduction and other mental health concerns as their primary reason for practicing," said Lindsey Hopkins, PhD, of the San Francisco Veterans Affairs Medical Center, who chaired a session highlighting research on yoga and depression. "But the empirical research on yoga lags behind its popularity as a first-line approach to mental health." Hopkins' research focused on the acceptability and antidepressant effects of hatha yoga, the branch of yoga that emphasizes physical exercises, along with meditative and breathing exercises, to enhance well-being. In the study, 23 male veterans participated in twice-weekly yoga classes for eight weeks. On a 1-10 scale, the average enjoyment rating for the yoga classes for these veterans was 9.4. All participants said they would recommend the program to other veterans. More importantly, participants with elevated depression scores before the yoga program had a significant reduction in depression symptoms after the eight weeks. Another, more specific, version of hatha yoga commonly practiced in the West is Bikram yoga, also known as heated yoga. Sarah Shallit, MA, of Alliant University in San Francisco investigated Bikram yoga in 52 women, age 25-45. Just more than half were assigned to participate in twice-weekly classes for eight weeks. The rest were told they were wait-listed and used as a control condition. All participants were tested for depression levels at the beginning of the study, as well as at weeks three, six and nine. Shallit and her co-author Hopkins found that eight weeks of Bikram yoga significantly reduced symptoms of depression compared with the control group. In the same session, Maren Nyer, PhD, and Maya Nauphal, BA, of Massachusetts General Hospital, presented data from a pilot study of 29 adults that also showed eight weeks of at least twice-weekly Bikram yoga significantly reduced symptoms of depression and improved other secondary measures including quality of life, optimism, and cognitive and physical functioning. "The more the participants attended yoga classes, the lower their depressive symptoms at the end of the study," said Nyer, who currently has funding from the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health to conduct a randomized controlled trial of Bikram yoga for individuals with depression. Elsewhere at the meeting, Nina Vollbehr, MS, of the Center for Integrative Psychiatry in the Netherlands presented data from two studies on the potential for yoga to address chronic and/or treatment-resistant depression. In the first study, 12 patients who had experienced depression for an average of 11 years participated in nine weekly yoga sessions of approximately 2.5 hours each. The researchers measured participants' levels of depression, anxiety, stress, rumination and worry before the yoga sessions, directly after the nine weeks and four months later. Scores for depression, anxiety and stress decreased throughout the program, a benefit that persisted four months after the training. Rumination and worry did not change immediately after the treatment, but at follow up rumination and worry were decreased for the participants. In another study, involving 74 mildly depressed university students, Vollbehr and her colleagues compared yoga to a relaxation technique. Individuals received 30 minutes of live instruction on either yoga or relaxation and were asked to perform the same exercise at home for eight days using a 15-minute instructional video. While results taken immediately after the treatment showed yoga and relaxation were equally effective at reducing symptoms, two months later, the participants in the yoga group had significantly lower scores for depression, anxiety and stress than the relaxation group. "These studies suggest that yoga-based interventions have promise for depressed mood and that they are feasible for patients with chronic, treatment-resistant depression," said Vollbehr. The concept of yoga as complementary or alternative mental health treatment is so promising that the U.S. military is investigating the creation of its own treatment programs. Jacob Hyde, PsyD, of the University of Denver, gave a presentation outlining a standardized, six-week yoga treatment for U.S. military veterans enrolled in behavioral health services at the university-run clinic and could be expanded for use by the Department of Defense and the Department of Veterans Affairs. Hopkins noted that the research on yoga as a treatment for depression is still preliminary. "At this time, we can only recommend yoga as a complementary approach, likely most effective in conjunction with standard approaches delivered by a licensed therapist," she said. "Clearly, yoga is not a cure-all. However, based on empirical evidence, there seems to be a lot of potential." (HealthDay)In a cohort of young adults, fractures mainly result from severe trauma, with few fractures at osteoporotic sites, according to a study published online July 29 in the Journal of Bone and Mineral Research. Joshua N. Farr, Ph.D., from the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., and colleagues examined the incidence rates for all fractures among young adult (age, 18 to 49 years) residents of Olmsted County in Minnesota in 2009 to 2011. The authors compared the distribution of fracture sites and causes with those for older residents, aged 50 years and older. The researchers found that 2,482 Olmsted County young residents experienced one or more fractures during the study period. The age-adjusted incidence of all fractures was 66 percent greater among men than women (1,882 versus 1,135 per 100,000 person-years; P < 0.001). Eighty percent of all fractures resulted from severe trauma, compared with 33 percent in Olmsted County residents aged 50 years. Compared with older residents, younger residents had a greater proportion of fractures of the hands and feet (40 versus 18 percent), with few fractures observed at traditional osteoporotic fracture sites (14 versus 43 percent). Vertebral fractures were more likely to be due to moderate trauma, especially among younger women. "Young adults, and more commonly men, suffer fractures primarily at non-osteoporotic sites due to more significant trauma," the authors write. Copyright 2017 HealthDay. All rights reserved. "We have signed a contract on behalf of the Qatari navy to acquire seven warships from Italy for five billion euros (5.9 billion U.S. dollars)," Foreign Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al-Thani said at a Doha press conference with his visiting Italian counterpart Angelino Alfano. The deal includes support services in Qatar for further 15 years after the delivery of the vessels. All the units will be entirely built in Fincantieri Italian shipyards starting from 2018, ensuring 6 years of work and an important impact on the main Italian defense companies. Leonardo will be responsible for the integrated supply of the new naval units combat system, main radars and on-board sensors and defence sub-systems, including 76/62 medium calibre and 30mm small calibre weapon systems, the anti-torpedo protection system, the Thesan mine avoidance sonar. MBDA will be supplying the Qatar Emiri Naval Forces (QENF) with Exocet MM40 Block 3 anti-ship missiles as well as Aster 30 Block 1 and VL MICA air defence missiles. Germany withdraws from Energy Charter Treaty Is Jordan country that has not supplied arms to Armenia?: 'The press usually has reliable information' European Commission approves nationalization of Russian Gazprom's German subsidiary Pashinyan: If the state interferes with the exchange rate unnecessarily, the economy will only suffer U.S. to work with strategic coalition of Southeast Asian countries Armenian PM: To reform army, it is necessary to make military service more attractive Putin and Raisi discuss topical issues of the bilateral agenda Blinken: Ukraine must decide on timing and content of any talks with Russia Catholicos expresses hope that Russia efforts will contribute to ensuring free, safe life of Artsakh Armenians More than 50 of poorest developing countries are on brink of bankruptcy, says UN official Armenia ex-ombudsman: We are facing serious national security issues (PHOTOS) 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 Apple Inc. (AAPL) - Get Free Report CEO Tim Cook has heard it all before. And he's heard it for a while. He's no Steve Jobs. Despite doubling revenue and profit and tripling the amount of cash Apple holds in banks around the world, Cook is routinely blasted for a lack of innovation. "In five years the only truly new product that's managed to ship is the Apple Watch," a Quartz columnist wrote at the end of last year. "And somehow, with 115,000 employees, Apple can barely get annual updates out for its laptops and desktop computers." In an April segment from NPR, Apple was unfavorably compared with Amazon.com Inc. (AMZN) - Get Free Report , which has taken an early lead in the connected home with its voice-activated Echo, and Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) - Get Free Report , which has created a nice business from its Surface laptop. Also cited was Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. for its (SSNLF) Galaxy S8 smartphone, which finally has a battery that works. Apple to Bulldoze Its Way to $2 Trillion Jim Cramer Reveals How Apple Just Stunned Wall Street And earlier this week, TheStreet's Natalie Walters spoke with former Apple creative director Hugh Dubberly, who didn't hold back his feelings that the company just isn't what it once was. "Steve is gone, and so the creative direction is gone," Dubberly said. "It's sad to see Apple slipping to the position of follower, which used to be Samsung's position." So what's up, Mr. Cook? Well, revenue in the fiscal third quarter, ended July 1, climbed 7% to $45.41 billion as fears that iPhone 8 production delays might crimp sales didn't materialize. In fact, Apple said Tuesday, Aug. 1, that iPhone unit sales rose 2% to 41 million from the same period a year ago, meeting expectations. Sounds like someone, somewhere at Apple effectively dealt with production delays. IPad sales were easily the biggest surprise in the report, according to TheStreet's Eric Jhonsa, who closely covers Apple. Despite a 12% drop in iPad sales for the previous quarter year over year, iPad revenue grew 2% this time aroundto $4.97 billion, easily surpassing analyst expectations that sales would total $3.95 billion. Most importantly, Cook's Apple delivered the kind of upbeat projections that make investors happy to drive Apple shares to record levels. Apple has projected sales of $49 billion to $52 billion for the three months through September, while analysts were expecting sales of $49.1 billion. The higher figure suggests the new iPhone model will be released by the end of September, according to Jackdaw Research chief analyst Jan Dawson, further putting to rest concerns about production delays. It seems very likely that Apple will release its new iPhone 8 model in the fall rather than at the end of 2017 or early 2018 as some had forecast. Updated models of the iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus are likely as well. Morgan Stanley said its expected 23% iPhone unit growth supported by a 20% increase in sales of two-year-old iPhones. For Cook, the result points to the importance of managing a product as valuable as the iPhone. Innovation is hard to do. It takes brilliance and a bit of luck. Still, Apple is making inroads into augmented reality, Cook said, explaining that AR-capable devices represent future growth areas for the company. This One Chart Reveals That Yes, Apple Is Headed Straight to $1 Trillion "I could not be more excited," he said. It might, in turn, be time for people to finally get excited that Apple is headed by Tim Cook. Apple shares on Wednesday afternoon were up 4.6% to $156.93, giving the company a market capitalization of nearly $820 billion. Not bad for someone not named Steve Jobs. Apple is a holding in Jim Cramer's Action Alerts PLUS Charitable Trust Portfolio. Want to be alerted before Cramer and the AAP team buy or sell AAPL? Learn more now. More of What's Trending on TheStreet: Watch More with TheStreet: 5 Ways Companies Are Using AI to Secretly Change Your Life Around the World in 5 Insane Pizza Hut Pizzas This Nissan Technology Prevents Kids From Being Left in Hot Parked Cars Tesla's Elon Musk Is All Jokes as the Model 3 Accelerates into "Production Hell" Action Alerts PLUS, which Cramer manages as a charitable trust, is long AAPL. The City of Milwaukee has received a $150,000 National Endowment for the Arts grant for a project at the new Milwaukee Public Library branch in a mixed-use development in the former Hills Building, 906-910 W. Mitchell St. Mayor Tom Barrett announced the grant which will fund the "Gathering Art, Stories and Place" project at the library, which is expected to open Sept. 30 on Thursday morning. The program will also receive funding from MPL. The new branch library will replace the current neighborhood branch on 14th Street and Forest Home Avenue. For the project which was created by the Milwaukee Arts Board and the Department of City Development a team will stage a series of storytelling programs in the librarys maker space, as well as other indoor and outdoor spaces, according to a press release from the mayors office. A rendering of the Mitchell Street library's maker space. The programs which will be led by MPL and Artists Working in Education with the support of Ex Fabula, the Greater Milwaukee Association of the Deaf, as well as are schools and community centers will include an artist lecture series, writers workshops, an archive of stories collected in the neighborhood, a pair of artist-in-residence programs, a mobile youth arts studio and a visual storytelling festival with hearing-impaired storytellers. "This project supports the Citys plan for the formation and growth of artistic projects that are responsive to the needs of our diverse community," Barrett said in the press release. "The project also highlights how historic commercial districts can play an important role in Wisconsins overall economy, functioning not only as prominent employment and business centers, but often as the foundation of the municipalities they serve." Library Director Paula Kiely said in a statement that the goal of the project is to bring together the branch neighborhoods diverse neighbors. "We are honored to be selected as an Our Town grantee," Kiely said. "Not only do libraries inspire and foster new experiences, in an increasingly networked online world, libraries bring our community together and play a significant role in neighborhoods as a trusted entity. "By engaging neighborhood residents in this project, we will fulfill the role of the public library in building community pride and investment, ultimately helping the City reach its goals for social and economic prosperity." Library spokesperson Eileen Force-Cahill said this new branch is unlike any other in the MPL system. "It will be the largest neighborhood library in the system, housed in a historic building within a dynamic business district in one of the citys most diverse neighborhoods," she said. "The new Mitchell Street branch has features like a teen maker space and other collaborative places for people to gather and connect. We are very excited about opening this library to the neighborhood next month." According to Sam McGovern-Rowen project manager for MPL construction the library is getting ready to install fixtures and furniture in the Mitchell Street branch, one of the final phases of construction. "Scherrer our general contractor is currently refinishing floors in the lower level and installing lighting," McGovern-Rowen told me this morning. "Most exciting is the recent re-installation of the restored historic mezzanine railing and new 'social stair' to reach the mezzanine." Stay tuned for a pre-opening peek inside. Fig 1: The nano-sized key-shaped device can be rotated like hands on a lock from 0 to 360 degrees, which could be used as a switch to turn on and off the current of a tunnel field effect transistor. Credit: IBM Nanotechnology is a term which applied to a variety of fields from clothing and automotive paints to sporting equipment and electronics. In the end it's all referring to a size, the nanometer (nm), and humankind's ability to understand, control and manipulate the unique phenomena which occur at this dimension. For perspective, a sheet of paper is about 100,000 nm thick. At IBM Research and, in some projects, with the support of government funding, scientists are exploring the nanoscale to improve the power density and energy efficiency of electronic devices, including everything from mobile phones to IoT sensors to giant cloud data centers. One such project is being led by scientist Elad Koren from IBM's Zurich lab. In the project, which is funded under the Ambizione program within the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF), the team is focused on understanding the basic physics of stacking of 2D materials, including the currently popular graphene. While there is much hype around graphene, it's considered to be one of the most promising materials for future semiconductor electronic and quantum devices due to its superior electronic properties. It also exhibits rich physical properties depending on how it is stacked on top of another 2D crystal, and here is where it gets really interesting and a little complicated. When the two stacked layers are made of the same material, such as graphene, a special set of periodic 2D superlattices will emerge at specific angles. Such mismatch can also induce a bandgap in bilayer graphene systems producing one of the first steps towards building transistor-type devices for next generation electronic devices which are more powerful, yet energy efficient. Koren and his colleagues published their initial results in the September 2016 issue of the peer-review journal Nature Nanotechnology. In the paper the team demonstrated how by using the sharp-tip of an atomic force microscope they can precisely control what appears to look like a common house key (Fig. 1). The nano-sized key-shaped device can be rotated like hands on a lock from 0 to 360 degrees, which could be used as a switch to turn on and off the current of a tunnel field effect transistor (TFET), an important step in reducing energy leakage in electronic devices. Measured current flowing through the twisted graphite nano-structure at a bias potential of V= 50 mV while continuously rotating the lever arm. Inset: momentum-space representation of bilayer graphene coupling at commensurate twist angles =21.8 and 38.2. Credit: IBM "We have achieved unprecedented accuracy in controlling the rotational configuration with an angular resolution better than 0.1 degrees. This enables us to both explore the fundamental nature of the stack and realize its full potential," said Koren. The ability to control the stacking configuration with high angular accuracy allows to control and engineer many physical properties and realize new novel materials in various fields in science and technology such as: electronics, optics, thermoelectrics and electromechanics. The device also enables a high magnetic flux within a single crystal cell which produces the famous Hofstadter's butterfly, the theorized behavior of electrons under a strong magnetic field and a periodic potential. The laws of friction don't escape the nano regime and even at this small scale friction becomes a challenge for the key-shaped device and as we know, friction causes heat, wear and dissipates energyan unfortunate property at this scale. Incredibly, the rotational mismatch in 2D layered systems strongly suppresses the friction and energy dissipation, an effect which is known as superlubricity. "There is virtually no friction. It's simply based on finding the right angle," adds Koren. Koren hopes that by sharing his research with others in the field it will spark some novel material and device designs. More information: Elad Koren et al. Coherent commensurate electronic states at the interface between misoriented graphene layers, Nature Nanotechnology (2016). DOI: 10.1038/nnano.2016.85 Journal information: Nature Nanotechnology Provided by IBM In 2016, Argonne conducted a cultural assessment stemming from a Solar Energy Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement (Solar PEIS) covering six Southwestern states that Argonnes Environmental Sciences Division. One of the first studies to portray how Spanish and Mexican settlers of the area related to the land before the U.S. government assumed jurisdiction. Argonnes charge was to determine which public lands within those states would be technically and environmentally suitable for solar energy development. Credit: K. Wescott/Argonne National Laboratory Hollywood's Indiana Jones gained fame for wielding his pistol and bullwhip, but researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory prefer to equip themselves with something far more sophisticated: Geographic Information Systems (GIS) analysis. Instead of conducting their investigations snake pit by snake pit, temple by temple, cavern by cavern, these archaeologists and their colleagues aggregated their GIS data by grids of one square kilometer (nearly four-tenths of a square mile) of a study area that encompasses 9,786 square miles of the San Luis Valley-Taos Plateau area of southern Colorado and northern New Mexico. The grids are packed with data pertaining to the presence of sites and landmarks that are archaeologically, historically, culturally and scenically important, and the potential threats to and opportunities for their future. These findings are documented in the cultural heritage values and risk assessment report for the study area that Argonne completed last year for the Bureau of Land Management (BLM). The multi-faceted study is one of the first to portray how Spanish and Mexican settlers of the area, the recipients of land grants from their governments, related to the land before the U.S. government assumed jurisdiction. "It's getting away from the project-specific, site-specific types of analysis into this broader landscape to look more at patterns and distribution of the archaeological sites and the cultural significance areas," said Konnie Wescott, who heads Argonne's Natural and Sociocultural Systems Department. "That larger landscape perspective is what really makes this different from a lot of activities that we as archaeologists tend to do." The cultural assessment was a pilot project that stemmed from a Solar Energy Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement (Solar PEIS) covering six Southwestern states that Argonne's Environmental Sciences Division had completed for BLM in 2012. Argonne's charge was to determine which public lands within those states would be technically and environmentally suitable for solar energy development. In addition, during that time the BLM was conducting Rapid Ecoregional Assessments (REAs) across the West to evaluate the condition and trends of the natural environment. The Solar PEIS resulted in the designation of four solar energy zones in the San Luis Valley, and strategies for mitigating the environmental impact of any utility-scale solar energy development that may ensue. Largely unaddressed, however, was the potential cultural impact of such development. "All those things that drive change in the natural environmenthuman development, fire, invasive species and climate changethey affect the cultural environment as well," noted Wescott, the cultural assessment's lead author. That's why she and her colleagues designed their pilot project to see if the REA framework for assessing ecological resources that had already been implemented elsewhere in the West could be applied to a cultural environment. "Quite frankly, it worked pretty well," Wescott said. Participants in the project included the BLM, the U.S. Forest Service, National Park Service, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Native American tribes and representatives from the National Heritage Areas for descendants of the Hispano community that had migrated into the area from Mexico. "We talked with all these groups to figure out what in the area was important to them and their stakeholders," said Emily Zvolanek, a GIS senior analyst at Argonne and co-author of the report. The Native American tribes, for example, hold sacred various sites in the San Luis Valley. Tsisnaasjini' (or Blanca Peak) in Colorado's Sangre de Cristo Mountains, is the eastern sacred mountain of the Navajo. Members of the Hispano community have also established their own distinctive lifeways in the area. "They have their very own culture that doesn't really exist anywhere else," Zvolanek said. An important characteristic of the Hispano community is its practice of long-lot agriculture. Under this system, farms are laid out in long, thin plots so that each one has access to water, crop land and grazing land. "It's very strategic and it's not practiced in many places anymore," Zvolanek said. The Old Spanish National Historic Trail that runs through the San Luis Valley on route to Los Angeles includes culturally significant features along its path. Argonne's research team plotted those points of interest on a map, then ran viewsheds of those spots, as well as other places with important views and settings. This figure shows the areas of greatest potential risk. Argonne researchers calculated risk by modeling the likely future conditions for areas likely to experience climate change, wildfire and the spread of invasive species, as well as the added areas of anticipated future new development. Credit: E. Zvolanek/Argonne National Laboratory The viewshed analyses take into account the physiography and topography of an area to determine what parts of the valley would be visible from a particular point of interest. This would reveal whether a potential new solar facility or transmission line could be seen from those viewpoints, thus detracting from the area's beauty and cultural significance. "We identified areas that have what we termed high cultural resource value," Zvolanek said. "The most important thing is to look at archaeological and historical resources that are unique to these areas. How can we keep them protected?" Especially helpful to the Argonne team was an ethnographic study completed in 2013 that identified sacred landscapes and traditional cultural properties that could be negatively affected by solar energy development. Nancy Keohane and Joseph Vieira, both of BLM's Rocky Mountain District Office, were among the federal land managers who contributed to Argonne's cultural assessment. The final report has become a valuable public resource that BLM has shared with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Colorado Parks and Wildlife and other agencies, said Keohane, a project manager for BLM's Colorado Renewable Energy Team. "We've had a lot of interest around the state of Colorado in doing more of these assessments," said Keohane, a project manager for BLM's Colorado Renewable Energy Team. "It's really nice to be able to pick up one document and understand that whole landscape." The project also has helped federal land managers to better appreciate how people have moved through and interacted with the landscape over the centuries and even the millennia, said Vieira, a national monument project manager and a co-author of the final report. "In renewable energy but also other land uses, these types of studies across the West benefit the peoples who live there now so they have a greater respect and understanding about the peoples who lived there before," he said. A case in point is the land-grant heritage of the area's Spanish and Mexican settlers. "It's a heritage that preceded the American era and is the source, unfortunately, of conflict between members of the public and the Hispanic Americans from that area who have felt disenfranchised from their land," Vieira said. Although the report is publicly available, it does not include the exact locations of lawfully protected archaeological sites. More detailed data that Argonne turned over to BLM is only available to credentialed researchers. The benefits of the cultural assessment led to a second such study that Argonne is conducting in Utah, another state where the BLM has established solar energy zones. The southwest Utah study area contains different cultural resources from Colorado and New Mexico, but similar methods still apply. For example, the Hispano community is absent from Utah, but Mormon history and culture loom large. And so does water scarcity, which Utah has in common with Colorado and New Mexico. Water quality and availability affects the cultural environment in multiple ways, Wescott noted. "Human habitation has always gravitated toward water, so there's always been a strong correlation between water and areas of cultural sensitivity and significance," she said. Water is a risk factor, as well. A reliable water supply will affect the long-term sustainability of the Hispano culture's long-lot agriculture. And its erosional and flash-flood effects in dry environments also pose a threat to archaeological sites. "It's a very complex problem," Wescott said. San Luis Valley-Taos Plateau did you know? Three types of utility-scale solar energy technologies were evaluated for development on public lands in the San Luis Valley-Taos Plateau region of Colorado and New Mexico. Photovoltaics are flat, rectangular solar panels, which use semiconducting materials to convert sunlight into electricity. Several photovoltaic-powered plants already operate in the San Luis Valley. Concentrating solar power (CSP) plants, such as the world's largest capacity power tower plant in Ivanpah, California, employ thousands of heliostats (tracking mirrors) that concentrate the sun's energy into a receiver that tops a tower standing more than 200 feet high. Parabolic solar troughs are also CSP plants that include large arrays collecting and concentrating solar radiation onto receiver tubes that run along the focal lines of the troughs. The concentrated radiation heats synthetic oil circulating through the pipes beforeit gets pumped to a generating station. Map of dark matter made from gravitational lensing measurements of 26 million galaxies in the Dark Energy Survey. The map covers about 1/30th of the entire sky and spans several billion light-years in extent. Red regions have more dark matter than average, blue regions less dark matter. Credit: Chihway Chang of the Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics at the University of Chicago and the DES collaboration. Imagine planting a single seed and, with great precision, being able to predict the exact height of the tree that grows from it. Now imagine traveling to the future and snapping photographic proof that you were right. If you think of the seed as the early universe, and the tree as the universe the way it looks now, you have an idea of what the Dark Energy Survey (DES) collaboration has just done. In a presentation today at the American Physical Society Division of Particles and Fields meeting at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, DES scientists will unveil the most accurate measurement ever made of the present large-scale structure of the universe. These measurements of the amount and "clumpiness" (or distribution) of dark matter in the present-day cosmos were made with a precision that, for the first time, rivals that of inferences from the early universe by the European Space Agency's orbiting Planck observatory. The new DES result (the tree, in the above metaphor) is close to "forecasts" made from the Planck measurements of the distant past (the seed), allowing scientists to understand more about the ways the universe has evolved over 14 billion years. "This result is beyond exciting," said Scott Dodelson of Fermilab, one of the lead scientists on this result. "For the first time, we're able to see the current structure of the universe with the same clarity that we can see its infancy, and we can follow the threads from one to the other, confirming many predictions along the way." Most notably, this result supports the theory that 26 percent of the universe is in the form of mysterious dark matter and that space is filled with an also-unseen dark energy, which is causing the accelerating expansion of the universe and makes up 70 percent. Composite picture of stars over the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile. Credit: Reidar Hahn/Fermilab Paradoxically, it is easier to measure the large-scale clumpiness of the universe in the distant past than it is to measure it today. In the first 400,000 years following the Big Bang, the universe was filled with a glowing gas, the light from which survives to this day. Planck's map of this cosmic microwave background radiation gives us a snapshot of the universe at that very early time. Since then, the gravity of dark matter has pulled mass together and made the universe clumpier over time. But dark energy has been fighting back, pushing matter apart. Using the Planck map as a start, cosmologists can calculate precisely how this battle plays out over 14 billion years. "The DES measurements, when compared with the Planck map, support the simplest version of the dark matter/dark energy theory," said Joe Zuntz, of the University of Edinburgh, who worked on the analysis. "The moment we realized that our measurement matched the Planck result within 7 percent was thrilling for the entire collaboration." The primary instrument for DES is the 570-megapixel Dark Energy Camera, one of the most powerful in existence, able to capture digital images of light from galaxies eight billion light-years from Earth. The camera was built and tested at Fermilab, the lead laboratory on the Dark Energy Survey, and is mounted on the National Science Foundation's 4-meter Blanco telescope, part of the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile, a division of the National Optical Astronomy Observatory. The DES data are processed at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Scientists on DES are using the camera to map an eighth of the sky in unprecedented detail over five years. The fifth year of observation will begin in August. The new results released today draw from data collected only during the survey's first year, which covers 1/30th of the sky. "It is amazing that the team has managed to achieve such precision from only the first year of their survey," said National Science Foundation Program Director Nigel Sharp. "Now that their analysis techniques are developed and tested, we look forward with eager anticipation to breakthrough results as the survey continues." This image of the NGC 1398 galaxy was taken with the Dark Energy Camera. This galaxy lives in the Fornax cluster, roughly 65 million light-years from Earth. It is 135,000 light-years in diameter, just slightly larger than our own Milky Way galaxy, and contains more than a billion stars. Credit: Dark Energy Survey DES scientists used two methods to measure dark matter. First, they created maps of galaxy positions as tracers, and second, they precisely measured the shapes of 26 million galaxies to directly map the patterns of dark matter over billions of light-years, using a technique called gravitational lensing. To make these ultraprecise measurements, the DES team developed new ways to detect the tiny lensing distortions of galaxy images, an effect not even visible to the eye, enabling revolutionary advances in understanding these cosmic signals. In the process, they created the largest guide to spotting dark matter in the cosmos ever drawn (see image). The new dark matter map is 10 times the size of the one DES released in 2015 and will eventually be three times larger than it is now. "It's an enormous team effort and the culmination of years of focused work," said Erin Sheldon, a physicist at the DOE's Brookhaven National Laboratory, who co-developed the new method for detecting lensing distortions. These results and others from the first year of the Dark Energy Survey will be released today online and announced during a talk by Daniel Gruen, NASA Einstein fellow at the Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology at DOE's SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, at 5 p.m. Central time. The talk is part of the APS Division of Particles and Fields meeting at Fermilab and will be streamed live. The results will also be presented by Kavli fellow Elisabeth Krause of the Kavli Insitute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology at SLAC at the TeV Particle Astrophysics Conference in Columbus, Ohio, on Aug. 9; and by Michael Troxel, postdoctoral fellow at the Center for Cosmology and AstroParticle Physics at Ohio State University, at the International Symposium on Lepton Photon Interactions at High Energies in Guanzhou, China, on Aug. 10. All three of these speakers are coordinators of DES science working groups and made key contributions to the analysis. "The Dark Energy Survey has already delivered some remarkable discoveries and measurements, and they have barely scratched the surface of their data," said Fermilab Director Nigel Lockyer. "Today's world-leading results point forward to the great strides DES will make toward understanding dark energy in the coming years." The Oriental eye fly (Siphunculina funicola) is newly recorded in China. Credit: Dr. Xiaoyan Liu The conjunctivitis-transmitting Oriental eye fly (Siphunculina funicola) has been recorded for the first time in China. In the same paper, published in the open access journal ZooKeys, a team of three scientists further describe three species of the same genus, which are new to science. The studied flies in the genus Siphunculina present a number of curious insects, including the grass flies and the Oriental eye fly - a species that transmits conjunctivitis and other eye diseases to both humans and domestic animals. As the larvae feed on faeces or thrive in decaying flesh, they can usually be found in bird nests, excrement or carcasses. The scientists Dr. Xiaoyan Liu, Huazhong Agricultural University, China, Dr. Ding Yang, China Agricultural University and Dr. Emilia P. Nartshuk, Russian Academy of Sciences, collected the Oriental eye fly in Hainan, the southernmost province of China. Previously, the species had been known to inhabit other countries in eastern and southern Asia, where the flies amass around people and cattle, causing considerable annoyance and spreading eye diseases. Siphunculina bulbifera is one of the new grass fly species. Credit: Dr. Xiaoyan Liu Siphunculina shangyongensis is one of the new grass fly species. Credit: Dr. Xiaoyan Liu More information: Xiao-Yan Liu et al, Three new species and one new record of the genus Siphunculina from China (Diptera, Chloropidae), ZooKeys (2017). DOI: 10.3897/zookeys.687.13156 Journal information: ZooKeys Facebook made progress in improving the gender and racial balance of its workers, with women, African Americans and Hispanics all gaining more representation in the Silicon Valley company's ranks over the last year. Women now make up 35% of Facebook's global workforce, up from 33%, and hold 19% of technical roles, up from 17%, the company said Wednesday. In the U.S., Facebook brought aboard more people of color. Three percent of Facebook workers are African American, up from 2%, and 5% of them are Hispanic, up from 4%. This marks the first time Facebook has increased the percentage of African Americans since it began publicly reporting its workforce demographics three years ago. But the giant social network fell short where the lack of diversity is most acute, in the proportion of African-American and Hispanic workers in technical roles, which has stayed flat at 1% and 3% respectively since 2014. The percentage of African Americans and Hispanics in senior leadership positions have also remained largely unchanged over that time period. A big part of the problem, according to Facebook's global diversity chief Maxine Williams: Too few people of color have the specialized education and training for technical roles at Facebook and too few of them apply for jobs there. African Americans now make up 6% of Facebook workers in non-technical roles, up from 2% in 2014, and Hispanics make up 8%, up from 6% in 2014, Williams noted. "It's the same company. If there was this awful culture that was rejecting people, it would play out in that space as well," she said. Last year Facebook came under fire for blaming the recruitment "pipeline" for the low numbers of African Americans and Hispanics in technical roles, prompting a protest with the hashtag #FBNoExcuses. Diversity advocates say Silicon Valley is not tapping into available talent. "Tech companies should be asking themselves: How do we close the gap between the approximately 18% of computer science and computer engineering graduates who are Black or Latinx, and our own technical workforce?" said Joelle Emerson, founder and CEO of Paradigm, a strategy firm that consults with tech companies on diversity and inclusion. Pressure to employ a more diverse team is only intensifying as Facebook laps the globe. Having women and underrepresented minorities brainstorming and building, not just using, the products dreamed up by Facebook is quickly becoming a business necessity. The giant social network announced in June that it now reaches 2 billion users each month. "If anything, it's a bigger priority," Williams said. For a fast-growing Internet giant to swing percentage point gains in one year is no easy feat, especially when competing for top technical talent, the lifeblood of technology companies. Rivals such as Google have also struggled to increase the percentage of African Americans and Hispanics in technical roles. According to a report earlier this year from Bloomberg, Facebook began giving incentives to recruiters in 2015 to find engineering candidates who were underrepresented at the company, namely women, African Americans and Hispanics workers. But during the final hiring stage, a small committee of high-ranking engineers vetoed promising candidates. Williams denied the report. Facebook has made the biggest strides in bringing more women into technical roles. According to Williams, women account for 27% of new graduate hires in engineering and 21% of new technical hires. Tech companies have been pouring resources and money into diversity efforts since Google ushered in a new wave of disclosure about workforce diversity in 2014 when it reported its lopsided demographics for the first time. Observers blame the paucity of women and people of color on the recruiting methods and insular corporate cultures of these companies, especially in Silicon Valley, which has historically been dominated by white and Asian men. At Facebook, 49% of employees are white and 40% are Asian. Data show many more African-American and Hispanic students major in computer science and engineering than work in jobs in the tech industry. Nine percent of graduates from top engineering programs are black and Hispanic, according to a report from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Among the findings in the EEOC's Diversity in High Tech report: Tech companies had more white employees (69%) than the average hired by all firms (64%) and more Asian-Americans (14% vs. 5.8%). But high tech fell behind in hiring African Americans (7%, compared to 14% in all industries) and Hispanics (8% compared to. 13.9%). USA TODAY analysis of the employment records of Facebook, Google and Yahoo in 2014 revealed that minorities are sharply underrepresented in non-technical jobs such as sales and administration, with African Americans faring noticeably worse than Hispanics. The actual numbers of African Americans and Hispanics working at Facebook in the U.S. remain small. In 2016, Facebook employed 152 black men and 107 black women, and 291 Hispanic men and 212 Hispanic women, out of a total of 11,241 employees, according to Facebook's EEO-1, the report on its workforce demographics it files each year with the federal government that the company released Wednesday. Facebook had refused USA TODAY's earlier requests for the report. In 2015, Facebook employed 94 black men and 51 black women, and 219 Hispanic men and 144 Hispanic women, out of a total of 8,446 employees in the U.S. 2017 USA Today Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC. Supermarkets in the Netherlands and Germany were Thursday removing millions of eggs from their shelves believed to have been contaminated by a toxic insecticide in a widening food scandal. Amid fears the Dutch poultry industry could be facing huge financial losses, German officials said late Thursday they believed three million tainted eggs had been made their way into the country and been sold. After shuttering 180 businesses earlier in the week, the Dutch food authority (NVWA) said following tests that 138 poultry farmsabout a fifth of all such concerns in the countrywould remain closed, with one batch of eggs posing "an acute danger to public health". Eggs from another 59 farms contained high enough levels of the insecticide, fipronil, that the food authority warned they should not be eaten by children. "Those businesses whose egg codes have been printed on the website will remain closed," the NVWA said, publishing a list of 138 codes printed on the sides of the eggs, which identify which farm they have come from. According to Dutch media, some 10 billion eggs were produced in the country last year by about 1,000 poultry farms, with many of them going across the border into Germany. Scramble in Germany The German agricultural ministry said "at least three million contaminated eggs" had been delivered from the Netherlands to Germany in recent weeks, most of which had been sold. "Germany has been worse affected" than initially thought, admitted German Agriculture Minister Christian Schmidt after holding a "crisis teleconference" Thursday with his counterparts in German states. Manufactured by Germany's BASF among other companies, fipronil is commonly used in veterinary products to get rid of fleas, lice and ticks. But it is banned from being used to treat animals destined for human consumption, such as chickens. The European Commission said it had been made aware of the egg issue, and spokeswoman Anna-Kaisa Itkonen told reporters developments were being monitored "very closely". "What I can say is that the farms are identified, the eggs are blocked, the contaminated eggs are traced and withdrawn from the market, and the situation is under control." Red lice It is believed the toxic substance was introduced to poultry farms by a Dutch business, named Chickfriend, brought in to treat red lice, a nasty parasite in chickens. Dutch and Belgian media reports that the substance containing the insecticide was supplied to Chickfriend by a Belgian firm have not been confirmed. German officials are also investigating reports that the contaminated product had been delivered directly to German poultry farms in the Lower Saxony region, which then sold their eggs in other parts of the country. The biggest supermarket chain in The Netherlands, Albert Heijn, said meanwhile it was pulling 14 types of eggs from its shelves. "All the eggs of these 14 kinds have been sent back to the depot and destroyed," company spokeswoman Els van Dijk told AFP. Belgium's federal food chain security agency (AFSCA) has also launched a criminal investigation in cooperation with prosecutors. Tests have found fipronil in some eggs but not in quantities that pose a threat to human health. None of the eggs have made it to Belgian supermarket shelves, the Belgian authority said. In large quantities, the insecticide is considered to be "moderately hazardous" according to the World Health Organization, and can have dangerous effects on people's kidneys, liver and thyroid glands. With losses expected to run into millions of euros, it is another blow for Dutch poultry farmers after 190,000 ducks were culled in November amid a highly infectious strain of bird flu. 2017 AFP The GOES-S satellite in a clean room at Lockheed Martin in Littleton, Colo., during a test deployment of the Antenna Wing Assembly (AWA). The antenna wing is stowed during launch and deployed 90 degrees from the stowed position, approximately 14 days after launch, once the satellite reaches geostationary orbit. Credit: Lockheed Martin Progress continues on the development of NOAA's GOES-S and GOES-T spacecraft that will follow the successful launch of the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite or GOES-R, renamed GOES-16 upon reaching geostationary orbit. The GOES-S satellite is fully integrated and is currently undergoing its final functional testing to confirm it successfully passed mechanical and thermal environmental testing. Electromagnetic testing, which is performed to ensure that the electromagnetic signals produced by satellite components do not interfere with its operation, is underway. GOES-S will complete testing this fall and be shipped to NASA's Kennedy Space Center in December for final launch preparations. "GOES-S is now in its final test phase preparing it to join GOES-16 in space, giving the nation two next-generation geostationary weather satellites to watch over the Western Hemisphere," said Acting GOES-R Series System Program Director Mike Stringer at the GOES-R Series Program Office, located at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. In parallel with the GOES-S testing, progress is being made in assembling the third satellite of the GOES-R series, GOES-T. Five of its instruments were delivered to the Lockheed Martin facility in Littleton, Colorado. The two solar viewing instruments, SUVI (Solar Ultraviolet Imager) and EXIS (Extreme Ultraviolet and X-ray Irradiance Sensors), are now integrated to the solar-pointing platform of the spacecraft. The majority of the spacecraft avionics have been integrated to the GOES-T system module and functional testing is underway. In mid-July 2017, the GOES-T core propulsion module was delivered, and in September, the propulsion module and the system module will be mated together to form the main body of the spacecraft. The GOES-T Extreme Ultraviolet and X-ray Irradiance Sensors, or EXIS, (left) and Solar Ultraviolet Imager (SUVI), right are integrated with the solar-pointing platform of the GOES-T spacecraft at Lockheed Martin in Littleton, Colorado. The solar-pointing platform will be mounted on the solar array of the satellite, which is a wing of five solar panels that will derive electricity from sunlight. Credit: Lockheed Martin GOES-S is currently scheduled for launch in spring 2018 and GOES-T is planned for 2020. They will be designated GOES-17 and GOES-18 once they reach orbit. The GOES-R satellite series consists of GOES-R, GOES-S, GOES-T and GOES-U. This series is more advanced than the current GOES fleet in that the satellites can scan Earth five times faster, at four times the image resolution, with triple the number of channels for more accurate, reliable weather forecasts and severe weather outlooks. They also provide critical solar monitoring and space weather observations. Close-up of the ALPHA apparatus. Credit: CERN A Canadian-led investigation has opened a new chapter in antimatter research. In a study published today in Nature, the ALPHA Collaboration, which includes 50 physicists from 17 institutions, reports the first detailed observation of spectral lines from an antimatter atom. "Spectral lines are like fingerprints," says lead author Michael Hayden, a Simon Fraser University physics professor. "Every element has its own unique pattern." There is one (possible) exception: matter and antimatter are believed to be mirror images of one another, and so the spectral lines of antimatter atoms should be precisely the same as those of their normal atom counterparts. Whether or not this is true is unknown. Until now, scientists have only had glimpses of antimatter spectral lines, and comparisons with normal matter spectral lines have been coarse. The ALPHA Collaboration studies antihydrogen, the antimatter counterpart of the ordinary hydrogen atom. Their experimental results show a particular set of spectral lines in antihydrogen match those in hydrogen very well. The team plans to zoom in much closer to check if subtle discrepancies exist between the two atoms on a yet finer scale. Conducted at the CERN laboratory in Geneva, the research involves irradiating antihydrogen atoms with microwaves, similar to those used to communicate with satellites. When this is done, the anti-atoms reveal their identity by emitting or absorbing energy at very specific frequencies. That pattern, or spectrum, of frequencies corresponds to the "fingerprint" described by Hayden. "One of the challenges we face is that matter and antimatter annihilate when they come into contact with one another," says Justine Munich, an SFU physics PhD candidate. "We have to keep them apart. We can't just put our anti-atoms into an ordinary container. They have to be trapped or held inside a special magnetic bottle." "By studying the properties of anti-atoms we hope to learn more about the universe in which we live," says Hayden. "We can make antimatter in the lab, but it doesn't seem to exist naturally except in miniscule quantities. Why is this? We simply don't know. But perhaps antihydrogen can give us some clues." More information: M. Ahmadi et al. Observation of the hyperfine spectrum of antihydrogen, Nature (2017). DOI: 10.1038/nature23446 Journal information: Nature The graph notes the dramatic decrease in population of overwintering monarch butterflies in Mexico in recent years. ISU research provides an explanation for why censuses of monarchs in the U.S. didn't always note similar population decreases. Credit: Monarch Watch Monarch butterfly populations have taken a nosedive over the last 20 years, according to researchers who monitor the number of butterflies that spend the winter in Mexico every year. But organizations of citizen scientists in the United States who conduct yearly censuses of monarchs in state parks and other locations in the summer have reported no consistent dip in the number of butterflies they see. This discrepancy has led some to challenge the widely accepted belief that loss of milkweed on the U.S. landscape has driven the decline of the species. However, an ISU researcher and colleagues have found an explanation for the difference between the overwintering numbers and the summer census findings. And their explanation, published recently in the academic journal PLOS ONE, bolsters the view that loss of milkweed, the only plant on which monarchs will lay eggs, has forced monarch populations to fall. John Pleasants, an adjunct assistant professor in the Department Ecology, Evolution and Organismal Biology, said long-term monitoring of butterflies and eggs on milkweed stems during the summer breeding season across the United States didn't note the same decline as that documented in central Mexico, where all monarch butterflies migrate for the winter. "These census findings, which didn't see the same drop in population, cast doubt on the milkweed narrative," Pleasants said. "It made people think maybe the problem isn't with milkweed becoming harder to find. Instead, maybe there's something going wrong as the monarchs migrate to Mexico." Pleasants set out to pinpoint the reason for the discrepancy and found that it results from the fact that monarch activity has shifted out of agricultural fields, where milkweeds were once common. For example, roughly half of farm fields in Iowa used to have patches of milkweed, but the widespread use of the herbicide glyphosate has kept fields free of milkweed in recent years. That leaves monarchs with no choice but to concentrate in other areas with milkweed, Pleasants said. It is these other areas where summer censuses are conducted. "The census takers used to see only a small sliver of the total population," he said. "Now, they're seeing a higher proportion since the monarchs aren't spending time in agricultural fields anymore." This increasing concentration effect masks the decline in population size, Pleasants said. The study accounts for the change in the proportion of monarchs inside and outside of agricultural fields by looking at the change in the proportion of milkweeds in those two areas using historical milkweed abundance data gathered by ISU agronomists. The summer census data are then corrected to account for the shifting proportions and thus reveal actual population size. "Then we see with these corrected numbers that, yes, the population of monarchs in the United States is declining at the same rate as the overwintering population," Pleasants said. The finding supports previous studies suggesting that an increase in available milkweed could help the monarch population rebound. Such studies have led to efforts across the country to restore monarch habitat. For instance, the Iowa Monarch Conservation Consortium, established through the efforts of the ISU College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, the Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship and the Iowa Department of Natural Resources, has taken a science-based approach to enhancing monarch butterfly reproduction and assisting community-led milkweed restoration efforts. Pleasants called monarch butterflies an "iconic species," with which virtually all Iowans are familiar. He said the monarch butterfly's distinct appearance and lifecycle, plus its unique migratory behavior, inspire people to undertake conservation efforts to reverse its decline. "It's a fascinating and awe-inspiring bit of biology," he said. More information: John M. Pleasants et al. Interpreting surveys to estimate the size of the monarch butterfly population: Pitfalls and prospects, PLOS ONE (2017). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0181245 Journal information: PLoS ONE Kenneth Blanco, acting chief of the Justice Department's criminal division, said the case showed the US could pursue cybercriminals operating in other countries A US judge on Thursday sentenced a Russian citizen to 46 months in prison for his role in a global computer fraud that took in millions, the Justice Department announced. Following his 2016 extradition from Finland, Maxim Senakh, 41, pleaded guilty in March in a federal court in Minneapolis to wire and computer fraud. He will be deported on his release from prison, the department said. Prosecutors said Senakh used malicious computer code dubbed "Ebury" to infect thousands of computers around the world to harvest user names and passwords. The conspirators then used the log-in credentials to redirect internet traffic for click-fraud and email spam. Kenneth Blanco, acting chief of the Justice Department's criminal division, said the case showed the US could pursue cybercriminals operating in other countries. "We have the ability and the determination to identify them, find them and bring them to justice," Blanco said in a statement. Senakh was extradited from Finland in January of last year despite strong objections from Moscow. Finland shares an 830-mile (1,340-kilometer) border with Russia and Helsinki has worked to main stable relations with its larger neighbor since the end of World War II. 2017 AFP The National Museum of Natural History's wet echinoderm collections at the Smithsonian's Museum Support Center in Suitland, Md. Echinoderms are a group of animals that include sea stars and sea urchins.Natural history museums and collections are libraries of life that catalog the planet's diversity, keeping records about where, when and what they collect. Taken with the collections they describe, these records help scientists study how life on Earth is responding to broad changes on the planet. The Genomic Observatories Metadatabase creates tools for scientists conducting cutting-edge biodiversity genomic research to share and reuse genetic data for environmental and ecological analyses, like natural history museums do with the information they keep about the forms of life they collect."Tracking biodiversity through global change is a collaborative effort," said Christopher Meyer, a research zoologist at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History who helped lead the Genomic Observatories Metadatabase's development. "We can't do it on our own. GeOMe will advance big data and discovery for the future, allowing the sum of scientific endeavors to far exceed individual research products." Credit: Hilary Von Swank A new publically available database will catalog metadata associated with biologic samples, making it easier for researchers to share and reuse genetic data for environmental and ecological analyses. The resource, called the Genomic Observatories Metadatabase (GeOMe), was developed by researchers at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History and eight other museums and research institutions. It links publically available genetic data to records of where and when samples were collected, providing contextual information that until now has been missing from widely shared databases. Such information is critical for comparing biodiversity in different locations worldwide and tracking it across time. But despite calls for more data sharing within the research community, researchers have until now lacked the tools to make this information readily available. The developers of the database, described Aug. 3 in the journal PLOS Biology, said standardizing and preserving this metadata will greatly enhance the value of the genetic sequence data that researchers are already collecting. With GeOMe, researchers will be able to find and access genetic data collected at specific times and places anywhere in the world, enabling them to ask big questions about the structure and sustainability of life on the planet. For example, they might investigate how the inhabitants of a specific altitude throughout the world have shifted as the planet's climate has changed. The invertebrate zoology collections at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History.Natural history museums and collections are libraries of life that catalog the planet's diversity, keeping records about where, when and what they collect. Taken with the collections they describe, these records help scientists study how life on Earth is responding to broad changes on the planet. The Genomic Observatories Metadatabase creates tools for scientists conducting cutting-edge biodiversity genomic research to share and reuse genetic data for environmental and ecological analyses, like natural history museums do with the information they keep about the forms of life they collect.Christopher Meyer, research zoologist at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History, said he and his colleagues devoted the time and resources to developing the Genomic Observatories Metadatabase because they knew it would be a powerful tool to accelerate discovery. As museum scientists, they recognize the value of tracking and preserving information. And as a leader in acquisition and dissemination of knowledge about biodiversity, Meyer said, it was important for the National Museum of Natural History to play a key role. Credit: Chip Clark, Smithsonian Institution "Tracking biodiversity through global change is a collaborative effort," said Christopher Meyer, a research zoologist at the National Museum of Natural History who helped lead GeOMe's development. "We can't do it on our own. GeOMe will advance big data and discovery for the future, allowing the sum of scientific endeavors to far exceed individual research products." Scientists who analyze ecological sampleswhether they are plants or animals or entire communities of microbes, gathered from the oceans, freshwater or landhave their own systems for keeping track of when are where those samples were collected. But for the broader research community, such information has been difficult to obtain and impossible to comprehensively search. GeOMe provides a solution by permanently linking information about samples' temporal, environmental, geospatial and scholarly context to genetic sequence data stored by the National Center for Biotechnology Information. Meyer said he and his colleagues devoted the time and resources to developing GeOMe because they knew it would be a powerful tool to accelerate discovery. As museum scientists, they recognize the value of tracking and preserving information. And as a leader in acquisition and dissemination of knowledge about biodiversity, Meyer said, it was important for the National Museum of Natural History to play a key role. Samples taken for genetic study during a biodiversity and ecological survey in Ranomafana National Park, Madagascar.The Genomic Observatories Metadatabase creates tools for biodiversity genomic scientists to share and reuse genetic data for environmental and ecological analyses, like natural history museums do with the information they keep about the forms of life they collect. Credit: Christopher Meyer, Smithsonian GeOMe's developers, including Eric Crandall at California State University, Monterey Bay, Michelle Gaither at the Hawai'i Institute of Marine Biology and John Deck at the Berkeley Natural History Museums, have worked to ensure that the resource is easy to use and adaptable for a wide range of needs. With the database and toolkit freely available to the research community, scientific journals can now mandate that authors make their metadata available in a searchable and standardized format, just as they have long done for genetic sequence data, they said. Importantly, the team notes, data in GeOMe will conform to standards developed by the Genomic Standards Consortium and the Biodiversity Information Standards organization, ensuring that submitters capture and record the same essential information about every sample. These standards will ensure that in the future, researchers will be able to conduct analyses across datasets. "[Our knowledge of] biodiversity is being written through genomic databut the data doesn't mean much unless you can put it in context," Meyer said. "If we don't start implementing a tool like this now, our data will be less useful in perpetuity." Provided by Smithsonian The Salton Sea from space. Credit: NASA Scientists at the University of California, Riverside investigating the composition of particulate matter (PM) and its sources at the Salton Sea have found that this shrinking lake in Southern California is exposing large areas of dry lakebed, called playa, that are acting as new dust sources with the potential to impact human health. "Playas have a high potential to act as dust sources because playa surfaces often lack vegetation," said Roya Bahreini, an associate professor of environmental sciences, who led the research project. "Dust emissions from playas increase airborne PM mass, which has been linked to cardiovascular disease, respiratory disease, and mortality." Study results appeared recently in Environmental Science and Technology. Bahreini's team set out to test whether emissions from playas change the composition of PM10 (particulate matter with diameters up to 10 microns) near the Salton Sea. The team assessed the composition of playa soils (recently submerged underneath the Salton Sea), desert soils (located farther from the sea), and PM10 collected during August 2015 and February 2016. They found that dust sources contributed to about 45 percent of PM10 at the Salton Sea during the sampling period while playa emissions contributed to about 10 percent. Further, they found that playa emissions significantly increased the sodium content of PM10. "Increase in the sodium content of PM10 can affect the ecosystem when the sodium-rich particles deposit downwind and change the natural balance for soils and agricultural lands or when these particles form clouds," Bahreini said. "Currently, the primary concern for PM emissions from playa is the contribution to total concentration of PM10, which regardless of composition, is an irritant and can have negative respiratory effects." Her team also found that playa soils and PM10 are significantly enriched in selenium relative to desert soils. Bahreini explained that selenium can be a driver of aquatic and avian toxicity. "Additionally, higher selenium enrichments in PM10 during summertime suggest that selenium volatilization from the playa may become an important factor controlling the selenium budget in the area as more playa gets exposed," she said. Alexander L. Frie, a graduate student in environmental sciences and the first author of the research paper, at the sampling site. Credit: Bahreini lab, UC Riverside. Alexander L. Frie, a graduate student in environmental sciences and the first author of the research paper, urges that the Salton Sea be paid close attention since, although it is widely considered a large ecological disaster, with no serious monitoring and remediation efforts the sea may also create a human health crisis for the surrounding area. "Although our results indicate playa emission may not be especially toxic when compared to other dust particles, increased emissions from a shrinking sea will reduce the quality of life of the residents within the Imperial Valley and other downwind regions," he said. Samantha C. Ying, an assistant professor of environmental sciences and a coauthor on the paper, stresses that monitoring the increase in dust sources over time is necessary to quantify its contribution to local health problems. "Our study shows that the shrinking Salton Sea is contributing to dust sources in the region," she said. "Even considering just the small area of playa that is exposed now, the contributions are significant." Another concern the researchers point out is that water that is currently diverted from the Colorado River and directed into the Salton Sea is scheduled to end before 2018. The resultant decrease of inflow into the sea will likely cause a decline in water level, exposing more playa, and therefore emitting more dust. "With more playa being exposed, we expect total PM10 concentrations to increase and human exposure to these particles in downwind areas will also increase," Bahreini said. "Therefore implementing any project, for example, creating shallow water pools over the playa, that limits formation of salt crusts on the playa will be valuable." Bahreini, Frie and Ying were joined in the study by Justin H. Dingle, a graduate student in Bahreini's lab. Credit: CC0 Public Domain "President Donald Trump signs an executive order allowing the hunting of bald eagles," a headline from the St. George Gazette blared last month. The headline was fakeas is the St. George Gazette, a pseudo local news organization that's one of a handful of spoof-generating sites run by entrepreneur Paul Horner from his home in Arizona. Yet, Trump declaring open season on bald eagles story was widely shared, following the life cycle of inflammatory fake news stories that were frequently shared during the run-up to last year's election. But this time something different happened. About a week after the story posted, fact checkers at Snopes.com and FactCheck.org saw the story was being flagged by users and debunked it. After that, any time the link was posted or shared on Facebook, the social network showed this message beneath the headline: "Disputed by Snopes.com and FactCheck.org." "There's definitely been a huge change, a dramatic change," Horner told USA TODAY by phone last month. "It's hurt my wallet for sure with how difficult it is now to get something to go viral and people so quick to call things fake news." Facebook and Google came under fire late last year for allowing their networks and advertising programs to distribute and amplify fake news stories during the U.S. presidential election. In response, they said they've been cracking down on false stories and hoaxes, inking deals with fact-checking organizations, making it easier for users to report fake stories and choking economic incentives for fake news producers. The snowball effect of these measures has been felt by Horner, the owner of ABCNews.com.co, CNN.com.de, the St. George Gazette and about 13 additional fake news domains. He's been interviewed by almost every major media outlet since the election and is even writing a book about fake news. He told The Washington Post after the election that he was making nearly $10,000 a month from fake news alone. After authoring widely shared fake stories about the entire Amish population voting for Trump and Twitter deleting Trump's account, he told The Washington Post he felt Trump was elected because of hima sentiment he now disavows. Horner said these days, almost all of his stories that go viral on Facebook get disputed and his most popular sites get marked as spam. Three of his sites, including ABCNews.com.co and CNN.com.de were removed from Google's ad network. He would not provide USA TODAY with exactly how many shares, views and dollars he's lost since Facebook and Google started cracking down on fake news. But he did say that all have slightly decreased. "If people know the article might not be true then they're less likely to read it or if they think it's a gag or a joke they read it as that and then they don't share it," said Horner, who lures readers to his websites with a salacious headline then pockets ad revenue from the page views. Business is tougher now for everyone else too. Several fake news sites have shuttered in the past six months or stopped publishing stories entirely. Jestin Coler, who was named the "king" of fake news by NPR, has "retired" from the business and took the widely popular NationalReport.net and the Denver Guardian with him. In total, 28 fake news sites have shut down in the months following the election, according to BuzzFeed News. Still, fake news remains a lucrative business, as digital advertising networks find it difficult to enforce their policies, allowing fake news producers to monetize. Plus, fact-checking organizations tasked with debunking fake news may at times be too slow to react. Four fact-checking organizations partnered with Facebook told USA TODAY they debunk one or two fake stories a day at most. "It's like playing whack-a-mole, as soon as a fake news site is identified and threatened, it can just refashion itself," said Melissa Zimdars, a communications professor at Merrimack College in northern Massachusetts. "They (Facebook and Google) have a huge role in thisand it's one where we're only seeing the beginning of them acknowledging." The two Internet giants, Facebook and Google, have tried a combination of humans, algorithms and partnerships to flag fake newswithout stepping into the controversial arena of censorship. In early December, Facebook announced it would link up with third party fact-checkers: Snopes.com, FactCheck.org, Politifact, ABC News and the Associated Press to visibly debunk fake stories flagged by users. Stories deemed fake by these fact checkers then appear lower in the News Feed. The social media giant has also limited fake sites from buying ads and upped its detection of fake profiles that help fake news spread. Links shared en masse by spammers also get a lower ranking in the News Feed, the company announced last month. Facebook hasn't released specific data, but the company's Vice President of Product said there's been a "decrease" in fake news on the platform at the International Journalism Festival in early June. Google in January said it had removed some 200 sites from using its AdSense program. Website owners using AdSense pick which kind of ads they want displayed and where. Google's software then does the grunt work of populating available website space with those ads. In April, the company also changed its search algorithm to de-prioritize "clearly misleading content" and made it easier for users to report fake stories populating search results. But these tactics don't come without problems. "No silver bullet" When users on Facebook report fake news, fact-checking organizations have access to a program that displays which stories are being flagged the most often. Although they don't see exactly how many people have reported each story, when multiple organizations debunk a story, Facebook adds a "disputed" tag to the link. That story is then ranked lower in the News Feed, meaning it's less likely to show up on people'News Feeds. Aaron Sharockman, the executive director of Politifact, told USA TODAY he sees about 200 flagged stories per day. A small amount of those stories are patently false, he said. The rest are either completely true stories reported by trolls or misleadingbut not necessarily falsehyper-partisan clickbait. Waiting for enough users to report a particular story may take too long. By the time two fact-checking organizations research and debunk a storyeven if it's the next day"it may be too late and the damage is done," said David Lazer, a professor at Northeastern University who has done extensive research on fake news. "You have a bunch of humans that have to do their homework," said Lazer. "That kind of system is slow and open to manipulation." Lori Robertson, managing editor at FactCheck.org, told USA TODAY the organization debunks between two and three articles per week for the Facebook partnership. She added that the partnership with Facebook has made the non-profit shift more resources to debunking fake viral claims. Similarly, Sharockman said Politifact fact checks one or two fake stories per day for Facebook. The Associated Press does "a handful a week, often many more," said AP social media editor Eric Carvin. ABC News has debunked a total of two dozen stories since January. "We're seven people total and we're also fact checking a White House that's certainly making a lot of news, so we're getting to one or two things, but we're only getting to one or two things," Sharockman said. "That means it may take a few days before we get to fact check even a popular story." A Facebook spokesperson told USA TODAY in a statement that the company is using a "multi-pronged approach" to combat fake news. "There's no silver bullet solution, which is why we've deployed a diverse and strategic plan," the statement reads. Advertising networks The same St. George Gazette that published the story about Trump legalizing the hunting of bald eagles as well as another widely debunked story about Trump saying he wanted to cancel Saturday Night Live, was still running Google ads as of July 11. After this reporter told a Google spokesperson the St. George Gazette appeared to be violating its policies, the company removed Google ads from its website. Google would not comment on the specific case. Google's AdSense policy doesn't specifically target fake news, it only addresses "misrepresentative content" or deception. Only sites that masquerade as legitimate news organizations, meaning they don't have a disclaimer claiming to be satire, are in violation of Google's policies. The St. George Gazette does not have a disclaimer. Other advertising networks have similar policies against deception. But even when there's a clear cut violationas was the case with Horner's St. George Gazettethe sheer number of fake news sites is difficult to keep up with, advertising networks say. Revcontent, an advertisement service used by used by Forbes, Newsweek and Reuters, according to its website, also took similar action when notified the St. George Gazette was using its services. It's also the most popular ad service used by fake news creators, according to an April BuzzFeed News analysis. In a statement to USA TODAY, Katherine McDermott, Revcontent's brand manager, said that its a challenge to keep up with violations when content can be changed at anytime without the company knowing, explaining why some fake news sites end up with Revcontent ads. She compared Revcontent to YouTube, saying that "If YouTube was to fact check every video on its site, it would be overwhelming to say the least." Horner also uses MGID, a Los Angeles-based ad network, on the St. George Gazette. MGID said it would remove the ads from the site after an inquiry from this reporter. "Fake news sites are prohibited at MGID. We fall onto some because we don't have the internal resources to validate what is considered fake or not," Michael Korsunsky, MGID's chief marketing officer, told USA Today in a statement. 2017 USA Today Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC. Summer is the busiest travel season, and that means long stretches of highway, wandering attention and maybe a few miles through counties or states spent over the speed limit. Then, the flashing police lights and miserable pull-over. It can happen anytime and anywhere: along rural roads, in speed traps, big cities or daily commutes. A few new platforms have emerged to offer drivers a chance to fight back - by playing the courtroom odds and helping customers choose the most successful lawyers. While automated ways to fight traffic tickets have been around for a while - mostly serving to refer customers to law firms or simply paying charges through a court website - entrepreneurs behind the new platforms say they offer greater flexibility for payments and a deeper understanding of traffic violation and court data. Off The Record is a Seattle-based platform launched in September 2015, covering 18 states including California, Washington, New York, New Jersey and Texas. Its mobile app links to a digital platform, connecting aggrieved drivers and local attorneys. The startup idea formed after a group of friends, including co-founder Alex Guirguis, were pulled over when returning from a camping trip in Oregon over Labor Day weekend. Four cars in the group were pulled over at different times and cited for speeding. The friends looked for a digital solution to finding local attorneys to fight the violations. They had little luck, and ended up paying the tickets, he said. "We realized there was definitely an opportunity here," Guirguis said. Guirguis and his co-founders found estimates that about 40 million tickets are issued to U.S. drivers annually, and less than 5 percent are disputed in court. Guirguis quit his software engineering job at Amazon and formed Off The Record in January 2015. The company recruits local lawyers to sign up. The attorneys set their own rates, court locations and expertise. Drivers take a picture of their ticket and include other relevant information through the website or mobile app. Clients are referred to lawyers, and the two sides can communicate over the secure platform or by phone and email. An attorney will make court appearances and file papers challenging the ticket. Off The Record charges attorneys a fee for each case they accept. Guirguis said the platform has succeeded in bringing down legal costs for customers, since the software allows platform users to see the range of prices for similar services. When the company opened the platform in San Francisco, legal fees ranged from $195 to $1,100 to handle similar, routine violations, he said. Average legal fees on the platform for San Francisco lawyers now average between $200 and $250, he said. Rates have also fallen in Silicon Valley courtrooms, he said. Off The Record has about 250 lawyers and has handled about 5,000 tickets. It boasts a high success rate at reducing violations and preventing points from accumulating on a driver's record. If a driver runs into problems outside of California, TIKD - pronounced "ticked" - has opened a platform on the east coast. It's website-based, with plans for a mobile app. TIKD was founded by a former Naval officer and Harvard Business School grad, Chris Riley, who was stopped in a speed trap in Miami. Riley requested three years worth of traffic violation data from the local courts. Riley analyzed the data and realized the inefficiencies in the system of fighting violations. The company believes it can win the majority of cases, spreading around the risk and savings to consumers, said spokeswoman Louise Finlay. The company has handled thousands of tickets, she said. "There's no other service that does exactly what we do," Finlay said. TIKD allows users to photograph the violation and submit relevant information. Unlike Off the Record, TIKD requires users to pay an upfront fee - typically between $150 and $400, depending on the seriousness and location of the infraction. TIKD hires an attorney to fight the claims. The driver pays one fee, and gets a refund if points are not removed from his or her record. Customers are updated on the status of their ticket throughout the legal process. The startup was launched in February, and covers markets in Florida, Georgia, and the greater Washington, D.C. metro area. It hopes to reach 30 major metropolitan markets next year, Finlay said. Jeremy Simon, a private attorney in Florida, said the service has referred about 200 tickets to his firm since June. Simon said some lawyers have resisted the new platforms, but he's seen it increase his business. He thinks it could eventually encourage more people to fight their tickets and drive down legal fees. "It challenges the established paradigm," Simon said. "This is the future. You have to adapt." Other law firms and lawyers specializing in traffic tickets advertise widely online. The Ticket Clinic, a law firm offering services primarily in California and Florida, boasts a 30-year history of fighting violations from speeding to DUIs. The firm says it has handled 3 million violations. If a driver is really stuck and can't get points removed from his or her license, there are other options. The Oakland-based company DriversEd.com sells state-approved, online courses that gives California drivers a chance to reduce points and lower insurance premiums. Digital services to fight traffic tickets Off The RecordA Seattle-based startup that runs a platform connecting drivers with lawyers. The service gauges attorney success rates, and guarantees a reduction in traffic points. TIKDPronounced "ticked," the website offers services for a flat fee and takes care of legal costs and fines. It's available in certain East Coast cities, and plans to expand to more major metropolitan markets. The Ticket ClinicA law firm with a network of offices in California and Florida. The firm boasts 30 years of representing drivers. 2017 The Mercury News (San Jose, Calif.) Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC. Allergan plc, a pharmaceutical company, develops, manufactures, and commercializes branded pharmaceutical, device, biologic, surgical, and regenerative medicine products worldwide. The company operates in three segments: US Specialized Therapeutics, US General Medicine, and International. It offers a portfolio of products in various therapeutic areas, including medical aesthetics and dermatology, eye care, neuroscience, urology, gastrointestinal, women's health, and anti-infective therapeutic products. The company also offers breast implants and tissue expanders; and RM-131 (relamorelin), a peptide ghrelin agonist for the treatment of diabetic gastroparesis. In addition, it develops medical and cosmetic treatments; therapies for non-alcoholic steatohepatitis and other liver diseases; inhibitor for the treatment of psoriasis and other autoimmune disorders; atopic dermatitis drug candidate; peri-ocular rings for extended drug delivery and reducing elevated intraocular pressure in glaucoma patients; and treatments for neurodegenerative disorders, including Alzheimer's disease. Further, the company develops RST-001, a novel gene therapy for the treatment of retinitis pigmentosa; small molecule therapeutics for inflammatory and fibrotic diseases; topical medicines for fat reduction; and delivery system and botulinum toxin-based prescription products. It has collaboration, option, and license agreement with Lyndra, Inc.; and strategic alliance and option agreement with Editas Medicine, Inc. Allergan plc also has licensing agreements with Assembly Biosciences, Inc.; MedImmune; and Heptares Therapeutics, Ltd. The company was formerly known as Actavis plc and changed its name to Allergan plc in June 2015. Allergan plc was founded in 1983 and is headquartered in Dublin, Ireland.